Paui danced among ethereal attacks as if it were completely natural, bending in ways that made Sechen wince in sympathy for her joints. A haze of light blue Issi hung in the wake of Paui’s movements, but there was a little bit of the dull straw-yellow that Thana had mixed in there.

“Is that what her Issi’s supposed to look like?” Sechen asked.

“Not at all, no.” Runfree said, appearing next to Sechen with an echoing boom. “I’ve got three separate Issi types, and Paui’s somehow mixing two of them together to make a distinctly new type. Whatever happens here, I’m sure it will be interesting!”

Sechen raised an eyebrow at Runfree. “I thought you’d be more pissed with her.”

“Because of something her parents forced on her, and that has eaten away at her for years?” Runfree shook their head sadly. “No. She has punished herself far more than I would have if I placed all the blame solely on her. Wix, though, has broken my trust. He’ll be going long months without tea and dessert privileges, and I will be overseeing all of my own trials from now on. Paui might be the first I know of who bought their way into a bond, but was she the first? And was she the last? Some feel pride where she feels guilt, so I fear I’ll never know.”

“Couldn’t you have avoided all of this if you oversaw your own damn trials? They’re people here for a lifelong bond to you, not some kind of loan.” Sechen said with a little more venom than she’d meant to get through. “Shouldn’t you care a little more about who bonds with you?”

“I second that thought.” Thana agreed. “You oversaw Wix and my trials personally, yet you gradually let others take over for you. What brought on that change?”

Runfree shrugged sheepishly. “Truly nothing remarkable; I got tired of watching the same thing over and over again. That’s all.”

“You got bored? With people coming for your Issi?” Sechen glared at Runfree with obvious disdain. “Revel couldn’t get one damn person, and you’re here bored out of your mind because you’ve got too many kids fighting over, what, ten bonds a year? Fuck you, buddy.”

“Five bonds per half year, so you’re technically correct. And I’m more than aware of the privileged position I’m in thanks to my power and the safety of the Gilded Night, but now that I’m watching Paui, I feel like I might’ve missed out on far more than I knew.” Runfree put a hand on Sechen and Thana’s shoulders, and Sechen felt the ground slide out from under her feet for a split second, then she was suddenly right next to the white stone barrier of the clearing.

“By all means, Paui is scoring quite well on this portion of the exam. But from watching her, I can see exactly where she is lacking and if those parts are fixable with a handful of months of work, or if they’re something she’ll struggle with for the rest of her days. That makes me think of my other apprentices, and if I could have seen their struggles firsthand if I was here at the beginning. I don’t mean to be harsh, but some of them should never have made it into my family. They may have power, or skill, but they do not wish to learn beyond that. Something I would have caught if I was here in person, instead of allowing them to be evaluated by skill and potential alone.”

“Right. Tell that to the next batch of kids you bring through, not me.” Sechen said, turning her attention to Paui. “So what’d you do to her? There’s no way she’s that coordinated.”

“It’s a marvel of Issi…” Runfree began to speak, but Thana cut them off.

“A marvel of Issi that Wix, Jovie, and I designed.” She said without a change in tone. Runfree harrumphed and muttered under his breath for a moment before gesturing at her to go ahead. “The runes carved into whitestone allow us to project Runfree’s Issi into the clearing. With that Issi we can simulate what it would be like for an apprentice to have a bond with Runfree, and how they would react to all sorts of stimulus while under its effects. Combat such as you are seeing now is the first step of the process, as fluidity and speed Issi are mainly used to weave through danger.”

“Fast Issi.” Runfree corrected.

Thana shot Runfree a blank stare. “As I was saying, speed and fluidity Issi take unique tolls on a practitioner’s body. The point of this exercise isn’t whether the practitioners can avoid the attacks, but that they understand what their newfound Issi is doing to their body and work around it.”

“What kind of ‘unique tolls’ do you mean?”

Runfree looked over at Thana expectantly, and cleared their throat when it became obvious she was waiting for them to explain. “Fluidity Issi can do serious damage to a person’s joints and muscles if they overuse it and suddenly find themselves with an empty container.”

“In this case, we wait until the Issi field has been deactivated and give the hopefuls a five minute reprieve. We then see who of the group can walk themselves out, who need help to walk out, and who have injured themselves so that they cannot walk. Those of the first two groups are graded and move on to the next section of the trial, and those in the third group are eliminated.” Thana cut in.

“Yes, exactly that.” Runfree grudgingly said, a look of childlike disappointment on their face. “Fast Issi carries its own risks; a practitioner’s mind might not be able to keep up with their body, their body might not keep up with their mind, or they risk speeding up sections of their body that can cause them irreparable harm if used repeatedly. These are things that can be learned, however, so none of them are disqualifying if a hopeful shows them in the trial.”

“You will see what he means when Paui undertakes the trial with speed Issi.” Thana said. “Once the barrier is brought down, Paui will have thirty minutes of rest where you can ask her for specifics if you’d like. For now, though, I would recommend you watch.”

“That we can agree on.” Runfree chuckled.

Both of her hosts went silent, and the aura of intensity that surrounded them became almost too much to bear. They were taking this seriously. Far more seriously than Sechen had expected, given Runfree’s seemingly jovial attitude. She focused on Paui and the near constant assault of Issi that was barraging her, all the near misses and the small hits that she took slowly painting a picture that helped Sechen understand her better.

Not once did Paui get hit by anything that would have dealt any serious damage. The worst she suffered were a few bruises and welts from attacks that Sechen could pinpoint she wouldn’t be dodging, while letting some wash over her seemingly harmlessly. The blue Issi trails grew longer and longer as Paui went on, tracing a memorial to her trial along the clearing. It seemed like a horrible waste of Issi to Sechen, but she saved her questions for after the trial was done since neither Thana nor Runfree looked like they would appreciate being brought out of their states of extreme focus.

The intensity ramped up as the Issi carvings glowed brighter, techniques growing faster and more plentiful as they assaulted Paui. Yet she didn’t flinch, adjusting her reactions on the fly to alter the course of the faster-moving techniques and dodging the slower, more readable ones. Sechen couldn’t imagine a group of untrained teenagers finding any success with this part of the trial, especially if there was another unknown evaluation once it was over. But Paui had gone through this once before, so she knew exactly what to look out for. Maybe that's why it seemed so intense; because she would have aced the original trial with her eyes closed.

“She’s making immaculate progress.” Thana said as Paui slid through two blades, batting aside a ball of electricity with an errant swipe of her hand. “I expected her to be far less competent with how you spoke of her, yet she is exceeding what you would ask of any new hopeful.”

“If she was a teenager, I would have accepted her from this performance alone. But she had years of experience with my Issi, so I can’t grade her in the same way.” Runfree said, a hint of longing in their voice. “This is how she would have been if Wix’s intervention hadn’t broken her confidence. And yet she wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t intervened. I won’t let anything like this happen again.”

Paui looked around as the attacks paused, concern creeping onto her face as the lull stretched on. The Issi in the whitestone was growing intenser by the second, yet nothing inside the clearing appeared to match the rising power.

“Is something wrong with the Issi?” Sechen asked in concern.

“A storm is brewing.” Runfree said solemnly. “If Paui can weather it, she’ll have passed this part. Even if she collapses along with the Issi field.”

The visage of a person appearing in the clearing cut off Sechen’s next question. Paui seemed confused at first, dropping her hands to her hips and tilting her head to the side, then quickly backed away with shock as the figure came into focus. Runfree was right in calling this a storm, but that might have been too insignificant. A tornado or blizzard might have been a more apt comparison. How was Paui supposed to best the person whose Issi she was borrowing?