Unbound

He was adrift.

It was hot.

Felix blinked his eyes open and beheld a swirling typhoon. Flames and broken chunks of razor-sharp obsidian surrounded him, tearing at his visualized Body. He banished the pain. It was nothing. Intent and Will were enough to hold himself together despite the shrapnel tearing phantom blood from his flesh.

“Enough!”

His Master Tier Mind clamped down, and Atar’s core space rattled with his powerful command. Within a core space, everything was real and illusion all at once; within someone else’s core space, that fact was doubly true. Fire flowed through him, as did the obsidian meteors, not so much as ruffling his clothes. Atar’s core space could not affect him if he didn’t accept it.

Felix! Felix, are you okay? Everything burst, and then the cage—

I'm fine, Pit. I'm fine. We're all okay. Give me a moment. We need to work.

I’m coming in—

No! Pit couldn’t join him in Atar’s Spirit. Atar can’t take it! If you Converge with me, this whole place might collapse.

Sit tight. We can still do this.

Felix flexed his Skill, feeling at the edges of it. Fiendforge was still holding the core space together, but it was the lone bandaid on a critical wound. The inferno around him roared, rising to a fever pitch as its arrested explosion surged with newfound momentum. The Skill was losing ground, fast.

It’s me, he suddenly knew. Atar’s core space couldn’t touch him if he didn’t let it…but the opposite was also true. Felix was a ghost in the mage’s center, and he couldn’t afford to be. God damn it!

He let the inferno in.

Agony embraced him like an old friend as he was scorched and rent asunder—yet Felix couldn’t give it his attention. Though his visualized Body barely kept up with the damages, and blood choked off his breath, he didn’t stop. He flared Fiendforge, and this time, his grasp solidified.

The explosion stopped its expansion, though it writhed against his Will like a cobra in a sack. If he let it free, Atar would... He shied away from the thought. Everything was balanced on the smallest of ledges.

Down below, between the tides of flame, a scrap of bone and dust clung to the edge of a single obsidian platform, the only one still standing from the dark temple.

“Atar!”

Atar was a shell of his former self, pieces of skull and spine and arm supported only by a column of ash and smoke. He was diminishing by the moment. Still, his charred and splintered arm was locked forward, fingers splayed only inches from his brand new Skill. It shone before him, brighter than even the inferno—covered in so many inscriptions that little of the black obsidian pillar remained.

I need to get down there! Yet he was stuck dozens of feet away, unable to move. Fiendforge was holding things together, but it also held him, like he was clamped into his own vise. If I move, the explosion will continue to expand.

If it did, Atar wouldn’t survive.

Below, the ash smoke of Atar stumbled, unable to reach through the pressure of his new Skill. He fell.

Sonata of Dominance!

The Skill screamed out of Felix, strange within someone else's core space, almost twisty and unwieldy. But his Willpower clamped onto it, forcing it to behave. Obsidian slammed together, catching Atar against its cracked surface.

“Get up!” Felix demanded, and fire blasted away from his voice. “Move!”

Atar jerked forward, his form trailing ash into the typhoon. He stumbled to the Skill pillar, almost falling against a wave of power. Pressure borne by waves of fiery Mana poured from the pillar and slammed into the mage. He got within inches before he stopped, and his very bones began to fray.

Ash sprayed outward like blood.

Felix swallowed. Atar hadn’t died to bring the Skill forward, but he couldn’t last much longer.

“Atar!” Helpless rage boiled within him. Rage at not being able to help, at not being able to move. Rage at impotence. "Ask me for a boon!"

The mage’s half-skull couldn’t turn, but his eye sockets went wide. "What?"

"Just do it!”

“G–give me a Boon!"

Felix tried once again to engage his Title, but that blockage was still there. There was a brilliant wall that dispersed his power in all directions.

"Nothing's happening," Atar screamed. "Felix, I really need something to happen!"

Felix growled. He wasn't sure why he couldn't press through, but it didn't matter if Atar couldn't survive. "Forget it! Remember visualization! Focus! This is your core space! Show me what that means!"

Atar was tired, that much was so clear. But the man was never one to shrug off hard work. He rallied, rising from the ground on nubbins of ashen bone and, despite the chaos of the inferno, Felix could feel his Intent coalesce.

It rang out like a plucked string in an empty auditorium.

Obsidian gathered toward the man, moving slowly at first, and then very fast. It snapped to his bones, forming a shell around his Body as pieces of splintered rock fused together until he stood on legs of glassy stone.

Whoa.

Atar rose to his feet, taller than ever before with arms that had almost doubled their reach. Thick, obsidian appendages that thrust forward, pushing through the waves of pressure…and put a hand onto the Skill pillar. His Will thrummed through it, and the sigildry lines glowed ever brighter. Another, stronger blast of pressure shot out, splintering Atar’s obsidian shell as fast as he could visualize more.

Slowly, light filtered through the complicated knotwork lines on the pillar…but it was too slow. The pressure only grew stronger as the Skill marshaled its power, and the obsidian visualization wouldn’t last. Atar needed more power. Felix grunted, pushing at the phantom muscle that worked his Title, trying everything he could to activate it. It wouldn’t budge.

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"Blood and ash! The Skill won't activate!" Atar screamed. "It needs more Mana! It needs..."

Atar hurled himself, his entire body, at the pillar.

"No!" Felix yelled.

He connected, and the knotwork patterns flared with blinding light. The mage's obsidian shell crumbled, taken into the Skill as fuel.

The mage howled in agony.

Felix dropped Fiendforge, and he fell through the sky. The inferno raged, ripping in all directions, suddenly loosed from his control and expanding wildly. Felix landed on the obsidian platform, taking several steps forward, but everything crumbled beneath him.

“Shit! Fiendforge!”

The Skill slammed home once again, halting the explosion once again and freezing him in place only a few feet away from his friend. If he had let go any further, everything would have gone, including the Skill and Atar before him.

Sonata of Dominance!

Mana gathered into his control, but it was incredibly chaotic and fought against his Will. Even with over ten thousand points in the stat, the majority of the Mana around him fled from his grasp, powered by a strangeness he couldn’t fathom.

Sonata of Dominance is level 118!

Obsidian congealed around Atar, but it, too, was sucked into the Skill pillar. Everything Felix threw at it was the same, pulled inward until it powered the illuminated knotwork. Atar was, too, his bones turning to ash. He was barely more than a spine and pieces of a skull glaring into the Skill, and an incandescent rage boiled off of him.

There was nothing Felix could do.

A screeching caw ripped from the sky around them, and the inferno bent inward, tearing into a river that streamed around them like a ribbon. It twisted, folded upon itself in an instant into the shape of an immense bird, wings outstretched.

hold!

The Urge’s wings folded and it dove into Atar, through him, and into the Skill itself.

White and orange flame followed, ripping through it like a tiny hurricane. Felix was thrown back despite his iron grip on the core space, recovering only as he slid to the very edge of the obsidian platform.

the array is done, atar! the Urge bellowed. you need only activate this!

The Skill gleamed before him, suddenly surging upward and gathering pieces of obsidian into itself like a cyclone of shrapnel. Atar fell back, released from its grasp as bright wings spread from the Skill’s sides. He stared upward alongside Felix, the mage trailing ash and smoke as little more than a jawbone, cheek, and an eye socket.

Power flowed from the Urge and into the Skill, but it was slowing down. Felix knew it wouldn’t make the leap alone. He pressed his Title again, urgently trying to give power through their Link, but the barrier was stronger than ever. He bared his teeth. He knew the culprit now. "Urge! Get out of the way!”

i do not take orders—

Felix's snarl cut off the bird's protest. "Ask for a Boon for Atar."

From the gleaming pillar of an unnamed Skill, a nebulous head with four eyes and a sharp beak rose up. i do not need your aid! I can—

“Do it, or I'll devour you whole."

Felix’s voice brooked no argument and, Urge or not, it was not immune to fear.

i–i would like a Boon for the mage.

With a whisper of snuffed flame, the barrier between them vanished, and their Link surged back to full potency. A bracing deluge of ice upon his senses, Felix could immediately feel his friend as easily as he could his own hand. With a thought, he gathered Mana and Essence and pieces of his own significance and hurled them through their Link, forcing it into Atar.

Tier IV link has upgraded to Tier V!

It streamed from him, straight into the ashen cloud before him.

The mage's fractured skull snapped back. Above, the Urge screeched and spread its vast white wings from the edges of the Skill pillar. A pair of rolling timpanis rose up, carried by the haunting sound of brass and woodwind that buoyed a triumphant melody atop the resounding baseline—until it crashed against cymbals the size of cities.

It shook through them, Affinity describing a majesty Felix could not put into words. The world flexed, and the cyclone around them tightened, spinning faster and faster until it was an overwhelming cascade of sound and fury signifying…everything.

Felix sagged, feeling drained for the first time in a while. It took him a moment to even realize he wasn't holding Fiendforge anymore. He sat up and was surprised to find himself atop a polished obsidian floor covered in white and orange sigaldry.

He grinned.

The temple had returned, rectangular and roofless, though sigil-streaked columns ran its boundaries. A night sky wheeled above, filled with constellations he couldn't name...and two moons that gleamed blue-white and red-gold.

Just like Vess.

He stood with ease and walked to the center of the temple. Around him were standing stones made entirely of pure, solidified flame. They were white, tinged at their depths with orange and bloody crimson.

"I can't believe my Skills came back," Atar said with a cough.

The mage was standing easily now, still skeletal but no longer broken. White robes hung from charred bones, and his white hair had returned to his bare skull, though his face was still fleshless. He scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. “I—You saved me again, Felix.”

“You saved yourself,” Felix said, patting the man on the back. “I just helped.”

Felix looked to his left, where the center of the temple had once boasted an obsidian cage. Now it was bent and twisted into something else, and white flames flickered fitfully in between the bars.

It looked like a nest.

"How're you feeling?" he asked.

"I'm...better. Stronger."

atar remains weak.

A small white bird rose from the bent nest of metal and obsidian. Made entirely of fire, it had been invisible until it had moved, though it blinked four gleaming eyes of crimson at Felix now. we must utilize the skill now, or else this was all for nothing.

Felix watched the Urge carefully. "You said the inscriptions on your bones are done?"

as best we could manage...we are currently burning through your crafting hall while we tarry here.

Felix stared down the bird, until a bony hand was laid on his shoulder. "Felix. We must try."

He gave a stiff nod. "Fine. I'll leave, but I'll be right next to you."

the forge, atar. move swiftly. we have but one chance at this.

Atar laughed bitterly, but not without hope. "My life is on the line, Urge. I'll fly if I have to."

Felix blinked, and the temple was gone, replaced by the real world all around him. Three things became immediately apparent: a scratchy pain across his entire body, his Garment was entirely gone, and he was surrounded by a metal box.

Trapped with a burning skeleton.

Felix punched through it, ripping open the back as fire exploded all around them. Oxygen fed into it, stoking it to new heights.

The skeleton moved, its eyes gaining new life. "Get back, Felix!" Atar said.

Flaring his Agility, Felix dashed away as Atar dove from the strange box and into that improvised metal hulk behind the workstation. The incinerator.

"Get down!" he shouted at Alister as he sped close.

"But Atar is—"

Felix grabbed the man and pulled him close, shielding him as the arrays kicked on.

An explosion rocked the Glyphworks, tearing across the chamber and slamming into Felix's back. The heat was incredible, and his health dropped by a full thirty percent.

Atar screamed.

Alister struggled, trying to run through the inferno toward him, but Felix held firm. "Stay with me!"

Pyreform Revival!

The inferno's roar slid into softness, and the heat soured—a bitter, terrible cold replaced it. Felix risked a glance back. Frost covered the charred and melted workstation, crystallized across the abused metal safety cage. Everything had solidified into slagged piles of stone and steel, surrounding a figure at the center of the explosion.

Atar stood just outside the makeshift incinerator, his bones squirming with Mana as tendrils of flame somehow turned from elemental power into flesh. Muscles and ligaments and skin formed across bones, layer by layer, until a fully formed Atar stumbled out of the cold. He was naked, skin still gray and hair still white, but he was unharmed.

He was whole.

The mage fell to his knees, trembling.

"Atar!" Alister pushed out of Felix’s arms and rushed forward, whipping off his blue cloak to wrap it around his love. "Are you... you?"

The mage coughed. "I am," he said, smiling. "The Skill worked.”

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