Unbound - Chapter Five Hundred And One – 501

Chapter Five Hundred And One – 501

You Have Killed A Moontouched Wickerjak (x13)!

XP Earned!

Spears and discs reformed and returned to Vess as she bounced back from her attack, while the only remnant of her foes—a mist of sap—scattered in all directions. One of the bronze discs briefly shoved up beneath her leading foot, allowing the spearmaiden to launch off of it, leaping high enough into the air that she could plant her partisan deep into the wooden ceiling. There, she assessed the situation as her Stamina began to slowly recover.

Elemental Eye is level 74!

Analyze is level 71!

She looked down at the defensive bulwark her allies had made around Beef’s prone form, now with Felix kneeling over the Minotaur’s chest. Pit had vanished into Felix’s Spirit and Hallow’s Risen were laid out beside their master. Without either Unbound, their team had to rely on the War Naga’s sheer physical bulk for the majority of their protection, while Lady Isla slung strange magics that fuzzed at Vess’ senses. They did worse to the plant monstrosities, turning them against one another or sending them sprawling over imagined terrain. It allowed Toa’ut and company to follow up with punishing trident thrusts, and that strange Nymean spirit to attack with lashing vines.

Mana swirled everywhere. Shadow, lightning, and poison Mana snapped from the War Nagas, and Lady Isla spread liquid streams of life and augmentation. The spirit was a conduit to a large reservoir of Mana—water, shadow, life, and earth predominantly—but very little of it escaped the Nym’s Mana Gates. The spirit had claimed he was losing potency the further they traveled from his Companion, and Vess tried not to curse their luck. Her own air and metal Mana dotted the field, faded now and not nearly as dense as the Chanter’s power. She had been the only one to take the fight outward and attempt to cut back the horde. It wasn’t working. No matter how many we kill, there are always more on the way.

Vess had trained for battle her entire life. It was her life, in many ways, but she had rarely been so challenged as she was recently. Part of her efforts to change her fate involved not using her new, very powerful Skills. That had forced Vess to focus wholly on utilizing her basic movement techniques and her summoned Spears, both of which were untarnished by the Primordial’s touch. It greatly limited her capabilities, restricting her fluid movements and eating away at her Stamina. She had forgotten how much her On The Wing reduced her Stamina expenditures, not to mention The Fang of Havoc, which normally assisted her costly leaps.

What’s more, her Skills yearned to be used—crooned at her, almost. That had been something the Lady Isla had not warned her about; her escalating Affinity had only made it harder to ignore her evolved Skills.

She had been relying entirely on her Spear of Tribulations and her newest weapon: the Sling Salvo. The High Bronze discs were devastating when used in conjunction with her Spear Skill, floating them with a greater control than the weapon naturally offered. That they duplicated themselves mid-flight was an even greater boon, spreading a lesser damage with every pass. But, like her movement techniques ate through her Stamina without a proper Skill, the discs and Spears burned through her Mana at a prodigious rate.

I am so close to advancing my Spirit. If it were Adept Tier, perhaps then I—no, she shook herself before resetting her feet against the tunnel roots. I need to rectify my Skills before I can advance again. Lady Isla had told her it would be a risk, but Vess was willing to face down every danger that stood between her and where she needed to return. Where she must return.

A piercing noise cut suddenly through the shrieking din. Vess nearly lost grip on her partisan as a wave of darkness bubbled out of her chest, heard from outside but somehow emanating from within. She cast it aside, squeezing tight on her Affinity until the sensation departed with a dizzying whorl of sensations. Vess blinked away the stars from her eyes to see the battlefield below…and it was changed.

Gaze of the Unseen Hunter is level 72!

All around the War Naga, the Wickerjaks and Thornvalds had been blasted to frozen kindling, their bodies shattering to pieces as those further back moved up with halting steps. Her Gaze allowed her to view living creatures as collections of colors representing the heat their Bodies gave off, and now it only showed her the darkest of colors. In some places, those closest to their allies, it was utterly black.

What in Siva’s name was that? Did Felix do that?It looked nothing like Rime Shaping. A gasp tore from Vess’ throat as her Gaze of the Unseen Hunter found a mound of blackest night sitting at the center of her allies’ bulwark. Felix, Beef, and much of Hallow were covered in thick, opaque layers of ice. “Felix!”

“I’m trying to thaw it, Lady Dayne!” Lady Isla shouted. That wave of frost had hit them all, leaving hoarfrost on the Chanter’s sleeves and hanging thick on the War Nagas’ backs. Twin orbs of green-gold liquid were congealed on her palms, bright with heat. “Focus on them!”

Pinging among the horde were a number of shapes that stood out in her Gaze as if they were burning. Dozens were slipping in through strange crevasses in the root tunnel, streamers of dark water following them, but they didn’t need it to navigate. Their Bodies were soaked with that vile ooze, and dripping fins the size of wings morphed out of the muck. They twisted into the air, eel-like monstrosities straddled by savage fish-men, blackened and slimy while their eyes burned with a raging malice.

“Broodvipers and Drakins.” Vess said, a very Felix-like growl rolling from her throat. Dangerous to face alone, a part of her warned. She did not care.

Spear of Tribulations!

She hurled herself down, Born Trait amplifying her jump just as ten Spears manifested in a swirling cone of death before screaming off ahead. She bellowed, with all the strength of her Body’s lungs.

“Ten Tribulations!”

A wave of chill darkness rolled outward, centered upon the glowing plinth. However, it got caught up in the shimmering light show, failing to penetrate and reach Felix. Instead, it bounced backward off the cords of power, which multiplied until they were a small wall of furious noise and illumination. The dark power was funneled immediately toward the throne Felix’s friend was sitting upon.

The teen Minotaur screamed.

“Beef!” As the darkness vanished, it left behind thick slabs of frost on the platform, throne, and Beef’s legs. If Beef had been capable of getting up previously, Felix doubted he could even make the attempt now. The kid was flash frozen to the chair.

Beef let out a lowing groan. “Regal…ia. The…echo…”

“What do you mean? What about the Regalia?” Felix asked. The transcendent, multicolored storm still raged around them, and it was only getting louder. His friend wasn’t responding, but Felix could see that Beef’s wide chest was still moving. “Hold on! I’ll get you out!”

Felix licked his lips, nervously casting around the featureless Void. Pit stood nearby, braced against the swirling, multi-hued winds. Converge with me, Felix sent. I think we’ll need our combined Harmonics on this one.

On it! Pit vanished in a flash of light, instantly appearing as a heavy weight within Felix’s Spirit. He said Regalia, right?

He did. Felix cast his Perception and Affinity outward, trying to get a handle on what was going on.

Pit warbled in concern. Didn’t he carry that thing for a while? Didn’t he say that it kept trying to control him? Is that the echo?

Shit. More darkness and ice blasted up and inward, splashing against the maelstrom of light ineffectually. More ice built up and over his friend. Pit, you’re a genius.

I know.

Fiendforge!

Focusing his attention, Felix listened instead to the whirling cacophony in front of him as his Skill activated. It clamped onto everything around them—a feeling like a vice squeezing his entire body—and fed a stream of general information to him. This clearly isn’t the Void…but it does feel like the liminal spaces around cores. Like where he had stepped in order to traverse the Links between his friends’ spaces. But…we’re not outside of Beef’s core. I can feel that through Fiendforge. But that means…what?

Felix hadn’t a clue. The storm of light sounded like the Grand Harmony, and was just as overwhelming, but it afforded him little insight. Except…at the edge of the spinning light, there was a bouncing to the tone. A wobble that didn’t make sense. That tremendous, melodic roar was too large, too complex and layered to prance with staccato notes—and yet it was there.

The echo.

Felix followed it, tracing the rippling patterns as they expanded before his Affinity. Threads of light tangled and flexed, forming and dissolving into lattices and knots that didn’t so much as vibrate as breathe. Felix’s Born Trait tugged at him, insistent, and he recalled the last time he’d heard such a song.

Yeah. That sounds like the Regalia. He could almost feel the rush of cold waters and a vast, impossibly distant doorway somewhere just out of sight—like a familiar voice two rooms away.

The inside of the platform bloomed with dark energies again, and this time Felix’s Fiendforge felt the full force of it. Icy death crawled across his Skill, strange and eerily familiar in the way of nightmares.

A face like a sunken crater stared at him out of the darkness.

“Gah!” Felix leaped back, clamping down with Fiendforge and Bastion of Will even as his arms ignited with red-gold flames.

The face was gone.

“I hate that thing,” Pit whimpered, and Felix realized his tenku had leaped from Convergence and was huddling behind his leg in puppy form. “That’s what you saw in the Breach?”

Felix swallowed. “Yeah. And it seems that is what’s affecting Beef inside that ring.” He licked his lips before tentatively pressing his Willpower back into place, shoving the memory of its too wide grin somewhere deep behind his Bastion’s walls. Beef’s core space tightened and flexed, ever so slightly with the pressure of Felix’s Fiendforge. “Okay. Okay. The Creature is in the ooze. Or the ooze is the Creature. Unclear. That stuff is putting out waves of something like Dissonance, and it got to be too much for Beef. Not sure why.”

Felix’s Bastion gained ground as he spoke, the fear and confusion the Creature instilled in him fading with each word. Pit seemed to be reacting too, because he had shifted back into his Chimera form.

Pit nudged the ring of light with a dark paw. It passed harmlessly through the energy. “Right. Then what’s all this? It’s keeping the ooze-stuff inside. How?”

“I think that’s related to Beef. To me too.” Felix pointed at thick flows of dusty brown and blackened green in the spinning lights. “That’s Beef’s particular brand of Mana, or at least what his Skills lean on. But he’s Unbound, like me. That means he can use all kinds and his core should reflect that. That ice,” he said, pointed inside where layers of hoarfrost had coated Beef up to his hips. “That’s something to do with the ooze, and Beef is keeping it from overwhelming the rest of him.”

“He is?” Pit asked, stalking forward. He tilted his head, beak poking into the wall of light. “I don’t he’s doing anything.”

“What?” Felix stepped closer as well, and through the increasing flows of Mana he spotted the wide, two-foot high granite plinth. There was no column atop it, just a rough and broken surface, as unfinished as everything else appeared. Except, from this angle, Felix spotted a depression in the vertical surface, the one facing Beef’s throne. “What is that?”

The granite plinth had a sizable chunk of it missing, as if something had scooped out a massive chunk.

Fiendforge is level 33!

He could feel an imbalance all around him–flaws in the surface of Beef’s core space like cracks in the surface of an egg. Yet somehow it did not collapse as Felix tightened his grip, shifting the pieces of it until they revealed the hole that had been bored out.

“He is missing his Spirit.”

Felix and Pit both whipped their heads up, away from the damaged plinth to a feature that had not been there before. A woman was bound against the invisible ceiling, seated in a throne all too similar to Beef’s save that it was upside down. She had long red hair streaked liberally with gray and it hung down around her kindly, age-lined face. She wore a thick sweater and jeans, the fabric pressed against bands of dark chitin that seemed to rivet her in place.

“Who are you?” Pit chirruped in alarm. “Why’re you upside down?”

The platform, throne, and plinth was a perfect mirror of Beef’s own, down to the bands of swirling Mana and layers of dark ice. The woman smiled at them, but it was touched with sadness.

“Hello. I fear we haven’t properly met.” All around her, the empty black seemed to stretch and wobble as that echo redoubled in intensity. She winced, but the sad smile returned soon after.

“I am Hallow. And all around you are the emptied remnants of Michael’s Spirit.”