Claudette flushed and bowed her head. No matter how she attempted to distract herself, she couldn’t keep the color from rising in her cheeks. The soup in front of her did nothing to alleviate her feelings of guilt. “I apologize once again. Due to this mistake, I am willing to forgo the tips that I gathered with my effort. You may do with them as you wish. I do not deserve them”

Neveah snorted. Vye and Raina too, looked at each other and giggled. Even the subdued young girl Delilah looked up with a hint of a smile on her face. But then she glanced and Randidly and shivered before returning to her enthusiastic washing of the dishes.

The group of them congregated in the back kitchen behind the soup stand, made slightly cramped now that they were joined by the two figures that had resisted the spread of Claudette’s image, Lucifer and Clarissa. Both cheerily devoured some of Neveah’s soups as compensation for her troubles.

Even as the main focus of her guilt, Randidly just scratched his chin with his metal hand, leaving a light dusting of flour on his face. He barely even seemed to acknowledge her. Claudette bit her lip wishing to get some sort of response out of him after his injury. “I know it is but a pittance, but-”

“That’s not why we laughed.” Neveah interrupted while slowly shaking her head. “It’s just… Randidly is notorious for never having money on him, although he’s probably the richest man in Expira. It’s like money as a concept doesn’t even exist to him. His interspatial ring is too full of priceless treasures for individual bills.”

“Tatiana used to give me these thick folders filled with the details of my investments… Honestly, it exhausted me to look at them. So I gave her a Power of Attorney so she could run the whole Randidly Foundation, or whatever.” Randidly waved the metal hand again. Then he winced and looked down at his right hand. “Honestly, what I want is not the money. Just warn me next before you unleash an attack like that- I took it directly on my body. Which-”

“Which you can handle,” Neveah said curtly, prodding Randidly with a soup ladle.

He rolled his eyes, but he didn’t bother to disagree. Claudette forced her eyes to wander down past his elbow and flinched. A thick black gash covered most of the top portion of his forearm, where he had absorbed most of the force of her attack to protect that idiot Izzie. Thick tendrils of desolation wiggled outward from the wound, but they were being slowly beaten back by golden and emerald roots of Randidly’s own images.

Neveah poked Randidly again. “You are just a sore loser.”

“I didn’t have time to fully manifest my own images,” Randidly grumbled as he eyed Neveah with a sour expression. “Some warning would have been nice. That’s all I’m saying.”

“You lived. What else matters?” Lucifer chimed in, earning a wide smile and a second helping from Neveah. But the muscular saber user kept his head buried in his food to avoid Randidly’s withering glance.

Claudette remained silent, somewhat comforted by their casual attitude. Besides, that final attack was a cause for celebration: in that moment, she had felt the whole of her image’s power. Her attacks before had been vague approximations of the image she and Randidly had struggled so long to create, essentially efforts where Claudette’s grip on her newfound power wasn’t quite in the right place to achieve proper leverage. The force that she had been able to unleash was only half of her true ability and it had still dominated those two foolish men.

But then, feeling threatened by the arrival of Clarissa and Lucifer, Claudette had instinctively found her grip and unleashed a strike that might have leveled the Western portion of the festival grounds, had Randidly not taken the brunt of the attack.

Exactly how high are your Physical Defense Stats…? Claudette wondered. The whole of her image, albeit a version still unfamiliar with the newfound wholeness of her power, had only left a mark on him. That mark likely would have given her an advantage in a longer battle, but it was vaguely frustrating that the attack she thought could level a city was just absorbed by him.

“So you are from the Nexus right?”

Claudette turned to look at the speaker. Clarissa had a startlingly straightforward personality. Her eyes were bright as she gulped down another bite of her soup and leaned forward. “What’s it like out there? You know, whenever Randidly is willing to open up transportation, there are a bunch of us that would be willing to explore the wide universe.”

Claudette saw Randidly’s shoulders stiffen, but he didn’t look up from his quiet healing of his arm. Suddenly, a lot of his inner drive to improve himself and protect this place made sense to her. The people of his planet have no idea what sort of place the Nexus is. And because of the thickness of the Nether in these isolated worlds, there are some strange deviations in how their images are developing. That is exactly the sort of thing that would encourage the Engraving Guild to rip their souls to shreds to find out the how and why. Even my father-

Neveah smiled at Clarissa and shifted the conversation. “You want to go to the Nexus before you make it through all the Calamities? Besides, if you want an adventure, isn’t the portal between the newly added Nemesai worlds coming soon? I suspect that it won’t just be vacations to strange places included in that reveal. The pantheon is hard at work.”

Clarissa continued to complain, but the Nexus didn’t come up again. Randidly remained in the corner of the kitchen sighing and Claudette lowered her head to try and imprint that feeling of wholeness she had briefly grasped. That raw panic that fueled her attack had been the key that changed everything.

If she wanted to have any chance of standing up to her father, that was what he needed to master.

*****

Alta roared and spread her arms. Waves of grey ash spun out from her limbs, filling the air with a clinging, acrid smog. Azriel blazed past her, a fleeting and crackling red comet, and smashed against the pillar of sunlight that this intruder had created around his body.

The golden pillar dimmed, even as Azriel buzzed back and forth, bouncing against the manifestation of the image and arcing away as though she was drawn there by gravity. At this point, the intruder had realized that trying to hurt or impair Azriel was impossible; he simply continued to strengthen his defenses and raised a scaled arm to point at the Ancient Weaver. A rippling javelin of golden fire tore downward, aiming to destroy her partially erected web.

The Earth Golem Emperor interposed himself between them, spreading his arms and meeting the strike directly.

BOOOOOM!

Drawing on the deep well of significance and unconscious images that the entire Pantheon had access to, the Emperor faced down the strike and endured. Before his body broke, the javelin flickered and died. The Ancient Weaver finished her work and unleashed her web in a rotating throw. The projectile clung to the golden pillar and dimmed its light even further.

With that opportunity, Alta rushed forward and conjured a massive demon of industrial progress. The avatar of pollution and sacrifice gave shape to the billowing ash around her, granting her monstrous, clawed wings. Her body shifted toward the metal husk she possessed toward the end of her life as she hammered on the golden pillar. She achieved the height of her destructive prowess and unleashed it without qualms.

At the same time that Alta attacked, Azriel planted her feet and accelerated into a piercing crimson streak. They hit on exactly opposite sides of the golden pillar.

BOOOOOOOMMMMM!

The golden light shattered, falling down in jagged pieces until it hit the ground and began to disintegrate. Finally, the figure of the intruder was revealed as he fell down into the crater and settled on top of the rubble. The scaled humanoid looked around at them all, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. His muscular body was bruised and exhausted, but Alta was still wary; their true foe was the golden specter floating behind this body.

Even if they killed this fellow, she somehow suspected that the golden spirit wouldn’t be harmed. And if he came back again-

Alta gathered a fistful of grey destructive energy to use this opportunity to strike, but suddenly a figure appeared next to her and laid a hand on her arm. “Wait.”

Lucretia’s long lavender hair fluttered around her. Compared to the grim-faced group of the Pantheon who had been fighting against this foe, she seemed otherworldly as the projection of the sun faded and left her bathed in starlight. Lucretia took several steps forward, smiling at the intruder. “You are strong. But fighting us here, with that body as an intermediary? You will fail.”

The intruder clicked his tongue but didn’t answer.

Lucretia took another step forward. “Are you ready to explain why you are here? We could sense your ill intent toward Randidly when you arrived; that was the reason that we pulled you here for this private discussion.”

“Randidly? Hum. So that is his name.” The intruder muttered to himself.

“You did not even know his name?” This time Azrial spoke, tilting her head to the side. “Then why did you come here with malicious intentions? And how did you come here? It is difficult to believe you discovered the Alpha Cosmos accidentally.”

The intruder shrugged, a small smile on his face. “It is truly this Randidly’s fault. He has been interfering with my connections to my descendants. Originally, they should revere me, but due to my… imprisonment, I had been unable to respond for generations. So this Randidly superimposed himself in that connection and provided one with assistance. That process woke me up from my long slumber… and coincidentally, I was able to escape. I did not expect to find… any of this. The isolation, this group of you… The resemblance to the way we were all those years ago is uncanny.”

“On behalf of Randidly, we apologize for any insult that may have been given,” Lucretia said slowly. “But you are not welcome here. I’m sure you can meet with Randidly in the wider universe and settle accounts in the future. And we assure you, your people will be well protected within the Alpha Cosmos.”

“I can see that. Which is why I’ve decided to change my approach.” The intruder sighed and shook his head. The gesture caused more blood to leak out of the corner of his mouth. Then he looked down at the rubble beneath him, in the base of the crater. “Do you know why Elhume made the decision to restrict the amount of Nether in the Nexus, all those years ago?”

Lucretia shook her head and the intruder continued to speak, flicking some of the stones beneath him with a finger. “Because Nether sometimes makes things unpredictable. It is the energy of memory and connection. When too much Nether is allowed to pool without any structure, powerful natural currents form. Some of those currents come in the form of unexpected associations.”

Alta had a bad feeling in her chest. Lucretia cleared her throat, perhaps sensing that same thing even more acutely. “So what is your new approach?

“The easiest way for a connection to form is a name.” The intruder ignored Lucretia’s question and plunged his fingers into the dirt. Then he pulled, revealing a broken corpse with a spear wound at his heart. The intruder grinned up at the Pantheon. “Casually naming a disposable piece is a mistake that we made often too, in the beginning. You might not know it now, but you all… are you not the private group of Patrons raised by Randidly Ghosthound?

“And suddenly, I want to be a part of this Alpha Cosmos. With this piece that you have named a Patron… such a jump is quite simple.”