Randidly’s skin crawled as the enemy appeared behind him, but he didn’t panic. Bits of shattered stone still tumbled through the air from his dramatic arrival and already he needed to clear this hurdle. While that strange watcher of the Cult of the Savior appeared behind him, he pulled deeply from his emotional sea and unleashed three of his images in tandem. Hypothetical Gaze that Consumes the Universe. Nyx’s Successor Births Fate.

Darkness Withers the Sky and the Waiting Carrion Grins.

Congratulations! Your Skill Darkness Withers the Horizon and the Waiting Carrion Grins (T) has grown to Level 976!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill Darkness Withers the Horizon and the Waiting Carrion Grins (T) has grown to Level 988!

Congratulations! Nyx’s Successor Births Fate (GD) has grown to Level 1030!

A horrid chimera manifested in the space behind the attacker, armed with the hungry and insidious gaze of the Stillborn Phoenix, the cataclysmic promise of Nyx’s whisper, and the viciousness and bloodthirstiness of the beast that lurked in the canopy of the World Tree. The watcher shivered and jerked sideways and Randidly offered a predatory smile over his shoulder.

The being twisted, trying to slip in between the fabric of the shadow and the ground, vanishing into the veins of the base. But the carrion being crowed its amusement as it shuffled forward, all feathers and the smell of rot. It reached out with taloned hands and tore into the flesh of the Cult of the Savior’s assassin.

Congratulations! Your Skill Darkness Withers the Horizon and the Waiting Carrion Grins (T) has grown to Level 989!

At the last moment, it seemed to realize the being couldn’t escape the haunt of Yggdrasil easily. To its credit, it then acted decisively. It wheeled around and raised its curved scythe, determined to strike a vicious retaliatory blow. Although Randidly wouldn’t describe the effect as luminous, the strange energy it gathered around its weapon did resemble light. A milky, pale light that he had only seen coming as wisps over the horizon, before pure light arrived to burn the pretenders away.

The fingers of the carrion wriggled and sank more deeply into the target, leading to that light faltering just as soon as it had come. Yet it swung a vicious weapon at Randidly’s back, despite its deepening wounds.

Randidly smirked. You are going to regret lashing out while wounded. Marred Yet Reliable Foundation of Yggdrasil. Diffracted Corruption of the Avaricious Impossibility. Cloak of Utter Night.

The base layer was his body, refined with new anchors and polished flesh to be impossibly durable. Then came a layer of pure corruption, the shroud of the Stillborn Phoenix’s event horizon which could warp time, space, and energy. And finally, Randidly wrapped himself in the inky inviolability of the deep night.

When the scythe with its weakening light sunk into those defenses, it barely managed to cut through the thick substance of night. In the face of the distorted layer of corruption, it could advance no further.

Congratulations! Your Skill Darkness Withers the Horizon and the Waiting Carrion Grins (T) has grown to Level 990!

Congratulations! Your Skill Darkness Withers the Horizon and the Waiting Carrion Grins (T) has grown to Level 991!

The watcher shrieked, using some burst of momentum to tear itself out of the grasp of the carrion being. Perhaps it realized that every moment of contact allowed the Waiting Carrion to feed on the deeper elements of its being. It vanished into the tumbling rubble of the walls, pieces still hanging in the air, a testament to how quickly had the confrontation happened.

Randidly straightened, confident that the problem was handled for now. He weighed the rest of the room, going through the mental checklist of elements he would need for his first attempt. Rocks cracked and skipped around his feet to belatedly announce his arrival, smoking and scarred.

The energy was so thickly packed with energy even Randidly couldn’t help but be impressed.

Now that the watcher had been handled, Padraic, the Patron of the Borrowed, the Patron of the Deep, Elhume, and the Prophet were the only occupants. The clay body shuddered and spasmed, a whirlpool of darkening energy rushing through its form as the heart began to mutate under the strain. If that process wasn’t handled delicately, humanity would never come to exist, but Randidly had confidence he could manage to pull it back even from the brink of collapse.

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Under ideal circumstances, but ensuring compliance would have been my first priority anyway, Randidly’s lip twitched. The Patron of the Deep hurried toward him, leaving Elhume to glare all his impotent rage across the room, unwilling to lash out toward Randidly, lest the attack affect humanity's creation.

“Nether King Hungry Eye. I see you simply must interfere in all our attempts to save Pine,” The Prophet said gravely.

Randidly ignored him, instead spreading his senses out to scan the underlying Aether constructs waiting in the wings. A wide grin spread across his face as he found what he was looking for; Elhume had readied a sort of examination array keyed to the distinct signature of all those individuals using Cerulean’s Fates. Essentially, it would draw in image shapes from all the active Fates in the Nexus, imprinting all those possibilities into humanity.

A good idea. And the shape could be retrofitted for Randidly’s purpose.

Randidly raised his hands, his mind already jumping ahead to the elements he would need. But first, he needed to ready the environment. Kinetic energy exploded out and filled the chamber with a whirling storm of force, rotating quickly to the same velocity as the whirlpool of power around the hardening clay of humanity.

“Hungry Eye!” Elhume’s eyes blazed. “Withdraw your power immediately. If you will not-”

Randidly looked at Elhume for a second, seeing through him, understanding his current perspective. He saw in the tense set of his shoulders how Elhume believed he had no other choice, he had been pushed to this inevitable conclusion and what Randidly did now amounted to taking away his last chance to save his son. He would be a desperate animal, lashing out wildly in a panic.

A failure here would be unacceptable. Elhume would do almost anything to prevent it.

But this version of Elhume was also completely out of his depth, twisted and fearful to the point of being so deep in a lake of agitation he would be deaf to Randidly’s explanation. Randidly’s eyes flashed. “Seems like there is no point in talking. Step aside Elhume. You only have a second to make the choice. I will not ask a second time.”

“I will never-” Elhume roared.

At the same time, the Prophet stepped forward with its eyeball bulging, its two eyes mouths gnashing their teeth. “Hungry Eye, you made a mistake in coming to our base. Here, our power-”

Randidly lowered himself into a three-point stance, the toes of each foot and the knuckles of his left arm pressing against the ground. He used the other hand to reach down and squeeze the harpoon-spear version of Acri, wrapped around his waist. The weapon trilled, understanding his intentions immediately.

Both Elhume and the Prophet stopped speaking, looking with alarm at the sudden shift.

From the Alpha Cosmos, the other two pieces of the transformed Acri emerged. The heavy spearhead, the glittering blade as large as a gravestone, cracked the reinforced ground with its weight. The articulate, thorny tentacle’d Thorn imitation rolled and climbed up, wrapping its base tightly around Randidly’s waist. Then its long appendages began weaving themselves together into a resilient, massive single cord.

Every muscle in Randidly’s body burned, with excitement, violence, and anticipation. He had practiced this form before, but never had the opportunity to use it against a genuine foe. But now, he wanted to strike decisively, especially against Elhume. He needed overwhelming physical force.

A blow so decisive the fist-user would be cowed. At least for a little while after such a loss, his image wouldn’t be a threat to Randidly.

While the vine body finished weaving itself into a tail, Randidly unleashed his image physicalizations. This display placed quite a bit of strain on the Stillborn Phoenix, but it bore it well enough as it condensed in the hole in Sulfur’s palm, his left hand transforming into an event horizon.

Randidly’s back arched and then flexed. He gritted his teeth in displeasure as gnarled, sharpened roots forced themselves out of the thick muscles of his back, bare branches stretching wider and wider into a horrid approximation of wings. Shadows flickered along their length, the currently well-fed carrion skittering happily back and forth.

His body became the Dread Homunculus, all intensity and armored joints, a being designed to shatter the limit of the possible. His skin darkened into an armored substance, glistening and deadly in the dark red flashing coming from the humanity ritual.

As he remained crouched there, his three images singing together, Acri used the massive appendage to pick up the third of his three pieces, the massive spearhead. The Dread Homunculus looked forward with focused eyes, one of its hands a swirling, blank oblivion. Vicious-looking roots stretched out from his back into the vague approximation of featherless wings.

And a massive scorpion’s tail swayed above his head. This was his most monstrous form, all his transgressions made physical.

A split second before Randidly moved, Elhume seemed to finally realize how serious a situation it had become. “You mean to-”

When Randidly moved, the ground shattered. His left hand led his back, the event horizon shredding through the intervening space to assist in his deceptively immediate acceleration. He didn't pull any emotional affect from his emotional sea, because his whole being focused on the channeling of energy. He was image physicalizations and momentum, nothing more. Neveah had to reach through him, keeping his storm of kinetic force in the proper rotation, nudging the energies swirling around that clay body in order to avoid it all collapsing.

Opposite him, Elhume straightened. He had just enough time to pull back a fist and throw it forward, his image of the void flaring and expanding into a destructive squall. He trusted Randidly too much; he didn’t hold anything back.

Randidly’s scorpion tail, the massive Acri portion shooting forward, ghosted out to meet the punch. There wasn’t a collision, just a vicious severing.

Elhume’s right arm tumbled through the air and bounced off the ground. Blood leaked out of the torn flesh and dribbled across the clay body of humanity.