Randidly’s mind spun for another thirty seconds as he bumped up against a lot of bad ideas in his search for the correct Path.

Despite the high costs described by the notification, he felt slightly tempted to seek out and damage Enmya while he could. After all, the whole problem with the Stillborn Phoenix had been caused by his deft interference. However, that would waste all of his MR points if he started with it, leaving Randidly believing it to be a waste.

Perhaps a final, spiteful action if nothing else came to mind, but the Reverie seemed too powerful to waste on that.

Randidly also thought that, if this form was truly beyond individuals even at the Pinnacle, he could escape the memory of the upper Sonora and try to use his Codex to scan the mind of Elhume himself. Or at least perceive the depth of his enemy. The one within the memory hadn’t yet become the current iteration, and therefore less useful, but he was sorely tempted by the thought of finally understanding the mountain he had been working toward since the System arrived.

However, the note about the difficulty of passing through temporal barriers and scanning opponents, given the relative incompleteness of the Fatepiece, meant that it wasn’t a sure thing that he would be able to scan this particular foe. And wasting all the MR…

I want to understand what is happening within the memory then. Really understand, because there are still a few things that I’m missing… Randidly’s eyes flashed. The world pulsed, lightly coated in green. Another thirty seconds passed, as he balanced the different paths he could take and weighed each possibility. A few new thoughts occurred to him: In the end, the Nether Arbiter remained at large, beyond the reach of the Cult of the Savior. Was the Arbiter worth locating?

One problem at a time, Randidly hummed to himself and came to a decision. The Fatepieces spun around him, beckoning him. He reached out and plucked up the rolled-up and battered Visage of Obsession. As he unrolled it, his focus turned to the tortured Stillborn Phoenix.

After a few final moments of indecision, he used a point to rewind the damaged image to the moment right after it had been struck by Enmya. First, because Randidly sensed that pushing it much farther would cost more MR, and second because he didn’t want for the Stillborn Phoenix’s attempt to be born not to have been a step forward.

He flicked a metaphysical wrist and discarded that Fatepiece for Another. The complex Dreamcatcher of the Long Night floated over to his hand. He spent a single MR to pause the continued degradation of the image, wrapping it in energy from the Fatepiece.

He sensed that he wouldn’t be able to activate his image without ending the paused state, but it would do for now. He could consider the problem further when he wasn’t stuck inside of the high-pressure Reverie.

With three more MR, Randidly dropped the Visage and Obsession and grasped the Alchemist’s Passport. The Fatepiece hummed in his hand, mentally unfolding an enormous map in front of him. Normally, even with the Dread Homunculus, the layered perception of space and time would have left him dizzy. But somehow, he navigated it purposefully. He felt several key facts in a brief scan, which made him very glad he decided to utilize this Fatepiece: first, Elhume’s emotional state had deteriorated to an alarming degree; the first hints of the tyrant to come could be seen in his frayed edges as he stalked through the Nether battlefields.

Second, and perhaps most bizarrely, the ‘lost’ Nether Arbiter was with fucking Devick of all people. The Nether binding the two had become quite solid. And speaking of Devick, as far as Randidly could tell with a brief glance across the vast distance to her body, she was busily absorbing some massive, destructive image. Based on the resonance of Nether Randidly could sense even through a faint brush, it was something she had obtained in the original timeline as well.

Worth monitoring, Randidly grimaced. But none of these facts swayed him from his chosen course.

His eyes focused on a particular spot in the universe, remaining within the current time so as not to spend more MR unnecessarily. When it comes to understanding what is happening in the memory… you are the best option, aren’t you? Especially considering you coincidentally have a prophecy regarding how things went.

Randidly spent an MR to step through space, without really any conscious effort, and appear above the hunched form of the Cult of the Savior’s Prophet. With his bulging chin eye narrowed, the mysterious figure looked down at a bowl of water and observed a woman, frozen mid-speech by the activation of the Reverie, talking in front of a sizable crowd. Blinking, Randidly was surprised to notice the woman was Mae Myrna.

On the table next to the Prophet, a strange geometric pattern twisted and rearranged itself, the only object in motion other than Randidly himself. It gave Randidly a strange sense of unease, but he also sensed this weird bit of paper contained the truths he came for.

For a split second he considered targeting the patterns on the paper, but he wasn’t sure if they would reveal their meanings on their own. And if they didn’t he would have one less MR and a lot more desperation.

“Let’s see how this works,” Randidly muttered soundlessly. He released the Alchemist Passport and reached out for the Codex Hexahedron. Just touching it, the Fatepiece felt less solid in the Reverie than the other two had. Randidly grimaced in sudden anxiety but still squeezed the Codex. The cube swirled and rearranged themselves. From nothing, a connection was forged between his spiritual form and the Prophet. Randidly abruptly could much more easily read the Aether and Nether of his target.

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However… he began to sweat. The whole reverie trembled as his actions triggered a response. A light began to flare to life around the Prophet, a yellow radiance seeping out from a crooked, improbably looking geometric shape on the paper. Point two for why scanning it would have been a bad idea. Blood drained from Randidly’s face as he felt his first MR expend itself and the second began to dig away, attempting to pierce through the defense.

He knew that shape, that light. It was one of the most expansive and vicious of the statues he had encountered on the other side of his Nether Core. And very clearly, it did not like what he was doing.

Before he could even begin to imagine how to combat this, the familiar resonance he had obtained with the Cloak of Utter Night and the Hollow Needle rose within him and lashed out. A bit of borrowed power, freely given from his own patron statue. With a tinkling noise, the golden illumination shattered. Randidly’s final point of MR vanished, but he could suddenly see.

You have utilized all of your MR points! The Reverie will end in fifteen seconds. You will be returned to your starting position.

Randidly’s grip on the moment became tenuous. Without any of those torches weighing down this projection body, he rapidly began to vanish. But in those frantic moments, he looked deeply into the details of the Prophet’s memories. He couldn’t dig deep enough to see any personal details about the Prophet, and any aspects relating to the strange light still had enough glimmering power around them Randidly avoided them, but the prophecy became clear to him.

He could see the Cult of the Savior coming into the memory, meaning to assume control of this Universe Core to reinforce their particular set of universal laws. He saw them attempt to break into the Universe Core on their own, but the soul of the Nexus was still a wild and fickle thing at the time. In addition, powerful Nether individuals identified and harried the Cult at every turn.

After suffering a few failures, they retreated. Before they could achieve their goal, they had a few more tasks to accomplish. Mostly by neutering the Nether.

Randidly wished he had more context for the broad generalizations of the prophecy, as he simply understood that the Cult of the Savior influenced Nether politics until Nether Warlords lashed out against Nether Priestesses, committing several atrocities. In response, power was centralized. While the Cult watched from the darkness, the role of Nether Arbiter was created.

From the prophecy, Randidly saw the two goals this accomplished: one, it weakened the Nether people in the long term. But also it added homogeneity to the Universe Soul, which would be the flaw they exploited later.

Then they would get in contact with Elhume, manipulating him until he felt pushed into a corner and agreed to help kidnap the Nether Arbiter. According to the prophecy, they would torture the Arbiter in front of Elhume, an ultimately fruitless spectacle that was arranged just to weaken him emotionally. With the access Elhume possessed and a powerful pulse of Nether, it was theoretically possible to open up access to the Universe Core. However, the Nether Arbiter would never agree to sacrifice lives in order to do so. Instead, the Cult would-

Randidly’s gaze flickered. They would use a desperate and weakened Fatia Cerulean to further weaken the universe core? I wish it would give more of an explanation-

With time ticking away, Randidly hurtled past that stumbling point to the second half of the prophecy. Once they gained access to the Universe Core, the Cult was to remain cordial with Elhume through the rest of the war between Aether and Nether. In fact, Elhume’s visits to Pine taught the soul individuality and would become a poison that weakened the Soul. When Elhume started to recover emotionally, when he was no longer distracted by the hostilities and began to wonder about Pine’s deteriorating condition, they would accelerate a long-laid plan-

Unleashing or encouraging whatever being that needs to be hunted with the Hierarchy of Karma, Randidly hummed in understanding.

-to keep him off-balance. He would be betrayed by one of his Patrons in the process, and the Cult of the Savior would arrive and help. Then they just needed to bide their time, steadily encouraging a third opening of the Nexus as a way to revitalize the sickened Pine, when they could rendezvous with their allies in the main universe to obtain control of the Nexus.

Randidly began to withdraw from the Prophet’s mind, his own buzzing with thoughts of how Elhume would eventually break through the certainty of this prophecy, betraying and crushing all attempts by the cult to infiltrate the Nexus. Only a few fractions of time remained until the reverie would end, and he was satisfied enough with the result.

He understood, if not the mechanics, the plan of the Cult of the Savior. Randidly had also learned about the Nether Arbiter’s location, which would give him even more context for Nether and the Cult of the Savior’s interference. As an added bonus, he had been able to indefinitely slow the damage to the Stillborn Phoenix.

Randidly felt a twinge of guilt that he hadn’t bothered to look for the artifact that had motivated him to come into the memory, the one which had resonated with the current Patron of Feathers while she weakened. However, he knew it would become relevant soon, likely related to the usage of the Hierarchy of Karma. He also wasn’t sure when or how Elhume would rapidly improve in power, but at least he was willing to take on faith, considering the current state of the Nexus.

However, right as he was about to completely remove himself from the Prophet’s mind, as his spiritual body collapsed, he encountered a scrap of emotion on the surface of the Prophet’s consciousness. Vexation and worry, that the contingency plan in the prophecy, the one which would need to be dealt with the Hierarchy of Karma, was developing too quickly, due to Randidly. Tied to those emotions was a resolve to observe the situation closely.

Randidly blinked. Then he remembered what the Prophet had been watching.

The Reverie shattered. Randidly thumped almost physically back into his body, rocking back on his heels. His eyes watered and the abrupt slow-down from near-perfect insight to his usual faculties hit him hard. For several seconds, he just coughed, struggling to cobble together even a single notion in the morass of his brain.

“We…” Randidly licked his lips. Slowly, he turned and looked to the East. “Have a problem. A different sort of problem than we thought.”