By the time Randidly opened his eyes, some of those inevitable shifts became physicalized in the body in front of him. Copper spikes began to rip out through Wick’s eyes and oozed blood. Drops congregated at the dull tips. His bearman hair receded, leaving ugly stretches of rust-colored flesh behind.

When Wick spoke, it was with a different voice. The tone was clipped “I would appreciate it if you kill me.”

The black emotional sludge clinging to his heart quivered with renewed anticipation. It would be so easy to assent and end this. Plus, it would be smart; if he didn’t end Wick with his own hands, the powerful man might somehow come back to threaten him later. Wick had already proven to be a dangerous individual. Plus it was the revenge that Randidly had sought. There were a thousand reasons why he should kill Wick quickly.

And yet.

And yet Randidly was afraid. Because when he looked at Wick’s collapsed form, he saw himself so clearly in the shape of this man’s destiny. He saw how near-parallel their lives had run. How small choices had brought them to diverging paths, and the prospect of similar choices leading them back together terrified him.

Plus, letting him go does feel like the worse punishment for him...

Randidly shook his head. Precisely because it was a choice Wick would never make, he felt drawn to it. He knew it was foolish. He knew he would likely regret it. Yet at this moment, feeling emotionally exhausted and vaguely tainted and fearful of the effects all that Wick jelly invading him might have- all he wanted was proof that he was Randidly Ghosthound.

“You will regret it,” This new Wick, likely one of the other personalities, observed. One drop of blood fell off the spike and spattered onto his bare skin. Which, at least, solved the question of why his skin was that color.

But Randidly couldn’t help but chuckle at the words. “I’ve regretted a lot of things since coming to the Nexus. This, I think, I can live with.”

His clumsy fingers groped several times before they settled on the familiar handle to the Philosopher's Key. He raised the bronze implement gingerly, struggling more than usual to find its proper resting place to open back a portal to the safe house that Edraine had created. After the key turned and the portal unfolded, he turned back to look at Wick.

Other portions of the Commandant’s body began to bulge. Some of them stretched into tiny limbs with misshapen digits, while others became copper protrusions. At the same time, Wick seemed to be oozing outward, like a scoop of ice cream left too long in the sun. The bottom portion began to melt and run.

We may have similar beginnings, Randidly resolutely turned back forward and stepped through the portal. He felt oddly hollow, beyond even the exhaustion, as he considered this powerful foe that had threatened him for so long now coming apart at the seams. But we will have different endings. This ending of yours… whether it is an ending or not… you deserve it, Wick.

You’ll have to live your pain, just like I’ll always carry mine.

As he passed into the familiar room and right before he collapsed onto the bed for a long and dreamless sleep, a portion of the notification he received when he created his Fatepiece came back to him. It floated unbidden to the surface of his mind.

Yet the paradox of the alchemist is eternal. If they are flawed, are not all dreams that they can conceive made of that same flawed flesh? Can their hands not ultimately only wring more imperfections from the substance of this plane?

I’m starting to catch up to them. So when I wake up, I need to start thinking about how… Randidly’s mind relaxed almost immediately when he lay down on the palette all his tension dissolved his last few conscious thoughts. ...to take that final step… to accomplish the impossible…

...to tear down the Nexus...

*****

Devick found Wick several minutes later exactly where Randidly had left him, albeit with Wick having split into several more minor blobs around a sagging sack of skin that had once housed them all. The largest of the image remnants, the flesh titan, rose and offered a sad smile. “Mother. Please, kill us all and end this.”

She paused midstride, genuinely surprised that this pathetic thing had the nerve to speak to her. Especially while completely naked. Her temper rose hot and vicious in her chest and she raised a hand. Chains clinked threateningly in the distance.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

Then she paused. After a few moments of reflection, she shook her head. “Don’t act so intimate in the future. Besides, my son chose to spare you. And to be frank, I quite admire his cruelty; if you are desperate to die, I want that much more not to grant your wish. Now, if you’ll excuse me-”

Another one of the nearby blobs oozed. It used two small arms made entirely of molten copper to set itself upright and looked at Devick with blank, copper eyes. Another split portion, this one periodically out grey smoke, inflated itself and shook. “You! We are your child! This trash you see dripping across the floor is exactly what you made. The Ghosthound is not-”

The flesh titan lashed sideways with a whip of rust-colored muscle and ruptured the fragile skin of the speaking blob. Grey smoke leaked out and it collapsed. Devick chuckled and leaned over all of them, the sacks of flesh, image, and emotion that had already begun cutting themselves to pieces in the aftermath of the battle. “Now, I created a child sure, once upon a time, a great warrior and fearless leader. You are neither of those things.”

“But the bindings…” The grey cloud Wick whispered with what seemed to be the last bit of his strength.

“Are gone, yes?” Devick sighed and shook her head theatrically. “Who knew you were such a sentimental type, to seize upon the past like this. No, please, my business here is not with you. I just figured it would be the best opportunity for me to understand my beloved son. And to that end…”

Devick cast her gaze around the destroyed room. She walked over to a particularly devastated portion, where a huge hole had been burned into the ground. Clicking her tongue, she walked up to the edge and peered down into the darkness. “Ah, what a robust body he has! Even after a few minutes, that drop of blood is still burning its way down toward the core of this place. No, I wouldn’t want that zombie down there to touch my son’s blood; it is a mother’s prerogative to protect a foolish child from such risks.”

She snapped her fingers.

For several seconds, nothing happened. There were some distant rumbles below, but other than that, the surroundings remained inert. It took a full five minutes for the sound of clinking chains to rise out of that hole. And then it was a further thirty seconds before Devick’s rusty chains erupted, tightly wrapped around a single, emerald drop of blood.

She smiled sweetly at the blood, which pulsed and struggled against the chains. “Now, no need to worry. If you need to blame anyone, blame your original body for treating you so carelessly.”

*****

Moonlight Blade gasped and sat up. His clawed hand went to his chest, which still felt numb even as the last vestiges of the nightmare passed.

He had been sleeping in the corner of his deepest cave, well away from most of his subordinates. He hated that he needed some time away, but he had been truly wounded by the struggle for the Beigon girl.

Shivering, the Canine pushed himself to his feet. The worst part, even worse than the strange erosion that had hit his images, was the dreams. Even now, days later, every time his mind wandered he would fall into a light sleep. And waiting for him there was the keening song of Claudette’s sword.

Moonlight Blade’s hands tightened into fists. Every time he awoke because he felt that sickening chill as her weapon impaled his chest. As someone who considered himself only a half step before the Image Fulfillment stage, it was a horrible embarrassment to be so affected.

Yet he did not hold a grudge against the girl for this. She had bested him. Although that strike had taken him by surprise, who hadn’t engaged in an ambush in the past? Such is the mode of the wild. To hold a grudge over such a thing was to curse the eagle for its feathers or the spider for its web. Better to focus on the future.

Besides, there is the matter of the Ghosthound… Moonlight Blade barred his teeth. Then he glanced down at the bracer on his forearm. He could very distinctly feel the way the Ghosthound had somehow adjusted Moonlight Blade’s final attack, using the tiny shard of an image that grew within the equipment.

Due to that opening, the Beigon girl had seized her own destiny.

The wolfman raised his head and unleashed a howl that shook the mountain. The heavy granite walls vibrated as the noise bounced back and forth through the tunnel system. He took great pleasure in sensing the young of his pack being startled awake and glance around wide with fear. Greater pleasure still when most of them tried to make themselves as small as possible, remaining still so as not to draw his ire.

He let the note fall away and rolled his neck. Hum, better to set my pride aside in this situation too. The artisan who makes this equipment is from the Ghosthound’s homeworld. This is a genuine chance for me to improve my power. Likely he won’t hold a grudge; most of his fighting was done against Devick and that Rex girl. But still… perhaps it will be safest to sweeten the pot.

Moonlight Blade began composing a message to the Ghosthound, but soon was snarling at the interface and throwing his claws up in the air. Everything he typed out felt meek and mild. Obviously, he was extending a peace offering, but he didn’t wish to sound like a trembling whelp dragging itself across the ground with its throat exposed.

“Ozark!” Moonlight Blade howled.

Almost immediately a trembling form a few caves over jumped and slammed his head against a stalactite. After rolling on the ground for a few seconds, that pathetic servant character seemed to realize that he had been called and scurried toward the deepest cave. Moonlight Blade laid down and did his best to seem sinister and powerful.

“Y-you called?” Ozark practically chirped, his eyes flicking to Moonlight Blade’s chest as though looking for wounds.

That certainly earned him no ill will, but the wolfman felt oddly at ease around this particular subordinate of a subordinate. This being’s entire body seemed to acknowledge Moonlight Blade as a superior existence, was a sort of capitulation that was difficult to find.

“Compose a letter,” Moonlight Blade growl. “Let Randidly Ghosthound know there are no hard feelings between us. Then request that he facilitate additional equipment for me… along the same vein as this bracer. Its maker is from his homeworld, after all.”