Chapter One Hundred and Sixty Seven – 167
Two men argued below the earth, in the dank sewer network beneath Haarwatch. The larger shouted, red faced and sweating at the smaller, a slight figure with a silver goatee.
"-he holds us in the palm of his hand, Teine!" Elder Hyde growled. "The council has fallen and the guild lost its Charter! We're gutted, you skinny fool! Unless we take it back!"
"No," Teine said in a flat voice. He was leaning close to the Domain entrance and studying it, along with thirty or so Bronze Rank Guilders. All of them were frantically scratching sigils into the stone with shimmering styluses. "I think not."
"What?"
"You think I don't know about Katan's movements? We don't all think with our biceps, Hyde."
Hyde gaped only seconds before he began boiling. "Listen here you little shit--"
"No, you listen!" Teine turned and fixed the huge gorilla of a man with a pale stare. Hyde froze as if he'd held a naked dagger to his throat. "This Domain is on the cusp! The shell won't hold unless we fix it, and fix it now, you enormous baffoon. All of my work, all of--it is ready to burst. If it does, then it won't matter if the Guild was aflame right now. I have to stop this."
Hyde flinched and turned to stare at the Domain entrance in horror. The crevasse had cracked further and further open, now wide enough to drive a wagon through. "What have you done, Uldred?"
"Not nearly enough," the Elder of Spirit snapped. "Now leave me, unless you want to test my--"
Teine gasped, turned to the gelatinous entrance while holding a hand to his waist. "No. No no no!"
"What?" Hyde's face paled and he searched the entrance for a threat. "What?!"
"Run, run everyone!" Teine's pulled a strange contraption from his side, and Hyde saw that it practically blazed with a crimson light. "It's--it's coming!"
ERROR!
Domain Failure!
Countermeasures Deployed!
It was like falling into dark water.
He felt an immense relief as the edges of the Domain split around them, and Felix and the Ravager King plunged deep into the liminal Void. Script circles flared to life around them, dozens of them, hundreds, until it was like they were moving though a dark and limitless molasses. They fell in slow motion, each movement an eternity as the Ravager moved its tendrils in order to devour Felix.
Unlike his arrival, Felix was going down. Not that it mattered. There was no up or down in the Void.
There was Will, and there was death.
Behind him, Felix could feel the Ravager King's mountainous fanged jaws peel open, inch by inch, while its barbed whiskers shifted and tensed within him. Beyond that and beyond the burning light of the Domain's failing protocols, Felix felt the Ravager's power. It animated the eldritch flesh that crawled inside his arms and chest, power that was spreading into him like a poison. But Felix had experience with poisons, and burning away said poison was nothing more than a struggle of Will.
And Felix had Will for days.
Not even required to flex his Skill, the poisonous potency of the Ravager was swept up in Felix's channels. Like a rushing river, it was brought to his core, where a newly formed ring of blue-white fire rotated and crackled with ferocious lightning. Within that ring there was a dark space, a vacuum that sucked up the poisonous cloud of power in moments. Pain spiked through him, but that was nothing new. The Song of Absolution and Sovereign of Flesh all but cancelled the sensation out. Felix was aware that it hurt, but it didn't matter. Instead he focused on digesting the potency he felt crawling through his core, and to his surprise it was done almost instantly.
Awareness blossomed within Felix, and suddenly connections he hadn't been aware of were revealed to his Affinity. Falling in slow motion, he could sense the immensity of the Ravager behind him in all new ways. The power present in those tendrils that still pierced him could be tracked back, his Spirit following them as his Mind tore free secrets hidden in its flesh.
The Ravager King was dying.
Without the Maw, it was decaying from within. Its evolution and design had been so propped up by the Maw's Mind and traces of its Spirit that when Felix had stolen its essence there was little else to support the creature's ponderous Body. Now Felix was Primordial, at least in part, and he could clearly sense the few glimmering Profane Sigils that still marked the beast's mountainous Body. A network of arcane markings wove through the King's innards, much like the Queen's core, and they bore the self-same connection to the Domain itself. Felix could sense power pull inward, siphoned from the countermeasures around them, dimming their brilliance one by one while also empowering the King.
If the Ravager absorbed the script circles that slowed them, Felix would not survive a single second.
Yet at the sight of those sigils, that newest part of him resonated like a struck bell. A network of glowing threads, silver-colored and otherwise, erupted outward from them both, a ragged web of the Envoy's design. In a flash, he understood.
The Envoy's sigils, the ones he'd been placing in the city. They formed a connection that breached the walls of the Domain itself. But what was their purpose...?
The ringing bell inside him shook harder, practically vibrating his brain. He could sense notifications piling up but held off from pulling them up.
Listen, Pit whispered. Their Affinity, joined by their convergence, sang out to them both.
Echoes of what the Ravager could sense filtered through him as they fell through the Void. Connections to the Domain and what lay beyond, all flashing through Felix in the frozen instants they struggled against the dying pocket realm's final defenses. They overwhelmed his Perception, until all he could sense was the flurry of sense images from beyond.
An alien Intent seized him, and the Void disappeared.
Sensation snaked through the streets, from hidden markings in alleyways and atop buildings, twisted sigils that flared with yellow-red light. Felix's Spirit soared, carried on dark winds as he beheld a city aflame.
"Hold! Hold the line!"
Waves of Acolytes smashed into a line of barely armed defenders. It was only the efforts of a few trained warriors, Bodie, Kelgan, and Yan among them, who helped keep their defenses from collapsing.
"Torch squad, unleash your Light!" shouted an Initiate currently locking blades with the heavily muscled Bodie. She grunted in effort, clearly trying to keep his massive hammer locked up, but the man was too strong. "Now!"
All around her, the front line of their Acolytes suddenly dropped to a knee, disengaging with their opponents while those behind them thrust forward with their halberds. They raised their right hands.
"Walls! Walls! Ice and Earth!" Bodie yelled, and activated a Skill. "Strength of Ten!"
The man's muscles bulged, and quite abruptly the Initiate could no longer match him. Her blade was thrown up, out of position, and she took a massive impact against her breastplate.
The Initiate was thrown into her own ranks, fouling whatever casting they attempted, but there were plenty more Acolytes than that. Bodie hurled himself backward just as defensive Skills activated, stone and ice yanked up from the ground before their people. A salvo of brilliant lights followed closely after.
"Agh!"
"Chevrons! Chevrons! Push!" Yan screamed so hard a vein on his forehead was near to bursting. He ran among the inexperienced fighters, fighting off some of the more capable zealots. Here and there, the defensive formations shifted shape into rough, acute angles. Then with a rumble they lurched forward and bashed several Acolytes.
They were fighting for their lives. Felix could identify several Dusters, many of which he'd saved from form the Inquisition. What was happening?
Then, in the distance, he heard it.
The howling.
It took the fighters longer to sense the trouble, but Felix knew them well. He'd been fighting them for hours, after all.
Revenants stampeded down the street.
No...
The monsters came, ambushing both sides with tooth and claw. Screams of horror only just began to fill the air when the pull of wild Intent seized him, and he was gone.
A pair of Guilders facing down an Initiate were sideswiped by a deformed Revenant, only moments before a second one took down the Initiate. They died near instantly.
A shop overrun, once filled with arms and armor, now empty. Looted, it appeared, still crawling with opportunistic bandits trying to cart away entire stacks of smelted steel.
They never even saw their deaths, the Revenants too fast for the Untempered to track. They died before they even hit the street.
Street after street, Felix was pulled along the fitful connections within the Ravager King. He saw boots on the ground, red cloaks, and folk being pushed out of their homes. A great hue and cry was filling the quarters to the tune of "heretics!" Flitting between places like a spastic bird on the wing, Felix saw and smelled and heard much, most of which was angry shouts that soon turned to screams and desperate wailing.
The Revenants caught everyone off guard.
Acolytes were torn down as several streets were flooded with the creature, their armor and Tempered Bodies not enough to withstand their hungry ferocity. Guilders being pushed toward the Wall were beset by a half dozen Revenants, all of them dying before swords could be drawn. In fact, were it not for the uncontrollable appetites the Revenants displayed, they would have swept through the entire city, few as they were.
Onward, the surging connection pulled him.
"Ice Arrows!"
A wave of chill projectiles fell from the Wall. In moments, the sound of thick ice shattering and the pained caterwaul of monsters filled the air.
"Sparkbolts!"
Another set of missiles flew from the battlements, these shining bright as torches as they sped into the amassed monsters. The Sparkbolts lit up the area for a brief moment, revealing mottled hide and greasy fur. Analyze designated them as Shriekers, and they lived up to the name.
"What in the Trackless' black Night is going on out there?" Mervin Cors panted. They looked to be burning through their Mana fast. "It's like they've gone mad!"
The creatures, easily the size of Avum, were throwing themselves at their defenses as if they had no sense of survival. There were at least a hundred bunched against the wall, and more were coming out of the woods. For a moment, Mervin thought he spotted something armored out there, in the trees.
It was gone before he could get a better look.
"Doesn't matter! Suppressive fire!" A Bronze captain snarled. "Don't let up until they're gone!"
His Spirit shifted, yanked from the Wall and thrown deep into the earth again. The power was waning; the Ravager's connections grew dim and misty.
Something was wrong.
Felix tried to focus, but he had no control. Sightless, he fell through layers of dirt and stone, refuse and bone from cities before Haarwatch. His Spirit fell like an arrow, hurtling back toward the Domain.
A song waylaid him, diverting his path just enough to speed beside a woman with bright eyes, aquamarine hair, and ochre skin. She raced through the sewers atop a wave of water and refuse. Motes of song pursued her, harmonies that strung out behind her as haunting echoes.
She looked at him. Her hands and throat moved, a Chant forming on her tongue. "Hold fast to it, Felix."
Brilliant, aquamarine vapor gathered in her hands, and a series of blazing sigils cracked the flesh of her forehead and poured out behind her like a streamer.
"Hold fast!"
Then the song lost its grip on him, and Felix felt himself snap backwards.
Felix's Perception collapsed inwards fast enough to give him whiplash, but his advanced stats let the punishment result in nothing more than a half second of disorientation. More than that, his Mind felt raw and clear, a bleeding edge. Zara's words pushed at his Spirit, urging him to move. Without letting himself think, he acted.
Abyssal Skein!
The Domain's hold slipped from him as if he was coated in oil, and Felix let himself blaze with Willpower. Like lightning, he tore the Ravager's whiskers from its face before spinning and digging his talons into the abomination's snout.
"Betrayer!" it thundered, the Domain's countermeasures failing by the dozen now. Its wings trembled and its legs twitched, huge motions that broke more and more of the bright circles of sigaldry.
"Shut up!" Felix flipped himself up and over it's semi-truck sized snout, landing solidly between its bone-like horns. "She said hold on, Mini-Maw! So how about this!"
Shadow Whip!
Shadow Whip!
Dark tendrils of his own spat outward, wrapping around and latching onto the Ravager's horns. Felix gripped them tight, like a pair of reigns as a wall of shimmering darkness loomed below them. The edge of the Void.
The few remaining constructs around them shattered like glass, transparent and drained of power. Momentum, long held in stasis, rocketed outward.
But it was too late.
The Void shattered into blinding light.
The Manaship Stalwart hovered above the city of Haarwatch, a soaring reminder of the high price one must pay for taking the easy ways to power. Sorcery and dark guidance, terms that were anathema to the Pure Light of the Pathless, He Who Defied Ruin, the One Who Preserves by allowing Humanity to flourish on its own.
Master Inquisitor Katan stood tall upon the bridge of the Stalwart, looking through alchemically treated wood beneath his feet. As transparent as glass and as hard as stone, the wood was the perfect vantage through which to view his final victory over Haarwatch. Even from such heights, his powerful Perception allowed him to view the pitched battles and ruthless culling of those who had proven themselves far too willing to backslide into chaos.
Order was being restored.
Below, any and all heretics were being rounded up, while those Guild members not on the Wall were being shifted toward the Domain. After all, they were the city's first line of defense. A grim curve flitted about his lips.
Katan scanned once more for his Master Tier opponent, the Sorcerer. However, just as before, he could sense neither hide nor hair of her. He had searched for hours, and the failure twisted at his soul. It was as if she had vanished from the face of the Continent!
He briefly entertained the idea that she was one the Hierei were looking for...but no. Not even an Unbound would make it to Master Tier so soon.
He would have to keep looking. The summoned bastards couldn't hide from them forever.
"Master Inquisitor, sir! The seers are reporting--it's--" The Acolyte swallowed---Roderick, he recalled.
"Spit it out, man," Katan said, not bothering to look up from below.
"The Domain is falling, sir. Beasts have begun running amok."
"A shame," Katan glanced at the Acolyte and smirked. "Are our people out of the area?"
"Most, sir," Roderick said somewhat unsteadily.
Katan scowled. "Tsk. They were warned. Very well. Begin our ascent. Ready the cannon."
The man visibly calmed himself before saluting and stepping toward the pilot. Katan nodded, pleased at the Acolytes mental fortitude. He'll go far. Not nearly as weak-willed as that other one.One cannot chase strength through temerity.
Katan looked to the helmsman, an Inquisitor. "Helmsman, keep the hill in sight. We've got a city to save."
"Aye, Master Inquisitor."
The Mana engines thrummed alive, their steady hover traded for a reserve-eating climb. The ship rose another three hundred feet, well within range of their cannon but far enough away to avoid any desperate Skill discharge. Katan was not one to leave things to chance.
Far below, those pitched battles turned to terrified flight as more and more russet beasts emerged from the sewers and underbelly of the Eyrie. Like loping, humanoid wolves, the creatures were ghastly to see even from such a distance.
Katan raised a hand. "On my signal, unleash our Lord's Light."
"Aye, Master Inquisitor."
More and more of these creatures emerged, falling over one another in their haste. They chased down Guilders and other stragglers with a rabid ferocity that stirred the Inquisitor's blood. He felt a call to go and face such abominations...but he restrained himself. This was not the time, and the Manaship was far more efficient than one man, Master Tier or not.
"Fire at will, helmsman."
All long the side of the Stalwart a series of whirring chimes rang in tandem. A series of metallic cylinders shifted and turned downward as Acolytes rotated the control wheels, until they were facing directly down. The scripted cylinders shimmered with gathering Mana vapor, drawing from their reserves at a frightening pace. However, it was only a brief build up of Mana, one that strained at his enhanced senses before all of it discharged with a low chooouuff.
*BWWWWUUUUUUMMMM*
Beneath them, the hill leading up the Eyrie evaporated. A cloud of fire climbed up into the sky, the concentrated Manashot providing such ample incendiary that the air itself threatened to burn.
"Again," Katan ordered.
*BWWWWUUUMMM*
Another hit, another blooming cloud of incandescent power. Katan felt a strange, nervous flutter begin in his chest and climb it's way onto his face, until a smile teased at his lips.
"Come around, helmsman," Katan ordered, the smile just about breaking through his stoic regard. "There's more monsters in the Dust Quarter. We have to save this city."
The sky rumbled, like distant thunder.
Katan looked out the starboard windows. The sky was darkening toward night, but there were no clouds in sight. Yet the thunder persisted.
"Sir? I think--" One of his Initiates began to speak, but a resounding, cataclysmic crunch and crash shook them all. The Stalwart pitched to the side as the ambient Mana suddenly spiked and destabilized.
"All hands on deck! All hands on deck!"
He knew this Mana. It was the Sorcerer.
Khorun Katan leaned against the tilting deck and peered down through the transparent material. Brilliant, aquamarine sigils appeared briefly across the base of the Eyrie, symbols imbued with a dark talent to which the Inquisitor gave grudging respect. Stone and wood cracked and sundered beneath their influence, before a huge chunk of its facade simply detonated. A massive, unearthly bellow shook the air as the Guild tower was sheared through entirely.
An absolute monster burst free from the wreckage, sending mansions and towers tumbling off to the side as it was born into this world. It was a living mountain, as russet as the creatures below, but on a far grander scale. It was fast too, faster than anything the Master Inquisitor had seen before.
It was a Pathless cursed dragon.
The Initiates struggled with control over the Stalwart. Katan leaped over to grab the wheel and pull them into a desperate turn.
But it was too late.
A head bigger than their ship rushed up at them, with a fanged maw wide enough to swallow them whole.
"Pathless preserve us," Katan whispered, for fear he'd gone mad.
Because for a brief, terrifyingly absurd moment, he was certain there was someone riding it.
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