“The iridescence came from when I married my wife. I’ll spare you the details of our honeymoon, but when we returned to the Gilded Night and I donned my uniform I found that these bursts of colour that I’d caught out of the corner of my eye now and again had cemented themselves permanently on my attire. I pushed through a barrier I thought I never would that night, and my Issi was permanently changed.” Wix explained, though it didn’t bring many solid answers.

“So what do the brown and sparkles do to your Issi?” Sechen coaxed.

“They are a divergent evolution of the fluidity Issi Runfree’s bond granted me. The iridescence affords me the ability to push my fluidity outwards, altering the properties of almost any other object that directly touches me.” Wix reached down and plucked a blade of grass, standing tall and rigid, and with a burst of iridescent Issi it drooped down through his fingers as if it was melting. “For an Issi type that is normally only internal, this ability is utterly warping. As far as I am aware, a scant few of Runfree’s practitioners gain access to it, and even fewer of them master it as I have. That is what an iridescence on our uniform signifies; an expelling of Issi that was previously internal, or an internalizing of Issi that was previously external.”

“They’re a powerup?” Sechen ran her fingers over the blade of grass, feeling it distort and wobble under barely any pressure. “Why do you need to keep that secret?”

“Because they take the place in our containers where other bonds would reside.” Wix said gravely. “You are aware of the threefold limit practitioners are under?”

Sechen shook her head. “Nope, sorry. My master wasn’t the most… knowledgeable on stuff outside her own Issi. And the more I think of it, she probably wasn’t knowledgeable on that either.”

“Well, the threefold limit is the name given to the breaking point where a practitioner’s body breaks down from a critical mass of Issi in their container. For unknown reasons a practitioner can only have three bonds, regardless of power, size, or who they have bonded to. If they attempt to take in a fourth it will either fail or begin degrading their body until they are far weaker than they had been with three.” Wix explained. “Which means a Runfree practitioner cannot bond with anyone else, as our modifications will come through even if we are in danger of the threefold limit.”

Shaking her head, Sechen recalled that Paui had been sent back here to try and gain another bond. “Did Runfree ever tell Hoalt about the weirdness of their Issi?”

“I do not know. I would hope so, but Runfree has their own peculiarities that could have gotten in the way.” Wix sighed. “As far back as I can remember, Runfree hasn’t overseen their own trials. Every once and a while they will feel the need to return to overseeing them, as they did with Thana and my trial, but it is a fleeting desire that leads to abandonment for sometimes decades at a time. As such, we have taken it into our own hands to teach new apprentices how to handle their Issi in Runfree’s stead.”

“You know, that makes a whole lot of sense, actually.” Sechen said slowly. “Ten practitioners a year, times however many years they stay here, and there’s no way Runfree could teach them all. Is that why you get so many people coming here in the first place? Because Runfree accepts so many apprentices?”

Wix nodded. “Exactly. We also have a reputation for being some of the more powerful practitioners in the Gilded Night, and that’s thanks to our peculiar circumstances. Most manifestations don’t fully understand how to teach people like us, who don't have full control of our Issi from the moment we’re born, so having people like myself, Thana, and Marcello tends to help more than it harms our apprentices.”

“Marcello? That grumpy old guy?” Sechen asked in disbelief. “You just told me he doesn’t like anyone that hasn’t been bonded to Runfree for decades. He’s in charge of teaching teenagers?”

“I can see how that would paint a negative mental image.” Wix chuckled. “Marcello is a very different person to our apprentices, no matter how he feels about them. He sees you as a potential distraction for Paui, and treats you as such. You don’t have to like it, but know that he takes great care of all our apprentices, Paui and myself included.”

“I’ll be damned.” Sechen crossed her arms and sighed, leaning up against the monolith. “Puts another layer of understanding on why Revel couldn’t teach me much of anything.”

Wix stared at Sechen for a moment then slowly nodded in understanding. “They were a fresh manifestation, I’m assuming? Or they’d never taken an apprentice before?”

“Both.” Sechen replied curtly. “And she was a little closed-minded with my struggles.”

“If you can get Marcello to listen, you should go talk to him. He struggled with the exact same thing as you, although that was so long ago he might have forgotten.” Wix stepped forward and shook his arms out, as if getting ready for a fight. “But I’m taking up too much precious time. I did bring you here for a reason, and you need to take in the other two monoliths before we can get to that. So… do that, please.”

Following in Wix’s wake, Sechen stepped into the center of the three monoliths and turned to focus on the one she’d just been standing beside. The lines of this carving were curved and graceful, a painstaking work of art that felt like it was moving before Sechen’s eyes. The breathing blue Issi certainly added to the illusion, the intricate scene playing out with a sort of realism that the jagged, almost primal carving didn’t have in the slightest. Among the waves and gales of the carving danced an ethereal being, a collection of spirals and flourishes that somehow gave a perfectly clear image of a lithe figure. To Sechen it looked like a young woman spinning in a long, billowy dress; arms splayed out to the side with hands that ended in too many fingers and a gust of wind instead of feet or legs. The face was an unreadable mess of squiggles and filigree, but Sechen could swear there was a childlike joy under the carving’s flowing locks that mingled and got lost in the breezy surroundings.

“Well that isn’t Runfree.” Sechen said with a snort, but her words didn’t carry the sarcastic weight she meant them to. “Unless they put on a lot of muscle and grew legs since this was made.”

“Again, we do not know what the carvings are meant to depict, just that they do not depict Runfree.” Wix said plainly, gazing at the carving with a sort of sour expression. “I feel such a connection to this piece, thanks to my bond with Runfree, and yet I will never know what it depicts. It’s an itching in my mind that I simply cannot scratch.”

Wix stepped towards Sechen and gently grabbed her by the shoulders, spinning her around and pointing her towards the last carving. “I know this one is entrancing, but you have one final monolith to observe. Something will happen after you fully take it in, so be ready for a sudden change.”

“Not going to tell me what it is?” Sechen asked, and she vaguely heard Wix give a negative, but her mind was quickly invaded by the last carving. Where the first felt primal and angry, and the second felt whimsical and free, this final one was a visage of absolute calm and serenity. Which made little sense, as if each of these pertained to one of Runfree’s Issi types, this third monolith would have represented force Issi.

Each marking was minuscule and precise; a small, thin line that just barely didn’t connect to its immediate neighbor. They formed a sort of corona around the main subject, slowly flowing from green to silver like the shimmering waters of a verdant forest stream. Inside of the corona sat something with insectoid limbs and a flat diamond-shaped head, twin slits imitating closed eyes the lone detail on the creature’s face. It didn’t sit so much as crumple to the ground, as if a living creature had come up to rest on this monolith and was devoured by the stone, limbs splayed out at its sides and over its lap, four insectile legs evenly spread among crossed and splayed out in front of the creature. Sechen reevaluated her initial thoughts on the carving; this wasn’t calm. It was exhaustion and the serenity of finding somewhere to rest.

The smell of fresh air snuck its way into Sechen’s thoughts before she registered what was happening, the monolith flickering and sputtering Issi for a handful of moments before the whitestone disappeared completely. The Issi markings stayed hovering in the air, as if the stone had become invisible, and revealed a seemingly endless expanse of silver-green grass. Low hills rose and fell on the edge of her vision as she spun around, a surge of Issi she’d somehow missed fading into nothing.

“Where… are we still in the room?” Sechen asked with trepidation. She couldn’t afford anything bizarre happening if she was going to meet Paui for her trials. “It feels so different out here. Almost like we’re actually outside.”

Wix smiled wide, taking a satisfying breath that stretched his chest, letting it out in a content sigh. “The Runfree prairie, a stretch of land that resides to the south of Resthollow in the warmest non-Pyreheld section of the world piece. The room has a spatial overlay where we can be temporarily both inside of the manor and outside on the prairie at the same moment; it isn’t teleportation, as you know the downsides and impossibilities that come with that, but it is an ingenious little workaround that Marcello and the other first-bonds put together so Runfree felt comfortable leaving his manifested grounds.”

Sechen bent down and scraped at the dirt beneath the grass, raising her dirt-stained fingertips to her face with fascination. “Any idea how this works?”

Wix sighed longingly. “Marcello can’t say. Runfree has made the first-bonds swear a vow of silence regarding the construction and workings of the room we’re in and not in right now, and even if it wasn’t as all encompassing as it was, Marcello wouldn’t do anything to betray Runfree’s trust.”

The wind picked up slightly, carrying the scent of smoke from some far-off fire. Sechen swiveled to try and catch sight of a rising plume, but found nothing. “I get that this is cool and all, but why did you bring me here? If all you wanted was to tell me about Runfree’s Issi thing, we could have gone anywhere else. Maybe somewhere that didn’t risk either of us getting killed or hurting the manifestation you’re bonded to?”

“Paui confided in me that you were having troubles with your manifestation. And from your lack of a veil, I could easily tell that your Issi was something of a troublemaker as well.” Wix gingerly worked a patch of grass until it was flat, then kneeled down on it with care. “Take a seat and I’ll tell you what required us to come out here.”

“Damned metal grass.” Sechen grumbled as she tried to imitate what Wix had just done to a moderate success, except she sat cross-legged and had to push away a few more blades of grass. “Alright. What’s so important you had to say it here, which is still in that room in the cabin, so technically we didn’t actually go anywhere for this?”