Unbound

Above, at the end of a long, darkened corridor, there was a large door set with the same translucent stone as the observation pit below. This, however, was scratched and fogged over until only the vaguest of shapes could be seen through them. There was a plaque above the door, made of mithril and etched deep enough that the grime couldn’t obfuscate its words.

“Tool Storage,” Felix read. He pushed open the door. “Well, that’s a bit on the nose.”

Inside was a large space that was filled with racks on racks of storage shelving, similar in many ways to the library. Here, however, the shelving was packed full of an eclectic assortment of oddments: hooks, clamps, files, knives, and a plethora of things he couldn’t readily identify. His Emperor's Vigilance told him that the majority were for examining monster corpses, both in dissecting them and investigating what was found within. Most were made of metals like high steel and mithril, but a few were wooden or made of gemstones, and all of them featured complicated arrays scratched across their surfaces. They were fascinating, if a little gruesome. It was like walking into Dr. Frankenstein's tool shed.

Of course, as was the theme of the place, there were a great many plants sprouting up between the aisles as well. These, however, were intentionally planted in specially made troughs that were overrun with weeds and moss. Like a little garden, split among the tools in a way that flowed naturally with the design of the shelves, despite their less than wholesome purposes. Some of them had flowers, others fruit, but all of them were potent, high-Tier plants. Felix marked those for harvesting later; he would no doubt be able to make use of them in his alchemical lab back in Elderthrone.

The penultimate corridor brought Felix to something he didn't expect: a Sanctum. Unlike his Shaper's Sanctum, this was not made in the same manner. It did not have the airy design or the specific qualities to enhance shaping. Instead, it seemed to be just a focal point for magical studies, most likely for the Nymean magi that once operated the facility.

It opened into a low dome, decorated with Nymean stars, and the floor was tiled with that same sixteen-point star that covered the entrance. It was otherwise empty of any decoration or furniture, featuring only tendrils of moss that hung through the carved stars in the walls. When he crossed the center of the room, however, his sword and crown hummed, like molars rattling together.

Authority Recognized!Inheritor Status Confirmed.Sanctum Master Status Confirmed.Be Welcome, Magus!

Felix felt the notification rebound off of something inside of himself, buried in his core, before it spread outward into the Sanctum itself. The moment it hit the far wall, a portion of it rippled, revealing a magenta light that washed across the chamber. A fist-sized Belais crystal sat atop a carved stone monolith, among a nest of roots and vines and pale yellow blossoms.

“Another one of these,” Felix said, peering closely at the set up. “Dang. Still charged with Mana, too, after all this time.”

Belais crystals were used often in Nymean ruins because, it was thought, they held liquid Mana within themselves for a long time without degrading. Felix reached out, placing his hand against it, and it was smooth and cool to the touch. Sigils lit up along the monolith, describing a maze of magenta that spread from the floor to the very tip, and a faint, foreign bit of knowledge battered against his Mind.

Access Facility Map?

Y/N

That’s handy. Yes.

A greater light was summoned from the depths of the crystal as its stored Mana was accessed, and it projected it upward, into the air. After a moment, the light resolved into an isometric illusion detailing a tall, cylindrical shaft flanked by four separate chambers. The layout was similar to what he'd just explored, and a little listing in the corner showed him a star next to the number sixteen.

There was also a little number in the opposite corner. 1 Of 5

Felix’s frown faded to a grin as he flipped the display over, revealing another facility that looked exceedingly similar but was oriented differently. This one, however, had a new number at the bottom. 2 Of 5Three more greeted him as he flipped through, each subtly different while remaining the same overall layout. All five had a star rating as well, with the remaining four listed as ten, twelve, fourteen, and fifteen respectively. The top five most dangerous ruins he had sensed with his crown.

They're connected, somehow. It was similar to how the Abundance Anima connected all those facilities in Khasma, though they were built entirely from the Spirit Tree’s roots, with the other towers being merely offshoots of the primary growth. This place was just built at the same time, I think. But why all the roots here? Is there a connection?

He thought back on the roots he had seen in the research area. They had looked healthy, fresh, in a way that the decrepit roots he'd seen elsewhere did not.

No. The roots feel like a new development.

He had known that Abundance was spreading. That's what Alister had said, and the reason why the former Prince Tevin had captured Paxus in the first place. Felix peered closer at the diagram. Despite everything else, he felt a bit of anticipatory joy roll through him.

There weren’t just Mana Wells in his location, but every other one, too.

Yum, Hunger rumbled.

At long last, Felix headed down the leftmost corridor, toward the Mana Wells.

Created as the clear heart of the facility, the hallway opened up into a chamber much like the one in Elderthrone. It was built like an amphitheater, tiered from top to bottom with balconies fully equipped with carved balustrades, as if whatever went on in the room was designed to be witnessed by a crowd.

The walls above the tiered balconies stretched high to a domed ceiling set with a sixteen-point star picked out in dark blue lapis lazuli, while smaller stars were cast from gold and silver against a shadowed backdrop. The high walls were decorated by a mosaic of cut tile, and though clinging moss and fungus obscured some of it, Felix could make out tall, heroic-seeming figures in armored robes. They strode around in a steady line, more detailed than he imagined mosaics could be, and bore determined and stoic expressions as they held glowing stars aloft.

Nym.

Curled about them in a border were roots and leaves, leading to three separate trees in the mosaic’s background. They were crowned with stars of their own, glowing like a sun was setting behind each one. Something tickled at the back of his Mind, and for a moment, Felix frowned up at the mosaic, chasing it down.

There’s always a lot of tree symbolism in Nymean artwork. Roots here. Leaves. Usually more vines in the other ruins, though. He hesitated. Or were they all roots instead?

What exactly was the role of Spirit Trees in the Nymean empire?

Felix sighed. He was getting off track. He set aside the thought for later and descended.

A set of steps led down from the door to a central, circular platform that was made up of upthrust hexagonal pillars of stone. Set into it in a triangle were three metallic discs, like manholes the size of houses, and each covered in elaborate sigaldry that reminded Felix of flames or waves. Between those three discs, in the exact center, was a small Belais crystal.

Similar to the one in the Sanctum, this one was a good deal bigger, at least four feet tall at its apex and twice that at its base, forming a faceted shape that pointed directly up to the ceiling. Felix followed the line it described, and saw that it matched with the very center of the sixteen-point star.

He strode up to the Belais crystal and laid his hand on it.

Light welled up from within, and a new display appeared, this one showing three cylindrical shapes of colored liquid floating before him, each one affixed over one of the inscribed discs. Symbols appeared all around the display, fully 3D, pointing to different parts of the cylindrical shapes like a technical schematic. It wasn't in any language Felix recognized, and many of the letters were outright missing or corrupted.

Did the Nym have a language? Even the snippets he’d found in the books above were in the common tongue where they weren’t wiped clean by the Ruin. He tried to make sense of what remained of the words, but the letters were hacked apart and fuzzy, like someone had taken an eraser and scrubbed haphazardly.

Why haven’t they been wiped clean entirely, though? He supposed it had to do with what the information detailed. Not all knowledge had been purged by the Ruin’s advent, just the good stuff. The powerful things that triggered the Ruin’s onslaught. Not that he could tell what the information was anymore…so he supposed it was effective after all.

He didn’t really need the labels, though. The colored cylinders were clearly the Mana Wells, and if they were anything like the one in Elderthrone, they would be filled with pure liquid Mana.

He could see a cross-sectioned view of the Well itself, too, and as Felix peered closer, he discovered that he could rotate the display freely. He did, making out bits and pieces of markings scratched into the walls. They weren’t as elegant as most sigaldry he saw in Nymean ruins, featuring a sort of slapdash quality, like the inscriptionist had been in a desperate hurry. He flared Magus of the Grand Design, and pieces started making more sense as the Skill aided his comprehension. After perhaps twenty minutes and a lot of careful rotation, he was able to identify them as variations on siphon, imprisonment, and redirection arrays.

Magus of the Grand Design is level 108!

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

He blinked. Alright. More levels. He supposed he had been pushing himself to figure them out.

Siphon. Imprisonment. Redirection. He was sure some fancy mages had real names for what was being done here, but he didn’t know them. What else would you call a collection of sigils that diverted magic and physical force into a cage that was strengthened with every blast and impact? From what he understood, the only way out was the circular lid, and that was only able to be opened by a magi with the proper Authority. It was the perfect prison for monsters that couldn’t be killed.

Let me fix that for them.

He looked back at the displays, studying each of them in turn. Each Well contained something, that much was clear, but the details were obscured. The first was mostly liquid Mana, save for a flickering set of shadows moving through the middle portions. The second had its entire bottom darkened out, but there was no obvious movement. The third, however, was all but soaked in shadow so that the cylinder of liquid looked murky. The level of the liquid was also all the way up to its top, as opposed to the others, which had faded somewhere around 75% full.

Rough guess. The bigger one is the one to worry about. The Urges in Elder Thrawn had been absolutely huge, after all, and they had been tough to beat at the time.

"Okay. Small fry first, then."

Greetings Inheritor.Do You Wish To Access The Mana Wells?

“Yeah, this one first,” he said, pointing. That floating cloud of his Authority once again firmed up, pressing forward against the circular disc before him and the sigaldry across it flashed. Steam hissed from its edges as it released, opening a seal that hadn’t opened in Ages.

It smelled terrible.

Door upright, Felix got an unobstructed view of the interior, which looked larger than the circular opening before him. Bright green Mana, poison type, sloshed some forty feet below, and as he flexed his Manasight, Felix could make out shifting creatures deep within it.

They moved fast, and through the occluding layers of liquid Mana, they kept vanishing. He focused, Willing the brilliant green to part before his gaze. The potent Mana resisted, its power more concentrated than he was used to peering through, but eventually he caught sight of a half dozen creatures.

God, those’re ugly.

Manasight is level 99!

They swam away again, and he lost them. If he wanted to get ahold of the little monsters, he was going to have to either jump in or do something about all that Mana.

“Well, I’m certainly not jumping in,” he muttered, before extending his Will.

Empyrean Embrace!

The vivid green Mana surged upward like a water spout, twisting about itself before it converted, midair, into a flashing illumination that poured into his open maw. It thundered through him, potent and raw, stinging his nostrils a bit as it passed into his skull Gate before surging into his core space. Power flashed, rustling the branches of his Divine Tree before it fled lower, twining across the opalescent trunk before skimming the harmoniously discordant grinding of his dual cores…and was snagged by an invisible hand. Pulled downward, into the spinning event horizon of a yawning shadow.

It vanished.

More.

Yeah yeah, hold your horses. Felix peered into the Well. “There you are.”

With the Mana gone, the creatures below were easier to spot. Sixteen foul abominations, each bearing a dozen pale white eyes, gills, and horrifying limbs of claws and tentacles. They reminded him of the voidbeasts he’d run into between Pax’Vrell and Nagast.

Bloodsucker Thralls. Gross. He blinked. Manawarped. No wonder they look familiar. They shook and trembled, their scales and skin sloughing in disgusting flakes, as they recovered from the sudden vanishing of Mana. Was it because of the Well? Did all that Mana make them mutate? Is that what happened to the voidbeasts, too?

One of the Thralls screeched, spotting Felix far above, and its call alerted its fellows. Immediately, they all took off, racing up the sides of the Well as if gravity didn’t hold them, tendrils and claws slapping against stone as their mouths drooled with a sudden, aching hunger.

They were fast, but they were weak.

He consumed them all in a single bite.

You Have Killed A Bloodsucker Thrall (x16)!

XP Earned!

When their screams had faded, and his belly was fuller than before, Felix opened the second Mana Well. Just as the first, it released a cloud of pressurized steam as it did so, and revealed a brilliant blue expanse. Force Mana. He ate that, too. As it fully drained into his Hunger, it revealed the bottom of the Well, where a vast, unmoving shape lay.

Emperor’s Vigilance!

Emperor’s Vigilance is level 112!

A Manawarped Abomination, he read off. Primordial Spawn. What? Really?

Lore: A unique monstrosity that once terrorized Etrionn, They Who Hold Up The Sky, with its rage and ferocious appetites. Imbued with a Primordial’s deepest aggressions, it was only restrained by the combined forces of Superior Fire Elemental Khadaash and the Cadre Corporeal.

The lore entry raised more questions than it answered. Who or what was Etrionn? What was the Cadre Corporeal? Why the hell wasn’t it moving?

Felix leaned over the Well’s opening, clenching his jaw.

Though it was unmoving, it was very much alive. The Abomination’s Health pool was almost double Felix’s own and barely dented by its long incarceration. Felix flexed his talons, ready for a fight.

Eyes like beads of iron blinked up at him, hazy with something only vaguely resembling consciousness. Then they closed again, a deep, rattling breath rolled from its distended gills. Felix frowned, unable to help the regret that clutched at him. The Abomination’s Spirit was hesitant and broken, as if it had given up on everything, and even this chance at freedom wasn’t enough to rouse itself. Despite its Health pool, Felix got the impression that it was barely clinging to life at all.

There was nothing Human about it, but Felix’s regret morphed into full-fledged pity for the strange beast, mutated and trapped in this place for so long.

All he could do for it was put it out of its misery.

Empyrean Embrace!

The creature exhaled once, and Felix swore he felt a sense of deep gratitude. Its Will gave way like cobwebs before a flame.

You Have Killed A Manawarped Abomination!

XP Earned!

The monster burst into vibrant smoke, its vast Body condensing into a surprisingly tight whirlwind of Essence and Mana before plunging into Felix's core space. A powerful chunk of significance came along for the ride, slamming into his core space like a tidal wave. Only a small piece of it was sucked up into Hunger’s horizon, while the rest practically hummed as it soaked into the dark spaces of his core space, clarifying the details around him as if someone had polished it up.

Primordial Spawn. Like the Revenants or the Dustwights. He smacked his lips contemplatively. I don’t taste the flesh curse, though. Did the Manawarping overpower it?

That seemed unlikely.

The significance settled into him, not weighing him down so much as drawing pieces of him closer together. Affixing him, in a sense, like drying plaster. He wasn’t sure if he liked the feeling, but gathering significance had been one of the points of this trip, and Felix was happy it hadn’t been a waste.

Two Mana Wells emptied, Felix turned to the last and pressed his Authority against it. The giant lid jerked, releasing a gout of steam, but stopped after rising only a few inches.

Warning!

Mana Well Contains A Volatile Threat!

Do Not Release!

"That’s odd.” It hadn’t warned him about the Bloodsuckers or the Primordial Spawn. “Whatever's in here must be a lot stronger, then.”

Before he could even consider re-engaging the seal, however, the entire disc was slammed from below. It flipped away before embedding itself into the mosaic with a loud crash, and a smokestack of murky Mana spat upward into the air, thick and greasy. Pressure came then, pushing Felix back two steps as the ground beneath him shifted.

A voice echoed from below, like a tolling bell.

Friend Or Foe. To Unseal My Prison Was Unwise.

Felix flared his Perception. The muddied Mana was foul, turned somehow, like butter in the sun. A creature without shape coiled below, and its eyes burned.

You…Do Not Sing With Fear, it said. The creature seemed confused. You Are Eager.

Felix said nothing.

Name Thyself.

"You first."

It Speaks, the voice rumbled, and the liquid shuddered. I have Had More Names Than You Have Had Years Upon This Wretched Rock. I Am Known By Curse And Blessing, By Fear And Love. For I Am Both, Inextricably Bound Into One.

"Uh-huh," Felix let his Affinity sing across his Skills, igniting them with power, but not yet releasing them.

I Am The Urge Of Bloody Turmoil!

The Urge burst forth, tearing from the manor well like a blubbery serpent emerging from a tin can. There was an uncanny resemblance to the Deepking in the shape of its huge, wedge-shaped head, but otherwise it was a bulbous thing, covered in draping folds and bulging pustules. Three yellow eyes adorned its skull, poking from behind thick lids as if they were going to burst.

I Claim You, Thief!

Sonata of Dominance!

The power around him stuttered to a complete stop as Felix laid his Willpower across the entirety of the chamber. The Urge screeched, undulating away from him as if it were lashed across the face with a stinging whip.

"You're not claiming anything,” Felix said through his teeth.

The Urge stilled.

You Are Different, it said. A third eye widened, and a deep ochre energy burned within it. You Are Changing.

Felix frowned. His hands flexed, talons gleaming in the light of the Urge’s eyes. He focused on holding the Urge. It was fighting back, but not nearly enough to make Felix worried.

"Oh, am I?" he asked. "How, exactly?"

You—it spasmed, its slick, blubbery sides bulging around Felix’s control. You Can Feel It, Too. A Fading Song. An…Expansion.

You Stink.

Felix stared at the thing. He had no clue what it was trying to pull, but he knew it wouldn't work. "Rude."

Truth. Stink Of Lifes. Of Truths More Than Mortal. It shoved its snout at him, snapping its overly muscled jaws. You Smell Like An Urge!

A fissure of startled fear ripped through Felix, and for a moment, his Skill faltered. The Urge lunged, breaking through his hold, mouth agape to swallow him whole.

It wasn’t fast enough.

He caught it by the upper and lower jaws, his Strength more than a match for the Urge's ancient, decayed body. It screamed.

"Shut up," Felix growled. He twisted, slamming it into the ground. With a wrench, he tore the thing’s jaw clean off.

Empyrean Embrace!

Weakened, the Urge had no Will to contest him. It blinked its three burning eyes before they went dull and turned to foul smoke.

"Well," Felix said. "That was new."

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