‘Obstacle course’ was too generous a description of the long sandy stretch Elach chained himself past over the course of an hour. There was a lake with a thin metal bar crossing it, a wall with a few handholds that spewed water at random intervals, and quite a few suspiciously empty stretches of sand that just screamed ‘trap’. None of them mattered to someone who could soar through the air like a bootleg wind practitioner.

“Congratulations practitioner Elach on clearing the floor of endurance.” The sheet said as Elach crossed into a black marble building with fountains and baths all over it, a chill in the air that Elach would have appreciated much more if he’d been out there for longer. “Though you didn’t endure much of anything out there, did you?” The sheet chuckled, reaching over to a table next to them and offering Elach a pin with Hoalt’s insignia on it. “This marks you as the lowest ranked practitioner allowed in the pillar. By clearing the other eight floors in the testing group, you’ll be able to access the pillar that will help you grow as a practitioner.”

Elach reached for the pack Hoalt had given him to carry the bundles and the canister, patting it as he put on a pleasant smile. “Sounds good.”

“Are the other floors going to be as easy as this one was?” Y’talla cut in. “Because that was way too easy.”

“These floors are designed to be difficult, but not impossible, for fresh practitioners. For seasoned veterans like yourselves, they will seem simple in comparison to what you must have fought through.” The sheet said, flourishing itself as it gestured grandly to a fountain in the center of the room. “Drink deep to restore your Issi, rest if you would like, and we wish you the best of luck for the next eleven hours.”

Flow snickered and sang about Elach’s inexperience as the sheet floated away, spreading their wings wide and taking wide steps as a mockery of the sheet’s grandiose gestures. Y’talla giggled as she walked, and Elach shook his head with a smile.

Elach reached down and grabbed Flow, who batted at him with their wings in a token resistance. “Your Issi doing alright, buddy? I felt you doing something while we were out there, but I couldn’t tell you what it was.”

Flow tilted their head to the side, then closed their eyes. Elach felt them probing at their container, the fountain in his headspace, feeling around for anything then opening their eyes and shaking their head.

“Nothing? Alright, maybe I was just imagining it.”

After a quick bath and a light lunch, the group made their way up to the next floor. The threshold this time was an elevator that Elach had to press his pin to to make an additional button shine with a gold number; the third floor. The elevator hummed for a short moment without the feeling of movement he’d gotten back at Resthollow, then let out a high-pitched roar as the doors slid open to reveal the third floor. Or, more specifically, an occupant of the third floor.

A wolf that looked like it was made of tar lunged at Elach, and his instincts kicked in. He stepped in and shoved his forearm into the wolf’s maw, pushing back as hard as he could to throw the beast off balance. He crashed to the floor on top of it, the wolf’s teeth squishing against his arm with the slight softness he knew they had, their tar-like Issi trying to cut into Elach’s arm without success.

“Sticky bastard.” Elach muttered as he wrenched the wolf’s jaw off his arm, standing up as it struggled against his chains. He looked around, the small room obviously made for this express purpose. “I know you’re watching me; unless I hear something in the next thirty seconds I’m killing this thing.”

“...Twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine, thirty.” Y’talla counted. “I guess you’re supposed to kill it, Elach.”

Flow hopped down Elach’s arm and looked him in the eye, a short hungry song escaping their beak.

Elach gestured at the wolf and backed up. “Be my guest.”

Happiness sang through Elach’s bond as Flow jumped onto the wolf and eviscerated it. Tar flew this way and that as Flow dug through its chest cavity, black organs piling up to the right of the wolf and other unknown pieces to the left. Flow moved with the precision of a surgeon, nothing rupturing as they systematically dismantled the dead Issi beast. Elach had to turn away as Flow got to the head, the memory of Cama’s head crushed underfoot too close to what Flow was doing.

Just a handful of minutes later, Flow chimed success and stepped out of the wolf’s now empty skin. Elach looked over to see all the organs organized neatly off to the right, separated by some system he didn’t know, bones stripped of all meat above the pelt, a few things he didn’t recognize off to the left, and a pile of meat at the beast’s feet. The utter precision and skill Flow showcased was a little unnerving, since they couldn’t have known the tar wolf’s anatomy like that, but Elach couldn’t argue with results.

“Practitioner Elach and companions, you have finished the first portion of the trial of combat. The carcass is yours to do whatever you please.”

Flow picked their talons clean with their beak, rubbing themselves on their wings where blood sloughed off without sticking. They called for Elach to take the small pile to the left, some of the bones, and an eye. Elach questioned why the eye was included, but as he leaned over to pick it up, he felt that it had the strongest Issi signature out of all the wolf’s body. Why a tar wolf’s eyes held that much Issi Elach didn’t know, and as he held the small bundle of things, he felt them already starting to bleed Issi.

He reached into his pack and pulled out the canister, emptying out the mass of candy that he noted was far more than should have fit into it. “If either of you want any of that, feel free to dig in. I don’t think I’m fitting all of it in my bag, and I’m not mixing candy and organs.”

Flow pecked at one of the individually wrapped hard candies for a moment before Y’talla bent down and unwrapped it for them, taking another for herself as Flow swallowed theirs whole. Elach raised an eyebrow as Issi dissolved from the candy as it hit Flow’s stomach, unimpressed by the amount it was giving off compared to the amber nectar. If it didn’t have a hard limit it might be useful as a latch-ditch effort, but Elach wouldn’t lose sleep over losing a dozen or so out of the fifty-odd candies.

Y’talla unwrapped her own and popped it into her mouth, eliciting an instant frown and swallow. “That tasted the same way rocks smell.” She shuddered. “Ick.”

Elach smiled as he placed the eye into the canister, feeling it being tucked away in whatever power the canister held. “My mom always said something could either taste good or be good for you; never both. Then dad would sigh and roll his eyes as he finished cutting up whatever he was making for dinner that night.”

Black metal bars fell from the ceiling and clattered to the ground on the other side of the room, Issi spilling in from the same place they had and floating over to the pile of metal. Whatever it touched began vibrating with power; first the two largest rods slammed against the back wall, capped by small statues of dragons. After came the smaller of the bars, seven thin rods that latched onto the leftmost post before swiveling to connect to the right one. Finally the curved one leaped up, spiraling through the air before landing lopsided on the wall. It shimmied and shook until it found purchase between the two dragon statues, completing a gate that was twice over as tall as Elach was.

“You think they want us to go that way?” Y’talla asked with a smirk, crossing her arms as the wall behind the gate melted away to show another larger room behind it. “How much longer do you need, Elach?”

Looking down at Flow, Elach raised an eyebrow in question. Flow snuck a longing glance at the organs for the briefest of moments, turning back to Elach and indicating that they could leave at any time.

“You want to eat these?” Elach asked, poking at what he thought was a kidney and recoiling as it spurted a black liquid. Flow nodded guiltily. “Hey, overseer people? Is it safe for my bird to stay here and eat the wolf?”

Elach waited a moment for a response, and got a different voice in return. This one was deeper and more expressive than the monotone, almost bored one from before. “This room is safe, but we can’t guarantee that nothing will move from the other rooms into this one. If you’re confident that you can draw enough attention from the Issi beasts, your bird will be fine.”

“Alright, you can stay here then.” Elach said to Flow. “Don’t get tunnel vision on your meal, ok buddy?”

Flow raised their head from the organ they were digging into with a look that said ‘were you saying something’? Elach shook his head and waved for Flow to go back to pigging out, and Flow did just that, diving in headfirst to the drippy, black meat.

“Gross.” Y’talla said, leaning closer to Flow with grim curiosity. “You think they’re going to eat everything?”

“I think they’re going to try.” Elach shook his head. “If I have to listen to this for any longer, I’m gonna be sick. Let’s give them some space.”

As Flow tore through the wolf’s remains with a revelric, sloppy gusto, Elach lead Y’talla to the gate. The left side detached from the wall with a click and swung open, creaking around one post while narrowly missing Elach’s face by an inch. Stepping through the hole in the wall led him to a room that had twin gates off to the left and the right, shadows with bright eyes staring out from behind each one. The one off to the left had twin vertical slits of brilliant green, glimmering like jewels and shining with predatory intelligence. The gate on the right held four squares, two on what Elach assumed were the front of the face and two on the side, aggression and desperation rippling off of them in an almost physical sensation.

“Looks like one’s a cat, and the other’s some kind of goat.” Elach said. “I’m not one hundred percent sure, but the way the shadows are moving combined with their eyes makes me ninety percent confident.”

Both shadows sat nearly still behind their gates, but the slit-pupiled shadow looked tense; like it was ready to spring at Elach the moment those bars were removed. Whereas the square-pupiled shadow looked like it wouldn’t move a muscle until Elach got too close. One predator, and one prey. If Elach had to choose…

“If we can fight them one at a time, I think we should go for the predator first.” Elach suggested. “Depending on what its Issi is, we shouldn’t have too hard a time taking it down.”

“You say we, but I know I’m not going to be any help to you.” Y’talla scanned the gates, then looked back at Flow tearing into their meal. “I’ll stay back here so I can run away if I need to.”

“Alright.” Elach waited for Y’talla to back away to the threshold of the gate, giving him a thumbs up when she was ready. “Overseers? Whatever you’re going to do, we’re ready.”

Elach waited for something to happen, but nothing did. He looked back at Y’talla with a raised eyebrow, receiving a shrug in return. “I’m going to open one of the gates now. Stop me if I’m not supposed to do this.”

The cat-like shadow shied away from him as he stepped towards the gate, and Elach couldn’t get any sort of information from them. It was as if they were only a shadow, no Issi and nothing tangible about them whatsoever. His fingers wrapped around one of the bars and pulled, the gate holding strong under his attempts. He grunted under the strain of trying to open the gate, then hopped back while shaking his hands.

Leaning down, Elach saw the shadow scurry further back into the darkness. “Okay, this is supposed to be the trial of combat, right? So why is this thing running scared?”