Devick couldn’t breathe for several seconds. Her ears rang from the clash of battle all around her, making it clear she couldn’t linger in this state for too long. A few inches from her face, the light slowly died in the animated armor’s visor; the Nether being’s life seeped out of its form.

Besides, Devick’s fingers twitched. I don’t fucking think Hungry Eye would have even blinked at work like this. He would have just done it.

Her body shuddering from the strain, Devick pulled her fingers out of the armor’s chest cavity. She left long stretches of skin from those fingers in the fucking rust bucket, due to the violence with which she had punctured its defenses. Both her Grand Fate and Malice had faded to just a flicker inside of her body.

Even she didn’t want to admit how close that had come to turning out a different way.

When she finally pulled all the way out and stumbled backward, it was just in time— a howling anthropomorphic hyena whipped and ax through the space she just vacated. The metal edge of the weapon shrieked as it skidded along the armor’s front, so loud and so close that it cut through the general din of battle and deafened Devick in a whole new way.

She swiped, almost casually, with her other hand. Malice barred its teeth, spent but not completely, and she physically ripped through the neck of the Nether Warrior and tossed its scowling head to the side.

“Would have been karma to kick the bucket to a real minor character, at this point,” Devick panted. “When obviously, all this story is about me-”

A blazing azure comet exploded into the sky above her position, this time crashing through the general chaos with light, rather than sound. The intense light briefly paused the frantic motion of the melee, casting a glittering alien fresco of the entire fight. Devick stared up at it, her mind chugging through the possibilities.

She cleared her throat, arriving at the surprising, yet undeniable one. “That’s… Cerulean’s emergency beacon.”

By the time she had recognized the beacon for what it was, dense waves of Nether swept up and smothered it. While she was doing some mental calculations in her head, arriving at a little over a minute having passed since Deganawidah had rushed across the battlefield and crashed at the position of his target, twitchy Vendla appeared at her side. Two long gashes crossed his chest, but the blood had already dried. “Hurry, chi. We will be moving to assist Cerulean.”

Devick hadn’t even opened her mouth to reply and he was gone. In his place, a Nether warrior with a severed arm staggered forward. Its bloodshot eyes fixed on Devick and it lunged at her with its broken spear raised.

For a brief moment she very seriously considered not dodging the attack. She could twist slightly sideways and take a wound to the shoulder, taking her out of the serious action but posing no true threat to her life. Yet even as she considered ceasing this constant fighting, the serious expression of Hungry Eye flashed in front of her. Devick gritted her teeth. No, that’s exactly the problem, isn’t it? You’ve never taken a breath in your life. And that’s why-

Devick used her elbow to knock the weapon sideways. She stooped down and plucked up a discarded dagger, inserting it with a rush of caustic image into the throat of the Nether Warrior. Stumbling forward, Devick made her way toward Cerulean’s base camp. Overhead, the sky became a brilliant green as the lifeseal around Homewell began to activate, apparently forces within also moving to Cerulean’s defense.

That’s why I can’t stop chasing you. Devick’s heart beat fluttered. For a few seconds, she felt like stomping through the mud on a vicious battlefield wasn’t such a bad thing. So long as it brought her closer to Hungry Eye.

Even as her surging emotions began to tug at her perspective, a dour version of herself took a sharp pin and poked a hole in the inflating day-dream. Yea, well, might be romantic, but it might also be deadly.

Maybe that’s part of the fun?

She couldn’t help it. She giggled and skipped toward the vicious waves of Nether.

*****

The Patron of Feathers floated in her dream, watching her life over and over again. As the scenes flickered in front of her eyes for the third, fourth, and fifth times, her unconscious began to see broader patterns. Invariably, she would linger longer on the inflection points that began to push the rest of history in one direction or another.

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The first day she continued to return to was the day of the she looked out the window after dinner and thought she saw dragons dancing across the sky. One of the last peaceful memories she had from the First Cohort.

She leaned her head against the warm wall of the inn. At that time, she had ran away from home and went around with Elhume and Yystrix. Partially just to escape her father, but also because they were some of the most creative and powerful individuals she had ever met. They might not possess the fearsome might of her father, but they grew quickly.

However, as with most nights where Elhume began drinking, the after dinner conversation devolved into dangerous territories.

“Opening up the Nexus would be a terrible idea.” Yystrix said flatly. Her gaze fixed on a spot on the fall wall and stayed there, even as she continued to mechanically to unfold the blankets they possessed.

Elhume frowned, rinsing their plates in the water basin. “How can it be worse than our current situation? Sure, we might have some advantageous, but they are watching the entrance to the Universe Core, Yzzy. If they found out we possess the few last Distinction Imperatives, they would rip us to shreds. Let alone if they knew we had the key-”

“Don’t say it,” Yystrix hissed. “Are you a fool? In this building?”

“We are the strongest three individuals for leagues,” Elhume snapped back, but the chagrined expression on his face functioned as an admission of embarrassment. But he cleared his throat and refocused. “We didn’t understand how the space in the Nexus worked and now we do. But we can’t make use of those truths when those old monsters snuck in and established their own little rules while we still admired everything our son had created. So we throw a little chaos into the mix-”

Yystrix spoke in a cold voice. “Your plans too often involve tossing in chaos to an already dangerous situation. Maybe that’s why they so often go wrong?”

Elhume waved his hands. In the corner, trying to make herself as small as possible, a wound on the Patron of the Feather’s shoulder throbbed. Earlier that week, Elhume had opened a pen holding some War Bihorns, in an attempt to let them escape from the pursuit of a Raptor Construct Bloodsleuth. It had worked… but the Patron of Feathers had very nearly lost her arm when one of those Bihorns made its displeasure known on the way past.

“...but what else can we do, Izzy,” Elhume said, all his defensiveness turned to weariness. “We made the universe… but all the certainty I felt when I touched the Pinnacle- I barely remember any of it. And now we don’t even know how he’s faring up there. Does he know we are here, can he see us? I just—”

Elhume let out a hissing breath and flicked his hands, splashing water against the wall. Yystrix’s expression softened, as it always did when Elhume brought up their relationship with Pine, their child who also functioned as the soul of the universe.

Sometimes, the Patron of Feathers loved how strangely open they were with her, although it didn’t make much sense. Sometimes, she wondered if the only reason she had been told was so they wouldn’t need to sneak away to snipe at one another.

Which was why, when she noticed a glittering in the corner of her eyes, she pivoted and looked, glad for the distraction. Her eyes widened as she witnessed several pale, sinuous flows rising above the treeline. Almost immediately, her expression brightened.

She spoke up quickly, pointing out the window. “Look! Dragons!”

Her current self watching the replayed memory wondered what would have happened, if she hadn’t been angled toward the window, if she had instead gone over to help Yystrix with the bedding, if only she could reach out and squeeze the throat of her past self shut, preventing the words from slipping out.

Perhaps also glad for a distraction, Elhume and Yystrix came to the window. Elhume seemed nonplused, but Yystrix’s eyes sparkled with interest. “Spontaneous Sculpted Aether? How strange. I would think most of it would have expended itself by now.”

“Huh?” Elhume scratched his cheek.

Yystrix flashed him a sharp look, as though dubious he really was the one who had reached the Pinnacle and managed to create this universe. “Essentially, wild magic. Sometimes… an image springs to being fully formed, without any justification. A completely impossible display, something manifesting from nothing. Fits and starts from the universe’s birth, I believe. It happens less and less as the organization solidifies. Truly, its a minor miracle that it occurred now.”

Very quickly, both Elhume and Yystrix were gathering their things. The plates were given a perfunctory wipe before being stuffed back into the bags. The carefully laid out three sets of bedding were swept up in arms and stuffed into the small interspatial storage device they could afford. The Patron of Feathers blinked. “We… are going?”

“Obviously,” Elhume flashed a smile. “Let’s see what treasure is at the other end of the rainbow.”

The Patron of Feathers thought that he had been kidding. They moved quickly, hopping right out the window and speeding through the surrounding forest. Only as she struggled to keep up with her older companions did she realized there was steel under his playful words; they truly meant to investigate this Spontaneous Sculpted Aether, and wanted to do it quickly. The Patron of Feathers bit her lip, thinking about the bitterness on Elhume's face when he talked about being weak and all the moments that Yystrix couldn't bring herself to meet his gaze.

They rushed out into a clearing being gently tousled by a dying wind. The rapid manifestation of energy still lingered as glittering motes in the air, drifting down over the scene like soft snow. All three slowed and paused at the edges, looking at the figure sitting with its legs crossed in the middle. The Patron of Feathers gasped, unable to believe how lovely and soft this creature's fur seemed.

"What is that?" She whispered.

Yystrix tilted her head to the side. "...an eight-tailed fox."