“Sorry. Sorry. I’m alright now.” Sechen said, wiping away her tears with the back of her hand.

“You don’t gotta be alright.” Prisoner said quietly. “It’s fine to be broken. Just means we’ve gotta work to gettin’ you better again.”

“We’ll see if you still say that when I’m done.” Sechen forced a laugh, peeling away Prisoner’s fingers. “I’m going to skip the rest of that part for my own sanity. Once they’d finished with their tests, they pulled the needle out of my arm and dragged me back to my room. They tenderly placed me on the bed and tucked me in as if they hadn’t just tortured me for who knows how long, whispering encouraging words into my ears as they stroked my hair that went down almost to my knees, telling me how I was doing so well and that I would be the next evolution in practitioners. How I would give ‘us’ a chance against the tyrants and living cities. I never found out who this ‘us’ was, and I’ve been too scared to look into it.”

“The tests continued every five Issi cycles after that. ‘Progress reports’, they called them. What I now know are my pathways burned from overuse of an Issi that I wasn’t attuned to, and they attached something to my upper arm that dispensed an icy blue liquid into me that made my pathways hurt less. Made the Issi flow easier, and my thoughts come slower. They poked around all of me, seeing what the oily Issi had done to my body, until they were apparently satisfied with what they’d found. They left me alone for forty three Issi cycles.”

Sechen leaned back against Prisoner’s arm, his almost fatherly presence strangely calming. “At that point, my pathways were pretty chewed up. They barely pushed Issi around, and I could just barely eke out enough to keep myself alive. I started getting hungry and thirsty, and everything started to hurt again. It slowly came to a point that I thought I was going to die of starvation, then I was damn sure I was going to die. But I really didn’t want to, for some reason. I felt like I was remembering things from before I could actually remember things, and that was the first hint that something was wrong with me. That I wasn’t who I thought I was.”

Her words caught in her chest, knowing that she was getting close to the point of no return. After this, her secret would be out in the open, and she’d have to do something about it. That scared the hells out of her.

“I remember smiling, but I didn’t understand why I was smiling. I lifted my arms out from under the blanket without thinking I was doing that, and laced my fingers together, placing them under my head. I couldn’t control my body. It was terrifying. I took in the Issi that came into my room, and it barely moved through me. I knew I was going to die. That my time was up. Then my door opened. The people in white came in with wide smiles, congratulating me on making it to the end of the program, and that they only had one step left before I could begin my training. I wanted to back away, to scream and run, but instead, I spoke.”

Those words were burned into Sechen’s memory, and would never leave as long as she lived. “I said; “It was worth sleeping away a year of my life for the cause.” I felt my heart drop, like I’d been living a torturous lie for so long. I said it with cheeriness and excitement. Like I’d volunteered for all that pain and suffering. I tried to break through whatever had just been put in place, but it wouldn’t budge. I was trapped in my own body. I couldn’t control anything any more. They helped me up from the bed, their hands warm as they pressed against my skin, and they led me through dark, sterile hallways into a room I’d never seen before. There was a tree with crescent shaped orange leaves fluttering to the ground, the air around me crisp and cold with a breeze that tore through my thin skin and sent a shiver through my spine. The blue manifestation was sitting on a log next to the huge tree, giving me something to compare its size to. It had to be at least fifty feet tall, its leaves the size of my torso. The blue manifestation smiled at me as the people in white brought me to them, and I wanted to scream. Instead, I smiled.”

“Welcome, Ensche. Thank you for your sacrifice in the name of furthering our cause. They said, putting a wet hand on my shoulder as a technique raced through my body, giving me enough strength to sit on my own. They smiled with a touch of concern on their face, then said: Have you had any adverse reactions since waking up? Your subconscious had quite a difficult time with all of the procedures. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Was I just this Ensche person’s subconscious? I realized that was the first time I’d ever heard my name.”

She shifted in her seat, looking at the arrangement of tiny statues on the table. “I talked with the blue manifestation for a long time. About my life before I remembered anything, the cause I was apparently a part of, and all the things that had been done to my body in the name of that cause. They never explained why they’d done what they’d done, just that they thought it would make a practitioner powerful enough to eventually fight a tyrant or a living city. Some good that did them.” Sechen snorted, gesturing at herself. “After a while, the manifestation said it was time to move on to the final step of preparation. That after this, I’d get my first Issi seed and we’d start my training as a practitioner. All I needed to do was consume my wisp.”

“Hells.” Prisoner muttered. “I didn’t think that…”

“Quiet down and let me finish.” Sechen said without any venom in her words. “The manifestation walked me through the process once before telling me to try it myself. I didn’t know what consuming my wisp meant back then, but I was so ecstatic that I was finally going to be able to help these people. I closed my eyes and looked into my container, and I saw me staring down at myself. And then I realized what was happening. Ensche had been put to sleep while all of this happened. And the only other thing in her body that was alive had taken over. Something that didn’t have enough of a mind of its own to form memories before that. Something that was way too young in its own species to even start creating anything like a personality. So when it took over a sedated girl’s mind, it thought that it was her. Because it didn’t have anything else. Because I didn’t have anything else. And now?”

Sechen put a hand over her heart, the memories starting to burn. “I was going to be consumed.”

“Okay there, I gotta stop you now. Are you implyin’ that you’re that girl’s wisp?” Prisoner asked, but his tone wasn’t questioning. He already knew.

“Shut up and let me talk.” Sechen said, worried that if she stopped for too long she wouldn’t be able to start up again. “Ensche tried to consume me. She put all of the Issi she borrowed from the blue manifestation and circled me with it, looking down at me with hungry eyes and devouring intent. But there was one problem; she hadn’t gone through anything that I had. She didn’t know this new, weak body of hers. She didn’t know how much I’d suffered in her stead for whatever power she was going to gain. And I… I… I fucking hated her. She was so insufferably smug. I wanted to reach out and tear out my… her.. our eyes with my trembling fingers. Gouge into the thin skin that stuck to our ribs with our ragged fingernails and make us bleed. Make her feel any of the pain she put me through for her own power.”

“She died so easily. Her will crumbled against mine, a single moment of surprise as I used exactly what the blue manifestation had told her to devour her. I didn’t think it would work. It shouldn’t have worked. But it died. She died. And I lived.” Sechen reached out a hand, dark tendrils coming off her fingers that light slowly mixed through. Like light filtering through murky waters. “Ensche died so Sechen could live. And it was anything but willingly. I remember her screams, her pleading, but it was too late. She didn’t want a partnership. She wanted me dead.”

Sechen tried to hide the smile that always came out when she remembered this part. It made her look like a monster. “I ate away at the parts of her brain that made her her, and filled them with what made me me. It wasn’t a long fight. She screamed once, but it was cut so short it sounded like a gasp. Then I opened my eyes, my own eyes, and stared into the eyes of the monster that had tortured me for the dead girl’s sake. They must have seen something in my eyes, because they recoiled in fear and disgust while screaming something about how I killed Ensche. I felt the dregs of that oily Issi in my pathways, and I used it to run. A screen of darkness and a lot of painful running later, I made it out into an autumn night.”

Sechen breathed deeply, remembering the first taste of crisp air that slid over her tongue. “For some reason, nobody came after me. I walked until sunrise, but that was all my body could take. I collapsed into a pile of leaves, taking in whatever Issi I could find, and waited for the savior I didn’t know would be coming. But she did. After the first snow of the year fell and almost froze me to death. That’s where Revel came in, she gave me a bond, and failed in teaching me anything about my Issi. I was happy just being alive and not in pain. And that’s about it.” Sechen let out a long sigh, looking over at Prisoner for his reaction. “That’s how I became what I am, why I can’t compress my container, and why I didn’t want to tell anyone any of this.”

“Sweet mercy, Sechen, I didn’t even know that was possible.” Prisoner said almost instantly. “You know this screws up most everythin’ we know about wisps and practitioners, right? Practitioners always held all the cards, but you somehow came away with the better hand. You think it’s because they lobotomized Ensche and your… er, the wisp that you were’s Issi filled in the gaps?”

“That would explain a lot, but I honestly have no clue.” Sechen said with a shrug. “All I know is that I’m haunted by myself in my headspace, and I always turn back into that scared girl inhabiting someone else’s body when I go in there. Even with all the confidence I’ve gotten from your training, I just can’t bring it through to there.”