The fire stalked around them like the lion it was based on. Each tongue of flame possessed sharp eyes, waiting for a single moment of weakness.

Randidly felt a weird sense of grim relief, held aloft by Duulys’s grasp amongst the sea of silver fire. Everything became the jaws of the lion around him, flaying away his skin, puncturing into his body, rupturing the normal flow of blood through him. His powerful body was being ravaged, caught in the middle of an extremely potent image.

Emotional waves radiated out of Duulys and twisted the flow of energy. Any sort of Randidly’s usually siphoning methods was impossible here; somehow, the rage and pain that Duulys felt locked them both in this horrifying hell. They were isolated and alone, forced to both experience the ministrations of the silver flames.

And yet.

Randidly Ghosthound had never flinched in the face of pain. His mind trembled and quaked underneath its pressures, but that was more an expulsion of kinks and distractions than everything else. As he grew used to the sensation, his senses sharpened.

Soon, alone with his swirling core of Nether battling against the flames, he found a weird sort of peace. Being so immersed in another’s projected emotional pain forced the Grey Creature to withdraw its own angst into a meeker spiral, in self-preservation. A tension he had held for so long that he didn’t even notice finally eased.

In the face of the grinding external threat, the whole of his capabilities came together.

Of course, his vision swam and occasionally Randidly lost track of his thoughts amongst the surging waves of painful flames. Bits of his awareness were erased by hot gushes of white agony, leaving him unsteady and distracted. So he just looked in the face of his opponent and observed the almost perfect emotional force being unleashed against him.

Egg’s Illusory Plume struggled valiantly, keeping the worse of the damage from clawing away chunks of flesh. The Stillborn Phoenix howled and sucked down as much of the heat and vicious image as it could manage. Yet steadily, his protective barrier was forced back. The image of Duulys Ambar was oppressive and implacable. Uncommon Metabolism had to fight directly against the cleansing fire and rapidly lost. Only with the heavy support of Nether currents did Randidly prevent himself from being wiped away. Even then, it was probably only because of the super-physical reality of his body; his body was an entire universe, which gave him a resilience that was hard to overcome.

Sulfur gurgled in strained enjoyment. As much as the heat pained the plant arm, the image also churned so much kinetic energy around that it was gathering itself for another evolution.

Randidly’s gaze flickered in amusement. In the end, I’m surrounded by masochists.

Congratulations! Your Skill Stigma of the Stillborn Phoenix (L) has grown to Level 427!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill Stigma of the Stillborn Phoenix (L) has grown to Level 501!

The Stillborn Phoenix writhed in something like pleasure, its greedy hunger dragging more of the flames ontop of Randidly’s body. A particularly ravaging wave of flames seared at his legs. A tired smile arrived on his face and melted away. He appreciated how gleefully it created Skill Levels. The indiscriminate gluttony was just a part of that image.

“Just fucking die!” Duulys roared in his face, flecks of spit flying toward Randidly’s cheek but evaporating almost instantly underneath the heat. The two of them seemed completely isolated, face to face, with the heat and harsh image squishing and mushing the fabric of existence closed around them. Once again Randidly tried to reach out and pull energy to himself with Yggdrasil, but he could grasp nothing. The connection had been twisted off.

I probably could take from the Alpha Cosmos. But I don’t need that to beat this man, Randidly panted, his fingers tightening on Acri’s shaft. The pain sizzled along his arms and legs, occasionally making his vision flicker. In that way, they weren’t really alone; agony was their constant companion.

Congratulations! Your Skill Stigma of the Stillborn Phoenix (L) has grown to Level 570!

Randidly’s thoughts were tiny bubbles, drifting away from the thunderous agony of a waterfall of flames crashing onto his body. They multiplied rapidly around the point of impact and somehow fizzled out as they drifted further away downstream. He felt his eyes fluttering as wave after wave of brutalizing image grinded at his psyche. Probably without the presence of the Alpha Cosmos within his body, adding an extra-dimensional permanence to his body, he would have burned away several times over.

Yet he had the Alpha Cosmos. His thoughts continued to rapidly form and pop. He built up momentum for a counter-attack and then had it obliterated by the unflinching force of this image. His Nether Core swirled, maintaining as much of his functions as he could manage. Almost subconsciously, Randidly felt his mind shifting. Bits fell away at the edges in these cycles guarded so tightly by pain. He consciously loosened his grip on different aspects of himself. He jettisoned the unnecessary portions to free up more energy for the critical areas.

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Congratulations! Your Skill Stigma of the Stillborn Phoenix (L) has grown to Level 620!

Randidly released a slow breath. His lips were parched and cracked form the heat. Yet the process of falling into the Visage of Obsession felt so natural. He gave up different awarenesses and received a sharpened focus for his efforts.

With that focus, Randidly observed the howling Duulys Ambar before him with solemn eyes.

Not the man’s bulging shoulders, his bouncing dreadlocks, or the waves of silver flames that radiated from his person. No, Randidly’s focus followed the keening wavelength of his emotional affect the silver lion utilized. Trapped inside this isolated space, there was nothing else to do but study the source of this trial. They were pressed so closely together that it was easy to see how Duulys animated his image with his impassioned potency.

Time stretched. Again and again, Randidly would lose the track of his thoughts and have to start again. He abandoned other parts of himself, desperate to be able to hold on to his emotional senses.

The heat seemed to be curling into Randidly’s ribcage, desperate fingers seeking a way to rip him open. Randidly ignored it; his body could handle the pressure. He continued to focus, sinking into Duulys’s emotions. That rage and fear and vicious desire to prove himself became the pounding bassline of the small area.

Randidly’s eyes flickered with recognition as he observed the emotional movements. Helen had demonstrated that it was easier to adjust her affect to try and be good enough in most situations, ignoring the concept of a perfect affect. Duulys followed the same path, except he had honed his efforts to be impossibly close to the perfect emotional affect, in every effort.

His sense of pain wasn’t acute enough to follow it, but there were waves and ripples within the agony ripping into his body and soul. Slopes and valleys, rises and falls. The subtle topography of an image moving across a complex subject, driven by complex emotions. Randidly released a breath through his nose. To traverse that geography, Duulys shifted his focus in a constant, contextual dance.

His senses gathered as much of the movements as possible. This was the foundation of everything else.

He knows the pattern. Randidly’s thoughts stirred and popped.His eyes widened, absorbing all the shifts as this man sought to brutalize him. He’s fought with himself for so long he knows his own texture, down to the slightest detail. I can’t quite manage that-

-but maybe…!

Randidly had a plan. He saw the way to utilize emotions, but needed some of his abandoned facilities to do it. So he rose back through, gathering the whole of himself. The agony ambushed him, gleeful over his return. After focusing for so long, being slapped in the face with the horrible pain felt like being awoken by a river of boiling water. His thoughts turned chaotic for several seconds as he tried to gather himself. After tensing his shoulders, he forced himself to relax; he couldn’t overpower pain.

He floated on top of it. He became a part of it.

Duulys leaned forward, his eyes glowing. Randidly had no idea how long they had been here, but even Duulys seemed exhausted. “Damnit, what a cockroach you are. But you will regret making an enemy of Duulys Ambar-”

The answer had come to him because of the difficult storm of emotions that Randidly had suffered underneath the Grey Creature. There was obviously so much more to explore, but he had been scraped raw by its wild fury for so long he understood the sensation of it. With that knowledge, he emulated the searing emotional intensity that Duulys generated.

He had patterns and dances of his own.

His heart stirred as his images moved. But this time, the order of arrival was different. The Grey Creature came first, the monstrous body that had evolved in order to survive becoming the template for the manifestation. It was humanoid, with sleek, chitinous armor across the joints. Sulfur was a heavy presence on his left side, a hammer of a arm, ready to begin the counterattack.

The Stillborn Phoenix came next. This time, it didn’t stop with his left eye. Both eyes and his mouth were filled with tiny points of swirling darkness. Black smoke crackling with crimson electromagnetic impulses drifted out of his hungry orifices. The hollow openings yawned wide, depthless and infinite.

Yggdrasil came last, grateful and giving as always to its wilder fellow images. The branches of the World Tree shoved themselves out of the image’s back, ripping apart his flesh and branching out with sharp twigs. Emerald leaves became feathers, stretching almost double Randidly’s body length in each direction. The massive, monstrous wings beat twice, the leaves rustling with the long sharpened sound.

The new, adjusted image physicalizations solidified across Randidly’s body. His branch wings wove themselves into existence. He raised his gaze, both eyes replaced with Egg’s of Depression. His wings spread wider, pushing against the harsh waves of silver flames. His Nether Core began to rotate, faster and faster, all his significance coming together.

Already, the leaves along his wings were beginning to char. But Randidly needed to wait for the Skill to end. He would take matters into his own hands. Both his Authorities shivered and threw the force of their presence behind his triplicate image activation.

The Ashen Doors to Pandemonium Unlock. Revelation of the Atramentous Threshold. Dawn Opens the Sky and Reality Stirs.

All three images moved together, shouting with all the surging emotional affect Randidly could manage that the space in front of him was a door. A threshold. A folded sky ready to bloom into reality.

The silver flames faltered as Randidly twisted with his Grey Monarch’s Authority and reframed reality. Duulys’s eyes widened. Then, with all the force of his significance, Randidly slammed his powerful body into the doorway and forced it open. His wings spread wide to fill the unlocked space, dripping blood and charred leaves around him.