Elach noticed Brynn staring at him from across the field, her gaze drilling into him with a piercing disinterest. “For that theoretical person it might be.” He slowly admitted. “Stuff would’ve been off for them for the past few months.”

“And your bond from before did basically nothing for your power now. Were you stuck with a surrogate like me until last month?” Hugil asked with an incredulous shake of his head. “You’re like six years older than me. How didn’t you go crazy without a bond?”

“I’m only twenty two.” Elach said defensively. “How old are you?”

“Twenty.” Hugil answered. “And so are Arvay and Brynn. Glas likes teaming us up by how old we are.”

“Without worrying about the power gaps, either.” Arvay grumbled, jerking a thumb in Brynn's direction. “She’s at least twice, maybe three, or even four times as powerful as Hugil. And I’m only about two-thirds as strong as he is.”

“At least Brynn’s… good people.” Hugil said with an exaggerated roll of his eyes and a quick check over his shoulder at his friend. Seeing she was preoccupied with a slowly growing group of clamoring practitioners, he leaned in to whisper in Elach’s ear, “As long as she’s not acting on orders from Glas. Then she’s a real pain in the ass, and just as bad as all the others.”

Arvay coughed, and Hugil straightened up with a nod. Brynn’s head hadn’t finished turning when he started his next sentence. “You’ve seen the other groups. Constantly fighting for attention from Mr and Ms chosen ones. But not our group and Brynn.”

“Ugh, yeah.” Arvay agreed with an exaggerated sigh. “Their jaws must be tired from how much…”

“There are people here requesting a demonstration and teaching.” Brynn stated, the unspoken order hanging in the air as she stared down Hugil and Arvay. “As Glasrime’s representatives, we have a duty to them. You haven’t forgotten that thanks to your playtime, have you?”

“And there’s the old responsibility calling.” Arvay sighed. She waved as she started walking away, turning to face Brynn with a plastered smile. “Sorry, Elach, but we gotta do this. Part of being bonded to the person that runs this whole shebang.”

“Maybe we could meet up for supper? Go shopping for a focus after that?” Hugil offered with a little desperation in his voice and pleading eyes.

Elach shrugged noncommittally. “Sure. Should I give Sechen an invite?”

“The more the merrier.” Arvay said. “And by more, I mean Sechen. Don’t invite anyone else.”

“I don’t know anyone else, so alright?” Elach said, a little confused by Arvay’s command. He then looked at the group that had started swarming Brynn and understood her worries. “Because Sechen won’t bring anyone else, right?”

Hugil smiled wide. “You got it.”

“See you at six?” Arvay offered, looking at Hugil who shook his head. “Seven?” Hugil studied the group, and sadly shook his head again. “Eight?” Arvay said, a little worry creeping into her voice. Hugil slowly nodded.

“Eight it is then.” Elach said, and relief flashed over Arvay and Hugil’s faces.

“See you at eight!” Hugil called out with a wave as he jogged after Arvay, and Elach waved back.

He hadn’t made a friend in years. And while he still wasn’t sure if these people wanted friends or just someone who didn’t see them as minor celebrities, Elach realized he didn’t really care. He’d been aimless when he lost Kayvee, and if he didn’t have Flow he probably would’ve stayed that way. Alone wasn’t how he wanted to live his life.

As the mob shifted to absorb Arvay and Hugil, consuming them like moss covering the last of a rock in the shade, Elach thought of what killing an eternal would do to people like them. He hadn’t even bothered to think of it when Sentence and Prisoner had brought him up to speed on the state of the world, but he’d also had no reason to bother with those thoughts. He’d lost everything; mom and dad, his village, Kayvee, and probably Hollow. He hadn’t stopped to think that there was anything for him but the path Sentence and Prisoner had explained to him.

But now, after less than an afternoon with people? Seeing Revel and Sechen struggling with their own lives, getting tips from Glasrime’s disciples? He wanted to live a life that was his, and his alone. He still wasn’t fully in control of his emotions, wasn’t used to feeling things and worrying about the consequences of his actions. And most of all, Elach remembered what the people still under the eternals’ control went through each and every day. Parents emotionlessly shrugging off the deaths of their children because they were not destined to mourn. Walking past the corpses of teenagers multiple times a day for a week, callously using them as landmarks and teaching moments. Barely interacting with the person he’d called his best friend aside from card games.

The divide in Elach’s goals was an insurmountable one; they were one-hundred percent incompatible. If he killed an eternal, nothing of this existence would remain. But there was always the risk that someone else might kill an eternal, and change everything without him even knowing. So what was the point?

Elach watched as a glass giant knitted together in the middle of the crowd to oohs and aahs. His hand ran over the perfectly healed wounds, and he shuddered. If he stayed this weak, then something else would inevitably make his decision for him.

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“You two alright?” Elach knocked on the door to Revel and Sechen’s hotel room, receiving no response. There wasn’t so much as a peep coming from inside, but when Elach twisted the knob the door clicked open. “It’s Elach. I’m coming in.”

He pushed it forward a couple of inches before it hit something on the inside, and he had to push with his shoulder to get any kind of movement. As he grunted and shoved, his feet flew out from underneath him on a slippery floor. He heard someone stir in the room. And through the crack he’d managed to open, he saw an arm lying on the bed. And it wasn’t Revel’s. And it hadn’t been water he’d slipped on.

“Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no.” Elach muttered as he stepped back with shaking hands. “Oh eternals no.”

Elach set his anchor inside the room as thoughts of the worst filled his mind, and he braced himself with his arms over his face as he pulled. The door shattered into pieces on impact, splinters bouncing off Elach’s arms like they were made of metal as he barreled into the room, tripping over the insensate lump of flesh that was blocking the door.

Sechen was sprawled out on a carpet absolutely ruined with blood, her arm on the bed in another stained pool of its own. Elach tumbled head over heels to smash into an armoire, groaning as he pulled himself together after an impact that hadn’t so much as left a dent into the hardwood and glass piece of furniture. He couldn’t say the same for himself, however, his arms that he’d crushed between his head and the armoire already sporting a mark that would become a nasty bruise, or worse, come tomorrow. But that didn’t matter right now, Elach groggily told himself, shaking off the impact.

Sechen was either bleeding out or dead not fifteen feet away.

Elach scrambled on his hands and knees over to Sechen, planting his right hand on the carpet with a wet splat as blood splattered to mark his face. The way she was placed left Elach staring at a gaping wound where her arm should have been, scarring over with tarnished gold that seemed to be forming a flat stump. Dried blood ran down from Sechen’s torn sleeve to pool in the carpet, but nothing seemed to have been added to it in however long it took blood to begin flaking.

“What in the hells…” Elach muttered, watching as gold overtook the last vestiges of torn flesh on Sechen’s shoulder. It was now a complete golden disk, almost flat with her torso.

Something slapped onto Elach’s shoulder, and he let out the highest, shrillest scream he could have imagined. He never imagined himself making it, of course. He’d expected it to come from one of the denizens of his old village who’d always shied away from anything violent, who screamed out in terror when their own little one jumped out at them from behind a door. But here he was, drying his throat as he permanently stained his self image forever more.

“Revel?” Sechen croaked, trying to lift her head from the blood soaked carpet under her. Her skin was deathly pale, and from how she struggled the rest of her wasn’t doing much better.

“Not…” Elach squeaked, and he stopped to clear his voice. “It’s Elach, not Revel.” He said in a forced deeper voice. “Are you ok? What happened here?”

“Manifestation came in strong…” Sechen muttered, the rest of her words devolving into a mumble that Elach couldn’t make heads or tails of.

“Can I do anything to help?” Elach asked worriedly, pulling Sechen’s severed arm from his shoulder and setting it down next to her outside of the blood puddle. Her arm also had a gold covering where the torn flesh should have been.

“Hungry.” Sechen groaned.

“Food, got it.” Elach said quickly. “Do they have a kitchen here?”

“Think so.” Sechen muttered.

“I’ll go grab some in a second. But first I’m going to roll you over.” Elach said, and Sechen grunted in confusion. “So you don’t drown in your own blood. Or vomit.”

“Ok.”

Elach carefully put his hand on Sechen’s intact shoulder, gently nudging and moving her until she had her back against the wall with her head resting on her intact arm.

“I’m going to get food and water now.” Elach said in a soft yet hurried tone, and Sechen muttered acknowledgement. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”

Sechen’s scratchy laugh was painful, both to hear and from the groan that followed. “Can't.”

Elach gingerly stepped over the remains of the door before breaking into a sprint, his feet constantly slipping on the glassy floors as he ran as fast as his legs could take him. Elach burst into the stairwell after a quick glance at the elevator, looking down a spiral staircase that would take him down ten stories to the ground floor below. He cursed how long it would take to get down, and how much longer it would take to get up, then slapped himself on the forehead.

“Anchors, you idiot.” He muttered to himself, looking down at the ground far below and placing an anchor as far down as it would go. It made it about four floors down before he felt his Issi straining, and barely managed five as his container wailed at him in warning. Halfway would be good enough, he decided, and shifted his anchor to be over the stairs instead of above the faraway ground floor.

In two pulls that ripped Issi out of him in a way that reminded Elach of falling flat on his back as a kid, all the air forcefully expelled from his lungs that left him struggling for breath. Now he was struggling to get his Issi moving again, even though he felt like he still had at least half a tank left. It seemed he needed to fully fill his pipes before using a technique, so the more Issi it took the longer the recovery period was.

Elach coughed as his lungs burned, feeling the warm sweetness of the amber nectar from the fountain seeping into his container as it worked to replenish the Issi he’d lost. And as soon as the feeling began, it stopped. Not because his container was filled, but because all the amber had been used. And from his theory, he couldn’t refill it until some time tomorrow. Elach looked down the stairwell, still five floors to go before he could get help. He then craned his neck to look back up at the five floors he’d bypassed, deciding that it was easier to go down than to climb up, so he would save his Issi for the return trip.

Elach tripped on the edge of a frostbitten rug as he burst out of the stairwell, slamming down on one knee and both of his hands in front of a small crowd of people. A few of them turned to look at the sound, seeming to note that Elach was unknown or unimpressive and turning back to whatever they were doing. The front desk had a fairly large line, but Elach didn’t care.

Sechen needed help. And Revel wasn’t here to give it.