Their time frame was set in stone as Elach’s sleeping face stared up at Paui. She blanched and stepped back, her hips running into the guardrail as the implications of what she saw crashed into her. Sechen couldn’t see her own face, but she assumed it was fairly similar to Paui’s. Pale and shocked, but with anger instead of confusion.

“Who is that?” Thana asked with confusion at Paui and Sechen’s reactions. “Is he important?”

“That’s… Elach.” Paui stated, looking around as if Rainshear’s home had suddenly become unbelievably dangerous. “Who was only in the glacier for as long as Sechen and Revelation were. Which means Runfree was there when Revelation was kidnapped, and when we were marching towards the glacier with orders to insert ourselves into the equinox competitions.”

An uncomfortable silence settled over the trial as the ramifications of what Paui found sunk in. There was a solid chance Hoalt already knew that Runfree was a traitor, or was suspicious enough to send an entire regiment just to scare them. Neither option spelled anything good for the Gilded Night. After a long while Paui continued her search, not finding anything else of note until she scoured Rainshear’s bedroom for a second time.

She held up a ring with a symbol on it that Sechen didn’t recognize; a spider’s web in the shape of a pentagon with two curved daggers like snakes’s fangs crossed over top of it. Sechen willed Issi to the tip of her finger and drew the symbol on the back of her left hand to make sure she wouldn’t forget it. It somehow reminded her of those bizarre, puppet-like practitioners that Metea/Irric killed back at the glacier, and there was no way there wasn’t a connection between them.

Paui didn’t relax until she’d left Rainshear’s cafe, scurried up the mountain in minutes, and sat atop it looking down on the building that looked completely out of place when not among a street of businesses. It simply ended on either side and to the top, going from glass to nothing in the span of an inch. She shuddered and hugged herself, turning away to continue the trial without speaking another word.

Ten minutes later, Paui killed the second token-bearing beast. A monster of red stone and clay that mindlessly charged Paui over and over again while cloaked in flames until she blasted enough of its armor away with thrown stones to expose a dripping black and brown mottled core. She rushed in, far too quickly for the lumbering golem to react, and liberated it of its core as flames began to lick at her arms. She hissed in annoyance and extinguished her clothes, small holes on her shoulders revealing spots of pink that could have easily been far worse.

Thana must have made the trial harder for Paui once more, as Sechen couldn’t imagine any unbonded successfully fighting one of these beasts, and definitely not three of them. Paui’s master over her borrowed Issi made the fights seem one-sided and easy, but Sechen knew what it was like to struggle with Issi that didn’t do what she wanted because she didn’t know how to properly wield it. And that was after years of fruitless training. A teenager who had three days of training, only one of which they used the Issi type they decided they wanted? There was no chance they’d succeed.

Which brought Sechen’s thoughts to a standstill. Wix had insinuated that Paui would be able to choose the bond she got, and that it wasn’t just through this last section of the trial. But if this trial was tailored to what each hopeful wanted, then what was he on about? Sechen shot a glance over at the control room as another possibility surfaced; what if Runfree wasn’t the only traitor?

Thana seemed to be just as concerned about this as she was, but what if that concern was for different reasons? What if Runfree’s mind had just blown open secrets that they’d been keeping for years, and now Thana had to make the difficult choice between her family and her bonded? What if Wix had already made that choice, and everything he’d done for Sechen was to throw her off Runfree’s scent? If he was in on this, he’d know that Rainshear had Revel.

The third token-bearer didn’t last more than thirty seconds. It was a sort of strange mixture of countless different birds and a bowl of gelatin, fluidly shifting between different shapes and sizes to best fit it’s combat with Paui. The sunbaked canyon it called home caused the thick liquid the bird-gel was made of to bubble and boil, making it near impossible for Paui to get her hands on it without hurting herself. Unfortunately for the bird-gel, it was just hot. And a thin layer of sand over Paui’s arms turned into a blast of shrapnel that tore it apart, absorbed the liquid, and spelled an abrupt end to the critter. Paui kicked away globs of still twitching gel to get to the token, flipping it up into the air and grabbing it with a smile on her face.

“Congratulations, hopeful Paui, for clearing the first leg of the final trial.” Thana announced as the Issi within the whitestone barrier began to dissolve. “Your completion time was fifty-six minutes and eleven seconds, which leaves you with two hours, three minutes, and forty-nine seconds to rest and prepare for the next section of the trial, which will be announced fifteen minutes before it begins.”

Thana finished her speech and her voice crackled away into nothing, but the Issi around Paui didn’t. She looked around in confusion as something else spun up around her, something opaque enough that Sechen couldn’t see her any more.

“This isn’t part of the trial.” Paui said with a wavering voice. “Thana? What’s happening?”

“Sechen.”

Sechen jumped at Thana’s presence that had suddenly appeared to her left. Not just her voice, but her physical form. “Agh! What?” She half-asked, half yelped.

“I’m sending you in to help Paui. I don’t have any modicum of control over the program any more, and my attempts to enter myself were met with familial lockouts. Anyone with a bond to Runfree cannot get in.” Thana explained, pollen-like Issi pouring off her as she fiddled with a whitestone slate.

“But I’m not family.” Sechen said, looking to the now pitch-black field that Paui was trapped inside. “How do I get in?”

The whitestone shone a brilliant yellow, then muddled as something darker worked through it. A deep, dark black that ate away at all the light it touched, taking the glossy yellow and turning it matte with dots of utter darkness. Thana looked up at Sechen with eyes that spun like miniature yellow whirlpools, accents of black adding to their seemingly bottomless depth.

She reached out a hand, and Sechen took it without a second thought. “I know you must be worried that I’m involved with this in some way. All I have to convince you is my word that I am equally shocked and appalled by this as you are. But know that I am my word, and that I will ensure Runfree answers the questions that I know you have. That we all have. And depending on the answers…” Thana’s stare bore into Sechen, an unspoken promise of intense violence in them.

Sechen shuddered and gulped. Thana’s Issi ran through her like a spike of terror-fueled adrenaline, and she felt a fragment of the power the woman had been hiding from her. “Send me in.”

Existence slowed down to a crawl as Thana’s Issi encompassed Sechen, the gaze of something unfathomable settling on her for a split second before moving away as if it hadn’t just noticed her. Runfree’s Issi slid off her barrier like rain on a tin roof, countless pelting droplets that were an annoyance until they fell into a calming background rhythm. She shook her head, opened her eyes that she hadn’t realized she’d closed, and found Paui staring at her.

“Sechen? How’d you get in here? What’s going on? Is Thana in on this?” Paui asked a series of rapid-fire questions, not giving Sechen a moment to answer. She then swiveled her head, looking around like a cornered animal. “Shh. Can you feel that?”

Sechen could, in fact, feel that. An overwhelming presence somewhere close, and yet also incredibly far away. Like feeling sunlight on your face while trying to imagine just how incredibly hot the sun itself was. Unfortunately, she recognized two-thirds of that incredible power.

“Runfree.” She breathed, and Paui nodded seriously. “And it doesn’t feel like that one you fought.”

Paui grabbed Sechen by the wrist and pulled her out of the way, into a small cave that was off the beaten forest path she’d been standing moments before. When Sechen shot her a questioning glance Paui held a hand to her ear for her to listen. A sound like rapidly approaching thunder was barely audible, getting louder over the course of a dozen minutes, and finally showing just what had managed to make that grand of an entrance.

Three massive Issi beasts stopped just outside the cave, any riders obscured by the sheer size of the monsters. Their legs looked like horses, but were as wide as a small tree’s trunk, coloured like burnt steel with droplets dripping down that could have been Issi or extremely dark blood. Sechen heard a frenzied conversation taking place outside the cave, no voices she recognized, until a technique that seared the air around them and stole the breath from her lungs exploded forth and a charred corpse dropped heavily to the ground. The conversation became far more amicable after that, continuing on as if the speakers had swatted an annoying fly instead of having murdered someone.

Paui tapped Sechen on the shoulder to get her attention, gesturing at the stretch of wall behind her. Sechen turned and followed Paui’s finger to find the same symbol that Paui had found in Rainshear’s home, and suddenly she didn’t feel quite as safe in the cave. She looked around for a nook to cram herself into, but now that she took another look, it was obvious this wasn’t a natural cave. The walls were glassy smooth, as if someone had melted away the rest of the rock and left this small section open. After the display from moments ago, Sechen figured that that was exactly what had happened.

“No, I don’t think that was too severe. Brainwaste sold us out, and you know the boss would’a done way worse.” A man’s demeaning voice echoed through the cave, a pair of legs dangling down the massive beast’s side before the rest of him fell. “Speaking of, you said she’s here today? Not some smoke and mirrors stand-in, but the real deal?”

The man who sauntered into the cave looked like he’d just lost a fight with a bear. His clothes were tattered and soaked with blood, ugly scars that burned like flames almost overtaking healthy skin on his body. His beard was split by so many scars that it was equal parts wiry black hair and scar tissue, with an upper lip that was so mangled Sechen assumed nothing could grow there. Both of his eyes were milky white with blindness, countless pinpricks of red like hot coals dotted among them that brought the man’s inability to see into question. And yet, somehow, the man’s hair was perfect. Slicked back without a single injury marring his scalp, red-hot roots leading into greasy coal-black. Sechen didn’t wonder for a second who’d fired off the earlier technique as the man kicked the charred corpse out of his way, not even sparing it a disgusted grimace. He truly didn’t care that he’d just murdered one of his companions.

“The boss doesn’t have a reason to lie to us, Helio.” Another man sighed, dropping into view without his legs first dangling low. “If she said that she’s going to be here, then she’s going to be here. We don’t have to worry about betrayal with her.”

The man punctuated his sentence with a kick at the charred body, sneering down at it with utter hatred. Sechen couldn’t pinpoint anything truly unique about him; he was fairly muscular, had dirty blonde hair, and dark brown eyes. No manifestations to be found, no unique armor or weapons, no tattoos, nothing. Yet she still got a sense of power from the man, so there was a good chance he was hiding his true self. Possibly an obscurity practitioner, secrecy practitioner, or something else that valued not showing their true selves.

And the final member of the group, an extremely tall woman who wore a porcelain white mask without any markings or holes whatsoever, appeared between the two men as if she’d been there all along without a word. The only body part that escaped her robes were her skeletal hands that she held clasped behind her back, extremely thin fingers that knotted together as if they didn’t have any bones in them twitching like insects while she listened to her companions talk. Sechen tried to get a bead on the woman, but there was absolutely nothing to get a bead on. Her mask and skin were porcelain white, while her hair and robe were silky white. There were no markings whatsoever on her or her clothes that dragged along the ground without getting dirty.

Just as the swaggering fire practitioner was about to step on Paui’s foot, he turned on his heel to look at his companions. Sechen gasped as his eyes slid over her without recognition dawning in them, then sighed in relief as Paui’s tensed muscles behind her relaxed. These people were a part of Runfree, or whoever had access to the trial’s, memories. They weren’t part of the trial, and as such, couldn’t attack her.