The man who called himself Prisoner watched as cloudy gently placed her cup down on a coaster, her hands trembling at the difficulty of performing that one simple task. He grimaced at her degrading faculties, now not even able to create a personality strong enough to be despondent or enraged, but living in a fugue state of nothing that would ensure she stayed alive for a while longer. It wasn’t anywhere near the best option, but he’d never run into anything like her situation before.

“How’re you doin’ now, cloudy? Can you feel your Issi at all?” He asked, pushing himself off the silver chair with purple cushions to settle down next to her on the floor. She didn’t respond, as was the new norm. He gently patted her head, feeling her perpetually damp hair under his fingers. “I ain’t leavin’ ‘til I find some way to get your mind back, sister. I ain’t throwin’ away anyone for the ‘greater good’ ever again.”

“I don’t want to be like this.” Metea/Irric mumbled, her voice barely a whisper against the hissing silence of this place. “If I was just Irric, I could’ve fought for Revel. For Elach. Rainshear was a little stronger than he was, but I would’ve put up a good fight.”

Metea/Irric spat, her voice unchanged but her words spoke a different tale. “I wasn’t that strong, Metea. I was weak. Together, we should’ve been more. Should’ve done more. But we didn’t. And then we did nothing about it. I… I did nothing about it.”

Prisoner sighed and pushed himself away. Listening to cloudy and other cloudy argue was becoming way too common, and hard enough to follow if he tuned out for even a second. One moment cloudy was crying about being a burden to other cloudy, and the next other cloudy was blaming himself for not being enough. But the hard fact was that they were both right. Cloudy was complacent, and even though she was strong for her age, she wasn’t strong for her circumstances. And who knows, maybe that’d been Rainshear’s fault. The woman did seem to like being in control of everything, and a strong cloudy wouldn’t’ve been controllable.

He flicked a coin between his fingers, one of the same ones he’d given sleepy way back at the start of all this. A whole month or so ago. Prisoner sighed and flipped the coin, calling it back to his headspace before it could hit it’s apex. This was the safest place he’d found, but he worried that even these barriers and veils wouldn’t be enough to keep all eyes off him. So he’d added his own.

And yet, he still felt wrong. Bringing the attention of the eternals down on him was quite literally the last thing he wanted, and he knew that he’d never be happy with the protection he could put down. A strong enough barrier was just as likely to bring attention as any other display of power. So he was stuck waiting. Waiting for the moment cloudy managed to lower her guard so he could get a good look into the wasteland that was her headspace. Only then could he get his grubby fingers dirty working on a real, permanent solution.

Purple slashes appeared in the air before him, crystallizing and falling to the ground with a quiet thunk. He bent down and hefted the three crystals over his shoulder with a grunt, walking over to the shrine he’d been building up over the past three days. Just a little bit more, and this place would be under his complete control. For a little while. He didn’t want to piss old scaly off too much, even if he wasn’t one hundred percent sure the overgrown gecko wasn’t lying his shiny ass off.

Hoalt’s city came first. Prisoner knew that, and he had to be real careful not to overstep those boundaries. Anything he did here that looked like he was moving in, so to say, could end up being reacted to with extreme prejudice. A prejudice he’d survive just fine, but the others wouldn’t. He ducked under the first of the crystal shards he’d planted in the walls, cursing as the ones he was carrying slammed against the ones overhead with a musical chime.

“Damned musical mishaps.” He muttered, pressing a hand to the crystals to get them to stop vibrating. “Gotta find a way to make these noises a little more intimidatin’. Nobody’s gonna think twice ‘bout dismantlin’ these singin’ stones.”

The fixture he added to was shaping up to be a complex lattice of stones, a tunnel that got smaller and smaller as it went until eventually settling on a single, silver-wrapped stone. An amplifier for what little Issi was in this place. To fill one more keystone with enough Issi to protect someone with the blessing of their homeland. He’d been lucky that ringlet didn’t consider herself to have a homeland, so he could repurpose one of the keystones he’d already made for her. But he could feel that gracey had a deep connection to the Gilded Night, whether she wanted it or not, and her body just wouldn’t accept anything else. Cloudy was part manifestation, and shiny was a full-on wisp manifestation, so they didn’t need one of these suckers. But sleepy would need one eventually, and that would require convincing him to go back home.

Prisoner shrugged and planted his crystal in the ground, soldering it with liquid silver so it would stay upright. Sleepy’s Issi was so bizarre that he might end up not needing one anyway. Hells, when he’d found the poor guy he’d been living on Issi and water alone for who knows how long. Without training to do specifically that, he should’ve passed on long before making it to Prisoner’s old cell. But he didn’t, and it was probably thanks to that bird of his. Just another reason he needed sleepy.

With a contented sigh, he stepped back and marveled at his creation. He was about halfway to the keystone, working from the outside in for reasons he no longer remembered. The tunnel-like structure was finally coming together, to the point where he had to bend in half under the furthest crystal, but even after he finished it he would have to wait. This was the only safe place he’d found, but its Issi concentration was so piss-poor that he’d have to wait months to get gracey’s keystone concentrated enough.

But maybe that was a blessing in disguise. Prisoner turned his attention back to cloudy, sweeping the Issi away from her with a thought, and watching as the light of recognition slowly returned to her eyes. “How’s it goin’ in that headspace of yours? Anywhere close to a helpin’ yourself out?”

She shook her head, lacing her fingers together in her lap, then flopped onto her back. “Everything’s still a complete mess. I’m trying to do what you asked, but every time I think I’m making progress, I start breaking apart and I have to restart from nothing. I wish I’d trained like Sechen had, so that I could stand being Issi-less for longer than a few hours. Then maybe I’d be able to help you out a little more.”

“You’re helpin’ yourself here, not me.” Prisoner corrected, tapping her on the forehead from above. Her grey eyes spoke of her exhaustion, but she never voiced it. Only frustration with herself. “You’re sure I can’t just break my way into your headspace? I’ve done it before, and it only had… mild consequences.”

Metea/Irric gaped at Prisoner with outright horror. “You say that like it’s a normal thing. Breaking into someone’s headspace needs something like carving Issi, and even then, it’s only used to get someone out of it. Not to…” Metea/Irric struggled for words, her mouth opening and closing multiple times before she found them. “Not to break yourself in! That’s impossible, and if it was possible, it would kill me!”

“I did say there were mild consequences, didn’t I?” Prisoner said with a shrug. “It ain’t my place to tell you what you need to do. But in a few months, ringlet and gracey’re gonna be done with this place. They’ll ice whatever’s been snugglin’ up to the wolf Hoalt, and then they’ll send the word down that they’re leavin’ for some reason or another. And they’ll take sleepy and shiny with ‘em, which means I gotta go too.”

“Gracey?” Metea/Irric asked. “Who’s that?”

“Oh, that’s fumbly’s new nickname. The old one don’t fit her no more.” Prisoner explained. “She got her clumsiness problem all sorted out, and some shiny new Issi to top it all off. Hence, gracey.”

She continued to stare at Prisoner. He raised an eyebrow, then snapped his fingers as he realized what he’d forgotten to say. “She’s got grace Issi now. Hence, gracey.”

That just seemed to confuse her even more, but cloudy shook her head and sighed. “I guess I believe you, but I’ve never seen anyone just get new Issi. There’s always a trial, and a bestowing ceremony, and then some time for the Issi seed to settle in.”

“Well, two out of three of those already happened.” Prisoner said. “But gracey didn’t have to wait a while for her new Issi to settle in, since it’s technically still the same Issi she’d already had. Just a different flavour.”

“What? How? They’ve only been gone for… three days? No.” Metea/Irric pressed her hands to her head. “It hasn’t been that long. I only remember a few hours, but I know it’s been days.”

“Four days, actually.” Prisoner said with sympathy, kneeling down next to Metea/Irric and patting her on the shoulder. “You ain’t doin’ so hot, cloudy. And I’m doin’ everything I can to cool you down, but thanks to your uniqueness I can’t do much of anythin’. Unless you change somethin’, we ain’t leavin’ here for a good long while.”

Metea/Irric looked down at the floor and pulled her knees up to her chest. She nodded weakly in understanding, and Prisoner felt her conscience pulling back to her headspace. This was all on her now, and based on how quickly gracey had joined the ranks of freaks he had along with him, cloudy might not have enough time. That was one decision he was not looking forward to making.