The first lance slammed down from above, sinking into her Issi like a stone in soft mud. Countless impacts sounded in quick succession, riddling her Issi with enough needles that she felt like she was standing inside an oversized pincushion. Sechen yelped as a lance tore through her Issi and missed her by a hair, a full dome of murky light blocking out anything from outside. She felt it stretching thin and poured more Issi into it, her container growing noticeably emptier as the shell grew thicker and thicker. Eventually the glass lances were consumed by her Issi, no longer poking through whatsoever, and Sechen was left standing there alone.

Her breath came in short bursts, paranoia setting in as the time between attacks stretched on. Brynn could easily overpower her shell, and Hugil could cut through it like butter. So why weren’t they? Sechen didn’t remember Brynn being too cautious, but her newfound Issi could be spooking them. It did stop the glass colossus’ fist, and the knight’s lances, so they might be worried it could stop Hugil’s Issi as well. Well, Sechen was damn sure it wouldn’t. And waiting here would just let them find out what she already knew.

One look at her dome and Sechen knew she’d have to find a way to see through her Issi. Hiding from her enemies was fine and dandy, but she was a sitting duck if the hiding went both ways. She pushed her left thumb against her palm and shoved her arm forward, propelling her Issi away from her as she revealed herself.

“Yipe!” Hugil cried out in surprise as he was battered by the wave of Issi, slamming him into the tree behind him with enough force to splinter the trunk. It barely inconvenienced him, as he slashed at the ground and disappeared through it.

A knee crashed into the back of Sechen’s head along with a biting cold, sending her crashing down to the ground as a freezing wind bit at her exposed arms. Hugil reappeared as her head cracked against stone, slashing at her manifested arm with enough Issi to damage someone ten times as powerful as she was. The Issi on her upper arm slithered towards her bicep to intercept Hugil’s strike, lashing out and barely diverting it in time. Just enough so that her arm was sliced down to the bone, not severed completely.

“Fuck!” Sechen ground through gritted teeth, slamming her forearm into the ground in an eruption of light. Hugil disappeared into a slash as Arvay shot upwards, hovering on a whirl of freezing wind, her body encased in an icy armor that looked like it’d been caught in a leftwards windstorm as it cooled. “Bastards!”

Her Issi sloshed around her in a luminescent puddle, thick like pudding and stained with murky darkness, and utterly useless against three people more powerful than she was. Any one of them could have easily beat her, but as she stared up at Arvay, she saw caution in her mannerisms. She was right; they didn’t want to overreach into the unknown. And as Arvay flinched away from something, Sechen knew that sentiment wasn’t shared among her three attackers.

Before Arvay could react, Sechen raised her arm to the sky and begged her Issi to follow. A spiraling pillar of murky Issi thundered upwards, spraying thick luminescent Issi as it surged towards Arvay at a terrifying pace. Arvay ducked under the intertwined tendrils by letting her storm wane, and Sechen clasped her right hand.

The scars of light Issi shone with power for a split second, hardening the darkness that cradled it into a dull claw of hollow Issi. Arvay paused and looked at the claw with what Sechen hoped was curiosity or apprehension, and that was when the light burst out. A river of thick luminescent Issi poured from a myriad of cracks on the underside of the claw, a spine of light illuminating the top up to the sharpest point. One single drip touched the ground before any other managed to sneak out, and Sechen gasped as her container strained under the weight of whatever she’d done.

The stone pathway didn’t so much as fizzle as her Issi ate through it, burning away everything inside of it that she couldn’t use until it was a much smaller puddle of luminescent Issi. She felt it trying to eat away at the ground under what was formerly a section of path, and gave it a mental command to stop. Her Issi seemed to fight her for the briefest of moments, like a dog insistently pulling on its restraints when it saw a squirrel, and she pulled back. This was her Issi, not some untrained mutt.

The light stopped trying to eat through the stone just as the second drop splattered to the ground, followed immediately by a third, a fourth, and a constant stream that flooded the ground with her Issi. It was like a concentrated waterfall, the Issi pooling under it in a reservoir of power that called to Sechen like a blazing beacon. And as quickly as it began, the claw crumbled into nothing as the flow burned out. Sechen felt a yawning emptiness in her container, all that remained of her Issi packed away into the three rings that surrounded it. She’d just wasted everything on that attack, and it did next to nothing.

Tendrils reached out to the other two rings, one popping into existence around Sechen’s elbow and the other around her armpit and shoulder. The Issi-infused parts of her body sang with the influx of power, but there would be no more techniques. Hand-to-hand was all she had left, since she’d refused Prisoner’s offers to get her a weapon. Stupid. That had been stupid.

Hugil appeared in a slash of Issi, his clawed hands grasping for her neck. She grabbed his wrist and pushed down, her rings flaring with light as they empowered her for all they were worth. His bones shattered under her fingers, his eyes widening in surprise as a knee went straight for his unmentionables. That feeling of squishing was extremely unpleasant for Sechen, and Hugil went down without a sound. She winced in sympathy, but couldn’t spare more than a fleeting thought for his safety. If he’d sided with Glasrime on this, he was the enemy. Plain and simple.

“Is that actually you, Sechen?” Arvay asked, uncertainty plain in her voice as she hovered on the edge of what she assumed was Sechen’s range.

“Unfortunately.” Sechen said with a curt nod. “That change your mind?”

Arvay shook her head, and her storm shifted. “No.”

“Worth a try.” Sechen muttered as cold washed over her, winds biting at her skin as Arvay spun a lance out of the storm, a thin shell of ice with winds raging inside of it. She threw it with the wind behind her, and Sechen barely had enough time to dive out of the way from the shattering impact. Compared to Brynn’s glass lances, Arvay’s weren’t anywhere near as dangerous.

Sechen stepped forward into the wind, feeling it rage against her yet not slowing her in the slightest. Her Issi wicked away any rime that tried to form, but did nothing for the cold that was seeping into her bones. It was like standing in the middle of a winter storm, except the snowflakes were sharp as knives and the cold was specifically trying to whittle her down until it could end her. Arvay instinctively stepped back as Sechen didn’t relent, flexing the fingers on her right arm, the only part of her body that wasn’t wracked with shivers and numbness. Backed away from the pool of Issi that now lay closer to Sechen than Arvay.

Brynn’s voice cut through the howling winds like the fatal knife it was, a hint of worry showing through her words. “Don’t let her get to the Issi!”

Her legs carried her forward as a curse escaped her numb lips, and Sechen watched as recognition dawned on Arvay. She was still closer to her Issi than the icy practitioner, but those winds of Arvay’s could easily carry her to the Issi long before Sechen could break through. Especially as the cold sapped her dexterity. But Arvay paused. After she acknowledged Brynn’s command. Maybe the bond between the three of them was as strained as Metea/Irric had said.

The puddle of Issi didn’t splash under Sechen’s foot like she’d expected; in fact, it didn’t move whatsoever. Her foot planted on it as if it were a solid mass, ripples spreading away on the surface through her Issi. Instantly she knew something was wrong. Her light wasn’t supposed to be like this. She’d made a huge mistake with whatever she’d done with the claw, and now her Issi was puddled uselessly underfoot. She tried to pull it back into herself, and somewhat succeeded, but the discomfort that came along with it was a reminder that her luminescent Issi wasn’t complete without the murk.

“Damn it all.” Sechen lamented as Arvay formed another lance, Brynn screaming incoherently at her for disobeying orders. She couldn’t see through Arvay’s blown-ice armor, but she imagined that Arvay didn’t want to throw that lance. That she didn’t want to kill someone she might have thought of as a friend. The point digging into Sechen’s chest reminded her that it was just her imagination, the explosion of biting ice that followed a period where she’d hoped for a question mark.

Brynn breathed a sigh of relief as a blossom of frozen blood sprouted from Sechen’s chest where Arvay’s javelin tore into her. She’d been seconds from being detected by all the wards and sensors on this property, since her two supposed ‘equals’ couldn’t seem to do anything right. Though she had explicitly told them not to go all out, at risk of tripping any of the sensors, so she wouldn’t go too hard on them when they came together for a debrief later tonight.

“She isn’t dead, right? I explicitly told you to incapacitate, and not execute, her.” Brynn snapped. “Don’t tell me you two are so incompetent that you killed her before we could get any information out of her.”

Arvay stepped up to Sechen as her storm subsided, the flower of frozen blood the only part of Arvay’s Issi that remained. She put a hand on Sechen’s neck, waited a moment, then shook her head. “She isn’t dead, but I hit a lung. We’ll need to get her to a healer before long if we don’t want her dying on us.”

“Hit a lung. Of course you did.” Brynn muttered. “Have Hugil help you carry her out with you. We still have a deadline, in case you’ve forgotten.”

She turned away without waiting for Arvay to respond, glaring down the street to make sure nobody had seen them. It was beyond unlikely that this had gone unnoticed, but manifestation districts like this were always rowdy and explosive. The other residents would chalk it up to a training exercise, a new bonding, or someone expanding their container. As if to prove her point, an explosion from a property down the street kicked up a massive plume of dirt and stone, a barrier flashing bright pink whenever debris would have left the property limits.

Brynn shivered as Arvay’s words came on a freezing breeze. “I don’t think Hugil’s going to be moving any time soon. Sechen went right for his… soft spot, and he’s out like a light.”

“Drag them down and I’ll carry them myself.” Brynn snapped. “Eternals, you’re both useless.”

Brynn turned lazily with an exasperated sigh, noticing too late that someone had appeared behind Arvay. She began to speak, but then there was suddenly someone in front of her as well. A woman in a bright white suit with a dull yellow pattern stitched onto it, her hair the same colour as the pattern and her eyes appraising Brynn with a cold efficiency.

“I would recommend you take this opportunity to leave, miss, less this devolve into something unpleasant.” She said without a shift in tone, yet the threat was beyond present. “Take your underlings and leave, and we will not follow. Am I understood?”

This was not according to plan. Brynn chewed the inside of her cheek as she considered her options, neither of which sat well with her. Fighting would inevitably bring out Runfree, someone she wasn’t confident in her chances against, and running away would bruise her pride. A more selfless woman would have spoken outright, but Brynn took almost an entire minute to deliberate.

“Send them down.” Brynn ordered, unwilling to give up control to this mystery woman.

“As you wish.” The woman gave a shallow bow, and suddenly Arvay and Hugil tumbled down beside her. “I wish you the worst, scion of Glasrime.”

Brynn’s blood ran colder than usual. They knew, so Hoalt either already knew or would within minutes. Which meant the plans had to be pushed up, and extreme measures needed to be put in place to ensure their success.

“What just happened?” Arvay asked, looking around as if she hadn’t seen anything that just happened. Which she probably hadn’t, with her Issi as underdeveloped as it was. “Was someone just here?”

“We’re leaving.” Brynn said curtly. “Contact the wolf when we return. Their aid is needed far sooner than I’d expected.”