The snowstorm blanketed noise as well as vision, but the clash from the depths of one canyon boomed outward to fill the surroundings; the remainder of the Lizakh’s forces on Expira were fighting for their existence against the monsters of the Calamity. So D’min could make a shaking beeline for the canyon that housed the central hatchery.

Bodies of his kin lay sprawled across the stone pathway, their entrails having been ruthlessly yanked out and left strewn between them. The snow around them had been dyed a delicate pink. With his eyes burning, D’min paused and lay his father down on the ground with the other corpses. If we do not stop this attack, there will be no meaning to bringing you back, father. Forgive me.

D’min’s breath caught in his throat as he imagined the snort of disbelief that his stern father would have made at his excuses. Had made, only yesterday when he had been unable to provide the evening meal at its usual time.. But D’min squeezed those memories out of his head by tightening his hands on the shaft of his spear and rushed forward to the depths of the canyon.

He rushed down the slope into the largest portion of the canyon. D’min occasionally staggered and hit against the stone outcroppings, but largely remained on his feet. The reason the Lizakh had chosen this area was because of the tunnels that ran through the surrounding hills. Even before the Calamity itself arrived, D’min’s people were having difficulty keeping up with the growing average Level of the people of Expira. They were forced below the surface to endure.

D’min felt his foot catch in a small crack and he lurked to the side to stay on his feet. He slammed his knee against the side of the gorge, drawing a long hiss out of his mouth. The snow on the ground wasn’t thick enough to cushion his fall. Using his javelin as leverage, he pushed himself back onto his feet and tested his knee; at the very least, it did not give out when he put weight on it. So D’min hobbled onward.

The noises of battle were grand specters, sweeping back and forth through the twisting gusts of snow. However, D’min only managed to catch up to their shadows. He found broken weapons and pools of cooling blood at the edge of the stone canyon. D’min choked back a stop and forced his legs to keep moving.

The snowfall seemed to be growing heavier, but the clash of claws on metal that D’min heard reverberating through the stone canyon confirmed his worst fears about this attack. Even worse, the chirps of the Sky Otters were growing louder while the sonorous bellows of Lizakh warriors fell silent one by one. A low undercurrent of desperate shouts and sobbing lay beneath everything else, forcing D’min’s imagination to picture that his people were being driven underground as the Sky Otters continued to slaughter their guards.

Every part of D’min’s body was cold. If we die here… will everything we have done be meaningless? Without the LIzakh, will the Patron of the Sun simply remain sealed for the rest of its existence?

Will we simply become collateral damage in another planet’s Calamity?

D’min rounded a bend in the ravine and stopped short in front of a pile of fresh bodies. Almost a score of the Lizakh lay twisted and broken, their cavities excavated of their organs. They lay discarded in the snow like peanut shells. Meanwhile, only three Sky Otters lay dead opposite them, a grim example of the very real difference in fighting capabilities between the two species. Although D’min’s people used weapons, they could not bridge the gap in base physical gifts between them.

As a whole, we are inferior. D’min urged himself forward. The thick blizzard in front of him covered everything in a white dusting. Now, he flinched away from every stone bulging out of the ground, afraid that it might be another pile of Lizakh corpses. The sounds of fighting in front of him were loud. They whispered horrible prophecies of what he would find at the end of this desperate dash. We are weak. So why… after all that we have done for the Patron of the Sun… is that grand figure truly going to let us die like this…?

Have we accomplished nothing?

Unless… D’min was so cold as he forced his feet to carry him forward. He saw vague shapes blurring through the air in front of him. Finally, he had arrived at the loudest point in the blood-soaked canyon.

The Sky Otters truly had corralled the other Lizakh back to their caves and were now viciously assaulting the core of the hatchery at their leisure. D’min could make out the remainder of the Lizakh resistance standing just within the shadows of their caves, wielding steel to exact a bitter price on the invading monsters to proceed any deeper. They stood above small grey walls that must have been recently erected to deal with the sudden attack.

Because the dangerous flight abilities of the Sky Otters were sealed, the fighting was even more intense. But D’min knew they would not last long. More Sky Otters glided overhead, waiting for their chance to land and attack. Others charged forward, their thick hides absorbing the strikes from the finest Lizakh weapons ever forged.

Unless all we’ve done has been for nothing. Unless the Patron of the Sun doesn’t even exist. D’min forced himself to move. He gripped his own javelin and raised it above his head. Habit took over then, leaning his body back and then whipping himself straight, earning a series of cracks from his mistreated joints.

The javelin zipped forward, blasting apart the swirling snow. D’min’s target stumbled forward when the javelin sunk into the small of its back; his aim had been true. But then it reached around and cracked the shaft in haft. It spun to face D’min with cruelty in its eyes.

Skee? Skree?!

It almost seemed flummoxed to find that a lizard person had struck it from behind. Its expression was that of a homeowner who found a pest in an unexpected location. But it was not bothered by this indecision for very long. It dropped onto all four of its muscle limbs and skittered forward. D’min couldn’t help but notice that its claws were already wet with blood.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

We’ve been fighting for the Nexus this entire time. There is no greater truth. D’min’s vision swam. It is true that an individual life is meaningless… but so are the lives of an entire people. Nothing has meaning-

Snow swirled around him and D’min struggled to make his peace with death. The cold finally reached his heart and he surrendered. But at the last moment, a savior arrived.

BOOOOOOOM!

A pulse of orange-gold light blasted above them, forcing open the barrier of clouds and revealing a wan but welcome sight of the sun. A few stray snowflakes drifted down in the explosion’s wake, but whatever being now active in the sky than had forcefully suppressed nature, completely changing the day.

Even the bloodthirsty Sky Otters ceased attacking and looked up.

Out of that seed of light, a humanoid figure drifted down toward the canyon. Her hair burned with golden light. Her spear seared the surroundings with enough heat that the snow covering on the ground began to melt. From her head stretched two massive, white wings that softly and buffeted them all with warm breezes.

The Valkyrie touched down onto the ground and swept her gaze sideways through the assembled bodies. Even her eyes smoldered. She was only about five meters away from D’min, who felt a desire to submit so intense that he collapsed and had to prop himself up on his elbow to watch her move. Then D’min peered in the direction that she was looking.

Without the screen of snow, he could also see that six wounded Lizakh guards had piled up the corpses of their fellows in order to form a barricade against several hundred Sky Otters, most of which floated and considered the new arrival.

In that still scene, this avatar raised her spear.“Sun Strike.”

A brilliant golden flare tore through the sky, shredding and searing a dozen Sky Otters unfortunate enough to be standing in her way.

After her attack, the Sky Otters that hadn’t had the luck to die immediately screamed and screamed. Their fellows took a second to process this development and then swarmed forward, realizing that this valkyrie was a foe. But after two more of her overwhelming attacks, the canyon had fallen completely silent.

One of the guards by the mouth of the cave stumbled forward. “A… a Chosen of the Sun! We are saved!”

*****

Randidly felt like a sugar-fueled toddler as he took another break to gather his energy. He found that the rhythm of an hour of intense work followed by a short rest was the most sustainable way to take advantage of his Tier I Enhanced Obsession. So after floating across the completely reinvigorated sea, Randidly sat on the icy beach and meditated.

However, there was a large drawback with this method; he had quite a lot of time to think.

Randidly sighed as he considered the dull ache in his heart. God, I miss Helen. And I miss feeling like I haven’t failed my subordinates. Even if I tell myself I can use this chance to sharpen my vigilance and improve, the ache…

Not that the pain had gone anywhere even when he was busy; the absence in his Aether Crossroads still set Randidly to trembling when he considered the sensation too directly. But the continued expression of that grief this past few weeks had done a lot to develop a certain exhausted mental fortitude. The loss no longer destroyed him; it had just become one more burden that he had to carry.

A burden he owed it to Helen to continue carrying. A wave crashed against the rocky shore beneath him and sprayed him in freezing water. He stoically allowed the salty liquid to run along his jaw and drip back onto the stone beneath him.

Congratulations! Your Skill the Glittering Leaves of Yggdrasil (L) has grown to Level 372!

Soon, the seed of a headache had been erased and Randidly could thankfully busy himself once more. He began to thoroughly re-landscape the border of this central land; he had almost completely remade the vague periphery of her image. Yet Claudette’s focus had likely been still on more central themes than this border, so the edge of the sea was as bland as grey as what Randidly had found on the other side.

Here, he began to spread a bleak and featureless tundra. He made the ground rough and the layer of topsoil frozen. The horizon was monochrome, drawn with grey, black, and white in various quantities.

The terrain also sloped upward; a pair of looming mountains above the shoreline kept those ominous stormclouds from descending upon this desolate place. The heavy slabs of rock made a poor path upward, toward the central engine that drove this image world and filled Neveah’s Aether constructs with humming purpose.

Congratulations! Your Skill Grand Perspective (R) has grown to Level 123!

Even if this stretch is bland, there can at least be a crushing sense of consistency to it, Randidly reflected as he slowly moved up over the jutting stone outcroppings. This emptiness… this was the place where Claudette’s image strangled out its competition. Was there life in this place, originally? Should I add a few skeletons in the more icy portions…?

At the base of the twin mountains, Randidly paused again. He warred inwardly with himself. Not that he tired of the training; he quite enjoyed the task of improving the details of Claudette’s image. But he couldn’t deny that all this time to rest and feel the horrible loss of Helen left him impatient with his current speed.

The thinking between sprees of activity was slowly killing him.

So even if he could have continued forward for an amount of time, Randidly pulled out his Visage of Obsession and looked at the canvas once more.

As soon as he was on the solid black staircase, Randidly began to descend. His steps were even, leading him in a gradually descending circle. The stillness of this version of his Fatepiece continued to unnerve him, even though he welcomed the chance to spend some time away from the creepy image guide.

After two hundred and twenty-two steps, Randidly found another smiling Claudette waiting above a horizontal screen of darkness that bisected this world. She regarded him with a knowing look. “You came back quickly. I applaud how thoroughly you are embracing your obsession this time. Previously, you went deeper only when you had no other recourse. But now-”

“What’s the price to continue?” Randidly interrupted. He hoped that the projection changed soon, so he would no longer be hounded by Claudette’s image everywhere he turned.

“Ah,” The faux-Claudette clapped her hand twice. “Well, this one might be difficult to accept, but it is necessary to accomplish your goal. To continue, you must give up your ability to sense temperature.”

Randidly pressed his lips together. Due to the freebie, this was the second sacrifice he needed to make to continue. But considering the context, it was difficult for him to accept. “How will I be able to refine Claudette’s image without being able to feel cold?”

“A cold that is only a temperature will never be able to save her,” The projection replied. “Don’t you agree?”