The Legend of Randidly Ghosthound

Neveah manifested directly beside Randidly just as he squared his shoulders against the ineffable flow of time. Partially because she wanted to support him, partially because she wanted to protect him from any more outside interference, but also because… she had a hard time following his struggle.

To her extreme annoyance, a combination of Randidly’s deranged state and his deep intuition toward Nether allowed him to grasp the passage of time. She could see his shoulders tense right before the impacts would come, causing the furious humming of the pearl to still for just a moment, a hair away from completely shattering.

Despite her access to his senses, she could only feel the strange energy obliquely. With all the very flashy natural advantages Randidly had acquired for himself, it was easy to miss the first, and most important, of his strengths.

When faced with the unknown, he didn’t question. He grasped the uncertainty and experimented until he found the natural grip for his hand, so he could wield it.

Which was why, even without being pulled into a Dungeon by Yystrix, Randidly Ghosthound would have thrived.

Neveah pursed her lips, looking toward the Prophet; to her mind, that creature would be the greatest threat. Yet it simply drifted sideways, its eye on its chin transfixed by Randidly’s furious and rough movements. The Patron of the Deep drifted nearby while Padraic remained hunched over the clay body of humanity, struggling to keep the last embers of possibility alight in its chest.

A low groan escaped Randidly’s lips. He shuddered his way through another lashing wave from the force of time. Rippling spatial distortions appeared around his body, ripping the skin off of his shoulder, briefly compressing his chest cavity to a dangerous degree. He snarled is way through the pressure, his hands curled into claws around the pearl. Despite that, Neveah could see the substance of that precious nacre began to chip and fade.

A little of its glitter seeped out of the flaws, even if the miraculous heart remained intact. But how much longer would that last?

“I cannot understand this,” The Prophet ventured, bringing Neveah’s attention back to the untrustworthy Cult of the Savior leader. It cleared its throat when Neveah glared, surprisingly docile. “Let me rephrase: I can see the purpose of what he attempted, just barely. I can also see the immense value it generated; the lessons that Nether King Hungry Eye learned by seizing an object beyond the precipice of possibility yet why-” The Prophet paused as Randidly growled his way through another assault from time. “-why does Hungry Eye now attempt to maintain it? Even with great preparation, it would be impossible.”

Each of the mouth-sockets stuck out a fat tongue. “Peh, I ask with no ulterior motive. The air between us crackles with the poor compatibility between our two images; a fight will never produce a winner. I simply wish to understand while he makes himself vulnerable like this.”

At this point, the Patron of the Deep spoke. “Perhaps, you strange horror, the concepts of beauty and generosity flourish within the depths of his Nether Core. Many find philanthropy to be the most rewarding endeavor-”

The loud crack of the ground fracturing cut off his words. Energy danced in the air around Randidly as he layered his person between the vicious forces of time and the rapidly destabilized shape he had managed to create in the pearl. The pressure built, making his silhouette seem impossibly real and vivid. Already, his skin had turned a very alarming grey. His eyes were shut, but just barely, like a freshly made corpse.

Randidly’s hands surged into an entirely different sort of motion. For a few seconds, Neveah didn’t recognize the strange shapes he made. Yet, to her surprise, he seemed to be pulling an old, old trick of Yystrix’s, the one she used to try and hide her base in the Raid Dungeon from the System’s attention, quite a long time ago.

Randidly quickly embellished the foundation, creating a much more convincing disguise for the pearl, masking it from all sorts of energy. It survived the first arrival of time. Yet the second shattered most of the careful shapes he had made. By the third, Randidly once more had to withstand the assault with his body, images, and Nether.

Still, a small break was all Randidly need to come up with a half dozen other countermeasures, which he had already half-created in front of him. The tips of his fingers gleamed like Christmas lights, both with Mana and the possibilities of the defenses he could weave.

“Scythe might return,” The Prophet said quietly. “Yet he pulled his attention entirely inward. How can he have the confidence? What does he gain by this struggle? Does he believe that his efforts accomplish more than simply delaying the objects shattering?”

The last question was asked with a hint of wonder in the Prophet’s voice, as though he almost wished that Randidly Ghosthound raised his head to all of existence, laughed, and told it no. Yet Neveah shook her head, dispelling that possibility. “He would give almost anything to prevent it. But… well. There is benefit enough in the effort.”

Time slammed against Randidly, rupturing another three layers of his defensive Engravings. The Nether in his veins had slowed to a trickle, completely depleted by weakening the concussive arrival of time. He slumped forward, his knuckles pressing against the ground, simply hunching over the pearl.

However, Neveah didn’t miss a slight glimmer coming into one of Sulfur’s protruding spikes on that left arm.

“So pointless.” The Prophet frowned. “Yet I suppose without the chaos of such attempts, he would not have stumbled across so many ways to actually subvert the proper order of provenance.”

“You are missing the point, Prophet,” Neveah’s lip curled. “Perhaps it is due to your over-familiarity with Aether and the loss of context, but there is immense value in the efforts Hungry Eye pours into this protection.”

“Do you truly intend to try and stuff the fractured remnants back within humanity?” The Prophet chuckled. “This new race was Elhume’s baby; without him, without the certainty and vision that he possessed, even I would feel leery of messing with such powerful energies, in their raw and untainted form. What you are trying to repurpose- well, I can’t even fathom how the energy will be warped by the sundering. Such oblivious optimism is beneath you.”

We have quite a bit more certainty that Elhume could have had, when he first created humanity. Neveah thought, but she didn’t respond. In fact, the Prophet’s phrasing struck her as odd; this strange being was definitely fishing for information.

Between the two of them, the second half of Randidly’s preparations imploded, almost directly. Bits of stone skidded outward away from him. Existence trembled in the area immediately around Randidly’s body, as he began to cause a larger impact with his resistance. Very ominously, the pearl in his hands stilled.

Instead, Neveah smiled enigmatically. “I just have a strong feeling it will work out, Prophet. Especially with Padraic and the Patron of the Deep here, assisting.”

“Indeed, to be unified in purpose and intention-”

The Patron of the Deep’s words were cut off by a crater forming underneath Randidly. He hung in the air for a few seconds, his robes shredded to pieces by the hammer blow of time he had endured, then slumped down and hit the ground. The way his body bounced made him seem unconscious. But he did not let go of the pearl.

The sneers came back to the Prophet’s face. “Barely thirty seconds, he has managed to protect that pure object. Now, I understand that the operations of Nether possess some of their own backward charm, but thirty seconds is not enough to create either history or connection.”

Randidly’s body contorted. A visible crack twisted up and down the length of the pearl. The glitter in one of Sulfur’s spikes brightened. And after a second of trembling, the shape in the interior remained cohesive and complete. For a little bit longer, at least, Randidly Ghosthound kept this object from breaking.

“And now, failure.” The Prophet’s gaze sharpened. From its expression, it had its own goals for the energy freed up by the shattering of the Pearl. With that in mind, Neveah flicked her fingers and gathered all the radiating forcing into a storm, based around Randidly’s body.

“For now, all I can say is not yet,” Neveah replied lightly. Her fingers blurred into motion, creating defensive Engravings around Randidly. Not to protect him, she didn’t trust her interference wouldn’t get in his way because she couldn’t replicate his anticipation of the waves of time, but to make sure the benefit they had labored for would be only theirs.

She sat and watched as Randidly continued to fight the waves of time to a stalemate, even without any resources remaining to him. His images had faded. The Stillborn Phoenix had slunk back into the core of him, Yggdrasil could barely manage to pull energy through his veins, and the Dread Homunculus could barely keep him from passing out. Yet his emotional sea surged with forceful denial.

Even when nothing remained but the certainty of failure, he did not cease his struggles. He managed to squeeze a fistful of Nether out of somewhere and used it to attack the next temporal wave directly. The cracks spiderwebbed out, but the pearl didn’t shatter. When the next wave came, Randidly raised his left arm.

The temporal force he had absorbed, those strange principles the Soulseed incorporated, released in a chaotic blast. For at least one more wave, the Pearl remained.

“What a waste,” The Prophet said through two sets of gritted teeth, eyeing her defensive arrays.

Neveah smiled sweetly. “You know, the trick with Nether is to never underestimate a connection. Never to dismiss a precedent, even if its an extremely remote one. You might see all this energy expended for naught, but should we succeed, should these energies linger around long enough for us to use, we will fuel humanity with these long moments of struggle.

“No matter what adversity humanity might face in its future, its descendants will possess an atavistic certainty the impossible can be fought. Because for forty-two seconds, Nether King Hungry Eye showed them how.”

The next temporal wave, and then the next one, arrived and Randidly forced his way through them, all gritted teeth and refusal to concede. Neveah’s heart ached, watching him. Not for the physical pain he endured, but for the heartbreak she knew would be coming. In Randidly’s current actions, she saw more of him as a child, fist balled and eyes watery, wishing life could have been different.

At forty-seven and a half seconds, a temporal wave arrived and Randidly failed. The Stone of Boundless Nacre shattered. Randidly howled his throat raw, grief and exhaustion exploding out of his body.

In a way, it was perfect. Because that last-ditch resistance let Neveah sweep through and pluck up the remnant shapes from the Pearl before they could be damaged. While he collapsed in a much-deserved nap, she picked up the fragments of his failure, all glittering edges and grief.

Neveah’s eyes blazed as she brought those forces around the clay body of humanity, to make the universe regret its folly.

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