Unbound

“Nevarre,” Sword said, as if weighing the name. They stood, separated by churning water as fire and light and stone rained upon them all. He adjusted his grip upon his overlarge blade. “That is Wyvarren, is it not?”

Felix felt sweat or blood trickle down his back. A hollow ache pulsed at his center, but he forced it from his thoughts. “What?”

“Yes.” The word was drawn out. Savored. “Wyvarren. Perhaps after this, we can go find your family. I daresay our treaties with Wyvarr would make the matter simple.”

“We could find them, yes,” Tome said in a distracted voice. His face was half melted and bloody, but he looked as detached from their conflict as if he were reading a research paper. “Easily. A House that produced such a powerful combatant could not hide from us.”

It was a distraction, clearly. Felix had no family on the Continent—but he was more than happy to play it up for time. “You’ll never touch them,” he said and let the truth of that sentence ring through his Spirit.

“Perhaps. Or perhaps we shall parade your corpse through Isindr, and take them when they cry for our mercy.”

Forcing himself to disregard the disturbing imagery, Felix split his attention for the briefest of moments. His inner songs rang loud and bright and he clamped tight with Fiendforge before spinning his cores as fast as he could—even as he ducked beneath the horizontal swipe of his enemy’s weapon.

He took Sword’s sudden strike against his blades, and despite the numbing shock that ran up his arms, he took a single, easy breath. The internal pressure eased…before swiftly turning to a hot, searing pain. Dissonance and Harmony raged, unleashed from their enforced stasis and eager to swell up inside his core space.

“Rancor’s Blade!” Sword shouted, and fire erupted across their crossed weapons.

The Skill slipped from Felix’s grasp, and fire washed over him, uncontested. He clenched his teeth against the agony, rolling into the water and pulling a shield of ice from below to blunt its hungry edge. In the split-second respite, he felt at his Skill…only to find it fully active and aimed inward instead of outward.

Sorry! Pit cried, his lilting voice filled with pain, pressure, and urgency. I need it! And this!

Fiendforge vanished from Felix’s control as well. He could still hear their songs, still feel the vibrations through his Aspects…but the physical and mental strain of them both vanished entirely. Unbidden, a bead of hope accumulated in his heart, and it grew larger and brighter with each muted strain of sound—even as he desperately danced away from a barrage of flaming darts.

“Do you not have the courage to face me, Navarre?” Sword scoffed at him, following up his volley of projectiles with a horizontal swing. A crescent of orange flame licked outward…only to meet a curtain of half-formed ice. With an explosive hiss, it turned into a cloud of superheated steam. “Hiding now? My Perception is far too sharp to deceive, Nevarre.”

Within the sudden cloud bank, Felix floundered. Delight chased after the hope that fluttered within him, joy that his Companion could do such a thing. A half-dozen darts of stone shot toward him, but he slapped them out of the air with his Riposte. He sensed the onrush of Mace, weapon lifted high with her remaining arm—yet Felix couldn’t help it.

He laughed.

Status Condition: Berserk

Status Condition Ended!

“You’ve broken him, Sword.” Mace said, uncaring at the noise she made in the shallow water. She appeared from the fading steam with a fervent light burning in her eyes. “My turn, yeah?”

Her strike was fast, and the loss of his Berserk Status Condition was like dropping a heavy weight from Felix’s neck.

He lifted his left arm, too slow before her heightened stats, and her attack was like a collapsing building in its descent. Undeniable and bone-crushing. The bladed flanges gouged a bloody furrow in his shoulder, and Felix felt something snap just above his elbow. “Hah! That’s just the start for repayment on my arm, boy!”

Her triumphant grin froze, however, when instead of crying out, Felix seized her weapon. “I’m not done,” Felix hissed. “Mine!”

Chthonic Tribute!

The orichalcum mace fought back—all things wished to remain as they were, whether they were a rock or a magic weapon. But neither stone nor orichalcum could match his unfettered Will. Felix wrenched it hard, yanking it free of the High Guard’s grip…and it blasted apart, dissolved to liquid Mana and smoky Essence that poured into Felix’s gullet.

Claiming what he needed with Sovereign of Flesh, his arm snapped back together in a rush of pain…and the rest he sent skittering into his depths. Pit! Take it!

“Wha—my Masterwork weapon!” Mace cried out, falling back. “You—he—!”

“Do not gawk! Kill him!” Sword commanded. “And these pests, as well!”

Felix spotted Vess and Yintarion leaping through the air at the same time as the High Guard. He bellowed a warning and ripped a thirty-foot tall wall of stone from beneath their feet just in time to meet the slash of Sword’s blade. The crescent of flame cut through the two feet of stone like melting wax, only to hit a swiftly woven shield of wind and water. The Wyrmling roared, and the explosive impact sent the pair hurtling to the ground.

“Vess!”

“I am—fine!” she gasped upon landing. Her left hand and shoulder were charred, the white enamel in her silver armor spiderwebbed with cracks.

“But we are at our limit,” the golden Wyrmling said. “I have held them all that I could. We must rest! The Dragoon is not meant for this battle.”

“Then go!” Felix ordered, worry and anger warring within him. If they couldn’t fight, he needed them out. Safe. “Now!”

It was too late. Spear and Tome joined the others, each bearing a dazzling golden cloak. Joined by sigaldry and some arcane process, their combined Spirits pointed at them all. More dangerous by far than any mere weapon.

The High Guard charged as one.

Stomps that shattered stone and thrusts that split the very air rained down on him, but Felix held on. He devoured spells and Skills but could only grasp the barest edge of their power—at best blunting them before he was forced to dodge aside, and many came on entirely too fast. Their strange array was too potent. Yet, it wasn’t just the array—their Skills seem to mesh and intermingle, Spear’s wind working in tandem with Tome’s lightning and Mace’s earth and metal. Sword, flaring with fire Mana, was apart, a flourish to each concerted attack meant to upset the rhythm of the fight.

Vess and Yintarion gave their all, but they were exhausted, and she had barely enough Stamina to last another few minutes. Felix was their wall, building barriers of stone and ice and greenery where he could…and interposing his own Body where he could not. His scales took the brunt of those attacks, Armored Skin acting as backup for his already mighty Body, but they took a savage toll.

Wound after wound accumulated on Felix, and his Health plummeted. Sovereign of Flesh hummed through him, fed by the glancing feedings he took from their Skills—enough to maintain his Health and Stamina, but not nearly enough to feed Pit's efforts. The roar of his Hunger had increased, seemingly angry at a lack of sustenance, and the hollow pang of Pit’s efforts was a dull knife dragged along the insides of his bones.

Felix knew how this played out. He’d done it twice before, weeks prior, when he’d faced the Grandmaster of Ahkestria. He may have won in the end, but that gray-skinned bastard hadn’t been at his peak; when he had been, Felix had nearly died. Now, fighting four Masters somehow joined into a Grandmaster was like battling a tempest. Attacks came from every angle, at every moment, until the world was reduced to him and them.

“Adherents of Ophidia!”

Thin dragons of water spun upward and around, splashing ineffectually against the golden haze of the High Guard’s power, but succeeding in making all of them flinch backward. All but Spear, that is.

“She flees!” the woman cried, before throwing out an empty hand. “Howl Aphson!”

A fleet of air spears manifested and launched all in one motion. Felix’s Perception tracked backward, even as Sword advanced on him. Vess!

His friend and the Wyrmling blurred across the ground, sped by strange air magic and the ghostly wings she bore. Yet Spear’s Skill surged across the shallow water with unerring accuracy.

Relentless Resolution!

The ground exploded. Mud and water cascaded over the High Guard, and Felix was abruptly elsewhere, his hands reaching outward to grasp at the air spears. “Chthonic Tribute!” he howled.

Air Mana and smoky Essence flooded his pathways, dimming the Skill’s glow, but he couldn’t pull it all.

Stone Shaping!

Rime Shaping!Green Shaping!

Blue-black walls erupted from below, curving around his friends in the split seconds before the spears hit…and punched right through.

Vess screamed, and Yintarion roared in piercing agony.

Felix made it there a half-heartbeat later, to find his friends bloody on the ground. Still alive, he realized. Barely. One more hit…

The High Guard were closing in.

Pit! I need those Pillars done!

I need more Essence! You have so much Mana, but we’re all but out of Essence to weave these things!

Four warriors tore up the water almost as fast as Felix had, their steps thunderous as the sky was painted a bloody crimson by the setting sun. He did the only thing he could think of; the only thing that had worked for him time and time again.

He ate.

Chthonic Tribute!

Felix pitted every ounce of his restored Willpower against everything around him but Vess and Yintarion. The water, the mud, the stone and drowned grass, even the air itself—he devoured them all.

Chthonic Tribute!

The world dissolved around him into a miasma of loose Mana and Essence smoke, spreading farther and farther until he reached the edge of his power. The air buckled, and the ground evaporated, until they were inundated within a writhing curtain of dark smoke. It alone wouldn’t do…because Felix was going to eat it all soon. So, he uncorked a bottle at his side, and let flow a deep, thick fog from within. The Bottle of Eversmoke from Temple Haestus spewed forth an impenetrable cloud around them all, and Felix and his friends were concealed.

Spells and Skills launched at the perimeter of his externalized hunger, attacks that nearly caught Felix head-on despite their concealment. Before he could address them, however, a vibrant light flowed from behind him. Felix turned in time to catch Yintarion lifting a shaking claw and breathing out deep flows of darkest purple tinged by blue.

“You are not—the only one with tricks, Felix Nevarre. Sever The Eye!”

The miasma of released Essence and Eversmoke were inundated by Yintarion’s Skill, and it seemed all of the golden Wyrmlings swirled around them. To Felix’s eyes, it was a storm of Mana that crackled as it met the magic of the Eversmoke…and let it expand into strange, whirling dimensions. Distance and space suddenly upended as a hurricane of chaos was born.

“An illusion, and all I can spare,” Yintarion said. His voice was thin, and the glow from his golden scales dimmed, as if he had truly pressed everything into that Skill. “It will not confuse them for long.”

“Thank you.” Felix turned back toward the roiling fog around them. Chewing on ideas as water rushed around them, filling in the sudden hole he’d taken out of the earth. Rock, soil, air, and water had little in the way of Essence compared to a person, but it was enough that Pit had begun weaving again. What else can I do?

Skills fired off, but this time they spun away from where Felix, Vess, and Yintarion huddled atop their platform of stone. Boulders arced over, birds of geen-gold light swirled, and air spears stabbed down at erratic angles—all of them far from hitting. Distantly, he heard them curse.

“You finally face us truly, and now you run?” Mace said, the wrath in her voice as clear as the derision—and the buried pain. “Pathetic! You are not fit to be a Territorial Lord!”

“He is not,” Sword affirmed. Felix’s skin crawled just to hear the man’s voice. He was the one that Felix was worried most about, and there was a weight to the man’s voice he could not place. “And so I challenge you, Lord of Nagast, for your Title!”

Attention!

Territorial Lord Autarch Felix Nevarre Has Been Challenged For His Authority!

The Challenger Is Master Callum D’or Of The High Guard!

Shit. Apparently, Felix didn’t get a choice to refuse the matter. Even the Grandmaster of the Desert’s Flame got a choice. What sort of Authority does he have to force the issue?

Begin Challenge!

“Judgment’s Squall!” Sword’s words boomed through Felix’s concealing cloud. His Perception caught the High Guard lifting his weapon above his head…only for it to ignite into a tower of flame, hundreds of feet into the air. “Face me with honor, Usurper Nevarre! Or your people will be punished for your cowardice!”

The firestorm coiled upward, an inferno in the guise of a cyclone, high enough that, were it to fall, the flames would reach Haarwatch’s walls. Through the haze of illusion and fog, Felix could tell how powerful it was, and that it would savage the entire wall—and set the Sunrise Quarter beyond ablaze. Thousands would die, unless he acted, and if he acted…Felix licked his lips. He looked behind him, where Vess lay unconscious on their narrow stone platform, and the wan light of Yintarion all but guttered out.

“Very well!” Sword cried out, and his voice boomed twice as loud as before as he addressed the entire battlefield. “Your Autarch has abandoned you! He refuses to face a lawful Challenge! As such, he has condemned you and your city to death!”

“Run, fool king,” Yintarion rumbled.

Felix took a single, steadying breath. “Yeah, that’d be smart.”

Pit, he sent. Prepare yourself.

A warble of strain was interposed with confusion and—as Pit sensed Felix’s Spirit—fear. Swiftly followed by a fierce determination. I stand ready.

Felix stood up.

“It’s time for something stupid, though.”

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