Randidly spent almost a day wrestling with the issue of this mysterious Fourth Authority. During that time he mobilized all of his powerful mind and delicate senses to comb through the notes and flavors of his internal world. He even found and eradicated a few lingering notes of Devick’s madness that had somehow managed to survive his first few purges.

On the subject of the Fourth Authority, however, he achieved exactly nothing.

He couldn’t feel any connection between the dimly sensed Authority and the Penance. They were a part of him, not some passenger from the Penance. If anything, this only made him feel worse; if the Authority didn’t come from a foreign influence, he had no idea why it would be a part of his Nether Core.

His next theory was that perhaps it was related to his other Skillset, the Moirae of Ripples. He had used that pseudo-image quite a bit in combination with his Nether Skills, after all. Especially recently. However, that made even less sense. Authorities came from the foundation of his Nether Core. Solomon had mentioned it and Randidly’s intuition told him the same thing. And as powerful as Moirae of Ripples was, it hadn’t even been imagined when he had made his Nether Core.

This Fourth flavor wasn’t exactly unfamiliar, but he couldn’t see how his Nether Core had been founded on it.

Still, his failure to identify the culprit from his vague senses wasn’t exactly surprising. Trying to understand the source of his authority based on the vague sense was like studying shadows to figure out the tactile sensation of rubbing fabric.

Randidly did his best to put it out of his mind. As it turned out, the Penance was a useful tool for this; he felt conflicted and vaguely anxious when he closed his eyes and accepted the owed oblivion, but woke up cool and tingling from paying a few hours' worth of deferred seconds. He even went so far as to go under for another few hours, building up a bank of paid seconds that he could rely on through the early portion of his training.

Examining his refined Nether closely, he could feel the subtle difference in depth that using the Penance generated. After humming to himself and staring down at the grey, cooling surface of the lava of the volcano, Randidly reached into the Penance and shifted the payment up to two seconds per every sixty.

The effect was immediate but relatively small. Randidly clicked his tongue; he might have doubled the amount of time he paid to the Penance, but it was still an insignificant portion relative to how much time remained his own. However, due to the thickening of the currents he could weave, Randidly left increased Penance intact and moved his attention away.

He meant to begin building a schedule for himself on this island, but his attention was drawn by some movement at the edge of his sphere of influence. Randidly twisted to look out at the growing behemoth riding the sea waves and his lips twitched.

Randidly only had to look at the group from the Vulpis Squad and feel their image to understand their intentions. They had lashed together several barges, setting up a ‘basecamp’ right outside of Randidly’s Nether storm, which extended above twenty meters beyond the beach into the surrounding seas. There they staged several excursions into the Nether environment, where their images were constantly weathered by the heavy presence of Nether.

Seeing that this was exactly the point, Randidly didn’t bother to try and attune the Nether to their image, which wouldn’t have been difficult considering that their image partially came from him. And increasingly, he played a larger role in their collective image. However, he had noticed their regular activities a few days ago, before he had banked up some time for the Penance; now he couldn’t help but gawk at the blossoming, bobbing shanty town that sprung up on the edge of the storm.

A lion’s share of the new arrivals were from Kharon and the Order Ducis, who appeared to have negotiated with Heiffal and the Vulpis Squad to be part of the training session. Groups came from the Wandering City on Scrawled bits of driftwood that were soon repurposed to extend the barge and create small shelters. But what fascinated Randidly was the trickling arrivals of smaller groups.

They came in ones or twos, with unfamiliar images but with a distinct trail of significance that they followed to reach him. They were strong; stronger than Randidly expected to find amongst unfamiliar individuals who hadn’t been trained by anyone that he knew. Yet the weirdest part was the way they were connected to him, without him even knowing, due to his far-reaching influence on Expira.

Their desires all revolved around the world and that led them to him. They wanted to protect this planet. They wanted to be able to control their own destiny. They wished to understand the long road to the Pinnacle.

Some were selfish in their goals. Some wished to heal the world. Some very obviously possessed more than a little antagonism for him. Some seemed to just wander in as if it was perfectly natural to cut down a tree and decide to sail into the unexplored expanse of volcanic islands South of New Scandiv. Already his storm built a well of significance beneath this island and the previously sluggish Nether layer of the Alpha Cosmos began to churn around it.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

But despite their individual differences, they came and created a secondary swirling force of Nether, drafting off the friction Randidly’s Nether Core generated when it interacted with the ocean around it.

In the end, it was a drain on Randidly’s Nether Core. But an acceptable one. As he looked out at these strangers coming together to transform themselves, he couldn’t help but grin like a wolf.

“You want to find power?” Randidly whispered. The air of his churning storm hummed, but a low frequency of denial as his words were convened across the distance and spoke to that unconscious significance they responded to; that wasn’t the truth. They didn’t simply want power. His grin stretched wider and wider, his eyes going wild with a king’s jealousy of his kingdom. He raised his right hand and cracked his knuckles. “Ah, that’s not right. You want to catch up with me, is that it?”

Even as he said the words, he could feel the chorus of affirmative challenges from these individuals. On Expira, cut off from the Nexus as it was by Randidly’s actions, the one smirking from atop the pyramid was the Ghosthound. For those clambering upward, they didn’t understand at all what he did to protect them. Only that he was in their way.

With a foolish stubbornness, they clambered up toward him.

He released a joyless laugh and spread his arms wide. His Nether Core began to whirl more rapidly, smooth and almost lyrically keening, the flows of significance pulling at the threads that led these challengers here. And now that he knew what he was sensing, he could feel more familiar figures, like Hank Howard and Alana Donal, steadily being drawn to this place.

Without giving them a chance to regret it, Randidly expanded his storm. As the Moirae of Ripples, he gobbled up the floating shantytown and a bit of ocean beyond it. If they wanted to grow, he would provide the environment to do so. As his influence reached out, he forcefully altered the flows of the ocean in the surrounding sea, so it was very easy to be drawn in but difficult to leave.

Perhaps it was slightly petty, but something competitive in Randidly’s chest burned to show his dominance. He rolled his shoulders and sent messages to Naffur and Tatiana, informing them of the changes he had made. He also recommended they set up a few buoys or something further away from the island, warning these travelers away.

Then he put them entirely out of his mind. He had more than enough on his plate already. They would handle themselves, or they wouldn’t. After focusing, he began to train.

Most of his attention remained on patterns and Nether, specifically the way the Penance and Authorities functioned. But he created time slots in his day to continue to push his Hierarchy of Burden forward. He reached out to Heiffal and offered opportunities to the Vulpis Squad to share the early tiers, so he could ascend farther and they would have a more brutal way of testing their bodies.

He cleansed and sharpened his three images, preparing for the chance to immerse himself in the Sea of Dreams and strain them further.

During his moments of reflection, he produced the strange bone charm and scrutinized it. Somehow, it managed to marry the stickiness of Nether’s connection with the violence of Aether’s emotional force, while remaining true to neither. It was a perversion of both energies, weaponized and released with malicious intent.

Due to his capabilities with Nether, he could prevent the item from latching onto him. Yet also, he could sense that time was required for it to build up a ‘charge’ of its horrifying attack. He did his best to penetrate the structure and understand the mechanisms before it was armed once more.

Skill Levels came slowly, compared to the frantic struggles he had engaged in over the last few weeks. However, what Randidly gained was understanding. Understanding of energy ripples, understanding of Penances, understanding of the way that images and connections could be blended together.

Also a distant understanding of the way the Nexus cleaved the two energies apart, in a mysterious effort that had led to several strange side effects.

But he didn’t rush. Because for the first time in a while, Randidly had time to improve slowly.

*****

Sam growled and threw up his hands. “This piece of shit…!”

He tossed the headpiece of glittering leaves to the side. It clanked noisily off the workbench and fell to the floor, somehow managing to cut a deep divot in one of Sam’s favorite hammers as it fell to the ground. Buzzing like an overstressed steam engine, he bent at the waist and swept the item off the ground. Then he tossed it over to a bin at the far end of the room, filled with similar attempts.

All very high quality, higher than anything Sam had made by relying on the materials on Expira. But not high enough.

Muttering quietly to himself, Sam went to the sink and rinsed his hands under the faucet. His connection with Ozark had continued, with the other party giving meandering instructions and vague explanations of materials that led to this: a headpiece worn by a powerful wolf that could benefit an image.

Recently, those nagging messages and requests for status updates had stopped. Sam thanked his lucky stars that the Ghosthound had chosen to go into isolated training so he now had some space to breathe and think about the project.

But at the same time, Sam wheeled around and glared resentfully at the bin filled with poorly executed materials. It means that I’m stuck in here with these failures staring me in the face… and no one to be mad at-

“Sam? Have you got a minute?” Regina knocked and then allowed herself into his workroom without waiting for a response.

Sam put on an aggrieved expression; it was a rule that they weren’t allowed to do exactly this in their house. However, he inwardly felt a flush of warmth as he looked at his wife. He coughed to hide it. “Hum? What is it? I just finished up. And you know our rule.”

“I know, I know,” Regina flapped her grease-covered fingers. Then she gave him a bright smile, a smile that had made him fall in love with her. She sucked in a breath and spat out her new idea. “How would you like to take a little vacation… to the South Sea?”