“Larson, heart of my heart,” Devick said sweetly. She set down her class with an audible clack of container on wood. She leaned forward; selling this would be in the details. “May I ask you for a favor?”

“Oh, Devick, I’m insulted you need to ask,” The other woman released a tinkling laugh and waved a hand. She leaned back, distancing herself almost subconsciously from the request, despite her warm words. “Anything, for you.”

Devick tried not to smirk at the other woman while also resisting the urge to seize her by the hair and slam her face into the table. The small celebratory dinner party after the Miracle’s most brutal match yet had cleared out. The other players had been politely dismissed a long time ago, but Larson had kept Devick around, to laugh and tell the quirky little story about how a warrior, secretly puppeted by Larson, had blasted Devick in the back of the head with a fireball.

The punchline of Laron’s bit was, when Devick got back to her feet, it was hard to tell if her head was on fire or not. Because of her red hair.

Now, after all the hangers-on had finally departed, it was just the two of them. Devick made her move. She had known Larson wouldn’t immediately accept, just as Devick knew Larson would attempt to embarrass her rather publicly, no matter what sort of favor she asked. It was just in this woman’s nature to twist any opportunity into a way to inflict pain.

The knack was making sure Larson didn’t know how to wound you. And then give her just the opportunity to make an attempt at it, without being certain. In such an instance, she would aim broadly… and overreach.

“I almost feel foolish for asking, considering how busy you must be,” Devick raised a finger and twirled her hair, drawing out the tension. Already Larson’s eyes gleamed with interest, although the other woman hid it behind a condescending smile. After dangling the bait for a few seconds, Devick released a loud sigh and looked around at the surrounding room. “You just… I don’t know. Have the touch.”

“The touch? Well, I’ve certainly tried to do the best I could, considering the circumstances.” Larson waved her hand vaguely at the surrounding walls. Considering the amount of money poured into the lavishly decorated penthouse of the hotel, Larson Cerulean had nothing about which to complain. These suites might even be superior to her lodgings in Cerulean City. “But what sort of favor do you require?”

“My birthday party is in a week,” Devick serenely lied to the woman who had prodded the match earlier in the day to make her victory that much more difficult. Yet that anger was just a buzzing annoyance compared to the sea of black hatred she held toward Larson, for making the Nether King believe he should set Devick aside. “Obviously, I’ll be busy with preparations for the quarterfinals and won’t have any time to plan it. And I recall quite fondly some of the parties you used to throw when I visited Cerulean City-”

Larson Cerulean, for all that she had grown cannier in her age, could not prevent her eyes from widening. This young woman valued three things: her fierce pride in her family, the ability to show off, and executing cutting cruelties with plausible deniability. The chance to host Devick’s made-up birthday would give her the opportunity to do all three.

“Oh, Devick,” Larson reached out and laid a hand gently on her arm. “I had assumed you already had something arranged! Obviously, I tucked away a special to gift you for the occasion, but- well, this is all so sudden. It would certainly be almost a miracle to wrangle together a birthday party suiting someone of your stature in only a week. I’m not sure if I can promise my usual panache.”

“If anyone can do it, it’s you,” Devick insisted. As she looked over at the other woman, she could practically see the wicked gears of Larson’s mind turning, figuring out how best to rip into Devick without being obvious about it.

Gotcha, Devick thought. Step one complete.

*****

Randidly’s emotion sea boiled. Nether rushed through his veins, superheating his body to the point steam wafted off of his person. Each breath clouded the area around him, releasing just enough of his Nether to adjust the environment.

A storm of force spiraled all around his body. More and more power, edged with Nether, gathered into a frightening storm. His fingers flexed and stretched as he prepared himself to strike. His image physicalizations solidified along his limbs, burning with enough intensity that their shape lingered in the air for a few seconds as he moved his body around.

Congratulations! Your Skill Conviction of the Celestial Cataclysm (T) has grown to Level 963!

All his emotions seethed beneath the surface of his skin, the sharp edges of his soul biting into the universe. Emotional affect hummed until it resonated with the fabric of his image physicalizations. The armor across his arms became so dark that it erased bits of existence with their passage. The bright core of his golden veins shone out with blinding light. Power flooded through him.

Yet Randidly did not stop there. He kept his eyes focused; he couldn’t just supply energy, he needed the emotions themselves to be tied into the shape. Each particular resonance needed to be pure and to fit in with each other. His eyes cracked slightly, blind to the whirling storm of kinetic energy and Nether that filled the air around him. The notes must form a symphony. The affects had to be perfect.

Congratulations! Your Skill Casting Blades from Insatiable Grievances (M) has grown to Level 791!

For almost fifteen minutes, he simply sat in place and honed those particular emotions. His awareness wasn’t so wide he could handle all three at the same time, so he would prune and adjust one before moving on to the other. Then the next. Then he would focus back on the original image, only to find some small flaws had emerged. In addition, the context of the other notes gave him more awareness of how it should be shaped.

Congratulations! Your Skill Casting Blades from Insatiable Grievances (M) has grown to Level 851!

He honed further. He adjusted. He switched to the next image and did the same thing. Then the next, then the next. Over and over again, Randidly’s three images gradually coming into alignment with one another.

When he felt the moment of truth, when all three images had begun to sing a crooning song of fury, he stood. His eyes briefly took in the deep trench the wind had dug around him and hoped that the long, skinny weasels were intelligent enough to flee. But then he couldn’t have other concerns, not while balancing his three images with their honed emotional affects.

“Wicked Waltz of Tartarus,” Randidly hissed. “Darkness Withers the Horizon and the Waiting Carrion Grins. The Chimera’s Suffocating Rebuke.”

Randidly punched, bearing all the exhaustion that had settled within his left hand. The emotions rose through each image and Skill, not quite perfect but close enough power warped the arm. The storm around Randidly erupted into a spectral projection of an ancient battlefield, a sprawling horde of rotten skeletons fighting for all eternity. From that battlefield, a horrid specter of death rose. It glided out of the distance on wings woven of rusted blades, each wingbeat sounding like the death rattle of a thousand warriors. In its eyes rested the final stillness of death, beckoning any observer closer.

The memory began to tremble, despite the near constant revs from his Nether Core.

Sulfur transformed with the image physicalizations, becoming that horrid raven, death riding sooty wings, and Randidly punched with every ounce of force he possessed. The storm spun and twined through his limbs, gathering physical power to boost the attack further. The space immediately around his body erupted in blooms of grey flame. Nether Weight adjusted the environment, his mastery of Synechdochence adjusting the disparate inputs to create the most powerful output Randidly Ghosthound had ever generated.

He unleashed his rebuke against the world, against a memory of infighting and petty competitions and the horrid machine of death it would eventually spawn. Randidly released his last few restraints, throwing everything he could into the attack.

The Grey Creature howled and tore.

His image physicalizations absorbed both emotion and Nether and shot forward, carving a path through the memory. Considering the complicated visualizations of the strike, Randidly was curious bout the final form. However-

However, the power was enough to shred right through the memory. The area toward which Randidly struck was replaced by a gaping, twitching void. As he lowered his fist, small bots of power shot off of Sulfur’s knuckles.

“Hum,” Randidly said. “I suppose… this is a good sign?”

Then the memory cleared its throat and began to try and tear itself to pieces, folding along the void he had cut into it with the unleashed energy. For the moment, Randidly let the matter of his destructive force drop. Instead, he rapidly began crafting Nether Rituals to suture the gap together and keep everything from collapsing.

Now that he had finally seized upon several threads within the memory, he didn’t want to let them go. He had no idea when he would end up if he allowed himself to go back to the web of the upper Sonora. Randidly also worried that the lower Sonora had finished collapsing, so being forced out of the memory would mean his chance to learn more would vanish.

Wind not of his own making whipped around him, tugging at his hair. Randidly stuck out his tongue as he attempted to concentrate. His Nether stabbed into the ground and wove the space back together. His first attempt had been done with too much force, just ripping off an uneven chunk at the edge of the gap and worsening the problem. But Randidly had been pushed to his limits by his energy games with Neveah. Once he ceased panicking, he could use the proper amount of force.

Under his insistent care, the memory healed.

Two hours of frantic surgery later, he collapsed onto the ground with a pounding headache. “Shit. That was closer than I’d like.”

He allowed a few gaps to gurgle their way out of his chest, but the relief of collapsing didn’t iron out all of the tension in his body. An almost bitter smile crossed his face. “Still have a bit more growing to do within the memory, huh? Alright, but I’m almost there…”

Randidly raised his hand toward the sky while he allowed his exhausted body to rest on the broken and melted ground beneath his experimental attack. It took almost a half hour to prepare and he wouldn’t have even a hundredth of that time in actual combat. But it proved he was on the right track. That strike contained power enough to consider himself one of the top figures of the Nexus.

“All of it,” Randidly said to himself. Yet as he spoke, he felt Neveah’s awareness riding with him. His Phaea, the steadily growing individuals within the Alpha Cosmos seeking a more established bond with him, resonated with his wish. His eyes sparkled, a darker green than they usually appeared, but no less dangerous for that. “The entire sky. I’ll tear it all down if that’s what’s required to escape this hell of consumption and violence.”

And what then? Neveah prodded. What will you do, if you truly reach the Pinnacle?

Randidly barred his teeth but didn’t answer. In the quiet of his mind, he admitted to himself he didn’t know what came next. Just he hoped he would leave an easier Path to tread for those who followed in his footsteps.