The first thing Elach did when he opened his eyes was empty the remaining contents of his stomach. The second thing he did was check to make sure he still had a stomach, since the last he remembered was being cut in two while fighting for Metea/Irric’s freedom. It seemed as if everything was still in place, which in itself was reason enough to be concerned. And the falling mass of stomach liquids through the empty floor down into the void below did glint strangely, as if they were shifting through all the colours of the rainbow at once.

So he wasn’t in reality. The absence of a floor should have clued him in right away, but waking up from supposedly dying tended to shift one’s priorities. Elach pushed up against the barrier that let him stand on nothing, wincing as his arms strained to get him into a kneeling position. Everything hurt beyond imagination, and with a final glance at the rainbow sludge down far below, he had an inkling as to why that was. Just a few minutes ago, he’d drunk one of the bottles of existential bleed that Prisoner had made him take with him to try and fight someone way out of his league. And even with all that power coursing through his veins, he still couldn’t do much of anything. Now Sechen was probably dead, and Metea/Irric a replacement for whatever that group was going to use Revel for. Oh, and Revel was Rainshear’s slave, either of gratitude or of force. Elach leaned over and dry heaved once more, but he only managed to bring tears to his eyes. There was nothing more to give.

Elach turned his head to the center of the shed-sized room, and his eyes settled on Flow’s fountain. Or he assumed it was, since it looked nothing like it had the last time he was in his headspace. It no longer had a thick column connecting its base to the fountain itself, for one. Instead, the fountain hovered over a single black plate with glowing red-gold amber etchings in the shape of a symbol Elach knew all too well; five straight lines arranged as if they’d been scratched by a clawed hand, and in the center of those lines were two overlapping diamonds and three dots that gave the illusion of an extremely simple flower. The lines were for him, and the flower was for Flow. But the black and amber was a colour combination he’d only seen once before, and only for a very short time before he’d been killed.

It was the colour of the chains his Issi had become. Elach held out a hand and tried to summon them once more, but all he could manage were small links that fell over his hand like metal silk. And yet, they still felt more like his own Issi than anything else he’d managed to do. Still, it felt like something was missing. He had the chains, yet nowhere to anchor them. And only with that revelation did Elach finally open his ears, becoming immersed in the song that was playing from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

“I’m glad you’re here too, buddy.”

Flow cawed in agreement, hopping down from the top of the fountain as the song faded into the background. They shuffled over to Elach, their talons clacking against the empty floor, and hopped up and down excitedly with spread wings just a few inches from Elach’s face.

“Did you get even bigger?” Elach asked, holding out his arm for Flow to hop up onto. Their talons latched onto his skin with a surprising stickiness, and no pain at all from the razor-sharp weapons. “No, I think you’re still about the same size. I’m just not used to this new you yet. So, do you have any idea what happened to your fountain?”

Flow shook their head and sang a low, confused note.

“So you don’t know either, huh.” Elach sighed, using his other arm to push himself up from the floor. “Probably has something to do with what happened when we were compressing our Issi.”

The fountain itself hadn’t changed as much, since it’s base form was still the same flower-like bowl, but it was now black with white and blue speckles breaking up the monotony. Like a solidified version of the minty nectar that filled half of the fountain’s chambers. Elach stepped up to the waters to see if either of the nectars had undergone changes as well, but they seemed to be the same as before. The red-gold amber nectar was still thick and sweet, while the minty nectar was cold and thin. He rested his hand that wasn’t currently held parallel to the ground on the rim of the fountain, and he instantly felt like something was off. Not wrong, per se, but different. Like there was another part of the fountain that wanted to be free, but it was buried under something that Elach couldn’t make heads or tails of.

“Did you feel that?” Elach asked, and Flow shivered in response. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

Elach took his hand off the fountain and turned his head, finally taking in all the changes that had happened to his headspace, the first of which he didn’t know how he’d missed up until this point. In each of the cardinal directions there was now a door, and none of them resembled each other in the slightest. The one straight behind where he had woken up looked to be made of actual amber, with streaks of red and gold alongside twigs and berries that seemed haphazardly strewn through the stone. Its handle was a bit of an oddity, however, as it was a black V that did not actually touch the amber, and it had a constantly shifting pattern of pearl white and sapphire blue speckles inside of it that grew brighter and dimmer at random intervals. Elach stepped forward to grab the handle, but Flow was having none of that.

They hadn’t even given that door a second thought, and they pecked Elach’s forehead to get him to look where they wanted him to. Elach shifted his gaze one door to the right, and had to stop for a moment. His thoughts raced at the possibilities this door implied, but they also disturbed him more than a little. He thought he’d managed to break free from the eternals’ controlled reality, but the shining obsidian arch with a curtain of grey static cascading down from it gave him second thoughts.

“It’s Hollow.” Elach said, and Flow bobbed up and down on his arm while squawking in excitement. “But how? We didn’t bond yet. And they’re still somewhere out there on the other side.”

Or maybe they weren’t, Elach realized. He’d recently learned that wisp manifestations weren’t quite as bound by the eternals as everyone else was, so maybe Hollow could actually end up finding him. If he was actually still alive, that was. But that didn’t explain how this door was here, and as Elach walked closer to it, he felt something in his mind pushing him away. He walked for what felt like minutes, but when he stopped he was still at the boundaries of his room. The door was just out of reach, tantalizing him from a few steps over the void below. He pressed his hand up to the invisible wall, and a screen of symbols popped in place to prevent him from going any further. His symbols.

“Maybe it’s because I lived for so long on the other side?” Elach theorized, removing his hand from the wall and watching as the symbols crumbled into nothing. “This is what was supposed to happen, but now it’s been cut off because I bonded with Sentence.”

Flow thought for a moment before reluctantly muttering agreement, disappointedly turning away from Hollow’s door and pausing. Elach looked at them with a raised eyebrow for a second before he followed their gaze, and he too found himself at a loss for words. It was like reality was collapsing in on itself as countless different doors shifted in and out of existence, sometimes not waiting for the previous ones to disappear before popping in themselves.

It was a bizarre spectacle to behold, with doors sticking out of and overlapping each other in ways that shouldn’t have been possible before exploding into splinters or pebbles or whatever else they were made of and making way for another imposition. Elach rubbed his eyes with his free hand when he felt them drying out, forcing himself to blink and look away from the spectacle. It wasn’t easy, and Flow chirped in annoyance as they brushed their head with their wing when Elach moved them away.

“Well, that was something.” Elach chuckled. “How didn’t I see that when I looked around the room before? Should have been pretty obvious.”

Flow rumbled a sound deep in their throat that sounded more reptilian than avian, a sound that Elach took to be agreement mixed with annoyance at themselves for not noticing. Or they could have been angry. Elach chose the option that didn’t mean he had a murder-bird just a few inches away from his face.

“And door number four isn’t much better, either.” Elach said as he crossed his free arm over his chest. Door four wasn’t even really a door, but a pile of bricks, metal scrap, and splinters that had probably been a door at some point. Elach could feel, but not see, Issi coming off the pile like steam off a freshly baked pie, and for some reason it was equally tantalizing to him. But once more the door was out of reach, a wall of his symbol blocking him off from making it any closer to the wreckage.

“So, what now?” Elach mused. “We’ve got four doors, and we can’t get to any of them. Wait, what happened to the blurry thing that used to be here? Shouldn’t Prisoner’s coin be in here somewhere?”

Flow batted Elach’s head with their wing.

“What was that… ah. Right. The doors.” Elach said sheepishly. “Probably should have realized that sooner. So what, Prisoner’s coin made all of them appear? Then I should be able to put Issi into them and do a technique, right? Or does that only work outside of my headspace?”

Elach stepped back up to the amber door and placed his hand on the gem-like material. It felt warm to the touch, and he could feel something rhythmically pulsing through it like a heartbeat, an oddly soothing pulse that felt like it was synchronizing with his own. He swallowed hard as he removed his hand, already longing for the comfort and warmth he’d felt through the amber, and instead reached for the V-shaped handle.

It was a stark comparison to the amber, cold and slick like a mossy rock after a rainstorm. Elach tried pulling, rotating, and pushing the handle, but none of his attempts proved fruitful. His hand kept slipping over the handle if he tried to wrench it harder, and it wouldn't budge even if he put all of his weight on it. Flow tried to get it open as well, gripping the handle in their talons and flapping or jumping to try and get the least bit of movement from it.

“Maybe it isn’t supposed to open?” Elach offered as Flow jumped to the ground. But as soon as the words came out of his mouth, he knew that wasn’t the case. The doors were made by a combination of his Issi and Prisoner’s coin, but there was something else there that he couldn’t place. It was like there was something just beyond them, something that didn’t belong to him or Flow. It didn’t feel dangerous, sinister, or even like something at all he realized. No, it felt like someone else.

Flow’s Issi spiked at the moment Elach came to that realization, their feathers shimmering and rustling in an invisible wind in agitation. A deep rumble came from deep within them, both a warning to whatever was in there and their way of letting Elach know he wasn’t alone in this. Elach expected to see a red-gold or blue and white speckled black aura coming off of Flow, but that wasn’t what he saw. It looked as if there was a helix of translucent Issi surrounding them, giving off the feeling of the first glimpse of a lifelong journey. Deep forest green wisps joined in the colourless helix every now and again, following its path perfectly and making Elach think that the entire helix was supposed to be that green.

Switching his focus back to the door, Elach reached out with his Issi to try and grasp the handle. A chain of tiny links connected his right arm to the door handle, wrapping themselves around it multiple times and crushing the two arms of the V together into a rectangle. Elach got the feeling that all he had to do was pull and the door would swing open, but he wasn’t quite sure if he wanted to do that. There was the possibility that whoever was on the other side wasn’t friendly, or that his headspace would warp to try and accommodate the newcomer the same way it had done when he’d bonded with Flow. Elach looked down at Flow, who nodded without even looking at him, their resolve written plainly in the way they stood at the ready. Elach shook his head to clear his doubts, positioned himself for better leverage when he yanked the chain, and took a deep breath.

Elach visualized the door handle being yanked towards him, tightened his grip on the chains, and pulled with the combined might of muscle, mind, and Issi. But he’d managed to forget how his own Issi worked, and the door rushed up to him as the slack in the chain wound itself around his wrist. Elach’s nose barely met amber with a small dink, and he stepped back in shock as the way his own Issi worked came rushing back to him. The chain still hadn’t disappeared, however, and as Elach moved backwards the door swung open with him.