“Is your name Sanguine or Shard? Scarlet.” Elach asked.

“You could also remove your hand from the crystal, you know.” The librarian pointed out. “And my name is Shar. Sanguine felt a little too on the nose, as people with noses say, and I don’t really enjoy the blood association when I’m not even a blood wisp. Slaughter wisps are far more powerful than our common cousins.”

“Slaughter Issi?” Elach looked around. “And you work in a bookstore?”

“There isn’t a call for slaughter these days. Honestly, I can’t remember there being a call for slaughter in my lifetime. Which has only been just about a century, mind you.” Shar waved her hand. “Not on this side of the veil, at least. I could drink my fill of violence if I went down below, but that isn’t quite my style. But we’re getting off topic. If you want to help your wisp manifestation get stronger, you have to help them push their boundaries. If they’re a fire wisp, help them get their flames hotter and hotter. Or find a way to let them summon their flames further away from themselves. Or get them to make their flames into specific arrangements, like a ring or a pillar. Anything like that helps us know ourselves better, which makes our Issi more concentrated. I can’t really explain why it works like that, but it does.”

“Help Flow find out what their Issi can do. I gotcha.” Elach paused. Had Flow ever done anything with their Issi? He couldn’t remember.

“If Flow hasn’t used their Issi yet, they must be a very fresh manifestation.” Shar said. “Remember; I can read everything you think while your thoughts are punctuated by the trigger word. The first use of a wisp manifestation’s Issi is bizarre to say the least. We don’t quite use a technique, we just… burst. Scatter to the wind and reform later with an extremely basic understanding of our Issi. It takes hours for some, and minutes for others. It took me exactly fifty three minutes and thirteen seconds to reform after I first used my Issi, and I changed quite a bit when I did. I was fairly animalistic before, but I came out of it a slightly less impressive version of the manifestation you see here today.”

“Will that happen to Flow?” Elach asked. “They look like a bird now, but will they look more like a person after they use their Issi? Scarlet.”

Shar shrugged. “They might, and they might not. Whatever they feel they should be, they will be. While I was scattered across the room I tested my Issi in, I got images of myself clad in the sanguine mists my wisp had. A sleek form wrapped in it, hiding jagged edges that could burst out at a moment’s notice. It felt right, and when I reformed, it was me.”

“Something to be prepared for. Anything else I should know?”

“Study up on your wisp manifestation’s Issi with them. Finding another way to use their form, not just their Issi, can be very helpful. Even if it doesn’t make their Issi grow in power, they’ll be stronger for it.” Shar gestured at her dome of red mist. “This doesn’t scream slaughter, but I can do it. And if I never researched all the ways practitioners used slaughter Issi, I never would have even thought of it. Using what someone else has already figured out isn’t weak, or cowardly, or plagiaristic; it’s the way of the world.”

Elach took his hand off the crystal before he thought of something dangerous. He hadn’t thought the trigger word, but he didn’t trust himself not to. If he wanted to help Flow with their Issi, he’d have major trouble. Sentence had barely anything on it, and even those were mostly folklore and stories, so unless Hoalt had a repository on transcendent Issi he was in for a lot of trial and error.

Time flew by as Elach spoke with Shar on all things manifestation, learning that all non-wisp manifestations grew much the same way the average practitioner did, but at a slower pace. They were linked to whatever manifested them, after all, and aiding whatever that was to grow also grew the manifestation. For beast manifestations, they consumed. Land manifestations needed to be built up, expanded, or repaired. And object manifestations were the simplest of all; they needed to do what they were made for. If a broom managed to manifest a form, it needed to sweep. A shield needed to be hit. Swords needed to be swung. Shar explained that weapon manifestations could grow the fastest, with beast and wisp manifestations barely behind, and land manifestations in a far, far fourth. Since land had difficulty manifesting in the first place, their manifestations were normally born strong. Weak land manifestations didn’t last long.

“I’ve kept you for too long.” Shar said as she, which Elach learned she wished to be addressed as, dispelled the dome of mist that surrounded them. “I never thought I’d meet another person who helped raise a wisp manifestation, never mind three of them. You did an excellent service to our kind, Elach, and I can’t thank you enough for it.”

“Three still doesn’t feel like all that many.” He said, taking his hand off the crystal instead of punctuating his thought with ‘scarlet’.

“When your numbers barely breach one hundred, and you don’t have a set lifespan, three in one year is a miracle. Hells, three in one decade is about what we expect.” Shar pushed the books on the table towards Elach. “If you’re going to stay here a while longer, I’d love to meet Y’talla and Flow.”

Elach nodded with a smile. He placed his hand on the crystal for a quick thought. “You probably already have. I’ll bring them sometime this week.”

Shar smiled wide, bearing her maw of shards for Elach to plainly see. “I’ll look forward to it.”

Elach gathered the books under his arm and waved goodbye, walking towards the door as the surroundings came back to him. His hand pressed against the door and he froze. Issi spiraled down from the roof of the cavern like ink through water, dark strokes painted onto reality. They latched onto smaller, less vibrant blotches of Issi; inky darkness bleeding into the myriad colours and muddling them with the will of another. Eight in total. Elach went to grit his teeth, but all he found was the pain of bloodied gums. He knew the feeling of this Issi all too well.

He’d lived it through the eyes of another. The Issi that destroyed Y’talla’s spring was impossible to forget.

Kellick looked down on the small mob his partner had gathered, lambs dancing in the palm of the beautiful man with inky black eyes and enough jewelry to bankrupt a powerful practitioner. Which they’d done multiple times. He smiled at the memory of those monsters spilling their coffers to hire out the best of the best, watching as their loved ones marched towards the inevitable death they’d paid for. They always screamed their lungs out. Called them monsters. As if, by Kellick’s choice of victim alone, the crime took on a new light.

“He’s at the door.” Ven said in his quiet, smooth voice, his countless fingers dancing as he pulled all the strings. His manifested arms were angular and crystalline, the fingers like miniature needles, and he knew exactly how to use them. “The manifestation inside. You’re sure she has a non-aggression pact signed into her clause?”

“I’ve read it over ten times now, Ven. She attacks a single member of the public and she gets expelled from the pillar immediately.” Kellick laughed with a malicious grin on his face. “You should have seen all the reports. The people here are terrible to her, and she just has to take it. A slaughter manifestation being bullied by children. She’ll see what happens when someone really wants to hurt her soon enough.”

Ven sighed with a dreamy smile. “We haven’t had anything like her in a long time, have we? Her Issi will be a feast in more ways than one.”

“The Spinner’s going to want this one, so we have to keep her alive. Remember that.” Kellick twitched as the door swung open, the man who they’d been contracted to eliminate stepping out into the open. Kellick pivoted his heel, a line of glowing copper etching into the roof of the hotel. “He’s leaving. Send in the lambs.”

One of Ven’s manifested hands splayed its fingers, Issi strings becoming clearer and thicker as he spurred one of the lambs to make the first move. Kellick knew Ven was testing their mark, seeing how far he would go against an innocent, if he even knew they were innocent at all. It would get messy if he didn’t. Kellick licked his lips; things hadn’t gotten messy in a good few jobs now. The anticipation was scrumptious.

A woman with some offshoot of pyretic Issi lunged forward in an unnatural assault, heat distorting the air around her as she swiped at the mark. But he didn’t even flinch. He held up a hand and caught her forearm, throwing her off to the side like a bag of trash. He didn’t instantly teleport out of the pillar, which meant they were good to go.

“Weak ones won’t touch him, even though he doesn’t have that much Issi in him.” Kellick relayed. “He’s running low, too. Don’t bother wearing him down.”

Ven made a noise that Kellick knew was confirmation. The clicking of crystal fingers coincided with the lambs moving in, Issi flaring from eight different sources as they attacked the mark. He stepped out of the way, reached out to the side, and was suddenly halfway across the clearing. Kellick blinked and focused his Issi behind his eyes to make sure the mark wasn’t using illusion Issi, then hummed consideration deep in his throat.

“Looks like the report was right; he’s got some kind of movement Issi. His container’s running extremely low now, so he shouldn’t have too many more of those in him. Is everything fine on your end, Ven?”

“That throw was a little surprising, but after getting a better look at him, he’s trained his body pretty well. Nothing special in his attack, only basic Issi enhancement. Keep an eye out for anything that wasn’t on the report.”

“Of course.” Kellick’s eyes followed the mark with uncanny accuracy thanks to his Issi. “Can you try to bait out an attack? I want to see for myself what our mark is capable of.”

“That might be easier said than done.” Ven said after a moment of silence. “He’s quite skilled at dodging anything I throw at him. Even techniques that don’t have an obvious tell; I think he can see the flow of Issi like you can.”

Kellick rubbed his stubbly chin as he watched the mark sidestep attack after attack. He wasn’t overly nimble or fast, he just wasn’t where the techniques were aimed. “Interesting. That’s a skill most practitioners don’t work on until much later in their training. Do you think it’s his Issi that’s letting him do that?”

Ven frowned as one of his arms stilled. He reached up and smacked it with one of his flesh-and-bone arms, but it seemed to be stuck. “Nobody that young can see Issi that well without something helping them. I’d guess it’s his Issi helping him, but he could also have some kind of relic or trinket that does it for him. Hoalt sent him specifically, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s armed to the teeth.”

“Any relic from Hoalt’s will have more barriers and veils than the average practitioner.” Kellick nodded. “I’ll watch for Issi flares. No veil is perfect.”

The mark held fast, his meager Issi store lasting far longer than Kellick had expected. He must have a recyclable technique. Lucky bastard. Ven didn’t so much as break a sweat as he skillfully manipulated the lambs into a formation where the mark would have to kill one of them to get through, and as he’d expected, the mark shied away from bloodshed. The ring closed in ever so slowly, but the mark didn’t seem fazed by their impending attack.

Kellick crossed his index fingers, twinkles of coppery Issi sparking to life around his hand. “He knows they’re too weak to hurt him. You ready to turn it up a notch?”

“Always.”