The strike ripped through the dark sky of the central facility of the Sonara, dragging all attention to its proud capability.

Pullas’s image was an overwhelming wind in a field of dry, fallen leaves. The massive fingers that had so plagued them were raked away in a single blast, leaving the group curiously alone and bare on the ground. As the attack traveled further away and the light faded, Randidly could see that two of the nearest pulsing towers had their tops completely melted off, just from ambient radiated potency.

All of the suppressing images in the area fell away, allowing the group to release a breath.

Almost in slow motion, Randidly observed Pullas’s attack reaching the small dot of Nether so long refined between massive supernovas of dark emotions. It hit these exterior volatile elements first, crashing into a massive sea of chilled rage and burning its way directly through without slowing. However, very obviously the light of Pullas’s attack took on a soft blue light as it continued. Her radiance didn’t dim so much as incorporate a chilling practicality that sharpened its edge.

Randidly believed it did not bode well for them and the impending reaction based on how quickly the attack had been tainted. He steeled himself and raised the Alchemist’s Passport, bringing his Fatepieces back into resonance with each other.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Fiona announced, her voice wavering just slightly. Pullas seemed to be almost completely spent, just staring vaguely up after her attack, so Fiona just walked over to her and dragged her back to stand with the rest of the group.

Randidly released a breath and tried to focus. His tired mind sloshed around as he shifted to the new task. But he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the moment of impact. Or rather, the moment that chilling blast of death Pullas released ripped its way through two more horrifying emotions… and simply vanished as it encountered the drop.

It had been devoured, wholly and immediately. The light had been extinguished. Randidly allowed himself a moment of optimism.

Then the Nether in the area began to accelerate toward the drop.

Even worse, a strange muttering rose from the aftermath of the contact. With huge holes in their sides, the dense clouds of dark emotions began to whisper the identity of the image that passed through them. The sounds were inaudible, but each word felt like a pounding hammer at the significance in the area.

Death.

Death.

Death.

A ripple ran across the surface of the small bead of refined, fake Nether. Then that ripple continued outward past its edges, gathering more and more momentum through the backwash significance that spread out around the group. An enormous whirlpool emerged with that small dot as the center.

Alright, enough of this. Randidly pressed the Alchemist’s Passport forward; without the long fingers stretching around the area, the spatial barriers had gone down. Pullas’s attack and Xershi’s head had demolished all the restrictions in the area. So he simply slipped forward into the Electromagnetic and then partially into the light radiation layer, shooting away as fast as he could manage while under control.

They screamed across the layer, occasionally running up against the spatial barriers the towers maintained, but with plenty of momentum to punch through the impediments without slowing down. He felt space rapidly vanish around them. Yet even as they rushed across the vast distance, Randidly felt a sinking feeling in his stomach; something was wrong. Without being able to sense the exterior stairwell, he was forced to come out of the Fatepiece activation and glance around.

The group scanned the surroundings in an entirely different area from where they had started. That place had been covered with the towers with the fingers visible, but this area seemed almost abandoned, with a low grey mist hovering above them and only strange pulses of yellow light in the distance for company.

The ground around them was filled with small craters. Strange, blocky rock formations were spread around the divots in the ground, with cubes protruding sideways out of vertical stone columns. Even weirder were the strange suits of armor scattered across the space, scale mail arms and legs stretching out around the frame of a torso, but without a breastplate or back. Most of these were burned or scarred, used in some weird process, and then discarded.

“This… doesn’t seem like an exit,” Xershi unhelpfully observed.

Randidly pressed his lips together as he pivoted into a full three-sixty. They had moved far enough through the layer that he could no longer sense the drop of Nether and its dangerous transformations. But if anything, that only made its existence more ominous, as the percussive waves through Nether remained constant, edged with the word death. “We traveled a lot of distance… but I can’t sense us getting closer to the exterior stairwell. I’m a bit worried…”

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“...that this layer is different, being the middle?” Fiona grunted. She clapped twice. Small maroon moths burst from her body and flew in different directions, rapidly accelerating. But even as they became distant, they all turned upward, meeting back together in the sky and rushing directly upward from their position.

Fiona clicked her tongue. “Uh oh. Let me just try something else.”

This time, she put her hands straight out from her body, both accumulating mauve light for several seconds. Next to her, Pullas remained blank, lost in her inner thoughts and leaking massive amounts of Aether that had Randidly increasingly concerned. After a few seconds, Fiona’s hands released gushing blasts of mauve light, which stretched out and soon began to turn upward.

“The only exit from this place is in the central area. And shooting along the layer like we did won’t help; we are essentially running around on the inside of a sphere, spatially.”

“Pullas?” Xershi said. When she didn’t respond, he began making faces at her.

Randidly glanced around, so many issues warring for his attention. Almost casually, he picked up a nearby suit of armor and stored it within his Alpha Cosmos, just to study later. Strange symbols glittered along the torso frame. Then he squinted upward. “This is the main layer. I suppose it makes sense there isn’t-”

Unfortunately for the group, at that exact moment a veritable wave of massive fingers arrived. They drilled out of the misty gloom of the layer ‘finger’-first, revealing a disgusting, tentacle-filled maw at their end that certainly made them more sinister looking. Rather than slamming into the group to squash them, they sought to snap the Ascension Pact members up as a delicious snack.

For a half-second, Randidly hesitated. But next to them, Pullas didn’t stir. His expression became twisted with worry, but he threw himself forward. Necessity urged him to action. He forced his Nether Core to activate, flooding the surrounding area with energy, even as his three images spun together. Emotions seethed through his body as he flicked out Acri and prepared for a charge.

Almost immediately, some previously hidden small hands skittered out of the strange stone outcroppings and seized upon Randidly’s Nether. This time he directly ripped through their bodies, shredding the bastards before enough of them built up to actually stop his rotation. He pumped out more and more Nether, simply bulldozing his way through the strain as they tried to stop him.

However, in the next moment a powerful image restriction crashed down upon his shoulders. All three of his images faltered underneath the tight, blurring barrier. Even the Grey Creature’s emotional violence, seperate and wild as it was, couldn’t fight its way through the pressure.

His previously confident steps slowed and his pupils dilated. Physically he remained quite capable, but Randidly looked on at the twisting and writhing finger with trepidation.

Flows of golden light danced around his body, condensing into Pullas’s projection of death. She turned and winked at Randidly, before spreading her arms out. A radiate nova blasted out, obliterating the restriction on images. Then Death began to dance smashing backward the wild and hungry fingers. They bounced off the ground with enough force to crack the ground already ruined by craters.

After a brief pause to again admire how overwhelming Pullas’s image had become, Randidly hopped back to join the group. Still dazed, Pullas nodded to him. “Sorry. I was… a bit lost. It’s… so hard. Staying focused. There’s just something…”

Feeling the surrounding Nether, Randidly’s heart began to ache as he looked at Pullas. The strangeness grew around her every second. Every whispered “death” by those distant emotions seemed to be reinforcing the lesson on that small bead of Nether, echoing out through the significance and then came back together in Pullas’s body. Some connection was being forged between them.

The leaking Aether dribbled over that bond, solidifying it, adding shape and flesh to the raw metaphysical bone. Randidly’s heart sank. Whatever that drop is becoming… I’ll bet anything that its first purpose in life… will be to kill Pullas.

However, on the plus side, this strange existential growth began to block up the cracks that had emerged in her during the process of finishing her image. Even as she fought against the tentacles, her eyes began to refocus on the foes in front of her. Life seemed to visibly be returning to her bloodless cheeks. Which was good, because they would need her if they had to head to the core area.

Randidly raised his Fatepieces. The Hierarchy of Burden spun and glittered, prepared to be used. “Alright, come on back. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Despite Pullas’s relative vibrancy, Xershi still swept her up with an arm around her waist and carried her to cluster with the rest of them. She didn’t even seem to notice, the hands of death flicking out and knocking away the caustic energy worms. As they moved into position, Randidly wove some Nether together, still allowing his energy to spread out and demolish the hands seeking to restrain him.

In a massive twist, he pulled the whooshing tide of force back in on himself and wove a tight and rough Nether Ritual.

Congratulations! Your Skill Right Hand of the Nether Polymath (M) has grown to Level 889!

Congratulations! Your Skill Yearnings of the Nether Heir (P) has grown to Level 850!

Let’s arrive right at the core, past the defenses, Randidly said a silent prayer as he finished weaving the energy together. The Nether Ritual hummed in recognition. When he thrust his Alchemist’s Passport into the Hierarchy of Burden, he pushed directly through the first two layers and into the beginning of the third.

The yawning maw of entropy sucked at their edges as they ripped through space.