The embrace of the cold fingers of entropy felt oddly invigorating and addicting. The thin flaws within space blurred around them as they tunneled deeper toward their destination. Like Randidly would only too happily struggle against the greed of entropy until his existence was inevitably extinguished. As though it was somehow beautiful to toil so thanklessly against the natural, universal force that would one day claim them all.

Maybe that’s part of the danger of Entropy… You experience it and are filled with a perverse desire to fill it, no matter how well you know that’s impossible.

Yet another part of Randidly pointed out that he had accomplished many previously-considered-impossible accomplishments. His mind wandered. Perhaps this would be another-

The Nether Ritual humming in Randidly’s chest began to come unwound, having almost accomplished its purpose. In an extended instant, they had arrived. Randidly forced himself to move, stunned by how numbed his hands had become. His fingers would barely twitch. With a great effort, he pulled back on the Alchemist’s Passport and disengaged their spatial rush.

Emerging from the between-existence of the void to the layer felt like hitting the surface of a lake from a great height. Combined with the numbness of too-long exposure to entropy, Randidly felt briefly stunned by the return. Behind him, Fiona and Xershi seemed similarly to struggle, while Pullas immediately released her projection of death to block any threats.

The group stood on the surface of a city-sized hunk of rock, their bodies feeding them a conflicting series of information about which was up as the rock continued to lazily spin. The same massive cords that they had seen siphoning energy away from the captured individuals below ran into the floating core, digging through gloomy tunnels into the center of the area. As he looked around, he grimaced; the way to the next layer wasn’t in sight.

They would probably still need to go deeper.

Randidly crouched down, releasing a pulse of Stillborn Phoenix gravity to fix them to the surface of the rock. However, the confusing tugs on their bodies continued to occur. His head whipped around to peer into the inscrutable surface of the asteroid as Randidly realized the source; this sort of ‘gravity’ was the same force exerted by Pine.

Within the surface of the asteroid, extremely dense Engravings prohibited Randidly’s senses from scanning the interior and figuring out what sort of threats awaited them. They had to proceed forward blind.

Movement dragged Randidly’s attention back around. He paled; he had been being dramatic earlier when he called the mass of tentacles that approached them through the mist a wave. But now, from every direction, the fingers came in such numbers they filled every angle of approach.

The sheer number made it seem like a new, sinister horror restriction of the layer was approaching, until the individual, writhing movements of the fingers became clear. Apparently, the mass they had been fighting earlier was only a fraction of the beings of twisted Nether wriggling on this enormous layer. All he could see in every direction was the fingers, hungrily swimming toward them.

“So, into the asteroid?” Fiona prompted. Randidly nodded. The group hopped to the nearest hole and followed the cords into the inner area.

The companions kicked themselves off the walls, ricocheting their way deeper toward their objective. As they moved, the pull of significance in the area got stronger. It never approached the sort of all-consuming significance that made it impossible for the average person to descend the Shaft, but it pressed against their skin. Meanwhile, Randidly did his best to absorb as much as possible of the dense Engravings that lined the walls.

Neveah, you are going to have so many research projects after we get through this.

They bounced out into the core area with Pullas’s image skipping in the front. Yet only stillness awaited them. They were in a smaller open space, aside from the cables flowing up to the middle, with an even smaller core waiting in front of them. The central platform bore two complex portals and one strange ball of what looked like yarn. An alternating red and teal warning light began to blare along the interior of the core emptiness, the wall of which was dotted with strange boxes.

Very quickly, as the lids began to slide to the side with a scratching certainty, these boxes revealed themselves as coffins. Shinier and more advanced versions of the armor suits wrapped their fingers around the edges and hauled themselves back out of the strange tombs. Symbols danced across their arms as they activated.

Even from a distance, their auras were horrifying.

Details began to happen very quickly, Randidly’s mind buzzing to observe it all. His Fatepiece, specifically the Hierarchy of Burden, began to resonate. Powerful projections of Nether in the shape of genuine Aether images rose from these animated suits, blurry and hulking, beings of pure malice and shadow. Pullas’s image of Death shot forward, smashing into the nearest suit.

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The suit only took a few steps back from the collision. That aura rebuffed her attack. It raised its body and took a jerky step forward. Randidly recognized the animating force in its chest, a pulsing ball of energy: these things housed Nether Princes.

Not just any sort of Nether Prince, but deep wells of powerful memories that powered its movements.

Xershi activated his Ascension Pact tattoo to wreathe himself in flames of Nether Weight. He tossed himself at another of the suits, but was smashed directly backward, his enormous metal liger keening in pain. Pullas twisted and shot a bolt of bright and sunny death across her body and stumbled that suit before it could follow up with a vicious swipe.

Randidly looped his arms around Fiona and Pullas. “Don’t linger, Xershi.”

He leapt, streaking through the space toward the central platform. As he blurred forward, he could see more cords flowing up to the platform from every direction, feeding themselves into the car-sized ball of yarn. The resonating in his chest began to intensify. The teal and red light crystallized into a sudden and vicious tight suppression formation that sprung from the wall.

The binding passed harmlessly through the Nether Prince-driven suits and just wrapped up the group. In several blinding strokes, Pullas cut their way out. Xershi scrambled up to join them just as Randidly condensed a solid plane of air and kicked off to cross the rest of the distance and land on the platform.

The Hierarchy of Burden continued its strange wiggling. Sweat dripped down Randidly’s chin.

“Do we just flip a coin?” Xershi asked, while Pullas twisted around and intercepted several of the suits that leapt off the wall to follow them. She knocked down a half dozen, but more came from every angle. Several bulky fingers curled around the edge of the platform, preparing to haul these strangely resilient suits into view.

Randidly shook his head decisively and then nodded to the left. “No, that one.”

Of the two portals, one bore the signature Engravings of the Sonara and the other had a complex pseudo-Nether Ritual underneath it. Right now, finding out where Elhume attempted to guide the Nether King would need to wait.

Pullas clapped her hands together. Even her emotions had become overwhelmingly bright in their emotional affect. Randidly could barely believe how much her image had been improving. “Before Expiry, A Pure Moment.”

A blast of golden light swept outward, this time passing harmlessly through the Ascension Pact group and slamming into the suits. Of course, this barely rocked them back. Then they moved with a horrible, jittering speed to catch up to them. Xershi and Fiona had already dashed to the left threshold, which pulsed with Engravings and activated due to their presence. The familiar golden barrier that led to another layer formed in the opening.

“Don’t linger too long,” Fiona called over her shoulder as she vanished, following Xershi forward.

Pullas paused and looked at Randidly. Above her head, death continued to shoot out prismatic waves that held the suits at bay. “Is everything alright? This… is the right portal, yes?”

“It’s not that,” Randidly said slowly. He could distantly feel more significance firming up between Pullas and the distant drop of Nether; the horrible repetition of the word death continued as those emotions latched until it, even as they moved away. Feeling that develop, Randidly was again reminded how much influence he could exert with Ghasthund, should he find a use for the word.

His attention fixated instead on the reaction from his Hierarchy of Burden, which had grown more intense since they moved to the central platform.

Following his instincts, Randidly’s gaze went to the massive ball of yarn. From here, he could see cuniform symbols all across the thread, minuscule and too simplistic to be any sort of functional Engraving system. But his eyes widened in recognition. The Hierarchy of Burden is reacting… because this item, too, is a Hierarchy. An old tool used to handle the pressures of creating an isolated universe.

The Nether Princes within the opposition’s chests had begun to stir in response to Pullas’s attacks. Memories from previous battles soaked out from the Nether Prince, empowering the armors. They moved forward with more confidence, withstanding her strikes and advancing across the last few meters to the duo. More and more climbed over the edge of the platform.

“Randidly…” There was a low warning in Pullas’s voice, even as she blazed with a brighter light. Her incarnation of death spun with a wide smile on her face, seeming to enjoy the frantic series of collisions that shook Randidly to his bones.

He knew he was wasting time, but he was also impossibly quick. Dreadful Alacrity zipped him across the platform to the middle area. He stretched out a hand and rested it against the yarn. He realized two things at once. First, something lived within the yarn, although it was somehow incomplete; Randidly could see how large chunks of this tragic being’s significance had been cut away.

Secondly, the contact fed him the name of the object: The Hierarchy of Karma.

His eyes widened, completely sidetracked despite the dangerous nature of their current situation. The Hierarchy of Karma, from the history Randidly had heard of Elhume from the Patrons, had been used on a mission with Elhume, the Patron of Truth, the Patron of Feathers, and the Patron of the Borrowed to slay a being that had been an existential crisis to the Nexus. Such was the violence of that conflict that the Patron of Truth had died in that battle.

The same Patron of Truth whose doll, even in its weakened form, had landed a strike on Randidly without him being able to avoid it.

Why the hell… Randidly’s eyes bulged as he looked at the cables bringing image power up here, feeding it into the Hierarchy of Karma. …would Elhume be keeping this thing alive?!?

However, answers mattered less right now than escaping. Randidly plucked up the still fighting Pullas, the suits reaching out at their backs to seize them, and leapt through the portal into the next layer.