“Look, we’re here already, so would you please quit your whinin’?” Prisoner groaned, grabbing his head with his hands and stepping towards a guard’s booth that was darkened by the shadows above. “If you want your going outside privileges revoked, keep doin’ what you’re doin’. Because I’m real tempted to lock you in your room tomorrow.”

“Not my fault you’re trying to train someone instead of hurrying the heck up.” Metea/Irric shot back. “Where’s your sense of urgency? Sleepy doesn’t have a lot of time left, and we’re screwing around instead of going as fast as we can! You wouldn’t even teleport us to the limit of the safe range! Don’t you care about him?”

“At this point, it don’t matter how long we’ve got left. As long as we get inside and meet old scaly, sleepy’s gonna be fine. It’s what the bastard’s gonna charge for his services that’s sendin’ a chill down my spine and de-springin’ my step.”

Sechen bent down to rub her legs as Prisoner argued with Metea/Irric. It’d been like this for most of the walk, and she’d tuned them out a long while ago. Gilt had explained that Prisoner was doing this on purpose, trying to keep this side of Metea/Irric out so that they wouldn’t have to deal with the near comatose guilt-ridden side, but it had sawed through her last nerve an hour and a half ago. Gilt was content to walk in silence, though, and Sechen had joined him. Now that they were here, it was exactly like she remembered it. One guard booth half in the shadow with a bored-looking guard reading a book, or doing a puzzle, or working on some paperwork, that would take their names and occupations and promptly tell them they didn’t have enough value to enter the night district. This time, the guard was eating lunch.

“Hey, cousin, you workin’ now or should we come back in ten?” Prisoner asked, ignoring Metea/Irric’s latest loaded question. She crossed her arms and sneered at him. “We need in.”

The guard took one look at Prisoner and turned around, brushing crumbs off his workspace and fiddling with something just out of Sechen’s field of view. “All five… four… is that a corpse?”

Prisoner followed the guard’s point, which landed squarely on Elach’s body that was splayed out over Gilt’s back, attached by golden ribbons. “Not yet, but soon to be. He’s the reason we need old scaly’s help.”

“Well, don’t call Hoalt that if you need his help.” The guard chuckled. “I’ll need you to prove your value to the Gilded Night before I give you a pass. You know how this works?”

“I used to, but I could use a refresher. It’s been a long while since I was last here.”

“Of course.” The guard said, reaching down and coming back up with an obsidian black slate and a golden stylus. “First off, are you speaking for everyone here? Or will they be seeking entrance on their own?”

“Everyone.”

“Okay. If you can’t get in with everyone, you can still try and get in on your own afterwards.”

“Won’t be a problem.” Prisoner said confidently. “So how’s this goin’ down?”

“I’ll give you a quick Issi exam, then you can present what you’ve brought to sell, either skills or things, then I tally that up and give you a map and an access pin if you’re worth enough to the Gilded Night.” The guard held up a small gold pin shaped like a claw with a single black gem in the center. “It lets you walk through the shadows wherever the city’s given you access to. It’s pretty simple, really.”

“Mmhm.” Prisoner nodded. “Anythin’ else?”

“Other than the reminder that you speaking for the others means you’ll have to show us a higher value than if you were going in alone, and that you’ll obviously have to take down any veils or barriers before the exam starts, no. Which, if you’re ready, can be right now.”

Sechen felt a little Issi start to roll off of Prisoner, but still nowhere near his real power. “Go for it.”

The guard nodded approvingly, then reached his hand towards Prisoner’s chest. A spiral of orange Issi coiled around his arm starting at his elbow, angular and irregular, before reaching his fingers where it multiplied into a net of Issi. Prisoner stared down at it with a look of boredom, watching as it touched his chest and sent out a pulse of Issi. A repurposed scouting technique. Sechen watched as orange fractals snapped off the guard’s net and raced around Prisoner’s body like a multitude of tiny snakes, the angular lines coalescing over Prisoner’s stomach once they finished their work. The guard reached out to recall them, and Prisoner gave him a word of warning.

“Don’t try to take all that in at once. I’m a little stronger than I look.”

The guard nodded seriously. “Thank you for the warning, but it is unnecessary. I can already tell from how bloated my technique has become from your ambient Issi alone.”

With two fingers, the guard plucked one of the angular lines from his hand and crushed it between his fingers. It exploded into triangles, then those triangles shattered into smaller triangles, until eventually it was a thin mist that the guard inhaled through his nose. His eyes lit up orange as he coughed, pounding his chest as if he was choking on something. “You weren’t kidding about being powerful. That’s some of the most concentrated Issi I’ve ever felt.”

“You know it.” Prisoner said with a smile.

The guard crushed all the other lines in his hand and waved away the luminescent orange dust, his eyes slowly going back to normal over time. “Well, you pass the Issi test with flying colours. More than enough for everyone here, too. All I have to check now is what you’re here to sell.”

“We’re a little more interested in tradin’ than sellin’.” Prisoner said, stepping to the side and flourishing his hand as a list appeared in it. He handed it over to the guard, who eyed it with confusion. “This is what we’ve brought that we’re willin’ to part with.”

The guard raised an eyebrow and leaned over, disappearing from view, and coming back up with a pair of thick-rimmed black glasses that he pushed up onto his nose. He read over the list Prisoner had given him, his eyebrows raising higher and higher until he reached the last item. “This is suspiciously close to what we have been told has been lost from Glasrime’s glacier. Is this a coincidence?”

Prisoner shrugged. “Does it matter?”

The guard cracked a sideways smile. “Well, it might be worth a little more if Hoalt knew it was stolen from one of his biggest rivals. Nevermind the fact that most of this was stolen from scum like Promised Tomorrows.”

“Then no, it ain’t a coincidence.”

“I’ll make sure to pass the word along, then.” The guard rolled up the list and handed it back to Prisoner. He then unfurled a map and swiped his hand over the entire thing, shadows dissolving until only a small blotch remained. He grabbed a handful of five pins and pinned them to the side of the map, their black gems clouding with Issi as he rolled the map back up and handed it to Prisoner. “This’ll get you access to anything but Hoalt’s hall, which I couldn’t give you access to if I wanted.”

Prisoner nodded thanks as he grabbed the map. “And if we wanted in?”

“To Hoalt’s hall?” The guard turned on his seat and pointed to somewhere in the distance. “There’s another checkpoint right before the hall. It’s a lot more strict than this one, but I think you’ve got a chance to get in. Especially if the list you showed me is… reacquired from Glasrime’s band of assholes.”

“You’re just takin’ me at my word for that?” Prisoner shook his head. “You’re real trustin’, what with bein’ in Hoalt’s employ.”

The guard shrugged. “A powerful practitioner’s only as good as their word. Hoalt learned that a long time ago, and he’s drilled it into all of us for almost as long. Or so I’ve heard from my superiors. Maybe you’ll meet one of them when you’re shopping around.”

“Could be.” Prisoner removed the pins from the map, tossing one to everyone and two to Gilt. “Put these on. We’re headin’ in.”

“Good luck!” The guard called as the group walked past, the shadow of the tower lowering the temperature from perfectly warm to just slightly cool. Sechen shivered, gave Prisoner a questioning look, and received a confirmatory nod. She sighed and let go of the block she’d been holding, feeling her Issi wash over her body in a calming warmth.

The night district wasn’t too different from the gilded district, just a little more opulent and spaced out. The homes were the gold and black Sechen had expected from the Gilded Night, and though they were about twice as large as the homes in the gilded district, they all looked to have a business on the lower floor and an actual house on the top. Just as many, if not more, people were going about their day, eating on restaurant patios or window shopping outside expensive boutiques with brightly coloured wares on display. Most of them wore black and gold, but they were accents to outfits rather than the outfits themselves. Scarves, pins, jackets, ties, belts, glasses, and a plethora of others Sechen didn’t know how to describe.

“This isn’t what I thought the night district would be like.” Sechen said after a woman in a very low cut backless dress walked by, some kind of manifested armor on her chest and back shown off by the clothes. “I was expecting something more cult-like. Or black market-like.”

“This ain’t what I remember, if it’s any consolation.” Prisoner craned his neck at a statue of a figure with a large shield and a near expressionless face, two vertical slots where eyes would be pouring out clear waters before running down a body that looked like it melted into the golden base below. “That thing is certainly new, and if it’s important enough to get a statue, I’ve missed quite a bit of this city’s history.”

“Wow. Amazing. A fountain.” Metea/Irric grumbled. “Can we please focus for one second? Get in and get out, since someone’s life is on the line?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Prisoner waved dismissively, and Sechen saw Metea/Irric’s temper flare. Not enough to lash out, but she was getting close. “We’ve got this here map, and it’ll take all day to check the necessary boxes just for the ingredients. There’s still the matter of findin’ someone to make the darn thing, and another to administer it to sleepy here.”

“And how long will they take to make it?” Metea/Irric shot back. “I know these things take time. Sleepy doesn’t have enough days left for us to screw around like this.”

“She is correct.” Gilt said, butting into the conversation and putting himself between Metea/Irric and Prisoner. “We have less than a week remaining. Would I be correct in assuming you would prefer not to place our hopes on the back of Hoalt?”

“Why yes, you would be correct.” Prisoner said. “Fine. Ringlet, Cloudy, you two take this and this.” Prisoner handed Sechen a rolled up piece of paper and a small silver crystal clouded with purple. “There should be more than enough in that crystal to trade for everything on that list. But that ain’t permission for you to make bum deals to get done quick, you hear me? If I find out you’ve emptied our coffers before we’ve got everything we need, there’ll be hells to pay.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Metea/Irric said mockingly as she shoved Sechen away from Prisoner. “We won’t waste your precious junk. Goodbye.”

“Ringlet!” Prisoner called, and Sechen looked over her shoulder in time to catch something Prisoner had thrown. “You two check the spots I circled, and I’ll hit the others with shiny. Meet back here at the creepy statue in eight hours.”