Unbound

When Felix came back to the ship, he found a crowd of onlookers. Arclights with spells dancing on their fingers, Blades and Bones with weapons drawn, and numerous Yttin and Henaari bearing spears and tridents—ready and willing to mete out death, but finding only Felix and the empty dark.

They burst into applause.

Felix stifled his embarrassment as he flexed his Willpower and Alacrity, the two stats that allowed one to fly in the Void. They were a little less useful in the Dark Passage, perhaps due to the sheath between them and the true Void, but Felix had more than enough to make up for the difference. He landed on the stern, the Claw members making space for him, and gestured for them to quiet down. “Anyone hurt? No? Good. You did well. The beasts were fought off, but we’re not through yet. Keep your eyes open.”

The Claw all saluted, fist to chest. Felix had never wondered what “pride” might sound like, but it was fun to learn. A series of swelling violins and cellos, picked and enhanced by breathy, staccato notes swirled around his soldiers. It was strong, and barely dented when Vess started shouting. “Everyone return to their posts!”

They did, hustling back down the steps from the helm, quite a few returning below decks. Felix spotted mages using their Mana Gauge Skill to test the air, while others hauled the corpses of the Void beasts for study.

“That Void beast was massive. Is it gone?” Vess looked over the railing, more than a little disappointed.

“It is. Hey you,” Felix snagged a Goblin Legionnaire before she could move too far away. “Haiza. Go to Commander Harn. Remind him about using Willpower to maintain your footing here. Tell him I can’t catch everyone when they fall overboard.”

“Sir?”

“He’ll know what I mean. If he has any questions, send him to me.”

She ran off, right past Chanter Tzfell and Chanter Laur. The Dwarven woman watched her with pursed lips. “You know all their names?”

Felix smiled. “I have a good memory. How can I help you two?”

“We had thought to aid you, but it seems well in hand,” Laur said. He was dressed in a bottle green jacket that only reached his waist, with a flowing tunic of cream colored silk and matching trousers. His long auburn hair was loose, only collected around his temples by a band of woven leather. “A shame, as I was eager to see how my wards would deal with such creatures. They were Void born, yes?”

“They are.”

“I thought these Passages were safer than the standard?”

“They’re different,” Felix said. “I don’t know how much safer they are. Who said that?”

“It is remarkable what can be gleaned by an understanding ear,” Tzfell said. “We sought to help, but to do so we need understanding. None told us what these Dark Passages are, how you are able to access them, or where we are going.”

Laur nodded along. “What is to prevent greater threats from intruding through the dimensional sheath?”

Felix opened his mouth to argue, but closed with a grimace. “You’re right. But that is for a reason. Trust that we are safe for now, and I’ll explain the rest shortly.”

The Elf looked ready to say more, but Tzfell placed a restraining hand on his forearm. “Of course, Lord Autarch. We shall be in our rooms until then.”

Felix and Vess watched them leave, lithe Elf beside stout Dwarf, neither of them lacking in a certain grace. It pricked at his senses, the way they moved, something he’d noticed before but still couldn’t pin down.

Vess thumbed a small monster core at her waist, carved with a series of relatively simple sigils. A sound-ward popped up, humming inaudibly around them. “Why do you distrust them so?”

He looked amusedly at the sound-ward, but Vess gave him a flat stare. “I am simply following your lead.”

“Fair. Less distrust, more…I’ve yet to see what they’re bringing to the table.” Felix’s easy smile flattened into a grim line. “I’ve escaped being a pawn for Primordials and gods. I’m not interested in being one for the Chanters.”

“Well said.”

Felix blinked. “Really?”

“Are you so surprised? We have traveled together for a long time now, Felix. I trust your judgment. And I look forward to hearing your plan.” She stepped away, footsteps light upon the deck, air boosting her movement. Her footwork, as always, was deceptive—she was there one step and gone the next.

I agree. Flawless judgment. Pit sent, still standing at the helm. More mountains loomed some distance ahead. Now, how do you slow this thing down?

“Erm, maybe I’ll take over from here.”

They reached the exit a few minutes later, and this time Felix made sure to conjure a raft before anyone exited the Dark Passage. The waters were just as frigid as before, and a small snow flurry had settled in during their absence, but it was simple enough to get his company onto the Rime Shaped raft before moving toward the island at the river’s center.

Felix had Pit’s book in his hand, though he hadn’t managed to crack the spine by the time they had fetched up against the rocky coastline of the island. He was busy thinking, comparing and contrasting his options for advancement. There was no easy answer, and as the Claw disembarked and began to blaze a trail into the island’s interior, he tucked the book into a thick leather pouch his Garment fashioned at Will, clasping around the tome so that it would remain secure from the wet and the cold.

He really loved his clothes.

Pit was ahead, sniffing through the snow before bounding into drifts twice his size, clearly having the time of his life. Harn led the company, marching toward a spot Felix had marked out on his map. Evie and Beef were chuckling at some shared joke, with more than a few of the nearest Claw members cracking smiles. Vess walked with some others, Blades mostly, illustrating jabs with her spear while Yintarion nodded wisely from her shoulder.

Felix tried to enjoy it, but it was hard, knowing what might be coming.

This next leg should be simple, and then the Hoarfrost. Plans tumbled through Felix’s Mind, chasing after one another as he considered option after option. He didn’t have all the details, was in fact missing several large ones…but it would do. He hoped.

He hadn’t expected the attack in the Dark Passage, not really. The creatures had avoided him the first time he’d traveled to the north, but something about them had drawn the beasts. Likely the Mana from so many people. There was far more here in the Foglands than there was in the Void, and even if the Dark Passages had some it was thin.

Not for the first time, Felix appreciated just how much Mana existed in the Corporeal Realms. He’d grown used to it after nearly a year, but the idea that physical reality was just stacks of vibrating Mana was wild to him. It was thick even in the air, like they were swimming through an invisible sea. Manasight caught it all, glimmering and blinding if he focused on it too much. A thousand swirls of vapor, liquid, and solid Mana, all of it vibrating at infinitely variable speeds. As long as Manasight was activated, it was like drowning in a kaleidoscope.

As he’d grown with the Skill, the sensations were less intense. Or at least easier to navigate. The air tasted of silver and smelled of cold violence banked beneath frigid water. Why? Felix was never really sure, though he sometimes had hints. Manasight was much more than sight—it was synesthesia, a combination of multiple senses that he had found intensely confusing in his early days. He was pretty sure it tapped into the Grand Harmony somehow. Only by letting the sensations flow over him could he make out reality behind the chaos—like those fuzzy illusions they used to put on posters when he was a kid. Focus just beyond the bedlam, and he could see reality in a new way. He—

Tzfell passed in front of him, slipping through the waist-high snow as if through a silken curtain.

Manasight is level 80!

The Mana, he realized. When normal people moved through air Mana it created eddies and gusts. The Chanter, on the other hand, was slipping through it and the snow without a ripple. He looked for Laur, who was doing much the same. I can’t believe I didn’t see this before.

Tzfell stopped and glanced back at him, a small smile on her tattooed face. “He is sharp eyed, this one. You can see?”

Felix nodded. “I can. How are you doing that?”

“We live in balance, Autarch Nevarre. Harmony. We move as the Realms move.” She paused. “You…fight the world.”

“What?”

Her lips thinned and he swore her tattoos shifted. “You see, but move as if you cannot hear.” Tzfell looked up, way up, until she met his eyes. Her irises caught the dim winter light like faceted gems. “You walk in Dissonance.”

The Dwarf kept moving but Felix drifted to a stop. Thinking.

The second Dark Passage was a touch longer than the first, but Pit insisted on piloting the ship again. Felix had agreed, not only to help his Companion build up the Skill, but also for the extra eyes and ears in the case of another attack. A significantly larger number of guards were stationed on deck, and all of them were on high alert. No Void beasts had visited them yet, but they were ready.

Within the captain’s quarters, located just under the helm and behind a thick crystalline door, the team was having a meeting. The interior was mostly bare, just as many of the chambers on board—Felix’s subconscious was not big on furnishings, it seemed. There was, however, a table in the center of the room. It was large and circular, clearly a scaled-down recreation of the table in the Hall of Songs. Vess and Yin, Evie, Harn, Beef, and the two Chanters were arrayed around it, staring at one another beneath the steady, blue-white light of a crystal chandelier.

Felix drummed his hands on the table. “So. Now that we’re well underway, let’s discuss the plan.”

“What plan? We’re just going to the Dwarves and back,” Evie said. “Right?”

“Bit more to it than that,” Harn grunted. “Gotta get to the Rimefangs in the first place.”

Felix pointed at the grizzled warrior. “Right. We’re heading north to the Boreal Pass and from there into the Hoarfrost proper. Once I claim the Hoarfrost, I’ll be able to use Labyrinthine Wing to traverse the stupidly large distance to the Rimefangs. Without it, we’ll be traveling for months…by then, we’ll very likely have lost the Unbound Gnome completely.”

His friends nodded along with his words, their Spirits at ease. The exception were the two newcomers; both Chanters were small storms of turbulence.

“You’re simply…taking control?” Laur asked, clearly skeptical.

“That’s the plan, yeah,” Felix said. “Why?”

“The Hoarfrost is massive, taking up a large portion of the Continent’s northernmost edge. No one in living memory has been able to take it from the giants or the monstrosities that live among them.”

“My people have tried to take it by force many, many times.” Tzfell added. “They have never once succeeded, not for longer than a season, across the breadth of an entire Age.”

“Listen, we brought back an ocean to a desert. I think we can take some ice from a few giants,” Beef said. When Felix gave him a surprised look, the kid smiled and gave him a thumbs up.

Heh. “I have a plan.”

“And what is it?” Laur asked.

“We enter the Hoarfrost and take it.”

“That’s…not a plan,” Tzfell said.

“Sure it is,” Harn said. “Two steps. Easy as droppin’ an axe.”

“We already beat up the ice king,” Pit added.

“Grimmar, was it?” Tzfell asked, fingers drumming on the table. “Would the Frost Giants not want revenge?”

“That’s not what I—”

Felix stopped Pit with a gesture, instead shrugging at the Chanters. “Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll handle that when we get there.”

Laur fiddled nervously with his lace cuffs. “With so few? Why wouldn’t you bring an army?”

“Too many people. Gets real noisy,” Evie said. “Plus, who would watch over our home?”

That was the first time Felix remembered hearing Evie refer to Elderthrone like that. It was heartwarming. “The Witches of Cold Rock Coven will support us when we get there. We’ve hashed out a deal. The other Covens will likely be opposed, unless they’ve won them to their side, but we only need one Coven to vouch for us to approach Kingsrock.”

“Why’s everything called ‘rock this’ or ‘rock that’?” Beef asked.

“Ain’t much else up there,” Harn said.

“Cheery.”

“And this Kingsrock is what, exactly? Another settlement?” Laur asked.

“It is their holiest of places,” Tzfell answered eagerly. The geometric tattoos around her left eye twitched. This time, Felix was positive that they moved across her skin. “Finding it is an achievement my people only managed once in all our years, and it did not end well for them. None can approach it without dire consequences. Do you plan to fight a war by yourself, Lord Autarch?”

Felix smiled. “If things go to plan, I won’t have to.”

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