Randidly’s senses blazed he examined the Patron of Truth, who stood with a puzzled look on her face and tried to parse apart his comment about a lake or a whirlpool. She seemed like she had gone through a blender since he had seen her last. Deep bags sat under her eyes, shading toward the deep purple of an ugly bruise. Her hair was unkempt and her cheerful certainty had been replaced by a resignation that felt dangerous to his nascent emotional senses.

A few strands of her image, mutated by Westrisser’s addition to resemble tendrils of Nether, stretched out toward Randidly. The humidity in the room remained uncomfortably high. He eyed the tendril with distaste. Just by being here, his Nether Core pressed against the fabric of significance and drew attacks. For this remade image to flow, it had to flow through him.

He crushed that aggression with just a Nether Weight enhanced glare.

Congratulations! Your Skill Yearnings of the Nether Heir (P) has grown to Level 955!

“Obviously, a whirlpool.” Mae grunted out the words. She blinked her bleary eyes. “Ah, I see. You mean to say what Westrisser really did was add a rotation to my power, to add its persistence and force. Yet it’s hard to look at these manifestations-” Randidly blasted through a few more tendrils that aimed for himself and Demetrius. Each time he popped the tendrils, a smell of tainted water and sulfur popped up into the air. “-and not worry something more sinister is occurring.”

“You are fighting against yourself. The rotation. That caused the pain, which worsened your fears and blurred the details of your own shape.” Randidly felt slightly embarrassed to look at the woman and be able to see the way Aether, Nether, and twisted emotions intersected to cause her such anguish in her body. He felt too fresh after his own struggles to really be giving advice, but it seemed like few others would understand the conflux of the energies as much as he. Especially after having their relative capabilities pounded into him by Neveah for the past nine days.

Still, I might not be entirely correct. A snap of his fingers popped a rot filled thrust of tendrils aiming for his chest. A grey-green fluid of indeterminate origins splattered on the ground. He pursed his lips as the residue began to shimmer. The horrid breath of Mae Myrna’s image hit him in the face but could find no purchase. Considering how incensed Wyndaos is by Westrisser’s… experiments, perhaps the origin of these Nether principles in Mae might be more problematic than anticipated.

But Randidly tried not to dwell on that possibility. Better solve the problems they could now and figure out the rest later. He cleared his throat. “You need to release the grip you have on the image.”

The Patron of Truth looked at him uncertainly. Beside the table, her shadow began to wriggle. “Are you sure?”

“Let go, I’ll handle it,” Randidly said lightly. His Nether Core revved in confirmation. He could see the impulse to rotate within Mae Myrna’s image, now tied in with the weird sense of justice and providence that gave her image its bite, but he couldn’t really see its shape while she had twisted herself so much to keep it still. Unless she allowed the image to manifest itself in its altered form, they wouldn’t be able to figure out what they needed to do next.

They locked eyes briefly. Randidly didn’t blink. He let his certainty show. With a sigh, she relaxed herself.

Her image flourished with wicked glee, prepared to use its black teeth against anything that did not fit with its ‘justice’. Black tendrils erupted from the ground around her like an inflatable nightmare anemone. Her shadow twisted and pounced into motion, directly at Randidly’s chest.

In that moment of expansion, Randidly could see the shape of what would follow. Purple black revelation energy glimmered in the corners of his eyes and projected out this working. Instead of stamping itself out across the whole of the surrounding space, as world-state style images usually did, The Patron of Truth’s image would start around her body with a wild current of energy. Tying into the significance in the area, the image would gather momentum and swirl out. The main thrust of her image would be converting significance to her side and providing animation for the current.

Congratulations! Your Skill Revelations of the Atramentous Threshold (T) has grown to Level 932!

From there, she could rely on the significance to propagate and infect the surroundings. Enough momentum would mean she would expend very little energy to gather additional influence. The obvious drawbacks would be a decreased strength at the beginning and a similarly reduced spread of the image. But for all that, Randidly was fascinated by the endless aspect of this usage. Spreading an image like this would require so much less mental energy than simply maintaining dominance in the surrounding area. At the beginning the worldstate would be fragile, but the large it grew, the denser it would become.

However-

The shadow’s fingers sharpened into daggers. The vicious anemone lanced forward with a score of tentacles.

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Randidly growled and released a pulse of significance. The feelers of darkness burst from the pressure. The full weight of his presence ripped the shadow in half. The moment had been enough to figure out what he was dealing with; now he raised his hands and began to weave a Nether Ritual in the air around Mae Myrna. Thankfully, the bones of the shift really were all about the strange structural components. This fixation with darkness was just a distortion based on fear.

As he guided the ritual, he spoke to the pale woman. “The unfortunate downside of your current state is that a Nether King, or probably even a Nether Herald, could shred your image before it gets momentum. I’m not sure how long it will take to swell past that. Against most image users, you should be fine.”

“But the darkness,” Mae Myrna whispered. At her words, the scattered sludge surged together and rose in a heavy cleaver that almost reached the ceiling. The thing chopped toward Randidly.

He flicked it with a finger. The energy and significance boiled away into a hissing mist in the face of his Nether Weight. “You’ll need to do some soul searching. Let before first finish this… just a moment… ah, there.”

Congratulations! Your Skill Right Hand of the Nether Polymath (M) has grown to Level 915!

Randidly released his Ritual and it snapped into place around Mae Myrna. This time, when her image gathered some momentum on the significance around her body, it made to lash out… but simply sloshed up against the edges of Randidly’s Nether Ritual. It swirled around in confusion, but quickly recognized its chance and soaked all of the included significance with its taint. Soon, the area directly around Mae Myrna’s body filled with a rotating miasma. Much to Randidly’s relief, the aspects of darkness and rot seemed to recede as it was allowed to proceed through several rotations.

The stain remained, but it was more and more her original image that radiated out from her person.

He inspected the edges of his Nether Ritual carefully. Finding a few flaws, he wove another one and layered it around the first. He turned back to the Patron of Truth, who already seemed to be breathing a little easier. “I suspect you’ll get a better sense of your image if you allow it to function a bit. The rotations will give you balance. Before, you were just… grabbing at everything, in the same way you would have previously. But this… you should be able to learn how to control the push you give the energy, how much you want it to spread.”

That’s it. That’s why this seems familiar, Randidly’s pupils dilated. The way her image now tries to linger and alter the world functions like a Nether Core beginning to form. But… her image is attempting to use the entire universe to establish itself…

“Huh,” The Patron of Truth hesitantly stood and stretched. The Ritual stayed anchored to her body, allowing the energy to maintain its tight spiral. She took several sharp steps to the side. The Ritual didn’t waver. She raised her hands and flexed her fingers, sending out little spurts of energy. A grin split across her face. “Hey, you know, perhaps this isn’t such a bad thing. Don’t I look positively devious shrouded in darkness? Nether King, let me take this opportunity to reveal I have cast aside morality and embraced debauchery! Fear my capricious rage~ I will spare you this time, as you have aided my woeful existence, but don’t let it go to your head.”

“Sure, sure,” Randidly’s lips twitched, but he did feel a flush of relief that she now felt good enough to joke. “But before you begin your successful bid to become evil overlord of the area, why not test the limits of your new image? I would imagine you should be able to increase the circulation speed quite a bit. Once you can handle that, slowing it down will help you learn to function without my protective bubble.”

Mae Myrna bit her lip and nodded. With a bit of focused will, her image began rotating more and more quickly. The air hummed, being thoroughly conditioned by significance to support the spread of her worldview. It was honestly fascinating to observe. As she increased the speed, the outward pressure increased. Randidly’s first Nether Ritual quickly began to fray. The Patron of Truth stopped, but Randidly wavered he on.

The first Ritual soon collapsed, but the second made for a better seal. She would be able to overcome it eventually, should she need to release the image. In the meantime-

Mae Myrna seemed to notice the same thing because she released a disgusted breath. “Alright, I’m getting a better sense of how to manipulate it, but Westrisser- he can’t legitimately believe he’s made me stronger with this, can he?”

Randidly shrugged, unwilling to pass judgment so quickly. But it was easy to understand the undercurrent of frustration in her words. “There are advantages. As you familiarize yourself with the different levers of activation, I expect you will figure out how to release your image at a high level. But you’ll also need to find a better way to prevent your image from dominating the area when you don’t want to use it than strangling yourself.”

“Ah, but will such a method be as melodramatic?” Mae lifted a hand and struck a pose.

Snorting, Randidly turned away. “That Nether Ritual should hold for-”

He froze, midturn. His senses blasted out of his body and filled the room and the surrounding hallway. The orc guard took a step back, clearly afraid due to the sudden surge of power. Yet Randidly guided his power around him and examined the rooms in the area. He touched on just the hint he had sensed and seized upon it.

Randidly’s eyes opened and blazed emerald. Gradually, he reeled in the scrap of significance he had found until he could taste it. A slow smile crossed his mouth. I suppose it makes sense. Now that pretenses have fallen away, Westrisser has no reason to keep Swacc from seeking to undermine me. But honestly… do your worst. If you lash out, I’ll catch you and break your arm.

Randidly’s left hand clenched. The memory has proven it will show me truth enough of the real occurrence, even if I intervene and alter things. So your presence… is no longer required.