Once more, Elach didn’t have time to reply. Glass armguards and greaves adorned the practitioner in the blink of an eye in addition to a long, thin ribbon that twirled itself around his neck. His next attack brought with it the unraveling of said ribbon, acting like a third limb that lashed and jabbed at any openings Elach left. Which were quite a few, considering he didn’t have any training in dealing with armed opponents. But it couldn’t strike deep, barely cutting through his skin when it raked across him and left small divots wherever it stabbed.

He shivered as his body remembered the freezing shards. If the practitioner’s partner showed up, those small cuts would quickly turn into frostbitten wounds. He needed to get away, or end this fight extremely soon. The rime practitioner couldn’t be far behind. Elach wrapped chains around his legs and swung a kick at the practitioner, who blocked it with the side of his thin sword. He chained his leg down to the ground, bringing the glass practitioner to his knees, shattering the sword as his enemy spun out of the way and flourished with his dagger as he went. The thin blade cut deep into Elach’s thigh, and he felt a dangerous gush of blood soak his pant leg.

“Shit.” He muttered, pushing Issi to repair whatever had just been severed. He was already starting to feel lightheaded, and the glass practitioner looked at him with a shake of his head and a click of his tongue.

“Such a pity. A practitioner falls to a simple severed artery.” He crossed his arms and looked down on Elach with a dash of pity. “If only that were true. No, you’ll fall to the shards of glass that are cutting you up from the inside. If you still have the energy for one last desperate stand, I welcome it.”

Desperate stand? Elach narrowed his eyes and tried to feel for foreign Issi in his system, and found it battering at the insides of his veins with little success. His Issi was keeping them from killing him, but the moment it ran out, he was dead. This wasn’t just a technique, it was real glass infused with the practitioner’s Issi. A part of the weapon he’d used, and a part that would stay in Elach forevermore if this man lived.

He stumbled to the side, pretending to be far more injured than he was to get another moment to think. The glass practitioner had thrown their dart the moment he’d chained himself away, which meant that he had to have known where Elach was going. He envisioned four anchors, all at different points between and behind himself and the glass practitioner in a straight line, and the practitioner didn’t so much as twitch.

If the man wasn’t reacting to the anchors, then he had to be reacting to the flare of Issi that came when Elach created his chains. In that moment between creation and pull, the glass practitioner had to discern the endpoint, and react accordingly.

Elach created another anchor off to the right and connected his chain to it. The glass practitioner swiveled and threw his dagger to where the chain ended, then Elach connected himself to the furthest anchor he’d previously created and pulled. He charged into the practitioner’s back with his shoulder, feeling bone meet spine, then chained his leg to a point beyond the practitioner’s right. His knee smashed into the practitioner’s side, crashing through a rapidly forming protective technique, slicing his knee up something fierce but doing far more damage to his opponent in the process.

The practitioner’s face slammed into the ground with a muffled scream of pain, and in one swift motion, Elach pulled himself over the moaning pile of pain and chained his foot to the ground. He stomped down with all his might, but a shield of glass popped into being and strained under the weight of his Issi pressing ever constantly down. Elach chained both his arms to the ground and pulled it up towards him, crushing the practitioner under their own shield until it began to crack and splinter under the pressure.

Another presence slid up on Elach’s Issi sense. The air around him took on a biting edge of cold, and after one last attempt to crush the glass practitioner underfoot, he chained towards the smokescreen.

A woman bent over the grounded form of the glass practitioner and snorted. “He got you good, Scose. How’s that dirt taste, man? Taste like humble pie? Taste like telling your partner to lie back because you can deal with this guy yourself? Huh? Huh? That what it taste like?”

“It tastes like dirt.” Scose muttered as the woman scuttled around him.

“Mmhm. Mmhm.” She nodded vigorously, grabbing Scose by the back of his shirt and tugging him up. “You still think you can take this guy by yourself, Scose? With your nose all fucked and your arms more dirt than skin?”

Scose spat a mouthful of dirt and looked down at his feet in shame. “No.”

“No?” The woman raised his chin with one finger so Scose was looking her in the eyes. “No to what, Scose? I need an explanation here.”

“No, I can’t defeat him by myself.”

“Good. Now, was that so hard?” The woman tapped Scose twice on the cheek with her fingertips and a broad smile. She turned to Elach and gave him a bright smile, the temperature of the air dropping to near freezing as the field around him dipped with frost. “You’re a little stronger than Brynn gave you credit for, ain’t you? To beat poor Scose within an inch of his life while you’ve got enough glass in you to make jam outta your insides. Makes me think we’ve been kept in the dark on purpose.”

Scose frowned and stepped up beside the woman, his single word rising at the end in question. “Quell?”

“I’m not asking for his life story, dumbass.” Quell laughed, slapping the back of her arm against Scose’s chest with a thump. Her eyes narrowed at Elach as the frost crept onto his feet, but he didn’t feel any intent for it to spread further. “He’s not coming at us even though I made the first move. He’s gotta be able to tell I’m not gonna hurt him, which means we’re in way over our heads. Hey, you!”

Elach blinked in surprise, looking behind himself and seeing only the smokescreen. He pointed a finger at himself while turning back, and received an exasperated eye roll from Quell.

“No, I definitely wasn’t talking to the only other person here. Yeah, I’m talking to you, dumbass! How’d you get an Issi sense that well developed? We barely started training it a year ago, and it’s hard enough to feel someone’s technique before they skewer you with it. Someone as young as you shouldn’t be able to feel the intent behind a technique, period.”

With a shrug, Elach communicated all he knew.

“He has pathways and a concentration that are far, far above his Issi levels.” Scose pointed out.

Quell sighed and shook her head. “Yeah, that explains why he’s got the Issi sight, but then how’d he get the pathways and concentrations? Think a little before talking, dumbass. So, random person who’s got all of Glasrime’s anger pouring down on them, what’d you do for it?”

“I have absolutely no idea.” Elach said honestly. “I either died or almost died trying to protect someone I barely knew, then I woke up here two weeks later, got told to come deal with some people who’d invaded the pillar, and here I am.” He gestured at himself, then narrowed his eyes at Quell. “Why do the two of you have matching collars?”

“Insurance.” Scose grimaced, running a finger along his neck just under the collar. “I hate to say it, but I think you’re right. The explanation Brystan gave us didn’t make any sense, and then he left us here to deal with the ‘matter of overwhelming import’.”

“So, Elach, I’ve gotta ask; did you steal a buncha shit from Glasrime?” Quell asked, stepping forward as her Issi diminished. “Or did you steal a buncha shit from promised tomorrows?”

Promised tomorrows? Weren’t those the people that stole Revel away in the first place? Or was he remembering that wrong, and they’d been the group that had an empty cage where a wisp manifestation was supposed to be?

“I didn’t steal anything from anyone. I was completely out of it after I fought to get someone back from promised tomorrows, and I don’t know what happened between then and when I woke up here a week and a bit ago.” He explained. “But considering that we were fighting promised tomorrows, I’d assume whatever was stolen was from them.”

Scose and Quell shared a look. “That’s what we thought, too. Glasrime loves those assholes for some reason, but if you don’t have a name that starts in Bry-, then they don’t have any love for you. Even if you’ve got a bond with Glasrime.”

With a grim nod, Scose recalled all of his Issi. “I’m not about to die for an organization that took food out of my mouth before I bonded Glasrime. And from my plate afterwards.”

“Neither am I.” Quell agreed. “They’re right bastards, Elach, and they’ve got the sympathy of all our privileged brethren. If Brystan had stayed here, we wouldn’t be talking to you, we’d be mindless dipshits clawing at your throat while the monster you’ve got in the smokescreen tore us to ribbons.”

“Like Hugil and Arvay followed Brynn.” Elach realized. “Because of what happens if you disobey them.”

Quell chuckled humourlessly and tapped her collar. “You got it. These collars keep us in line outside the glacier like Glasrime does inside. But since Brystan ain’t here, he can’t press the button and force us into doing his dirty work. Dumbass pushed us into this, and now he’s gonna pay.”

Elach bristled as the frost on his feet melted away, leaving his back a little too hot against the smokescreen. He stepped forward cautiously, and the two Glasrime practitioners stepped back to let him get away from the smokescreen but still keep a fair distance between them. “So he left you two and a bunch of newbies to keep me from going up to the next group of floors?”

“That’s right.” Quell nodded. “And the person stuck in that smokescreen with your monster. Who we had no idea about, but thinking back, Brystan did run like a coward after Brynn’s latest report. Cold hearted bitch paid in blood to get the wolf on our side.”

“Oh, shit.” Elach cursed, turning his Issi sense to the smokescreen. He couldn’t feel Shar or the other practitioner through it, but he hoped they could hear his voice. “Did you hear that, Shar? The other Hoalt’s backing the invaders!”

With a sucking vacuum of Issi, the smokescreen disappeared instantly. Shar was standing above a practitioner that wore almost the exact same cloak as the other smoke practitioner, but slightly more ornamental. They were cut up something fierce, bleeding from a myriad of wounds, and Shar coughed up a storm. But they were both still in fighting shape.

“Glasrime struck a bargain with the wolf?” The smoke practitioner hacked, their voice raggedy and low like Elach had expected. “That wasn’t part of the deal. Glasrime will bring the wrath of the eternals down on all of us.” They swiveled their head around, noticing the lack of practitioners in the field. “What happened to my students?”

Quell gestured at Elach. “He did. Our info was way off, Roclas. Brynn’s twisting this take-back operation into a full-blown war, and I’m not getting stuck in the middle of it. Scose and I’re gonna go have a little talk with Brystan, then get the hells outta here before everything goes to shit. I’d recommend you take the remaining four of your students and do the same.”

“Remaining four?” The smoke practitioner squeaked, only then seeming to notice that Elach was there. “You were supposed to be weak.” They said helplessly, with a surprising lack of anger in their voice. They looked down at their hands, and shook their head. “I sent them to their deaths. For the sake of a war they weren’t even a part of. Who did I lose?”

“I treated them like… real practitioners.” Elach said after a moment’s pause to look for better words than he ended up using. “I thought they were coming to kill me.”

The smoke practitioner nodded numbly, turning their hood off towards the distance. “Who did I lose?” They repeated.

“One of the lava practitioners.”

“Brothers losing brothers.” The smoke practitioner whispered. “He will hate you for the rest of his life, but I was the one that sent his brother to his death. I have to… I have to go. Maybe not back home, but somewhere this won’t spill over to.”

Shar shrugged and let go of her Issi, stepping up to Elach as the smoke practitioner ran off in the direction their students had gone. “The emperor expected as much, but to have confirmation is terrifying. Once we’ve delivered what he gave you we’ll meet with the rest of your group and move to dealing with the bigger problem of the wolf down below.”

“And we’re going to try to convince Brystan to get the hells out of here.” Quell added. “We’ll wait for a few hours after you go up just in case his useless ass is waiting for us. Don’t want to sour our truce right after we made it.”

Elach followed Scose and Quell with his eyes until they’d stepped out of the straware fields. If they were scared of the wolf, then there had to be something else going on that he didn’t know about.

“Why are they scared of the wolf?” He asked, stepping up to the edge of the mist and anchoring himself right above the tome. “And what did the smoke guy mean about drawing the wrath of the eternals?”

Shar hacked up a glob of black-swirled red, her tongue running over her mouth before she spoke. “The eternals don’t care about us on this side of the veil. But if we do something huge, like, say, a war between the two halves of the Gilded Night, then they’ll get interested. And once they see that some of us aren’t under their control, they correct that with extreme prejudice.”

That seemed dangerously close to what Elach knew about when an eternal died, but not exactly the same. “How does it happen?” He asked, now more suspicious about Shar than ever.

“I have no idea.” Shar admitted. “The Emperor explained it to us, but I have never seen the phenomenon myself. And from the way he spoke, I hope I never do.”

“Yeah, I hope so too.” Elach sighed, chaining himself into the mist once more. He waited a few moments to see if Shar was joining him this time, but she stayed outside of the mist’s influence yet again.

He scanned his surroundings for any Issi threads, and after a very thorough check, he was confident that there were none. He reached down to the blood splattered book and flipped through the pages, feeling at the Issi around him and the slight differences between the feel of each symbol. He quickly skimmed each page, feeling their unique Issi signatures, and found the one that matched what he felt around the tome after fifteen minutes. He ripped it out with a single motion, and the mists blinked out of existence.

Below him was a lattice of light blue and bright green that evoked a feeling of slumber, of thoughts coming slower and things that couldn’t be real shifting about on the edge of alertness. He whistled in acknowledgment of the absurd skill of the person who’d made this, and said an internal thanks that Shar had been here to warn him. He would’ve been stuck here for days uncoiling the real from the unreal if he was on his own.

Aside from the mists dispersing, nothing else had changed. He couldn’t see anything like an exit, and the space within the mists was actually far smaller than he’d thought. About the size of a small house, with nothing much at all to draw his attention. And beyond the mists there was absolutely nothing. A blank space that, when he tried to set an anchor inside, rejected him.

“I got the page out.” Elach said as he appeared out of the mist zone, which was somehow still there despite him removing it. “I thought that was supposed to open up the next floor group?”

Shar shook her head. “That’s not quite how it works. We need to head back and prepare for the ascent.”