Kerink blew a hole in the ceiling above, giving her party a means of escape and the mountain city a new vertical shaft. The slime wrapped zirself around the other low-tierman and made a long appendage out of zirself to serve as a rope. She took it and jumped, using her barrier skill as stepping stones. A few of the low-tierman capable of flight followed her but most she had to carry.

Negotiations had gone to hell. The only thing left to be done was for Akmadouric to wrest dominion away from the Dirske lords. Which would be a stupid waste of willpower that could be better spent elsewhere.

Very rarely had she met someone so unreasonable as the Dirske Grand Lord, it was a sign of stupidity. Handing Zackary Taylor and Bayei over to the Dirske lords was out of the question. The members of Akmadouric’s army couldn’t betray one another even if Zack had decided to take up his own personal mission which conflicted with the primary one they had been sent here for.

But her mandatory refusal only sparked more rage out of the borderline insane Dirske Grand lord, making negotiations that much more impossible. She really hated the high and mighty types.

And she really hated her job. Being a mid-tierman in command of a bunch of low-tierman who wouldn’t do anything of great impact for at least a few decades. Although there were few exceptions thanks to a certain skill

Allied Luck boon Description: Alter the thread of fate for the allies around you so that they have a higher chance of positive outcomes. Willpower cost: 1,000 per minute Requires: Technique level expert

It was tiresome. Passively casting the skill at all times so that the currently worthless low-tierman might someday encounter something that reacts with their physiology in such a way that they gain superpowers.

In her years as a Mid-tierman protecting low-tierman, she had had many underlings go through such incidents. Like the rock golem that fell into some strange looking yellow magma and became a magma golem, advancing to the elite low-tierman rank. Or the spirit that had it’s bonds to the mortal coil ripped apart by a blue dwarf star’s solar flare yet had somehow used his willpower to keep himself together. Becoming an elemental, a being of pure energy in the process and advancing all the way up to initiate high-tierman.

Of course, most of the time they just died horribly and had to pay the favor costs needed for an additional body, but such is the process of learning to reforge bodies into living weapons and adding available abilities to the skill store. Although willpower based transformations are barely understood even among deities.

After traversing a third of the distance jumping from stepping stone to stepping stone, she felt something ominous within the thread of fate.

Three hundred miles away Kerink’s second set of eyes swiveled around and pierced solid matter to view the interdimensional activity. Then the blood drained from her face “What in the name of the AllGod is that doing here!?”

It was an avatar of an idea. A being that had fixated on a single thought, and become the very physical embodiment of it. It’s black stick figure body moved through the grayness of it’s aura while everything else around it went perfectly still. But curiously enough, it looked like it was afraid. And not just afraid, but terrified of something.

Enemy skill analyzed Make it stop Description: Releases an ever expanding aura that makes all types of movement impossible. Threat level: Extremely high Requirements: Strict and unknown.

How is it extremely high? Oh no. Anyone caught within that gray aura would have all of their bodily processes cease. Cells wouldn’t be able to deliver energy to where they needed to go even if it was only micrometer away. For most species it would be an instantaneous and painless death.

‘But I can still see it. Why? Because light can still travel though it.’

Kerink formed a deuterim ball between her hands. Then increased it’s luminosity until she directed a laser beam into the mountain city. It cut into the rock and stopped right at the edge of the aura without going any further.

‘Why didn’t that work?’

Kerink hesitated for a moment. Once the high-tierman reinforcements arrived they would dissect the ability but that would take time. Which Ulgroth would then use to flood his units into this newly contested dimension.

She didn’t feel like she had any other choice. Above her second set of eyes, a third set cracked opened and activated a skill she had never used before.

Origins reveal Description: Delve into a being’s most defining moment. Requires: Eyes of Knowing

Her only chance of beating such a thing was to go into it’s memories and use willpower to alter it’s perspective, causing the foe to lose the ability.

Anaya Sood walked with her mother hand in hand amid a crowd of marching people. Some wore brightly colored fabric of every color, but most wore white homespun cloth which only covered their privates. Many people carried signs with words like ‘Independence for India’ and other signs showed a man in spectacles with the name ‘Gandhi’ over his head.

‘Humans.’ Kerink noted.

The five year old girl had no idea why all these people were out walking such a long distance. But mother had told her that it would make things better somehow, she really wanted to start eating more than one meal a day. So she walked as long as she could, taking two steps for every one of the adults. Until she could walk no more and had to be carried the rest of the way.

The crowd of people stopped at the market square. Normally the area was filled with vendors stalls, but now it was empty. All the people who had been walking started to fill the square. Anaya just tugged on her mother’s arm and held out her hand. Then ate the piece of bread she was given.

“Mom can we go home now?”

"No sweety, this is important.”

“Okay.” The little girl’s obedience earned her a kiss on the cheek.

The people in the crowd marched around in a circle waving their signs in the air for an hour, then the rhythmic clacks of boots drew everyone’s attention.

Men with a much lighter skin tone marched in unison. They looked so much different than all of the brown people the brown people Anaya had seen all her life. They all wore the exact same tan clothes, which blended into the environment around them. On their heads were bowl-like green hats that seemed to be solid, instead of being made out of fabric. The newcomers marched in a two lines, to the left and right.

A man appeared at the center of them. His clothes had funny looking gold shoulder pads and his green solid hat had a star on it’s center.

An old man asked “Why are the British soldiers here?”

The man in the middle didn’t quite glare at the huge crowd of half-naked Indians that populated the market square, but there was a hardness in his eyes as he shouted “READY” the soldiers stood at attention with their guns at their side.

The entire crowd tensed in fear.

“AIM” They pointed their guns at the protesters.

Someone off to Anaya’s right said “They wouldn’t.”

“FIRE!” As one all of the rifleman’s guns cracked and flashes of fire came out of their tips. Anaya watched tiny streaks fly really really fast into the adults around her.

She had gotten scratched by a cat once before and she’d wailed for a whole ten minutes, but the amount of blood then didn’t even compare to the amount of blood that sprayed. Everyone ran in a panic, bottlenecking the two exits. Anaya’s mother grabbed her and dragged her off her feat. More cracks. More blood. People started climbing the walls. Anaya and her mother made it out of the area that was under fire to join the people trying to get out of one of the exits.

The evil man in the tan uniform called out “Turn, thirty degrees left!” and the riflemen began shooting into where the crowd was thickest.

Blood sprayed into Anaya’s face as the hand that had been gripping her’s went limp. She wiped her face off and opened her eyes to see her mother lying on the ground, looking up at her with eerie unmoving eyes, blood leaking out of her skull into a red puddle.

“Mommy. Momma. Wake up. Don’t sleep.” she shook her mother, but she just continued to stare with lifeless eyes.

Anaya thought ‘Death. This is what it is.’ she sat that amid the chaos. More blood splattering all over her but still she didn’t move. There would be no more bedtime stories. No kisses. No hugs. No more love. Mother was gone.

“This...this emptiness. Make it stop.” tears and snot ran down her face, then she screamed “MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT ST-”

Through the din of the firearms and the pain of her mother dying, her mind registered an intense physical pain in her chest for just a moment. Then it was gone and all went black.

“MAKE IT STOP! MAKE it…” her voice trailed off as she felt a presence above her and quickly she looked up.

Kerink didn’t pull out fast enough and she saw the true form of Ulgroth without any kind of mental protection. Her willpower was nowhere near enough to contend with the dark deity’s in the avatar’s most defining moment.

Galroop the slime carried the rest of the low-tierman within zirself as Kerink bounded towards the portal. That wasn’t zir real name, it was just the only sound that ze had learned how to make by creating an air pocket within zirself.

Zir real name consisted of a series of flashing lights which he could create within himself using chemical reactions. Green, gold, red, silver, blue, green to be exact.

The entire language of zir species was light based. No sound. If it weren’t for the Akma network’s translations, ze wouldn’t even be able to communicate with most of the personal of Akmadouric’s army. Light travels faster than sound, therefore light based communication is better. Why couldn't they all learn how to communicate in zir species' style of language? It is superior.

A jerk on the appendage Kerink was holding interrupted him from his musings. She turned around and stared at the mountain they had come from.

From below they watched her transform. Thick dark violet tentacles emerged out of Kerink’s six eyes. Her orange skin turned black and her teeth were pushed outwards as they grew longer. Then more violet tentacles grew out of her skull and eyes opened out of all of them.

Then a blue screen appeared above her head

Corrupted Kerink (Disconnected) threat level: high

Disconnected. Akmadouric had split her consciousness apart in order to save her from getting completely corrupted. And what was left within her secondary body was about to kill all of the low-tierman that she had been in command of.

Galroop cut the line. Leaving a small part of himself to evaporate in Kerink’s hand. Ze and the rest of the lowtier-man fell onto the mountain below.

Kerink dropped near them, landing on all fours and cracking the mountainside with the impact. Spikes grew out of her spine. Her rib bones tore out of her back and grew long and sharp. Then she opened her mouth and let loose a white deuteriam blast which cut through the flying low-tierman who were fleeing.

The other low-tierman of their group left the insides of the slime and spread out. Kerink charged at a speed barely perceptible for most of the low-tierman there. She passed them by and the blades on her back cut apart three of them. Then dug her claws into the rock and used her Barrier to pivot and change direction at a sharp angle. Cutting into more low-tierman.

Her path took her to Galroop and she cut into the multi-colored balls within zir ‘You weren’t paying attention during the briefing, and therefore you don’t know much about my physiology. Those are just unimportant chemical pockets.’

Kerink blew past zir and turned upon a low-tierman that had diamonds covering his skin. He erected his own Barrier just before Kerink hit him with a deuteriam clad kick that turned him into shimmering rubble.

‘No wonder she expressed such contempt for low-tierman. We are helpless against her. The gap in power is too great.’

One of the psychic diplomats stood up out of his hiding place in a crevice next to zir and said “If you are going to attempt anything, do it now.” His pink eye stalks then began to twitch.

Galroop frantically asked “What are you…” then ze realized he was going to do the only thing a psychic could do. A mind invasion. And he was doing it knowing that the cost was to become corrupted, but Kerink would be in a vulnerable state for the next several seconds.

The mid-tierman shook and Galroop rolled across the distance as fast as he could. Then corrupted Kerink opened her mouth and shot out a white deuteriam blast in zir direction, but she remained standing in one place.

Numerous deuteriam blasts burned away at Galroop’s gel body. Ze morphed zir form out of the way of her attacks, mitigating the damage. One beam went through a hole in zir body without touching anything. A sizable chunk of zir turned to vapor as ze took a direct hit.

Galroop sprung into the air and landed on the corrupted mid-tierman. Then began to crawl around her body. In this position ze would take out most targets by either strangling, suffocating or melting with acid but none of those would work against Kerink. Deuteriam blasts burned away zir slimey amorphous body as ze moved around her. Until ze got into position directly opposite of the Make It Stop aura.

Corrupted Kerink charged a deuteriam blast in a ball to burn away more of zir. Which was exactly what ze wanted.

Galroop arranged the chemicals within zirself to react specifically with deuteriam energy. The explosion blew a chunk out of the mountain and part of it sloped off into the lowlands below. Ze instantly turned to vapor and his consciousness got sent back across the Akma network for safe keeping. The corrupted mid-tierman flew into the grayness that crept towards the survivors of her onslaught.

All of the remaining low-tierman knew that they could use willpower to resist any effect. Including Make It Stop. All of them failed.

“It’s amazing.” Bayei said as she viewed the sunset for the first time “It’s even more spectacular than the paintings of it.”

Zack thought ‘Such wonder this woman has for even the most common things…damnit I’ve fallen for her haven’t I?’

He said “On my world we have looked into the stars and discovered many wondrous things. Planets that have diamonds caught in never ending sixty mile per hour winds. Planets that are still in the process of being eaten by their suns and have turned from being a sphere into an elipsoid. But I have yet to even scratch the surface of what wonders are in the multiverse.”

Bayei looked over at the Mountain of everlasting song in the distance. Hearing it’s random melodies. She stood and looked out across the landscape “I’m…feeling something that I’ve never felt before.”

“What kind of feeling? Put it into words.”

“It’s a longing. A desire.”

"For what?”

"I want…I want to live. Not just exist at the bottom of a vast network of dingy caves, but to truly live. I want to…see things that I’ve never heard of before. To understand beauty…and…and learn. To meet interesting people…and experience things I’ve never even dreamed of.”

Zack looked over at Bayei with a smile “Well maybe-“ but suddenly paused. Seeing a gray spot on the horizon that wasn’t there a minute ago. Then Akma displayed the skill description for Make It Stop.

Fear crossed his face as he read the ‘Extremely High’ threat level tag “We gotta go now.”

Bayei turned around to see it, took a step forward out of curiosity then got dragged away by Zack.

She climbed on his back. Zack jumped off the cliff and took flight, or tried to. But he didn’t nearly have the lift needed to carry his own weight and hers. His last Poiraud hadn’t yet recovered from her burns, he couldn’t use her. The youngling didn’t have the same pain tolerance as Hroyd.

Immediately they dropped. Zack repelled himself away from the slain golem and continued to fall, until they reached the cloud layer. The trees below glistened with their sticky blue sap that they used to capture prey. Zack fought to ascend, searching through many of the metal deposits in the mountains around him, but they still fell towards the forest. And then it happened, Zack’s leg got caught in the blue sap. Bayei put both legs on Zack’s shoulders and inverted herself so that she could cut the top of the tree off just below his foot.

Zack struggled but to no avail. He watched in horror as they grayness covered the mountain behind them and overtook them. For a moment the world around them turned still and gray.

Then a blue screen appeared

You died

After a moment of disorientation, Zack saw that he was back in his storage locker which meant Akma had put him back in his true body “I died?….she died.”