Elach found himself standing in front of a massive pillar of deep blue stone that hadn’t previously been in the dead center of the town-like clearing. Everything else that had been there had been hurried off to the side by a scrambling populace as he returned with the page folded in his pocket, a rumbling shock shooting through the clearing while the ground opened up and produced its massive blue child. He’d turned to Shar for answers, but she’d brushed him off to collect the few things she’d left in her home for the journey to come.

It took close to two hours for Shar to return with a large backpack that he’d seen her pack before they left the first time. Elach raised an eyebrow and lowered his arm so Flow could hop onto a nearby table, but a look from Shar silenced any questions he had.

She burned with a quiet fury, not speaking a single word until she reached the pillar and rested her hand on it. “We have far less time than I thought. Contact Prisoner this moment and tell him to prepare for our arrival within the week, but not to continue his ascent. His mission has become our mission.”

“You saw yourself that he’s holed up with Metea/Irric, and that he isn’t leaving until she’s better.” Elach pointed out, recalling the extremely brief conversation he’d had with Prisoner after Hoalt’s unseen representative came for a visit behind closed doors. “And what about my mission? I’ve still got this dagger thing I have to deliver to someone on this floor that I never managed to find.”

Shar grumbled and snatched the dagger from Elach’s hands, then held up a hand for him to wait. She hurried off towards a back alley as Elach shot Flow a confused glance that they returned with an equally confused spray of musical accompaniment. Not two minutes later Shar returned with a small amulet that held Hoalt’s insignia, shoved it at Elach then pointed at the pillar.

“Your mission is done. We’re leaving.” She ordered. “Take out the page and press it to the pillar. This will take a while, so we can’t afford to lose even a minute.”

“Alright, alright.” Elach said as he stepped gingerly forward. “What’s got you so on edge?”

“The possible end of my city and all its people.” Shar said bluntly. “So you’ll have to excuse my desire to hurry.”

“I guess that’s fair.”

The paper fused to the blue pillar the moment Elach brought the two together, the symbols leaking off the paper to populate the deep blue with bright white. A thrumming rumble shook him to the core, and as he stared deep into the blue stone, he felt an inescapable pull towards whatever was inside of it. He barely noticed when Flow perched themselves on his shoulder and pecked at the tip of his ear, trilling in wonder as the same pull Elach felt dragged them in.

His entire being was overtaken by comfortable blue. A pool of warm water welled up around his ankles, washing away aches and pains he hadn’t realized had been building up. With an exhausted sigh he leaned back, floating in a constantly rising tide of perfectly warm water, feeling it seep into every fiber of his being as he drifted away to somewhere else. A weight he knew was Flow settled on his chest, shaking themselves for a quick moment before falling into a breathy sleep.

Elach drifted for what felt like an eternity with a comfortable haze over his mind. The Issi around him was carrying him somewhere, the symbols in the sky lighting and darkening to mark his path, until they all lit up in a magnificent show of luminescence. He basked in the wondrous motes of light that rained down from the sky, crashing into the waters around him with the force of earthquakes. The waves they kicked up sent him flying, but he chained himself in place and wrapped an arm around Flow to keep them from falling.

He gazed lazily downwards as the waters turned jagged and dangerous from the onslaught of the falling symbols. With a shake of his head and a surge of his Issi Elach tried to push the invading Issi out of his mind, but to no avail. It was like trying to move a mountain with his bare hands, and after a few long moments of fruitless attempts, he gave up. Gave up and hung there, staring down at turbulent waters, until the symbols blazed with one last gasp of light and blinked out. Leaving him in absolute darkness.

The darkness cracked and splintered into nothing, falling away like panes of shattered glass until Elach felt the Issi’s hold release him. He shivered and looked down, seeing a single ring of blue light with one of the symbols from before; a crescent moon in chains, with a lock hanging from the upper edge. His feet slammed against the glowing moon and broke through, sending him tumbling for the briefest of seconds until his feet hit solid ground once more.

Flow struggling against his now crushing hug brought him back to his senses. “Sorry, buddy.” He said as he released Flow, who climbed up to Elach’s shoulder and squawked acceptance of his apology. “So this is the twenty-first floor, huh? Doesn’t look like much, and I don’t see any rotten piles of flesh here to welcome us.”

“That was a particular quirk of the eleventh floor.” Shar said as she appeared right behind Elach, stepping through the small gateway before them without pause. “Hoalt theorized that showcasing a terrifying monster who wasn’t as they appeared would lead to opening the minds of certain closed-minded practitioners.”

“Did it work?” Elach asked, following her through the gateway towards an extremely long rickety bridge over a massive forest of bright yellow and orange trees below. He wrinkled his nose as the sickly sweet scent of decaying fruit smacked him in the face, pulling his shirt over his mouth and nose as he walked.

Shar shrugged. “Not as Hoalt wanted. It served to make practitioners far more cautious, and to take longer to judge something as a threat or a friend. A quality that is appreciated in powerful practitioners, but one that grows more dangerous the weaker a practitioner is. Watch your step as you leave the bridge. The winds get far more severe outside of the protective wards.”

The protective wards lasted exactly as long as the bridge was far. The deafening gale battered Elach’s skin and forced his eyes into a squint, and as he raised his arms to try and get a better look at what was in the distance, Flow hopped onto his head and leaned down over his face.

They let out a single caw of questioning, and Elach rolled his eyes. Flow cackled and flapped their wings, and suddenly the winds were flowing around Elach instead of directly into him. Elach blinked in surprise and lowered his arms, turning directly into the wind and feeling it slide off him without affecting him in the slightest. Flow bent down over his head once more with a gleam in their eyes, then cooed in happiness as Elach scratched them under the beak and down their neck.

“Thanks, buddy.” He said, his voice cutting through the wind as if it wasn’t there at all. Shar turned in surprise and almost stumbled against the wind, but if she said anything, it was lost to the gales.

“Can you do whatever you did to her too?” Elach asked. Flow considered for a moment, feeling at the Issi they had left, then bobbed up and down in confirmation before flying towards Shar. “Don’t try to fight Flow; they’re going to do what they did to me to you.”

Shar relaxed and let Flow land on her head, then Flow’s Issi wrapped her in a skin-tight veil of constantly moving Issi. She looked down at her hands and nodded thanks to Flow, a hint of amazement showing through her posture.

“That is a wonderful technique, Flow. Thank you.” She said sincerely, waiting for Elach to catch up before she continued. Flow hopped onto his shoulder when he caught up, leaning into him for another set of scratches. “I had completely forgotten you were a motion wisp.”

Elach smiled at the simple lie he’d told. Shar obviously had her share of secrets, so he didn’t feel anything about deceiving her. “I didn’t know their Issi worked like that, but they obviously know best.”

“And they’ve given us the gift of reducing a five hour trek down to two. Maybe less.” Shar chuckled, tapping Flow on the beak. “Plus the addition of being able to converse as we walk. These treetop pathways make for poor company when the only other stimulation you have are your thoughts.”

The conversation didn’t start off interesting; Shar pointed out each and every single thing she saw, and Elach nodded in acknowledgement and added in a few words here and there. Such as the trees that, on closer inspection, were a collection of perfectly smooth cones of one of two colours; yellow or orange. Like countless thousands of a child’s drawings brought to life. Or the pathways that seemed to just rest over the top of these trees, built of wood with a constantly spiraling grain that seemed to blow along with the winds. She rested a hand on an orange cone that peeked through a hole cut in the wood, shivering at the bizarre feeling before insisting Elach do the same. It felt like sandpaper, but his hand slid down it like it was perfectly slick, and when he removed his palm to look at it it was covered in a slimy substance with small orange grains stuck inside it.

Shar burst out laughing at Elach’s look of disgust as he sniffed it, redoubling when Flow licked the substance off his hand with a trill of delight. Elach flicked the last of the substance at her, but it was quickly swept away in the wind without ever reaching its target. Which, once more, caused a laughing fit.

Elach sighed and looked up at the sky, a mosaic of blue, white and black that looked as if it had been shattered, shuffled, then incorrectly put back together. “How do we clear this floor?”

“I’m not quite sure.” Shar replied, tapping the side of her blank lower face with one finger. “I know what the hub floor looks like, because everyone in the Gilded Night knows what all the hub floors look like, but beyond that I don’t know anything.”

“And what happened to the intensity from before?” Elach added. Shar stiffened, but didn’t stop walking. “It felt like days in there, but it couldn’t have been more than an hour. Which is an hour later than when we didn’t have any time to waste. What’s going on here?”

“Nothing.” Shar said too quickly. “You must have felt how calming it was. That’s all.”

“Mmhm.” Elach hummed, stepping ahead of Shar. He hadn’t sped up. “Alright. Whatever. We need to hurry anyway, to save your beloved city.” He chained himself as far into the distance as he could, letting the chain settle around his wrist for Shar to see. He offered a hand to take her along, but she didn’t move to take it. “Shar, this is making it a little hard to trust you. And I’ve been putting a lot of trust in you since that representative came by.”

“I know you have.” Shar sighed, pushing his hand to the side. “But I can’t tell you everything. It’s classified for a good reason.”

Flow let loose a string of musical insults, and Shar winced. Elach thought they were a little too harsh, but they got across what he’d wanted to say. If Shar had classified information, then there was no way she’d be constrained to a single floor in the pillar. And Hoalt wouldn’t send a representative to specifically tell her to climb the pillar with someone else he sent on a mission. Worst of all, she hadn’t denied anything Flow said.

Elach let his chain shatter and sighed. “Fine. Let’s find out what this floor needs and get out of here as fast as we can. It’ll be good to see Prisoner and get a few real answers for once.”