The Legend of Randidly Ghosthound

Randidly and Lowana sat opposite one another, both with their hands in front of their body. Her due to the black wicker shackles that remained on her hands, him to mirror her. Nether moved between them. Thin tendrils of connections were formed in then broken, a constant state of energy motion.

Both leaned slightly forward, aiming to upset the equilibrium between them.

Pressing his lips together, Randidly tried his best to incorporate the inevitable force he had seen from Deganawidah as well as the delicate unraveling notes he had seen from the Thrice-Drowned’s student, Illia. Rivers of significance flowed with a metallic inevitability, edged with sharp barbs. His Nether, armed with these new weapons, marched to battle with the inky darkness of Lowanna’s energy.

Randidly leaned further forward, his Nether Core gathering up momentum.

Congratulations! Your Skill Left Hand of the Nether Oracle (M) has grown to Level 997!

Congratulations! Your Skill Right Hand of the Nether Polymath (M) has grown to Level 982!

The results of first contact made Randidly wince as Lowanna’s Nether cleaved through his own without any apparent effort. Yes, each tool he had stolen was very powerful. But that was against unreactive and unobservant opponents. These principles he gleaned hadn’t yet been totally incorporated into the function of his Nether Core. Which meant that Lowanna's more holistic pattern could target the weak connections and snap off these additions. Her Nether swept forward through those weak points, unobtrusive but suffocatingly thick.

Randidly slammed his Nether Weight against the oncoming tide, twisted and conjured spears of vicious significance with his Synechdochence and his manipulation of patterns, but Lowanna’s energy could endure everything he threw at it and still advance. In terms of concentrated power he might have an advantage against her, albeit against the controlled, not sacrificing lives version of the Nether Arbiter, but her cohesiveness overwhelmed him. Step by step, the space between them, the area where their extended hands existed, began to fill with Lowanna's energy.

Congratulations! Your Skill Gospel within the Seething Torrent (P) has grown to Level 1015!

By the end of the exercise, Randidly had a pounding headache. And as a nice dramatic flourish, Lowanna used her dominant energy to form a mirrored pair of black wicker handcuffs on Randidly’s limbs.

Randidly nodded his surrender and twisted his wrists. The fake handcuffs disintegrated into powder and fell away from his hands. Lowanna studied his hands for a second, then looked up at his face. “That… well, I cannot deny that I enjoyed the exercise, but this cannot happen often. Even with my energy controlled… it toed a dangerous line. Do you wish to instead practice the bonds again?” She looked at him for several seconds, her eyes intent. “Ah, you do not want to be here any longer. You are… distracted.”

“No, I do want to be here. It’s just.” Randidly hesitated. He gestured to the nearby firepit. “Can I get you a cup of tea?”

Lowanna raised an eyebrow and Randidly sighed. He scratched his head. “Alright, the truth is that I want to ask you a favor. I need your help.”

Lowanna clicked her tongue, like a mother at the behavior of her incorrigible offspring. “Is this engagement not helping you grow? As I said, this sort of practice carries risks for me. And if you want me to intervene in the battle with Nether forces, I refuse. Your screening of my presence is the only reason the Cult of the Savior hasn’t come for me. They still wish for an effective lever against the Nether world, especially now that the old ways are mobilizing. No matter how ineffective they know it will be.”

“I don’t want you to interfere in the battle between Aether and Nether, although I cannot deny I don’t think your presence will remain hidden if you assist me. But I think I can offer you enough that you will find it worth it.” Randidly felt awkward, not because he didn’t like asking for help, although that was true. No, his hesitation was because… he essentially wanted to ask Lowanna for a miracle.

“I will at least listen,” Lowanna inclined her head. “Make your request.”

Randidly released a breath. His senses reached toward the dead area in his chest, where the remnants of his Class continued to groan under its own weight. He also felt for the area where he had stored the energy of Muse’s Reverie, now muted and fading, stuck at 3 of 6. He pulled his attention out of his body and considered Lowanna. “You haven’t brought it up, but considering your skill with Nether, you must have noticed… the edge to the current world. One that shouldn’t be present, if this was real.”

Lowanna’s eyes flickered, but otherwise she did not respond. Only her knuckles whitened, as her fingers flexed.

He continued. “Maybe that’s also why you’ve been so accepting of a life here, spending time from Neveah, hiding from the Cult of the Savior, allowing this war to chug forward. And you are right; for me, this is a preserved memory of your time. The most sophisticated I have ever seen, impossibly real, maintained by the most powerful individual in the present as a deep regret. For all that, I believe… I’m trying to create a method to bring the Nether people out of the memory. To do something… impossible-”

Even by just saying the word, Randidly felt a twinge from his Fateset, balking at the impossible. The Stillborn Phoenix hissed in displeasure, but Randidly pushed forward. “-because in the present, the Nether people… have lost so much. Their entire history has vanished, been destroyed. So please, help me with this project and I will try to create that perfect balance you spoke of, with the three bonds.”

“What are you asking me to do?” Lowanna said as she leaned forward, not even questioning the veracity of his characterization of her current environment. Randidly wondered if that was because she trusted him or had essentially figured the truth out on her own.

Randidly licked his lips and glanced upward. His gaze pierced through the roof and up into the seething currents of significance. With three days until so many individuals began their attempts to change history, some patterns had become more clear. Others, through sheer dint of the quantity of meaning crashing together, became opaque.

But Randidly looked at the looming forces and understood that he needed leverage against the Nether forces. One they wouldn’t be expecting, one which could allow him to pry open an opening. A method to pivot the explosion of violence they might wield against Homewell. Just… perhaps not the one that they would expect.

“This is going to sound slightly crazy,” Randidly began slowly. “...and maybe impossible. Definitely, no one but you could do this. But I want you to try and discover some… common element that runs through all Nether bonds.”

For several seconds, Lowanna just stared at him. When she spoke, her voice was wry. “...the comment element is Nether, Hungry Eye. Besides, why all Nether bonds? All bonds but Phaea only exist theoretically. That is the reason my people have climbed to such heights with such little power.”

Randidly shook his head. “For what I have in mind, just focusing on Phaea enough. We need a unifying pattern.”

“There is none,” Lowanna said with certainty.

Randidly countered with a crooked smile. “I’m sure that’s the answer that every other person I could talk to would give to me. Even Deganawidah, with all his fury and experience. And I have to admit, I agree with that perspective. I’ve been wracking my brain for two days, trying to find an answer to this problem. A method that I could use, a uniformity to Nether to target. And I can’t do it. But you aren’t me. You are the Nether Arbiter, a being of immense power, so immense it neutered away everything else but your control.”

“This is a lecture you should not need to hear, considering I have been doing my best to pass the history and spirit of Nether onto you. Some prayers are never answered.” Lowanna said, her voice sharp. “Well, one other similarity jumps out to me: all bonds are bonds. Other than that, the patterns are different. The spirit of the bond, the goal, all are different. They happen between different types of people of different tiers. There is no unifying pattern for every bond.”

Randidly raised his hands. “You don’t need the answer now. We have a few days. Please, just think about it. There is… for me, there is so much at stake at discovering this unifying method. With it, I could also save your people. Please think about it.”

*****

“Snack break?” A now completely caked in dirt Dattylan asked.

Charlotte’s lips twitched, thinking they would need to have a snack run if they wanted to continue at this food consumption pace. But still she nodded, looking at the mottled beams of light coming through the vine fronds to fall on the kid’s face. “Snack break.”

They trooped out from the fourth room of this stretch, the deepest by a good meter, each room back along the vine-roof to the entranceway going up by a foot or so until you could easily leave from the hosting area. As they departed, Charlotte waved a hand. Her Primal Ground image hummed in pleasure, sinking into the walls and working its particular magic.

Small bits of uneven dirt flowed to fill equally small divots in the ground. The corners sharpened into exact corners. An aura of life flowed out of the ground, rising from the very active bacteria that Charlotte had cultivated in the space. Moving from that dark space of light into the warm sunlight left her blinking. She sighed slightly as she leaned her bulk against some water barrels nearby. In the end, all my image improvement has really done is make me a bacteria farmer…

However, her dour mood vanished as Dattylan hopped up on a nearby box, unfortunately just as covered in mud as she had seemed in the shadows, her oversized shovel slung across her shoulders, her mouth settled into a grim line and her eyes into a squint, fully prepared to embrace her new life as a day laborer after two hours of digging.

She held out a palm without even making a pretense of washing her hands in the rainwater barrels before her treat.

Charlotte passed the last of the scones to the girl, who gobbled it down, along with quite a bit of dirt from her hands. When the girl had finished, she leaned back and heaved out a long sigh, the noise filled with the vicissitudes of a life well lived. Then she glanced at Charlotte, her eyes glittering with hard-earned wisdom. “You do this every day?”

“Every day this week, at least,” Charlotte replied. And a second after she said those words, she felt a pang of regret. Because her bond with the Ghosthound, as his Knight, told her that a reckoning was coming. Soon, this brief period of idleness would be dragged away by the relentless march of time. Maybe not if she remained and protected the slums, but the peaceful exploration, the flood of refugees shifting to live under the vines, that would be over.

War came hungry and cackling from beyond the horizon.

“And after this week?” Dattylan said.

“After the week, I go back to working for my boss,” Charlotte said lightly.

“Who is your boss? What does she do?”

“He,” Charlotte corrected. “He… well. He’s trying to build something that lasts. He wants to make-”

“So he needs a good digger.” Dattylan nodded in understanding. She patted Charlotte on the shoulder. “Well, you are the best digger I know. Whoever your boss is, he is very lucky to have you.”

Charlotte was surprised by how touched the compliment made her feel. But before she could try and thank the girl, she paused and looked up. Her image hummed a strangled warning. A ripple ran through the bacteria, starting from the nearby edge of the slum and then rushing inward along the vines. Then, in a second ripple, the life-giving aura, the interplay between Lifeseal and the vines, broke down.

In only a few seconds after that, large swaths of the bacteria began to die.

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