All had proceeded without a hitch. And that was why he worried.
Don Beigon watched the shifting portal to the Path to the Pinnacle. Higher and higher they climbed. More and more energy flowed through to the grand working he had created. His foundations had become incomparably solid. He felt some others attempting the Pinnacle, but even from here, he sensed their wrongness. His own note of truth had become loud and clear, thrumming through his body.
The vibe of the gathered individuals had changed as well, as more time had passed and Elhume didn’t rip open a hole in the sky and use his fist to grind all their dreams to dust, the celebrations became more animated. Many had produced mead to share in anticipation. They believed more deeply that this might not end in them all being obliterated.
Of course, the Don knew he would gladly do the obliterating himself, when the time came. They were fuel, nothing more, ready for when he had need of them. Yet even he couldn’t believe that Elhume still hadn’t yet made himself known.
Could the collapse of his crystal citadel… have deeper implications than I suspected? The Don felt irritated by the lack of response. These details were outside of his predictions. He didn’t like not understanding the way the situation developed. His careful calculations now seemed woefully insufficient.
The continued ascension of the portal, however, calmed him down. If nothing else, he constantly improved the possibility of reaching the Pinnacle. And once he reached that height…
Once the Pinnacle comes within my grasp, none will possess the power to stop me from bettering this world. The Don didn’t bother to suppress the smile stretching across his face.
“A great success, yes?” The humanoid hawk fluttered her wings and floated nearby. She watched the whole process in a way that only a predator could, with pupils wide and soft.
“A great success,” The Don agreed.
*****
Congratulations! Your Skill Protostar Sears the Fabric of Space (P) has grown to Level 61!
…
Congratulations! Your Skill Protostar Sears the Fabric of Space (P) has grown to Level 205!
…
Recalculating…
Your Skill Protostar Sears the Fabric of Space is reacting with your Singularity of the Inhospitable Depths Skillset! Examining empathy… incorporating influences… shifting Skill associations…
Recalculating…
Congratulations! Your Skill Protostar Sears the Fabric of Space (P) has evolved into Singularity Engulfs the Finite (GD)! Skill Levels will be maintained!
…
Congratulations! Your Skill Singularity Engulfs the Finite (GD) has grown to Level 485!
Randidly belched up darkness and silence, but the air and space he obliterated with his attack screamed as it was wrenched into oblivion. Randidly felt a strange stirring in his chest, but ignored it, pouring all his rage and grief into this forceful blast. His whole existence narrowed to channeling the Songstress of Absence.
He sang a mournful dirge: once again, he hadn’t been quite enough. He had dragged the entire Alpha Cosmos into danger and another had paid the price for his reckless advance. He wept and existence wept, but it was existence that broke under the weight of his grief.
The oblivion washed away Devick’s image, chain by chain. He felt her flaring her significant emotional weight, he felt her forcefully swallow another Grand Fate and try and use it to buttress her defenses, and finally he felt her rising glee and desperation. The necrotic energy Grand Fate crackled gallantly, shielding her body for a few seconds from Randidly. When her image failed, Devick used raw emotions to hammer at Randidly’s attack.
The song ate through emotion, slower than the image, but still as inevitable. Soon only Devick’s horrible, off-note chorus of Grand Fates and the warped truth they created remained.
Waves of weaponized event horizon lapped at her skin, burning through Devick’s long hair, rotting her skin. She opened cracked and bleeding lips and forced out a shaky breath. “Randidly Ghosthound, tell me this: did that other version of me ever make your heart weep like this? I don’t know why you bother with an imitation when you are already so intimate with the real thing.”
And in one more in a long line of fucked decisions, Devick stepped out of her protective imagery and into his singularity blast. Her flesh melted. Her left eye popped, still staring straight at him, and the right followed a second later. Her bones thinned and snapped. Her leering skull cracked and splintered.
Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
Yet her glee only grew stronger. Randidly could practically hear her laughing. The horrible note of truth through all her captured and enslaved Grand Fates grew deafening. Nether began to congregate in the sky, the powerful churning of existence centering on this new inflection point of history.
Congratulations! Your Skill Singularity Engulfs the Finite (GD) has grown to Level 630!
His body swayed, his muscles fraying faster than he could heal them. Begrudgingly, Randidly allowed the note of his grief to drop off; he spent all of his emotional force and couldn’t completely annihilate her.
If he had time to sharpen this new Skill, incorporate it better into the image, support the attack with a framework from his other images-
But he had not. He hadn’t been thinking. He had simply screamed. He was so, so tired of not being enough. His voice possessed power, but it was too raw to yet be a weapon at the level of the Pinnacle.
And of course, his failure curdled in his gut.
When the wave of darkness tapered off and vanished, a twisted framework of hatred, glee, and madness remained in the scraps of the Actus Suprem’s broken body. A radiance of rust filled the air around Devick’s withered remnants; looking at her depleted form, Randidly couldn’t get over how closely she resembled Fatia Cerulean now, all soft humanoid shape replaced by a wicker body core and animated by a twisted spirit.
“And now that you’ve had your solo, it’s time for mine. Experience a mother’s love, Randidly Ghosthound.” She raised her thin and spindly fingers toward the sky as she stepped back into the massive avatar of chain and madness. A ripple came through the two moon eyes, first the brighter left, then the cooler right. Randidly swayed, gathering himself for the rest of the fight, considering his options. He hadn’t want to rely more on his Nether Core, but the process with Enmya meant his body roared with pure significance.
Meanwhile, Devick waxed her way toward a twisted version of the Pinnacle. “A mother who would warp the whole world in order to spend the rest of eternity loving you-”
Randidly gasped as an unexpected blast of force erupted from his chest. The unexpected development caused him to stumble. But if he were surprised, Devick was entirely blindsided. Two little fuzzy creatures with misshapen mouths locked onto both of Devick’s hands, keeping them from moving.
For the first time, all semblance of cheer fell away from her expression. Her thread-thin neck pivoted, the hollow sockets of her eyes fixating on these interlopers. “What… the fuck are these?”
Congratulations! Your Skill the Twin Lingering Shadows of Misfortune (T) has grown to Level 1199!
Congratulations! Your Skill the Twin Lingering Shadows of Misfortune (T) has grown to Level 1200!
The giggled nervously, the sounds echoing.
“You little shit,” Devick hissed. She was a hateful, weightless puppet floating in the midst of all her clinking chains. “You choose now to throw these in my face?! What is it, jealousy over your mother? Does it taste bitter that I had other sons before you, ones less perfect? Keh. You think these little maggots can stop me for even a second-”
Randidly just watched as Devick ranted. He felt curiously detached. Part of it was expending so much emotion at once; the experience left him hollow and numb. But the other part was a strange certainty that he didn’t need to do anything further.
He felt an invisible hand touch his shoulder. The significance was clear; he had done enough. His role, as always, was to open the Path.
“I’ll shred them. I am all-powerful! All the aborted flesh and spirit in the world is me. All the broken and repressed impulses. These twisted failures are me! If anything, you’ve only made me-” Husk Devick gnashed her rotten teeth together. The strain was invisible, due to her thin arms, but Randidly could see space distorting around the bindings. A larger tremor ran through the floating moons Devick had affixed in her form as eyes. “-more powerful! I can just devour these things; the past will never bind me. Haven’t you shown me that? Even our pasts, we can change with enough power.”
Her horrible cacophony of bound Grand Fates twisted the world, worming their way deeper and deeper into the fabric of the Nexus. She took another step toward a horrible perversion of the Pinnacle. Devick cackled, her jaw clacking in a manner exactly like Cerulean’s amusement. “All of my life can be remade, with the proper deviation! From now, I will work my way through time, until every moment is just us, the two-”
A spike of crimson shot down from the brighter of the two hanging moons and pierced through the knot at the core of the partially annihilated Devick. Her hands twitched, recognizing and trying to block the attack, but the twin spirits of misfortune held her fast.
Once pierced, her core began to whistle like a deflating balloon. The madness in the air wavered with uncertainty.
Congratulations! Your Skill the Twin Lingering Shadows of Misfortune (T) has grown to Level 1220!
“You sneaky bitch!” Devick’s head whirled all the way around. When the second spike came from the reflected eye, the husk wrenched until one of the twin lingering shadows tore. She caught the second strike and scowled upward.
The moons dissolved. The spikes flowed down toward the connection point until Lyra stood there, head held high, one hand buried in Devick’s chest and the other caught by the monstrous husk’s hand. Her lips twitched. “If you can plant self-destructive impulses in me… why are you being so petty about me doing the same?”
“I’ll kill-” Devick began.
But before she could get very far, Randidly was there, hands clamping down on her shoulders. His eyes burned with emerald fire. Suddenly, he understood how best to unwind this version of Devick. “You won’t get the chance to inflict even one more scratch, Actus Suprem.
“The Fourth Authority: Animation Nova.”