“I think we can ignore any of the black robed people.” Sechen said, wiping black blood off her hands in the grass. “Even if any of them are alive, we can go through them after we’ve saved the rest.”

“If that’s what you think is best.” Metea/Irric said as a brilliant explosion burst just feet from her face, crashing against a wall of turbulent water-filled winds and scouring long gouges in the ground around her and Sechen.

Sechen silently thanked Metea/Irric for dampening the sound so she didn’t go temporarily deaf, then shook her head and actually thanked her.

“You’re welcome.” Metea/Irric said with a smile that quickly faded as she turned back to the battle that was raging in the distance. “I think that was a wide miss, and they still haven’t noticed us, but I’ll watch out for anything else they want to throw at us.”

The next few bodies weren’t quite as alive as the first one Sechen brought back to the medics, but one of them had at least a chance of surviving. The others? They’d need a corpsetalker to find out who ended their lives. The worst part was that every casualty seemed to be a fresh apprentice, someone who was probably sitting in the park training with their patron when these freaks attacked and ended their paths before they’d truly began.

“Get down!” Metea/Irric’s voice screamed in Sechen’s ear, and she crushed her body to the ground without a second thought.

A scythe of rippling gold power tore through the air just a foot above Sechen’s prone form, keening with the sound of a particularly rusted knife being constantly run over a whetstone. Metea/Irric grunted in effort at some unseen task, and Sechen scurried away so Metea/Irric could let loose.

The howl of wind let Sechen know Metea/Irric had noticed her departure, and the splatter of thick, black blood that exploded from the spray of loose meat that used to be a robed invader reminded her just how powerful Metea/Irric was. A storm cloud spread across the faraway glass roof of the park and the winds grew their howl to a tornado’s all encompassing wail, the rain falling so hard on Sechen’s skin that it felt like it cut into her with each and every drop. She grimaced and pulled her shirt over her head, but as quickly as the rain had come an egg-shaped whirl of wind and water cut her off from the storm outside.

Metea/Irric’s voice cut through the din of the storm with perfect clarity. “The shield’ll follow you wherever you go. You can leave this to me.”

“Any chance the black robes aren’t the bad guys here?” Sechen asked, stretching her arms across her chest.

“None.”

“Well then, I think I’ll join you in stopping these freaks.”

“Glad to have you.” Metea/Irric said with a smile in her voice, but it was the same tone as a parent handing their child a hammer to ‘help’ with construction. “Just yell if you get in over your head.”

“Don’t have to tell me.” Sechen muttered, and Metea/Irric’s laugh came in clear over the storm. Sechen couldn’t help but smile as she felt the circle of gold around her neck grow warm with an inner light, and the telltale snap of it shrinking to wrap tightly around her neck. Her container started bleeding light as the ring forced power into her as she forced power into it, and her manifested arm shot through with fractals that made it look like light was attempting to burst out of her.

“That’s new.” Sechen said as she admired the linework running down her arm, golden tubes now connecting her middle knuckles to the back of her hand where they dissolved into light. She called on her focus, a small statue of a dog made out of golden wire that Revel had made for her years ago, and the light blossomed from a bright white to a gleaming gold like the circle around her neck, and something in her container shattered.

It felt like Revel’s Issi seed was trying to devour her from the inside. The simple majesty of the light Issi strained and fought to become something greater, something that Revel had warned would happen eventually thanks to the unique circumstances in which she’d bonded Sechen. Sechen’s light had always been soft white, whereas Revel’s had been the colour of shining liquid gold, but the light Sechen watched break free of the skin on her arm lost its brilliance. It was gold, sure, but it was the tarnished colour of the circle around her neck whenever it was inactive. Like her skin was tainting it just by being near the light.

Sechen flicked her wrist, and two circles of tarnished gold light wrapped themselves around Metea/Irric. She turned and shot Sechen a questioning look, and Sechen returned one with equal confusion along with a shrug.

“It won’t hurt you.” Sechen said with confused confidence. “Just do your thing.”

Off-white scratches etched themselves into the ring that glowed with a dark gold light, one long scratch repeating itself ad-nauseum over the outside of their surface. Sechen looked at the back of her hand and saw that two of her knuckles, underneath the now tarnished golden tubes, had a halo of golden light hovering just above them.

The halos spun lazily over Sechen’s knuckles, and it felt like there should have been something else there. Like Revel had given Sechen only a fraction of an Issi seed, or that Sechen was still too weak to access everything she had. Or maybe it was a mental block, like almost everything else Sechen dealt with. Still, they emanated a sense of strength, of power, of amplification, and of incompleteness. A puzzle with only one piece, the other who knows how many lost in the ethereal.

“This might just be the most conspicuous empowering technique I’ve ever seen.” Metea/Irric said with a real smile in her words. The shield around Sechen spun faster, whipping into an almost solid barrier that radiated both danger and safety. “Cover your ears. I’m not sure how loud this is going to get.”

Metea/Irric clawed at the air as if she was cutting an invisible foe from hip to shoulder, and the rain began falling perfectly sideways. The battering storm winds shifted to flow from directly behind Metea/Irric, and when she turned to Sechen with an amused look on her face the winds shifted to always be at her back.

She raised a hand and called on her Issi, the winds changing direction to flow into a vortex right in front of her that didn’t so much as ruffle her hair. The invaders weren’t so resilient as a whole, and those that could not make themselves heavy enough or dig into the ground were ripped away and pulled into the maelstrom that grew by the second just a few feet away from Metea/Irric.

The blood and chunks of skin that sloughed off the invaders tinted the vortex black, the rain chewing into the unfortunate souls inside like countless small blades. Sechen stared in disgusted admiration as Metea/Irric grimaced at the destruction she brought, shooting one look back at the field of corpses that somehow hadn’t been sucked into the maelstrom as the roiling winds redoubled. When Metea/Irric let the technique fall moments later, there wasn’t anything recognizable as ever having been a person in the wet, black mass that fell to the ground with a stomach churning squelch and splatter that stained the nearby area with blood and viscera.

Sechen’s first ring crumbled into motes of tarnished gold light, and only then did she notice the void in her container that using the ring had taken. She checked her hand and confirmed that one of her knuckle-halos had also gone out, and trying to recast the technique on Metea/Irric left her with the all too familiar feeling of her container bottoming out. Metea/Irric readied another ball of compressed shearing wind with a thin layer of water coating it, and she felt the last of the Issi she’d unknowingly infused her rings with mingle with Metea/Irric’s Issi, empowering the technique she was forming as the ring crumbled around her.

The intensity of the storm didn’t so much as die down, and Metea/Irric let the ball of wind and water float between her hands as she stood her ground against the last invaders who’d managed to outlast the onslaught of her maelstrom. She flowed back a few feet as lines of wind and water appeared under her feet, and just as the invaders were about to reach her, Metea/Irric did something Sechen hadn’t known was in the woman’s portfolio of powers.

The lines running down Metea/Irric’s neck and down into her shirt flashed a bright blue, and she lashed out at the closest invader with a punch that pierced through their chest and launched a blast of pressurized water from the hole, shredding another invader to ribbons that had the misfortune to find themselves in the path of destruction. Another invader tried to bear down on Metea/Irric and found their technique striking open air, as Metea/Irric had launched herself out of the way in the milliseconds between the invader forming the attack and launching it. The orb that still hovered in place lanced out with a blast of water-wrapped wind that pierced directly through the invader’s heavy armored helmet and thunked into the ground behind them, leaving a corpse that fell along with the swing of it’s axe.

The vortex shot out lances of water-laced winds that were far deadlier than Sechen thought they had any right to be, until the invaders were culled down to only the people Sechen could feel were exuding immense levels of Issi. Metea/Irric stepped back and surveyed the fight that was currently raging, shook her head and turned towards Sechen, crossing the distance in two steps that destroyed the grass beneath her.

“That fight’s slightly out of my league, so unless you can do the ring thing again I think it’s time for us to leave.”

“No, I’m pretty much empty.” Sechen said, snapping her fingers to try and make another ring, this time around her own arm. It popped into being, much to her surprise, taking next to no Issi from her to do so. “Guess it costs more when I try to put them on someone else.”

“That’s standard for most support techniques.” Metea/Irric said as she brushed aside the whirling shield of wind, widening it again by half and stepping inside to join Sechen. “It takes a chunk of your Issi at the start, then uses more of it to amplify whatever the target’s doing. It’s much easier to tap into your own container than someone else’s, so it costs less Issi.”

“Great. So I can amplify my own terrible techniques for cheap.” Sechen said with a snort. “Helpful.”

“Once you get more techniques, you’ll see just how helpful it can be.” Metea/Irric started walking away from the battle, the shell of wind dragging across the ground to follow her. “This’ll be over soon. Let’s wait for Elach in the lobby.”

Sechen shot a look back to see that Metea/Irric was right. Now that the invaders’ numbers had been culled, the remaining patrons in the fight were already gaining ground. But the invaders didn’t so much as flinch at their increasing losses, instead fighting like puppets as their strings were cut one by one until the dancing stopped.

“Do you think these people are connected to the ones that attacked you and Revel yesterday?” Metea/Irric asked as she let the wind shell fall, crossing into the overcrowded hall from the lobby to the park.

“Probably?” Sechen said with a shrug. A slightly too uncaring shrug. “Could be that the equinox brought all the weirdos out of the woodworks.”

“Are you downplaying Revel’s disappearance as a coincidence?” Metea/Irric asked incredulously.

“I…” Sechen started, pausing halfway through her sentence as her thoughts became jumbled. “Am I? Why am I? Rainshear needs our help.” She said with a shake of her head. “Why are we waiting for Elach? Isn’t he supposed to be back at the cafe?”

“Are you doing alright?.” Metea/Irric asked with concern, putting a hand on Sechen’s shoulder. “He’s in the prize hall. Looking for any signs of Gilt. But… he’s…” Metea/Irric frowned. “You’re right. He’s supposed to be back at the cafe.”

Metea/Irric took a seat on a plush bench near the entrance to the hotel, and Sechen took the spot right next to her. They sat in silence as the chaos of the battle in the park rose to a boil then very slowly started to die down, stretchers and body bags being carted out and in with about equal frequency to deal with the poor apprentices that had found themselves wrapped up in a patrons' fight.

Sechen rubbed the back of her hand, the golden tubes having regressed into her skin but never completely leaving, watching the death parade slowly march onward as horrible memories tried without success to take hold in her mind. They slid off on an unfelt tide of Issi, one that raged in both her and Metea/Irric.

Somewhere else, Rainshear smiled.