Don Beigon felt like he was melting, so hot were the flames of fury and panic inside of his head. His thoughts chased and bit each other, scrambling to be the first he addressed. All his careful control was swept away by this intoxicating surety; what happened in front of him now was injustice.

And it would not be allowed.

The Don’s eyes bored into the back of the Actus Suprem as she walked up the stairwell to the Pinnacle. Finally, a thought made its way through the chaotic jumble and reached his tongue. “You… you cannot be serious! She bears more sins than any other individual in the Nexus! She delights in misery and pain!”

“Incorrect.” The corpse sniffed and turned to regard him. It offered him an almost indulgent smile. “Think back to your journey on the Path to the Pinnacle. Did she inflict any harm upon the guardians of this place? Or were you constantly the instigator of violence? I do not think the rules of this place are very difficult to comprehend.”

“Wha-” The Don’s mind went blank at the sarcastic remark. Perhaps it was only the actions on the Path to the Pinnacle that determined the outcome of this final test? All her sins in the wider Nexus were forgiven? Yet as he considered those options, his rage bubbled and frothed even more quickly. “So you mean to say… you would reward her for tagging along with the expedition, not lifting a finger?”

“Correct,” The corpse smiled at this, but the expression looked stiff and sinister.

“Hah…. Hahaha…. Hahahahahahah!” The Don trembled. The blood pounded in his ears, his heartbeat and the ponderous steps of his anger synchronizing into one thunderous knock. For several seconds he hunched over and allowed his disbelieving laughter to tumble out of him. Then he straightened, his eyes bright. He gripped the handles of his wheelchair, feeling the bamboo beginning to crack. “This is indeed… not what I expected to hear from you. Actus Suprem Devick was rewarded… because she did not earn the benefit with her actions? Because she hadn’t done anything to deserve it? Compared to reality, the cruelties of my Path are miniscule.”

The corpse regarded him with distaste. “Do not throw my own words against me. Clarity and specificity are qualities worth pursuing. This woman did not cross certain lines during her time on the Path to the Pinnacle, and because of that-”

“It’s exactly this attitude,” The Don seethed. His veins seemed to be on fire. He felt the thunder and lightning merging more and more closely with his own image; the Grand Fate had almost been totally assimilated by him now. Yet, still trembling, he attacked first with words. “This is the great truth about the world that is impossible for you disinterested arbiters to understand. That there are two types of people. Those who must sweat and toil and sacrifice to advance, and this group is judged and punished for working hard to get anywhere. And then there are those born with a natural advantage, whose every stumble is applauded and who always will land on their feet, because the world is willing to shift itself to accommodate them. Do you not see how the winners are already chosen? And you expect me to simply accept your regurgitated shit?!”

His fingers curled, static, sparking between his fingers. “How do you think it feels, to know your efforts matter less than someone else’s pedigree? That those in power shape the world to reward the simple act of possessing power, while devaluing effort? To know you will never be enough-- a decision was made at my birth and now I’m just suffering under it.”

The corpse remained unswayed. “You killed your way through the Path to the Pinnacle. To not blame the situation for the sins you have committed.”

“You made me choose between remaining forever locked out of the chambers of power or killing my way forward.” Don Beigon growled. He barred his teeth. “I do not regret taking the only opportunity given to me. For supporting your fucked up establishment, they deserved to die.

“She found another way,” The corpse jerked her thumb over her shoulder to indicate the departed Actus Suprem. “You’ll find that cleverness and timing can do a lot to improve your life.”

Don Beigon felt as though all the veins in his upper body tensed and shuddered at her words. His hands clenched, the arms of his wheelchair snapping. Righteous fury filled his body. He sang with it. He could overcome this corpse, pry apart whatever framework animated it, and then proceed upward. Nothing could stop him, so long as he fully embraced the power in his chest.

And To finally have vengeance for his wife, any price was worth it. He became thunder and crimson serpent incarnate-

Wait, crimson serpent?

Recalculating…

Congratulations! You have experienced a lucky event! You have generated the Deviation Rarity, Don’s Deviation (DoD). Calculating effects…

Power surged through the Don’s limbs, fizzing like electric discharge and smelling of blood. The brief moment of confused clarity was washed away, heat and panic and indignation igniting all his brain cells past the point of coherence. He laughed again, loud and booming as he raised his arms and unleashed wave after wave of copper-colored lightning bolts. He became the storm of justice, to tear down this system that oppressed him and so many others.

The corpse shook her head, almost sadly. She raised a hand and cut sharply. A wave of an overwhelming image chopped down and severed all the Don’s lightning bolts. As his eyes widened, he felt a burning sensation in his chest. He looked down to find the chop had continued; his body had been severed at his sternum. Blood leaked out of the gaping wound more quickly than he could believe.

Before he could muster a response, the corpse moved again, thrusting a palm forward. The blow slammed against his chest and sent him tumbling back out of his cracked bamboo chair. His upper torso made a noise of wet impact as it hit the ground. All the thunder and fury rapidly drained out of his body.

Recalculating… Error!

Your Deviation Rarity has been reclassified. You have gained access to the Rarity Devick’s Deviation (DD). Effects have stabilized.

His mouth and hands twitched, trying to articulate how heavy his heart felt, how filled with bitterness he was. It shouldn’t have been like this. “You… you… this is a mistake. My Fate… I should have-”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Do you now see?” The corpse stood with jerky movements. She then tottered over to the side little chamber, leaning over him as the blood drained out of his body and his image continued to sputter. “I am not without sympathy to your point. But the environment is only half of any situation: You also had a thousand choices. Just like you complain the world has been stacked against you, you’ve trapped yourself in a mental prison of dichotomies. You covet the experience held by those at the top and constantly compare yourselves to it. A much more effective method… would be to find your own Path, not steal another’s.”

“Fuck you,” Don Beigon coughed up blood. “If it were possible to simply create your own Path-”

“You failing to possess the requisite ability to find one does not mean it is impossible,” The corpse smiled and leaned over him. “Now, hold still; that Deviation you have managed to possess… what an interesting possibility.”

*****

Randidly skin tingled. He felt the horror and shouted warnings of Nyx now, even though they were distorted into near-meaningless reverberations by a temporal. He used his energy halo vision, trying to gauge what was currently happening. Those three scaled fingers tightened on the edge of the portal and the Nexus shuddered.

The first rays of a halo large enough to smother the entire Nexus peaked out of that hole in the fabric of space.

With the damage Pine currently inflicted on space, additional huge rents in existence tore open in the surrounding area. From those edges, Randidly saw all the dangerous energies he had experienced through the Hierarchy of Burden crackling in the area: electromagnetic, light, entropy, jagged space, etc. The area became a horrible maelstrom of unstable existence. The remaining air, what hadn’t yet been swallowed by Pine, turned thin and flimsy.

Randidly’s eyes blazed; the unstable sensation felt familiar to his time in the Upper Sonara. Except instead of the memory popping, now the entire Nexus seemed on the verge of breaking to pieces. The sinuous hiss of a serpent came from the opening. Just barely, Randidly could feel the horrible eternity promised by this Laplace, the Fickle Crossroads of Time. A truth of endless nostalgia and remembering, the past repeated over and over again, changed, fixed, but only within the confines of ‘memory’.

Endless do-overs, never resulting in any advancement. On a fundamental level, Randidly and his images felt disgust for the shape seeping out through the opening.

“What the hell is this?” Randidly whispered. Significance exploded out of him in every direction, attempting to stem the destructive tide of tears that would punch a hole in the entire Nexus. Yet he needed more and more, barely keeping up with the spreading damage. And that didn’t even address this approaching threat.

“A door you opened, Randidly Ghosthound,” Elhume seemed triumphant, even with two separate forms of the Nexus’s destruction filling the sky. “An impossible possibility, because you were not content to leave the rules of this place undamaged. Usually, only those Eternities present at the founding of a new universe may exert their influence within isolated spaces. But because of a long history of Laplace’s presence here… and your particular hubris, we are able to create a miracle. What a beautiful cooperation we’ve achieved.”

The ground and sky shook and began to swirl together. Matter mattered less, warped by the approach of this Eternity. Randidly’s heart rate increased; Eternities were the Nether equivalent of an Aether Pinnacle. But whereas Aether allowed an image to briefly dominate an entire moment, an Eternity was Nether finding a solid shape for the rest of its existence.

And even though it hadn’t yet arrived, Randidly could tell that this particular shape was very old. It was a presence in the Sea of Shapes that had been sifting through universes and attempting to dominate them for a long time. In front of this Eternal shape, Randidly could feel the noise of his own truths losing their volume.

Can I fight even this? Randidly wondered.

The Dread Homunculus barred its teeth. The World Tree rustled its leaves. The Songstress of Absence opened its eye and stared at the new arrival.

There is nothing I will not fight, to protect my people. Randidly’s eyes narrowed. Although, the reactions of my Truths are so strange. Why do they shrink before an external shape…?

“Why would you endanger us like this?” Randidly asked, seeking more information.

To his surprise, Fiero opened his mouth and answered. “If I have another chance at living in the Nexus, I will not lose my mother.”

Both Randidly and Elhume gave Fiero a sharp look. Randidly’s one of horrified sympathy for Yystrix, Elhume one of bitter fury for the wife that had been pilfered from him. But Elhume shook his head and faced forward. Randidly could tell the other man attempted to revive his image, but he, too, was suppressed by this Eternity’s approach. “Temporal distortions may not be an ideal method, but you’ve left us with no choice. My son, Pine… he has fallen too far inside of himself. At this point, we are simply delaying the inevitable. But if we intervene before the method of Grand Fates becomes widespread-”

“You are fools,” Randidly blinked. “Both of you. This… none of it will be real. Just distortions-”

Randidly grimaced, unable to finish his sentence. Existence turned liquid around them. His significance attempted to add some weight to the space, but Randidly could suddenly feel the way this Eternity used the wound he had inflicted on time to circumvent him. Everything began to spiral in on itself. The shape was a World-State image, but one of a power that Randidly had difficulty judging, even as he watched it corrupt and spread right before his eyes.

His energy halo vision just saw its inky influence seeping outward, darkening and spreading without seeming to weaken.

“Did you not create reality from a memory?” Elhume said. “The first is always the most difficult event; the second is nothing to speak of.”

“You are not me,” Randidly countered. But he felt a horrified prickling on his skin when Elhume smiled immediately in response. In Pangu’s Asymptote, Nyx continued to shout warnings.

“Sure, but you are going to help us, Randidly Ghosthound. Did you ever wonder how we stabilized the method of creating Dungeons, once the Nether Kings were hunted to extinction? With a little help from Laplace. All the time distortions in the Nexus were made possible by him. You’ve been borrowing this Eternity’s power for a long, long time.” Elhume’s smile widened. “A pseudo-Hierarchy has been created, through repeated use. And now, finally, he can receive the repayment he deserves.”

From the portal came a lanky serpent’s head, covered in dirty grey hair. It forced its way through the portal and the Nexus unleashed a groan like rotten wood about to break. Randidly’s eyes flashed-- he decisively pulled back his Nether, no longer stabilizing the space.

“I will not save you from yourself,” Randidly announced.

As the Nexus began to collapse, the dirty hair shifted and revealed the face of the serpent. With handless clocks for eyes, Laplace looked at Randidly Ghosthound. Its long tongue slid out between its lips and the collapse ceased. Time had been frozen.

The ominous color of its energy halo continued to darken. More and more of its essence spilled out through the hole, an obliterating wave of its Shape forcing the Nexus around it into a different and dangerous form.

The Eternity heaved and pulled the rest of its belly-dragging body through the portal, surrounded by suspended spatial tears. Its power radiated off from its body, changing the fabric of the Nexus.

Randidly wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or horrified when next, it was Pine that released a dangerous shudder. Even the massive eclipse in the sky observed the shift and felt unease.