The entire street seemed to settle into shocked silence. The air directly around Randidly flash froze due to the Stillborn Phoenix’s enthusiasm in taking energy from the world; as he completed the punching motion, frost across his arms cracked and flaked off his body.

He stood in a miniature snowstorm, having accomplished his goal right under the noses of the city’s authorities.

Tumbling like a ragdoll, Drane Swacc, the man who would found the horrid Swacc dynasty in the Nexus, rolled and bled out before Randidly’s eyes. Even seeing the near corpse, Randidly didn’t relax his guard. With Infinite Incendiary Filaments of the Dove Moirae, he watched Swacc as the momentum ceased and he could observe, across his body, his cells beginning to slowly sputter and die in real-time.

He had fought too many Swaccs, seen them pull out too many tricks, to be comfortable with them dying easily.

They were a scourge on the Nexus, one that would act as a parasite on Elhume’s later rule until they grew too fat and bloated for even that, making a bid for the Path to the Pinnacle and needing to be hunted down by Elhume himself.

The body stilled. Its heart had been pulverized, its breath ceased, its images collapsed, its Soulspace began to dissipate. Yet what eventually convinced Randidly were the ripples coming up from Swaccs body.

Congratulations! Your Skill Motif of Unimagined Tolls (GD) has grown to Level 1020!

At first in small bursts, but then in a huge, cascading waterfall of force in volume, ripples exploded out from the corpse. Randidly, for all of his heightened senses, could barely follow them all. They spread throughout the sky. Yet along their echoing and bouncing path toward Malloon, they encountered strange knots and exploded in complexity. Randidly gradually felt a headache brewing and withdrew his attention.

Congratulations! Your Skill the Motif of Unimagined Tolls (GD) has grown to Level 1021!

Tragically, simply looking away from the issue didn’t solve his problems. Because Randidly soon found his Nether Core beginning to skitter and stutter. The sky above him clogged with a heavy web of ripples. The flow of the memory became ponderous around him, caused by his own creation of a new inflection point.

Randidly grimaced as he turned away from his target. Well, at least that proves it; Swacc is truly dead. If just because I know have another problem I need to solve. It’s just a shock to realize how deeply he had wormed his fingers into so many aspects of the Aetherlands… normally, this sort of shock to the memory wouldn’t be an issue, but with my Nether Core restricted by Neveah’s seal… Neveah? Anything you can do about this?

The flickers in the memory were intermittent and weak, but the ripples had only started spreading. Randidly knew they would get much worse before it got better. Neveah stirred in the distance. He felt her make some experiments before her reply came back. Unfortunately, you are the source of my Nether. I have enough with me to slow the damage to the memory, but you will need to get out from under that seal to really fix the issue.

And so Randidly faced the Turtleline and the Osterai and smiled as though he hadn’t a care in the world. Because he would bluff his way out of the barrier if he could, and force his way out if he couldn’t.

The elderly Turtleline stamped his cane against the ground, his mouth pressed into a firm line. “Impudence. You think we don’t dare divert power from the barrier to suppress you?!? Nether King Hungry Eye-”

“He wielded an image, Ethluusen. His Nether hasn’t stirred in the slightest,” The Osterai tiled his head to the side, regarding Randidly much more levelly. Between the two of them, the Osterai seemed much more dangerous.

“His punishment-”

“Perhaps asking for a payment would be much more simple,” The Osterai cut in again. “For disturbing the peace. From you, Nether King, we request a blow to stave off your fellow Nether. A gesture of goodwill.”

Finally, Ethluusen rounded on the Osterai with his lower jaw stubbornly jutting out. “Allowing the Nether King to wield his power freely?!? Impossible! His kind are known for their guile; he will turn the attack on our forces and weaken the invulnerable imperative of the lifeseal! No, this cannot be allowed.”

“Weakening an invulnerability should be impossible,” The Osterai clicked his beak together.

While the two bickered, Swacc’s body continued to cool. On the nearby rooftop, the young and probably recently adopted Eliot Swacc began to cry as he struggled to understand what was happening. Domon Matteo croaked out a small bubble of blood as his body began the painful process of healing his wounds. And above them all, the ripples kissed, rebounded, and multiplied. The stuttering in the memory grew worse.

“I don’t have time for this,” Randidly announced, keeping the smile on his face. “You have five seconds; if you have a reasonable request I can fix while I’m here, I don’t mind granting it.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Please attack the Nether Forces-”

“You think you have the liberty to leave?!?” Ethluusen the stick-in-the-mud Turtleline howled. He stamped his walking stick on the ground once more.

Randidly shrugged. “If you cannot agree, that’s on you. I’ll be taking my leave~”

He stepped with care, gauging the tensile strength of the ground beneath him better this time. He shot up into the sky. He had intended to kick sideways and fly across the sky of Homewell, and damn the consequences, but he was genuinely surprised by the bristling presence of Ethluusen waiting above. Randidly blinked; the turtle must have used a trick to move because he didn’t sense any burst of kinetic energy. His eyes traced the ripples and flow of energy around the Turtleline. The stubborn being channeled a pinch of the massive barrier's power, turning it into his own physical force.

Interesting, Randidly’s eyes sparkled. If I can build a similar barrier within the Alpha Cosmos… I bet I can surpass the limit on physical training I’ve butted up against recently…

“Ethluusen! Be reasonable!” The Osterai moaned, but the resignation in his voice revealed how little he expected his plea to accomplish.

In the sky, the Turtleline hovered like an incensed deity weighing a sinner and finding him wanting. “The Hubris of you Nether Kings! Binding your own hands and waltzing into our majestic city to commit murder. Suffer well-deserved castigation! Hammer!”

More power swirled to his figure. He raised that lead cane and cracked it down. A giant projection of that very same cane appeared in the sky, a divine, if blunted, spear that shot toward Randidly. All that concentrated power had been weaponized and transformed into kinetic force. Randidly almost laughed.

With Sulfur, he reached up and simply… caught the attack. His body shuddered under the force, but the Unique Ability Resistant to Force displayed its particular area of complete dominance. Sulfur hummed with pleasure.

A few blood vessels in his body burst from the pressure running through him. But even compared to his light, warm-up training, this was nothing.

Clicking his tongue, Randidly unleashed the full force of his Stillborn Phoenix. His emotional see thrummed and seethed, flowing rapidly through the lines of force to strengthen the image’s dominance in the immediate area. A massive black egg trembled in the sky, opening to become a hungry eye. Its avaricious gaze took in the entire city, desperate and gleeful. The barrier around Homewell trembled, not prepared to be struck from within like this. It would weaken the city, but it wasn’t so damaging that it should materially affect the defensive effort.

Besides, Randidly needed the display to accomplish two things.

First, to gather enough image power to form a claw of darkness and the tattered edges of a hole in the universe. With such a weapon, he slashed and burrowed his way out through to space outside of Homewell’s barrier. Once there, he undid Neveah’s seal and began to address the problem of the destabilized memory.

But also, before he left the area around Homewell, Randidly used the more ostentatious display of the Stillborn Phoenix to hide another task. Yggdrasil spread out its golden lines, gathering a network of natural energies and weaving them together into a rejuvenating web.

He couldn’t quite understand the lifeseal quite yet, but witnessing its execution did give Randidly several ideas about alternate Engraving structures. With those insights, he took a seed of Aether and wove it together with lines of warm life energy. These spread through the ground and anchored themselves to colonies of moss and other assorted plant life in the caves deep beneath Homewell.

All this Randidly did to draw several minute threads of energy, tied around the random individual who had offered him half of his yeast bun at the entrance to Homewell. They were thin now, but should the guard ever need some extra energy, or a chunk of Aether, to survive it would be waiting.

To make sure I’m different from Swacc, from Elhume, from those who also believed they were above consequences… Randidly clenched his fists. I need to make sure I never forget to repay my debts. I am not above prices. I can just force the issue if I believe its necessary.

But I shouldn’t always rely on that.

*****

Elhume stood with the two representatives of the Cult of the Savior, sweating. A constant burning anger churned through his veins, leaving the interior of his body feeling paradoxically scalded and clammy.

They should have been here by now.

Nathaz Eloise, with his undulating arms, glanced at the other figure. “Duo should have returned by now. There is no way that the Patron of Truth could have withstood its might.”

Elhume bit his lip so hard it bled, fear and hope warring in his chest. He obviously didn’t want Mae hurt; what lay between them was too complicated to name, but he didn’t want to see her fall into the clicking mandibles of the bloodthirsty duo. Yet if she didn’t if the Arbiter continued to remain at large-

Pine-

“What a strange sensation. To be wrong,” The Prophet murmured. “It should be impossible, and yet… Heh. Well, there is no point in waiting.”

“...you believe Mae Myrna overcame Duo,” Nathaz Eloise seemed genuinely puzzled. “Such an outcome… is impossible. You know the nature of that hungry certainty.”

The prophet’s entire face was covered in the shadow of a deep cowl. He waved his hand. “Possibly a side effect of Pine’s own dispersal-” Those words caused Elhume’s heart to drop. “-if the Hierarchy of Finality weakens, so too do the others. Still, I cannot know for sure… until I personally see the cause of these disturbances.”

Nathaz bowed his head. “I will give you the most up-to-date information regarding their flight-”

“No, not them. They are merely… side effects.” In the depths of his hood, the Prophet smiled. “To truly understand, I must see this invisible man, Nether King Hungry Eye.”