Chapter 1322 (2/2)

“It doesn’t seem very powerful,” Helen commented with a yawn.

Randidly rolled his eyes. “I don’t think it’s something that will take an active role in battle. It is more… of an amulet, I suppose. It’s a dreamcatcher, and what I understand of dreamcatchers, they are hung over the bed of infants. To protect them from bad dreams.”

Helen shrugged. “As I said, it doesn’t seem very powerful. People rarely sleep with the System. So when would you have time to dream? And are your dreams really that bad that you need protection from them?”

Rather than answering, Randidly simply flapped his hand to shoo Helen away and focused back on the Dreamcatcher. Shrugging, she turned and walked toward the edge of Randidly’s floating island. Now that his spear practice was over, it was clear that Helen’s interest in staying here was quickly waning. Although the party below wasn’t much better, walking around was certainly better than just staring at Randidly cradle his dreamcatcher.

Which left Randidly alone to focus again on the chimes coming from within the Dreamcatcher of the Long Night. His focus narrowed. Very quickly, he also realized that there was a flow of… something through the dreamcatcher that was causing the noise. In addition, that flow went both ways: coming out of him and into the dreamcatcher and from the world, through the dreamcatcher, and flowing into him.

As the description had said, the Dreamcatcher of the Long Night acted as a buffer for… something. Experience and… time…?

No Levels, huh...

So for quite a while, Randidly paid very careful attention to the noises coming out of the dreamcatcher. The high notes of the chimes, the low notes, the strange flow that rang them… his attention watched for anything determinative about what was occurring. When that didn’t yield anything, Randidly even brought out his Philosopher’s Key and prodded ineffectually at the dreamcatcher for a while. But he couldn’t sense any karma amongst those noises.

With a shrug, Randidly stopped trying to determine anything from the raw sound and simply immersed his consciousness directly in the dreamcatcher. His light mental touch quickly went up to one of the loudest chimes that was being held suspended in the dreamcatcher. Randidly was slightly afraid that there would literally be a bad dream held there, but almost a half-hour of careful observation had yielded him nothing.

It felt like time to gamble a bit.

Immediately after Randidly reached out, the chime he reached for grew increasingly loud. To the point where it buzzed his entire perspective. And then everything went dark.

And in the dark, he found a voice.

“So you choose this path. But as I have stated, it is useless. You are an accident I never expected; did you really think that I would simply let you go?”

Moving slowly, Randidly turned to face the source of the voice that continued to speak so malevolently. “I cannot take control. But I can break you, take away all your strengths, your connections to the outside world. You need but simply acquiesce; I’ve taken away your ability to do anything else, after all. Then I will use your Aether Crossroads to create a utopia for you humans. Simply give in, and you can escape that darkness. Otherwise…”

What was strange was the sense of immediate familiarity of this place… and then feeling of alienation. Because Randidly felt emotions in his chest that weren’t his own, not truly. They had been at one time, but now…

He was crowded by fear, anger, panic, anxiety, and a bone-deep hatred for everyone that tried to control him. The emotions were so pure and poignant that he felt them bleeding into his consciousness.

Ignoring the voice talking to him, Randidly spun on his heel and looked around at the surrounding area. Not a thing could be seen. It was completely dark, isolated from the rest of the world. Then the familiarity made sense; this was a place that Randidly knew. A place that he remembered very well, even to this day.

This was the first time that the Creature had approached him directly, seeking to use his images to create a world she could use to hide from the System. And when Randidly hadn’t agreed, she had isolated him. It was only through the connections to the four people he had given blessings that he had been able to escape.

Randidly seemed to have been teleported to the past. And rather than going back to his then capabilities, his Skills were still all present.

He looked calmly around. To the eyes of the current Randidly, he could see the rather lazy construction of the Aether framework that cut off him from the rest of the world. He could also see the deliberate holes that would allow him to escape if he could use this opportunity to connect his Aether and images to people outside of this area.

Randidly almost couldn’t help himself; he raised his hand and tore it all down.

Suddenly they were back in the badlands just outside of Donnyton. Yystrix was clearly shocked, taking a step back. “You… how did you-”

“...Even if you are just a projection of her… in an old memory that has haunted me for a long time…” Randidly said slowly. He raised his hand and wiped away a tear. Yyxtrix wore Lyra’s young face, looking so innocent and out of place as the monster that had tried to doom the Earth several times. “...it’s good to see you. You didn’t deserve what happened to you, Yyxtrix.”

Congratulations! Your Fatepiece Dreamcatcher of the Long Night has grown to Level 6!

…

Congratulations! Your Fatepiece Dreamcatcher of the Long Night has grown to Level 12!