The entryway echoed under Elach’s feet as he touched down, a hollow sound that ensured no ground-based creature could ever sneak through here. Everything around him was created out of a material that looked like a calcified version of a wasp’s nest mixed with beeswax, swirling and papery but with far more structural stability. Carved into the walls were small indents where lightless crystals lay, burnt at the bottom and slightly orange at the top.

Elach reached out to touch a crystal, feeling an uncomfortably cold emptiness pulling away his body heat as he remained in contact with it. It felt slimy and slightly wet like moss, but when he pulled away, his hand carried no residue to back up his claim.

“Bizarre.” Elach mused, tapping his finger to it one more. “They’re obviously not using this, so…” He looked around, the mostly-dark entryway perfectly quiet and utterly empty. “They won’t miss one of these, right?”

Elach reached into his pocket of transcendent Issi and attached one end of a chain to the bizarre gem, then the other to the other wall of the entryway. If the gem wasn’t lodged in there too tightly, trying to pull the two walls together should dislodge the gem without any fanfare. If it was in there a little too tight, though… well, hopefully he hadn’t chained to any load-bearing portions of the wall.

It took a few moments for Elach to latch onto the chain with his mind, and another few for him to convince himself that this wasn’t a horrible idea. He then pulled to collapse the chain, and the gem popped free in a small burst of dark amber liquid that trickled pathetically to the floor. Whatever reservoir of light this gem had been drawing from had gone dry a long time ago, and as Elach stepped over the tiny puddle to retrieve the gem, he couldn’t help but notice all the other gems that had been haphazardly studded around the entryway.

“This place must have been beautiful when all these weren’t broken.” He sighed, kneeling over a larger gem inlaid into the floor and placing two fingers on it. “Well, I already took one…”

Fifteen minutes later, Elach had nearly depleted the walkway of its gems. They felt cold in his headspace, and his hands were shaking and pale, but he felt like he’d made the right choice. These things had called to him for some reason, and he had a feeling that Y’talla would find a good use for them. Or maybe Flow, since the gemstones were almost the same colour as the amber nectar. Maybe the stones would strengthen the nectar’s recovery capabilities, or maybe the nectar would breathe warmth into the stones. And if neither of those came to be, then he’d hand them off to Metea/Irric to use in her works when he met up with her and Prisoner.

It was going to be strange seeing them again. He’d only known Prisoner for a day or so, and Metea/Irric for three days, most of which she’d been under Rainshear’s control. And then there was Sechen, the scrawny practitioner who’d lost her patron.

“This is going to be weird.” Elach muttered as he stored away the last of the gems he was willing to risk taking. He’d wasted enough time already, and he wasn’t going to keep pushing his luck with nobody coming through. “Time to do what I actually came here for.”

His feet echoed along the rest of the entryway, a slowly winding corridor that went far further than he’d expected. Lighthome only seemed to be a short walk from the gatehouse, but as he walked on and on it seemed as if that wasn’t the main part of the city. It could have been a guardhouse, or a barracks, or a simple scouting post. But as he kept walking, he became surer and surer that it didn’t have anything to do with the city as a whole.

As he got closer and closer, the entryway got brighter and brighter. Coloured stones that looked passingly similar to the ones he’d stolen flickered and sparked weakly with light, but when he put his fingers to one it didn’t feel anything like the others. It was warm and welcoming, with its surface feeling closer to glass than moss. It almost felt like they weren’t cut from the same gemstones, but a quick comparison proved that they were almost identical twins. Except one was slippery, slimy, and cold.

Elach hummed in interest as he sent the stone back to his headspace. The warmer ones almost lacked something compared to the cold ones, which was the opposite of what he’d expected. A quick reassessment showed that to be wrong; it wasn’t that the warmer ones lacked anything tangible, it was that they lacked potential. Whatever that meant he didn’t know, and he didn’t know how he knew it, but then Y’talla spoke into his mind to put an end to his wondering.

“Where did you find these?! They’re so weird!” She laughed, and Elach felt his head grow cool. Like he’d just flipped over the pillow on a hot night. “Sooo empty. Like, empty beyond empty. Ooh, maybe I could use these to store Flow’s orange stuff. Or… orrr… ok, I can’t think of anything else right now, but they’re still cool. Wait.”

Y’talla paused, and Elach could feel suspicion through the bond. “Weren’t you supposed to be going to Lighthome? How’d you find these? OH, did you steal them from the bugs? You aren’t supposed to make them angry until Shar comes with you, remember?”

“I remember.” Elach said with a sigh. “It was on the way, and nobody saw me. I’m pretty sure nobody even knows the ones I took exist; the light that came out of the indents was really dark and evaporated slowly.”

“Alright!” Y’talla accepted immediately, her attention completely taken by the cold, mossy gems. “Good luck with the rest of everything! Don’t ruin the plan!”

Elach shook his head and kept walking, watching as the tunnel around him went from dim to blinding over a very small distance. Somehow none of the light escaped from the illuminated part of the tunnel; one step he was in flickering dull light and the next he had to shield his eyes from the luminous assault of Lighthome’s grand entryway. An entryway that was equal parts glimmering decadence and sinewy shadowed ooze.

The walls, ceiling, and floor were all the same nest-like material he’d walked on for what felt like close to a mile, but everything else was crafted from crystals of varying colour, shape, and size. A massive chandelier hung from the ceiling far above, individual crystals shimmering with light to create a dancing pattern that reminded Elach of a field of fireflies in the late summer night. And on the supports and the chandelier itself was a stain of black ooze, spread like a liquid spider web between almost every post and chain.

Everything in the room was dusted with the disgusting black sludge. The grand staircase that led up to a mass of tunnels, all the little boutiques that advertised in a language he didn’t understand, and especially all the statues of bug-people. It was as if the ooze was trying to erase the history of these people, and they were simply letting it. An insidious killer this gunk was.

Elach pushed aside a mass of strands that had grown to partially cover the entryway and felt his echoing footsteps muffle. It was as if something had filled the hollow space under him with, say, something black and oozing. This ooze really had completely overtaken Lighthome and all of its residents.

“Welcome, visitor.” A cheery voice spoke from Elach’s left, and he turned to see an ant-like bug-person sitting behind a barren waist-high desk. “What can Nevvi aid the visitor with on this fine day?”

Elach hesitated for a moment, then placed his lantern on the desk. The ant reeled back in surprise, then leaned forward with greater interest. “I’m looking for wherever I can exchange these for tangible currency. A bank or something like that.”

“The lightwell is what the visitor seeks.” The ant said quickly, caressing the sides of the lantern like it was a precious jewel. That was beyond suspicious to Elach, as he’d seen plenty of bugs with lanterns like this come through this exact tunnel. “Does the visitor wish for directions, or shall Nevvi act as a guide?”

With the way the ant eyed the lantern, Elach could guess why it was offering its services. But having a local with him would probably take away at least some of the suspicion that might be cast on him. And it would be nice being the one getting guided for once, instead of being the guide.

“If you’re offering your services, I’d love a guide.” Elach said with a smile and tapped the top of the lantern. “What’s your price?”

“Oh, nothing, esteemed visitor. Simply being in the presence of the many-lights is enough for Nevvi.” The ant said with reverence. Elach didn’t miss that his status had been upgraded to ‘esteemed visitor’, and the ant’s denial of payment only served to increase his confusion.

“You act like you rarely see these little things around here.” Elach said casually as the ant rose from behind the desk, their standing height coming up to just under his chest. “I’ve seen plenty of your people coming through the gatehouse with these lanterns. They can’t be that rare.”

Nevvi shook its head vigorously. “Little lights are not rare, no, but the condition of the esteemed visitor’s lights is immaculate. Most lose their luster through the entryway, but the esteemed visitor’s still gleam with untapped light.”

Elach nodded as if that made sense, following the now quiet ant as he organized his thoughts. If the entryway was siphoning away the light from these wisplings, then why were his wisplings fine? He tapped a finger against the lantern and probed at it with his Issi senses, then paused as they slid through the lantern as if it was a part of his own body. His protective technique had somehow extended itself to the lantern without him noticing.

But that also meant the entryway was somehow siphoning away the wisplings light… Issi… lifeforce… whatever it was that they actually had. The dead crystals he’d liberated must have been part of a bigger light consumption network, which left a very good chance that there was a central reservoir where all of it went. Which would end up as his target if the bank didn’t have enough light to saturate Roxu.