HUNGER

Unbound Book Three

NICOLI GONNELLA

Copyright © 2022 by Nicoli Gonnella

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To Cornelius.

Inspiration for Pit and all around Best Dog.

CONTENTS

Newsletter

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Epilogue

Afterword

About Nicoli Gonnella

About Mountaindale Press

Mountaindale Press Titles

NEWSLETTER

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PROLOGUE

NINETEEN MONTHS AGO

Beneath the jewel bright skies of the Continent, the glorious edifice of Amaranth shone like the sun itself. It was said that when the sun sets on the world, Amaranth will still burn bright. Alabaster buildings soared into the sky, structures held together by Mana and the ingenuity of Humanity. Great arches, built Ages past, were suspended between their lofty peaks, artistry the likes of which could never be replicated.

Several of those stories-tall arches connected to a vast palace at the center of the city. It was beyond immense, a walled compound beyond the scale of any other thing in Amaranth. It was one of the wonders of the Continent, a construction that had few equals: the Shining Palace, the Seat of the Hierophant, Holder of the Lamp, the greatest mortal servant of the Pathless God and ruler of the Hierocracy.

At the center of the compound, rising dozens of stories higher than the Shining Palace itself was a tower. There were no walls to this tower; it was built of exposed, filigreed sculptures, immense Human figures lifting stairs and floors above them with grace and dignity. A spiraling staircase ascended its outside, only the clever scriptwork inscribed in the stone keeping the wind from snatching supplicants into the sky.

On this day, beneath the setting sun and the rising moons, a gathering was happening atop the highest room of this tallest tower. Priests, garbed in gold and white, stood along the edges of a large circle inscribed into the stone floor. The circle was covered in complicated writing, sigils of power that pulsed with a delicate tracery of light. In the center of the inscribed circle were nine smaller circles, each one bisected by a bold sigil that lay dark and inert. As one, the twelve priests raised their hands and summoned forth columns of white light that speared down upon them from the heavens.

"Faithful are we, O Pathless," intoned one of the priests, and his words were echoed back by the rest. "Tempered by your light, strengthened by the darkness you illuminate, we chosen seek your aid in this one dire task. Bless us with your radiance, He Who Remains."

The outer circle lit up brighter, the maze of sigils igniting as a torch to oil. The large sigils within, however, remained dark.

A woman stood outside the circle of priests, her body covered in thin, flowing layers of pure white cloth. A staff of alabaster was in her hand, intricately carved and humming with power, while atop her brow rested a silver diadem of the simplest construction. Surmounting her regal head, however, was another. This one was made of light itself, bent into the shape of a nine-pronged crown and hovering above. She was neither old nor young, comely nor haggard; ageless and beyond description, she tapped her staff thrice.

BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM.

"We come to you on bended knee as humble supplicants, Trackless One," the woman intoned. "Dark forces gather against us, creatures of ill intent seek to destroy us. Your Ancient Enemy returns, and none shall survive its fury. The balance of the world has once again come undone, and we seek to tilt the scale toward Order. Toward Strength. Toward Purity."

Another pillar of light stabbed from the sky, this one hitting the very center of the circle and splashing outward. Power burned through the air, and all of the priests' vestments flapped in a gathering breeze. The air smelled of sharp, crackling char.

The ageless woman, crowned and mantled, stepped forward. She raised her hands to the sky, palms open and face tilted up with an expression of serenity.

"We seek those unchained by fate, untouched by the laws of our realm. We seek saviors, O Pathless," the woman tapped her staff once more.

BOOM.

"We seek—"

Shouts sounded out. One of the priests shed his robes, hurling them into the circle and revealing robes that were a dark, sinister red. Black iron greaves were strapped to his legs, and worn leather sandals secured his feet as he stomped upon the edge of the ritual circle.

"The Gods live!" he cried.

"A Chanter! Destroy him!"

The priests all around him sent off bursts of condensed light, Skills that could shear through a Manaship with ease. But the spells turned, bent away from the man's body at wild angles. The man himself staggered and coughed, but bared his teeth in a bloody grin. Rage mounting, the ageless woman raised her staff and summoned a bolt of pure, golden light. It blasted forth with such speed that the waves of its passing sent several priests to the ground. It hit the red-robed man directly in the chest.

And he was unmoved.

The woman gaped, her face falling from haughty anger to a dawning horror. "Mad as his goddess: he's deathwarded!"

As she said it, the man began to age visibly as attack after attack hit him. What was once a healthy, hale Human of middle years soon became a hunched crone. Yet still he struggled forward anyway. As he did, he began to flicker with blue-white lightning, his skin charring as he ran into the circle. He sang, loud and bright.

"The Coward in White shall rule no longer!"

"Stop him! He cannot damage the ritual!" The woman was apoplectic with wrath, and she called upon her power and sent it careening into the chorister. "Do not strike the circle!"

Just as the woman gathered her Mana for another pass, the man reached the center… and detonated.

*KRAKOOOOM!*

A globe of blue-white lightning erupted from the chorister's position, his body the focal point for a powerful strike. A thundering harmony sundered the air as if the skies themselves were delivering judgment. The scripted circle flared in agonized response, its surface raging as the light and air Mana contained within bucked and shot outward. It was overwhelmed and replaced by the blue-white power, and as Mana began to congeal around the outer inscriptions, the central sigils flared with a harrowing potency.

A pulse of power shot into the sky, a beam woven of wrist-thick strands of incandescent brilliance. From it, that awful, haunting melody dominated the air just as a terrible, buzzing cacophony shattered windows for miles around. Priests were thrown from their feet, out of their careful positioning, and very nearly swept out into the sky itself. Above them, the clouds were scrubbed from the sky as something ineffable blasted through them. Beyond them.

The woman strode forward, her face a thunderhead. The circle they had painstakingly perfected was ruined beyond repair, while the power they had summoned from their God had been burned away entirely. She crossed the circle, her steps heavy.

On the ground, the remnants of the chorister heaved his sunken chest, a smile upon his broken lips. More skeleton than man now, his ruined eyes were unable to even see the terrible fury that filled the woman in white.

"What have you done, you cretin? You've doomed us all," she spat. "It comes for us. Even the Chanters."

A single, wheezing breath was taken in, and that smile never abated.

"Let… it come… Hierophant."

The chorister died then, but that did not stop the white-robed woman. She hurled a beam of light into his ragged corpse until it melted the warded stone beneath, and her screams could be heard throughout shining Amaranth.

CHAPTER ONE

"Father. I have done as you asked. Let me free. Let us rage."

Unknown

Found Scratched On the Walls

Crafters’ Quarter, Haarwatch

The sky lightened with the hesitant touches of dawn. While nocturnal creatures had long gone to sleep, daylight creatures were waking to a new day. The temperate forests of the Foglands rustled with a cool breeze, but one that heralded an oppressive heat soon to come. It was a calm morning, all things considered, were it not for the screaming.

Mervin Cors ran for his life.

Oh Pathless protect me! Mervin heaved himself over the rocky terrain, pushing his Agility to the limit. It wasn't much, and he feared for that lack. If I'd have known… I wouldn't have focused… on Perception!

Mervin leaped over a fallen tree, planting his sturdy boots on the slick trunk and throwing himself forward. He'd always been more attentive than his friends growing up, and he'd thought to specialize by focusing on it once he'd started gaining real levels. He had even earned the Clear-Eyed Title as a result of that training, granting a plus two bonus to his Perception and Vitality! Now, it was all that kept him alive.

The Tin Rank ducked beneath a grip of clinger vines and dove around a thicket, narrowly missing the large thorns he had only seen at the last instant. Sweat poured down his face and neck, his leathers already sodden with it despite the early morning chill. He had been running for fifteen minutes, but it felt like hours since he'd been separated from his patrol and Iron Rank patrol leader. He was only a Tin Rank, and level 11 at that, so the last thing he should have been doing was running through the Foglands all alone, but he followed orders. Iron Rank Kelas ordered them to scatter and regroup back at the city gates. So they did.

*BUZZZZZZZZZ*

The hated sound came again. They were gaining on him.

Blind gods! Mervin gasped at his own profanity. Forgive me, Trackless One. I meant… no disrespect!

It was the beasts! They tore at his mind, leaving only fear behind. The monstrosities were tireless and more aggressive than any monster he'd seen before. He'd been told about the four-winged Chimeras that usually stalked the mists, but now that the land was cured of its impure enchantments, they must have come closer to the walls.

A powerful sucking sound tore through the air behind him, and Mervin flopped forward, banging his shins against some rocks and bouncing painfully against the hard earth. The acid, by pure chance, sailed over him and splattered against the thick trunk of a lethwood, eating through its bark in seconds and leaving a gaping hole behind. Mervin forced himself to his feet and kept running.

The buzzing grew louder to his left then his right, the sound of their wings a terror to his senses. He ran, breath loud and side cramping, and entered into a rocky gully covered in moss and vines, the only place clear of the awful sound. Mervin only made it thirty feet before he realized his error. A large rockfall had closed off the entire path—the gully was a dead end.

No no no no, he thought frantically. Mervin cast his eyes to either side of him, flexing his Perception so that he might notice something, anything. The walls were too steep, the rocks too large and smooth to climb, and though there were vines, the plants were fragile; they wouldn't hold his weight.

I'm going to die here. That grim thought was followed up by another. They… herded me here. Like an animal.

He had family back in the farmlands around Setoria, family he'd never see again, most likely. Already the buzzing increased in volume. They were coming. Mervin wiped at his face and unsheathed his short sword; not an ideal weapon for the enemy, but useful in the tight terrain in which he found himself. He tried to think like a Guilder. There were a couple places he could use his Skills, and the heavy rockfall behind him was a solid defense at his back. Large blocks of stone, quarried a long time ago probably, based on how pitted and moss-grown they were. There was even an odd triangular stone, half buried, and his Perception picked out a dark etching on the surface—

*BUZZZZZZ*

The monstrous lizards hovered into view, four of them, all level 20 and up. Mervin’s backside puckered, and his stomach heaved perilously. They differed from the old Guild reports, which called them Four Wings and said they had four glowing eyes and bodies of noxious smoke, but so many things had changed recently. They were actually called Sharpwing Skinks, according to his fledgling Analyze Skill. They only had two eyes and were scaled, with large, triangular heads and fat tails, their dog-sized bodies flying on four blurring wings. The one in the lead let out a croaking yarp, and Mervin noticed it was at least twice the size of its brethren. A Sharpwing Bruiser, and it made that awful sucking noise again. Its throat swelled.

Mervin's heart thundered, though his short sword shook only slightly. He was proud of that. If nothing else, he could tell the Pathless he died bravely. Perhaps the priests would pass that onto his mother and father.

"Pathless… anyone… if anyone can hear me," he whispered, eyes filling with tears. "Please… save me."

Impossibly, a brilliant light suddenly kindled behind Mervin. A rainbow haze of light and dancing mist shot into the air and glimmered with a kaleidoscopic frenzy, driving the lizards back and forcing the Tin Rank to cover his eyes in astonishment. There was a heavy thud on the ground that Mervin could feel through his boots, and when he blinked away the spots in his vision he beheld… a man.

"Finally," the man grunted.

What?

Mervin's hair stood on end as the wave of powerful, chaotic Mana passed and dissolved into the air, but his skin crawled as he beheld the man before him. He was covered in blood, some of which was not red but a dismal gray. Even as he watched, however, the gray ichor burned off him like smoke, leaving only the crimson. He wore no armor beneath that blood, just simple clothes that had seen better days. He had a head of shaggy black hair which hung about his ears, and wide shoulders suitable for smithing or… or fighting. There was a sense of weight to him that Mervin couldn't parse, but he felt his mouth go dry and his trembling intensify.

"You could have warned me," the man growled, and Mervin went still. The stranger shook his head and made a curt gesture. "The blood was… Yeah. I'm sure you did. Ass."

Mervin's eyes widened. He's insane. Pathless forfend.

Insane or not, he was another body between the Tin Rank and certain death. For that he only felt gratitude. "Beware! Behind you is a dire foe!"

"Hmm?" The man turned to Mervin and blinked in surprise. He felt… naked under the stranger's dark blue gaze, as if his secrets were glimpsed in a second. Swallowing, Mervin pointed with his short sword, just beyond the man's shoulder, and the stranger turned around.

"You again?" The stranger took a step back when he saw the Skinks, before turning his head to either side. "Pit! Pit are you—? Good." He pointed at the Skinks. "Take them out."

A cry rang out in the forest, like a predator swooping for its prey. He froze instantly, and a quick notification popped up in front of him saying he was Stunned for three seconds. Then a tempest of death rained down on the lizards. Spears of ice descended from above, followed by rapid arcs of tightly woven air, both coming so fast they filled the far end of the gully. Mervin goggled at the spells. Is there a mage on the ridge? Have the Guilders returned for me?

A furious squawk pierced the morning, and a russet creature with dark wings leaped from above, leading with slashing claws. It landed among the lesser lizards, taking one down to the ground. A monster! Mervin felt his bowels quake as he Analyzed it, confirming exactly what he feared: it was a chimera. Mervin had heard they were misty monstrosities with multiple eyes, covered in claws and fangs…this one had the look of a bird and fox, but just as fierce as the stories claimed.

He turned questioning eyes to the stranger, hoping for some clarity or reassurances that he wasn’t mad. But the man was merely straightening his clothing, dusting it off and inspecting it. He held up the hem of his tunic and peered at it before nodding to himself, apparently satisfied.

"Still in one piece." He looked proud of that, for some reason. "Jacket's pretty torn though. You owe me, creature. And all this blood! I know it was my idea, but you—! No, enough. I don’t want to hear it anymore.” He paused and cursed again. It was an unfamiliar word. “Yes, I’m blaming you for my pants, too!"

The stun effect had lapsed, and Mervin pressed himself as far back as he could. If he were able to, the young man would have slipped into the nearest crevasse. Out of the corner of his eye, Mervin caught the triangular obelisk glowing for a bare moment longer before the runes on its length dimmed like a setting sun. He shuffled fearfully away; he was not one to meddle with strange magic or insane mages.

"Pit, you need help?" The man rolled his shoulders, as if limbering up. "I can—"

A sudden squawk came from the chimera, and it almost sounded… reproachful. Which was absurd. Chimera were monsters, they couldn't—

"Alright, alright. You have your fun, I guess." The man threw up his hands and turned away, tilting his body toward Mervin.

Please don't come over here, please just ignore me. Mervin prayed, unable to take his eyes off the wild battle before him. Which is why the Tin Rank saw the Bruiser dart forward at the stranger's back. "Behind you!"

The man spun, then he was gone. Wind raged in the gully, pushing Mervin further against the mossy stones, and he could barely see what happened next. The sound of a meaty slap echoed through the area, and the hulking lizard was smashed into the ground. It exploded into black, greasy smoke.

Dead. In one hit.

That was a level 23 beast! Scales sturdy enough to withstand an Iron Rank's Strength! And he just… swatted it like a bug!

Smiling broadly, the stranger turned to his chimera, who had downed two Skinks and was working on the last. "Need help, bud?"

The chimera chirped back at him in a way that Mervin thought meant 'no.' I'm going crazy. Or I died, cursed by the blind gods to… to whatever this is!

Chimera busy, the man turned back toward Mervin, fixing him with eyes that seemed just a bit brighter than they had before. He was tallish, maybe a few inches taller than him, and carried himself with a solidity that Mervin hadn't seen before. Shaking himself, the Tin Rank shot off an Analyze at him.

Name: Unknown

Race: Unknown

Level: 25

HP: ???/???

MP: ????/????

Lore: Unknown

Race unknown? What? Mervin was new to the Analyze Skill, only having leveled it to 3 so far, but he'd yet to encounter that before. He screwed up his courage and stood.

"Wh-who are you?" The Tin Rank managed to put his short sword between himself and the level 25 stranger, though he doubted it'd do much. "Why are you here?"

The stranger took a step backward and regarded the blade between them. He seemed… not afraid, but cautious. Then his eyes flared a bright blue and Mervin felt exposed all over again, as if the man had seen into his soul. Mervin shuddered, and his blade dipped. With a sudden cry, the last Skink was dispatched, and they were alone.

What have I gotten into?

* * *

He's a demanding little cretin, isn't he? The Maw sniped from his left. The creature was vile and resembled nothing more than a withered Human corpse. It wore a dress and the face of a person, but it was a monster in every way possible. It wanted to eat, to consume everything, and all else was a facade it constructed to achieve that end.

Having sacrificed himself to defeat it once, Felix wasn’t about to forget that detail anytime soon.

Felix didn't bother to respond or even look at it. He was still pissed at how their crossing had gone. The Maw claimed it hadn't had knowledge of how much blood the gate would take from him, but Felix was down to a mere 5% in both Health and Mana. Whatever the gate had done, it had taken all of Felix's strength to make it happen.

Flashes of horrific shapes flitted across his perfect memory, almost squeezing a gasp from him. He suppressed it, just as he pushed back the memories of a dark shape with too many limbs, held by chains the size of mountains and an endless storm of—he frowned. Focused. He refused to show weakness here, not in front of this kid, and definitely not in front of the Maw. He wasn't in the mood for twenty questions, but maybe this guy would have some answers for him. He estimated his age at somewhere between seventeen and twenty, at best.

Voracious Eye...

Name: Mervin Cors

Race: Human

Level: 11

HP: 63/75

SP: 13/171

MP: 52/52

Strength: More Data Required

Weakness: More Data Required

He's just a kid, and his stats seem awfully low. Why is he out here alone? Felix didn't entirely disregard the weapon in Mervin's hands, it was a sharp blade after all. But if Felix could survive Harrowing talons, he doubted he had much to fear from a—his Eye flared again—a Beginner Tier Iron Shortsword.

His icons flashed at him again, and Felix suppressed them with a grunt of annoyance. He'd have time to look them over when he figured out what was going on.

"My name is Felix, and this is Pit," Felix gestured to the tenku trotting in their direction. "We're… travelers. Can you tell us where we are now?"

The boy gave him a confused look. "What? You're in the Foglands."

Felix pursed his lips, not entirely surprised given the presence of Skinks. Always with the Skinks. He squinted around himself and activated his Manasight, but the usual fog didn't appear.

"Where is the fog, then?"

"Where've you been? The fog's been gone for three months," Mervin swallowed nervously. "How could you not—"

Felix didn't let him finish asking his question, but instead jumped out of the rocky gully in which he found himself. Landing heavily at the top, he wobbled precariously on the edge for a moment. Oof. Forgot this wasn’t the Void for a sec. Feels like everything weighs double here.

He found himself in a wide valley with huge, strangely hued trees surrounding him, thick with undergrowth and flowering plants. It reminded him of the lake and waterfall area to an extent, and was familiar enough that he could be in the same forest. He knew how huge the Foglands supposedly were, though, so he doubted that. He flared his Manasight again, twisting it in the special way he’d used to view the illusion before, but there wasn't even the barest hint of fog.

So it's really gone. Why? Felix scratched his chin.

Perhaps it is because a great lummox impaled himself on the Essence Anchor that provided the enchantment. The Maw floated up before him, its diaphanous dress flowing as if underwater. Its eyes bore into Felix's with a renewed animosity. Congratulations. You're back on the Continent. Fool that you are, you won't make it ten minutes once you reach a city. Those who know anything aren't fond of the Nym, you see, let alone one touched by a Primordial.

It cackled delightedly, and Felix growled. He flared his Bastion of Will as he had within the Void. There, the Maw would vanish for a few seconds, enough to annoy the creature. Yet this time, the Maw vanished like a popped soap bubble. Felix goggled and felt a pressure in his core space, a faint screaming. "Why did that work so much better here?"

With a surge of sound, the Maw reappeared as if clawing its way up from a well. How dare you shove me away! Do you not recall who saved your life in the Void?

Felix snorted, mixed between angry and amused at the lie. "You gave me bare bones and called it a meal. Go away!"

I'll not! I'll haunt you ‘til your dying day, Felix Nevarre!

Acting on a hunch, Felix flared his Bastion of Will, and imagined a stone room, deep beneath his mental fortress. He shoved the Maw within, then imagined shutting the door and locking it. The Maw's eyes bugged before it disappeared once again. This time, there was no sound, only the faintest pressure in his middle.

“Visualization, I think you called it, Maw?” Felix let out a burble of nervous laughter. “Thanks for the lessons.”

He took a deep, if shaky breath. Some peace, for a little bit. ‘Til it finds a way out.

Felix hopped back down into the gully, startling the boy again. "Sorry. Had to check where we were."

"S-sure," Mervin stammered, and Felix moved away to give the kid some space. "Wait! Where are you going?"

"Over here," Felix gestured back down the gully, where Pit was sitting on his haunches. "Just have to sort out some Status stuff."

Mervin nodded and sat down, but his terrified eyes didn't leave Felix for a second, even when the Nym reached Pit and ruffled the tenku's feathers playfully.

"We made it buddy. We're back." Pit let out a happy chirrup and went back to preening his bloody feathers. Felix grimaced and then took a whiff of himself. "Oof, first thing we have to do is get a bath, the both of us. It's been… I don't even know. Too long, though."

Felix sat down with a sigh on a protruding rock ledge, keeping the Cors kid within sight at all times. He seemed harmless enough, but the guy had a sword and was out alone in the Foglands; Felix doubted his situation was at all that simple. However, he might be able to lead them to a settlement or, if his guess was right, Haarwatch itself.

He said three months, though. It felt a lot less than that. He ran a hand over his face roughly. He was so tired. Focus. Notifications now, everything else later.

Felix opened his blinking notifications and felt the symphonic blare of the System thrill through him and Pit both.

Pit's Rake is level 24!

Pit's Wingblade is level 21!

Pit's Frost Spear is level 20!

Stealth is level 27!

Relentless Charge is level 17!

Unarmed Mastery is level 29!

Blind Fighting is level 23!

Corrosive Strike is level 28!

Dodge is level 30!

Armored Skin is level 41!

Make an Entrance is level 12!

Bastion of Will is level 44!

Deep Mind is level 36!

Ravenous Tithe is level 11!

Voracious Eye is level 29!

Manaship Pilot is level 22!

Dual Casting is level 22!

Influence of the Wisp is level 29!

Mantle of the Long Night is level 17!

Shadow Whip is level 30!

Stone Shaping is level 28!

Reign of Vellus is level 35!

Wrack and Ruin is level 30!

System energy, so long-denied in the Void, suddenly came rushing back into him. A colorless wave crested and crashed into his burning, thundering core before being spat back out in waves of blue-gold radiance. The haphazard solar system of his core space lit up, close to all of his Skills gaining their belated growth. Felix shuddered with the rush of it and fought not to fall to his knees. He succeeded, barely.

Felix was positive he'd earned even more Skill levels while in the Void, but that place doubtlessly ate up everything it could. He was lucky to have grown at all from the experience. Moments after the last Skill increase came through, another blue box appeared, this one edged in gold.

Quest Complete!

Escape the Void!

You have managed to escape the clutches of the Void with only minor physical impairments! However, the Maw still resides within you!

Rewards:

+1 Title

+1 Level

New Title!

Voidwalker (Epic) - You've walked the dark Realm of the Mind and survived. +10% Effectiveness to All Void Skills, and +10% WIL and ALA when in the Void or liminal space.

You Have Gained 1 Level!

You Are Now Level 26!

+2 PER! +2 VIT! +1 END! +2 INT! +3 WIL! +4 AGL! +4 DEX!

You Have 25 Unused Stat Points!

Your Companion Pit Has Gained A Level!

He Is Now Level 17!

+2 VIT! +2 PER! +4 AGL! +4 DEX! +3 WIL! +1 END! +2 INT!

You Have Found A Hidden Quest!

Shrines of the Broken!

You have found and recognized one of the Lost Gods' Temples, reactivating its Shrine and taking a step forward upon the Broken Path. Dare you go further?

Rewards: Unknown

Exploration is level 26!

Exploration is level 27!

+1 Bronze Chest awarded!

Quite apart from the streaming notifications and flares of orchestral majesty, a very real, very heavy chest materialized in front of Felix. It thumped to the hard-packed earth and kicked up a trace of dust. Felix's eyes widened with delight. The chest was made entirely of smooth sheets of bronze metal, molded into an eye-pleasingly curved chest with a hefty black lock on the lid. When Felix touched it, the lock unlatched and the lid popped open.

You Received:

+500 Gold Crowns

+Far-Afield Boots

+Valdarian Satchel

Felix lifted a thick leather purse with the weighty feel of money in it. The pouch clinked satisfyingly in his hand as he shifted it and lifted the second item out. They were dark leather boots with bronze plates on the toes and up the front, while the bottoms were heavily textured as if designed for hiking. More importantly, they were in far better condition than his current pair. Felix kicked off his own ratty pair and laced them up. They fit perfectly, which both surprised him and didn't; he'd just gotten them as a magical reward for completing an insanely difficult quest. The least they could do was fit properly.

"Now I just need new pants," he muttered while admiring the shape of the boots. They came up to mid-calf and laced at the sides. The bronze plates on the toe, heel, and front of the foot felt like armor. It would probably be good for kicking.

Last but not least, Felix fished the Valdarian Satchel out of the chest and held it up. It was a simple enough bag, similar to the Hanaari bag he used to have, made of dark leather with bright silver clasps. The moment it was out, however, the Bronze Chest simply vanished between eye blinks. Felix scanned the area before him, but the chest had dematerialized without a trace, save the four slight divots in the ground. He shrugged after a moment; it didn't matter really. He'd gotten his reward. He slung the bag over his shoulder and put the money pouch inside it. Before he could give his boots and bag a once-over with his Voracious Eyes though, the boy interrupted.

"Blessed be, did you complete a System Quest?" Felix turned to find the teen standing a lot closer than before, his dark eyes shining as they took in his boots and satchel. "Those are quest rewards, right?"

"Uh, yeah, they are."

Mervin's mouth gaped. "I thought I saw a Chest manifest! I've never seen a proper completed System Quest before, just the usual Guilder kind. Wow."

Felix's head tilted. "System—? Wait, Guilder? You're in the Protectors' Guild? Are we near Haarwatch?"

Mervin blushed slightly and nodded. "Yes and yes. Newly-made Tin Rank, sir! Joined up after all the troubles."

"Troubles?" Felix called for Pit, and the tenku stopped preening to step closer. "What troubles?"

"You must've been really far away, sir. Everyone's been talking about it." He swallowed and nervously smoothed down the front of his tabard, which featured a shield crossed by a sword and spear. "The Foglands lost their fog, but then the monsters went mad. Magic gone wild, they say, sir. It's why the Inquisition's been called."

"The what?" Felix asked, but he feared he wouldn't like the answer.

And he was right.

CHAPTER TWO

They walked in silence while Felix chewed over his thoughts. Mervin walked silently to his side, and Pit trotted just ahead. Felix's thoughts were… uneasy, to say the least.

Mervin had explained that the Inquisition was pretty much what it sounded like; a militant arm of a church. The church in question being the Pathless, or Trackless, or “He Who Remains,” according to the Tin Rank. Cors had turned out to be quite devout, and claimed most folks he knew were to some degree. He was from a farm out near Setoria, and that was months away from Haarwatch, at least by merchant wagon. "Might be different, round here," he had said.

"The Pathless provides guidance," he had continued, eyes closing briefly as if in prayer. "The God that Remained when all others fled, he entreats us to follow the High Laws: to seek Order, Strength, and Purity. That, uh, that's how the priests put it, at least." Mervin had scratched the back of his neck and shrugged. "I don't know much about the Inquisition, just that they hold to the High Laws and that they root out Sorcery."

"Sorcery?" Felix had frowned. "Like Mana Skills?"

"Oh no no, of course not. Everyone uses Mana Skills, well a lot of people. Not me. I don't know any yet. Sorcery is different. An abomination." Mervin shook his head and shivered. "It sunders your soul."

He had gone quiet for a time, and Felix tried to order his thoughts. Sorcery isn't magic? Or the magic I know isn't Sorcery? Was the Maw's blood magic Sorcery, then?

"Can you give me an example of Sorcery?" Felix had asked.

"Oh no. I've never seen it." Mervin had paled at the question, his ever present-fear rising quickly to the surface. "Pathless provide I never do."

"Then how do you know it's bad?" Felix had asked the question while he kept a lookout, and when he had returned his gaze to the Tin Rank, he found him staring with no little disbelief. "What?"

"S-sir, it's bad because it's Sorcery." And that had been that.

Apparently, the Inquisition had been called due to the serious uptick in powerful monsters emerging from the Foglands. Mervin had described it as "vile monsters crawling out of the forest" like the Razorwing Skinks, all of them headed toward Haarwatch for some reason. The Inquisitors claimed it was the work of Sorcery out in the untamed wilds—that something had been awakened.

"Far as I understand, the Guild has been running patrols the whole time, keeping an eye out for any more monsters and clearing up the smaller ones. This… this was my first time out." Mervin had looked off into the woods. "I hope everyone is safe."

"Monsters coming from the woods… were any Chimeras?" Felix had asked, scratching Pit behind the ears.

"Beasts, mostly. No Chimeras have been seen since the fog faded. It's like they disappeared. S-save for yours, sir."

Felix shared a glance with Pit. He had a feeling his Companion was going to be conspicuous in Haarwatch, even if the widespread illusion no longer made him look so hideous to others. The way Mervin had reacted to Pit had been a good indicator of how people still viewed Chimeras, even after three months.

Good thing we have Convergence. It only lasted twenty-seven minutes, but it was better than nothing. He had to level up Etheric Concordance further, or find a better option. Something to mask Pit, like an illusion? He almost asked Mervin, but stopped himself. He was likable enough, but was he trustworthy? Especially considering the Inquisition and this Pathless religion. Dude seems like a real believer, too.

Felix had been an atheist back on Earth, so he wasn't all too comfortable with this talk of gods and militant religious organizations. He knew his history well enough, and the word "inquisition" had few good and plenty of bad connotations. This may be the Continent, but I doubt it's much different from home. People are people. We’d better be careful, Pit.

The tenku had let out a pulse of assurance that felt like a warm breeze.

That conversation had been over twenty minutes prior, and the three of them had walked in silence ever since. Mervin watched the woods with nervous eyes, but Felix felt at ease for the first time in a long while. He couldn't sense anything dangerous nearby, and his Manasight only picked out a few huddling auras belonging to low-level beasts, creatures that were clearly not a threat to him or his Companion. The Tin Rank, however, seemed to view every rustling bush or snapped twig as a dire threat. He was wound tighter than a spring.

Given the moment, Felix used his Voracious Eye on his boots and satchel, something he'd been too rushed to do previously.

Name: Far-Afield Boots

Type: Armor (Enchanted)

Lore: Armored footwear of impressive quality and ancient design.

Stamina Reduction II - Decrease Stamina consumption by 10%

Steady Footing I - Increases the wearer's sense of balance and decreases chances to slip or fall.

Name: Valdarian Satchel

Type: Container (Enchanted)

Lore: Made of supple Harnoq leather and stitched with enchanted silk, this satchel is both sturdy and waterproof. Perfect for forays into the wild.

Self-Repair II - By absorbing ambient Mana, minor holes and tears in this object will repair themselves over time.

Weather-Sealed II - Rendered waterproof and resistant to the effects of fire, abrasion, and tears.

They were nice, no question about that, the enchantments on them alone proving them fascinating additions to Felix's capabilities. Plus, he thought they looked good with his stolen pirate shirt and jacket, torn up or not.

Maybe I'll get more armor once I'm in town. Actually have some protection for once. His thoughts drifted to the pouch of 500 gold crowns in his satchel. Was it enough to buy armor? To live on? Felix thought about food and lodgings and other expenses that would doubtless come up, and a surprisingly terrible idea occurred to him. Am I going to have to get a job again?

That thought was entirely too depressing, so Felix looked to his newly acquired Title: Voidwalker. The Title was a bit lackluster, though the wording of Voidwalker suggested he would get a 10% bonus to Void Skills at all times, not when just in that… place. The conditional bonuses to WIL and ALA were less than pleasing, especially since he had zero reason or interest in ever going back there. If I never see the Void again, it'll be too soon.

It was potentially very useful, but not nearly as good as if he'd gotten that Title while still in the Void. He had spent so much time traversing the Void, pushing his Will and Alacrity to their limits. If he'd had Voidwalker, how much faster would his ship have traveled? Would he have outrun the Whalemaw without nearly dying every ten minutes?

It raised the question: why didn't he receive more? For completing a supposedly impossible Quest, he had received a single level and a single Title. How was that fair? He had expected… he wasn't even sure what he expected, but more than that. Was it because of what the completed Quest has said?

Quest Complete!

Escape the Void!

You have managed to escape the clutches of the Void with only minor physical impairments! However, the Maw still resides within you!

Always comes back to the Maw, he thought with a flash of irritation. It was inside him, even now, locked in his Bastion. Or was it? It hadn’t made itself known in a while…

Shit.

He had to check.

"Mervin, a moment," he called out.

"Is there something wrong, sir?" Mervin looked nervously up and down the path. He looked nervously at everything. "Is it—is it a monster?"

"No, just a rock in my boot. Gimme a sec."

"Uhm, alright."

Giving Mervin a final glance, Felix settled against a toppled bole, closed his eyes, and delved deep.

He fell through a bright blue sky and landed lightly atop the tallest tower in his Bastion of Will. One of his earliest Epic Skills, Bastion of Will had saved his butt time and again, and somehow had formed a literal fortress within his core space. A whole world, in fact. The wind buffeted him from this high, and Felix noted that the central (and only) tower had grown by another entire level.

Glancing over the crenelations, he saw below him a square fortress with high walls made of dark stone, and the walls were unblemished. When last he'd seen his Bastion, the walls had been ripped apart, the grounds sundered, and the green, acidic ocean just a half mile from its gates. He'd put in a lot of effort to fixing what he could, but it had remained unfinished, despite spending the strange Essence he'd been able to extract from Voidbeasts.

Now all of that was repaired, somehow. The walls were no more than a hundred feet high, and the central tower was twice that now. The green sea had certainly receded further, now more than a mile in the distance, while the landscape around the Bastion was filled with wildflower meadows. Further out, a huge forest covering rolling hills with jewel bright trees. Felix inhaled, tasting vinegar and rich, earthy loam on the breeze. "How'd it repair itself? Was it returning to the Continent that did it?"

In the Void, the System was… thin. Leveling up Skills and stats was all but impossible unless you had a workaround, and eventually your core space would simply waste away. If returning to the Continent had sent that burst of System energy and boosted his Skill levels, who said it couldn't repair the damage done when he'd strained it against the Maw?

That brought Felix back to the reason he was there, and his appreciation for the view soured. He turned around and walked up to the door leading inside the tower. Strangely, he had known it was there before looking, like in a dream. It was thick and banded with silvery metal, and it opened at a touch of his hand. The Bastion felt both less and more real than the tree he was seated upon, back on the Continent.

He sped down a winding staircase, searching for the room where he'd placed the Maw. Felix knew he had made the cell below ground—where else would you place a dungeon?—but it was such an instinctive move that he had no idea how to get there. So he followed the staircase all the way until they stopped, which turned out to be one floor below the earth. There, at the end of a short ten foot hallway, was a stone wall.

Behind it, he knew. The wall was smooth, without joint or seam, and Felix had to briefly exert his Will to create a tiny, bar-filled window. The stone molded and flowed away, and inside he could see a small fifteen foot square space, completely bare of human comforts like chairs, toilet, bed, or even a window. In the exact center hovered the Maw.

"Took you long enough, worm," it hissed. Its face was even more gaunt than before, almost skeletal, and its blue green eyes burned in the dark. It had no pupils. "Do you despair without my company?"

Felix snorted. "I have questions for you. And if you have any interest in escaping this dungeon, you'll answer them. Do you understand?"

The Maw bared its teeth at him and hissed again. Felix met its stare without blinking; he'd had enough of the Maw's abuse and dissembling. This was his Body, his Mind. After a minute or so, the Maw jerked its head in what could generously be described as a nod.

"Good. I earned a Title and a level for escaping the Void. Why so little?"

The Maw laughed, and cruel delight twisted its features. "Do you think the System unfair, Felix Nevarre? Do you wish it to hold your hand and pat your head, to wipe your tears?"

"Answer the question, Maw." Felix tried not to grit his teeth, but it was hard. "Am I being punished for your presence?"

The Maw amusement vanished. "You ask dangerous questions, Unbound."

Felix frowned. "Dangerous? Why?"

"Oh child, I wish I could properly explain. Truly. But this confinement is doing terrible things to me," the Maw let out a breathy laugh. "Just let me out again, and I—"

"No." Snarling, Felix slammed a solid wall back in place, erasing the bars he'd created. He could hear muffled screams from the other side, but the Nym ignored it. He took a calming breath before walking up the stairs.

At least I know I can hold her now, weak as she is—IT, he corrected himself, shaking his head vigorously. IT. Not a woman, not even close. He smiled. I may not have gotten the answer I wanted, but there's something there, something it's hiding from me. His smile gave way to a frown. Or it’s lying.

Muttering to himself and taking one last look at the cobbled courtyard he'd climbed up onto, Felix ejected himself from his Bastion of Will—

—and opened his eyes to find Mervin standing inches away.

"AH!" The Tin Rank wheeled backward before falling on his butt. "You're awake, sir! I thought you'd succumbed to some evil spell."

Felix frowned and looked around. He was still sitting on the toppled tree, but at some point he had driven his fingers deep into the tree, as if he had been trying to crush it. He hadn't sensed his body doing that from inside the Bastion, had lost his external senses altogether and that… that was a problem. He cleared his throat. "Just thinking. Sorry."

"No, no I'm just glad not to be out here alone, sir." Mervin adjusted his helmet and sheathed his shortsword again, pointedly not looking at the chunk of tree Felix had collapsed. Felix gave him an awkward smile and started walking again. Pit was in the woods, having taken a nap during Felix's little sojourn. Now he followed after them, padding through the undergrowth. Mervin hung back for a moment before hustling to follow.

"So, ah, Mervin. Do you know about any people who returned from the Foglands? Around two or three months ago?" Felix wasn't sure how long it took to travel from Shelim to Haarwatch, but a few weeks should have been feasible. "Guilders like you. Name of Onslaught and… and the Shieldwitch."

Mervin winced at the names. "Yeah. I heard of them, though that was before I came to Haarwatch. News of them though, that's been all over town for months. People said they had something to do with the new monster attacks. Something bad. Onslaught got demoted to Bronze, and the Shieldwitch…did you know her, sir?"

"Yeah, I do." Felix felt a sinking sensation in his gut, and he couldn't help but notice Mervin's use of the past tense. "What happened?"

The kid looked uncomfortable, and refused to meet Felix's eyes. "I-I don't really know. I just know her body was brought back by a Silver Rank." His eyes met Felix's for a moment before turning away again. "I'm sorry."

Felix didn't know what to say, though he'd feared that this had happened. The woman had sacrificed herself to get him into the Vault where the Maw had been held, had pitched him in so that at least one of them could survive. I should have stayed. Even someone as strong as Magda couldn't have survived the charge of so many Frost Giants without help. He'd have died too, a small voice argued in his head, but guilt drowned it out.

He swallowed, then focused on the path. They had a ways to walk yet.

* * *

The approach to Haarwatch wasn't subtle. The forest, which dominated the area with huge trees and thick underbrush, suddenly stopped. It had been cleared for a hundred yards leading up to the walls of the large city, which was situated firmly between two sweeping mountains. The wall—or Wall, as Mervin referred to it—gleamed red-gold in the early morning light, a formidable defense for the western approach while the mountains guarded the city from the north and south.

The ground was pitted and charred in places, depressed or raised in others. Pitched battles had occurred here, many of them. The air swirled with the remembered scents of blood and fear, and the ambient Mana, while dimmer than in the forest, was filled with a sense of wild violence. Manasight translated that for Felix, and though he'd experienced it in the past, he still wasn't sure how, exactly.

Something to ask in town, maybe. Felix glanced down at his hands, calloused after weeks of conflict. He had many questions he hoped to be answered now that he'd reached civilization. Gonna need to find a library or something. Maybe even the Guild. Felix had previously considered joining the Guild, but the news of Harn and Magda's treatment didn't sit well with him. Something's going on there. Politics, maybe. They had mentioned the Elders were conniving.

Even before they left the comfort of the treeline, Felix could tell that the walls were high, three hundred feet at least by his amateur guess. His Voracious Eye, having no distance limit, identified the walls as made of orichalcum. He smiled, remembering when he'd used an Essence Draught of Orichalcum. Magda said the metal was used for city walls, but the way she said it… This is no simple fortification. Even from so far away, Felix could feel emanations from the walls, faint Mana signatures that swirled around his senses. He had no idea what they meant, but it wasn't something he'd felt from any common material.

Mervin picked up his step once the city was in sight.

"I can't wait to get back. I truly hope my squad made it home safely." Mervin glanced at Felix and grinned. "There's a great inn just inside the gates called The Fat Horse, and it has the best pork pies. You just gotta try one."

Felix smiled as his stomach gurgled. He hadn't eaten anything in at least a day—not unless he considered his Ravenous Tithe to be eating, and… no. He definitely didn't. "A meal and a bed sound wonderful right about now."

Pit warbled in delight.

But before they left the comfort of the trees, and while Mervin stepped ahead, Felix used Convergence. With a flash of light, Pit disappeared from his side and took up residence in his Spirit. The tenku trilled in curiosity, a little surprised at the suddenness of Felix's action. We don't know who to trust in this town. Better for you to stay hidden while you can. He could spot two tiny figures standing outside the orichalcum walls. Huge gates were closed behind them, simple and completely flush with the wall itself. He Eyed them both as he caught up with the anxious little Guilder.

Name: Keryk Dalserris, Acolyte

Race: Human

Level: 20

HP: 132/132

SP: 242/283

MP: 189/189

Strength: More Data Required

Weakness: More Data Required

Name: Lafei Retter, Acolyte

Race: Human

Level: 20

HP: 152/152

SP: 203/215

MP: 200/200

Strength: More Data Required

Weakness: More Data Required

I can take them easily enough if it comes down to it. The question is, how many more are there? I'm not gonna fight a whole city of enemies. He paused at an accusing trill from Pit and raised his hands in admission. Again.

Prepared and on the clock—Convergence only lasted twenty-seven minutes, one minute per level—Felix hurried after Mervin. If the Tin Rank noticed the absence of Pit, he made no mention of it, but Felix wouldn't have been surprised; the kid was fairly perceptive, but he was extremely set on making it out of the Foglands.

They walked for another ten minutes, crossing the blasted kill zone on light feet, and all the while, Felix watched the gate guards. They were Acolytes, whatever that meant, and as they drew closer Felix could make out the details of their armor. Each wore an identical set of silvery chainmail with a snow-white tunic belted over it. The tunic was trimmed in gold thread, accenting a golden starburst pattern emblazoned on their chests.

Similar starbursts were etched into their white-enameled pauldrons and helms. The helms were similar to German sallet helms with a domed top and a sort of half visor, leaving only a slit in the front. Their gorget (or whatever it was called) extended upward, covering their neck, chin, and mouth. It would have made for an intimidating look, had the Acolytes kept their helms on. Lafei had hers tucked under an arm, while Keryk's was nowhere to be seen, and both were sweating in the mounting heat of the morning.

In fact, it was so hot outside the trees, Felix was starting to feel a tingle along his limbs. Not quite pain, but pressure that he was sure would make the switch were it to get much warmer. Damn broken Heat Resistance!

"Those're Inquisitors. Low-rank, I think." Mervin tilted his head and looked up and down the wall. "They weren't out here a day ago, just other Guilders. Something must have happened."

Felix was starting to regret approaching the gate like this, but it was too late to back out now. Sweat trickled down his forehead.

"Halt," called Lafei, studying them with lazy eyes. She leaned back against the gate itself, not bothering to come closer. "State your names and your business."

"Tin Rank Mervin Cors, Protectors' Guild apprentice, coming in from patrol." Mervin saluted smartly, though maybe he puffed his chest out a little more than usual. The Acolyte's eyes drifted toward Felix, who met them impassively.

"Felix. Out hunting."

"In the monster-infested wilds? Who authorized you to leave Haarwatch? Do you have a Writ of Passage?" Lafei asked without much inflection, and she slowly opened a scroll and checked it. Meanwhile, Keryk stepped forward and eyeballed Felix. Both Acolytes carried halberds in their fists and a small side sword at their waist, and Keryk ground his haft into the packed earth below. Felix ignored him and addressed his partner.

"I wasn't aware I needed authorization or a Writ. I've been away for a bit, living in the wilds. I guess the rules changed on me." Felix kept his gaze steady and his expression as blank as he could manage, attempting to convey the sense of casual authority he'd seen in Harn.

Deception is level 11!

Keryk stepped closer, sniffing before making a face. "He certainly smells like it. Damn backwater yokels, haven't you heard of a bath?"

Felix tamped down his anger even as Pit squawked inwardly in outrage. The tenku was getting smarter every day, and his anger burned up and down Felix's spine, practically urging him to do something, anything. A flex of his Willpower held the emotions at bay for now.

"Been a while since I've seen civilization. You let me through, and I'll be sure to get right on that." Felix smiled, though he realized it was more like baring his teeth.

"Impossible. You're not on the log as having come out, so you can't come through the gates." Lafei sniffed, clearly disdainful toward his breach of protocol. She busied herself with re-rolling the scroll in her hands. "This is being done for your own safety."

Keryk stepped closer. "The Foglands are thick with Sorcery, ya see? You never can tell when someone's been… corrupted."

Felix glanced at Mervin with disbelief, and the Tin Rank only widened his eyes and shook his head slightly. When he looked back at Keryk, the man reached out and poked him in the chest.

"And you can't do nothin' about it," he whispered. "So piss off."

Reign of Vellus took Keryk right in his smug face.

He flipped end over end until he smashed against the metal wall. Azure lightning crackled and spat across his armored form, making him twitch and spasm even as he slid into an unconscious heap on the ground.

"Damnit."

* * *

"Keryk!" Lafei's eyes followed her partner's crumpled form before spinning toward the offender. "Cease your casting! Stop—!"

But there was no one there, save for that cowering Tin Rank who looked up at her in confusion.

"Where'd he go!?"

CHAPTER THREE

Oh thank god this is working, Felix thought with relief. Abyssal Skein felt difficult to summon, far more so than when in the Void, but it camouflaged him enough that, when he'd run to the wall and out of line of sight, it compensated. Lafei didn't even glance in his direction. That was so stupid. Why did I attack?

He didn't know what had come over him. He had just felt so angry.

It took Lafei eight entire seconds to call for reinforcements; he knew because he was frantically counting down the time until Abyssal Skein ran out, and he had to take a breath. His chest felt fine so far, but he had a minute at most. Once Keryk stopped convulsing, Lafei banged on the gate, sending muted thumps through the strong metal. In moments, more white-and-gold-armored Acolytes and even an Initiate, whatever that meant, flooded out.

Abyssal Skein is level 5!

"What happened, Acolyte? Report!" The Initiate was wearing armor of a similar design to Lafei, but wore her helmet and had a thick crimson cloak draped from her shoulders. She also gripped a gold-chased longsword in her left hand, one that shimmered with barely-held-back fire Mana. Lafei saluted, throwing her fist to her heart.

"There was a suspect, ma'am! He attacked Acolyte Keryk with an unknown Mana Skill and fled the scene."

"Who was it? Name and level." The Initiate looked around the area with sharp eyes, stopping briefly to stare at Mervin, who sat on the ground before them, not daring to move. Felix crept closer to the open door, but there were two armored figures in the way, and the way his Skill inverted colors made walking a little queasy. "Any day now, Acolyte!"

"Ah, um, ma'am, I didn't..." Lafei looked flustered and was sweating. "I didn't get a chance to Analyze him."

"What?" The Initiate's voice went low and flat. "Why?"

"He-he didn't seem like a threat, ma'am. Keryk—" Lafei's eyes looked down to her still-unconscious partner.

"Keryk is a buffoon. I had thought assigning him to you would curb his impulsiveness. I appear to have been wrong." The Initiate growled the last. "So we have a rogue element who attacked one of our own with a Skill of unknown provenance? You let such a threat escape, Acolyte? Is that what you're telling me?" The sword in the Initiate's hand started to cast off hazy waves of heat, and a small flicker of fire licked the tip of the blade.

"Y-yes, ma'am. But!" Lafei frantically pointed to Mervin on the ground. "This one arrived with the assailant. He knows them!"

All of the Inquisition members stepped toward the Tin Rank, and Felix found his opportunity. He crept to the open door as quietly as he could. He cast a final look at Mervin, who was still cowering on the ground with wide eyes and trembling hands as the Initiate stood over him with that flaming sword. Felix clenched his jaw but had to leave it at that; he couldn't hold Abyssal Skein much longer. Either Mervin would give up what he knew about Felix or he wouldn't; there was nothing Felix could do about it now. He ducked through the doorway...

...and nearly ran into another Acolyte who rushed through. Diving forward, Felix rolled to his feet and agony shot up from his heels to his spine. He stumbled forward, barely catching himself before he barrelled through another member of the Inquisition. Felix staggered toward the tunnel wall and got his bearings, his lungs beginning to burn for oxygen.

He was in a corridor that extended nearly fifty feet, with numerous holes in the ceiling through which he could see various men and women in leather and mail armor moving about. The corridor was filled with Guilders, each of them wearing their Tin Rank badge on their chest. Felix didn't stop to gawk, but stuck to the shadows and hurried out.

The tunnel emptied out into an open field, easily two hundred feet wide and as long as the exterior wall. It was all hard-packed earth and stone, and there were a few dozen groups of armored figures clustered throughout. Lungs aching for breath forced him toward an unattended cart, half-filled with unmarked wooden crates. Reasonably out of sight, Felix let out his breath and felt the oil slick sensation of the Void dissipate.

Eugh, that sucks. Feels harder to do here, more… strain. He was panting, gulping air and sweating beneath his light clothes. Footsteps crunched all around him as Guilders and a few members of the Inquisition moved in groups to train, guard, or whatever they did here. Taking a few quick breaths, he pulled in as deep as he could and activated Abyssal Skein again.

Felix peered through the wheels under the wagon and saw another gate on an inner wall, about three hundred yards down to his right. There were a number of carts throughout the field, each one in the process of being unloaded. Timing his movements around the soldiers, he swept past them, stepping as fast as he could while still remaining quiet. That turned out to be pretty fast, almost equal to his old Earth running speed.

Abyssal Skein is level 6!

Abyssal Skein is level 7!

Each bump in level made the breath in his chest a touch easier to hold onto, a bit less of a burning burden. The sun was rising now, but it came from the east, the opposite side of the city. Long shadows from the walls cast the grounds into cool shadow, and by moving cautiously between the carts, Felix was able to make it across the field and to the internal wall. It was made of a pale gray stone, granite according to his Eye, and was both fifty feet shorter than the outer wall and entirely mundane.

Keeping low, he managed to get to the inner gate, tailing behind a departing wagon. This gate was manned entirely by medallion bearing Guilders, Tin Ranks both, and low-level ones at that. Felix passed by them without causing either to blink, and in seconds, he was in. He had made it.

So this is Haarwatch?

The street was paved with wide, flat stones and rose ahead of him in a low but steady incline. The shadows were still thick there, the hill Haarwatch was built upon raised the houses in tiered rows that blocked the rising sun like a mountain. Even so, dawn broke across many of the building's highest edges, their roofs limned with honeyed light. In contrast to his dark surroundings, the sky was a bright, robin’s egg blue with only a small scattering of clouds. gray plumes drifting lazily from the businesses and residences around him, and had Felix been able to take a breath, he was sure wood smoke would have filled the air.

As it was still early morning, the streets were mostly empty, though the scant exceptions were all Guilders. They moved to and from the wall, fresh faces scurrying forward with cleaned weapons and armor while a tired few came down sets of stairs built into the inner bulwark. Those trudged off in various directions, the street splitting into one that ran parallel with the wall and one that led up toward the apex of town.

Inns and taverns filled the thoroughfare before him, more than he expected, and they were beginning to bustle with early morning business. Felix hustled forward, less concerned with being spotted now due to the increase in people. He wanted to drop his Skill as soon as possible; the feel of the Void was not pleasant, oily even. It was damn useful, however. Idly, as he passed lamp posts and tavern after tavern, he wondered what Skills he might have picked up from a Tenebril or Narhollow.

Idiot. Considering how long the Nochtnatter took to digest, one of those mega-whales would've split me apart.

A sudden spate of shouting behind him caused Felix to flinch and glance backward. A few Acolytes had run out through the inner gate and were gesturing furiously to each other. They tried to be quiet and calm, but Felix focused his Perception and could just barely make them out.

"What's going on? Why aren't you at the wall?" An older Acolyte had stopped his fellows from shouting, trying to make sense of their agitation.

"Initiate Zala sent us. Says someone got inside, a human male, younger looking with blue eyes," one said, looking around furtively.

"She suspects Sorcery! A beast, loose in the town!" another Acolyte offered, not nearly as quietly.

"Quiet!" the older Acolyte grumbled. "Things are bad enough with the murders, I don't need you to start a panic!"

Felix moved beyond the range of his senses, but didn't stop. He'd heard enough. He started looking for a viable inn, somewhere he could hideout and rest. Felix spotted a sign with a huge, round horse eating a pie and smiled. The Fat Horse, huh? It looked inviting at first glance, but soon he realized the place was swarming with Guilders. Briefly, he could see the telltale flash of white enamel and gold trim among its early morning crowd. Inquisitors.

There was the sound of metal against stone, and the jangle of harnesses that drew his eye back down the street, toward the inner gate. Two of the Acolytes were sweeping down the road, eyes panning and halberds at the ready.

Shit shit shit. Felix's lungs were beginning to burn again. He needed to move fast. He ducked down a narrow side street, little more than an alley between two wood and stone buildings. Seconds later, he burst onto another street, this one just as wide as the last and running parallel. The main difference was that it was significantly quieter.

Which made it far easier to hear the *clomp-scrape* of booted feet coming his way.

Screaming inside, Felix rushed to the nearest building and tried the door. Locked. He ran to the next, but it was also locked. Few of the buildings here had smoke rising from them, and those that did were closer to the wall road. Toward the Acolytes.

The next door had a sign above it with an illegible script and the picture of a book, a needle, and a candlestick. For a moment, looking at the sign, he thought he heard… something. A piece of song on the breeze, alluring, it vanished in seconds. Felix didn't care what kind of shop it was; he needed to get off the street. With a mental apology to the owner, Felix placed his shoulder against the door and pushed. With a tearing sound and the metallic plink of hardware falling apart, the door opened. Felix shoved himself inside and closed the door, releasing a gasp as the Void fled his body once more.

Abyssal Skein is level 8!

Inside, he saw all manner of strange things, from food to rope to what looked like candles, all of it filling a half-dozen shelves that squeezed the small shop front for all the space it had. A barrel was next to the door, filled with what looked like nails. Felix grabbed it and rolled it in front of the door just as the sound of booted feet came close. He ducked and invoked Abyssal Skein again, but his Mana was running low. The Skill was extremely inefficient now that he was out of the Void and used a ton of his Mana, so much that even his prodigious recovery wasn't enough. He used the Skill to scurry forward and past the rows of shelving, which he ducked behind and released his breath.

Muted voices sounded outside, too soft and muffled for him to make out much of anything. For a short, worrying moment they lingered… before continuing onward.

Felix huffed a relieved sigh and leaned back against a burlap sack of dried beans. Holy shit, buddy. Why can't I just have a normal day? Pit let out an annoyed squawk and Felix sighed. Ok ok, hold on.

There was a bright flash of light, near blinding in the dark shop, and Pit rematerialized next to him. The tenku shook his body and wings, though at least had the good grace not to extend them. The aisle was much too small to accommodate his increased wingspan. Felix bit his lip and furrowed his brow.

Anyone who Analyzes Pit is gonna know he's a Chimera. Hell, anyone with eyes will figure out he’s some sort of beast. I gotta find a way to hide him, something better than Convergence. Even if I brought Etheric Concordance to level 200, that still wouldn't be enough to hide him full-time. He scrubbed at his face and rubbed his eyes, feeling the hours of no sleep weighing on him more heavily than ever. Not to mention that I'm rocking a Lost Race, one that isn't well thought of. I'm sure Mervin Analyzed me, even if he doesn't know who or what the Nym are—wait. He sat up. If he identified my Race, why were the Acolytes chasing me looking for a 'human?' Oh. Right.

Felix brought up his Status.

Name: Felix Nevarre

Level: 26

Race: Nym*

Omen: Magician

Born Trait: Keen Mind

______

Health: 233/864

Stamina: 732/873

Mana: 141/1458

______

STR: 157

PER: 154

VIT: 175

END: 161

INT: 191

WIL: 277

AGL: 131

DEX: 128

______

BODY

Resistances: Acid Resistance (C), Level 24; Fire Resistance (C) Level 20*; Cold Resistance (U), Level 20; Heat Resistance (U), Level 22*; Pain Resistance (U), Level 42; Poison Resistance (U), Level 42; Lightning Resistance (R), Level 1*

Combat Skills: Axe Mastery (C), Level 5*; Blunt Weapon Mastery (C), Level 10*; Dodge (C), Level 30; Long Blade Mastery (C), Level 15*; Parry (C), Level 4*; Small Blade Mastery (C), Level 10; Staff Mastery (C), Level 7*; Thrown Weapons Mastery (C), Level 11; Unarmed Mastery (C), Level 29; Blind Fighting (R), Level 23; Corrosive Strike (R), Level 28

Physical Enhancements: Running (C), Level 24; Swimming (C), Level 6; Acrobatics (U), Level 25*; Free Climbing (U), Level 15; Relentless Charge (U), Level 17; Armored Skin (R), Level 41; Physical Conditioning (R), Level 24

MIND

Mental Enhancements: Deception (C), Level 11; Intimidation (C)*, Level 8; Make An Entrance (U), Level 12; Meditation (U), Level 33; Bastion of Will (E), Level 44; Deep Mind (E), Level 36; Ravenous Tithe (E), Level 11

Information Skills: Tracking (C), Level 13; Exploration (U), Level 27; Herbalism (U), Level 17; Voracious Eye (E), Level 29

SPIRIT

Spiritual Enhancements: Dual Casting (U), Level 22; Mana Manipulation (U), Level 24; Manasight (U), Level 40; Manaship Pilot (R), Level 22; Etheric Concordance (L), Level 27

Spells: Abyssal Skein (R), Level 8; Cloudstep (R), Level 10; Fire Within (R) Level 37; Influence of the Wisp (R), Level 29; Invocation (R), Level 1; Mantle of the Long Night (R), Level 17; Shadow Whip (R), Level 30; Stone Shaping (R), Level 28; Reign of Vellus (E), Level 35; Sigils of the Primordial Dawn (E), Level 13; Wrack And Ruin (E), Level 30

______

Unused Stat Points: 25

Harmonic Stats

RES: 103

INE: 88

AFI: 62

REI: 60

ALA: 143

Felix focused on his Race and noted that the asterisk was still there. Concentrating on it brought up a familiar notification.

Further Bloodlines Have Been Found. Processing 20%

Right. The Bloodline Progression had jumped significantly during his battles with the Void pirates, and then again, at the end. He shuddered, thinking of the Dark Guardian. Absorbing and deflecting even the smallest portion of that thing's lightning had sent his Bloodline jumping by an entire six percent. Why, though? Ravenous Tithe clearly increased it, but was it just the amount of power ingested?

He leaned back, knocking his head against some sort of crate of goods. I could ask—No. The Maw stays where it is until I can figure out a way to deal with it. At least locked up in my Bastion, it can't annoy me. Or try to change me or my Skills. Felix sighed. So is this what tripped Mervin up? Or did he have a low-level Analyze? I still can't believe I forgot about Analyze. Got so used to it not working on the Continent. I got lazy.

Abruptly, there was a soft scuffing sound followed by a light thump from above, and Felix leaped to his feet. Someone's here!

The sound of creaking wood filled the air as someone trudged down a set of nearby stairs. Felix scanned the room and noticed two doors, one behind the counter and another in the back. Quickly, he motioned to Pit and moved to the back door in the hopes he could get out… but the door was locked, and he could still hear the clomping of Inquisitors on the street outside. Briefly he considered bashing down the back door, but a loud crash and gasp assured him that he was too late.

"Who are you?! What are you doing in my shop!" An—he blinked—an elderly human woman no taller than five feet stood behind the counter with her arms akimbo. For a second, Felix could have sworn she had been taller, though. "Trying to break into my stores, eh? Well I've got the solution for that—!"

"No, no! I'm not—I mean no harm! My friend and I were trying to ah, evade some attention. I'm so sorry if we woke you." Felix was babbling, he knew, and the woman peered at him from across the room then looked down. She started, exactly how Felix had feared she would, but then tilted her head curiously. She looked back up at Felix and squinted, then mouthed a word, as if reading something to herself. He felt something crawl across his awareness, light as a feather.

Shit, she Analyzed me. Felix looked at the door he was attempting to open and let his legs tense beneath him. He could move fast, maybe fast enough to—

There was a knock on the front door.

Felix's head whipped around, and through the curtained window he could see the silhouette of an armored figure. Felix turned to the woman—clearly the shop owner—and swallowed. She merely considered him for a long moment while the figure outside knocked with increasing rapidity. Nodding to herself, the woman walked to the front door. The huge barrel in front of it stymied her at first, but she moved it over easily enough. In fact, Felix saw Mana flare along her wrists and forearms, just underneath her blouse sleeves as she manhandled the barrel.

Cleared, the door opened under the figure's knocking, though the woman kept it from opening too far. She stuck her face out through the small opening.

"Yes? How might I be of service?" Her voice was sharp and waspish, and he could see the figure lean back.

"Ah, have you seen a young man come by here? Blue eyes, dark hair, about yea high?" The Acolyte outside held up his hand at roughly Felix's height while simultaneously trying to peer deeper into the shop. In response, the woman closed her door tighter.

"Why? Has this person done something wrong?" Out of sight of the Inquisitor, Felix saw the woman reach toward a shelf right next to the door.

"He's wanted for assaulting an Acolyte of the Inquisition and for entering town without a Writ of Passage." The Acolyte held his head up high and straight.

"Is that all? Busy morning for you, hmm?" She gripped something on the side shelf, but did not pull her hand back. "I can't imagine having to spend my morning chasing down some unlucky sod through town. My condolences."

"Ma'am, have you seen him or—"

"No. I have not," she snapped. "Now, I have business to attend to. Have a pleasant morning, Acolyte."

The woman closed the door and leaned against it, pausing a moment to let the Acolyte walk away. Moments later, he did. She turned back to Felix with a stern expression, and he could see that she was not as old as he had originally thought. Perhaps late-forties at most. "Now, explain to me why I lied for you." She looked at both of them with unnerving eyes. They were dark, but they pierced right through him. "And why an Unknown Race is walking through Haarwatch with a chimera, of all things."

CHAPTER FOUR

Felix didn't exactly know how to answer the shopkeep's question. Unknown? Is that what she saw with Analyze?

He narrowed his eyes and held a Skill loosely in his core, feeling it thrum. "What do you mean, Unknown Race?"

"Tsk. Did you do anything strange recently? Adventures in the Foglands, perhaps?" Felix didn't answer, but his face must have revealed something, because the woman chuckled. "It was an easy guess, seeing as you apparently got through the Haargate. And it figures, as strange things tend to happen in that forest. But it means you're undergoing a change, boy. One that few are blessed with and most regret. Something happened to you, and now you're living the consequences."

Felix practically snarled internally. He knew what happened, just as he knew exactly who to blame. Even though she was locked up, he swore he could almost hear her mocking laughter.

"Makes sense that you came into town anyway, if you didn't know." She eyed him up, taking in his ratty pants and battle-worn gear. Her sharp gaze lingered a bit on his boots and satchel, though that may have been his own suspicious nature. "But you can't go wanderin' about with that in your Status. You'll get strung up by the Pathless' cronies in no time."

Felix sighed and shared a glance with Pit. It seemed their respite was not meant to be; he felt he was destined to be hunted no matter where they traveled.

"I can help, if you've the coin."

"Really?" Felix didn't know if he could trust the woman, but she hadn't turned him in. That counted for something at least. "How?"

The woman held up a finger before grabbing the barrel of nails and pulling it back in front of her door. She did it with ease, though again Felix noted the flare of a complex range of Mana from her forearms. Magic bracelets maybe? Strength-enhancing?

She shuffled behind her counter and bent beneath it. Felix could hear scraping and knocking, things shifting as she looked for whatever it was she had.

"Aha! Here it is." She stood back up, holding a round disc in her hand made of a dark material. "A simple charm, all things told, but the best solutions are often the most obvious. Here, take a look."

Felix stepped forward and took the palm-sized disc from her tentatively, quickly discovering that it was strung onto a thick cord. A necklace, apparently.

He used Voracious Eye, and for the first time since arriving back on the Continent, felt the item resist. Tilting his head, Felix bore down while flaring his Skill, stretching that resistance until it… snapped.

Name: Amulet of Veiling

Type: Necklace (enchanted)

Lore: The song of a Chanter has been woven into this amulet, rendering its modest ashwood material as durable as iron and aiding in obfuscating the Status, Skills, and Titles of anyone wearing it.

Obfuscation XI - A veiling Song worked into the item to redirect any inquiries sent at the wearer.

Chanter's Intent II - The Harmonic Song of a Chanter was used to enchant this item, and it bears their Intent. +20% Effectiveness of Obfuscation.

Chanter's Inversion I - Addition of Dissonance to invert the item's properties, hiding them.

"What is this?" Felix didn't like the name of the item, though its properties seemed extremely useful. Almost too useful. "Why give this to me?"

"Because you have both need and money, and I'm running a business." The woman smiled, her teeth slightly crooked. "You can wear that necklace, and it'll hide your Status, Skills, and your Titles from prying eyes."

"That's amazing and exactly what I need." Felix ran his thumb over the wooden surface of the amulet, which had been carved into a circular shield of sorts. Small patterns were etched into its smooth surface, and it felt more like metal than wood. "Amulet of Veiling. Why would you have this?"

The woman stiffened, and at first Felix thought it was because she was offended. But—no, she looked afraid. He could hear it, after a fashion, a series of plucked notes across his Affinity, the Harmonic stat that dealt with connections. Then, an instant later, the expression was gone, replaced by an easy smile. "A curiosity only. Many such things end up in my hands."

Felix, sure that the amulet held no danger to him, put it over his head. A shudder rocked him, a visible wave of Mana that dropped from his head to his toes. The sound of a harp strummed across his senses, contained within the wave of Mana itself. It passed quickly, but Felix had tasted enough of it to recognize its flavor. It felt like System magic, or at least like the rush of power he felt when he gained stats, Skills, or Titles.

"Wow. That's… hm." He noticed a new icon flashing in his vision, this one showing an empty hooded cloak.

Status Condition: Veiled

"Definitely works." He looked again at the shopkeep, one that he realized he hadn't even Analyzed. Her named was Caerwin Hodges, and was normal in nearly every way, though she was level 32. Was that a normal level for her age? How did shopkeepers gain levels? At first, he suspected she might be hiding something in her Status, but Felix hadn't felt a hint of resistance as he had with the Void pirates or the amulet just now. His Voracious Eye saw all, at least in this case.

"Quite nice, yes?" Caerwin eyed him with a grin. "It's yours for only twenty crowns."

That stopped him short. Felix looked up from the amulet and frowned. "That seems like a lot. You did say it was a simple charm."

"Simple to some is a great difficulty to others. It is not a complicated piece, but it is quite rare."

"Ten crowns," he counter-offered.

"I could never go lower than twenty, and that is a steal as it is."

Felix frowned and opened his mouth, but Caerwin spoke first. "Besides, someone has to pay for those beans."

Felix quirked his head as he followed the woman's gaze, and saw that Pit had ripped into the bag of dried beans and was eating messy mouthfuls of it. "Pit! No! That's not ours."

He tried to pull the hungry Chimera off it, but Pit was obstinate and starving. Felix sighed and fished out his money purse. He counted out twenty gold coins, each one stamped on one side with a nine-pronged crown and an elderly man's face on the other. He handed the lot to Caerwin, who nodded her thanks. "You can have the beans, and as a welcome to our fine city, take some kentl jerky. It's quite good and will fill up your friend there."

Felix grabbed the bundle of smoked meat the shopkeep pointed out and let Pit scarf up the last of the dried beans. They slithered and clacked in the background as he tried to think through his options. Fingering his new amulet, he turned back to Caerwin and found her studying him with an intense look, one that faded to professional curiosity when she noticed his attention.

"Ah, I need to sleep somewhere. A...friend suggested the Fat Horse Inn, but I noticed it was, uh—"

"Filled to the brim with Guilders and Inquisitors? Oh yes. Any inn near the wall will be filled with the folk. Guilders stay in the Guild Barracks nearby usually, but if the Tin Ranks aren't on wall duty or training, they'll be at one of those inns. The Inquisitors, well," Caerwin's mouth twisted as if she'd bitten a lemon. "They claimed what they wanted, which was just about every inn in the Wall Quarter."

"Not a fan of the Inquisition?"

Caerwin smiled. "Are you?"

Felix smirked and glanced out the curtained windows. He could see people starting to move about, though no obvious signs of armored guards. "Is there somewhere that isn't so heavily occupied?"

Caerwin considered him a bit longer. Felix didn't squirm under her gaze (though part of him wanted to) but he didn't like how the woman had been looking at him. It didn't raise his hackles or anything, but even still. What is she thinking? Why is she helping me?

"Try the Dust Quarter to the north. Plenty of inns there with vacancies, even now. As long as you can handle bed bugs."

Felix grimaced but nodded. If that was the price to pay for evading the Inquisitors and curious Guilders, that was fine by him. Felix tucked his new amulet into his clothes and checked for Pit. The tenku had polished off the rest of the beans and was nosing Felix's new bag for the jerky. Just hold on a second, bud.

"Thank you ma'am, for all the help. You… you really didn't have to, and—just thanks."

Caerwin smiled, a big bright grin that showed off her slightly crooked teeth. "Any day I get to shaft the Inquisition is a good day for me."

Felix smiled, then chewed on his lip apprehensively. "Do you carry anything for—"

"For your Chimera?" Felix nodded. "No, sorry, boy. Nothing I have could hide your friend, and you're right to be worried. The folks in this town don't have any good memories of Chimeras, even if they don't attack the walls anymore."

Felix sighed. That was what he'd figured. It wouldn't be that easy. "Can you look for something? I'm willing to pay."

The woman fingered her chin a moment. "I can look. Inventory is short city-round since they closed off all the gates. It'll cost you, but if you've got the money..."

"I do."

"Well then. Come back here in three days, I'll see what I can find."

"I appreciate it." Felix peered past the curtains, judging the street outside. The wide road was filling up quickly, close to a hundred people that he could see, and it would only increase from there.

"Take the back door," Caerwin pointed at the rear door, the one Felix had tried to flee through. "It'll take you into my garden. Hop the wall, and you'll be in an alley that you can follow east until it opens up onto Cobalt Street. Head north from there, and you'll hit the Dust Quarter in no time."

Felix hesitated a moment before nodding his thanks. He tried the back door and this time it opened with ease. When had she unlocked it...?

He opened the door and shooed Pit out. Turning back to Caewin, he nodded. "Thank you. Again."

He slipped out the door and closed it behind him.

* * *

Left within the brightening shop, Caerwin's smile was wide and bright and a laugh bubbled up from her chest. "What an interesting boy."

Her laugh was bright and melodic.

* * *

Felix moved through Caerwin's back garden relatively easily. It wasn't large, though it had an impressive array of herbs and plants growing there. He Eyed them instinctively, noting various new plants he'd yet to encounter in the wilds. But then he and Pit hopped the wall, which was approximately eight feet tall but was otherwise no obstacle to their abilities. Activating Skulk and Abyssal Skein respectively, the two companions made their way down the empty alleyway, heading east as the shopkeep suggested.

That was a breath of fresh air, Felix smiled to himself. She could have reported us to the Acolytes easily and didn't.

He was feeling good about the interaction, having come away with a useful amulet that should let him live a quiet life, at least for a little while. As the two of them neared the end of the alley, they shared a glance before ducking into a shadowed nook and activating Convergence. A flash of light and Pit was gone again, hidden away as best they could manage. He was feeling punchy, and the back of his head ached in a way he could only attribute to extreme fatigue.

We just gotta make it to an inn in the Dust Quarter. Then we can rest.

Cobalt Street was just as busy as Caerwin's own, and more people seemed to flood forward as seconds passed. There were many different Races present, his Eye spotting several Dwarves and Half-Orcs, but the majority were Human. Everyone wore a wide variety of colors and style of clothing, too. It was like a renaissance fair, but brighter and louder and… smellier.

The scent of woodsmoke prevailed over most others, but as the heat of the day mounted, so too did the general miasma of unwashed masses. Felix didn't notice any open gutters filled with filth and did see several grated drains on his walk north, so the city must have a working sewer system, which was a relief. He idly fantasized about taking a shower again, and held out quiet hope that indoor plumbing had been invented already.

That thought was spurred on further by the proliferation of odd enchanted objects he saw among the throngs of people. Various pieces of magical equipment and armor could be spotted on some Guilders, but even everyday people around him were holding small etched cubes and other oddments, each giving off waves of various Mana frequencies. Things glowed and steamed and stank, all of it sharp in Felix's Manasight. In a way, it made Felix miss his Elemental Shard, which he hadn't seen since he was pulled into the Void.

It was probably destroyed by the Essence Anchor. The artifact was made to siphon and absorb Maw-tainted energy, and the Shard fit the bill after Felix's unwilling infection. Maybe those cubes had similar functions. I'll have to find out when I get a chance. Do some real shopping.

As the crowds grew, Felix found it harder to stay unnoticed with Abyssal Skein, though the Skill did level up to 9. Ultimately, the chance of being discovered was too high, so he found a quiet corner and dropped the Skill. Mingling with the crowd was easy enough, though his heart raced whenever he passed groups of armored guards. The guards were all Guilders and moving in groups of three or four, all of them Tin Ranks save for their leader, who was always Iron Rank. They didn't seem to be looking for him at all.

Thankfully, the farther he progressed from the Wall, the less presence there was of the Inquisitors, and Felix was now confident Caerwin hadn't lied. The streets were just as busy, but the buildings looked more worn and dilapidated compared to the western area, and the clothing on folks became more muted and threadbare. Leather armor was still extremely popular, however, though most of it looked less well-cared-for and none of it had any enchantments, according to his Eye.

As he passed through a thick stone wall, the condition of the streets, buildings, and people deteriorated even further. This, he assumed, was the Dust Quarter proper. While the lack of maintenance increased, so too did the number of people. The majority of folks seemed to be headed back where he had come from, most dressed in thin shirts, sturdy canvas pants, and worn boots. Laborers, he assumed. The Dust Quarter seemed to be made up of said laborers, and like Felix had been expecting, was likely the poorest section of the city.

Dusty, too. He coughed as a passing wagon kicked up a beige cloud. Well-named, I guess.

The streets were in disrepair, and in most areas, the cobbles had been either worn away or torn up, and it was only hard-packed earth. In the summer heat, that dirt was a lingering dust in the air that quickly dried out his mouth and nose and irritated his eyes. It wasn't much of an inconvenience as his high Vitality and Endurance inured him to some of those discomforts, but it wasn't great.

Fighting through the crowds and traffic took up a lot of time, and Convergence ran out twice. After waiting a bit of time in the shadows of a few questionable buildings, Felix and Pit kept going. Each time, after it wore off, there was a sort of cool down wherein it wouldn't function. The transformation was easy to hold at first, but it ate away at his concentration and mental energy quickly, similar in a lot of ways to piloting a Manaship. Except he'd done that and more in just the past day. He was exhausted, physically and mentally.

An hour and a half after he had set out from Caerwin's, Felix found a row of inns. They were situated around a reasonably maintained stone square, one that was dominated by a large fountain depicting a creature of uncertain origins fighting against a woman in heavy armor. The copper of the statue was covered in verdigris, and water poured down from green wounds in the beast's body.

The square was quite busy, filled with carts and travelers, even a good amount of weapons-bearing people moving in and out of the various taverns and shops. He was near the other end of the Dust Quarter, edging toward whatever the eastern section of the city was called, as he could see a wall loom over some roofs. It was far higher than the one between Wall and Dust Quarters.

Felix navigated through the press of bodies, gently excusing himself as he passed a line of Humans, Goblins, Dwarves, and Hobgoblins all waiting with buckets by the fountain. It was where they got their water, clearly, and that fact alone dashed Felix's hopes of a hot shower. He doubted that people who had to tote water from a communal fountain had access to modern Earth plumbing.

On the far side of the square was his destination: a large, two-story building with a cracked and faded sign out front depicting a turkey leg and a mug of frothing ale. Squiggles below probably said 'Turkey Beer Inn' or something, and it irritated Felix that he still couldn't read anything. He mounted the steps onto a wide porch, past a collection of elderly Dwarves smoking long pipes, and into a poorly-lit and very humid common room. The majority of the area was dominated by poorly made wooden tables and stools, while a stone fireplace took up the far wall, abutting the long counter of the bar. A few patrons mingled about, sitting with mugs and plates of food or else chatting at the counter, drinks in hand. A dour-looking Half-Orc in a dirty apron stood behind the bar, wiping mugs and serving ale from the kegs set into the wall behind him.

An older Half-Elven woman with a kind face gone jowly and bright blue eyes came up to him. "What'll it be, love?"

"I'm looking to get a room and a bath." Felix managed not to stare too closely at the woman's slightly pointed ears. He'd seen Elves before—the pirate assassin Celat had tried to kill him, after all—but never so close or with him so tired. The shape of them tickled at a portion of his brain, that part that still was amazed by the fact he was in a different world.

"Aye. That'll be two silver a night, five copper for the bath. Includes one meal a day down 'ere in the common area. Anything else is extra. Sound fair?"

Felix nodded, his head feeling increasingly fuzzy. "Ah, yes. Sounds fair enough." The woman walked back to the bar and rummaged under the counter before coming back to him. She handed Felix a worn iron key.

"Yer room key. Don't lose it, or you'll get charged 5 silver to replace it, yeah?" She smiled at him and turned to head back into the back.

"Ah, wait. Would it be possible to have my meals brought to my room? And to double them?" He smiled and hoped he landed on charming.

"Sure, anythin's possible with enough money. One more silver a day for extra meals and bringin' it up to yer room. Good?"

Felix smiled, feeling stretched thin with exhaustion. "Good. Here," he handed her a single gold coin. "This should cover it."

The woman's eyes went wide when she saw the gold, and she quickly stuffed it into her bodice. "I should say so! Will there be anything else, young master?"

"No, that, ah, that should be enough," Felix didn't know how to take the woman's sudden change in attitude. A crown must be worth more than I thought.

"Very good. Yer room is up the stairs and third on the right. Blue door." She smiled with a wink and swept away, back into the growing crowd.

Felix shook his head and trudged up the stairs, feeling that strange sort of floatiness reserved for drug trips and sleep deprivation. He gripped the iron key hard, worried he'd drop it, but then forced himself to loosen his grip. He didn't want to bend the thing. Somehow, he made it up the stairs—though he had little memory of the trip—unlocked his door, and spilled into his room. He managed to lock the door again before keeling over on the bed and falling into a deep and dreamless slumber.

CHAPTER FIVE

He slept like the dead. No dreams, no sudden monster attacks. Peace.

Finally.

He woke up only once, and that was to retrieve two dishes left at his door on a beaten tin platter. They were piled high with meat and bread, but he barely looked at it. Felix merely pulled it into the room with a grunt and fell back asleep less than a minute later. Hours of oblivion passed him by, and it was glorious.

When he did awaken, Felix blinked groggily at a darkened room filled with dusty shafts of light. They cast from a small, shuttered window and etched a tilting set of lines across the door and far wall. Felix sat up with a great stretch and realized that Pit was awake as well, busily munching down the majority of the food. Grumbling at the greediness of the tenku, Felix wrestled away a piece of bread and a few cold, greasy slabs of meat. He Eyed them quickly, but they weren't made of any animal he recognized. He shrugged and tucked in, devouring it all in no time.

While he ate, he took in the room for the first time. It was small, barely more than a closet, just enough to hold his narrow cot, a side table, and a small chest at the foot of the bed. That window opened out to the east, though it was covered by crooked wooden shutters. With a grunt of effort, he stood up, unlatched the clasp, and pushed them open. Light flooded the room, and Pit lifted his head with a trilling coo. A breeze rustled Felix's hair.

Outside was a sea of tiled rooftops in shades of red, brown, and blue. Chimney stacks lined every structure, some larger than others, and a steady stream of smoke poured into the blue, cloudless sky. The day was well toward noon, and the few streets he could glimpse were bustling. Shouts and cries and laughter filled the air, a rowdy mix of sounds that reminded him of the busiest parts of Fort Lauderdale.

Haarwatch itself was impressively large, something he hadn't quite appreciated during his wanderings the day prior. Perhaps because of how tired he was, or perhaps his lack of vantage. Situated atop the second story, Felix felt he could get a better grasp of the city's layout. The city was tiered, each street rising up a hill as it moved toward the center, each section built into steps and filled with buildings.

The wall between the Dust Quarter and whatever lay to the east could be seen easily, close as it was, and the buildings over there looked to be in far better condition. What little he could see of the higher portions of Haarwatch were nicer as well. It was hard to tell through the glare of the sun, but it appeared that the highest tiers were large manors, while the very center of the city was a large fortification. A tower, it looked like.

Who does that belong to?

*KNOCK KNOCK*

The knocking startled him, though Felix didn't realize how much until he looked down and realized he'd summoned an orb of dense acid. Huffing a dissatisfied breath, he dismissed the spell and let the excess Mana slip back into his palm Gate. It tingled unpleasantly as it traveled back into his core. Felix activated Convergence again, but let the flash fade a bit before cracking open the door.

"Yes?"

An elderly Dwarf stood outside the room with another tin tray. This one was piled high with what looked like spare ribs, a savory-smelling soup, a whole loaf of brown bread, and a large bowl of baked tubers. Steam poured off the tray, which was wider than the Dwarf holding it, and he pushed it forward at Felix. "Your meal."

He didn't sound happy to be delivering it, though with as many wrinkles as the Dwarf had, it was hard to tell what wasn't a frown. A mass of gray whiskers covered his chin and jowls but left his upper lip hair-free. Dark brown eyes stared at him beneath bushy brows. He shoved the tray forward again, nearly causing the soup to slop out of its bowl. Reflexively, Felix opened his door and took the platter. The moment he did, the old Dwarf started back down the hallway.

"Uh, sir, ah," Felix Eyed the Dwarf and caught his name. "Wulfand, please. Where can I get a bath?"

The Dwarf turned around with a glacial slowness that was so passive aggressive it looped back around to regular aggressive. He fixed Felix with a dark eye and grunted. "Aye. Wait here."

The Dwarf continued down the hall without another word.

Felix watched for a minute longer, but the old goat didn't say anything else. He closed the door and considered the platter of food. He was starving, the paltry scraps he'd had nowhere near enough, and he tore into the meal, drinking the soup and eating the ribs with gusto. An indignant squawk echoed through his bond, and Felix grinned. This is my turn, piggy.

Mean.

The meat was tender and slathered in some sort of sweet sauce, while the bread was coarse and hot and heavy. The soup was some sort of vegetable medley, but was delicious and salty, while the baked tubers tasted less like potatoes and more like a radish. All in all, it was a good and filling meal, and he'd mostly finished by the time another knock sounded on his door.

Leaving the last bits of meat and vegetables for his Companion, Felix stood and opened it to find a large wooden tub shoved directly into his face. Barely dodging, Felix saw that beneath the tub labored a panting Wulfand. He brought the thing into the tiny room and dropped it unceremoniously on the floor. A loud sloshing noise startled Felix as he realized that it had been absolutely full of water the entire time.

"Soap. Clean rag. Towel. Enjoy." The Dwarf was out of the room before Felix could fully register what he had said. As the door closed, Felix noticed on the floor a lumpy bar of soap sat on two folded squares of cloth.

"Oh uh, thank you… Wulfand," Felix trailed off ineffectually. What a weird guy.

* * *

Ten minutes later, Felix luxuriated in the feeling of hot water on his skin. The tub had been filled with nearly boiling liquid, but apparently his Apprentice Tier Body could handle it easily. It felt perfect.

After locking the door and releasing his Companion, Felix focused on cleaning himself for the first few minutes. Now fully clean for the first time in weeks, Felix smiled and tried to relax. The tub was sizeable, large enough to fit his entire body beneath the water if he scrunched up a little. It beat washing in a freezing lake.

He watched birds fly outside his window, kestrels apparently, and observed the lazy wisps of woodsmoke stretch into the sky. It was blue and bright and wonderful to see after the endless black of the Void. Sounds were quieter away from the window, but Felix was still aware of countless noises and thumps all around him, evidence of many people packed close together. He dipped his head beneath the water until his ears were covered, muting the constant tumult. All he could hear was a low murmur of activity, and the steady *thump-thump* of his heart.

I've made it. Civilization and people. Felix turned his gaze to the ceiling, running his eyes idly along the worn and ancient wood rafters. What now?

It was something he hadn't considered. For such a long time, surviving long enough to reach civilization was the goal. Then he was in the Void, where just getting anywhere had been the goal. Now that he was there, Felix found himself slightly adrift.

Things I need to do: one, learn more about the Continent and everything I can. Ignorance had been the bane of his existence since landing on the beach. I need to find a library or something… and learn how to read. God, that's annoying. Hopefully Keen Mind will make that easier. And two, get some new pants. Wait, no, that's priority number one. New pants and other clothes. Sturdy clothes.

He sat up in the water as his mind engaged in the topic. New list, then. One: get clothes and avoid being naked all the time. Two: learn about this place. Magda mentioned an Academy but didn't say if it was in Haarwatch. Could be a good place to learn or train. Three: find a way to keep Pit hidden or hide his appearance. If we're lucky, Caerwin will come through for us and have something in a few days. Four: ugh, get rid of the Maw somehow.

He groaned, reminding himself that it was still locked up within his Bastion of Will, though for how long remained an important question. Five: find my friends. If Magda… if she died and Harn was demoted, what happened with everyone else?

Felix was concerned that the Tin Ranks hadn’t made it back safely, especially since that Sworn assassin had been after them. Or had they suffered for Magda's reckless charge into the Foglands? He hoped not, the last thing he wanted was more trouble for them. Not even Atar.

A thought struck Felix. Did Callie make it back? His eyes went to his tattered pants, piled on the bed. In one of his pockets was a triangular locket. It had been one of the only possessions—aside from his clothes—that had traveled to the Void and back. Magda's last request was to bring that back to her on again/off again partner. Six: find Callie.

He rubbed his face with a handful of water and blew out a deep breath. Seven: stay away from the Inquisition. Keep my damn head down. And finally, get stronger. Train. I survived the Foglands, the Maw, pirates and the Void. It'd be pretty dumb to get taken down by some jerk gate guards.

Felix stood up, letting the water cascade off his body as he reached over for the towel. It was stiff and coarse, but absorbent enough. As he dried off, however, he noticed something had been beneath the towel. A mirror. Small and round, edged with tarnished silver, it was a handheld thing barely larger than his face. Overcome by trepidation, Felix stepped out of the tub and picked it up. He looked at himself for the first time in weeks, and he nearly gasped.

The man in the mirror was not him.

The man he'd been before leaving Earth was pudgy and well on his way to thirty, while the man (boy?) in the mirror was maybe twenty and lean. The old him was in there, somewhere, but he'd been boiled away, refined into this sharp-jawed and square-chinned person. Felix smiled, noticing even his teeth were whiter and straighter, and his eyes… his eyes really were blue, dark like the eastern sky before nightfall. They had been brown back on Earth, just as his face had been more pinched and body flabbier even when he'd been staying in the Waterfall Temple. Did Tempering my Body change me so much? What happens when I Temper it at Journeyman?

"Would my family even recognize me now?" The thought hit him like a ton of bricks. Even if he managed to get back to Earth, he was practically a different person now. In a much smaller voice: "Do I even want to go back?"

The words felt like a betrayal in a way, but Felix had changed so much since his arrival. Physically and mentally. He also had Pit now, who was closer to him than any pet or friend had been back home. Dangerous as this new world was, he would be lying if he said he didn't enjoy it on some level.

Pit headbutted him in the thigh and warbled in support. "Thanks, Pit." Felix took a breath and centered himself, something that had become easy in his time here. "We have work to do. You wanna come down or stay up here?"

Pit chirruped and hopped up onto the bed. He circled twice, sending Felix's clothes tumbling off the edge and nearly into the tub, then sat down. The snoring began almost immediately.

Felix rolled his eyes and snorted.

* * *

After dragging the tub into the hallway, Felix had a newfound respect for Wulfand. The wood of the tub itself was very dense, and the added weight of the water as well as how much it sloshed around made for a lot of spills. Felix could have chucked the tub across the room, but moving it without spilling a drop? That was beyond him.

So it was a slightly soggy Felix that trudged down the stairs, having left the tub in the hallway for someone to collect. He found the common room below filled with a bevy of people, and the mad din of chatter, crockery, and the occasional shout filled the air. Most folk seemed to be intent on lunch, though quite a few were nursing tall drinks, and the smell of alcohol was thick in the air.

Felix Eyed the crowd, skimming mostly while his perfect recall took snapshots of their information. Nearly all of the customers appeared to be laborers here for a midday meal, their heavy boots and worn clothing dusted with dirt and grime while the hefty large mugs of ale. They were the most sedate of the lot, though a low argument was happening somewhere across the room. Felix shook his head, his senses on overload until he focused, dividing up what he cared to listen to and what was just noise.

A surge of anxiety caught Felix unaware, however, as he started moving across the room. No longer exhausted or keyed up on anger and adrenaline, he found that his old social instincts were kicking in. Back on Earth, a crowded room filled with rough-seeming folk would have low-key freaked him out; but Felix reminded himself that he was—almost literally—a different person now. With a minor effort of Will, he squashed the urge to flee up to his room, and he strode purposefully to the bar.

The Half-Orc bartender, whose name was apparently Ignatius Tanque, was quite busy. The guy moved up and down the bar serving drinks and food with rapid-fire precision, his dark green hands moving in a blur. One of the things he was serving was a tall ale and a crust-laden pie filled with the savory aromas of onions, garlic, and pork. Felix's mouth practically watered while his stomach growled, his appetite practically untouched. When he made it up to the counter, Felix gestured at the retreating platter of foodstuff. "Excuse me, what is that?"

"House ale and pork pie," grumbled the bartender. "You want some, kid?"

Felix nodded, not even minding the 'kid' comment. After all, he looked like one again. "Absolutely, I do."

Ignatius apparently knew magic, because within seconds a duplicate order was in front of Felix. The Nym gaped at the Half-Orc's speed, which was belied by his stocky, muscle-bound appearance. "Holy—wow, thank you. How much?"

The bartender's dour expression lifted a second in a smirk, the small tusks in his lower jaw sticking out further. "Nothin'. You paid enough for a month. Up front, no less. You're good, kid."

Felix scratched his neck and considered the bartender as he moved back down the counter, serving other customers. He tapped at his chest, where the amulet set under his shirt. This thing cost me almost two years’ worth of lodging? Holy shit. I need to get a handle on this money thing.

Felix took his platter and made his way across the room again, this time to a small table further from the bar. He sat down, not quite alone but by himself. The ale was called a Westworth Ale, and he was thankful it was good, because his Eye told him it had 0% chance of intoxicating him or anyone with an Apprentice Tier Body. Not that he wanted to be drunk, but a buzz every now and again wasn't the worst thing in the world. The meat pie was great, though, the crust buttery and flaky while the insides were savory. He ate the crispy thing in what felt like seconds.

"...listen! I got good news—"

"No no, you listen! We're tired of your 'good news,' Gnokl! You peddle trash!"

The voices, which weren't trying to be quiet by any measure, were from a couple tables over, nearer the front door. A pack of five Goblins sat among the remnants of a huge feast, each one garbed in flowing robes and large sashes. Felix even spotted a curled slipper on a tiny Goblin foot. They had sharp features with prominent noses and lank hair that ranged from green to darkest black, and their heads were quite large compared to their slender bodies. Two of the five were arguing.

"I am offended! See, brothers and sisters! Hartl impugnes my honor! I'm impugned!" The Goblin named Gnokl screeched dramatically and thrust his hands at the others. "I only bring the choicest of news! From the best of sources!"

"Fine, fine. Stop yelling, Gnokl," a slightly thicker-set Goblin growled from the other end of the table. "Speak your piece."

Gnokl shot a victorious look at the one he'd called Hartl, who wrinkled her nose. "Thank you, Eukr. I heard that the Festival of Spheres is going to be held as normal! No changes!"

"What of the monsters?" asked Lotr, a gap-toothed Goblin with a smattering of dark freckles on her pale green face. "The fog is gone, and the monsters are worse than ever. Not to mention the murders."

"Murders? Just some nut about town. And what are monsters compared to the might of the Hierophant's own Inquisition? With the redcloaks defending the city, who would dare attack? Who could even succeed?" Gnokl dismissed Lotr's fears with a laugh. "Our time to profit is here, my family!"

"What profit is there in a Festival where none can attend?" Hartl sneered. "The Inquisition has the city locked down. No new arrivals! Who will buy?"

Gnokl's reply was drowned out by a sudden cheering from nearby. Felix flinched, nearly tipping his ale over in surprise. A group of young people had wandered into the inn at some point and had sat down at a table next to him. They were cheering as one of their own tried and failed to chug down an extra large tankard of ale. Amidst the insults and jeers, Felix lost the thread of the Goblins' conversation. Now they were speaking about shipments or something, which was far less interesting.

"Hey! You here to join the Guild, too?" One of the group caught Felix's attention, looking at him with a smile. Deema Renn, according to his Voracious Eye, a Human with brown skin and light, amber-colored eyes. She was wearing a suit of leather armor that looked barely broken in, and rested her hand casually on the sword at her waist. She was maybe seventeen or eighteen, same as the rest, and at a glance Felix noted that none of them were over level ten.

"Maybe. Haven't decided yet," Felix smiled at Deema and nodded at the others.

"Haven't decided? Why come here and not know?" A big, boisterous teen with a wispy neckbeard and thick arms tilted toward them on his stool. He was also wearing armor, though it had elements of chain mail to it, including big old pauldrons on his shoulders. "Haarwatch doesn't have room for people not willing to help."

"Kelvin! Don't be an ass." Deema frowned at her friend before smiling back at Felix. "Sorry about him. He doesn't get out of his cage much."

"Hey!"

"Haha!" another of their group crowed, his narrow face all sharp angles. "He's a beast, all right! Can't take him anywhere!"

"Nice to meet you." Felix smiled politely and nodded at them and Deema before turning to his drink and pointedly staring into the distance. He hoped they would get the hint and leave him alone… but then someone pulled a stool out at his table and sat down.

Jesus. "Listen, I don't mean to be rude but—" He looked up and into the eyes of the Half-Elf proprietor herself. "Oh, sorry. I thought you were—"

"Some villagers too excited for their own good?" The woman grinned and flashed a glance at the group, which had somehow gotten embroiled in a drinking game with several elderly Dwarves. Felix even spotted Wulfand among them, miserable as ever. "It happens. Kids come into town looking to join the Guild. Test themselves against the Foglands. Then they cause trouble for the locals or themselves, and everyone's the worse for it. Best if they're… managed, a bit."

Felix smiled. "Better managed by you than someone less reputable."

She smiled right back, eyes crinkling at the corners. "I think I like you, lad. And not just because you pay in gold."

Felix's smile soured just slightly, though he fought to keep it steady. "Glad to hear it. I wanted to ask you a few questions, actually."

"Figured as much. Introductions first, yeah?" She held out a dainty hand. "I'm Jacinda Tellis, and this is my place: The Drum and Tankard, though everyone calls it the Drum Tank. Pleased to meet ya."

Felix gripped her hand firmly. "I'm Felix. Just wandering through."

"Well Felix the Wanderer, what can I help ya with?" She smiled brightly, and the flash of silver at her ears and neck caught the sunlight. Felix finished the last of his ale and smiled back.

"What do you know about pants?"

CHAPTER SIX

Step forward.

Foot angled toward the enemy, spear up. Keep your spear up!

Twist. Foot strike! One! Two!

Faster!

Faster!

Vessilia Dayne panted, sweat streaming down her forehead and back, soaking her padded training garb. The spear, a wooden one with a lead center, was slick in her grip as she thrust forward. An arm of baked clay swiped up at her, deflecting the blow upward, while a second arm jabbed for her throat. She spun to the side, flowing outside the strike and swung the blunt end of her training spear toward a smooth orb of baked clay. The combat Golem took the blow and rotated, following her agile form as she maneuvered around it, blocking two more swift strikes from her spear.

Faster!

Vess ducked under the Golem's wild swing, catching its knee on the haft of her spear and shoving downward. She rolled, flexed, and popped to her feet just outside its range. But the Golem was fast—just as fast as she was; it oriented on her in seconds. Which was exactly one second too long to avoid her thrust.

The tip of her spear pierced the clay dummy with a muted *crack* and neatly split its head in two.

Haah haah. Vess' breath was harsh and ragged. That fight took… entirely too long.

The combat Golem, while only Clay and thus of moderate difficulty, was still too much for her. No matter that she had fully Tempered her Body in these last few months. She still was not there yet. Not even looking at the Golem's shattered head and sagging body made her feel better. I should have bested that in seconds!

She sat heavily in the matted grass, still lush despite her trampling feet. The Upper Ward of the Guild's citadel, the Eyrie, was a prized training ground. It was littered with obstacles and special training equipment like enchanted combat Golems, but also dotted with expansive gardens. Tall trees, jewel-colored flowers, and perfectly manicured hedges filled the Ward, framing and containing various training areas. Iron, Bronze, and even Silver Rank Guilders would have killed to train in these gardens. The skies were blue, the sun hot, and the breeze constant and cooling. On the surface, Vess had zero reasons to be unhappy or discontent.

Yet she seethed.

Sitting in the thick grass beneath the looming spire of the topmost floors of the Eyrie in the center of Haarwatch, Vess fought to find her center. Her calm was upset at the start of each spar, the moment she spied the spindly body of the automaton begin to move. Clay Golems were sleeker than their more advanced brethren, made for those just beyond their first Temper, more focused on speed than strength. Whenever the creature struck at her, all she could see was an assassin in black leaping from the shadows. One that dropped her without effort or care, who had made her abandon her charges in a city of death. Abandon her friends.

Vessilia took a breath. And another. She attempted to slow her racing heartbeat and still her raging blood.

I am more than this, she breathed through her center, expelling worry and terror. I am more.

"Milady? Is everything… are you unwell?"

Vess cracked an eye and frowned at the voice, one that belonged to a young woman dressed in a pale yellow jacket and dark blue pants. She had long, brown hair tied up into a warrior's knot, a mace at her waist, and a bandolier of knives across her chest. A bronze medallion dangled out of her open collar.

"I am fine, Liandra. Thank you." Vess stood up and distanced herself from her nosy minder. That was what she was, after all; a spy, an interloper. Set upon her by her father's Hand when he was too busy to watch her himself. When word reached the Duke that his only daughter and heir was grievously wounded in a deadly training mission gone wrong, he had dispatched his Hand, Darius Reed, to find her and keep her safe. Once he had arrived, her time alone had dwindled further and further. Now, even when the Hand was otherwise occupied, she was to be watched.

She repressed a growl in her throat. The Bronze Rank was a relatively new addition, ever since Darius had found that Vess had slipped into the lower floors of the Tower. While that itself wasn't forbidden to her, it had been done when the Master Inquisitor had been touring the Eyrie. Darius wanted nothing to do with the supposed Inviolate Inquisition, but as the Duke's representative, he had been forced to attend the meeting, and when he had returned to find Vess gone it… had not gone well.

The growl came out full force now. She had been helping her best friend, Evie Aren, find her sister's body, since it was stolen by the Guild. No matter their reasons or intentions for Magda Aren's body, she had been more than happy to risk her freedom to return it to Evie and her family. Atar had even gone in on it, being the one to tell them Magda's location in the Eyrie, and he cared for little beyond his own advancement. It was the only right thing to do.

Two weeks later, she was still under watchful eyes at all times. After her disastrous foray into the wilds, the Duke had forbidden her from engaging in any more hunts, marks, or standard Guild contracts until his Hand deemed her ready. After her escapade with Evie—the details of which were thankfully hidden from Darius—she was not allowed to leave the Eyrie, and especially not to see her friends. As far as the Hand was concerned, Evie, Harn, and Calesca were all responsible for her near-death in the Foglands.

And of Felix, I've had no word at all, Vess thought with a softening glower. She feared the worst, but held out hope. Yet, Evie hadn't known his fate, either.

So she trained. As recompense for her supposed suffering and to honor the Duke, Vess was granted the rights to use the Inner Ward so that she could safely train. The Guild even procured a new set of Essence Draughts for her Tempering, which was impressive. Not as impressive as the color the Hand's face had turned when he'd found out she'd lost her previous set, however.

The training provided a useful outlet for her frustration, and Vess could admit to herself that training was one of her favorite things to do, given the choice. But that was the problem. She had no choice.

Vess moved deeper into the gardens, seeking out another challenge, something that she could sink her teeth into and forget about everything—at least for a little while. Liandra, of course, followed at a discrete distance. As always. The woman was a Guilder, but one brought from Pax'Vrell and trained personally by the Hand. She was only Bronze Rank, but that was still two entire Ranks above Vessilia's Tin. Despite her greater social standing, the woman outranked her in the Guild. If Vess was one to toss her pedigree around, like most of her simpering contemporaries, she might be aggrieved with Liandra's constant judgemental eyes and almost-but-not-quite smirk, but she—no, no she was pissed. At everything.

It unfocused her, the rage. She felt bottomless fury at the nameless assassin that stole her away from the Foglands, at the giants that killed her mentor, even at the Guild itself. It was clear they were hiding more than a few things, but she was sickened by one hidden truth above all else.

The Guild hadn't only illegally stolen Magda's body, but the lives of twenty or so Guilders, though she had no proof of the latter, and the former had been burned on a funeral pyre. All of them were survivors from the failed occupation of the Foglands, people Vess and her team had risked their lives to save. They had returned injured and sick from the wilds, and while the Healers took care of them, they had supposedly volunteered for further care.

Rumors had them hurt and experimented upon by the Elder Teine, but Vess had been able to find no evidence of that save for Atar's confused testimony. One he was happy to share with her, but refused to tell anyone in authority.

"I like my position in the Guild, Vessilia! Magda was one thing, but I'm not risking everything for people I don't even know," he had said to her.

Vess sniffed, still upset by that conversation. I'll be figuring it out myself, then. She listened. Any moment now, in fact.

She wound her way down a path of crushed gravel, between flowering lanhel trees and large, artfully placed rocks. The path split up ahead, leading to three disparate training areas, ones that Vessilia knew well. As she came upon the fork in the road, there was a crash and a distant scream from behind them. Vess whirled and started toward the sound, but Liandra held out a calloused hand and grunted.

"No, milady. I'll see what's going on. Please, remain here."

Liandra took off. The woman was exceptionally fast, her build clearly focused on Agility. In moments, she had disappeared into the manicured forest. Vess grinned and waited approximately two seconds before she dropped her training spear and ran in the opposite direction.

That should keep her busy. For a time.

Although Vessilia wasn't as invested in Agility as Liandra, she hadn't neglected it either, and excessive training in Running meant she was fairly fast. The heiress sprinted through the woods in a straight line toward the Spire, the top-most section of the Eyrie, where all the important business of the Guild was decided. Seconds later, she was there, staring up the thirty feet to the first ledge.

The Spire was called such because it rose four stories above the Inner Ward, each floor tapering until it reached the beacon itself. The walls were smooth, expertly crafted and laid to prevent exactly the sort of thing she was about to attempt. Within the Spire, a meeting of Guild Elders was about to take place, and Vess would be damned if she was going to miss it. Taking a running start, she leaped upward over twenty five feet, pushing her Born Trait to the limit.

She missed.

However, Vess activated one of her new Skills, and her booted feet found solid purchase on the smooth walls. She'd badgered the Hand to teach her the Skill, one she always had her eyes on—one of her Mother's favorites. Wall Run was more complex than its name suggested, and at level 2, she could only manage a few feet. But that was enough.

Wall Run is level 3!

With a grunt, Vess propelled her body up the last few feet. Her fingers caught the lip of a ledge, and she leveraged herself onto first her forearms then her elbows. The ledge she had found was scarcely wide enough to support her, more a decorative protrusion than anything else. Flaring her new Skill again, Vess kicked up and over… just barely grabbing onto the nearest window sill. A little more effort, and she was in.

The window, easily twice the size of her body, opened up on greased hinges. Vess breathed a sigh of relief. Her preparations had paid off; the same servant she'd paid off to create a commotion in the Inner Ward was also able to unlock this window. Climbing through as quietly as she could, Vess crept into a short hallway outside a set of closed double doors. They were a spotless white, adorned by the gilt edged carving of a shield with a spear and sword crossing it. The Guild Seal.

Voices rumbled through the door, but were too faint to make out. She'd prepped for this too, and pulled out a slip of thick vellum. That had been its own adventure; Darius would have killed her if he'd found her with a Script-Cipher. They were banned in the Hierocracy, even to nobility, but her need outweighed her caution. Vess' senses told her that no guard was positioned here, though she heard the faint heartbeat of someone down a set of stairs forward and to the left. Carefully, she held the vellum to her face and whispered three words.

"Ing Tohl Rul!"

The sigils on the page flared before detaching from the vellum. One fluttered up and attached itself to Vessilia's forehead, while the other two floated beneath the door itself. The vellum dissolved into ash in her hand. Immediately, Vess could both see and hear everything that happened in the room beyond.

I'm not too late! she mentally crowed.

Within was a large circular space dominated by a rectangular table and ornate, padded wooden chairs. The walls were paneled with dark, polished wood, expensive and well-crafted to Vess' discerning eye. A crystal chandelier hung from above, filled with magelight that illuminated the entire chamber. Seven Guild Elders sat in the chairs, all of them embroiled in a heated debate.

"—Festival cannot be done with the Inquisition barring the gates. I do not know how we can expect anything else," a heavy-set man with huge sideburns and fists the size of hams grumbled. Elder Hyde, she recognized.

"We've brought in entertainers from Bel Atol and Levantier, had them come a month back now. Luckily, well before the Inquisition stoppered our gates." A plump woman with gray-streaked red hair smiled. Elder Regis. "I don't see the problem."

"We've more than enough food and entertainment. What Elder Hyde is suggesting is a dearth of out-of-city guests. The Festival of the Spheres has always drawn in merchants and hunters from beyond the Verdant Pass, even the rare village within it." Slender, silver-haired Elder Teine nodded at the rotund Hyde. Vess grimaced at his deceptively pleasant voice. "I agree. Visitors have historically generated the most revenue during this event. Is it worth it to even hold such festivities, especially in the face of the increasing beast assaults and the… imposition that the redcloaks represent?"

"The Inquisition," a deep baritone voice said, emphasizing the title. "May be a thorn in our side, but they are one that must be removed with the utmost caution. The Festival will occur as planned." The voice belonged to a powerfully built man in a silk doublet, and he rapped a knuckle against the table. Elder Fairbanks, de facto head of the Protectors' Guild in Haarwatch. "What of the wall, Elder Latvere? How is our defense against the beasts?"

A man with pale blonde hair and a narrow face sighed. "Well enough. The beasts grow stronger and more numerous by the day, but typically wait until nightfall to attack. The Tin Ranks are getting a decent amount of experience, though nowhere near the same as with a horde surge."

"The Inquisitors help us hold the gates against the beasts?" Fairbanks' eyes were mild, but there was a tension across his shoulders Vess didn't understand. "Or do they simply bandy their Writs of Passage to all who wish to cross?"

"Both. I cannot fault them on that account, dangerous as it’s becoming for the Untempered." Elder Latvere sighed again. "I just wish they'd learn to get along with our people."

Hyde laughed, a big, boisterous chortle. "Pathless protect us from his own zealots."

Fairbanks managed a thin smile. "And what of the hunter? The one that attacked the Acolyte? Has he been found yet?"

Latvere shook his head, but there was a second of hesitation. Of surprise. "N-no. Still at large. At this point, I doubt they'll ever find him."

"Good for him," grunted Elder Holt, then a grin nestled into his wild salt and pepper beard. "Bloody their fuckin' noses. The bastards."

"Careful, Holt," said a woman with gauntlets on her hands. Vess recognized Elder DuFont. "The Master Inquisitor has surprisingly good hearing."

Vess was certain Eliza DuFont had hired the Sworn assassin that had come for her in the Foglands. She had even been the one to greenlight the original operation, the reason why so many folks had died or returned sick from the wilds. Vess' lips turned in a sneer, her disgust enough that she almost missed further conversation.

"—Katan oversteps himself, and we all know it," growled Holt, his tone not quieter at all. "He'll only be happy when he can burn this entire city to the ground."

"Be that as it may, you all know Master Inquisitor Katan is not overstepping at all. The power he wields is real and backed by the Hierophant herself." Elder Fairbanks shook his head slowly, his mane of dark brown hair flowing with the movement. "As long as they have the scent of blood, they are a hound that will not heel. We must give them nothing. Understand?"

Significant looks were exchanged, and Vess' eyes darted between each of them during that brief silence. She was missing something. Are they talking of the survivors? Or other secrets?

"Elder Teine," Fairbanks' voice cut through the silence. "Have your preparations been completed?"

"Yes. It took entirely too long, but we've finished the last of the construction this week." The silver-haired man smiled, his teeth perfect and white. "The survivors will not be found. I believe… at… aft..."

Survivors! Vess' concentration had been slipping as the script-cipher deteriorated, but that sharpened her attention. Unfortunately, that's when the cipher really began to degrade. The spearwoman fought against the failing runes and poured more of her limited Mana into it, hoping to hear something—anything—more.

"—something is here."

A sudden and furious flare of Mana was her only warning, and it was a lifetime of training that let Vess throw herself sideways in time. The white doors exploded outward, becoming a storm of wooden shrapnel in an instant. The carpeted floor and opposing wall were shredded to pieces in a fraction of a second. Vess gaped, panic gripping her heart like a vice, and she found herself frozen. Not by a Status Condition or Skill, but by sheer terror.

Suddenly, a furious gust of wind swept through the hall, pushing Vess' body back another few steps even as it hurled shrapnel back into the Elders' chamber. Hands of steel grabbed her shoulder and waist. Before the spearwoman could react, she found herself sailing through the air outside. Only then did she get a good look at who held her: her father's Hand, Darius Reed. He regarded her with flat, emotionless eyes that gave her goosebumps and a new sort of terror.

She'd have rather been discovered by the Guild Elders.

At least they might have only killed her.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The bell above the door chimed as Felix left the tailor's shop, proud owner of a brand new suit of clothes. Gone were the ratty pants and stained tunic. In their place were a pair of black cloth pants, looser than his leather ones, while his new tunic was a dark blue-gray and fit across his broad shoulders more comfortably than any clothes since his arrival. Plain, sure, but both were far more sturdy due to the pair of enchantments woven into them.

Name: Khellish Tunic

Type: Tunic (enchanted)

Lore: Made in the Khellish style, popularized by the Marquis of Varnais, it is a common tunic stitched with a fine hand.

Self-Repair I - By absorbing ambient Mana, minor holes and tears in this object will repair themselves over time.

Self-Cleaning I - By absorbing ambient Mana, stains and dirt are repelled from this garment.

Name: Khellish Trousers

Type: Trouser (enchanted)

Lore: Made in the Khellish style, popularized by the Marquis of Varnais, these are simple trousers stitched with a fine hand.

Self-Repair I - By absorbing ambient Mana, minor holes and tears in this object will repair themselves over time.

Self-Cleaning I - By absorbing ambient Mana, stains and dirt are repelled from this garment.

The enchantments were stitched inside at the seams, forming a series of concentric circles that made little sense at first glance. He understood their function from his Voracious Eye, but how they accomplished those enchantments boggled his mind. His old clothes he tossed away, as they were more like smelly rags at that point. The dark brown jacket he'd stolen from the pirates, however, he kept. Felix liked the style. The tailor had repaired it for a few copper pieces, or copper stones as they called them.

Finally. Now, I don't have to worry about ruining everything I own. He smiled as he hopped down the tailor's stoop, a pleasant spring in his step. I wonder if I can learn this enchanting thing. It's so useful.

The tailor had been a spry old man named Bartrand, a Human well into his eighties yet as energetic as anyone. His deft hands had made his new tunic and pants in minutes, probably utilizing some Skill in the process. Two bolts of cloth turned into clothes, like magic. Though it cost him ten gold crowns, he'd ordered another two sets in addition to the first.

Felix walked down the road, enjoying the unbroken cobbles beneath his feet. Bartrand's shop was on the nicer side of the Dust Quarter, closer to the Wall Quarter than the Drum Tank. According to Jacinda, the blacksmith was perhaps three or four blocks away.

The afternoon was hot, but a nice breeze stirred his hair and helped disperse it a little. A few trees sprung out of the cobbles in the median or edges, overgrown and splitting the road with their roots. Weeds and grasses poked through the spaces in the road as nature made its efforts to reclaim the place. It was still summer, as far as he could tell, though he hadn't run into a breakdown of the seasons here on the Continent yet.

Maybe there'll be a book about it at the Elder Crown? He was excited about the prospect of learning. He had always loved school, and now he had a perfect memory. The only library in the city, according to his innkeeper, was in the Guild's tower, the Eyrie at the center of town. Wanted for sneaking into the city, Felix figured it would be foolish to go to the Guild at this point. Jacinda had pointed out a bookstore he could visit instead. The Elder Crown was located further into the Wall Quarter, past the blacksmith's naturally, so he would visit there last.

Best for last, I hope. He really wanted to figure out this reading thing. In his chest, he felt a small tug of annoyance at the thought. He smiled. It's okay, Pit. I'll be back soon.

The two of them had to remain split for the moment. Felix's errands would take him far longer than a half hour, and he didn't see the need to exhaust himself mentally at this point. So, Pit was still holed up in their room. Felix had left Jacinda with the instructions that no one was to disturb his room while he was gone, and the Half-Elf had been almost offended. Apparently, she ran a tight ship at the Drum Tank.

So now Felix and Pit were reduced to sending vague messages at one another, the limit of Etheric Concordance at this distance. Faint emotional impressions on Felix's end, at least. Pit seemed to get more out of their communication than he did, somehow. Either way, Felix made sure to keep talking to his Companion, as he hoped to level the Concordance as much as possible. It was his only Legendary Skill, after all. And it was paying dividends already.

Etheric Concordance is level 28!

Felix quickened his steps. The smithy was nearby, and he was eager to see it. As great as his Armored Skin Skill had proven, he still wasn't keen on being bashed and slashed all the time.

The last block to the smithy was filled with a bevy of food carts and small vendors strung out along the thoroughfare. Various meats on skewers were popular, as well as meat and vegetables wrapped in some sort of flatbread. The smells were equally strange and enticing, peppery seasonings and citrus-like aromas wafting on the breeze. It was clearly a busy street, and it thronged with folks of many Races. Mostly Humans, but plenty of Dwarves, Halflings, Half-Orcs, and Goblins passed him by, many dressed as laborers. There was even a white-haired Gnome performing magic tricks for a group of children.

Sparks shot from the Gnome's hands, delighting the younger watchers. Their cheers brought smiles to their parents and minders, who stood nearby. Felix laughed himself as a transparent serpent materialized from the sparks, flying above the kids in a complicated pattern. It burst into a cascade of glittering stars that rained down on the audience, much to their uncomplicated joy. A number of those children were not Human, though their wide eyes and big smiles were just as infectious.

Perhaps he'd been conditioned by popular media, but seeing the more monstrous people being accepted as normal was at first a little jarring to Felix. Less so after his experiences at the Drum Tank, but it was still a little odd to see green skin and fangs on the people around him. Ultimately, however, Felix shrugged it off. This was a new world, and it came with a new normal. Far as he could tell, the "monstrous" Races weren't excessively prone to dick behavior. And certainly not the kids. Indeed, that distinction seemed to apply more to the Humans.

"What do we have here?"

Case in point.

The voice wasn't much louder than the rabble, but it seemed to cut through it like a knife. Ahead, a group of four Humans moved through a thinning crowd directly toward the Gnome magician. Parents in the audience quickly snatched up their children and fled. Felix saw the Gnome blanch and fall backward, his green and purple robes tangling in his feet.

"Mehren. H-how nice of you to visit—"

The man in the lead snorted and tossed his head of tawny hair. He and his associates were dressed in boiled leather armor and were strapped with weapons. Mehren himself had a short sword at one hip and a mace at his other. Felix frowned at the interaction and at the rapidly dwindling street traffic.

"Nice enough to pay me the money you owe, sorcerer?" Mehren snarled, hand on his mace.

The Gnome paled further, if that were possible, his ruddy skin turning as white as his hair. Barely four feet tall, the elderly creature was clearly terrified as the four Humans hemmed him in. He raised his hands, palms out.

"I d-don't know what you mean, Mehren. I paid your boss in full last week."

Mehren laughed, and his cronies followed suit. "Sure ya did, Sorcerer. But you ain't paid me."

Ah, classic shakedown. Felix walked forward, skirting the edge of the group as he Eyed them. Four Humans, all level 26 except this Mehren who is level 29. First Temper, every one. Felix chewed his lip as he drew closer. I should just let this go. There's no need to get involved.

"Please, don't call me that," the Gnome winced, still on the ground. "I'm not a—"

"A what? A Sorcerer?" Mehren's voice was louder than ever, and his mouth split into a feral grin. "Ya seem scared. Why's that? Don't want the Inquisition's attention on yer lil magic show?"

The thug kicked the flimsy stand the Gnome had been performing behind, and it collapsed in with a crack of splintering wood.

"Last thing ya want is the Inquisition in yer business, Thangle." Mehren loomed over the prone magician and pulled free his flanged mace. "Give me my money, or else we can go have a nice talk with ‘em."

Shit. Calling the Inquisition attention to this part of town wasn't something Felix wanted to happen. He had noticed they weren't as omnipresent there as they were in the Wall Quarter. He sighed. I should walk away. Right?

"I-I don't have it, Mehren! I swear! I'm barely able to stay afloat here!" Thangle the Gnome crab-walked backward until he hit the tilted remains of his stand. "I've got nothing!"

"You always got something, Thangle. But maybe you need encouragement?" Mehren brought down his mace with brutal efficiency.

Relentless Charge!

The mace stopped midair, and Mehren grunted in surprise. Felix's hand was wrapped around the flanged head of his weapon, cradling the steel blades like they were nothing.

"Who're you?"

"Doesn't matter," Felix said, glowering. "Why don't you walk away, friend?"

"Ain't no friend of yours, kid." Mehren sneered and tried to yank his mace back from Felix's grip. It didn't budge. "Hey! Let go!"

"Fine."

Mehren was still pulling when Felix relaxed his grip and ended up falling on his ass. A snicker passed through the crowd, quickly stifled, but the thug went nearly purple with rage. He gestured to his cronies. "What are you all doing! Get him!"

The smallest came for him first. They were fast, specialized in Agility, it seemed. He brandished daggers in a deadly whirl of acrobatics, forcing Felix to bob and weave through the attacks. "Come now, Javyn. Is that the best you have?"

The enforcer blinked at Felix in surprise at hearing his name. "Do I know you?"

"No," Felix smiled before striking Javyn on each of his forearms. The enforcer cried out and dropped his daggers, then a solid kick sent Javyn flying. "I just figured that would distract you."

Felix's Perception and Blind Fighting flared, telling him that another was coming from his left. He quickly spun to the right. A sword cut through the air a moment later, whistling past his newly repaired jacket sleeve.

Close one. I am not going back to the tailors after this. He needed to end the fight quickly, but he couldn't bring himself to kill these men, even if they were jerks. He wasn't in the Void any longer. That took his spells off the table, leaving his Unarmed Mastery. It'll be enough.

Felix stepped quickly, moving through the two remaining thugs with ease. It was like they were fighting on a delay, each move they made telegraphed and too slow by half to touch him. It was a heady feeling. Not even the Void-rotten pirates were this slow! How much higher are my stats compared to theirs?

He struck, once, twice, three times, and all of Mehren's enforcers went down. Two of them had broken legs, and the other had two broken arms. It was brutal, but the best solution he could think of; Felix was worried a full strength punch would have killed them.

Quiet dominated the street, save for the cries and moans of his opponents. The crowd had fled, but not all too far. Felix could see them hiding around corners and in open doorways. Watching. He turned toward Mehren, who held his sword up to Thangle's throat.

"I don't know who you are, but you'll regret it. No one crosses the Blades!" He pressed the sword a little tighter against the Gnome's skin, drawing a rivulet of blood. "If you run now, I'll promise you'll die quick. If not..."

Mehren's arm flexed, but instead of slicing the Gnome's throat, it flew outward toward Felix. It was faster than it had any right to be, and likely a Skill of some sort. It blurred toward him.

Reign of Vellus!

Azure lightning exploded from Felix's body and collided with the spinning short sword, quickly and brutally smashing it into the cobbles.

"Wha—?"

Relentless Charge!

Felix struck Mehren in the gut, throwing his entire body into the brick building behind them. He hit with an unpleasant thud and was still.

You Have Defeated Mehren, Javyn, Poul, and Jasim!

XP Earned!

"Shit. That was harder than I intended." He forgot about the inertia from his Charge, added on top of his increased weight and density. He looked down at the Gnome. "Sorry. You okay?"

The Gnome flapped his mouth like a fish as he stared at Felix. The faintest of wheezes were coming from him, but nothing close to words. Felix reached down and helped him to his feet. The elder Gnome wheezed in a huge breath and started a hacking cough. Felix took a measured step back from him until he'd finished.

A flare of concern lit up his bond, and Felix sent a vague reassurance back at Pit. I’m okay. Stay where you are.

Pit’s distant concern faded to muted wariness but never went completely away.

"You all right?" Felix asked again, worried at the amount of purple in the Gnome's face. He Eyed him and felt a familiar resistance. He didn't push, letting the magician keep his secrets.

Name: Thadeus Thangle

Race: Gnome

Level: 33

HP: ???/???

SP: ???/???

MP: ???/???

Lore: Gnomes are small, generally nimble, and are typically predisposed to Mana Skills.

Strength: ???

Weakness: ???

"Yes yes. I'm fine," he croaked before blinking at Felix again. "You saved my life, young man! Thank you! Thank you, thank you!"

The back of Felix’s neck heated up and prickled as a few scattered people began to applaud. More folk than he'd originally noticed had stuck around at the edges of the conflict, including several children. Felix smiled tightly and nodded at them before turning back to the mage. "If you're good, then I'll be uh, I'll be going."

"Young man! Wait!"

Felix turned to see the diminutive magician shove the various objects and doodads on his collapsed stand into a pack he'd pulled from… somewhere. "You cannot leave without a boon! For the savior of Thadeus Thangle, a boon is necessary!"

Felix smiled and waved his hand, ready to decline… when he spied a book the Gnome was wrangling into his pack. The cover was decorated with an excess of floral embossing, but around the edges of it were a series of symbols he found extremely familiar. Sigils!

"Do-do you know magic?" Felix stepped closer and lowered his voice, aware of the eyes on them. "I'm looking to learn, if you're willing to teach."

"Like Mana Skills?" Thangle tilted his head before resuming his normal tone. "But of course! I know my fair share, though mostly in the realm of Illusion. Not a very popular realm of the arts." He looked around himself, noticing the limp and groaning forms of his assailants. He flashed Felix a grin behind his wispy white beard.

"Hm. If you come see me at my home, I could offer you some lessons, if you like. It would be the least I could do for my savior!"

Felix agreed and suddenly found himself in the possession of a small pasteboard card, embossed with various squiggles. "Ah, this is, ah great. Could you give me directions? I'm new to the city."

"Of course! Seek the Deathly Rooster, and find upon it a hallowed hall. Within will be your prize!" Thangle snapped his fingers, and a poof of purple smoke rose up in place around him. Felix backed up a step in alarm, and as it cleared, he found no trace of the Gnome.

What was—?

Felix's head swiveled until his Perception caught on something. Approximately fifteen feet away he saw a small form in purple and green dash around a corner. Felix laughed, a little confused.

This city is full of strange old men.

Seeing that the would-be bandits were slowly rousing, and the crowd was filling in once more, Felix quickened his steps. He had places to be.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Fifteen minutes later, Felix found the smithy. A wide, squat building built of dark, heavy stones. It was unlike the rest of the mostly wooden buildings around them. The roof was tiled with red clay, and a lacquered sign hung from a peg above the door. It featured a series of squiggles below a huge furnace filled with a blazing white flame.

Obvious enough. Felix smiled. If it weren't, the plume of dark smoke rising from a large chimney would have been.

The door opened on well greased hinges, and immediately, Felix was hit with a wall of sound, of crashes and bangs. Inside, the air was filled with the scent of char and hot metal, an odd mineral note that Felix couldn't quite place. The one and only room of the smithy was divided into three sections. The first was what Felix would call the customer area, where people like him waited or browsed through a selection of arms and armor along the walls. And there were plenty of those. The left wall had suits of chainmail and scalemail, even a fully articulated set of plate, all made of shiny steel. The right wall was covered in swords, hammers, spears, halberds, and many others that Felix could not name.

Two counters divided the room, one on the left and one on the right, each seemingly dedicated to armor or weapons. Beyond them was the real show, where several Dwarves labored over anvils and steaming barrels of liquid. Perhaps six or seven of them were packed into the work area, each focused on some portion of the smithing process. A Dwarven woman, perhaps five feet tall with brilliant red hair, shouted as she lifted a piece of steel from her anvil and stuck it into the large forge in the back. Said forge dominated the entire back of the building. A white fire blazed in its depths, and from the front of the shop, he all but froze in fear. Yet the expected pain never came.

What?

His Heat Resistance, among other Skills, had been broken by the Maw during their first encounter. Now, each time they were activated, they caused him immense physical pain. Felix lifted his hand and flexed it, not feeling a tingle or spasm, but also not feeling much in the way of heat either. He looked at the white flame again, curiously. Is it enchanted to keep out the heat?

"What can I help you with?"

Felix started, caught staring at the flames. The red-haired woman had set down her hammer and moved closer to the counter, smiling at him. He smiled in turn and nodded. "I couldn't help noticing your forge. The fire is… beautiful."

The Dwarf paused and quirked her head to the side. "That's different than the usual lines I get."

Felix blinked and immediately blushed as he suddenly noticed the smith's fully covered but curvy figure. "What? Oh, no. I'm-uh—"

"You Humans, always so easy to crank up," the Dwarven woman laughed. She waved at him. "Don't worry about it. I could tell you actually appreciate the forge itself, not the sweaty Dwarven gal heaving around hot metal."

She winked at him, and Felix decided he wanted to die, just a little. Clearing his throat, he focused on looking anywhere but at her. "I uh, Jacinda sent me to see you. Said you could help me get some armor."

"Jacinda, eh?" A rougher voice came from behind him, and Felix turned to see another Dwarven woman walk into the smithy with a heavy burlap sack. She had dark brown hair and darker eyes, and was even shorter than the redhead. "You got money, right? That old softy is always sendin' us charity cases!"

The burlap sack hit the ground with a muffled thump Felix could feel from six feet away. The dark-haired Dwarf eyed him up and down, clearly not impressed. Felix smiled at her.

"Yes. I have money. Plenty of crowns. I'm—"

"Crowns?" The dark-haired Dwarf grinned, and Felix felt a twang of apprehension over his bond. She eyed him and his clothes up and down, though she frowned a bit at his canvas jacket. "You've money to spare, right? Or did you spend it all on your fancy clothes and satchel?"

"I have—" he narrowed his eyes. "I have enough."

The dark-haired Dwarf laughed, not unkindly. Then she paused. Her eyes were arrested by his feet, and Felix realized she was looking at his Far-Afield Boots. "That metal… how'd a boy barely past level 15 end up with those boots?"

Felix fought hard not to show his surprise. What did she see when she looked at him? He Eyed himself, something he hadn't considered doing before. He felt a strong resistance and naturally didn't push past it.

Name: Felix Nevarre

Race: Human

Level: 15

HP: 194/194

SP: 153/188

MP: 220/220

Lore: Humans are multitudinous on the Continent. They are statistically weaker than most Races, especially at lower levels.

Strength: More Data Required

Weakness: More Data Required

The amulet doesn't just hide, it gives me a fake ID! That's cool. He was annoyed that he hadn't thought to check before. When he realized the Dwarf was still waiting for an answer, he cleared his throat and thought fast.

"These old things? A dead aunt left them to me. She was crazy, but she had some nice things." He smiled and, distantly, thought he could hear a muffled scream of rage. It only made his smile more genuine, especially when a dim sense of amusement followed after.

"Crazy huh?" The Dwarven smith straightened up and narrowed her eyes at Felix. "She didn't tell you what those were?"

"No? Are they valuable?" Felix played it as dumb as he could. Of course, he had no idea of the boots' value, but as a reward for defeating the Maw? They had to be special, somehow. "They're quite comfortable, which is all I care about. Any armor I have I'd like to tailor it around them, if that's possible. Though if you have something better, then..."

Deception is level 12!

"Better?" The smith sputtered before obviously mastering herself. She pursed her mouth and looked to her side, at the redhead, who nodded. "We can figure something out."

"Indeed we can!" Said the redhead brightly, before putting out her hand. Felix shook it, surprised at the gentleness of her grip. "I'm Eldrunna, and this hag is Rafny."

The dark-haired Dwarf spit to the side, still eyeing his boots.

Felix smiled and looked around at the room. "Nice to meet you both. You own this place? It's amazing." He pointed to the armor and weapons on the walls. "You made all of this?"

"Oh yes, with our own two hands. I work on armor, while Rafny does the weapons shaping." Eldrunna beamed, clearly pleased at his compliments. She gestured to him and pursed her lips. "Do you have an armor Skill? Light Armor Mastery, Medium, like that?"

"Oh, no. Never worn the stuff. Figured I'd change that." Felix shrugged. "Dangerous world out there."

"Never worn—" Rafny raised an eyebrow. "You a mage?"

Felix opened his mouth, paused, and then nodded. "Yeah. More Mana Skills than anything else."

Eldrunna frowned, eyeing his shoulders and torso. "Hold still, I just have to..."

She grabbed a handful of air in front of Felix, tightened her fist, and threw it to the ground. In his Manasight, a purple haze mixed with orange and white-green burst from her palm Gate, a combination he'd not seen before. On the visible spectrum, a shaky image formed from heat haze and smoke, slowly steadying into a holographic replica. Felix gawked in surprise, and his replica did the same thing. It's like a mirror spell.

"Illusion magic?" He looked to Eldrunna, who nodded with a smirk.

"Just a bit. Armorsmithing Mana Skill called Smoke and Mirrors. Quite useful for figuring out a customer's needs without all that measuring and changing." She flicked her hands to the side, and suddenly illusory Felix was wearing a set of chainmail. "No, that's no good. Metal doesn't quite suit you."

She flicked again, her hands moving through options so fast his double appeared to be wreathed in smoke and flame. Ringmail, scalemail, splintmail, even half-plate and a full set of articulated plate armor. Nothing seemed to satisfy Eldrunna's eye. She pelted him with a series of questions ranging from his favorite foods to his flexibility to whether he'd achieved Apprentice Tier yet. Each question was clearly of some importance to her, though Felix couldn't tell how. Eventually, the questions blurred as much as the illusory options, the late afternoon sunlight filtering in through a high window and distracting him. It reflected off something metal and flashed golden across his eyes, leaving a deep blue afterimage that persisted no matter how he blinked.

He suddenly felt… uneasy, for some reason. As if something were brushing gently against him, something he couldn't see or even really sense. He tried to put it out of his mind, steady himself and listen, but it continued. Lingering. Like a—

"You look strapping, fer a Human. You a Guilder?"

"Hm? What?" He blinked the blue and gold flashes from his eyes and played back what Rafny was asking. "Uh no. I'm not."

"Tch. Shame. Coulda used a Guilder to get us some supplies from the Domain." A steady rasp came from her hands, busy as she was guiding a whetstone along a short sword.

Felix blinked, coming back into the conversation completely. "The Domain? There's one here?"

"Is there one—Guild's built atop it, isn't it?" Rafny gave him a lopsided smile. "Big fuck-off lair beneath the city, and you didn't know? This your first day here?"

"Ease off, Rafny. He seems like a nice boy. Nicer than the usual riff-raff that old Half-Elf sends our way." Eldrunna turned back toward Felix and dismissed her illusion. "She's right, though. From what I can tell, if you want a great set of armor—great mind you!—you'll need better raw materials than we have now. Our supplies are tragically low right now, what with the… issues at both gates."

Felix made an “ah” sound and nodded.

"See? Even the new boy has run afoul of the bastards!" Rafny snarled, drawing sparks from her blade. "Yyero blight the Inquisition."

"Watch it, Raf," warned Eldrunna in a sharp tone. "The walls have ears."

Rafny snorted in reply, but she didn't say any more.

Eldrunna turned back to Felix. "If you do join the Guild and can go into the Domain, make sure to collect any metal or monster cores you find. We'll pay you very well for them."

"Failin' that," Rafny said as she tested her short sword's edge against a leather strap. It sliced a thin piece of it, like butter. "We should have some better metals in a week or so. Somethin' in your price range, yeah?"

Eldrunna smiled. "Come back in a week. We're waiting on resupply from the Verdant Pass. It should, hopefully, be here by then."

* * *

As Felix left, he spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about illusion magic. The Skills he'd seen on display, Eldrunna's Smoke and Mirrors, and Thangle's serpent mirage both seeded within him a sense of wonder. Something he hadn't felt in a while now. He'd spent so much time surviving that even the miraculous things he could do himself had come to feel… not drab, exactly. Common. Everyday. Whether that was true or not.

But illusions… Felix found himself yearning for more magic, more secrets. More Skills that he could explore, despite his earlier conviction to simply improve what he already possessed. Thangle's offer was more tempting than ever, and he resolved to visit the Gnome soon. Felix was sure someone knew what “the Deathly Rooster” was, after all.

He walked through the late afternoon crowds with an anticipatory smile on his face. His next destination was the bookstore, called the Elder Crown by Jacinda. It was located deeper into the Wall Quarter, where the foot traffic decreased by a large margin. However, the amount of wagons and carriages that moved through the streets only rose. From what he'd been overhearing, the Wall Quarter and the southernmost section, the Crafter's Quarter, were the busiest in terms of traffic. Which made sense, as he'd been told most of the businesses were in those two quarters. The Dust and Sunrise Quarters were more residential, though of significantly different social climates. Jacinda had described the Sunrise as "upstart noble bootlickers," but that just sounded like upper middle class to Felix. He'd known a few suburbanites who'd fit that description.

Haarwatch was a tiered city, rising up and up toward the center. At the peak was the Eyrie, the Guild Hall, and home of the Elder Council as well as the Governor. Surrounding them, in elaborate mansions, were the nobility and higher-ranked Guilders. The difference, apparently, was moot. So even within a Quarter, the closer to the center you traveled, the higher your social standing became. Or because it was higher, you could move further inward. Either way, it had everything to do with money.

Haves, thought Felix as a dark green coach rattled by him. Inside were a number of well-to-do figures, dressed in silks and lace. Only paces away were three homeless folk, begging for coin. And have-nots. Same as everywhere else.

Felix frowned and, quick as he could, tossed a silver into each of the beggar's raggedy hats. He was fast enough that his hands were just a blur. By the time they noticed it, he was already gone. It wasn't much to Felix, but he'd been through rough times before and knew any amount could help.

Despite the crowds and ever-present dust, Felix found the bookstore easily enough. It was small like many of the Dust-side shops. Still, it had a certain charm. Brick and exposed wooden beams proliferated, and it was one of the only shops with a large glass window. Through it, he could see a bevy of bound tomes and scrolls. It was small, quaint, and almost cozy. There was no sign for the business, but a nine-pointed star was carved from stone and placed above the lintel of the doorway.

Interesting. He'd seen a star like that before, in Shelim and other places. It might have meant nothing, but then again....

Felix entered the shop.

A bell sounded above him, rattling on its coiled metal spring, and Felix was treated to the sight of shelves upon shelves of books. Bound pages were stacked in corners, in nooks, vertically and horizontally along shelves and ledges. Anywhere a book could fit, it did. And the smell. Felix closed his eyes and breathed it in. It was faintly woody, with hints of old almonds and the barest touch of something sweet he couldn't identify. It was a scent that was both familiar and alien, so much like his books at home, yet tinged with something else.

On the far side of the room was a counter and a small bell. Slowly, so as not to knock over any of the many precarious towers of books, Felix picked his way across the store. There were a few close calls, but Felix was deft enough to slip through the maze without incident. However, just as he was reaching the counter, close enough to ring the bell, he heard a sound.

"Coo."

Felix hesitated, hand over the bell, and slowly turned his head back… and up. Above the books and shelves was an absolute forest of exposed rafters. Atop those perched birds. Hundreds of them, of all shapes and sizes. From robin to barn owl, they sat still and silent above him.

All of them were watching.

Whoa, no. That's too many birds, Felix gulped before looking back down at the books. Why isn't there poop everywhere? Why didn't I notice them earlier?

"Yes yes! I'm here!"

The voice was loud and boisterous, no-nonsense in a bright and jovial sort of way, were that possible. An older woman came out from a back room, the door to which Felix hadn't spotted before. It had been almost completely obscured by another leaning tower of books. The woman was familiar, or at least her coloration was: sea-green hair tied neatly back into a bun, and dull ochre skin. She was a Naiad, further confirmed by his Eye.

Name: Zara Cyrene

Race: Naiad

Level: ???

HP: ???/???

SP: ???/???

MP: ???/???

Lore: Naiads are descendants of the spirits of freshwater and are considered capricious at the best of times. They are known for their Mana Skills and aptitude for combat.

Strength: ???

Weakness: ???

Felix had felt no resistance to his query, so assumed it was likely the level difference that caused Voracious Eye to fail. Zara fixed him with a bright blue eye, squinting. Though there was no gray in her hair, her face was traced with lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Laugh lines, hopefully.

"Hm. A Human. What do you want?"

She was not bigger than Felix, in fact was rather slight. Yet he couldn't argue with her presence, which pressed against his senses slightly. "How" escaped him, though Felix had experienced the sensation before multiple times. Her mouth was filled with triangular shark teeth, and grinned when she noticed his attention.

"Come to stare at the terrifying Naiad, hm?" She leaned forward, and Felix leaned back almost instinctively.

"No, no, that's not it. Jacinda sent me. She said you had the only good bookstore outside the Librarium—"

"Fu was venna!" she suddenly spat. "This is no Librarium, little Human. It is a place of business. Do you have business with me?"

"Uh, yeah." Felix was taken aback, but pushed forward. He'd been through worse than social anxiety. "Jacinda, from the Drum Tank? She said to come to you—"

"Ah! My help! Yes, good! You've come just in time." She clapped her hands and laughed. A sudden immense ruffling sounded above them. Felix flinched and looked up, but the birds had not moved an inch. "Just got some new crates in, and you're… good enough."

She grabbed his arm and lifted a section of the counter, pulling him back beyond it in the same motion. She was very strong.

"Help? I didn't come for—" Felix pulled back, but Zara's grip was like iron. "What are you—Where are we going?"

"This way, this way. My, you're a heavy one, aren't you? Don't step on the books. Careful!" She guided him beyond a few more tilted towers and into the back room. Said room opened up expansively, nearly the same size as the shopfront itself and filled with crates of various sizes. The air was filled with the earthly perfume of newly cut lumber.

"Here." She handed him a crowbar and pointed at a small section of crates, these no larger than four by four foot square. "Open those crates, move the contents inside the shop, and find a place for them."

Felix looked at the crates, quickly counting all eight of them, before turning back to find Zara already walking out.

"Hey! How am I supposed to do this? Why—?"

"You do some work, I teach you what I can. There is no such thing as a free meal, boy." She stepped out the door before turning back and grinning her shark grin. "Anyone who says otherwise is lying to you."

Zara waved and kept walking, disappearing from sight. A distinct jangling bell sounded before the sound of a slamming door made him realize she had actually left.

"But I can't read..."

CHAPTER NINE

The crates were easy to open, though the crowbar seemed superfluous. Felix just grabbed and lifted the tops off with his bare hands. Inside were dozens of books packed in straw. Each was bound in wooden boards covered in various kinds of leather or cloth, most with no cover decoration or even a title on the binding. The few that did featured simple sigils stamped on their surfaces, usually inlaid with gold or silver leaf. The sigils, at least, he knew. Most of them. They formed the building blocks of his categorization effort.

Felix opened crate after crate, inspecting each book before placing it on a dry table at one end of the workshop. The books with sigils went into one pile, while the books without went into another. He made sure to be as careful as he could, treating each book like glass. He wasn't clumsy, per se, but he hadn't tried being so delicate since he crossed the First Threshold.

His work on Bateo's farm in Echo's Reach was more lifting and carrying than anything else. Now that his Primary Stats had all risen above one hundred, significantly so in some cases, it had taken some time to get used to it. His Aspects, those bits of himself he Tempered at Apprentice Tier—Body, Mind, and Spirit—they seemed to balance him out for the most part. He'd been able to manage those jerks earlier, after all.

He stacked a few more books absently as that confrontation replayed itself in his Mind's eye. Having perfect recall meant that phrase was literal; he could relive his memory with insane fidelity, as long as it was within the last thirty days. The actions of Mehren and his shakedown crew unfolded before him again, the arrogance and casual cruelty evidence at first glance. Why then had he let them live? The question had been nagging at him all afternoon, one he'd originally dismissed as benevolence. Mercy was good, right?

Then why do I feel like I've made a mistake?

It was because the thugs and the Blades, whatever they were, represented a threat. In the Foglands and the Void, Felix had learned that threats were not to be left alone or walked away from, not if you could end them. If you couldn't? Then run as far and as fast as you could.

That can't be my world, though… to live like that is—it sucks. Killing threats or fleeing them, either the callous aggressor or the calculating coward. Felix ran his hands through his hair and huffed a breath. A vision of Mehren's face hovered in his mind, of that moment of fear and pain when Felix had struck him. Him being so weak didn't help anything. It wasn't like he was a Void-rotten pirate or a rampaging Risi.

"Arhh!" Felix scrubbed his face vigorously and stood up straighter. "Enough! Focus. Books."

And so he worked.

Ten minutes later, Felix had sorted the first crate into two large piles, both carefully stacked. The first was unmarked and illegible to him in all ways. He ignored that pile. The second had at least one sigil placed on it, either on the binding or the cover. He moved over those with a sharp eye, pulling out any one that he recognized. The symbols were complicated and involved, different from the sigils he'd translated on the Essence Anchor, but each one contained a seed that was familiar to him. Slowly, he began to parse them.

Sigils of the Primordial Dawn is level 14!

Sigils of the Primordial Dawn is level 15!

The sigils were all a sort of shorthand for the books. Title and author, somehow mingled into one or two characters. That revelation alone took him longer than he wanted, and a small part of his mind was worried Zara would return and demand to know why he wasn't doing the task she'd assigned. As much as Felix didn't appreciate the sudden workload, he was right where he had planned to be: learning. He didn't want to be kicked out for not completing this thing.

By comparing his translated sigils to the title page of the book, Felix began to work up a mental model of the Continent's written language. At least, this written language. God, I hope this is the common one and not some obscure Pig Latin or whatever.

He moved book by book, studying the sigils and the title pages, building up the model in his mind. Having perfect recall was quite the boon in this case, not to mention an Intelligence stat of 191. The information flowed into his brain and was locked in amber, crystallized, sorted, and curated. By the end of the first hour, Felix felt like he could read a smattering of words, though much of the grammar and syntax still escaped him. By the end of the second hour, he'd sorted all of the first crate into alphabetical order based on the author's last name.

Pleased with himself, Felix stretched and made his way back into the main shop. It was just as much of a mess as ever, and while he looked over the crowded area, he realized there was nowhere to put all these books. Every nook and cranny seemed chock-a-block with tomes.

"How the hell am I supposed to do this, then?" Felix looked up at the birds, who watched him with great unblinking eyes. "Does she want me to fail?"

The birds said nothing.

Then Felix noticed that, no, perhaps not all the space was being used. He spotted a corner that wasn't quite being utilized properly. Another shelf to the right had books stuffed in sideways and horizontally. Once he spotted it, he couldn't stop seeing it: the entire bookstore was a travesty of misused space. A slow smile spread across Felix's face, and he rubbed his hands together as an idea formed.

Above him, several birds tilted their heads in unison.

* * *

Sigils of the Primordial Dawn is level 19!

Three hours later, Felix took a self-satisfied look at the work he'd accomplished. The storefront was still filled to the brim with books, of course. More than before, since he had brought in the remaining crates as requested. Except now, it was organized.

Zara's "system" of shelving had seemed to be just shoving the tome wherever was closest. In order to properly fit all of the crates in this cramped shop, Felix had to take them down. All of them. Luckily, many books on Zara's shelves had sigils on them; they were the easy ones to categorize. The others were much more of a slog, since he had to translate their titles one agonizing word at a time.

And still there were issues. The books had titles like Gregor's Fire Manual, Memoirs of the Viscount, and How To Hunt A Krelladon. He wasn't one hundred percent on all of the words and phrases, but his Godeater Mind and Born Trait were clutch in these situations. That model was refined again and again, with more information added to it with every line he read. Had he not Tempered his Mind, Felix was positive the entire effort would have been beyond him, perfect memory or not.

The model (and context clues) were key for the stranger titles. Felix found himself reading a page or two of them to get an idea of their topics, often at odds with their titles for whatever reason. Taking those context clues and (mostly) translated titles, Felix sorted the books once again into the following categories: reference material, nonfiction, and fiction. The latter was hard to determine, being a world of magic and all, but the few he'd placed in that category he was fairly positive about. Reference Material was further split into History, Naturalism, and Magic. The last was of particular interest to Felix, and it was hard to resist sitting down and immediately reading those tomes.

Now, his great work done, Felix felt a wild sense of accomplishment. Sure it wasn't fighting off a giant narhollow or defeating an eldritch horror of hunger, but Felix had put his mind to a task and completed it. Admittedly, there were some rough spots in his categorizations, mostly due to the vague nature of some of the inventory. Even so, Felix felt confident that he'd done a good job.

Night had fallen beyond the large glass window of the shop. A scruffy-looking man was moving between lampposts and lighting them with a long rod that seemed enchanted. It cast globes of warm light that bobbed in place above each post. The darkening streets were still bustling, people moving back in the opposite direction, pushing back into the Dust Quarter. Meanwhile within the shop, those same small floating lights had conjured themselves along the walls, though he couldn't have said when that had happened. Felix frowned. Zara wasn't back yet. He wasn't entirely sure where to go next, so he sat behind the counter and picked up one of the books he'd categorized under 'Magic.' It had a particularly enticing title: Elemental Magic, and the wording wasn't too difficult at first.

To the layman, magic is simple. Learn a Mana Skill, exercise it like you would a muscle, and perhaps put a few points into Intelligence. Like that, you have become a mage. A poor one, perhaps, but a mage.

True magic, however, is far more complicated.

One must first attune oneself to an Element. This is done during the Mote Stage, when one's core is at its most fundamental. Attuning to an Element can be as easy as standing before a fire or bathing oneself in a fast moving river. Methods vary and success is never guaranteed. Once attuned, however, one can begin to learn the appropriate Mana Skills. The attuned core, weak though it must be, will gravitate toward Mana Skills of the same Element. Once learned, they will even level at an accelerated pace, far more than Mana Skills of all other Elements.

Furthermore—

*CRASH*

Felix jolted upright at the sound, the book tumbling from his grasp as he turned toward the front. The door had crashed open and hit the slanted wall of the entrance, dislodging several books in a hail of paper and binding. A voice, high, clear, and utterly amused, cried out.

"Blood and bloody ashes, Alister! It wasn't locked, you madman!"

Into the store walked four young adults, no older than their late teens yet dressed in elaborate outfits meant for those years older. The first was an annoyingly handsome young man with dark brown hair, wavy and slicked back. He was dressed in a wine-colored doublet and dark pants, stylishly slashed along the sleeves and hem. Boots made of pale leather came up almost to his knee before folding over elegantly, and a silver-hilted rapier poked from his left hip. Felix peeked over the counter and watched as the intruder swept his eyes over the premises. He huffed a dissatisfied breath and took his hand away from his sword.

"Look at this trash," he sniffed. "My father has a better collection than this."

Felix frowned as the others came further into the light of the store. He let his Voracious Eye rake over them and noticed that all of their levels were in the early to late twenties. The first two turned up their noses as they entered, one a stout-looking boy named Dabney and the other a wispy slip of a girl named Lilian. Like the first, they were both attractive in a young Hollywood sort of way, though quite pale. Then Felix's Eye landed on the last of their party who strode into the room in dark robes only accented by the glitter of an iron medallion on his chest. He didn't need to analyze his name at all.

Lilian whined and pouted. "Why in Avet's name are we here, Atar?"

Atar. Felix dropped back below the counter and considered his options. He could get up and confront them. Felix was reasonably sure he could throw them out. None but Atar had reached their first Temper, his Eye could tell that. Or...

Abyssal Skein.

The Void stretched over him, oily as ever, and Felix's vision inverted as he melded with his surroundings. He'd listen in awhile, see exactly what was going on.

"I told you. We're here for a book the Librarium banned." Atar walked forward and ran his hands over the shelves nearest him. "I heard this place might have it."

Felix turned back to the teens, now idly pawing through the bookshelves he'd just organized. The slender boy with the rapier, Alister, shoved a few tomes off a ledge and made himself a place to sit. C'mon! I just organized those!

"Ugh, but why here? This is practically the Dust!" Lilian minced a few steps into the shop, if only to get out of the doorway. She was wearing a layered dress made of a plum-colored fabric, and her shoulders were draped with a red half-cape. "Who knows what's lurking out here."

"Just the poor, dear cousin," laughed Alister as he idly toyed with another book. "There's nothing here that can threaten us, especially not in some third-rate booksellers. Though, this is all a good deal more organized than I imagined." The last was muttered under his breath.

Felix crept forward, flaring his Abyssal Skein as hard as he could as he shifted closer to Atar's position. The boy was moving further toward what Felix had dubbed the "Magic" section, and he found his curiosity getting the better of him. A deeper voice laughed near the door.

"Nothing but Untempered dullards here, Lilian. I could take them with both arms behind my back."

"Don't start killing the commoners again, Dabney. You know how your father hates playing clean-up," Alister's urbane voice drawled from his perch. "And besides, you wouldn't want to get on the bad side of the Inquisitor."

The other two went quiet, and even Atar paused and looked back. "Careful what you say, even here. The redcloaks have ears in many places. Especially in the Wall Quarter."

"Of course, Professor," laughed Alister. Felix couldn't see him or the other jerkholes ruining his work, but he heard the boy hop off his perch and land lightly on the wooden floor. "Then we best look harder. Right? Hm?"

With a chorus of groans, the other two teens started combing the shelves. Felix could hear one of them heading for his aisle.

"What are we even looking for?" whined the girl.

"A book, you clod," quipped Alister.

"It should have the sigil for etiin on the binding," Atar added, then under his breath: "Not that they'd know what that was."

Alister gave Atar a smirk and kept looking.

Felix let loose his breath, and his skin rippled and became noticeable. Quick as he could, he took another, re-upping his Abyssal Skein while a wave of weariness crashed over him. Putting a hand to the ground, Felix let the dizziness pass and scurried forward, careful to keep himself as quiet as possible.

Abyssal Skein is level 10!

Etiin? Despite never hearing the word aloud before, his sigil Skill translated it for him. Heart? What sort of book would the Guild library ban?

The thought intrigued him, and if he were being honest, Felix didn't want them to have it. Sure it was a little petty, but he hadn't barged in and insulted all their hard work.

"Aha! Here it is!" Felix's head swiveled to the right, where Atar stood just beyond the hollow shelf. The fire mage tried to reach through the space, but his hands were just slightly too big. "Damn. Gotta go around."

Quick as he could, Felix padded over and snatched up the book Atar had reached for; it was a dark brown with a silver sigil stamped into the spine. It indeed did have the etiin sigil on it, along with a few others. Just as Atar rounded the corner, Felix tucked the book away into his nigh-invisible jacket. Slowly, ever so slowly, he moved away from the shelf and the mage.

"Damn, damn! Where is it? I just saw it!" Atar fretted visibly, and Felix could see sweat beading on his brow. He crouched down and started rummaging through the books on display. His hands were shaking. "Not here. Not here!" Felix noticed bags under the fire mage's eyes, dark circles from lack of sleep. Something haunted the teen mage, and the book was connected in some way.

What the hell happened to you, Atar?

Atar's friends soon joined him, and he bounced back up to his feet in an exaggerated huff. "It's not here either. Sorry for making you come all this way, Alister."

The brown-haired boy waved his hand and scoffed. "And miss you growling at some decrepit books in the Dust? Wouldn't have missed it for the world, Professor. Next time, however, let's leave my cousin out of it. Agreed?"

"Hey!"

Atar smiled, worries seemingly forgotten for a moment. "Agreed."

They all started moving closer to the door, Atar in the rear. Lilith's piercing laugh sounded as Dabney made a tepid joke about poor people, but Felix wasn't listening. He was too busy staying stock still while Atar scanned the bookstore one last time. The blonde mage frowned and bit his lip, but eventually turned back around and followed his friends. They didn't bother closing the door.

Abyssal Skein is level 11!

A little more than a minute later, Felix released his breath. The oily coating of the Void retreated, and he sat heavily on the ground, taking a deep, steadying breath through his nose.

That was worse than usual. Dropping it and reactivating the Skill hadn't felt that bad so quickly before. It had felt just as hard as the day prior, when he was entering the city. The Void was difficult to access, and it was straining parts of him he didn't fully understand. Felix grimaced. And I'm gonna have to use it again.

Zara still wasn't back, but he'd completed what she'd asked of him and more besides. I'll stop by tomorrow though and see what she can teach me.

Felix stepped to the door and gave the shop a once-over. Aside from a few books thrown on the floor, it wasn't too bad. In fact, thanks to his reorganization, it looked two hundred percent better. Smiling to himself, Felix closed the door securely behind him. With a brief pulse of Reign of Vellus, he shoved the lock home from the outside of the door. He only managed to knock two rows of books over in the process.

Reign of Vellus is level 36!

Felix took off after Atar, weaving through the evening crowds. He didn't bother to notice however, that the rafters of the bookstore were entirely empty.

CHAPTER TEN

After catching up, Felix made sure to keep a solid distance between himself and the group. The Wall Quarter was busy, though it mostly seemed to be revelers passing by than laborers or Guilders. Shouts and catcalls echoed from the street corners, and the constant press of bodies was a distraction. Felix found himself wanting to pull away from anyone who got too close; a vague sense of unease built up within him.

Calm down. This didn't bother you earlier. Focusing was the easy part, Felix found, his Mind, Skills, and stats primed in that particular direction. His Bastion of Will rose up around him, inspiring a blast of mental clarity that scoured the unease from his mind. There was a growling sense of irritation from beneath his Bastion, and Felix narrowed his eyes. I'll deal with you later.

The group had managed to extend their lead, and when Felix caught back up, he found them parting ways. The two rich cousins and their burly friend went one way, while Atar continued on, deeper into the Wall Quarter. Felix didn't hesitate and kept following the fire mage.

True night had fallen, though the time was something approaching nine o'clock during the warm summer's evening. Lampposts were everywhere, lighting up the night, and a few carriages rattled up and down the thoroughfare. Atar kept to the main streets of the Wall Quarter, places filled with people out for the evening. Doing what, Felix wasn't sure.

They were moving parallel to the western wall, where Felix had entered the city, and closer to the higher-tiered sections. Folks were dressed in fine clothes with vibrant dyes and complicated embroideries. Women wore dresses of various lengths, or even pants in many cases, while men were bedecked in colorful jackets and waistcoats. Atar blended in with these people with ease, his fine robes and glittering bronze medallion worn openly on his chest affording him appreciative glances from passersby.

Sticking to the shadows, Felix avoided such gazes as much as he could, more interested in remaining as unobtrusive as possible. He kept Abyssal Skein inactive, as being nigh-invisible didn't help with crowds, and the toll it was taking on his mental acuity was becoming concerning.

Atar meandered through the streets, not stopping anywhere but definitely searching for something. Four times he paused near public seating like benches or tables near some sort of bistro. He would pace like a cat kneading its bed, moving around the area in clear dissatisfaction. Each time, he moved on again. As they walked further and further, Felix heard strains of up-tempo music and good-natured shouting, while the streets were slowly filled with the sizzling sounds and delectable smells of food stalls.

We're closer to the Crafter's Quarter than I thought. Where is he going?

Only a few more minutes later, Felix found out. Outside a tavern called the Bearded Trout, an array of outdoor seating was placed, and Atar finally huffed and chose a table furthest from the tavern itself. Felix paused at a nearby stall and watched. The fire mage pulled several books from his robes, far more than Felix would have guessed. He placed them all on the table in front of him and began thumbing through the pages.

You came all this way to read some books? Felix furrowed his brow. Why bother—?

"Oi! You gonna buy or just stand there?"

Felix started and turned. He saw a number of annoyed faces glaring at him, some next to him and the others behind the food stall counter. A Hobgoblin in a grease-stained jacket stared at him over an impressive looking mustache. Behind him, two line cooks were cooking a variety of vegetables and some sort of blue meat in large pans. The smell was powerfully good. Felix's stomach made an impressively loud gurgle, and he grimaced in embarrassment.

"Oh, uh, yes. I'll have the uh," he glanced at the menu, which had been drawn in grease pencil on a board. "Onion and… this bowl. Please."

The mustachioed Hobgoblin grunted and shouted the order to his assistants. "That'll be three stone."

Felix reached into his satchel and pulled out some coins. He had made change at the tailor's and had plenty of silver and copper coins now. Too many, he felt. Felix counted out three copper coins and handed them over. By the time the Hobgoblin tucked the copper in his waistband, a huge steaming bowl of noodles topped with onions, peppers, and shredded blue meat was placed on the counter. A large wooden fork-like utensil was planted in the center.

"Pleasure doin' business. Next!"

Felix scooped up his bowl and found a place to sit where he could still keep an eye on Atar. Though the mage had been alone for some time, Felix had found himself reluctant to approach. What would he say? Then, as Atar took longer and longer to settle down, he simply grew curious. What, exactly, was Atar doing out here? Studying in the evening air?

Maintaining line of sight, Felix absently nibbled on a piece of shredded meat. He blinked in surprise at the bowl in front of him. It was delicious. The flavors exploded on his tongue, salty and savory, the meat cooked to perfection. He looked back at the food stall he'd purchased it from and saw they only had one or two people in line.

Why isn't the line a mile long? He shoveled more of it into his mouth. It's so good!

The bowl was gone in seconds. Felix checked to see if Atar had moved anywhere and, noticing he had not, he returned for more.

A few minutes later, Felix's table was filled with seven different bowls, each heaping with rich, savory sauces and strange spices. He hadn't eaten since that morning, and the Nym made up for that oversight with gusto. Felix gorged himself, engaging in the wholesale slaughter of noodles, vegetables, and meat. There were no survivors.

While he ate, Felix kept a wary eye on Atar, always waiting for the young man to get up and leave abruptly. He never did. In fact, the fire mage looked increasingly ensconced at his table, the books around him forming a small fortress behind which he furiously scribbled on a sort of notepad. From this distance, Felix could see the sweat beading on Atar's forehead and the dark circles under his manic eyes. The mage seemed frantic and stressed, now worse than ever.

Felix finished slurping down the last bite of his final bowl when Atar shifted the books before him, nearly toppling the small tower he'd made. During his recovery, he exposed a book that he'd been furiously referencing, one with a beaten leather binding that looked extremely familiar to Felix.

Hey! Felix stood up at his table, chair scooting backward. That's my journal!

A few patrons nearby looked askance at Felix, but he paid them no mind. Atar didn't notice, and Felix had decided he was done with watching.

Why the hell does he have my journal? Technically a dead Henaari's journal, but many of Felix's early ramblings and questions were jotted down in those pages. Felix started walking toward Atar, watching as he stared with frustration between the journal and some other books. He clearly couldn't read Henaari or English and was trying to decode it. But why? Why would—

Atar pulled some loose paper from the back of the journal, and his face paled. Felix clenched his teeth.

The Archon's papers. Great. He has those, too.

Distantly, Felix felt Pit stir in their room, a faint pulse of concern. He sent back an answering pulse of reassurance before striding up to Atar's table. He pulled out a chair next to him and sat down, as nonchalant as he could make it.

"Hi, buddy." Felix grinned. "Long time no see."

* * *

Atar was staring at a ghost.

Mouth gone dry, hands shaking, the mage tried to stand up but only managed to knock his own chair backward. He would have fallen were it not for the ghost arresting the chair, his grip like steel. The man had grown stronger since last they met, and… yes, of course, he'd undergone his First Temper.

How? Atar boggled as he was righted by the musclebound youth before him. How did he survive?

"Not excited to see me?" Felix asked, and Atar pushed back his mussed hair in a bid for more time to think. "I get it. Not everyday you run into the person whose belongings you stole."

Quick as a flash, the journal was in Felix's hands. The cracked, beaten, tormented journal that Atar had spent the last two months attempting to decode. The one that, were it to be taken away, he'd lose all chance at easy advancement.

"Wait! Don't! You don't know what you have there!" Atar made a halting grab for the journal, but the blue-eyed man kept it easily out of reach. Atar wasn't so far gone as to lunge across a table for it.

"I don't? Looks to me like the journal of a Henaari Farwalker." He flipped the journal open, landing on a section written in grease pencil in a hand much different than the beginning. "And here is where someone wrote in English. Do you know this language?"

"Ah no, bu—"

"Didn't think so." Felix closed the journal with a clap and fixed Atar with a bright blue gaze.

Weren't his eyes darker?

"You don't understand, Felix. I need that journal. It's the answer!" Atar's bewilderment burned away under a dawning realization. "You can read it?"

Felix frowned and tucked the book into the satchel at his side. Atar's eyebrow raised at the quality of it, at the quality of everything Felix was wearing aside from his coat. That had the air of a laborer's best evening jacket, but was hardly equal to the rest of his ensemble. Atar flared his Analyze.

Analyze...

A flash of pain lanced through Atar's brain, but it was gone in a moment. Some fools in the tavern started singing. Ridiculous. He focused on the window that popped up before him.

Name: Felix Nevarre

Race: Human

Level: 22

HP: 250/250

SP: 234/234

MP: 310/310

Lore: Humans are multitudinous on the Continent. They are statistically weaker than most Races, especially at lower levels.

Strength: More Data Required

Weakness: More Data Required

Atar frowned at the information before him, not because it was wrong per se… but it was underwhelming. The fire mage assumed Felix had advanced much farther, at least to what the Guilders would consider Bronze Rank. This suggested Iron, at best. "How do you know that language? The Henaari tongue, yes, that's esoteric, but there are scholars for it. But that, no one knows that language." Atar folded his arms to hide their shaking. If he knew that strange script, then perhaps—!

Felix stood a moment longer and eyed him. Then, with a hefty sigh, he scooted out one of the wrought iron chairs and plopped down in it. The metal groaned in protest, and Atar was surprised that only made Felix sigh louder.

"Atar, that's my handwriting." Blue eyes fixed on his own. "Why do you care? What's so interesting about a journal?"

Atar's head spun. No, that can't be it. It's all I had to go on.

"A journal." He sat back in his chair, and, for lack of a better word, slumped. "And I assume what you've written here is...?"

"My personal thoughts about the Foglands, notes on monsters, that sort of thing." Felix leaned forward. "What's going on? You look exhausted."

Atar rubbed his face and gestured to the books scattered about the table. "Research. Since we returned from the Foglands, I've been under the wing of one of the Guild Elders. Elder Teine has been a boon to me. He sheltered me from the fallout of that preposterous mission, as well as provided much-needed actual instruction in the time since."

"Fallout," Felix murmured, his lips twisted in a grimace. "I'd heard bad things about Magda and Harn since I've been back. What about the others? Are they under this Elder, too?"

Atar twisted in his seat, not quite meeting Felix's eyes. "The others have gone a different way."

Silence reigned for a bit, and when Atar risked a look up, he saw Felix considering the other books on his table. He ran a surprisingly gentle finger along the spines of several, mouthing something. "Research. Into what?"

"This," Atar took a breath and slid one of the papers toward Felix. It contained the single greatest find he'd ever made… but it was hardly news to the man he took it from. "I found this in your journal there. I had thought that the indecipherable writing would shed light on these pages. You've dashed my hopes there."

Atar looked at Felix and saw him blanch, but his jaw also clenched, and his brow furrowed. With a swift movement, Felix flipped the thick sheet of vellum over.

"That's not a pleasant thing to be looking into. I'd suggest not going down that rabbit hole."

Atar gaped before retrieving the paper and stowing with the paltry few others. "And that is not an attitude I expected from a Magician Omen, Felix. This is a remarkable work of sigildry! It's unknown, clearly powerful, and..."

"Dangerous. And that's being generous. Can't you feel it?" Felix tilted his head curiously at Atar. He nodded, acknowledging the odd pressure from the sigils. "Is that all it is? School work?"

Atar frowned at the unfamiliar word. "If you mean training, then yes… and no. This has a practical application, too. A month ago, I encountered markings remarkably similar to these here, in the city itself."

Felix's face went stony, and Atar leaned back.

"Where?"

"Across the city. In the Dust," Atar gestured vaguely north. "You've heard of the murders? The one they're calling the Butcher? These were found… carved into one of their victims."

Another sheet of vellum was placed on the table, this one with several scratched sigils that radiated a similar sense of unease Felix's papers did, but shallower. Atar had tried his best, but they were inadequate copies. Felix considered it for a moment before turning that one over, too.

"I haven’t heard of this Butcher. You're trying to catch the killer?" Felix's voice was skeptical, though Atar thought he noted a sense of disquiet. The man seemed… twitchier than before.

"Yes. It's part of a Guilders' duties, to protect the city in which they are stationed. The Elder put out a standing offer that whoever finds this killer will be greatly rewarded." Atar smiled, and he felt Mana surge in his channels for a moment, though he kept his Mana Gates secured. Losing control due to emotion was childish. "A chance at training atop the Spire is in the offing, Felix."

Instead of a shocked exclamation or even an appreciative murmur, Felix just blinked. "Okay."

"Okay?! The Inner Ward is the best place to train in the city!" Atar stared at the man, willing him to understand before he remembered. "You're more of a bumpkin than I thought."

Felix had the strangest knowledge gaps of anyone Atar had ever met. He was an annoying enigma while in the Foglands, but now he might be the key to everything. He decided to be honest, to lay out what he could.

After all, if he failed… it didn't bear thinking about.

"I saw these runes cut into the fleshy remnants of a Half-Orc. And I saw similar runes scrawled in the body of the next corpse as well. I'm willing to bet they've been on all of the victims, stretching back two months now. I need to know their purpose. If we can decipher them, then maybe we can find the thing that did this!"

"This city is big, but you've got guards and stuff, right? How hasn't the murderer been found yet?" Felix tapped the paper. "These sigils… I'll tell you now, they make me uneasy. Where would someone who could do this hide?"

"Only one place," Atar said, tapping the side of his nose. "The Domain."

"The Domain..." Felix seemed to chew over the idea. "Doesn't the Guild have control over it?"

"They maintain it. The Guild uses it to train Tin and Bronze Ranks, on top of the seasonal Cullings. It's the sole reason Haarwatch even exists."

"What? Why?" Felix asked, his brows furrowed. Atar squinted at him.

"Because cities only form around Domains? At least the ones that stick around do, because it offers free training and resources to whoever manages it. Those resources keep the city strong, able to fight off any wild monster hordes or rival claimants to the territory. Not that folks go to war anymore, not in the Hierocracy." Atar ran a thin hand through his increasingly out-of-place locks. He would have to visit his man down Camphor Way in the morning. He was due a trim. "The things I have to explain to you; it's like you fell out of the sky, sometimes."

Felix did one of those annoying smiles, only this time his teeth were bright and near perfect. Tempered. Atar huffed a breath through his nose. That only made it more irritating.

"So, this Domain is below us. Below the Eyrie, I assume? And only Guilders can access it?" At Atar's nod, Felix turned his gaze toward the center of the city, a dark, looming silhouette against the rising moons. "Interesting."

"Interesting, he says." Atar rolled his eyes. "Something is getting in and out of the Domain without alerting the Guilders at the entrance. That means it's clever, powerful, or worse."

"Why haven't they closed the Domain?" he asked.

"Silver Rank Guilders guard it day and night, and as far as I know, it requires an Elder's permission to even get close to it. Permission that hasn't been forthcoming of late." Atar spread his hands, helplessly. "Still, the murders happen."

"How many people has it killed? You said it's been around for months?" Felix asked in a measured tone that made him sound… disinterested. Atar could hardly believe it.

"Fifteen exactly, as of five nights ago. And that body, the only one I've seen since the first, had similar markings slashed into it. You have to tell me what you know. Where did you find these?" Atar held up the vellum pages again and saw Felix flinch only a second before a tight grip forced his hand down again. "Ah!"

"Don't."

Atar looked into Felix's eyes and saw them glowing, as if an internal fire was pushing against his irises. Pale blue and… the sound of thunder.

"Where are the others? What's been happening with Vess and Evie?" Felix asked quietly and released Atar's wrist. The mage winced and massaged his left arm, certain a bruise would be there in the morning.

"Like I said, they aren't in my circle anymore. Lady Dayne has been training in the Inner Ward, to the jealousy of many, including myself. I've… only seen her once since we returned." Atar sighed mournfully at that, the tattered remains of his plans to woo the ducal heir gone before they started. If only he'd had more time!

I suppose my current situation is tolerable, he added with a small smile to himself.

"And Evie?" Felix asked, his gaze penetrating. Atar's smile died away. "I feel you've been avoiding that topic."

Atar fiddled with his collar and picked some dirt from his robes. He'd have to get them laundered soon. Travel through the Dust was always taxing on one's wardrobe—

"Atar."

"Fine," the mage huffed. "Evie hasn't been around, though I saw her a couple weeks back. After Harn got demoted and her sister was… she left the Guild. Her and a bunch of others. The survivors we saved."

The blue-eyed bumpkin sat back, crossed his stupid muscley arms, and frowned. Atar swallowed and considered leaving. Clearly, the man wasn't going to help him. He wasn't even sure why he'd expected otherwise! It was probably for the better this way. Whenever Felix showed up, his life turned toward danger and disappointment. He couldn't afford that, especially not now.

"Fine."

"What?" Atar blinked in surprise, unsure he heard Felix utter that word. "You'll help?"

Felix nodded, and Atar's spirit soared. Finally! He could make some headway and beat out the opposition! He could—

"If you get me access to the Domain."

"What? No. That's impossible!" Atar's rising star suddenly smashed to the cobbles beneath them. "Even if you join the Guild, there's no way to get you past the guards. They're Silver Rank, Felix!"

Before Atar could react, the vellum pages in his hands were gone. A small gust of wind buffeted his robes, but the mage's senses couldn't even keep up with what had happened. Then he saw. The bumpkin had them, and he was carefully tucking them into his damned bag. Atar flexed his fingers impotently before collapsing backward with a groan.

"Uuugh! Fine! You win, you idiot. I'll see what I can do."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Early morning sunlight streamed into the warehouse, dusty beams that promised greater heat in the afternoon. Moving through that light, Evie ducked a thrown blade, landing in a low crouch before springing up into a sideways somersault. She relied on her legs and right hand, her left whipping her spiked chain in a spiral around her body. Coming to her feet, Evie only heard the two other blades her chain deflected. She didn't pause, but burst forward, leaping over the small half wall before her. With a twist of thought, Evie reduced her own weight, sending her body hurtling forward even faster than before. It was enough, just barely, to avoid the swing of a wooden quarterstaff.

"Cheater!" Harn growled from below, his bare face grimacing. "No Born Traits!"

Evie landed lightly, her feet barely pressing upon the sand of the arena. "Your Born Trait is passive, Harn! Of course you'd say that."

"Haha, she's got you there, Kastos," laughed Bodie, his shoulders shaking as he rested on his own wooden staff. Both he and Harn were wearing simple trousers and boots; that was it. No armor and wielding only simple sticks. This wasn't about hurting each other, it was about pushing themselves. Pushing her, really. Evie grinned at Bodie as she retracted her chain into her hands. She at least got to use her weapon.

"See? Even Bodie's on my side."

Harn grunted, his face sour as usual. He opened his mouth to say something, but there were three booming knocks on the front door.

All three of them paused and looked at each other. Evie glanced backward toward the common area, but the others all looked just as surprised. After being shown the door by the Guild, they had holed up in an abandoned warehouse in the Dust, one complete with rats and a slew of squatters. Callie had gotten ahold of the place… somehow. She never really explained that, but Evie didn't care enough to grill her on the subject. She had them all fix the place up to an extent, filling it with a sandy pit, some equipment, and the bare essentials to survive. If nothing else, it was a place to train. To stay busy.

Staying busy was all Evie had, these last two weeks.

The knocking came again. Not insistent but steady, as if whoever was out there had all the time in the world. Evie looked at Harn and the man was frowning harder than usual, his nostrils flared. Without a word, he dropped his wooden pole and scooped up one of his inscribed silver axes before heading to the door.

The door had been replaced by Yan early on, and the man's idea of metalsmithing was to make it fuck-all heavy and four inches thick. It was sturdy, at least. Harn motioned to the others before slowly grabbing the latch. Bodie and Evie readied their weapons, her chain slithering from her shoulder while the big man hefted a huge maul. Behind them, Portia and Trendle flared some sort of Skill, but she didn't bother to check which. They all knew the drill. The Inquisitors had accosted them in the streets already, one of the many reasons they remained in the rear end of nowhere. The redcloaks had questions that they couldn't answer, but Evie knew they weren't done with them. With her.

In one smooth motion, Harn pulled the heavy door open and brandished his weapon. Evie heard gravel crunch as whoever was out there shifted slightly, but there was no scream, no mad scramble. Just a faint grunt.

"Is that how you say hi now?"

The voice was… familiar. Distressingly so. Evie's eyes widened, and she rushed forward.

"Avet's teeth, how are you alive, kid?" Harn asked, axe still in hand, but no longer pressed against the other person.

"Nice to see you too, Harn," said the voice, and despite Bodie's warning looks, Evie slipped up to the doorway and saw a tallish boy around her age. One with dark blue eyes that flashed as he smiled.

"Felix!"

* * *

"Hey, Evie. Been a while, I guess," Felix said with a half wave. His view into the warehouse was a bit limited by the narrow doorway, but he could clearly see her standing behind Harn. The latter grimaced at the girl before giving Felix a warning glance.

What's that about?

"Noctis wept, Felix! Where've you been?" Evie gushed, her black hair falling out of some sort of tie in the back. She suddenly waved her hands in front of herself. "No, wait. Come inside. Come inside!"

Shoving Harn aside, Evie grabbed Felix's hand and led him into the warehouse. The place had been hard to find, as a large portion of the southwestern corner of the Dust Quarter was composed of these dilapidated and abandoned warehouses. Felix didn't know the history, but it seemed like they had been used by various businesses that had gone bust or moved their operations into the Wall or Crafters’ Quarters. The area had thus become a dense maze of crumbling stone walls and streets overrun by weeds and wildflowers. If it hadn't been for Atar's directions, he wouldn't have found the place at all.

A heavy clang filled the air as Harn closed and locked the door behind him. The entire space was quite large and open, with a few walled off sections in the back. Immediately before him stood an area divided into several sections, one of which was a sand-floored arena filled with waist-high walls and a number of wooden poles. Other, stranger objects dotted the floor, things that screamed "obstacle course" to Felix, while a series of wooden mannequins were lined up along the far left wall.

"Not a bad place," murmured Felix. "Much more impressive than the outside suggests."

"Yeah, Callie had some work done, for sure. Yan and Kelgan did most of the heavy lifting though." She gestured to two men who had meandered out of the back area.

More than a few people had started to come forward, and Felix smiled at them all as Evie led him toward the obstacle course. She let go of his arm and leaped atop a pommel-horse thing with an enviable ease. For the first time, Felix was able to get a good look at her. She looked the same as ever, just… tired, maybe. She was wearing a loose linen shirt, pants, and no shoes at all. A light sheen covered her face, and if it weren't for that, he'd have thought she had been lounging around. But all of this equipment, the sand sticking to her feet, the sweat. He'd interrupted a training session.

"How'd you find us?" Harn asked. Felix turned toward him and smiled reassuringly.

"Atar told me."

"Blasted boy," Harn muttered. "He shouldn't have told anyone. Were you followed?"

Felix shook his head. "Not a soul. Though, I didn't know you were hiding. What's going on?"

"I'm sorry, not to be impolite, but who are you?" A gentle voice came from the side, and a woman with a blond pixie cut stood alongside Yan and Kelgan that Evie had pointed out. All three of them were giving him stares of varying levels of distrust. Felix smiled, as kindly as he could, and scratched his jaw.

"I guess it was kinda rude to barge in like that." He cleared his throat. "I'm Felix. We… yeah, we met, sorta. I was with Harn and Evie during the rescue."

"Oh! You're the climbing kid!"

Another voice chimed in, this one feminine as well, though less gentle than the other. A stocky Dwarven woman stepped forward and slapped Yan on the shoulder. "That's the kid I was talking about. Climbed up the side of the building, no fear."

Yan flinched as the woman hit him before looking at Felix again. "Oh right. The kid who fought the giants. Siva's teeth, I can't believe you're still alive."

Felix's smile waned slightly at the reminder, crystal clear flashes of ice and blood stabbing through his brain like lightning. "Me either."

Someone laughed, and it was half a second before he realized it wasn't anyone in the warehouse. Stop it, jerk, or I'll shrink your cage.

The laughing cut off.

Evie suddenly hopped down and shouted. "Introductions! Everyone! This is Felix! He's good people. He helped save all of you!"

By this point, the area was starting to fill up. In addition to Harn and Evie, there were seven others. Yan was a short man with a black, spade-like goatee and a completely bald head. He wore simple leather armor and had two shortswords belted to his waist. Kelgan stood next to him, his beard full and light brown, and he wore a simple tunic and pants without any ornamentation. He held a spear loosely in his grip, though that was true of every one of them. All were armed in some way, whether they wore armor or a bathrobe in one case.

Portia was the pixie-cut with a staff, and the Dwarven woman was Vivianne with a tumble of bright red curls. Unlike Eldrunna at the smithy, Vivianne was all sharp angles and wiry strength. There was also a giant named Bodie, a Human close to seven feet tall and packed full of more muscle than Felix thought was possible on the human body. He carried a war hammer the size of Felix's head, surmounted by a nasty five-inch spike. Rounding out the crew was Karp, a bearded Human man leaning on a very tall bow, and Trendle, also Human and as large as Karp was skinny, but festooned with a tremendous mustache. It was so impressive Felix almost didn't notice the bandolier of wooden spikes across his chest and hips.

Evie led Felix through the introductions, though she didn't say much else except his name and that he'd been part of the rescue operation. Eventually, though, Felix noted two absences. "Where's Callie? I assume she's with you folks, right?"

"She's around somewhere," waved Evie nonchalantly, and she gave an awkward shrug. "Callie's a free spirit."

"Aye, she's that," rumbled Bodie good-naturedly before his voice turned harder. "She had some tasks this morning. Same as all of you! Let's get back to it!"

Bodie clapped his hands, and the sound alone was enough to make Felix's ears ring. The others all peeled away with varying levels of grumbling, each to their own business, presumably. Bodie smiled pleasantly at Felix before he headed into the sandy combat arena, where both Yan and Kelgan were waiting.

"They seem nice," said Felix as he twisted a finger in his right ear. "Certainly in better shape than before."

"It's been three months, Felix." Evie made an exasperated noise. "I'd hope they'd be healed up by now."

"Three months… yeah." Felix considered the warehouse again as his thoughts touched on his lost time in the Void. "Atar told me about Vess. Have you really not seen her in all this time?"

“Aside from a brief… excursion two weeks ago, we haven't been able to see her since. Kept to the Eyrie and the Inner Ward, from what we hear. The Duke even sent his Hand to protect her, train her." Evie shrugged again, though irritation was plain on her face. "Not that I expected a ducal heir to be hobnobbing with folk like us for long. It's just with the Sworn an' all—"

"Wait," Felix stopped her. "The Sworn? That assassin lady? What happened?"

"She was taken," Harn said from behind him, and Felix jumped. The man smiled when Felix gave him an annoyed look. The damn man was quiet as a shadow, especially without all his usual armor. "While we escorted the prisoners back to the tower, Vessilia was kidnapped. Someone drugged ‘em and dragged her off."

"What? You know it was the Sworn that did it?"

Harn nodded at him.

"Then what happened when you got back? Isn't that illegal or something?"

Harn laughed, and Evie's face soured. "Oh sure, if you could prove it. By the time we got back with everyone, Vess had been holed up in the Eyrie for a week. The Guild claimed she had 'made it back on her own' somehow."

Felix gave him an incredulous look. "That's… damn. That sucks. Atar mentioned her being secluded, but not all the rest."

Evie scowled. "Atar wouldn't have. He's been avoiding us, too. Makin' nice with the Elders and the nobles."

Harn spit and grunted. "Sparky did what he thought was best for him. Can't blame ’im, not after the tribunal's decision. And he did us a solid, later."

"...Fair," Evie allowed with a grimace.

The sound of a slamming door came from the back of the warehouse, muffled but entirely audible to Felix. He paid it only half a mind, instead looking at Harn. "I heard some of that, too. Demotion and all. I'm sorry, Harn."

The stalwart man shrugged, but absently touched his neck. Felix saw his Guilder medallion was completely missing. "It is what it is, now."

"That's bullshit, Harn. And you know it," growled Evie, who hopped back up onto her perch. "Guild needed a scapegoat and used you and my sister to do it."

Evie's eyes were bright, but no tears came. She made a slashing motion with a hand. "Yyero blight their balls! It was wrong. Is wrong."

"What are we arguing about now?"

They all turned toward the new voice, and Felix saw Callie striding into the open warehouse. She looked like a new person, sleek armor and a slew of sharp weapons about her body. Her tawny hair was still short, cut at the nape of her neck in a style slightly longer than Portia's, and her face was clear of bruises and blood. She did look tired, though, as dark circles accented her eyes. She paused for just a moment when she saw Felix, but it was barely a stutter in her step.

"Felix," she walked up to them and nodded at him. "You're alive."

That last part sounded more like an accusation than an observation to Felix. He blinked and looked at Evie. She didn't meet his eyes.

"I am," he admitted before rubbing his chest in a flare of phantom pain. "I'm sorry."

Callie's eyes softened slightly, and she cleared her throat. "I have questions. Let's talk in private."

Felix nodded and followed her as Callie went to one of the separate rooms in the back. He could sense Evie trying to follow, but heard Harn hold her back.

"Let them talk, kiddo."

* * *

"I gotta be honest, Felix, I saw the aftermath of what happened in the Labyrinth." Callie sat down at a table in a back room and gestured for him to do the same. "I don't know how anyone survives that."

Felix grimaced and sat down. The room she had guided them to was spartan, containing only a rickety table and four chairs. The rest of the space was dusty flooring and brick walls. It felt like an interrogation room, which seemed apt.

"You saw the giants?" Callie nodded, and Felix continued. "They attacked us right as we reached the center, the vault door. Did you see that? Magda thought we needed to get inside and turn off whatever artifact was powering the fog. Maybe that would get us out of there."

Felix took a deep breath. "Grimmar and his people attacked us before we could. We… we were surrounded and hurt, and the door was closing. Magda was injured… she couldn't stand. I tried to drag her into the door, but we weren't gonna make it..."

He ran a hand through his shaggy hair, shoving it back from his face. "Magda Shield Bashed me into the vault. Said one of us had to make it through. She… uh—" Speaking of it raised the phantasms of his memories, clear and as sharp as broken glass, but Felix pushed them away. His throat ached. "She saved me, Callie."

Callie didn't move or speak for a time. They both sat there in silence, neither really looking at one another for a while.

Eventually, however, Callie stirred. "Call me Cal. Callie is… Cal is fine." Felix watched her jaw flex, as if the woman was chewing something over. Making some sort of decision.

Ah, wait. Felix fished out something from his pocket and placed it on the table.

"She asked that I give this to you, when I made it out."

Atop the rickety wooden table was a beaten triangular locket on a fine chain. The chain was broken, but Callie—Cal—didn't care. She reached out tentatively and touched it. In his Manasight, Felix saw a bloom of white-gold Mana flare gently around the locket on the table… but no answering glow on her. I thought they were paired lockets? Where did Cal's go?

Cal gently lifted the necklace and cupped it delicately in her hands.

"Thank you. This—" She swallowed. "I didn't find it when I found Magda's body. She was torn up so badly that… I thought it had been lost."

"It was important to Magda that you get it back. I lived… somehow, and when I found out where you were, I had to bring it to you," he said.

"Shit, look at me, all weepy." She laughed and wiped at her eyes with her wrist. "First bit a'good news I've had in months."

"I can't imagine it's been easy. With the Guild and everything," Felix offered.

"Ugh, blind gods, no. It hasn't," Cal growled and tucked the locket into a pouch at her waist. Her demeanor changed, growing harder. "Hunts have dried up, the Haargate locked, and the Sunrise Gate not much better. Can't even access the Domain for training and harvesting. Those conniving bastards won't be happy ‘til I'm dead or out of town. And with the Inquisition lockdown, the last ain't happenin' too soon."

"Damn," Felix said, scratching the back of his neck. "I was hoping you might let me tag along when you left. But if the Inquisition isn't letting people out..."

"Yeah, we're all screwed for now." Cal paused, pursing her lips and considering him a moment. "You’re free to tag along if we make it out. You seem good in a fight."

"What about the Domain?"

"What about it?" Cal raised an eyebrow. "We can't get in. Like I said, we're pariahs from the Guild now, even Harn, Bronze Rank or no."

"What if I could get a way in?" Felix offered.

"Then I'd say you have some wild delusions, kid. But I'm listening." Cal leaned forward.

Felix bit his lip and shook his head. "It's more of a maybe, but… but first I have to tell you something. It's important and—we're gonna want Evie and Harn in here for this."

CHAPTER TWELVE

A few minutes later, the four of them were all assembled in the empty room. Felix had used his Voracious Eye on each of them as they came in, something he had neglected when he arrived. Evie was level 23, while Harn and Cal were level 39 and 42 respectively. With his new senses and Skill, Felix could even tell that both Harn and Cal were beyond their Second Formation while Evie was just shy of her First. However, he couldn't tell whether she was missing her Mind, Spirit, or Body. Voracious Eye was extremely strong, though, so he had hopes it would grow as he leveled it further.

Even if it came from a… dubious source.

Almost without him noticing it, Felix had begun to pace. They all watched him for a bit before Evie belted out a laugh. "C'mon, Felix. Out with it. What's goin' on?"

Felix forced himself to stop and unclench his fists. His knuckles were starting to hurt. He took a steadying breath and looked at Cal. "Is there some way to ward this room against eavesdroppers or anything?"

Cal frowned. "I trust this crew with my life."

"With my life, too?" Felix asked.

Cal looked at Harn, who shrugged. The man pulled a number of blue orbs from a pouch at his waist, a familiar artifact Felix hadn't seen in a while.

"Wardstones, huh? I thought you borrowed those from the Guild?" Felix grinned, and Harn smiled right back.

"Got lost in the Foglands, the report said. Who am I to argue?"

When the wardstones activated, they bathed the small room in the cool glow of water Mana… well, to Felix's Manasight anyway. He wasn't sure how prevalent that Skill was yet. That had to change.

It's why you're doing this. Keep it up.

"I have not been fully truthful with all of you before. I mentioned to Harn and others that I had been in the Foglands for a few weeks when we met, and that is absolutely true. What I left out is this: before that, I was not exactly… here."

Evie gave him a blank look, while Cal and Harn frowned slightly.

"I was… jeez, this was easier with Magda. I told her this, too, by the way. Ok," Felix took a breath. "Where I'm from, levels and Skills and magic don't exist. I'm not from the Continent. From what Magda told me, I'm an Unbound."

Felix expected shouting, but instead the silence was deafening. Evie had gone wide-eyed, while Cal was pale. Harn, however, started laughing.

"Of course!" He slapped the table, putting a dent in the hardwood. "That makes so much more sense! Blind gods, no wonder you're so damn strong!"

Harn's reaction broke the floodgates, and soon both Evie and Cal were rattling off questions. Neither seemed particularly angry or afraid. All of Magda's talk about the Unbound being regarded as demons and worse… it was a relief, to say the least.

"Yeah, Magda knew. I told her while we were in the Labyrinth." Felix grinned at the memory. "She reacted a lot like you, Harn."

The warrior smiled back and scratched his cheek, as did Cal. "Yeah, she would've. You drove her nuts, ya know? She never could tell what your deal was."

Felix grimaced. "She mentioned that, too. I feel bad for lying about it, but honestly, I didn't know the first thing about this place when I arrived. When I met you all, I knew enough to worry what my Race or… 'foreigner' status would mean."

"Your Race?" Evie perked up. "You're not Human?"

"Oh, right. No I'm not. It got… long story, but it changed when I arrived here." He paused before barreling through. "To Nym."

That got even more of a reaction, with Harn gritting his teeth and Cal folding her arms. Evie, however, had the best response.

"You mean those star guys? From the tower walls? Did you get some good bonus stats? Is that why you're so strong?" Felix smiled and nodded at her, and Evie shrugged. "Nice choice."

"I didn't exactly make that choice. Like I said, long story. I was… assigned my Race, though I did get to choose my Born Trait. Keen Mind, like I told you once before, Harn. Perfect recall for up to a month back. That's come in handy more times than I can count."

Cal shifted in her chair, her face grave. "This is a problem, Felix. The Nym are feared for many reasons, but those who even know the name are few. They're a Lost Race, which means Ruin scoured them from the world Ages ago."

"Ruin. I've heard that mentioned a lot." Felix frowned, thinking back on the Temple of Vellus he'd found in the Void. Of the mural cut clean in half by something huge and powerful. Vellus—a goddess—was Lost, according to the Maw. "It's some sort of force? A monster? How does it extinguish entire Races?"

"No one knows, but we do know that anything deemed Lost is lost in truth," Cal sighed, half-frustrated, half-exasperated. "I wish I knew more. I've run into so many issues treasure hunting that I'd kill for an answer, Felix."

She shook her head. "But my point is, the Nym are Lost. Knowledge of them is pretty small. But the Unbound? The Unbound are myths and bogeymen, demons from the old religions. Even the Pathless talks about them. Everyone's been told an Unbound story when they were kids. They are feared and reviled, without exception."

Felix thought he followed. "So, you're saying I'm screwed if people find out?"

Cal nodded. "That's what I'm saying. Is there any way to tell?"

"Not that I know of," Felix shrugged. "My Status doesn't even mention it. I only know the term because of Magda and Evie here." Evie shot him a confused look. "You mentioned it in that cellar after we met. Briefly."

"Can we see your Status?" Cal asked.

"Hey now, Cal. That's not right." Harn growled at the woman. "You don't just ask ta see a man's Status. You don't have ta show us nothin', Felix."

"He does if he doesn't want to be blind-sided by an Inquisitor. Or do you not recall who is in this city right now?" Cal looked at all of them in turn. "Those ranked Inquisitor or higher have some Perception Skills that are Rare. Others can do stuff even I don't know about. The moment you run into one of them Felix, you could be identified and ambushed. An Unbound? They'd tear apart the city to find you."

Felix blanched, and his heart beat a little harder. A sense of smug satisfaction drifted from his Bastion, but he quenched it with an internal growl. A trilling song pushed against his mind, and Felix calmed a bit. Thanks Pit.

"I encountered the Inquisition when I got into the city. They were being dicks, so I, uh," Felix scratched his eyebrow and didn't quite meet their gazes. "I may have knocked one of them out."

"Yyero's backside," Cal cursed.

"Shit."

"Good," muttered Evie. "Blind fools can get what they deserve."

Harn placed a comforting hand on Evie's shoulder. She flashed the older man a smile before sitting up again. "So, they know who you are?"

"Not so much. Apparently the Acolyte at the gate didn't Analyze me before I, uh, slipped past her. Been avoiding their patrols ever since."

"That's good. Brainless beginning, but I'd rather be lucky than smart any day of the week." Cal huffed a breath and slapped her knees. "So. You willing to show us your Status?"

Felix thought it over a moment, but realized he had little to hide from these three. In fact, doing so would get in the way of his plans. "Sure."

He pulled it up and pushed it toward the three of them, willing it to remain unchanged. A blue window appeared before each of their faces, and Evie gasped.

"Siva's lily-white ass! What the—how?"

Name: Felix Nevarre

Level: 26

Race: Nym*

Omen: Magician

Born Trait: Keen Mind

______

Health: 864/864

Stamina: 732/873

Mana: 1458/1458

______

STR: 157

PER: 154

VIT: 175

END: 161

INT: 191

WIL: 277

AGL: 131

DEX: 128

______

BODY

Resistances: Acid Resistance (C), Level 24; Fire Resistance (C) Level 20*; Cold Resistance (U), Level 20; Heat Resistance (U), Level 22*; Pain Resistance (U), Level 42; Poison Resistance (U), Level 42; Lightning Resistance (R), Level 1*

Combat Skills: Axe Mastery (C), Level 5*; Blunt Weapon Mastery (C), Level 10*; Dodge (C), Level 30; Long Blade Mastery (C), Level 15*; Parry (C), Level 4*; Small Blade Mastery (C), Level 10; Staff Mastery (C), Level 7*; Thrown Weapons Mastery (C), Level 11; Unarmed Mastery (C), Level 29; Blind Fighting (R), Level 23; Corrosive Strike (R), Level 28

Physical Enhancements: Running (C), Level 24; Swimming (C), Level 6; Acrobatics (U), Level 25*; Free Climbing (U), Level 15; Relentless Charge (U), Level 17; Armored Skin (R), Level 41; Physical Conditioning (R), Level 24

MIND

Mental Enhancements: Deception (C), Level 12; Intimidation (C)*, Level 8; Make An Entrance (U), Level 12; Meditation (U), Level 33; Bastion of Will (E), Level 44; Deep Mind (E), Level 36; Ravenous Tithe (E), Level 11

Information Skills: Tracking (C), Level 13; Exploration (U), Level 27; Herbalism (U), Level 17; Voracious Eye (E), Level 29

SPIRIT

Spiritual Enhancements: Dual Casting (U), Level 22; Mana Manipulation (U), Level 24; Manasight (U), Level 40; Manaship Pilot (R), Level 22; Etheric Concordance (L), Level 28

Spells: Abyssal Skein (R), Level 11; Cloudstep (R), Level 10; Fire Within (R) Level 37; Influence of the Wisp (R), Level 29; Invocation (R), Level 1; Mantle of the Long Night (R), Level 17; Shadow Whip (R), Level 30; Stone Shaping (R), Level 28; Reign of Vellus (E), Level 36; Sigils of the Primordial Dawn (E), Level 19; Wrack And Ruin (E), Level 30

______

Unused Stat Points: 25

Felix just grinned at their expressions. Evie was speechless (a rarity), and Cal looked like her eyes were going to pop out of her head. Harn, however, just started laughing.

"Yer absolutely ridiculous! Ye've got even more Skills than before, too. An' so many are near or at Apprentice Tier?" Harn scratched his head. "Is this what an Unbound can do? No wonder they called ‘em demons."

"Wow, your stats are… wow." Evie poked and prodded at his Status, smile wider every moment. "You're almost as fast as me, but have me beat in every other category. You're a beast, Felix."

Felix smiled uncomfortably. No wonder this is a cultural taboo. It's awkward as hell.

"What is wrong with these Skills?" Cal asked. She was pointing to the dozen or so with asterisks next to them. Felix's smile turned into a wince.

"Those. During the final fight in the Labyrinth, Grimmar used an ability that damaged some of my Skills." Felix blew a heavy breath out of his nostrils. "It hurts to use them now. Can't even do a flip without Acrobatics frying my nerve endings. Or get too close to open flame."

"Hmm." Cal leaned back in her chair, staring at his Status for a few moments longer. "Lotta Skills, lotta magic, too. You a mage or a fighter?"

Felix shrugged. "I've had to be both. I'm whatever I need to survive. Right now, that means a little bit of everything."

Cal rubbered her chin and nodded. "You've got a way to keep this all hidden, right?" At Felix's nod, she continued. "I don't see anything here that might indicate you're Unbound, save maybe the amount of Skills. Regardless, I'd keep it under wraps. You're far stronger than someone your level has a right to be, and that'll raise questions you don't want asked."

"She's right, kid. The Inquisition starts pokin' around, they'll lock you up for a thousand years. Yer worse than Sorcery, ‘far as they're concerned." Harn drew small circles with his finger on the wooden tabletop, leaving uneven marks on it. "This conversation ain't leavin' this room, right?"

Harn looked at all of them, and everyone nodded. "Good, then we swear."

"Harn, what?" Evie turned in alarm to the warrior. "I'm not gonna spill anything."

"Kastos is right," Cal said with a sense of finality. She stood up and put out her hand, motioning to Felix to come closer.

"What is this? What do you mean by 'swearing?'" Felix looked to Harn as he stood up and ambled over.

"A Binding Oath, given freely and secured by the System itself," he said, placing his hand out next to Cal's, palm up. "We swear by our strength and power ta keep yer status, yer Race, and yer nature as Unbound a secret from all but the four of us. We break that oath, and we lose levels, stats, even our formations in some cases. The System judges us."

Felix looked at each of them, surprised at the resolve in their faces.

Evie groaned, but she got up and put her hand in. "Ugh, he's right. This way, none of us can betray your trust, whether intentional or not."

Harn waited until Felix also put his hand out, and began a low, wordless chant. It washed over them, the words themselves infused with green-gold Mana that spilled from Harn's mouth like an ocean surf. The waves hit the warded walls and rebounded gently, like ripples in a pond. The chant was almost a song to Felix's ears, a gentle noise almost beyond hearing. As the green-gold Mana built up in the room, swirling around the four of them, Felix saw increasing flashes of gold and blue across his vision, and his head began to swim. Just as it reached a crescendo, all of the Mana in the room reversed course and was sucked into the center. Around their hands.

For a brief moment, their hands all glowed with brilliant life Mana before it sank beneath the skin. Felix felt his skin tighten and prickle, but it passed. However, his friends sucked in sharp breaths or cursed loudly, in the case of Evie.

"Noctis' tits! That hurts!"

"Maybe if ya trained up yer Pain Resistance, it wouldn't be a problem," quipped Harn with a tight smile, flexing his hand slightly.

"You ok, Felix?" Cal asked, massaging her wrist.

Felix was staring off into space, a little startled.

New Skill!

Oathbinding (Rare), Level 1!

Through close observation, you've learned to bind the oaths of the willing. Costs Health, Mana, and Stamina.

"Uh, yeah," he said. "I'm good. I just learned Oathbinding."

"What?" Harn said, mouth opening. "Just now?"

"Yeah."

"Burnin' Unbound," he muttered.

Felix frowned at the notification a bit longer before dismissing it. He wasn't sure why he'd gotten that Skill so easily, when Manaship Pilot had taken a System reward to show up.

"Thank you, everyone. You didn't have to swear, but you did, and I'm… I'm honored." Felix smiled at each of them.

"So what's it like being Unbound?" Evie asked, popping herself onto the table top.

"Honestly, I have as many questions as you do about it," Felix sat down with a grunt, and the chair creaked beneath him. He looked down in annoyance before continuing. "Unbound and Nymean, and I don't know the first thing about either."

"Well, we're not good sources for that," admitted Cal. "If we were still Guilders, I'd have you try the Archivist. She runs the Guild Librarium. Best damn mage I ever knew."

Harn snapped his fingers. "Not anymore."

"What?" Cal turned to him.

"She left a few weeks ago. Got into it with a few Elders over her book system." Harn barked a short laugh. "They tried ta rearrange all her books. She ended up hangin' the new Archivist out the window of the Spire."

"Sounds about right," Cal laughed. "Where's she now?"

"Runs a shop in the Wall Quarter. Elder Leaf or something."

"Elder Crown?" Felix asked, heart sinking.

Harn snapped his finger and pointed at him. "That's the one. She'll know more about Unbound, maybe even the Nym if yer lucky."

"Yeah, that's me," Felix moaned. "Lucky."

* * *

They spoke at length about the Foglands and his time there, and Felix was happy to finally answer all questions honestly. It was amazing to not have to worry about weaving a convincing lie or telling a half-truth.

Eventually, the questions wound down, and the subject of the Domain came back up. Felix explained what he meant about getting them access.

"Atar promised to get me access to the Domain. I can see if he'll stretch that to all of us."

"How'd you manage that?" Evie asked.

"He had something that belonged to me. I took it back until he decided to help." Felix grinned, but that slipped a second later. "Still lost my poison fang dagger and sword though."

"Oh right, you had that hook blade, right? You lost that in the Labyrinth?" Evie said through a mouthful of bread. Where that bread had come from was beyond Felix. He was half-convinced she had a Skill to produce food whenever she needed it. He nodded.

"Hooked sword? Was it made of bronze?" Cal asked. When Felix agreed, she sighed. "Damn. The Guild took it. I recovered a sword and a book from the Labyrinth. That and Mags… but the Guild was in a mood. They took everything my crew and I had, did their bastardized 'tribunal,' and threw us out."

"Burn ‘em," growled Harn, taking a pull from a dark brown bottle. Felix Eyed it, though he didn't really have to. The smell alone was testament to how blindingly strong the alcohol was, way worse than the Twice-Boiled Swill he'd had in the Void.

"So you had this, too?" Felix pulled his journal from his satchel and showed it to Cal. She nodded.

"Yeah, that's the one. It was yours, too? No one knew what it said, except that the first part was in Henaari. No Henaari scholars in the Guild, which shouldn't surprise anyone. Pretty secretive bunch, them. The sword they were much more interested in. Elder DuFont practically drooled over it."

"DuFont?" Felix asked.

"Elder of Acquisitions. In charge of gathering operations, herbalism and the like, but really it's just looting. She held onto that blade like it was her baby." Cal shrugged. "It's in their hands now, sorry to say. Unless you plan on raiding the Eyrie, that's where it's stayin'."

Felix frowned, but tried not to let the loss distract him. "Well, I'll see what I can do with Atar. I'm gonna see him tomorrow."

There were a few more questions, mostly about his time in the Foglands. He answered honestly for the most part, giving them a rough idea of the time before he met Magda's party. There were a few questions about where he'd been for three months, but Felix found himself reluctant to talk about the Void. About the pirates, the Maw, and...and Bateo.

He deflected, relying on his Deception Skill to keep the conversation on the Foglands and Labyrinth. Eventually, the four of them wrapped it up. Outside the room, where the sun could actually be seen, Felix realized it was late afternoon. They'd been in there most of the day.

Evie walked him to the door.

"You’re welcome to come train with us whenever. It'd be good to spar against you again."

"Sure." Felix smiled. "I still owe you one, I think. You and Vess kicked my butt last time."

Evie paused near the door, going quiet. Felix stopped just before he grabbed the latch.

"What's up? Er, what's going on?" Felix asked. "You seem… less Evie than usual, if I can say that."

"She's trapped up there, you know?" Evie nodded into the distance, toward the center of town. "Vess. The Elders and her Father's Hand are keeping her on a tight leash since we did what we did."

Felix nodded. Evie had explained the situation with Magda's body, which had made Felix sick. He was glad to hear she had gotten a proper funeral. She, of all people, deserved to be honored.

It also went a long way toward explaining why they were still talking to Atar. Him working for an Elder certainly seemed to rub Cal the wrong way. Evie kept talking. "The Duke has a lotta power around here, but he's also two Territories away. With his Hand here, the Elders are keeping Vess locked up like a… like a songbird. Callie and Bodie say we can't do anything, but something is wrong. The Guild… it never felt this way when Magda was around."

Felix didn't know what to say. He looked at Evie, and saw the joy that was being crushed out of her, first by the loss of her sister, and now the loss of her friend.

"That really sucks," Felix agreed. "But what can we do about it? Break her out? The way they talk, the Eyrie is impregnable. Filled with Silver Ranks."

Evie shrugged and swiped her hair out of her face. "I know that! It's just—everything went sideways after the Foglands. I dunno."

Felix put a hand on her shoulder. "We'll figure it out. Somehow."

Evie smiled back and punched him on the shoulder. "Don't be a sap."

Felix grinned and opened the heavy door, walking out into the late afternoon sunlight. "I'll see you tomorrow, Evie."

"See you tomorrow, Felix."

Felix wandered a bit after that, taking the streets of the Dust without putting too much thought into it. His mind was whirling with information, not the least of which was Oathbinding and that three other people now knew his secret. And he didn't have to worry! It was more of a load off his mind than he anticipated, and Felix reveled in the sensation of freedom.

Pit chirruped in his mind, responding to his good mood. Their connection grew stronger the closer he came to the Drum Tank. It was a happy sound, a joyful call that was like the ringing of bells.

Wait.

From the spires of various buildings, bells were being rung. As he listened, more joined in, until the air was filled with the sound. Felix rushed up a nearby hill until he could get a clear view of the wall in the distance. Blooms of orange fire and blue water Mana erupted from the top of the Wall. Screams echoed in the distance.

"The Wall's being attacked." The flares of Mana sent a rumble of distant hunger to quake his Bastion. He clamped down on that as hard as he could, squashing it like a bug.

We're meant to feast, Felix. The Maw's voice slithered out from its cage. You cannot starve yourself forever.

Felix grunted and walled it off further, sealing the Maw's cackling beneath his mental tower. He didn't have time for the Maw's insanity right now.

SKREEE!

The cry came from above, and Felix whipped his head up to see five dark shapes come swooping out of the sky. Silhouetted against the evening light, he couldn't make out their details before they landed some streets away. The ground shook with their impact.

Then the real screaming started.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

SCREEEEEE!!

Dust and debris filled the air, while residents of the Dust scattered in a panic. Cries of pain and fear were everywhere, nearly drowned out by the screams of the monstrosities. Heva Groktis tried to still her racing heart, searching the street for her family.

"Mama! Mama where are you!?"

A woman with dark black hair and wide copper eyes emerged from the dust, her red arms wrapped around a squirming toddler. Both were covered in grime as they stumbled from the cloud.

"Mahria! You're alright!" Heva cried in relief as she gathered up her daughter and grandson, her own copper eyes leaking bright tears. "Where is your father? I haven't seen him since..."

"He—he distracted one of the creatures. He drew it into the streets, away from Bhed," she clutched her son tight in fear, and the little boy clung to her. "I haven't seen him since, Mama."

Heva's heart broke at her daughter's words, and she turned from her to gaze back into the drifting clouds. The sounds of crashing stone and pained screams still filled the air. The creatures were nearby, she knew it. Her old bones burned. Heva raised a trembling hand to her chest to soothe the ache that jabbed against her ribs.

"How many are there, Mahria? Did you see?"

"No, I Analyzed three of them coming down our street, but we circled wide to avoid them." Her daughter scanned the street around them, the setting sun doing little to illuminate the cloudy shadows that clung to the cobbles. "I think they're a few streets over now."

Heva didn't have Analyze, never was able to learn it. Mahria had learned it from her late husband, a Guilder, before he'd disappeared in the Foglands. "Disappeared" usually meaning he'd been left for dead by the Humans. Non-Human Guilders rarely lasted long, Hobgoblins less than most. A shrill scream echoed among the buildings, and a crowd of noises filled the air.

"We have to move, we—" Heva's voice broke. "We have to run, now."

"Where Mama? I ran into Dedra, and she said she saw thirty of these things landing in the Dust. Where can we go?" Mahria's voice shook and her copper eyes flickered wildly about the street. She flinched when she saw two stout figures run toward them through the gloom, but as they came closer she recognized them.

"Jask! Oveh! Where're you going?" Heva cried out toward the two Dwarves, her neighbors for years now.

"Run, Heva! Run!" Jask yelled. "It's coming!"

HISS-SKREE!

A blurred shape, shimmering blue and green in the failing light, zipped through the haze. It was huge, easily ten feet tall at the shoulder, made up of insect-like segments and sporting six legs. It landed upon Jask, its scythe-like claws slashing down. The Dwarf's head came free from his shoulders in a fountain of blood.

Oveh's grief-stricken screams tore through the air, shocking Heva and Mahria from their stupor. They turned and ran.

"What is it?" Heva panted. She was too old for all this activity, her stats having diminished with age. She looked at her daughter as they ran. "What has come here?"

"Prismatic Wretch. Level 35," Mahria gasped as her eyes streamed with tears. She'd known Jask her entire life, a kindly man prone to giving out sweets to a mischievous child. She clutched little Bhed tightly. Her eyes found Oveh, who slogged beside them with grim determination. "Insectoid type. Fast and strong, but they have a paralytic poison, too."

"By Vellus' holy heart," Heva gasped. A level 35 loose in Haarwatch? It was the horror that kept parents up at night, of the wall falling and the denizens of the wild overrunning the city. "How did they get beyond the wall?"

Not just one. At least three. She gripped her amulet as they came around a tight corner, all of them breathing hard. Blind gods protect us, deliver us from the Night!

A rapid-fire chittering was all that warned them before a iridescent green claw swiped from around the corner. It missed them by a hand-span, hitting the building instead, and a shower of shrapnel rained over them all. Oveh fell, hit in the face by a brick. She tried to drag herself backward, pushing back with one arm and leg.

"Another one!" the Dwarven woman cried, perhaps pointlessly. The Prismatic Wretch had already emerged from around the corner, its segmented body glimmering in the dim light of the setting sun. It had a wide head with two huge, segmented eyes on either end. The bottom of its head was filled with twitching mandibles and rows after rows of needle-like teeth. It hissed at them and swung its scythe-arms forward, snapping them closed with enough force to rattle their bones. The Wretch scuttled forward and jabbed again, this time aiming for Oveh.

The Dwarven woman screamed, but her body wouldn't move any faster.

A burst of fire slapped against the monster's chest, a ball no larger than a Human skull. The Wretch flinched backward, swiveling its head to find the attacker. It screamed in fury as it saw Heva, standing twenty feet away with her hand outstretched and still smoking.

Heva swallowed, sweat pouring down her crimson skin. Her daughter looked at her with wild, confused eyes.

"Mama, you can't fight it," Mahria pleaded. "It's stronger than us both. We-we won’t—"

"Run, my heart. Take your sweet boy and run." Heva smiled at her daughter and kindled another ball of flame in her hand. "I'll buy you time."

Mahria's eyes filled with tears, and Bhed started to whimper. "No, Mama. You can't."

"Go! Now!" Heva turned and hurled her flame at the Wretch again. It splashed off its head, making it screech in annoyance. She didn't turn when she heard the sound of running boots, but her eyes glimmered with tears. "Come, you damn bug! I've more for you!"

The massive insect skittered forward again, its six legs easily maneuvering through the debris-strewn street. It passed right over the prone form of Oveh, and Heva breathed a sigh of relief. Then Oveh growled and thrust her hand up, causing a spike of stone to burst from the cobblestones. It stabbed into the Wretch's underside, scoring a deep mark in its chitin.

SCREEEE!

The Wretch ran at the Hobgoblin. Heva gathered more fire, letting it pool in her hands like water, but she was trembling. It was a minor Skill meant for starting cookfires or lighting candles. Yet it was the closest thing she had to an offensive Skill, well-used despite not even being Apprentice Tier. Heva knew it was useless.

Vellus protect and Noctis preserve my family, she prayed as the Wretch closed the gap. She closed her eyes and felt her tears fall. Let this be enough.

*WHUMP-CRSSSHHH!*

Heva flinched at the noise, but there was no pain. She cracked open an eye and gasped.

Before her, among a cloud of stone dust, the road itself had been sundered. A crater had formed beneath the Wretch, and it scrabbled ineffectually at the sides of it. After a moment, her ears registered the sound of flesh on stone, a rhythmic cracking punctuated by shrill screams. A dark figure was astride the bug, unleashing a flurry of strikes down into its carapace, and streamers of green gore splashed outward with each hit.

The Wretch screamed again, but Heva noticed the change in timbre.

It was terrified.

A sudden crash, and the Prismatic Wretch went still and silent. The figure stood up from the creature's back and leaped out of the shallow crater they had made, landing heavily a short distance away. Heva gasped and took a step back. The figure turned toward her, and in the failing light she could only make out the shine of bright blue eyes beneath a heavy cowl.

"Are you okay?" he asked. His voice was a pleasant tenor, not as deep as some, but definitely male. "Are you hurt?"

Heva shook her head, then turned into the distance. She gasped in renewed terror. "My friend, Oveh, she's back there!"

The man turned, his cloak flaring with him. "Shit. Another one." He turned to her. "Uh, wait here, please."

The ground cracked beneath him as the man launched himself upward, easily clearing the dead Wretch and its crater and landing halfway to her friend. Another insect had scuttled from the shadows and fought against the Dwarven pottery master. Heva was surprised to see her friend put up such a good fight; the woman was throwing small spikes of stone out of the ground itself, each one from a different angle. The monster was forced to bat them away constantly.

However, Oveh was clearly slowing down by the time the man landed nearby. He hit the earth with a loud crash, sending a spray of cobblestones into the Wretch. The creature reared back, but recovered nearly instantly; it lashed forward with its huge fore-claws, viciously hissing. The man didn't move, but the air pulsed in front of him, and a series of lightning bolts speared up from the ground and into the insectoid. The Wretch's momentum was halted, though Heva could tell it strained against whatever power the man used.

Then he punched it.

"By all the lost gods," Heva whispered to herself. Her knees, two knots of pain from all the running, felt weak and wobbly. Only through sheer willpower did she keep herself standing. "Who is this man?"

The Wretch was sent stumbling back, and the man advanced. In a flash, he was at its side, keeping up the pressure with constant jabs and strikes. There was an air about him, something Heva couldn't identify but seemed unnervingly familiar. The thought fled when she saw her friend stir on the ground.

Heva cautiously moved forward as the man fought the monster to a standstill. It was still screaming, but it was now actively trying to flee the blue-eyed man. Tendrils of shadow whipped outward and tangled up the Wretch's limbs, preventing it from scaling Kall's tannery at the end of the road. She hurried a little more now that the coast was clear and rushed to Oveh's side.

"Oveh, my dear! Are you alright?" The aging Hobgoblin stooped and helped Oveh to her feet. She was a Dwarf and just as stout and dense as that usually meant, thick with fat and muscle. "Come, we have to get out of here."

"Heva?" Oveh asked, a little dazedly. "Where's Jask?"

"He—he'll be right along. Let's get going, all right?" Heva wanted to scream at Oveh's words, her heart aching far more than her knees or back. It made her think of her own husband, still missing on this terrible evening. She hurried her friend back toward the crater, toward where Heva's daughter had fled.

But when they approached the broken hole, they heard the unmistakable sound of movement within it. A glistening blue-green claw slammed into the cobblestones, and the Wretch leveraged itself out of the hole.

"Blind gods!" Oveh cursed, nearly causing the both of them to trip. "They're undying!"

The Wretch slithered forward with an ungainly thump, and Heva saw that most of its legs had been shattered. It chittered its mandibles and a clear liquid oozed from its needle-lined mouth. Heva conjured another speck of fire, but before she could launch it, the Wretch lunged forward.

SKREEEE—AWK!

A dark object whipped past them, sizzling in the increasing dark. It impacted the Wretch square in the face, and sickly gurgling noises erupted from the creature's wide open mouth. Heva watched in rapt disgust as the thing's face began to boil and melt before her eyes. It collapsed with a squelching thud.

"Haah, haah, jeez," panted a voice behind her.

Heva jumped and turned toward it, only slightly relieved to see it was the blue-eyed man. He stared a little too long at the melting corpse of the Prismatic Wretch. His hands clenched and unclenched a couple times too. Heva swore she could hear his tendons creaking.

"Those things… they're tough."

He stepped up toward them, but stopped when both Dwarf and Hobgoblin women flinched backward. He put up his bare hands, still streaked with green ichor. "Sorry. You both okay now?"

Oveh nodded, but her entire body was tense. Heva cleared her throat. "We're fine, I think. But please, if you see my husband, save him. Please."

The last was in a terrified whisper as the reality of their situation sunk in; she had little hope her Lanis survived. To the man's credit, he nodded and stood up straighter, his eyes remarkably bright in the gathering gloom. She still couldn't make out his face, though.

"I'll do what I can," he said, then someone else was screaming. Another series of insectoid screeches pierced the air, and Heva turned toward them.

"Those are nearby, on Weevil Way maybe." Heva turned back to the blue-eyed man, but he was already gone.

Oveh was shaking, trembling really, and she gripped the Hobgoblin's arm tightly. "Who in Avet's name was that?"

"I—" Heva took a shuddering breath. "I don't know."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Armored Skin is level 42!

Shadow Whip is level 31!

Corrosive Strike is level 30!

Blind Fighting is level 24!

Dodge is level 31!

Relentless Charge allowed Felix to leap up atop the nearest building, making his already sizable jump into a gravity-defying display. He was gone before the Hobgoblin woman could say much else. He didn't have time to chat, not if he was gonna stop the rest of these bugs.

There were just so many. What he had first assumed was only a handful turned out to be at least fifteen. They had somehow flown over the wall and gotten into town, evading what Felix had to assume was substantial defenses. How else could this town survive? But they didn't display their flight again, instead focusing on scurrying through streets and buildings, either climbing them or breaking right through the walls. The screams of their victims were deafening.

Felix had found a discarded cloak during his first approach and was glad for it, even if it didn't sit exactly right across his shoulders, and the cowl was too big. The last thing he wanted was his face being described to Guilders or Inquisitors by a hundred different bystanders.

Felix came to a stop at the edge of another roof, his Far-Afield Boots helping keep balance on the slick tile. A street beyond, another few buildings lay half-demolished, and the click-clack of the bugs’ scuttling feet carried through the screams. At least fifteen people were running from two more Prismatic Wretches, the insects snapping their huge mantis claws behind them. He focused.

Voracious Eye...

Name: Prismatic Wretch

Type: Insect

Level: 35

HP: 984/984

SP: 543/899

MP: 437/610

Lore: Born as Shimmer Larva, the Prismatic Wretch spends twelve weeks devouring corpses before it can pupate into its current form. It will pupate again after it has eaten 10,000 more.

Strength: Powerful claws, quick reflexes, and hard chitin exoskeleton.

Weakness: Their underbellies are the least defended part of their anatomy.

This one was the same as the others, almost cookie cutter copies. Now he knew their Strengths and Weaknesses, though it had started with the usual "more data required" message. After his third kill, it had populated with… fairly obvious notations. And like all the rest he'd Eyed, this Wretch had some sort of aura around it. A type of Mana vapor, as far as he could tell; it distorted the air around the insect like hot air above pavement.

Okay, round three. Felix grinned, sucked in a breath, and activated Abyssal Skein, fading into his surroundings. The oily slick sensation of the Void crawled over his skin, and not for the first time Felix wished for a mirror to see the effect. Not that he'd be able to tell much, with the way the Skill inverted colors in his vision.

He bolted along the edge of the roof, running parallel to the Prismatic Wretches. The citizens of the Dust were keeping well ahead of their claws. Felix Eyed them as he ran, noting that not a single one was above level 13. They shouldn't be fast enough to evade them... Ah, right.

Felix looked ahead and perceived the lengthy shadow of another Wretch hiding behind the corner's bend.

These bastards are pack hunters.

He couldn't waste any more time. With a final leap, Felix pushed off the edge of the roof and into the air. Shattering tiles exploded behind him, and he felt bad about that for a brief second. The noise caused the trailing Wretch to look up in alarm, though it clearly didn't see him.

Influence of the Wisp!

Wrack and Ruin!

Wrack and Ruin!

Prismatic Wretch is Enthralled for 2 Seconds!

Blue fire crawled across him and the Wretch in an instant, while Felix summoned two dark orbs of sizzling acid. Still falling through the air, he launched them directly at the monster's head. The first spell splashed against the creature's hardened shell, weakening it. Then the second drilled through the insect's head like a red-hot knife, sending out a wave of green ichor across the cobbles.

You Have Killed A Prismatic Wretch!

XP Earned!

Felix hit the ground with a roll, but the movement sent a blade of agony through his side and up his spine. He gasped and fell to the side, momentarily incapacitated. The sense of the oily Void vanished from his skin as he breathed, and he felt more than saw the attention of the other monster.

"F-fuck," he panted, pushing himself to his knees. "Right. No Acrobatics, idiot."

The second Wretch was already scuttling toward him, its six legs moving far faster than it had while herding the Haarwatchers. Felix threw out his hands and conjured twin Shadow Whips that he immediately split into four separate sections. The tacky shadow-stuff tangled with the Wretch's legs and sent it floundering, its heavy claws pulling it face-first into the ground.

Wrack and Ruin!

Felix bounded to his feet and summoned another acid orb as he darted at the creature. But the damn creature had learned from its companion's demise. It rolled its body in a single fluid motion. The orb blasted into the street, tearing a furrow in the stone before its energy petered out.

"Damn it!"

Stone Shaping!

Stone Shaping!

Felix kept running but threw his left arm up as he cast the spell, sending his Mana streaming out of him in a spiraling pattern. His Fire Within barely had to work at it, the effort as easy as breathing. The rubble nearby clinked and clacked, drawn together into a massive car-sized boulder and settling into the earth with a resounding THUD.

The damn bug was tearing through his Shadow Whip, flailing its limbs in an attempt to right itself, and Felix knew he had little time. He focused his Mana and came up behind the boulder he'd made, stretching out a hand and summoning the storm.

Reign of Vellus!

The azure lightning crackled from his body, rising from the earth to impact the boulder with a crack of thunder. The rock was launched forward at speed, hitting the Prismatic Wretch and driving it into the building opposite. All that was left was a green smear on the street.

You Have Killed A Prismatic Wretch!

XP Earned!

Reign of Vellus is level 37!

Screams sounded again as the Haarwatchers found the hiding bug, and the crash of its oversized mantis claws filled the air. Felix huffed a tired breath and took off. People scattered, running to the right and away from the measured flailing of the Prismatic Wretch. Street lamps, rare here in the Dust, illuminated the shimmering carapace of the bug and cast its shadow large upon the buildings around it.

Just let them die, Felix. They aren't worth the trouble. Or better yet, whispered that malicious voice. Eat them.

Felix flared his Willpower and Bastion to seal off the voice, but not before the Maw managed the last word.

We're hunters, Felix! We eat and kill! That is—

"Shut… up," Felix panted and threw himself forward.

Relentless Charge!

Zipping through the intervening space, Felix's body slammed into the Wretch. His shoulder charge snapped through two legs before he careened into the bug's chitinous exoskeleton. He followed that up with two Corrosive Strikes, each blow denting its impressive armor. The Wretch screamed in pain and rage and spat a clear, viscous liquid directly onto his right arm. The substance sizzled and burned, and blinking notifications informed Felix that he was being poisoned.

He didn't stop, just maneuvered constantly around the Wretch and delivered strike after strike into its body. Kicks and punches, left hand mostly as the right had gone almost completely numb. He started laughing. Felix devoted part of his mind to drawing the poison from his system, feeding it to his Fire Within as he kept up his offensive.

When the Wretched managed an underhanded jab at him, Felix was launched nearly twenty feet backward. He smashed through a shop window and into some sort of display case. He barely felt it, but he noticed his Health was nearing the half-way mark. These Wretches had done a number on him so far.

I can't keep getting hit. But I can't give away my entire skillset. His spells were very recognizable, as far as he knew. What was the point of hiding his face if he had bystanders describing all of his attacks? He hopped back through the window and onto the street, checking to make sure his cowl was on right. His Mana was still good, and rising. They've already seen my lightning-kinetic spell. Let's try this.

Reign of Vellus!

Reign of Vellus!

The debris around him lifted from the street and hovered in midair for a moment, a field of glass, wood, and stone. He heard gasps from nearby but didn't pay any attention to them. With a pulse of his mind, he fired the lot off at the final Wretch.

The shrapnel sliced through the air like bullets, embedding itself into the bug's hardened carapace. It reared back in pain, and Felix exploded forward.

Relentless Charge!

Relentless Charge!

Corrosive Strike!

Like a bullet himself, Felix darted down the street, spamming his charge Skill as he reared back with his left fist. Acid spat and sizzled from his grip, and the moment the Wretch's iridescent thorax appeared before him, he struck. His fist shattered through the weakened carapace, cracking into it like a massive lobster, only to have gallons of green ichor pour outward onto him.

You Have Killed A Prismatic Wretch!

XP Earned!

Relentless Charge is level 18!

Felix stumbled back, careful not to slip in the thick mess on the street. He wiped his mouth, intending to push the foul ichor away from him, but accidentally tasted it.

Mmmhmmm...

His inner ear buzzed as the Maw sent discordant strains echoing from his Bastion. Her—its!—music rattled his bones, and… and made his teeth itch. Felix walled it away as best he could, flaring his Bastion of Will. It diminished, but the Maw was gaining ground.

No no, that's not good. Felix had no idea what damage the Maw could truly wreak, but he very much liked it locked up in a dungeon, even if said dungeon was only in his Mind. He cast about, searching for distraction, and saw the crowd.

The fifteen or so souls he'd been saving had huddled up at the corner, perhaps half a block down. There, much to his surprise, was the Coldforge smithy. Eldrunna and Rafny were there, handing blades to many in the crowd and shields to others, even though most could barely lift some of them. The gathering had placed its back to the smithy with their attention in all directions. However, Felix could sense that more than a few of them were looking at him, the lone man who'd fought off the monsters.

He tugged his cowl further over his face, hoping none of them had some sort of vision Skill that'd expose him. He'd checked his Amulet of Veiling earlier, and somehow it had changed again, masking his level, name, race, everything. It was a sea of question marks; as was his own confusion, but he could ask Caerwin exactly how the thing worked later. For now, there were more monsters to kill.

Felix looked around again. Somehow, he'd gotten pulled further afield than he'd intended. Felix quickly traced back his steps, his Mind easily backtracking along his wild path. He had turned from the route to the Drum Tank and had headed south and west. He was nearer the Wall Quarter than before, which made sense.

The monsters came from across the Wall. He peered into the distance, unable to see the power being hurled atop the Wall but clearly able to sense it. Then, if there are more...

A hissing screech echoed from down the avenue, its switchback curve and thick shadows preventing him from seeing too far. A clicking sound announced the arrival of at least two more Prismatic Wretches, or something like them. Felix risked a glance behind him, searching the area for anyone else who might be willing to fight these things.

Other than the crowd of locals, all of whom were low-level, there wasn't a single armored Guilder out here.

Did they not care that the city was being attacked? Or were there more monsters attacking elsewhere? The thought crept through his mind, a thrill that lanced through his gut. Was the city being overrun?

Thick, greasy smoke poured from the rapidly decomposing corpse beside him, and Felix moved forward, ready to intercept another attack. Despite his circumstance, Felix felt a giddy joy at returning to combat. Fighting these insects had knocked the rust off several of his Skills and set his heart racing...

Two more Prismatic Wretches skittered forward out of the darkness, and Felix cycled his Mana through his channels, watching them draw closer. The streets here in the Dust were tight, far more than anywhere else he'd seen, and the Wretches were forced to come at him single-file. A dark orb of acid gathered in his fist, one that he hid from the bugs and the crowd behind him in the folds of his borrowed cloak.

C'mon… a little closer.

The Wretches scuttled forward again, cautiously, clearly put on edge by the smoking remnant of their kin.

Closer...

Suddenly, Felix's senses screamed at him, and he threw himself forward. An ear-splitting crash shook the earth behind him, and when he risked a look, he saw an entire chimney had fallen onto the road, only inches away.

"What the—!?"

Another Wretch leaped from a nearby roof and landed on top of him, its massive ten-foot-high body easily straddling his entire form.

"WHOA!" Felix released the acid orb straight up, sending it drilling straight through the underbelly of the Wretch. The acid ate through its weaker carapace in an instant, boring straight up through its innards and out of the back of its head. Gelatinous ooze and offal poured down atop him, even as the Wretch collapsed to the side.

"Gak!" Felix choked on the foul juices, while part of him reveled in it. It tasted of sweet fury, better than the finest meal he'd had since coming to Haarwatch. It washed against his palate, sweet and savory and so damn good. Felix had a sudden burning need to devour every last scrap… but he wrestled with his Hunger, pitting his Willpower against the rising temptation and rolled slowly to his feet.

"Haah… hahaah..." Felix panted, more exhausted by his internal battle than by the damn bugs. He could feel clawed hands scratching against the fresh walls he'd erected. His teeth itched terribly. His hands—

SCREEEE!!!

The two Wretches ahead started charging at him, barreling down the narrow street, but he paid them no heed. Instead, Felix stared down at his hands, a feeling of horror ripping at his guts as he turned them over again and again. A dreadful laugh cut through his Bastion.

His hands had discolored, the skin blackening toward the tips of his fingers: dark with purpose, twisted from true, were wicked, deadly talons.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Wha—how?

Felix turned his hands, numbly noticing how they shifted from rough, inky black hide toward his normal skin further up his forearms. Small ivory studs even poked from the meat of his arm, studs that looked alarmingly like bone. A wicked laughter crawled through his ears.

What have you done!?

The Maw gave no answer, but the nearby Prismatic Wretch let out a hissing screech as it snapped out its claws. The blast of sound shocked Felix's gaze upward, away from his transformed hands. The bugs were only a dozen feet away, at best. The lead creature opened its mouth and hissed as it scuttled forward, clear, paralytic drool whipping behind it.

SCREEEEE!

Felix snarled and heaved himself into action. With a concentrated Reign of Vellus behind him, he was launched up and over the monster, high enough that he could see the two others that were also stampeding down the narrow street. His sharp Eye and high Perception saw that their claws were smeared with crimson, their carapaces streaked with bloody trails. Rage boiled in Felix's core, and his Fire Within crackled with thunder and ruinous flame.

INFLUENCE OF THE WISP!

Blue wisplight burned across the four of them as Felix sailed above, the Skill snagging each of them in its thrall.

Prismatic Wretches (x3) are Enthralled for 2 seconds!

Already passing the height of his assisted leap, Felix whipped his hands out to the sides and dual cast Shadow Whip.

Dual Casting is level 23!

Twin streaks of shadow slithered outward and latched onto the buildings to either side of the street. Felix let himself fall, the tacky material stretching a moment before rebounding him forward like a bungee cord. All three of them were still frozen, their inhuman visages a tableau of universal pain as the blue fire ate away at their bodies. Felix felt zero sympathy, only a cleansing fury that drove his next spell all the harder.

Wrack and Ruin!

The dark orb shot forward, splashing corrosive all over the lead Wretch as Felix sailed through the air toward it. The wisplight flickered out only moments before he landed atop its back. He dismissed his Shadow Whips with a thought.

SCRAAAA! SCREEE!

The massive mantis tried to spin and attack him, but hit buildings to either side of itself, the street entirely too narrow for the ten-foot-tall monstrosity to maneuver. Exactly as Felix had hoped.

Unfortunately, that did nothing to prevent the Wretch behind him from attacking.

A massive scythe whipped into Felix's torso, tearing him off the lead insect's back and sending him hurtling through the upper story windows of a residence. He exploded through the wall and slid across a room until he fetched up against the far wall. Glass and stone littered the floor, but Felix paid it no mind. With a groan, he shoved himself to his feet, splintering a wooden floorboard as he did so, and jogged back to the window.

The three Wretches had proceeded further down the street, no doubt drawn to the large gathering of survivors at the Coldforge.

"Goddamn it," Felix cursed, before he heard a soft gasp behind him.

Quick as a blink, he turned toward the noise, his hand crackling with blue lightning before he realized he had smashed into a bedroom. Two brown-haired Humans wearing bedclothes stared at him with wide, terrified eyes. Felix quickly checked that his cowl was up, and when he did, the Humans screamed and ran from the room.

They saw his hands.

"Great."

Looking back outside, Felix saw the monsters already three houses down and picking up speed. A powerful wave of fury surged from him, a rage that shouldered past all restraint and caution. The bastards had left a trail of blood and gore dripping behind them, and Felix could envision the bodies these monsters had waded through on their way here. They were monsters, made to eat and kill and feed.

No.

He leaped out of the window, his legs flexing lightly as he smashed into the cobbles. He summoned a writhing tendril of shadow into his right hand.

I'll show them a monster.

Relentless Charge!

Felix burst forward, and at the same time cast out his Shadow Whip. The branching tendrils entangled the rearmost Wretch, catching all of its right side. Channeling his mounting horror, his insides burst into agonizing flame, scouring his pathways with a burst of laser-focused hate. He impacted the insect with his claws outstretched.

And he tore it apart.

The monster's chitinous thorax sundered beneath his midnight talons, his swipe passing through its hide with barely any resistance. His momentum was so great that he kept going forward, hurtling into and through its left legs. They snapped like dry tinder, gruesomely segmented by his left-handed strike.

Relentless Charge!

He sped forward, moving past the nigh-immobilized enemy in the back, onto the second in line. He spared no thought and put no mind to tactics. He was fury and hate. Each clawed strike slashed open a body part, sending green gore splashing in all directions. A giddy sort of rush built behind the ferver, a humming in his ears that Felix's Body couldn't ignore even as it passed by mostly unnoticed.

The second Wretch flailed backward, driven away from his offensive in primal fear. Felix laughed, and in his moment of distraction, the rearmost monstrosity lunged forward. With a sickening, wet thud, it sank its needle teeth into his right shoulder before whipping his entire body into the ground. The stone cracked beneath him, and blood sprayed in vivid arcs from his gaping wound.

"RRRUAAGH!" Felix unleashed a 360-degree blast of lightning that tossed both Wretches backward several feet and himself upright. He could feel the paralytic toxins racing through his bloodstream, but he didn't care.

Status Condition: Paralyzed (Torso, Arms)

The one behind him was still alive, though it struggled to right itself after that last hit. Unable to lift his arms, Felix brute forced out the Mana pattern for Reign of Vellus, willing it to discharge even as his arms stopped working. It hit it square in the face, splitting the bug's head and bursting its left eye in a shower of goo. The Wretch hit the ground only moments before Felix himself.

You Have Killed A Prismatic Wretch!

XP Earned!

His Poison Resistance and Fire Within burned through the paralytic in his blood, but at that moment, he could feel nothing but the warm wash of green ichor as it spread around his prone body. Bits of it poured into his mouth, and Felix found himself unable, and unwilling, to spit it out.

It tastes… his Mind shuddered in disgust and desire. It tastes good.

His Fire Within sparked with gold and blue as it rapidly devoured the low-grade paralytic. With a sudden, ear-popping jolt, it cleared entirely from his system.

Poison Resistance is level 43!

Felix got to his feet, his claws trailing in the puddles of lumpy muck that surrounded him. It dripped heavily from his stolen cloak, soaking the material and dragging it down tight against his shoulders.

Go ahead, it whispered. Take your due, Felix Nevarre.

Felix fought against the voice, forcing his own hand down and away from his face. He turned back to the nearest Wretch, who only now had mustered the courage to attack. The ten-foot-tall bug skittered forward and struck simultaneously with its two claws, but Felix reached up and grabbed them.

*THOOM!*

Gobbets of offal and ichor pulsed outward in a ripple, the force of the Wretch's blow clearing the streets around them for six feet. The iridescent bastard tilted its inhuman head at Felix, clearly confused at his defiance. In response, Felix snarled, sunk his talons into its claws, and yanked. The wounded Wretch toppled forward, clearly not expecting that move. As its head came into range, Felix reared back.

Corrosive Strike!

Acid popped and sizzled against the monster's face, but it was Felix's Strength that ripped it clean off. The bug collapsed, more of that thick blood pouring out onto the road.

"Haah… haahaah… haah."

There was a screaming bug ahead of him, but Felix couldn't quite manage to care. People, Humans, Dwarves, and otherwise were shouting—something in the distance. The sound was underscored by a persistent burr that rattled his bones and—

Dammit, my teeth itch!

Green ichor pumped from the Wretches' wounds, their bodies jelly beneath their hardened chitin. The smell was gruesome, nauseating, and delicious. He licked the fluid from his face, savoring the flavor and feeling his core spark and spit and burn. His hand, the one to take off the bug's head, was covered in effluvia and lumpy gore.

Take what's yours. Take it all. The wind blew hard in the night, pushing those screams and shrieks far away. Claim it.

Felix plunged in, taking huge, ravenous bites of the putrid organs he pulled from the puddles around him.

YESSSS...!

His teeth itched more furiously than ever, but each bite soothed it until he felt a strange weakness in his jaw. Quite suddenly, the sound of a mess load of dice rattled against the cobbles. Felix absently looked down, and saw almost three dozen white shapes sitting in the ooze.

His teeth.

Tentatively, Felix felt at his face under the cowl, pushing a taloned finger to his mouth.

Fangs...

A wave of horror climbed up his throat, bile and terror intermingled. He vomited out onto the street.

Then the last Wretch hissed at him and charged, swinging its mantis claws as it thundered through the remnants of its brethren. It smashed its jagged pincers into him, throwing Felix into and through another Wretch corpse. The body exploded into gore and greasy, black smoke in equal measure, and Felix rolled twice before finding his feet.

The Wretch was already on top of him.

Felix screamed, the constant waves of rage and horror overwhelming him. A tempest exploded to life in his core, an inferno crowned by a sea of lightning. He caught the next blow and bashed the follow-up, pulling himself into and onto the insect's massive body. The tall neck of the bastard reared back, pulling away from his sharp talons, but Felix dug in.

SCREEEAKKK!

He slashed and gouged, blow after blow rending the tough chitin. The Wretch threw itself against a building, scraping Felix against the stone and wood, but his tenacious fury was boundless. He screamed and tore further. His eyes burned like twin stars, distant storms turned deadly, and he brought his mouth down onto the Prismatic Wretch's neck. He tore it apart.

You Have Killed A Prismatic Wretch!

XP Earned!

Ravenous Tithe!

The dead Wretch, the last of the three, turned to oily smoke instantly. The smoke roiled and congealed, pulled toward Felix's throat as if diving toward him, a pillar of oiled essence. Like liquid darkness. Great swaths of discordant noise blared through his Mind, his Body, rattling his very soul.

Felix felt overwhelmed, stuffed completely with the Wretch's Mana. The strident strains of creaking disharmony pulled at his core and chest, his skin feeling close to splitting while a cackling madness shuddered across his mind.

CHIRR-CHIRRUP!

Suddenly and perfectly, a bright chirp cut through the noise.

A sharp, persistent call that echoed across the tender firmament of his Spirit. The buzzing flared in volume, but the lyrical call was unfazed and unstoppable. It drowned out the burr of discord, silencing the rage-fueled screaming that Felix hadn't even been aware of, that nonetheless ripped across his Bastion of Will like a hurricane.

Quiet.

The eye of the storm.

A feathery head nudged his leg, hard, and a great wing wrapped around his shoulders.

Pit… Pit...

Here, he chirruped. Here.

And the light returned.

* * *

Eldrunna peered into the night, toward the chaos that had just gone silent at the end of the street. She was among her neighbors, citizens of the Dust who had fled from the night terrors. She gripped her sword tightly, drawn and held defensively against another onslaught of those giant insects.

The Dwarven woman was not a master of her arms and armor, but she was a trueborn daughter of the Undercity, and she would not falter.

"Rafny, did you see it?"

"Yeah," Rafny grunted from nearby. Eldrunna couldn't see her through the press of bodies, but she knew her wife would be close. Any chance to wield her weapons. "I saw it. Damn near impossible not to."

"Well?"

Rafny appeared next to her, emerging through the fear-stricken crowd almost like a ghost. Eldrunna envied her Agility. Rafny hefted her flanged mace and scowled.

"The beasts were Marked. A Master-Tier Mark."

Eldrunna cursed, for once entirely unhappy to be right. If the monsters were Marked, then something big was on the horizon. Something that would spell trouble for the Dust, or worse. "What about the fighter? You still see him?"

Rafny scoffed. "Can't you?"

"You know your eyes see farther than mine ever will." Eldrunna smiled and pecked Raf's cheek. "All I see is smoke and corpses."

Rafny grumbled, and her eyes flared a bright yellow-green as Night Eye took effect. "He's still there. Still standing too, now with some sort of creature next to ‘em..." She suddenly groaned. "Blood and ash."

"What?"

"The Guilders have arrived."

* * *

"Easy people, easy," Aric murmured. "It's all corpses."

They stepped carefully through the slick cobbles as they followed a trail of gruesome death. The trail had led them through much of the Dust Quarter, but seemed to end here. The four Guilders who accompanied Aric were all freshly minted Tin Ranks, his new team for the next Wall shift. This breach had meant they were getting a crash course in urban combat, though they had only encountered a single monster, and that one was nearly half-dead. It had been covered in some sort of acid.

One of the Tin Ranks stepped on a thick piece of entrails and nearly slipped, but they caught themselves on their staff. Aric couldn't remember her name, only that she was handy with magic. Deeba? Darla?

"Something tore through these things," she gasped, righting herself. "Who could do this?"

"Silver Rank?" One of the others suggested, the burly one with the neckbeard. Kevin or something. One of the others scoffed.

"Why would there be a Silver Ranker in the Dust, Kelvin?" Another boy, though far more slender. A Dexterity specialist, Aric recalled. "Don't know why we're here, either," he muttered, clearly not expecting Aric to hear him.

"Focus," said Aric in his best 'I'm the leader so shut up' voice. "We still don't know if there are more of these Prismatic Wretches around—"

A sharp growling sound came from just ahead, a sound Aric hadn't heard in months. But if the Wretches had somehow breached the wall, then why not a Chimera?

"Hold steady!" Aric hissed. "Enemy ahead."

The four Tin Ranks lifted their weapons and leveled them in the general direction Aric indicated, but just about froze still. None of them discharged a Skill blindly, so Aric counted that as a win. He rolled his eyes and made to gesture to them, but then the growl was accompanied by a sudden, terrifying laughter.

It pierced the night like a stiletto to the heart, and Aric's eyes caught something that made his blood run cold.

Through the greasy smoke of vanquished monsters, a figure in a tattered cloak and deep cowl hunched over something else hidden in its shadow. Two great wings spread outward behind it, six feet wide if they were a span, colored crimson and black. Eyes like cold stars flared in its darkness, and the laughter only grew more wild...

Then the laughter was gone and so was the creature.

The smoke cleared, and the street before them was empty. Aric felt himself breathe again, though he hadn't realized he'd been holding it.

"Blood and ashes, what was that!?" cried the thin boy. "My Analyze got nothing but question marks."

"Those eyes, they were terrible," gasped the girl, clenching her staff close. "Captain? Captain, what was that?"

Aric didn't reply. He couldn't. He hadn't been able to Analyze it either, and a cold feeling in his gut whispered why, mad though it was.

"...Spread out. Find out where it went." He pointed to the left and right. "We need to clean up any more of these monsters."

His team did as they were told, though the slender one gave him some annoyed looks. Aric didn't even mind, his thoughts still caught up in the moment.

The Elders need to know.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Eliza DuFont gazed pensively at the sky, dark but still smeared with a reddish haze along the western horizon. From the Spire, she could clearly see the Wall, and her enhanced Perception could even make out the specks of Guilders rotating through their shifts. It was hours past midnight, and the attack had petered out some time ago, but those on the Wall weren't taking any risks.

Not anymore, at least, she mused with a finger tapping her lips. What a catastrophic screw-up.

The view from this window was limited to the western quarter, but she could dimly sense the rage and grief that suffused her city. Many people had died this night. Too many.

Eliza turned away from the dark and took a steadying breath. Behind her, the others were mingling tiredly before this impromptu council session began. Regis held a cup of steaming kaf in her hand as she spoke seriously with Holt and Latvere, the two of them looking like death warmed over. Teine and Fairbanks, the shortest and tallest of them respectively, were murmuring something to one another and trading written reports. Hyde, at least, was the only one beside DuFont herself who looked like he'd seen a piece of the battle. His hands and face were speckled with red, while his formal robes were clearly tossed over a suit of armor.

DuFont nodded at the rotund elder, and he sent a wary scowl back. The scowl became a begrudging nod as Hyde noticed the gore flecking Eliza's gauntlets as well.

At the head of the table, Elder Fairbanks raised his hand and let out a pulse of magelight. Cool green light splashed against the ceiling and drew their attention. "Let us begin."

With a quiet shuffling, all seven of the Elders made their way to their seats. Eliza eyed the pale white doors, unblemished now despite being shattered to pieces just a few days ago. The council chamber had been rapidly repaired after Hyde's paranoid display. To think, the old boor thought they had been spied upon.

Eliza scoffed to herself.

There was little reason to believe it true; the Spire was extremely difficult to reach, unless one already had access. And even if someone were to infiltrate the halls, the council room was warded against eavesdropping from outside. One would have to breach the chamber itself to listen in, an act any one of the Elders would have noticed.

Out of amusement, she had looked into it, but there had been no evidence of skulduggery. There were some faint traces of unidentifiable Mana in the hall, but that could have easily been from a passing guard or even one of the Elders. Hyde's blast had flushed the environment with his own explosive blend of fire and water Mana, the chaotic energies of which had scrubbed anything else out. Not even her Tracking Skill had found anything.

Either Hyde was a fool, or the Sworn had been contracted against them… and DuFont knew the latter wasn't possible. She had made sure of that.

"Where is Governor Westworth?" asked Regis, arcing an eyebrow. "Was he not summoned?"

"Asleep in his manor, no doubt," groused Holt through his wild beard. He didn't bother to be quiet either. "He's of no use here, anyway."

The others all grunted or nodded in agreement. The Governor was a figurehead at best. The Protector's Guild held a Charter and city Authority, provisional though it may have been.

"First order of business." Fairbanks cleared his throat and tapped his forefinger on the hard table, the sound more like metal than flesh. He turned to Elder Latvere with tired eyes. "How stands the Wall?"

Latvere smoothed back his pale blonde hair. "The Wall survives, though it has taken some damage. Elder Teine and Elder Holt's people are already on it, rapidly fixing stress cracks in the sigaldry."

"The beasts damaged the Wall?" Hyde's deep voice was incredulous. Eliza could almost see his mutton chops bristling. "That's never happened."

"Not often, but it has occurred. We fought against roughly three hundred foes this night, each one beyond what we would term First Formation for monsterkind, or Tier I. These were strong enemies, stronger than we've fought in the past, if not as numerous." Latvere's face was drawn as he looked at the Elders. "The Tin Ranks who man the Wall were barely able to hurt them, and we had to rely on Iron and Bronze to do any significant damage. We've suffered a number of losses, though the final report hasn't come back yet."

"The monsters. What were they?" Fairbanks asked.

"Insect type, a mutated variation on the Greater Mantis. Predominantly Prismatic Wretches, but there were fifteen Prismatic Lords, known as Greater Wretches." Latvere gritted his teeth and nodded at Teine. "The Elder of Spirit may know more."

Everyone's focus turned to the silver-haired man, who raised a hand. "Not as of yet. They've been mutated by the excess Mana in the Foglands, but the how of it is uncertain. My people are looking into it."

"Damned magic. What is happening out there?" Hyde muttered. "What did that woman do?"

Eliza smiled inwardly, not missing the Elder of Body's sour words. Indeed. What did you do Magda, you oaf?

Fairbanks rapped his knuckle on the table again. "Focus. Elder Latvere, you said portions of the Wall were damaged. Is that how they got in?"

Latvere nodded and swept a hand on the table before them. An illusory image of the city rose from the script circle inscribed there, shining with a ghostly yellow light. Sections of the Wall lit up brighter than the rest. "They breached here and here after several Prismatic Lords assaulted the same portions of our Wall. The Wretches flew into the city, at least forty of them. They had wings, built for short-range flight, but more than effective to reach our less-defended Quarters. Most landed near the Wall, but a few hit the Dust and Crafters’ Quarters."

"Casualties?" Elder Fairbanks turned his mild eyes to Hyde, who growled.

"Too damn many. The Guilders were more or less ready to face monsters in the Wall Quarter, but the others shouldn't have stood a chance." Hyde grunted and pointed at the illusory map. "I've reports of upward of six hundred dead, mostly in the Crafters’ area. The Dust, though… there was a lot of damage to buildings, but the casualties have been surprisingly low."

"I've heard reports of quite the strange happenings in the Dust," Elder Teine said before Elder Hyde cut him off.

"Wild imaginings of exhausted Guilders," he grunted, slapping a meaty fist onto the table. "There's no reason to believe—"

*SLAM*

The pristine white doors, just so recently repaired, were abruptly thrown open. The new sigil lock (an insistence of Elder Hyde's) was sundered as if made of paper. All those present leaped to their feet, save for Elder Fairbanks. A slew of Mana lights bloomed across the room, Skills held ready, only to fade as two men strolled into the council chamber.

The one in the lead was tall, over six and a half feet, just as tall as Elder Fairbanks, though far more slender. He was wearing elaborate plate armor, enameled white and decorated with delicate gold filigree across the pauldrons, vambrace, and cuisses. A tunic edged in gold thread and emblazoned with a golden starburst across the chest finished the look, though it looked dingy and travel-worn, as did his bright red cloak. A complicated helm was tucked beneath the man's right arm, displaying his hawkish features and graying temples. His face was severe and clenched in fury.

Katan, Eliza snarled to herself. She itched to loose one of her Skills on the interfering bastard, but common sense reigned her in. Khorun Katan, Master Inquisitor of the Inviolate Inquisition, second only to the Grandmaster herself, and she answered directly to the Hierophant. Nothing but calamity would result in attacking him, accident or no.

"Master Inquisitor," began Elder Fairbanks, still seated at the head of the table. "Welcome. I was not aware you had returned to Haarwatch."

"Only just," Katan said, curt as always. His face was a thunderhead as he looked between them all. "Imagine my surprise as I return to your city after weeks in the Foglands, only to find it having barely survived a siege. What happened?"

The Elders were silent for a moment, and Fairbanks spread his arms with a tired smile. "Please, take a seat, Master Inquisitor."

"I'm quite fine where I am, Guilder," he tugged off his gauntlets and hung them by his belt, directly next to a saber that Eliza's eyes widened to behold. Her Analyze Skill pinged it as extremely powerful, though the Inquisitor's Spirit muffled the full details. "I have gathered the bare facts from your people, and I do not like what I am hearing. Monsters breaching your Wall and attacking the citizenry? After all, I have been told that the Wall will repel anything the Foglands can vomit forth, that its enchanted orichalcum is powerful enough to last Ages. Apparently not."

Eliza could hear Elder Hyde's teeth grinding from across the table. Regis placed a discreet hand on his shoulder. The Inquisitor, whether he noticed or not, did not stop.

"On the way here, I saw devastation through the Quarters, including multiple fires. But did I see your precious Guilders walking the streets? Tending the unfortunate?" The man sneered at them, his sharp features all the sharper for his disgust. "No. Not one. This is unacceptable, High Elder. It is gross negligence."

"We have teams out there now! Sweeping the Quarters, looking for missing threats—!" Hyde bristled.

"How was your Wall breached? The enchantments reach several miles into the sky. Whose head should roll for their incompetence?" The Inquisitor's voice was quiet, and there was a power there that everyone stopped to hear.

No one answered.

Then, an undeniable pulse of energy poured from the man, a near-visible wave of aggression that flowed from a Skill and his Spirit. A blinding brilliance was conjured behind his head, a corona of light that stabbed outward. Eliza, as everyone else, was pressed hard into her seat. Katan held out a hand, and his companion, a dark-eyed man with a sharply trimmed goatee, handed him a scroll. He unrolled it and held it out toward the council.

"This, Elders of the Protectors' Guild, is your City Charter.'' His voice raised in volume as several Elders, Eliza among them, gasped. "It details your rights, your privileges, and determines your authority over Haarwatch. The Hierophant has trusted this Charter to me, and if I deem it necessary, I will tear it to pieces."

He glanced at all of their faces, by turns shocked, appalled, and enraged. He did not seem to gain an ounce of satisfaction from it, the grim set of his eyes and mouth never changing. The light behind him faded away as his Spirit eased back. "Now, I'll ask again: how was your Wall breached?"

"A, ah, concentrated assault, Master Inquisitor," managed Latvere, his eyes darting between Fairbanks and Katan. The High Elder nodded, and Latvere continued. "The Prismatic Wretches made up the bulk of the attack, but there were a number of Lords among them. These Prismatic Lords sundered the sigaldry in two places, allowing a number of Wretches to fly through."

The map of the city flickered back on and the parts of the Wall Latvere had pointed out before were highlighted. The Inquisitor stepped forward and placed a hand on the script circle, spinning the projection and zooming in on a piece of the wall itself. Eliza raised an eyebrow, impressed. The Inquisitor was adroit at scriptwork; surprising for a man who hated magic.

But I suppose scriptwork isn't Sorcery, she thought, scathingly.

"Coordination like that is not normally seen in Tier I monsters. This sigaldry..."

"Yes," agreed Latvere. "The creatures were frighteningly accurate."

Eliza saw Teine lean forward in interest, his eyes flashing between the Inquisitor and the model. He met her gaze and smiled. Eliza smiled back and flexed her gauntleted hands just out of sight. She could tell the bastard just had another idea, likely regarding his damn experiments. The last thing she wanted to be concerned about was what fresh horror his team would requisition.

"I have also heard tale of another monster, one seen in the Dust Quarter this night." Katan turned his gaze across the table. "People on the street are talking. One… creature killed fifteen of these Prismatic Wretches and protected your people. They weren't a Guilder, and they certainly weren't one of mine. Do you know of whom I speak?"

Teine perked up even further, his easy smile stretching wider with excitement. "We heard. One of our Guilders saw him, and now they all know about it. They're calling him the—"

"I've heard. Ridiculous," Katan snorted. "This Guilder, did they see his name?"

"Unknown," shrugged Teine.

"Race? Level?" Katan pressed.

"All unknown," the Elder of Spirit sighed. "We assume he is wearing a powerful artifact to so completely hide his information."

"It's all rumors, and idiotic ones at that," scoffed Hyde. "Our man gave us a description, but it's the worst sort of tripe. Aric can hold a sword, but he sees Chimeras in every shadow. I don't know why you're concerned about this fool—"

"Tell me." The words weren't a question, that same pressure shone off of the Inquisitor. Hyde only paused a moment before rattling off the details, each one more fanciful than the next. Eliza would have laughed had the Inquisitor not been so intent. Claws? Wings? Eyes made of blue fire? An intelligent Chimera?

Idiotic doesn't cover it.

"...Reports from the citizens are scattered at best, but the eyes are a constant. Blue and glowing. That and some sort of lightning Skill," Hyde finished rattling off, his memory impressive despite his dedication to his Body above all else.

The Inquisitor's aide leaned forward and whispered something in his ear for a moment. It was so soft that none of the Elders even caught a syllable. Katan fingered his chin before his attention sharpened again, and his eyes bored into the Elder of Body like daggers.

"The Inquisition will take over searching for this person. Report any findings to my undersecretary with due haste." Katan dismissed the matter, apparently done with the topic. He leaned in closer.

"Now, show me how the monsters attacked. Show me everything."

Eliza repressed a groan that threatened to become a yawn. It was going to be a long night.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The darkness burned. It roiled, clouds of black grown heavy with a baleful promise. A wind grew from nothing, a thickness to the air that felt—

—Oily, slick—

Clicking segments brushed against his legs, and he shook them off. The darkness resolved into shades of gray and bruised purple, tinted reality tainted by miasma. The thick wind swirled, gained heft, a soggy weight that dragged him down.

Below the surface.

He drifted. Beneath the waves, beneath the world. Where things crawled in the everlasting night. Unfurled, unseen in the liquid shadow. There was no sound, no sight.

Something bumped his legs again.

Ten thousand eyes lit up the deeps, malevolence in their rapidly approaching gazes. He sensed spines and sharp, chitinous legs slicing, their forms undulating through the dark water. Only a flex of his Will, and they were blasted away. The lightning of the Reign of Vellus went wild beneath the surface. It burst from him in a savage storm that was virtually unimpeded by the acid around him. It spread like the roots of an ancient tree, fine lines of blue energy branching outward to strike everything in reach.

But it wasn't the lightning that ravaged the approaching horrors; it never had been. The kinetic force behind Reign of Vellus shattered those nearby, churning the sea into a chaotic maelstrom of silt and monstrous effluvia.

More followed.

More.

He was rage. He was unbridled hatred. And he was Hungry.

Creatures fled before his power, things he didn't recognize. Shelled and segmented, covered in fins and spindly legs. Lights flickered in the depths, gathering far beneath him like a sea of stars.

Without warning, the sea became sky, and the clouds reemerged. Thunder boomed and rattled all around him, the shattering cry of vengeful monstrosities. He hovered above a vast city, the lights having resolved into a million points of illumination on the streets miles below. It was surrounded by mountains and draped in the velvet coverings of darkest night.

A titanic roar, and a mountain rose from the dark city. Wreathed in fire but impossible to see, it was teeth and claws and ten thousand swirling blue-green eyes.

A new sound ripped through the air, a staccato burst of explosions. Fireballs the size of city blocks screamed toward him, heavy with heat and death, seeking his heart. He roared.

And everything was obliterated by azure lightning.

* * *

Vision streaked by jagged lines of white, he crouched low. The ground was soft, plants and soil and frequent rains having made for treacherous footing, but his people were nothing if not stable. His broodmate chittered nearby and stabbed the earth with her razor-sharp legs.

Threat. Trees. Fear.

More concepts than words, they flagged a dark source of instinct in his brain, and he swiveled toward the nearby copse of trees. His vision was faceted, wide, and could spot the heat boiling off a Mana Vole at a thousand paces.

So why did he not sense the terror beneath?

Hands of hardened shell burst from the soft earth below, grabbing at two of his legs with a frightful grip. A body followed, something entirely too large, nearly as big as him. He scrambled, scything out with his iridescent claws, but the creature brought him low. They hit the earth with a dull thud, and the creature swung atop him. It reached out and grasped its heaving abdomen and twisted and—

* * *

Felix lurched awake in the dark.

Frantically, he glanced around, but it was too dark to see. He experienced a half second of rising terror before activating his Manasight. The ambient Mana of the room pulsed into visibility, a sharp contrast that made his eyes ache.

He was in his room at the Drum Tank. How? When did I—?

The memory resurfaced, slightly hazy as if viewed through a dirty glass. Of himself sneaking across the Dust Quarter and through his own window. Of collapsing in his room as Pit materialized next to him.

Felix looked to his right, wincing as he saw the state of the window and, indeed, the room itself. The casing around the small window had been cracked and torn half-way from the wall, no doubt due to his forceful entry. Pieces of wood covered the floor, and the bed he was on was no longer even supported by its posts. The thin mattress and board now laid directly on the ground.

Sitting up, Felix noticed that Pit was dozing peacefully next to him. The tenku cuddled against his warmth, like the puppy he was, and a small huff came from his agape beak. Drawing strength from that peace, Felix dared to lift his hands.

They were… absolutely normal.

He brushed his hands up his forearms, noticing all the bone spurs and discoloration had vanished. Then he shoved his fingers into his mouth, checking his teeth. They were blessedly flat and small.

Holy shit, they grew back. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the wall. A shudder crept across his shoulders as the memory of them falling out replayed in his mind. Thank god.

Better yet, Felix felt good. Without pains or aches, and when he checked his Health it was completely full.

Health: 864/864

Felix eyed the dark sky through his window. If he had to guess, it was coming close to dawn, so he'd only been asleep a handful of hours. His Health regeneration wasn't that fast, so why...?

His notifications were blinking. Bracing himself, Felix toggled them open.

You Have Gained 1 Level!

You Are Now Level 27!

+2 PER! +2 VIT! +1 END! +2 INT! +3 WIL! +4 AGL! +4 DEX!

You Have 30 Unused Stat Points!

Your Companion Pit Has Gained 1 Level!

He Is Now Level 18!

+2 PER! +2 VIT! +1 END! +2 INT! +3 WIL! +4 AGL! +4 DEX!

New Title!

Indomitable (Rare) - You've stood alone against an incursion of forces at least ten levels higher than you and won! Requires Unconquered, Iron Will, and Face the Charge Titles. +6 INE, AFI, REI

New Title!

Unleash the Beast (Unique) - You've taken a step toward unveiling the power your new bond with the Maw has imprinted upon you. Beware the Path you tread, young Nym. +10% REI, +20 VIT

New Skill!

What Dwells Beneath (Unique), Level 1 - You have learned to shift your physical form into something… else. Boosts STR, VIT, and END during shift. Stat boost, pain, and speed of transformation increases with Skill level. Duration of transformation increases moderately with Skill level.

Felix's heart hammered at the rush of System energy, but his concentration burned past it. The minor orchestral swell was nothing compared to the anxiety that gripped him. Aside from the Indomitable Title, he had earned a Title and a Skill relating directly to his gruesome transformation.

Fuck, he scrubbed at his eyes. The Title's even named similar to the one I got for trapping the Maw. Cage the Beast.

Did this mean it was getting out? That the Maw would take him over? Felix searched his mind for any trace of it beyond his Bastion of Will, but found nothing. Fire Within illuminated his channels and pathways, a calm rush of blue-white fire that pulsed through him like a second heartbeat. Everything was normal.

Except that I half-turned into a hellbeast during a very public fight. Felix disentangled himself from the sheets and stood. He wanted to pace, but the room wasn't nearly big enough for it. With a frustrated sigh, he settled for leaning against the far wall.

He considered his new Title and Skill, both of which were Unique, a rarity he hadn't yet encountered. They were both ominous for a number of reasons. The Title, Unleash the Beast, even went so far as to warn him.

The Skill seemed to be a sort of shapeshifting ability, which meant that maybe he'd be able to control this thing. That it wouldn't just happen again like it did the previous night. Felix grimaced at the idea of increased pain during these transformations, but if he had his way, he'd leave it at level one and never use it again.

I only hope it hasn't changed me already. The bloodlust I felt last night was— Felix's thoughts stuttered to a stop as his mind made an intuitive leap. Oh no. No no no.

He opened his Status and checked his Race.

Race: Nym*

*Further Bloodlines Have Been Found. Processing 30%

Fear's grip on Felix's heart loosened slightly when he saw his Race hadn't changed yet. But it tightened back up when he noticed how much that progress bar had jumped. What did it mean? Was his transformation a part of this? He had questions.

And he knew where to find answers.

* * *

With a strange inward lean, Felix fell into a dark expanse. It was so similar to the Void that, for a moment, he froze in terror. It was the brilliant, blue-white light of his core—a ball of flame and crackling lightning—that set him at ease. It hovered in the center of his core space, a sun in the middle of a spinning solar system.

And that's what he saw: etched patterns of light, tightly bound into rough orbs that revolved around his burning core. Swirls of light, of Mana, flowed between Skills and core, drawn into the passages that led from the space and up into his body. Those were his channels, where Felix's power circulated through his flesh and could be released from one of nine Mana Gates. Palms, elbows, knees, feet, and the base of his skull. He took a breath as he drifted down, power rotating through him. All but his skull Gate were able to be closed, flexed like a muscle, to increase his overall control of Mana and to filter the kinds of power he absorbed.

Except, as an Unbound, he wasn't limited to one or two types of Mana as many others were. The book he'd been reading the other day had conveyed the most common practice, that one must attune to an 'Element' at the Mote Stage. One or two were common, though the book suggested some diluted their abilities by attuning to multiple. The Mote Stage was when his Fire Within first activated, when his pathways were forged beneath his skin and shortly after. Yet Felix had not done any of that. Instead, his Mana Gates had been locked open, gleefully sucking in any and all Mana around him while he learned Skills and spells of such diverse variety that it would have beggared a normal Human. Perhaps even a normal Nymean.

The Maw, jerk though it was, had explained that he could use any Element he decided to. The Mana in his core could change from dusty brown earth to purple-white ice with little to no loss in potency or speed. It was an advantage that no one else enjoyed, he had been told. His Mana Gates would convert his raw power into whatever his Skills needed.

Felix shook his head and attempted to focus. He was still too groggy after... everything. He needed to focus. He needed answers.

His core space resembled nothing so much as a spinning solar system with his blue-white core of flames and lightning surrounded by slowly revolving patterns of light. Each pattern of light represented a Skill he owned, but they were fuzzy and indistinct unless he drew close to them. The dark between the Skills was even cloudier, filled with unnameable debris that he'd been told needed to be cleansed from his core. The Maw had offered to teach him how, to guide him, but Felix couldn't trust it. So Felix fell further until the Skills around him were as large as houses. Some of the higher-leveled ones, like his Bastion of Will, were far larger and more akin to an entire city block. It was toward that Skill that he gravitated, falling into its twisting pattern with a flash of blinding light—

—and through to a perfect blue sky. His Bastion of Will spread out below him like a medieval citadel, the walls thick and tall and made of a dark stone. In the distance, that acidic sea roared against a pebbly beach, and a dark smear against the horizon was a forest that had sprung up at some point.

Felix took a moment to marvel at it. He had a tiny world here in his Skill, somehow, though he knew it was all some sort of mental construct. The Visualization and Actualization Stages of his core space—the Stages he was hovering between—were where he could imagine his core space with greater fidelity and then access it almost like an actual realm. The how of it was bewildering, but perhaps no less so than summoning acid from thin air or bending iron with his bare hands. He shook his head as he landed atop the lone tower of his Bastion, swiftly heading down the spiral staircase that bored through its center.

He had things to do.

The lowest level of his Bastion was a short hallway filled with smokeless torches. The hall ended in a smooth, black stone, featureless and seamless. With a minor effort of will, the stone shifted into a classic jail cell door, bars and all. Within was a small space, three feet by three feet exactly, too small to lie down or even move much. It was completely uncomfortable for any sane being.

The Maw stood in the exact center. It wore the face of Lhel, a Nymean woman nearly two thousand years dead, but it was stretched taut against an underlying skeleton. The Maw appeared to not have eaten in weeks, and its face was so hollow its cheekbones seemed sharp enough to cut glass. It wore a tattered dress that flowed and rippled in a nonexistent breeze, and its limbs were little more than bones wrapped in parchment skin. It looked terrible.

Why, then, was it smiling?

"What have you done, Felix Nevarre?" the Maw cooed, its eyes going wide with feigned shock. "Have you been naughty?"

Felix growled and stepped closer to the cell door. "What did you do?"

"I?" The Maw placed a gangly hand against its bony chest. "I have been stuck here, where you so graciously incarcerated me. Thank you for that, by the way. Truly a magnificent palace you've made for me."

Felix snorted. "You deserve even less. Were I able to scrub you from my mind altogether, I'd have done it in an instant."

The Maw merely smiled at him, but its eyes were wide. There were no pupils, but Felix could feel its intense regard.

"What have you done to my Race? What are these 'bloodlines'?" Felix demanded, not for the first time.

"Winding are the currents of fate, they run deep and dark. Thick as blood." A rictus grin plastered itself on its stolen face, and the Maw spread its arms wide. "Change is coming. The earth quivers with it! Can you not feel it, boy?" Felix didn't answer, and the Maw didn't care. "Same as the gnawing hunger in your belly. The howling beast that sits in your soul and wants out, out, out."

A shrill cackle bubbled up from the Maw's throat.

"This is just the start, Felix Nevarre." A smile, flat teeth white and too big for its cadaverous face. "It gets so much better from here."

It took less than a second to reseal the monster back in its cage and flee his Bastion. Less than a second before Felix was gasping for true air. Before he stared into the dark sky, through a broken window he was sure he'd have to pay for… but then, Felix was far more worried about the bills he didn't yet know about.

Because sooner or later, every bill came due.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Restless, Felix went outside.

The sun was a faint hint of light above the mountains, but the city was slow to rise. He could hear others shifting and groaning in neighboring rooms, the restless sleep of those soon to wake. He moved as quietly as he could through the inn, but his heavy tread was murder on wooden floors. They creaked and groaned beneath him, as if he weighed twice his current size. He was generally a fan of his increased density and weight caused by his Moving Mountain Body, but at times, it did not do him any favors.

A few patrons were up and eating in the common room, though Ignatius was apparently still asleep. A slender Elven woman was tending the bar, moving with a practiced efficiency that suggested great familiarity with the job. Either that, Felix mused, or a high Dexterity.

The woman met his eyes, but Felix turned away and headed through the back hall just past the bar. The hallway led to a number of private dining rooms, places where someone could pay extra to have a warded conversation. The way Jacinda explained it, the rooms were inscribed with sigil circles that kept sounds extremely muffled… some of the time.

They were faulty, more often than not, and he doubted Jacinda had the coin to get them repaired. Even just providing the Mana for the sigil arrays was exhausting for most people, he'd come to understand, and a patron had to pay for that. As he passed the doors and into the rear of the inn, Felix wondered how he'd compare in recharging such things.

My Mana regen is pretty good, far higher thanks to my Resonance and high Willpower. He stepped through the back door and into a wide open space featuring some pens, a coop, and a large stables. The area was mostly empty, though he sensed some movement in the darkened recesses of the stables. Maybe I can get paid to recharge stuff.

He might not need the money currently, but Felix was sure he would in time. Plus, the prospect of being useful was appealing to him. Aside from killing monsters, he realized he had no marketable skills in this semi-medieval world.

Looking around the yard, Felix noticed it was mostly packed dirt with patches of weeds sprouting joyfully in the less used corners. It was fairly large, perhaps thirty or forty feet long by a hundred feet wide, though the fence and paddock cut into that space. Some small feather-covered creatures pecked around the coop, a strange, dinosaur-like cross between chicken and reptile. Called Daika, they were no bigger than his head and weak at level 2 or 3. The paddock next to them housed a few heavier beasts, covered in shaggy brown coats and with a series of stumpy horns coming from their skulls in a crown shape. They were otherwise similar to a cow or maybe a yak. One regarded Felix with calm, dull eyes as they chewed a mouthful of cud.

Farm animals. Huh. Having grown up in a city, Felix was only vaguely familiar with things like cows and chickens and pigs. Everything he'd learned on the subject came from books or TV, and what he'd learned in the Void wasn't really applicable on the Continent. It's nothing like Bateo's voidbeast farm, that's for sure.

The rest of the space was clear, perfect for some morning exercises. Felix found himself full of energy, despite the night's activities, and needed to burn it off. Plus, his Physical Conditioning Skill was lagging behind, and that only leveled when he really pushed himself.

Felix began to run, doing a few laps around the yard. It was wide enough that he didn't get dizzy from the turning, but was too small to really push his speed. He jogged to a stop a few minutes later, not even winded. His Running Skill and Stamina regeneration were both high enough that this level of effort was nothing.

Felix wracked his brain. He had never trained his body back on Earth, either because he was too busy or lacked motivation, and now that his Primary Stats had risen so high, it seemed his casual jogging and jumping routine was not going to be enough. He'd already noticed that his stats rarely improved after fighting anymore, only bumping by a point when he'd well and truly pushed himself.

Felix eyed his surroundings, putting his powerful mind behind the problem. While Intelligence increases hadn't made him smarter, per se, it did make his cognition faster. Felix thought about what he knew of training, and embarrassingly, what came to mind were a series of montages from various sports movies. Silly though it was, it did spark an idea.

I might not have any slabs of beef to box, he thought as he walked to the side of the stables and picked up a hefty, curved piece of wood. But I can certainly run while carrying this.

It was a shoulder yoke, the kind people used at Renaissance Festivals to carry water around. There were even a couple huge buckets attached to hooks on either side. Near the yoke, there were a series of empty troughs, and Felix's sharp Perception noted that they extended further into the stables. Nearly all of them were low.

So he got to work. Clearly the Drum Tank got its water from the fountain in the square out front, so Felix slung the yoke over his shoulders and went out. There was a smattering of folk moving about, but no one was using the fountain. Felix jogged over and carefully filled up the buckets, each of which easily held three dozen gallons. Filling them up and setting them down again was easy enough for his Strength, but the challenge came when he had to hook them both to the yoke and stand up.

Here goes nothing. With a soft grunt, Felix stood up. The water sloshed a bit, but he was able to steady them after a moment. Slowly, he began to walk back.

Felix's steps were careful at first, not wanting to jostle the water out of the buckets, but picked up speed as his confidence grew. The weight of the yoke was quite a bit, several hundred pounds at least, and it dug into his shoulders and neck. Even so, Felix made it back to the stables within ten minutes and dumped the water into the nearest troughs. The water nearly filled the five foot containers, and he nodded to himself.

Let's get to it. He smiled to himself. Faster this time, maybe.

So it went. As the sun began lightening the sky into a bright blue, Felix continued filling the buckets and refilling the horse troughs. Time blurred, his mind clear for the first time since waking, occupied only by the effort and strain.

By the end, Felix wasn't entirely sure how many he'd carried, just that he'd managed to reduce his time between the fountain and troughs to a single minute. It had been extremely challenging to not spill any water, forcing him to use muscles he hadn't known he'd possessed and rely on his Dexterity more than ever before. His Agility, too, was strained by the situation, forced to push himself just enough to move quickly, but not so much that the counter-force sent water spilling out. Felix still hadn't gotten a true reckoning of his stats as compared to the average person in the Continent, but he knew he was leagues beyond many. Hitting the First Threshold on his Primary Stats at his level was something clearly unusual, so once more Haarwatchers filled the streets, Felix made sure to slow up a bit.

Setting down the last two buckets near the stables, Felix met the eye of an impressed worker and nodded. "Here ya go. Some more water if you need it."

The man, a Human with dirty blond hair and scraggly sideburns, laughed. "I think we're good, friend."

Felix grinned a little sheepishly and wiped the sweat off his brow. He turned and realized that a number of the servers and kitchen staff were lounging on the back deck of the inn, watching him. Humans, Dwarves, and even that Elven bartender were there, peering at him above railings and through the posts of the covered porch.

"Ya finished, son?" A gruff, elderly Dwarf asked him, a pipe clenched in his mouth. Felix smiled ruefully and scratched his head.

"I suppose I am."

"Haha!" cried a Human man next to the Dwarf, pumping his fist into the air. Everyone else groaned. "I called it! Two and a quarter glasses! Pay up, Kivi!"

The Dwarf (Kivi, apparently) grumbled through clenched teeth and slapped a pile of copper coins into the young man's open hand. A few went pinging to the ground, and the Human scrambled after them, to the laughter of the others.

"If you're done with that, I've got a few chores that need doin’!" Shouted a Dwarven woman among the workers. She had a pile of auburn hair and a noticeably buxom figure. Her eyes were on Felix and her smile was wide and predatory. The Elven bartender laughed lightly.

"Keep it in your pants, Hendra!" Light shouts and laughter followed, though the Dwarven woman didn't look upset in the least. The bartender gestured to Felix. "C'mon, traveler. Jacinda sent me after you."

Fighting off a blush, Felix nodded. Before approaching the inn, he flared his Mantle of the Long Night. A swirling, freezing breeze sprung up around him. It cooled the sweat on his skin near instantly, and Felix hopped up the stairs after the Elf. Felix activated his Eye as he passed the workers, some of whom were giving him wide grins. He smiled back and quickly committed their names and faces to memory, a habit he'd been trying to keep up on.

Never know when it'll come in handy. None were particularly impressive, level-wise, but that was hardly their fault. Have to imagine it's hard to gain levels packed into a city. Can you gain experience from tasks other than fighting?

He hadn't thought to ask that before.

The Elven bartender was named Wylla and was just past her First Formation. She boasted an impressive level of 32, and Felix assumed she must have been a Guilder at some point, unless serving drinks earned you experience. As he'd noticed before, she moved with an easy grace that meant either a Skill or high investments in Dexterity and Agility. She was wearing a simple linen shirt, leather bracers, and a pair of coarse woolen pants that laced up the side of the legs.

No weapons, he noticed as he followed her into the kitchens. Are they hidden? Or does she not—

"You done gawking, farmboy?"

Felix jerked to a stop and lifted his eyes from Wylla's waist. She was giving him an arch look, her almond eyes narrowed. He blushed fully this time.

"No, I'm just—"

"Uh huh," she said, cutting him off and turning toward the rest of the kitchen. A Gnome woman was busy nearby, directing a small staff of Dwarves cooking a variety of things. The place was a riot of noise and smells, all of which hit Felix's senses at once. His stomach growled, loud enough that the Gnome turned in alarm. She smiled when she saw the Elf.

"Oh Wylla, dear, you're back. Is that big lug finished back there?" She huffed an annoyed breath. "Those lazy gamblers take advantage of any reason not to work."

Wylla nodded her head casually to the left, and the Gnome's big eyes followed. The moment they landed on Felix, she let out an impressive squeak of fright. "Oh dearie me, I didn't… ah… please, help yourself. We made food for you."

With an embarrassed flourish, the Gnome woman disappeared behind a large Human that suddenly stepped in front of her. Felix's eyes tingled slightly, a sensation annoyingly similar to a mounting sneeze. With a minor effort, he flared his Manasight. The Gnome was still there, he discovered, the Human form was simply an illusion she had crafted and swirled with purple Mana. Felix smiled, more than a little impressed at the casual crafting.

Wow. He gazed a little longer at the slightly transparent illusion. How does it work? It's like light but that isn't light Mana—

Wylla snapped her fingers at him, and Felix blinked away his Manasight.

"Hey, 'big lug.'" She gestured to a couple steaming dishes on a tray before him. "Take it. On the house, this time."

"Really? Why?"

"Jacinda appreciates when people help out. Hauling that water usually takes half the morning and tires out our people." The Elf shrugged. "That's worth at least a free meal, yeah?"

Felix smiled, and the Elven woman rolled her eyes in annoyance before shooing him out of the kitchens with his platter of food. He found himself in the short, private hallway again, but he could hear crowds gathering in the common area. Tapping a finger gently against his tin tray, Felix nodded to himself before heading up the stairs to his room.

An unlocked door and a quick conversation with Pit had the two of them Converge. If the shift reared its ugly head again, Pit seemed to be one of the few who could snap him out of it. He couldn't hide away in their rooms forever, not if they planned to live anything close to a normal life on the Continent.

Bracing himself—a task far easier with Pit as co-captain—Felix went back downstairs to eat their food.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Felix found a spot easily enough. The common room was starting to get busier as the sun rose higher, but it was still quieter than he expected. Most everyone around him looked worried, and the usual boisterous talk was cut by a great deal of whispering and low voices. A few folks eyed him as he passed, and Felix read a great deal of wariness in everyone.

He settled in an empty table at the far end of the room, next to the cold stone hearth. The Drum Tank had two medium-sized windows on the front, south-facing side of the building, but the rising sun barely illuminated the common room due in part to the mountains. The other part was the Eyrie, the Guild fortress itself at the center of Haarwatch. Its looming edifice cast a shadow across much of the Dust, Felix had noticed.

His workout had left him with a buoyant feeling that was swiftly evaporating. Felix desperately tried to retain it. He focused on his food. He had been served a thin porridge, several rashers of thick bacon that was both incredibly aromatic as well as enticingly fatty. Two eggs were hard boiled and set in a little bowl, and there was an entire loaf of that same dark bread. A local specialty, he assumed.

It was goddamned delicious.

Pit whined in his head, the tenku's hunger a rumbling tattoo in his Spirit. Once Felix started taking bites, however, his Companion quieted. That answered a question that had been percolating: did Pit gain any benefit from Felix's meals while Converged? Apparently yes, though he'd have to do more testing. It might turn out he was more hungry when the two Companions fused, after all. Felix felt entirely ravenous this morning. The combination of the workout that morning and last night...

Don't think about it. He shook his head. Not now.

Instead, as Felix chowed down, he turned his ear outward toward the folk all around him. They were quiet, but talk persisted in varying levels of murmur. Merchants and travelers complained the loudest, stuck in Haarwatch going on a month now. Plenty of locals put in their two cents, small groups of them stringing together whispered questions about the night before. About the attack.

It was not a common event, Felix learned. The Wall was attacked near constantly, but the times things got through the Wall and into the city? Such events could be counted on one hand. The Wretches and their ilk hadn't hit this far into the Dust, however, and many of the people there were speaking with second or third-hand accounts of it all.

"Down near Cordage and Riverwalk is what I heard," muttered a nearby man, a Human though short and stocky enough for any Dwarf. He was nursing a tall wooden mug. "Yyero-cursed things came outta the sky. Landed on houses and shops, crushing everythin' inside."

"They flew in?" asped a Half-Orc at the same table. They were all dressed in simple tunics and trousers, all of them heavily patched with thick leather. Laborers at the mines or river docks, Felix figured. "How'd they even get in?"

"Me cousin said they flew over the Wall. Overwhelmed the Guilders." A Dwarf at their table with a sable beard spat onto the floor. "Twins-damned adventurers. What use are they?"

The Dwarf's voice was louder at the end, and more than a few patrons cheered at the words.

"Who needs ‘em!"

"Blight the Guild!"

"Hey, hey!" cried a Human, this one with a set of narrow shoulders and large mustache. "The Guilders protect us, yeah? They've been doin' it this long. They'll know what ta do. Even if they can't help, the Pathless will provide. The Inquisition is here."

A few more grumbles around the room, this time of grudging assent. Another Dwarf, however, one with two braids done into his blonde beard grunted at the man. "Guilders weren't here, Davy! Redcloaks neither! Dusters ain't important enough for ‘em to come."

That's true, realized Felix, still absently munching on half a loaf. I didn't see any Guilders until the end. Where were they?

"Truth, Lino!" shouted the sable-bearded Dwarf from across the room. "But what about that man what fought em off?"

Oh no. Felix felt the bread turn to cement in his gut. He snuck a glance around the room and tried not to grimace. Everyone was looking toward the Dwarf.

"What man?" asked someone.

"Ye didn't hear?" smiled the Dwarf, his face grinning wide now that he realized he had the whole room as an audience. "He was a terror. Fought the damn bugs off with nothin' more'n his fists! Saved the whole Quarter!"

"I heard a'that," said the Half-Orc, snapping his fingers. "Someone said he was throwin' around lightnin' like a mage."

"A mage fighting with his fists? That's mad," sputtered a Hobgoblin nearby, her large nose up in disdain. "You're spinning tales, boys."

"No no! It's true! Swear on Ave—on that Pathless' altar!" The black-haired Dwarf leaned forward and pointed southwesterly. "Me cousin was down at the Coldforge when it happened. Giant bugs, twice again as tall as a Human, armed with swords fer arms and vicious teeth. They shook the earth and screamed such terrible noises. Ye all heard it, I know it."

Nods passed around the room, and a few more folk crowded in. The dwarf, Favar according to his Eye, kept speaking.

"They came down Cordage, down Riverwalk, skippin’ over the rooftops a' the Orthin thoroughfare. Ten, twenty of them. More and more, an’ they killed everything they saw." Favar swallowed and someone passed him a mug of ale. He slung it back. "Dusters was dyin', you all know it. But then this man showed up, a huge brute with lightnin' cracklin’ from his hands and covered in deadly weapons. He leaned into em, slaying the bugs left an right!"

"I thought you said he used his hands?" Someone said.

"He did! He didn't need the weapons, he was so strong! Alone against dozens, he killed ‘em all."

The crowd in the Drum Tank grew quiet as the Dwarf kept speaking. Even Felix leaned forward a little.

"He was mad. Jumpin about, tackling the bugs like… like I ain't never seen."

"You ain't seen him. Yer cousin did," someone accused. Favar waved them off.

"That lightnin' in his hands? It couldn't be stopped! Crashed into them like a Silver Rank, don't mistake it!" Favar held up his hands, fingers curved. "Had hands like claws, teeth like a wolf, eyes of fire! A fiend! A monster fightin' monsters!"

The common room went deathly silent, all eyes riveted to Favar as he puffed out his chest. "He saved the Dusters. The man saved ‘em all."

Then, tentatively, another voice whispered.

"I heard he had a Chimera followin' him. Like a hound." A shudder. "Unnatural."

There was a pause, before one, then everyone started talking at once. The quiet atmosphere was shattered as laborers and merchants and tradesfolk all vied to share stories of this strange new being that saved them. Felix's eyebrows crept up and up as he heard more and more fanciful rumors being bandied about. After a while, they weren't even based in truth. He could fly, he could explode people with a look, he ate the bugs with a single bite.

Well, that last one hit a little close to home.

"A toast!" cried Favar, and several others took up his cry. "A toast to the Hero of the Dust! To the Blue-Eyed Fiend!"

Oh Jesus Christ. Felix sank into his chair as a few more cheered. It took all his Willpower not to bury his face in his hands.

* * *

Felix ordered two more servings of his breakfast as he waited for all the commotion to settle down. Just thinking about all the wild tales that were now circulating about him made him groan in embarrassment. But he was hungry as hell, and the food was just barely enough to satisfy the Companions' Converged stomachs.

He was just finishing up when he heard familiar voices in the common room.

"Why? Why'd it happen to me?"

Felix half-turned in his seat and saw three Goblins in flowing robes sit at a nearby table. He had listened to them banter just he other day, but Gnokl, the Goblin currently holding his head and moaning, had been in far better spirits.

"What happened, Gnokl? Were you attacked?" The slender Lotr was sitting adjacent, wringing her hands.

"All I did was buy up all the meat I could for paeti! When the Festival started, the vendors of that delectable dish would've had to pay through the nose!" He slammed a fist into the table, barely rattling the cups nearby. "Then those d-damn bugs smashed my warehouse! They landed on it!"

"It'll be okay," comforted Lotr, her oversized freckled face creased in concern. She patted a gentle hand on Gnokl's back. "You can rebuild, right? Did your laborers get hurt?" She gasped. "Did anyone die?"

"What? I don't know. That's not the po-o-o-oint!" Gnokl gasped. "My crooooowns!"

The only other Goblin at the table, Hartl, leaned back and laughed, loudly. She had a sharp expression, and her nose was even bigger and pointier than the others. "Could be worse! The Butcher coulda got ya!"

"The Butcher can have me! I'm ruined!" Gnokl moaned at her, his eyes red and leaking fat tears. "That meat was priceless! Impossible to get! I had to barter with damn Guilders for that Domain flesh!"

"Just, ah, just do it again?" Suggested Lotr innocently, at which Gnokl snarled.

"Do it again!? It cost me all my extra gold to get what I did! And now the redcloaks are locking up everything! Including the Twin's-damned Domain!" His face sunk into his arms again, and his sobs began anew. "I'll never recover! I just won't! I can't!"

Felix chewed his last few bites of soft bread, thinking. He was going to a Domain soon enough—as long as Atar held up his end—and the smiths at the Coldforge already gave him the idea to collect materials to sell. Why not get monster meat, too? Can't be too hard, right? He scratched his jaw in contemplation. He'd have to get an enchanted skinning knife like Magda had, but it was possible.

He walked over to the Goblins. Taller than them by at least three feet, Felix loomed over them. "I hope you don't mind, but I overheard what happened. I'm sorry to hear it."

"What's it to you, tall boy?" Hartl demanded, her green face curdled in dislike. "This is Goblin business!"

Felix was taken aback, briefly, but fought to keep that from his expression. "I uh, apologize. I was just curious to see if you would like my help."

"Help?" Gnokl asked, lifting his head from his arms. His face was streaked with tears and snot. "You'll help? How?"

"I am going into the Domain soon. We could make a deal."

Gnokl's face lit up, but Hartl snorted in contempt. "As if we'd just trust some nobody."

Felix held up his hands and smiled gently. "I'm just offering." He turned toward Gnokl. "If you're interested, just let Jacinda or Ignatius know you're looking for me. I'm staying here."

"What's yer name?"

"Just ask for the… Wanderer. She'll know." He stepped away and headed out the door, not stopping even when the Goblins began to furiously whisper.

Hopefully that hook sinks in, but either way, I have some prep to do. And before he could begin on that, he had to pay a visit to Caerwin.

I just hope she has what we need.

Pit chirruped excitedly.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Before he'd taken two steps out of the Drum Tank, lights of gold and blue sparked across Felix's vision. They swarmed at the corners before resolving in a blue notification box and the faint sound of trumpets.

New Skill!

Negotiation (Uncommon), Level 1!

You've learned words have many uses, and one of them is to make a profit! Increases how favorably a target treats you slightly per Skill level.

Felix blinked the lights and notification away and felt at his center. Another symbol etched in the faintest of lights was there, scribed upon the murky dark of his core space.

"Hey! Move it, Pinky! People are tryin' ta eat!"

Felix blinked, his visualized core fading away to be replaced by the lumbering form of an Orc laborer. The man was taller than Felix by a foot, his skin a dark purple-green, and he had tusks that jutted out nearly six inches from an impressive jaw. A line of folk stood behind him, all trying to enter the inn.

"Oh, sorry," Felix muttered, and hopped off the porch. The line of laborers grumbled in his direction but passed him by without further fuss. Which was good, as Felix found himself entirely absorbed in his core once again.

How the hell did I gain another Skill? Felix mentally poked and prodded the symbol in his core, but it was fully and entirely there. He was fairly certain why he'd gained it, but not how. In the Void, the System had felt thin as a whisper, barely giving him any Skill levels at all. Now that he was thinking on it, the System felt thick as treacle, yet it flowed around and through him as if on the breeze. Was it because of his nature? Being Unbound? He recalled learning Parry in a similar fashion, when Vess had taken a swing at him in the Foglands. That blue-gold glow. The energy of the System?

Recalling Cal's words the other day, Felix knew his best bet was to speak to the former Archivist-turned-bookseller. Despite the dread that crawled over him at the thought, she might tell him more about the System, Nym, and Unbound as well. So long as she wasn’t too mad about his reorganization, that is. He’d gotten a little carried away there.

Caerwin first. Then Zara.

* * *

A warm wind kicked up in the streets, blowing the ubiquitous dust in long streamers along the ground. Felix hustled through the crowds, noticing that the sky was darker than it was at dawn. The clouds hung low, and he could smell rain in the air. Felix was almost annoyed he'd thrown that tattered cowl away, that is, until he noticed the first redcloaks.

Many were just wandering the crowds, more of them patrolling through the Dust than he'd seen before. But what did he know? He'd only been in Haarwatch a few days. However, what caught his attention the most was when several Acolytes stopped a couple wearing hooded cloaks.

The redcloaks pulled the couples' hoods back and exposed the faces of a pair of Human women, girls really, both equally surprised. What followed was a series of jabbing fingers and close talking. If he had been any closer, he might have caught what, exactly, the Inquisition was doing, but he saw all of it from across the busy street. Not even his Perception was good enough to bridge that gap.

He saw the same thing happen again and again. The redcloaks were singling out people in hoods and cowls, anyone who hid their face. The more he saw it, the more a sinking suspicion formed in his gut. When he saw an Acolyte peer into a cloaked Hobgoblin's eyes, he cursed.

They're looking for me. Shit.

He got off the street, heading down a narrow alley between a butcher and cooper. The last thing Felix wanted was an in-depth conversation with the Inquisition. Not even if they were going to hand him a reward for fighting off those monsters.

Luckily, he didn't stand out too much. With the cowl gone, he had his rough canvas pirate jacket over his relatively nicer tunic and trousers. His boots were a bit of a giveaway, but Felix hadn't heard any stories about the Blue-Eyed Fiend's footwear.

Jesus. The Blue-Eyed Fiend. It wasn't a name he would have picked for himself. It made him sound like a monster. But then again… I always said I'd become a monster if that's what it took to survive.

Felix looked up the wall of the coopers before sucking in a breath.

Abyssal Skein!

Felix felt the oily Void wrap around him before he grabbed hold of the wall and yanked himself upward. Halfway through the movement, he activated Relentless Charge, sending him hurtling further and neatly over the edge of the two-story building. He landed with a heavy thump, but luckily the cooper's roof was sturdy. He took off at a jog.

Felix kept Abyssal Skein running when he could, mostly to keep others from noticing him leaping from rooftop to rooftop. It was, by happy coincidence, much faster to navigate the city in this manner. He bypassed much of the foot traffic and merely had to deal with the occasional long jump. Those were few and far between, and twice Felix simply climbed down rather than risk an eye-catching leap over a busy street.

But it was honestly freeing up there, standing on top of various buildings. Pit liked it, too. He could make out so much of the city, from the rising tiers at the center to the minor walls that demarcated the Quarters. Felix purposefully avoided the partially gutted streets he'd fought within, needing no reminders as he headed west.

The sky hung low as ever, heavy and bruised with a purple color only summer storms carried. It was like a roof on the world, and Felix felt all around him a sense of curious immediacy. He breathed deep, tasting woodsmoke and char, fish from the nearby river, even the faint but omnipresent tang of unwashed funk. It was strange and new and familiar all at once.

"A new world," he murmured to himself.

Felix had dwelled on the thought before, but his circumstances had always been dire. He had been but a step away from death out in the Foglands then again in the Void. Here, he had the time to breathe. To savor. That's what he learned that morning. The night might have held terrors and savage fighting for survival, but today he'd accomplished a helpful task. Had a good meal. And now he'd get to enjoy a summer rainstorm, his first on the Continent.

There are worse places to be, he thought, closing his eyes and taking a breath. He sighed and opened his eyes again, this time staring at his bare hands before burying them in his pockets.

Passing over the short barrier between the Dust and Wall Quarters was as easy as moving from roof to roof. A simple jump and he'd passed through. Just beyond, the buildings improved significantly. The roof tiles were no longer loose and patched and were made of something sturdier than clay. Felix didn't bother to investigate, but the material wasn't quite as slick or treacherous. His Far-Afield Boots had kept that from inconveniencing him in the Dust, but it was still quite noticeable when a tile slid off to smash on the ground below. None of that happened in the Wall Quarter.

It was clear more money was invested into this section of the city, and it was easy to see why. The Wall was their great barrier, protecting this outpost city from the wilds of the Foglands. The Guilders manned the Wall, fought the monsters, and protected the city. In a world that seemed to value strength more than anything, it made sense. He hadn't been there long, but the Dusters were clearly considered second-class citizens in Haarwatch, most of them too weak to even consider joining the Guild. And if they were too weak to join, why would the Guild care about them?

Felix shook his head and hoped he was wrong. Hoped that he was just being cynical and pessimistic.

I'd be damn happy if I were—

Someone was watching him.

Felix spun toward the sensation, flaring his Perception all the while. A figure stood on a rooftop, several buildings down the street. His regard felt like a heavy pressure against Felix's senses, an intensity that threatened to strip the Nym to the bone. Pit warbled in fear in the back of his mind. A sharp, burning sensation flashed against his chest; his amulet felt like it was on fire.

Without regard to grace or form, Felix threw himself off the rooftop. He landed awkwardly in Caerwin's back garden.

What was that? Who was that? His Eye hadn't been able to get a read on them at all. Not even that hint of resistance. Just… nothing.

With a hesitant glance upward, Felix hobbled over to Caerwin's back door. He rapped lightly on it.

No one answered.

He tried again, straining his senses through the door as well as up toward the roof. A sour feeling was turning in his stomach. Suddenly, his Perception picked up on murmuring inside, then a crash, and shouting.

Pit shrieked in agitation, and Felix yanked hard at the door, breaking the lock. He rushed inside. Beyond the short hallway, Caerwin looked at him with an alarmed expression that faded quickly into vague amusement. Beside her was a man and a woman, though the latter was hooded in a dark blue shawl.

"Caerwin—!" Felix came to a stop as he took in the scene. Caerwin was standing at her counter, and several broken glass jars were on the ground between her and the visitors. The man turned to him, and Felix saw that his lightly tanned face was round with flabby jowls and a scraggly beard. A series of dots were tattooed beneath his eyes in a row, five of them under each eye. "Uh..."

The man regarded Felix mildly, his eyes calm and demeanor unruffled, as if he'd been expected. Felix felt a burning sensation from his chest again, this time much less intense.

"You have a visitor, Caerwin. I shall not keep you. Let us know your answer soon." The man pulled his blue cloak closer around himself and regarded Felix again. "Another time, perhaps."

Caerwin didn't answer as the two swept out of her shop and were gone.

"Seems like I interrupted something," Felix hazarded, still eyeing the figures as they disappeared into the crowded street. It wasn't raining yet, but the sky had darkened considerably. Idly, he hoped it rained on that jerk on the roof. "Friends of yours?"

"Hm," Caerwin grunted, not answering as she bent over to pick up the shattered remains of her jars. "Where've you been? You're a day late."

"Oh you know," Felix gestured vaguely. "Been busy."

"Hm. Haven't we all."

Unsure what else to do, Felix helped her pick up the pieces. "Who was that?" He tried again. "They seemed… intense."

Caerwin laughed, a touch bitterly he thought, before giving him a shrewd look. "Intense is a good word for it. Don't you worry about them. They're my business alone."

Felix backed off. Soon the floor was clean, and Caerwin stood back up. She clapped her hands. "So! You're back to see if I have anything for your Chimera… Where is he?"

Felix smiled. "Had to leave him someplace safe, for now."

"Ah." Caerwin nodded, a wry smile on her face. "Of course. The redcloaks are everywhere today, I've seen."

Felix nodded as he peered out the windows. The crowds were thick, and he could see one or two white-armored Acolytes moving along them. When he looked back, the woman was regarding him oddly. She blinked when she noticed his attention.

"Let's begin then. Just a moment." She went into her back room, opening and closing the door swiftly. But not before he saw a black robe hung from a peg, along with dark sandals, the Roman kind that wrapped all the way up the leg. Felix heard a good deal of rustling—cloth, wood, metal, all of it scraping and knocking against each other. It took a while, long enough that Felix started gazing around the room. He started using his Voracious Eye on anything he could, idly attempting to level the Skill. There were quite a few interesting things in her store, though most of it was, well, strange.

Aside from the variety of dried foods like jerky, beans, and dehydrated fruit, there were many odd knick-knacks and carved wooden figures that registered only as "Decoration" or "Art Piece (enchanted)" in the rare cases. A few tall, thin wooden figures were enchanted with a fire-starter Skill, something that would generate a super-hot spark. Functionally no different than a flint and steel striker, but much more interesting. Much of the shelf space was taken up by useful things like ropes, candles, even a ten-foot pole.

"Browsing?"

"Oh, sorry. I was just admiring the sheer variety of things you have here," Felix huffed a laugh. "It’s quite a lot."

"Ah you know, you pick up one thing, then another, before you know it, you have a whole shop’s worth. Seemed easier to sell it off than store it, hmm?" Caerwin gave him a grin with her slightly crooked teeth. The laugh lines around her mouth and eyes were deep and well-used. "Now come over here, boy, and I'll show you what I found."

Felix made his way over to the counter, where the older woman placed a single green stone on the counter. It was diamond-shaped and highly polished. The green coloration was rippled like the frozen surface of a disturbed pond. He looked at Caerwin for permission before picking it up.

"It's a charm. Found it after digging through some old collections. Gotta bond it by blood, but that's easy enough. Drapes an illusion around the wearer that'll fool most anyone. I even saw it fool a Silver Rank once."

Felix made a noncommittal grunt and used his Voracious Eye on it. A similar resistance rose up as when he'd first identified his amulet. The item pushed back at his mental probe, almost a physical force. Felix had to bear his entire Will down on it, and it began to shift and buckle. With a final mental heave, the resistance shattered.

Voracious Eye is level 30!

Name: Stone of Wild Echoes

Type: Gem (enchanted)

Lore: This polished piece of malachite has been shaped by Chanter's magic to echo a strain of the Wild Song. The Wild Song masks the physical form of the one it is bonded to, but it must be bonded by blood. Chosen form: Dire Hound.

Mask of Echoes IV - Once bound by blood, the Stone will allow the wearer to appear as a Dire Hound of the appropriate coloration.

Chanter's Intent I - The Harmonic Song of a Chanter was used to enchant this item, and it bears their Intent. +10% Effectiveness of Mask of Echoes.

Chanter's Inversion I - Addition of Dissonance to invert the item's properties, hiding them.

Ugh. A short bout of dizziness surged through his head, but it passed quickly. "Wow this—" Felix looked at the stone again, no bigger than his thumbnail. "What's the Wild Song?"

Caerwin's eyes lit up and a wide, radiant smile spread across her face. Felix leaned back and hesitated.

"What?"

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

There was a sudden knocking at the door. Felix started to back away, but before he could move far, the door was slammed open. It crashed into the rack beside it, scattering a number of items to the ground. Felix was pretty sure they were ceramic bowls.

Lightning flashed outside, framing the bulky silhouettes of two Acolytes. They wore their red cloaks open and displayed an impressive array of weapons at their hips. Thunder followed a heartbeat later, rattling the curios on Caerwin's shelves.

"Ma'am," said the one in the lead, tilting his dark, shaved head toward Caerwin. "We seek a suspect in the attack last night. Have you seen anyone suspicious?"

For what it was worth, Caerwin didn't even glance at Felix. She simply frowned and shook her head. "No, Acolyte. I have seen few today after the violence last night. Perhaps fewer if I must suffer such constant interruptions, hmm?"

"Think hard, shopkeep." The other Acolyte, a woman with extremely pale skin and loose brown hair spoke up. Her eyes narrowed. "This man is of average height, average build. Has one or perhaps several lightning-attuned Skills, and blue eyes."

"I've seen no one like that," scoffed Caerwin. Rain began to lash the roof, creating a soft, constant clatter above them. Felix tried to let his Perception spread outward, hoping he could catch an attack before it came.

The female Acolyte stepped closer, staring Caerwin and then at Felix. "Are you sure?"

Her eyes lingered for a moment longer on Felix, and he froze, his fanned Perception collapsing onto the Acolyte. As if in slow motion, the woman looked up and directly into his eyes. Felix stared into hers, the Acolyte's gaze a bright and vivid yellow. She blinked… slowly...

...and then turned away.

"I'm quite positive," Caerwin assured them.

"As am I," Felix managed, his voice steadier than he expected. The woman sighed and grimaced out the window and then at her partner.

"It's starting to come down hard. Let's keep going."

The bald man glanced at Felix before nodding. "Aye."

Deception is level 13!

Deception is level 14!

"Keep an eye out. This man is very dangerous. Report any sightings to the nearest Inquisitor." The woman nodded tersely at them as she pulled her cloak around her shoulders and set out. Her partner was right behind her.

"Have a pleasant morning, ma'am. Sir."

The two of them left without anything further, trudging out into the rain. The door swung closed behind them with a soft click.

Felix swung toward Caerwin, who had been staring after the two Acolytes with a sour expression. He had questions. No. One question.

"What the hell was that?"

"What do you mean?" The middle-aged woman matched Felix's angry stare. She gave nothing away.

He groaned in annoyance. "They were looking for blue eyes. She looked right at me. I have blue eyes." Felix pointed at his eyes and walked a few steps closer to the shopkeep. He fished the round disc from his shirt and held it up. “She should have said something. This Amulet, this Stone. These aren't just magic are they?"

Caerwin's smile returned, wider than ever. "What else could they be?"

Felix didn't answer her question, but instead posed one of his own. One that had been bothering him since he'd read the amulet's description. "What's a Chanter?"

Now, he didn't exactly know what to expect as an answer, but delighted laughter was not even in his top ten.

"It is magic, Felix. True, real magic." She spread her hands, and an arc of light shimmered between them, carried along with a faint hum. Felix stepped back, glancing between it and the shopkeep.

Mage, he amended. She's definitely a mage.

"You've quite the eye, boy. I was surprised when you noticed the features of your amulet. The Stone, well, that was my test. To see if my hunch was right." She snapped her finger and gestured at him. "And it was. You're attuned to it."

"To what?"

"To the music of the spheres," she said as a lilting melody played across the room, a soft, sweet sound that sharpened the details all around him. Colors were suddenly more vivid, smells richer, the scrape of his toes against the inside of his boot loud and insistent. Then it faded, and so did the clarity. "To Harmony."

Felix's eyes rounded, and his mind raced. "The Grand Harmony?"

Caerwin's smile turned elated. "Exactly so."

"Tell me," Felix stepped forward, Pit's warbling voice added to his own. "I've seen… I've been—"

"Not here. Small cantrips and verses can be done in secret, but… Come to the Crafters’ Quarter in four days, at dusk, on the corner of Cobbler and Weavers Way. Ask for me." She sighed and smiled again. "I promise, I'll have all the answers you need."

I doubt that. Felix frowned as she pressed the Stone of Wild Echoes into his hand. He looked at her and raised an eyebrow.

"Consider it a gift. Just remember," she said as she led him to the back door again. "Find me in four days. Dusk. Yes?"

Felix nodded, reluctantly. Her words were too intriguing to pass up. Of course he'd go.

"Good. I have an appointment that should have been here already. I will see you then, Felix." She tried to shut the door, but he put a foot in the jamb.

"Just tell me, what is it?" he pressed. "What is the Grand Harmony?"

The woman looked at him with intense eyes, dark but not quite black. There was something familiar about her face, the shape of it. She slowly pushed his foot from the doorway. "It is life itself."

The door closed.

* * *

Felix left her garden, leaping directly over her wall in an impressive display of athleticism. Caerwin perceived him through the walls of her shop, up until he left the perimeter of her property.

His Strength must be quite high, she mused, before a sudden chiming grabbed her attention. She glanced at the timepiece behind her, frowning. Where is that boy?

The servant was late. Caerwin would normally have been annoyed, had her visitors not kept her. Felix was one thing, an intriguing puzzle that had fallen into her lap. The others, however… she could do without their platitudes.

When the boy arrived, he was drenched from the rain, apparently having left the Eyrie without a cloak of any kind. He panted, hands on knees just inside her doorway.

"In, in!" She sniped. "You're letting the rain inside!"

True enough, the rain had become a downpour, and the wind whipped it sideways along the street. The boy fumbled with the door latch for half a minute before getting it to catch. He turned and tried to wipe the wet on his trousers, which were equally soaked.

"I'm sorry, Miss Caerwin, ma'am." He bowed twice and touched his forehead with his right index finger. He glanced up at her with a worried frown. "I came as fast as I could, but the Inquisition has been putting their hand in Guilder affairs. Now the crowds, and the rain..."

Caerwin waved her hand and shook her head. "Don't worry about it, boy. I've been busy anyway. What do you have to report?"

The servant looked around the shop, at the shelves and walls and windows that rattled with another peal of thunder. "Right here? Are we...?"

"Safe?" A series of markings around the room suddenly began to glow a sharp magenta color before fading. "As houses, boy. Speak what you will."

The boy, no older than fifteen, cleared his throat and stood a bit straighter. He pushed his dripping hair out of his face and looked at the shopkeep. "She is asking questions as you'd hoped, ma'am. Poking around everywhere she can."

"Good. And the ciphers? Were they useful?" Caerwin leaned forward over the counter, intent. "Was she able to activate them?"

The servant nodded. "I had to do quite a bit to give her the chance, but luring a few guards off and unlocking a window wasn't too difficult. Not for me, anyway."

A strange sort of confidence leaked into the boy's tone, his shoulders squaring and his chin lifting with each word. By the end of it, he was staring boldly into Caerwin's dark eyes. He had even grown by at least four inches and no longer looked fifteen. He looked to be in his early twenties.

What a Skill he has, Caerwin thought appreciatively, not for the first time. "But she did use them, yes?"

"She used them. Said they had let her listen in on the Elder Council. But," here he hesitated with a wince. "She was nearly caught. One of the Elders blew up a door."

"Damn," muttered Caerwin. "Was she found out?"

"That's the good news. Her father's Hand whisked her away, and near as I can tell, the man erased any trace of her presence."

"A stroke of luck," the shopkeep breathed. "Has she asked your aid any other time?"

The young man nodded and put his hands on his hips. An easy smile came to his lips. "That's part of why I'm here. She's lookin' for more Script Ciphers. Since I was her source last time, I figured—"

"No. Those are too easy to trace. The council won't get fooled the same way twice." Caerwin tapped her lip. "Can you get her out of the Eyrie? Into the city proper?"

The servant winced again. "I don't know. They've been keeping a pretty tight watch on her. With the last attack—"

"I'll get you fifty crowns."

"—I don't see why not. She's a free spirit. Been achin' to get out of the tower for a while now." The servant rubbed his cleanly shaved chin and smirked, showing off a set of dimples that weren't there a moment earlier. "Might hafta grease some palms, o'course. Can be mighty difficult fundin' such things..."

Caerwin rolled her eyes and produced a velvet satchel the size of her fist. She tossed it to him. It disappeared into his pockets so quickly, it was a magic all its own.

"Pleasure doin' business with you, ma'am. Where and when should I tell the young miss to go?"

"Four days. Send her to the corner of Cobbler and Weaver's Way. Come at dusk, and have her ask for me."

"Ask for you? Or for Caerwin?" The servant smirked, and his eyes flashed a series of colors, from red to silver to a simple, unassuming brown.

"You've a sharp eye and a loose tongue. See that it doesn't get any looser, or I'll have it for myself, eh?" Caerwin frowned at him until his smirk wiped clean.

"Sorry ma'am. I'll see it done."

The shopkeep bent low to pick up one of the ceramic bowls that had survived their fall. When she looked up, the young man was gone. In his place, however, was a large puddle of water. She grunted.

Always more to do.

She went and got a mop.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Tucked away in a blind alley beneath a leaking awning, Felix took a chance and let loose. A flash of light, a little brighter than usual in the dim morning, and Pit rematerialized next to him. The tenku regarded Felix with a tilted head, curious.

"Let's see what this Stone is all about, eh?" Felix held out the diamond-cut malachite out in his palm, level with Pit's face. The Chimera nudged it with his beak, but it just sat there. Inert. "It says you have to bond it by blood."

Pit understood right away. He raised a clawed paw up and slashed at his foreleg. He had to do it a couple times before he could draw any blood, then dribbled it onto the malachite. A surge of horns swelled in their ears, as if someone was trumpeting a charge, but it faded quickly.

Pit Has Claimed The Stone Of Wild Echoes.

The stone lifted, floating under its own power. Felix and Pit watched it with fascination, the polished surface glinting in the overcast light. Then, with a burst of speed, it slammed into the tenku's forehead.

"Whoa!"

By the time Felix reacted, it was already over. The green diamond stone shone bright against Pit's black plumage, centered directly above his eyes. Felix extended his hands gently, almost but not quite touching it.

"Are you… okay?"

Pit warbled an affirmation and sent a pulse of thoughts along their bond.

"I don't know." Felix tilted his head, moving it around to look at the stone from different angles. "Try activating it like a Skill, maybe?"

Pit tilted his head in mimicry of his Companion, and with a sudden shimmering chime, his body… disappeared. In its place was a large dog the same size as Pit, a Dire Hound, Felix supposed. To him, it appeared like a heavy-jawed, giant fox more than a dog. Pit looked at Felix with his bright golden eyes, and his tongue lolled out of his mouth.

"This is amazing," Felix whispered. His Eye couldn't even tell there was a Skill or spell active. He ran his hands along Pit's back, feeling only coarse fur. "Is it an illusion or a transformation? How the hell does it work?"

Whatever the Wild Song was, it was powerful. That was clear. Even Pit's wings were gone, as if they'd never existed. Felix stood up after a while and patted his friend's head. Pit leaned in for neck scratches, of course.

A crack of lightning disrupted his musings, and Felix looked up into the blackened sky. It was raining buckets still, the precipitation pleasantly cool on his overheated skin. Felix was feeling more and more uncomfortable indoors, he realized. Outside in the fresh air felt just… right, to him. Pit, of course, was a wild creature, and the moment Felix's attention drifted, the Chimera started bounding up and down the alley. He soon made a game of splashing in the puddles there, and Felix tried to let himself relax.

Breathe.

Thunder shook the skies again, resonating in his chest like a timpani. Large, fat droplets spattered down onto the street and eaves around him, interrupted occasionally by a stiff westerly wind. It smelled of petrichor and grilled vegetables from a few streets over, earthy and savory in his nose.

Breathe.

His jacket was soaked, as was everything except his feet. He had good boots. His new satchel too had a weatherproofing enchantment on it, so he didn't worry much as he spread his arms and enjoyed the downpour. It made him feel… normal, somehow. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine being home again.

Miss you too, Bumble.

Felix's eyes snapped open, and he forced himself to breathe deep again. His recall kept surprising him. It was unreliable beyond thirty days into the past, but sometimes a memory would dredge itself up and replay, gem-like in clarity. He'd purposefully kept from thinking about home, his real home, ever since escaping the Void.

Figures that it'd fuck him up right when he was trying to relax.

"Well, the only thing for it is to get to work, I guess." He clapped his hands and turned to Pit. "C'mon boy, let's go visit—"

Splashing in his direction, Pit panted in glee. Water poured convincingly off his impeccable disguise, the tenku looking exactly like a big dog.

A really big dog. A really big, wet dog.

Perhaps going to the Elder Crown isn't the best choice right now. Felix doubted Zara would appreciate him leading a sopping wet mutt into her shop, Dire Hound or no. Considering she was very likely steaming mad about his, ah, reorganization...

Yeah. Best to leave that for tomorrow.

Felix walked down the alley, Pit at his heels. It was nice not having to hide the Chimera. Convergence was wildly useful, though perhaps not for its intended purpose; the ability to hide Pit had been a definite boon since entering Haarwatch. The boost to his Harmonic Stats that it offered had been less frequently useful. But then, he didn't really understand what those stats did—something he planned to rectify.

A loud creak and splash sounded just ahead, from the mouth of the alley. Felix reacted instinctively, twisting behind a corner and getting out of sight. But as he peeked around the brickwork, he saw it was just a common carriage and a few people on the street. None were looking at him, most of them more concerned with getting out of the rain than passersby. The carriage rattled passed, the giant birds leading them squawking piteously, like ostriches bred with lizards of some sort.

Getting jumpy, he chastised himself. The encounter with the Inquisition had put him more on edge than he realized. Will the Amulet keep me hidden from them? It's worked once already, but how? It's almost like it's making decisions by itself, altering what it veils and how it does so. Is that possible?

As Felix walked through the nearly empty streets, uncaring of the torrential rain, he realized there were no redcloaks out and about anymore. The few people he saw moved quickly and appeared to be workers of various stripes, all wearing heavily oiled cloaks. One of them even gave Felix a double glance, but the Nym just shrugged. Why worry about getting wet when you're already soaked?

What he did worry about, however, was the immediate future.

Should I try to leave? On my own? The Inquisition is looking for me, and I doubt it’s to give me a medal. The Guilders seem to be shitheads. Why stay?

But he already knew the answer to that question. Fear. Felix had thought he'd abandoned it in the Void, like it was a piece of him he could cast off. The fear that lurked in him since his arrival never went away, and it drove him still. Was he strong enough to last in the interior of the Continent? Or even back in the Foglands now that the monsters were apparently growing more powerful and numerous by the day?

He also feared the Maw and whatever power it still held over him. Felix had to get rid of it, cleanse himself, somehow. His transformation the previous night, as well as his new Title and Skill were proof enough that he was encroaching on dangerous territory.

However, did he really want to leave the city? To head off into the unknown again, just him and Pit? While the thought of exploring the Continent did appeal to him, Felix had only just gotten here. The city offered comfort and at least a small measure of safety. Not to mention: a way forward.

Zara might be able to teach him more about being Unbound or the Nym, while Caerwin… he didn't really know what the shopkeep had to offer. But it had something to do with the music he heard on a daily basis. That alone felt important enough to stay. Leaving with Cal and the others seemed the safest bet. And if that fell through? He could always run.

He was getting very good at running.

Mind resolved, Felix headed back toward the Dust, keeping to the streets this time. The hilly roads and thoroughfares were slowly turning into miniature rivers in the deluge, but apparently his magic boots were waterproof. His feet were dry as a bone. Once he realized that, Felix slogged through the water carelessly, casting his mind forward.

Cal, Evie, and Harn. Are they okay? Guilt that he hadn't thought of them before flashed through him. But they were tough, the older two certainly stronger than him. Even if a bunch of bugs attacked, I'm sure they would be fine. Right?

* * *

The warehouse the others had holed up in looked no worse for wear after the hectic night. Felix supposed that made sense. He was pretty sure all of the Prismatic Wretches had been contained east and south of this area, but it was a bit of a relief anyway.

At Felix’s knock, Karp answered the door, his bright red beard still vivid in the overcast light. The man grinned, showing off several missing teeth before waving Felix inside. His smile slipped only slightly when Felix was followed by a giant red and black Dire Hound.

"Felix right? Wasn't able to say earlier, but nice to meet ya," Karp's smile was wide yet oddly disarming. "We were wonderin' if you were comin' back. She's been asking for ya."

"Nice to meet you too—wait, who was?" Felix looked at the grinning archer. His question was answered by a shout.

"Felix!" A green rope dropped from the ceiling, and a lithe figure descended it. Practically floating, moving downward far slower than normal physics could account for, she landed lightly on her feet and stepped closer. Evie's face was stricken.

"Did you see the battles?"

"Uh, yeah, I did."

"Noctis' tits, how come I always miss the good stuff!" She frowned and glanced over at Bodie and Harn, who were discussing something at the other side of the warehouse training area. "By the time we got out there, everything was over. Siva's teeth! Is that a Dire Hound?"

Evie put her hands out for Pit to sniff, but instead of doing that, the disguised tenku just jumped up onto her and started licking her face.

"Ooofa! Haha!" Evie weakly fought off Pit's affection. "He's a good boy! Aren't you? What's your name?"

"Pit," Felix supplied with a smile. Evie looked up at him with a curious gaze before her eyes widened in realization.

"Pit? How?" She ran her hands over the tenku's face, ruffling his ears and scratching his neck. "This is—how?"

Felix shrugged, not giving an answer, entirely too aware of the presence of Karp. "You didn't miss much, by the way. Giant bugs, nasty and mean." Felix tried downplaying it, but Evie wasn't convinced.

"Sure. Next you'll tell me you didn't fight ‘em." Felix's face betrayed him, and her mouth quirked into a victorious grin. "I knew it."

Another green rope dropped beside the first, and another woman descended. This time, she did so far more rapidly, but with substantially more grace. Cal pushed back the green ropes (vines, he realized) and stepped forward.

"Felix. Welcome back. After last night, some of us were worried about you. The creatures invaded right after you left us." Cal looked him up and down as if checking for injuries. "You fought them?"

Felix only shrugged. "No one else was."

"Rotten Guilders..." Karp muttered, and Felix gave him a look. The bearded man only frowned and moved away, toward Yan and Bodie nearby.

"Been hearing a lotta wild stories," Cal drawled. She took a slow sip of a flask at her hip. "Some hero decided to take on all the bugs alone."

Felix's face soured. "I'm not a hero."

"That's not what people are sayin," Cal continued. "They're sayin this hero smashed through the bugs like they were nothing. Still, took him a half hour to take care of ‘em all. Mighty slow. Sounds like this hero could use some practice. If he's as strong as the washerwomen were saying this morning, well, then I imagine he can take some proper training."

Felix smiled. "That's exactly why I came by."

Evie squealed in excitement. "Avet's eyes, yes. Time to fight."

* * *

"Alright," Cal leaned back against a padded post and regarded him. The four of them, Cal, Evie, Felix, and Harn had all relocated to the far side of the warehouse nearest the obstacle course. The others were all busy in the back or in the sandy arena fighting pit, and they'd been warned to give them privacy. "How do you want to progress? I know you can fight, I've seen it, but is that what you want to do?"

Felix paused. He hadn't considered that before, and he said as much.

"I had a feelin'," Cal smiled. "Most folk born here—gods that's odd to say. Most folk develop a particular set of Skills based on how they wish to live their life. Often, they'll let their Born Trait guide them in those choices. This generally leads to Skillsets and Titles that reinforce one another, giving a particular lean to their proficiencies."

"Don't always happen that way, though," said Harn, who was still not wearing his customary silver armor. Felix found it very strange to see him out of it, like a turtle without a shell. "A lot of folks get caught up in bad situations, or shit, they get forced into developing Skills that aren't optimal for their Born Trait. Happens all the time."

Cal nodded. "You've got this Keen Mind. It ain't a Trait I'm familiar with, but Harn tells me it has to do with memory. I imagine that'd make you good at knowledge Skills, yeah?"

Felix shrugged. "I suppose. I have perfect recall for the last thirty days. Beyond that, I have an increased chance for perfect recall, though it's not a sure thing. I picked it when I thought my Race and Omen were leading me toward being a wizard."

"A wizard?" Evie asked, mouth scrunched around the word. Pit was sprawled across her lap and enjoying head scratches.

"Oh, a mage, I guess. Big hat, big beard? You don't have wizards here?" Felix looked around at them.

"Haha, big hats and big beards aplenty. Never heard the word before, though." Evie grinned, enjoying the shape of it. "Wizard."

"Anyway," Cal cleared her throat and nodded at Harn. "After you put your trust in us, I was talkin' over your Skills and Titles with Harn. You're just...all over the place. It's like you picked up every Skill and Title you could, somehow. Which is damn hard to do."

"Something to do with being Unbound, maybe," Felix shrugged off the difficulty, forcing nonchalance into his tone. "But the why of it was survival and necessity. Every Skill was won through combat or experimentation, and the Titles were mostly accidents I was lucky enough to survive."

Deception is level 15!

"When I arrived here, I had no idea how all of this worked. There are still mysteries to me that are probably common knowledge to all of you. I fought tooth and nail; I survived...my enemies didn't." Felix shrugged, but his face was troubled. "I don't...in my world, fighting to the death was called murder, no matter how you dressed it up. Here, it's so normalized. I feel like I should hate it but...it's exciting, it's—goddamn it—it's fun. Is that messed up?"

Cal shrugged, nonplussed. "Not on the Continent. Plenty of battle nuts here. The strongest usually are, anyway."

Harn grunted. "You got a long way ta go before being Silver or Gold Ranked, but Cal's got the right of it. Battle is in the people's blood, leastwise those that do best in it. I've seen you fight more than her, and you got the spark."

"Now you just need the skill." Cal chuckled. "That's where we come in."

"Honestly, I enjoy magic, too. I'd rather roll all my Skills into my fighting style, if that's possible." Felix looked uncertainly between the two of them. "Can that be done?"

"First, a question," Cal asked while stepping closer. "How much pain can you handle?"

This time, it was Felix who grinned.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Training, Cal had said moments before, is about pushing your limits.

Felix stood in the sandy arena, breathing heavily and wincing at the two cuts to his left shoulder and right pectoral. He had wisely chosen to strip down to his trousers and boots alone. Harn stood across the way, wearing his simple tunic and pants, but also breathing heavily. The two silver axes he held in his grip shimmered, the faint crimson sheen of Felix's blood adding to their aura of menace.

How much can you handle?

Felix charged forward in an attempt to catch the man off guard, and threw a Corrosive Strike. Harn blocked it with an axe, diverting the blow to the side and swinging his other weapon low.

Felix simply jumped, breaking contact and launching himself up by fifteen feet. Relentless Charge sent him hurtling back toward the ground, where he landed with an explosive blast. Sand burst upward, and the stone floor beneath shattered, sending shrapnel flying everywhere.

Before the cloud cleared, Harn burst through the sand swinging. Felix dodged his blows, barely, his Agility just enough to avoid Harn's obvious Axe Mastery. But only if he focused his entire attention on it and fought defensively.

Dodge is level 32!

He grunted and used his fists to punch the hafts of Harn's weapons, sending them backward for a half-second. He lashed out with a kick.

Harn took the kick straight to the chest, and for a brief moment the warrior's eyes widened in surprise. Then he tumbled backward, smashing into and through the crude wooden barrier of the arena.

"You see that?" Yan crowed, slapping the barrier. "Kid just knocked down Onslaught!"

"Just wait," smiled Cal in a way that annoyed Felix. The others had all crowded around them when they found out Harn was sparring with him. Felix even spotted Kelgan eating some sort of kabob.

Harn got back up to his feet and laughed ruefully, rubbing his chest. "Damn fine kick. Nearly broke a rib."

"Wouldn't want that," Felix smiled and beckoned Harn back into the ring. "Hate for this to be over so soon."

"Gettin' cocky, eh?" Harn grinned. "I like it."

Without warning, Harn whipped his left arm forward. Felix leaped to the side, kicking up another fountain of sand as the spinning silver disc hurtled toward him. Felix met Harn who was already there somehow, his other axe mid-swing.

Shit!

Reign of Vellus!

A blast of lightning arced between the two of them, coiling around Harn's arm and axe. For an instant, both of their movements slowed to a crawl, before a concussive force launched them away from each other. Sand exploded upward in a geyser of granules, while Felix dropped his left arm and spread his legs to control his backward slide. A faint tingle of pain raced up his nerves, but it wasn't entirely crippling. Apparently that was bordering on Acrobatics territory. Good to know.

The sand drifted slowly to the ground, and Felix pushed his Perception to the limit. He could hear the pitter-patter of falling particles, the excited breathing of the people crowding the barricade nearest him, and smell the raging humidity of the storm outside. But as the dust cleared, he saw no sign of Harn.

Pit shrieked.

Above!

With a surge of Mana, Felix thrust his hands upward, dislodging a burst of sand all around him as four arcing pillars of stone crashed into place. Just in time. Harn's falling axe blasted into and through one of the pillars, shearing to the side and away from Felix's body. The man himself landed atop the rushed construction, easily destroying it with another strike, but Felix had already darted out.

"Tch," Harn said, spinning his axes atop the wreckage. "Almost had you, kid."

Felix didn't answer and instead sounded the pattern of another Stone Shaping. With a grunt, the destroyed pillars reformed and burst from underneath Harn. The man shouted in alarm as a blunt block of stone blasted him in the leg, falling backward before getting struck by two more. The impact cracked through the air, almost explosive, and Harn was thrown once more.

He landed heavily in the dirt, ten feet away.

"Avet's own," murmured Yan.

Felix was panting heavily as he regarded Harn. Doubt wriggled in his guts as the man laid there for a few seconds longer, but eased once he rolled to his feet. Harn..his arm and shoulder were covered in deep fissures, as if he were made of stone himself. As Felix watched, the cracks sealed back up into unmarked flesh.

Harn grunted in clear annoyance and brandished his axes. Felix felt a surge of Mana flare, an orange vapor gathering around the warrior's fists. The sand erupted behind Harn as he accelerated forward, axes swinging. Felix activated Relentless Charge and went to meet him.

Harn shouted something, but Felix couldn't make it out. The orange vapor around his fists spiraled outward, wrapping around his twin axes in a peculiar pattern before snapping around them like a blazing net. Felix's charge had him close with the warrior in an instant, his already preposterous speed enhanced by the Skill, and close enough to feel scorching heat as Harn's axes burst into white hot flame. Harn became obscured behind a curtain of scorching air, his axes boiling the air around them.

Felix cried out, his skin tightening and cracking from the heat, but more than that; his core shuddered in tearing agony as a melody was aborted. A chord sheared, screaming out of tune like snapped strings as the axes swung closer to his neck. The swell of torment crested over him, followed closely after by a black wave of oblivion.

* * *

When Felix's consciousness swam back to the surface, the first thing he felt was frustration.

It happened again.

His broken Skills included Fire and Heat Resistance, something he hadn't run into yet. Felix kept his eyes closed and groaned. Beneath him, it was soft but gritty. The arena sand. How long had he been out? Felix cracked open his eyes.

Harn and Cal stood over him, along with a stocky Dwarf he'd never met before. Felix flared his Voracious Eye.

Name: Roridan Yarspike

Race: Dwarf

Level: 55

HP: ????/????

SP: ????/????

MP: ???/???

Lore: Dwarves are gifted with physical stats, and often excel in scriptwork and scholarly pursuits.

Strength: More Data Required

Weakness: More Data Required

His Eye couldn't get a full read on the Dwarf, and the lack of resistance suggested it was due to his level. Moreover, the Dwarf noticed.

"Ah, yer awake." He grinned down through a short, bristly beard the color of moss. His blue eyes belied his tone, however, creased at the sides in concern. "How'dya feel, lad?"

Felix sat up, noting that his flayed nerves and aching bones felt entirely normal. Just as before, the surge of pain from his broken Skills hadn't lasted beyond the moment. "I'm fine."

"Yer tough, kid," Harn said with a frown. "When ya dropped, I didn't know why. Cal reminded me though."

Felix accepted the warrior's offered hand and hauled on it to regain his feet. Harn grunted in surprise at his weight, and Felix smirked. A hand laid onto his shoulder, and Felix turned to find Cal staring at him.

"It was your Skills, right?"

Felix nodded, and the Dwarf sucked in a sharp breath. "Broken Skills? Noctis wept, that's not good." Felix looked over at Roridan, and the Dwarf gave him a sheepish look. "Sorry, lad. I'm makin' assumptions. The name's Rory."

"Nice to meet you, Rory." Felix smiled politely and shook the Dwarf's outstretched hand. "Are you part of this team, too?"

"Ach, sadly no. I've got too many fledgling Tin Ranks to up an' leave the Guild."

"Rory is a Guild Trainer," Cal said by way of explanation. "One of the best."

"Lies, lad. Don't believe ‘em. I'm just your average Dwarf, gettin' by on my good looks and charm."

A snorting laugh came from Harn. "Good lookin' as a troll's ass."

"Ah, didn't know ye've been plowin' the Troll Market, Harn. My sympathies!" Rory cackled as Harn growled.

A quick glance around the room told Felix that everyone else had scattered back to their tasks, though Evie hung just outside the area with Pit at her side. He looked back at the Dwarf and Cal. "Did I miss something? I thought you weren't on good terms with the Guild?"

"We're not," grunted Harn. "But Rory's a friend. Long as he can keep his mouth shut."

The Dwarf raised a palm. "Consider me buried treasure, friends. Locked and lost."

"He's trustworthy, Felix. He's here to help train our people...and you, if you're up for it." Cal explained as she pushed her short hair back. "He's trained most Guilder recruits for the last thirty years, and he's been workin' on a training regimen for our team. Twins know I'm not up to managing all of their...eccentricities."

"It's an art, really Callie," Rory said, already looking toward the back rooms. "Gotta know when to push and when to rein in. Speakin' of, I'll get your crew rounded up to start. I don't have all day."

The Dwarf stomped off, heading out of the arena. Felix watched him go and drummed his fingers on his thigh in agitation. Once he was far enough away, Felix turned back to Cal and Harn.

"What'd you tell him?"

"Nothin', kid. Can't, remember?" Cal spread her hands, palms up. "We made that oath, and we're bound to keep it."

"Rory is a good sort," Harn added. "He's also still a Guilder, and yeah, there's risk, but it also means he has access ta resources we need. Without his trainin' we ain't gettin' through that Domain. Without the Domain, we don't have enough funds to get outta Haarwatch when the redcloaks lift the lockdown."

"I see," Felix said after a moment. He didn't like it, but it made sense. "Then I have questions for you both, especially after our spar, Harn."

"Warded room?" Suggested Cal. Felix nodded.

"Warded room."

* * *

Felix toggled his notifications as the wardstones were activated.

Dual Casting is level 24!

Relentless Charge is level 19!

Unarmed Mastery is level 30!

Corrosive Strike is level 31!

Stone Shaping is level 29!

That all made sense after his tough fight against Harn. The last line made sense too, in a darkly comedic sort of way.

He4t Re813#%ce is level 23!

Even glancing at the notification sent a shock of pain coursing through him. He'd gained a level in his broken Skill. What the hell did that mean?

"First off, I gotta say ya did well in our fight," said Harn, admiring his torn jerkin. "That Corrosive Strike of yours is strong."

"Not strong enough to take you down, though."

"Hah! You'll need more than some fancy Skills and high Stats ta beat me, kid. I'm a whole 'nother Tier ahead of you, and I've got a few Skills nearing Adept Tier. It's impressive ya could even fight me at all." Harn leaned against the wall and regarded him with serious eyes. "If I hadn't accidentally tripped yer broken resistance—sorry bout that by the by—you mighta lasted a bit longer." He bared his teeth in a sharp smile. "A bit."

Felix laughed and sat down, carefully this time, not wanting the chair to break beneath him. Cal sat across from him, tipping her feet up onto the table. "Since you're my best bet on getting into that Domain, I need to get you up to speed. That means we gotta get you ready. I ain't bringing an untrained fighter into a Domain, battle-talented or not. So ask your questions quick."

Felix sobered and sat forward. "Right. It's about my Primary Stats. I've hit what the System called the 'First Threshold,' but I don't actually know what that means. I feel faster and stronger, but I've no gauge on how strong, how fast, how tough. I need to know if I'm to move forward."

Harn whistled. "First Threshold, of course. Stats over 100 well before level 50. That puts yer fightin’ in a new light."

Felix hesitated. "What?"

"Yer Primary Stats're working together now. It's like," Harn grasped his hands as he looked around the room. "Like these wardstones. Impressive works by themselves, but together they make a complete whole. Together, they do something greater."

"Ok, so that should make everything easier, right?" Felix asked. "Is there an accurate measure of Strength or Agility? Does one point in Strength equal, say, ten pounds of punching force or something?"

Cal shared a look with Harn. "Why?"

"Well, it'd be nice to know what I can do, instead of hoping I'm strong enough or fast enough." Felix leaned back in his chair. "In the Foglands, too much time was spent not knowing, just guessing and hoping. I'd rather be done with that, if I can be."

"That's what we have ta do. Test yerself. Fight to the edge." Harn clenched his fist. "You hopin' fer validation? That you're stronger than others? Well congrats, kid. You did it, yer probably stronger than any dozen Tin Ranks combined."

"Thats—that's not what I'm after," Felix explained, feeling like he was grasping at straws. "The System quantifies this sort of stuff, right? I figured people who grew up here would have a better, uh, system for keeping track or comparison."

Cal laughed. "No one in power wants that. Give the peasants the ability to rise up easily and more'll do so, meaning the strong might lose their positions."

Felix opened his mouth before his brain caught up. Of course. That makes entirely too much sense.

"For physical and mental efforts, you'll have to train to your limits to find ‘em. Same as everyone else. Once you've defined those limits, you can move from there." Cal thought a moment before she tapped the table. "Perhaps you should learn Spirit Sensing or somethin' like it. Your Perception and Intelligence are high enough for it, certainly. Useful for assessing threats, animate or otherwise. You have Mana Manipulation and...what is Fire Within?"

"You memorized my Skills?" Felix asked.

"More or less." Cal shrugged.

"Huh. Fire Within is for internal Mana control, basically. Lets me visualize my core and, uh, pathways around my body." At their blank looks, he tried another term. "Mana channels? What do you call them?"

"Channels, but 'pathways' works, too, I guess," Cal looked at Harn who shrugged. "That's a tough Skill type to earn. You should be in a good place to learn Spirit Sensing. I'll see what Rory can do."

Harn looked at Felix and grinned. "You've got more questions, don't you?"

Felix smiled, almost apologetically and spread his hands. "So many."

Harn settled into another chair and groaned. "Ok. Two more. That's my limit, kid."

Felix took a breath.

"What is the Broken Path, and what the hell are Harmonic Stats for?"

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

"The Broken Path..." Cal trailed off with a frown. "I saw the Title in your list yesterday. I had hoped it meant something else." Felix tilted his head, but didn't interrupt her. "The Broken Path is what the priests call the old ways. The ways that came before the gods left us."

"I keep hearing that they died," Felix said with a questioning lilt to his voice.

Cal shrugged. "Dead, left, either way they're gone. Two Ages have come and gone, and they've not come back."

Felix's mind lingered on Vellus, the Goddess of the Bloodmoon, as she'd been described. His thoughts immediately pinged off the memory of Mervin and his faith. "What about the Pathless? That's a god, too, right?"

Harn spat. "Not one worth talkin' about."

"The Pathless makes it a point to not interfere. It's in the name. Unlike the Old Gods, who myth holds were quite involved in the Continent, the Pathless stays aloof and neutral. The only guidance he offers is his High Laws." Cal said the last with more than a little rancor. "The Hierocracy has the Pathless as the state religion. The Hierophant herself is the god's greatest mortal servant, supposedly."

"Remember what we said about no one in power wanting to help guide the weak? That's the Pathless' line. Part of his so-called 'High Laws.'" Harn growled. "It's a line I've grown tired of hearing."

"So then the Broken Path...it's, what? Guidance?" Felix asked.

"A way to power. But it's called broken for a reason. The Old Gods were...not much was left when they departed. Any guide, any path they might have lying around is bound to be incomplete." Cal chewed her lip in thought. "You'd have to find a scholar to tell you more. Hard to find one willin' to delve into a subject as taboo as the Old Gods, at least in the Hierocracy."

Felix clenched his jaw. He had both the Broken Path Title as well as a quest related to it. He pulled it up.

Shrines of the Broken!

You have found and recognized one of the Lost Gods' Temples, reactivating its Shrine and taking a step forward upon the Broken Path. Dare you go further?

Rewards: Unknown

"Wish I could tell ya more, kid," Harn said, standing behind one of the metal chairs and leaning onto its back. "But you've got a knack for hard questions."

"My curse," Felix smiled thinly before collecting himself. "What about Harmonic Stats? What are they? What do they do?"

Cal shook her head. "Hard questions, indeed. They're specialized Stats, ones that only take effect after they're unlocked. Far as I know, there are eight of them, same as the Primary Stats. You can unlock one or two with enough luck or talent. Which one did you get?"

"Uh," Felix checked his memory. "Resonance, Intent, Affinity, Resilience, and Alacrity."

There was a moment of stunned silence before Harn let out a short, sharp breath. He pinched the bridge of his nose.

Cal looked at him and asked in a flat voice, "How? Why?"

Felix just shrugged, his thin smile blooming a bit further. Cal and Harn clearly saw it as the smile of someone who couldn't stop being impossible. She took a calming breath as Harn grunted beside her.

"Burnin' Unbound."

"Harmonic Stats," Cal started before floundering a bit. "Far as I know, they aren't well-understood by anyone I've encountered. Maybe the Nevast Penatar, or the Conclave at Levantier might know more, but they ain't sharin'. This is what I do know: each Harmonic Stat is born of two Primary Stats, but while the Primary affect mostly the Body and Mind, the Harmonic Stats affect the Spirit."

"Really?" Felix sat forward again, his interest piqued. "That's how they're divided up? I guess it never made sense that so many of the Primary Stats had to do with the physical side of things. Two for the Mind."

"Three," corrected Harn.

"Intelligence and Willpower and what, Perception?" They nodded. "Interesting. And do they all affect the Spirit, then? Do some affect the Mind as well? Or the Body even?"

"Predominately the Spirit, but I've heard some say the Mind and Body are still affected in some way. Like I said, not well-known, not in my circles." Cal tapped her chest. "Unlocking them is different for everyone, but doing so before your First Spirit Formation is a great boon to your foundation. You had how many of these when you Tiered?"

"All of them."

There was a terrible squeal-crunch as Harn's hands crushed the back of the metal chair.

"Five. Twins’ teeth, Felix. Alright. Then your Apprentice Tier Formation is..." She looked up in thought. "Moving Mountain Body, Dawnwalker Spirit, and..."

"Godeater Mind."

"Godeater...that'll raise a ruckus alone." Harn grumbled.

"What do the names mean?" Felix asked. "I know I picked various Essences during the Formation process, but I'm still not entirely sure what that all means in a practical sense."

"Essences are...seeds," Cal explained. "Way it was taught to me was, you pick your seeds, plant them into your Body, Mind, or Spirit, and the System grows them anew. The details, the specifics of the seeds are what determines the shape of your new self. But your own soul, the power that is you, is what truly shapes it. So your Moving Mountain Body is ‘cause of the Essences you chose, but also ‘cause of who you are."

Felix drummed his fingers on the table. "If you gave two people the same Essences and used the same Skills to Tier, would they form the same Body?"

"Yes and no," she said, rather unhelpfully, if Felix was being honest. "They would both form a similar Body, but the specifics would vary. Like I said, I was taught it has to do with your soul, which doesn't work best with all Skills. So one may be better suited to the Body formed and be able to get more out of it."

"Hmm," Felix thought it over. Did that mean his Formations were a good fit or not? "How can you tell? If your Formation is the right one?"

"Hard to say, but once you've passed Journeyman, you'll know." Cal shuddered. "Journeyman is known as one of the worst Formations to make."

"Hurts like a bitch," agreed Harn. "Worse if you've strayed down the wrong path."

Felix had stood and started pacing, nervous energy bubbling up inside him. "How do you both know all this? I thought you said people didn't teach anyone?"

"The Guild teaches, though it expects much in return," Cal scowled. "Too much, I think now."

"Felix, yer Formations are...odd, to say the least. Ya used some powerful Essences to make em, but I ain't heard of a single one." Harn scratched his jaw. "I'd suggest not sharing em with all an' sundry."

"Wasn't planning on it," Felix said, a touch crossly. "Only reason you three know is because I'm dead in the water on all this."

"We appreciate your trust, Felix. We don't take the responsibility lightly. You must understand, the Nym, the Unbound, your...situation is something that doesn't happen." Cal massaged her eyes. "Not anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"Unbound are more than rare. There hasn't been a recorded case since, I dunno, the Second Age?"

"Magda—" Felix glanced at Cal, who's face tightened slightly. "She told me Unbound were called demons, monsters. Calamities."

"All true. You don't find a lot bandied about Nym or other Lost Races because just that; they're Lost. The Ruin and their fall makes them...vanish. The Unbound, however, they simply stopped arriving at some point. Their memory lived on in a thousand stories that needed a good monster, something to dwell in the night and warn children about."

"They became boogeymen." Felix said, but received only confused looks. "Monsters in the dark."

"Ah, yes, precisely." Cal nodded. "No adults actually believe there are monsters lurking beneath their beds, but every one of them was once a child who did."

"Plus the monsters that do exist lend credence to the worst they can imagine," Felix added. "I get it."

They sat in silence for a moment while Felix collected his thoughts. Far from depressed, he found strength in this information. The Broken Path could be promising, if dangerous, leading him toward more power if he didn't get lost on it. And Harmonic Stats… he had already unlocked so many, so that must be a good thing, right? The last two were System rewards for completing a very difficult quest, after all.

The question now was, how did he move forward?

"Alright, what's next?" Felix looked between the two of them. "I want—need—to advance my Skills and level as much as I can. How do we do this?"

Cal smiled, a sharp, ferocious thing. "First, we get a handle on your foundations. The First Formation is the bedrock upon which your strength is built. If any of it is flawed, then you'll only get hurt trying to advance.

"Yesterday you mentioned the Skills you Tiered to advance your Body, Mind, and Spirit. That'll give us a handle on how to progress. Can I share that information with Rory?"

Felix hesitated. "There's no way he can use it against me, right?"

"Knowledge is always power," Cal said with a shrug. "If you're asking whether or not I trust him, I already answered that. Rory...he wouldn't."

Felix clenched his jaw but nodded. "I guess I'll have to trust you on that."

Harn snorted. "Don't blame ya, kid. But he's got the know-how ta make this work, more'n me or Callie. He trained Magda, after all."

There was little to discuss after that. Felix's questions were sated for the moment, though he was sure he'd have more tomorrow. Truthfully, his mind was already buzzing with concepts and inquiries, but those would have to wait for Zara. If nothing else, he hoped the bookseller and ex-Archivist could suggest some reading material. Even if his reading ability was still hovering around the grade-school level.

As they walked from the room, Felix got an eyeful of Cal's adventurers sparring. Bodie was fighting off Yan and Portia with a big warhammer, while Vivianne was handily defending against Kelgan's rapid-fire spear thrusts. The five of them moved fast, fluidly, as if they were engaging in a deadly dance. It was hypnotic.

"I've never once looked like that," murmured Felix, his awe apparent. Harn snorted in amusement.

"No. Yer more like a battering ram. Lotta power, little finesse." He clapped Felix on the back, and for once the Nym didn't even take a step forward. Harn grinned in appreciation. "Tomorrow, we start to fix that."

"Felix, before you go. Did you speak to Atar today?" Cal asked, stretching her lower back.

"Shit," Felix said. "With everything going on, I forgot."

"Thought you had perfect recall?" Harn asked.

"I do, but not if I'm not thinking about it...It's hard to explain. It's been a rough day."

"Hah, don't worry. We know where Sparky is stayin'. I'll put word out to him to meet us here tomorrow mornin'."

Felix grimaced. "Better make that tomorrow afternoon. I have to meet with the bookseller in the morning."

"Ah," said Cal. "Yes, do that. We'll deal with Atar."

"Tomorrow then," said Harn as he pocketed the wardstones. "We'll see how strong you can become."

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The next day found Felix approaching the Elder Crown. The rain persisted, though the skies were merely overcast and gray while a steady drizzle filled the streets. It was early morning, as Felix had found that he no longer needed as much sleep. He barely got more than four hours before his brain woke him up, while his body filled him with the frantic urge to move. As before, Felix filled the inn's water supply, including several storage barrels located in a cleverly hidden shed abutting the building. After wolfing down several helpings of breakfast, he set out, Pit at his side.

While no one gave him second looks, having a Dire Hound at his side was great at clearing a path. Pit was a giant puppy, but all anyone else saw was a half-tame monster. The huge lizard-birds that pulled many of the carriages were easily twice the size of Pit, so while some stepped aside with a startled oath or wide eyes, most just quietly gave the tenku space to roam. Felix happily followed in his wake.

Luckily, he had been able to purchase a secondhand brown cloak from Jacinda for a few silver pieces, or 'swords' as they were called. On the expensive side for secondhand, as far as Felix could figure the price of things, it came with an enchantment that more than made up for it.

Name: Simple Cloak

Type: Clothing (enchanted)

Lore: A simple but sturdy design favored in areas of a more temperate clime. Has several pockets inside.

Weather Sealed I - Rendered waterproof and slightly resistant to fire, abrasion, and tears.

Now, not nearly as sodden as he had been before, Felix trotted up to the storefront of the Elder Crown...and found it locked. He peered through the large glass window in front, but it was still early morning, and no magelights floated inside. He could see plenty of books, still in the neat rows he had placed them in, but there was otherwise no sign of Zara. He even craned his neck, trying to peer into the shadows above the room.

Felix flared his Manasight, and the ambient Mana in the building and streets burst into life around him, illuminating their wild, interwoven nature to him. As whenever he'd activated it in town, it was a lot, but Felix muscled through the input, pushing away everything that wasn't his focus. It had been getting easier and easier to do that, far more so than when he was trapped in the Maw's prison. The building was locked, and several threads of wispy colored vapor was strung along the door and window before him. The threads were woven into the wood and stone casements, almost permanent enchantments.

That's what they are. Enchantments. Felix marveled at the skillfully woven strings of power. What Skill does this?

Of course, he had no answers there. The one he'd prefer to ask was missing.

Hopefully not actually missing. It doesn't seem as if she's been back since I made my changes. That's almost three days, the night before the Wretches got through. Felix fretted at the coincidence, alarm burning in his mind. What if she was hurt?

There were a few vendors nearby, each with their own shopfronts. Felix made a few gentle inquiries, trying not to seem too eager. Most hadn't a clue and promptly ignored him once he made it clear he wasn't buying, but a cobbler two doors down told him that he hadn't seen the bookseller for several days.

"Ain't too uncommon with that one," the cobbler offered congenially. He nimbly threaded a thick needle through the insole of a large boot before him. "Comes an' goes. Shop's closed more often than not."

Felix thanked him and went back to the Elder Crown.

The shop was undamaged, as was the neighborhood around it. The Wretches had landed farther south and east of the area, closer to the river that snaked through the four Quarters. Felix had to assume Zara simply had errands that took her away, though with the city locked down, he was unsure where she could be going. Still, her disappearance ate at him.

I should've come back yesterday. Damn it. A mote of fury kindled in his chest at his own guilty conscience. If he had come back yesterday, if he hadn't been afraid of being scolded, he could have had answers. Better answers than Cal and Harn could provide him. A way forward.

That mote became a boiling heat, a surge of impotent frustration. Felix clenched his hands tightly enough that several passersby gave him frightened looks; his forearms creaked with tension, their painful strain clearly audible. His skin prickled with an agonizing heat; the urge to do stupid, reckless violence nearly overwhelming. He wanted to tear the bookshop's door off its hinges or put his boot through a wall. To break and shatter and utterly destroy something, anything he could. He raised his clenched fist, muscles twitching with that wild intensity, and he saw...

...his skin had blackened.

What Dwells Beneath is level 2!

Pit butted against his hand, his soft fur and warmth a shock against Felix's skin. Waves of serenity flowed over him, into him, splashing toward the bond in his chest. The surge of anger broke apart as that warmth eroded it, his senses flooded with something ineffable. Felix breathed deep, his mind grasping and flowing with Pit's compassionate offering.

Calm. Let it flow. Let it center you.

Meditation is level 34!

Deep Mind is level 37!

When Felix opened his eyes, his hand had reverted to its normal coloration. Not a talon in sight. He breathed a sigh of relief, all of the tension flowing out of him with that breath, and his knees nearly gave out. Stretching his right hand toward Pit's wide Dire Wolf head, he gave him an appreciative pat.

"Thanks, buddy."

That was entirely too close. He had almost transformed in broad daylight, before a hundred people on an open street. What happens if I can't control it? That rage...it was mine, but it wasn't.

Felix was pretty sure he knew who it came from, and it took several more calming breaths before his heart steadied again. He imagined the Maw was laughing its ass off, but thankfully his Bastion of Will was held too tightly to hear it. Until he knew how to remove the Primordial asshole from his Mind, he was stuck in his situation. It all came back to the same thing. His only way forward was to strengthen himself; perhaps if he strengthened his mental Skills like Bastion of Will and Deep Mind, he could excise the Maw's influence completely.

I hope.

"C'mon Pit," Felix said as he started walking northward. "Back to training."

* * *

The streets approaching to the warehouse section of the Dust Quarter were mostly residential, usually filled with laborers going to or from work in the mountain mines or the river docks. Kids would often scurry about, playing games and chasing each other through the dusty streets. Today, things were a bit different: the roads were more like mud after all the rain, and there were far more folks in armor walking about.

Felix counted at least ten Guilders moving through the crowd, armed to the teeth and bearing a green or red sash at their hips. The sash had Guild markings on it, their crest of a Sword, Spear, and Shield, but they were more easily picked out by the medallions they all wore around their necks. Tin Ranks were most of those he spotted, but a few Iron Ranks peeked through the crush of bodies. They all seemed to be panning the crowds, looking down alleys and around barrels or wagons.

But they weren't the only ones.

Several white-enameled warriors sauntered through the streets, usually no more than two at a time, but far more obvious in their golden sunbursts and bright red cloaks. Again, most were Acolytes, which Felix had learned was the trainee rank of the Inquisition. However, he did see one group of Acolytes led by an Initiate stop a middle-aged man and demand he lower his hood and show them his eyes.

"O-of course, your excellenc—" the man tried to comply, but his arm was arrested by the gloved hand of an Iron Rank Guilder.

"No need for that, friend," smiled the Iron Rank, his light brown hair tied back in a simple queue at the nape of his neck. His jaw was square and covered in scruff, his smile easy and bright. "But I've a few questions for you, if you've a moment."

"Ah, certainly—"

"Hold, citizen." The Initiate wore a full metal helm, and only his angry eyes could be seen. He stepped forward and loomed over the Guilder, for all that they were perhaps two inches shorter. "You have no rights here, Iron Rank. We're conducting a search."

"As are we," the man said easily, gesturing back toward the four Tin Ranks that were nearby. "We've reports of a screaming in the night. Said it was around here. Now sir, did you hear anything like that last night?"

As the man glanced between the two armored foes, Felix Eyed the Tin Rankers and quickly looked away. Damn. It's those kids from the inn.

He'd heard that they had passed whatever entry tests Guilders performed, but hadn't expected them to show up here. Before the monster attack, neither the Guild nor Inquisition bothered with the Dust Quarter, a fact Felix had quite enjoyed the more he learned about both organizations.

Now they're doing patrols? The last thing he needed now was for them to remember him. Even if he couldn't be tied to anything, he felt far more comfortable under the radar. Felix stepped into the nearest alley, Pit following close behind. Just in time, too, as the Guilder and Initiate's voices started getting more heated. Pit let out a huff of annoyance.

No thanks. The less involvement with either of those groups the better, as far as Felix was concerned. Cut through the alley, skirt around them altogether. Might even be able to reach the northern section this way.

Felix and Pit headed off into the shadowed back streets of the Dust, but he quickly found out that city planning hadn't been on the mind of those who had built this Quarter. The alleys and half-drowned streets behind residential blocks and the odd commercial businesses was a warren of interconnecting pathways. Trash filled most of them, the gutters either too full or too broken to sluice any waste away and into the large, gaping sewer grates. Those were interspersed in a sort of hodgepodge way, some alleys having two or three, while other times he went blocks without seeing one. Luckily, the rains were keeping the stink down, but that just meant much of the way was spent trudging through inch-deep pools of nameless muck.

"This is godawful, Pit," Felix complained as he stepped on something that squished unpleasantly. "I'm so glad these boots are waterproof."

Pit let out a piteous whine, his ears drooping. He had no boots. Felix patted the big tenku's ribs. "We're almost through. I think."

They wandered a bit longer in the maze of alleys with no clear end in sight. Felix's memory and sense of direction were on point, but the buildings here were tall tenements, apartments stacked up four, five stories high. He had no landmarks to guide him. He contemplated just climbing the side of the nearest building when he heard splashing and the clear sound of retching up ahead.

Someone shouted, and there was the unmistakable ring of metal on metal.

Felix almost ignored them, not willing to get involved in this fight, either. But then he heard a familiar voice.

"Put yer steel away. Check his pockets and purse. He ain't gonna need it no more."

Mehren. Felix groaned inwardly, and Pit's hackles rose. And probably a few of his 'Blades.' What are they doing back here? It sounded like...are they gonna kill someone?

Moving carefully through the water, Felix peered around the nearest corner. Sure enough, there was Mehren and his goons. He was wrong about the murder though...it had already happened. A body, gray and lifeless was at their feet. It was partially submerged in the growing muck, but it was clearly torn into several pieces. Its chest was ripped open, while one of his arms and head were detached completely. The last was easy to tell, as the head was sitting atop a tilting pile of refuse. Felix's Eye identified him as Risel Faun, an Elf.

Damn, Felix grimaced at the gore. Mehren and his cronies were standing around the body, and Felix thought he detected a bit of surprise on their faces. I don't think they did this. Maybe they just found it?

The Blades looked to be in rough shape since their encounter with Felix a few days ago. None of their Health was at full, though only one of them was wearing a sling. Perhaps healing potions helped undo the damage he had caused, but not all of them. Mehren, however, was back in fighting form. His Health, Stamina, and Mana were all at full, and he seemed supremely confident as he stood directing his men to loot the body. There was a...wavering to his Status that Felix didn't quite understand. As if he were Eyeing him through a rippled glass window.

"Hoo boy, found somethin' good on him! At least thirty stone, and ten sword."

"I got a knife! Barely used, too!"

"Hah!" Mehren laughed, nudging an absolute giant. It was a Half-Ogre named Claude. "An’ you thought coming out here was a waste."

"It helps. Still makes you short on your take, boy." Claude cracked his knuckles. "Boss is still pissed at ya."

Mehren blanched and nodded quickly. "O-of course. We're gonna hit the tenements next. Those old broads'll have a ton of stone stashed away. Always do."

Despite a rising pulse of outrage from Pit (did he understand the concept of robbery?), Felix pulled himself back. The better path was to leave, let the world spin on. He wasn't involved, right?

Right. Felix took a last lingering look, ready to back up and climb out of that place.

Then he saw the sigils.

Cut into the torso were at least six sigils, their shapes clear and precise. Each one was a twisted, rotten vision. A...cage around a terrible secret. They pulsed, triggering his Manasight, each a corrupted heartbeat, pounding out a dangerous, intoxicating tattoo...

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

"Well well well, look who's come back. An’ with his doggie, too."

Felix had stepped out into the alley, straight toward the body. He hadn't even realized he'd moved. He blinked his eyes, attempting to banish that staccato rhythm from his head. Mehren was sizing him up, wielding a new mace that shimmered slightly with an obvious enchantment.

"Been lookin fer you, hero," Mehren drawled. "My boys and me ain't been happy since we met."

"Maybe you should see other people, then."

"What?" Felix could almost see the cogs turning in Mehren's brain, but then the man just ignored it. "We owe you a debt, I think. The boss wasn't pleased to hear his best earner got got by some no-name idiot. Now's I got this."

He brandished his mace, which flared into fire as it swung in a tight arc. Felix felt his chest clench, and Pit growled beside him. Had to be fire, huh?

"Yeah, be afraid! We're gunna gut ya and your dog." Mehren smiled nastily. "Boys!"

They came at him. No hesitation.

Two rushed forward, clearly Agility-focused fighters, each armed with long daggers. The two-inch-deep water splashed backward as if they were tiny speedboats. The other four were more ponderous, their heavy but powerful steps sending gouts of water with each stride.

Stone Shaping!

Stone Shaping!

Stone Shaping!

While the Agility fighters were fast, they weren't running-on-top-of-the-water fast, which meant they had to touch the ground. Sounding the pattern of his Skill, Felix abruptly raised a series of spikes in front of them, randomly spaced. Both of the enforcers went down, hard.

You Have Killed Javyn!

XP Earned!

The first simply impaled himself. The second one wasn't as hurt and rolled to his feet with ease, but was immediately cut down by near-invisible blades of wind Mana.

Pit's Wingblade is level 20!

You Have Killed Neman!

XP Earned!

Felix didn't flinch, having felt Pit's mounting anger, and he only felt the barest flicker of regret. They brought this on themselves.

Another one leaped through the air, sending a geyser of water shooting upward as he angled a perfect parabolic arc toward Felix. The man's body twisted like a gymnast's before rapidly plunging downward, feet first. Felix was only just able to get his arms up to block it, and the Human's boots hit him like a ballista bolt. The ground beneath groaned then broke, dropping several inches and sending up a spray of foul water. Before Felix could even counter-attack, the man somehow rebounded off of his arms, reversing his direction and sending Felix stumbling two steps back.

Jasim, a previously-encountered enforcer, was there. He jabbed at Felix with huge metal gauntlets covered in spikes. Felix dodged back, the sharpened steel so close he could feel the chill of the metal. Felix bobbed and weaved through Jasim's attacks, leaning on his Primary Stats and his Apprentice Tier Dodge Skill.

"Hold. Still. You. Shit!" Jasim was panting as he threw one wild strike after another, but Felix didn't answer. What was the point? Anything he said would be wasted breath, not only ignored but actively fought against. A prickling heat washed over Felix's skin, tingling the nape of his neck as he ducked beneath a wild backhand. Two more came at him from either side, heavily muscled idiots wielding axes and a pair of bolo sticks.

Growling in frustration, Felix kicked Jasim in his leading knee. It shattered with a pleasing, meaty crunch and high-pitched screams of pain. Focus lost, Jasim's gauntlets shimmered and disappeared. Felix grinned.

The bolo-boy surged forth, metal studded batons twirling for Felix's head and chest. At the same time, a hand axe was launched from the other enforcer.

Reign of Vellus!

Shouting in fury, Felix unleashed a blast of kinetic lightning, the power raw and unshaped. An orb of lightning burst from him in all directions, catching the bolo sticks and axe in midair and reversing them. Bolts of electricity cascaded into the water, and the three heavys suddenly seized as physics took over. The alley, shadowed by the tall tenements around them, was lit up in a wash of blue.

Felix turned toward Mehren and his Half-Ogre associate, and he could feel his eyes burning bright.

"The Fiend!" The bouncy enforcer cried out from an elevated perch. Felix flung his hand at the man, sending a Shadow Whip outward. The whip moved too quickly for the fighter to evade, and it smashed into his neck and back, sending him hurtling down into the water.

Mehren and the Half-Ogre, Claude, looked at each other and then at Felix. All of their men were down, though most were still alive. Felix bared his teeth and stepped toward them.

"Why are you messing in my business! Who are you, ya freak?" Mehren held his mace out in front of him. The fire enchantment burst brighter, sending out streamers of orange vapor as if warding him away.

Felix didn't answer as he walked closer through the rain. He didn't care anymore. He was done holding back.

Mehren screamed, his eyes wide and mouth a frenzied grimace. He charged, and so did Felix.

Windblades suddenly flashed across the crooked alley, each one slicing into one of the fallen enforcers. Death notifications blinked at Felix as Pit dispatched the rest of them. Mehren shouted and brought his mace to the side with both hands, as if it were ten times heavier and long as a greatsword. As they sped toward each other, the thug swung hard.

Stone Shaping!

Mad as he was, boiling even, Felix knew enough to avoid that damn enchantment. With a sharp gesture, a pillar was yanked up through the ground beneath Mehren and impacted his forearm. The swing went wild, the rapidly rising pillar forcing the bandit's mace up into the sky. Less than a second later, a fireball erupted from the weapon, easily ten feet wide. It shot off like a rocket, only to explode less than thirty feet away, sending rings of scorching heat into the crowded buildings nearby.

Influence of the Wisp!

Mehren is Enthralled for 5 Seconds!

Claude Resisted Enthrall!

Blue wispfire flared over the both of them, though it immediately guttered out around the Half-Ogre. Mehren, however, began to burn. The giant enforcer roared at Felix before thrusting one of his massive hands toward him. A wave of fetid water surged from beneath Claude and hit Felix at the knees, like a tiny wall. Felix's feet were swept out from beneath him and he landed face-first in the muck.

"Don't mess with the Blades, stranger," Claude rumbled from nearby. Felix pushed against the ground, hurling himself up and back into a standing position, just in time to be hit by three lashing tentacles formed from the trash water.

Felix grunted, but withstood the blows. It was a strong Skill and must have been well into Apprentice Tier. He could see his Health and even Stamina begin to seriously drop for the first time in the fight. He tried dodging and weaving, but the bludgeoning tendrils found him each and every time. Claude was clearly strong, beyond his First Formation with a Skill that could freely manipulate water. Doubt rose in his chest as the cold manifestations sapped him of Health and Stamina.

Was he too tough to beat?

Felix's hunger bared its teeth at the thought, the base of his skull thrumming with an atonal hum. The rage he had felt before, a kindled flame, burst into an inferno. It didn't matter what the scum could do. He'd destroy the bastard.

Cold Resistance is level 21!

With a weary grunt, Felix forced himself through another knee-level wave. The Half-Ogre's eyes widened as he did so, his hands gesticulating rapidly, probably to adjust his Skill.

"Enough."

Relentless Charge!

Wrack and Ruin!

Corrosive Strike!

Mana burning in his channels, Felix cut through the watery distance between them, and Claude was too slow to keep up. Felix's right arm blasted forward, a near-black orb of powerful acid clenched in his fist and empowered by his boosted speed. The Half-Ogre fell to his knees, arms twitching spasmodically. Claude gaped at him like a fish on land, a sizzling wheeze pouring from the hole in his chest. Whatever Body the Half-Ogre had formed, it was weaker than the Risi.

You Have Killed Mehren!

XP Earned!

Mehren died off to his side, and Felix bared his teeth over the dying Claude, feeling his eyes burn while his teeth itched and ached. Something splashed into the water, but he paid it no mind, his intense gaze fixed on the gathering horror of the enforcer.

"What are you?" he wheezed, a burbling pop of breath and corroded liquid.

"I'm hungry."

Ravenous Tithe!

Claude burst into a cloud of dense, greasy black smoke filled with streaks of aquamarine. The smoke flowed into Felix, pulled into him with a monstrous inhalation. Then it was gone.

All that was left was the rain.

* * *

The fireball was the first clue that something had gone sideways.

"Oona, what was that?" Aric demanded as they ran forward. He looked at the ochre-skinned Naiad, who had tilted her head as she stared off into the middle distance.

"Fire Mana, Rank I enchantment I-I'm pretty sure," she said, blinking her pale eyes and refocusing on the Iron Rank.

"Shit, what's over there?" Aric looked at Deema, who was fiddling with her staff. The big man, Kelvin, was just beyond her, guarding their rear. Who knew what the Inquisition would pull. They had left before it had come to blows, but the Initiate had been ready to put them all to the question if need be. "Deema! What's over there? I told you to study the Dust Quarter!"

"Oh! Uh, that's uh, common folk housing. Well away from most markets and shopfronts." The woman gripped her staff tightly. "Likely someone up to no good."

"True enough," Aric admitted. "A Rank I enchantment couldn't be afforded by the people who live here. That means someone else has come into the area to cause trouble."

Oona gasped. "The Butcher?"

"Maybe. Maybe not." Aric wasn't convinced the so-called Butcher even existed.

"Then we stop them, right?" Kelvin said, entirely too enthusiastically. Aric had noted that he alone had been ready to fight the Initiate and his Acolytes, if it had come to it. Aric could appreciate that kind of battle lust.

"That's the job. Leif!" Aric called out ahead of them, where his most nimble Tin Rank was acting as scout. "Move ahead and find them. Do not engage!"

Leif smirked and nodded before he accelerated down the twisting alleyway.

"Kid's gonna get his teeth knocked in one day, smirk like that." Aric grumbled. Then, to the others. "C'mon! We have to move!"

* * *

Nel Zarkas lifted his eyes to the sky. It was overcast, drizzling miserably, and approaching chilly for a summer's morning. His Acolytes muttered among themselves, complaining about the audacity of the Guilders. They had moved further down the muddy thoroughfare after chasing off the worthless adventurers.

"Quiet!" Nel looked and listened. Special rituals and ancient techniques passed down by their order had enhanced Nel's already System-improved senses to something beyond Human. His Perception pierced the flow of light and sound around them, pushing, prodding. Then, he had it.

A soft, buzzing strain touched his senses.

Nel gestured to his Acolytes, and all of them came to attention and lined up. The Inquisition was an order of discipline and strength. They followed the High Laws with a zeal only surpassed by the Paladins themselves. However, Nel's order was devoted to one task above all others. The third of the High Laws, that which defended them against the depredations of the rest of the Continent. To seek Purity and erase the stain of the ancient gods wherever possible.

"We move. Now."

Sorcery was afoot.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

What Dwells Beneath is level 3!

What Dwells Beneath is level 4!

Felix snapped back to himself what felt like moments later, hunched over an empty spot of foul water. He huffed a labored breath and straightened. Corpses surrounded him, their bodies riddled with slashes and even a few Frost Spears.

How long had he lost control? The bodies hadn't begun to dissolve yet, so not that long. However he wasn't sure if non-monsters did that...What was the difference between a monster and a regular person? The Risi were considered monsters, their bodies dissolving into greasy smoke a few minutes after their death. Monsters had a Type, while non-monsters had a Race, though the why of that was lost to him.

Panicking only a little, Felix brought up his Status. It still listed a Race, thankfully.

Not a monster. He glanced at his tan, Human-seeming hands. Not yet.

His Race still had the asterisk, and when he checked, the percentage had increased yet again.

*Further Bloodlines Have Been Found. Processing 32%

His core felt full, packed to bursting as it had twice before. The Half-Ogre...Felix couldn't believe he ate him. He had been so angry. So hungry. Would digesting Claude's Mana increase his Race changes? Very likely. And when it hit 100%? What then?

The rain muffled much, but Felix began hearing noises from the buildings around him. People were starting to move beyond their fear and investigate. He didn't have much time. Felix bent down and retrieved the enchanted mace from Mehren. His corpse was not great, more charred mannequin than human being. His Influence of the Wisp was gnarly now… he'd never used it on a weaker opponent before.

He also found some more money, mostly copper stones, but a few silver swords as well. It was definitely stolen money, but Felix had no way of returning it. He slipped the pouch into his satchel.

There were a number of weapons in the muck, but Felix had neither the space or inclination to take them. He did just fine without one. He very intentionally did not look at his fingers.

He was the weapon.

Bandits finally disregarded, Felix turned to the first corpse. The original victim. Now that he was close enough, he noticed that several organs seemed to be missing. The heart, obviously, but also a few other gray, fleshy bags were taken out. He could still see the ropy length of the Elf's intestines, though there were chunks taken out, jagged wounds that looked to be work of an animal.

Claws and teeth.

He was careful not to get drawn too deep into them. He could still distantly hear the atonal hum the symbols produced, and frankly, they scared Felix. There was a magic at work here he had no idea how to handle. Atar was right, however: the sigils were disturbingly similar to the Archon's own. Felix swept his eyes over everything, committing all of it to his impressive memory—the whole scene—determined to let Atar know about this. Perhaps that would help convince Atar to get the crew into the Domain. More than that, though, whatever had done this—had scrawled these obscene sigils—it had to be stopped.

No one deserves to die like this.

Pit's triangular ears abruptly perked up, and he swiveled his head down a side alley, one they had not yet traversed. Felix followed his gaze and focused his senses.

Splash. Slosh. Splash.

Footsteps. Someone's coming. Pit looked at him and shook his illusory fur, sending water around them in a spray. Felix nodded.

Convergence!

Abyssal Skein!

Pit disappeared in a flash of light, once again merging with Felix as he pulled on the Void. The oily sensation slid over his skin, sending an uncontrollable shiver of distaste down his spine. Shaking that off, he began climbing the face of the nearest tenement. It was easy, the blocks of stone and wood that comprised the old building having many handholds. He climbed nearly to the top, easily four stories up, when there was a distant scuffing from above.

Felix froze, angling his head just slightly to see. He was clinging between two windows, only twenty feet away from the rooftop and freedom. After nearly ten seconds, a figure emerged from the opposite roof, one dressed in thin leather armor and a tin medallion.

It was the thin Guilder from before. Leif was his name. The teen leaned cautiously over the edge of the roof and looked down. Leif's eyes passed right over Felix and fixed on the ground instead.

"Pathless forfend..." Leif whispered.

Curious, Felix watched as the new Guilder clambered down the tenement and began poking around. Splashing echoed down an alley, and soon he was joined by four others, all of them cloaked and bearing those sashes. Four with green, one with blue.

The lead was Aric, a square-jawed Human male, handsome in that way someone became after their First Formation. He wore what appeared to be a common combination in the Guild, leather armor with metal accents along the arms and chest. A set of swords hung at his waist, one short and one long.

Behind him was Deema, the darker-skinned girl bearing a sword and staff. She and one other wore robes, but under Deema's he caught a hint of chainmail. The other robe-wearer was named Oona, and she was clearly a Naiad, her ochre skin stark against the dreary gray of the alley. She also held a staff, though hers was thinner and the top third was covered in a dense script. The last one was Kelvin, the neckbeard kid with too many muscles. He was wearing the usual leather armor, though with noticeably more plate pieces. He also had an axe and large shield in hand.

Classic adventuring party makeup. Scout, fighters, support mages. Iron Rank to lead, Tin to follow. They started moving toward the bodies, Aric with purpose and the others trailing behind.

They said earlier they were looking for evidence of an attack, one that happened last night. Is that when the sigils were made? Felix rubbed his chin as the Guilders investigated the enforcer bodies. A few of them were impaled on icy spears, but most were covered in electrical burns and many, many cuts. Pit chirped aggressively in his mind. Yes, thank you for that, buddy.

Abyssal Skein is level 12!

Felix started at the increase. Two young Hobgoblin children were at a window nearby, one that had been shattered by the exploding fireball. They looked scared, but curious as they stared down at the Guilders below. They didn't seem to notice Felix at all, despite him being inches away from them.

Abyssal Skein is level 13!

Slight movements from the buildings around the "courtyard" drew his eye. More people were pressing cautiously against their windows, most having been damaged by Mehren's attack. Most were Hobgoblins, Goblins, and Orcs, though he saw one or two Dwarves. They all looked afraid.

Afraid of who, though? Had they seen the fight? Seen him?

"Come away, children. Come away," someone out of sight said.

"But Mama! There's Guilders down there," the girl complained. Her brother pouted and pushed closer to the window.

"I wan see gidders!" The boy yelled excitedly.

"You know they're dangerous, Behva. They can't be trusted!"

"Mama," the girl started with a whine in her voice, but her brother squealed.

"Red! Red!"

Felix turned and looked down, and sure enough, three people in bright red cloaks stomped into the area.

Inquisitors.

"Come away. Now." The fear was far more clear in her voice now like a vibrating wire taut with unspoken tension. The children drew back.

Felix glanced up. The roof was close, but he was unsure if Abyssal Skein was up to the task. The chances of the Initiate or Iron Rank having a strong observational Skill were...Felix had no idea. Greater than zero, at least. Now that his rage had fled him, caution dictated he stay still.

Curiosity told him to listen.

"You," the Initiate snarled. His red cloak swirled around him as they stomped into the alley. "Leave. This has become Inquisition business."

"Hold on there, redcloak." The Iron Rank held up his hands. His name was Aric Vetne, according to Felix's Eye, and the man took a couple steps toward the Initiate with his hands still raised. "The Guild has Charter in this town, and that means we investigate it when our citizens get murdered."

The Initiate laughed. Felix Eyed him, noting his level of 34 and well beyond his First Formation. "Your Charter is meaningless. As I told you before, the Inquisition has your Guild by the balls. You either do what I say, or your Elders will have your neck. So please, do fight back."

Even from an aerial view, Felix could read the sour expression on Aric's face. He looked at his Tin Ranks, arrayed behind him in an inverted 'V', with Kelvin and his shield in the front.

Flaring his Manasight, he could see wisps of their auras, multicolored and shot through with the green-gold threads of life Mana. Every single person down there, the living at least, surged with a riot of emotions. Felix could almost taste the stubborn frustration and smug superiority as if it were all intermingled with their Mana.

Manasight is level 41!

Huh. Really? The revelation distracted him enough that he almost missed what came next.

"...you think happened here? Just tell me that, and we'll go," Aric was saying.

Nel the Initiate smirked toward the two Acolytes behind him before sighing dramatically. "Very well, adventurer. I think something very, very dangerous happened here. Something found these poor souls and tore their life from them. Savagely."

"This looks like everyday murder to me," Aric protested.

"How often do you see seven Humans slaughtered like this?"

"Fair enough. Still, looks like a gang fight."

The Initiate pointed, not to the bodies nearby that had Frost Spears sticking from them, or the charred remnants of Mehren, but to an empty patch of water. Exactly where Claude had knelt...before Felix ate him.

"Sorcery has been done here," Nel intoned. The rain pounded down, and thunder shook the sky. "Its song is unmistakable."

Song?

"Captain!"

Aric turned and saw Deema pointing at the far wall.

They found the Elf. In the gloom and rising water, they had likely almost missed it.

"Trackless protect us," an Acolyte whispered, loud enough that Felix could hear it over the rain.

"Sorcery,” the Initiate gasped. “Vile. This is ours now, Guilder. Begone."

Aric clenched his fists, hesitating for a long moment. Felix almost thought he was going to start a fight, but he held himself back. The Iron Rank gestured something in handspeak to his team, and they all trudged away.

"Be seeing you, Nel." Aric's voice was flat and low. Angry.

"Mhm," the Initiate said, a sharp smile on his face. "Soon, I'm sure."

“I’ll be letting the Elders know of this,” Aric promised.

“Then what are you waiting for, Guilder?” The Initiate made a negligent shooing motion with his hand. “Your tower is that way.”

Felix could practically hear the man grind his teeth, but instead of attacking, he spun on a heel and stomped off into the muck.

The Initiate snorted derisively. “Weak and without conviction.”

The Initiate ordered his two Acolytes to look at the other bodies, and he strode purposefully toward the mangled Elven corpse. Felix couldn't quite see his face from this angle, but his body language screamed his distaste. Gloved hands waved above the corpse, trailing faint wisps of colorless Mana. Unattributed Mana. Almost but not quite the same as the rainbow trails left by the beasts in the Void. Unlike what Felix assumed was a waste byproduct of the Narhallow, this felt purposeful, packed with a honed intent.

A sudden spike of harmonious chords rose through the air, punching into Felix's senses. He was so surprised he nearly lost his grip on the ledge, and only Pit's anxious trilling kept him aware enough to hold fast.

What in the—

Below, shimmers played about the corpse, until a green, transparent form rose up from where it laid. It was humanoid, and if Felix's Perception wasn't fooling him, looked exactly like the dead Elf, except more or less in one piece.

A ghost? Ghosts are real?

The apparition stood and began stepping forward carefully, cautiously. It moved in a strange, jerky manner, and it wasn't until it jumped side to side that Felix realized he was looking at a recording of sorts. And it was playing backward.

The Initiate stood aside, letting the ghost Elf move where it would. The Acolytes didn't react, however, not even when the thing passed directly through their spaces. Either this was the most normal thing ever for them, or they couldn't sense it at all.

Felix was betting on the latter.

It was increasingly clear the ghost was battling someone or something. Faint, luminescent marks on its body were wounds. They were severe at first, but slowly they disappeared in groups of three or four. Claw marks, clearly. The ghost moved all over the small space of the crooked alley, navigating the terrain with an enviable Agility until finally it ended its journey at the mouth of the far pathway. There it slowed to a stop and turned, as if calmly regarding someone. Then it stopped, shimmering again as if on pause.

The Initiate grunted, his face sweating. He made two small gestures, just shapes with his fingers, but it was as if he were lifting a boulder. Veins in his neck stuck out like cables, and his limbs shook. Then a dirge, slow and sad, cut through the air. The ghost began to move again. Forward this time.

Do not be afraid. The ghost spoke, and its voice was immediate as if Felix were hearing it with his mind alone. I won't hurt you. You can—blind gods, what have they done to you? What—no! No!

With a ragged gasp, the Initiate fell to his knees, and the ghost disappeared.

"Sir, are you—?"

"I am fine, Acolyte. Do your duty." The Initiate snapped at his underling who quickly went back to searching the dead enforcers.

Felix licked his lips and swallowed, but his mouth and throat were parched. He knew he couldn't stay here any longer, no matter how much he wanted to investigate exactly what this guy could do. He had already refreshed Abyssal Skein twice during his wait, and he was feeling the drain on his mind. Now that the Initiate was clearly distracted by his recovery, he slowly climbed up the remaining twenty feet and over the edge of the roof. Moments later, he was gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Felix hurried through the rain away from the Initiate. A knot clenched his insides.

He had transformed again. Against his will. Again. After the close call just an hour earlier, he thought he'd be up for it, his impressive Willpower able to fight it off. But this time it had come upon him without warning.

Almost. Felix frowned as he vaulted over another alleyway. It was far easier to navigate the complicated warrens of the Dust from up there. There was that anger again. It crept up on me the moment I saw those damn sigils.

Felix paused atop another tenement, leaning against a large water barrel. The thing was full and spilling over in small rivulets along the sides as the rain kept coming down. It had been the sigils. They had crawled into his head, same as when he'd read the Archon's notes under the mountain. They were insidious, and somehow, in some way, they were connected to the Maw. He knew it, though he couldn't say where the knowledge originated. He still had his journal and the Archon's papers tucked safely in the satchel at his side. Some deep part of Felix had warned against looking too deeply at the sigils, and he'd been proven right this morning.

The sigils are clearly similar to the Archon's. Different characters, absolutely, but in the same alphabet or whatever. Felix's brain hurt to dwell on them, the crawling sensation of a trapped heartbeat returning even through his memories. He set the recollection aside for now. Plenty of time to review it when he spoke with Atar later that day.

He started moving again, using Relentless Charge to clear a particularly large gap between buildings. He couldn't sense anyone below, but held Abyssal Skein regardless. His body took to the task nearly effortlessly, landing with soft knees and continuing to run. His mind, however, dwelled on what he had seen.

The Inquisition had used some sort of Skill to raise the dead. Or a spirit projection, at least. Felix assumed it was a Skill, but the presence of that music… somehow, the Initiate tapped into the Grand Harmony and was able to replay the victim's last moments.

Could I learn to do that? How do you even tap into those chords? Felix sensed the music when the System took action; level ups, stat allocation, that sort of thing. He even heard it when Atar, Evie, and Vess all Revealed their Omens. Distinct compositions for each of them. However, all this time, it had been reactive.

Could he change that?

Moreover, what did it mean that the Inquisition was using an ability like that? Was it a special power they learned, a Skill granted by their allegiance? Questions swirled in Felix's brain, but he had no answers. Not yet.

By the time he landed with a splash on the streets below, Felix had amassed a simple list of objectives going forward.

Figure out the Grand Harmony thing

Avoid becoming a monster

Train, train, train

Admittedly, it was a simple list, but it teemed with uncertainties. At the end of the day, what he needed to do was get stronger. Power, on the Continent at least, was the only solution people seemed to take seriously.

* * *

Trendle answered the door this time, letting Felix in without blinking. The big man simply locked the door behind him and walked off, twitching his extremely impressive mustache.

Put a dang walrus to shame, Felix thought with a smile. He was impressed.

Shouting soon caught his attention, and Felix realized that Atar had arrived earlier than expected. Felix released Convergence, and Pit appeared next to him in his Dire Wolf disguise. He wasn't even wet.

"Wish I could ride around dry and cozy while you do all the grunt work," Felix murmured through a grin. He ruffled Pit's head as the tenku let out an oddly birdlike woof.

"You brought me all the way out here for this?" Atar was saying. His voice carried well, and Felix didn't need to see the teen fire mage to find him. Beyond the back area, Atar was standing with Cal, Harn, and Evie. He slashed his palm through the air. "I can't do it. It's impossible."

"We need to get into that Domain, V'as," Cal explained calmly, though her eyes were hard. "My people need to get stronger, and we need money to get out of this nowhere town. You helped us before."

"That was then; this is now. And you're not alone in that thinking, which is why I think the Elders have restricted access. With the redcloaks blocking the gates, and the monsters breaching the Wall, everyone is scrambling to get stronger." Atar paced, hands on his hips and blonde hair expertly coiffed. "But, even if the Guild wasn't, the Master Inquisitor has decided to reinforce our guards, putting his own people on the Domain entrance as well. At this point, I doubt anyone can get through, not unless you're prepared to fight your way in… and out again."

"What if we're disguised?" Felix interrupted, nodded at everyone. "Good morning, everyone."

"Hey Felix." Evie smiled, reaching out to ruffle Pit's head. She'd really taken to the little pig. "Thought you had errands this morning."

"I did. The bookshop's been closed for days. No one has seen Zara since before the attack." Felix looked at the other three. "You heard anything about that?"

Cal frowned and Harn shook his head. Atar perked up. "The bookseller? At the Elder Crown?"

"That's the one. Where I saw you and your friends."

"Ah." Atar seemed...embarrassed? That's weird. "I haven't been back since you… since that night. I can ask around, if you'd like?"

Taken aback slightly, Felix shrugged. "Sure, I guess. That'd be helpful. Thanks, Atar. Oh!" Felix fished out the enchanted mace he'd looted from Mehren. "You can make use of this, right?"

Harn tipped his head back—his stoic way of being surprised—and took the weapon from Felix. "We can, yeah. Oh, nice enchantment on this one. Rank II is hard to come by out here."

Oh really? Felix thought about his boots and satchel, both with Rank II enchantments. Pit's Stone of Wild Echoes had a Rank IV enchantment on it, and Felix's Amulet of Veiling had a Rank XI working. If Caerwin made those items, as he suspected, then… Just how powerful is she?

"So, disguises?" Felix asked again.

"Disguises ain't all that effective against Silver Rank senses. And that's who you'll be up against, if Sparky is right." Harn hefted the mace over his shoulder, the object trailing a few sparks.

"Of course I'm right, Harn. And yes, Silver Rank Guilders will see right through a disguise, unless you have an Adept Tier illusion or transformation Skill?" Atar shrugged when Felix shook his head. "Then it won't work."

Illusions, huh? Felix looked down and met Pit's eyes, the thrum of a shared idea between them. "I might have a plan for that but… give me a few days."

"Like I said before, we can wait a bit. Just the sooner we're flush, the better." Cal took a deep breath and scratched her jaw. She looked tired, dead on her feet almost, and Felix wondered how much was on her shoulders right now. "The Guild's cut us off, the Inquisition is breathin' down our necks, and now our only avenue to fund our way out is being closed. We need a win."

"We'll get it, Callie." Evie said, eyes burning with a ferocity Felix hadn't seen since the Foglands. "No matter what."

Atar stood awkwardly nearby, trying not to make eye contact with any of them. Felix opened his mouth to say something to him when the large overhead door got pounded on. Bodie and Yan hustled over, weapons in hand, and peeked out. Without another word, they threw open the doors, and a very wet Dwarf walked out of the rain. He flipped back his hooded cloak and grinned.

"Are ye gonna stand an’ goggle, or help?" Rory put his hood back up and slapped Bodie and Yan on the back.

Outside the door, the rain was coming down in sheets, waves of precipitation that slithered across the streets. Behind Rory, a team of those bird-lizards, Avum, were pulling some sort of huge wagon.

"Excellent. He's early, too." Cal grinned at them all and nudged Felix as she walked by. "We can start that training now."

Felix clapped his hands and rushed to help.

* * *

It took all of them to unload Rory's preposterously-sized wagon, which was made of a pale metal and easily the size of a train car. The team of Avum Felix had seen was actually six strong, and even then he had a hard time believing the giant chickens could pull that monstrosity. Moreover, inside the wagon was a strange assortment of shaped wooden pillars, chains, and almost twenty man-sized crates marked with the Guild Seal. The team got it all inside in record time, at least in comparison to Earth, and despite the items weighing hundreds if not thousands of pounds, did it all by hand.

Felix wasn't winded by the effort, but he was breathing hard by the end of it. The others couldn't say the same, as Yan, Kelgan, Vivianne, and Karp looked more than a little out of breath. Portia and Trendle were limp forms on the ground. The only ones without a sign of the strain were Harn, Bodie, and Rory himself. Cal had "overseen" the unloading process, Felix had noted.

"Was that...was that part of the training?" Felix asked.

Rory laughed. "Tha’s just unloadin' the trainin', lad!" He looked at them all placidly. "Now, get up! It's time ta set this up!"

Another grueling fifteen minutes had them lining all the parts in various positions around the front of their warehouse. The adventurers had a number of training materials out already, things like wooden dummies and pommel-horses, though Felix didn't have a name for most of it. Huge logs and chains and crates were all set around the dummies and obstacles, and once the last piece was set down, Rory clapped his hands and shooed them away.

"Go an' rest, wee babes. I'll let ye know when we're good ta go."

Felix retreated with the rest of them, but felt eager to keep on going. The feeling seemed to be near universal; everyone watched with anticipation as Rory began fiddling with the side of one of the posts.

"Hey, Felix!"

He turned, his ears picking up Atar's sharp whisper. Felix doubted the mage was being as quiet as he thought he was, as Atar looked cautiously at the others before motioning for Felix to come closer. Felix sighed and walked over. They had things to discuss, anyway.

Atar retreated to the back area of the open warehouse, where someone had converted it into a sort of lounge-slash-cafeteria set up. Two long tables were laid out along with benches and a few rickety chairs padded with overstuffed cushions. A stove had been built in the corner, a pot-bellied metal one that looked like something from the turn of the 19th century. Felix eyed it curiously and noticed that there were several sigils inscribed along its top and base.

Fascinating. They use magic to cook? I mean, why not? It's useful as hell, I think. He craned his neck and saw a small round panel built into the side of the stove. Is that the control point? Like on a Manaship? I wonder if—

"Felix!"

He turned back toward Atar, who had been calling his name for the last thirty seconds. He grinned sheepishly. "Sorry. I get caught up sometimes in—Sorry. What's up?"

Atar's annoyed face relaxed. "Listen, about earlier. I said that I wasn't going to be able to get anyone into the Domain, and I mean it. Not even you. The layers of security the Guild is putting on the thing, not to mention the Inquisition...I don't see how it's possible without an authorization from an Elder."

"And you can't get one? Why not ask your patron, Elder Teine?"

"It-it's not that easy, I'm afraid." Atar sighed and a trace of bitterness flavored his words. "The Elder is quite similar to my Master in that he believes in self-sufficiency. No handouts. He offers great resources to us, but only if we earn them. That usually means following his orders."

"And he ordered you to find the Butcher." Felix said, thinking. "So, if we find the Butcher, does that get us into the Domain?"

"It's possible, I suppose. But, like I said before, I believe the Butcher is hiding in the Domain itself."

"You've brought that up to Teine?" Felix asked. "What'd he say?"

"Of course I haven't!" Atar was aghast. "It's a theory, barely better than wishing for Siva to change my fate. He would shoot down anything without proof."

Felix considered his next words carefully. "I might not have the proof you need, but I saw another victim today."

"What! Where?" Atar's attention sharpened so fast Felix was surprised he wasn't cut. "Why leave this ‘til now? Is it close? We could go now and—"

"No. Guilders and the Inquisition showed up a bit after me." Felix shook his head. "Probably crawling with those redcloaks by now."

"Spirits forbid," Atar cursed. "Why were they there? Can you tell me what you saw?"

"Easily. My Born Trait is all about memory, if you recall."

"Oh right," Atar looked excited. Felix laid it out, describing the scene and the grisly sigils. He recounted the Guild's and Inquisition's arrival, though he left out the ghost stuff.

"He claimed Sorcery had been done there?" Atar asked, rubbing his fingers against his baby smooth chin. Felix doubted he'd grown even a patch of stubble yet.

"That's what he said."

"Strange. Nothing like that has been picked up before." Atar started pacing, and his expensive-seeming black and maroon robes billowed.

"I've heard it thrown around a few times. What exactly does the Inquisition consider Sorcery?" Felix had an idea, but needed to know if it was true. Or if he was missing another aspect of the picture.

"Mm? Oh, as far as I can tell, it's nonsense," Atar said with a dismissive wave of his hand. He kept pacing. "I've heard it described in colorful terms, but mostly as 'dark song' that 'corrupts all it touches' and other such bunk. In Te'thys, we have no Inquisition stepping on our necks. I've never heard of this Sorcery they tout up here."

A song. The Grand Harmony? But no. He used the Grand Harmony to cast that ghost replay spell. I'm not discounting hypocrisy, but if it's not Harmony, then what could it be? A thought flashed through his mind, the memory of a buzzing unpleasantness as he faced against the Maw.

What about its opposite? Not Harmony, but Dissonance.

The power of the Maw.

"And they were similar to the notes?"

Felix was drawn back into the conversation by Atar's question, and he fought to hide his suddenly queasy stomach. "Extremely. Not the same symbols, but the same language definitely."

"And do you...have those notes with you?" Atar asked, hopefully.

"I do. And no, you can't have them back." Felix rolled his eyes, though his left hand carefully clutched at his satchel. "I gave you that book from the Elder Crown, wasn't that enough?"

"Ugh, I wanted that for reference into script writing. It is not my area of expertise. If you're not going to give me your notes, then take it back. You might find it useful." Atar fished the book from his own bag and handed it to Felix. Felix took it and resolved to peruse it later.

"Where'd you get that bag, by the by? It boasts impressive enchantments. Like Harn mentioned, Rank II enchantments are hard to come by out here in the outskirts."

Felix shrugged. "System Quest reward for defeating the Risi."

Deception is level 16!

"You got credit for that? I guess you did your part, true enough." Atar sighed. "I'd like to go see that body, but if the Inquisition has it in their grips, they're not likely to part with it."

"They do seem...confrontational and possessive," Felix agreed.

"You don't know the half of it. Living in the Eyrie means I get to experience the questionable joy of constant conflicts between the Guilders and lower-ranked Inquisitors. Minor stuff, simple arguments and the like. But any chance to put Guilders 'in their place,' they take it." Atar sat in a chair opposite Felix with a definite huff.

"What's their deal?"

"Their 'deal?' They follow their High Laws, mostly to the letter. They're the investigational arm of the Hierocracy. A Master Inquisitor was sent here, you know? Not some nobody. Hand picked by the Grand Inquisitor herself, I've heard."

That meant little to Felix, except that whatever they were doing here was considered important. He said as much.

Atar laughed. "You've probably heard by now. Dispatched when the Foglands stopped being foggy and started producing erratic monster variants. They got here awful quick, though, which means someone tipped them off. The capital is far, far away."

"Who would do that? And why?" Felix asked. They were moving farther afield of his questions, but he hadn't heard this. More information on his pursuers was always good. "What would they benefit from having an obviously zealot organization shut down the entire city?"

"Perhaps they didn't know the Inquisition would shut it down? Or perhaps they didn't care. Hard to tell." Atar leaned forward and pointed to the west. "But what happens when an entire region full of rare raw materials is suddenly made available?"

Felix nodded, recalling their conversations in the Geists' Tower. "Right. There's money to be made."

"And where there's money, there's power. That, at least, we had plenty of in Te'thys."

A sudden shout and flash of prismatic light caught their attention. Felix leaped to his feet and saw Rory standing triumphantly by one of the thicker posts they had carried in. "There we go! Time ta test yerselves!"

Without another word, the wooden posts began to shimmer with Mana vapor before pulling themselves up from the ground.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The posts, chains, and other materials lifted up on streamers of Mana, each one levitating to a preordained spot. The massive five-foot thick by twenty-foot long posts stood up and locked into position, eighteen of them forming squared gates along the entire length of the warehouse.

Slithering into place, chains attached themselves all along the tops, hundreds of them at varying lengths. Carved lines along the beams lit up with a light visible to everyone, though Felix still tracked the grasping tendrils of Mana vapor through his Skill. The vapor crawled among the opened crates, pulling out metallic cylinders and other odds and ends, hoisting them along until they affixed themselves to the ends of chains. On and on it went for almost ten minutes.

The entire time, Felix watched with Manasight as power flowed in a steady stream from Rory into some sort of control node on the original post. Oddly, the amount of Mana being transferred from Rory to the control node seemed rather small, a trickle compared to the river that must have been needed to maintain the setup.

Something else is at play here. Felix bit the inside of his cheek in thought. Perhaps a high-level Skill that reduces the amount of Mana used for this? Or...is it the sigaldry?

Felix let the construction draw him away from his conversation with Atar, the wondrous working doing much the same to everyone. Eyes were wide and glued to the shifting materials. Felix analyzed the pillars, but they were made of a simple lethan wood, a common enough tree he'd seen a thousand times in the Foglands. It was more about the scriptwork than anything else. Those carved lines that curved around sections of the arches appeared to be smooth markings of light, but were actually tight grouping of tiny sigils.

Sigils of the Primordial Dawn is level 20!

He recognized a few of them, but the nature of sigils was that each symbol had many meanings. The light sigil he'd found under the mountain had meant light, sure, but it also could have meant shining and dazzle. Context and the presence of adjacent sigils changed everything. So the sigil for metal he spied was affected somehow by the two sigils next to it, though he wasn't sure how. His level just wasn't high enough yet, though he figured some formal instruction would do wonders for his knowledge gaps.

Another reason to find Zara, Felix bemoaned. Maybe Caerwin would know, too...

Aside from a few markings in what he'd call the basic script, most of the sigaldry on the rapidly assembling training course were those strange flowing lines of sigils. As Felix paced around the base of a post, he saw the join of an archway marked with larger, more detailed inscriptions. Matched sigils that were pressed tightly against each other as if glued.

"Glyph pairs, lad. That's what they're called."

Rory had come up on him as Felix had inspected the work, and the Nym felt himself jump a little. "Didn't mean to startle ye. I noticed your gaze. Glyph pairs are an old sigaldry trick to attune smaller pieces of a larger whole." Rory slapped the post fondly. "Makes it easier for puttin' em together, not to mention controllin' the whole of the Gauntlet."

Sigils of the Primordial Dawn is level 21!

Felix's mind widened just a tiny bit more, the information Rory had offered burning new pathways through his brain. Off in the distance, he could hear those faint strings grow louder again as his Skill leveled once more. He focused on Rory's face, still flush with a certain amount of pride as the Dwarf regarded the assembly.

"And the lines? There are so many small inscriptions, and frankly they don't make much sense..."

Rory grinned and shook his head ruefully. "I'm no scriptie, but I've had enough dealings with the art to make a fair guess at things. Those're subordinate sigils, each one altering the last in order to make all this possible. If ye ask me how, though," he laughed. "I'd be guessin'."

Felix's eyes grew distant as the wheels started turning in his mind. The more he learned about sigaldry, the less he realized he understood. It was a magic language that operated like complex code of sorts, and code had never been a strong suit of his. Felix was more of an art and books kinda guy during his formative years. He knew bits about how different languages worked, in a broad sense. Sigaldry felt like those languages back on Earth that had tonal structures, where the timbre could affect the meaning of each word. Or maybe it was more about syllable stresses?

Felix waited to hear that level up sound again, but was out of luck. Maybe I'm just out in left field, or it just wasn't significant enough to level up the Skill.

While he had been batting around ideas, Rory got on with his job.

"This is the Gauntlet! It will be your home for the next two weeks. Thanks to your generous leader and my own ingenuity, the Gauntlet is filled with strengthened obstacles reinforced further by magic. Your task is to move from one end of the course to the other. It doesn't matter if ye get hit, or if ye break something. Ye get through, and ye've made it."

"That's a big 'if,' team!" Cal shouted from nearby. She pointed to the far end, where a golden glyph pair was marked out against the final archway. "However, I feel in a generous mood. The first one to make it to the end in less than five minutes wins claiming rights on any one item in the Domain."

Excited chatter burst out among the adventurers, with Yan and Kelgan the loudest of them all. But even Portia and Trendle stepped closer to the Gauntlet, anticipation clear on their faces. There was some shoving and shuffling, but the Gauntlet was wide enough to let five of them move abreast. Bodie, Yan, Kelgan, Rory, and Trendle had all lined up.

"Begin!"

Felix watched the crew struggle forward, dodging flailing chains, erratically moving metal clubs, and a series of foot-long spikes that shot up out of the ground in patterns fast and thick. None made it to the second arch.

He felt a twinge in him, a need to challenge the course, even when faced with the pain and injury visited upon the others. With an effort, Felix drew away. It wasn't time for that, not yet. First, he needed a solution to one of his direst problems.

Felix walked up to Rory. Mana hung thick in the air, swirling in confusing eddies around the archways as the control node kept drawing more power from the Dwarf. Felix still didn't understand how the inscriptions didn't drain him completely, but assumed it must only take a small amount to maintain.

What happens if that flow is cut? Felix banished the thought as Rory's eyes turned toward him. "Rory, I have a question."

"Hm? Oh, good. I've got a few of my own, lad." Rory gestured for Felix to follow him as he retreated back to the tables and benches. As the adventurers turned and challenged the Gauntlet again, the Dwarf settled himself onto a sturdy bench. The heavy wood creaked alarmingly beneath him, but Rory seemed completely at ease. "Now, we can talk with a little less distraction, aye?"

"Uh, sure." Felix sat across from the Dwarf, the wood groaning only slightly beneath his enhanced weight. "You're a trainer, right? For the Guild?"

"Aye. For a long time now."

"Why are you helping them?" Felix gestured back toward the Gauntlet. "This is a lot of expense to undertake, even for friends."

"Then ye've not had very good friends, hm?" Rory fixed him with a gimlet eye before grimacing. "Can't say as I like the heading the Elders have been on, either."

"How's that?" Felix pressed.

"What's with the questions, lad?" Rory raised a bushy eyebrow and twitched his mustache. "I don't think I like what you seem to be implyin'."

"I'm not implying anything," Felix spread his hands on the table and shrugged. "I'd rather know what I'm getting into, though. Cal says she trusts you. I want that to be enough, but..."

"But ye don't know me. I get it," Rory rumbled and rubbed at his short beard. He pondered something a moment longer before he let his hand fall to the tabletop. "I've been trainin' folk for a long, long time. Longer'n ye or your parents' been alive. I've seen some mesmerizing things in my life, wonders the likes I'll never see again. One of em was named Magda."

Felix’s stomach dropped at the name. Rory nodded. "Oh aye, I knew her well. Trained her meself on that same Gauntlet. She was the best of the best, strong and clever, but most of all determined. Nothin' was enough, not unless that meant she was powerful enough to crush anything in her way." He smiled, his eyes looking at something Felix couldn't see. "She was mad all the time. Fought damn near everything. Cared for nothin' but that little slip of a girl over there."

Felix followed the tilt of Rory's chin, seeing Evie as she bounced on the balls of her feet. She was performing a few stretches just outside of the Gauntlet, obviously eager to try herself.

"She woulda done anythin' for that girl, lad. She did, in fact. I heard the tale." Rory's face was stern, but sad, "Cal told me shortly after she returned with… Three hundred frost giants against a pair of shields. I shoulda known. Old age and a sick bed wasn't ever gonna be her end."

Felix shifted uncomfortably and clenched his hands together on the table. For others, it had been months, but for him it had been mere weeks. The memory of her smile after she'd shoved him to safety… it was crystal clear and sharp as glass.

"So, if ye want a reason for this, there it is." Rory shrugged, a small smile on his face as he looked at Evie. "I'll train Magda's sister up right, and if that means I'm buttin' heads with the Elders, then so be it."

A feeling of certitude and resolution pulsed from the Dwarf like a cool wind, and Felix took heart. He could tell—somehow—that it was the Dwarf's Spirit, and it assuaged the formless fear lurking in Felix's chest. He let out a sigh of relief.

"Glad to hear it," Felix smiled. "What do you know about sundering Skills?"

* * *

"Well, lad, ye seem to have been cursed with quite the motley Skill collection, eh?"

The two of them had retreated to the empty back room, the one with a metal table and chairs. Rory had silenced him the moment he'd asked about sundering Skills and hustled Felix out of the common area. "Don't want just anyone to hear about this, right?" he'd said by way of explanation, and that was true enough.

Felix had listed out his broken Skills for the Dwarf, who had spent nearly twenty minutes in silence as he contemplated. He nodded to a wall, gesturing to someone outside. "Harn teach ye the basic weapon mastery Skills?"

Felix nodded and Rory continued. "Figures. No doubt he planned to have you work them into Martial Mastery, typical for frontline fighters. Hard to do, but if ye manage it, it's a powerful Skill."

"How exactly is that done? The combining." Felix had been wondering about that. While he had received System notices for Skills combining or evolving, the mechanics were beyond him. If he could enact something like that intentionally...

"Generally speaking? Hidden conditions. I've been a Guild trainer for seventy-five years, but the handful of combinations I'm privy to is a meager helping of what's truly out there." Rory frowned. "Power is not somethin' folks like to share, lad."

"Yeah, I've heard that before," Felix murmured. "I've heard some odd things about sundering Skills, for example. That it's painful and difficult. That it shatters the Skill entirely and removes it. Any of that true?"

"Absolutely, considerably, and sorta, in that order." Rory's frown became a mischievous grin. "The whole process was made to cater to rich idiots that Tempered themselves with the 'wrong' Skills. Which is ridiculous. Sundering a normal Skill is a nightmare, to do so to a Skill ye've Tempered yourself with? You'd normally be better off slittin' your own throat. At least that way you'd die quick."

"So it's not possible?" Felix asked.

"It's possible, but not without a king's ransom in materials." Rory hesitated. "These Skills ye've broken, they're not...?"

"Oh, no. I've not Tempered any of them, though one is… was at Apprentice Tier."

Rory let out a sigh of relief. "Good. We can work with standard Skills. Now, alright, the rarity of your Skills ain't too bad. Common will hurt, Uncommon will be worse, and Rares, well, they'll knock ye on your ass, sure enough. No Epics or Legendaries, eh?"

He laughed. Felix smiled slightly.

"To answer your questions further, it's also difficult to sunder a Skill. To break it in the first place isn't easy either, but an unlucky few can find themselves in your predicament. I've had the misfortune of guiding five others in this process, though you're my first with so many broken Skills.

"And the Skill doesn't disappear, at least not at first. That's part of the difficulty, if'n ye want the greatest effect of your former Skill. There's a short window where ye can take a sundered Skill and combine it with others close to it," Rory explained.

"Close to it? As in synergy?" Felix asked, caught up in a sudden idea. Rory looked taken aback.

"Actually, yes." The Dwarf collected himself with a blink and continued. "Synergy is the System's word for it. A connection between Skills that allows them to work together more easily. The greater the Skills' synergy, the easier the merger. If successful, ye end up with a much stronger Skill than before, usually of a higher rarity as well."

Whoa. Felix mentally listed out his Skills and started moving them around. He had ideas, but he didn't know the restrictions. "Are there limits? How many Skills can be combined?"

"Gettin' ideas, eh? The five times I've done this, no one has combined more than two other Skills into their sundered Skill."

That sounds like a challenge. Felix licked his lips and traded glances with Pit. The tenku let out a chirruping huff and rolled his eyes. He turned back to Rory. "How do we start?"

"To sunder a Skill, first ye've gotta push the Skills, practicing them until ye've reached critical spread, the Skill widening within your core. It'll be the worst pain of your life, but that's how ye know it's working. In this case, that means gettin' em to Apprentice Tier, one and all." Rory mimed pulling something apart in his hands. "Then, you can either tear it apart with an effort of Willpower and an alchemical draught. End of story, Skill sundered.

"Combining Skills requires three things: a formidable Will, a tolerance for pain, and having unlocked Intent. Do you have that Harmonic Stat unlocked?" At Felix's nod, Rory smiled. "Excellent. One less worry. After taking the steps to sunder your Skill as normal, you fold into it at least one other Skill that will go toward a new combined ability. These should be something related to the broken Skill, otherwise ye'll end up with a useless new Skill if it even works at all. Remember: synergy. Folding the new Skills into the broken, you must apply your Willpower and Intent, fusing them together. Come."

The two of them stood up and walked back out of the room toward the wall where a few crates had been stacked atop each other. These had been unused by the Gauntlet assembly process and were still nailed shut.

"Ye'll also need a source of energy," he tapped one of the crates, and the lid popped off almost by magic. Inside were roughly spherical gemstones, and immediately Felix could sense an intense potency from them. "Ye can use these beast cores to push yourself. It's the easiest way, though it has drawbacks."

Felix didn't like the sound of that. "Like what?"

Rory did a half shrug. "Some folks out there like to use beast cores to enhance their capabilities. They're great for boosting the strength of Skills or even your own core. But impurities from beast cores build up in your channels. These impurities will lead to issues at your next Formation, sometimes resulting in a true impasse. I've heard of them even weakening your foundation at certain concentrations."

Like plaque in an artery, Felix mused.

"Is there another way? Some other source of energy that won't riddle me with weaknesses? I've got so many to repair." Felix didn't like the idea of using something that would result in weakening himself.

"Sure, but there ain't chance ye can get a Domain Core. Maybe over in Setoria or Pax'Vrell, but here? In this economy?" Rory laughed. "Beast cores are the best ye'll get."

Rory pointed back at the empty room. "Go and have a think. Meditate if ye've got the Skill. For the next step, I'll need ye to be able to visualize your core. Not think about it, but truly see it in your mind. Let me know when ye've managed it."

The Dwarf started to walk away, clearly headed toward the group of exhausted Guilders sitting at the beginning of the Gauntlet. Another two attempts had failed.

Easy enough. Felix took a look at his core, using Fire Within to visualize his channels and center of his power. Aside from the looming aquamarine cloud of dense Claude-energy, it looked much the same as normal.

"Done." Felix called out. Rory stopped mid-step, no more than fifteen feet away. He turned around slowly.

"Are ye sure? Ye need to truly, honestly see it before ye. Like a night sky spread only for yer eyes. Or an earthen vault, with your Skills buried as treasure all around. I've heard it described many ways. Do ye see that, truly?"

"Yeah. My core is blue fire and lightning, and surrounding it are symbols of light, patterns that represent my Skills." Like a solar system, almost.

"I'll be damned," Rory huffed. "Well, I guess Harn can handle the crew for a bit while I focus on this."

Felix glanced at the Mana tether between the Dwarf and Gauntlet. "Don't you need to control the course?"

"Not as such. It takes a small bit of Mana to maintain, but the sigaldry does most of the work. Means I can put my attention toward the next step."

"What's that?" Felix asked.

"We gotta build ye up before we break ye."

CHAPTER THIRTY

The clouds thinned late in the day, and a warm, buttery sun slathered itself over the citizens of Haarwatch. While the common folk bustled to and fro, attending to their trade or craft, the nobility of the hill attended midweek service. While the priests of the Pathless encouraged all to attend their sermons, only the rich could afford to spend an entire morning idle.

A cathedral was situated only doors away from the Eyrie. It was centralized in a way that emphasized its importance to the local nobility and high-ranking Guilders both. It rose many stories tall, as big as any noble's manse, built of pale, glistening stone that shimmered in the sudden sunlight. The rain that had plagued the city for the past two days had ceased quickly and quietly. Distant rumblings became more distant still as, far off in the sky, wild winds drove the weather away.

"Praised be the Pathless," murmured Sela with her eyes closed. A shaft of warm summer sun had pierced the stained-glass windows and sent coruscating patches of multi-colored light across several pews. "Only the true god would break such a storm apart. I worried I would not be able to hear the Honored Priest's sermon over the thunder."

"Indeed," said Vess as noncommittally as she could manage. She peered into the sunlight, trying to sense past the glare. "Why did it head west, though? Doesn't the weather usually sweep to the east?"

"Shh," came a harsh whisper from the pew ahead. An elderly woman, Matriarch Evona Rakis, gave her a brief but intense stink-eye before turning forward once again.

Vess attempted to trade glances with Sela, but the diminutive heir to the House of Mour had shrunken down into her elaborate gown. The girl was deathly afraid of scandal; to her, nothing was worse than the disapproving glare of an elder. Vess sighed instead, softly as she could.

The priest of the Pathless' sermon continued, uninterrupted by their momentary discussion. He was railing on about strength and unity, but the ducal heir mostly let it wash over her. The last thing she cared to hear was the moralizing of another Hierocratic puppet. She did not often attend these services, claiming the ducal privilege of a private altar. Mostly, it was to avoid interaction with the local nobility, who were as rabid social climbers as anyone in Pax'Vrell. Perhaps more so, being on the outskirts of the nation and far from any real seat of power.

Often, Vess would be accosted by whispers and sycophants the moment she left the relatively isolated Eyrie. The Guilders kept the deference to a minimum, but that was usually due to their insistence on strength over station. Their regard for her was for her relatively high Skill levels, young age, and powerful father who ranked among the top twenty in the Hierocracy. Duke Dayne cast a long shadow.

Considering all that, Vess was having trouble reminding herself why she had left the quiet of her isolation.

Siva grant me patience, she intoned, looking up at the resplendent mosaic that dominated the ceiling. It was an expansive depiction of the Pathless standing guard over the mountains and river valleys of the Continent, His body composed of shining light. Behind and around Him were amorphous forms shaped from darkened glass and tile, beings that were both horrible to look at and gruesomely destroyed. Smaller forms batted at Him, but they were ants before the others.

It was a common scene, the defining scene that brought the Pathless into reluctant power. When all the gods left, the Pathless remained to safeguard the world against calamity. Vess had often wondered whether the larger, darkened figures were the gods or said calamity, but no priest had been able to give her a satisfactory answer. The smaller ones, however, she knew to be those weaker spirits of nature and emotion that dotted the Continent.

Urges, she scoffed inwardly. She liked them less than the Pathless.

Vess was well-versed on many things, but the intricacies of the ancient Revelation of the Pathless were always relegated to the priesthood itself. Joining that priesthood for a passing curiosity was never a consideration for her, though the Daynes had always made a public showing of worshiping the Pathless. Privately, however, they were devotees of the Old Gods. Very privately. In a nation controlled by the prime servant of the Pathless, it was unwise to even give the appearance of blasphemy.

"Ahem."

Without looking, she felt the weight of the Hand's regard on her. Darius Reed's Perception was almost a physical thing, an effect she'd experienced only a few times before, and always from those who had Tempered themselves well past Humanity's limits. Darius himself was close by, near enough that he dissuaded most from approaching her but far enough away that Vess could at least imagine she was autonomous. He hadn't left her truly alone since the "incident," as the Hand kept referring to it. "For your own good," he had said, that hard stare of his unwavering.

She looked back down at the priest and didn't turn toward the Hand. Still, she could feel his dissatisfaction with her behavior, which, according to him, had been growing only more reckless as the days went on. Vess snorted in annoyance, earning her yet another aghast look from Lady Rakis. She managed a contrite smile before the foul woman turned back around.

House Rakis was ancient and had once placed a Hierophant upon the Primarch Seat. Coupled with the old bat's age and disdain, it was hardly surprising she'd risk censure for something so slight. Vess could have pressed the issue, but doing so was both below her and an effort in fruitless pride. The young woman had nothing to gain and would rather pretend none of these petty nobles existed at all.

Vess' senses, limited by her level, could still detect Darius' stoic regard. Then it was gone, no doubt turned outward to look for possible threats in the crowd. They were surrounded by the peerage and high-ranking Guilders, and still he acted the part of a faithful, deadly hound. The man never stopped, a statue made real, stoic and disapproving. No wonder her father thought so highly of him.

"...so we raise our hands and thank Him for all his Benevolence and Mercy. He who did not Run or Fall, who Stood in the Breach. For all of us."

Vess carefully watched the nobles around her as the priest droned on, holding expressions of contemplation, surly repose, or even worshipful joy. The last was rarer, but the heiress could see quite a few bathing in the light of the windows and words of the priest.

"We must stand fast to the High Laws the Pathless set down for us. Seek strength, for it is only with our own power that we can rise above this world and mold it to our will. Seek order, for without structure, even the strongest among us would fall. And seek purity, above all else, for the stain of the Lost Gods must not be allowed to spread, or else their tragic weakness becomes our own."

The priest paused, his dark eyes and sweating brow furrowed in a paroxysm of concern. "The Trackless One, omnipotent and unknowable, Ordained that these Laws be followed, or all else would Fall into Desolation. Think on that when next you train or manage your holdings or do one of the thousand pieces of governance that has been entrusted to you. You, all of you, are the Strength, Order, and Purity that the Pathless seeks. The chosen who have risen above the dross of this mortal coil.

"Let us commune a moment with He Who Walks Unseen. Orestai."

"Orestai," intoned the crowd in response, and everyone bent their necks and closed their eyes.

They had a very formalized protocol during worship—ironic for a church that prided itself on exceptionalism and individual merit. First came opening hymns, followed by a ritual quietude, before various priestly lectures, and now the communion with His Spirit.

A great deal of structure for a god intent on letting the masses fend for themselves. Vess barely suppressed her eye roll. Once the communion was over, the priest continued to speak about the High Laws.

"...Their importance is greater than ever, for the monstrous have invaded Haarwatch. They have breached the Wall and may do so again." A few of the Guilders in attendance shifted uncomfortably, and Elder Latvere frowned impressively. That surprised her.

The priesthood is criticizing the Guild? Vess bit her lip in thought. Why?

The sermon ended shortly after that, and a hymn followed, sung in the original Latirii, as were all the Pathless' high services. A dead language so old none knew its provenance. It was impressive sounding, at least. As the services ended, there was a final oration and plea from the priest for those present to "honor their peoples' sacrifices" and to strengthen the city against the darkness that threatened to engulf it. Powerful organ music filled the cathedral, dire accompaniment for his words.

A great deal of hot air, but danger does come, much as I wish it would not, Vess mused as folks stirred and began to stand. Few if any of those nobles present would care if a thousand commoners died to protect Haarwatch, just so long as they lost nothing. It was the result of a curious intersection of power and purposelessness. At least the higher-ranking Guilders in attendance seemed to take the priest's final words seriously.

As the nobility and Guild members slowly filed out of the cathedral, Vess kept her eyes peeled. Much as she cherished her own faith, she would not have submitted herself to the judging gazes of the peerage for small reason. She had a plan.

Shuffling forward, she eyed everyone she could, trying to keep track of the Elders in the press of perfumed flesh. After a few steps, she could make out the Master Inquisitor, Khorun Katan. He stood near the Elders, situated at the front of the cathedral like herself, and she caught a flash of his hard eyes as one of the Elders said something to him.

He is like a bared blade, a naked threat of the Hierophant's involvement in town. Why? What was the point in coming here? That was something Vess had struggled to understand, but seemed tied to everything else. The official answer was that the Inquisition was on the hunt for Sorcery, but that was their general reason for doing anything. Sorcery was never found, not that she had ever heard. Something else brought the Inquisition here. Was it something so simple as the Fogland's strange, stronger monsters?

She moved forward again, keeping that lingering knot of Guild Elders in view.

Vess' training under her many tutors taught her that the wise and powerful often acted on multiple agendas at once, hiding their true intentions behind masks and feints. An efficiency of action, they had called it, though Vess found it dizzying more than anything else. Subterfuge was a skill she had been forced to learn early on, but never one that she enjoyed. Trust, as a result, was not something she handed out easily. She had interacted with the Master Inquisitor once before, and he'd been perfectly civil and courteous. But there was definitely power inside him. An iron fist masked by the thinnest of velvet gloves.

The High Laws of the Pathless so prized by His priesthood was revered by all the branches of His church. However, each branch had a specialty. The priesthood focused on Order, the Paladins focused on Strength, and the Inquisition focused on Purity.

The altered Foglands and sudden strange strength of its monsters was concerning, Vess could not debate that. There was something going on there that was likely a threat to this city, but it was a new one, barely a few weeks old when the Inquisition first arrived in town. That was not time enough to reach the ears of even the nearest branch in Pax'Vrell.

Unless it is something that has been happening for far longer. She realized. Something that has only recently come to light… but perhaps had been long suspected...

Unbidden, Elder Teine's voice rang through her mind. "The survivors will not be found..."

She had given that snippet of conversation much thought since the Hand had rescued her from discovery. Though she could take no further action while Darius watched her like a hawk, she still had small stretches of free time. And servants loved to gossip.

She knew the "survivors" were those who came back from the Foglands; the Guilders who were part of the original operation to lay claim to the dangerous territory. In her time since they'd retrieved Magda's body, she'd learned that around ten of the remaining thirty-seven Guilders did not survive. "Lingering wounds" and "persistent Status Conditions" had kept the healers from effecting a full recovery. Vess vaguely remembered the mass service held for them by the Guild, but that was during her convalescence. They had been moved immediately after the Inquisition's arrival, much to her dismay. If they had waited only a few glasses, she wouldn't be hunting any longer.

There, she thought with an internal smile. By the pillar.

Elders Teine and DuFont were set aside from the others, and they appeared to be having a rather intense conversation based on their body language. Casting her Perception forward, she tried to hear their words, but was too far away. If only I had another script-cipher!

The priest was meeting with a line of nobles, a common event at the end of a service. While the Pathless forbade formal guidance, the priesthood were considered learned and wise. Vess stepped into that queue, inching forward and closer to the Elders. The line was glacially slow, and all the while she worried that the Hand would pull her away. Luckily, even Darius Reed had a limit, and he satisfied himself with standing watch near the cathedral entrance. No doubt to ensure she didn't try to slip out unseen.

Vess frowned at him, and he gave her the smallest smirk. She quickly turned away again. No need to give the man satisfaction of knowing he was right, though it was only a minor element of her plan.

What felt like an entire glass later, but was closer to a fifth of that, Vess was near enough that she could hear their conversation if she strained herself.

"...developments. I wish to be involved in the endeavor," Elder DuFont was saying, her smooth face belied by intense eyes boring into the relatively placid gaze of Elder Teine. "You know I can provide you some much-needed assistance in your… acquisition efforts."

Teine smiled, a small thing that tilted his silver goatee to the side. "I am grateful for your interest and generosity, Elder DuFont, but the project is quite self-sustaining at this point. And besides, are you not entirely too busy with all of this fabulous trade from the Foglands?"

DuFont gave him a look that could melt steel, and might have, if what Vess had heard of her were true. "Our friends have stopped all that. Come now, Uldred. Surely your project could use some aid. The rumors among the Council alone have—"

"Rumors are whispers that dare not declare, DuFont. Watch your tongue, or—" He blinked in surprise and half-turned. "Your Grace, how are you this fine evening?"

At the last minute the queue had moved quickly. Vess would have rather listened more to their conversation, especially as it grew heated, but instead she smiled and stepped forward. She made sure to share it equally between the two of them. "Good evening, Elders. I am in splendid condition, actually. I never found the time to thank you and all the other Elders of the Guild for allowing me to use the Inner Ward. It is a remarkable training facility."

Elder Teine inclined his head while DuFont laughed prettily. "I would hope so, your Grace. Only the finest of materials were used in its construction, and it has nurtured many Silver Ranks in its time. Based on the improvements I sense from you, those resources are not wasted at all."

"Indeed, you are a shining example of the talent our Guild needs to foster more often," Teine grinned. "If only all new recruits were as gifted as you."

Vess waved away the praise with a laugh. "You are doing terrible things for my ego, Elders. In fact, I have found myself at a bit of an impasse in training. I am looking for some more bite to push myself. Were I allowed, I would love to enter the Foglands again and test myself anew."

"You have not heard, then," DuFont said with a clipped tone. Her manner melted into unctuous apology. "I am sorry to say that the Inquisition would no longer allow such a thing, let alone the Duke."

"What has the Inquisition to do with any of it?" she asked, head tilted at the right angle to convey naive curiosity, rather than the annoyance she felt. "I have heard that they are offering a Writ of Passage to those that would travel beyond the Haargate."

"The Writ is offered no longer, not after the attack," Elder Teine interjected. He seemed amused. "The Haargate has been closed, especially to a Tin Rank under specific orders to remain in the city. Orders handed to us by your father, if I recall."

Vess felt her smile sour at the mention of her father, but she pressed on. "And I understand that. Truly I do. Going against my Father's specific orders… I would not wish that on anyone." She lingered a moment there, letting them marinate in the truth of her position. "So, I have instead come to ask to help with your hunt for this murderer in Haarwatch. The Butcher, I believe the locals are calling him."

Teine and DuFont exchanged a strange look, and Vess felt a thrill of excitement as she continued. "I had overheard a few Guilders just today claiming this Butcher had murdered yet another unfortunate soul. This time in the Dust Quarter."

"Which Guilders did you hear this from?" DuFont asked, her eyebrow quirked.

Vess simply shrugged with a single shoulder. "A couple Tin Ranks, though I did not get their names." She wasn't about to admit that her sources came from the servants, lest they cut off her access in some way. "Were they right? Was there another murder?"

"The hunt for the so-called 'Butcher' is ongoing, your Grace, and we are not at leave to discuss it. In fact, it has grown more complicated, as the Inquisition has put their hands on the reins as well." Elder Teine shrugged his narrow shoulders, emphasizing his immaculate white and silver robes. "At this point, I am not even sure I could involve you. That is, providing young Master Reed would allow it."

Teine's eyes flicked back toward the cathedral's exit, but Vess didn't follow his gaze. By now, the place had mostly emptied, so she knew it would just invite the Hand to come closer. She didn't have much time.

"Tch. I truly wished to be out among the people again," Vess sighed, perhaps a touch dramatically. She would have killed for a true Acting Skill. "Ever since the breach, I have lamented the fact that I have been stuck training atop the Eyrie when I could be protecting Haarwatch's people."

Vess made to leave, but pressed her hand against her chest and turned back. This was it. The move. "What about the Domain, then? It should have plenty of challenges for my level and Temper."

And it would be the perfect excuse to leave the Eyrie on a consistent basis. Darius would have no reason to impede my departures, and I could meet up once again with Harn, Evie, and Atar.

"The Domain has been temporarily closed to all, your Grace," Teine's face was once again apologetic, nearly perfectly so. He bowed his head in sorrow.

"Closed?" That caught her by surprise. "How? Why?"

"Any good Domain must be maintained. While normally we could manage this in stages, the disrepair had gotten out of hand during the last few months. Until the sigaldry around the perimeter is repaired, none may enter."

"When shall that be?" Vess found a whine in her voice that she didn't have to fake. This was not going well.

"It is a delicate process, your Grace," explained Elder Teine. "We are making the attempt but expect it to last the next few months."

"Months?" Vess goggled, no longer acting.

"It is a delicate process, repairing a Domain. Had we not been so distracted by the changes in the Foglands, perhaps it could have been avoided."

"Blast and bother," she cursed, then blushed. "Pardon my tongue, but I was looking forward to varying up my routines."

"Think nothing of it, your Grace," Elder Teine bowed, then glanced behind her again. "If you'll excuse me, we are expected elsewhere. As, I imagine, are you."

"I will think on what we can do for you, your Grace," promised DuFont before walking after Teine.

Vess followed them with her eyes and saw Darius Reed striding toward her, his face as stern as always. Before he could reach her, she huffed and swept past him with a swirl of her skirts. "Let us leave, Darius. I am thinking a nice repose in the parlor is called for."

"...Very well, Lady Dayne."

She would meet with that servant boy again that afternoon. If she couldn't get out of the Eyrie, she could do with a few more script-ciphers.

Without missing a beat, the Hand turned and followed after.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

"Best thing to do before sundering is to build up any Skills ye might have that are similar." Rory paced in front of Felix, his heavy arms akimbo. "The only problem with your situation is that ye probably don't have enough Skills to fold in. In that case, we can load you up with a few nice alternatives, then train ‘em. Sound good?"

Felix nodded. He'd shown him the broken Skills, but he wasn't about to reveal his full Skill list to Rory, nice guy or not.

Over the next hour, Rory detailed Guilder Skill basics. Typically, a new Tin Rank recruit was expected to learn at least two passive Physical Enhancement Skills, one active Combat Skill, one Mental Enhancement Skill (typically an informational type Skill like Herbalism or Analyze), and sometimes one or more Mana Skills, if their Titles extended in that direction.

"Don't your recruits have Skills already, though?" Felix asked.

"O' course! If they're useful, we lean into ‘em. If not, they're abandoned. Can't be learnin' too many Skills, or else you'll end up unbalanced." Rory took a drag from a pipe he'd procured somewhere. After letting out a cloud of smoke, he sighed. "A lotta young idiots get it in their heads to play the hero."

Felix kept his face as neutral as possible before swiftly listing the Skills he had that fit into Rory's framework.

"Good. Ye've covered most of the basics. Surprised that ye got so many Resistance Skills, those're notoriously hard to get," Rory gave Felix an appraising look. "Makes sense that Pain Resistance is on your list. Ye'd need it."

Felix cursed inwardly. Perhaps telling him about those wasn't the best play, but three of his broken Skills were resistances. It made sense if he somehow combined them with his others. He'd already admitted to being trained in several martial Skills by Harn, so that cat was well and out of the bag, too.

"We can build up your Resistances, I think, if you're up for it. The weapon mastery Skills ye have can be pushed toward Martial Mastery, which is what our more talented recruits achieve, though not normally before Iron Rank. Ye'll be ahead of the curve there." Rory grinned, excited at the prospect. "Your broken Acrobatics is a toughie, but we'll build up your Running and Swimming Skills to push on that one. Intimidation, however, stumps me. I'll have to think on that."

"Why's Intimidation any different?" Felix asked.

"Well, it ain't reactive, not in the way passives are. Intimidation is an applied Skill, one you need to leverage. So trainin' it is...it can be tricky."

"I see." Felix thought o the all the times he'd managed to level the Skill. Each time was an attempt at scaring off monsters with brutal violence or even blatant lies. So, if he were to increase its level, then he'd have to do some more threatening. Great.

"So. Shall we get started?"

For the first few hours, Rory had Felix exercise with a few of the others. The movements pushed him to his limits, earning a significant amount of Skill levels. But that wasn't the end of it. The Dwarf said he wanted to get a baseline reading on Felix's general abilities.

He was also not allowed to run the Gauntlet. Not yet.

"It'll crush ye, lad," the Dwarf insisted. "Ye're barely level twenty..."

Right. The Veiling. It was obscuring his capabilities, though the how still escaped him. It seemed to present a different set of information to everyone, yet no one had noticed the discrepancy. Was that part of it, too? A sort of...forgetfulness aura? He had many questions for Caerwin. But that meeting was days off, and the training was now.

Much like his morning water runs, Felix was forced to carry thick wooden beams while doing laps around the Gauntlet. At first this was manageable, if a strain, as the beam was very dense in addition to being fairly unwieldy. Keeping balance of the ten-foot-long object was more of a concern. But every five laps, Rory changed it up by adding either more weight or telling Felix to increase his speed. By the end of the first hour, Felix was burning through his Stamina prodigiously and doing sprint intervals around the warehouse.

It was torture. His heart hammered, and his skin was covered in sweat. His muscles ached with a terrible intensity, while the shoulder the beam lay upon became so numb it felt like it was going to fall off. Felix's Stamina regeneration was impressive by this point, but maintaining Meditation while he ran was an insurmountable task at first. All of his regeneration took a sizable hit.

Breathe. In through the nose, out of the mouth. A circle. A cycle. In and out.

In.

Out.

Felix pushed himself harder than he had in a long time. Though it wasn't the same as fighting for his life against monsters, his body was being stressed in new and terrible ways. The beam went from hefty to impossibly weighty as he ran on, his arms screaming while his legs were pillars of electric lava. Pain crackled through his hips and spine, setting his flesh on fire where it wasn't numbed by the beam's compression.

He didn't stop.

And the notifications poured down like rain.

Pain Resistance is level 43!

Pain Resistance is level 44!

Physical Conditioning is level 25!

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Tier in Physical Conditioning!

You Gain:

+10 STR

+10 END

+10 VIT

Physical Conditioning is level 26!

Meditation is level 35!

Meditation is level 36!

In fact, as the hours ground down, Felix felt himself… not reveling in the exertion and pain, but appreciating it almost. His Body was powerful—he'd known that for a while—but he hadn't recognized his new limits, not even when he was fighting the Void pirates. He was running headlong into them now.

A mad laugh often slithered through his defenses while he worked, sending fissures of pain through his chest. Each time, Felix had to clamp down hard on his Bastion of Will. He had to train his Mind as well, and the Maw was an… eager participant. Every time his defenses slackened, it was there, testing the edges of its prison.

Bastion of Will is level 45!

Deep Mind is level 38!

Pain Resistance is level 45!

Through the haze of pain, Felix worried about what the Maw could do. He had to admit, however, that it was perfect for practicing constant vigilance. And, despite his growth, his bloodline progression hadn't changed by a single percentage.

"That's enough!"

After four hours, Rory called it. Felix collapsed to the ground, utterly exhausted. While he'd learned to flare his Meditation occasionally while running, Felix still had trouble activating it the entire time. His Stamina was in the red and had been for a long time. He didn't even bother to sit up and simply laid down on the floor and tried to reign in his jerky, erratic breathing.

At some point, Karp, Kelgan, and Yan had joined Felix in his torture. They hadn't run as long as Felix, but they were all varying degrees of a mess. He blinked. He hadn't noticed at all.

I might be… worse off… than I thought. He gulped lungfuls of air. Even my… inner monologue… is winded.

Eventually, he gained control over his breathing, and Felix felt Meditation activate, soothing his aching muscles with the benefits of enhanced regeneration. Slowly, so very slowly, his mind cleared from the haze.

"Back on your feet, all o'ye!"

At this point, Felix wasn't even thinking anymore, he simply lurched more or less upright. Rory stood in front of the small group and started doing… stretches. Felix's beleaguered mind took a long moment to realize what was expected of him, then followed suit. Strange as it was to see, the Dwarven trainer was extremely limber, and the positions he forced them into were complicated to the point of being punishment.

Felix's body had never moved or bent in such ways, but he doggedly pressed on even while Karp and Yan collapsed. The stretches were extremely painful, both because of the extent of the movement, but also due to the intense, agonizing knots that his legs, back, and shoulders had become. All of it hovered tantalizingly close to Acrobatics as well, one of his broken Skills. Each push and pull sent rivers of heat lightning across his joints, burning his tendons and ligaments as much as they did his muscles and nerve endings.

His advanced physical stats gave him an edge over the others, Dexterity alone doing a lot of heavy lifting; but ultimately it was his monstrous Willpower that let Felix shunt the agony and continue. Regardless, Felix eventually fell from proper form, but Rory just shoved him back into place each time.

Hours passed again in a sweaty blur. The stretching felt almost as rigorous as the sprinting, and by the time Rory stopped, all of Felix's muscles felt like jelly. Weak and wobbly. He ached for rest.

Physical Conditioning is level 27!

Physical Conditioning is level 28!

Meditation is level 37!

With a strained grunt, Felix was hauled back to his feet. He wasn't sure who did it at first, but the sawdust and leather smell of Rory had become unmistakable.

"You're not done yet, lad. Keep pushin'!"

Somehow, he picked up his dense wooden beam and hefted it onto his shoulder again. Felix and the others were led outside, into the afternoon sunlight. The journey was at first a succession of light and shadow, little more than flashes across his beleaguered vision. However, his Meditation had caught up to his exertions, at least a little bit; Felix found enough clarity to recognize that he had been led to the river.

Green and fast-flowing, the river wound through the Dust Quarter like a sleeping dragon. It smelled of wet boards, moldering stone, and something deeper he couldn't place. A few boats moved up and down its length, each with long, brown, spindly legs that took Felix entirely too much time to realize were oars.

Rory stood in front of them and said something that Felix couldn't make out above the watery slap of the river waves and the roaring in his ears. He shook his head and focused, just in time to see the Dwarf gesture down a slick set of stairs.

"...is Swimming. One mile, completed twenty times," Rory grinned. "Ye've got until nightfall."

Judging by the long shadows and dropping temperature, that was only a few hours away. Felix's head spun slightly as his Stamina fought to catch up. Was this what it meant to push himself? Was it enough? The roaring in Felix's ears became a high, sadistic laughter.

Yes, keep going, child. Break for me.

Felix snarled wordlessly, causing Yan and Karp to step back from him. He didn't even notice. I will not break. Not here. Not ever!

Before his mind could catch up, Felix ignored the stairs and leaped directly into the river.

* * *

When Felix began his running, Pit was more than content to sit in the pretty Human's lap and get pets. Disguised as a Dire Hound meant others were far less cautious around him, and Pit was enjoying that immensely. The pretty Human, for instance, had always felt nervous around Pit in the past; scared, even. Now, however, she seemed delighted by him.

Pit chirruped happily as she scratched just the right part of his neck. He liked this magic stone.

Additionally, the tenku found he was becoming more and more aware of the emotional state of the big folk around him, to the point that he could track their general feelings moment to moment. There was limited use for this ability, Pit realized, but it helped net him a significant amount of treats. The pretty girl and the scary one both caved after a few minutes of what Felix called begging. Felix's concept of the word was surrounded by a gentle admonishment, but Pit couldn't imagine why. His stomach was full from all the treats they sneaked to him. How could that be bad?

Over the course of the day, Pit observed his Companion training with several of the other Humans, and it was exciting. But after the tenth time around the room with that strange, dead tree, Pit started to feel sleepy. If Felix's emotions were any indicator, the running was very difficult and only grew more tiresome as he went on… but Pit could only muster a bored disinterest.

They stopped the running after a while, this time to do some strange poses. These were not interesting, either.

Pit took a nap.

When he woke, he was alone. The pretty girl had abandoned him to fight against one of the burly Humans, this one with a big heavy hammer. As he contemplated finding another Human to beg for treats (his stomach was feeling empty again), his legs wobbled beneath him. A thrill of terrifying weakness strummed across Pit's chest, and the tenku let out a surprised whimper.

Felix...

His Companion was hurt, somehow. But it didn't feel… it felt intentional. Strain. Yes. Strain was the word the Chimera sought. Felix felt as if his Body, Mind, and Spirit were being stretched thin. That thinning, it reverberated across their bond like a sharpened chord, a music that sawed dangerously close to....

Pit snarled, unable to stop himself. He scented the Enemy on his Companion, more so than usual.

Back off!

Pit's scream was silent and devoted entirely within; the powerful strings that connected him to his Companion shuddered with that exclamation, however. There was a discordant squawk that cut through the air, then silence. The connection between Felix and Pit snapped back into crystal clarity, and though the tenku could feel the immense physical and emotional exhaustion the Nym was enduring, it was clean. Pure.

The Enemy was back in its cage.

Shortly after that, Felix stumbled into the warehouse, along with three others. They were all soaking wet, even though the rain had stopped a long while ago. Felix was obviously exhausted, his Stamina almost completely depleted, but as the Nymean fell to his knees, he began to regain that ground. Rapidly.

Pit snorted in satisfaction. If nothing else, his Companion was relentless. Felix might bite off more than he could chew and nearly die multiple times a week, but he never gave up. A sense of satisfaction wafted around his Companion, flaring just slightly stronger than the exhaustion that plagued him. Thoughts of fighting, spells, and new heights rolled through his mind like storm winds.

Pit chirped in excitement, relishing the idea of more combat. Perhaps this time, he could even...

The not-quite-small one (a Dwarf, he reminded himself), the Dwarf said something about resting and visualizing his gains. Pit didn't fully understand his meaning, but Felix seemed to; his Companion had simply nodded and closed his eyes.

Just...sat there. Thinking.

It was extremely boring.

Huffing a breath rife with dissatisfaction, Pit folded his legs and settled in to watch. Even when his stomach called for more food, the tenku did not move. The Enemy tried to strike when he was weakest, and Pit would not give it the chance. It was the least he could do, for his friend.

He just wished there were more treats.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Swimming is level 7!

...

Swimming is level 20!

Running is level 25!

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Tier in Running!

You Gain:

+3 END

+3 AGL

+3 VIT

Felix felt like garbage by nightfall. The river was cold, despite the humid heat in the air, and he was pretty sure there were giant eel-creatures down in that green water. Something brushed against his legs, at least, and he'd been too out of it to use his Eye.

The mile Rory had them swim was fairly straight, with only a gentle curve near the end. The others had joined Felix at some point, but most of his recollections were foggy. A wet, musty splash of brackish darkness and shouting sailors. Going up-river was the hardest, since Felix had to fight against not only the current, but the riverboats as well. Oftentimes, he was forced to submerge himself completely to avoid the shallow draw of one of the many craft that plied the waters. Abyssal Skein came in handy whenever he was forced to do that, helping him to hold his breath better and avoiding the attention of whatever lurked in the depths.

Felix had pushed on and refused to think about it.

Abyssal Skein hit level 14 during his extended swim, though it hadn't helped the thickening fog that had settled over his mind. When Felix finally climbed out of the river, he was a shaking mess, barely able to crawl. Releasing the Void from his flesh had taken more effort than holding it, somehow, and its oily caress did no favors for his mental state. It was with numb fingers and bone-weary mind that Felix hoisted the wooden beam once more and trudged in the direction of the warehouse.

Naturally, that was when the Maw decided to attack.

"Attack" was… not entirely accurate, but it wasn't wrong, either. The Primordial let loose a buzzing cry that sent Felix's mind whirling, filling his mind with the sound of powerful, heavy stone splintering under pressure. Its cry deepened, but still retained that unnatural discordance that rattled his inner ear and set the trees around his Bastion to shuddering. The cry gained momentum quickly, until immense earthquakes heaved through his mental structure, sending fissures to spider crazily up the side of the central tower.

A terrible weakness shuddered through him, nearly causing Felix to drop the beam he was carrying back to the warehouse.

A dark, cold fear surged across his mind, that the Maw would manage to break his Bastion Skill as well...

Then there was a swell of righteous horns. Felix couldn't explain it any other way. Like the music of the System, it rose as if from a great distance, crescendoing until it dominated even the snapping groans of his Bastion. Something surged along his bond, something that moved faster than Felix could track. It hit his damaged walls, and the discordant buzzing from within was cut off. The Maw went silent.

Rationally, Felix recognized that Pit had done something, but “what” was a mystery. He sent back a weary pulse of gratitude and sensed the tenku not far off and watching him intently. The door behind him slammed shut as a few more figures stumbled into the warehouse, and Felix's sharpening senses detected the other Humans and Rory.

Rory grunted as Felix struggled to stand again. "Dun worry, lad. The fight’s over for today. Now ye'll consolidate it all. Take a breath and visualize your core and Skills."

Felix hesitated just a moment before he slumped heavily to the ground. He was probably in someone's way, but he couldn't find the energy to care.

"Ye must delve deep into your core and seek out the truth of your Skills," Rory explained as Felix sat there. "Gain insight, and ye'll make miracles, lad."

The Dwarf left without another word, and Felix took a shaky breath.

Felix hadn't fully explored his core and Skills therein since Bateo's farm, but he had seen some limited success with his Mana Skills. More importantly, he believed he had an idea of what Rory was talking about.

Diving into his core, visualizing it via Fire Within, Felix could sense the wide expanse of it all. His core wasn't really a place at all, but a thick, limitless darkness in which several things floated. No, he reminded himself. Revolved. Like a tiny solar system.

The center was dominated by a blazing blue-white bonfire, haloed by the crackling discharge of similarly colored lightning. Above the center, thick and cloying, was an aquamarine vapor. It swirled restlessly above the fire, though it didn't disperse or burn away.

Claude energy, Felix noted. He'd never investigated his core after… feeding. This is what the Maw called Essence?

It was what he consumed when his Ravenous Tithe activated. The Maw had given him a bit of a crash course while they were in the Void together, but as usual hadn't told him everything. Such as what "Essence" was or its uses. He shook his head. Focused.

Arrayed around the fire and fog were a number of symbols that flared and faded at irregular intervals. Among them, his broken Skills were like a series of shattered teeth. They flickered with a fitful light, the patterns on them interrupted and incomplete. It was almost painful just to view them. Previously, Rory had told him to reach out toward his broken Skills, not to activate them, but hold them close.

Learn their shape, their movements.

As his Meditation gained more ground, his taxed mental faculties began to rally. Felix gently poured himself into the task. It was difficult, certainly. His broken Skills were like exposed nerves; too close, and the pain would send him hurtling out of his visualization. Felix spent tens of minutes being expelled and re-envisioning his core over and over as he tested his approach.

Fire Within is level 38!

Each rejection stabbed at his brain, his pain receptors flooded with a dark agony. Eventually, he gave up, the patterns that once made up the Skills having become too tangled and thorny. They were raw thickets where his functional Skills were cultivated gardens. Felix turned his attention away from them. They weren't his true purpose here, anyway.

After considering his wide variety of Skills, Felix focused his first attempts on Physical Conditioning. It had already hit Apprentice Tier, but the feature he was most interested in was in its description.

Physical Conditioning (Rare), Level 28! Through application and hard work, you have begun a regimen to improve your health and physical fitness. Increases the rate at which your Physical Skills grow, based on Skill Level.

Rory had confirmed that there were several Skills like this that amplified others as their main focus. They were, naturally, called Amplification Skills and were always classified as Rare or higher. Physical Conditioning, the Dwarf had said, was one of the more basic versions.

"Basic as in everyone has it?" Felix had asked. Rory shook his head and took a long drag off his pipe.

"Nay, lad. Amplification Skills aren't come by easily, even yours. By basic, I mean it modifies Physical Skills only, and is not highly specialized or more broadly powerful. There are some high-ranked Skills out there that would blow your young Mind." The Dwarf had snorted out a laugh before ordering Felix to keep running laps.

The vivid recollection faded from Felix's mind and he blinked into the present, considering. If I up my Physical Conditioning as high as possible, then Swimming, Free Climbing, anything under the Body category should grow faster. Right? Right.

His unbroken Skills were shapes of pure light scattered around the blazing bonfire of his center. They hovered, etched into the pregnant shadows of his core like strange constellations. Celestial bodies in a starless void. Or a Void, maybe.

He kept moving. Felix recalled how Stone Shaping and Shadow Whip undulated and shifted like waves in the sea. Physical Conditioning was no different. It was an angular string of light, a pattern of jagged peaks and valleys described by shifting vibrations.

Vibrations, he mused. Distantly, he thought he could detect a sort of humming, like the faint memory of a steel string, struck a long time ago. Vibrations create harmonies, right? And a harmony is a series of chords strung together...

Physical Conditioning hummed just slightly louder, not changing pitch or timbre. It was constant, low, and… almost comforting, somehow. It lapped against his skin like a tiny sea. An almost physical song...

According to Rory, normal denizens of the Continent visualized their cores through various techniques. In doing so, they both solidified their mental image of their core (important for various reasons, he claimed), and it also allowed them a reference point to gain greater understanding of their Skills.

The earliest stage of a denizen's journey was called the Beginner Tier, where all growth was relatively explosive, up until one approached Apprentice Tier. Brute force and simple repetition could raise Skill levels, given enough time and effort. After Apprentice Tier however, Skills were far harder to level in that same way… unless one were encountering extremely deadly danger on a regular basis.

This was not something a standard denizen does on the Continent. Strength was prized, but most parents loved their children and wouldn't want to send them to the wolves on the off-chance they'd survive and grow.

That was Felix's advantage, among other things.

He'd been born among the wolves.

So, to push his Physical Conditioning further, he would need something else. He would need what Rory had described as insight, vague as that was. Felix sounded the Skill, following its pattern as it shifted between troughs and crests. That vibration was like a frequency, a specific pitch that called to mind a plethora of strange images. The more Felix delved into it, the more his own memories were turned back around upon himself.

Before he knew it, he was back in the water, swimming amid the strong current and swift boats. Water splashed over him, soaking him. The cold tried to invade his skin, but it wasn't strong enough to even tick up his resistance, while whatever kept nipping at him from below was too weak to penetrate his Armored Skin. He swam that mile again, and again, all the while a series of low vibrations thrummed across all of his senses. Time faded into nothing; it was just the water, just the exertion.

Swimming is level 21!

Swimming is level 22!

Physical Conditioning is level 29!

Swimming is level 23!

Swimming is level 24!

Physical Conditioning is level 30!

Swimming is level 25!

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Tier in Swimming!

You Gain:

+3 END

+3 DEX

+3 STR

* * *

With a sudden, hollow gasp Felix lurched upright. He felt as if he were resurfacing from a deep sea dive, and there was a brief moment of disorientation where the world felt too loud, too bright.

Woof, what...what was that?

His inner ear felt wobbly as if he'd lost his land legs. Felix was still sitting on the floor of the warehouse, however. True night had fallen at some point, and the constant sounds of training had faded into the low murmur of soft conversation back toward the cafeteria area. Pit had sidled up to him at some point, and his illusory coat was soft and warm. Absently, Felix petted the tenku, still marveling at what he'd just experienced.

The vibrations of his Skill had resonated with his perfect memory of swimming the river, and he'd somehow...relived it? He'd even gained Skill levels from the experience.

Just like in the Void, when I'd improved myself while fixing my Bastion of Will. This time, it was a memory, though. How much growth was from rehashing a memory versus sounding out the Skill? Felix pushed back his shaggy hair. He had gained a few levels from a similar tactic back in the Tower, but nothing so… vivid. He also didn't feel as if he'd garnered any substantial understanding or insights into Physical Conditioning. But he knew where the energy had come from; the same place it had back in the Void.

Felix felt a distinct gnawing in his gut, a sudden low-pitched growl that called to mind unpleasant memories. Diving deep with his Fire Within, Felix envisioned his core once again. His Swimming Skill glowed with the same luminescence as his Running and Physical Conditioning Skills—evidence of their ascension to Apprentice Tier—his core was largely the same. Save for one thing. The Essence of Claude the Half-Ogre, a thick aquamarine vapor, was nearly gone. Even as he watched, the last wisp of it fed itself into the fire of his core and was consumed.

Claude's essence, where'd it go? Then the barest flicker of gray subsumed Felix's vision, familiar enough that he groaned. Why now?

A series of flashing images inundated Felix's brain, too fast and too garbled to make out much. It was over almost before it began, and Felix was thrust unceremoniously back into the world.

Ravenous Tithe is level 12!

Felix panted, the brief, wrenching sense of dislocation scrambling his thoughts. After a moment, he had a realization. The Essence was there before he'd had his dream training, but was practically gone by the end of it. Was he...was he using the Half-Ogre's consumed power to fuel his own growth? Was that why he didn't gain a Skill or even coherent memory from Claude?

He thought back to the recent gains. He had "eaten" Mana each and every time: to learn Oathbinding, he absorbed the Mana being radiated outward by Harn during the process. When he learned Negotiation, he had just consumed a Prismatic Wretch the night before.

What worried Felix the most, however, was that each time he'd given into his Ravenous Tithe, his Race progression bar ticked upward. With a sinking sensation in his gut, he checked his Status.

It hadn't moved at all. It still read 32%.

Was it because I used the latent power to grow my Skills instead?

Ravenous Tithe is level 13!

...

Ravenous Tithe is level 15!

Sudden certainty flooded him at the same time the System inundated his mind with an orchestral echo. He could devour monsters and fuel his Skill growth and acquisition. That sinking sensation had become a giddy excitement, and it sent faint tremors down his arms and legs. Though maybe that was just the exhaustion.

He had a way forward. Now he just needed some monsters to eat.

Or, Felix thought with a spike of excitement. Monster cores.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The sun had set hours ago by the time Eliza DuFont's feet hit the Sunrise Quarter. Crowds that in other areas of the city were still thin and frightened of the recent breach were heavy and boisterous there. The danger had never quite spread into the Sunrise Quarter, perhaps because it was the farthest away from the Wall, and the monsters spent their lives well before reaching the district. Or perhaps because the ornate walls between the Dust and Crafters’ Quarters were manned with dozens of private mercenary forces.

Eliza had passed quite a few of them on her trek, their levels typically around mid-thirties but occasionally higher. Her experienced senses could pick out the tell-tale signs of First Temper on them, though it was rare to see anyone even nearing their second.

Strong, to a point, she mused as another three hired mercenaries escorted a rotund man in silk brocade. They were all dressed in jackets and robes, their enchanted armor mostly hidden beneath common clothing. The rich denizens of the Sunrise Quarter were rarely as strong as a common Iron or Bronze Rank Guilder, and the same was true for their security.

Any stronger and the mercenaries would be too expensive to hire. Or, we would pick them up. She made a mental note to have Vera or Tera send a recruitment squad into the Quarter. The strength she detected was being squandered on guard duty.

The Guild ruled Haarwatch predominantly upon their strength, but secondarily by their numbers. All combatants with talent were allowed to join and take the Oath, and it was even offered as a form of leniency when Guilders captured bandits or ruffians with a modicum of skill. At present, they easily had fifteen hundred Tin Ranks, with around six hundred Iron Rankers, and half that in Bronze. Silver Ranks, the leaders of their branch forces, made up only two dozen.

The Elders were, of course, Gold Ranked by virtue of their position, but rare were those that actually had the power to back it up. Eliza herself, for instance, was merely a strong Silver Rank before her promotion. She had risen in the Guild through politics and an excellent track record; she had earned her place, no mistake about that. Unfortunately, that was a sentiment she often found herself defending.

Damnable Elders. She scowled as the crowds parted around her use of Spirit. The folks around her shifted away from the slender woman without quite knowing why. It was an effective and efficient way to move through the city, though it did tend to leave a wake of unsettled emotional distress. Damnable peasants. Burning, insufferable city!

Life at the top of the heap in Haarwatch was likely as rife with schemes as anywhere else, except they fought over a trash heap. She had worked so very hard to develop and execute the original Foglands operation, and when it blew up in her face, she had scrambled to pick up the pieces. The Guild had scraped by without losing too much face, but the arrival of the Inquisition was a hit they had not been expecting. Or at least, Eliza had not.

Machinations within machinations. The wheels of deceit and ambition turned wildly within the Spire, and Eliza did not—could not—trust another Elder. Too many plots and secrets, pet projects and quiet obsessions made up the lives of the other Gold Ranks, though in wildly different proportions. Hyde and Regis were violent but straightforward enough, while Latvere was too much of a lapdog for Fairbanks to scheme without permission. It was Teine, above all others that she doubted. His past… experiments had always been strange and unruly, but not until the expedition had been rescued had his projects become a top priority of the High Elder.

What were they working on? What is going on with the Domain? She had attempted to find out, to insert herself into his plans and find the weaknesses, but that had failed. Things were changing in the city, and Eliza doubted it was for the better. The Master Inquisitor's hand was also on the scale now, after all.

And now the Dayne girl is getting involved. Eliza hadn't missed the girl’s maneuverings at the cathedral. She'd been angling to enter the Domain, despite what she had said about the wilds or hunting that killer. Teine was nervous after she'd left, quickly excusing himself despite Eliza's offers of help; something DuFont knew the Elder of Spirit needed to continue his experiments. The bastard had done something, likely something illegal or worse, sacrilegious. If Vessilia, paragon of virtue and devotee of the Pathless, knew something she shouldn't, things could go very badly for Elder Teine.

Eliza grinned, the idea of sweet leverage sending a warm flush across her chest. She increased her pace.

DuFont held her thoughts close as she navigated the wide, smooth walkways of Sunrise. Her path had been running more or less parallel to the Ianus River the entire time, but her next turn set her directly on its banks. Rising before her was a large and impressively made manor, one that was built over the river itself and acted as a private bridge.

Lights hovered above its tall walls, flitting organically around the immaculate construction. Eliza's Analyze picked out the materials and construction of the wall and manor with practiced ease, a small part of her impressive Mind cataloging and pricing everything she saw. It was a learned reflex, but it had served her exceptionally well. For instance, she could tell the walls were heavily warded with various hidden sigils, likely carved on the inside edge of the span-thick barrier to keep them from disruption or defacement. The type of stone also told her that it was not particularly conducive to Mana, which meant the wards weren't offensive or even strictly protective. Were she to leap over the walls, there would be nothing to stop her from passing through harmlessly. It was her knowledge of the place, however, that informed what the wards truly were: a privacy screen.

Before her was the Water Lily, a gentleman's club of ill repute in the city, but frequented by much of high society. Eliza sneered in disdain. There are no gentlemen here.

Regardless, she stepped through the circular arch and into the inner courtyard. She had business to sort.

The building was indeed suspended above the Ianus, built with such grace that not a single support beam was in evidence, allowing free passage for all craft that plied the river. It was a marvel of construction, and Eliza did not miss the irony. Haarwatch may tout the Wall and Guild as their greatest accomplishments, but she was sure more money was put into this damned pleasure palace than the entire Eyrie.

She flared her Willpower, muting her own chaotic thoughts and emotions. Clarity descended, and with it, she began to move. The inner courtyard was large, at least a hundred feet in diameter and dominated by an elaborate fountain of two Humans locked in a delicate embrace. Water, pumped up from the river, poured obscenely from their entwined mouths to cascade down their verdigris-covered bodies. The main entrance to the Water Lily was bedecked in gaudy, garish curtains and gilt everything, but that wasn't her destination. Eliza turned to the right, circling around the manor itself and proceeding through several beautifully crafted stone archways.

The path led further out onto the river, an impossibly large stone structure, made more impossible by the lush garden that sprouted up around her. Thick green foliage and delicate, ornamental trees in vibrant purples, oranges, and magenta filled an area expertly spaced with wide pathways. It was quite beautiful, a fact that did nothing to quell her visceral disgust. Establishments such as the Water Lily were not to her liking, and were she truly in charge of the city, every whorehouse in town would have gone up in flames by the morning. Even standing here, in the innocuous gardens, had her skin crawling.

Which was probably why the bitch chose this spot to meet.

Eliza patted her hip, caressing her offended ego with the faint promise of violence. She still wore her enchanted gauntlets–rarely took them off, in fact–but they were of particularly fine make: she could feel every ripple and edge of the sword at her side. It was a strange one, she had to admit, though that had only fanned her interest even more. When she had seen it on that fool treasure hunter, the Elder of Acquisitions knew she had to have it.

Crescian Bronze, in the Foglands? If the others knew of the blade's provenance, no doubt the struggle for control would increase tenfold. It was why she kept the details of the blade a secret, especially from Katan and his dogs. Crescian Bronze was worth twice its weight in gold, a damn sight more than even a Rank III enchanted blade of steel, and that was without anything extra. The edge would never dull, the surface would never rust or stain. More importantly, the material was highly reactive to Mana, making it perfect for inscriptions. Arrays. Enchantments.

Eliza's eyes slid over the surface of the sword again, but still she could not find a single marking on it. Her Analyze Skill was at Adept Tier, and still she could perceive nothing from it, save for the faintest of sensations of its past owners. Eliza did not fully understand the new aspect of her Skill yet, but since hitting Adept Tier, it had begun to… almost sing the origins of the inanimate to her.

She caressed the hilt of the sword as she had done many nights over the past months. There was a recent touch, one that was not inconsiderable in the weapon's peculiar memory. A strange tang to their Mana, it called to mind nothing so much as a feeling of… yearning. Ambition, perhaps. The Elder did not yet know the depths of the Adept Skill, but each attempt calmed her, setting her Mind a task worth chewing over.

It was an impressive weapon, worthy of her collection, but it was ultimately nothing more than that. A hobby. A distraction. Meanwhile, the other Elders were working on far more impactful projects in the dark.

The soft sound of leather on stone roused Eliza from her musings. Her powerful Perception immediately captured the presence of a young woman. With practiced slowness, Eliza turned toward her and smiled.

"You certainly took your time, Ilia."

The Sworn shrugged her dark-clad shoulders, but a whitened eye beneath her mask winked. "Have to have fun sometime, right? Sides, this wasn't exactly a planned meeting."

Eliza's smile turned cold. "Indeed. We're secure?"

"Of course."

"Excellent. I've run into a potential problem, and I need it surveilled." Eliza caressed the hooked blade once more before re-sheathing it. "Will you take the contract?"

"That blade," Ilia said, looking down at the Elder's waist. "Where did you get it?"

"What does that matter?" Eliza raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow at the Sworn. "If you must know, it came from the Foglands. Spoils of war, you might say."

"I've seen it before," Ilia said, her gaze flicking up to Eliza's. "On a member of Magda's party."

"That's not a surprise," Eliza sneered. "I took it from Calesca myself."

"No, not her. The other one. The boy with the Chimera."

"Chimera? Ah, yes. The one who perished with the Shieldwitch." Eliza caressed the blade at her hip.

"Perished? You're sure?"

Eliza looked at the Sworn, curious. The agent's tone hadn't revealed anything, and had in fact been entirely neutral; but something about her words, her interest, riled the Elder's interest. "Reports are that he and the Shieldwitch were beset by Frost Giants. A nest of vipers, I believe you called them? Neither survived."

Ilia frowned and straightened.

"What was your interest in this boy?" The Elder asked.

"There is no interest," the Sworn assured smoothly as her frown disappeared. "He survived a confrontation with me. In turn, I set loose an army of Frost Giants upon him and his allies."

"A savage retaliation," Eliza said, an appreciative smile on her lips. "I owe you some thanks for netting us at least one win in that arena. The Shieldwitch was more trouble than she was worth."

Ilia inclined her head slightly. Just the right amount for dealing with a superior, nothing more. "Of course. The Sworn has a reputation to uphold, after all."

"A shame for the boy, though." Eliza sighed. "I would have been greatly interested to find out how he'd tamed a Chimera of all things. Will you take the contract?" Eliza asked again, making sure to sharpen her tone. Ilia hesitated, and Eliza's smile thinned. "What's wrong?"

The Sworn didn't shuffle her feet or tighten her shoulders; she was too good at subterfuge for that. However, Eliza got the distinct impression of concern. "You paid quite a hefty sum to the Order already. Non-interference in Guilder affairs, you said. To prevent your fellows from using us. Why's that changed?"

Eliza rolled her eyes. "The terms of that agreement don't cover this, so don't try twisting them. This is for another purpose. No killing, no kidnapping."

Ilia took a step closer, moving from the shadows and into the dim light of the three smallest moons. She wore the same blackened armor and arsenal of knives as before, though a number of them were newer and inscribed with impressive skill. She looked up at Eliza, nearly a full hand taller than her. "You know, if I'd known how much shit I was gonna get after bringing that girl back, I would've refused your offer. Did you know the Inquisition sent people to our Chapter House? Looking for our involvement in the Foglands, they said." Ilia's jaw clenched. "The Vow nearly took my head for that alone."

Eliza rocked back slightly. She hadn't known that. "The zealots grow bold," she murmured before grimacing. The Foglands hadn't turned out well for anyone, as far as she was concerned. She waved her hand. "This is nothing like that. As I said, no kidnapping. I simply need your talents for surveillance."

"Fine. I'll hear the terms," Ilia said.

"You'll follow, observe, and report back to me the comings and goings of Vessilia Dayne," Eliza tapped her lip with a metal-clad finger. "Duration will be over the next month."

"The heiress? Again?" Ilia raised an eyebrow beneath her dark mask, evidenced by the widening of her pale left eye. "Why? Who's she gotten mixed up with this time?"

"If I knew that, I wouldn't be contracting you." Eliza frowned. "Do you have issues with the terms?"

"Not as such. It's just boring, s'all." Ilia's voice had turned flat and unimpressed. Her right hand ran across the hilts of her many blades. "I'd have figured the Guild woulda had her in hand by now."

Eliza fought not to snap at the Sworn's suggestion that the Guild could not control its members. Her Willpower cooled her emotions and helped deftly weave her answer. "The Guild offers its people the freedom to seek strength, but it will not take mastery over its members. Truly, seeking to limit our members' freedoms would not go well."

"You mean you're afraid of the Duke, yeah?" Ilia grinned. Eliza could only offer a contemplative look and a jerky nod. "Payment?"

"A thousand crowns, paid in full tonight, if you'll take the contract."

Ilia whistled, low and long. "Just to watch the brat? Even with the redcloaks breathing down my back, that's twice the goin' rate. Why so much?"

"You're worth it, as is your discretion. Your assistance in earlier matters meant a great deal of trouble did not fall on the Guild's head." Eliza smiled, good-naturedly this time. "Plus, you'll have some challenge: the Duke's Hand guards her."

"Hm," Ilia grunted in gruff appreciation, and Eliza's smile sharpened.

Got her. Battle addict like her won't refuse pitting herself against the Hand and the Inquisition.

"I need this begun immediately if possible. No one can know, just as before." A large leather bag was suddenly in Eliza's grasp, and the faint sound of shifting metal could be heard from within. "Do we have an accord?"

Ilia took a great, hawking spit to the side. It hit a paving stone with a surprisingly loud, wet splat.

"If it's got you Guilders all bothered, whatever that girl is into sounds like a bit of fun." Ilia grinned, and her teeth practically glowed in the moonlit darkness. "Avet knows I need some fun. Sure."

She put out her hand, already glimmering with concentrated Mana.

"An accord."

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The days passed quickly while Felix did nothing but eat, sleep, and train.

Exhausted after that first intense day, Felix had slept for a solid ten hours. His Stamina and Health were fine, but something inside of him was strained by everything he had accomplished. Not to mention the constant assaults from the Maw. When he woke up the next morning, it was at it again, clawing at its cage and shouting obscenities. Still, he felt refreshed and excited to tackle his Skills and headed to the warehouse quickly.

After his successes in meditation, Felix managed to procure a single monster core as he passed one of the opened crates. Most of the adventurers were preoccupied with the Gauntlet, including Rory, while Cal was off somewhere else. At first, he'd attempted to consume the core from a distance, but whatever "claimed" meant in the Skill description apparently didn't apply. Remembering how he'd absorbed the Mana engines, he shoved his hand into the crate, grabbing one before Ravenous Tithe could activate.

Ravenous Tithe is level 16!

He'd retreated to attempt meditation again, hoping no one had noticed his theft.

Attempting to train Physical Conditioning via monster cores brought to light a limitation to his newly discovered capability. The monster core sat as a roiling cloud of colorful Mana, ranging between blue, green, and vibrant orange. Monster Essence, he decided to call it. But when he tried to use the swimming memory again, he did not experience the same effect as before. Felix could still relive the experience, his memory being what it was, but the sensation of progress and exertion was absent.

What was the difference?

He had many memories of exerting himself physically, but few were a challenge for his current set of stats and abilities. Reliving those memories provided nothing, and in fact didn't even reduce the energy of the monster Essence.

Well, the Skill is level 30 now, which is higher than the others and hopefully offers some faster gains. He'd have to push himself to his new limit to stretch Physical Conditioning further.

His Running and Swimming Skills had both hit Apprentice Tier already, so he switched focus. His plan was to combine several of his Physical Enhancement Skills with Acrobatics to recover as much as he could from the broken Skill. The Dwarf had indicated the amount and quality of Skills combined were factored into the rarity of the new synergy Skill, so that is what he concentrated on. Rory had said that most people combine one or two Skills in this manner; Felix was shooting for more.

He trained Free Climbing after that, though Felix worried his enhanced stats would make the Skill nearly obsolete. At first, it did. When he used his impressive Strength to launch himself half-way up a wall, he didn't so much as gain a level in the Skill. It wasn't until he considered the Skill itself, what it was meant to teach, that he came upon a solution. He concentrated on climbing slowly, seeking out natural handholds instead of making his own or hurling himself around. It was dead simple with his Endurance and Strength to climb the warehouses around the area nearly indefinitely, but the agonizingly slow pace ended up taking him six hours of constant training. It gave results, though.

Free Climbing is level 25!

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Tier with Free Climbing!

You Gain:

+5 STR

+5 PER

+5 END

A series of notes rang in his mind as the Skill Tiered. After having spent a few hours investigating his core, he knew it was an exact match for Free Climbing as it appeared via Fire Within. Now that he was paying attention, the notes vibrated something inside of him, sending relatively minute waves of energy across his body. The vibrations were coming from his core and radiating outward.

The System resonates with the Skill, which absorbs the upgrades from it and sends them outward into the Body, Mind, and Spirit. It was a guess, but Felix felt right about it. His unifying—and admittedly vague—theory on Harmony and vibrations was expanding by the hour as his Skills grew before his very eyes.

He didn't sleep that night. Relentless Charge was up next.

The Skill had become a staple of his combat style—if he were so generous as to call his method of fighting a style. He worried he might lose the burst of speed it afforded him in clutch moments. If he were being honest with himself, he wasn't entirely sure why he added it to the list, just that he had a… feeling. Something about the vibrations of Relentless Charge seemed to fit with pieces of Acrobatics, especially Running. Almost like a puzzle.

Training Relentless Charge was simple enough compared to Free Climbing. Felix merely activated it over and over again, flitting about the warehouse as fast as he could. This meant he dropped his Mana and Stamina quickly, but he was able to recover those resources abnormally fast. The worst part was the nausea that occurred after activating the Skill too many times, usually around twenty times in rapid succession. Felix had to take a breather whenever it triggered thereafter, steadying his head and inner ear.

The advancements to Free Climbing and some of Relentless Charge consumed the entirety of the first monster core. Part of what was unbalancing him was the sudden, empty ache within his gut as his evolved hunger growled for sustenance. It felt a bit like when he'd been starved for energy in the Void, with the System barely reaching him. The hunger wasn't as… wild as it used to be, but Felix still felt leery feeding that urge. He still did, however, as his bloodline progression had not yet moved a single percentage point. He was safe with this method, and he could advance faster than ever before.

Reality, unfortunately, doused his good mood.

When the first core dissipated, Felix was quick to snag another from the bountiful supply. Yet Ravenous Tithe would not work, only producing an unpleasant hollow ache, as if he were trying to suck up clay through a straw. Giving it some time, Felix came to the understanding that he was only able to consume a single target per day, irrespective of its size or complexity.

How could a tiny monster core compare to an entire person like the Half-Ogre? Felix was annoyed at the limitation, but it tracked; while now he was using the Essence to power-level his Skills, it would take him multiple days to digest a whole being's energy. Felix could only hope the wait between uses would reduce as it leveled up.

Eventually, simple repetition stopped working as he was warned it would, but by then he had turned to sparring with Harn once again. The Guilder known as Onslaught still did not wear his signature armor, but he was tough as ever. Moreso, in fact, as Felix was focusing on utilizing Relentless Charge as his only method of defense and offense. Defense was of prime concern as he dashed out of the way of Harn's axes.

As he hadn't consumed another core, the training took a long time, well into the late morning of his third day. By the end of it, Felix was drenched in sweat, and his muscles were feeling twitchy and weak from overexertion. As before, he was keeping up with Stamina, but something else was being drained during all of this training. He'd slowed a lot by that point, often taking long breaks to recover his spent Health.

Harn wasn't exactly pulling his punches, though thankfully he defended more often than attacked. The few times he had struck out at Felix, it had been with the haft of his axe, and it felt like a sledgehammer into his bones. The attack had even managed to up his Armored Skin by a level, though Pain Resistance didn't budge.

Physical Conditioning is level 31!

Armored Skin is level 43!

Relentless Charge is level 25!

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Tier with Relentless Charge!

You Gain:

+5 VIT

+5 WIL

+5 END

The gains weren't his alone, however. Pit had decided that sitting around and sleeping were boring, and started challenging himself as well. While Felix struggled through his Skills, Pit had fought against Evie and Harn, who appreciated the durability of the growing tenku. His improved intellect and further control over his hot-headed emotions did much to advance his combat abilities, and there were even a few times the Chimera had them on the backfoot.

Pit's Cry is level 25!

Congratulations! Pit's Cry Has Reached Apprentice Tier!

Your Companion Gains:

+10 INE

+10 ALA

+10 INT

Pit's Wingblade is level 22!

Pit's Frost Spear is level 21!

Pit's Poisonfire is level 15!

Etheric Concordance is level 29!

Pit was growing well, though not as fast as his Companion. Felix had considered feeding the Chimera one of the monster cores, but he couldn't find a way to steal any more of them, not without using Ravenous Tithe. Pit had been capable of devouring cores in the past, so it stood to reason he'd be able to benefit from these as well. Admittedly, those were elemental or chimeric cores, but Felix didn't know if it mattered.

Rory clearly had plans for the cores, though the sheer number of them suggested the training of an army. After some careful inquiries, Felix found out that monster cores were used by scripters, alchemists, even some other crafts like wainwrights and blacksmiths. What that meant, of course, was that Felix was stealing a hot commodity, likely worth a lot of gold. He vowed to keep his consumption hidden as best he could, though not only for that reason. Last thing he wanted was for someone to discover his Ravenous Tithe Skill and somehow recognize its origins. It would, at best, lead to awkward questions.

As he sat near one of several water barrels and doused himself with a ladle of it, Felix checked the sun overhead. It was around noon, so that meant he had only a few hours before the meeting with Caerwin at dusk. Felix had hoped to have sundered and combined Acrobatics before that time, but his cheat hadn't been as groundbreaking as he had hoped.

He had raised his related Skills; all of them were now at Apprentice Tier. That feat would have blown him away back in the Foglands, but it now had him feeling he was racing against time. And losing. Felix wasn't sure if the foreboding came from the Maw's increasing interruptions or something else, but it felt like an axe was above his neck, ready to drop.

As soon as he had his breath back, he sought out Rory. The Dwarf trainer was sitting at one of the long trestle tables and eating a hash of meat, leeks, and tubers with gusto. It was a rich, hearty smell, but Felix had eaten the strange Essence of a monster, and though none of it remained, it made actual food seem unappetizing.

"Ah, Felix, welcome!" Rory slapped the table and offered him a tired smile. The Dwarf was wet with sweat and stains covered his studded jerkin. "Takin' a break from your mad dash?"

Felix sat down at the table, trying not to let his still-wobbly muscles drop him. The bench creaked beneath him, as usual. "Something like that. I think I'm ready to sunder and combine one of my broken Skills."

"Excellent!" Rory's eyes lit up, and he grinned through a mess of egg in his mustache. "Just know, lad. Once we begin, there is no stopping this. Are ye sure?"

Felix nodded, and Rory shoveled the rest of his food into his mouth with impressive speed.

* * *

Once again, he was taken to the warded room, only this time, it had been emptied of all furniture.

Stay outside, Pit, he sent to his Companion. I'm not sure how this is gonna go down, but it won't be pleasant.

The tenku sent a surge of protective anger and concern, along with a series of images and senses all bundled together. No.

Felix grinned and shooed the Chimera away. After rubbing against him like a big cat, the illusory Dire Hound padded toward the door and settled down outside of it.

Moments later, Harn appeared with the wardstones, handing them to Rory to let the Dwarf set it all up. At Felix's questioning gaze, Harn shrugged.

"Better if the one doing the ritual sets up the wards. Keeps the Mana aligned properly, I'm told." The warrior peered at Felix's eyes and stuck out his hand. "Good luck, kid."

Felix gripped his hand firmly and smiled nervously. "Just a little pain, right? I've been through worse."

Harn just grunted, amused. Cal raised her thin eyebrow and smirked. "You've got balls, Felix. This combining business seems..."

"Ill-advised and dangerous?" Felix offered.

"Yeah, that."

Felix shrugged, hoping to affect a suave disregard. "Why change the script now?"

"Cal, everyone, I need ye out of here. This is delicate, and you're all a distraction."

Cal and Harn nodded with a final look at Felix, but Evie pushed back. "Why? What exactly are you doing, Rory?"

"Helping, lass. Best way I can," Rory said.

It was clear Evie didn't like it, but she let Harn guide her out of the room. Before she left, she made eye contact with Felix, clenched her fist, and gave a nervous smile; it was the local equivalent of the thumbs up. Felix smiled back, genuinely warmed by the concern. Before Cal exited, however, Rory got her attention.

"Make sure ye get everyone away from this room," he warned. "It's going to get very loud, very soon."

Felix was instructed to strip down and sit in the center of the room. He did so, not even feeling self-conscious about being naked in front of a stranger. He was too nervous. Felix's stomach was roiling and his tongue was dry, moving around his teeth like a mummified husk. He folded himself up and sat on the cold stone floor.

Rory took some time, setting the lumpy monster cores in a spiral centered on Felix. Then, with a small piece of chalk, he made a series of markings between and around the cores. Felix watched, his interest tempered by the ceaseless flutter in his chest, resonating with Pit's own worries just outside the chamber.

"Right. Ye've pushed your Skills up to Apprentice Tier, and ye broken Skill was already there. The next step is to break open the affected Skill and use these monster cores," Rory gestured to the five strings of cores that spiraled out from Felix's body. There were exactly three dozen, each with sigils chalked out next to and around them. Lines connected each row of cores, forming a funnel leading directly to him.

"Due to all the trade restrictions, I don't have an alchemical daught for the sundering, but I'm told ye have exceptional Willpower. It'll be up to ye to pull open your Acrobatics Skill without breaking it completely. Ye think ye can do it?"

Felix nodded.

"Do ye need me to go over it again?" Rory had given him a rundown of the combining process before during one of his recovery breaks, and the Dwarf's words were crisp in his mind. Felix shook his head and tried to breathe slowly. "Alright. Pray to whatever gods ye believe in, lad.

"We start now."

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The room was inundated with light. Vibrant, electric luminescence shimmered in steaming flows from the sigils on the floor. The Mana vapor shot upward like inverted waterfalls, crashing into the ceiling where it collected and swirled. Felix tore his eyes from it and stared around in naked fascination. The chalk markings were almost blinding to normal vision, but to his Manasight, it was a riot of intense colors.

The smell of dark green river bottoms and fecund, misty forests filled his ears, while roars and caterwauls assaulted his nose and tongue. The rows of monster cores had lit up along with the sigils, blaring their potent cries into the warded room. The dense, gem-like objects released a sudden, brilliant surge of sensation, images and scents flashing past his Perception too fast to catch.

The outermost row went dark.

"You must be quick, lad!" Rory grunted, a light sheen of sweat on his brow even after only seconds of effort. He held his hands outward, his wrists haloed by complex sigils written in the air itself. "The ritual will hold on the strength of the monster cores. But ye'll not have any for yerself if ye don't hurry!"

Felix's heart rate spiked, but he only nodded. A final look at the tempest of Mana around him, and he closed his eyes and plunged into his core. Reality was supplanted by his own internal landscape, the brilliant blue-white fire of his core illuminating his tiny corner of this darkened world. The world felt right. As he hurtled downward, Felix saw an infinite darkness expanding in all directions, one that reminded him viscerally of the Void, save for a certain puissance that thrummed against his inner ear.

What's the difference between this and my Bastion? Or is it the same?

A series of powerful vibrations sent ripples through the thickened air, and Felix saw that they were coming from his Bastion of Will. Its pattern was one of the most complex, either because it was higher-leveled or maybe higher rarity. The fact that it reacted to his thought was incredibly intriguing, but he didn't have the time.

Later, he promised himself as a swell of pain shot through his core. So long as I make it through this.

Felix turned back to the fire that raged inside of him, while azure lightning flashed in time with his own frantic heartbeat. All around, the thick, potent darkness was filled with patterns painted in light, some even more complicated than his Bastion of Will. They had become increasingly familiar to Felix over the past few days, most especially his five newly Tiered physical Skills. They glimmered like stars; not as cold, distant lights, but raging infernos filled with a power that sent electric thrills up Felix's spine. Their vibrations shook the air, each a different pitch as they passed before his eyes, revolving around the ever-burning fire.

He oriented on Acrobatics. There was no inferno there, no nuclear engine bursting with barely-bridled might. Instead, fitful sparks of light coursed its broken pattern, a bare suggestion of what it once was. It keened like a child sawing on an out of tune cello, atonal and without purpose. Its burr rattled against his inner ear, and Felix gritted his teeth against the sensation. Cold dread gripped him while spikes of pain lanced his body.

From the depths of his memory, nearly unbidden, Rory's remembered voice surfaced. Step one is to wrench open the broken Skill, almost but not completely sundering it. Ye think ye can do that, lad?

"Only one way to find out," Felix gasped, the pain easing by just the slightest of margins. Like the Dwarf said, Felix had no alchemical draughts to do this for him, so he had to rely on his Willpower alone. Luckily, he had that in spades.

As he'd attempted before, Felix closed with his broken Skill. Even doing that sent fissures of pain down his arms and back. Tiny lightning bolts shot from his heels up the back of his legs, and his bones creaked with the strain, his teeth rattling with a vibration so fine yet so… wild.

Many times during training, he had attempted to embrace his broken Skills, but had been rebuffed every single time. Now, as he drew closer and closer to its cleaved pattern, he felt the jagged edges of dissonance claw at his mind and body, somehow drawing blood for all that he wasn't even really there. Distantly, Felix could feel a warm liquid run down his chest and ribs. His actual chest and ribs.

Pain Resistance is level 46!

Firming his Willpower, Felix closed again, slowly, cautiously. He listened for the song of its pattern, the rapid rat-ta-tat-tat beat that once dominated the Skill. He moved closer with the staccato vibrations and braced himself for the shearing leaps of atonal progression where the pattern was twisted and snapped. But, like a corrupted, looping audio file, it resumed back at the start each time.

Suddenly within arms-reach, the Skill was brilliant. Felix had never appreciated its beauty before it had been sundered, but now that he was so close it was obvious how remarkable the Skill had been, how it had so much room to grow. Growth that would never happen now, not in the same way.

With tentative hands, Felix gripped the edges of his Skill and felt the life and light pulse against him. It felt like holding a burning hot light bulb, a revving engine, and nothing at all. Another surge of discord was coming up, and Felix had to act.

It's now or never.

Gripping tight, he pulled, straining not with his muscles or brawn, but with his mind. With his Willpower. The worst pain he had ever experienced exploded through him, instantly seizing his body and dimming his sight. Black crowded his vision, one that was different from the darkness around him; this promised not potential, but oblivion itself. It tore through him like a red-hot spear shoved through his bowels, ripping at his mind, ice against his extremities, demolishing his nerves before eroding them completely.

Felix gritted his teeth and felt something crack in his jaw.

This. Is not. Enough!

Pain Resistance is level 47!

Acrobatics stretched in his mental grip, the pattern blazing hot as its potential flared for perhaps its last time. Felix pulled with his Willpower and agonizingly, murderously slowly the Skill snapped, strand by strand. Felix's scream shook his entire inner world, and every corner of his core screamed with him.

He'd done it.

Now for the rest.

He strained to hold Acrobatics together. The broken Skill wished for nothing more than to burst apart at the seams and snap the final flickering lines of its original pattern. Rory's voice once more intoned in his mind, and Felix wasn't sure if he were hearing it from the source or just remembering it.

This is where Intent comes into play, Felix. Ye must use your Willpower to hold the broken Skill together after almost shattering it, but your Intent must draw the other Skills in by visualizing what you need. Net them, lad. Forge them into your new Skill.

His Skills normally revolved around his fiery core like planets, but arresting the movements of Acrobatics had thrown that revolution into disarray. Skills trembled and moved in unclear ways now, no longer orbiting his center but performing wider and wider elliptical paths.

Felix reached out with his Intent, trembling like a newborn foal as he flexed muscles he hadn't known existed. Running was the first, and it stuttered to a slow stop as Felix turned his Intent upon it. Slowly, far slower than he wanted, it began to reverse its course back toward him… and Acrobatics.

Carefully, Felix guided the blazing Skill into the near-dead carcass of the other, pressing their patterns together and clamping tight with his Willpower. He felt his mind grip onto something and figured it was working, at least a little. With a pained gasp, Felix pressed on, gathering toward him first Swimming, then Free Climbing. Each one was harder than the last, a trial of an untested strength he'd never before utilized. His Intent felt bruised and sore, but Felix kept advancing. Eventually, he pulled in Relentless Charge and finally, Physical Conditioning, though he could feel that the last had burst several blood vessels in his true eyes.

Now piled atop one another, Felix held onto them desperately with his Willpower; hoping against hope that he might—

SYNERGY DETECTED!

Yes!

The Skills Running, Swimming, Free Climbing, Relentless Charge, and Physical Conditioning Have Synergy With Acrobatics!

Do You Wish To Evolve Them?

Warning! Evolution May Result In Death And Cannot Be Stopped Once Begun.

All Choices Have Consequences.

Continue? Y/N

Felix’s mind trembled as he hesitated over both the unfamiliar and familiar words.

Evolution...no one had referred to it as that, just combination. But that was a momentary blip in his thoughts. His true focus was on the second to last line.

All Choices Have Consequences. He had seen those words again and again from the System, but only during....Why did he see them again? Obviously there were going to be consequences, but was this another warning from the System? Why? The Skills in his grasp shook with wild vibrations, each of them pulling in a separate direction. If he slackened for even a moment, they would explode outward, and Felix knew somehow that none of them would be the same. That if he failed here, he'd break them all. Worst of all, his Willpower, mighty as it was, wasn't going to last much longer.

Continue. Yes.

Evolution In Process...

* * *

Rory was sweating like a pig.

He took an unsteady breath, fighting against the ritual's need for power by supplying his own Mana. It wasn't massive, but it would give the boy another minute, at least. He clearly needed it.

Felix was trembling in the center of the room, his naked flesh prickled with goosebumps and covered in terrible, bloody scratches. Where those came from, he could only guess, but Rory assumed the ritual was not going as planned. The boy shook like a leaf in the wind, as if a simple breath would knock him over. He was on the edge.

C'mon, lad. Ye can do it.

Rory had seen true steel in the strange child, something that reminded him of Magda. He had a drive and a powerful need for strength; whatever it was, the Dwarf just hoped it would be enough. Then a burst of light crackled across the chamber, the entire room abruptly lit up by a cold, azure lightning that spread outward and above the boy before dissipating. It was almost as if—

Don't be daft. Rory shook himself and poured more of his own Mana into the ritual. The boy is almost there. C'mon!

* * *

When Felix had closed his eyes, thirty-six monster cores were set up in the strange array, part of Rory's arcane ritual. Three of them went dark before he'd even started, but the rest had shone on. Now, Felix could sense that only twenty remained, the others consumed by the ritual itself. He hoped it would be enough.

Power buzzed all around him, as if a thousand angry hornets waited just beyond sight. It lingered among the cores, not yet drawn into the ritual, waiting only for him to draw it into himself.

Oddest of all, Felix could sense the ritual's strange lattice of Mana all around him, a delicate construction that he didn't understand in any significant way. But he knew, somehow, that it would be easy to pull in the power of the monster cores, that it would take only a thought to begin a near instant process.

But he had a better idea.

Ravenous Tithe!

His core shook with an earsplitting groan as what looked like thousands upon thousands of gallons of monstrous Essences streamed through his channels and into the infinite sky above his burning flame. It seemed less infinite now that it was filled with a melange of crackling energies, many of which were straining and struggling against one another. Like angry beasts in a cage.

The sky pressed low upon him, but the fire of his core didn't care. It flared, a corona of brilliant lightning spider-webbing up and into the Essence clouds, like a storm in reverse. Immediately, wisps of power were sucked into his core, sending gouts of incandescence out toward Felix and his gathered Skills. The energy flowed past him, and he was untouched, but the same was not to be said for his sundered Skill.

The wild vibrations he fought against suddenly quieted, and somehow Felix could feel the nourishment the monster Essence brought to his Skills. Bolt after bolt erupted from his fiery core as more wisps were transformed into an incomprehensible, healing light. Felix felt an uncontrollable laugh bubble upward, his Willpower slackening in just the slightest while his Intent held still to his desires. Rory had been quite specific about the importance of Harmonic Intent. As far as Felix understood things, it was all that was shepherding his disparate Skills into a unified whole. Each burst of rarefied light sent waves of energy pulsing through the amalgamation of Skills, forging new patterns of light that spread over the entire mass like wildfire.

That laughter died away only a moment later, as the monster Essence was suddenly yanked away from his fiery core. Felix could barely see past his blue-white flames, but he knew with a profound certainty that things were not as they should be. Instead of the Essence being subsumed and transformed by his fire, it was being directly siphoned by another Skill.

Bastion of Will?

The complicated pattern of vibrating light was flaring with a firestorm of power, a steady stream of Essence pouring into it like water down a drain. Worse still, Felix could feel none of its supposed strength. Whatever was happening, the potency of the monster Essence wasn't being absorbed by him.

But that makes no sense, he murmured in dismay. What else except—

A detonation rocked his core, so extreme that his Skills flared in sympathy, a sudden, symphonic melody. Instantly, he knew it came from his Bastion. Without moving an inch, Felix's mind fell deeper within himself, dropping through darkness and into a blue, summer sky. Below him spread that squat, square fortress built of unnaturally dense stone the color of smoky obsidian. A massive crack ran up and across the central tower, splitting the construction nearly in half.

Horror clenched his heart.

Oozing from the breach was a monstrous being, one he had thought long-weakened. Its twisted shoulders squeezed from the deep fissure in the tower, and its massive, ungainly head roared in blistering rage and a familiar, awful hunger.

Free! Free!

Even as Felix catapulted downward, monstrous Essence swirled in the air around his Bastion. Great, opaque clouds of flashing violence twisted and spun, pulled toward the Maw's open gullet. Its almost anemic-seeming body, horror that it was, began to fill out and gain muscle mass as he watched. The Primordial was nowhere near its original power, but it was more than enough to pull itself free from the final wreckage of the tower.

Sweet sustenance, Felix Nevarre! The Maw clawed its way forward, stretching on the cracked flagstones of his inner bailey. It cackled madly, turning its insane eyes up toward his falling form. Now let us test this devilish prison of yours, hmm?

The Primordial blasted forward, leaving yard long furrows into the stone itself. With a resounding crash, the Maw collided shoulder-first with the outer wall. The entirety of his Skill shook with the impact, and Felix reeled as if hit by a humongous pillow of air.

He was thrown bodily from the Skill, landing with a teeth-jarring crash upon the surface of his core.

"What the hell? WHAT THE HELL!" Felix blazed with a fury that felt like liquid magma in his gut and veins. The evolving Skill behind him trembled beneath his gathered Will, still held together by little more than hopes and wishes. The rage almost masked the acute distress that suddenly speared through his head and heart. His Willpower quaked.

Though he couldn't spare the attention or time to open his true eyes, Felix knew the sigil array had only moments left of its life. The framework of Mana that had allowed him to absorb so many cores at once was failing, as it no longer had enough magic to power itself. After all, it had accomplished its purpose: he had absorbed twenty monster cores, supposedly more than enough to handle his Skill evolution. Rory was likely pleased, happy to have had the sundering ritual work. How would he have guessed that a Primordial asshole was stealing all of that potency for itself?

Felix's Willpower strained like never before as he held it all together, despite the fact that the evolving Skill was now pulling at him, attempting to draw power where none was available. Except… Felix gasped as he felt something tear loose from his chest, projected mental construct that he was. A bright red light, pulsing with vitality, was ripped from him and sucked directly into the evolving Skill.

Ugh! What—?

Another light was wrenched from him, this one a flickering yellow and far larger than the red. In quick succession, a blue light followed after, easily double in size again. Felix knew, near instantly, what it meant. He could feel his Mana total dropping, dozens of points at a time, his Health and Stamina matching it at only a slightly slower pace. Absent of any other power source, the System was stealing his resources to power the new Skill.

Another burst of shimmering lights were snatched from his chest, their exit a lacerating counterpoint to the awful strain as the Skill quaked ever greater. The vibrations were returning now, nearly shaking themselves apart, and only held with the barest shreds of his brutalized Willpower.

That molten wrath returned, searing his guts as Felix watched his Health, Stamina, and Mana drop with every breath. His throat burned at the loss, at the pain, at the cruel, bullshit agony of everything. As if in sympathy, his visualized core around him trembled as well, the dense darkness shaking like a living thing, like...

Like it was vibrating.

Felix seized upon that thought, flaring his anger ever higher as his blue-white core fire responded. It burned higher and higher, while that strange lightning crackled outward. His Skills resonated, each of his two dozen abilities letting out a series of pure, penetrating tones.

His Skills blazed with light, their patterns flashing and pulsing like the veins of beings of light and sound. But loudest of all was the evolving conglomeration of Skills before him, their tones nearly seizing his muscles with their proximity. But, more than that, Felix realized a fundamental truth.

Manasight is level 42!

Fire Within is level 39!

The Skills he was so desperate to combine matched with one another, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle too big to comprehend. Their waves paired, crest to trough, a collection of notes that created a strident harmony. That harmony resounded through his core, creating ripples that flushed his inner space with sensation and emotion both, echoing off something beyond himself. A vibrating source from without.

With an almighty roar, Felix pulled on that vibration all around him, and like he was drawing a massive bow across strings, a wild, aching melody sounded. Flashes of electric blue and a bright, luminous gold sparked through his entire core, lighting the darkness. He pulled again, using what little remained of his Intent to squeeze the sounds from his gathered Skills.

A hesitant, haunting series of notes burst through the darkness, churning it from within. Then it escaped him, the harmonics sounding on their own as they gathered speed. A cascade of blue and gold sparks burst across his core. Something powerful, something vital was being siphoned off into his evolving Skill, and it scintillated with a growing light that soon turned blinding.

The vibrations, the music, swelled into a triumphant crescendo.

Evolution Complete!

You Have Formed A New Skill!

Skill Level Has Been Reset!

Unfettered Volition (Epic), Level 1

With thought, action is born. Consumes Mana and Stamina when activated. Speed is increased by a small amount per level. Consumption of mental strength is reduced a small amount per level.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Skills Lost:

Acrobatics

Relentless Charge

Running

Swimming

Free Climbing

Physical Conditioning

Apprentice Tier Benefits Forfeited!

Shit, Felix cursed as his Mind was inundated by the System messages, and a profound weakness swept through him. All choices have consequences, huh?

He should have figured this would happen. When Acrobatics had broken, he had lost the Apprentice Tier bonuses, so if entire Skills were to be subsumed, the bonuses were lost, likely sacrificed to power the forging of his new Skill. Felix did a quick mental calculation: he'd lost 78 entire stat points from the merger.

God damn fine print! Is that why people don't combine more than two Skills into a broken one?

A rattling, discordant cry shook his core again, and for the first time, a piercing pain lanced through his Bastion of Will. The Maw was almost free. It hadn't been able to affect Felix before, but it had been emaciated and weak then, neatly defeated by its own hubris and Felix's desperate sacrifice. Now, when he'd been at his weakest and most distracted, it had reclaimed some potency, namely the nearly twenty monster cores worth of Essence provided by Rory.

Essence that should have gone to him, forcing him instead to feed everything he had into his new Epic Skill. A brief glance confirmed that he'd lost 110 points of his maximum Mana, 80 points of his maximum Stamina, and 50 points of his maximum Health.

Health: 793/955

Stamina: 432/809

Mana: 1141/1392

I really hope you're worth it, Felix frowned at the pattern that emerged from the dense darkness all around him. It breached the shadows like a great sea beast, its lines etched in light and humming in a complex weave of sounds. It wasn't the most intricate Skill he'd inspected, not even the most convoluted one he owned.

That distinction belonged to his only Legendary Skill, Etheric Concordance. However, what struck Felix was despite its novel appearance, he could still identify pieces of it, tracks of the pattern that once belonged to Running or Swimming or the others. It burst into fervent light as it settled among his other Skills, taking its place in the revolving solar system of his core.

Felix beckoned, and the brilliantly surging symbol for Bastion of Will floated toward him. It burned brighter than ever before, but there was a frenetic violence to that light, a crimson hue that had begun to stain its labyrinthine pattern. Two more times, pain struck across his back like a barbed scourge, sending Felix's mental form stumbling to a knee. But then the Skill was before him, floating inches before his trembling grip. He knew he had to get back in there, fight the Maw off, and imprison it back in his mental dungeon. But how? It was too strong for his Bastion, that was clear.

His Skills revolved around them, Felix and his Bastion both. Now that he was listening, each was letting out a series of near-constant chimes. It felt similar to running his hands up and down a keyboard, except with more...purpose behind it. A story almost, writ large in the tonality of his strange cosmic core space.

Then, as his new Skill came back around, Felix felt a stirring in the Bastion before him. It was nothing he could see, as the Skill was still shuddering and stained by whatever the Maw was attempting, and nothing that he could hear. At least, not at first. Felix hooked his Intent around his new Skill and pulled it closer, shifting it free of its circuit. The pattern fairly leaped at him, responding so well that he nearly overshot its placement.

As the two Skills came closer, a humming began to form between them. There was a… a bridge or something connecting the two Skills. Quickly parsing the Skill descriptions, Felix realized both seemed to have his Willpower as their predicating force. A strange sort of harmony was present there, arcing above and below his senses in a way Felix couldn't quite grasp. A strain of syncopation barely registered to his ear, a term he hadn't heard since high school music class, but it was there. Felix let the music guide him, the progression of pitches and chords pulling him into a turbulent yet steady connection joining the two Skills. It was as if he could—

SCREAAAW!

A distorted roar buzzed through him, shaking his bones so hard his ligaments screamed in protest. Felix was thrown from wherever he had just found himself, suddenly staring at the twisting sigil of his Bastion of Will. The Maw was growing stronger still; his fortress wouldn't hold.

Come and face me, Felix!

With a gulp and a clench of his jaw, Felix did the only thing he could: he leaped back into the Skill.

* * *

A wall of crimson burst before him, and its touch felt like shards of jagged glass on his skin. But then Felix emerged into a blue sky, falling faster and faster as the square fortress of dark stone appeared far below him. The Maw was a large speck within the inner bailey, a writhing mass of rangy muscle and yellow bone.

It hasn't broken through yet, Felix confirmed with relief. He scanned the fortifications of his Skill and noticed the outer walls still held, but they were cracking in so many places. It was only a matter of time, unless he did something. But what?!

The skies above his Bastion were typically cloudless, but Felix spotted dozens crowding the Skill. They were dark and ominous, no doubt generated in response to the Maw's attack. He had to move faster. Felix streamlined his body and attempted to cut down his wind resistance. As he fell with greater alacrity, Felix plunged heedless into the nearest cloud.

Then things got weird. His senses were enveloped by a dark mist, so much so that he could no longer perceive the Bastion around him. All too suddenly, the mist cleared, and Felix landed face-first on...low pile, beige carpeting.

What the hell?

He stood up quickly and realized he was standing in his old office. Cubicles filled the space, hundreds of feet wide, while large windows let in mid-afternoon sunlight for those chosen few near the edges. Felix stood in the center of it all, prefabricated walls segmenting the pathways and filled with the industrious clatter of a thousand fingers typing. For a brief, dizzying moment, Felix couldn't remember why he was here or what was happening; then something inside of him screamed back at the confusion, pushing it back from his mind.

Not again!

The world around him snapped into focus. Felix recognized his old office job, even his old cubicle. He also recognized that something had been in his head, trying to fool him. The taste of the false memory was familiar, something that had been done to him before. In it, he was an engineer at the firm he'd worked for, designing attractions for theme parks. But Felix had never been an engineer. He was a desk grunt, doing data entry and purchasing for the sales team. A drone punching in and out in the sterile fluorescent light.

A memory stirred in his mind, the edges feeling rough and clawed at; of staring at the engineers and designers at the company and wishing he'd made half of what they did. It had once been a powerful yearning that dominated Felix's rather bleak life back home, but it had become a gray, faded thing in the time since. Yet still, that same something gripped him, somehow squeezing his memories like a sponge, but it was using that old desire to do it. A desire that meant nothing to him now.

He focused his Mind upon it, and the compulsion was excised. There were nebulous workings in the air, transparent and red as blood. They hovered about his head like flies looking for a perch, too stupid to give up.

"Mondays, right bud?"

Felix blinked and looked to his left. His coworker and cubicle mate was a heavy-set man with a wild beard and completely shaved head. He smirked at Felix like they were sharing a joke. Distantly, he dredged up the man's name.

"James, what," Felix licked his lips. "What's going on?"

"Just the ol' grind, m'dude. Whoa, hey man. You been working out?" James' sleepy eyes blinked in confusion. "Lookin' like uh, swole or whatever. Pilates?"

There was a shout from the other end of the floor, and Felix saw a spume of papers being tossed into the air. James leaned back in a chair that was clearly not meant for his girth and grimaced at Felix. "Shiiit, boss is pissed."

Stomping echoed through the room, the sharp clack of heavy heels apparent despite the thin carpeting. The crimson constructs roiled around him, still too afraid to latch onto him again, but unable to stop hovering.

What are these? Felix gazed at the complicated creations, but they blurred and twitched whenever he tried to pin them down. He could only barely study them out of the corner of his eye. They look like… like sigils?

The stomping grew in intensity, and James' eyes had gone round in panic. "C'mon man! Do work or somethin'! She's gonna kill us if we're not making calls!"

James pulled his phone out from the cradle and started feverishly dialing. Panic spiked through him as well, but not because he was afraid of getting in trouble. It was a memory, after all, and not a very accurate one, either. The colors weren't quite right, and James had never fully shaved his head. His wife would have hated it too much.

No, the panic he felt was because those clomping heels didn't sound like the tread of an angry boss, but like the enraged stomp of a monster. A hungry one.

"FELIX!" his boss roared, and dust shook loose from the ceiling. "FELIX!"

Desperate, he reached out toward the crimson construct that darted about his head. It was delicate, made out of a latticework of Mana so intricate it actively made no sense to him. Whatever secrets it held were far too complex for Felix's own understanding. But, the one thing he could determine was that it led off into the distance. Far into the distance.

Sigils of the Primordial Dawn is level 22!

Sigils of the Primordial Dawn is level 23!

Suddenly Felix understood the tiniest portion of the leech-like Mana working. All too close, cubicles began to fall and scatter as something started to charge through them. A terrible roar ripped through the office, and James dialed his phone furiously.

With a frantic exhaled breath, Felix sent his own crackling Mana vapor into the construct. The latticework flared into brilliant, bloody life, and he was torn away, the world itself shredding into a million motes of crimson light.

* * *

The construct dropped him in a forest before disappearing. Felix crouched, gathering his bearings, but it was an easy task. He knew exactly where he was, or rather, what memory he currently occupied.

He stood within a temperate forest, the scent of a vinegar sea still tainting the breeze. It was the western edge of the Foglands, almost where he'd first arrived on the Continent. And surrounding him in all their technicolor glory were seven Sharpwing Skinks. Their wings buzzed as they hovered, their fat tails twitching below themselves as they eyed him with hunger. Felix laughed.

"Skinks? C'mon!" He hadn't feared the nasty reptiles for a while now, not since he'd fallen into the Archon's Domain. With a gesture and minor expenditure of Mana, all seven Skinks that crowded near him were blown apart, azure lightning scorching their flying pieces. "At least give me a challenge."

As if in reply, a buzzing sound filled his ears, soft at first but growing increasingly louder. More were coming. A lot more.

The buzzing was more than their wings, though. There was a note of dissonance in his ears, a clash of chords deep in his bones that sent spasms of pain across his flesh. Lines of fire etched up his forearms as his muscles split and reshaped themselves, skin pierced by jagged barbs that pushed their way out. Felix folded in agony, his hands lengthening into cruel claws. His teeth began to itch, and one of them already fell out. Felix spat it into the brush.

What Dwells Beneath is level 5!

"Uugh," he growled, his voice rougher than usual. Yet another change. He felt more shifts inside of himself as that discordant pressure built, flesh reshaping to someone else's plan. Felix clenched his jaw and looked for that construct again. It was his way out.

He flared his Manasight, and his vision went almost entirely gray. Whatever these worlds were, they were not constructed of Mana, which, while confusing, was a stroke of luck. In contrast, the ruby-red Mana construct stood out like a torch in the night. His Perception pinged on it, writhing around some two hundred yards away. Felix dashed forward, ripping through brush and low foliage as if it wasn't there.

As he drew near, he realized a new challenge. The crimson construct was twisting and writhing in a large forest clearing, but when he relaxed his Manasight, Felix saw that the latticework was embedded completely within the largest copse grub he had ever seen. It undulated before him, its fleshy, banded body pushing over trees and shattering rocky outcroppings. It was bigger than a house, and its business end was just a pink circle filled with teeth.

Unfettered Volition!

Felix couldn't spare the time to think about this; he attacked. Flaring his new Skill instinctively, he rocketed forward, easily evading the jet of acid the grub began to release. The stream followed him, chasing after his form like a fire hose five times the normal size, but Felix kept ahead of it. He felt suddenly faster than he'd ever been before, easily double the effect he got when using Relentless Charge and it was only level one. More than that, though, Felix felt more agile than ever before, his progression not a straight line but a curving, serpentine movement that was both unpredictable and swift. In an eyeblink, Felix was before the immense copse grub, but he didn't stop. His Skill had touched his Mind, leaving behind the smallest of instincts behind. It was like he both knew and had no clue what he was doing in that moment. He leaped onto the slick flesh of the grub.

And he ran up it.

Insanely, Felix's speed or some aspect of his Skill kept him on the surface of the grub, his Far-Afield Boots gripping surely to its gooey skin. Snarling with his new voice, Felix jammed his right hand down into the beast while he ran. His curved talons cut through the layers of blubber and split it like an overripe melon. The belly of the beast burst, its skin too weak to hold its putrescent internals, but he kept going. Felix ran onward, upward, all but flying past the banded segments of the mutated copse grub until he flung himself straight up in the air above it.

Unfettered Volition is level 2!

Unfettered Volition is level 3!

He hung for a moment, suspended by inertia and the dwindling effects of his Unfettered Volition. In that split second, Felix's Manasight caught the edge of the writhing, crimson construct through the green and pink maw of the grub. Spinning his body almost effortlessly, Felix dove down, flashing past its jagged fangs and into the moist, stinking embrace of its guts. Momentum was on his side however, as he rocketed down into its bowels, just close enough for his expelled Mana vapor to engage with the construct.

The world exploded, again.

* * *

Not losing you this time! I'm not getting stuck again!

Once more, the latticework construct twisted and shifted through worlds of shattered light. Felix clung on with all he had, pushing more and more Mana vapor out into the convoluted sigils to somehow cement his grip. But then a wave of pale blue light suffused his senses, and the construct itself changed, seemingly on the fly. Felix could no longer hold on. As if it became a ghost, the construction passed through him and his Mana, disappearing entirely.

Felix was thrust into another world, stumbling along a wet, darkened street before a pale ranch-style home. This one was more than familiar.

It was his parent's home.

Blink.

He was inside suddenly, sitting at a dining room table. Felix's head spun, his senses coming to terms with the abrupt relocation. Light came from his left through a familiar open doorway. Someone was bustling in the kitchen there, moving dishes around, and the unmistakable scent of food being prepared filled the warm air.

"Felix Nevarre."

The voice belonged to a woman. She was standing at the other end of the table, and Felix hadn't sensed her at all. She was turned toward the large window behind her. Felix could only make out her silhouette and an oddly-shaped blouse she was wearing. It sounded like his mother, but Felix somehow knew it wasn't. That pissed him off.

"Who are you?"

The woman didn't turn, only raised a teacup to her unseen lips. Felix couldn't quite suppress the image of skeletal fingers, of strings above her limbs. A puppet.

But for whom?

"Unfettered Volition. A… fascinating Skill," her voice said between quiet sips. "That it was entirely forged by your Intent and Willpower is very impressive, Felix Nevarre."

Felix's vision split. There was no better way of describing it. The woman was in front of him still, facing away and sipping on tea. Yet she was also standing atop a wild mountain the size of a planet, chained to its face as a rain of lightning and blood scoured her. That face was wild and terrifying, her eyes filled with a blood-stained final gasp.

The woman sipped her tea again.

Felix backpedaled, knocking over his chair as he cast about for some way out. Where was the construct?

"You'll not find it, Felix. This is not one of the Primordial's tricks." She took another small sip of her cup. "I merely wished a look at the mortal Ascendant who rides so close to our realm."

Questions swirled in his mind, but Felix repeated himself. "Who are you?"

"There is no time, Unbound, and there are rules even I must obey. I am here as fog, slipped between breaths. A stolen moment." She considered him, back still turned, her shining eyes reflecting off the blackened glass of the window. The sounds of the kitchen had gone ominously silent. Felix knew this wasn't real, he wasn't at his parents home, yet still the silence clutched a dread claw in his guts.

"Think clearly on your Skill. On its name. You fight a dangerous battle, Ascendant, on a Path more than broken. It was shattered." A delicate hand (twitching, screaming) set down the teacup, but never once turned back toward Felix. Its face was fixed outward, regarding things Felix dared not contemplate. "I cannot see it all. But you must choose your own way, Felix Nevarre. Never give up that Choice. You will lose everything if you do."

A screaming anguish, a blood-curdling cry that sent uncontrollable spasms up into his arms. Felix's vision split again, and something impossibly, unfathomably large writhed in utter agony. Its screams were storms of arctic blue, and its shudders were tidal waves of blood and force. Its presence was a mountainous weight upon his Mind and Spirit, and everything that composed Felix strained with the effort of merely existing. It very nearly scoured him away, but the vision disappeared abruptly.

Deep Mind is level 39!

Deep Mind is level 40!

He doubled up, gasping, and nearly missed the figure drop its teacup. It had shattered on the tiled floor.

"I've said too much," it hissed. "And never enough.

"You must never stop, Ascendant. To stop is death." The figure twitched, its womanly form turning strange. It had too many joints, its hair didn't lie still, and the shadows of its flesh boiled. "I haven't time enough. They're coming. Run, boy."

Felix didn't have to be asked twice.

Unfettered Volition!

He held his arms up, shielding his face and neck as he burst through the large picture window in the front of his old home. Glass, wood, and plaster showered the street along with him, but Felix landed easily as his enhanced stats and Skill-enabled Body was neither harmed nor even disoriented by the demolishing movement. Without pausing, Felix took off down the wet street. He didn't truly know what that creature was, but he felt it just as she did. Something was coming for him, rushing from all sides. He felt it at the edges of his Perception, but also as a flare of twisted, crimson energies to his Manasight.

The Maw… so, who was that? He knew the creature he'd just spoken to was something else, but who else would reach into the Maw's twisted lies to speak to him, of all people? And why?

And what is that drumming?

Felix ran up the side of a two-story building and alighted on the roof, barely even crunching the shingles beneath his enhanced density. Those bloody forms were still closing in on him, but he tilted his head and focused. He listened. Echoes of a beat sounded in the distance, wild-seeming, almost running counter to the faint hum of everything else. It was a syncopation buried in the layers of the false world he'd been transported to; the hum of his Bastion was there, but underlying it were offbeat progressions that built a strange complexity into the tone. Now that he heard it, Felix felt it everywhere around him, a resounding chorus that was shouting at him to do something.

Felix reached out and embraced it, flaring Unfettered Volition and hearing that off-beat grow stronger and more pronounced. The building beneath him began to shake and tremble, vibrating hard enough to send shingles skittering off the roof. Twisted forms covered in bone spurs pelted down the streets around him, hundreds of them from all directions, headed unerringly toward Felix. He pressed harder, burning his Skills like miniature suns, and the harmonics shook the sky.

Unfettered Volition is level 4!

...

Unfettered Volition is level 10!

Bastion of Will is level 46!

RES +2!

INT +4!

The world dissolved into jagged, blue light.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

"Hahh hahh, ye've gotta… stop, lad," Rory panted, his large shoulders barely holding his arms up. His hands flexed and twitched, while spiraling cords of sigils connected him to the wild working before him. "Ye can't..."

But the Dwarf knew the boy couldn't hear him.

The small room was awash in blue, but the boy was a study in red. To Rory's Adept Tier senses, he knew Felix was still alive and fighting. How was beyond him: his aura had become flush with the vilest sort of corruption only moments ago. He had screamed in such agony that, were they not in a warded room, would have alerted everyone for blocks. Blood oozed from lacerations all around Felix's chest and shoulders, even thighs and feet, coating him in streaks of crimson. The red stood out vividly against the blue light of the ritual.

"Stop," Rory grunted, activating his Teacher's Demeanor and Ritualist Skills. The draw on his resources slowed a bit, but the ritual itself was too far gone. The monster Essence had poured into it, driving its sigils into the final stages. But the ritual was going awry, somehow, yet there was no space or interval in the dense sigaldry that Rory could leverage for extraction. "Stop, damn ye!"

The boy was tied up in it all. Whatever the Dwarf attempted was blunted and redirected, pulled into the center of the ritual to splash against a shell of rainbow energy. The monster Essence had begun to be refined, and nothing could enter the central area, even as it wobbled dangerously. Flashes sparked off its surface as bits of stone and even dirt from beneath the abused floor hovered around the kid. He was like a whirlpool, everything spinning about his seated form, the eye of a storm of Mana and Essence like Rory had never seen before.

It was impossible. What Felix was doing was utterly impossible. The very thought of it was enough to make the incredulous Dwarf cheer, were he not riding the razor's edge of exhaustion. He'd always loved an underdog.

C'mon lad! Ye can do it!

Rory deactivated his Skills and, with a grunt, allowed more of his Mana to siphon into the destabilizing ritual. He leveraged his Intent and Willpower, forcing it to level off for the moment. If the kid could put up with this torture, then so could he, or else what kind of teacher was he?

I'm with ye, lad! Fight!

* * *

The sky burst into ten thousand pale blue shards, and Felix barreled through it all. His vision clearing almost instantly, the Nym took in his surroundings with a quick sweep. His Perception was almost unnecessary here in his Bastion of Will. He could see the rolling green landscape, the darkened forest, and the distant acid green sea. Most importantly, Felix could see the squared formation of his fortress and all the damage that had been caused so far. He fell through the air far faster than he'd have liked, yet within moments, he had alighted harmlessly atop one of the few unblemished curtain walls.

The Maw was only a hundred yards away from him, digging its hind legs into the loamy earth. It looked only passingly similar to the form it revealed back in the Labyrinth; a towering behemoth with an aura to match. What he saw before him now was also heavily muscled, but in the leanest way possible. Little more than thirty feet at the shoulder, it was more of a starving hunting cat than a demolishing dragon, despite the crest of yellowed bone spikes that extended all the way down its lashing tail. It had six limbs, though their connection to its torso was a collection of exposed ligaments and bone, as if it hadn't enough material to form something sturdier.

All of that was absorbed in the moment Felix landed, then the Maw accelerated forward. A spray of dirt and grass clumps shot backward, and the Maw collided head-first with the wall. It clawed its numerous paws into the cracks it had already made, spreading them just a little wider. The sound of metal crashing swept through Felix as pain lanced through him, and an ephemeral wisp of memory gushed free of the damaged Bastion.

That's how it accessed my memories, Felix frowned as he observed the rest of his damaged Skill. This place is made of them.

Felix's instincts screamed at him, and he threw himself into a roll to his right. With a resounding crash, a yellowed spear of bone smashed into the crenelations behind him, missing Felix by inches.

"So you've come back, fool. Did you not like reliving your favorite memories?" The Maw snarled at him, its tail still lifted above its head like a scorpion's stinger.

"Did you think that would work? Your little forgetfulness construct and a few false dreams?" Felix forced a laugh, trying to mask the unpleasant roiling in his guts.

Deception is level 17!

The Maw growled, its blue-green eyes multiplying along its brow with wet, audible pops.

Gross.

"You think you're so clever, Unbound. So powerful, hm?" The creature began to pace away from the wall again, slowly moving closer to Felix's perch. "How soon you forget me, hmm? How soon you ignore that without me, you would be nothing. Nothing."

Felix didn't answer, only tracked the Primordial as it paced to further his left. He still stood atop the battlements of his fortress, but the Maw began to grow before his eyes until it was nearly fifty feet at its shoulder. Its rangy form looked practically skeletal with all that height, whatever substance that made it up being stretched impossibly thin.

"What do you hope to achieve here, Maw?" Felix asked. "You escape from my Bastion and what? We go back to bickering every other second? You're just a ghost now."

"Ghost? So you say. Let me out then, oh warden. What else could I do to you?" It swung at him, but Unfettered Volition let him leap neatly over its barbed stinger. He landed easily, like breathing.

"Not much, it seems," Felix quipped.

The Maw snarled at him, a buzzing, rattling noise from its thorn-lined glottis. Internally, Felix grimaced, because he knew he was lying just as much as the Primordial. Whatever arcane utility the Maw possessed was more than capable of changing him on a fundamental level. It had altered his Skills, Titles, even affected his physical form. Felix flexed his hands, which had returned to normal, Human-seeming appendages since his exit from the false memories.

"Ah yes, your transformation. How do you like it, boy? Can you taste the power? The thrill of your enemy's heartsblood? Is it not grand?"

Felix didn't answer, only matched its impossibly wide smile with a cold glare.

"Tch. You're a fool to not enjoy the bounty of such power. A Unique Skill! Do you not understand?" The Maw scoffed. "Of course you don't. One in a million might get a Unique Skill, and it always, always has the potential to push them toward greater heights." The Maw's smile stretched beyond its head, stretching down the monster's neck and collar, a terrible rictus of sharp yellowed bone. "You only have to embrace it."

The humming discord rose again, burning through Felix’s chest and intestines. He quashed it as best he could, stamping his Will on the rattling dissonance.

"Never, you piece of shit," he spat.

"Now that is hurtful, Felix." The Maw had the gall to look offended. "True, in the past I have been less than congenial, but I would think our long weeks together have proven me a most amicable ally."

"An ally?" The words surprised him so much he let out a sharp laugh. "Don't lie to me, monster. I don't have time for this, or you."

"I would never lie, not to my Vessel. That is what you are, though not in the way I would have wished. You are my only connection to life, you see, and without your Mind to reside within, I would be gone. No more than a dull narhallow, drifting in the Void for all eternity." The Maw leaned back, sitting on its multitudinous haunches as its body constantly shifted and twitched, muscle flowing over yellowed bone and tooth. Several eyes combined into four much larger orbs, and they regarded Felix almost earnestly. "Who else will help you when the Inquisition comes knocking at your door? When the Guild finally realizes you're here, and that you have answers about the Foglands they desperately want? You know it's true."

The Maw's sudden solemnity took Felix by surprise. It hadn't lied, either, much to his chagrin. Without him, the Primordial would have faded into nothing in the Void, and now it was chained to him by forces he didn't understand. He couldn't deny the power his partial transformations had given him, even as they horrified him.

Unfettered Volition!

Felix sensed movement behind him, and was moving before his conscious brain registered what it was. He flipped to the side, spinning horizontally in midair like an Olympic gymnast as a latticework of blazing red Mana speared through the battlements. He landed easily and regarded the construction, its strange sigaldry twisting before his eyes.

"You absolute asshole," Felix breathed, turning back to the Maw. But it was already leaping toward the wall… not at him, but at the largest fissure in the Bastion.

KRAKOOOOM!

The small world of his Skill shook beneath Felix, releasing a deep, groaning note. A gong hit with the world's largest hammer. Felix saw the Maw pull itself back, and that the crack had become a crevasse.

It was going to break through.

He ran toward it, hands already lighting up with blue electricity, but the crimson construct flared to sudden life. Spears of strange provenance thrust around its twisting frame, suddenly becoming a magical hedgehog. Felix dodged out of the way, but was forced back as it lashed out at him like a blind cobra. Beyond its twining form, the Maw tensed its muscles, its stolen power condensing around itself like a shell of multicolored miasma.

"No!"

Felix threw himself forward, shattering stone beneath his tread as he exploded into motion. The construct lashed in his direction. He still had no idea how it worked, but he didn't have to know how to program a computer to put a fist through one.

Corrosive Strike!

The blow shredded the construct into ribbons of burning light, its non-euclidean geometry igniting like a fuse. A trail of bloody fire whipped back, faster than the eye could track, following itself back to the source and exploding against the chest of the Maw. A series of resounding detonations burnt through monster Essence, erupting in a wild conflagration that launched the Maw backward. It landed eighty feet away, sliding until it nearly hit the broken central tower.

Whoa. Felix hadn't expected that, but he wasn't about to refuse some good luck. He leaped off the wall, his Body and Will carrying him nearly fifty feet. He landed on a rare patch of undisturbed grass, right next to the charred strips that still burned fitfully.

With a roar that made the air tremble, the Maw righted itself. Clearly damaged, the meat of its form was burnt and scoured away by the explosion. But then its body twisted and snapped, joints reversing and flesh crawling over exposed bone to reform into a creature barely ten feet tall but far more heavily muscled. The damaged flesh sloughed away until everything was pink and raw. Its face was no longer feline seeming, but had the appearance of Lhel stitched across the angular skull of a lizard. Thick, pus-like drool poured from its jagged mouth, and four huge eyes of blue-green liquid rolled wildly in their sockets. As Felix stepped closer, they oriented on him with a disturbing intensity.

Madness was in its gaze.

It prowled forward, deceptively slow, and Felix barely had time to dodge as no less than three bone spikes impacted the ground around him. Dirt shot upward, and Felix rolled out of the way, just able to perceive the insanely long length of the Maw's newly generated tails. Stingers, really, made of knotted bone and sinew, tipped with vicious barbs. Three writhed above the Maw's back and were soon joined by one, three, five more.

"Holy shit," Felix cursed.

The Maw charged, screaming incoherently.

Stingers whipped at him from every conceivable angle. Felix burned his Unfettered Volition, and he spun in a deadly dance between their razor ends. However, not even that Epic Skill was enough to defend from every direction. Twice, the Maw's barbs found purchase, tearing into his flesh and leaving behind gaping, hissing wounds in his left side and right thigh. Each strike dropped his Health sharply, knocking him down a full 10%, but more than that, the Maw's strange abilities sent his senses reeling. It screamed through its tooth-lined trachea, blood and phlegm gathering on its impossibly wide lips, and Felix's wounds droned in terrible sympathy.

Buzzing spikes of dissolution shot outward along his body, as if his skin and muscles were simply fizzing away to nothing. Felix screamed, matching the Maw's insanity with pained intensity. The discordant effect of the Maw's power felt like acid, except that he had no resistance to it, no armored skin that would block its effect.

Felix could only fall to his knees, writhing beneath the Maw's wild glee.

Pain Resistance is level 48!

Felix struggled against the Maw's numbing power, but felt he could gain no ground before it eroded beneath him. Each time he attempted to muster the strength or even will to stand, the buzzing intensified and sent waves of weakness through him. What was worse, notifications kept popping up, showing him that his Bloodline was advancing at a rapid pace.

Bloodline Progression at 45%

No...!

Bloodline Progression at 48%

Unfettered Volition!

He surged all he had into his new Skill, pushing himself to simply stand. But his body was all but unresponsive. The Maw's whipcord stinger plunged downward, again and again, piercing him with their terrible barbs and setting loose new waves of dissolution.

"KEKEKEKEEEEEEHAHAAA!" The monster cackled in wild glee. "Don't fall, Unbound! The fun is just beginning! Once I take over your flesh, I'll keep you here, lock you in your favorite Skill! You'll taste this agony for eons to come, until all you know is suffering and mindless, primal terror!"

Influence of the Wisp!

Reign of Vellus!

The Skills did nothing except send sharp, ear-piercing feedback to spear his senses. His nerves howled, though his throat was so raw and torn that no sound escaped Felix's chest.

Bloodline Progression at 50%

What Dwells Beneath!

Felix's eyes shot open wide as the Skill, somehow, activated of its own accord. His pain shifted anew, turning from all-encompassing to a burning fire that swept across his muscles and skin. His hands blackened and lengthened, the skin growing dense and leathery as more muscle impossibly gathered beneath his forearms. Spikes of bone erupted from them and his elbows, and the transformation didn't stop there. It swept upward, crawling across his shoulders and chest and down his torso. Wherever it passed, his flesh darkened and turned to leather. Faster than ever before, Felix's teeth burst from his mouth, razor-sharp fangs thrusting his normal ones out in an eruption of blood and spit.

So great was his horror, in fact, that he didn't notice at first that the dissonance had faded. Felix's ears were filled with the grating cacophony of the Maw's power, but despite or perhaps because of that, he could practically feel the strange counterbalance that swept over him. As he changed in terrifying ways, reforming into monstrous flesh, the jarring harshness eased imperceptibly.

What Dwells Beneath is level 6!

What—-what is going on?

Was the Skill...helping him?

Felix couldn't wait any longer; he had run out of options, and the Maw's stingers were exacting a terrible toll on his Health. Already, he was down to less than 15%. Felix flared his Unique Skill, equal parts horrified and hopeful, pouring his concentration into it.

What Dwells Beneath is level 7!

The change happened rapidly, painful in a far different way than the Maw's awful powers. Sweeping alterations expanded outward from his bloody wounds, carrying that burning agony with them. Spikes of dark bone pressed from his spine, only a few inches in length, but they were as sharp as his talons. He was malformed and hunched, the transformation not complete at all, but much of his arms, torso, and right leg were utterly changed. His skin toughened and filled out, swelling with strange, dense musculature that made him appear a humanoid monster. But that didn't matter, not then. What mattered was that Felix suddenly had the strength to stand, pushing himself shakily to his feet.

What Dwells Beneath is level 8!

What Dwells Beneath is level 9!

Etheric Concordance is level 30!

Etheric Concordance is level 31!

CHIRRUP!

A surge of wild, untamed melody burst from Felix's chest, fighting even further against the unraveling pain. The Maw's wild eyes cleared for the first time in minutes, and it took a hesitant step backward from Felix.

"What are you doing? What are you doing?" The Maw howled, the Skill around them quaking like a struck gong. Felix didn't answer, didn't flinch before the Maw's rage. He had heard it, now that he had fought back the Maw's discordant cry, it was so obvious.

Bastion of Will.

The Skill had always been a passive defense, but perhaps that was only because Felix had been too limited in his thoughts. The world around them let out a melodious hum, shearing through that brassy, clamorous gong. The Skill quivered beneath that sound, a sonorous tone that soothed Felix's mind for the brief second it played, reassuring him. This was his Bastion, his Skill, and the music of it told him that he had but to claim its control.

Grass, dirt, entire fields of burning greenery, they slithered back where they belonged, roots reattaching and settling in. The walls around them began to slowly reseal, the stone reforming as if it were knitting flesh and blood. His Bastion was a safeguard, a fortress for his Mind and Spirit, a world sheltered from the terrors of the Continent.

And it was not defeated because of a few broken stones.

"NO!"

Felix ignored the monster's cry, because he heard that syncopation once more, the off-beat that tumbled frenetically from his core. He pulled it toward himself, flaring his Intent and Willpower.

Unfettered Volition!

With uncanny ease, Felix avoided the Maw's panicked strikes, his body moving to the tune of not one but two Epic Skills. Unfettered Volition was about manifesting his Will in the physical world, about the desire, the drive to act, to move. Of course it would find synergy with his Bastion of Will, where his powerful Mind protected itself, where it generated the impetus.

The music swelled, filling the air all around them with a joyful harmony unlike anything Felix had ever heard. The Maw screamed in fear, but he didn't, couldn't hear it. His senses only had space for the song, the wild, incandescent symphony of his two Skills. With an instinct he didn't understand, Felix matched the edges of their patterns and wove them together into a new whole, one with a complexity so powerful it rang out like a triumphant cheer above his citadel.

There was a terrible yowl, and a flood of multicolored Essence poured all around him. Monster Essence, he recognized.

"How?" The Maw cried, and Felix looked down to realize he had started floating. The Maw was beneath him, cowering under the quivering vibrations in the air, its form reduced to the starving appearance of Lhel once more. "You shifted, but you...the Harmony answered you. How?"

Felix didn't answer, couldn't in fact, his mind riding inspiration so fierce that he feared he'd be burned if he stopped. Instead, he willed the ground to open up beneath the monster, and it did. The Maw fell into a pit without a single cry, and cords of stone wrapped around its frail-seeming form, locking them in place. Metal dredged up from the deep core of the place, surged around the Maw, and sealed it completely. Before it disappeared, Felix saw that its face was a broken mess of confusion and fear, but not of him.

Then it was gone. Resealed.

Felix stared into the pit for a while longer, his ascendant high finally crashing down, but no words came to his throat. With a gesture, the earth filled itself in. He hoped that would hold the Maw, for now, but in his heart Felix knew it would not last long. He would have to act sooner than later.

Felix glanced up at his Bastion, noticing that it had almost completely repaired itself. The central tower had even healed the massive crack in its side, but it was not the same. The once-square tower now had five sides, and the closest side was etched with the unmistakable pattern of Unfettered Volition.

Unfettered Volition is level 11!

...

Unfettered Volition is level 15!

What does that mean?

A sudden wave of dizziness cut that thought short. Felix doubled over and nearly retched, his body trying to expel something deep within him. The Essence that had been floating nearby suddenly was sucked away, pulled out of his Skill entirely. Before Felix could react, so was he.

"AAAAA—!"

* * *

Rory had been hauling hard on the ephemeral lines of his ritual, drip feeding it the Mana it needed to function for just one more minute. His muscles strained and his head pounded, the effort costing him dearly in mental strength. Then, without warning, Rory was thrown onto his ass.

The Mana surged in the room from where it had been congealing around the boy. It was potent, dense with that strange corruption and hostile energies that it had been blistering the Dwarf's skin just at the edges of the ritual. He had been unable to get any closer, forced to watch as Felix died before his eyes.

What have you done, Rory? The lad is—

The Mana blasted outward, a fierce, knife-edged arc of energy that howled through the small room. Chalk sigils burned in an instant, and as the power smashed into the walls, even the wardstones flickered and failed. The water Mana that comprised their defenses evaporated in a flash. That howling continued, a guttural cry that Rory soon realized was coming from the boy. Rory saw that his eyes, nose, and ears were all bleeding as his mouth stretched wide in a terrible, awful scream.

All at once, the energy and screaming cut out. Felix collapsed like a sack of meal.

"Nay lad! I'll not lose ye like this!" Rory leaped forward now that the ritual had fallen. He reached the kid before he even hit the ground and unleashed his hidden Skill, not caring who saw. "Siva's Blessing!"

A brilliant, pink light erupted from between the Dwarf's fingers, plunging deep into Felix's chest. Tendrils of powerful Mana flexed and pumped energy straight into the boy. Rory's teeth gritted as he watched it devour what little he had left of his own power. For a long, terrible moment, there was no reaction. Then the boy bucked, hard enough to nearly throw the heavyset Dwarf off his feet, and a foul, multicolored plume erupted from his mouth.

"By all that glitters," Rory swore, unable to take his eyes off the mess of thickened vapor. It struck the ceiling before oozing through cracks and crevices in the wood. "What in Avet's name was that?"

But the boy was out cold.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

It was usually an interesting thing, having a relatively high Perception. Felix had long ago passed what he'd considered an Earth human's limit, having pushed farther and farther into a fantastical new realm of the senses. Even further, recently. Realistically, that meant when he pushed his Perception to its limits, even the smallest of scents or touches were enough to grate against him. So, when he went from perfect unconsciousness to a cacophony of wood smoke, clashing metal, and awful, piercing pressure, it was the absolute worst.

"Uuugh," Felix managed, not even daring to open his eyes. From the way his head hurt, he knew that light would only make the situation worse. His… everything hurt, from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. His Perception was twanging strangely, like a stat hangover or something, and the rest of him was little better. So for a while, he simply laid there, attempting not to think any thoughts that would prove too challenging. Some time later (minutes? hours?), Felix finally dared move. Something warm and soft was pressed up against his left side, and the sleepy flare of concern made him stretch his face into a smile.

Pit. What a good boy. Felix cracked open his eyes, wincing at the light. Pit snored gently. Still disguised as a Dire Hound, the big lug was curled up against Felix's torso, almost on top of him. The both of them were on a crude pallet, atop a thin straw-filled mattress and covered in a rough but very warm blanket. Hope they invent memory foam sometime soon. This shit can't be good for my back.

Then he remembered that he was effectively twenty again and probably had enough Vitality and Endurance to tank a car crash. Right. Fantasy bullshit.

There was a slight thrumming inside his chest, and Felix patted his friend gently. It was a sensation of quiet care, a warmth that the tenku had always had for Felix, even before he'd saved his life. Thanks for the help, little man. You've got impeccable timing.

Pit's interference in the last moments of his fight had given him the juice to end the Maw's escape attempt. The memory soothed his pain slightly, the hum of their connection like a balm for his soul. Their Concordance sang, much like his other Skills, but was definitely more obvious out here in the real world. Even without accessing Fire Within and visualizing his core, he could detect the flowing harmonies between their Spirits. Now that he was looking for it, the connection was almost visible to his Manasight. The Skill's complex pattern was like a glowing chain of light, linking him to the sleeping tenku.

The room he was in was dark, though that mattered little to him or his Manasight. But still, he was in a small ten foot square room with a heavy metal door. Only the pallet and Pit were in the room with him. There was that sound of crashing metal again, along with the faint impression of grunts and shouts. His heart raced a moment before he flared his shaky Perception: though it was outside of his immediate range, the distant sounds sharpened somewhat, enough to make an educated guess.

Ungh. Training goes on, apparently. Felix was just glad it wasn't an attack. He'd had enough fighting, at least for a few more hours. Instead, his attention was redirected toward the blinking icon in his vision. Gathering his nerve, Felix toggled his notifications open. Time to see what I earned.

Fire Within is level 40!

...

Fire Within is level 43!

Deep Mind is level 41!

INE +2!

WIL +1!

You Have Defeated the Unending Maw! Again!

XP Earned!

You Have Gained 1 Level!

You Are Now Level 28!

+2 PER! +2 VIT! +1 END! +2 INT! +3 WIL! +4 AGL! +4 DEX!

You Have 35 Unused Stat Points!

Your Companion Pit Has Gained 2 Levels!

He Is Now Level 20!

+4 PER! +4 VIT! +2 END! +4 INT! +6 WIL! +8 AGL! +8 DEX!

New Title(s)!

The Shape of Fate (Epic) - Master of your own destiny, you have forged a Skill from the remnants of your own abilities, your Intent, and mighty Willpower. What else can you accomplish? +10% INE, WIL, INT

Blessing of the Lost (Epic) (Upgradeable) You have obtained the favor of a Lost god! Effect(s) unknown!

System harmonics surged as power flowed through Felix in a deluge of light and sound. The music he had been hearing for ages now was clearer than ever before, as if an orchestra had taken up residence in his head. For that brief, transitory moment, he was experiencing something intrinsic and utterly true, as if a layer of reality had been peeled back.

Then it was gone, and Felix fell back onto his pallet with a muffled thump. Pit didn't even wake up.

Whoa. Hasn't been that intense in a while. Felix reviewed his notifications, raising his eyebrows. It was a lot to take in.

Fire Within had increased a lot, especially for being in the later levels of Apprentice Tier. But that made sense as far as a revelation/stressor standpoint went. It took more to jump levels now than ever before, yet he had spent much of the last day contemplating his core, only able to visualize it at all thanks to Fire Within.

His understanding of that admittedly confusing Skill had grown by leaps and bounds. Now, he knew it as more than just internal Mana control and the source of his fiery core; it was his Rosetta Stone for understanding his Skills and the functions of Mana itself. Felix mentally earmarked the Skill for improvement, hoping for much greater dividends if he used it for his Journeyman Formation.

Was that possible? Using different Skills for each Tier? Better ask Rory. Felix shook his head. The System power had made him jittery and easily distracted, apparently. Keeping his thoughts in line was difficult. Maybe if I have more Willpower? Or would it be a Harmonic Stat? Maybe Alacrity, that affects 'feats of the Mind'. I have freaking 35 points to spend, after all. Though, no. I can't spend them on Harmonic Stats. System won't let me. Should I dump them into Willpower then? Just go all in? Or stick with my attempt at balance?

Felix put a hand to his head, the migraine that gripped him in a vice now tunneling his vision, blackening the edges. It throbbed, the agony swelling with every beat of his heart. Consequences, clearly, from fighting off a Primordial jerk while also sundering and evolving his Skills. It hurt like hell, but the pain cut through his frenetic thoughts, helping him cut away the dross and focus on the important bits. His Titles.

The Shape of Fate was Epic and very cool, a reward for forging Unfettered Volition. Maybe he'd get another when he took care of the rest of his broken Skills? One could hope. Of real interest, however, was the Blessing of the Lost. It suggested something he had been too unnerved to verbalize: that the puppet woman in his false memory was more than she had seemed. And she had seemed like quite a lot, judging by those disturbing visions. Felix flinched, his headache pulsing harder as he tried to suppress the memory of those bloody, awful eyes.

Favor of a Lost god. That's… good, right? Felix hoped so. He certainly didn't like that the effects of the title were unknown. He scanned over his stats, but didn't see any changes that weren't accounted for by his other Titles. She mentioned the Broken Path, too. She said a lot of interesting things, though I can't say any of them made much sense. Except that she warned me, told me to focus on the name of my new Skill. To help me? Was she suggesting a tie between Bastion of Will and Unfettered Volition?

Felix had an inkling of which god she might have been, but no real way to confirm it. Vellus. This has to be connected to my Shrines of the Broken quest. Right?

Did that mean he was going to meet other gods as he visited their shrines? Did he even want to? What reason did he have to trust the one he'd just met, let alone others? Felix leaned backward with a sigh. So much to consider, despite his aching head.

She had clued him into Bastion and Unfettered Volition. They weren't combined; it wasn't anything like the evolution his Acrobatics had undergone. More like a powerful connection existed between them. Their patterns, their vibrations… resonated. And now they were paired, somehow.

Moreover, the advent of his newest Epic Skill was remarkable. Its effects more closely mirrored his Mind Skills, despite being formed from a confluence of Body Skills. The why escaped him, but perhaps it had something to do with Relentless Charge; that Skill had taken Mana and Stamina to activate, after all. Maybe that transferred over? Influenced the new Skill somehow?

However, Unfettered Volition was all about the application of his considerable Willpower and (perhaps) his Intent. Felix knew that, if he were to will it, he could rise from his pallet despite his obvious injuries, forcing himself through the door and possibly even through a fight. Or at least be able to throw a couple punches before he collapsed. His Willpower was strained now, and his body was banged up enough that he wasn't planning on attempting that soon.

Briefly, he contemplated the Skill from within his core, flaring his Fire Within almost effortlessly. The sparkling solar system shimmered into view as Unfettered Volition floated to the fore. Moving in perfect tandem was his Bastion of Will.

There it is. Connected.

Unfettered Volition was a swirling cascade of light, the rapid tattoo of a drum major as heard from a dozen blocks away. The sound was distant but clearer than ever before, even more than the Skills he'd developed over the past few days. Yet still, the muted notes of something else lurked beyond the etching of light before him.

Secrets on top of secrets. He grunted in frustration before deactivating Fire Within. For another time, I think.

For now, he just wanted to sleep.

* * *

"Felix?" The whisper was loud enough to wake the dead, let alone Felix, and he blinked blearily at the small lantern Evie was carrying. She was fully armored up in her leather kit, even had her spiked chain slung around her shoulder and waist like the most punk rock of belts. Her long, straight hair swayed low over the light, casting wobbling shadows across the room. "You awake?"

Felix groaned. "I am now."

"Good. You said you had something to go to at dusk, right? Some sort of meeting?" Evie fiddled with her chain and grinned. "You asked me to remind you if you were uh, out of sorts. You still goin'?"

Felix closed his eyes and groaned louder. The meetup with Caerwin. Of course.

"Thanks, Evie." He grunted as he sat up, his head feeling fairly alright considering. His Health had recovered, too, sitting at its maximum value again. "Yeah, I think I'll go. I should be—"

Unfettered Volition!

Without consciously moving his muscles, simply willing them forward, Felix stood up while still holding his blanket around him. It was extremely similar to moving normally, especially to outside viewers as his muscles were still actually being used, contracting and extending and all that. Internally it felt like sitting still and thinking instead of using his muscles actively.

Weird feeling, in any case. He deactivated the Skill and nearly fell over before he regained his balance. Bit odd on the dismount though. Probably should be careful about that.

"I should be fine," he finished with a rueful smile. "What's the time now?"

"Dusk, or near about," Evie held out her hands, palms first as Felix frowned. "I've been trainin' all day, save for when we had to pull you outta the warded room, naked as a baby. How'dya not have any scars? Even I've got three or five from growin' up and learning my Skills."

"My enemies get the scars, not me—" Felix couldn't even finish the line before he broke out into a dumb grin. "Just lucky, is all."

Evie rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. "I'm sure."

She drummed her fingers against her leather cuirass and pursed her lips. "How'd you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Scare the piss outta Rory," she smirked. "He didn't say anything, but he was white as a ghost when he left that room."

Felix snapped his fingers. "I've been meaning to ask about that. Are ghosts real?"

"You—what?" Evie blinked at him.

"Are ghosts real? Back… home," Felix said with an eye toward the open doorway. "Ghosts aren't real. At least, not as far as I knew. Are they a thing here?"

"Sure. Ghosts, spirits, wraiths, haunts, different types dependin' on circumstances," Evie looked up, as if remembering something. "Never fought any, Magda would never have let me. But she gave me a book years back on basic monster types you might see out an' about in the Heirocracy."

"Huh." Felix propped his arms up on his hips. Maybe the Inquisition did call up that guy's ghost.

"You didn't answer my question," Evie said, crossing her arms.

"Really? Weird. Anyway, do you want to come?" Felix eyed the young woman.

"To your mysterious meeting at dusk? And skip out on my sacred duty to clean all the practice weapons and wipe my own blood off the big, dumb Gauntlet?" Evie grinned. "Siva's breath, twist my arm, why don't ya?"

"Cool." Felix laughed before reaching down and ruffling Pit's illusory fur. "C'mon, lil pig. Time to do the thing."

The tenku got up grudgingly before sticking his butt into the air and pushing out his forelegs. A wide yawn and basso chirrup filled the air.

"What a big stretch!" Felix started walking out, dropping the blanket that had been shrouding him. "C'mon, you two. I have a feeling I'm already late."

"Ahem."

Felix turned around, eyebrow raised. Evie grinned and pointed at his waist.

"Might want to put on some clothes first."

"Shit."

Evie's laughter was almost as loud as the embarrassed rush of blood in his ears.

* * *

Evie ran over what happened in the aftermath of Felix's sundering ritual. Rory had dragged him outta the warded room, covered in blood and dark smoke, naked as a jaybird. Cal and Harn had hoisted him and put him in another room before fetching a whole mess of healing potions. They had apparently force-fed him over two dozen before any healing would take. A considerable expense, now that the Guild was blocking them from their affiliated alchemists.

Evie stumbled in the retelling at that part, and Felix, shockingly, could tell that she was still a bit upset about it. He hadn't realized she'd cared.

Though maybe she's just mad I used up all those potions. He'd have to make it up to them somehow.

After that, he had just slept a whole lot. Nearly seven glasses or so, by her estimation. He didn't ask, but figured by context clues that glasses meant the same thing as hours.

By the time Evie had finished her retelling, Felix had dressed in his familiar tunic and trousers again. A distinct, yet unfounded fear that someone would take his stuff was laid to rest, at least for the moment. All in all, ten minutes and they were ready to go. Before Felix could step out, however, Rory snagged him. Most of the others were all eating or recovering as the three of them tried to sneak out, but the Dwarf had been leaning at the end of the back hallway as if expecting their clandestine departure.

"We need to talk, lad," Rory said and walked into another room. Felix gave Evie a shrug and followed, silently instructing Pit to stay back but be on guard.

He wasn't sure how this talk was gonna go.

The room he walked into was filled with half-open crates and barrels, storage for food and other sundries. Rory stood near a collection of barrels marked with squiggles that Felix could, after a second, identify as the word for water. Felix approached him cautiously.

"What's going on, Rory?" Felix tried a smile. "If this is about the monster cores, I'm sorry about wasting them—"

"Nay, lad. Not about the cores. They're just another strange piece on the pile of oddities ye've subjected me to." Rory shook his head. "I want to know if ye're alright."

Felix was taken aback, a bit. "I'm fine, I think. A little sore still, but my Health and everything is back up to full, and I've got a brand new Skill to work with."

Rory's grave expression lightened by several degrees. "Aye? Ye combined your Skills? What'd ye get, if'n ye don't mind me askin'?"

Felix tried not to hesitate, but couldn't help it. "A Rare one."

Deception is level 18!

"Ach that's good! Same as your Physical Conditioning, but I guess it was too far to dream ye'd get an Epic." Rory sighed before laughing and slapping Felix on the leg. It was hard enough that it would have sent Felix tumbling ten levels ago. "Good for ye! I was worried at the result, seeing how it ended..."

Felix grimaced. "I don't remember much of the ritual, but Evie gave me a rundown. Sorry for causing so much worry. I really do feel fine now."

"That's good to hear. Ye belched up such an awful concoction, I feared ye had lost more than one broken Skill." Rory shook his head, and a faint but definite shudder went through him. "I don't mind admitting that the sight of ye vomiting that corruption up into the ceiling shook me to the core. It was truly noxious stuff. The boards in the ceiling had to be thrown out, they rotted through so fast."

"Really," said Felix. "What was it?"

"I was hopin' you'd tell me, lad," Rory chuckled. "It looked a bit like the energy inside a monster core, but ye can't imbibe a core and spit it out. The energy doesn't work like that."

Huh. Felix had to assume it was something to do with the Maw, and all that energy it had lost during the last seconds of their battle. Maybe the corruption he was sensing was just the Maw's imprint on the Mana. That'd make sense.

"Then I don't have a clue, honestly. My sundering experience is a little murky and hard to follow at this point," Felix offered. "Like a dream, almost. I'm not sure how I succeeded."

Deception is level 19!

"...Aye, that's common enough. Actions within the Spirit tend to fog over fairly quickly." Rory tapped his pipe against a nearby barrel, expelling the last bits of old leaf. He deftly packed it full again. "Your Spirit affects not only Mana and its use, but also how much punishment ye can handle when dealin' with Skills like that. I have a feeling your Spirit is strong as a mountain's bones, lad. How'd you come to that?"

"Lucky, I guess." The excuse came readily to his lips, and Felix shrugged with a laugh.

"Pff, take more'n luck to Form a Spirit as resilient as yours. All that? That would have killed any Bronze Rank I know, most Silver, too. The amount of trauma on your Spirit… and here you are, up and walking." Rory shook his head, awed. "What's it called? Your Spirit?"

Felix watched the Dwarf cautiously, all of his senses heightening as Rory scoffed at himself. "Listen to me. Ye don't have to answer, lad. My curiosity got the better of my tongue."

Felix studied the trainer's face, and he read a variety of emotions playing across it. Stoicism, embarrassment, a little sliver of fear, but mostly curiosity… affection? Felix was no expert by any means, but the smile on Rory's face seemed genuine.

"I'm on my way out, Rory. Will you be here tomorrow? We can talk more then, I think."

"Aye, and the day after. Beyond that, I dunno. The Guild—" He cut himself off and shook his head. "Things're changin' quickly in Haarwatch. Ye be careful out there tonight, yeah? The mood in the city has gone strange these last few days. Don't go looking for trouble, lad."

Felix nodded and gave a small wave. "Never do, Rory. Usually it's the other way around."

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The sun had only just barely set by the time Felix stepped outside. Three moons hung low in the sky, each a bit larger than the singular moon of Earth. The others were either not yet up or hidden behind buildings, Felix wasn't sure. Even after weeks, it was still an odd experience, gazing into the night sky and seeing such blatant proof that he was so very far away from home. Their light was bright here in the dregs of the Dust Quarter, where street lamps were either broken or nonexistent. He'd learned their names over the past few days: the silver one was Siva, while the two others, both a leaden blue, were called the Twins.

Named after the old gods. The others were called Noctis and Yyero, their colors dark yellow and an almost burnished bronze respectively. But not Avet or Vellus.

Avet, from what he had gathered, was a devilish figure that was a mix of trickster and monster. Those who dared to worship the old gods used his name only as an epithet, usually intending nothing nice by the comparison. Vellus, aside from his Skill Reign of Vellus, he'd heard mentioned only once: the old Hobgoblin he'd saved just a few days prior.

Five moons, seven gods. Eight, if you count the Pathless. Felix gazed into the night sky and tapped his foot. And I have a quest to find each of their shrines...

Felix wasn't sure what his motivation for completing that quest was, and had placed it firmly on the back burner. Now that he'd been visited by Vellus, though… it put the quest into a different light.

If gods are real, then I'm attracting their attention. I really don't like that. Felix's relationship with religion had never been easy, despite his mother's best efforts. The history, the misuse of power, all of it had turned him off at an early age. The idea that gods here were real...

Felix let out a deep, steady breath. Meditation flared, and his mind calmed ever so slightly. Pit cooed from within him as well, his soothing presence a balm against his anxiety. Gods and whatever interest they had in him were entirely out of his own power to affect, so the Nym turned his mind toward more immediate concerns.

Monster cores.

Rory had mentioned that, by utilizing monster cores, one could clog or erode their foundation in various ways. Had he hurt himself by inundating his body with them? He felt different since waking, but not weaker. Stronger, in fact, despite losing so many stat points. It was hard to pin down exactly, but he attributed it to his repaired Skill. Regardless, he didn't feel as if there was buildup in his pathways, and a quick check with Fire Within showed nothing wrong with the looping passages through his body. Nothing he could detect, anyway.

Some of the monster essence was used to evolve his Skill, but most wasn't. The Maw might have done him a favor, in fact, by stealing it to empower itself. He'd been forced to use what he could only assume was a resonance between his Skills to join them together. That was a tidbit he wasn't sure if he wanted to share or not. Whatever the mystery of Harmonics was, it was a veritable font of power. Pure, undiluted and undifferentiated Mana… or perhaps the energy that turns into Mana? It felt far different to his senses than even the rainbow cascade of Mana in the Void.

What else could be done with it? And how can I do it again?

"Alright," Evie practically shouted, bursting out of the heavy metal door and into the relatively cool night air. "Let's get a move on, yeah?"

The slender girl still had her leathers on along with her spiked chain wrapped about her shoulder and waist, but at some point, she had twisted her dark hair in a coiled braid atop her head. Eyes that glowed with a diffuse green light flared in his direction, and she popped a hand on her hip. "Enjoyin' the view?"

Felix blinked. "When did you put up your hair?"

"Just now," Evie gave him a look he'd recognized from his sisters. A tightening of her lips and eyes, as if he'd just ignored something again. "You're going like that?"

Felix looked down at himself. He was still wearing his Khellish style tunic and trousers, his Far-Afield Boots, and had his Valdarian Satchel slung across his chest. His clothes were clean and hole free, despite his rough training, all thanks to their Rank I enchantments. His hair was still longer and shaggier than he liked it, nearly brushing his shoulders by that point. It had also started to curl in weird ways, something Felix usually avoided back home. He'd often kept his hair cut short, almost uniformly over his head. It hadn't been an important task. Honestly, it still wasn't. Felix was sure there were things such as barbers here, but he hadn't cared to find one.

Though, he did worry that he might smell. He'd bathed that morning (every morning, in fact, much to Wulfand's annoyance), but he spent a long time covered in blood and sweat, and monster essence had leaked out of his pores and face. He didn't think he smelled, but Felix was rarely the best judge.

He didn't have time for that, anyway.

"We're late. Can you keep this pace?" Felix asked, beginning a fast jog down the street. Evie caught up easily, her loping gait eating up the distance. "Not bad, Aren."

"Heh, don't kid yourself, Felix. Are you sure you can keep up with me?" Evie laughed before taking off like a shot. With a grin, Felix followed after.

She was fast. Evie had mentioned her Agility was higher than his, but Felix didn't quite believe her. It was obvious now. Moreover, she moved with such fluid grace that, if Felix hadn't already been jealous of her Acrobatics aptitude, he would have become so. As they came quickly to the end of the street, another wood and stone warehouse loomed ahead, easily four stories tall. Evie reached it first and leaped straight up into the air, her body nearly floating weightlessly into the moonlit sky. With that single jump, she had landed atop the roof.

Unfettered Volition!

Felix burst forward, letting his new Skill take control of his body. He maneuvered up and over the short wall around the warehouse, and then, through brute Strength, jumped more than halfway up the face of the building. With a casual thrust of his hand, Felix grabbed the sill of a high window and yanked himself still higher, tossing his body upward and easily onto the rooftop. It was fast and smooth, though not nearly as fast as Evie's more direct route. Felix reveled in the Skill, however, feeling more in control than he had in a long time. Perhaps since he'd first started increasing his stats.

Unfettered Volition is level 16!

"Not bad, for a rookie," Evie grinned before she took off.

Felix got to spread his wings a bit with his new Skill, which, though low-leveled, allowed him to move much more fluidly than ever before. It wasn't the flawless grace of Evie's spins, flips, and turns, but it was very smooth. It was like his synapses didn't even fire, the delay between wanting to do a thing and accomplishing it reducing closer and closer to zero.

Efficient, he thought with a nod. It wastes nothing between thought and action.

The two of them quickly moved from the Dust and into the Wall Quarter, where they slowed their headlong flight. Felix wasn't keen on garnering any more attention than he needed to at that point, and with both the Guilders and Inquisition on high alert, running through the streets and over buildings definitely qualified as making a ruckus. Evie merely shrugged and followed him down to street level.

"You're good at that," Felix offered as they started walking quickly. "Fast and accurate. Do you have any ranged Skills?"

"What, like Archery?" She asked with a raised brow.

"Sure. I figured you'd take advantage of your high Agility and Dexterity." She made a face, and Felix tilted his head. "You don't like Archery?"

"It's not that," Evie smiled to herself, a small, sad thing. "Magda tried to get me to fight ranged for years. Probably meant for me to stay back, away from danger. She was more of a mom than… well. Finally gave up when I set all my arrows on fire, though. I started working with the chain the next day."

Felix regarded the young woman beside him, feeling an echo of her ache. Like his own heart had been hollowed out by a spoon. Wait. That's not me.

Yet he felt it, like a soft reverberation in the air between them. It sounded like a minor key, drawn soft and slow over a deep hollow.

"Don't give me that look," Evie snapped, and the sound shifted toward an uptempo, almost atonal plucking. Felix blinked, and the sound faded away entirely.

"Uh, what look?" He tried to recover, but he'd been obviously staring. "I don't—"

"The pitying look. Everyone's been doing it, even Callie, and she mopes more than me." Evie kicked a cracked flagstone into the river. It splashed with a deep ka-thunk.

"I'm not, I just was thinking about your chain work," Felix extemporized. Evie raised an eyebrow, clearly not buying it. "No really. I was thinking how it was a good thing you gave up on Archery. You found your calling with the chain."

Evie eyed him suspiciously a moment longer before smiling. "I am good, aren't I? Acrobatics and Chain Mastery are my primaries."

"Yeah, I noticed. You're impressive," Felix smiled as she puffed up her chest in mock pride. "I mean, at least compared to me. But then, I broke my Acrobatics."

Evie laughed and shoved his shoulder, but was barely able to move him. "Noctis' tits, you're heavy. What've you been eatin'?"

Felix scratched his jaw and looked down a side street. "You'd be surprised."

"You fixed it though, right? Acrobatics?" Evie asked after a moment.

"Yeah, that's what today was about," Felix huffed a weary breath, glad for the redirection. "I've still got more to fix, though I'm not looking forward to it. Not if they're that difficult again."

"I'd probably just sunder ‘em and let ‘em go. Learn somethin' new, ya know? You pick up Skills fast, right? Since you're… ya know. Shouldn't be a problem to replace ‘em, right?"

Felix wobbled his hand from side to side. "Hard to say. This way, though, at least I know the Skill or something like it will be there in the end."

Then again, maybe I could just eat a big monster and learn some new Skills. Bringing them up to Apprentice Tier would go a long way toward getting back all those lost stat points.

Evie lowered her voice and glanced around. There was no one on the street for at least three blocks, as far as Felix could tell. The night was strangely quiet in the Wall Quarter. "What'd you end up with, after everythin'? Somethin' good?"

Felix couldn't help glancing around as well, despite knowing nothing was there. "Epic."

Evie whistled. "Damn, Felix. Not many people have Epic Skills, and most of them are Bronze or higher. Could you imagine Tiering with an Epic?"

"Mhm, I can."

"Blood and ash, that's right. You damn cheat." This time, when she shoved him, he stumbled forward two steps. Felix looked back, surprised. Evie grinned, victorious.

"Did you use your Born Trait?” he asked. “Talk about cheating."

"Damn straight. Had to max out my weight to do that, though. You weigh as much as a merchant's wagon!"

"Benefits of Apprentice Tier and some really good draughts," he said.

"Vess had some quality gems in there, that's for sure. Bet she caught shit for losin' that." Evie's eyes went distant for a moment. Felix could feel the mood turning a bit maudlin again. Felix kept talking, not entirely sure what he was gonna say.

"Didn't have much choice, though; it was either Tier up or die. I was lucky enough to get this Body." He looked down at his chest and hands.

"Mmm, sure were."

"What?" Felix looked back up with a confused squint.

"What?" Evie said with a grin. "I'm just admiring your sturdy Body."

"Oh," Felix said, forcing himself to push past the flush that burned his cheeks. "You, uh, you haven't finished your Formation yet, right?"

Evie's face went from playful to annoyed, and Felix once again felt those distant reverberations. They flipped between strange chords, an uneasy sensation in his guts. "No," she said.

"Sorry, is it a touchy subject?"

"No, it's—it's not that. The damn Guild was responsible for getting us our Iron Essence Draughts, and I was almost ready to advance my Spirit and finish my full set before we got back to Haarwatch." Evie tightened her hand on her spiked chain, and Felix thought he heard the metal groaning, ever so slightly. "Then the trial happened, Harn got demoted, and all of our items deemed 'Guild property' were taken away."

"Including the draughts," Felix supplied.

"Right."

"Damn. I don't imagine they're easy to make or find, are they?" Felix thought about his explorations around town. "I haven't been everywhere in Haarwatch, but I haven't seen a single alchemist."

Evie snorted, but it was a tired sort of laugh. "Definitely not easy. There are a few alchemists in this outskirt town, but those that could make it are workin' for the Guild already. I'll let you guess how likely it is that they'll sell to me."

Felix frowned in thought, and they kept walking.

The Wall Quarter was quiet as they passed through it. Although it was around nine by his best estimate, most businesses were closed and locked, and little more than the gently bobbing globes of magelight filled the streets. Wide thoroughfares, ones that Felix had only experienced during the light of day were strangely empty. After two entire blocks of this weirdness, Felix turned to Evie. The young woman was panning her glowing green eyes across the road ceaselessly.

"Is it usually like this at night?" he asked.

"Definitely not." Evie didn't stop searching, her eyes flaring with each sweep, almost like tiny strobe lights. "The Wall Quarter is busy at all times of the day, but especially in the evening. More taverns here than anywhere else, 'cept maybe Crafters."

"Then where is everyone?" Felix was unnerved by the quiet. His time in cities had always been punctuated by noise, whether it was there or on Earth. It wasn't a ghost town or anything; Felix could still see people moving around through some of the upper floor windows. Instead, it was as if everyone was just… staying off the streets.

Why, though?

Distantly, Felix thought he heard shouting a few streets over, somewhere closer to the Wall itself. It didn't seem panicked or violent, just loud. Funnily enough, it actually put him more at ease. Drunken shouting was par for the course.

He shared an eye roll and smile with Evie, and the two of them sped up. If no one was out and about, they had leeway to move as fast as they wanted. Still, the two of them kept to the shadows by unspoken agreement, neither of them interested in the attention of authorities. At the speed the both of them could move, they arrived at the wall between Quarters within minutes.

As if someone had drawn a magical dividing line, the streets in the Crafters’ Quarters were loud and lively. Whatever unease shuttered the nightlife in the Wall Quarter was outmatched by the sheer ribald frivolity of their higher-quality alehouses and taprooms. Higher-quality patrons, as well. More than a few carriages rumbled through the streets, pulled along by huge chicken-lizard Avum, each craft enameled and colored a variety of hues. A number were even inscribed with illuminated sigils, often surmounted by a decidedly non-magical House crest.

Among the throng, shouting and laughing, Felix could see a variety of Races. Mostly Humans, of course, but also Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, and even a gaggle of Goblins that were furiously arguing at a street vendor. Flaring his Voracious Eye, Felix took it all in, noting names, levels, and their Formation status. The information washed over him, similar to how he'd come to use Analyze in the Foglands, his incredible Mind pulling it all into the depths of his memory. It was as if he were devouring their details, imbibing secrets that flourished and nourished part of his Mind.

Voracious Eye is level 31!

...

Voracious Eye is level 33!

Interesting. Felix felt for the Maw, but there wasn't a single twitch from his Bastion as his Eye Skill jumped in levels. With a name like Voracious Eye, that insight made sense. It hungered for information, for data. He was happy to oblige.

Mage lights bobbed on ornate lamp posts, spaced evenly along each street. Folks were dressed nicely, in some cases too nicely. Those were clearly nobles, and Felix spotted quite a few of them. Fine, thin capes and dresses abounded, elaborately tailored and draped, yet cool enough for the sweltering summer night. Most, however, were less melee-focused than Evie. She stood out a bit, not that she seemed to care.

Due to the crowd, their speedy pace stalled out. Luckily, he'd asked Jacinda for directions, and she'd said it was close by the Wall Quarter. Low-key panic threaded through his heart regardless. Felix hoped they weren't too late.

With some prompting, Evie gave him a general run down of the area, mentioning some of the better taverns. Based on how good the food was at the Drum Tank, Felix was eager to try something more expensive. Evie even mentioned that the best of them employed people with the Chef Title or Master Cooking Skill.

"It's pretty hard to advance the Skill, I'm told. Not enough variety in the local monster materials," Evie explained as she twisted between two people. Felix followed with less grace, instead pushing through the crowd as gently as he could.

"Monster materials? Normal people eat monsters, too?"

"Uh, yeah? What else are they gonna eat?" Evie gave him a look over the shoulder of a drunk Elf. "They're hard to prepare, sure, but with enough fixins, you'll get somethin' damn good. Not like what Harn and Maggie made us back in that tower. Throw in a leveled Cooking Skill? Mm!"

Before they knew it, the crowds cleared and they emerged onto Weaver's Way.

"That was hectic," Felix said, gesturing back toward the crush of revelers.

"A little, I guess," Evie peered back. "Usually folks get kinda keyed up before the Festival of the Spheres. Add in that monster breach and well, folks're probably lettin' off steam. Ya know?"

The way forward was far clearer here, the march of taverns and alehouses having been left behind on the previous road. Weaver's Way, much as the name suggested, was dedicated to seamstresses and tailors. Felix even spotted a sign that looked like an old-fashioned loom. A few people moved around, but it was far more like an active summer evening than a rowdy Friday night in a college town.

"Cobbler should be just a few more streets this way," Evie said, up on her toes to see over a few carriages further down the street. "Not far."

They sped up, but made sure not to move faster than the others around them. It wasn't uncommon for people to have advanced stats, but they were usually Guilders and were easily remembered. The less of that, the better. Still, they made it to the intersection of Cobbler and Weaver's Way in less than two minutes.

It was a rather unremarkable section of the city. The architecture was nice but not the nicest he'd seen, and a few lampposts blinked in disrepair a bit further down the lane. Everything was clean and tidy, the stoops swept and shrubberies pruned before the closed up shops. Nearly every light was off, though a few of the busier stores still bustled with late business. Despite it all, there was nothing to indicate where Felix was to go from there.

"Where're we supposed to go now?" Evie asked. "There's nothing here."

Felix frowned, and that thread of panic started to weave around his chest. Had he come too late? Had she been waiting for him and left?

I knew I shouldn't have tried to combine my Skills today. I should have just waited. He all but growled at himself.

"Evie, do you see—"

Felix watched as Evie flinched during her search around them. Her bright green eyes, courtesy of the Night Eye Skill, flashed brightly each time she did.

"Why are you flinching?" Felix asked.

"What? I'm not flinching," Evie said, even as she did it again.

Wait a second...

Felix watched her turn again, and noted the direction she's facing when the flinch happened again. Flaring his Perception, he stared that same way. There was nothing but a poorly maintained building on the corner, cracks running up the stone staircase. Several broken windows covered the building's facade like missing teeth, and lent a definite air of urban decay. A man stood by the front door, shadowed by a triangular awning above him.

How did I miss that?

There was a faint hum in the air, like the lasting reverb of a final chord, and once Felix recognized that, the fuzziness of the scene before him vanished completely. Everything was brought into crystalline clarity, even the man only twenty feet away from them. He was a Hobgoblin, his skin red where it showed beneath his dark leather armor and cloak. He made eye contact with Felix and nodded very slightly before opening the door.

Whatever had just happened, apparently he'd passed.

Voracious Eye is level 34!

Striding forward, Felix grabbed Evie's hand and pulled her along with him. "C'mon, I found it."

"What? Wher—Oh," Evie's voice was quietly startled as they moved up the front steps. "Uh, hello there."

The Hobgoblin didn't answer, just tilted his head slightly toward the open door. Felix took the cue and stepped through, Evie close behind.

CHAPTER FORTY

The door opened up into a hallway of plank floors and sagging walls. Cracks spidered from dents and holes in the plaster, while the hardwood flooring was gray and marred by the tread of countless feet. It was utterly dark inside with not a single window to alleviate the gloom, and Felix smelled something musty and abandoned, like a cellar gone to rot.

Pit let out a worried whine in his mind.

"So, we're here," Evie said, and her eyes glowed far brighter than before. "Seems homey."

"There's gotta be more than just… this," Felix gestured. "C'mon."

The two of them walked forward and discovered two things. One, the hallway was relatively short, and two, the back wall was fake. The latter was easily spotted by Felix's Manasight only because the wall flared and quickly dissipated as they approached; beyond was a dark decline. A set of stairs.

"This is very odd," Evie muttered. "Who exactly is this Caerwin lady?"

"I'm coming to realize that I have no idea," Felix admitted. A warm and slightly fetid stench rose up from the stairwell. Whatever illusion had been hiding the passage was an impressive working, and Felix believed that, if it had not dissipated on its own, he would never have noticed it. "But we've come this far, right?"

"Sure. Secret magic building, disappearing walls, dark and creepy staircase leading into what smells like a sewer," Evie sniffed and frowned into the dark. "What could go wrong?"

"Now you sound like me," Felix smiled and took the first step into the stairwell. Immediately, two orbs of magelight lit to either side of him as if affixed to the walls. "Whoa."

Felix took another step, and the same thing happened again while the magelights behind him dimmed slightly. When he took a step backward, the first lights brightened. "Oh, this is cool. The lights are keyed to the steps."

How's it work, though?

Felix flared his Manasight, and once he'd negotiated the usual density of the ambient Mana, he could see a series of bright strips laid across each and every step, like strip lighting almost, except they appeared to be embedded under the stone stairs. Another series of bright spots dotted the walls leading to the hovering magelights, three in all, and after he concentrated a moment, longer they came into focus. They were sigils, each somehow linked to those underfoot.

So they function by, what, sympathetic pressure? How—

"Not to interrupt your… whatever this is, but don't you have somewhere to be?"

Felix blinked, bringing his Manasight down to a simmer as he glanced guiltily at Evie. The young woman was still standing on the top, arms folded and smirking.

"Ah, yeah. I can always check later, I guess." He cleared his throat. "C'mon."

The two of them padded down the stairs, taking them quickly. The lights followed them, of course, a steady stream of brightness that flowed with them while leaving everything behind and before them in darkness. Evie had to deactivate Night Eye shortly after starting, the bright light quickly becoming too much for the Skill to compensate for, and Felix lost some of his appreciation for the enchantment when he realized it effectively night-blinded them.

But is that a bug… or a feature?

Less than two minutes later, their whirlwind passage ended at a far lower level than Felix had encountered in Haarwatch. At the base of the stairwell was an archway made from three curves, what he remembered as a pointed trefoil arch. Once through it, they stepped out onto an open platform surrounded by latticed masonry. Small bricks had been used to create multiple stacked trefoil arches, all of them leading out into a wider area below. The rush of water was loud in their ears, but it was absolutely dark beyond those arches, thanks to their destroyed night vision, not to mention the magelights that bobbed out of the ground at their approach.

That fetid smell had only grown stronger and wetter.

"Halt, friends," a calm and vaguely amused voice said. Felix and Evie peered into the darkness, but soon another set of magelights bloomed, these around two men in dark blue robes. The robes were draped across their shoulders and down to their knees, below which they wore iron greaves and dark leather sandals. The one that was speaking had a wide smile and a well-kept beard of dark brown. His eyes twinkled in the sudden light. "What brings you here?"

The man's manner and voice suggested a casual, friendly attitude, but Felix didn't fail to notice his companion. That man was quiet and watched them like a hawk.

"Come to see the sights, you know. Sewers are our thing," Evie said, looking around. "Quite a nice one here. Gettin' me in a mood, eh?"

Evie nudged Felix with an elbow. When he looked her way, she flicked her eyes slightly to the left and then right. Felix blinked, long and slow, and shook his head. He turned to the guards (obviously they were guards), and smiled back.

"I was told to ask for Caerwin. She sent me."

The robed man's smile faded as if it had never been there at all, and the both of them swept to the side. As one, they raised their arms and gestured across the platform. At the far end, perhaps thirty feet away, a trio of magelights illuminated a door.

"A friend of Caerwin is a friend to all within, travelers. Be welcome."

The two guards didn't move as Felix and Evie passed them, despite the death-grip the latter had on her chain. Felix put his hand gently on her elbow and pushed her along. "I think we're good."

"Yeah? Then why do I feel like we're walking into a nest of vipers?" Evie hissed through her teeth. "Those are choristers, Felix. Priests of the Twins!"

"The old gods?" Felix asked, nonplussed. He looked back at them and found the dour one still staring daggers at them. With a muted jolt, Felix realized that the two priests looked exactly alike. Literal twins? He quickly turned around and hustled toward the doorway. "I thought the Pathless ran them all out or… or worse?"

"Uh huh. Me, too. So why are they here?"

Shit. What have I stepped into now?

They came upon the door, surmounted by three magelights. One was silver, while the other two were blue. Felix's mind made a sudden, strange connection as he saw them and the choristers, an intuitive leap that he absolutely knew was right. Three lights, three moons. Colors of the gods.

He doubted it was worth anything, but still. More data was better than none.

The door itself was ornate, inlaid with beveled edges and floral carvings, odd for a door in a sewer. Felix expected it to be swollen with moisture and rot, but it looked to be in immaculate condition. They opened at a touch as well, gliding on well-oiled hinges that were absolutely silent and revealed another short hallway beyond. This one was round, composed of small bricks expertly constructed into a cylinder, and ended at another pointed trefoil archway.

The two of them proceeded forward, both of their heartbeats increasing in speed. Felix could hear the song of his friend's Spirit change pitch, tipping toward an exciting up-tempo beat, and her hands hovered near the handle of her weapon. It's her Spirit I'm hearing? For some reason, Felix felt an unshakable certainty in that.

The archway was bright, but once their night-blinded eyes adjusted, Felix gasped. Beyond was a simply cavernous room, vaulted and supported by massive brickwork pillars, thousands of square feet of space that was dominated by a large, worn mural along the far wall. Filling the room were hundreds of people, dressed in all manner of clothing, all of them talking and whispering among themselves. Felix goggled, and looked at Evie who was similarly surprised.

Exploration is level 28!

"What is this?" She asked.

"Not a clue." Felix half-shrugged and stepped into the room. "C'mon, we have to find Caerwin."

They stepped forward cautiously. The majority of the crowd wasn't Human, Felix noticed. There were many Hobgoblins, Orcs, Goblins, and even Dwarves and Gnomes, most of whom were dressed in the patched and threadbare outfits of laborers and miners. He spotted a few who were wearing something nicer, perhaps along the lines of what Felix himself wore, but noble silks and brocade were clearly absent.

"—all know of the vagaries of the Guild! Of just who the Protectors' Guild truly protects!"

The crowd shouted in agreement, and Felix oriented on the speaker. At the far end of the chamber, a small wooden platform had been built. It stood in front of the dirty mural, and upon it stood at least a dozen men and women in colorful robes. Each of them, including the speaker, were styled in the same way as the two guards outside, and Felix felt Evie stiffen in alarm.

"This is illegal," Evie said, turning about to eye the corners of the chamber, perhaps to find the exits. "The Hierophant banned gatherings like this."

"I thought you were a believer in all this?" Felix asked, his eyes still scanning the crowds as the brown robed chorister railed on and on. "The old gods and stuff. You swear by them enough."

"I am," Evie said, as she loosened the chain around her waist. "But we should find an exit and stick near it. I don't trust all this."

Probably good advice, Felix thought. "Ok, we find Caerwin, then we're outta here, deal?"

"Deal."

As the two of them moved through the crowd, the chorister only got more heated, riling up the crowd. "The Wall crumbles! Monsters are attacking us in our homes! The Guild has failed us, time and again. The Protectors' Guild is a lie and a sham, for none fought off the monsters in our midst, not until it was too late."

The crowd lulled as the orator paused. "We lost friends and family. Here, in the city that was promised as a safe haven. Now even the Inquisition has come, determined this time to stamp us out once and for all. The Heirophant says our gods are dead, but I say nay!"

The crowd shouted that down, growing more frantic until the chorister held out his hands, palms down. "The old gods yet live. They are but sleeping! We know they shall wake!"

A powerful pressure descended on them all, a cloud of ineffable force that touched everyone in the crowd. Ecstatic cries exploded all around Felix as he moved across the room. In his Manasight, the pressure shift manifested as a swirling, nigh-invisible presence that sparked against the ambient Mana. Everyone could feel it, and where it clustered, men and women of all different Races held hands and shouted.

Manasight is level 43!

It was unnerving, to say the least, though he easily fought off whatever it was trying to do. Felix wasn't sure what the cloud of pressure was, but it felt like some sort of aura effect. Was it a Skill? Maybe like Vvim's emotional manipulation Skill, from back in the Tower? That's shady as hell.

Felix looked up at the platform where the brown-robed chorister still had his eyes closed and hands raised, basking in the cheers of the crowd. The man was gaunt and completely hairless, his robes hanging from his frame like a sack. Behind him were four more choristers, their vestments a dull yellow, dark gray, and two in matching blue. But what caught his eye was the wall beyond.

The mural was as high as the ceiling, which was nearly fifty feet. Felix could make out seven immense beings depicted, surrounded by the relatively bright heavens above and the darkened earth below. Each of them were composed of various colors and textures, but the mural was so faded and grime-coated that Felix had difficulty distinguishing them, as if they were cloaked in the detritus of time itself.

"The Guild and the Inquisition. Two sides of the same befouled coin," the chorister spat, and his thin lips trembled with either rage or sadness. The cloud in the air shifted, pressing against his Bastion but finding no purchase. The people around him grew solemn, and he saw no shortage of angry, clenched fists. "Neither helps us during these dire times, for neither wishes for us to survive. Those who cannot fight or pledge themselves to the blind god are seen as fodder for their cities and drudges for the most menial jobs. They say we are worthless."

The cloud shifted again, and Felix slowed as people's eyes dilated and those fists rose into the air. The chorister shouted, spittle flying from his mouth.

"Are you worthless?" he asked.

"No!" the audience shouted.

"Are you worthless!?"

"NO!"

"And we shall show them that!" The chorister’s last words were nearly drowned out by a cacophonous outcry. The anger was nearly palpable, as cloying as the body heat of all these people driven to desperation. Felix couldn't help but feel a measure of sympathy for them all; living without strength in this world was unfathomable. To live your life without any sort of control over your own fate? To live in fear of monsters, Human or otherwise? Unacceptable.

And they seemed to be right: the only way out for the vast majority of them was to join the Guild or maybe the Inquisition. Join up, serve the cause, fight and get stronger–but not too strong. Felix began to see the Iron Essence Draughts in a new light; limiters on the strength of the Guild's rank and file, ensuring they only Temper sub-standard bodies.

Can't rise up if your foundation is unsteady. Shit.

Were it not for the sickening manipulation at work, Felix might have found sympathy for the choristers as well. Yet the brown-robed man's power hovered about them still, pushing and prodding at their emotions as his speech went on. Felix had to push himself away from it all, escaping the larger mass of crowd and into the thinner outskirts of the chamber. Here there were fewer people, though all of them were still focused almost entirely on the stage. The chorister had stepped away now, returning to the others. Slowly, Felix could feel that pressure fade away, pulling away from him entirely.

Talk about mob mentality. Felix glanced around him and saw a number of people he recognized from the Dust Quarter, most of whom were still gripped in a righteous fury. Folks he'd seen in passing mostly, though each face twinged his perfect recall. If he tried, he could remember exactly where he met them.

Surprisingly, he saw the weaponsmith Rafny. She had her arms crossed and a powerful frown on her face, clearly not impressed by what just happened. More significantly, the other Haarwatchers around her also looked equally clear-eyed. Among them were a few surprisingly familiar faces, including the Hobgoblin grandmother and her Dwarven friend he'd saved the night the Wretches attacked.

Thank god someone else isn't falling for this. Felix looked over the crowd again. Most of these people are level ten or lower, and I doubt any of them have mental defenses. Pushing on their emotions was probably easy. Why, though? They have a legitimate gripe: the Guild clearly doesn't give a shit about Dusters.

He scanned the crowd again, looking for Caerwin. Where is she? I thought— Evie was standing further to his right. She too was facing the stage, and had her fists waving in the air. Oh no.

"Evie, you okay?" Felix approached cautiously, and at first she didn't even look at him. "Evie?"

The woman's eyes were dilated, and she was sweating heavily. Felix tugged on her arms, tried to make her look at him, everything short of hurting her, but there was no response. On instinct, Felix listened for that strange internal music he'd heard before and perceived a frantic, furious crashing. It was frenetic bordering on discordant, and it drove a spike of worry into his chest.

"Evie, snap out of it!"

Without warning, an ochre hand reached from behind and laid itself on Evie's brow. Felix had no time to react as a humming pulse released at the point of contact. He felt it as if being rebuffed by a small breeze, a harmless shower of sparks that gusted against his face and neck. Wordlessly, Felix watched as pieces of that coercive cloud structure drifted away from her, chased like grease from soap. Despite his Manasight, he hadn't even noticed there were any lingering traces.

Like a puppet with her strings cut, Evie collapsed. Felix caught her even as those same ochre hands helped steady the fighter back on her feet. Distantly, Felix could hear her internal harmonics settle into a calmer series of chords before they faded from his Perception entirely.

"Yyer-yyero's ass, what happened?" Evie wobbled but kept on her own two feet. "I feel like Rory's Gauntlet just ran me over."

Felix felt a smile tug at his lips as he turned to the person who had helped them. "Thank you for… whatever you did, it was—"

He blinked in shock, then followed that up with a helping of trepidation. Standing before them was Zara Cyrene, owner of the Elder Crown bookstore. She was wearing robes that draped across her shoulders and down to her knees, displaying a set of iron greaves and leather sandals. Unlike those on stage, her robes were dyed completely black.

"Hello again, Felix."

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

A soft but strident note filled the air. Almost unwillingly, Felix’s attention pulled away from the Naiad before him. He turned toward the stage, where a beautiful woman wearing gray robes stepped up. Unlike the rather plain set of the chorister of Yyero, hers were embroidered with silver designs along the collar and hem, forming complicated knotwork constructions. Felix recognized her from Caerwin's shop, and behind her, he could spot that older, bearded man as well. He was dressed in blue robes and was directing a cross look at the bald chorister in brown.

They were all priests at her shop, that day? Felix frowned through the sweetening chords. Then the watcher on the roof...another chorister?

Felix's Voracious Eye pulled up her name and level, but a powerful resistance blocked him from seeing the rest as anything but question marks. It didn't even denote her obvious affiliations, unlike the Acolytes he'd Eyed. She was either a much higher level or had something blocking him.

Name: Aslei Tunn

Level: 42

The song continued despite his investigations, a series of vocalizations that lilted softly through the air. Felix could even hear a strange reverb, an echo throughout the chamber as hearts calmed after their previous rage. That same internal harmonization, that secret music, he was hearing traces of it from everyone around him. Somehow, the chorister was attempting to settle things down with some sort of song magic.

Song magic. Sounds like a new age album.

"You feel it too, Felix? The Choristry of Siva, goddess of luck, healing, and plenty. It's an alluring tune." He turned to see Zara's bright blue eyes fixed on him. She was a little shorter than Felix, an inch or two taller than Evie herself. "Your Affinity is stronger than I suspected."

"Is that what it is?" Felix pursed his lips and looked back over the crowd, now with heads bowed in prayer. "Why are they doing this? This and whatever the hell that brown-robed guy did is straight up manipulation."

"Ah, so you sense that as well. I'm impressed." Zara grinned, baring her sharp, triangular teeth. "Few unlock their Affinity, let alone improve it at such a young age."

"Affinity? Is that one of those harmony whatsits?" Evie looked between the two of them with a frown. She seemed almost completely recovered. "Did someone use a Skill on me? How come I don't have any Status Condition notifications?"

"You won't. The choristers are quite skilled at what they do, though Yyero's follower is more of a...blunt instrument. Aslei has a far lighter touch."

She was right. Felix's Bastion was clearly blocking the chorister's Skill from affecting him, but he could feel a faint pressure around him, moving through the space as if it was seeking people out. The brown-robed chorister, the follower of Yyero apparently, had used his Skill, and it appeared as a nearly invisible cloud that sparked against those it contacted. This woman's power was truly invisible, and only Felix's strange combination of Skills and Harmonic Stats could pick out the edges of it. He could even sense that it was reaching into Evie, just as he could sense when Zara reached out and banished it from around them.

Zara laughed at Felix's look. "You expect me to tolerate their games?"

"I'm just surprised at all of this," Felix said cautiously. "I was invited here to meet with… a friend. She neglected to mention this was going to be a religious rally."

"Religion and politics tend to infect all things, I'm afraid." Zara's laugh lines quirked as her brows drew down; an expression of resigned disdain. "Even when people should know better."

The Chorister of Siva ended her lilting hymn, and much of the crowd looked up in quiet joy. She tilted her face upward—her face marked with five dark dots under her eyes while twin lines stretched down from them to her jawline—and smiled gently. "Be welcome, my friends and fellow Haarwatchers. Be welcome under the gaze of the true gods."

There was a suseration among the crowd, as if people were trying to cheer but were too relaxed to do it.

Or doped up, Felix thought with a frown.

"Today, we have gathered to celebrate our oneness with each other, with the ancient gods of our ancestors who still live on. We have also gathered to protest the dire treatment we have all labored under, from the Guild and now the Inquisition.

"Too long we have been forced to give up our choice, to surrender ourselves to the blinding light of the Pathless, and in so doing ruin our chances at strength and success."

Murmurs grew as her touch lightened, and people began to regain their senses.

"You all deserve the power the System offers, the power the gods once guided us toward. In Ages past, the sentient Races were giants upon the Continent, contending with the greatest of threats and walking down the pure Path. We seek that again. And it starts with you."

Aslei pointed out at the audience, her voice never rising into a shout or cry, but still echoing across the vaulted chamber. Felix could feel a rising thrumming from the gathered folks, a sympathetic hum with the chorister's simple words.

Is another Skill being used? Felix glanced at Zara, who had pursed her lips.

"Just watch," she mouthed.

"We must show them the power we hold," Aslei continued. "Beyond the strength of levels and battle. We show them that we are all worthy of respect, of choice, and of freedom.

"The monsters in the Foglands grow stronger as the Mana flows ever more potent. We do not know why, and that is because we have lost our way. Turned aside from the true Path, having broken it apart with lies and conflict. The Inquisition and Hierophant keep us weak, all so they can stand above us.

"But we few have persevered, despite the strong-arm tactics of the redcloaks and the spineless inaction of the Guild. You faithful few are our core, our feet on the ground of this great city. Without you, without the solidarity of our people, this will not, cannot work.

"We hold the faith, and we will be victorious."

The crowd exploded into a riotous cheer. Far from the violent eruption of before, this felt like the earned adulation of an experienced politician or beloved figure. It felt… pure, almost, and Felix was briefly tempted to lower his walls and just taste that experience. Just for a moment.

"Don't."

An ochre hand on his shoulder brought him back to his senses, and when a puff of silver something erupted from his mouth, Felix almost growled in anger. Pit screeched in tandem, and the construct flickered and was torn to pieces.

"Interesting," Zara observed. Felix glanced at her, transferring his ire toward the Naiad.

"What is all this?" he snapped, gesturing to the entire chamber.

"Rebellion, Felix. They're talking of rebellion." Zara looked at them both calmly as the people around them cheered louder.

Evie goggled at her. "What? How? They'd be crushed."

Zara shrugged, her sharp teeth bared in a silent snarl. "That's what I keep telling them. But they drive on, regardless."

"What's your part in this?" Evie asked. "Why would they trust the former Archivist for the guild they hate?"

Felix looked away from the silver-robed chorister at that, interested in the answer. The Naiad went quiet.

"And what, exactly, do you want with us, Zara?" Evie asked, looking between the two of them. "Thanks for the, uh, help. But like he said, we came here lookin' for someone else."

"Oh I'm aware, Miss Aren," Zara flashed her shark teeth at her, and Evie took a half-step backward. It wasn't just the expression, as even Felix felt the swell of pressure from the ex-Archivist, a taste of what he'd sensed when they first met. "I was the one who invited him, after all."

"What?" Felix blinked. "We haven't spoken—"

"Been a few days, mhmm," she nodded. Her smile widened and her voice altered, becoming older, tone flatter. For a moment, a half-second, her face paled and shifted. Gone in a flash of shadow. "How's the Wild Song been treating your friend?"

Possibilities raced through Felix's head like shuffling cards, but the obvious one rose swiftly to the top. Felix narrowed his eyes, flaring his Manasight and all of the senses he had. He detected nothing, however.

"Caerwin?"

Zara smirked. "I knew you were a bright boy, Felix. Plain awful at organizing books, though. You ruined a perfectly good system, you know."

Felix shared a confused look with Evie. "How—why—?"

"I should think you, of all people, would appreciate the need for Masks," Zara said with a twinkle in her eyes. Felix didn't even rise to the bait, instead thinking on his interactions with both shopkeepers. How could he have missed this? Felix's thoughts touched on Pit's enchanted stone before he made the connection.

"The Wild Song, huh? Those bracers aren't for Strength enhancement, are they?" Felix nodded at the Naiad's forearms, which were covered in dark leather that had been inscribed with various sigils. Bracers that Caerwin had also sported.

Zara just grinned.

"What's with the robes?" Evie asked, clearly annoyed that she didn't understand their conversation. "Bold of you to playdress as a chorister, considerin' the company."

Zara tilted her head in the slightest of bows. "Zara has long sung the Choristry of Avet, though Caerwin has never pledged herself to any cause."

Felix furrowed his brow. Had he been wrong? "But you're the same person… aren't you?"

"Masks are funny, Felix. We wear them, but they also wear us." Zara's eyes flickered out toward the crowd. "We haven't much time, I imagine. Come. We must speak in private."

She reached out for their hands, but Evie snatched hers away. Zara tutted. "Don't be like that, Aren. The god of secrets and fire isn't going to steal your soul. At least not through me."

"That's exactly what He'd say, though," Evie muttered. "But don't you forget that He's also the god of change. Violent change. After what we've heard here, I don't know that we should be talkin' to you at all."

Zara tilted her head, conceding the point. "True enough. I make no claim on the virtue of the gods, I merely share their chorus."

She gestured away from the crowd. "Do you wish to follow?"

Again, Felix and Evie shared a long look. "You trust her, Felix?"

"I uh—" Felix found himself reaching out for that connection again, his Affinity, and in a way he still didn't consciously understand, he listened. The world narrowed until only himself and Zara existed, until he could hear the thud of his own heartbeat and the rising tempo of the Naiad’s inner music. It felt… agitated, but confident. He could sense a truthfulness, somehow, but it was coupled with a sense of urgency that sent secondhand chords of panic back into his own chest. Felix broke off the contact with a gasp, and the world around them returned.

Zara blinked, very clearly shocked by what had just happened, though she regained her composure quickly. Felix took a steadying breath and nodded. "I think I do. For now."

"Good enough for me, I guess." Evie tilted her chin at the Naiad. "Let's go."

"Wonderful."

The three of them stepped away from the crowd, moving into the farther ends of the chamber, where the vaulted ceilings came down onto a series of brickwork pillars. Perhaps fifty feet away, an alcove was set behind yet another pointed trefoil arch. Felix couldn't detect anyone over here, though he wasn't sure; that faint stench seemed to stick to his physical senses in a distracting way.

As they drew close to the arch, two birds fluttered down from above. They landed on her shoulders easily, nestling into the folds of her dark robe. Felix hadn't sensed them at all, though that might have been because of their size rather than the general miasma in the air. They were quite small, a little brown and white owl the size of a teacup and a brightly colored kingfisher that was slightly larger.

Pit chirruped brightly in his head, and the two birds eyed him with interest. The tenku was always looking to make friends or fight monsters. Felix was happy he'd settled on friends for now. The fighting might have to come later.

They stepped into a small open room. Bounded only by the archway in front, it was open to the vaulted ceiling; likely it was some sort of supply closet back when this all was an operational sewer system. Now, there was only a round wooden table and five simple stools. It made Felix wonder how long the choristers had been hiding down here. Did they live there? Or just worship?

"My reasons for asking you down here were threefold, Felix Nevarre." Zara turned to address them once they'd cleared the arch. She led them to sit at the table. "The first was to give you… perspective. I would have you know the lay of the land in Haarwatch before we continue. As well as the roles I play."

"I'm gonna have to assume you mean the little rebellion out there, yeah?" Zara nodded, and Felix sighed. "Okay. That's not something I want to get involved with. I'm flying by the seat of my pants here. Signing up for a theological revolution isn't my thing."

"Seat of your pants?" Evie said with a grin. "I'm with him on that. I hold the old faith, but I'm not about to risk my neck on whatever fool thing these trumped-up peacocks have planned."

"A reasonable position to hold," Zara agreed. "I too believe it is far too late to take the sort of actions they desire. They seek a peaceful resolution, a show of economic and political force by those who keep this city running. The time for such actions has unfortunately passed, and newer, more dire solutions must present themselves."

"More dire solutions?" Felix asked. "You mean more violent."

Zara tilted her head again. "If it must be so. Of them all, the Chorister of Yyero has the closest angle on it, if I'm to be honest. The others, however, do not listen well to a Chorister of the trickster god known for inciting incendiary change. They listen to Caerwin well enough, but she is only one voice."

"Ok, that's gettin' real confusin'," Evie complained. "You're both, right? Caerwin and Zara. Why do you talk about her like she's not you?"

"Nature of the craft, Aren." Zara bit her lips for a brief second, and her sharp teeth drew blood. "I'll explain in better detail if you accept my offer, Felix."

Felix nodded slowly. "Alright. Then what's the second reason?"

"The second is that I am in need of apprentices. I seek to pass on what I know, what few in the Heirocracy know." Zara looked Felix in the eye.

"Chanter magic," he said.

"Just so," Zara smiled. "Those who understand the harmonics of the universe are few and far between. You fell into my lap, Felix, just as I was searching for those with the talents to grasp the truths I bear. That is not coincidence. That is providence."

Felix grimaced. "Predestination is not my favorite concept. I'm not here because someone sent me. I'm—"

Felix swallowed his words, and he felt Evie tense next to him. "I'm here for my own reasons," he finished.

"All that I know is that you came to me when you were most needed." Zara held her hands out, placatingly. "Until last week, I had found only one other who could help me. And that has been—well. A challenge."

"Really? Someone else?" Felix was intrigued. "Who?"

"You'll meet them soon, if all things go right," Zara promised. "The third reason is the most important. Far more than my need for an inheritor. Something beyond the unrest the choristers are trying to capitalize upon. Have you sensed it?"

Felix and Evie frowned in tandem, but then the chain-fighter snorted. "Lady, I've been hiding from the Guild and the redcloaks for weeks now. That's plenty of problems for me."

Zara smiled with her shark teeth. "Fair enough."

She looked to him. "Felix? Do you—"

"NO!"

The three of them spun toward the sound, and Felix quickly oriented on the stage. They still had a clear line of sight through the archway. The twins in blue had attempted to walk up next, but a woman in dark red robes stumbled to the stage, her eyes wild. Her robes were torn and stained, as if she had slept in them for years. Her pale-brown hair was tangled, half of it matted and the other half trying to escape whatever clips or ties she was using.

"The Chorister of Vellus," Zara said with pity in her voice. "The poor thing."

Without warning, Felix's sight was subsumed by a vision of that terrible mountain. A cataclysmic storm tore across it, an eternal torment that sent blood-curdling screams crawling through his veins. The sudden memory was so visceral that Felix shoved the tips of his fingers straight through the wooden table top.

"Blood and ashes, Felix!" Evie said, startled by the loud crack from the table.

"Ah, shit. Sorry." The vision settled back into his Mind, and Felix gave an embarrassed glance at the others. "Um, what's that about?"

"You're not a follower of any gods, are you Felix?" Zara asked, her eyes curiously flicking between his fingers and his face.

"Ah, no," Felix admitted.

Zara sighed lightly. "The Pathless claims the gods died, having lost their way beyond the heavens. But, like the chorister said, the gods are not dead. They are slumbering, far away. Vellus, however… Vellus was Lost."

"Lost? Like how the Nym are a Lost Race?" Felix asked.

"The Nym? Yes, exactly like that. Records of the Ages past are moth-eaten at best, all first-hand accounts on the subject either destroyed or wiped clean in much the same way as the Nym. We don't know why or how, but the Ruin came for Vellus." Zara pointed at the stage, visible through the archway. "Those who still venerate Her always end up mad."

"Then why would anyone?" Evie said, aghast.

That's awful, Felix agreed, now closely watching as the red-robed woman fought against the blue's restraints. He was reminded of Old Mungle, the Sage of Vellus, a madman trapped in the Void. He, too, had the same timeworn affliction. The other choristers tried in vain to hold her back, but somehow the Chorister of Vellus shook them off and stepped toward the edge.

He wanted to ask Zara about her third reason, but Felix could suddenly feel a strange crackle in the air. A tension that lifted the hair at the back of his neck. Nothing like how the others had affected the chamber. What is this?

Zara sat up straighter, her blue eyes narrowing. Felix could sense Evie grip her chain harder, and he knew she was already looking for the exits. The chorister began to speak.

"Yyero's chosen speaks of a dire darkness. Of none to help. Of mortality. He is right."

The woman's voice was reedy and thin, all but trembling under the weight of the audience's regard. She spoke as if she couldn't help herself, as if each word pained her. "When death dropped from the skies, no mortal hand reached out to help us. To help you. But those in the Dust, they saw something else that day, didn't they?"

The quiet was heavy, thick with… something Felix couldn't identify. The chorister clenched her hands before her, then clapped them together, sending the sharp sound blasting into the crowd.

"Like lightning they came! The one who delivered the Dust from the predation of monstrous fate! Who was it? Who, on that day, dared defy the Guild? Defied the Inquisition itself?"

Whispers swept through the chamber like a breeze before a storm. Hands and head flapped like leaves, twisting and nodding and gesturing. Felix felt his gut sink even as his face began to heat up in embarrassment.

"The Blue-Eyed Fiend!" The chorister's voice cracked like a thunderbolt, stilling the whispers in an instant. "No mere mortal, but an avatar! A vessel of the great gods! A champion sent from the slumbering ones to protect their chosen people!"

Even from this distance, Felix could see the white all around the chorister's eyes. She panted with heavy breaths. "A mighty storm followed his appearance for days, proof of his provenance! Wings of darkest night! A voice of thunder! Eyes of midnight flame!"

Each shout sent fissures through the crowd, near visible tremors that sent the audience trembling. Felix could see they were getting worked up, and several of the Dusters (even Rafny and her coterie) had their fists upraised and were cheering.

"We ask for relief from the Inquisition, Blue-Eyed Fiend! We call on you! We beseech you! Aid us, defier!"

The chorister's voice had turned rough and ragged by the end, but the crowd went wild. That crackling in the air discharged into a jagged cry, one that was soon taken up by many. It was a wild, inchoate ululation; a stoked desperation that sent chills down Felix's back to hear.

A squawk from Zara's shoulder jolted Felix back from the mortified silence he'd fallen into. He looked at the Naiad's odd pets, and their gaze was fixed on the archway. A moment later, a young boy stepped into the alcove. He was perhaps fifteen years old and wore a simple but clean tunic and shorts, along with a set of strappy sandals.

"Uh, ma'am?" he asked, voice shaking. The boy glanced back at the uproar of the crowd with wide eyes.

"Ah, yes. Come in, boy."

He stepped further in and made a beckoning gesture behind him. A woman followed, cloaked in black. Something ineffable had changed about her, but Felix couldn't have mistaken that dusky skin and dark hair. Her own eyes widened in surprise as she turned the corner.

"Evie! Felix!"

Chairs scooted back as they both stood, and Evie closed the distance in moments. She fairly tackled the heiress in a hug, hard enough that Felix hoped Vess was wearing armor.

"Fate beckons! The storm calls!" the chorister shouted from beyond. "Vellus draws all in her tireless tides!"

Then the wall exploded.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

HOURS EARLIER:

After taking the contract from DuFont, Ilia spent the next few days carefully tailing the brat. It was just as boring as she had feared. The twist did nothing but train her Skills and Body, but not even in interesting ways. She'd push herself in fighting clay golems or her dour minder, a Bronze Rank Guilder Ilia didn't recognize. Either way, the girl seemed to be going through the motions more than anything else. The Sworn sensed a strong waft of ennui and frustration.

Had she bottlenecked? That would explain her moods and the way she savaged those golems with her training spear. But no, Ilia didn't think that was the issue. She sighed and continued observing.

It had been difficult establishing contact with the heiress, at least at first. Her movements were restricted by her ultimate guardian, the stone-faced Hand of the Duke. Ilia had not had the misfortune of running into him yet, a fact she considered extremely lucky. The controlling bodyguard kept Vessilia either training at the Inner Ward or in her obscenely expansive chambers.

Unfortunately, at the outset, she couldn't get too close to either of those places. Guilder wards kept out non-guilders; at least physically. Those damned medallions they all wore were keyed to the wards and couldn't be stolen.

Thankfully, the halls of the Eyrie were not so tightly controlled. Guests and dignitaries were expected in the halls, those few who deigned to come this far west. Moreover, Ilia had her Unmoored Spirit, one of two Epic Skills she'd received as recompense for the disaster in the Foglands. At low levels, it proved itself formidable, allowing her Perception to extend twice as far from her physical form as usual.

Once she'd hit Apprentice Tier with it, the Skill had fundamentally changed. Now she could attach two of her senses to a target and simply follow it around for a time. It left her actual body without sight and hearing, but the Sworn had taught her to use all of her senses. Ilia was more than capable of fighting while blind and deaf. Though, if an opponent could find her while her Shroud was active, they were likely to be a great deal more trouble than she could handle.

Regardless, she had attached her Sight to the girl during one of the moments she ventured out of her apartments. Vessilia would often tour the Eyrie, sometimes twice a day, walking a few halls and making appreciative noises at various works of art. It was all very… pedestrian of her, and she'd often speak kindly to the servants as they passed or cleaned the art in question.

What a strange noble, Ilia had thought, not for the first time.

Disguising herself as a servant was child's play to the Sworn, literally in fact. The Esseri would often assign them roles among the Housefolk and set before them a simple task, such as touching a target with her naked blade in a crowded room. The first child to complete the task would win. The rest suffered… correction.

Ilia turned from that memory. She had not always won, after all.

All it took was a touch for Ilia's Skill to attach to the heiress' Spirit. And what a strong Spirit it was! Ilia was quietly astonished, having previously taken the measure of the girl. The heiress had transformed herself, somehow, pushing her Spirit in ways Ilia couldn't quite track, but could definitely sense. Very impressive for a Tin Rank, though Ilia suspected she'd be raised to Iron in short order.

That had taken all of a day, and since then, it was train, train, train, punctuated by bouts of conversation with the servants, the only other folk who wandered this high in the Eyrie. At least, the only ones who weren't actively avoiding her. Ilia had pieced together that the mess of the Foglands and resulting tribunal had brought the ire of the Duke onto their heads; now the Guilders were making a point of leaving her alone while providing her with every comfort she could desire.

Spineless.

Ilia had dared to hope the heiress was divulging important secrets to the servants, but those dreams were dashed quickly. Instead they spoke of their lives, their homes, their families. Vessilia was compassionate and caring, honestly appearing as if she cared about every little detail the servants spat out. The Sworn found it mind-numbingly boring and had to assume the girl was leveling a Skill of some sort. No one could care that much about a bunch of random people, let alone the Untempered, without an ulterior motive.

Turned out, she was half right.

On the third morning of her contract, Ilia watched as the heiress once again engaged in a familiar conversation with a maid carrying a stack of linens. A bit into their conversation, the girl had popped her head to the side and smiled. In that instant, Ilia knew she'd been right about the Skill; the girl had just leveled it up. It was likely some sort of social ability which were notoriously difficult to level.

Ilia's lips stretched into a smile about a half mile away. She'd stashed herself in the rafters of the Pathless' cathedral, the closest and tallest building in the immediate area. At this distance, the Sworn wouldn't be able to keep up her Unmoored Spirit for much longer, but she felt immensely satisfied at finding a reason for the heiress' constant, saccharine compassion.

It's all about Skill grinding, she sneered. While she levels, she makes everyone think she's a kind-hearted soul only concerned with the welfare of those around her. Pfah! I'd be almost impressed at the deception were it not so… banal.

She had been hoping for some dark secret or purpose, something to mar the image of the perfect duchess-in-training. Ilia wasn't sure what irked her so about the idiot girl, but—no. She did know. Vessilia Dayne had everything handed to her on a silver platter, from her training resources to her lodging. She knew nothing of privation, of surviving in the cold winter and the scorching summer, fighting off monsters just to live another few hours. It was so easy, the twist was bored with it all!

It was enough to ignite a burning rage in the Sworn's heart, though she quashed it with an application of her considerable Will. As one of the Sworn, she did not let her emotions rule her. She was cold. She was ice.

Then another servant came along, a boy she hadn't seen before. Which was strange. Ilia had an excellent eye for faces, and the servants in the upper levels of the Eyrie rarely changed. Regardless, this strange new servant, a courier it seemed, approached the heiress with all the confidence of either a friend or an assassin.

Hm, I'm hoping for assassin. That'd be fun.

With a look, the boy easily drew her away from the linen maid. Almost like a clandestine lover, were the boy not so young. He had to be no more than thirteen years old. Intrigued, Ilia pushed her Unmoored Spirit closer to them, tight enough to hear their words.

"...wants to meet with you," the boy was saying.

"What? Really?" The heiress gasped, excited for the first time since Ilia had started watching her. "When? Where?"

"Tonight. Dusk. We go to the Crafter's Quarter, corner of—bbler—wea—ay—"

With a dizzying snap, the Sworn's Skill lost cohesion and ran out of time. Ilia found herself back in the cathedral, sitting cross-legged atop a dusty plank floor.

No!

She flared the Skill again, dredging up her mental reserves. Even though it was an easy activation, the mental toll the Skill took was considerable. By the time the Sworn returned her sight and hearing to the scene, the heiress was walking away from the courier, an excited grin on her face.

Unmoored Spirit is level 32!

Twin's teeth! Damnable girl! If that idiot weren't so boring, I'd have kept a better eye on my Skill! Now she'd have to follow the two-faced fool around for another half-day.

Tonight better prove interesting.

* * *

"Come, your Grace," said Mettias, holding out his slender hand. "It's just a little further."

Vess hesitated before she took the boy's hand and climbed up onto the ledge. The boy had proven himself amazingly resourceful this evening, far more than Vess had ever considered. He didn't seem more than fifteen, perhaps younger due to his slender frame, and it was remarkable that he'd even set up this meeting.

Vess had started to suspect things weren't as they seemed with the boy. She had met him months ago during her usual foray into the Guild halls, looking to level up her Oratory Skill. It was abysmally difficult to do so, often requiring her to talk at length about anything in order to advance.

To her great annoyance, it did not increase in proficiency by actually conversing, more by proclamation and expounding. That was a great shame, as the servants had such fascinating lives and stories to tell. After a while, Vess gave up on actively training the Skill and simply used "social training" as an excuse to give herself a chance to talk candidly with the servants. Occasionally, she saw some gains, like today, but it was incidental.

It was on one such foray that she ran into a courier who was transporting notes between Silver Ranks in the Eyrie. He was a clever boy, quite funny, too, and had the most interesting stories. The most fascinating of which were about strange magics and duplicitous masters, both topics that resonated with her. Magic had always been a fascination when she was younger, set aside for the clearer path of the Dragoon once she'd been tall enough to handle a spear. And the boy's tales, when she could eke one out of him, often depicted young heroes besting their dark masters with cleverness and Mana Skills.

It was an escape she desperately needed, if only for a few minutes. As she had no way to contact her friends, the rest of her life had become dedicated to training. While the thought of growing stronger sustained her, kept her moving forward, the darkness and near certainty of corruption among the Elders had been driving a wedge into her mind. She had long decided to ferret out the Elders' secrets, but had no clue how to go about it. When Mettias had suggested magical crafts, she had latched onto the concept like a drowning man would a rope.

And it had worked! The scripts-ciphers had been tremendously successful, cutting through the Guild wards without issue. Wherever the boy had gotten them, they were a powerful tool. And she wanted more. It was just what she needed to crack the shell around the Guild's dark secrets.

Vess was unsure how she would make it out of the Eyrie. All of her previous attempts had failed. Too many wards, too many Guilder patrols. Not to mention the Hand. He lurked about her apartments like an angular ghost, moving from room to room, always doing something but never really speaking with her. For all that he was ten or so years her senior, Darius Reed had practically grown up in the same house as Vess, but she knew very little about him as a person. Only his ability in combat, and then only in generalities, just that he was quite strong. And entirely too observant.

Then the Hand received an urgent missive from the Elder Council, delivered directly to their door by a very familiar face. At first, the heiress thought Mettias was attempting to fool the Hand and cursed the boy for recklessness. But then she saw the letter itself. Vess had not been able to ascertain the reason behind the summons, but it had Elder Fairbanks' true seal upon it. Based on how the Hand reacted, it seemed important, too.

Somehow, Mettias had been able to deliver a true summons to her guardian at just the right moment. Vess was suspicious.

Before he left, the Hand had put Liandra in her apartments again, instructing the heiress to not stray out of sight of the Bronze Guilder. Vess simply retired early and locked her doors. An open window and Wall Run (now level 15) had done the rest.

Slipping from the Eyrie had proven near impossible in the past, but Mettias had given her a servant's tabard and led her along passages not normally traversed by Guilders and especially not visiting nobility. Doors were left open, and the guards at the gate were absent. It was as if Vess was meant to leave this night.

Or something else was going on.

They had come to the Crafters’ Quarter quickly enough. Mettias led them with the confidence of someone who had traversed the city a thousand times, and Vessilia clung to the boy's competence. She was more than comfortable facing down horrors in the wilds, but the wild bacchanalia of the Crafters’ Quarter after dark was something else entirely. The servant had deftly led them, the crowds often paying neither of them any mind in a way that Vess was increasingly sure was Skill-related.

Nearly a glass later, they came to the corner of Cobbler and Weaver's Way and navigated into a passage between buildings. An elaborate wrought iron gate stood over the mouth of a wide archway composed of small bricks. It was good that Mettias knew where to find it, because it was all but invisible to Vess' senses. Even when they passed through the gate, she still had trouble picking it out from the surroundings.

Magic, she thought with a thrill of wonder. So different than the Mana Skills my father's people use. This feels… it is barely noticeable.

They descended below the streets, following an unmarked path into the elaborate sewer system beneath Haarwatch. Vess was only tangentially aware of its existence; it was a feature of most cities, though Haarwatch's was not well maintained. Walls were crumbling and sagging while water and filth built up around clogs and breakages. The smell was unpleasant, to say the least, and Mettias seemed to agree. He hurried along their path, taking turns as rapidly as his little feet could move.

He led them onto a narrow ledge and around some sort of cistern, easy enough for Vess and her Tempered Body, but quite the balancing act for someone without the proper advancement. Interestingly enough, Mettias negotiated the ledge without effort, moving even faster than the heiress. Vess noted it and kept moving, making sure to keep her suspicions off her face. It was easy after countless years of balls and social functions back home, nearly second nature.

Just beyond the cistern was a flat wall, but with a gesture and pull, Mettias activated a hidden catch. A section of brickwork swung inward.

A door, Vess smiled. A secret door.

They stepped over the threshold, and the door closed neatly behind them. A short, dark hallway greeted them, but beyond a pointed trefoil archway warm lights burned bright. On the other side, Vess beheld a cavernous chamber. The quietude of the path they had traversed had been replaced by a cacophony of religious zeal. A stage on the far end supported a woman in a dark red robe, currently shouting something. A large crowd dominated the space, filled with the coarse features of laborers and other menial workers.

All Untempered, judging by their Bodies. Those who pushed beyond Apprentice Tier found themselves more youthful and vital for far longer, but it was clear that most present had not. She watched as the robed woman, clearly a chorister of all things, spoke with further vehemence. What is this?

"This way, your Grace," Mettias said, leading her along the outskirts of the chamber, toward an alcove in the rear. As they drew closer, the red-robed chorister shouted about someone called the Blue-Eyed Fiend.

Someone defied the Guild? And the Inquisition? How much had she missed, locked away in her tower?

There was a sharp squawk, and Mettias hesitated in the archway. He looked entirely too young as his voice shook.

"Uh, ma'am?" He glanced back at the uproar of the crowd with wide eyes, and Vess felt a twinge of sympathy before her suspicions began solidifying.

It's an act, Vess swallowed. What have I walked into?

"Ah, yes. Come in, boy." The voice was smooth as silk, older and feminine, but strong. Powerful. It reminded Vess of her mother, in a way. Mettias moved forward and gestured for her to follow. Cautiously, ready to summon her spear to hand, Vess walked through the archway.

Within was a table and three people. At one end was a Naiad woman in black chorister robes. Two birds sat on her shoulders, strangely enough, and she fixed Vess with a pleased smile. Opposite her, however, was a surprise.

"Evie! Felix!"

Moving at a speed Vess could barely see, Evie tackled her in a hug. The heiress felt her ribs creak with the girl's strength, but she squeezed just as hard. A bubbling laugh worked its way up from her belly, threatening to burst from her chest if only Evie would loosen her grip. Her eyes teared up, blurring the form of Felix as he regarded her from across the room. He, too, had stood up, though he hadn't rushed to hug her or anything.

Not that I would mind that, she admitted with a blush. He was as broad-shouldered as ever, but seemed to fill out his much-nicer clothes even more. Then his sharp smile turned into a frown as the red chorister shouted something else.

*KATHOOM!*

The room was rocked, each of them tossed around as if the earth itself tried to buck them off. Vess stumbled from Evie's grip, but kept her feet, as did the rest of them. Mettias, however, looked shaken.

"What have you done?" The Naiad pointed at the courier with an ochre finger. "Did they follow you?"

"No! I swear it!" Mettias' voice was high and sharp, the epitome of panic.

Vess maneuvered toward the archway and peered out. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Felix do the same. The chamber was filled with dust and debris and much of the crowd was struggling back to their feet. The explosion seemed to have originated along the wall, near where Vess and Mettias had entered. A cloud of smoke hung in the air, thick and obscuring at this distance.

"Run, my friends!" A gentle voice cried out from atop the center stage. A woman in gray chorister robes raised her hand and summoned a trilling spark to spin above her. The silvery wheel of fire shot off toward the far wall. "They have come for us!"

The silvery fire burst against a dome of orange light, the force of their meeting clearing the dust and smoke away in an instant. Beneath that dome were dozens of armored soldiers in bright red cloaks.

"Fuck," whispered Felix.

Someone screamed, and then all hell broke loose. The crowd began to run away from the Inquisition soldiers and toward various exits around the large chamber. Boots marched forward, slowly, their tread loud, the orange dome above maintained as it tanked strike after strike of the choristers' magical bombardment.

"It's like a Roman shield wall, but," Felix gestured. "Magic."

Roman? Is that a Skill?

"What do we do?" Evie asked, and Vess started. She hadn't realized her friend had been leaning over her shoulder. The warrior leaned back and unraveled her spiked chain. It clunked to the ground like a heavy, deadly snake. "Do we fight?"

"What? Of course not! We run!" Mettias, whatever his skillset, was still a child. "Come, your Grace! We must get you out of here!"

"The child is right," said the Naiad. She looked imperiously over them all, her bright blue eyes far harsher than Felix's. "You all must flee. The Inquisitors must not find you here."

"What about you?" Felix asked, crossing his arms. "You'll get burned just as we will, if you're found here."

A burst of power lit up the chamber outside their alcove, flares of gold and orange as Skills discharged. The shouting grew louder, though it wasn't just manic flight. From somewhere, men and women of various Races had emerged with spell and blades to face the redcloaks.

"I must help the choristers," the Naiad said. "Mettias. Lead them away, head down the northern passageway. Yes?"

The courier nodded, his face growing serious.

"I'll meet with you all when you're clear of here. You know where to bring them, Mettias. Do not fail me." With that, the Naiad ran out of the archway.

"God damn it," Felix cursed in his strange way. He turned toward the rest of them, searching before his eyes alighted on Mettias. "Kid, time to go. Lead the way."

For a moment, Vess could have sworn the courier sneered at Felix before bobbing his head in a bow. "Of course, young master. Follow me!"

The three of them followed after the messenger. Their side of the chamber was a mess of rocky debris and a few unfortunate people who had fallen down or been trampled by the crowd. Felix hesitated as they ran past a number of people, all of whom were no longer moving. With a gentle push, Vess urged him onward. He flashed her a pained look before taking off.

Despite weaving through the crowd, they made it across the chamber fast. Mettias led them toward an unassuming section of brick wall that reminded Vess of where they had come in. The Untempered laborers all pushed and jostled against one another, all of them funneling into the diffuse side passages further onward. Screams and the clash of steel on steel filled the air, while the flash and hiss of activated Skills underlaid it all.

"Why aren't we following them?" Evie yelled over the din, gesturing toward the Untempered masses.

"You wanna get caught?" Mettias growled. Wait, growled? "You think the redcloaks just happened to find us here? Who do ya think is waiting outside those exits?"

Vess' eyes widened as folks streamed past them, all running headlong toward their doom.

"We're just gonna let them run into the Inquisition's hands, then?" Felix asked. Mettias was ahead of him and pushing across the traffic flow toward the wall. He glanced back at the young man with an exasperated look.

"You wanna fight a whole phalanx of Inquisitors, be my guest, stranger," the courier scoffed. "Me? I'm gettin' the blazes out of here."

Another explosion rocked the room, followed by a bloom of vibrant orange and red. The air was growing hot, and smoke began to fill up the chamber faster than ever. People all around them started coughing and choking as the air was superheated.

"Run, heretics!"

Vess turned to see several redcloaks had broken through the warrior's line, but they hung back, taking potshots with their Mana Skills, all of which were fire-based. Sparkbolts were common, though a few of the larger strikes she was not as familiar with; none of them, however, were striking the fleeing Haarwatchers. They were hitting the ground or above them. They were being herded.

A particularly large blast engulfed the wall ahead of them, coating it in a wash of yellow flame. The substance of the Skill clung to the wall as if it were a sticky paste, and it burned hot. Evie cursed and Felix took a step back, worry in his eyes.

"Yyero's ass!" Mettias cursed, his voice sounding rougher and deeper as he coughed. The smoke was pouring through the room now. "I can't get it open!"

"Stand back," Felix said. He still looked worried, but his brow was furrowed as he reached both of his hands forward. A flare of dusty light flickered across his hands and arms, barely visible to her Elemental Eye. Then he thrust his arms outward.

The wall ahead of them turned liquid, and with a violent gesture from Felix, began to open up. Immediately, air rushed into the chamber, and the fires all around them flared into new, explosive life.

"AHHHHGGGG!!!" Felix screamed as the immolating heat engulfed them for the briefest of moments, but the fire ahead of them began to dwindle immediately. Vess blinked in surprise as the brick wall had started folding over itself, extinguishing the flames as it did so.

"Go!" he gasped.

All of them leaped forward through the hole, Vess included. The moment she landed on a blessedly cool walkway above clear, running water, she turned back. Felix struggled forward, though he didn't look injured. A deep voice shouted from behind him.

"Get him! Don't let them escape!"

With a final scream, Felix threw himself forward through the hole. He landed in the shallow water with a cry, before turning back and throwing his hands together again. The wall closed back up nearly instantly, stone flowing until it hardened into a new, altogether rougher surface.

Then the wall shook with a bang, and stone chips flew.

"We have to keep running!" Mettias shouted, taking off down the pathway. "Get up if you want to live!"

Vess watched in disbelief as the courier disappeared into the dim gloom, while Evie hopped down and helped Felix to his feet. The young man was soaking wet, but looked in less pain than before. "You okay, Felix? This water is freezing!"

"Much better, yeah," Felix grunted. "The cold is good for my bro-uh—"

He paused as he met Vess' gaze, then looked away. Evie, for some reason, rolled her eyes. He clambered up, dripping wet as the sounds of impact continued. They increased in tempo, and stone chips began to break off in multiple places.

"We gotta move, fast," he said. "I thickened the wall a bit, but it won't last forever."

"Where'd that little shit go? Did he take off?" Evie looked around, noting the dim light of the pathway. There seemed to be a greenish-blue ambient light coming up from the water itself. Vess nodded and all three of them began a slow jog away.

"He—" she shook her head. "I do not think he was what he seemed. It has been a strange night."

"Hah!" Evie barked a laugh. "You, too? Ever since this guy appeared, it's been one strange thing after another."

She smacked Felix on the shoulder, and he pretended not to notice. Instead, Felix was scanning ahead and seemed to be… listening? They picked up their speed, running at full tilt, and before long reached a branching point. Four pipes led off in four different directions. Felix stopped a moment and, yes, Vess was right. He was listening.

Felix snarled to himself. "Lost him. Too many echoes down here. I can't tell where the kid went."

"Neither can I. And I know my Perception isn't close to yours." Evie shook her head. "So, do we just guess?"

Vess looked between the two of them and bit her lip, then flared her own tracking Skill.

Gaze of the Unseen Hunter!

The world changed colors, flipping into a high contrast heat map of their surroundings. It made normal maneuvering a chore, but was worth the disorientation. Clear as day, she could see the crescent shape of a child's heels, bright against the cold stone. She started walking forward.

"Follow me."

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

They ran.

Vess led them, watching the ground like a hawk, but still easily navigating breaks in the path. She was using some sort of tracking Skill, that much was clear to Felix, though he wasn't sure what she was tracking. It wasn't until the second or third intersection that he spotted a suspicious scuff on the ground. He was focused, and it lit up in his sight with a strange glow.

Tracking is level 14!

Tracking is level 15!

After that it was a bit easier, but whoever this kid was, he was either extremely light on his feet or had a nicely leveled Stealth Skill. His Tracking Skill was still Beginner Tier, but Felix's Perception wasn't anything to sneeze at. Yet the clues, despite lighting up, were few and far between. Vess, however, didn't have that problem. She followed his path like a bloodhound, and despite their circumstances, Felix was pleased to have most of their group back together. They only needed Atar now.

Felix smiled to himself. Maybe not Atar.

Resounding blows echoed down the tunnels behind them. Despite the distance, Felix could sense the rock wall he'd created wasn't going to last long. The strikes grew more rapid and furious by the second.

How many are after us?

That fact would greatly determine whether they could fight them off or not. Felix was strong and fast, but he couldn't fight everyone. You don't spend weeks nearly dying, fight after fight, without gaining some appreciation of your limits.

They put on a burst of speed, and Vess furiously scanned the ground. Her Skill was interesting, clearly a higher rarity than his Common ranked Tracking. He could have asked, but—

The sound of a mountain breaking apart rocked the tunnel.

—They didn't have time.

They're coming. Felix couldn't hear anything except their own breathing and the distant rush of water. The sewers were a mix of storm runoff and wastewater. The recent rain had pumped the area full, which explained all the water back where he and Evie had first entered. The rush had once again become a thundering that filled the air, and the three of them burst into a wide-open chamber.

The pathway opened up into a fifteen-foot-wide bridge centered in a huge room perhaps a hundred feet wide. It arched over a deep cistern of some kind. Water cascaded down one side of the chamber, pouring from trefoil openings to their right and dropping nearly two hundred feet to a tumultuous confluence below. The air had grown cold previously and now was filled with a chill mist that swirled over everything, including the pathway. If Felix hadn't had his enchanted boots, he wouldn't trust the footing at all.

"He went this way?" Felix asked, pointed at the far end of the room, perhaps three hundred feet away. The roar of water filled his Perception like static, but his eyes could still make out the discolored rungs of a ladder built into the wall. It led upward, disappearing into the misty gloom above.

"Had to, right?" Evie said, panting slightly. Felix was reminded her Endurance and Strength weren't that high; that run probably knocked a bit out of her Stamina.

"I think so… it is too cold now, though. His tracks have leeched away." Vess groaned in annoyance. She appeared as unhappy as the others that Mettias had run off. Felix watched with Manasight as her eyes swirled with power, alternating orange fire, gold light, and green-gold life Mana. They thrummed to his ear, weaving in a dizzying pattern.

She must be using some sort of… thermal vision? That's extremely cool. Felix found the thrumming pattern of her Mana, although faint, to be almost hypnotic. He idly wondered if he could make his own Mana mimic that effect. His Fire Within provided him with a good amount of internal Mana control, enough to shape out patterns for his various Mana Skills. Maybe I'll ask her later if I can observe the Skill again.

Vess turned and caught Felix staring at her. She blushed, and Felix froze like a deer in headlights.

"What?" she asked.

"Oh uh, the Mana..." Felix coughed. "It's nothing." He looked at the both of them and started moving toward the ladder. "We have to keep moving. The Inquisition can't be far behind."

"We took lotsa turns back there; hopefully they lost us," Evie said, but she followed after.

“Another wall will slow them down here.”. He readied his Stone Shaping, annoyed he hadn’t thought of it sooner… when Felix's instincts screamed at him. He grabbed both women and leaped backward. A second later, a wave of fire rushed through the tunnel behind them, exploding into a flower of flame. Light bloomed from the entrance, barely twenty feet away, carrying a terrible, intense heat with it before winking out.

"HEEUUUNNG!" Felix groaned, pushing back to his feet as his nerves danced with roiling torment. He hadn't been hit, but the wash of heat was agony on his broken Skill. Focusing his Will and Pain Resistance, he pushed past it, forcing his Mind to ignore his screaming Spirit.

H($t R3$(%74nce is level 23!

"You just had to say something," he panted at Evie. She smirked at him, but her eyes danced with fear even as she unspooled her spiked chain.

"I sense two of them," Vess said, low enough that Felix hoped only they could hear it. "We can take them."

"Levels?" Evie asked as the end of her chain began to hover slightly above the ground. Felix blinked, his mind off the pain for once. That's new.

"I cannot make them out. Inquisitor armor blocks Analyze below Adept," Vess said. She had pulled a long silver spear from… somewhere, and she held it firmly before her.

Flames still licked the interior of the tunnel, vestiges of whatever Skill had just hurled toward them. Water roared all around, but the humidity didn't put a dent in the pockets of fire. The clanking of footsteps reached them only moments later, and waves of orange Mana flared in the tunnel mouth. Felix watched as the Mana stoked the fires back into size, billowing them with power as two plate-armored Acolytes stepped forward.

They wore the full silvery platemail of their order, enameled in white and detailed with a golden sunburst upon their chest. Each of them also wore a sallet-style helm that almost completely covered their face. Still, Felix could make out their eyes, which were hard and focused on them. The larger of the two led the way, while the other, slighter by only a small margin, stepped carefully behind.

"Heretics," intoned the leader in a heavy baritone. Felix thought he recognized the voice. "Put down your weapons, and come with us."

"I'll pass on that, thanks," Evie quipped, letting her chain slowly begin to spin.

"You would arrest us?" Vess drew herself up and frowned imperiously. "On what charges?"

"By order of the Master Inquisitor, all of those found at the illegal gathering are to be tried for false worship, sedition, and heresy." The smaller of the two spoke with a clear, acidic conviction, and Felix knew he recognized the voice.

Voracious Eye.

There was a moment of resistance, but it was barely a blip. Felix pushed past it easily.

Name: Aenda Karcan, Acolyte

Race: Human

Level: 33

HP: 343/343

SP: 213/284

MP: 685/685

Lore: Humans are multitudinous on the Continent. They are statistically weaker than most Races, especially at lower levels.

Strength: More Data Required

Weakness: More Data Required

Name: Niall Palast, Acolyte

Race: Human

Level: 31

HP: 644/644

SP: 415/435

MP: 342/342

Lore: Humans are multitudinous on the Continent. They are statistically weaker than most Races, especially at lower levels.

Strength: More Data Required

Weakness: More Data Required

In the same instants that their information flashed before his eyes, he also got a sense of their advancement. Both Aenda and Niall were beyond their Apprentice Formation, but they felt alarmingly… uniform. As if they were copies of one another.

As if they were one person, both began advancing on them. The trio stepped backward, maintaining the distance.

"You will put down your weapons, or you will be physically restrained," said Niall in his deep voice. "Aenda, read them."

The yellowed eyed Acolyte flared her Skill. Felix could almost see it spark to life around her eyes like a lattice of faint, glowing lines. What was even weirder, he felt the Skill slip off him in the strangest way.

"They're hidden!" Aenda snarled and lifted her hands. Orange Mana pooled in her palms before igniting into balls of swirling fire. "Last chance! Put your weapons down, relinquish your artifacts, and put your hands up!"

"Careful, these bastards are tough," Evie said, ignoring her. "They all know how to fight together."

"Inquisition forces use light and fire Skills," Vess hissed. "Hopefully, they'll be at a disadvantage down here, with all the water and shadow."

"Alright, enough chances," grunted Niall, before he stomped his foot and launched himself forward. Behind him, Aenda pulled her hand back to cast her bolts of flame.

Shadow Whip!

A black, wrist thick whip of shadow Mana smashed into the Acolyte from the side, and the burly foe was hurled off the platform entirely.

"Niall!" The remaining Acolyte turned furiously toward the three of them. "You'll burn for that!"

"Siva's breath," Vess cursed, but she rushed forward at the other Acolyte. Her feet blurred and twisted, her body not quite where she appeared to be; which was lucky, because a stream of fire burst from Aenda's mouth. It narrowly missed Vess, but swept after her.

Like a goddamn dragon.

Evie's spiked chain whipped outward, catching the woman across her armored chest and throwing her back. The impact sounded like a car crash, the metal screaming under the weight of the blow. The fire breath cut off as she hit the ground, but the Acolyte wasn't down yet. With a shout and burst of flame, she flipped back up to her feet. Just in time to deflect the thrust of Vess' spear.

"Fall, heretics!"

The woman's visor flooded with brilliant, golden light as some sort of shimmering construct formed around the Acolyte. Panels of golden light formed into a bulky and oversized suit of armor. Vess struck out with a flurry of strikes, her spear tip blurring, but the woman blocked them all on her oversized conjured vambrace. The next moment, Evie's spinning chain slammed into Aenda, but the woman didn't budge an inch.

Then, the woman punched Vess down into the ground, shattering parts of the bridge below them with the heiress' body.

"A little help!" Evie shouted at him, but Felix was already moving. Another Shadow Whip formed in his hands as he ran forward, but his Perception, slightly muddled by the constant pounding of the water, still snagged on an important detail.

Niall was coming back up.

The bastard was flying above him, tethered to the bridge below by some sort of fiery lasso. Felix's Mind raced, putting it together in a whirl of thoughts: the Acolyte had some sort of binding Skill, used it to attach to the underside of the bridge, and used that momentum to fling himself back up and over. Niall came down hard, almost directly on top of Felix, and his gauntleted fists ignited with flame.

A powerful double-fisted smash took Felix in the shoulder, knocking him immediately to the ground as his Spirit screamed in agony. It wasn't as hot as the explosion before, nor Aenda's dragon breath, but the combination of both Heat and Fire Resistance activating sent acid through his veins. His skull bounced off the stone tiles, but that pain was nothing. Before he could regroup, Felix felt a booted foot catch him in the gut and hurl his body a few feet away.

"Oof! What're you made of, heretic?" Niall stumbled, clearly surprised at Felix's weight. Flaring his Willpower and Pain Resistance, Felix awkwardly rolled over and lurched to his feet.

F(re Re517*4ance is level 21!

Pain Resistance is level 49!

Woo, he cheered, seeing his broken Skills slowly advancing. Ugh, I wanna throw up.

"You broke my sabaton," the Acolyte's deep voice said in annoyance. He growled at Felix. "Come quietly, and we won't have to repaint this bridge with your blood."

"I uh, I'm not a fan of either option," Felix said, before activating an old favorite.

Reign of Vellus!

This time, instead of throwing the bastard, Felix yanked him closer. Niall shouted in alarm as blue lightning arced off his shiny armor, burning dark patches into it and charring his cloak. His feet left the ground as he flew toward Felix at high speed.

Corrosive Strike!

A fist full of acid met the Acolyte's forearms, raised just in time to block the blow. But it wasn't enough. Felix's Strength caved in the metal and the bone beneath with a sharp retort. Niall screamed, his deep voice jumping several octaves.

Reign of Vellus!

Reign of Vellus!

Corrosive Strike!

Like a yo-yo, Felix shoved the Acolyte away again before crashing into him with his powerful blows. The kinetic Skill acted as a force multiplier, increasing the strength of his punches by an order of magnitude.

Reign of Vellus!

Reign of Vellus!

Corrosive Strike!

Again, and again, until the man went limp. By the time Felix's Will dropped him, the Acolyte was a mess of bent steel and pulped flesh. Blood and acid dripped from his fists, hissing as it hit the wet bridge beneath him.

"I'll take… option three," Felix panted. The effort of activating two Skills and physically exerting himself had taken its toll. His Stamina was down by a quarter, and his Mana… well, that was already regenerating.

"The Fiend!"

Alarmed, Felix looked up. He saw Aenda staring at him with wide eyes from beneath her conjured shell, now half-destroyed by Vess and Evie's relentless assault. His friends paused to look at him, Vess confused and Evie with an eyeroll. The Acolyte pointed at him and shouted again. "The Fiend is here!"

Crap, my eyes. Felix tried to stop them from glowing, but it was almost involuntary at this point. He didn't even know if he could stop it.

Without warning, a presence unveiled itself. A heaviness settled on all of them, and Felix could tell whoever it was had gone beyond Apprentice Tier. The pressure he felt against his Spirit was much stronger than the Acolytes. From within the tunnel the sound of clomping boots were clearly heard.

"Good," said a voice, light and airy. "I was getting bored."

A man emerged from the tunnel, wearing armor much the same as the Acolytes, except far more intricately detailed. Gold inlay formed a large sunburst on his breastplate, and large sword was belted at his hip. His helmet, if he had one, was off, and he appeared to be a man in his late thirties with dark eyebrows and white-blonde hair. Eyes like chips of flint stared directly at Felix and he smiled.

"Is my Acolyte correct, boy? Am I looking at the Blue-Eyed Fiend?" He didn't stop walking as he spoke, though the four combatants felt frozen. Something about that pressure, the aura, felt like it was pinning them to the ground, Acolyte included. "Or are you a waste of my time?"

Voracious Eye.

Name: ???, Initiate

Race: Human

Level: ??

HP: ???/???

SP: ???/???

MP: ???/???

Lore: Humans are multitudinous on the Continent. They are statistically weaker than most Races, especially at lower levels.

Strength: More Data Required

Weakness: More Data Required

The pressure redoubled, blocking Felix's Skill more effectively than a stone wall. However, Felix was able to confirm one thing.

This man had completed his Journeyman Formation.

Noctis' tits.

Evie must have caught a look in his eye, because she turned from Felix and launched a wordless assault on Aenda. A whirling chain swept the Acolyte's feet from under her, throwing the fire mage to the ground. Vess was a half-beat behind her, but her spear made short work of the damaged armor conjuration.

"Sir!" Aenda cried out as she hit the ground, splinters of golden Mana bursting outward. "He Shines in Darkness!"

"Back!" Vess shouted, at the same time leaping backward with all her strength. Evie tried to do the same, but caught the edge of the detonation as Aenda's Skill ignited the air around her.

*KRAKAKOOOOOM!*

Felix was hit by a giant pillow of air, pushed up and into the watery darkness beyond the bridge. He threw a hand out and conjured a Shadow Whip, intending to imitate the Acolyte's maneuver. But the tacky substance of shadow found no purchase on the bridge's pillars, the stone coated in Ages-old slime and moisture.

Stone Shaping!

Desperate, Felix cast out the Mana pattern for his Tempered Skill, pulling the substance of the pillar with all of his might. There was a grinding groan from the stone all around him, and then his Skill caught. A six-foot-wide block of stone lifted from the pillar as Felix fell, like a Jenga piece, and Felix immediately oriented on it.

Reign of Vellu—!

A brilliant light interrupted his casting as an arrow of blinding radiance stabbed straight through his gut.

Felix hit the pillar hard, cracking it in half before plunging the rest of the way into the cold, cold water below.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

For the second time in his life, Felix was bulldozed underwater by the force of a waterfall. Except, this time he was conscious, whether he liked it or not. A golden arrow jutted from his abdomen, a point of savage pain that burned like fire; a perfect, awful counterpoint to the icy water.

He was forced down. Into the cold. Into the dark. His head spun, rattled by the dual impact of stone and water. Instinctively, he tried to flare his Manasight. But for the first time ever, it wouldn't come. He flipped over, shoved by the strong currents of water and sent spinning dizzyingly until he couldn't tell which way was up. He tried again, and this time, not only did it not work, but a rush of golden light snuffed out the Mana that lingered in his channels.

The golden arrow was messing with his core.

Before Felix could process that, something brushed against him. It was hard and rough, disappearing almost as soon as he felt it against his back. His heart hammered, fear surging through his veins like molten iron. He tried to activate Abyssal Skein, to hide, but that Skill couldn't bypass the deleterious arrow either.

Something hit him again, this time with the force of a truck. It bowled him over, flipping him ass over teakettle in the pitch-black water. Ironically, the golden arrow preventing his sight did give off some light, just enough to illuminate a small area in front of him. As Felix spun, pushing his arms and legs outward to slow his nauseating tumble, the light was plenty to see the horror that faced him.

A massive eel creature, its head easily the size of his entire body, was winding toward him. Its body was covered in sharp, dagger-like scales colored some murky green, and its pale, milky eyes were filled with hunger as it bore down on him. Felix kicked away, propelling himself through the water slower than he would expect without the aid of Unfettered Volition, and the eel caught up to him almost instantly. It twined through the murk, spinning around his form before tightening its coils around Felix with a sudden and inescapable rush.

The golden arrow was shoved deeper into his gut.

Bubbles streamed from Felix's mouth before he could bite off the scream, saving what remained of his precious oxygen. Black splotches started to creep into the corners of his vision. He knew he had maybe a minute or two before he'd start sucking down water. Pain lanced from his middle, lightning that pulsed through every one of his limbs; limbs that were growing more numb by the second.

The eel squeezed.

Maybe less than a minute.

The creature was strong. Felix felt his ribs creak and the skin along his arms tear as the razor-sharp scales sliced into him. His breath tried to escape, his chest compressing. Felix strained with every ounce of Strength he had, but the cold had seeped into his flesh, the creature was stronger, and he had no Skill to fight back. He felt… disconnected from his core in a way that was utterly terrifying.

Armored Skin is level 44!

Armored Skin is level 45!

A voice, faint but filled with an alien and all-encompassing wrath bellowed at him. Fight, you fool!

FIGHT!

Something stirred within him, a connection that strung between the dark, empty space where he once felt his core. It began to hum, then it began to scream. Felix's eyes blazed a brilliant cyan, lighting up the dark water around him. He opened his mouth wide, and small, white teeth floated away in a puff of blood, instantly replaced by inch-long fangs.

Felix bit the damn thing.

His teeth sheared into the creature's skin easily, sinking through the scales and into the meat of the monstrosity's body. Dark ichor poured into the water, clouding all around him, but also streaming down into his throat. His insatiable maw.

Strength filled him, as did his Hunger.

His transformation Skill had nothing to do with his Mana and everything to do with his connection to the remnant Maw still trapped within his Spirit. A connection that he could yet feel, for good or ill.

What Dwells Beneath is level 10!

...

What Dwells Beneath is level 15!

Felix felt his body shift and change, morphing into that monstrous half-form he had adopted in his Bastion. His Strength and Endurance jumped, new power coursing through his veins like lightning, and with a furious shoving, Felix heaved the eel creature away from his body just enough to slip free.

Orienting on the path of the air bubbles his escaped breath left, Felix swam up. Yet he knew he couldn't make it, not without dealing with the beast first. His Perception could just barely pick it out, swirling in the depths just below him, preparing to strike. The golden arrow still stuck from his gut, that and his blazing eyes were better than a spotlight, screaming out his position.

The arrow...

With a malformed claw, Felix reached down and tried to pull it out. Incredible pain seared through him, burning something vital inside of him. He couldn't pull it out, even with his crazy Strength.

The water roared around him, and Felix sensed the approach of something huge. The cold pressed in, pushed its numbing chill upon him again, but Felix refused to succumb.

He's been here before. He'd used his Fire Within to burn inside him, to heat up his core. It burned hot, but it was not true fire. It was Mana, the lifeblood of everything. But he doesn't have access to his Fire Within, just his teeth. Furious, he flared What Dwells Beneath, pushing it harder than he'd ever dared before.

What Dwells Beneath is level 16!

His Hunger roared through him, cracking like thunder through his channels. The water around him began to ripple, then shudder. The eel was within sight, undulating toward him with the speed of a freight train.

Felix reached for the arrow, still shining with pure golden light. He devoured it.

Ravenous Tithe!

The golden Mana was pulled into his body completely, consumed entirely and leaving not a scratch on his flesh. The power rushed through him, a deluge from that small projectile, packing his core full even as his inner fire once more ignited. The eel was closing in fast, and Felix hurriedly fed the golden Mana into his core flame.

The water around him erupted into furious bubbles as everything around him began to boil. The eel flinched as it charged, but its jaws had already opened wide to swallow him whole.

Felix grinned with a mouth made for slaughter. And he dove into its gullet.

The eel swept past, coming to a halt only thirty feet away. Its pale eyes bulged, and it writhed as boiling water poured from it.

REIGN OF VELLUS!

The entire creature exploded in a shower of lightning.

You Have Killed An Unknown Monster!

XP Earned!

A dark form was hurled downward from the explosion, deeper into the water. Felix hit the bottom of the cistern with a muted crack, kicking up a massive plume of silt.

For a moment, everything was still. Then Felix stood up, his body still malformed with dark, thickened skin and bone-white spines. Blood clouded the water around him, and his Health had dropped 30% already. Still, Felix could feel his core again. He could sense all of his Skills, and it was a joyous reunion.

But his Perception snagged on something out there in the cloudy dark waters. He flared his Manasight, and immediately wished he hadn't.

The floor of the cistern was crawling with eels.

* * *

Vess had watched helplessly as Felix plunged off the side of the bridge. And then she had fought, trying to convince herself that he would come back up at any second. Now she stood, panting and bloody as she dodged yet another blast of intensely concentrated light from the Initiate before them.

"Sure wish our boy would hurry up!" Evie hollered as she flipped over another beam of light. Even so, a scorched line marked the back of her leather armor. Evie hissed in pain, but recovered her footing just in time to evade another blast.

"Oh, almost got you there!" laughed the Initiate, who still had not moved from his original position. "Please! Keep it up! Let's see which fails first, my Mana pool or your bodies!"

"Get stuffed, prick," Evie shouted, simultaneously hurling her impossibly long chain at him. The links stretched beyond their appearance, rattling toward him like a spiky serpent.

The Initiate lazily blocked the strike with a glowing sheet of light. "Come, now, heretics. You can't expec—!"

A silver spear thrust at his throat, stopped only barely by another panel of golden light. Vess clucked her tongue before blurring away.

Dragoon's Footwork!

Where she once stood, the stone tiles burst into red-hot slag beneath the Initiate's furious counterattack. Vess landed fifteen feet away and kept backing up, but her left thigh was painfully scorched along the outside. The Initiate's eyebrows drew downward, and he adjusted his stance, squaring himself toward the spearwoman. He held up his hands and summoned golden radiance into both that pulsed with a clear threat.

He is taking us seriously now.

Vess whirled her conjured Spear of Tribulations. Her usual spear was back in the Eyrie, too big to sneak out with, she had thought, though she had been cautious enough to wear her armor. The Initiate's Journeyman abilities had torn the both of them up, leaving them with a collection of burns and bleeding wounds that were slowing them down.

<We have to stop him now> Vess signaled to Evie, who nodded and replied back with another quick flash of handsign.

Training in the Foglands had done a lot for Vess. She had gained Skill levels, her Omen, and even friends. Most importantly, however, was teamwork. Coordination.

They moved as one.

Evie dashed low, pushing her body forward until it was almost parallel with the ground, squeezing every ounce of power from her Agility. Her chain whipped back and to the side, trailing behind her like a tail of deadly barbs. She lashed out with it, the preternaturally light chain flicking forward with unerring precision and deceptive strength. It flashed, bashing into panels of golden light with enough force to elicit a grunt from the Initiate.

At the same time, Vess went high, utilizing her Born Trait to soar into the air. She easily cleared Evie, her powerful jump sending her arcing above.

Dragoon's Descent!

Air Mana gathered around her, faintly visible to her evolved Elemental Eye, boosting her speed as Vess rocketed downward. The wind screamed at her passage, and the Initiate had no time to dodge away.

*BOOOOM*

The tip of Vess' conjured Spear and the Initiate's golden shield met. The bridge beneath them depressed, dropping the Initiate a whole foot as the stonework cracked explosively. Stone dust and debris shot outward, flung by the force of the impact.

"Ugh—You'll have to do better than—that!" the Initiate panted, his carefully styled hair disarrayed. Vess, still balanced above him upon the haft of her Spear, grinned downward.

"I plan to," she said, and twisted her Spear.

Pierce the Sky!

Vess' body was sent hurtling up, sending an opposing force powerfully into the shield beneath her. A network of bright cracks skittered across the surface of his shield, and the Initiate's eyes widened in fury. "You absolute bit—!"

A spiked chain took his legs out from under him.

"Oouf!"

Vess landed twenty feet away after canceling her Skill mid-leap. Evie yanked her chain back and began spinning it. Brows down, they advanced on him together.

* * *

Crell was pissed.

His Acolytes were down. One from that idiot brute that fell off the bridge, and another from two women, of all things. One of which was barely into their Apprentice Tier! Crell growled as he stood back up, drinking a Healing Potion to repair the lacerations that one had done to his leg. His injuries were minor, bare scratches, but the pain would be a distraction in battle. Moreover, she had torn right through his greaves to do it.

Apprentice Tier or not, that one was dangerous.

"Vile, corrupted rabble," he snarled. He didn't often snarl, but these wretches had brought him to this point. Crell would much rather have crooned for the ladies of the capital or laughed with the Inquisitor on his rounds, but he'd been sent here. To the sewers. To collect the rats. "You dare lay a hand upon me? Upon my Acolytes?"

Crell cared little for his underlings, despite one surely being dead and another close to it. They had been trained with the greatest force in the Hierocracy, and still they fell? To these rubes? The Acolytes deserved what they had received, if not more.

"Don't like it when your victims fight back, huh?" The one with a mouth somersaulted over his Diurnal Reach, the bright bolt of hardened light flashing past. The damnable girl was too fast to catch, even with his control of light Mana.

"Silence!"

The two women were fighting better than he expected, going so far as to be able to land a solid blow on him. However! They weren't a match for his superior stats and Skill levels. For his divine purpose. He was Journeyman Tier, for Trackless' sake! Crell stood back, blocking their strikes, and assessed his options. He had but a few, though all of them were satisfyingly violent.

If only I hadn't wasted my Empyrean Arrow, he groused, blocking another swipe of a chain. The spearwoman leaped forward again, riddled his golden panels with strikes before disengaging. Clearly I should have used it on one of them!

The Fiend, he scoffed. To think he'd been almost convinced when he'd seen the idiot child's blue eyes. It was why he'd wasted his second most powerful Skill, a strike he could only employ once a day, but the perfect counter to any foe who's advancement was lower than his own. It disrupted the connection between a person and their core, disabling the flow of Mana as long as it remained lodged within them. Perhaps it's good that they died. Next time, I'll ask for smarter subordinates.

The golden arrow may have been spent, but he was an Initiate of the Inviolate Inquisition! Nothing could stop him or his order! He would simply have to apologize to his superiors; they had wanted as many of the heretics alive as possible.

Crell smiled, and light began to pour from his eyes and mouth.

Echoes of the Divine Shell!

A construct of hardened, golden light shimmered into place all around him, lifting him up until he was nearly ten feet tall. The construct formed around his limbs and body, extensions of Divine Will, while Crell was held secure within its transparent chest. To others, he knew, it appeared as a mighty, armored warrior complete with a flowing cape and greatsword as large as a Human. A thrill raced through his veins, a familiar giddy certainty that danced across his Mind whenever he activated this Skill.

I am light made flesh. The perfect being.

It was Crell's greatest Skill, one he'd Tempered at Journeyman and leveled extensively. Unlike Aenda's rudimentary grasp of it, he had begun to unlock its great power. He only wished he had been able to Temper it for his Apprentice Formation, for he would be an unstoppable force upon the field. And no heretic would ever know peace again.

"Bow before the Light of Truth," Crell intoned, his voice sounding deep and hollow from within the translucent gold shell. "Or you shall be broken upon its altar."

He blurred forward, digging furrows into the stone beneath him. The Shell greatly increased his Strength, Endurance, and Vitality, closely mimicking the power of someone who had crossed the First Threshold. Nothing at or below his advancement could stand against his might, and Crell let that indisputable fact bathe his mind in grandeur as he attacked. The darker one summoned multiple silver spears that hovered around her, each striking at slightly different angles. Were he outside of his Shell, the Initiate might have even taken the girl seriously. As it was, each stab was inconsequential, no more worrisome than a toothpick thrusting at steel plate.

White chains burst from the ground, wrapping around his gleaming limbs. They exuded a powerful chill, so cold that they steamed in the moist air. For the briefest of moments, Crell feared he'd been restrained, and frost began to crawl along his radiant armor. He looked at the chain wielder and screamed in refutation.

"BEGONE!"

A mighty surge of his arms, and the chains strained and snapped, dissolving into purple-white Mana before disappearing entirely. The chain wielder's head snapped back as if he'd hit her directly, her nose bleeding. She snarled in surprise and no little fear.

Yesssss. Fear the Truth. Fear me.

Shoving against the ground, the Initiate launched forward at the same time he swung his left fist up into the chain wielder's chest. The damn slip of a girl very nearly evaded the strike, as impossible as that was, but she caught a glancing blow to her leather chest plate. The boiled armor caved in, and the girl was sent flying. She landed nearly forty feet away, her body tumbling wildly along the very edge of the bridge.

Crell laughed.

A dark, powerful roar filled the chamber, and Crell felt something take hold of his attention. Like a lodestone to steel, the Initiate spun in place and beheld the head of a spectral dragon. Its jaws were wide open and its terrifying roar dominated the space between them. A notification blinked into his vision before disappearing.

Status Condition: Frightened

Crell's heart hammered in his chest, and his adrenaline surged, but moments later the Status Condition flickered and faded away. Then it was replaced by another.

You Have Resisted Fear!

You Are Taunted for 5 Seconds!

Status Condition: Taunted

The Initiate's gaze tunneled until all he could see was the damned spear wielder. The spectral dragon that had formed over her face had dissipated, leaving only a set of dark, infuriating eyes. She was everything he hated, everything he wanted to see crushed from this world. Someone with access to a Skill such as that, yet aiding the heretics' fool cause? It was a breach of the most fundamental of laws. Such power was not meant to serve, but to rule. Anything else was weakness masquerading as strength.

A terrifying conviction shuddered through his Spirit, one that he had held close to his heart for decades: The strong must excise weakness wherever it is found.

With an unthinking bellow, the Initiate charged, his ten-foot-tall body eating up the distance between them with massive strides. The girl's spears zipped forward, determined to meet his charge. Crell bared his teeth and pushed harder. He would shatter the spears from the air itself before ripping the pathetic heretic apart. Her blood would burn!

Moments before impact, the spears disappeared.

Crell hit something so hard his gargantuan body was sent spinning to the side before slamming down into the ground. More rock broke beneath him, his powerful Shell tearing a ditch into the solid stone. A notification flickered past his eyes, barely registering as the Taunted Condition expired.

Five seconds later, the Initiate was able to stand up. He shook his head and realized what had happened, against all odds. He'd been Taunted, and not just by anyone. By a Dragoon.

"Who are you?" he growled, noticing the right upper cannon of his Divine Shell had been completely shattered. It was a gaping hole in his otherwise perfect defense. "How do you know that Skill?"

The woman, busy getting her chain wielding co-conspirator back to her feet, turned toward him and flourished a spear she pulled from the air. She didn't speak, and neither did the other one, both of them raising their weapons.

"If you won't answer me," he shouted, letting his aura ignite with a sudden radiance. "Then I'll just ask your corpses!"

Crell flared all of the potency of his Body of the Incandescent Rise, channeling his Mana into the purest element: light. It spread around him like the noonday sun in the dark confines of the sewer, displacing the natural shadow and water Mana found in that wretched place. He poured himself into the effort, calling upon his Incandescent Core to bless him with a final Skill.

One that would wipe their heretical stain from the Continent!

Demesne of—!

A geyser of water jetted upward, showering the bridge and filled with crackling blue lightning. Crell flinched back from it, the water sizzling into steam as it hit his aura. That boy with eyes glowing like cold fire fell from it. He landed so heavily that the stone splintered with a sharp retort.

A dark black tendril was in his hand, one that trailed over the edge. "Eels," the boy rasped, his eyes blazing brighter.

Crell felt his power twisting in his grip, the light Mana nearly grown out of his control. It ripped at his Mind, his channels barely enough to handle it. He didn't understand. The boy had been thrown… he had… what was wrong with his body...?

"What?" the Initiate asked, despite himself.

"EELS!"

Then the boy hauled on his dark tendril with both hands, yanking free a massive, writhing monstrosity...

...and hurled it directly into him.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Felix had thrown the eel creature (a level 43 Veelo), and was delighted to see it coil instinctively around the Initiate. Yanked from the cold water below, it had struggled mightily against Felix's Shadow Whip, and now its gasping fear became a surge of panicked strength. Its scales were broken in a few places, but they were still plenty sharp. It's body was gouging lines of smoking light from the incredible phantom armor the guy was wearing.

It's like he's a mecha pilot. The Initiate was safely suspended in the center of the conjuration, and based on how he was fighting off the eel creature's constriction, it also afforded him enhanced Strength and Endurance. If not more. No way that's less than Epic rarity.

While the Initiate struggled with the Veelo, Felix fought down his transformation. Slowly, over perhaps five seconds, the Skill pushed back. He bore down on it, applying his Willpower against it, and with a burst of transcendent pain, his arms and hands reverted. Fangs fell with a muted clatter onto the bridge, and Felix finally glanced at his friends. They were battered and wounded, their armor covered in scorch marks and no little blood. They looked beaten to hell but were still standing, somehow.

"You guys okay?"

"We are, ah. Excellent." Vess looked at him with bright eyes and spun her spear, though she winced. Four more spun sympathetically, ten feet above her head. He didn't miss how her eyes slid the length of his arms, curiously. How much did she see?

"Just waiting on you," Evie quipped. She wiped a trickle of blood from her hairline and straightened her shoulders. "We gonna finish this, or do you have more fish you wanna throw?"

Felix smiled and shook his head, trying to ignore the rumbling in his guts. The golden arrow's Mana still roiled in him, sending strange, golden sparks through his core flame. He wasn't sure what was happening. By this point, he'd usually been able to gain a Skill or Memory, but neither had occurred. He tried to ignore it for the moment.

They had other things to worry about.

Voracious Eye.

Felix tried to push past the wall that blocked his Skill, bashing into it with the hammer of his Will. Chips went flying, but the wall remained. Still, he was able to pull free one fact; the name Crell Sovos.

Two Apprentice Tiers and one Beginner on the cusp against a Journeyman. Felix swallowed, watching as Crell's Mana armor slowly ripped the Veelo apart. The massive eel covered over half of the giant warrior, and Felix detected more than a little pained panic in its eyes. We can do this, right?

Wrack and Ruin!

Felix summoned a dark orb of acid and launched it at the Initiate. It flew true, but splashed harmlessly against the panels of shimmering Mana.

That's not gonna work. I'll have to get in close.

"Evie, Vess, can you two still dodge his attacks?" He looked at them, sure they would say no. They both nodded, though.

"That Skill of his is immensely strong, but slow," Vess offered, leveling her spear. Four more hovered above her, bobbing slightly. "If we are fast, we can strike effectively."

Evie nodded to hide a grimace. "We got this. Just don't get hit, right?"

"We'll hit him from all sides, then. Evie, take the right. Vess, the left. I'll take him head on. Unfettered Volition." Felix burst forward, his stride so smooth he was almost gliding over the rubble-strewn bridge.

"He has grown confident," he heard Vess say, followed by a snort by Evie. But then he closed with the enemy.

The Veelo finally gave up the ghost as Felix approached. The Initiate's magical mecha triumphantly ripped its arms through the wet flesh of the eel's corpse. He felt a small trickle of the beast's power enter his core.

You Have Killed A Veelo!

XP Earned!

"You dare! You common gutter trash!" His face twisted into a smirk. "That you survived that fall is impressive, but you'll not survive me!"

Crell sneered at him from within his transparent shell and drew the massive, conjured sword at his hip. The blade was easily six feet long and a foot wide. A greatsword made for a giant. Felix had experience with giants.

And so did his friends.

A length of chain zipped in from the right, rotating so fast it buzzed and drilled into the Initiate's upper arm. The conjured armor was broken there, but there were still several layers before someone could hit the redcloak hiding inside. Instead, it chipped away at the golden light, casting off shards that turned to mist. Crell grunted and swung at the chain, taking some minor damage on his construct's fist but easily knocking it aside.

Back exposed for a moment, two silver spears raced into it, followed an instant later by the black-cloaked Vess and her main spear. Crell shouted in surprise, but she leaped explosively backward, speeding through the air to land nimbly back where she'd started. The spears burst in a flurry of air Mana, localized windstorms that chipped apart yet another section.

Fully distracted, Felix rushed up on the man and lashed out.

Influence of the Wisp!

Corrosive Strike!

Reign of Vellus!

Blue-white fire flickered briefly around the Initiate before failing, but Felix landed a solid, heavy blow on the bastard's midsection. With a sparking trail of electricity, he hit with Corrosive Strike and Reign of Vellus at almost the same time. It hurt like hell, though, and felt like his bones were splitting apart. The redcloak was sent stumbling three steps back. Crell's face was the picture of shock.

"You are the Fiend," he gasped and felt at his abdomen. A gash in his armor leaked a hazy, golden vapor.

Felix looked down and saw that his hands had shifted and blackened again. Wicked talons showed.

"Too bad for you," Felix said, and flared his Will.

Unfettered Volition!

* * *

Aenda twitched her fingers, barely moving so as to complete the illusion of her death. Niall twitched right back, confirming her plan. The two of them had been beaten soundly by the heretics, but Aenda's increasing mastery over light magic gave her some utility with illusions. She wasn't as hurt as she appeared, and Niall...

...well, he wasn't dead, at least.

An unholy racket sounded behind them, just out of sight. It sounded like a dire struggle, the clash of steel and Mana constructs clear to her senses. But that made no sense. Initiate Crell was Journeyman Tempered, far above the heretics in terms of stats. How did they still survive?

What foul magics did they possess?

Aenda added another layer of flames to her spell, pulling its heat and combustion tighter. Compressing it. She feared the capabilities of these heretics, feared that the both of them only had one more strike in them before it was over. So she was gonna make it a good one.

What she was attempting was extremely dangerous. She was skirting the edge of acceptable Mana Skill usage. In her desperation, Aenda was altering her Searing Bolt in a way that felt terribly close to dreaded Sorcery. There was a… hum to the air, something that she held tight to as she wove fire over flame, condensing her focused bolt into a truly fearsome weapon. Sorcery or not, Aenda would not die without taking at least one of the heretics with her.

After condensing the fire, it was so dense it was almost like a jelly. Its very presence warped the air, and it was all she could do to hide its presence and herself. Her illusion magic was at the Beginner levels, only just enough, yet still she was burning through her Mana. She was nearly empty, and as her headache worsened Aenda sensed one of the women land within range.

She made her move.

"Ascend into the Light!" Aenda cried as she stood and began to release her coin-sized ball of flame. "Die—"

*HURGK*

Aenda tottered on her feet and looked down. A… a blade was sticking out of her chest. It… it came from… behind her..? Distantly, the Acolyte heard Niall stand and shout, but soon it was just a rush in her ears. Not even the nearby concussion of her altered Skill cut through the thickening silence. All the heat within her leeched outward, and her vision darkened.

What… what happened?

As she fell, a boy leaped down from the ladder. He scurried toward her, another long knife in his hand. Its blade was a match for the one in her chest.

Why...? Pathless… why?

Then nothing.

* * *

The sound of an explosion filled the chamber, rising above the constant roar of water. Felix whipped his head toward the source, and saw Evie and Vess get thrown bodily as a massive fireball detonated nearby. Directly atop the male Acolyte, Niall, completely incinerating him.

You Have Killed Niall Palast, Acolyte of the Inviolate Inquisition!

XP Earned!

Evie, Vess! He mentally screamed, dodging away from the Initiate's monstrous swings. The Acolytes weren't dead!

The orange trail of Mana vapor extended back from the explosion to the female Acolyte, Aenda, who fell to her knees with her arm outstretched. There was a huge dagger through her chest, at least a foot long. Through the dissipating fireball, she looked weakly behind her before collapsing completely.

Is that… the courier?

"HAH!"

A blaze of heat scorched Felix's back, throwing him forward. He tucked into a roll and barely held onto consciousness as his resistances rebelled against him.

"AHHGG!" Felix couldn't believe he'd turned his back on the damn Initiate! He pushed himself to his feet, his vision dipping in and out as his resistances flared to "protect" him from the hardened light Mana of the sword.

H34t R!s/$*4nce is level 24!

Armored Skin is level 46!

"A heretic cannot stand the Divine fire of the True God!" Crell expounded while Felix got his bearings. "I will burn the impure flesh from your bones, piece by piece!"

Moving faster than he ever had before, the Initiate surged forward and kicked Felix in the chest. The Nym was sent flying through the air, landing on his back before tumbling end over end. He stopped only after he had smashed through a boulder-sized chunk of rubble, thirty feet away.

Jesus, this guy. Felix leveraged himself up, feeling his bones protest but having little choice. The zealot was already charging at him. That last kick had definitely loosened something inside of him, though. His Health had dropped again (big surprise), and he was hovering somewhere around 30% his total. I've gotta end this fast. I—

Felix doubled over as spasms wracked his Body, Mind, and Spirit. Someone started screaming.

Dimly, Felix realized it was him.

Deep within him, his core was rioting. His internal fire flickered before igniting a deeper and more impressive blue, now flecked with gold flames. In his mind's eye, there was a ring of golden light that radiated outward until it fetched against a new etching of light. This one almost looked like a stylized arrow.

You Have Fully Digested Your Opponent's Mana!

New Skill!

Arrow of Perdition (Legendary), Level 1!

Conjure an arrow of ruinous fate. Changed by your very nature, the Arrow can directly damage the highest-level Skill of the target. Must physically penetrate the core of the target. Penetration power increases with level, damage increases with level, Mana consumption decreases slightly with level.

Whoa. Felix's head swam with the sharp rise of melodies from within his core. It felt… triumphant.

"Who do you think you are to contend with an Initiate of the Inquisition?" The jerk pounded toward him, his gait eating up the distance. The golden panels of his armor slightly distorted his sneer. "I can't see your level, stranger, but I can sense your advancement well enough! What power could an Apprentice Tier possibly have that could contend with Divine Will?!"

The music still surged through him, and Felix managed a pained grin.

"Etheric Concordance."

A brilliant flash of light went off to the side, making the Initiate flinch in his charge. From the light manifested a Great Dane-sized Chimera, disguise dropped and massive wings outspread like crimson shadows. Those wings whipped outward, sending a blast of concentrated air directly at the zealot. The Initiate blocked the Wingblade with an upturned arm, though some of the force cut through his upper arm, breaking the weakened interior sections further. While the zealot hissed in pained annoyance, Felix rushed forward.

Unfettered Volition!

Corrosive Strike!

Corrosive Strike!

Corrosive Strike!

Flowing over the debris strewn bridge, Felix sent a flurry of blows into the man's golden abdomen. The Initiate doubled over, his massive, enhanced frame sent reeling by the Nym's strikes, compounded by his physical transformation. His talons ripped into the golden Mana, though he left only deep scratches instead of sundering the material. A massive arm swung at him, the movement powerful but slow and easily dodged. Wingblades rained down on the two of them as well, but the Initiate suffered through them with nothing more than strained grunts.

Pit's Wingblade is level 22!

Pit's Wingblade is level 23!

"You assault an Epic Skill gifted by Divinity to my order with unholy claws? And a Chimera!" An arm of shimmering light blasted past Felix, still slow but growing faster. The armor never stopped moving, seemingly building momentum with every swing of its massive gauntlets. "Your folly knows no bounds, Fiend!"

"Shut up," Felix groaned.

Felix ducked another haymaker before leaping into a midair barrel roll, gracefully avoiding a follow-up strike. The absolute control over his own Body that Unfettered Volition offered Felix was intoxicating. He flowed like water through the Initiate's powerful counterattacks, deftly avoiding all of them; but the margin was thinning. Each attack was faster than the next, until the gleaming giant was a whirling dervish of limbs.

Unfettered Volition is level 17!

Still, Felix hit him, and hit him hard. Higher levels, enhanced stats, and the Initiate's sheer size let him dart in and out of the Initiate's guard. Cracks started to form along his abdomen, where every single one of his slashes landed.

"Stop! Moving! And! Die!"

The Initiate's armor flared brighter, burning like a tiny golden sun as he swung his fists up and over. They came down like a speeding train, as inevitable as an avalanche.

Arrow of Perdition!

Felix summoned his fledgling Arrow on the move, though it ate up a staggering 80% of his available Mana. A surging headache pierced his skull and almost sent him stumbling from the drain, only his heightened Alacrity and Willpower keeping him on course. It was tiny, barely longer than his finger, but an actual, physical arrow made of gold and blue light.

Unfettered Volition is level 18!

Felix spun into the giant armor's reach and jammed it right into its cracked abdomen. It sank straight into his gut.

Into his core.

Crell looked down, his eyes wide with fearful anticipation. Seconds later, nothing had happened. He laughed. "Pathetic! That Skill only works on those of a lesser advancement. Fool!"

His armor flickered and shattered into mist.

Arrow of Perdition is level 2!

Arrow of Perdition is level 3!

Arrow of Perdition is level 4!

Arrow of Perdition is level 5!

"The Skill description didn't say that," Felix mused. The Initiate fell five feet to the ground below, landing in a surprised slump.

"No," he whispered, aghast.

Felix grinned. "Yes."

"No!" Crell's body lit up as if his blood had turned to light. Spittle sizzled as it flew from his mouth, and he threw himself to his feet. "Impossible!"

He drew and lunged with his side sword in one motion. Felix flinched back from the heat more than his opponent's wide strike. The Initiate's Body warped the air in a hazy aura around himself. Pain crawled along his nerves, and it was only growing worse. The heat increased with each second.

Mantle of the Long Night!

A spinning burst of arctic air swirled around Felix, immediately cutting into the heat. Felix flared it harder, pushing his Skill more than he'd ever tried before. He felt his Mana ticking downward faster and faster.

Mantle of the Long Night is level 18!

The light and heat from Crell redoubled as his rage broke through the bounds of reason. He was shouting something, but Felix only heard a wet, angry gargle. Whatever was causing the heat was taking its toll on the man. The deadly heat scorched Felix's nerves, while white pressed in on the sides of his vision. If the Initiate didn't stop, he'd pass out from the pain of his broken Skill, easy pickings for the insane zealot.

Yet neither stopped.

Behind Felix, his friends battled against the surviving Acolyte. With his focus captured, he couldn't spare the attention for them, though he breathed a sigh of relief that they still lived. He hoped they would succeed before cutting his senses off completely; he dove into his core.

Mantle's etched pattern was a hurricane, a swirling spiral that twisted in unexpected directions. A maelstrom of arctic intensity. At its center lay a point where it felt like the essence of ice itself resided. The winds, he realized. They didn't push outward like he had felt. They pulled inward, greedily subsuming all heat for deathly cold.

Mantle of the Long Night is level 19!

...

Mantle of the Long Night is level 22!

Like a gathering storm, the pattern swirled with growing strength. The invisible maelstrom was larger now, spanning at least twenty feet in diameter. The bridge below them iced over. The air itself began to precipitate, the humidity wrung out and turned to snow.

Still, Crell burned like a man on fire.

"Your foul stain shall be stamped from this city! Fiend, you end here—!" He suddenly stumbled forward.

From behind, a barrage of Frost Spears assaulted the Initiate.

Pit's Frost Spear is level 21!

Pit's Frost Spear is level 22!

The first set of spears dissolved before they hit him. Those that followed, however, flowed through Felix's growing Mantle, thickening with rime as they hurtled past. The Initiate batted them away with little issue, laughing shrilly. Only a portion of their force was preserved, though it was more like hail than deadly projectiles.

But it was distracting.

Wrack and Ruin!

An orb of dark, potent acid hovered above Felix's palms, and he hurled it forward. The light and heat boiled it away before it could make contact. Then he got an idea, though his Mana reserves were growing lower by the second. The Arrow of Perdition had drained him of so much, and maintaining his Unfettered Volition and Mantle of the Long Night didn't help. But he thought he'd have enough.

He hoped.

Felix ran forward, cutting the distance between them with a silent scream. His Heat Resistance howled in his core, the sound of a tortured violin seconds from breaking apart completely. It was only twenty feet, but it felt like a thousand. Felix stopped when his skin felt like it was peeling from his body, and he thrust his arms forward.

Reign of Vellus!

Lightning surged from beneath the Initiate as the Skill's kinetic force pulled at him. It grasped at his form for a brief instant, as if the man was somehow slippery. Crell shouted in alarm as the lightning blasted against his legs and chest, likely only minor injuries, but extremely eye-catching. He spun toward Felix, and the light burned brighter than ever. Felix was so close he could smell the sizzle of fat and muscle as the Initiate screamed incoherent fury at him.

H34t R!s/$*4nce is level 25!

Congratulat—-

With a final wrench, Felix picked him up… and hurled him directly into the waterfall.

The water that flowed from those archways, every single stream, vaporized instantly. A dense cloud of steam rushed into the chamber, blasting past Felix like a hurricane and sending waves of indescribable agony across his broken nerves. Barely, by tooth and nail, Felix held onto consciousness.

Then, finally, the notification he was waiting for popped up.

You Have Killed Crell Sovos, Initiate of the Inviolate Inquisition!

XP Earned!

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Standing still to let his Stamina recover, Felix extended his senses as far as he could. It seemed the Initiate was well and truly dead.

With a sigh of relief, he toggled the notifications he hadn't bothered to view during battle.

Thrown Weapon Mastery is level 13!

Make An Entrance is level 15!

Cold Resistance is level 22!

What Dwells Beneath is level 17!

You Have Gained 1 Level!

You Are Now Level 29!

+2 PER! +2 VIT! +1 END! +2 INT! +3 WIL! +4 AGL! +4 DEX!

You Have 40 Unused Stat Points!

Power stormed through his veins, a bright white light that thundered through his channels and into his core. It looped, completing the circuit again and again. Each time, the patterns etched in light grew more intense, more powerful. It was Felix's biggest net gain since he fought the Prismatic Wretches, and he wasn't so blind he didn't see the connection.

Battle. Nothing forces improvement so much as battle.

He grimaced as a searing pain nearly doubled him over.

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Tier With Heat Resistance!

You Gain:

ERROR!

ERROR!

ERROR!

Damn. He knew it was too good to be true. Of course he couldn't earn Apprentice rewards with a broken Skill; he'd lost them when Acrobatics broke, after all. But at least that means it's prepped for combining.

Felix fumbled out a Health Potion and quaffed it. He had only a few in his satchel, minor things that Cal had been able to get him, only healing 150 points of Health. With all the alchemists in town under the Guild's thumb, getting potions was remarkably difficult. With the city on lockdown, it was nearly impossible.

He felt his body shift and settle, the pain stark in the aftermath of his fight. His hands had returned to normal, as had his teeth. Pit landed next to him and folded his wings. The Stone of Wild Echoes sat upon his forehead, a green diamond on his sable avian head. He chirruped at Felix.

"I'm okay," Felix replied and stood up. He had shaken off most of the bad effects of his broken Heat Resistance. "I think that ritual strengthened me against the pain a bit."

He had certainly not been as incapacitated as usual by his damaged Skills, and was even able to push through it and remain conscious. Maybe combining the rest of them won't be so bad.

"Twin's teeth, Felix," muttered a pained voice. "What was that?"

"Is that Pit?" asked another. "Where did he come from?"

Felix looked up and saw Evie limping toward him, leaning on the arm of Vess. The spearwoman was bruised and beaten, but not nearly as bad as Evie. She gave Pit a wide-eyed look.

"Glad to see you're both alive," Felix started, but Vess cut him off.

"What happened to your arms, Felix?"

Ah.

"A new Skill. A transformative one." Felix's mouth felt dry, and he waved off their concerned looks. "Low-level. I don't really have a good grip on it, yet."

The two of them exchanged a look Felix couldn't translate.

"More importantly," Felix said quickly, part of him attempting to divert their attention. "Where've you been?"

The others all turned in the direction Felix stared, so all of them saw a very guilty-seeming teen trying to pull a long dagger out of a corpse. Flustered at the attention, the boy yanked too hard and freed his blade, but fell backward onto his butt.

"Mettias?" Vess said, incredulous. "Were you here the whole time?"

"Um, yeah, er… yes, I was," Mettias fumbled, struggling back to his feet in a way that suggested a limited amount of Agility or Dexterity. Felix's eyes narrowed.

He's faking it. That dagger throw had to have been fifty feet. High Dexterity is a must for that sorta precision. Why lie?

"What, hidin' in the shadows while we fought for our lives?" Evie groused, raveling her chain around her shoulder. The spiked metal links seemed to slither under their own power, retracting toward Evie like a winding power cord.

"Hey, I killed this lady!" Mettias protested.

"After abandonin' us in the sewers!" Evie shot back.

"You found me, right? No harm!" The courier pointed to Aenda's corpse. "This one coulda cooked me alive! I ain't even Apprentice Tier!"

"Lie."

Everyone stopped and looked at Felix. He glared at the boy. "You've already passed your First Formation. I'd guess you're more than halfway to Journeyman, too. You're lying to us. Why?"

Silence greeted his words as sweat beaded against the courier's forehead. His dark eyes flickered between the two women, perhaps hoping for a way out of the situation, but Evie was frowning and caressing her spiked chain. Vess, meanwhile, looked more than a little upset.

In71mi#*@on is level 9!

...

Int$m1d471on is level 11!

The flare of pain surged across Felix's senses, but it was minor at that level. Felix focused on Pain Resistance and weathered the storm, fighting to keep his eyes focused on the courier who flinched before them.

"Explain, Mettias." Vess' voice crackled with authority. The Heiress of Pax'Vrell was displeased.

For a handful of seconds, the little jerk gripped his long daggers as if he would do something with them, before he slumped in defeat. "Fine. Fine. Ugh, I knew this job wasn't worth the money."

Then Mettias began to change.

The boy's skin rippled, crawling along his body in a way that was distinctly upsetting to watch. His shoulders widened, and his arms thickened. His face, once the perfect depiction of a guileless fifteen-year-old boy, grew leaner in the cheeks and mouth, his eyes harder and more calculating. A sharp chin and jaw emerged from the disappearing baby fat, and he grew nearly six inches in height until he was a couple inches taller than Felix. When it was all said and done, he appeared to be a young man around age twenty-five or so. All of this occurred within a matter of seconds, the shift moving so fast that someone could miss it were they not looking closely.

"Noctis wept," Evie cursed.

"Wow. That's impressive," Felix admitted, and used his Voracious Eye once again. Before he had registered as a level 10 Human with little to no remarkable features. Now, he showed to be level 31, and focused specifically on Agility, Dexterity, and Perception. He was weak in Willpower and Vitality. Even tired as he was, and on the low end of his Health pool, Felix was pretty sure he could take him.

"Why?" Vess asked, and Felix noticed she looked almost betrayed. "I trusted you. What is your game?"

The last was said with more steel in her voice than Felix had heard before. Mettias heard it too, because the man paled.

"I was set to watch Vess by Zara or Caerwin. Whatever she's callin' herself today," the duplicitous courier admitted. "You think my Skill is impressive? You ain't seen nothin'."

"Why?" Felix asked.

"I don't know. Didn't ask. She wanted me to support your investigation."

"My—? How did she know?" Vess blinked and looked at Mettias with narrowed eyes. "So that is why you had those Script-Ciphers."

"Script-Ciphers?" Evie raised an eyebrow. "That's banned magic."

"What are they?" Felix asked.

"Sorcerous scriptwork constructs, meant to bypass wards. Aside from bein' Sorcery, they're illegal because proper ones work extremely well."

Sorcery. That means they're Chanter-made, I'd bet.

"And there's few ways to detect ‘em," added Mettias. He shrugged. "I was told to deliver, so I did."

"I trusted you," Vess said, her mouth a thin line. "I suspected something was off… but not this. Why did Zara want me to investigate the Guild Elders?"

Evie sucked in a startled breath, and Felix raised his eyebrows. Investigating the Guild Elders?

Mettias at least had the grace to look somewhat ashamed, but he only shrugged. "I—I don't know. I'm just the messenger."

"He was sent by Zara," Felix repeated and looked to the others. "So, she would be able to explain herself. That's the next step."

"That's what she told me to do, anyways. Lead you outta here an bring you to her," Mettias said.

"And then you ran away," Evie sneered at him.

"I was scared!" The young man protested. He was almost as skinny now as he was in his teen disguise, and he gestured at the nearby corpses with his daggers. "Yeah, sure, I'm stronger than these idiots. But I ain't gonna last against a proper Journeyman Tier. I don't know how you did."

The last remark was directed at Felix, but he ignored it.

"If you know the way, then let's go. I don't want to waste more time down here." Felix extended his senses back the way they had come, but he caught nothing other than the sound of flowing water and echoing stone. "More could be coming after us."

"Finally, someone's speakin' sense!" Mettias started to walk away, but a gloved hand gripped his shoulder. Tight. He cried out.

"You lead us true, or else we'll bury you," Evie snarled in his ear, loud enough that they all could hear her. "Got it, guttersnipe?"

"G-got it."

Evie released him, and he scrambled toward the far end of the room, toward the ladder. She snorted. "Pretty cowardly for a spy."

"I don't know that he is one," Felix muttered, watching the courier's progress. The man paused at the bottom of the ladder and turned back toward them, beckoning. "There's more to this puzzle."

"Vess? You alright?" Evie turned to her friend, and Felix glanced her way. The spearwoman was angry, that much was clear from what he heard from within her. A rising tension that sounded like the plucked strings of an increasing number of violins. Contrary to that, Vess' face was clear and calm, and there was a shrewd sort of consideration in her eyes.

"For now. Let us meet with this Zara again. I have many questions. And they will be answered." Without another word, the heiress swept toward the ladder, halfway there with a single leap.

* * *

Felix let the others move ahead, each of them beginning to climb the ladder up. Pit stood at his heels, and huffed a breath before cooing. He ruffled the feathers on his head, and turned around.

He had one last task to do.

He knew that at least one Initiate could replay a corpse's last moments. Whether that was common to all of them or was a singular, esoteric Skill, Felix had no clue. But he wouldn't leave it to chance. He just hoped destroying their bodies would suffice.

It was the least they deserved.

The Initiate’s body was lost somewhere in the water below, and Felix wasn't willing to go hunting for it. He doubted the Inquisition would, either, even if they could find it. Hopefully, the Veelo made a snack of Crell's bones, the bastard.

Instead, he focused on the two Acolytes. His Ravenous Tithe had processed the golden arrow's Mana already, so usually that would be it for the day. But Felix could feel that the Skill was lit and ready for use again. Perhaps after reaching level 10, the Skill gained multiple uses per day, but he wasn't sure if that just meant one more or several. That left him with a challenge. The Skill had upgraded a little, but it still could only process a single target at a time, and may not be usable on the second body even after he'd digested the essence. But Felix had an idea.

Ravenous Tithe's Skill description mentioned a target “claimed by him. So, reaching out with his Mind, Felix claimed possession of the two corpses. If someone asked him at that moment to explain the how of it, he wouldn't be able to answer. Flaring his Skill, sensing its pattern brighten like a growing star, Felix grabbed at them, and pulled.

His channels screamed, straining with an inverse pressure that felt close to collapsing his insides. Whether it was his Vitality or Endurance, he wasn't sure, but before his pathways caved in, something reinforced them. Shortly after, the bodies turned to thick smoke, both of them streaked with golden light before flowing into Felix's open mouth. The power pushed at his internals in a way that reminded him of a stretched stomach after a big meal.

In seconds, they were gone, armor and all. Only the abundant destruction of the bridge remained as evidence of their fight.

Ravenous Tithe is level 17!

Oh dang, Felix rubbed his stomach, which had distended slightly. It's like I just had five Thanksgiving dinners.

Pit whined nearby. The tenku was growing hungry.

"We'll get some grub when we're back at the Inn, bud," Felix said. "Unless you want some eel?"

A dissatisfied chuff met his words, and Pit turned toward the ladder, lifting his bushy tail up into the air. Felix smiled and checked his new stash.

Within his core, Felix could perceive a swirling collection of vapor glimmering between golden radiance, orange intensity, and flashes of a few other hues. It felt… gross, holding the remains of the redcloaks inside of his core space. His heart hammered in his chest as rage rekindled. They reminded him entirely too much of the Void pirates he’d faced. Redcloak and pirate both cared little for the people they trampled in their path. With an effort, he pushed the emotion away, banking its fire for later.

He doubted this would be the last time he’d cross them.

* * *

They moved through a network of smaller tunnels above. These were narrow, half-filled with water in some places, and lacking in any sort of access walkways. So they trudged as stoically as possible through chill runoff and questionable muck. Pit was not happy and quickly retreated into Felix's Spirit.

Mettias led the way, though the group never once let him very far ahead. Trust had to be earned, after all. One look at Vess, and Felix was certain she was measuring the courier's every step. If he ran, Felix would hate to be him; Vess was far better with that spear than Felix was with his fists.

Conversation was slim as they progressed, but the further the four of them got from the battle site, the more comfortable they all began to feel. There had been no sign of pursuit as of yet, and Felix was certain they'd either been forgotten or it was assumed a single Initiate could handle whatever may arise. As far as Felix was concerned, it didn't matter which.

"We're gonna be in some serious shit if word gets out about this," Evie said after a time. Her voice was less echoey than Felix would have expected, but louder, too. "We just killed members of the Inquisition."

Her voice was tight, but a thread of her excitement was obvious.

"I am… less than pleased we were put in such a position," Vess said with a frown. "The Initiate started off so aggressive there was no chance of parlay or understanding."

"We were the enemy," Evie agreed. "He didn't give two shits about who we were, just that we were heretics. I'm glad we killed ‘im."

“I agree,” Felix said, and it came out as a growl. “They deserved worse than what they got.”

"Well, that’s on you," Mettias said over his shoulder. “I ain’t involved.”

"Remind me again, who stabbed an Acolyte in the back?" Evie laughed. "You're just as damned as we are, if we're caught."

"Ugh," the courier grabbed his head as if he'd only realized the weight of his actions. "We gotta run. Hide. Get outta town!"

"Gates are locked down," Vess said with a dawning anger. "Even if anyone escapes their raid, they will have nowhere to go."

"Gates shut, people on the run. This raid seems..." Felix floundered for the words, fighting to keep his anger at bay. "Ruthlessly well-timed."

"That's a good point," Evie agreed. "That place was hidden under so many veils and shrouds that we barely found it. How'd the Inquisition do it?"

"The Inquisition has more resources at their disposal than even my father," Vess said with an angry shake of her head. "They have trackers and soothsayers and ward-breakers in abundance. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that they found out about this because that is what they do. The Inquisition hunts and eradicates pockets of worship all over the Hierocracy. I've seen it before."

Vess conjured her silver and gold spear to help her across a particularly slick patch of tunnel. Evie hopped lightly over it, while Felix tromped through, his enchanted boots finding easy purchase on whatever muck was down there.

"That is not to say that they did not have a spy, however," Vess admitted.

"Don't look at me. I work for a burnin' Chorister of Avet. And there ain't no way I'd be helpin' the Guild or the Inquisition." Mettias spat to the side.

"Either way, those people are walking into a trap," Evie said. "They were herding them down those tunnels. Guarantee they had a buncha Acolytes and Initiates at the exits, just waitin'."

Felix scowled when Vess nodded in agreement.

"Then we should do something about it. If they're walking into a trap, we need to break the trap. Right?" He looked at the others. They all gave him sidelong glances that were not encouraging.

"Uh!? It's a trap. Why would we walk into it, too?" Mettias groaned from the front.

Evie winced. "I hate to say this, Felix, but Skinny has a point."

"Hey!"

"We don't even know them. Why risk our necks for a buncha nobodies?" the chain wielder continued, ignoring the courier's outburst. Her fingers toyed with a rent in her leather pauldron.

"Because we have the power to do it," Vess stated. "I am sick of power being used only to secure more of the same. Why should we not do what we can?"

Felix pointed at her. "That. That right there. We have the power to do something, so let's fucking do something."

He almost mentioned that he did, in fact, know some of them; but that wasn't the point.

"You got a complex, anyone ever say that?" The courier grew snarkier by the second, emboldened, perhaps by the fact that Evie hadn't killed him yet.

"And you're a liar and coward," Felix shot back. "I know what I’d rather be."

They walked in silence for a while after that.

It seemed that there would be no more pursuit, but the group didn't leave anything to chance. They followed several winding paths and took intersections seemingly at random, sometimes doubling back to confuse any tracking Skills. According to Mettias, at least. Soon, however, they climbed the last ladder and pushed their way free of a large storm grate in some back alley. It was almost completely dark, save for the crescent of a single bronze moon.

Yyero. The god of pestilence and rot shines down on us. That's not ominous at all.

The four of them got topside quickly, and Felix panned his Eye all around him, hoping no one was nearby. Beside him, two sets of eyes flared with green luminescence to his Manasight as both the women enabled Night Eye. Vess' looked a bit different than Evie's, though, the Mana swirling in larger concentrations. There were no people in direct eyesight, but there was the distant racket of a large crowd.

"You all hear that?" Felix asked.

Mettias shook his head while the others listened a bit harder before indicating that they had not.

"It sounds like..."

He heard the distinctive jangle and creak of metal on leather, as well as the groan of stressed lumber. Armor, he realized. Felix turned and crept to the end of the alley. The sound was stronger there, and Felix realized they were in the Wall Quarter, just outside the border with Crafters. He smelled smoke.

The others joined him, and Vess tilted her head. "I hear it now. Sounds like armored men and… carriages?"

Felix climbed the building.

Abyssal Skein!

Unfettered Volition!

Fading into the darkness, Felix was atop the building before the others could react. Crouching low, he could easily see several blocks over. A mass of redcloaks and steel armor had surrounded a large gathering of various people, many of whom were coughing and stumbling out of an old building in the Wall Quarter. The redcloaks had their weapons drawn and were loading people up into armored carriages etched with large sunbursts on the sides.

"See? A trap," hissed Mettias, breathing hard and laying himself flat on the roof beside him. "Those idiots're doomed."

There was a soft thrum in the air, barely audible. Felix glanced up, and his mouth gaped.

Above them, slowly circling the arrested commoners, was a large, wedge-shaped object. Its sails billowed in the high-altitude winds, white Mana crawling along its hull.

A Manaship.

"Double doomed," Mettias corrected himself.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Ilia watched the Inquisition.

While the insipid heiress had gone sneaking off with the courier, the Sworn had wanted to cast her net wide. Where was she headed? Who, exactly, was she going to meet? She had no way of knowing, and to race ahead might mean losing track of the little twist. So she followed, never straying closer than half a block to muddle the girl's fairly sharp senses. It was going well until they hit the Wall Quarter.

Somehow, she lost them in the crowd.

One minute she had eyes on them, and in the next the packed streets had swallowed them entirely. Her Perception was useless, her various sight Skills unable to penetrate the dense mire of Untempered flesh. Even Unmoored Spirit showed only strange, confusing glimpses of sight and sound.

It was clear that someone was contesting her claim with a Skill. And it was strong enough to befuddle an Epic ranked ability. Admittedly, her Unmoored Spirit was only in the Apprentice Tier, but even so. The Sworn was relatively sure it was the courier doing it, but that hunch didn't matter until she found them again. So she did what she couldn't do before.

She cast her net.

Moving quickly and methodically, Ilia scoured the streets of the Wall Quarter. Strangely enough, while she found no trace of her quarry, Ilia did notice that the once-busy streets emptied out as dusk descended on Haarwatch. It was an eerie sight, one she had not often experienced in the city, and never in the Wall Quarter. The area was considered the beating heart of Haarwatch, with taverns open all night and many specialized shops available as well, all to service the ceaseless vigil upon the Wall itself. Yet now, it was silent as the grave.

Or rather, the normal sounds of the quarter were silenced, but the creak and jangle of armor and harness was much louder. Taking the briefest of dips away from her hunt, Ilia sated her curiosity and found a massive gathering of Inquisition forces. At least five hundred redcloaks had marshaled in the Wall Quarter, and from what she overheard the Initiates whispering, they were going on a hunt. For heretics.

Ilia had been a member of the Sworn nearly all her life, and she had grown a nose for coincidences. This was not one of them. So, still unable to find hide nor hair of her quarry, she shadowed the strike force as it honed in on a section of the Crafters Quarter. They consulted no artifacts nor arcane tools, instead making directly for three separate areas. The force split up with militaristic precision, each group moving as quietly as they could without sacrificing speed. Before long, the splinter Ilia followed came upon an old, dilapidated building on the boundary between the Crafters’ and the Wall Quarter.

After encircling the old, clearly abandoned residence, the Inquisition settled in to wait. As did the Sworn. Neither had to wait long.

When the smoke began pouring out of the structure, Ilia knew what would happen. She had studied such tactics herself, once upon a time. Bursts of thicker smoke and licks of controlled fire sent people fleeing out of the building's two exits. They were all dressed in the simple clothing of Untempered crafters and laborers, and many of them were either wounded or hacking from the smoke. It was child's play to corner them and drive them into the armored wagons that had followed at a discreet distance.

God-touched idiots, Ilia shook her head. Her heart was ice, but she couldn't shake a tiny touch of sympathy for the poor families that would lose mothers and fathers to this. Hope they said their goodbyes.

Few came back from Hierocratic justice.

Above her, a low hum drifted past the chaos below. Ice or not, Ilia's heart had lurched to see a Manaship descend from the limited cloud cover and circle above the site. They have a Manaship? Heretics were present in most places of the Hierocracy. A Manaship had cannons that could level a building in a few blinks, and ate up more Mana in an hour than most folks could generate in a week. Its presence was utter overkill for the level of conflict she'd experienced in Haarwatch. Unless the Inquisition played a different game.

Two other plumes of dark gray smoke pushed up into the night, straight and untouched by wind. Like a prowling shark, the Manaship began a slow circuit around each ambush point. Something else was going on here, Ilia was certain of that.

The Inquisition had set guards along the edge of their operation. Men and women in white-enameled armor turned away those few foolish souls who tried to peek further in. From among them, words drifted to the Sworn's sharpened senses. The guards in question were a half a block away, too far for her Analyze to tag. She focused on the sound, letting her Perception enhance them until it was as if they were only feet away.

"Do you think he's really up there, Nel?" said a larger figure, gesturing above. He wore the sword of an Initiate and was easily three span tall and wide as a tree trunk. The red cloak that hung from his back was more like a bedsheet. "The Master Inquisitor?"

"Of course not. Probably an Inquisitor at the helm. You think Khorun Katan has the time to watch over a rat flush?" The big one grunted, conceding the point. The second Initiate, Nel, was shorter and slighter than the first and seemed… agitated.

"Think the Fiend will be here?" The big one asked, thumbing the pommel at his waist. "Think we'll see some claws and teeth tonight?"

"You still on that? He's not real," Nel said.

Lies. Ilia recognized. He's afraid.

"The Master Inquisitor thinks so," the other argued. "Why put out orders to keep an eye out, then?"

Nel scoffed. "Orders to look for someone with blue eyes and lightning-based Skills, yeah. Not for some monster out of tavern tales."

"Still," Treetrunk said. "Shame we're hunting him down. Dusters talk about him like he's a hero."

"He attacked two Acolytes to enter this city illegally, Marv," Nel explained with a trace of heat. "Then he killed monsters far above most people in town, and maybe even did in some citizens. There are more than a few mysterious disappearances. Bodies carved up and left in alleyways..."

Nel didn't shiver, not exactly, but a tremor passed through his aura after his last sentence.

"You saying the Fiend and the Butcher are the same?" Marv the Treetrunk tilted his head in confusion. "That report said he'd attacked the gate guards only a couple weeks ago. The Butcher has been leaving bodies for a month, at least."

"Who says he didn't leave and come back?" The Initiate shrugged, but his agitated Spirit was easy to read. "Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe—"

The rest of what he said was lost in another popping burst of fire Mana. The abandoned house spat out licks of hungry flame from its windows and doors as even more smoke fed out into the dark night.

Ilia could sense a number of people behind locked doors and shuttered windows, watching the redcloaks grab people off the street and burn down buildings. She knew they were too scared to venture out here, too weak. They feared they, too, would be taken away.

Then she felt a resonance in her Spirit. Her Skill had found the heiress again.

Remarkably, the girl wasn't at any of the three sites, and for a moment, Ilia doubted her intuition. Then she noticed that the resonance was coming from behind her. In a flash, Ilia Cloud Stepped to the roof and looked back. Flaring her Journeyman Tier eyes, she fixated on a small, barely perceptible flash of silver in the dark night.

Found you.

Beside the heiress was another, a strange gangly man with a sharp, rat-like face, as well as a familiar figure wearing a spiked chain. Evie Aren. Just what are you doing here?

She had known the two were friends, but from what she could tell, Dayne hadn't tried to see her in months. Why now? The Sworn's eyes panned over the roof, nearly skipping over an empty patch beside her—No. Not empty.

Eyes of Revered Shadow!

Her eyes strained, aided by her Skill, and she could suddenly perceive a boy with intense eyes and shaggy black hair. Waves of shadow rolled off him, revealed to her by her advanced Skill, and something else kept fighting back against her observation. She pressed harder, feeling blood vessels burst in her eyes, to no avail. Yet the shape of that jaw, his nose, they tickled her Mind.

Ilia jolted in surprise.

What? That can’t be. She felt like she was seeing things. He's still alive?

* * *

"Where are they taking them?"

Vess made a face, her eyes unfocused as she tried to look toward Felix. She took several blinks and frowned as if through a headache. "Could you stop doing… whatever it is you are doing? I cannot talk to you like this."

Abyssal Skein is level 14!

Abyssal Skein is level 15!

"Oh, sorry," Felix dropped his Skill, and all three of his companions nearly sighed in relief. Vess flicked her eyes to him, having been looking about two feet to his left.

"Gods, what is that Skill? Knowing you're there but not seein' you is like worryin' at a toothache I can't find," Evie grumbled from the other side of Vess, and Felix shrugged without answering.

"That wasn't Stealth. You were almost invisible," Mettias gasped. "That is...that-teach me!"

Felix ignored him, too, turning instead to Vess. He repeated his question.

"Where is the Inquisition taking them? Do you know?"

"To the Eyrie. It is the only place with enough facilities to hold so many," Vess said while she looked back out at the mass of red cloaks and smoke-stained prisoners. She settled a little lower on the roof, trying to present as little a silhouette as possible.

Felix looked out as well. He had wanted to rush in and save the people, but… with the amount of opposition, there wasn't much he could do. His Eye picked out many Acolytes and Initiates, but also four full-fledged Inquisitors. He'd asked before, and the ranks in the order were relatively analogous to Guild Ranks. Acolytes were Tin or Iron Rank and Initiates were Bronze, generally speaking. Inquisitors, however, broke that pattern. Most were closer to Gold than standard Silver Ranks. Many, he'd been told, had Skills that were in the Adept Tier; one whole rank above Journeyman.

He'd been told all of that, but his Eye confirmed that many were stronger than such rankings assumed. None were below Apprentice Tier, while many were above Journeyman. Those four Inquisitors were, in fact, Adepts.

Felix was strong; he knew that and appreciated that he could manage odds that many others couldn't. But even he couldn't fight four above-Harn-level combatants and their literal army.

Felix ground his teeth in annoyance. All of that still said nothing of the Manaship that cruised the sky above them. Felix vividly recalled the Hippocamp's Fury and the sheer amount of firepower it had brought to bear. Surely, an Inquisition ship would be equipped with far more munitions than a pirate vessel stuck in the Void. At the very least, Felix had to worry about possible reinforcements from above, as the ship was clearly large enough to carry hundreds.

“Manaship,” Evie muttered. “Deadly.”

“What’s powering it?” Felix asked. His voice was quiet, too quiet maybe. He was worried he’d start shouting if he gave rein to his anger.

“That depends entirely on the style of ship,” Vess said, also watching the ship make tight circles above. “This type utilizes Domain Cores and a dedicated crew to feed it Mana.”

Felix licked his lips. “They don’t… strap people to their engines?”

“That’s dark,” Evie said, giving him an appraising look. “Ain’t heard of that before.”

“It has not been done that way in a long time,” Vess said. “At least, not in civilized lands. Much as I despite their Orders, I doubt even the Hierophant would stoop to such methods.”

Felix felt a knot of tension slip from his gut, and his skin prickled uncomfortably. He loosened his clenched fists, only to find them wet with blood where his nails had dug into his palms. Chill. It’s… the pirates are gone.

Pit warbled in concern from within. Sense memories flashed between them, of the pirate vessels and the Mana slaves that had been lashed to their engines. He’d saved them… most of them. It still made him sick, and the sharp recall didn’t help things at all.

I remember, too, Pit. And just because these idiots don’t do the same thing, doesn’t mean they don’t deserve an ass kicking. Far as Felix could tell, the redcloaks had the same “might makes right” attitude that Nokk and his crew had fostered. I’m sick of it. All of it.

"Yes, they have this ship docked at the Eyrie, though they have not deigned to bring it out before now," Vess said with some contempt, answering a question he’d missed. "Why they feel the need to use it on Untempered commoners trying to worship is reprehensible."

"They're Inquisitors," Mettias said, his voice tired. "This is what they do."

"Look," Evie pointed out two other plumes of smoke that pushed straight up into the sky. "You think that's where the other tunnels let out?"

"Definitely," Mettias grunted. "Which means this area is crawlin' with redcloaks. I dunno about you, but I'm gettin' outta here. Zara asked that I bring you to her, but I ain't forcin' you to come."

"Wait," Felix put out a hand to halt the man. "What's going to happen to them?"

"The prisoners?" Mettias grimaced. "Probably gonna get killed."

"What?" Felix said in a strangled tone. Through their bond, Pit echoed his alarm.

"There will be a trial first. Hierocratic law demands it," Vess assured him, but Mettias snorted.

"A farce."

Vess' face reddened slightly, but she didn't disagree. "Once they are found guilty, they will either be banished, executed, or..."

"Fed to the Domain," the courier finished.

"What?" Felix repeated. He wasn't sure he heard that right. "They could be fed to a Domain? How does—why? Why would that be a thing?"

"Domains use up a lotta Mana to keep functioning properly," Evie said, her own face pale. Whether it was anger or fear, Felix couldn't tell. "Guild uses ‘em as trainin' resources, and to keep doin' that, they need to be topped off nearly all the time."

"Right," agreed Vess, her voice quiet. "It is an important thing any controlling force knows, for if the Domain dies, there too goes the easy strengthening of your warriors."

"Yeah, but people? You feed it people?!" Felix felt himself grow angrier the longer he thought about it. It reminded him again of the Void.

"Criminals mostly, those convicted of terrible deeds, typically," Vess affirmed, her jaw tightly clenched. "But more often, it's fed monsters that are captured from the wilderness, at least that is what is done in Pax'Vrell. Here.... I do not know what is normal here."

"Monsters are what's normal. So many Chimeras have been fed into the Domain here that it's mostly filled with ‘em," Evie said. She winced and gave an apologetic shrug toward Felix. "Sorry."

Pit squawked in outrage from Felix’s Spirit, though no one heard it but him.

"Ain't nothin' we can do to change it, not here," Mettias said, crawling to the edge of the roof again. "Perhaps Zara has answers, though. If your willin' to follow me."

Vess and Evie shared a look. Evie shrugged, but her face was hard. The chain wielder nudged Felix, who still stared at the gathered Inquisitors.

"C'mon Felix. Let's see what this wizard has to say."

Despite himself, Felix smiled. "Hey, you used it right."

* * *

The youths climbed down off the roof, heading back toward this Zara.

Zara. Sounds like a Naiad. Ilia couldn't place the name for a few moments, but then it came to her. The Guild Archivist. Former, I think. She recalled hearing about a Naiad that got ousted for causing a ruckus in the Eyrie. Why would they be going to see her?

Intrigued, she followed. Had she not been contracted to do this, Ilia would have followed them anyway. Her nose was telling her that something big was happening; this was just the edge of it.

Knowing that Felix was there had her more careful than ever. He had spotted her Shroud in the Foglands when it should have been impossible; she took no chances of that happening again.

They blazed a path, cutting through the city's back streets and alleys in the most efficient way possible. The man leading them, skinny and strange as he may have looked, knew more shortcuts through Haarwatch than even she did. Felix kept disappearing from her senses, his Stealth able to evade her Unmoored Spirit, but not for a terribly long time. He'd reappear eventually, visibly tired, yet they stopped only twice. Each time, Felix would disappear from her senses for another handful of minutes before reappearing. When the boy had first vanished, Ilia had felt a thrill of panic that he had spotted her; but no, he seemed to just need a break. He was clearly using some sort of Skill in addition to his Stealth, as he always came back appearing more tired than before. It was strange enough that even their gangly guide remarked on it.

"How many piss breaks d'ya need?"

Felix didn't even bother to answer, though, just gestured for the man to lead on. So on they went.

Before an hour was out, the four of them had made it into the Sunrise Quarter, of all places. Ilia spent a goodly amount of time in the Sunrise Quarter, and it was an expensive place to live, even at the outskirts. The minor Houses all lived there, while the heavyweights were toward the elevated center of town. The guide brought them to the easternmost stretch of the Quarter, only blocks from the Sunrise Gate itself.

The street they headed down was quaint, filled with trees and perfectly maintained streets. Enchanted lanterns hung every thirty feet, and a small park lay across the avenue, filled with night-dark grasses and the hoots of owls. Ilia settled on the roof of a nearby house, content to follow them with her Unmoored Spirit alone. Her disembodied sense of sight and sound hovered invisibly above the heiress, and she regarded them as they spoke in bare whispers.

"—do you think?"

Felix shrugged, and not for the first time, the Sworn noticed how he'd grown bigger. He looked strong and nimble, and his eyes never stopped moving as he tried to pay attention in all directions at once. He advanced. Exceptionally, too.

"I don't wanna guess," he said. "Let's just get to her and ask. I have a lot of questions myself."

Evie Aren chuckled, and Felix raised his eyebrow at her, which just made her laugh more. The heiress watched it all, and there was a curious and familiar look in her eye.

Jealousy? Interesting. Ilia snickered to herself. That may prove useful.

"Alright, we're almost there," said the thin man. "Just brace yourselves, because it'll feel… strange."

"Strange how—"

"AH!"

Ilia felt her Spirit sent reeling back. It slammed into her physical form like a runaway cart, nearly knocking her off the ceramic roofing tiles. Her sight filled with buzzing shapes that twisted and burned too bright to look at. They barely faded with her eyes closed. Meanwhile, a textured ringing vibrated across her ears, as if she had stood too close to a bell as it began to ring. For a moment, she clung to the surface of the roof, putting her senses back in order. When she had gathered herself, only ten seconds later, the Sworn found the street completely and utterly empty.

Her quarry had gone, and with a light flexing of her Will, she found her Epic Skill unresponsive.

"Blighted night," she cursed.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Abyssal Skein is level 16!

...

Abyssal Skein is level 20!

Felix had kept his Void-touched stealth Skill active as much as possible during their walk. He knew it was somewhat useless; he was following a group that was not able to hide as he could. But he kept it up as it began leveling insanely fast. Far faster, in fact, than even his devoured essence-fueled growth had demonstrated. Almost as if someone were watching him, constantly.

Numerous times during their trip toward Zara, Felix had cast out his senses. Other than the faintly-felt presences within various buildings, clearly asleep or resting, there was nothing. Shadow Mana swirled all around him, further hindering his Manasight. It was especially thick that night, with all but the bronze crescent of Yyero shining down on them.

But that same darkness aided their journey. Patrolling Guilders were easily circumvented, and the Inquisition was nowhere to be seen, a dubious advantage of their attention being firmly fixed elsewhere.

Distracted, Felix almost missed when Mettias had warned them of something coming. What he didn't miss was the stuttering shock as a cold sensation swept through his blood and bones, scouring him so thoroughly and so quickly that he barely had time to be upset. He stumbled forward three steps, and Unfettered Volition, which he had been running on a low burn all evening, deactivated by itself. The others faltered as well, and Vess had to conjure another silver spear to catch herself.

"Avet's blackened teeth!" Evie cursed, whirling on the courier. "What was that?"

"Shh! Keep it down!" Mettias flinched under Evie's glare, but kept talking. "Just a precaution. Safety measures, right?"

"What is it?" Vess asked, her hand moving through the air as Mana vapor wafted around her limb. Felix could clearly see the vapor, but he hadn't known Vess had a similar Skill.

Mana Manipulation, too, he noted as the vapor curled around itself and fountained from her palm. She was pushing it around curiously, though with quite a measure of skill. Must be Apprentice Tier or so. Best I can do is push it out and hold it in a rough cloud shape.

"I'unno," said the ever-helpful courier. "I'm just the help."

Felix frowned at the man, but was distracted by the sensation of something beneath the street, perhaps carved into the bottom of the cobbles...if not deeper. Whatever it was, it extended outward from them in a large circle, easily 200 yards in diameter if he had to guess.

"It deactivates active and passive Skills for a brief duration," Vess said, her eyes roaming the ground. She glanced back at them and shrugged. "I've had a lot of time on my hands to practice some of my lesser-used Skills. I can feel this. Like a… crack in the world. A hitch in the step. Not enough to truly harm anyone—"

"But enough to make ‘em trip for a second," Felix finished, looking impressed at the faint script circle before grinning at Vess. "Good eye."

"Yea yea, good spottin', but that ain't something you can just hit everyone with on the street. Else you're gonna get a buncha rambunctious nobles on your ass," Evie pointed out. "This was targeted."

"So Zara is already here," Felix said.

In response, Mettias walked over to a nearby wall of large cut stone, within which was a gate of wrought iron. It opened at his approach with a soft groan.

"If you'll follow me, then," he said.

Beyond was an impressive house, but that went without saying. Since entering the Sunrise Quarter, the trio had seen a number of residences that were situated on spacious grounds and featured intricate stone and ironwork. Statues of monsters and men subduing them abounded, far more so than anywhere else in the city, and typically within walled compounds. The streets themselves had been well-appointed but decorated with little more than beautiful lampposts.

This mansion was small by comparison, as were many at the edge of the Quarter, but once they had passed the thick stone walls, they were confronted with an abundance of flora. Blooms of all colors sat draped in shadow, motes of emerald-gold life Mana flitting around their slumbering forms. The entire property felt different to Felix's Manasight, as if the ambient chaos of the city were somehow muted and restrained.

Controlled.

The house itself rose before them, three stories and looming in the dark. No street lights reached beyond the gates, though even without their System-enhanced Perception, it was easy to walk the smooth path of flagstones and up onto a deep, columned porch. Mettias paused before a large wooden door, stained dark like cherry wood, and mounted with an impressively fashioned knocker.

"That looks like a wood elemental," Vess said.

It was made of a dark metal and carved to resemble a craggy yet beautiful male face. Vines and leaves crawled along its visage, twining together to form a semi-circle that hung below. Mettias knocked, and the sound of it was oddly resonant. Like he'd struck a big drum.

The door opened on its own.

"Creepy," Evie said.

"You first, Mettias," Vess insisted firmly. The courier ducked his head and walked forward. Felix felt the rhythm the man hid within his chest… it sounded a lot like guilt. And worry. A lot of worry.

Why, though?

Within was darkness and the smell of lemon and beeswax. Felix's sharp eyes picked out a wide wooden floor, inlaid with polished stone in the very center of a round room almost forty feet in diameter. Sculptures sat in nooks to either side of the entryway, flanking two sets of armor on elaborate stands. A crystal chandelier hung high above, and a grand, double staircase swept around the circular room. To their left, an orange light flickered to life beyond a door that was mostly closed. A fire, judging by the way the shadows danced.

Something landed in front of them.

It was a brightly colored kingfisher, the same one that had sat on Zara's shoulder down below. It regarded them with a sharp look before hopping once then flying away.

Felix watched its flight and noticed that many other eyes were watching from the upper floor.

Birds. Lots of birds.

"That… that is a large amount of avians," Vess said, shooting a glance at her friends. "Why are there so many birds?"

"No clue. She had them in her bookshop, though," Felix said. "That kingfisher didn't land there by accident. It was a message."

"She has backup, you mean," Vess replied, looking in Felix's eyes. Hers were a brown so dark they were almost black.

"Definitely spooky magic stuff, then," Evie nodded. "If this goes sideways, you make with the lightning on the flying rats."

Felix pursed his lips but didn't argue. She was right, after all. He hoped this would all go well, that he'd get some solid answers for once, but… things didn't always go to plan for him.

They entered the dimly lit room and found a gorgeously appointed parlor. A large, plush carpet sat on the floor, muffling their booted steps, and the walls were packed with tall, built-in bookshelves that were absolutely overflowing with tomes. Well-stuffed chairs were placed strategically around a pale fireplace and impressively carved mantle. It, too, appeared to be of what Vess called a wood elemental, the leaf and vine motif apparent. The last vestiges of an evening fire simmered within.

Zara, the woman of the hour, stood beside a tall-backed chair and the weakly flickering fire.

"You've all made it safely," she said warmly. "That is good."

Without a word, the fire beside her flared up and further illuminated the room around them. The Naiad gestured to the seats around her.

"Please, sit."

Felix watched her before looking at the chairs. His Eye noted they were made of chimeric leather. Harnoq skin, to be precise. Pit growled within him, and Felix declined a seat. The woman gave him a strange look before nodding.

Zara looked much as before; Felix hadn't been sure she wouldn't change her appearance once again. Ochre skin, blue-green hair, this time piled in an impressive updo. She was no longer wearing the black robes of a chorister, and instead was garbed in what Felix termed “fancy noble lady clothes.” A dark teal gown that was relatively understated but clearly expensive, it had a high collar and long sleeves. A white shawl lay around her shoulders, despite the summer evening heat.

"Thank you, Mettias. You may go."

"Ma'am," the courier nodded in a way that also seemed like a clumsy sort of bow. "Should I, uh—"

"You may retire upstairs," she said to him, clearly dismissing her agent.

"Ma'am," he repeated, then slunk off into the dark.

"A useful man, if crude," Zara said with a sigh before turning to the three of them. "I am sure you all have a thousand questions, yes?"

"At least," Felix agreed. He saw the others nod in his peripherals; they had both taken seats nearby.

"Very well. For dragging you all into that… debacle, I believe I owe you at least a few answers," Zara spread her skirts and sat in the high-backed chair nearest the fire. "What do you wish to know?"

"How many made it out safely?" Felix asked immediately. Leaving people to be arrested had been scraping him raw.

"Not enough," Zara said, clearly pained. "A few made it out of lesser-known entrances, but nearly all of the other choristers were taken. Save for Siva's own, which should be no surprise."

Evie grunted. "I don't give two burnin' shits about them. I wanna know why, exactly, we were invited to that shitshow? You seem like a smart lady, mysterious an all with your spooky magic, you had to have known the redcloaks were comin'."

"You give me far too much credit, Evie Aren," Zara frowned. "If I had known the Inquisition was planning a raid, that meeting never would have happened. If I had sensed their coming, I would have warned everyone. Unfortunately, not only do the redcloaks have seers and wardbreakers, they also have experts in scriptwork. They not only bypassed our security, but they turned it against us."

"How?" Vess asked. "The layers of defenses we saw down there were numerous. To do what you're saying would take either Master-level Skill or—"

"Or something else, entirely," Felix finished. He looked up into Zara's eyes, sensing her deep frustration. "The Inquisition uses your Chanter magic."

"OOh the boy is smart!"

There was a flurry of feathers, and the same brilliantly-plumed kingfisher fluttered down from above. He alighted upon the edge of Zara's high-backed chair and regarded Felix with a single bright eye.

"Did—did that bird just talk?" Evie asked.

"Did the Human say something dumb?" The creature piped in a mocking tone. "See? I can point out the obvious, too."

"Enough, Keru," Zara snapped. The bird closed its beak with a huff. "Yes, I suspect the Inquisition knows of and uses aspects of my art."

"Wait, wait, what's Chanter magic?" Evie asked, clearly struggling to accept the reality of a talking bird. She blinked and glared her question at Zara.

"Sorcery," Vess responded quietly, and the room went silent a bit. She sat up straighter. "You are a Sorcerer."

Zara took a seated bow. "Guilty as charged."

Evie sucked in a breath through her teeth, and Felix felt a few facts falling into place. The redcloaks had kept going on about Sorcery and purity and all that, and when the Initiate sensed something happening in that back alley, he had called it Sorcery, too. Right before he had done something that had rung out among the harmonic vibrations Felix had become attuned to… something which illuminated a man's last living moments.

"Sorcery is… the Grand Harmony?" Felix asked. Zara tipped her head to the side in agreement.

"In part. Truly, what the Pathless calls Sorcery is a mish-mash of traditions that exist outside of the paradigm of accepted power structure." Zara smiled, her shark-like teeth flashing in the firelight. "The Grand Harmony is a large component of that, and the prime offender in most cases. It was the magic taught by the old gods, after all."

"Harmony," Vess said softly. "I have… that is familiar."

"I imagine it would be, your Grace," Zara said in the same tone. "It was a talent of your mother's."

"Come again?" Evie said, wiggling a finger in her ear. "You're saying the Duchess, famous dragon hunter and pride of the Hierocracy was a burnin' Sorcerer?"

Felix's head whipped between the three of them, trying to catch everything. Vess had leaned back as if pressed against the chair, while Evie was all but jumping out of her seat. Zara ignored Evie and spoke to Vess once more.

"It is one of the reasons I chose to help you. I know my kind, those of us who have heard the majestic chords of creation. When I invited you to the gathering below, it was to offer you a perspective that you likely had not experienced in court or the Eyrie.

"Forces move beneath this city, beneath this nation. As an heiress, you are well acquainted with many of them, but to these, you are blind. As are you, Felix. I needed both of you to understand what has been happening and what is at stake."

Zara wet her lips and took a measured breath. The kingfisher hopped from one side of the chair to the other.

"More importantly, I need your help."

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

"Our help?" Felix gestured around them. "For what?"

"There are some things I cannot do," Zara said. "And it is a task that needs those sensitive to the Grand Harmony."

"So, not me, then?" Evie said, and Felix couldn't tell if she was annoyed or relieved.

"I don't doubt you're quite capable," Zara said. "A trusted ally is always worth their weight in gold."

Felix's Eye couldn't fully read Zara; she clearly had something similar to an Amulet of Veiling. But the Naiad must have decided to let her guard down, because suddenly he could perceive her advancement. He sat up in surprise. Felix's sense of the Tiers grew foggy after Journeyman, the heft and weight of each one different. But what he felt from her was strong. Very strong.

"What Tier are you?"

Zara's eyes sparkled with muted amusement as she answered, "Master Tier."

That's a whole level above Adept.

"Avet's lying teeth!" Evie shouted, while Vess gasped. "If you were Master Tier, you wouldn't need us for anythin'!"

"That is normally quite true," Zara agreed, folding her arms and settling back into her chair. "But what needs to be done cannot be accomplished by someone such as myself, or truly anyone significantly above Journeyman."

Vess frowned and slashed her hand through the air before her. "Before I hear any of your requests, you will tell me about my mother. Now."

Felix gave her a surprised look, but nodded when he saw the young woman's intensity. Her mother died, right? She said it was just her and her father, the Duke.

Zara folded her hands and regarded the heiress with a cool gaze. "What do you wish to know?"

"How did you know her? What proof do you have that she practiced… Sorcery?" Vess' voice dropped into a whisper at the end of her question.

"Your Grace," Zara began, tapping her fingers together pensively. "Your mother was a Dragoon. You know this, of course, but what you may not know is that she fought more than dragon-ilk in our skies. Beasts of all stripe threaten the Hierocracy, and the Lady Dayne was a powerful blade against their throats. But once, she needed more than her spear and Skills, and in a moment of dire need, she reached out for something, anything...and found it."

"Sorcery," Vess repeated.

Zara inclined her head. "Sorcery. Harmony. The Wild Song. It has as many names as there are people in this world. She found within her a capacity, and she came looking for tools to better harness it. I was living in Pax'Vrell at the time, and that is when I met her. She had quite the knack for my trinkets, and though her fame was her own, I like to think I helped more than most."

Vess went quiet, her stare turned inward.

"Need and inspiration draw it from within most of us. You have unlocked some Harmonic Stats, no?" Zara asked.

Vess nodded. "Resilience and Might."

"Very good. I imagine you got them after Tiering up, yes? One or two of your Skills evolving into a higher rarity?" The sharp look Vess gave her made Zara smile, those shark teeth reemerging. "That is the way of it. The Grand Harmony is the truth of creation itself. Those who stumble upon even a smidgeon of it discover remarkable insights."

The Naiad swept her eyes over all of them. "Such insight is needed, because the balance has shifted here in Haarwatch. A dark dissonance has grown within the center, one that must be cut out at the source. The Inquisition and Protectors' Guild are both flawed organizations, filled with those who follow their own greed and lust for power. I've had plenty of time to experience the truth of that. But worse things have risen from the shadows of that gluttony. The Guilders overreached when they sent their people into the Foglands to claim it, and when they came back, something else came with them."

Felix shifted his feet. "What?"

"There were those who sickened badly after the operation," Vess said with a dawning horror.

Zara nodded. "People the Guild could not heal, which is a rare occurrence. The System assists our bodies greatly in recovery, and those few Skilled with curative abilities are usually enough to stave off death. But all of those maligned were reported dead after a few weeks."

Vess stood up and started pacing. "But they did not, did they? Elders Teine and Fairbanks both have spoken about the survivors, about how they have been put somewhere safe."

Vess slowed to a stop and turned to Zara.

"You said dissonance was growing in the center. The center of what?"

Shit.

"The Domain," Felix said with a groan. "You're saying the Domain has been, what, corrupted by whatever the Guild is doing?"

Zara nodded.

"Which is what, precisely?" Evie asked, annoyed. "State it plainly."

"Very well," Zara said. "The Elder of Spirit has long experimented with Mana Skills and whatever power he could grasp. It's no surprise that he would leap at the chance to study a powerful corruption that followed the Guilders back from the Foglands. They were isolated in the Domain, and the Domain itself restricted from all but a few in an effort to keep it contained. Yet, the dissonance grows worse. It's a subtle thing, but soon it will be bad enough that even you two may hear it."

Felix's mind raced. "This corruption it… do you know what it is?"

Zara shook her head. "It's powerful, yet insidious. I haven't experienced it before."

I have a feeling I have. Felix listened to his Bastion, but the Maw made no sound, nor movements. It was trapped securely. It'd be nice to be wrong, though.

"So this corruption thing grows, why's that our issue?" Evie asked.

"It is of concern to everyone in Haarwatch. If the problem is not resolved, we have a week, perhaps two, before the dissonance escalates beyond our control. The power within will dissolve the script wards around the Domain—"

"And the shell will break," Vess finished, her face pale. "Whatever monsters are within, they'll flood the city."

"Haarwatch will be eaten alive from the inside," Zara confirmed. "It has already begun. While our Wall is overwhelmed, rumors fly about other monsters lingering in town. Murdering in back alleys and deserted shops."

"You mean the Butcher," Felix said. "I was told they thought it was coming from the Domain. You think it's one of these corrupted creatures?"

"One or more, I do," Zara said. "If you'd seen the bodies, you would know they were not ravaged by any normal beast."

"I ran into one, yeah," Felix said, his mind trying not to envision the twisted sigils on the Elf's corpse.

"You did?" Evie asked, surprised. "You didn't mention that before."

"Sorry. I told Atar. He's been searching for the Butcher for… the Guild." Felix nearly cursed when he realized what that might mean. "He said Elder Teine was having his students all search for it."

"Trying to clean up his mistakes," Evie muttered.

"So what would you have us do?" Vess demanded. "I cannot stand idly by and let the Domain fail. It would be a catastrophe."

"The only thing that can be done is to enter the Domain and cleanse it. Once the source of the corruption is eradicated, then the Domain has a chance to balance itself," Zara explained.

"Enter a highly secure area directly beneath the Guild?" Evie scoffed. "Even if we were strong enough to handle this, we wouldn't get past the Silver and Bronze Rankers that guard it."

"I also know that the Inquisition has placed some of their people down there, too," Felix said. "Atar mentioned it a few days ago."

"Really? Shit. Why?" Evie looked at him.

"That is suspicious. Why would the Inquisition care about the Domain?" Vess asked Zara.

"Because they know something is happening, too," she explained. "They have to. Like you said, Felix: the Inquisition knows Chanter magic as well. They can feel it in the air."

"Then why are they feeding it?" Felix asked. "Wouldn't that just make whatever is corrupted inside the Domain stronger?"

"Yes it would. Why would they do that, do you think?" Zara leaned forward, piercing them with her light blue eyes.

"Cause they're stupid?" Evie muttered, sighing in frustration.

Felix thought of the redcloaks and their attitude toward the city, toward the Guilders, toward everyone. He'd seen a great amount of contempt from the Acolytes and Initiates. It was hard to imagine that changed as someone went higher up the chain. So what was the logical extreme of feeding an already dangerous situation?

"They plan to break the Domain," Felix said.

"No! Not even they would dare!" Vess insisted, looking between Felix and Zara. "The Inquisition are hateful fools, but why would they even want that?"

"They clearly don't care about Haarwatch or the people in it," Felix growled as he paced behind the row of chairs. "The better question is, if the Domain is broken, what does the Inquisition gain?"

Zara smiled her saw-toothed smile. "Well-put, Felix. I'm impressed. You're right. There is much to gain here. If the Domain fails, then the blame will lie squarely with the Guild. Monsters will ravage the population, and the Inquisition can come to their aid and cleanse the city. After that, Guild Charter broken and city saved, the territory would be ripe for the taking."

"As would the Foglands," Felix finished with a frown. "And all of the untapped resources they contain."

A moment of silence crawled across the room, the only sound the crackle of the fire.

"And you want us to stop this?" Evie asked, incredulous. "This isn't a convincing argument. If anything, it's just convincing me to tell Callie and make a run for it."

"Evie," Vess admonished. "You would never run."

Evie's sour look softened, and she fell back into her chair with a defeated sigh.

"Siva's tears, you're not wrong, Vess. But this is a lot." She eyed the Naiad. "You're sure you can't go and deal with this yourself?"

Zara shook her head ruefully. "If only I could. But the Domain is not highly ranked, and my level of advancement would strain it beyond its limits. The shell would break, and we'd be in the same situation I'm looking to avoid."

"Forgive me if I overstep, Zara, but you are a chorister of Avet. He is a god not known for order and virtue," Vess said carefully, hands turned up. "The chaos of an unleashed Domain would seem to be exactly what he would desire."

"Avet is a god of chaos and change. Revolution. Not slaughter," Zara explained, a touch of exasperation on her face. "And the short of it is that I have not spoken to my god in all of my life. The gods are not dead, but they are farther away than we can imagine. I do this because I love this city and its people. I will not sit on my hands while innocents are butchered for power.

"I cannot say this will be safe. That would be a lie. But it is the only way I know to prevent an atrocity."

Felix scratched his jaw and looked at the others. "Can you give us time to think it over? I don't think this is something we can decide on just with ourselves. I think Cal, Harn, and the rest need to be involved, too."

Vess and Evie both agreed.

"Of course. I wouldn't expect you to rush into any decision here," Zara rang a small bell on a side table, and the doors on the far end of the room cracked open. A woman with red skin and a dark gray gown appeared. "Melle will be able to escort you to your rooms. You are free to spend as long as you wish here. In the morning, we can all go and speak with Calesca and Harn."

The three of them cautiously stood up and followed the servant up a set of stairs and down a dimly lit hallway.Three rooms were laid out before them, but they all moved into the same one as soon as the servant left.

A sharp trilling sounded in Felix's head, and he smiled to himself. "Sorry, bud, just a sec."

There was a flash of light, and Pit coalesced beside him. He still hadn't resumed his Dire Hound disguise, and the chimera stretched his dark wings out to their fullest extent. He had grown again, and his wingspan was nearly ten feet.

"Pit! Doesn't it get stuffy in there?" Evie asked. "Can't imagine there's much room with all the other Skills crammed in. Also probably stinky."

Pit let out a cheerful chirrup and padded over to her for head scratches.

"Traitor," Felix murmured.

"That Skill of yours is impressive, Felix," Vess said, reaching a tentative hand out to pet the chimera. "I am still amazed at how different he looks."

"Hm? Oh right, because of the Foglands illusions. Yeah, I always wondered why he creeped you all out. To me, he's always looked like a, well, this." Felix gestured at his Companion, who currently had a lolling tongue and eyes half-closed. Both Evie and Vess were scratching right behind his ears. Felix could feel his thrum of contentment, but he tried not to let it dull his caution.

Felix extended his senses to the limit. He had to assume they were being observed somehow, but he couldn't detect a thing. "What do you think? Is Zara being honest about this?"

"I believe she is telling the truth as she knows it," Vess ventured, sitting with a tired sigh on the edge of a large king-sized bed. Pit let out a sad whine when her hand left. "Is that the truth as it is, however? Do we really think the Guild and the Inquisition are capable of such terrible things?"

"Both the Guild and the redcloaks can go rot, for all I care," Evie spat. "I wouldn't put anything past them."

Felix had to agree. "I don't know much about either organization, but the Guild has been a mixed bag from what I've experienced, and the Inquisition… I've been on their bad side since I got into town."

"Why is that?" Vess asked, peering at Felix with her dark eyes. "You have alluded to it a few times."

"Oh, that's because Felix knocked out an Acolyte on his way into town," Evie laughed. "Bam! Hit ‘em with that lightning bolt thing he does."

"No!" Vess seemed equally shocked and delighted. "Did they not arrest you?"

"Had to catch me first," Felix let himself smile at her surprise. "I snuck away and ended up in Caerwin, ah, Zara's shop in the Wall Quarter. It's how we met."

"Such a strange life you lead," Vess murmured. It was late and all of them, except Felix, likely hadn't slept since the day before. "We should get some rest. I would suggest we put up wards or something, but that seems pointless."

"Yeah, she'd just tear right through anything we laid out." Evie grunted before patting Pit firmly on the head. "Off ya get, cutie."

Pit's tail and wings drooped as he slunk back over to Felix, who rolled his eyes.

"Zara needs us for now. No reason to harm us before we help. Still, wouldn't hurt to look around, right?" Felix flashed them a smile before exiting, a grumpy tenku on his heels.

CHAPTER FIFTY

It was late, and the halls were only filled with a bare minimum of light. Conjured magelight sat atop tiny sconces, each one worked from a reddish metal with a small white yellow light glowing in a near-perfect orb. Felix could pick out tiny sigils etched around where the sconce met the wall, and again around the indented portion below the floating orb.

He saw the markings for light and for circle, but the sigaldry got more complicated from there. Felix also spotted force and what looked like diffusion or something similar. He was leaning on his Skill for the brunt of the identification, those bits and pieces of knowledge that seemed jammed into his brain by advancing Sigils of the Primordial Dawn. Following the patterns and flow of the sigaldry was easy, but parsing exactly what it was doing was another thing altogether.

It's likely drawing power from… ah, yeah. Felix's fingers found a small, misshapen orb beneath a metal panel. It was about the size of a pea, and glistened with white and yellow light. A tiny monster core. Why not draw on the ambient Mana?

Felix could sense a great deal of Mana floating in the air, exuded like breath from everything around them. Why wouldn't a simple device like this pull from that source? It was thick as soup, yet as transient as the thinnest cloud. Mana was weird. The nature of it eluded him, but that was another purpose for his walk.

Quickly, Felix and Pit found their way back down to the parlor and opened the door. Within were the numerous built-in bookshelves chock full of tomes of all shapes and sizes. A fire still crackled in the hearth, and his sharp eyes picked out Zara still in her seat.

"The strange one is back," piped a voice before a flutter of wings announced the jewel-colored kingfisher. It alighted on a small side table and regarded Felix and Pit with a dark eye.

"Uh, good evening, Keru," Felix said, not quite sure how to greet the little bird. He settled for a tiny wave before shifting his attention to Zara. "I've slept enough for today, so I thought I might do some reading. Would that be okay?"

Zara stood, gracefully, as she had done everything else. "Reading is well and good, but I feel you have other questions that I may answer more directly. Hmm?"

Felix inclined his head.

"Tell me about Chanter magic."

* * *

Two men, minor nobles by their dress, stumbled down the Boulevard of Rising Truth on the outskirts of the Sunrise Quarter. They clung to each other as if both were afraid of drowning at sea, their teetering forms only contested by their rambling, slurred conversation.

"Merrik, you know, Ostwin's boy? Says he's lookin for a—" The darker one belched. "—new breed a defenders. Fer the Wall."

"An' you're thinking of volunteerin'?" The other fixed his friend with an unsteady, watery eye. "You can't hit the broad side of a, a, what do they call ‘em? A horse house."

"Pony palace."

"Stables," the lighter one finished. "Pony—? The Wall! Next you'll say you wanna wade into the Foglands itself..."

The darker man pulled himself straight, though his shoulders wobbled with the effort. "I'm a blooded citizen of the Hierocracy, Sellens. We've a duty."

"To die to monsters?"

"To fight to—to defend our way of life," the man's thatch of dark hair was frizzy with the summer humidity, but he smoothed it down as best he could. "To be a hero."

"A hero," a patch of shadow whispered, and both men nearly tripped over themselves. A lithe form materialized from the darkness, patches of light fleshing out into a shapely woman with full, red lips and tight armor. "I could use some heroes, right about now."

Hands like claws of darkness reached out and gripped their doublets, bringing them both to their knees without any effort at all. A face half-covered in a black mask loomed from the shadows, and those red lips smirked with contempt. The two men couldn't scream, couldn't breathe, as if her hands gripped their hearts instead.

"Muster your courage, heroes, and tell me everything you know about this damn street. Or else, you'll find that monsters are far closer than the Wall."

* * *

Keru let out a shrill note and fluttered over to a bookshelf. Pit echoed it back at him, but kept his much larger form still. The kingfisher trilled again, going deeper by an octave, and Pit copied it exactly.

"What are they doing?" Felix asked.

"I've learned not to ask," Zara said with a sharp smile.

The two of them were sitting in chairs facing one another. Zara had, at some point, found a chair made of Avum leather and had placed it in the place furthest from the hearth. His discomfort with sitting in chimera leather, close cousins to Pit, had been noted and acted upon in less than a few minutes. How she had known he'd come back here was a mystery he didn't bother to unravel; Felix had far bigger questions than that.

"As I was saying, all of creation is music." Zara said this and, very faintly, Felix could hear a distant echo to her words. Like they were reflecting off something both nearby and impossibly distant. "The mythology of the old gods says one day a great song arose from the Void, a powerful, primal surge of complex tremors that competed against one another for dominance. Yet, they were too equally matched. Instead of dominance, what was established was a powerful balance, a harmony of chords that echoes to this very day."

"But what's the real story?" Felix asked.

"Truth lies in all stories, whether they be legends or histories. Just as all records are tainted by the perceptions of those who write them, so, too, are they informed by some intrinsic truth that cannot be purged." Zara spread her hands. "The real story is that the Grand Harmony has existed for all of known time."

"And how does a Chanter work into this?" Felix drummed his hands on his thighs. "How would I tap into this power?"

"That you have sensed it, attuned yourself to it, speaks well of your progress, Felix. To reach deeper, however, one must come to an understanding with the Wild Song. Immerse yourself in its flow. Listen to the rhythms of the world, the vital vibrations in our very souls and in everything around us. Then, when you grasp the fundamental truths you seek, it is restructured, turned to a new purpose by our Will and Alacrity."

"Mind over matter?" Felix asked, somewhat skeptically.

"If you like," Zara shrugged. "Mind over Spirit, over Body, is perhaps more accurate. To be a Chanter is to harness the Chant, which is, simply put, a codified set of rules for moving the Grand Harmony to your Will."

"So, a new power source? Independent of Mana and Stamina?" Zara nodded, and Felix chewed the inside of his cheek in thought.

"Don't mistake me, boy. It's not an infinite resource. The amount you can accomplish with the Chant is equal to the strength of Mind and Spirit you can bring to bear."

Felix's thoughts skipped a track as questions raced through his brain. He leaned forward. "What is the Void?"

"The Void… it is the absence of creation. And yet, it birthed our reality, if the myths are true. It is the flipside realm to this, the Corporeal Realm. Some, in their wisdom, have called it the Mind Realm. I question the soundness of their own Minds, however, to so closely relate a representation of 'nothing' with cognition." Zara shook her head, her gaze flitting across her bookshelf.

The Naiad's description matched the old sage's mad ramblings, back when he'd been stuck within the Void. He had said the Void was the space between the Minds of gods. Cognitive Realm, huh?

"Then what of the Desolation?"

"How do you know this word?" Zara's voice snapped like a flag in storm winds. Felix even felt a jolt of fear at her bright blue gaze.

"Let's say I'm well-traveled," he managed. Zara was quiet a while longer, long enough that Felix began to feel uncomfortable with the silence. Yet just before he spoke up, she sighed.

"The Desolation… it is the confluence of all things. The meeting point between the Cognitive and Corporeal. Ethereal, one might say," she clucked her tongue. "But these are academic subjects. They are useful for conceptualizing what we consider the Grand Harmony, but are not intrinsic to it. They lie outside the Wild Song."

"So what is the System, then?" Felix leaned forward again, his hands on his knees. "If the Void and the Desolation are beyond the Grand Harmony, then this whole magic music seems to lie outside of the System as well."

"It does, which is one of the reasons it is so reviled by those in power. The System empowers and establishes a set order to the world. The Wild Song disrupts that; anyone with the knack can access its might."

"Why don't people teach everyone they can?" Felix asked.

"It's harder than you might think to access and harness the power of the Wild Song. Hard on the Body, on the Mind, on the Spirit itself." Zara let out a little growl from the back of her throat. Felix felt the heavy weight of anger and sadness pulse out from her for only a moment before it vanished. "And it's doubly hard to survive exposing yourself to someone who, with but a word, could end your life. An entire phalanx of Inquisitors waiting in your home, perhaps informed by someone you thought could be trusted. Inquisitors who will end you, but not before putting you to the question."

The force of the emotions that escaped the Naiad's rigid control had nearly pressed Felix into his seat. It was a terrible, maudlin caterwaul, a sadness that he had difficulty shaking from his thoughts. Whatever had happened to Zara was not something Felix had ever come close to experiencing.

"The System promotes strength," she continued, her voice firming with each word. "The strong accrue more power; power begets power, on and on, into infinity. The Hierocracy, like most nations on the Continent, rely on that superiority to rule. Buck those rules..."

"Yeah," Felix whispered. "You get crushed."

The weight of the moment threatened to drag the conversation down, but Felix couldn't allow that to happen. He had too many questions.

"Why does the System exist, though? It's natural?" he asked.

"Born of the Grand Harmony, we believe. Those few of us who have delved into the realm of myth and legend that passes for true history can point to many places where the System was extant. Ages upon Ages ago, it was here." Zara smiled without showing a single tooth. "But the Chant appeared not long after."

"So it's been around forever? I'm not a statistics guy, but I would think if the Chant has been around that long, there would be more people using it. Right?" Felix asked.

"There were, once upon a time. The origin of it is more shrouded in mystery than even the Lost Kingdoms."

That piqued his interest.

"Long ago, there were some who were blessed with the ability to sense the discrete Harmonics of creation. They were quickly labeled dangerous, and for good reason." Zara conjured a flickering light from the hearth, weaving it through the air to form a series of shapes between them. Tall humanoids stood upon a field, statuesque. "Their coming was, at best, a mixed blessing. Records are sparse, but a relative few of them were responsible for entire empires falling to Ruin."

"Ruin? The mythical force that ends Races and stuff?" Felix asked. He'd been curious about that quirk of this world for a long while. "What is it?"

"As far as I can tell, it is far more than mythical. It is cataclysmic, and I believe very much real." Zara's image shifted, and now the figures were leaping through the landscape, each out bringing to bear mighty abilities. One shattered a mountain, another crushed a city, more burned forests or froze the sea. Wild, incomprehensible disasters that any one person should have no ability to affect.

"And these… born Sorcerers were harbingers of Ruin, then?" Felix gestured to the figures woven of fire Mana. "I mean, obviously, right?"

"Nothing so dramatic as that. And nothing so complete." Zara waved a hand, and the fire Mana returned to the hearth, where it began crackling once more. "We're operating on snippets of third, fourth, even fifth-hand accounts for our information. True wheat among the chaff has always been nigh impossible to find."

Zara stood up and walked to a side table, one Felix hadn't noticed before. It opened up and revealed a set of glasses and bottles of dark amber liquid. The Naiad poured herself a drink as she continued speaking.

"You'll find stories of them in nearly every culture, every religion. Echoes of what was once a great truth known to all and sundry."

She poured a second glass and walked back toward Felix. "The ancients had a word for them, of course. And that, at least, passed through the Ages unmolested."

She handed him the drink.

"They called them the Unbound."

Felix felt his stomach drop to his ankles.

Deception is level 20!

He looked up to see Zara studying his reaction. Luckily, he'd managed to keep his face stuck on “fascinated but neutral.”

"That's… remarkable. I've heard of the Unbound before, but only as monsters in old stories."

"Precisely what I mean. They've survived in the minds of people precisely because of the power the Chant contains." Zara laid a hand on Felix's shoulder. Her skin felt hot through his tunic. "And that is another reason why I must train apprentices. One way or another, knowledge of the Grand Harmony cannot end with me."

"Are you the only Chanter in Haarwatch?" Felix asked carefully, pulling from her touch. "What about the other choristers? Wouldn't they help you with the Domain?"

"Oh, they have a rudimentary grasp of it. Enough to be dangerous." Zara waved her hand in the air and returned to her seat. "They're strong, don't mistake me. Each one is easily an equal to any Silver Rank in the Guild. However, beyond their desire for religious freedom, they are fractious, chasing their own causes. They would not help me in this, were I to ask, and I don't trust them enough to do even that."

"Yet you trust us," Felix said, not quite a question.

"Indeed."

"Why? Maybe you know about Vess through her mother and family, but I'm some nobody off the street," Felix breathed out a confused huff. This had been weighing on him. "Why trust me?"

Zara was quiet a moment as she sipped her drink. A log popped and shifted on the fire, and the two feathered creatures were sitting on the floor cooing at one another.

"We don't know a lot about Chimeras," Zara finally said. "We know they are dangerous, and that they would attack our Wall relentlessly and in great numbers. But why did they hate us so much? Why were they all so different? These were questions we never had answers for; now that they've retreated into the Foglands, I doubt we'll get them any time soon."

Zara shifted her attention back toward Felix. "What I do know, however, comes from ancient legends. The Chimera were said to be born of a great magic, Ages ago, during the era of the Lost Kingdoms. What few records exist depict them as proud, strong, and intensely loyal. Until now, that loyalty has never extended to anyone beyond the Foglands. Until you."

Felix glanced at Pit, who was moving his foreleg around, playfully swiping at the bird. His big, bushy tail wagged rapidly.

"I find animals to be a great judge of character, Felix Nevarre. Not only have you begun to attune your senses to the Grand Harmony, but you have formed a powerful bond with a creature out of legends. Both speak well of you, in my eyes." Zara gave him a tight smile. "Not to mention, I too have unlocked Affinity."

"Ah." Felix opened his mouth and smiled. "Of course."

She could feel his emotional state, just as he had started sensing others. Likely, she was far more adroit at it. As far as Felix knew, she could read him like a book. He opened his mouth, intending to ask more, but the Naiad forestalled him.

"Before you ask more, I believe we should wait for Lady Dayne. I'd rather not repeat myself more than necessary," Zara smiled gently.

Felix nodded reluctantly, before making to stand up.

"Feel free to stay and peruse my collection," she said, gesturing to the books all around them. "I daresay I've a finer collection here than in my shop. Much more… focused, you might say."

"That would be amazing, honestly," Felix breathed out a sigh of relief.

"Though, please," she said with an arch look. "Don't go rearranging it."

Felix flushed and let out an embarrassed laugh. "Ah, sure."

The Naiad left, her kingfisher Keru following closely after, leaving Felix and Pit alone with the soft crackle of firelight. Felix leaned back in his chair, letting the high back cradle his head as he felt several layers of unease fall away. New anxieties waited in the wings, but for the moment, he had accomplished a goal and learned more about Chanters and even some about the Unbound.

And if the Lost Kingdoms are what I think they are, then I've also got a new angle on Nym lore. Felix lifted his head and stood. Time to begin.

The next eight hours had Felix perusing as much of Zara's private library as he could. Much of it was difficult, if not impossible for him to parse at first, but the more he read, the faster the mysteries of vocabulary, syntax, and structure were revealed to him. His Godeater Mind was powerful, and though he didn't know what else it might offer him, it had a voracious appetite. Information poured into him, and he found himself sorting it all into neat columns, easily retaining everything thanks to his Born Trait.

He'd started the night with a preschooler’s handle on the common language, but by the end of it, Felix had a stranglehold on it. He blazed through books, his Perception letting him easily read an entire page in seconds, and his Dexterity letting him flip the pages quickly and smoothly without ripping the books in half. He devoured tomes on myths and legends, on Mana and various Skills, and even found one about the Lost Kingdoms. He had been right in his assumptions: the Lost Kingdoms was the collective name for nations that were beset by the Ruin.

Strangely, the records of the Lost Kingdoms were all centuries or millennia after the fact. He'd read two or three written works by various scholars, most of whom relied on the testimony of adventurers who encountered ruins of said kingdoms in the field. Felix doubted people traveled the dangerous wilderness and spent much time excavating ruins for the history of it. Now, if those ruins held treasure, Felix was sure they'd at least be investigated. But what would treasure-hungry adventurers ignore during a violent foray into undoubtedly monster-infested ruins? Probably a lot, was Felix's guess.

All he could do on that front was sort the information in his mind, holding onto the useful theories and rumors until he could verify it all someday. Honestly, Felix wasn't entirely sure why he cared. He was Nym in name only, and that only if this bloodline thing didn't change that on him. Why did it matter? Still, thoughts of Vvim, the Geist back in Shelim reappeared. The wizened creature had a high regard for the Nym, which made sense based on the history of the two Races. Felix knew his curiosity would force him to find out more before long.

He found very little on the Unbound, either. Or rather, nothing that wasn't a child's fairy tale or recounted in books on religious myth. As he'd been told before, the Unbound were considered boogeymen, especially in the religious texts. Monsters meant to scare people into doing the right thing. Little to no concrete information existed, and nothing regarding what Zara herself had mentioned. He'd have to ask her more about the subject when he could; she likely knew a great deal more than she had said.

Regarding Mana and scriptwork, however, the library was a goldmine. Discussions on the nature of Mana, where it came from, what it was capable of, and a categorization of the types. Felix ate all of it up, and even tried some of the exercises described to increase one's control over internal and external Mana.

Fire Within is level 44!

Scriptwork was similarly effective. While the Primordial Dawn style sigils he used were different from the standardized sigladry in Haarwatch, they shared a common core. Both utilized a sort of manufactured Intent by creating a network of sigils around a primary glyph, each subordinate marking acting as a filter through which the purpose of the array would be realized. Mana was channeled through the array, and the network of sigils created the effect. Simple enough in concept, though quite complicated in execution.

Felix had no scripting tools, which would include a metal stylus and a suitable media to etch onto, but he poured over any examples he found. He had even run into a thin book that contained a limited selection of common sigils that he immediately set about memorizing.

Sigils of the Primordial Dawn is level 24!

Sigils of the Primordial Dawn is level 25!

Congratulations! You Have Achieved Apprentice Tier with Sigils of the Primordial Dawn!

You Gain:

+10 INT

+10 INE

+10 AFI

That, in particular, was an extremely satisfying result of his efforts.

The dark progressed to light faster than Felix realized. Having had plenty of rest before and his advanced Endurance meant he wasn't tired in the slightest. So, when he heard a banging on the front door, Felix stepped out from his ever-expanding collection of stacked tomes and poked his head out of the parlor. The sun was far brighter there, as the main entry was flanked by large, full-body windows that let in the growing light of morning. Felix blinked at the sunlight, clearing his vision in time to see the Hobgoblin servant Melle step forward to answer the door.

Two figures strode in, and even slightly distracted, Felix could tell that both were equal parts anxious and pissed. It fairly sang from their chests.

"Cal! Harn!" Felix called before stepping out of the parlor completely. "What are you doing here?"

"Felix, Noctis wept, you're alive," Cal looked as taut as a piano wire. "Is Evie here?"

"She's upstairs, probably asleep," Felix said. "She's totally fine."

"Thank the gods," she muttered, and turned to the Hobgoblin. "Take me to her, now."

Melle sputtered a moment. "Ma'am, I was told to have you wait here while I—"

"Take me to Evie Aren, or I will rip this place apart brick-by-brick," Cal hissed.

The Hobgoblin paled, her red skin turning an interesting shade of pink, before she nodded. They both quickly headed up the stairs.

"Did she just use her aura, or—" Felix began, but Harn just laughed.

"No, that's just Cal," Harn's blocky hand clapped Felix on the shoulder, pushing him down just a little bit. "It's good ta see you alive, kid. We thought you had been caught up in that mess down Crafters’ way."

"Almost. I'll—" Felix's stomach made an alarmingly loud gurgle at the same time he noticed a tantalizing scent in the air. "I'll tell you everything over breakfast."

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

The spread at Zara's house was impressive, nearly filling the twenty-foot-long table it had been laid out upon. Unfamiliar meats, cheeses, and baked goods were piled high, and Felix didn't wait to tuck in. Harn was only happy to assist. Felix gave him a rundown of their situation between bites, but had to start all over when a red-faced Evie and hard-eyed Cal came through the doors. Vess followed only a short while after.

With all three of them talking, Felix was able to put away the food far faster. Pit ate even more than Felix, taking two bites for every one the Nym could manage. The food soothed some deep sort of ache in him, something that Felix was only aware of once it had disappeared. He had pushed himself hard the past twenty-four hours, and his Body was reminding him that it needed more than a little light reading.

By the time breakfast was over, the explanations and follow-up questions were done. Harn looked concerned but interested, which Felix expected. But Cal… she had gone pale during their story, specifically the part about a corruption in the Domain. She had badgered them all for every tidbit of their conversation with Zara, of their interactions with the Inquisition, and, not surprisingly, of Felix's newly revealed experience with a dead body in a back alley.

Each answer sent her emotions shifting from anger, then disgust, until finally they settled on a dull sort of dread. Felix was sure no one else noticed it, but his Affinity was working overtime and feeding him the rapid-fire beat of sharp-edged anxiety within Calesca Boscal. It was very different from her usual steady confidence. He didn't like it at all.

Perhaps minutes after the final round of questions and suppositions, Zara swept into the dining room, followed by three Hobgoblin servants. The servants immediately began to clean up the ravaged corpse of breakfast, whisking away platters and soiled dishes with a speed born of what Felix assumed were highly specialized Skills.

"Good morning to you all." Zara smiled at them, displaying her sharp teeth. "I hope that morning repast was to your liking, and trust that you have shared all pertinent information regarding my request?"

The group nodded, and Cal cleared her throat. "We have, Zara. But I have some questions that need satisfaction before we go any further."

"Of course, Cal. That's to be expected." Zara nodded and sat down in a chair at the head of the table. "I'm ready to answer any questions you may have."

Cal frowned. "What do you mean when you say there is corruption in the Domain?"

"I mean exactly that. It's a perversion in the natural order. A… flaw in the melody, as it were. There is something within the Domain that is altering it on a fundamental level," Zara explained. "Soon, it shall be too much for the scripted shell to further contain."

"How can you know this?" Cal asked. "How can the Guild not know this?"

"C'mon Cal, that seems obvious," Harn said.

"I wanna hear it from her," Cal said before taking an unsteady breath. "Please."

"No need for that. For your assistance, I'll gladly tell you," Zara took a sip of tea that one of the servants had placed before her. "Thank you, Melle. As you well know, I was a Guilder for many years. I was the Archivist, one of the keepers of knowledge in the Eyrie. As a function of that position, I was privy to many secrets the Elders would have rather kept locked away. Piddling things, usually. Debts and grudges.

“But I also know that Teine, the Elder of Spirit in charge of magical research in the Guild, has engaged in reckless experimentation before. I know that something went terribly wrong during the Foglands operation. I wasn't involved in the decision to send our people out there, but I was aware of the attempt and was briefly included in the recovery process. I know that the threat of the Frost Giants, while not fictitious or overblown, were a convenient cover for something worse. Something that had started before the Risi ever found you all."

Zara and Cal had locked eyes. She leaned forward, pressing her elbows into the tabletop. "I know of the terror at the center of the Labyrinth."

A quiet pulse of unease spread through the group, though it was perhaps more eagerness in the others. Felix, on the other hand, felt his stomach lurch as he tried to keep himself breathing normally, naturally.

"The ruins were built by the Geist, an artificially Lost Race. Since they were only brushed by the Ruin, more is known of them. Although highly Skilled and proficient in a variety of areas, records of their civilization note two core competencies: their architectural brilliance and their intensely realistic illusions."

Cal shuddered. Evie put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed while Cal collected herself. "Yeah. I know about those."

"Forgiveness, Cal," Zara's voice softened. "This must bring back terrible memories."

"I can handle it," the treasure hunter grunted. "Say your piece."

"Very well," Zara leaned back. "The Geist clearly made the Labyrinth. I've read the reports given by many of the survivors, and what I know of them confirms this. The reason they made it, now that is a different knot altogether. The Geist were craftsmen, whether that was architecture or illusion, but nothing in their known history was built frivolously. The defenses are too strong, too varied for simply defending a treasured artifact. Clearly, whatever the Labyrinth held, it was of utmost importance that it stay contained. But that strength was likely too much, based on the preliminary reports I've secured. It was strong enough that I fear it could have affected others from within its cage."

Zara passed her eyes over the group, making sure she had their attention. Felix feared she would stop at him, but she didn't. He had started to sweat.

Does she know?

"This creature's corruption infected the Guilder team. I assume subtly at first, yes?" Her bright blue gaze landed on Cal.

"Yeah," Cal admitted, her face pale again. "It… they found something. A beast in the fog. It was twice the size of an avum. Except it was shaped like a massive weasel, only covered in erupted bone spurs. Horrible thing."

Cal clenched her jaw. "Something had nearly killed it, and the damned quill pushers wanted to study its body. They kept it alive, keeping it from dissolving, and pulled it into the center of the compound."

Cal's voice roughened, and she forced the next words out. "It took days before anything happened. The scholars were more reclusive than before, leaving the protection teams almost completely alone. Everyone thought it was the dark and the fog getting to ‘em. No one suspected the monster samples were contaminated. The scholars went first, then their scribes and porters. Anyone who made contact with it." Cal swallowed, more unnerved than Felix had seen her since the Risi camp.

"With its blood." Zara stated. Not a question at all.

"Yeah. The blood was… bad. Sick. It drove ‘em mad, then it… changed them. We had to put ‘em down." Cal looked up at Zara, an odd glint to her eye. "You're sayin' this is happening here?"

"Yes, that is what I fear. I have known what the Domain feels like for decades… it has changed, the vibrations it sends out are twisted from true in subtle ways. Subtle for now. That corruption is growing. Of that, I am completely certain."

"That is somethin' that needs to be stopped," Cal agreed, but she clenched her jaw so hard her temple pulsed. "But you expect us to do that? The things that… their blood—how do you expect us to fight that?"

"I have some protections for that," Zara said, and with a wave of her hand produced a triangular stone the size of her palm. The amulet was a deep blue color and shaped with criss-crossing ridges. "One of these, attuned to your Body, Mind, and Spirit will ward off the corruption for a time."

Name: Ward of the Willful Eye

Type: Wardstone (enchanted)

Lore: Designed to withstand harmful environmental effects such as caustic or dissonant elements for a maximum period of six hours.

Shell of Harmonius Will VII - A Song of protection that diverts dissonant environmental hazards. Has no effect on direct attacks.

Chanters Intent II - The Harmonic Song of a Chanter was used to enchant this item, and it bears their Intent. +20% Effectiveness of Shell.

"Damn," said Harn. "That's useful."

"Less than I'd like, I'm afraid," Zara admitted. "Under normal circumstances, the ward would last six hours. In an environment as hostile as the Domain… I fear it will be less. Perhaps far less. The corruption we speak of is degrading the Domain's shell. I imagine it would make quick work as a lesser ward. The only advantage I have here is the inclusion of Harmonics, which should counteract the corruption's nature."

"What about our own enchanted items?" Evie asked. "Will they be affected, too?"

"These wards will protect the whole of your person, including anything worn upon it. Once it fails, however," Zara snapped her fingers. "Your Rank I enchanted armor will likely be destroyed in short order."

"How long will it take to clear this 'threat'?" Cal asked.

"I don't know," Zara replied, with no little annoyance. "I truly wish I did. The danger grows with each passing day, but I have been unable to determine how much of the Domain has been corrupted. It is clearly hungry, however and once the Inquisitors have sentenced their 'heretics' and pushed them into the Domain, it will likely be too late. The shell will burst with that influx of power, and this city will be doomed."

"So you're sayin' our gear will get trashed, our lives are on the line, and we don't even know how long this will take?" Cal scoffed. "You better be makin' this interestin', then."

"Oh, I plan to," Zara agreed. "I wouldn't expect anyone to throw themselves into danger at my word. We have history, Cal, but I know we have never been friends. Instead, I offer this."

The Naiad produced a small scroll and tossed it to the treasure hunter. Cal caught it easily and unfurled it. Felix watched with interest as Cal's eyes went from half-lidded apathy to wide-eyed startlement. He couldn't see the contents from this angle, but that didn't matter as Zara started listing off the items.

"In addition to having rights over everything you collect in the Domain, I will give you enough Essence Draughts to bring each member of your crew to their next Tier. They'll be uncommon rarity, the best I can procure during this lockdown. I will also personally assist Evie in completing her Apprentice Formation. I have quite a few notes on her current advancement that I know could be improved," Zara smiled wide. "And a payment of a dozen Uncommon monster cores will be given to each crew member, to aid them in expanding their power for the future."

"Damn," repeated Harn. "Yer loaded. How's that?"

"I've done well for myself," Zara gestured at the manor around them. "But all of my wealth means nothing if I cannot keep this contained."

There was silence around the table, each of them absorbed in their thoughts. Felix considered what he knew of the dangers the Domain represented, as well as the wealth that Zara was offering. He needed to consider his Journeyman Tempering sooner rather than later, as his Skills kept rising, and the monster cores would only be beneficial to that process, at least for him.

More importantly, if what Zara said was true, then the Maw had a hand in all of this. Or at least, remnants of its power. The beast the Guilders killed was clearly one of its twisted children, those Geist it had mutated with its power. Felix felt a responsibility to do something about that… but also felt a distinct fear. How would this affect his bloodline progression? Would it—

A thought struck him like a lightning bolt. Could Zara cleanse him of the Maw? Permanently?

"What's the win condition, here?" Felix asked. He looked up at the others, some of whom were giving him questioning glances. "We go in, we destroy the corruption somehow, and then leave? Simple as that?"

"I doubt it," said Vess. "Nothing about this seems simple. Do you have a way to cleanse the Domain?"

"For that, I will have to teach both of you," Zara said. "We will come to it soon enough. But first I must hear your answer, or else there is no point in continuing. Will you aid me? Will you aid this city?"

Cal looked to Harn, who gave a slow nod. Then she panned to the others, Vess and Evie, and both were quick to agree. Her final glance was to him, and Felix drummed his fingers on the table in contemplation.

"In addition to everything else, you'll teach Vess and me about Chanter magic, right?" Felix looked to Zara, and she nodded. "As long as we Oathbind this agreement, I'm in."

Cal's eyes lit up, and she turned a sharp smile of her own on Zara. "Exactly what I was thinking. Will you agree to that?"

Zara laughed. "I would expect nothing less."

They quickly hashed out the details of the oath: Zara was to provide all that she had stated to their crew, while they would do their best to eradicate whatever threat lay within the Domain. Secrecy was paramount, and the condition of keeping this information to themselves was part of the oath as well. They were going up against two strong organizations, after all. Neither the Guild nor the Inquisition were going to like them getting involved.

A few seconds later, all of them stood in a circle, hands held toward the center. Everyone was familiar with the process by now, but Harn shook his head when he was told to begin.

"Naw, let the kid do it. He has more claim in this Oath. It'll lend power to it, too."

So Felix, feeling a bit self-conscious with his low-level Oathbinding Skill, began the process. He repeated the terms, the contingencies, and the consequences.

"...we swear by our power and advancement."

As each word squeezed out of his chest, Felix saw those sparks in his vision once again. Blue and gold, they sparked among his allies' faces. After sensing these sparks so often, Felix thought he finally had an idea what they represented. It was an intrusion of the System, interacting with Felix's own strange abilities. Instead of fighting them, Felix let them swell across his sight.

Oathbinding is level 2!

Oathbinding is level 3!

Felix could feel the last remnants of the two Acolytes vanishing from his core, their stolen essences fueling his growth. Then, thick strings of shining silver light unspooled between their outstretched hands. The strings stretched from palm to palm, connecting, binding each of them to one another.

Oathbinding is level 4!

The sparks kept flashing, and the silver string kept going. Secondary and tertiary connections formed along their arms and shoulders, complicating their connections. Until the space between them all was dominated by a complex web of silver cords, each string vibrating with a giddy joy that Felix could only let wash over him.

Oathbinding is level 5!

...

Oathbinding is level 8!

The silver web burst outward, spreading in all directions in Felix's sight, arcing over the curve of the world itself. The vital frequencies shook him to the core as Felix sensed their oath affecting and being affected by far more than just their own will.

For the briefest of moments, he sensed a smile. Small and broken, but bright against an unending black.

Then it was gone.

"Gauuuh!" Felix gasped and stepped away from the group. The light of the Oathbinding was still shimmering above their hands, distracting everyone but Vess to his immediate right.

"Are you—?" she began, but Felix waved her off.

"I'm fine," Felix swallowed a lump in his throat, and felt Pit nudge the back of his leg. He accepted the comforting touch. "I'm fine."

"Hoo, that was burnin' intense," Evie said as she shook her hand. "Didn't look any different, but the last one didn't feel like that."

"Now that we're in agreement," Cal said quickly, drawing Zara's attention. "I imagine you have some more details, yes?"

Zara nodded, appearing slightly off-kilter from the Oathbinding herself. She blinked her eyes clear. "Yes, of course. We have much to discuss."

"Good," Cal gestured out of the dining room, and Zara swept forward.

"You have the run of the house," she said as the two departed. "Just stay inside. There is a persistent visitor outside my wards. Someone seems inordinately interested in you three."

Felix, Evie, and Vess shared a look.

"Don't worry," she said, her shark-like teeth bared. "I'll take care of it."

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

The soft scratch of a quill on parchment filled the room, competing with the smell of newly ground ink and aromatic lavel tea in the cramped space. Eliza DuFont finished a sentence with a flourish and sat back, a sigh on her lips as she regarded her office. While quite large, they were nothing compared to the Elders of Spirit, Mind, or even Body, for all that the pig used it only to store his weaponry. It was, perhaps, only fair. Her personal power in relation to theirs was less, and their authority on Guild affairs was considerable. Only Fairbanks, that pompous git, could gainsay them without repercussions.

As the Elder of Acquisition, she had a say in the Council and on matters of import and export for the small city. That included the Verdant Pass and regions beyond, as well as the formerly unknowable Foglands. It was the last that should have sent her star rising in the Eyrie; the acquisition and distribution of resources of untold variety and potency? It was the dream she'd held when they had first assembled the original operation, the one that she thought dead when communication was lost with the outpost. It was ironically brought back to life by the damn Shieldwitch, a thorn in her side if there ever was one. The musclebound idiot had even cleared the eternal fog and dispelled a hefty warding illusion. The Foglands, and all the power it represented, had been within her reach.

And then the Inquisition had arrived.

The damnable redcloaks had locked down their city while the Guild was still sending exploratory expeditions into the Foglands. Now, as the rate of monsters began to surge once more, and the zealots barred her gates, Eliza's authority had been cut off at the knees.

"Tsk," she clucked. In her pique, she had spilled a few drops of ink over the letter she was composing. With a flick of the wrist and flare of Mana, the parchment shot into the air and dissolved. She'd have to start over.

"What… a waste."

Eliza leaped to her feet, her inscribed gauntlets sparking with bright yellow Mana. In the same motion, she cast her senses around the room, washing the area with her power. She blinked, her fists faltering.

"Ilia? Siva's breath, what's happened to you?" Eliza gasped.

Before her, the shadows melted, dissolving into the battered form of her Sworn agent. Her leather armor was scuffed and torn, and her hair was wild beneath her hood. Blood dripped from somewhere on her person, pattering onto the polished floor.

"Something… something's done in my head," Ilia whispered. She stumbled forward, barely catching herself against Eliza's oversized desk. "It rose… the lie's opposite, the...."

Suddenly she was there, in front of Eliza, gripping the Elder by her gown. DuFont flinched, but didn't shake the Sworn's iron grip. She could only stare into eyes that looked all too Human, washed clean of the usual opaque whiteness.

"Sunrise. The sunrise did it," she hissed, and drool spilled from her mouth. "There's rats in the walls, DuFont."

"Unhand me, Ilia," Eliza snarled. "Or else I'll put paid to your morning. Mark me."

Like a wilting flower, the assassin drooped, her hands going limp as she fell backward. Eliza figured she'd have fallen to the ground, had her rear not hit the Elder's desk. She appeared broken, somehow. Whoever had done this was strong, that was clear, and the thought of it sent a thrill of fear down DuFont's spine.

"I slipped out—through the black," Ilia's head had fallen onto her chest, and her tattered hood covered her features. "Barely-barely… it sang a… it clutches at me."

Eliza couldn't help it; she took a step back. But the Sworn wasn't finished.

"Sunrise has them. Has them in its grip and hidden. Held tight. The girl..." Ilia's quiet voice slithered out of her throat. Eliza regretted her retreat. Now she had to lean forward to hear, despite her Perception.

"Sunrise...? The Sunrise Quarter? The heiress is in… who has her?" Eliza asked, her heart racing. Perhaps this was a good thing, despite appearances. Perhaps this was leverage....

"Sharp—the sea. The sea," Ilia wheezed. "But I saw it. I saw him."

"Him? Who did you see?" Despite Ilia's unnerving condition, Eliza was growing tired of this. She hadn't paid to listen to a madwoman. "Who has the Dayne girl?"

A heat returned to the Sworn's muddy brown gaze as she turned it on the Elder, and Eliza flinched.

"Felix. The blue-eyed cockroach."

* * *

The waters roared in the large chamber beneath the city, filling the air with a fine mist that cooled the warm summer morning. Khorun Katan stared wordlessly around himself as four Inquisitors and two dozen Acolytes dredged the dark pool below the bridge, looking for evidence. Before him, two char marks stained the broken bridge, a structure that had been torn up in multiple places by the advent of clearly implacable forces. The Master Inquisitor knelt and ran his naked hand along the stone, the carbonized markings coming off against his skin like charcoal.

"Initiate Crell had two Acolytes with him," Inquisitor Maldis informed him, standing slightly to his right. "We show no other sign of their bodies. They could have been taken as hostages, or—"

"Sound the Echo," Katan ordered.

"Aye, sir," Maldis snapped a smart salute and took a step back. Sheets of pale, unattributed Mana poured from the man in waves, soaking the charred markings before them. Soon after, a spike of music flared across the chamber, a divinely harmonious chord that shook the air itself with its majesty. Katan, so close to its epicenter, closed his eyes for a brief moment to bask in the sensation. It was a uniquely uplifting experience, utilizing their god-given abilities in this way, an exaltation of the Spirit.

We praise your hidden word, Lord Pathless. Let your holy music show us the Truth.

Flickers of green gossamer appeared before them, each hovering over the burnt outlines on the bridge. Yet, before they could coalesce, a fitful droning cut through the sustained chord, neatly severing the Inquisitor's control.

"Ah!" Maldis cried out, holding his left hand tight. Blood gushed from beneath his fingers, dark and rich with life Mana. "Something—I don't know what that was, sir."

Katan stood up, frowning at the floor. He'd heard such sounds in the past, but not since his Mortification.

"Try again."

The second time had the same result. The green, ghostly apparitions the ability usually summoned were absent, as if they had been scrubbed from existence. It was something Katan had never seen before, and it worried him. The moment that droning reappeared, the Master Inquisitor cut off Maldis' power. As the divine chord faded, so too did its opposition.

Discord. Light above. Discord. Are they truly here?

"There's nothing left… Even their souls are just gone." Maldis was shaken, and not by his wound. That had nearly closed up already; it would take a far more grievous injury to put down an Adept Tier soldier. "Sir? What is this?"

Katan still weighed his answer when the Acolytes across the room shouted excitedly. The Master Inquisitor smoothly pivoted his attention toward them, watching as they breathlessly hauled on a line made of hardened light and life Mana. Seven Acolytes strained against the weight, pulling with all their Strength, until inch-by-inch a creature was dragged atop the bridge.

It was a Veelo, level 38, mean, and easily the size of a carriage and a team of avum. Its massive, lamprey-like teeth jutted out like a clutch of sabers, while its thick, muscular body and razor-sharp scales gouged the stone bridge like it was made of wood. The creature was pushing toward a Tier Two beast, the classification for monstrous power that was roughly equivalent of a Journeyman-Tiered sentient. It was dangerous, and as it lunged erratically, the Acolytes abandoned the conjured line and dove out of the way.

Light's Glory.

Khorun Katan gestured sharply with his right hand. There was a flash of brilliant, golden Mana, and the Veelo's head separated from its body. A second gesture opened the creature's belly, flooding the bridge with its bright green and purple offal. The monster writhed and twitched for an entire minute, even without its head, digging deep furrows into the hard stone beneath it.

Once its death throes subsided, Katan gestured to the Acolytes to begin the search. Inch by inch, they combed through the gooey mess spilled from the beast. Less than ten minutes later, one of the Acolytes shouted in alarm as a bright purple sack burst open, sending a secondary rush of hot, fetid liquid pouring over their boots. Among the effluvia, however, was a charred and masticated corpse. It was practically unrecognizable were it not for the golden sunburst upon its mangled breastplate.

Crell. Katan felt a twinge in his heart, the tiniest bit of despair for a promising student snuffed out. The man had possessed an exceptional talent for the Pathless' arts. His death was a blow to all of them. Take him unto you, Trackless One.

"You were right, sir," said Inquisitor Maldis. The man's face was a bit green at the edges, but he'd clenched his jaw in admirable stoicism. "How did you—?"

"We have our ways, Inquisitor," Katan said with the smallest of smiles. "Now let us find who did this terrible deed. Join your call with the others."

This time, all four Inquisitors joined in sounding the fallen Initiate's Echo, and their combined effort finally drew results. A transparent green corpse formed before moving backward through time, darting below water for several seconds before launching back up and into one of the waterfalls. They tracked his movements, noting as his burnt and ruined flesh began renewing itself. Katan sensed the Initiate had utilized one of the dire features of the order's Body Formation, inundating his flesh with pure light Mana. Typically a fool's gesture, or one of great desperation.

Did you fight it, Crell?

Physically fit and hale, if battered, the Inquisitors around them drew in a tight breath when a ghostly amalgamation of plates appeared around Crell's body. It was a Skill the order taught to all of its most promising children, one with which Katan himself was intimately familiar. Echoes of the Divine Shell. A defensive measure that was powerful even at Apprentice Tier, but grew substantially so with each subsequent Tempering. It would take a powerful force to break through such protection.

There was a flicker in the Echo.

"Hold," Katan ordered, and the apparition froze.

The ability to recall the Echoes of those lost was a great boon to the order, one that was divinely gifted to them Ages ago. However, the downside of the power was threefold: the first was that it was not a System Skill and could not be leveled or Tempered, while the second was that it placed a great toll upon the mental strength of all who employed it. The Inquisitors around him would likely be laid up for several hours, more if he dallied. The third and finally, it only ever showed the victim.

Unless you cheated.

Katan reached out with his power, sounding the Spirit's Echo upon the fabric of the False Realm, what scholars foolishly called the Corporeal Realm. He infused it with his considerable Might and honed Intent.

The Echo strengthened and gained clarity. The once-transparent form became more like smoky glass, detailed enough to show Crell's face, twisted in both fear and pain. The Inquisitors nearby had begun to sweat with the effort of holding the Echo. Expressions of relief washed over them as he took the Echo upon his own shoulders. It was a steady erosion of his mental prowess, but little more than a minor inconvenience at that moment. He'd been forged in far greater fire than this.

Katan held out his hand and called another note, one that sounded like the divine Pathless' own strident bell. A wash of power poured over the Echo, highlighting details on the Initiate and picking out a figure standing before him. The figure was composed of dim, shifting shadows and was pushing forth an object. An object that glowed bright gold, unlike either of the others.

It was a dart, and it was piercing Crell in the gut.

No.

In the core.

"An Empyrean Arrow?" Maldis gasped.

"He was killed by one of our own?" Another Inquisitor hissed, outraged.

"No," Kata declared with a guttural snarl. "It was… corrupted."

The four Inquisitors looked again and scowled, almost as one. "I see it, blue flashes along the shaft. And the gold isn't right. It's not light Mana. Not the purity of the Pathless at all. How?"

Katan didn't answer, instead chasing down options through his impressively Tempered Mind. Scenarios and potential threats whisked by his consciousness, categorized and filed away within seconds, but all for naught. The Master Inquisitor knew of no extant force or individual who could use their divine techniques, Skills that had been passed down to their order alone.

It is a mercy, culling this town. Katan bared his teeth at the shadowy figure. If we catch the head of whatever serpent this one belongs to, a blight shall have been eradicated.

Outside the Inviolate Order, none should hold such power.

Unless...

Katan flexed his abilities again, enhancing the frozen image, pouring more and more of himself into the working, until the vaulted chamber was awash in a transcendent choral paean. The world quivered as the tempo rose, the enigmatic beat of the Shining Realm thrumming through them all in a mad dash.

He could feel the Inquisitors as they looked on in worship and reverent awe. Were he able to spare the effort, Katan would have admonished them. None of them were divine, or worthy of such awe. They were but Vessels for the Truth.

The form resolved itself, built before their eyes from swirling blue smoke and fire. It formed the shape of a man, without armor or weapon, just simple clothes. The man appeared powerfully built, but details were sparse. Little else could be inferred, for a rustling spike of dissonance trailed the man's form, disrupting the clarity of the True God's message.

Katan felt the strain on his considerable resources and moved forward quickly. He pivoted around the man and looked him in the face. Twin spots of ghostly blue fire blazed in the man's eye sockets, deadly and filled with a terrible, hungry rage.

"The Fiend," Katan murmured.

Before the others could gasp in alarm, the base of the burning man's neck ripped open, and the image degraded completely.

The inquisitors fell forward with pained cries, and even Katan felt the sting of the backlash. The divine forces of the world shook through him, muddling his senses and perhaps his thoughts as well. How else could he account for the fact that he had seen, however briefly, rows of jagged teeth in the man's neck?

Unless… No, that way lies madness...

"Increase patrols in the Dust and Crafters’ Quarters. Push through the Wall and Sunrise districts as well. We must find this creature," Katan locked eyes with his subordinates. "Before it is too late."

The Inquisitors saluted, fist to chest, before flowing out toward the Acolytes. With so many heretics gathered up, the plan was moving apace, and it freed up even more of his soldiers to hunt down this 'Blue-Eyed Fiend’. Which was fortunate, as the man's bizarre but powerful advancement was a threat to everything they hoped to accomplish.

It is no mistake that the Fiend was down here, attending that profane meeting, Katan wanted to spit, but decorum reined him in. He must be allied with the choristers and whatever those foul heathens dared to plot.

They had caught most of the leaders, thankfully. Each of them would be put to the question, naturally, but the servants of the dead gods were hardy. Tough to break. Perhaps if they—

"Sir! Master Inquisitor, sir!"

Katan looked up to see an extremely nervous Acolyte saluting before him. They trembled so hard their armor practically rattled, and despite his dour mood, the hint of a smile played across the Master Inquisitor's face.

"Proceed, my child."

"There is a Guild Elder here to see you, sir." The Acolyte's face flushed, and the words fairly tumbled from their mouth. Katan frowned.

"Which one?" he asked.

"She said her name was DuFont, sir," the Acolyte swallowed. "She claimed to have evidence of the… of the Blue-Eyed Fiend, sir."

Khorun Katan, Master Inquisitor of the Inviolate Order, bared his teeth.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

H34t R3$!5t4nce is level 26!

F17e R3$!5t4nce is level 25!

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Tier with Fire Resistance!

You Gain:

+ERROR

+ERROR

+ERROR

Felix held back a scream as his nerves revolted within his flesh. The hand he'd held over the brazier had blackened and charred under its punishing flames, and Felix cradled it gently against his chest. Fumbling with his satchel, he pulled out a small red vial, uncorked it with his teeth, and poured it over his arm. The sensation of ten thousand needles against his skin consumed Felix, but he'd been through this several times now. He clamped down on his desire to shift about and watched. Some of the blackened skin flaked and sloughed away, while bloody rivulets dripped down his wrist. In their place, new skin and muscle formed, fresh and pink and extremely tender. But it wasn't enough. Grunting in annoyance, Felix fished out his last potion and poured it on as well until the pain was replaced by a terrible itching.

Arm more or less restored, Felix stood and took several steps away from the brazier, grateful to escape the ever present haze of heat-induced pain. His Heat Resistance may be at level 26, but a sharp uptick in temperature sent fissures of hazy agony, like a steel file against his fingertips.

With luck, I'll have this all resolved today. Felix took a deep gulp of air and grimaced as he exhaled. The room smelled of smoke, char, and strange magic. Not for the first time, he considered his… appetites these last few hours.

The room around him was bare of literally everything. He was lucky Zara could deliver on some of those Uncommon monster cores, because he'd run out of furniture in the first hour. Aside from the brazier before him, the room was covered only in the results of his training. The rugs were scorched, and the walls were speckled with divots where his acid had dissolved them. Sections of the room were still iced over from his Mantle experiments, though most of it had melted by that point.

After breakfast, Felix, Vess, and Evie had pushed Zara for more information about this "visitor" she had mentioned. Though the Naiad had also assured them that she would take care of it, the three of them were alarmed that someone may have followed them from the sewers. It was clear they had been followed for some time at least, as the increase in his Abyssal Skein Skill was testament to someone actively searching for Felix over the course of an hour. Someone who had exceptionally good Perception or a powerful Skill, strong enough to oppose his Void Skill.

The temptation to rush to a window and look was overpowering, but they went to their rooms instead. Zara had confirmed that there were multiple layers of wards laid into the area around her mansion, some overlapping other houses nearby, too. As they had suspected, the scripts had some targeted elements, but mostly they were passive wards to distract, disrupt, and obfuscate her property. The Chant, apparently, allowed more subtlety than standard System Skills.

Zara had said the visitor had been dealt with, but Felix wasn't taking chances. He and the others had returned to their rooms to practice what they could and hone themselves while Cal and Harn ironed out the details with the Naiad.

Felix had practiced with Lightning Resistance at first, utilizing a spare dagger Evie had on her. Just like in the Labyrinth, Felix channeled his Reign of Vellus to push on the blade and cause lightning to arc across its metallic surface. Holding onto the steel sent that same lightning through himself. It hurt, but it was the gentlest pain he'd experienced in a while. The experience with sundering and combining Acrobatics had given him a new tolerance, but this was something else. The pain increased as Lightning Resistance increased in level, each time jumping by a significant margin, until he ran out of steam around level 6.

Felix had run out of energy. Of the essence he'd stolen from the Acolytes, most of it had gone to developing his sigil work in the library. Finally, it had been depleted.

As an experiment, Felix picked up a chair in his room and used Ravenous Tithe upon it. It burst into smoke and was sucked into his body. Startled despite himself, Felix focused within and saw that a small amount of energy swirled into existence above his core.

"The Skill never said my target had to be alive. Just that I 'claim' them, whatever that means. What am I even absorbing here?" Felix looked around himself with his Manasight flared to full. The room was a shifting swirl of ambient power, something he usually ignored like looking past the dirt on an unwashed window. It was everywhere. In everything. "Am I just… taking their Mana, then?"

He tried again, this time watching closely.

It took Felix two more chairs and an ottoman before he could spot what was being eaten. The Mana of the inanimate items was being leeched out quite clearly, but there was also something more… ephemeral being taken. He didn't know what it was, only that there were gaps in the flow of Mana as it was pulled into his core. Each time, nothing was left of the object itself.

His experimentation proved that he could absorb this essence from almost anything that had Mana, and whatever that invisible aspect was. If it was present in wooden chairs, Felix was sure he'd find it in plants or rocks or something. The only downside of using it on the inanimate versus monsters was that Felix had devoured the entire room before he'd even gotten close to the same amount he'd gotten from the Common monster cores Rory had provided.

It also proved without a doubt that the limit on his use of Ravenous Tithe had lapsed as it had leveled. He wondered what it would be capable of once it reached Apprentice Tier.

Using the essence stolen from the room around him, Felix dove headfirst into his training. He tried repetition and reliving several choice memories regarding his various resistances, as well as attempting to feed the essence directly to each Skill he was raising. The last wasn't too successful, but he didn't regret the attempt. If it had worked, it would have been amazing. As it was, Felix's Skills increased apace as he devoted himself entirely to the task. He had dawdled long enough, hoping for a more laid back, peaceful life in Haarwatch. He was about to enter a Domain that was very likely corrupted by the same dark passenger that was buried in his lawn, and who knew what he would face before it was over.

He had to be ready.

At some point, Zara or one of her servants had left him with ten Uncommon grade monster cores. Those went into the rotation, and he'd only managed to consume a single one before he'd finally hit Apprentice with Fire Resistance.

Pulling himself from his thoughts, Felix checked his other notifications and let out a quiet, satisfied sigh.

L!ght&1ng R3$!5t4nce is level 2!

...

L!ght&1ng R3$!5t4nce is level 25!

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Tier with Lightning Resistance!

You Gain:

+ERROR

+ERROR

+ERROR

Dual Casting is level 24!

Acid Resistance is level 25!

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Tier with Acid Resistance!

You Gain:

+3 END

+3 VIT

+3 WIL

Acid Resistance is level 26!

Acid Resistance is level 27!

Mantle of the Long Night is level 23!

Cold Resistance is level 23!

...

Mantle of the Long Night is level 25!

Cold Resistance is level 25!

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Tier with Mantle of the Long Night!

You Gain:

+10 INE

+10 INT

+10 END

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Tier with Cold Resistance!

You Gain:

+5 END

+5 VIT

+5% VIT

Ravenous Tithe is level 18!

...

Ravenous Tithe is level 21!

He'd done it. Finally. The next step in healing his broken Skills, and he'd bumped all of them to Apprentice Tier. It had been utter agony, so painful despite his level 49 Pain Resistance, but he'd persevered. And it had only been… Felix blinked at the clock on the wall.

"Six hours?" He hadn't realized he'd become so engrossed. It felt as if he'd resurfaced from deep underwater, or as if he had just gotten over a bad fever. His skin tingled, and his mind felt more alert than normal. Was that an effect of Ravenous Tithe? Or simply strain from prolonged Skill use?

Shaking his head, Felix decided to take a small break. After all, he still had to find Zara and question her. What did she know of the Labyrinth? Of the Maw itself? Felix almost wished she knew he had a piece of the Maw inside him, have it all in the open so he could ask about ways to fix it. To cleanse himself. But he'd seen her face when she'd mentioned the corrupted Domain, the disgust and the touch of hatred in her eyes.

Would she help me? Or kill me?

Pit had retreated to a corner to practice his own Skills. Mostly Frost Spear and Wingblade, though he employed Poisonfire occasionally. That one was hard to level, it seemed, at least in a non-life-threatening situation. The monster cores helped, as Pit had proven himself able to eat them. After eating one of the cores, the Chimera had gained a sizable boost in a few random Primary Stats, but was either unwilling or unable to eat more at the moment.

+5 STR

+5 END

+10 INT

Pit's Frost Spear is level 24!

Pit's Poisonfire is level 16!

Pit's Cold Resistance is level 23!

Pit's Wingblade is level 25!

Congratulations! Pit Has Reached Apprentice Tier with Wingblade!

He Gains:

+5 STR

+5 END

+5 DEX

Felix petted him as he passed, letting the tenku struggle on. His Companion was determined to get stronger as well.

Felix eased out of his room and made his way to Vess and Evie's quarters. As he stepped closer, he heard a gleeful squeal and shout and the unmistakable sound of laughter. Their door was open, and within stood Evie, wearing only a sweat-stained jerkin and pants, holding out her arms in triumph.

"Yes, yes! Be in awe of my splendiferous new form!" Evie spun about, and Vess clapped her hands together, a wide smile on her face. Evie turned smoothly toward Felix and grinned. "You see before you a newly minted Apprentice Tier warrior!"

Felix laughed as his Eye confirmed it. She exuded the aura of someone solidly in the Apprentice Tier. "So, Zara pulled through. She got you those Essence Draughts quick, huh?"

"Quick?" Evie cocked an eyebrow. "Took the last four hours to process that stuff and push myself into Apprentice. Where've you been?"

"Felix has been in his room," Vess chipped in. "From what I could hear, it sounded like he was fighting the walls."

Felix grinned, not embarrassed in the least. "More like myself, but yeah. Had to… shore up some weaknesses before we make our run at the Domain. Have we decided on when we're doing that yet?"

Vess sighed. "Not as of yet, no. Cal spent two hours hashing things out with Zara and making plans. She has not yet deigned to share the details."

"Keepin' it close to the chest," Evie agreed. "Probably for the best, all things considered."

"Enough of that! Tell us! What are your three Formations?" Vess clapped her hands again and focused on Evie. "You had your Body and Mind completed already, yes?"

"Oh yeah. For months now." Evie started fiddling with something before her eyes, poking and swiping at thin air. "Damn Guilders cut off supply of Essence Draughts, though, so I was stuck coolin' my heels at half Formation."

She waved her hand toward Felix and Vess each, and a blue box appeared before his eyes.

Body: Gossamer Steel

Mind: Tempered Iron

Spirit: Resounding Iron

"She gave me an Uncommon Essence Draught called a Mandrake's Cry for my last Spirit Tempering. Gave me the options of Resonance, Howl, or Shatter. Told me to pick Resonance, so I did." Evie shrugged. "Cal trusted her. Nodded and everythin', so I hoped for the best."

Evie grinned. "Now I got a Harmonic Stat unlocked, too."

"That is wonderful!" Vess got to her feet and hugged Evie. "Which one?"

"Resonance, I assume?" Felix asked. Evie nodded and gave him a sour look.

"Spoilin' my reveal? Tch." Evie gestured to the windows before the both of them. "Gives a goodly bump to my Mana regeneration, which between you an’ me, wasn't top-tier. My Mind was already Tempered before this, which is a shame, considerin'. Used the basic Iron Essence Draught from the Guild. My Body, though, the woman must truly be a wizard like you said, Felix. She had me drink down a half dozen vile concoctions and do a bunch of silly tasks to retemper my Body into this: Gossamer Steel. Grants me bonuses to Agility, Dexterity, as well as Strength and Endurance. It's absolutely perfect for my fighting style."

"Retemper?" Felix asked. Rory had mentioned sundering Tempered Skills, but that it was so painful it often led to death. "You didn't… did you sunder your Tempered Skills?"

"Oh, blind gods, no," Evie breathed. "I'm not nuts. Zara's techniques were more of an… alignment shift. Said my Formation wasn't solid enough yet, since my Spirit was Untempered, so I had some wiggle room."

"That's… Zara is full of surprises," Felix shook his head. "Is this sort of thing normal?"

"Not common, certainly," Vess said as she gently put her hand on Evie's shoulder. "And, I am told it is excruciating."

"That's true and a half," Evie grunted, leaning into her touch. "Felt like my insides were on fire and my outsides were frozen solid. It's what took me so long."

Felix bit his lip, the memory of sundering his Skills sharp. Before the day was out, he'd have to handle that as well. The pain wasn't the largest threat, of course. He'd lose all the stat bonuses he'd just gained and possibly some more Health, Mana, and Stamina… more worrisome was what the Maw might attempt. Last time, it had nearly escaped his Bastion and trapped Felix in a maze of false memories. This time...

"Your Formation is impressive, Evie," Vess smiled. "You're such a talented fighter, I was worried you'd be stuck with the standard Guilder foundation."

"Almost was. Iron through and through. Turns out the best thing the Guild could ever do for me was kick us out." Evie's smile was broad, but a little stiff. That wound would likely not heal for a long while.

"Ah," Vess smiled tentatively. "Since you've shared yours, it is only fair...."

A blue window slid over to Felix and popped up next to Evie's.

Body: Pristine Might

Mind: Risen Spear

Spirit: Everburn

"Noctis wept, Vess! Are these Dragoon Formations?" Evie asked, eyes wide.

"Yes. The same as my mother’s, in fact," Vess said with a distant look on her face. "The Body is designed to handle the movement and leaping abilities inherent to the Dragoons, while the Mind is built for acclimating to the pace of battle. The Spirit itself, like many things the Dragoons embrace, was stolen from the dragons centuries ago. It has a… myriad of functions."

Felix blinked at the pop-up and glanced at the two young women, easily discussing their Formations. He'd been told sharing your Status and advancement details was an act of trust, a show of faith that the other person wasn't going to use that information against you. Sourness turned his stomach as he considered his own secrets and Status. He knew he couldn't be as trusting, at least not without some protections.

"Vess, I'd like to show you my Formation as well," Felix said, interrupting their conversation. "Sorry if I'm interrupting. I just realized that there's been a great deal of me that you've had to take on faith. If we're going into battle together again, I think we should be as transparent as possible."

Vess met his eyes, dark brown on his dark blue. She smiled, almost relieved. "Agreed. It is important to trust one another."

Felix could sense Evie's leering smile, but put it out of his mind. "I will have to Oathbind us… is that okay?"

"Yes," Vess said, though not without a touch of hesitation. She met Evie's gaze, and the chain-fighter gave her an encouraging nod. "That is fine."

"Okay," Felix breathed, a smile coming to his lips. He put his hand out, and Vess did the same. "I will share with you my Status, my Skills, even my Titles, and in turn, you must vow to not reveal this information to anyone except Evie, Cal, or Harn. Sound reasonable?"

"Yes, so far," Vess said with a curious tilt of her head. She didn't verbalize anything, but Felix could tell she was bursting with questions.

"Will you swear by your power, your level, and your Formation to keep this oath?" Felix asked, his memory guiding him on the right words to say. They sounded a little stuffy, but he could feel their resonance with his Skill, like a tiny echo.

"I will."

Oathbinding.

In Felix's vision, threads of silver emerged from nothing and looped around both of their wrists. Round and round it went, until they were bound tight. Sparks of blue and gold flashed at the edges of his vision, until the threads simply sank into their skin and disappeared.

Oathbinding is level 9!

An invisible weight settled across Felix's shoulders, as if he'd put on a backpack full of rocks. It faded after an instant, but if he focused, Felix could sense its presence. He looked up at Vess who had hunched in a similar way.

"Too many oaths can weigh a person down," she explained before straightening. "I have taken more than most. But I knew that going in."

"Oh," Felix said, nonplussed. "What happens when you take on too many?"

"It can cause mental damage, from what I hear," Evie offered cheerfully. "Most people can't handle more than a handful of bound oaths. Though, with your Mind and Will… you're probably gonna be fine."

"Oh cool, another thing to worry about," Felix groaned as he stood up, but smiled tentatively at Vess. "Here."

After making a couple choice edits, Felix sent his Status to both of them.

"This might take a while..."

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

"Unbound..."

Felix watched Vess carefully. He'd slowly built up to the revelation, giving her his life story and explanation for his high stats, and large number of Skills and Titles. He'd hoped the weirdness of his existence would somehow soften the impact of the last bit. Judging by the heiress' reaction, Felix didn't do a great job at that. He looked at Evie, who was picking at her teeth with a small knife.

"What?" she asked.

Felix blinked and gestured at Vess, who sat with her head in her hands on the chaise. Evie's mouth made an 'O' shape, and she sidled up next to her friend.

"Vess, you uh, you handlin' this alright?" Evie said lightly.

"I know it's a shock, especially considering everything I'm sure you grew up with," Felix said. "But honest, I'm just a normal guy from Fort Lauderdale. I mean, that's in Florida, but I'm still really normal. Like the most normal. I'm not planning an insidious reign of terror or anything. Not really sure I could even manage that. I ate at the same deli every day for a year because it was ten steps closer than any of the alternatives. I spent more money on sandwiches and blueberry muffins than I did on some of my bills, and they were bad sandwiches."

"What about the muffins?" Evie asked.

"They were fine," Felix shrugged and looked at Vess. "But does that sound like a demon from Ages past?"

"Felix, I… You are from another world, yet your Race is Nym. You have extraordinarily high stats, too many Skills, and weird Titles. You are a monster, Felix." Vess raised her gaze and met Felix's. "But you could have run away, back in the Foglands."

"What?" Felix asked.

"I heard you and Magda speaking the morning before we left for the giants’ camp. She gave you a map with directions back to Haarwatch, said you could go," Vess explained.

Evie looked at Felix with a curious expression.

"You stayed with us, though. You risked your life for people who were not only strangers, but, to you, people from another world entirely." Vess huffed a small laugh. "And now you're doing it again. That is… remarkable."

Felix didn't know what to say to that. In the moment, he hadn't felt it had been much of a choice at all.

"No, I do not fear you, Felix," Vess continued. "Nor do I think you mean any of us harm."

"Well, that's a relief." Felix managed to fight off the flush from his cheeks, disguising it with a cough. That's me. 100% nice guy. No dark secrets here, no sir.

His conscience was a jerk.

"Evie, how long have you known?" Vess asked the green-eyed fighter, who still leaned against a bed post.

"A week or so? Felix told us once we found each other again." Evie sat down on the chaise next to her friend. "You're sure you're okay?"

"It is very strange, I'll admit. But it answers many questions that hover around you, Felix." Vess gestured vaguely at him. "You are very mysterious."

Felix shrugged apologetically. "I don't try to be. I honestly had no idea what people would think of me, and the more I learned about my Race and the world in general, the more cautious I grew. Secrets felt safer."

"You're not wrong," Evie said. "I dunno if Magda would have killed you if you'd been upfront about all this, but she wouldn'ta let you help. That's the truth of it."

Felix sighed. "That's the mental math I did as well."

"Now, we shared ours. I feel it is only fair that you do as well." Vess gestured to the blue window that still hovered in front of her. "What are these Formations you have? I've not heard of any of them."

"Same for me," Evie smirked. "Spill, Felix."

"Uh sure," Felix started, but hesitated. "I Tempered myself under some rough circumstances, so I'm not entirely sure what any of these mean, but I have some guesses."

He brought his Formation up in front of him.

Body: Moving Mountain

Mind: Godeater

Spirit: Dawnwalker

"My Moving Mountain Body was Tempered with Essences of Liberation, Mountain, and Inevitable. It's… it seems to be about relentless movement, breaking through obstacles by sheer force. Or maybe weathering them. I'm not sure." Felix shook his head. "It appears to favor my, uh, heavy-handed approach to fighting, giving my Body extra heft and durability."

"So that's why chairs creak under you," Evie quipped. "Here I just thought you'd gained a few pounds."

"Ha ha," Felix fake-laughed. "You joke, but if this increases each Tempering, then at some point, I'm worried I'll fall through the floor."

"Wait, these sound like rather rare Essence Draughts. How'd you get them?" Vess asked with a confused frown. Felix clenched his jaw and quirked his lips in embarrassment.

"Ah, they were yours," Felix said.

"What?" Vess said. "How?"

"Magda fell into the Labyrinth with them, and it was my only option," Felix was quick to explain. "I wouldn't have survived otherwise."

Vess waved her hands. "No, that's not why I am confused. Those were Dragoon Essences, harvested from powerful monsters the order had hunted down. You should have been hurt by imbibing them on the run, without the proper ritual to counteract the withdrawal symptoms."

Felix scratched his head and shrugged. "Magda mentioned withdrawal, too, but I didn't notice anything. I felt jittery for a while, I think, but that was it."

"Curious," Vess pursed her lips. "I—my apologies. Please continue."

Felix hesitated a moment longer before diving back in.

"Uh, my Dawnwalker Spirit is one I don't really understand. I Tempered it with the Immolation, Chiaroscuro, and Beacon Essences. If I had to guess, it reminds me of a lighthouse. Just a feeling I get," Felix shrugged. "It's pushed forward my Harmonic Stats quite a bit, though. So perhaps something to do with them?

"My—" Felix cleared his throat and paused again. "My Godeater Mind..."

There was a lump in his throat, and his chest thundered with his rapid heartbeat. Felix mustered his Willpower and attempted to impose it on himself. His heart slowed, but his nerves remained.

"What manner of Essence produced it?" Vess prompted, her voice quiet. As if she sensed the delicate nature of the question, she didn't press or insist. She let the question hang, a gentle offer.

Evie snorted. "Yeah, that's a bit much, right?"

Vess looked at her friend with a touch of annoyance.

"What? He's got a Formation called the Godeater. What Essences could make that!" Evie laughed. "So much weird stuff happens around you, Felix."

Felix chuckled, more than a little nervous. "That's been my takeaway so far, yeah."

He took a breath.

Here goes nothing.

*REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE*

A sudden piercing sensation swept through Felix's mind, sending him collapsing to the floor. It was short as it was sharp, over in seconds. Felix looked up to see the other two leaning heavily against the chaise and shaking their heads.

"Twin's teeth, what was that?" Evie asked.

"That felt..." Felix began, but Vess cut him off.

"The wards. Some of the wards have fallen. Look!" Vess flew to the window, one which faced the street. Beyond, Felix could see the flashing detonation of sigils upon the air itself, burning away like a fuse. He blinked.

She can see Mana, too?

Vess was right, of course. The echo of the severed wards still shrieked through the air, sweeping outward in an almost visible shockwave. The three all stumbled to the windows, and what they saw made Felix's blood run cold.

The street was filled, absolutely chock-full, of redcloaks.

"Holy shit," he whispered.

Armored figures marched down the boulevard, moving from house to house in smaller groups and banging on gates. Some rode on Avum, the bird-lizards draped in red cloth and metal barding, forming ranks of cavalry that sent a pulse of dread through Felix. A figure, nearly six and a half feet tall, walked down the center of the street, proclaiming loudly. Only after the woosh of the failed wards faded could the three of them hear the man.

"—order of the Master Inquisitor, by the power invested in him on behalf of the Hierophant Herself, we proclaim heretics within Haarwatch! The city is overrun! We demand that all residents step outside their homes and allow us to search you and your property for evidence of heresy!" The figure paused and swept his head from side to side. "Come, faithful. Let us end this quickly."

Almost as if on cue, the Acolytes at a nearby manor bashed open the gates and rushed into the grounds. A similar scene played out all down the street, as far as Felix could see.

"They've invaded the entire neighborhood," Felix whispered. "Are they hunting for us?"

"There," Vess pointed at a group of redcloaks kneeling on the ground. They weren't dressed in armor as the rest, but thick, overlapping robes of white and red. They seemed to be inspecting it. "They're looking at the buried sigils. If they were not looking for us before, they will be soon."

As one, the redcloaks turned toward Zara's estate. They gestured with emaciated fingers at the wrought iron gate, and a squad of Acolytes surged forward. Orange light flared as the two in the lead raised shields embossed with a fiery sunburst, and they charged headlong into the gate.

Chaos. The moment the Acolytes touched the gate, the air was ripped apart by the screaming sound of discharging Mana. Waves of purple-white and orange burst outward onto the street, immolating several redcloaks and flash-freezing the others.

"Halt!" Cried the tall figure, someone Felix's Eye pegged as a full-fledged Inquisitor. He held up an amulet, fashioned in the same sunburst as their armor. The amulet began to glow a brilliant gold, and Felix heard a series of strident chords. He exchanged a look with Vess, and saw Evie tilting her head slightly. Felix could feel the vibrations still a moment, as if being marshaled close, and then a single plucked chord sounded out.

The air around the Inquisitor rippled, spreading slowly at first but gaining speed. When it hit the gate, it was like an eight-foot wave that washed into the gathered wards and scripts. A brilliant discharge of purple-white and orange Mana was sent in random directions, streamers that froze stretches of cobbles and burst heated the air. Then, with a whooping blast, the gates were blown off their hinges completely.

The Acolytes charged again.

"We gotta go, now!" Evie hissed.

The three of them turned and rushed out of the room. Felix sent a worried pulse of intent toward his Companion, but Pit was already waiting in the hallway, his Dire Hound disguise back on and his hackles raised. He had a bulging leather satchel in his mouth.

"Callie! Harn!" Evie hollered as they took the stairs four at a time. "We've got a problem!"

"We know!" Harn growled, his body once again covered in his scratched silver armor. A large pack was on his back, presumably filled with monster cores. "Zara says there's a way out downstairs. We're goin' now!"

They all ran down the hall, heading toward the back of the manor. The place was larger than Felix had anticipated, but certainly too small to hide from the Inquisition. His mind raced as he tried to figure out a plan, but nothing came to him. All he could think to do was run.

"Come!" Zara appeared from a side door off the kitchen, waving urgently to all of them. "Down here! Quickly!"

The five of them plus Zara fled down another set of stairs, this one made of solid stone. The room below was a wine cellar of some sort, filled with barrels and racks of dark bottles. Several servants were gathered here already, each of them wearing cloaks and packs. Zara replied to Felix's silent question.

"We're practiced at this. It's not the first time the Inquisition has knocked down my door," Zara said with a grim smile.

"That… does not inspire confidence," Vess replied, her voice dismayed.

"How do we get out?" Cal asked, focusing on the situation at hand. "Where's the door out?"

"Here," Zara gestured, and the bare stone before them transmuted into a metal doorway. "This leads down into the sewers."

"Again?" Evie complained quietly.

"You must run, head to your base and gather your people," Zara gave Cal a worried frown. "We have to be ready to move before they sentence their prisoners. I had thought we had a week, but now… we must act quickly."

Cal didn't hesitate, instead reaching forward to clasp the Naiad's wrist. "We've an accord, Zara. We're not backing out now, just because some redcloaks are gettin' frisky."

A muffled boom sounded upstairs, and the tromp of booted feet thundered above.

"Go. I'll keep them busy, give you enough time to get out of here." Zara stepped aside as the door opened, the scent cold and earthy. She handed Cal a leather satchel of monster cores. "Take these, before I forget. Give each of your people one, and only one."

"Very well. Be safe, Zara," Cal said before heading through the door. Harn grunted at her as well before following, the others close on his heels.

Felix was the last to leave, his eyes lingering on the Naiad's. She reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder as he passed.

"Something moves in the Domain already. You can feel the heat, can you not?" Felix's eyes went out of focus, trying to sense what she mentioned. Zara squeezed his shoulder, bringing him back. "Trust in the Grand Harmony, Felix. Listen to the echoes inside of you."

Zara smiled at him, covering her sharp teeth with her lips. "May Avet's gaze avoid you, child."

Felix wasn't sure what to say, so he only nodded and stepped into the sewers. The door closed behind him, plunging the path into utter darkness for a brief moment. Felix had to flex his Manasight to reestablish the hidden glow of the world.

The Corporeal Realm, I guess.

Before him was a long set of stairs, hewed of uneven stone and spiraling down into the deeper dark. He hurried down them, and within seconds found the backs of his friends as they gathered at an intersection of tunnels. Five paths converged here, and the sound and smell of rushing water was strong. Heat pulsed in the distance, almost due west. It scratched against his senses like a scouring pad.

Zara was right.

"Which way do we go?" Evie was asking. "I'm all turned around now."

Harn took off his gauntlet with a muffled click, and held his bare hand up into the air. After a moment, he lowered it and pointed to the right-most tunnel, where the sound of rushing water was the loudest. "That way. We should be able ta get into the Dust by sticking ta the northern passages. Come up in the storm drains near the Ianus."

"Good. That's what we do then," Cal ordered, looking at them all. "If anyone gets separated, then stick north as best you can."

"Wait."

Everyone stopped and looked back. At Felix.

"What is it, kid? We gotta move," Cal asked.

"We have to go to the Domain. Now." Felix said. Cal and Harn exchanged a look, and Evie frowned.

"Why? Shouldn't we get help?" Evie asked.

"Felix, we need to get back to the warehouse. Get the rest of our team and train up," Cal said. "We can't go chargin' into a Domain without prepping, or without a full team."

"I know, but the Inquisition found us. At Zara's, no less! They have to know that something is up," Felix pointed out. "What if the redcloaks already know about our plan? Or the Guild? What if they're waiting by the time we get there?"

"All the more reason ta come back ready," Harn grunted. "You think yer strong enough to face a handful of real Inquisitors?"

Felix clenched his jaw. "If we go now, they won't know what we're doing. Who knows what they may find out in Zara's house?"

"Going now is walking into danger with our eyes closed. We aren't prepared with supplies or in the right mental space to assault a normal Domain, let alone one that's been… corrupted." Cal held up one of the wardstones. "This is all that'll keep you safe in there. Just this rock."

She tossed one to each of them. "We can't go in without a full contingent. And even then, we can't stay long."

"I—I can feel something. Something is happening to the west, something that feels like—"

Like a burning, fizzling, buzzing in his head.

A static cry just outside of earshot.

"The Domain is west of here, right?" he said, voice tight.

Vess nodded, followed shortly by Cal.

"I think something bad is happening at the Domain. Right now." He met Cal's eyes, his own pleading. "We have to do something. At least check it out. What's the point in preparing, if the redcloaks burst the Domain before we can even get in there?"

"Zara did mention that they're movin' quicker than she thought," Harn muttered. Cal looked at him thoughtfully, her expression sour.

"Vellus burn me, but alright," Cal groaned. "Harn, take them. Scout ahead. I'll go back to the warehouse and gather the team. We'll meet back at the edge of Dust and Sunrise in six hours, right?"

The trio nodded, followed slowly by Harn.

"All of you, if you get there and something is happening… don't be stupid. Hold back, wait for reinforcements." She handed Felix a rolled-up parchment. "Don't die. You, memorize this."

Felix unrolled the scroll and looked it over thoroughly. It was a map of the sewers, a path leading to the secret entrance of the Domain. "Got it."

He rolled it back up and handed it over.

"Don't make me regret this." Cal shook her head.

"Go."

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

The crowds raged against the press of Acolytes, their fine-cut clothes markings of their noble statuses. All around the Sunrise Quarter, the people of Haarwatch pushed back against the probes of the Inquisition. Near the target house, several large men pushed back against an Inquisition shield wall, shouting down the Order's calm instructions.

"Stand down! You are to be searched, and your property to be inspected!" An Initiate stood nearby, sword drawn. "A refusal to do so is unlawful!"

"Get off our property, redcloak!" Yelled one burly man, his body wrapped in a silk robe embroidered with leaping manticores. He held a gleaming steel longsword in one hand. "You have no right!"

"We are the hand of justice, Lord Petricus," a voice boomed from above, along with the sudden thrum of a Manaship's engines. "And you are in violation of our lawful charge."

Khorun Katan descended from the deck of his ship, carrying a potent silence with him that spread outward like wildfire. Landing on the streets below with a muffled thump, the Master Inquisitor watched as a wave of salutes rippled through his soldiers, each one acknowledging him even as they performed their tasks. An aura of implacable superiority pressed down upon everyone for dozens of yards, and the civilian resistance ceased.

"Ma-Master Inquisitor," Lord Petricus stammered, barely able to stand under Katan's influence. "It is true, then? There are heretics within the Sunrise Quarter?"

"Indeed," Katan looked away from the minor noble, his House barely worth memorizing. He had done so anyway before coming to this worthless outpost. If one is to attend a task, one must crush it utterly, his mentor had always professed.

"Then, of course, we allow your men access to our estate and our… our persons," Lord Petricus stated, his large, bearded face pale under Katan's aura.

"How gracious," Katan said, turning back to the minor noble with a smile. He nodded to his people. "Proceed."

Acolytes trod forward, grasping each of Petricus' heirs and leading them all back toward their estate. Around Katan, the scene repeated itself as more became aware of him. It was one of the reasons he brought the Stalwart, after all. Only the blind would not notice its heavily armored presence in the sky, the proud jut of its hull emblazoned with the golden sunburst of his Order.

Fear is a tool. Use it as you must to seek the Light. Katan's mentor's voice was vivid in his head, her quiet confidence and steady council a balm for days such as this. The rabble of this outpost city were a seething cesspool of heretical beliefs. The light of the Pathless shone upon them, evidenced by the churches around the city, but Haarwatch shied from the truth. They fled the promises of strength and struggle, to grow beyond their stations by the holy edicts of the Trackless. They turned instead toward the dark ones, the Lost gods, seeking false promises of an easy path.

Pathetic.

Katan turned toward their target, the house that had been warded so thoroughly that it had evaded all of their seers and wardbreakers. He could see several of his soldiers kneeling on the ground, doubtless inspecting the sigaldry buried beneath the street itself.

The heresy runs deep here, Katan frowned. To find one so powerful, hidden in plain sight....

Had DuFont not come to him, Katan worried that he would not have found it. The Elder of Acquisitions had surprised him, offering him this information almost for free. Like much of the Elder Council, Katan had her pegged as part of his opposition. The Elders of Spirit, Mind, and Body certainly were, and most of the others fell in line with them.

She ran to us open-armed. It was a calculated move, but one that I can respect. Katan turned back toward the targeted estate. Never will we turn away those who seek the Light.

Perhaps he would let her live in the coming days. Her network was useful out in the edges of the nation, and the woman herself was personally weak. That, in particular, was a flaw that Katan had no issue accepting. Weakness could be reforged, and if not, the weak could never rise. They were made to be trod upon by their betters, after all.

*KATHOOOM!*

A violent explosion of water surged through the lower levels of the mansion before him. Windows burst under the pressure, and heavily armored men and women were expelled from the casements and doorways. They landed heavily among the flattened flora, even as the water dissipated back into Mana vapor.

"Khorun Katan!"

The voice carried, clear as a bell, over the metallic cacophony of his Order. Striding out of the front doors was a tall woman with wavy green hair and ochre skin. She wore the black robes of a chorister of Avet, most foul of all the Lost gods. Her hands crackled with a deep blue Mana, streamers of which spun up around her hair and sent it floating erratically. Katan fixed her with his Analyze Skill, but was rebuffed by a powerful ward.

"Chorister and Sorcerer," he growled, causing the dust and pebbles around him to shake. "You dare to strike my people."

"You violate my home and my people," the woman countered. "Release your prisoners now, or else I'll do far more than strike your pawns, Katan."

The Master Inquisitor's lip curled as he considered the situation. He could feel the thrum of the woman's power through her ward, though not her exact advancement. It was likely she was close to him, or so he hoped. Else, this would be over far too soon.

Khorun Katan bared his teeth in a smile, and the woman answered with a shark-toothed grin.

Then they both disappeared.

*KRAKKKK!*

In mid-air, an impact sent shockwaves of water and fire Mana, bursts that lashed into the estate grounds and spilled over the wall. Acolytes were sent sprawling, and even nearby Initiates were burned and lacerated by the opposing forces.

Above them, two figures rebounded off one another to land forty feet apart. Both of them stood, unsupported in the air. The woman cleverly manipulated air Mana to hold herself aloft, while tendrils of dark water rose around her like serpents. She was uninjured and completely at ease. A lilting song escaped her lips, a haunting melody that seemed to warp the air around her.

Katan's interest increased to alarm. The blow he'd taken from her had dented his Inviolate armor, perhaps leaving a lasting bruise as well. This one is more than strong. She's a light-cursed Chanter.

"Impressive, woman," Katan hummed. "You must be the heart of this city's darkness."

"Fah," she spat. "Come at me if you wish for pain, Katan."

"Very well."

Shell of Divine Truth!

Lance of the Fall!

Sun's Lash!

With a gesture, a suit of fine armor appeared over his own, this made of golden light. It was not oversized as Crell's, but instead fitted to his form and covered in far more detail. Katan had long since mastered his Skill, evolving it beyond an Initiate's simple form. A massive lance of golden light also manifested in his right hand, while a whip of concentrated orange fire Mana appeared in his left.

"Let the pain begin."

* * *

They moved as quickly as they could, each of them activating whatever stealth or subterfuge Skills they had. Felix took the lead, having memorized the map, which worked well for him. He had to occasionally dip out of Abyssal Skein, now up to level 20, to keep their eyes on him, but it meant less time holding his breath, a difficult task at the speed they were traveling.

All of them were remarkably quiet. Evie had her standard Stealth up to an impressive level 35, while Vess utilized her Dragoon's Footwork to great effect. It wasn't the first time he'd seen a Skill used outside of its technical description, but it did clear up for him why he'd never managed to beat the spearwoman in a fight. Her precision was beyond good.

Harn took up the rear, keeping an eye out for pursuit or whatever threats might be found down there. He moved quickly as well, just as fast as Felix remembered, but even quieter. His silver armor, still scratched in places, made almost no noise as his joints pumped powerfully. Simple, puffing flares of hidden sigaldry indicated the warrior's armor had been enchanted in some way, though aside from a dark brown color that reminded him of oil, Felix wasn't sure how. Not that he had the attention to spare.

They ran into several creatures in the sewers, things that slithered through the increasingly foul water and struck from the shadows. Serpents and rat-like beasts the size of large house cats leaped out, but the four of them mowed through their resistance. None of the creatures were above level 10, save for a particularly large Odious Fang, a green and brown serpent covered in moldering feathers. It was level 15, and had a nasty poison to its bite, which Felix got to experience firsthand. When it struck from beneath a shallow pool, Felix put himself between Vess and the creature, blocking its fangs with his forearm. The six-inch-long fangs had skittered off the meat of his arm, warded away by his Armored Skin, but the beast ejected a spray of liquid poison directly into Felix's face. He recoiled, falling onto his ass in the muck as a sickening heat pulsed outward.

Vess and Pit destroyed the Fang with Rake and three conjured spears, shredding the beast below the skull, while Harn rushed to his side. For his part, Felix grunted and breathed through the poisoning, funneling it all into his core.

Poison Resistance is level 44!

His resistance burned through most of the poison, and what remained Felix was able to burn up and ingest. He felt the smallest of flares from his Ravenous Tithe, activating just enough to devour whatever power was inherent in the Odious Fang's poison.

Brings back memories, he thought sourly while warding away a flash of images of the Sworn. He didn't feel any worse, however, his Body having metabolized the poison rapidly.

"Yer okay, kid?" Harn asked.

"Fine," Felix said while standing. "Poison Resistance took care of it."

"Ah, right," Harn said, remembering. "Good thing ya did. Odious Fang poison is right nasty."

"Then I'll stay in the lead. If we see any more, I'll take point and draw attacks." Felix moved to the front once more and took off at a run. The others caught up soon enough.

Felix couldn't shake a sense of dread, ever since Zara had pointed out the pulsing heat to the west. He could feel it still, like a swollen, infected wound in the midst of healthy flesh. It was clear that it wasn't Manasight or his Perception that detected it, which meant he was reaching out into the "vital vibrations" of the Grand Harmony. How was still unclear, despite Zara's tutelage. But it didn't matter. All Felix had to know was that something bad was happening, or would happen soon.

They had to be there to stop it.

They ran for another ten minutes, and thankfully there were no more enemies lurking in the side passages. The illusory heat of what he assumed was the Domain lay close to hand, only a few turns of the tunnel away. It loomed in his mind like a physical thing, an obelisk that began blotting out the sky as he drew nearer. That sickly, feverish feeling began to buzz against his nerves, tinnitus for his entire body.

"We're close," he told the others as they leaped over an intersection filled with thick, stagnant liquid. "I think we—"

*KATHOOOOOOM!*

Everyone slid to a halt, Felix fetching up against the curve of a tunnel. Dust and debris shook from the ceiling, and aftershocks echoed through the sewers all around them.

"What the hell was that?" Felix asked.

"An explosion?" Vess ventured.

"No," said Harn, his face pale. "Can't ya feel it? No, ya can't, of course. That's a fight."

"What?" Evie exclaimed. "Who could cause that in a fight?"

"Two Master Tiers," Harn said, clenching his jaw. "We have to run."

Zara? Felix thought as they took off again. Fighting who?

*KATHOOOOOOM!*

Khorun Katan barely maintained his stance in the air, the shimmering Mana beneath his feet flickering as his concentration wavered. His Divine Shell was shattered in four different places, and the panels leaked golden light into the afternoon sky. Blood dripped from his right hand, which only held the handle of his lance, the rest of it having been snapped off with his last powerful strike.

Below him, a crater had formed where the Sorcerer's mansion once stood. The Sorcerer was within, hopefully crushed beneath the rubble. Surviving an impact such as that...

Haah haah… This woman… has such strength. It should not be possible.

He had hit her with the full force of his Lance of the Fall, a Master Tier Skill backed by the immense Strength of his Immaculate Light Body. He had seen the blood fountain from her wound even as her strange Skill shielded her with a dome of living water. He hadn't received a kill notification, however. Katan swept his senses through the remains of the house, and his breath hitched in his chest. He sent a second pulse after the first, and found the same dire result.

The Sorcerer had fled. She lived.

"Search her house!" Katan shouted, his voice booming into the air above the Sunrise Quarter. "Tear it apart. Find her!"

Below, his forces exploded into action, several squads rushing forward into the ruins of the Sorcerer's home. Others milled nearby before a savage look from the Master Inquisitor sent them running to inspect the other houses nearby. She would not escape him. He could not allow it.

With such a foe alive, their plan could only suffer. Even if it succeeded, he had no guarantees it would take that woman down with the city. To kill the dragon, one must cut off the head, his mentor had once said. We must move. Now.

Katan dismissed his lance and whip and let his Divine Shell fall into motes of golden light. Using the remains of his Mana, he ascended further into the sky. The damn witch had hurt him and exhausted his reserves. As the Master Inquisitor landed atop the Stalwart, he glared once more at the wreckage below, searching for the woman. Destruction met his gaze. Swaths of the Sunrise Quarter had been crushed and set ablaze by their fight, entire blocks broken apart by the clash of Master Tier Skills. And the resonance of foul Sorcery.

A contingent of Initiates, the Master Inquisitor's aides, rushed forward to help him.

"I am fine," Katan stated, steel in his voice. His aides backed down, except one. A young man by the name of Klark, if he remembered correctly. And he always did.

"Sir, do we—" the Initiate's voice broke a moment, evidence of his youth. Younger than I thought. "Do you wish us to organize a fire brigade?"

"Let them burn," Katan announced. Klark blanched, but the Master Inquisitor growled out a proclamation. "The people of Haarwatch must learn what it means to house a Sorcerer in their walls."

"Y-yes sir. Of course, sir."

The Initiates scrambled to relay his orders, utilizing the curious etheric contraptions built into his vessel. Even with their advantage in numbers and levels, his people were nothing without communication. Still, Katan could not afford any alterations to their plan.

"Initiate Klark," Katan intoned. "I need you to relay an order to our men in the Eyrie."

"Of course, sir."

"Tell the teams to begin."

Klark paled again, but nodded. Katan frowned.

"Your compassion does you credit," he said. "But the heathens deserve none of it, Initiate. Do you understand?"

Klark swallowed and nodded. Beneath his armor, Katan could sense his body tremble.

"Go. Now."

"Yes, sir," Klark managed before bolting away.

Re-education will be necessary for that boy. Katan turned and looked down again, feeling his Health slowly tick back up. He could see all of the city from this height, all of the territory that would soon be his. He'll have plenty of company, soon.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

Unfettered Volition is level 19!

Less than a minute later, they arrived at a tangled intersection of tunnels, at least thirteen by Felix's count. Most were not large enough for a Human to walk down, but there were at least five that were. Water spilled into the intersection from some of the southern passages, pooling just long enough to stink before they sluggishly shifted to the north. The sound was like thick mud splatting into a bog, loud and intermittent, but was not enough to cover the distinct clatter of metal on metal.

Of pained cries.

Felix shared a cautious glance with the others as he and Harn both leaned outward, attempting to stay flush with the tunnel wall. They had lucked out and were about twenty feet up from the ground, out of direct line of sight from those below. Magelights had been tossed about the room, steady orbs that lent an even lighting to most of the area. The floor of the intersection was uneven stone and dark sediment segmented by several streams of thick sludge. And atop it all was rank upon rank of redcloaks. Felix counted thirty of them, three Initiates leading squads of nine Acolytes each. He passed that onto Harn with the only handsign he'd picked up.

<Three zero bad. Three big bad,> he signed. Harn smirked but nodded.

Apart from the intimidating number of Inquisition members, there was the source of the whimpering cries. Sixty-five men and women were chained up together in the center of the redcloaks. Felix picked out their faces, quickly matching them against his memories of the crowds at the gathering.

"Next group!"

A squat Initiate hollered from the far end of the chamber, the same direction Felix was feeling the greatest concentration of that pulsing heat. The Nym's eyes were drawn toward the man, and like iron to a magnet, snapped onto what stood beyond him. There was an enormous fissure in the stonework, a gaping crevasse that exuded a sense of foul power. It was a familiar dissonance that chewed on the ends of his nerves. It looked solid, but quivering, like rock turned to flesh turned to jello. As he watched, what was clearly the Domain entrance rippled and… breathed. Felix could see a steady exhalation of dark fumes, Mana vapor that was fouled with a familiar stain.

The Maw's corrupted touch. He grimaced. Now that they were so close, Felix’s core flared in tempo with the Domain, almost like it was syncing up. What have you done now, monster?

There was only silence from his unwilling passenger.

Now that he was looking at it, Felix noticed that the area closest to the Domain was tinged a slight red and covered in a creeping moss. Small plants sprouted here and there, each rigid stalk permeated by the same twisted sense of power in miniature. It was as if the Domain was… spreading.

Is that normal? Or is the shell failing already? Felix clenched his jaw.

People began moving. The Acolytes, faces covered by their sallet helms, yanked on the heavy chains. Several Haarwatch citizens were pulled off their feet with startled yelps.

"Stand up, dogs!" snarled an Acolyte. "Time to answer for your sins."

"No!" wailed a rotund Dwarf, his shoulders thick with muscle. "Ye'll not be doin' this!"

The Dwarf yanked back against the chains, but couldn't best the Acolyte's Strength. The redcloak simply hauled on the chain, towing the Dwarf (and the four others connected to him) forward. With a grunt, the Acolyte punched the struggling Dwarf across the jaw, the meaty crunch cracking through the tunnels. The Dwarf fell limp.

"Anyone else got something to say?" A nearby Initiate demanded, and his body briefly lit up with an orange glow.

Only whimpering and heavy breathing could be heard.

Felix clenched his jaw, trying to figure out how to do this. The redcloaks were clearly already throwing people into the Domain. The Haarwatchers were chained up in groups of five, their shackles linked by heavy chains that an Untempered Human would likely have trouble moving alone. A few even had metal collars, for some reason. Three Acolytes moved forward, lifting the unconscious Dwarf and pulling the rest along. Up toward the Domain.

Felix pulled back from the opening and whispered at Harn. "We gotta do something. Fast."

"The Domain. There is another entrance." Harn muttered.

"You weren't sure?" Felix gaped at the man, but he only shrugged.

"Language is tricky. I ain't built for it. Coulda swung either way, ya know?" Harn tilted his head back. "C'mon."

Felix gave a frustrated glance back at the opening before they both crept backward toward the others. Felix gave them a quick rundown of what he had seen.

"They're relaxed, not expectin' resistance," Harn pointed out. He cracked his own neck. "We could take ‘em out."

"You think?" Evie asked, startled. "Thirty redcloaks against four of us?"

"They're not waiting," Felix hissed. "They're gonna try and burst the Domain as soon as possible. And who knows what is happening to the people thrown in."

"Monsters'll kill ‘em soon enough," Harn said softly. "Haarwatch's Domain's too much for anyone below Apprentice Tier. We wanna save ‘em? We move now."

"We barely handled one Initiate before," Vess pointed out. "What's different now?"

"I got my full Formation, Vess. And we got Harn and Felix. We can take ‘em," Evie stated, giving them a shaky smile. Felix could feel her emotions wobble between confidence and fear, an echo of his own. "We gotta, right?"

Felix looked at them, meeting each of their gazes. Fear was there, yes, but so was conviction. They were all in.

"I've… got a plan," Felix said, and started etching a diagram in the muck of the tunnel.

* * *

As the next group was pulled up the slight incline toward the Domain, Rafny tried to fight off another wave of hopeless dread. She had been struggling against it all day, escalating from panic when the redcloaks burst into the gathering to darkest fear as they'd been rounded up and forced into armored wagons. They'd been left in those stifling boxes for hours, ringed by Acolytes with enchanted pikes. Then they moved again, and this time, when Rafny saw light, it was morning and she was being dragged back into the sewers.

Burn you, Elle, Rafny thought without heat. Why're you always right?

Eldrunna hadn't wanted Rafny to attend the gathering, but with Heva so dead-set, the weaponsmith couldn't bear to let her go alone. The Hobgoblin was younger than Rafny by a decade, despite looking older, and the gruff Dwarf always had a soft spot for her. Not to mention that, if something happened, her daughter Mahria would never let Rafny hear the end of it. Oveh, she… well, she needed looking after ever since the attack. She hadn't handled the loss of her husband and home very well.

Someone yanked on the chains, and Rafny winced. Her arms and wrists were bruised where the manacles cut into her, so heavy that even though she had above-average Strength, it was still difficult to move. She watched with horror as another group was dragged above, the dread shifting toward sparking hate as an Acolyte casually slapped them. Rafny had figured they were being led down here to die, but she hadn't imagined this.

"They're taking them, oh gods, they're taking them, too," Oveh whispered. Her face was covered in muck, just as all of them were, her hands over her mouth merely spreading more of the sewer's filth over herself.

Heva gently put an arm against Oveh's, the nearest she could manage to a hug with their chains. Rafny could almost see the weight bowing her shoulders. "Rafny, what can we do? We won't survive the Domain!"

"Hold fast, I'll—I'll think of something," the Dwarf promised. "We just need an opportunity."

Yet the weaponsmith had no ideas. The Domain was entirely too strong for the Untempered, and she might only survive a few moments longer, chained as she was. If she could access her Skills, then… but the collars cut her off from her powers. Rafny was the highest-leveled person in the room, save for the Initiates, though there were perhaps one or two other fighters mixed in. All of them had been collared, though. If she could get the key from one of the Initiates, then perhaps they'd have a chance, but their group was firmly in the center of the prisoners. She had no clear shot.

Blighted redcloaks! Siva, please, if you still look down upon us. Send us your aid. Rafny wasn't much for praying, but she'd been raised on the old gods by her traditionalist parents. In the face of greatest adversity, she knew of only two solutions they'd approve. Fight or pray. Someone ahead moved up, and she grimaced as the manacles ground against her wrists again.

For now, praying was all she could do.

A sound to her left drew Rafny from her dark thoughts. It was metallic and resonant, echoing from the darkness of one of the several tunnels that fed into the intersection. Shorter than most present, she could only see it through the gaps in the crowd. Three Acolytes, the nearest to the passage, turned and drew their weapons.

"Sirs! We have contact to the south!" An Acolyte reported to the Initiates. Rafny saw two of them straighten up from across the chamber.

"Who walks before the Inviolate Order?" Another Acolyte barked. "Name yourself!"

No words. Just steady steps in the darkness, coming ever closer. The Acolytes huddled nearer one another, perhaps instinctively as the sound grew louder.

And then there was light.

Two pale, silver flames appeared, each wrapped around the length of twin metallic axes. The fire cast upon a figure wearing a set of full plate armor, complete with boots and full helm. It was the frog's mouth helm, in fact, that Rafny recognized. That and the axes.

Onslaught? Here? She nearly gasped at the hope that bloomed in her breast. Why?

"Come no further, or you will be held accountable for crimes against the legal authority of the Inviolate Order!" the lead Acolyte spat, his short sword coming to his grip even as his shoulders quaked with obvious fear. The man did not stop, and instead swirled his twin axes like a Kivatii fire dancer. "Halt!"

The man in silver armor jogged forward.

"Sir!" the Acolytes stuttered back before the booming voice of an Initiate took control.

"Form ranks! Candle and Lantern Squads assist!"

Twenty Acolytes peeled off from the prisoners as step by step, Onslaught advanced. Muck splashed outward as the warrior cleared the tunnel and entered the fitful light of the intersection. Rafny's heart soared. Someone had come. Finally.

The Acolytes advanced as one, their pikes leveled and each of their bodies flaring with a range of orange and golden lights. The weaponsmith knew the Silver Rank Guilder could take the bastards, but she wasn't so sure about the three Initiates who were here. Indeed, her stomach dropped as one of them stepped forward and raised his hands. They began to glow with a golden radiance, but before it discharged, spears rained from the sky.

*KLANG! KLANG! KLAAANNGG!*

"RAAAUUUUUUUUAHHH!"

"HURK!"

The Initiate dodged out of the way of two spears, but others found their marks. Two others were hit, one Initiate taking it in the shoulder and the other getting pierced by two different spears through his breastplate. Blood fountained as the latter collapsed to his knees, his chest sucking air.

"Ambush!" the original Initiate shouted. "Eyes up! From above!"

A woman dropped from a smaller tunnel nearly directly above them, her body covered in white-enameled armor that was vaguely similar to the Order's own. But she held a silver spear in her hands, this one chased with gold details, and as she fell she screamed.

"Spear of Tribulations!"

A swell of power was her only warning, and the Dwarf threw herself atop the others, dragging them all to the ground. The spears burst into cyclones of air Mana that shredded the accumulated muck in the tunnels and sent sparks flying from the Initiate's armor. The one who had been pierced, however, burst into bloody chunks of meat and bone.

Rafny looked up from the ground and saw chaos.

The spearwoman was furiously battling one of the Initiates, her silver weapon clashing with the zealot's burning sword. The two of them moved in a complicated dance that Rafny had experienced too many times to not recognize. The young woman was well-trained, her footwork more than a match for the Initiate's.

Meanwhile, across the chamber, Onslaught finally hit the rows of Acolytes like a reaping scythe. The Inviolate Order fell before his axes, some even getting tossed into the air by his Strength and momentum. The unluckiest were bisected by his blazing silver weapons. The Acolytes weren't helpless, however, and they had been trained to fight against greater odds. Shields were pushed closer, and a weaving of golden light permeated their defenses. Their pikes thrust forward in a wave, strikes coming from all around the warrior, trying to penetrate his weak spots.

Fools, Rafny thought with a grunt, lifting herself from her friends. The Onslaught doesn't have weak spots.

The pikes glanced off his armor, not even leaving scratches as a shimmer of silver, metallic vapor inundated Onslaught’s form. The armor itself seemed to swell, increasing in size and thickness, turning his arms and axes into even more deadly instruments of war. The screaming was deafening, so loud in fact that she almost missed the thick, spiked chain that launched from yet another tunnel. It wrapped around the injured Initiate and tightened with a squeal of metal on metal.

"An-another—yeeeaarrgh!"

The Initiate managed only that before he howled in pain and staggered to the side. It was like he struggled with a considerable weight, even as the blades on the chain dug into his joints. Rafny got to her feet, slowly helping Heva and the others chained to them as well, but she never took her eyes off of what unfolded.

The Initiate was yanked to the side by a sudden tug, and out of the dark tunnel, a figure began sailing through the air like a crossbow bolt. She moved fast, but it was clearly a woman, and she held up a fist that was covered in a purple-white haze. Before she landed, that haze resolved into a foot-long spike of ice.

She hit the Initiate spike-first, thrust into the space between his breastplate and pauldron. Fully opposite the open spear wound, and from the man's scream, Rafny guessed the hit penetrated. The woman began to stab mercilessly with the ice spike until it was stained red.

"Who are they?" Oveh asked, her vague eyes finally showing a measure of clarity. "Where did they come from?"

"Who cares?" Rafny grunted. "It's our opportunity. Keep your eyes peeled."

That was when lightning lit up the intersection, overwhelming the magelights with its intensity. It was thick as a tree, bursting from the slope leading to the Domain entrance, and a dark figure fell through it from somewhere above. He landed lightly as if the lightning cushioned him somehow, and faced the last Initiate. From the distance, Rafny couldn't make any details out, but the man seemed to hurl something dark forward at the Initiate. Whatever it was hit the zealot's extended blade, and a burst of sizzling liquid was deflected to the side.

"Heretical dogs!" the Initiate snarled, shoving the lead prisoner into the Domain's entrance. Strung together, the rest were sucked through as if something was pulling them. The Initiate grinned at the young man. "Too late for them!"

"We're saved," Heva whispered. Rafny looked at her, confused, but saw the old Hobgoblin's eyes were filled with tears. "I can't believe—He's come to save us, again."

"Who?" The Dwarf asked. She looked at the man's broad back, covered in a beige canvas jacket. "Him?"

A piercing crack filled the air, overwhelming the barrage of violence from the Onslaught for a moment, and the man leaped forward. Chips of shattered stone followed his feet as he sped through the air. But a spark of brilliant orange light emerged from the Initiate, and a golem made of fire and stones was conjured directly in the challenger's path. The heat was so intense Rafny could feel it from forty feet away, but then it was followed by a wave of utter, arctic cold that made them all shield their eyes.

There was a sound of frustrated screaming, and the sounds of physical combat. Metal scraped against metal, flesh hit flesh, and there was a terrible squelching sound from beyond the foundering golem.

"What was… an arrow?" the Initiate gasped. "GAAAAUUUUUH!"

To Rafny's surprise, the golem burst into a column of wildfire, scorching the ceiling and plant life for ten strides in all directions. An Acolyte, still guarding the prisoners, stumbled back from the pillar of fire, nearly dropping his pike. Taking the chance, Rafny leaped up and threw her manacle chain over his neck.

"HURK!"

With her considerable Strength, she squeezed until the man's gorget crumpled, and his face started to turn purple. With a sharp, final twist, a kill notification floated before her eyes. Wordlessly, she dismissed it.

"You!"

The other Acolytes rounded on her, their eyes wide and filled with rage. Two of them rushed at her.

A weak fire bolt hit one of them directly in the face, singeing his mustache, while the other floundered and fell. A stone club had shattered into pieces against his knees. Before either of them could recover, two figures fell on top of them, digging their fingers and activating Beginner-Tier Skills against their eyes and mouths.

In seconds, it was over. Heva stumbled to her feet, her sharp nails coated in blood and spit from where she'd forced them down the bastard's throat. With a heave, she pulled a still-snarling Oveh off the other Acolyte, the Dwarf's low-level Stone Forging Skill leaving chunks of rock embedded in the man's ruined face and neck. Heva met Rafny's gaze and gave her a shaky nod.

Siva be praised, Rafny thought, stunned, but then was startled by another realization.

It had gone terribly quiet.

The other prisoners were looking around them in wonder and no little awe. Onslaught, his silver armor covered in blood that was clearly not his own, marched forward and struck apart another set of manacles with his axe. Rafny panned the room, noting the two women standing nearby, looking over the crowd. One was the chain wielder, her black hair wild from the fight and blood across her mouth. She caught the Dwarf's eye and offered a red grin. The other was the armored maiden, her spear missing, who somehow did not look disheveled despite her struggles against an Initiate.

And standing above them, still on the hill near the Domain, was a broad-shouldered young man that Rafny recognized. The boy Jacinda had recommended, the one Elle was still designing armor for… and his eyes were glowing a bright, electric blue.

"The Blue-Eyed Fiend," she heard Heva whisper. Several other prisoners turned toward her and also began whispering.

"Vellus bless," Oveh said, her voice louder. "We're saved."

The tunnels around them suddenly shook, and the Fiend turned toward the Domain entrance. Were her eyes fooling her, or had it grown?

"We have to hurry," the Fiend said. "It's beginning."

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Felix felt the fear burn in his gut like a fuse. As the stone cracked further, it was clear the Domain was spreading, pushing itself… or being pushed, maybe. The corruption he sensed as a sick, fungal rot washed over him again, a funk in his nose even as the increasing volume of jarring discord rattled his inner ear.

Pit cooed at him internally, conveying his own agitation. The tenku had been converged since Felix had conceived of the plan. He was a trump card Felix was happy he hadn't had to play.

He toggled his notifications.

Reign of Vellus is level 38!

Mantle of the Long Night is level 26!

Cloudstep is level 11!

Arrow of Perdition is level 8!

Solid gains, he mused, distractedly rubbing at his sore chest. The Initiate had done a number on him, knocking his Health down to 60% with his fire and blade. If he hadn't utilized his Mantle of the Long Night, the heat and flames would have made him collapse in pain, let alone the actual damage. Luckily, Felix had been able to overwhelm the zealot before he could marshall a proper defense. Last thing Felix wanted was to face someone with that magic armor Skill again.

"What's beginning?" Evie asked, her voice strained and out of breath. "Don't be cryptic."

"No, I—" Vess stepped up, crossing some of the distance between them as she stared at the Domain entrance. "I feel something, too. The shell, it is weakening."

The heiress turned toward the prisoners, some of which were only just now pulling themselves up onto their feet. Felix noticed more than a few were giving him strange glances, though they flinched when he met their eyes. He heard whispers pass among a few of them.

"It's him… the lightning..."

"Blue-eyes..."

Oh damn. Felix closed his eyes and sighed.

"You there," Vess called, pointing out a taller Orc in the crowd. His dark, purple-green skin was bruised with lighter shades all down his arms, but he held himself tall under the noblewoman's gaze. "How many have they thrown into the Domain?"

"Too many," the Orc grated. Felix noticed a collar was tight around his thick neck, that in fact more than a few of the prisoners wore similar collars. "Five, six groups?"

Evie gasped, and Felix felt his stomach clench painfully. That was perhaps thirty or so people lost already. Felix glanced back at the Domain, watching the entrance shudder slightly as if in time with a massive, unseen heartbeat. Could they save them? Or were they already dead?

"You're wasting time," said a familiar voice, and Felix turned back around to see the Dwarven weaponsmith Rafny finish rifling through the remains of an Acolyte. She was methodically going through their pouches, a task made harder by her manacles. "If you're planning on saving them, that is."

"Rafny?" Harn said, stepping out from the press of bodies. "How'd you get caught?"

"Poor life choices, maybe—aha!" Rafny said with a flourish. A key made of a dark metal was in her hand, its tip looking oddly pronged. She ignored her manacles and moved her hands around her collar, feeling blindly for a moment before they could hear the sound of a metallic click. The collar opened and dropped from her neck. Rafny took a deep, steadying breath as if she'd been swimming and just come up for air. "That's a lot better."

"You need help with those...?" Harn gestured at her manacles, and the Dwarf sighed and nodded. Harn's axe was as precise as a scalpel, shearing them off her wrists in no time.

"Thanks, Onslaught." She smiled gratefully up at him, far less gruff than she had been with Felix. "Can you help everyone else?"

Harn nodded and moved to the next prisoner, an older Hobgoblin woman who didn't take her eyes off Felix. He broke their manacles just as quickly. People began to bunch up, pressing closer to the bloody warrior in a panicked effort to get free. Harn was clearly tired; he had just fought upward of twenty five opponents, Apprentice Tier notwithstanding, and the press of close to fifty freaking out people didn't allow him to swing his axe. Not unless he wanted to kill them.

"Everyone! Stop!" Felix shouted, and found his voice louder than ever before. It startled him a bit, the force he could push with his diaphragm, but scared the prisoners more. They froze. "We'll cut your chains soon! Please form a line, and Harn will see to you!"

Surprisingly, to Felix at least, they listened. The whispers started up again, though, centered around that Hobgoblin woman, but Felix blocked it out. He turned to Rafny and descended the slope leading up to the Domain entrance. "Rafny, what are those collars for?"

The Dwarven weaponsmith was already freeing the Orc who had spoken earlier. His name was Etrik, according to Felix's Eye. She gave Felix an appraising look before answering. "Elision collars. Chokers. Cuts off the core."

Etrik took a deep, relieved breath as his collar came off and nodded appreciatively to the woman. She handed him the key. "Go Etrik, unlock the others."

"Yes, ma'am," he said and stomped off.

"Cuts off the core? As in, you can't use Skills?" Felix asked.

"Right. Also drains your Mana, keeps it artificially low. Makes people weak, even after they've been released. Easy to capture again." Rafny hawked a glob of phlegm into the putrid water nearby. "Bastard redcloaks."

"Damn," Felix muttered. "That's diabolical."

"Dia-what?" Rafny asked.

"Nothing," Felix looked at the prisoners, many of whom were openly sobbing and hugging one another. He glanced around the cavernous intersection, noting again that fully half of it was covered in the creeping flora from the Domain. "This is bad. We can't let this get worse."

Vess nodded. "It is straining already."

"What're you talkin' about?" Evie asked, stepping closer. "I don't feel anything."

"Neither can I, but this shouldn't be happenin'," Harn said with a gesture at the crimson-stained growth. He'd managed to free the rest of the prisoners in rapid succession. "Somethin' is wrong with the containment shell."

"The Domain?" Rafny asked, her face growing pale. "What's happening?"

"It's weakening," Felix explained. "Something's been done to it. We think the redcloaks are trying to break it open."

"But that would mean a monster horde, in the middle of a city," Rafny gasped. "Why?"

Evie shrugged. "No clue why. We just gotta stop it."

"We have to go in," Felix said, looking at the entrance. He turned back to the others, conviction in his gaze. "We can't waste any more time."

"That's mad," Evie whispered. "You heard Callie! We go in alone, we'll die."

Felix looked between them all. Harn grunted in thought while Evie balked. Vess had paled, but clenched her jaw and nodded. The weaponsmith put up her hands and backed away.

"That sounds crazy, kid," Rafny said. "The Domain is tough, meant for people with far more—-"

"Wait!" Harn hissed, his helmet cocked to the side. "You hear that?"

Everyone silenced, straining. Distantly, Felix could hear a soft but steady thumping coming from the southern tunnels. It was hard to identify at first, but not for some.

"Guilders," Vess said, summoning her silver spear to hand. "I recognize that march. Standard gait for quick travel."

"They're close," Harn growled. "But I can't feel ‘em yet. Damn walls."

Rafny swallowed. "We have to run, then. If the Guild is involved with this, none of us are safe. Heva! Oveh! We have to go!"

"Can you lead them out of here?" Felix asked and the weaponsmith glanced over the crowd before nodding. "Harn, can we send them Cal's way?"

"That's a lotta mouths," Harn said, but his expression softened a bit as he looked over the faces looking about them with fear. "But yeah. Can't say as I got a better idea."

"Good. Rafny, get them to the Dust Quarter, northwest corner. Look for the third warehouse past the disused cartwrights," Felix explained to the Dwarf before turning to everyone. He raised his voice. "Everyone, you have to leave this place. Danger is coming. We'll hold them off, but you must follow Rafny here to safety."

"I just wanna go home..."

"Is it more redcloaks!?"

"We can fight!"

"No, you can't!" Felix tried to protest over the clamor. The way things were going, the Guilders were gonna hear them. "I don't know how many are coming, but they're all Tempered. You can't—"

"—Kick their asses!"

"...Avet's teeth, I'll show them—!"

"They're fools," Evie whispered. "What could they possibly do?"

"Might overwhelm ‘em," Harn suggested with a shrug. "For a moment, at least."

The sounds in the nearby tunnels redoubled, growing louder far faster. It suddenly seemed like forces were coming toward them from two separate directions, now.

"That's not just Guilders," Evie said, her eyes wide. Harn sniffed at the air.

"Redcloaks. More of 'em," he said with alarm. "We gotta move, now."

The crowd still bickered though, ready for a fight that they couldn't win. Felix felt his skin flush in anger and frustration. They couldn't plan another ambush, not like this, and almost all of the Haarwatchers were liabilities. He met Rafny's eyes, and her shoulders slumped in defeat. Felix couldn't stand it, and rage boiled in his gut.

"EVERYONE! GET! OUT!"

Lightning sparked to life around him, blasting upward into the ceiling as if he'd become a pillar of electricity. He rose up from the ground slowly, lifted by a shimmering pulse of kinetic energy wrapped around his legs. Pain burned at his Mind and Body, his broken Lightning Resistance activating beneath the torrent of bolts. Felix hadn't even realized he'd utilized Reign of Vellus, having only felt a bottomless rage that threatened to burst him apart at the seams.

"Run! Death is coming! Follow the Dwarf, or else die." Felix could feel his eyes burn a bright, brilliant blue, and he didn't care. If that's what it took to get through to these people. "Go!"

There was a beat of silence as everyone's eyes were on Felix, and the stuttering arcs of vivid blue lightning that shot off his body.

Then they ran.

Luckily, it was to the west, toward the Dust Quarter. Felix released Reign of Vellus and dropped painfully to the ground, nearly collapsing were it not for Vess. She caught his elbow and hauled him to his feet, and he found himself face-to-face with the heiress.

"That was..." Vess cleared her throat and smiled. "...well done."

The pain faded a bit as he looked at her smile. She has dimples, he thought. How have I never noticed that?

"Noctis wept, Felix," Evie said, slapping him on the back. He grunted in pain and disengaged from Vess' grip. "Went all Blue-Eyed Fiend, huh?"

Felix grimaced. He really didn't like that name.

"You certainly looked the part," Vess added without surprise at Evie's reveal. He hadn't mentioned that bit of infamy to the heiress, but figured Evie would have blabbed the first chance she got. "Now, we must move."

The sounds were growing stronger as two forces converged on their position. Why, Felix had no clue. Perhaps one was backup, or maybe the Guild were coming to check on their experiments. All he knew was the insistent pulse of the Domain was growing stronger, and it sickened him.

"We're in a bad way, tactically," Harn said. "Tunnel's got the high ground. Whoever comes through can rain down Mana Skills or even arrows, and we don't got a chance."

"We can't lead them to the survivors," Evie said. "So that way's out."

"We gotta go in," Felix repeated, and started up the slope toward the Domain. "We have to stop this before it gets worse. We don't have time to wait on Cal and reinforcements. Harn, can you enter the Domain?"

"Should be able to," he said slowly. "You sure about this, kid? We go in, there likely ain't no comin' back out unless we stop this thing."

Felix looked at the others and nodded. "The way this thing is pulsing, it feels like it's gonna burst in hours, not days. I might be wrong. Hell, I don't know what I'm doing half the time. But my gut says we go now, or we miss our shot."

"We don't know what's going on in there," Evie protested. "We could die, just as easy as those poor prisoners."

"Maybe," Felix said. "But we have to try. Right?"

"Do we, though?" Evie replied, but her voice was nearly overwhelmed by the tromp of boots and the flair of a familiar sensation of power.

"That is the same as Zara," Vess gasped.

"Master Tier," Harn snarled. "We won't stand a chance."

"Welp, after you then," Evie gestured to the portal with an unsteady grin. "Seems like I changed my mind."

Felix swallowed and stepped up to the reddish film that filled the crevasse. He pressed his hand forward and felt it give, like big jello jiggler.

"Here goes nothing," he said.

Felix dove in, the others close behind.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

"Movement ahead, captain!"

"Vanguard, secure the room!" shouted the Bronze Rank Captain Elwick. He turned to the rest of his squad of ten and growled. "Everyone else, double-time!"

Atar V'as grunted as he forced himself to move faster. The eight others around him did the same, though perhaps with less anguish, considering most of them were Journeyman Tempered. They had all been running for miles, and while Atar wished he could groan and protest, his constant training had taught him the futility of pushing back on these matters. Guild leadership expected obedience in their recruits, and if Atar wished to progress any further with his goals, he had to at least pretend to listen.

At least now they were doing something.

It had been hard to sit idly by, watching the Inquisition tear up the city. Atar was a foreigner in Haarwatch, to the Hierocracy itself in fact; yet after only a few short months, he found that he utterly despised the nation's faith in the Pathless. The belief in gods was opposed to how he was raised in Te'thys, and that the Hierocracy even had an organization such as the Inquisition was profoundly disturbing to the young fire mage.

Yet, sit idle he had. Despite his desires, the Elders had specifically told the rank and file to stand down, to wait within the Eyrie for further orders. Those at the Wall were likewise restricted, though for a better reason. Early this morning, a wave of monsters had surged from the Foglands once more. It was relatively low in number, perhaps only three dozen, but they were all significant threats, high-end Tier I monsters that took the Tin Ranks on the Wall considerable time to whittle down.

But he and the rest of the Guild had little else to do. While they had been told to sit on their hands, the whys of that decision still haunted Atar because he saw no benefit in it. If they had confronted the Inquisition, the Guild could have leveraged their Charter over the city and stayed the zealots' hands. But, for all Atar's hopes, nothing came of that line of thinking; instead he had watched, powerless, as hundreds of citizens were carted away to some Inviolate Order bunker.

Then the order had come; the squad he belonged to were to be escorted into the Domain, where they would secure something Elder Teine needed. Further details were held back from them until they were within the Domain itself, but Atar was beside himself with joy. Aside from the training potential within the Domain's confines, it would allow him to prove the location of the Butcher. Once the Butcher was found, Teine was sure to give Atar priority on resources and access to the scriptorium held within the Spire. He had even tried to see if he could invite others to aid them. More help meant a faster turn around, right? Teine had refused to consider it, however.

"You, I can trust, Atar. You and my other apprentices. An outsider, no matter how skilled, is not worth the risk," Elder Teine had said with a small smile, his disdain for non-Guilders evident. The risk, whatever it was, had not been explained.

Sorry, Felix, I tried. Atar felt a bit guilty about that, but then Felix hadn't really held up his end of the bargain yet, either. The frustrating man had been hard to find for days now and had provided no instruction on those strange, vile sigils. I'll just have to figure this out on my own. Like always.

"What is taking so long?" Lilian hissed from beside him, strain clear in her voice, and Atar raised an eyebrow at her. "What? We've been traversing this gods-cursed sludge chute for hours! I'm sweating through my gambeson!"

"It's barely been a glass, dear cousin," Alister smoothly interjected. He fell back to run alongside them both, the exertion clearly not a problem for the noble scion. He gave her a piercing look. "You should really invest in Endurance, Lilian. Or at least learn to suffer in silence, like Atar here."

A dim-witted guffaw came from behind them. Atar rolled his eyes as Dabney plodded forward. "Spells don't help much now, do they, Atar?"

"If I were to waste my Mana on it, yes, I could easily best you all to our destination. Since I'm neither a fool nor an impatient idiot, I'll remain quiet and prepare myself instead." Atar focused his eyes forward and kept running. "I suggest you all do the same."

Dabney growled his irritation, but a sharp bark of laughter from Alister quashed it. For his part, Atar tried to ignore them all.

He liked Alister, quite a bit, were he to be honest, but his cousin and friend were grating at the best of times. Alister was kind and he… he was at least proficient with his rapier and a bevy of Mana Skills complimenting his offensive style. Dabney was a goon, strong but thoughtless; he likely had chosen the greatsword due to style over any proper ability. Atar knew he had Tempered with Great Weapon Mastery, but his lack of Agility was remarkable. Dabney was focused on defensive Mana Skills, in contrast to Alister, utilizing earth Mana mostly. It was clear that the boy had attained Elder Teine's tutelage with gold rather than talent.

Lilian, however, was specialized in Augmentation, a rare form of Mana that was highly coveted but rarely manifested without an excessive amount of luck or coin. Yet, instead of using that status to push her to greater heights as Atar would have, she coasted. That lack of drive soured Atar's feelings toward her. Given the option, she'd rather sleep than train. Of all of them, Atar understood her the least.

Within minutes, Atar's flagging Body cried out in relief as their destination appeared around a bend. Closer they came, and Atar noticed a hole in the wall that looked as if it had been melted. Like someone had shifted the stone to form a crude passage connecting a tunnel higher up. It was a strange detail, but no stranger than any other of these poorly planned underground tubes. The mage hated it down there, the wet and cold a pervasive antithesis to his Skill set.

Thankfully, they emerged swiftly out into a wide-open chamber, an intersection of many sewer tunnels of all sizes. A wave of indrawn breath moved through the squad as they entered, and it took Atar only a moment to see why.

Dim magelights flickered above, highlighting a field of corpses. Mingled with the crimson light of the Domain entrance and some strange flora, the chamber resembled an abattoir rather than a sewer. Bodies in mangled armor were strewn about in all directions, often in pieces. White enamel was smeared with dark, clotting red, and at his feet Atar spied the rounded remnants of a skull. It was buried in the fetid muck, and as he drew away, the suction of his boot tilted the face upward.

They had died screaming.

Highest Flame, what happened here? Atar pushed down his gorge, fighting to keep his composure as fear surged up through his belly. Last thing he wanted was to embarrass himself before Elder Teine.

Indeed, the Elder was already here, somehow beating the squad despite leaving after them. He was, in fact, already arguing with someone else in the intersection. Atar blinked as he realized that a contingent of the Inviolate Order had poured out of another tunnel at almost the same time they had.

"—Were headed to reinforce the guards over this unreported entrance into the Haarwatch Domain," the Initiate was saying, his body language stiff and unwilling as the Elder loomed nearby. "We had received word that our people were under assault by an unknown force—"

A slender hand was held up, cutting the Initiate off as if he were an errant schoolboy. Elder Teine was not a large man, but his Master Tier aura was a force of nature, and Atar could sense the man leverage it against the zealot. Much as the mage disliked the redcloaks, though, he had to hand it to the Initiate. Had that aura been directed at Atar, he wasn't sure if he'd even remain standing.

"Reinforcement for guards?" Elder Teine asked sharply, gesturing to a pile of discarded metal nearly sunk into the muck. "Explain, then, why manacles and chains are here. Such things are typically for prisoners, no?"

The Initiate paled but refused to break eye contact. "I—you will have to take that up with the Master Inquisitor, sir."

"And indeed I will. For now, you're neither wanted nor needed here. Begone," Teine snorted and stepped away, back toward Atar's squad. "Zealous clods."

The Initiate seethed at the Elder's words before slinking back to his Acolytes. The group gathered around him and fell into a quiet but intense discussion. After a few moments, they retreated back down their tunnel, leaving the Guilders alone.

The Elder walked the short distance toward them, and the entire squad from Captain Elwick to the dullard Dabney all straightened their stance. A strange expression lingered on the Elder's face, one that appeared equal parts concerned and gleeful beneath his silver goatee.

What does he see when he looks at us? Atar wondered, sparing a glance for Alister and the others. When he looks at me?

He had thought previously that Apprenticing beneath Sig'nyh Kel'lyv, Grandmaster of the Desert's Fire, would have engendered some goodwill for him, but Atar had found nothing but a constant struggle to prove his own worth. Elder Teine was a self-professed believer in authority by merit, and only those who demonstrated their capabilities deserved resources. Atar had hoped, nay, expected favoritism, and when it was not forthcoming, he found himself rather adrift. It was such emotions that had tied him to Alister, a scion of a noble House that had also been expecting an easier time.

"Something dark has occurred here. A force appears to have ambushed and utterly destroyed a contingent of the Inquisition." Elder Teine took a deep breath and exhaled as if savoring some sweet scent. Atar smelled only the putrid rot of sewage and the stale blood of dead men. "It is fascinating, is it not?"

"Sir?" asked Captain Elwick, rather tentatively.

"Who, exactly, went up against the redcloaks? I'm missing something here, I know it." Teine drummed his fingers against his lips. "Some look crushed, others stabbed, while more are simply severed in twain. But by whom? Eh? And this!"

Quick as a flash, the Elder of Spirit blinked through the air, reappearing upon the slope leading into a crevasse filled with a shimmering red light. He ran his hand across the crimson-tinged flowering plants and mosses that grew upon the slope, clearly spreading outward from the Domain itself. "The Domain spills outward. We've repaired the sigils twice already, and still it spreads."

"That's from the Domain?" Lilian asked Alister in a whisper. "I thought it was a desert or something?"

"Hush," Alister hissed.

"How're there plants and stuff coming out of a dusty desert?" Lilian kept asking.

Elder Teine stood up next to the crevasse and held out a hand, feeling the yielding membrane of the Domain flex beneath him. A groaning came from the crack in the wall, as if the stone were protesting his very touch. "It is my great sorrow that I cannot check on this myself. I must ask this of you, my dearest Apprentices and Journeymen. Someone killed these men and women, and those same someones passed into the Domain. Or perhaps, something."

The Elder clapped his hands delightedly. Atar narrowed his eyes at the man. He was… enjoying this, Atar realized.

"Yes yes yes! You're all agog at the possibilities, as I am!" Elder Teine walked down the slope again and fixed Captain Elwick with his steely gaze. However, a wide, somewhat manic smile marred the authoritative effect. "Captain! You must lead your squad into the Domain and find out if it was indeed monsters from within that escaped. If that is the case, you are to capture one for study. I must know what happened!"

"And if it’s not, sir?" The Captain asked and gestured around them. "What if it was truly a Human or other sentient Race that did all… this?"

"Then kill them or capture them. I'll not have unauthorized people using my—our Domain, without repercussions," Teine's smile was crooked this time, and his gaze drifted down the line. "All of you are here because your potential is great among the etheric arts. All of you were chosen by me for the power you may one day wield. But without my guidance, that power may never come to fruition. Without my influence, you will toil in obscurity for countless years, wasting your youth as you struggle to merely survive. Yet, I can make you thrive, make you soar above the others in the Guild. You must only listen to my orders to know the proper way.

"You must Oathbind. Here. Now."

Atar's breath caught in his chest, and he flicked a confused glance up and down the line. What?

"Secrets abound in the Domain, the Captain here can attest to that," Teine put a hand on Captain Elwick's shoulder, and the man nodded with pride. "He has kept the Guild's secrets well, as have all of my Journeyman Guilders. Now it is time for the Apprentices to make the same Oath. Are you ready?"

"I am, sir!" Alister had stepped forward without hesitation. Atar could sense that Dabney was about to move and did it first, moving closer to the Elder and nodding his agreement.

"I am!"

"Me too!"

"I am," the final voice said, high and nervous. Lilian's face held everything Atar's heart was practically screaming.

Elder Teine's smile turned comforting, and his eyes twinkled as he placed a hand on her shoulder. He was the very image of a kindly grandfather. "You need not be scared, Lilian. It is a light burden I place upon you, one you need not even think on after this day. You have but to agree to never write or speak about what you see or experience in the Domain, not with Guilders or any others, even among yourselves, once you have left its confines. If you betray this trust, then your Skill levels, your advancement, and your life itself is forfeit. Do you agree?"

With a jerky nod, Lilian acquiesced. The others followed suit, and cursing to himself all the while, Atar agreed as well. Mana built up around them, colorless and vibrant in the strangely lit sewer, and it rushed between the five of them. A flare of crimson light at the Elder's hip joined with the binding, as if sealing the ritual itself.

In moments, it was done. Atar could barely feel it at all.

"Wonderful," Teine smiled. "Now we can move onto the more exciting parts of this endeavor."

The Elder of Spirit beckoned all ten of them up the slope and toward the Domain entrance. Atar hustled so he could stay in the front. He didn't want to miss any of this.

"Whoever finds and traps the beasties that did this heinous act will be rewarded a set of Epic Essences for their next advancement," Teine grinned as gasps swept through his people. "If it turns out that people are behind this, then their capture is also grounds for reward. Dead or alive."

He paused a moment, as if thinking. "I'd prefer them alive. Much more fun that way."

Despite that dire proclamation, the murmurs were even more excited this time. Atar could hear several of the Journeyman Tiers whisper excitedly about winning the Essences, and he felt butterflies in his stomach. It would be difficult to outperform his Journeyman squadmates, but for a chance at Epic Essences for his Journeyman Formation? Atar was up for that challenge… as long as the other Apprentice Tiers were with him. If his exhaustive training in the Guild had taught him anything, Atar knew his limits now more than ever before. He needed Alister and the two annoyances attached to him.

Atar caught Alister's eye and nodded. The noble grinned back at him and shrugged, before nudging him with a sharp elbow. "Not quite a night at the tavern, but still exciting, no?"

"In a mortality affirming sort of way, yes," Atar said, and fixed a curl that had fallen in his eyes. He nodded at the others. "Your… associates going to be helpful, this time?"

"In their own way," Alister said, grinning again. "Don't worry. I have your back. Who else will go to dinner with me?"

Atar narrowed his eyes and ignored the flush in his cheeks. Elder Teine had started speaking again.

"Ah I can see that you're all eager to begin! Excellent! I shall—" Teine stopped short as a panicked voice caught his attention.

"Sir! Elder Spirit, sir!"

Everyone looked over at the tunnel they had only just recently traversed. A woman wearing a Tin medallion and sweat-soaked leathers stumbled to a stop at the base of the slope. She gulped great breaths of air and was sweating so much it looked like she'd gone swimming.

"Well?" Teine snapped. "What is it? Can you not see I'm busy?"

"I'm… sorry… sir. The Master… Inquisitor has… destroyed several… blocks of the Sunrise Quarter," she gasped. "Personally, sir!"

"Pathless forfend," Captain Elwick gasped.

Atar's eyes widened, but it was nothing compared to the reaction of Elder Teine. The silvered Guilder had frozen and stared up at an angle, as if he could see directly through the stone itself. And perhaps he could, mused Atar. Whatever he did, the Elder's face grew pale and his breathing erratic. Quickly, he spun and regarded the Domain behind them, reaching out and sliding his fingertips across the invisible membrane that prevented his access.

"Sir?" Captain Elwick ventured. "What is going on up there? Sir?"

"You must all go, now," he said, his voice flat. "Enter the Domain."

For a moment, no one moved at all. Atar traded glances with Alister and even a few of the Journeymen. Then the Elder turned toward them abruptly.

"Did you not hear me? Go!" He roared, and Lilian was almost bowled over by the sheer volume of his shout. "Now! Captain Elwick, accomplish your goal. The glass has turned; we haven't much time."

Licking his lips and swallowing at that, the Captain nodded and ordered them forward. "You heard the man! Let's go!"

One by one, they pushed into the Domain, the not-quite-liquid surface of the entrance parting around them with no resistance. Atar hung back, for all that he was in the front before, unable to take his eyes off Elder Teine. The man was staring up again, but this time he was fiddling with some sort of device at his waist. A strange vapor poured from the small construct, colored a deep, rotten red that reminded him viscerally of… of the Domain itself.

"Atar, get a move on," Captain Elwick said, and Atar jumped in surprise. Fixing his hair, he cleared his throat and nodded at his captain.

"Of course, Captain. Right away."

Both of them entered at the same time.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

You Have Entered Into The Domain Of Another.

Beware—!

It App—ERROR!

Entrant(s) Exceed Domain Strictures!

Full Manifestation May Damage Shell Integrity.

Ejecting...

A shrill, piercing note filled Felix's ears but was immediately countered by a mellow, more melodic cry. There was a flash of sudden warmth, a rush of heat that punched into his core, and Felix's world became darkness.

ERROR!

It was a familiar sensation, one he'd banished from his thoughts countless times since escaping his last Domain. Previously, he'd battled against a raging ocean filled with horrible monstrous forms, then again in the Void, when he'd faced a dark serpent in the clouds. The visions of those experiences still haunted his dreams on occasion.

Yet this time, it was all different.

Felix found himself in a place of utter, complete darkness, yet when he raised his hands, he could perceive his skin and clothes as if they were fully illuminated by some unseen source. He stood upon nothing, yet the ground felt firm, if a little yielding. He knew this place well.

The Void… I'm in the Void again? Felix peered around him, trying to keep himself calm. The last thing Felix desired was to be stranded in that pirate-infested nothingness. He spun around, looking for some way out. What he found instead was a series of strange, circular lines, nine of them, each one hovering just behind his back and shoulders. Felix leaped away, instinctively using his Willpower to move once again, but the lines remained stationary. Peering closer, Felix realized they were a series of odd sigils, built up into circular symbols like halos of written magic.

Mana constructs. Just like the Maw had used on me in my Bastion. Except these were dim, whatever Mana had animated them had burnt out, leaving only a gossamer corpse of several failed constructs. As he watched, they began to break apart and fade into the Void. They tried to latch on and they… failed?

That hadn't happened before. Whatever these constructs had tried to accomplish was thwarted by… what? Felix felt a certain heaviness in his core, and a quick internal glance showed him a modest amount of essence hovering above his burning center. He had eaten the construct's power, apparently without even knowing it.

Now that's pretty cool, he admitted to himself.

Looking beyond the immediate, Felix spotted his friends a short distance away.

ERROR!

Ejection Failed!

Countermeasures Deployed.

The words appeared before his mind's eye along with that same piercing note. It hurt like an ice pick cracking into his molars. But Felix understood their meaning as he got a better look at his friends.

Evie was a sight, her body moving as if in slow motion. As Felix watched, her eyes slowly started opening, and her body was still braced as it had when she'd stepped into the Domain entrance. Another three Mana constructs hovered at her back, these fully functional and filled with power, power that she was clearly fighting against.

To her left, Vess was in a different situation altogether. Seven different Mana constructs had attached to her, each one flaring with enough power to almost halt the spearwoman's stride mid-step. Her eyes were wide open, and Felix could read a terrified sort of wildness to them, even as he was sure she didn't see him at all.

Harn—

My god, Felix whispered.

Harn was covered in dense sigaldry, the coils of power looped heavily around his shoulders and arms. What looked like two, maybe three dozen constructs hauled him back, his body frozen entirely. Inch-by-inch, he slid backward.

Felix listened closely for the piercing note again, this time leveraging his Affinity as it stabbed into him. The Harmonic Stat had helped him intuit the feelings of others well enough, and he had a hunch it'd be useful here.

Sure enough, as the note resolved itself, faint, general impressions flitted through his Mind and Spirit. Felix suddenly envisioned the shell as constructed by generations of Guilder inscriptionists, the layers of complexity and verbose fluidity between each interconnecting piece of the whole. It was a masterwork far beyond his measly Skill level, and it would have been nothing more than vanity to say he understood more than a fraction of a fraction of its workings. Yet impressions remained, synaptic leaps that his Mind and Spirit made without conscious thought or reason.

It's a liminal space, Felix remembered. The Maw had explained them before as a type of sheath around Domains and other places. It wasn't the Void, but it was drawing from the Cognitive Realm to empower it. The shell held in the Domain, without it the energies and monsters within would spill out into the Corporeal Realm.

The level of complexity and power was a delicate balance, and introducing too much power into the shell by, say, an Adept Tier adventurer passing through would cause damage to the mechanism. The constructs, then, were automated responses, meant to boot someone too powerful from the Domain. But it hadn't worked on him because of his own special circumstances, and the others...

It's definitely trying to throw Harn and Vess out, Felix gasped. Back into a sewer full of Inquisitors and a Master Tier enemy. Shit!

Felix didn't really have a choice, not as far as his conscience was concerned. He couldn't let it happen. Felix just hoped that it wouldn't destroy the shell in the process. Rushing toward Evie, he grabbed at the construct behind her… and his hands passed right through them.

Ravenous Tithe!

Yet the Mana construct did not dissolve into streamers of bright mist. Then an idea came to him; he imbued himself with the Void itself.

Abyssal Skein!

Felix's form turned dark, drawing the essence of the Void as he reached out and put his hands on the constructs once again. This time, his hands made contact. Hauling with his Willpower and Alacrity, Felix shredded the construct in no time. Evie stumbled forward, released from whatever stasis it had held her in.

"What the—?" she started, but Felix flew toward Vess.

"No time!"

This time, he didn't bother with Ravenous Tithe, merely held onto his Abyssal Skein and tore headlong through the energy behind the spearwoman. Felix's body blasted through the majority of it, the collected Mana bursting in a fireworks display of rainbow energies. It was enough that the woman began to spin herself, a draconic maw forming around a slow-moving fist as she started to shatter the remaining constructs.

Felix grinned at the sight and immediately launched himself at Harn. Vess was gonna be fine.

As he reached Harn, the man had been lifted almost entirely off his feet, his body nearly horizontal. The constructs were yanking the warrior into the air, clearly to expel his body out of the entrance as rapidly as possible. Felix gripped the nearest construct and felt the scalding heat of power that thrummed across its matrices. His Skein seemed to prevent it from harming him, yet his Willpower couldn't budge the thing and neither could his Strength. They were thick as cables, taut with tension, and filled with a sizzling Mana. Desperate, Felix gripped them tight and tried again.

Ravenous Tithe!

There was a moment of resistance, then the construct burst into a cascade of blinding Mana. It forced its way into him, slamming into Felix's gut like a rocket. Fireworks went off in his vision. The Void shuddered violently before everything was consumed in light.

* * *

Warning!

Entrant(s) Exceed Shell Parameters.

Manifestation Actualized.

Shell Integrity Damaged.

Extant Damage - 50%

Shell Integrity Reduced from 50% to 35%!

Shell Integrity...Stabilized.

The light became darkness, became light again, except this time it was far more red.

Felix blinked awake and sat up with a panicked lurch, sweeping his Perception all around himself. There was blessedly little, however. Moss and soil gave beneath his fingers, and a gentle wind played through his hair. They were in a dense forest filled with gargantuan trees and thick swaths of moss and fern-like undergrowth reaching higher than his head.

They had made it.

You Have //// Survived.

The Challenge [[][] Incomplete.

Be Wary, Young ???

Harn! Felix gasped, and jumped to his feet. Thankfully, his friends were only a few feet away, similarly knocked on their butts. Felix moved closer, still keeping a wary eye out on the wilderness.

"Is everyone okay?" he asked.

"Just chipper," Evie growled, holding her head. Vess just groaned in response. Harn grunted, and perhaps it was deeper and longer than usual, but he still wore his full helmet. Reading him was a challenge. He seemed fine, at least.

"Feels like I fell outtuva tree and fought every branch on the way down. What happened?" Evie stood on shaky legs, gripping a nearby tree to aid herself.

"I remember… darkness? Then a light..." Vess trailed off and shook her head before coming to her feet smoothly. "That is strange. Whenever I have entered a Domain in the past, it was always an effortless transition between outside and inside. Like walking through a door. This… this felt off."

Felix looked between them. "Do none of you remember crossing through?"

They all shook their heads, and Harn's voice echoed slightly as he spoke. "Like Vess said. We were out there, then in here, and we took a tumble between that."

Felix frowned. "We were in the Void, sorta. The Domain's shell was trying to reject all of us, expel us from itself."

"The Void?" Evie asked, confused. "How's that?"

"Domains're like pockets," Harn offered with a grumble as he stood. "Void keeps em separate from the world. No clue how it works, but you shouldn't have been able ta see that, kid."

Felix shrugged. "I’ve seen them before, from inside the Void. Might be my new movement Skill or even my Voidwalker Title."

"Maybe," Harn allowed. "Twin's teeth, though. I shouldn't have been rejected. I ain't so close to Adept as to get pushed out. And you lot, none of you should've… exceptin' Felix maybe."

"Yeah, Felix is weird," agreed Evie and Vess nodded.

"Hey!" Felix protested, but it was halfhearted. They weren't wrong.

"We need to form up and get a move on. Who knows how long we have before..." Harn paused as a rustling shook the nearby undergrowth. "Damn."

Three monsters prowled out of the nearby ferns. Felix found himself face to face with a large, four-legged beast easily the size of a cow. Its body was covered in rust-red scales and tufts of black fur at the shoulders and knees. Its face, however, was a blunt oblong without eyes or nose, filled entirely with a large gaping mouth. Yellowed fangs dripped a thick saliva onto the mossy earth as the beasts began to circle, two to the left, one to the right.

Voracious Eye.

Name: Spawn of Hunger

Type: Primordial-Spawn

Level: 36

HP: 645/645

SP: 578/583

MP: 200/200

Lore: Tainted by the Maw's corrupting influence, these creatures possess some of that Primordial's traits, including a prodigious hunger.

Strength: More Data Required

Weakness: More Data Required

"Kill ‘em fast," Harn shouted. "We got more incoming!"

Like it was a cue, the spawn rushed forward, each of them blurring as the mossy earth exploded beneath them. All three of them headed directly for Felix.

Reign of Vellus!

Familiar blue lightning blasted upward from the ground, hitting all three spawn directly in the chests and threw them backward. Their scales were scorched black in places, but their Health had barely dropped at all.

"They're focused on me!" Felix shouted. "I'll draw them in, everyone focus fire on this one."

Influence of the Wisp!

Primordial-Spawn Has Been Enthralled For 2 Seconds!

Blue wispfire erupted along Felix's limbs as the targeted spawn froze in place and lit up like a bonfire. A heavy spiked chain whipped forward, lashing against the paralyzed creature and tearing its rusty scales from its shoulder and ribs like a scourge. Simultaneously, two silver spears shot out, stabbing down and through the beast’s back. Its Health dropped like a lead balloon under the assault, but Felix couldn't enjoy it.

He had his own problems.

Unfettered Volition!

Spinning above the charge of one spawn, Felix landed atop the second as it snapped at him. The creatures were large with pot bellies, but their scales left their bodies smooth, hard, and difficult to grip. Still, the Nym held fast to a protruding bone spur along its frill, steadying himself enough to cast.

Wrack and Ruin!

A dark orb manifested in his palm, and he slammed it directly into the spawn's spine. The creature's scales sizzled and popped as the powerful acid corroded them, and he had to grip harder onto its back as it tried to buck him off. The spawn's hide was tough, though, and he hadn't punched through it yet when Felix noticed the second one come back around. Its mouth was open wide, a mess of jagged, mismatched fangs that would rip off an entire limb if he let it.

Now!

There was a flash of white light, and a winged shape burst into the air. The spawn didn't slow and, being blind, it didn't even startle, but that was its first mistake. A rain of icy spears pummeled the earth, many of them smashing into the spawn's tough hide. Few did more than shatter, but they did cause the charging creature to rear back and reorient, only to be subjected to a barrage of wingblades as Pit landed.

"CREEEAAAAAWW!!" Pit cried out, and the spawn froze in place.

Pit's Cry Has Frightened A Primordial-Spawn For 3 Seconds!

Grinning to himself, Felix redoubled his Mana, pouring more of it into Wrack and Ruin as he pushed the orb deeper into his foe's back. With a sudden release of tension, his arm burst through its hide, and the orb of condensed acid shot off. Like a bouncy ball in a tiny room, the corrosive spell ricocheted through the Spawn, its own hide keeping the wrecking ball inside as it ate through the beast's innards. Seconds later, Felix rode the beast as it fell to the ground, dead.

You Have Killed A Primordial-Spawn!

XP Earned!

It took only seconds more for the rest of his team to finish off the other two, and all of them were breathing only slightly quicker. Felix checked his notifications upon a swell of light and music as Pit jumped up in levels.

Abyssal Skein is level 23!

Ravenous Tithe is level 22!

Wrack and Ruin is level 31!

Influence of the Wisp is level 30!

Pit's Wingblade is level 26!

Pit's Cry is level 26!

Your Companion, Pit, Has Gained 3 Levels!

He Is Now Level 23!

+6 PER! +6 VIT! +3 END! +6 INT! +9 WIL! +12 AGL! +12 DEX!

"That wasn't so bad," Evie said, reeling her chain back in with a yank. "Dunno why everyone's worried about the danger here."

"They were easier than expected," Vess agreed, reaching down to scratch Pit by his tufted ears. "Thank you for the help, Pit."

Pit let out a warbling coo, happy with the scratches.

"SKEAARRRRRTTCHH—-!"

A loud shout and crash sounded, and something easily twice the size of the spawn fell into the clearing, shaking the earth beneath them. Parts of it were severed and leaking vile ichor, while its huge, featureless face was dominated by a six-foot-wide mouth filled with curled fangs. A single huff of hot, fetid breath, and it expired.

A blood-covered Harn stepped out of the trees, his two axes still shimmering with an aura of silver flame. He stopped to look at them all, and Felix wasn't alone in his gawking.

"Come. Ain't safe to dawdle here." Harn sheathed his axes at his waist. "We gotta move."

Trading an embarrassed look with the others, Felix followed after the warrior. His Eye identified the larger creature as a Knight of Hunger, another of the Primordial-Spawn type. Like the lesser Spawns, it was clearly influenced by the Maw's corruption, even putting aside the name and type of the beast. In fact, the longer they were here, the more the air carried a deep and upsetting scent, as if something huge and predatory had made this entire place their lair; as if it had been marked.

It tastes like the Labyrinth, near the center. Felix smacked his lips with a grimace. Like licking a battery coated in scum. As if the Maw's usual discord had been turned into a scent.

Felix felt his Bastion stir, the ground beneath his fortress trembling by the smallest of measures. It was almost nothing, in fact, but it still made him worry.

The five of them moved forward as quietly as possible, and Felix tried to take in everything he was seeing. The moss was similar to the kind outside the entrance, a deep red and filled with an acrid scent. The ferns and other plant life were similarly affected by the Maw's pervasive corruption, though the gargantuan trees seemed largely immune. Aside from being a dark, dark red.

They followed a clear path through the undergrowth, where several somethings had fought a battle against more of the local beasts. No corpses, of course. Even the ones they had defeated were already turning to greasy black smoke behind them. But someone else, monster or otherwise, had been through there recently.

"Hey, hold up," Evie called out and kneeled down on their path. She pushed aside a few leaves and pulled something dull and metallic from the earth. "These look familiar..."

"Manacles," Vess said with a curse. She cast about with sad eyes and uncovered a long bone that still held a hunk of bloody meat on it. "The prisoners did not survive long after all."

"Damn it." Felix sighed. "Now that we've cleared this area, will more monsters show up to kill any other 'offerings?'"

"Shouldn't. Takes a day or two for a Domain to manifest more creatures, more if the Domain Core lacks power." Harn spat to the side through the opening in his helmet. "I figure we ain't gotta worry about that, though."

"Did you see the notification when we woke up?" Felix asked. "Shell Integrity is down to thirty-five percent after we arrived. Down from fifty percent before. Whatever is happening is going to be soon."

"Yeah, yer right, kid. My coming in here ain't done us any favors, though," Harn cursed. "Avet curse the Elders for this shitshow. What are they even doin' in here? This looks nothin' like I remember."

"Whattya mean?" Evie asked, ducking under a low-hanging frond. "Was the forest not this big?"

"There didn't used to be a forest at all," Harn growled, using his axe to cut down a red-veined plant. It shriveled up in response to his touch, and the severed stem leaked a sap that was thick and a dark orange. "This Domain was a desert terrain against some mountains. Hot, dry as can be, but definitely not a forest."

"Whoa," Felix said, peering at the bleeding stump before looking up at the large, redwood style trees around them. "If it's that different, what else has changed?"

"A good question," Harn grunted.

They kept moving. The swath of destruction only increased the further they went, though visibility was limited with the huge trees and high undergrowth. It was almost like they'd been shrunk down and normal nature had been elevated far above them. A second wave of monsters hit them after about fifteen minutes, nearly identical to the first group except greater in numbers. Harn fended off a hulking Knight while the others took on five Spawn. The fight lasted longer, and they got a little bruised, but with Harn keeping the level 45 Knight at bay, the battle was just a matter of time.

A third wave happened another twenty minutes after that, and it was the same story, though they were feeling winded by the end of that fight. Just as both times before, the enemies all headed directly for Felix, which was a mystery to the others. He thought he knew why, but he wasn't willing to offer an explanation. Not yet.

Unarmed Mastery is level 30!

Corrosive Strike is level 31!

Unfettered Volition is level 20!

Cloudstep is level 12!

Stone Shaping is level 29!

Mantle of the Long Night is level 27!

Felix and Pit both were able to push many of their Skills higher, finally able to fight in both dire circumstances and against stronger foes. The energy he'd imbibed from the weird liminal Void around the Domain was put to good use. The power funneled easily into his core, supercharging his Skills' advancement even as the fight challenged his abilities. The others in their party reported gaining several levels during this time, and Felix was glad for that. He doubted things would get any easier.

After the third wave, they quickly found the forest opening up to a jagged promontory. Instead of water, of course, this speared out over a deep valley filled with waving, crimson grasses. And, perhaps five miles away, there was a fortress of some kind. It was built into a rising mound and surrounded by jagged stones that sheltered it from the winds.

It was also on fire.

"What is going on there?" Vess asked, peering outward. "I fear it is too far to sense details. All I can see is… it looks like a lot of monsters."

"Same here," Evie concurred. "Harn? Felix? You guys spot anything?"

Felix was squinting, trying to will his vision forward, and his high Perception acquiesced. Like a telescope, Felix could suddenly make out details at the fortress as if he were less than a hundred yards away. He could see the fortress walls, and yeah, they were on fire… but they were also coated in shards of ice, and the telltale crackle of lightning surged within its walls. Monsters were swarming around the battlements, some of them coming from outside the walls, but he couldn't—

"Holy shit," Felix breathed. "Are those Guilders?"

CHAPTER SIXTY

"They are Guilders," Harn confirmed, his hand shielding against the bright midday sun. Felix knew it wasn't a real sun, but it was just as hot and bright. "Musta been their path we've been followin'."

"That means they came in the same entrance, though," Evie said, her voice sharp and hissing. "Did the redcloaks let them in? Are they part of the plan?"

"That… doesn't make sense," Felix said with a frown. "Why involve the Guild, the only people capable of stopping the Inquisition?"

"Maybe they've been in here longer than the redcloaks were out there?" Evie suggested.

"Say that is true," Vess jumped in. "Then the Guild also came into this Domain, using a secret back entrance instead of the normal one. Why?"

"Good question," Felix said. "And I think we need to talk to Zara about what the word 'secret' means. I'm not sure she knows."

Vess smiled, and Evie rolled her eyes. Harn grunted, though Felix was willing to believe that was his version of laughing. Felix checked the wardstone at his belt, bringing up the item's description.

Name: Ward of the Willful Eye

Type: Wardstone (enchanted)

Lore: Designed to withstand harmful environmental effects such as caustic or dissonant elements for a maximum period of six hours.

Shell of Harmonious Will VII - A Song of protection that diverts dissonant environmental hazards. Has no effect on direct attacks.

Chanter’s Intent II - The Harmonic Song of a Chanter was used to enchant this item, and it bears their Intent. +20% Effectiveness of Shell.

Time Remaining: 4 Hours 52 Minutes

They'd bonded the stones shortly after entering the Domain, and the clock on them had started ticking down. But it was ticking down a bit faster than anticipated, as they had spent perhaps forty minutes moving from the entrance to their current location and had lost over an hour of duration.

"Listen, I don't trust what's happening here any more than the rest of you," Felix said, and gestured to the wardstones they all wore. "We've got less than five hours… glasses, sorry, five glasses until the protection on these wardstones fail. Maybe the Guilders are trustworthy, but likely, they're not. Either way, we need to see what's in that keep and kill whatever monsters we can't avoid. This'll get two birds with one stone."

Harn nodded. "Agreed. We'll move closer, observe."

"Take ‘em both out if we can," Evie said, a sharp look in her eye. Vess clucked her tongue and nudged her friend with her elbow. "...Or help, or whatever."

Vess' smile was thin-lipped and troubled. It was clear to Felix that she did not like the idea of harming Guilders. Felix didn't either, if he were being honest with himself, but he'd do what he had to do. Something terrible was happening in the Domain, something he could feel would have crawled into their skin if not for their wardstones.

"Wait," Vess said, crawling closer to the ledge and peering outward. "Look, by the far forest."

A dark smear moved in the distance, and at first, Felix thought it was some sort of odd river; then his eyes adjusted and he could make out the approach of nearly a hundred loping humanoids. Their flesh was mottled with rust red and pale yellow, their arms long and tipped with overlarge claws. Stranger still, each of the figures carried something on its back, and it varied from the corpses of other monsters to piles of dirt and leafy plants. The moment he saw them, a rattling dissonance drifted to him on the breeze, setting his teeth on edge.

"Are they carrying bodies?" Vess asked.

"Food for later?" Evie asked, and Harn shook his head.

"Better hope not," Harn said. "That'd mean they're smart. Gimme a beast horde over a half-dozen smart monsters."

Voracious Eye!

Name: Manawarped Revenant

Type: Primordial-Spawn

Level: 38

HP: 534/534

SP: 1003/1120

MP: 255/255

Lore: Corrupted by the Maw's vile blood, these humanoids were once Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and Hobgoblins, among others. Their form has been infected and altered, instilling them with a deep and unending hunger.

Strength: More Data Required

Weakness: More Data Required

"Shit," Felix said and shared the information with his crew, flipping his Voracious Eye screen toward all of them.

"Noctis wept," Vess gasped, holding her hands over her mouth. "The prisoners..."

"Ain't the prisoners," spat Harn. "They were just thrown in, and I've seen enough bones to know they died quick-like. This is somethin' else."

"What's the Maw?" Evie asked, and Felix very nearly bit his tongue off in surprised anger. Stupid mistake. He should have just read it aloud.

"It's… not important," Felix extemporized, though he knew that answer wasn't going to fly. To his great relief, an explosion of fire bloomed above the ruined keep. Everyone's eyes snapped forward, and the wind carried the sounds of screaming and discharging Mana Skills. Several figures scurried atop a wall, fighting off waves of Spawn and a few other varieties.

"Ain't gonna last much longer," Evie said, pointing at the line of running Revenants. "Those're headed straight for ‘em."

Another, smaller explosion hit one of the rounded towers, and silhouetted against the flames was a familiar figure. Felix squinted, able to just barely make out finer details. A man in red robes with a curled mop of blond hair flung bolts of fire out into the monster horde.

"Is that… Atar?"

* * *

Fields of Flame!

A torrent of fire burst from Atar's outspread palms, catching alight the disgusting Spawn before him. Six of them charred instantly, burned up by the powerful fire, while five more reared back in pain and fear. It was what he loved most of all about fire: it was effective.

Atar had grown immensely since the Foglands. His spells had improved by leaps and bounds, but so had his Endurance, Strength, and Vitality. He was proud to say that he was level 32 and closing in on 33. The Apprentice Formation his mentor had helped him achieve was responsible for much of his growth.

Body:Flameborn

Mind:Scriven Crown

Spirit:Vast Ignition

His Body allowed him a near immunity to mundane fire, though magical fire was another thing entirely, save for his own flames. It also allowed him to utilize Strength Ignition to greater effect, especially after the Guild had accelerated the physical training regiment begun under Magda and Harn. He was, at this point in his advancement, at least the equal to an extremely fit Human in his prime. An Untempered Human of course, but that was… fine, he supposed.

Though his Body seemed lackluster, that was to be expected; it was Tempered with a Common-ranked Essence Draught. It was his Mind and Spirit that were more impressive, and of greater concern to the magically leaning Atar. His Mind focused on his scriptwork and his authority over his own thoughts and mental processes. Since Tempering, Atar had found cognition, memory, and retention of knowledge to be far simpler. Still requiring effort, but like night and day compared to before.

His Spirit focused once more upon his chosen element: Fire. It boosted his abilities that utilized that element, of course, which most of Atar's Skills did in some way. It also aided in Mana regeneration, enough that Atar was no longer constantly besieged by Mana-depletion headaches. A handy feature, as they had been fighting non-stop since they arrived in the Domain.

After the brief blip in that… nowhere space, they had arrived in the moss-covered forest of the Domain. It had lasted less than a second, but many of them (not him, surely) had felt shaken after the experience. Like someone had walked over their grave. The fire mage had even heard Captain Elwick muttering "that shouldn't happen," which, all things considered, was not a great sentiment to overhear.

Strangely enough, the very air in the Domain felt… off to Atar. It was a high summer heat, but the sizzle against his exposed skin was more than that. He tried to verbalize it to his friends, but they seemed to brush it off, as did the captain.

They gathered themselves and marched on, fighting wave after wave of monstrosities. Spawns, Knights, and even creatures called Rooks that best resembled the idea of a bird; that is, if the idea was all bone spikes and mouths attached to paltry wings. They were easy enough to drive off or kill, at least, and their group was not lacking in area-of-effect Mana Skills.

The way was a fight, but the Journeymen handled the greater beasts and even some of the lesser creatures as well. There were six of them, after all, not one that wasn't strong in their chosen Mana Skills. This left the Spawns to the Apprentices, and the combination of defense, support, and offense between the four of them proved effective even when fighting two or three of the Spawn in tandem.

They cut a swath through the strange forest, a forest some of the Journeymen seemed worried about. Atar gathered it had not been here before, but that wasn't too strange, surely? He'd heard that Domains shift slightly over time.

Eventually, after perhaps an hour, they had spotted the keep. It was usually the first staging ground from this entry, he'd been told. Kept secure so that new arrivals could regroup and set out into the Domain for training or resource-gathering.

That had not been the case.

"Down!"

As the flames dissipated, Atar threw himself to the side. An explosion of ice rocked the battlement before him, shearing through the remaining Spawn.

"Beastie incoming!"

A series of sharp impacts clattered off the wall, some new creature having thrown large bone spikes back at them. Atar blinked through the haze of Mana vapor, the icy Skill's Mana passing into the visible spectrum, but not so much that he missed the massive, foot-long spike that had stuck in the ground between his legs.

He scrambled to his feet and backed up until he was well within the confines of his team. When they had realized the keep had been overtaken by monsters, Captain Elwick had decided they would retake it. They needed a place to fall back to, and based on the enemies they were facing, it should have been easy.

They hadn't expected the cats.

"You think he got it?" Dabney asked, his dour face covered by a set of conjured stone armor. It made his voice reverb slightly in a way that Atar found intimidating… that he'd ever admit to that.

"Julian's strong, but this thing ain't done yet," said Okar, one of the Journeymen and leader of their group. There was a coughing roar from beyond the purple-white Mana mist, and something moved. "Wall up!"

Julian and Yvette, both Journeyman as well, conjured their defensive Mana Skills. Dabney's Apprentice effort rose alongside it, stone bursting upward as sheets of ice and metal overlapped it. Just in time, as the creature bashed into it, sending cracks spreading across the stone.

Atar looked out, his Sparkbolts at the ready, and assessed the situation again. There were easily three dozen Spawns roaming the courtyard, though they were hard to make out over the almost permanent miasma of thick, greasy smoke down there. It was as if a thousand corpses were rotting away but never quite clearing entirely. Their second group had gone around the other side of the battlements the moment they'd arrived, hoping they could snipe whatever was dwelling down below from two angles. All Atar could hear of them was the occasional pop and sizzle of various Mana Skills going off. He hoped they were still alive.

The coughing yowl sounded again, and the rapid-fire retort of heavy impacts sounded from the defensive wall. Atar guessed they had about fifteen seconds before all three Skills failed. Swallowing hard, he invoked his Crown.

Crown of Ignis!

A three-pronged crown made of fire manifested above his head, while ten Sparkbolts appeared and began rotating around his head. A heady rush of inviolability thrummed through him, but his Scriven Crown Mind helped ease him from the precipice of vanity and hubris. He wouldn't lose himself to his own power… at least not for a while.

Beside him, Alister let build a crackling blue energy along the length of his rapier, and a script circle of yellow vapor spun around his free hand. "Be ready."

The crunch of gravel was their only warning before, a full five seconds early, a beast leaped down on them from above. Spikes of bone flashed down at them, shearing off sections of Dabney's armor and piercing Julian through his right shoulder. The Journeyman's screams were drowned out by the rumbling explosion as the walls failed, and another beast surged toward them.

Atar threw his arm forward, a flurry of Sparkbolts launching toward the leaping Razortail. Fiery impacts burst in midair, throwing the monster's leap off-course and into the crenelated wall on their right. A mounting charge of energy hummed, and Atar turned to see Alister lunge forward and thrust his rapier into the Razortail's path. A tight cone of kinetic force discharged, halting the beast's advance for a brief, pivotal moment.

Atar spun away, back toward his own foe. The Razortail had climbed back to its feet and shook its large, wedge-shaped head. They resembled big cats in only the most superficial of ways, bulky at the head and shoulders and slender at the back, with long, spike-filled tails. Fangs at least a handspan long glistened in the light of his Sparkbolts, the creature coughing another roar at him.

"Die, vermin!" Okar shouted, his hands thrusting straight into the ground. The battlements shook as pillars of jagged rock erupted in a violent, zigzagging pattern toward the Razortail. Atar couldn't track whether the Journeyman's attack had hurt it or not, but it did jump back to launch a volley of bone spikes.

"Fallacious Assault!"

A wave of pure purple Mana swept outward, hitting all of the spikes but seemingly doing nothing to them. Yet as Atar flinched, each and every one of them missed his team, some landing within a breath of flesh. He glanced at Lilian, who stood panting a short distance away.

"Move, cretin!" she shouted at him, and Atar jumped and launched his remaining Sparkbolts at the Razortail. At the same time, Okar manipulated the stone again, and shafts of irresistible force met it at the same time.

You Have Killed a Razortail!

XP Earned!

The yowling sounds of the other four behind him had fallen silent as well, and Atar turned to see Alister, Dabney, and Yvette crouched over a too-still form. Yvette was crying and holding the limp and bloody form of Julian. The bone spike he'd caught in the shoulder had hit him at a sharper angle than Atar had realized; he was dead.

"Burnin' monsters," Atar cursed.

Screams sounded, human screams entirely too close. Okar stood forward, the strongest among their team, and beckoned them close. Alister, Dabney, Lilian, and Atar moved in; Yvette pulled herself away after an agonizing second. Okar, tall and barrel-chested with a full beard, put a large hand on Yvette's shoulder as she moved in. The slender woman shook it off with a glare.

"Ah… alright, keep your eyes out for the leader. We end them; we can at least make our sacrifices worth it," Okar's eyes didn't quite flick toward Julian's body. "Remember, Domain rules: end the leader, end the wave."

"Rules? Does this place even have rules anymore?" Lilian asked, fear hiding behind her sharp words. "These are not the monsters we were promised. By the Captain's own admission, this is not the standard terrain of this Domain. What is going on?"

"The lady has a point," Atar agreed. "How can we be sure of anything?"

"Because I said so," Okar snapped, his beard bristling. "Now form up! We move!"

Atar grimaced, sharing the look with Alister and Lilian. Dabney had simply moved ahead, eager to please in his new vanguard position. He was one of two defensive specialists they had left, after all.

"These buffoons are as blind as we are," Lilian whispered as they fell into positions. Alister snorted.

"You want to risk it without them, dear cousin?" He arced a perfectly manicured eyebrow.

Lilian paled, which Atar didn't know was possible considering her light complexion. "N-no, I—"

"Quiet," hissed Yvette from behind. "Damn children."

Lilian's face flushed now, and Atar was right behind her, but Alister grabbed them both by the shoulders and led them forward. "Not the time, you two."

They moved on, walking the battlements of the small fortress and keeping an eye on the swirling death smoke congealing within the courtyard below. The ruins of a central tower barely peaked above the miasma, but Atar could detect no movement aside from the gentle swirl of the smoke. Soon, however, they reached a portion of the battlement that had been roughly used by weather and time. It had partially collapsed into the keep, blocking them from easily traversing the walls. The gap was nearly fifty span wide, Atar guessed. Well out of his range.

"We could jump it," Dabney suggested in his dimwitted voice.

"Not everyone here can. We turn back," Okar snarled, pushing through the Apprentice Tiers with a shove. "Circle around and meet up with the Captain again."

No sooner had those words left his mouth than the air was filled with a high-pitched howl. At first one, then four, then dozens, all of them raised in an ululating, almost-Human cry. A pressure descended with those cries, one that pushed Atar and his friends to their knees. Even the Journeymen weren't unaffected, grunting in pain as they barely kept their feet.

"Wh-what is this?" Atar gasped.

The smoke below began to fade slightly as a stream of loping humanoids entered the keep's courtyard. They were a horrifying mish-mash of random features, but all of them were of a theme. Blue-green orbs dotted their oval faces, and rust-red scales covered their hulking bodies in broad patches interspersed with sickly yellow strips of putrid flesh. Atar used Analyze.

Name: Manawarped Revenant

Type: Unknown

Level: 38

HP: ???/???

SP: ????/????

MP: ???/???

Lore: Unknown

Burning lot of good that did, Atar bemoaned. All he knew for certain was that there was no way they'd be able to overcome this many. Not without the rest of their team, and even then… Even then, Atar had no confidence that they would survive.

"What a-are they d-doing?" Alister managed, as the pressure had not let up at all. The lot of them were nearly incapacitated simply by these creature's presence.

Forget fighting, Atar thought. If this keeps up, we'll be slaughtered.

The smoke below was clearing as the Revenants moved inward, toward the broken tower at the center. They carried bodies on their backs, corpses mostly, and most of them shuffled toward that tower. There was a guttural screaming of Spawns as dozens of them were shunted out of the smoke and away.

"Pathless forfend," Okar cursed.

The battlements shook under the tread of three dozen toothy beasts, and he struggled to regain his feet. The Spawn only had one place left to go, and that was straight through them.

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

Felix raced through the tall grass of the field. It was at least twice their height, but the fortress was still occasionally visible through the stalks. He kept his Perception swept outward, as did Harn, each of them watching for any hint of monstrous foes. But there had been nothing, not a single living thing in their long run. He couldn't even hear the sound of insects or birds.

Just silence and the huffing of their breath.

Though he didn't move as fast as he could, Felix outpaced all of them. Pit, Harn, and Evie were forty yards behind. Vess lingered somewhere beyond that. Unfettered Volition let him run through the grassland like a ghost, his feet moving so fast and precisely they barely tore up the earth at all. His Willpower as translated to bodily movement was astoundingly effective. Considering he had—

Felix skidded to a halt, his body twisting through the sheaves of monstrous grasses so that only a few were trampled. He checked his Status again, not sure what he was seeing.

STR: 157

PER: 161

VIT: 228

END: 184

INT: 223

WIL: 292 (332)

AGL: 144

DEX: 141

His Harmonics showed the same parenthetical bonus.

Harmonic Stats

RES: 105

INE: 117

AFI: 78

REI: 74

ALA: 143 (160)

His Willpower and Alacrity had jumped, and as his memory caught up with him, Felix realized why.

Title: Voidwalker (+10% Void Skills, +10% WIL, ALA in Void)

Combined with my other bonuses, they're skyrocketing. He licked his lips and furrowed his brow at the little blue screens before him. But that part of the Title only works in the Void...Does a Domain count as Void space?

Harn had said the Domain was surrounded by the Void, that it was in a "pocket." So it was a piece of, what, Corporeal Realm surrounded by a pocket of Cognitive Realm? The Void must be heavily present for this Title to activate, right? And does that mean I'm using my Willpower to move, not Agility and Strength?

It was concerning news, based on what he had experienced in the Void, but he couldn't be mad at the boost.

While he was thinking, the others had caught up. Harn stopped and panned his senses around them, Evie and Pit arriving shortly after. He tilted his head when he found nothing of note.

"What's happened?" Evie asked, her breath sharp but even. "You see somethin'?"

"No, just another bit of weirdness," Felix said, and explained his Title and the boost. "The Void is not a place I'd like to revisit; it has some pretty nasty things in it."

"Normally, I'd say don't worry about it," Harn said as he pushed some grasses out of his way. "Domains're usually pretty secure. But now..."

Felix and Evie nodded. Vess landed next to them, having resorted to long, horizontal leaps to keep up with the rest of them.

"What is wrong? Why have we stopped?" she panted.

Evie explained while Felix moved ahead, pushing his Perception outward and moving quickly again through the grass. They were far closer now, almost to the keep itself, the fight audibly growing more frantic. A short distance ahead, perhaps another two hundred yards, Felix sensed the grass ended against a rocky bluff.

They had made it.

"Move quiet; we don't know what we're comin' into," Harn murmured.

"Atar's in there, though," Felix said and Harn shook his head.

"I don't care what yer Eye told ya, we can't just rush in." Harn pointed out the rocky bluff rising above them. "We can climb up, but I dunno what we'll find up there. I suggest we circle 'round, head toward the break in the keep I saw back on the cliffs."

There was another explosion followed by the sound of cracking stone. A few voices shouted out, all speaking the common language.

"On your right!"

"Walls! Cast your walls!"

Panic filled the voices, faint as they were. People were dying up there, and they were running out of time.

Felix shook his head and scratched Pit along his neck, communing with his Companion. There was a flash of light, and they converged. "You can do that, but we've only got so much time. Come with me or not, but I'm climbing up. Now."

Felix didn't wait, instead rushed to the rocks ahead and began to climb faster than he ever had before. He wasn't sure if the others followed him, though he hoped so. He put all his focus on speed, blurring up the side of the cliff and quickly transitioning to the weather-roughened blocks of stone that made up the fortress.

The noise only increased as he rose, shouts and monstrous screaming intermingling, while the crack and boom of various Mana Skills kept drowning it all out. By the time Felix had reached the top of the sagging outer wall, a desperate clash was unfolding. Spawn raged across the battlements, flooding toward a conjured wall of stone and metal without care for their wellbeing.

They were tearing it apart.

With a startling crack, the wall broke completely, releasing gouts of invisible silver and dusty brown Mana vapor into the air. Beyond, as the wall crumbled, Felix could see the familiar face of Dabney, one of Atar's "friends." The young man screamed in terror as three Spawn leaped toward him, their toothy mouths opened wide.

Reign of Vellus!

Lightning surged across the walkway, a rolling kinetic wave that swept through the assembled Spawn and hurled them out into the air. Ten of them were caught up in the blast, and a second hit sent a dozen more stumbling back into their fellows along the wall. Kill notifications sounded for nine of the ten thrown from the battlements, but Felix ignored it, focused on the battle. He jumped onto the wall and readied his fists and Mana.

"Felix!?" Atar shouted from behind. "Blood and dust, how're you here?"

Felix didn't answer, partly because he was focused on the fight, and partly because something tackled him out of nowhere.

He went rolling, tumbling over and over as whatever had hit him disengaged. Felix flared Unfettered Volition, coming to a stop at the edge of the battlement, just above the thick, roiling smoke below. It stank to high heaven and was shot through with various streamers of Mana, while an army of Revenants strode forward with corpses on their backs. His eyes took it all in, absorbing the sight in a second. The Revenants were headed toward the center of the courtyard below, where the smoke was the thickest. A broken tower.

His core clenched as his Bastion trembled, harder than ever before.

A surge of panic pushed at him to dodge out of the way. He rolled to his right, spinning straight up off the ground and onto his feet just as a series of bone spikes slammed into the stone. Another volley followed, this one aimed at his new position, but Felix was ready.

Reign of Vellus!

The wave of kinetic force caught the spikes and hurled them backward. Not with precision, but with plenty of force. The thing screamed in pain, and Felix flowed forward, seeing it for the first time.

Voracious Eye!

Name: Razortail

Type: Primordial-Spawn

Level: 40

HP: 242/681

SP: 193/484

MP: 0/0

Lore: Once a type of large cat, this creature has been defiled by the Maw's influence. Named for the razor-sharp spikes that grow on its tail, it can fling them at great speed to disable or kill their prey. Its bite is poisonous.

Strength: More Data Required

Weakness: More Data Required

The information settled into his mind as he built up another Corrosive Strike. It looked like a big cat, but its face was missing all features, save for its triangular ears and a wide-open mouth of overlapping fangs. Two of the bone spikes had sunk into its haunches, and the creature still reeled from the blow. Quick as he could, Felix slammed his fists into its ribs.

Shadow Whip!

Spreading the end of his whip, he snagged the Razortail as his punch sent it flying. Grunting, he hauled back, yanking the creature toward him like a yo-yo. Yowling with a terrible fury, the corrupted cat tried to right itself and claw at him, but Felix was done. He slammed a left hook right into its messed-up face, shattering its teeth and melting its face from the inside out.

Corrosive Strike!

You Have Killed a Razortail!

XP Earned!

Felix let his arm drop and stood up straight. With a tight, controlled breath, he turned to look at Atar. The man was gaping at Felix, as were the others next to him.

"You good?" Felix asked.

"Behind you!" Atar shouted.

Felix turned in time to see another Razortail leap out of the drifting smoke, but a silver spear punched through its throat. It landed at his feet, barely, gurgling wetly. A second spear took it through the heart, and it dropped.

"Damn, Vess," Felix whistled. "What level is that attack?"

"Forty." She grinned, clearing the distance from the ledge to Felix in a single, effortless bound. "We good here?"

Felix saw her eyes flick toward the Guilders, who were collecting themselves. He shook his head slightly and shrugged one shoulder. Vess nodded, and they both turned toward the Guilders.

Let's keep you a secret for now, Pit.

The tenku cooed in reluctant agreement within him, frustrated but willing to wait. Pit wanted to fight. Felix had a feeling the Chimera would have all the chances he wanted soon enough.

There were another series of roars behind them, but a chain swept out, impacting several with meaty thuds. More were tossed off the battlements, and Felix could sense the Spawn hesitating.

"Nasty infestation up here, huh?" Evie said, hopping off the wall. Harn followed shortly after.

"That was dumb, kid," Harn grunted as he took in the scene and the Guilders. His voice dropped low. "This won't turn out how ya want, I reckon."

"Hey! Who are you?!" A big man with a braided beard and a short metal rod at his side stepped out of the ruined barricade and approached them. He was flanked by a slender but tall woman, nearly six and half feet, with long, intricate braids in her dark hair. Her face had been painted in blues and blacks, some sort of ritualistic war paint, Felix figured. Or maybe that was just her skin, he couldn't be sure.

"We're the ones who saved your ass," Evie quipped and held out her hands. "No thanks necessary."

"Why are you in the Domain? It's closed for civilians." The man, Okar Litell to Felix's Eye, looked at his companion. Yvette Stred. Both Journeyman Tiered, both pushing level 45.

"They're with me," Harn said, stepping forward.

They balked, and Yvette's eyes widened at the sight of him. "Onslaught," Felix heard her mutter.

"You seem to be in trouble," Felix said, looking past them at Atar and the other Apprentice Tiers with him. The mage's friends from the bookstore were all there. "We came to help. No need for hostility."

For a moment, all they could hear was the roaring cries of more Spawn and the shuffling grunting of the Revenants below. Felix could sense Evie's hand on her chain, Vess' fingers ready to conjure a spear, and Harn's hands utterly relaxed at his side.

"Good," Okar said, giving them a relieved smile. "We're in need of some good news. Iron Ranks, get over here!"

Felix let his breath loose, slowly. That almost went bad. He noticed Harn's stance hadn't changed, though.

Atar and the others approached, and all of them bore signs of heavy fighting and minor wounds. Meanwhile, Harn started talking, trying to get the lay of the land. The Guilders told them about the rest of the team, that they split up but had already lost two Bronze Ranks to the beasts. Their Captain was nearly Silver and had taken the other team along the opposite side of the fortress. They had no clue whether he was alive, and Felix couldn't hear the sound of fighting over the monsters. The smoke obscured their vision of the other battlements however, so he couldn't be sure.

"We were sent to stop whatever this is," Okar said, pointing into the smoke. "Can you help?"

Harn tilted his head. "I can't sense anythin' other than these Revenant things."

Hearing was almost out of the questions; the air was filled with growls, roars, and screams. Some sounded like men, but it was impossible to tell. More Revenants moved corpses and other things, random items it seemed, into the smoke's dense epicenter: the base of the ruined central tower. Thankfully, the smoke had already begun to recede, and now it cleared further. The Revenants were picking up the Spawn corpses they'd dropped down, lifting their bodies even as they began to rot away into more of the black smog. As they grabbed them, they stopped rotting altogether. The Revenants carried them toward the center.

Flashes of ice Mana flared through the thinning smoke below, on the far side of the wide courtyard.

"There!" Lilian cried out, pointing.

"Must be the captain," Okar said, his voice gaining an edge. "But I don't see sign of the others—"

A massive, ear-piercingly-loud roar exploded across the ruins. The Guilders and Felix's allies were all knocked back, the shockwave of it hitting them like an invisible mattress of air. Felix stumbled back too, his ears ringing and skin crawling. The roar in the ruins rattled with a note of familiar discord, shearing through the air like a knife. From his core, from his Bastion, a similar cry responded faintly. Like an echo.

What is that thing? Felix wondered, eyes wide. Then the smoke cleared, and more of the courtyard was revealed.

"Captain!" Okar hissed, and Yvette had to hold him back from leaping down three stories. Below, the Revenants had more than the corpses of monsters and uprooted vegetation; they carried two limp bodies, and the struggling form of a third Human. Felix's Eye caught their names and advancement, all of them Journeyman, two of them completely dead. Captain Elwick fought against his captors, releasing knife-edged waves of purple-white ice Mana to assault them, taking down one or two with each strike. But the Revenants didn't flinch back and didn't stop. The man was swarmed as they watched.

"We have to get down there!" Okar said to them, panic clear in his voice. He started down the walkway, headed back toward the keep entrance and stairs. "C'mon!"

"There's nearly a hundred Revenants down there," Harn pointed out and swept his hand to the side. "Not ta mention the Spawns that are still waitin' at the base of the battlements. We drove them off, but they aren't gone. We rush down there, no plan, we won't get halfway through the courtyard before we're dead."

The Apprentice Tiers didn't move at all, their faces drawn. Yvette, who had started following Okar, slowed to a stop and gave Harn a considering, fearful look. She glanced back at Okar, who looked at all of them with a darkening expression. Atar looked at Vess and Evie, before shifting his attention back to the captain below. The man's screaming could be heard clearly at this point.

It sounded like he was being torn apart.

"He's dying!" Okar shouted, and Felix winced. They were gonna draw attention to themselves.

Felix Eyed the captain. "He has over half his Health left, but barely any Mana or Stamina."

Alister, his fine armor smudged and dented, looked at him with surprise. "How would you know that? We're too far for an Apprentice Tier Analyze."

Felix didn't answer him, but looked at Okar instead. "Unless we can kill over a hundred enemies quickly, he's not gonna make it. I'm sorry."

Okar snarled at him and took a step toward Felix. "Shut your fool mouth, Apprentice Tier. You don't know what you're talking about! Yvette! Iron Ranks! Let's go."

That same terrible roar blasted out again, and everyone stumbled. The dark smoke washed across them as if driven by a hurricane-force gale, small debris following in its wake and scratching against their armor and exposed skin. Felix blinked at the wind, peering out into the nearly cleared courtyard and saw that the Revenants had prostrated themselves before a pile of corpses and vegetation.

What?

Within the broken tower, a dark smog still swirled, but now thick, scaled appendages slithered outward. Tentacles the size of tree trunks grasped at the pile, yanking it all back toward the thickening smog.

"Blind gods," Vess whispered.

Voracious Eye!

Name: Larval Ravager

Type: Primordial-Spawn

Level: 62

HP: ????/????

SP: ????/????

MP: ????/????

Lore: Born of the Maw's blood and one of the Subcores of the Domain, this abomination is clearly feeding on the corpses of the Domain's monsters. Its purpose is unknown, but it gains power from its consumption.

Strength: More Data Required

Weakness: More Data Required

"Holy shit," Felix said, before another roar buffeted against them all. His insides squirmed, buzzing painfully before it ended. An eye, blue-green and oily, formed within the smoke. It blinked open, and Felix could feel it fix on them.

On him.

The next roar shook the battlements, shifting the very stone beneath their feet as the Larval Ravager screamed out what Felix could only interpret as a challenge. Rising within him, the Maw's consciousness belted out its own rattling cry, and Felix's flesh trembled with a burst of shearing discord. The roar of the Larval Ravager was cut short, and for a moment, Felix thought it had been cowed.

Then it leveraged its body out of the smog.

A fleshy, yellow tube of meat covered in spiky barbs and scales creeped slowly outward from the tower. Its body sent tremors through the earth with every flex of its disgusting muscles. An endlessly fanged mouth was surrounded by a dozen tentacles, each one covered in bony hooks. The Larval Ravager appeared far closer aligned to the Dread than the Maw, and was all the worse for it. Blue-green orbs formed along its length, shifting and pivoting as they stared directly at Felix.

An instinctual terror gripped him, and looking at the others, Felix knew they felt the same. A notification blinked in his vision, an icon of a screaming face.

Status Condition: Frightened

"Avet's teeth," Lilian gasped. "What is that?"

"It's death," said Yvette, her voice shaken and body trembling. The whites showed all around her eyes. "Oh gods, it's death come for us."

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

With a second terrible howl, the Larval Ravager let loose its minions. The Spawn went wild, scrabbling up the battlement steps while the Revenants burst from their torpor and loped directly at them. In seconds, the monstrous humanoids were ascending the wall.

Closer now, Felix saw that their bodies were all bipedal and vaguely humanoid. Yet, they appeared to vary depending on whatever Race they once were; stocky, small, thin, tall, otherwise, there were all kinds. But each of their heads were different, wild variations on some dire creator's monstrous vision. Fleshless skulls, lizard-like features, canine, and others he had no name for; all of them, however, were cursed with overlarge jaws and outsized fangs.

Felix’s chest constricted as the beasts came at them, his instincts screaming at him to run. Yet his feet felt rooted to the floor, struck immobile by the horror that coursed through his veins. Some part of his mind knew something was wrong, aware of the Frightened Status Condition, but he couldn't do anything about it. Fear literally paralyzed him.

"Iron Rank!" Okar shouted, grinding his teeth, forcing himself to speak. "Condition Ward! Lilian!"

Lilian was shaking, but she jerked at the shout as if woken from a nap. With unsteady hands, she traced out a curving shape in the air. Felix's Manasight showed him a dark purple Mana flood its confines, filling the shape with an ultraviolet light that speared outward and into all of them.

Status Condition: Frightened Has Been Dispelled!

The fear dropped away, cracking like a porcelain shell. Felix’s mind immediately shifted back into gear. He took a step back from the edge of the wall, shaken. The Larval Ravager was strong enough to put a whammy even on his own powerful Mind and Willpower. That wasn't encouraging at all.

Someone hurled a stone projectile through the air, and it shattered harmlessly against the Larval Ravager's hide. The thing didn't even seem to notice as it pulled itself slowly, inexorably closer. Felix turned and saw Okar pale and frowning at the creature, his breath like a bellows from his chest. "It's a Tier II."

"Everythin' can die. We'll just have ta do it up close," Harn grunted before turning to the rest of them. "Battle comes ta us! We have ta move, and we have ta fight. If I die, I'll do it with blood on my axes. Who're yer defensive specialists?"

"You said we wouldn't survive down there!" Dabney shouted.

"And now they're crawlin' up at us," Harn spat. "Ain't got much choice anymore. Tell me quick: who's got walls?"

Lilian finished casting her Condition Ward for the second time, and the other Apprentice Tiers seemed to finally shake the effects. Yvette nodded and Dabney raised a trembling hand.

"Good. Can ya make em portable yet?" Harn asked.

"The Iron Rank cannot, but I can," Yvette said, obviously still shaken by the Larval Ravager's fear effect. "I can summon and carry the wall with Steel Fortification, but I'll be unable to do much else. It takes too much focus and Mana."

"That's fine; we'll handle the offense," Harn gestured to himself and Okar. "We'll handle close and mid-range while you four focus on ranged and crowd control."

Alister, Atar, Evie, and Vess all nodded and readied their weapons. In Alister's hands, a thin rapier crackled with a familiar blue energy, while Atar unfolded his collapsible metal staff.

"Felix, you play go-between, yeah? Shore up where needed." Harn gave him a look, and Felix nodded. He had more variety to his Skills than perhaps anyone else present, and a prodigious amount of Mana, though Felix feared he'd wish for more before the end of the fight.

"Can we do anything about that?" Harn pointed to the Revenants climbing up the walls. They weren't very fast, but they'd be up soon enough.

"I got it," Felix said at the same time as Dabney.

"How about together?" Felix suggested.

"You think I'd need your help?" Dabney said with a sneer, having regained his bravado. He raised his hands, and a dusty brown Mana coalesced in Felix's vision. He gripped his hands into fists and thrust them outward. "Fist of Stone!"

Literal fists of stone blasted from the wall, sized up about twenty times, bashing into some of climbing Revenants and hurling them off. The percussive sound of it dominated the air, rising above the howls below. Dabney grinned as sweat formed on his brow and cut off the Skill. His broad chest heaved for breath, and the teen looked snidely at Felix.

"Oh, that's a cool Skill," Felix said, a bit excited at the idea of it. He figured he could make Stone Shaping mimic that, but had a better idea. "Let's try this, though."

Stone Shaping!

He cast Stone Shaping, and as usual, he pushed the looping patterns of the spell outward, but his long familiarity let him do it near instantly. A wide section of the wall loosened as he gained control over it, and several Revenants fell when their grip disappeared. But many more simply kept moving, pushing through the softening stone with frantic movements. With a grunt and a chunk of his Mana, Felix pushed the section further down, claiming a swath nearly twenty feet wide by thirty feet high. Then he reached out...

And swallowed them whole.

The Revenants howled, but their cries became burbles and faded to nothing as the stone enveloped them. With another effort, he smoothed the section of wall until it was, he hoped, impossible to climb. His effort proved a success as one after another Revenant reached the expanse and slipped off. Felix stepped back and took a deep, steadying breath. His Mana had dwindled by nearly four hundred points during that effort, and he needed a few seconds to recover.

"What—how'd you do that?" Dabney asked, his face slack.

Felix shrugged and didn't answer, instead turning back to Harn. "That'll delay them for a bit."

"Good. Let's take the fight ta them. Okar, with me." Harn cracked his neck and started down the walkway, back toward the stairs. Felix could sense a wave of Spawn already heading their way, just beyond a drifting patch of black smoke. Harn, Yvette, and Okar rushed ahead, while Yvette summoned a glistening steel rampart nearly thirty feet long and six feet high. The conjuration hovered barely an inch off the ground, and though she wasn't touching it, the woman held her arms out as if bracing the wall.

"Time to fight," Evie said with some eagerness. "These Spawn ain't so bad, but I'm curious how the Revenants stand up."

"They seem strong, most aren't above level 40, but there is a strange potency to them that I cannot place," Vess said as they hustled forward. "Like a toothache..."

Felix nodded, but didn't add his thoughts to the mix. He knew what she was feeling: the Maw's presence, twisting the essence of the Revenants into whatever they had become. Moreover, they exuded a sense of wrongness that the Spawn or even the Knights had only briefly exhibited. The Maw's influence, felt so strongly throughout the Domain, was especially potent in them.

They gathered speed, and soon everyone was sprinting down the walkway. Felix checked his notifications while he had the chance, letting the changes wash over him. A mental flex set them to appear during battle, hoping to take advantage of whatever power bump he could get.

Make An Entrance is level 16!

...

Make An Entrance is level 19!

Unarmed Mastery is level 31!

Deep Mind is level 42!

Bastion of Will is level 47!

Energy flooded his core, sending ripples of power through his Body as his Skills leveled up. Felix felt a heady rush, but not from the System energy. No, it was the thrill of the fight, of proving himself against another. He didn't know how much he could improve against a sea of monsters, but he realized he was impatient to find out.

Soon, individual Spawn began reaching them, and Yvette's wall smashed into them like a speeding truck. Felix could practically feel the impact as the quadrupeds were battered into piles of meat and bones, the jagged edge of the Bronze Rank's steel wall bursting them like bloody water balloons.

Harn pointed off to the side, toward the Larval Ravager. They circled its bulk as they ran, and Felix could tell they'd come down on its left flank by the time they climbed off the battlements. "It's gotta be a Sub-Core! Ain't nothing gonna get this big in a Domain otherwise, less we're lucky and it's the primary Domain Core."

He laughed, a short dry thing. "Lucky since defeating the Domain Core means shuttin' down the Domain, at least for a bit. But if this Domain Core is a level 62, Tier II beast, I'll eat my damn armor!"

They hit another patch of Spawns, and this time, Harn and Okar had to lean against the wall. They added their own significant force to its acceleration, and another eight Spawn were smeared against the walkway. Harn kept talking.

"We kill the Sub-Core, we end the monster waves and weaken the rest." He grinned. "We get close, shore up, and put everythin' we got into that bastard. Yeah?"

There was a ragged chorus of "yes" and "yeah" before they were drowned out by the thud and roar of the approaching horde. All at once, a massive force hit Yvette's wall, and she nearly was knocked on her ass. Harn and Okar put their shoulders to the wall once again, pushing forward.

"Ranged! Shoot over the wall!" Okar grunted through his beard.

Atar immediately conjured his fiery crown and hurled ten Sparkbolts up and over the wall, while Alister thrust his rapier straight up. In response, blue-white columns of force speared upward on the other side, tossing Spawn bodies into the air, assisted by Atar's rapid-fire explosions. Vess leaped into the air, soaring far higher than the wall itself and conjured six silver spears above her outstretched hand. With a powerful throwing motion, all six spears blurred forward and embedded beyond their fortification, silencing several roars for a moment before all six exploded with an earth-shaking detonation. For her part, Evie jumped forward, nearer the wall. Rising just high enough to see over it, she made a grasping motion, and Felix sensed a series of bright, purple-white bursts of Mana on the other side as she worked her specific sort of magic.

Ice chains, Felix noticed. Man that's cool.

Not to be outdone, Felix gave into the competitive drive that pushed at his mind. With a blast of lightning and burst of Mana, Felix dragged both his arms from the left to the right, hurling five or six Spawn straight up and over the outer walls. Unable to stop themselves, they fell hundreds of feet below, screaming all the while. Light-headed, Felix stumbled for several steps before he caught himself, the drain on his Mana and Stamina prodigious.

"Did you just throw them off the wall?" Atar shouted at him as they kept running. He was panting but keeping up better than he ever had before. Felix nodded and huffed a breath. Atar looked impressed. "Yyero's breath, man! Can you do it again!"

"Probably!" Felix shouted back. As the roar and thud of the next wave hit the wall, Felix tried again. And again. Over and over, pushing himself to his limit as his friends and unsteady allies focused their far more directly damaging spells upon the horde.

Reign of Vellus is level 39!

Reign of Vellus is level 40!

It took only minutes to reach the stairs at the end of the battlements, but it felt like more. Without stopping, they turned and headed down the stairs, three flights of them. From above, they could easily see the last dregs of Spawn that were headed their way, and beyond them, a courtyard filled with monstrous Revenants. They hadn't been quiet during their run, and the creatures were loping alongside the wall, rushing to meet them all with deadly violence.

"Don't stop! We can't hold out if we stop!" Harn forced them onward. "You stop, you die!"

A few Spawn made it up the stairs, but they all died in flurry of ice, stone, and fire. Then they hit the ground floor, and Yvette began to glow with a silvery vapor. Her steel wall shifted, twisting around them to form a nearly complete circle, the outside of which was studded with deadly, razor-sharp spikes. They charged forward, pushed on by Harn, Felix’s, and Okar's strength, plowing through more of the Spawn before the first Revenant hit them.

The things were fast, each with a loping gait that ate up distance and afforded their sizable bodies considerable force. They also seemed to move together like a flock of birds, swarming toward their front in an intimidating wave. That first Revenant hit, but it was followed shortly after by two, then three more. Their clawed appendages cut screeching furrows in the steel wall, and Yvette stumbled with the force of their strikes. Once more, they put their shoulders to the wall, forcing their advancement.

Skills burst on the other side of the wall, impossible to miss the massing of enemies, but the Revenants weren't going down fast enough. The wall was being shredded faster than they could kill the beasts, and Yvette had to funnel even more of her Mana into it to keep it repaired. Eyeing her sagging form, Felix knew she was draining fast.

"Open a hole!" Harn yelled.

With a gasp from Yvette, a space opened up in the wall, one big enough for a single Revenant to fit within. Quickly, the Manawarped started pouring through, only to be met by Harn's twin axes. Yet, despite the man's Strength and Skill, it still took two or three swings to put one of them down.

"Yvette! Keep movin' forward! ‘V’ formation! Everyone, keep attacking with everything you've got!" Harn immediately followed his own advice, and his axes blazed with a deadly heat. They kept moving, though their pace dragged slower and slower as the monstrosities piled on.

The Revenants, meanwhile, were trying to circle around them and climb the metal fortifications. Vess met them with furious precision, utilizing her Dragoon's Footwork to avoid the arcing strikes of the enemy while still wielding her floating spears and the one in her hand. Each strike was met by a pained scream, her conjured spears exploding within wounds and serving to knock prone several at once.

Evie was a whirling dervish, her chain never stopping and hitting the Revenants with brutal force. She danced along the wall itself, her Agility more than enough to make such a thing possible, but even she was hard pressed to avoid all of the Revenants’ strikes. The creatures fought with a tenacity and fury that was terrible to see and harder to counter. Wounds didn't slow them, and unless it was completely debilitating, they would crawl back toward the Humans with nothing on their minds but a terrifying bloodlust.

Felix himself pulled back from the wall and made use of his Reign of Vellus to push the Revenants back, but they were harder to hurl than the Spawn had been. They weren't necessarily more hefty than the Spawn, but they were harder to pin down. The rabid, frenetic energy of the monsters had them wriggling out of his kinetic grip more often than not. So, instead, Felix pushed back where he could and laid waste with Wrack and Ruin.

Reign of Vellus is level 41!

Wrack and Ruin is level 32!

Cloudstep helped him stay above the wall, keeping line of sight on the Revenants and increasing his precision with his condensed acid orb. The concentrated acid tore some wounds in the Manawarped creatures, but they were sturdier than the Spawn by a significant margin. It often took two or three hits for them to actually penetrate and do damage, and by then most of the power had leeched from the spell.

Cloudstep is level 13!

Cloudstep is level 14!

Felix had unleashed Pit as well, to the surprise of some of the others. The Chimera kept up his Dire Hound disguise, and after he made it clear it was his pet, the Iron Rankers stopped trying to kill him.

Since Pit couldn't stay above the wall as Felix could, he had the tenku focus on assisting Harn at the front. Warbling out an aggressive cry, Pit did just that, and soon the sound of Frost Spears flooding the front opening filled the air.

"Focus on the wounded, Pit!" Felix heard Harn shout, and the sounds of battle redoubled.

To the rear, Sparkbolts rained down on the enemies, followed by flowering explosions that set many of the Revenants aflame. Yet they still didn't stop. Annoyingly, Felix had to make sure he kept the burning enemies away from himself, but the heat was starting to build, and his broken nerves were twitching. It wasn't enough to disable him, not anymore, but it wasn't pleasant.

Pit's Bite is level 25!

Pit's Bite Has Reached Apprentice Tier! Congratulations!

He Gains:

+9 STR

Pit's Wingblade is level 27!

Pit cried out, his voice jubilant as he dove into the fight.

Despite the endless, oncoming tide, Felix grinned. He felt more comfortable here than he ever did in Haarwatch. His Body reveled in the exertion as he hurled spells and punches at their monstrous foes, while his Mind feasted on the complex calculations of battle. And if Pit was any indication, his Spirit was just as joyful in the continuous cycle of violence.

Okar, Alister, Lilian, and Dabney all made impressive showings, but only a part of Felix was keeping track of that. His true focus was on the enemy, or else he would be overwhelmed. Mana burst all around him, kinetic force and earthen spikes, vapor swirling and dissipating in the air in the same breath. The Nym swung his fists at any Revenant that got too close, easily launching them back over the wall, though it was often not enough to do significant damage. Regardless, it was paying off.

Unarmed Mastery is level 32!

Corrosive Strike is level 32!

The reserves within him, the essence he had absorbed within the Domain's Void barrier, were running low once more. He could feel it as an ache in his gut, a hollow that tore at him. The essence was his ticket to faster Skill gain, which meant survival. So he didn't hesitate as he ripped the jaw off of an injured Revenant and took a deep, terrible breath.

Ravenous Tithe!

The creature burst into incandescent smoke. Far from being the normal black, it was a desaturated crimson, streaked with various rainbow hues and it was sucked into Felix's body in an instant. Immediately, a swirling cloud of essence formed above his core, one that he immediately put to work.

Cloudstep!

He rose up on platforms of crackling Mana, climbing higher than the steel wall. They had come to a near total stop, the pressure of the horde too much to simply force their way through. They blocked the way to the Larval Ravager, a meat wall. Harn, Okar, and Pit were at the front, fighting the ceaseless tide of malformed flesh. Yvette struggled to maintain the wall, and in a few places, the silvery Mana vapor was growing alarmingly thin. The Apprentice Tier fighters all were becoming more and more drained as the fight went on, and he suspected Dabney was reaching the end of his Mana pool. All of them were fighting battles to the sides, too preoccupied with surviving to focus their fire.

They were losing.

The Larval Ravager towered a hundred feet and a horde of enemies away. If they didn't make it through… Felix checked his Mana; he had enough to try and make a difference.

"Harn! I'm gonna try and open things up ahead of us!" Felix shouted, and the man grunted. "Anyone who can help, focus fire on the front!"

"Get ready ta move, people!" Harn hollered at the rest of them.

Influence of the Wisp!

Stone Shaping!

Reign of Vellus!

Manawarped Revenants (x13) Are Enthralled For 5 Seconds!

Every single area of effect spell he had poured out onto the field. Wisplight flared around his body as one, four, a dozen Revenants fell under his Enthralling Will. He nearly smacked himself for not trying this earlier. Their bodies ignited like torches as they froze, and then the ground buckled beneath them, dropping slightly before a forest of spikes thrust upward.

An area approximately twenty feet in diameter was affected, hitting far more than the ones he had Enthralled. Each spike stabbed and bruised the Revenants, some doing little damage, but the accumulation destroyed their footing and their momentum. Then, with a furious wave of azure lightning, he pressed them down, shoving their bodies into the earth like a massive hammer.

The spikes shattered, but so did many of the Revenants. The rest were suddenly immolated by a swirling firestorm that arose among them, along with shafts of blue-white force, fists of stone, and exploding silver spears.

Kill notifications flooded Felix, but he put them out of his mind, watching his depleting Mana. The rest had piled on, and it was working.

"Again!" Felix shouted, and poured out the rest of his Mana.

Influence of the Wisp!

Stone Shaping!

Reign of Vellus!

Manawarped Revenants (x9) Are Enthralled For 5 Seconds!

Just as his Voracious Eye indicated, the Revenants' had little Willpower. They were easy pickings for his Influence Skill. Each one hit with Influence of the Wisp died, regardless of the stone spikes and kinetic strike. The blue-white fire ate through them at a prodigious rate, dropping them before the Enthralled Status Condition lapsed.

More fire and force, earth and ice hit the same group, cutting them down even further. The Revenants stumbled, many of them broken if not dead.

Influence of the Wisp is level 31!

Stone Shaping is level 29!

...

Stone Shaping is level 30!

Reign of Vellus is level 42!

With a grunt, Felix fell from the air, his Cloudstep dissipating once his Mana drained dry. Exhaustion gripped Felix for a moment, and a massive headache stabbed at his head, neck, and shoulders. He stumbled forward, trying to keep pace with the now-rapidly-moving wall. He felt hands under his arms and looked up to see Vess holding him up.

"I have you, Felix," she said and smiled. Despite the gore on her face, it was a really good smile. In fact, as his regeneration started to rally and his Mana refilled, Felix was almost loath to pull away. But he did anyway. There was fighting to be done.

"I'm okay now," he said, not quite meeting her eyes. "Thanks."

The wall shuddered as it pulverized the bodies ahead of them, while most were shunted to the sides by the V shape of the steel fortification. Revenants threw themselves at their wall, but now that they were moving fast again, the blows were glancing. Damaging, yes, but the team moved on. They were steadily getting closer to the Ravager.

We're gonna make it.

A trumpeting cry shook the air, literally vibrating it, and Felix clapped hands over his ears reflexively. But there was nothing that could stop the sound from piercing his Body and resounding within his Spirit and Mind. Rage and disdain filtered out from within his Bastion as the cry washed over it, strong enough now that Felix could almost mistake those emotions for his own. He looked up, and all of them saw the Larval Ravager had reared up and was affixing them with a single, baleful eye.

As one, the Revenants began to surge, shifting their positions around their island of battle while still throwing themselves against their diminishing steel wall. Felix looked around them and gasped past the painful sound, which still had not abated. "What's it doing?!"

Harn looked at them all, and he gripped the hafts of his weapons tighter. "It's changing the field."

The area before Felix had filled in once again with bodies while the flanks had depleted. Their path toward the Larval Ravager was blocked once again, and Felix could almost swear that its rallying cry became repugnantly pleased near the end.

Okar cursed. "Pathless forfend, it's intelligent?"

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

Revenants swarmed them, and the steel wall shook. After Okar's exclamation, the Guilders and Felix's team all returned to the fight. They took turns resting and casting in waves, trying to whittle down the enemies. Lilian kept using a Mana regeneration Skill on Yvette whenever she had the strength. The defensive specialist was starting to pale beneath her war paint.

Felix stared down the Larval Ravager. Vivid, blue-green eyes shifted and settled on its tube-like body, nauseating bubbles that expanded and popped before blinking open in another spot. Yet that constant mutability didn't dampen the sharpened intent Felix sensed. As if the creature were malevolently laughing at them. At him.

Once, I would have considered that thought crazy. Felix clenched his jaw. R.I.P. my sense of normalcy.

It was, all things considered, a disgusting monster. Felix had found that the Maw's influence tended to bring about some nasty mutations, but this one was particularly gross. The sight of its glistening, mucusy hide and writhing tentacles sent pangs of disgust and derision through him. With a start, however, Felix realized that deeper emotions welled up around his own. Like smoke from a dissolving corpse, those feelings floated upward on strange winds. Somewhere deep within him, something else was doing some thinking.

"What're we gonna do?" Evie asked, landing nearby. "There's too many!"

"Yvette?" Harn queried, looking to the tall defensive specialist. The woman's arms were trembling as Revenants pounded against her barrier. Her form shimmered with a spiraling purple vapor; Lilian's efforts at boosting her Mana regeneration. Felix wasn't sure if others could see the vapor or not, though.

"I'm—" she grunted as a particularly hard blow rocked a portion of the wall. "I can't—-"

"You have to, Yvette!" Okar seethed. "You do hold on, or we die here."

Harn frowned at the two of them and fished something out of his pack. It was a fist-sized glass bottle filled with a blue potion. He tossed it to Okar. "Have her take this. It'll give us a little more time."

The big man caught it and eyed the potion for a long second before uncorking it and tipping it down Yvette's throat. The woman choked a little, but she kept it down.

What an asshole, Felix thought. The derision wafting around his Mind focused on Okar and fed him images of the bearded Guilder getting punched in the mouth. Would serve him right—NO. Felix buckled down, flexing his Will and Bastion, and the emotions cut off.

felix...

felix...

Despite that, the Maw was still able to beckon to him. As the others returned to the offensive, and hoping he wouldn't regret it, Felix sent his consciousness down into his Bastion. He landed on the immaculate grass of his inner bailey and stood directly atop the Maw's living tomb. Words, just barely above the sound of the wind, drifted up to him.

"Kill it and devour its Spirit, Felix Nevarre," it insisted. "It is an insult to all that We are."

"I'll get right on that," Felix shot back, disgusted with himself. What else had he expected?

"It is part of me," the monster whispered through the earth. "You sense this. But it is not me. It is other."

"Uh-huh." Felix eyed the sky, worried at what was happening in the real world. "How does this help me?"

"I'm telling you, you bastard halfwit—!" The Maw's voice trembled with bottled emotion, but it cut itself off. "It's like me. And it's like you. It hungers. That which it eats makes it stronger."

A sudden yowling pierced his ears, and Felix threw himself outward and opened his physical eyes. The Revenants screamed, their bloodlust driven to new heights as they rushed their fortification. The metal wall started to buckle in places, groaning as if in sympathetic agony. There had to be two hundred Revenants in the shattered courtyard of the ruined keep, and the majority of them were all but blocking their way to the sub-core beast. Yet more surprising with the increasing numbers was that only a tiny portion was attacking their position. The wall shuddered and groaned, but at any one time, Felix could only sense thirty or forty enemies raging against them.

Why? Why not drown us in— Felix paused, looking above the wall. Where'd the Ravager go?

Felix took a startled step back before jumping up and standing atop a crackling cloud of Mana. From his new vantage, he could see the Ravager had not fled, but had dropped to the ground to feed. Using its mouth tentacles, it shoveled corpses into its fanged orifice as quickly as it could. Each swipe sent three or four bodies into its gullet, and its entire length continuously… undulated.

Grimacing at the sight, Felix turned and saw a figure through the thinning crowd. His Eye identified the man as Chathm Elwick, and Felix could sense that he was on the higher end of Journeyman Tier. Likely because of that, the man was still alive. Barely.

"Uh, man overboard," Felix shouted while pointing, not entirely sure how to phrase it. "Your Captain Elwick is about a hundred yards that way. He's alive!"

Okar looked up at him in shock, then traded looks with Yvette. Without speaking, the both of them began moving in the direction Felix pointed. Along with the steel wall.

"Whoa! What're you doin'?" Evie shouted as she was bashed with the rear end of the wall before she could begin to keep pace. Vess and the other Apprentice Tiers had made similar recoveries, all of whom turned to look in confusion at the two Journeymen.

"That one said the captain is alive!" Okar said, pointing at Felix but refusing to stop. Revenants roared beyond the wall, scraping against the side as they pivoted. "We aim to see he remains so!"

"We need ta press the attack, Guilder!" Harn shouted as he kept pace. "The farther away we move, the more ground we gotta reclaim! And she doesn't look like she's got a lotta juice left!"

It was true, of course. Yvette was blowing hard like a winded horse. Still, she gritted her teeth anyway, moving the wall toward their fallen captain.

"You either follow, or you die, Kastos," Okar sneered and pushed all the harder on Yvette's wall.

After a moment, Harn growled in frustration and helped them, pushing the fortification that much faster. Felix joined them soon after, hoping the speed would make some difference.

The Revenants, far from fighting their progress, snapped at them but shifted away. In mere seconds they had come to the Guilder's broken form, and with a visibly tiring effort of Will, Yvette reshaped the wall around them all. The wall shrank, the same height, but smaller diameter as she sacrificed size for thickness.

Their captain's body, now on the far side of the space, was bent and broken in several places, and the meat of his shoulder and thighs was absolutely torn apart. If Felix's Eye hadn't stated he'd had about five percent of his Health remaining, he would have assumed the man a corpse.

"Noctis wept," Vess said, coming to a stop. "How is he still living?"

"It's his Obviated Body," Alister stated, his thin chest heaving. "I heard it keeps someone alive, negating the attack that would have ended them."

"That's incredible," Felix muttered.

"Incredibly expensive, and a one-trick pony," Atar said quietly. "Only works once per advancement Tier."

Okar slid to his knees and pulled a ruby red flask from his hip pouch. Everyone noticed as the thick, ambient Mana of the Domain was suddenly drawn toward the revealed flask as if its contents were sucking power from the atmosphere. Felix recognized the phenomenon, having seen it with Vess' Rare Essence Draughts. With a deft, practiced motion, Okar tipped Elwick's head back, popped the cork, and tilted the contents down his throat.

Precious seconds ticked by as the Revenants renewed their assault on their position. Felix had hoped their sudden disinterest would stick, though he knew it had been too good to be true. Distracted by the resumed attacks, Felix turned back to see Elwick's legs visibly mending, the reddened meat of his quadriceps weaving back together like the worst sort of crochet.

"Easy El, easy," Okar helped the man back to his feet slowly as the impacts quickened all around them.

Felix cast his senses out again, not reaching terribly far, but enough to notice that their reprieve was absolutely over. Five were battering at their wall now, but another twenty were loping toward them from the main horde. Beyond them, deprived of his eyes, Felix could only sense a… vicious malevolence radiating from the Ravager.

"More incoming," he warned them.

"Lilian! Again!" Yvette ordered, and the diminutive noble cast her Mana regen Skill once again. The Skill stuttered and flickered out, though, before ever truly manifesting. "Lilian!"

The girl was ragged, her Mana stores empty. Felix could tell that even without using his Eye. She'd been boosting everyone or debuffing the enemies the entire fight. Still, Yvette grabbed her and shook her hard enough that Felix could hear her teeth rattle.

"That's enough!" Alister shouted, his rapier drawn and pointed at the tall guilder. "Put her down, Yvette!"

"You overstep, Iron Rank," Yvette warned, but she let the girl go.

Felix had already started to ignore them as the bickering sharpened, and utilizing Cloudstep, he ascended above the wall carefully. With the fortifications so close after the reshaping, he risked getting attacked by a jumping Revenant, but he did it anyway. Just high enough to get his eye-line cleared, enough to see what that bastard Ravager was doing.

It was...eating. Still. In fact, it had begun eating some of the Revenants too.

That's fantastic! If it turns on them, then we just have...to...

Felix activated his Eye, just to double check its stats again.

Name: Larval Ravager

Type: Primordial-Spawn

Level: 64

HP: ????/????

SP: ????/????

MP: ????/????

Lore: Born of the Maw's blood and one of the subcores of the Domain, this abomination is clearly feeding on the corpses of the Domain's monsters. Its purpose is unknown, but it gains power from its consumption.

Strength: More Data Required

Weakness: More Data Required

Hadn't it been level 62 before?

The blue box still hovered before Felix's eyes when the image flickered.

Level: 65

Shit shit shit shit.

Felix dismissed his Cloudstep and dropped. He spun and immediately grabbed Harn.

"Something's wrong," he said quietly, pointing in the direction of the Larval Ravager. "It's getting stronger. The Ravager. That's why it's letting us sit here, why it let us move this far out."

"What?" Harn asked.

"It ate what the Revenants brought back, and now it's eating the Revenants, too!" Felix included Evie, Vess, and Atar, who had come closer to him to hear. "The corpses are making it stronger somehow, it's already jumped up three levels. You saw what the Spawn's Lore said: they get stronger by consuming. This thing is just a big, scaled up version of that. How long before we can't fight it at all?"

Harn made a clucking noise from within his helmet and shouted over his shoulder. "Twin's teeth. Okar, Yvette! Hope yer captain is healed up, cuz we gotta make our move. Now."

"I agree."

Neither Felix nor Harn sensed the attack before it landed. The impact threw them both to the ground as a dark, granite spear slammed into Harn's side. The Onslaught's axes went flying from his grip as he landed face first on the uneven courtyard stonework, while Felix was tossed into the Steel Fortification by a wave of force.

Felix's vision swam, and sounds started to echo unpleasantly.

Status Condition: Concussion (Minor)

"Bastards!" Several Evies shouted. Felix was pretty sure she was moving toward Harn. The man was bleeding from the earthen spike that had been driven into his side. "What're you doing!"

"You think we're fools?" Okar growled. "You think we don't know why you're here? What you've done?"

Elwick stood and spat out a mouthful of blood, looking far healthier than before. He was a tall man, easily matching Yvette, but lean where Okar was thick. He wore enchanted robes buckled with steel-plated leather, Felix noted, though he couldn't read the enchantment while it remained on the man. His face was handsome and symmetrical, perhaps too much so, and his shock of sandy brown hair hung low over his forehead. He frowned imperiously at them.

"Harn Kastos, you and yours have perpetrated violence upon an ally of the Guild. Murder, to be specific. For that, you shall be detained and held on trial in the Eyrie," Elwick intoned, perhaps going serious but landing near feverish and urgent. He held up his hands and cracked his knuckles. A vein pulsed in his forehead, and sweat covered his brow. "However, you are trespassing within the Domain. And by order of Elder Teine, that sentence supersedes the former. You must either leave or die."

"You think we're goin' anywhere?" Evie snarled. "You think you can make us?"

"We are trapped here, just as you," Vess added calmly, but she held her silver spear tightly. "If we try to leave this barricade, we will die."

Okar rolled his neck and grinned maliciously. "Then die."

Without a word, the barrel-chested earth mage shot forward, dark, granite-like armor flowing over his body as he reached for the closest target. Vess' eyes widened, but the Journeyman Tier adventurer was fast, and she was on the back-foot.

Still disoriented, Unfettered Volition threw him forward, and he cocked his fist back to hit the bastard.

Atar was faster.

An explosion of fire bloomed beneath Okar's leading foot, pushing it askew and sending Okar down in a tangle of limbs and cracking boulders.

"Atar? You betray us?" Elwick said, aghast. His eyes were bloodshot despite his healing, and that sweat was getting worse. "You betray your Elder?"

"This is wrong! What are you doing, Captain?" Atar's face was flushed, and his outstretched hand shook, but his fiery crown sat steady atop his head.

"You don't understand, boy," snarled Okar, and Felix felt a strange twinge from the man. A rapid, ill-tuned refrain. "You step aside, or else you'll share in their fate."

"Listen to Okar," Elwick said, his hard face not giving an inch despite his reddening complexion. "We don't want to kill you, too."

"Madness," Alister muttered. "What has Teine done to you?"

"Oathbound," Harn said as he stood up, his hand clenched at his wound. Felix could see the metal of his armor flowing over it and pressing into his skin. "They've been bound to kill."

Atar and Alister both looked at their captain, Yvette, and Okar who had climbed to his feet. Atar gritted his teeth. "Is that true? Did the Elder compel you to kill?"

"Only those who entered without permission," Yvette said, her high voice reedy with strain. The Revenants had increased their attacks, and it was draining her Mana fast. She fumbled a blue potion to her lips and gasped. "Those stupid enough to dare."

Okar grinned cruelly at them all. "And those stupid enough to defy us."

"Idiots! We'll die if we don't work together!" Atar shouted, but it was too late. In a burst of motion, Elwick and Okar rush at the injured Harn. They knew if Harn fell, the rest of them wouldn't last a minute.

Felix once again threw himself forward, but his aim was still slightly off, his concussion blurring his sense of space. Instead, he was hammered in the side by a metallic bar, one that sent him careening into Alister and Atar. All three of them went down in a pile. Groaning, Felix looked up to see Yvette still standing in the same space and grinning with bloody teeth.

"Try again, little boy," she taunted. "Shaping my wall takes Will, not Mana. And I can do this until you die."

Three razor-sharp spikes punched from the wall to their right. Felix sent out a Stone Shaping, lifting a crude segment of rock out of the ground to block it.

The spikes cut right through it.

A beam of force erupted beneath the leading edge of the spikes, and with an excruciatingly loud groan, they bent upward and missed them by inches. Felix looked at Alister, his arm outstretched and panting.

"Thanks," Felix managed, before rolling off the pile. "Evie! Vess! Some help?"

"Already on it!" Evie said, sailing over his head. "You three help Harn!"

Yvette screamed in frustration.

"You absolute… bitch," Lilian grated out, but as she raised her hand to cast, she swayed and her eyes rolled back. She dropped to the ground, unconscious.

"Dabney! Cacoon!" Alister shouted, and the big man immediately hunched over Lilian and activated a dome of stone. The noble looked at Evie whip her chain about and several spears streaked toward the Journeyman defensive specialist. "They're not gonna be enough to handle Yvette!"

"Then go help them!" Felix shouted, but had to roll to his left to avoid an explosive fissure in the ground. He looked up to see Okar focused on him and Atar. That was fine with him. "Atar, let's give Harn time to kick your Captain's ass."

"This is dumb! Argh, fine!" Atar conjured a grip of Sparkbolts and sent them flying at the charging Journeyman. The fiery projectiles burst harmlessly against Okar's dark granite armor, his Journeyman Skill shrugging off their impacts without breaking his stride. The man's face, framed by a Roman-style helm of rock, was split by a sadistic grin.

"I'm gonna enjoy breaking you boys," he sneered.

Influence of the Wisp!

Wrack and Ruin!

Stone Shaping!

The Enthrall didn't land, and his acid scored his armor but careened wildly once it hit. The Stone Shaped rocks he thrust upward disrupted the man's footing, but for barely a moment. Okar stomped his own feet and sent out a pulse of dusty-brown Mana that smoothed the ground again.

Shit! Maybe I—

"Spirit Immolation!" Atar cried, and his body burst into living flame. It wasn't just covered in it; the teen became fire.

Holy damn. Felix’s Heat and Fire Resistance clawed at his insides. He took a wincing step back from Atar, glancing between him and the oncoming Journeyman.

"Strength Ignition!"

The fire became flesh once more, but now Atar absolutely glowed with orange Mana vapor. His body gave it off like a tiny sun. With a burst of speed Felix had never seen from the man, Atar hiked his robes up and ran directly at Okar. Quick as a blink, Atar drew a series of quick sigils in midair and dropped into a slide, falling under the man's guard and jabbing out with his open palms as he passed. The sigils attached to Okar's legs, etching into his armor before sending a thrust of concentrated fire Mana blasting forward from the man's knees.

Like a misaligned hobby rocket, Okar's feet swept from beneath him, the man barely having time to brace as his face was jackhammered into the earth.

Felix didn't let him recover, hitting the man with a concentrated Reign of Vellus, something that still was hard for him to accomplish accurately. He pressed hard, dumping Mana into the Skill to just keep the man down. Okar fought it, trying to rise, pitting his Strength and Endurance against Felix's Intelligence and Willpower.

Were it an effort to crush him, Felix would have been outclassed by the Journeyman defensive Skill, but it wasn't. The man only wanted to move, and that boiled down to stats. And Felix had those in spades.

"Burn me, how're you holding him down?" Atar asked, looking at Felix in confusion as lightning ceaselessly crawled across Okar's body. "Nevermind! We have to restrain him ‘til Harn finishes with Elwick, then Onslaught can take care of him. I've got nothing that can get through that armor or his resistances."

"That's right!" Okar shouted, his face straining against the ground. "Cower like always, Atar! It's all your good for, you worthless pile of—!"

Reign of Vellus!

With a thunderclap, a pillar of lighting seemed to launch Okar straight up into the air. The man reached nearly fifty feet before he began arcing downward, well beyond the wall. Directly into the Revenant horde.

"Screw him," Felix grated, his head aching from the Mana use. "He was trying to use earth Mana to sneak attack us."

Atar looked down, noticing for the first time a series of sharpened spikes that had pushed up from the broken flagstones.

Status Condition: Concussion (Minor) has expired.

"Great," Felix said, stretching his shoulders. "Let's go."

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

"She's too good!" Alister ducked beneath a scything silver blade, swooping out of the wall before being reabsorbed. "We can't fight her like this!"

Alister came back to his feet, tumbling deftly as more spikes thrust randomly from the rapidly shifting metal. His father had paid outrageous sums for his son to be trained by the best, not just in Mana Skills, but in all aspects of combat. True, he had often neglected his studies in favor of carousing, but he found himself thankful for his father's stubborn insistence. A first time for everything, he mused.

"Then stay back and let us handle it!"

That commoner, Evie Aren, flashed by him. Her preposterous weapon, a spiked chain of all things, was a blur in her hand. It whipped forward and wrapped around Yvette's outstretched arm, the blades digging into the meat of her bicep. The girl hauled on it, pulling herself toward the Bronze Rank with such speed that Alister barely had time to blink before she hit. Yvette shrieked as Evie dug a dagger into her armored robes, and a flow of battered steel hammered outward. Evie flew back, her chain falling slack from Yvette's arm.

Alister gathered Mana for his Grand Impetus, his core funneling it along his pathways until it pooled at the base of his wrist. With a twist and thrust of his enchanted rapier, the Mana discharged in a smooth bolt of blue-white light; pure kinetic force. It was a Skill Alister was greatly proud of, one that he had developed over the course of many years, combining several ancestral techniques with his own ingenuity. It was powerful, more than enough to dispatch an enemy of his own Tier. However, when it came to those of a higher Tier, it was less than optimal.

The strike put a sizable dent in a stretch of steel, but didn't penetrate.

Yvette gathered herself, having screamed herself hoarse, and shoved her mangled arm toward them. A wave of undulating spikes rippled from the walls, pieces disconnecting and flinging at them far faster than Alister wanted.

Avert!

A narrow shield of blue energy sprang into a semi-circle before him, and the projectiles hit it hard. Gouts of stone tore to pieces to either side of Alister as the shield absorbed and diverted the kinetic force, shunting it to either side of himself. An impressive showing, he had to admit, but it was eating through his Mana quickly. The lot of them had been burning their resources ever since arriving in the blasted Domain, and especially since attempting an assault on the keep. Alister stood up, but he was unsteady. His Mana was at 30%.

Arms grabbed him suddenly, and Alister found himself hoisted into the air. The uneven flagstones beneath him erupted into jagged shards, a disorienting plume of dust and debris. For a few moments, he felt weightless as he looked up at Evie, blood on her brow as she gripped him, but heaviness returned as they both tumbled hard to the ground.

"Ugh, that's hard to do," Aren grunted, rolling to her feet with enviable ease. It was something Alister could have done himself, were he not so tired. As it stood, his process involved more cursing. "Oh good, Vess' turn."

Alister looked up to see Vessilia Dayne, heiress of the Duchy of Pax'Vrell, sail above their heads alongside six floating spears. Three of them zipped forward ahead of her landing, projectiles that Yvette easily deflected. But then the woman followed, and her body fell like a boulder, suddenly speeding up with such celerity that Alister doubted his eyes.

*BOOOOM!*

The earth rumbled beneath them as she hit, spear-first. Yvette had blocked it, but the steel screamed as it began to give way.

"C'mon, pretty boy! Time to work!" Evie dashed ahead, sprinting toward where her chain had fallen.

"Blood and ash, why are they doing this?" Alister said before limbering his arm and hustling after. "Atar's right! There's no benefit here! Win or lose, these monsters will eat us alive!"

Even now, the steel walls protecting them shuddered with rapid, repeated blows. The screech of claws on steel had become a constant refrain. Once they fell, the Revenants would kill them all. So why were they pushing this? Had they truly been Oathbound into it? That was madness!

More spears came crashing down on the defender, this time accompanied by the lashing blows of Evie's chain. Steel flowed and shifted, moving like water under the Will of Yvette, but the attacks took their toll.

Grand Impetus!

Alister, steps away from the vicious melee, thrust his rapier and released another condensed blast of Mana. This time, the force of it sheared through Yvette's battered shield and struck the Journeyman properly. She hissed, her painted face twisting into something cruel and… it was only for a blink, but Alister couldn't shake the sight of it.

She'd looked… monstrous.

"SCREUAAAAAW!"

A bone-chilling cry cut through the air, followed closely by the bounding form of that strange Dire Hound. Though it wasn't directed at him, Alister could feel a mental Skill wash across the space, targeted on Yvette. The effect failed against her Journeyman stats, but the Hound didn't stop. Sharp planes of air Mana launched outward from it, slicing through the air and putting scratches in the steel wall.

The attacks hadn't the strength to truly injure Yvette, but it all added up. Alister deflected more steel projectiles with Avert, while the others laid into her. For the first time, the noble believed they were going to win.

But what then?

* * *

Captain Elwick felt a fury he had never known before. These people, these… monsters in Human guise had invaded the Domain against the Elder's wishes. They had killed, yes, of that there was no doubt. The bodies beyond the Domain were mutilated with the kind of joyous disregard for life that only the worst creatures possessed. Elwick knew there was no saving them. No forgiveness.

Just rage.

"REEAAAARG!" Elwick lunged, his sword trailing an icy fog as it moved. His Skill, Ethereal Ice, helped to shroud his attacks to make them harder to perceive and defend against, and he knew it would work against the Onslaught. The man was a legend for his durability and resistances, but Elwick's Skill would overcome him because… because it had to. There was no other option.

"Why are you here, Kastos?" Elwick snarled. He needed to understand. To know if there were more of them.

"Takin' a tour," Harn grunted back, twisting sideways and letting Elwick's blade to pass harmlessly. "Maybe kill some monsters."

"Don't be glib, bastard. You're not good at it!" Elwick pressed the attack, pushing the demoted Guilder back, trying to press him toward the steel wall. "You killed people to get in here! I know that's true!"

"How many have you done in?" Harn asked. He batted aside Elwick's blade, sending a spray of icy fog back toward the captain. The bastard ducked out of his line of sight as the fog rolled over Elwick's eyes. "How many has Teine had you kill?"

"Enough," Elwick grated. His own fog didn't hurt him, but it did make him lose track of the silver warrior. "I follow orders, that is all."

"Truly?"

Elwick swung toward the voice, but hit nothing. Then his Obviated Body screamed a warning, and the captain threw himself to the ground just as a silver blur swept through the space where his neck had been. Tucking a shoulder, the Bronze Rank rolled to his feet and reset himself. Harn advanced, twin axes out to either side. Nearby, the others were engaged with the Iron Ranks and seemed to have the upper hand. Elwick grinned and felt a delicious, giddy bloodlust dance across his veins. Not for the first time, Elwick felt a dark, visceral thrill at the thought of killing this man.

"I'll have your head this day," Elwick promised, and activated Rimefang's Lament. His Skill made a sheath of preternaturally hardened ice grow over his long sword, expanding the blade by five inches and lengthening it by another foot. "You face judgment, Harn Kastos!"

Elwick spun his blade, whirling it in a wild maneuver that shouldn't have hit anyone, were it not for his Mana Skill. Rimefang's Lament sent shards of dark ice in every direction he spun the sword, each one trailing his Ethereal Ice fog. He felt them connect with Harn's armor. The sound was almost metal on metal, a clashing that rattled out in a rapid beat. The captain surged forward, leading with his sword. He could practically taste the bastard's blood on its edge, on his tongue, filling him with strength and power and—-

"Tch."

Elwick's blade hit something immobile, sending a wrenching pain up his arm and shoulder. The fog of his Ethereal Ice washed over the upraised gauntlet of the Onslaught, the sword trapped between his fingers. Ice crawled down the man's hand and vambrace, lines of frost that spread rapidly, but the man stood tall. Unconcerned.

Before Elwick could react, his sword was twisted to the side. Harn's gauntlet had frozen to the icy blade, and the damn warrior used that against the captain. He hauled back, and the blade ripped from Elwick's grip. Without a focus, Rimefang's Lament faded an instant later, and the sword fell to the ground.

"Teine really messed you up, didn't he?" Harn asked, before Elwick felt a punch deform his breastplate and send him flipping backward. The uneven flagstones came up hard, and the Guilder’s nose broke as he tumbled. "I ain't never heard of an Oath makin' someone crazy."

The bastard was talking, TALKING, while they fought. Elwick’s rage suffused his Mind with a dark, sizzling impulse, to rend and tear and rip apart the silver monster that was slowly walking toward him. A mad urge to taste his blood and...and...

"I'm sorry ta do it, but I gotta put ya down. Yer dangerous, an' I don't have time ta find out why."

"Murderer," Elwick spat, spraying his blood onto the ground. "Thieves and trespassers! Usurpers!"

"Usurpers?" Harn tilted his head, axe held ready. "Usurpin' what?"

Images flooded Elwick's mind as he pushed himself up, his arms shaking with more than exertion. Images of teeth, of eating, of terrible, terrible things striding in the dark. Of a mother… and children cast aside. A part of him cried out, but it was a small part, barely noticed among the crushing deluge of emotion. Of lies and hunger, endless hunger.

A crown of bone.

Screaming, Elwick summoned four more blades made entirely of ice Mana and sent them hurtling toward the Onslaught.

Verglas Edge!

The man bent his arm, protecting his chest and face with it while his other hand wielded an axe. Harn sheared through two of the ice blades with a single strike. He was unharmed. The Onslaught moved toward him.

Elwick's channels felt as if they were on fire, his Mana long since run out. Strain marred him, his core, and the captain knew he had little left to give. But he was so angry, and it was as if he were being gifted more strength from that rage.

Now on his knees, the captain focused upon the heat he felt building in his chest. He knew the wrath he felt was unreasonable, that it was mad, that his Elder had never told him to take things so far. That small part of him could see the web of their Oath, once shining, now corroded. Burnt. And along that web came a delirious certainty that he had been lied to… that the man before him was a greater threat… that he shouldn't be killed, but… delivered...

Something burned away inside of him. Something vital. That small voice vanished, popped like a soap bubble. But the rage remained, bottomless and hungry. Despite the wounds that riddled him, Elwick felt good for the first time in a long while. He felt right.

Power surged through him, flushing his limbs with strength. Elwick screamed at Harn as he attacked, lunging from his knees. A sword of ice materialized in his hand, blurring in a savage thrust. The bastard still met each blow with his axes, deflecting the attacks easily, contemptuously.

"How are you even here!?" Elwick snarled, blood drooling from his mouth. It tasted sour on his tongue. "The Domain should be closed to you!"

"So they did alter the shell." Harn grunted, somewhat wryly. "Knew it felt weird comin' in."

"How?" Elwick flared Verglas Edge, diverting his attention to summoning not many blades, but a single one. Mana vapor coalesced above the warrior, a guillotine of power, just at the cusp of solidifying. Harn was only a few steps away. "It… should have stopped you.

"Can't be tellin' you all my secrets," Harn said as their blades locked together and Elwick pulled him close. The man tilted his helmeted head in confusion. "Your eyes..."

"Die!"

The blade, nearly the size of a wagon, dropped with all the subtlety of a cannon. Held fast by Elwick's sudden surge of strength, Harn could do nothing but accept the inevitable. It hit hard, hard enough to shatter the flagstones for several feet in all directions, immediately coating them in frost. Elwick was thrown back, skipped off the ground like a rock on a lake, before fetching hard against the steel wall.

Yet before blackness claimed him, there was a surge of terrible, primeval crimson and the stench of blood.

Then nothing.

* * *

Felix would like to have said he hesitated when presented the choice. An explosion of purple-white and silvery Mana to their left, while to their right a furious exchange between the Iron Ranks and Yvette. The explosion had been a powerful thing, nearly throwing him and Atar off their feet, and he worried that Harn had not survived such an assault. But Pit was to the right.

So on he went, dragging a gaping Atar with him.

It was easy enough to bridge the distance with Unfettered Volition, the wild alterations to the ground barely hampering his speed. Felix readied a Skill, and he felt Atar muster his concentration and re-summon his fiery crown. But by the time they'd reached them, it was over. Yvette was down on the ground, a rapier and spear to her throat.

"You're all..." Felix smiled. "You're okay."

Pit ran up to him and jumped, putting his big paws on the Nym's shoulders in his excitement. The hidden tenku was streaked with blood and caking dirt, but his Health hadn't dipped too badly. Felix fished a monster core from his pack and surreptitiously fed it to the Chimera. Pit snatched it up, eating it in seconds, and hummed contentedly as threads of System power began to unspool within him.

+1 INT

+1 STR

"Well enough," Vess agreed, pausing to smile back at him. She was bleeding a bit from her left cheek, and her cloak had some new holes in it, but her Health was well above 80%. "Never had to fight a defensive specialist before. Harder than I expected."

"Highest flame, Alister, you're bleeding!" Atar rushed to the nobleman's side, but he was waved off.

"It's fine, Atar. Just got winged, is all," he said, but Felix felt a light trilling from his Spirit. It felt… pleased?

"Pretty boy over here took a wall spike for me," Evie said with a grin and a nudge at Alister's back. The young man blanched at the movement and had to put up his rapier. "My hero."

"I don't appreciate being in another's debt, Aren." He sheathed his rapier. "Now we're square. Ah! Lilian! Dabney!"

As the nobleman rushed over to a mound of rocks, Felix looked over to the other side of the enclosure. It had devolved into a cloud of stone dust and Mana vapor. He could feel someone moving about, but he wasn't entirely sure it was Harn. Silently, Felix stepped forward, putting himself between the cloud and his friends.

Then a body was sent sailing through the air, one in blue robes and run through by a large shard of ice. He landed hard in front of them without rolling, but Felix's Eye could tell the man was barely alive. Again. Blood poured from his many wounds, looking darker than it should have as it pooled beneath him. Emerging behind him was Harn, still fully armored, though his pauldrons and breastplate sported a savage-looking rent. Frost trailed from the man as he walked up to Elwick and put his boot down on his chest.

"EAAUUGH!"

The Guilder twitched several times but couldn't quite make his arms work well enough to push Harn's boot away. He resorted to writhing beneath it instead.

"You alright, Harn?" Evie asked. "Your armor's busted. I've never seen it busted before."

Harn tried to shrug and winced instead. He nodded to Atar, Alister, and the others. "Your captain packs a mean punch. Lucky fer me, it wasn't mean enough."

A discordant twang, like a steel string snapping, rippled through the air. Felix's ears perked up, and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end as that ambient heat he'd been feeling all this time turned into a bonfire. He shouted and pushed the others back, away from Elwick as the man's skin began to dry and blister beneath the invisible heat. Felix's nerves screamed out in pain, but he pushed it aside, muscled it into the back of his throat as he watched what happened next.

Elwick had started to convulse, and his body at first seemed to dehydrate and shrink beneath the unnatural heat. But what Felix had mistaken for blistering resolved into small thumbnail-sized callouses that surfaced on his exposed skin, overlapping and growing as the strangeness continued. That discord grew ever stronger, and within him, the whispering Maw snarled wordlessly.

This was the corruption. But it wasn't the Maw's.

This is something new...

Felix felt it like a figure standing at the edges of his vision, and as Elwick writhed and convulsed, it grew all the stronger. The man's body was looped and knotted with shimmering threads, enough to weigh down any person. Hundreds of them at least, each of them spreading far and wide in a web Felix couldn't hope to perceive in its entirety. A few of them radiated outward, binding Atar, Alister, Lilian, Dabney. But on Elwick and Yvette, the threads weren't silver, not anymore. They crawled with a dark crimson stain, corroded by it, yet paradoxically strengthened.

The threads extended into the distance toward the supposedly secret entrance they had used. Felix, unable to help himself, pushed. He followed the threads back, back until he sensed something holding onto these threads, a powerful figure that shone like the sun at dawn. Blinding, golden.

Master Tier.

Elder Teine, they'd called him.

Someone screamed.

Felix yanked himself back to reality and saw, to his horror, that Elwick had clambered back onto his feet. Only, it was not Elwick, not anymore. His bones had shifted and deformed, his once-handsome face splitting down the middle as the man's teeth fell out. The scaling of his face and arms was more complete now, darkening toward a rust-red color save for where slick veins pulsed obtrusively along the inner parts of his limbs.

"Kill… kill you… eat you..."

Elwick's face split open with a meaty hiss, and teeth the size of daggers leaped from hideous, newly formed gums.

"Kill you! Eat… you!"

Kill it, Felix! Destroy it!

Reign of Vellus!

Felix didn't need the Maw's increasingly vibrant advice to make a move. He gripped the newly born Revenant with his Will as lightning played along its battered armor. The robes burnt away under the barrage of azure electricity, but the hide beneath was tougher than it looked. A barrage of other Skills hit it moments later, fire and ice, stone and silver spear. But the thing did not buckle. The creature that was once Elwick took a single step forward, pushing at Felix with an overwhelming Strength. He had Reign of Vellus flare as hard as he could, but it barely inconvenienced it.

"Punish! Eat! Fee—!"

With a powerful swing, a silver axe bisected the monstrosity's neck. Elwick's deformed head hit the flagstones with a heavy, wet thud.

Then Yvette began to scream.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

The wall shuddered as Yvette's body writhed and burned on the ground. The steel of it expanded and contracted like a breathing organ in time with her gasping howls. It was the same, Felix saw, the same as Elwick.

The same as me, he feared, thinking on his transformation Skill.

Harn readied his axe and strode her way purposefully. "I'm endin' this. Be ready to run. The wall won't hold once she's dead."

"Run where? Not toward that… thing," Lilian panted. She had only just recovered a few percentages of her Mana and winced with the ever-screeching impact on the other side of the walls. "These monsters will tear us to pieces without Journeymen!"

"Then I hope you can run fast," Harn said.

The others started to shift, but Felix needed to understand. The connections he was seeing were Oaths, bindings that existed invisibly all around them. Context told him that, but there was also an intrinsic… knowing that he couldn't explain. Yet the red-stained strings confounded him… he knew they should be silver, like moonlight drawn into thread.

He needed to see again.

Straining his vision so much that spasms of pain clenched his brain, Felix tried to find that space beyond the physical world around him. It had felt so natural when he had looked at Elwick, but with Yvette, it felt like there was nothing to see. Just a woman shuddering on the ground as the stones baked with the unnatural heat she was emitting. The pain of his broken Skill came on again, and Harn stepped closer to the woman as if in slow motion. His axe lifted.

Pit let out a sharp, chirp-bark, and a deep vibration shook through their bond. Felix gasped, and suddenly could see.

The Domain was awash in those silvery lines. They threaded through and around everyone present, pushing through space as if physical reality were nothing more than Mana vapor. They wound around him, his friends, the Iron Rank Guilders, too...and Yvette was even more tangled than Elwick. Oaths bound her limbs like puppet strings, but one that was more concerning than all the rest. The string that was stained red, the burnt and pitted one that led all the way back to Elder Teine… it was not alone. A second dark string, thick as the first, extended into the near distance. Felix's eyes followed it. Very near.

Right to the Larval Ravager.

A pulse of unnerving crimson flashed down the string, traveling from the Ravager to Yvette, and Felix knew the change was accelerating without looking. The screaming of shearing chords as the power passed him was like stressed steel, and Felix felt the vision torn from him. He staggered, hand to his head, sight clearing just in time to see blood fountain into the broken ground.

Harn had cut the Guilder's head off.

"—lix! We run!"

Felix had barely registered the shout when the walls all around them dissolved into silvery vapor. The Revenants had piled against the Steel Fortification, and now that it disappeared, they descended like packs of wild dogs.

Atar dropped a series of Sparkbolts along their left and right, each one exploding in a tiny fireball. Revenants flinched back from it, but it barely scratched them. Instead, it set up the next attack, which was a line of bright blue columns that erupted in concussive upward force. Fanged jaws snapped shut, and clawed arms were wrenched askew, and the group kept running.

"We need to get out! Head for the collapsed wall!" Harn shouted, gesturing toward the "entrance" of the keep, where the sagging curtain wall had tumbled down. Revenants crowded in their way, but there were far more in the other direction. "Dabney! Be strategic with those walls! Atar save yer fire for sure-shots! Felix! Push ‘em back!"

"Earthen Bulwark!"

Reign of Vellus!

Dusty brown Mana surged with blue-white crackling lightning, slabs ripping up from the ground to block the faster Revenants. They weren't slowed down or particularly hurt, but it stalled them, keeping their slower members from getting gutted. More effective was the wall of kinetic force and sizzling lightning that swept outward. Felix was careful not to hit his allies, but otherwise dumped as much of his Mana into the blasts as he could. Revenants were bowled over by the Skill, their legs knocked from beneath them or otherwise bodily shoved back into the following horde.

Your Companion Pit Has Gained 1 Level!

He Is Now Level 24!

+2 PER! +2 VIT! +1 END! +2 INT! +3 WIL! +4 AGL! +4 DEX!

"SCREAAAAAW!" Pit surged with energy as he killed a wounded Revenant and screeched in triumph. Wingblades and Frost Spears blasted in all directions, focusing on those hurt most by Felix's power. His body even surged and ignited with a green fire at times as the tenku charged through downed enemies, his Poisonfire chewing through their scaled flesh better than his beak or claws.

Pit's Poisonfire is level 17!

Pit's Poisonfire is level 18!

They were doing it, but it was costing them dearly. Vess and Evie held the front, sweeping the relatively fewer creatures that opposed them there, while Harn focused his axes on those too strong to be deterred by their prowess. Lilian still huddled in the center of their formation, her face haggard and pale. She hadn't cast anything, Felix was sure. Dabney kept up his defensive Earthen Bulwark, but couldn't move it with him. He was forced to resummon it each time, blocking rushes from the sides but tearing through his Mana pool. Felix's Eye told him the kid couldn't keep it up for much longer.

Atar and Alister were in the rear with Felix, each pushing the offensive as best they could. Atar's Skills were better suited to mass combat, his fire spells perfect for bunched enemies, and the man's high Intelligence seemed to add heft to each strike. Allister had his kinetic columns, but he couldn't employ that often, it appeared, instead focusing on precision strikes of the same nature. Despite the blue potions they slugged back, both were running on the dregs of their power.

Felix checked his own Mana and was annoyed to see that he only had 400 points left, less than 25% of his total. He was regenerating fast, but his spell options were dwindling. So instead, he focused on his physical gifts.

Corrosive Strike uses the bare minimum of Mana, though I'll have to be sparing with Unfettered Volition. Felix gritted his teeth and danced out of the way of a Revenant's claws. Still, the creature tore three furrows in his jacket. Snarling with fury, Felix ducked close and laid the beast low with two Corrosive Strikes to the neck and chest. The Revenant, already wounded, split open like a rotten melon.

You Have Killed A Manawarped Revenant!

XP Earned!

Notifications like that were flooding in, too fast to keep track of, and Felix once again shunted his notifications to the side. The increase in power from them was not always worth the distraction they caused. Regardless, they were close. The exit was a mere hundred feet away, and after that Felix hoped they could escape into the fields of tall grasses. It would be hard to find anything in that. He—

"Trespassers… food!"

Without warning from his Perception or Skills, Felix was tackled from behind.

"Felix!" Someone shouted, but the sound was lost amid the roar and clatter of a dozen Revenants being bowled to the side. Felix was in the grip of something incredibly strong and fast, and when he hit the ground, they were easily fifteen yards away from his original position. They dropped to the earth in a wild roll, and whatever it was lost its hold on Felix, sending more Revenants to their knees as they tore through them separately.

Unfettered Volition!

Flaring his movement Skill, Felix arrested his movement and surged to his feet. He was well beyond the enemy line, closer to the Larval Ravager than to the exit. A jagged wound blazed in his side, and Felix sucked in a pained breath. He could move past the pain with Willpower and his Resistance, but it was bleeding badly. Revenants surrounded him, their split faces hissing, but they did not attack.

They're waiting, Felix realized.

"It wants you… it… takes you!" A monstrously large Revenant leaped into the small clearing, landing with enough force to break the stone beneath them. It was as scaled and hideous as the other Revenants, but the tattered pieces of robes and split remnants of a thick beard told him enough of who this was.

"Okar," Felix breathed. "Of course you're still alive."

* * *

Pit charged into the wrong-beast, body aflame, and used his claws to tear weeping gashes on their legs. The wrong-beast howled in pain and fury as its legs stopped working right, but Pit had moved on. There were so many to fight.

Poisonfire is level 19!

Rake is level 25!

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Tier in Rake!

You Gain:

+3 STR

+3 AGL

+3 END

Strength pulsed through him as the world whispered its secrets. Ever since he had met Felix, Pit had come to relish combat and the growth he inevitably experienced during it. With a minor effort of Will, spikes of ice manifested around the tenku and shot off. Each one hit a wrong-beast, their bodies so close together it was impossible to miss. The world told him more died each moment, their lives taken by Felix's friends and not-friends, and each one brought a tiny surge of that same strength.

Cry is level 27!

A quick, piercing call forced several Revenants to freeze in place, easy targets for Pit's Frost Spears and Wingblades. Though the Chimera's wings were hidden, the Skill still worked the same as he flexed them, launching spinning discs of compressed air Mana. The near-invisible blades scythed into the ranks, strong but still only strong enough to cut the scaled flesh of those closest.

As the Revenants dropped, and the world told him of their deaths, Pit saw something hit Felix in the back. His Companion was taken down, hurled headlong into the horde.

No!

Panic burst along their bond, along with pain and rage, all of it finding its sympathetic echo in Pit. Letting out an agonized howl, Pit ran to one of his Companion's friends. She was fighting with that long, sharp-toothed tail of hers, spinning it with deadly precision; she did not notice him.

Frost Spear!

The single large spear Pit conjured blasted through the enemy the Pretty Killer was attacking.

Frost Spear is level 25!

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Tier in Frost Spear!

You Gain:

+3 INT

+3 WIL

+3 PER

The tenku shrugged off the surge of power and screeched at the Pretty Killer. Startled, she looked up and finally noticed Pit's gaze, for the first time seeing where Felix had gone. "Man down! Felix got pulled into the horde!"

"Hold together!" the Metal Man grunted, each swing of his axe reaping a life. "Either Felix gets free, or he doesn't. We can't go after him."

"That's a damn fool thing to say," the Pretty Killer hissed, and after looking at the Dangerous One with the metal spears, they both took off.

"What're you doing? Where're you going!" The slender man-child wailed. "You can't leave us!"

"Hold together!" The Metal Man repeated. "Stay—Twin's teeth! Hold!"

Pit didn't listen. He didn't care. His Companion was in danger.

They dove into the horde, spells and claws swinging.

* * *

"RARGH!"

Felix felt the blow before he saw it, the force of it bending him double before a second strike sent him up into the air. He arced up like a sack of potatoes launched from a catapult. Wind whipped at his hair and clothes as he tried to pivot in midair. The ground rushed up fast, along with the grasping claws of a field of Revenants.

Reign of Vellus!

Unfettered Volition!

Flaring his Skill, Felix transferred his motion down into the crowd below, smashing several of the Revenants directly into the ground. Others were shoved back, stumbling from him as lightning surged in a ten-foot area. Felix still landed hard but on his feet, and a simple knee flex let him absorb what remained of his fall.

Stone Shaping!

Spikes of reshaped flagstone ripped upward, skewering the Revenants that surged around him. The hulking form of the Okar-Revenant ran toward him, plowing through the other monsters with a bull-like single-mindedness. Head and shoulders taller than the others of its kind, the Okar-Revenant sheared through them with each swing of its thick arms.

Stone Shaping!

A thick block of stone jerked upward from the ground, directly in the Okar-Revenant's way. The beast didn't stop its charge and simply smashed through it with a bloody lurch. But that was enough to distract it.

Influence of the Wisp!

Wrack and Ruin!

Manawarped Revenants (x4) Are Enthralled For 5 Seconds.

Blue flames erupted around Okar and a few of those closest to him. Their low Willpower was a weakness Felix could exploit, freezing them in place as he hurled a dark orb of concentrated acid at him. The first hit and splashed almost harmlessly against its chest, but the second started eating a hole in Okar's scaly abdomen.

Felix's Mana dwindled again, dropping faster and faster with each orb of acid. By the time Influence of the Wisp ran out, he barely had more than 5% of his Mana pool left. It'd regenerate, but he needed at least a minute to be useful.

The Okar-Revenant didn't give him that.

Screaming incoherently, the former Guilder bolted forward, eating up the distance between them as if it had never existed. Felix dodged back and to the left, but the damn thing was on top of him; he couldn't evade it. He had too little Mana to use Unfetted Volition, instead relying on his Agility and Endurance. But Okar was relentless; each dodge was met with a charge and a clawed slash, pushing Felix back further away from his friends and the exit.

"It… want!" Okar drooled through his ruined, malformed face. Its overlapping fangs destroyed most of what it tried to say, but the words repeated, over and over. Strike after strike. "It want!"

"Who wants?!" Felix shouted back, his hands moving fast to block the beast's attacks. Its claws tore his forearms repeatedly, blasting past his Armored Skin and ripping into his muscles.

Instead of answering, the Okar-Revenant lunged at Felix. The Nym leaped aside, but nearly tripped as his feet hit massive, torn-up blocks. Sparing a glance for his surroundings, he realized they had moved so far into the keep that there were barely any Revenants here at all.

BEWARE!

Senses screaming, Felix surged to the side, narrowly avoiding a tree-trunk sized tentacle slamming into the ground. With a rising horror, Felix saw that they were within reach of the Larval Revenant itself. Okar grunted and hissed through his wet face-hole, something sort of like laughter.

"It want you," it said.

Above him, a massive, watery eye ballooned into place on the Ravager's slick flesh. Blue-green swirls tightened around a dark pupil, fixated upon Felix. At the same time, he suddenly heard it. Like a trumpet in the dead of night. A call.

A challenge.

It cannot be allowed to live, Felix Nevarre, the Maw whispered. You know it. Destroy it, my Vessel.

Shut up, Felix snapped. He wished it was a lie, but the damn Primordial had a point. This thing was part of the Maw, somehow. To let it live would be a threat to everyone in the city when the Domain burst. The challenge repeated, and more sickening eyes grew atop the Larval Ravager's wormlike body, watching him.

Status Condition: Taunted

Felix was moving. Unfettered Volition turned mere thought to action, and the Nym put on a burst of speed that cared nothing for what was before him. Like a greased eel, Felix slipped between those few Revenants around him, leaping atop their heads and making a beeline for the worm-like body of this… this creature that dared defy him.

Reign of Vellus!

Shooting himself forward with a burst of kinetic energy, Felix cocked back an arm. The Larval Ravager was huge, its tube-like body as wide as a tower and just as tall. As it loomed closer, Felix gathered his Mana into a ball of acid he gripped tight in his fist.

Wrack and Ruin!

Corrosive Strike!

Acid sprayed along the plane of the beast as Felix's fist made contact with it's blubbery hide… and did nothing. Felix hung there, the dual power of his kinetic boost and rebuffed strike holding him aloft for a terrible, dreamlike moment.

A tentacle slammed into him.

*BOOM!*

Felix hit the ground hard enough to break it, the heavy cut stone tilting in line with his impact. A nest of uprooted blocks erupted around him as he laid there, too stunned to breathe or blink or think.

Health: 784/1093

Status Condition: Taunted

Has Been Interrupted

Then he could hear voices. A voice. One that should not ever have been talking to him.

The Maw was scolding him.

"—absolute buffoon! It is taunting you! Clear your mind! Steel this Bastion!"

"You're free..." Dread gripped his insides. The damage last time was terrible. Here, now it will be...

"Stop wasting time and focus! Felix Nevarre! Steel your Bastion!"

Snapped out of his doom spiral, Felix did just that. He flared his Bastion of Will, pushing to keep the Maw contained… except she hadn't escaped. She was still trapped beneath the earth, and as he looked for her the last vestiges of the Taunt dissipated. Felix pulled himself up from the ground.

"How are you speaking so clearly to me?" Felix asked.

"It is toying with you," the Maw said. "I know this."

"Great. You're ignoring me," Felix said.

"You saw it eating corpses, its own Revenants? It's devouring pieces of power. Pieces of Me. Each morsel of my energy builds its strength." The Maw's voice shook. Felix wasn't sure whether it was rage or, strangely, fear. The Primordial was regarding this thing the same way as it had the Whalemaw.

"It's turning into you?" Felix said with alarm, his worry over the Maw doubled.

"No, you dullard. It would need far more than morsels for that."

"Like if it ate me?" he asked.

The Maw went quiet. "I forbid you to be eaten, Felix Nevarre. This… abomination is a stain upon the Realm. End it."

Unfettered Volition!

"I'm glad I have your permission, then," Felix growled and started moving.

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

Pit was flying.

Clutched beneath the arm of the Dangerous One, Pit screeched in triumph and anger. They were close now to his Companion, to his desperate battle. They soared above the amassed wrong-beasts, lifted up by the Dangerous One's strange jumping ability. Her shiny weapons floated beside them, bobbing in the air but otherwise unfazed by their speedy ascent.

"It is time! Brace yourself!" The Dangerous One shouted to him, and as they had done twice now, she released the tenku from her grip. Disguise already banished, Pit spread his wings and glided alongside her for a moment.

"Dragon's Descent!"

With a burst of speed, the Dangerous One plummeted. All seven of her spears flashed forward, each embedding into the horde with meaty thunks and tortured screams. She landed an instant later, and the force of her impact sent the wrong-beasts scattering. She stood amid the gory wreckage and twirled her spear among a tiny forest of silver poles and writhing bodies.

"Come and fight, beasties."

The wrong-beasts around her, shocked at her entrance, roared and charged in. From above, Pit crowed again and unleashed a rain of Frost Spears.

Frost Spear is level 26!

Frost Spear is level 27!

More screams from the wrong-beasts, though this time it was pain rather than rage. Pit knew his attacks would not kill a healthy wrong-beast, but each strike added up. Of those more directly hurt by the Dangerous One, one or two Frost Spears could finish them. And Pit had Mana to spare.

Yet still they swarmed. Pit glided above, keeping to a circling pattern as the Dangerous One engaged the enemy, waiting for her next leap.

"Binding of the White Wastes!"

Icy chains burst from the ground, restraining several wrong-beasts as they rushed her. Their legs simply flash froze to the stone beneath, white fog boiling off of them. The Dangerous One looked up in relief, still whirling the one remaining spear in her hand.

"Watch ouuut! Breaking Wheel!"

Gray metal flashed by Pit's eyes, narrowly missing his pinions as the Pretty Killer dropped her lengthy chain. Somehow, she'd joined the ends so that it made a massive, bladed circle that fell with far more force than the slight female should be able to impart. Pit had seen this same move twice before, and it still astonished him.

Pit suddenly felt a wash of icy fear followed by a sudden spike of rage. A terrible pain tore at his chest. In the distance, Pit could see the writhing Bad Thing, but he could not see Felix.

Pit shrieked in fear. Felix was hurt! And… Pit could hear whispers through their bond. Soft, scratchy sounds that crept along the edges of it. The Enemy. It's awake. They were running out of time.

The chained wheel hit the earth like a thunderbolt. White chains shattered, as did the wrong-beasts beneath as the bladed chain tore through them. Four or five died, while more were ripped open by the oversized blades on the chain wheel. The wrong-beasts didn't scatter, there wasn't enough room on the field to do that, but they hesitated.

That was all they needed.

"Pierce the Sky!"

The Dangerous One rose from the earth like a bird as if she had grown her own pair of wings. Pit, still circling above them and growing lower and lower with each revolution, was plucked from the air by the female's skilled hands. Together, they ascended once more.

Behind them, the Pretty Killer followed, her body somehow lightened so that when she hurled her heavy chain into the sky, it yanked her from the earth's grasp. She was flung into the air like a ballista bolt, surging past the both of them with a speed that still surprised the tenku.

"Seven Tribulations." The Dangerous One whispered, so soft only Pit could hear her. Behind them, all seven silver spears exploded, shredding the Revenants and hurling them away.

We're coming, Felix! Pit pushed at their bond, sending his sensations as he felt them. We're coming!

* * *

Etheric Concordance is level 32!

Felix spat a stream of blood from his mouth, standing up from the cracked ground once more. A clutch of Revenants rushed him, those rare few still lingering around the Larval Ravager, but Felix didn't have the time.

Influence of the Wisp!

Influence of the Wisp is level 32!

The Revenants froze, each and every one. Wisplight ate at their scales, burning through their muscles and bones.

Reign of Vellus!

A wave of concussive force swept from Felix's right hand, impacting the Enthralled Revenants. Their bodies resisted for a brief instant before they burst into meaty paste.

You Have Killed A Manawarped Revenant x5!

XP Earned!

Panting, Felix let his arm drop. He was bone tired. He had driven off Okar, but Felix had an increasing suspicion that Okar had retreated purposefully. Just not for his own purpose.

Felix looked up, where the Larval Ravager still loomed. Somehow, the Ravager was controlling Okar and would have controlled the rest, too, had they lived. The how of it confounded Felix, and his Mind raced even as he dodged another volley of vicious bone spurs.

Unfettered Volition!

Sliding through the Ravager's offensive, Felix circled it, summoning a blast of concentrated kinetic energy. And lightning, one couldn't forget the incongruous lightning that wreathed Felix's hands.

Dodge is level 32!

Reign of Vellus!

Even as he let it loose at the base of the beast, Felix knew it wouldn't matter. The force of Reign of Vellus tore open a gushing wound in the Larval Ravager's side, but it began to seal back up in seconds. His attacks only functioned as a minor distraction, at best.

The damn thing wouldn't take damage properly. His acid did nothing, neither did his Stone Shaped spikes or freezing Mantle. He'd been bludgeoned and nearly crushed several times. The Larval Ravager's body wasn't fast, but its mouth tentacles made up for it. In addition, it could grow those bone spurs from its slick flesh.

Not fun.

When he had enough Mana to keep Unfettered Volition up, he could dodge them with relative ease. But early on, that meant his Mana kept bottoming out. Armored Skin had increased, of course. It was level 48 now. Closer to Tiering up, which would have been exciting had he even a single Essence Draught on him.

Reign of Vellus was the only skill he had that was even a little effective, but hitting it hard enough to truly damage the thing ate through his Mana fast. Felix's head ached as his Mana dropped low again, too low to keep Unfettered Volition running.

That heat, the radiation in the air, was providing some sort of regeneration to the beast. Anytime he hit it hard enough to bruise, its gaping mouth sucked in big gulps of air. To his Manasight, it was like a giant vacuum, sucking up the ambient Mana.

Like in the Vault. With the Maw.

Felix flared Meditation as best he could, but his Mana could only regenerate so fast. And his Health… he was below 50% already. The Nym needed a way to neutralize the beast, but it was a mountain. How did you fight a mountain?

Unbidden, Felix's mind teased at the mystery of the Revenants. Of Okar, Yvette, and Elwick. All of them had turned, transformed somehow into these things. It sent a very particular sort of terror through Felix, one he'd been avoiding thinking about. Dodging around the Larval Ravager though, freed up his Mind as his Body acted. What Lies Beneath was very similar to these Revenants. Not in appearance, of course, but the feeling in the air. That heat, that corruption. Somehow, the Larval Ravager had latched onto these creatures and turned them. Felix feared it had something to do with the Oathbindings the Guilders were under. But how could the Larval Ravager do that?

The Maw could manipulate the System. Alter it somehow, he mused, tucking into a roll and fetching up against the beast's mucus-coated hide. Could this thing do the same?

It's too weak to do that. It exploits the bonds, spreading its warped influence through Siva's damn strings. The Maw's voice was a surprise, though it shouldn't have been. It sounded pissed.

Siva? The goddess?

Who else? Even dead, She can't stop getting in my way.

Definitely pissed.

The Maw had become more and more verbal as the fight wore on. Three minutes in, and he wasn't sure which hurt more: his wounds or his ears.

Spiritual ears, he supposed and almost laughed. He was getting loopy.

What?

Nothing. Shut up. Listen, how do we kill this? Felix flared Unfettered Volition again and ran up its back, hopping between bone spurs as they regrew. Nothing I do is working!

You know what you must do, Felix Nevarre. You are simply too afraid to try.

Felix paused, almost disastrously, as the spur he stood up on was ejected from the Larval Ravager's body. Kicking off, he flipped backward and into its slick flesh, sliding down twenty feet before he fetched up against another spur.

It is the only way.

Felix didn't want to hear that. She (it!) had been pressing the issue since he swung his first punch. The Nym didn't have enough Strength to fight this battle, nor a proper weapon. Except that wasn't true; he had both. But the cost was terrifying. And the Maw was likely lying, leveraging the moment. Felix wasn't an idiot.

Still, he feared it was right.

Screaming. Far different than the howls of the Revenants, this was a painful shriek from close by. Still leap-frogging the bone spurs of the Ravager, Felix cast his Perception outward. There. Evie. Vess.

His stomach dropped as something in his chest burned. Pit!

He could feel Pit's fear. Separated by the horde, but he could sense the tenku coming to him, rushing as much as he could. But there wasn't enough time. His Companion couldn't overcome this beast, the same as Felix.

Not without sacrifices.

You should be used to sacrifices by now, Felix Nevarre. The Maw taunted.

"SHUT. UP." Felix panted, his mind whirling. They're all gonna die. Everyone he cared about in this dumb world. And he could stop it.

He could stop it.

What Dwells Beneath.

Through their connection, Pit cried out in fear, but it was too late. Pain clamped its jaws on Felix, as if every single part of himself was on fire. His flesh tore and lengthened, his skin hardening as it darkened toward leathery black. Spikes of bone tore from his forearms and elbows even as his fingers formed long, curved talons.

He screamed.

What Dwells Beneath is level 18!

Bloodline Progression is 51%

The scream drew the Ravager's attention. It had been toying with him, all this time, letting Felix wear himself out against its impervious hide. But something rattled the air as he shouted, something primal and entirely not Felix. A mouth-tendril whipped down at him, intent on smashing him into the ground once again. This time, however, was different.

Unfettered Volition!

Felix could no longer parry attacks, so he didn't bother trying. Instead, he vaulted the bone spurs around him, lashing outward with his talons and hit the tentacle straight on.

His claws sheared right through it.

Caustic blood drenched him as Felix's overhand strike carried through the limb like a hot knife through butter. It smelled of rot and rust, as if it were already partially congealed within its veins. It was delicious.

And he wanted more.

* * *

Pit felt it when Felix embraced his Enemy-form.

The sensation slithered around their bond like a serpent, an eel that clutched at their connection. It wasn't evil, not like the wrong-beasts or the Enemy, but it was dark and clawed. It was hungry.

He didn't like it. Moreover, Pit knew that Felix had issues resisting its call. The Enemy-form carried a tempting song, a chord that thrummed strangely against all the rest of his Skills. Perhaps the Enemy-form would win the fight… but Felix would need Pit in the end.

Yet they were blocked.

They were close, perhaps only another two jumps away, when the wrong-man had come for them. The females had hissed and shouted, but they met the wrong-man head on without flinching. His attacks were wide and sweeping, and he killed more Revenants than not with them, but the wrong-man was dangerous. Something about his scent and that rapid pulse in Pit's ears...

The females were hurt. Bloody from their long fights, tired from pushing themselves far harder than they should have. Pit tried to help, tried to use his own power to weaken and distract the wrong-man. But it was no use; the creature's hide was too tough for Pit's Skills to penetrate.

"Eat… grow… strong..." The thing panted, barely pausing between clawed strikes and kicks. The Pretty Killer moved fluidly, dodging nimbly out of its way as she brought her whirling chain to bear. When she smashed it across his chest, the wrong-man grabbed it, slicing his own unnatural hands to ribbons as he did so. "Eat...!"

"Eat this!"

Three silver spears shot into the wrong-man's chest, followed by a flurry of nearly invisible Wingblades. Then they exploded, the air Mana carving the wrong-man's abdomen to pieces. Dark, clotted blood poured from him in a heavy cascade, yet the wrong-man still stood. Still struggled.

"E… eat… stronger… feed—"

A Frost Spear, thick as a human's thigh, punched into the wrong-man's throat. Finally weakened by the females' attacks, it was enough.

You Have Killed A Manawarped Revenant!

XP Earned!

Pit shrieked, sharp and high. System power pooled in his core, reverberating against his flesh. He fixed the females with a sharp, golden eye and shrieked again.

"Right. Let us hurry," the Dangerous One said. She gathered Pit up in her arms again and launched up from the earth. Behind, following quickly after them, Pit could hear the Pretty Killer mutter to herself.

"Eat this?"

* * *

Strength surged through Felix's veins as a weighty feeling dropped into his gut. He sank his claws into the Ravager's flesh, just below its roaring, circular jaws and held himself there. A swirling power manifested above his core.

Monster essence.

The Larval Ravager quivered, all of its mouth tendrils spasming wildly. Thousands of tiny eyes bubbled up and formed beneath Felix, and he kicked at them with savage glee. They burst like enormous abscesses, pus and blood pouring down the already slick, pebbled hide. Felix felt strange, like his emotions were on a roller coaster. The essence coiled within him, boiling above his core fire. A wild, unnerving laugh shot out of his throat, insuppressible.

Something is wrong.

The Ravager twisted, its body moving as slow as a massive whale, but quite fast all the same. The great tube of its body, wormlike in composition, twisted on itself until he could see the many bone spurs forming upon a lower section… now directly beneath him.

The bone spurs launched, flashing upward with impressive strength. Felix hissed, his teeth dripping thick saliva as he spun, rolling out of the way even as he kept his razor-sharp claws embedded in the beast. Like cleats, he dug into the Ravager's skin, tearing chunks from it as the bone spurs bombarded him. The Ravager screamed as it impaled itself countless times over, the spurs sinking deep into it.

What Dwells Beneath is level 19!

Bloodline Progression is 52%

Yet Felix couldn't dodge them all. One spur after another slammed toward him, until he was thrown off the beast entirely.

Something is wrong!

Free-falling, Felix snarled at the oncoming bone spurs. The Larval Ravager had pulled itself high up, bending itself into the letter C in order to dislodge him. But he wouldn't relent. He couldn't.

Reign of Vellus!

Felix twisted in midair, using the kinetic shove of his power to reorient against the passing bone spurs. As another passed by him, dangerously close, Felix latched on with the Skill. He grabbed hold, letting its momentum slingshot up upward, back toward the Ravager's mouth.

Reign of Vellus is level 43!

Felix soared through the air, more free and more alive than he had felt in forever. His mind was clear, finally clean of anxiety and worry. In its place, he only felt a steady and warm hate, directly solely at the Larval Ravager. With more grace than he'd known he possessed, Felix leaped over a thrashing tentacle, sliding atop its slick surface as he rode his stolen kinetic force. Another tendril rose up, thicker than the rest, and Felix flared Reign of Vellus again. The burst of electricity gave him enough pushback that he reversed his course, though not before altering his angle and hurling himself further into the Ravager's range.

The tentacles writhed all around him. They shifted, fluid-like, consolidating from four dozen to a score of thicker appendages. Each and every one of these mouth-tentacles converged on Felix's course, and the real fun began.

Reign of Vellus is level 44!

Unfettered Volition is level 21!

The mad tempo of the fight continued. Felix ricocheted from one tentacle to another, never stopping longer than it took to reverse his path with an aimed blast of kinetic energy. Unfettered Volition proved more than useful as well, enhancing Felix's talent into a deadly grace. Understanding bloomed within his Mind and Spirit as he pressed the two Skills, leveraging them both for all the power he could grasp. Lightning crackled around his body, slithering up and down his limbs even as it set his nerves alight.

L18h7n/ng Re5/st4[]ce is level 26!

The agony of that level was finally enough to cut through the wild bloodlust. Felix blinked his eyes, feeling as if he'd woken from a disturbing dream. But then he was confronted with yet another tentacle, this one attempting to crush him between its limbs. Instead, Felix brandished his deadly talons, tearing deeply into the thicker tentacle so that its rotting blood poured out. It splashed all over him, a torrential downpour of effluvia.

It was so good.

Pain slithered up his back, but shifted to a sense of relief as something suddenly protruded from his spine. A wild glee surged once more in his Spirit, and the pain faded. There was only the pleasure of the hunt.

Of the kill.

What Dwells Beneath is level 20!

Bloodline Progression is 53%

He dipped and dove, altering his approach with precision blasts of Reign of Vellus. The Skill was more than the brute force implement he had made of it, and somewhere in his Mind he knew that. His Perception finally clear, he could utilize his Skill to its utmost.

But then, the Larval Ravager split its limbs up, banished its efforts at sturdier (and slower) attacks. Then it did it again, and again. And again. Until the air before him became an impenetrable net of waving tendrils, each one no thicker than his arm. They swung en masse for Felix.

He tore into them, pushing at them with Reign of Vellus. But the low intensity he'd been using only pushed them back slightly, like a sail on a ship. He hadn't the Mana to spare for greater workings, but his Mind didn't care for resource management. He had other ways to deal with this monster. His claws had proven quite effective.

The tendrils tore easily, his talons making them into little more than ruptured blood containers. The Larval Ravager bellowed in pain and… a surprised sort of rage.

"You didn't know I'd fight back?" Felix screamed. He spun atop the lip of the creature's open mouth. "You absolute shithead!"

Reign of Vellus!

Felix exploded upward, his ascent followed by the ozone smell of discharged lightning. A net of tendrils tried to grab him, but his talons and teeth shredded them even easier than the larger variations.

Do it, Felix Nevarre!

Without questioning, Felix spun himself, flipping in midair as he reached the zenith of his rise. He set off another kinetic push, launching off the writhing mass of tentacles above him. He shot, like a bullet, into the Larval Ravager's gullet.

The last thing he heard was the painful scream of some sort of bird.

Who is—

Then darkness.

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

The Larval Ravager teeth were many. Row after row of overlapping fangs twisted and clenched, some missing him by mere inches.

Others did not.

Armored Skin is level 47!

Armored Skin is level 48!

Armored Skin is level 49!

His arms and shoulders bore the worst of it, though the wounds started clotting almost immediately as the monster essence he held inside of him diminished rapidly. Minutes ago, he would have been confused, perhaps terrified by that detail. Now it was nothing more than a fact, one that meant he might succeed.

Short, tight bursts of Reign of Vellus sent him careening through the Ravager's throat. It spared him more injuries, at least until he cleared the last row of teeth. Then he met the pulsating esophagus of the beast, the wet, purple-red organ lined with massive thorns that rattled with its panicked breaths.

The Larval Ravager screamed, and the thorns rattled like a million maracas. Though he'd surprised the monster by his move, it wasn't taking it lying down. Half-summoned, his latest burst of kinetic force died on his fingertips, blown out like a match in a windstorm. A terrible buzzing crawled across his skin as Felix fell, ricocheting freely off the thorn-lined esophagus, a sound that pushed into his head like a drill. But all it found inside was the same inchoate noise, roared out from within his very Spirit.

Its (Her!) voice was a balm on Felix's senses, a music that somehow drowned out the deafening bellow of the Ravager. Felix heard the call in Her tone, the passion. Memories. Of all the beasts he'd fought, those few touched by Her song had formed a core of power. Solid and hidden, he somehow knew these cores fueled the abilities and transformation of Her progeny. Her children. This one was a fake, a pretender to the throne that She would not tolerate.

He knew what to do.

Blue lightning slashed to the rear, propelling Felix into the slick surface of the Ravager's innards. Talons of ebon night tore away at it, slipping at first, before catching and tearing. Ripping. Viscous, dark fluids poured out of the hole, and Felix couldn't help but laugh. He opened his mouth wide, teeth flashing in the aftershocks of his lightning, and he let the tumult cover him. Power, swirling clouds of essence formed within him, drawn from the beast's flesh. It gave him strength, more than enough to keep moving.

What Dwells Beneath is level 21!

Bloodline Progression is 63%

The flesh around him quivered and shook, but it could not dislodge him. What it could do, however, was heal rapidly. The fissures he created sealed quickly behind him, new fat and muscle reforming as the Ravager bellowed and sucked at the ambient Mana. Like a weevil in a wall, he burrowed deeper, fleeing the closing flesh while seeking the one thing his Mind, Spirit, and Body all screamed for: sustenance.

What Dwells Beneath is level 22!

Bloodline Progression is 64%

A heat stopped him. Not anything from among the Larval Ravager's organs, but from within. His chest. A… calling?

STOP!

He couldn't stop. That wasn't possible. He was so hungry.

REMEMBER!

The memory of feathers and fur stirred in him, of a beak that nipped his fingers. It had been hungry, too. Growing. He—

A pain clutched at his chest, and Felix curled up within the Ravager. Unnamed fluids pooled around him, drenching him, soaking his clothes. The pain was a hard, sharp stone jammed into his heart. No, five stones, gripping his chest as if to strangle. As if to rip something out.

The calling stopped, dimmed too dark, and so too did the pain. Neither faded, not completely. But it was enough for him to unclench his limbs and keep moving. Forward. Toward the core.

The Ravager's flesh was tough, resistant to all but the preternatural edge of his talons and teeth, so the going was slow. He moved like an eel, a snake, sliding his body along the path he forced open with the burning Strength in his arms and legs. His skin had become dark once more, rough like stone or bark, not quite scaled but a far cry from smooth.

Spurs of bone jutted along his forearms and legs, sharp nubs that aided him in his crawling advance even as they tore apart his jacket and trousers. Had his boots not given him incredible traction in the slimy confines, he would have kicked them free. His feet felt cramped, talons pressed tight against the enchanted material.

He felt like a new being. Strong and tireless, even when the Ravager attempted to bear down and kill him. Creatures came for him, mostly small and formed of chitinous knots of appendages surmounted by leech-like mouths. The moment he attained greater space, an abscess within the Ravager, these things came for him.

Parasites, She whispered in disdain. They are nothing.

And She was right.

The parasites fell before his claws, their strange bodies broken with a single strike. He ate one of them to sate his Hunger, but the taste was foul. Whatever they were, they tasted of refuse and waste. He ate two more just to be sure. More came, relentless, endless, but he plowed through them, digging deeper.

Notifications flared and passed as he moved and fought, simple things that the growing storm within him fueled. Felix tore stubborn pieces of fat and muscle from his path, often eating it with a squirming relish, pushing himself ever forward.

Blind Fighting is level 25!

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Tier in Blind Fighting!

You Gain:

+5 DEX

+10 PER

Unarmed Mastery is level 33!

Unfettered Volition is level 22!

What Dwells Beneath is level 23!

Bloodline Progression is 65%

Meaningless words. All that mattered to him was moving, pushing, eating. And the core. Soft, whispered words floated through his Mind, just as his Hunger pulsed within his Spirit. The Body followed, urged by the cravings that could not be denied.

The screeching split his concentration as he entered another abscess, its tone loud enough to distract. The parasite he fought, far larger than those previous, took the opportunity to slash open his chest. Felix flinched from the attack, hissing. A sense of desperation and fear inundated him, tumultuous emotions that muddled his mind.

STOP!

Enough! Felix snarled in his mind, ducking away from the parasites that tried to flank him. Multitudinous limbs flashed with sharp claws, their many eyes glowing in the fetid dark. Their bodies were knots of bone and gristle, large as they were, like skeletons made to an insane man's vision. But the creature in his mind could not be stopped. The wet world around him faded as light bloomed, and suddenly Felix was outside, looking through someone else's eyes.

He stood amidst the horde, now surging toward him and two others. Two women, different in many obvious ways but similar in conviction. Each held their weapons at the ready, their bodies low and grounded, ready for the fight. His not-eyes flicked between the oncoming monsters and the women, while surges of wild emotion flared in his chest.

Remember, Felix!

Etheric Concordance is level 33!

Etheric Concordance is level 34!

Tightness enveloped his heart, his connection. That tunnel of light flickered out once again, strangled by Her dark hand. Soft assurances snaked through his ears, redirecting the snap-back of foreign rage and dismay. Turned outward, toward the parasites that still accosted him.

Pain bloomed from his chest and hip, and Felix discovered more jagged wounds where his toughened flesh did not quite reach. Roaring in pain, he barreled forward, pushing off a slick protuberance and launching himself talons-first at a cluster of parasites. The creatures flailed defensively, scoring strikes against Felix's shoulders and arms, but their claws scraped harmlessly off. A flurry of wild swings eventually caught them, tearing off one of their many limbs and dumping their foul ichor into the cavity. Felix landed at the far end, injured but healing.

Several mouths screeched at him from across the abscess while the meaty walls pulsed like a heart. Corrupted Mana surged through the area, lighting everything with a bloody stain, and Felix turned just in time to see the parasites leap for him. They hit him like a speeding truck, driving him through the slick walls and into a cascade of violet ichor. They gripped him with bony appendages, lashing with wild abandon at his head and neck. Felix lifted his shoulders, protecting his neck from immediate harm, but the parasites were relentless.

Reign of Vellus!

A surge of lightning blasted the parasites from atop him, sending them flying much farther than Felix had anticipated. He rolled to his feet, surprised to find himself in a larger area, somewhere deep in the recesses of the Larval Ravager. Visible bones lined the walls, as if he'd entered some sort of rib cage… except it was only the size of a high school auditorium at best. Far too small to serve as a true rib cage to the beast.

A wet shuffling caught his ear, and through the swirling Mana, Felix could see the parasites gathering. There were far more than two. They drifted in from around the chamber, nightmarish skeleton monsters with too many eyes and too many limbs, skittering across the “walls.” A web of thick tendons sat in the center of the abscess, an organic pillar that stretched from the floor to the ceiling and which glowed with an erratic light. A dissonant hum filled the air, slithering through the space in a way that Felix found familiar.

There. Take it. TAKE IT!

Felix let out an excited shout and flowed forward, talons out and fangs bared in a wide grin. The parasites came at him like a tidal wave, but Felix did not stop.

Unfettered Volition!

Mantle of the Long Night!

A wave of icy chill spread out from his body, swirling like a maelstrom around him, and it hit the parasites hard. Immediately, he could sense them slowing, their bodies lagging as tendons and exposed joints stiffened. Felix hit them with his arms swept wide, letting his enhanced Strength and Endurance carry him through their ranks. They fell like bowling pins, Felix's charge knocking many off their feet while his talons cut through their bodies. A scythe upon wheat.

All too soon, it was over. Felix stood in the wreckage of their forms and panted, aching for more to appear. There was a thrill in his heart at the thought of more violence, a dark hunger to use his talons for their intended purpose. He almost stepped away, intent on finding more challenges, but Her voice brought him back. To the center.

You must free it, boy. Her voice was like honey, thick and slow and sweet upon his ears. Cut it free.

He did. His talons made short work of the tendons, and the flesh parted to reveal a large, glossy orb. It was lopsided, lumpy in a way that sent a shiver of unease through Felix, but the pure scent of its Mana made his mouth water. A deluge of concentrated Mana poured from the breached flesh, inundating him in its flow as he reached forward and plucked it free.

Name: Bloodstone (Greater)

Type: Core (Legendary)

Lore: A complete bloodstone. Made of a powerful creature's raw, immutable essence. This is a Greater version of it, and has been corrupted by a dark Intent.

BEWARE! YOU MUST HOLD ON! YOU—!

Felix clutched at his chest as the words pummeled his mind. He felt his Spirit quake beneath their intensity, and his grip upon the Bloodstone weakened. Then She choked the words from his Mind, until they were only an incessant roar at the back of his thoughts.

Ignore it! You must take this, Felix Nevarre. It is the only way to save them!

As if conjured by the words, the crystal clear memory of the Revenants rushing toward those people filled his mind. A deep, unreasoning panic settled into him. Felix's claws flexed against the Bloodstone and his heart thundered. Something about them…

It is the only way. Her voice explained, and for a brief, flickering second Felix thought he could see a gaunt hand lift the Bloodstone up to his mouth. You must devour it.

A long, slow blink. Felix felt twisted, turned around. His skin, rough and craggy, felt riddled with a maddening itch. His lips ached from where his teeth kept tearing them open. He—

I—

Ravenous Tithe.

The world began to rip apart all around him.

* * *

Pit stumbled, barely avoiding a wild thrust from a wrong-one. A series of Wingblades sent the creature reeling backward, thin lines of blood drawn across its chest. It also acted to propel Pit backward, away from the front line and behind the two women.

He landed hard and shook his avian head. A buzzing scream still echoed through his chest, a painful burr that sent rippling shocks down his spine. Pit keened, as he felt his connection to Felix dim like a guttering candle. Wrong-ones still swarmed, but Pit was on the ground, unable to defend as the pain blazed through him. The sound of metal above him was a distant event, the shouts of the Humans nearby mere echoes in his ears.

The earth shook hard enough to force Pit's eyes open again. A deep, cavernous bellow shook the air, and Pit looked up. The Enemy-worm, still looming high above them, flailed its mouth-tentacles wildly. The bellow was squeezed out of its drooling maw, and when it petered out, Pit's eyes widened in alarm.

Parts of the Enemy-worm began to turn to smoke, its massive body falling apart into crimson-streaked gouts of fog. Another tortured scream, this time from behind them, and Pit saw the remaining wrong-ones faltering and falling to their knees.

"What's happening?" The Pretty Killer asked, her face streaked with sweat and blood.

"I—I am not sure," the Dangerous One said. Her eyes were locked on the dissolving Enemy-worm, and Pit traced her gaze. The smoke was collapsing inward, as if pulled by a powerful breeze or… or it was being sucked in.

Felix.

With an exhausted, warbling chirp, Pit got back onto his feet. The women looked at him, and he chirped again while looking directly at the center of the smoke. Then he started running, heedless of whether they followed or not.

Felix was in trouble. That was all that mattered.

* * *

The power rushed into Felix, sparking along his channels like an intoxicating draught. First the Bloodstone dissolved, rushing into his core with remarkable ease, but then the rest of the Larval Ravager followed. It was far more monster essence than he had ever taken in at once, and as the pressure built, Felix feared he wouldn't be able to take it.

The Larval Ravager bellowed, but it was a terrified gasp as it finally gave up the ghost. The flesh around him rotted away into that thick, pungent smoke.

He—

Where was he?

Felix's eyes widened in alarm as he realized he was suspended several stories above the ground. He was held in place only by a tether of impossible power that even still poured into him.

So much.

So much.

Bloodline Progression is 66%

Bloodline Progression is 67%

He couldn't contain it. The essence pooled above his core, stretching his internal space, pushing him toward a breaking point he'd never considered, never thought he'd reach. His channels throbbed with agony as the essence moved through even there, gouging looping patterns out within his Spirit. It felt as if his entire body was being stretched and torn, pushed beyond its capacity in the most brutal of ways.

What Dwells Beneath is level 24!

Bloodline Progression is 68%

Awake at last, Felix could feel the transformation pushing to completion almost as fast as his Bloodline Progression. Unable to breathe or speak, he felt a savage terror take hold of him as his skin darkened across his chest and abdomen. His bones creaked as they twisted, shifting into stranger, more bestial shapes. A scream arose, but it could not escape, instead burning within his chest like a bomb. He shook like a leaf in the wind.

Felix...!

A flickering sensation ignited within his chest, just left of his tortured screams. Worry, doubt, fear, and a deep affection spilled out from that light, though something tried to cut it off. Furious, Felix sought the connection, pulling back at it. Something resisted him, something strong, but he pulled hard enough that a flash of blazing light burned through. Felix could feel the desperate passion of his Companion. Briefly, his Mind cleared.

Etheric Concordance is level 35!

Etheric Concordance is level 36!

PIT!

FELIX! His name was bright upon Pit's mind, though the rest of his intent was merely a jumble of images. A collection of stars in the sky, of a bonfire burning in the dark, and of… of lightning...

A desperate, pained hiss sounded all around him, and the connection with his Companion dimmed once more. Unable to spare it any thought, Felix bore down on Pit's message. It was clear what the tenku was saying, but why...? Felix dove into his core, Fire Within flaring.

An immense nebula of shimmering essence literally crackled with a virulent potency above his core fire. His Skills revolved around him, each of varying brightness and intensity, each humming a slightly different tone. The essence was pushing at the darkness, straining it as it grew with every passing second. And—

And tendrils of that smoke were being siphoned off. Directly into—

What Dwells Beneath, Felix breathed. You piece of—MAW!

A delighted chuckle rose from the darkness, pulsing from his Bastion of Will like a whisper of wind. The siphoning did not stop, only increased.

What Dwells Beneath is level 25!

Bloodline Progression is 69%

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Tier in What Dwells Beneath!

YoU? //)N>>

ERROR!

ERROR!

ERROR!

Synergy Detected!

What Dwells Beneath Is Compatible With Multiple Skills!

Do You Wish To Evolve?

Y/N

No! Felix reached out and grasped part of the essence himself, pulling on it to redirect toward his core fire. Tendrils of the essence dipped below and were consumed almost instantly, but it was too little. The pressure kept building, threatening to rip him apart.

What Dwells Beneath is level 26!

Bloodline Progression is 70%

What Dwells Beneath is level 27!

Bloodline Progression is 71%

Stop! You can't do this!

I can, hissed the Maw, an edge to its voice. This is my power, after all!

Felix gripped the clouds of essence and wrestled with it. Flaring his Willpower, he maneuvered great chunks of the power into his core flame, digesting the condensing essence as fast as he could.

Fire Within is level 45!

Fire Within is level 46!

What Dwells Beneath is level 29!

Bloodline Progression is 73%

Felix felt the shift covering his body more and more completely. The pain spiked through him, terrible schisms within his bones and muscles as altered composition. Something much deeper than a few claws was happening, and Felix felt his knees weaken. He couldn't contain it, neither the essence or the rapid progression of his monstrous nature. Even the pieces of essence he'd managed to digest were too condensed and wild for him to do much more than store within himself.

I have to hold it. Lights flashed across his eyes, his Skills revolving ever faster as the pressure built within his core. But the rest...

The rest of the monster essence, still streaming in, was too much for him. Too much for anyone, he wagered. And the taint to it, the corruption that stained the essence was not something just anyone could take into themselves. Not unless they were already infected by it. It was a stroke of luck that he could handle this much at all. That he—

What Dwells Beneath is level 31!

Bloodline Progression is 75%

His core shuddered.

What?

The blue-white fire below, surmounted by bolts of azure lightning, had shifted its radiance. It had taken on a distinct purple hue. Whirling his perception, Felix saw that the essence funneling into his Unique Skill was overflowing, its power spreading around his core like a crimson stain. And it was growing.

What have you done! Felix shouted.

Only what I must, the Maw whispered back at him. This is not my end, Felix Nevarre. I am… sorry it must be yours. But at least you will not be alone.

It was trying to make him into a Revenant, or something like it. Trying to stain him. Turn him into a perfect Vessel, once and for all. And—his vision split, Felix's Mind snapping into place with a resonant thrum. Silver strings were all around him, more than a few connected to himself. The corruption had started to creep along his Oath strings, too… steadily corroding them.

Heading for his friends.

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

No!

Felix wrestled with the streaming essence, fighting to halt the corrosion of his Oath strings. But even his potent Willpower couldn't muscle past the Primordial's powerful grip. The Maw had too much leverage over Felix's Body. Somehow, the thing was utilizing his own strength against him.

Just stand down, Felix Nevarre. You cannot surpass me. You wasted your time among mortal society when you could have been training yourself to withstand me, fool. Now, my influence grows with each level, and soon you will be but a shadow in MY Mind.

Felix felt the Maw's certainty like a blow to the skull. He went reeling through his core. The crimson nebula above him flashed with iridescent Mana flows, the screaming pressure of its increasing bulk a constant burr in his Spirit. Dimly, he could still feel Pit shouting his emotions across their bond, panic and anger the greatest of them.

He glanced about himself, hoping to see something he could use, but was only confronted by the shimmering vista of his Skills as they revolved around his core fire. Planets around a burning star. He needed a way to stop the Maw's control of the monster essence. A way to weaken it. Or… a distraction.

That's it. Felix grit his teeth and summoned his Status. He hoped he was making the right decision.

With a thought, he dumped all 40 bonus points into Willpower.

WIL: 340 (385)

A distant, rising song broke through the churning darkness around his core. A symphonic chorus that shouted out a glorious refrain, a cadence that folded upon itself as it flooded his core like light from the dawning sun.

You dimwitted boy! The Maw screeched across his core. Nothing more than a voice, Felix could still sense its attention was fixed upon the approaching light. You stupid, foolish child! You are rife with my power! This will not save you! It will kill you!

He hadn't thought of that.

The light hit.

It blasted forth from the cloying darkness around his core, almost colorless despite its warmth. A radiance that moved like liquid light in a raging torrent. A majestic chord rose up within that song, bursting into a crescendo that nearly knocked Felix from his own core. He had to hang on, tooth and nail, he had to continue to see. To visualize what it was doing.

As always, the System power hit his core fire, then radiated outward like ripples in a pond. Once the colorless light hit that blaze, it changed somehow. No longer colorless, it flashed blue and gold, familiar colors to Felix. The same colors he'd see when his abilities went… weird. The blue and gold washed back outward, and Felix could feel his Mind and Spirit strengthen. Willpower, after all, was a piece of both Aspects.

Then the power hit the clouds of monster essence and the power of the Maw, and the world stuttered into buzzing static. The song collided with the Maw's dissonance with a thunderclap, loud enough to shake Felix's soul. Blue and red lightning lashed outward at their point of connection as the two sounds fought for supremacy within the Nym. Pain blazed across his Mind, Body, and Spirit as if he'd put his tongue on an exposed power line.

The Maw roared in rage, pitting its will against the influx of the System. The gold and blue light was a cresting wave, powerful but not endless. The Maw was going to win against it, that was clear. But for now, it no longer held the reins.

Dizzy from the dissonant battle within, Felix reached out to the nebula of monster essence and halted it. The advancing corruption of his binding Oaths stopped, but the pain of wrangling the Maw's corrosive power sent shivers of virulent hunger through him. Felix could feel his body weeping blood as capillaries burst and flesh tore. But he held it, and with an almighty heave, Felix started pulling the essence back from his Unique Skill and core.

It won't… work, the Maw panted, still opposing the harmonic System energy. Redirect it… however you wish, what's done is done. This city is doomed. You were… never meant to succeed against me. Fate is mine. You are mine.

Felix's Mind burned. He knew he had moments of strength left, slivers of time before the Maw finished with the System's power and turned its will upon him. His will, stolen and repurposed against him. He was fighting himself, more than the Maw, and after weeks of being upon the Continent he had grown strong. Powerful. How could he defeat himself? How—

Shock burned through his chest, the faint echo of a tenku's determination, and his own gasp of revelation.

I am eternal and unending. Confluence-born, I am the last of my kind for a reason! Not even the Ruin could stop me! The Maw preened, squashing the last of the System harmonics with a flare of its stolen Will. Of all my siblings, I am the last. The survivor, always the survivor.

Patterns of light shifted behind the Maw's presence, only now taking the form of a desiccated woman with hair that flowed in its own breeze. At first brown, then blonde, then black, it changed constantly and fluidly. The revolving lights of his Skills cast wild shadows on its features, draping them with shadows by turns.

You have chained me up for the final time, Felix Nevarre, it snarled. Now you shall feel the pain of bondage. Now you shall be my Vessel in truth. I—

A pattern of light stopped near her, a flickering symbol that sparked like faulty wiring. The Maw glanced down at it, confused.

What is this? NO—!

With a salvo of Will, Felix gripped the Skill and broke it down the middle.

EEEUUUUAAAAGH!

The Maw went into convulsions, pain blasting through it as the Skill was sundered. The light within the pattern dimmed, guttering but not extinguishing. Not yet. Felix marshaled his Willpower and Alacrity, holding the Skill on the cusp of true sundering.

Lightning Resistance, for the base. Felix grunted as he drew the others to him. Acid, Cold, Heat, Fire, Poison and Pain Resistance each followed, snatched from their orbits to press against the bucking remnants of Lightning Resistance. And...

Still in control of the nebula, Felix poured a torrent of corrupted essence into the broken Skill. Like parched earth, it soaked up everything.

SYNERGY DETECTED!

The Skills Acid, Cold, Heat, Fire, Poison, and Pain Resistance Have Synergy With Lightning Resistance!

Do You Wish To Evolve Them?

Warning! Evolution May Result In Death And Cannot Be Stopped Once Begun.

All Choices Have Consequences.

Continue?

Y/N

YES!

Evolution In Process...

* * *

The Revenants scattered around Pit as he ran, as heedless of them as they were of him. Evie and Vess were right behind the Chimera, their weapons gripped tight in case the monsters tried anything. None did. They fled the smoking corpse of their master, even now dissolving into nothing.

Eaten.

Only distant traces of smoke remained, and they snaked their way across the destroyed courtyard and into the figure that hovered far above them all. A corona of crimson light played around Felix's features as the smoke was pulled into his mouth, his body arced almost in half.

"Blind gods," Vess murmured. "What is happening?"

"I don't know," Evie said. Felix had never mentioned anything like… this before. She looked to Pit, who hadn't stopped. He was several spans ahead, leaping over rubble with several flaps of his impressive wings. The Chimera let out a keening noise, a sad sorta chirp that hurt her heart to hear. "Whatever it is, it ain't good."

"That's an understatement."

Evie swiveled, chain unhooked before she realized it was Harn. He'd come after them, little Iron Rank Guilders in tow. "Harn. What can we do? Do you know what's happening?"

The armored warrior shook his head, the plates of his gorget and helm scraping noisily together. The man had taken more damage than Evie had thought. "Never seen its like. But I know ominous when I see it, and that," he pointed at Felix's hovering form, smoke swirling around him and illuminated by flashes of red lightning. "Yyero's hairy backside, that's bad."

"You know what 'ominous' means?" Lilian said nastily from behind him. Alister shushed her, loudly.

Harn didn't even give them a glance. "We need ta get him down, quick. Vess, you can—"

Pit let loose a loud, shrieking cry. It was so sharp it hurt Evie's ears, but was underlaid by a basso thrum that made her teeth vibrate. Above them, Felix started to thrash in place, and the red lightning was joined by jagged blue. The Chimera reared back, forepaws clawing at the air as his wings beat impotently. It broke her heart.

"C'mon," she said, grabbing their attention again. "We've gotta save him."

* * *

Still holding onto the sundered Skill, keeping it from falling apart completely, Felix listened for the pattern. He'd spent hours leveling the Skill, familiarizing himself with its sound, its signature. He needed to make sure that...

There!

Exactly where he'd heard it before. The joining point. The bridge.

Essence pouring into it, turning the pattern of the Skill malleable, Felix maneuvered Heat Resistance until it overlapped the Skill. The two joined easily, as if they were meant to be together. Their pattern sang like a chorus, a sudden harmony that cut through the mind-numbing pain.

Y-you can't do this! You are mine! The Maw, crawling like a wounded animal, let out a bellowing roar that was squeezed into a pained gasp. You—!

The nebula writhed in Felix's grip, and despite his Will, streamers of it began to peel off. The essence twisted, forming itself into spikes, shards of discordant fury and barbed coils that launched at Felix's Spirit and Mind. The agony bloomed bright, sending terrible ripples through his concentration.

I'd rather tear us both apart than let you cage me again!

The corrupted, shaped essence surged for him again, and Felix wasn't sure he'd be able to keep hold of his sundered Skill when they hit. But he was overextended, unable to counter. He braced himself for the pain.

CONVERGENCE!

White light flashed through his core, tracing through the darkness like veins of illumination. Felix's chest swelled at the feeling of his friend returning to him again.

Felix!

Pit! Focus on the Maw! I have to—

Yes! Fight the Enemy!

Good boy. With Pit here, he knew he could do what he must. His Companion would watch his back.

* * *

As their joined Harmonic Stats shot upward, Pit reveled in his newfound power. Converged, he was Felix to an extent, but still possessed his own Mind, his own desires. And now, those desired turned toward the Enemy. It was wracked with pain, convulsing before the splitting Skills Felix was attending. Pit had no sympathy for the creature; it was the Enemy, one who had been hunting his Companion for far too long.

It was time to end it.

Reaching for Felix's Mana pool, Pit stumbled when he found his senses… expanded. Their combined Harmonic Stats afforded them significant strength, but what caught his attention was their Affinity. It was a stat rarely used by either of them, and Pit knew of it almost instinctively. It was their connection to the world around them.

Blooming before their eyes, threads of every hue imaginable extended outward. Silver, blue, green-gold, a spectrum of colors for which neither Pit nor Felix had names. They thrummed with vibrations, strange and sublime. One thread, brilliant and strong, looped through their chest as if it began and ended with themselves.

Bond, Pit knew. Our bond.

Just left of that brilliant thread, though, were a tangle of darkened lines. They were sunk deep within their chest, buried in the gristle of their flesh and bones and more. Pit touched those threads, dark as pitch with the slightest sheen of crimson, and to Pit's surprise, the Enemy quaked. They trembled with weakness and fear beyond what Felix had done to them. It was a fear that quickly turned to rage.

Watch yourself, creature! The Enemy's will was enough to knock the threads from Pit's grasp, where they dissolved back into their chest as if they had never been. You step too far!

Even hurt and twitching from Felix's efforts, the creature was strong enough to hurl the ethereal edges of monstrous essence at them. Its power bore down upon them, looking to break them under the deluge.

Come! Pit cried in challenge. Fight!

* * *

Felix dropped his attention back to his efforts, and thankfully the other Skills sounded out in short order. Fire melded with Heat Resistance and Lightning, a Venn diagram of both, while Acid and Cold touched upon only portions of Heat's pattern. Poison was harder, and Felix felt his Body bleed and sweat as the Maw engaged Pit in a fight. The tenku was draining his somewhat recovered Mana fast, something he didn't even know could happen with their bond. But Felix couldn't focus on their conflict. He had to trust his Companion to protect him.

He dove deeper, tracing the rhythms and chords of each complex Skill. Then he found it. Poison Resistance, along with Pain Resistance, were background noise to his Body, a rhythm that was less pronounced and more… fundamental to who he was. Who he had become.

They meshed. All of them. Finally.

A song erupted from the joined Skills. It was...joyous. An exultation of defiance. A hymn of struggle, of battle, of… haha yes!... of resistance.

Power flooded the Skill, essence draining from his nebula faster and faster. The song of it rose higher, a resounding drum beat upon the surface of his inner cosmos. The new, brilliant pattern flared with impossible light, rainbow hues that shifted within that brightness like oil. Felix felt as if his heart would burst.

He felt remade.

Evolution Complete!

You Have Formed A New Skill!

Average Level Has Been Retained!

The Song of Absolution (Legendary), Level 31!

A song dwells within you, a melody impervious to the elements or the discomforts of the flesh. Sing on, Chanter, sing on.

Felix gasped, his Spirit and Body quaking beneath the onslaught of energies. He felt strength drain from him as his combined Skills lost their Tier bonuses, even as a new strength replaced it.

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Tier with The Song of Absolution!

You Gain:

+5% WIL

+5% VIT

+5% END

Watch out!

With a trill of birdsong, Felix was shoved aside as a wave of corrosive essence struck him in the shoulder. Vertigo sent him reeling, the spinning Skill before him flaring sun-bright for a moment before the song faded. His consciousness dipped into darkness.

Moments or minutes later, Felix became dimly aware he was moving. His arms turned and twisted, shifting in complex patterns as Mana discharged from his fists. Then something hit him, a burning, sizzling sensation across his ribs. Awareness returned all at once: he was still within his own core, and Pit… Pit was fighting the Maw, with his body.

Sort of body, anyway. He was a mental projection, as far as he knew. But with their Etheric Concordance, Pit was one with him in any form.

Etheric Concordance is level 37!

Etheric Concordance is level 38!

Their body dropped, nearly plunging into his core fire, as a spike of bubbling crimson essence ripped through their previous position. Pit!

Awake?

Yeah I'm awake, what— They dove to the side, and a wave of corrosive power swept nearby. What is happening?

You slept after evolution. Pit’s voice in this place was a rush of birdsong that revealed words within it. The song sounded pained. I have fought.

Your diction's getting better… but you're hurt.

Only little. Enemy strong, but weak.

Let me drive, then. Felix exerted his Will and found his projected body back under his own control. Another ripple of barbed essence was coming at him, and with a grunt, he flared his inner fire. Below them, his core fire burst upward, hissing as it ate away at the monstrous essence.

But not all of it.

Felix was gut punched by the bulk of the essence, still whole after his offensive. Immediately, the essence latched onto him, gripping his arms and legs with bands stronger than iron and filling his ears with the sound of a thousand droning insects. A short distance away, the Maw manifested as a ghostly visage more skeleton than flesh; a bare sketch of what was once the Nymean named Lhel. Despite her near-translucency, her words practically dripped from her mouth, heavy with venom and vitriol.

You've wronged me for the last time, Felix Nevarre. You will submit to me, fully and completely. No more surprises, no more tricks.

"And why would I do that?" Felix asked, testing his bonds. They were immovable, completely resistant to any force he could bring to bear. "I've fought you this long, why wouldn't I fight a little bit longer? I've already proved I'd rather die than let you live."

Because, the Maw drawled as she drifted toward him. Behind her came the undulating force of what remained of the Larval Ravager's essence, an amount that surprised Felix. There had to be at least four or five standard monsters worth of essence, based on the Claude-scale he'd cobbled together. Because if you do, I will not infect your pitiful friends.

She leaned in, close enough for Felix to see her innumerable teeth. A never-ending field of fangs. And if you don't, I'll tear your little Pit out of your chest right here, right now.

Felix felt Pit's terror, an echo of his own that drove it even higher. Their bond was a bonfire in his chest, feeding them both emotions and thoughts, sensations and… and he couldn't afford to lose that. Felix could feel the Maw, feel it in a way that he never had before. His Affinity, heightened as it was, could sense in the discordant tattoo of the Primordial's inner rhythms that it was not lying. The vicious creature would do it.

Lies. Pit sang at him. Weak.

Pit, I—I can't lose you.

Look, Pit insisted.

Pit, no. I can't—

LOOK!

Their bond flared, becoming almost physical to his sense of Affinity… along with dozens of others. Cables thick and thin extended outward from Felix's body, real or not, in a vast network that seemed to extend into eternity. Among them were the silver strings of his Oaths, and those sworn to him, but also a bevy of others. Hundreds, thousands perhaps.

My… connections?

The Maw's jagged smile twitched and twisted. Why do you hesitate, little Nym? I told you that your tricks will not be tolerated. You are under my control, utterly and without recourse. Save for submission to my Will.

Speak, it snapped when he didn't respond. The barbed essence crawled over the skin of his neck, the razor edge of it burrowing into his skin. Though it wasn't his true body, Felix felt it just the same. He gasped in sudden pain, a burning flame eating through his muscles and tendons. But his eyes could not leave his new vista, for he saw more than his own.

The Maw had connections, too. They were fewer and the threads less vibrant, but they were there, woven around and through the Maw's decrepit form. And—

Speak, or I'll burn that beast out of your Spirit like the parasite it is!

He saw it.

The black threads, soaked in dark, rusted red.

The link.

"Maw," Felix croaked. His not-mouth was dry, for some reason. "You've given me no choice. And I..."

SPEAK! The Maw's skeletal visage twisted, mouth open, fangs dripping.

"I'm not sorry."

What?

Gripping them in his mind, Felix tore the black threads free of his chest.

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

The Revenants were running. Vess' spears caught two of them in their variegated backs, tips piercing their scaled hides. The subsequent explosions of air Mana shredded one completely and brought the other to the ground.

You Have Killed A Manawarped Revenant!

XP Earned!

Spear of Tribulations is level 48!

The other Revenants didn't even bother stopping. They fled in a mad dash, down the steep tunnel left by the Larval Ravager's evaporated body. It was easy enough to send a final spear to finish the downed monster.

You Have Killed A Manawarped Revenant!

XP Earned!

You Have Gained 1 Level!

You Are Now Level 35!

You Have 9 Unused Stat Points!

The energy of the gods rushed through her veins, buoying her spirits for a brief, powerful moment. Then it fled back to the heavens once again. She came back down, and Vess panted with Mana and Stamina drain.

Three levels in as many hours, and dozens of Skill gains. This is a far harder Domain than Pax'Vrell offers.

Admittedly, that was likely because Pax'Vrell didn't have legions of mutated Manawarped creatures infesting it. The challenge they had presented had her Skills advancing at a rapid pace. Dragoon's Footwork, Pierce the Sky, Dragon's Descent, and even her Elemental Eye had all jumped at least five levels. Spear of Tribulations, her lone Legendary Skill, was nearly Journeyman Tier!

But the reality of her situation was less exciting, and far more grim.

Turning back, Vess saw her friends strung out among the broken courtyard, each picking off stray Revenants as they fled. They were almost all injured, their armor and robes showing more than a little sign of the battles they'd undergone. The Iron Rank Guilders, Lilian and Dabney were both in better condition than the rest, though the young man looked as exhausted as Vess felt. Alister and Atar, along with Evie and herself, had put up much of the offense in this last push, not to mention the rush to reach Felix.

Felix...

The man was still hovering nearly fifty feet above the ground, suspending by… something? Her Elemental Eye couldn't pierce the veil of swirling black smoke that, for some reason, had yet to dissipate. Instead, it crackled with red and blue lightning, discharges of intense power.

Ever since Pit had disappeared a few minutes ago, it was as if Felix had become frozen up there in the sky. Vess had been concerned when the Chimera had vanished, but reminded herself that it was a feature of their shared Skill. Now, they had to figure out how to help him.

"Just jump up there," Harn said, gesturing to Felix. "Whatever's happening doesn't look good. I can't Analyze him fer some reason, but it don't take a scholar to know he's hurtin'."

"Jump up there? And what, get electrocuted?" Evie scoffed, though her eyes flicked guiltily toward Felix's arched form, his face (what little they could see) frozen in a grimace of pain. "We don't know what's happening to him!"

"Whatever it is, we gotta keep movin'. We don't got a lotta time." Harn tapped his belt where his wardstone sat. Vess had checked it only moments ago. They had a little over three glasses until its protection faded. And then...

"What does that mean?" Lilian demanded, her voice shrill. Harn grunted noncommittally but otherwise ignored her. "Excuse me! I asked a question!"

"Lilian, stop," Atar warned waspishly. The man's curled blond locks were askew and horribly frizzy. If he had possessed a mirror, Vess imagined his mood would be a great deal more sour.

"Stuff it up your robes, Atar!" Lilian stomped forward, her sleight five-span form barely reaching Harn's chest as she thrust her finger in his face. "You need to explain! I wake up after helping Yvette keep us alive to find you killing her and the Captain! I'll not have you plotting to kill us, too!"

"You think if we wanted you dead, we wouldn't have done that already?" Evie said, the blood on her face making her grin positively ghoulish. "You think you could face me, let alone the Onslaught?"

"Enough!"

Atar pushed the both of them apart, though for her part, Evie clearly let it happen. Vess knew she could have refused to move for the fire mage; he did not have the brawn to face her physically.

"We're not gonna bicker! We can't! Not if we want to survive this place." Atar scratched at his forearms, where Vess could see the skin had reddened and flaked. Like a sunburn or rash. She quickly spotted a similar burn on all of the Guilders.

Evidence of the Domain's corrupting influence? Vess had felt the burning sensation in the air, but it was nothing more than that. Her wardstone protected her from the worst of it, but the Guilders had nothing of the sort.

Avet's teeth. Vess rarely cursed, but she felt it appropriate. We have to get them out of here.

"Fine! No bickering!" Lilian threw up her hands, her robes flaring as she spun in a frustrated half-turn. "Just answer me truthfully, Onslaught: did you kill the Inquisitors that were outside the Domain?"

"Lilian!" Atar hissed, but stopped when Alister touched his shoulder.

"Let her ask. We need to know," the young nobleman said. "Answer, if you please, Ser Kastos."

Out of the corner of her eye, Vess saw Evie grip her spiked chain. Purple-white Mana crawled along her forearms as she primed a Skill. Her own conjured spear floated alongside her. If they attacked, they'd be ready.

Please do not attack, she silently pled. Believe Harn's words. Do not make us—

"Yes," Harn said, surprising them all. "Yes, we killed them."

Siva's grace, Harn. Vess' Elemental Eye picked out surges of Mana gathering within the Guilders' auras. They were just as ready for this fight.

"And you were sent in here ta sweep up intruders, right?" Harn continued, and Alister gave the man a sharp look. That surprised him.

Slowly, Alister nodded. "Elder Teine's orders."

"Did Teine tell you this was in here?" Harn gestured to the smoking Revenant corpses all around them. "Did he prep you at all for it?"

The Iron Ranks didn't answer, but it was clear. The Elder had done neither.

"We're here because this Domain's goin' ta shit," Harn said, sheathing his two axes at his waist. "The shell is gonna burst soon, and we gotta stop it."

Atar's eye's fairly bulged from his skull at that. "What? The shell—? If that bursts, then—!"

"Exactly," Evie said with an uncharacteristically serious nod. She put her hand on the fire mage's shoulder. "When we passed through, it was at thirty-five percent."

"That's… that's horrifically low," the nobleman muttered, hand leaving his rapier and drifting to his chin. "How? Why?"

"We can explain in a bit. First, I want to make sure our friend is well," Vess interrupted, focusing them all. She pointed at Dabney. "You. Can you make me a staircase?"

Dabney looked to Lilian, who gave him the slightest of nods. He grunted in agreement.

"Good. Then—"

A sudden screaming pierced the air. Vess spun toward Felix and saw him arch his back as a cascade of furious red lightning burst from his chest. It hurled off into the distance, howling all the while.

"Pathless forfend," Dabney gasped. "What was that?"

* * *

Ripping the black threads felt like ripping apart his soul.

A deep, apocalyptic ache tore through him, deeper than flesh and bone. Felix and Pit's screams were synchronized, their bond ensuring they shared in the agony. Pieces of the threads slipped back into Felix's chest, but the rest snapped like a strained bungee cord.

And the Maw went with it.

Crimson Mana gathered around his core before it blasted outward, off into the interminable dark. Carried upon its wave of power was the Maw as it truly was: a skeletal beast more bone and sinew than substance, a dozen blue-green eyes bubbling along its wedge-shaped head as it bellowed out its defiance.

YOU CANNOT! I AM ETERNAL!

Its dire, triangular head snapped forward in an attempt to latch back onto Felix, but before it could reach him, a wave of black-gold melody discharged from the center of his chest. Words couched in birdsong flowed behind it.

You are nothing, Pit trilled.

The shimmering song, as liquid-light as the System's own power, crashed into the Maw's teeth and shattered them. Broken, the Maw was cast out.

Felix was free.

+2 RES

+4 INE

+6 AFI

New Titles!

Fatebreaker (Legendary)!

You have banished the remnant Mind of a Primordial, freeing yourself from a dire fate! +10% All Stats, +10% Journeyman Tier Bonus

The Shape of Fate II (Epic)!

You have formed a second Skill by the power of your Will and Intent! +10% INE, WIL, INT

A tsunami of colorless Mana crashed into him, hitting his core fire over and over, sending waves of gold and blue power rippling throughout his overtaxed Body, Mind, and Spirit. Overwhelmed by the pain and an uncomfortable amount of pleasure, Felix couldn't breathe. He could barely think. All the while, his Etheric Concordance hummed in his chest, a pleasant vibration that somewhat countered the severed link with the Maw.

Etheric Concordance is level 39!

...

Etheric Concordance is level 42!

Yet dissonance returned.

A resonant crack very nearly split his core space, and yellow lines of light, like veins, traced through the darkness. Pain. Terrible, awful pain. Felix could sense his physical body was seizing. His thoughts stuttered as agony became his entire world.

Body Formation Compromised!

Essence of Inevitability (Poison Resistance) Has Been Lost!

New Essence Required Immediately!

It felt as if a piece of him had been cut away; his muscles were weak, and even his blood turned thick and slow. Even without the notification, it was clear his Body was no longer working as it had been. In fact, he felt worse than normal, and as the veins of yellow light filled his core space, it only grew more pronounced.

The Song of Absolution is level 32!

...

The Song of Absolution is level 35!

The pain dimmed, countered by a faint melody that trilled around the edges of his core space. His new Skill, shining like a spotlight, revolved into view and dulled the edge of his suffering.

Terror took its place as he fully realized what he had done. In his haste, Felix had combined Poison Resistance with his other Resistances. He'd formed his Body with Poison Resistance, using the Inevitable Essence, one of three distinct Features of the poison that was killing him.

And now, that pillar of his Body was gone.

The Song of Absolution is level 36!

The pain returned, fiercer than before, barely dimming as his Skill flared in response. His mind raced. Felix had precious few Skills close to Tiering, and The Song of Absolution was, somehow, already level 31 and had passed through Apprentice Tier retroactively.

Thinking was hard, but Felix brought up his Skill list, wrestling with the remaining monster essence. The essence of its progenitor was strong in the Ravager, though not nearly at Maw levels, which should mean he'd be safe. Felix bucked at the thought of using it, but his only other option was to risk whatever might happen when his Body Formation completely failed.

That wasn't a real option.

Applying his monstrous Will, Felix took hold of the essence and fed it, bit by bit, to his core fire. It fought back against him, still imbued with the Maw's fractious will, but he held it tight.

He seized Unfettered Volition, the pattern of the Skill hovering closer to his core fire. It was the perfect Skill to use for his Body; the problem was that it was only level 22. Luckily, the answer was staring him right in the face.

Monster essence. Memories. And his own Keen Mind.

Bracing himself, Felix dove deeper, delving within his perfect recall to find a true challenge for his Skill. He flitted through flashes of his previous encounters, from combating the Skinks within the forest to fighting Grimmar in the Maw's prison. The former netted him nothing, as he was too far advanced for them to prove much of a challenge, but Grimmar was another story.

The corrupted Risi Chieftain loomed enormously in his Mind, and the fight itself had been brutal. Felix relived the memory over and over, each time pushing himself to avoid Grimmar's most vicious attacks. Again. And Again.

Unfettered Volition is level 23!

Unfettered Volition is level 24!

He burned through the essence as fast as he could to fuel this strange technique, but Felix felt his Mind and Spirit stretching beyond his limits. A headache burned through him like lava, yet still he pushed. He pushed until Grimmar provided no more challenge than the Skinks. To advance beyond level 24, he would need a far greater opponent.

Or worse circumstances.

An idea germinated in Felix's head, one that terrified him far more than the Maw ever had. He had so little mental energy left after fighting the Maw and his previous memories that he feared he'd have only a single shot at this last level. Did he truly wish to gamble it all? In answer, and before he could convince himself otherwise, Felix plunged into his recollections.

Into the Bitter Sea.

Dark, brackish water surrounded him, though the coarse soil of a sandbar was within arm’s reach. Behind him, he knew, the enemy reached out its hooked tentacles with intent to grapple and threaten him. He just wouldn't give it a chance.

Felix kicked to the side, his body moving slower in the water than on land, but the presence of Unfettered Volition made all the difference. Just as in the last memory, Felix didn't have the Skill at the time this memory occurred… or any Skills, for that matter. But, as a training technique, that had no bearing. He had the Skill now.

A barbed tentacle flashed into his previous location, a knotted limb that only vaguely reminded him of an octopus from Earth. The dark water revealed little save for a series of brilliant orange eyes. Far too many eyes.

Come and get me, Dread.

Three more tentacles lashed out from the darkness, providing him with no warning. Flaring his Skill, Felix swam for all he was worth.

He dove deeper and opened up the space around him for more maneuverability. Felix had expected swimming and dodging would be difficult, and it was, but Unfettered Volition made it far easier than it should have been. With no delay between his thoughts and action, he managed to be just beyond wherever the Dread struck.

Dodge is level 33!

...

Dodge is level 35!

Damn, not that one!

The notification distracted him for less than a second, but it was enough time for a tentacle to latch onto his right forearm and yank him closer. Like a fish on a line, Felix was towed into the darkness where the orange eyes pivoted and focused on him. Abruptly twisting, Felix let its appendage shear the flesh from his forearm in order to keep moving.

Closer than ever before, the Dread belched out a cloud of corrosive liquid, far more potent than the ocean itself and hot enough to boil the water around it. Even with his movement Skill, he was unable to dodge fast enough. The cloud enveloped his chest.

The Song of Absolution is level 37!

The Song of Absolution is level 38!

Health dwindling to nearly nothing, Felix took a desperate gamble. He dove straight for the Dread, twisting himself wildly to avoid the creature's deadly barrage. The green deepened into nearly pitch black as he descended, and the monster's orange eyes loomed larger than ever before. From the green-black water, what looked like teeth flashed at him, and Felix kicked his legs to undulate his body up and around the strike. The burning hot sensation of a long, shallow wound opened up on his chest, but he avoided the bulk of the attack.

Unfettered Volition is level 25!

Congratulations!

Without wasting a single moment, Felix let the memory drop. Instantly, he was catapulted back into his core space, but his Mind took a moment to catch up.

—Apprentice Tier in Unfettered Volition!

You Gain:

Frantic, Felix grappled with the remainder of the Larval Ravager's essence and hurled it, wholesale, into his core fire.

+10 END

+10 WIL

...

Epic Essence Detected During Formation!

[Essence of the Primal Seed]

Choose a Feature:

Elemental

Prime

Genesis

He chose.

Congratulations!

You have absorbed the Essence of Genesis!

His insides lurched, and his Body began to quake as if it were about to fall apart entirely. The monster essence was gone, he'd done it; so why did he feel like he was about to die?

Felix received two rapid-fire notifications:

Formation in Process!

You Have Fully Digested Your Opponent's Mana!

You Have Received A Memory From A Larval Ravager!

View Memory?

Y/Y

Great.

Reality shattered. Again.

* * *

Images flashed before his eyes, much of it degraded.

Verdant fields and desert dunes. Delicious prey and a dark predator. Felix was both the Larval Ravager and was outside of it, a first for him. The Larval Ravager was small, merely the size of a minivan, and it sat undulating on the rocky ground. He could smell water nearby, a lot of it, and by stretching his senses, Felix could see a lake around them.

He was on an island. The Larval Ravager was only level twenty, and there were piles of corpses nearby. Two similar creatures dove into them, their relatively small mouths chomping away at beasts the size of grizzly bears.

The view shifted, crackled. Massive flaws cut through Felix's vision, half-obscuring what he saw, but he noticed things had changed. The Larval Ravager was bigger, perhaps the size of a school bus now, and it had started digging a hole into the rocky soil. A thick, pulsating tube reached back out of the hole, up onto the center of the island. He knew it was connected to the Larval Ravager, just as he knew that there were three others just like it.

Three other Sub-Cores, each just as strong. Each constantly eating and growing and… and feeding. Felix knew that all of the energy wasn't going to the Sub-Cores alone, but that a significant portion was being siphoned off. Sent down the pulsating root at their base, toward this island.

Toward the Domain-Core. The Ravager King.

The moment that thought occurred to him, Felix's vision splintered again. This time, he floated above a massive, undulating mass of pustules and gasping, gnashing mouths. It rose up from a deep crevasse at the very center of the island. It seemed too large to exist. Felix tried to focus on it, but the memory was terribly flawed. He could barely make it out.

However, at the base of the Domain Core stood a small, metal man. He seemed busy etching sigils into the stone around the Ravager King, complex scriptwork that glowed with a sickly yellow and crimson light.

Felix knew, in the way of dreams and invasive memory heists, that the Ravager King was growing strong. Fast. And that whatever that little metal man was doing, it was designed to evolve the creature.

It was building a new Maw.

CHAPTER SEVENTY

Congratulations!

You Have Tempered Your Body! Again!

You Have Formed: the Seed Of The Unchained Mountain Body

+20 STR

+20 END

+25 WIL

+10 AGL

+10 DEX

+20 VIT

You Have Killed A Larval Ravager!

XP Earned!

You—

"Ugh, he stinks. Why does he stink?"

—Have Gained 4 Levels!

You Are Now Level 33!

+8 PER! +8 VIT! +4 END! +8 INT! +12 WIL! +16 AGL! +16 DEX!

You Have 20 Unused Stat Points!

"He just dove head first into a big murder worm. You think you'd be smellin' pretty?"

Your Companion Pit Has Gained 8 levels!

He Is Now Level 32!

+16 PER! +16 VIT! +8 END! +16 INT! +24 WIL! +32 AGL! +32 DEX!

"What's wrong with that thing?" The thing kept talking. His eyes weren't working right, something—

Something grabbed him. Felix didn't think.

He didn't have to.

Unfettered Volition!

"AHH!" There was the sound of crunching metal, and Felix could feel a warmth beneath his fingers. His vision had become a blur of glowing vapor, too bright and busy. Squinting, Felix leveraged his body upward, flaring Unfettered Volition.

The thing cried out.

"Get him off me!"

Arms reached under Felix's own, straining at first before another set joined them and hauled him off the creature. "Felix!"

It was like someone switched on a light. Suddenly the misty vapor parted from his eyes, and he saw the prone form of Dabney, clutching his shoulder with a pained expression. Atar and the other Guilders crowded around him, while Evie and Vess had their arms looped around his own.

"You dare touch a noble? You swine!" Lilian shouted. Her small face was the palest he'd ever seen it. "If we were in Haarwatch, you would be hanged for that!"

Felix ignored her, focused on the wincing Dabney. The man's armored robes were messed up. He'd crumpled the reinforced weave of the robes in his fist, but Felix noted that there was a lot of damage already. Some of it was from bites and claws, but most of it was as if it had been dissolved or burnt by something. The outfit was trying to fix itself, but the ambient Mana seemed… hostile.

"I'm fine," he said to the others, and they let go of him. "I'm sorry, I… I'm alright now."

"You? You almost crushed my throat!" Dabney had gotten back to his feet aggressively, only the thin arm of Alister holding him back.

"Calm yourself, Dabney. The man was confused. He clearly just Tiered up." Alister gave Felix a considering look. "Apprentice, if I'm not mistaken. But...weren't you Apprentice Tier beforehand?"

Instead of answering, Felix looked over the notifications that still hovered across his vision. Seed of the Unchained Mountain? And so many stats? He'd almost gained twice the stats his previous Formation had offered. Was it because of the higher rarity of the Essence he took in? It had been Epic, as opposed to the Rare poison he'd originally used in the heat of the moment. Maybe—

Felix shook his head and attempted to center his thoughts. His Mind was racing, and his Body felt like a car battery was attached to his muscles. Spasms and ripples of energy shook him, as if he'd mainlined a gallon of adrenaline. His Spirit felt odd, too, but less shaky, just more solid. Powerful. Likely, that was his Will propping him up.

"Monster!" Lilian screamed as a black shape bounded to its feet.

It was Pit. Formerly twitching on the ground as he'd leveled up eight times, the tenku had gained another fifteen inches in height, now rivaling a medium-sized pony for size. His wings, too, had grown immensely, twelve feet wide with brilliant crimson primary feathers among his otherwise black colorings. Pit stretched them out with a loud snapping sound, only slightly less loud than a damn gunshot.

Alister's rapier was up fast, too fast and too close to Pit for Felix to react in time. A bolt of blue kinetic Mana blasted from the blade and struck Pit in the wing. The tenku squawked in outrage and spread his wings again, white Mana flowing into the appendages.

"Stop!" Felix shouted, and Pit cut off the Skill. Harn grabbed the nobleman's rapier by the blade, redirecting the man's second shot into his own armor. He barely moved.

Alister looked at Harn in alarm. "You didn't even flinch."

Harn grunted and released the rapier. "Don't be so jumpy, kid. The Chimera is with us, remember."

Alister looked at Pit again, perhaps seeing him without fear in his eyes. Felix's enhanced Perception could pick out the man's tremulous heartbeat as it began to settle. "Of-of course."

Felix crossed the distance to his Companion, giving the still-shaking tenku a hug. It was like putting his arms around a small tree trunk, though far softer. Next to each other, Pit's withers came up to his collarbone, putting the Companion's head a few inches higher than his own. You're so big!

A pleased rumble moved through Pit's chest. He ducked his head to nestle onto Felix's shoulder. Emotions and impressions moved between them, forming into concrete words. Easier to fight. Easier to hit.

Felix sighed. He could tell the kinetic blast had hurt Pit, but his Health wasn't terribly affected. You're agile. Focus on dodging for now. Maybe we can get you some armor at some point.

Glee surged through the bond.

"Alright. Now that we've got the crazy outta our systems, let's move." Harn looked up at the sky, the sun unmoved. "We don't got a lotta time ‘til this avum is cooked."

Harn started moving toward the broken tower, but Alister held up a hand. "Now wait a second, we weren't done talking about that."

"What's there to talk about?" Evie asked. "Domain's gonna burst soon, so we gotta stop it. Stone simple."

"How?" Atar stepped forward this time. He gestured around them. "We barely made it through this lot. How're we supposed to stop this?"

Harn sighed and removed his helmet. It detached with a hiss of compressed air, as if it were sealed around him. His hair, shaggy and brown, fell out in a wet pile on his scalp, and his craggy face looked more tired than Felix had seen for some time.

"Same way we did here. The only way, near as I can figure," Harn said.

"Destroy the Domain Core," Vess said, and her tone betrayed none of the uneasiness Felix knew she felt. Her inner chorus practically sang with anxiety. "Kill the Core, we kill everything else by proxy."

"No more Revenants, no more push to burst the shell," Harn said with a nod.

"But… but that will destroy the Domain anyway!" Atar shouted, and the nobles all looked horrified. "It will be finished, completely!"

Felix understood what that meant, at least academically. No more Domain meant no more easy development for Haarwatch, no more farmed resources aside from, you know, actual farming. The way it'd been described to him suggested that most, if not all of the cities on the Continent utilized a personal Domain to thrive. It was likely far harder to manage without one.

"It's better the Domain dies than kill everyone in the city," Evie said. Lilian's and Dabney's faces were both ashen, but narrowed at that.

"Better? If this Domain dies, then my family is ruined!" Lilian gestured to the other two noble Guilders. "All of our families! You can't kill the Core!"

"People will die!" Vess shouted right back. "Thousands upon thousands! Haarwatch will be torn apart."

"Our families would survive such an event," Dabney said, proudly. "We've soldiers and fortifications rivaling the Wall itself! But if the Domain falls, then we lose our status in the Hierocracy and our access to resources. That's untenable."

"You—you would rather the people in your city die than lose your fortune?" Vess asked, incredulous. "That's monstrous."

Dabney's face screwed up and reddened, but before he could retort, Felix jumped in.

"The creatures that escape here won't just be Tier I," Felix said while petting Pit's downy feathers. "All of them are rising in levels. Yet the Dust Quarter and Crafter Quarter were torn apart a few weeks ago by a few dozen Tier I monsters. You think the city will be able to withstand hundreds of them?"

"The Guild—"

"Will save its own ass," Felix cut him off again. "And the redcloaks… they'll probably leave on their Manaship, right? You think your families' private mercenaries will keep you safe? What about when the Tier II monsters emerge?"

Silence greeted Felix's words. Everyone was looking at him, and he felt part of himself squirm under their scrutiny. But he shoved that piece of him aside and focused on his words.

"The Domain Core is feeding off these Larval Ravager things. The Sub-Cores. All those corpses and stuff it was eating? It was strengthening the Sub-Cores and, by extension, the Domain Core. When I… killed it, the connection was cut off, but I got a glimpse of more. There are at least three other Sub-Cores, each one feeding the Domain Core."

"Burn me," Atar whispered. "What level are they?"

"Considering this one was at level 68 before it died? A lot higher. The Domain Core is massive, easily twice the size of the Larval Ravager."

"That Larval Ravager was at least a Tier Two creature," Harn said with a worried frown. "It was eatin' those Tier One Revenants, too, no problem. Domain Core'll be worse."

"A Tier Three? How do we defeat something so obviously beyond us?" Lilian asked, and Felix had to admit it wasn't a bad question. "We wouldn't stand a chance against such a beast! We should run!"

"We should leave now!" Dabney agreed, fear warring with anger on his face. "We nearly died today."

"You get used to it," Evie said with a stretch.

"You're all insane," Lilian said, color returning to her face again. "I'm leaving."

"How will you escape your own Elder? You think he doesn't know about this?" Felix gestured all around them. "He put them in here! These Primordial-Spawn? They're from something recovered from Shelim, from the Foglands."

Atar started at that. He looked between Felix, Evie, and Vess, searching their faces. His own paled at what he saw. "Burn me," he whispered.

Alister looked confused. "What? What am I missing?"

"The mission to the Foglands, the one I told you about." Atar swallowed as if his mouth had dried out. "The Risi? Is this them?"

"No, the Frost Giants aren't part of this," Felix said. "This is about what we found at the center of the Labyrinth. A Primordial."

Everyone looked at him again, though most wore confused expressions on their faces. Atar and Harn, however, did not.

"A Primordial? You saw a Night-cursed Primordial, Felix?" Atar was beside himself with both horror and a strange longing. Like Felix had described surviving a walk through a hurricane. In many ways, he was. Harn's expression was different. He looked startled then clenched his jaw, tight.

"Survived one, yeah," Felix confirmed. He tried to refocus the conversation. "The point is, people were infected by this thing. Their blood, it does something to their blood and Bodies, though it doesn't have to start that way. The corruption it… can anyone, damn, I don't know what people can do," Felix said, frustrated. "Can anyone else see oaths? Like the silver strings of Oathbinding? It probably takes unlocking your Affinity."

"Uh, no?" Evie said. "You can?"

"Yeah," Felix huffed a breath. "The Larval Ravager had a hold of Okar and the others. That's why they changed. That and the corruption in the air, burning into their Bodies, is why everyone changed."

Atar and the nobles all looked down at their arms, each of them with patches of redness that had started to flake. Felix had spotted those early on, but tried not to focus on it. There wasn't anything he could have done before.

Evie swallowed audibly. "We saw bones at the entrance, but not near enough. So these—-"

"Were all people. Noctis wept," Vess whispered.

"That doesn't make sense," Alister said with a frown. "You're saying the air in here is trying to turn us? Into one of them?" He gestured to a half-dissolved Revenant on the ground.

"Or just killing you, yeah," Felix said, shaking his head. "We don't know enough about this place. Teine might, since he kicked this whole thing off, but… the nature of this place is twisted. Can't you feel it in the air? That burning on your skin? It invades everything, every—"

Felix cut himself off. The Maw was gone from him. Finally. But its legacy lived on in both the Domain… and in him. A thought brought up his Skills.

What Dwells Beneath (Un), Level 31

Still there. Not even broken as he'd hoped. Luckily, his Bloodline Progression had halted at 75%, but Felix had no idea if that would move again were he to use his Unique Skill or his Ravenous Tithe. Or what would happen had his bloodline ever hit 100%.

Hopefully, he'd never have to find out.

"Point is," Evie said with a tight, mirthless smile. "It's a race. Either the Domain breaks and Haarwatch is screwed, or we do, and whatever happens to the city is someone else's business."

"Grim," Harn nodded. "But accurate." Harn put his helmet back on with a click. His armor thickened across his chest and shoulders in a strangely organic way. "You run outta here now, or you help us. Either way, I ain't leavin' you at my back."

He unsheathed his axes and gave them a practice swing. "So, which is it, kids?"

* * *

"—not going well, sir," Samson Hyde, Elder of Body, explained, his hamfists hard against the table. Olivia knew the man felt the day's losses keenly, despite his gruff exterior. "The Inquisitors have rounded up nearly the entirety of the outer Sunrise Quarter. And that's after their damn operation last night!"

Olivia couldn't help the chill that trailed down her back at that. Heretic purges. Four hundred Untempered went missing in the night—by their most conservative estimate—and the Guild was still reeling from that when a fight broke out in the Sunrise Quarter.

A fight between Masters.

Olivia Regis was Elder of the Mind, wore the Gold medallion of her Rank, and even had half a foot into the Master Tier. Her Mind had Tempered into it, though her Body and Spirit lagged behind. Yet even she could not stand up to a true Master Tier opponent. Despite that, an unknown opponent had fought back and, by all accounts, injured the Master Inquisitor.

Where is Eliza? She never misses a council session, emergency or otherwise. Olivia's Mind raced, picking at the problem that sat before them. Uldred, too. He'd at least have some suggestions on how to deal with this. The Elder of Spirit was too clever by half.

"Then we take the fight to them," Elder Holt insisted, slapping the flat of his hand on the table for emphasis. "Show these damn redcloaks who they're messin' with!"

"A poor idea, Holt. We've not the numbers to contest the Inquisitors, not if we also intend to man the Wall." Latvere adjusted the spectacles on his face, for all that he didn't need them. Reaching Journeyman Tier would have fixed any imperfections in his natural sight, let alone Adept. "But I do agree that we cannot take this lying down, sir."

Latvere had addressed Fairbanks, High Elder, who was studying the script-display of Haarwatch before him. "You say this Master Tier vanished after fighting Katan? Not died? Simply disappeared?"

"That is what we've learned, yeah. But the redcloaks won't let our people close enough to do an investigation properly." Samson grimaced and ground his teeth together. Olivia winced. It was a habit she'd been working to cure for quite a while now. She loved the man, but that grinding...

"Then we must—"

For the third time in as many weeks, the door to the Guild Council chamber exploded open. Pieces of the scriptwork locks, so painstakingly etched in the frame, whizzed into the room beyond. The hardware itself followed, embedding into the far wall and narrowly missing the shocked face of Elder Fairbanks.

"Who dares break the sanctity of this council?" Elder Latvere shouted into the dust and debris, but neither Samson nor Holt waited for an answer. A half dozen Skills hurled into the breach, Mana vapor trailed visibly into the world from ice, fire, and even poisonous clouds. Olivia summoned her own protections and held her breath, hoping.

No. Not yet.

A blazing white sword cut through the Skills and her hopes as if they were paper. Mana swelled and fountained to either side of a tall, armored figure wrapped in a red cloak. "I dare."

"Master Inquisitor..." Olivia's heart dropped into her stomach, and she clung tighter to her defensive Skill, the glow of kinetic Mana tight against her skin.

"Katan! What's the meaning of this!" Fairbanks fairly blazed with anger and power. Despite being focused on the Master Inquisitor, Elder Regis still felt a thrill of fear as she gazed at the High Elder's gathering might.

"I warned you, Elders. I warned what your actions might force me to do," Katan did not move, but his Master Tier Spirit swept into the chamber and pressed against the Elders, all of whom paled and shook. Latvere even collapsed back into his chair, though Fairbanks did not.

"You have attacked this city, unprovoked. And now you accuse us of, what?" Fairbanks rasped, hoarse with strain.

"Of a corruption so deep, it stains your tower to the core," Katan said, still outside the chamber. "A little bird exposed you all, for the good of the Hierocracy."

Despite the suppression of Katan's Spirit, Olivia was able to pivot her head just fine. At the Master Inquisitor's side was a slight woman wearing padded armor and large, golden gauntlets. Eliza?

The damn woman stared at them all, more than a little defiance in her eyes. And… was that triumph?

"I have no clue what you are talking about, Katan," Fairbanks grated. "Whatever DuFont has told you is clearly a lie."

"I would have thought an Elder would be better at falsehoods," Katan didn't so much as smile. "I now know of your experiments in the Domain beneath us. You have played god with the powers of this world and with the lives of your citizens. For that, you have lost all authority to this city."

"We are this city!" Fairbanks bellowed, his voice pushing past the suppression of Katan's Spirit. Olivia's eyes bulged at the waves of Mana the High Elder manipulated around himself. "All we do is for our people's benefit. We don't hide in the dark and attack citizens in the sewers!"

"Indeed," Katan said, unsurprised by the High Elder's tactics or power. "You merely shove your citizens into a dangerous Domain that is mere days away from breaking apart completely."

Olivia gasped in horror and heard Samson growl. She caught his eye and felt that icy fear expand throughout her body. It wasn't that he was surprised by the revelation, only by the fact that the Master Inquisitor knew it. No, Samson. It can't be. Tell me he's lying.

But Hyde wouldn't meet her gaze again.

A sudden brilliant light flooded the chamber, as if a white sun had risen outside their windows. Olivia lifted her hand to shade her eyes and peered out of the windows behind her. She nearly choked. A full Manaship hovered outside the Spire, and what had to be twenty Mana cannons were pointed directly at them.

One volley could kill us all, she thought, her Mind racing to figure out a plan, an escape, something.

The sound of ripping parchment filled the room, and all eyes swiveled toward the Master Inquisitor once again. He held an unraveled scroll in his hands and was tearing it in half. Streamers of visible Mana poured off of it as the various wax seals melted from its surface. The other Elders moaned in dread, but Olivia had become numb. She felt nothing as the Charter that codified the Guild's rule over Haarwatch was subsumed in flames.

Temporary Authority Invalidated!

"It is done," Khorun Katan said, emotionless. "And so are you."

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

Ultimately, Lilian and Dabney left.

They let them go, though Evie took the time to watch them from atop the keep walls. She saw them move across the grassland and start to climb the cliffs toward the exit before she returned to them.

Felix was conflicted about just letting them go. Surely they'd cause trouble for them, right? Yet Harn insisted this was the lesser of two evils.

"If we'd forced them to stay, they woulda betrayed us at the worst time. Can't force loyalty, kid." Harn adjusted his gauntlets, and something clicked and shifted beneath the metal. "They might bring Guilders down on us, or rat us out to the redcloaks, but that harnoq's already outta the bag. 'Sides, we don't have time to worry about it."

That was true enough. They had a little over three hours left on their wardstones, and Alister and Atar were worse off. Without protection, Felix was unsure how long before the Domain would begin to hurt them permanently. Already, their exposed skin was red and flaky, despite their Health being at full.

However, both Atar and Alister had chosen to stay. Atar's choice hadn't surprised Felix; the man seemed to have changed during his time away from the group. It was also distinctly possible Felix had never truly gotten to know him. He had certainly seemed appalled at the idea of the Domain bursting.

Alister was another story. Felix barely knew the man, but he definitely gave off the air of a spoiled rich kid. Felix had expected him to join with Lilian and Dabney, the former being his cousin and all. He didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but his reasoning felt flimsy.

"It needs doing," he had said. That was it.

Atar seemed to trust Alister, and the others said the man had been quite capable in the previous fights, if a bit limited. Like Atar and fire, Alister seemed devoted to a single slice of the Mana spectrum. The noble used a similar kinetic Mana as Felix employed with Reign of Vellus… except his didn't discharge lightning everywhere. The Mana was almost the same color blue, however.

Vellus, he mused. Goddess of the tides, of storms, and of blood. Guess it would make sense a skill with her name would have lightning associated with it.

Reign of Vellus had evolved from Tides of Vellus, a Skill he'd stolen from the Wisps he'd fought back in the Foglands. It was how they attacked their prey. So, were those Wisps connected to Vellus, too? Felix hadn't heard many religious stories during his time in Haarwatch, though the Dusters weren't shy about swearing by the old gods.

It's probably illegal, telling stories about them. Heresy. Felix's lip curled at the word. He'd never involved himself with religion back home and was a self-professed atheist, albeit a quiet one. His thoughts drifted toward his encounter with the being he thought was Vellus and—-

—Felix blinked, unsettled. He felt as if the ground had lurched beneath him and felt a little dizzy.

Dangerous memories. He distracted himself from them by opening up his notifications. They had been blinking like mad ever since he'd woken up.

Here we go.

Ravenous Tithe is level 23!

...

Ravenous Tithe is level 35!

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Tier with Ravenous Tithe!

You Gain:

+20 STR

+20 END

+20 VIT

Bloodline Progression is 80%

Oathbinding is level 10!

...

Oathbinding is level 15!

Manasight is level 44!

Manasight is level 45!

Make An Entrance is level 20!

...

Make An Entrance is level 22!

Corrosive Strike is level 33!

...

Corrosive Strike is level 35!

Unarmed Mastery is level 34!

...

Unarmed Mastery is level 38!

The Song of Absolution is level 39!

The Song of Absolution is level 40!

Reign of Vellus is level 45!

Fire Within is level 47!

...

Fire Within is level 49!

Etheric Concordance is level 43!

Felix had expected a large number of increases, but it was always surprising to see them scroll by his eyes. He'd even managed to Tier up another Skill… but that was a mixed blessing. While Ravenous Tithe added a significant boost to his physical stats, he couldn't help but notice its other effect.

Bloodline Progression is 80%

It's still rising. Just like I feared. He still had touches of the Maw within him, and likely always would. Ravenous Tithe, Voracious Eye, and What Dwells Beneath. Unless… unless he wanted to sunder those Skills; he'd managed to do it with the Larval Ravager's essence, perhaps—

No.

No, they had to kill the Domain Core next. How could he manage to sunder not one but three different Skills without dying and dooming the entire city? Which meant he had to risk his Bloodline Progression reaching 100%. And whatever might come after that.

Felix watched the others talk and tweak their interfaces. Vess had hit level 35, and Evie had made it to 38, somehow. He had been surprised to hear they had battled their way across the Revenant horde, carrying Pit, trying to reach him after he'd been assaulted by Okar. Their advancement even impressed Atar, who was still sitting at level 34. The lowest-leveled among them was Alister at level 31. All of them had enjoyed a significant bump in their Skill levels as well.

War was good for them, screwed up as Felix found the sentiment.

The conversation among them was subdued and quiet, but Felix was happy to hear some jokes out of Evie. So was Vess, who snorted at a particularly ribald one Felix only half-heard. It'd been rough, what they'd just endured, and regardless of its benefits, a battle like that could really mess someone up. Felix himself felt stretched thin. The fight against the Spawn and Revenants had lasted so long, and then he had taken on the Larval Ravager itself. Alone.

"You have ten minutes. Then we move," Harn said from the battlement nearby. He was watching the way they had come, where Lilian and Dabney had gone.

Felix roused himself from his thoughts. They had fought; he had survived. That was all there was to it.

Name: Felix Nevarre

Level: 33

Race: Nym*

Omen: Magician

Born Trait: Keen Mind

______

Health: 984/1511

Stamina: 1059/1198

Mana: 2805/2805 (3360)

______

STR: 218

PER: 206

VIT: 312

END: 233

INT: 280

WIL: 555 (666)

AGL: 185

DEX: 188

______

BODY

Resistances: The Song of Absolution (L), Level 40

Combat Skills: Axe Mastery (C), Level 5*; Blunt Weapon Mastery (C), Level 10*; Dodge (C), Level 35; Long Blade Mastery (C), Level 15*; Parry (C), Level 4*; Small Blade Mastery (C), Level 10; Staff Mastery (C), Level 7*; Thrown Weapons Mastery (C), Level 13; Unarmed Mastery (C), Level 38; Blind Fighting (R), Level 25; Corrosive Strike (R), Level 35

Physical Enhancements: Armored Skin (R), Level 49; Unfettered Volition (E), Level 24

MIND

Mental Enhancements: Deception (C), Level 20; Intimidation (C)*, Level 11; Make An Entrance (U), Level 22; Meditation (U), Level 37; Negotiation (U), Level 1; Bastion of Will (E), Level 47; Deep Mind (E), Level 42; Ravenous Tithe (E), Level 35

Information Skills: Tracking (C), Level 15; Exploration (U), Level 28; Herbalism (U), Level 17; Voracious Eye (E), Level 34

SPIRIT

Spiritual Enhancements: Dual Casting (U), Level 24; Mana Manipulation (U), Level 24; Manasight (U), Level 45; Manaship Pilot (R), Level 22; Etheric Concordance (L), Level 43; What Dwells Beneath (Un), Level 31

Spells: Abyssal Skein (R), Level 23; Cloudstep (R), Level 14; Fire Within (R) Level 49; Influence of the Wisp (R), Level 32; Invocation (R), Level 1; Mantle of the Long Night (R), Level 27; Oathbinding (R), Level 15; Shadow Whip (R), Level 31; Stone Shaping (R), Level 30; Reign of Vellus (E), Level 45; Sigils of the Primordial Dawn (E), Level 23; Wrack And Ruin (E), Level 32; Arrow of Perdition (L), Level 5

______

Unused Stat Points: 20

Harmonic Stats

RES: 120

INE: 141

AFI: 95

REI: 84

ALA: 160 (181)

His stats had reached new highs, despite the hit they'd just taken due to his evolved Skills and lost Formation. His Willpower was especially ridiculous. It had jumped over two hundred points! His others were far behind, the two next closest being his Intelligence and Vitality.

His two new Titles went a long way toward boosting his capability. What would happen if all of his Primary Stats were over two hundred? He had passed the First Threshold back when he hit 100 in all his Primary Stats before level 50. Would that happen again? Would he hit the Second Threshold, whatever that was?

I'll find out eventually. Felix took his remaining twenty bonus points and divided them up among his two lowest stats: Agility and Dexterity. Both shot up, and another rush of System power flowed into his core fire and back out to his Body.

AGL: 197

DEX: 200

Now only Agility is shy of two hundred points. I somehow doubt all stats above two hundred is the magic number though. Probably something like five hundred or something. Felix sighed. Got a ways to go until that.

Climbing to his feet, Felix gave up on staring at his stats and Skills. He was tired. His Stamina was full, as it almost always was, but still he felt worn out. He walked over to a section of the courtyard that wasn't completely torn apart. Pit was prancing about, flapping his wings so hard he nearly lifted himself off the ground.

"What're you doing, bud?" Felix asked, but Pit didn't answer, only tried again. And again. And again. Each time it seemed like he was lifting just a touch further, almost as if—

Pit Has Learned A New Skill!

Really? That was the tenku's first naturally learned Skill in a long while. Almost all the rest had been from elemental cores.

Flight (Rare), Level 1!

Tenku are born with the ability to glide. It is not until they are older and more experienced that they progress into true flight. Costs Mana to utilize. Speed, maneuverability, and carrying capacity depend on AGL, DEX, END, and STR. Each increases with Skill Level.

Holy shit. Felix was stunned, but that was nothing compared to the elation that surged through their bond.

Pit bugled in ecstatic glee and began to bound around the courtyard. He picked up speed as he ran, until the tenku's wings snapped out and began to pump. This time, though it took several seconds, Pit took off.

He was airborne.

"Pit can fly?!" Evie gasped, and Vess clapped her hands in delight.

"Now he can," Felix said, unable and unwilling to wipe a wide grin from his face. For a moment, they were all silent as the Chimera carved circles into the air above them. Pit cut around the broken tower, looping it in a spiral pattern until he shot off even further into the sky. Barrel rolls, spins, flips, the tenku did them all in an aerial ballet of unrestrained joy. Pit's emotions resonated so strongly across their bond that Felix's grin was threatening to become a permanent fixture.

Pit's Flight is level 2!

Pit's Flight is level 3!

"Good. That might be useful later," Harn said as he landed with a thump. He nodded at Pit. "Get ‘em down, though. Somethin' might see ‘em."

Felix sighed and pulsed the thought toward his Companion. Pit let out a low, pitiful whine, but quickly descended.

Pit's Flight is level 4!

"Sorry bud. Gotta be careful. We'll get more chances to fly soon, yeah?" Felix gave Pit some consolation scratches, though the tenku huffed his breath and turned away. Felix kept scratching just below his ears.

The Chimera's fit lasted all of ten seconds before he leaned into Felix's fingers. A surprisingly sad warble came from the pony-sized Companion, and a hazy impression drifted across their bond. Fuzzed by the distance of the memory, it was more colors and sensation than true visual cues. Felix could easily sense that Pit was very young, and that he was flying, coddled atop his mother. He felt warmth and safety and a slight rush at the dips and sharp turning the older tenku was doing. It was a good memory, if tinged by sadness.

Felix laid against Pit's neck, his arm around his chest.

"Finish up whatever yer doin' and meet up by the tower." Harn touched Felix's shoulder as he started moving, holding him back. "Felix, we gotta talk first."

Felix looked at the others. Atar and Alister were having a quiet conversation, but Evie and Vess both gave him a questioning look. He waved them off before turning back toward Harn. Pit settled in beside him.

"What's going on, Harn?" he asked.

"Just where'd you get it into yer head that running off in a battle was a good plan?" Harn's face was hidden by his helmet, but his tone was harsh. "And then you took on the Sub-Core, alone? What were you thinkin'?"

"I–" Felix wasn't sure how to respond. Part of it was that he hadn't been thinking, just reacting. Okar came at him, and their fight moved them away from the group. He explained as much to the warrior.

"Then maneuver him back! What you did was dangerous, and not just fer you," Harn said and pointed at their retreating allies. "Those two rushed after ya, despite what I told ‘em. They coulda got killed if that horde got their claws in ‘em. You understand?"

Harn exhaled hard enough for it to whistle against his armor. "Felix, yer strong and fast and smart, but you don't think enough. Or ya think too much. I'm not sure."

"Probably both, if I'm being honest," Felix said.

"Listen, you've got potential. I've told ya that before. But yer not usin' yer Skills to their best effect." Harn gestured to the broken tower ahead of them. "We're gonna head into that tunnel soon, and we gotta keep our formation tight, understand? You an’ me? We're the vanguard. Take the first hits before anyone else. The others can use ranged Skills or precision strikes neither of us are as good at. You disagree?"

Felix didn't. "I've always had to fight on my own, and despite our few bouts, Harn, I don't have any proper training."

"I know, kid, I know. Been meanin' to rectify that, but time's against us." Harn looked back toward the others a moment longer. "Felix."

"Hm?"

"If we're gonna do this, risk our lives against this Ravager King, then I gotta know," Harn took a deep breath before continuing. "The Primordial."

Shit. "What about it?"

"I've heard of ‘em before. Stories mostly, tall tales, things you can't believe, even on the Continent." Harn tapped a metal-shod finger against the head of his axe. "A long time ago, I met some merchants. This was farther east, outside the Hierocracy. My uncle owned an inn, and he'd let me sweep the floors fer some spending money. It weren't much. Barely a stone a day.

“But I got ta see the new visitors and, sometimes, if I were lucky, I'd hear some stories. These merchants were pale, far more so than you or me. Sickly lookin', I thought. They said a beast made of nightmares attacked their ships, out on the Endless Sea. It had a weird name, one I barely remembered in the rush of hearin' the tale. One of em even showed me a scar where the thing's glistenin' spines had scratched em."

Harn shook his head. "It was a small thing, barely a nick. But to an impressionable kid huntin' fer adventure, it was a glorious battle wound."

Felix just listened, unsure where Harn was going. He wanted to keep moving, but this… Felix felt this conversation was a long time coming.

Harn kept talking. "I woulda listened fer hours, but they were tired. Long journey, I imagine. We weren't anywhere close to the Sea. Plus, a few of them looked sick, feverish even. Before they left for bed, I even heard one of em mention that they had finally escaped their city lord. The relief in his voice, Felix, it weren't nothin' I ever heard before," Harn said. "Can't remember thinkin' much of it at the time. It was excitin', though, and I planned to ask em many more questions in the mornin'.

'Cept, when my aunt went to wake ‘em, she found ‘em all dead. Drowned in their beds, their throats and lungs filled with acidic brine, more'n a thousand leagues from the Sea. I was able ta see ‘em before my uncle had ‘em carted out. It was like their insides had turned to seawater. I ain't never seen nothin' like it before or since. And the man? The one with the scratch? It had spread, splitting the merchant's arm entirely in two. Like he'd been cursed… or corrupted.

“The name of the beast what attacked ‘em, Felix. Took me a long time to remember it. They called it a Primordial."

Felix swallowed, his throat dry. There's more of them?

"Now yer sayin' you saw one. In the center of the Labyrinth, where you said you were sealed in after Magda died, yeah?" Harn turned to him, and through the helmet Felix could see a glint of light reflecting against the man's eyes.

"...Yeah."

"Were ya hurt? Scratched? Infected like these people out here? If we're gonna be fightin' this thing, I gotta know. I've seen too much to let this go, Felix."

"Harn," Felix took a deep, steadying breath. It was time. Beyond time, honestly. He was tired of hiding things, anyway. "The Primordial's name is the Unending Maw...."

* * *

"Quick march, Acolytes!"

A chorus of grunts met the command, and the loud tromp of booted feet became thunderous. Rafny held tight to the brick facade of a burned-out bakery and held her hand low. The eight who followed her all held their breath.

The city had been overrun by the Inquisition these last few hours. Fights between them and the Guild had broken out all across the Quarters, and more than a few fires had resulted, gutting homes and businesses. Rafny had worried they would rage unchecked, but, surprisingly, the Inquisition had gone about extinguishing them rapidly. Now they were focused on rounding up Guilders and moving them all to the city center.

To the Eyrie, she was told.

Shortly after they had left the sewers, the majority of the freed prisoners had followed The Onslaught's advice. They found their way to his warehouse, where Calesca Boscal had been waiting. They'd taken the group in without complaint, offering food and a place to hide. It was a welcome relief.

After a brief rehashing Rafny had been all too willing to provide, Calesca had filled them in on further details. By that point, fights were already breaking out all over, and the treasure hunter had sent out scouts to check the lay of the land. She wasn't sure why all the Guilders were being herded into the Eyrie, but she doubted the redcloaks had good intentions.

Bastards, she thought with venom. Part of her wanted to attack them now, when they least expected it. Extract her pound of flesh for what they'd done to her and others. With an effort of Will, she held herself back. Now wasn't the time.

They had glasses before the Domain shell broke, at best. How Calesca knew that, Rafny wasn't sure. The Dwarf had seen the back entrance to the Domain herself, but other than that damn kid's word, she hadn't noticed anything wrong with it. Yet he'd seemed so certain, and with the treasure hunter confirming the kid's statements, it made her course of action clear.

She just hoped she wasn't too late.

Don't think about that. Just keep moving. Just wait for these Night-cursed zealots to get out of the way and keep moving.

Heva reached out her crimson hand and grasped the Dwarf's own. "Hold fast, Rafny. We'll make it back in time. The gods are with us. They sent us the Fiend, after all."

Gods haven't done much for us yet, Heva. And I doubt that kid was sent by anyone, much less the gods. Rafny didn't voice her opinions though, merely gripped the Hobgoblin's hand instead. Heva had insisted on coming with her, though she wasn't as strong as some of the other Dusters that offered their help. "Thank you for coming, Heva."

The old Hobgoblin merely smiled and squeezed her hand once more before letting go.

Oveh was back at the warehouse, helping Bodie and the others. Thank the gods, Rafny thought without irony. She couldn't have dealt with two of them. Though perhaps the distraction would have helped. Bellyaching was easier than admitting to herself the actual reason for her anxiety. That might make it real.

She'd been leaving anyway on her task, but Calesca wanted her to help in another way, too. Weapons and armor for her people. For their people, really. After this, they were all in it together. The Dwarven weaponsmith was more than happy to agree; the blades at her forge were aching for redcloak blood, in any case.

Finally, the Inquisitor grunts turned the corner. Rafny whispered to the others. "Come, quickly."

Moving far more quietly than eight people had any right to do, Rafny and the others crossed the thoroughfare and passed into another twisting alley. Luckily, it hadn't rained in days, and the hot summer sun had baked even these secluded side streets dry. Instead, thick layers of dirt kicked up into a light dust as they moved to the edge of the alley. Another open road spread before them, Wending Street, brightly lit by the mid-afternoon sun.

We're close. It's just around the corner!

Heva's crimson arm grabbed the back of her gambeson and pulled her short just as the sound of clanking mail reached the Dwarf's ears. Everyone froze, still in the shadows between buildings. Carefully, Rafny peeked out.

A lone Initiate walked down the street, peering into houses as he went. He was big, for a Human, over twice again Rafny's size, and she was not slightly built. The man seemed to be still searching for stragglers.

C'mon, just keep moving.

The man stopped and turned, while a dart of fear shot up her spine. At first, she thought the redcloak had heard her somehow, but her fear settled into cold dread as Rafny realized where he was looking.

Directly at the Coldfire Forge.

The Initiate quickly marched inside, bashing apart the door.

"No," Rafny whispered. Without turning to the others, she rushed forward. If Elle was still in there, if she was still alive...

The sounds of battle crashed against her senses before the weaponsmith made it to the halfway point. Metal screeched and clanged, grunts and shouts rang out, and the distinct tang of light Mana positively poured from the broken doorway. Rafny sped up, not caring if her people were behind her or not. They weren't Tempered, as she was.

Someone screamed.

Rafny burst through the entryway in time to see an armored figure collapse to the ground, seeming suddenly small as they curled over a fatal chest wound. The Initiate. Dead.

With disbelieving eyes, Rafny looked up and saw a vision in green platemail, an Adeptwork armor if she'd ever seen one. It was wrapped about a stocky, significantly curvy form, no taller than she, and the warrior yanked her short sword from the Initiate's chest with a feminine grunt.

"Elle?"

The armorsmith looked up in surprise, and her free hand lifted a visor on her peaked helmet. "Raffy? Oh, Noctis wept, you're alive!"

The two clutched at one another while the rest of her team arrived behind her, filtering into the smithy as surreptitiously as they could manage. Rafny could sense Heva holding them back a bit, murmuring something.

"Give them a moment, please."

Rafny took it, but released her wife after a few seconds longer. She stared into Elle's eyes, finding them wet and red-rimmed. How long had she been defending this place?

"Whatever's happening, it isn't going to end well, is it Raffy?" she asked.

"It's goin' south fast, Elle. They're… I can explain more when we get back. For now, we gotta pick up everything we can and bring it with us."

"Everything?"

"Whatever isn't nailed down an' we can carry, yeah," Rafny grimaced. "Weapons and armor are the priority. We might… we'll have to leave the forge."

"No," Elle said, resolute.

"Elle, please understand," Rafny pleaded. "Something bad is gonna happen. Worse than the Inquisition takin' over the town. We'll need what we can carry, and I don't have enough arms to bring the forge—"

Elle put a steel hand over Rafny's lips, gently. For some reason, the Veridian Steel felt warm. "Just listen, you hammer-headed fool. Everyone? You can come out now. It's safe."

With a murmur and shuffling, a few folks emerged from the back rooms. Then a few more. And more. And...

"Twins' breath, how many?" Rafny asked, looking over them all. She spotted a number of their apprentices and more than a couple neighbors.

"Seventy-eight, all told. Everyone I could get my hands on." Elle grinned and nudged her wife. "More than enough arms, eh?"

Rafny couldn't help but smile. Elle always had that effect on her, even in the middle of all this.

"Everyone, come with us," Heva had stepped up and addressed the crowd. Rafny looked at her in surprise. "Grab everything you can carry."

"Where?" Someone asked.

"Somewhere safe," she said with a glance at Rafny. "Where we can make a stand."

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

Mervin Cors was on Wall duty.

He'd been on Wall duty for the past few weeks, ever since that man had jumped outta the Foglands. He was told it was punishment, but Mervin was more than happy to stay on this side of the Wall where it was safe.

Safe from the Inquisitors, at least.

He'd been hounded by a lot of people, Guilders at first, then the Inquisition, all asking about Felix. Who was he? Where had he come from? What could he do? Mervin didn't like the attention at all. He answered the questions as best he could, but none of his words seemed to satisfy the Acolytes, and they had started to get angry. For servants of the Pathless, they did not take his ignorance well at all.

They had pressed him, hard. Asked him a thousand questions in a thousand different ways, using words that befuddled him despite his rigorous education. He'd learned all his letters well before he was ten, and his math wasn't too bad. But the Acolytes looked at him like he was an idiot.

Worthless.

Not even his revelation about the glowing obelisk was enough to sate them. Sure, at first they were pleased, but after a week, they returned with more questions. Queries about Mana and blood and things which a former plowman knew nothing about. And now, he was hearing rumors of some fighting between the Guilders and Inquisition, though he didn't put much stock in it. Servants of the holy Pathless wouldn't engage in such foul business, he was sure.

Regardless, he was happy to be out of all of it, whatever might be going on. Ironically, up here, he found a place to relax.

"I think they're gone for now," Piotr said with his steady baritone. "Mervin, Lars, Garin, rest up. Lettl, Davik, Oren, stay sharp."

Suppressing a groan, Mervin allowed himself to sink to the carved stone bench built into the Wall, one of hundreds along the length of the defensive construct. It sat behind a wide crenellation, heavily protected from anything attacking the outside of the city, the perfect place to rest when your stint atop the Wall stretched long into the night. The sun was just about to set, but Mervin had been on his feet since mid-morning, having taken a double shift from another Tin Rank. Anything to stay up there, away from the questions.

"Wave's been gettin' stronger. Those last bugs had weird metal on ‘em. Like steel, almost," Lars said with a strained grunt. He'd been on the same shift as Mervin all day.

"Steel bugs? You been drinking again, Lars?" Garin asked with a grin.

"Shut it," Lars groused. "I saw it."

"Calm down. It ain't nothing we can't handle," Piotr said. "And I saw it, too, Garin. You callin' me a drunk?"

"Sir, no sir," Garin lazily saluted.

Mervin glanced nervously at the older Piotr, but the man just rolled his eyes and kept watching the treeline. He was in charge, their senior but still another Tin Rank. He didn't have the authority to do much to Garin. Ranks were spread thin since the bugs had gotten through the wards weeks back.

"What if Tier Two's show up again?" Melvin asked, voicing the worry that ate at him. He felt safe from the Inquisition up here, but the monsters were getting stronger. Lars was right about that.

"That's what the Bronze're for," Piotr said, nodding at several women tinkering with metal styluses on the red-metal parapets. Shimmering symbols flashed beneath their markings as each worked quickly to repair damaged sections of the walls. They were all preternaturally beautiful, a symptom of Tempering themselves into Apprentice Tier. The bronze medallions hanging from their chests meant they were likely close to Journeyman, too, and their assured competence at their craft was clearly evident.

"You think they can fix it? They've been at it for hours," Lars asked.

"They're Bronze," Garin said by way of explanation as he leaned back, his eyes closed. "Elder Spirit's got ‘em trained on those scripts. Wouldn't be out here if they didn't know their stuff."

Bronze. It seemed an impossibly far chasm to cross to Mervin. Still at level eleven, he'd failed to raise any of his Skills beyond level twenty, let alone Temper himself with them. His one saving grace was his extremely high Perception for his level, a stat that had saved his life several times by that point. But it wasn't enough. He didn't have the Strength to destroy a Skink with a single punch, or the Skill to disappear in plain sight and knock out an Acolyte with lightning.

He was no Felix, whoever or whatever he had been.

"Can't believe the monsters damaged the script so bad," Melvin said. "Thought this Wall was indestructible?"

"Ain't been fixed right since the incursion a few weeks back," Lars said. "Been patching it up nightly ever since. But like I said, those bugs're gettin' stronger. I know it. Soon, we won't be able to hold em back."

"Easy, Lars," Piotr said, fixing the two of them with his steely glare. For all that their Rank was the same, Mervin felt like a bug himself when Piotr looked at him in that way. "The Wall will hold. To say otherwise could be considered insubordination, yeah?"

Lars' mouth shut with a clack of teeth, and a frown started to form on Mervin’s face. Piotr was agitated far more than normal. Because of the rumors? They'd all heard the booms and felt the ground tremble earlier that day, but patrols had told them not to worry about it, that the Elders were handling it.

Is he worried about the Inquisition? Surely he doesn't believe that—

Someone stood beside him.

With a start, Mervin found a short and slender man in cream robes standing within an arm’s-length. He was older, his hair and goatee silvered, but looked to be a youthful forty years old. A strange artifact was in his hand, like a flask of some sort, leaking a glowing, rust-colored steam.

What in the world—?

"Elder Teine!"

First one, then all of the Bronze Guilders snapped to attention as they saw the slender man. Mervin was so surprised by the speed of their movements that it took him an entire five seconds to register that he was looking directly at the Elder of Spirit in the Protector's Guild.

"You, you, and you, come with me." He ordered, his eyes never ceasing their movement. Yet the Elder wasn't looking at the Wall or the Foglands, but into the city itself.

"Sir, we're not finished. The sigaldry is incom–"

A terrible aura pressed down on the Bronze Rank, so skillfully accurate that Mervin barely felt the shivering echoes of its force. Lars gaped like a fish, noticing the man for the first time. The Bronze Guilders, however, could barely stand under his gaze. There was a feverish intensity to him that Mervin found upsetting. "Do not question me."

"Y-yes, sir."

Swiftly, the Elder and all of the scripters left the Wall, speeding down the interior stairs at a clip Mervin's eyes couldn't follow. They had gone so fast that a few of them had even left their metal styluses.

"What in Yyero's blighted backside was that about?" Garin asked, his rest apparently disrupted by the Elder's abrupt passage. "Can't a man get a few winks anymore?"

A bell sounded from down the Wall before being echoed above their position as well. With a groan repeated by a hundred others atop the Wall, Garin lurched back to his feet.

"Monsters, incoming!"

Mervin stood up as well, Lars close behind him. The forest of lethwood trees and other, more exotic lumber had begun to shake and quiver. His sharp eyes picked out a small horde of six-legged Wretches, their rear ends clearly coated in a dull metallic gray.

"Time to fight, Merv," Lars said as he slipped on his boiled leather helmet. "Let's kill some bugs."

Mervin smiled back at the man, but his insides were tight and cramping. He repeated his mantra.

Be like Felix. Be like Felix. Be like Felix.

He wasn't sure, but Mervin liked to believe that helped.

* * *

Slowly, the team climbed down the rocky decline of the Larval Ravager's tunnel.

Situated at the center of the broken tower, the tunnel dropped nearly fifty feet that accumulated debris turned into the most treacherous of ramps. Atar and Alister had the worst time of it, helping each other carefully navigate the shifting earth, while Evie and Vess ghosted right past them. Evie altered her density until she practically floated to the bottom, while Vess used a combination of her Dragoon's Footwork and spearwork to negotiate the terrain. Harn was much more blunt, but perhaps even faster. He had just leaped over it all, letting his body coast the last few feet atop jagged stone chips the size of a car.

Felix, of course, utilized Unfettered Volition. His steps were sure and quick, easily keeping pace with the two women. But more importantly, giving Harn his space.

Felix had told the warrior everything. Everything. The man had taken it better than Felix had expected; he hadn't lashed out in anger or retreated in disgust. Harn had merely walked away, his face hidden behind his armor, though his internal rhythms suggested his emotions were in turmoil. Conflicted and worried.

Admittedly, it's a lot to take in.

Instead, Harn had addressed them all and broken down their plan. They were going to enter the tunnel and make their way to the Domain Core. From that point on, the plan was to destroy the Domain Core and stop all the creatures it spawned. A seemingly simple plan, were they to ignore the level disparity between their group and the monsters.

No one had a better idea. Well, running would have been a good idea, but they'd committed.

So, on they went. The first few miles beneath the earth were relatively unremarkable. The smell of loam and damp earth pervaded their senses. Felix's Manasight was filled with dusty-brown Mana swirled with the gray-black of shadow and the green-gold of life Mana, all of it mingling somehow chaotically. Unpredictably.

<Do you hear that?> Evie signed to him, and Felix nodded. They'd chosen to use handsign to communicate once in the tunnel, since they couldn't be sure how far sound would carry. Felix caught Harn's attention at the front of the group and repeated the signs.

<Hold. I'll check.> Harn slipped ahead.

<What's wrong with him?> Evie asked, but Felix just shook his head. He wasn't having that conversation in handsign. He might have gotten better at it by memorizing the forms, but he lacked the nuance needed for an explanation as heavy as the Maw. And frankly, he really didn't want to, not after Harn's reaction.

Pit nudged his leg, their bond warming in comfort. Felix smiled back at the tenku, but his eyes drifted once more to where Harn had disappeared beyond a bend in the tunnel. A full twenty minutes later, Harn crept back into sight.

<Thirty ahead. Spawn of Hunger. Two Knights> Harn signed. <Distracted. Eating.>

<We can use that,> Vess signed. She motioned for Atar and Alister to come closer. <Alister, you can make area of effect kinetic blasts, yes? And Atar, you can cover an area in fire?>

Both nodded.

<Good. Then here is the plan...>

Ten minutes later, Felix found himself down the tunnel and hiding behind a rock larger than his first apartment. Alister was next to him, fiddling with the hilt of his rapier. Vess had laid out quite the comprehensive attack plan, and the two of them were to start things off.

In the near distance, a gaggle of Spawn swarmed over each other, like desperate scavengers. Felix couldn't make out what they were so excited about, and he was certain he didn't want to know. Instead, he could feel them pulse against his sense of Affinity, their endless hunger so much more clearer than Harn's own mixed feelings to Felix.

From across the tunnel, he saw the signal.

<Begin!>

A deluge of fire arced from Atar, hidden across the tunnel, spraying like a firehose upon the gathered Spawn. Beside Felix, Alister tensed and jabbed his elegant rapier into the air. A series of five-foot columns descended from the sky, each hitting the group with the force of a speeding dumptruck. The Spawn were filled with a sudden rage and fear that oriented in their general direction. Felix felt his connection to them thrum as they communed in some sort of… hive mind. As one, they charged.

Stone Shaping!

Flaring the Skill, Felix grabbed at the rocky floor across the entire breadth of the tunnel. It was a tactic that would not have worked only a few hours ago; but now, with his Mana over three thousand, he had power to spare. The ground turned to sludge before dropping away completely as the first of the Spawn hit the trench, sending them toppling down below. The sudden, thirty-foot drop was not nearly as brutal as the six-foot-long sharpened spikes at the bottom.

You Have Killed A Spawn of Hunger (x17)!

XP Earned!

Stone Shaping is level 31!

Stone Shaping is level 32!

The Spawn didn't halt at all, the trench forming too quickly to avoid and their hive-mind or maybe herd mentality was too dim to make on-the-fly decisions. For all their advanced levels, the Spawn were exceptionally stupid beasts.

Not true for the ones that followed. The Knights of Hunger.

Huge and hulking, they were easily fifteen feet tall and about ten feet wide. An avalanche of muscle and fat, they were vaguely humanoid, covered in a similar patchwork of rust-red scales and sickly, yellow flesh, and like all Primordial-Spawn, their faces were devoid of anything save wide, drooling maws.

The Knights leaped over the trench, treading atop a number of lesser Spawn in their run-ups, and landed hard enough to depress the stony soil. They were met immediately with potent orbs of flame and pinpoint strikes of needling kinetic force. The two Knights put up their hands defensively, only for both of them to be lashed by smoking white chains from the ground beneath. Purple-white Mana steamed around them as the Knights bellowed their fury, tearing their limbs free with a minor effort.

But not in time for either of them to avoid three spears a piece striking them directly in the teeth.

The explosion of air Mana rocked the Knights back, throwing one of them prone, and tore gaping, bloody holes in their faces and throats. If they were Human, the fight would have been over. But they had all fought them before, and Felix knew their kind better than most.

Unfettered Volition!

Felix raced out of cover, Harn following a split second after. Of the two of them, Felix was far faster and reached his Knight before Harn had crossed half the distance. Flaring a number of Skills at once, he unleashed hard.

Influence of the Wisp!

Shadow Whip!

Reign of Vellus!

A Knight of Hunger (x2) is Enthralled for 10 Seconds!

Hurling his hands forward, Felix enveloped both of the Knights in wisplight, and the hungry fire began eating them alive. Unable to let that be all, Felix summoned a blackened whip of darkness and brought it smashing down from above, shattering the Knight's arm as it tried to manifest spikes of bone along its length. The arm was forced into the creature's gut by the whip first and then by the wave of kinetic energy that slammed into it like a hydraulic hammer. Blood spurted sideways, gallons of it, and lightning crawled across the immobile monstrosity.

You Have Killed A Knight of Hunger!

XP Earned!

Influence of the Wisp is level 33!

Felix started toward the second Knight when an axe blazing with silver Mana tore into its chest. He took a step back as Harn jogged the rest of the way and retrieved his weapon.

"Damn, kid. You're a lot faster than before. Is all that from levelin' up?" Harn said, wicking the blood from his axe.

"That and my new Body. I'm a lot more… dense now, I guess." Felix shook his head. "This shouldn't have felt so easy."

"Be glad it did. We could use a little easy. It's only gonna get harder from here." Harn fixed Felix with a contemplative gaze. "I get why you didn't tell us before. About the Maw. Bein' as you are what you are, not knowin' how we'd react… I get it. But from now on, I'm gonna need you ta trust me. Battlin' without knowin' yer allies' capabilities is like fightin' blind and deaf. Easy way ta die."

Felix clenched his jaw, fighting down his first instinct to mention his Blind Fighting Skill, before nodding. "I think I can do that. I trust you, Evie, and Vess."

"Not Atar or the noble welp, huh?" Harn asked, a smile in his voice. "Don't fully blame ya there."

"Atar's alright, but I'd rather Oathbind him than take chances." Felix shook his head. "They're—"

"What is that?"

Felix turned to look at Atar, who was jogging up to them. The man pointed beyond the trench Felix had made, to where the Primordial-Spawn had been congregating. Feeding. Glimmers of light shone through the gloom of the tunnel, as if something had been etched along the wall of it. A spike of pain wormed across his brain as Felix looked, and he noticed for the first time a slight pulsing in the ambient Mana all around them. It was very faint, like music heard from rooms away, but there it was.

"It-it's the same as your pages! The same as the Butcher!" Atar crowed and sped toward the lights. Quickly, Felix reversed a portion of his trench, the earth reforming breaths before the fire mage rushed across it. "Sigils, Alister! Felix! Sigils!"

CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

Alarm shot through Felix, and he raced ahead, pulling the stone back into place as he ran.

Stone Shaping is level 33!

Despite his speed, Atar still made it to the sigils ahead of him, and Felix found the young man staring raptly at a series of gashes in the earth. As if molten lava was dwelling a fraction of an inch below them, the sigils emitted a light like liquid fire. Atar's face was illuminated by that dancing glow.

"It's… beautiful," he murmured, but Felix noticed he couldn't quite keep his eyes on it. Each time he did, he flinched like he'd been burned. "How is this possible? Are they natural formations?"

"Don't," Felix said, grabbing the fire mage's hand before he could touch one. Atar looked at him in confusion. "They're dangerous."

"Of course they are," Atar said, pulling free of Felix's grip. "I'm not an idiot."

"They're not the same as the sigils you use in Haarwatch," Felix continued, trying to explain. "They're far more like the Primordial Sigils I've seen before. But twisted, even from that."

"Primordial Sigils?! So you can read them," Atar said. "I knew it."

"Some of them. Not—" Felix's eyes spasmed, vision shifting in and out of focus, as he beheld a section of the sigils. He strained though, and the effect slowly faded. "—Ugh, they're painful just to look at."

The others had all caught up to them by this point, Evie and Alister panting slightly.

"Noctis' tits! That hurts," Evie shouted, throwing up a hand and squeezing her eyes shut. "It's like shoving my face into a bonfire made of needles."

"She's not wrong," Alister agreed with a commiserating wince. "What in the Light are these?"

"Sigils. Scriptwork that's been made fundamentally different than our own!" Atar hopped to his feet excitedly. "There's been evidence of this where the Butcher has been active for the past few months. Now here."

"What does that mean?" Vess asked, carefully not looking at them. "They sound… off."

Felix nodded at her. "They are. I've seen them only a few places before, but they don't seem natural at all. You can hear it, that underlying buzzing?"

"They're creepy. Like something is inside ‘em, movin'," Evie said with a shiver.

Atar pointed down at the ground, which was mostly slabs of stone unearthed by the Larval Ravager. "Look at the shards around the edges. It's like the sigils burst from below, breaking open into these shapes. Did someone make these?"

"I doubt the Domain made ‘em," Harn said. "Why were all the monsters huddled around it? The way they were actin', I expected to find a few corpses."

"I-I'm not sure," Atar admitted, and Alister just shrugged as he blocked the view of the sigils with an upraised hand. "Felix?"

Felix knelt down, putting himself inches from the broken stone. There was a collection of six large sigils arranged into a triangular pattern, each with smaller markings around them. Standard primary and secondary scriptwork, but what did it mean? Despite a lack of pain sensors in the brain, Felix hurt, and his eyes burned as he looked at them. But he shoved that aside. His new Skill made that far easier.

The Song of Absolution is level 41!

...

The Song of Absolution is level 43!

Free from most of the pain, the sigils almost leaped into his mind. They felt active and, if not malevolent, at least intensely aggressive. That same sense of dread he'd felt upon first viewing them a couple months ago was present, but it was muted. He realized that what he had been sensing before was a limited sort of awareness in the sigils, like a tiny mind.

Sigils of the Primordial Dawn is level 26!

...

Sigils of the Primordial Dawn is level 31!

Manasight is level 46

...

Manasight is level 48!

Huh. The sigils before him began to make more sense. He could see where a few of them were similar to the Primordial Sigils he'd seen in the Nymean Temple and beneath the Archon's mountain. Of the six primary sigils he could identify were subsist, might, siphon, and heart. Similar, now that he had the knowledge, to the sigils carved into the Elf in the alley. The others were incomprehensible to him, though he spotted a few secondary and tertiary sigils set in orbit around the others. Sigils depicting gorge and hold were among them. He wasn't entirely sure what it all meant, but he had an idea.

The sigils are feeding on the Domain.

Sigils of the Primordial Dawn is level 32!

...

Sigils of the Primordial Dawn is level 39!

"It's an array, built to siphon energy from here to the center," Felix announced. He pointed at one of the markings. "This is the siphon sigil, just meant for pulling ambient energies, I think. I've seen them on the lamps at Zara's house. These, right here along the edge of it? They're changing what should be a trickle into a flood."

Felix looked up at all of them. "If I had to guess, the Domain-Core is feeding on the Domain itself."

"What? That's insane," Alister said. "It would collapse itself, killing it and the Domain around it. It would solve our problem for us."

"Weren't the Revenants feeding them monsters and plants and stuff?" Evie asked.

"This seems way more direct," Atar said, pointing along the tunnel. "A giant funnel through the Domain, built to guzzle up all the ambient power. A lot more efficient than finding, killing, and then eating all the monsters and vegetation."

"But I thought Zara claimed the power would expand, bursting the shell?" Vess said. "This is… draining that power?"

"Yeah, she said that." Harn mulled over the new information before glancing at Felix. "What d'you think, Felix?"

Felix grit his teeth at the question. He didn't even tear his eyes away from the sigils on the ground. "All this power, all this energy? If it can handle it, they won't need an army of monsters to burst this place. Just the one."

Harn grunted, worried. "Is the Core advancing rapidly, then? Can you tell how much is bein' pumped into it?"

Felix shook his head. "Fast, but not as fast as I was afraid of at first. The Core clearly isn't getting all of it, since those Spawn were here. They were feeding on the energies as they converted to essence. This type of creature… it's something of a special skill they have."

"Trackless forfend," Alister breathed. "They'll out-level us in no time."

"That's why those Spawn gave such a good bump," Evie said with a snap of her fingers. "They got all… juiced up here."

"Just another reason ta hurry," Harn grunted and motioned for them all to move out.

"Felix you have to show me how to read these," Atar said, crouching beside him as the others passed. He kept looking at the sigils before wincing and turning away. "This is new."

"Or very, very old," Felix said, before standing and following the others.

* * *

They traveled as fast as they could, but the farther they went, the more arrays of twisted sigils they found. The earth and rocks around them paled as if they were being leeched of their vitality. It appeared that the Domain-Core was sucking the entire place dry from the center out.

Moreover, at the location of each array, they encountered more of the Primordial-Spawn. A lot more.

Harn and Vess' leadership in the early fights paid off, and after a few more, a pattern evolved. Alister and Atar would attack them en masse, hitting with their area of effect Skills and grabbing their attention. Felix would use Stone Shaping to box them in, funneling the relatively weak Spawn into a recessed pit. Once they had charged blindly at them and trapped themselves, the rest of them would simply unload their ranged Skills onto the beasts.

Like shooting Spawn in a stone pit.

Felix was learning a lot about his allies, both in the way they fought and the Skills they used. Each of them contained more flexibility than he had anticipated, but they were also fairly tightly specialized around either a single element of Mana, or their weapons. Which made sense, as Skills and Titles tended to arise from repeated actions and training. At least for normal people. He was already getting weird looks from Alister whenever Felix would display a new Mana Skill or aptitude. He could see the hushed conversations he had with Atar, though he refused to listen to it even if he could.

Felix didn't need superhuman Perception to know when he was being talked about, and frankly, he didn't care. He was done hiding what he could do.

As the battles wore on, Felix grew into his new capabilities. His Body, which before had been heavy and strong, had transformed yet again. He was only a bit heavier than before, yet he felt denser, as if the weight was being turned inward somehow. It was hard to explain, but the result was that his movements felt smoother and quicker than before. His Agility and Dexterity worked well with his Strength and Endurance, cooperating in a way he hadn't noticed since he'd hit the First Threshold.

A few times, when their tried and true method of trapping and killing the monsters had failed, Felix had found himself wading through Spawns without care for injury. Their claws glanced off his Armored Skin and new Body as if he wore platemail, and his answering strikes broke through their scaled skin with ease. If the groups hadn't started to contain more Knights and those flying Rooks, it would have all felt too easy.

Can't have that, he mused sourly as he dipped beneath the furious haymaker of a Knight. Harn came in from the side, bisecting the bruised bastard with two rapid swings, and they moved on.

Next.

Clearly as never before, Felix understood his Formations.

His Godeater Mind felt hungry for all things, knowledge among them, but also the way monsters moved and fought. He found a part of himself studying them, recording what he could into his vault of memory. Felix's Spirit, meanwhile, felt like a raging fire in the darkest of nights, a beacon along a stormy coast as he erupted with spell after spell. Crackling electricity, shifting stones, waves of acidic destruction all followed, one after another. The relative darkness of the tunnels was bathed in the light of their Mana, and a fierce joy rose up in Felix. It was untouched by the Maw's influence, a thrill for surviving when so many things wanted him dead.

For his Body, it was a mountain unleashed by calamity. That is what the Seed of the Unchained Mountain was: as if a volcano had erupted beneath him, within him, the mountain quaked and moved. Yet still, for all the destruction promised by earthly cataclysm, it was only a promise of what was to come. He had only taken a step onto this path, and he had a long way to go. The words of Vellus rose, unbidden in his Mind. And whether due to his increased Willpower or Intelligence, unlike previously, her words were devoid of any acid-trip visuals and clear as a bell.

You fight a dangerous battle, ascendant, on a Path more than broken. It was shattered.

You must never stop… To stop is death.

That's true enough, Felix mused as he ripped apart a Spawn's jaw. The moment the beasts lost the initiative, we were able to slaughter them.

And slaughter was good for training.

The Song of Absolution is level 44!

The Song of Absolution is level 45!

Unfettered Volition is level 26!

...

Unfettered Volition is level 33!

Dodge is level 36!

...

Dodge is level 42!

Corrosive Strike is level 36!

...

Corrosive Strike is level 38!

Unarmed Mastery is level 39!

Voracious Eye is level 35!

Dual Casting is level 25!

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Tier in Dual Casting!

You Gain:

+5 INT

+5 PER

+5 ALA

Dual Casting is level 26!

...

Dual Casting is level 30!

Meditation is level 38!

Meditation is level 39!

Influence of the Wisp is level 34!

Influence of the Wisp is level 35!

Shadow Whip is level 32!

Wrack and Ruin is level 33!

Wrack and Ruin is level 34!

Mantle of the Long Night is level 28!

...

Mantle of the Long Night is level 33!

Arrow of Perdition is level 6!

...

Arrow of Perdition is level 13!

Pit had benefited as well, fighting alongside them and able to focus entirely upon offense. His Mana Skills in particular rose fast, until only Poisonfire, Flight, and Cold Resistance were less than Apprentice Tier.

Pit's Bite is level 31!

Pit's Rake is level 34!

Pit's Cry is level 35!

Pit's Skulk is level 31!

Pit's Wingblade is level 35!

Pit's Frost Spear is level 36!

Pit's Poisonfire is level 23!

Pit's Flight is level 9!

Felix had cycled through nearly his entire repertoire, looking to eliminate the monsters as fast as possible. His bonkers Mana stores and significant regeneration allowed him to chain together spells far quicker than ever before. He was even able to use Arrow of Perdition three times before running too low for comfort. The dart had grown to be the size of a crossbow bolt after it hit level 10, and it had really messed up the Knights he'd used it on.

Mopping up the rest had been a cakewalk.

After the last enemy fell, they found themselves in a widening section of the tunnel that was bathed in shadows. Despite the proliferation of the foul sigils along the walls, there were no more Primordial-Spawn within Felix's limited sight. The tunnel was desolate and pale, even the color bleached from the powdery stone all around them. Felix had been growing increasingly concerned about the structural integrity of the shaft for a while now, and those same fears spiked again. With the amount of essence drained from all around them, he would have figured this whole place would have collapsed a long time ago.

"Quiet," Alister said, scratching idly at his neck. "Where'd they all go?"

"A good question," Evie said, her voice echoing more than Felix thought it should have. "This feels like a graveyard."

Atar coughed twice into his elbow before leaning over to study the closest array. A sheen of perspiration covered his brow, despite the relative cool temperature of the tunnel. He and Alister had both flagged considerably over the past hour, burning through their own collection of Health and Stamina Potions as both pools had finally begun to dwindle despite their best efforts. The flaky rash had only spread along their skin, and Felix's sharp eyes even picked out the holes that were slowly being eaten into their robes. He didn't mention anything, however. They both knew what they were up against, and soon enough Felix and the others would have to face the same corrupting influence. There were only two hours left on their wardstones.

Will we make it? Felix wasn't sure. The speed they had been moving had eaten up the miles, but the lack of details and reference points made judging their progress difficult. He took a moment and thought, recounting the past hour in his memory. We've traveled… almost fifteen miles.

"How big is this Domain? Does anyone know?" Felix asked.

"Eleven or twelve leagues straight across last I knew," Harn said. "Give or take. You think we're close?"

"Gotta be. We've traversed about… half that? How many feet are in a league?"

"What?"

"Nevermind," Felix said, converting his best guesstimate based on his limited understanding of what a league was… back on Earth, at least. "We've done like, four or five leagues, I think."

Harn grunted in thought, one of his many types of grunts. "The beasts've been worth more experience this last stretch."

"Nearly all my Skills have jumped up a level or two, and I have earned another level besides," Vess said. "It is like we are stealing their power."

Evie grinned. "Like little level-up meals, just for us."

"Not for us," Felix reminded them, and Evie's grin faded. "The Sub-Cores and Domain Core are all feeding on these things in addition to everything else. I figure that's why we aren't seeing any here. They're probably all back at the center, eaten or about to be."

"Grim," Evie said.

Felix frowned into the distance, still too dark to his Manasight. Too void of life. "No clue how strong the Cores'll be when we get there. The memory I received could have been months old, for all I know. The Larval Ravagers looked much smaller."

"Memory? Who's memory?" Atar asked, looking up from the array he was studying. Felix didn't answer, but the fire mage got there all the same. "The Ravager's memory?"

Felix nodded.

"Burn me, Felix. How?"

"A Skill," Felix admitted. "Ravenous Tithe. If I eat the Mana of an enemy I… can take on a memory of theirs."

"Blood and ashes," Alister said, eyes wide.

"That's… that's a wild Skill, even for you," Evie said. "Useful though."

Felix shrugged, not willing to talk about it more. Despite resolving to no longer hoard secrets, he wasn't about to divulge them willy-nilly. They now knew he could gather memories, and that validated his opinions on the battle to come. That was enough. "Atar, what do you see?"

Atar blinked and looked at the array again, wincing only a little bit this time. His lips were chapped and his hair lank as he stood up. Alister put a hand under his elbow to steady him, and the fire mage gave the noble a small smile. "The siphon is weaker here, as if it had used up all its fuel. Do you see a lot of ambient Mana here?"

"No, very, very little. It's actually a little hard to see in the dark because of it," Felix said. "I guess that answers the question. No more ambient Mana because the Core has already sucked it all up."

There was a faint sound, a grating of rocks tumbling against one another. They exchanged glances. Then it came again, a little louder this time.

<What is—>

Before Felix could complete the sign, red eyes lit up the darkness. Primordial-Spawn, only two of them, but they were absolutely huge.

Voracious Eye.

Name: Bishop of Hunger

Type: Primordial-Spawn

Level: 56

HP: 1843/1843

SP: 2483/2483

MP: 434879/843

Lore: Tainted by the Maw's corrupting influence, these creatures possess some of that Primordial's traits, including a prodigious hunger. A Bishop is blighted with eight or nine prehensile limbs, each tipped with jagged barbs.

Strength: More Data Required

Weakness: More Data Required

A loud voice, cold and reverberating strangely, spoke.

Bring them to me.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

The Bishops of Hunger, each around the same size as a Knight, loped from the shadows. Their prehensile limbs, seemingly boneless appendages, arced behind them like a handful of scorpion stingers while they ran on all fours. Even their hands were strangely shaped, tipped with yellowed claws that tore into the stone tunnel without issue.

"Felix! On me!" Harn shouted.

Convergence!

Pit appeared in a flash of light nearby. "Pit! Stay out of their range and pummel them with everything you got!"

"Chirrrupp!"

"Felix!" Harn was already running.

Unfettered Volition!

The Bishops had halved the distance between their group, but they were ready for them. Sparkbolts blasted into the lead Bishop's mouth, causing it to snap closed in pain. A cobalt blast stabbed into the other, but it was deflected by the heavy scales along the creature's shoulders. The same was true of a series of Frost Spears, each of them shattering ineffectually on the Bishop's hide.

Stone Shaping!

Felix grunted as he lifted two ten-foot-tall slabs of stone from the ground fifteen feet ahead of the monstrosities. Three feet thick each, he figured it would at least give them a little extra time to attack. Yet the Bishops sped up, and with a snarling roar, both of them crashed through the barriers, tearing them to pieces in the process.

And dropping right into the trench Felix had formed.

The first Bishop roared as it fell, impacting the earth forty feet below, but the second nimbly grabbed onto the sides with its flexible stingers. The bone spurs punched into the stone and it leveraged its wide bulk out of danger. Within moments, its blind, gaping jaws were on the other side of the trench. Just in time to feel the hit of Harn's axes.

The man struck with the steady beat of a metronome, hit after hit, paced between the beast's furious counterattacks. Bloody lines appeared on the Bishop's scaled hide, though they began to heal before much damage could be inflicted.

Time to change that.

Influence of the Wisp!

Wrack and Ruin!

Wrack and Ruin!

A Bishop of Hunger is Enthralled for 2 Seconds!

Blue wisplight wreathed the Bishop in punitive flames, and it came to a lurching stop. Two seconds was time enough for Felix to summon twin orbs of dark acid. He hurled them straight forward; with the enemy locked in place, aiming was far simpler. The orbs hit the Bishop with the crack of a baseball beaning a man at ninety miles an hour, while the smell of sizzling putrescence filled the air.

Influence of the Wisp is level 36!

Wrack and Ruin is level 35!

"That's disgustin'," Harn said. He pivoted and summoned silver flames onto his axes before bringing both of them down on the creature's shoulder. They bit deep, unleashing a fountain of dark ichor that splashed over the warrior. "BLECH!"

"Ha," Felix managed, sliding beneath the suddenly flailing limbs of the unfrozen Bishop. The creature wasn't so easy to fool; the eight stingers he counted all moved in opposing directions, striking almost randomly around itself as Felix attempted to dodge. But it wasn't random; each hit maneuvered Felix, positioning him for a final blow. Almost past it, he faltered, and two bone spurs struck him full on in the chest. He was slammed backward, only barely able to turn his headlong fall into a backward tumble due to Unfettered Volition.

Still, the force of the blow sent him nearly forty feet away before he could fight back against the momentum. And in that time, everything went wrong.

A flurry of Sparkbolts and kinetic blasts hit the beast, but it simply waded through the attacks. Three of its tendrils warded off the furious Harn, taking the man's slashes without flinching. Its Tier Two resilience was in evidence as its wounds continuously healed. The Bishop, hurt but still fighting, had engaged with Harn, Vess, and Evie. The two women harried the beast with spear and chain, each taking on one of its tendrils while the bulk of the creature fought against Harn. But the Bishop could use its tendrils completely independently of each other, and they hadn't realized it yet.

Evie spun her chain about in a complicated series of whorls, each pass adding momentum to her deadly chain, and the Bishop's tendrils crept back under that onslaught. Felix started running. From his angle, he could see it. It wasn't retreating from her, it was luring her in.

"Watch out!"

The words had barely left his mouth when another tendril lashed out; coiled upon its tall back, it would have been all but invisible from up close. The strike hit true, smashing into Evie's left hip hard enough to be mistaken for a gunshot.

Evie screamed.

"No!" Vess was there as Evie collapsed under the pain, the damaged joint no longer able to bear her weight. A spinning slash severed the tendril just behind the bone spur stinger, and the creature shrieked in pain. "Evie!"

Stone Shaping!

Shadow Whip!

"Pull her back!" Felix accelerated as much as he could, and his powerful stride ate up the distance in seconds. He threw his arm up, the Mana pattern coming instantly to mind, and ripped up a squared section of stone beneath the Bishop's right foreleg. Suddenly, the creature was off-balance. So, he conjured a dark whip of shadow and lashed it to the damn thing's hindleg.

Reign of Vellus!

"HUAAH!" With a mighty heave, Felix sent out a pulse of crackling kinetic Mana, picking up the monster's belly as he yanked upon its back leg. Like a felled tree, the Bishop teetered just a moment on the cusp while its tendrils went wild.

Influence of the Wisp!

A Bishop of Hunger is Enthralled for 2 Seconds!

Unable to move, it fell. Hard.

"Take it down!" Harn shouted moments before he carved into the immobile beast. "Everything you got!"

Fire, lightning, force, and a deluge of Frost Spears slammed into the Enthralled Bishop. Felix watched its Health dwindle to near nothing, hovering just a hair above ten percent, when someone shouted.

"Pierce the Sky!"

Vess soared into the air, passing by a crowing Pit at her zenith, before she shouted again. Her hair whipped around her face like dark flame, and six other spears manifested around her. "Dragon's Descent!"

Like a meteor, the future Dragoon dropped spear first upon the Primordial-Spawn, just moments before the Enthrall ended.

*KATHOOM!*

The sound was like thunder, and it shattered the stone beneath. Felix looked on in awe, all seven spears left embedded deep within the monster's side and a deep, dark ichor gushed from every wound.

You Have Killed A Bishop of Hunger!

XP Earned!

"Twin's t-teeth," Evie said. Felix belatedly noticed she had been propped up against a large boulder nearby. "Think sh-she's mad?"

Felix looked for someone to help, but Harn had moved toward the trench Felix had made earlier. "Evie, don't talk, save your strength," Felix began, but the girl gave him an annoyed look.

"Wh-what, you think this is—is your dumb wor-wor— your dumb home?" She laboriously reached into her side pouch and pulled out a minor Health Potion. "I'll be ri-right as rain soon."

"Your home?"

Felix turned and saw Alister standing nearby, having approached with another potion in his hand. His raw, reddened brows furrowed, and his mouth pinched. "What does she mean?"

"Not really the time," Felix said as he clenched his jaw. He looked worriedly back at Evie, but the girl was carefully slugging back two potions at once. It wouldn't heal her much, and it certainly wouldn't heal a shattered hip, but it would help. "Harn, are you—

"Harn!"

A tendril whipped out of the trench and slammed the warrior off his feet. As with Felix before, Harn was hurled bodily into the tunnel walls, but failed to stop himself in time. He hit with an explosion of stone and dust.

Through that dust, the second Bishop charged.

It erupted from the stone ground, as if the thing had half burrowed out of the trench he'd made. Its powerful legs sent it surging toward them all while its nine tendrils unfurled from its broad, lumpy back. Waves of fire and pillars of blue light dropped down upon it, but it hardly slowed. In seconds, the Bishop had closed the distance, drawing level with its dead compatriot and sending both Atar and Alister to the ground. It hadn't even bothered to use the bone spur on the end, instead used the broadside in a casual swipe of three tendrils.

"Seven Tribulations!"

Vess leaped at Felix, dragging the both of them down to the ground. The seven silver spears, still embedded in the corpse of the first Bishop, exploded in a torrent of white Mana vapor. The second Bishop took the detonation straight to its side and lost its footing. It careened like a runaway dump truck, out of his line of sight, crashing with a deafening roar.

Deafening, had his hearing not gone already.

Sound was muted and a sharp, tinny ring took its place in Felix's ears. Vess laid only a foot away, and the way her head lolled, she was unconscious. Evie was nearby, her eyes similarly closed. A few confused seconds went by as he stared at them both, not quite sure why he was on the ground and why they were just lying there. Then his Endurance and Vitality caught up with him, and the blinking icons he hadn't noticed flickered and disappeared. Sound returned in a rush, and his thoughts were no longer muddy and confused.

Quickly, he Eyed both of them. Their Health was low, but not dropping any further. "Atar," he recalled, turning around.

"Jesus."

The area around the first Bishop's corpse had been obliterated, as if Felix had scooped it out with Stone Shaping. Rocks shifted and clattered nearby, debris from the blast probably.

"What level is that Skill?"

From the corner of his eye, Felix caught sight of Atar and Alister. They weren't out and had been knocked further from the blast than Felix had been. But both men looked hurt badly, and his Eye confirmed that they were hovering around twenty percent Health… and Atar's Health was dropping.

Not good. Pit? Pit where are you?

More rubble shifted, and his hearing, so recently restored, was consumed by a terrible, high-pitched droning.

Felix gritted his teeth against the sensation even as it attacked his center of balance and made his core fire flicker wildly. It felt as if it would go out. Snuffed like a match.

To his left, Atar and Alister dropped off, like puppets with their strings cut.

What is… this?

It felt familiar.

That was his last thought before the sound became everything.

* * *

Felix drifted.

Smell, strangely enough, returned at first. An acrid stink that just about pierced his brain. A musk heavily underscored by a familiar putrescence. Sound came next, followed closely by memory. The ringing! Dissonance! A familiar tone was a favored technique of the Maw… he could hear it still, pulsing in his bones, emitting from somewhere close by.

As touch and sight returned in equal measure, Felix held himself as still as possible, hoping he had not given up that he was awake. Cracking his eyes the smallest amount, he found himself swinging from the flexible grip of the Bishop of Hunger. It had two of its tendrils wrapped about his legs and, he was happy to see, was struggling just a little bit with his weight. Peeking just a bit more, Felix could make out his friends dangling from the Bishop's other limbs. All accounted for, except...

PIT!

A heat that had been muted all this time flared to sudden life. Sense-impressions floated over to him, as if from a great distance.

Felix.

Pit are—where are you?

Near. The bond was his Companion, there was no doubt about that, but he did not feel nearby.

Okay. Be—be ready. I have no idea what we're gonna do here. The Bishop dipped, and Felix went swinging farther than before. The damn thing was limping.

Vess really fucked you up, huh? Voracious Eye confirmed it. The Bishop was sitting just a little over half its Health, though it was regenerating steadily. Bad luck we couldn't finish the job.

That droning intensified, as if offended by his thoughts. But that was crazy, even for this place. Right?

Felix winced. Light poured into the tunnel; real light and not the glowing forms of his Manasight. The sound of shifting stone and dirt was steadily replaced by grunts and roars, and the putrid animal stench grew to cataclysmic levels. They stepped out of the tunnel, and the rocks broke to powder beneath the Bishop's feet. Felix's stomach clenched with fear.

Before him was spread a horde of Primordial-Spawn.

Exploration is level 29!

All of them, all types. The Spawn, Knights, Razortails, and Revenants spread as far as he could see. The Bishop was taller than most, so that vantage was considerable. Just as in the memory, they appeared to be on an island in the midst of a sizable body of water. They were elevated, too, the tunnel having come out near the summit of a low crag on the island.

The monsters were all bellowing and roaring, shouting bestial challenges to one another as they jockeyed for position in the dust. A platform sat in the very center of the island, a huge rounded plinth the size of a two-story building set amidst the crag. None of them dared approach the platform.

Of course, the Bishop carried them directly to it.

The stone of this cliff was just as white and insubstantial as the rest of the island, as if a single puff of wind would blow it all away. Yet the Bishop's clawed feet thudded dully against the bare stone as it ascended. Precise, angular steps meant for the tread of someone much smaller were cut into the cliff. They led in a spiraling curve up to the top of the platform.

Did the Domain make this? It wasn't anything like the ruined keep, and Harn had mentioned that as being a staple of the Domain, something the pocket dimension manifested directly. It didn't fit the… theme of things, he supposed.

They reached the top in short order, and Felix glimpsed a massive hole bored into the cylindrical platform, the hole that he feared held the Ravager King. But more frightening than the fact that they were above the cave of an immense and powerful monstrosity were the lights. The top of the platform was covered, absolutely covered, in twisted arrays.

And among those arrays were people.

Oh no, the worshippers. At least thirty people in various states of corruption were held down around that gaping hole. He could pick out enough faces to recognize them from the religious rally. Those who had been there the longest were already covered in a fine mesh of rust-red scales, while those who must have been sent in recently were merely covered in a flaking rash.

The arrays between them all were of considerable concern, though. Having grown used to the droning dissonance given off by the Bishop (for who else could have done so?), and after spending considerable amount of time studying the twisted sigils in the tunnel, it barely hurt him. It merely felt like his brain was being squeezed, as opposed to being stabbed.

The platform was covered in blazing lines scored into the stone, and each one pumped like blood vessels. Felix could almost taste the power being funneled into the hole, a cascade of Mana being sucked up like a massive whirlpool. To his Manavision, it was a blinding maelstrom of rainbow energies being devoured by a black hole.

"You return, a twin no longer. Where is your brother, dear?" A cold, metallic voice echoed through the thin air. Felix, still hanging, tried his very best to appear unconscious. "You fear them?"

It's strange, sing-songy voice sent upsetting shivers down Felix's spine. Its voice was both robotic and possessed of some dire malignancy. The clomp of heavy boots grew louder, until he felt something nearby. A chill presence, like ice to his advanced senses.

"Set them down, you oaf. Here and here. Line them, just like so, ah yes," the voice continued. Felix felt himself lowered roughly, until his head cracked into the stone ground. It took an effort of Will, but he was able to keep up his act.

Deception is level 21!

Felix could sense the others nearby, though the sigils were interfering with his Perception. Bindings of stone laced with shimmering gold metal reached across them all, securing their legs, waist, chest, arms, and necks. Leaving just enough space to continue breathing and pivot his head, were he to do so. He kept his eyes closed and listened.

"Were they strong, my Bishop? Surely they must have been, to have bested your brother." Its voice slid fluidly between manic and dispassionate, but always it had that lo-fi robotic buzz to it.

The Bishop that had carried them groaned, as if in pain or… sadness?

"Shut it, cretin. Haha! It's not the look, but what lies within!" A crunch of gravel and a soft, whirring click. "These are they who killed my Larval child. Grown, she was, from the smallest of grubs found in this Domain. Fed upon ichor and significance until she had become a true terror.

"Fed by the very sigils that mark your soul, Bishop of mine. Were the soul to exist, of course. Of course. Mother would have known, Mother....

"I'll know how they did it! I'll know, so that it may never happen again."

The voice faded and the clomping resumed, as if they were walking away from Felix. Distantly, he heard it bending over and risked a peek. Cracking open an eye for just a moment, Felix beheld a wonder.

A fully metallic man, perhaps five foot six inches tall, its body an archaic suit of armor that was covered in a network of lines and sigils. A massive, convoluted array was inscribed into the metal. Lines of liquid fire that shimmered around its body, following the curves of its armored limbs. Most upsetting of all was that Felix recognized who it was. Or rather, what it was.

An Arcid. A servant of the Archon.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

The Arcids were servants built by the Archon, a figure Felix had encountered back in the Foglands. Why was one here, in the middle of Haarwatch?

"Let us see, let us see! Cookpot or slab? What shall it be?" The Arcid scuttled between bodies, moving first toward the nobleman. "Ah, so scrawny! All bones! But the taste of force, of twinned bindings on… aha!"

The metallic man, covered in glowing lines, pulled something free from Alister's body. Felix could make him out with his Perception, a combination of all of his senses, and it looked to be holding a circular band of metal. A bracelet?

"Enchanted, yes! And tasty, too," the Arcid rocked back on its heels before poking around again. "Anything else, hmm?"

Voracious Eye.

Name: Arcid # 54770

Designation: Envoy

Type: Archonic Construct-Hybrid

Level: 62

HP: ?/#%

_ERROR0(#

—

Felix's head recoiled from the failed identification, his neck jamming painfully into the stone restraint. The Arcid, the Envoy, stood up and looked around wildly.

"Something's here! Something...it LOOKED AT US!" The Arcid's face, fashioned like a visored helmet, twisted on itself as the yellow-red lights of scriptwork writhed. "FIND IT!"

The Bishop trundled away, as well as a number of other, smaller creatures he hadn't sensed at all. Somehow, the construct had noticed Felix use his Skill, which suggested that anything he did might be sensed. It's level 62, nearly the same level as the Larval Ravager, and I had to kill that from the inside.

Felix wracked his brain, trying to think of some way to get out of this; more importantly, to prevent this strange Envoy from killing his friends.

He watched as the construct creature swayed on its feet, almost as if it was drunk, then it lurched in a seemingly random direction. Like a starving wolf, it pounced on one of the other captives. A woman, she was only mildly affected by the Domain's invasive Mana, though she was entirely insensate.

"Was it you, dearest Gerda?" The Envoy whispered harshly. "Did you dig your filthy eyes into me? Into my soul? That was not nice, Gerda. No no no no no."

The Arcid flourished a hand, and a jagged length of metal appeared in it, an implement Felix recognized.

Inscription stylus. But why—?

The thing jabbed it down, into the flesh of Gerda's chest. The woman neither moved nor screamed; she might as well have been dead, though Felix could sense a steady rhythm from her chest. Horrified, he could only watch as the Envoy slowly carved into Gerda's flesh a series of upsettingly twisted sigils.

Felix hadn't the vantage to see what they said, not precisely, but the feeling of their activation was like a new, terrible note in the discordant symphony inundating the platform. It began to recite in a sing-song voice a single breath apart from laughing outright. Its joy was neither infectious nor particularly joyful, though it contained within it a warped glee for the pain it caused.

"Marked and sent by the Master, we was. Mixed with the sick and the dead. Hard to spot, we are. The gifts of the Master were great, let us shift ourself, change. Hard to pin down upon the board, like a fly cut open. Hmm?" A dark chuckle tumbled from its throat, like a file on a hollow metal cylinder. "Like you, we fell between the cracks. One among many in a city blind. Blind!"

Blood began to lift from Gerda's chest, defying gravity to float upward in a trickling stream. It collected into a wobbling orb inches above her chest, perhaps only four or five inches in diameter.

"This cesspool city. Too busy, too wild and rotten. It was easy for us to find our way below, to the depths. To here," the Envoy reached out and lightly gripped the pooling blood orb. Crimson liquid rippled and wobbled between its fingers, and a soft, agonized moan came from the woman's lips.

What the hell is it doing?

Felix couldn't read the inscriptions the Arcid was making on the woman. Not only did he not have the vantage, but the ambient noise of the platform was too confusing, too busy. The scripts around them were screaming into the air, each one a mad note in a song that he had to actively suppress from his consciousness. Were it not for his experience with the Maw, Felix doubted he'd be able to do that much.

The Envoy laughed again.

"You'd think us cruel, were you awake. You'd call us monster. Killer. Butcher. That is our favorite title we've earned." It let out a soft, scraping sigh filled with an unmistakable yearning. "It was very hard for us to step back into your city just to kill one or two pathetic mortals. Oh, the blood we wished to spill, to sup upon."

The Butcher. Of course. Felix tensed against his restraints. He had to break the bonds somehow. This thing might be more dangerous than the Ravager King.

The Arcid let go of the blood orb, letting it grow above Gerda's chest. "But orders are orders, and the Master is not to be gainsaid. No no! A frenzy denied, we could but play with the mortals. Bleed them, mark them, lead them back here. To me."

The construct lurched back to its feet as if pulled by puppet strings. The movement was unnatural and, Felix sensed, entirely too fast for most to track. The blood orb above Gerda's chest siphoned off toward the pit, a red ribbon that eventually dwindled to nothing.

"Your blood, all of you, is important to us. To growth. That is the Master's order, yes? Survive. Grow. And, as a reward, bathe in the blood of forty thousand mortals." That yearning grew in the construct's tone. "We have been patient. Yes. So patient. But the time for patience is ending, Gerta. Soon it shall be time for—"

"What… are you doin', you metal bastard?" Harn's voice was ragged, and he strained against the shaped constraints, to no avail. "Keep yammerin' on and I'll… off myself."

Harn!

"Awake! Surprisingly strong!" The Arcid's shout was maniacally delighted. "Was it you, with the Eyes that touched us?"

Harn grunted. "Let me free, and I'll do more'n touch you."

The Arcid laughed, a bell struck by iron rods. "Such fire! Who are you, warrior, to threaten us?"

A droning buzz swelled in the instant before Harn began screaming. The lights of the array around the man flared like erupting magma, and even Harn's strange armor began to glow with heat.

"Fire for fire, hmm?" The construct cackled. "Touch us not with your Eyes, mortal. WE DO NOT LIKE IT."

Felix swallowed and tried to control his racing heart. This thing is strong. And its power over the arrays...

He could sense the others stirring as well, though Atar and Alister were still deeply unconscious. He assumed the corrupting influence of the Domain was working its ill will on them far better than the rest. With a thought, Felix accessed his wardstone's timer.

Time Remaining: 58 Minutes

Fuck me. That was no time at all. How long were we out?

As he watched, the timer dropped by two minutes. The Domain was eroding the wardstones fast. Make that thirty minutes. Shit. Okay. Stop. Calm down and focus. Get rid of the bindings first, then...

Felix clenched his jaw. Then we take care of the rest.

Harn's screams cut off as his armor swelled from his body, pushing at the stone around himself. The Arcid tilted its helmeted head, twin sodium fires burning in interest. "You protect yourself? Fascinating. Such ingenuity in Humanity. A shame that you all must die."

"Ain't… dead… yet," Harn gasped, and the stone bands tightened against his thickened armor.

"Give it time."

Harn's screams this time were far louder, but Felix tried to shut them out. He had to focus.

Slowly, Felix sounded out the pattern for Stone Shaping. He did not infuse his Will and Mana into it, merely followed along its familiar pattern etched within his core space. As he did so, he felt an answering reverberation from the bands of stone stretched across his neck. A thrum that could have been imagined, it was so faint.

So, he tried again, and once more he felt the vibration… except he could also sense that parts of the stone weren't responding at all. He pushed his Perception at the rock around his throat, angling his senses until he thought he could tell what the issue was: the bands were not only made of stone. There was a thick vein of unfamiliar metal through them.

Stone Shaping doesn't touch metal. It's in the name. Wrack and Ruin might melt it all, but it's too slow. Felix ran his thoughts along the pattern of the Skill again. Then how can I—?

He hit the point of vibration again, perhaps three quarters the way through the Skill's etched lines. Drilling down on that, he changed the pattern with Fire Within. Just a touch, and the vibrations dimmed away. So, he reeled it back, altering the pitch. The vibrations returned and then strengthened ever so slightly. Permutation after permutation, he changed a crest to a trough, altering the wavelengths that made up his patterns. They were sounds translated into light and vision. He just had to find the right combination to...

There.

He had it. He hoped.

PIT! He could feel his Companion somewhere close, hiding from the beasts that even now rampaged for some intruder. I need a distraction. Can you make that happen?

Yes. The answer was quick and certain, no hesitation.

Just be careful.

"You… are resilient, Human," the Arcid said. It almost sounded impressed, and Harn's screams seemed to lessen. "It surprises us to find such capability. But your Body will only get you so far. Hee!"

"This… ain't nothin'... I ain't seen yet," Harn gasped through the reddening metal of his helmet.

"I plan to show you mortals something extraordinary." The construct gestured sharply, and four hooked claws of metal-laced stone rose up beside it. The claws were wrapped with glowing lines and smaller arrays. "The Master plans to crush this city beneath his heel and fuel his army with your people's wasted potential. But first… first WE get you."

Now!

The whine of displaced air was the only warning before ten five-foot-long Frost Spears impacted against the Arcid's back. The construct leaned forward slightly and turned. "What?"

It screamed, more furious than Felix had expected. "HOW DID A CHIMERA GET IN HERE!?"

The claws shot into the air, stretching from the earth around the platform. Pit wheeled high above, the distance allowing him to dodge the strikes. More Frost Spears rained down, but the Envoy shattered them with a wave of its hand.

Pit's Flight is level 10!

Stone Shaping!

Felix flared his Skill, sounding the altered pattern, and sent it as far as he could reach. It was like pushing through an invisible barrier with each foot beyond his body, and his Mana dropped precipitously. He gritted his teeth and pushed though. A sustained, high-pitched note pierced the air.

Stone Shaping!

Break, damn it!

All at once, the bonds around his body shattered, and Felix surged to his feet. Just in time to see Evie, Vess, Atar, and even Alister's bodies freed from the platform. Frost Spears rained down along with several Wingblades, but the Arcid had erected a moving shield of stone from the platform itself. The construct blinked its yellow-fire eyes in confusion as Felix stood up.

Make An Entrance is level 23!

"What? How do you stand, Human?"

Stone Shaping!

Felix tried to grab the stone shield the Arcid had formed, but couldn't grip it at all, even with his new pattern. It was like pushing on a wall with his old Earth strength.

"Interesting. Interesting! Your Will is strong!" The Archid giggled. "Not strong enough, no no, not nearly."

"Maybe not," Felix panted, releasing his attempted Skill. "I'll try anyway, though."

"Stupid!"

The Arcid rushed through the air, its heavy metal fist upraised. Felix braced himself and readied a number of Skills, but realized he had to keep this thing from killing his still-prone friends. As the Arcid left its shielded position, Felix called through his bond.

Pit!

The Arcid barely had time to move as a ten-foot Frost Spear impacted its metal body, force enough to even send its sturdy form into the ground.

"Harn! Evie! Vess! Get up!"

His friends began moving, but too slowly. And Evie's hip was still clearly messed up. They wouldn't have time to get out. Across the doughnut-shaped platform, ice shattered as the Arcid began to regain its feet.

Pit! Together!

"You work together with the Chimera? You fool! We—" Its words cut off as Felix hit the thing with a series of Mana Skills.

Wrack and Ruin!

Reign of Vellus!

Influence of the Wisp!

Target Is Immune to Enthrall.

An orb of dark acid hit the Arcid in its left hip, followed by a wave of lightning that sent it spinning to the side. Yet not once did it lose its balance. The lines on its metal limbs flared with a malignant potency, and it appeared suddenly… bigger.

"We do not like being interrupted," it snarled like a lawnmower kicking over. "You tangle with things beyond you, child of—"

It suddenly tilted its head, having grown nearly four feet taller than before. Its limbs were stretched and elongated, unnaturally thin for its newly larger frame, yet the armor of its form still completely overlapped and interlocked. A crest of spikes lined its pauldrons and helm, and the eye-slits of the helmet had become more slanted and pronounced.

"You smell of… of death. Who are you?"

Felix hesitated. "I'm no one."

"No no no, you lie," the Arcid lifted its left arm and inspected it. Yellow-red lines crawled along it, sigils that somehow flowed like liquid up his form. "The Song tells it true. Dark Fate's howl has touched you, mortal. How? Why?"

"Both are insane questions." Felix's eyes flicked toward his friends. "Don't really have an answer."

The Envoy snarled again and the sodium light of its eyes brightened. "Then we shall have answers from your corpse!"

Like a blur, the Arcid flashed forward. As if the distance meant nothing, it gripped Felix by the throat before his senses registered it had arrived.

"Heurk!" So fast!

It lifted him up and up, until he was suspended four feet from the ground. It pushed its dark head forward, closer to Felix's, and inhaled. The yellowed fires widened. "Strings of fate, cut through and through. A touch of the darkened Void and… and something familiar...

"A predator," it hummed. "Teeth upon teeth. We are fascinated."

Even suspended as he was, Felix felt something deep below them shift. The Envoy looked away, down into the gaping pit beside them as a hoarse, rattling groan rose up from the open shaft. A presence turned, just beyond Felix's senses, something incomprehensibly huge. A spike of terror jabbed through his Mind and Body as oxygen was slowly being choked out of him.

Status Condition: Asphyxiation

Status Condition: Fear

The Song of Absolution is level 46!

The Song of Absolution is level 47!

Bastion of Will is level 48!

Bastion of Will is level 49!

Status Condition: Fear Has Ended!

"It is almost time." The Arcid stepped back, still carrying Felix in his iron grip, off the ring of sigils and atop one of the stones it had raised. Jostled and wrenched about, Felix could see the four distant tunnels on each side of the island, identical to the one they had traversed. "They come."

That's when he felt it, a rumbling through the Arcid's arm. The ground around them shook faintly. Felix's vision began to dim in the Arcid's grip, but it was still enough to see as three of the tunnels exploded into showers of white dust. Three worms the size of modest skyscrapers burst from the earth, undulating toward them at breakneck speed.

"My children return."

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

Voracious Eye.

Name: Ravager Queen

Type: Primordial-Spawn

Level: 75

HP: ?????/?????

SP: ?????/?????

MP: ????/????

Lore: Born of the Maw's blood and a Sub-Core, this abomination has fed upon one of the four corners of the Domain. It gains great power from its consumption.

Strength: More Data Required

Weakness: More Data Required

Three of them… all are Tier Two. He could sense it, just as he could sense the advancement of others through his Voracious Eye. As Felix fought for breath, the three of them all began to rampage among the gathered Primordial-Spawn, slamming their massive circular mouths down into the horde. Hundreds disappeared in seconds, and the hundred-foot-long tentacles along each face grabbed more still. The worst of it all, however, was that the horde didn't flee in terror; they stood, stock still, and died.

Just as his friends still laid out on the ground, each of them unmoving. Even Harn, armor finally cooling, was sprawled out, limp with unconsciousness. Felix felt dizzy. All of them were going to die.

"They are almost ready, little wolf. Once this rabble is gone, it will be time. Time for your city to burn." The Envoy laughed hysterically. It wheezed for breath, a strange sound, stranger still for all that it was a construct. Did it breathe? Had the Archon built lungs for it? Why?

The Envoy peered at Felix. "I hear your fear. Your desperation. It is… unseemly for one such as us."

Us? Thoughts like confused fireworks went off in Felix's mind as he struggled for breath, and rage suffused him. He leveraged his Strength against the construct's metal hand, but only managed the smallest of gasps. Then even that was gone. The Arcid's grip tightened, holding him solidly around the throat and shoulders. It pinched off his air supply completely, likely bruising his spine. Felix's Endurance and Vitality were both remarkably high, but still the Envoy's hand was choking him.

Status Condition: Asphyxiation

"Such rage! You've the teeth of prey, but I sense in you a similar Spirit; a predator, stalking in the darkness. A Hoarhound hiding in the snow." The Envoy smiled, its visor stretching with an unnatural creak. It had no mouth but its amusement was clear. "Our kind can smell one another, haah! And you stink with death and the claimed potential of hundreds. Exquisite!"

The construct looked back out among its creations, its eye-fires compressed in obvious pleasure. Felix's chest burned. It felt like fire crawling up his skin. "The expended breath of prey curls amid your shadow. Glorious. And you brought it here, for us. All for us."

From the corner of his darkening vision, Felix saw a flash of yellow-red light. Though they appeared carved into it, the array lines and sigils on the Envoy's arm had flared and moved, somehow. It now radiated from his chest, and crawled up onto his neck with all the fury of a house fire. It hurt. The damn thing was branding him.

A squawk of fear shot through his heart, but Felix's dizzying thoughts hurled a warning at Pit. Stay back!

It's only pain. This is nothing. Nothing!

Felix clamped his Will down upon his Mind and pushed down the agony. It was less than nothing.

It was training.

The Song of Absolution is level 48!

Stretching his thoughts out, he tried to understand the array that coiled around his chest and neck. It defied his knowledge, its twisted form a perversion of the script he had come to know. But he knew it well enough. The tunnel had been an adequate teacher while his Mind picked up the slack.

Siphon was there, but that was only part of it. An intrinsic part, but not the focus of the array. No, it was a sigil that looked vaguely similar to the one for seal. It was modified by a few others he could parse, such as body, air, and anger for some reason. The last pulsed with a steady, uncompromising heat. It was the intensity of a volcano, moments before eruption, an ignition of dark passions that stirred his chest just by looking at them.

That anger seemed to be foundational. He spotted it throughout the array, all secondary or even tertiary sigils. Were Felix to check the platform below them, he'd find even more of its insidious heat.

Why? What's the point?

Vertigo assaulted him as his Vitality began to fail. Felix nearly buckled under a rush of new-birthed pain and pressure.

"You are like the other," the Envoy rattled, its voice curious. "Resilient. Much too much. What are you, little wolf?"

The sigils twined around Felix's neck, a noose of liquid light. He felt it drawing tighter than before, and the air trapped in his lungs felt suddenly compressed. A balloon ready to burst. A fine net of energies wrapped themselves around his flesh, and Felix could vividly see their insane designs.

The lines are… what? Lines of power? Like a circuit? They fluctuated as he watched them, surging and flaring in irregular intervals. Almost at random. No… not a circuit… it's alive. Writhing… around something...

* * *

"You are doing it wrong," the Envoy said, an angry rattle in their manufactured throat. "Now is the time for screaming. For begging. Break yourself to pieces against my hide, let loose your bowels, SOMETHING!"

The boy only stared back, his blue eyes distant.

"No, no! Look at me!" The construct shook the little Human, dragging him closer to their metal encased face. "Stare into these forged eyes! Who are you?"

Fires of the Golden Lord.

A rising song smashed against the Envoy's Skill, shoving it back. The construct blinked in astonishment. A Skill gifted by the Archon himself, rebuffed by a… a Human?

Furious, the Envoy tried again, but this time it engaged the force of the Profane Sigaldry upon its skin. A shearing dissonance cut through the melody that surrounded the boy, and their Skill followed easily in its wake.

The Envoy grinned beneath their metal face.

Name: Felix Nevarre

Race: Unknown

Level: 33

HP: 843/1316

SP: 988/1313

MP: 3843/3843

Lore: Unknown

Strength: More Data Required

Weakness: More Data Required

"What is this? What IS THIS?" The Arcid seethed. "Unknown?"

It was impossible. The Fires of the Golden Lord could not be evaded, and the power of the Profane could not be denied. It was impossible.

Yet the Envoy had been blocked, somehow. Their senses could still pick out the boy’s advancement, smell it on him.

"Apprentice Tier?" The Envoy began to laugh, a manic sound always in the back of their throat. They squeezed harder, and a mental command sent Profane Sigaldry skittering across the not-Human's skin. "Cold winds of old, strange indeed! I shall love to take you apart, child. Piece by bloody piece!"

The boy twitched and sucked in a tight breath, but no screams came forth. It was… it was like he didn't even feel it! The Arcid looked down at their free hand in confusion and dismay. "No, no, no NO! I don't LIKE this!"

The boy's pain and fear quietened until both were all but gone. The bright scrabbling of a mad wolf faded into a steady solidity that the Envoy did not know how to interpret. No matter how the Arcid squeezed or cut, the strange Human failed to respond.

It was infuriating.

The Master gave it a purpose. A goal. If it was not reached, then… and this boy, this Unknown was a threat to their plans. They must know more.

The Envoy looked deeper. They reached out to the boy, to the connection they could feel forming between them as the Profane Sigaldry did its work. Within him was a creature of teeth and claws, but there was more. The Void.

Thoughts, memories that weren't their own thrust to the foreground of the Envoy's Mind. The touch of the Void is unusual in one so young. And the truncated strings of Fate… the howl of lost significance, severed… willingly?

They shook their head. The thoughts spoke strangely of such meaningless things.

The boy was a threat. He was marshaling himself for something. The Envoy could survive it, but was disquieted by the fact that the Profane Sigaldry did not envelop him in utter agony. As if the child had been bathed in its light before… or possessed the strength to withstand it.

Strength! A boon for my King! The Envoy cackled wildly, throwing its dark helmeted head back in glee.

No. A colder voice intervened from within their Mind. The Envoy's head snapped back downward. A danger. Unknown.

Kill it.

* * *

The Song of Absolution is Level 49!

Sigils of the Primordial Dawn is level 40!

...

Sigils of the Primordial Dawn is level 44!

Notifications came and went, but Felix had shut it all out. Even his own burning lungs were dim impressions, muted by his Will and his resistances. He didn't have enough time. Either he'd suffocate completely, or the Envoy would tire of its game and kill Felix outright.

He focused. The Sigils became everything. They were dense and eldritch, but that kernel of familiarity persisted. He chased it down, his Mind grabbing at whatever it could. That was how he recognized that they were each twisted in the same way. Each marking took the original Primordial Sigil and nearly inverted it. It meant the same thing, impossibly, but it was being twisted by an additional force. But the inversion left weird, droning gaps where the Sigils were once whole… yet the array didn't fall apart. They worked, despite being broken. Why?

Harsh emotion washed against him, pulsing from the sigaldry in random waves. It was molten hot, but a heat of the Mind and Spirit. He had to resist it with his Bastion; the emotions were insidious as they tried to climb into him and implant themselves. A flex of his Will tore them out, root and branch.

Deep Mind is level 43!

It's the anger, he realized. It's filling in the cracks, somehow. Providing a scaffolding to… what? Break down the Mind and Spirit? But why—?

He felt on the cusp of something important, but he'd run out of time. Pain, above and beyond the choking and crushing stabbed through his Body. He resurfaced to find the Envoy's face a mask of wild rage, and one of its overgrown fingers had sharpened into dark metal claws that tore into his ribs. Sensation and affliction returned in a rush, and Felix let out a gasping cry.

"YES! HEHE! WITNESS YOUR END, IMPOSSIBLE CHILD!"

The Envoy roared in ecstatic glee, having grown another three feet in height. Now it loomed over Felix like a child holding a toy, one it intended to tear apart at the joints. Fear slammed back into his veins as Felix struggled impotently against the Arcid's grasp, unable to even pull away from the blade of cold metal that pierced his guts.

"Yessssss. That is what we want. That is what we want!" The Envoy hissed in obvious pleasure. "Feel the pain and fear before you perish! Feel—!"

The world abruptly tilted as the Envoy's arms shot up into the air. Felix barely had time to register the surprise on the mad Arcid's face before he was tossed. He soared through the air, high enough that he saw the construct stumble and spin around. Behind it, several people had gotten to their feet.

"YAAAAEERGH! Stupid, stupid Human!" Dark blue blood poured from the metal around the Envoy's knees, yet it still loomed far taller than its attacker.

"Come down here and say that," Harn grunted.

Felix had just enough time to register that the man had somehow bulked up his silver armor and held his two burning axes to the sides before near-invisible Mana constructs pulled him into the bored hole.

Toward the Ravager King.

"SHIT!"

His hands hit the side of the bore, but it was too smooth to grip. A force beyond gravity yanked him down, down.

Shadow Whip!

Reign of Vellus!

Stone Shaping!

He sent out pulses of Reign of Vellus and Shadow Whip, even flaring Stone Shaping. Nothing worked. His Mana was sucked down into the hole before it could activate. Torn from his channels the moment it left his body, it felt like.

He tumbled through the air, the bright opening growing smaller before he gave in. He didn't have a choice. A snapping pain enveloped his body as he shifted.

What Dwells Beneath!

The change was fast since Tiering, but the pain was worse than before. Adrenaline and his Song of Absolution let him ride the worst of it, giving him enough clarity to throw his deadly talons forward into the smooth stone walls. A screeching crumble filled the chasm as his claws dug in and brought him to a jerking stop.

Bloodline Progression is 81%

What Dwells Beneath is level 32!

His body screamed as all of his weight focused on his shoulder joints, but thankfully, they held. Felix took a shaky breath as he realized he'd stopped, and that even the dire sigils had evaporated from his flesh. He could breathe again! He was safe.

The air shook with a deep, menacing bellow. One that came from the darkness below.

Safe was… relative.

The Ravager King was down there, perhaps waking already. Felix's senses were a jumble. His Manasight was all but useless. If he fully opened up that Skill, all he would see would be a chaotic torrent of power being shunted down below. A never-ending feeding trough for the King.

Mana: 2417/2808

Mana: 2342/2808

It was eating his Mana, even as he hung there. He had to move, and fast.

Explosive blows cracked the air above him, and Felix dragged his attention back up. He had fallen perhaps… sixty feet? The opening looked little bigger than the moon in the sky of Earth. He dug his talons deeper into the wall, a difficult task as the stone was resisting his intrusion. The wall of the bore was lined with more of the same intricate lines, though these were all the same sigils, repeated over and over. Siphon. Anger. Gorge.

Felix's anxiety doubled just as he felt Pit call for him. Tapping into their connection, he warned the tenku away. Help Harn!

The last thing he wanted was his Companion sucked into a giant feeding tube.

Mana: 2284/2808

Unfettered Volition!

Bracing himself a moment, Felix let himself sigh in relief as the internal technique was left untouched by the twisted sigaldry. Hand over hand, Felix pushed his hands up and into the walls. He tried not to look at the dark, scaled sections of his arms or the weirdly jointed nature of his fingers any more than he had to, instead focusing all of his energy on climbing out of that hell hole.

His Mana dwindled, faster and faster it seemed. But Unfettered Volition was Epic-ranked for a reason, operating with impressive efficiency, and his transformation Skill proved its worth. The enhanced Strength and Endurance of his shifted form let him fairly scurry up the wall.

He made it to the top faster than he anticipated, each step easier than the last as the pull of the sigaldry grew less and less. Coming to the lip, Felix peered cautiously out.

People were still trapped against the platform, still banded down by metal-laced stone bonds. The worst, those too far gone to the Domain's corruption, were little more than red dust. Their Essence trickled into the bore like sand in an hourglass. His instincts in this form wanted him to reach out to the Essence as it passed, to take it into himself. Better he have it, after all, than the enemy, right?

The rational, human part of his mind wanted to reject that idea but… A scream sounded, and the clash of steel and flesh increased their tempo. His friends were fighting for their lives. He looked and saw Harn battling the gigantic Envoy, while the others… the Bishop had returned. And it wasn't alone.

Dozens of Revenants surged against the others, held at bay by the flailing chain and scorching Sparkbolts of Evie and Atar. Closer by, Vess and Alister fought tooth and nail against the Bishop itself.

He needed the power, and the Ravager didn't.

Ravenous Tithe.

The swirling Essence of the corrupted victims twitched in the maelstrom at the top of the bore, but it refused to come to him. Grimacing, Felix shoved a taloned hand into the edge of the Mana whirlpool. He bared his teeth, and his voice grated against his throat.

"Ravenous Tithe."

The dusky Essence flowed into him, winding around his outstretched arm and plunging itself down Felix's throat. Out of sight but somehow sensed, Felix felt when those worst-affected collapsed into piles of ash. A steady stream of power coiled within his core, sparking with a variety of colors that glittered in the light of his revolving Skills.

Bloodline Progression is 82%

Ravenous Tithe is level 36!

The power didn't stop with just a touch of it, but all of it. If he had attempted this before eating the Larval Ravager, Felix felt he would have exploded from the inside out. But that abomination had pushed his core's limits, hollowing out the darkness. Now the corrupted Essence didn't come close to filling him up.

Bloodline Progression is 83%

And frankly, he was hungry for more.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

Felix steadied himself as the influx of Essence threatened to topple him. While the amount posed no threat, the denuded melodies of their corrupted essence sang of discord and strife inside of his core. As he'd experienced before, it was the direct opposite of the strains that came from the System. Yet, Felix had not survived the Maw and its machinations without learning to deal with discordant power. A flare of his Will and Alacrity let him push past the pain, tightly corralling the essence cloud within his core.

You're mine now, so stop it.

Inner turmoil quietened, Felix peered over the edge of the hole. Apart from Harn's struggle, he could clearly see Vess fighting the Bishop of Hunger, and the beast was ragged as it faced her. Tired as she looked, she danced into its reach with remarkable grace, nimbly avoiding most of its writhing tendrils and deflecting the rest with her spear. Six more spears floated nearby, darting forward and sending the Bishop bounding out of the way. It clearly feared the agile spearwoman. Felix watched it roar in frustration as Vess dodged again and again, only for it to receive a sharp blast of blue Mana into its sensitive mouth.

"Quiet, you!" Alister shouted, leveling his rapier and releasing bolt after bolt of his Grand Impetus attack. The Bishop winced and reared back after each successful strike, so much so that it had to dedicate two tendrils to defending its slathering maw. Meanwhile, Vess had positioned it, leading the beast with her spear and dizzying movements until it was nearly atop Felix.

Felix grabbed at the lip of the bore and heaved himself upward. For a brief, terrifying second, he felt the Ravager attempt to take him again, but his razor-sharp talons found quick purchase in the Bishop's hindquarters. The Primordial-Spawn screamed in pain and surprise, lashing one of its back-tendrils toward the offending party. Felix caught the blow, his enhanced Strength and Endurance tanking the strike with only a little damage before he gripped it and pulled.

The tendril tore free of the Bishop with a fountain of dark ichor and a mountainous bellow.

"You want some more?!" Alister crowed, blasting with another of his kinetic bolts. Hidden by the bulk of its body, Felix rapidly climbed up and over the creature, each handhold ripping terrible wounds in its body. Wounds, Felix noticed, that were not healing as rapidly as the others.

Good. Heal this, then.

Throwing himself onto the thing's back, Felix tore into the cluster of muscles and ligaments that comprised the base of its tendrils. Scaled hide and cartilage sloughed away beneath his teeth and talons, giving no more resistance than softened clay. The Bishop stumbled to the side and screamed, but the others gave it no pause. Spears and bolts of force took it hard, bloodying its eyeless face and belly.

Meanwhile, Felix tore deep. He delved within the monster until he met the rubbery resistance of its putrid organs. Until he hit a hard nodule that sparked with a buzzing energy in all of his senses. Its monster core.

Ravenous Tithe!

Hand upon the core, Felix breathed in the massive Bishop of Hunger, turning its raging resentment into a whimper of despair. Thick, black smoke rotted its flesh, until it burst and swirled in the place it once stood. Felix landed heavily on the ground among the faint remnants of its foul essence.

Ravenous Tithe is level 37!

"Felix?"

He turned to find Vess only feet away, her spear held level with his chest. Her face had shifted into a horrified fascination. "Felix is that you?"

"Who else would it be?" he asked, but his voice sounded deeper and rougher, like burlap over gravel.

"Your… transformation Skill?" she asked and hesitantly lowered her spear. He nodded, and some tension eased out of her shoulders. "We thought you had died."

"Just fell down a hole." Felix grimaced and avoided her gaze by looking up. Pit was wheeling about above them, fighting off clouds of Rooks. If he focused, he knew he'd sense notifications piling on as the tenku killed the flying monsters with every Wingblade he launched. "You folks've been busy."

"Blighted Night, what happened to you?" Alister came up, his clothes soaked in sweat and rapier hanging heavily from his left hand. His face was twisted with disgust. "You look like a monster."

Felix glanced down at himself and had to agree. The transformation was more full than ever. He had lost his canvas jacket during the most recent fights, now clad in only his self-repairing tunic and trousers which strained against extra body mass. He had gained muscle as if he'd taken up bodybuilding, heavy in the chest, arms, shoulders, and through the thighs. His skin had blackened and roughened as before, but actual dark scales had manifested upon his arms and shoulders. Off-white bone spurs stuck up from his forearms and elbows, and his hands were covered in a sheath of flexible scales the blue-black color of midnight. His boots felt cramped as before, and Felix feared how his body had changed where he couldn't see it. Worriedly, he looked behind himself before sighing in relief.

"No tail," he said.

"Was that a concern?" Alister asked, eyebrows rising.

"Evie and Atar," Felix began, but the nobleman waved a hand.

"Taken care of," he gestured back toward them, where Felix had seen the two of them facing down Revenants. Most were dispatched, and much of the surrounding area was on fire. "Atar's good with crowds. More so since we've leveled up."

"Alister can help them finish off the Revenants. We have to help Harn, Felix," Vess said, focusing his attention. Across the platform, the armored warrior still fought with the resounding clash of metal on metal.

"We've got more to worry about than the Envoy, Vess," Felix made a gesture at the captives still surrounding the platform. "The Domain's corrupted all of them. I can feel it. We have… we have to stop them from being fed into this array."

Vess' face paled at his words, but Alister looked on in silent agreement. Felix appreciated that, at least. "They're feeding the Ravager King below, in that hole. Once it's fed, it'll rise up and destroy the Domain. We have to cut off its source. Otherwise I'll—" Felix didn't finish the thought. He hoped it wouldn't come to that. He'd barely survived draining the Larval Ravager, let alone a King. He shook his head. "There are three Ravager Queens, evolved forms of the Larval Ravager we fought before. They're eating all the Primordial-Spawn around us."

"All of ‘em?" Evie asked. Felix looked over at her, surprised to find her so close. Evie had an arm slung over Atar for support, while Atar himself was limping but seemed to be managing it well enough. Evie's face was a mask of pain, and he avoided looking at the gaping wound in her hip. But he offered him a wry smile. "Nice face, by the way."

"Highest Flame, Felix, what've you done?" Atar said, his free hand going to his own face. "That's—"

"Not important right now," Felix said. "The Queens are bulking up, pushing their levels higher with every mouthful."

"Yyero's balls, it'll be a fight for our lives then," Evie sighed down at her hip. "And me without my dancin' shoes."

"We can break the sigils," Atar said suddenly.

"I know it's an array and that it's feeding the King. But I had a hell of a time stopping the Envoy from using it on me. How do we break it?" Felix said. He was genuinely curious. Atar had spent far longer learning about scriptwork than he had.

"We have to disrupt the gathering array. We can't let this monster take anything more than it already has," Atar pointed at several larger sigils, glyph-pairs that repeated around the platform. "These should be binding points. Break them, and it might cause decay in the script."

"Might?" Felix asked.

"Unless that thing built redundancies, yeah," Atar grimaced and looked away from the sigils. He rubbed at his eyes with a hand that was red and swollen. "It's the best option I can see."

Felix swallowed and tossed his wardstone to the mage. "Take it. It'll help with the Domain's energies. At least for another twenty minutes or so."

"Felix, are you sure about that?" Vess asked. Felix just shrugged. He couldn't help but feel he should have given it up earlier. The moment Atar cut himself and bonded the wardstone, Felix felt the atmosphere of the Domain begin to limply bite at him. It was barely a sensation at all.

Dangerous. It must creep up without you noticing. Felix flexed his hands. But if it's just this much, I think I can handle it.

"Whatever you do, do it quick," Evie growled and nodded across the bore. "Harn'll need help soon. Not even he can keep that fight up."

Felix quickly pointed out the sigils he had figured out while fighting for his life, leaving the task in Atar's hands. He nodded at Evie, who held her chain in a white-knuckled grip. She'd been set against one of the doomed sacrifices. "Evie, protect his back. More Revenants are coming, I'm sure of it."

"You know me," Evie said with a wide grin. It almost hid the rapid tattoo of fear within her chest. "I got this."

Felix nodded and turned to Alister. "You and Vess are with me. We take down the Envoy together, then—"

"No. I stay with them," Alister didn't look at Felix when he declared that, but met Atar's eyes. The fire mage looked relieved.

"Oh uh, okay. Sure," Felix stumbled for a moment but recovered. "Good. Keep them safe."

He stepped away, attention drawn inexorably to the clash of titans happening on the other side of the bore, nearly a football field away. Vess came up beside him, spear in hand. "Are you ready for this?"

"No, but that hasn't stopped me before," Felix smiled at her before remembering his fangs. To her credit, Vess didn't flinch at all.

"A remarkable Skill, Felix. Truly." Vess' eyes trailed down his shoulders and arms. "Does it hurt?"

"Every time," he said. He flexed his shoulders. "Alright. Let's—"

"FELIX NEVARRE!"

A ghostly voice wailed all around them, pouring from the mouths of every unconscious person around them. The words were spoken in near unison, a legion of conflicting timbres. Felix felt his guts clench; despite the new voices, he recognized it.

"The Maw..." he hissed. "What are you doing here, you parasite?"

"Who? Felix, what is this?" Vess asked, spinning to look at the mouths moving in tandem.

"The Envoy has trapped me! Held me here at its foul funnel. The Profane Sigaldry is villainous and vile. It twists my power against me! Vessel! You must help!" True fear shook the Maw's multitudinous voice, but Felix saw something else. As the Maw spoke, the unconscious bodies around them began to decay faster and faster. It was burning them up like tinder.

"Take me up! Bring me back! I-I am slipping!"

"No," Felix whispered, backing away. His hand drifted to his chest, where the ache of their severing still lingered. "Never again."

"What? Felix, you cannot leave me! It is too strong! It will consume me!"

Felix spotted another knot of sigils, each mark twisting into one another until it was a tangle of wild lines that still, somehow, pulsed with eager power. A flash of understanding passed through him, and Felix found a collection of black threads tethering the Maw's flickering Mind to these bodies through those sigils.

"You're holding onto all of these people… they're dying," Vess said, aghast.

"They are nothing! I am everything!" The Maw's voice growled so hard Felix heard throats rip and tear with the force of it. "I cannot die, Felix Nevarre! I will not die!"

Like an ungainly puppet, the nearest Human unfolded her arm and reached upward. Grasping for Felix.

"Save me, hero," the Maw pleaded.

"Fuck off."

"What?"

With an effort of Will, Felix severed the black threads again.

A colossal scream filled the air as all of the trapped sacrifices cried out in heart-wrenching agony. In his Manasight, a complicated tangle of crimson lights was torn from all of them all at once. The Mind of the Maw was pulled in a flash down into the bore. The sacrifices' bodies were torn apart, turned nearly instantly to red dust that sloughed from their blackened skeletons; bones that soon crumbled as well.

"What did you do!?" Atar cried out. "What was that?"

"Break the sigils, Atar! We'll handle the Envoy!" Felix shouted and already started running. He didn't have time for questions. He didn't even have time for the knot of emotions that burned inside him.

Pit! On me!

They had a metal man to fight.

* * *

"Break the sigils," Atar muttered, running his hands above the burning arrays. "Just like that, easy as water and shade. And after you go and kill half the prisoners."

"I don't think he did that," Evie said, her eyes never leaving the path down from the platform. The chalk-white cliffs were good for one thing, and that was spotting more enemies advancing on them. "Didn't you hear that weird voice?"

"I don't care; it made this that much more difficult," Atar jabbed at a sigil with his inscription stylus. The form didn't budge. It was harder than steel. "I-"

"Incoming!"

The words were followed by a bolt of blue radiance and the shrieking death knell of a Rook. It landed hard on the stone not twenty paces distant, and Atar blinked owlishly before glancing at Alister. The nobleman just grinned, a handsome smile despite his puffy skin and reddened complexion.

"Keep them farther away, Alister," Atar groused. "I've gotta figure this out."

"Yes yes, I know my role. You just use that big brain and do yours," Alister said with a wink. Atar couldn't help the flush that tried to creep up his neck. He hoped his Domain-damaged skin kept it from view. The last thing he desired was—

"Oooh, what's this, then?" Evie asked with a grin audible in her tone. Atar didn't even look at her, but that did nothing to dissuade the uncouth girl. "Always reaching up past your station, eh, Atar?"

"Shut up, Aren. That's none of your concern," Atar looked down at the twisting sigils before him, wincing at their caustic power. "I can't affect these binding points with my stylus. These are enchanted to inscribe on damn near anything!"

"Then, I don't know, break it another way," Evie said, whirling her chain above her head with a pained expression. She hurled it outward just as another Revenant emerged onto the platform, piercing it's head. Another agonizing grunt and the thing was pulled off its feet and slammed heavily into the ground. "Burn it or something!"

Burn it— Atar's eyes widened. Of course. So simple I couldn't see it.

Crown of Ignis!

A fiery crown manifested upon Atar's head before a collection of ten Sparkbolts likewise made an appearance. With a minor effort, Atar pushed the Sparkbolts together, compressing their heat and strength. It was difficult, but the compression technique was one Atar had recently been able to employ. If done correctly, it amplified the output of a Skill immensely. As long as he didn't lose concentration.

Carefully, he maneuvered the oblong bar of white-hot fire down toward the glyph-pair.

"Back up, ya bastards! Bindings of the White Waste!"

"Grand Impetus!"

Atar ground his teeth and focused. He pushed the bar of heat down against the stone. He winced as black, acrid smoke began pouring out from beneath it. C'mon. C'mon!

Skills rained down all around him, but Atar couldn't spare them a single thought. He had to trust that his allies would keep him safe.

C'mon!

CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

"I'll send my spears ahead; pull him back from Harn!" Vess shouted, landing near him before leaping forward again. In this way, she was just able to match Felix's rapid pace. His body was more powerful than ever, his Strength, Vitality, Endurance, and Health regeneration boosted far higher than normal. He hadn't the time to do the math, but it was a lot.

"Use your lightning!" Vess said, and Felix growled in approval.

Reign of Vellus!

A burst of kinetic force lifted Felix up and through the air at the same time both he and Vess jumped. The platform beneath them shattered, and a wave of displaced yellow-red energy shot outward before being pulled once more into the bore. Meanwhile, Felix was absolutely launched into the air, his jump coupled with the kinetic boost proving to be far greater than he anticipated.

"AHH!"

Like a plunging boulder, Felix fell.

Moments before impact, a sharp jab stabbed his armpits, and his shoulders were wrenched upward. A piercing cry rattled his ears, and Felix felt an exultant joy to accompany the stomach he found in his throat. Felix looked up and saw Pit above him, flapping his wings like mad to fight against the pull of gravity.

"SKREAWW!" Pit's cry was triumphant, but soon turned into alarm as the reality of Felix's density set in.

"Drop me! I got this!" Felix shouted. He looked down then and felt his balls try to crawl back up inside him. He was very high.

Pit dropped him.

Below him, three silver spears hit the Envoy's feet and exploded into vortexes of violent air Mana. The Arcid danced back, only to be met by a charging Harn. The man's armor had bulked up considerably, enough that it appeared he was twice as tall as before, a true murderbot.

"You dare!" The Envoy screeched.

Reign of Vellus!

A fountain of azure lightning erupted beneath the Envoy, arcing off his body and forcing a terrible scream from its buzzing throat. At the same time, the kinetic force of the Skill hit and staggered the bastard, pushing it down just as it pushed back up at Felix and turned his probably deadly impetus into a survivable plummet. Still, the Nym hit like a two-door sedan dropping off an overpass, and brought the giant metal bastard down onto the ground.

Status Condition: Concussion (Critical)

The stone shattered beneath them, and sigils burst in a vibrant splash of yellow-red light before the living sigils rerouted around the downed Arcid. Felix reeled, his bell well and truly rung, and gave only token resistance when the Arcid shoved him off and regained its feet. It was hard to focus on anything more than the flashing sounds and booming shapes of the battle around him.

"You cretinous, slackjawed troglodyte! You—! What are you?" The Envoy took to its feet, a blur of angular limbs, its elongating head tilted upon an ever thinning neck. "Unknown! Unknown! What are yo—?"

The Envoy's words were consumed by three more air Mana bombs, sending it flinching to the side. There was no visible damage, but the fury of churning Mana had to hurt something fierce. The hulking form of Harn’s body slammed into the distracted Arcid. But the Envoy was slippery; the yellow-red lines of light on its body flared brilliantly, and somehow it slipped from Harn's expert grapple. Stepping back, the Envoy reached into the stone beneath it and ripped out a massive triangular club from its depths, leaving only a rough hole in its place. The Envoy screamed.

"Rakta fo lallu! Come and die!"

The Arcid kept Harn at bay with large, looping swings of its immense, three-sided club. The armored warrior dodged and parried the blows, but always at an angle, never keeping the club in contact with his weapons for any longer than he had to; the momentum of their fight was enormous, where one wrong move was a sure path to death.

Status Condition: Concussion (Mild)

Reign of Vellus!

Miraculously able to move thanks to What Dwells Beneath, Felix thrust his Will at the construct. Azure lightning threw the Envoy's weapon hand up, displacing its attack for the single precious second it took for Harn to duck into its guard and pummel the Arcid with his twin axes.

*K-CHUUUUN!*

The Arcid's body rang like a gong, hit so hard the yellow-red lines splashed off the opposite end of its body in a cascade of liquid light. It howled in pain and clear fury and tried to bring its club down onto Harn's back. But the Onslaught was too close, and the club went wide, hitting the earth with enough force to throw Felix back up onto his feet.

Silver spears sailed past him again, followed by more explosions and the soaring form of Vess. She practically streamed with air Mana as she dropped from the sky.

"Dragon's Descent!"

Vess hit hard, but not nearly hard enough to penetrate its powerful armor. Yet the Envoy overcompensated and stumbled back, allowing Harn to rush in. The ground cracked beneath him as he pushed off, sending a splash of diverted energies into the air. Axes raised, he spun them in a dizzying display, silver fire trailing after each weapon.

The Envoy whipped its arms around, club and metallic limb covered in glowing script. It blocked one attack after another, a flurry of strikes Felix had a hard time keeping track of, but he didn't need to. He just had to be ready.

Harn forced the Envoy to take a single step backward, and Felix already had his new pattern going.

Stone Shaping!

He grabbed at the metal-laced earth and created a four-foot-square hole in the stone platform. Sigils sparked and whined in protest, but it was too late. The Envoy's foot fell in the hole, and its gigantic body came crashing down.

The icon of a head with a crack in it flickered and faded away. Felix's thoughts felt instantly clearer. He worked his jaw and felt his ears pop. Maybe getting a helmet would be a good idea....

"Tu fel rata, mortals!" The Envoy bellowed from the ground, and a concussive blast erupted from its chest. Harn and Vess, both of whom were pummeling the prone Arcid, were sent flying nearly twenty feet away. "You come to play, but we are not amused! You are prey! And you shall feel our teeth!"

All across the platform, the yellow-red sigils flared with light as a dark measure of discordant notes tore apart the air itself. Sigaldry ripped from the stonework below them, a half dozen lines for each of them. The lines of liquid light tangled with their arms and legs, binding the lot of them and dragging their limbs down. Vess screamed in sudden pain, and Harn's huge armor began to smoke like a chimney stack.

Felix felt the sigil lines bite into his skin, sizzling against the toughened flesh and burgeoning scales of his arms and legs. It hurt, but it stung more like a papercut than a blade to the guts; what hurt more was the damage it was doing to his pants and boots. Already sizzling from the ambient damage of the Domain, chunks of his trousers began to flake away under the magic garrote wire.

Reign of Vellus!

Like in the bore, the Mana was sucked away the moment it left his channels. The lines tightened, cutting deeper into him until he fell to his knees.

"Hee hee! We have you all!" The Envoy did a strange dance, all knees and elbows. It had grown so tall and so thin, it appeared to be nothing more than a collection of dark iron pipes, somehow molded into humanoid shape. "Not so strong now, Human! Not so! We are gods in this Domain. Mother and Father both! Listen! My children come apace!"

High and low pitches mixed together into a horrible cacophony of noise as the Ravager Queens bellowed at their maker. The earth rumbled, harder than ever. They were coming.

Felix could just make out Atar and the others, who were fighting an encroaching horde of Revenants and Spawn from the narrow pass up the cliffs. The oncoming tide of the Queens was pushing them all into the center. Flashes of blue and purple-white vapor were near constant, but they were both scraping the bottom of the tank. Their Mana was nearly spent, Evie couldn't walk, and Alister's Stamina hovered barely above 10%. He couldn't even see Atar.

"Yes! Come to us!" The Envoy's voice rebounded in the strange space, shaking with a piercing reverb. "Let us begin the end!"

Vess screamed even louder, and smoke rose up from her armor and exposed flesh, while even Harn groaned and was driven to his knees. A sudden, blazing pop of light burst at both of their hips. A wisp of uplifting song drifted on the breeze only a moment before it was crushed from existence.

The wardstones!

Their protection was gone.

* * *

"Hold them! You have to hold them!" Atar screamed.

"I'm trying, burn you! You could at least help!" Evie shouted back, barely able to hear her own voice over the howls of the Revenants. The bastards had come flooding from the pass, hungry for their blood, and it had taken all her Skill with her chain to keep them back. She glanced at Alister. "Talk to your boyfriend, noble!"

Alister grunted a laugh but didn't respond otherwise. His red, blistered skin was covered in sweat, yet he still swung his rapier with a desperate endurance.

"He's—we're—-shut up, Evie!" Atar screamed. He was huddled behind the both of them, protected by hastily crafted wards that protected them from Atar's magic. A brilliant white light and intense heat filled the area before him, so bright the others couldn't even look back lest they be blinded to the constant attacks from the fore. "It isn't working! I need more time!"

"When I said melt it, I. Was. Joking!" Evie punctuated her words with her chain, each swing taking out knees and jaws while cutting through the delicate flesh of the inner thigh and gut. "I thought you were the smart one!"

Atar just grumbled at her and refocused on his efforts. Under the influence of his compressed fire Mana, the stone had begun to melt, but it had taken far too long. The clash of flesh and steel and the fearsome cries of the Revenants filled his senses. Atar wouldn't have the time to do this again.

Finally, it happened. The stone, now a red white, began to bubble and deform. A section a foot in diameter rapidly turned to liquid, taking the sigil along with it. YES! Eat that, Evie!

Then the sigils shifted and reformed around the melted stone.

WHAT? Atar clutched at his face. WHAT? How—! No!

"What's, ugh, happening?" Alister asked, dodging inept charge of a Spawn of Hunger. He dispatched it with a careless thrust, his intense eyes on the fire mage. "Did it not work?"

"The sigaldry moved! Which is impossible, by the way!" Atar's aching eyes traced the new placement of the glyph he'd been trying to melt. It still appeared to function in the same way, despite the pattern of the array changing. It flew in the face of everything he'd learned!

"The Mana source is the Domain, right?" Alister asked, calling down a series of blue pillars onto a line of enemies. The narrow pass helped the group more than anything else, not to mention that Chimera that still hunted the flying monsters up above. Alister gave Atar an exasperated look. "Can you stop that?"

"Of course not!" Atar threw out his hands and let loose sheets of fire, blanketing the Revenants in molten death. Well, not death; severe injuries, let's say. "We can't cut off a whole Domain."

"Then what good is this? What would fouling a single aspect of this array even do?"

"The flow would be unbalanced, and ideally it would—" Atar started, but was cut off.

"And if it can just self-correct? Like we just saw it do?" Alister asked.

"Blood and ashes..." Atar whispered, staring again at the sigils below him.

Evie grunted, spinning her spiked chain in a dizzying flourish before slamming through the head of three half-burnt Revenants. "Just—ugh! Stop talking and do something!"

"Fine!" Atar's Crown of Ignis formed again, and ten empowered Sparkbolts hurled into the horde. "This is all I can do! We can't do anything about the sigils!"

Alister sagged in relief at the sight, and he gave the fire mage a grim smile. He massaged his sword arm. "This'll have to be good enough. Keep it up, Atar. More and more are coming.

"We'll make our stand here."

Evie groaned and took a steady look behind them. Then she threw her chain up in the air.

Breaking Wheel!

The chain connected to itself, forming an oddly shaped circle before accelerating back down toward the earth. From her seated position, Evie stretched out a hand and screamed through her teeth. The circle of spiked chain fell like a meteor, smashing into the ground with all the force of a giant's footsteps. The stone platform shattered where it landed, the stone pulverized beneath the intense weight of the chain. Much of the area within the circle was devastated as well, and the three of them were jostled, hard, while the bodies of the nearby captives were sent flying in all directions.

"Burn me," Atar gasped.

The sigils, unable to find purchase over a huge swath of stone, flickered and failed. The semi-sentient sigaldry couldn't adapt to the large change without losing cohesion, and the massive array across the whole of the platform flared once before disappearing for good. It had worked.

"Damn academics," Evie panted.

* * *

Without warning, the lines holding their bodies down flickered and dimmed, though they still held tenaciously to their limbs. Something had happened. Even the Envoy sagged as if abruptly losing a great deal of energy. Felix could hear Vess and Harn immediately begin to strain against them, and perhaps they'd get out that way.

But Felix had another recourse.

This better work.

Ravenous Tithe!

The endless hunger of his Skill grasped at the lines holding him to the ground and ripped away their power. Weakened, the power was putty in his hands. Mana, essence, and the pulsing heat of mad rage flowed into him, coursing through his channels and into his core.

"AHH!" Felix screamed, the power tearing through his channels. It felt like acid in his veins.

"What lunacy is this?" The Envoy said, its voice sounding far less mechanical than normal. "What have you done?"

AAAGGH! Again!

Ravenous Tithe!

Ravenous Tithe!

Bloodline Progression is 84%

Felix took two more agonizing breaths and freed his friends from their bonds. Then he flared What Dwells Beneath, forcing as much Mana and Stamina into the Skill as he could manage.

What Dwells Beneath is level 33!

Bloodline Progression is 85%

More of his skin tightened and thickened. Felix rushed forward, pushing Unfettered Volition as hard as he could. Constructs of yellow-red energy blasted upward, swords of corrupted power that speared up through his path, and it was all Felix could do to weave through them. The Envoy spun its arms defensively, and a large tower shield appeared to build outward from its forearm.

Just in time to meet Felix's punch.

Both of them slid backward after the clash, and Felix felt like he'd broken several of his fingers. They ached, but that vanished quickly as his battle form repaired the damage a lot faster than normal. But that was barely a blip on his consciousness; he was far more interested in the Envoy.

The metal man had hunched over his tower shield, looking at it in surprise. The metal had held, but a large dent had buckled the front of it. "Your flesh… transformed flesh, blessed by the Mother, you—"

A peppering of Wingblades hit the Envoy between the shoulders, attacks that drew only sparks from the Arcid's powerful armor. Not falling for the same trick, the Envoy braced itself for Felix's charge, only to find him gone.

"HYAH!"

A bright strike against the Envoy's left knee sent sparks and chunks of metal scattering. The Envoy shouted in alarm and spun its sword and shield to its left, seeing a still-smoking Harn already taking a second swing.

*KLANGG!*

The Onslaught's axe deflected from the Arcid's shield, who took the momentum of that attack into an overhead chop with its enormous club. Harn took the blow to his right shoulder, and the pauldron crumpled beneath the construct's Strength.

Yet it was not prepared for Felix. The Nym placed a hand on the Envoy's back, centered on the dimmed sigils upon its body.

Ravenous Tithe!

Ravenous Tithe is level 38!

Ravenous Tithe is level 39!

A great, heaving breath pulled away a river of yellow-red power. More acid in the veins, more crackling potency packed into Felix's ever-crowded core. But it worked. The sigils along the Envoy's body guttered out and vanished.

"No!" The Arcid's voice faltered, and the shield crumpled under another shearing chop from Harn. "How have you done this!?"

The Envoy's body bloomed with unimaginable heat, temperatures so bad that Felix's Health began dropping rapidly. He had to leap away nearly thirty feet before it abated, and even then he'd lost nearly five hundred Health, despite his impressive resistances. From a distance, Felix watched it burn out, melting chunks of its arms, chest, and legs. It burned so bright and so fast that the construct could barely scream at all.

With a sharp retort, the Envoy's armor cracked, revealing wasted blue flesh beneath. Remnant pieces that steamed with a purple-white vapor, scored skin covered in puckered scars. Fault lines crazed across the armor Felix had taken for its skin, now known to be armor in truth.

The Envoy fell to its knees, club slammed into the earth before it to support its groaning weight. A jagged hole had appeared on its chest where much of its armor had turned to slag. Within, the flesh heart of a living creature had been replaced by a monster core that had somehow been knitted together with three others, creating a malformed lump of opalescent glass.

Harn stepped forward, braving the bloom of intense heat that had turned much of the surrounding platform into malformed slag. The chime of metal on metal filled the air as the Onslaught leveled one of his twin axes at the monster's exposed core. The Envoy, eye-flames wide and unfocused, followed the line of the axe to the charred warrior himself.

"Tell us, creature," Harn rasped. The heat hadn't done his voice any favors. "Tell us how to end this."

"No," it giggled suddenly. Devastated by its wounds, still the Arcid was mad enough to cackle. "No no no no no! We… will not!"

The ground began to rumble, even more than before, and the air filled with the bellowing cry of three Ravager Queens.

They had arrived.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

The Queens were just beyond the cliff, coming in fast. Felix could feel them like burning stars in his senses, descending on their position. The Envoy cackled, and Harn hefted his axes, his intent clear. The insane construct had no purpose, not anymore. But Felix had questions that needed answers. Quickly, he stepped in front of him, and Harn recoiled. From the look in his eyes, he hadn't expected Felix to appear quite so monstrous.

"Envoy! Is the Archon your master?" Felix asked, trying to ignore the warrior's regard.

"Oh," it gasped, something like lucidity returning to its eye-fires. "Ohh. You're him. It is making more sense now." It sneered. "You are supposed to be dead, Nym!"

Harn gave him a new, different look, but Felix ignored that, too. "You said the Archon is planning to attack? When? Quickly!"

Another mad giggle. The Envoy tried to stand, but its legs cracked further, the metal stressed beyond its temper. "When you least expect it."

"Felix!"

Unfettered Volition!

Felix caught the Envoy's conjured blade in his clawed grip and felt it bite into his palm, though the pain was negligible. Felix bared his fangs and grabbed the bastard's opalescent core with his other hand. Its eye-fires flared in panic.

Ravenous Tithe!

Bloodline Progression is 88%

A shimmering stream of essence poured between Felix's fingers, sucked neatly into his chest. The fires in the Envoy's helm were finally snuffed out, and it collapsed bonelessly on the ground.

"Twin's breath, Felix," Harn murmured. "Is that your...?"

"Primordial Skill, yeah," Felix nodded. "We need to-"

He stopped and clutched at his chest.

"What is it?" Vess asked. "Felix?"

My core. It feels— The essence roiled in his core, a sleek, shimmering collection of hues quite different from the yellow-red storm brewing within him. It stood apart, like a spot of oil in water. It feels—

Deep Mind is level 44!

Deep Mind is level 45!

Something scraped at him. The essence. It… something was inside it. Something important, he felt.

"Everyone, get to high ground and," Felix swallowed, careful not to cut his tongue on his sharpened teeth. "Carry me with you."

"What? Why?" Harn asked, but Felix didn't answer. He dove into his core, passing through the clouds of essence that boiled above it and lassoed the shimmering lights of the Envoy with his Will. Without hesitation, he thrust the lot of it deep into his core fire.

In his dual perception, both within and without, the world slowed until it stopped. Color leeched from reality as a wave of multi-hued Mana exploded outward.

* * *

He was in the Void again.

Pure darkness in all directions, one that reminded him forcefully of his own core. Felix stood on nothing, fully lit by an unseen light. It had been some time, but he knew what came next. Felix flexed his Will.

And the Void shattered.

Black gave way to unremitting white as millions of Envoys populated the space around him. The tall, thin construct extended in all directions, an unending centipede made up of millions, billions of Envoys. Each of them were in slightly different positions or looked slightly different. It had thrown Felix for a loop the first time this had happened with the assassin, but he had come to realize what this all meant.

Iterations through time. They were memories in time. Pieces of the Envoy throughout its life, folded on itself and repeated into infinity.

It was beautiful. And nauseating.

Felix found he could intuit some of the details of the memories as he glanced at them, the smallest of pieces at least. He needed the right one. So he looked around, which was difficult, as the memories crowded his vision in increasingly complex ways. He saw Arcid after Arcid, some small, some large, but still the same one. It...

Among the twisting lines of memories past, Felix saw selections that weren't constructs at all. Instead, he saw a tall, slender creature with blue skin and a wispy, white beard.

The Envoy was a Frost Giant?

Felix reeled. He'd thought… the Arcids were constructs right? His Eye told him so… constructs are just magic robots… right?

He'd been assuming. After so much time on the Continent, Felix had still barely scratched the surface of what was out there. He'd been wrong. He saw it clearly now, as iterations of the Envoy replaced the slender Risi with a half-plated monstrosity, writhing in pain. He glimpsed snippets of those memories, snatches of fire and torment that put his own experiences to shame.

He would only have one chance at this. He had to pick the right one. Felix honed his Intent, an aspect of himself he still didn't quite understand, and focused on his need. He knew the Archon had something to do with the twisted sigils, that it had sent the Envoy on its way. An answer had to be here. He felt it in his soul.

I need to break the array.

Following the echoes of his Intent, Felix latched onto one that was near the cusp, where the Giant was not quite an Arcid yet.

The expanse dissolved into shades of darkness and fire.

And Felix found himself standing alongside a massive stone table, upon which the Risi was held down with bands of dark steel. Pieces of its legs and arm were being laboriously replaced by dark metal in a shower of sparks. Another, far smaller Arcid stood beside it, marking off items on a scroll.

The memory shuddered.

"We found him along the city limits, Master," said the Arcid. Its voice was far higher-pitched than the Envoy's. "He proved easy to lure into our tunnels."

"Good."

The second voice that spoke shivered through Felix like a cold wind. A figure stood, wreathed in darkness, near the far end of the room.

"It is working, Master. Your vision is infallible," the short Arcid said in excitement. A low chuckle came from the shadows, and the gleam of golden metal caught Felix's eye.

"Infallible. If only," the Archon mused, stepping into the light. "Merely old and patient, Number 54228."

Existing within a memory, Felix knew he was in no danger, but it was hard to convince his heart of that. The damn thing nearly leaped out of his chest as he saw the Archon, up close after so many weeks. He moved closer to the table and tried to see exactly what was being done to the former Frost Giant. A collection of obtuse Mana constructs whirled above, each one a dense construct of sigils. Not just any sigils, either. They shone with a yellow-red light and twisted upon themselves, inversions of what he knew as standard sigaldry.

The memory shuddered again, more ripples across the world. In his bones, he knew he was running out of time.

"Spend the time here, Number 54228. Get this right, and we will be set to reforge the rest of them," the Archon had stepped closer at some point, and Felix started. He looked up at the golden giant's helmet and the red fires that burned in its visor. The thing held a massive fist up and clenched it to the sound of creaking metal. "All of them."

"Yes, Master. Your Will be done."

Convoluted constructs spun and descended, piercing through the barely conscious Risi's shoulders, chest, abdomen, and thighs. The Frost Giant woke screaming, and the Arcid did nothing to stop it. Felix watched the sigils flow and shift, mesmerized by their complexity, but conscious of the ticking clock he was on.

There's an answer here, I know it. Felix cast about, looking for something, anything.

Along one wall of the dark room was a mess of greenery. It opened out into that subterranean garden Felix had traipsed through, and wafts of crimson Mana swirled in a warm breeze. To the other side was a series of familiar metal doors. And the Archon...

The Archon stood, hand outstretched, and a tangle of sigaldry flaring in its gauntlet.

Felix's eyes widened and felt his soul spasm in revelation. Ripples burst across the surface of the memory, enough that everything within distorted. Distantly, beyond the Risi's screams, he could hear a basso thrum another world away. The ripples became violent tremors, and it was all Felix could do to hold on just a tiny bit longer. He had almost—

* * *

Ravenous Tithe is level 40!

...

Ravenous Tithe is level 45!

Felix surged to his feet with a strangled gasp.

The world was shaking all around him, and the sharp, ear-splitting sound of rock exploding under immense pressure was all he could hear. He was atop the highest point of the cliff, as far away from the platform as they could be without descending into the death grinder that was the rest of the island. Disoriented, he almost struck out at the gentle touch at his back.

"Kawaa?" Pit cooed, and quiet admonishing fluttered across their bond. Felix let loose a breath he hadn't realized he'd taken and dropped his hand to Pit's feathery head. Apologies flowed back toward the tenku.

"Felix, are you well?" Vess asked, her face smudged with sweat and blood and dirt, but still soft with concern. She had to practically yell to be heard over the din. "You—"

"You went all crazy," Evie groaned. Felix turned to find all of his friends behind him, crowded along the edge of the cliff. Evie was sitting against a rocky protrusion and shifting painfully. "Couldn't wake you. What's going on?"

"I-" Felix's tongue touched his teeth and recoiled before he realized he had shifted back. He must have released his transformation during the memory trip. "I stole a memory from the Envoy."

"Great," Atar huffed, his face slick with sweat and reddened by the Domain's influence. Alister next to him looked even worse, and the noble leaned heavily against the fire mage. "We had to haul you up this damn cliff while you took a nap!"

A screaming bellow pierced the air, somehow louder than the sound of an island being ground into dust. It felt like it shook Felix's brain.

"No," he managed over the sound, trying to get his thoughts out. This was important. "I saw the Archon… the thing that's behind all this!"

The earth dipped, literally dipped beneath them, the cliff face sinking a whole foot before it stopped. Though startled, Felix, Vess, and Harn all flowed with the movement; their stats and Skills excelled at movement or grace. The mages and the injured chain-wielder were thrown to the ground. Pit merely fluttered upward, unfazed.

"Siva's tits!" Evie shouted.

Felix spun, looking outward. In the distance, the powdery remnants of stone had begun to mix with the waters around them. The lake was pouring in as the ground fell apart.

Closer, the Queens raced around the vertical cliffs, as if chasing each other or… or waiting.

For what?

"They've been circlin' for the past few minutes," Harn said. Felix looked over at the man and wasn't surprised to see his scratched armor appearing in better condition than before. One day, he'd have to get the man to tell him how he did that.

"Awful nice of ‘em. Gave us time to get up here," Evie chimed in. She leveraged herself up against the rock beside her, gingerly putting weight on her legs. "Blind gods, that hurts. But I think I can stand."

"Not gonna be good in a fight, though," Atar observed, reaching into his pack. "Take this."

He handed her a glass bottle with a swirling red and purple liquid inside. Evie took it with a scowl. "I don't need your charity."

She drank it anyway.

"And for you, too," Atar murmured to Alister, soft enough that others might not have heard it. Felix tried not to; it felt too much like spying on friends. Another potion changed hands, and the two lingered, leaning into each other.

God, I hope we survive this. Felix swallowed despite his dry throat. Below, the Queens moved faster and faster, and they seemed to be different somehow. Their analyzed details hadn't changed, but—

*C-CRACK*

The sound came from the platform, where the bore still thrummed dangerously. Huge cracks sundered the stone in several places, as if something from deep below was straining upward. Like an egg.

"The King is almost ready," Felix said. "We have minutes, at best. We need to—"

Quest Complete!

What? Felix stared blankly at the notification that populated before him. What Quest?

An Incursion of Risi - The giants have descended from the Hoarfrost, threatening your home. You long ago discovered their purpose, but now the last of them are eliminated! Good job… eventually!

Purpose 1/1

Risi Killed 500/500

Reward:

+1 Level!

+New Title

You Have Gained 1 Level!

You Are Now Level 34!

+2 PER! +2 VIT! +1 END! +2 INT! +3 WIL! +4 AGL! +4 DEX!

You Have 5 Unused Stat Points!

New Title!

Frostbane (Rare)!

You have proven yourself to be an enemy of those that hunt in the frozen wastes. +10% damage against Giantfolk and 10% damage reduction from attacks by Giantfolk.

Why now? There were so many left when I left the Foglands, Felix blinked at the messages and it dawned on him. The Envoy.

He looked toward the Envoy's body down below, but it must have fallen into one of the expanding crevasses. The Envoy had been a Frost Giant before being turned into an Arcid, one of the first. An experiment. The Archon took the rest… he turned them all into these things.

It still didn't answer the question of why he'd completed the quest, but he wasn't about to say no to a free level and title.

The earth shook again.

"Vess! Look!" Evie pointed below. The Queens had changed. Their huge mouths split, scaled flesh forming into dozens of serpentine necks topped with triangular heads. Tentacles still proliferated around their bodies, and on their backs, a few of the tentacles had twisted and joined. As if...

As if they were growing wings.

"They can't fly, right? No way, right?" Evie asked, not taking her eyes off the Queens.

One by one, the Queens lifted into the air as they circled, until they were a spinning wall of scaled flesh. They had become huge, swollen abominations; hydras that undulated with a gargantuan grace.

"Fuck me," Felix whispered.

The waters poured in around them, crashing toward the cliffs, but the Queens rose from the flooding earth, above even their position. Soaring through the sky, the Queens redirected their flight toward the center of the island. Toward the bore.

"That'll lead to nothing good, I wager," Atar said. He had pulled out his collapsible staff and leaned on it heavily.

"I won't take that bet," Alister said. He was looking better, but not by much. "We have to run. We can't face them, or whatever the King is. We'll die without even putting a dent in them!"

The Queens circled the bore, three of them spaced out so neatly it was clear that a fourth Queen was missing. Without warning, their bodies lit up with hundreds, thousands of sigils and complex lines. Yellow-red luminescence flared bright along their skyscraper forms, and as if in answer the bore itself burst alight. In a flash, the water that had neared the cliffs was atomized and turned to less than dust.

The bore was taking on more power.

The waters hissed as they vaporized, the line pushing farther and farther out. Around the bore, the cracks widened, and the light pulsed with a steady beat that was nearly too low to be audible.

Felix considered what he knew. What the Archon had just inadvertently shown him. Could he win? And if not, could he at least keep them alive?

Felix took a shaky breath. Only one way to find out.

"I'm going in. We have to kill the Queens before the King is finished with… whatever it's doing," Felix glanced at the others. Harn and Vess stood nearby, watching him with serious faces, while Evie just rolled her eyes.

"Okay hero, let's slow down. Charging in there and dying is a great idea and all, but let's at least try to think of another plan," Evie said.

"What plan would that be, Aren?" Atar whispered. His face was stricken and pale, despite the swelling and flaking rash. "We are literally between a rock and the hardest of places. Three Tier III creatures."

"Not to mention an unknown that could easily be Tier IV," Alister added unhelpfully. "Now we can't even run, unless you're all immune to whatever that is!"

The nobleman gestured to the evaporating lake, now little more than an empty bed filled with desiccated plants and cracking earth.

"No, we can't run," agreed Harn. His gauntlets creaked around the hafts of his axes. "We fight."

As the world fell apart around them, the air filled with the hiss of burning water and the rumble of breaking earth, Evie sighed.

"Shit."

CHAPTER EIGHTY

Holy shit, this is high up.

Getting up onto the Queens had been their first challenge. The creatures flew fast and high, and with the imposing size of them, it was like trying to jump onto a super-fast rail car the size of a skyscraper. Thankfully, they had Pit. Felix flew up first. They had to time it perfectly to avoid any of the other Queens' attention, and that was far harder than it seemed at first. But the two of them made it up there, though Pit was barely able to lift him that high, and then only with judicious use of Reign of Vellus to give them a kinetic kick.

Vess had it easier, utilizing her specialized Dragoon Skills to launch herself into the air and just about soar. She had enough juice to even carry the two mages.

Pit had to return for Evie and Harn, though the former had recovered some use of her legs. Still, she wasn't up for jumping.

As the others arrived, Felix crouched low upon the Queen's back, closely inspecting the pulsing sigils that covered its hide. As always, it was a disquieting thing and appeared almost volatile, but when Felix's foot touched it, nothing had exploded or burned him. It seemed safe enough. What's more, the Queen hadn't even reacted to their presence.

We're like ants to them. Just like I hoped. Felix grinned. He'd dropped his shifted form to keep him lighter for Pit; his Skill added about thirty pounds of muscle onto his already heavy frame. The tenku huddled nearby, his wings tucked close in the immense wind, and he looked exhausted. Thanks, bud. Rest for now.

Convergence.

A flash of light later, Pit joined within Felix, and they both breathed a sigh of relief. It was comforting for some reason, holding his Companion so close. Felix suspected a large part was not having to worry about him.

Can't get into trouble if you're with me, right? Felix felt Pit's warbled response and laughed. Yeah yeah. I get into enough trouble for the both of us. Thanks.

The Queen shifted beneath them, and the sigils flared as it completed yet another circle around the bore. The three of them were flying in formation, each one dropping burning lines of magic down into the hole with every pass.

"AH!" Atar shouted as he nearly lost his balance, and slammed his metal rod down. The sharp end stabbed down into the Queen, but thankfully neither the mage's Strength nor his weapon did more than poke the beast. Vess' dark hand grabbed him by the front of his tattered robes and kept him from falling off the beast's back.

"Blind gods, Atar," Vess hissed. "Be more—AHH!"

The Queen bucked beneath them again, and this time, Vess went flying along with the mage.

Shadow Whip!

What Dwells Beneath!

They both fell off the side of the Queen, practically sucked into the air by the wind. A black tendril snapped outward and entangled both mage and warrior, and Felix had to shift his form in order to hang on. Felix's bones shifted and cracked, healing quickly but not painlessly as his body bulked up and changed. Disgusted, he spat out his flat teeth and watched them fall away from the side of the Queen. Black talons dug deep into the Queen's scaly hide, and even then, he was dragged back along its length for nearly twenty feet before he stopped and could reel them in.

What Dwells Beneath is level 35!

Shadow Whip is level 33!

Bloodline Progression is 90%

The Queen beneath them gave a stentorian bellow.

God damn it!

* * *

We live.

We hunger.

We… yearn.

A dim sentience had erupted within Them, and They That Were Queen raised Their multitudinous heads and roared a challenge into the burning skies. None but Their Sisters answered, for none alive could stand up to Them.

None but One. The King.

Their King.

Even now, Their Sisters spun the incandescent power of Their Father. A ritual that They understood in their bones and enacted without conscious thought. One that would break Them free of this small world and into the next, the land beyond, where Their Father waited.

We will rise! Screams in the sky, Their Sisters echoed Their exultation. We will triumph!

We will feed!

Pain.

One of Its Sisters bellowed, and the sharp sensation rippled through all of Them.

What is this? Pain was not new to Them, and it had once been a dim memory. Something that happened when They were smaller, weaker. That was before the Betrayal, when Their Fourth had been torn apart. Eaten by a predator unknown. Now, pain had returned. Now it tore at Their Sister as They flew just ahead, a terrible, gushing pain against Their flanks.

As one, the Sisters turned half their serpentine necks and spat streams of white flame outward. The stone around them charred, melted, turned to red-hot slag that no foe could hide behind.

Still the pain persisted.

Then They saw it. The creature...no, creatures were crawling upon Their Sister. Like the parasites in Their blood, these things dared climb atop them. They were Queen!

They lived.

They hungered.

* * *

"Highest Flame," whispered Atar. "Such power."

The white flames of the hydra-beasts had slagged what little of the island remained, leaving it molten and charred beyond recognition. The cliff upon which they had huddled was little more than a melted candle stub.

"Glad you didn't stay behind, huh?" Evie nudged Atar in the ribs. The mage got up gingerly and tried to smooth his windswept and Domain-frazzled hair. He ignored Evie's jibe and nodded in thanks to Felix, who was only just disengaging himself from the Queen's tough hide.

"Hydra-dragons," Felix groaned, more to himself than anyone else. "They're fire breathing hydra-dragons."

There was a big bellow behind them, and the nearest Queen to the rear accelerated, screaming with her… Felix counted quickly… 40 heads.

"Felix," Harn grunted. "They know. We gotta move."

"Right, right." Felix hurriedly turned toward the long gash he'd torn in the Queen. "This is as good a place to start as any."

He slashed his claws down. Sparks flew, but Felix could barely penetrate any deeper into the wound. He slashed again, and the same result. He could tear a small furrow, but any more than that, he was repelled by the thing's monstrous regeneration.

What?

The roar of the Queen grew louder, and his friends started giving him antsy looks. Frowning at his talons, Felix grabbed at the corrosive essence that lingered in his core, hoping it was the answer. He reasoned that he could fight against the Maw's creatures so well in this form because it, too, was influenced by the Maw's machinations. It bore the Primordial's touch, its signature maybe. So what would happen if he put more of that behind his strike? He pushed long tendrils of essence, still connected to the main mass in his core, up through his channels, looping them across his body and toward his fists.

"Whatever you're gonna do, do it now!" Alister shouted above the wind.

Flexing his talons, Felix tried again, but this time burned the essence, forcing the larger mass into his core fire. A deep, resounding echo shuddered through Felix's Body and Spirit, and the moment his claws touched the Queen, its flesh split in two.

Felix grinned up at Harn who just shook his head.

"Scary smile you got there, Felix," Evie said. "You could put someone's eye out."

Behind them, the other Queen raced forward, all of its heads snapping in vicious anticipation. Atar spotted orange and red Mana vapor gathering in its many jaws.

"It's gonna breathe fire again! Quickly, quickly!" Atar screamed.

Unfettered Volition!

Felix dug deep, tearing a widening hole in the Queen's flesh. Each pass scooped hunks of fat and hide away, burrowing a hole into the Queen's back. His arms blurred, excavating a bloody tunnel before their very eyes. Burrowing like a damn mole, he tore their way down into a large cavity pulsing with visible yellow-red light.

"Everyone! Inside!" Harn shouted before grabbing Atar and physically hurling the mage into the fetid hole.

The warrior barely made it within before fire washed over them, and only Harn's ever-reddening armor prevented it from pouring into the hole behind them.

"Noctis wept, Harn," Vess reached out a hand before pulling it back sharply. She hadn't even gotten close, and the heat was unbearable. "Are you—?"

"Fine," he growled. "Just damn hot. Move it."

"Follow me. We've got a ways to go. This thing is huge," Felix said. With a grimace, he strode forward with claws outstretched.

The way was tight and wet and frankly unpleasant as hell, with only the pained rumblings of the Queen itself giving Felix any joy. That and the fact that, despite crossing several internal cavities and gnarly abscesses within the beast, they had yet to run into a single Parasite.

Good news, at least. He didn't remember everything from when the Maw had puppeted him into the Larval Ravager, but much of those fights remained. They were nasty foes, and it was unlikely they had stayed the same as the Queens grew. They were probably far harder to fight now.

He wasn't worried about Vess or even Evie, despite her injuries. Harn was, hah, that wasn't a concern. Atar and Alister worried him, especially the latter, who remained unprotected from the Domain's strange atmosphere. The two of them had at least recovered some of their Mana; they had a few blue potions squirreled away. Hopefully, that meant they'd be able to put up a fight when it came to it.

Because it always came down to a fight.

Finally, they had dropped far enough. As they broke through yet another fleshy membrane, Felix felt a bone-deep exhaustion pulse through him. The essence he'd been burning up had faded to mere wisps in his core. He doubted he could push much farther without… refueling. Diving deep, they had been growing steadily closer to his target, and now he could feel its proximity. It was like an invisible sun on his face; Felix could orient himself based on the heat alone.

"It's close," Felix panted. The journey hadn't only exhausted his essence store, but his Stamina had barely kept up with their mad dash. Harn nodded and moved ahead into the large empty cavity they had entered. The place was framed by bones that lifted the meaty ceiling, and a number of fleshy protuberances filled the ground with a vaguely twitching terrain.

"Why're there so many...holes in this thing?" Evie asked. She had a hitch in her step that the healing potion hadn't cured, but she was managing well enough. She held her chain in a white-knuckled grip. "It's creepy."

"Fascinating," Alister murmured. "See that? That looks an awful lot like a massive Mana bladder!"

"A what?" Evie asked as her eyes swept the cavity.

"It's an organ inside most monsters that allow them to store and use Mana Skills! It's usually connected to their cores." Atar's exhaustion gave way to exuberance. "Remarkable. That is orders of magnitude larger than any bladder I've seen, so their core must be huge!"

Felix crept forward, keeping low to the ground in the dark, humid space. The only light to be found was from the pulse of various veins and organs on the walls, likely the condenser the mages were speaking about. It was less of a problem for Felix, who relied on his Manasight to see. It was a chaotic swirl of convoluted vapors down here, but long experience had taught him how to peer beyond the miasma, and he navigated as if he were in a meadow in broad daylight.

"Felix!" Vess whispered. "I believe I found what we are looking for."

Felix turned the corner and beheld a wild mess of yellow-red light. Lines like those below proliferated, filling the nook of the abscess with a confusing mess of sigils that looked more like a glowing, tangled net. Said net was surrounding a large sphere that hovered in midair, though the details of it were lost among the jumble of wild power. Felix took a step closer to it and got smacked in the face with a near solid waft of emotion.

A hot, caustic wind tried to force itself down his throat, but when it couldn't, it simply soaked through his skin. Instantly, his heart rate skyrocketed, and a sweat appeared over his entire body while muscle spasms twitched across his chest and shoulders, and a terrible heat took up residence in his chest and head. Like someone had distilled everything he had ever hated and poured it into him, until he overflowed with it.

Destroy, it whispered in a thousand voices, all of them familiar shadows. Break. Devour.

No. It's… not mine… NO. Felix fought back against the sensation. He recognized a mental attack when he felt one; especially one flavored this particular brand of Primordial. OUT.

The emotion fled before his Willpower, crushed from his veins. Panting, he turned to Vess and the others who had gathered behind him.

"Be careful. Don't come too close," he swallowed and turned his wide eyes back to the complex array before him. "There's a… something here. Emotional radiation."

"What?" Evie asked.

"I sensed great, turbulent emotions baked into the sigils on the platform," Atar noted. "So the Envoy built this, too? How? It would have had to grow with the Queens to be in any way functional as a ward." He ran his hands through his hair in frustration, making it stick straight up. "This is mind-bogglingly complex! What sort of Mind would be necessary to manage this?"

"It feels like an echo, Atar," Felix said, taking another step. Winds buffeted him again, but it was easier when he was expecting it. "Remnants of the Primordial."

"They're comin'," Harn's head perked up, like a hound. "Just like ya said, Felix. Look alive, kids."

The four Apprentice Tiers all shared a look and faced outward, gripping their weapons and readying their Skills. Felix worried, but he stuck to the plan. His plan.

It's gonna work, he assured himself. It has to.

But then he couldn't think about them or the plan anymore. He stepped forward.

The array pushed back at him, but Felix slid between its thrust, quashing the waves of negative emotion that tried to force him away. Was it even a ward? Or was this a side effect of so many of these vile sigils overlaying one another? He saw that they each expressed a brilliant thread of anger down on the platform, utilizing it to some purpose. This was instead taking that to another level, and popping in the Maw's slogan to boot.

Devour, Felix snorted and Willed himself forward, each step feeling like he was walking through hip-deep mud. Maw, the one-hit wonder.

Closer, he could make out the finer details of this collection of arrays. The orb that floated above was the Queen's core, it could be nothing else, and no less than seven arrays were laid atop it. Felix let his gaze soak in the details, barely even wincing at the violence inherent in the twisted glyphs, and his Mind grabbed their details and began to sort them. It didn't feel as automated as all that, but Felix found it hard to explain the process to himself. There was a growing part of his Mind that could do things unconsciously that Felix could not entirely grasp. It was… a concern, but not one he had the luxury of indulging at the moment.

Instead, he focused his energies on identifying the sigils. Fully half of them were designed to siphon more energies and likely led to the Queen's gut and mouth, where food could be drained of its power. The rest varied between actual physical wards to protect the core, and… and the last two, he could not figure out. Not by a long shot. They were far more complex than the worst of the siphon arrays, and seemed to spread all over the creature's body; he could spot lines of script that swept off into walls of flesh and beyond. His best guess was that they were meant for… control? Maybe?

Felix flexed his claws and, with the last of his stolen essence, fueled two slashes that cut apart the nearest warding arrays. The atonal hum of the core was abruptly diminished, and Felix could hear the clash of metal and sound of rapid, concussive impacts from behind him. Quivering, wet screams were followed by shouted curses and insults about their mothers.

Keep moving.

The way was clear, mostly, save for a portion of a siphon array and control array. The way they had been laid overtop, one would have to clear at least one of every type in order to reach the core. The complexity of them was astounding, especially if, as Atar suggested, these were grown with the Queens. Was it the Maw's influence, or was the Archon in fact this good? He'd rather it be the former.

The shouts and screams behind him increased in pitch, though none of the monsters made it close enough to Felix, even if the arrays were down. He hurried forward, skirting as close as he could manage to the center, exactly where two arrays met and grew through one another. The world was washed in yellow-red, two distinct emanations that somehow avoided blending into orange. Felix couldn't get much farther than this, but he didn't need to.

He reached out his hand, and he sounded the pattern.

And the light responded.

* * *

"Huah!"

Evie's chain hurled out into one of the Parasite's heads and turned it into paste. The things were nasty, and they kept coming. They were freaking pouring out of the walls. Good thing they had an exploitable weakness.

Sharp metal through their heads.

So, while Felix messed around with those weird drawings, Evie and the others did work. That wasn't entirely fair, but Evie's hip wasn't making her entirely agreeable. Each pivot and stretch had her wincing, an action that had cost her more than one kill so far. The Parasites, as Felix called them, were like six-legged hounds, heavily muscled but sleek enough to fit through the squelchy tunnels they'd torn through. Their heads were bone and sinew compacted into a wedge shape and filled with teeth. Each leg had rows of spikes on it, bone spurs that sliced at a touch.

Like she said: nasty.

Evie had less than optimal room to use her chain, but that just focused her and helped keep her mind off her injury. She had to be precise, or else it was Atar who got a spike in the brain.

Scorpion's Tail!

Dervish!

The spikes alongside her chain sharpened and proliferated while the chain spun in tight loops around Evie's body. Parasites were shredded with each pass, the chain's mass altered at the moment of impact to slam through their resistance and shatter their exposed bones. Swerving and twisting in unnatural ways, Evie slithered through the defenses of the monstrosities. Alister's blue strikes were right behind hers, taking advantage of their broken defenses and piercing them through their chests and mouths. Parasites died by the dozen.

Yet there were always more.

"How many are there?" Evie shouted. "I've killed… at least twenty!"

"The Queen is immense! We've likely only seen a small fraction of what dwells within it!" Atar said, at the same time bathing the area before him in red-orange flames. The Parasites he faced let out wet, clicking screams as they were consumed. He glanced backward at Felix and stumbled, his face pale.

"Atar!" Alister grabbed the mage and steadied him. "What's wrong?"

"What is that?" Atar gasped. Evie pushed back a line of enemies and risked a glance back herself.

Behind, Felix stood next to the cocoon of yellow-red sigaldry, and his hands blazed like the gods-damned sun. Evie felt pain lance into her eyes and directly into her brain, a white-hot poker of agony that made her scream and turn away.

Yyero's blighted ass, Felix! Ugh! She blinked away the pain, but a blocky afterimage stuck in her vision. Parasites crowded her despite that, and Evie wielded her chain to drive them back. Stupid mages! Why'd I have to look back?

* * *

They felt the change immediately. Before Them, Their Sister bucked and rolled, spun off course by the eruption of agony within Their heart.

The creatures! What have they done!

Already, They sensed the ritual weakening. The power scribed upon their blood and bones still raged, still thrummed to its design, but the potency had altered. Reduced. Impossibly affected.

As one, the Queens all knew what must be done.

The ritual must be performed. Their god demanded it be so.

Their roar was legion. Power flared along their hide, along bodies larger than the paltry mountains that inhabited that world, and streams of white fire poured from their many mouths. Directly into the bore. Symbols none of Them understood flashed into being along Their necks and chests, markings that brought new, untold pain into Their existences. Yet still they persisted.

It was as it must be. Life for Life. And after, Death.

In this world, and the next.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

The freaky sigils proliferating in the Domain were difficult on both the Mind and Spirit, but Felix pushed through it. He had no essence left, so this part had to rely upon his own talents rather than the stolen potential of his enemies. Quite apart from simply tracing it, Felix found he had to divest an uncomfortable amount of attention and care into the magical runes. Different from other such markings, he didn't so much expend Mana as he invested himself into the attempts.

It was awful.

The sigils weren't of the Primordial Dawn, but were close, inverted as he'd discovered before. Like the Romance languages, they felt connected by a string of commonalities. Potential translations flitted through Felix's Mind, so enthralled he barely noticed as the ground beneath his feet twisted and bucked. Felix hit his knees, but still it was a dimly felt thing. All of his attention was on his memory… and the core.

This… or was it...?

He recreated a number of twisted sigils he'd encountered, attempting to faithfully replicate their convoluted depths. Until he finally got the notification he'd been hoping for.

New Skill!

Profane Sigaldry (Legendary), Level 1!

Your foundations in sigils and prodigious Mind have combined to teach you how to twist reality to suit your needs. Be wary, Unbound, you walk upon the thinnest of precipices.

Yeah, no shit. He felt his skin crawl as limited knowledge of the twisted sigils bathed his Mind. It wasn't a Skill he wanted, and he felt its influence almost immediately. The Domain and Queen flesh around him was awash in Profane energy, a strange combination of harsh emotion and an awful, dominating Want. With effort, Felix walled those feelings off, relying on his near-Journeyman Bastion of Will to aid him.

Now, he could focus on the next bit. Slowly, he etched a new pattern into the air.

The pattern fought him, despite his perfect recall. Marred by the Envoy's own flawed memory, one that was further complicated by the fact that the Envoy had not been entirely present during the events. It was a miracle Felix had even recognized what he'd seen.

But he tried. And tried.

When Felix sounded the last flourish, for an entirely too brief moment, a sigil hovered in the air before him. It was neither the twisted nor the angular script of Primordial Dawn, but instead a fluid, curving shape that nevertheless exuded a strident sense of solidity.

A notification trilled in his ears, and Felix grinned through his fangs.

Synergy Detected!

Profane Sigaldry and Sigils of the Primordial Dawn have high synergy!

Do You Wish To Evolve?

All Choices Have Consequences.

Y/N

Hell yes!

Behind him, Felix could hear the battle escalate furiously as more and more Parasites ripped into the central cavity. Yet, that was all the attention he could spare his friends, as the next instant he felt as if a vice had clamped his soul and began squeezing.

Pit chirruped in fear. Felix could feel the tenku pressured in the same way, and their bond compressed and lit up like a white-hot iron bar between them. Pit shrieked in distress.

He would have also screamed had he been able to; his Spirit felt stripped bare while his Body was wracked with enough tremors that it was all he could do to remain kneeling. Still, his Mind raced as gold and blue spark burned across his vision, and a dark red puissance flared all around him.

You can do it! Just hold—!

He hadn't any essence left, and Felix realized his mistake just a moment too late. Red, blue, and yellow streamers of potency began to rip from his core fire, each piece as agonizing as if he were ripping the flesh from his own body. He tried and failed to draw in more power from the arrays around him, but they were even more difficult to tear away than the Envoy's. Anchored as they were in the Queen's Body (and likely its Spirit), the sigils were nigh impervious to his level of Will.

Felix gritted his teeth against the pain as his three resource pools dipped yet again. It hurt, but everything always hurt. He could deal. He had no choice.

With a great, wrenching twist, the draw abruptly stopped.

Skill Evolved!

You Have Lost Profane Sigaldry and Sigils of the Primordial Dawn!

New Skill!

Level Has Been Maintained!

Theurgist of the Rise (Legendary), Level 44!

Your exposure to the depths and variety of sigaldry has revealed an ancient path toward mastery. Mark well the trail, Unbound. Beware the Ruin.

That's it! Felix's laugh was near-delirious, but he could see it, finally. The Envoy's memory, the Archon's extended grasp...

The wavy outlines in his memory suddenly made sense.

Theurgist of the Rise is level 45!

* * *

A huge monster tore through the flesh tunnels. Its coming was muffled by the wet, hollow veins of the Queen, but its enraged clicking shriek was hard to miss. Claws the length of Evie's leg tore through the nearest putrid membrane, dark ichor spurting along the cut, and it forced its way out. The thing looked as if five or six Parasites had climbed atop one another, fusing into something even larger and more disgusting.

Its shriek heralding its arrival, several Parasites disengaged with their weapons and rushed toward it. They swarmed the already nine-foot tall monstrosity, climbing up its bony, angular body and—-

Ugh. I coulda lived my whole life without seein' that. Evie's stomach turned, the smell of everything hitting her at the same time she watched a heap of Parasites ooze and snap together like half-melted wax. The thing turned its sightless eyes toward them and squealed a furious challenge.

"Avet's black eyes, this Domain! I! Hate! It!" Evie whirled her chain into several Parasites rushing to join the merger. They splatted against the ground with the gushy sound of a full wineskin hitting a plate of hot meat.

Silver spears rushed in and sunk, half-mast into the abomination.

"Spear of Tribulation," Vess hissed, her voice too hoarse to shout.

A burst of razor winds tore skull-sized holes in the bastard. It tottered but kept its feet.

"Fall! Grand Impetus!"

A bolt of blazing blue zipped forward, almost too fast to track. The abomination's head twisted around, snapping like a handful of dry rotted sticks, and the thing fell to the ground. Its body burst in a fountain of ichor, and Parasites began leaping from its tattered corpse.

A terrible roar sounded next to Evie, and she just about leaped out of her skin. "Noctis' tits! Warn a gal!"

Vess' face was covered by the head of a spectral dragon, a small one at least, and its toothy face grinned at her as it continued to issue its challenge. The remaining Parasites, and there were more than a few, all heard her call and stopped in place.

Then they ran away.

The spectral dragon's head disappeared from Vess' shoulders, and the Dragoon-to-be let herself slump just slightly. "Dragonfear should keep them distracted for a moment."

Fire and blue impacts hit their exposed backs, while a swath of them simply died to Harn's silver axe energies.

"Huh," Evie said, taking a few wobbly steps forward as she unspooled her chain again. She wasn't gonna let the others take experience from her. "That's a toss-up Skill, yeah? Fear or taunt? How'd you know it'd be fear and not the taunt effect?"

"I didn't," Vess replied and flashed her a tired smile. Evie laughed despite the pain in her hip.

"Crazy noble."

"Idiot commoner."

"St—!" Evie barely got the word out when the entire world flipped.

"AHH!"

"WHU-!"

"UGH!"

The lot of them were hurled into the air at an angle, and Evie only barely managed to get her feet oriented properly before reducing her weight by half. Still, she landed with a heavy thud against one of the taller fleshy growths along the floor, like meat stalagmites.

Fucking Felix! She knew this was his fault. Evie dared a glance in his direction again, but couldn't find him among that awful shine. Instead, she saw the far wall disgorge an entire battalion of Parasites, all of whom immediately began to fall directly toward her.

* * *

He felt it, for an instant. The array configuration.

Control.

Then it was ripped from his grasp by something he couldn't sense.

Theurgist of the Rise is level 46!

Theurgist of the Rise is level 47!

No! He snarled and forced his body closer. His muscles bunched and knotted as if he were trying to bench press an ocean liner, but the arrays didn't budge in the slightest. He sounded the patterns again, flashing the complex lines by hurling his own Mana into the air.

Mana Manipulation is level 25!

...

Mana Manipulation is level 29!

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Tier With Mana Manipulation!

You Gain:

+5 INT

+5 WIL

+5 DEX

That same invisible hand wiped his work away, almost as if… he flared his Manasight. There!

Abyssal Skein!

He reached out and grabbed the Mana construct that hovered near-invisibly around the Sub-Core. The convoluted construction was piled atop the arcane array that extended outward among the Queen's flesh, the one he wasn't quite sure about. As he gripped it, he could sense his own exuded Mana flowing along its channels, sucked away to who-knows-where.

Manasight is level 49!

Felix's hands, coated in the Void, snared the construct easily. It was woven of Voidstuff, after all, just like the security measures on the Domain's shell. While he didn't know the full effect of the last array, he did know it had to interact with the Void, or else the Queens would have had no connection with the Domain itself. The part of his core that housed the Theurgist of the Rise Skill hummed with such knowledge, and more.

He tore it apart. And the world around him tipped sideways.

The guttural, basso fury of the Queen in pain rumbled through him as Felix stabbed his claws into the fleshy footing, flared Unfettered Volition, and held his ground. He could sense, dimly, that the giant monster was careening toward the earth. Diving.

He didn't have much time.

He pushed his Mana out of his channels again.

For the briefest of moments, the Archon's pattern burned with fidelity in his memory. Felix latched on, not willing to let the moment go even as the Queen began to drop. It was in his grasp. A series of jagged, inward spiraling waves, compounded and compressed until they felt more like a physical object than a manifestation of Mana and Will.

His working sent a pulse of golden-blue tendrils deep into the angry network of sigaldry around the Queen's core. All around them, among the rampaging Parasites that had thinned considerably, sigils had appeared and coalesced into strange arcane arrays, each rapidly changing as the core defended itself. But it wasn't enough.

He had it.

New Title!

Architect of the Rise (Legendary)!

You have embraced the path of mastery, and though the plans were pilfered, you recreated them with nothing more than your overwhelming drive. Gain a 25% bonus to learning all sigaldry as well as creating and maintaining complex arrays.

Swiping away the notification, Felix commanded the arrays to drop, and they did. The sigils dimmed and dissolved into brilliant vapor, something that would be child's play to take in. But Felix didn't bother. He wasn't there for that.

He shoved his hand against the core.

Ravenous Tithe!

* * *

"Brace yerselves!" Harn shouted.

"Easy—for you to say!" Atar held onto a knobby protuberance in the once-floor. Parasites fell around him, their sharp claws scrabbling for purchase as gravity had its way. The Parasites hit the fleshy walls of the cavity with a clatter of bone and squelching flesh, only to be incinerated by Atar's fire. A whoosh of air sounded, and four spears embedded in the flaming mass before detonating into whirlwinds of razor-sharp Mana streams.

Fields of Flame is level 37!

"Felix! What is happening?" Vess shouted. A powerful rattling had filled the air, like the death rattle of some immense creature. "Is that the Queen?"

"It's… it's diving!" Alister shouted, stabbing his rapier into the tender flesh. "Why? What is going on out there?"

"I don't know!" Atar screamed, his voice already hoarse. His Mana was pushing near empty and a headache pounded at his temples. "We're stuck in the belly of a Tier III monster and hurtling through the sky! This is all new territory for me!"

He knew he should have stayed on the ground. Should have tried to escape the Domain, no matter how impossible it seemed. Even now, he could see more Parasites begin boiling from below them, amid the charred corpses of their brethren. Their clicking screams barely penetrated the Queen's massive howls.

Then the screams, all of them, changed in tone. Pained ferocity became something else.

"It's afraid!" Vess shouted after she hurled another of her spears into a cluster of climbing Parasites. "The Queen is—Look!"

Farther away, near the now dim core, the cavernous abscess had begun to turn into a dark, hideous smoke. Atar could barely hear another monstrous roar that sounded different than the Queen and its infestation of Parasites. Felix.

"It worked!" Evie groaned. "Brace yourselves! Bindings of the White Waste!"

Purple-white Mana vapor coalesced out of the air and chains as thick as his wrist burst from every nearby surface. They snaked around Atar's waist, and he shouted in pain. The chains were made of unnaturally cold ice, so cold they burned him through his robes.

"Suck it up, Sparky!" Evie hissed as a vein protruded from her forehead. He could see she was holding everyone in place, all at once. And good thing she did, as the Queen reoriented and everything spun and flipped.

Burn you, Felix! What are you doing?!

* * *

It was too much.

Felix had known that. He'd planned for that.

But the sheer amount staggered him. Far beyond the relatively paltry well of essence in the Larval Ravager, evolving into a Queen had pushed its entire being to a far higher level of power.

Ravenous Tithe is level 46!

Ravenous Tithe is level 47!

Bloodline Progression 91%

It's too much. I can't… I can't...

Pit shrieked and the pressure shifted. The flow of essence split, instead of scouring Felix's channels it poured into his chest. Into his bond.

Into Pit.

Etheric Concordance is level 44!

Bloodline Progression 92%

Both of them strained while the Queen beneath them twisted and heaved. He could sense its pain as the essence poured through him, and the edges of its thoughts burned bright against his own Mind. Fear and hate, and stubborn, unwilling contempt for all that wasn't itself. But such thoughts were fleeting things, gone, buried beneath the torrent of a skyscraper worth of beast essence. Felix and Pit shared the strain, but even so, it was far too much. To contain it all would have ruptured both of their cores.

Bloodline Progression 93%

So he flipped the script and seized upon the connection built into the strange, far-ranging arrays. That moment of utter control had given him enough to convince him the plan would work.

He just hoped he wasn't wrong.

Felix shunted the remaining power down those connections to the Domain itself, feeding it back. Almost as if he'd unclogged a massive drain, the essence jettisoned down the scribed lines so fast it spun Felix's head. In seconds, the first of the essence reached the edges of the Domain, where it dumped unceremoniously into the liminal Void.

Ravenous Tithe is level 48!

Bloodline Progression 94%

Fear thrummed through the Queen, its essence quivering with it as it passed through him. Felix took no satisfaction in that, could in fact barely stay conscious as the hurricane of power rode through him. His Body, Mind, and Spirit acted as conduits to the savage essence, as did Pit's, and the potency of its passage was shredding him from the inside out.

His Health had dropped to 65% in the last twenty seconds, and his Stamina was little better.

Bloodline Progression 95%

Bloodline Progression 96%

Bloodline Progression 97%

Ravenous Tithe is level 49!

Felix could sense it as the Queen banked hard again and its wings strained to keep itself aloft. The monstrosity's body was dissolving rapidly, sucked away into the Void, but it had one last hope. Felix felt that thought burn across its Minds, each of its hydra-like heads pulling, pointing down.

Toward the bore.

No!

Felix tried to disperse it faster, but though he could shift the focus of the connections that drained the Queen, he had no control over the rate it vanished. He was stuck. He could neither speed it up nor slow it down, just...

With an effort of Will, Felix focused the dissolution upon the beast's wings.

"Hang tight!" Felix bellowed for anyone who could hear him.

There was a terrible half-second of absolute weightlessness, then they all plummeted to the earth below.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

They hit hard. So hard they bounced.

For all that he'd turned and braced against the Queen's bulk, the thing was dissolving fast. Felix hung on tight, digging his claws deep into the iron-hard flesh, but by the second impact, there wasn't much left of the Queen to protect them. Streamers of its essence fled in all directions, like a popping water balloon filled with a dark, iridescent smoke. Including into the bore.

Felix's muscles felt like they were on fire, too tense and too loose all at the same time. His ribs were definitely broken, at least two of them, and he felt like he'd lost more than one of his fangs. He'd braced against the impact, but that had possibly made it worse. It was only the strange cushioning of the Queen's flesh sublimating into essence that had given him any relief at all. As it was, he had tumbled free after the second jolt, sent rolling hard along the splitting earth, entirely too close to the yellow-red inferno.

What Dwells Beneath is level 36!

His Spirit screamed however as it tried to contain a huge chunk of the Ravager Queen's essence. With a flash of light, Pit emerged from within him, stumbling upon manifesting and groaning with the same strain. It was far more than either of them had dared to hold before, and even divided between them, it felt like the both of them would split open.

The sound of a System message trilled in Felix's ears.

You Have Killed A Ravager Queen!

XP Earned!

A rush of energy slammed into his core, waves of vibrations that upset the fragile balance Felix was attempting. Like an overturned plate, the essence cloud fell from his core, smashing down into his core fire. It was a storm cloud of flashing light and foreboding darkness, a corrosive violence he couldn't tame.

The lot of it burned.

Hold it tight, bud! Don't let it into your channels! Felix could barely manage the thought, and had to hope Pit got the message. He didn't even know if tenku had Mana channels, but he did know that any Maw-touched essence burned like fire. If he let it run wild, it'd eat him from the inside out.

And he couldn't let it out, or else it'd pour right into the bore.

But the System didn't let up. They had taken down a substantial threat and an enemy over twice their level. Felix could feel System notifications begin to build up, yet the thick smog of essence acted almost as insulation to the arrival of the gold-blue vibrations. It was almost painful, a muffled sort of pressure in addition to the burden of holding in all that essence.

What Dwells Beneath is level 37!

"Uugh." Voices from behind him made Felix turn shakily, and his breath flowed a bit easier as he saw his friends piled nearby. Remnants of purple-white Mana vapor still steamed from their clothes and armor, but they seemed relatively unharmed. Save for the minor convulsions every single one of them were undergoing. His Eye told him each of them were gaining several levels as he watched.

Somehow, the essence was causing the System power to bounce and rebound within his core, disallowing the Harmonics from integrating with the rest of his Body, Mind, and Spirit. Shaking, he leveraged his Willpower and Song of Absolution; Felix got unsteadily to his feet.

Bits of the essence were burning up in his core fire, and the waves of disruptive power that generated were being soaked up by his monstrous form. His altered muscles were slowly feeling less pain and damage, and the red bar of his Health began to gradually, but visibly creep upward. Felix figured by the time he processed a quarter of the essence, he would be fully healed. Except, it was too slow a process to help with the System reverberations, which were sending more and more pain into his packed core.

Furious bellows shook the sky as Felix stood, and the gargantuan forms of the other Queens swept in from the sides. Each with thirty plus hydra heads and bodies too large, too impossible to fly, each with a murderous Intent burning within their eyes.

Oh damn, Felix thought with a lurch to his stomach. I hope—

Blinding white fire poured from one, then both queens as they swooped overhead. Six dozen streams combined into far more than enough fire to turn him to charcoal, and all of it was headed straight for him. Felix squeezed his eyes shut and threw his arms up into the air, as if that would do anything.

Yet, he was still alive.

Cautiously, he peeked out, and beheld his most ironic savior yet. The fire bent in mid-air, churning against an invisible current, and was being sucked wholesale into the crevasse before him. Toward the damn Ravager King.

Holy shit, Felix felt his heart catch up to his mind, thudding so hard it felt likely to burst from his chest. Holy shit, that was close. Pit—?

Pit offered a weak chirrup before dropping to his haunches. His pink tongue lolled from his beak, and his wide golden eyes blinked unsteadily. He hadn't been hit by the flames and heat, but Felix could feel the essence putting pressure on their bond.

The ground shuddered beneath their feet.

"What do I do?" Felix asked himself, leaning down to hug his Companion. He scratched at his friend's ears, hoping it helped even a little. "Zara, what did you think we could do here?"

His plan to devour a Queen before it could finish whatever ritual they were enacting had worked… sorta. He'd eaten the damn Queen, but some of it still fed the King. And the others… he looked up. They'd stopped breathing flame and had instead lit up entirely with yellow-red sigils. Their bodies, once lightly scrawled with arrays, became absolutely covered. Lines speared outward from them, sinking into the cracks in the widening hole before him, each revolution spinning them together into some sort of woven pillar.

"How could we stop this?" he asked no one in particular. "Harmonics? What—ugh," a muffled vibration shook his core. "What could the Harmonics do here?"

The sigils flared even harder above him. The Queens bellowed, their rage turning to triumph as one, then the other abruptly began to fall.

"Holy—!"

The sigils upon their bodies ignited like oily fire, like lightning made of blood, bursting across their flesh as they shouted in ecstasy. They dissolved before his very eyes, dissipating long before they reached him or his friends, and their essence poured into the bore. The woven pillar of yellow-red energy held onto the essence like the eye of an unnatural hurricane. Hot winds buffeted Felix and Pit both, almost pushing him backward.

Pit squawked in concern, barely able to keep his eyes open. He was sensing something below, but Felix felt it too.

The King is coming. It's almost awake. He felt a dumb, slightly hysterical laugh bubble up from his chest. At least the Queens are gone now.

Zara said one of them had to be there to use the Chant. To recognize the Harmony. But how could that help here? The answer had to be there, because otherwise Felix could feel hopelessness claw at him. Because, if he couldn't figure this out, he and all his friends were dead.

Felix could see the remnants of the Grand Harmony in these twisted echoes of life, but how did that help? What did the Harmony have to do with it at all? The dissonance the Domain had devolved into was the Maw's nature, played out on a wide scale. He imagined what such a corrosive and contagious influence could accomplish in the greater world. What havoc it would wreak.

He shuddered.

Having lived with the Maw in his head for weeks, Felix knew more about it than perhaps anyone else. About its personal brand of insanity. It was a survivor. It called itself the Unending Maw, said it survived the Ruin itself, whatever that entailed. He had witnessed it using Harmonics and whatever you called the opposite end of the spectrum. Felix had started to envision them as something like Order and Chaos.

How would someone tame Chaos, though?

The Archon has done it, he realized. As the world around him shook itself apart, and his friends slowly got to their feet, Felix relived the edges of his most recent memory. He's taken the Chaos and forged a magical script from it. An inversion of Harmony, of Order. So then—

Theurgist of the Rise. His new Skill. The one he'd gained after applying his understanding of the ancient Sigils of the Primordial Dawn to the Profane Sigaldry of the Archon. The knot of knowledge that represented his new Skill and gave him a limited understanding of it confirmed it. The Skill was a combination of two opposing magics. The thin line between Harmony and Dissonance.

Could he use that?

Suddenly, a very bad idea entered his head, incited by another instinctual piece of knowledge in his newest Legendary Skill. But he could make it work… right?

Just probably not alone.

He forced himself toward his friends, shouting over the racket of an ending world. He explained the plan, and his friends groaned.

"How do we do this?" Harn asked, taking his helmet off. His face was red and bleeding in several places, not to mention a large portion of his hair and eyebrows were burnt to hell. "I don't figure you expect us to swing an axe at this thing."

"Yeah. What can we even do?" Evie asked, propping herself up with one of Vess' conjured Spears. "We don't exactly got much juice left in us."

"No juice needed, I don't think," Felix shook his head and tried to envision what was needed. "Just… stand where I tell you. But I'll need an Oath from the two of you," Felix amended, helping Atar and Alister to their feet.

"What? Why?" Alister's skin was puffy and bleeding in spots, but his eyes were sharp and suspicious.

When Felix explained why, Atar pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and sighed. "It's worth a shot. Fine." Alister agreed shortly after, and Felix spun the Skill into existence. He turned to the rest when it was done.

"Everyone, assemble around the hole. Spread out, as far as you can," Felix's mind was racing as he went over designs he'd memorized over the past month. The books at Zara's had included quite a bit on sigaldry, but a lot of it had been beyond him. "Atar, I need your help for this part. The seeking array."

The mage nodded, not even bothering to object. "Alister, you can help, too. You've studied sigils."

"A tad, yes," Alister said.

Felix took them to the edge of the bore, where Pit still sat. The Tenku was quiet and pained, he could feel; Felix just hoped he'd be able to end this soon. Convergence. I'll need you safe for this next part, buddy.

Pit gave a tired chirrup.

They got to work.

Theurgist of the Rise is level 48!

Theurgist of the Rise is level 49!

Stone Shaping is level 34!

...

Stone Shaping is level 39!

Cutting marks into the rock with his Skill, even at a large distance, proved doable. It just cost him more Mana and tore at his channels more than usual, but… Felix didn't have much other choice. His Architect of the Rise Title helped immensely, as the positioning and alignment of all the disparate pieces seemed to assemble in his mind at speed. Atar pointed out where Felix's ideas made sense and where they didn't, the mage's greater Skill at normal sigaldry aiding them more than he'd hoped. It wasn't complex, his working, but aside from a few scrawled symbols, it was more than he'd ever done before.

As the earth lurched under his feet, Felix hoped it would be enough.

Something had started moving below them.

"Run. Get into position," Felix ordered Atar and Alister, face grim as the earth split and collapsed before them. "When I give the signal, give me everything you got."

Frantically gesturing in broken handsign, Felix oriented his friends around the bore, before reaching out with his Affinity. He sought their connections, the Oathbindings that connected them all to one another. Ghostly, silver threads extended from Felix to Evie, Vess, and Harn, while two newer ones touched the mages. They blazed bright in his mind's eye, despite the hurricane of dark essence that still swirled atop the bore.

Then the hurricane was sucked violently downward. The pull that Felix had been fighting against since arriving disappeared entirely. Yet the rumbling beneath them increased in intensity until everything was vibrating. Something was moving upward, and fast.

If a baby Ravager can do it, so can I, Felix thought with a swallow. Then he activated his array.

Power surged across their bonds, and the silver threads became awash in a blue-white radiance.

"Ah!"

"Egh!"

"Hrm," Harn grunted.

Each of his friends felt a chill sensation flow over them, as if their entire bodies had been dunked in icy water. Around them, sigils shaped into the stone filled and began to emit a blue-white light, while complicated lines extended between them all. Evie, Vess, Harn, all of them found a larger sigil traced beneath their feet, made up of the connections between the other glyphs.

Then they all began to connect. Lines of blue-white fire traced above the opening of the bore, a massive net of tightly written sigils. Mana poured from Felix at a rate he couldn't believe. He'd run out in seconds.

C'mon, you big dumb monster! Faster! He cast a tendril of Shadow Whip out into the very center of the array, letting it dangle in the wind that began to blow upward.

The earth quaked, and a trumpeting roar blasted from the hole, nearly bowling over the lightest of them. Gale-force winds erupted into the sky before a blur flashed up and out of the bore. Blue-white lines of power snagged against its form, latching onto it.

Yes! Felix grinned, before his Shadow Whip also caught at the beast's hide, and he was ripped off the ground. AHHHHHHHHHHHOLY SHIT!

What Dwells Beneath is level 38!

...

What Dwells Beneath is level 42!

Shadow Whip is level 34!

Shadow Whip is level 35!

The air itself tore at him as Felix held onto his dark lifeline. The creature sped upward at a speed he could barely comprehend, and only his enhanced, monstrous Strength let him hang on.

What Dwells Beneath is level 43!

What Dwells Beneath is level 44!

His Mana pool dwindled faster and faster as he hung there. Felix gritted his teeth and made a calculated risk.

Reign of Vellus!

A burst of kinetic lightning sent Felix hurtling just high enough to make contact with the body of the Ravager King itself. Burning a sizable portion of the dense essence within him, his talons barely found purchase enough to let him climb up onto its back. Wedging himself between two immense scales, Felix had a moment to take a breath as the thing's ascent began to level out.

Voracious Eye!

Name: Ravager King

Type: Primordial

Level: 1

HP: ?????/?????

SP: ?????/?????

MP: ?????/?????

Lore: A newly born Primordial, arisen through the interference of dark power and nefarious Intent. It bears the hallmarks of the Unending Maw, though it is not the same creature.

Strength: More Data Required

Weakness: More Data Required

Level 1 Primordial? Great. Just great. Felix braced a hand against the scale before him, still terrified he'd fall off. This close, he could see the maze of yellow-red arrays that littered the King, a mess of sigils that repeatedly attempted to flood his mind with aggression and hate. Flexing his Will, Felix crushed those impulses and tentatively peeked over the edge. Maybe that means it's weaker than the Maw, but it's still got a five-digit number for Health.

The Domain was far below, so far that he could almost see where they had started. They sat near the upper edge of the Domain, and it was as if they were looking out into a whole other world. Or a different part of the Continent, maybe. The Domain didn't appear to just end, but seemed like it kept going forever.

Yet, within the confines of what he knew was the Domain, everything had been reduced to dust. Or perhaps ash. Just piles of bleached particles void of life or Mana. Felix paled himself, and clutched at the scales beneath him.

Work. Just work.

Wings the size of small ponds cracked like thunder as they whipped open, and the beast jerked upward. Felix, caught unawares, barely managed to prevent himself from smashing face-first into its iron-hard scales.

"Vessel, you have come for Her?"

The voice was huge and rumbled through every piece of him that was touching the new Primordial. Felix looked up to find the Ravager King had somehow bent back upon its own spine and was looking at him. It twisted its neck further, spinning it entirely around before leveling a huge blue-green eye at him. Its face was lizard-like and angular, with massive fangs and a crest of thick, rigid scales across its forehead and neck.

It was a god damn dragon.

"Excuse me?" Felix shouted into the wind.

"If you have come for the Mother, you are too late. She is with Us, now," the Ravager King blinked half of its pupil-less orbs, the rust-red flesh smoothing over before reforming slightly out of place. "We are One."

"Great," Felix yelled, trying to stall for time. "That's just uh, excellent! I'm very happy for both of you!"

"We have felt your steps upon our Domain, Vessel," the King intoned, and the rest of its body rotated to keep Felix in its sight. "Though We slept deeply, We dreamed of such wondrous things beyond Our realm. One of them was of a piece of the Mother, the greatest of pieces, coming closer and closer to Us. To home."

Felix shuddered and used the movement to hide the repositioning of his hands.

Deception is level 22!

"We thank you, Vessel, for carrying Her as you have. It is a great service you have done Us." The dragon's scales shone with yellow light between their joins. "Together, We have become something more than We ever were apart. Now, when We break free of this world, We shall show Our Father Our true worth."

Where are you? Felix's senses quested within the Ravager King as it spoke to him, born along the tides of the blue-white array he'd laid out before. A Seeking Array, they called them, a relatively simple array meant for finding certain objects. Deep below, it delved, questing inside the mountainous dragon's Body. He just hoped it would work.

Something stirred inside the Ravager, and with a lurch of fear and hope, it felt deadly familiar.

"Do you wish to join Us as well, Vessel?" The Ravager King asked. "Your services cannot be underappreciated, not by Us. You may join Our grand being and survive to see Us reestablish the proper order in your world. You do not deserve the fate of lesser prey."

"Prey?" Felix asked, less than idly. "Who do you consider prey?"

"Everyone, Vessel. Everyone."

Felix blanched and glanced over the side of the Ravager.

"Yes," it rumbled, a pleased, hungry mountain. "Them, too. The first of many, thanks to my Father. And to you."

Great. Felix swallowed then grimaced as he felt a sharp tug at his Spirit, like a fish on a line. The Seeking Array sent reverberations back toward him, squealing against his senses as a presence latched onto it.

It won't work… Felix Nevarre, a familiar voice whispered to him. It sounded thready and weak, a woman lost in the desert. It has… torn me to pieces… and nearly… consumed me. You cannot de-fang this beast… not… alone. Let me aid you.

He could feel the Maw's Will oppose his own, its devious Mind attempting to burrow into him like a beetle. All of his fears, his anger, his hate came rushing to the foreground, inflamed by its touch. Felix clamped down on all of those emotions, cutting the Maw's influence off like chopping off a limb. He felt it howl in pain.

I don't trust your help, Felix hissed. And I need it even less.

Without another second, Felix felt the Maw extend itself along his construct, a sharp, toothy spear aimed for his core. As far as attempts on him went, it was by far the weakest and slowest. Felix stopped its thrust with his Will alone, and the array began to collapse upon the Maw's remnant Mind.

Ravenous Tithe!

A red light so dense it was like liquid blood oozed from between the Ravager's scales. It shot directly into Felix, straight through his core and into his crackling flame. Power flared and burned, and the light grew agonizingly bright. Felix gasped.

You Have Consumed The Mind Of The Unending Maw.

Bloodline Progression is 100%

Stand By.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

The books Felix had read and memorized were not complicated things. Above all else, they stressed the fundamentals of sigaldry: opposing glyphs to enhance effects, modulating the effects of primary sigils with smaller secondary sigils. Basic theory and craft. But, most of all, they emphasized the importance of connections.

To form a proper array, one needs connections. Or, to put it another way, a link to your goal. You can get away with glyph pairs and scripted links, like the obstacle course Rory assembled. Those allowed the sigaldry on all the disparate pieces to communicate with one another, programmed to know how they fit together and to do so by merely feeding them Mana. They were a complicated work of art, as far as Felix's understanding went, and his working was far, far simpler.

He'd overlaid several arrays to work in conjunction with each other, but that merely increased the Mana load, which even now drained him almost to nothing. For the best results, however, one needed a real connection between the array and what it was looking to achieve. Felix already had a connection to the Maw. Stronger than any other. He'd died fighting the Maw, more or less.

Using the Maw as a focus, Felix felt his array finally catch, even as an interminable heat built up in his core and notifications streamed past his eyes.

All Choices Have Consequences.

Stand By.

He'd devoured the Maw. Considering the tattered remnant it had become, it had been easy. But as his simple array caught hold within the Ravager King, and Felix felt the heat of his Bloodline Progression burn through his gut and chest, he realized he'd underestimated the effects. The Ravager had been trying to digest the Maw's Mind itself, mixing it with its Primordial essence until they were One. Like drawn to like, the Maw's pieces clung to one another like iron filings on a magnet.

The Mind he'd pulled into himself raged, and the same notification flashed by again and again. Stand By. Felix held on as his Body and Spirit shook, hard enough that he barely noticed the writhing pain of the mountainous dragon beneath him.

"What have you done!" Its titanic voice shook the sky in its confusion. "I—I cannot hear my god! I CANNOT HEAR!"

Blue-white lines of fire manifested across a relatively small section of the Ravager King's back, geometric designs overlapping in rapid succession. Felix fed the Queen essence that clogged his and Pit's cores, dumping the nigh-toxic quantities out and into the section of the array he'd designated as a siphon. A rush of power fled his channels, along with the last of his Mana, and a final corona of blue-white sigils flared into existence above the Ravager's hide.

The yellow-red glow of Profane Sigaldry guttered out. The Ravager King floundered, and fell from the sky.

It worked!

"BETRAYAL! FIEND! VESSEL OF LIES!"

Felix plummeted beside it, unable to hold back a scream of primal terror. Torn from the beast's hide by the wind, Felix fell mere feet above it. That was all that saved him, as the Ravager flailed its serpentine neck, belching out plumes of green fire in every direction. Its wings beat hard, pushing at the air to keep itself aloft. It only succeeded in jolting Felix's body, slamming him back onto its iron-hard scales. Frantically, he grabbed the edge of one, his talons finding bare purchase on their surface.

Without warning, a verifiable sea of bloody essence ripped up out of the scales around him. It was a thick and dense syrup that smashed against his Body, burning across even his strengthened skin. Felix screamed, his fanged maw open to the sky. The essence wormed its way into him through his mouth, his nose, his eyes, his pores. Any way it could.

Like drawn to like.

He hadn't just torn a broken piece of the Maw's Mind… he'd taken all of the Maw from the Ravager King's belly. Every single piece of what gave the Ravager such power; that made it a Primordial.

The King bellowed titanically, but its voice was a distant rumble beside the tempest that roared in Felix's ears. Intuitively, he shared the corrosive burden with Pit, who took more of the Maw's essence into himself without hesitation. But even with Pit's help, Felix couldn't handle it. His core, previously pushed to near-breaking by the Queen's foul essence, felt like it would shatter under the deluge.

It's too much!

They fell toward the broken earth, and Felix couldn't even release his Companion so that he could fly away. Without each other's support, the power would tear them both apart.

Pit! Felix groaned, mindlessly gripping the sharp edges of the Ravager's huge scales.

Breathe, the Chimera's voice cooed. Breathe.

Feathers rested against his arms, a warm, fuzzy lump against his back.

Felix breathed.

Do as me, Pit said to him, a chorus of senses and birdsong. Words weren't needed through their bond, but it always sounded like words to Felix. Do as this.

The sensation of a spinning wind, of unseen eddies ruffling feathers. Memories new and old of flight.

As they fell, Felix tried to copy his Companion. Tumbling end over end, he fought.

A storm inside, a raging inferno that crackled with lightning. His core was a tempest untamed. Inch by inch, he pushed at it, visualizing what he needed. Slowly, achingly slowly, it moved.

It spun.

* * *

"Felix!" Vess shouted and white-knuckled her spear so hard she felt she'd break her hand. She couldn't stop watching her friend fall from the sky atop that abomination. "We have to do something!"

"We have to run!" Atar shouted right back. He was propping up Alister, though his Stamina was more than strained. "That was the plan! The array activated, and we go!"

"Ugh, stop yelling," Evie groaned. She held her hip and her head simultaneously. "How do you mages get over losin' all your Mana like that?"

"We… don't do it… often," Alister panted. The man was looking worse by the second, and they would be in the same state soon enough. Their wardstones had only minutes left.

Vess turned back toward the sky, where the draconic beast was flapping its wings powerfully. It appeared to have slowed.

Elemental Eye!

Swirls of noxious crimson power clouded her vision, corrupted blood Mana. She focused past it, willing her ability to draw a bead on Felix. But the movements of the creature had obscured his position. Still, the Skill adjusted.

Elemental Eye is level 37!

Vess could see a strange flux of Mana swirling around the Ravager King, yellow-red and a vibrant blue-white that were popping and smashing together with all the force of a thunderstorm.

Felix, where are you?

"Vess, we have ta go," Harn said to her in a low voice. Vess pulled her gaze away from the sky and turned to see the rest of them moving further away. Evie lingered close by, still leaning on a borrowed spear. "We gotta get outta the Domain before it collapses."

"And Felix?"

"It was his plan," Harn reminded her. Vess clenched her jaw and looked back up just in time to see the beast breathe another cloud of green flame. Even from such a distance, a wave of heat washed over them, instantly drying out her eyes and making her skin tighten.

"That is a dragon," Vess said. She looked back at her friend, her best friend, and grinned. "My family has a thing about dragons."

Harn just met Vess' eyes briefly. "Aye. It certainly looks like one."

"Shit," Evie snorted and leaned off the spear. "I gotta see this."

Harn clapped her on the back and walked away. "Good luck, kid."

But Vess wasn't watching him anymore. She hefted her spear and looked around. She needed—ah, there.

Pickings were slim, but she needed to be as high as possible for this next part.

* * *

Stand By.

The instant the Mana in his core began to move, it became a blazing ring of blue-white light and crackling discharge. The Maw's essence, distilled and thickened so graciously by the creatures of the Domain, was pulled into that whirlwind until it spun above his core in a similar fashion. Until an internal suction suddenly yanked a generous portion of it inward, into the spinning flame.

Blue-white fire and snapping lightning dimmed as the dark, corrosive energy permeated it. For a terrible second, Felix feared it would be smothered, suffocated into a wisp of smoke. But then it rallied and blazed brighter than it ever had before.

A wave of energy swept outward, a ringing gong and ascending arpeggio at the same time. It crested into his revolving Skills beyond the ring of light. The blue-white energy set his various skills burning ever brighter, each of them releasing, in turn, a crystal-clear note, one that sent goosebumps across Felix's entire body.

The golden light that had been dwelling within his core, suppressed and unable to go anywhere since the Queen's demise, suddenly exploded outward, hitting his ring of light and following the blue-white wave in, washing out into his dark core space. Potency soaked into him, and notifications started flashing across his vision.

Bloodline Affected by Extended Contact With A Primordial!

Your Race Has Changed!

New Race!

Primordial Nym: A cadence long Lost, a Union new once more. +2 to WIL, INT, DEX, And END Per Level. +7 Bonus Stats Per Level. -10% XP Gain.

First Threshold Exceeded!

Calculating...

Racial Skill Gained!

What Dwells Beneath is replaced by Sovereign of Flesh!

Level Is Maintained!

Sovereign of Flesh (Transcendent), Level 49!

Flesh is as clay to you! Gain increasing control over your Body, increasing your Strength, Endurance, and Vitality by a flat 25% when active. Requires Essence to function. Control and speed of transformation increases with each level, pain decreases moderately per level, and Health regeneration increases slightly per level. Amount of Essence required per transformation decreases minimally per level.

Harmonic Stats Unlocked!

+Evasion (EVA) - Affects physical defense. Confluence of Dexterity and Agility.

+Might (MIG) - Affects feats of the Body. Confluence of Strength and Endurance.

+Felicity (FEL) - Affects mental defense. Confluence of Perception and Dexterity.

Harmonic Threshold Exceeded!

Calculating...

Racial Skill Gained!

Unite the Lost (Transcendent), Level 1!

The Ruin is not the End. Seek the Center. Unite the Lost.

Felix felt his body shift and change while, beneath him, the Ravager King finally managed to lift itself upon its massive wings. Scales and bony crests lifted from the flesh of his arms, until he looked practically armored. His musculature swelled, and Felix felt heavier than ever before, having to shift his body to avoid falling flat on his fanged face. What's more, atop these scales appeared lines of bright blue light, stark against the black and mottled gray. They swirled like convoluted knots, mazes that he could barely follow, building from his center until they spread across his shoulders and down his arms and legs.

"You ignore Us, Vessel! Do so at your peril!"

The Ravager King bellowed out another challenge and spun its preternaturally supple form, hurling Felix off its back and into the sky.

He barely noticed, his head filled with a wash of glorious song.

Etheric Concordance is level 44!

...

Etheric Concordance is level 49!

Fire Within is level 50!

...

Fire Within is level 57!

Ravenous Tithe is level 50!

...

Ravenous Tithe is level 54!

Congratulations! You Have Reached Journeyman Tier in—

Coming to himself, Felix cut off the notifications mid-stream. Now wasn't the time to Tier up, he realized. Unfortunately, that was also the moment his horizontal flight ended and he began to plunge toward the ground.

"AHHHH!"

Felix windmilled his arms and kicked out his legs, trying desperately to cast something that might help.

Pit! He shouted through their bond. Their connection felt stronger and more clear than it ever had. He could sense the deep lethargy that had hold of his Companion within him. Pit! Wake up!

The Ravager King circled its nimble bulk, turning its blunt dragon's head toward the falling Nym. It began to dive directly for him.

PIT!

A sensation of heat and bright clarity pulsed through his bond, and Felix heard the strident cry of a hunting hawk.

Sovereign of Flesh!

Already active, the Skill flared ever brighter, sending cascading waves of sound across the ring of fire that his core had become, and Felix felt something tear from him. Two somethings, with a quick, fierce pain that faded as fast as it had arrived. Without warning, Felix's entire body lurched as something dragged him upward. He turned to look incredulously behind him.

He had wings.

What the fuck?

Pit crowed in his Spirit, pleased as peach with himself. Sense memories flitted between them at lightning speed, and Felix suddenly understood. They could share features now, due to their high Concordance and his new Skill, Sovereign of Flesh. And now he had wings. They were a twisted mix of bat and bird; dark membranes studded with inconsistent black plumage, each feather highlighted by a vibrant cyan edge.

Pit screeched in warning, and without thinking, Felix dove.

Just barely avoiding the twisting, barbed tentacles of the Ravager King, but not fast enough to avoid the massive windstream it produced. Felix was thrown about, sucked into the Primordial's wake.

"Thief! Thief of Mothers, of Fate itself!" The Ravager King twisted its hind legs independently of its top half and lashed out. "Thief of Blood!"

Unfettered Volition!

It felt like what he imagined getting hit by a bullet train was like; blinding impact, then he was sent flying. Felix careened through the sky, his Skill allowing him to only take the barest hint of the Primordial's force. Still, his Health had dropped a whole 30%, and despite his enhanced regeneration, he couldn't take many more hits like that.

Shell Integrity is at 9.5%!

Failure Imminent!

Seek Shelter Immediately.

Damn it, Felix cursed. The thing is still standing… I don't know if I can do this.

His Perception snagged on something far below them, a glimmer in the rocks. Without hesitation, Felix tucked his wings, leaning heavily on Pit's instincts, and dropped from the sky.

The Ravager King recovered, twisted about, and was in hot pursuit. Its gargantuan wings beat at the air with such ferocity that space itself began to break apart.

Shell Integrity is at 8.4%!

Failure Imminent!

Seek Shelter Immediately.

Felix flew down, down closer to the earth than ever before. The abomination was extremely agile, but it was huge; he'd like to see it maneuver properly, this close to the rocky center of the island.

True to form, the Ravager King gave chase, shouting obscenities at Felix as he evaded its jaws again and again. That was no mean feat, as Felix was drawing heavily on his bond to keep his head on right and fly true. Unfettered Volition helped after that point, translating Pit's instincts into Felix's motion without a hitch or seam.

It was the only reason he was still alive.

Yet, as Felix banked near a half-melted promontory, the Primordial cut his lead to nothing. Felix strained to put on more speed, but his remarkable stats were paltry compared to the Ravager King. Hooked tendrils lifted from the beast's snout, whiskers of nightmare, and swiped at Felix's legs, each strike getting closer and closer.

"Pierce the Skies!"

A powerful shout filled the air with a burst of incandescent magic, and a blurring form hurtled up and past both Felix and the King. A flash of silver, and the figure disappeared. The Primordial squealed and reared back in rage and surprised pain. A silver spear jutted from one of its many blue-green eyes.

Grinning, Felix spun about and looked up, just in time to see Vess approach the apex of her superhuman leap. A glance downward showed him a panting Evie who stood on the higher part of the melted cliff, arm outstretched. Vess brandished her silver and gold spear, and five more appeared in the air around her as she slowed to a stop.

"Wyrmling's Call!" A spectral dragon's head appeared over her own, and a challenging bugle sounded. The Ravager's many eyes suddenly oriented on Vess with a powerful intensity. She had taunted it.

Vess, Felix gasped. No!

"Dragon's Descent!" she shouted the same moment Evie below snapped her fingers. Like a stone, she dropped from the sky, spear outstretched along with the five others.

Felix beat his wings and flew toward the King.

"This world ends! We are beckoned to a new land, and none of you shall stop Us!" The Ravager King hollered in its too-deep voice. A virulent green flame flooded from the abomination's mouth, so hot the air itself began to scream.

Reign of Vellus!

Sovereign of Flesh!

A cloud of lighting burst before him, a blue-white canopy of energy that blew aside a portion of the fire. Then he burned more of the essence within him and let his new Skill take over. For the briefest of moments, his hands stretched and expanded, becoming massive paddles of flesh and bone and claw. Savagely, he tore through the flames, dispersing them even as they coated his appendages, burning him terribly.

"What?" The Ravager King screamed, startled.

A second later, Vessilia Dayne hit, along with five of her best friends. Every single spear found a hideous eye, and before she dismounted, Vess twisted her spear with a vicious fervor.

"Die, dragon!" She leaped away, her Born Trait and Skills carrying her at speed back to the earth. "Seven Tribulations!"

Her spears exploded.

A storm of air Mana filled Felix's vision, obscuring the damage, but when it cleared, he could see car-sized divots in the Ravager King's face. The dragon roared in shock, pained but very clearly still alive.

"Vess! Run!"

What's it gonna take to end this? Felix conjured two orbs of Wrack and Ruin, and to his surprise, they were twice as big now. He flung them at the Ravager, and they zipped through the air so fast he couldn't track them. Felix had cast them as a distraction, but when they hit the Ravager's snout, the force of the orbs knocked its whole head back.

Felix stared at his hands in shock, then at his core. The ring of light blazed within him with an incredible density that he felt strangely renewed. It had something to do with his spells beings more powerful, and—-

What the hell? His Mana pool had been cut in half. What the hell!?

"We seek the Mother, Vessel. We will have Her, one way or another." A fitful glow stuttered to life around the Ravager King, and with a disgusting undulation, the creature burst into light.

Or so it had appeared.

Pit screeched in warning, and Felix flapped his wings, hurling himself forward through the air. All that meant was that he was smashed against the flat edges of the Ravager's teeth, rather than chomped within them as the Ravager appeared beneath him and launched all of them high into the sky. Felix gasped in blind agony, his vision taken over by a series of jagged afterimages.

As one, they plummeted toward the wasteland of drained ash far below.

Status Condition: Dazed

Dazed, Felix couldn't even put up a fight against tentacles that emerged from the King's snout, barbed things that tried to slice and dice him. Several plunged through him, piercing his arms and legs, and one stabbed through his upper chest, close to his heart.

Felix and Pit screamed together.

All three of them hit the ground.

And exploded through it.

Shell Integrity is at 0%!

Domain Shell Failure.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

Two men argued below the earth, in the dank sewer network beneath Haarwatch. The larger shouted, red-faced and sweating at the smaller, a slight figure with a silver goatee.

"He holds us in the palm of his hand, Teine!" Elder Hyde growled. "The council has fallen, and the guild lost its Charter! -e're gutted, you skinny fool! Unless we take it back!"

"No," Teine said in a flat voice. He was leaning close to the Domain entrance and studying it, along with thirty or so Bronze Rank Guilders. All of them were frantically scratching sigils into the stone with shimmering styluses. "I think not."

"What?"

"You think I don't know about Katan's movements? We don't all think with our biceps, Hyde."

Hyde gaped only seconds before he began boiling. "Listen here, you little shit—"

"No, you listen!" Teine turned and fixed the huge gorilla of a man with a pale stare. Hyde froze as if he'd held a naked dagger to his throat. "This Domain is on the cusp! The shell won't hold unless we fix it, and fix it now, you enormous buffoon. All of my work, all of—it is ready to burst. If it does, then it won't matter if the Guild was aflame right now. I have to stop this."

Hyde flinched and turned to stare at the Domain entrance in horror. The crevasse had cracked further and further open, now wide enough to drive a wagon through. "What have you done, Uldred?"

"Not nearly enough," the Elder of Spirit snapped. "Now leave me, unless you want to test my—"

Teine gasped, turned to the gelatinous entrance while holding a hand to his waist. "No. No no no!"

"What?" Hyde's face paled and he searched the entrance for a threat. "What?!"

"Run, run everyone!" Teine pulled a strange contraption from his side, and Hyde saw that it practically blazed with a crimson light. "It's—it's coming!"

* * *

ERROR!

Domain Failure!

Countermeasures Deployed!

It was like falling into dark water.

He felt an immense relief as the edges of the Domain split around them, Felix and the Ravager King plunged deep into the liminal Void. Script circles flared to life around them, dozens of them, hundreds, until it was like they were moving through a dark and limitless molasses. They fell in slow motion, each movement an eternity as the Ravager directed its tendrils to devour Felix.

Unlike his arrival, Felix was going down. Not that it mattered. There was no up or down in the Void.

There was Will, and there was death.

Behind him, the Ravager King's mountainous fanged jaws peeled open, inch by inch, while its barbed whiskers shifted and tensed within him. Beyond that and beyond the burning light of the Domain's failing protocols, Felix felt the Ravager's power. It animated the eldritch flesh that crawled inside his arms and chest, power that was spreading into him like a poison. But Felix had experience with poisons, and burning away said poison was nothing more than a struggle of Will.

And Felix had Will for days.

Not even required to flex his Skill, the poisonous potency of the Ravager was swept up in Felix's channels. Like a rushing river, it was brought to his core, where a newly formed ring of blue-white fire rotated and crackled with ferocious lightning. Within that ring, there was a dark space, a vacuum that sucked up the poisonous cloud of power in moments. Pain spiked through him, but that was nothing new. The Song of Absolution and Sovereign of Flesh all but canceled the sensation out. Felix was aware that it hurt, but it didn't matter. Instead, he focused on digesting the potency he felt crawling through his core, and to his surprise, it was done almost instantly.

Awareness blossomed within Felix, and suddenly connections he hadn't been aware of were revealed to his Affinity. Falling in slow motion, he could sense the immensity of the Ravager behind him in all new ways. The power present in those tendrils that still pierced him could be tracked back, his Spirit following them as his Mind tore free secrets hidden in its flesh.

The Ravager King was dying.

Without the Maw, it was decaying from within. Its evolution and design had been so propped up by the Maw's Mind and traces of its Spirit that, when Felix had stolen its essence, there was little else to support the creature's ponderous Body. Now Felix was Primordial, at least in part, and he could clearly sense the few glimmering Profane Sigils that still marked the beast's mountainous Body. A network of arcane markings wove through the King's innards, much like the Queen's core, and they bore the self-same connection to the Domain itself. Felix could sense power pull inward, siphoned from the countermeasures around them, dimming their brilliance one-by-one while also empowering the King.

If the Ravager absorbed the script circles that slowed them, Felix would not survive a single second.

Yet, at the sight of those sigils, that newest part of him resonated like a struck bell. A network of glowing threads, silver-colored and otherwise, erupted outward from them both, a ragged web of the Envoy's design. In a flash, he understood.

The Envoy's sigils, the ones he'd been placing in the city. They formed a connection that breached the walls of the Domain itself. But what was their purpose...?

The ringing bell inside him shook harder, practically vibrating his brain. He could sense notifications piling up but held off from pulling them up.

Listen, Pit whispered. Their Affinity, joined by their convergence, sang out to them both.

Echoes of what the Ravager could sense filtered through him as they fell through the Void. Connections to the Domain and what lay beyond, all flashing through Felix in the frozen instants they struggled against the dying pocket realm's final defenses. They overwhelmed his Perception until all he could sense was the flurry of sense images from beyond.

An alien Intent seized him, and the Void disappeared.

* * *

Sensation snaked through the streets, from hidden markings in alleyways and atop buildings, twisted sigils that flared with yellow-red light. Felix's Spirit soared, carried on dark winds as he beheld a city aflame.

"Hold! Hold the line!"

Waves of Acolytes smashed into a line of barely armed defenders. It was only the efforts of a few trained warriors, Bodie, Kelgan, and Yan among them, who helped keep their defenses from collapsing.

"Torch squad, unleash your Light!" shouted an Initiate currently locking blades with the heavily muscled Bodie. She grunted in effort, clearly trying to keep his massive hammer locked up, but the man was too strong. "Now!"

All around her, the front line of their Acolytes suddenly dropped to a knee, disengaging with their opponents while those behind them thrust forward with their halberds. They raised their right hands.

"Walls! Walls! Ice and Earth!" Bodie yelled and activated a Skill. "Strength of Ten!"

The man's muscles bulged, and quite abruptly the Initiate could no longer match him. Her blade was thrown up, out of position, and she took a massive impact against her breastplate.

The Initiate was thrown into her own ranks, fouling whatever casting they attempted, but there were plenty more Acolytes than that. Bodie hurled himself backward just as defensive Skills activated, stone and ice yanked up from the ground before their people. A salvo of brilliant lights followed closely after.

"Agh!"

"Chevrons! Chevrons! Push!" Yan screamed so hard a vein on his forehead was near to bursting. He ran among the inexperienced fighters, fighting off some of the more capable zealots. Here and there, the defensive formations shifted shape into rough, acute angles. Then, with a rumble, they lurched forward and bashed several Acolytes.

They were fighting for their lives. Felix could identify several Dusters, many of which he'd saved from the Inquisition. What was happening?

Then, in the distance, he heard it.

The howling.

It took the fighters longer to sense the trouble, but Felix knew them well. He'd been fighting them for hours, after all.

Revenants stampeded down the street.

No...

The monsters came, ambushing both sides with tooth and claw. Screams of horror only just began to fill the air when the pull of wild Intent seized him, and he was gone.

* * *

A pair of Guilders facing down an Initiate were sideswiped by a deformed Revenant, only moments before a second one took down the Initiate. They died near instantly.

* * *

A shop overrun, once filled with arms and armor, now empty. Looted, it appeared, still crawling with opportunistic bandits trying to cart away entire stacks of smelted steel.

They never even saw their deaths, the Revenants too fast for the Untempered to track. They died before they even hit the street, with only Felix’s eyes to witness.

* * *

Street after street, Felix was pulled along the fitful connections within the Ravager King. He saw boots on the ground, red cloaks, and folk being pushed out of their homes. A great hue and cry was filling the quarters to the tune of "heretics!" Flitting between places like a spastic bird on the wing, Felix saw and smelled and heard much, most of which was angry shouts that soon turned to screams and desperate wailing.

The Revenants caught everyone off guard.

Acolytes were torn down as several streets were flooded with the creature, their armor and Tempered Bodies not enough to withstand their hungry ferocity. Guilders being pushed toward the Wall were beset by a half dozen Revenants, all of them dying before swords could be drawn. In fact, were it not for the uncontrollable appetites the Revenants displayed, they would have swept through the entire city, few as they were.

Onward, the surging connection pulled him.

* * *

"Ice Arrows!"

A wave of chill projectiles fell from the Wall. In moments, the sound of thick ice shattering and the pained caterwaul of monsters filled the air.

"Sparkbolts!"

Another set of missiles flew from the battlements, these shining bright as torches as they sped into the amassed monsters. The Sparkbolts lit up the area for a brief moment, revealing mottled hide and greasy fur. Analyze designated them as Shriekers, and they lived up to the name.

"What in the Trackless' black Night is going on out there?" Mervin Cors panted. They looked to be burning through their Mana fast. "It's like they've gone mad!"

The creatures, easily the size of Avum, were throwing themselves at their defenses as if they had no sense of survival. There were at least a hundred bunched against the wall, and more were coming out of the woods. For a moment, Mervin thought he spotted something armored out there, in the trees. It was gone before he could get a better look.

"Doesn't matter! Suppressive fire!" A Bronze captain snarled. "Don't let up until they're gone!"

* * *

His Spirit shifted, yanked from the Wall and thrown deep into the earth again. The power was waning; the Ravager's connections grew dim and misty.

Something was wrong.

Felix tried to focus, but he had no control. Sightless, he fell through layers of dirt and stone, refuse and bone from cities before Haarwatch. His Spirit fell like an arrow, hurtling back toward the Domain.

A song waylaid him, diverting his path just enough to speed beside a woman with bright eyes, aquamarine hair, and ochre skin. She raced through the sewers atop a wave of water and refuse. Motes of song pursued her, harmonies that strung out behind her as haunting echoes.

She looked at him. Her hands and throat moved, a Chant forming on her tongue. "Hold fast to it, Felix."

Brilliant, aquamarine vapor gathered in her hands, and a series of blazing sigils cracked the flesh of her forehead and poured out behind her like a streamer.

"Hold fast!"

Then the song lost its grip on him, and Felix felt himself snap backward.

* * *

Felix's Perception collapsed inward fast enough to give him whiplash, but his advanced stats let the punishment result in nothing more than a half second of disorientation. More than that, his Mind felt raw and clear, a bleeding edge. Zara's words pushed at his Spirit, urging him to move. Without letting himself think, he acted.

Abyssal Skein!

The Domain's hold slipped from him as if he was coated in oil, and Felix let himself blaze with Willpower. Like lightning, he tore the Ravager's whiskers from its face before spinning and digging his talons into the abomination's snout.

"Betrayer!" it thundered, the Domain's countermeasures failing by the dozen now. Its wings trembled, and its legs twitched, huge motions that broke more and more of the bright circles of sigaldry.

"Shut up!" Felix flipped himself up and over its semi-truck sized snout, landing solidly between its bone-like horns. "She said hold on, Mini-Maw! So how about this!"

Shadow Whip!

Shadow Whip!

Dark tendrils of his own spat outward, wrapping around and latching onto the Ravager's horns. Felix gripped them tight, like a pair of reins as a wall of shimmering darkness loomed below them. The edge of the Void.

The few remaining constructs around them shattered like glass, transparent and drained of power. Momentum, long held in stasis, rocketed outward.

But it was too late.

The Void shattered into blinding light.

* * *

The Manaship Stalwart hovered above the city of Haarwatch, a soaring reminder of the high price one must pay for taking the easy paths to power. Sorcery and dark guidance, terms that were anathema to the Pure Light of the Pathless, He Who Defied Ruin, the One Who Preserves by allowing Humanity to flourish on its own.

Master Inquisitor Katan stood tall upon the bridge of the Stalwart, looking through alchemically treated wood beneath his feet. As transparent as glass and as hard as stone, the wood was the perfect vantage through which to view his final victory over Haarwatch. Even from such heights, his powerful Perception allowed him to view the pitched battles and ruthless culling of those who had proven themselves far too willing to backslide into chaos.

Order was being restored.

Below, any and all heretics were being rounded up, while those Guild members not on the Wall were being shifted toward the Domain. After all, they were the city's first line of defense. A grim curve flitted about his lips.

Katan scanned once more for his Master Tier opponent, the Sorcerer. However, just as before, he could sense neither hide nor hair of her. He had searched for hours, and the failure twisted at his soul. It was as if she had vanished from the face of the Continent!

He briefly entertained the idea that she was one the Hierei were looking for… but no. Not even an Unbound would make it to Master Tier so soon.

He would have to keep looking. The summoned bastards couldn't hide from them forever.

"Master Inquisitor, sir! The seers are reporting—it's—" The Acolyte swallowed—-Roderick, he recalled.

"Spit it out, man," Katan said, not bothering to look up from below.

"The Domain is falling, sir. Beasts have begun running amok."

"A shame," Katan glanced at the Acolyte and smirked. "Are our people out of the area?"

"Most, sir," Roderick said somewhat unsteadily.

Katan scowled. "Tsk. They were warned. Very well. Begin our ascent. Ready the cannon."

The man visibly calmed himself before saluting and stepping toward the pilot. Katan nodded, pleased at the Acolyte’s mental fortitude. He'll go far. Not nearly as weak-willed as that other one. One cannot chase strength through temerity.

Katan looked to the helmsman, an Inquisitor. "Helmsman, keep the hill in sight. We've got a city to save."

"Aye, Master Inquisitor."

The Mana engines thrummed alive, their steady hover traded for a reserve-eating climb. The ship rose another three hundred feet, well within range of their cannon but far enough away to avoid any desperate Skill discharge. Katan was not one to leave things to chance.

Far below, those pitched battles turned to terrified flight as more and more russet beasts emerged from the sewers and underbelly of the Eyrie. Like loping, humanoid wolves, the creatures were ghastly to see even from such a distance.

Katan raised a hand. "On my signal, unleash our Lord's Light."

"Aye, Master Inquisitor."

More and more of these creatures emerged, falling over one another in their haste. They chased down Guilders and other stragglers with a rabid ferocity that stirred the Inquisitor's blood. He felt a call to go and face such abominations… but he restrained himself. This was not the time, and the Manaship was far more efficient than one man, Master Tier or not.

"Fire at will, helmsman."

All along the side of the Stalwart, a series of whirring chimes rang in tandem. A series of metallic cylinders shifted and turned downward as Acolytes rotated the control wheels, until they were facing directly down. The scripted cylinders shimmered with gathering Mana vapor, drawing from their reserves at a frightening pace. However, it was only a brief buildup of Mana, one that strained at his enhanced senses before all of it discharged with a low chooouuff.

*BWWWWUUUUUUMMMM*

Beneath them, the hill leading up the Eyrie evaporated. A cloud of fire climbed up into the sky, the concentrated Manashot providing such ample incendiary that the air itself threatened to burn.

"Again," Katan ordered.

*BWWWWUUUMMM*

Another hit, another blooming cloud of incandescent power. Katan felt a strange, nervous flutter begin in his chest and climb its way onto his face, until a smile teased at his lips.

"Come around, helmsman," Katan ordered, the smile just about breaking through his stoic regard. "There's more monsters in the Dust Quarter. We have to save this city."

The sky rumbled like distant thunder.

Katan looked out the starboard windows. The sky was darkening toward night, but there were no clouds in sight. Yet the thunder persisted.

"Sir? I think—" One of his Initiates began to speak, but a resounding, cataclysmic crunch and crash shook them all. The Stalwart pitched to the side as the ambient Mana suddenly spiked and destabilized.

"All hands on deck! All hands on deck!"

He knew this Mana. It was the Sorcerer.

Khorun Katan leaned against the tilting deck and peered down through the transparent material. Brilliant, aquamarine sigils appeared briefly across the base of the Eyrie, symbols imbued with a dark talent to which the Inquisitor gave grudging respect. Stone and wood cracked and sundered beneath their influence, before a huge chunk of its facade simply detonated. A massive, unearthly bellow shook the air as the Guild tower was sheared through entirely.

An absolute monster burst free from the wreckage, sending mansions and towers tumbling off to the side as it was born into this world. It was a living mountain, as russet as the creatures below, but on a far grander scale. It was fast, too, faster than anything the Master Inquisitor had seen before.

It was a Pathless-cursed dragon.

The Initiates struggled with control over the Stalwart. Katan leaped over to grab the wheel and pull them into a desperate turn.

But it was too late.

A head bigger than their ship rushed up at them, with a fanged maw wide enough to swallow them whole.

"Pathless preserve us," Katan whispered for fear he'd gone mad.

Because for a brief, terrifyingly absurd moment, he was certain there was someone riding it.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE

Screaming in terror, Felix and Pit hung on for dear life.

The Ravager King had exploded from the demolished Domain Shell, tearing apart nearly a thousand yards of dense sigaldry with a body bigger than the Eyrie itself. Felix would have been scraped clean of the Ravager's head, were it not for the level of mindless fury the creature was experiencing. A near-constant wave of awful, vicious heat poured from its gaping jaws, a torrent of green fire that melted a hole before it. The heat was excruciating, so much so that Felix could feel his Song of Absolution growing heavier and heavier within his core as notifications built up against the block he had on them.

Huddled low behind the bony crest of the Ravager, Felix had only sensed the cacophony of pulverized stone, atomized earth, and the putrid light of its flames. When it all ended, he'd found himself clinging desperately as the maddened Ravager tore into the sky itself.

Where the Inquisitor's Manaship had been waiting.

For all that the Ravager had been a Primordial the length of a mountain when it stretched out, it had lost a lot of its mass crossing the Void. The decay Felix had sensed had only accelerated. But that wasn't enough to stop its fury.

The Manaship opened up with a volley of shots, each one a blinding sun to Felix's Manasight. They struck true; whole sections of the Ravager King's jaws and teeth were torn apart. A lance of golden Mana even speared down, tearing a deadly furrow in the beast's neck and nearly severing it entirely. The blast continued onward, shearing sideways through the Ravager and directly toward Felix.

Ravenous Tithe!

Unfettered Volition!

Felix hurled himself away while simultaneously taking a chunk of the potent Mana hurtling toward him. A surge of burning light Mana rioted through his channels and sunk unceremoniously into his hungry core, and the edge of the beam he'd so carefully dodged only burned him a little.

But all of that was not enough.

The shuddering remnants of the Ravager's jaws closed on the Manaship, shearing the structure in two and resulting in explosion that burst even more of the Primordial's head. The ship careened wildly to the side, spinning from Felix's view, and not just because of its trajectory. Felix, having dodged the golden lance, had fallen to the side of the Ravager's colossal neck, holding tight by only a single Shadow Whip.

*RRUUUUMBLE*

Below them, the Eyrie collapsed into an ever-widening pile of rubble. Huge clouds spiked up into the air, filled with brown earth Mana and flashes of less identifiable types. Sparks and blooming red explosions filled the dust, and the warm wash of thousands of expended Mana constructs surged into air already cluttered with the busy ambient power of a city.

Lights below him, fires and lanterns. Like a sea of stars. He could see it two ways, hanging from his tentative thread, one with his normal eyes, and one with Manasight. The ambient Mana lit up the night like phosphorescent winds, patterns flowing through streets and homes. The sky around them was otherwise dark; the sun was close to setting, but storm clouds had also started to roll in. What was left of the evening sun was soon blotted from sight, and thunder crawled along the distance.

The Ravager King roared in defiant challenge.

Head gone, the Ravager King should have been dead. It wasn't, though Felix could sense its dissolution was happening faster and faster.

Not fast enough, he thought, flapping his wings as he tried to remount the beast. The King's frantic undulations were a rollercoaster. Every time he'd get the lift, the gargantuan abomination would shift dozens of yards in either direction.

The mountainous wyrm was too big for the sky. It coiled upon itself as its devastated face and neck twisted and rotted away. Still it beat its wings, and its disgusting body began to bubble and ooze. A new mouth ripped from lower on its neck, where the flesh hadn't quite torn apart. New teeth pushed through the quickening fat and scaly hide.

Just hang on, she said. Felix grimaced. Sure. Easy.

He let go.

Unfurling his wings, Felix leaned upon Pit's instincts and let the warm currents from below them guide and lift him back up and around. He followed the loop of the monster's body as it rippled and tore, and he could see that whatever it was attempting was only hastening its end. One loop and a handful of seconds later, Felix landed heavily upon the back of the Ravager once more. Were it not for Unfettered Volition, he would have landed on his face, but thankfully the Skill worked well even mid-air.

"You stupid, stupid child," it seethed as it twisted and split its own flesh. Cracks chased along the Ravager's scales, the strain of such a movement too much for its weakened state. "You've doomed Us..."

Its voice was a heavy, wheezing crackle, a death rattle through the bellows of its stories-thick chest. Felix didn't bother answering as he was too busy building up an orb of acid in his hands. Wrack and Ruin had been somehow affected by his newly empowered core, as if more Mana and power had been packed into the spell, making it nearly the size of a miniature basketball. Felix focused and compressed it, pressing on it with his Will and Intent even as he poured more and more Mana into it.

The Ravager's new face emerged from its half-neck, a stunted thing of jagged lines and quickly solidifying bones. Blue-green orbs, pupilless, resurfaced atop its slick scales. Its eyes passed over him, scanning the world around them both.

"It is glorious," it breathed. "And it is doomed, just as We are, Vessel. Before We die, We will take you and your city with Us. By the will of Our Father. For Our Mother."

Its newly formed mouth dropped open, and the titanic sound of a sucking bellows filled the air. The ambient Mana around them faded, pulled into its mouth as the Primordial's hunger ate it all. For the first time, Felix realized how dark it was; without the ambient Mana of the world to guide him, it was like being struck blind.

Below, in the streets of Haarwatch, he could still see the flow of Mana. But even there, it flickered and dimmed, guttering before a heavy breath. Flickers of the connection Felix had shared with the Ravager fed him dizzying snippets as Skills responded sluggishly, or outright failed as the Revenants faltered down on the ground. Deaths on both sides began to pile up rapidly.

Felix bared his teeth, fangs still, and bore down on his spell. It wasn't strong enough. He could add and compress all day. and it wouldn't be strong enough to end this. Not if the full might of a Manaship's guns and a high=Tier offensive Skill couldn't do more than slow it down.

Thunder rumbled, closer this time. Above, the skies lit up with hidden bolts, jagged discharges that were still trapped in the clouds.

Felix cast about for something...anything. He peered at the Ravager with his Manasight, but that was like looking into the sun, so bright did it shine with stolen power. A dense network of yellow-red lines formed upon its face and neck, quickly extending past Felix to cover its entirety. He flinched back from the Profane Sigaldry, but found they had no power to hurt him any longer. Instead, he found himself staring at the twisted sigils and… No, that—that would be… foolish… right?

Pit warbled, annoyed.

I know! But can you think of a better way?

The tenku whistled resignedly, and Felix dashed off. He let his wings rot away; they were only a hindrance to his movement. Bits of his flesh reabsorbed into his body as the feathers and strange bits of bone appeared to rapidly disintegrate. He scanned the ever-moving scales of the beast, searching along the scribed lines for a sigil he recognized. One he could use.

There.

Felix had to leap off one undulating section of the Ravager and latch onto the next with his talons. A simple pull upward sent him flying another twenty feet, where he landed with something resembling grace. Right on top of a bright, yellow-red sigil.

The symbol for siphon.

Felix swallowed, but his throat was dry and rasped against itself. It's one of the basics of sigaldry. Like calls to like. He slammed his hand down, digging his talons deep into the scales without much effort. He breathed deep.

Ravenous Tithe!

It was like trying to inhale a hurricane. A storm of power pressed against him nearly immediately, as the Ravager's bounty suddenly became his own.

"WHAT!? NO!"

To say it was a struggle would be giving it too much credit. The Ravager was a Primordial built and raised to be a world-devouring monstrosity, an apex predator designed to ride at the vanguard of a war of death and destruction on a scale Felix couldn't even comprehend.

The power tore through Felix, scouring his channels on its way toward his spinning core. There, the ring of blue-white fire blazed barely bright enough to compete with the radiance streaking toward it.

Felix hadn't been born to this, but the last world-devouring monstrosity had set its eyes on him, and he'd killed it. Again, and again.

The Maw was dead.

Long live the Maw.

* * *

Vess limped out of the collapsing tunnel, praying to Siva that it would last just one more second. One final shove, and the floating raft of silver spears made it out. She could see the sky, dark as it was.

Evie moaned atop the raft, and Vess patted her armored boot absentmindedly. It looked like it was about to rain.

"Almost back, Evie," Vess panted and wiped the blood from her eyes. "We made it through, and we are—"

A roar shuddered across the city, one that was so loud the earth itself rumbled with it. The tunnel behind her, long-strained, finally fell in on itself and sent a cloud of fetid dust all over the both of them.

"Avet's black Night," Vess cursed. She hobbled further out from the wreckage of what she thought was once a residential tenement. The sky suddenly became awash in brilliant, multi-colored light, as if the sun at noon had reappeared. "What-?"

A feeling of unbridled rage pressed down against her, the hand of a god made of pure hate, and Vess fell to her knees. Behind her, the raft of spears clattered to the uneven ground. Evie gasped awake.

Then, without warning, the presence vanished.

"What the shit was that?"

* * *

Harn, armor beaten and torn, stopped and looked up as the sky burned.

"Unbound," he cursed. "Blood and ashes, kid." Grunting, he hefted his grip around the two mages and kept walking.

"You better survive."

* * *

The power burned through him, and Felix didn't have the breath to scream. Yet instincts he'd stolen from an ancient asshole agreed with Pit's advice, and he listened. He spun his core, rotating it as fast as it could go and focused on simply withstanding it.

The ambient Mana the Ravager had tried to steal was suddenly his, a city's worth of it. It was all he could do not to choke on it as it became clear that the Ravager could not fight back against his pull, and far more than just Mana flowed into Felix.

Its defenses against him had been destroyed when Felix had taken the Maw's Mind from it, and subsequently the remainder of the Maw's influence. But its flesh was still grown amidst a slurry of Primordial blood and twisted harmonics. It was a faint, but concrete connection.

It was all the Hunger needed.

The Ravager King withered before him, its Body failing to keep up with Felix's appetite. Muscles, ligaments, blood, anything and everything that made the Ravager the threat that it once was.

The screams of the Ravager tore at Felix's ears, but he couldn't spare the time to listen to them. He was a python trying to eat a rocketship. The power that emptied into him was filtering out through his Body, his Mind, even his Spirit. The Maw's inert instincts prodded him, telling the Nym what he should keep and what was useless to him.

The breakdown and expulsion of Mana burned around them both like twin suns, as Felix kept the Ravager's Strength, Vitality, and Endurance but tried to reject the powerful rage that simmered among every cell of its being. He kept its blood and broke down its bones and muscles, but couldn't keep it all.

So it went to Pit as well.

Endless, timeless seconds, minutes, hours passed. There was nothing but the Hunger. Spin and pull, burn and expel, spin and pull, burn and...

He didn't even realize he was falling until he hit the ground.

*KRAK!*

Fallen stone split beneath his booted feet as he landed. Felix stumbled as if drunk, and his head reeled. He could barely see as the world flashed rapidly before his eyes, small blue boxes flickering with static jumping into his vision before disappearing again.

He'd taken in so much… so much, in so little time. Envoys and Queens and Kings and… and the Maw.

Felix was on the ground, somehow. He didn't—He wasn't—

Mother… Father… Why have you forsaken Us?

The words vibrated from somewhere deep inside of him, and they faded slowly, until only silence remained.

Complete and utter silence.

EPILOGUE

"He's—" The white-armored young man trembled, his eyes distant. Haunted. His cloak had burned away, and his once-shiny platemail was dented and dull.

"Tell us, Klark. We heard it, we-we saw the explosion," an Acolyte got down on her haunches to look in the boy's eyes. And he was a boy, perhaps no more than seventeen for all that he wore the sword of an Initiate. "We need to know."

DuFont rolled her eyes, though she made sure the others didn't see her. She had been assigned to a group of Initiates and Acolytes, rounding up dissidents in the Crafters’ Quarter. When the sky lit up, she thought the Stalwart had unleashed its Mana cannons on the city; something the Master Inquisitor seemed more than ready to do. But then she'd spotted it falling.

And the world went mad.

They'd found the boy while trying to reach a local rally point, but when they came to the square, no other Inquisition members were there. So they kept moving, down through the Crafters’ and toward the Wall. That was when they came upon him, sitting against a rock, dazed and bleeding.

DuFont nodded to the Initiate nearby, a man by the name of Graves. He was tall and lanky, but his Skill with the blade at his hip was well into Journeyman. Nearly Adept, if her guess was right. And it always was. "Keep an eye on the perimeter. Those Revenants could come at any time."

DuFont strolled over to the boy and rapped him twice on his helmet. Shock was painted across the Acolytes around them, shock and a little distaste. Especially from the kneeling one, the comely one. Tsk. I'll remember that.

"Time’s up. We've no time to coddle you," DuFont leaned over the young man, putting her face closer to his own. "Tell us what happened."

The Initiate gaped for a second before his training must have kicked in. Setting his jaw, he blinked and nodded. "Yes, ma'am. It’s—the Master Inquisitor. He was onboard."

"And where is he now? We could use a hand with all these monsters running free."

"He's… he's dead."

Soft gasps erupted all around them, and DuFont closed her eyes in frustration. You bastard. You absolute bastard! To the Initiate, she reached out a hand and helped him to his feet. "How?"

"The beast, it..."

"We saw," DuFont said.

"It bit the ship in half. We… we crashed," Klark gestured around the bend of rubble. "I-I got out. I fell. Why did I live when he did not?"

DuFont wanted to shake the little idiot, but she restrained herself. "You saw the Master Inquisitor die?"

Klark nodded. "He was torn apart by the beast's teeth. He—I cannot believe he could survive such wounds."

"You'd be surprised," DuFont muttered to herself. To the others she spoke louder. "Everyone, let's fan out. The Master Inquisitor might still be alive. Find him."

Katan better be alive, DuFont swore to herself. Or I'll kill him.

* * *

"Leeds, get the water line going! We have barrels to fill, and it's black as pitch out there."

"Aye, cap'n," said a thin man with a shock of curly red hair. He was one of the newer arrivals, but she'd recognized him from around the Dust.

Gods, they're all new arrivals.

"And bring Bodie with you!" Cal gripped the daggers at her waist. They'd lost two runners two hours ago because of a lack of fighters and light. They had plenty of bodies, but after the Inquisition packed it up and ran, anyone worth a damn with a blade had joined up with the Wall and what remained of the Guild.

The Guild, she snorted. Without the tower, the Guild didn't exist, not in Haarwatch. Some of the Bronze Ranks were trying to rally at the Wall, but no one had even seen a Silver Rank or Elder since the Eyrie fell. If she didn't know how resilient those bastards were, Cal would have assumed they died in the collapse. Where are they, then?

The Tin and Iron Ranks had been struggling with monsters at the Wall, and it was only getting worse, she heard. And now, monsters were inside the walls, too. They'd built outward from their warehouse, if only to accommodate the influx of survivors from the nearby Quarters. A few industrious crafters had built them a wall of dirt and loose stone, more a mound than a proper fortification, but it was something.

It had proven its worth a hundred times already, slowing the beasts down before they could trample them all. A few torches had been planted along its length, keeping the area well-lit despite the storm clouds that still crackled above them.

Lightning but no thunder. Clouds but no rain.

Kelgan and Yan stepped across the barricade, back from their patrol. The spearman met her gaze and shook his head slowly.

Damn. Still no sign of the kid.

Harn said he wasn't worried about Felix, but she'd had to just about physically restrain Vess from going back out there. Evie was awfully quiet, too. Just about as quiet as she got when Mags disappeared. Cal ran her hands through her short hair, causing it to stick up wildly.

She had to protect them all. Somehow. No one else would.

Someone screamed.

Fluid Shift!

Like a greased shadow, Cal spun over the makeshift wall and onto the street beyond. Without thought or hesitation, she sighted down the Revenants charging down the road, hot on the trail of a group of survivors.

"Karp! Portia! On me!" Cal shouted as she moved, flickering through the Haarwatchers' ranks like a ghost. She didn't stop as a flurry of green-gold arrows and golden bolts filled the sky, merely timing her approach. The first row of beasts went down, leaving only six left.

Not nearly enough.

Fatal Flurry!

Seven precise slashes tore through the Revenants like they were made of paper, and a dark ichor sprayed wildly all around her as they fell as one.

You Have Killed A Manawarped Revenant (x6)!

XP Earned!

They're getting weaker, she mused. But where are they coming from? There are still so many.

Harn said the Domain had been teeming with them, but that most had died before it ruptured. So how did so many flood the streets? Her scouts were tentatively reporting several hundred in just the Dust alone. They couldn't handle that many, not as they were. Something had to change.

"Ma'am?"

Cal turned, and the man behind her flinched backward. Her sharp eyes caught him and the others all huddled close, as if afraid of the monsters… and of her. She looked down at her daggers, which were still smoking a visible vapor of black and sepia. She sheathed them.

"You lookin' for shelter?"

The man nodded. Behind him, several women, four elderly folk, and a child looked at her nervously. Cal tried to smile reassuringly, though the way the man's face paled, she doubted she did it right. Damn it, Mags. You were always better with people.

"Good, you can find it right there," she gestured behind him to the torch line. "Just beyond the low dirt wall. Ask for Portia, or Karp, if she's busy. They'll set you right."

Cal turned back around, pushing her Perception out into the narrow maze of streets. Their patrols weren't the best yet, but this group shouldn't have gotten this far. She'd have to yell at someone in a bit.

"Lady?"

A small voice. The child. Cal tilted her head back and saw a little girl, maybe no more than six or seven years old. She was bundled in a cloak and had a small makeshift pack on her back. She gave Cal the fiercest little look. "Is the Fiend here?"

"Amaya!" The man was shocked. Her father she supposed. "Apologies. Apologies."

"No," Cal answered, holding out a hand to forestall the father. "He's not."

The little girl screwed up her face in confusion. "Why not? Mama and Papa called this a safe place. They said the Fiend protected us when the bugs came. He should be in the safe place."

"We're looking for him, he's..." Cal hesitated and looked at the girl's father. The man looked just as interested in the answer as his daughter. It had been happening more and more: people asking about Felix. Ever since those prisoners had made it back to the Dust. She cleared her throat.

"He's fighting the monsters right now. Big ones. But when he's done, he'll be coming back here. Alright?"

The little girl named Amaya chewed her lip before nodding once, firmly. "Let's go, Papa."

Cal huffed a laugh and watched them go.

Where are you, Felix?

She needed all the help she could get.

* * *

"No!"

Stellis, dirty and terrified, huddled over her two children. It was so dark, she hadn't seen the building leaning until it was too late. She—

She was still alive.

Confused and hesitant to believe, she opened her eyes.

Only scant spans above her, the crumbled wall hovered and… and glowed. A vivid, greenish-blue that was all the brighter for the darkness. Agog, she reached a hand out as if to touch it.

"I wouldn't advise that," said a voice. A woman's voice, kindly but tired. The dirty, terrified woman turned and beheld a tall, statuesque figure with black robes and free-flowing hair the color of the sea. Sharp teeth showed through an even sharper smile. "Though, I would prefer it if you’d move."

Stellis flinched and looked down at her children, before hustling them away from the suspended masonry. Once clear, the wall dropped to the ground with a mighty boom.

"I cannot thank you enough, my lady," Stellis began, stumbling over her words in her haste. She was exhausted, driven to her wits’ end during their escape, fear and adrenaline all that fueled her mad flight through the night. Yet, she screwed up her courage and belted out her words. "I fear asking for more, but can you help us? We have nothing. We… we're looking for shelter."

"Of course, child," the woman said, for all that she looked no older than herself. A Naiad, Stellis realized, noting her ochre skin in the faint light of nearby fires. "The Wall is taking survivors in; space is limited, but it is the closer option. There is also a group in the Dust Quarter that is housing families."

"The Dust?" Stellis asked, her stomach dropping. It was so far. The Wall was far closer, but if the woman was right, they were probably full at this point. "Do you know if the Wall is full?"

"I do not. It is a risk, either way, child." The woman held both her hands, palms up, and seesawed them up and down. "I cannot make the choice for you."

Stellis watched the women for a long moment before she nodded. Of course, she finally recognized the robes. That was the way of the old religion, her grandmother had said. The sanctity of choice, freely made. Stellis drew in a ragged breath and held her sons closer. They had both gone so quiet since they escaped their tenement; they had been so brave. She could be brave, too.

"The Dust it is, then."

The woman, the chorister, nodded and gave her directions. "When you arrive, ask for Cal. She will put you up."

"Thank you, my lady. Thank you so much," Stellis felt her heart ache as she left, hoping she had made the right decision.

* * *

As the woman disappeared into the dark, Zara snapped her fingers. A woman in a dark cloak and long black dress stepped from behind a rubble pile and curtsied. She had dusky red skin and golden eyes that caught the light of distant fires.

"My lady?"

"Take a walk back toward the Dust encampment, Melle." Zara stared disinterestedly after the woman. "I still sense many Revenants abroad this night and have noticed an excess of energy in you. Burn it off."

"Of course, my lady," Melle curtsied once again, before she moved after the woman and her children. If one were paying attention, they would have noted that she made not a single sound. Zara wouldn't have sent someone incapable, after all.

Honoring the right to choose was a mainstay of the old religions, just as accepting the consequences of those choices. Zara would never break such firmly held beliefs. Her handmaiden simply had some aggression to work out.

That was all.

Zara glanced up at the sky, her eyes awash in a shimmer of aquamarine power for an instant. Even sounding the flows of Mana, she could see little above them. The storm raged silently, releasing muted lightning with increasing regularity between the cloudy peaks. But whatever the Ravager had done, it had drained the skies of power more thoroughly than anything she had seen before. And Zara had seen a lot.

Then, it died.

The boy had done it.

A remarkable child, she thought with a grim twist of her lips. He hadn't even needed the spell she'd held in abeyance. The cool Mana of it still coiled within her, thrumming lightly beneath the streets. More power than she'd worked with in a long time, a complexity only supported because of how deep she'd Chanted her Intent. There were no half-measures against such a foe.

However, the magic she'd laid down hadn't been strictly offensive, as Zara was not willing to eradicate the city center just to strike a wounding blow against the Domain Core. She possessed no true idea how much Endurance and Vitality it retained, so going too weak would have been a waste of Mana, while going too strong would do the Ravager's job for it. She'd have destroyed the city.

Other magic, however, was far more flexible.

The nature of her own gift was far better at support than direct force, which is why she'd had so much trouble against the Master Inquisitor earlier that day. In fact, she still bore a few wounds from that encounter. Zara grimaced as her movements tugged at them, yet she could not stop. Not until she found him.

Whatever Felix had done had torn the Ravager apart. Which should have been impossible. She had Analyzed the beast before its end and had been utterly devastated to learn it was a Primordial. One of the great enemies of the gods themselves. For all her faith and despite her planning, at that moment, Zara felt despair sink its claws in her heart.

Yet, Felix had performed a miracle.

In the chaos, however, she had lost track of him. He had fallen to the earth, but Zara had faith he would survive. If he was who she hoped, who she feared… He couldn't die. Not yet.

A pained groan cut into the night. Zara's sharp Perception pivoted toward it, and she moved fast. Beyond the remnants of five crushed buildings, the burned out husk of a Manaship laid half-submerged beneath the street. Bodies were scattered everywhere, white enameled armor bent and broken, flesh charred beyond recognition. The boy, she soon realized, wasn't here.

But someone else was.

"Sorcerer..."

Zara stepped closer, picking her way slowly, carefully. A handful of spells floated through her Mind and Spirit, ready to be released, but they faded to the background as she saw him.

Khorun Katan was pinned to the earth by the majority of the candlemaker's guildhall. His left arm and leg were charred ruins, no more than grizzled stumps in the night. What was left of him was sweating and crazed with burns, though his full head of hair sat untouched atop his head. Eyes still bright with a terrifying Intelligence watched her.

"Redcloak."

"Come to gloat, witch?" Katan bared his teeth, and Zara saw blood had flecked them. "Come to laugh at my ill fortune?"

"I was not even looking for you," Zara said, keeping her face neutral.

"Lies, now? Were you… not, ugh… looking for vengeance?" The redcloak tried to shift himself, but the tons of stone would not budge beneath his damaged Body.

"For what?"

"For—! For falling to my golden lance, heretic!" Katan spat. Zara simply watched him, probing at his Body with her Skills.

"I did not fall, redcloak," she said.

"More… lies."

"Believe what you must," Zara said with finality. She was done here. "You have chosen to do so all your life. Be satisfied with your just reward."

"Fight me!" Katan raged, his free hand clawing at the stone that held him captive.

Zara wanted to; blind gods, she wanted nothing else. But she knew she didn't have to, not anymore.

"No," she said, and walked away.

"Lance of the Fall!"

Zara snapped her fingers, twice.

A brilliant crescendo sounded, a bright, joyous series of chords that made the air itself hum. Simultaneously, aquamarine light flooded from the ground below the Master Inquisitor, instantly inundating him in a sphere of pure water. Zara half turned back toward the man who now half-floated, completely submerged in the thickening liquid. His eyes were wide and veins stood out like cables in his neck.

"You have made your choice," she said, and snapped her fingers a third, and final time.

The water collapsed in on itself with enough power to restrain a corrupted Domain Core rife with the power of an entire pocket dimension. Upon Khorun Katan, it crushed his flesh and bones to jelly. With a wet, gurgling noise, the orb became nothing more than a small marble of power before fading away entirely. Only echoes were left behind.

"All choices have consequences."

* * *

Deep beneath the bones of an ancient mountain range, silence reigned.

"Report!"

The Archon's voice was a hammer blow to the assembled Arcids. There were twelve, each of them made of slightly different metals, experiments all. The smallest was no bigger than a human, while the largest stood well over twenty feet tall. But not one would meet their master's eye-fires as the Archon strode into the chamber.

"Well? Is there none brave enough? Fine," the Archon stomped a heavy metal foot, and a wash of yellow-red light surged along the squared floor tiles beneath them. A wave of misplaced stone hurled one of them forward, sending it crashing to the ground. "Number 55118, report. Now."

The Archid, its umber-colored limbs twitching, stood. In a stilted voice, it began to speak.

"Ahm… All of the Reforged have been thoroughly changed, Master. Not a trace of their Type remains, though a measure of their inherent power—"

The backhand surprised everyone. Metal squealed and crumbled as the Arcid was thrown nearly forty feet and into the far wall. The Archon stomped over to his throne of green and silver stone and sat heavily.

"Number 54773. Report."

"Haarwatch has not fallen," Number 54773's calm voice declared. It stepped out of the crowd with a cool, mechanical precision before stopping only six span from the Archon's feet. It did not glance at its fellow, who was shakily extracting itself from the wall. "I just finished verifying with the advance scouts, and they claim the Wall still stands, and the interior is still relatively secure."

"Still? What of my Mark? Is it still active upon any beast within the Walls?" The Archon drummed his thick, metal fingers against the stone arm of his throne.

"Your Mark rules the Wretches yet, but they are deep within the woods, replenishing their numbers. Within the city, there is no trace of your Mark."

"How?"

"We… aren't sure, Master," Number 54773 adjusted its stance slightly. Nervously, perhaps. "All connection was lost when our link was cut. None of us retain enough Affinity to see beyond it. The Domain shattered, that much we know, so the city is dealing with a number of monstrous outbreaks. But the Domain Core… it is gone."

"Gone," the Archon let out a vibrating sigh through its golden breastplate. "How did the… what was it called?"

"A Ravager King, sir. An impressive creation by the Envoy and yourself," the Archid flattered.

The golden giant simply grunted, and the sound rattled through its chest and neck. "I merely facilitated the power and the plan. My Envoy did the true work. I am but its creator."

"Of course, sir," Number 54773 said. "But as our creator, our Father, you are the reason we can accomplish anything. All credit, all glory begins and ends with you."

Had the Archon a mouth, it would have smiled. This one is quite good with words. I should invest more in their Minds from now on. "How did the Ravager King die?" it asked.

"It seems there was a Master Tier Human in the city. With a Manaship."

"What?" The word was an avalanche of sound, for all that the Archon did not move. "How was this not known?"

This time, the Archid trembled in clear fear. "Th-the ship was hidden. Perhaps in the Eyrie, which had previously proven scry-proof. We… we aren't sure. But we do know that the Manaship's cannon fire hurt the Primordial badly. Then the Master Tier hit it with a light-based Mana Skill, severing its neck."

"And that killed it?" the Archon leaned forward and felt its stone chair grind beneath its bulk. "Just that, for a Primordial?"

"Ah, no, sir. It seems there was another figure involved," and here it paused. It glanced back at the other Arcids, but after receiving no help from them, turned back. "There is record of a man."

The Archon stared in towering silence, simply waiting.

"He… this man somehow climbed atop the Primordial and," the Arcid paused and blinked its pale eye-fires at the Archon. "The man somehow tore it apart."

"Hmm,” the Archon rumbled. “Another Master Tier?"

"If not higher. A Grandmaster, perhaps."

The Archon shook its head. That was impossible. If such a being unveiled themselves to strike down the Primordial, he would have known, even buried in the Foglands. No, something else had happened in that contemptible city. Something strange. He did not like mysteries.

"If the Primordial died, then why do I still feel the creature's power? Why does it still weigh upon the world?"

Now that he knew to look for it, the Archon felt something at the edges of his mighty Perception. It was weak, perhaps the weakest Primordial he'd ever sensed, but there was no mistaking it. Even from within the Foglands, the Archon could feel the pull it had, something he'd grown used to from the vile Maw with whom he'd once shared a border.

"No Primordials were left alive, sir," 54773 replied hesitantly, unsure. "Perhaps further investigation is needed."

"Yes," the Archon snarled as he sat back on his throne. He regarded the Archids before him, their specially crafted Bodies and plundered Spirits. They were nearly ready. "Find this man and bring down that Wall, in whichever order you choose. We have little time before the Blood Moon comes. You know what is needed; what is at stake."

With a wave of the Archon's hand, the far wall rotated out of sight. The throne room became a balcony overlooking an absolutely massive staging ground, one cut through by viciously hot flows of brilliant lava. Among the flows stood hundreds of massive, metallic creatures, each of them a vivid blue-gray. They appeared sculpted from ice, rather than metal, freezing cold despite the overwhelming heat.

"We have much to do."

AFTERWORD

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ABOUT NICOLI GONNELLA

Nicoli Gonnella spent his formative years atop a mountain, breathing deep of the world energy and expelling impurities from his soul. Also he went to school and stuff. He always wrote but now he's abandoned everything to do it full time. Readers give him strength, spirit bomb style, and there's no telling how strong he will become. This isn't even his final form.

He lives with his wife, two kids, and a corgi named Cornelius.

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ABOUT MOUNTAINDALE PRESS

Dakota and Danielle Krout, a husband and wife team, strive to create as well as publish excellent fantasy and science fiction novels. Self-publishing The Divine Dungeon: Dungeon Born in 2016 transformed their careers from Dakota’s military and programming background and Danielle’s Ph.D. in pharmacology to President and CEO, respectively, of a small press. Their goal is to share their success with other authors and provide captivating fiction to readers with the purpose of solidifying Mountaindale Press as the place ‘Where Fantasy Transforms Reality.’

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