“As I said, we do not have the luxury of time on our side.” Sentence reiterated, his voice calm as Elach and his container screamed in agony. “I have overfilled your container to the proper size it needs to be before you may compress it, and wrapped it in the threads of existence to ensure it does not rupture before you expand it properly. You will have to work through the pain, Elach, but you and Flow will come out the other side stronger and more knowledgeable from this ordeal.”

“We still have three days!” Elach yelled, and Flow joined in with angry cawing.

“Three days to instill six years worth of knowledge.” Sentence said. “And still, these four days plus your bond with Flow will only make up for around two years. Perhaps more, thanks to the peculiarities being a six-year guide afflicted you with; but you will still be behind. Albeit less so, though you will then have the tools to eventually reach the same heights as your peers. Now focus on your container. It shouldn’t be difficult with the Issi inside you threatening to rupture at any second.”

Sentence was right about that, at least. It would have been harder to ignore the white-hot ball of pain and Issi just below Elach’s stomach, but latching onto it with his mind was like trying to grab a burning log from a campfire and hold it at both ends; he constantly let go, dancing his focus from one hand to the other, burning both and making no progress.

“I can’t.” Elach said in a shaky voice through clenched teeth, cold sweat starting to pour down his neck. Panic was starting to set in, and he couldn’t stop his hands from shaking. “It hurts too much to keep hold of.”

“That is a... problem.” Sentence slowly admitted, walking up to Elach and putting a hand on his shoulder. “My Issi shouldn’t be reacting so violently. Though it might just be that your container was smaller than I expected. No matter; what you have to do is the same regardless of the cause.”

Sentence trailed his finger down Elach’s back, and freezing cold blossomed along his spine. The cold sank in deep, then turned to numbness as it washed over Elach’s container.

“I’ve numbed your container to the best of my abilities. It will still damage you if left untouched, and it will be far more difficult to discern the right time to stop expanding your container, but you will be able to touch it.” Sentence lifted his finger from Elach’s back, but the numbness remained. “Now, can you get a hold on your container?”

Elach opened his eyes for a moment to ensure his fingers weren’t charred and burned, closing them once again when he saw that they were indeed still usable. This was all in his head, all the feelings and the pain, but if he didn’t get a hold of the Issi raging inside his container that might no longer be the case. Elach prodded his container with the pads of his fingers, tentatively pressing all of them to the roiling mass when he wasn’t forced to recoil in pain. He could still see the Issi doing something horrible to his skin, but this was all in his head. His real fingers were still fine, just like they were seconds ago. And even if he was starting to smell seared flesh mixed with wet earth, he was going to be fine.

“I’ve got a hold on it.” Elach said, fighting back the urge to rip his fingers from his container. “What do I do next?”

“Has your Issi manifested self fused with your container?” Sentence asked.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Ah, right. The palms, fingertips, or whatever you have placed on your container of the person you see yourself as when you observe your container should now be fused onto your container. And from the grimace you just gave me, I’m going to assume we can go ahead with expansion now.”

Attempting to pull his fingertips from his container no longer felt like he was stretching the skin on his fingers, but now felt like he was going to rip the fragile shell of his container in two. It was a terrifying sensation, to hold the thing that allowed Elach to not only wield Issi but to think for himself in his own hands. As Elach wondered, he noticed Sentence had been speaking for a few seconds and had missed the first part of his explanation. He asked Sentence to repeat himself, and Sentence let out a small sigh but obliged.

“Expanding your container is not only about making it possible to hold more Issi within you; your container is the physical representation of your powers. It will grow into a mirror of what your Issi becomes; and with each cycle of expansion and compression it will become attuned to the Issi inside of it. So you must focus on what your Issi can do, what you hope it will evolve into, and let those thoughts and ideals shape your container for you.”

“And that will make my container bigger?”

“No, it will ensure your container does not deform as you force it to expand. To actually expand your container you will need to put a constant strain on it, but not so much as to damage it, while taking Issi into yourself to fill the empty space that is created. Once that space is filled, you will have to change your perception so that your container is no longer being stretched, but that its current size is normal for it. Perception is key for this, Elach, and a moment of hesitation could cause your container to snap back into place with disastrous consequences.”

“So all I need to do is pull for a bit, then convince myself that my now-bigger container is how it should be?”

“Pulling may not necessarily be what you need to do, but the core of the thought is correct. Actually putting the thoughts into motion will be the challenging part of this exercise, and since you will be working with a dangerous amount of Issi I will be monitoring you and reaching out to save you if you are in danger of collapsing your container in on itself.”

Elach gave his container a tentative pull from both sides, the overfilled orb leaking Issi like light through leaves, its terrifyingly fragile surface the only thing keeping that Issi from destroying him. “Good to know.”

“Once you begin, your perception will be limited to your own inner world. I will be here, watching over you while you work, keeping you safe when you inevitably fail. But time runs short; do not dwell on failure, quickly learn and move past it, and strive to never fail in that same way again.”

His fingers fused with his container, which was both the orb in front of him and the paradoxically large space his mind found itself in right now, Elach tried to spread his fingers to stretch his container. The cracks widened by the second, Issi burning through like the flare-ups from a starting fire. Elach waited for the pain to come, then for discomfort, then for anything as severe as an itch. But as he pulled his container apart, the cracks now so wide he could have stuck a finger through them, he felt nothing. Which was both relieving and worrying.

“Am I supposed to feel something?” Elach said, but his voice echoed out around him instead of leaving his mouth. “Right, trapped inside my inner world. And Sentence did say he’d numbed me. So maybe I’m doing this right?”

A flare of Issi jetted out and slammed into Elach’s chest, ripping the breath from his lungs. As he gasped for breath he looked down with one eye closed, expecting to see a wicked burn, but saw only ashes fluttering to the ground and pink skin under a hole the size of a cherry in his shirt. Elach let go of his pull and his hands snapped back into place, the tears in his container back to the minimal scarring they’d started as. Nothing exploded around him, and he didn’t feel Sentence’s Issi come in to save him.

Elach looked around in confusion, the endless void around him giving him nothing to work with for any sort of explanation. Was he doing this wrong? He craned his neck back as far as it would go, only now realizing that his container was fixed in place. He could rotate it, but other than that it wouldn’t move at all. Looking back at the cracked orb in front of him, Elach took a deep breath and tried to pull his container into expanding once more.

“This isn’t working.” Elach muttered. He’d managed to pull his container until it looked more like a rounded spiderweb than anything else, letting Issi flares smack harmlessly into him as it grew larger and larger. “I’ve gotta be missing something.”

Perception. That had to be it. Elach let the strength out of his arms, his container snapping back into place once more. He wasn’t looking at this like he needed to; he was simply pulling on his container and letting it do whatever it wanted to. He wasn’t actually making his container bigger, all he was doing was stretching what was there thinner and thinner without thinking about how his Issi would stay in this sorry hole-filled excuse of an Issi receptacle.

This time, he had to make sure his container would be able to actually contain his Issi. Elach stared down at his fingers, now fused into his container, dissolving into Issi at the first knuckle. The rot-like Issi didn’t seem to be crawling up his fingers past where it already had, but it gave Elach an idea. Instead of pulling on his container, Elach pushed his fingers into the cracked orb. They slipped inwards, all sensations disappearing into nothing as the Issi rot spread up to Elach’s second knuckle, and the cracks all filled in. It was like a cloud had covered the sun, and when Elach tried to pull his fingers back out the orb was pulled with them.

He’d added a little bit of himself to his container, and now it felt stronger than before. Stronger, but not larger. Issi still raged against the slightly thicker shell, and so Elach pulled. But this time, he didn’t envision it pulling apart and exposing scars of Issi. This time he thought of his container as a starving beast, devouring everything outside of it and growing fat with excess. The first pull Elach felt something like a tickle at the back of his mind, but that tickle quickly grew into something more. As he pulled, his container growing ever so slightly larger and larger as he did, ribbons of something amber coloured funneled in from the nothing around him to add to his container. With each ribbon he grew more and more exhausted, until his arms burned with the burden of keeping his container as large as it was. He felt like he would collapse any second, and as one more ribbon came into being that is exactly what happened.

His container exploded. Issi and amber sheared through his perceived self, cutting him to ribbons and leaving him a mutilated corpse floating in the expanse of his own mind. He closed his eyes as everything started to go black, but then something powerful intruded on his world. It was like being spun about at hurricane speeds, his brain crushed to the back of his skull as he tried to keep up with what was happening. After what felt like minutes, but was probably closer to fifteen seconds, Elach reluctantly opened one eye, then the other, and confusion crept over him as he looked down at his hands on his container.

It was like he’d done nothing. His fingers dissolved into Issi rot up to the first knuckle, and scars of Issi marred the surface of his container as Sentence’s Issi raged within. He breathed a shuddering sigh of relief and slumped to the ground, the near-death experience leaving him shaking and his thoughts jumbled for a few minutes until he managed to gather himself and pull himself back up.

“That must have been Sentence.” Elach said to himself, pushing his fingers into his container up to the second knuckle. “Which means I just snapped my container back into place.” He chuckled, eyeing his container with newfound apprehension. “Let’s not do that again.”