Unbound

As his Skill settled into place, Felix tested it cautiously. It spun, a subtle vibration that thrummed across the breadth of his core space as the nine rings around the planet increased their rotational speed. He could feel it working, but it was hyper specific; it didn’t affect his thinking or his mood or anything physical. Yet when he considered the sigaldry on a nearby shield, the Skill surged and a veritable flood of ideas began to boil behind his eyes.

“Whoa,” he said, leaning a hand down to steady himself. The floor was cool compared to the heat in the air, and it’s solidity grounded him. “That’s intense.”

“Your new Skill?” Harn asked. “It’s good?”

“Transcendent Rarity.”

“It better be! That felt like getting my brain shoved through a meat grinder,” Evie complained. “Are we gonna feel like that every time you evolve a Skill?”

“If so, I’ll see what I can do about squeezing shut our Links.” Felix said distractedly. He was already running through a mental list of every sigil, array, and inscription technique he could recall. With his Intelligence-boosted memory plus his Born Trait that gave him perfect recall for everything within the past three months, that meant a LOT of information.

Assisted by the Skill, his Mind flagged fresh commonalities between designs, cataloging them all into new, more efficient arrangements. Details he’d seen but never recognized were now glaringly obvious. If his understanding of sigaldry was a giant, convoluted knot then the new Skill was a series of loosened threads, each leading to another, and another, all of which pulled free at the slightest tug.

His Mind skipped forward, leaping from glyph to sigil in his recent memory, and landed on the improvised combination array he’d just attempted. So many errors and inefficiencies marred his design that it was almost embarrassing. Rapid ideation cascaded through his Mind, discarding all of the flawed pieces of the combination array until all that was left was the siphon at the center and the barest bones of a circle. Felix’s Magus of the Grand Design worked almost like autocorrect, highlighting points of interest, conflict, and redundancy. Its song focused what he knew, almost amplifying it, and allowing Felix a chance to leverage that knowledge.

It was overwhelming.

At some point, either Harn or Evie had placed his newly forged legs onto the ground. Felix picked them up, turning them over in his hands as he worked through his options. He reviewed what he knew about arrays and their interaction with people’s bodies. Mana Gates absorbed Mana from the environment and transported it into the core through one’s pathways, where it was stockpiled and refined. Stamina was similar, except it was drawn from the Body directly instead of the world around them. The Skills within one’s core space used that stockpiled power to activate their precise waveform, which in turn sent a specific pattern of Mana or Stamina back out into one’s pathways where it either affected the Body, Mind, or Spirit directly or was expelled back out through one or more Mana Gates. It was a cycle, a constant dance that had many inputs, variables, and outputs. It was—

Felix blinked. Our…inner systems are arrays?

It wasn’t a perfect analogy, but it had merit. He stood, holding Harn’s legs and gesturing at a crowded workstation. "Clear it off. I need space.”

"Any more space, you're gonna be in this mountain alone," Evie remarked.

"All right, Dragoons, get out of here,” Harn said. The Dragoons, who had been craning their heads to watch, slowly dispersed until they were at the far end of the forge. "You got a plan?"

“I—have an idea.”

Quietly, Felix began to work. He poured everything he had into the design, sketching iterations of his formation onto slate tablets over and over again. His Skill sang in his veins and every idea he’d ever had, every iota of ingenuity he’d ever possessed went into it. He owed Harn that much.

Hours passed. Two. Four. Six hours worth of iterations upon tablets that sparked and broke into flaming pieces. Tests that shattered the stronger Tier III stone he attempted them on. He moved onto stronger materials, from flattened sheets of high steel to the silver-green sheen of mithril. Nine more hours passed and the iterations piled up in slagged stone and shredded metal, until Felix came upon an array formation that held its charge of Mana.

For five more hours, he laboriously carved those sigils into the interior of Harn’s new legs. Focusing his Intent and Affinity, he utilized the Chant to make his Magus of the Grand Design cry out in joyous harmony.

Wait. What was that? Felix heard something when he applied the Chant too strongly to his new Skill. A resonance he hadn’t expected. When the Skill activates I feel…there! Sigils of force, flesh, blood, and earth. Each of them had lit up inside his array formation without any additional Mana added to the circuit. He activated Adamant Discord and ignored the lightning that crawled up his arms, focusing instead on the thin blue lines between his chest and the sigils. There’s a connection there. I can use that.

He modified his array, adding tertiary sigil supports to strengthen the bonds between the metal and Harn’s living legs. To his specialized sight, the connections strengthened until they were wrist thick and vividly blue. In the center was his piece of true genius, a combination of so many things he'd learned converging on one point, on one man. A primary-glyph combining the sigil for metal and Harn's own name, which further compounded the effects of the tertiary supports.

After twenty full hours of constant work, Felix sat back and considered his efforts. The sigaldry was detailed and somewhat cramped, but it bloomed around the interior of the legs like tiny webs. It was done, and the connection to Harn was so strong that Felix felt like he could let it go and the legs would be drawn to the man from across the room.

"Harn,” he said, his voice rough from disuse. “Your born trait is to manipulate metal around your body, right?"

The man looked up from where he was sharpening a short sword and quickly set it aside. "Aye,” he said, looking at Felix eagerly. “It’s done?”

Felix swallowed and pushed the legs toward his friend. “Use your Born Trait. Seize control of the bindings. The array should take it from there."

Evie appeared from somewhere—Felix hadn’t paid attention to anyone but sigaldry in almost a day. She helped Harn up into his crutches and across the room before seating him in his bench and picking up the metal appendages. “Heavy,” she said with a surprised grunt.

“Gotta be. These need to last me into Master Tier,” Harn said with a nervous grin. “Go. I’ll take it from here.”

Evie backed away until she stood next to Felix, and the both of them watched with bated breath. Harn grasped the arcanite legs with more hesitancy than Felix had ever seen him show. A lesser man would have shaken with fear, excitement, or both, but Harn was steady as he placed them against the exposed stumps of his legs, ending just at the knee.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

“Here goes nothin’,” he said.

Mana surged in Felix’s vision, flowing from the Tier VI monster cores embedded in the calves as Harn activated his Born Trait. At the very top of the arcanite legs, the metal turned almost liquid. Normally arcanite would be beyond his Born Trait, which was designed for lesser Tier metals, but the array that Felix worked into it acted as a sort of amplifier and extender. It was the hardest part of the design, and Felix clenched his jaw so hard he feared to break a tooth.

C’mon. Work.

The liquid surged, rising up over Harn’s knees before forming into hundreds of spikes that struck as one. Each spike drove into his Tempered flesh, driving through skin and fat before binding to muscle and bone. Harn gritted his teeth, sweat pouring down his forehead as he maintained his Born Trait. “How long…do I have to hold it?”

“I’m not sure,” Felix said. “It needs to reach your—”

Harn screamed, a short, guttural thing that shook the weapons from nearby racks.

Felix swallowed. “Bone marrow. It’s gonna spread from there—!”

Magus of the Grand Design is level 99!

…

Magus of the Grand Design is level 100!

Master Tier!

You Gain:

+120 INT

“Not now,” he muttered. “Evie, my Essence Draught, please!”

+140 WIL

She tossed him a stone bottle from the satchel he set onto the ground. “You using Harn to Temper your Skills?”

Felix bared his teeth as System energy began to gather in his chest. “Just a happy coincidence. Keep an eye on Harn. He has a ways to go.”

He broke the seal and downed the entire bottle.

+...

Legendary Essence Detected During Formation!

[Essence Draught of Atlantes (Pure)]

Broken Path and Fatebreaker Titles Found!

Master Tier Bonus Added!

Unbound Nature Resonates With [Essence Draught of Atlantes (Pure)]!

Calculating Effects...

Choose A Feature:

Oro - Let Rise The Voice

Animus - Let Sing The Heart

Arbiter - Let Burn The Eyes

Understanding followed the pronouncements of his Features, like a trio of pale blossoms flowering on a twisting vine.

Oro - Let Rise The Voice. Meaning flowed through him, resolving into an impression of a stentorian shout into the world. A robed figure turning words into reality as sigils flared around them in complex rings. Either Felix was getting better at Tempering, or the connection was exceedingly obvious, but the Feature was clearly a result of Invocation combining with his Skill. The “voice” was the act of channeling Mana through his arrays, but it promised a more profound output for every sigil, array, and formation he inscribed.

Animus - Let Sing The Heart. Listening. Harmony. The convoluted song behind the universe. It thrummed through him, into his fingers and out of the soles of his feet, until his being resonated with the primal chords of Creation itself. The Heart was more ephemeral than the Voice, but it promised an amplifying effect on his Affinity and an extension into the Grand Harmony.

Arbiter - Let Burn The Eyes. Judgment. Witness. The observation of an impartial, omnipotent eye. It did not promise to grant him such power, but it was potent regardless. The Eye pledged to aid him in refining his sigaldry on the first attempt, reducing failures and time spent iterating.

Increased output. Expansion of effect. Improved efficiency. His three options swirled through Felix like near physical winds, buffeting him with potential. All three were tempting, all of them containing the potential to vastly improve his sigaldry. Increased output would benefit his larger workings…but could mean less efficiency in the long run. For much of his time on the Continent Felix had relied on brute force to get him through conflicts; he’d since learned that he didn’t always need a vast outpouring of power. A hammer wasn’t always the right tool for the job.

Expansion of effect was similar to increased output. It promised to increase his connection to the Grand Harmony, deepening his arrays in some fairly undefined way. It would increase his efforts with the Chant, which could have significant improvements to his work…just not in any immediately understood manner. Improving his connection to the Grand Harmony was supremely tempting, but how did it differ from his current understanding? His Affinity was over five thousand points. Would Animus double that for sigaldry? What would that mean in terms of effects?

Improved efficiency was the easiest to parse, both the effects and benefits, partially due to how Magus of the Grand Design worked already. He’d seen the benefits of his autocorrect-like knowledge, and it was incredible. By allowing him to notice mistakes early on, correcting imbalances and deficient formations, Felix could achieve advancements in both precision and power. It was perhaps the most enticing of the lot.

For the first time, Felix was struck by how much he understood…and yet he was equally unable to make a decision. Instead, he did as he also had, and felt for the Feature that most resonated with his Skill and core space at large. The answer didn’t surprise him, but a small piece of him mourned his other two options.

Very well. Felix firmed up his center, and chose.

Congratulations!

You Have Absorbed The [Essence Of Animus]!

As always, Hunger pulled the other two Features away, sucking up their power like a voracious hound at his feet. Felix focused on the sensation emanating from his Skill. Whereas before it had pulsated with a frenetic insistence, now it beat with the slow tempo of an oncoming army, mighty and inevitable.

Felix closed his eyes, feeling the shape of it, the flow of its new, more complex pattern. With the new Feature, he could sense its deep well of power too, a hidden dimension inside the Skill. Like the mass of a true planet, depressing the fabric of space by its very existence.

Grand Harmony… He could hear it, clearer than ever around the Skill. It’s beautiful.

He opened his eyes—

—Harn stood before him, a bit bloody and very sweaty, but smiling. “All Tempered?”

“One more down, at least,” Felix said, stretching his arms. He felt something in his spine pop and relief poured across his muscles. "The legs…it worked?”

"It did, kid. It did."

They both looked down, and not only were the metal legs attached, they were alight with flowing, magical lights. The sigaldry was mostly visible at the connection point above the knees, and it was there that Harn’s pants were shredded and bloodstained. Gone were the questing spikes of metal that had burrowed into his muscles, and instead it was smoothly joined over the patella and even extended a few inches up onto his thighs.

“They work perfectly,” Harn said, before bending his knees and ankles. The metal legs moved exactly as a natural foot would, bending and turning with ease. He even flexed his feet and toes.

Felix leaned forward, staring at the sigaldry. His Skill hummed in his chest…but it found no new errors or inefficiencies. If he had taken Arbiter, maybe he might have…but he hadn’t. Instead he sensed a deep stirring at the knee joint and the bottom of the feet. “Your Mana Gates. Does the array—”

Harn released a liquid stream of Mana from his knees and feet, the silvery power curling around itself before dissipating. “It does. Feels almost like the real thing.”

“Oh thank god,” Felix breathed. That was what he’d been most concerned about; it wasn’t nearly as complex as the organic system of channels and gates that Harn original owned, but it would suffice. Relief flowed through him, and no little amount of exhaustion.

“Only real problem is feelin’,” Harn continued. He stopped his legs a few times. “Can’t feel nothin’ from them except a sense of pressure. Not too big a hurdle, really. I can adjust myself easily, and that’s more’n enough to fight."

To illustrate his point, Harn kicked out to his right. His arcanite leg shattered an empty stone quenching barrel. "Damn good job," Harn said.

"Don't mention it."

"I was talking about my forgin’," he said, a wry smile tugging at his scarred face.

Felix grinned. "Right. Of course.” He took a steadying breath. “Now where are those other weapons you need me to enchant?"

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