Unbound

Vess and Yin fought fast, their Bodies and Skills made for aerial combat, and they all but bristled with attacks; Spear, claw, and beguiling movement. The Essence of air, metal, light, and water flowed through them, guiding them as they brought all they had against the Grim Nightshade.

None of it was enough.

The spirit moved like the wind itself, escaping their attacks and landing his own as if it were ineffable rather than solidified flesh. Even those strikes that landed were fouled with a shifted foot or adjusted tail, their failures made all the more frustrating for the size and innocuous form of their foe…and the calamity occurring below.

Auntie. Uncle. Please forgive me for leaving you alone.

Vess repeatedly had to tamp down the fury that rose in her as the screams and cries of her people below struck her senses like ballista bolts. She desperately wished to leave the Grim and attend her friends and family, but Yin qualified as both. She would not abandon him.

Vess slid to a stop on one of her Spears as her spectral wings provided her impeccable balance. Her breathing was labored and her hands sweaty beneath her gauntlets—despite approaching Master Tier, her Stamina had barely remained above twenty percent the entire fight. She slugged back a thick yellow potion and watched it rise out of the corner of her eye, only to realize that movement around her had stilled. Exhaustion dulled her senses and dogged her muscles, but that struck her as ominous. For a moment, confusion reigned until she found the miniscule spirit some distance away, staring down. Not at the Dragoons and their plight, but into the swamp beyond the fortress, where Felix and Pit faced down the Janus Hydra.

"Interesting," the Grim said. It looked up at Vess, fixing her with its black eyes. “Why does he not run?”

Pride swelled in Vess’ breast, burning hotter than her exhaustion. “Because he believes.”

The Grim tilted its head like the animal it resembled. “Believes what?”

Chains, one red and one blue, shot up and around the spirit. They twisted like snakes, spikes and blades angling for the mouse’s mortal flesh, but the Grim knocked them both askew with only a single kick of its long feet. He hopped back, skidding across the sky as if it were solid ground, and stared at Evie as she shot up into the space he’d just left.

"Remember me?"

The Grim hissed at her. "Begone, this is beyond you."

"You don’t know shit about me. Bonds of Dominion!"

Purple chains ripped from nothing to seize the Grim, holding it in place with a force that Vess was surprised to witness. She’d seen this aspect of Evie’s chain Skill before, but not often. The spirit flexed its powers, elemental magic spinning around its fur like a cyclone—but the bonds held.

"Very interesting,” it said.

A piece of Vess woke up, kicking back the exhaustion as adrenaline poured through her Body, and excitement through her Spirit. She held on to her partisan. They could do this.

The Grim shifted the spin of its power and after several long heartbeats the bonds stretched thin and snapped apart.

Evie landed atop one of Vess’ Spears and frowned. “Cheater.”

"A new hand tests their might." A smirk played across the mouse's face. "Bare your fangs, Human, and do not stop until one of us is dead!"

“Gladly, rat!”

A mess of roots and stone rose up from the swamp, but Felix grabbed it around its thickening neck.

Chthonic Tribute!

His grip was still recovering and his repaired elbows ached, but nothing was wrong with his Willpower: the Rootclone was torn asunder by the force of it. Each piece they had torn off the Hydra had attempted to rush back to Fenwald once it had formed, and Felix wasn’t allowing that anymore. He funneled its dark, liquid smoke into his core space, where its Essence and Mana fed the Skills he was using to keep himself alive.

The Janus Hydra itself, however, was not so easily disposed of—it didn’t tire, and it didn’t stop its relentless assault. Felix was faster now, his Dodge Skill having gained a significant boost by reaching Master Tier, but it still wasn’t enough to avoid it all. Neither Felix nor Pit were lightweights, but no matter how they cut the thing, it kept regenerating. Even now there was a steady stream of masonry splashing across the swamp, a constant barrage of projectiles that they were forced to avoid as they joined with the Hydra. The distance simply slowed the process.

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Felix leaned back, evading a scythe only to catch a second across the top of his back. The bone blade cut through his clothes and scales cleanly and into the flesh beneath, leaving a gushing wound that Sovereign of Flesh burned Essence to patch up. Already, the potency stolen from the Rootclone was diminishing. Both he and Pit were bloody and only getting worse. His Companion couldn't even damage it with his Skills, just annoy it.

As he did now, batting the back of the Hydra's head with repeated arcs of golden light, it spun and lunged to attack the Chimera, and Felix changed tactics.

Astrum Ascendance!

Storm Shaping!

A shield of water and wind formed. Not around Pit, but around the Hydra. Its claws based into it, rebounding off the swirling, near-solid sides. Quick as a flash, its folded length recovered and began battering at the shield from the inside, seeking escape with all of the urgency of a mad dog. Felix grunted with every blow, burning Essence and Mana to fuel it.

The creature bashed its club into the shield, making it ripple and bulge. Pit stepped several feet back.

"Now what?" he asked, shrinking the Riposte to a normal-sized longsword. It looked like a toothpick in his beak. “We can’t do this forever.”

"I'm thinking!" Felix strained himself, flipping through ideas and tactics for something, anything he could do—when the flash of sigaldry caught his eye. “Wait…”

The Hydra had torn its arm in its frantic assault on the shield, revealing dark stone and slowly crawling vines. There, a glyph flared against the dark.

Magus of the Grand Design is level 102!

Felix's new Skill caught on the shape. It was unfamiliar, a script that he had never seen, but his Skill still flagged his attention. "Pit, can you hold this for me?"

"The shield? I’ve never used two of your Skills at once."

"Sense my Skills through our bond. See how I'm using them."

Pit closed his huge, golden eyes. "Oh, I see it. I can take them over. Can you maintain it?"

"I..." The weight of Astrum Ascendance and Storm Shaping clearly dragged at Pit, as if he were lifting a heavy weight. He grunted, his deep voice edged with birdsong. "Yeah, but not for long. I don't have the Essence you have."

"I just need a minute," Felix said. Free of the Skills and their distraction, he turned back to the Hydra and flared his Magus of the Grand Design and Manasight to trace the bare bits of sigildry he could see flashing beneath the breaks in root and rock. They were everywhere, tracking across its entire body, but were inconsistent. They shifted form and layout repeatedly and without pattern, but the longer he looked the more he saw odd connections and strange additions to what he knew as conventional sigaldry.

Manasight is level 93!

Felix traced them, finding that the vast majority of the glyphs and sigils that he saw followed a pattern toward a swirling mass in the monster's chest. There, his Manasight caught a twisting oddity that he couldn't quite place. It smelled of the color green and sounded like the taste of a freshly grown strawberry. It was maddening and confusing. He backed off.

Something was there, but Felix couldn't see it clearly through the shifting patterns and its strong hide. As he pulled away though, he noticed a shimmering, half-real trail of sigils extending from the Hydra across the ground…and to the fortress.

Manasight is level 94!

It flowed through water, vanishing into mud and roots before resurfacing dozens of yards away. Power pulsed across it as it repaired its own wounds, flowing from the fortress to the construct’s core.

Magus of the Grand Design is level 103!

…Magus of the Grand Design is level 106!

Manasight is level 95!

…

Manasight is level 97!

The script was easily beyond his current understanding, but Felix didn't have to understand something to break it.

Felix poured Mana through his hands as his sigaldry Skill flared, and he struck through a piece of it, sounding his Chthonic Tribute at the same time. The link tore, parts of it fading up into liquid smoke that poured down his throat…but it wasn’t enough to disrupt the connection. Felix cursed, reaching down again—

Connection.

The word reverberated through his Mind, bouncing off ideas he’d discarded and congealing into something new.

Adamant Discord!

Felix flared the Skill, pushing it until a million pale lines appeared all around him. Between the Hydra and the fortress, running parallel to its leash of sigaldry, a line ten times as thick hung in the air. It rumbled with a deep, complicated rhythm and he reached out and—

"That's it," he said—just as the Hydra burst free of the shield.

"Felix!"

The Hydra lunged for Pit, yet before it could reach him, bands of lightning seized its limbs, binding them to the swamp it came from. It fell forward, smashing its torso into the muck.

"We aren’t connected,” he said, lifting himself up to hover above the twitching construct. "But you and this place are.”

Adamant Discord is level 100!

Master Tier!

Lines of blue bursted in all directions, overwhelming Felix’s vision until all he could see was a rich tapestry of trembling azure.

You Gain:

+200 AFI

"Tempering?" Pit asked, exasperated. "Now?"

+200 INE

“Can’t break tradition.” Felix bared his teeth and electricity played around his shoulders. It hurt already. “And Master Tier doesn’t wait.”

He slugged back an Essence Draught and rode the lightning.

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