Note to self, an Eternity shouldn’t be underestimated, Randidly’s eyes blazed as he dug his teeth into his lip to focus. Fat drops of blood splashed onto the ground from the hole in his ribcage. He felt the pressure in his chest as his heart was tugged out of its resting place. Meanwhile, the rampant heat from Yggdrasil and the Songstress of Absence had become an inferno.

Each individual activity required so much of his focus that he could barely manage them all. Images, emotion, Nether Core, concepts regarding his Grand Fate and Penance… Laplace hadn’t missed that vulnerability. And what was the most galling about the whole situation was that he had been bested by this shit.

Meanwhile, his two images being delayed right before the Pinnacle were incensed; they demanded the capability to reach the Pinnacle and deal with this sudden threat. Randidly quieted their complaints, ignoring the pain. His hands snapped up and grasped the tongue that had taken him by surprise. He squeezed, intending to tear his way through the thick strands of muscle. Sticky saliva oozed up between his fingers. Even more dangerously, the touch once more exposed him to the horrible pulses of time. His muscles vibrated with the powerful resonance, beginning to tear underneath the strain.

Damnit, damnit, damnit! Randidly’s eyes blazed. His whole body shuddered. For the first time since he had remained his Stat anchors, he felt directly overmatched. He considered his options. Setting aside the problem with condensing a Penance, his Nether Core continued to purify and produce vast quantities of significance. If he corralled that and cut through the tongue-

Randidly’s thoughts might have been scattered by the wound, but his images did not lose track of their roles. Yggdrasil and the Songstress endured and shredded the temporal waves, as per their preference, while the Dread Homunculus stepped up again and threw its body forward to buy more time. Its hip bone was pulped by the impact. But despite its best efforts, the four final tomes were now only a short distance away from upsetting the equilibrium of those images.

And still, Randidly had a tongue wrapped around his heart.

The Dread Homunculus ignored its wounds and forced itself back to a standing position. If nothing else, its stubbornness kept pulling it back to its feet. That and the beacon-bright spark of emotion taken from Shal animated it, despite the damage it had suffered. The light wrapped around the image’s shoulders and urged it forward.

The tongue unleashed a temporal distortion through Randidly’s hand and then pulled.

Randidly’s gut reaction was to dig in his heels. Every muscle in his body quivered, ready to resist this foreign invasion to his last drop of blood. A deep, instinctual part of him growled in the face of these threats. He considered each individual problem, dissecting the methods he could use to smash apart his opposition.

Then he forced himself to relax. The Alchemist in him snorted and reeled in his wild emotions. Part of advancing… is letting go of the past. Possessing sufficient self-awareness to avoid the same mistakes you made previously.

His eyes dropped to his chest. He released the grip with his hands, which meant that his heart was wrenched out of his chest cavity, gushing blood out of its torn ventricles. The pain was horrendous, but Randidly just pressed his lips together. Because… you don’t matter at all, do you? Just a distraction.

The raw confession was enough for that pumping, gleaming muscle to fade and vanish from the tongue of the Eternity. The blood remained on the ground, but the wound passed like a strange dream: Randidly had already given up his body. It hurt to so bluntly admit it, but that heart didn’t matter to his wellbeing. Instead, he had to deal with the group of four tomes. His eyes fixed on the crooked silhouette of the Dread Homunculus, the hordes of the dead milling around the image’s ankles. Yggdrasil?

Time to begin the counter-attack.

Rustling slightly, the canopy of Yggdrasil parted and allowed a bit of the universe’s original light to seep out. A nova of golden light suffused the surrounding area. Randidly felt his own exhaustion vanish under that warm-honey illumination, but also knew that the temporal waves of Laplace were enduring a much less friendly pressure.

The birth of a new world inevitably meant another would be shattered by the violent birth.

A thick golden root wiggled out and connected to the wounded form of the Dread Homunculus. The healing energy flowed without ceasing, circling through the limbs and helping the broken flesh of the image to knit together. A little bit of the integrity returned to its body, even while its face remained twisted in that vicious smirk.

Perhaps with only five minutes, maybe even two, the Dread Homunculus would have returned to its full and glorious form, reinvented and with the clarity of its true emotional affect. Randidly Ghosthound didn’t currently have that sort of time.

So after only a single short second, for the most grievous of the yawning wounds to be forced closed across its streamlined body, the image gestured imperiously to the surrounding space. Those damned that still lingered in the shredded remnants of his Cloak of a Thousand Lightless Horizons shivered and lifted from the ground. They flowed in accordance with its will.

The integrity of the cloak had been obliterated, but that only intensified the unwillingness of the dead in the face of this outside threat. They might have been torn by the vicious attack from the temporal waves, but the dead were tireless, broken specters. A little damage now would not slow their charge. All that he provided was the pattern, and then the dead wove themselves back together into a fluttering grey cloak, all cloying mist and creeping dread.

With the convoy of tomes fluttering their pages forward, with the final barrier to Pine waiting just beyond the back of the Dread Homunculus, Randidly’s pupils dilated. His experience began to mutate, his sharp senses feeding him too many details about the surrounding space. His body ached and he tried to relax and allow a little more of the healing to occur.

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In front of him, a bold and vindictive silhouette prowled. He observed the image he had relied upon so long to improve and become the sort of monster that could fight against the horrors of the Nexus, always looming above. Randidly focused on that image and how it could reach the Pinnacle.

The difficult part of the translation was the emotional Affect. The Dread Homunculus, the Grim Chimera before it, and the Grey Creature before that, were not creatures of emotion. The particular horror had been born of necessity, of the painful experiments of the Creature to create its own sort of Miracle. And Yystrix had succeeded; Randidly’s current existence was proof of that. With naught but mundane materials, she had forged a vessel. But what did that success mean for him? The thread of Truth he could follow to the Pinnacle needed to be concrete.

How did the Dread Homunculus feel about what it had become?

Before he could even begin to answer the question, the books arrived, pages aflutter. This time, the Dread Homunculus raised its left arm and made a fist. Rather than deflecting and defending, it acted; that was how it had thrived thus far. The stormy cloak howled with a thousand voices. Strands of the deads' unwillingness flowed into that fist.

As it threw the punch, the protrusions on the left arm began to radiate intense light. Randidly felt the stirring of Helen’s significance in the limb, all spite and violence. The dead roared their approval. The absorbed dominance of time was unleashed in a focused blast, flooding up through the fist.

The temporal waves had reached a fever pitch, creating a visible maelstrom of power.

The knuckles met the edge of that convoy of tomes and splintered. The light sputtered and winked out of existence. Randidly felt a piercing sense of alarm from Sulfur as the front part of the arm shattered and exploded underneath the combined force. The Dread Homunculus released a horrified hiss as its body was kicked a short distance backward-

And rebounded off the slightly elastic final barrier before Pine.

Randidly felt his consciousness beginning to disassociate from the pains of his body. Part of it was the abandonment of his reality, but the other half of it was the increasing scope of his mental capabilities. So many processes had separated and operated in parallel lines with each other. Thoughts related to igniting and fueling his various images with emotional force were cordoned off, while another part of his focus managed his Nether Core. A third part helped stabilize the Dread Homunculus through the wound to Sulfur, guiding the seething golden heat that Yggdrasil could spare into the worst of the wounds.

Yet a final part simply watched. That part of Randidly examined the Dread Homunculus with cold and unshaken eyes. It continued to observe and seek the Path forward. Why do you pour out so much effort? What are you trying to accomplish?

And… how will it feel if you begin to believe you will fail?

With the powerful physical rebound from the impact, Sulfur pulled kinetic energy from its marrow and rapidly began to reform the left arm. Liquid energy became clay from the left elbow, weaving back into an approximation of the forearm. Yggdrasil grew more firm in its roots and branches, forcing back the tome it endured and sparing more energy to assist in the healing process. The Dread Homunculus had a half dozen few energies sliding into its form as it stumbled forward after rebounding from the final barrier.

Almost interrupting her own successful image refinement, the Songstress of Absence unleashed a screeching aria of hate as the four tomes pressed forward. When they arrived before the Dread Homunculus before it could fully recover, her volume rose until she seemed possessed. The wounded Dread Homunculus barely had time to raise its gaze when the temporal whirlpool plowed into the image. More of the dead and damned leaked out through the tattered remnants of the Cloak of a Thousand Lightless Horizons.

What will you do? That solemn part of Randidly asked his final image, searching for its own Path to the Pinnacle. When painful collisions are unavoidable, when you are pushed to your limits… How do you feel?

The orbiting moons around the books began to glow. Through the haze of shattered space and liquid time, Randidly could see the looming form of Laplace slithering closer behind its powerful attack.

Are rigid? Will you break?

The Dread Homunculus released a low groan and slashed with his right hand. The claws sank for a second into the dangerous temporal momentum but were then wrenched and twisted until the digits snapped right off. The stumps spat out blood, but most of the small discharge was lost when the convoy trundled forward and smashed into the Dread Homunculus’s chest. For the second time, the image was catapulted against the slightly elastic barrier.

Are you supple? Will you bend out of your original shape?

To Randidly’s right, from the battlefield between Yggdrasil and the first tome, the sound of fluttering pages became increasingly loud. But as frantic as the temporal book became, it could not force its way past the World Tree. The emerald canopy rustled, unleashing a deafening pulse of noise that suppressed the book. More and more golden veins of energy snaked outward, struggling to assist the Dread Homunculus-

The Songstress of Absence found a pure note, perfectly exemplifying her annihilating music. She cut and shredded all the waves of temporal force in front of her. Even the pause maintained by the Pantheon shuddered underneath that power. A few crescent slices flicked sideways, passing out of the space of her tome, and sideswiping the convoy.

The attack barely made a dent in the maelstrom of the central attack. But ‘barely’ was enough space for a small flaw in the whirling temporal vortex to spin in the Dread Homunculus’s direction and give it just a split moment to suck in a breath.

Marginally, it healed. A small amount of muscle and detail wriggled back into black.

Then the convoy crunched into its chest, temporal waves squeezing the image from one side while Pine’s barrier unwillingly gave ground on the other. Randidly’s thoughts quivered and then he was there, his vessel and the Dread Homunculus superimposed, the last defense before Laplace could infect the entire Nexus with its horrible world-state image.

His body was the spine of this defensive effort.

That separate observational part of Randidly abruptly found itself as the Dread Homunculus, smirking as the image, filled with a wild glee that didn’t seem to match the current situation at all. Yet he felt it bubbling in his chest. It was an answer to the question he had been repeatedly asking, but one that didn’t make much sense.

What do I feel? Randidly raised his head and laughed, even as the vice tightened around him. The Dread Homunculus image shivered and shifted. The small marble of stubbornness that he had taken from Shal had been pressured and pressured until it gleamed like a blazing, incendiary diamond.

He felt unwilling. He felt wronged. He felt vindictive. He felt challenged.

The Dread Homunculus opened his mouth and gulped down the bead of light he had received from Shal. His emotions began to sing as he prepared to force the issue of creating a Grand Fate.

I feel like I just need to Advance. The crooked smile had been drawn in large strokes across his face. The rest will work itself out.