Unbound

Within his spacious captains' quarters, Felix had made something of a nest for himself. After a few experiments, Green Shaping had proven the most effective for building creature comforts. The ice chairs from before had been fine, but a cold butt after hours of core diving wasn't a fun experience.

Unlike Stone and Rime Shaping though, Green Shaping couldn't simply fabricate plant life where there was none—that seemed to be a result of the type of Mana it affected. Stone was earth mana, Rime was ice Mana, and both of them could be fashioned entirely out of his own stores in the rare case he didn't have the raw materials to hand. Green Shaping, however, was control over life Mana, which was fairly nebulous as a concept. Growing things, suffusing them with further life, that Felix could manifest directly from his channels. Straight up manifesting wood and vines and stuff was beyond the Skill's scope.

Mana, Felix had learned, was a product of the Grand Harmony. It composed all of the Corporeal Realm, not just infusing things but as an intrinsic part of them. Felix could see it with his Manasight. A simple flex of the Skill showed Mana floating around him in rivers of vapor, the walls and floor and air itself filled with it. There was a bit more to reality than just Mana, such as Essence, but in this case Mana was all he was concerned about. With each moment more of it was absorbed into his Mana Gates, which functioned as apertures and a sort of filter for most people; nine of them in the palms, elbows, knees, feet, and one at the base of the skull. For them, it kept non-attuned Mana types from entering their channels. For Felix that was a nonissue, as his Unbound nature made all Mana types compatible with his core. Mana types, like the Grand Harmony itself, were all just a spectrum of vibrations, after all. When he activated one of his many Skills, their song sent shivers of Mana through his channels, the end result being the manifestation of the Skill itself. In the case of Green Shaping, that meant he could pour out life Mana bent on growing and shaping plantlife.

All he had to do was find a bit of wood.

That had been a chore, but thankfully a chore he could assign to one of his many followers. Wood was rare in the desert, though Felix doubted that would remain the case, what with the new abundance of fresh water. Turned out, there were a few wooden objects they'd taken from the old Grandmaster's house. So now Felix sat upon the remains of three small statues: one of a woman holding a sword, another of a man with a book, and the last of a fat pig-like creature, lying on its back. It was pretty cute. Each one was carved of ancient wood, but all contained tiny pieces that drank up the life Mana he provided, growing new shoots from their otherwise hardened forms. These he bent with his Will, growing the shoots into wide branches that formed a roughly circular bench. Additional branches split off, many of them going down to the deck and growing in between the chitin boards to secure it all. Foliage sprouted along the tops, a thick, moss-like greenery that was pretty comfortable to lounge on.

Once he was sure it could handle their combined weight, Felix settled in, making an effort to relax his shoulders and neck. "Alright Pit. Our turn next."

"Yesss!" The fur pillow behind him rumbled in delight. Pit was sprawled along the rear of the circular bench, nestled close to Felix's back. The pleasure that had radiated off the Chimera once he realized he would fit had been nearly palpable, and now it shifted toward a more enthusiastic glee. "I can't wait to show you everything!"

Felix smiled, and cracked a single eyelid. Pit's beak and bright golden eyes hovered by his knee, quivering in excitement. "Close your eyes, and breathe deep."

"Okay okay. Got it." Pit did as instructed, screwing his eyes shut and laying his triangular ears against his skull. "What was next? Right. Breathing. In," he sucked in a breath like a bellows. "Out." It came out, just as harsh.

Cardinal Flame!

Felix swooned, his Mind cast backward and down, thrown along with his Mana into freefall. His control meant it twisted, coursing into his Companion's Mana Gates and snaking through his channels in a blink, a flash of thought. Unlike his other friends, Pit was different. Chimeras were different, somehow. A Race but with monstrous features, such as a monster core as opposed to a core space. A solid, spherical core that sat heavily at the junction of all his channels, where Pit's power radiated outward. Functionally similar to a core space, but fundamentally different.

Or so he thought.

Felix landed with flexed knees in the center of a verdant forest, to the babbling sound of a distant river and the incessant noise of animals, insects, and beasts. "What the hell?" Before, when Felix had inspected Pit's core, he had visualized it as a solid lump of magical material crackling with lightning. Now...now it was so very different. Felix spun in a circle, eyes panning everything he could, from the ancient trees to the distant mountains and the endless, summer blue sky. "What the hell is this?"

"You like it?" Pit landed nimbly next to him, having no trouble with the thick canopy and looming trees. The tenku was perhaps the size of a terrier, similar to how he'd been when they had first entered Shelim.

"You're tiny."

Pit hopped twice and spun in a quick circle, lightning trailing after his bushy fox tail. "I know! Isn't it great!"

Felix knelt down, and Pit rushed into his arms, trilling in joy. He ran his hands over Pit's feathers and fur, feeling the alternating textures and thick warmth from his projected Body. "You've packed a lot of detail into your visualized Body, bud. This is a really good job." Pit warbled at him, head still nestled against Felix's neck. "And this place...is this the Foglands?"

His Perception unfurled, rolling through copse and grove, meadow and field. The forest he'd gotten to know so well back in his earliest days on the Continent was here, and even the River Eile was there, with its enormous river lilies dotting the edges. Which meant the distant babbling was in fact the waterfall Felix had once taken a ride down, quite unwillingly. If I go that way, will the Stronghold be there, as well? How faithful is this recreation?

Felix almost started walking toward that direction when his Perception snagged on something different. Something changed from his memory of the forest. "What is that?"

Pit squirmed out of his grasp and Felix let go. The tenku glided to the ground on small wings, the feathers shimmering with blue, black, and crimson. "I'll show you!" He dashed off, into the underbrush.

Following more sedately, Felix kept his Perception unfurled, examining everything he could. The detail was stunning, though not nearly as good as the armor in Harn's space or anything in Vess' own. Now that he was looking, Felix could tell the leaves were all the same tear drop shape, even the big ferns that dotted the underbrush. Wind rustled those same leaves, but it didn't always move them the way it should, or even the branches, instead some were so rigid it was like they were made of stone. His Perception delved into the earth, and while the surface was springing and covered in loam, it all solidified into hardened rock only a few inches below his feet. Little details mostly, but added up they broke the illusion of a true forest.

Still really impressive. Felix followed the tiny Pit through the underbrush, tromping atop flowers and fronds that sprang back up, unharmed by his passage. And that smell. So familiar.

The scent of sharp spice wafted on the breeze, somewhere between pepper and coriander. Felix remembered that smell, and the first time he had encountered it. The tall, bulbous trees it came from were in a discrete grove, separated from the other Fogland trees by a tiny rivulet. He had first found Pit among a grove very similar to it, hiding in the mangrove-like roots from the sharp claws of the Seven Legged Orit. Except there were far more of those trees than Felix could recall, and as Pit led him in the center of the grove he realized why.

"See?" Pit said, proudly. His wings stretched out, barely four feet, tip to tip. Beyond him was another of the fat, mangrove-like trees, except this one was ten times the size of the others. It was, on closer inspection, several trees braided into one and was at least thirty feet in diameter. "My core!"

"Pit," Felix said, astounded. The tree was far more detailed than the forest, like looking at night and day. Ivy-like leaves spiraled down from looping branches, alongside hanging moss wafting in citrus-infused gusts of wind. The bark was smooth but ridged, the turn of the thick trees interrupted by long, raised cords, and all of the trees (at least ten of them) were meshed so completely they appeared to have grown into one another. There was no telling where one tree ended and another began save for at the very top, nearly fifty feet up, where a perfectly circular space was cleared. The trees grew around it, as if forbidden to touch the glowing object at the center. It was a smaller version of the red-black core he'd once sensed, fashioned from swirling liquid into the shape of a four-pointed star. "This is amazing."

Pit shrieked, a sound of joy mingled with unbridled enthusiasm. He ran forward, flapping his wings excitedly. "Did you see? Did you see my star core?"

"Yeah. Yeah I did. Seeing how you've somehow developed a core space, I was expected a ring shape, like mine. This," Felix paused, memory jolting him. "Your core looks like a Nymean star."

Pit's eyes widened and dilated, gold vanishing beneath deep pools of black. "Whoa. What does that mean?"

Felix walked a slow circumference of Pit's tree core. "I wish I knew." He ran his hand through the lower branches, fingers just brushing the edges of hanging moss and leaves. There were patterns there, hidden in the weft and weave of threadlike stems formed something more. There was more too, a secret vibration that hummed against his fingers. "These are your Skills," he realized. "You have Skills and a core space. What does that mean?"

Pit tilted his head, clearly confused. "I've always had a core."

"Not like this. I'm assuming it happened during or since your Evolution, right?"

The tenku nodded with a happy chirrup. "I've been waiting to show you."

Felix's hand, reaching for the next Skill, one he believed was Poison Resistance, and paused. He looked down at his friend. "Why were you waiting? Why not show me sooner?"

Pit shrugged his tiny shoulders. "You were busy and stressed. This isn't that important." He warbled in surprise when Felix's hand came down to scratch the top of his head.

"You're always important, bud. And this is remarkable, but confusing." Felix withdrew his hand and placed it on his hip. Suddenly there was a sword there, though it hadn't been with him the whole time. The hooked blade, his Inheritor's Will, glimmered with green-gold energy. "Karys. I need to speak with you."

The green-gold glow intensified, expanding and separating from Felix until it formed a hazy man-shape a few feet away. A dark-skinned, slightly wrinkled face emerged, then a body all wrapped in odd, ceremonial robes stepped out of the glow. Karys, in his full Nymean form, bowed deeply to first Felix and then Pit. "My Lord Autarch. How may I help?"

"I didn't interrupt you or anything, right?"

Karys waved a slender hand. "Merely the more boring parts of logistical management. Your army has mobilized. I have already sent a ship full of Legionnaires back toward Haarwatch."

"Oh dang. Then I won't keep you too long." Felix gestured all around him. "What do you make of all this?"

Karys looked around, his bright green eyes livelier than his aged appearance suggested. "A core space? I had expected your Bastion. To summon me into another's core space would require...this is Pit's, I assume?"

"It is."

"Fascinating." He ran an age-spotted hand over a particularly low-hanging vine. "You have done well, Pit."

The Chimera puffed up in pride, throwing his tiny chest out. Felix grinned. "He has. My question is...well it's more confusion. Last time I saw, Pit had a monster core, not a core space. After his Evolution he now does. Is this...normal?"

"Ah yes. Your Evolution. Stormwing Tenku, yes? And a Primordial on top of that, just as your Companion. Hm." Karys tapped his lips in thought.

"He even has a tree as part of his core. Like me. Does that mean anything?" Felix asked.

"It could mean the visualizations you harnessed within your core space are influencing his through the Companion bond. Perhaps. Or perhaps it is simply a case of independent discovery. This," Karys paused and looked around. "This is Nagast, after all, is it not?"

"Yup!" Pit said excitedly. "Home!"

"Right. And your home well before Felix ever found you, yes?" At Pit's nod, Karys spread his hands. "There we have it. His core space is a recreation of his home. As our visualizations are predominantly subconscious, at least at first, to have it resemble something so close to heart is a natural occurrence."

Felix huffed an amused breath. "My core is the cold depths of space. That's not exactly home sweet home for me."

Karys shrugged his wide shoulders, still surprisingly built for an old man. "Not even the greatest scholars among the Nym and Geist knew all the secrets of core space formation. Perhaps being an Unbound affects your own visualization process?"

Felix waved off that line of thought. "I'll deal with my own stuff later. What about his core? It isn't a sphere or a ring shape. It's—"

"A Star," Karys breathed. His green eyes grew large before the Nym gasped in sudden pain. He threw his hands up, grabbing at his skull. "A Star!"

"Karys!" Felix grabbed the man as he sagged to his knees, but before he could really be worried Karys stood back up. "Uh, what was that?"

"Memories," the Nym panted. "The holes in my memories have not progressed...in a long while, not since...you granted me a new Body...but I found more. Oh, Mercy Upon High, I found more." Karys shuddered in Felix's arms, only once, before he gently pushed away. "I am fine. It is simply an...existential agony to find the raw edges of my Mind."

"Jeez, Karys. I'm sorry. I didn't know it hurt you to remember..."

"Think nothing of it." Felix's Chancellor took a deep, fortifying breath. "I did, however, recall one thing. We Nym called the Chimera the Children of Harmony, the Guardian Beasts, and, most appropriately it seems, the Wardens of the Stars."

"Wardens of the Stars?" Felix glanced at Pit. The tenku was growing more pleased with every new title he heard. "As in the Nymean Stars? Found in literally every piece of Nymean art and ruin I've encountered?"

"The very same. I...cannot recall the how or why, but Chimeras are linked to it all." He jabbed a slender finger at the four-pointed core. "Their very cores have something to do with it."

"Huh."

"Chimeras are beast and mortal, Monster Type and Race all at once. They bridge two worlds, and while I cannot recall the meaning behind it, their nature is a fusion." Karys put a hand on Felix's shoulder and extended another to Pit's upturned face. "A bond between realms."

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