Zack blinked and coughed, feeling the blood coursing down his face and unsure exactly what was going on. Pain very enthusiastically coursed through his upper body, with his left shoulder feeling like it had been wrenched out of its socket. His dyed red vision and the flopping of his stomach briefly convinced him that he had died and gone to hell. For his sins, he would be punished for all eternity.

He closed his eyes, his skin tingling and burning. At the very least, I protected them this time.

This idyllic interpretation of the last few contorted moments was shattered as Zack slammed into solid ground and cracked his jaw. For several dizzy seconds, he just allowed the mechanisms of momentum and bodies to jostle him as he rolled forward. He groaned and spat to get dust out of his mouth. Blood dribbled out from between his lips.

“The possibility is just ahead. Truly, astounding. It should not have been possible for us to arrive like this. Perhaps there is meaning to human companionship.”

The sound of the Chimera woman’s voice reignited some of his annoyance and helped ground Zack. Gradually, reality dragged him back. His vision swam, but soon he became aware of the shattered bricks walls around them and Zeta standing at the collapsed entrance to the small building, firing several bolts of Mana at their pursuers. Todd crouched over Zack and used a bit of cloth to mop up the blood on his face.

Zack batted the hand away and sat up.”Wha… what happened?”

Todd’s expression was sour. “I recognized that look on your face; you wanted to do something dumb. So when I passed by, I Scrawled on your shirt. Which, apologies, has no shredded itself to bits dragging you out of the way of that attack. But I figured it was a small price to pay for you to stay alive. You’re welcome.”

Awkwardly, Zack looked down at his bare, bloody, and dirty chest. Somehow, he ended up relying on Todd again. Unwilling to face his guilt, he instead scowled over at the Chimera woman as she wandered down past the entrance to a staircase down. “Getting here is fine, but I don’t see how we can get out of this deathtrap-”

As though agreeing with him, wind began to shake the building. Zeta hurried past and offered Zack a hand, which he took to be pulled to his feet. All three moved after the Chimera, Zack still occasionally shaking his head to dispel some blurriness in his vision.

They heard the rest of the building front cave-in behind them as they descended into a high ceilinged basement. But at the moment, none could worry about it. They all stood transfixed at what they had found.

“How unlikely for this to be here,” Zeta remarked.

Todd’s expression crumpled. The suffering they had endured against the Calamity flitted across his face. “An archway.”

Somehow, buried in this building’s basement stood one of those tall, gleaming portals to another world in the Alpha Cosmos. They exchanged a glance; the stone stairs behind them had begun to hum with Huang Li’s pursuit. As one, the four of them passed through the archway and fled to some other place

*****

Randidly sank into his Grey Creature image like sliding on a well-used coat. Compared to the others, this image required the simplest emotional affect: he simply wanted to survive. That desperation, that need, that wild determination that could force the result it wanted… perseverance and stubbornness flowed through the Grey Creature in a way that was just as vital as blood. He raised his head and howled for all its fear, rage, and spite.

Violence sharpened the Grey Creature’s edges. Suffering hardened its skin into a calcified barrier. Ambushes had honed its senses. Growth had widened its horizons. Until it existed as a perfect vessel for all of Randidly’s desires, the unfortunate vessel that had carried him so far underneath the Nexus’s thumb.

If anything, the only problem with the Grey Creature… Randidly’s mouth twisted as he let the image fade. Or put another way, it sank into him. Even now, that being waited with narrowed eyes right under his skin. Is my feelings toward its origin. Even now, it’s difficult to separate that power from Yystrix, who tried so hard to turn me into a puppet.

For the moment, Randidly just released his hold on the image and floated in that warm, humming space near his Nether Core. He sank into the Penance, banking up a few hours' worth of minutes. Unfortunately, his emotions and reservations crashed back in a wave. Trying to address his feelings toward Yystrix wouldn’t be simple. One way was to rely on the Dreamcatcher of the Long Night to speak to her but the simpler way was to revisit her tomb and move through her memories. Perhaps with the improvements he had made-

Well, let’s be realistic, Randidly clicked his tongue. Very little of my growth has been in terms of Engraving or using Aether patterns. So perhaps I should start including tutoring sessions with Neveah into my training plan.

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With that thought as the transition, Randidly pulled out the Stillborn Phoenix and manifested in the space around him. A massive singularity bulged into being from the abyss, quickly ballooning outward until it devoured space and the light nearby turned milky. Bolts of crimson electricity crackled along the edges and with his insights from the light radiation, that milky light became aggressively volatile, ready to blast any individual foolish enough to wander into its scope. The brightness seemed to possess claws, capable of stripping away flesh and revealing the bones underneath.

Humming to himself, Randidly began to make a few other adjustments as well. He suddenly understood the pressure that the Egg of Depression exerted on the fabric of space. That it had accumulated so much pressure that it began to tear at the edges of this existence. Only in small ways, opening up brief gashes.

Yet waiting beyond those small tears was a constant weight, sucking away energy and pressing its chill hands against the surroundings. The Stillborn Phoenix had to reach and grasp with that much more determination to avoid losing emotion and energy to the long shadow of entropy. The very existence of that black hole created a competing hunger in the environment, necessitating a larger existence to sustain itself and probably prying open the door to that realm of Entropy in the process.

“Man, I can see why this sort of image is dangerous to have,” Randidly shook his head. Then he stopped making detail adjustments and settled into the emotions of the Stillborn Phoenix. This image housed his loneliness, his desire to achieve something that felt impossible to an isolated boy, that pervasive sadness that had calcified into something solid enough to stick in his throat and suffocate him.

Compared to the other two images, Randidly was surprised to find almost no issues with these emotional affects; his familiarity with his sad roots hadn’t faded at all. It would require some practice to work the correct flavor to balance the various elements, but that was just a matter of practice. That is, except for two glaring unpredictable elements that swam around the edges of the image.

Randidly glanced again at the black hole. The two unborn drifted in the milky light and crackling electricity with a surprising amount of grace, considering their ugliness and misshapen bodies. They capered about, delighting in the strange influences of the Stillborn Phoenix, treating this like a game.

Of course, they basically ignored the reality of the image as they did so. They did not want to acknowledge the suction of the Stillborn Phoenix, and thereby invalidated the electromagnetic radiation, the light radiation, and the entropy it created in the surroundings. Their existence and independent wills were a constant drain on the power he could wield.

Still, it’s not like there aren’t difficulties with all three of the images. I don’t need to force an answer right now, especially since the Stillborn Phoenix loves those ugly slugs. Randidly pulled himself out of the Stillborn Phoenix image and then out of his mental projection. He stood and stretched, looking down at the island. The constant Nether had shifted the vegetation to a strange, blueish sheen that made the island look partially glazed in plastic. But that was the most innocuous of the shifts in the vegetal life.

If the island were divided into thirds around the central volcano, one third would belong to the training individuals, who continued to exhaust themselves and sip from the environment Nether, one third would go to the mutated ants and their swollen queen, and now a third belonged to the unruly and weirdly intelligent jungle collective. Thick vines had woven themselves around the tree trunks so thickly that they hung like physical walls. And in the center of that dense area, one tree had shot upward to almost double the size of all the others. At this point, it was almost half as tall as the volcano itself, a second sort of monument on this previously nondescript place.

As he stared over at it, the wide frawns of the tree waved in a way that ran counter to the motion of the wind.

Randidly could only laugh at the effect he had just by existing somewhere. You know, I remember them saying that the second step of improving your image is to exert your will on the universe. And not that I wanted this to happen, but their is something inherently poisonous about power. Once you possess it, it taints everything around you…

That thought made him shiver. Then he thought about the gleaming eyes of Devick, which gave him an entirely different sort of chill. She possessed an entirely different sort of poison. Randidly rubbed his face. I’m safe for now, isolated away from time at the bottom of the shaft. I just need to make good use of this time to improve. So that when I return to the Nexus, I’m ready.

“Okay, that’s enough training for now.” He bounced up to his feet and did some more stretching until his hamstrings and shoulders both pleasantly popped. After slapping his cheeks, he started sending out messages. First to Neveah, then to Nrorce and Tatiana and Sydney, and a half dozen other important figures in Kharon and in his life.

After a few awkward bits of conferring and juggling schedules, he arrived on a satisfactory date. In three weeks, Randidly would be hosting a bbq on his new island. Neveah’s delight seeped through their Soulbond, even if she kept her message perfectly polite; she was quite happy that he was taking some time off of his own volition.

Feeling her pride and joy, Randidly rolled his eyes. In the end, this is less about a healthier emotional lifestyle and more about variety. I can feel it, from the way Penance affects me. Significance comes from living and breathing in the moment. Taking advantage of the time you have. And since I have so much time here, the best way to facilitate growth is to switch often and throw everything I have into those activities while I’m doing them.

“So, three weeks of training.” Randidly rubbed his hands together. Then he called up the Hierarchy of Burden and began.