Elach closed his eyes and focused on his container, which was now completely filled with Issi, and tried to see where all the nectar had gone. He had a feeling it wasn’t in his stomach thanks to the lack of warmth, so he focused a little harder on his container. And there he found the rest of the nectar, packed in the insulating space between his container and the void within it, pulsating with warmth and power. It was saturated to the brim with nectar, and Elach tried a few anchored pulls around his headspace to drain it a little. The nectar seemed to stimulate Issi production, draining from the insulating space as Issi poured in from the void.

Satisfied that he’d made enough room for more nectar, Elach tried to take another sip. Yet still he couldn’t take in any more. He tried again, this time focusing on his container as he drank, and found himself face to face with a countdown. It had four hours and fifty-five minutes remaining, and when he plugged in the around five minutes since he first found himself unable to drink any more nectar, that totaled up to five hours. But that raised more questions than it provided answers. What if he’d started with a full container of Issi? What if he spread out drinking the nectar, would it have a shorter timer? Would growing more powerful lower that timer, or let him keep more nectar in his insulation?

Flow sputtered again as they raised their head out of the nectar, lines of red-gold amber shooting down their back and both of their tail feathers. Any black and blue were replaced by the red-gold amber, and their body had become swirled with the same colour. Flow flapped up to Elach’s shoulder and flaunted their new colours, but Elach was too busy staring down at the previously clear water that had taken on the same hue as Flow’s transformed colours.

“What did you do?” Elach asked as he ran a finger through the nectar that was now as thick as syrup. Flow puffed their chest out proudly and sang Elach a song, and he could have sworn he heard meaning in some of the notes. Not words, but feelings. Happiness, pride, and was that jealousy? Elach had no idea what Flow had to be jealous about, but it was there.

“Still can’t understand you.” Elach shook his head and walked over to the other side of the fountain. “The existential bleed ran out a few minutes ago. Want to test this stuff out?”

Flow took one look at the starry waters and hopped in, splashing around happily as they let out a small shiver. After dismissing a thought that maybe he shouldn’t be drinking bird water, Elach dipped a hand in the water, marvelling once more at how it made it see-through with a thick white outline, and pulled out a handful of water. It was just as cold as before, but the white and blue dots glittered with a fervent intensity that they didn’t previously have. He downed the liquid, its freezing and slightly minty taste overriding the sweetness that had coated his tongue from the nectar. It had barely hit his stomach by the time it was expropriated by his container, coating the outside of it in a freezing capsule that made him feel… closer together? It was hard to describe, but it was like his Issi wanted to get smaller. Make room for more Issi inside of his container. He was hoping that it would help him make his container and headspace larger, but it felt like it wanted to make his Issi more compact. A similar end, but he’d still have a small headspace when all was said and done. And, as he realized within seconds, the effects on his container weren’t all passive. He could feel that they wanted to be used in addition to something else, and Elach looked at the ring on his finger with longing. He so wanted to try and find out how to use it, but his present scenario didn’t really seem like the best time to try that, so the added questions about the nectar and liquid ice were added to his ever-growing list of things he needed to somehow find an answer for.

The far wall cracked, it’s partly see-through material harboring a long horizontal slash with smaller cracks webbing off of it in all directions that leaked Issi through them that Elach could not place for the life of him. It wasn’t his, that’s for sure, so Elach pulled Flow out of the water and backed off.

“We’re leaving.” Elach said with finality, and Flow peeped quietly before squirming out of his arms and into a compartment under the fountain that closed before Elach could so much as wonder where it came from. An impact from the other side of the wall, where nothing should have been, rang out, and the crack splintered wider to let a glimmering sapphire light shine through. Elach closed his eyes and escaped from his headspace before whatever was out there could break through, and snapped awake to find darkness.

“He’s awake.” A female voice said with disdain, and Elach tried to move his arms only to find them bound to his sides.

“He better be. Guy’s headspace is better defended than some masters.”

The second voice, filled with grudging respect, was new to Elach. But he recognized the first one as belonging to Brynn, which meant that they’d captured him. And they hadn’t done anything for his wounds, if the wetness and lingering aches he felt all along his body were anything to go by, so he held no hopes for this to be a misunderstanding of some sort.

“I know you can talk, freak.” The male voice said, like a younger brother trying to get a reaction out of their sibling. “What? He’s a freak. You two saw it firsthand, why am I getting chewed out for saying something that’s obvious? He’s like twenty five and has the Issi strength of a nineteen year old but the mental barriers of a century old master! That’s weird!”

Someone had either shot the new guy a nasty look, or someone else had spoken so quietly that Elach couldn’t even catch a peep of their words. “I’m twenty two, thank you very much.”

“Really?” The male voice asked incredulously, and Elach felt a hand grab his face as someone studied him closely. “Could have fooled me.”

“He fooled all of us.” Arvay snorted. “Bastard has the Issi of a master, then halfway through the chase he shrinks down to what he is now. Scared the hells outta us.”

That must have been when the existential bleed wore off, but how was he going to explain that? He’d come into possession of an Issi accelerant that made him look like a master, but didn’t actually make him as powerful as a master? Actually, that sounded perfect.

“It must have been the stuff I drank a few days ago.” Elach said, and when nobody interrupted him or told him to shut up, he continued. “I got it from my teacher before we parted ways. Kind of a graduation present, I guess. He said it would help make me more powerful, but didn’t bother explaining that it wasn’t permanent. And that apparently it made me look way scarier than I actually am.”

Hushed words were exchanged, with Elach making out choice ones such as ‘garbage’, ‘impossible’, and ‘lying bastard’, but his story must have held at least a mote of truth to it because they didn’t freeze him solid on the spot. “What did he give you, exactly?” Brynn asked, a small note of hesitance in her voice.

So they knew of something that could do what Elach had said. Maybe it was the existential bleed, maybe not, but that added a needed credence to his story. “He called it existential bleed.” Silence. That was either good, or terrible. “I don’t know if that's what it's actually called, but that's what he called it.”

“Did I hear him say existential bleed?” Another new voice asked, coming from behind Elach. “As far as I know, we lost all of our ways to produce that years ago, didn’t we?”

“We did.” Arvay confirmed.

“But that doesn’t mean there weren’t a few thimbles of existential bleed we couldn’t find.” Brynn added. “There’s nothing Glasrime couldn’t do.”

“No, it doesn’t.” The newest voice agreed, growing close to Elach and placing a hand on his head. “So what are you going to do with him? Him showing up so close to the equinox can’t be a coincidence.”

It was, Elach thought, but nobody would believe him. They probably thought his made up master had sent him here either as a representative or a spy. Or maybe both.

“We were waiting for him to wake up before deciding.” Arvay said. “Couldn’t put him away without at least hearing his story first.”

“And not everything lined up correctly.” Brynn said. “Someone his age has no right to be as strong as we thought he was, or as weak as he is now. Something like the existential bleed should have skyrocketed his Issi levels to far beyond his current influence.”

“Tell you what; I’ll take him off your hands. I have Sechen here with me anyways, and having some unknown person powerful enough to access a substance thought eradicated from our world in my debt is worth the trouble.” The newest voice offered.

Elach’s three captors didn’t even consider the newest voice’s offer before Brynn accepted. He heard them walking out of what had to be a fairly small room, the door creaking shut behind them and leaving Elach alone with the newest voice. At least he thought it was just him and the newest voice, until they started speaking from behind him as footsteps echoed off to his right.

“Your master must be an incredible person.” The newest voice said, leaning down to pick at the knots binding Elach to the chair. “Existential bleed is the pinnacle accelerant for spatial Issi, and the penultimate accelerant for rending Issi, so any practitioner would kill to get their hands on it. And you claim to have drunk deep of it, yet you hold no more power than an apprentice with a quarter of your experience. Seeing that I will be vouching for you, would you mind explaining how that is possible?”

Newest voice muttered to themselves as Elach gathered his thoughts. He was about to speak when the newest voice cursed and took a few steps back, brightness exploding into Elach’s mind through the blindfold as his bindings were ripped to bits by something that didn’t so much as brush against his flesh.

“Sorry for that. Knots aren’t my strong suit.” Newest voice apologized, and Elach rubbed at his arms. Dried blood caked onto his skin, his wounds far less severe than he’d thought they were. They’d just bled a lot. “Please, explain how you’re as weak as you are. No offense, of course.”

“Of course.” Elach repeated. “It’s because I got my bond pretty recently. That’s it.”

“Really?” Newest voice asked.

“Yes, really.”

“Well, that does not mesh with what my apprentice told me. You can take off the blindfold, you know.” New voice said. “I’m not trying to keep you in the dark here. Much the opposite, really.”

Elach fumbled with the blindfold for a few seconds before he managed to peel it away from his skin. It tugged on his hair as he pulled it over his head, and he only opened his eyes once he had it clean off. The room was small, like he’d expected, with walls of glass that he could see people going about their business on the other side of. He felt a little annoyed that people had passed by this room where he had been tied up and coated in blood and not done a single thing, but at least someone had eventually come to see what was up.

Scratch that, two someones. The one he could see was a woman who looked to be his age with a tarnished gold ring around her neck that constantly crumbled and reformed to show an inner circle of gleaming white-gold. The whites of her eyes were the same colour as the inner circle, and her hair was blonde with a pearlescent gilded sheen. But maybe blonde wasn’t the right way to describe her hair. It was more like the pure white of a bright light. She looked at Elach expectantly, frowning when she didn’t get whatever reaction she was looking for.

Uncomfortable with staring at someone for too long, Elach turned in his chair to look at the owner of the new voice. He was expecting to see another person, but he came face to face with someone that reminded him more of Resthollow or Hollow than any person he’d ever seen. They had a halo of brilliant gold covering where their eyes should have been, underneath which bright yellow hair flowed down their back like a waterfall of liquid gold. Four arms that were detached from their torso hovered with gilded armor from the top of each arm down to their wrists, a triangular strip connecting the armor to their middle finger with another ring of brilliant gold. Their torso was surrounded by two constantly rotating golden rings, from over where their shoulders would have been to their opposite hip, porcelain white symbols etched into them that morphed and shifted like living beings. Their torso had a gaping hole from the middle of their chest down to their pelvis and a flowing dress obscuring their legs, if they had any. They reminded Elach of Hollow somehow.

“My apprentice tells me you deceived her when you first met.” The golden ringed manifestation said, though not in an accusing tone. It was more like amusement. “Back in Resthollow you acted as if you were bound to this world like the rest of those under the eternals’ reign. Why would you want to avoid her? Does your master have an unresolved grudge with me?”