Chapter 1500 (1/2)

This time, Randidly silently followed Octavius through the stark passages of the military base after the interview. As such, they made very quick time. The duo quickly descended down through the Web and reached its deeper recesses where the house of Edraine was located. But while Octavius proceeded directly through the heavy metal door on the wall, Randidly paused on a cord. It was only when Octavius turned around that Randidly spoke. “Go on ahead. I need to take care of something very quickly, then I’ll follow.”

Octavius was grinning from ear to ear, still buzzing from the excitement of Randidly earning the position of Head Drill Sergeant, so he nodded and turned away without thinking too much about it. Which allowed Randidly to unobtrusively drop another few hundred meters downward in the Web without anyone being in the pollution zone.

He didn’t need to go as deep as he had been training earlier. And no matter how much he wanted to keep training, now was probably not the best time for that; it was finally time that he got on the same page of everyone else as to why they were taking these actions. But for now, Randidly alighted upon another cable in that gloomy energy waste chute and gratefully released the emotions that the Stillborn Phoenix had been steadily refining.

Compared to their earlier violence, these emotions had greatly settled while Randidly had been informed of some of the smaller details of his new post. Which left the emotions an almost slime-like form, sluggishly exiting Randidly’s body. Their pink-red color had become increasingly vibrant, possessing some inherent quality of purity that made the emotions difficult to regard directly without some instinctual squinting. More importantly, as shape had almost completely been stripped away and only emotion remained, Randidly had been able to tell that the process of breathing was steadily polarizing the emotions. More and more, they were stripped and reshuffle to resemble that obsessive and all-consuming desire of the Stillborn Phoenix.

By extension, the emotions were essentially becoming Randidly’s own.

He could already feel a sudden stirring from his image physicalizations; if he was feeling it directly with the slow accumulating image physicalizations, it seemed like he would also be able to create more drops of liquid Aether with the strength of these emotions.

But Randidly was still cautious about cashing in on that benefit without fully understanding it. So he released those emotions now, to see if the extra emotional power would remain once the emotions were removed from his body.

When the emotions hit the air, at first there was no response. Then, only a second later, the emotions began to explosively hiss and foam, like potassium dropped in water. The emotions expanded outward with all the furious glee of a brood of young dragons eager to leave the nest, their earlier sluggishness completely forgotten as the impurities of the world built space between the emotions.

Feeling somewhat conflicted, Randidly watched those emotions diffuse into the surrounding space. Then he noticed something else quite strange: the Stillborn Phoenix retained some connection to those emotions as they spread outward. That expanding and diffusing energy had been marked by Randidly’s emotions, just as surely as something could be marked by a powerful and distinct shape.

How long will that connection linger, I wonder…?

Humming to himself, Randidly allowed the suddenly obedient Stillborn Phoenix to absorb some more of the ambient energy to continue its breathing. To Randidly’s surprise, the brief exposure to the bearman’s chaotic image had really affected the Egg of Depression. The idea that all of its carefully constructed artifices could be stripped away by another had aligned the image much more closely with Randidly’s interest; it had been scared straight. For now at least, it was committed to the journey of training so they could overcome this new foe.

With Yggdrasil’s help, sucking up another massive amount of ambient emotion and cutting away the energy only took a few minutes. As the Stillborn Phoenix adjusted to the process, the speed of the refinement was increasing. Then Randidly ascended and proceeded into the residential dome and to Edraine’s house.

Opening the door to Edraine’s room, Randidly was surprised to see that Lady Iellaya was already there. Which meant that there were more passages through the Nexus than just going up and down the Web. Still wearing her ornate military uniform, Lady Iellaya grinned over at him, “You know Commandant Wick could crush you, right? Like a bug, accidentally, if he carelessly passed too close to you.”

“For now,” Randidly responded with a similarly sharp grin. They booth took steps forward and hugged each other briefly. Then they stepped apart at the same moment, moving with unspoken cooperation. Seeing Lady Iellaya’s skeptical expression, Randidly shrugged. “But we will see what happens in a year.”

“You are fucking insane,” Lady Iellaya speechlessly shook her head. Then both turned and looked at Edraine and Octavius, who were standing next to the central table in the room with serious expressions. Since Randidly had gone to his interview, the table had been cleaned of the messily strew papers and now housed three separate stacks of coins.

Randidly observed the three stacks. The leftmost stack he recognized as three Coins of Territory stacked on top of each other. The middle stack resembled the Tier I citizenship coins, except the metal was a strange blue color. There were five of these coins.

The final pile was Nexus Tier I Citizenship coins and there were four of them.

“Although we’ve been biding our time, we’ve still managed to gather quite an amount of resources.” Edraine’s voice was smug as she spoke. Then she pointed to the leftmost pile. “These, Mr. Ghosthound, are for you. An insurance policy, in case our attempt fails and there are… reprisals.”

That immediately had Randidly pressing his lips together. The Grim Chimera growled, deep in its throat. “...this would grant me the ability to take away a whole planet as territory, should we fail. A way to save Expira, huh. So, what exactly is your plan, Edraine? What are we even doing here? Why am I becoming a Drill Sergeant?”

But even as he said that Randidly did activate Hallucinations of the Bloodless Heart to float the Coins of Territory over toward him. His right hand tightened around the three coins and they were stored in his interspatial ring. He would not refuse this; he also had the planets of the Nemesai to still research and assist, as per their agreement.

Edraine nodded slowly. “I do think it’s time we talk about that. All four of us. Very simply… all of us here want to change the Nexus. I think it would be for the best for us to start with this commonality. It’s a bit frivolous, but I’d like to begin by each of us stating our individual goal for changing the Nexus. As for me… I wish to change the philosophy of the Nexus. I no longer wish for lives to be treated as a resource.”

Randidly frowned slightly as he studied Edraine. If he had been forced to make a guess previously, he definitely would not have said that Edraine was here over philosophical differences with the Nexus. Considering what happened to her… and her brother...

For a second, the room was silent. Octavius glanced around nervously, then cleared his throat. “I wish… I wish to live a peaceful life. That is all. But… but I’ve lost people due to the Nexus. If I can prevent something like that from happening again… if I can make the Nexus a more peaceful place...”

Randidly hadn’t spent much time with Octavius Shrike, but he was struck by the sudden intensity that seized the rhinoman’s face when he mentioned losing people to the Nexus. The lines around his eyes deepened and his mouth stretch wide to reveal thick and flat teeth. Rather than resembling the teeth of an herbivore, Randidly instead saw the insatiable cogs of a machine that would stubbornly grind any offending substance to dust.