Chapter Four Hundred And Forty Five – 445
Claw and crew scrambled across the decks, their celebrations of victory spoiled by the continued storm. The seas kept on heaving, and lines and sails needed tending. Felix had sent Pit winging off into the rain to check on the other ships, but so far they seemed untouched. The Fathom spawn had attacked their boat, and only their boat.
Why, though? Were they just hungry? Opportunists? Felix tapped his lips as the muck and bright blue ichor was swept from the deck. Pieces of the Draktopi were even still twitching, a motion distinct from the swaying of the ship, as if they were reaching out...toward Beef. What?
Beef was still there, a few feet away from Felix, holding his clenched fist out before him. It was trembling almost as much as the Fathom pieces. "Felix, please. II can't do this much longer."
"Right. Follow me."
Felix led the Minotaur into the captain's quarters. His quarters, according to the crew. The room was as wide as the Manaship and half that in length, so forty feet by twenty give or take a few inches, and for all that space it was mostly empty. Building a dozen Manaships in the span of a day and a halfeven with most of the parts and the expertise of shipwrightshadn't given them the time to furnish the ships at all. At best there was a wide bed and a chest of drawers at the foot, both of which were grown into the floors and walls wherever they met them.
Once the doors closed behind them, Felix turned and held out a hand. "Can you let it go?"
Beef was sweating now, and the knuckles on his hand were pale and bloodless. "I'm trying to. It's like my hand's not listening...eveneven holding it out is taking a lot." He grabbed at his fist with his other hand, straining to move even a single finger. "I can't!"
Divine strains of music were spinning through the air, harder to ignore now that they were in close quarters. Felix clenched his jaw. "It's protecting itself." He reached up, but the moment his claws came within a foot of Beef's fist it jerked upward.
Beef gasped, and veins of gold began to pulse through his ruddy fingers and forearm. His eyes widened, amazement piled atop the physical pain. "It's afraid of you."
Adamant Discord!
Felix had a guess at what Beef held, but once the connections of the world were highlighted by his Skill he knew it for a certainty. A vibrant, pulsing cord of connection extended toward Felix from the thing, golden and thicker than the object itself. He and the hidden object had a history, after all, and connections were all about meaning and relationships. It also had a stranglehold around Beef's arm, which was why his veins were lighting up with Divine power, and a corona of gold hovered around the Minotaur's head.
"Hold still," he warned.
"Quickly! It's ah! It's like needles are crawling up my arm!"
Felix flared his Skill, igniting a minor burst of lightning as the connection solidified and hardened, somehow transitioning into an object that his Will could now grasp freely. Forging a cage of Intent around the chitinous envelope and backing it with his Willpower, Felix hauled back on the cord with every ounce of stat he could put behind it.
With an underwhelming, sizzling pop, the envelope slipped from Beef's hand and clattered to the floor.
Adamant Discord is level 82!
Beef fell back as thunder boomed between them, hitting the deck so hard the whole room shook. He grabbed at his forearm, which was a mess of blood. "Ah damn it! Shit!"
Felix crouched low, just over the small object, but his eyes were for his friend. "You okay?"
"Fuck!" Beef swore a couple more times, but quickly ran out of gas, then he was just breathing through his teeth. "Yeah. Healing is...yeah, it's happening slowly. Did you have to rip open my arm when you did that?"
"It was crawling into you, already had a little before now, but it was getting worse fast. How's your head?"
"It" Beef paused, mouth open. "It feels good. Better, but I didn't know it felt bad before now. What did you do?"
"I had to tear out the thing's influence, and it was affecting your Mind, I think." Felix peered down at the thing, which was starting to smoke a bit. "How did you find it?"
"I don't rememberwait, no, I do." Beef screwed up his face, furrowing his brow and closing his eyes as if reaching way, way back into the vault of his Mind. "I found it in the water. Days ago. When we were coming out of the Tomb and the ocean rose up around us. It...it wanted me to keep it secret." He shuddered. "It had me hide it away, I can remember that now. Just like how I remember trying to tell you about it three different times...but it kept fogging things up. Distracting me."
"What was different this time?" Felix asked. The chitin was fully eaten away by the burning now and he waved his hand rapidly to clear the smoke. A scrap of dingy, off-white cloth sat there, utterly normal aside from the threadbare patterns of gold on it. "How were you able to tell me about it?"
"I think...I think when Vess did that dragon call thing. It shook something loose in me." Beef clambered back to his bovine feet, but didn't come any closer to Felix or the scrap of cloth. "What the hell is it?"
"A piece of the Pathless' Regalia," Felix said, and picked it up with his clawed fingertips. Beef hissed in warning, but the thing was utterly inert. It hung between his fingers like...well, like cloth. "Looks burnt a little. Probably from when I blew it up before."
The Regalia had been used as the catalyst of an array that had been designed to siphon away the powers of a Primordial. It would have rendered the Paladins invincible, even their weakest members, and who knew how long it would have lasted. When he stopped it, the whole array had detonated and led to a great many problems. Story of my life, he mused. "It feels diminished, compared to last time, and not just in size."
"Burnt up or not, that thing is strong," Beef said with a shudder. "It was messing with me this whole time, and I couldn't even remember it! This is a Divine thing?"
"Yeah. Part of the Pathless' Regalia, a cloak or robe maybe, which I assume the Hierophant has access to in order to furnish her Paladins with this. I wonder how many though." Felix rubbed his fingers over the cloth, feeling tiny jolts of energy spark across its length. It was painful, but nowhere near the level it would need to make him drop it. Small tendrils tried reaching out to him, but they found no purchase on his Aspects. He grinned. "I wonder what would happen if I used this to track down all the pieces of the Regalia and destroy them? It worked on the assassin."
"Ooh, that's a cool idea. Knock them on their asses for once." Beef laughed at the idea and shook his fist. Blood splattered on the floor. "Ouch, that still hurts."
The Divine were simultaneously intriguing and repulsive to Felix. They were gods, supposedly, but they were more like monsters in everything but name. His few encounters with them had always ended with horrifying results, typically featuring him barely escaping their incredible strength. Questions remained, however: who were the gods? What is their purpose? Could he find out through the Regalia, at least a little?
Felix stood, still frowning. The gods disliked him, hated him in the case of the goddess Noctis. She had tried to kill him, last they had "met." Felix couldn't say he was in any hurry to repeat that particular experience.
"I can remember more now," Beef said quietly. His head was tilted in thought. "Every chance that thing got, it wanted me to leave. Head north."
"Back to the Hierophant," Felix said. "Makes sense."
Beef shook his head. "Not just that. It didn't want to be found, but it was...excited when I held it. It...it knew I was Unbound. It called me out, by name." He shuddered so hard more blood wicked onto the floor. "It's why I knew in my gut I needed to get rid of it. I've read enough books to know that some faceless object 'wanting' things is a pretty good reason not to listen."
Felix held it up. He could feel the Intent that Beef spoke of, and for someone with less advantages it would have probably overridden their Mind quite easily. Felix was frankly impressed that Beef had resisted it at all; the thing was insidious, the Intent squirming through the Mind to convince you that it was your idea to do as it wished. And right now, all it wanted was to get as far away from Felix Nevarre as possible.
The Call of Defiance is active!
+25% Willpower Against The Divine
Against him, however, it wasn't even a contest. Felix quashed it's Intent as easily as stepping on a bug...well, a big bug the size of a cat maybe. It was a fragment of a fragment of the Divine, after all. As the insistent Intent within it flickered out, all that was left was a small, infinitesimal spark buried within its folds. Within him, his Divine Tree rustled in agitation, resonating with the spark. "A fragment of Divinity," he said.
"A fragment of an asshole," Beef muttered.
Felix chuckled. "Yeah that's been my experience." Felix lifted the scrap of Regalia and inspected it in the light of a Mana lamp. "Last I saw this, it just about blazed with light. Still," he said, hefting the oddly heavy fabric. "There's quite a bit left."
"What?" Beef asked.
Felix ignored him, more focused on the Regalia and the odd reaction his core space was having to it. The thing was giving off vibrations, subtle ones, but his Divine Tree was picking up on them easily. The Divine spark was so little, but it was enough to kindle the interest of two facets of his core space. Both wanted it, but the Divine Tree could only quiver at him, grasping ineffectually without a Will of its own...and his Hunger was waiting.
On him.
Feed us, it whispered. Across the breadth of their fleet, he felt Pit's attention turn toward Felix in concern. Feed us. Grow strong.
Felix shoved the scrap of cloth into a pocket, before willing the Garment to form a zipper and closed it shut. Pit trilled in approval.
His Hunger quietened with a grumble, and the Divine Tree ceased its more frantic swaying...but with the Regalia no longer to hand, Felix felt something else in its place. It had been tethered, sorta, to the artifact but now it hung in the air and wrapped around his attention like a coiled snake. It was a thread, colored ebon-gold, thick as the one he held to Beef, and it stretched off to the north.
He touched it with his Affinity, or tried to; it shied away like an opposing magnet each time he drew close. The ebon-gold light that emanated from the metaphysical connection barred his touch, but it echoed something he had felt in the Regalia. A spark of the Divine.
What the hell is this?
"Felix?" Beef asked.
He refused to relent. Felix recognized the connection now, having seen it within the bundle of Links in his Bastion. When he'd been hunting down Beef, this had been the one other connection that had shone brighter than his, and just as now it had fled from his touch. It was undoubtedly a Link to another Unbound. If it was showing itself as he inspected the Regalia then he needed to know why. It squirmed, but Felix bent everything he had into seizing it tight.
Adamant Discord!
Skein of Fate!
Got you!
"Felix, what is going onnnnnnnnnnn"
Sound stretched and bent while the world around him faded into streaks of riotous color, until he felt like he was bridging a vast divide between the here and a place impossibly distant. Time smeared just as space and sound, until Felix no longer knew how long he held onto the Link, no longer could remember why he cared, only that he must not let go. Hold on!
The world cracked. Once, twice, until a web of fissures filled the smearing colors of reality and the soundless void. Until everything shattered.
And Felix was somewhere else.
"Are you quite sure you are well enough to travel?"
The voice of a kindly old man was the first thing Felix heard. Then reality flowed back together, a jigsaw puzzle reassembling itself, and he could see a rustic town in the middle of tall, snow-capped mountains. The streets were filled with people, Dwarves mostly, and the houses were all built in an odd style he'd never seen before. Like interlocking cubes, iterated over and over again until they formed complex structures that rose three or four stories all around him. Geometric patterns were worked into the cubes, leaving nothing bare but the cobbles beneath their feet.
He stood there, bodiless as he always was in these visions, though he could pivot and move around the area to an extent. Among the crowd was an old man in white robes, looking in his direction with such fearful intensity that Felix was worried he'd actually been transported there.
"I require no coddling, Hierei Faer. I need only serve." This voice was strange to Felix's ears, female as if strained of all emotion and personality. Like a corpse given voice. "What is the problem you have encountered?"
Felix looked at her, but instead of a person he only saw a figure dressed in enough plate armor to put Harn to shame. She was taller than Felix, somewhere close to seven feet tall, and just as wide. The armor was patterned with sharp edges and hard angles, covering her so completely that not a speck of skin or hair could be seen. She flexed her hands, spiked gauntlets bending around the hilt of a sword at her waist. One of many weapons that covered her person.
Goddamn walking armory, he thought. She's gotta be the Unbound. By why does she sound so weird?
The old man swallowed nervously, the loose skin of his neck rippling and sweat dotting his bald pate. "As always Imara, please call me Kellis."
"What is the problem you have encountered?" she asked again.
"We are waiting while the Dwarves determine if they will let you into their city," the robed man said. The crowd ahead of them was murmuring and quite a few cast looks back on the man and Unbound. "The Hierocracy is not well liked here."
"And if they decided against us?" Imara asked in that dead voice.
"Then we cannot fulfill our mission. The Gnome, whoever he is, will be lost among the peaks."
Gnome? Wait. Did he said Hierocracy? Felix spun, taking in the man's robes again and noticing a distinct sunburst pattern across his chest, embroidered in thread-of-gold. Is he a priest of the Pathless? Why is she with the Pathless?
"That is unacceptable." Imara was moving before the old priest could respond, pushing through the throng as if they were children instead of solid slabs of Dwarven adults. Shouts followed her, pained and outraged in turns, but the armored mountain didn't stop for a second until she reached the very front of the line, where twenty Dwarves in heavy mail stood outside a massive doorway carved from the side of a mountain. "You. Open the gate."
Felix followed after her, pulled by the magnetism that had drawn him to her in the first place, and he saw as the Dwarven guards traded disbelieving looks. "Ye the one with the old priest?" one asked.
"Open the gate," she repeated.
The priest in question was shouting at her back, unable to get through the crowd. "Imara! Imara no!"
"Yeah, she's the one. Naught else like her on this range, bleedin' giant," another guard said.
The first held out his axe, a simple but very stout looking weapon. "Ye cannot pass. Not until the Hinterlords decided on it, aye?"
"My mission cannot be stalled. You will open the gate, or I will open it for you."
"Listen here, lassie. If ye take a single step further, ye will find the might of all the Giathban fall on ye. Unnerstand?"
Imara heard him, but it was clear she did not care. She stepped forward anyway, and the priest's shouts only redoubled. A series of riotous explosions went off: beams of sizzling heat followed by huge concussive blasts. The guards had thrown up large, boxy shields that protected them, but the crowd was thrown back on their rears, even from twenty feet away.
Imara, however, remained standing. Her armor glowed at the edges, but Felix knew she was unharmed.
"Stand back!" the lead guard shouted, but Imara took another step. "Men! Grab yer weapons! We teach this one a lesson!"
All twenty of the Dwarven warriors rushed forward, shields and axes to hand. Imara only walked.
"Imara! Stop, now!" the priest shouted, far closer now. "We have other ways!"
The woman ignored him, and unleashed her Spirit.
Everyone around them was blasted backward, save for the priest. Their Bodies seized, unable to move as the physical manifestation of her Spirit swept them entirely out of her way. Even Felix, who was merely a witness projected across a Link, felt the heavy weight of it. It clawed at him like a malevolent creature, trying to tear away his Willpower and burrow deep into his own Spirit. The image of things flickered and faded, like a television with bad reception, but Felix saw Imara march to the gates of this mountain city and unsheathe a thick club at her waist. She swung. A crack splintered across the face of the mountain door.
"Imara!"
She swung again. And again. Each time Felix's connection thinned, until he could only parse the haziest of details. He witnessed the gates fall and an army arrayed against this Imara.
All Felix felt, at the end, was concern for the army.
Then reality shattered one last time.
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