The Legend of Randidly Ghosthound

Moish’s knuckles ached, but he didn’t dare slow.

The confrontation behind him shook the air and ground. The front wall of a house collapsed right in front of the Homid, shaken loose from its bindings. The howling Nether winds possessed enough power to punch holes through Moish’s feeble image and ravage his body, but he kept his head down and tried not to think too much about how fragile they were. His arms pumped, carrying him away from the battlefield now that the strange Nether King had taken over.

The Lizakh leader, running abreast with Moish, ceased trying to stem the flow of the blood from his stump and used his good hand to slap the back of stumbling soldier in front of them. The two veterans kept up the rear of their ragged group of survivors, but this one’s speed kept slowing. “Just keep going. Homewell will hold-”

With poor timing, a rumble shook the ground and collapsed several of the shanties along the thin thoroughfare into a mess of repurposed metal sheets and wooden pillars. The group of wounded soldiers continued forward by climbing and hoping, the slums West of Homewell too cramped and the situation too desperate to circle around.

The wind whipped and screamed back and forth, blasted away by one attack after another.

Moish tried not to look down as his heavy fist settled on a brightly colored ceramic pot from the shaken loose home and shattered it to pieces. He didn’t think about all the memories lost in the collapse.

All the lives, spent.

Moish’s eyes were bloodshot, but he didn’t dare close them. He knew that as soon as he did, he would see again the ground eviscerated by a rising wave of thorny roots. Nether Warriors, admittedly enemies, had been ripped to shreds by these implacable, almost primordial roots that had emerged. Probably two thousand lives had been snuffed out in only a second, leaving carnage and the eerie silence of graveyards. Draining and puddling, a murky brown pollution that Moish couldn’t scrub off the surface of his mind.

As a last straw, as Moish stood there and watched those thick, violent roots tear through the system created by the sapling he had carefully protected for so long. As a result, the plant seemed to slump. It might have taken on an ominous brown coloration, but with the darkness of the Nether storms it was difficult to tell. Now, with more pieces of the broken pot falling away from the jostling of fleeing, Moish couldn’t help but feel like the plant he cradled in his feet was the perfect metaphor for Homewell.

His toes tightened, but that only caused the pot to deteriorate faster. He couldn’t look too closely at that situation either, so he looked up and stared at the marred armor of the soldier in front of him.

Ahead of the group, a few civilians waddled along, the parents bearing their important belongings in packs on their backs and herding their confused and frightened children. Moish and the Lizakh Leader exchanged a glance. Moish cleared his throat. “Everyone, please hurry. The fighting-”

For a moment, the world seemed to shiver. Then Moish blinked with his chin aching from sudden contact with the ground, his mouth filled with dirt. The blow had come so suddenly, he hadn’t even been able to react; his bones ached. It felt like someone had picked up the sky and used it like a weapon, bludgeoning them onto their bellies.

Next to Moish, the Lizakh Leader groaned. Moish looked down at the clods of broken dirt and shattered pot beneath him. The sapling had been crushed. He bit his lip.

He hoped it wasn’t a portent for the city.

His vision still swam, but Moish pushed himself up to his arms. One lesson you learned in the Badlands is that you very rarely had enough time to acknowledge your current injuries before you needed to dodge out of the way of the next blow. He winced as he glanced again at the broken pot, but the ground shaking reminded him of his priorities. He gave the Lizakh Leader a hand and hauled him back to his feet.

“Thank you,” The Lizakh Leader said. Then a strange, helpless expression crossed the lizardman’s face. The shift was enough for Moish to pause and wait. After an internal battle visible on his face, the Lizakh Leader coughed and continued. “I know… this isn’t perhaps the best time-” An impact back behind them sent a wave of poorly constructed slum houses tumbling through the air, only twenty or so meters behind them. “-but if not now, I’m not sure I’ll get the chance. I actually… don’t know what your name is, although we’ve worked together for so long.”

Moish stood silently for a second and then began to laugh.

*****

Nether and Aether mixed freely in Randidly’s body. The sky remained barred to him due to the Authority of Illia, but he ignored the sky and swept forward across the sundered ground. His opponents staggered to their feet, still shaken from the sudden impact.

Randidly’s lip twisted. You think this body can’t just tear down the sky? I swallow worlds. This is nothing.

He flicked a wrist and pulled the velvety fabric of night from the void to wrap around himself. A cloak settled across his shoulders, the primordial darkness from which the universe emerged. The Dread Homunculus clicked its tongue in anticipation, eyeing the five foes as they recovered and began to pull Nether from the air to arm themselves. His smile sharpened as he examined the patterns used by the Nether Kings. Not so fast.

Congratulations! Your Skill the Cloak of Utter Night (P) has grown to Level 979!

Congratulations! Your Skill the World Tree Sips from Every Realm (T) has grown to Level 987!

As the Nether Kings tried to create their heavy drills of Nether, Randidly drank down their energy, leaving them with shells of what they attempted. Illia’s eyes narrowed and she shot toward Randidly, her wings transforming her movement into the leap of a rainbow. Grinning in response, Randidly planted his foot and flicked his wrist. Acri slithered out into his spear form, aimed for her heart.

With an equally teasing grin, Illia bounded up at the last second, leaping over Randidly and sending her whirling patterns raining down across him. The plates of condensed Nether dissipated, the Nether he absorbed from the Nether Kings began to seep out of him. Growling, he strained against the Authority she had woven through his own Nether Core rotation. The thin threads began to distort slightly under his attention, but Randidly grimaced; he couldn’t tear his way out of it without completely stopping his Nether Core, at least not right now.

His energies continued to churn within his body as he struggled against the restriction. Bit by bit, like blood dribbling outward and running down the skin, organic veins stretched from the Nether organ within Sulfur into his Soulspace. Those veins continued to approach his Class, drawn by the natural magnetism between the significance and shape of Randidly Ghosthound.

Illia threw down drifting waves of pattern unspooling, screening the Nether Kings in the back from Randidly’s touch. He spun Acri in his hands and thrust sideways. The first of the blow rippled outward, tearing a chunk off of the nearby stone fortress, but producing a plume of kinetic force. Illia seemed to realize the threat and bounced sideways to intervene, but once the force was out there, it was too late.

Randidly’s emerald eyes blazed. He crooked a pinky, tugging at a small breath of wind. The conflict between the lifeseal and the Nether storms produced enough friction for the rest to fall into place. The different Nether currents bounced off of each other and created a spear of energy that stabbed one of the Nether Kings in the chest.

Congratulations! Your Skill Gospel Within the Seething Torrent (P) has grown to Level 993!

The Nether King with large, curling molars staggered backward. His condensed Nether dissipated. His expression was blank as he considered the blood leaking out of his chest. Another Nether King cried and scrambled over to check his status as the other toppled over.

Randidly leveled Acri, his eyes fixating on Illia. I might not be able to cross the boundary, but I thought I already proved it’s not enough to stop me. I’ll rip my way right through to you. Erebus’s Baleful Waltz. The First Tree Suffers Only Fealty. The Wrathful Calamity Rends.

Congratulations! Your Skill the First Tree Suffers Only Fealty (P) has grown to Level 950!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill The Wrathful Calamity Rends (T) has grown to Level 921!

Right before Randidly unleashed his thrust, he rolled his shoulders. Thousands of ghastly imitators sprung into existence, the host of the dead that had poured themselves into the making of the Dread Homunculus. His posture straightened and his body pulsed with authority; all these wights bowed their heads, acknowledging his superiority. Then he thrust, the cohort all striking simultaneously with him, creating a claw to rend open the boundary between ground and sky.

The Stillborn Phoenix flinched slightly but recovered enough to support the effort. His emotional sea thrummed, carrying all three clear emotional notes together in a beautiful harmony. The edges of his image physicalizations across his body sharpened. The veins spread even closer to Randidly’s Class.

The air shook. It was, perhaps, the most powerful single blow he had ever unleashed. The memory shivered, a small stuttering as Randidly steadied his foundation on a new plateau of power.

The attack became a beckoning finger, a featherlight touch that annihilated everything in its path.

Illia gasped, the thrust ripping her open from her left shoulder to the right side of her stomach, even through the diffusing power of Toosah. In addition, the bottom right of her four wax paper thin and artistically rendered wings fluttered down away from her body, severed.

Randidly drew Acri back settled into his base stance, habit hammered into him from years of training under Shal. He released a breath through his nose. However, before he could follow up, the Stillborn Phoenix released a deep ache, an echo of forcing itself into a complete whole for a second to utilize that attack.

High-level performance still remained slightly beyond the image.

Grimacing, Randidly swayed. Above him, her wound weeping, Illia’s eyes narrowed as she considered him across the divide between ground and sky. “You could kill me with the power you demonstrated. Well, I am honor bound now to prove I can do the same of you, Nether King Hungry Eye. Otherwise, I could not live with myself. You might have taken a wing, but I yet remain free to dance alone across the sky.”

The Nether Warrior who had dedicated her life to the service of others blurred into motion, spreading out those weeping unraveling patterns faster and more broadly than she ever had in the past. They rained down around Randidly, invisible streamers of energy, erasing the wild storms of power that thundered around them. The energy nearby rapidly transformed into sand and ran through his fingers. In the back, the three Nether Kings in fighting shape began to gather up their power into a new, more sophisticated form. They forged a single concentrated weapon to wield against him.

Randidly clicked his tongue and pulled again, both with Yggdrasil and tugging at the other edges by manipulating patterns.

Congratulations! Your Skill The World Tree Sips from Every Realm (T) has grown to Level 990!

Congratulations! Your Skill Gospel Within the Seething Torrent (P) has grown to Level 996!

Their attempt collapsed. But by the time Randidly refocused on Illia’s frantic and confusing motions, her preparations had finished. She lifted her chin. “Celestial Tears.”

Her body blurred into motion, seeming to lose all its mass and gaining vast quantities of energy in exchange. The Nether around her buzzed, animated by the sharp pop of color around her body as her wings fluttered. She rode lime-colored lighting, spitting out turquoise sparks and vibrating along violet arcs.

Her new form flitted around him. She started at the edges of the area she had so thoroughly affected with her patterns, using her strange Nether methods to step out of the air and appear in a new spot.

Then she began erupting right next to Randidly and physically slamming into him, all crackling lightning bolt energy and searing antagonism.

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