With a vengeance, the Nether Ritual of the Nether King gushed out of the ground. More and more of the floating remnants of the ground that used to exist here were smashed to bits by the violent energy, leaving only a dozen or so floating stone islands now drifting atop a vast oblivion.

The Frost Matriarch’s breathing was becoming increasingly fast. In addition, frost began to condense around her massive body as she continued to flare her image to protect the group.

Randidly’s eyes followed the shifting lines of Nether rising up into the sky for a few seconds. Some concealed part of himself intrinsically recognized the shape of what he was witnessing; but the truth of what would soon happen danced just out of reach like a half-remembered dream.

The shape of this working was familiar. Where the hell have I seen it before…?

Gritting his teeth, Randidly pulled his gaze down. Behind him, the audible breathing of the Frost Matriarch as she endured the pressure from the grand Nether Array that was beginning to shift into high gear. He didn’t have time to waste. Now that the Nether King was moving, Elhume wouldn’t be far behind.

Randidly’s fingers continued flick out in complicated patterns. He flawlessly carved Nether into the interior of the protected area. The almost ornate symbols of this Precise Nether Ritual were not the typical ones Randidly utilized when Engraving. Honestly, they were the precise and well-crafted symbols that Neveah used, while Randidly often made do with a rougher and more direct language. Each had its advantages, but even acknowledging that Randidly’s typical arrangement was faster, he still chose to write in Neveah’s manner.

It was simply imperative that this base boundary be completely perfect.

Congratulations! Your Skill Architecture of the Primordial Ways (M) has grown to Level

Randidly continued to take steps to the left, even as the hand of Elhume began to ooze fury and hatred; it seemed that the distant ruler of the Nexus had finally realized that something was amiss with this ambush. Its speed accelerated. That hand came down with a heavy rebuke upon the Nether King and doomed the rest of them simply by proximity.

Randidly took another step and traced out five runes in a split second. His lines were sharp and to scale. He followed this success up with another step as his work continued. His fingers burned, but Randidly couldn’t really tell if it was from the Nether, due to the accumulating friction from rubbing his finger against this surface, or from prolonged exposure to the cold of the protective igloo. The idle speculation was a comfort, somehow. Playfully analyzing the problem helped Randidly distance himself from the very real danger of being smashed out of existence by Elhume.

Congratulations! Your Skill Left Hand of the Nether Oracle (M) has grown to Level 307!

The frost around the Frost Matriarch had crystallized into a clear pillar around her body as she radiated an aggressive cold that seized upon everything and everyone who stood near her. Most of the weaker Pinnacle Seekers were even forced to back away from her.

Randidly had taken so many steps to the side that directly in front of him, out across the dark abyss waiting below, he could see one of the three formerly massive tornados on a small patch of land. As he wrote the next few runes, he couldn’t help but be distracted by its presence.

The shattering of the spatial walls meant that spiking electromagnetic charge in the atmosphere had vanished, and Nether now gushed upward from the hidden ritual of the Nether King. Matter and space were devoured, leaving a few massive chunks of land drifting apart from each other in a chaotic blackness. This portion of the isolated space had deteriorated, but it seemed Commandant Wick kept everything from collapsing back into its prior form. So now they drifted in the area between layered spaces.

The tornado in front of Randidly was similarly stuck in this strange oblivion. It has absorbed quite a bit of ambient power from both the Nether King and Elhume hand and swirled with a palpable image of destruction. Randidly couldn’t deny that it had grown in the past few seconds to a frightful intensity.

However, the isolated piece of ground it was based upon quickly disintegrated beneath it. They were in a chaotic area that wasn’t technically space, so the body of its winds rapidly dissipated. In addition, the powerful tornado was closer to the palm of Elhume than the Pinnacle Seekers. The pressure it endured was deadly.

Despite being prepared for it, watching such a powerful image squeezed out of existence was still rather alarming. Just like the stone ground being steadily eroded by the tide of Nether, the storm rotated itself into smaller and smaller cycles, until it simply didn’t exist.

Randidly took a step to the left and continued his frantic scrawl.

Congratulations! Your Skill Left Hand of the Nether Oracle (M) has grown to Level 308!

“I won’t make it in time,” Randidly spoke quietly, but he was quite sure that the Pinnacle Seekers were paying attention to him. Even without looking at them, he could read their solemn nerves from their emotions. “Someone might need to help the Frost Matriarch withstand Elhume’s pressure until I finish.”

With a flourish, Randidly finally finished his circuit. The base layer had been completed. He scanned the construction one more time for mistakes then began to draw quickly along the ground with his fingers. He made toward the central area, idly reflecting that it clearly wasn’t the cold that caused his fingers to burn; the sensation was getting worse and he had left the chilled medium behind.

Wondering if what he was doing was somewhat disrespectful, Randidly pressed his steaming fingers against the Frost Matriarch’s ice pillar and relished the invasive chill. But after only a few seconds of rest, he forced himself to continue.

“Can we manage…?” Seeker Ozaer wondered aloud. “Perhaps if we contact Speculum Pence-”

“The two Speculum were extremely close to the point of conflict; the pressure they endure should be many times worse than ours.” The Winged Serpent hissed. Even the reptile seemed nervous as it looked out through the protective igloo at the crashing waves of Nether and the massive hand of fury. “It appears the two Speculum and Commandant Wick have been forced to work together to endure the pressure. If those two Speculum were forced to set aside their differences… the pressure must be overwhelming.”

Thick drops of sweat continued to fall off of Randidly’s head. Seconds seemed to balloon into massive things as they were filled with the majesty of the two titanic individuals who fought at the core of this destruction. But the preparatory accumulation of the main players had finished; the Nether Ritual of the Nether King began to coalesce into a powerful core.

Randidly reached the middle of the space and drew a circle. He allowed himself a single breath; only in this brief pause did he realize it, but the thick drops of sweat that were falling from his brow froze before they hit the ground. The clinking noise filled him with a powerful urge to laugh. His hands were trembling. His Nether Core had accelerated its own rotations to keep up with his demands, but it still wasn’t enough. The energy he could now gather was thin and feeble.

Cursing his own weakness, Randidly sucked in another breath and he once again pressed his fingers against the conveniently placed ice pillar. Invigorated by the Frost Matriarch’s refreshing image, he began to draw once more.

Congratulations! Your Skill Precise Nether Ritual (L) has grown to Level 264!

Congratulations! Your Skill Precise Nether Ritual (L) has grown to Level 265!

Influence +11

The Nether King released a powerful halo of shiny darkness even as the dais beneath his feet began to crumble. At his gesture, his power flowed through the veins of his prepared Nether Ritual and completely resuscitated it. For a brief moment, the pressure of Elhume’s hand was screened. The two Nether Princes limped back toward the Nether King’s throne, each covered in wounds from their struggles to hold back the orthodox Nexus forces.

Randidly clapped his hands together to get some feeling back in his fingers. The noise sounded muted and distant. His rapid movements left him numb. He looked out past the barrier that the Frost Matriarch maintained and estimated that every wave of Nether could engulf him and shatter his Nether Core with its density. He quickly forced himself back into his work.

Influence +8

The Nether King’s aura of darkness was in stark contrast to the bright light that emerged midair between his body and that of Elhume’s hand. Despite the importance that he finish the Nether Ritual, Randidly couldn’t help but look up and take another glance at the much grander Nether Ritual happening right in front of him. Somehow, the Nether King was weaving a connection to the Elhume’s hand and drawing out something vital. That theft was fueling the entire process, creating that wondrous illumination that stalled out all attacks.

To put it another way, this Nether Ritual could not have happened without the presence of Elhume. Randidly’s mouth twitched. Why did the Nether King need Elhume? Because now that he saw it, it was clear where he had seen this arrangement of before, even if the truth left Randidly baffled: it was from Tellus.

“The Nether King is opening a door,” Randidly muttered. Then he shook himself, did his best to steady his trembling, and began drawing runes once more.

Congratulations! Your Skill Architecture of the Primordial Ways (M) has grown to Level 423!

Randidly’s idea for what came next in his defensive array was actually inspired by both his own training methods and his new Fatepiece. He hadn’t yet heard from the historically minded Seeker Thunder Wing how to activate his Hierarchy of Burden, but Randidly was already familiar with making his own movements more difficult by defraying some of his expended force across a large physical object. In this case, he would be the one that absorbed the force of the dangerous attacks; Randidly’s body would become the buffer between the isolation layer and the delicate infrastructure of his array.

He would bear the burden.

Randidly’s hands blurred once more as he began to draw the buffer array. Part of the reason that he chose this Path was due an epiphany; the height of his combined power was slightly misleading.

In every area except one, Randidly was talented but unremarkable compared to his peers in the Nexus. He had three images but was only a worthy foe for this tier of enemies when he combined all three. He could manipulate Nether, but this Nether King made him feel like a child building fake spaceships with the comically large legos for toddlers. He was increasing up his Nether Core’s Influence, yet compared to the Influence that the Nether Lattice had been able to subdivide and inject into those black spikes…

Only when it came to his body did Randidly have an advantage. He even felt that the advantage he possessed was relatively large after being able to so easily repel the Dusk Jackal’s physical strike. So to survive while taking on Elhume, he planned on taking advantage of his monstrous Stats.

As the portal stabilized and formed into a visible threshold of white light, Elhume’s hand changed. It didn’t just accelerate forward to strike at the Nether King, although it did indeed do that. A ripple surrounded the massive appendage and the shape began to change. The hand shrunk from large enough to crunch the entire isolate space to a hand that was about a hundred meters from the tip of the fingers to the base of the palm. The skin turned dried and grey and the palm was crisscrossed with an intricate pattern of scars.

The hand wasn’t just an idea of a hand, but literally, the reaching will of Elhume.

Seems like someone is in a bad mood, Randidly mused.

As the appendage rushed toward the doorway of light, the fabric of existence boiled with around its grey skin. Randidly was focusing as best as he could on the Engraving he was doing, but his senses flinched from the emotional potency that the hand was releasing. Suddenly, he was very, very glad that he made so many preparations.

Otherwise, he readily admitted that he would have been annihilated without any suspense. He finished the buffering Engraving with a flourish. Then he began to create the base stabilization runes.

“...is it strange that I feel like I recognize the door?” Seeker Three-Tails tilted his head to the side and stared at the portal conjured by the Nether King. An ornate frame was rapidly forming, even as Elhume’s attack rushed downward.

Seeker Ozaer began to laugh. “You wouldn't deserve the name of Pinnacle Seeker if you did not! Ha! No wonder Elhume is so incensed. I do not understand how he managed it… but that Nether King just opened a very famous door: the Path to the Pinnacle.”

Even Randidly paused in his desperate scrawl for a split second when he heard the truth about this conjured door. Then, with a sense of foreboding in his heart, he did his best to finish his Nether Ritual.

What would occur when Elhume’s strike landed on their protective igloo was quite similar to what had happened to the entire space when the hand first appeared. The difference was that Randidly was connecting the array to his body, so the ‘bulges’ that had so destabilized the space above the crater would be absorbed. Or rather, ‘handled’ by him personally. The effect was subtle, but those distortions had far-reaching effects. Enduring a portion of that force physical would prevent the interior machinations of his Nether Ritual from being frayed.

As for whether even his powerful body would be up to the task…

The Nether King gathered his two Nether Princes to himself and then sped forward in the direction of the light. Even as the furious Elhume moved to smash this foe, the Nether King reached the luminous portal. The ornate door frame glittered with complex and shifting symbols.

“Can a Nether being even make it to the Pinnacle?” Seeker Dusk Jackal whispered uncertainly.

The Winged Serpent shook its head slowly. “Imagine a being that could conjure the memories of an object from nothing. Such an individual could rewrite the past and we would be unable to do anything about it. Theoretically… the capability of a Nether being at the Pinnacle… is even more horrifying than an Aether being.”

A split second before Elhume’s attack arrived, the Nether King stepped through the doorway of light and vanished. Randidly winced when it became clear that Elhume didn’t bother to soften his blow due to its late arrival.

His fingers were still scribbling the last few runes of his Nether Ritual.

In a horrifying crash, that strange doorway was annihilated. Light and darkness surged and mixed in a chaotic froth of energy. A shockwave rippled outward to smash into all those bits of matter that were unlucky enough to still remain.