“If you think I run this place for the coin, you’re wrong.” Rainshear said seriously, grabbing Elach by the shoulder and forcing him to remain seated. “Come and sit. I’ll whip something up and you can try to use that ring of yours, okay?”

Elach was taken aback. Why was almost everyone he met here so damn nice to him? “Thank you. Seriously.” He said with a nod.

Rainshear smiled at him, pressing on a tile on the back wall that lit up and triggered very gentle sprinklers above all the potted vines. “A friend of Metea/Irric’s is a friend of mine. Feel free to call our home yours for as long as you need it. Give Sechen and Revel the space they need to figure some things out.”

While Rainshear cooked up a meal that smelled and looked delicious, Elach carried on a conversation with her that gave him valuable information about the new reality he found himself in. Pyreheld, Freshetfall, and the Gilded Night were the three main centers where people free from the eternals’ power gathered. But not in the living cities themselves; Glasrime’s glacier stood above the buried city of Freshetfall, and Lavassil’s tunnels snaked below the Pyreheld mountain range.

There were a fair amount of smaller settlements here and there, but most people spent their time venturing to something called Sacred Grounds for bonds and treasures. Rainshear explained that they were the lesser versions of Living Cities, where nature alone manifested a physical being. She used Oasis as an example, a small body of water surrounded with verdant plant life in an otherwise frigid and hostile mountain range that manifested into the man Elach had seen earlier in the day.

The other great powers were far more divided than Glasrime and Lavassil, usually living in smaller villages composed solely of their apprentices and other patrons who’d sworn loyalty to those powers. Rainshear warned Elach not to stay too long in another great power’s village, since a few of them had a reputation for forcing bonds and servitude on apprentices they viewed as worthy. It was an honour, apparently, to be chosen by a great power, so nobody would come to save him. Elach made a noise between disgust and anger, and Rainshear chuckled at his outburst.

And that was it. The entire world that was free from the eternals was that tiny. No living cities, one tyrant ground, and whatever the glacier and the tunnels were considered. Rainshear spoke with jealousy as she compared what she had to what those under the eternals’ power did, the sprawling cities and vibrant wilderness that she was excluded from.

“That can’t be it.” Elach said in disbelief. “There were at least ten tyrant grounds and four living cities on the other side. And all of them were super populated. How many people are even free from the eternals at this point?”

“Not many.” Rainshear said sadly, placing a cooked piece of Issi beast meat and seared vegetables in front of Elach along with a cup of something sweet and orange. “For every thousand people out there, under the eternals’ control, there is one of us. And the ratio for apprentice to patron is pretty bad here too. Unless you’re someone like Glasrime or Lavassil, of course.”

“You have at least three apprentices.” Elach said, remembering the other two people he’d seen Rainshear with that hadn’t been Metea/Irric. “How many is the average?”

“Two.” Rainshear said, then she motioned at the floor below her. “But look at someone like Freshetfall, just underneath our feet. They have at least a hundred thousand apprentices. Six figures. And even the weakest patrons, issi beasts that have just managed sentience or weaker mythic weapons, still have ten to fifteen apprentices. Some choose to keep only one, to make their bond that much more special, but it’s their choice. Not something they’re forced into.”

“Damn.” Elach considered his next words carefully. Depending on how Rainshear felt, this would either gain him an ally or get him kicked out onto the streets. “So, what would you do if you had the power to change everything? To kill an eternal?”

“And what would that do?” Rainshear asked flippantly. “Eternals can’t die, and even if they could, how am I supposed to do anything? They’re so powerful my head would explode if I so much as looked at them.”

Elach stayed quiet even though he wanted to explain everything to Rainshear. But she would think he was crazy. It made perfect sense that the eternals would indoctrinate everyone into thinking they were invincible. Who cares if there existed a small set of the population who lived outside their rule, when they posed absolutely no risk to them? They already thought they were winning one over on the eternals, so why would they go for more?

“Just humor me.” Elach said.

Rainshear sighed, and brought her hand to her chin. “Alright. If it’s just to humor you, then I would kill them all. They’ve trapped everyone here in a hell that they call paradise. We can’t interact with the other people, we can’t make anything that lasts outside of places like this glacier, and we’re always terrified that our children won’t accept their bonds and we’ll lose them forever.”

“And then there’s the stuff we don’t know we don’t have.” Elach said. “Since the only thing we’re free from is the mental blinding, we could be missing a whole lot of other amazing things about our world.”

“Excuse me?”

Rainshear’s eyes were huge, her mouth hung slightly open, and her arms were hanging limply to her sides. Had she not known that?

Elach had to be careful with what he said. Apparently these people knew less about the eternals than he did. “Ok, so don’t freak out, but the eternals apparently each hoard something from us. We’re immune to the things that screw with our brains, but there are a bunch of other things that we aren’t immune to. And we don’t even know what they are.”

“You’re kidding.” Rainshear barked out a strained laugh and shook her head incredulously. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“You don’t have to believe me.” Elach shrugged. “Who knows, I might just be insane.”

Rainshear considered Elach’s words for a moment, her mouth forming soundless words as she went through a slideshow of expressions. “I need to go.” She suddenly said, bolting over to the door and throwing it open. “You can stay here tonight. I live upstairs, and you can grab some blankets and a pillow from the chest near my bed to sleep on the couch.”

And then Rainshear was gone, the door clicking locked behind her and the windows tinting so much that Elach couldn’t see anything outside. This might have been a huge mistake, but he could live with that. If he was truly in danger, he could always find a hole somewhere and drink another bottle of existential bleed. But he didn’t think Rainshear was trying to get him in trouble; he utterly trusted her for some unknown reason. He shook his head to disperse the warm vapour that was collecting on his hair, and blinked a little slower than he was used to.

“Semantics.” Elach muttered, cutting himself a piece of his steak.

The meal was rather plain, but Elach wasn’t going to complain. Rainshear had claimed to have the best pastries in the world, not the best meat and veggies. Whatever the drink was was fabulous, however, so Elach gave the meal one extra point. A solid seven out of ten.

Ten minutes after Rainshear scurried away, Elash gathered his dishes and brought them over to the small sink behind the counter. He ran them under hot water and scrubbed them with a sponge soaked in what the bottle said was liquid soap, two words he’d never heard used in exactly that order. But the stuff smelled like soap and foamed up like soap, so Elach cleaned the plate, utensils, and his glass and placed them on a rack right next to the sink before looking around the little cafe for anything that resembled stairs.

After another ten minutes of fiddling around with everything that wasn’t bolted down, Elach found a long metal pole hidden behind one of the hanging vine pots. It had a hook at one end and a bizarre elongated s-shaped curve at the bottom, the left and right bends of the S adorned with loose metal cylinders that jangled around as Elach lifted the rod out of its indent in the wall. He remembered seeing something he’d initially disregarded as another sprinkler, but this one was directly over one of the tables instead of one of the vine pots. And where the others had rounded glass heads, this one was a metal loop.

Pushing the table and its chairs out of the way, Elach lifted the hook to the ceiling and struggled for a moment to get it to latch into the loop. A few attempts that annoyed him far more than they should have later, Elach got it to latch and smiled to himself. He let it hang there for a second as he appreciated his handiwork, pushing it to one side and chuckling to himself as it swung back and he batted it away once more.

The thought of Rainshear returning and looking at him like he’d lost his mind snapped Elach back to the moment, causing him to grab the swinging metal pole and look nervously to the door. It was as quiet as it had been, so Elach pulled down hard to try and get the hatch to come down.

Nothing happened. Elach pulled again. The metal creaked in protest, but the hatch above didn’t so much as budge. Looking down at the twin cylindrical handles that hung around Elach’s chest, he figured he had to do something with them to get the hatch to open. He grabbed onto them, one hand each, and tried to pull them apart. Nothing. Then he tried forcing them in opposite directions, and the creak of metal above him let him know he was doing something right. He looked upwards to see something slowly lowering from above as the metal pole lowered itself closer and closer to the ground, until Elach had to squat so low to get the right leverage to keep the stairway that was unfolding from the roof above moving.

The pole struck the ground below, and the stairway was exactly one pole-length from the ground now. Elach set the pole down on the ground and reached out with his hands to grab onto the metal loop, lowering it the rest of the way until a collapsible staircase lay in front of him. It was so steep it might as well have been a ladder instead, but Elach just shrugged and returned the rod to its hiding place before climbing up to the living space above.

The space above wasn’t very large, but it did have a ladder leading to a loft above it. There was a kitchen off to his right, a few potted plants that looked like miniature trees dotted around the small space he stood in, and two comfortable looking chairs that were placed at an angle to each other with a small table in the middle. There were two doors, one to Elach’s left and the other straight in front of him, and they were both open to reveal bedrooms for Rainshear and Elach assumed Metea/Irric. He looked over his shoulder to find a bathroom the size of one of the bedrooms, a huge tub and two stalls with frosted glass walls that must have been showers.

But no couch. Which left only one place it could be.

Elach grabbed onto the ladder and hefted himself upwards. He emerged onto a railed-in space that looked like where Rainshear and Metea/Irric spent most of their time. The loft was the inverse of the floor below; where the walls that separated the kitchen, bathroom, and bedrooms cut off the main floor, the loft was placed right on top. One corner was filled with bookshelves, three chairs, a table with random books strewn about it, and a blue, white, and grey rug underneath everything. Another corner was devoted entirely to what looked like board and card games, and there was a much larger circular table with the remnants of a game with green circles and red squares that Elach couldn’t make heads or tails of.

The other half of the loft looked to be devoted to Rainshear and Metea/Irric’s hobbies. A rectangular table was strewn about with metal scraps on one half, tools and an anvil nearby that screamed forging but with no actual forge to be found. Another table held a large amount of glassware, shelves behind it overflowing with jars labeled in bright colours and flowery fonts that made them easy to discern at a glance. A mortar and pestle sat unused among the glassware, and a small burner engraved with similar etchings as the bowls back home sat next to it.

Elach walked the loft a couple of times in confusion. He was sure Rainshear had told him he could sleep on the couch, but there was no couch to be found. He was about to climb back down the ladder and check the bottom floor again when his foot failed to find ground, stumbling face first into a dug-out portion of the floor he’d somehow managed to miss. It was a perfect square, about six and a half feet by six and a half feet, and the edges were filled with couch. It boxed in a wooden table that Elach used to stop his fall, which luckily was bereft of any knick-knacks unlike the other tables on this floor.

When his heart stopped beating at twice its normal rate, Elach climbed down the ladder and found the room with a chest in front of the bed. He explicitly didn’t look around, since he felt like that was a breach of privacy, taking a single blanket and pillow for himself and climbing back up to the loft. Elach mourned the loss of his toothbrush as he ran his tongue across his teeth, removing all of his clothes save for his underwear and placing them on the table.

He didn't know how truly exhausted he was until he closed his eyes, forcing his thoughts to flow to his headspace instead of drifting off to blissful sleep.