Exactly a week after Lowanna gave the order to Enmya to subjugate Westrisser, her favorite person in the world marched out of Wyndaos in grand fashion. In the end, he had too enthusiastically followed her orders to seek justice; he took every Nether Warrior Tier Two and above in a grand column that would shake the Aether world with just its passage.

Not for one hundred and seventy years had such a force set out from Wyndaos, intending violence.

The people cheered. The Nether Heralds whispered to each other and to their chosen representatives departing with the force, recognizing this would be a powerful chance for naming. Amongst the Nether Heralds, nothing was more important than who you were known to have named.

Meanwhile, vast crowds of children climbed the Black Wicker fences to get a better look. Whistlers were shot off in celebration, whizzed away by the wind. The hundreds of orphans reclaimed from defeated Nether Kings and brought to Wyndaos to learn, clenched their fists and watched Enmya’s passage with sparkling eyes.

They dreamed of the day that they, too, would earn the honor of being part of such a beautiful procession, striving for the glory of the Nether.

Lowanna wept in the privacy of her chambers for many reasons, but the first reason was this: Enmya had refused to say goodbye to her. When Lowanna had suggested it, he had glared at her. “No one is this world is more powerful than I but you. So long as you do not fight me, there is no danger to my life. A goodbye would be pointless.”

She had laughed and danced away from him. “Fine, be that way. Good hunting, my Nether Herald.”

A nearby Nether Herald had stiffened. Rage and indignation boiled on his face, but he said nothing to her directly. Enmya gave her a long-suffering look; Nether Heralds had been so touchy about his identity since he, previously a Nether Herald, had achieved such great accomplishments that he had been heralded in turn. Which put him in a unique position of not being anything, not a Nether King, not a pure Nether Warrior, no longer a Nether Herald.

Just hers.

He would pay for her flippancy, in small slights and fastidious demands from Nether Heralds during their journey. But Lowanna didn’t care. He deserved it, for not being able to see beyond his own fat head to her desire to say goodbye to her closest friend.

Enmya, your journey will be hard. For the sins you will soon commit… I forgive you. I would always forgive you, no matter what.

I wonder, before the end, whether you will see how your own hard methods through the years paved the way to this end for you. Mercy and compassion is always worth it, especially when it saves lives. Can you not relent, once I’m gone?

But of course, I will be whip you use to torture yourself, won’t I?

They had spent enough time with each other that Enmya’s response appeared, fully formed, even in her mind. You have forgiven them everything, Lowanna. Yet did that earn you even an ounce of softness, for your own end? If you must suffer, so much they.

“Touche,” Lowanna whispered, watching the patterns that encircled her. She felt very, very tired.

As the procession departed, Lowanna announced that the digging for Black Wicker would stop for a brief time. The people rejoiced, settling into a three-day holiday. Lowanna smiled at their joy, spending the first two days working tirelessly with kitemakers to create the grandest and most majestic kites she could imagine.

Most of these creations were so large and ornate they couldn’t even get off the ground. Too much expensive fabric had been woven into their architecture. Lowanna spent ours crafting a palace of gold and crimson, fluttering silk and peculiar construction that could have only been accomplished in dreams. Patterns drew the eye and refreshed the viewer. All the strange insight gained by a lifetime as Arbiter, used to make a toy.

Once she had finished, the kitemakers stood around the three-meter-wide and two-meter-tall kite with their mouths dropped. She had worked in-to-out, starting with the ornate inner palace, then moving to emerald and azure stretches of ‘gardens, and then spreading to the vaulted exterior, making the glittering inside barely visible, hinted at only through the swirling of fabrics.

Once they had laid their eyes on it, the children refused to believe it was impossible for this kite to fly. They created elaborate harnasses and used teams of six children rushing ahead and dragging the massive kite and building up speed. Other children quickly became part of the process, creating pyramids of their bodies and holding their hands up in the air to try and discover the best wind to be caught.

In the end, Lowanna felt pity on them. She stirred, just slightly. She didn’t move or release her power, that would require the cost of a life. But she could prepare to release her power, which was enough to tear the essence of the universe slightly. Her touch guided that wound and created a powerful blast of wind that swept over Wyndaos. At long last, the celestial palace she had created took flight.

All of Wyndaos clapped and danced as the heavy palace rose higher and higher, guided by Lowanna’s touch. Eventually, she stopped supporting it, but to her surprise the kite continued to float. A thin air current she didn’t expect plucked it up and carried it North, away from Wyndaos and into the expanse of the Hollow Plains.

Perhaps the greedy hermit who had gathered all the other kites took a particular interest in this one, too.

Struck by a sudden urge while watching the shrinking form of the kite, Lowanna made her second announcement. That kite would be named a holy item and needed to be recovered. A second crusade would need to be created immediately, drawing on all Nether Warriors old enough to hold a weapon.

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The single Tier Two Nether Warrior remaining, Darwan understood her intentions immediately, even if his assumptions about the frivolous request weren’t correct. But with just as much enthusiasm as Enmya, he gathered up every Nether Warrior old enough to hold a weapon.

Darwan’s eyes danced warmly as he paraded through the grounds, followed by a thousand children all puffing their chests out proudly, delighted at this chance to prove themselves. The group flooded out into the Hollow Plains in search of the holy item, leaving Wyndaos quite deserted.

It was all Lowanna could do. Tears formed in her eyes as they loped after the distant dot in the sky that was the kite.

The procession was away the whole night, determined to succeed. The children chased doggedly until even that strange aircurrent tired and allowed the palace to flutter down to the ground. They returned the following morning, triumphant and carrying the kite.

They found Wyndaos rings broken and charred. The smell hadn’t yet turned, but the deceased would soon stink. Bodies were piled haphazardly, the only remnants of the holy city being aging Nether Heralds and those too young to hold weapons. All the records, carefully carved into Black Wicker over a thousand years, stomped and broken. The gates had been sundered and shattered. It might usually linger at the edges of your senses, but the specter of death grinned, its fingers deep into the entire area.

Darwan instantly snapped back to professional discipline and ordered his Nether Warriors to search for survivors, and despite the fact most were still children, they obeyed. With tears streaming down their faces, they flipped over bodies and uncovered more wreckage.

One fact became immediately clear: the Arbiter had been taken

*****

Within his tightly woven Nether dome, Randidly didn’t feel the bubbling flood of significance preparing to drown the entire Second Cohort in war.

He continued to push his body to its limits, testing both the reinforced ground and his body. He stepped, relishing the capability to exert the fullness of his high Stats without the universe shattering around him. A single bound could cross the intervening distance and bring him to his target. Force howled through his limbs, vicious veins of power seeking release.

Congratulations! Your Skill Severing Tide of Amenonuhoko (P) has grown to Level 995!

His eyes narrowed as he planted his foot and pivoted, keeping all that force bound within his motions. The violence of the movement birthed a whirlwind that grabbed uselessly at the ground with desperate fingers. Then he was gone, another step bridging distance in an instant.

Randidly watched as the ripples bunched together like the topographic depiction of a mountain, so many consequences and waves of power squeezed themselves between each of his leg extensions and flexions of his elbow. Like a spring, the ripples huddled closer together unwillingly, but Randidly only accelerated.

With trails of steam and wind trailing after his body, he crashed from one edge of the circular platform to the other. He took zig-zag pathways, leaving gashes in the air with his speed. Sonic booms became his footsteps and whirlwinds marked the locations he veered. The joyful crinkles around his eyes deepened as Randidly lost himself in the pure sensation of wind. Nothing compared to the freedom he found in manipulating his body. He flew and flitted, danced and fluttered, bounced and glided. His power became a buzzing presence in his body, so many ripples generated each second and rebounded back by the dense network of consequences he controlled around his form until the fuzzy lines became almost solid, a physical presence around his body.

His hands moved with even more grace than the rest of his body. Randidly’s limbs were balanced once more and his fingers combed through the howling winds he left in his wake, delighting at the sensation.

Congratulations! Your Skill From the Chaotic Sea, Abrupt Reverberation (T) has grown to Level 875!

Congratulations! Your Skill Wicked Waltz of Tartarus (T) has grown to Level 960!

He did not bother to pinch together Nether to influence the area and he did not impress his new Fusion Domain on the surrounding space. Simply by guiding the movements of his body, a storm formed. He became wind and fury incarnate. Yet Randidly Ghosthound knew this was not his limit.

He stepped again, tearing his way out of the storm he had made over the past fifteen minutes. Even his powerful body protested the harsh movements, the muscle fibers of his knees straining to constrain his momentum. But then a notification popped up that surprised him so much he tripped and tumbled along the ground, chuckling.

Although you have not been struck by a blow, such immense physical pressure has been applied to your body that the ability Combat Furnace (U) has been activated! All regenerations double for the next three minutes (duration shortened due to the unusual activation procedure).

Still amused, Randidly tumbled across the ground until he settled on his back. His heartbeat filled him with reassuring heat and momentum. Wisps of steam continued to drift off of his superheated muscles. The ripples, so long condensed into a chaotic and dense aura around him, were allowed to explode out and fill the whole of the dome. For a long time, he simply watched those reverberations fade into the dome.

Just as he was about to stand and go investigate if Acri was prepared to experiment with his new form, a shift in the sky focused Randidly’s attention.

Little pieces of the amorphous mass that had been the possibilities and potential of the Grey Creature’s evolution began to fade away. They glittered and sparkled as they disintegrated, the debris of paths not chosen. And at the center of the sky, a more concrete shape began to form.

Randidly blinked as he watched the movement of the shadows as flowed down and back across themselves. Then he laughed. “Of course, its the same way the ripples were layered.”

Above, what had once been the Grey Creature hummed in agreement. Given the prerogative to Advance, it took the shadows and began to fold and compact them, over and over. Like Damascus steel, the nascent image hammered these shadows into triangular fragments of possibility. With threads of fate, it wove those forged pieces into a body, an assemblage of raven’s feathers, interminable mist, and gloomy denial.

Those pieces were obsidian snake scales and the whisper of iron leaving a leather sheath. They clung together like the remnants of a vicious nightmare in the psyche of a child, refusing to depart even under the full light of day. They were Randidly’s own nights alone in his room, hoping for a morning that never seemed to come.

They were long silences and the fractures perspective could inflict on reality.

As the image plucked up fistfuls of darkness and shade, most of the general smog of shadows that had hung over Randidly’s training area began to disperse. From the depths, another detail crystalized; two emerald lighthouses blazed from the face of the image, two eyes that burned and frothed like a chemical reaction about to combust or explode.

No, not a chemical reaction. Alchemic, Randidly’s lips stretched wide in a Cheshire grin. And soon…

The image who had once been the Grey Creature settled upon those two truths about itself, for now. Only a few of the details solidified. A pair of burning emerald eyes within the churning depths. A body forged of folded and refined shadows.

But Randidly felt a great deal of pity for his opponents when the rest of its monstrous body finally took shape.