Coming back to his body, Randidly felt fresh and scalded, as though he had hopped into boiling water and let the heat and bubbles strip away a few surface layers of skin. His mind flopped around in his skull, luxurious and pummeled. What remained of his emotions had been cleansed and thoroughly ironed out by the deep swim into the Sea of Dreams.

His Penance was running a bit low; the Sea of Dreams was the sort of training that made it difficult to accurately keep track of time. So before anything else, Randidly sank into the oblivion and paid the few seconds per minute that he owed. When he came back to himself, he took a few minutes to gather himself and simply looked at the island.

The training groups had started constructing a series of wooden buildings above the beach. The bare bones of the partially completed scaffolding curled like fingers in the soft light of the dawn coming up over the island; apparently, the trainees had tired of tacking their rest on sand or on the bobbing barge. And Randidly had no doubt that Tatiana had sold some of the land of this island to some very expensive restaurants that wanted to be known as serving the group that trained in his shadow.

The ants were doing some construction of their own on their portion of the island. They had selectively cleared trees and dug massive holes down into the ground. Or, perhaps rather than construction, it was more accurate to say they were doing some massive excavation and expansion on their tunnel complex. Huge piles of dirt evidenced their industry, which continued even into the morning. Also, Randidly sensed that there was one of Tatiana’s ogre assistants with the ants, making some sort of negotiation.

I’ve never really thought about this before, but this must be how she makes me so much money, Randidly’s lips twitched. She’s part real estate developer and part angel investor. And its easy because she just follows wherever I go and pours money into the things nearby...

Meanwhile, his eyes drifted left. The weird plant collective had become increasingly interdependent and dense, although some of its hive-mindedness seemed to have abated. The vines between the trees had multiplied several times over, so moving through that portion of the island was more like going through a ropes course than hiking through a forest.

Likely as an adaption to the new environment, Randidly noticed that a few varieties of snake and smaller monkey had returned. They skittered and bounded through the tight quarters, forming some sort of weird symbiotic relationship with the central tree. The monkey paws and snake stomachs had evolved a stickiness that let them ignore the constant rainfall; the fauna seemed to thrive. Randidly didn’t really understand how it all worked, but he could feel the Nether pooling in that area.

And he could also see the constant rise of that central tree, now nearing the height of the volcano. It’s highest branches flirted with some of the low hanging clouds in his Nether storm.

“What a weird island.” Randidly shook his head helplessly. It was hard to remember what the island had been like before he arrived. His presence had that much influence. And even after he left, he doubt at least two of these shifts would go back to normal.

Pushing that disturbing thought out of his head, Randidly began to train his Nether capabilities. He shrugged his shoulders and reached out to engage with his complex Nether Storm. He experimented with several new variations of patterns that he had thought of while in the Sea of Dreams. He methodically observed the results for several minutes before making other minute adjustments and seeing if he noticed any accumulating shift from the change.

One problem with Nether is that it exists on a much longer timeline than Aether, Randidly mused. By the time I know the real results, I’ll be somewhat committed to what I have created. This method’s usefulness is limited.

Then he broadened his view and looked at the massive weather sphere dragged into the whole churning storm around the island, looking for ways that his small shifts caused something bigger to develop elsewhere. Sometimes he found some troubling large-scale consequences, sometimes he didn’t.

Randidly reached and tightened a Nether flow or tied two together and tried again. In a way, the work was soothing; he could truly observe without expending much actual effort. On the other hand, some of the unpredictability and his lack of ability to predict the larger problems left Randidly frustrated.

Nether is supposed to be my thing, but there is so much more to learn. Randidly shook himself. It was almost a relief to turn to the next type of training: more exposure to the massive Nether Array sitting at Expira’s heart.

Randidly’s perception sunk into the ground and quickly came upon the churning Nether infrastructure of the ritual he had made on a sudden impulse. To see the shift in it made him realize that maybe the Nether Ritual was similar to the changes in Nether; it might have felt like a light decision, but it had been accumulating for a long time.

And the thought of that was quite sobering.

But his curiosity about the Ritual quickly overwhelmed that feeling. As it swelled and grew more solid in its flows, it resembled a massive hourglass, with two large semi-circle currents that met in a tight and complex knot of interactions in the middle. It was to that densely twisted middle, where the flows parted perfectly to create a small cock-pit arena, that Randidly flowed.

Almost grimacing to himself, he cut through the gauzy layer of Nether that he kept around his Nether Core usually, which kept him from getting distracted during his other types of training. Then he braced himself for the flood of sensations, connections, meanings, moments, and memories that began to press themselves into his form.

If Randidly was being honest-

His eyelids fluttered almost uncontrollably. The beginnings of a headache already planted themselves behind his eyes. The press of other significance, being stuffed into his body and Nether Core-

-this sort of training shared the same balance of soothing and frustrating that manipulating Nether Patterns did. The rust of awareness and snatches of meaning was intoxicating. To the point that Randidly could feel even his firm and reliable Willpower being pressured to go along with the massive flow. To give oneself over to the current of information brought with it some inner release.

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Body and mind came into alignment and a deep peace spread through him. It just so happened that most of the positive effects of that peace were buried deeply underneath the growing mental strain and the accelerating deluge of sensation.

Randidly felt thin tendrils stretching out and connecting him to every bit of intelligent life on Expira. Their cares and lives flitted through those thin connections, briefly inhabiting him and rotating through his person. His skin was passed around a million different times a second, housing all manner of hopes and desires. But universally, they departed as soon as the connection was confirmed, leaving him sweating and gasping, barely able to withstand the unending parade of connections.

He forced himself to endure through the mental exhaustion for three reasons: first, he could feel the peace within him growing. Randidly had no doubt that he would lay down for a positively delightful and fulfilling nap after.

Second, he could feel himself steadily acclimating to the pressure. Not nearly fast enough to make a difference, but Randidly wanted to push himself as far as he could go.

And third-

Forcefully being exposed to the connections made Randidly realize that out of all the connections, there were some that stood out from the others. There were the obvious ones, like his four original connections in Donnyton and his later connections to Heiffal, Raymund Ballast, and to the whole Pantheon that handled the System in the Alpha Cosmos, but there was two others that were markedly different than the others. In his strange, almost underwater view of significance flowing between individuals, they glowed.

One he recognized immediately: the connection between and Delilah was perhaps the strongest of all these separate veins of meaning, flowing deeper than Randidly’s bond with her mother and father. Part of his brain continued to stagger underneath the constant flux of connections, but another studied this firm filament between him and Delilah in an attempt to understand why it was so much more robust than the others.

Ultimately, he could only conclude was part of it was the horrible and amorphous word ‘fate’. In a way that Randidly didn’t understand yet, a connection had been woven between. However, the other part was more easily digested; he and Delilah were the ‘firsts’. Him for growing in power, she for being born entirely under the influence of the System. As frontrunners, they shared an extremely hard to define understanding of what it was like to stand apart from the pack.

Those factors proved an excellent foundation for a Nether connection. But the curious development was that another connection existed, only slightly smaller than the one he shared with Delilah. And as Randidly’s awareness fixated on that connection, he realized that he didn’t recognize that person at all.

Pushing a little, more information regarding this figure flowed to Randidly. Sensations and impressions of fear, pain, and loneliness flickered past until he caught up to the present.

He saw a young face, perhaps only five or six, looking at his or her reflection in a dirty puddle. The child was wearing a worn brown shirt that seemed to have once been pink. The child reached up and pinched their cheeks.

“Randy!” A voice shouted and the child scrambled up. After glancing around surreptitiously, the child scurried back across the dusty ground. Wagons sat, their horses and various monstrous beasts of burden chewing grass and staring at nothing while the humans busied themselves. Almost a hundred people sat in loose circles around a series of five small campfires. Woodsmoke and frying meat filled the air with a homey vibe, even if the hollow eyes and suspicion of the group more than erased that.

I wonder if its the name. Randidly felt a weird gurgling in his stomach. Could this child… be named after me?

Randy was careful not to make any eye contact with anyone on the way back to the smallest of the wagons. A woman waited for them, her hands on her hips as she glared down at the child. Randidly suspected that when she wasn’t glaring, she was actually quite pretty. She gestured with her chin toward the wheel well of the wagon, which bore an Engraving. “Did ya do it again, kid?”

Randy shook their head. Emphatically, passionately, so quickly that the child’s large ears flapped slightly and Randidly felt the child’s dizziness through their connection. But Randidly could also see that the Engraving was curiously inert.

Mana was still present in the drawn lines, but it was curiously inert. Even he felt confusion as he attempted to study the phenomenon with the limited senses he had. How could shape and Mana be present, but the whole working not actually do anything?

The woman pressed her lips together. “Don’t give me that shit. You think normal Engravings just stop working so quickly? You slept by the corner and I heard you crying, Randy. I know you can’t control yourself when you are upset, you just suck and suck without even thinking. God damnit.”

Randy hesitated and then spoke with all the presence of wind blowing a newspaper across the ground. “I didn’t mean-”

“Yea, and I didn’t mean to agree to take responsibility for a liability like you,” The woman shook her head and turned away. “Fuck, I really don’t need this shit. Not right now, not with the tariffs to get back into the Zones coming up. If I don’t find some good work soon-”

The woman gave the child a meaningful glance. Then she climbed into the wagon and closed the door behind her with a swish of the hips. For a few seconds, Randy just stared blankly at the wooden material. Then their eyes fell to the broken Engraving. Then, they became abruptly aware of the hard stares coming from some of the dirty groups sitting around the fire and fled for one of the low hills above their camping position. Only when those flinty eyes above soup cans no longer following them could they relax.

Randidly observed, feeling something twist in his gut. He delicately examined the young child, feeling the worst parts of the Stillborn Phoenix and the Grey Creature existed in this Randy’s chest. Just in small, nascent forms, but she truly possessed the ability to absorb something vital from nearby spaces.

It was, he had to admit, a fascinating ability.

He watched Randy do it, as they stacked rocks, threw fistfuls of dirt up in the air, and occasionally stared back down at the wagon. The area around her lost some of its forced vibrancy. It didn’t exactly damage the surroundings, but the hardened dirt, reinforced by the constant Aether, reverted to a more fragile form.

Yet it was only when night fell and the apron walked back out that Randidly could see the other connection between himself and the child.

Crouching in the hills, Randy pressed hands to their ears as the woman laughed loudly at the jokes from dirty men from the campfires below. At the end of the night, the woman led a man back into the wagon and Randy’s tears pooled in the dirt.

Randidly felt his mind trembling, begging him to relent and release his grasp on the torrent of sensations that pummeled him. Yet he didn’t relent. Stubborn and furious, watched this young stranger cry themselves to sleep and remembered some hollow nights from his own childhood.