After the woven trap of Nether finally faded and a surge of significance joined the roiling disaster that was his Nether Core, Randidly began to prepare to study all three of the important events within the theater of war. Since he and Neveah could only handle one each, he decided to bring in some extra help.

One which required a very concerted Nether Ritual, straining his Nether Core. And also to tug at the edges of the memory. But Randidly had put a lot of hard work into both and he felt confident that they would survive the process.

And he was right.

Randidly and Neveah stood and watched the woman depart to accomplish her mission. The memory stuttered around them, bearing the echoes of bringing her here, but the flickering felt small next to the constantly building agony of his own Nether Core. The memory would survive, although he became increasingly concerned that the problem within his Nether Core wouldn’t resolve itself on its own.

“Even now, you test her,” Neveah shook her head slightly.

Randidly scratched his cheek. “Isn’t it better to test than to ignore her?”

Neveah released a groan, but she didn’t disagree; she had spent too much time with him to deny how true a statement that was. Very quickly her expression turned serious again. “Be careful, in the South. You might be strong, but Nether still possesses all the old tools to wield against you. Don’t take more damage than you need to.”

Randidly huffed out a chuckle and Neveah bristled. “That wasn’t a joke. We both know the way you can soak up attacks. A walking abuse sponge.”

“You be careful too,” Randidly shifted the topic as he glanced at her. “You can feel it too, right? The thing forming in the East… It’s coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. An influence we don’t understand is at play. Somehow, its the whole of the region that’s going to become important. The feeling I get when I look at the horizon in that direction…”

They both twisted and looked East. The clouds had shifted last night, leaving a briefly clear sky. But hunched along the horizon in every direction were the puffed-up forms of storms, waiting to sweep through when Randidly didn’t guide them around his position. The direction of note didn’t look different. And weirdly, Infinite Incendiary Filaments couldn’t detect anything unusual; the energy flows and quantity seemed mundane. If anything, the East possessed fewer powerhouses and therefore seemed relatively mundane.

Yet Motif of Unimagined Tolls went haywire whenever he turned his attention in that direction. Consequences were accumulating.

Neveah stepped close to Randidly and wrapped her arms around him. Her skin felt very warm. Such was the Skill Level with her illusion that she felt in his arms like a human woman, slight and nearly a foot shorter than Randidly. When she pushed back, she pouted. “Don’t be so scowly. I can take care of myself.”

Randidly bit his lip, suppressing his memories of Neveah’s agony back on Expira. Those moments in the past when she had been overwhelmed with fear and emotionally distraught about the very real prospect of death. He wanted her confidence to be true, that she would be okay out helping the Sonara. Or rather, helping him, who had grown emotionally attached to the people inside this memory.

But as he watched Neveah step and launch herself across the sky, Randidly admitted to himself that he wanted Neveah to be okay more than he believed it to be true.

Still, this was her battle to fight. He could support her, he was only a breath away always, but she couldn’t overcome this by relying on him.

For a few minutes, he simply stood and breathed. One by one, he cataloged the sensations across his body. His left hand ached. His chest burned. A low wind hinted at the creeping presence of rain. But then he shook himself; he wouldn’t waste time, not now when the Second Cohort seemed to be tumbling toward a conclusion.

He just wished he had a better idea of what sort of conclusion it would be, with the role of the Cult of the Savior still too vague for his comfort.

Before all of that, however, Randidly frowned and stabilized the memory. The stuttering and flickering gradually dissipated, but the burning inside of his body became even worse. With a grimace, Randidly sat on the ground in a meditative position. His awareness went inward, to the Nether Core intent on destroying itself with glorious rotation.

Definitely not a problem that would simply work itself out.

The pulse of significance around the Nether Core remained incredibly strong and pure; for all the pain of this process, it definitely did improve the quality of Nether flowing through Randidly’s body. That, combined with the added significance he absorbed from Plague Rider, meant that Randidly felt a tingle of anticipation the next time he wielded the full force of his Nether Storm and produced a spectral spearhead with his Synechdochence. He might not improve the efficacy, but the power would be in a whole different world. He would stampede over lesser images, breaking them over his knee.

Yet the longer he remained with his Nether Core overheating like this, the more Randidly realized that the issue wasn’t the result of unchecked speed. Upon closer inspection, the instability came from the nascent seed of his Second Authority, still being condensed after the Dread Homunculus made its appearance.

Or rather, that was his best guess; he couldn’t quite see what he believed to be the Second Authority. But a crumb of some new shape had gotten in the Nether Core and gradually left it a stuttering wreck.

Randidly pushed his awareness closer and closer, peering more minutely at his Nether Core than he ever had in the past. Understanding of his own body grew during the inspection. The process of ‘refining’ Nether that the Core always performed was due to an infinitesimally small hole, right in the middle of the Nether Core. Not a literal hole, but rather a metaphorical one. It was a door that opened only when the Core was in full, gorgeous rotation. Almost an optical illusion, created by the constant spinning. But still an opening through which all his energy flowed. When Nether got pulled through that hole, the Nether Core spun. The more energy flowing along that river, the faster the rotation.

Right now, a flood of energy pushed itself out through the hole. Yet the Nether Core stuttered. When Randidly examined the process, he could see the smallest bit of something solid, poking through the hole. He frowned, reaching out to ascertain whether it was some portion of his Second Authority, but it wasn’t easy to address the literal within the metaphorical.

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Whatever it was, the object tried to squeeze through a hole that didn’t really exist, both destabilizing the Nether Core with a slight tremor and forcing it to spin more quickly to handle all the energy flowing through it. Consternation and confusion swept through him. Very clearly, the problematic bit was on the other side of the refinement hole.

Where the hell was it pulling from?

He drifted closer. As he was just an awareness in his Soulspace, the problem gradually enlarged itself before him. A gleaming, sharp tip of something stuck out of the edge of his whirling Nether Core. Huge currents of Nether surged back and forth, the whole setup rumbling with him. He became a drifting particle, forcing its way against the flow of energy.

Randidly floated forward, passing without difficulty through the currents of Nether. Compared to the Weight he had earned climbing to his current height, the energy here mattered little. Right at the edge, he hesitated; this introspection was becoming almost too convoluted for him to know if what he was about to try was dangerous. But he reached out and touched the offending hunk of substance.

Right before he could ‘touch’ the problem, his hand encountered resistance. He pressed up against the edge of his Nether Core, causing another bout of horrid tremors through the spinning. The brush was enough to cause the whole illusion to dissipate. Suddenly it was just a bundle of meaning and history, pulled into a tight fist in his chest, running wild. It took a few seconds of wobbling before the image restored itself.

His eyes blazed as he looked through to this obnoxious problem. Fine, it’s not really a door. But for me, just the appearance of a door is enough to open and walk through.

With a flick of the wrist, Randidly produced his Alchemist’s Passport. He pressed it cautiously forward, testing for a true door. To his surprise, he found the passage easily. However, a barrier lay across the opening; it did not truly exist.

The Apostate Moirae chuckled darkly. Randidly’s emotional sea roiled and spun to his support. With eyes blazing, he leaned all his Willpower up against the blockage and simply shoved. He had expected the impediment to put up resistance, but it only wavered for a moment before his Fatepiece sang and the hole opened up, real and true in front of him. His whole Class hummed, pleased with the development. In the back of his mind, the Apostate Moirae guffawed.

Randidly stepped through the opening to investigate the problem with his Nether Core. He found a sea of significance so vast and deep it threatened to pop his consciousness and leave him mindless.

Yggdrasil moved first, a furious denial of a thousand emerald leaves rustling. Golden roots snaked out of his body, sliding into his Nether Core, and then curling around him protectively. Next came the horrid squawk of the Stillborn Phoenix, who saw in the opening of the Nether Core itself and began to greedily drink down all this significance in this strange place to ease off the pressure. Finally, the Dread Homunculus arrived, setting across Randidly’s body protectively.

He felt himself change and stood straighter; no longer was he a creature that could be threatened by these sorts of dangers. His eyes blazed in the strange sea of significance. And around his body condensed a cloak of utter night, which held everything at bay.

A tremor ran through the sea. Randidly had just found his bearings and noticed a few strange floating shards of stone when he hurtled upward, dragging his Nether Core and his images with him. The fact the opening pulled along was great because he had no idea if he’d be able to find his way back down into the depths of this strange place otherwise. The significance parted unwillingly, but the combined efforts of his three images kept him safe during his ascent. The pressure rapidly decreased as he moved to more shallow areas, but as he sped through the gloom, he noticed strange tendrils of connection. Translucent veins spread everywhere, small patterns playing out across their subtle forms.

He continued rising too quickly to get a good look, but Randidly learned two things: there were hundreds, even thousands of different vein structures and most quickly degenerated when two touched each other. They seemed poisonous to each other. The only way they coexisted was when one pattern became subordinate to the other.

Then Randidly broke through the surface of the sea. The sudden lack of pressure made his skin tingle. His eyes widened as he looked around. What the hell?

Above the sea of significance stood statues of various materials. Some were marble, some carved from wood, some appeared to be flesh with blood leaking out from them. The more Randidly looked, the more confused he became. Some were blurred in his vision, a horrible, headache-inducing swirl that made his consequences vision go haywire. He hurriedly backpedaled his awareness with several blinks.

Some seemed completely alien, idea forms or insectoid supersoldiers, designed on a different plane of existence from the Nexus. Others resembled Lovecraftian horrors, Randidly’s vision darkening if he looked for too long. As he looked away from those, they lingered in his eyes for a few seconds, like staring too long at a light. Even worse were the repeated statues, all pulsing with the same ugly patterns. In fact, now that he looked around, over half of the statues were actually part of statue groups.

Only when he carefully fixated on the statue directly in front of him was he able to recall why he came here. Despite the protection of all his images, Randidly began to sweat at what he saw. Because the figure felt so familiar. What the hell is-

His thoughts came to an abrupt end as several things became obvious at once. First, he actually noticed the statue in front of him. A figure in a voluminous cloak of pure darkness. The figure sat on a common wooden stool. The only details visible of the feature was the bottom of the face, an expressive mouth hinting at a smile. Then a hand of oily crystal with two fingers pinched around a pale needle. The statue appeared to be… sewing a human face.

Randidly’s heart fluttered. Between him and the statue, one of those translucent veins stretched. He felt a strange resonance; he and this statue hummed in the same, complicated cadence. And once he had seen the first vein, he saw a few others touching upon himself, sinking into his images and Nether Cores.

…outside influence. These are… almost platonic ideals? Or stories. Randidly’s mind spun. They possess both Aether and Nether, but in an inert, neat form. And the amount of significance here- Shit. Those pieces floating where I entered this place, in the depths of the sea. Is this remnants of-

The second increasingly apparent fact about his current existence derailed that thought. All the surrounding statues seemed to shiver and pivot in his direction. Randidly didn’t see them move, per se, but every second he noticed different vein systems slinking into the area around him. For the first time in a while, he felt genuine fear. They couldn’t advance while he examined them, but as his awareness rotated, they seemed to creep closer and closer. With the pressure of this place, he couldn’t look everywhere at once.

The longer he lingered here, the more those veins resembled fingers, stretching toward his back. And this time when he pivoted, he froze. The statue from which he had received the Cloak of Utter Night had straightened. The shadows remained across the face, but he had the distinct impression that it now looked at him.

Its off-hand had shifted so that it pointed to the needle it held pinched in its other hand. The vein-pattern between them pulsed, sending an emotional message of reassurance. And hope.

Alright, fine, Randidly shivered, unsure of what he had stumbled upon. He looked and blessedly, his Nether Core remained in the middle of his projection. He looked at the statue in front of him, at that unassuming needle. During that brief moment of focus on the statue in front of him, suddenly he felt completely surrounded, translucent veins vibrating with their own frequencies pressing so close he could feel them all, a droning hive of insidious influence.

Gritting his metaphorical teeth, Randidly looked at the needle. Somehow, he knew it wouldn’t be enough just to grab the item. The First Authority: Seize.

Then he hauled all of himself back through the small hole in his Nether Core.