Artificial bleed? Was that what they thought Elach had taken? “Artificial bleed?” Elach cut in. “You can make fake existential bleed?”

“Existential bleed is, by its own virtue, a synthetic product.” Revel said. “It is created when mortal, spatial, and rending Issi are combined and left to their own devices. The catastrophes that occurred as a consequence of creating existential bleed led to the overseeing powers banning its creation, which led to a radical increase in demand while the supply dwindled. The last few vials of it sold for more coin than any one person could produce, and were bought thanks to agreements from various parties coming together to each get a single drop of it.”

“What, did you think the bleed your master gave you was real?” Sechen asked. “How much did they manage to get for you, anyways?”

“Not much.” Elach lied.

“How much is not much?” Revel asked. “Was the drop the size of a pea? A pebble? A grain of sand?”

“Does it really matter?”

“It does, but not for the reason you may think.” Revel said. “It matters because your master might not have given all they had to you. If they still have more, they might have sent you away because they fear for their and, by extension, your safety.”

Elach cursed silently. His lie was already starting to get out of hand. “I think they gave me everything they had. They emptied out the dregs of a vial into a bottle of water and gave that to me.”

“If you say so.” Sechen shrugged. “It’s your master who’s in danger.”

“If you think they’re fine, then that’s enough for me.” Revel said, resting a hand on Elach’s shoulder while she walked in front of him. “But if you ever feel that they might be in danger, please tell us. We’ll help any way that we can.”

“Of course I will.” Elach said, feeling a little nauseous. He was finding out quickly that he didn’t enjoy deceiving people. Or, at least not people who seemed to only want to help him. “Thank you. Seriously.”

Sechen waved off the thanks. “It’s nothing. Disciples help each other out.”

“Yeah.” Elach said with a forced smile. “We do.”

---------------------------------------

“So do the wisps stop people from going back under the eternals’ control?” Elach asked.

The group had made their way to a fairly short line of manifestations, Issi beasts, a few mythic weapons, and a few normal looking people that Sechen had called ‘progenitors’ when Elach pointed them out. The conversation had fallen back to how all these people managed to live outside the eternals’ control, and Revel had been mysteriously quiet ever since they got in line.

“Nope. The bond they form with whatever patron right after they bond the wisp does that.” Sechen watched Revel as she spoke, concern written on both of their faces. “Usually it’s one of the surrogate patrons, or a progenitor if one of the parents are already part of the lineage, but sometimes Glasrime will bond with a kid if their parents are important or powerful enough.”

“So what’s a progenitor, anyways?” Elach asked.

“Exactly what it means. A person who got enough Issi for themselves that they could sever their bonds and bond with themselves. It’s a little hard to wrap your head around, but it works for some reason. The ultimate narcissists.” Sechen chuckled.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not what progenitor means.” Elach said.

“I’m getting there.” Sechen said defensively. “When a progenitor has kids, they bond with them. And then when those kids have kids, the progenitor bonds with those kids’ kids. They are literally the start of a family of practitioners that have the exact same Issi.”

“Gotcha.” Elach said. “So you’ve been bonded to Revel your entire life, then?”

Sechen shook her head. “No.”

“So you’re like me then?” Elach asked, confused by Sechen’s immediate dismissal of her own explanation.

“Sometimes things happen that change your life in an instant.” Sechen said, snapping her fingers on the word instant for emphasis. “Revel stepped in to help when that instant came for me, and I’ve been bonded with her ever since. It’ll be four years in about a week, actually. So no, I’m not like you, if I believed that you were telling the truth. Which I don’t.”

“Thanks for reiterating that.” Elach said, then changed his tone to a whisper. “Is Revel alright?”

“Things aren’t great for wisp manifestations here.” Sechen whispered back. “Even the way she is now, there are a whole lot of people that want her to bond their kids as a wisp. Not the living, thinking being she is, but as a more powerful container for their little angels.” Sechen snarled in disgust. “This is the third year she’s tried to get someone to bond with her as a patron. She has a long list of requests formally asking her to kill herself so they can use her corpse as materials and her mind as a container, but none for her Issi as a patron.”

“And that’s normal around here?” Elach whispered incredulously. “Why in the hells are you two here then? Shouldn’t you run as far away as you can and try to find people like me to bond instead?”

“People don’t just break free from the eternals, Elach.” Sechen sighed. “That’s why I don’t believe you. Wisps have a natural resistance to them for some reason, but Issi beasts, manifestations, progenitors, and mythical weapons all need to get powerful enough on their own to break free. And, I’m sorry, but you don’t seem like the all-powerful or bonded to the all-powerful type to me.”

“I found someone like Revel to bond with me. That’s how I broke free.” Elach said, no longer keeping his voice low. “Just like the kids here, but way way later. Wait, you seemed to think I could have come into this world on my own like ten minutes ago. What gives?”

“I thought you might have been brain damaged.” Sechen said, raising her voice to just above normal speaking volume. “Now I realize you’re just delusional.”

“Please, be quiet.” Revel said, her voice quiet and shaky. “It’s almost my turn.”

All the fight left Sechen instantly, replaced by concern for her patron. Elach came to the sad realization that Sechen would never believe him without some kind of evidence, and maybe even after that she might not. He didn’t really understand why he wanted her approval so bad, but he figured it had something to do with losing Kayvee. He didn’t realize how bad he needed a friend.

Revel was called up to the front of the room, where there were three people tending to a wide variety of clients, one of which had just finished with their previous client and signaled for whoever was next to come up.

A man dressed in a full black suit was flanked by two apprentices dressed equally formally, their image disrupted by neon yellow scabbards on all of their backs. The man’s scabbard shifted with patterns like snakeskin, patches of slightly darker yellow interlaced with the neon. They appeared to be empty, so either the blades were invisible or they had to leave all their weapons behind before coming to this place. The man reached into his breast pocket to produce a pouch of coins that were notably larger than the pocket itself, his skin a dark brown that split to reveal lines of blue underneath, like a parched field over an underground river.

The Issi beast at the next desk looked like a combination of a unicorn, frilled lizard, and a half-melted candle burning strong. Glops of waxy white dripped off of a translucent horn with a black as night core, with waxen scales, a frill of living flames, and a tail made from a collection of long lit wicks. The thing was a walking fire hazard that itself looked like it wanted to be nowhere near a fire. An apprentice gathered the waxy drops that fell from the beast’s horn, and it nodded in thanks at them while continuing its conversation with the person behind the desk. Their voice was thickly accented in a way Elach didn’t recognize, like their words were made of molasses and had trouble sticking to their mouth while also coming out slow. One of the beast’s eyes flickered in recognition as Revel walked up beside it, a wick connecting the top of a glass marble to the bottom that burned at the center, never running up or down the wick.

Revel sat at the chair with their arms obviously shaking, and Sechen pulled Elach up with her before shoving him off to stand at Revel’s right while Sechen took her left. It was a show of power, Elach figured, but it didn’t feel like it in the moment. He felt hungry stares from all around, most coming from people like him, but a select few came from other patrons. A woman with sky blue eyes and hair that fell like rain eyed Revel with desire so obvious Elach felt a little disturbed, a chain that looked to be made entirely of water wrapped around her right arm with a blade that pulsed and shook like it contained the entirety of a thunderstorm on its edge.

By the fact that two apprentices stood by her side as well, Elach guessed that she was a weapon’s manifestation, and that knowledge did nothing to help him understand why she looked at Revel with such a lust for power. She met Elach’s eyes for a second, then glued them right back on Revel with half-shut lids as she licked her lips seemingly without realizing, and Elach blinked in surprise. Maybe it wasn’t Revel’s power she was lusting after.

“Ah, Revelation. Here again to try and win the favor of one of the prime candidates?” The man sitting behind the desk said, an unreadable smile on a face heavy with gaudy make-up. He offered Revel a form with a hand that was equally white with foundation, making a clicking noise with his tongue as he set it down in front of Revel. “Give me a moment, please. It seems as if someone has run off with the last of my pens.”

Revel sat with her back perfectly straight and her hands on her knees. The tension in her was so strong, Elach half expected her to snap in two at any moment. “Take all the time you need.” Revel’s voice cracked at the word need, and a luminescent blush ran up her neck.

“Mentet, you got any extra pens!?” The man behind the desk called out to the woman in a long fur coat dealing with the wax unicorn lizard.

“Here!” Mentet called back, throwing a bundle of pens wrapped in twine.

“Thanks!” He said, turning back to Revel as he pulled a pen out of the bundle to hand to her.

“Here you go. Fill in the form just like half a year ago, then write down there,” He tapped on a box at the bottom of the form, “what you can offer to potential apprentices. Anything from what Issi you can give, to stipends, to uh, shall we say, ‘relief’.”

The man looked explicitly uncomfortable at mentioning that, as did Revel. “But please, don’t lower yourself to that. I know that this year will be different. You said last year that you were looking for somewhere to create lodgings for your apprentices, correct? That should be a big plus for anyone looking to break off from their busier patrons for a different education.”

“Right. The lodgings.” Revel said. “I’ll put that down.”

“There are no lodgings, are there?” Elach whispered to Sechen, and she said nothing in return. But the look on her face told Elach everything he needed to know.

“Good luck out there, Revelation.” The cracked skin man in the suit said as he walked past with his two apprentices. Elach had seen the storm woman with a weapon, so the scabbards hadn’t been emptied for regulations’ sake. There was something else at play.

“Thank you, Oasis.” Revel said quietly with a small, anxious smile. “Hopefully this year will be better.”