Chapter Three Hundred And Forty Six - 346
A ritual was needed.
Felix sat amid a wash of sigils and glyphs, all of them radiating around him in a spiraling array of confusing concepts. Sigils for Mind, Body, and Spirit were circled by dream, air, fire, water, and lightning, those circled by yet more in a formation of at least six different arrays.
"Whwhere did you learn this?" Atar asked the Naiad. Zara only grunted, scraping a strand of aquamarine Mana across the final section. "I don't even see how it functions...where is the input? The output?"
"I've learned many Skills in my years." Zara straightened with some effort. "To explain everything you do not know would take several lifetimes, child."
"Are you up for this?" Felix asked, cutting off Atar's angry retort. He was concerned for the woman despite everything Zara had hidden. "I can tell you've strained your Spirit, and your Body"
"You look like ten leagues of bad road," Evie said, hands on her hips.
Vess' face was serious, but Felix spotted a faint twitch on her lips. "I echo her concern, Zara. Should we not wait? Until you are in greater health."
"We cannot. Perhaps his link will persist, or perhaps it is degraded by the day. I have no way of knowing which." Zara wiped her brow, but her face was steady; resolved beyond any effort to dissuade. "We begin."
As instructed, Felix let himself drift down into his own core space, letting sound his Meditation, Deep Mind, and Bastion of Will. Zara had given him some bare directions for this process; he was to let his senses drift, searching his core space for the thread of connection that was the cause of his spate of unsettling dreams. For him, that meant utilizing his Bastion of Will, the fortress within him that was a world of its own and contained the impressions of several other Skills. Meditation, Deep Mind, and Relentless Resolution were each inscribed upon the five-sided tower in his Bastion, and as the fortress hummed to life each of them pulsed in sympathetic vibration.
Most important, however, was the silver lightning rod that stuck from the very top of that tower. It was looped with countless, colorful strands that arced down from the sky before returning again into that clear blue. Each of those strands were a connection that Felix had established in the world, one for every person, creature, and thing he had influenced in some way...and those that influenced him.
Felix strummed those threads, the mental projection of his fingers combing across them even as his Affinity sought out the one he needed. There were so many, it would take him an entire lifetime to even count half of them...and this was the amount after only a half year on the Continent. How much would this swell in the years to come? How would Felix be required to change by then?
Or...or could he actually go home? Could Zara truly send him back to Earth? To his family?
To see Mom? Or Gabby?
A strident call came from beneath his fingers as a dozen strands vibrated to raucous life, and Felix was scalded. He hissed, the pain overcoming his impressive resistances. He beheld ten threads, flush with opalescent hues, each singing at a pitch only slightly different from one another.
What was it? The thought of home? Of Earth?
The threads blazed with life again, though some far more than others. One, a light that was predominantly ebon-gold all but drowned out the others; its thread felt the thickest of all. The strongest. Yet when he reached for it, the light turned his hand away, like a wall separated them. Beside it, a thread of black-green and sandy-brown illumination threw wild shadows over the rest, and was the second-most robust of the connections.
Why?
Unwilling to waste time, Felix gripped the second thread. He found no resistance, and the moment he made contact he was ripped off into the distance. His Bastion faded into streaks of blues and greens, until he felt like he was bridging a vast divide between the here...and a place impossibly distant. Barriers of light came and went, shattering as he traversed them, breaking into tiny, razor-edged stars that sliced at his Will. Felix screamed, but he would not relent. He would hold!
All the world became a hurricane of light.
Until it stopped.
With a floundering quake, forward movement became a relentless quiescence, and Felix was abruptly aware of fine, red sand beneath his feet. Heat packed in around him, like a jar half-again too full with insufferable temperature, made all the worse by brilliant flare ups strong enough to melt sand into smears of thin glass. Sound came soon after touch, and Felix immediately recognized the roar of chaotic battle.
Sandstorms swirled around his position at the edge of a silken dune, and vivid displays of light and fire Mana streaked into the skies and down again onto the earth. All the land was rolling dunes, with the barest hint of red-orange mountains to the southeast, but most of it was blotted out by the whirling tornadoes of sand and flame. Among the dunes and storms, figures in bulky red armor wielded golden weapons against a shambling horde that seemed to...emerge from the whirlwinds themselves.
"Hallow! I can't control them!"
Felix spun. Whatever this was, his senses were weirdly bluntedso much so that he hadn't noticed the hulking Minotaur only three feet behind him. He was staring not at the clashing forces, but at a charging contingent of more shambling forms. Undead, he realized with a sickening lurch. He could see threads of writhing colors stretching between the walking dead and strange sand-twisters. The whirlwinds are full of undead.
"Hallow!" the Minotaur bellowed again, his tone fully panicked now. He was dressed in worn chitinous armor, much as before. "Why can't I take control?"
A voice, cool and calm and distinctly feminine came from beneath them. "They are still bound to the Tomb, Michael. You cannot take possession of them until you take the Tomb as well."
The sands parted as a horse-sized scorpion rose from beneath, its barbed tail lashing and massive claws clacking. Blackened green light shone between the cracks in its carapace and from its eight beady eyes, but the calm feminine voice was absolutely coming from its form. Behind it, three more shapes rose, a segmented Multipede and two humanoid figures in broken crimson platemail. As with the undead and the whirlwinds, threads wove among the glowing figures and all of them led to the Minotaur.
A Skill?
Whatever it was, it meant the Unbound had a powerful connection to his creatures. Summons, perhaps. Summons that could speak and think, somehow. And take action on their own, it seemed, for as the shambling horde reached them, the Multipede and humanoids swept forward to meet them. Their mandibles and swords glowed with that same blackened hue, tinged liberally with green. Necromantic Mana, his Manasight told him, and things made a sudden sense.
It was a zombie fight.
The humanoid warriors hit the undead like speeding trucks, mowing through their ranks with brutal efficiency while the Multipede was more like a bullet train. It tore across the sands, weaving complex, looping pathways that skewered the enemy with every leg and clash of mandibles. Only a few made it so far as the Minotaur, and he ended them with a swing of a massive maul the size of a boulder, crushing all of them at once in a cataclysmic strike.
"Seismic Shatter!"
The ground erupted in a spreading cone, one that neatly diverged around the glowing warriors and hit the final stragglers with a fatal flurry. The enemy undead were splattered across the crimson sands.
"The Paladins," the Minotaur said with a choked off gasp. Through their connection, Felix felt the guy's Spirit and Mind quiver; tell-tale signs of Mana exhaustion. "Hallow. How're they doing? Are they in AOE range?"
All four of his necromantic pets froze, facing toward the storms only a couple dunes away. Felix could spot more undead pouring out, but they were met with a constant barrage of golden Mana vapor. Lashes and manifested blades of light that cut down columns of the encroaching dead.
"They are. I recommend running. They are sure to overcome this latest defensive measure," the scorpion said. Mana puffed from it, much like Felix's sword when Karys spoke through it. "You are still not strong enough to contend with them directly. I suggestget back!"
Without warning and surprising even Felix, a rain of liquid light tore from the sky. Golden shafts of radiance formed deadly spears that burst the entire dune they stood upon. He could see the scorpion move almost as fast as himself, throwing itself between the burly Minotaur and a burst of the golden spears.
"Run!" its once-calm voice bellowed, now pained and panicked.
The MinotaurMichaelstumbled back, too slow to have even seen the strike coming, his bovine face a picture of astonishment that swiftly changed to anguish. "Hallow!"
"I will be fine! You must run!"
From across the other dunes, the whirlwind had all but ceased, and a phalanx of red-armored warriors were marching in double time toward them. Their hands gripped lances and greatswords and huge axes made of liquid, golden light. Felix whipped back, staring at the Minotaur, and his face crumpled with tears.
He ran and the Paladins overcame the scorpion. It fought bravely, but it was no match for their reach and numbers. In moments it was taken apart.
The second it died, Felix was yanked forward, appearing at the Minotaur's side like he'd been teleported. The guy was bent over, clutching at his chest and staring in the direction they had left. The ground rumbled, and that huge Multipede reared from the sands, bearing the two humanoids that were clearly former Paladins. It's eyes shone a blackened green.
"You must keep running. They will find you," said the exact same voice as before, now coming from the big bug.
"I felt you die," the Minotaur whimpered. "Ugh. It hurt."
"I am sorry, Michael."
"Don't call me that. It's not my name anymore," the Minotaur said. He drew himself up to his full height, likely close to eight feet tall and filled with thick slabs of muscle beneath his rough, chitinous armor. He hefted his boulder-sized maul, and started trotting down another dune. "Where do we go?"
"Back to the city. Find Naos. We will find a measure of safety there, for a time."
A strange tugging started at Felix's navel, but he held onto the vision, lingering beside this other Unbound. He wanted to see more, to see what the man was planning and how he'd fight back against the Hierocracy. Yet when the Multipede mentioned a city, the connection between him and the Minotaur thrummed in teeth-buzzing dissonance. In Felix's Mind there flashed the image of a towering storm, two thousand feet high. A sandstorm of red, but also sheets of incandescent yellow-white flame, hot enough to send jagged shards of glass spiralling out all around it. The faintest impression of soaring towers could be seen through the storm, but a hailstorm of deadly projectiles drove men in red-plate armor back and away from its perimeter.
Something tugged at him, far harder than before, and this time Felix let it take him. The hurricane of light returned, far swifter now, until he slammed into a wall of enduring darkness that swept him away entirely.
Bastion of Will is level 85!
Meditation is level 69!
Deep Mind is level 75!
Adept Tier!
You Gain:
+10 AFI
+10 ALA
+10 EVA
"is my home! What is the Hierocracy doing there? We're not apart of your union!" Atar was on his feet and shouting when Felix came to his senses. He jabbed a finger at the space above Felix's head, where a projection of his experience was supposed to have been displayed. It had worked, apparently. "Those sands are inviolable!"
"The why is simple. They are hunting an Unbound," Zara said.
"Thethe bull...man?" Vess asked. "That was...that is an Unbound? The same as Felix?"
"All Unbound choose the Race as they arrive, as well as a few other advantages," Zara explained. "That is what the old texts say, and Felix's own experiences support it."
Felix stood, combating a momentary dizziness before mastering himself. "She's right. He must've chosen a Minotaur during his arrival."
"Minotaur? That's what he was?" Evie asked. "Looked about as tall as Karys. Burlier, too."
"A Lost Race," Zara muttered. There was already a scroll in her hand, and it was half covered in cramped notations that she added to as she spoke. "Possibly with a Strength and Endurance bonus at each level. Do you know how strong he is? Will he survive those Paladins?"
Felix's Mind flashed back. It had been chaotic, but he'd gotten a fair measure of the guy. "He's tough. Hurt though. I don't know how long he'll last on his own."
"He had those...bugs with him," Vess said. "A curious Skill. Might they be Companions to him?"
"That looked like a Slayer Scorpion, and the other was a Multipede, both deadly denizens of the Scorched Expanse," Atar explained. "My home."
"I'm more concerned about the hundreds of walking corpses we just saw," Evie pointed out. "Was that your Unbound friend's doin'?"
"That's just the Expanse. Undead are a...recurring problem," Atar said. "But this is beyond their normal activity. Why isn't Ahkestria taking action? Those Paladins, the undead; my Master would never have let things get so bad."
Felix's memory roused again, summoning the last image he'd captured from the Minotaur's Mind. "Ahkestria. Is it covered in a burning sandstorm?"
Atar stilled, his brows furrowing. "Yes, but only when attacked. It keeps the city safe from the undead and a long litany of past invaders...you don't think? The Paladin's would never dare to attack the City of Embers!"
"I got a flash, a memory, from the Minotaur. He'd seen that city, and it was covered up by a storm as nasty as the columns of soldiers trying to enter it." Felix shook his head and carefully extracted himself from the formation. "That's where the guy was headed, at the end there. To the city."
"Then that is where I must send my order," Zara said, tucking her scroll back into a pouch at her waist. "A Chanter by the name of Isla was to be tracking this particular Unboundthat she is not with him makes me quite nervous indeed. Tough or not, this Michael must not be allowed to fall."
"Then we should go there ourselves," Atar said. His Spirit simmered with barely lidded rage. Clearly what he'd seen had affected him more than he was letting on. "I could speak to my Masterformer Master, and find out what is truly happening there."
"You will never make it in time," Zara said. "The trip would take months, if you were lucky, and events would have far outstripped our small glimpse here."
"Then what? Let things fall apart, as they did in Haarwatch?" Atar asked. Evie, much to the fire mage's surprise, spoke up on his side.
"Haarwatch was bad enough. I ain't lettin' that happen to someplace else," she said.
Vess nodded. "If we have a way to help, then we must pursue it. Sure there is some manner of aid we can provide? Zara. How do you reach these other Chanters?"
"An ancient artifact, bound to my order. But it is not fool proof, and messages move slow," Zara explained. "I'd like nothing more than to throw everything aside and rush after this child. They're like you were Felix, moving blind through the world. That he fights against the Paladins speaks to his character, but few can withstand multiple battalions of the Hierophant's elite soliders."
"Then there's nothing we can do?" Evie asked. Her hands gripped at the chain wrapped about her waist. "I don't like the idea of leavin' anyone against those odds."
"We...I might have an option," Felix said carefully. "It all depends on our luck, though." He gripped his sword. "Karys? Hope everything's dusted off; I'm bringing some people into the Temple.
"We need to see the Heart of Darkness."
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