Randidly settled into the dark and murky area of himself where his Nether Core existed. He relaxed for a short time, savoring the comforting hum of its rotation. Around him, he felt the constant flow of Nether, churned outward and running through his veins. The Penance rang with a slightly different note, achieving a delightful harmony with the lower-pitched core.

In a way, he wished he could remain there for longer, simply savoring the reassuring hum of the Nether System that supported his body. It felt like leaning against a massive metaphysical rib cage and hearing the even and sure beat of a powerful heart.

Then Randidly felt that comparison was slightly strange because the heart was his own. Shaking his head, he turned his focus to the three foundations of his images.

Randidly understood intuitively the emotions that would empower his images, but that was putting the cart before the horse. He should not adopt those emotional affects in order to pick up the emotions, but those should be his affects all the time, thereby binding him more tightly to his three images. Making that process subconscious and natural would remove one small impediment from him improving his images.

Considering how far he still had to go, he wanted to get that small distance out of the way as soon as possible.

He first conjured Yggdrasil, having the massive trunk, creaking branches, and rustling leaves wrap around him. The warm and earthy noises of Yggdrasil were very different from the hum and chime of the Nether Core and Penance, but they wove together extremely well into a natural symphony. Randidly instantly felt transported to an imaginary temple deep within the jungle. Above it, the World Tree rose.

Randidly felt, raw and exposed, forcefully opening himself up to sensations so he could examine the whole of his emotional affect with Yggdrasil. He felt awe and fear, for the wild growth around and for the rugged and unpredictable beauty of nature and life. He felt a desire for stability, the warm uplifting feeling that allowed the World Tree to gather and purify so much energy to later distribute to the surrounding landing.

But Randidly also felt a stubbornness in that image. For a few seconds, he groped around, confused. But then he felt the source; although the World Tree continued to consume increasingly large amounts of energy and gather it all together, the tree still felt that its current form was enough. As he was partway through evolving the image and its Skills, that resistance to change was still present.

He allowed the image to fade and nodded to himself. I’ll need to deal with its Skill evaluations before I can pin down the exact emotional state for Yggdrasil. Even if I don’t want to interfere in the chaos of what is coming for Expira, it will be useful to take away some of its ripples and force them into Yggdrasil. Eventually, even this stubborn old tree will bloom like a flower.

He turned his attention to his neck image and the one that still left him feeling the most conflicted: the Grey Creature. He looked at his own face, within the armor and the scales, the two tails, and the familiar eyes of Yystrix.

*****

Zack Krum felt like the incarnation of a war god, ripping through the hastily assembled first line of defense in Zone 7. The guards stood slightly askew on the high wall around the market, the interior of which had been made to look like the facade of the buildings so that the various attendees didn’t realize how trapped they truly were, and were still partially blinded by Todd’s scraps of cloth when the trio had made it to the ledge.

One guard whipped a stun baton around but Zack Krum had already pinched his elbow and folded the joint to bring the weapon to its owner’s chest for a brief kiss. As it released its sizzling charge, Krum sashayed forward to his next few opponents. He hip-checked on guard off the edge and caught another raising his weapon. With a grin on his face, he flipped the man into a tumbling somersault several meters in the air.

The guard began to scream as he got over his dizziness and realized he was falling off the wall.

Zack planted his foot and turned, ready to enjoy more Judo flexing, but the wall around them was clear. A few crumpled forms remained, but none capable of slowing them down. Zeta had boldly smashed three backward and four more folded underneath precise hits from Todd’s Scrawled metal bars he usually kept strapped to his side.

Todd raised an eyebrow over his creepily inert eyeballs, likely noticing Zack’s enthusiasm for more violence. The older teen ducked his head and followed as they leapt over the edge. Something between jealousy and protectiveness warred in his chest. Yes, I know you are more powerful than me, even if you are several years younger. That’s why I don’t get why you are so-

Zack smothered that thought; he couldn’t decide what he would accuse Todd of being, even if it was just in his mind.

Beyond the walled market, the true form of the hive cities could be seen. Tall, bulbous buildings housed stacked sleeping pods where much of the population were still stored through the night. Despite the System, Zone 7 recommended people sleep several hours each day. Zack felt a bit queasy as they landed next to a few high-tech-looking tubes before leaping forward.

He knew the real reason that the Zone 7 government had created those tight, lightless tubes; to measure and catalog the Skills and Stats of their population through a daily check.

Vast farms spread between the housing silos, filled with lush greenery that swayed slightly as the trio rushed above it. Occasionally there were low grey warehouses that provided access to the underground workstations, but they avoided those in their hurtling dash. Giant glass lightbulbs poked up from the ground, providing a little bit of alien strangeness to the terrain.

These buildings housed the farming overseers. Most were still empty, but a few early rising overseers looked up in alarm from their panoptic desks as the trio blasted forward. Behind them, a shrill alarm began to ring from the market. These noises rapidly spread through the whole complex, the loudest noise coming from the governmental compound ahead of them.

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“Can’t turn back now,” Zack muttered to himself. That ugly desperation he couldn’t shake climbed out of his pounding heart and sat on his shoulder, filled with a wild glee. Some part of him started to understand that what they did now had consequences, that they couldn’t escape easily from an entire Zone of furious guards, but that portion of him that had been watching, injured and helpless, while Todd had stepped up and stalled the Patron of the Grey whispered that he deserved this.

Any pain, any real-world trial, any punishment from Zone 7 would be better than facing the guilt he carried toward Todd. It should have been him. He was the older, he had been less exhausted. Yet before that baleful grey light, he had flinched.

Todd had not.

Zack planted his foot and blasted forward, destroying a thick swath of potatoes. With the alarm came drones, rising from underneath the overseer bulbs, likely designed to quell any unrest amongst the workers. To that end, they weren’t equipped with any modern weapons, looking like a pair of massive arms hanging down off of a helicopter propeller. But they still began to mass in front of the group, looking to slow them down for the other defense forces to show up.

“Don’t waste too much time,” Zeta called. Zack barely heard him. He accelerated.

His body sang, the desperation tightening its grip around Zack’s throat until he could barely breathe. Then he was amongst the grabbing and latching drone arms, whirling like a tornado or like one of their whirring helicopter blades. He seized one hand that stretched toward him, broke off a metal thumb, and then shoved the remaining arm into another propeller. While that drone collapsed, he twisted to avoid a zooming follow-up and hooked his foot on a metal elbow.

He pulled himself in and spun, kicking that unfortunate drone down to smash into two others that smoked and cratered another portion of the field. Then Zack was kicking off, flying past the drones and laughing wildly as adrenaline wiped his worries away.

“There.” Zeta pointed to a tower along the side of the governmental complex. All three accelerated further, traveling around another group of drones that tried to intercept them. Zack’s hands ached for action, but he stayed with the group.

Zone 7’s main governmental plaza had originally been a palace, but the Zone’s leaders had worked hard to shake the traditional style of leadership and liberate their people from rigid structure. They had succeeded, at least partially, but one of the costs of that success was that many of the Zone’s elite felt entitled to build their own small palace next to the main one. So soon this governmental complex was the poshest neighborhood in the Zone, with a military base, a beyond state-of-the-art hospital, and a prison all grafted onto the sides like some sort of chimera of a city.

From the brief scouting investigations they did when Zeta first suggested this strange mission, the area they headed was the prison. And if this woman was on the highest flower of the grey and square prison tower, she wasn’t a common individual. Zack wondered what sort of figure could so thoroughly capture the attention of the robotic and logical Zeta.

Gleaming silver turrets rose from the spiked walls of the prison, having been designed to repel intruders. As Mana flowed through and charged their barrels, more metal bars flew out from Todd and spun out to create a dozen tiny shields. His metal plates shook and buzzed sideways, deflecting the first charged attacks. Meanwhile, Zeta adjusted his modules and raised an arm-cum-long-distance-canon, quickly returning fire and reducing the small turrets into smoking husks of metal.

With their speed, the trio only needed a few minutes to close the distance to the tower. Still using Todd’s shields for cover, they tossed out small boards containing his Scrawl and began to shoot directly upward. Guards showed up on the lower ramparts with their weapons raised, ready for the trio to try and climb up the side and infiltrate the main portion of the prison, but they seemed thrown by the rapid ascension.

At a certain balcony three levels down from the top, Zeta stopped. The automaton landed on the edge and twitched slightly, as though unsure how to proceed. Zack crashed to the stone ground after hopping off his vehicle and rolled. By the time he was standing, he rather awkwardly realized that the reason Zeta had paused was the woman was on the balcony, pressed up against the far wall and watching the new arrivals with concern.

He tried a rakish smile. The woman was beautiful, with soft lavender hair and pale pink eyes. Her arms were crossed defensively across her chest. “Hello, miss. Don’t worry about us, we are here to rescue you.”

Yet just as soon as he finished speaking, Zack Krum settled into a crouch. The woman in front of him, her eyes glowing that familiar, baleful grey light, raised her hand and conjured a swirling ball of light. Zack’s instincts screamed, warning of the danger that she represented. Then he looked at the woman a second time, past her beauty. He saw the shimmering scales on her temples and the horns that curled out from her forehead.

“She a Chimera,” Todd whispered, perched at the edge of the balcony like a baby bird about to be shoved into freefall by its mother.

The light the woman created grew brighter as she prepared to unleash her Skill. Todd swayed. Zack’s eyes narrowed, that horrible desperation finally finding a target. This time, he wouldn’t flinch. He took a step forward, about to pounce, but then Zeta was there, its powerful brass fingers clamping onto Zack’s wrist. “Wait.”

The automaton looked solemnly at the woman. “I’m sure you’ve analyzed the odds. There is no future for you here. Come with us, leave this place. Those distant possibilities, we can show them to you. With us, statistics won’t matter as much. Even as I say that I feel foolish-”

Zack looked up at the brass man in confusion. “What are you doing? She’s a monster. She can’t really understand you.”

“The System translates language for all intelligent life,” Zeta responded. “And human cultural additions to communication are not so important as you believe. This being understands.”

Zack’s eyes narrowed. “She-”

“The moon whispered I would be saved by earth bones.” The woman’s voice was low and cool, like a stream at night. She closed her hand and the deadly light vanished. She walked up and rapped a knuckle against Zeta. “That is you?”

“I can be considered bones. I am a composite alloy.” Zeta’s voice sounded strangely muffled. Up close, Zack noticed how tall the woman was. She towered over all of them, a few inches even above Zeta. But the brass man and the strange female chimera locked gaze and seemed content to just stare at each other.

Yet Zack couldn’t believe this nonsense. He turned to Todd. “We need-”

“We need to go,” Todd had already drawn a Scrawl on an extra board and tossed it at the woman’s feet. “Zeta, tell your new friend that we need to move now before the guards come back in force. We don’t have long.”

A new voice spoke from above the balcony. “Unfortunately, it is already too late. You are under arrest, for attempting to free a dangerous criminal. Please surrender, otherwise, I cannot guarantee what follows will not be extremely painful.”

All three pivoted and looked up. Standing on a cloud, a man in a sharp Zone 7 military uniform looked down on them with folded arms. He had a slightly curved blade at his waist. Zack even recognized him.

They had been caught by Huang Li, the man who wielded the Sky Slaying Sword.