Randidly frowned down at the Visage of Obsession for several seconds as his brain considered this sudden appearance. The drawing of Yystrix tilted her head to the side, that same small smile on her face. Randidly bit his lip. But after a few moments of examination, he shook his head heavily. “...no. You are not truly Yystrix. You are just… me, aren’t you?”

The rough featured Yystrix shrugged. The navy blue and pale green sky behind her rippled. “Well, I’m a construct that was carefully made by your subconscious. And you do have quite a thorough understanding of me, even if you don’t understand all the secrets of my existence… so I would say that the difference is negligible. You can consider me both you and Yystrix.”

Randidly pursed his lips at that. In his mind, that distinction made a world of difference. With that realization, he was able to release a breath and relax; this wasn’t another nightmare scenario where Yystrix somehow managed to infiltrate some part of himself to exert her will once again. It was just the indelible mark that she left on him, manifesting itself in the painting.

The effect was more annoying than dangerous, more exhausting than deadly.

Yystrix’s smile widened as though she could sense his thoughts. She moved her head from tilting to the left to tilt to the right. But she changed the subject. “You must have questions about the Fatepiece. I am here to give you your first test, but the actual mechanism is rather simple. So while you are here… I can try and ease your curiosities.”

After a short snort that showed how little he trusted her words, Randidly was silent for several seconds. Despite the fact that this was just a projection from his subconscious, every effort that this individual made to help him only made him more suspicious. But he couldn’t deny that he had some concerns about the activation of this Fatepiece.

So after thinking carefully, he opened his mouth to speak. “Will using the Fatepiece grant me what I want? Can discover the significance that each of my images holds in my heart?”

“The Visage of Obsession obviously isn’t just going to provide you exactly what you want,” In typical Yystrix fashion, she shrugged unhelpfully. Her eyes were bright and amused as she examined Randidly. “It’s a tool that will surely cause some result, as you pass through the various challenges it will present… but the exact result is difficult to know. After all, obsession is a powerful, but very distorting force upon an individual. How you handle that… is difficult to predict.”

Randidly grunted at that and shook his head. “Heh. If this is your idea of answering questions, I guess I have a very thorough understanding of Yystrix after all.”

Yystrix’s nose crinkled as she laughed. Randidly silently noted the increase in detail of this figure the more he stared at the Visage of Obsession in his hands. “Yes, yes, laugh while you can. Your Fatepieces are all a bit… Well, the Visage of Obsession is unpredictable, to begin with. But I’ll say this; of all the reasons you could use this Fatepiece, your current goal is one of the best you could have chosen. The significance of your own images… as you pass the trials and lose precious things, your own significance will be one of the few things remaining.”

That caused Randidly’s gaze to sharpen. “Lose precious things, huh. Which brings us to the first trial.”

Yystrix nodded. “It’s rather simple, really. For the first trial… reach into the Visage of Obsession and rip out my tongue.”

That caused Randidly’s eyebrows to shoot upward. “Rip out your tongue? So... it’s a fight.”

“What? Oh, no, I won’t struggle. I’ll just bleed a lot.” Yystrix shrugged. Beneath her feet, the reds and oranges of the ground flashed and shifted. The greens in the sky above Yystrix continued to grow increasingly pale until they were only a few tints away from white. She shrugged. “Sorry to disappoint you, but the Visage of Obsession won’t test you in that manner. None of the tests will be fights. Just reach into my mouth and… rip out my tongue. Then you can move on from here.”

“It’s that simple…?” Randidly asked slowly. And of course, Yystrix just smiled in response.

Huffing out an annoyed breath, Randidly let go of the edge of the Visage of Obsession. As he expected, it just hung there in the air in front of him. So he pressed his hand forward and saw his fingers pass through the front of the Visage of Obsession without any discernible change in sensation. He flexed his fingers. With narrowed eyes, his hand continued to travel forward as the drawn figure of Yystrix grew and grew until it dominated the entirety of the foreground. Her eyes were very, very bright.

She smiled at him as though she was encouraging the act. “It’s that simple.”

Randidly’s eyes narrowed. But it wasn’t like he had any choice. He glanced around at the edges of the Fatepiece, but it was now difficult to see past the face of Yystrix. The lines around her eyes were so familiar. It was the gaunt face of Lyra who had walked to hell and back. She was a woman who was deeply haunted by her past, by the pursuit of Elhume, by the situation of her son, Pine.

Sighing, Randidly reached forward. Yystrix obligingly opened her mouth. He grasped her tongue, pausing for a second as he truly felt the slimy sensation of a tongue through the pads of his fingers. After wondering at the realism, Randidly’s fingers tightened around the tongue and he began to pull.

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Rather anticlimactically, he hadn’t bothered to worry about his grip and his hand slid harmlessly of the bundle of muscles and nerves. While Yystrix chuckled, Randidly gritted his teeth and reached back within her mouth. This time he reached deeper, seizing on the base of the tongue. His grip was firm. And then Randidly ripped that tongue out.

When suddenly Randidly’s own mouth tasted like blood, he only chuckled. But then he blinked because he realized that he didn’t make any noise as he laughed.

As the Yystrix in front of him suddenly receded, allowing the colors to return, she winked at him. Then she held her finger up to her lips to make a shushing gesture. Then, in a small whirlwind of rough grey lines, she was gone.

Congratulations! Your Fatepiece the Visage of Obsession has grown to Level 10!

Congratulations! Your Skill Absolute Timing (Ru) has grown to Level 172!

The Visage of Obsession quietly rolled closed in front of Randidly and hung there in the air by some otherworldly power. Almost as though they were sharks sensing blood, three gusts of emotion cut in sideways and tried to knock the Fatepiece away from Randidly. But the Grim Chimera roared to malicious action and shredded those emotions to tattered pieces of ethereal mist.

Only a few minutes had passed since he had reached Level 9 in his Fatepiece, but Randidly could no longer make any noise. This, then, was the ‘cost’.

He opened his mouth and blew through his lips. He could feel his breath escaping his body, but it made no noise. Randidly frowned. He brought his hand around and slapped it against his chest. Again, there was no noise, although he felt the normal force. Meanwhile, the emotions continued to howl upward from the depths of the spine, moaning as though the energy animating them came from strained agony. Air rustled against the ragged clothes on Randidly’s body.

He drifted over toward the wall and slammed his fist against the warped and yellowed bone. Again, no noise resulted. Randidly clicked his tongue or meant to, but of course, nothing happened. When he ripped out Yystrix’s tongue, he had completely taken away his own ability to generate noise.

That caused Randidly to scrunch up his own face. Obviously, that couldn’t actually be what happened. Much more likely was that he had somehow deprived himself of the ability to hear noises that he had made.

Having that thought caused Randidly to make another meaningless click of his tongue, which then caused him to roll his eyes at his own situation. Not that he especially relied on making noise, stranded as he was in the depths of the Nexus. But it felt… strange to so suddenly be deprived of his ability to make noise.

Which is probably the point… Randidly’s expression turned solemn as his gaze landed on the floating Fatepiece. If things continue like this… I’ll be steadily deprived of portions of normal existence as I use the Fatepiece. In exchange, I suppose I’ll more easily be able to focus on my significance? But at the same time…

Randidly shook his head at how this might affect his already precarious mental health. Then he looked down through the midnight-blue darkness. After a moment of indecision, he released his emotional tether and began to drift down through the swirling torrent of emotions. His right hand shot out and grabbed the Visage of Obsession. Randidly’s emerald eyes glowed as he let his own emotional strength seep outward from the edges of his body and combat the wild emotions directly.

I cannot stop now that I’ve started. And if I continue… I’ll require more time. Better to head deeper now, in case I lose sight next...

So Randidly descended, Yggdrasil, Stillborn Phoenix, and the Grim Chimera cutting open a path. It was somewhat dangerous to release his images for long periods of time, but with the support of Yggdrasil, clashing against the surrounding blasts of emotion became a tempering process. The impurities in his image’s emotion were hammered out and then cleanly healed. It was a holistic improvement that Randidly couldn’t quite measure at this moment.

Because as he headed closer to the horrifying significance below, the emotional remnants were growing steadily stronger. So it didn’t feel like his improvements were very much to speak of at all. Yet Randidly had a sense that he was improving much more quickly than he realized.

Occasionally as he fell downward, emotions managed to break past his defenses and sear his skin. Although empowered with image physicalizations, his skin rapidly broke out in blotchy boils. Then his flesh began to sizzle and warp until these deviations were annihilated by the thunderous fury of his image.

All of his images, of course, were now also silent.

Randidly kept his attention on his Nether Nebula the entire time, as the Nether content in the air moved up toward 70%. The emotions he could learn to cope with, but he knew he was playing a dangerous game in terms of significance. Until he managed to replicate the effect of the Nether Cores, proceeding too deeply might lead to him simply vanishing without a trace.

Before I even get to make to dig a grave for my helpful doppelganger… Randidly thought bitterly. And that thought led him to slow his descent and reach upward for the emotions that the Stillborn Phoenix steadily released. For a split second, Randidly’s heart dropped; the difficulty in reaching up toward those emotions was many times what it had been only a short distance above him-

Then he paused. Honestly… he probably had dropped more than a short distance as he had proceeded. The time he spent falling was probably misleading. It wasn’t that the Nether content in the air changed more quickly the deeper he went…

...just that he was traveling more quickly downward. In fact, the changes in the Nether content of the air might be happening much more gradually the deeper he descended. Yet that truth was erased by the obscenely powerful significance below.

Either way, the Stillborn Phoenix’s pattern of absorption, refinement, and release had greatly accelerated since coming down below the event horizon of this significance. Due to the constant barrage of emotions, it had to pick up the pace of its ‘breathing’. So when Randidly finally reached up through the surprisingly vast space that now existed between him and the Nexus proper to seize his emotions, he paused in his descent.

Grimacing, he acclimated to the new pressure of the flow of significance; it was still manageable, but getting very close to his limit. He then cast his eyes around. Gradually, the corners of his mouth quirked upward. If he could have, he would have laughed aloud.

There were quite a few shapes moving the murky darkness below him. Their robust body had his eyes sparkling with excitement. Randidly was nearing the territory of the Nether Beasts.