Randidly stood next to the grand Engraving they had created on the moon above Expira and allowed the whole of twenty levels of the Hierarchy of Burden’s electromagnetic radiation to ravage him. This time, it wasn’t as a training exercise; instead, Randidly had found that the electricity was excellent at superheating his metal left arm.

They had chosen the arm because Neveah’s experiments revealed that the Engraving affected a rather large area; extrapolating from her earlier patterns, this Engraving would take up the same amount of size as a small city. Part of the safety constructs removed included a pattern that would tie the refining process solely to Randidly. The mechanism would have been useful, but Neveah insisted that for the refinement, magnification was more important. And the safety construct took up too much space.

So now Randidly stood on the grey stone of the atmosphere less celestial body, his toes digging into moondust. Ideally, the Engraving wouldn’t be so large that anyone would notice on Expira.

When the conductive metal of his arm became malleable, he then ceased using the Fatepiece and wrought some small adjustments to his fingers and upper arm along the limb, to slightly repair the damage he had inflicted in his earlier grief. In the absolute landslide of tasks that he needed to address, remaking his metal arm had somehow fallen through the cracks.

Neveah walked up next to him, having walked the circuit of the giant working and scrutinized every inch of the Engraving. She said to Randidly. “I’ve set up a broader Engraving around this area to maintain a semblance of an atmosphere. You don’t typically need to breathe, but I’m unsure how long this process will take; we might as well prepare for the worst. There will be a significant amount of energy flowing through your body due to the formation, but it isn’t even half of what your Fatepiece can produce in the first layer. I’ll be supplying the energy, so your focus will be entirely on your work. Do you need anything else before you begin?”

Randidly shook his head, but inwardly he spoke to himself to calm his impatience. You are here to learn how to improve images. Mastering that skill will take you closer to your goal of getting revenge on Commandant Wick. Besides, you owe Claudette. When you are ready to improve your Nether Core, the materials she provided will be invaluable.

Influence +42!

Neveah wandered off, doing some last-minute projections in her head. Randidly grinned across the Engraving at Claudette. She stood above five hundred meters away from him, in the central portion of the Engraving. He made sure to exaggerate his words, so she could read his lips. “What about you, are you ready?”

“You weren’t lying about four days,” Claudette shook her head. But now that he knew what he was looking for, her raw nerves were obvious to Randidly’s senses. She shrugged. “I wish I had more time to prepare… but we don’t, do we? To finish, we need to begin. So, let’s just begin. You’ll be doing most of the work anyway. I’m just… your malleable clay. Don’t take advantage of me, Mr. Ghosthound.”

Randidly didn’t bother to acknowledge the combination of playfulness and genuine fear in Claudette’s final sentence; he knew she only took this gamble because she had no choice. He looked to Neveah. “Alright then. Let’s begin.”

Neveah raised her slender arms, spots of light gleaming from her fingers. Randidly felt her channeling a huge amount of raw Aether through his body and into the Engraving. The thick lines on the grey ground began to release waves of golden light. The desolate surface of the moon bloomed in front of him like a field of sunflowers.

That golden light started at the edges and steadily seeped inward, like cold syrup running back up to the top of a mound of pancakes. Soon the edges had turned blinding and the area around Claudette’s body began to crackle with power. Randidly heard her release a shuddering breath and then her eyes fluttered and shut. After one more pulse of power, the whole Engraving flashed and suddenly a silvery dome stood in front of Randidly. Swirls of black lines spun and swam through the silver surface.

Yet what instantly seized his attention was the waves of raw energy radiating off of this thing.

Randidly turned to Neveah and raised his eyebrows. She shrugged. “Part of the reason that this isn’t a more common method of improving an image is how much raw Aether is required to sustain the expansion and magnification. I didn’t mention this to Claudette… but a lot of compromises were made in the typical orthodox constructs to lower the cost of the refinement. As a courtesy, I arranged the Engraving so it cut no corners; she probably is experiencing the most lavish image refinement in the history of the Nexus.”

“Thanks, Neveah.” Randidly nodded several times to reassure himself. “Now I just… need to help her take advantage of this opportunity.”

“Good luck,” Neveah said quietly. “You’ve improved your images to the point that you can threaten the monsters of the Nexus after only a decade. You can do this.”

Randidly walked up to the silvery dome and pressed his hand against the surface. Several black lines spun together and opened up a hole that devoured him.

Randidly’s stomach did flips just like the transition between his waking moments and the Reign of the Eidolon Crucible. Silver light expanded quickly outward, absorbing his hand, arm, and then his whole body. A few seconds later, the light began to dim and he could make out his surroundings.

Randidly floated in darkness; for a few seconds, he wondered if he had returned to the shaft. But then he noticed the fractured and incomplete images drifted around in the darkness. And as his eyes adjusted, he could see that the surroundings weren’t completely dark. Slowly, glittering motes of light swarmed toward him on complicated arching paths.

As more light accumulated Randidly moved his body. Looks like I’m in without any problems. So this is Claudette’s image… Now if I can just find the relevant parts of her image-

Very abruptly, the lights spread out and locked into place around his body, then began accelerating with Randidly in tow, carrying him toward the central portion of this image world. Randidly looked around at the vast, empty spaces filled only occasionally with handfuls of dust and strange, ethereal shapes. HIs was a rather boring commute. You might have overdone it a bit, Neveah. This is TOO much expansion…

With his new ride, Randidly continued to accelerate. The more he approached the bright central area, the larger and more details the strange, almost sinister movements in the periphery were; currently, Randidly moved through the subconscious of Claudette Beigon. He wondered whether most people’s subconscious was filled with such an inky darkness.

His sense of time distorted in this image realm but he would have bet that it took him almost an hour to arrive at a fuzzy plain that was at least solid. A chill wind swept across the area, giving the impression that the blurry surroundings were waving him down. Even with his overwhelming body, he felt the temperature begin to suck away his warmth. Randidly bit his lip but ultimately willed himself to slow down and land on the plain. Luckily, the lights obey his will.

“Wasn’t I supposed to have a- Gah!” Randidly was scratching the back of his head in wonder when he saw the floating ‘guide’ behind him. He patted his chest and calmed his racing heart; it had been quite a while since his Grim Intuition had allowed him to be caught by surprise.

But of course, the culprit was an integral part of this world that was conjured by the Engraving. Randidly needed to observe it to determine whether the changes he was making aligned with Claudette’s beliefs or not. Of course, he technically didn’t have to fully follow the spirit guide. Perhaps he had more experience with specific areas and he had been hired because Claudette had some modicum of trust with him. But generally, all of the primers Randidly read on the process said that following the guide was the easiest path.

Just one problem. Randidly grimaced at the floating spirit guide that had drifted in the air behind him. It was a perfect replica of Claudette, aside from three important facts. First, this version of her was a grey specter: everything about her resembled stormclouds and dirty frost. Second, her arms were crossed over her chest and her eyes were closed. And finally, the specter Claudette hovered with a wide-open mouth without any of the normal anatomies of the orifice.

There were no teeth, no tongue. No breath passed through those stretched lips. Within that hole was only darkness.

Randidly forced out a chuckle. “Well… whatever. At the very least, nothing seems to be going wrong. So I can just begin?”

Huuuuummmmm.

The specter released a resonate noise from that dark portal on its face. Randidly flexed his fingers and reached out with Conviction of the Celestial Cataclysm and grasped at the surroundings. He distantly felt the distant Engraving activate and then the world began to shift. Randidly’s eyes swept through the area. He quickly sharpened the detail of the grass in the surrounding area and then began to put some thought into the dry and barren ground beneath it.

When he finished with that, Randidly looked up to the blank grey hanging above him and filled it with distant clouds.

Congratulations! Your Skill Conviction of the Celestial Cataclysm (T) has grown to Level 483!

Once Randidly had drawn the clouds, he spent quite a bit of time fussing with the details of their look and shape. He did not skimp on the reality of the clouds. Broadly, Claudette Beigon’s image centered around a sword from ice so potent that it had destroyed a world. Being sheathed into the ground was enough for this sword to slowly smother the life from the surface of the planet. A portion of that environmental destruction was related to weather.

The clouds should be distant and looming, but not so aggressive that you feel like a storm is rolling in quickly. The doom this sword brings is slow and irresistible. Randidly decided. He put his hands on his hips and created a heavy cloud bank that hung above the horizon in every direction. He even added a few distant booms of thunder, to add to the immersion.

Then Randidly stopped to scratch his head. He started to have a few doubts as he looked at the heavy clods. “This influence is easy to abuse. The guide had been making positive noises, but I really just-”

Randidly stopped himself and huffed out a breath. This might be his first time working through another person’s image, but he knew his own. Besides, the details he currently toyed with were small in the whole of Claudette; that much was clear by the sheer size of this place.

Randidly spun around, but there were no distinguishing characteristics. He could only see clouds and plains, driven by a chill wind.

He glanced at the guide spirit. “Do you know the way to the core of your image?”

Rather than humming, one of the guide’s arms moved. However, the thing moved only one joint at a time. So its finger extended, its wrist straightened, its elbow stretched, and then finally its shoulder lifted the arm and pointed in a certain direction. Randidly shook his head and tried not to think about how creepy the guide was going to be for however long this project took.

Then he rolled his shoulders and began to seriously arrange the air currents of this place. Weather wasn’t just isolated events, it was a grand, interlocking pattern.

Congratulations! Your Skill Grand Perspective (R) has grown to Level 49!

Congratulations! Your Skill Conviction of the Celestial Cataclysm (T) has grown to Level 484!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill Grand Perspective (R) has grown to Level 71!

After upping the chill factor and making the wind come in a constant howl rather than occasional gusts, Randidly sighed. He suddenly felt the enormity of the task in front of him. Working with the details made him realize that there probably would not be any one sign to reveal he had succeeded, either. Randidly glanced over his shoulder at the floating guide. Perhaps the Nether Ritual to rip out the Nexus’s observation Aether constructs would have been the quicker project.

“Too late now,” Randidly said aloud. To his surprise, ghost Claudette hummed its agreement. He glanced at his wide and gloomy mouth before glancing away. He could already feel his mental strength ebbing, but he didn’t intend to take a break now. Randidly was only just building up some momentum. But he had to admit to himself that the best way to do this… was to use his secret weapon.

Randidly pulled out the Visage of Obsession and squeezed the thick canvas between his fingers for several seconds. Then he unrolled the mysterious painting and stared down at what was on the page.