Chapter 1901

Chapter 1901

Zack blinked and coughed, feeling the blood coursing down his face and unsure exactly what was going on. Pain very enthusiastically coursed through his upper body, with his left shoulder feeling like it had been wrenched out of its socket. His dyed red vision and the flopping of his stomach briefly convinced him that he had died and gone to hell. For his sins, he would be punished for all eternity.

He closed his eyes, his skin tingling and burning. At the very least, I protected them this time.

This idyllic interpretation of the last few contorted moments was shattered as Zack slammed into solid ground and cracked his jaw. For several dizzy seconds, he just allowed the mechanisms of momentum and bodies to jostle him as he rolled forward. He groaned and spat to get dust out of his mouth. Blood dribbled out from between his lips.

“The possibility is just ahead. Truly, astounding. It should not have been possible for us to arrive like this. Perhaps there is meaning to human companionship.”

The sound of the Chimera woman’s voice reignited some of his annoyance and helped ground Zack. Gradually, reality dragged him back. His vision swam, but soon he became aware of the shattered bricks walls around them and Zeta standing at the collapsed entrance to the small building, firing several bolts of Mana at their pursuers. Todd crouched over Zack and used a bit of cloth to mop up the blood on his face.

Zack batted the hand away and sat up.”Wha... what happened?”

Todd’s expression was sour. “I recognized that look on your face; you wanted to do something dumb. So when I passed by, I Scrawled on your shirt. Which, apologies, has no shredded itself to bits dragging you out of the way of that attack. But I figured it was a small price to pay for you to stay alive. You’re welcome.”

Awkwardly, Zack looked down at his bare, bloody, and dirty chest. Somehow, he ended up relying on Todd again. Unwilling to face his guilt, he instead scowled over at the Chimera woman as she wandered down past the entrance to a staircase down. “Getting here is fine, but I don’t see how we can get out of this deathtrap-”

As though agreeing with him, wind began to shake the building. Zeta hurried past and offered Zack a hand, which he took to be pulled to his feet. All three moved after the Chimera, Zack still occasionally shaking his head to dispel some blurriness in his vision.

They heard the rest of the building front cave-in behind them as they descended into a high ceilinged basement. But at the moment, none could worry about it. They all stood transfixed at what they had found.

“How unlikely for this to be here,” Zeta remarked.

Compared to the other two images, Randidly was surprised to find almost no issues with these emotional affects; his familiarity with his sad roots hadn’t faded at all. It would require some practice to work the correct flavor to balance the various elements, but that was just a matter of practice. That is, except for two glaring unpredictable elements that swam around the edges of the image.

Randidly glanced again at the black hole. The two unborn drifted in the milky light and crackling electricity with a surprising amount of grace, considering their ugliness and misshapen bodies. They capered about, delighting in the strange influences of the Stillborn Phoenix, treating this like a game.

Of course, they basically ignored the reality of the image as they did so. They did not want to acknowledge the suction of the Stillborn Phoenix, and thereby invalidated the electromagnetic radiation, the light radiation, and the entropy it created in the surroundings. Their existence and independent wills were a constant drain on the power he could wield.

Still, it’s not like there aren’t difficulties with all three of the images. I don’t need to force an answer right now, especially since the Stillborn Phoenix loves those ugly slugs. Randidly pulled himself out of the Stillborn Phoenix image and then out of his mental projection. He stood and stretched, looking down at the island. The constant Nether had shifted the vegetation to a strange, blueish sheen that made the island look partially glazed in plastic. But that was the most innocuous of the shifts in the vegetal life.

If the island were divided into thirds around the central volcano, one third would belong to the training individuals, who continued to exhaust themselves and sip from the environment Nether, one third would go to the mutated ants and their swollen queen, and now a third belonged to the unruly and weirdly intelligent jungle collective. Thick vines had woven themselves around the tree trunks so thickly that they hung like physical walls. And in the center of that dense area, one tree had shot upward to almost double the size of all the others. At this point, it was almost half as tall as the volcano itself, a second sort of monument on this previously nondescript place.

As he stared over at it, the wide frawns of the tree waved in a way that ran counter to the motion of the wind.

Randidly could only laugh at the effect he had just by existing somewhere. You know, I remember them saying that the second step of improving your image is to exert your will on the universe. And not that I wanted this to happen, but their is something inherently poisonous about power. Once you possess it, it taints everything around you...

That thought made him shiver. Then he thought about the gleaming eyes of Devick, which gave him an entirely different sort of chill. She possessed an entirely different sort of poison. Randidly rubbed his face. I’m safe for now, isolated away from time at the bottom of the shaft. I just need to make good use of this time to improve. So that when I return to the Nexus, I’m ready.

“Okay, that’s enough training for now.” He bounced up to his feet and did some more stretching until his hamstrings and shoulders both pleasantly popped. After slapping his cheeks, he started sending out messages. First to Neveah, then to Nrorce and Tatiana and Sydney, and a half dozen other important figures in Kharon and in his life.

After a few awkward bits of conferring and juggling schedules, he arrived on a satisfactory date. In three weeks, Randidly would be hosting a bbq on his new island. Neveah’s delight seeped through their Soulbond, even if she kept her message perfectly polite; she was quite happy that he was taking some time off of his own volition.

Feeling her pride and joy, Randidly rolled his eyes. In the end, this is less about a healthier emotional lifestyle and more about variety. I can feel it, from the way Penance affects me. Significance comes from living and breathing in the moment. Taking advantage of the time you have. And since I have so much time here, the best way to facilitate growth is to switch often and throw everything I have into those activities while I’m doing them.

“So, three weeks of training.” Randidly rubbed his hands together. Then he called up the Hierarchy of Burden and began.