Randidly felt like he painted the gruesome image of Yn’ulk and his followers for almost an hour. Each time he moved his gaze, he found a new frosted talon that could be slathered liberally with the blood of the foolish group. And once the marking had been made, he needed to watch the blood flow back through the air and into the body of a Lizakh and experience a horrible sort of recovery.

For whatever reason, when Randidly gripped tightly to a single story, the layers were surprisingly well behaved.

On the other hand, the fallen Lizakh were wild and corrupted. Randidly felt quite sour as he shaped them, traced their stinking warrens and horrible madness. Their weapons were rusted and partially blunt. Crafting the entire scene felt quite a lot like moving through the most recent barrier in the Visage of Obsession.

Yet by manipulating the layers, he lessened the mental blow against himself. He traveled backward, from wound to wholeness. In that manner, Randidly sunk willingly to shade, his guilt wearing off as the suddenly the group was arrogant and safe again.

That was Randidly’s favorite moment of this tragedy. He paused there for a while, taking care to perfect that feeling. Their baseless confidence and excitement as they hurried into the Field of Talons, sure that they would soon save their civilization. He could not see their expressions, but he felt their pure desire to overcome this desolation, even if it manifested as something selfish.

He made sure to pause in these moments and add his own precious insights into the image. Suddenly Randidly was back in his cabin in the Southern portion of the not-yet established Donnyton’s valley. He helped Donny and Daniel and Lyra, sharing his own experience with Paths from his time in the Dungeon.

We made it past the initial shock of the System and we started to believe that we could live like this, Randidly lived those moments. His own layers briefly held sway; he physically occupied the role of himself, but a different version. The weakness of the body was unfamiliar and his left arm felt strange and hot. But he still smiled. It was a fragile joy. We knew nothing about what still lay before us…

Still, Randidly turned back to the site of the ambush of Yn’ulk. The other layers receded. The talons flickered and suddenly the worst of ambushers were there. The fallen Lizakh crouched over the bodies and ripped through their scales with their teeth. Our wake-up call was a bit gentler than this.

Congratulations! Your Skill Conviction of the Celestial Cataclysm (T) has grown to Level 513!

Then time began steadily unwinding. The corpses lay beneath the iced talons and rotted. D’min stood above them. Randidly couldn’t read his expression with the price exacted by his Fatepiece, but he drew from his clear memory of Helen’s death. Grief and vague self-doubt hung across the Lizakh’s shoulders, causing them to droop.

He blames himself. And he should. He had no way of knowing that this was coming, but he was the one who was supposed to bear the consequences.

Randidly turned his gaze away from D’min’s pathetic figure, looking across the Field of Talons. One moment the cursed sword was gone, one moment a giant pillar of ice had grown atop the weapon to seal it further, then next D’min was there again, staggering across the black moor. Randidly drifted after him, pulling with his three images to fill himself with energy.

Congratulations! Your Skill the Glittering Leaves of Yggdrasil (L) has grown to Level 390!

The pain from the mental strain eased, but only somewhat. Yet now was not the time for a break. His attention gathered up on D’min’s uneven gait. He needed to accentuate this progression to the best of his ability.

The field was pitted and rocky. By the time D’min arrived before the sword, he was shivering. Two orbs condensed once more, one black and one emerald, observing the throbbing veins that stretched down from the poisonous hilt and covered the icy blade. Most of the weapon was hidden in the ground, but these shifting layers allowed Randidly to see this moment in its totality.

Below the ground, horror seethed, pumping out and poisoning the planet.

Whether through some innate physique or sheer determination, D’min managed to arrive at and stand directly about Clarent. With shaking hands, he reached out and seized the weapon that had spread the suffocating desolation. His fingers tightened on the hilt. And the wrenching moment of stillness that followed informed Randidly that D’min found it stuck.

Randidly traced the sharp lines of his arm, highlighting the way his overtaxed muscles strained against the frozen surface of the blade. Randidly carefully blistered D’min’s hands as the Lizakh attempted to grip this desolate weapon, even as it continued its baleful radiation.

Somehow, even Randidly was surprised as D’min produced the Strength to pull Clarent out of the ground. And of course, exposing the pale weapon to the air and giving its horrid black veins access to the air made everything so much worse.

Randidly blinked and suddenly D’min was a frozen pillar, held in place. Even though he was long dead, horror and helplessness still congregated around the frozen edifice to his passing. The two floating orbs carefully sharpened those emotional notes, taking note of the way Clarent had sealed itself in ice and D’min’s body.

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Then everything began to grow foggy; Randidly obediently allowed his consciousness to be pulled within his dreams.

Randidly observed the chaotic mix of images and impressions that followed with bemusement. Am I really this fucked up?

There were flashes of violence and then long stretches of dark silence. No sooner had one form flickered in place in front of him than it had vanished or been shoved aside or transformed. Everything was in constant flux, a flower became a room with barred doors and then an insidious sadness that Randidly had to brush off like dried flower petals.

His three images were there too, amongst the chaotic swirl of color and meaning displayed before him. Randidly could also tell that they were trying to communicate with him, but their words were jumbled together beyond recognition, to the point that Randidly could only shake his head.

Perhaps in the past he would have worried, but the prior sacrifice to the Visage of Obsession made him strangely at ease. The current him could simply accept the strange bouquet of impressions and take what he needed from them, without allowing them to stick for very long.

However, while he was sinking to the bottom of a sea of golden fire in another dream, Randidly heard a new voice, this time speaking clearly. “Please… Patron of the Sun, give your chosen people your blessing.”

“Please great Patron, if you don’t intervene, the Lizakh… we will all…”

“Please…”

The voice faded way, but not before Randidly reached out and grabbed that exhausted and mentally depleted tone for D’min. The sea of flame around Randidly flattened itself to nothing and then he was standing in a dusky place. There, he recognized the aura of Clarent herself, standing before a slender shade at the edge of the world.

‘You truly wish to help your father?’ The shade whispered. Its smile filled its face like the echo of a scream in a cave. ‘Well, I do not know where the original sword has been secreted, but I can help you find another sword. One even more powerful than the holy weapons of the Skykings.’

‘Please,’ Clarent bowed her head. ‘I would give anything to help him.’

The shade chuckled in this dark crack of existence and seeped into Clarent’s body. At first, she was just bewildered, but then she began to transform. Her already different body morphed when tainted by the Limina. Her whole body shrunk and twisted. For a split second, Clarent believed she had become a tree, but then a pale blade stretched upward from between her fingers.

‘You and I are so similar. Together… we are the perfect sword.’ The Limina whispered to Clarent, as it made itself at home inside of her body.

The images in front of Randidly began to dissipate; he was waking up. He let them go, viewing the backstory of Claudette’s image with the same dispassionate attention that he viewed all of his strange dreams. The images and emotions he saw flowed through him and then out. The current Randidly moved from sleep to wakefulness with a calm intensity.

The world in front of him was occasionally populated with faceless Lizakh and sometimes gripped in a chill so permanent that Randidly’s Perception tingled. Occasionally a horrible storm stomped down from the high mountain ranges and across the sea, threatening to end the world. Of course, a world was a durable thing. Despite the howling winds and precipitous drop in temperature, the world endured.

Yet Randidly took a few moments to sink into the surface of the world and trace the steadily accumulating corruption that oozed toward the core.

*****

D’min looked forward at the spray of seawater with wide eyes. It was still too cold for his taste here, but that was the least of his concerns. The Lizakh knew of larger bodies of water, but D’min had never seen anything bigger than a river. And the Great Sea of Expira in front of him consumed the entirety of the horizon.

But quickly, the Savior dragged back his attention with her words. She pointed to a small concrete fort on one of the cliffs above the sea. Even from this distance, D’min could make out a thick layer of bodies layer around the base of the compound. “Head there; this is where the forces of Expira are gathering for the expedition into the Calamity. I need to contact King Phirun and see if the politics of this are still fucked.”

“Will we… be allowed to approach?” Yn’ulk had the presence of mind to ask. After leaving the Frost Dragon Wivanya in charge of their base, they had traveled with the Savior to this coastal area. Her presence meant that they had never been in any real danger; the Revelations that she revealed were overwhelmingly powerful. But the Lizakh warriors had been fighting against the spawns of the Calamity almost constantly.

D’min looked again at the corpses strewn outside of the fort. It appears as though most of them are aquatic creatures that crawled out of the sea. If we are mistaken for monsters- Well, we still are monsters.

“Just seem intelligent. There are several recognized non-human races on Expira. Flare your image if they flare theirs. Yn’ulk, you should be responsible for that.” Alana nodded to them all. “There are some things I can protect you from, but you’ll also need to experience some things for yourself. Inside of the fort are some of the strongest warriors on Expira. And to be frank, each one is greedy for the opportunity to defeat the Calamity.

“So be prepared to prove yourself. Have confidence.” The Savior nodded once. Then she grinned viciously at them. “But if someone gives you any problems, tell them you are under the protection of Alana Donal.”

Then she turned and left, kicking off the ground and condensing brilliant pearly wings that stretched from her helmet. With a few beats, she ascended like a radiant star and pierced through the clouds. The whole sky rippled with her passage.

Yn’ulk looked around. “Tight formation. We might be in a strange situation, but we are still Lizakh. We have our pride. We will take this chance given to us by the Patron of the Sun and seize it.”

The warriors responded quickly; their formations had been drilled into them since their juvenile period. Without them, physically more imposing monsters would have long defeated and devoured the Lizakh.

Te’Leto fell into place next to D’min. And to his surprise, the older warrior spoke in a low voice, covered up by their shifting armor and weapons. “If this opportunity is related to the Patron of the Sun at all…”

D’min gave a slight nod in response as they walked toward official contact with the humans of Expira.