Alana Donal led the charge toward the central defensive position within the barren sea bed, the entire Vulpis Squad practically ghosting across the ground due to the lingering effects of her Second Parable: A Determined Witch. Alana still felt drained, both because of the amount of powerful individuals she affected with her Parable and also with the effort of creating the Parable.

As she charged headlong directly into the powerful temporal distortions, she reflected on what she could have done differently.

She had some thoughts about how she could perfect the story; her image could use some honing in its execution. However, a door had opened in her heart. She didn’t just need to follow Randidly Ghosthound. She could observe all of the Legend he had created.

There were so many stories from his crusade that were worth telling but had been sidelined as he dominated the discourse. But through the budding Nether Core in her chest, she knew the other stories were just as important to what the Alpha Cosmos would become in the future. She could spread these other more modest tales so that when the people of the Alpha Cosmos thought about the long shadow cast by Randidly Ghosthound, they didn’t miss the thousands of individuals enabling him to take swings at the Pinnacle.

People like me. Alana’s heart fluttered. It was too vulnerable to say out loud, but it animated her entire existence. It was a painful pleasure, an acknowledgment she had denied herself for too long. People like me matter. He couldn’t have done this without us.

Not that she had ever believed she was worthless, but she definitely hadn’t felt like enough. Her Parables finally nudged her obsessive discipline to the side and offered her some grace.

An echoing bark came from the front of the group; Vizzeret Clamman had spotted the first line of defenders. The shade of the witch hovering over all of their shoulders hissed and spat out her animosity. The opportunity had arrived and all their movements sharpened. The formation tightened as Vulpine husks ripped their way up out of the ground and glared at the approaching offensive. In the sky above them, the density of temporal distortions had reached the point a vortex spun in the air.

Those temporal waves tugged at them, but the presence of Nether in their chests kept the group safely anchored in place.

“Vulpis Squad!” Raymund Ballast bellowed out in his clipped tone. But then he loosed a low growl. Even Alana felt herself shivering in response to the raw noise. Their collected leader had lost his temper with the determined witch riding him. “Cut them down. We do not slow!”

The Squad roared back its approval. Alana felt her steps quickening. She became a blur, bounding through the formation until she stood at the head of the column. Her body was so, so tired. But she felt the warm presence of her Nether Core, grounding her. She pulled from its strength.

“The First Parable: A Hopeless Soldier.”

She felt Heiffal’s frustrations, his fear, his acknowledgment of his approaching death. And then she felt him push those feelings aside for now and use his body to advance his cause, his soul alight with the belief that he did the right thing.

She burned with the belief that her actions here mattered. And if she just pushed a little harder, she could matter a little more.

Three husks hissed at her and took steps forward. Their remnant and jagged images slashed through the air to shred her. Alana Donal released a breath. She was a human, fighting at the edge of a strange world. She was a hundred stories tied together in a single body.

Alana sidestepped the first blow, leaned sideways and deflected the second, then channeled all her Nether and belief into her spear to shatter the third. The witch dug her claws more deeply into her torso, urging her forward.

She felt a muscle in her shoulder tear, but she broke through and her spear ripped out the throats of these three defenders. When they collapsed, the Vulpis Squad swept her up with their momentum and carried her further, deeper into the central perimeter. Their uniform steps were almost contagious, so soon she was back to loping in the middle of the group. A ringing alarm began to blare; the familiar whirring of the porcelain dolls filled the air as their light bodies floated up into the sky. The temporal distortion crackled.

“The next line of defense… please allow me.”

Alana glanced sideways at Charlotte Wick, who had come to gallop beside her with her long legs. The ghost of the witch over Wick’s shoulder possessed a particularly vivid lavender color. The Witch’s long fingers had sunk into Charlotte’s back. And the light in the bear woman’s eyes…

Alana nodded slowly and ceded her core position. Ballast noticed but made no comment as the Squad surged forward. Parables functioned differently than her Revelations. On the one hand, they took a great deal more energy and lasted longer. And while they were currently weaker than the Revelations, that would soon change with time. But the real advantage was in how they functioned.

She thought about all her images in terms of light. Revelations were Alana acting as a medium, catching the radiance thrown off by Randidly Ghosthound. A blank canvas to a projector screen. Powerful and direct, they had provided her with potent force as she had honed her image. But with Revelations… the flow of light was the same, but Alana now styled herself as a prism. The pure power refracted through her, different versions reaching different audiences.

Alana kept her eyes on Charlotte’s back, the haze of lavender determination hovering around her. Perhaps today… we will get to see what it means to be the Knight of the Ghosthound.

With a screech, the porcelain dolls descended toward the group, their torsos whirring.

Charlotte Wick roared and gestured. The dead ground beneath their feet came alive in answer.

*****

Unable to calibrate Nether incorporation into the image equilibrium…

Recalculating…

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Following evolution… balancing outputs… adjusting parameters…

Pantheon Intervention-- Energy overflow normalized through Pangu’s Asymptote…

Recalculating…

Deviations detected! Analyzing…

Recalculating…

Yggdrasil is undergoing a rapid incorporation of Nether! Please note, results are uncertain.

Randidly’s body felt light and incendiary, while simultaneously like he oozed forward in an elongated bubble of time. So much awareness and change flickered through him during the execution of a lightning-fast spear-stroke. He was more plasma than person, more motion and potential than even a universe.

But maybe this is exactly what a universe feels like, The thought sprung into Randidly’s mind. Maybe this state of change, the seething power, the evolutions, the destructions… Pine, is this what you witnessed, sitting in the core of the Nexus?

Was your every second fire and ecstasy spread across a thousand planets?

Unbidden, his Yggdrasil image sprung into existence around his body. The towering tree rose to the sky. Its branches spread out, thick with lush emerald leaves. They rustled dismissively as the Timeless fists began to rage and smash into the image. But with the font of power opening in Randidly’s chest, leaves bashed and shredded simply grew back, broader and more brilliant than before.

Those earlier sparks of power from the two energies racing against one another lingered, with more hanging every second across the thick boughs of his image. Randidly’s lips twitched as Yggdrasil began to sparkle like a Christmas tree.

Then the Nether began to pump into the World Tree, pure and overwhelming. A powerful wave of darkness began to gather within the deepest recesses of the World Tree’s trunk. It swirled into a dense sphere, a seed within a tree, the other half of the powerful energies that existed within Randidly’s body.

Congratulations! Your Skillset Yggdrasil, the Universe that was First a Tree (P) is evolving!

Opposite him, Fiero threw a fist that Randidly knew he should observe. This punch was ‘Truth’. Compared to Pinnacle’s Shibboleth, the Seventh Fist, this one possessed such a deeper and more nuanced image state. Randidly’s sudden evolution released dense waves of Nether that caused the air to roil and shudder, but the presence of this Truth stilled all the energy reverberations by Fiero.

And yet Randidly couldn’t really be bothered. Because the World Tree drank down his liquid Aether and his bubbled Nether, maturing rapidly as it attached itself to the Alpha Cosmos in a literal fashion.

Until this moment, he hadn’t realized that this tree had one more tier of presence to reach in his life.

The Nether congregating in the base of Yggdrasil’s manifestation exploded outward. It curled up and around, corrupting and morphing a thick streak of the World Tree’s trunk into purple-black bark covered in wickedly sharp thorns, the full trunk resembling an ominous candy cane. The Thick vein of Nether bulged and wiggled, smaller veins spiderwebbing out and spreading the presence of significance through the image.

Congratulations! Your Skills Aureate Arteries of Yggdrasil (T) and Marred Yet Reliable Foundation of Yggdrasil (T) are combining to become The Yyrflesh Vessel of the Alpha Yggdrasil (GD)! Skill Level will be set at 1450!

Randidly continued to glide forward in his attack, his rapid evolution making his own movements feel slow by comparison. The clash between the changing Yggdrasil and Fiero’s Truth moved toward their confrontation. Nether flowed rapidly upward through the World Tree and congregated in the canopy, rapidly darkening one particular section into a cage of shadow and thorn.

Yet in the middle of those restrictions grew an entirely obsidian apple. Its skin glistened.

Randidly’s lips slid back from his teeth. The Alchemist in him rubbed his hands together at a well-made trap. Now… time to do a little bit of cleaning up. Did you really think I would miss your lingering touch, Devick?

More and more significance and potential congregated along the dense vein of Nether running up through the World Tree. Yggdrasil shivered with its presence, especially around the dense and unshaped node of energy that served as an endpoint. The obsidian apple grew and grew, so much raw power fed into it. For a long moment, there was no movement…. But then he heard the echo of a mad cackle. From a hundred small flaws in Randidly’s Aether and Nether, little rust-colored serpents swam out and couldn’t resist biting into the power.

They all dove straight for the apple. Fang after spectral fang pierced through the skin and drank the sweet juice.

Randidly smirked. His Nether Core accelerated its rotations, the gleaming gem at his core growing slightly larger. For now he had been able to simply ignore the consequences of grappling directly against Devick’s image, but he couldn’t allow that to last forever. The individual herself had been neutralized, but that didn’t mean the horror she unleashed would behave long term.

Unless it was tempted and harnessed. The Alchemist snapped his fingers. Nether Rituals came to life all along the Nether-touched portion of Yggdrasil’s trunk. All those small details spun together… and snapped into place at the core binding in the canopy.

Devick’s lingering corruption felt his trap close around it and shivered in something like pleasure.

Congratulations! Your Skill Darkness Withers the Horizon and the Waiting Carrion Grins (T) has evolved into Insatiable Deviation Promises Doom (DD)! Skill Levels will be maintained.

Congratulations! You have incorporated a Second Deviation Rarity into your Skills! Muse’s Reverie +1!

“I’ll consume you,” The horror waiting in the branches of the World Tree whispered. It tried to move, but the thorns of the Nether pathway bound it in place; its rage shook the leaves, adding an aggressive note to the rustling. All along the thick Nether vein running up through Yggdrasil, her madness flourished. Bright purple and orange flowers bulbed and bloomed and began rotting in rapid succession. Compared to the trunk lined with history and stories, that stretch became a symbol of overindulgence, of self-destructive excess.

“Someday,” Randidly agreed easily. Her aggression became a part of him. Or rather, it was always a part of him. He accepted it and gave it its place within him and his image and suddenly he felt a whole new surge of power running through him. His eyes went to Fiero. “But not yet.”

Congratulations! Your Skill Dawn Opens the Sky and Reality Stirs (T) has evolved into Genesis Opens a Thousand Doors and Baptizes All Comers (GD)! Skill Level will be maintained.

Randidly’s spear lashed forward, carrying with it the power of his vessel, the howling prophecies of Devick’s madness, the accumulation of significance that began when he first learned the Golden Roots of Yggdrasil almost thirty years ago. No Skill was more instrumental to his growth, no aspect of him was more honed than this.

When the attacks met, the ground beneath their feet vanished, entirely obliterated. The clouds vanished, driven by fear and self-preservation toward the edges of the horizon. Spatial tears danced around their bodies. The secondary shockwave arrived, the ground further away seething and fracturing due to the force of the meeting.

Slowly, however, Randidly pushed Acri forward. Within his chest, he felt three notes all perfecting themselves: the Pinnacle, his own variant Ghosthound’s Deviation, and now even Devick’s Deviation. His Soulspace sang as he kept himself just back from reaching the Pinnacle, slowly perfecting his truth. Randidly Ghosthound leaned back and laughed.

Their clash involved powers he at one point couldn’t fathom. Against a being who had simply glanced at him and shattered his Class. And now…

Now, Yggdrasil’s roots drank down Fiero’s power like a child trying soda for the first time.

Congratulations! Your Skill The World Tree Sips From Every Realm (T) has become the World Tree Guzzles Even Truth (GD)! Skill Level will be maintained.

Congratulations! Your Skill The World Tree Guzzles Even Truth (GD) has grown to Level 1125!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill The World Tree Guzzles Even Truth (GD) has grown to Level 1299!