After she fell asleep, Vualla woke in the vast darkness once more. It was a living thing, a sea of leeches that sucked away all her warmth and also seemed to study her vigilantly for any signs of life. That was the new thing that Vualla sensed lurking in the darkness around her, a spark of consciousness.

It wasn’t the only new thing. They only danced at the edges of her perception, but Vualla was quite sure that there were Aether constructs floating around in the darkness. Yet it seemed that they were quite shy, because every time Vualla waited for them to appear, they froze underneath her attention.

So all she really had was the cold thirst of the darkness to distract herself. Yet Vualla couldn’t really be bothered to marshall up much of a fight. Even if she hadn’t been being slowly drained of her vitality, she was far too exhausted to try and resist the weight of the darkness around her. Sleep hadn’t been a leisure activity, it had been because she was completely spent.

Even at her best, Vualla could barely hold her own against this curious space. So now she just allowed it to do its vampiric work.

Because immediately prior to Vualla collapsing, her camp had endured another exceedingly sharp Nether attack. Once more, Vualla had moved forward to fight against the Nether Gatekeeper that was threatening Terith’s camp. Although she hadn’t been selected as the interim-Commander, she was the strongest individual remaining in the camp.

Her role was to fight the Nether Gatekeeper. And she had faced down one before in an ambush mission and found it in herself to defeat another in the prior large confrontation. It was with confidence that she had proceeded toward her foe. Every day had seen an improvement in her abilities to control her energy and image.

Even without Cail’s training, Vualla was growing.

To her shock, the fight had been brutal. Exceedingly brutal. Vualla had been very near to losing. Some part of her believed that this Nether Gatekeeper might have been stronger than the one that she had defeated previously, but the other half of Vualla just worried that her previous victory had been a fluke.

Her confidence was shaken. But it was not destroyed. Because Vualla had ultimately won.

Still, it meant that she laid almost helplessly in the darkness and allowed it to siphon away her warmth. Yet an extremely peculiar thing happened as she simply opened herself up into the darkness. Although the warmth in her chest faded, although she felt insecure and worried… the emotions that she carried weren’t extinguished by this place.

If anything… the truth was that the darkness drew out all of Vualla’s fears and insecurities and made her face them directly. And honestly… Vualla felt pretty good about it. Twice now she had won. So what if it was hard? Hadn’t her entire life been hard?

Hadn’t reaching this amount of strength been her goal since she was a little girl? Had she truly expected it to become easier at this point? No. This was only the beginning.

“I can do this,” she whispered.

The darkness watched her silently. The strange Aether constructs continued to drift around her.

*****

Line by careful line, Randidly engraved his image of the Akashic Records into the trunk of Yggdrasil.

The brilliant arrays for energy absorption that Vualal had taught him were an integral part of it, as Randidly planned out the large shape of the aggregated runes to have a grander meaning outside of the truths they contained. But that still left him with the rather daunting task of imagining the minutia of the thing that described everything. It was a test of both detail but also breadth. This needed to be large.

Existence had no true edge. So Randidly had to approximate that.

That was his first goal. He expanded the world tree. A size where a world really could fit on a branch. Then he simply let his mind unfocus as his hand worked. Bit by bit, he would cross the vast ridges of rutted bark to scrawl individual sigils across the whole of the image. It was a distance that was unthinkable for a physical body to endure. But as it was just image work, Randidly continued to push himself.

His fingers gleamed with Aether and Mana as he smoothly built the Akashic Records up, line by line.

His strategy was a bit unusual, but it was an unusual problem. Obviously Randidly didn’t know everything. So how could his image contain the record of everything?

He settled on something close to random chance; Instead of trying to put meaning into what he was doing, Randidly simply followed the shapes. He drew shapes randomly, then found patterns in the shapes he had created and continued them. They multiplied.

Soon, grand, looping patterns began to emerge. Randidly didn’t even need to pursue them once his mind touched upon them; after enough time, habit would bring them back. Time moved forward with different shapes but the same patterns or different patterns with the same shapes. And when Randidly finished one branch of Yggdrasil, he looked up and saw thousands of branching arms that still needed to be covered.

With a sigh, Randidly removed himself from his image. Doing such detail work actually went pretty quickly, as the mental world didn’t need to adhere very strictly to a normal time frame. Yet it was still exhausting because Randidly’s consciousness had to move through each and every motion of carving.

Or he supposed he didn’t need to do it that way. But he definitely knew that the outcome would be superior if he continued on in this manner.

And these are just the branches. The trunk itself...

Sighing, Randidly leaned back on the ground and appreciated the silence of his tent around him. He had taken to sending Zauna and Salazar out of his tent while he did his image work, and had no regrets about it; he saved so many moments where he would be shocked into wakefulness by a sudden noise this way.

“...yet there still is the problem of Salazar…” Randidly muttered. Even he couldn’t miss the way that the snakeman was being torn to pieces as he was continually told to shut up by Lady Iellaya’s subordinates while the stress of the constant attacks was getting to him. Some part of Randidly wanted to order Zauna to be the one to talk with him, but he knew that wasn’t the Path he should take.

He was the leader. And he needed to act like it. Especially after receiving the rather concerning message from Naffur about the state of the Order Ducis. Doubly so because he knew that Helen was tied up elsewhere for another few weeks.

But that’s a problem for another day. From my perspective… I’ll probably have addressed all of my images before that developed further.

Still, there were good reasons to go see Salazar either way. Randidly had gained a Skill Level in Visualization during his earlier Yggdrasil refinement that brought him to 3 Skill Points away from the PP motherload. Rather than rushing toward the PP, Randidly wanted to try and get all of his images to the point where he would be ready for a Fate before he started finishing Paths.

That way, the System might recognize the work he had done on his images and make the related Paths even more valuable. And since he was already so close there really was no need to focus on gathering PP.

Right now Ignition Essence was currently digesting another batch of the hiltless blade’s memories, while Randidly had kinda settled on using the whole of the Alpha Cosmos as the focus for the Grim Chimera. There were some… theological problems with it, but Randidly believed as long as he focused on the aspects of the world that it would work.

After all, just like the Grim Chimera, his Soulskill was essentially the ashes of several destroyed worlds piled on top of the weapons of an ancient Creature. Despite that… it evolved into something that was more than the sum of its parts. The Grim Chimera had met Vualla and found in her another that he was willing to give his life for.

The reason that Randidly wanted to put off the meeting was two-fold: the first reason was that he was very close to Level 50. If he wanted this to work, he needed to get all of his images ready with a balanced focus. Only then could he use that as a base to create an even more potent Fate than the one the System typically created.

With a snap of his fingers, Randidly conjured a tongue of emerald flame that danced across his fingers. The light threw long and flickering shadows against the walls of the tent. The whole of the interior was transformed by the strange light.

And the second reason was obviously that Salazar was a rather annoying person. Even without the stutter, he was extremely self-centered.

“...but when comparing my minor annoyance to what might be a mental breakdown for Salazar, there is no reason not to go talk to him,” Randidly sighed.

Congratulations! Your Skill Lantern of Harsh Truths ® has grown to Level 46!

“What the hell, that Skill shouldn’t work on me,” Randidly winced. Two more Skill Levels to go. At this point, he probably couldn’t wait until his work on his images was done for the Paths, but that was fine. As long as he could finish the images before he reached Level 50, it would work out.

Randidly hopped up to his feet and walked out of the tent before he could randomly gain a Skill Level doing anything else. At this point, he simply had too many Skills for him to even take reasonable precautions against it…

Was it worth it to spend the PP to forget a Skill…? Probably not, but...

To his surprise, Salazar was not in his usual position waiting outside of Randidly’s tent. And in his place was a rather unwelcome guest.

“Ileot Swacc,” Randidly said lightly. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

With a high pitched chuckle, Ileot gave Randidly an elaborate bow. “Randidly, I have wonderful news. Lord Miln has finally had some success with the Nether Prince. We will likely have access to the powerful memories or emotions within that bit of Nether in the next few days.”

“How… nice.” Randidly said dryly. “But you’ll have to excuse me, I have something to attend to.”

“Of course, of course,” Ileot smiled sweetly, not thrown at all by Randidly’s attitude. “Just one more thing. I don’t know if I informed you previously, but the memories within the Nether Prince aren’t something that only a single person can experience. Some of the potency is sapped, sure… but it can easily be shared. And because of our friendship… I’ve convinced Lord Miln to allow you to accompany him. No need to thank me.”