Unbound

The stone covering above them was ripped away, and Felix desperately backpedaled, dragging Cal along with him.

"Hah! Yes! Now you flee!" DuFont crowed from above him. It was her hand that had ripped the last of his stone protection away, but it wasn't a Human hand. Stone and metal had flowed and congealed into an oversized limb that grafted to the chestplate of her Inquisitor armor. It was crude and jagged, but the strength it exuded was terrifying. DuFont pulverised the bits of shaped stone in her grip, letting the dust whip away in a wild breeze. "Now you fear."

"In my defense, I've been terrified this whole time," Felix said with a cautious look at her new limb. Cal grunted and tried to find her feet. "New arm?"

"To replace the one you cost me," DuFont snarled and pointed at him. The metal and stone arm only had two fingers and a thumb but it looked plenty deadly. She stepped closer, slowly. "Do you know how it feels, Fiend? To lose a piece of yourself?"

Felix backed up, Cal's weak legs barely helping. The Song that hovered around DuFont grew in volume. The woman had not only grown a new arm, she had grown, period. She was a foot taller than Felix's five ten and broader across the shoulders than she had any right to be, yet aside from battle damage, the Inquisitor armor still fit neatly across her body. Cal's blades were still jammed into her torso, but the exposed flesh around them had hardened to a crazy extent. It was like someone had turned her Temper up to eleven, and he suspected it had something to do with the Song of Fury.

"I've never lost an arm, but you've taken enough from me. From everyone in this city," Felix said, maintaining distance while still holding Cal to her feet. Each jolting movement spilled more of her blood onto the ground. The trail they were leaving boiled. "It has to stop."

"Taken from this city? You dare to speak on such things?" DuFont laughed, a bitter note atop the frenetic concerto of her Song. He could hear swelling strings and staccato notes behind every shift of her body. “I know what you are, Felix, and what you claim to be! Nym and Primordial, intertwined! You brought this calamity to our doorstep yourself!”

She lunged for them.

Unfettered Volition!

Felix burned his Agility, Dexterity, and Strength with all the effort he could muster. Still he caught the edge of DuFont's metal fist, and it was enough to send him sprawling backward. Felix fell, cupping his body so that Cal could fall on him as well, and instead only managed to spin into a tangled ball of limbs and unpleasantly hard armor.

"The power of true Authority is nothing like the neutered mastery the Guild commanded," she continued as Felix stood again. Her right arm, the Human one, lifted up a sword of gleaming bronze. His sword. "I’m no longer beholden to the limits of their vision. I alone saw what the Foglands promised, and I alone set out the operation to claim it. When it failed only my actions saved the Guild from dire repercussions. Yet it failed originally because of their weakness!” The hooked sword dropped slicing neatly through an orb of acid Felix had flung. The acid broke apart into a bisected stream of Mana vapor. “Just as Teine’s experiments failed. All of them worthless. If they had but listened to my counsel, taken heed of my concerns and caution, the Guild would still rule and our Wall still stand.”

“That’s rich, coming from you.” Felix cast about, looking for something to use against the woman. The mansion was on fire around them, all that was wood burning and the stone not far after it. The heat was intense, her power multiplied as the Song of Fury pushed her beyond Adept and into the realm of Masters. She couldn’t use her Authority directly against him—he’d seen those messages—but she was merely augmenting herself. It was her own amplified Aspects and Skills that were the threat. "You basically tore down that Wall to build your own."

"Yes, to protect those who were worthy of protection. Nymean or not, I have heard of your exploits, your little speeches to the paltry few who worship the ground you walk on. You are a boy, with a boy's knowledge and aspirations! You know nothing of true power, and what it takes to keep it." DuFont's arms spread wide. "I hold true, System born Authority. It doesn't even matter if the Heirophant herself comes for me; they will do anything to retain the sovereignty I now possess. Once you two are dead, nothing can halt my advance.

"So embrace it, Fiend. Accept your end."

The Song of Fury rose to a shrill crescendo as they ranged across the blasted mansion. It battered at Felix as he danced behind burning pillars and charred staircases, but he could tell she wasn't using it on him. The Song was what had advanced her; his enhanced Affinity was working against him, able to pick out the dire weft of its melody. It made it easy to tell where DuFont was, but she had abandoned subtlety in favor of pure, overwhelming force.

"Leave me," Cal hissed, but Felix ignored her. He ran through what remained of some sort of parlor, though all of it was aflame. He could feel his resistance Skill slowly ticking upward the longer they lingered, but he wasn't—there. At the end of the parlor was a huge, floor to ceiling window.

Stone Shaping!

Short spikes emerged from the uneven flooring just as DuFont came barreling through the parlor wall. She laughed, her face bloody and burnt. Her eyes were wild and glowing with a deep, golden light.

"Hey!" Felix rasped through the smoke in his lungs. "That's my sword!"

DuFont's smile only grew wider, and points of yellow and gold Mana formed above her shoulders, elbows, and hands. Flickering shapes appeared in the mass of Mana, each one a different Skill. All of them artificially potent. She was burning herself up, Felix could feel it.

"I want it back," he said.

"Then come and take it, boy!" DuFont's Skills filled the burning mansion with a cataclysmic light.

Stone Shaping!

Felix's spikes erupted from the floor.

Ilia feinted right, but Evie swung wide. Her chain bent and slid, moving after the Sworn with unnatural precision. Ilia cursed and dissolved back into shadow stuff.

Evie sent two Ice Spikes into the dark, but they only shattered against the buildings around them. "Quit playing around, Sworn. We've a score to settle!"

"You couldn't beat me while I wore the Mask of a child," Ilia's voice replied. It sounded distorted and spread out. Evie couldn't trace it. "What hope do you have of besting me now?"

Evie hissed out in pain as something cut her cheek, hard enough to draw blood. She spun from the attack, stepping on her chain and passing it around herself in a belated defense. Ilia laughed.

"Ah that was too easy. Just imagine if that were poisoned, hm?" the Sworn laughed again as Evie's face paled. "Don't worry, Aren. I wouldn't waste my work on you, a woman I could end with my eyes closed. My poison is reserved for Zara and your pal Felix."

Ilia appeared again, composing herself from the stuff of shadows. "Stop running and let me kill you!"

Evie did not oblige, and instead kept weaving that defensive net of whirling chain around her. Blades of shadow swept from every angle, but she'd Tempered Dervish and it was paying off. "The sooner you fall, the sooner I can move onto the rest of them."

"First Vess, and now Felix? You got a thing for my friends?" Evie said, letting her chain dance along the street. It wrapped around a tilted lamppost and she hauled on it, using the leverage to accelerate her impressive Agility.

"Aw, poor little Aren. You can make new friends," Ilia crooned as claws of shadow emerged from around her; they met Evie's chain and sparks flew. "Not like they're family, or anything."

"You bitch," Evie hissed. "Bindings of the White Waste!"

Purple-white chains shot from the ground, but they found no purchase on the Sworn. Ilia danced backward and lobbed three blades.

"Dervish! Ice Spike!"

Evie's chain undulated like a snake, the curve of its length rippling just long enough to block the thrown weapons. At the same time, a foot long icicle manifested in her palm. She threw it.

The Sworn knocked it out of the air with her side blade. "Is that all you got, Aren? Are you glad you're sister didn't live to see you fail so badly?"

Evie screamed.

The spikes hit the window an instant before Felix himself did. The both of them rocketed through the glass, just ahead of an absolutely gargantuan explosion of heat, fire, and shafts of near physical light. Several of those still managed to score burning lines into his legs and back despite it all.

She has lasers?!

His helmet had shattered, so he had to trust in his Journeyman Body to protect him from the reinforced glass while he did his best to shield Cal from the impact. They both fell, hard enough to shatter the cobbles of the street two stories below.

"HRNG," Felix managed. He'd landed on his back, his density and the speed of their descent enough to drive him two feet into the road. Cal wasn't in his arms, though. "C-Cal!"

"Get up you idiot," the treasure hunter said quietly, extending an arm into his shallow crater. Felix took it and leveraged himself up with his legs and other arm. Still, Cal grunted in surprised pain and no wonder; he'd grown heavier yet again.

"You okay?" Felix asked.

"No," she said with a shaky smirk, and Felix noticed her face was very pale. His Eye couldn't break through their Veiling Amulets they each had donned, but he imagined her Health was pushing close to the twenty five percent mark. "But we gotta finish this. One way or another."

"My sentiment exactly!" DuFont screamed from above, so much closer than Felix anticipated. He tried to react, but she fell onto them with a preternatural speed, her massive ill-formed fist landing in his side.

Felix had no time to even scream before he was slammed downward into the earth. So hard was his impact that he immediately lost track of Cal. His vision was inundated with stone, pain, and the relentless hammering of a jagged fist of metal and stone. The first blow didn’t break his skin, but the fourth did. Dufont jack hammered into him, pummeling him deeper into the flagstones with every strike.

Felix gasped for breath, too overwhelmed by DuFont's offensive. Cal was...she was gone. He couldn't feel her. Everything, in fact, felt as if it had gone numb. Even the despair that crawled up from his core and into his chest. He—

—Vess ran. The monsters at her heels while everyone died around her. She took a wild, shaky breath to—

—dodge out of the way of her blade, but not the kick that followed. The Sworn moved to unpredictably, and she was covered in weeping gashes already. How much longer could she last? What—

—is this?!" Zara screamed, her own emotions clearer than any before them. A terrible, nascent violence swelled beneath her senses as the Apollyon plowed onward, relentless. Unstoppable.

Felix felt it all, a despair and fear that echoed its way across his friends and allies. Visions flickered in an out between the manic blows of DuFont's powerful new body, of Vess and Evie, Thangle and Atar and Alister. Impressions and emotions hummed across their connections.

All of it a song.

A song that reminded Felix of the people in camp on that first day. The fear and hopelessness that streaked their Spirits and faces. What could he do against that? Against any of it? Why was he fighting so hard?

Unbidden, a warmth blossomed in his chest. The feel of feathers and fur and a warm pressure at his side. Three words echoed across their bond.

Safe. Home. Protect.

Other connections answered in kind. Cords of silver that thrummed with a fire that burned to heal and save. To protect those they cared about. Cal and Evie, Harn and Vess, Atar and Alister. But more. So many more. All the faces and names he’d memorized and tucked away, the Coldfire smiths, the Alchemist and her little family, the grandmothers and grandfathers and orphaned children. Connections that swelled into the thousands crowded his Mind and Spirit. They pulled at him, a weight far greater than he’d ever known, but which felt lighter than a feather.

And in a rush, he knew.

The Unseen Tide.

His Primordial core, the [Cardinal Beast Core], spun with a grand shrieking dissonance. Only tempered by the [Thunderflame Core] swelling with a sublime and overpowering harmony. The veins growing from the abyss between them sparked with vivid, colorless lightning.

"I can feel you!" the creature above him screamed. "I can hear the strange music you sing! Stop it!"

Felix had survived endless beatings, the predation of an insane Primordial and a Goddess. He has grown stronger, time and again, by surviving the threats against him. Not winning. Persisting.

For a long time, he felt he was running. Running for his life, running to civilization, running from the Inquistion and the Guild. Now though, he knew he was running toward something. Battle called to him, in a way nothing ever had, and his Companion reveled in it just the same.

He knew his purpose, in that moment. He had been searching all this time for the reason why he was brought to the Continent. This was why. He was here to fight. To protect.

A gods help whoever stood in his way.

Whispers of song spoke to him. Preserve, they said. Protect. Unite.

He activated his Skill.

Unite the Lost!

From within Felix, a wave of Mana and Essence swept outward. Not across physical space but travelling down the ephemeral web of connection he could see so clearly. DuFont hissed in sudden, confused pain.

"Stop it!"

A wave of Mana swept from the dark, so potent that Vess gasped. A winged shape dropped a rain of deadly Frost Spears on the enemy, driving them back for a bare instant. It wove among a complicated web of violet stars, screeching in defiance. With a sudden surge, the last of the purple stars manifested, and somewhere ahead a Gnome crowed in triumph.

"Let it be done!"

The tendrils pulsed, once, as Mana drained from the elaborate spellform and along their lengths. Swift as an arrow, a thousand tiny tubes lit up with a spark of power...power that hit a thousand simultaneous stones hidden in the city streets all around them. Grenades planted along thoroughfares, at corners and the shallow ditches of blind alleys.

Sigils ignited.

Behind Vess, the night turned to day with the wild roar of cataclysm.

The Apollyon stumbled as the array finally caught, and strands of victorious energy entangled the etheric abomination's immense legs. Sigils the size of houses burned their way into its shiny, metal hide.

"You go no further!" Zara shouted, and the beast bellowed back just as a firestorm lit up the night. Miles ahead, she felt triumph echo through her Affinity.

Dervish (U) Has Evolved Into Reap the Maelstrom (E)!

Skill Level Is Retained!

Reap the Maelstrom (Epic), Level 54!

You have become the center of your own storm. An inexorable force of nature, your relentless momentum brings dark currents to bear on your enemies. Skill level moderately increases accuracy and damage, greatly increases weight and the amount of Mana packed into your chain.

Without warning, a surge of Mana jolted into Evie's core. It flowed through her channels like fire and lightning, cycling into her core and back out again in an instant. The chain in her hand, so desperately describing a defensive loop against the Sworn, somehow sped up. The wild power of it skyrocketed as Evie bent and looped the chain around her shoulder, hip and leg, each rotation adding the rush of deep blue Mana to it's strikes.

Ilia's strikes were thrown off balance. Evie's chain wrapped twice around forearm and pulled, hard. Yet the Sworn was strong and fast, stronger than Evie for certain, and she pushed back. Evie stumbled forward, her Strength unequal to the task.

But then, Evie had never really devoted much to Strength.

Evie ducked into Ilia's guard, pulling herself closer to the assassin's body before lashing outward. Ilia gasped as a line of fire opened up along her cheek, before laughing. The Sworn closed her grip on the chain-wielder, immobilizing her without any difficulty at all.

"All of that, for a simple scratch?"

"Yeah," Evie breathed, and dropped the blade she held. Ilia's eyes widened as she saw it. It was her blade, one she kept in a hidden sheath along her upper arm. A sheath that was now empty. The Sworn felt her face go numb. "Poison's a nasty thing, ain't it?"

A look of horror crossed her face before she fell limply to the ground.

"Don't mess with my friends."

Unite the Lost!

Mana and Essence swirled within him, a vortex of liquid power around his opposed cores. The pattern of Unite the Lost flared with brilliant, incandescent music as it turned inward. Between the two cores, the vein-like growth hummed and burst alight.

Divine Spark Detected!

Primordial Spark Detected!

Something shifted. Tectonics slipped across fault lines. Discordant Harmony swelled, exploding and expanding as a etching of light twisted and turned. A Skill shrieked as threads snapped and realigned, while his cores hummed and vibrated in sympathetic distress.

"Stop! Stop! Stop!" DuFont was screaming. Her malformed fist came down upon him like a wrecking ball. Madness was in her eyes.

A storm ignited within Felix, one that had been growing for a while. Thunder and fire and lightning discharged in a great, almighty burst outward. DuFont was hurled back, her towering form thrown clear of Felix's own battered flesh.

Within him, before him, a powerful chorus sang.

Reign of Vellus (Epic) has evolved into Adamant Discord (Transcendent)!

Skill Level Is Retained!

Adamant Discord (Transcendent), Level 54!

You have reclaimed power once Lost to the turning of Ages. The Pull of Significance accumulates with every step. Greatly increased power, control, and precision with each Skill level.

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