The shadow of Actus Suprem Devick’s wicked smile seemed to stretch out and hang across the Fifth Cohort Rally Station with just the suggestion of her presence.

Raymund Ballast knew he didn’t have much time to respond to the lieutenant’s question. But he knew also that he needed to be extremely careful to all matters relating to Devick. From the way Randidly spoke about her, it wasn’t good to give her access to him while he was in this vulnerable state. Considering how much energy went into Randidly’s actions, it must be delicate.

Yet in the end, it felt like Raymund had no choice. Showing weakness now would just draw out the bloodthirstiness of their enemies. Neutrally, he said, “If you believe that you will not earn Devick’s ire to draw her attention to a minor training matter, you are free to do so. I will not strong-arm you from digging your own grave.”

The Lieutenant’s eyes bristled with indignation, yet for several seconds she didn’t say anything. She seemed confounded by his response, more than anything else. At the very least, he felt confident he had made the right choice; she had been waiting for him to balk at the mention of Devick.

But what would have happened if I had flinched? Was a trap prepared? The borrowed image fluttered behind Raymund’s back. With it, he possessed a little bit of extra-sensory awareness. He could feel how torn she was.

She’s a pawn of a higher individual, but one who is clearly not Devick. Raymund watched with detached intensity. Perhaps a jealous peer within Military High Command? It is difficult to know who might be targeting the Ghosthound…

“Fine, I will contact her.” The Lieutenant finally said. The words seemed torn from her mouth. He barely avoided snorting; one more flail to try and draw a reaction. She watched Raymund with bright eyes. He folded his arms.

Vant cracked his knuckles, clearly intending to put an end to this farce with the business end of his fist, but Raymund gave him a sharp look. Vant snorted and also folded his arms. Jieu Ronault hummed at a deep frequency, the sort you felt, rather than heard. The noise signaled the rest of the Vulpis Squad to make preparations for an imminent threat. To their credit, the Squad moved across the surface of the Rally Station without any appearance of tension. They walked at a leisurely pace in seemingly random directions, but very quickly the various combined images were in position.

Minutes ticked past as the face-off in the sky. All awaited the response of the Actus Suprem Devick. The flames coming off of Randidly’s body had almost entirely dissipated now. From the report from Charlotte Wick who investigated his person, their leader was currently sleeping. Yet even just doing that, energy continued to rise in thick waves throughout the area.

Honestly, it felt like a good bet that the leader of Military High Command would be too busy to bother with whatever Randidly’s display had been. Yet she was also notoriously unpredictable. That was part of Devick’s overwhelming power.

The ripples came, but they were not as small as when the patrol itself had arrived. Raymund had almost lost his grip on his borrowed turtle shell tail but steeled his Willpower as the entire sky above the asteroid began to quake and seethe. He hoped it wouldn’t come to fighting, but if it did, he wanted every weapon he possessed to be at his disposal. If nothing else, he would lay his life on the line to buy time for Randidly.

Techetadore. Even if I can’t survive to come and help you… I know he will. Raymund’s eyes blazed. That is why I follow the Ghosthound. He can-

A figure appeared, dipping through the fabric of space and emerging in a glittering sunburst of energy. But the body that came through out of the disturbance was squat and fat.

The Leader of the Vulpis Squad felt a wave of relief rush through him.

Raymund saluted the figure, but his tone was firm. “Retired Commandant Kyl MacDuul. How kind of you to visit. However, we are in the middle of training drills. I can only ask you to leave and return another time.”

“How booold of you,” MacDuul’s drooping jowls flapped slightly as he drew out the word. He eyed Raymund, squinting at the tail behind his back, which signaled a stolen image. The squat man pursed his lips. “To so quickly shoo away a retired military veteran like myself. You do realize that I’ve protected the Nexus from the Nether threat for longer than you’ve been alive, yes? And more than that, I doubt your Commander is quite yet ready to stand toe to toe with me in a fight. It would behoove you to have some patience, son. I’m not merely wandering past. I bear a message from the Actus Suprem.”

“Then by all means, deliver your missive.” Raymund felt an itch develop on his cheek. Remembering the pulsing waves of madness of that woman’s image, he gritted his teeth. Beside him, he could feel all of the fury in DiOrtho’s body gathering up into his tense shoulders. “We await the orders of our leader.”

The words were heavy with salt as Raymund said them.

“Ahem. ‘Dearest Randidly, I sense you will soon go up to investigate the Sonara. Visit me before you do.’” Kyl MacDuul rolled his shoulders imperiously. His whole body shook. “That is the entire message. As for you, Ballast… Your antics are excused for now, but you still need to file reports in the future when you plan on making a mess. Do not forget that.”

“And also… as for you leader…” MacDuul harrumphed and looked down to where heatwaves and wisps of energy continued to radiate outward. “He was placed in charge of the squad because of that damn fool Wick, whose image is now shattered. Do not think others in Military High Command have let his dangerous ambition go unnoticed. He should stop flashing his belly.”

The squat retired Commandant squinted. Luckily for the Order Vulpis members, whatever sort of training Randidly had been doing was over. The explosion of energy ceased. The heat began finally to die down.

“But. The Ghosthound… certainly is full of youthful vigor.” MacDuul grimaced and turned away. “Also, if he refuses the Actus Suprem’s orders… I will take pleasure in hunting him down and dragging his foolish ass back before our glorious leader.”

*****

“Ghasthund,” she said.

“What?!” Randidly blinked several times, trying to get the world to stay even in front of him. His vision drifted as each object melted and seeped into one another. Despite the fact he wasn’t moving, his perspective rocked like the deck of a fishing vessel in a massive storm.

He squirmed and felt anxiety building in his chest. Plus, his body felt too small. He sat at a dining table, both hands on the wood. The flat wooden seat felt extremely uncomfortable for his small legs.

His mother was at the counter. Her dress had patterned daisies up and down its length. She turned just enough for him to see the edge of a sad smile on her face. He couldn’t catch her eyes. “Ghosthound, I said. I’m just… haaah, I don’t know, lovely. Isn’t it strange that giving up this name makes me feel queasy? When I first heard your father’s name, I must have laughed for twenty minutes. I thought it was a joke and not a cool one. He took out his ID to prove-”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

She stopped speaking and squared her shoulders forward. Sun flowed in from the window in front of her, melting and blurring and seeping into everything. The light was almost like an eraser, rubbing away the details of her form and leaving a blank canvas. He heard a long sigh, punctuated by the sound of her knife cutting carrots in front of her. The heavy thunks seemed so lonely.

Erased is not the same as blank, the thought popped into his head.

Randidly’s mind began pulling together the pieces of this strange vision. He knew this place, this moment. Aside from his mother weirdly saying Ghasthund at the beginning, this interaction had actually happened in the past. This was when his parents were getting divorced. His father had given him the papers, telling Randidly that it would soften the blow coming from him.

But what it had really meant was that he had seen his mother’s face crumple at the moment she realized what his special surprise was. Yet the strange thing was that he couldn’t remember what she looked like. Her eyes had been rubbed away by the passage of time.

“Mom, you won’t be alone,” Randidly’s chest burned. This wasn’t part of his memory at all. In it, he had just squirmed at the table until the two of them ate in silence. But the current Randidly knew this was one of the last times that his mother had cooked dinner herself. After this, they just picked up fast food or frozen things instead.

“Ghasthund.” His mother clicked her tongue. She didn’t even seem to have heard him. “What a stupid thing to get sentimental over.”

“You don’t-” Randidly sat up. His body was covered in sweat, but the dream parted like tissue paper with a bucket of frigid water dumped on it. Groaning, he lifted a hand and rubbed his nose. He had an absolutely killer headache. And that strange dream-

“Finally awake.”

A voice spoke right next to him, making him jump. His body responded instinctively, pressing his hands to the ground and tossing himself up into the air-

The wooden ceiling of the dwelling exploded as the projective known as Randidly Ghosthound ripped its way through the comparatively fragile building materials. Air whooshed past him as he sailed quickly up in an arc above the FIfth Cohort Rally Station. Still dazed, Randidly blinked until he began to make out some sensations around the domineering presence of his headache. His limbs twisted around him, responding so quickly that they seemed to have the same idea the moment his brain had it and were therefore moving before he had told them to.

The pressure of the wind helped focus him. Despite the strange uncoordinated display, he felt physically ideal. A slight block that had been present previously had been removed. The buttery smoothness and hyper coordination of all his responses threw him off, not any lingering discomfort.

He could still feel the fragments of his Stats hovering in his chest, each uniquely poignant. They worked now in concert, his body and mind running off their cooperation. Yet in the center of that arrangement, one Stat continued to dominate the rest; it formed the lynchpin of his new evolution.

And within it, the man continued to hum, taking rusty scissors to those threads of fate that hadn’t gone up in flames.

For a second, Randidly checked his Nether Core. However, the connections the Stat severed weren’t his actual connections. The Stat simply reframed itself to become something it hadn’t been before.

Randidly continued to tumble with air rushing past him, gradually acclimating to the changes. The muscles of his body hummed with power. He twisted midair, marveling at some small physical adjustments he noticed. Both his arms were now covered in pulsing tattoos. The lines looked black sometimes, but at others glittering with royal purple notes. His arms were long; he stretched out his limbs, feeling how sharp and streamlined his body felt. His fingers too, were longer than he remembered.

He frowned at his digits. Not only were the fingers extra long, but his palms seemed unnaturally extended to accommodate them. In terms of size… each finger is as long as a banana. And although they are still slender, the power- also, ending in a chitinous point-

Randidly was so intently studying his fingers that he barely even noticed as he crashed back down to the ground. In terms of structural integrity, the asteroid couldn’t hold a candle to him. He had apparently struck an area above one of the interior caverns because a huge stretch of dirt and orange stone collapsed into a massive hole just from the lightest descent of his hop.

The ground cracked and for a bit he twisted midair, avoiding falling rubble. Everything felt strange and distant, like the air he could walk through previously now required swimming. His movements seemed exaggerated, as the harmonious Stats made new things possible. He swam amongst the collapsing stone, avoiding debris until he found him crouching on a series of shattered boulders.

He used his tail to push himself back up and set him on his feet. His tail had grown too, almost doubled in length, while otherwise remaining the same. He folded his legs beneath himself, the tail snaking out in a spiral to provide a stronger base. He supported himself with just the tail, tilting himself back and forth to test its limits.

Using one of his unnaturally large hands, Randidly swiped at the air. Grey Monarch’s Authority, humming with improved efficiency in this form, pressurized the air into a pane of glass. He then added a back and looked at his own reflection in the conjured mirror.

Randidly recognized his own face. But otherwise…

I look like a monster. Randidly blinked. The thought was curiously numb and without judgment. His Stats had made him this way, but Randidly was the one who had planted the seeds of his Stats.

Again, his arms were the most eye-catching shift, even if the internal rearrangement was more literally unnerving. They hung down from his shoulders, long and unnatural, his fingers stretching down to his knees. The shoulders had added bulk, especially on Sulfur’s side, but the limbs were sleek otherwise. His neck looked athletic, but some of the muscles he developed when he remade his body had vanished. He looked almost gaunt, with such a slender and pale neck.

His hands went to his midsection. His waist seemed encased in some sort of tight armor, but it was just a hard shell that was part of his body. Beneath it, he could feel his potent musculature shifting underneath his probing fingers. His thighs and calves were the most overly muscular portions of him, bearing some hints of the shell armor, while in other places covered in the swirling tattoos that Randidly sensed were based on Primordial Nether Juju.

Randidly’s eyes were still emerald, his gaze intense. His cheekbones remained sharp, yet as with his neck, looked increasingly gaunt. His hair was somewhat different. Most of it remained black, but somehow he had developed some random strands that were either pure gold or silver. Those strange hairs glittered as they mixed with his dark hair, making him seem quite like a mad scientist.

His headache gradually began to ease. His thoughts began to run more smoothly, piecing the things back together. If anything, the problem had been the speed at which they came. With a bit of experience, he could cope. For now, he set aside the issue of the weird dream he had about his mother. Instead, he considered the ramifications of evolving his last Stat.

Randidly had once remade his body to suit his powerful capabilities. It had been an effective transformation that allowed him to stand toe to toe with foes in the Nexus that had much more well-developed images. But if he understood the recent reward correctly, that transformation had been a human warped until he possessed impossible capability. With all-new stats, he now saw the version of himself without being based on the template of humanity at all.

A monster, from genesis to execution.

He wondered if that would help, in his fight against Elhume. To no longer be human.

Neveah hopped down the edge of the crater and made her way to stand next to Randidly. She smiled at him and reached up to toy with his hair. “Honestly, I like it. You look like a silver and gold fox. Very fetching.”

“A silver fox, really? Neveah, I’m only-” Randidly snorted in spite of himself, but then paused when he realized he really didn’t know how old he was anymore. Probably in his mid-thirties, but with all the time training, it was easy to lose track.

Randidly gave himself another long look in the mirror. “It’s just… well. I’ve had a lot of changes since the System arrived. It’s not like I could just pause things before, but now I’m building up momentum toward something I can’t avoid, you know?”

Neveah stood on her tiptoes and brushed her lips against his cheek. Then she wrapped her arms around him, despite the fact he was a foot taller and with his added thickness, she could barely reach all the way around. “Still, you’re still you. So long as you believe that, there is hope.”

Randidly nodded, staring at himself. But he couldn’t help but wonder what it meant to be him, these days. After all, his insides housed an entire solar system.