Randidly opened his eyes to look at the ceiling of his childhood bedroom. He sighed in resignation, but still pushed himself up to his elbows; he had known he would need to begin this process soon, he just hadn’t realized it would call to him.

Perhaps it wasn’t one of his four cores of negative emotions, but patience had never been one of his strengths.

Before he could move, he noticed a doppelganger sitting at the end of the bed. The other Randidly with pure black eyeballs smiled over at him. “Morning, sleepyhead. Did you think we would wait around forever for you to act against us? Tsk, what an optimistic soul you are. We really are just like you, you know; we grow the most when our lives are on the line. Giving us this time has only made us more powerful.”

The room shook, as though the psyche born of emotion wanted to flex its capability. Randidly scowled and hopped to his feet, but his doppelganger just laughed and waved a hand. “Oh, nothing can be done now. It’s already too late. You’ve continued to focus your energy in some areas… and we’ve taken care of others. I think you will find you lose something quite precious this time. And if you don’t want it to happen again… just back off trying to contain us, alright? There is no reason we separate personalities can’t exist.”

With a growl, Randidly sat bolt upright in the real world, hyperventilating. His brow was damp with sweat and a vague anxiety. He reflexively released a massive blast of Nether into the surroundings based on the implied threat in the doppelganger’s smile and caused the fabric of the memory around him to begin to tremble. Cursing quietly, Randidly pulled back and attempted a more reserved search for the source of his queasy feeling.

He scanned the farm and found nothing amiss. He reached into the Alpha Cosmos and contacted the Pantheon to see if someone had been kidnapped from there somehow. Yet it was not until he walked out into the warm sun and glance around at the farm that he realized what he was missing.

He looked down at Sulfur, almost sadly. His heart ached. “Do you know what happened to Acri?”

The arm released a pulse of bitter negativity that hung around Randidly’s inner awareness like curdled milk smelled. Just from that strange taste of rot, Randidly knew what core of negative emotion he now faced.

Envy had taken Acri, somehow. Randidly still felt the connection to the Soulseed, but it also felt muffled. As though he was only distantly connected and the doppelganger had a closer connection. Randidly’s expression darkened. A black, bleak fury crept into his body as he felt estranged from the weapon companion that had served him well for so long.

That had evolved again and again for him, as he grew in power. That had suffered along with him to transform into something peerless. A Soulseed that he admittedly provided very little support and guidance. He had long grown to rely upon Acri.

And now this uppity ball of emotion…! He gritted his teeth.

Almost out of habit, Randidly flicked his wrist. Acri did not slither up from his waist and straighten out to become his peerless spear. The weapon truly had gone to exist in some other space.

Demetrius found Randidly like that, almost an hour later, as he struggled to control the rising tide of suffocating emotions within him. The old man’s face creased with worry. “My liege? Is something the matter?”

Randidly blinked himself awake; whatever this core of Envy had done, it had also opened him up to additional influence from the cores of negative emotion. The current antagonist envy was obviously there, and so was rage, a foe Randidly would get to eventually. He couldn’t yet tell what the third core of negative emotion waiting within him would be, but having these two foes identified was enough.

Forcing himself to calm down, Randidly spoke to the Nether Herald. “I’m fine. I just wanted to inform you I won’t be able to help around the farm today. I have… some internal issues I wish to address.”

Demetrius gave Randidly a long look but simply nodded and turned away from him. Feeling a horrible cauldron of negativity swirling inside of him, Randidly returned to his small storeroom. He chided himself for so long allowing himself to be distracted by the abrupt loss. With deliberate care, he sat down cross-legged and closed his eyes. In a moment, he had sunk down into the mental area.

He swore to himself that he would not take long to resolve this. Because feeling the emotions leak so easily into himself made him recognize another truth about this problem that plagued him; they were not leaking into him, not truly. Randidly was just finally acknowledging what had been within him the whole time.

His eyes snapped open, looking again at his childhood ceiling. He pushed himself off the bed, his body twisting and growing to his adult form through sheer force of will. He trembled with fury, the intensity of his desire to protect the innocent weapon from his own darkness tearing him right out of the strange physical restriction. He stalked out of the bedroom and into the cavern of doors.

Ace’s name blazed with light. His face twisted in a scowl, Randidly walked over and threw the door wide open. Without even a second of hesitation, he pushed himself across the threshold. Of course, when we talk about envy you can only use Ace as your puppet, huh… you bastard.

I’ll tear you to fucking shreds if you harm Acri.

The air around him rippled, shimmered, then began to reinvent itself into a new space. Despite the fact that his emotional force didn’t abate, it gradually receded as the environment rearranged itself into a more mundane form. The floor became bland alternating tile. Brightly colored red and blue metal tables, with the small seating benches affixed to the sides, grew out of the floor at regular intervals. At first just silhouettes seemed to occupy them, as the floors stretched to the walls and rose to become enormous windows. The babble of conversation snapped into places, the silhouettes developing hair colors and various clothes.

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Individuals spooned green beans and chicken noodle soup into cups along the varied buffets. Occasionally a particularly high-pitched laugh cut through the buzz of conversation, but the noise was low and constant. A TV at the far end of the building played Ninja Warrior and several guys in basketball jerseys groaned as a man fell off the salmon ladder.

Randidly stood in the memory of Rawlands University dining hall. He recognized this place and time as when he had met Ace. His left hand automatically seemed to be holding a tray, but he dropped it. The plastic clattered to the ground and the mashed potatoes and slices of pizza exploded like a food grenade over his shoes. An irrational anger seized him; he ripped the footwear off of him as brutally as he could. Some of the people at nearby tables nudged each other with their elbows and laughed behind their hands, but Randidly ignored them.

Right now, he burned. He abruptly realized how foolish indulging in these memories was. Or rather, how foolish it was to try and push the responsibility away from himself.

Unwilling to waste any more time, Randidly stalked across the dining hall to the far side. Originally, he had wandered around the dining hall for about five more minutes, nervous about where he would sit. In the end, he had stumbled across Sydney, laughing and chatting with upperclassmen like it was the most natural thing in the world. He had stood there and watched for a few minutes, far enough away they wouldn’t notice him, trying to appear casual while he worked up his nerve to go approach her and her group.

After all, he had come to Rawlands College to follow Sydney. He hadn’t been sure how she’d react, especially when she had specifically told him not to do it.

To the current Randidly, the stress and anxiety of his late teenage years were difficult to relate to. These days, he was far too busy and beset by problems to worry about what other people thought about him.

Plus, he admitted to himself, the long history of his accomplishments gave him a great deal of support. That buzzing, unmoored feeling of being alone in the world was not what he experienced any longer.

No, the sort of peerless loneliness he knew now was a very different animal.

Once he found the position where he had lurked and watched Sydney for a while, he spun on his heel and scrutinized the surrounding faces on the opposite side of the dining hall. After a few minutes, Ace had suddenly shown up next to Randidly and thrown his arm around his shoulders. He had said, ‘she’s quite the looker, right? Wonder what her story is.’

After licking his dry lips, Randidly had stammered out they were childhood friends. Ace had looked blankly at him and then laughed. He insisted they go over and introduce themselves. So with Ace dragging Randidly along, they had. Even then, Randidly had wanted that easy confidence.

The rest was history.

Randidly raised a hand and put it on his chest to feel the thunderous reverberations of his heart. His jaw hurt from so much clenching. Very quickly, he found Ace sitting at one of the tables. Yet despite the haze of rage around him, Randidly could immediately notice a few things. First, Ace was alone at his table. He quietly ate his food, sparing furtive glances for the surrounding tables between bites. He looked young and nervous. Which, of course, he was.

Randidly’s expression hardened as he began to stride over to Ace’s table. I’ve already made my peace with Ace. We should have communicated better while we have the chance. But now that you’ve fucking with my companions… before you grope into my life and affect something serious-

Ace looked up and blinked as Randidly stood next to his table. He offered a tentative smile. “Hey man, seats are free if you want to join-”

“Where’s Acri?” Randidly hissed.

“...what? What the hell is Acri?” The young Ace said, genuinely confused. “Look I just thought-”

“I’m never going to be perfect,” Randidly interrupted, speaking as much to himself as to the Ace projection. Then again, this core of negative emotion he could feel swirling in the environment was more him than anyone else. “Simultaneously, I need to acknowledge my own struggles. I need to… to envision a life where I’m not required to fight. Now that I’m getting closer, I think I’m losing a bit of my tenacity, just because the future I’m fighting for is becoming increasingly concrete.”

“What?” Ace repeated. The projection really had no idea what to do with this sudden monologue. Unlike Sydney in the other memory, this was just a piece of the past.

Randidly slammed his fist down on the table, silencing the nearby tables and making Ace jump. “I really don’t want to play around with you like this, Envy. Give Acri back. Right now.”

“Or what?” Suddenly Ace’s expression widened into a sunny smile. The facade fell away as Envy took over. “Look, I get it, you’ve had the privilege of everything belonging to you for a long time. You’ve grown comfy and fat sitting in control of yourself. But you are larger than just one personality now; because of your size, you are going to lose some things. Acri is just the first, I assure you- guhk!”

Randidly’s hand shot out and snapped around Ace’s neck. A young woman nearby screamed. A few guys in the surrounding area leapt to their feet, adrenaline coursing through their veins but unsure what to do. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see several individuals raising their cell phones to record videos of what was happening.

What a pointlessly realistic memory, Randidly thought with caustic bitterness. His fingers tightened on Envy’s throat.

He leaned closer. “Let me say again what I’ve realized, heading here to face you: I am not perfect. I get angry, I get frustrated, I make mistakes. I never will be perfect; even if I find methods to circumvent the worst of my own inadequacies, new situations will prompt me to make more mistakes. Being the version of myself I want to be is constant work.”

“Exactly.” Envy croaked. “No matter how hard you struggle, you’ll never escape-”

“You are a fool!” Randidly hissed. His arm trembled from the idiocy of the nascent consciousness inside of him. “I am not plagued by you. I created you because I feared what possessing negative emotions meant about me. This all goes back to my mother. Because… because it was and still is hard for me to blame her for how… for how hard I had it as a child. I buried and blunted the hatchet I naturally created to rail against her. But the truth is-”

Randidly sucked in a breath before he could continue. Security guards were rushing over in the memory.

“-The truth is that I hated her, just a little bit. I wished she was better. Normal, like the moms of the other kids. I wished-” Randidly choked off those words and shook his head. A balding man with a taser was asking Randidly to calm down. The strange unreality swirled around him. He ignored it all, fixating on Envy taking Ace’s form. “But I am all those negative emotions. I am depressed and envious and jealous and furious.”

“Everything you have will soon be mine,” Envy whispered.

Randidly shook his head. “You aren’t hearing me. Envy… you are already me. You aren’t an antagonism born of me. You are me. Which means you are mine.”

In one massive gulp, Randidly swallowed the second core of negative emotion. The Grey Creature cackled in glee while the Stillborn Phoenix rumbled with its own constant hunger.