Edraine had been extremely careful with her planning. The more information she had gathered the more hesitant she had become. What they did now would leave some traces. And what Edraine began to worry about was who would be the one who would come to silence unwanted snoopers.

Lady Iellaya strode forward confidently, following the heavily armed guards into the depths of Military High Command’s prison. They were hemmed in by heavy stone blocks the size of a normal dresser. Even worse, the ceiling was oppressively low, so everyone who passed through this place had the impulse to stoop. Here, the worst and most dangerous criminals in the Nexus were kept under lock and key. Of course, the open secret of this place is that most of those terrible criminals were soldiers who had simply killed too many people too blatantly to ignore.

But the Nexus might be relatively lax most of the time, but its justice was harsh. Once the criminals were sent here, they would never escape alive, not without significant help. The guards here possessed enough power that one could pin down Lady Iellaya and two would probably be able to overcome her in a short while.

Their quiet capability added extra tension to the air as they proceeded down the stone hallway. Expressionlessly, the duo of guards held a torch aloft and continued forward. The flames licked eagerly at the stone ceiling.

But luckily, it did not appear that this place was designed for someone of Edraine’s caliber. She moved in Lady Iellaya’s shadow without revealing a hint of her presence. Or rather, her image constantly annihilated any signs of its own passage, leaving nothing in her wake.

After some investigation, Ocativus and Lady Iellaya had discovered that no one had ever visited the ‘corrupt’ Overseer of the Sixth Cohort. In the entirety of that individual’s stay in this horrible jail, no one proceeded to the deep cell surrounded by heavy stone to either interrogate or visit the disgraced Overseer. Considering the political clout required to have someone assume the position of Overseer… it was impossible that the Overseer had no allies remaining.

To Edraine’s mind, there were two possibilities. The first was that the Overseer had truly pulled the wool over his allies eyes for her own personal gain. But based on the research that she and Octavius had done, that was almost impossible.

The second possibility, then, was that the Overseer had been tossed aside by her former allies. Which implied that the core of this conspiracy was powerful enough to buy them off or intimidate them into silence.

Lady Iellaya did remarkably well keeping her expression even as they approached the crucial intersection. She had requested permission from Military High Command to visit some old Nether Heralds that were held captive here; considering that she would soon be heading to the Fifth Cohort, it wasn’t a particularly strange request.

Except for the fact that Lady Iellaya was the leader of an entire frontline; she was undoubtedly familiar with Nether Beasts of all types. But Edraine and her cabal had no choice; they needed access to the Overseer.

There was a breeze that rustled the still, stone halls filled with heavy air. It was the sort of air that hadn’t been touched by wind in centuries. Just as the guards paused to glance backward from the strange anomaly, Lady Iellaya sneezed and rubbed her nose. Sensing the guards’ gazes, her eyes turned sharp.

“...what the hell are you lookin’ at, soldier?”

Pressing their lips together, the guards turned away. And in those few interactions, Edraine arrived before a small wooden door far down the hallway. There was the sound of an aluminum can being crunched to a flat disc and then Edraine brushed away the remnant dust from the deceased guard and opened the door.

Within, a shriveled, green caterpillar woman sat in a wooden chair. Her antenna were limp and feeble, her body ancient and weak. Other than the woman and the chair, there was nothing else in the small cell. When Edraine arrived, the woman’s milky white eyes shifted upward. And then she smiled.

“I’ve waited for someone to come here a long time,” The woman whispered. She gestured to the surroundings. As Edraine’s eyes adjusted to the lighting inside of the room, she could see that every inch of the cell’s walls were covered in dense lines of script. Even the floor was crisscrossed with words. “I believe you’ll find everything you want here. Every secret that I have… I only ask for one thing in exchange. That you kill me so I can finally escape this wretched world.”

Edraine’s eyes flicked around, scanning through the words until she found the information she was seeking. There was a portion of the text dedicated to the caterpillar’s home world, some explanation of her insights into her image, and also an entire wall that appeared to be a auto-biography.

Her lips curling upward, Edraine skipped to the end of the biography. As she hoped, there was the information regarding her time as an Overseer. When her eyes reached the few lines pertaining why she had been betrayed by her supporters, Edraine frowned; they would need to do some more investigating in order to verify the former Overseer’s claims.

Then Edraine turned back to the caterpillar and nodded. “...I will do as you wish.”

Edraine didn’t bother to mention that she would have slaughtered the woman anyway, to prevent news of her visit from leaking. It seemed more merciful to allow this woman to believe she finally had control over her fate.

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*****

The shade gripped the limp body beneath it, maintaining their floating position as best as it could. Its hold upon the emotional tether shook slightly. Honestly, it was quite annoyed that it not only had to keep itself from slipping downward, but also protect this inert body.

Yet its subconscious urged the shade to protect this floppy humanoid. And when the shade looked down at the face of the humanoid, it felt its nonexistent heart soften. Yes, it was an exhausting task. But it would never to refuse to protect this humanoid. And when it looked at its face… there was just something so familiar…

The shade shook itself. Its attention could not waiver. There was work to do. The longer it procrastinated, the longer it would need to suffer underneath this weight.

As the shade turned all of its considerable focus inward to consider the significance of an abstract existence called the Stillborn Phoenix, it immediately smiled. All it took was a thought and the problem unraveled before the attention of the shade. Due to its extremely unusual existence, the shade could see to the core of the issue immediately.

The Stillborn Phoenix was many things, but above all, it was the personification of necessity during the difficult tribulations of living. In a way, it was possible to think about the Grim Chimera closely relating to necessity, but that was an entirely different understanding of the term. The Grim Chimera responded to necessity and other outward forces in order to survive.

The Stillborn Phoenix was literally all of the necessity in the life of-

The shade paused and frowned. Its mind turned abruptly foggy as it tried to follow through with that train of thought. The thoughts scattered like they were dried leaves blown away by a chill gust of wind. But despite the strange intellectual stutter, the shade quickly shook itself once more; it was a higher order intelligence and not one to be stuck on tiny details. Instead, it continued its reflections on the Stillborn Phoenix.

Yet the more the shade thought about it, the more it realized that necessity wasn’t quite appropriate. Or rather, it painted a rather rosy picture about the sort of necessity that constituted the Stillborn Phoenix. If the shade was a bit more honest with itself, it would perhaps instead choose the term compromise.

The Stillborn Phoenix was the site of compromise between the self and the universe, and due to its role, was filled with unwillingness. Its existence was the evidence of the inevitable concessions one engaged in during the normal course of existence.

It was an image built with foreign and recycled pieces. The purity of the host was steadily wiped away. It was a place where other powers were devoured and repurposed. In a way, it was an image innately tilted toward failure. Even from the beginning, the image knew that its dream was impossible. In the end, a singularity of mass could never break through the ‘egg’ of its even horizon and be reborn as a phoenix. On this bitter foundation, anything and everything was absorbed.

It was a contradiction. It was inherently flawed. It was the representation of the lack of perfection in the self. But even from that flawed beginning, the image didn’t possess the power to rise above its existence. Outside influences continued to intrude.

It made allowances and excuses. They were impossible to avoid. Even with monumental strength, strength wasn’t sufficient to live.

The image was the faded regrets of R******* G*********.

The shade’s face twitched. That thought… was extremely strange. Then it shook itself for the third time and adjusted its two grips: one on the limb flesh body in its hands and the other upon the emotional tether that kept it from being pulled inexorably downward. After discovering the long awaited significance that it had been pondering, it raised its hands to a new task. Nether spun out of its inner nebula and arrived at its spectral fingers.

Luckily, shades can have as many hands as they want, the shade grinned to itself and grew six more arms. It divided its attention and segments over several portions of its mind, allowing itself to ‘wholeheartedly’ work on six attempts at once. Nether Engravings filled the surrounding space, inky blank lines of darkness that hung in the air

Time flowed forward. Occasionally, the various parallel thought processes either were stumped or believed that they had completely captured the correct feeling, so they would peek at a neighboring hand. Usually, what the hands found sparked off some heated debate and two arms would merge into one to resolve the issue. They would combine the best of both Engravings to create a new, streamlined version and then peek once more at a neighbor.

Soon, there were only two hands Engraving. Then, when both were prepared, they examined each other’s Nether Engraving. To the shade’s delight, both had essentially come to the same final shape.

Of course, that sense of accomplishment didn’t last very long; now came the most difficult portion: layering the three significance Engraving. But the shade wasn’t too worried; it had plenty of time. It adjusted its grip on the body and on the emotional tether and got to work.

In the silent shaft, time moved steadily forward. Spectral fingers traced Nether in the air.

The shade didn’t feel exhaustion or any sort of mental fog. It seemed to be constantly experiencing epiphany after epiphany as it tackled the problem of Nether Engraving. Occasionally, it would peak at the Nether Gatekeeper below it to examine some of the principles there. Other times, it would refamiliarize itself with the significance of all three images, to see if it had missed anything in the Engravings.

When the Nether Gatekeeper below it stopped being helpful, the shade looked farther afield at some of the other Nether Gatekeepers it had examined before. Then, when those weren’t enough, its Grim Intuition fished downward for more. Bit by bit, the difficult problems of layering the energy flows were resolved. With its own Nether Nebula, the shade tested the patterns of significance and discovered that they were extremely effective. As it combined all the different elements, there was an overwhelming, qualitative change to its existence that the shade somehow felt ill-equipped to understand.

The more the shade practice, the more powerful its Nether Nebula became. The knowledge came like a bolt from the blue; if the shade was willing leave this limp body behind, it would be able to escape from the pull of the significance below. These patterns that the shade had created generated a self-contained energy field that was impervious to the current of significance.

The only shackle holding him here was responsibility.

However, soon the shade realized that there was another problem. Between its continued practice, it began to cast its eyes around very seriously: what physical item was appropriate to use as its Nether Core?

The dark shaft did not provide any easy answers.