Paui sprung into action with a grimace, sprinting towards a wall and pushing off it in a burst of blue Issi. She switched to speed Issi to make a long jump into a small opening, her trail switching from yellow to blue as she contorted herself to fit through the tight space. She rolled and broke into a sprint the moment she got to her feet, mantling and dodging around translucent obstacles as the clearing squished behind her and elongated in front of her. Some sort of mechanism to increase how large the clearing felt to Paui, Sechen assumed, watching her friend nimbly make her way through the first section of the trial without so much as stumbling.

When Paui hopped into a chute that would take her to the first blue and yellow swirled beacon, the course underwent a major shift. Everything was pushed out to the sides as Paui fell through the same ten feet over and over again, shifting to make room for a forest-like space. The Issi beacon cracked and shivered like a hatching egg, exploding into the form of a lithe cat with markings the shape and colour of bloody scars. It opened a mouth full of jagged teeth and roared as Paui dropped to the forest floor, shooting her a predatory glance before turning around and scampering up the nearest tree without using any claws Sechen could make out.

It didn’t make it to the treetop before Paui shot up next to it, grabbed it by the neck, and flipped off the tree with a yowling predator pawing at her. She rotated in mid-air to position the cat under her shoulder and flared her speed Issi, slamming into the ground with enough force to kick up translucent leaves in a ten foot radius. There wasn’t a trace of the cat when they cleared, just a shining coin of marbled blue and yellow that Paui pocketed as the forest withered away into a small room with two exits.

“One down, two to go.” Paui said to herself as she rolled her shoulder, eyeing both exit doors as if they posed more of a challenge than the cat had.

From where Sechen was sitting, she could see that both exits led to the same place. A massive concentration of Issi that she couldn’t fathom a use for, and that didn’t coincide with any of Runfree’s Issi types. Paui deliberated for a handful of moments, scouting out the room to try and find any hints of the right path, eventually settling on the left door with a shrug and a sigh. The moment her back foot passed through the door’s threshold it snapped shut behind her, trapping Paui in a perfectly dark corridor as something began dripping from the walls.

She muttered a curse under her breath and sprinted forward, but the floor under her moved with her. She didn’t notice any of this, however, and Sechen watched with interest as the squished portions of the obstacle maze reoriented themselves. The renovations subsided just as whatever was in the hallway touched Paui’s shoes, and the hallway split open to a brand new section of the trial.

“I remember this thing!” Paui laughed as she stepped up to a rickety bridge that sat on flat ground. She caressed one of the ropes with fondness, watching as force Issi flared up from between the boards. “Sorry, bridge, but I don’t have half an hour to waste on you this time.”

Paui stepped between the two rails of the bridge, got a good grip on each side’s rope, and took in a deep breath. Yellow Issi rolled around her back, winding itself into tight spirals behind her shoulder blades. Sechen smiled and leaned forward, ready to witness whatever Paui was going to do, but something within the yellow Issi brought her pause. There were small streaks of blue floating through the yellow, fluidity Issi dissolving into speed Issi without mixing to create something new.

Ropes snapped backwards as Paui pulled, the tight spirals unwinding with explosive force, blue and yellow Issi alike aiding in Paui’s lightning-fast pull that utterly decimated the poor bridge. Along with all the Issi constructs in the room. A chain explosion of Issi rang out, starting at the other end of the room and expanding towards Paui, who ran up the nearest wall to avoid the blast. Her feet clicked against stone tile when she fell, the bridge room shuddering and spasming as it rapidly cycled through a myriad of appearances.

At first, it was a massive fountain with a garden surrounding it. Then an autocarriage sped by to Paui’s right as she was deposited in the middle of a roadway the likes Sechen had only seen in Resthollow. Someone poked their head out a window and shook a fist at Paui, then dissolved into Issi as the room shifted once more. A forest, a creek, a lakeside cabin, and three different wintry landscapes in a row flashed by before the trial settled on one location. Sechen bit the inside of her cheek when she recognized where the simulation had settled, keeping herself from calling out in anger at what she saw.

A simple cafe, decorated with hanging plants. Walls of opaque glass. And a stylized sign that read ‘Rainshear Cafe’. How in the hells did Runfree know about Rainshear’s place? The glacier and the Gilded Night weren’t exactly on good terms from what Sechen understood, and a powerful manifestation like Runfree visiting would be seen as an act of war.

Sechen took a deep breath and dug her fingernails into her palms. She had to be overreacting. Or misunderstanding how the simulation worked. Maybe Thana or one of the other apprentices had visited once, and had given their experiences to this program for the final trial. She nodded to herself. That was a perfectly reasonable explanation. Runfree had seemed blindsided by the news that there were Glasrime practitioners in the Gilded Night. She had to be overreacting.

Runfree couldn’t be a traitor.

“What is this place? A restaurant?” Paui wondered aloud, stepping over to one of the tables and running a hand over it. “How is this part of the trial?”

She turned to the door and stepped outside, where the trial was still perfectly functional. A steep cliff rose to the top of the boundary with plenty of branches and rocks for Paui to take hold of, but she wrinkled her nose and went back into Rainshear’s cafe. Sechen couldn’t tell what Paui was fixating on in there, but she knew it would cost her time. Time Paui could easily afford to waste, with her breezing through the first third of this part of the trial, but still.

Paui hopped the counter to the back of Rainshear’s cafe, rummaging around for any kind of clue as to what she needed to do. She carefully set boxes of ingredients on the counter, lined up pots and pans, emptied a safe under the counter, and came up with a confused frown on her face. Eight ripped open boxes later, she found that they’d been correctly labeled. None of the kitchen utensils proved to be weapons in disguise, and all the coins in the safe were the currency Glasrime used exclusively for the glacier. Paui picked up a single coin between her fingers and closely examined it, gears visibly turning in her mind as she came to a conclusion Sechen had a feeling was eerily similar to hers.

“I know you can hear me, Sechen. And you too, Thana.” Paui called, holding the coin out further in front of her face and gesturing to it. “If this place is made out of Runfree’s memories, then why is a restaurant from the glacier here? Wouldn’t that start a war if either emperor Hoalt or Glasrime found out?”

“We will talk about this later.” Thana called through the clearing, Paui perking up at the sound. “But know that I am just as confused as you are.”

“Okay… wait.” Paui stepped forward, her eyes fixated on a point on the ceiling where a small loop of metal hung. “Is this… I’m going to try something. There should only be places Runfree visited in the trial, right? So it should be impossible for me to go upstairs if they never did, right?”

Thana paused, and when she eventually spoke, Sechen could hear uncertainty in her voice. “Correct to both.”

“Alright then.” Paui dusted off her knees and jumped to grab the metal loop with one finger, testing which way it needed to spin before a coil of Issi spun her and the loop until a ladder dropped from above. “This isn’t looking good.” She sighed, staring up into a space that hadn’t manifested yet. “I can feel wards up above, so even if Runfree didn’t have to physically see something to put it in here, they wouldn’t be able to get through those.”

Which meant that if Paui climbed through to a living space, and not a blank space, that they'd have been here before. That they’d have been invited by Rainshear, or maybe Metea/Irric, into their home. Even if they weren’t working with the glacier, they could be working with Rainshear. One was far worse for the Gilded Night, and maybe the world piece, but the other was far worse for Sechen. And for Revel.

Paui pulled herself up the ladder and emerged into Rainshear’s landing. Chairs around a hatch, a kitchen and two bedrooms surrounding it, and another ladder that led up to a loft. Paui’s fists clenched at her sides as she strode through Rainshear’s home, opening every door and rummaging through closets and chests that should have had some sort of locks on them. Yet she never ran into a single hurdle, climbing to the loft area that was slightly messy from the remnants of Metea/Irric’s creations. And off in one corner, sitting comfortably with a book in her hand, was Rainshear.

Sechen bit back a curse, her nails digging into the wood beneath her. She hadn’t expected to utterly despise Rainshear, but seeing the woman again brought a vitriol to the top of her throat that was screaming to be set free. But Rainshear wasn’t really here, as was made obvious by Paui’s attempts to get the manifestation’s attention. Even slapping her across the face didn’t elicit a reaction; Rainshear just licked her thumb and turned the page in her book with a chuckle to herself.

“Runfree knew Rainshear.” Sechen muttered in disbelief.

“Paui, can you find something that would identify on which day Runfree visited Rainshear?” Thana asked. “That could make the difference between old friends reuniting for a visit and traitors discussing the downfall of one of their homes.”

With a nod Paui continued her search, but now with an end goal in mind. She sorted through Metea/Irric’s shelf of stuff, all the bookshelves, and eventually found herself a pair of pants and a shirt thrown onto a table that was set to be level with the rest of the ground. And next to that table, in an indentation with plush furniture, a man slept under brightly coloured blankets. A man whose face Sechen and Paui recognized at once.