I immediately froze stiff. Not because I was in pain, no. What I had taken for an explosion within my very mind was instead an onslaught of noise. The instant I had stepped forth into the world beyond the emergency wards of Blutstein, a wave of it had immediately assaulted me. It was like…an almost white noise, a sound I could hear resonating with something other than my ears.

  This sure as hell wasn’t something anyone who had been outside the wards had ever mentioned.

  It wasn’t…unpleasant, I suppose. Not anything more than the sound of an intense thunderstorm beating against a pane of glass. It fizzled and crackled endlessly, coming from…I don’t know where, honestly. Not anywhere close to or around me, that’s for sure. I…couldn’t quite place it, but…

  Slowly, I craned my neck downward until I was staring at the dirt beneath my feet with unseeing eyes. I blinked rapidly when.

  Ah.

  That’s why. It was…somehow coming from Vereden itself? Not the air, or the grass. Nor the sea behind the city that I called home, or the twin mountains that stood as sentinels on either side of it.

  No.

  The strange humming noise was coming from somewhere in the heart of the planet Vereden itself, deep, deep beneath me.

  ...curious. I...wanted to try something.

  But before I could, I became aware of a tugging coming from around my waist. Snapping back to reality, I looked up and behind me. There, through the glowing shield of the Blutstein Wards, I could see Meia jostling the rope tied around my waist. I was…a little touched at the concern I could see on her strong features.

  Touched and embarrassed.

  I had frozen in place the instant I’d stepped outside the wards, standing as still as a statue while I tried to parse the sound. She must have been checking to see if I had, I dunno, immediately died or something.

  I leaned back through the curtain of the Wards with only my upper torso and raised a hand. “I’m fine, I’m fine!” I said hastily, a sheepish smile on my face.

  “What the hells happened!” The half-Orc woman burst out angrily, shaking the rope tied to me in frustration. “I thought something had gone wrong!”

  I shook my head rapidly. “Ah, no, everything’s fine. It’s just…I have to check something. Oh, and the ADP is working fine, I suppose,” I said almost absentmindedly. “I don’t feel any kind of burning.”

  Meia was visibly taken aback about my nonchalance at how the device we’d labored so hard at was functional. It’s not like everyone on the team hadn’t been pulling all-nighters for days over it or something.

  The half-Orc woman eyed me suspiciously for a moment before grunting. “Well, get on it with. I don’t have all day.”

  I nodded at her and then withdrew from the wards once more. Again, the same sound…or perhaps sensation was the better word? The same sensation hit me once again.

  Now…to see if I can dial in on it.

  You see, my Core had noted something insightful. Whenever we synced our senses with Aetherial Melding and meditated using it, we could always sense a pulse coming from the core of the planet. It had always struck us as something not dissimilar to a heartbeat, if not much slower than the one we possessed.

  If this sensation was possibly coming from the same place…

  It only took me a split-second to focus on Aetherial Melding, and I had fallen into what I typically referred to as my ‘crafting trance’.

  And when I did, the sound changed.

  Faintly, as if I was hearing it from far, far off into the distance…

  I heard a woman weeping.

  It was soft, nothing at all like the buzzing white noise from before. In that woman’s voice, I thought I could hear oceans of frustration, sorrow, and helplessness. She wasn’t wailing, nor was she sobbing. Rather, it was soft, and fragile, and with an exhaustion evident within that spoke of hours upon days of relentless misery. There was a hiccupping quality to it all that I found…particularly distressing. I could tell. This wasn’t the sound of a person in physical agony.

  No…this was someone in the depths of a deep, dark depression. An endless pit that she couldn’t escape.

  But the strangest thing was…

  I…something about that voice was almost…familiar to me. But I couldn’t place it. My brow furrowed, and without even realizing what I was doing, I spoke aloud.

  “Hello?” I called out, softly enough that I doubt Meia even heard me. “Are you alright? Can I…help you?”

  The weeping…stopped, for a moment, as whoever this was drew in a short, sharp breath of shock. Tentatively, I heard this disembodied voice call out, in an extremely tentative tone. “…Nathaniel?”

  My mouth dropped.

  I finally recognized that voice.

  “Anima?” I whispered in shock.

  The woman sobbing…had been the Great Spirit of Life. The same Spirit who had helped me in my battle against Rhazal, all those months ago in Elderwyck.

  And the same one who had spoken to me in the depths of the Netherim bunker, but never again.

  Somehow, she heard my whispered word. The voice of Anima began to weep once more, but this time…

  It was in relief.

  “Finally…” She choked out in between her sobs. “Finally, after all these months…I got through to you…”

  ………………….

  It took some time for the Spirit to calm down, and while she was, I signaled to Meia to bring me the chair we had brought along. There was an entire testing station that we had packed and brought, in case we needed it. But the only thing I needed was a place to sit.

  I had a feeling I was going to be here for a while.

  I waited patiently in the sturdy wooden chair for Anima to regain her composure, leaning forward as I did. I was…aware of just how ridiculous I looked, sitting just outside of the barrier protecting Blutstein from certain death. More than a few curious city-goers had wandered by to gawk at me through the barrier, only for Meia to physically growl at them.

  That sent the onlookers scurrying away in a hurry.

  But they didn’t matter to me.

  Anima did.

  I waited patiently as the long-absent Great Spirit calmed down, across whatever form of communication we were using. I heard it when her…breathing, I suppose, evened out, and she made a sound as if she was clearing a throat I’m pretty sure she didn’t have.

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  Uh...maybe.

  “…thank you, Nathaniel,” Anima said to me, a note of embarrassment evident in her voice. “I…cannot possibly explain just how good it is to finally hear your voice.”

  “I…well…I suppose it’s good to hear you too, Anima,” I said, furrowing my brow in confusion. “I was wondering when I would finally hear from you again.”

  To my surprise, she went silent again for a moment. Just when I was about to prompt her again, she spoke. “You didn’t know,” She said with heavy resignation. “Of…course you didn’t know. It was foolish of me to consider otherwise. I…just thought…maybe…” She sighed and didn’t elaborate.

  This was getting more confusing by the minute. What the hell was going on here?

  So I asked her.

  “Anima…what are you talking about?” I pressed. “Why are you trying to contact me? How are you talking to me in the first place? I would have thought you’d be busy, with, you know. Everything.”

  “…everything?” I heard her murmur, dread thick in her voice. “What…do you mean, Nathaniel? What are you talking about?”

  That drew me up short, and I’m not ashamed to say I gaped into space at her words. “What do you mean, what do I mean? I’m talking about the veritable end of the fucking world, Anima! Darkened, ominous skies! Corrupted Aether polluting the world, killing everything not under wards! The Concord cut off from Vereden! You…have to know what I’m talking about…right? I mean, you’re a Spirit! The Concord is your whole thing!”

  Surely…surely a Spirit would notice if their entire home realm wasn’t accessible anymore…

  Right?

  It almost sounded like Anima was shaking her head slowly, on the other end of the veritable ‘line’. “Perhaps I would have noticed…” She whispered. “If I had been within the Concord these past few months, Nathaniel. But…I am not. I…am in the only physical form in which I can possess. I am here, physically on Vereden…but not of my own accord. I…have been imprisoned, Nathaniel.”

  I jerked in place, shooting to my feet at her words. “Imprisoned?” I said in disbelief. “What the hell do you mean, you’re imprisoned? Are…you saying you’re trapped?”

  “Yes,” Anima said sadly. “By those I…perhaps should have known better than to fully trust. But I so dearly wished to mend long dilapidated bridges, and foolishly, ever so foolishly accepted their invitation, into their personal realm. Orus and Neris...have turned against us.”

  Orus and Neris? The two Great Spirits I had kind of awoken during my fight with Rhazal? The Great Spirits of the Land and the Sea had turned on us?

  This whole thing was their doing?

  I numbly looked down at the covered form of my Primordium left arm. Orus had been the one to shape that for me…

  While I was shocked into numbness by her words, Anima continued. “And I truly do mean us. If what you said is true about an apocalypse…I have no doubt they were involved in some way. Please, start from the beginning. Perhaps I can help shed some light on these matters.”

  Haltingly, still shocked by her almost nonchalant comments condemning her fellow Great Spirits, I did as she asked. Anima remained silent as I took the time to explain everything that had happened over the last several weeks, since the Skyfall occurred. The only noise she made was a mournful sigh when I mentioned the death toll from the incident.

  She was silent in the aftermath of my explanation for a moment. Eventually, I prodded her.

  Metaphorically, of course.

  “Do you…know what Orus and Neris did to cause this?”

  “I…do not believe they were the direct cause, Nathaniel,” Anima eventually replied, sounding like she was choosing her words very carefully. “I merely believe that they perhaps…assisted with this ‘Skyfall’ as your people are calling it. We Great Spirits are mighty, Nathaniel. Do not doubt that. But to cast a pall over the entire world of Vereden, corrupting the very Aether that permeates all of existence upon it?” She let out a short, bitter laugh. “No. We do not possess the ability. However…I have a suspicion about the cause of this. Nathniel…do you know of the unrest in the Concord, that began some months ago?”

  I furrowed my brow, casting my mind back. “I…do remember something,” I started slowly. “The first night that I spent in Shurenga’s home…there was some kind of…wave that apparently crashed through it? I was affected by it pretty…badly, and Shurenga told us that it came from the…Mad…God…” I trailed off.

  It couldn’t be.

  …could it?

  “Is that all they told you?” Anima said mournfully, causing my dread to spike. She sighed once more. “Nathaniel, it was…more than just a wave. It was more of a tsunami, truthfully. A catastrophe of our very own within the realm we called our home. Not…quite as deadly as the one to affect the physical, but the results were deadly, to many a spirit. The damage was severe. All of us were incredibly busy containing the effects of that wave, which we believed originated from the beast that Fynneas had become. Or at least his Mantle, deep within the Concord. It took us…weeks to contain it, and the damage will likely linger for decades more. This is why I did not contact you after your escape from the last bastion of the Netherim, Nathaniel. I was simply busy. It was irresponsible of me to speak to you as I did in the first place, in truth.”

  Well, that answered one question. I had wondered just why I had never heard from her again. And then…she was apparently captured sometime after that?

  I remained silent during her explanation, feeling like a stone was weighing on my chest. I had heard none of this. Not from Fade, a literal half-Spirit himself, and not from Azarus, my best friend. Both of them were heavily involved in Spirit matters, and they’d said nothing to me. But…now that I thought of it…sometimes they were downright cagey about matters involving the Concord. They outright dodged my questions at times.

  The frown on my lips only grew.

  “Eventually, my siblings and I did all we could,” Anima said sadly. “And so, one…evening, I suppose you could equate it to, I accepted an invitation from Orus and Neris into her home, the realm of Still Waters. We…had not spoken in the aftermath of our reunion during your battle with the beast Rhazal. There, they betrayed me. I was set upon in a manner I did not expect and captured. At the time, I thought this was foolish. It would be a simple matter for me to retreat to my own realm. None among the Great Spirits can confine another in a realm not of their own. Alas…that was what they were counting on. I know not how, but they…hijacked my retreat when I tried. Instead of my own realm, I wound up in a very, very special place. A location I had not visited in eons. The very heart…of Vereden itself.”

  I blinked

  And then Anima continued.

  “What you would call the planet’s core,” She said helpfully.

  I opened and closed my mouth for a few moments, dumbfounded. Eventually, I found my voice. “Are you saying…you’re in the molten core of this entire planet?!”

  Anima laughed lightly, apparently very amused by my shock. “Something like that,” She said mischievously. Her mirth didn’t last long, though. “I did not think it was possible, truly. I am afforded access to this sacred place by my position as a Great Spirit, but somehow…my siblings have trapped me here. No matter how hard I try, I cannot escape. Either physically, or into the Concord. But…because I contacted you that one time, I left a small method with which I could speak to you. It is subtle, and none but one of my siblings could detect it. But it is there. In the aftermath of my capture, I have been attempting to speak to you for some time. But you were deaf to my pleas,” Anima sounded like she was on the verge of tears once more. “Now, I suspect even that was being blocked. Only with the completion of whatever plot this is has the connection been allowed to flourish once more. Too late for me to warn you of treachery most...painful.”

  “But…I only heard you once I stepped out-”

  I was cut off. “When you stepped beyond the rim of Kyron’s War Wards,” Anima finished for me, sounding audibly…disgusted for some reason.

  I blinked rapidly at the very real antipathy in her voice, but I didn’t have to ask Anima about it.

  She was more than willing to vent after all those months trapped on her lonesome.

  “An invention of that charlatan’s, all those millennia ago. A leftover from the conflict that raged ever so briefly between the gods and Spiritkind, before we were overwhelmed by their might. I have no doubt our connection shall be blocked once more, once you set foot under them once more,” Anima said coldly. “The fact that those Wards have activated once more only lends credence to my belief Orus and Neris are involved in your disaster. Everything is lining up, now.”

  “The wave from the Mad God…” I started slowly.

  “And the betrayal of Orus and Neris,” Anima continued hotly, her sorrow giving way to rage. “I believe they are connected, in some way. I know not how, but those three existences are wrapped up in…something. Some plot of ill intent. Which is…shocking, for many reasons.”

  I couldn’t stop my fingers from drumming against my thighs as I pondered the situation, frowning. “How?” I wondered aloud. “Is the Mad God even capable of something like this? My understanding was that the man was nearly a feral animal.”

  That was what a mysterious old Elf had told me once upon a time, after all.

  “He is a feral beast now,” Anima said bluntly. “He would not be capable of such deviousness. Which means he must have some kind of…accomplice within the physical. Orus and Neris possess no ability to manifest easily within your realm, Nathaniel, to plan such a thing. Perhaps, though…perhaps accomplice isn’t the right word. Perhaps puppet-master is the right term.”

  I slowly shook my head, overwhelmed by the implications of what Anima was saying. Eventually, I let out a resigned sigh. “Which means one thing,” I said quietly, letting my head fall into my hands. When next I spoke, I didn’t care if my words were obstructed by my palms.

  The implications were just…too frightening.

  “If we want this to stop…we need to kill the Mad God."