Influence +31!

Randidly pressed his eyes closed and tried to ignore how nervous he was. The cool air of the cavern was the only reason he could remain as calm as he was. But even through the relief of the air, an annoyance cropped up. Why the hell do these notifications need to ruin every meaningful moment…?

Randidly had problems managing his guilt already. He had been able to keep a clear head about it since he sparred with Bertram and felt the beginnings of Helen’s Depths of Horror seeping into the Stillborn Phoenix, but also the constant ache of her absence hadn’t packed its bags and vacated the hollow under his heart. Now, to stand here above her coffin, to be forced to speak, and to feel himself benefiting front he experience-

Influence +32!

Stop it, Randidly said to himself. He stared at the coffin in front of him, trying to ignore the people waiting behind him. Waiting for him to speak. You know the reason you are nervous… has nothing to do with the accumulation of Influence.

I just don’t know… what do you say about someone who gave their life to protect you? Randidly chewed on his bottom lip for several seconds.

Neveah stood over next to Wivanya and Alana, but she reached through their connection. Do you want a bit of advice?

Yes. Randidly replied honestly. At the moment, his mind was blank.

Say what you would want to say to her now. If she could still hear you.

Randidly pressed his eyes shut and blew a breath out through his nose. He opened his eyes and turned around to look at the people swimming in this same cool grief as him. He forced himself to take another breath to steady himself.

Heiffal and his subordinates who had served as Overseers with Helen stood on the right. In the middle were representatives from the Order Ducis and Kharon who had either been trained by Helen or been trained by those Helen trained. In addition, Donnyton and many of the other Zones sent representatives who had assisted Helen in patrolling the Wildlands in the early days. Beyond them were smaller clusters of people who came from Bubble Cities that Helen and the Order Ducis had liberated.

To the left, about half of the Elite Recruits stood with stern expressions. At the front, Charlotte Wick practically glowered forward, burning a hole in the coffin with her intense gaze.

As he had requested, all the attendees held their weapons as they stood at Helen’s funeral. Randidly would have almost felt dumb for suggesting it in retrospect, had not he seen how desperately everyone was clinging to the bits of metal, bone, and wood in their hands.

Finally, his gaze settled on Islinda. The woman who resembled Helen in the details yet was assembled into an unrecognizable whole. Her intense gaze held Randidly for several more seconds until he closed his eyes once again. He was the one who had led her daughter away and allowed her to die. Now Islinda watched, hiding all of her emotions within the depths of her body. Yet her raised thin and white lips showed that she would likely come to a conclusion about him after the ceremony.

If he was being honest with himself, Randidly was glad that she had insisted that he speak. He wanted to; he felt like he needed to. He was the one who could speak best about her. But without the last push… he wasn’t sure that he could have opened his mouth and told Tatiana that he would begin things.

His skin tingled; as the afternoon turned to evening, the air was cooling.

The attendees stood silently and stared at him as he gathered his thoughts. With the canyon walls keeping away the wind, the shadowy depths at which they stood existed without a single disturbance. Randidly licked his lips and straightened. His eyes scanned all the people who had come one last time. Above, Randidly could feel the Lancers of the Baleful Crusade who were active on Expira had arrived to stand vigil as well.

So much poised stillness for one single woman. Randidly bit the inside of his cheek to force himself to begin. His Nether Core didn’t accelerate, but he could feel the energy he released sliding into the surrounding space and prying open the System’s normal Nether allowance.

Right now, this cavern began to slowly fill with memories.

“...Thank you all for coming. This will not be a religious service, nor a long one,” Randidly said slowly. He tasted the words, doing his utmost to balance his desire to do right by Helen’s memory with his sense of guilt toward Islinda for allowing her daughter to die. His back itched with the tension across his shoulders. “We came here because we have one thing in common. We knew Helen. And that… that experience...”

Abruptly, Randidly had to grit his teeth. He had helped directly to make the arrangements for the funeral, especially in regards to the coffin. Randidly had taken it upon himself to adjust Helen’s broken body back into a semblance of health. He had personally used roots to correct all of her snapped joints.

But even so, the corpse in the casket behind him curled like a shrimp. All the light and fire Helen possessed was gone. Facing that truth brought the ache in his Aether Crossroads to the forefront of his mind once again.

He felt awkward and hot standing in front of so many people. Randidly had made speeches in front of even larger groups in the past, like when he addressed his Elite Recruits or when he had addressed the population of Kharon. But numbers didn’t prepare him for how vulnerable he felt now.

He was not prepared for how his grief pulsed and twisted around his spine like a poisonous serpent.

Randidly’s eyes fell back and he found Islinda’s intense stare. She looked so much like an older version of her daughter that for the briefest moment, his stomach dropped out of his body; he truly believed that Helen was here, watching her own funeral. And if that were the case, he wondered what she would say.

Randidly drew in another breath. And then he couldn’t help but smile, thinking of how sourly Helen would have found the stuffy and solemn surroundings. She quite disliked the cold. Some of the weight he felt dropped away. His Nether flowed out of him more and more rapidly and deepened the memories in this place.

“...each person here has their own relationship with Helen; I won’t assume I know what this day means to any of you. You will likely have your own way of mourning her passing.” Randidly began to speak with more confidence as he found his train of thought. “But I can tell you about my relationship with her. I can tell you why these past few… weeks have been so difficult.

“We met as rivals. I went to Tellus to pay a debt and she was one of the first powerful foes I faced. I was lucky enough to defeat her. But even in our first meeting…” Randidly shook his head slowly. “I felt how desperate she was. How much she needed to improve. I had learned to fight underneath the System… and I had learned that I fought and won or I died. Helen believed the same about her own situation; she could not afford to lose. So when I defeated her… she decided to become my spear attendant.

”In her mind, she had no other choice.”

Randidly took another breath. His mouth was suddenly dry; he should have prepared water. With the brief respite, he opened himself up and allowed Nether to flow freely out of him and swirling through the surrounding space. Then he ignored the dryness and continued to speak.

“A lot of you… likely those who didn’t spend as much time with Helen, are probably wondering why I insisted that everyone carry their weapons openly at this funeral and that she be buried with her spear.” Randidly’s lips twitched slightly as he looked around at the surrounding people. “The easy answer is that nothing brought Helen joy like competitive violence. She was fiery and brutal, both in conversation and in a fight. The more complicated answer… is that I would have told you, before I had the last few weeks to reflect, that so much of my relationship with her centered around sparring. Sparring was her constant request to me. Generally, it was the only thing she asked of me.”

Randidly had the urge to scratch his neck but suppressed it. “But… sparring was only the beginning; I was a fool to think that was the defining mode of our relationship. Because now, when I think of Helen…”

His expression crumped. Randidly needed to suck a breath in between his teeth before he could continue. “Now, when I think of her, I remember a woman who never doubted that I could accomplish something. She was someone who would hear me make a sudden and strange request: help me practice my new image, teach these people how to use an image, training these naive youths to become soldiers-”

Across the natural amphitheater, Charlotte Wick fell to her knees and began to sob.

“-anything. Anything I asked, any plan I made, or any bizarre training regimen I wanted to try… Helen was always there.” Randidly’s shoulder heaved as he continued to talk. “She was always there. For years she has followed me without complaint. And I… to her….I am so, so very thankful. I couldn’t have gotten to this point without her. She was my Knight, the only one that I’ll ever have. She was…”

But suddenly, Randidly’s throat closed. The words would no longer come. His body rebelled against his desire to express the complex relationship he had built with Helen through all the years that he had known her. Just like how Randidly felt like his body had been strained to bring a planet into his Alpha Cosmos, he now felt strained releasing the truth of how much she meant to him into the world.

His powerful body was an insufficient medium to convey the truth.

Nether rolled off of his torso in thick ripples. A strange stickiness accumulated in the air as the Nether filled all the available space and began to compress. And in front of him… Islinda removed a training spear from her interspatial device and gripped it tightly. A single tear rolled down her cheek.

Randidly closed his mouth. He could feel his body beginning to heat the cavern; his heart was beating too quickly. He cleared his throat awkwardly and finally addressed the most common uncertainty floating around Helen’s sudden death. “I’ll say this briefly, just once. Helen’s death was not an accident. It was a reminder of the sort of place that the Nexus is. Of the reason why we need to work so hard to change things.”

He turned away from the crowd and peered at the coffin. “Thank you all for coming. For the next hour… sit and remember. For Helen.”