Unbound

"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 wobbly 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; then it had been 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, and 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 11!

The Maw growled, it's 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, hm? 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. It's 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, monster?" 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 it head, stretching down the monsters neck and collar, a terrible rictus of sharp yellowed bone. "You only have to embrace it."

Felix felt the rise of humming discord again, burning through his 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 hours 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 it's 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 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: Felix 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, it's 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 worlds 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 it's twisting frame, suddenly become a magical hedgehog. Felix barely dodged out of the way, but was forced back as it lashed out at him, like a blind cobra. Beyond it's twining form, Felix could see the Maw tense 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 backwards. 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 it's 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. It's 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 as Felix rolled out of the way, just able to perceive the insanely long length of the Maw's newly generated tails. Except they were more like stingers, 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 he knew 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 29!

Etheric Concordance is level 30!

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 they were 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 sudden 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, and 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.

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