Lyra squeezed her eyes tightly shut and kneeled, trying to imagine the clear picture of the blood-red moon that had protected her to this point. She saw all the shadowy contours of its form, all the secret curves and broad expanses. The celestial body hovered over a clear lake, its reflection almost closer and more present than the true form above.

The power of reflections and foils, Lyra rubbed her eyes, jaw still clenched. Is not in what they borrow from the object of their mirroring, but in the subtle ways the medium irrevocably alters what is shown. They transform, parading as imitation.

A ripple ran through the lake. The surface of the red moon turned chaotic, a bubbling cauldron of blood. The primordial pool from which all life crawled. Her image power intensified; she could almost feel the light beating against her skin. And yet-

Nathaz Eloise undulated next to her, nervously flicking his tail. “Lyra, are you well?”

“Fine,” She lied. She shut her mouth immediately after the word, not wanting to allow any blood to leak.

As though the monster on the other end of those hooks sunk into her soul could hear her words, a tremor of amusement traveled down to Lyra from those rusted chains. But that was also an opportunity. For a moment, stillness gave her a chance to catch her breath. Lyra opened her mouth and gulped down air. Her image roiled and seethed, gathering up all its potential. She opened her eyes and briefly glimpsed the counter-stroke dreamt up by the Upper Sonara Society, the growing mass notification that would remove people from the normal Aether streams of the Nexus and make as many as wished for peace into Patrons.

In the next moment, the Actus Suprem pulled. The amusement in the chains rattling vanished, replaced with grim determination. Lyra’s moon trembled and shifted a minute amount.

The lesser beings had been overcome and this woman’s calamitous attention had shifted. Lyra came within her sight. Inch by inch, the moon was pulled from the sky.

As she once more squeezed her bloodshot eyes shot, Lyra offered a small prayer. Work fast, Randidly.

*****

Shal sucked in a breath. All the current threats, all his stress and worries, all the pressures that the Armament put on his body, they all fell away as a change swept through him. A different awareness came upon him, just as swiftly and totally as a child falls asleep. One moment he fought to prove a point to his foolish student, and the next he imagined how he wouldn’t need to prove such a point.

If Randidly Ghosthound had never found him in that Dungeon-

His awareness whorled and revved. Gradually, he could see the threads of possibility.

Shal had been in a Dungeon above his Level, but he had also had a malaise laid across him by Lucretia, his birth mother, the Witch of Karma. She had wished for him to remain hidden until the proper time. Randidly’s presence, the act of training, had snapped him out of the malaise. A coincidence, perhaps a tragic one. The surprise meeting had been, Shal believed at the time, just the shock he needed to snap him awake and allow him to return to Tellus.

But what if their meeting had been a curse instead?

Shal saw himself, staying in the Dungeon for several months longer. Randidly never showed up. He forcefully trained in the Style of his father, becoming more and more the Spear Phantom, even though he did not grow his Skills by any great degree. His intent flickered and faded as often as it could become solid. At some point, he would have become impatient; he understood he could not linger much longer within the Dungeon without contracting Aether Sickness upon his departure. He would have forced the issue.

He would have underestimated his foes and been cursed by too many enemies at once. He would have almost died. The curses would have sunk into his flesh from a dozen angles.

His body, on the brink of his life being extinguished, would have responded instinctively he would have stumbled across a new Style… one that would eventually grow to become his powerful Wraith Adder. His body moved, guided by inspiration and necessity. The spear would have been vicious, poisonous, sinuous, overwhelming. The cross-pollination between the ideas of his brother and father.

As he grew familiar with his new tools, the Dungeon would have posed no serious threat to him.

Shal’s imagination began to accelerate. Because of time dilation, he returned about the same time to Tellus as in the timeline when he encountered Randidly in the Dungeon. But rather than still possessing the useless and frustrated pride relating to his father, Shal would have founded a new Style. In order to maintain the indigo color of his banner, Shal would have scheduled a demonstration that would have been scheduled for six months later.

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Time enough for him to sharpen his Battle Intent and be able to seize those accolades, all on his own.

Those six months would have been grueling. Not with the training of a student, but attempting to overcome his Aether Sickness while simultaneously pushing the Wraith Adder to greater heights. He would have thrown himself into the frontlines earlier, fighting against the Wights to sharpen himself.

This, actually, is where he experiences real danger. One of the powerful Wights attempts to possess his body… and Shal’s sharpened will breaks free and allows his Wraith Adder to ascend and become the Spear-Tooth Wraith Hydra. A wildly powerful image.

With his new image, Shal fights his way through the Wight wars. He eventually meets and rivals the great Masters of the various Tellus Schools. He even grows so powerful that he leads the charge against the Spearman and ends that mad-man’s wild plot to provide Aether to his former lover’s world.

Just as before, Shal earns a ticket that opens the Path to the Pinnacle. But this time, he did not hobble there and barely manage to scrape by during the assent. He had earned his passage with his spear.

Obviously, the Path to the Pinnacle still existed more as a trap-funnel for those of high potential, but Shal thrived where previously he had struggled. He fought his way higher and higher, experiencing the shades of those who came before him and sharpening his image. Eventually, he fell, as all did on the Path to the Pinnacle. He still was approached by the arrogant Swacc Family, throwing around the power of their Armaments to recruit him.

Shal still assented. But with a heart confident in his own power and patient enough to bide his time until he no longer needed to heed their veiled threats.

At night he would have practiced his image, using the powerful Armaments as guideposts to focus his own improvement. The work was exhausting, but Shal had not forged any of the distracting connections of the other timeline. He didn’t have a disciple about which to worry. The threats in his world had been ripped out by the root. He could afford to focus solely on himself. His Spear-Toothed Wraith Hydra truly became monstrous.

An accumulation of blows from Armaments could never fell this image. It would come back stronger every time, without blemish or flaw.

Shal, still enthralled with the reimagining of himself, for the first time felt the slightest hint of a tremor— is it truly possible to have an image that would receive no damage or adjustment from this battle? Obviously, it wasn’t yet perfect-

Shal felt the strangest sense of impact. He was suddenly back upon the battlefield. He felt the fighting of the two armies behind him, saw Alana Donal leveling her spear against him and releasing waves of orange light, and finally could see Elhume fighting above against-

Just a man, Shal’s eyes flickered, torn between a horrible sense of grief and a grim satisfaction. The tears on his cheeks had dried. He felt a vague sense of loss. Randidly Ghosthound. A stranger and a threat to the Nexus.

One more shuddering reverberation bounced through Shal’s heart. All the weight of failure and bitterness vanished. He could feel his spirits soaring. Anything he lost was covered up by the feeling of ascension. He still wielded the Armament, felt the heavy image of violence in his hands, but an even more potent image prowled within the confines of his chest. A smile tugged at the corner of Shal’s mouth.

Now seemed the prime time to reveal his true image to the Nexus.

With a quick movement, Shal flipped the heavy weapon up from his hands into a more javelin hold. Alana Donal narrowed her eyes, but Shal already threw the weapon. The heavy violence ripped through the air. Shifting her grip on her spear, Alana said. “The Third Revelation, Anguish.”

Power fuzzed around her body and then exploded outward. The force of the image pressed against the projectile and barely altered its course. Shal’s eyes flashed; he could see Alana’s goal. While this wasn’t the most effective method for preventing damage now, she looked ahead. Because the Anguish bubbled outward to hit Shal. If he had been the old him, the him cursed by the presence of a certain connection, Shal would have been frozen. His fear would have been a critical weakness.

The weapon of violence ripped a deep gash in Alana’s arm. Simultaneously, Shal stepped forward through the wave of Anguish. His heart seized… but he recovered in a split second and produced an old spear from his interspatial ring. No longer did he wallow in his suffering. Now, he prepared to spring and achieve his full potential.

Shal took a stance and thrust his weapon forward. “The Hydra’s Long Fangs.”

His spear blurred into a thousand quick stabs. Wounded and surprised by his quick motions, Alana reeled backward. A few admittedly deft strikes of hers invalidated quite a few of his attacks, but this Skill was a numbers game. At least a score of new wounds were added across her body.

Blood dribbled down her limbs as Alana stabilized herself. The phantasm of Azriel Blanche appeared at her side, her eyes very sad as she examined Shal. “Can you feel the difference in how he moves? A dangerous shift, but one you can handle.”

Alana gave a tight nod. Shal rolled his eyes. Azriel could lie to Alana as much as she wished. Shal was now the individual he had always wanted to be. He had discarded his fears and tossed aside his Armament. He spun his spear and his image manifested in the air behind him. Its weight warped the air, even with the powerful forces going back and forth between Elhume and the Ghosthound.

The Three-Headed Wraith Hydra grinned, showing its needle-thin spear-teeth.

And then the images above faltered. With wide eyes, Shal looked up and saw the powerful glow, the image that had been dominating the sky, around Elhume beginning to fade. The Pinnacle of the Nexus… began to weaken.