Unbound

The freaky sigils proliferating in the Domain were difficult on both the Mind and Spirit, but Felix pushed through it. He had no essence left, so this part had to rely upon his own talents rather than the stolen potential of his enemies. Quite apart from simply tracing it, Felix found he had to divest an uncomfortable amount of attention and care into the magical runes. Different from other such markings, he didn't so much expend Mana as he invested himself into the attempts.

It was awful.

The sigils weren't of the Primordial Dawn, but were close, inverted as he'd discovered before. Like the Romance languages on Earth, they felt connected by a string of commonalities. Potential translations flitted through Felix's Mind, so enthralled he barely noticed as the ground beneath his feet twisted and bucked. Felix fell to his knees, but it was a dimly felt thing. All of his attention was on his memory...and the core.

This...or was it...?

He recreated a number of twisted sigils he'd encountered, attempting to faithfully replicate their convoluted depths. The pages he'd stolen those long weeks ago from the Archon's study, the dead flesh, carved in a flooding alley. Cruel, insidious patterns flashed across his recollection, until he finally got the notification he'd been hoping for.

New Skill!

Profane Sigaldry (Legendary), Level 1!

Your foundations in sigils and prodigious Mind have combined to teach you how to twist reality to suit your needs. Be wary, Unbound, you walk upon the thinnest of precipices.

Yeah, no shit. He felt his skin crawl as limited knowledge of the twisted sigils bathed his Mind. It wasn't a Skill he wanted, and he felt its influence almost immediately. The Domain and Queen flesh around him was awash in Profane energy, a strange combination of harsh emotion and an awful, dominating Want. It was the Intent of a single-minded madman. With effort, Felix walled those feelings off, relying on his near-Journeyman Bastion of Will to aid him.

The pattern fought him, despite his perfect recall. Marred by the Envoy's own flawed memory, one that was further complicated by the fact that the Envoy had not been entirely present during the events. It was a miracle Felix had even recognized what he'd seen.

But he tried. And tried.

When Felix sounded the last flourish, for a entirely too brief moment, a sigil hovered in the air before him. It was neither the twisted nor the angular script of Primordial Dawn, but instead a fluid, curving shape that nevertheless exuded a strident sense of solidity.

A notification trilled in his ears, and Felix grinned through his fangs.

Synergy Detected!

Profane Sigaldry and Sigils of the Primordial Dawn have high synergy!

Do You Wish To Evolve?

All Choices Have Consequences.

Y/N

Hell yes!

Behind him, Felix could hear the battle escalate furiously as more and more Parasites ripped into the central cavity. Yet that was all the attention he could spare his friends, as the next instant a vice clamped onto his soul and began squeezing.

Pit chirruped in fear. Felix could feel the tenku pressured in the same way, and their bond compressed and lit up like a white-hot iron bar between them. Pit shrieked in distress.

He would have also screamed had he been able to; his Spirit felt stripped bare while his Body was wracked with enough tremors that it was all he could do to remain kneeling. Still, his Mind raced as gold and blue sparks burned across his vision, and a dark red puissance flared all around him.

You can do it! Just hold--!

He hadn't any essence left, and Felix realized his mistake just a moment too late. Red, blue, and yellow streamers of potency began to rip from his core fire, each piece as agonizing as if he were ripping the flesh from his own body. He tried and failed to draw in more power from the arrays around him, but they were even more difficult to tear away than the Envoy's. Anchored as they were in the Queen's Body (and likely its Spirit), the sigils were nigh impervious to his level of Will.

Felix gritted his teeth against the pain as his three resource pools dipped yet again. It hurt, but everything always hurt. He could deal. He had no choice.

With a great wrenching twist, the draw abruptly stopped.

Skill Evolved!

You Have Lost Profane Sigaldry and Sigils of the Primordial Dawn!

New Skill!

Level Has Been Maintained!

Theurgist of the Rise (Legendary), Level 44!

Your exposure to the depths and variety of sigaldry has revealed an ancient path toward mastery. Mark well the trail, Unbound. Beware the Ruin.

That's it! Felix's laugh was near-delirious, but he could see it, finally. The Envoy's memory, the Archon's extended grasp...

The wavy outlines in his memory suddenly made sense.

Theurgist of the Rise is level 45!

A huge monster tore through the flesh tunnels. Its coming was muffled by the wet, hollow veins of the Queen, but it's enraged clicking shriek was hard to miss. Claws the length of Evie's leg tore through the nearest putrid membrane, dark ichor spurting along the cut, and it forced its way out. The thing looked as if five or six Parasites had climbed atop one another, fusing into something even larger and more disgusting.

It's clicking shriek heralding its arrival, several Parasites disengaged with their weapons and rushed toward it. They swarmed the already nine-foot tall monstrosity, climbing up its bony, angular body and---

Ugh. I coulda lived my whole life without seein' that. Evie's stomach turned, the smell of everything hitting her at the same time she watched a heap of Parasites ooze and snap together like half-melted wax. The thing turned its sightless eyes toward them and squealed a furious challenge.

"Avet's black eyes, this Domain! I! Hate! It!" Evie whirled her chain into several Parasites rushing to join the merger. They splatted against the ground with the gushy sound of a full wineskin hitting a plate of hot meat.

Silver spears rushed in and sunk, half-mast into the abomination.

"Spear of Tribulation," Vess hissed, her voice too hoarse to shout.

A burst of razor winds tore skull-sized holes in the bastard. It tottered but kept its feet.

"Fall! Grand Impetus!"

A bolt of blazing blue zipped forward, almost too fast to track. The abomination's head twisted around, snapping like a handful of dry rotted sticks, and the thing fell to the ground. It's body burst in a fountain of ichor, and Parasites began leaping from it's tattered corpse.

A terrible roar sounded next to Evie, and she just about leaped out of her skin. "Noctis' tits! Warn a gal!"

Vess' face was covered by the head of a spectral dragon, a small one at least, and it's toothy face grinned at her as it continued to issue its challenge. The remaining Parasites, and there were more than a few, all heard her call and stopped in place.

Then they ran away.

The spectral dragon's head disappeared from Vess' shoulders, and the Dragoon-to-be let herself slump just slightly. "Dragonfear should keep them distracted for a moment."

Fire and blue impacts hit their exposed backs, while a swath of them simply died to Harn's silver axe energies.

"Huh," Evie said, taking a few wobbly steps forward as she unspooled her chain again. She wasn't gonna let the others take experience from her. "That's a toss up Skill, yeah? Fear or taunt? How'd you know it'd be fear and not the taunt effect?"

"I didn't," Vess replied and flashed her a tired smile. Evie laughed despite the pain in her hip.

"Crazy noble."

"Idiot commoner."

"St--!" Evie barely got the word out when the entire world flipped.

"AHH!"

"WHU-!"

"UGH!"

The lot of them were hurled into the air at an angle, and Evie only barely managed to get her feet oriented properly before reducing her weight by half. Still, she landed with a heavy thud against one of the taller fleshy growths along the floor, like meat stalagmites.

Fucking Felix! She knew this was his fault. Evie dared a glance in his direction again, but couldn't find him among that awful shine. Instead she saw the far wall disgorge an entire battalion of Parasites, all of whom immediately began to fall directly toward her.

He felt it, for an instant. The array configuration.

Control.

Then it was ripped from his grasp by something he couldn't sense.

Theurgist of the Rise is level 46!

Theurgist of the Rise is level 47!

No! He snarled and forced his body closer. His muscles bunched and knotted as if he were trying to bench press an ocean liner, and the arrays didn't budge in the slightest. He sounded the patterns again, flashing the complex lines by hurling his own Mana in to the air.

Mana Manipulation is level 25!

...

Mana Manipulation is level 29!

Congratulations! You Have Reached Apprentice Tier With Mana Manipulation!

You Gain:

+5 INT

+5 WIL

+5 DEX

That same invisible hand wiped his work away, almost as if...he flared his Manasight. There!

Abyssal Skein!

He reached out and grabbed the Mana construct that hovered near-invisibly around the Sub-Core. The convoluted construction was piled atop the arcane array that extended outward among the Queen's flesh, the one he wasn't quite sure about. As he gripped it, he could sense his own exuded Mana flowing along its channels, sucked away to who knows where.

Manasight is level 49!

Felix's hands, coated in the Void, snared the construct easily. It was woven of Voidstuff, after all, just like the security measures on the Domain's shell. While he didn't know the full effect of the last array, he did know it had to interact with the Void, or else the Queens would have had no connection with the Domain itself. The part of his core that housed the Theurgist of the Rise Skill hummed with such knowledge, and more.

He tore it apart. And the world around him tipped sideways.

The guttural, basso fury of the Queen in pain rumbled through him as Felix stabbed his claws into the fleshy footing, flared Unfettered Volition, and held his ground. He could sense, dimly, that the giant monster was careening toward the earth. Diving.

He didn't have much time.

He pushed his Mana out of his channels again.

For the briefest of moments, the Archon's pattern burned with fidelity in his memory. Felix latched on, not willing to let the moment go even as the Queen began to drop. It was in his grasp. A series of jagged, inward spiraling waves, compounded and compressed until they felt more like a physical object than a manifestation of Mana and Will.

His working sent a pulse of golden-blue tendrils deep into the angry network of sigaldry around the Queen's core. All around them, among the rampaging Parasites that had thinned considerably, sigils had appeared and coalesced into strange and arcane arrays, each rapidly changing as the core defended itself. But it wasn't enough.

He had it.

New Title!

Architect of the Rise (Legendary)!

You have embraced the path of mastery, and though the plans were pilfered you recreated them with nothing more than your overwhelming drive. Gain a 25% bonus to learning all sigaldry as well as creating and maintaining complex arrays.

Swiping away the notification, Felix commanded the arrays to drop, and they did. The sigils dimmed and dissolved into brilliant vapor, something that would be child's play to take in. But Felix didn't bother. He wasn't there for that.

He shoved his hand against the core.

Ravenous Tithe!

"Brace yerselves!" Harn shouted.

"Easy--for you to say!" Atar held onto a knobby protuberance in the once-floor. Parasites fell around him, their sharp claws scrabbling for purchase as gravity had its way. The Parasites hit the fleshy walls of the cavity with a clatter of bone and squelching flesh, only to be incinerated by Atar's fire. A woosh of air sounded and four spears embedded in the flaming mass, before detonating into whirlwinds of razor-sharp Mana streams.

Fields of Flame is level 37!

"Felix! What is happening?" Vess shouted. A powerful shudder had filled the air, like the death rattle of some immense creature. "Is that the Queen?"

"It's...it's diving!" Alister shouted, stabbing his rapier into the tender flesh. "Why? What is going on out there?"

"I don't know!" Atar screamed, his voice already hoarse. His Mana was pushing near empty and a headache pounded at his temples. "We're stuck in the belly of a Tier III monster and hurtling through the sky! This is all new territory for me!"

He knew he should have stayed on the ground. Should have tried to escape the Domain, no matter how impossible it seemed. Even now, he could see more Parasites begin boiling from below them, amid the charred corpses of their brethren. Their clicking screams barely penetrated the Queen's massive howls.

Then the screams, all of them, changed in tone. Pained ferocity became something else.

"It is afraid!" Vess shouted after she hurled another of her spears into a cluster of climbing Parasites. "The Queen is---Look!"

Farther away, near the now dim core, the cavernous abscess had begun to turn into a dark, hideous smoke. Atar could barely hear another monstrous roar that sounded different than the Queen and its infestation of Parasites. Felix.

"It worked," Evie groaned. "Brace yourselves! Bindings of the White Waste!"

Purple-white Mana vapor coalesced out of the air and chains as thick as his wrist burst from every nearby surface. They snaked around Atar's waist and he shouted in pain. The chains were made of unnaturally cold ice, so cold they burned him through his robes.

"Suck it up, Sparky!" Evie hissed as a vein protruded from her forehead. He could see she was holding everyone in place, all at once. And good thing she did, as the Queen reoriented and everything spun and flipped.

Burn you, Felix! What are you doing?!

It was too much.

Felix had known that. He'd planned for that.

But the sheer amount staggered him. Far beyond the relatively paltry well of essence in the Larval Ravager, evolving into a Queen had pushed its entire being to a far higher level of power.

Ravenous Tithe is level 46!

Ravenous Tithe is level 47!

Bloodline Progression 91%

It's too much. I can't...I can't...

Pit shrieked and the pressure shifted. The flow of essence split, instead of scouring Felix's channels it poured into his chest. Into his bond.

Into Pit.

Etheric Concordance is level 44!

Bloodline Progression 92%

The both of them strained, while the Queen beneath them twisted and heaved. He could sense its pain as the essence poured through him, and the edges of its thoughts burned bright against his own Mind. Fear and hate, and stubborn, unwilling contempt for all that wasn't itself. But such thoughts were fleeting things, gone, buried beneath the torrent of a skyscraper of beast essence. Felix and Pit shared the strain, but even so it was far too much. To contain it all would have ruptured both of their cores.

Bloodline Progression 93%

So he flipped the script and seized upon the connection built into the strange, far ranging arrays. That moment of utter control had given him enough to convince him the plan would work.

He just hoped he wasn't wrong.

Felix shunted the remaining power down those connections to the Domain itself, feeding it back. Almost as if he'd unclogged a massive drain, the essence jettisoned down the scribed lines so fast it spun Felix's head. In seconds, the first of the essence reached the edges of the Domain, where it dumped unceremoniously into the liminal Void.

Ravenous Tithe is level 48!

Bloodline Progression 94%

Fear thrummed through the Queen, its essence quivering with it as it passed through him. Felix took no satisfaction in that, could in fact barely stay conscious as the hurricane of power rode through him. His Body, Mind, and Spirit acted as conduits to the savage essence, as did Pit's, and the potency of its passage was shredding him from the inside out.

His Health had dropped to 65% in the last twenty seconds, and his Stamina was little better.

Bloodline Progression 95%

Bloodline Progression 96%

Bloodline Progression 97%

Ravenous Tithe is level 49!

Felix could sense it as the Queen banked hard again and its wings strained to keep itself aloft. The monstrosity's body was dissolving rapidly, sucked away into the Void, but it had one last hope. Felix felt that thought burn across its Minds, each of its hydra-like heads pulling, pointing down.

Toward the bore.

No!

Felix tried to disperse it faster, but though he could shift the focus of the connections that drained the Queen, he had no control over the rate it vanished. He was stuck. He could neither speed it up nor slow it down, just...

With an effort of Will, Felix focused the dissolution upon the beast's wings.

"Hang tight!" Felix bellowed for anyone who could hear him.

There was a terrible half-second of absolutely weightlessness, then they all plummeted to the earth below.

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