With the Ghosthound’s arrival, Neveah felt herself relax for the first time since she had entered Mae’s strange energy field. The cool touch of Nether breezes against her face assured her of the coming dawn from this confrontation.

Randidly landed lightly, only a small shockwave of dust spreading out. But his presence was enough that Elhume and the vicious centipede Duo stopped their melee and eyed the new arrival warily. As the timelines consolidated, they had returned to a standoff where the two had been fighting off to the side and Mae had been teleported away by a skittish Patron of the Borrowed.

Yet in front of the monolithic power of the new arrival, both shifted uneasily.

Randidly’s emerald eyes flicked upward to the splintered carnage of the tree and color seemed to be injected along its length. The bark of the tree glittered with motes of gold as life energy infused every inch. The leaves swelled and turned emerald. Fresh shoots pushed their way out of the broken trunk and began to grow the tree back to its former height. The air in the surroundings began to feel a bit more clean.

Some of the branches that had dropped and crushed roofs through Sanctuary grew small legs and walked themselves out of city limits, where they began to smolder and turned to ash. With a few small nudges, the structural damage to the buildings began to heal.

One task accomplished, Randidly glanced around at the assemblage of Patrons, cool currents of Nether immediately spreading out from his body and forcing back other energies. When the pattern of Nether encountered the hook-edged energy released by the stubborn Mae, they briefly churned against each other and reached a stalemate. Then Randidly made an adjustment and the image-state pattern began to unravel before his touch.

He raised a hand and raked it through his shaggy black hair. His focus came back to Elhume once all the lingering threats had been handled. Randidly Ghosthound offered the nervous watchers a wry smile. “Don’t stop on my account. I’m just here to observe.”

“Ah, Nether King Hungry Eye! How have you been? A pleasure as always.” The Patron of the Deep bustled forward as the rest seemed stunned by his words. “And not a moment too soon! Elhume has been seized by some of the most ghastly ideas, and insists-”

“Heh,” Elhume clenched his fists. Blood continued to drip from the wound on his chest. The space around him pulsed with power. “First you refuse to help me. And now you’ll block me, Nether King Hungry Eye? But I’m glad you’ve come; I’ve sensed the damage you have brought to Pine as well. We can settle that business if you insist on preventing me from eliminating Mae Myrna.”

Randidly tilted his head to the side and Neveah could see the gears of his mind turning. She could also feel the flood of Nether information he absorbed, his Dread Homonculus chewing through all the possibilities and weight to understand the situation. Just the thought of how deeply he could peer into the patterns of significance gave her a headache. In the end, Randidly shook his head slowly. “You misunderstand me. By all means, continue attacking Mae Myrna if you wish. I will not stop it. I’m simply here to observe.”

Elhume’s growling, stern expression slipped. Neveah could see the way he continued to thrust himself forward based on resistance. When Randidly stepped around by not rejecting him, some of his certainty had been shaken. “I… I won’t stop.”

“I believe you,” Randidly responded.

Veins in Elhume’s neck began taking cues from his clenched jaw, bulging and pulsing as he tried to puzzle his way through the innocuous phrase. His anger sought a new direction. “You crash into this situation and simply expect me to forgive you because you show the baseline sincerity?! I will deal with you once I’ve eliminated Mae- hey, do you think I don’t notice what you are doing?!?”

Elhume whipped partially around, still keeping an eye on Randidly. But while Duo prowled around Mae, she had been gathering a certain amount of momentum with her vicious energy. Randidly had unwound the force that had leaked out to fill the rest of the valley, but she now kept it tightly wrapped around her limbs, like jagged veins running across the surface of her skin.

Mae’s eyes remained inert. “Why even bother to ask after my actions? We remain antagonistic, Elhume. You insist on this world, where individuals' only choice stems from whether they possess power. I gather power, a cretin scrambling in the mud like all the rest. Because without power, my dreams of a better life will crumble all the same.”

Do you truly mean not to intervene? Neveah asked Randidly as the two central characters returned to their glaring contest.

She felt his indecision. …I suspect Elhume won’t actually harm Mae, despite his bluster. When I touched the prophecy I learned how important a lever Mae was for the Cult of the Savior to keep him under control. I believe she has a bigger role to play than just this.

All the more reason for him to eliminate her, Neveah hummed to herself. If he were capable of making long-term decisions.

“You would kill Pine. Tear him into tiny pieces, warp his essence.” Elhume hissed. The cadence of his breathing increased and his eyes bulged as he stared at Mae. “I have seen your handiwork, the methods you use to feel in control-”

“You have no right to act self-righteous on the subject of means,” Mae growled in response. The violence of her emotion began tearing through the careful stitching holding the wound on her soul closed, each moment worsening the fray. “What of Wyndaos! What of the children you fed to this tool of the Cult, gladly tossing flesh onto the bonfire to accomplish your goals?! You walk a lightless Path, Elhume. You have become just as tainted as those you promised to fight against.”

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“Perhaps. Yet can it be anything but inevitable that we subconsciously become our worst opponents, in order to best them?” Elhume said. “They have become dominant for a reason.”

For a long moment, Mae simply looked at him. “...I suppose if you embrace a world of winners and losers, you will be chasing the common elements of winners, no matter how sordid or bloodsoaked those elements may be. You would bury whole stretches of your emotion, ignore them for years if it served your purposes.”

A moment of brief confusion flickered across Elhume’s face, followed by his emotional shutters slamming down and him pressing his lips together. The conversation topic shifted into vague waters. “Compared to the dedication to my family, such feelings would undoubtedly be light; they might have very well floated away all on their own.”

Simultaneously, both seemed to realize there was no further use in talking. Clearly exhausted, Mae gestured and the destructive image of Duo rose protectively around the force she continued to gather. Elhume flexed his hands and dashed forward. The centipede chittered and accelerated forward to meet him.

Just like in their previous confrontations, when the two met, the ground shook from the impact. Fist and talon slammed into one another. Thinking a second attack would be coming, some of the nearby people in Sanctuary began to scream.

The Patron of the Deep floated over to Randidly, who stood watching the fight with his arms crossed. “You… do you truly mean to allow this foolishness? I had assumed you had assumed the stuff of your soul would be more sterling than this, Nether King. She cannot match him; you toss her out to slaughter.”

Randidly offered the Origin Beast a crooked smile. “And then what? I keep the two of them apart for the rest of their lives? This is the best chance to solve this issue. It might be messy, but there are few other options.”

The Patron of the Deep seemed uneasy, but he did not push the issue. The three of them stood at the edge, staring toward the rabid fighting. Huge trains of force conjured by punches were shattered and clawed to pieces, jagged shards of force tumbling sideways and carving deep scars into the ground. The other Patrons watched uneasily as the temperature continued to plummet, the void aspect of Elhume’s strikes strengthened the longer he fought.

And next to her-

Neveah poked Randidly mentally. You dog. You aren’t allowing them to settle their emotional differences… you are trying to evolve the Stillborn Phoenix while they distract themselves!

Randidly sniffed. Why can’t it be both? But seriously, I wish I had been here to observe the memory struggling against itself in person. Because that’s what the Stillborn Phoenix has been doing; two layers of existence have been trying to coexist, with different elements in each. So I shouldn’t be focusing on the forms, I need to strengthen the transition… a simultaneous hyper-position…

His Nether storm began to churn above his body, almost without his conscious effort. The rotations of his powerful Nether Core exerted itself on the world. When she watched closely, she could also see his Third Authority, Intangible Burial, acting on the world as he began to refine the image.

A power akin to the touch of the void, but with less an emphasis on suffocating, and more on pure removal.

The ground shook with the nearby conflict and Randidly Ghosthound began to shift.

Rolling her eyes at her incorrigible partner, Neveah followed the action. The two fighters had started even, but with each punch, Elhume edged slightly forward. Now the vicious centipede’s carapace had been cracked in a half dozen places and its tail flicked side to side restlessly, but couldn’t muster enough force for a sneak attack as it had earlier in the fight. Elhume began to advance with every step.

Neveah shifted to look at Mae, whose eyes continued to burn holes in Elhume while she remained still during the fight. The tear in her heart continued to worm its way open, despite the dense energy she gathered to press the edges together. Following an instinct, Neveah borrowed Randidly’s Nether senses; with him present, the amount of insight she could see increased ten-fold. Because since Elhume had arrived, her emotional state had worsened quickly.

In Mae Myrna, she found the heavy tethers of a deep Nether bond. More than that, the emotions carved into her side were rich and… romantic. Neveah had always suspected there had been something between the two of them, but it took Mae’s careful control being ground down to this point to sense her longing.

But when she looked at Elhume… half of the same bond was there, but the other half seemed hollow. Like the core elements had been hacked away with a blunt tool.

Elhume took a sudden half-step forward, catching Duo off-guard with his movement. The centipede curled its body around to bite at Elhume’s head, but the man had already thrown a punch. Like a cooked shrimp, the shell of Duo’s body split open and revealed its soft flesh. The insect monster released a chittering wail. Elhume stepped past the beast as it collapsed, but then leapt sideways to avoid a surge of strange intensity.

From the oozing flesh of Duo, a slender eel the length of an arm riggled free. A head with beady eyes focused on Elhume. A pure and overwhelming power exploded out of its body, targeting the foe that so wounded it. In the vicious force, Neveah understood why it had been named the Hierarchy of Finality.

“No!”

All the force Mae had gathered smashed into the side of that concentrated dose of death heading for Elhume. The force whirled and ground against the attack, struggling to find purchase; despite how much potency Mae gathered, she could not escape the mandate of deserving. And Elhume almost didn’t deserve to be spared.

Randidly looked up, distracted from his interior work, and waved a hand. Suddenly he wore his Cloak of Utter Night, whipping the edge in a voluminous wave in front of the standing Patrons. A split second later, a horrible shriek of pain and doom knocked Neveah back on her heels, even through the impediment. The other Patrons stumbled backward, shocked by the power.

No Hierarchy could be easily resisted.

When the smoke cleared, the eel Duo hissed at a low volume and slithered back into its larger body, shackling the specter of death it carried with it. Elhume sat on his ass, bloody with a large hole in his left shoulder, the flesh of which had begun to turn black and necrotic under the influence of the Hierarchy of Finality. Mae’s careful stitchwork had torn open fully, genuine concern and care scrunching her brow as she looked at him.

All her power had been spent. After all his attacks, she beggared herself to save his life. She took a few hesitant steps toward her side and fell to her knees.

“Elhume-” Mae began, but Elhume cut her off.

“You mean nothing to me,” He spat out the words. “Fuck off, Mae.”

After he shoved himself to his feet, barely able to stand without collapsing, his eyes scanned the assembled Patrons. To Neveah’s immense surprise, his gaze locked on the Vulpine. “Patron of the Borrowed. We need to speak privately.”

Then Elhume retreated.