Unbound

Felix sat within his core space, holding tight to the reins of chaos.

His shaping Skills sang, a caterwauling that filled the dark space between his little planets, until even the opalescent roots around his core space quivered with it. Astrum Ascendence burned, eating through his Essence almost as fast as his other Skills, but it was the cosmic flame that pushed all the rest to such intense heights.

Almost have it...!

The patterns were there, he could hear them all, but his Skills fought him. Tooth and nail, they pulled in every direction except where he Willed.

Whenever he made any progress toward unifying his shaping Skills, Dissonance interfered. Over and over it drove a wedge between his Will and the Grand Harmony, and no matter how he formed the image of what he wanted, his Intent, it would not manifest.

Dammit. He tried to remember how it felt to combine Invocation and his evolved sigaldry Skill together...but the memory was slippery. That wasn't normal for Felix, but things to do with Harmony and Dissonance routinely fell outside that particular category.

A deep concussive boom rippled across his core space, and Felix scrambled to maintain his grip on his Skills. Unlike the rest, that hadn't come from within. Pit! What was that?

Uh—! It's a monster...thing!

Felix grimaced. Can you handle it?

Felix distantly felt Pit run off and, for a moment, was tempted to follow.

Do Not Release Your Skills, Hunger urged. We Are Close.

Right. Felix firmed his Will and refreshed his Intent. Pit can handle it.

"Calm down, everyone!" Archie shouted, trying to be heard over the grinding of stone and screams of the villagers. "Get away from the walls! Don't---stay here!"

They're going crazy! Archie could barely stand thanks to the trembling ground, but he'd seen enough earthquakes to know what to do. Running around like an idiot wasn't it. Screw the earthquake killing them. They're gonna trample each other to death!

A sharp sound cut the air, like a sheet of paper the size of a mountain being ripped in half. Archie winced and several villagers were laid out, ears bleeding and unconscious on the grass. Beyond them, in the flat, empty area where he and Beef had sparred, the ground split open. Light poured from the sudden chasm, followed by a slithering appendage that appeared to be chunks of masonry wrapped in vines. Then another, and another.

Oh what the fuck.

A centipede as big as a passenger jet made entirely of tangled roots, moss, and broken blocks of stone emerged backward from the chasm, glowing with a multicolored light that oozed around it like flowing water. It lifted its head from the crevice last, but it kept rising higher and higher, resolving into a humanoid torso, complete with arms and a messed up head.

Two heads, Archie amended rationally, while a larger part of him was frozen in fear. It's like it took two giant statue heads and lashed them onto its neck.

The monster screamed, and light poured from its empty eyes and open mouths. Its voice was a roar that was neither Human or any beast Archie had ever heard.

"Twin's Mercy!"

"Run! Get away!"

Something dropped from the sky, wreathed in crackling lightning, and the monster stumbled back. It didn't fall though, as its many legs and long length stabilized itself near instantly. The monster oriented itself on the fallen object, and Archie's breath caught as he saw that it was a red-furred Hound.

"What are you?" Pit asked, standing between the beast and the refugees.

That light returned to the monster's empty, stolen faces, and was accompanied by words but no voice.

INTRUDERS NOT AUTHORIZED

UNDERCROFT VIOLATED.

AUTHORITY REJECTED.

Stone from the broken wall hurtled from across the inner bailey before slamming into the monster, joining with magic, moss, and roots to form two massive arms. One ended in a brutal club, and the other shaped itself into a wicked-looking scythe blade.

INTRUDERS REJECTED.

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The horror swung at Pit, but the little guy burst into a storm of light himself, forcing Archie to cover his eyes. A shockwave nearly tore him from his feet and sent many of the villagers flying. When Archie opened his eyes, the root centipede had both of its weapons tangled in the beak of a now-luminous Primordial Storm Tyrant.

"Run! Get inside the fortress!" Pit commanded, his voice booming as the monster pulled itself free. "I got this!"

The fire of panic burst into an inferno around Archie as the villagers scrambled for the keep. He couldn't blame them.

Archie, sweating and cursing, followed close behind.

The Grim blurred forward, vanishing from Beef's perception, only to reappear before him in an instant. It whipped around, and Beef barely blocked its long, tufted tail with the haft of his hammer. Still, the impact threw him into the wall, forty feet away. Beef gasped, and blood poured from between his teeth. His health was in freefall, settling only somewhere around fifty percent.

The thing can kill me in two hits!

Hallow shouted something in the distance before releasing a wave of crystalline daggers. They struck nothing, however, and she was struck with a bloom of intense flame. Hallow stumbled back, half of her left arm melted to slag.

"Hallow!" Beef struggled to stand, his hooves finding poor purchase on the weather-worn floor. "Screw this! Entropic Paradigm!"

A flow of chitin pressed Beef up from the ground, lifting him right back onto his feet, before he controlled a second flow that hurled his fallen hammer back toward his hands. He caught it with a grunt.

"Hell yeah. Go time, mouse! Relentless charge!"

Beef shot back into the middle of the fight. Evie was already there, whipping her two chains around. They blurred in a crazy net that Beef couldn't even get close to—and yet he couldn't even see the Grim. Evie spun, slicing and flipping with such intense grace that it left Beef awestruck.

Yet she missed the pillar of ice that smashed up into her back, freezing her feet just as a hardened burst of air had laid her flat out on the ground. She did not get up.

"Circle of Smash!"

Beef slammed his hammer into the Grim, releasing an area-of-effect attack that rocked the stone floor. But the Grim was too fast, even for his Skills. Bedlam was a blur in Beef’s fists, his limbs falling into the motions Harn had drilled into him—but the thing was never where he aimed.

It's like it's freaking teleporting!

Chitin spikes, cages, and blades condensed from his Mana and the Grim broke them all with a swing of its whip-like tail. It spun, all two ounces of it, and lunged for Beef's throat when a silver Spear cut it off.

“Dragoon,” the thing whispered, and it rumbled across the room like a promise of death.

Vess didn’t speak. Six more silver Spears followed the first, tracking the Grim as it bounced about the turret chamber like a ball, always just ahead.

“Draconic Stormfall!”

The woman landed hard, partisan stabbing into the stone floor just as the Grim pulsed with a collection of incandescent Skills. Lightning swept outward in a ring, met and easily matched by the Grim’s own workings, but the creature was held in place as he defended.

“Circle of Smash!”

Beef brough Bedlam down, quaking the floor—and discharging the warhammer’s disruption enchantment. A wave of power shot from the icy hammerhead, cutting through both the lightning of Vess' Stormfall and whatever collection of powers the Grim nearly unleashed. The creature tottered back, its tiny frame seemingly dizzy, and the tip of Vess' partisan speared at it, drawing a line of blood from its furry flesh.

The Grim hissed and struck back with its whipping tail.

"Go, Beef!" Vess shouted, meeting the Grim's attack with her partisan as well as those floating around her in a complex dance.

"No," he said, "I promised to help!”

“Go help them," she insisted, jerking her head toward the open windows. The rumbling had ceased, but now screams were echoing from beyond. "You've done enough here!"

A blast of golden light hit the Grim, sending it spinning backwards, giving both of them time to breathe as Yin chased after the strange mouse spirit. Vess glanced at Evie, and her stern expression broke. “Take this, give it to Evie. Quickly!"

Beef nodded, taking the potion and running immediately to the downed woman's side. Evie was bloody and unconscious, with a nasty bruise forming across her cheek and temple. Beef tipped her head up and, as carefully as he could with his giant hands, poured the potion down her throat. Evie seized, hands punching out at Beef, but her fist met rock.

Hallow intercepted the hit with an echoing grunt.

"Hallow, you're alive!"

"Of course I am, Beef. You would feel it if I died." She grunted again as she forced Evie's arm back down. The girl was still out cold. “And it wouldn't be pleasant.”

Evie snorted, and was suddenly and violently awake. "Where’s that burnin’ bastard?"

Beef could do nothing but point. Vess, Yin, and the Grim were fighting across the room, three blurs surrounded by coiling serpents of water and silver spears. Evie made to get up, but Beef put a hand on her shoulder. It was so big it covered her entire shiny pauldron.

"We gotta go, Evie. People are hurting outside.” Beef stood up, and Hallow flowed across his chest, forming into a breastplate with several glowing crystal eyes. "Come on."

A blast rocked the air and pressure slapped at Beef’s face and chest like a pillow the size of a mattress. He grunted, just as the walls of the turret shivered and cracked. At the same time, the Grim zipped out through the window. Yin was hot on its heels, with Vess chasing immediately after.

"No," Evie hissed as she stood up. "She's not fighting that thing without me."

“Vess said—”

Evie uncoiled both her chains, one a blue-silver and the other red. "Go be a hero, kid. I got a rat to kill."

"Don't kill the—" Beef tried shouting, but Evie had already whipped her chains forward, launching herself out the window toward the Grim.

"Ugh." Beef leaned atop the wide sill at the opposite end of the turret. He considered the inner bailey, far below as he drank a Health Potion. "Just you and me, Hallow."

"And them.”

Beef saw it. The ground was torn up, a deep chasm in the center of the field, while the edges were filled with upthrust stones, as if the earth was revolting against them. Pit was there, surprisingly small against the monster's bulk, and protecting the fleeing shapes of hundreds of ant-sized villagers.

"Let's even the odds," Beef said.

He jumped.

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