Devick burned. It wasn’t necessarily painful, but she was very aware that their would be lingering damage.

But in that heat, she also found power.

The essence of her soul had become fire. Each of her thoughts and emotions just existed for a split second before it became further fuel for the inferno rampaging through her body. The flames rose higher and higher, dancing past the edges of her skin, emotional intensity and the raw essence of shape turned into incandescent plasma. The specter of Malice floated and shimmered in that manifestation, being forged as Devick discovered this genuine Path forward for her image.

The flames that consumed her were varied. Some were the dark color of rust, some were pitch black, others were pure white. Devick gradually focused her attention toward the most pure and hottest flames, finding the materials necessary to burn away the more stubbornly persistent parts of herself that didn’t waver, no matter how hot the flames of her image had become.

Malice lived and breathed in the furnace of Perdition, slowly being refined. The hare’s ears lengthened, the muscles on its body developed, and more and more bleak emotions concentrated in that left hand. The process echoed out through this perfectly amplifying space until it bounced off the far wall, landing on her again and doubling the benefit.

“Is this warm feeling pride? Huhuh, who knew that guiding a friend toward the Pinnacle would be so fulfilling.” The current form of the shapeshifting spirit had become toddler-sized, walking around Devick with an admiring gaze. But from the increasing pudginess of her cheeks, she approached another point of loud rupture and shift to a new form. Yet the longer that the shapeshifter looked at Devick, the more she hesitated. “Ahem… but you know, you burn away more and more of yourself in this way. Your image is becoming pure, but…”

“Haaaah… it seems my methods of teaching are too profound for you to handle. You have turned them into the crucible of destruction.”

“Are you still insisting on continuing this self-immolation? Your personality is warping.”

Devick didn’t blink. She didn’t move. She felt surprisingly calm. For the first time in recent memory, the wild emotional rollercoaster of her everyday existence had evened out. She poured more and more of herself into the radiant flames. Her awareness dribbled and oozed down her bubbling psyche. She had found a Path. She felt herself advancing. Malice grew stronger and more ominous, mutating in the shadowless baptism of these flames.

She wondered how much she had narrowed the gap between herself and Randidly. Her fingers twitched, but she urged herself to be patient.

Shit, really, I’m practicing patience now, Devick thought, but a split second later the thought popped and vanished. The wry humor followed another second later, until finally, even her bitterness went too. All that remained was purpose.

“Girl n-now now, be reasonable. Do not burn away your memories… I have some experience with this. Bad experiences. Without memories, the valuable connections cannot be grasped-”

“If its me,” Devick didn’t recognize her own voice, papery and fragile as the air passed through her lips. She could barely whisper; the flames must have begun to eat into her physical form. A few little bursts of pleasure manifested in her heart, before the flames took those too. Her lips stretched, slowly carving a smile across her face. “If it’s with this hand…”

Devick raised her left hand. It had become a twisted black claw, all obsidian and charcoal, all imperfections burned away to leave only the sinister fulcrums of inevitability. “As long as I reach, I can grasp anything.”

“Impossible. In the Nexus-”

Devick cackled, more and more joy feeding into a bright golden flame that rose in her image, hotter and more annihilating than any that came before it. Gradually, those stubborn parts of herself that had thus far resisted the inferno began to soften as the joyous flame ballooned outward. “I am a Deviation. What is impossible for others is not necessarily so for me.”

The shapeshifting spirit attempted to respond, but it had reached that point in its maturity. Its body had been overfilled and it popped. Devick laughed and laughed at the perfect timing, the golden flames rising higher and higher, until it rivaled the rust-colored madness in her, the black hatred, and the white devotion.

Devick’s eyes shifted to unseeing as a cardinal chick hopped out of the remnants of the small girl. It regarded her with not a little fear as Devick rushed upward toward her Pinnacle.

*****

Randidly felt a sudden wave of trepidation as the surging force of Laplace arrived before him, furious from being tricked with the Alchemist’s Passport. The source was unexpected: there was a flaw in his Nether Core, from the half formed shape of his Penance. It had developed to the point that it was a hitch in the refinement of his significance, even before the Penance was condensed.

What the hell did I miss? His mind spun, but he turned up no obvious answers.

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Facing down an Eternity, it was a bad time to feel so ill-prepared.

But Laplace was already in motion, so Randidly didn’t have that much time to consider. He flared his images, aiming for a different strategy. Besides, he felt resonance building in his chest between his Insatiable Deviation Promises Doom and the originator of that Deviation Rarity. He wasn’t sure what Devick was experiencing, but if she could come across her own Truth and it was compatible with him…

His Penance had its foundations shaken, but his Grand Fate grew increasingly solid.

Then Laplace towered in front of him, its large and greedy had snatching at Randidly, ripping right through the temporal fabric with the attack.

Randidly made to release a breath but forgot his lack of physicality. So he just had a moment of preternatural stillness before he exploded into motion. Acri slashed sideways, interposing itself with the massive hand. The spear shaft hummed slightly as it moved through the broken chunks of space and time, but still blocked the attack.

The already broken ground beneath their feet ruptured; the two seemed doomed to fight into a deepening crater right in front of the final barrier of Pine’s corpse.

Upon physical contact, Randidly had to once more endure the horrifying pressure of stored time. Because the fabric of time had become so distorted in the area, even the one moment of prolonged connection allowed all that horrifying pressure to march down into his body. His muscles screamed and wiggled, his vessel once again pushed almost to the limits of his endurance from a brush. Only after these few clashes did Randidly realize how horrifying an entity an Eternity was.

But Laplace wasn’t the only monster currently in residence in the Nexus. And while the hand met his spear, Laplace ceased in its motion.

The momentum of the dead riding Randidly’s cloak had been expended, but he still felt the dreadful well of emotion they had imparted to him. So Randidly squared his shoulders and drew deeply from that power. He grimaced out a hint of amusement, saying a silent prayer for the shattered remnants of the ground in this place. Ghosthound’s Cloak of a Thousand LIghtless Horizons. Siren’s Dirge of Bottomless Taking. The First Tree Suffers Only Fealty.

Those few pathetic remnants of broken pillars and shelving exploded as a seemingly endless wave of tree roots sprung out of the ground. Not only did the tree roots sparkle with glimmers of lively gold, but they also burned with spectral fire from his abundant Nether. And while the roots rose from the ground, they also pried open the small flaws of the layered significance that maintained the workshop. A horrific whooshing sound rose from a squeal to a roar as the space began to collapse back into the misty expanse that covered the rest of Pine’s corpse.

And from the darkness of the broken structure, a second set of shadow roots emerged, howling with the craving of the deceased. They were long fingers forged from shards of darkness and hunger.

Randidly pushed and smashed with his spear, breaking the extended moment of contact. He wanted to throw the Eternity back, but again he underestimated its oppressive presence. At most, he managed to halt the opposition’s momentum and then take a few steps back, creating some space.

Well, that will need to do.

Laplace howled and pounced forward with more quickness than Randidly would have given it credit for, but by then the roots arrived, chewing down from above and below, teeth of craving and life respectively. They closed and bit on their target.

Fueled by the powerful emotions of the dead, Randidly pinned Laplace in place. His three images worked in perfect concert. Each emotional affect was a honed blade cutting through the dense significance of the foe and anchoring its body in place. Randidly then focused his attention on the clock hand image he had prepared. Once more, that image settled along the blade of Acri. He took a single step, arriving right in front of the Eternity-

Laplace the Fickle Crossroads of Time heaved its massive and bloated body, held between two powerful manifestations of Randidly’s image, perhaps the two most powerful he had ever managed. And the teeth tore underneath the raw pressure it wielded. In a split second, Laplace shredded the top teeth and even brutalized the manifestations of Yggdrasil. That horrifying resonance developed from all the time it had lived was almost unstoppable.

Almost.

Randidly’s Nether Core spun, faster and faster. He spat the words out while he leveled his spear. “The First Authority: Seize.”

The impact of the Authority slamming into the Eternity ruptured something in his projected body as his Nether Core heaved and sputtered— his lips parted and blood spewed out over Laplace’s face. But Randidly Ghosthound had thrown too many thrusts in too many impossible situations to let that distract him. He completed the motion, while Laplace remained pinned down by spending both the momentum of the dead and all the significance of his Nether Core.

Randidly shoved his spear into Laplace’s left eye. He released the image fragment and an ornate black wicker second hand appeared on the eye. After a moment of trembling stillness, it began to tick in constant motion.

As Randidly kicked off and created some more space, Laplace released a horrifying screech that transcended sound. Waves of distorted images exploded out with the noise. The constant swirl of infectious time that Laplace had maintained began to contract and writhe with instability. It flopped around him, still destructive but now lopsided. Each rotation of that force saw its area contract.

Randidly warily took a step back, unsure of how effective a blow it had ended up being. But he felt the back of his right heel sink into a sticky rind. A glance over his shoulder confirmed that the air had begun to ripple more constantly: despite the series of blows he had landed against the Eternity, he had lost ground and ended up pressed against Pine’s final threshold.

He couldn’t fall back any further, not at least while the Eternity still remained so potent.

Laplace’s agonized keening continued for several seconds. The air rang with pain and rage. The temporal fabric tore in a wider and wider area around them, adding a strange dreamlike quality to their confrontation. The scream might have only been a few seconds, but it seemed to contain hours of pressure. Or perhaps that horrifying breadth of its existence began to leak out past its skin.

However, Randidly’s expression became solemn. Gradually, its pained screech tapered off. The left eye had a ticking second hand, its infectious image remained hobbled by the addition. Yet with the temporal fabric unwinding further and further away, it seemed to find a balance with itself.

And then Laplace looked at Randidly, favoring the black clock face of its right eye. He could see a decision in its expression. Sure, it had been annoyed before, had moved its powers against him, but it hadn’t ever really looked at him. It was an Eternity, and he was just an individual within the Nexus that hadn’t yet even reached the Pinnacle. It had knocked him aside and moved on to more pressing business.

No longer.

Randidly licked some of the remnant blood off his tongue and spat it to the side. Even now, his Nether Core had only begun to regain its momentum. The resonance of his Truths began to accumulate into a knot of tension in his chest. “So, looks like you are finally taking me seriously. How. Fun.”