Unbound

Holy shit, this is high up.

Getting up onto the Queens had been their first challenge. The creatures flew fast and high, and the imposing size of them was like trying to jump onto a super-fast rail car the size of a skyscraper. Thankfully, they had Pit. Felix few up first. They had to time it perfectly to avoid any of the other Queens' attention, and that was far harder than it seemed at first. But the two of them made it up there, though Pit was barely able to lift him that high, and then only with judicious use of Reign of Vellus to give them a kinetic kick.

Vess had it easier, utilizing her specialized Dragoon Skills to launch herself into the air and just about soar. She had enough juice to even carry the two mages.

Pit had to return for Evie and Harn, though the former had recovered some use of her legs. Still, she wasn't up for jumping.

As the others arrived, Felix crouched low upon the Queen's back, closely inspecting the pulsing sigils that covered its hide. As always, it was a disquieting thing and appeared almost volatile, but when Felix's foot touched it hadn't exploded or burned him. It seemed safe enough. What's more, the Queen hadn't even reacted to their presence.

We're like ants to them. Just like I hoped. Felix grinned. He'd dropped his shifted form to keep him lighter for Pit; his Skill added about thirty pounds of muscle onto his already heavy frame. The tenku huddled nearby, his wings tucked close in the immense wind, and he looked exhausted. Thanks, bud. Rest for now.

Convergence.

A flash of light later, Pit joined within Felix, and they both breathed a sigh of relief. It was comforting for some reason, holding his Companion so close. Felix suspected a large part was not having to worry about him.

Can't get into trouble if you're with me, right? Felix felt Pit's warbled response and laughed. Yeah yeah. I get into enough trouble for the both of us. Thanks.

The Queen shifted beneath them and the sigils flared as it completed yet another circle around the bore. The three of them were flying in formation, each one dropping burning lines of magic down into hole with every pass.

"AH!" Atar shouted as he nearly lost his balance, and slammed his metal rod down. The sharp end stabbed down into the Queen, but thankfully neither the mage's Strength nor his weapon did more than poke the beast. Vess' dark hand grabbed him by the front of his tattered robes and kept him from falling off the beast's back.

"Blind gods, Atar," Vess hissed. "Be more--AHH!"

The Queen bucked beneath them again, and this time Vess went flying along with the mage.

Shadow Whip!

What Dwells Beneath!

They both fell off the side of the Queen, practically sucked into the air by the wind. A black tendril snapped outward and entangled both mage and warrior, and Felix had to shift his form in order to hang on. Felix's bone's shifted and cracked, healing quickly but not painlessly as his body bulked up and changed. Disgusted, he spat out his flat teeth and watched them fall away from the side of the Queen. Black talons dug deep into the Queen's scaly hide, and even then he was dragged back along its length for nearly twenty feet before he stopped and could reel them in.

What Dwells Beneath is level 35!

Shadow Whip is level 33!

Bloodline Progression is 90%

The Queen beneath them gave a stentorian bellow.

God damn it!

We live.

We hunger.

We...yearn.

A dim sentience had erupted within Them, and They That Were Queen raised Their multitudinous heads and roared a challenged into the burning skies. None but Its Sisters answered, for none alive could stand up to Them.

None but One. The King.

Their King.

Even now, Their Sisters spun the incandescent power of Their Father. A ritual that They understood in their bones and enacted without conscious thought. One that would break Them free of this small world and into the next, the land beyond, where Their Father waited.

We will rise! Screams in the sky, Their Sisters echoed Their exultation. We will triumph!

We will feed!

Pain.

One of Its Sisters bellowed and the sharp sensation rippled through all of Them.

What is this? Pain was not new to Them, and it had once been a dim memory. Something that happened when They were smaller, weaker. That was before the Betrayal, when Their Fourth had been torn apart. Eaten by a predator unknown. Now pain had returned. Now it tore at Their Sister as They flew just ahead, a terrible, gushing pain against Their flanks.

As one, the Sisters turned fully half their serpentine necks and spat streams of white flame outward. The stone around them charred, melted, turned to red-hot slag that no foe could hide behind.

Still the pain persisted.

Then They saw it. The creature...no, creatures were crawling upon Their Sister. Like the parasites in Their blood, these things dared climb atop them. They were Queen!

They lived.

They hungered.

"Highest Flame," whispered Atar. "Such power."

The white flames of the hydra-beasts had slagged what little of the island remained, leaving it molten and charred beyond recognition. The cliff upon which they had huddled was little more than a melted candle stub.

"Glad you didn't stay behind, huh?" Evie nudged Atar in the ribs. The mage got up gingerly and tried to smooth his windswept and Domain-frazzled hair. He ignored Evie's jibe and nodded in thanks to Felix, who was only just disengaging himself from the Queen's tough hide.

"Hydra-dragons," Felix groaned, more to himself than anyone else. "They're fire breathing hydra-dragons."

There was a big bellow behind them and the nearest Queen to the rear accelerated, screaming with her...Felix counted quickly...40 heads.

"Felix," Harn grunted. "They know. We gotta move."

"Right, right." Felix hurriedly turned toward the long gash he'd torn in the Queen. "This is as good a place to start as any."

He slashed his claws down. Sparks flew, but Felix could barely penetrate any deeper into the wound. He slashed again, and the same result. He could tear a small furrow, but any more than that he was repelled by the thing's monstrous regeneration.

What?

The roar of the Queen grew louder and his friends started giving him antsy looks. Frowning at his talons, Felix grabbed at the corrosive essence that lingered in his core, hoping it was the answer. He reasoned that he could fight against the Maw's creatures so well in this form was that it too was influenced by the Maw's machinations. It bore the Primordial's touch, its signature maybe. So what would happen if he put more of that behind his strike? He pushed long tendrils of essence, still connected to the main mass in his core, up through his channels, looping them across his body and toward his fists.

"Whatever you're gonna do, do it now!" Alister shouted above the wind.

Flexing his talons, Felix tried again, but this time burned the essence, forcing the larger mass into his core fire. A deep, resounding echo shuddered through Felix's Body and Spirit, and the moment his claws touched the Queen it's flesh split in two.

Felix grinned up at Harn who just shook his head.

"Scary smile you got there, Felix," Evie said. "You could put someone's eye out."

Behind them, the other Queen raced forward, all of its heads snapping in vicious anticipation. Atar spotted orange and red Mana vapor gathering in its many jaws.

"It's gonna breathe fire again! Quickly, quickly!" Atar screamed.

Unfettered Volition!

Felix dug deep, tearing a widening hole in the Queen's flesh. Each pass scooped hunks of fat and hide away, burrowing a hole into the Queen's back. His arms blurred, excavating a bloody tunnel before their very eyes. Burrowing like a damn mole, he tore their way down into a large cavity pulsing with visible yellow-red light.

"Everyone! Inside!" Harn shouted before grabbing Atar and physically hurling the mage into the fetid hole.

The warrior barely made in within before fire washed over them, and only Harn's ever-reddening armor prevented it from pouring into the hole behind them.

"Noctis wept, Harn," Vess reached out a hand before pulling it back sharply. She hadn't even gotten close and the heat was unbearable. "Are you--?"

"Fine," he growled. "Just damn hot. Move it."

"Follow me. We've got a ways to go. This thing is huge," Felix said. With a grimace, he strode forward with claws outstretched.

The way was tight and wet and frankly unpleasant as hell, with only the pained rumblings of the Queen itself giving Felix any joy. That and the fact that, despite crossing several internal cavities and gnarly abscesses within the beast, they had yet to run into a single Parasite.

Good news, at least. He didn't remember everything from when the Maw had puppeted him into the Larval Ravager, but much of those fights remained. They were nasty foes, and it was unlikely they had stayed the same as the Queens grew. They were probably far harder to fight now.

He wasn't worried about Vess or even Evie, despite her injuries. Harn was, hah, that wasn't a concern. It was Atar and Alister that worried him, especially the latter, who remained unprotected from the Domain's strange atmosphere. The two of them had at least recovered some of their Mana; they had a few blue potions squirreled away. Hopefully that meant they'd be able to put up a fight when it came to it.

Because it always came down to a fight.

Finally, they had dropped far enough. As they broken through yet another fleshy membrane, Felix felt a bone deep exhaustion pulse through him. The essence he'd been burning up had faded to mere wisps in his core. He doubted he could push much farther without...refueling. Diving deep, they had been growing steadily closer to his target, and now he could feel its proximity. It was like an invisible sun on his face; Felix could orient himself based on the heat alone.

"It's close," Felix panted. The journey hadn't only exhausted his essence store, but his Stamina had barely kept up with their mad dash. Harn nodded and moved ahead into the large empty cavity they had entered. The place was framed by bones that lifted the meaty ceiling, and a number of fleshy protuberances filled the ground with a vaguely twitching terrain.

"Why're there so many...holes in this thing?" Evie asked. She had a hitch in her step that the healing potion hadn't cured, but she was managing well enough. She held her chain in a white-knuckled grip. "It's creepy."

"Fascinating," Alister murmured. "See that? That looks an awful lot like a Mana condenser!"

"A what?" Evie asked as her eyes swept the cavity.

"It's an organ inside most monsters that allow them to store and use Mana Skills!" Atar's exhaustion gave way to exuberance. "Remarkable. That is orders of magnitude larger than any condenser I've seen!"

Felix crept forward, keeping low to the ground in the dark, humid space. The only light to be found was from the pulse of various veins and organs on the walls, likely the condenser the mages were speaking about. It was less of a problem for Felix, who relied on his Manasight to see. It was a chaotic swirl of convoluted vapors down here, but long experience had taught him how to peer beyond the miasma and he navigated as if he were in a meadow in broad daylight.

"Felix!" Vess whispered. "I believe I found what we are looking for."

Felix turned the corner and beheld a wild mess of yellow-red light. Lines like those below proliferated, filling the nook of the abscess with a confusing mess of sigils that looked more like a glowing, tangled net. Said net was surrounding a large sphere that hovered in midair, though the details of it were lost among the jumble of wild power. Felix took a step closer to it and got smacked in the face with a near solid waft of emotion. A hot, caustic wind tried to force itself down his throat, but when it couldn't it simply soaked through his skin. Instantly, his heart rate skyrocketed and a flop sweat appeared over his entire body while muscle spasms twitched across his chest and shoulders, and a terrible heat took up residence in his chest and head. Like someone had distilled everything he had ever hated and poured it into him, until he overflowed with it.

Destroy, it whispered in a thousand voices, all of them familiar shadows. Break. Devour.

No. It's...not mine...NO. Felix fought back against the sensation. He recognized a mental attack when he felt one; especially one flavored this particular brand of Primordial. OUT.

The emotion fled before his Willpower, crushed from his veins. Panting, he turned to Vess and the others who had gathered behind him.

"Be careful. Don't come too close," he swallowed and turned his wide eyes back to the complex array before him. "There's a...something here. Emotional radiation."

"What?" Evie asked.

"I sensed great, turbulent emotions baked into the sigils on the platform," Atar noted. "So the Envoy built this too? How? It would have had to grow with the Queens to be in any way functional as a ward." He ran his hands through his hair in frustration, making it stick strait up. "This is mind-bogglingly complex! What sort of Mind would be necessary to manage this?"

"It feels like an echo, Atar," Felix said, taking another step. Winds buffeted him again, but it was easier when he was expecting it. "Remnants of the Primordial."

"They're comin'," Harn's head perked up, like a hound. "Just like ya said, Felix. Look alive, kids."

The four Apprentice Tiers all shared a look and faced outward, gripping their weapons and readying their Skills. Felix worried, but he stuck to the plan. His plan.

It's gonna work, he assured himself. It has to.

But then he couldn't think about them or the plan anymore. He stepped forward.

The array pushed back at him, but Felix slide between it's thrust, quashing the waves of negative emotion that tried to force him away. Was it even a ward? Or was this a side effect of so many of these vile sigils overlaying one another? He saw that they each expressed a brilliant thread of anger down on the platform, utilizing to some purpose. This was instead taking that to another level, and popping in the Maw's slogan to boot.

Devour, Felix snorted and Willed himself forward, each step feeling like he was walking through hip-deep mud. Maw, the one hit wonder.

Closer, he could make out the finer details of this collection of arrays. The orb that floated above was the Queen's core, it could be nothing else, and no less than seven arrays were laid atop it. Felix let his gaze soak in the details, barely even wincing at the violence inherent in the twisted glyphs, and his Mind grabbed their details and began to sort them. It didn't feel as automated as all that, but Felix found it hard to explain the process to himself. There was a growing part of his Mind that could do things unconsciously that Felix could not entirely grasp. It was...a concern, but not one he had the luxury of indulging at the moment.

Instead he focused his energies on identifying the sigils. Fully half of them were designed to siphon more energies and likely led to the Queen's gut and mouth, where food could be drained of its power. The rest varied between actual physical wards to protect the core, and...and the last two he could not figure out. Not by a long shot. They were far more complex than the worst of the siphon arrays, and seemed to spread all over the creature's body; he could spot lines of script that swept off into walls of flesh and beyond. His best guess was that they were meant for...control? Maybe?

Felix flexed his claws and, with the last of his stolen essence, fueled two slashes that cut apart the nearest warding arrays. The atonal hum of the core was abruptly diminished, and Felix could hear the clash of metal and sound of rapid, concussive impacts from behind him. Quivering, wet screams were followed by shouted curses and insults about their mothers.

Keep moving.

The way was clear, mostly, save for a portion of a siphon array and control array. The way they had been laid overtop, one would have to clear at least one of every type in order to reach the core. The complexity of them was astounding, especially if, as Atar suggested these were grown with the Queens. Was it the Maw's influence, or was the Archon in fact this good? He'd rather it be the former.

The shouts and screams behind him increased in pitch, though none of the monsters made it close enough to Felix, even if the arrays were down. He hurried forward, skirting as close as he could manage to the center. Exactly where two arrays met and grew through one another. The world was washed in yellow-red, two distinct emanations that somehow avoided blending into orange. Felix couldn't get much farther than this, but he didn't need to.

He reached out his hand, and he sounded the pattern.

And the light responded.

"Huah!"

Evie's chain hurled out into one of the Parasite's heads and turned it into paste. The things were nasty, and they kept coming. They were freaking pouring out of the walls. Good thing they had an exploitable weakness.

Sharp metal through their heads.

So while Felix messed around with those weird drawings, Evie and the others did work. That wasn't entirely fair, but Evie's hip wasn't making her entirely agreeable. Each pivot and stretch had her wincing, an action that had cost her more than one kill so far. The Parasites, as Felix called them, were like six legged hounds, heavily muscled but sleek enough to fit through the squelchy tunnels they'd torn through. Their heads were bone and sinew compacted into a wedge-shape, and just filled with teeth. Each leg had rows of spikes on it, bone spurs that sliced at a touch.

Like she said: nasty.

Evie had less than optimal room to use her chain, but that just focused her and help keep her mind off her injury. She had to be precise, or else it was Atar that got a spike in the brain.

Scorpion's Tail!

Dervish!

The spikes alongside her chain sharpened and proliferated while the chain spun in tight loops around Evie's body. Parasites were shredded with each pass, the chain's mass altered at the moment of impact to slam through their resistance and shatter their exposed bones. Swerving and twisting in unnatural ways, Evie slithered through the defenses of the monstrosities. Alister's blue strikes were right behind hers, taking advantage of their broken defenses and piercing them through their chests and mouths. Parasites died by the dozen.

Yet there were always more.

"How many are there?" Evie shouted. "I've killed....at least twenty!"

"The Queen is immense! We've likely only seen a small fraction of what dwells within it!" Atar said, at the same time bathing the area before him in red-orange flames. The Parasites he faced let out wet, clicking screams as they were consumed. He glanced backward at Felix and stumbled, his face pale.

"Atar!" Alister grabbed the mage and steadied him. "What's wrong?"

"What is that?" Atar gasped. Evie pushed back a line of enemies and risked a glance back herself.

Behind, Felix stood next to the cocoon of yellow-red sigaldry, and his hands blazed like the gods damned sun. Evie felt pain lance into her eyes and directly into her brain, a white hot poker of agony that made her scream and turn away.

Yyero's blighted ass, Felix! Ugh! She blinked away the pain, but a blocky afterimage stuck in her vision. Parasites crowded her despite that, and Evie wielded her chain to drive them back. Stupid mages! Why'd I have to look back?

They felt the change immediately. Before Them, Their Sister bucked and rolled, spun off course by the eruption of agony within Their heart.

The creatures! What have they done!

Already, They sensed the ritual weakening. The power scribed upon their blood and bones still raged, still thrummed to its design, but the potency had altered. Reduced. Impossibly affected.

As one, the Queens all knew what must be done.

The ritual must be performed. Their god demanded it be so.

Their roar was legion. Power flared along their hide, along bodies larger than the paltry mountains that inhabited that world, and streams of white fire poured from their many mouths. Directly into the bore. Symbols none of Them understood flashed into being along Their necks and chests, markings that brought new, untold pain into Their existences. Yet still they persisted.

It was as it must be. Life for Life. And after, Death.

In this world, and the next.

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