Elach leaned over the extremely deep hole that had appeared behind Roxu, peering through a retreating lattice of roots to see Shar’s red form working far, far below. She’d certainly held up her half of the plan, so now all that was left was to put both halves together.

“Do you think it’s deep enough?” He called down.

Shar planted a makeshift shovel in the ground and leaned on the handle, looking up at Elach with relief. “If it isn’t, we’re in major trouble. But I’m spent, and unless you want someone with an eighth of their container filled tomorrow, this is as deep as I’m going to get.”

Elach manifested a chain for Shar to grab, which she accepted with a nod of thanks. One swift tug later she was standing at the edge of the hole in front of him. “If it isn’t deep enough, then Roxu will have to make do. I’ve got a lot to tell you about Lighthome, and maybe you can help me make sense of some of what’s happening to my Issi.”

“Something’s happening to your Issi?” Shar asked, stepping into Roxu as the curtain parted before her. She looked Elach up and down, then tilted her head in confusion. “I can’t feel anything different about you. Maybe if you took down your veils for a moment, I could get a better look?”

“Not happening, sorry.” Elach said, holding up his palm to stop the question that was coming next. But he didn’t have to.

Shar nodded in understanding, then sat down on the bed with a sigh of exhaustion. “Can you give me an explanation of what’s happening? Or at the very least what feels different compared to before you left for Lighthome?”

“If I’m going to tell you that, I might as well start from right after I left for Lighthome.” Elach said with a grunt, settling down in what had become his chair. “Right after I left, I kept noticing these groups of bug-people acting strangely violent…”

Shar had been silent for a good few minutes after Elach had finished telling his story, ‘taking in everything’ in her own words. Elach scratched his stubble while he tapped his foot on the ground, waiting for whatever thought was taking Shar so long to sort through. She’d asked uncharacteristically few questions while he told her about what happened, and even fewer once he’d finished.

Roxu creaked, reminding Elach that he was indeed inside a sentient being, and not a simple hollow tree. “I may have an idea as to what happened, but I don’t know your story outside of what you’ve told me, so I’m not really sure. But it seems to me like you might be developing…”

“Quiet.” Shar snapped, surprising Roxu to silence.

Elach turned to Shar with equal surprise. “You can understand Roxu now?” He asked.

“Very slightly. But I understood enough to know what Roxu was going to insinuate.” Shar muttered, lacing her fingers together and looking down at them. “But from everything you’ve told me, Elach, you don’t want to hear what that insinuation was going to be. Not just from today’s story, but everything you’ve confided in me over the weeks.”

“Okay… well, you can tell me when we aren’t in serious danger. What about Ghravv’s spawn? Did that guidebook say anything about it? Or these bug-people in general?” Elach coaxed, trying to get any kind of information on the place and people he was about to doom. “I know Hoalt knows about them, so maybe there’s something written about them in there?”

Shar shook her head. “I’ve read the book cover-to-cover twice now, and there are exactly zero mentions of bug-people, shrouded in shadow or otherwise. They must be from before Hoalt opened the pillar to the general public, when it was only a training ground for his armies and chosen. But I don’t know why this spawn isn’t one of the constants; it seems powerful enough.”

Elach waited until it was obvious Shar didn’t have anything else to say, then leaned back in his chair to stare up at nothing. “That’s it?” He eventually said. “All that, and you don’t have anything to add?”

“No, I don’t.” Shar confirmed with a massive yawn. “My mind isn’t in the state for conversation or any serious thought at the moment, sorry. Maybe tomorrow we can go through everything one last time while we travel to Lighthome in case my tired mind didn’t absorb some piece of critical information.”

“Eight or six hours?” Elach asked. He received quiet, rhythmic breathing in return. “...Shar?”

The woman had managed to fall asleep in the seconds between the end of her speaking and Elach beginning to speak. He craned his neck to check that she was actually sleeping and not just avoiding the conversation for some reason, but pulled back the moment his Issi senses touched her. She was utterly drained.

Unlike Elach, who still had a strange excess of Issi and energy. He leaned on one elbow and closed his eyes, feeling his connections to Flow and Y’talla strengthen in the moments he was between his physical body and his headspace. It might’ve been rude to ignore Roxu, but from tomorrow forward, the dead-ish tree would have a brand new home here. Where it would be impossible to ignore.

“The last moments of relative silence.” Elach chuckled, opening his eyes to the spine a gleaming rainbow above Flow’s fountain. “That’s coming along nicely, so maybe I should get to work on a third focus…”

His eyes were drawn once more to the rotting blades, which he continued to think of as biological for some reason. They weren’t rusting, but rotting. Even though they were definitely made of metal, and not something like wood or bone. But not any kind of metal Elach had ever seen. It was… hurting.

“Hey, Elach!” Y’talla said with a vigorous wave as she clambered onto the invisible platform. “Hope you don’t mind that I took all those wisps for the spring. They’re going to grow up big and strong once we get the Issi flowing with Roxu!”

Elach smiled and tousled Y’talla’s verdant hair. “I should have guessed that’s what you were doing. And no, I don’t mind at all.” He leaned down, checking that all the existential bleed was indeed still there, sighing in relief when he found all the bottles intact. “There was one specific wisp that came in before all the yellow ones. Is it fine?”

“Mmhm.” Y’talla said with a nod, hopping up to the edge of the fountain then spinning to look into Elach’s eyes. “We’re making the safest primal spring the world piece has ever seen. But we’re going to need a whole lot more stuff if we don’t want all of our wisplings to grow up into nature wisps.”

Elach gestured at the small pile of stuff he’d bartered a few of the wisplings for. “Is any of this stuff worth… planting?” He crossed his arms and stared down at the primal spring. “I’m not really sure how we’re supposed to get Issi into this place. We can’t just go around stealing important landmarks.”

“Of course not. We need to ask their permission first.” Y’talla huffed. “I’m not forcing anyone into anything they don’t want. And except for the grave markers, nothing’s worth planting. Maybe if we can convince Shar to give up some of her seeds, we could get some cool trees and plants in here…”

Y’talla continued to ramble, but Elach was stuck on the mention of grave markers. He quickly scanned the piley and didn’t notice anything that looked like grave markers. Unless the blades weren’t actually blades.

He bent over and grabbed the smooth obsidian handle of one of the blades, then carefully removed its far more jagged twin. “Do you mean these?” He asked, holding the rotting blades for Y’talla to take. “I thought they were some kind of rotted old swords.”

“They can be both.” Y’talla laughed, grabbing both handles without worrying about the jagged edges. “Too bad they never managed to manifest themselves; I bet they’d have some crazy stories to tell. But they’re both super dead.”

The mist-water puffed up under Y’talla’s feet as she jumped down, waving with both blades for Elach to follow her. “Come on! Let’s give our spring its first taste of Issi!”

Elach reached out to chain himself next to Y’talla, but his thoughts came faster than his actions. And he found himself right next to her before he had managed to raise his hand. She smiled wide and marched giddily away from the center of the spring, and Elach followed.

His thoughts were locked on the feeling of chaining himself, of his Issi acting at the same speed as his thoughts. Maybe even faster, since he didn’t have to push his Issi into the chain at all. It felt instinctual. As if it had always been a part of him. The sort of thing a practitioner worked their entire life towards, not a few simple months. It had to be because of where he was. Because the Issi in here was all his. All his to use as he saw fit.

A deep breath brought all the burgeoning life from the primal spring into Elach’s lungs. It was… invigorating. Invisible currents of Issi drifted through the spring, begging to be used. Begging for more. Begging for… purpose.

“Whose graves were they marking?” Elach asked, running a hand through one of the currents. It caressed his skin like a lover, flowing over him with warmth and affection. Issi had never felt like this before. It filled him with purpose.

Y’talla turned and began walking backwards, hiding the grave blades behind her back while she beamed at Elach. “You’re finally feeling it. I knew I wasn’t wrong about you.”

“All this purpose.” Elach muttered. He felt the perfect place for the twin blades calling out to him, a split boulder hiding in perpetual shadows. “What am I feeling, Y’talla? This doesn’t feel like my Issi.”

“Well that’s because it isn’t.” Y’talla laughed. “Not yet, at least. You’re not strong enough to take all of it in, but when you are, you’ll be strong enough.”

Elach snorted, chaining himself and Y’talla to the boulder. It took less than a single thought. “So when I’m strong enough, I’ll be strong enough? Isn’t that redundant?”

Y’talla shrugged. “You’ll know what I mean when you get there. Maybe you can tell me what it means, since I’m just saying things without knowing again. Stupid whatever happened to me.”

She placed the grave markers back in Elach’s hands and gestured towards the two halves of the boulder. “Are you ready? Hollow’s going to be so happy that we got her a source of Issi in here, so she won’t have to worry about getting stronger out there where it’s dangerous.”

“...Right.” Elach murmured, the blades in his hands chitting in excitement at being given purpose. Chittering in the exact same tone as Ghravv’s spawn. “I know whose graves these marked.”

Y’talla said something else, but Elach couldn’t hear her. What he was about to do was monumental. He didn’t know why, but he knew it was. These grave markers reminded him of the ruins he’d found the tattered arrowheads around back home, or the lily pads all the regular lotus-like wisps loved. It was significant. But it lacked purpose.

Elach drove each rotting blade into a half of the boulder at the same time. The weak stream of Issi diverted and began swirling around the two graves, cocooning them in soft chains that glowed the colour of Y’talla’s skin. They were like his own chains, but not exactly so. They were his and Y’talla’s chains somehow. As if he now shared her burdens, and she his.

He backed away, his mind working through the complex knot that it had worked itself into. The chains melted into the boulders to reveal that the pulsing shadowy rot from the blades had seeped into the rock. It was calming and cool, like the darkest corner of a basement on the hottest and brightest day of the year. A reprieve from all the light and heat, offered to anyone and everyone who drew close.

A sanctuary in the dark, for those not at home in the light. Elach took a step back as the primal Issi shifted and twisted until it had completely disappeared, the flow of primal Issi now diverted around this particular place. And from within the grave markers, new Issi arose. Shadow from the further sibling with the smooth handle, and rending from the closer sibling with the jagged edges.

Purpose. Elach felt the blades’ ecstasy at being given a purpose, of being cemented into the proverbial bloodstream of existence. And after the wave of purpose came submission. Contentedness at being what they currently were, to sleep and dream until Elach needed them manifested more than he needed their power. The blades carved a single word into his mind, spoken not with hatred, but with ecstatic submission in the same fashion as some might say ‘savior’ or ‘hero’.

Tyrant.