If anyone had bothered to ask Alta why she had decided to accept the invitation to Randidly’s Birthday, which they hadn’t, she would have scowled at them and replied that being forced to assist the weaklings in the Alpha Cosmos was extremely tiresome. This could be a welcome break from that. But it was probably lucky no one had asked. Because if they had, Alta wouldn’t have been able to deny that the answer she provided was slightly hollow.

In the same way that she still was.

Sure, guiding the insufferable fools dumb enough to choose her out of all the available pantheon was often more aggravating than it was worth. Either they refused to recognize their own strengths or they refused to listen to Atla’s advice. And some of the Classes that they requested she create a lighthouse for… it was like most people had no concept of how valuable such an endowment was. Or how permanent it would be.

Especially with the new rules worked out amongst the members of the pantheon, it took significant capital to establish a Class Lighthouse. Alta refused to do so casually.

Yet beneath all the struggles and annoyances of the job, Alta enjoyed it. She enjoyed being able to provide futures for these people. Even though her core was still filled with spite and fury toward Randidly Ghosthound, gradually her desire to destroy waned as she was exposed to other people’s stories. Their small tragedies gave context to her own path through life. Gradually, she had even begun to feel uncomfortable with what she had done.

At its core, this trip to Earth was a distraction. Or perhaps a confirmation of who she was. Or maybe it was her way of questioning what she had done. Perhaps even this was Alta trying to discover whether she had a mistake to lash out at Randidly for letting his negligence lead her original world to ruin.

Yet what she found on Earth was… not what she expected. It was mundane in the most aggravating. There was a polite woman who provided them with egg salad or cucumber sandwiches and spoke to them in this… normal space. On a bench on a hill overlooking a city diligently belching out smoke. This place world with grass, and trees, and flowers. And a place of work, disappointment, and sweat.

She had taken a bite of the cucumber sandwich she had chosen and didn’t try very hard to listen to what the woman had told them about the birthday party.

Alta very quickly felt stupid for imagining Randidly would live in any sort of special world. But in her mind, Randidly Ghosthound was the closest thing there was to a god. It was his inactivity that killed her family and allowed her world to slide toward ruin. He possessed the capacity to do great things and he had been too busy to bother with thousands of lives.

The world she expected him to inhabit to be a place of power and callous austerity. His image of ash that Alta had experienced spoke of a ruined world filled with dust and drifting clouds of regrets. But this world…

Later, as Alta had sat on the comfortable couch in the ornate waiting room in the giant event complex, she felt lost. This was not what she had expected from Randidly Ghosthound’s origins. Whatever her motivation had truly been, it could find no grips on this… average looking place.

While Azriel, Armgrast, and Wendy had chatted about the surroundings and the situation with the woman named Tatiana, Alta had just looked around. It was only when they opened the doors to the event center that Alta had finally glimpsed something that could truly be the origins of the twisted Ghosthound that she had long held in her heart.

Her eyes went out over the assembled people, most of whom shared the strange, angular proportions of Randidly’s body that Alta had always wondered about. Their limbs had nothing of the grace of a Spriggit, after all. But just as quickly as she had seen their bodies, she had felt their images desires.

This was the greatest knack that she had developed as a member of the Alpha Cosmos’ pantheon: sensing the images and desires of other parties. While in the Alpha Cosmos, they had all been intimately tied into the System itself, so Alta and the others had been given extra insight into the people they would be helping.

But although that access wasn’t as effortless as it was before, Alta had learned enough in her several months of experience to recognize some common factors. She could sense the similar movements of the overly System of this place, even if she was not connected directly to it. So when she looked out at the assembled partygoers she had seen two things dripping off their brows: fear and ambition, poured in equal measure into a bubbling cauldron of expectation.

They craved power but feared the price they would need to pay to obtain it. And they were wild too, in a selfish way. Careless and self-obsessed. The dark emotions had finally made Alta’s gaze focus on the situation at hand.

When the party had moved to the interior and the function of the tiles had been revealed, some of that tension began to come to the surface. People surged forward to test themselves and their images against each other and try to eradicate some of the fears that they held in their hearts. Although it was somewhat disgusting to watch such blatant attempts, Alta could understand the urge to do something while feeling that desperate.

It was that very same urge to change something uncomfortable that led her to attempt to destroy an entire world.

The initial three that went out onto the floor actually were the purest out of the surrounding individuals. Alta could get just a glimpse into their hearts and she saw the genuine love of competition that drove them forward. The second wave of people was much more selfish in their desires. So much so that Alta wrinkled her nose as she looked out at the group. Luckily, Azriel moved to suppress those fools who were most desperate to prove themselves.

Then the Nemesai had arrived.

Alta had a very haphazard understanding of the political situation in Randidly’s world, mostly because she hadn’t been listening closely when Tatiana had taken them through what was currently occurring. But she had heard enough to know that the Nemesai had recently killed quite a lot of people, and Randidly Ghosthound had invited them anyway.

That had struck Alta as interesting, but she couldn’t figure out exactly why until now. It had been the one thing that remained clear as she had been walking around in a daze. Previously, that information had been like a key to a door that she couldn’t find. It had just jangled around in the back of her brain, frustrating her constantly. But as soon as the Nemesai walked into the room, she understood why Randidly’s actions had seemed familiar to her.

She saw it in the sense of being lost that she could feel from the young woman holding a hammer. She saw it in the forced confidence of the man with the golden teeth. She recognized it in the bleak pessimism in the Winged Serpent’s eyes. Her mouth twisted as she felt the bleak fatalism that the floating lich carried around with him.

Randidly treated these Nemesai… the same way he had treated her when she had tried to destroy his Soulskill. And this night was their chance. Or rather, it was his chance to teach them a lesson.

For whatever reason, that infuriated Alta. Partially at Randidly, but also at these Nemesai for being stupid enough to walk into this place.

So as the Nemesai projected their violent images and applied pressure to the surrounding people, Alta’s eyes narrowed. Despite the fact that she was just an image body, one that she tried to make in her original image, she felt a terrible heat coming from her chest. Even as she tried to suppress the impulse, pressure built inside of her body.

And when they started joining hands to suppress Azriel, well…

*****

“Fuck you.”

Alana paused as she entered into the ballroom, flanked by Hank Howard and followed by six blue-silver dragons who were glancing around with interest at the human dwelling. Wivanya raised her long neck to get a better look at the individual throwing off such powerful waves of fury.

What Alana found almost amusing was that all the people scattered about the front area of the ballroom were so fixated on the image battle happening in front of them that they didn’t notice the dragons only a few meters behind them. It seemed that she had been worried about drawing too much attention for nothing; there were plenty of eye-catching guests attending Randidly’s birthday party.

Hank sighed. “I finally thought I’d get the chance ta play the hero, too…”

Alana’s lip curled up in amusement, but she stayed focused on the drama unfolding in front of them. The woman stalked forward, the air warping around her as the heat began to blast outward from her person. Her aura was so powerful that you could literally see the amount of heat that she was producing.

The two Nemesai standing on the raised platform at the front of the ballroom narrowed their eyes but stepped to the side as the woman passed. The Bandit King whirled around to glare at the person who had shouted an expletive at them, but his expression faltered as he saw the responsible party and felt the image rolling off at her.

...where does her power come from… Alana thought with narrowed eyes. She felt a drop of sweat forming on the back of her neck. When she looked at the young woman who was heating the entirety of the ballroom with her presence, Alana felt only a minor threat. Yet the power of her image… was it possible that she possessed a relatively weak body that tricked her Preception…?

But as Alana watched her, the young woman’s body began to transform. She took another step forward and her skin began to redden and scab over as though she was being burned by the heat she was producing. When she took another step, her torso was suddenly wrapped in a thick metal casing and the center of her body glowed like a furnace.

The next step had her wearing a steel helmet, but it could be seen by the growing redness along her neck and arms that her burns were only growing worse. There were places where her flesh cracked and oozed underneath the unrelenting heat. Yet the woman showed no signs of pain, simply pulsing with a hungry fury.

Then she stepped down onto the tiles that measured images and the temperature immediately jumped up about ten degrees. The light produced by basically every other figure wavered wildly as they struggled to stabilize themselves while being battered by the fresh image. Aside from the two Nemesai and one other woman who possessed a similarly powerful image, most of the other people on the tiled floor retreated to the sides. Even Mrs. Hamilton pursed her lips and gave up ground before this young woman that was transforming into a metal monster.

“Do you think being stronger than these people is enough?” When the metal young woman spoke, her voice was hoarse and vicious. “Do you think your tantrum will every change the fate of you and your planet?”

“You-” The Bandit King began, but he narrowed his eyes as the light beneath the metal woman’s feet grew almost blinding. His image of the bloodsoaked field was thoroughly suppressed. The heat in the ballroom became almost unbearable, to the point that Alana gave Wivanya a glance. “...no, you aren’t from Earth. What the hell are you doing here? And what do you think you know about us?!?”

Wivanya’s image spread outward, gradually covering the front area of the ballroom. The temperature thankfully began to sink back down toward livable levels. Some people realized the source of the intervention and turned around to give a thankful glance, but their eyes widened when they noticed who was powering that chilling image.

Alana rolled her eyes. Why are people so obsessed with dragons…?

The metal woman laughed with surprising coldness. The brightness beneath her feet quickly grew beyond the size of the two Nemesai. Her body was wreathed in flames. “No, I am not from this planet. But I know what you do now is pointless. People who are unwilling to spend there time building something to last… will never have true strength. Any benefits you receive will crumble to nothing but ash.”

“You dare-” The Bandit King began, but he forcefully buffeted backward by the force the metal woman was releasing. All the while, the woman took one step at a time forward and soon seemed wrapped in a red-hot suit of armor.

“Is this facade of cruelty truly the path you wish for?” The woman roared. “And if it’s not… why do you continue to hide from the truth and follow it?”

“Well said.”

The room shook with that casual phrase. The images that were previously so easily rippling across the ballroom slowed and then stilled.

Randidly Ghosthound stepped out of the darkness and suddenly appeared on the central island with the five strange objects covered in tarps. Alana’s eyes widened to see that he was dressed up; well-embroidered silk along his legs caught the light as he stepped forward. Then he spread his arms and a buzzing, black energy drifted down to touch the tiles. The light of the images sputtered and then faded.

Suddenly the floor seemed completely inert. The people who were still standing on the tiles turned slowly to face him. With a solemn expression, Randidly glanced around at the surrounding people. “And tonight, that’s why you were all invited here. It’s time to talk about the Paths we have chosen… and what we can build for Earth.”