Devick felt a few beads of sweat dripping down her lower back and wished she had a spare moment to wipe them away. Or at least swat at the back of her leather armor, smushing them and soaking them into her equipment. Those drops somehow managed to keep hiding there, even as she twisted back and forth, stubbornly clinging to the soft, near-invisible hairs that grew along her spine.

Alas, too busy doing the devil’s work, She clicked her tongue in mock distaste, even as she rode the low thrill of panic which had swept her away since the two armies had met. Her wrists and ankles ached and she had a shallow cut across the side of her neck, weeping a few drops of blood.

Her ears had become almost useless. The shouts of pain and the roars of challenge buzzed through the air, mixing with the sound of weapons slamming into one another until the vibrations became confusion incarnate. It was only her overload panting of her body struggling to keep up with her demands, the gasping heaves echoing in her ears, that kept her grounded in the moment.

She skittered sideways to avoid a lashing strike from a Nether Warriors tail, grabbed the impotently extended tip, then pulled it out across her body to cushion the blow from a flail swung at her by a bona-fide Nether Gatekeeper, an animate suit of obsidian armor with flames leaking out its joints.

The weapon tore through the Nether Warrior’s body without much resistance and knocked Devick sprawling, but the impediment was enough she didn’t lose her arm by taking the hit. She yelped and rolled sideways, her armor acquiring another layer of mud stinking mud. By the time she had popped up to her feet, a bestial new Nether Warrior whipped around with a growl and raised his hatchets to strike.

Devick crouched down, leaned forward, and briefly became Malice incarnate, all claw and ill-will. The wicked hare did not appreciate this sort of disrespect. Her hands were edged with crimson claws of hatred, allowing her to hamstring the Nether Warrior as she streaked past him. And not a moment too soon, because that obsidian flail smashed into the ground where she had just been crouched with the wet squelch of a rotten ribcage being smashed open.

Congratulations! Your Skill Malice, Hare of the Crimson Foot and Barbed Heart (M)(U) has grown to Level 501!

She righted herself while releasing another a heaving exhale that sounded like the expulsion of gaseous vomit, those drops of sweat trembling on her back with fear. Around her, violence raged in every direction. Nether Warriors and Nether Gatekeepers came forth in an unending tide, cut down almost as fast as they arrived by Cerulean’s elite troops, but not quite. Every second, they had to retreat. Devick pushed a few errant strands of crimson hair out of her eyes and almost tripped over the headless corpse of a body wearing sapphire armor. Her eyes fixated on the Nether Gatekeeper, still stalking toward her, still leaking tongues of flame and acrid smoke out through its joints.

Devick grimaced as she sucked in an equally massive breath. Fuck, I guess it’s too much to ask the armor to show a bit of biological weakness. Truce, you whiny bitch?

The last mental phrase was extended toward her Grand Fate, which had been pouting through most of the battle. After a lingering moment of hesitation, it nodded, very willing to try and survive this ordeal.

Yet before Malice and Maverick’s Barbaric Imperative could begin to work hand in hand, her senses tingled in an entirely different warning. She looked up, suddenly with much more dire concerns than the baleful suit of armor chasing her across the field of violence.

The Nether forces paused as well, a half beat behind Devick, not as keyed to threats as she was but still more capable of sensing shifts in the energy of connection. For another full second Cerulean’s guards fought with furious intensity, before a cold wind swept across the battlefield and smothered most of their movements.

The rain had mostly stopped by now, but a shiver ran through the battlefield.

Even Devick felt herself paling before the shifting intensity. Her Nether senses were blunt, but they at least could pick up on general trends. And the rumbling movement of energy was about as subtle as if the hand of god reached down and spun the whole world on which they stood like a globe, so the sky appeared to howl past with so much more vehemence and violence than it had ever done in the past. The cause possessed so much more capability than the ants on the ground that it was difficult to even fathom the space between them.

The twitchy Vandla materialized next to her, his small hands caked in blood. His eyes moved minutely, even as he fixated on the shift, making it seem like he was under the influence of a powerful stimulant. “Deganawidah moves. Care, Devick-chi. Now it truly begins.”

He vanished just as quickly, leaving Devick standing in the long shadow of the oldest and most formidable Nether boogeyman in existence and a Nether Gatekeeper stomping forward to kill her. The battlefield surged to life around them, a horrid fear slowing the movements of the Aether warriors, despite their best efforts.

How long would it take for Deganawidah to make it back to Fatia Cerulean? And… what would happen when he did?

“Really makes a girl’s heart flutter,” Devick muttered to herself. “What a day for romance, eh Hungry Eye? As long as you don’t die… I promise I won’t either.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

*****

About five days ago, when Randidly had explained the bones of the plan to Nathan, the serious-faced young Soul Architect had explained very patiently why what he was attempting couldn’t be done. There were simply too many constraints on the creation of a Class.

Classes had to be built on a foundation, so the user could accumulate power as they added experience into the structure and built it higher. The current System method was to offer three options, a base Class, a Class derived from the user’s current abilities, and a random preset shape from the repository of previously created Classes. All three of these options were usable, mostly because they were stable. The user didn’t really create a Class at all, Nathan explained, because they couldn’t. They borrow previous iterations. Without some experience with the System and an acclimation to images, a person didn’t possess the requisite imaginative rigor to create the sort of framework a Class needed.

What they could create would be vague and leaky, requiring more energy to build than it would produce for the user down the line. It would take a vast amount of experience to gain Levels. The Skills would be weak, the Level Up gains would be small. In the end, the Class might even collapse under its own weight or contradict itself.

The Alpha Cosmos had gone a different route in terms of providing Classes. The Pantheon had contemplated the problem for a while and settled on a middle ground, one that often required their direct intervention. You could seek out Nathan directly, which only a few elites knew to do. Then for large sums of valuable resources he would spend several weeks with the individual, learning their habits, strengths, and weaknesses. At the end of that time, they would create a Class together in an approximation of the process Randidly went through when he made his Class.

The other option was the Class Lighthouses in the Alpha Cosmos, which were observed and fueled by the Pantheon. These strange, and often hidden, structures possessed specific archetypes, with varying degrees of specificity and power. But in the end, these Classes were skeletons. The process of communing with the Class Lighthouse would take the specifics of the individual and add the flesh to the Class. So while the general Class of the Lighthouse could be “Grove Guardian”, a more stalwart individual might obtain ‘Silent Grove Sentinel’ or a research-minded Intelligence build might earn ‘Arcanist of the Silver Leaves’.

“You need certainty, vision, and understanding and create a solid Class,” Nathan had said. “So you would either need a complete and total library of Classes inside this ‘stone’-- which, believe me, we are trying to compile-- or you need to somehow to infuse both power and vast intellect into the stone, so it could create the Class from nothing on the fly. Both are impossible. You’ve made living Engravings, but you’d need to create a very specific sort of life, one whose consciousness wouldn’t corrode or degrade in a limited existence.”

Randidly had just grinned and slapped Nathan on the shoulder. “Impossible is sorta the whole point.”

In the present, Randidly moved through the Cult of the Savior base with the Cloak of Utter Night wrapped tightly around his frame. Various layers of rather clever Engraving guarded the outer reaches of the facility, but the combination of folding perspective and the Cloak’s defensive abilities meant Randidly could proceed further without worry.

The skin of his arm tingled as significance flowed past him. The shaping of humanity had begun. He could feel Elhume’s intensity even from afar. The single-minded, void-edged focus of Elhume had strengthened even from the last time Randidly had encountered him. Yet simply pausing and listening was enough to determine that he still had some time.

The heart he had woven for Padraic hadn’t fractured yet, which meant it hadn’t yet been constricted by the three locks on humanity.

As Randidly approached the core facility where the ritual was occurring, the defenses grew more tightly woven. He had to pause for longer, because he was worried about more than the boundaries themselves, but also the shadowy figure of the ‘Scythe’ who seemed so adept at noticing when Randidly wasn’t disciplined with his attention.

Halfway through slipping through the final barrier, his gaze flickered as he sensed the significance in the environment abruptly deepening. The accumulation of Nether happened so quickly that space and time turned sticky, creating friction as they rubbed up against one another. A ghost of a smile danced across his face. That’s my cue.

Randidly had kept all the leftover force rushing through his veins, building up momentum. With the timing of his arrival perfectly arranged, he didn’t need to bother with subterfuge any longer. He raised his hand and unleashed it all, setting off a veritable bomb in the middle of the defensive structure.

The Engravings flashed bright and then shattered. The cave wall in front of Randidly buckled and collapsed, letting him breeze forward into the wide ritual spot. In the center of the cavern, a rainbow whirlwind of energy spun down into a humanoid, clay form, imprinting values and philosophies into the new species. The air stunk like a spring day right after dawn, practically drowning in life energy.

In the center of that whirlwind, the disparate pieces had come together around the heart and begun to squeeze; a hairline crack now ran through the energy-processing formation at the core of humanity, spitting out dangerous sparks. And those sparks didn’t just dissipate, but skittered across the heart, their heat warping the lines of potential further.

Randidly’s pupils dilated, as he noticed the situation in the room. On instinct, his hand shot up, forming into a claw. “The First Authority: Seize.”

Elhume’s body, moving through his polished punching form, wrenched to a stop across the cavern. His fist was only a few inches from the Patron of the Deep, who sweated and panicked, just looking at the man he had followed for years. In that unhesitating fist, he saw the end of his life.

Randidly felt exhaustion suffuse his body at the instinctual activation of the Authority and felt a little bit of regret. He should not have spent his Nether like this, but the unexpectedness of the scene when he entered the cavern had caught him off guard. Why was Elhume trying to kill the Patron of the Deep? But he let the reckless madness take him, grinning and shouting across the ritual. “Patron of the Deep, we really need to stop meeting like this-”

“Nether King Hungry Eye,” Elhume fumed, ripping his way out of the grip of Randidly's Authority and glaring over at him. "You are not welcome here."

Yet the real threat came from behind; Randidly felt tingles up and down his spine as the horrid create Scythe appeared in his shadow. The thing raised its weapon. “Heh. Gotcha, rat.”