Chapter 2421 |
The group raced through the scattered chips of wood and metal that Laplace’s rampage had left smoldering on the ground of the strange workshop. They passed several areas of temporal wounds, but the restricted nature of this portion of Pine’s corpse meant that the wounds had almost healed naturally on their own. But what Randidly noticed most of all were the vibrations running through the ground.
Ahead of him, he saw a particularly powerful reverberation bounce a half-finished doll off a shelf and have it shatter on the ground. Randidly’s gaze sharpened. Laplace… hasn’t passed through the next barrier. I’ve almost caught up with him.
This realization was almost enough to push down his rising unease at the mysterious purpose of this facility.
Behind his back, the dead began to get excited at the prospect of contact. The Dread Homunculus released a noise somewhere between a hiss and a sign, trying to cope with the pressure of all these souls borrowing the momentum of the image. Their small movements were insubstantial on their own, but they learned from the patterns Randidly sent out through their ranks. The damned increasingly moved as one relentless entity, multiplying their power to a ridiculous degree.
In a way, he had become a tireless legion. And he provided all the fuel for the army gnashing his teeth from his shadow.
Randidly rolled his shoulders and focused as much as he could. His feet kicked off the shattered ground and chased an Eternity. His three images roared with their individual emotional affect. The notes came into harmony. His Nether Core continued its rotation, the healing of temporal wounds adding more and more interior substance to the function. Very soon, he sensed that he could begin the process of condensing a Penance.
Randidly’s three half-formed Truths buzzed and sharpened. They stood in stark contrast to the simple and firm Truth passed to him by Nyx: You can’t have it both ways. Or to put it another way, a choice always needed to be made. Randidly understood why Nyx had given this particular Truth to him: These powerful moments of the Pinnacle and Eternity represented an opportunity.
But there was always an opportunity cost.
Randidly’s jaw clenched. He raced forward, the speed of his passage and the train of dead following him knocking delicate shaving tools to the ground and starting a small clatter. When he stood at that crossroads, what would his choice be…?
Yggdrasil stirred with interest as they passed through to an area covered in wooden frames with draped silk in a thousand different hues. The long materials fluttered in a nonexistent wind.
The Dread Homunculus growled and gnashed its teeth, almost driven mad by the pressure of the dead, as they moved to an area filled with bookshelves. Randidly pressed his lips together; could the entire knowledge of the Nexus dead be gathered here?
It was only when they passed through to the final portion of this space, the rumblings of Laplace’s violence shaking the air, that Randidly finally put together the true meaning of this place.
Broken chalkboards littered the ground in this section, but from the shattered pieces, Randidly saw complex Engravings of a style that Randidly didn’t recognize. Different portions of the ground were covered with Engravings of poured and set gold, making glittering arrays of indeterminate purpose. In the distance, Randidly saw marble pillars with immaculately made dolls sitting atop them. He didn’t recognize the dolls, but he could feel the general aura of this place, so similar to his own Pangu’s Asymptote.
The epiphany came when Randidly looked across the vast distance to the left and saw one doll in particular, with half of its face and its left arm missing, but with an emerald for a right eye. The doll sat beneath a flowering tree, with a monster for a shadow and cradling an event horizon in its arms.
He sucked in a breath. The signs were always there, weren’t there? Of Pangu’s touch on the Nexus, even in my own journey. Tellus’s Second Calamity was to fight an alternate version of the Spearusers, manifesting as the opposite choices. Then encountering Eliot and his twisted version of Ileot on the frontlines. Finally, the creation of the Sonara…
Yes, Elhume had the emotions and regret to condense the memory, but he needed help to shape it. Unlike the wild Laplace infecting of the Nexus, Pangu has been content just to experiment with his Momento, observing the power of his distorted reflections. But…
Randidly’s hands turned into claws as he pulled his eyes away from the half-finished doll. In his chest, Pangu’s Asymptote hummed. His preparations certainly hadn’t accounted for this development. Why the hell did you give me your Momento? What’s your goal?
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Randidly found no answer waiting in his Soulspace. His questions did not trigger any sort of communication from the Eternity. The Momento resonated with the work of its master due to the significance between the two of them, but there were no extraneous strings; the Momento had been freely given.
Yet it was also clear that perhaps the real goal of the Momento was to give Randidly a little extra edge against Laplace. Randidly’s power was being borrowed by this mysterious figure, who clearly had invested a lot of energy into the Nexus, to eliminate an invader. Instinctively, he began grinding his teeth.
“Why?” Randidly loosed the word. Yet absence was the only audience for his frustrations.
Ezekiel looked hesitant, but Commandant Wick only rolled his eyes. “Boy, do you think the freshly dead such as us had any impact on this decision? Those with power make the rules. If you care, you can figure out the details.”
“But you know,” Randidly said. Ahead, the rumbles became increasingly loud. They passed more and more pillars, but the dolls here were absent, either used or taken away by their creator. “Why this was allowed. What Pangu wants.”
“Does it matter?” Ezekiel sighed. “We must hurry. The core of Pine-”
Randidly’s eyes sharpened. “I’ve struggled under the thumb of the Nexus for so long. And over and over, I’ve been told this is the way it is and will always be. But that’s not true. What is true is that… all these tiny details, the hidden arrangements, all those are elements. The present would not have occurred without them. All details matter. If I can know them, what I can create-”
Randidly’s diatribe trailed off for two reasons. First, because in the middle distance, he heard a horrible keening noise; one of the powerful dead released a scream. A massive shockwave followed a split second later. The explosion distorted the space visibly in front of them. Laplace was only a short distance away.
In only about ten seconds, the final foe would come into view.
But perhaps the larger and more distracting shift happened in Randidly’s body. Ghosthound’s Deviation released a roar of triumph. Randidly blinked and his entire awareness began to warp— the noise of his truth rose and rose until it became a clarion ring that echoed out through the surrounding space and reordered everything.
The Alchemist in Randidly pushed the limits of his awareness and brainpower so he could handle the scope of all of existence. He could process all inputs. So his experiments with the different elements of the Nexus could accomplish miracles. The horrific force of Ghasthund that he had condensed was premised on a certain mathematical inexorability. Those tiny choices you made, the consequences you avoided, and the fears you fled from would inevitably catch up with you.
All details matter.
A Truth had naturally formed in Randidly’s chest, with the accumulation of all his efforts in the Nexus so far. Ghosthound’s Deviation finally had a concrete name; as each second passed, its volume rose and rose, searing the inside of his body.
Randidly pressed his lips together. After a moment of indecision, he sent out a strand of Willpower and quieted the approaching crescendo. Discovering the shape of my Truth couldn’t have come at a better time. But I need all three before I’m willing to step onto the Pinnacle. If all details matter, timing is also very important.
Almost unwillingly, that calculative perspective on existence shivered and settled down within his body, waiting for its chance to explode.
Randidly planted his foot against the ground as another wrath-filled temporal explosion occurred in front of him. He felt grateful for the tightly bound significance of this workshop as he mobilized the whole of his Primordial Nether Juju and Dreadful Alacrity. His physical body, pushed beyond the bounds of the System, accelerated, He tore through the air, dragging the dead behind him.
The vision of Laplace sharpened. The snake’s long arms, his scaled back, his fat, dragging tail were clear. The Eternity raised a clawed hand and jabbed it forward. Arrayed against this monster were a half dozen souls of the dead, but even to Randidly’s eyes, they blazed with powerful energy halos. Their Aether and Nether did not move in concert, but at least did not sizzle and weaken their auras.
Yet when the temporal hammer fell, the dead soul faltered and fractured. His history had been sundered and his energy sputtered and died. Laplace cackled with glee.
The remaining dead didn’t move to attack but instead bellowed out keening whispers, the trickle of grave dust, the scrape of dry bones shifting against each other. The spoke in the language of the dead, hoping Laplace could hear their words. But Laplace simply waved one of its fat hands. Time spun in whirlpools. The keening noises reached its senses, but in a scrambled order.
Like all others, the language of the dead was still a language. When jumbled, it would lose all communicative power.
Laplace slithered forward, its horrific world-state infecting outward. It slapped one defender to the side and smashed another to the ground. It’s black clock eyes turned to the soul of a young woman, who released a piercing note.
For a moment, the Eternity paused. But then it pounced forward and shattered her body. This horrific being cackled again, releasing a burst of its dreadful significance. The last of the defenders were knocked to the side. Laplace turned and faced the far wall of the workshop, where the final barrier of Pine’s corpse remained.
The Eternity reached-
But then it jerked to a stop: Randidly’s hand had been faster in seizing its tail. For the first time since it had arrived, its confusion weakened the temporal significance it released.
Those black eyes turned around and regarded a grinning Randidly Ghosthound. He settled into that familiar stance of a spear thrust as he inserted his image of a clock hand along Acri’s edge. Behind him, all the dead and damned began their stampede forward. “Are you ready for round two?”
