Randidly didn’t want to admit how much effort it took to create a small eye in the raging Nether storm of Deganawidah. But seeing the pure joy in Devick’s flash of recognition, it felt worth it.

He shifted the flow of his Nether, sensing that already Deganawidah’s brutal pattern made minute adjustments to overwhelm him. Randidly had to grit his teeth when he noticed that the shift almost immediately made him lose more ground. The bubble of safety tightened around him.

Congratulations! Your Skill Left Hand of the Nether Oracle (M) has grown to Level 999!

Luckily, after saying her piece, Devick collapsed backward. Randidly, burning with both his images and his concern for her as Deganawidah’s power overwhelmed his own, did a strange sort of dance; first, his left hand shot out to support her back, but then he wondered if the Stillborn Phoenix might negatively influence her, considering her relative weakness. So he paused and then twisted, all at the limits of his speed, so he could reach around with his right hand and press it into the small of her back to support her.

She flopped over sideways with all the structural integrity of a rotten eel corpse. Despite the circumstances, despite a wounded Cerulean cowering on the ground a few meters away and Deganawidah’s harsh countenance turning to brood in Randidly’s direction, he beamed and barked out a laugh.

“You are such a fool,” Randidly whispered, having to snake his arm entirely around her waist to keep Devick from rolling over and face-planting into the ground, where the encroaching Nether would have flayed the skin from her bones. But there was quite a bit of fondness in his voice, more than he had expected.

Perhaps it was just because she didn’t regard him with the surly silence she had before she ran off a week ago to join the war effort. Perhaps it was hard not to respect the depth of her trust in him, that his presence had unraveled her tenacity so completely.

The shock of amusement boosted his mentality, just a little more, in the same way, his frank conversation with Lowanna had helped him. The jolt of energy flowed through him, sharpening his perception just a degree back toward his peak. It wasn’t much, but it would have to be enough. He began to churn his Nether in a different direction, hoping to force back the implacable tide washing away his defenses.

Congratulations! Your Skill Right Hand of the Nether Polymath (M) has grown to Level 990!

Randidly slipped Devick into the Alpha Cosmos and turned to regard his own dangerous circumstances. The tips of his toes began to burn as Nether continued to wear his defenses down.

Even the few seconds of arriving in the area and conjuring this dense, monstrous version of his image physicalizations had given him plenty of chances to gather up the surrounding kinetic forces and conjure a wicked storm. With Deity’s Ruthless Cerebral Scope, the edges of the storm became barbed, so as it churned forward, it ripped its way through all the images and dense waves of Nether that stood in its path to get here.

Until it met against Deganawidah’s sea of Nether, which smothered it like a rainforest drowned a lawnmower.

“Our business is concluded. You have been served your fate, Hungry Eye,” Deganawidah rumbled. His thin top lip curled up across his chest. “Why have you bothered yourself over this one? His death has been ordained and none in this world or any other would weep to see him gone. Keh, not even himself. A false simulacrum, soulless and hollow.”

While he stood silently and flared his images, Randidly pivoted his Nether for the third time. He added a bit of uncertainty into the patterns his Nether Core released, trying to create a more formidable defense. He was appalled to notice, if anything, his changes sped up the deconstruction of his Nether patterns. But he did receive a small blip of good news.

Congratulations! Your Skill the Left Hand of the Nether Oracle (M) has grown to Level 1000!

“Hungry Eye,” Cerulean dipped its skull slightly. Already, its azure energy began to pulse excitedly, a blind parasite sensing a path toward survival. “I know we have had our… disagreements, but I will never forget this boon.”

Randidly didn’t bother to correct the raptor construct’s impression of his purpose. Instead, he barred his teeth toward the egg-bodies Deganawidah, with the impossible wide mouth stretching across his torso and the gold teeth, and considered his options. When apart, it had been easy to forget how overwhelming his Nether had been Even now, it squeezed Randidly’s throat, constricted his chest cavity, just as it radiated out from him. In the memory, it was almost impossible to capture the difference between ‘he possessed stronger Nether than you’ and ‘his Nether overwhelmed you.’.

Yet this pressure was exactly what the Stillborn Phoenix required to become concrete. The craziness of what would soon follow just made Randidly bristle with energy and teeth. “I need some help, Deganawidah. And it can be no one but you.”

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“To snatch a treasure from the depths of the sea is a common dream among fools,” Deganawidah regarded him critically for several seconds. Outside of the confrontation, Randidly sensed a gathering of energy from Homewell’s Lifeseal. Deganawidah undoubtedly noticed it as well but didn’t bother to react. “You understand I will once more remind you of your limits? I will not hold back anything.”

That’s the point, Randidly’s grin widened. That’s why it could be no one but you.

“I misjudged you, during our first meeting,” Deganawidah said. His voice rumbled through the air. He pivoted and raised his muscular arms, as though to embrace Randidly. “I had thought the lack of awareness was purposeful. That being shown the edge you raced toward would end the strange perversion you had. Perhaps you would cease pushing the boundaries and content yourself with a moment all your own. Alas. You are not that kind of fool.”

Randidly almost felt annoyed to be regarded like this, when Homewell didn’t merit a single glance. But he supposed greater heights of power called attention to him, no matter what he did.

The Nether began to stir as Deganwidah focused. Randidly winced when the remnants of his kinetic storm collapsed underneath the pressure. The last of his Nether practically evaporated before Deganawidah’s onslaught. All that remained were his image physicalizations: the event horizon on his left hand, the bare and gnarled branches stretching out from his back to form wings, the shimmer-less edge of Utter Night hanging around his body. Acri hung above his head in the scorpion tail form, a deadly promise.

The event horizon pulsed with excitement as the tension built and Nether seared against his image physicalizations. The Stillborn Phoenix knew the first order of business in this second attempt was to transform it. It didn’t yet understand what it would become, but it didn’t care: it simply craved existence.

And perhaps even more viscerally than that, it craved revenge against the foe that had wounded it in the first place.

The heavy silence of its heartbeat rippled out through Randidly, smashing itself against Deganawidah’s Nether. The Nether didn’t even pause for a second. It simply pushed its way forward and washed up against his condensed Aether. Randidly’s skin tingled in anticipation. But despite the opening created, the attack didn’t come.

“I have a purpose, one I discovered a long time ago in the depths of my body,” Deganawidah spoke in a confiding tone that almost unnerved Randidly in its candor. The Nether monster flexed its fingers. “Every time I almost died, the many betrayals that I have suffered, I felt it there. It refused to allow my candle to be extinguished. I could not collapse, even if I wanted to. There was a higher calling, waiting for me. And you-”

“Perhaps I find a similar goal at my core,” Randidly settled down into a lowered stance.

The Nether roared in his ears. Deganawidah’s wide mouth turned down at the edges, his strange mood shifting back toward the usual impenetrable emotional fortress. Randidly’s own Nether Core whirred as much as its limits would allow, yet it could only coat his skin in a thin layer of energy. Deganawidah’s voice now contained hostile notes. “You sculpt a false idol and call it purpose. That is why you are a fool. There are shapes and moments. The rest is fleeting. Your confusion in this regard I could forgive. Yet your flailings hack at larger purposes. You endanger us all.”

You… Randidly’s eyes widened. It was like a switch had been flipped. All the remaining exhaustion that had huddled in the corners of Randidly’s body evaporated. Because an aspect of his Fateset clicked into place: the changes he could affect in others… did not always have to be changes they wished for.

And right now, it seemed he had inadvertently brushed up against a possible change within this old Nether being.

“Would it truly be so monstrous, not to march toward some arbitrary self-finale, Deganawidah?” Randidly’s blood sang with Nether and Aether. His Fateset pulsed. He felt the path forward, illuminated by shrewd instinct and equipped with all the thoughts and preparations Randidly had poured into this night over the last week.

His thoughts raced in rapid recalibration. The problem he had encountered earlier was the identity of the impossibility he fought against. He had thought it had to do with the creation of the Stillborn Phoenix image as a complete being, but in retrospect, it was his preconceptions making the task seem impossible. Had he not listened to his instincts previously, he might have even come to meet Deganawidah and substituted this being’s preconceptions about predestination for an impossibility to be destroyed. But now he knew the whole point of the second attempt was to accomplish the original goal of the Upper Sonora, to make the memory a true alternate existence, Randidly could see this would just be a step in the right direction.

Another detail snapped into place. A little more of his path became illuminated, filling his chest with certainty. He would shatter the false impossibility of Deganawidah that blocked his way so he could square off against the real ones. Momentum, to attack a true precipice.

The last detail which plagued Randidly was what he would do with the failed remnants, assuming he truly encountered another impossibility. Which, considering the purpose of his three challenges and the three unintended consequences, would have caused Neveah to throw a conniption fit.

But I bet I’ll figure it out, standing on that threshold. Randidly hummed to himself. He nodded, satisfied.

“We are incompatible,” Deganawidah announced. With no more warning than that, he thrust his hand forward. Behind him, a suffocating deluge of old history flowed to snuff Randidly out.