Shal felt struck dumb. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t feel. He barely even felt blood dribbling out of his wound. He sat, torn between two lives he might have lived, one where he had encountered a student, another where he had not.

The memories hissed and spat at one another, unwilling to accept the existence of the other. In both, he had followed the path of the spear. The more he tried to dig into the specifics of either, the more the memories blurred and blended into one another. They simultaneously couldn’t remain like this, but also couldn’t be extricated.

He both existed and he didn’t.

He sat and blood continued to seep out of his wounds onto the ground. Even breathing took a great deal of effort, his chest heavy with emotions he didn’t want to face. Because no matter which of the lives Shal wanted to believe was true, both had essentially now ended.

He felt the scar on his fundamental soulshape, seared there with the powerful blow Alana Donal had used. Although an arm could be healed, it would never again be a natural part of him. He no longer had a future that he had so long reached for.

“Alright, let’s get up and move,” The head guard ordered with an anxious glance up toward the crystal mountain range. Already one crack had skittered through the overhanging structure. If the edifice would collapse, with the waves of dense energy and the heavy materials, all those present would be crushed.

In a way, Shal yearned for just that. To have this suffering taken from him. It would be so easy to just lie down and be crushed-

Yet he felt so hollow he allowed himself to be hauled up to his feet and shoved forward. With the other captured Swacc Family members, he shuffled across the ground toward the exit. Only when the person in front of him stumbled did Shal notice who proceeded in front of him; the massive, boar-headed humanoid that he had fought against right when he arrived in the Nexus, still reeling from his loss on the Path to the Pinnacle.

With his Armament in hand and a booming laugh, this being had laid Shal low right when he had been at his most vulnerable. His memories of the confrontation were fuzzy and half-remembered, just one part of the entwined lives that he lived. Yet now that same individual looked so small and helpless, his face just as empty and drained as Shal’s own. They shuffled on, never even making eye contact with one another.

The group trooped out of the crystal mountain range and examined the surroundings. No ambush waited for them. And honestly, they were minor characters compared to the main fight still releasing shuddering tremors throughout the Nexus and destabilizing the area. So they moved slightly further away so as to escape the spitting energy coming off the destabilized mountain range.

Shal couldn’t be bothered to listen in on the quiet discussions of the guards. There were also a few amongst the Swacc Family who put their heads together to mount a resistance and escape, but Shal ignored those small plots as well. After all, what would be the point?

He sat at the edge of their temporary camp, looking out across a sea of drifting space debris. Occasionally the ground beneath him vibrated, but the sensation didn’t attract his curiosity. His dual lives created friction as they rubbed against each other. The ache where his right arm had once been grew stronger. Who was he? Who had he been? Who would he become?

Would it be better to die, so he would no longer be plagued by these questions? Could he-

There was a soft tapping as a rather large grouping of rocks knocked against the solid ground on which the crystalized Aether was built. Shal blinked and raised his eyes, noticing for the first time the way the surrounding rocks seemed to be swirling in purposeful patterns. There were no visible connections, but the orbiting rocks seemed to be part of some massive machine.

However, the weirdest detail was the tall man who straightened from his supine position on the recently arrived rock. He looked Shal up and down and released a long sigh. “It always starts like with something like this…”

*****

When the timely assistance arrived for Solomon Rex and Fiero’s attention got pulled away by the sudden flaw in the crystalized Aether, Randidly breathed out a sigh of relief. He forced the tension from his back and shoulders, using all his powerful mental acuity to rid his body of any lingering aftereffects of Fiero’s Folly.

He flexed Sulfur’s fingers. He gripped Acri. He’s right, isn’t he guys? Not in the way he thinks, but… this isn’t about me. Neveah is right. I represent the possibility of change. All I need to do is listen to the flow of significance

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I’m thinking and considering too much. I need… to let go.

And just fucking run wild.

Randidly Ghosthound straightened. He was a being who had once been human, still retaining that shape even though all the Stat anchors of humanity had been replaced and upgraded. He stood tall, he had black hair hanging down to his shoulders, his eyes glittered like emeralds. At this point, he wasn’t sure how to answer a question about his age. He was lean and athletic, just as sharp as the weapon he wielded.

He grinned. His hands tingled.

With the release of tension, the speed of his Nether Core’s rotation sped up. More and more connections flowed through his newly created Momento. He followed his instincts, feeding more and more of his energy through the membrane, connecting this world to the connected other perspective. He released a deep breath and so came the Nether as well, flooding out and cleansing the air of the dense Aether of Elhume’s body.

“You jackal!” Fiero growled, glaring up at the spreading cracks. Just as quickly, the Vulpine’s narrowed eyes flicked back to Randidly. “Even now, you flail and destroy rather than simply play the part you have been assigned. The Seventh Fist: Pinnacle’s Shibboleth.”

Randidly’s image physicalizations sprang into action, wrapping around his body. He began with the first arrangement, Yggdrasil making his hair emerald and his veins luminescent gold, an event horizon forming in the palm of his left hand, and the Dread Homunculus covering his extremities in chitinous armor.

His smile widened. For all that rode on this moment, Randidly had recalled how much fun these struggles were.

He ignored his Skills, allowing them to manifest naturally. He planted his feet and shot forward.

The seventh punch thrown by Fiero had a sharper feel than the rest. The image manifested and ballooned out, not as wide as Boundless, but it felt like an entire world was contained in that fist. The same weightiness that Randidly had benefited from to catch up in the Nexus now was turned against him. He felt that same tickling nervousness in the pit of his stomach he had felt when Elhume and Fiero had stood hand and hand in the memory, each half of a whole about to reach the Pinnacle.

A quality Randidly couldn’t yet rival lay in this fist.

Randidly stepped forward, despite this awareness. He planted his feet and thrust his spear. His images flared and swirled together, each edged with its own unique emotional affect, each naturally balanced with one another. His spear blazed golden lined with green veins but edged in black.

Although he shouldn’t be able to clamber up to the Pinnacle without reaching that point on his own, his power didn’t know that. It tried its best anyway. The sharp report of the meeting boomed outward.

The force of the impact smashed down on the battlefield below, crunching a few of the Vulpine husks and giving the Vulpis Squad some much-needed time to pause and regroup. Spearlight ravaged the fist, the two worlds behind the power leaning into one another to get an advantage. The impact was also so powerful that some of the weakened crystal Aether near the spread cracks began to crumble.

After an extended moment of struggle, Randidly found himself thrown backward. He transformed the movement into a natural back handspring, and while righting himself his image shifted to the second form he had discovered, Randidly as a monster. His left eye and most of his face vanished completely, the Songstress of Absence crooning out her annihilating song. Yggdrasil stretched gnarled and thorned roots up to form two monstrous wings. Not just that, but roots also stretched from his waist to create a giant tail. The heavy axe-blade Acri fell into place.

By now, Randidly Ghosthound was practically beaming.

His knuckles against the ground, Randidly leaned forward and then launched himself for the second impact. He blasted through the thick waves of disturbed Aether filling the chamber as the millenia old prison began to come down.

Fiero’s worried glance had flicked back and forth across the spreading flaws in the crystal area, so he was a split second late in unleashing his Seventh Fist, Pinnacle’s Shibboleth. Randidly pulled deeply from his own Nether, forcing all the power and rebounding kinetic impacts through the tail. Acri drilled forward.

Space cracked briefly, shattering and setting the rich ambient Aether nearby aflame. Both Randidly and Fiero staggered backward, standing in a sea of ghastly violet plasma flames, flickering, spreading, and dying as the Aether combusted and Randidly’s suffocating Nether extinguished the energy. Energy churned and churned around his body.

As the impact echoed out, more of the crystal above them began to crumble. Fiero eyes bulged out of his head. “You… Randidly Ghosthound… Keh…!”

Randidly took a step back and gathered himself. The event horizons moved to his eyes, transforming his pupils into that horror in the abyss that looked back at you. A cloak of pure darkness settled across his body. His skin glimmered as golden runes spread across his available surface underneath that fluttering darkness. He was a man, he was a world, he was a story.

He was the Legend of Randidly Ghosthound. And the Nexus would fucking remember him.

He took a breath. Yggdrasil gratefully sucked in also, its roots stretching out and sipping from all of the rich ambient energy in the environment. Even though he had suppressed some of the Aether, there was so much more that came flooding into his body. Kinetic force and raw Aether mixed and mingled. Randidily’s body felt aflame, the concentrated core of a star about to approach a supernova state.

He felt himself approaching a new plateau of energy. He buzzed with the potential. So long as he pushed a little further…

Seems like today is the day I finally step onto the Pinnacle.