Randidly’s eyes widened. He couldn’t believe Byuresk would just say yes like that.

He couldn’t believe he had made that decision so quickly.

“Father!” Devick gasped, instantly revealing herself amongst the guards. She stepped out of her group, her hands reached up and tugging at the edges of her hood, as though hiding her hair now would make much of a difference. Her voice rang with fear. “Wha… I don’t-”

Randidly felt strange cold prickles running across his arms and legs. A wave of emotion crashed into his body, tensing his muscles. Suddenly, he tried his best to focus on the fact he was within a memory. She’s just a shade of a young woman. Really, my actions here matter very little. I’m only here to gather information. Besides, her rise to power in the future might be exactly because she was taken in the past during one of these ransom situations in the past, albeit probably not as the only hostage.

And yet… why is this such a punch to the gut?

Ioot beckoned. “Come here, girl. Let us all have a look at you. It is a great honor, to exchange your freedom for that of your town. Many will have memories of this moment for their entire life. You bring much honor to your father through your sacrifice.”

Devick swayed, a stray leaf tugged from the branch and sent spiraling down to rot and wither on the ground. Randidly narrowed his eyes. The Grey Creature in his chest began to stir, pushing aside his attempts to distance himself from the reality of the situation. He pictured her bright and enthusiastic face while they spoke on the balcony. And the shadows in her eyes when she had spoken so defensively.

…its because of her loneliness. And because I cannot just stand here while your father treats your life so cavalierly…!

“Oy, Hungry Eye, is there a problem?” The massive Nether King grinned. A long tongue lolled out of its mouth for a second, then rolled itself back up. He set his massive weapon down on the ground next to him. “It’s a great deal! The girl for the lives of everyone in the town. And despite its backward ideas about Engraving, they really could help you; I assume you are trying to set yourself up to condense a Penance, yea? If nothing else, this town has connections.”

From his leering expression, he clearly wanted Randidly to have a problem with the proposal. Randidly felt ice settle below his stomach. His lip curled up. Of course, I was a fool; they can see the significance linking me to Devick. Even though the events to form it haven’t yet occurred, its robust enough for Nether Kings to note.

Realizing they were needling him made two-thirds of Randidly want to take a breath and calm down, but right now the Grey Creature possessed the lion’s share of his emotional potency. He felt some inner beast awakening in himself, seething with barely controlled fury. Emotion affect began to radiate out from his body. Byuresk took a step back, eyes wide at his aura.

“King Hungry Eye…” Ioot spoke slowly. Her blank mask tilted to the side. “Why are you releasing so much Aether? How unique. You have quite a few talents, don’t you?”

His eyes gleamed. Randidly methodically cracked his knuckles, the threads of his patience wearing thin. Blood pounded through his body with enough force the memory began to shimmer. Nether whirled through him, urging him toward violence. Steam began to congregate around his mouth and nose from the ambient heat of his biological function.

“Nether King, what are you doing?” Byuresk asked quietly. “No one knows better than me how difficult a decision this is. We are talking about my daughter, who’ve I’ve watched grow in Tatem-”

Adoptive daughter, The Grey Creature whispered.

“-but we do not live in a utopia,” His voice lowered into a hiss, briefly revealing something like concern for his offspring. Then his expression hardened. “The Nexus is filled with ambitions, crazed individuals desperate for a second chance away from the main universe. The second wave knew what was coming and embraced it; they razed the status quo when they arrived and now have fractured the entire situation. We are a small village in the border areas between several larger factions. Peace has a price.”

Kids shouldn’t need to pay the price for their parents' mistakes, The Grey Creature began to tremble.

“You probably judge me,” An ugliness stirred in Byuresk’s expression. For the first time, he looked Randidly straight in the eye. “Yet you are young. You have no idea what it’s like to make difficult decisions. To have thousands of lives depending on you.”

Randidly genuinely didn’t know what he would have done or said in the next few moments. The haze of the emotional affect around him darkened the air until it seemed a fog hung around his body. The whole situation felt superfluous; he wanted to physically reach up and tear down everything. The Nether cage, the two Nether Kings, their forces, Byuresk and his snooty self-righteousness-

But into that zone trembling with tension, a new voice sounded out from Tatem.

“Fear not, brave citizens of Aether! I have received the inspiration of the Nether King and can overcome this hurdle. As you will see, my pattern cannot be beaten by the Nether forces!” Padraic raced down the pathway to the open gate, his brown curls bouncing with his short bounds. His voice was loud and confident. As he passed with his hopeful message, individuals began to stir within the shanty homes. “Allow me to demonstrate a practical example.”

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He began to wave his hands while still running, drawing a new Nether Ritual with the blunt instruments of his fingers. To his credit, Randidly could immediately see he had indeed improved since their brief confrontation on the stage. There were a few cleverer arrangements in the rotating patterns. However, it was a small step forward. A single iteration.

The big Nether King sneered at Padraic. “Okay, let’s amend the requirements. This shit also needs to die.”

“I’ll take care of it immediately,” Ioot raised her hands and unleashed a blast of dense energy. It left glittering fireflies in its wake. A guard too near to the blast shrieked and fell back, robe and armor underneath burned away by the proximity to the intense energy.

Randidly shifted to block the attack, but then the big Nether King was there, wrapping his arms around him and grinning down at him. “What, do you have a problem with that? Your Nether might be thick, but if there is one thing I have confidence in, its my body-”

“Want to make a bet?” Randidly said, looking up at the massive body stretched to cover him. Ioot’s beam shot forward, approaching Padraic, who began to move with sudden frantic strokes to finish his pattern.

“What are you betting?” The Nether King tilted his head to the side.

The Grey Creature sneered up through Randidly’s features. “The lives of everyone here.”

As the Nether King guffawed out a triumphant noise, Ioot’s beam arrived at Padraic. His hand cut sideways in a sharp gesture, finishing his Nether Ritual. With a sizzle, the shoddy connections between Aether and Nether flared to life. A blast of pure light bloomed from the spot of his ritual, smashing against the powerful bolt of energy. For a second the two forces spat and hacked at each other, but then the light spread out in a radiant halo and obliterated the beam.

“The bet?” The Nether King tilted his head to the side, ignoring Padraic.

Randidly rammed his fist into his diaphragm with all the force he could muster. He planted his feet and pivoted cleanly, his entire body focused into one blow. The Nether King’s flesh quivered and his eyes bulged. He felt bones shatter. Randidly showed his teeth. “I bet that shit and I can overcome your little trap holding the town hostage.”

Randidly backstepped as quickly as he could, avoiding several sharp harpoons of Nether from Ioot. She tilted her blank face in the other direction even as she conjured more. “We agree. But should you two die, the whole of Tatem will die with you. A funeral cairn fitting of such an interesting Nether King.”

“Now wait-” Byuresk began, but the wave of Nether from Ioot’s body sent him scrambling backward. With one last worried glance toward Randidly, he gestured widely. The grey-robed guards gathered in a tight group to the side, right inside the gate. With several bounding steps, Randidly accelerated back toward Padraic.

His eyes widened as he saw Randidly, but then the young man loudly cleared his throat. “Nether King, do not attempt to engage me, or I will be forced-”

Ignoring his words, Randidly gestured sharply with a hand to add a flaw to Padraic’s Nether Ritual and then used his body to pry open a way through the waves of energy. Padraic’s eyes widened, but Randidly had already bounded around and pressed his hands to the man’s shoulders. “Actually, we are working together this time.”

“Ah, I’ve given you inspiration? But now seems like a bad time for a collaboration-” Padraic’s expression warred between excitement and worry. For good reason: opposite them, the larger Nether King pushed himself up off the ground with his knuckles and roared. Even if Randidly had inflicted a serious injury on him, he still possessed his Nether Core. Reaching behind him, the Nether King snatched his club off the ground and used it to leverage himself into a standing position.

A huge pool of dense Nether formed around him.

Behind that foe, a swarm of Nether harpoons floated around Ioot’s body. She wove these into a dense, barbed web. And even further back, the grand Nether Ritual covering Tatem began to activate. The sky darkened as it spun, choking off light to the people within.

“The problem with the transition is you don’t understand the shapes of the energy, just feel they are different,” Randidly’s mouth moved while his mind spun through rapid calculations, fueled by the vengeful Grey Creature riding in his chest. As helpful as the emotional affect was, he needed to spend just as much effort pushing it down, to prevent the dream around him from shattering from a movement with all of his intensity. “But both Aether and Nether have roles. Aether, shape and emotion. Nether, memory and connection. To simply to more functional terms, there is the mast and the sail. So if you are weaving the two of them together-”

Congratulations! Your Skill Right Hand of the Nether Polymath (M) has grown to Level 899!

Congratulations! Your Skill Architecture of the Primordial Ways (M) has grown to Level 930!

Even with only a few pinches of Nether and about double that of Aether, Randidly completely reforged the ineffectual conjunction that served as the core of Padraic’s experiment. Although he might be stunned and studying the shifted Randidly made, Padriac still provided his image to fuel the working. The light around them became blinding, transporting them to a land of vague shapes and impressions. Heat rippled the air around the duo.

“However, the most abhorrent part of your attempts is the inefficiency within your patterns. You waste so much energy on the light and the heat when you need the power to fight against enemies.” Randidly grunted. His fingers tightened on Padraic’s back. “Pomp is useless in battle. But I’m… not at my full power, so all I can do is show you the general pattern. The rest is up to you. Watch carefully.”

With his few pinches of Nether, he drew a quick Nether pattern. After wavering for a second, Padraic used his rough grasp of Nether to imitate. The replication was aggravatingly imprecise; the casual and hasty portions of the pattern were well followed, but the true nuance that Randidly added was ignored, but almost immediately the light fell down to normal levels. More of the transformation would be maintained.

Which left them standing in front of a rising wave of Nether, practically the last remaining light in the darkness. And Randidly felt Padraic gradually running out of power to fuel the pattern.

“Maybe I could be a little less… showy,” Padraic said rather suddenly. He looked over his shoulder at Randidly. “But for some things, efficiency isn’t everything, you know? This is to save the town. This needs to be a symbol for the future, to show that there are ways to overcome Nether Kings.”

“Stay focused,” Randidly hissed, twisting him back forward. “And now… unleash everything you’ve got.”

The Grey Creature crooned in anticipation.