“I did? Why would I…” Elach shook his head and sighed. “No, I know why I would. Damned sense of obligation. So, wild guess; you were one of the manifestations that tried to bond with me?”

“I didn’t just try.” Y’talla puffed out her chest in pride. “I succeeded. But I didn’t know you didn’t have a wisp. So things went… screwy. You said goodbye, left while joking with Kayvee, and then the biggest boom I’d ever heard went off. It felt like the entire world piece was going to shatter. And then… you forgot me. I called out to you, but you either looked right through me or got that look everyone gets when they see something they’re not supposed to. Your eyes didn’t focus on me, and you went all still, and you stopped responding at all. I had to let you go back, and everything just kept going. It was like the eternals were laughing at all my attempts to talk to you.”

Elach shook his head and whistled. “I don’t remember any of that. Not at all. Were you friends with Flow and the other two?”

“As much as I could be friends with an unmanifested wisp, yeah. Which isn’t a lot.” Y’talla pointed out. “They go from a mindless mass of Issi to a fully functioning manifestation in the blink of an eye. With nothing in between the two!”

“I was bonding Flow when Hollow manifested, so I didn’t get to see her change. Would have been interesting.”

“It was. All three of those wisps look so cool now. I hope I’ll manifest something like they did some day.”

“Some day.” Elach repeated with a nod. “So have you been in my head all this time? Just waiting for something to happen?”

“I’m pretty sure those invaders killed me. Well, the me that was in the real world. I’ve been stuck in something like a dream ever since we bonded, and when I died it felt like I became whole. Like I latched onto the last piece of myself and hung on for dear life, you know?” Y’talla mimed tugging on a rope, then shrugged. “I didn’t even realize I’d died until I started seeing things through your eyes. It all happened way too fast.”

Elach rubbed his chin in thought. “There’s gotta be a connection there. The cultists attack my primal spring and kill you. We put back together another primal spring that didn’t get saved in the nick of time. I couldn’t do anything to this place before you filled the holes in Sentence’s bond. This can’t be nothing.”

“No way.” Y’talla agreed. “I was hoping stuff would change when we fixed this place up, but all we got is this bottomless spring. Maybe we were supposed to fix the sky.”

“If we were, we didn’t have the tools to fix it. It’s not worth dwelling on. Instead, we need to try and find a way out of this place.” Elach gestured in a semicircle. “I’m thinking we jump and hope the landing’s soft.”

“Wow.” Y’talla snickered. “That’s a terrible idea.”

“I’ll pull us down for a little while first, but after that, I think falling is our best bet. Our Issi should let us survive the fall.”

Y’talla grumbled and moaned, but eventually caved. “Ok. But you have to promise you won’t let go while we’re falling. And that you won’t land on me.” Y’talla pointed her finger until it was less than an inch away from Elach’s nose. “You can survive me falling on you, but I can’t survive getting crushed by you.”

Elach pushed Y’talla’s finger away with one of his own. “I’ll protect you, don’t worry.”

“I know you will.” Y’talla said with a smile. “I trust you.”

What felt like a few hours of fruitless chaining and pulling later, Elach gave the signal. Y’talla nodded and hugged Elach as tight as she could, and Elach let go of his chain. He readied himself for the plummet, that feeling of vertigo that slowly faded away into air whipping past his face in a sort of acceptance of the inevitable.

Instead, his feet touched solid ground.

“Did you let go?” Y’talla asked, eyes still squeezed shut. “I don’t feel like we’re falling.”

Elach frowned and chained himself upwards, then pulled himself down once more. He flew past the point where he knew the ground was, and two chains later, he should have been burrowed deep into the dirt. He let go and braced to fall once more, only to find solid ground once more.

“This place is aggravating.” Elach sighed. “You can open your eyes. We’re on solid ground.”

“Really? That was a short fall.” Y’talla noted, untangling herself from Elach and prodding at the ground with one toe. “Did we get really lucky?”

“No, I pulled us deeper after I hit the ground the first time. Don’t tell me this was some kind of test.” Elach groaned. “A damned faith exercise in the middle of everything.”

“I guess we’re both pretty faithless.” Y’talla giggled. “Now what?”

Existence responded to Y’talla’s question by shattering into a billion pieces, leaving Elach standing on nothing as they were whisked away like dust on the wind. He turned in a panic to see that Y’talla was still there, breathed a sigh of relief and watched everything break away.

“Elach?” Y’talla asked nervously.

He reached out and tightly grabbed her hand. “Yeah?”

“Are we going to be okay?”

The barbed lies stuck in Elach’s throat. No matter what he tried, he couldn’t get them out. So he had to settle for the uncertain truth. “I don’t know.”

Elach gasped at the burning on his stomach and its mirror on his forehead, launching bolt upright as the air was stolen from his lungs in one titanic breath.

“Ah, good. I was starting to worry your friend’s recipe might have been flawed.”

Elach turned to see a well dressed man with dark skin, then whipped around to look for Y’talla. He couldn’t find her anywhere. Was he in someone’s office?

“Not that it could be a flaw in my administration technique, or Jame’s creation.” The man chuckled. “Welcome back to the land of the living, Elach.”

“Where is Y’talla?”

The man raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know who you’re talking about. You’ve been dissociated for almost two weeks now, so you must have questions. As part of the deal, I will answer them as well as I can.”

Two weeks? That couldn’t be right. He’d been with Y’talla for at least… two months. “Who are you? And where am I?”

“The two golden questions. My name is Hoalt, and you are in my city. More specifically, my home inside of my city.”

“Hoalt?” Elach clenched his fists and narrowed his eyes. “Tyrant.”

“By designation alone. I was made aware of your unique circumstances by the man who calls himself Prisoner, and I’m prepared to show you my true form to dissuade any doubts you have.”

“I don’t want to be anywhere near that monster.” Elach tried to swing his legs over the edge of the… desk he was sitting on, but his muscles weren’t exactly obeying him. “You almost ate me. Twice.”

Hoalt bristled, golden lines speeding down his skin before disappearing a moment later. “That is where you are mistaken. We hold similar views towards the starving tyrant of the Gilded Night. And, if you confirm Prisoner’s goals, we might have similar desired ends as well.”

“I’m not getting tricked into talking. If you want a conversation, you can go ahead.” Elach gestured for Hoalt to begin. “I’ll make up my mind after listening.”

“A fair proposal. Where would you like me to start?” Hoalt asked, leaning back in his chair and resting his hands on his chest.

“Who brought me here?”

“Your friends, of course. Who else would carry a corpse a week out from the glacier to ask for my assistance? But that isn’t what you wanted to hear, is it?” Hoalt shook his head. “Because you wouldn’t consider them friends. Prisoner, Sechen, Metea/Irric, and Gilt brought you to me to make and administer a tetherbrand that would re-link your container and headspace after they were severed in a confrontation in Glasrime’s doman.”

“Gilt? How in the hells did they find him?” Elach wondered aloud. “And how’d Prisoner get out of his cell? Wasn’t that supposed to be an eternal punishment kind of thing?”

Hoalt raised an eyebrow. “He is actually a prisoner? I thought it was a nickname.”

“Unless I’ve been hallucinating everything for the past few months, which is seeming more and more like a reasonable possibility, yeah. He’s a real convict.” Elach stretched his fingers, feeling his torn and chained container struggling to contain his Issi. “Did Metea/Irric and Sechen want to be here? Or was he… I don’t know, blackmailing them?”

“They seemed to be here of their own free will. Though Metea/Irric was worse for wear, and Sechen seemed strangely amicable around the representative I sent along with them.” Hoalt smiled knowingly. “Something must have happened between her and Paui.”

“And Gilt?”

“I couldn’t get a read on that one. He seemed to be content to go along with the others, if my quite rusty ability to read body language and social cues is anything to go by. Don’t invest all of your time in Issi, Elach, as the rest of your skills will fall behind. And you never know when you’ll need them.”

Elach snorted. He’s spent enough time honing his other skills. “I’ll keep that in mind. Where are they?”

“In the pillar, dealing with an issue that I cannot personally attend to. Physically cannot, I should specify.” Hoalt turned his head and gestured at a wall, a projection flickering to life on the black stone. “The pillar is where all the practitioners in the Gilded Night work towards bettering themselves. To advance upwards, they must earn their way through each individual floor until they hit a wall they cannot break down. But there is a catch; a practitioner only has access to the group of ten highest floors they have reached.”

“They can’t go down lower? Why?”

“To give the others space to better themselves. A practitioner with decades under their belt can wreak havoc on a weaker person, and not simply by harming them. Imitation can stifle a person’s progress and place their future in jeopardy, doubly so if they could escort the weaker practitioners through all of the tests and pitfalls of the pillar.”

“And you’re bound to your own rules because…” Elach trailed off.

“Because I gave my word, and I am confident in the administrators I have in place to keep the pillar safe and prosperous. And that is where your friends came in; one of my administrators has gone dark.”

“They’re missing?”

“No.” Hoalt grimaced. “You’ve been to Gilded Night before you crossed the veil, so you should know how it affects everyone.”

Elach recalled the shadows that had overtaken his family the moment they stepped into the wolf’s domain. “They’re all shadow-y? Why’s that a problem?”

“Because it spreads like a disease.” Hoalt gestured once more, and the projection shifted from a picture of the pillar to a simple diagram of two featureless people. One of them passed through what looked like a doorway, gaining colour and growing taller. “Our safe houses and connection points are designed to remove the taint of obscurity from those that pass through, yet my administrator somehow fell victim to it. Someone brought it to us, either willingly or not, and it is my duty to this city and all its people to find and eliminate the source.”

“So while you’re doing that, you sent Prisoner to deal with the administrator. I gotcha.” Elach nodded. “I’m leaving.”