Nic didn’t head straight back for the oasis. The beacon would have given away his hiding spot in moments, so instead, he circled through the empty sands, sailing past pillars of red rock and petrified trees, ancient ruins, tumbling weeds…

He appreciated the heat-baked beauty of the desert, even now that the terrible storm of intersecting rifts made the sky flash with strange colors and distant thunder cracks. Even now that there were shadows of ash burnt into the stones.

It was a world that had survived everything he and the System had thrown at it.

There were still small, wriggling frogs and horny-headed lizards living beneath the shadows of rocks. Still birds that flocked to the rivers floating in the sky.

It was a world that refused to die, and Nic felt a kindred spirit in that realization.

Two times, he saw the sails of a ship on the horizon. Each time he quickly turned and shot away, using Sacrifice to fuel a sudden burst of speed that let him escape the fast-sailing sandships. He kept far away from the watchtowers, although he was sure they saw him.

Already the pillar was dwindling. It had started as a brilliant beam that stretched to the heights of the sky.

Now it was half that size and half that intensity, beginning to fade into the bright air of the desert.

As it shrank into a thin layer of light surrounding his skin, Nic changed directions suddenly, betting on them following his last-seen course. He dropped into the sand and vanished below, digging himself down into a comfortable, dark cavern.

The last of the light dropped away.

For a moment there was darkness, and then…

Synchronizing.

System-runes covered his skin, rotating around him as if they were inspecting him. Every inch of his body was sealed into an armor of drifting, luminous blue letters, and then they spread outwards, covering the cave’s walls like a projected starfield.

Welcome, candidate. The system grants you high honors, walking with you on your path.

"Nicolas." Sofia's voice suddenly cut in, sounding urgent and hurried. "Whatever you do, be on your best behavior."

And from thin air, out stepped a figure in shining silver armor. Or, no. Made of silver armor. She was like Sofia, clearly, a form of Sofont. But where Sofia had a single mask of beautiful make that served as her head, floating in a fountain of pale blue flame…

This newcomer had two masks, hideously conjoined. The metal stretched and gave the impression of mutant flesh, the right and left halves sharing a single central eye and a too-wide mouth that grimaced at one side, smiled at the other.

"Greetings, child. We are the Dialectical."

Nic looked at the creature dubiously. She - they - had four arms, each skinny as an insect's limb and ending in a three-fingered claw of a hand. An armored skirt concealed their lower body, but Nic had the impression there were more than two legs down there.

"So." He said. "You're here to teach me?"

"We are here to learn alongside you. The new dao presented by the Aleph is a curious and exciting new road for the System." They smiled. Or half of them did. "Each time we study a new bearer of the Aleph's mark, we come closer to understanding its nature."

"Regulus, for instance, is the aspect of the Aleph that strengthens and forges the self…"

"While Antares forces change upon others."

Nic silently reached up and touched the point on his skin where the new mark had adhered, completing the set. They formed a design like a collar around his throat, each mark connecting to the next, an unbroken whole. Combined with the tattoos that spread across his body, his skin was equal parts light and dark, a chiaroscuro pattern.

“However, each bearer of the mark manifests them differently.”

“Hold up.” Nic said. “What are the marks, at all? None of the other Concepts I’ve encountered have been anything like this powerful.”

“Amplifiers.” The Dialectical answered. “They do exist for other Concepts, other Daos, but they’re extraordinarily rare. The first flame would have cast thousands of Fire marks across the cosmos. The first drop of water, likewise…”

“So they’re what, souvenirs for seeing a new Dao?”

“Better to think of them as the door by which the Dao entered our world.”

“Alright.” That made some kind of mystical, mumbling sense. As much as anything about the higher spiritual concepts ever did. “So how do we go about this?”

---

A lizard had scuttled into the underground space, poking its head through the soft sand walls in search of tasty bugs. This was it’s mistake. The poor creature now sat in the Dialectical’s silver palm.

Nic concentrated.

The System was helping him. Energy flowed into his body without end, and his concentration was steeled with Esper. There was nothing he lacked.

The Antares marks floated in the air around the lizard. The ghost of the mathematician had used just one to turn flesh into steel, bone into glass. It hadn’t gone well for those he’d experimented on.

Nic didn’t want that on his conscience. One by one, like shooting stars, the marks flew down and passed through the lizard’s thorny skin, sending waves of unseen fire radiating through its body. It stiffened, head rising into the air as its legs began to twitch spastically.

Sweat dripped down Nic’s face as he tried to control every thread and iota of the energy, gathering it towards his goal. He made the lizard’s muscles tighten and contract, working them like a puppeteer works the strings, finding the hidden fulcrums, levers, sinews, tendons. His eyes were closed tight and he could see the inside of the lizard’s body in his mind, his energy mapping it out from within.

Organs. Too squishy, too delicate. Can’t touch those.

Bones. Too hard, to inflexible. Full of marrow that makes blood. Another bad choice.

He focused on the muscles. Bit by bit, they began to transform, growing stronger and lighter and taking on a dull blue shade like metal.

The lizard twitched. A heartbeat went astray. There was a moment where Nic hoped beyond hope there was still time to salvage things.

And then the lizard exploded into a tiny rain of gore.

Wiping a bit off his face, Nic sighed. That was one innocent reptile on his conscience.

“Interesting, interesting. You went for the musculature.. Most try to change a single limb, but you…”

“Muscle is simple. I know muscle.” But apparently not well enough.

“Don’t be harsh on yourself. If anything, the fault is mine. I may have neglected to tell you…” The Dialectical’s crude face made an aberrant, disgusting attempt at a grin. “Nothing has ever survived the process of the Antares.”

“Then why…” Nic’s jaw ground in frustration. “If all it’s good for is killing, then let’s go kill something that can fight back.”

“It’s quite useless as a weapon, actually. An opponent of similar strength will be able to reject the marks.” The Dialectical waved one of their many hands. “It’s power lies in transmutation, but, it kills what it touches. The most promising use we’ve seen it vitrification…”

Nic raised an eyebrow.

“Turning things to glass.” The sophont clarified.

“But you don’t think that’s what it really does…” Nic guessed. “Or you wouldn’t have had me try before telling me that.”

"Indeed." They admitted. "The other rune-sets are straightforward. Regulus refines living tissue, Fomalhaut destroys by introducing chaos, Aldebaran animates unliving tissue…"

Refinement.

Chaos.

Animation.

Tools in a cycle, transforming all they touched. Killing and giving birth in equal measure.

What was missing..?

'Transformation' was too broad. They were all transformations, in their own way.

What purpose did the cycle lack…

Nic closed his eyes again. He could still see, etched into his memory forever, the expanding dome of the nuclear fire. The way it blazed across the world and then dissolved into smoke, a rising cloud that filled the skies with ash and hideous, warping energies. The way the shadows of a thousand runes had burned themselves into the desert.

He knew the Aleph better than anyone.

He knew how destructive it could be.

“Your time is almost up. Once the System’s runes are removed, the Aleph will be much harder to control…” The sophont reminded him, sounding almost chiding. They were as hungry for the truth as Nic was, and their patience was short.

"Let me try something." Nic said.

"Do you require a new lizard?"

"No." He lifted the half-dissolved corpse from proctor's palm. Closing his hands around it he summoned forth the three runes of Antares, letting them circle, letting their light fill his hands like a furnace. He had been trying to transform the lizard's body into something, trying to guide it towards a destination.

Now he let chaos and entropy do their work. He made the dead thing in his hands less, shrank and shriveled and took its matter, sucked the dwindling heat from its blood and the water from its flesh.

And in its place…

Fire blossomed. The pale, sterile flame of the Aleph.

Energy.

The Antares were the furnace that fueled the others. It was the transformation of something solid and real back into formless potential. Back into that fire he had witnessed. The Aleph could destroy and create and transform…

But it began by wiping the canvas clean.

“Fascinating.” The sophont said, speaking in two voices at once. “A source of power to fuel the cycle. We were hoping you would be talented, as the Dao’s chosen witness. We are not disappointed.”

The runes filling the secluded cavern began to fade. With them, the Dialectical sank into translucence and began to disappear.

“We will meet again when you collect the rest of the marks. I hope to make further discoveries together…”

“The knowledge of what you’ve done here today should be reward enough.”

Nic was left in the dark, holding a pale flame.

It wasn’t quite Demonic Essence - the System merely confused the two - but it was close.

Nic pulled it into his body and devoured it.

What could he do, now that his enemy’s strength could become his own?