Three points of light burned in the sky, rising up from the ground. Nic was guessing those were where he was meant to go.

Three beacons had appeared alongside Nic, tumbling out of the portal with him. They were long, thin spars of crystal, spikes meant to be driven into the ground.

He waited for the meadow to shift again, watching it repeat forms. Grass, serpent, brain. Everything here had that same horrific quality. The stone he perched on slowly melted to a puddle under his feet, and he had to step out quickly to avoid being dragged in as it warped into the shape of a turtle, snapping its jaws at him. Then back to stone, the turtle’s head and legs fading back into nothing.

Even the mountains were sometimes clouds, sometimes giants, sometimes mere stone again.

Nor were the patterns static. As Nic watched, the serpents ceased to appear, replaced by paving stones. The brain grew more complex until it was the circuitboard of a vast computer, and the grass became a forest. He waded in, realizing he only had a limited time until the beacons were lost forever in the eternal shifting sands of this world.

By the time he found them, the limbs of the trees had already become the antlers of massive, long-legged beasts. As they warped fully into being and began to snarl at him, Nic beat a hasty retreat with the beacons in hand.

So far…

Weird, but not especially dangerous. Very, very weird, but as long as he didn’t get buried by the shifting landscape he didn’t see any direct threats. Even if something terrifying erupted out, he could just survive until it faded into something less deadly.

But that changed.

As he pushed aura into his feet, ready to jump up and scout the surroundings, the earth cracked. Black water flooded up as the brittle ground gave way underneath him, threatening to plunge him into an abyss of dark water. In a split second…

The earth was gone.

A yawning pit, ringed by jagged stones like teeth, had opened beneath him.

“Gwungo! Leash!” Nic called out as he plunged down, feeling the water drag at him. It wasn’t ordinary. He had nothing to fear in any lake or sea, but this dark, clinging black water had no substance. It was like falling, with no resistance to push and swim against.

Gwungo snapped out, grabbing hold of the walls. Nic was pulled up again, gasping as he spilled free of the black abyss. The water was poisonous, somehow, even to him- he couldn’t bring himself to breathe it in.

Spitting out a mouthful, he clambered over the edge of the pit.

It was already sealing together, the stone pouring back in to cover the black infinity beneath. But Nic had definitely gotten the message:

No aura.

No cultivation.

If in the normal world, cultivation allowed you to consume the energies of the world, here, it was upside-down. If you reached for your cultivation the world would swallow you whole.

Which narrowed his options for escape if the world suddenly turned dangerous.

Nic suddenly understood why Sofia had been so cautious, on the edge of telling him not to go. In this place, none of his advantages applied, except perhaps for his regeneration.

He would have to proceed cautiously.

Over the next ten minutes, Nic moved across the meadow in sprinting, dashing lurches, diving through whenever the terrain shifted to something safe. He made it to the first marker of light with time to spare, bolting through a forest of hairy, rough-bodied redwoods as they turned to pillars of arid stone.

The ground where the light came down from the sky was cracked, crystallized. The tendrils of crystal that spilled from the impact seemed to make the world more stable. Where they touched the ground, it no longer changed shapes, but remained solid and permanent.

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Taking out the first beacon-spike, Nic used Peacemaker’s flat to hammer it down into the ground. The crystal flared, light pulsing through the tendrils, making them spread deeper into the landscape. Solidity and presence spread with them. The blurred edges dissolved and reality was pinned into a single shape.

Nic let out a careful breath, finally feeling some safety in this world.

Cautiously he circulated a wisp of aura, ready to jump aside if the ground gave way again…

But this time, nothing happened. The ‘solidity’ of the world seemed to offer some protection from the abyss. Experimentally, Nic used Archive Recall on the grass underfoot.

It returned a readout of common, spring-growing grass.

So that was how it worked…

The System was claiming territory, using him as a vessel to stake out new ground against the chaos. The beacons he planted were the seeds of the System’s control. That made this whole affair a bit… questionable, in Nic’s mind…

But it wasn’t as if anyone lived here. This place seemed to be more of a wasteland.

As Nic set out for the next light-beam, he was watching carefully. The fact the ground collapsed if you tried to call on your aura was one thing…

But it wouldn’t make this place that dangerous. Not unless there were things here that could prey on you, while you were weak and unable to defend yourself.

And sure enough…

As he moved swiftly through the changing forests and up slopes that seemed to rise from the earth beneath him, he noticed strange shapes accumulating on the edges of his vision, moving in sharp, darting attempts not to be seen. He turned and raised Peacemaker, calling out…

“I know you’re there!”

In response, a wind blew from nowhere. Shadows drifted out from behind the trees, which were melting into a canopy of pondscum over blue water. Nic found himself wading through knee-deep water as the shadows drifted closer and closer, flitting through the air, shapeless like mist.

He drew a talisman out of his bag and flung it.

As the aura within ignited, the air shattered. Darkness spread across the landscape like cracks in a mirror, and the swirling motes of shadow were pulled inwards.

He threw out two more in fast succession, trying to catch the shadows that escaped as they went fleeing across the landscape. The fractures spread across the world, swallowing them. Only a few shadow-motes escaped, drifting away at top speed.

But Nic knew there’d be more.

There always were.

Something moved behind the cracks in the landscape. Something black and shiny like insect chitin reached out of the fractures, snatching up an escaping shadow and dragging it back in. Nic caught a glimpse of massive crab-like claws…

And Nic decided to run.

He ran as fast as he could, relying on the natural power of his body to blur across the ground and leap over danger, smashing into the soft earth with each step. Something about this place made even the rocks pliable like clay, crushing down wetly underfoot. It was like the landscape was alive, the camouflaged flesh of a single massive being.

Behind him…

The fractures had sealed together, but Nic still felt an immense sense of threat. The beast he’d glimpsed through the cracks in the world was still there. It was moving unseen, as if the land around him was a thin sheet of ice over deep water, and in that abyss a leviathan was stirring, rising towards the surface…

If he’d thought he was smart using the talismans to shatter the world and disperse his enemies, he didn’t feel smart now.

He’d just drawn the attention of bigger predators.

The sky in front of him rippled, and Nic kicked aside in time to escape as that massive, dark crab claw burst from above. Dark water poured into the world as the claw’s serrated inner blades snapped shut, the massive beast trying clumsily to fish him out.

Dozens of briny, small legs spilled out of the portal, the smallest hint of the creature’s true form emerging. Beady eyes on long stalks waved. It was akin to a massive lobster, covered by bulging translucent sacks that puffed and inflated with the dark water. Frothing bubbles blew and sputtered up on its clicking, mandible-guarded mouth.

Nic hit the ground and yelled, “Shield!”

Gwungo expanded into a flowering shield just in time. The lobster-beast turned and spat.

A long jet of cold, powerful water slammed into Nic, sending him sprawling across the ground. It seemed to burn the grass and trees like acid, melting them into new shapes so rapidly they blurred together and became dark, twisted lumps of colorless gray matter. It sucked at his Essence, depleting the strength in his limbs…

Only Gwungo saved Nic from being knocked to the ground and completely drained by the water’s icy touch.

He ran, keeping cover between him and the beast now. It was a massive shadow, filling up more and more of the sky as its tiny, clicking legs poured over the gap, spilling its fat underbelly out into the world. Its back half was less like a lobster, and more octopoid, expanding into slithering black tendrils like knots of rubber.

It roared and the world trembled.