Unbound

The others tried to protest putting himself in danger, but Felix ended the arguments by simply walking toward their creepy bone house. They needed information, and aside from the doom and gloom of the skeletal remains, Felix knew he could handle himself against most things. So what if the place looked like death's vacation home? He'd eaten Primordials and gods. Well, one god. Part of one.

"Felix!" Zara said, her tone sharp enough to cut stone. His team was gathered at the first wagon, with the company spread out further beyond it, and everyone was watching him walk across the night-purpled sand. "Have a care. The Song does not sit well within."

"...Right." He nodded, acknowledging her warning. She offered nothing else, so what could he do? Be right back, Pit.

Worry filtered back to him, hidden by a bright confidence. Be safe.

You know me.

Felix turned away from them all and tried to stride confidently up to the blackened corpse. It loomed over him, easily four stories tall, but the gaps in the ribs were narrow where they were not filled in with rock or covered in flapping leather sheets. The only entry was a gaping hole, where one massive redwood-thick rib had been smashed apart. Without breaking his stride, Felix ducked into the dark.

And dark it was. The way ahead was utterly impenetrable even to his Perception, and the breeze that traversed the interior was hot and warm, like breath. If that wasn't unnerving enough, the floors were sliding sand and the walls were a mix of stone and bone, barely wide enough for his shoulders. Felix followed it by touch, mostly, following a solitary path that wound around inside the structure like a maze, flaring his Manasight as best he could. He was able to pick up the barest hint of earth Mana from the sands and stone, but they were thin and dull—the bone all around him buzzed at his Affinity, a resonance that seemed to drag the Mana down and away. It was like walking through a dark room with a dying flashlight.

The path soon splintered in many directions. His Manasight and perfect memory served him well, allowing him to at the very least know his way back out. But finding his way forward and remembering the way back to two very separate things. Felix simply guessed at each junction, following the warm breeze whenever he could feel it. More than once he had to turn back as he hit dead ends and small alcoves filled with bones and tattered cloth. After the fourth such misstep, Felix growled in annoyance and yanked his khopesh free of its sheath.

"Karys? Do you know anything about all this?" he asked. The sword buzzed, its timbre almost an exact opposite for the numbing sound from the bone walls.

"Alone in a house made from a giant skeleton," Felix said. He gave his Chancellor a quick run down of the Yttins and their odd home. "What's remarkable?"

"The sensation of resistance. My Perception cannot gain purchase around anything but the sand at your feet and your own body." Karys still sounded like he was down the hall and behind a closed door, so muffled was his voice. "Only a truly powerful creature could exude such a forbiddance, even were it still alive. It is likely encompassing the entire settlement, and why you cannot Analyze them."

"Ok, one question down," Felix said. He grimaced as his foot went through something that cracked and then was upsettingly soft. A bug of some variety. "A thousand more to go. What do you know of the Yttin?"

"Yttin," Karys said. He went silent for so long, Felix was worried he'd lost him. "I—I am unsure if this is a correct memory, but I believe they were among the elite in Ahkestria. Warrior-monks of some variety."

"Bit spindly for warriors," Felix said, ducking beneath a thickened clump of cobweb. It stretched across the path, almost invisible in the gloom.

"Perhaps they used Agility based Skills...My experiences with the Sunbright Jewel and its citizens was limited, that much I do recall."

"Hm. It was called the Sunbright Jewel before the sea dried up?" Felix asked.

"Yes. It was renowned for its crafters, even among the Golden Empire, and that is saying something," Karys said. "Lost, as all the rest was, during the War."

"You've mentioned this War a few times. War with who?" Felix asked. He stepped up and over a collection of bones that formed an odd, pyramidal staircase. Up and then down, back to the sand.

"The War against the...against the Enemy..." Karys struggled, and the green-gold Mana, already muted, flickered uncertainly. "I cannot recall their names...They were opposed the Empire, sought to bring us low, to eradicate the works of our people and allies. Descendants of the Deathless."

"The who?" Felix stopped in his tracks, staring at his blade. "What are the Deathless? Karys?"

But Karys had gone silent.

Felix panicked for a few minutes, which was how long it took his Cardinal Flame to quest into the sword and check on its integrity. Its deepest recesses were opaque to him still, but the glow of life Mana was still there, just heavily muted by the bones all around him. Frustrated, Felix slammed the blade home in its sheath and prowled forward. The sooner he was out of the bone maze, the better.

Rooms and alcoves dotted the halls, small spaces meant for a small people. Many were festooned with cloth of various garish colors, as well as creations of paler bone. Furniture, made of their food, clearly. Tables and rudimentary chairs, all bound up by thin white cords that looked a lot finer than the hempen rope he'd seen in Haarwatch. They were interesting to see, but he kept moving, following the hot wind deeper and deeper down into the earth.

Finally, after a half hour's descent, he felt a strong breeze roll across him. His Perception followed the currents though he couldn't see around the maze like corridors, the darkness having gotten only deeper as he went. He didn't look forward to fighting in it, if he had to, but that's what his Blind Fighting Skill was for he supposed.

I should train that more, he mused as he ducked under another thick, wavering cobweb. The tunnels weren't made for tall people, at least not explicitly. There was a lot of ducking. I can't expect to always have the upper hand on sightedness. If the Raven and now this place teaches me anything, its that even my Perception can be stymied.

He took a couple more wrong turns following the strengthening wind, but eventually he found a large antechamber somewhere deep below the bluffs. Blackened bones traced the walls and ceiling, reinforcing it like support beams, and the floor was just as sandy as the passageways. What was different, were the hundreds—no—thousands of threads criss-crossing the ceiling and walls. Some were just layers and layers atop one another, until pieces of the bone and stone were obscured by a gauzy white. Others were delicate and complicated looking webs spun between prominent vertical bones, as if they were on display.

Shadows edged the corners of everything in a way that Felix didn't notice at first, but movement caught his eye. Then a sound, like falling tiles or hollow heels on wooden floors.

"Who's there?" he asked.

The clicking sped up, until it resolved into a new noise. A voice speaking the common tongue. "New. You are."

Felix turned toward the voice, but whatever it was had already moved. He could feel the wind of its passage, like a car passing too close on the highway. "That doesn't answer my question, creepy voice in the dark. Are you the...Beast?"

"Hmm," it said, clicking more furiously. "Small. Small and yet."

The ground thumped, and sand skidded across itself. Felix spun toward the sound, and couldn't help it: he took a step backward.

"And yet so potent."

It may have once been a spider, but that was several mutations ago. Rippling flesh covered it's many limbs and bulbuous body, all of which was roughly the same size as an elephant. Rows of jagged spines traced along its back and legs, and each movement made them twitch and flutter as it shifted across the sands. Felix swallowed involuntarily. Its head wore a grotesque mask of carved bone, all teeth and eyes and grimacing muscles, but below it was a mouth of clacking mandibles and sideways incisors. Between those was a nightmarish, humanoid face, eyes glowing copper.

"What the hell are you?" Felix let his Cardinal Flame sing, and his body shimmered with pent up red-gold light.

The creature skittered back, half up the wall behind it. It's legs—oh god—it's legs all ended in thick, Human hands and each one grabbed onto the webbing between bone pillars. Felix stared at it, unwilling to even blink. It was using some sort of movement technique, because every couple of seconds, its sound and smell would deaden or twist. He was afraid if he even blinked, the thing would get behind him again.

"What are you?" he asked again, and tried to use Voracious Eye.

Tried being the operative word.

Pain lanced across his Mind as the Skill tried and failed to move the weight all around them. Felix screamed, his vision going white as the buzzing dissonance all around him intensified. The thrum of his cores sped up, a sound pressing back against it as his Bastion flared, and suddenly Felix found himself kneeling in the sands while blood dribbled from his face.

"Haah," he panted, wiping at himself. The blood was coming from his eyes.

Fear spiked through Felix and he surged to his feet, looking wildly about the room. His Cardinal Flame had been squelched by the...reverberation of the bones, and it took him a moment to find the creature. It had retreated back up to the ceiling, where it crouched in the unnatural darkness, peering at him with gemstone eyes and glowing copper orbs. It tilted its head, curious.

"You sing..." it said. Its voice was like whispered thunder, flexing the air in a way that Felix couldn't understand. "You sing and the bone sings and...you bleed."

Felix wiped at the blood on his face, not taking his eyes off the monster. "I'll ask again. What are you? Are you the Beast?"

A high giggle came from the elephantine creature. It made Felix's skin crawl. "No no. I am—I was—the shaman of my people. I read the Weavings and the weather and the stars in the Great Nothing."

"You're Yttin?"

Ten glowing eyes bobbed in the dark. "I was cursed by the gods for peering too far. Too far! I saw too much!" It tittered again. "The Weavings of Fate are not for mere mortals. No no. Not for us. Never for us."

"You were cursed?" he asked. Felix licked his lips, keeping the exit to his back. He had zero idea on the thing's strength but it was fast, and it could hide from him. If this thing was crazy and wanted to kill him, he'd have to run. Getting outside of the skeleton might give him a chance to kill it.

"The flesh turned, the blood soured, for the gods allow no intruders in their Domain," it said, its voice distorted as if by static. But the static was composed of sub-audible clicking, as if its vocal cords still remembered being Yttin. "We are not meant to know the endings that they Weave."

Felix watched the thing carefully, his senses buzzing against the dissonance all around him. How much was from the bones and how much was from the creature? It looked—and felt—like Primordial spawn, just a lot more potent than the Dustborn Wraiths he had fought. His Affinity swam in the static around him, and he could feel a resonance between it and the song that coiled within his core space. The dark abyss roused, trembling as it scented the spider-monster, and Felix had to shove it's sudden Need from his Mind.

Quiet, you.

"Who are you, Human, to have tamed a chimera?" it clicked at him. Five-digit hands padded across the ceiling as it came closer, not dropping from above but stretching its head and abdomen down closer. The face hidden in its jaws pivoted and turned, until it was looking at Felix right-side-up. "Who are you to have such a song in your blood?"

"He is a friend. A Companion," Felix said.

"Chimeric Companion...an ephemeral tie to Harmony," the shaman giggled, and warning flares went off in Felix's mind. "They do not like it."

The bones around them groaned at its words, and that buzzing discord increased tenfold. The bond with Pit constricted, a foreign pressure squeezing down on it with insidious strength. His eyes opened wide, and Felix saw the darkness of the room crackle with blue-white light. "Do not touch my dog."

Felix felt his Will press against something alien and vast, a Will and Intent that moved like a mountain, slow but inexorable. Immediately, his Aspects burned, like he was leveraging that mountain with his bare hands. Felix locked his knees and strained against its weight...while the shaman's mouth-face crawled closer.

"You resist? The gods...they do not want resistance. They ask me, they ask-ask that you stop, that you cease." The shaman's copper eyes blinked, flashing brilliant streams of light that seemed to worm into Felix's Mind. His Bastion quaked, off-kilter by the weight he held aloft. Its voice continued on, whisper-thin, but surprised. "But you don't. You ask ask too. Of those who pass. My people, the People, once-warriors and once-proud, they speak to me of your caravan. What do you want, Human-who-is-not?"

Felix gritted his teeth against the pain, the mountain growing neither lighter nor heavier, but everything within him pushing back against it. "We...want to...avoid the Paladins...of the Pathless."

The shaman sniffed at Felix, lifting two of its disgustingly-Human hands and pulling webbing from itself. It blinked, twice more.

"More. There is more. You tell us so little, yet you vibrate with potency. What are you?" The shaman pressed into him, poking, prodding with its vile hands. "The blue of your eyes. The glow of a Body attuned to fire?"

Poke.

"No."

Prod.

"Attuned to lightning?" It grabbed him with two hands, four, and squeezed his shoulders and neck. "No, no, no. Tell us. What are you?"

"Enough!" Felix screamed, and flared Adamant Discord. Lightning lit up around him as connections sprung into his vision. They were thin and dim, but not the ones attached to the shaman. There was a link between them that was as thick as a keg and too bright to look at directly. Lightning surged along its length as he pushed, and the shaman's hairy limbs were wrenched back inch by quivering inch.

The shaman hissed, and two other legs speared at his face. Felix ducked his head, letting them hit the crown of his skull. It sent him skidding backward across the floor, and the mountain leaning against him vanished entirely. The creature skittered backward, two of its eight limbs blackened by Felix's power, and it hissed at him again.

"Cursed! We are both of us cursed!" it howled, before it lunged for him.

Stone Shaping!

Stone Shaping is level 76!

Stone Shaping is level 77!

Spikes of stone ripped from the earth, stabbing into the beast over and over, while more blocked its path. Felix saw fully half of his Mana vanish in an instant, as the pattern of the Skill had all but refused to cooperate. It's this damn skeleton cave! It's fighting everything I do!

The shaman tore through the rough-made sandstone, screaming in pain and rage and—

And he punched it in the face.

Corrosive Strike is level 65!

Wild Threnody is level 70!

The creature's head snapped up, its disgusting legs flailing and grasping at Felix as it tumbled backward.

Shadow Whip!

Felix grappled the spider horror, dark tendrils wrapping around its fleshy neck and yanking it forward. But he stumbled. That mountainous Will crashed into him at the same time Felix's second fist hit the shaman, and the both of them were hurled back, into the sands.

FELIX!

Pit's voice was thin, but terrified. All Felix could do was push against the weight bearing down on him, a weight that was so very familiar and utterly unknown. Primordial. It hissed and burned across his arms and chest, against his throat and face, but it did no more than scald. It was hot and dry, an oven wind filled with countless motes of sand, a million teeth tearing at him, crushing him.

Get...OFF!

Adamant Discord flared and flashed, sending pieces of the Will blasting off of him, but it simply reformed. It slammed down at him once more, and the chamber of bones vanished. Images flashed instead, of wind and sky and heat and the merciless sun, all of it cutting at his Will like knives. Felix pushed back against it, but it was like fighting a landslide.

And yet...and yet he felt a hard nodule within its mountain, something firmer than the indestructible sands. Felix reached for it, shaping his Intent into a razor's edge and cutting upward through its Will for the briefest of moments. For a desperate instant, he could find no trace of what he sought, but his blade of Intent struck true. A bead of bizarre potency crackled across his senses, worse than all the weight of its Will.

"You're not the first abomination that demanded things from me! I'll tell you what I told the Unending Maw!"

Felix screamed.

He seized it.

"Fuck off."

Chthonic Tribute!

Unite the Lost!

Light and shadow slammed into Felix in a hurricane of force while streamers of red-gold flame and blue-white lightning surged back out. He lifted from the earth, buoyed bodily by the immense streams of Essence that dove into his channels, searing him and his core. Bone shattered, and the screams intensified, two voices raised in agony...until he fell to the sands with a final, heavy thud.

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