Randidly gasped, or at least he tried to. The muscles of his chest contracted and his diaphragm pulsed. But immediately, he felt restricted; his body would not move as he wished. Although he had immense physical power, none of that could be used against the liquid.

He existed within his own body, but more a lingering spirit than an animating force. The feeling was simultaneously peculiar, tension relieving, and alarming.

So for several seconds, he floated down through the aggressively blue water, seeing with crystal clarity as Devick stood above him and peered down into the liquid. From the way she cast her gaze about, it seemed that she didn’t have the same sort of perfect vision into the substance that he did out. Which was just as well; Randidly felt his skin crawl when he thought about her near-empty eyes as she manifested that shield and then ripped him down into the water with those rusty hooks. They hadn’t been able to shred his flesh, but he felt the lingering taint of her corrosion on his skin when he hit the sapphire water.

Luckily, whatever held Randidly bound also cleansed him; the remnants of Devick’s image that ended up on him were eradicated. The sapphire color destroyed all outside force. Devick frowned and pouted at the water, sending a powerful hook smashing into the lake. It absorbed the hook without a ripple but just as quickly disintegrated it.

Randidly watched in fascination, seeing the way energy spread out through the interior of the liquid. Those same disturbing patterns flared briefly in response to the transgression. This… is one of the most sophisticated barriers I’ve ever seen. It incorporates both Aether and Nether principles; all force employed is immediately spread out over the entire lake. It looks like it destroyed images, but it simply dilutes them. So-

For several seconds, Randidly released pulses to adjust his back-first descent into the unknown, now vacated of his ability to move his body. The oppression on his senses was even worse in the liquid, giving him no useful information except Devick stood above him and the environment was a deep sapphire.

However, Randidly quickly got the hang of manipulating that rule and caused his body to rotate in the isolated space. The blue medium expanded an image to the point of dilution, but Randidly wasn’t trying to manifest the Grey Creature or any other specific image. Instead, he scaled his result to the size of the lake. He simply focused on a vast sea of sapphire, where there was a minute eddy in a particular area.

He could hear Devick grousing above him, but Randidly’s expression turned serious as he finally witnessed what lay below him. About twenty meters away, a distance that put Randidly already about 1/4th of the way toward the bottom of the lake, sprawled a condensed weaving of light. The hexagonal lines of light appeared simply to block a small tunnel, through which Randidly could see a massive pillar of black flames.

Yet as soon as Randidly stared at the very exact framing for that small tunnel, the details of what lay on the other side began to shift; just like the barrier diluted images from Devick, it erased detail from whatever lay on the other side of that hexagonal light fence. Concentration would steadily piece together the damage done by the fence. After a few seconds of looking, an enormous, spined shadow lay in the middle of that flame pillar. After ten seconds, that shadow became a black dragon, sleeping fitfully. Smog drifted out its nose, which eventually became the substance that burned to create the pillar of flame.

Or at least Randidly thought it was sleeping fitfully. Yet suddenly a massive ivory spike was driven so prominently through its spine that Randidly wondered how he had missed it previously. And once he saw the spike, the dragon was a young man with raven-black hair so long it wrapped around him like a cocoon-

Randidly came back to the strange stillness of the sapphire liquid, feeling his brain heating up in a similar way as when he tried to calculate the complex interaction of ripples. Even more surprising, Randidly was only a few meters away from the fence of light. He had somehow lost several minutes looking toward that strange figure beyond the barrier.

Pulling his attention inward, Randidly tried to calm himself. He manipulated his expansive ‘image’ of the lake around him to slow his descent until he was simply floating in front of the barrier. Then he used the liquid around him to turn himself around and looked back toward the surface of the lake. Devick’s looming form had vanished. She either was waiting to ambush him or grew bored with waiting and decided to bother someone else.

Randidly wasn’t sure which was more likely.

With an inward sigh, Randidly rotated back toward the fence once more. He tried his best to observe the patterns without letting them absorb him. The strange detail compression triggered easily if the fence wasn’t regarded carefully. This is what gives the Skull of Truth its power; not whatever being… dragon… is imprisoned down there, this sophisticated sapphire barrier. I wonder how-

A small prod brought him within touching distance to the octagonal bars of light, had he possessed the ability to reach out. Being so near the barrier, Randidly suddenly realized that he sensed a very familiar aura on the barrier. An aura that he would never forget.

The white energy cage in front of him had been made by Elhume. Instinctively, Randidly’s pupils dilated as he looked at the strange barrier within the sapphire lake. This is all inside the Skull of Truth? I thought this was left behind by the Patron of Truth? What the hell did you do, Elhume?

A small spark of dissatisfaction, for everything Randidly struggled against, for the entire pyramid of individuals with power-above-all-else mentalities, the entire series of dominos leading to Wick and his callous cruelty, burned in his chest. The scent of Elhume and the lingering taste of pride that hovered about this particular creation worsened the stifled feeling Randidly experienced. In Elhume’s shadow Devick cackled, madness and ambition bound together with the desperate drive to survive.

Unable to resist his curiosity about the making of this potent Aetherium, Randidly used currents of sapphire liquid to extend his hand and lay a finger on one of the thin lines of light.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

*****

Claudette and Neshamah eyed the pair of rebels curiously as they hurried through the tunnel, but there was no fight in them; whatever they had encountered within the Skull of Truth, it had brutalized their bodies and crushed their spirit.

The two women’s feet made strange slapping noise on the stone floor as they moved in Randidly’s bare feet. Elaborately carved pillars were spaced at regular intervals along the passage, depicting strange flickers of images that Claudette couldn’t comprehend. A strange, sapphire shine to their edges made them impossible to understand. During those brief times where she paused and tried to take a few extra moments to examine the pillars, she only received a headache for her efforts, and the vaguest picture of a fox kneeling and begging before a bright light for clemency.

Did father create that image for this game…? Claudette was bewildered as she turned her focus back forward. Each pillar seemed to contain a separate image, each possessing the same sort of brain-searing detail as the first. Each glittered with the faintest hint of sapphire. But if he didn’t create these, where did they come from? Were they part of the Skull of Truth to begin with?

The passage around them slowly widened. The pillars thickened, the glittering yet continually out-of-reach detail on them spreading to cover larger and larger space. Without any fanfare, the ceiling seemed to dissolve, so that no longer did it feel like they were in a cavern, but underneath a wide night sky.

Yet while that impression felt accurate, it only made Claudette’s heart tighten and shrivel. Because the sky in this place felt like the open mouth of a beast, panting above them and releasing no light or hope.

“There,” Neshamah said quietly. To their left, glimmering through a veritable forest of hazy pillars, was a pure crystal radiance that stank of Don Beigon’s touch. That should be their destination.

The group adjusted, but Claudette felt her wariness toward their companions rise; it was clear the sight of what both groups hoped was the destination put some fire back into the bellies of the rebels. Up until now, they hadn’t seen a single other competitor. The acknowledged threats to Claudette’s freedom and the representatives from the Engraving Guild had not been seen. Plus, Randidly should be at the entrance to the mines, waiting for more groups so he could proceed after them.

Perhaps, the participants in the final battle were around them right now. The prospect made Claudette dizzy, especially with the strange influence of the pillars. She used Randidly’s powerful legs to carry her forward to the goal and tried not to let doubt creep into her heart. Everything had happened so quickly. It was true that this wasn’t supposed to be a long competition, but she had thought-

Then Claudette’s, Randidly’s, eyes sharpened. Ahead of the group a single figure was waiting, standing in the shadow of one of the sapphire-edged pillars and releasing seething waves of ill will and Nether.

The four of them slowed. Perhaps she wouldn’t have been aware of it normally, but the skin of Randidly’s arms prickled; the figure in front of them possessed quite a bit of Nether. Neshamah looked solemnly forward. “Who are you?”

“Skull Shadow,” The figure responded, not a hint of movement showing from beneath the long cloak he wore.

Neshamah’s expression stiffened. “But I thought-”

“None of you may pass,” The cowled Skull Shadow continued, seeming to consider the trappings of polite conversation to be optional. “The alliance with the Beigon Family will be obtained by the Nether Collective. It has been determined.”

“Oh great,” The lyrical voiced Allilia muttered. “Some new Orthodox Nexus Organization. And a collective, at that. I’m sure there’s no harm in giving them unilateral authority over a few planets.”

Skull raised his hand and unleashed a concentrated blast of Nether at Allilia’s chest. His responses were direct, if nothing else. She snorted and produced a strange humming that obliterated the force of the attack. However, Skull raised both his arms and spouts of Nether erupted all around them.

Thick tentacles of Nether lashed back and forth, carving scars into the stone and releasing a caustic suppression. Claudette felt slightly uncomfortable, but it was definitely true that the disparate Nether couldn’t injure this body easily. She marshaled herself to deploy her image, but Neshamah blurred past her.

The other woman forcefully blasted apart the Nether defenses that Skull Shadow quickly brought around to bear and slammed into him. The stoic man growled as he stumbled and then collapsed onto his back. More Nether was surging, but Neshamah twisted and unleashed a piercing bolt of Nether that ripped a hole in the hastily erected defenses. She exchanged a glance with Claudette and in the next moment Claudette launched herself through, stumbling to regain her footing and then dashing forward in the direction of the light source.

The ground rumbled beneath her as Neshamah and Skull clashed behind her, but Claudette ignored it. The rebels seemed caught up in the chaos and she was happy to proceed alone. On the wings of Randidly’s powerful body, she soon arrived before the brilliant light, which turned out to be a gazebo made of pure crystal. She briefly stilled, remembering a request as a child that her father make her an entire princess castle made of diamonds. Her father had laughed and laughed, slapping his knee in a desperate attempt to regain control. Then he told her that if she was impeccably behaved for the rest of the year, he would see what he could do.

However, between that conversation and the end of the year, Claudette’s mother had died. In the wake of that event, a lot of promises had slipped into the cracks and dissolved into the gulf of their private griefs.

When she stepped onto the crystal gazebo, some mechanism beneath it activated and a teleportation array manifested. In the next instant, Claudette stood on a small path in the desert at night, but this time the sky above was filled with stars. Beautiful patterns gleamed above, so fresh and bright they seemed about to drip down on the sand.

She examined the terrain. The path forked directly in front of Claudette, stretching off to the left and right in a meandering fashion. At that fork stood a sign and beyond it a deep ravine filled with glimmering light.

On the sign was a message.

My sincerest congratulations to those who have made it to this point; this is the final leg-- you haven’t quite won yet, now have you? Before you lay two paths, nearly mirror images of one another. You’ll-- paths lead to the final location. However, the journey will not be simple. Parallel-- arduous and painful, while the other-- based on the natural structure of the Skull of Truth-- luck.

That was the entirety of the message, because a weird sort of black flame flickered up from within the ravine, eating away a large portion of the final few lines and much of the middle. Claudette took several steps forward and peered down into the ravine. A sea of black flames waited below. And as she watched, the cracked ground spread, eating up even more of the Don’s message.

The damage would soon annihilate the entire message. Claudette frowned. What the hell is going on…?

Then, because the tight knot of anxiety in her chest urged her onward, she started moving down the left path. No matter what was occurring, she would not waiver.