Metea/Irric sat across from Elach on the other side of the table, quietly etching something into a thin plate of metal that looked like it was still molten. Her eyes were instead locked on Elach, and he could see the clouds within them shifting through the dim grey light of a pendant around her neck.

“Barely different.” Elach yawned, sitting up and pulling his blanket to his shoulders. “Is that normal?”

“Changes in size don’t usually come with anything else, until they come with everything else.” Metea/Irric said, gently blowing the metal shavings off of her plate. They collected in a tiny vortex and settled in a small glass container off to her right. “If your headspace was a house, you wouldn’t really notice when the rooms got a little bit bigger. But then, one day, there’s suddenly another floor in your house. That’s the kind of change I mean.”

“How long does it take to get changes like that?”

“Once per container compression, but it didn’t happen for me until well into my third. And it didn’t happen right away. I finished with my daily routine and checked my headspace to find a brand new addition. Focuses and manifestations can cause changes too, but focuses are like furnishing a room and manifestations are like changing what your house is made of.” Metea/Irric waved her stylus in the air, the tip glinting light blue. “But that’s just a generalization. You’ll learn that people like us aren’t as closely bound by the norm as everyone else.”

Elach nodded. “Sorry about today, by the way.”

“Eh. I don’t blame you, honestly. Rainshear’s as dangerous as the hells themselves, and I have a bad feeling she’s not going to get better any time soon.” Metea/Irric set down her project and leaned closer to Elach. He noticed a small pendant around her neck glowing grey, etched to the brim with symbols that seemed to absorb the ambient Issi around them. “You coming here gave me enough of my mind back to finish this pendant off, since Rainshear had to focus most of her attention on keeping you subdued. She’s got you under a technique that’s making you a little dumber, and a whole lot more subservient.”

Elach looked over his shoulder, glancing down to the main floor where he knew Rainshear was. “Should we be talking about this here? Can’t Rainshear hear us?”

“She’s… out right now. She left right after you got back.” Metea/Irric said, holding up a hand to stifle any questions Elach might have had. “No, I don’t know where she went. Or when she’s coming back..”

“Well, then, I have one or two questions I’d like answered.” Elach said, pushing himself up on his elbows so he was sitting on the couch. “You tied me up and interrogated me. Was that you or Rainshear?”

Metea/Irric leaned back and crossed her arms, letting out a breath that lingered in the air as wispy clouds until she spoke and dispersed them. “That was mostly Rainshear. I wanted to make sure you weren’t going to spill my secret to everyone, but that’s not how I wanted to do it. But I think you know that whatever Rainshear wants, she gets. And that’s why she’s so obsessed with Revel.”

“Because her Issi doesn’t work on Revel?” Elach assumed.

“It’s not that it doesn’t work, but more that she doesn’t want it to work.” Metea/Irric said slowly, a grimace spreading along her face as she thought. “She’s said some pretty awful things to me in private, and most of them involve what she wants Revel to do for her. To willingly do for her, and to her, I mean.”

Elach wrinkled his nose at the thought of what Rainshear wanted. “That’s awful.”

“Mmhm.” Metea/Irric agreed. “Oh, and I told Sechen that you got stronger overnight. Sorry. I kind of don’t have a filter anymore thanks to being Rainshear’s puppet for so long.”

“Did you tell her about Flow?” Elach asked. If Rainshear already knew about that, then it didn’t really matter if Sechen did.

Metea/Irric shook her head. “I can keep some secrets secret, but it’s hard. Like, if I open my mouth without thinking first, it’ll all spill out. You can thank Rainshear for that, but me being a little too trusting is all me. This technique in me exacerbates it, but I know I’m a little too naive for the glacier.”

“Another reason not to trust Rainshear. As if I needed another one.” Elach chuckled. “So what’s happening? Why’s Rainshear out?”

“She said she’s going to meet with her ‘colleagues’. But I contacted all our regulars, and none of them said they were meeting with Rainshear.” Metea/Irric crossed her arms and shook her head. “She’s already got a plan that we’re going to talk about tomorrow, but I’ve got a really bad feeling about it.”

“I’ve had a bad feeling ever since I felt Rainshear’s technique screwing with my brain.” Elach muttered. “So are we a part of this plan, or is she leaving us behind?”

“We all are. But the truth is that none of us should be going with Rainshear. She’s bringing along ‘colleagues’ that I haven’t even heard of, and it’s going to be absurdly dangerous for anyone weaker than them. Which all three of us,” Metea/Irric motioned at Elach, herself, and where Elach assumed Sechen was sleeping, “are. And that leads me to my next question; why is Rainshear insisting that we come along?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know what I mean.” Metea/Irric sighed. “It’s been bothering me all night, and anything I come up with is so awful that I don’t want to consider it a possibility. Like if Rainshear brokered a deal with whoever kidnapped Revel to do an… exchange. A combination of me, you, and Sechen traded for Revel’s freedom.”

Elach thought back to Rainshear’s look of unbridled lust when he caught her staring at Revel just two days ago. Combined with the technique he’d just freed himself from, Metea/Irric’s suggestion didn’t seem too far-fetched. “You think she’d do that? Revel would be livid if Rainshear bartered Sechen’s life for Revel’s.”

“I don’t think she’d do that, since she’d be trading three puppets for one, but I can’t eliminate the possibility. I’ve met every single person in this glacier that works to protect wisps and their bonded, Elach. None of them are coming with us tomorrow. That does not bode well.”

“So what are we gonna do?” Elach leaned forward as his worry pushed back his fatigue. “If Rainshear’s gonna sell us to save her crush, I’m not having any of that shit.”

“I don’t know. I can’t fight Rainshear alone, and if she’s got a whole crew of people as powerful as she is I don’t stand a chance.” Metea/Irric sighed, folding the metal sheet in front of her multiple times until it was small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. “I can’t run, either. I can’t get Rainshear’s Issi out of my body, so she’ll be able to track me wherever I go. And I promised Sechen and Revel that I’d protect them. If Rainshear isn’t going to do that, well, I am.”

“And I’m definitely weaker than you are. And Sechen’s weaker than me, right?” Elach asked. “Unless she’s hiding her true strength or something?”

“Unfortunately not.” Metea/Irric sighed. “She has extenuating circumstances combined with some, how do I put it… self-imposed roadblocks that have kept her weak.”

“So we wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“Pretty much.” Metea/Irric said with a grimace. “But that’s the worst case scenario. The best case scenario is that Rainshear hired these people because she didn’t want to out everyone else if Glasrime does turn out to be in on this.”

Elach pressed his lips into a thin line. “That makes more sense than her trading us for Revel, if she wants to stay here.”

“I know Rainshear.” Metea/Irric sighed. “The only reason she got into this is because of Revel, you know. Got infatuated with her at first glance and changed everything about her life to protect wisps. Probably in the hopes that Revel would see what Rainshear was doing and throw her gleaming self at Rainshear out of some kind of thanks.”

Elach let out a low whistle. “That’s more than a little creepy.”

“Far more than a little. And that’s why I think Rainshear’s willing to sell out Sechen; she thinks Revel’s gratitude at being freed will override her grief at losing Sechen. Or maybe, in Rainshear’s mind, the grief will make Revel even more likely to look for someone to fill the void Sechen left.”

“Ok, now that’s just full-on disgusting. And you think that’s probably what’s going to happen tomorrow?”

“I do. And if you see me tomorrow and my pendant isn’t glowing under my shirt, don’t trust a single thing I say.” Metea/Irric rubbed her pendant with two fingers. “And don’t trust anything Rainshear says if it’s for anyone’s benefit but her own.”

Elach slept like a log, that is to say crackling and burning up on the inside and out until he felt spent and useless. He woke up to Metea/Irric nudging him awake, and the look she gave him let him know exactly what he suspected. He let out a titanic yawn that made his jaw pop, signaling Flow who appeared with a quiet song hello before settling down on the table.

“Be ready for anything.” Metea/Irric said with a neutral expression, patting Flow on the head before turning to drop down to the main level. He didn’t catch a glimpse of her pendant, but her words didn’t sound like they’d been run through Rainshear’s filter.

Elach threw on his now three day old clothes as Flow landed on the rail surrounding the loft, waiting for him to finish before gliding down as Elach climbed down the ladder himself. The smell of breakfast was somehow different this morning, an acrid undertone that made his nose feel like it was burning with every inhale. He looked at Metea/Irric for any kind of signal that the food was unsafe, and she shrugged while pulling apart a muffin with coal black berries and sulphur yellow streaks with a mild expression of disgust.

“I know it doesn’t smell the best, but we don’t get a lot of high-level Issi foods here.” Rainshear said with mild disdain, picking at an egg with a dark pink yolk and slightly red whites.

“Because the good stuff goes to Glasrime’s friends?” Elach guessed, taking a seat next to Metea/Irric across the table from Sechen.

“You got it.” Rainshear sighed. “This slop’s almost as powerful as the good stuff, but the good stuff has one huge advantage over this garbage.”

“And that is?” Sechen asked, seemingly unbothered by the off smell and assumed off taste of the food.

“It actually tastes good.” Rainshear said with a dry chuckle. “Infinitely easier to get a boost from the foods you eat if you can actually stomach them.”

Elach bit into a muffin that tasted like Rainshear had scraped it along the ashes of a campfire in the same room as a rotting orange. The fact that it crunched like charcoal didn’t help the overall experience. “Yeah, if this didn’t taste like garbage I could stomach more than a bite.”