“Well, she’s takin’ it worse than I even thought.” Prisoner said. “But I can’t say she’s wrong. Cause I ain’t got no idea what the backstory for this little scuffle entails outside of some names and who wronged who.”

“It does not matter if she is wrong or not. What matters is what she does with those feelings, and if they will break her or forge her into something far stronger than what she ever was.” Gilt mused as he shifted to avoid dropping Elach’s body.

“So you were born a philosopher, huh?” Prisoner teased, and Gilt sighed loudly but didn’t say anything to the contrary. “Tell me this, then, o wise one; what happens if cloudy don’t best her demons?”

“Then she succumbs to them.” Gilt said plainly. “Though the depth of her hypothetical fall is yet to be determined.”

Prisoner shook his head. “Wrong. What happens is that she lives on, but a part of her dies. And now it’s our job to make sure that part ain’t one of the important ones.”

“You’re already giving up on her?” Sechen asked in disbelief.

“I’m being a realist. She’s takin’ too much weight on her own shoulders, and from how she talked, she ain’t givin’ any of it up no matter how we beg or plead. Because, for all that she thinks I’m here for all of you, I ain’t. I’m here for me. And him, I suppose, but that’s because we’re lookin’ for the same thing.” Prisoner patted Elach’s body, grimacing at the spark of Issi that arced between his hand and Elach’s back. “If you or cloudy hear my proposal and decide to turn back, then that’s it. We leave behind everyone that ain’t comin’ with us, let them deal with their own lives, and go on with what we’re doin’. Because none of what you do matters once you leave us.”

Prisoner’s last sentence was laced with hidden meaning, but Sechen couldn’t take anything from it except a blatant disregard for her and Metea/Irric’s problems. And Gilt’s. It seemed almost too callous for Prisoner, and he hadn’t said it with hatred or disdain. He’d said it as a simple fact, as if it truly didn’t matter what everyone else was doing. He’d said that his goal was so dangerous that simply speaking it could endanger them if the words found home in the wrong ears, and Sechen didn’t want to go any further without knowing. Revel had hidden enough from her, from pointlessly small things like what she’d bought for dinner to far larger problems like failing to find a single offering to attract new apprentices.

“Can you make it so Metea/Irric can’t hear us?” Sechen asked.

Prisoner raised an eyebrow, but quickly nodded as realization crawled up his face. “You sure about this, sister? Once you hear this, I gotta teach you how to veil your thoughts before I’ll ever let you use that diamond.”

“Because you don’t want your secret getting out.” Sechen said with a nod.

“Because I don’t want you dyin’.” Prisoner said gently. “I wasn’t kiddin’ when I said what sleepy and I are doin’ is dangerous. Because some very powerful people like the way things are, and they’ve kept it that way for a good long while now, so they’d go to infinite ends to keep it goin’ forevermore.”

“Well, from what I’ve seen of the world, it could use a change.” Sechen grumbled, thinking of all the awful people she’d been unlucky enough to meet while traveling with Revel. “So, what, you’re some kind of underground resistance that’s going to take down the big guys?”

“No.” Prisoner shook his head, then paused. “Actually, that’s pretty close to right. Just with the wrong people behind those thoughts. Last chance to leave with a clean mind, ringlet. You too, shiny.”

“I have nowhere else to go.” Gilt said simply. “Elach and Kayvee granted me this life, and I never expected to be able to walk alongside either of them. Maybe one day Kayvee will join us as well, but that is a dream, not an expectation.”

“Kayvee? Was that the guy who was with Elach when I saw him at Resthollow?” Sechen asked.

“Shorter than Elach, very muscular, deep green eyes and short red hair?” Gilt described, and Sechen nodded. “Then yes, that was Kayvee. Once I am powerful enough, I promised that I would offer him a bond, as Hollow did for Elach. Though I do not know how that would function with someone who resides on the opposite side of the divide.”

“It don’t.” Prisoner said. “Not from personal experience, but from watchin’ a lot of wisp manifestations struggle with the exact same thing you’re sayin’. Since you technically work on both sides of the divide, most wisp manifestations choose to live on one side or the other. Walkin’ between don’t bring anythin’ but heartbreak.”

“So I need to decide if I will be joining you or working towards bonding with Kayvee.” Gilt mused, making a noise deep in his throat that sounded like a combination of a chuff and a hiss. “That does indeed make the decision difficult.”

“Well, since the both of you are so conflicted, how about we delay this until later?” Prisoner offered. “World-shatterin’ revelations are best done where you can rest your head, and we’re only two days or so from the Gilded Night’s first unnamed outpost and about a week from the city proper. If everythin’ is still the same as I remember, of course.”

Gilt thought for a moment, then shook his head. “From what I have gathered, nothing major has changed within the last century. The war for the Diamondthorn Groves is a newer development, but the major cities and dwellings have not expanded or lost their territories in any form of recent memory.”

“Figures.” Prisoner muttered. “Makes it easier for us, though. So you two have all of two days to decide; stay and learn, or leave and make your lives elsewhere.”

“I did not realize you had known Elach before all of this began.”

Sechen looked up from her book to see Gilt meandering over, settling down like an oversized house cat right next to her.

“‘Know’ is a little too strong a word for what happened. ‘Met twice’ is more like what actually happened.” Sechen said, closing her book and slipping it back into its waterproof jacket. “So you’re one of the wisp manifestations Elach met while he was working the primal spring?”

“That I am.”

“So what happened to the others?”

“For one of them, it is not my place to say. Though for the other, who Elach gave the name Hollow, I simply do not know where they chose to go.”

Gilt said no more, and Sechen just sat there in silence as thoughts of Revel wormed their way into her conscious mind. She looked down at Gilt, who she couldn’t help but think of as Revel’s long-lost cousin, since Revel had started off as a wolf-like manifestation before she got powerful enough to control the Issi she was made of. Sechen had never seen her like that, of course, since it was so long ago, but Revel’s light shows had painted a vivid picture that Sechen would never forget. And that brought another question, which Sechen didn’t really want to ask, but knew she needed to.

“How much do you know about your own Issi?”

Gilt looked up at Sechen with a raised ribbon eyebrow. “My own Issi? Could you elaborate?”

Sechen placed her hands on her lap, then looked down at her open palms. “Like… actually using it. I know you have a container like I do, but do you know how to expand it? Compress it? Use techniques with the Issi you have? And if you do, how do you know that?”

“Ah, you are wondering if we manifestations have an innate understanding of our Issi. A good question, though one I am not fully qualified to answer.” Gilt murmured something with words that slipped through Sechen’s mind without taking hold, and a small swarm of white symbols, runes, and a few letters Sechen recognized buzzed just in front of him.

“I do not know the equivalent for you, but as a wisp manifestation it does not feel as though I am manipulating Issi. It is as though I am imposing my will upon myself or existence around me. Take this technique, for example; it does nothing. But from what I have learned of practitioners, doing nothing is an impossibility for your Issi. You must impose not only an image of what you wish to do with your Issi, but a purpose. That is most likely the fundamental difference between your kind and my own.”

Sechen frowned. “The ability to do nothing?”

“Not quite. Though I am not sure how to describe it.” Gilt waved a hand through the cloud of symbols; a very person-like hand that did not belong to the animal that Gilt was, and they rushed back into Gilt’s core of the same fluttering writings. “As wisp manifestations, some of us have the ability to manipulate our forms. And yet we have an image of what we are in our minds, and always revert to that once our Issi is exhausted or halted.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Sechen asked.

“Can you change your form, or are your changes pushed upon you by the Issi you are given? Did you have a say in what your manifestation manifested as? That is the difference; to us, Issi is not simply a tool to be used. It is who we are; our everything. We do not need to artificially stimulate growth in our containers, and compression is a simple act unlike what I assume it is for your kind.” Gilt breathed in loudly, and Sechen felt the carpet shiver under her feet.

“Hey!” Prisoner yelled from somewhere in the woods. “If you’re gonna do that, do it far away from all our stuff!”

Gilt ignored Prisoner, but stopped nonetheless. “With these natural Issi strengthening abilities comes the ability to let our Issi simply do nothing. To project it outwards without a purpose or thought, in the same way we become stronger. We do not even require a focus to perform techniques, we are simply limited by the amount of Issi that resides within us.”

“So, if you had, say, an apprentice…” Sechen shifted uncomfortably.

“Ah, I think I understand now.” Gilt said while slowly nodding. “You apprenticed to Revelation, who is a wisp manifestation, and she had no idea how to properly train you so that you would grow stronger. Is that correct?”

Sechen nodded in return. “Yeah.”

“Did you never ask Revelation herself what you have just inquired of me?”

“It didn’t really come up.” Sechen lied, clenching her fists and trying not to let her anger show. “Revel kept saying she knew how to teach me, that her other apprentices were doing just fine, that it must have been me, that kind of thing. But then I found out that there were no other apprentices. That I was the only one, and Revel had no idea how to actually help me.”

Gilt’s face did something that Sechen chose to interpret as a wince. “That must have been a powerful blow to your trust in Revelation.”

“Yeah. And to make it worse? Revel strung me along for almost four years before she told me everything.” Sechen rubbed her right shoulder, feeling the warm golden interlocking plates where her arm connected to her shoulder. “My manifestation didn’t come in until a few days ago, after almost four years of waiting. And I still don’t really know why it did.”