“I’m fine, Tim. Go work on your stupid drawing stuff,” Delilah groused. When he didn’t immediately leave, she threw herself down onto the flower-filled field, rolling back and forth across several unfortunate patches of daisies like a steam roller.

Tim, the kind kid that he was, hesitated before listening to her. But at the moment, that only made Delilah more frustrated. When he opened his mouth to speak, Delilah hopped to her feet. “Didn’t you hear me? Leave me alone! I need time away from a dummy like you.”

Looking chagrined, Tim retreated and left Delilah alone in the field. Every time he peeked over his shoulder at Delilah as he walked back toward the hill, Delilah felt a surge of dissatisfaction in her heart. But as she glared over at Tim, she felt the familiar weight of her dad’s hand settle on her shoulder. Even though he wasn’t here, he was there, chiding her softly when she behaved too wildly. She could feel his warm and patient smile, easing her anxiety. Although her temper flared, she did her best to force it down due to the reminder of that hand.

“UGH! This is so stupid…” Delilah whispered and knocked the back of her head against the grass-covered ground. She knew that Dozer would push her to let go of her anger, but it was hard. Especially when, after being beaten up the prior day, she had spent all night preparing to get her revenge. She had designed several specialty weapons that she carefully inscribed. But of course, when the Ghosthound brought her away to this place, the moss spirits didn’t follow.

Without the moss spirits, her special weapons were useless. So she was just beaten up again, without any ability to resist. The other kids had simply watched. It was infuriating. It was embarrassing.

In Delilah’s mind, there were two types of people that she encountered on a daily basis. Those who were older than her and more powerful and people that she had eventually surpassed because her potential caught up to them. In her heart, Delilah had always believed that the first group would slowly morph into the second group. It wasn’t that other people didn’t try to train; they did, it just wasn’t enough to keep up with Delilah’s growth. Because she was special.

Even her mom agreed with that.

Even Randidly Ghosthound, the man who even now made Delilah shudder in fear, was only powerful because of how long he had spent training. One day, she would surpass him. She would develop her own image and crush him for how cruel he was during their games of hide and seek. It was one of her main goals.

Yet with this Annon… Delilah hesitated. She saw how hard he worked. He was only a few years older than her, yet his power appeared just as overwhelming as the Ghosthound’s. Logically, she knew that Annon was weaker than the Ghosthound, but the fact that he had been able to grow to his current strength placed a lot more pressure on Delilah mentally than anyone else ever had.

After being beaten yesterday, she had studied him like a hawk for the remainder of the day. And as though beating Delilah up meant nothing to him, Annon had returned to the same dull and boring work that Tim now struggled with. It was so dumb.

Delilah had watched his eyes most of all. It was there, in the steady focus that he displayed, that Delilah found what she feared. That look she saw on Annon’s face seemed to announce to the world that he would never compromise. He would continue pushing forward at any cost. He would never stop growing.

Can I keep up with that…? Delilah bit her lip. Then she slammed her fists back down to the ground and began to roll back and forth.

“Having fun, destroying the flowers like that?”

Delilah pressed a hand to the ground and then flipped up to her feet. She raised her hands, ready and willing to take out her frustration on this stranger who dared interrupt her. But as she looked around, there was no one in the surrounding area. Even the air was still; there wasn’t the slightest breeze.

The voice continued to speak. “I’ve done similar things in the past. Fields of flowers… they remind me of something I’d prefer not to remember. So sometimes I level them and turn them to ash.”

“What are you?” Delilah demanded.

The voice laughed. “Just someone with a lot of regrets. But I can probably help you. How about it, little girl… do you want some help becoming strong? I can give you a Path.”

*****

At the recommendation of Derek Moss, Randidly proceeded forward through the heavy iron doors and proceeded down from the surface into the large training facilities that surrounded the engine of Kharon. This was where the lion’s share of the people currently trying to earn citizenship in Kharon spent their day.

It wasn’t the most… enjoyable existence, but most of the people who were in the image adjustment process were willing to put up with the dim lighting and strenuous workouts in order to become an official citizen of Kharon. This was their chance.

Plus, the people who were applying for citizenship weren’t even kept in the underground chambers; they were simply required to finish a certain amount of training hours each day. From the most recent report, the number was set at eight. Which gave these people plenty of time to experience what living in Kharon was really like. They could even get some part-time work.

But for eight hours a day, they would accept being sharpened and honed. Both physically and mentally.

You could clear the physical and image-based training courses arranged by the Order Ducis and free yourself for days at a time, but there had basically been no one thus far that had been able to do so. Very few extremely powerful people were willing to endure this treatment. This was the path for the desperate or the determined.

After watching several sweating individuals struggle to roll several-hundred-pound ‘tires’ forward through mud, Randidly turned away and walked along the periphery of the physical testing area to the training pavilion. Randidly could tell immediately that the Order Ducis members here recognized him immediately by the way their heads perked up and whipped toward him, but the applicants were too caught up in their own struggle to notice.

And here I thought I was doing better at hiding my image… Randidly mused. Well, perhaps its because of the connection they have with me… Tatiana does always have an insane sixth sense regarding where I am and what I’m doing… Perhaps this is a lesser version of that. I’ll have to ask Naffur about it sometime.

It was something of a relief to be able to stroll quietly through the dark hall, with the reverberating grunts of exertion and shouts bouncing off the metal walls form the ambiance of a gym. Randidly walked into the training pavilion with a strange sense of contentment As he did so, a woman who had been slouching against the table in front of her immediately sat bolt upright and used her hands to press herself into standing. “M-m-m-mr. Ghosthound! I didn’t realize… err I… what are you doing-?”

Randidly opened his mouth to answer when the table that the woman was leaning against collapsed underneath the force of the woman’s hands. In a rather ungainly pile of limbs, the woman fell forward and slammed her head against the ground. Randidly’s mouth twitch. “Just… stopping by. You must be Hydie Mordath, right? The Hexwitch.”

“Ah… heh… yea…” Rubbing her forehead, Hydie stood. She furtively glanced at Randidly and then adjusted her glasses. She stood up straight, too, looking more at the ceiling than at Randidly directly. “You… why are you here to see me…?”

Randidly took a glance at Hydie. It was only for a brief second, but Randidly’s training in regards to both images and Nether had been proceeding very steadily over the past several days. Combined with his already high base image, the amount of weight that he could create with a casual look equivalent to some current Earthlings full strength image.

For a brief moment, that weight was on Hydie and she flinched.

Now why would you assume that I am here for you…? Randidly thought idly. He had seen Naffur’s report regarding the suspicious points regarding this woman, but he had ultimately left the decision over how to address it in Naffur’s hands. But having her so obviously draw his attention right now, Randidly let a flicker of purple-black revelation energy swirl around his left eye. Considering this behavior, you really aren’t suited to be a spy…

But considering that an Order Ducis member died due to a strange accident… can’t hurt to check.

The threads of causality spun outward from Hydie’s back, dragging her past along behind her as she existed in the current moment. With the information Randidly had been given, it was enough to peer backward in time. Those same threads also rolled forward, and Randidly watched as they grew increasingly entangled with the fate of Kharon. A frown emerged on his face.

Congratulations! Your Skill Revelation of the Atramentous Threshold (T) has grown to Level 303!

But then Randidly looked away and the weight was gone. The energy vanished from around his eye. He had peered as well as he could with the inferences available to him, and it didn’t appear that Hydie was responsible for that death. Because Randidly also knew of the preparations that Tatiana had been making recently in regards to problems like this, he wouldn’t bother to pry into this woman’s backer as of yet.

But had she been responsible…

Heh. Randidly shook himself gently right as his emotions caused his image in the surrounding area to intensify. Truly, his control over his image wasn’t as steady as he had thought. The shouting of the applicants outside the building immediately fell silent; Randidly could sense their throats had been frozen before his aura. Their eyes bulged. He felt a flash of guilt. These are innocent parties. And people that Kharon is trying to recruit. No reason to bear my fangs here…

“I’m actually not here for you,” Randidly said, giving Hydie what he believed to be a winning smile. From her pale expression, it was clear she didn’t believe him; it seemed his cutting off of his chilled anger was a single beat too late. His smile faded to a small grin. “I’d like to talk with one of the applicants here. One… Gertrude Collins. Can you bring her into the tent please?”

For several seconds Hydie was motionless as she coped with her fear. Gradually, her hands began to twitch. Randidly was content to wait. She soon dethawed enough to pull at the edge of her collar. “Ah… I wish I could help you Mr. G-g-ghosthound, but… Miss Collins isn’t here. She completed the image challenge yesterday and has sixteen hours' worth of training off.”

Randidly frowned. “... I thought the challenges were purposefully designed to be almost impossible to pass.”

“They were. Even Ajax was surprised when she did it,” Hydie explained nervously. “She’s the first person to ever do it. Besides never being willing to spar, she’s probably the most capable image user in all the applicants. So I’m sorry but-”

“No, that’s fine,” Randidly said. Inwardly, he was sighing. He hadn’t bothered to check for Gertrude Collins’ location because he believed that he knew where she would be. Now, finding out that wasn’t correct… it felt like a certain kind of karma.

So as to not subject himself to anymore stammering or touch upon Tatiana’s scheme further, Randidly produced the Philosopher’s Key and directly portaled out of Kharon’s interior. From high up on his island, Randidly’s Grim Intuition spread outward to cover the whole of Kharon. Then, when he had located Gertrude Collins, he descended quietly from the sky and landed nearby in the sprawling park in which he found her.

Randidly watched Gertrude Collins for a long time. She was younger than he had expected, probably very close to Randidly’s age. Her long, dark hair was in a heavy braid down her back and she was dressed in jeans and a grey button-up shirt. In addition, she was pretty in a way that suddenly made Derek Moss’s vehemence about her talent make a certain sort of sense. But more than the details of her person, Randidly watched her as she tested out of Kharon’s examination in order to come to these parks and gather a group of unruly children.

She was reading them a children’s story. Toward the beginning, the older kids rolled their eyes but as the story went on, they began to gather in larger and larger numbers. First twenty, then fifty, then a hundred. As more people came over to figure out what was happening, they asked the people already there what was going on and were quickly shushed.

In addition to simply reading her story, she used illusions to draw out what was happening above her head so more children could see. But to put it mildly… her illusions were quite bad.

The characters were blocky and somehow vague. Rather than facial features, she relied mostly on each character’s signature color to distinguish them.

Or at least that’s what Randidly thought at first. But as he watched her continue through her story, Randidly realized that it wasn’t color that made him so sure of what he was looking at: it was because Gertrude Collins’ characters practically sung with their own images and motivation.

Slowly, Randidly nodded. So this is the woman that Derek Moss thinks is the greatest teacher in the world. Good. Still… the question now is why she didn’t come forward when the Order Ducis inquired about individuals with teaching experience…