Unbound

"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, he felt a sharp jab in 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.

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, it's 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 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 it's 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 that Felix had a hard time keeping track of, but he didn't need to: he just had to be ready.

When 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 it's 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 flesh, 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 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 own magic. A brilliant white light and intense heat filled the area before him, so bright that 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 exhasperated 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 swordarm. "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 off 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. 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 it's 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 backwards 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 it's 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 in 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.

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