Randidly Ghosthound studied the roaring tide of Nether above Homewell and tried to guess the amount of time he had remaining. The computational allowances given to him by the Dread Homunculus rapidly approached their limits. He narrowed his eyes and chewed on his lip. From what he could tell, all of his preparations would come to a head in a little less than six hours.
Randidly hoped he could make sure all the preparations by the other factions would be foiled, but he would settle just on his own succeeding.
“Right after lunch,” Randidly muttered, not bothering to suppress a massive yawn.
The sun hauled itself up above the horizon, weighty and blazing. Randidly went through his mental checklist, trying to catch any detail he had missed. He sent a confirmation to Nathan, making sure that he would have the pieces necessary for the first layer of this plan. The creation of humanity, refocusing his Fateset, and the Philosopher’s Stone would be his first step and he needed to make sure everything was in place.
His thoughts continued, swimming through the current of problems flowing around him. Reaching out to Lowanna for another piece could wait until later; although both Nathan and Lowanna had been set a difficult task, Randidly had no idea about how the Nether Arbiter could succeed. At least with Nathan, he had been able to give some guidance.
The Philosopher’s Stone served as an effective mental anchor, after all.
Randidly turned to the North, where he could sense Lowanna continuing to meditate. Ripples ran throughout the massive sea of her Nether; where Deganawidah seemed to drag a vast tide in his wake, the Nether Arbiter sat atop a bottomless well of power. Those small ripples bounced up and down through her potential, hinting at the shape of her potency.
It made even the Dread Homunculus wary, to feel the hints of her movements. Which was why he had decided to offer up a silent prayer and trust her when he could find no other answer to his problem.
Still, he could tell from the movement of significance that going to her now would deplete the momentum of history swirling around her with no benefit. So Randidly straightened and stretched. His muscles were warm and he felt ready to move. Close, but not quite ready. Let’s grind a few more Skill Levels.
He started with Yggdrasil, allowing the vast canopy to manifest above him, although keeping the image invisible so as not to pointlessly disturb the Turtleline leadership of Homewell, already buzzing from the tide of Nether Warriors only a few hours out from their borders. If any of the residents were to look up toward the rays of the dawn, they would see a massive glimmering specter, a place where light met the invisible leaves of the World Tree. Those points of impact sent out starbursts of color, refracted into blues and greens and oranges, a radiant haze of beauty that would take their breath away.
Randidly leaned closer to the ambiance, sewing beauty and wonder into every inch.
Congratulations! Your Skill Dawn Opens the Sky and Reality Stirs (T) has grown to Level 939!
Congratulations! Your Skill Dawn Opens the Sky and Reality Stirs (T) has grown to Level 940!
A nova of heat and light began to form around his image, as Randidly concentrated on capturing the metaphysical aspect of dawn’s arrival. Just like the sun rising over the horizon, the tree’s growth revolutionized the landscape. For many, dawn signaled the start of the day, the first victory over night. It was rebirth and return, it was warmth and light.
Light very literally cracked open the opacity of darkness, opening up the visual world from the shadowy realm of nightmares to the clarity of the day. Randidly hummed and sculpted the impression he felt, based on the warm touch of the sun against his skin. A halo began to form around the World Tree, borrowed from the Stillborn Phoenix.
In this incarnation, Yggdrasil possessed an event horizon all its own, the edge of the life-spring it possessed. It gave and gave to the world, first in the form of its pure light, second in its warm sap and energy. The tree woke and the world organized itself into certain positive patterns.
Congratulations! Your Skill Conviction of the Celestial Cataclysm (T) has grown to Level 1021!
Congratulations! Your Skill Dawn Opens the Sky and Reality Stirs (T) has grown to Level 952!
The sun crept higher, its rays warming from pale white to yellow-oranges. The impression around Yggdrasil pivoted from the flow from a cool spring to the surging force of a volcano. The nova intensified. Yet as Randidly felt his focus for the image sharpening, he also felt that he had reached the apex of his Skill gain momentum for the day. Already, the glory of dawn began to wane. And while he had gained some Skill Levels, it wouldn’t be enough to cross the gap to a Mille.
He pressed his lips together. Well, a tiny bit of cheating isn’t so bad. Yggdrasil?
The World Tree stirred. He could feel its warm acceptance as its metaphysical roots dug through the edge of the lifeseal around Homewell. Perhaps the core operators of Homewell would have noticed his intrusion, had they not had all their attention frantically preparing for the assault.
So they didn’t notice until small roots of Yggdrasil had wound their way into the hearts of all the awake and alert individuals of Homewell until Randidly began to tug their gazes upward, using their attention on the beautiful sunset to hone his image. They looked and witnessed its light, its influence, the grace of its arrival. From the response of their emotions, Randidly began to rapidly carve out the impression he had been seeking.
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Congratulations! Your Skill The World Tree Sips from Every Realm (T) has grown to Level 993!
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Congratulations! Your Skill Dawn Opens the Sky and Reality Stirs (T) has grown to Level 962!
Congratulations! Your Skill The World Tree Sips from Every Realm (T) has grown to Level 1001!
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Congratulations! Your Skill Dawn Opens the Sky and Reality Stirs (T) has grown to Level 984!
Just as the ire from Homewell began to accumulate, Randidly released the people. He pressed his lips together but didn’t feel bad cutting his cramming short. He hadn’t needed much, not really energy, just attention to really boost the accumulation of the Skill. He hadn’t quite reached a Mille, but the dent put it within striking distance.
Especially because he wouldn’t define Ghasthund until the last of his three impossible attempts, giving him plenty of time to earn Skill Levels. Randidly had no doubt he would struggle the entire way through the second two attempts, when he began to antagonize not just the Cult of the Savior, but both of the fighting forces around Homewell.
Randidly cast his gaze amount, not really looking with his eyes but using his Nether senses to comb through the surging significance around him. He looked for any elements he missed, any trouble from Beigon or from the Cult of the Savior, any ways that forces were shifting more quickly than he had expected. He also peered closely at the process of creating humanity, across the world in that deep bunker of the Cult, just to make sure everything was on track.
Randidly clicked his tongue, looking from the cave system and then pivoting toward the marching Nether forces. “You really need to have this all happening at once, don’t you? Well, it least it won’t be a boring day.
He shook off those thoughts and refocused on his Skills once more. To give his mind a rest from the constant vigilance, Randidly created one of his patented physical suppression chambers, reflecting a vicious amount of force back onto his limbs. Honestly, he threw as many torturous little Engravings as possible into it; he really was running out of ideas about how to train his physical body. While Sulfur purred with pleasure at the restrictions, Randidly forced himself through spear forms, honing his movements.
Congratulations! Your Skill Homunculi’s Monstrous Tenacity (P) has grown to Level 940!
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Congratulations! Your Skill Homunculi’s Monstrous Tenacity (P) has grown to Level 963!
Congratulations! Your Skill Marred Yet Reliable Foundation of Yggdrasil (T) has grown to Level 951!
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Congratulations! Your Skill Homunculi’s Monstrous Tenacity (P) has grown to Level 1004!
Congratulations! Your Skill Erebus’s Baleful Waltz (P) has grown to Level 1010!
When his skin was slick with sweat, he took a break. Blood and Nether filled his muscles, leaving him warm and loose. His shoulders rose and fell as he waved a hand and dismantled the Engraving zone around him. He squinted up at the sky and parsed apart the waves of significance crashing against one another; definitely, as the beginning approached, even his mind felt overwhelmed to consider the possibilities.
As Neveah repeatedly emphasized to him, he was just a man.
Unable to find any problems in the Nether, he returned to his training. This time, he brought out the Stillborn Phoenix. A harsh week of training had ironed out the discomfort in the image activation, although it remained straddling two truths about itself. Randidly kicked himself off the ground and shot up into the clear sky. He flicked his wrists sideways and then drew a circle with his two hands in the air.
A split second later, the sky howled and screamed as the Hungry Eye opened and took a large bite out of existence.
Congratulations! Your Skill Hypothetical Gaze that Consumes the Universe (T) has grown to Level 989!
Congratulations! Your Skill Diffracted Corruption from an Avaricious Impossibility (P)(U) has grown to Level 982!
A chill wind whipped and whined in the immediate vicinity before that too was gobbled down by the Stillborn Phoenix. The image wavered for a second, before surging forth with enough inky darkness to suspend Randidly in a sphere of oblivion. His skin tingled and the sweat that covered him vanished, sucked away into the void. He could hear the low growl of avarice against his ear and the hum of an empty stomach.
If someone had glanced South from Homewell, they could have looked up and seen a black sun gnawing at one corner of the sky, while its bright twin rose opposite. In the darkness, Randidly’s eyelids fluttered and closed. When he opened them, his eyes burned with revelation energy, allowing him to see existence from the perspective of a being cast out, locked away, and told it could not exist.
Congratulations! Your Skill Revelation of the Atramentous Threshold (T) has grown to Level 992!
Congratulations! Your Skill Diffracted Corruption from an Avaricious Impossibility (P)(U) has grown to Level 987!
A smile stretched across his face, showing the teeth of a confident predator. He saw it, the pulse of life, the strange contours of the reality he had always inhabited, the flash of colors, and above all, the chaos. The specter of the Stillborn Phoenix prowled at the edge of the event horizon, that crepuscular threshold, hungry and vicious and separated and furious.
Randidly Ghosthound’s emotional sea surged and swelled with the need of the Stillborn Phoenix. All that force and intensity whirred its way through the image, rushed around the edges and watched reality dripping away like the event horizon was a drain, then spun back into the body of the Egg of Depression. From beyond, the beast stirred.
The next instant, all the force it threw all the force it possessed against the boundary.
To Randidly, it felt like a humming. But a blast of kinetic force exploded from his dark sun. The ground cracked and shattered and the explosion triggered a dust storm that swept outward. He watched, with black-purple energy dancing in his eyes, as the dust storm swept up upon a migrating herd of ostriches and sent the unfortunate beasts tumbling through the air.
Congratulations! Your Skill Revelation of the Atramentous Threshold (T) has grown to Level 998!
Congratulations! Your Skill Hallucination of the Bloodless Heart (T) has grown to Level 939!
With all its fury, the Stillborn Phoenix knocked on the door to reality several more times before it was satisfied.
Congratulations! Your Skill Diffracted Corruption from an Avaricious Impossibility (P)(U) has grown to Level 1001!
Congratulations! Your Skill Hypothetical Gaze that Consumes the Universe (T) has grown to Level 1003!
Congratulations! Your Skill Revelation of the Atramentous Threshold (T) has grown to Level 1000!
Randidly floated back to the ground. That’s up to 20 Milles. With quite a few right at the cusp. With three exhausting attempts to accomplish the impossible looming before me. Right on schedule.