Around Randidly’s body, the tugging of significance grew stronger as they fell deeper out of the Nexus web and into the Abyss below. The conjured reality of the Samsara was almost impressively genuine. Velio twisted his grip on the sword running Randidly through and drew another grunt out of him. Velio’s image used the wound to sink into Randidly’s body, but Yggdrasil had developed quickly enough it could quash and sup on all these interlopers.

Yet despite the physical trouble, Randidly’s main focus was on those impending corkscrews.

His emerald eyes flashed. In a way, it was a race-- his senses moved much more quickly than the memory attack, stretching out and glimpsing the wider structure of the Samsara through the gap. Even with just a few seconds, he began to see the way the Eternity used replicating waves in order to keep him tracked in here. Although the edges shown to him within the memory were resilient in the face of his attacks, these inside mechanisms were not.

He could see the weaknesses from here and Randidly finally felt a bit of raw bloodthirst, thinking what he would be able to do with his newfound Grand Fate, should he sink his teeth into the inside.

Congratulations! Your Grand Fate Temporal Thaumaturgy Mends Eternity has grown to Level 392!

Still, I cannot believe what I’m seeing here. Laplace might be an ugly monster, but these interior patterns… This is beyond anything I’ve ever seen before. Even the significance flows used by Deganawidah are child’s play compared to this. Randidly took a breath to quiet his growing worries. I can’t see the load-bearing functions at all.

The point of the first corkscrew neared, aiming to sink into Randidly’s subconscious and brutalize his sense of self. He observed them, continually dealing with the image waves both trying to break his Soulspace and half and the weaker reverberations bursting their way from Velio’s blade. He looked, he felt his Grand Fate advancing, and they fell.

Everything moved too quickly for him to be comfortable. Randidly Ghosthound had a long experience of handling crises, but these were starting to get to him.

One fact he didn’t miss was the response from the Samsara in regards to the situation between himself and Velio. Again, it wavered. Partially it wanted to hum in pleasure as it did earlier, as they spiked down through the spine, but also it kept spitting. Randidly retreated from Velio, technically true. But because Velio’s weapon had been shoved through Randidly’s innards, he dragged the bastard afterward just as quickly.

Velio flailed and struggled a bit more, drawing Randidly’s attention back to the physical altercation. Apparently the bastard had noticed his image alone wouldn’t be enough, so he released the grip on the saber with one hand and reached for Randidly’s throat. Randidly didn’t even react as the hand closed around his windpipe and began to squeeze; it wasn’t very dignified, but an attack like this was entirely worthless as a method of killing him.

While Randidly’s eyes began to bulge slightly from strangulation, they hurtled downward into darkness. The Nether content in the air increased, which allowed Randidly to spoil more and more significance through his form and began to purify it with the raging Truths.

They kept just ahead of the memory attacks. Randidly prepared himself as best he could.

“You transgressing scum,” Velio cursed and aimed a head butt at Randidly. Acri went flexible, coiling into a spring to catch the forehead of the man and rebound it backward. “You cannot win in a fair fight, so you intend on dragging me down with you to hell?!?”

“You ambushed me while I was training,” Randidly couldn’t help but roll his eyes at this conception of fair. Then he ignored Velio, even as be began to use his heavy fists to pound at his body. Because above him, those corkscrews had arrived.

The Samsara creaked and roiled. But the memories spun down with liquid smoothness, aiming to drill into his body. As they grew closer, Randidly could feel them. The horror and dullness they contained, to obliterate his sense of consciousness and cause him to be completely lost in these memories. To fight against them, Randidly wove together his Nether and his Aether, centered around Yggdrasil.

Those deadly points spun toward him, but Randidly followed his instincts. He moved the ‘seed’ of Yggdrasil from which the branches spread upward and the roots spread downward. The circular source of possibilities condensed back as a sphere. The font of potential settled at the middle of the World Tree, the transition point between roots and branches. All the weak and mild Nether he had managed to convert flowed into that point, spreading down into the roots until the tree was the mirror image of itself, the golden and emerald above and the grey and shadow thorns below.

Randidly wove a Nether Ritual and moved image and significance to meet the memories. Velio was screaming and howling as they fell deeper and deeper down the spine. Ignoring the man completely, Randidly poured all of his focus into the ritual.

He almost couldn’t believe when the Ritual shattered to pieces on contact. Those memories spiraled forward and penetrated into his body without slowing down at all. Aether and Nether moved to stop the memories from hitting his psyche, but they weren’t enough; the real power of the Samsara was how it had hollowed out Randidly’s Vessel when it brought him here.

All that he had been saddled with were his riotous Truths. Nothing else came close to rivaling the potency of these forged barbs of memory.

Obviously, Randidly’s first instinct was to thrust these rising Truths in front of the invasion. And in a rare show of caution and intelligence, Randidly did not do so. His instincts assured him that choice would end only one way. His entire being would be split in twain by the released pressure.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Which left-

Sorry, mysterious benefactor. You use the tools you have, not the ones you wish for. Randidly thought as he shifted Pangu’s Asymptote from its place within his chest. Without the presence of a fully developed Nether Core to support, he couldn’t do much with the Aspect anyway. He angled the mirror and met the first corkscrew directly. There was a horrific shrieking that frothed his bone marrow, but Randidly diverted the first attack. He shifted and knocked away the second, the third, and-

Crack!

Randidly winced as the fourth impact caused a small imperfection to snap into existence on the mirror. Velio landed a massive blow against his nose that he hardly noticed. Instead, he steeled himself and continued to batter away the last few corkscrews with Pangu’s Asymptote. Each strike created a few silent flaws that spread outward. He was a child, walking out onto the thin ice of a frozen lake. As more memory corkscrews rotated toward him, Randidly wondered whether an Aspect could be broken.

And then, with the last of those vicious drills of memory, he realized it could.

The mirror came to pieces in his inner world. Flat pieces of glass tumbled in the rumbling horrorscape above his near-meltdown Soulspace. Randidly felt a tremor, even through the curious separation of the Samsara-- outside of these memories, his Nether Core began to go through some dangerous wobblings. Without the other world in the reflection to stabilize his advanced Nether Core, everything began to fall to pieces.

He would have some time due to the warping temporal effect of the Samsara, but not much. He needed to stabilize his Nether Core. And the obvious answer to do that-

“If I am to die, I will do it on my own terms!” Velio shouted. He genuinely took Randidly by surprise when he sucked his image into his body and then allowed the image to detonate, sacrificing himself in a blaze of blood and Aether.

Randidly winced as he was knocked away, but also he felt the Samsara rumbling.

Randidly Ghosthound fled in the face of Velio Dunn.

Fled from being covered in his blood, more like, Randidly scowled, but this time he didn’t stand idle as the Samsara tightened and tried to push him into the next memory. His Grand Fate flexed. He had seen enough over these past few transitions and the corkscrew attacks to know the weak spots. As his ability to meet and handle temporal disturbances had improved, he could clench that new muscle like the heavy fist of Sulfur.

The waves above shifted. Randidly cracked the walls open like a chicken egg.

Congratulations! Your Grand Fate Temporal Thaumaturgy Mends Eternity has grown to Level 405!

…

Congratulations! Your Grand Fate Temporal Thaumaturgy Mends Eternity has grown to Level 500! The range of your temporal abilities has greatly increased! Your influence has been strengthened. The fabric of time you heal will be slightly more resilient in the future! The effect is miniscule, but you have earned the goodwill of Time itself!

Randidly tumbled out into a seething storm of patterns, still complex and glittering as they attempted to constrict around the ‘location’ he had just left. The world became warped around him, all half-impressions and the esoteric underpinnings of existence laid bare. He could see through to the bones of the Eternity. Triumph bubbled in his gut.

Simultaneously, he felt a spike of panic, considering the rapidly declining situation of both his Soulspace and his Nether Core. The destabilizations continued. He felt a constant agony, a part of his attention now being spent holding his Vessel together. He didn’t even want to know the situation in his actual body.

At the very least, his Grand Fate improved even more quickly, with all this information available. Randidly reached out and touched the Samsara, causing visible distortions in its mechanisms, even if the functions weren’t yet threatened.

Congratulations! Your Grand Fate Temporal Thaumaturgy Mends Eternity has grown to Level 602!

New, unfamiliar patterns activated in the Samsara as though it sensed his interference. Before Randidly could make any headway in the chaotic soup, a bubble formed around him. A split second too late, he saw similar restrictions now rushing to surround himself.

These damn patterns…!

If nothing else, the Alchemist in him was eminently practical. It looked around with calculating eyes and then turned its focus to the shattered pieces of Pangu’s Asymptote that floated inside of his body. It considered these new tools, broken as they were, and considered what sort of miracle it could create with them.

The Aspect had separated into two forms: the bare ‘frame’ and the floating shards of ‘glass’ that had separated from the frame due to fractures. As they tumbled end over end, Randidly saw that both were covered in strange patterns-

Randidly stilled. His eyes narrowed. Despite the opportunity to study and damage the Samsara around him that was rapidly vanishing, he focused on the remnants of the Aspect. The glass shards had various snippets of Nether Rituals imprinted upon them, glittering and mysterious. From just a look, Randidly could tell they helped create the asymptote portion of the Aspect that connected and separated two infinitely close worlds.

But this structure… Randidly burned in indignation. He knew from the beginning that Pangu’s assistance wasn’t for free. From the upper-most portion of Pine’s body, the mysterious Eternity had its fingers deep into the Nexus. It copied and stole the dead.

Yet what Randidly didn’t expect… was for the inspired patterns on his Aspect to match the other energy he had sensed in the Samsara. Even Laplace had been given a nudge from Pangu.

Even that, Randidly perhaps could have accepted. He would have gritted his teeth, told himself not to be distracted from the current threats arrayed against him, and instead focused on breaking out of the Samsara. Yet the betrayals didn’t end there. Because hidden underneath the ‘glass’ portions, against the base frame of the Aspect, there was a pattern of a different nature.

It only took him a few The glass created the Asymptote. The frame captured all the details of Randidly’s Soulspace, aimed at copying and duplicating his Truths. It was an observational pattern of extreme specificity. Such that even though he was unfamiliar with the patterns, Randidly could understand how they worked.

“What the hell are you doing with our Truths, Pangu?” Randidly stilled, his emotional sea taken from him but the raw feelings still chilling his blood and freezing his heartbeat.

He fought against an Eternity, the most dangerous invader the Nexus had ever faced. And another Eternity observed, waiting to see the Truths powerful enough to overcome this assault.

Simultaneously, Randidly had destabilized his his Nether Core by destroying Pangu’s Aspect and had riled up his Truths toward a grand miracle, while accidentally sealing them off by creating an unrelated Grand Fate.

Shit. Randidly pressed his lips and eyes together.

For the first time in a long time… he had no idea how to advance through this situation.