Chapter One Hundred and Fifty Seven - 157
The Bishops of Hunger, each around the same size as a Knight, loped from the shadows. Their prehensile limbs, seemingly boneless appendages, arced behind them like a handful of scorpion stingers while they ran on all fours. Even their hands were strangely shaped, tipped with yellowed claws that tored into the stone tunnel without issue.
"Felix! On me!" Harn shouted.
Convergence!
Pit appeared in a flash of light nearby. "Pit! Stay out of their range and pummel them with everything you got!"
"Chirrrupp!"
"Felix!" Harn was already running.
Unfettered Volition!
The Bishops had halved the distance between their group, but they were ready for them. Sparkbolts blasted into the lead Bishop's mouth, causing it's to snap it closed in pain. A cobalt blast stabbed into the other, but it was deflected by the heavy scales along the creature's shoulders. The same was true of a series of Frost Spears, each of them shattering ineffectually on the Bishop's hide.
Stone Shaping!
Felix grunted as he lifted two ten foot tall slabs of stone from the ground fifteen feet ahead of the monstrosities. Three feet thick each, he figured it would at least give them a little extra time to attack. Yet the Bishops sped up, and with a snarling roar both of them crashed through the barriers, tearing them to pieces in the process.
And dropping right into the trench Felix had formed.
The first Bishop roared as it fell, impacting the earth forty feet below, but the second nimbly grabbed onto the sides with it's flexible stingers. The bone spurs punched into the stone and it leveraged it's wide bulk out of danger. Within moments, it's blind, gaping jaws were on the other side of the trench. Just in time to feel the hit of Harn's axes.
The man struck with the steady beat of a metronome, hit after hit, paced between the beast's furious counterattacks. Bloody lines appeared on the Bishop's scaled hide, though they began to heal before much damage could be inflicted.
Time to change that.
Influence of the Wisp!
Wrack and Ruin!
Wrack and Ruin!
A Bishop of Hunger is Enthralled for 2 Seconds!
Blue wisplight wreathed the Bishop in punitive flames and it came to a lurching stop. Two seconds was time enough for Felix to summon twin orbs of dark acid. He hurled them straight forward; with the enemy locked in place, aiming was far simpler. The orbs hit the Bishop with the crack of a baseball beaning a man at ninety miles and hour, while the smell of sizzling putrescence filled the air.
Influence of the Wisp is level 36!
Wrack and Ruin is level 35!
"That's disgustin'," Harn said. He pivoted and summoned silver flames onto his axes before bringing both of them down on the creature's shoulder. They bit deep, unleashing a fountain of dark ichor that splashed over the warrior. "BLECH!"
"Ha," Felix managed, sliding beneath the suddenly flailing limbs of the unfrozen Bishop. The creature wasn't so easy to fool; the eight stingers he counted all moved in opposing directions, striking almost randomly around itself as Felix attempted to dodge. But it wasn't random; each hit maneuvered Felix, positioning him for a final blow. Almost passed it, he faltered and two bone spurs struck him full on in the chest. He was slammed backward, only barely able to turn his headlong fall into a backwards tumble due to Unfettered Volition.
Still, the force of the blow sent him nearly forty feet away before he could fight back against the momentum. And in that time, everything went wrong.
A flurry of Sparkbolts and kinetic blasts hit the beast, but it simply waded through the attacks. Three of its tendrils warded off the furious Harn, taking the man's slashes without flinching. It's Tier Two resilience was in evidence as its wounds continuously healed. The Bishop, hurt but still fighting, had engaged with Harn, Vess, and Evie. The two women harried the beast with spear and chain, each taking on one of it's tendrils while the bulk of the creature fought against Harn. But the Bishop could use it's tendrils completely independently of each other, and they hadn't realized it yet.
Evie spun her chain about in a complicated series of whorls, each pass adding momentum to her deadly chain, and the Bishop's tendrils crept back under that onslaught. Felix started running. From his angle, he could see it. It wasn't retreating from her, it was luring her in.
"Watch out!"
The words had barely left his mouth when another tendril lashed out; coiled upon its tall back, it would have been all but invisible from up close. The strike hit true, smashing into Evie's left hip hard enough to be mistaken for a gunshot.
Evie screamed.
"No!" Vess was there as Evie collasped under the pain, the damaged joint no longer able to bear her weight. A spinning slash severed the tendril just behind the bone spur stinger, and the creature shrieked in pain. "Evie!"
Stone Shaping!
Shadow Whip!
"Pull her back!" Felix accelerated as much as he could, and his powerful stride ate up the distance in seconds. He threw his arm up, the Mana pattern coming instantly to mind, and ripped up a squared section of stone beneath the Bishop's right foreleg. Suddenly, the creature was off balance. So he conjured a dark whip of shadow and lashed it to the damn thing's hindleg.
Reign of Vellus!
"HUAAH!" With a mighty heave, Felix sent out a pulse of crackling kinetic Mana, picking up the monster's belly as he yanked upon its back leg. Like a felled tree, the Bishop teetered just a moment on the cusp while its tendrils went wild.
Influence of the Wisp!
A Bishop of Hunger is Enthralled for 2 Seconds!
Unable to move, it fell. Hard.
"Take it down!" Harn shouted moments before he carved into the immobile beast. "Everything you got!"
Fire, lightning, force, and a deluge of Frost Spears slammed into the Enthralled Bishop. Felix watched it's Health dwindle to near nothing, hovering just a hair above ten percent, when someone shouted.
"Pierce the Sky!"
Vess soared into the air, passing by a crowing Pit at her zenith, before she shouted again. Her hair whipped around her face like dark flame and six other spears manifested around her. "Dragon's Descent!"
Like a meteor, the future Dragoon dropped spear first upon the Primordial-Spawn, just moments before the Enthrall ended.
*KATHOOM!*
The sound was like thunder, and it shattered the stone beneath. Felix looked on in awe, all seven spears left embedded deep within the monster's side and a deep, dark ichor gushed from every wound.
You Have Killed A Bishop of Hunger!
XP Earned!
"Twin's t-teeth," Evie said. Felix belatedly noticed she had been propped up against a large boulder nearby. "Think sh-she's mad?"
Felix looked for someone to help, but Harn had moved toward the trench Felix had made earlier. "Evie, don't talk, save your strength," Felix began, but the girl gave him an annoyed look.
"Wh-what, you think this is--is your dumb wor-wor-- your dumb home?" She laboriously reached into her side pouch and pulled out a minor Health Potion. "I'll be ri-right as rain soon."
"Your home?"
Felix turned and saw Alister standing nearby, having had approached with another potion in his hand. His raw, reddened brows furrowed and his mouth pinched. "What does she mean?"
"Not really the time," Felix said as he clenched his jaw. He looked worriedly back at Evie, but the girl was carefully slugging back two potions at once. It wouldn't heal her much, and it certainly wouldn't heal a shattered hip, but it would help. "Harn, are you--
"Harn!"
A tendril whipped out of the trench and slammed the warrior off his feet. As with Felix before, Harn was hurled bodily into the tunnel walls, but failed to stop himself in time. He hit with an explosion of stone and dust.
Through that dust, the second Bishop charged.
It erupted from the stone ground, as if the thing had half burrowed out of the trench he'd made. It's powerful legs sent it surging toward them all while its nine tendrils unfurled from it's broad, lumpy back. Waves of fire and pillars of blue light dropped down upon it, but it hardly slowed. In seconds, the Bishop had closed the distance, drawing level with its dead compatriot and sending both Atar and Alister to the ground. It hadn't even bothered to use the bone spur on the end, intead used the broadside in a casual swipe of three tendrils.
"Seven Tribulations!"
Vess leaped at Felix, dragging the both of them down to the ground. The seven silver spears, still embedded in the corpse of the first Bishop, exploded in a torrent of white Mana vapor. The second Bishop took the detonation straight to its side and lost it's footing. It careened like a runaway dumptruck, out of his line of sight, crashing with a deafening roar.
Deafening, had his hearing not gone already.
Sound was muted and a sharp, tinny ring took its place in Felix's ears. Vess laid only a foot away, and the way her head lolled she was unconscious. Evie was near by, her eyes similarly closed. A few confused seconds went by as he stared at them both, not quite sure why he was on the ground and why they were just lying there. Then his Endurance and Vitality caught up with him, and the blinking icons he hadn't noticed flickered and disappeared. Sound returned in a rush, and his thoughts were no longer muddy and confused.
Quickly, he Eyed the both of them. Their Health was low, but not dropping any further. "Atar," he recalled, turning around.
"Jesus."
The area around the first Bishop's corpse had been obliterated, as if Felix had scooped it out with Stone Shaping. Rocks shifted and clattered nearby, debris from the blast probably.
"What level is that Skill?"
From the corner of his eye, Felix caught sight of Atar and Alister. They weren't out and had been knocked further from the blast than Felix had been. But both men looked hurt badly, and his Eye confirmed that they were hovering around twenty percent Health...and Atar's Health was dropping.
Not good. Pit? Pit where are you?
More rubble shifted, and his hearing, so recently restored, was consumed by a terrible, high pitched droning.
Felix grit his teeth against the sensation even as it attacked his center of balance and made his core fire flicker wildly. It felt as if it would go out. Snuffed like a match.
To his left, Atar and Alister dropped off, like puppets with their strings cut.
What is...this?
It felt familiar.
That was his last thought before the sound became everything.
Felix drifted.
Smell, strangely enough, returned at first. An acrid stink that just about pierced his brain. A musk heavily underscored by a familiar putrescence. Sound came next, following closely by memory. The ringing! Dissonance! A familiar tone was a favored technique of the Maw...he could hear it still, pulsing in his bones, emitting from somewhere close by.
As touch and sight returned in equal measure, Felix held himself as still as possible, hoping he had not given up that he was awake. Cracking his eyes the smallest amount, he found himself swinging from the flexible grip of the Bishop of Hunger. It had two of its tendrils wrapped about his legs and, he was happy to see, was struggling just a little bit with his weight. Peeking just a bit more, Felix could make out his friends dangling from the Bishop's other limbs. All accounted for, except...
PIT!
A heat that had been muted all this time flared to sudden life. Sense-impressions floated over to him, as if from a great distance.
Felix.
Pit are--where are you?
Near. The bond was his Companion, there was no doubt about that, but he did not feel nearby.
Okay. Be--be ready. I have no idea what we're gonna do here. The Bishop dipped, and Felix went swinging farther than before. The damn thing was limping.
Vess really fucked you up, huh? Voracious Eye confirmed it. The Bishop was sitting just a little over half its Health, though it was regenerating steadily. Bad luck we couldn't finish the job.
That droning intensified, as if offended by his thoughts. But that was crazy, even for this place. Right?
Felix winced. Light poured into the tunnel; real light and not the glowing forms of his Manasight. The sound of shifting stone and dirt was steadily replaced by grunts and roars, and the putrid animal stench grew to cataclysmic levels. They stepped out of the tunnel and the rocks broke to powder beneath the Bishop's feet. Felix's stomach clenched with fear.
Before him was spread a horde of Primordial-Spawn.
Exploration is level 28!
All of them, all types. The Spawn, Knights, Razortails, and Revenants spread as far as he could see. The Bishop was taller than most, so that vantage was considerable. Just as in the memory, they appeared to be on an island in the midst of a sizable body of water. They were elevated too, the tunnel having come out near the summit of a low crag on the island.
The monsters were all bellowing and roaring, shouting bestial challenges to one another as they jockeyed for position in the dust. A platform sat in the very center of the island, a huge rounded plinth the size of a two story building set amidst the crag. None of them dared approach the platform.
Of course, the Bishop carried them directly to it.
The stone of this cliff was just as white and insubstantial as the rest of the island, as if a single puff of wind would blow it all away. Yet the Bishop's clawed feet thudded dully against the bare stone as it ascended. Precise, angular steps meant for the tread of someone much smaller were cut into the cliff. They led in a spiralling curve up to the top of the platform.
Did the Domain make this? It wasn't anything like the ruined keep, and Harn had mentioned that as being a staple of the Domain, something the pocket dimension manifested directly. It didn't fit the...theme of things, he supposed.
They reached the top in short order, and Felix glimpsed a massive hole bored into the cylindrical platform, the hole that he feared held the Ravager King. But more frightening than the fact that they were above the cave of an immense and powerful monstrosity were the lights. The top of the platform was covered, absolutely covered, in twisted arrays.
And among those arrays were people.
Oh no, the worshippers. At least thirty people in various states of corruption were held down around that gaping hole. He could pick out enough faces to recognize them from the religious rally. Those that had been there the longest were already covered in a fine mesh of rust-red scales, while those who must have been sent in recently were merely covered in a flaking rash.
The arrays between them all were of considerable concern, though. Having grown used to the droning dissonance given off by the Bishop (for who else could have done so?), and after spending considerable amount of time studying the twisted sigils in the tunnel it barely hurt him. It merely felt like his brain was being squeezed, as opposed to being stabbed.
The platform was covered in blazing lines scored into the stone, and each one pumped like blood vessels. Felix could almost taste the power being funnelled into the hole, a cascade of Mana being sucked up like a massive whirlpool. To his Manavision, it was a blinding maelstrom of rainbow energies being devoured by a black hole.
"You return, a twin no longer. Where is your brother dear?" A cold, metallic voice echoed through the thin air. Felix, still hanging, tried his very best to appear unconscious. "You fear them?"
It's strange, sing-songy voice sent upsetting shivers down Felix's spine. It's voice was both robotic and possessed of some dire malignancy. The clomp of heavy boots grew louder, until he felt something nearby. A chill presence, like ice to his advanced senses.
"Set them down, you oaf. Here and here. Line them, just like so, ah yes," the voice continued. Felix felt himself lowered roughly, until his head cracked into the stone ground. It took an effort of Will, but he was able to keep up his act.
Deception is level 17!
Felix could sense the others nearby, though the sigils were interfering with his Perception. Bindings of stone laced with shimmering gold metal reach across them all, securing their legs, waist, chest, arms, and necks. Leaving just enough space to continue breathing and pivot his head, were he to do so. He kept his eyes closed and listened.
"Were they strong, my Bishop? Surely they must have been, to have bested your brother." It's voice slide fluidly between manic and dispassionate, but always it had that lo-fi robotic buzz to it.
The Bishop that had carried them groaned, as if in pain or...sadness?
"Shut it, cretin. Haha! It's not the look, but what lies within!" A crunch of gravel and a soft, whirring click. "These are they that killed my Larval child. Grown, she was, from the smallest of grubs found in this Domain. Fed upon ichor and significance until she had become a true terror.
"Fed by the very sigils that mark your soul, Bishop of mine. Were the soul to exist, of course. Of course. Mother would have known, Mother....
"I'll know how they did it! I'll know, so that it may never happen again."
The voice faded and the clomping resumed, as if they were walking away from Felix. Distantly, he heard it bending over and risked a peak. Cracking open his eye for just a moment, Felix beheld a wonder.
A fully metallic man, perhaps five foot six inches tall, its body an archaic suit of armor that was covered in a network of lines and sigils. A massive, convoluted array was inscribed into the metal. Lines of liquid fire that shimmered around it's body, following the curves of its armored limbs. Most upsetting of all was that Felix recognized who it was. Or rather, what it was.
An Arcid. A servant of the Archon.
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