Chapter Three Hundred And Seventy Seven – 377
Atar's Focus (Rare) Has Evolved Into Lens of the Magus (Epic)!
Level Is Retained!
Atar's Imbued Sparkbolt (Rare) Has Evolved Into Stars Of The Sovereign (Legendary)!
Level Is Retained!
Atar's Fields of Flames (Rare) Has Evolved Into Incendiary Vortex (Epic)!
Level Is Retained!
Bastion of Will is level 87!
Relentless Resolution is level 73!
Cardinal Flame is level 82!
Fiendforge is level 5!
"Just keep rotating it as you Temper the last Skill," Felix encouraged the mage. "Feed it power and squeeze it while it spins."
"I'mguh!trying!" Atar's face was ashen, his olive complexion literally crumbling between moments of concentration, before reforming into his Human visage. Felix tried not to focus on that thoughit was too disturbing.
Instead, he observed Atar's core space as a whole. The mage had impressed him; his Willpower was strong enough that he had suffered through not one but three Skill evolutions and their Tempering. The man was shaking like a leaf, holding his hands out and guiding a channel of flames between Incendiary Vortex and his core. It advanced, ever so slowly, prodded by the taxed mental faculties of the mage. But it did move.
Crimson-tinged flames were everywhere now, though most of it was concentrated on the core flame and the now-evolved Stars of the Sovereign Skill. A parting gift from the Primordial curse back in Haarwatch. It had marked Atar more deeply than Felix had ever realized.
The rest of Atar's core space was in a bit of a shambles. Rubble filled the floor, shaken loose from the walls and ceiling, obscuring the hazy sigaldry lines etched beneath their feet. Shelving Felix swore hadn't been there when he'd arrived had toppled and splintered, hurling tightly bound scrolls onto altars and catching fire. The monolithic altars and golden basins flared in random bursts, and not just the one's Atar had been Tempering. All of them suffered as the mage fought to spin the bonfire of his core.
Felix hadn't needed to step in during the Tempering so far, but it had been close. The final dregs of the last Essence Draught were swirling just above the core flame, a liquid cloud the burned and burned but never consumed itself. Atar had guided two other Essence Draughts into his core flame, each time feeding the power to the Skills he desired to Temper and struggling through the process. Felix hadn't been privy to the Essences Atar had been offered, only that Atar trembled after each Tempering.
The guy was wiped, but he didn't stop. He couldn't, Felix knew, because to do so would be to ruin his progress completely.
C'mon, Atar. You got this!
The last wisp of Essence Draught was devoured by the core flame, igniting an explosive pop within its depths. Felix frowned and Atar flinched as the reluctantly spinning bonfire finally gained momentum. A lot of momentum, in fact. Too much.
"Atar! It's pulling in too much power!" Felix warned.
"I can'tI can't stop it!" Atar screamed, his shoulders bursting into charcoal ash and flame before reforming. "I can barely hang on!"
The mage's core whirled, until it was no longer flame, but a solid beam of light. The gold altar beneath it dimmed as it brightened, condensing and rising higher and higher from its original position. A high, keening whine ascended with it, loud and sharp enough that Felix's ears buzzed and the muscles in his neck spasmed wildly. It was familiar.
That's like Dissonance...but not. Felix pressed his Affinity as hard as he could, his Perception, his Cardinal Flamewhatever he could to see what was happening. Manasight caught it. Swirls of nameless Mana and Essence expanding and grasping from the core's gyrating form. It's Dissonance Lite. Same great taste, none of the calories.
The Maw's influence, again. Luckily, Felix had the solution to that.
Chthonic Trib!
Wait! Felix's instincts screamed at him, and he cut off the Skill before it could fully activate. The ravenous abyss within him chomped in frustration, but he shoved the sensation aside. That isn't right. The Primordial's influence...it's not there.
Felix could sense that something was present in Atar's core, and indeed all over his core space, but whatever it was had been fundamentally changed. Transformed. By something Atar did?
It's not Dissonance, not as I know it. It felt hot and heavy, like a suffocating convection bent on burning Felix from the inside out. It was too weak to harm him, but it was growing. Fast. It needs more power though. That's Atar's real problem.
Even now, those grasping tendrils of Intent spread outward, utilized by his core even if Atar didn't have the stat unlocked. Everything used Intent, it was just a matter of being in control or not, and this was wildly outside the mage's ability to command. Those tendrils caught up the walls, the broken shelving and mysterious scrolls, burning them all and sucking the fuel back into its center. The beam of crimson-orange light burned brighter with every passing second...and Atar's core space was falling apart.
Fiendforge!
That same out of body experience happened, as Felix took the core space in his hands and pressed. He could feel links forming between himself and Atar as his Aspects molded the mage's own. They resonated, Skill and core space, until the transcendent Harmony overwhelmed the keening screech of spinning fire.
Fiendforge is level 6!
Things shifted. The hybridized archive/temple/ritual chamber turned and clicked. The shadows grew richer, more textured, while the golden inlay became more lustrous. The sigaldry on the black stone was refined, the haze of its meaning clarified as Felix called out to Atar's visualized space. Flames sharpened, brightened, but also that crimson glow deepened along the edges of each and every fire. Felix couldn't touch that part at all for some reason, but his influence magnified its presence until it suffused the stone itself. Crimson gems appeared on the stone pillars around him, studding the darkening rock and golden basins at their zeniths.
Power and strength flowed from Felix, Essence and significance burned alongside his own Mana, fueling the changes. No. Not changes, but affirmations of what Atar had already intended. The pattern of it was clear to Felix, the way the mage had visualized his space and what he wanted it to beall Felix had to do was reinforce it.
The Skill all around them surged, billowing into columns of red-orange flame as Atar's core let out a powerful, singular roar...before folding in on itself. It spun, faster and faster, the Harmonics in the air spurring it onward as much as Atar's furious Will. The man thrust himself forward, all but jumping into the flames, and the power coalesced. His core shrank by half, but now was a hollow ring of liquid fire, similar to Felix's own, just colored orange with bloody crimson haunting its edges.
Fiendforge is level 7!
Fiendforge is level 8!
Cardinal Flame is level 83!
Atar fell to his knees, and this time they held their Human shape.
"You did it," Felix said, looking around. He was tired, but it was all mental. Physically he felt fine. "You got it from here?"
Atar only nodded, too busy rapturously studying the space around him. He ran fingers over the golden sigils in the black stone flooring.
Felix let his Cardinal Flame relax, and opened his real eyes.
The sandy chamber was awash in the smell of char, and a glittering shield of blue force Mana hung around him and Atar's body. Alister jumped when he noticed Felix's open eyes and the ward vanished.
"I had to shield you because of all the fire Mana he was putting out. I barely stopped it all. What happened? Is he okay?" The words tumbled out of Alister's mouth as he crouched next to Atar's prone form. "Did he...did he Temper?"
"He's fine. He did fine," Felix said with a grunt of exertion as he tried to stand...and took a solid chunk of glassed sand with him. It clung to his legs and trousers where the apparent fire Mana had melted ithe could see several places where Atar's robes were trapped in the glass. A careful exertion of Will and Mana shifted his Garment and the glass fell free. Even that much hurt him, the strain of his Mind and Spirit mounting after his efforts with Atar. They weren't debilitating, but Felix suspected it'd be at least a few hours before he'd be at a hundred percent again. "He's inspecting his core space now, but he's done. Keep an eye on him. He didn't fully Temper an Aspect, but he's gonna be tired for a while."
Alister nodded mutely before taking Atar's hand in his own.
"Felix."
He turned to find Zara kneeling over Evie's body. His friend was bleeding from the nose and mouth and shuddering violently, like she was having a seizure.
"What happened!" He rushed to her side, barely noticing that the sand was frozen solid beneath his feet. "She's bleeding!"
"Her core space is locked tight, I couldn't pry it open," Zara said, frustrated. "Damn girl has it frozen solid and wrapped all around with chains...and there's something else."
Felix looked up from Evie's face. Her jaw was chattering and her lips were turning blue. "What?"
Zara's pale eyes met his own. "Something is stopping me from getting closer to her core."
"Stopping you? You're Master Tier. What could Evie do to stop you?"
"I could force my way in, but it would ruin her." Zara shook her head. "She would never advance beyond Weaving, and could not even Temper to Master Tier were I to do that. But you...whatever you did with Atar worked. You need to do it again. Can you?"
Felix clenched his jaw and placed a hand on Evie's own. "Doesn't matter if I can. It's Evie."
Cardinal Flame!
He dove into her channels.
The sandstorm howled just beyond the barricades, and monsters raged in its midst. Vess spun through attack after attack, leaping and landing amid the undead horde with greater and greater ferocity. Spears burst again and again, tearing through the creatures without mercy as fast as she could muster the Mana to summon them. Bolts of lightning and fire still zipped out from the skeleton, along with carefully placed arrows packed with deadly Blessings and Skills. The Legion were holding their own while Vess thinned the numbers in the storm, and even when more got through than she intended, the Henaari's hooked spears and the Frost Giant's massive ice-axes tore the enemy apart.
It was working.
You better be okay, Evie! Vess thought as she skidded to a stop on an angular ridge of stone. Dustwights streamed below her, pressing against one another in a mad dash toward the skeleton and her people. Adept Tier is harder than those that came before. Father always told me that, but I did not think it would affect them so much.
The sight of her friends on the ground had affected her more than Vess was happy to admit. That they could be struck down, even if it were only to their own advancement...it filled the heiress with dread. She dealt with it in the only way she had ever been taught.
You Have Killed A Dustwight (x3)!
XP Earned!
Vess had jumped up an entire level during the battle, but she was more concerned with pressing her Skills to their limits. She had to reach Adept Tier herself, and soon, or else she would be unable to protect anyone from the threats facing them. At least as Adepts they had a fighting chance against Masters, small though it was, and Vess could not foresee a scenario where they did not face the Paladins down. It felt inevitable.
Dragon's Descent!
She jumped and landed among another dozen Dustwights, their bodies exploding with the impact of her spear. Experience surged within her, and she nodded in grim satisfaction as her Skill grew.
Dragon's Descent is level 67!
PER +1
Vess paused as the Dustwights scrambled away from her blast, catching a sound on the wild winds. It was as if the storm had changed timbres suddenly, gaining a basso thrum to it that shook her teeth. There. It is...growing?
A single leap carried the woman fifty feet into the air, arcing up and over the battle before kicking off a bluff and leaping again. For a brief, weightless moment she hovered, over a hundred feet above the battle and braved the scouring winds. She squinted, pressing her Perception for all it was worth.
Elemental Eye is level 55!
The blackened green and dusty brown Mana all around them was darkening to the north. Strengthening.
Another storm. It is another storm!
She began to fall, but not before the second Cursewind hit them. Its unnatural strength added to the first, and the wind turned from powerful to undeniable. Vess was hurled from the sky, out into the desert where she impacted and exploded an entire dune with her impact.
"Ungh!" She groaned, clawing out of the soft ground. "No. That storm is bringing more than just wind." The air was impenetrable with orange dust and foul, swirling Mana, but she could see shapes falling from the new storm. Dustwights by the hundreds joined the army already laying siege to their temporary fortress. "I need to get back."
Her Health had dropped to half, but it was making a slow recovery, and Vess limped down the face of the dune. She'd traveled perhaps two hundred feet in her fall and couldn't even see the enormous skeleton through the storm. Still, she would make it back and help. Darius and Harn would have already seen the danger. They would be fine.
Then, between her and her friends, a series of sandy explosions blasted apart the dunes. Shielding her eyes against the gritty winds, Vess could not spot what had caused it at first, but then forms began to crawl from the impact craters. Tall and hunged, thin as corpses and bearing claws like curved daggers, they clambered from the sands. Ten of them. Fifteen. Thirty.
Analyze!
"No," she whispered. She had recognized them from Felix's description, but Analyze confirmed it. "Dustborn Wraiths."
Vess began to run.
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