Chapter 2408 |
Devick took the steps upward two at a time, unwilling to remain close to either the bitter figure of the Don or the strange corpse for a moment longer than necessary. At this point, she acknowledged that speed was a more important element than grace and sophistication; she currently had no audience to impress. Plus, the more she ascended, the easier the pressure on her image became; she no longer needed to reinforce her skin with significance just to avoid being burned to a crisp.
“And now…” Devick licked her lips in anticipation. Adrenaline from surviving the previous circumstances still pounded through her veins. “What sort of prize do we get to claim at the top?”
Light filtered slowly back through the environment. She felt like she swam up from the depths of the ocean and could feel the surface approaching by the second. The steps remained sized to her legs, but Devick felt like she was leaping huge distances with each step that she took. Her footfalls were light, but they thrummed through her entire body. Revitalizing waves of image reinforcement filled her with a comfortable languid relaxation. Malice stretched, her joints popping pleasantly as any previous damage healed. And now that Devick wasn’t trying to hide her true power from Don Beigon, the Merry Bride of Perdition to expand and breathe in the reinforcing power.
Devick climbed to the Pinnacle, wondering if this would be enough to narrow the gap between herself and Randidly Ghosthound.
And if it’s not… Her eyes flashed. Where do I climb next?
What she found at the top was the familiar form of the Nether King, standing in a wide flat area. As close as she could tell, the nondescript area was some sort of tomb. There were two humanoid statues in the open area, one made of obsidian and one of ivory. A starry dome stretched overhead and Devick stared just a second too long at the celestial expanse, rapidly coming back to herself after five seconds of vertigo.
Her pulse beat rapidly in her ears and wrists, accelerated into a gallop by the intoxicating sensation of her image expanding. Malice had grown and developed immensely, she could sense, in that strange moment of falling. But she had also been entirely defenseless.
Weirdly, the fact that she hadn’t been ambushed almost annoyed her.
The Nether King, who had been standing in front of the obsidian statue, grinned at her over his shoulder as though he could read her mind. “Ah, finally present? Excellent, that will make this next part quite a bit easier. Otherwise, I would have needed to rely on some inefficient methods.”
“Taking the heritage of my people, the possibility we have so long been deprived. Ah, Devick, don’t give me that look. I mean neither you nor Randidly any harm.” The Nether King shrugged and gestured to the two statues. “Witness now, the two pillars upon which the Nexus was built. Luckily, Pine has been loosed in the Nexus; otherwise just being in this place would likely result in your annihilation. And while you are here, hehe, you strike me as someone who would appreciate a small secret. Look closely at that white pillar, you will see the reason Elhume had such difficulty holding onto his power.”
Devick frowned but did take a longer glance at the white pillar. Her curiosity practically demanded it. Whatever she expected to find was not immediately apparent; the statue was quite mundane, no tentacles or flaming tridents whatsoever. “...that’s a woman. Should that mean something to me?”
“Well, perhaps not. Let me just say that statue commemorates an image discarded, a Foregone Fate,” The Nether King hummed. “Sometimes, well-meaning inaction is even more dangerous than taking an obviously foolish action. For remaining idle opens the door for the unworthy to pervert something genuinely pure. And leave the rest of us spending four thousand years to pick up the pieces.”
Quite lost and not at all titillated by this ‘secret’, Devick nodded toward the obsidian pillar. “What about that one? You are collecting the heritage of your people, but what does that mean?”
She took a few steps closer and saw that the Nether King had been angling his body to hide his left hand, drawing slow circles in the air and siphoning off dense significance from the obsidian statue. He watched her with sharp eyes while he continued his labor. “Yes, this belongs to the Nether people. It is the entire reason I needed to enter into the Path to the Pinnacle. I do not know the particulars of how he died in the memory, but in the original timeline, Deganawidah the Thrice Drowned sacrificed himself in order to forgive the sins of the Nether Arbiter after she had spent a month being tortured by the Cult of the Savior.
“The aftermath… was not pretty. Despite his best efforts, my people were afflicted with widespread weakness and dizziness for days, opening us up to attacks from Aether forces. I suspect Elhume believed this to be the Nether Prince of Deganawidah, and rightly hid it here to avoid another abusing its power. However… this is quite a great deal more important than any old nascent Nether Prince.”
Devick watched his hands closely. She felt a shiver in her own Nether Core, witnessing the loving way the Nether Prince stroked the Nether. “I’ve never seen significance like that.”
“Perhaps Randidly Ghosthound will achieve a similar purity someday, but this… this is the ripe remnant of a Penance, entirely served. Raw, unused significance of the highest caliber.” As he spoke of it, the energy seemed to shift. Every time Devick looked at it, it seemed to be shimmering a different color.
She saw its translucence, but light glinted off it as azure, emerald, and topaz, always shifting, always pure.
“You are going to swallow that and become-” Devick sucked in a breath as her mind raced through the possibilities.
But a sharp glance from the Nether King silenced her. The lines on his forehead signaled disappointment with her. “No, I will not consume this rare treasure for my own short-term benefit. This, as I said, is the heritage of an entire people. Who, through the malice and trickery of Elhume, have been all but hamstrung. No, I believe, under the right circumstances, this can be forged into the most valuable currency of the Nether Beings: an unshaped name, to Herald whatever I wish.”
“What would you be Heralding?” Devick couldn’t help but ask, her eyes stuck to the ball of significance the Nether King drew away. Even to just her attention, that orb of multicolored significance felt sticky.
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“The chance we lost, due to a woman’s misplaced loyalty to her foolish husband. I will christen a Shallah, and her universe will be our chance for peace.” The Nether King popped the removed significance away and then turned to face Devick. His whole demeanor changed from serious to almost patronizing in an instant. “Well, now that’s done with. You are welcome to take the valuable image in the other statue, but in the meantime, I need a drop of your blood, dear Devick. If you would be so kind?”
Malice growled and Devick’s eyes flashed. “Now sir, what sort of lady do you think I am? My blood is reserved for only my most intimate companions. I’m afraid that even vomiting onto your face would leave my modesty too wounded for words.”
“It is not a request,” The Nether King took another step forward. His features were suddenly completely hidden in the shadow of the obsidian pillar. “Just drip a bit on the floor and leave me to it. It will be much less unpleasant for you.”
Devick laughed; definitely, dealing with naked threats was a lot more simple than confusing secrets. “What happened to meaning me and Randidly no harm?”
“Obviously,” The Nether King chuckled. “I lied.”
*****
Laplace entered the Nexus, just like that. His presence screamed until the universe became deafened by its calls: ‘the world has ever been thus. Time is fickle’.
Opposite the new arrival, Randidly’s three images came together in his chest. He tightened his grip on Acri. But before he could move, the Eternity waved a hand. Rather than a temporal wave, Randidly just felt a strange tingle. Although his images were empowered and sharpened, the ripple the Eternity unleashed left Randidly completely frozen.
His muscles flexed, but they couldn’t. He tried to lash out and bring his physical body to bear, but he couldn’t do that either.
He couldn’t even widen his eyes in surprise. He simply stood there, the images and his body and his entire existence scrambled in a way that left him straddling various impossibilities. As he examined himself, his mood soured. More specifically, parts of Randidly had reverted to how they would have been, without the advantage of compressed time to develop in the Nexus. He was still the man who had evolved his images and earned the Class ‘The Legend of Randidly Ghosthound’, but his body had been strewn across several times.
Yggdrasil fared the best, but the Dread Homunculus was partially the Grim Chimera, and then again partially the Evolving Creature. The same affliction transfixed the Stillborn Phoenix. Perhaps even more dangerously, Randidly’s body partially had evolved Stats as different anchors and then partially did not. He was a vessel but was not. He housed Truth, but did not. All he had accomplished was real, but also was not.
Not, at least, for now.
Time, for Randidly Ghosthound, had become a crossroads on which he had been stranded. And he hadn’t the faintest idea how to unscramble it, or fight against the effect this monstrous Eternity unleashed.
For a while, the Eternity just looked at him, with those eyes that were covered with numeric engravings with no indicators as to what time they showed. They were blank and meaningless; time enshrined and worshiped without having any relevant bearing on reality. Randidly felt the tiniest stirring in his emotional sea, but that, too, could barely mobilize itself. It sloshed and rumbled, but generated no force.
It’s always just, His eyes glittered. Always just one more fight, huh?
The Eternity soon turned away without any other action. The shift was a clear dismissal. It raised its scaled fingers and slipped it into a nearby spatial crack. Not caring about widening the universe’s wounds as it ascended, the Eternity dragged its body up and up, heading for the open maw of Pine.
Again, Pine shuddered. Yet even an innate rejection of this interloper could not slacken its hunger. If anything, the corpse of the Shallah sucked down more and more, soon accepting the whole of this scaled being into itself. The dirty hair, the heavy-scaled body, and even the trailing wisp of a tail soon disappeared.
“It goes to remake the Nexus,” Fiero cackled. “You’ve provided just the help we needed to achieve our ends, albeit in a method that we did not wish for. And even that is your fault. Is this your own Ghasthund? The Nexus shall soon become a hell of your making…”
While Fiero continued to giggle and cackle alternatively, Elhume just frowned up toward Pine. “Why must Laplace climb into Pine? Surely the body of an Eternity possesses enough power to potency to remake the universe without relying on Pine.”
Even frozen, Randidly found a point of freedom; although the whole of him remained mixed up, the reflection within Pangu’s Asymptote remained pure. With brutal efficiency, he began to weave together significance and complex patterns in that alternate reflection. Nyx watched his motions with understanding and pity.
He didn’t like this as an option, but he needed to solve this problem quickly.
“Touching the Universe Soul is the most direct method,” Fiero said. But he suddenly regarded Elhume much more coolly. All of the Vulpine’s manic glee had vanished. “On a fundamental level, the Hierarchy of Time’s Crossroads will be entered into the Nexus. Once that has happened, you can proceed back in time freely-”
“There are other ways. The Present Pine… this will hurt him.” Elhume said.
“You-” Fiero seemed almost shocked. As the world ended around them, these two individuals looked deeply into each others’ eyes, almost past the point of empathy. “You short-sighted fool. Your son died long ago; we are straddled with only his corpse. If you had managed to elicit any sort of response, mooning about below with this horrifying singularity-”
Elhume began to plead. “Perhaps just a little longer, with more significance-”
“It’s too late,” Fiero cut him off. Then, with surprising gentleness, he said. “If it is easier, I can take those feelings from you. You need not suffer for your son any longer.”
“I-” Elhume’s face crumpled. For several long seconds, he stared at the ground. “I do not wish to always be the one who runs from his feelings.”
“And yet, here you are,” Fiero observed. “Complaining about the situation you created, after the fact. Inviting an Eternity into the Nexus was your plot, to trump even the potential of the Ghosthound. So, are you going to take responsibility, or will you need me to handle it, as always happens?”
While this extended conclusion to the duo’s melodrama continued, Neveah frantically reached out to Randidly. At least consider the implications of this decision. If you totally unmoor yourself from reality-
It’s my Class, Neveah. It was always going to end like this. He wrote with Aether to give the label shape. He added Nether, his own intoxicatingly dense significance, to give it weight. The implications spiraled out beyond even his own ability to conceptualize, but he didn’t care. He needed access to himself. And without an effective way to fight back-
Neveah radiated waves of caution. You, Randidly Ghosthound, always have chosen your own end. And if you do this, that will no longer be the case. You will no longer be writing your story, just living it.
Randidly’s lips twitched. If they would stop me from being able to control myself, I’ll just fight even the people of the Alpha Cosmos. Because I am a Legend.”
Within the depths of Pangu’s Asymptote, the Nether Ritual and Engraving combo activated in a searing nova of sizzling light… which frothed with energy and then ate itself.
For his first trick, Randidly Ghosthound created individuals from memory.
For his second trick, he discarded his reality like an old coat.
