Randidly tried to keep his expression even as he used his Fatepiece to bring them to the edge of the area. His stomach was doing flip-flops, struggling to keep the huge chunk of energy he had taken from the tube in place. His bowels gurgled, his physiology responding to the shift in the Alpha Cosmos. His hand trembled slightly from the strain, right as he activated the Alchemist’s Passport, meaning they needed to walk ten minutes from the location to the edge of the layer.

Each step threatened another massive burp. The aura of power the Aetherium contained was that difficult to choke down. But he didn’t want to show any more signs, in case the creator realized something was wrong.

In the end, the entire Ascension Pact seemed just to accept a short walk was better than making a second attempt. Pullas kept shooting worried glances toward Xershi, who spent most of the journey muttering to himself. Meanwhile, Fiona walked behind Randidly with a suspicious expression on her face. “...by any chance did you steal whatever the creator was trying to plunder from that installation.”

Randidly coughed, surprised to be so quickly seen through. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

She rolled her eyes but didn’t press the issue. Which was good, because Randidly felt quite a bit of regret about the whole process. Originally he had just intended to store the energy in Yystrix’s tomb. Sensing the chunk of her power had filled him with an immediate impulse to take the chunk of Aetherium, which ended up being the size of a city block. But very quickly it became obvious he couldn’t just stuff it in the tomb. Plus the Aetherium radiated a constant sort of image-tainted aura. This chunk of solidified energy was Yystrix, through and through. He didn’t quite feel comfortable just keeping it on Expira, where its influence might spread.

His next move was to shift the huge piece of energy to hide behind the moon with the Sea of Emotion Path Randidly had also plundered and felt was too dangerous for the average person. But when he placed it there, the Sea of Emotion almost immediately reacted to the aura. Before anything permanent could happen, Randidly moved it again through the Alpha Cosmos, fretting about how to prevent a bad reaction.

Neveah suggested putting it inside the fake-sun, adding some credibility to the solar illusion. But for obvious symbolism-related reasons, Randidly immediately refused. Eventually, he tossed the massive hunk into the darkness beyond the Nemesai planets and decided he’d figure it out later. All the while his metaphysical digestion gurgled, even the thick Nether of his Alpha Cosmos having difficulty keeping down this item.

This is a huge piece of Aetherium… maybe five hundred times the size of the piece I used from Nrorce’s daughter, Randidly shivered. But it’s just a fraction of the energy that had crusted around Elhume’s body, in the scene I witnessed that first time he brushed up against me. How powerful is he…?

Randidly put the issue out of his mind for now. The group arrived at the exterior stairwell and began to climb, each with their private thoughts. The next floor was the 50th, the site of Elhume’s… whatever project the Sonara had become. The other traps ended up being part of a previous setup, which was left in place because they were effective at preventing individuals from climbing. But this layer-

The Ascension Pact soon stood before the golden barrier. Randidly looked at them all. “Are we ready?”

They didn’t need to respond. Their firm gazes showed their willingness to climb. True to his slightly immature personality, Xershi grinned at the prospect of the challenge, his existential confusion from the encounter with the creator forgotten. Fiona nodded, still with the group despite, or perhaps even because, they had met her ex-husband and he had been taken away by Devick. Pullas’s eyes were bright and clear. A stillness had come over her, as though she made some broader decision about her life.

Randidly walked through the portal. What waited on the other side was a much more well-illuminated space.

Immediately, the restrictive environment made itself known. Even Randidly grimaced at the sensation pressing against him. Not only were his Nether flows restricted, but there seemed to be some sort of cosmic order imposed on the area. His images were reduced, needing to struggle to get past the edges of his body.

The surroundings were filled with tall towers. These released periodic pulses of energy, the combined tapestry of Engraving pulsing from these towers becoming the heavy restrictions of the layer. And as Randidly looked up into a grey sky, he realized the bindings he felt were just a side effect. Even worse, space here was similarly subdivided and isolated, making the prospect of quickly using the Alchemist’s Passport impossible.

Above him, he saw the complex and forced flows of Aether and Nether that produced the twisted combination of both that proved to be so destructive. A completely shallow flow of Nether was forced to pass very close to a series of congregated nebula of dense emotion, with such potency that Randidly only had to look at them to feel them pressing against his skin. These emotional wells, for lack of a better term, radiated their particular brand of intensity and gradually infected the passing Nether with their vehemence.

Back and forth the Nether rushed, never accumulating any significance, never leaving the closed system of its basic flow underneath the heavy presence of emotions. Gradually, the Nether began to exhibit a hint of memories, however they were jagged and fragile. It was an energy filled with empty substance. The emotion created a hollow edifice in the energy, which when it broke, produced the horrible destructiveness the fake Nether exhibited.

Of course, the next thing Randidly noticed were a dozen black hands with undulating fingers in the surroundings, of the same type that had used such a painful Nether Ritual against the group a few layers below. Randidly grimaced, sensing hundred more just in the surrounding area, using their long and prehensile fingers to drag themselves into position for a similar strike. Their movements remained unnerving and collaboratory.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I suppose its because Elhume’s powerful image concerns fists, Randidly thought in disgust, even as he began to circulate Nether through his body. His Nether Core revved into gear, gladly pushing back the restrictions imposed by these pulsing towers. He had enough Weight to throw it around a bit and give himself some room to mobilize his powers. But fuck, these hands with their wriggling fingers are creepy.

The rest of the Ascension Pact joined him in the fiftieth layer just as Randidly mobilized the full force of his Nether to crack and shatter the assembling Nether Ritual the black hands had created to invert the energy in the air. As the working feel to pieces, they hissed and clicked their fingers against the ground in agitation. Then a larger swarm began to move, forming a greater working to squeeze him in a slower and more deliberate effort. The towers around the group began to pulse with red light, drawing even more attention to their position.

Above, the conversion of Nether to this twist, overly emotional form continued.

“A welcoming party, how fun,” Mauve light swirled around Fiona as her lips curled at the surroundings. Xershi and Pullas mobilized their images as well, preparing for battle. Randidly felt half of the black hands continue to generate a Nether Ritual while the other half skittered across the ground, rushing toward them. Their tainted, fake-emotional Nether crackled around their bodies and generated a dangerous slipstream of energy; they seemed intent on simply charging toward the group and stampeding them.

In response, Randidly spread out his own influence.

Congratulations! Your Skill Yearnings of the Nether Heir (P) has grown to Level 752!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill Right Hand of the Nether Polymath (M) has grown to Level 884!

Randidly released a triumphant groan as he put down the second Nether Ritual the hands tried to weave together; there were a lot of them, but their understanding of Nether was rudimentary at best. The failure of their overarching plan even stalled out the oppressive waves from the towers. However, just as the Ascension Pact seemed poised to launch into movement, something in the middle of layer stirred.

“That-” Pullas’s eyes bulged. Even Xershi faltered, as an enormous shadow stretched across the whole of the layer and left them deeply in shade. A massive hand with seemingly innumerable fingers manifested itself and release a thick suppression onto the group.

Congratulations! Your Skill Ghosthound’s Acute Nether Nose (M) has grown to Level 1020!

Randidly breathed deeply as he leaned up and stared up into the air, trying to get a picture of what they were facing. Yet even he could barely grasp the space. In a way that the previous layers didn’t touch, the fiftieth layer was enormous. Perhaps just as far as it stretched horizontally, it also yawned vertically, the core area of the Sonara an area with space enough for the worst sort of destructive experiments.

Just distantly, Randidly could sense that the majority of the fingers this hand wielded continued a constant churn in a specific pattern, far from their position. Emotions more horrible and suffocating than anything Randidly had felt, except terminating from Pine himself at the bottom of the shaft, were pressed together into a tight orbit. These were the most violent and primal things Randidly had ever experienced, causing him to break out in a cold sweat across even the distance between them.

The tiniest drop of Nether flowed between those massive supernovas of dark emotion, gradually absorbing the worst sort of lessons.

However, Randidly blinked when a tinny voice boomed out across the layer. “I have long waited for you… Nether King. Did you think I hadn’t made preparations for direct contact like this?”

The group paused. The voice was worse than DiOrtho Vant’s most rusted, grinding image projection of the machine god. Fiona shot a glance at Randidly. “This thing thinks you are one of the extinct Nether Kings?”

“No wonder its behaving so violently,” Pullas adjusted her glasses, image still at the ready.

The enormous synthetic voice of the hand boomed out in what seemed to be a prerecorded message. “Still, I know you have long refused to work with me. But can you deny our goals are the same? Let us shatter the dream and return to the real universe. Perhaps both of our peoples, decimated within this cursed Nexus, will still be thriving. Perhaps the bubble of the Pinnacle means only a moment has passed outside.”

Randidly felt the Nether in the air stirring. He released a pulse of power to push back whatever the black hands had begun to create, but that energy started a cascading process that began to suck out more and more of his dense significance from his Nether Core. Cursing, Randidly tried to pull back his energy. But the Nether had been caught up in a complex pattern around him, drawing him into increasingly wide and circular rotations of energy.

He almost couldn’t believe the sensation. He felt oddly helpless, taken by surprise, his opponents targeting his Nether directly-

His eyes widened in recognition. The black hands were dragging his energy along into a knot, so that the flows of his Nether Core would strange itself. Immediately, Randidly began to flare his Nether Weight to struggle out of it, but he didn’t seem to be doing much. The power of Nether came from its significance, weight, and Synechdochence: this was the energy that was connected to the whole and wielded the whole’s power even when only a pinch was available. However, by the same token, Randidly couldn’t simply cut off the kidnapped power, now that it had been seized and pulled into a dangerous pattern.

“I have spent a century creating this trap. A single Nether King is not much at all. Are you struggling? I bet you are. If you do not submit immediately and allow yourself to be captured, you will be bound all the same, with your consciousness drawn into an agonizing hell I’ve created for you. When you have been dealt with, I will be notified.”

“Gonna surrender?” Xershi asked flippantly.

Randidly found himself sweating. More and more black hands were rushing out of the surroundings. Now there were three groups, the chargers, those somehow pulling on Randidly’s Nether, and finally, a new group created a Nether Ritual. The towers began pulsing, directing waves of restrictive force toward the group. He licked his lips, struggling to free his Nether from the grips of these hands. “I- I just need a few seconds- There is a trap pulling at my Nether-”

Pullas patted Randidly on the back. She gave him a sunny smile.“Yea, even if you weren’t the target, it seems like this layer’s trap was designed specifically for you. So take a step back, rely on us for a change.”

Looking at her, he felt himself relaxing, almost unwillingly.

Pullas moved past Randidly, Fiona and Xershi moving to her side. The smallest and slightest of the Ascension Pact released of a pulse of her image. The pale golden specter of death showed a wide smile as it began to tear through the restrictive defenses of the layer.

“I don’t know if this is my limit, but.” Pullas announced to the layer. “I know the world of which I dream. I know the life I wish to live, so I can die without regrets.