Unbound

The sun was getting low by the time Felix left Garon's former palace, but he didn't mind. He could see just fine in the dark, and there was little in Gharion that could threaten him now.

Felix had met up with Lavin and the Deepking once more, while the duo were still on their way to the Seat and Seal to fortify the area. Their paths intersected on a forested island in the middle of a crooked lake. The Knights and Gallants, as well as the collared Princes, had been following in their wake.

Lightning crackled around Felix as he flew a significant distance south of that meeting place. The flight itself was fairly boring, if lengthy, as he traveled across the Territory, and it gave him plenty of time to consider the Memory that he had unlocked after defeating Prince Garon. It had congealed sometime during his conversation with former Princes Tyvan and Kyvan, but he'd set it aside. He didn't need anything from Garon to cement his leverage over the Princes—their easy defeat at his hands had been more than effective. They had listened to everything he had to say, and, in the end, both Princes agreed to swear Oaths to the Seat of Nagast.

Felix didn’t require those Oaths. In fact, he'd made it exceedingly clear that it was their choice to swear them—but he’d also outlined the consequences. If they didn’t, he'd find new governors for the Territory. Neither of them had wanted to give that up. He'd asked for the same Oath from the collared Princes with Lavin when they'd met up and gotten the same answers. The Princes, meanwhile, had their collars removed. The Oathbound could be trusted, after all.

The memory, though, hovered in his core space, clinging to the branches of his Divine Tree like a fat fruit that Felix had yet to pluck. Trees flashed by him in the real world, and he cut Adamant Discord as he passed a particularly large specimen. Felix dropped a hundred feet, descending through the buttered sunlight and landing with catlike grace on a thick bough.

I should check it. He’d put it off long enough.

With the flex of his Intent, he accessed the Memory, and the world rippled around him. Through him. And then it was over. Felix blinked.

Ephemeral Evocation is level 63!

To say the Memory had been more concise than he was used to was an understatement. Days worth of information had streamed through his Mind, collating itself neatly like a dog come to heel. Felix scratched his jaw. He wasn’t upset about it, just surprised—almost as startled as the contents of the Memory itself. It answered a major question the Princes had been unable or unwilling to explain: the reason for the captive redcloaks.

Felix winced as he considered the images that filled his Mind. Those days were grisly enough to turn even his stomach, and it made him happy he’d ended the foul man. Prince Garon had bled them dry, seeking any information about the Hierophant’s plans and her weaknesses. He had, by his own laughing admission, been intending to go to war against Amaranth.

“Ambitious little fuck,” Felix muttered.

The guy would have been demolished before the Pathless had died, but if the god's passing had affected so many as it had, Felix admitted it might have been possible for Garon to win. The redcloaks he'd experimented on had been devastated—their cores were broken and most of their important Skills sundered. It certainly boded well for his own future foray into the Hierophant's capital, even as Felix felt an unfamiliar tug of empathy for the redcloaks. He'd had his Skills sundered before, and those were fairly unimportant. It was not an experience he’d wish on anyone.

Felix dropped through the thick canopy and onto a narrow spit of stone below. Boulders covered the edge of the water where they had tumbled down from a nearby cliff, and a thin lake snaked its way across the landscape. He checked his crown, and the thing hummed.

“Where is it?” There were thirteen ruins in Gharion, according to his crown, and most of them were rated as two- and three-star locations. Five, however, were all rated above ten stars.

Felix didn't have to look long, not with the crown's help. A resonant trail led him through thickets and piled stone to a spot on the ground just at the cusp of the water. The spot had been entirely covered by fallen rocks, but that was easy enough to fix. Felix grabbed the first boulder and simply shoved it away. It skipped across the narrow lake three times before it sank.

"Oh," he muttered. "I threw that one harder than I meant to."

The boulder had been the size of a small car. No matter how long he'd been on the Continent, that still felt weird. He swept aside the rest with considerably more care, piling the stone in a small mound nearby, and when he moved the last boulder, he found a suspiciously flat slab set into the ground. The sides of it were craggy but vaguely rounded and approximately twenty feet across, but otherwise it looked like an ordinary chunk of rock—yet his crown kept on humming.

Here, huh? Felix peered closer, narrowing his eyes as Manasight flared. The world shifted, turning to vibrant flows of color, and still he could only see a flat plane of earth Mana beneath him. Following a hunch, he gripped his sword and called upon his Authority, that ineffable sense of command that wafted around him firmed up for a half second, and the illusion fell away.

Gone was the stone slab, and in its place was a Crescian Bronze doorway built horizontally into the ground. It was a beautiful piece, really, covered with a mithril inlay featuring spiraling vines and three-pointed leaves that was entirely untouched by time or the elements. The silver-green material was stark against the golden bronze and only seemed to accentuate the large sixteen-pointed star carved prominently into the center.

That matches my sense of the place. A sixteen-star ruin. Most dangerous one in the Territory. It should hopefully have something good inside.

Felix reached forward, pressing his Will and Intent toward the doorway. "Open.”

Authority Recognized.

Welcome, Inheritor.

The hatch lifted from the earth, bashing into a few more rocks that weren't quite out of the way, and even reducing a couple to rubble as they were caught between the press of its magically enhanced hinges. A tight set of stairs was revealed, leading downward in a spiral into darkness.

Felix descended, extending his Perception into the room. He could hear faint drips of water and the soft sound of what seemed like waves emanating from far below, but there were no signs of monsters, wards, or deadly traps. He was the Inheritor, his Authority more than enough to secure even a sixteen-point ruin, but Felix didn’t mind being careful every now and again.

The steps led him into a massive cylindrical chamber, the base of which was at least three hundred feet below the entry…and the steps ended after a mere twenty. He knelt on the last step and traced his hands over a smooth cut across Tier VI stone. It reminded him of other ruins, each with perfect slices through them, as if a massive, superheated blade had cut them apart.

Adamant Discord.

Felix stepped off, slowly lowering himself the remaining distance on a tether of lightning until he touched the debris-covered tiles at the base. He flared his Manasight. He could see flickers of movement in the floors and walls, places where Mana still flowed along old paths, though they retained little power. He flared his Magus of the Grand Design and reactivated it, pouring his Mana into what he identified as a lighting array.

Magelights blinked to life, sputtering across gaps choked with weeds and dripping fungi and illuminating the darkened chamber. Some areas remained dark, the array cut off by similar smooth slashes into the stone.

Felix angled his head and adjusted his stance. That slash and the one on the stairs is a continuation of the same movement. He looked up. Big sword.

The lights picked out five separate hallways that led off in every direction: left, right, forward, backward, and down.

"Okay. Lots to explore, it seems." Felix cleared his throat. "System, are there any traps active here?"

All Traps Are Disabled, Inheritor.

"That's good. Where's the Mana Well?"

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The room pulsed, the magelights flickering in a pattern meant to lead him down the left corridor.

"That was easy enough. Thanks." He’d head down that path last, then.

The first path he took plunged downward, deeper into the earth, or so he assumed at first. When Felix descended another set of stairs, he found a deep shaft made entirely of some sort of translucent material. It seemed to be something like glass, but when he struck it with one of his talons, it rang like metal.

“Whoa,” he muttered, looking out through the walls. The shaft was another cylinder, and it plunged through the earth and out into the water of the lake itself. Cool blues surrounded him, dark now that the sun had set, but filled with waving fronds and flitting fish. The interior of the shaft was also filled with plants, some matching those he saw outside while others were very different.

Colorful blooms and oddly shaped leaves predominated, some even looking faintly carnivorous like a Venus Flytrap on steroids. He was looking at a terrarium of sorts, and a faint mist filled the air, obscuring some of the lower levels and adding a humidity that clung to him like a warm blanket.

Here and there, he found damaged sigaldry that snaked its way down the walls and through the translucent material. More magelights, but these were designed to light up the exterior. Inside the terrarium, regular ledges around twenty feet square pressed out of the central, spiral staircase, and each was fitted with built-in chairs and desks. It was clear that people were expected to sit and watch the world outside from these ledges, and Felix got the impression it was some sort of observation chamber.

To observe what? The water? The system called Gharion the Jewel of the Depths, so maybe this is what it meant. After all, places like Khasma existed, as well as those dangerous tidal whirlpools he’d navigated. It was likely there were many natural phenomena to be seen here, under the deceptively deep waters of the Territory.

It’s a research outpost, just like the one I found Paxus in. Felix made a mental note to ask the Nymean spirit about this location later. There was a good chance he had more insights.

After backtracking, Felix turned right, and this corridor led to what was perhaps once a library. At first his heart soared, but the moment he took a book off the shelf, it crashed back down to earth. The pages, moldy and damaged by time as they were, were wiped clean of any writing. The effects of the Ruin could not be denied, even by an underground bunker.

At least the titles are preserved. He dropped one of the soggier and mold-encrusted tomes. It splatted against the ground. Mostly.

From the spines he could read, he found a great many boring titles like Philosophical Foundations: A Primer, Wisdom In Fluidity, and Magical Mathematics. They contained some words, but most of it was incredibly dull and entirely useless to him. Especially the one about math.

He’d never liked math.

A few, however, had titles that were truly intriguing. Harmony of the Depths, Vibrational Reef: An Exploration of Elemental Frequencies, Oceanic Alchemy, and Aquatic Aria. All of them promised fascinating reads, but were stripped of a great deal of context. Still, they contained snippets of information that, at a glance, seemed useful enough to add to his collection. He created a small pile of those, but there were no more than fifteen books of that kind. The rest were blank or crumbled so much that they were useless anyway.

Hm. These were stripped by the Ruin…could Unite the Lost restore them? Felix had never tried to bring books back in the same way he’d reassembled structures. It certainly seemed possible. He reached over and plucked Harmony of the Depths out of the pile.

Unite the Lost!

The Skill thrummed within him, eating away at his significance to fuel its pattern, before flushing out through his palm Gate. A cascade of power swirled around the book…and sank into it.

That’s…not working. Why not—?

Without warning, a mass of significance burned through him as Unite the Lost kicked into overdrive. Power flooded from his palm, surging across the tattered bindings of the defaced tome, only to sink into it without a trace.

Breath caught in his throat, Felix cut off the Skill. “What the hell was that?”

He turned over the book, but the cover looked just as ratty as it had before. The pages inside were also unchanged. So where did all that power go?

On the first page, his perfect recall flagged a few words that hadn’t been there before. Most of the first page was blank, but now it read “Oscillation is a key feature of depth Harmonics—” and nothing else.

All that for less than a sentence? Felix scratched his head. That’s some shit conversion. I feel like I’d need to eat a herd of monsters to bring back even a portion of this book. Why though?

His first thought was that it was something to do with the Ruin itself. The thing destroyed people and the knowledge that made them dangerous. Restoring buildings and art that referenced those things was a lot easier than bringing back the knowledge directly.

Good to know.

There were also workstations set up in an open area between the shelving, and after he’d investigated the stacks, he focused on those. They were curiously made. There was no wood, but instead the tables were fashioned entirely of Mana crystal and sleek metals that remained untarnished despite Ages since their construction. They were almost sterile, save for the roots and moss clinging to the sides of them.

Nature had clearly begun to reclaim the facility, and its mark was everywhere on the crystal. Even the glass-fronted cells along the side of the library were filled with odd, maze-like growths of fungus along their back walls. The rest looked polished, as if someone had come in to clean it just the day before. It was a strange juxtaposition, and it made Felix slightly uncomfortable whenever he looked at them.

Whatever had been kept in the cells, whatever they had studied, that was gone.

Beyond a crystalline door near the back, he found another corridor leading to small apartments, much like the rooms he’d discovered near Khasma. Just like those chambers, there was nothing of interest in any of them. Tables and chairs were overturned or shattered entirely, and more fungus flourished within them.

“This place is falling apart,” he muttered, checking over a seam in the wall. Roots had crept in here, too, filling in the corners where the architecture had made room for them. Felix felt a distinct spark from them. A familiar one. "Huh, a Spirit Tree. And it's the Abundance Anima. She's really spread this far?" He shrugged. "I suppose speaking to Paxus would be easier than I expected."

He walked back out to the research lab and library and looked at them with new eyes. He thought they were just creeping pieces of nature, but maybe it was part of their research. Moss and fungus and roots—

That’s a strange shape…

His eye caught on a collection of curiously bent roots, hidden among the moss tendrils that clung to the walls. Curious, Felix stepped closer, brushing away the greenery. The roots followed a pattern, turning in sharp angles seven times around a hexagonal depression in the stone wall. Above it, obscured by shelf-like fungus, was a carved arc of stars.

This looks like—he pulled out the Primarch's Scepter. The length of sky blue crystal was the exact size and shape as the depression. “Worth a shot,” he muttered.

He slid the Scepter into place.

There was no mechanical click or sound of ratcheting gears, but the stone gave way before the crystalline Scepter, until half of its two-foot length sank into the wall. A melodious hum started soon after, vibrating through the Scepter and into hidden sigaldry that rose from the rock like lights surfacing from deep oceans. An array formed in a spiral before him, golden and silver and simultaneously brilliant in sight and sound.

Then it ceased, and an open archway stood before him, outlined in fading light, and carved with that same pattern of stars. Felix glanced within, only to find it relatively shallow. It contained a tall chest of miniature drawers, each no bigger than his hand and fashioned with bronze fixtures. Placed dead center on each drawer was a small, etched image of a leaf, a different one for every drawer.

Curious, Felix stepped in and opened one at random—the circular leaf. Cushioned at the bottom in a bed of vibrant green moss and mauve blossoms was a thick glass jar. It was stoppered with a plug of wood so fresh it had a small sprout growing atop it, and the jar itself was etched with the same leaf as the drawer. Inside was a layer of rich loam and a single, circular seed the size of a peach pit.

Emperor's Vigilance!

Name: Seed of Remembered Light

Type: Consumable (Ancestral Seed)

Lore: Spirit Trees are rare, and they can live for thousands of years. Even more rare are their seeds, within which is contained an exact copy of its Essence, ready to begin anew.

Alchemical Properties: If consumed, regain all Health, Stamina, and Mana and permanent bonus to Vitality and Endurance equal to one's level.

“Holy crap, another Spirit Tree seed.” Felix glanced around himself, staring at all the drawers. “You can't be serious.”

He opened them all. Some drawers were empty of jars and strangely vibrant plantlife, while others contained jars, but they were cracked, and the plants were withered. However, he found five more jars, each containing a seed of a Spirit Tree.

Does the leaf picture indicate the type of tree it'll become? Seed packets on Earth did that often enough. Weird that the names and lore entries are all identical, though.

Felix had nothing but good experiences since raising Atlantes up over Elderthrone, so he was extremely pleased to tuck these six jars into his pack, careful to cushion them with Garment-conjured padding to keep them from clinking together.

He'd find a use for them all, eventually.Eager, he moved onto the next area.

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