Wix led Sechen through twisting hallways that barely made any sense, floors that shifted from flat to ninety degree angles with barely any warning, and a bizarre stretch of consecutive rooms that all felt blisteringly hot or unbearably cold, and a few that somehow managed to be freezing hot or scorching cold. Wix’s suit shimmered under the onslaught of crazy Issi, gathering a pair of additional colours that didn’t seem to coincide with either the heat or the cold. By the time he stopped in front of a door with so many keyholes that there was more empty space than wood, his suit was adorned in a scene that reminded Sechen of a riverbed in the middle of a drought.

The electric blue ran through a medley of dark, parched browns, splashes of iridescent colour stitched into the brown and blue like hidden riches. Wix ran his hands over his chest as if he was sweeping away crumbs, and the suit returned to its plain blue adornment. He raised a hand to his mouth and mimed stitching it shut, then gestured at the plain hallway around them as if it were some sort of threat. Sechen shrugged and copied the stitching motion, then felt something settle on her container. A technique from an Issi type she couldn’t identify, sparkling iridescently as it ran through her channels and coated her everything.

“You rat bastard. What in the hells did you just do to me?” She snarled, her Issi latching onto the technique with grasping tendrils. Her light shone through the murk, and the technique withered.

Wix blinked in surprise, then turned to the doorway. “A vow of silence. Though I don’t understand how you managed to scour it from your system. A preemptive measure for what you are about to see.”

“Great way to shatter my trust in you, buddy.” Sechen stepped back, looking around for anything that she could use to fight. She wouldn’t stand a ghost of a chance against Wix, but maybe she could annoy him enough he’d stop bothering.

“Calm yourself. You don’t have any barriers or veils, so there would be nothing to stop an enemy from reaching into your mind and extracting what you are about to see.” Wix sighed, placing his key into a hole without turning it. “If I let you in here, you are either creating a barrier or you are taking a vow of silence. It is your choice.”

Sechen didn’t need a moment to decide, but she took one anyway. She nodded as if she’d made a hard decision, her mouth set in a line as she bit her lower lip. “I’ll make a barrier. Somehow.”

“One hour and fifty minutes to make a barrier. I will not let you miss Paui’s trial, so if you cannot make a barrier in that timeframe you will take a vow of silence.” Wix stared into Sechen’s eyes without any intensity behind them. There was nothing. Nothing at all. “I don’t think you understand what an undertaking it will be. If you are so against taking a vow, I can leave you with Hojo or escort you somewhere else in the manor.”

“Open the door.” Sechen said with more confidence than she felt, but not by much. She’d rebuilt what Prisoner had expected to take months in just a few short weeks, so how hard could making a barrier be?

It took another handful of minutes for Wix to open the many-keyholed door, revealing a solid wall of Issi so concentrated that Sechen didn’t believe her eyes when Wix stepped into it. He turned around, blurry and malformed through the veil of Issi, gesturing for her to follow him. She held her breath and pushed forward, reflexively closing her eyes as the Issi pressed and parted harmlessly against her forehead.

“It won’t hurt you.” Wix insisted, tapping Sechen on the shoulder. “It’s fine to open your eyes. There is a chance it could help your own Issi, if there is even a tangential similarity between your own and Runfree’s.”

“I don’t think there is, but who knows?” Sechen forced a laugh, her eyes rapidly opening and closing as Runfree’s Issi pressed against her. It didn’t hurt, it wasn’t even uncomfortable, but there was something about it that made her feel as if her eyes needed to stay closed. Like she would see something she was never supposed to if she kept them open. With a conscious effort she opened her eyes and kept them open, knowing that the second she blinked she’d have to go through all that again. “What in the hells is this place?”

The room had, like most others in this place, grown to sizes that could not fit inside the cabin. A field of knee-high silver grass stood perfectly straight, glinting with green whenever the light hit them just right, stretching on into the distance until it was cut off by an etched wall of whitestone on all sides. The Issi in the air shimmered and buzzed like an invisible swarm of gnats, a sort of hyperactive energy hiding behind a veil of irritation, whirls of yellow, blue, and green coloured particles lazily drifting through the air like swipes of a paintbrush on reality. In this field, there were three carved monoliths that whispered power like the first rumblings of an earthquake. Sechen could only make out the main carving on one of them, whose marking pulsed and breathed with pale yellow Issi.

The first had jagged, angular lines making up all of its markings, as if a savage Issi beast had taken the stone as a scratching post. Some created triangles, a scant few squares, with most creating jagged letters or tally marks of no more than five. M, V, and W were the most common, with a couple L, X, and Ts thrown in further from the main carving, as if they were less important than the other letters. The centerpiece of this monolith was a crude carving of a deer-like Issi beast, standing on spindly hind legs and roaring from a mouth with jagged teeth sticking straight out of its maw like thorns and horns that bent down and circled the creature’s neck like a collar.

“Is that the beast Runfree manifested from?” Sechen asked, drawn towards the centerpoint of the three monoliths as if in a trance. Wix stepped quickly to match her pace, then shook his head.

“Runfree has never elaborated what any of the three carvings actually mean, but no, it is not of the beast Runfree manifested from. They didn’t manifest from a beast at all, as a matter of fact.” Wix gestured grandiosely at the field around them, spinning with his arms out like a child in their first snow. “This is the Runfree prairie, a stretch of land that used to reside south of Resthollow in the warmest non-Pyreheld part of the world piece.”

Sechen froze immediately, her eyes growing wide as she struggled not to put her foot down. “This is Runfree? This entire place? Isn’t it really dangerous for me to be here right now?”

“Oh, beyond dangerous. You could cause serious damage to Runfree’s unmanifested form, or they could return here in an instant and end the both of us.” Wix bent down and tapped Sechen’s knee, her foot slamming down to the ground with a puff of silvery green Issi. “If I hadn’t used my key to bring us in, that is.” He flourished his hand, his key spinning around his index finger for two rotations before he grasped it in his palm. “Each practitioner is given a key to this place once they’ve proven they’ll make a worthwhile investment, and another keyhole is added to the door for their key specifically. The amount of barriers coating this place corresponds to how much Runfree trusts us, and I am one of the few people who have access to a barrier-free version of the Runfree plains.”

“Even after the whole Paui thing?” Sechen asked.

“We’ll see what happens once Runfree returns, but they have not revoked nor limited my access as of yet.” Wix said, gently ushering Sechen to keep moving. “I know you probably feel you don’t deserve to be here, as do most of us the first time we’re brought here, but I felt I had to show you this. If you’re going to be travelling with Paui, then you’ll have to know how to help grow Runfree’s Issi.”

“Couldn’t you bring Paui in here?” Sechen looked down at her feet, making sure she didn’t step on anything important. Not that there was anything but grass in this place, but it’s the thought that counts. “Why in the hells did you bring me in here?”

“Because Runfree’s Issi has a secret. As do most manifestations, if you care to look, but right now we’re dealing with this particular one.” Wix said ominously, stepping up to the back of the monolith that glowed with Issi the same colour as his hair and putting a tender hand on it. “Runfree’s Issi can only grow so much before it stops. And before you say that’s true of all Issi, Runfree’s stops growing within years. Not decades, or centuries, but years. Afterwards, it requires external stimuli to begin moving once more. Stimuli that will alter the Issi as if the practitioner had obtained another bond of their own.”

Wix slowly turned to Sechen, his suit now adorned with the same pattern it had held when he tried to put her under the vow of silence. “I have altered my own Issi twice now, and that is the safe limit for practitioners. You’ll have to forgive me for not removing the veils that alter my appearance, as they are time consuming and fairly finicky to remake.”

Stepping up next to Wix and the monument, Sechen found her focus torn between the three titanic whitestone slabs and the mysterious colour changing suit right next to her. Wix held the answers to everything, so she decided to ask about him first. “What made your suit change colours?”