“Is your patron the only fire Issi manifestation here?” Elach asked, and the woman looked up at him with an appraising glance.

“She might be the only fire Issi manifestation outside of Pyreheld. Makes it so we don’t have to push too hard to get new apprentices.” She said, gesturing at the cases full of coals for emphasis. “She knows the privileged position she’s in, which is why we don’t try for more apprentices. “

“Well, I’ll keep your patron in mind if I decide I want fire Issi.” Elach said. “What’s her name, by the way?”

“Her name is Cember, and she’d be happy to have you.”

The further down the row Elach went, the divide between prizes grew larger and larger. He passed by a twelve foot tall statue made entirely of some metal he couldn’t place, lines of Issi running up and down it like blood through exposed veins, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of it. There was a basket of yarn inside a display case that he couldn’t feel anything from at all. Each ball contained a myriad of colours, some shining with iridescence, but that was it. A very nice basket of yarn.

And the accostments from patrons’ representatives became far more common. Elach had to turn down someone what felt like every fifteen steps, although half of them dismissed him when they felt his container had no room for another bond. How they felt that Elach didn’t know, but he figured it had to do with the large glass spikes embedded in the walls that glimmered with a frosty sheen and pulsed with such concentrated Issi Elach could almost taste it. He couldn’t look at them for too long without feeling queasy, so Elach tried his best to ignore them.

And, near the end of the row, Elach found the first Issi beast.

It was a small cage, about three feet tall and six feet long, and there was a second identical cage stacked on top of it. Elach heard growling coming from the bottom one and whimpering from the top, leaning over to get a better look at the black amorphous blobs that barely moved inside of them.

They were wolves made of tar, like one of the Issi beasts Elach had seen before he’d left his village. But the coat of the top beast was pitted with tiny holes, and the bottom one had what looked like the start of porcupine-like quills down the center of its back. Their eyes were unfocused and dazed, the noises they made seeping out of their dreams and into their insensate waking lives.

Something Hollow said a long time ago tried to resurface in Elach’s mind, something about wisps being connected to Issi beasts. That clashed with everything else he’d learned since crossing over to the other side, but maybe the two weren’t mutually exclusive. Maybe most wisps turned into Issi beasts before they became manifestations, and Hollow and Gilt had somehow skipped that stage? Revel had said she’d been a wolf before she took her person-like form, and Flow was a bird, but then why were Hollow and Gilt different? And why did it matter that they were wisp manifestations after they became Issi beasts?

Elach rattled the glass bars like they were standard iron, and one of the wolves yelped pathetically before changing its growls to match the whimpers of its upstairs neighbor.

“Flow, can you come here?” Elach asked in his normal voice. He waited for thirty seconds without any answer, then tried getting Flow’s attention by spiking the Issi inside his headspace.

Flow squawked in surprise somewhere up above, and then not fifteen seconds later landed on top of the cages in front of Elach with a panicked look in their eyes.

“We have to make a set of signals so I don’t scare the tar out of you whenever I need you.” Elach said, reaching out to pet Flow on the head. “Sorry for that, but this might be important.” He gestured at the Issi beasts in the cages under Flow, who bent over so far their head was looking behind their tailfeathers to get a better look. “Can you tell if these started off as wisps or if they’ve always been issi beasts?”

Flow made a noise that signaled a negative, then brought their head up to Elach and chirped twice.

“Was that a ‘no, these weren’t wisps’ or a ‘no, I can’t tell if they were wisps’?” Elach asked.

Flow muttered in annoyance, and moments later Elach realized why. “Chirp twice if you can tell if they were wisps or not, once for no.”

Flow chirped twice, then once.

“So you could tell if they used to be wisps, but these ones weren’t, right?” Elach decoded Flow’s chirps, and received two more in response. “Good to know. Did you find anything interesting up there?”

Flow shook their head and chirped once.

“Alright, let me clarify that a little. Did you find anything important, interesting, or nothing up there?” Elach asked. “Three, two, and one chirps respectively.”

Flow thought for a moment and gave one long chirp followed by a short chirp.

“So a few kinds of interesting things, but nothing really?”

Two chirps.

“Alright. If I need you again, or if you need me again, send one short Issi spike in my headspace for something interesting and two long spikes for something important.” Elach said, scratching Flow under the beak. They cawed in understanding, sending a tentative short spike followed by two longer, more intense spikes to test out the communication.

“You’ve got it.” Elach said. “Signal if you see… wait.”

Flow whistled in question when Elach didn’t instantly continue his sentence. But Elach couldn’t put into words the discomfort that had been growing ever since he broke off from Rainshear and Metea/Irric. Why was he still here? The two of them had chained him up and interrogated him, and he was just going along with everything. He should leave. Take Flow and run.

A wave of soothing Issi crashed against those thoughts, dimming them to an empty feeling of discomfort without direction. It reminded Elach of the sprinklers in Rainshear’s cafe.

“Nevermind.” He said with a shake of his head. “Let’s keep going.”

“Did you find anything interesting?” Rainshear asked as Elach stepped onto the patio of a very busy restaurant.

“Saw a few tar wolves, but nothing else.” Elach said, pulling out a chair next to Metea/Irric and letting Flow climb onto the back of the last empty chair. “Is it normal for patrons to use their apprentices to advertise for them?”

“How else would people find out who put what in the prize hall?” Rainshear said sarcastically. “It’s not like there are plaques on every cage and case that say exactly what the thing is and who’s offering it.”

“Yes, it’s normal.” Metea/Irric said, ignoring Rainshear. “Glasrime’s tried to crack down on it a few times, but all they ended up doing was installing the Issi sensors. And the patrons somehow managed to be more annoying with those in place.”

“They use them to see exactly what kind of Issi you have, and if you have space for another bond?” Elach asked.

“So you got denied?” Metea/Irric said with an innocent smile, and Elach had the courtesy to look offended. “Yeah, the reason they were put in there in the first place was to stop them from annoying everyone that went by, but it just made them annoy certain people way more.”

“Did you get propositioned too?” Elach asked, turning to look at Rainshear. “Either of you?”

“Nope.” Rainshear said, looking away from Elach and trying to flag down someone wearing the restaurant’s logo on their apron. Her chain snaked out from beneath the table and tapped him on the leg, a feeling like calming waters drifting over his mind. Elach grimaced and tried to fight it, but his attempt at resisting quickly failed as the feeling took hold once more.

Rainshear snuck a glance over at Elach with piercing eyes and a smile full of teeth. He should have felt something at that, but all he felt was calm. That couldn’t be right. Yet he couldn’t string a series of thoughts together to put the wrongness he felt into place, and it slipped away in the calming rain of Issi.

“Oh yeah.” Metea/Irric grumbled, drooping onto her palm with a placid smile. “People see the spot where my polarity Issi is blocked off like it’s an empty space for their patron to fill.”

“Do you need menus, or are you ready to order?” The server asked as they stepped up to the table, taking a pen out from behind their ear and pressing it to a thin square of glass.

“A pitcher of water for the table, a glass of sweetroot tea for the bird, a cup of lightshine coffee for me, and whatever those two want to drink.” Rainshear said, gesturing at Elach and Metea/irric. “And we’ll need menus for the main course, please.”

“Al..right.” The server said, scribbling down Rainshear’s drink order. “And what will you two have?”

“I’ll have a peach slush-drink.” Metea/Irric said with a shake of her head, her voice regaining it’s normal tone.

Elach wondered if they had chocolate-flavoured milk, just like he had back home. “Do you have chocolate milk?” He asked, the words not having time to process in his mind before they came out of his mouth.

“We do, but I have to warn you; it isn’t very good. We don’t raise cows here, and neither do the people of Freshetfall down below us. So I wouldn’t order it.” The server said.

“That’s code for they have it on the menu, but don’t actually stock it.” Metea/Irric said, and the server tried to hide their surprised expression with a cough, but all it did was draw more attention to them.

“I’ll just have a coffee with chocolate melted into it.” Elach said.

“How much chocolate?”

Elach held his fingers about an inch and a half apart. “A square about this big.”

“So, one square. Alright. I’ll bring you the menus and water right away and then I’ll be back with your drinks.” The server said, scoring a line in the glass rectangle and moving on to the next table.

“‘Right back’ usually takes about five minutes when the place is busy.” Rainshear said, plucking one of the four inch long petals off of a beige and brown flower from the vase in the middle of the table.

As Rainshear popped the petal into her mouth, Metea/Irric ripped three off and offered one each to Elach and Flow. Flow took it with a whistle of thanks and tore into it immediately, but Elach was a little more cautious about eating a part of a flower that seemed to be for decoration, not consumption.

“They taste like pancakes with syrup, don’t worry.” Metea/Irric said, biting her own petal in half. “And it doesn't feel like eating a flower petal, if that’s your hold up. It’s more like a honeycomb.”

Elach shrugged and crunched into the petal, a burst of melon-like flavor spilling over his tongue. It wasn’t bad, but because he was expecting the overwhelming sweetness of syrup he almost spat it out.

“What kind of pancakes do you eat?” Elach asked.

“Regular pancakes.” Metea/Irric said with a sideways look at Elach. “It’s probably the melon-like syrup, right? I think that’s a Freshetfall thing.”

“Do you bust open some of these petals to use as syrup?” Elach asked, finishing off his petal and refusing Metea/Irric’s offer of another.

“After mixing it with sugar, yes.” Rainshear said. “Bottleblossoms are pretty common around here thanks to Freshetfall’s influence, and depending on what you feed them and the soil they grow in, the liquid inside of their petals taste vastly different.”

“Cool.” Elach said.

“They’re also really useful for infusers.” Metea/Irric added. “Because they can take on almost any Issi property, they’re pretty much a wild card for the bases of anything you would want to make. Not a very powerful one, of course, but sometimes you don’t need an Issi accelerant that’ll put you into an Issi drunk stupor.”

“I’ll be honest, I don’t know much about infusing.” Elach said. “Didn’t have one in the town where I grew up, and the whole ‘lived most of my life without free will’ thing meant I never tried to learn about it.”

“I can teach you!” Metea/Irric said eagerly. “Uh, but only if you want to. Learn how to infuse, that is. But if you don’t want to, that's fine too.”

“Maybe once I’m sure those wisps aren’t caged up in the prize hall.” Elach said. “If I decide to stay here after that, then sure.”

“You’re already leaving?” Metea/Irric asked with concern. “Is it something we did?”

Elach raised an eyebrow at that, wondering how Metea/Irric couldn’t see how chaining someone up and interrogating them could make them want to leave. Which raised another question, one that he felt like he’d asked himself before…

Rainshear’s expression didn’t change, but Elach felt Issi coming off of her in waves. And the question drifted away.