Unbound

Congratulations!

You Have Been Granted Territorial Authority!

Authority Accessed.

Welcome, Lady Eliza DuFont.

What Song Do You Wish To Sing?

Eliza had opened the notifications at least twenty times since it had appeared. She toyed with the translucent panel before her. Its meaning was relatively clear, but she did not understand the significance of the last line.

What Song?

List of Options:

Song of Peace

Song of—

Alright, I get it. She dismissed the interface entirely. She was intrigued, elated even, but would have plenty of time to plan after she received her aide's report.

DuFont strode among the halls of her appropriated mansion, flanked by a bare bones guard of Acolytes. They all snapped to stiff attention as she passed, which gratified her, though she did not miss the whispers the followed her passage. The journey up from the depths had been rough, bloody, and painful—but they had not been without fruit.

A twinge of pain shot up her left shoulder, and a tingling iteration flowed down into what she knew was empty air, but which felt so very real. As if her arm were still there. DuFont suppressed a groan as the pain grew too heavy with each beat of her heart.

Pain Resistance is level 8!

Learned a new Skill, at least, she huffed, too angry to be pleased. If that bastard hadn't stopped her, she could have claimed the Nest and been out of there before...before the explosion. Her people, the few that survived, later told her it was a Guilder that set it off. And that only shortly after giant metal golems appeared to activate that yellow-red array they still hadn't identified. None of the survivors had their Analyze at high enough levels to even get their Type, and the crater had hidden the offending Guilder from view. Bah. And now I have Challengers to worry about. Not only Teine and his Guilders but Boscal and her pet.

The Fiend.

She spat onto the polished hardwood and ground her muddy boots into the carpet as she stomped past. She still wore her white enameled Inquisitor armor, its protection far superior to anything she'd owned before, even after being pummeled by half a mountain. Her left gauntlet was lost, and the precious set was useless unless paired. She'd cast it aside soon after arriving in camp.

"At least I still have you," she crooned, patting the crooked sword at her hip. Her cloak was ragged and her skin covered in scrapes and bruises despite her Adept Tier Endurance and Vitality. It had truly been a close thing, only the mysterious Crescian Bronze blade allowing her to survive the onslaught of magic. It had dulled the edge of the explosion, while she had hid behind the bulk of that blasted Scale. "You, my army, and unmatched Authority."

A door loomed ahead, and DuFont marched through it without pause. Inside, Klark was busy organizing his desk and a number of missives bound in colored ribbons. He came to a smart salute as Eliza passed him.

"Lady Inquisitor," Klark said by way of greeting. "Are you—?"

"I'm fine, Klark," she said. The few healers remaining to her had bathed her wound in tinctures and covered it in unguents so sharp they could knock a man out. It ached terribly, but that only served to fuel her fury. "We've been back a few hours. What do we know?"

Klark reset his feet and folded his arms behind his back. "Much of the assembled Order was lost in the Nest, only two hundred remain from the operation."

"Successful operation, Klark," DuFont pointed out, and didn't miss the Initiate's quick glance at her lost arm. "Remember that. What of our troops here? How many remain and did they do as I ordered?"

"Yes, Lady Inquisitor. The Acolytes and Initiates you stationed here pulled all high value assets into our core camp and the external streets have been barricaded and trapped. A thousand remain, while the rest it, ah, it appears that the rest...fled."

Klark's flinched as DuFont whirled on him, and her Skills could read the fear on him. "What? What did Heuthorn do while we were away?!"

"What must be done!"

The double doors burst open, propelled by the kick of two Initiate boots. DuFont pivoted toward the noise, reaching down for the blade at her—Damnit! She switched and moved her right arm, drawing the blade. Into the room marched a rank of Initiates, their swords drawn and packed with Mana, while behind them was the tall, grey form of the man himself.

"Clovis," DuFont hissed. "What is the meaning of this?"

Inquisitor Heuthorn sneered at her, while fifteen Initiates spread outward to cut off any hopes of egress for DuFont and her aide. "We are balancing the scales, Eliza. As the last ranking member of the Order in the city, I am declaring summary judgement upon you."

"Judgement?" DuFont's blood pounded in her ears, and her knuckles went white on her sword. She lifted it, leveling it at the old Inquisitor's face. "You dare?"

"I do more than that, child," Heuthorn snapped. "You led thousands of our Order to die, against my well documented wishes. You are no longer fit to be the leader of our mission."

"Fool! I am the only choice! I have claimed Territorial Authority! The first in this damn country's history!" The Initiates' swords were unwavering as they glowered at her through their helms. "We are victorious, because of my leadership!"

"You have returned with a prize you do not deserve, Guilder. I have dispatched word to the Inviolate Order by way of Setoria, so that the Grandmaster may come here herself and take up the mantle of Authority." Heuthorn flicked a speck of imaginary dust from his pauldron, and DuFont felt her stomach drop. "Until then, you shall relinquish control...to me."

The Grandmaster, she thought, panicking for the first time. If she—she'll ruin everything!

Heuthorn smiled, his facade of kindly elder burnt away by the sheer hate in his gaze. "Do the right thing, Eliza. You cannot hope to win. Not anymore."

DuFont swallowed and glanced at Klark, who was standing at her side with his own sword held at the ready. "Whatever you choose to do, Lady Inquisitor. I'm at your side," he said.

Bloody Pathless and his burning, idiotic servants! DuFont flourished her Crescian blade and focused.

Authority Accessed.

Welcome, Lady Eliza DuFont.

What Song Do You Wish To Sing?

The Song of War.

"I choose victory," she snarled as her hand moved of its own accord. The sword stabbed the air and summoned a complex array from nothing.

"Attack! Do not spare her!" Heuthorn shouted. "Diurnal Barrage!"

A tight volley of light and fire Mana came at Eliza, but it was stopped wholesale by the glimmering array she had somehow summoned. With a flick of her sword, the array ignited into a blazing inferno, and an overpowering force crashed against her enemies. The Initiates were bowled over, swords torn from hands, while the Inquisitor barely kept his feet.

"What have you done!" Heuthorn howled. "This—this is Sorcery!"

"No," DuFont grinned, marveling at the power that thrummed through her channels. It spread into her core, as light and powerful as a springtime gale. "This is Authority, and you are no longer welcome in my Territory."

Select Targets For Expulsion From Territory?

"Yes." Eliza DuFont bared her teeth as the unrelenting force—the Song—dropped Heuthorn to his knees. His armor creaked as if a giant were slowly crushing him, and blood dribbled from the man's horrified eyes and ears. "And one more thing."

It was time to take her city back.

"Pathless' blessed light," one of the mages gasped. He would have fallen to his knees were it not for Lars' strong grip.

"On your feet. We got movin' to do," the archer muttered.

Mervin couldn't help but sympathize. They had escaped the calamity below the earth—with less than ten of them, all told—only to find new, ungodly threats ready to kill them all. New monsters ran amok in Haarwatch. Just a few at first, but the numbers steadily grew as the Guilders flitted from house to house in an attempt to reach the Wall again. Surely the defenders would have answers.

What they found was a massacre.

The Wall had been overrun, and parts of it were on fire. Blazing, violet flares of clearly magical fire lit large swathes of the structure, and according to Piotr, the red-gold glow of it had dimmed for the first time ever.

"Here! Survivors!" Someone on the Wall was shouting down at them. Mervin let loose his Perception and pinpointed them immediately, four stories up and leaning out of one of the Wall's many hidden windows. "More monsters on the way! Run! Get up here!"

His team didn't have to be told twice. Mervin and his crew sped for the access stairs, taking two or three at a time. The higher up they got, however, the more Mervin grew concerned. He could hear screaming from the other side of the Wall, monstrous ones as well as what sounded like Guilders. The interior shone with the same weak, red-gold light as the outside.

"What is going on? How'd this happen?" Piotr asked, his voice rasping. The man had been in rough shape ever since something had killed all the Revenants. They'd encountered quite a few of the desiccated corpses on their blind flight from the sewers, and he looked much the same. He'd lost muscle mass and fat, but he stubbornly refused to rest.

"Blind gods, man! What happened to you?" a Tin Rank exclaimed, but her Iron Rank superior stepped in.

"Wall failed at least partially. Monsters are surging from the Foglands faster than we can put them down, and without the Wall's protections—"

"They're bleedin' climbin'!"

The Tin Rank was pointing out of the other side of the ancient, orichalcum artifact, were several one way windows let them view the approach. What looked like thousands of low leveled white-furred monkeys had swarmed out, each roughly the size of a Human. And behind them came skittering creatures with iridescent green-blue carapace.

"Those're Wretches," Garin exclaimed, his eyes nearly bugging from his head. "They're back!"

"How? We never see two monster groups intermingle like this," Piotr rasped, speaking over the Iron Rank. Slowly their group had gathered the other Guilders closer to them, as if desperate for new information. All of them quivered with fear and uncertainty.

"Where's Elder Teine?" the Iron Rank asked.

"Gone," a Tin Rank mage responded. She was white as a sheet.

Gasps ran through the Guilders, but Mervin paid them no attention. Instead, he focused on the warning that was screaming through his head. Sentinel's Regard squealed, a hot sensation between his brows.

"Something bad is coming," Mervin said. "The earth...it's shaking."

Sentinel's Regard is level 34!

The Wall shuddered. Then the sound of an immense impact struck the side of the Wall, and Guilders screamed. Violet fire surged down the narrow hallways, but an Iron Rank mage raised a shield of hardened air, diverting the flames. The red-gold shine within the Wall flickered and died, plunging them all into semi-darkness.

"What happened!?"

"The sigils are inert! The Wall is down!"

A blue box appeared before their eyes as that high pitch noise continued through Mervin's ears.

Warning!

All Defenses Are Being Deactivated And Rerouted!

"No," Mervin gasped.

Beyond the treeline, the insectoid Wretches let out piercing, distorted screeches. The monkeys and insects charged, as one.

All Defenses Deactivated And Rerouted.

Heuthorn was curled on the ground, immobile but conscious, and he gasped like a dying fish. "What...what have you...done..?"

"What I must," Eliza said with a grin. She held it, despite the fact that her Authority somehow let her hear what was happening at the Wall. Desperate screams echoed impossibly across the distance of Haarwatch for her ears alone, but she pushed them aside. She focused on what she had to do.

No one could Challenge her Authority if they were too busy fighting another monster horde. She stripped the Wall of its damaged protections and rerouted the Mana to her, the Authority providing a basic understanding of the vast, hidden systems beneath the city. It was astounding.

The mansion began to rumble.

Mana Reserves Have Been Rerouted Completely.

Sing the Song of Siege. She had been flicking through her options while the Inquisitor had writhed along the floor. She had growing grasp of it now.

Song of Siege, Activating.

All around the Sunrise Quarter, the lines that traced out its well-tended walls began to tremble. She could sense that the few Acolytes nearby ran in alarm as something massive lifted from beneath the earth. Masonry and wrought iron crumbled and fell, the walls raised up higher than ever before falling into clouds of dusty debris. In their place, new shimmering walls of smooth, red-gold metal formed a single, solid barrier. No doors or windows or even defensive parapets existed along its length. It was smooth, steep, and charged with all the deadly defenses DuFont could access.

The Sunset Quarter was cut off entirely from the rest of the city, from mountain to mountain. Eliza laughed so hard she cried.

"Lady Inquisitor?" Klark asked, carefully.

Eliza dabbed at her eyes, but the mirth kept spilling out. "I'm fine, Klark. Truly, for the first time." She stepped forward, maintaining eye contact with a feebly struggling Heuthorn and all his precious lackeys.

"You cannot...kill me...you cannot...imprison me," the old Inquisitor gasped, barely holding onto consciousness. "The Order would...fall upon you...The hammer...of justice."

"The wolf need not fear the rabbit," DuFont said to him, and relished the fear in the old man's eyes as her sword cut off his head.

"I've found my destiny," she whispered. She turned to Klark, who had turned a bit pale. "Dispose of them. All of them."

"They do our work for us, brothers!" cried the venomous green Arcid, her skeletal neck turned to the skies. Violet fires had erupted along the western edge, and the sounds of battle rode the breeze. She was hunched over in pain, atop the stepped hills of city center. Her metallic flesh was battered and charred, but she was whole.

The rounded one, also charred, laughed. It's voice rattled as if something had come loose in its chest. "Our Father's Marked beasts have come, finally. The Bloodmoon is nigh! Number 55118! Let loose the signal!"

The umber-hued Arcid grunted and lifted unmarred his arms. His eye-fires were bright and merry as a bolt of yellow-red, inverted Mana shot into the sky above them.

A thunderclap shook the air as the power pushed at the ever-present cloud cover, making spacing for a single and gargantuan sigil. Yellow-red power sparked and scalded the air, tracing out the convoluted and eye-searing form that anyone within leagues would be able to see clearly.

Distantly, a noise began. It faded, then began again. And again. A dark cloud roiled to the west, low and racing for the mortal city. The skeletal Arcid laughed and threw it's arms wide.

"Let it begin!"

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