Unbound

The Queens were just beyond the cliff, coming in fast. Felix could feel them like burning stars in his senses, descending on their position. The Envoy cackled, and Felix saw Harn heft his axes, his intent clear. The insane construct had no purpose, not anymore. But Felix had questions that needed answers. Quickly, he stepped in front of him and Harn recoiled. From the look in his eyes, he hadn't expected Felix to appear quite so monstrous.

"Envoy! Is the Archon your master?" Felix asked, trying to ignore the warrior's regard.

"Oh," it gasped, something like lucidity returning to its eye-fires. "Ohh. You're him. It is making more sense now." It sneered. "You are supposed to be dead, Nym!"

Harn gave him a new, different look, but Felix ignored that too. "You said the Archon is planning to attack? When? Quickly!"

Another mad giggle. The Envoy tried to stand, but it's legs cracked further, the metal stressed beyond it's temper. "When you least expect it."

"Felix!"

Unfettered Volition!

Felix caught the Envoy's conjured blade in his clawed grip and felt it bite into his palm, though the pain was negligible. Felix bared his fangs and grabbed the bastard's opalescent core with his other hand. Its eye-fires flared in panic.

Ravenous Tithe!

If nothing else, he could take its memories.

A shimmering stream of essence poured between Felix's fingers, sucked neatly into his chest. The fires in the Envoy's helm were finally snuffed out, and it collapsed bonelessly on the ground.

"Twin's breath, Felix," Harn murmured. "Is that your...?"

"Primordial Skill, yeah," Felix nodded. "We need to-"

He stopped and clutched at his chest.

"What is it?" Vess asked. "Felix?"

My core. It feels-- The essence roiled in his core, a sleek, shimmering collection of hues quite different from the yellow-red storm brewing within him. It stood apart, like a spot of oil in water. It feels--

Deep Mind is level 44!

Deep Mind is level 45!

Something scraped at him. The essence. It...something was inside it. Something important, he felt.

"Everyone, get to high ground and," Felix swallowed, careful not to cut his tongue on his sharpened teeth. "Carry me with you."

"What? Why?" Harn asked, but Felix didn't answer. He dove into his core, passing through the clouds of essence that boiled above it and lassoed the shimmering lights of the Envoy with his Will. Without hesitation, he thrust the lot of it deep into his core fire.

In his dual perception, both within and without, the world slowed until it stopped. Color leeched from reality as a wave of multi-hued Mana exploded outward.

He was in the Void again.

Pure darkness in all directions, one that reminded him forcefully of his own core. Felix stood on nothing, fully lit by an unseen light. It had been some time, but he knew what came next. Felix flexed his Will.

And the Void shattered.

Black gave way to unremitting white as millions of Envoys populated the space around him. The tall, thin construct extended in all directions, an unending centipede made up of millions, billions of Envoys. Each of them were in discrete positions and looked slightly different. It had thrown Felix for a loop the first time this had happened with the assassin, but he had come to realize what it all meant.

Iterations through time. They were memories in time. Pieces of the Envoy throughout its life, folded on itself and repeated into infinity.

It was beautiful. And nauseating.

Felix found he could intuit some of the details of the memories as he glanced at them, the smallest of pieces at least. He needed the right one. So he looked around, which was difficult, as the memories crowded his vision in increasingly complex ways. He saw Arcid after Arcid, some small, some large, but still the same one. It...

Among the twisting lines of memories past, Felix saw a selection that weren't constructs at all. Instead he saw a tall, slender creature with blue skin and a wispy, white beard.

The Envoy was a Frost Giant?

Felix reeled. He'd thought...the Arcids were constructs right? His Eye told him so...constructs are just magic robots...right?

He'd been assuming. After so much time on the Continent, Felix had still barely scratched the surface of what was out there. He'd been wrong. He saw it clearly now, as iterations of the Envoy replaced the slender Risi with a half-plated monstrosity, writhing in pain. He glimpsed snippets of those memories, snatches of fire and torment that put his own experiences to shame.

He would only have one chance at this. He had to pick the right one. Felix honed his Intent, an aspect of himself he still didn't quite understand, and focused on his need. He knew the Archon had something to do with the twisted sigils, that it had sent the Envoy on its way. An answer had to be here. He felt it in his soul.

I need to break the array.

Following the echoes of his Intent, Felix latched onto one that was near the cusp, where the Giant was not quite an Arcid yet.

The expanse dissolved into shades of darkness and fire.

And Felix found himself standing alongside a massive stone table, upon which the Risi was held down with bands of dark steel. Pieces of its legs and arm were being laboriously replaced by dark metal in a shower of sparks. Another, far smaller Arcid stood beside it, marking off items on a scroll.

The memory shuddered.

"We found him along the city limits, Master," said the Arcid. Its voice was far higher pitched than the Envoy's own. "He proved easy to lure into our tunnels."

"Good."

The second voice that spoke shivered through Felix like a cold wind. A figure stood, wreathed in darkness, near the far end of the room.

"It is working, Master. Your vision is infallible," the short Arcid said in excitement. A low chuckle came from the shadows, and the gleam of golden metal caught Felix's eye.

"Infallible. If only," the Archon mused, stepping into the light. "Merely old and patient, Number 54228."

Existing within a memory, Felix knew he was in no danger, but it was hard to convince his heart of that. The damn thing nearly leaped out of his chest as he saw the Archon, up close after so many weeks. He moved closer to the table and tried to see exactly what was being done to the former Frost Giant. A collection of obtuse Mana constructs whirled above, each one a dense construct of sigils. Not just any sigils, either. They shone with a yellow-red light and twisted upon themselves, inversions of what he knew as standard sigaldry.

The memory shuddered again, more ripples across the world. In his bones, he knew he was running out of time.

"Spend the time here, Number 54228. Get this right and we will be set to reforge the rest of them," the Archon had stepped closer at some point, and Felix started. He looked up at the golden giant's helmet and the red fires that burned in its visor. The thing held a massive fist up and clenched it to the sound of creaking metal. "All of them."

"Yes, Master. Your Will be done."

Convoluted constructs spun and descended, piercing through the barely conscious Risi's shoulders, chest, abdomen and thighs. The Frost Giant woke screaming and the Arcid did nothing to stop it. Felix watched the sigils flow and shift, mesmerized by their complexity, but conscious of the ticking clock he was on.

There's an answer here, I know it. Felix cast about, looking for something, anything.

Along one wall of the dark room was a mess of greenery. It opened out into that subterranean garden Felix had traipsed through, and wafts of crimson Mana swirled in a warm breeze. To the other side was a series of familiar metal doors. And the Archon...

The Archon stood, hand outstretched, and a tangle of sigaldry flaring in its gauntlet.

Felix's eyes widened and felt his soul spasm in revelation. Ripples burst across the surface of the memory, enough that everything within distorted. Distantly, beyond the Risi's screams, he could hear a basso thrum another world away. The ripples became violent tremors, and it was all Felix could do to hold on just a tiny bit longer. He had almost---

Ravenous Tithe is level 40!

...

Ravenous Tithe is level 45!

Felix surged to his feet with a strangled gasp.

The world was shaking all around him, and the sharp, ear-splitting sound of rock exploding under immense pressure was all he could hear. He was atop the highest point of the cliff, as far away from the platform as they could be without descending into the death grinder that was the rest of the island. Disoriented, he almost struck out at the gentle touch at his back.

"Kawaa?" Pit cooed, and quiet admonishing fluttered across their bond. Felix let loose a breath he hadn't realized he'd taken and dropped his hand to Pit's feathery head. Apologies flowed back toward the tenku.

"Felix, are you well?" Vess asked, her face smudged with sweat and blood and dirt, but still soft with concern. She had to practically yell to be heard over the din. "You--"

"You went all crazy," Evie groaned. Felix turned to find all of his friends behind him, crowded along the edge of the cliff. Evie was sitting against a rocky protrusion and shifting painfully. "Couldn't wake you. What's going on?"

"I-" Felix's tongue touched his teeth and recoiled before he realized he had shifted back. He must have released his transformation during the memory trip. "I stole a memory from the Envoy."

"Great," Atar huffed, his face slick with sweat and reddened by the Domain's influence. Alister next to him looked even worse, and the noble leaned heavily against the fire mage. "We had to haul you up this damn cliff while you took a nap!"

A screaming bellow pierced the air, somehow louder than the sound of an island being ground into dust. It felt like it shook Felix's brain.

"No," he managed over the sound, trying to get his thoughts out. This was important. "I saw the Archon...the thing that's behind all this!"

The earth dipped, literally dipped beneath them, the cliff face sinking a whole foot before it stopped. Though startled, Felix, Vess, and Harn all flowed with the movement; their stats and Skills excelled at movement or grace. The mages and the injured chain-wielder were thrown to the ground. Pit merely fluttered upward, unfazed.

"Siva's tits!" Evie shouted.

Felix spun, looking outward. In the distance, Felix could see the powdery remnants of stone had begun to mix with the waters around them. The lake was pouring in as the ground fell apart.

Closer, the Queens raced around the vertical cliffs, as if chasing each other or...or waiting.

For what?

"They've been circlin' for the past few minutes," Harn said. Felix looked over at the man and wasn't surprised to see his scratched armor appearing in better condition than before. One day, he'd have to get the man to tell him how he did that.

"Awful nice of em. Gave us time to get up here," Evie chimed in. She leveraged herself up against the rock beside her, gingerly putting weight on her legs. "Blind gods that hurts. But I think I can stand."

"Not gonna be good in a fight though," Atar observed, reaching into his pack. "Take this."

He handed her a glass bottle with a swirling red and purple liquid inside. Evie took it with a scowl. "I don't need your charity."

She drank it anyway.

"And for you too," Atar murmured to Alister, soft enough that others might not have heard it. Felix tried not to; it felt too much like spying on friends. Another potion changed hands, and the two lingered, leaning into each other.

God I hope we survive this. Felix swallowed despite his dry throat. Below the Queens moved faster and faster, and they seemed to be different somehow. Their analyzed details hadn't changed, but--

*C-CRACK*

The sound came from the platform, where the bore still thrummed dangerously. Huge cracks sundered the stone in several places, as if something from deep below was straining upward. Like an egg.

"The King is almost ready," Felix said. "We have minutes, at best. We need to--"

Quest Complete!

What? Felix stared blankly at the notification that populated before him. What Quest?

An Incursion of Risi - The giants have descended from the Hoarfrost, threatening your home. You long ago discovered their purpose, but now the last of them are eliminated! You did a good job...eventually!

Purpose 1/1

Risi Killed 500/500

Reward:

+1 Level!

+New Title

You Have Gained A Level!

You Are Now Level 34!

+3 to WIL! +2 to INT! +4 to DEX! +1 to END! +2 to PER! +2 to VIT! +4 to AGL!

You Have 5 Unused Stat Points!

New Title!

Frostbane (Rare)!

You have proven yourself to be an enemy of those that hunt in the frozen wastes. +10% damage against Giantfolk and 10% damage reduction from attacks by Giantfolk.

Why now? There were so many left when I left the Foglands, Felix blinked at the messages and it dawned on him. The Envoy.

He looked toward the Envoy's body down below, but it must have fallen into once of the expanding crevasses. The Envoy had been a Frost Giant before being turned into an Arcid, one of the first. An experiment. The Archon took the rest...he turned them all into these things.

It still didn't answer the question of why he'd completed the quest, but he wasn't about to say no to a free level and title.

The earth shook again.

"Vess! Look!" Evie pointed below. The Queens had changed. Their huge mouths split, scaled flesh forming into dozens of serpentine necks topped with triangular heads. Tentacles still proliferated around their bodies, and on their backs, a few of the tentacles had twisted and joined. As if...

As if they were growing wings.

"They can't fly, right? No way, right?" Evie asked, not taking her eyes off the Queens.

One by one, the Queens lifted into the air as they circled, until they were a spinning wall of scaled flesh. They had become huge, swollen abominations; hydras that undulated with a gargantuan grace.

"Fuck me," Felix whispered.

The waters poured in around them, crashing toward the cliffs, but the Queens rose from the flooding earth, above even their position. Soaring through the sky, the Queens redirected their flight toward the center of the island. Toward the bore.

"That'll lead to nothing good, I wager," Atar said. He had pulled out his collapsible staff and leaned on it heavily.

"I won't take that bet," Alister said. He was looking better, but not by much. "We have to run. We can't face them, or whatever the King is. We'll die without even putting a dent in them!"

The Queens circled the bore, three of them spaced out so neatly it was clear that a fourth Queen was missing. Without warning, their bodies lit up with hundreds, thousands of sigils and complex lines. Yellow-red luminescence flared bright along their skyscraper forms, and as if in answer the bore itself burst alight. In a flash, the water that had neared the cliffs was atomized and turned to less than dust.

The bore was taking on more power.

The waters hissed as they vaporized, and Felix could see the line pushing farther and farther out. Around the bore, the cracks widened, and the light pulsed with a steady beat that was nearly too low to be audible.

Felix considered what he knew. What the Archon had just inadvertently shown him. Could he win? And if not, could he at least keep them alive?

Felix took a shaky breath. Only one way to find out.

"I'm going in. We have to kill the Queens before the King is finished with...whatever it's doing," Felix glanced at the others. Harn and Vess stood nearby, watching him with serious faces, while Evie just rolled her eyes.

"Okay hero, let's slow down. Charging in there and dying is a great idea and all, but let's at least try to think of another plan," Evie said.

"What plan would that be, Aren?" Atar whispered. His face was stricken and pale, despite the swelling and flaking rash. "We are literally between a rock and the hardest of places. Three Tier III creatures."

"Not to mention an unknown that could easily be Tier IV," Alister added unhelpfully. "Now we can't even run, unless you're all immune to whatever that is!"

The nobleman gestured to the evaporating lake, now become little more than an empty bed filled with desiccated plants and cracking earth.

"No, we can't run," agreed Harn. His gauntlets creaked around the hafts of his axes. "We fight."

As the world fell apart around them, the air filled with the hiss of burning water and the rumble of breaking earth, Evie sighed.

"Shit."

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