Unbound

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."

"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 were 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's 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 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 further 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 that 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 was working 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've 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 a 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, he somehow knew it was only a promise of what was to come. He had only taken a step onto this Path, and Felix knew he had a long way to go. The words of Vellus rose, unbidden in his Mind. 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 45!

Unfettered Volition is level 31!

...

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 31!

...

Voracious Eye is level 35!

Dual Casting is level 25!

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Teir in Dual Casting!

You Gain:

+5 INT

+5 PER

+5 ALA

Dual Casting is level 30!

Meditation is level 36!

...

Meditation is level 39!

Influence of the Wisp is level 34!

Influence of the Wisp is level 35!

Mantle of the Long Night is level 28!

...

Mantle of the Long Night is level 33!

Shadow Whip is level 31!

Shadow Whip is level 32!

Wrack and Ruin is level 30!

...

Wrack and Ruin is level 34!

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 nearly four thousand max Mana 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 integrety 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 was 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. To 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 horde 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 a the array again, wincing only a little bit this time. His lips were chapped and his hair lank as he stood up. Unbidden, 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, as of rocks tumbling against one another. They exchanged glances. Then it came again, a little louder this time.

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: That which they eat gives them strength.

Weakness: Blind, they hunt by sensing vibrations and are always hungry.

A loud voice, cold and reverberating strangely, spoke.

Bring them to me.

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