Chapter Three Hundred And Forty Two – 342
"You cannot be serious!" Vess hissed at the man, trying and failing to keep her voice down. The silence was so leaden even an Untempered could have heard a pin drop down the street. "Here? Now?"
"When else?" the Hand replied, his gaze never once leaving Felix's own. "What say you, Fiend?"
Felix only frowned, but his eyes were unblinking as well. "And this will solve it? Put all our grievances to rest?"
"It will satisfy my honor, Autarch," the big man said in his smooth baritone voice.
That's...really stupid. But what else did I expect? "Yeah. Okay." Felix rolled his shoulders. "Duel it up, then."
"Men," Vess hissed in frustration.
The crowd burst into frenzied whispers, quiet enough but not to someone with a few Tempers under their belt. It was more like a tide of sibilant susurrations; distracting at best. The Spirit of the crowd, however, was an entirely different beast. It blared, a great horn for those with the proper ears to listen, and that clawed at his balance like nothing else. He could feel the Legion watching, along with the Giants and Henaari, and among them Zara. She pursed her lips in annoyance, but didn't interfere. For that he was thankful.
Felix shut it all off as his friends cleared the market-turned-air dock, returning it to its first use: an arena of battle. He stretched his arms, always a good choice even when you have supernatural Agility and Endurance, and took to the center of the cleared space. The Hand followed after. He was still wearing his fancy armor and cape, and the massive sword hung in its sheath along his back.
"You accepted far faster than I expected, Fiend."
Felix shrugged. "You said this would end our beef. That's good enough for me. You sure you want to go through with this though?" Felix let his eyes flick to either side of them. "Last chance to back out. We can talk this over if you really want to resolve the whole Vess abandoning you thing"
"Enough," the Hand growled. He pulled free his giant greatsword and the thing just about pealed like a bell in his hand, high and clear. "I'll only be satisfied with your blood on my blade, boy. That will end our beef."
"Fine," Felix said, before raising his fists in a defensive position. "Let's get it over with."
Zara and Harn followed them out into the center. She raised her hands to the crowd and the whispers fell silent. "A duel under the auspices of Oath and Blood has been proposed and accepted! These two will fight until one can no longer continue, or until surrender. Killing is forbidden, but all else is acceptable." She fixed them both with her ice blue gaze. "Do you understand the terms?"
"I understand and welcome them," the Hand intoned.
"Yeah," Felix said. "Harn? What're you doing here?"
"I'm here to interfere in case things get heated," he grunted. "Keep the strikes clean and we won't have a problem."
"You question my honor, Onslaught?" The Hand gripped his heavy blade so tightly it groaned. "You dare think I'll kill your little protg?"
"I'm not here to stop you," Harn shot back. The Hand frowned.
"Gentlemen. Let us get this over with," Zara said. "Begin!"
The Hand lashed out with a big, booted foot, hitting Felix square in his chest. He took the blow head-on without flinching, sliding back thirty feet before halting himself, which was more than enough time for the Hand to unsheathe his immense sword and imbue it with a brilliant flow of white-green Mana.
"Windblade!"
Similar to Pit's attack, a crescent of compressed air Mana tore through the intervening space. It tore up the earth, leaving a trail of dust in its wake, and while it was too slow to hit Felix it did obscure the Hand's location. Only for a moment, but that was all he needed.
"Wind Drake's Fall!"
The crowd screamed. From above, a mesh of white-green Mana lashed downward at lightning-fast speeds. It hit the earth, slicing straight through stone and hurling even more dust into the sky, coiling it together into a dust devil beneath the mid-morning light. Felix grunted, enmeshed in it all; he funneled his power and Intent through his core.
Sovereign of Flesh!
Felix's body grew, muscles snapping across his frame as he grew to twice his former size. He slammed his clawed hands together with all of his monstrous strength, and the storm of dust and wind was ripped apart. He glared upward, directly into the startled face of the Hand, standing atop a platform of swirling wind.
"Monster," he whispered.
Felix only grinned, bearing his fangs. He exploded upward, shattering the lacerated earth beneath him. The Hand flinched backward, lifting his slab of steel in a low guard, clearly designed to fight against a rising enemy.
Cardinal Flame!
Red-gold flame exploded from his the Mana Gate at the base of his skull...and through his open mouth. The Hand howled, his sword turned white-hot in the instant before Felix impacted him like a runaway train. The sword bent, but it took the brunt of Felix's charge and instead sent the Hand flying up into the air even further. He careened, grasping at his odd movement Skill until he came to a stuttering halt near the ground once again.
Adamant Discord.
Lightning lashed about himself as Felix pulled toward in two directions at once; the sky and the earth. The result was a slow descent to the ground while blue-white electricity coursed about his chest and limbs.
"Very flashy," the Hand said with a sneer. "But you've not managed to harm me in the slightest, yet."
Felix noticed that the man had to look up at him now, which was more than a little satisfying, if petty. "Do you see any scratches on me?"
The Hand growled and sent a wave of white-green Mana coursing into his blade, straightening it and cooling it at the same time. "I've given you pause. I can feel the fear in you, Fiend. At best, you've dented my weapon. Surely this isn't all the vaunted Fiend is capable of...is it?"
Felix only grinned, and waited.
"I'l start with skinning that ebon hide from your back!" The Hand burst forward, pushed along by a clever use of air Mana and his own powerful Strength. He closed the distance in a blink and his slab of sword came up, a flickering slash meant to split him in two.
Relentless Resolution!
Felix danced away, just barely avoiding the slashing storm of Reed's attack. The blade's reach was enormous, keeping him at bay without offering any opening to slip into the Hand's guard, but Felix didn't care. His Agility and the movement offered to him by his evolved Relentless Resolution were more than enough to keep ahead of his opponent's attacks. The Hand's substantial Endurance would flag eventually, and when it did...
"Why? Why are you so angry?" Felix asked.
"Hold still!" Reed gasped, brandishing his blade ever faster. "This is combat to prove our honor! The both of us! Take! This! Seriously!"
"Fine." Felix was dodging strike after strike, but suddenly stopped and ducked low. "As you wish."
Mantle of the Infinite Revolution!
Rime Shaping!
Felix surged upward from beneath the man's guard, while ice and cold spun off his form like fog and hail, impacting Reed with the force of a blizzard held in Felix's grasp. The Hand blocked the blow with his sword, as Felix had expected him to do, and the intense cold hit the tortured metal instead. Frost formed across its surface as it was supercooled, just as Felix followed through with a secondary blow.
The sword shattered.
And the Hand was thrown bodily into the sky.
Felix watched the man soar upward, limp with unconsciousness, and felt only annoyance. He wasn't hurt after facing the Adept Tier warrior, not even slightly winded from the exertion. It had felt like beating up a child, almost. He frowned; he disliked the feeling. It was only saved by the fact that the Hand had been able to fight back...it just hadn't amounted to much at all.
Reed's body fell, rocketing back to the earth like a meteorite. Shaking off his annoyance and slight guilt, Felix raised his left hand to catch him in a net of Adamant Discord but was preempted. Aquamarine Mana vapor coiled about his falling form, slowing down his descent until the Hand was floating leisurely to the ground. Yet Zara did not even glance at the representative from Pax'Vrell. Instead, her eyes never left Felix.
He nodded at her. he signed.
She only blinked before walking off, Reed's floating body in tow.
Silence seized the crowd, and Felix leveled his gaze all around him. He could feel it blaze, crackling with blue lightning. "This is over. Go."
None protested. In seconds, the marketplace-turned-arena had transmogrified back into a silent field of dusty stone.
Later, Felix watched the sun sink closer and closer to the western mountains, small as they were. As early as it was in autumn, the light was still warm and plentiful, though he'd felt an occasional chill in the breeze. A harbinger of things to come.
He had let his friends do their jobs, leading the various groups to their assigned housing. Felix had made sure to build enough housing, crude as his workings often were; the Henaari were good with making things more homey, at least. With Vess and the Synod's help, he'd even done some rudimentary city-planning. All the stone and wooden houses now made proper streets and pathways throughout his Stronghold.
So now everyone was settling in or doing one of the myriad jobs their settlement required. From hunting to gathering and planting in his underground Garden, a facet of his Stronghold he had not spent much time within. Quests were still being accomplished, the standing order of materials and information feeding back into his Resource menus. Aside from his repeated failures with alchemy, things were looking good. Not "stand up to a foreign invasion" good, but decent enough.
Meanwhile, Felix had retreated from everyone else. After that little showing, he had felt the fear spinning untamed in the people's Spirits. Fear of him. It wasn't a new sensation, but it made him uncomfortable every time; even if it was well-deserved. He looked at his handsfully human ones nowand at his unmarked Garment. It had torn when the Hand had attacked him with those blades of air Mana, but the thing had repaired itself quickly. Now he wore a long-sleeved tunic with an asymmetrical collar he could prop up against the wind. He might not be affected by the cold, but he could still feel it in a sense, and he was a Florida boy. Cold wasn't his favorite. But the Garment and his skin beneath, they were leagues above where he had been only a few short months before...he'd beaten the Hand! That felt a little unreal, considering how long he'd worried about that guy gutting him for giving Vess the wrong sorta look.
But now what? Would the man be fine after he woke? Or would he rage about the loss? Felix hadn't a firm enough grasp on the Hand's personality to tell, and Vess had disappeared with all the newcomers so he hadn't been able to ask. He knew he should go and track Zara down, confront her about the Mark she'd left on him, or ask what the Cantus Sodalus was, or any number of responsible, leader-type things. Instead, he sat silent atop the Temple cliffclose enough to the waterfall to feel its light spray and far enough to not be entirely embroiled in its thundering cacophony. Curiously, as his Perception advanced it grew not only more sensitive but more exactly and malleable. He could, if he wished, block out the noise of the waterfall entirely and focus on the other sounds around himself. Felix had played with that aspect of his stats in the past, but as the hours passed into late afternoon, he simply sat there. Taking it all in.
He still heard the footsteps behind him, of course. He wasn't deaf.
"You're lookin' right sad," said a sharp, familiar voice. Felix turned, truly surprised.
"Rafny? I didn't know you were coming too."
A dark-haired Dwarf stood several strides away, arms akimbo. "One of us had to, you big lug. Establishing a Stronghold and a Forge and you didn't tell us? Elle was in fits, I can tell you." She peered at his face. "You don't look much like a monster."
Felix laughed. "That's just my....battleform. No, I'm not calling it that." He waved his hand. "Uh, my transformation. I can't keep it going too long. Burns up a lot of energy."
"Naw, not what I mean. Though that bulk is somethin' impressive, for sure," she said, walking closer and peering uncomfortably at the cliff's edge. "Everyone down there is hootin' and hollerin' about the Fiend. The Fiend and the Night Of A Thousand Lights. The Fiend and the Endless Fog. The Fiend and the Ice Witch. The stories they tell..." she chuckled nervously before backing from the drop. "They paint you up a great deal. The Ferocious Fiend."
Felix hadn't heard any of those stories before, but he could probably guess the contents of most of them. He shook his head. "I'm just me. Been through a bit, but"
"You're more than that to them, I'd say," Rafny jerked her chin toward the ledge. "They're afraid of you."
Felix sighed. "I know. I try to counteract it, but everything I do just feeds the flames."
"Oh, you misjudge me," the Smith said. She tested her weight against a small boulder nearby, half-grown over by tufts of stringy weeds. "It's good. It's a solid thing, fear. Keeps them in line, especially those Frost Giants. That was a bit of a surprise." She laughed. "But they way they looked at you. Like a Primordial come alive."
"Hm," he said. "If I'm going to lead them in any capacity, I'd rather they respect me than fear me."
"Bah, respect is fear given time enough to hew off the edges. Let em sit in the fire a bit, soften em up before you take the hammer and shape em. Yeah?"
Felix laughed. "You've got a way with words. Anyone ever tell you that?"
Rafny grinned. "Not ever. So!" She clapped her hands loudly together. "You gonna show me that Forge, or what?"
"All this, so you could angle for access to my Forge?" Felix stood. "Shameless Dwarf."
"Fool Human," she shot back, eyeing the cliff uncertainly. "Stop playing on the edge of things. You make me nervous. I came up to see the Forge, and you. Figured I'd need your permission before I could get near the thing. The Alchemist is probably mustering the guts to do the same thing."
"Oh, nope. I mean, yes, but you can also ask Harn. He's the Forgemaster now," Felix said. "Wait, Alchemist? Aenea is here too?
"She and her husband took ship the moment Cal put out the word. Somethin' about a 'treasure trove of alchemical reagents' in the Foglands." Rafny raised an eyebrow. "And Harn's your Forgemaster? He and I should have words, then."
Felix closed his mouth, and quelled the rising excitement in his guts before gesturing ahead of himself. "I'll lead the way, then."
This 𝓬ontent is taken from f(r)eeweb(n)ovel.𝒄𝒐𝙢