Unbound

DuFont was thrown back by a column of energy that stabbed the sky like a brilliant spear. Her armor and Tempered skin melted before its onslaught, and unimaginable pain wracked her for the first time since the Song of Fury had begun. A swelling of Sorcerous music surged within the boy, something that sounded entirely too similar to her Authority.

Primordial Spark Detected!

Divine Spark Detected!

The Primordial Spark she knew about—the Authority had told her as much. But the spark of the Divine? How? DuFont braced herself against the blue-white light of the Fiend's discharging Skill, and Analyzed him. She could tell he was no more than Journeyman, but his power...how was he so strong? Her Analyze couldn't tell the stats of someone else, but she could feel the edges of it all. His stats were far higher than they had any right being. Had she not enacted the Song of Fury, DuFont feared she would be no match for him.

A gold bordered notification blipped into her vision, and Eliza stifled a gasp.

Warning! Unbound Detected Within City Limits!

Recommend Immediate Evacuation Of The City.

Unbound? Impossible. That little shit—

The song crested, swelling to greater heights, and Felix struggled to his feet. She had split him open like a log—the armor on his chest and shoulders revealing bright blood beneath—but now his flesh shuddered and twitched as it healed over. The boy's eyes glowed that uncanny, piercing blue while similarly colored Mana vapor poured from his mouth like steam. He clawed forward. Up. Out of the crater she had created.

Her own Song of Fury was wearing thin; she knew it would not last much longer. The Song boosted all three of her Aspects and pushed her into Master Tier but...against an Unbound...She had to end it. Fast.

No wonder he had proven so hard to kill, and how he had accomplished the impossibilities that had been laid at his feet. Before her was a monster far worse than anything the Foglands could produce.

It was a demon.

Sovereign of Flesh!

Felix stood on shaking legs, his body broken but healing. He stared at his clawed hands, at the black scales that thickened and crawled over him. But it wasn't his transformation that he saw, it was a legion of threads he could feel touching every inch of his body. They were more than simple connections, however. They were lines of influence, weighted with a daunting potency.

Adamant Discord!

His new Skill flared and blue-white Mana flashed all around him. Lines of it shot in all directions, a spiderweb of power that sent a swath of the street itself heaving. The ground buckled and cracked, while a recoil of pain assulted his Mind, Spirit, and Body in equal measure. The worst migraine, cramp, and panic attack he'd ever experienced, and it lasted all of a second. Felix blinked it away, his Temper and Skills shrugging most of the effect off.

Felix no longer felt the uneven surges of Reign of Vellus. That Skill—and whatever affiliation with the goddess—was gone. He couldn't look into his core space, but all he felt now was a vast sense of connection.

Unity.

He felt the shift in the air as DuFont came for him, and not only because her heat Mana filled the street with an unbearable warmth. He felt the pull of her, distinct from the air and the earth and the flames. He dodged aside and her mangled arm of stone and steel crashed into the cobbles.

Dodge is level 52!

"Stand still!" she snarled. She was charred from his attack, and her arm had been broken down until it was more framework than bulk. "Your time here is done, Unbound!"

Felix started as the word came out of her mouth, enough that he took a spear of golden Mana right to the chest. Felix flew back, his wounds reopened and scorched for extra measure. He gasped in pain before his Song of Absolution kicked in.

"You seem surprised, Unbound. Did you think your secret would remain hidden?" DuFont's arm reformed, drawing in chunks of masonry from around her. A hulking limb formed atop her joint, studded with jagged protrusions that would shred anything it touched. In her right, she whirled her stolen Crescian Blade. "I know and soon so will everyone else. The Authority has told me to destroy you. Even if you survive today, Felix, the Church of the Pathless will hunt you down for the rest of your miserable life!"

Heat Mana pooled along her new arm, her Spirit as boosted as her Body, and even at a distance Felix felt his scales blister. She came at him, faster than he could track, but Felix threw himself aside anyway. He felt the threads shift with him. He felt them so clearly, it was almost as if they were...pulling him.

Adamant Discord!

Felix saw his Mana spool out of him again, but this time it followed lines in the direction of his dodge. Like a fish on a line, he was yanked into the distance, and just in time. The building behind Felix collapsed in a detonation of brick and mortar, not once but twice as DuFont entered and exited the structure. An aura of heat and light baked the air, distorting it as the stone around her boiled.

There was no more talking. The ten foot Inquisitor screamed and sprinted at him, her boosted Body simply eating up the distance. Felix pulled on those threads once more, whipping to the side just out of reach of each explosive swing. The arm impacted the ground, the buildings around them, and each time a flameless blast of power left molten stone and charred rings in her wake.

Adamant Discord is level 55!

Dodge is level 53!

With each flare, the threads of connection between him and everything around him tightened. He pushed and pulled on them with his Willpower and Strength, ping-ponging himself around in flashes of blue-white lightning. It strained his all of his Aspects, each wrenching change in direction, but he grit his teeth against it. Felix was ahead of DuFont, and that was all that mattered.

Another hit from that arm of hers...He didn't finish the thought. His Health had fallen below half again. Sovereign of Flesh and Meditate were working overtime, but the sheer presence of DuFont's aura was siphoning Health from him at a steady rate.

Sovereign of Flesh is level 54!

Sovereign of Flesh is level 55!

Wrack and Ruin!

As he sent himself up and over a nearby roof, Felix sent an orb of acid down at the maddened Inquisitor, and she didn't even bother dodging it. It hit her shoulder and sizzled, doing minor damage but she wasn't even slowed.

"You cannot defeat me, Felix! Your poorly planned attack failed," DuFont sneered as she leaped atop the roof. It creaked ominously under their combined weight. "Your friends are dead or dying. They've all abandoned you. Even the Authority has rejected you! You lost, Unbound."

Felix hunched, dizzy with pain and an omnipresent ache. His core burned bright, but his channels were raw and bloody. "You're...an idiot, DuFont."

Felix felt the rigid threads all around him, strong enough to break stone but no hindering his movement in the slightest. It was like...gravity. A force that bound everything together, a shimmering connection between all the others that spooled from the top of his Bastion of Will. It was what he felt back in that null space, when he was immobile. The Unseen Tides.

"Oh," Eliza chuckled. She strode forward, armored feet smashing through the clay roofing tiles. "Please enlighten me, wise one."

It wasn't people, like Oathbindings or the nebulous emotional connections he'd formed.

The Pull of Significance. Unseen Tides. The threads that bind me to...everything.

Even his enemies.

"You got too close."

Adamant Discord!

"Harn!" Evie lifted him up, propping him onto her shoulder; she had to shift his mass into herself just to lift him. He was hot to the touch, but no longer molten, thank the gods. "You can't be dead. Wake up!"

The blades in his back had been formed of shadow Mana, and once the Sworn had gone down they had dissolved. Which was just as well, because Evie didn't have the stomach to start yanking blades out of her friends. She banged on his chest, but the metal was so dense it barely made a sound. "Wake up!"

"Gods yer loud," he complained. His voice slurred, but suddenly his weight lessened as he found his feet. "What happened? Where's the Sworn?"

Evie laughed, but cut it short. It was too close to a sob. She pointed to the ground not twenty paces away. "Takin' a nap."

Harn grunted and took off his helmet. It came off with a click and hiss, like air was escaping his kit—underneath his face was bruised and bloody. "She dead?"

"Not yet." Evie hadn't been pressed to check. "I woulda run her through, but you were over here looking so pathetic and dead, so..."

"Yeah yeah," Harn said. "Where's Cal? Felix—?"

An explosion of blue-white lightning enveloped a rooftop down the block. Evie winced and shut her eyes, but not in time to avoid the searing afterimage of it. Booming detonations followed soon after as three more mansions in a row collapsed into ruin.

"Nevermind," Harn grunted and took a step forward, but nearly fell over when his leg didn't move right. "Damn legs. You've got my weight shifted?"

"Oh, sorry," Evie said, wiping her eyes. The afterimage had done a number on them and now she was crying. She sniffed. Stupid lightning. "I'll drop it."

"No, no. I've got a better idea," Harn said with a bloody grin.

Cal woke to the sound of thunder and the taste of strawberries.

She blinked awake, finding Evie above her and feeding her a Health Potion. No. She gasped as it went to work. A Greater Health Potion. The rare concoction practically swarmed with Mana as it plunged into her system, knitting her flesh closed and restoring her lost blood and bruised organs.

"How?" she croaked. Evie smiled and her eyes filled with tears.

"Ah, we just mugged some lady for them," she said. Cal saw Harn—looking more beat up than she'd seen in some time—standing with a bound and gagged Sworn assassin in his grip. Evie helped her to her feet. "Listen, we have a plan."

Felix stood atop the building, shivering under the aftereffects of his Skill. He'd thrown DuFont off the damn roof and through two—no, three—nearby homes. His Aspects screamed at him, but he'd done it.

Adamant Discord is amazing. He felt the flex and weft of things around him, as if his Perception were enhanced in a fifty foot radius around himself. He had limped to the edge of the roof to see if DuFont would get up from that hit. He was disappointed.

The Inquisitor stumbled from the wreckage, bloody and really, really mad. Her arm had swollen again until it looked like it belonged to some steroid-loving rock golem. "FELIX! This ends now!"

"Sounds good to me," he muttered to himself. Louder, he said, "Then come and end it!"

DuFont screamed like a woman possessed. Her eyes lit up, blazing with golden light like she was a jack-o-lantern and she exploded from the street below. Felix threw himself back, flaring both Unfettered Volition and Adamant Discord to move fast enough.

The roof beneath him shattered into a million pieces, set off by a sudden eruption of heat Mana, as well as DuFont's giant body rocketing upward.

Adamant Discord!

Felix panicked and pulled upward; the rigid threads hauled him into the sky.

DuFont, impossibly, followed after.

Twin blooms of fire and heat formed beneath her enhanced Body, while tendrils of half formed Mana writhed around her Spirit. She accelerated, and the tendril's snapped outward just enough to grab Felix's ankle.

"You're not running away!"

DuFont spun and hurled Felix back to the earth, so hard and fast he couldn't compensate. Felix hit the roof of another mansion and smashed straight through it. And the floor beneath. And the one after that. He landed amid a tiled kitchen, filled with pots and pans and the largest cauldron he'd ever seen. Felix wheezed a breath, but his Manasight flared as yellow Mana suddenly suffused everything around him.

Adamant Discord!

Felix barreled sideways through wall after wall, his scaled shoulders leading the way. Each hit shaved off more Health from his dwindling pool, but it was better than the alternative. He burst out onto the street, rolling away on the cobbles only seconds before the entire building erupted in flames.

Adamant Discord is level 56!

The Song of Absolution is level 67!

The heat was unbearable and Felix flinched to his feet. The air wavered and wobbled, the brightness of the fire enough to make him doubt his vision. Something moved at the far end of the alley, but his attention was torn away as DuFont landed before him. The stones began to slag beneath her tread, as Felix cautiously retreated. He was in a dead end street, but walls weren't enough to stop him.

The Song of Fury built to a frenetic and terrifying crescendo.

Eliza DuFont stood before him, dominating the space. He could see those tendrils of half-formed Mana lashing about her, ready to grab and tear him down. Heat Mana surged and the cobbles beneath his claws turned to molten stone, singeing his scales and push him back against the thick wall behind him. That too began to heat up, yellow Mana infusing it's length in an instant. "Have you ever been burned, Unbound? I'm told it's not pleasant, but it gets the job done."

"Fire is...not really my thing," Felix managed. The air was too hot to breathe now.

Mantle of the Long Night!

Arctic wind billowed out from him in waves of purple-white Mana, but the yellow vapor in the air made no room for it. The spell was crushed beneath the weight of DuFont's Spirit, greater than Felix's own despite his advancement. Felix cried out as his Spirit recoiled under the onslaught.

"No more talking, no more running. It is time to die, Felix Nevarre." She swung down her left arm in a brutal open hand strike, so fast it tore at the air.

*KRAAAAKKOOOM!*

Unfettered Volition!

Felix got his arms up and the rocky limb slammed him into the earth. The ground around them shattered for yards in all directions and a wave of molten stone sloshed upward. Felix fell to his knee, barely stopping the Inquisitor's unnatural power.

"No! DIE!" DuFont screamed, her mouth agape and spittle flying. She pressed harder, and Felix screamed. His knee, his entire leg, sunk into the molten cobbles. "The Authority is MINE!"

"No," Felix rasped. He felt at the contact between himself and everything. Her fist, his shoulder, the ground. It was all connected. With a trembling groan, he pushed.

"I just—"

Metal creaked and stolen masonry cracked as DuFont's arm was forced back, back, back. She screamed without words.

"—want to...remind you—"

He let Essence surge into his hands and sunk his talons into the forged limb. He flared his Strength all the harder and lifted his quaking knee out of the superheated cobbles.

"—I never Challenged you!"

Felix screamed the last as he put everything he had into a final burst of Strength. DuFont howled in fury as Felix tore her arm completely off. She stumbled, off balanced for a brief, fateful second.

"But I did."

Cal leaped atop DuFont's oversized back and drove two wicked daggers directly into her eyes.

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