Inwardly, Jawem felt embarrassed and slightly intimidated as he looked at the strong jawline and dark hair of the sleek figure in front of them; he hadn’t sensed the Nether King’s approach at all. Truly, no matter his actual intentions for Devick, the power he wielded could not be denied.

Jawem would need to up his vigilance. And hope the Nether King’s intentions toward Devick turned untoward.

Of them all, only Devick’s face opened up into a smile like a blooming daisy. She stuck out her hip and put a hand on it. “Well, well, well. A favor for a Nether King, eh? Honestly, not sure what we could realistically do for you. All we do is fucking manufacture sweat-”

Devick stilled. Her expression dramatically shifted. The gaze with which she now looked at Randidly was meek and fearful. Her eyelashes trembled. “Unless… Mister Nether King, I had no idea you were that type of man… if its my sweat which juggles your sweet jollies-”

“No, thank you,” The Nether King rolled his eyes. He gestured to the field, his lips still twitching with amusement. “It actually has to do with Hobfootie. I’ll be constructing a third stadium for Malloon to help handle the flood of people crowding around. This sport can really draw a crowd. And I want it to be the most prestigious stadium; I want to steal that right from the teams based out of Malloon. So all I want…”

Nether King Hungry Eye stuck out his hand and clenched a fist. Even just flexing his fingers, he crunched the air and created a loud spatial distortion. His eyes blazed with emerald fire. “Set my stadium as your home stadium and dominate your way to the top of the tournament. Win by as much as you can, as early as you can. Bring the crowds to me.”

Jawem felt a sinking feeling in his stomach as he saw Devick’s expression begin to change. Meanwhile, the Nether King looked around at the rest of the team. “Obviously, I’ll reward you for it. Free lodging and as much food and energy as you want. All you need to do is keep winning. Put on a grand show for the audience, one they won’t ever forget. Deal?”

“We will see what we can do,” Devick’s smile twitched and writhed, a monster trying not to reveal its true form in public. Or more specifically, in front of the Nether King. Behind her back, her fingers had wrapped themselves into a knot tight enough to strangle a stone pillar.

After one last nod, the Nether King turned and took a single step. That was all it took for him to vanish. Even while observing directly, his speed remained overwhelming. For a few seconds, the team remained silent. Then one of the defensive players shook his head. “I really don’t know how I feel, being sponsored by a Nether King.”

“You’d refuse food and money?” Tell shook his head. “Honestly, you make me sad. Listen, he may be a Nether King, but his meat is damn good, right? You are good at tossing Crushers, not thinking. Don’t overcomplicate things.”

“Still-” The player hesitated then shook his head. The team seemed pretty evenly split on the issue; Jawen knew a lot of them had lost friends and family to the Nether. Meanwhile, just as many had friends and family die due to the apathy of the Aether elite. These players had been drawn from harsh backgrounds.

Tell began unbuttoning his vest. “Alright, let’s not dwell on this. I for one am ready to shower-”

“Tell, put that back on. Training isn’t over. Hehe.”

Everyone who hadn’t previously noticed the transformation that had come over Devick paused and pivoted to look at her, due to the strange laughter. She had wrapped her arms around her own shoulders and leaned slightly forward. A horrifying grin spread across her face, the two edges of her mount eating their meandering way out across her cheeks like two centipede heads. A dense and whirling emotions pun around her.

Obviously, she didn’t possess a Class or any defined image. But for the first time, Jawem could sense how powerful this woman would be when she finally quit playing around with Hobfootie and developed.

“Ha. We are going to win this all, establishment be damned.” Devick raised her head and unleashed a peal of cackling laughter. “Don’t you want it? The glory of the Hobfootie Cup? The proof that all our efforts were worth it? To tear apart every small-minded dung-drop of a person who belittled and looked down on you? Let’s take it. With our own hands. Rip it from the greedy mittens of those bastards.”

She produced more and more vests from her interspatial ring. Her eyes blazed with infectious intensity. Jawem’s skin prickled; he could see the way the aura of her desire spread out and touched the players, gradually converting them to her side.

“So. As I said. Hehe. Training for the day… is nowhere near over.”

*****

The trip back to the farm was supposed to give him a break. Not that training with Bogart was difficult, but the results left much to be desired.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Randidly tried to keep his movements slow, but annoyance was making that difficult. Bogart swaggered forward, whipping his fists like they possessed enough power to subdue the opponent in only a single blow. Randidly dodged the first, but palmed the second. The self-set limits meant the punch kept shoving its way through his hasty guard, but it just bounced his head slightly back with his hand in the way.

Then he lowered himself down and whipped his foot around, catching Bogart behind the knees. The young man yelped and tumbled backward. He tried to scramble to his feet but caught one of Randidly’s bare feet to the jaw. His body dropped like a sack of potatoes. The apprentice had only lasted forty-two seconds in that spar.

“You really need to understand your own strength in a fight…” Randidly muttered to himself and scratched his head. The few massive Arakis Beasts loafing around the edges of the training area behind the farm snickered under their breath. Randidly’s eyes swept sideways toward the peanut gallery. “Anyone else want a go? I promise I’ll be gentle.”

Even the newly arrived Arakis Beasts, almost twenty of them in total, the smallest the size of a dump truck and the largest a building-sized armored crab, looked up at the sky in sudden contemplation. A few got up to go patrol the back side of the farm. Shaking his head, Randidly returned his focus to the unconscious Bogart.

Training the Nether Warrior had proven to be more problematic than he expected. Randidly didn’t want to pass judgment after only a few weeks, but the idiot was a horrible fighter. Mentally, he had all the poise, sophistication, and self-awareness as a tidal wave kicking in the front doors of a hospital.

Even the slightest hint of a weakness in the opponent’s guard filled him with unfathomable confidence. His blows would be wider and lazier until he revealed an opening that even a vastly suppressed Randidly could use to finish him in a single strike. Time and time again, Randidly hammered him down to the ground in exactly the same manner, with the same barely subtle feints.

He had assumed that he could at least get Bogart to try and understand specific duplicitous actions. Unfortunately, he appeared to possess the mind of a goldfish. Every time, he fell for the same motions. Their fights played out almost entirely the same, which became almost maddening to Randidly.

“Maybe I hit him hard enough to induce amnesia?” Randidly walked over to one of the three Arakis beasts following him around. It acted cute as he rubbed its belly.

However, his eyes soon sharpened. Two powerful presences were making a beeline for the farm. The defensive Nether Ritual he set up after Coppun’s attempted invasion picked them up from far, far away. The antagonism was a towering force, easily sending ripples through the surrounding significance.

Randidly looked at the largest Arakis Beast and gestured to Bogart. “We have some uninvited guests coming. Look after him, while I figure out why they are so mad.”

The guests were cruising directly through the brunt of the storms that were shunted off of the sky above the farm, but that didn’t slow them down at all. If anything, they seemed to be accelerating through the last few cloud banks, using their bodies as battering rams to obliterate unfortunate bolts of lightning that forked across their path.

With a pulse of gravitational energy, Randidly floated up to meet them.

A massive, golden school bus careened its way out of the slate-grey stormclouds, wisps of water vapor streaming from the gleaming chassis. Only when it drew up short and reared up like a cobra and release a thunderous bellow did Randidly finally have an inkling with whom he was dealing. “Nether King, you better have an excellent explanation why you possess the farm of my kin!”

If Jotem was an overly puffy individual without weight, the Patron of the Deep was a whale that had totally mastered its existence in space. Randidly sucked in a breath as he took in the Patron’s underbelly and strangely amorphous two side appendages. He usually kept his energy vision entirely toned down, so as not to blind himself on the constant flower of existence, but even in the base version, the Patron was as brilliant as standing directly in front of the rotating radiance of a lighthouse.

Yet more than even this Patron, it was the other accompanying him that threw Randidly. Because there, following more discretely behind the massive Origin Beast, was the raven-haired Patron of Feathers. His chest tightened immediately and his senses scanned her. However, the flows of significance did not lead her: what the current Patron of Feathers needed, the past one did not possess.

At least, not yet.

“Well!?!” The Origin Beast’s mouth opened and it wasn’t powerful energy that Randidly smelled to make him wrinkle his nose.

After a small cough, Randidly replied. “...Jotem and I are partners. He handles the networking and I handle the actual growing of the produce. He’s not here at the moment; he’s within Malloon for the Hobfootie tournament.”

“If you’ve harmed even- eh?” The massive being blinked as Randidly’s words slowly registered. His frown was considerable, so large that Randidly could recline against his lips and take a nap. “What do you mean, the two of you are partners? Why would my distant nephew associate with a Nether King?”

“Aren’t you the one that says that all beings are energy?” The Patron of Feathers spoke up. Her voice was light. She also looked very, very young as she offered a brittle smile toward Randidly. “Please, Nether King, we mean no disrespect. However, it has come to light that recently-”

“A conspiracy! Enemies on every side!” Again, the Origin Beast began bellowing out massive geysers of its foul-smelling breath. “A few accidents I can accept and grieve. But to have almost an entire race die within a decade- no, an ominous darkness comes for us all, for the greatest race to be torn down by jealous fingers!”

Randidly held up his hands in what was a placating gesture. “Don’t worry, I have a Nether Herald near to Jotem as we speak. I will ask him to watch over him while we proceed-”

“To Malloon! No time to waste. This crusade must continue!” And without even a backward glance, the massive being shot directly toward the destination.

The Patron of Feathers drifted closer to Randidly. “I appreciate that you were here. You are Nether King Hungry Eye, yes? Mae spoke of you. Perhaps… well, there are a lot of suspicious aspects of recent deaths in his family. And if the same had happened here… he would have barged into Malloon and probably challenged my father to a duel.”