Randidly and Neveah parted rather amicably on this night. They had drawn in the energy games all eight times, preserving the fragile pride both had for their usage of their more natural energy.

By tacit agreement, this would be the last night of the energy games. Based on the likely timeline, they wouldn’t have the spare attention for training, starting tomorrow.

Neveah returned to the cidery, wanting to try new mixes for alcoholic beverages. Over the past week, she had found a real knack for creating popular flavors. All the better for Randidly, who simply wanted to create an alcoholic drink and leave it at that.

With the continued festivities as they approached tomorrow’s semi-final match of the Hobfootie tournament, Randidly’s farm’s cider had become a staple of revelry. They were expecting a staggering amount of demand for cider, to the point that even Randidly’s energy-fueled orchards couldn’t keep up with production. As such, Neveah wanted to have a few ‘special’ batches to tide the upper class over.

If nothing else, the hunger marketing tactics Neveah imported from Expira seemed to invigorate Malloon’s upper class.

Randidly flexed his left hand; these days, leaving it still for too long meant it became stiff. For his own part, Randidly’s attention flowed toward two separate problems. First, significance once more had begun to gather in the sky above Malloon. The long-awaited confrontation would soon happen, but even with his well-honed senses, he couldn’t figure out exactly when Bleak Sky’s attack would occur. And considering the strange pulse of Nether they had witnessed a few days prior, Bleak Sky might not be the only foe they needed to deal with.

Tension from the mass of significance had become palpable this morning, growing worse as time passed. To the point that Bogart commented on the air feeling strange. Every hour, more significance pooled in the sky. The swirling darkness held a sea of potent meaning, the intangible gaze of history gathering in this one location. It was just a matter of how important this confrontation would be for the Nexus.

The other competing problem had been one Randidly hoped to have been rendered moot by the climactic arrival of the first. That is, tomorrow was also the day of Devick’s fake birthday party, scheduled for after the Hobfootie match. Had the attack come in these intervening days, he wouldn’t need to get her a gift; after all, they both understood it wasn’t actually her birthday. But if the attack would come after-

Most likely during the party, Randidly thought with a thin thread of misery. So I’ll have to endure the horrid first half of a party before I can just fucking fight with this ancient Nether being. Well, I suppose it isn’t here for me. Observe a fight between an ancient Nether being and the Aether forces.

But I shouldn’t forget the Aether forces might take this opportunity to lash out at me, considering my identity as a Nether King…

Snorting out a breath, Randidly pushed those thoughts away. Since he was going to this party, he wanted to give Devick a gift. A high-quality gift, considering her advice about Bogart had born fruit: when he had tailored the training away from physical fitness and toward mental capability, rather quickly Bogart became a better fighter.

Apparently, the demon man’s mental Stats had been so pitifully low that they held him back this whole time. A few Skills wouldn’t completely bandage that wound, but Randidly had made it abundantly clear that this sort of weakness, and being for so long unable to recognize it, was unacceptable.

Seriously, the gall of him to so routinely having been beaten by misreading tactics and never even considering addressing- Randidly bit his lips before the old flames of frustration could flare in his chest. No, not know. There are more pressing issues.

“What sort of equipment would Devick want, I wonder?” Randidly asked the cool night air.

Even from afar, Neveah’s consciousness rippled with amusement as she answered. A ring.

Randidly groaned, even as he couldn’t help but smirk along with the joke. He quickly erased that expression from his face. Somehow, even the thought of such a prospect left him worried of it somehow getting back to this version of Devick, who would obsess over him even more than she already was, or the modern Devick, who would either find it hilarious or vigorously murder him for his transgressions. Or more likely, she would laugh and then try to murder him.

His newfound powers would probably allow him to survive, but Randidly didn’t like how conflicted he still was about his current prospects. Better not to chance it at all.

He waved his hand to shoo away Neveah’s observation and sat down to consider the possibilities of a gift for Devick. It had been a while since Randidly had tried to forge anything, but he had two things going for him. First, his ability to manipulate the higher order energies had evolved to a ridiculous degree since his last attempts. The energy games had pounded the truths of Aether and Nether into his subconscious. Perhaps he had no knew insights on Engraving, but their energy implications were now illuminated to him.

Secondly, the few pieces of equipment he had seen thus far in Malloon had been almost pathetically simple. Creating a meaningful gift that was could have probably been done by the version of Randidly who had survived his second visit to Tellus. Weapons especially had very little bonuses aside from being harder or sharper. Having a nascent image within a piece of equipment, based on the creation method and story? Unheard of.

A growth-type equipment, Randidly decided on a whim. A working that will grow quickly, perhaps incorporating some of the concepts I’ve seen in world state images. Despite my warning, something tells me that she’s going to antagonize that Cerulean girl… Better to give her a capable enough shield for that fallout.

Randidly’s mind skipped through a half dozen potential patterns of the Engraving itself, but he grimaced and quashed them all before they could be fleshed out and therefore alter his thought processes. After all, each of his first thoughts was tainted by the vision of what Devick had become. Even through space and time, her rust colored madness chained his imagination and forced itself into existence. Distantly, he heard the clink of rusted metal. He almost shivered at the thought. The truth of what she became was a horrid sickness that he would not force upon the relative innocent of the past Devick.

However, the obvious advantage of that image was that it fit to Devick’s strengths. She was fickle and whimsical, hellishly stubborn and obsessive, alternatively methodical and intuitive. Essentially, she lived and breathed madness. Such a seed in equipment given to her would bloom extremely quickly.

He pruned that impression back, just as he had the others. Because the Devick he met in the past had shown other qualities. Or perhaps just less offensive shades of the same. Abilities to bind others to her cause yes, but also the ability to lead the Miracles and intelligently guide their growth. A propensity to fixate, but also a willingness to put in the hard work to seize what she wanted.

Several other possibilities flickered through his mind. After about a minute of his speed considering, he released a slow breath. “Well, I don’t think I can get away from the shape. The chains, the control, the power… It is Devick. The delightful cruelty of her Hobfootie play also confirms it. But… perhaps I can emphasize a different aspect of her insanity. Especially… especially if I can resonate with the traits that we share. Probably the best choice is stubbornness. With the stubbornness that stiffens both our spines, I can give you the same gift I used to survive so long… the ability to see your own death’s approach and say no.”

As he spoke the words aloud, some of the gathering Nether in the area shifted to surround him. Threads spun down into a circle in front of him, already envisioning the shape it would take. Likely a bracelet, Randidly judged, and it would pass both as a gift for a woman and as one suitably nonromantic. A thick band of Engraved metal, worn on the arm.

He could at least concede that some amount of precious gems should be used. Likely either onyx or a blood opal, to match Devick’s usual aesthetic.

Randidly looked unseeingly forward with half-closed eyes. The patterns in his head roiled and changed, seeking a permanent shape to give them power. He nudged and twisted, emphasizing some traits while playing down others. Step by step, he closed in on the meaning he sought. All three of his own images raised their heads to add a hint of their essence to the Engraving pattern. Yggdrasil to provide a way to grow and live. The Stillborn Phoenix for the cheerful capability to spit in the face of the possible. Last of all the Grey Creature, barring its teeth as it gave its entire existence to the labor of survival.

He saw the pattern’s manifestations, too. Those same chains, cursed with rust-colored madness. But twisted to a new end; the bracelet he would provide for her could save Devick’s life. After her body, split almost in half by a vicious blow from a foe, those chains would erupt out of her flesh and suture her back together. Her will and those burning chains could sustain her, even as the rest of her body would begin to fall to pieces. With the underpinning of a Nether Ritual laid within the gems, those chains could stretch from her will and seize upon existence, destabilizing other’s images or domains.

It remained an image of madness. But the madness of stasis, of maintaining the status Quo. Of refusing to be wounded by reality, or to push forward despite deepening injuries.

Down that path, Randidly saw darkness as well. The darkness was personified in his own Alpha Cosmos by Alta, who progressively replaced her flesh and humanity with an unflinching machine of iron and smog, to accomplish her goal. With a tool of the power Randidly considered crafting, Devick could do something similar. But she would essentially be using her future power to stitch together the past, which… would not end well for anyone involved.

“...I’m not going to try and shape your future, Devick,” Randidly whispered, almost surprised to realize he genuinely meant it. “This darkness… your own madness… you’ve already embraced it. Empowering it like this will probably accelerate the process… but you will need to deal with it eventually. The rest will be up to you.”

He saw the bracelet in his mind’s eye. After casting about through his interspatial ring, he found a plethora of rare materials that would serve to hold the Engraving he planned. He began to narrow down the possible combinations for the greatest synergistic effect, but his skin tingled with an altogether unexpected and ominous sensation. The Grey Creature looked away from the gradually coalescing working and hissed out a warning.

Randidly pivoted on his hill to find a grotesque, wireframe triplicate skeleton ending in the limbs of a fleshless dinosaur. The hulking thing had been moving with remarkable stealth over the low hills, avoiding both his physical senses and the Nether Rituals for observation he had thrown up to prevent exactly this.

If not for the preternatural instincts of the Grey Creature, this being may very well have walked right up to Randidly without him noticing. And it only took a single glance at the color of the flame billowing around his body to know who this was.

“I wanted to meet you once, before tomorrow,” Fatia Cerulean’s raptor skull tilted to the side. “You can sense it too, I’d imagine. No, perhaps even better than I. The storm approaches. Yet when I see you… it is strange, Nether King Hungry Eye. I feel a kinship with you. We both walk the Narrow Path and it has been a long, long time since I have met another fellow with as much potential as you. However…”

As Cerulean’s emotions turned, the air quivered around him. “...the same qualities that engender admiration make me believe it is best to kill you now before you can grow into a problem.”