Sechen stopped for a moment, looking over the room that had belonged to her and Revel for all of a single night as she gathered the few things she had that had survived the attack. The man who called himself Prisoner stood guard outside the door with the wisp manifestation that called themself Gilt, having an energetic one-sided conversation as Gilt stood quietly. Sechen pointedly ignored what Prisoner was saying, picking up her pack and stuffing it full of the provisions Metea/Irric had procured from a combination of Rainshear’s overflowing pantry and the kitchen below, who were more than happy to help her out when she asked.

“And you’re sure cloudy ain’t gonna run to Rainshear and sell us out the second we’re outta here?” Prisoner asked. “She’s real addicted to Rainshear’s Issi, and withdrawals could hit her real hard.”

Sechen turned to see if he was addressing her or Gilt, and his eyes were locked on hers. “I know you know what the prize was if they won that fight.”

“Well, how would you know that I know that?” Prisoner asked with that same smile that seemed to be constantly plastered on his face.

“You can… I don’t know, read thoughts or something.” Sechen said with a wave of her hand. “How else would you have known everything that happened the second you got here?”

“I could have excellent observational skills.” Prisoner said with a shrug. “But no, you’re right. And you’re also wrong. I’ll explain once we don’t hav’ta worry about the walls listenin’ in on our conversations.”

“I guess that’s fair.” Sechen muttered, placing the last of her clothes on the top of her bag before buttoning it shut. “But you are going to explain everything once we get out of here.”

“No question mark? You’ve got guts, sister, I’ll give you that.” Prisoner chuckled. “You done here?”

Sechen looked around the perfectly clean room. There were no longer any signs that Revel had ever been here. “Yeah. I guess I am.”

“Good. Cause I promised cloudy that I’d store all her infusion stuff in my headspace, and we’ve left her alone for a good ten minutes. Shiny, can you go tell her we’ll be there in a minute?”

“Shiny. How degrading.” Gilt said with a huff, but they turned away and started off towards the stairwell.

“Do you prefer wordy instead?” Prisoner called out, getting a low-pitched growl in response. He chuckled lightheartedly. “I think he likes shiny more. Don’t you think so, ringlet?”

Sechen didn’t like the nicknames Prisoner was using, but she agreed with the need to use them. At least until they were out of the glacier. “Why do you call Gi… shiny a he? I thought they preferred to be called, well, they.”

“He prefers his actual name, then he or they, and wayyy below those is shiny.” Prisoner said, pushing himself off of the doorway as Sechen moved to leave. “And somehow below that is wordy, which I myself didn’t think was that bad.”

Prisoner scooped up Elach’s body, which Sechen had learned wasn’t quite a corpse just yet, and fell in stride with her. He’d insisted on taking the body with him instead of leaving it at Rainshear’s, which had started an intense but short-lived argument between him and Metea/Irric, and in the end he’d only ‘won’ when he promised Metea/Irric that he had some way to take everything and anything she wanted from her house with him when they ran. And even that had only produced grudging acceptance, with the caveat that Prisoner explained himself when they were safe enough to do so.

“What happened to everything you stole, by the way?” Sechen asked as she rounded the corner to the stairwell. “Did you put it in the same place you’re going to put cloudy’s stuff?”

“You got it, sister.” Prisoner said, shifting Elach’s body so it didn’t jostle as much as he climbed down the stairs. “Once we get sleepy here back up and runnin’, we’ll divvy out the spoils on a need to want basis and start your trainin’ with shiny and me. I guess cloudy could join in too, but I’m not sure if that’d be as an instructor or a trainee. She’s got too much skill packed into too few years, and I’m eager to pick that mind of hers for the details.”

“A story for a story?” Sechen asked.

“Of course! What kind of man would I be if I didn’t reciprocate?” Prisoner said with a grin and a waggle of his eyebrows. “I ain’t shy, and I wouldn’t expect any of you to trust me without knowin’ the whole story beforehand. Again, not until sleepin’ beauty here wakes up. The second tellin’s never as good as the first, ya know?”

“You’re just using him to delay the inevitable.”

“Hey, believe what you wanna believe, sister.” Prisoner chuckled. “The truth is that I ain’t got any stakes in you, cloudy, or even shiny. Sleepy here’s holdin’ all the cards, and you three are just along for the ride in my mind.”

Sechen shot Prisoner a look. “And that’s supposed to make us trust you, how?”

“Because now you know exactly what I’m in this for.” Prisoner motioned at Elach’s body. “Use that to find out exactly how much faith you wanna place in me. I’ll always help sleepy over any of you, even if it leads to someone’s untimely demise, and you need to be aware of that. Me helpin’ you is just another way for me to help sleepy, which in turn is just a way for me to help myself.”

“So trust that we can’t trust you?”

Prisoner’s smile was aggravating. “Now you’re gettin’ it!”

Sechen rolled her eyes, stepping out of the stairwell and into a suspiciously empty lobby. She looked around nervously, and Prisoner shifted from one foot to another as he did the same.

“Now I ain’t been here in a very, very long time, but this can’t be normal.”

“It’s never this empty before the equinox.” Sechen whispered.

“Then we need to leave. C’mon. Let’s grab cloudy and shiny and make for the horizon.”

“It is terrifyingly quiet, isn’t it?” Metea/Irric whispered as they walked down the long tunnel that linked Glasrime's glacier to the city of Freshetfall below.

“You don’t have to whisper.” Gilt said, and Sechen flinched at the words that appeared over her eyes. She would have to get used to that. “The ruler of this wonder is either aware of us, and has already set their plan in motion, or they are allowing us to leave unperturbed. Neither option bodes well for us.”

“Agreed on that, shiny. I’m hopin’ they’ll let us go myself. Give us time to fix this,” Prisoner slapped Elach on the back, “and get Ringlet powered up so she can protect herself. And don’t you go complainin’. We’ll deal with whatever’s kept you down so long when the time comes.”

Sechen closed her mouth and nodded. She didn’t think Prisoner knew what had been, in his own words, ‘keeping her down’, but he was right. There was something there, and without Revel here Sechen wasn’t sure she could ever deal with it. She looked back up the tunnel, down a completely and utterly empty tunnel, taking one last glance at the place she’d called her home for eight weeks every year since she’d met Revel. It was the closest thing she’d had to a true home in that time, but looking back at it? She felt nothing besides contempt for the glacier and everyone in it. Save for maybe Hugil and Arvay, and certainly Revel. But that didn’t count; Revel would have been leaving with them if everything hadn’t gone wrong.

“You alright, Se....” Metea/Irric started, getting a shrill shushing from Prisoner. She grit her teeth and glared at him, and he just gave a shrug and a look of innocence in return. “Ringlet. Are you alright, ringlet.”

The words didn’t carry the sentiment Metea/Irric had started with, but Sechen appreciated them anyway. Prisoner gave Metea/Irric a thumbs up, and she returned it sarcastically.

“I’m… alright. Somehow.” Sechen said, crossing her arms and looking at the floor. “I know Revel’s stuck in there with Rainshear, doing… well, you know how Rainshear is, but at least she’s safe. The second to last person, after me, of course, who would want anything to happen to Revel is Rainshear.”

“At least until she gets tired of Revel. Or Revel starts asking questions about you.” Metea/Irric pointed out. “Rainshear hopped from manifestation to manifestation like she would get burned if she spent too long in one relationship. Revel might last longer since Rainshear’s been lusting after her for so long, but once it comes out that you’re alive, lust might not be enough to keep Revel safe.”

Sechen shuddered at the thought. “It just makes my skin crawl to think that I’m leaving Revel behind, and the only hope she has for staying safe is that Rainshear…”

“Don’t finish that thought.” Prisoner said. “Sometimes, people gotta do unsanitary things to survive. Don’t make it right, and it don’t mean you gotta like it. Hells, you don’t even gotta understand it. But that don’t make it go away. You gotta do somethin’ for that to happen.”

“Well, what can I do?” Sechen asked.

“Sechen, no, he’s baiting…” Metea/Irric tried to say, but Prisoner cut her off in a slightly louder than usual voice.

“Well, sister, that’s where our proposition comes in.” Prisoner said with the charisma of a sleazy salesman. “Sleepy and I, well, it used to be just sleepy until some big changes happened, but never mind that. Sleepy and I, we got a higher purpose than just livin’ day to day and satisfyin’ the primal needs and desires that let these flesh puppets we call bodies push back suicide another day. And before I can tell you what that is, you two have to swear not to tell anyone what we’re doin’. There’re some folks out there that are pretty damned attached to what they’ve built, and any big changes will have to be done over a mountain of corpses if they get wind of what we’re tryin’ to do.”