Unbound

Stepping into the Foglands was like walking into another world. Again. Magic swirled around him and thrummed beneath his feet, as if the Mana composing the world was alive here. Every tree shone brighter than even those in the Verdant Pass, every rock and flower and crawling vine—

Corrosive Strike!

A Vinesnake, level 26, splattered against the trunk of a velbore tree. His acid ate into the remains and the tree itself with a loud sizzle, boring a handful of uneven holes.

"Watch yourselves," Felix cautioned the rest. "There's likely a lot more where this came from."

His party nodded and kept moving forward through the trees. The Haarguard exchanged looks and began working as a five man team, sweeping ahead and clearing their path before advancing. On top of that, they were leading the avum as everyone else had dismounted once they had hit the denser parts of the forest. Felix was impressed. His friends, meanwhile, walked with the casual grace of the strong.

Strong enough to handle everything the Foglands throws at us? He doubted that, but his friends didn't exactly share his concerns.

"Place is so weird without the fog," Evie was saying. She had climbed another velbore tree, distinct with its dark purple leaves and smooth brown bark. "I can see so far."

"You've been here before, right?" Alister asked from the base of the tree. He was poking his rapier at a bush with blue flower and red thorns. "Right before the fog lifted?"

"Yeah." Evie hopped down off the high branch, turning in a neat flip before landing with a flex of her knees. "Before and right after. Didn't get to enjoy the walk back much."

Vess walked by and clasped the chain-fighter around her shoulder and squeezed, once. "Let us keep moving. There is not much light left."

"Truth. And we don't wanna get stuck in the open after dusk," Harn growled as he plowed ahead. He was by far more familiar with the Foglands, and they were following the path they had taken from Shelim previously.

"What happens after dusk?" Davum asked nervously.

"It gets dark," Harn grunted before disappearing into the underbrush.

The Orc paused, unsure whether the warrior was joking or not. Atar passed close by, leaning on his metal stave.

"Dark is when the real monsters come out," the fire mage said with a gravelly voice.

Davum paled, and looked back at his friends as Atar walked away. The mage's Spirit rollicked with amusement. Felix rolled his eyes and focused ahead.

Harn wasn't lying when he said the dark was worse, and Atar wasn't wrong about the monsters. Felix had spent many nights out there, hiding in trees and hoping nothing noticed him while the sun had set. He was far stronger than he was the last time he was in the Foglands, and he had an entire group of people at his back. They could do this.

They pushed an hour further into the woods, the trees stretching taller as the ground became more and more treacherous. Ravines tore up the land, narrow defiles and shallow gullies at first, but the breaks would become chasms in a few more miles according to Harn. He had scouted some of the area during his exodus, though that had been low on his priority list at the time. They had to get past the ravines, up through one mountain range, down through some more forest before hitting another mountain range. Shelim, the ruined city, was in the valley beyond that.

And the Temple is beyond yet another mountain. He shook his head. If the trek is this difficult now, no wonder people got lost when the fog enchantment was active.

"How long until Shelim?" Felix asked as they crossed another narrow gully. The avum, to his surprise, took to the rocky ground without issue.

"Eh, three weeks if we take it slow? There's a lot of forest mixed with these mountains," Harn said. "Without the monsters it'd be a sight faster, but who knows what's out here. This much magic condensed into an area and the amount of manifestations and evolutions that are possible seem endless."

"So Mana level does affect monsters?" Felix asked.

"Of course, why—" Harn stopped himself. "Right. Yeah, more Mana in an area the weirder the beasts get."

"I've noticed it's thicker here than in Haarwatch, the Pass, or the mines." Felix observed. "Do you know why it varies?"

"Gods? I don't know, kid. I'm just a man with an axe," Harn said. He used said axe to cut through a thatch before him, clearing the way with a single chop. "Leave the postulatin' to Zara and the other quill-pushers."

Felix pondered the energies around him, so vivid the time of day barely mattered. He felt he could get lost in the flows of it, and distantly Felix could hear the song that sat beyond it. The Grand Harmony, the timeless vibration that animated the whole of the universe, according to Zara. It was beautiful, complex, and all-encompassing. The vibrations reverberated through everything, including himself, and Felix could hear strains of it in his core. There it was countered by an atonal, arhythmic droning, an...anti-music that seemed to be everything the Harmony was not; both sounds had taken root deep within him, opposing songs that sang with every spin of his ring cores.

And then he felt an echo of that same opposition, what he called Dissonance.

It was faint, but it was there. In the Foglands.

Vess watched Felix as he prowled through the dense forest, his shoulders tight and his concentration on something she couldn't sense. She could, however, hear echoes of him in the air. He left them wherever he went, like footprints of sound from his Aspects. It was a heady music, both harmony and something more dangerous.

+1 AFI

They passed trees and moss and stone upthrust from the earth, each humming with Mana to her Elemental Eye. It was limited, far more so than Felix's own Manasight, but unlike Manasight it did not obfuscate the surface she looked at. According to Felix, it had been very easy to get lost in the flows of Mana he saw, enough that actually seeing objects became difficult. Elemental Eye allowed her to see the traces of magic upon the surface of the world, the elements themselves. Typically they simply glowed, traces of wind and water and fire tangling and separating in complex patterns.

In the Foglands, however, the elements burned.

"Shelim?" Kikri, the Elf, whispered to her Dwarven friend. "Do you know what that is?"

The two of them stood a dozen strides from Vess' position, but she could hear them clearly as though they were whispering in her ear. They had fallen to the rear with the mounts, letting the three men take point. Smart, and not specifically asked of them. An archer and mage would do well with some distance from any enemies they encountered.

"Not a clue," Nevia replied, struggling with the reins of their mounts. "Sounds foreign, though. Certainly not Underspeak. Ugh, move you blasted chicken!"

"It is a city, ruined in the Second Age," Vess explained, stepping forward to help Nevia with the recalcitrant avum. The Dwarf looked at her in a mixture of relief and surprise. "We visited it when last we walked these mountains."

"Second Age...truly?" Nevia said in wonder and mounting excitement. "A treasure such as that is rarely found!"

"Truly," Vess said with a thin smile.

"Then that is our goal? This Shelim?" Asked Kikri, clutching tight to her lacquered bow. "Are we looking for artifacts for the Gui—I mean, the Lady Haarwatch?"

"I suspect Felix will share our purpose soon enough. For now, know that we head in the city's direction." Vess pointed west, toward the slanting sun and the rising earth. "Conserve your Stamina as best you can. The way only grows rockier."

Those words were proven true as they reached a particularly wide chasm, perhaps thirty or forty spans across. It was not something their low grade avum could leap, and Vess had some doubts about the Haarguard. Luckily, there were a number of floating trees along the ravine, each rooted in an earthen mound that had somehow come unmoored from the ground.

"Fascinating," Atar was saying as they approached. "We didn't see these before. It's a new type of growth, buoyed somehow on...air Mana?"

"That's what it looks like," Alister confirmed. He was crouching and peering at the underside of the nearest tree. "The root system looks intact too."

"Orphale Trees," Felix said and Vess felt the guards near her jump. Their Spirits tickled against her senses. "Apparently they feed on earth and air Mana until they incorporate it into their trunks. Once they hit critical mass, it just..." Felix made a floaty gesture. "Very cool. But now it's time for a bridge."

Felix gestured at the ground beneath their feet, and Vess watched with fascination as the ground softened ahead of him before stretching, taffy-like, into the ravine. With her Elemental Eye she could see the dusty brown Mana that flowed out of Felix's hands and feet, vapor that soaked into the earth and gave it the power to bend and twist to his Will. It was...beautiful.

But when the forming bridge reached the floating Orphale Trees, the Mana was sucked away rapidly. Felix grunted in surprise and then concentration, as a veritable flood of Mana poured from his channels. Stone flowed like liquid, pushing outward along the bridge...until it too was sucked away. The edge of the shaping crumbled and cracked, devoid of its animating force.

"Huh," he said with a slight pant. Vess shook her head. All that Mana used and he was barely winded. "The trees are eating my Mana."

"That's not good, right?" Evie asked, idly spinning her new chain. "I assume that's not good."

"No it's not good," Atar said with a waspish frown. "Without his Mana we can't get across this chasm, not unless you can carry this many avum on your chain."

"How'd you like a quick ride across it right now," Evie threatened, whirling her bladed chain up into her fist, held only a half span from Atar's face. The mage flinched back before his Spirit ignited with orange Mana.

"Stop it, both of you," Felix snapped. "There's other ways to..." Felix trailed off as he looked up and down the ravine. "Hm. Maybe. Maybe. How much can they hold, though?"

"What is it?" Vess asked.

"The trees," Felix said. "We can use the trees."

"You thinkin' of jumpin' across them?" Evie asked. "That's a tall order for some here."

"Not jumping, walking," he explained. "I could ferry everyone else across, unless the trees want to eat my other magic. But I don't think I could lift the birds without hurting them."

"And findin' a way down and then back up would add hours to our day," Harn said. "It's better than nothin'."

"Why do we need the mounts anyway?" Kylar asked, and his little mustache quivered when he noticed he had everyone's attention. He rallied as his Spirit sparked with something like pride. "We are moving faster on foot right now, and the way is going getting more mountainous. Shouldn't we abandon them?"

"We'll need the birds for after the first range," Harn grunted. "They stay."

Matter settled, Felix instructed them to bring the trees closer. Vess sent her floating spears out to shepherd a number of them, which was more difficult than she had expected. The trees fought back, in a way. The flows of air Mana in and around them pushed back against her spears—made of mostly air Mana themselves—and wanted nothing more than to sit where they were. At least they didn't eat away at them like they had with Felix's Skill, though their resistance was frustrating to her.

Felix took this as encouraging for some reason, and began to help. Tendrils of shadow whipped from both of his hands, each one securing a single tree, and he hauled back. Strong as he was, it was only a matter of time before he brought them to the cliff face. The rest were grabbed by Evie and Vess.

"Oh, they're fighting back," Felix said, a slight note of strain in his voice. His tendrils were wrapped now around the outermost layer of Orphale Trees, split into eight or so thinner cords of shadow Mana. The trees steadily bucked against being grouped together like that. "Like similar polarities on a magnet," he said, another one of his meaningless phrases. Something from his home, she assumed. "I wonder if—"

Felix's face twisted in pain and Vess stepped toward him. "Felix what—"

Then she felt it.

A presence. It was oppressive, jabbing at her senses like a blade. Vess' heart thundered and her brow dampened. The others were feeling it too, she saw, in varying degrees. The guard simply looked confused. Vess looked around, searching for the source.

"There!" she gasped.

Across the chasm came the sound of snapping branches and crashing boulders as a horde of monsters barreled toward them. They were huge, running on four legs and covered in rocky armor. Wide, mad eyes and drooling fangs stared and snapped at them from a quarter league away. That oppressive, dangerous presence only multiplied, honing itself to a razor's edge.

"Defensive line!" Harn shouted, and the team staggered to their places. The Haarguard followed, far slower as they fought with the mounts. "Release the mounts!"

The avum ran off, all of them, nearly yanking Kylar's arm from his socket.

"It's too many!" Vyne shouted as he brought his shield to bear. "Nevia!"

The Dwarven mage looked to Vess for instruction. She nodded at Harn. The gruff warrior raised a hand as the beasts thundered down the slope. They were almost upon their position, and the beasts were even larger than Vess had thought. The chasm would pose no problem for them.

"Walls!"

A spray of jagged ice shot up around them, solidifying into a dense wall of ice Mana that covered about thirty span in an arc. Vess was impressed. It had even grown around the struggling Orphale Trees, locking them in place.

"Great job!" Felix shouted, dropping his shadow whips and giving Nevia a thumbs up. "Now me! Stone Shaping!"

The earth rumbled beneath them all as dusty brown Mana exploded outward. Then there was a mighty chorus of bellows, and two of the enormous hulks tore through the ice.

Vess whirled her new spear, heart hammering and core singing.

Finally. A proper fight.

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