“How did you manage to break all of your teeth?” The doctor chided Elach as she ran a finger gloved in protective Issi across his gums. “A few I can understand; I see that all the time. But every single one of your teeth have been lost, shattered, or fractured. You’re sure you didn’t stray out of the first zone?”

She turned to look at Y’talla, who was speaking for Elach while he was indecipherable. “Nope. We stayed in the first zone the whole time. He fought a big wheat monster that hypnotized us, and that’s why we brought back so much wheat, but he said it didn’t feel like it belonged in the first zone.”

The doctor sighed and cleaned her finger with a flash of Issi. “That’s because it doesn’t belong in the first zone. Straware only grows in a single small clearing in zone nineteen, and from the look of the haul you brought in, you reaped the entire crop.”

“Hey, that crop tried to reap us first.” Y’talla said defensively. “Something inside of it made it go crazy, and Elach got really hurt killing it. What if it hadn’t been us? What then?” Y’talla gestured at the open door that led to the clearing. “What if one of the new kids got caught? They wouldn’t be here right now, would they? Their blood and bones would be fertilizing the soil, a grisly addition to the harsh circle of life.”

“I’m not chiding you for defending yourselves. I’m worried about the precedent this sets.” The doctor clarified, her dark violet eyes ringed with exhaustion. “We’ve had a few… incidents this past week, but we didn’t have any leads whatsoever. Your story might be the clue we’ve been desperately searching for.”

Y’talla’s face fell, her words losing all of their bluster. “Have any of the kids died?”

“No.” The doctor shook her head. “A few extremely close calls, but no deaths yet.”

Elach spoke shattered words, the doctor turning to Y’talla as they both waited patiently for Elach to finish. “Elach wants to know if Hoalt has a representative on this floor. We have something we need to show them.”

“We don’t exactly have a representative, but Hoalt told us one would be coming within the week. You can wait for them while you recover.” The doctor stood and stepped over to a cabinet, opening it to show a massive array of premade pills and liquids. “Your Issi will fix everything but your teeth, which we’ll have to force to regrow. It’ll be extremely uncomfortable, and it will take a while, but you don’t have to do anything special while you’re on these.”

The doctor pressed a bottle of tiny white pills into Elach’s hand. “Put one of these into each hole in your gums where a tooth used to be, then flood it with your Issi. It will burrow in and attach to your bones, where it will use your body to regrow a tooth. With your Issi concentration, you should have a mouth full of new teeth by the end of the month. Now, I feel awful to have to ask you to leave with how you’ve helped us, but I have patients in far worse shape than you that I have to see.”

Elach nodded in understanding, pushing himself out of the examination chair and gesturing for Y’talla to do the same. Flow hopped off the back of Y’talla’s chair and swooped over to Elach’s shoulder, their weight almost comforting now. “Fhang yhew.”

“He said…” Y’talla began.

“I understood that one.” The doctor said with a smile. “Take it easy for the first few days, Elach. The drain on your Issi is by far the worst during the implantation stage, and will lessen with time.”

“She seemed nice.” Y’talla said as she pushed open the door to their room. “So what now? We wait for whoever Hoalt’s representative is to show them the spine?”

Luckily, Elach could speak properly to Y’talla and Flow through the link they shared. It would be very annoying otherwise. “I’m the representative, Y’talla.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. We’re on our own here.” Elach felt through his headspace, pulling the spine out with a mild effort. It was already starting to absorb his Issi, gaining a green and white tint to it. “I’m terrified this thing’s going to come back as a monster made of my Issi, but we have to do something about it. Do either of you have any suggestions?”

“Someone has to be willing to pay us for this.” Y’talla touched the spine with one hand, then yanked it away with a yelp. “It tried to eat my Issi!”

“It’s trying to make itself into a monster again. Be really careful with it.” Elach pressed a fingertip to one of the vertebrae, feeling it nip at him like an overaggressive kitten. “If we don’t sell it, we could break it down into little parts. Someone like Metea/Irric might be able to make something interesting with it.”

Flow looked down at the spine from on top of the headboard, a musing song giving way to a grinding trill.

“We’d have to go find something else to slaughter if we wanted to make bone meal.” Elach said. “I’m not saying no, but unless you and Y’talla can go kill something by yourselves or you’re willing to give up the spoils we’ve got in Hoalt’s canister, we should try something else.”

“Well, you did kill that thing all by yourself. And the spine isn’t alive at all, not even one little bit, so you could try to make it into a focus.” Y’talla suggested with a smirk. “We see the way you look at it, Elach. And you did everything to kill it, so why not take it for yourself?”

“If you insist.” Elach said with a shrug. “You still have some of the straware, right? There’s something I want to try.”

Y’talla nodded and set Elach’s bag down on the bed. She unbuckled it to reveal that it was stuffed with straware, pulling out a big armful before moving it to the floor. “What are you going to try?”

He gestured at the spine. “Can you two still feel the straware’s Issi in this thing?” Flow and Y’talla both nodded. “I think the straware’s a part of it now. So I thought, maybe it’ll take the straware along with it when I try to make it a focus. Boost my energy levels or something.”

“If you think so. Do you want me to weave these into something first?” Y’talla adjusted the bundle of stalks. “Because I want to weave them into something. I’m going to weave them into something.”

“We’re in no hurry. Not anymore.” Elach grunted as he hefted the spine off the bed and moved it to the floor. “We’ll find out how much the straware’s worth tomorrow morning, and we can see where we need to go from there. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll be worth enough for us to get a better room for a few nights, or pay for a good meal or two.”

“How much can this be worth?” Y’talla sniffed at the straware. “It’s a plant. You could literally grow an unlimited amount of it if you got your hands on one seed.”

Flow puffed up their chest and let out a long caw, spreading their wings for emphasis.

“Just because we have a lot of it doesn’t mean it’ll be worth a lot.” Y’talla countered. “A hill isn’t expensive just because you piled up a lot of dirt.”

A defensive retort disguised as a song from Flow, followed by a ruffling of feathers as if they’d proven their point.

“Mountains and hills aren’t the same thing!” Y’talla laughed. “A mountain’s made of rock. A hill’s dirt. You can find gems and stuff in mountains, but you dig through a hill and all you find is dirt. Dirt, dirt, dirt. All the way through.”

The argument that followed was short and intense, ending with Flow and Y’talla not speaking for all of fifteen minutes before the silence got unnerving and they moved the topic of conversation to the spoils Flow had collected from the Issi beasts. Flow was utterly convinced that they could use them to grow stronger somehow, but they weren’t quite sure what they needed to do. Y’talla had a few ideas, and they unwittingly shut Elach out of their conversation as she emptied the canister on the bed and shoved him off into the only clear corner of the room, sitting on the chest that held the rest of their belongings. She reminded Elach that she was a manifestation as she stared quizzically at the wolf’s eyeball, then licked it. A look of consideration spread across her face, and she delved deep into her thoughts at the taste of an Issi beast’s ocular organ.

“I’m going… somewhere else.” Elach said, feeling a little green from that display. He’d seen far, far worse, but this turned his stomach for some reason. “I’ll be at the, uh, I’ll be at the library. When you two get hungry, come find me and we’ll go get something to eat.”

“Okay. See you.” Y’talla said distractedly, giving Elach a small wave. Flow echoed the sentiment, looking up for a moment and chirping goodbye.

Elach squeezed through the door, carefully shutting it behind him as he went. He stepped gingerly through the plain halls of the costless section of the hotel, his muscles still not completely recovered from the fight with the effigy. He was honestly surprised he was doing as well as he was. His memories of getting heavily injured during the solstices were always followed by a few dream-like weeks or months where he was hopped up on painkillers and medicine, but now with his Issi he would be better within a few days. Regrowing his teeth was about the same as he remembered, rubbing at his jaw at the memory of the stabbing pain of his bones reshaping themselves, reaching into his pocket for the little white seeds the doctor had given him. He opened the glass bottle and plucked a single seed, grimacing as he turned it in his fingers.

Pressing the seed to his gum, Elach pushed past the point of discomfort to wedge the seed in there. His finger came out covered in blood, and he blinked away tears while thanking the eternals… he really needed to get that idea out of his mind. He decided to thank the dead gods instead for the fact that he now had Issi of his own, and could just move it towards his jaw instead of having to get two of those awful injections per tooth he needed to regrow. He felt an uncomfortable tightness and warmth as the seed pulled itself towards his Issi, touching the bone and flaring into a miniature sun for the shortest moment before it lodged permanently in place. After wiping his bloodied finger on his arm and the sweat off his brow, Elach moved out of the hallway and into the hotel’s small, simple front room. The man behind the desk nodded at Elach as he walked by, the door opening to let a fit young man through whose clothes all bore Hoalt’s insignia. Elach raised an eyebrow. Maybe he’d assumed who the representative was a little too quickly.