Devick raised her chin and endured his sharp gaze. Now, more than ever, she refused to take a step back.

“You don’t know what you are suggesting,” Nether King Hungry Eye, or Randidly Ghosthound as he was known in his main universe, practically blazed with power as he glowered at her. If he could reach into her mouth and rip out her suggestion before she offered it, he probably would have.

His jaw clenched and unclenched. His emerald eyes seemed to seethe with a whirlwind of energies, hovering just beneath the surface. He could crush her with either his Nether or his images, even after she had vastly improved relying on a knock-off version of his Fatepiece. “It is far to say that you and this woman had the same starting point. But the Actus Suprem has had a thousand years to stew and twist herself into a monster. Just establishing a small connection would be disastrous.”

Even the fact she stood in front of him right now was only because he protected her from the oppressive force of Elhume’s crystalized Aether above them.

And maybe, because she had to rely on him even to stand next to him here, Devick refused to abandon the thought without a fight. This was a way that she could be useful. “Would you rather just pick one of those ravines and march forward? You asked for ideas. This is an idea. Don’t be petty about it. If you think it’s bad, just say so. But we both know it isn’t.”

Randidly reached up and rubbed the bridge of his nose. She could practically see the thoughts crashing into one another inside of his head, a thousand a second, a million impacts and redirections. She wanted so badly to reach out and touch his shoulders, to rub out the tension. But she could only watch as he sighed and spoke. “I’m not— hah. Look, the Actus Suprem’s image is one of madness. Even a brush can be… destabilizing-”

“I’m not particularly stable to begin with,” Devick added. “A little more unpredictability couldn’t hurt-”

Randidly’s glare sharpened. “-but we would need more than a brush to get the information we need. To find the path the Actus Suprem took, we would need to establish a connection of Nether and then thrum it, to create an echo outlining her passage. You would not brush her: you would draw the gaze of the Actus Suprem. Because if nothing else, you share the same curiosity-”

“Randidly, you can just call her Devick,” Devick said quietly. “I won’t be upset. I know we aren’t the same person.”

She watched the muscles along his jaw clench, for what felt like the hundredth time today. Neveah stepped forward before they could get sidetracked on this other issue. “We don’t have much time, Randidly. If we are going to do this, we need to do it now. Or we need to just choose as Solomon suggested.”

The mountains of Aether sang their song of power. The mist seemed to be creeping further out from the base, approaching their position. Soon, they would be engulfed by its aura. For two full seconds, Randidly chewed on the problem. Crash, crash, crash, his thoughts terminated their brief and violent journeys. His gaze rose to Solomon. “You really know nothing else?”

“Nothing.” Solomon shook his head. “I didn’t dare leave Pine’s position until I was ready to commit. I could not investigate what had been done with this place.”

The Vulpine, Raymund Ballast, stepped forward and slammed his fist against his chest. “Ghosthound, if our theories are correct, the Swacc Family and their forces are still present within this base. Why not allow me to take on this burden? If we create one of these sympathetic links to Techetadore, the danger-”

Already, Randidly shook his head. “I appreciate the thought, and would much prefer it, but even if Elhume is attempting to possess Techetadore’s body, he likely won’t be at the place where the Actus Suprem is working. And stopping her from fucking the Nexus is priority number one. I don’t want to fight the Swaccs and end up lost. But Devick-”

“You can’t do this alone,” Neveah said, at the same time as Devick spoke.

“You can’t bear all the risk yourself.”

Neveah and Devick exchanged a glance. Neveah’s side was exhausted and Devick's was thankful.

Silence finally fell over the gathered group. To his credit, even while the frustration around his body swelled, Randidly gave a sharp nod. “Fine. Fine. Devick… fine.” Already his fingers danced. Thin threads of Nether unfolded like a blooming flower, drawing a three-dimensional pattern around her body. He was so efficient the pattern had been made in only a few seconds. Even worse, Devick felt her heart quivering at his grace. Even the casual, half-distracted movement seemed so effortlessly beautiful.

He stepped forward and squeezed her shoulder, while the Nether lines gleamed. “Devick, look at me.”

She looked up. She hoped he would kiss her. Instead, his emerald eyes suddenly appeared so soft she could drown in them, if she lingered too long.

“You don’t need to be a hero. If you start to feel overwhelmed, say something. I’ll cut the connection, even if the echo hasn’t been triggered.”

Devick felt frustrated tears forming in the corners of her eyes but forced herself to smile. “Maybe I just want to play at being the hero this time, Randidly Ghosthound. As a change of pace.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

For you. So you don’t always need to be everything to an entire universe.

Devick broke eye contact, but she looked over and saw the figures of Neveah, Alana, and Raymund. And while Devick hadn’t spent any time with the two leading subordinates of the Vulpis Squad, their eyes flashed in acknowledgment as she stood in the center of the Nether Ritual. Because although Randidly might not understand her thoughts, they did.

They held the same wishes in their trembling hearts. To, just for a bit, take some of the burden from his shoulders.

“Tch,” Randidly made one last noise as he dropped his hand away from Devick. Abruptly, she felt cold. With a gesture, he fueled the working around her body. Nether began to wiggle and flow. The pattern shivered and came to life. Space outside of the working grew murky. Devick could feel the working tasting her essence. A signal boomed out from the working, turning slightly sluggish as it moved through the misty energy around the crystalized mountain, but still burrowing forward.

Devick wondered how long it would take.

For better or worse, it seemed it only took a moment. After that first signal spread out through the mountain, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck beginning to tingle.

The distance between them must have been vast, but all of Devick’s awareness sharpened to a straight tunnel between two points. A powerful light blazed at the other end of the tunnel, obscuring the figure at the end, rubbing the limbs so blurry it was no longer even a silhouette. Devick remained transfixed by the floating notes of rust, and admittedly madness, that she sensed creeping down the tunnel. Her body responded in a way for which she hadn’t really been prepared. It was intoxicating, even from a distance, to sense this version of herself that Randidly Ghosthound feared.

Then the tunnel between them began to shrink. Before she had much time to process her emotions, the two Devicks seemed to be only ten meters away.

Devick’s blood curdled in her veins as she released how thick the air around her had become with those maroon image manifestations. She seemed submerged in the other’s image just by approaching. The working around her released another pulse, this one quickly racing across the small tunnel and touching the other Devick, the one called the Actus Suprem.

That figure, previously so intent on a series of dripping chains in her hands, stirred. She raised her head. The Actus Suprem beamed at Devick without any guile. Her hair was blood-colored, her teeth were white, and she was as captivating as a home on fire. “My, my, my. What an absolute treasure you are, little me.”

Those rusty motes of light drifted closer to Devick and she could see that their edges were jagged and vicious, as though the Actus Suprem had used her finger and thumb and ripped them out of discarded sheet metal. The woman’s image pulsed and whispered, at once overwhelming and calming. It swirled around her, almost as though it was preparing to chew and digest her.

Devick gritted her teeth and lifted her chin. ”And you are a monster.”

If anything, the Actus Suprem seemed even more pleased by the rebuke. “Well, that’s nice of you to say. You should see me when I hold one of my little parties. I have a fur-trimmed cape that is simply to die for.” Abruptly her gaze sharpened. Her smile widened, stretching her face, showing more and more teeth. “You know, if you don’t survive this, I’ll bury you in it. How about that? A promise, from one Devick to another.”

An answering pulse had formed around the Actus Suprem and began to bounce back toward Devick. Yet compared to the one going out, the one coming back seemed to only crawl forward. Or rather, it could not cross the shortened tunnel that they now viewed; it had to traverse the full distance between them.

A horrifying thought struck Devick. This small tunnel that makes it possible to see her… to see me as I could have become… That’s not Hungry Eye’s working. It’s her. She pulled me closer.

Her resolve hardened underneath the pressure of the Actus Suprem. And now Devick understood a bit of why Randidly called her that— because this version of Devick had climbed atop millions of bodies, building a veritable citadel of death and madness from which she could reign. It was an acknowledgment of the woman’s accomplishments, even if the dreadful cost disgusted him.

The return pulse continued to ooze through the space. Devick manifested her own Grand Fate, forcing back the skittering little rust motes around her body. Malice, crimson furred except for the deathly skeletal hand that had held a god slaying weapon, glared across the small tunnel between the two women.

Congratulations! Your Grand Fate Malice, Merry Bride of Perdition has grown to Level 971!

Congratulations! Your Grand Fate Malice, Merry Bride of Perdition has grown to Level 972!

For the first time, the Actus Suprem seemed genuinely confused as she examined Malice. She blinked several times. “That is- wait a moment, the codependence of your Grand Fate… and upon my very own son! Well, well, well, for a clone, you’ve got— no, but more importantly, why the fuck can’t I rip that out of you?!”

She snarled the last few words. Her eyes wept madness. The Actus Suprem shook the chains she held, half in anger, half in an almost taunting gesture. Blood splattered everywhere, hitting the ground between them, leaving arcing splashes like a pig carcass had been violently gutted. And then, as Devick watched, that blood began to wiggle and ‘evaporate’. Soon, a whole new spore cloud of those rusty bits of madness wafted toward Devick.

Malice raised its grey hand, radiating hate and preparing to rip its way through any sort of attack.

The Actus Suprem stepped past Devick’s brave Grand Fate before she could respond. The Actus Suprem held the chains in one hand, but the other reached out for Devick. The world seemed to move in stuttered snapshots, making resistance impossible. Right as Devick realized the threat, the Actus Suprem grinned. “Are you going to flinch now, little me?”

Devick felt chilled to the bone. Despite everything, despite all the differences in their lives, the challenging note in the Actus Suprem’s voice proved that she understood Devick. Proved she understood how desperately she wanted to be strong for Randidly. Instinctively, Devick raised her chin in response to the provocation.

The return of the echo had come across almost all of the distance. In another few moments, it will have returned to touch Randidly’s working. Devick bit her lip and braced herself.

So as the Actus Suprem drove her hand into Devick’s chest and soul, she did not flinch.