Unbound

Felix had experienced the protections around Domains before, and this one was no different. It appeared as the dark Void, but the floor was glossy and mirrored, providing an uncertain horizon line as circles of radiant sigaldry flickered to life all around him. The sheath around Domains was a liminal space not unlike a Dark Passage or Shadowgate, but unlike those others, this was far more limited.

You Have Entered Into The Domain Of Another.

Beware—!

It App—ERROR!

Entrant(s) Exceed Domain Strictures!

Full Manifestation May Damage Shell Integrity.

Ejecting...

ERROR!

Ejection Failed!

Felix ignored the messages that boomed across his consciousness. He’d seen them before, back when the Domain below Haarwatch was failing. Back then, the presence of him and his allies had strained the integrity of the Domain’s bounds, leading to further fracturing of its substance. Just as then, gleaming formations of sigaldry appeared around him: looping, radial structures made of brilliant purple-white Mana vapor. Pressure manifested around his limbs, gravity wrapped about him like a lead cloak, connected to the formations by glittering lines.

He simply walked through them all.

ERROR—!

The countermeasures burst with the shrieking sound of feedback, sigaldry flinging away from Felix like shrapnel. Pressure surged, attempting to hold him in place, to prevent him from entering the Domain at all. Yet Felix’s very feet shook the dark, until cracks formed across the mirrored floor. Daylight leaked from those fissures, illuminating dust motes wherever they touched, and emanating a deep, bone-aching chill.

The exit.

Felix stomped again, and this time, the liminal space could not hold.

Warning! Entrant(s) Exceed Shell Parameters.

Manifestation Actualized.

Shell Integrity Damaged.

Extant Damage - 75%

Shell Integrity Reduced from 75% to 22%!

Shell Integrity...Stabilized.

The light swallowed up the dark, and Felix dropped as if falling through an icy lake. He landed, legs spread for balance, atop cold stone and snow, while the last remnants of his crossing were blown away by a frigid northern gale.

He was in.

Pit separated from him, landing gracefully and stretching to his full height. “That was uncomfortable. It’s not usually so cramped.”

“Domain restrictions,” Felix said by way of explanation, and Pit nodded sagely.

“Like Haarwatch. The Domains near home didn’t feel like that.” He rolled a warbling note in his throat, thinking. “Because this one is failing too?”

“That’s what I’m thinking. The other ones were strong enough to handle our entrance…based on what I’ve heard this one should be able to handle our strength too. Haarwatch only really allowed for lower Tier entrants on top of being busted.” Felix knelt down and ran his hands across the cold rock and snow. Stone crumbled slightly, like talc, even without exerting his Strength. “This place seems worse though.”

You Have Survived.

The Challenge Is Incomplete.

Be Wary, Young Primordial.

Oh, there it is. The usual refrain when he entered a Domain. Typically, to exit it one would face the Domain Core or some guardian beast that was at the center. At least, if he planned to exit on the other end. If he just turned around, Felix knew he could simply pop back out into the mountain pass with his Shadows.

“It called you a Primordial,” Pit pointed out.

“Is what it is,” Felix said with a shrug. It had bothered him a lot, once, but without the Race change he wouldn’t have been able to withstand half of what he’d been put through. “I’m still me.”

Apart from the rocky promontory they stood on, the land was excessively flat all around. A plain of ice and snow extended in all directions, but the sharp winds were not alone among the ice: huge stone and metal spires speared up from the ground, hundreds of them, all at varying angles but none fully straight. Still, they rose so high that clouds of ice enveloped their tops, like a skyborn river of glass. A winter sun struck gleaming highlights off them all, a blinding radiance that forced Felix to reel in his Perception a bit.

He blinked. The cold had a bite to it that was vaguely familiar. It smelled of the vacant space where pollen and rain-turned earth might have been before and, oddly enough, like pine. A memory tumbled on the heels of that scent, when he, his mother, and his sister Gabby had gone north to visit family. It had been an effort to escape the crowds that swarmed their home on school holidays, and instead ended up with them stuck in a blizzard in a small motel sixty miles from anywhere.

There was no warning as with when he consumed an enemy’s Memory. There was only the sudden, total embrace of recollection, fully fledged and detailed in the way only his Born Trait could provide. The feel of cheap sheets, the low-pile carpet that smelled faintly of cigarettes, and even the overstuffed recliners in front of one of those old tvs—the boxy ones, not a sleek flatscreen. His mother, overtired and sleeping off the long drive north, while he had clicked aimlessly through static and daytime soap operas.

“I’m sick of this,” Gabby groaned, and started rummaging through their luggage.

“What are you doing?” he asked. Anything was more interesting than Days of Our Children or whatever he had on.

“I’m hungry, and I saw vending machines when we came in.”

“Yeah? So? That’s like ten rooms away, and in case you haven’t noticed, we’re snowed in.”

Like most motels, the doors led outside, and the unrelenting snow had buried the building. The snow had piled so high that for a few hours they were stuck in the room, with drifts against the doors and darkening the windows. He couldn’t even see sunlight through them anymore.

“Whatever.” Gabby stood up from the luggage, tugging on what had to be her fifth sweater. This one had a picture of a mermaid holding up a big crystal. “I’m going out.”

“You’re such a pest. You are not.” Gabby didn’t stop her march toward the front door, and the recliner squealed under him as he sat up. “You’re gonna get snow in the room!”

She stared at him, all challenge and that stupid smirk. “Afraid of a little cold?”

Before he could stop her, she whipped open the door…and was met by a wall of snow that wasn’t nearly as solid as she hoped. A wave of white rushed into the room, burying her as she let out the funniest sound he’d ever heard in his life—a goose’s honk mixed with a surprised, high pitched squeal.

He remembered laughing so hard he fell out of his chair.

“It’s not funny! Help me!”

The memory left him, gone just as fast as it had arrived. It had been so clear and sharp that Felix took a moment to remember where exactly he stood, though the sight of his own blackened fingers provided a sudden clarity.

Holy crap. That was a doozy. Felix ran his hands over his face. The small scales on his palms were smooth and cold. His Born Trait didn’t activate often for memories beyond thirty days prior, a feature he was glad for—he couldn’t imagine having that sort of recollection about everything all the time. No one needed that.

Felix made it a point not to think about Earth and his family too much. It made him sad, usually, because at the end of the day he had left everything behind without a word. His mom, his sister. They probably thought he was dead after that yacht fight.

It’s better that way.

“Felix,” Pit warned, just as the air fuzzed behind them.

“Ah. Took you long enough,” Felix said to the Witches that emerged from outside the Domain. “Only three of you?”

Naberius, nine feet tall and statuesque, glared at him from under sharp white brows. “You should have waited. You have damaged the Domain further.”

The other two Witches were far older, stooped and withered, but no less powerful. In the way of monster rankings, they’d each be the equivalent of an Adept Tier combatant. Certainly stronger than most, but far less of a strain on the Domain that he and Pit. One of them, Sitri, narrowed her pale eyes at him. “How did you do such a thing, Human?”

Felix shrugged. “I thought this place was strong enough that no one’s ever beaten it.”

“It is,” said the third. Foris.

“And you plan to fix it?”

“We do. We shall.”

Felix regarded them all evenly. “Then what’s the problem?”

“It is certainly an issue if you break the Domain fully before we can reach the Fifth Layer. That is where we must go to reverse the deterioration of this place.” Naberius regarded him down the length of her aquiline nose. “If you can make it.”

Felix laughed. “Lady, you—”

Thunder rolled across the landscape, but not from the sky. A stone and metal pillar cracked and collapsed, sending clouds of snow and debris into the air even as its rumbling shook their footing apart.

“Whoa, that’s not good,” Pit chirruped. He hopped across the rocks, his wide paws barely finding purchase beneath the crumbling earth. “It’s falling apart. All of it.”

“We need to move, immediately,” Naberius insisted. “The sooner we exit the First Layer, the sooner we will put this dissolution behind us.”

“Frostfather’s mercy,” Sitri whispered, lifting an ancient hand to point into the sky.

“Whoa.” Above them, those shifting clouds of glass were moving. Toward them. “Those aren’t clouds,” Felix said after flaring a Skill. “Those are Brumalbats.”

Thousands upon thousands of those man-sized bat monsters surged from the sky, their icy wings ringing like an army of windchimes well before the first shrieking reached their ears. They wound around the other pillars, still too far to attack them but gaining speed by the second.

“Saved some for you, Pit.”

The tenku laughed through his beak. He tilted his head at the Witches. “You’ll want to step back, old ladies.”

Naberius sniffed. “We shall aid you.”

“Not necessary,” Felix said.

Sitri scoffed. “Our aid is all that will save you.”

“Then we’ll fail, right?” Mana crackled across his hands, looping through his pathways with increased fervor. “You said do this alone, right?”

“A temporary pause,” Naberius interjected. “The strictures of our test do not account for this breakdown of order. Our curses will—”

“Nah. We’re doing this the right way.” Felix said, and began to sound the patterns of his Skills.

“Hey!” Pit cut in. He let out a trumpeting cry. “This is my turn!”

“I’m not gonna kill them outright, just setting the stage.” With his Affinity Felix flared the song of a Skill he didn’t use very often, relishing the sound of it as the Chant amplified its power. His Intent guided it, shaping its eventual release. “Remember the Tomb of Eternal Slumber?”

Pit’s golden eyes glinted in the wintry sunlight. “Oh yeah.” He lowered his head and raised his rear, fluffy fox tail lashing the air. “Set ‘em up.”

Rain of Cataclysm!

Acid Mana fled Felix’s channels, billowing outward in a liquid rush as it ascended into the sky. The spell was a big one, meant for a wide area, and that was evident in just how much Mana it used. Virulent green liquid flooded the air, swirling all around their stone promontory until they resembled nothing so much as clouds themselves. The Brumalbats shrieked louder, the first few unleashing sonic blasts that tore holes in his magic.

“Pit!”

“Tempest Fugit!”

Lightning and ice Mana roared from Pit’s own channels before shooting off directly into Felix’s acid clouds. The moment his Skill touched Felix’s, they both could feel their bond sing, as their abilities combined and changed. What emerged from the other side of the clouds were dozens upon dozens of frozen spears, crackling with bottled lightning, and composed entirely of acid.

Ice shattered and thunder boomed as the first Brumalbats fell, but that was only the beginning. Pit shrieked out his Skill again and again, passing it through Felix’s clouds and amplifying the effects. Normally Tempest Fugit was a spear of ice that, upon shattering, unleashed a localized burst of lightning. Now, each spear sizzled through dozens of monsters before the acidic ice wore away and delivered a payload of electrical damage. It was a massacre…but not quite enough. After the first thousand, Pit was flagging, his Mana all but gone.

Allow me, Felix sent through their bond.

The Chant allowed Sorcerers to alter and amplify their Skills without the System. This worked by utilizing their Harmonic stats to access, activate, and shape the Skills inside their own cores. Affinity and Intent were the primary movers and shakers in that operation—though all of his Harmonic stats played a role—and Felix had enough of both that it was a simple issue to change the layout of his acid clouds. His Intent shifted, no longer open and accepting the combination with Pit’s Skills, but aimed back toward his Skill’s original purpose.

Rain of Cataclysm surged outward, a horizontal, torrential downpour. Acid rain shot through the Brumalbats, eating through wing and claw with ease, until the sky was filled with their dying shrieks and the sound of broken, tinkling glass.

You Have Killed A Brumalbat (x2435)!

XP Earned!

Your Companion Pit Has Gained 2 Levels!

Pit Is Now Level 72!

He Gains:

+20 STR, +18 PER, +8 VIT, +22 END, +14 INT, +20 WIL, +40 AGL, +40 DEX!

+20 AFI, RES, and REI!

Pit let out a cry of triumph as he shimmered with System power, his fur and feathers crackling with retrained might. “That feels much better!”

Felix grinned, but it was halted by two more blue screen notifications that appeared, each bordered by gold.

New Title!

Ironskin Nemesis (Epic)!

By force of arm or magic, you have defeated a truly staggering amount of foes, proving yourself a true threat to the Ironskin Domain! As a result, all denizens of the Domain will see you as a true enemy and will attack on sight. +40 END and VIT!

Challenge Initiated!

Path of Rule!

You have taken the first step upon the Path. The Frostfather applauds you. How far can you climb?

“Huh.” Felix looked to the Witches. Their faces were drawn and haggard, and they watched him like he was a wild animal. “You said the name before, but who the hell is the Frostfather?”

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