Dusk curled its fingers shyly around the tropical sea, rewarding Randidly’s attendees with choppy waves of brass, molten gold, and crimson before the sky exhaled and passed into bruised purple and indigo. Night left the air warm, encouraging the party to continue without any pause.

Randidly had settled on one of the high branches of the central super tree he had somehow birthed. He ignored its gentle prodding with its vines as he sat and looked down across the beach. At this distance, he could feel the reverberations of the conflux of significance, but it didn’t wear at the edges of his attention.

In a word, he took a break. His Nether Core spun at a constant pace, methodically reinforcing his own significance against further erosion.

He watched the different groups disperse and mingle with one another as Tatiana moved the night to the game portion, bringing out balls, frisbees, and horseshoes for the attendees to use as they pleased. Very soon the younger generation stepped forward and engaged in a superhuman version of volleyball to the delight of the crowd. When the actual net ripped from a deflected spike, moving with enough force to smash through a wooden door, someone from Zone 32 cast an illusion of the net, making it higher and impossible to destroy.

A crowd gathered as the figures blurred in motion, the ball ricocheting and being sent across at a speed close to the sound barrier. To get the ball over the higher net, the players had to leap to great heights and perform acrobatics. They landed in massive blasts of sand before throwing themselves up into the air again, participating in a mid-air fight.

Halfway through a furious volley, the game was brought to a screeching halt as a comet of fire ripped across the ocean and shot directly above the action. Water fizzled at this low flying projectile and the crowd began to mutter. Randidly raised an eyebrow but didn’t interfere. The flames gradually dispersed and revealed a gleaming, canary-yellow skybike and the grinning Elijah Frank, arriving in ‘style’ to the barbecue. Randidly didn’t even bother to stop himself from rolling his eyes.

Meanwhile, the dark lump of Kharon also appeared on the horizon as it silently walked up next to the barge; some people would camp on the island, but most preferred the comfort of an actual city. Of course, with the Wandering City came a massive, luminous fog bank of floating moss spirits. Before Kharon had even arrived, they swam their way forward in a massive spectral river green. They impacted the sea and beach, exploding in an emerald sunburst that had every laughing and dancing amongst the lights.

A small tributary split off and made a beeline for Randidly’s position on top of the tree. They followed the thread between them and had quickly embedded themselves in the area around him. They burrowed into the bark and spiraled around the leaves. At first, the mega tree seemed alarmed, with its vines swaying back and forth in agitation. But quickly it felt the rejuvenating energy of the moss spirits and it began to hum with pleasure. The vines poked at the spirits, trying to ascertain their origin.

Chuckling to himself, Randidly looked down at another figure speeding across the sea. Compared to Elijah Frank, this one moved without worrying about being noticed in her approach. She quickly leapt across the treetops below and then swung up the branches of the massive tree.

When she spun up on the branch where Randidly was situated, he raised an eyebrow as he examined her. Several recent Nether connections pulsed at her back, thick and humming with urgency. “I thought those kids had a lot of significance trailing after them… but you’ve stolen the lion’s share of it, huh?”

“Ah, you’ve met the Chimera woman then.” Alana Donal sighed and cracked her neck. Randidly wondered why she seemed so different than usual, but then he realized that she wasn’t wearing her typical leather armor. She wasn’t even holding a spear. Plus, her fingers were vaguely smoking. “Yes, I think most of the attention has shifted. In the end, the kids don’t matter as much as the fact that they, recognized members of Kharon Academy, rescued a known criminal from Zone 7 custody. Gives certain groups a lot of grounds for criticism against you.”

Randidly forced out a laugh as he turned over that information in his mind. “Don’t worry on my account, I can handle a little criticism.”

Alana’s bitter smile made him pause. Randidly cleared his throat and stepped toward her to put his hand on his shoulder. She looked down at the hand in surprise for a second before she met his eyes while he spoke. “Look, I know this is about me, right? They think I should have handled the Expira situation differently. So if you need any help… please let me know. I really appreciate what’s been done for me. Especially by you, Alana. Without you, Expira wouldn’t have gotten to this point. Your firm resolve held the line when it mattered. When the Calamity was prepared to morph into something truly deadly.”

This time her smile was a lot more genuine. Tentatively, she reached up and patted his hand. Without armor, her shoulder seemed surprisingly thin. “This… thank you. But you don’t need to worry about it. This is our role, right? You handle the threats from outside in the Nexus, we take care of what's going on within the Alpha Cosmos. Besides, aren’t you just here because you are bored? Maybe if you invited me out to fight in the Nexus, I’d let you muck around in politics here.”

“Yea, that’s fair,” Randidly winced. He coughed once, to try and regain his composure. When he touched Alana, he felt resonance from the connection between them, pure and strong. A few flashing stills of her image drifted through, examples of her treating his actions with a reverence that he very clearly felt he didn’t deserve.

Because from what he witnessed, the most he had in common with a religious figure was how ominously silent he was when his supporters had truly needed him. And in his mind, he had done it for their own good.

I don’t regret it, Randidly tried to keep himself from grimacing. But I do wish I could do more...

“Still. I just wanted to say that if you need help, don’t hesitate to ask. Or…” Randidly blinked several times as he realized what he was about to say; Neveah had definitely started to rub off on him. “-or even if you just need to talk. You don’t need to bear everything alone.”

He felt the shift in Alana's significance. He felt her image ease, the harsh orange light of the sunlight she saw mellow into something warmer and golden. But in person, Alana just elbowed Randidly in the side. “Pretty rich, coming from you. At the same time: thanks. But the real problem with you helping is that you are too much of a hammer. If you move, you will just crack everything open and release a flood of chaos.”

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“You know, I’m surprisingly delicate these days,” Randidly twirled a finger in the air. His body moved and the Nether naturally followed, creating an unraveling in the surrounding significance that created cascading responses that resembled the long, hanging branches of a weeping willow.

It was, in Randidly’s humble opinion, a gorgeous display of restraint and tact. Alana looked at him curiously with her head tilted to the side.

Ah. She can’t see. Randidly winced as he stood there, striking a strange pose with his hand raised. Alana released a surprisingly feminine giggle and he shook his head helplessly. He needed to keep in mind that most others wouldn’t be able to see the Nether flowing around them.

“Oh actually, there is one thing you could help us with if you have some spare time.” Alana finally said. “Wivanya and her family have really spread news of your exploits into some of the other worlds, and if you could talk to them a bit, evangelize-”

Randidly winced and raised his hand for her to stop. “Okay, I understand that they admire me very much, but the zeal- oh. You’re kidding aren’t you?”

Alana laughed again. “Yes, I am. Although they really would appreciate hearing from you.”

They spoke about a few more things and then Alana left. Randidly watched her go while still marveling at the purity of the connection between them. Even now, she’s the one that has stuck most closely with my original vision for the planet. She’s pushed for images and for diversity in forces, leaving Donnyton to prevent it from becoming too dominant an ideology. Maybe I should give her a gift or something? This, at least, is something I can talk to Tatiana about.

...Or maybe not. I don’t think I can solve the problem of them being unable to perceive Nether… but right now Expira and the Alpha Cosmos are just letting it accumulate. What if I provide a bit of a nudge?

Humming to himself, Randidly raised his hands and began to stroke the currents of Nether that spiraled around him. He gradually removed the protective film he had used to get away from the crowd, once more exposing himself to the force and violence of all this pooling significance. Then, with his body as the implement, Randidly began to shape the flows of Nether.

He crafted something large and deep, that would add current and purpose to the Nether of the planet.

Recently, he became used to using raw Nether. The patterns he could create became the beginning and end of his usage. This he borrowed from the Nether King, who had so gracefully wrought Nether RItuals with every movement that it had swayed Randidly to follow in his footsteps.

However, even after advancing his mastery of Nether by an enormous amount, he felt the gap between himself and the Nether King. So now, as he aimed to give back to Expira in some small way, he relied on his original experience with Nether: Arrays.

With the churning force of his Nether Core and the accumulation of Nether below at the barbecue, Randidly began to draw an elegant trapeze of connections that stretched high into the sky above the island. Each carefully laid pinion he interlaced with some of that pure warmth he sensed from Alana’s connection to him. And once he started adding additional threads, he couldn’t stop.

The glimmering determination of Sam, the aloof but constant care of Annie, the meticulous arrangements of Mrs. Hamilton… and once Randidly had pulled deeply from the core connections on which he had founded himself, his images came too. The constant nudge from Yggdrasil, the wild canniness of the Grey Creature, the stubborn refusal to quit from the Stillborn Phoenix...

Smaller threads from Tatiana, Donny, Sydney, Neveah, Heiffal-

Congratulations! Your Skill Precise Nether Ritual (L) has grown to Level 503!

He stitched everything together with great care, balancing all his hopes and dreams for Expira. The more threads he incorporated, the more that seemed to swim after them, begging to be included by their own connections. The working stretched higher and higher, beginning to also sink into the ground and sea. And as the Nether Ritual took shape around him, the island itself got caught up in the working.

Randidly grimaced as his body began to ache, channeling a vast amount of foreign Nether without letting his own Nether Core alter the flow. Especially because of the danger of his image handling Calamities, this had to be independent of him. He pulled at the mass of significance swirling below and a whole world’s worth of history began to follow behind it. Without taking control of it, Randidly called on his Authority to Seize to pull more and more, deepening the working he created.

The Nether felt alive in his hands. Or rather, his grip on the connection to the whole of Expira was so vital that even contact invigorated him. The story of this world that had once existed outside the System had been waiting for someone to begin telling it. Now, it lent its Weight to the Nether Ritual.

Congratulations! Your Skill Precise Nether RItual (L) has grown to Level 529!

However, his series of steps to reel in more Nether proved too effective. Randidly rocked back on his heels, almost falling off the branch of the supertree as he attempted to channel it. Too many streams of Nether wound themselves together at once, each single thread thickening to a rope and then knitting itself into a fisherman’s net, dragging along a whole slew of other connections. As the Nether Ritual continued to sprawl outward, piling up into the sky and digging down into the sea, Randidly quickly had to admit that his Willpower wasn’t enough to support all the significance.

A strange luminance began to glimmer along the edges of the flows, a strange sort of gorgeous friction as meaning rushed at ever faster speeds to create an edifice to Expira.

Randidly’s breath hissed between his teeth as he saw the accelerating movement, and saw the moss spirits sense it too, rising up into the air to follow the flow. They provided the physical representation of the strange luminance. Reaching inside himself, Randidly found his sturdy Yggdrasil image and brought all those Nether flows through it. It acted as an expanded highway of energy, lessening the ache his physical form had to endure.

But soon, as the Nether Ritual swelled to dizzying heights and distant depths, even Yggdrasil began to tremble underneath the significance that swirled into him.

Below, the people cooed in awe as the emerald lights rose to join the stars. Meanwhile, Randidly pressed his Nether Core to its limits to support more and more support structures, a framework to handle the huge amount of significance that had arrived. Already he could feel the original form straining and bending underneath its weight and he reinforced the structure as rapidly as he could.

This is a hope. A prayer. Randidly trembled as his mind began to throb with the mental strain. He worked frantically, having to eschew understanding and rely on intuition to create space for the force that poured through him, as both his body and Yggdrasil could barely endure. A bridge, built toward nothing, hoping that on the other side, Expira might find hope. Whatever Expira becomes, whatever choices these people make… let them not forget how difficult it was to walk the Path to reach here.

How the small struggles on Expira are just a prelude to a bigger danger.

He raised his hands and felt his skin tingle with the rapid passage of Nether. The world around him spun. He looked up and couldn’t even see just the tip of what he had made. Then he lowered his gaze, trying not to collapse. Due to the queer luminosity that accumulated from so many gathering flows of Nether, the core glimmered below. It sank and settled in the depths of the planet as it began to activate.

And Randidly Ghosthound smiled, spent and collapsing because for a brief moment, he felt small before the whole of humanity's accomplishments. This history that he had just channeled had meaning.

So long as he protected them for long enough, this world would grow strong.