Randidly had felt the first inklings of Devick’s monstrous resistance to adversity when he had battled against her emotions directly. He had gathered up all his momentum and edged it with the bleeding blade of his images. His fury, backed by the Alpha Cosmos, had barely managed to make a dent in the grief and scarring that crisscrossed her soul.

The impact jarred him worse than even Elhume’s punches.

She, quite like the original Grim Chimera, was a being designed for survival. Even he didn’t know if he could wield enough force to squish and obliterate her hardy and persistent core. So instead, he stopped pressuring her.

From viewing her life from multiple angles, the one disadvantage the original Devick possessed is that she was so often the architect of her own doom. And her stubbornness meant she often doubled down, rather than concede. A strength, in the right circumstances.

A deadly weakness in others.

Randidly’s Nether Core hummed, a misty crystal ball releasing wave after wave of pure life energy. His Fourth Energy opened up a wellspring and poured out the thick and intoxicating anima. He channeled all that life, all that acceptance, all that possibility into the husk body of the Actus Suprem.

He let her vindictive unreasonably do the rest.

The effect didn’t start as one that would undo her. Devick’s desiccated flesh ballooned back to its previous form. Long waves of luscious red hair flowed down her back. Her piercing eyes returned, looking at him in confusion, then wicked glee as she felt power flowing through her shoulders and down to her fingers. “Oh? Now what is this? Have you finally-”

And then her urge to squeeze and resist activated. The power continued to flow in, but Devick instinctively tried to force the kind energy to compact and twist.

Her body collapsed in on itself, the right shoulder snapping sharply down and collapsing her chest cavity. Flesh grew and reformed in only a heartbeat, healed by the same energy that couldn’t be controlled. The discordant notes couldn’t defeat her near-invulnerable core, but the softly grown flesh Randidly had gifted to her couldn’t withstand the vicious note. And when the collapse happened, a tiny wisp of the sadistic ‘truth’ she sought escaped during the healing.

“What-” In a split second, Devick’s body had returned to its prior form due to the energy Randidly supplied. His Nether Core continued to whirl. The Fourth Authority gave without any strings attached. Devick looked down at her hands. “Tch, excuse me, how unseemly to show you that lack of control. Now, if you truly wish to support me-”

Her pale throat began to rot as a remnant burst of her captured necrotic Grand Fate got ahold of it, buoyed up by the warm animation. The flesh fell away and her voice went with it, leaving only a rasping noise as the rot spread down through the rest of her body.

She couldn’t resist that extra strength, it followed Devick’s instincts. So she failed to compensate.

Randidly’s energy healed her wound, but then her waist began to melt from the venom in the serpent tail Grand Fate. The look on Devick’s face shifted from confusion to genuine fear. Her truth took another step away from the Pinnacle as healing was gifted freely to her. Her resistance stirred and lashed. Now she was just a powerful individual, no longer with that approaching resonance.

Over and over again, Devick tried to find the balance in her image as Randidly channeled pure life energy through her limbs. She popped, she tore, she collapsed, her skeleton shredded its way out of her flesh, her brain overheated until it melted, her image falling and falling and falling. Once, one of her eyes turned briefly crimson as Lyra made her presence known. Then the eye had popped, obliterating half of Devick’s skull.

Randidly just observed and gave to her; The Actus Suprem couldn’t handle it.

Panting and trembling with blood leaking out of her nose, Devick stretched a hand toward him. “Randidly… Ghosthound. What-”

“Do you hate it, just a little bit?” Randidly said quietly. His heart throbbed. “All the jokes you made, wanting my love, wanting the connection with me… now that I’ve given it to you, its going to undo you. It's not cute to be unable to handle everything you’ve always asked for, Actus Suprem.”

“Of course, I hate you for this,” Devick coughed out a mouthful of blood. But when she straightened, her smile was pure and sweet. “But you said it; I am a woman that never makes mistakes! So of course I also love you for following my wishes. Thank you so fucking much.”

“I said you never admit your mistakes,” Randidly shook his head and the Actus Suprem just laughed. Her lips were wet with blood. She shivered as she burst again and reformed. His Nether Core continued to spin, but the manifestations of her powers began to fade. The sensation of the Pinnacle had vanished completely. The consumed Grand Fates began to phase out of her body, the bindings no longer tight enough to hold them. They rolled out onto the ground, strangely lonesome in their current uncertain existence.

All of the Grand Fates but one.

Randidly allowed his focus to wander. He felt so, so tired. His emotions had been spent, but more labors lay before him. He looked up at the floating orb above their heads, thousands of Grand Fates congregated in a single location. Devick’s resistance madness crackled through them, preventing them from returning. He had a headache thinking about how to solve this problem.

And then the individual he didn’t want to face, couldn’t bare ignoring any longer, stepped forward and shook her head slowly. “You won’t be able to kill her like this.”

“I know,” Randidly squeezed his eyes shut. Just a single moment of tense frustrations. Then he opened his eyes and looked at Lyra. He tried to smile, but his mouth wasn’t cooperating. She looked older, but he could see the ghost of her younger self haunting this version. He could see her humanity, just barely, a remnant of a different ‘life’. “You… I suppose you are going to suggest that you spend the rest of your existence acting as her jailor?”

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“Suggest it? Of course not.” Lyra’s hands were clasped behind her back. Her tawny hair glimmered in the reflected light from the gathering of Grand Fates. “I think it would have been much more fun to make you ask for it~”

She had the gall to wink at him.

“Lyra, this isn’t a fucking joke.” Randidly felt his breath quicken. He could feel the collapsing Nether connections stretching out from the projection in front of him to the distant location of her form. Each second she was away from her body, her soul withered. “If we act now, we can reunite you with your body. You don’t need to do this.”

“Even if you set this bitch to watch me, it won’t matter. I’ll crunch her personality into bits and eat it like popcorn,” Devick hissed. The vehemence of this threat was somewhat undercut by her chest cavity bulging out and popping like an overfilled balloon.

“Randidly,” Lyra looked directly at him, her eyes sad. “ Can I be honest? This… is hard for me to admit; being vulnerable doesn’t come naturally to me. I’ve chased so many false trails since the System arrived. Maybe avoiding the easy paths has been a mistake. So I should just… atone for the headstrong attitude I possessed when I was younger. Give me over to the job of restraining the vileness that she represents.”

“Vileness and possibility,” Devick hissed, by her lips began to rot as she spoke. She settled for clacking her jaw angrily.

“Lyra-” He tried again. His emotions swirled together, too thick to be parsed apart.

“Randidly,” Her voice this time was harsh. Lyra’s eyes flashed at him. “For the second time, I’m going to be more vulnerable than I care to appear. The time for you saying my name so softly were all those opportunities before that you didn’t take. When I vanished from your Alpha Cosmos to better myself and you never reached out. Now… now can you just support me, please?”

His Nether Core continued to spin. But no matter how much power raged through his body, how much life he produced to peel back the layers of adversity that had been twisted together to become Devick, no matter how much potential quivered in his limbs… Randidly Ghosthound had nothing to say to Lyra’s accusation.

He had let her go. He had been glad of her departure. Even when he found his peace with the actions of Yystrix, he hadn’t forgiven Lyra.

The history before them lay strewn like the wreckage of a crashed ship. The currents of fate had pushed them to this point, the shoals of reality had been nearly invisible, but they couldn’t have prevented the tragedy. In the end, it all seemed inevitable between them.

“I’m so sorry,” Randidly said. Even though he wasn’t sure he meant the apology.

Lyra smiled. “You showed me a magical world, one I had craved for so, so long. And I know that every time you ignored me, every time you cursed me for my mistakes… it was exactly because you wanted to rip down the tragic foundations that doom all of us walking through the Nexus’s halls. You don’t need to feel sorry, Randidly. I… deserved this.”

“You deserve far worse than this!” Devick roared, her torso bulging until she looked more like a grub than a person.

“You deserved better than this,” Randidly said. This at least, he was sure he meant.

Lyra bowed her head. Randidly gritted his teeth and looked away. Her projection faded and settled back within Devick, a crimson core animating a physical form suddenly provided with infinite gifts. And Devick’s twisted soul corrupted and squandered them all, destroying herself in the process.

Randidly released a breath that lasted for almost five seconds. By the end, his diaphragm trembled with the physical reality of compressing his lungs until nothing remained. After holding that squeezed state for ten more seconds, he allowed his mouth to open and for air to flood back through him. I thought I had so much time to make connections or heal them. But it’s also true I thought I had no time for anything… but preparing to defeat you.

Randidly pivoted, his attention finally turning to the two very pressing details of the environment he couldn’t avoid. First, despite the fact he now had undone Devick herself, Randidly had been careful not to destabilize the giant orb of gathered Grand Fates above him. Half because he wanted to figure out if these could be safely returned to their original owners. Half because his heart sank as he witnessed the serpents of Devick’s madness that swam and spat within the depths of that energy.

In a way, Devick had already won-- her Deviation would lurk within the Nexus for the rest of existence.

The second detail was Fiero floating opposite Randidly in the ruins of this place, who allowed the foggy halo of energy to fall from his body and reveal his withered form. His long Vulpine arms hung limply at his sides, but his eyes were bright. “I have observed your conversation with the Actus Suprem. For handling her so neatly… I commend you.

“However, she spoke the truth. While you insist on causing such chaos in mine demesne, she did inform you truly about the threat posed by Don Beigon’s action.” Fiero squinted at Randidly. “Set aside this petty squabble. The sanctity of the Nexus is more important than your pride, boy. We must not allow the husk that is Pine to shatter everything we’ve built. If that fool Don is touched by even the edge of him, that is exactly what will occur.”

“You know I’m not gonna agree to stop now. You are losing, Fiero.” Randidly rolled his shoulders. It was a relief to set aside his regrets and focus his animosity toward a fight. He felt a dull roaring in his chest as his Nether Core seemed to be looping its own flow around itself, over and over again. The changes were mirrored through Pangu’s Asymptote and some balancing tributaries traced out a rough organic ritual around them.

Congratulations! Your Skill Randidly Ghosthound Executive of Nether Reborn (GD)(U) has grown to Level 1707!

Foreign significance turned sluggish as it neared him. The patterns became increasingly detailed as the process in the Alpha Cosmos continued. Between Phaea, Malaa, and Toosah, balance would be achieved.

His Nether Core continued to spin and process its misty innards. Soon, Randidly sensed the depths of the crystal bubble would be flawless, a new plateau of Nether reached. Somehow, he sensed he would need all the power he can get.

“Your foolhardy behavior is at least consistent,” Fiero said. “However, I have already prepared my response. While you… handled the Actus Suprem, your subordinates have been handled. I have already cut off their connection to you. If you wish to see them alive, you will capitulate to my demands and eliminate the Don.”

For a brief second, Randidly froze. He felt confident in his subordinates in their fight against Devick’s elite soldiers, but withstanding Elhume moving directly was another thing entirely. And when he reached for their connection-

Congratulations! Your Skill Emerald Eyes and Dove Whispers Certify the Objective (GD) has grown to Level 1531!

Randidly’s lip curled, but the flood of relief included notes of alarm. “You didn’t isolate the connection. You’ve woven a massive time distortion around me.”

Fiero didn’t even seem put-out that Randidly saw through him immediately. He just chuckled. “And how well do you think they’ve faired during your repose?”