To know that none threatened that final meal that would finally end the hunger he felt Even the Stillborn Phoenix stirred at that surge of emotion displaying some of its own curiosity about that result
Easy now He thought to himself But despite himself RandidlyÆs throat bobbed Saliva pooled in his mouth an echoing hunger in anticipation of the world coming to a cataclysmic end
And he began to walk wading deeper into the Sea of Dreams The colors flailed and lashed trying to slow his pace but he ignored them A massive crimson Kraken of color dragged its body forward after Randidly ducked his head into the colors and let the image fragments tear through his canopy of emerald leaves This strange bundle of sentience raged and brought its tentacles whipping around but Randidly could feel himself laughing
He was pure He was energy incarnate A throbbing mental pain tugged at the edges of his awareness but he just sloshed his way through the thick medium of color Something obstinate and determined rose up in his chest Randidly planned to walk to the bottom of this sea of color and rip this damned Kraken to bits for having the gall to stand against him
Heh great YggdrasilÆs emotional shift has made me even more likely to engage in dumb confrontations Randidly lifted his bark covered hands and seized the tentacles Then he began to pull dragging the Kraken which had shifted to a pale green color toward him
And yet I donÆt hate this about myself If I canÆt believe in the impossible IÆll never be able to tear down the Nexus
Chapter 1921
Coming back to his body Randidly felt fresh and scalded as though he had hopped into boiling water and let the heat and bubbles strip away a few surface layers of skin His mind flopped around in his skull luxurious and pummeled What remained of his emotions had been cleansed and thoroughly ironed out by the deep swim into the Sea of Dreams
His Penance was running a bit low the Sea of Dreams was the sort of training that made it difficult to accurately keep track of time So before anything else Randidly sank into the oblivion and paid the few seconds per minute that he owed When he came back to himself he took a few minutes to gather himself and simply looked at the island
The training groups had started constructing a series of wooden buildings above the beach The bare bones of the partially completed scaffolding curled like fingers in the soft light of the dawn coming up over the island apparently the trainees had tired of tacking their rest on sand or on the bobbing barge And Randidly had no doubt that Tatiana had sold some of the land of this island to some very expensive restaurants that wanted to be known as serving the group that trained in his shadow
The ants were doing some construction of their own on their portion of the island They had selectively cleared trees and dug massive holes down into the ground Or perhaps rather than construction it was more accurate to say they were doing some massive excavation and expansion on their tunnel complex Huge piles of dirt evidenced their industry which continued even into the morning Also Randidly sensed that there was one of TatianaÆs ogre assistants with the ants making some sort of negotiation
IÆve never really thought about this before but this must be how she makes me so much money RandidlyÆs lips twitched SheÆs part real estate developer and part angel investor And its easy because she just follows wherever I go and pours money into the things nearby
Meanwhile his eyes drifted left The weird plant collective had become increasingly interdependent and dense although some of its hive mindedness seemed to have abated The vines between the trees had multiplied several times over so moving through that portion of the island was more like going through a ropes course than hiking through a forest
Likely as an adaption to the new environment Randidly noticed that a few varieties of snake and smaller monkey had returned They skittered and bounded through the tight quarters forming some sort of weird symbiotic relationship with the central tree The monkey paws and snake stomachs had evolved a stickiness that let them ignore the constant rainfall the fauna seemed to thrive Randidly didnÆt really understand how it all worked but he could feel the Nether pooling in that area
And he could also see the constant rise of that central tree now nearing the height of the volcano ItÆs highest branches flirted with some of the low hanging clouds in his Nether storm
What a weird island Randidly shook his head helplessly It was hard to remember what the island had been like before he arrived His presence had that much influence And even after he left he doubt at least two of these shifts would go back to normal
Pushing that disturbing thought out of his head Randidly began to train his Nether capabilities He shrugged his shoulders and reached out to engage with his complex Nether Storm He experimented with several new variations of patterns that he had thought of while in the Sea of Dreams He methodically observed the results for several minutes before making other minute adjustments and seeing if he noticed any accumulating shift from the change
One problem with Nether is that it exists on a much longer timeline than Aether Randidly mused By the time I know the real results IÆll be somewhat committed to what I have created This methodÆs usefulness is limited
Then he broadened his view and looked at the massive weather sphere dragged into the whole churning storm around the island looking for ways that his small shifts caused something bigger to develop elsewhere Sometimes he found some troubling large scale consequences sometimes he didnÆt
Randidly reached and tightened a Nether flow or tied two together and tried again In a way the work was soothing he could truly observe without expending much actual effort On the other hand some of the unpredictability and his lack of ability to predict the larger problems left Randidly frustrated
Nether is supposed to be my thing but there is so much more to learn Randidly shook himself It was almost a relief to turn to the next type of training more exposure to the massive Nether Array sitting at ExpiraÆs heart
RandidlyÆs perception sunk into the ground and quickly came upon the churning Nether infrastructure of the ritual he had made on a sudden impulse To see the shift in it made him realize that maybe the Nether Ritual was similar to the changes in Nether it might have felt like a light decision but it had been accumulating for a long time
He saw a young face perhaps only five or six looking at his or her reflection in a dirty puddle The child was wearing a worn brown shirt that seemed to have once been pink The child reached up and pinched their cheeks
Randy A voice shouted and the child scrambled up After glancing around surreptitiously the child scurried back across the dusty ground Wagons sat their horses and various monstrous beasts of burden chewing grass and staring at nothing while the humans busied themselves Almost a hundred people sat in loose circles around a series of five small campfires Woodsmoke and frying meat filled the air with a homey vibe even if the hollow eyes and suspicion of the group more than erased that
I wonder if its the name Randidly felt a weird gurgling in his stomach Could this child be named after me
Randy was careful not to make any eye contact with anyone on the way back to the smallest of the wagons A woman waited for them her hands on her hips as she glared down at the child Randidly suspected that when she wasnÆt glaring she was actually quite pretty She gestured with her chin toward the wheel well of the wagon which bore an Engraving Did ya do it again kid
Randy shook their head Emphatically passionately so quickly that the childÆs large ears flapped slightly and Randidly felt the childÆs dizziness through their connection But Randidly could also see that the Engraving was curiously inert