“Step one; take down the dumb ones.” Elach muttered, singling out a bird that was lower than the others and struggling just a little bit more to get airborne. He gathered his Issi around the bird in a spray of anchors, then locked them onto the paltry Issi pathways he felt running through it. He turned so he wouldn’t hit any of the five competent birds as he fell and reached for a chain, pulling himself down quickly while still maintaining a connection to the one above him.

With a thought the technique around the slow bird whirred up, locking it in place as he slid by the rest of the flock. He stopped at eye level with the slow bird, thanking his Issi that he didn’t seem to suffer any ill effects of stopping and starting too quickly, and grabbed onto the bird where its wings met its torso. He adjusted himself so he was precariously perched on the thing’s broad back, steadying as the birds looked around in confusion, and jumped.

The moment he reached the top of his arc, Elach chained himself to an anchor near the ground, released the imprisoning technique, and pulled. The blood splatter with feathers he found himself standing on brought on caws of rage, and Elach looked up to see the birds reorienting themselves to dive him. It couldn’t be that easy. They were going straight down. But an Issi beast had to be intelligent enough not to kill itself on the hunt.

Elach decided not to bet against nature, no matter how badly adapted the birds were, instead bringing the point of impact a little closer to the flock. In a flare of Issi Elach anchored a mess of chains in the flock’s path, but he didn’t put any thought into pulling them. He let them stay there, unpowered, and waited for the moment the birds ran into his… well, he wouldn’t call it a trap. Sudden wall was closer to reality.

A squawk of alarm preceded a resounding crunch as the chains bit into the flock’s tender flesh, guts and feathers spilling through the spaces between chains as the heavy metal the birds lugged around brought both their momentum and their lives to a screaming halt. Elach stepped back to avoid the viscera while readying himself for the survivors, and he was rewarded for his patience when five birds barely managed to avoid his chains. Out of a flock of close to thirty.

Now that he didn’t hold the element of surprise, Elach needed to switch up his strategy. He expected that these five birds were closer to manifesting a real personality and intelligence than all the others combined, the long gouges and deep dents on their armor a memento of battles won and lost. He kept an ear open for Y’talla in case something had gone horribly wrong, and in that moment he almost missed something that would have had fatal consequences.

The Issi from all the dead birds wasn’t going towards Y’talla. The two that had rammed into the rocks had already dissipated, their Issi streaming over Elach’s shoulders and up towards one of the battle-hardened avians who spun it around itself in a whirlwind that slowly formed into shards of jagged metal scraps. The scraps slammed into the bird as metal screeched against metal, weighing it down but creating another layer of far thicker armor over the creature. The other four held back as their fallen flock returned to Issi, waiting for their own carrion feast.

With a muffled battle caw, the now heavily armored bird slammed down to where Elach had been standing moments ago. If his reflexes hadn’t kicked in and pulled him away, he’d have a massive hole in his torso right now. The bird struggled for half a second before levitating itself out of the hole, seemingly unfazed from the heavy impact. Its armor shifted to form jagged knives where the thing’s talons had been, its beak elongating into a wicked hook that Elach knew would dig in and never let go.

“Not good.” Elach muttered. “Step two; kill the smart ones.”

The bird’s Issi pooled in its wings as shards burst off it, levitating just above its makeshift armor as little deadly projectiles. Elach felt the Issi shift from underneath the shards to behind them, then fizzling out one by one as the bird launched them at Elach. He pulled himself to the ground to dodge the first volley, which was followed shortly after by the screeching attack of the bird itself. Razor-sharp talons just barely scraped along Elach’s back, and he felt something seeping into his blood through the shallow wounds.

“Weaponized tetanus. Damn it.” Elach grunted as his back started contracting. He forced his Issi into his bloodstream to try and drive it out, but his utter lack of any healing properties made that a slow and very painful process. And every drop of Issi that went towards keeping him alive was one not keeping him safe.

Clanging and scraping let Elach know he’d have more trouble sooner than later. He looked up at the frontline bird with heavy armor and chained it in place, but the rattling and shaking was far more than the other bird or even the strangler ape. He had seconds to act. His feet pounded dirt as he approached the locked bird, looping two chains around its neck and attempting to pull in both directions at once. Something resisted. There was a brief struggle of wills as the bird broke free from Elach’s lock, jagged metal ripping through Elach’s skin as the bird’s Issi fought back with all its might, and Elach’s chains shattered. The ape hadn’t put up anywhere near this much of a fight, and he’d only used one chain for that thing.

Metal screamed against metal, and Elach grit his teeth. This wasn’t going to be easy.

A globe of water loomed over the horizon, shadows of oversized fish swimming around inside of it as if in a blood frenzy. It was preceded by a salvo of smaller spears, raining into the ground like a hail of arrows that popped into bursts of pressurized water, cutting into anything like tiny razors. Elach let out a strangled gurgle as they pelted his skin, leaving small, deep cuts that were only stopped by his Issi.

The bird he was wrestling didn’t give a damn. The water slid off its armor in nothing more than a mild annoyance, but a mild annoyance was enough of an opening. Elach dug his fingers into a deep gouge and poured in his Issi, taking the last dregs of his transcended pocket to anchor his chain deep into the bird’s flesh as the jagged edges tore into his tender flesh. The bird spasmed in a panic as Elach pulled himself back, an ethereal chain connecting his right arm to the bird’s left wing. It felt fragile, as if it would shatter the moment he called it into being. But he didn’t have time to ponder how weak it felt as a steel wind blew in his direction, carrying with it countless tiny needles. The other four were combat ready.

Flow’s song rang hollow in Elach’s ears. He barely had enough Issi to do what he wanted to, and that was if everything went perfectly. Which it already hadn’t. The meager power and control it afforded him did allow him to pull himself away, but the chain connecting to the leader bird strained and shivered as he distanced himself. Any further, and the technique would be lost. Any closer, and he would be caught in the steel wind. Elach was caught.

The other four birds weren’t armored like the first one, instead surrounding themselves with flawless needles of metal that floated on currents of air and magnetism Issi as they were readied. Support from a range while the alpha, or whatever the bird version of that concept was, went in close to take Elach down. His Issi couldn’t handle everything he needed it to. Doing this alone was far too complicated.

“Elach.” Y’talla said quietly, cutting through Flow’s song like a knife. He felt Issi rippling through the world, distorting everything around him and battering against his container with a reckless desire to be let in. Elach didn’t have the strength to resist it, and as it flowed into his container, he realized he didn’t have the strength to use it either. His arms were giving out as Issi tetanus ravaged his muscles. He was bleeding just a little too much. He looked up at the four birds, readying their next volley, and made a split second decision. He’d only destroyed a wide area once before.

It had taken four hours. But desperate times called for desperate measures.

“Get down!” He yelled at Y’talla, and he felt her Issi stall for a moment as she processed his command. If this didn’t work, he was dead. Hells, if it worked, he might still be dead. But if he did nothing, he was also dead beyond a shadow of a doubt. There wasn’t really a risk in trying.

One quick pull took Elach to the middle of the four artillery birds, their whirlwind of needles digging into his skin but getting rebuffed ever so slightly by the radiant Issi in his container. He couldn’t put it into any techniques, since it was Y’talla’s pure, primal Issi; but it did a good job protecting him while he did something idiotic. A tug on the ethereal chain brought the alpha avian in for a family reunion before it shattered, and Elach delved into his inner world before he could take the coward’s way out.

His fingers latched onto his container, dissolving into the layer that separated him from his Issi, and called for Flow. It wasn’t even a beat before he felt their consciousness settle in next to his, completing the connection to his container.

“If this doesn’t work, I’m sorry.” Elach said to himself, hoping Flow could hear. “I’ll make it as quick as I can.”

With one tremendous effort, Elach attached chains to all sides of his container. It hurt like hell, but he knew it was going to hurt far more in a second. Y’talla’s Issi streamed in unerringly, filling in for the last of his Issi he used on the chains. Flow’s song was quiet, a pure accompaniment to Elach’s lunacy. He appreciated it more than he could put into words. “Goodnight, buddy.”

Elach pulled his container wide open.

Y’talla would have watched in horror as Elach shattered like weak glass, but she was too busy cowering with her hands over her head to notice. What she couldn’t ignore was the megaton explosion that followed, ripping through the shattered lands with the force of an ancient master’s wrath. The only thing that spared her, as Issi ravaged everything around her, was the fact that it was her Issi doing the ravaging. Pure, primal force.

And then there was silence. Silence that was swiftly filled with a song. Y’talla stood up, her legs trembling under her, and moved to peek over the huge rock she’d hidden behind. Yet she couldn’t find the rock. She couldn’t find much of anything on the nearby pieces of debris. All she saw was a cloud of Issi making its way towards her, and a kneeling Elach who didn’t look quite right. The song was set on by the rattling of chains, and Elach rose much the same way a puppet on strings would.

“Elach?” Y’talla asked quietly. “Are you okay?”

Elach looked down at his hands, then turned to Y’talla with confusion in his eyes. She shivered at what she saw reflected in them. A useless coward who couldn’t do anything.

“I’m… fine.” Elach laughed. “How in the hells am I fine?” He moved closer to her, every step accentuated with a note and a rattle of a chain. “Are you alright? Your hiding place didn’t seem to do too well.”

“I’m fine too.” Y’talla turned her head, then pointed off into the distance. “But there are more of them coming. What are we… what are you going to do?”

“We are going to wait it out. Look at them. They’re scared to come any closer.” He gestured broadly at the apparitions that were crowded along the edges of the closest piece of debris. Even the one that had summoned the huge water ball had let their technique go. “They don’t know I’m completely out of Issi, and that I just did some real damage to my container. I don’t think I could do a single technique to save our lives.”

Y’talla probed at Elach’s container and felt something truly bizarre. His container was full of holes, yet it held its shape, chains of Issi holding it together on the brink of destruction. Issi leaked out of it, but there was so little of it in there that it didn’t do any real harm. The real danger was to Elach’s headspace. She went to voice as much, but under Elach’s confident expression she saw the darkness of worry. He already knew.

“If I could have done anything, maybe you wouldn’t be so hurt.” Y’talla’s voice cracked as she spoke, and along with it came silent tears. “Next time, I won’t be this useless. I’ll find some way to help you.”

“I know you will.” Elach said, ruffling Y’talla’s hair. “For now, though, we can’t do anything. Maybe the purple light will go away, and we can go back to normal.”

“I hope so.”