Gilt’s ribbons rearranged themselves until he was a smaller imitation of General Temery’s dragon form, a now ten-foot tall mass of ribbons and words that somehow gave off the same feeling as the far larger beast. With a roar that rocked the world underneath her and sent signals of danger across her eyes Gilt charged in, lashing out with jaws that carried no less force even though they were constructed of fluttering ribbons.

The glass knight tried to jump backwards, but the wind shifted at the exact wrong moment, and Gilt’s jaws clamped down on their forearm; their glass armor shattering into a multitude of fragments that caught the midday light and shone in a rainbow of colours. By the fact that their arm didn’t shatter in the same manner as their armor, exposing a heavily muscled arm with a blood red ring swirled with pollen yellow, their move had been a sacrificial one, and as their spear glowed with the same red light Sechen realized everything had been a trap.

“He’s not the glass one!” Sechen cried out, and Gilt seemed to wither as understanding rippled through his body.

But it was too late; Issi flowed down the knight’s arm and into their spear. Branching veins of blood red with sparks of yellow etched themselves onto the practitioner, and the weapon took on the same hue. Gilt craned his neck to the side to try and avoid the spear strike, his ribbons pulling in to shift him into a smaller form, but it wasn’t enough. The practitioner’s spear surged forward, catching a few ribbons in its path, but then an afterimage of vibrant yellow slammed into Gilt’s form, like a burst of pollen from a monstrous flower; letters and symbols blowing out of Gilt’s form like leaves on an updraft.

Seemingly random text popped up over Sechen’s eyes before she heard the sound that came along with them; a keening shriek that wouldn’t have been out of place coming from a dying animal. But Gilt wasn’t dead; the letters and symbols lay on the ground, dissolving into Issi, and he tried to stumble backwards without the majority of his neck and upper right torso. If he’d been anything but a wisp manifestation, that one attack would have killed him outright.

Sechen finally snapped out of her stupor, reaching into her container and pulling out enough Issi to empower Metea/Irric so that she could easily get rid of their attacker. She felt her Issi snake along her right arm and coalesce over her knuckles, the dim glow of tarnished gold sneaking into her field of view even though her right arm still lay at her side. She pressed down on the knuckle of her index finger with her thumb and visualized it appearing over Metea/Irric, but something got in the way. It was like there was an endless distance between her Issi and Metea/Irric’s, and she just couldn’t get a lock to empower her with one of the rings. But Sechen wasn’t going to let that surprise stun her, and she shifted her thoughts to Gilt’s Issi. It caught without so much as a hitch, and a tarnished gold ring of light appeared around Gilt’s partially destroyed neck. She felt Gilt slowly knitting himself back together with the added help of her Issi as she pressed down on the knuckles of her middle and ring finger, two more rings of light appearing around her own bicep and forearm as she moved to join the fight.

“Stay back.” Metea/Irric said in a voice barely above a whisper, but it reached Sechen’s ears nonetheless. “I’m going to leave whoever this is to you. I’ll take on the other three while you and Gilt take this guy down.”

“Gilt’s not… in fighting shape.” Sechen whispered. “And I can’t fight that guy on my own. He’ll kill me!”

“And I’ll die if I have to fight four people while defending you.” Metea/Irric shot back.

Another glass spear whizzed by Sechen’s head, and the knight was now down to two. She locked eyes with Metea/Irric and gulped, pushing down on her pinky and thumb to summon two more rings around her other arm.

“Fine. But my death is on your hands.”

Metea/Irric nodded with grim determination. “I’ll remember that. Now get ready.”

The winds shifted as Metea/Irric reached out with both hands, the blue line down her neck brimming with bright Issi as it did whatever it did to empower her. The knight noticed the change and their Issi shifted too, from the majority red to a majority yellow as they stepped forward in a leaping charge that left them fifteen feet in the air sailing down at Metea/Irric. But Metea/Irric wasn’t interested in fighting them, and in a maelstrom of shearing winds and pelting rain she shot forward, where the impact she made with something that shimmered and shifted left an aftershock that made Sechen stumble on her feet.

“Holy crap.” The armored figure muttered, raising their bare arm to their eyes as they turned to Metea/Irric’s impact. “What does she eat for breakfast? Dragons?”

“So you can speak.” Sechen said, trying to sound intimidating. “I’ll give you one chance to run.”

“Nah.” The knight spoke, grabbing the last spear that hovered over their back and leveling it at Sechen’s chest. “Even if they all die, they’ll wear her down enough for me to hop in and lop her head off. Speaking of which, sorry about this. I don’t usually take on jobs that make me deal with weaklings, but the pay was way too good to ignore this one.”

“Oh, you’re sorry. That makes this so much better.” Sechen muttered.

“Eh. It’s work.” The knight said with a shrug.

Without warning the knight lunged with a thrust shrouded in their majority yellow Issi. The glass spear sparkled as if it contained a core of sunlight, yellow rivers of Issi tinged with red undercurrents spiraling out from behind the spearhead, rushing straight at Sechen’s heart. She ducked to the side as the spearhead barely missed her shoulder, but it was quickly followed up by a knee to the gut that would have put her down for the count if she didn’t have her rings empowering her. The knight followed that up by slamming the butt of his spear down on Sechen’s back, then making a sort of annoyed grunt as Sechen didn’t instantly go down.

She was just as surprised as they were, if not more. The glass of their boots glimmered as Sechen watched them shift for another strike, and felt the butt of their spear pulled off of her back as it was replaced by a weight that was far too heavy for one hand. Red Issi then spilled down into her vision, and she knew she had seconds to react before she was dealt with. But she didn’t know how to fight. Revel had never done anything to help her learn, and before she’d met Revel…

Sechen grabbed at the knight’s leg and tried to push them over, her fingers sinking unsettlingly deep into the glass armor as she did. She stepped forward with her Issi draining from her container at a slow but constant pace, an inevitable end to this fight a dozen minutes away. The rings on her right arm shone as bright as the tarnished gold light could handle, and Sechen shoved with all of her might.

The shattering of glass was like music to her ears and blades on her skin. She screamed in pain as her right arm was assaulted with a storm of shards, cutting ridges in her arm that welled up with blood as her container surged with Issi. Her time limit went down from a dozen minutes to a maximum of ten as she forced her wounds to close with Issi, but they didn’t exactly close. Instead of blood she now leaked light, Issi taking the place of her lifeblood to let her fight on in the best condition she could manage.

A guttural scream cut off Sechen’s train of thought, and the Issi around the knight blossomed into something beautiful and terrifying. It was as if they were standing in the center of a geyser, Issi rising up from a circle beneath their feet in a column of equally mixed red and yellow that Sechen knew was bad news before she felt it. The glass armor melted away like warm butter, sloughing off wherever the Issi touched until it was a puddle on the ground below the practitioner. Their Issi collapsed inwards, and the practitioner’s scream turned into a background hum as their Issi roiled just beneath their skin.

The next strike came quickly, but Sechen was somewhat ready this time. She stumbled to the side as the assailant’s attack went wide, but the sound of dirt being kicked up let her know she didn’t have much time. The holographic fist that lodged itself into her side, knocking her down and sending her skidding through the hard-packed ground into the nearest tree, let her know she didn’t know anything. She rapidly blinked her eyes, trying to get them to focus, as her container drained itself at an alarming rate to fix whatever damage the attack had done. All that managed to do was get her a good look at her attacker’s actual Issi.

They wore a long, flowing robe of yellow Issi that crackled like thin ice, chips falling away before being replaced by more Issi from their container. Their face was now completely shrouded by a hood with a mask of red Issi made to look like a long-horned and stone-faced demon from a fairy tale, writhing tendrils of the same red Issi making up handwraps, the only other part of the practitioner’s body Sechen could see. They looked absolutely absurd, like a child picking out their own outfit for the first time, but Sechen couldn’t focus on that. No, all she could focus on were the countless projections of hands, some clenched into fists, others spread out as if waiting to grab onto something, anything that would get close, and some with fingers pressed together ready to slap or chop the practitioner’s enemy. Which happened to be Sechen.

She struggled to move, but found that her body wasn’t listening to her. She felt her Issi gushing to somewhere in her back that seemed particularly broken, and her rings winked out one by one as the Issi they drew from vanished. She felt stronger by the second, but a yawning emptiness in her container let her know just how weak she really was. She snuck a glance over at Gilt, who was still slowly pulling himself together, but the ring around him still glowed strong. Sechen could feel the store of her Issi she’d put into it, but it was no longer connected to her container. It was a battery for Gilt now, and all she could do was hope he managed to come save her.

A hand grabbed onto the neckline of her dress, and Sechen panicked. She grabbed onto the hand with all the strength she could muster, which wasn’t much, and dug her fingernails into where she thought would hurt the most. But there was one major problem with her thinking; this wasn’t flesh and blood she’d grabbed onto, it was a projection of red and yellow Issi. And as she sunk her fingers into it, the Issi lashed out with tendrils of red that whipped and raked themselves through Sechen’s skin like thrashing knife-worms. She screamed out in pain, no longer under the strengthening and apparently pain-dulling effects of her Issi rings, but she didn’t let go. Another hand grabbed onto her right arm and wrenched it, attempting to dislocate it from its socket. Instead, her arm popped free from its metal plate and spiraled off into the forest.

“Huh. Guess I don’t know my own strength.” The cloaked demon impersonator chuckled in a voice that sounded like it was muffled by the cracks and pops of a burning fire, taking a single step towards Sechen that left a puddle of yellow Issi steaming in their footprint. “I’d say you put up a good fight, but lying isn’t my style. Hells, you didn’t even put up a fight.”

The hand grabbing Sechen’s dress pulled back, only to be replaced by another two grabbing her by the neck. “Hells, this doesn't feel right.” The practitioner sighed, but the grip around Sechen’s neck didn’t give whatsoever.

“You… can…” Sechen tried to say, but the hands squeezed tighter.

“Sorry, what was that? I couldn’t hear you.” The practitioner crossed their arms, and one of the Issi hands cupped their ear towards Sechen. “Was that you begging for mercy?”

All Sechen could get out was a pained gurgle. She felt herself growing lightheaded, and clawing one-handed at the hands that were crushing her windpipe did nothing but harm her further. She reached out for the ring of Issi around Gilt, hoping against hope that he would jump in to save her, but found only emptiness and a still very damaged Gilt.

“It wasn’t? Alright, then. Goodbye, whoever you were.”

The hands gripped tighter, aiming to end Sechen’s life. She gurgled out something that might have been a plea or a curse, but both sound the same when all that comes out of your throat is spit and hope.