Unbound

The blue window hovered before him, shimmering with a golden light at the edges, as if gilt. The Paths were listed there, but they were also in the dark sky of the Void, like stars in the night. He could feel them just as he felt the first three, endless possibilities laid out before a narrow pinhole. A dozen Choices that could change the rest of his life.

Or lead him to his doom.

What to choose?

"This is...a lot," Felix said. He'd figured there would be more, but four times as many was surprising.

Remarkable. I had thought the Path of the Ascendant was powerful, but some of these others are truly mesmerizing. Karys hummed at this waist, even hopping a little in his sheath.

"Path of the Ascendant is a trap," Felix snapped. "Vellus can go rot. I'm not taking the bait."

Pit trilled in furious support, and Felix couldn't help the smile that twitched his lip. "Thank bud. First though, let's look at what we got here."

He knew, more than anything else, what he desired from these Paths. He wanted power, strength enough to secure himself and those he cared about, and autonomy to see it done. Despite everything, the Path of the Ascendant was still tempting, yet it was a free lunch in a world where all things had consequences. It fiddled with the Broken Path and gods. The more Felix interacted with them, the more he wanted nothing to do with the divine, even if they gave really good bonus stats per level. That interference just now, what he felt? If that wasn't Vellus putting her hand on the scale he'd eat his boots.

Felix wasn't aiming for godhood, he simply wanted to survive.

But survival alone was not it. Survivor was gone as an option, as was the Path of the Slayer. The Path of the Scholar too, unfortunately. Visions of himself investigating and unearthing long lost secrets, cataloguing the amazing creatures in the world, the plants, the magic...it called to him with surprising force. But Felix shoved it aside, rejecting it's allure.

The Path of the Bond was next. It flared in the distance, the vibrations of its light reaching him in the same instant he focused upon it. Felix was suddenly upon a mountain, a cliff, and Pit was beside him. The tenku was stronger than ever, bigger and heartier, faster too he could tell. He was closer than ever with his Companion, stronger while Converged, able to not only combine their Harmonic Stats, but their Primary Stats too. Yet as much as he loved Pit and wanted to strengthen their bond, it didn't compare to the rest of the options. Felix cut off the light, returning once more to the edge of his liminal forest.

Pit let out a disappointed sigh, and Felix patted him on the neck.

The Path of the Magus was tempting, but it was matched and bested by Path of the Archmagus, which showed him visions of a future Felix hurling spells from atop a Stone Shaped battlement. He wore battlerobes and held a blazing staff, thrusting it downward to send streams of solid-seeming Mana into the armies that came at him below. They were obliterated, wiped clean from the field in a daisy-chain of fire, lightning, and roaring earth. It was tempting. Magic was absolutely fascinating and he'd never tire of it, but his was not a pure magic Path. He had to account for his physicality as well; without his powerful Body, he'd have died long ago. He moved on.

Next came a dark light, barely anything at all, in the black around him. The Path of the Void had a song that was less than a whisper, but potent just the same. Yet it struck Felix as...lacking. The Path shimmered with visions of him soaring through dark, an army of voidbeasts at his back, of confronting the Whalemaw itself—He jerked back, stumbling from the vision in surprise.

"Whalemaw..."

Path of the Void might make him stronger in some ways, but he knew temptation when he saw it. The Whalemaw was beyond him...might always be beyond him. Yet the abyss gurgled at the thought of encountering it again, of consuming it and the remainder of the Maw's power.

Felix shivered. The Path of the Void was strongest when he was in that Realm, and while he was finding himself in liminal spaces and Void-adjacent areas more often, the Void was not a place to which he wished to return.

He licked his lips. Next.

The Path of the Devourer called to mind his earliest incarnations with What Dwells Beneath, the precursor to his Sovereign of Flesh. An incomplete ability that amplified his aggression and hunger. He saw that in the resonance of the Path, a future hinged upon his ability to control himself...or else devolve into something bestial. That too, he rejected. He'd fought his Hunger enough, wrestled into submission too many times to return to such a state.

The power it hinted at, however, that led him to the next Path. The Path of the Cardinal Beast. It blazed upon the list, the potency it heralded undeniable.

Path of the Cardinal Beast (From Cardinal (Major), Unleash the Beast, Cage the Beast, Sovereign of Flesh, Voracious Eye, Ravenous Tithe, Race: Primordial of the Unseen Tide (Lesser), Cardinal Beast Core)

+50% Essence Gain Per Foe Devoured, +50% Skill Gain Per Foe Devoured, +7 All Stats Per Level, +5 Levels To All Primordial-Touched Skills

It boosted the benefits of the Path of the Devourer and added a clutch of extra Skill levels; on paper Cardinal Beast was amazing. Felix's Affinity fixed upon the resonance of its distant song, however, and saw within it a fate almost as terrifying as the Path of the Slayer. Felix strode through city streets, larger than before, covered in black scales and crackling with blue-white lightning and red-gold flames. Men and monsters came at him, charging him from every alley and thoroughfare, as if to crush him beneath the press of their Bodies. Yet Felix reached out, and with a sharp inhalation, rendered all of them into dust and smoke. Smoke that he immediately consumed, pulling Essence from skin and bone and metal, Essence that he drove into his own cores. His skin burst, scales forming anew, and teeth—

Power. The Path of the Cardinal Beast promise power untold, as long as he was willing to take it.

Felix shuddered and pulled away, too tempted; almost so enamored that he immediately chose the Path. It called to him, and the abyss in his center sang back, a crooning cry that shook Felix's bones. It was the first sound his abyss ever made, but not its first overture of communication; he could tell what it wanted, could almost feel black claws attempting to reach beyond the spinning rings of his dual cores.

Give...Give...

Alarm spiked through Pit and Karys, all three of them now watching the abyss. It churned violently, bubbling, but did not spill over the containment of his ring cores.

"Hoo boy," Felix breathed. "That was...unexpected."

It is hungry, Pit sent. I do not trust it.

Nor do I, Karys added. But it is not wrong. This Path of the Cardinal Beast is powerful, and I see why. It carries the touch of your Race to its next evolution.

"Primordials," Felix all but spat. "Right."

There were more Paths, others that could draw his attention away from the buzzing light of Cardinal Beast. One in particular hummed with a strong, immutable song, and it leaped to his attention as he fled the Beast.

Path of the Unconquered (From Hero, Unconquered, Face the Charge, Bulwark of the Innocent, Indomitable, Iron Will, Work Horse)

+15 Endurance, Strength, Vitality, +5 Agility, Dexterity, Perception Per Level

Felix beheld a vision that seemed to be a through-line in his Paths. Him against an army. Soldiers in white armor and red cloaks marched alongside larger figures in crimson plate, but all of them bore swords of brilliant flame and trailed vaporous, golden light. Felix stood alone, covered in his black scales and bearing his Fang over his shoulder. A shield was in his off-hand, seemingly torn from the hide of a massive creature and inscribed with dizzying patterns, and he calmly beheld the charge that began.

Yet he could feel neither fear nor panic at their approach, only a steady, solid realization that he would stand. Faceless others fled behind him, scurrying for safety, but he would stay. Stand and fight and never give in, not ever, not even unto death. At a gesture, stone walls rose from the earth, funneling the zealots' toward him alone. He hefted his weapons.

It was a good day to die.

Felix gasped as the first blade came against him, shattering against his shield, driving him from the vision.

"No no, definitely not that," he said, sharing a concerned look with Pit. The tenku's ears were straight up and his feathers ruffled in alarm. It hadn't been that Unconquered wasn't powerful, it clearly gave good bonuses and drew from some of his most laudable Titles...but Felix wasn't keen on pushing himself toward self-sacrifice. Not again. Not unless he had to.

Which left the final option.

Path of the Cardinal Theurge (From Cardinal Flame, The Shape of Fate, Fatebreaker, Broken Path, Cardinal (Major), Intelligence and Willpower over 1000, Theurgist of the Rise, 1 Transcendent Rarity or Higher Spell, Cardinal Beast Core, Thunderflame Core)

+15 All Spirit Stats, +10 All Body Stats, +5 All Mind Stats Per Level. Increase XP Penalty To 50%.

Numerous Titles, Skills, stats, even the existence of both of his cores had set this before him. "Cardinal, like the Beast Path, like my Flame and Title." He'd gathered by this point that 'cardinal' had something to do with Primordials. "But 'Theurge' is odd." Theurges were miracle workers, if his memories from Earth were right. Some sort of cross between a wizard and a cleric in old tabletop games. Warily, Felix regarded the light of the Path and opened himself up to it.

Felix beheld himself, standing amid a collection of ruined silver towers. Upon the floor, etched into the stone, were glowing sigils and glyphs, circles upon circles lit with a crackling blue-white Mana. Above him were echoed the same shapes, etched in the air in red-gold light. Felix was wrapped in white robes that trailed down to the earth, dusty and darkened as if they had been dragged upon countless miles of dirt. Wings of black and crimson spread outward, forty feet wide, the tips of his pinions just touching the edges of the working.

Power swirled, gathering. Far above, between the arcing towers, a moon hung in the sky. The moon was huge, taking up all he could see, as if it were falling to the planet itself. A beam of braided light suddenly shot from the arrays around Felix, straight up and directly into the moon's surface. Straining his Perception, Felix could just barely make out a similar array forming there, at the far end.

A scream of dread Harmonics tore across the skies, quaking the silver towers to their cores. Somehow, Felix knew he was the cause, and it filled him with dread and conviction in equal measure.

"As above, so below," he intoned.

A cacophony of sound erupted, shooting up into the heavens along that braided beam. The moon crashed, like a cymbal, like a gong. Ripples spread outward, waves that grew as they traversed the Void above, then stopped. Caught.

Pulled.

A sense of the Divine descended, pulled by his call. A blurred figure fell upon that braided line, wrapped in chains, bound by light and sound. Felix arrested it with a surge of blue-white lightning, cratering the stone beneath him and sending plumes of dust in all directions. The silver towers beside him rang like struck bells, each toll in time with the figure's struggling limbs. Too many limbs. A body that twisted and turned.

A face that wasn't—the eyes—!

Felix's mouth opened, teeth upon teeth. He shuddered. Or the world did.

He—

He staggered back, pulling all that was him away from the resounding light of the Path.

"What the hell was that?" he hissed. Not for the first time, he wondered at the visions the Paths were showing him. Were they all future events, future possibilities? If he chose this Path, would this happen?

Karys flashed at his hip. Choices define us, Felix. Fate is never certain, but this would begin a Path that increases the odds of this occurring. Of that I have no doubt.

You are at the crux of change. At the cusp of the future. And if these are the futures before us, I fear for what may come.

You must be ready, Felix.

"Be ready," he muttered. "Who could be ready for this? For any of it? Blood and slaughter, losing myself to my hunger, to whatever trap is in the Divine Path, to...whatever the hell this was." Felix swallowed, but it hurt; his throat was dry as a desert.

Cardinal Theurge was dangerous. Powerful. Very powerful, yes, he was certain of that. The bonuses alone were great, though it came with an increase on his XP penalty. Yet it called to him, just as strongly as the Cardinal Beast did.

Was I about to eat a god? Felix shook his head in wonder. How is that possible? Or wise?

He regarded the Paths again, idly petting his Companion. Pit laid his head onto Felix's shoulder, the weight of him a comfort. "What should I do, Pit?"

Each Path was born of his choices, each linked to his being by his actions and achievements. Felix regarded the Paths arrayed before him, like looking at a tank of vipers. His Affinity twitched, shying away from the song of their possibilities, yet Felix tentatively looked again. From all angles he could.

What should I choose? The weaker but steadier Paths, or the more powerful and far more dangerous ones? Risk and reward. Yet if I choose the stronger, even avoiding Ascendant, am I just trading freedom for power? Slaving myself to hunger, or to a slantwise connection to the gods?

His Affinity caught on something. Threads of light, mingled with the vibrations of the Paths, they stretched across the Void and tangled with Felix's core. To this Titles, Skills, stats, everything. These are...They were the same sort of threads he manipulated with Adamant Discord, that he could grip and intuit with his Affinity.

Why couldn't he manipulate these, then?

Felix. What are you doing? Karys buzzed at his hip. This feels...strange.

"I'm making my own choices for once," Felix growled, and Pit howled into the blank night. He disappeared in a flash of light, joining his Intent and Affinity with Felix's and sending a surge of support. There were no words needed between them, but Felix spoke them anyway. "In it together, eh Pit?"

Always.

Far be it from me to oppose your Will. I doubt I even could, anymore. Kary bloomed with green-gold life Mana, and Felix unsheathed him. Let us challenge destiny, then.

Felix bared his teeth.

Adamant Discord!

Cardinal Flame!

The Paths quaked, their harmonics turned askew as the lights in the distant Void wavered. Felix could feel the pieces, the shapes of them all as they sang of his future. He seized them with his Affinity and Will, and shaping his Intent with a razor's edge he lifted his crooked sword and severed those threads.

A tone shook through him, through everything. A sound like the end of the world.

Felix grappled with the threads, which even now were attempting to run from his grasp. His powerful Willpower was all that secured them—backed by the thrumming Vein of Divinity within his core—inch by inch pulling them together. Closer, as the songs of them all rose to a catastrophic crescendo. Harmony and Dissonance, echoes of his core space, of his opposed rings, they sang in furious competition. Each outdoing the last note as Felix wove thread unto thread, pulling with blue-white lightning and red-gold flame.

All of it seared into him, into his soul. His Aspects trembled, convulsing as threads thick as cables secured themselves to his core space.

Felix would not be limited, not by the gods or the System itself. If this was the beginning of his destiny, then he would forge it himself.

He poured out everything he had into it, all his Mana and Stamina, even his flesh and blood. Essence bloomed and was subsumed, power flaring along his cores as they spun wildly, and the abyss screamed out in ecstatic terror.

The touch of the beast within him was there, a basso growl threading beneath the sound. It promised to satisfy his need for conflict and battle and physical supremacy. But there was a mind there too, a power that was beyond even the potency of the Theurge. Its song was a croon, and a baying howl, and a triumphant battlecry.

He knew—he knew!—and the knowing made the song all the brighter, the melding melody and shocking, jarring notes of its crescendo almost more than he could bear. Harmony and Dissonance, swirled together as the thrum of all that was crested an impossible note.

He chose.

Path of the Cardinal Fiend (From Cardinal Flame, The Shape of Fate, Fatebreaker, Indomitable, Tyrant of Choice, Thief of Fate, Against Catastrophe, Inheritor, Cardinal (Major), Willpower Over 2000, Strength Over 1000, Theurgist of the Rise, 1 Transcendent Rarity or Higher Spell, Cardinal Beast Core, Thunderflame Core, Vein of Divinity, Born of Will)

+50% Essence Gain Per Foe Devoured, +50% Skill Gain Per Foe Devoured, +5 Levels To All Primordial-Touched Skills, +20 All Primary and Harmonic Stats Per Level. Increase XP Penalty to 50%.

And in the dark, in the unraveling forest, a doorway formed of flickering light.

Felix fell.

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