Unbound

Darkness parted, and Felix fell much further than he expected. He hit the ground with a muted grunt, unhurt but surprised. Orienting himself, he looked behind him only to find his team huddled together in a dark chamber...but no Shadowgate.

Look up, Pit sent to him. The tenku was pawing at a nearby wall, green and black with strange plants.

Puzzled, Felix saw the glimmering face of a Shadowgate mounted to the ceiling of all places. More important than its stupid placement though, it flashed and sparked, clearly not in the best repair. The inky darkness at its center bubbled and popped like boiling tar or burning smoke. And from its depths, Felix could still feel a discordant cry of excruciating Need and Fury.

The Whalemaw was drawing closer.

"We need to shut that gate off!" he shouted.

Zara stood rapidly, looking from him to the gate. "Did you see it?"

"No, but I heard it. Can hear it, still," Felix said with a dry swallow. "It's getting closer. Karys? Karys can you hear me?"

The hooked blade at his waist was inert for an upsetting moment before it flickered with green-gold life Mana. "I do. Wonderful! I was—."

"Karys how do we shut down the gate?" Felix interrupted.

"We need to shut it down! Your side too! Now!" Felix felt that Need tear at him from above, an almost physical force.

"I—I, of course, my Lord! Find the joining glyph, reminiscent of a loosened knot."

"Found it!" Atar said, clearly picking up on the tension. He pointed at something directly above himself, at least fifty feet away. His hands charged with orange Mana regardless. "What do I do? Split it?"

"What? No! That'll misalign—no! Felix—my Lord!—pull out the power from the gate. Devour it!"

Felix didn't question his friend, but reached out his Intent and latched onto where Atar pointed. A glyph, shimmering with a deep blue light, woven around itself like Celtic knotwork. He seized it with his Will.

Chthonic Tribute!

The joining glyph spat fire, enough that Atar howled and leaped aside, and Felix tore it free, into his channels.

The Shadowgate flickered once, and cut out. The dark of the Void turned instantly into mere shadows, while the roar of furious Need vanished like a popping bubble.

"Karys! Did you shut down the gate on your side as well?" Felix asked his sword. There was a faint buzzing and an upsettingly long pause...before it blazed to life once more. Ribbons of green-gold Mana spun about the blade's hilt.

"It is done, my Lord."

Felix trembled, feeling muscles unclench that he'd never known he'd had. He eased himself down, against the wet, mossy stone of...wherever they had landed.

"Avet's black teeth, what was that?" Alister asked.

"Your Whalemaw," Zara said. "It sensed you, after the array slipped through."

"Yeah."

"That was not a great deal of time," Vess pointed out. She leaned on her partisan and peered upward at the ceiling-mounted Shadowgate. "How did it sense you and reach you in mere fractions of a glass?"

"Time does not flow correctly in the Void," Zara said. "It is...an unmoored Realm."

"Karys," Felix said to his blade. "How long since we left?"

"It has barely been a glass," he said.

Murmurs swept through the group, and Felix did a quick head count. Faces and names flashed through his Mind, and all of them accounted for—that was a relief. No one had been left behind by accident, and the voidbeasts had been denied entirely.

With that worry off his mind, Felix focused on the tilted room around them. As always, Mana streamed off of every surface, coiling to physical structures like a wireframe of shimmering, colored light. It was confusing and chaotic, but his long practice had made it far easier to use—that, and his exceedingly high Perception.

The room was roughly a hundred feet long and half that across, though it was not boxy by any means. Alcoves and columns, most broken, put divots in the chamber's facade while the floor was a spacious lattice of cut stone, similar to many Nymean architectural features. Beneath it's porous surface, Felix could see more water, brackish but not terribly deep. The water deepened the further out one travelled, until it dropped off into a dark pool at the far end of the chamber. Green and black plants—moss mostly—covered the walls and ceiling, and the smell of ages old must and mold filled Felix's nose.

Exploration is level 62!

"I see a door," Ari rumbled, his head halfway to the ceiling. He pointed a heavily muscled arm, blue as ice. "There."

Felix could see it too. It was a heavy thing, also made of stone and...unless he missed his guess, heavily warded.

"Anyone else think this place is...odd?" Evie said. "Why's it tilted?"

"I'm more concerned about this...leaking," Atar said, pointing out a few intermittent streams the came from above.

"True. I thought this was supposed to be the desert," Evie said, wrinkling her nose. "Why's it so wet? And smelly."

"The Ghreldan Hills are filled with several thousand lakes," Zara explained. She sniffed. "This Temple was clearly built atop one."

"It ain't atop one now," Harn pointed out.

"No, it is not. And that would account for why no one knew a Temple was here," Zara said. "It must have sank."

"Oh burning ashes," Atar moaned. More whispers rippled through the Legion, and even the Dawnguard traded guarded glances.

"We're fully underwater?" Felix asked. He pushed his Perception outward, but much as the Waterfall Temple had, the stone seemed to actively block his senses. He couldn't even detect anything beyond the warded door.

"Unclear," Zara said. Wavering forms of aquamarine light manifested above her palms and elbows, casting a cool light over the stone lattice. "I can feel my attuned element strongly, but it is being muffled by layer after layer of enchantment. Were it not for the architecture, that alone would confirm that this is another Nymean Temple."

Felix looked up at the Shadowgate on the ceiling, trying to parse details. Much of it was overgrown with the same black and green moss around the chamber, but his Perception wasn't blocked here. It was designed like a set of sweeping mountains, several rows of what he called the Teeth interspersed with malachite forests and thick rivers of sapphire. Along one side, he could even clearly make out a large waterfall. Would all the gates leading back to my Stronghold feature the same design? He was fairly certain it would. The Nym were definitely all about their aesthetics.

His eyes caught on a feature of the gate, mostly hidden by the fronds of moss that grew from it.

"This Temple is more than just tilted," Felix said, pointing up again at the inert Shadowgate. "Unless it's common to put steps on something in the ceiling."

"Oh," Vess said.

"This whole place is just about flipped," Atar said through a heavy breath. Sweat was beading on his brow. "We're underwater and in a fallen, crumbling ruin. Oh, Highest."

Alister rubbed the mage's back comfortingly, but looked to the others with urgency. "We need to leave here. There's no telling how safe this all is."

"I agree with that," Harn said from across the room. Half-submerged, near where the water met the lattice-floor there was a statue of a woman with a four-pronged star in her upraised hand. Harn knelt down and pressed his fingertips to the statue's wrist and grunted. A trickle of unformed Mana puffed into the star, igniting it with a bright sodium yellow light that quickly raced across the stone-lattice floor, tracing the outline of stars and leaves and leaping, stylized creatures in blazing radiance. Stars of solid stone across the structure, across all the walls, lit up with Mana, forming a constellation of light that all but banished the shadows in the flooded room.

"Magelights, cleverly hidden," Vess said, kneeling to inspect one herself. "I do not see the inscriptions."

"It's inside," Harn said as he stood, shaking water from his hands. "Seen these before, in some ruins Mags and Cal and I raided. Even broke open one of them stars. You could see the little sigils and everthin'."

"You...broke them?" Atar asked, his outrage almost overcoming the panic attack he'd been having. "Why would you do such a thing?"

Harn shrugged. "See how they worked. Sometimes things gotta break before you can fix em, ya know?"

The lights revealed the disrepair of the room, cracked pillars and splintering walls, as well as more and more of those hanging fronds. They were black with green edges, as was the thick moss that dominated the less drenched portions of the chamber. Where the light had travelled however, the plants were burned away, leaving an acrid stink in the air that wrinkled Felix's nose. Between that, the mold, and the musty water he almost wished his Perception wasn't so strong.

However, the light also illuminated the water between them and the warded door. They could see fish swimming about in there, silver things about a foot long. The light was agitating them like nobody's business, likely rousing them from their darkened fish homes. In those depths, Felix could see broken statuary and more of the stone lattice, chunked and eroded by long Ages. The pool was deep, the chamber clearly broken at the bottom where swirling mud and darkness once again claimed the waters. It was likely that, were they to swim down they could find a way out and up to the surface of whatever lake they were in...

Yeah, fuck that, Felix said with a shiver. Dark waters and tight spaces? He'd rather fight the Maw again.

"How're we gonna get across?" Darius asked, only to be met with the crackling snap of ice manifesting. A wide bridge of smoking ice crawled across the waters, sinking pillars into the muck as it expanded, and stopping only when it abutted the warded door. Three Frost Giants stood from the water's edge, all of them trading nods with the large Adept. Darius made a noise in his throat, something between surprise and appreciation. "Huh. Good initiative."

"We are more than axes in battle," Battelord Ari grated. He looked pleased. "Water such as this holds no domain over the Risi."

"Good, because there is a lot of it," Zara said, moving to the bridge.

Felix followed, the ice creaking beneath his massive weight, his eyes lingering over the ice's construction. He felt Rime Shaping within him tingle in sympathy with the display, almost calling out to him to use it and try something new and interesting. It wasn't the Skill, not really, but his own eagerness to play with the power at his disposal. Felix had spent the last month or so doing relatively little fighting, serving instead as a Mana battery for his arrays and building up his Stronghold. He was excited to get out of the Foglands and see something new.

The warded door was thick and stout despite its deceptively fragile appearance. A forest of trees and rolling hills covered its face, a preview of what was to come if Ghreldan was like what Zara said; curiously the moss didn't touch the door at all. It didn't even come within a foot of the lintel, and the edges of it were blackened. In his Manasight the door was simple stone, glowing with earth and hints of metal Mana, but unremarkable for all of that. He put his hand on it, feeling a thrum through his Affinity for all that his fingertips detected only solid stone. Definitely warded.

He stepped back. "What do we do? I'm sure we could break it open, but I'd rather not."

Zara sniffed again. "You can try, but from what I'm seeing these wards would even hold you at bay."

Felix shrugged. "Fine. Then we disarm them. How?"

"With some finesse," Atar said. He stepped forward and adjusted the collar on his black and crimson robes. "Step aside, let the Glyphmaster through."

"I regret everything," Felix murmured, drawing a grin from Alister. Atar pretended he didn't hear him.

While the Inscriptionists and Zara were focused on the door, Felix decided he'd try his hand at reinforcing the bridge. He knew from past experience that he couldn't Stone Shape the stone of a Nymean Temple, but he had other tools to hand now.

Rime Shaping!

Mana surged from his channels and out of the bottom of his feet, hitting and spreading across the already formed bridge before snaking down into the water itself. Pillars of ice formed, thick as Ari's torso, and plunged into the sediment far below. As each one formed Felix expanded the bridge until it would certainly hold everyone's weight without question. It was for him and Pit as much as everyone else, though the giants weren't exactly lightweights. By the end of it, the water level below them had dropped substantially, and more then a few silver fish flopped on outcroppings and statuary as the murky water sank. Pit cooed in delight and with the help of the Dawnguard was able to capture a good amount of them; they'd make for a good meal later on.

Or now, he thought as Pit ate almost half of them.

"Ooh, well that's interestin'," Evie commented. Felix followed her gaze, to where something yellow-white poked up from the repurposed water. "Skeletons. A lot of em."

Dozens of bones littered the slimed statuary, some fish, some definitely not. A few were even quite large, as if a beast the size of a giant had been devoured. Felix could even see jagged scrape-marks on the massive ribs and vertebrae. The water was so low that it only covered a tiny portion of the bottom of the chasm, and there it was dark as night and thick with mud. Whatever had made its home there was clearly not present any longer.

"I do not think I want to meet whatever did that," Vess said. She looked to the Hand once before stiffening her spine. "But we should prepare ourselves. If something that big was in here, there is no telling what the rest of this Temple will hold."

The company checked their weapons and armor, ensuring they were ready for battle, and Darius nodded at his ward. Felix almost rolled his eyes. Vess knows how to lead, man.

"Aha!" Atar cried out at the same time a flare of blue-white energy zipped along the large door. "We did it!"

A deluge of water sprayed through the crevices of the door, and quickly became a startling flood as they shuddered open.

Ages-old hinges protested against the liquid weight, and everyone scrambled backward. The mages shouted in alarm and the bridge quaked from the impact of the flood, but Zara threw her hand up and into the out-pour. Blue-green light flared, and the water split around them, arcing neatly past the edges of the ice bridge and directly into the now-empty chasm below.

"T-thanks," Atar said.

"My pleasure, Atar," Zara said before rubbing the palm of her hand as if it ached. The water had finally leveled out with their own chamber as the chasm below filled up over the level of the ice bridge. She lifted her sandaled feet, immune to the chill of the water but not the rotting stink of it. "This is not freshwater."

"Great," Atar muttered. Alister helped him to his feet, but his black robes were waterlogged. They draped from his spindly form, sloshing with every movement. "Gonna have to waste Mana to dry this out."

"I wouldn't bother," Evie said, slipping to the front and peering into the darkness beyond the heavy doors. "I got a feeling we're all gonna get soaked before this is over."

Felix peered into the gloom, attempting to ignore the fetid fumes of mold and rotting...things. The room was big enough to make the Shadowgate chamber feel like a coat closet, with huge vaulted ceilings and massive statuary of robed figures within alcoves big enough to park a Manaship inside. More statues lifted from the water, which had gone still after it had leveled off, and Felix could even make out the green line along the walls where the water once rested.

"This seems...pleasant," Vess offered.

Felix grinned at her. "Better than a Domain full of Primordial-Spawn, at least?"

"Most things are," she replied dryly. Vess hefted her spear. "Who shall be vanguard?"

Before Felix could answer, a voice slipped across the still waters—a harsh sibilant echo.

"Who daresss to walk in my demesne? What mortal filth tries their hand at the secretsssss of the godssss?"

The dark waters bulged and roiled, splitting for a wedge-shaped head the size of a minivan. Rivers cascaded down a face, pebbled with scales, its flesh was pale as snow and its eyes burned a vicious, brilliant red.

Name: Jadorak, the Horror of Haestus

Type: Nagafolk

Level: 241

HP: 10495/10495

SP: 14223/15843

MP: 3984/3984

Lore: Nagafolk are extremely agile swimmers and have the Endurance of a creature an entire Tier above them, no matter their level. Aggressive, territorial, and cruel, these monstrosities kill by crushing their foes or by injecting them with a deadly venom. Albino Nagafolk are rare and all the more deadly for it.

Strength: More Data Required

Weakness: More Data Required

"Who are you, to challenge me in my place of worssship?"

Fuck.

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