With a slap, the blob turned around. Or did a quarter turn. Hells, it could have done a full turn and Elach wouldn’t be able to tell. It seemed done with its introduction, and was now looking for confirmation that Elach had understood.

“Okay; let me make sure we’ve got everything. All the floors of this group are actually one long floor. Does that mean we can go up without clearing the individual floors?”

An expelling of putrid Issi accompanied the blob slightly deflating. “Yes.”

Elach held in a gag and nodded. “We can use that library slash training ground to get stronger, and taking on those requests from the bulletin board will somehow open the way to the next group of floors. Sounds right so far?”

“Yes.”

“Alright. Finally, we can sleep in that hotel over there and use any of the shops around here as we see fit. Do we have to pay for them?”

“Pay, yes. Pay in help. Not in coin.”

“Do we get paid in coin we can use here, or is it a one-to-one help to thing bought ratio?”

The blob rumbled in thought. After a moment, all it said was “Depends.”

“Depends on what?” Y’talla asked in a nasally voice, holding her shirt over her nose and mouth while also pinching her nose. “If we need to help someone to have somewhere to sleep, we need to know.”

“Ask in place.” The blob answered, their Issi worms pointing in all directions to the buildings ringing the clearing. “Prices in help posted.”

“Good to know.” Elach said, stepping around the blob and beelining towards the hotel. “Thanks… uh… I never did catch your name, blob.”

The blob buzzed with excitement. “Tomachon. Name Tomachon.”

“Thanks, Tomachon. Maybe we’ll meet again.”

Y’talla nodded thanks, as did Flow, the vibrations in the air warm and fluffy with happiness. Elach caught Flow’s head turn in the corner of his eye, and from the scraping and sloshing sound he heard going off into the distance he knew Tomachon was leaving. He signaled for silence until the vibrations died out, and even after that waited for Y’talla and Flow to let him know that the Issi worms Tomachon used had disappeared.

It took far longer than he’d expected. They got all the way through the entrance to the hotel, which was very barebones compared to the one he’d stayed in at the Glacier, merely a desk and a set of plain wood double doors separating the lobby from the hotel proper. The attendant, a man with thick glasses and a bored expression, informed them that they could stay for free as long as they liked, but their rooms would be as barebones as the lobby itself. He expressed disdain for the cheaper rooms, but grudgingly spared the fact that they were clean and safe, and pressed for Elach to take up one of the hotel’s requests so he could earn nights in a better room. Bathrooms that weren’t shared between everyone on the floor was another positive the man had forgotten to mention, and after one minute braving a stench that rivaled Tomachon’s, Elach was convinced that they needed to get their own room. Starting tomorrow, when he wasn’t so tired, dirty, and hungry.

“The worms are gone.” Y’talla tapped just under her eye as Elach closed the door to their room. It had enough space for a bed which Y’talla was currently occupying, a chest locked to his Issi signature off in one corner, and the floor between them. “It took a long time, didn’t it? Was Tomachon that powerful?”

“Anyone that can do whatever they did with their Issi isn’t a weakling. I think.” Elach shrugged. “I don’t really have a solid image of what a strong or weak practitioner is. Were those people back in my headspace strong? I’d say no, since I didn’t really have trouble with any of them, but before I got my Issi they’d be impossible to fight. And other than those people… I’ve got the people at the glacier who were stronger than me, and the newbies from today. I‘m not confident in my definition of strong any more.”

“So… is Tomachon strong or not?” Y’talla asked with a smirk.

“Okay, bedtime!” Elach clapped his hands. “Flow, Y’talla, how do you two want to do this?”

“I want to go back into your headspace. I saw a few new things in the primal spring and want to check them out before I go to bed.” Y’talla stretched and stood from the bed, gesturing at the pack Elach had laid down on the chest. “Are you going to try and use some of the stuff Hoalt gave you tonight?”

Elach shook his head. “Not tonight. If we’re going to be here for a while, then I want to get into a better, safer room before I try anything.”

“Makes sense. Flow, do you want to come with me or stay with Elach?” Y’talla asked as Flow hopped onto the bed, then jumped once more at Elach’s shoulder. They rubbed their head against Elach’s cheek and sang a happy song. “I’ll give you two some space. Elach, send me in.”

Y’talla strode over to Elach and took his hand. He nodded and closed his eyes, trying to replicate the feeling of pushing the bottles of existential bleed into his headspace. He saw Y’talla as a mass of Issi just in front of him, connected by their hands, and pulled her inwards. He heard a surprised gasp combined with the rattling of chains, Y’talla’s Issi suddenly surrounded by a vortex of his own. He opened his eyes to see something that he would chase for a long time.

Chains swarmed around Y’talla, a constant loop that came from and returned to Elach’s wrist. More and more of his Issi poured out as the chains multiplied, closing Y’talla off in an egg-shaped mass of chain and Issi. The last thing he saw of her before her eyes were closed off was an expression of wonder, her free hand gingerly reaching out to touch the chains surrounding her.

As quickly as it had started, the chains retracted and slid through Elach’s pathways to refund some of the massive cost he’d just paid. He felt Y’talla’s connection grow stronger as another consciousness settled in his headspace, the wonder slowly fading as she did and said nothing.

“Are you alright?” Elach asked worriedly. “Y’talla?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I’m alright. That was crazy.” Y’talla laughed. “You dismantled me into just my Issi to pull me in. It felt like I got a little closer to knowing stuff again, but then it all blew away.”

“But you’re okay? Not hurt at all?”

“Don’t worry, Elach. I’m fine. Is it alright if I use the map thing to move your headspace over to the primal spring?”

“Go ahead.”

Elach got a thankful feeling through their link that accompanied Y’talla’s silence, then a sort of itching inside his container as Prisoner’s coin glimmered with Issi. Elach’s fingertips grew warm with Issi, vertigo washing over him as his vision spun and his stomach churned. Half a moment later it was over, Elach blinking tears that hadn’t had time to form from his eyes that were still focused on the same stretch of wall he’d been before whatever happened.

“Yuck.” Elach muttered, receiving a confused look from Flow. “Next time you do that, Y’talla, let’s make sure I’m in my headspace too.”

“Will do.” Y’talla agreed. “See you in the morning or if I find something really cool.”

Flow gently pecked Elach’s ear to get his attention and chirped a question.

“I guess we should, huh?” Elach sighed. “Progress doesn’t wait for the exhaustion to go away. Want to start with expanding or compressing?”

“All we need to do is bring back some meat?” Elach asked incredulously. “We don’t need to skin or clean them, just bring the whole carcass back and we’ve got free meals?”

“Mmhm. I don’t get why this is so hard for you to grasp.” The man in a heavily stained apron shook his head, slapping his hand down on the counter he stood behind. “You practitioners bring in whatever you find, we clean and cook it for a share of the spoils. You bring in more than you can eat, we credit you for meals. And please don’t try the ‘I’m a rich little shit and I can buy your whole store if you don’t feed me’ bit.” The man mocked. “I’ve heard that more than enough, and I’m damn tired of it.”

“You don’t have to worry about that; rich is one thing we are not.” Elach chuckled. “Any recommendations on what to hunt?”

“For you?” The man looked Elach up and down, then spared a glance at Flow and Y’talla. “The floors might not be separated by a ceiling and such, but there are zones where it’s dangerous to be if you’re just a little too weak. I’d recommend staying in zones twelve through fifteen for now, just in case, and straying into sixteen to see how you fare. Anything you find in zone twelve, save for one of the dangerous beasts, will get you one, maybe two days of meals. Fifteen’ll get you close to a week, and if you bring back something dangerous from there you’ve got two weeks on the house.”

“Hunt in zone fifteen, scout out zone sixteen.” Elach confirmed.

“Can we only eat what we bring back?” Y’talla asked. “Like, if we want bird one day, do we have to go catch a bird?”

The man behind the counter shot a glance at Flow, who was openly drooling over all the meats on display at the butcher shop. “You have a bird, and you’re eating bird?”

“Oh, Flow’s a predator.” Elach scratched flow on the side of their neck. “They’ve eaten more birds than I have. I think.”

“Hrrm. Alright. If you manage to bring something back, don’t come in the front. There’s a bigger door off to the side where you won’t dirty the floor with blood.” The man thumbed off to the side. “If you want to cook for yourself, we can either give you some of the meat we’ve already got or you can wait for us to butcher your kill. But most practitioners don’t got time for that, and if you’re part of that crew, any of the restaurants ‘round here will know if you bring in a kill. Yeah, you might get less meals outta your kill, but they’ll be better meals.”

“What if we butcher the beast before we bring it back?” Y’talla asked.

“Then you saved us some trouble, but it won’t go towards your reward.”

A few pleasantries later, Elach stepped out into the courtyard and stretched. The butcher, the apothecary, the gardener, and every other shop they’d visited before all said about the same thing. Bring back something that helped them, and they’d provide a service in return. But nothing about breaking through that barrier between the twentieth and twenty first floor. They only had two more places to visit, and Elach figured they would be the two most important during their stay in this group of floors. Aside from the hotel, of course, but the requests he’d had to take up for better rooms would take far longer than the afternoon he was willing to spare at the moment.

“Do you want to go to the library or the training grounds next?” Y’talla tilted her head to the side. “Wait. Aren’t they the same place? Why did you call them different things when we were getting ready to go?”

Elach ran a hand through Y’talla’s hair. “Because I forgot.”

“You forgot something that happened yesterday? Geez, you and Flow must’ve had one crazy night.” Y’talla said with a smirk.

“Please don’t make it sound like I’m in a relationship with my bird.” Elach shook his head and chuckled. “This was the first time I really tried to expand my newly destroyed container. It took a little finagling, but Flow and I got the hang of it. The harder part was making sure we didn’t destroy the room in the aftermath.”

“That’s a scary thought.” Y’talla said. “So, library or one of the restaurants next? I’m starving, but will they serve us before we do something for them? Do they have a base meal like the hotel has base rooms, or will they only serve us after we’ve completed one of their requests?”

“Let’s go find out.”