Unbound

Archie leaned against the wall, utterly spent.

The fortress shook around him as roars echoed from the field—or was it the sky? He couldn’t tell. The world had gone insane. And yet…he looked up. He stood inside the keep, among a crowd of trembling refugees protected by ranks of armored soldiers. He was safe, and so was every last villager.

I…I did that. They were safe because of him. Even now, grandmas and mothers were grasping his hands in thanks before running off to their loved ones. They cried and shouted, but not in pain. He could feel their relief—their joy. The keep shook, but Archie only stared at his own hands as dust rained down from above. I did it. I dragged other people through.

He hadn't believed Felix when the man had said Stoneswim could improve, and for once he wasn’t sour about being wrong. Not only had the Skill gained steady levels as he pushed it further, but he’d expanded what he could pass through by leaps and bounds. The muck skimming in the swamp was one thing, but full stone with others? That was a whole new facet for him to explore.

Someone screamed.

Archie jolted from his thoughts as joy collapsed into terror. Something hit the keep from outside, and a deep resounding crack cut through the ceiling. Sections collapsed, tumbling free and clipping people with stone, but it was minor. Further down the hall, however, a slab collapsed, exposing sudden, sparking sigaldry and a curling mist of orange Mana. People ran in a panic, but not everyone was so quick to act.

Stoneswim!

Flames gathered, the orange Mana igniting into the real world as something inside the wall failed. An old man tripped on a soldier and they both went down in a tangle of limbs. Archie ran, phasing through the ground faster than he’d ever moved before, dodging through the press of people as the spark ignited.

A fireball ripped across the corridor, flame and pressure expanding in a mighty wave. Archie screamed as he dove through it, grabbing the arms of the old man and Dragoon as he did so.

Someone hurled water Mana at the conflagration and the curtain of intense flame faded. Archie fell, the three of them hitting the ground hard and rolling, but they were alive. As the others groaned, Archie inspected himself in alarm and then quiet astonishment. He looked at the old man and the soldier, and they weren't even burned. None of them were.

"I did it. Not just rocks and dirt. I did fire,” he said. “I walked through fire."

Archie could still hear the sound of it; the humble vibration that swept through him as he’d passed unharmed through flames. It had been unlike anything he’d ever experienced before. Whereas pushing through stone and metal was pressure and breathless, this had felt like being filled with heat and light—as if he’d become little more than flame itself.

“Young man, thank you,” the elderly Human said as he crawled to his feet. He was a bit bruised but the guy was a tough-looking farmer. “I don’t know what you did, but you saved us.”

“Aye,” said the Dragoon, who reached down to help Archie up. “I might’ve survived that, but—” he shuddered. “I wouldn’t wanna bet on that.”

The Dragoon saluted Archie. “Name’s Lem. Third Spear, Selin’s Company.”

The Delven gave a lazy half salute back. “Archie. I dont’ see the rest of your company down here, Lem. Why’s that?”

“We’re here,” he gestured across the chamber toward the front gates, where a few dozen Dragoons had joined the conscripted soldiers. “My company and one other have been…punished with cleaning duties in the keep. Luckily that means we’re here to help, such as it is.”

“Don’t go outside,” Archie advised. “You can’t handle that thing.”

Lem frowned. “I will keep that in mind.”

“Sure. Whatever.” Archie didn’t want to waste time telling a cop how to cop. “Just don’t die—ugh!”

Pain tore at him. A deep, excruciating agony sliced through his center, where his core space waited. It twisted and rumbled as if it were breaking apart.

Stoneswim is level 75!

…

Stoneswim is level 79!

Adept Tier!

You—$^$#

Congratulations!

Stoneswim Undergone A Trial By Flame!

An Evolution Is Available!

WARNING!

Evolution Requires Great Stores Of Energy!If Chosen, The Process Will Continue Until It Is Complete Or You Die.

Proceed?

Y/N

Archie gasped, the pain lancing up his spine now. What’s—Tempering and evolving at the same time?

—Gain:

One thing at a time! Temper and then evolve!

+100 AFI

Archie gasped as pressure built up inside of him, like the mother of all heart attacks. He couldn’t breathe, he could barely think, and his hands grabbed blindly at his waist. All of his pouches, however, were gone. I set them down in the camp—!

“Er, are you alright?” Lem asked.

The Elven Chanter ran up, a big smile on his face. "Goodness Archie! You’ve done a wonderful thing! Are you okay? What is—"

+120 PER

Archie spied the potions case on Laur’s belt and fumbled at the Elf, grabbing his collar and pulling him close. "Give me one of those stone jars, now!"

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Laur pulled out one. "All I have is one of Felix's, in case he Tempered away from his own. But—"

Archie didn't care. He grabbed it and ripped the seal off the top of the jar before chugging the entire bottle. It burned like fire in his throat before settling like an explosion in his belly, and Archie immediately dropped to his knees.

“—they’re made for Felix to use!”

Fireworks went off inside Archie’s skull, and the world turned into shapes of light and formless shadow. He heard nothing else.

Light and sound merged into one as Felix bent his Will against his Skills. The planets blurred, their atmospheres swirling as they came near enough to collide. Here a blue-green gas giant was pulled into the sway of a green-gold moon, their skies mingling as the song of it all came achingly close. The patterns trembled, their waveforms a hairsbreadth from harmonizing.

That was as close as he ever got.

Dissonance ripped through the burgeoning connections, sundering all of Felix’s efforts in a single, blaring note.

God damn it! Felix clamped his Willpower upon all of his Skills, preventing them from scattering across his core space. He secured them, but he’d lost so much ground. He calmed his emotions, soothing his frustration inch by patient inch, and tried once again to recall the sound he’d heard so recently. There is a way around this. Harmony and Dissonance can combine. I know it. I’ve heard it!

Yet the memory of its melody was gone, evading his Born Trait like nothing else ever had, save perhaps—

Felix’s Will faltered and his Intent unraveled as the thought struck him. His Born Trait gave him perfect recall for up to thirty days, beyond which he could only rely on his Intelligence-boosted memory. He could recreate entire days of his past, recollect the tiniest of details from his midday meal two weeks prior. Few things evaded its grasp.

Only this, he thought again. His heart was a rumbling timpani in his ears and his mouth had gone dry. And Ruin.

Beware!

Just as those words registered with Felix, he was ripped from his core space. His Will and Intent were shredded and Essence scattered into formless smoke as his Body lurched. Felix came to awareness mid-air, the combination array he’d painstakingly perfected breaking apart beneath him—and the entire wall itself.

“Oh whoa!” He grabbed frantically onto a massive, car-sized block of stone as it dropped away from the wall, just as all the others were. “What the hell—?”

Adamant Discord!

Felix kicked off the falling rubble and grasped onto a connection with the sky, lightning blazing around him as he was drawn up and away from the collapsing wall. He flared his Perception and Intelligence, pushing his Fiendforged Mind into overdrive so that he could figure out what was going on. The falling blocks slowed to a near stop, and the screams of so many turned into a long, basso note that rumbled across his senses.

He saw.

Laur and Tzfell stood at the keep, casting spells of warding that blasted falling rubble away from huddling villagers. A company of rank-and-file Dragoons were among them, as were the conscripted soldiers and the Daynes themselves, all frozen as they pulled the refugees out of harm’s way.

Above, Evie was frozen mid-leap across the sky above him, wielding two chains as she hurled herself after Vess and Yintarion, both of whom were in the midst of aerial combat with…something. He couldn’t see what, only sense a shimmer of green radiance.

The monster Pit had mentioned earlier was down below, striding out of a pool of swamp water within the now-ruined inner bailey. It was shaped like a nightmare, a hulking centipede centaur thing, covered in bulging roots that were actively absorbing more stone—stone stolen from the fortress. The wall, he realized. It tore apart the wall for itself. To…build itself up?

It was easily already bigger than a jumbo jet without the wingspan, and filled up a generous portion of the field. Hundreds of thick legs filled out its undulating form, along with way too many arms that ended in scythes and clubs.

The rocks below Felix were angling toward the monster, but they weren’t defying gravity. They dropped in achingly slow motion toward the ground, where a thick wall of chitin protected at least fifty people. It wouldn't be enough.

Adamant Discord!

Still holding onto his connection to the sky, Felix grasped the pale blue lines linking him to the wall he’d sat on for hours, the same wall onto which he’d inscribed a life-altering combination array. Lightning flared in his grip, bolts that extended into twenty, thirty, no fifty blocks the size of a mid-sized sedan. Felix screamed, seizing them all as his shoulders stretched between sky and stone, and he pulled.

Adamant Discord is level 98!

The collection of broken battlements halted mid-air. The sheer weight of it all was incredible, threatening to tear his arms from their sockets and blind him with the discharge of incandescent electricity.

The monster below reared up from the chasm in which it was growing, and lifted its deadly limbs at an incredible speed even in Felix’s slowed-down sense of time. Pit stood before it, defiant and crackling with his own storm. Scythes descended, aiming for the Chimera’s throat.

“RAAGH!” With a wordless snarl, Felix swung the massive stones away from the huddling villagers. “Do! Not! Touch him!”

He released his grip.

Time sped back into true motion as his Mind overheated, and the falling wall became a meteor of lightning and cataclysmic rock. It smashed into the monster just before it sliced into Pit, shattering its long body with the colossal force of an impromptu thunderstorm mace. The creature was ripped apart and thrown away from the fortress, rolling with catastrophic force into the swamp outside. A thousand feet away, it impacted the trees and water in a huge explosion of vile muck.

Adamant Discord is level 99!

Felix dropped to the ground, landing hard next to Pit.

"I had him on the ropes," Pit panted, and his left eye was swollen shut.

"I know you did.” Felix watched the creature writhing in the swamp. Its long body had been broken, but already pieces of it were crawling back together as sigaldry formed on its torso. Its many limbs thrashed the ground in its attempts to stand again. “What the hell is this thing?”

Voracious Eye!

Name: Janus Hydra

Type: Construct

Level: 863 (1683)

Lore: A guardian of the Fortress Fenwald, designed to keep its innermost secrets inviolate. This guardian is designed to activate when Fortress Fenwald is invaded by those without the requisite Authority.

“It's a Tier X construct, Paragon level," Felix said, reviewing the information his Skill fed to his Mind. "And nowhere near close to death. It still has over ninety percent of its health. Something’s boosting its level."

The Janus Hydra got back to its feet, dripping with swamp water and new, filthy roots that stretched out into fresh, uninjured limbs. In seconds, it stood as if Felix had never attacked it. The Hydra lifted its dual faces and roared at them like a goddamn dinosaur.

"That's bad, right?" Beef asked, coming up behind them. He was injured too. “It’s grown too. It’s at least twice the size it used to be.”

Hallow was next to him, but Felix blinked as he took in her new size. "It said we didn't have Authority. Called us intruders. It is the guardian of this place?”

“It's part of the Fortress, yeah. Vess might be able to calm it down, but..." Felix looked up where he knew Vess and Yintarion were. "They look busy."

“Hey! Janus Hydra!” Felix’s voice boomed across the fortress, impossible to miss. “As Autarch of Nagast, Inheritor of the Nym, and uh, King of Ahkestria, I command you to stand down!”

The thing tilted its head as if thinking, then more liquid Mana swirled around its sculpted skulls like a halo.

AUTHORITY REJECTED.

INTRUDERS NOT AUTHORIZED.

“Well, there goes that idea,” Felix muttered. The Hydra gathered itself up and began to charge back at them.

Pit trilled nervously. "Then what's the plan?"

Felix cracked his neck as scales sheathed his entire body in midnight. "Kick its ass."

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