Chapter 2317

Chapter 2317

Impressions flashed past the Patron of Feathers as her bodily functions began to fail. Her consciousness would snag on portions of the memories before the increasingly common blackouts dragged her down into delirium for an indeterminate amount of time. She saw—

Her hands covered in blood when they assisted in the coup of Malloon. The disappointment she felt when her father was the best in a long list of bad choices to rule the city.

The joy she felt as they began to accumulate other Patrons. Each became an integral part of the family, contributing legitimate accomplishments with her own Skills. And as their numbers expanded, so did the scope of their operations. With power came ambition, and each step forward forced the group to sharpen their blades so they could withstand their growing responsibility.

She saw the training room they developed. She felt her own sweat drying on her skin.

She saw darkness. Days of sparring and toil blurred past.

Most of all, like an ice pick through the heart each time, the Patron of Feathers remembered the look on Fiero’s face, half seen through a crack in the door, as he said. “From now on, wouldn’t it be easier if you were all mine?”

The memories trembled and scattered, blown away by a sudden gale. She sank into the unconscious darkness, tiptoeing between life and death, before she popped back into the memories with a gasp. She saw Fiero, just a manifestation of Wild Energy, floating in that clearing. She felt dread, knowing what was to come.

She could watch, but she couldn’t halt the tragedy.

The Patron of Feathers swam through her small loves, her favorite meals, her fondest memories. All those moments of stunned embarrassment, the lingering moments of personal shame, the trembling admittances of weakness she had to endure. Yet none of them could grant her any succor. The demands of her weakened limbs, the last gasps of her sputtering organs kept pulling her out of the memories and announcing a bleak truth.

She would soon die.

Tears glittered in the Patron of Feather's eyes. Her joints ached. In the end, the only memory that could screen her from the truth was-

Fiero’s sharp eyes, the malicious smile.

“...wouldn’t it be easier if you were all mine.”

She dove into darkness. She emerged dizzy an eternity later. Fiero smiled.

“All mine.”

The Patron of Feathers gasped as something shifted. The memories abruptly faded and left her in the dark room, sitting on the patterns drawn by her father. Around her were the dried and crusted remnants of bile and blood she hadn’t even noticed she had been leaking. She sat hunched forward, partially collapsed in on herself. Yet not a single muscle remained to shift her weight.

No wonder her organs had failed; she had been squeezing them for the last... however long she had been here.

So here, in the quiet... is how I will die. More... peaceful than I expected. The Patron of Feathers could barely manage a small wheeze at the prospect. She looked around at the small room, wishing she wasn’t here alone. More than that, she wished she could have changed the outcome of her life. She wished she hadn’t been so cowardly as to consider no method to change her situation other than running away. And then she wished she hadn’t simply allowed the Patron of the Borrowed to take more and more from those two good people, until—

The door opened, bringing with it blinding light. The Patron of Feathers shivered, realizing that the illumination from the room's mechanisms had gone dark. A figure moved through the blinding revelation and stood by her side. He patted her head, his alabaster feathers glittering. “You have done well, my daughter.”

“Of course, I sincerely doubt it will be this easy forever,” Randidly remarked. His Fateset twitched and flared, seemingly annoyed that he would say such an unlucky thing. But Randidly just flashed his teeth and continued to work. His Fateset didn’t truly think independently of him, it was just a matter of perspective. And he didn’t mind his more suspicious side rearing its head like this, in a harmless manner.

Grab, twisted, hold, strum, release. Another blast of accelerated time dyed the sky a soft golden color before the flow of night and day ripped new channels through the color.

Congratulations! Your Skill the Wrathful Calamity Rends (T) has grown to Level 994!

With the task in front of him requiring so little, most of Randidly’s attention flowed through to his emotional sea. He sank into its depths, feeling the churning currents of power lurking beneath the surface. Most of the sea had been completely emptied in the first impossible task, smashing against the flow of time, but now that it had recovered the deepest portions had burrowed into even deeper trenches. A horrifying whirlwind of emotions shredded in the deepest corner of that sea, creating a growing whirlpool of irresistible force.

Randidly reached out a mental finger and ran it along the churning edge of the vortex. The depth of determination he found there made him smile.

His attention flicked back to the surface. Below, he could feel reverberations blasting out from the confrontation between Aether and Nether: clearly, Deganawidah had lost his temper with the Cult of the Savior. But unless they tried to ascend and stop Randidly, he would leave them be. He focused on the process.

Activate Engraving, strum time, release and watch the colors ripple.

Congratulations! Your Skill the Wrathful Calamity Rends (T) has grown to Level 995!

Again and again, Randidly repeated these movements, carefully honing the small gestures to eliminate any wasted energy. Grasp, hold, strum, release.

Grasp, hold, strum, release.

Congratulations! Your Skill the Wrathful Calamity Rends (T) has grown to Level 996!

Momentum began to build up in the accelerated time bouncing off the remnants of previous waves that still lingered. The bleeding of colors grew more stark and overwhelming. Randidly observed with narrowed eyes, adjusting his methodology to create more of these rebounding effects. Very clearly, they would thrust him even faster toward the future.

Congratulations! Your Skill Motif of Unimagined Tolls (GD) has grown to Level 1099!

Congratulations! Your Skill the Wrathful Calamity Rends (T) has grown to Level 997!

While time whirled forward inside the Upper Sonora, Randidly peered through the gaps and saw the core of history that they followed. Honestly if this hadn’t been a constructed memory, Randidly suspected this brute force method wouldn’t have worked nearly as well. His Acute Nether Nose allowed him to peer down the ‘track’ they followed, witnessing just a fraction of the glorious Pinnacle even at the end. As he considered the area in front of him...

Randidly clicked his tongue. “Of course, it’s this again.”

Already, he could see how even the beginning descent of a Pinnacle event would tear through the essence of the memory and leave him with nothing but charred scraps of Aether. So he would need to perform some renovations, so he could afford to host such a prestigious guest.

Alright, let’s see if we can add a bit of extra strain on top. Randidly’s eyes twinkled. One-half of him continued the temporal process, grasp, hold, strum, release. The rest of his attention went to his fingers, which burned with Mana.

For the second time today, he began to Engrave.

He wrote into existence the foundations of a Miracle, his Fateset singing as it worked.