Unbound

The moment they pierced the boundary ward, it was like a mountain falling on his ears. Glaciers hurled into the sky, thrown vertical as well as horizontal by some insane force, only to collide with one another in cataclysmic impacts. Those savage detonations tore at his ears and shoved at his chest like a mattress filled with pure lead.

“Laur! Shields!” he cried out.

“Already done!” the Elf shouted. Immediately, the terrible decibels were muffled—not extinguished entirely, but Felix no longer saw anyone clutching their skulls.

Good enough.

The hounds straightened and sped down the trail, a bare plane of white amid the glaciers, thin but serviceable. Felix’s Perception and Affinity spread out, uninhibited now, pinged off of the unmitigated mayhem all around them. He flared them as his Mind tried to catalog everything going on, but it was a lot. He couldn’t—

Felix’s head snapped up. Rime Shaping!

A handful of jagged, house-sized boulders fell from above, debris from a distant collision, and Felix’s Will met it mid-flight. They resisted for only a moment before he took them apart entirely.

Rime Shaping is level 87!

All that fell atop them was a torrent of loose snowflakes.

“Uta na!” one of the Warriors called, and the Hoarhounds’ pelts crackled with purple vapor. They put on another burst of speed.

“You cannot waste yourself on the entire team!” Naberius shouted at him. She clutched at the rim of the sled and there was fear in her eyes. “The Step responds to power, and if you display too much it will respond in kind! Focus on us! Ensure that we make it through, and we Witches can claim the Kingsrock for you!”

“No!” Felix speared his Will through another falling slab of ice, boring a tunnel through its depths just in time for their sleds to race through. “Everyone makes it through!”

Thankfully, the glaciers didn’t only explode toward them, and the path opened up as things split apart before them. The trail widened to hundreds of feet, with deep snow drifts to either side like the world's freshest ski slope. Craggy cliffs of dark stone were revealed just beyond the snow, hemming them in. Felix took the moment to gaze beyond their group.

Pandemonium reigned in the Starfield Steps. The molden sky was filled with flashing lights, while colored threads gathered like strange lightning, striking downward at various places in every direction. The other tribes were moving, and quickly.

“What happens if the other tribes get to the Kingsrock first?” Felix asked Kimaris.

She opened her mouth, but Naberius cut in. “Then the claiming grows far more deadly.”

“What does that mean?”

“There is no time. It will be hard enough if we get there first. Do not tempt fate!”

Felix flicked his gaze to Kimaris, but the woman only nodded mutely. “Faster, then. Warriors! Can we get more speed out of the hounds?”

“Ta, for a bit,” one said beneath his horned helm.

“How long?” Felix asked.

The other Warrior driver gritted his teeth as the hounds shouldered through a six foot drift of powder. “A handful of heartbeats. It’s for bursts of speed only.”

The path was open now, with most shifting glaciers further away from their progress. The snow was dragging at the heavy sleds, but they seemed to be moving at the same pace as the other tribes. “Hold it in reserve. Be ready when I shout, alright?”

“Ta falla!”

Felix looked back over the twenty nine other sleds, all of them racing in a neat row. His soldiers had their hands on weapons and their eyes fixed on the environment, and that included Kimaris’ giants. The other giants and Witches, Cold Rock and Feldspear Covens, were sat back. The Warriors and Berserkers all had eager expressions, but the Witches were pale. It was hard to get a bead on their Spirits among the tumult, but it was clear they weren’t nearly as happy to be there as their subordinates.

Felix!

He spun around, guided by Pit’s sudden warning, but was only just in time to see his sled rip across a glowing line of sigaldry. Nymean work, he noted, even as the details of it were lost to terrain and distance. He caught enough to guess at it…and that guess was confirmed as the cliffs to either side burst asunder.

“Monsters! All sides and comin’ in fast!” Harn called out.

Living boulders chased with streaks of shimmering metal clattered out of the rubble, their angular insect legs blurring as they sped up. Felix knew them—or a version of them, at least.

Voracious Eye!

Name: Greater Gold Obelons

Type: Greater Elemental (Stone/Metal)

Like their lesser versions, these were shaped like immense, horned beetles crossed with rhinoceroses. The difference now were the veins of bright gold across their bodies…and their incredible size. Each one was twice the size of their sleds, and they were fast. They moved to match their speed with all the gusto of a rampaging herd of tanks.

“Greater Elementals! Stone and metal types!” Felix called out. “Tier IV!”

“Aye! Tough bastards, then!” Harn’s axes ignited with silver flame. “Bring ‘em down!”

From both sides of the convoy, a barrage of Skills was unleashed. Fire and lightning snapped outward, blasting against rocky hides, while ice and shadow impacted heads and legs. Despite the sheer amount of Skills, few Obelons fell.

What was worse, projectiles manifested around the Greater Elementals, rotating atop their backs like tiny asteroid belts before hurtling toward the sleds. The wards rippled but held under the first volley, but the creatures did not relent. As their group raced across the snow, the Obelons pummeled them with tire-sized boulders at utterly ridiculous speeds. The shields began to flash, ripples becoming a rainbow of hues.

“You need to end them!” Laur said, a shrill note in his voice. “They will overload the wards if this continues!”

“Brace!” someone else yelled, just before an elemental careened into their sleds. The thing’s horns dipped low as if to skewer them but a blazing silver axe met it, and they were the first to fall. Insectoid legs snapped and the elemental tumbled off into its own herd.

“Hide’s too tough to penetrate!” Harn commanded. “Aim for the joints and eyes!”

“A good observation,” Tzfell said, stepping up to the armored commander. “But tell your men to aim their Skills at my target.”

Harn grunted. “Call the shot, lady.”

“Magnetic Strike!” A series of geometric shapes burst out from the Dwarven Chanter. Each one was made of lines and sound, all a distinct color and pitch, and they flew toward the nearest Obelon like an arrow. They hit, and suddenly the shapes seared themselves into the creature’s rocky hide, gleaming with a dull silver against the gray and gold. “Fire now,” she commanded.

The Claw released their attacks at the same elemental. Unerringly, the Skills zipped toward the etched metal patterns on the Obelon’s back and legs, and each one landed with an unnatural whomp-snap. In moments, the creature fell, its legs snapped under its sundered shell. The Claw cheered.

“Eyes on the prize! Next target!” Harn said.

“Looks fun!” Beef said, and pointed at the opposite side of the convoy, where the Obelons sent their full barrage of stones at their shields. “Keratin Conception!”

Insectoid legs of dark chitin exploded up from the snow, skewering the beasts like pikes, only to shatter as more piled atop them. The herd faltered, stymied for a moment by the Minotaur’s strike, and he capitalized on it. “Hallow!”

“On my way,” she said, voice echoing as always.

The Sharpwing Matriarch flew outward, releasing a high pitched drone as it wove among the Greater Golden Obelons. Wings sharper than most blades sliced through the elementals’ rocky limbs, severing legs and scoring deep wounds along gold-veined sides. A few of the creatures tried to retaliate, but found themselves pelted with foot-long darts of hardened crystal. Hallow’s Homunculus stood atop Beef’s shoulders, arms firing round after round of darts. Eyes and mouths caught the worst of it, until the snow was littered with dark ichor.

“The way narrows!” one of the drivers called out.

Felix’s attention snapped back to the team, and the path ahead. The wide open terrain was swiftly vanishing, and with it the Obelon threat…but in its place was a twisting, descending box canyon that was coated in slick, glistening ice.

Shit. “Hold onto something!” he shouted, just as their sled hit the downward slope.

The Hoarhounds howled, their fear too strong to be ignored, and the drivers frantically hauled back on their reins. It was pointless though, as first one then all of their sleds were sent rushing down the slickened path. The walls of the canyon itself closed in, almost meeting in some places and the sky’s golden light was muted to a dim twilight. Explosions shook them, the glaciers still shifting in erratic, unpredictable ways.

Rime Shaping!

Felix cast the Skill again and again, pressing more of his Mana into the spell with every cast. He grasped at the ice as it whipped past, scoring it and hardening its texture into something the hounds and sleds could find purchase on. After a full twenty seconds of that, it even started to work.

Multi-Cast is level 84!

If only the walls of the box canyon had stayed in place. Another heaving section of the earth dropped into an unimaginably deep crevasse, tearing apart an entire side of the path and leaving it hanging over an empty abyss.

“Shit! Rime Shaping!” Felix said, mustering whatever else he could. “Stone Shaping!”

He pulled stone and ice together into an upswept lip, improvising the angle to hopefully keep them from falling to their deaths. Long experience mixing those two Skills made the job easier than he feared, and considerable time mindlessly watching the winter Olympics did the rest. What amounted to a half-pipe of hardened ice and stone manifested atop the far edge just as Felix’s sled hit it. The hounds whimpered, their footing gone as their skis ground against rock, striking sparks into the abyss…before sled after sled hugged the corner and sped onward.

Rime Shaping is level 88!

Stone Shaping is level 97!

“Woohoo!” Evie cheered. “Let’s do that again!”

“I vote no,” a Half-Orc beside her whimpered.

Fire bloomed against the top of the shields, flaring the wards into a prismatic cascade as the elemental magic spread outward.

“Oh what now?” Felix groaned. Beside him, Laur grunted in clear pain, and Felix spotted blood dripping from the Elf’s nose.

“Flying monsters,” Vess reported, jerking her chin upward.

Twenty char-black creatures descended from above, each one shaped like a hellish bird with wings made of fire. Plumes of flame spewed from cruel, hooked beaks.

Voracious Eye!

Name: Greater Cinderwing

Type: Greater Elemental (Fire/Air)

“Greater Cinderwings! Greater Elementals of fire and air!” Felix reported. “More Tier IVs!”

“More Greater Elementals?” Tzfell exclaimed. “How many can this blasted place produce?”

“We have them!” Vess announced, before conjuring ten gleaming Spears around her shoulders. Evie gripped her chain, and Pit angled himself to get a better view. “Will your ward allow us to pass through?”

Laur nodded rapidly. “Yes! Just be quick! Your Skills cost me nothing, but your Bodies will deplete my Mana fast!”

Vess and Evie shot upward, the former leaping impossible heights while the latter snagged her chain atop a passing Spear. They hit the descending elementals full on, Evie flung over Vess’ head just as the Cinderwing’s breathed another cone of flames. They were met with cold steel and savage winds.

“Tempest Fugit!” Pit shrieked. Twenty spears of ice manifested and shot outward within the same eyeblink, each one finding a target among the Greater Elementals. The ice shot was especially effective, but the burst of lightning within each one served as a nice chaser. The Cinderwings died in droves.

Still, washes of fire hit, rocking their sleds as the path once again straightened out. Each Cinderwing that died exploded, blasting their wards and weakening them. Felix couldn’t focus on it, but he knew anyway; Laur wouldn’t shut up about it.

Ice and stone blasted from the cliffs around them, raining down from the fiery explosions. The sleds were hit, and several got tilted onto single skis. Risi Warriors hurl themselves aside, throwing the sleds back onto both solid footing, and Felix eyed the Witches at his side. “Not gonna help?”

Mother Vepar clutched at her fur mantle, face pale beneath the wrinkles. “We cannot! This is a test for your people! Our aid cannot come until the Kingsrock!”

“How convenient! Damnit!”

The world moved again, this time splitting the path ahead into jagged and unpredictable crevasses. The hounds didn’t slow, fast enough and smart enough to judge where they could go and where they couldn’t—until a literal chasm snapped open ahead.

Rime Shaping!

Mana flowed from Felix’s channels and crackled into a thirty-foot wide bridge that spanned the sudden gorge. His sled shot across it, catching air as it hit the slight arch, and the others followed right behind.

“Watch out!”

Felix wasn’t sure who said it, but he flagged the problem immediately: another shift in the tundra sent a rift across the ground…and sent the far end of the chasm toppling into the abyss. His bridge cracked and broke apart, with more than half of his people still atop of it.

“No! Cloudstep!” Crackling platforms of pure Mana formed beneath his convoy, catching those that tumbled off and angling them toward safety. The platforms shuddered, but held. Felix screamed at the weight and as the distance continued to open up between him and the slowed portion of his team. “Stop the sled!”

“We cannot! More ravines ahead!”

Felix cursed. “Pass the word! Now’s a good time for that speed boost!”

“Ra falla dag!”

The Hoarhounds ahead of Felix shimmered with purple vapor before it sank into their haunches. The entire vehicle lurched forward as their pace doubled, and the same call went down the line.

Cloudstep!

Cloudstep!

Cloudstep!

The ground was falling apart and too unstable to shape anything from the earth, so all he could do was rely upon his old Skill. Felix poured all he had into it, thousands of Mana, and still the sheer tonnage of hound, giant, soldier and sled was like daggers into his chest and brain. Pain lanced up his arms and shoulders, as if he were holding the Cloudstep platforms on his very back as the tundra disintegrated beneath their skis.

C’mon! Hold it!

Platforms crackled and splintered, but they held. Their convoy dropped and bashed across the unconnected Cloudsteps, jostled by each lunging leap…until the last of them reached solid ground, more than a hundred yards behind Felix’s position.

“Jesus Christ,” he gasped. His knees felt like water. “They made it.”

Cloudstep is level 75!

…

Cloudstep is level 81!

Adept Tier!

You Gain:

+10 DEX

+10 AGL+10 INT

The path wound through another series of hard-banked turns, and Felix had to grip the sled to keep from toppling out. His insides surged with a bolt of System energy, which then expanded into a frenetic burst of something more.

SYNERGY DETECTED!

The Skill Cloudstep (Rare) Has Synergy With Sunken Ward (R)!

Do You Wish To Evolve Them?

Warning! Evolution May Result In Death And Cannot Be Stopped Once Begun. All Choices Have Consequences.

Continue?

Y/N

Now?! Felix groaned, but he mentally jabbed the affirmative. He wouldn’t pass up the opportunity. Why’d this have to happen now?

Evolution In Process…

Music cascaded across his core space, followed closely by the ache of newly stretched limbs and spasming muscles. He braced against the Warrior beside him, and dimly heard the man grunt in pain, but it was a distant thing. The evolution didn’t take as much out of him as some others, but it was fearsome. A gruesome burn compared to having his arms melted off.

He barely noticed when they passed over another brilliant seal of sigaldry.

“That’s a Dwarven trap!” Tzfell warned. “Metal and sharp…look out!”

A few rogue Obelons that had followed them across the wide crevasses were suddenly shattered by a hundred blades that slid out from nowhere. Sigaldry flashed all around them, blinding the whimpering hounds as more stout blades cut upward into the sky itself. The Cinderwings swooped out of the way just as Evie and Vess landed among their craft again.

“That trap isn’t done!” Vess warned. “Look!”

Felix’s couldn’t; his vision was covered by a notification.

New Skill!

Storm Shaping (Epic), Level 1!

The flow of air, water, and lightning have been baked into your very bones, and you have delved deep within them to find the kernel of their truth. Breathe deep, Ascendent, and know that you shape the tempest itself.

He swiped it away.

“Down!” Beef shouted.

A huge, silver-green blade, fifty feet long and hewn out of pure, gleaming metal dropped atop of them at an angle. Everyone threw themselves to the side, but Felix stood tall and bared his teeth.

He took it straight to the chest.

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