Elach opened his eyes to Sechen barely holding her own against someone new. This person was slinging flat circles of black tinged with pink as they bombarded Sechen with blows, some golden rings surrounding her blocking the hits but cracking little by little with each attack. Sechen lashed out with a flare of light followed by a glimmering lance, but that was knocked aside by her opponent as the representative announced yet another short break. Elach moved to stand, but Metea/Irric put a hand over his chest.

“If Sechen leaves, she won’t have enough Issi to fight again. Have faith in her.” Metea/Irric said through gritted teeth, her eyes locked on Sechen as she wheezed in the middle of the arena without a single movement to indicate she was leaving. He felt Rainshear’s Issi raging through her, and as such, didn’t try to argue.

Elach heard the clanking of chains, hollow yet terrifying, as he tentatively sat down. Metea/Irric either hadn’t heard what he had or she didn’t think it was worth mentioning, since she still didn’t take her eyes off of Sechen as one of the battered opponents took the place of the fresh competitor.

Elach stared down at his hands, and the shackles binding them to some faraway place were completely visible. They were simple bands of thick, sticky-black metal. No runes, no symbols, no markings. Just shackles, a few lengths of chain, and then nothing. His ankles were bound in the same way, and when he shuffled his legs closer together they clinked like there was a huge pile of links below his feet.

When Sechen’s opponent let out a guttural scream and lunged at her without even calling her Issi, Elach had a terrible feeling he knew what his opponents’ strategy was. As Sechen backpedaled and threw up a curtain of tarnished gold light to shield herself she threw a lance of light out to the side to try and dissuade her opponent from attacking, but of course that didn’t happen.

No, what happened was that her opponent very blatantly jumped to the side directly into the lance’s path, skewering herself through the chest on the Issi that wouldn’t have hurt anyone with even a basic defence. Even with barely the dregs of a container, her opponent should have been able to muster at least that.

“They’re killing themselves on us.” Elach said in disgusted disbelief. Metea/Irric must have heard something off in his voice, since she turned to look at him with wide eyes and a dying question on her lips.

“You had more.” She whispered, and Elach gave her a sad smile and a shrug.

“Only a little bit. I have seven, maybe eight, bottles left.”

“Eight… Elach... how did you…” She began in disbelief, but her words were drowned out by existence screaming in his ears. It wanted to take him over. But the defence against Rainshear’s technique was keeping him anchored in one place. Once he was done with her, he’d have to thank her corpse for the technique.

“Contestant Sechen has slain contestant Kath.” The representative said in a voice and cadence that was an exact replica of her previous slain contestant speech. “For the crime of killing one of our own, contestant Sechen forfeits her right to compete and I shall go to take her place, unbound by the power restrictions placed on this contest.”

“Oh no.” Metea/Irric murmured, and Elach shared the sentiment. There was no way the representative wasn’t stronger than any of the other contestants. But now that he had the bleed ravaging his stomach and container, he had to hope that he just might stand a ghost of a chance.

Elach pushed off the bench, trying to ignore the clinking that came with it. “Well, guess it’s my turn. Wish me luck.”

Metea/Irric didn’t say anything, which Elach thought was a little out of character for her, but then he followed her gaze and saw what had struck her silent. The Issi the representative was showing off was far beyond what Elach figured he could do even with the bleed, but the second he so much as lost focus on them it was like they didn’t have any power at all. That was a blatant display of power, and if Elach could see the representative’s face he assumed it would be twisted into a sadistic grin. Instead they gave nothing away, already standing on the other side of the arena with their arms crossed, waiting patiently for Elach to step up to get beat down.

As he walked towards the arena, Elach got a better sense of the area around them. There were actually a fair amount of people in the stands, hidden by Issi, that he could now sense thanks to the existential bleed’s power. Every blade of glass grass was swaying in a very slight breeze, and the arena in front of him burned with the Issi that made the boundaries and something else he couldn’t make out.

He could sense Sechen and Metea/Irric shaking in anticipation and fear, not speaking a word to each other as they watched him walk to what would most likely be his death and Metea/Irric’s imminent slavery. He tried to get a sense of the people in the stands, but the Issi clouding their appearance also clouded whatever Elach’s newfound senses were doing.

In a similar vein, he could hear the last remaining member of the original squad of their opposition speaking in hushed tones obscured by Issi to the second-newest addition who was as impossible to read as the onlookers or the representative in front of him, words that carried the weight of a grim acceptance and absolutely no reluctance whatsoever, an understanding that their death would pave way for greater things. They were going to die at Elach’s hands, whether he wanted to end them or not.

“Ah, the spawn of Sentence.” The representative said in a silky smooth voice, Issi roiling off of it like steam off a hot rock. “A pity you found yourself here, in Glasrime’s domain. And now you’ll die, without understanding why.”

“Because your boss’ boss is a wisp-hating powermonger?” Elach shot back, and the way the representative stepped back involuntarily made up for the fact he couldn’t see the shock on their face.

“Begin.” The representative’s old voice spoke, but it didn’t come from their body. Had everything been pre recorded?

The representative launched something Elach couldn’t make out at him, and he suddenly saw the world as a series of inky black outlines on a blinding white backdrop as he called on his Issi. He reached out a hand to pull himself to the side and felt a tangible connection, looking to the side and seeing thick chains of amber-veined obsidian wrapped around his wrist and snaking up his arm. Elach pulled and he felt the world shift, yanked by his chains to exactly where he wanted to end up. No anchors needed.

The chains disappeared from around Elach’s wrist the moment he stood where he’d pulled himself to, and the representative whipped their head around to look directly in his eyes. They obviously hadn’t expected him to be able to dodge their attack, which crashed into the far side of the colosseum, shattering into shards of glass that rained down on the field like deadly hail. There was no way Elach would have survived that before the bleed, and he probably couldn’t have survived the attack with the bleed either.

The representative snarled through the veil of their Issi, and Elach watched in enthralled confusion as their Issi snaked out of their core and spread about them. It culminated in their fingertips and toes before shooting back up through their body, creating a latticework of Issi that shone through their clothes like a brand fresh from the fire. He’d never seen anything like that, and as he took in the rest of the room, it seemed like no-one else had seen anything like it either. And they still hadn’t. The bleed must be overcharging his ability to see Issi to the extent he could sense his opponent’s techniques before they happened, and he figured that if he knew more about how techniques worked he might be able to do something with that information. Instead, he wrapped his arm in chains and pulled himself out of the way of whatever was coming at him.

What was coming at him turned out to be the representative themselves, their Issi sparking once more before forming into a bladed weapon somewhere between a sword and a spear, whose name either didn’t exist or Elach simply had never heard. The representative swung it in an arc where Elach’s neck had been mere moments ago, turning the momentum from the slash into a repositioning lunge to where Elach had found himself after the pull.

In a moment of panic, Elach tried to wrap his chains around the representative. To his surprise, they froze in place, not even straining against the chains that held them. He felt his Issi siphoned away at a terrifyingly high rate, filled in partly by the amber nectar recharging him, but keeping the representative in place was something he just couldn’t do for long. Instead, he pulled them down as hard as he could before dispelling the chains, crumpling the administrator to the ground as the world came up to meet them. They didn’t crunch like Elach had hoped, their Issi damping most of the damage they would have taken, but their surprise was just enough that Elach found a spark of hope to hold onto.

“Relying on an accelerant to have a hope at fighting me. Pathetic.” The representative spat as they pulled themselves to their feet with what looked like puppet strings from above. “Though it is interesting that someone like you managed to get your grubby little hands on something powerful enough to raise your status so highly. Perhaps Sentence gifted you something from his private reserves?”

“Could be.” Elach shrugged.

“Talk or not, it doesn’t matter. The autopsy will reveal all.” The representative said, Issi flooding out from their container like a river after the first melt of spring.

The world around Elach faded to a background hum, a sort of grey void that he could barely make out the important things through. The representative was sort of there, but they faded into the rest of the Issi like a camouflage insect on a leaf. He knew they were there, and if he focused all of his attention on them he could just barely make them out, but just that wasn’t enough. He couldn’t sense the Issi from the attack that was obviously coming, since it was made of the same stuff as the haze of Issi that engulfed everything. So he did what he assumed he’d have to do until the representative’s technique ran its course; dodge randomly and hope nothing hit him.

Elach’s chains pulled him to the other side of the arena as he heard something tear up the ground where he’d been standing, then heard the telltale sound of a blade slicing through the air towards him. He could barely make out an outline through the grey haze, and with a clenching motion he grabbed onto the outline and tried to stop it for just a moment. A fist collided with the right side of his face, rattling his teeth and making him stumble backwards in pain. But no follow-up came, and his guts stayed inside him where they were supposed to be. The weapon stayed chained in the middle of the air, showing the barest outline of the representative’s weapon and sparing Elach from an early end.

Another fist crashed into Elach’s gut, letting him know that the representative had abandoned their weapon to land another blow. They flickered into being for a moment while their hand smashed into Elach’s stomach, then with a flash of Issi to their fist Elach knew he was in trouble. He tried to twist himself out of the way, but his body just couldn’t bend the way he needed it to, so when the representative’s scouring blast of Issi struck him it didn’t quite kill him. What he was left with, however, was a fairly large dent out of his side that should have been leaking blood and viscera like a fountain.

Instead, his hand found something like polished stone on his wounded side. It was slick and hard, but most importantly it was sealing the rest of his insides inside. He pressed down hard, something he admitted wasn’t the smartest idea, and could swear he felt something push back. Not Flow, though; they were still in his headspace, and he could feel their worry seeping through the veil separating them.