Unbound

The Arcid screamed in unwilling rage, but Felix didn't care. Felix's Will was iron, and the Arcid broke itself against him. Mana and Essence tore from the Sphere, its Body and Mind and Spirit all draining into Felix's bottomless Hunger.

"You...Those are...mine," it rasped.

"No," Before its eyes flickered out, Felix met them and twisted his arm deeper into its chest. "They're mine."

The world around them, the battle that raged, all of it faded to gray and rippled away. Felix didn't hesitate, he knew how it worked now and he'd grown better at it. Grey became black Void before, with a single piercing note the Void shattered into the coiling Memories of the Arcid.

A universe of Arcids exploded in that Memory space, an eternally spreading centipede of spherical golems. Among them all were vibrations, strains he had never before heard. But Felix knew what it meant. It all suddenly made perfect sense. Connections. It's all Connections.

Felix knew what he needed to find.

He shaped his Will, his Intent, flexing his Affinity to hear the telltale shimmers of resonating connection. It was the loudest strand, for obvious reasons. However twisted the relationship, what could be greater than the connection between parent and child?

Felix seized it and swallowed the rest whole.

You Have Taken A Memory From Arcid Number 55390!

Y/Y

Yes.

The Memory swept him away.

Rory pulled back his sword, the wet heat of the Simian following it's blade as its body collapsed. Now that the furry bastard was out of his sight, he could see the trail of devastation Felix had left on the battlefield. The monsters were in disarray, and he had just taken down their massive leader. Rory grinned through his bloodied beard.

The next second, however, a wave of red-gold energy thrummed through the ground. It shone from beneath the cobbles, passing by the monsters without singeing a strand of fur, yet when it hit their wall the sigils around Rory flared into a blinding radiance. Even his Endurance couldn't handle the light, and wiggling afterimages dominated his vision for a precious few seconds. He couldn't see anything, but he hadn't Tempered some third-class Mind. Based off their positions seconds ago, Rory lashed outward in a flurry of offense that caught furred flesh with axe and blade. Kill notifications flickered past him, but he dismissed them out of hand.

"Hector! What's happening?" Rory screamed, his vision clearing enough to make out the Inscriptionist. The man was hunched behind a redoubt, frantically inscribing new sigils along the battlements. Rory could make out the man's face, and it was drawn and haggard.

"Th-the wards! All of them! All of them!" He practically howled the last, shoving his stylus forward as glyphs and sigils formed beneath him with unerring tenacity. "Mana is draining out of the arrays! Something is draining them all! It's sabotage!"

The translucent bulwarks around the battlements flickered and faded as the last of the Mana drained away, leaving the sigils dull and inert. Rory's senses flared in panic and he dove for his friend. "Get down!"

A string of spectral fireballs detonated atop the wall, and the Dwarf was thrown bodily from them as if he'd been hit by a giant's backhand. In a moment outside time, Rory briefly saw the other defenders tossed from the wall, and Hector hung limply in his grip.

Don't die on me, lad! Siva's Blessing!

Pink light welled beneath his fingers and sunk into the Inscriptionist, just as the two of them hit the ground hard.

"UNF!"

Rory landed on his back, hoping to cushion the more fragile Hector. He ended up squashed between his armor, the ground, and Hector's full grown Human weight. He wheezed a breath, his Body more than enough to put up with the punishment but it did nothing for the pain. Above he saw a swarm of Lesser Wretches buzz up and over the neutered walls, their wings easily carrying them into the emptied courtyard.

"Blind gods, this day doesn't quit, does it?" Rory rolled Hector off of him and reached for his weapons. He had lost the shortsword he'd been using on the battlements, but he was practically bristling with options. A handaxe and another shortsword found their way into his hands. Thunder crackled, far above. "Ye picked the wrong camp, beasties."

Charge of the Undermount!

Earth Mana welled beneath Rory's feet as he ran, each step propelled further as the ground strengthened him. The nearest Wretch turned toward him, but the Dwarf was on it before it could bring it's claws to bear. Three entire legs sheared off at the joint before it engaged him, and Rory's casual toss of a throwing dagger blew a span-sized hole in its armored abdomen. Mana and Stamina surged in his Body, his veins and channels chugging with a fiery cocktail of adrenaline and a potent, Weaving Stage core.

You Have Killed A Lesser Wretch!

XP Earned!

One down, Rory huffed and looked at the field. Too many to go.

More Wretches came over the walls as he watched, more than he could handle alone. Pockets of resistance were forming, but the fighters were scattered and injured from their various falls. People were dying right in front of him, and Rory couldn't help them. It about drove him mad.

*KRRAAUUSH!*

A section of the wall exploded inward, raining shrapnel on them all. Rory dove behind his recent kill, but saw his Health drop twenty points from the needle-sharp chunks of stone. A huge Wretch waded through the gap, rocks still falling from its huge scythe claws. One of the Greater Wretches. Behind it, a flood of Ghostfire Simians rushed in, streaming beneath its dagger-like feet.

We can't hold. Not here. Rory swept his eyes around the field, rushing to Hector's side and leveraging the unconscious man to his feet. We have to—

The monkeys and bugs all but ignored the defenders, heading directly to the reinforced warehouses and healing ward. Where the sick still remained, the ones hurt by the emerging Primordial energy. They'd never stood up again, despite the energy disappearing from the city. They were defenseless!

No! Damn it!

Scintillating Spanner!

He ran, the axe in his hand welling with a flux of Mana vapor. It began to shake so hard he could barely hold it. Rory cut down another Lesser Wretch, but kept running. As the vapor began spewing outward, he hurled his axe. The weapon arced outward and exploded in a bright white light laced with greens and blues. It hit the Simians hard, knocking many of them off their feet, but he couldn't stop them all.

He couldn't stop them all.

Felix was in the Archon's Domain, and somehow he knew this Memory was from months ago. He recognized the tilted halls and smoldering heat, though not the room he resided within. It was a vast chamber, fueled by waterfalls of vivid magma and studded with elaborate black metal machines.

Lava forges, he suddenly knew, having pulled the word from the Memory itself. Screaming Frost Giants were all around him, hauled upright on black iron hooks and chains by twisted amalgamations of that very same black iron and belching furnaces. Crude Arcid precurors, he knew, clearly created to build better versions of themselves.

With the Risi as the base.

A faint thread of sympathy pulsed in Felix, but he ignored it. They shared a lingering connection for his part in their demise, but he didn't regret his actions. Grimmar and his ilk were monsters, through and through.

Stronger by far, however, was the Maw's own connection to them. It was gone, but he knew he'd somehow taken over parts of whatever the Maw had been, and to the Risi the Maw was a god. The Risi he passed seemed to look right at him, but they don't see Felix. Not really.

"Mother...Mother please..."

The whispers continued, unabated. Pleas for mercy, for salvation. Hissed warnings of what they knew, what they dared to hear. Felix heard it all, pouring through him and leaving foul trails behind. The Archon, what it planned, what it was doing. The Risi were being torn apart, and he'd already seen the result.

Arcids and the Reforged. Despite their contentious history, despite his desire to feel nothing, that sympathy roused in him again. Damn it.

At the far end of the chamber, a fifty foot tall door opened with a mighty boom. Fear coursed through all those around him as a towering figure in golden armor stomped into the chamber. He was speaking to a much smaller Arcid who carried a clipboard, of all things.

"Yes, Master," it marked something on its clipboard. "That is what I have seen. The Bloodmoon comes apace, we have but to infuse them with the necessary tinctures as the reforging commences. Your garden has all we need. I—"

"Silence."

Felix froze just as the Arcid, for the Archon's huge, golden finger stabbed out. It pointed directly at him, and the golden giant's face—helmet though it was—contorted in revulsion.

"YOU—!" As if called, Wurms of all types unspooled from the walls and ceiling, slipping seamlessly from the rock. "How is this possible? You died! You could not have survived the Primordial!"

Felix swallowed and backed away. This Memory wasn't behaving like the others he'd taken, where he was a passive viewer. Felix didn't like it, not a bit. He reached out, trying to wake himself. He'd gotten what he needed.

"No, this is Nymean magic. Treacherous!" The Archon howled and his eye-fires blazed like Roman candles.

The Memory trembled as the golden giant focused on Felix, the hazy edges of it refining until he could barely tell it wasn't real. The Archon lit up with yellow-red vapor, focused in swirling orbs atop his elbows and palms.

Uh oh.

Darius stumbled, overextending his greatsword as the latest of his wind slashes ripped another clutch of monsters asunder. The damn monkeys kept pushing, trying to reach his charges, but he wouldn't let it happen. He was a protector, the Chosen Hand of the Duke of Pax'Vrell! He would not fail.

Reed! Take them all! Get them out of here!

"I told you Fiend," Darius grunted, blocking a blast of spectral fire with swirling wind Mana. "I can't carry them all and fight off an army!" He brought his greatsword around again in a looping strike, bisecting four more Simians. "But I can bleedin' try!"

His charges had spent themselves after waking, with only the rare bolt of lightning or jaws of shadow from the winded Elders. It was up to him.

Closer! Closer!

The monsters were thinning. He would make it.

I will make it!

"Stop running!" the Archon screamed.

Felix let out a spate of nervous laughter and kept trying to end the Memory. C'mon! What is going on? He couldn't feel the edges of it. It was seamless, like someone had pasted over the doorway out.

"RRUAUUUAAAGH!"

Felix kept out of the range of the golden giant, but had to keep pushing himself to dodge the Archon's blasts of burning energy. Wurms wove from above and below, slipping and out of the walls and floor while their four-way jaws chomped at the edges of his clothes.

"I'm not really here for this!" Felix back-pedaled, dodging for all he was worth. He felt with his Affinity, hoping for something, and touched upon those connections to the Risi again. They thrummed, but it wasn't a way out. But there was a thick connection connected to his chest, one that pulsed with warmth and constant energy.

Pit! Felix reached across it while ducking behind one of the chamber's lava forges.

"You will not escape me a second time, Nym!" the Archon raged. "I will have your head for what your people did!"

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Felix shouted back, though he had no idea if the Memory could hear him. It certainly acted like it couldn't. A single swipe of the Archon's oversized gauntlet demolished one of the lava forges, and Felix fell into a backward roll, popping back to his feet fast enough to dive out of the way of another energy blast. Stupid!

...Felix?

Pit! Thank god, Felix kicked off the wall and flipped over another incoming beam, using Shadow Whip to yank himself in another direction while mid-air. I'm stuck! I—

Felix felt something other than Pit, riding adjacent to their bond. A bundle of new connections, one's he could only barely feel except Pit was amplifying them in some way. It felt like...fifty of them. The number was firmed in his Mind and Spirit, fifty burning spots in camp...In the—Really? The monsters had made the camp!

They were in danger.

PIT! Save them! His Companion was already wheeling through the sky, diving down and reading an array of Mana Skills.

Another violent blast of red-streaked yellow energy speared outward, carving a deep, jagged line in the obsidian walls around them. Felix stayed ahead of it, but not all of it. He had to use Ravenous Tithe to take the edge off, but still the spell took him hard in the chest. He was thrown back, spun into the air and onto his side. The ground shattered beneath his weight.

Yet he stood up fast, his tattered clothes not even singed. It isn't real! he reminded himself. His Mind bored down, grabbing at the edges of the Memory. Felix burned his Perception and Affinity, pushing them as much as he could like opening his eyes wide in the darkest of rooms. There!

The flow of connections through Pit and those fifty others, he felt it, the space where it ended. Felix seized it and pulled with everything he had. Don't engage! Escape!

The edges of the Memory faded, turning foggy. He had it.

"No! Not again!" The Archon stomped forward, it's steps shaking the entire room. Magma shot from the cracks, spurted upward in tiny, molten fountains. "Never again!"

Felix reached and he felt the threads of the Unseen Tides tremble with his effort. OUT!

The Memory shattered around him, turning to fragments of light.

He sprawled forward, smashing his face into something wet and cold. Felix panted, gathering himself. Beneath his hands he felt the crushed and jagged edges of the dead Arcid, and the rain still came down in a deluge.

You Have Gained A Level!

You Are Now Level 48!

You Gain:

+2 to PER! +2 to VIT! +4 to END! +5 to INT! +6 to WIL! +4 to AGL! +7 to DEX!

You Have 17 Unspent Stat Points!

System energy fluttered through him, bouncing off his dual, stacked cores. It washed against the rest of him in a wave of sparking light, more different than before. There was no pleasure or pain. It just felt...right.

The camp! he reminded himself. He could feel those connections moving, roused by something that felt like fear and...What is that?

Rory blinked blood from his eyes as he cut down another three monkeys. The blade twisted, nearly wrenched from his grasp, and his positioning was pulled from true. He expected a claw to the face for his brief bout of inattention, but nothing came. Instead, he witnessed the monkeys before him being impaled by giant icicles that rained from the sky.

"SKREEEEAAH!"

A dark shape swooped out of the torrential downpour, the beat of its wings almost louder than its cry. More Frost Spears followed, spitting dozens of the Ghostfire Simians, whose spectral flames did nothing to blunt their terrifying chill.

The lad's Companion, Rory grunted as took a breath. He must not be far away then.

Rain scattered in all directions as the chimera dropped from the sky at wild speeds, Pit's dark body suddenly covered in a green flame. He slammed into the side of a Lesser Wretch, tackling it onto their back and savaging their underbelly. It's focusing on the monsters at the lead, nearest the Untempereds.

"Hah! Ye got a mighty beast, lad. Suppose I can't slack off meself." Rory dropped the ruined blade he carried and pulled a double headed axe from his back. He swung, decapitating another monkey and moving to support the tenku. The least I can do.

Another cry came from the chimera, and this one sent Rory stumbling. It twisted through his ears and shook him, physically shook him to hear it and he wasn't the only one. The monsters flinched as well at the noise. A glorious swelling of chords and a sawtoothed atonal burr. It vibrated the very air.

To Rory's immense surprise, as the sound ended he heard people emerge from the Healer's Ward. The door slammed open and dozens of patients stepped out on shaky legs, each of them in nothing but robes and bandages. Broken chair legs, eating utensils, and the jagged remnants of their cots were gripped in trembling hands. Pit took to the air, describing a tight circle above them, and it was as if the tenku gave the patients a sudden second breath of life. As one, they raised their crude weapons and screamed.

It was a release of such helpless rage and pain that Rory would have stumbled to his knees had the chimera's cry not already put him there. The Ghostfire Simians are likewise stupefied, enough that they barely reacted before the patients were on them. They went down, but they were Untempered. Miraculous as their recovery was, Rory knew they would die before long.

The Greater Wretch screeched and chittered in response to the challenge, and it surged forward, only to be met by the diving, on-fire shape of Pit. Thick, table sized mandibles snapped at the flying chimera, but Pit was too fast. Wingblades and Frost spears pummeled the creature, but it's carapace was too tough. It lashed out with a claw and smashed the tenku from the air, hurling him into the ground.

The thing is nearly impervious, Rory groaned, still supporting Hector's unconscious weight. The man was spattered with blood, but it was the ichor of monsters, not his own. More are coming. Monkeys and bugs, we'll be overrun. They aren't trained for this. None of them were.

Then a lone wind blade sailed through the blackened corpse smoke and hit the Greater Wretch on the ass. The thing stumbled from the strike, and it pivoted it's wedge-shaped head back toward the opening in the wall. Limping, his greatsword the only thing hold him up, the Hand shouted in challenge. Beside him, two dark robed Elders—much to Rory's surprise—stumbled out of the heavy rain. Bolts of lightning and jagged jaws of solidified shadow spread outward, decimating the weaker enemies before them.

"This...is the last army I fight...today," huffed the Hand, and the monsters burst forward, all of them redirected by the Greater Wretches shrieks. Toward the larger threat.

He grinned.This old Body's still got some juice left. He ran, double-headed axe held in a high guard as he rushed the Greater Wretch. From his flank, he watched in awe as Pit rallied, appearing ahead the patients and leading the Untempered in a charge. Frost Spears started it off, clattering off the giant monster's carapace as easily as the rain around it, but it split the beast's attention.

"Take out it's legs!" he shouted to the Untempered patients, and to his surprise they actually listened. The fifty odd men and women bum rushed the Greater Wretch's legs, hacking away at them. "Bring it down!"

Across the way, the Hand took on the teeming Ghostfire Simians and Lesser Wretches. His blades of wind Mana kept them distant or killed them outright. But the man was exhausted, Rory could see that even amid his own struggles.

"SKEEEAA!" Pit cried out, and a powerful flap of the tenku's wings sent a number of Untempered folk flying backward. The area before the Greater Wretch, empty now, rumbled and liquified before reshaping into a massive twenty stride spike of stone aimed at its heart. But the creature was too smart. It reared back, deftly avoiding the angled spike.

It could do nothing for the large Nym that fell from the sky. Felix hit it, feet first, and drove it's armored abdomen directly onto the deadly spike in a single, ichor-spewing movement.

You Have Killed A Greater Wretch!

XP Earned!

"Took ye long enough, lad!" Rory shouted at him. The boy turned and fixed him with a glowing, sapphire stare before making a sharp, expansive gesture.

A wave of blue-white flame swept outward, passing by Rory's people harmlessly, but clinging to every single monster in sight. They froze beneath the eldritch flame, locked into place as they began to burn alive. Kill notifications swirled through Rory's vision, so many he couldn't keep track of them.

Felix didn't smile as he hopped off the back of his kill, his face uncovered by the black scales that covered the rest of him, from his exposed chest to his bare feet. Rory thought he spotted claws there, too.

"Been a weird day," Felix said.

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