Amongst the residents of the Sonara, it was a mark of pride for an individual or group to produce a caliber of reaction that could shake the entire construction. To generate a ripple of such magnitude that it could be felt across the whole of the great work. The tight seals on each ring meant that it required a certain frequency of importance, a forceful permanence to the image, to escape a floor and run rampant across the whole. Beyond a single ring, most actual images were halted after a half dozen or so rings in both directions.

Yet on that particular day, individuals paused and looked up across the entire Sonara as an unexpected sensation lapped up against almost everyone. Nether tickled against their skin, whispering that the impossible would soon descend upon the Sonara. Several flinched back from the feeling, worried about how this new energy would affect their image. However, there was also a large contingent that watched the development with interested eyes.

The Sonara was an old, retrofitted thing. The current status quo was one of uneasy peace between several established groups and the ambitious youths. The pulse of significance that swept up through the different layers was an echo of a forgotten, discarded purpose.

Yet it struck a chord in a lot of the hearts that heard.

Stepping into the first ring, Actus Suprem Devick paused as she marched up the central staircase on Elhume’s mission. She stilled as she felt the wave of Nether; for her, how could she not sense who had created this working? How could she mistake the pointlessly bold energy of her son?

She raised her head with a bright smile on her face. “My, my, my. Looks like the fun is getting started without me. Maybe this trip into this coffin will be more fun than I thought.”

Nether bounced off the bottom of the Sonara and even began to echo back up across the layers. The deluge of unexpected energy suppressed the image static, almost clearing out the detritus that had been strewn across the construction after two hundred years. Unintended though it might have been, the powerful Nether Ritual cleansed the Sonara. Waves down and up carried Nether, extinguishing the near-constant hum that infested the joints between rings.

The group of four had borrowed the unconscious goal of this place, but not without giving to the mysterious Sonara in turn.

On the tenth floor, Duulys Ambar also paused in his movements. Some idiotic newbie to the Sonara lay slumped in front of him, the dents of Duulys’s knuckles reshaping his face into a particularly gruesome canyon. When the wave of Nether had passed the first time, he had only felt a keen sense of anticipation: this Randidly Ghosthound seemed more and more interesting, the longer he ran free through the Sonara.

But on the second major wave washing across his body, most of the Ghosthound’s grip on the energy had been wiped away by its passage through the floors. Underneath his actual quarry, Duulys sensed the presence of a very familiar figure, standing at the Ghosthound’s side.

Duulys Ambar’s face twisted. released his grip on the unfortunate soul and let the body crumpled to the floor. He rushed to the staircase and began to climb as quickly as he could. He could not let them beat him back to his seat of power.

The Nether waves didn’t only travel down, but also burned their way up. Spreading up through the Sonara was more difficult, but the vein of significance the foursome touched upon had been waiting for a thousand years for someone to tap into its vague purpose. With raw volume, the pressurized Nether blasted up, similarly annihilating all the broken scraps of images that hummed around the edges of the idle Sonara.

On the fiftieth floor, a sleeping guardian began to stir. The mechanisms around it continued to click and hum, gathering and observing an illuminated and sealed tube in the middle of the ring. Around that central guardian, the other defenses increased the frequency of their patrols.

On the seventieth floor, a very old man sat up from his napping spot in a field of wild daisies. A wind blew the swaying flowers, setting the field to rustling around him. The sun was warm. He smacked his lips and then rubbed his hands together. “Is it finally time? What a delightful surprise. I assumed I’d be trapped here until Solomon got off his ass and came back to claim his kingdom.”

Finally, up on the second-highest floor, the pulse of energy had turned faint before an ancient and unforgiving image. Something nearly absolute, a philosophy that brooked no argument. Almost all of the momentum had been lost as Nether burned its way through this image. All of the extra had been stripped away, so the wave of energy lapped up on the floor with all the presence of a whisper pleading for mercy. A few fireflies wiggled their abdomens and flew in lazy circles around a gloomy mausoleum.

After the wave dissipated, no response manifested.

And even this wave of energy that dared transgress the possible couldn’t reach the top floor. There, everything remained still and frozen.

*****

“Mr. Ghosthound,” Fiona said. The group of four moved quickly toward the exterior stairwell of the ring. Randidly felt mentally exhausted, but didn’t want to pause; he had agreed to allow Fiona and Pullas to deal with the image echoes for a few floors while he recovered. He felt like a used dishrag, left to dry in the sun and becoming weirdly stiff. “Was this form entirely necessary?”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Randidly glanced back over his shoulder at her. Fiona pulled up the sleeve of her leather armor to reveal the meat of her upper arm. There, a dark tattoo of what could only be the Stillborn Phoenix slowly spun. It was the concrete symbol of the Nether Ritual that Randidly still couldn’t quite interpret what it meant. Pullas bore a swaying Yggdrasil on her side and Xershi’s entire back was dominated by the stalking Grey Creature.

A spiraling, curling, abstract pattern inked itself across the middle finger of Randidly’s right hand. He, too, was woven together by the Nether Ritual. As evidenced by the Skill evolution and the strange connectivity now woven between them, he had succeeded.

Randidly just wished he knew exactly what it meant.

Pullas pulled up her shirt and peered down at her own tattoo. “Well, I don’t know. I actually think the design is quite intricate. You have quite a bit of talent as an artist, Randidly.”

“We can find out more later. For now, let’s move,” Xershi said, in a rare show of seriousness. Randidly privately suspected he was just slightly pouty that someone else had created such a massive show of force. The metal liger was weirdly competitive about things like this.

But they had all agreed that the Nether RItual probably earned them quite a bit of unwanted attention and moved as fast as possible to the next floor. No one brought up the impossible goals each had made. They poked and admired their new tattoos, but didn’t prod them too directly. For now, they focused on the concrete risks of lingering too long in the Sonara.

The group loped across the terrain, so much so that Randidly couldn’t help but be impressed with their extra effort. Then Xershi finally broke his own silence. He seemed even more disgruntled than previously.“...has anyone else noticed that they have a mysterious line in their Status screen and suddenly have +250 to each of their Stats?”

Even Fiona missed a step at that pronouncement. Randidly checked his own, but obviously, there was no such thing. Yet from the expressions of the two women, it was clear that being bound to him with this Nether Ritual provided some extra benefits to his companion. He wondered whether the mark on his middle finger also had some hidden meaning.

Meanwhile, Xershi released an exaggerated sigh.

“Mr. Ghosthound,” This time, Fiona’s address was more respectful than mocking. She seemed to have completely forgotten about the abyss on her shoulder. “How high are your Stats, exactly?”

Randidly just offered her a tired smile. He wondered whether she would believe him, or if she would push him on how he could move a body with such high Stats. She pursed her lips when he let the silence stretch. Xershi released a dark chuckle.

They soon arrived at the staircase and began to climb. However, they quickly stalled out. Randidly noticed it immediately, but he was only sure after Fiona slowed and allowed the veil of image to completely dissipate. The vague whispers and taboo laughter vanished. The group looked up.

Pullas gulped and said what they were all thinking. “All the image static… is gone.”

“We released a pulse of Nether,” Fiona said slowly. “A big one. When we created our Ascension Pact. Even I was shocked by the power I felt, but I wondered if perhaps it was just because it had been a while since I fought against a true being of Nether. If the Nether we released had enough juice to clean out all the broken pieces of images lingering in the Sonara…”

Without a smile on her face, Fiona’s expression remained bleak. But the meaningful gaze she cast Randidly’s way prickled his skin. He could only smile and shrug; he hadn’t meant for so much significance to get tied up in their promises. Stepping on what force waiting in the Sonara was an accident.

“At least it means the way up is clear,” Xershi said. “So let’s hurry.”

The four accelerated upward, Randidly relieved he could just use his body without straining his mind. The Engraving on the staircase began to accelerate their movements, porting them across the impassable amount of distance, when he received a message from Neveah. There has been a development with the Patron of Feathers.

Immediately, Randidly felt submerged in ice. He had no regrets about entering into an Ascension Pact with his group, but he had been quite worried about the speed of their assent. Even acknowledging how close to his limit he pushed himself, he wouldn’t be able to claim that he hadn’t lingered for them. Is she still managing?

Better than managing. Whatever you did recently with Nether- well, shortly afterward her condition began to stabilize. You don’t need to torture yourself as much as you climb. At this rate, she will be able to hold on for about a month.

For a split second, Randidly was stunned. Then he replied with an only slightly annoyed message. If everything was going well, why did you send such an ominously phrased message?

He could feel Neveah sniff. Dramatic effect.

Groaning, Randidly shook his head. But he did feel a bit of the tension that had become just a part of him in the past few days begin to ease. A month. He could work with a month, considering it had taken him only two days to make it a fourth of the way up the Sonara. He flexed his arms and rolled his shoulders. He looked up and studied the surrounding Engravings a bit more closely. Almost immediately, something else caught his attention.

Without the extra images bombarding him in these boundary areas, he could feel the fullness of the air that so benefitted images in the Sonara. It was the equivalent for acoustics for singing; as his images moved within him, there seemed to be a hinting of extra depth and flavor to what he produced. If he manifested them here for an extended period of time, their impression in his mind would slowly grow to possess that extra weight. LIkely it would continue to deepen as his impression of his own images improved.

Randidly looked up as they approached the next barrier. “Anyone dangerous on the other side?”

Fiona waved her hand. “With an extra boost of Stats and with four of us? On the heels of that pulse of energy, the next several floors will probably skedaddle out of our way. And if they don’t, I’ll carve a path.”

“Hey!” Xershi grumbled. His eyes had a maniacal gleam to them. His servos buzzed in his joints. “Don’t hog all the fun for yourself.”

Randidly felt pity to whichever resident in the Sonara was chosen by Xershi to prove that, he too, could be impressively powerful.