Now lying flat on the ground, Elach looked up to see that the bird wasn’t alone. All the apparitions in the sky were overtaken one by one by the silver beams, and the same low ringing heralded yet another monster that would be coming for them. And there were so many beams. There was no way Elach could handle all this alone. He glanced over at Y’talla, reeling from the unknown assault, and made the split second decision to run and hide.

Elach grabbed onto Y’talla around her shoulders and chained back the way they’d come from. There were less beams falling in that direction. “Your Issi dried up?”

“It's this headache.” Y’talla blinked tears out of her eyes. “Just thinking hurts too much. Why did that bird come alive, Elach?”

“All the shadowy blobs can come alive.” Elach said as he pulled through the forest. “I’ve been dealing with them while you were sleeping.”

“Oh.” Y’talla craned her neck upwards, her eyes half-lidded in pain. “Is that why I’ve been having nightmares?”

Elach grimaced. He’d been trying to spare her of almost exactly that. “Probably. Sorry.”

“All those poor animals.” Y’talla mumbled.

The murky figure that Elach breezed past looked nothing like an animal. Y’talla didn’t notice, and he said nothing, grimacing at the truth that Y’talla was too out of it to realize. Elach’s chains dragged them away from the most concentrated mass of silver beams and out onto a field of sparse debris, the number of beacons dropping like a stone as they traveled. There must have been far fewer casualties this far from the spring, but the seemingly endless stretch of debris still shone silver with descending eventuality.

The cacophony when the silver beams cut into the ground was unbearable. It was as if all sound had been concentrated into a single pulse with the sole purpose to deafen anyone unfortunate enough to be within its radius. Elach felt a scream ripped from his throat, and Y’talla clawed at his shoulder like a feral cat, but everything faded into the all encompassing mass of sound and rumbling.

Ringing was the constant reminder of the agony Elach now found himself in. His hands came away from his ears bloodied and trembling, his Issi swirling around his ear canals desperately trying to salvage whatever hadn’t been pulverized by the beckoning call of the apparitions. Y’talla curled up in the fetal position and sobbed heavily. The piece of debris they were hiding on shook as something crashed into it. Elach whipped his head around in a frenzy, breaths coming short and quick as he tried to get his eyes on whatever had come.

Something smashed into his leg and swept the balance out from under him. Elach twisted in the air and caught a glimpse of something that looked like a very thick, muscular arm with fingers like old leather and pock marks that flashed bright cyan. It retreated under the piece of debris as quickly as it had struck, and only then did Elach notice it had too many elbows. Four, to be exact.

A strangler ape. He’d never seen one of the Issi beasts before, but they were supposed to be about as deadly as a practitioner with a few years under their belt. Quite a bit stronger than all the beasts he’d fought over his years overseeing those solstice expeditions to the spring. But those practitioners he’d killed were also stronger than anything he’d ever fought… and beat. Elach looked over at Y’talla, who was cowering with her hands covering her ears, a trickle of thick, amber liquid dripping through her fingers.

He’d expected to be angry. Instead, he felt an intense desire to make sure Y’talla got out of this unscathed. He reached over and ran a hand through her hair, smiling through the pain as he caught her eye. She still looked terrified, but as Elach pushed himself to his feet, she was completely focused on him. He felt a surge of pride at that. She trusted that he could do this.

Flow stirred in the far reaches of Elach’s mind, and the song began. A series of quick notes, like a musical representation of raising chains, punctuated by a harsh trill before falling back into rhythm. A song of abrupt violence and sudden ends. Elach nodded along in time, feeling his Issi resonating with the melody in near perfect harmony. It felt different. It felt right. It felt powerful.

The air shifted behind Elach’s head, and he reached out instinctively to pull away from the strangler ape. In the split second before he did, though, he changed his mind and instead tried something he felt a little more confident in for some reason. The trill held on its highest point as his Issi manifested behind him, the air hanging still as if existence was holding its breath. Elach turned his head and came face to outstretched hands with the strangler ape, white-green chains latched onto the beast’s Issi trembling under the strain it took to keep the beast immobile.

Holding strong, Elach walked up to the beast. He felt Y’talla’s eyes boring into his back, his container empty yet strangely comfortable, and Elach wrapped a chain around the ape’s neck. He was careful not to touch the thing, in case it gave him those visions that all the other apparitions had and screwed up his concentration. One swift pull, the song’s notes hitting a crescendo for a split second, and the ape’s head smashed into the far wall of dirt as its body crumpled to the ground. Elach looked down at it as the held trill faded back into the song, then the song itself fading away as his Issi chains dissipated to return some of their spent power. It was a pittance, yet he somehow felt more powerful than he could remember outside of those few moments with existential bleed running through his pathways.

“Can you hear me?” Elach asked, and found himself surprised that he could, in fact, hear himself speak.

“Barely.” Y’talla said loudly. “How’d you figure out how to do the chaining thing?”

“I’m not sure, but I think it was because I wanted to protect you more than I wanted to hurt the strangler ape. And more than I wanted to run away.” Elach guessed, then shrugged. “Whatever it was, I’m happy to have another tool in my arsenal.”

“Maybe Prisoner’s coin cemented itself as your focus?” Y’talla suggested.

“You know, that’s probably a better explanation.” Elach offered Y’talla a hand, which she gladly took. “We should be safe here for a little bit, but we probably need to get moving soon.”

Y’talla nodded, then looked down at a point behind Elach. Her face darkened almost instantly. “Oh no.”

“Oh no?” Elach repeated, whirling around to see whatever was about to attack them. He found the corpse of the strangler ape bursting into Issi. “Oh.” He turned his head to Y’talla, who was clutching her head and holding in a whimper. “Oh no.”

Y’talla didn’t so much as whimper as the strangler ape popped into a fountain of cyan Issi. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and she stumbled backwards into a wall, but she held onto consciousness by a thread. A dim green glow emanated from her skin, then formed into an ovaline barrier that covered her entire body, and Y’talla gasped in relief.

“I think I’m okay.” She said shakily. “I was ready that time, so I could fight it.”

“Are you hurt?” Elach stepped quickly, holding Y’talla’s face in his hands as he looked her over. “Issi beasts don’t always go for flesh wounds.”

“The ape didn’t actually hit me, silly.” Y’talla giggled as she put up a token resistance.

“I know, I know. I’m just realizing that I’ve seen too many people get killed by Issi beasts to be taking them lightly.” Elach picked a twig out of Y’talla’s hair and tossed it aside. “You’re sure you’re fine? And you’ll tell me if you feel anything, and I mean anything at all, out of the ordinary?”

“Of course I will. And I do feel weird. But it's a good weird. Owwie.” Y’talla winced as Elach ran a finger over a cut on her forehead. “I feel more real. Like I’m not just something in your headspace anymore.”

“Well, if I somehow make it out of this alive, then you can join us in the real world.” Elach said offhandedly. He felt Y’talla stiffen as he said that, and looked down to see unbridled excitement. “That’s one big if, little miss.”

Y’talla stuck out her tongue at him. “I’m older than anyone else alive, stupid.”

“And you remind me of the kids I used to take to the spring.” Elach smirked. “Happy to be alive and doing something they’ve always wanted to do.”

Silence followed Elach’s words as the unsaid fatalities passed through his mind. And Y’talla’s, if he had to guess, from the way she shied away and grimaced.

“The eternals will pay for making you live through that.” Y’talla eventually said. “For making anyone go through that. For those poor kids. For their parents.”

“For the ones that survived and forgot.” Elach said solemnly. “I will remember them.”

“We will remember them.” Y’talla corrected. “Flow, Hollow, and Gilt will remember them.”

Issi slammed into their piece of debris, water gushing down over the entrance to their hidey-hole and trickling through the soft dirt above. Y’talla clenched her fists and turned to look out over the sparsely decorated expanse, and Elach stepped up next to her. She hugged around his waist like a child around their parent, and Elach put a protective arm over her shoulder as he eyed a faraway piece of debris. He breathed in the Issi Y’talla offered and hummed to himself, Flow instantly responding to refill Elach’s container. He wouldn’t have the pocket of transcended Issi for quite a while, but with his new technique, he doubted he’d need it.

The first round of attackers were a flock of birds like the one he’d headbutted to death. They swooped down at the alcove Elach and Y’talla had been in mere moments ago talons first, letting out surprised shrieks as they found it empty. Elach couldn’t feel much Issi on them, and aside from their talons being sharp like knives and their top feathers gleaming like steel, he doubted they had any Issi in them at all. The armorwings ascended with middling speed, squawking and flapping as they looked for their prey. When they got eyes on Elach, directing Y’talla to hide behind a big rock, they swooped in. This time, their speed was anything but middling.

Elach dove to the side, and upon seeing that he wouldn’t be diving far enough, pulled himself straight up into the air. The majority of the flock locked their beady grey eyes onto him with only a moment of confusion, but a pair couldn’t alter their path in time. They slammed into the rock with enough force to crack it, their bodies crushing into themselves like overripe tomatoes with the force of their metal coverings urging them ever forward. None of them even spared a glance downwards, which meant Y’talla was safe for the moment, as the birds struggled to gain altitude after their deadly dive. It was almost pathetic in a desperate way.

Armored faces glared up at Elach, razor-sharp beaks craning to point directly at his fleshy undercarriage, and dropping down like a stone was struck from his book of plans. Elach felt the chain grow warm in his hand as a warning to it’s imminent unmaking, and he quickly skimmed over said book for anything he could use. He didn’t have any deadly techniques of mass destruction, so he’d have to deal with the birds one or two at a time, and try to avoid letting them get their eyes on Y’talla in the process.