As soon as he walked through the portal, Heiffal winced and straightened. His hand went instinctively up to his chest, despite the fact that the pain was just a general ache that seeped out from every inch of Heiffal’s body. Every breath he took of the air of Earth made his lungs spasm painfully. His muscles tightened like leaves dying and curling inward in fall and his bones felt hollow and rotten.

Even though his body desperately begged him to stop taking the deep breaths that exposed him to such pain, Heiffal mastered that impulse and continued to breathe. The rejection steadily escalated. The ache worsened. Although it was difficult, Heiffal managed to keep his breaths even. The physical pain was falling away, gradually being replaced by something even more intimidating.

He could feel the very Aether of his existence responding strangely to the Aether present in the surrounding world; he never should be allowed to descend to this place according to the Nexus.

Per the Ghosthound’s orders, Heiffal ignored that certainty and mechanically took several steps forward. He refused to simply seize up and topple over as the agony ran rampant across the surface of his body. After all, if he were incapacitated, no one would be able to move the other inevitable victims of the pain. Which would force the Ghosthound to keep the portal open for longer than he had expected to wait for them to recover. And that would certainly not create a good first impression on the Ghosthound.

You already died once, Heiffal bared his teeth toward the clear blue sky that was so different than the terrible orange and black vista of the frontlines. Compared to that, this is nothing.

Heiffal took one step and then another. As the hammer strikes of pain against Heiffal’s psyche continued, he hobbled out of the threshold of the portal. The pain continued to grow as the Aether in Heiffal’s body slowly seemed to awaken to what was occurring. But then the connection that the Ghosthound had established in Heiffal’s chest stirred. It was slow at first, but as the pain became an all-consuming thunder, the flow of energy accelerated. Aether swirled in Heiffal’s chest.

From what he had heard from the Ghosthound, there were protections in place to prevent individuals from higher Cohorts descending to lower ones. The Aether constructs of the System were equipped with certain mechanisms that recorded the initial level in the Nexus where an individual started and monitored the surrounding Aether at every moment to determine where the individual was now.

Heiffal didn’t understand the details, but in essence, the Ghosthound planned to fool the mechanism by providing a constant flow of Aether past the sensor that would hide their current location. Aether began to rotate silently in Heiffal’s body, stalling the terrible pain out. Gasping, Heiffal could only wait and press his eyes closed.

Everything ached as that horrible sensor signaled that his entire spiritual existence should come to pieces for daring to step here. His heart pounded with the pain. But as that energy flowed out of the Ghosthound’s connection it gradually confused the mechanism. The pain began slowly to recede. The Aether in Heiffal’s body gradually righted itself.

It took about a minute for Heiffal to recover enough to move, but by that time almost a dozen other people had dutifully marched out through the portal. But the reason that so few had been able to make it was that about half of those first dozen had collapsed almost immediately, gradually creating a roadblock of bodies.

Still weak as his body gradually adjusted to the weird current of Aether that now sustained him, Heiffal began to shift the shivering soldiers and allow more to proceed through.

Shifloo, his second in command and the individual who followed Heiffal first through the portal, seemed to stay upright purely out of spite. She gritted her teeth hard enough to grind stones to dust and hunched her shoulders like she had a heavy bucket of water in each hand. About a minute after Heiffal recovered, she began to move with him and sort through the weakened bodies.

“The price of reaching the promised land, eh?” Shifloo coughed and shivered. From her low and raspy voice, Heiffal could sense that she had been much closer to completely collapsing that he had been. Her hands were still trembling from the strain.

It was only after the entirety of the group who had decided to follow the Ghosthound passed through the portal that Heiffal allowed himself to relax. Yet he couldn’t let his guard down all the way. Despite the fact that the Ghosthound’s Aether continued to flow and confuse the constructs in his body, there was a constant low beat of discomfort that ran through Heiffal with every heartbeat.

“It will be worth it,” Heiffal said simply as he clapped Shifloo on the back. Yet as she opened her mouth to respond, both froze. As one, their gazes shifted toward the Northeast.

“...by the way Heiffal, I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Shifloo said casually. She moved her jaw a little bit, as though trying to dislodge the scratchiness in her throat. “What does it mean that we are only supposed to intervene in fights where something more powerful than should be on a world before the Calamity is involved? ...Does whatever is making that image count?”

Frowning, Heiffal continued to use his senses to best gauge the limits of the echoing image that spread across the world. Certainly, he would have originally assumed that the source of this was one that was more powerful than should be present on Earth; the image he felt was almost as powerful as Heiffal’s own image, if a little murky in the details.

Heiffal considered carefully for two reasons. First, because this was the world that birthed Randidly Ghosthound. It would be foolish to judge the Earth using normal metrics. But also, there were currently two images nearby to that echoing image that were close to it in strength. And it was clear that the duo was intent on destroying the more powerful image.

“It means we judge it situation by situation. This… seems fine.” Heiffal turned away from the distant image and surveyed the surrounding area. They appeared to be standing on a low hill above a dense and humid jungle. Level 56 Flesh-Eating Macaws sat on the branches of nearby trees and watched the new arrivals curiously.

But a little to the West, Heiffal could see a large area where the trees had been leveled, as though some vast vehicle had recently passed that way. “Anyway, we don’t understand the forces at play in this world. Best to first find Kharon and then make any necessary decisions.”

“You’re the boss,” Shifloo said with obvious relish. She spat out a large wad of phlegm and finally seemed to find her voice again. Then she began urging the surrounding soldiers to their feet.

*****

Hank Howard’s eyes narrowed as President Greyman and her entourage screamed and leapt back away from the molten slag that rained down from the bloodbeast’s artillery. Despite the fact that one of the group appeared to have had their foot melted earlier, the whole group scrambled a safe distance away from the Orchard’s barrier.

Thankfully the blast was aimed higher n’ us by a fair bit.

Yet it wasn’t the people that concerned him the most. And to Hank’s great relief, the barrier held against the powerful blast. Some of the hexagonal energy barriers seemed to waver, but as more energy was drawn from other sides of the array, they stabilized. The six individuals directly opposite on the other side of the barrier were bloodless and pale, but they hadn’t buckled. The captain of the group hovered around like a nervous dragonfly, but couldn’t assist without interrupting the ritual.

Above, Alana’s Dragon Broodmother mount screamed as the duo accelerated toward the giant bloodbeast. Below, Hank nodded in satisfaction and turned away from the President’s near-death experience. Staying away from politicians made for a happy life and Hank had no reason to linger. Alana should distract the bastard for a bit. Give me time to-

But just as Hank was about to turn his full attention to how to ambush the main bloodbeast, he saw out of the corner of his eye that whatever residue remained from bloodbeast’s blast began to stir. A split second later, Hank’s palm was on the cool metal and kevlar butt of his repeater as he pivoted on one foot and brought the pistol to bear on the blood spawn.

Hank raised an eyebrow as he took aim; someone else moved before he pulled the trigger. The footless secretary thrust his palm forward and unleashed a basketball-sized arcane orb at the three figures that forced themselves up out of the rust-colored slag. The orb wasn’t the most powerful that Hank had ever seen, but it was clear that the secretary spent plenty of time increasing the Level of the Skill.

Still, Hank ignored the image-less attack and focused his will. After all, the murder wouldn’t have been so horrifying if normal Skills could slow him and his bloodbeasts down. A terrible image of lethality crawled its way into the heavy, handmade bullets that filled the repeater’s cartridge. It was a lethality of metal, smoke, and lonely justice that believed it had the right to judge even a god. He aimed calmly down the barrel.

Then Hank pulled the trigger four times.

The arcane orb blasted one of the oozy humanoid figures backward and it fell to its knees. But its eyes quickly began to glow blood red and it regained its footing. Just as its mouth began to yaw widely open in rage, one of Hank’s bullets pierced into the side of its cranium and instantly extinguished the blood-red light coming from its eyes. It collapsed as two of Hank’s other bullets found the heart and forehead of the second ooze and similarly finished it off immediately.

For the third ooze, Hank blew away an ooze’s back leg and it began to shift and lean backward. As it flailed its heavy arm and flung drops of molten metal around it, the ooze fell backward and pressed against the Orchard’s defense system. With its body sizzling, the ooze attempted to manipulate its ungainly limbs and push itself back to standing.

Satisfied that the blood ooze’s leg that he shot didn’t begin to reform, Hank fired another bullet and killed the third ooze. The pool of rust-colored slag began to harden into a jello-like substance somewhere between clotted blood and metal as the animating energy was put to rest. Looks like the trainin’ with Alana worked… Heh, let’s see how far this image of mine can go..

“How can you kill an ooze creature with a single bullet? What Skill did you use?” President Greyman asked sharply.

Hank shrugged lazily as he made his repeater dance across his fingers. He could practically smell the trail that he had been chasing for eight months, he wasn’t willing to waste time here talking to Greyman.

Besides, she wouldn’t believe the truth. Even he had been almost unconsciously influenced by Zone 1’s unwillingness to take images seriously. It was only after several months of fruitless pursuit of the murderer that Hank had seen the light. It was only after he had found the traces of Ezekiel and Ace’s fight against the murder that he had been willing to hone his particular image. “Uncanny Marksmanship, ma’am. Now if you will excuse me…”

Too bad that bugger of a secretary reacted fast enough to get off an attack… if he hadn’t so obviously failed to inflict damage, I could have just said they are mite weak…

“One more thing; what is the Red Revival?” The president asked as she walked calmly over toward Hank.

Hank pursed his lips. This was why he stayed away from politicians: they were already asking questions that should be obvious. Plus, Hank didn’t like to be the one to point fingers when it was hard to say how this bloodbeast was involved with the Red Revival. Yet he knew that the quickest way out of the situation would be to just answer her. He already heard the mournful cry of the ballad that his Soulskill would make of this day. Soon it would be his moment to strike.

As if to punctuate the importance of hurrying to join the battle, a plume of fire erupted across the battlefield. Alana’s golden flames cut through the worst of it, but many of the houses in the immediate area the clash began to slowly smolder. Ice blasted out of the dragon broodmother, but it was clear that the two weren’t the bloodbeast’s match.

Time for somethin’ a bit special, then.

Very purposefully, Hank holstered his repeater and pulled out his silver revolver. With a flick of the wrist, he slid out the cylinder and carefully slid a single bullet into one of the six slots. Then he flicked the edge of the cylinder and forced the mechanism to whir.

“The Red Revival. A group of extreme individuals who were initially suspected of being a cult, but then vanished from the spotlight several months ago. They grabbed attention by claiming they had a method to use a weird ritual to return to an Earth before the System.”

For a second she was confused, but then the President’s eyes widened. “The Group founded by Donnyton’s Decklan Hyde?”

Hank just smiled and tipped his hat toward the woman. Then he turned away and walked toward his date with destiny. Hank simply listened to the whir of the mechanism. When the time was right, he flicked his wrist again and snapped the cylinder into place.