Unbound

Felix leaned down, running his hand over a stretch of stone he’d just shaped. It was smooth and slightly peaked so that water could run off its sides, and it extended for perhaps two hundred feet in an unerringly straight line.

“Looks good,” Harn said. He wasn’t wearing his armor and his scarred face was pulled tight in an expression Felix had long learned meant approval. He hobbled forward on two high steel crutches Felix had made for him. “Though not as good as I expected. No Fiendstone?”

“It’s good enough.” Felix stood up, dusting off his hands. “I could make it sturdier, but that’d be pointless. Same reason I’m not cutting the path all the way through the swamp.”

Harn nodded, tracking his reasoning. “Teachin’s hard.”

“I don’t know how you did it.”

“Wasn’t easy. You were too stubborn and too strong for your own good, back then.”

“Back then?” Felix gave an exaggerated gasp. “I like to think I’m twice as stubborn now.”

Harn grunted. “Stubborn enough to want to kill a god.”

Felix’s good humor cracked and fell away. He gave Harn a long look. “Who told you?”

“No one. I don’t need someone to tell me what I can spot with my own two eyes. You’re on a mission, kid.”

“I am.” Felix clenched and unclenched his jaw. “Say what you’re gonna say.”

“Vengeance ain’t worth the blood it spills. That path leads to the gutter nine times outta ten.”

“He has my sister, Harn.”

“I know, kid. I know.” Harn shifted on his crutches, until he could put a hand on Felix’s shoulder. “And I’m here to help with that, in any way I can. Most of me, anyway.”

A huff of laughter escaped Felix’s throat. He couldn’t stay mad at the guy that sacrificed so much for him. “You’re a good man, Harn.”

“No I ain’t.” He shuffled back, crutches scraping against the stone. “I’m mean and stone stupid most days. If I was smarter, then I wouldn’t’ve tried to scrap with an Unbound. It don’t take smarts to do what’s right, kid. Stupid even makes it easier, sometimes.”

Felix shifted his attention north and felt like he was peering past the snow-capped mountains. Gabby was out there. He knew if he opened himself up to them, he could grasp the connections between the other Unbound again. Even without doing so, he could almost point in her direction.

“Yeah, maybe,” was all he said.

From behind them came a startled grunt. Felix glanced over his shoulder at the furry bulk that two Eidolons carried on a shaped stretcher between them. “Oh! Good morning, sunshine.”

Beef groaned. “What—what happened?”

“You passed out,” Hallow said, crawling down from Eagin’s shoulder.

“Hallow.” Beef gave his Companion a tired smile.

“That was quite the fight,” Felix said.

“It–yeah. Is Archie okay?”

“He is. Woke up well before you did.” Felix gestured back toward the others who were resting a few hundred feet back on a wide, natural island. “He’s busy practicing his Skills.”

“Oh good.” A lot of the tenseness evaporated from the Minotaur at that news. Hallow crawled atop his shoulders as he sat up and swung his legs off the stretcher. “Where did this come from?”

“Felix made it,” Harn said.

Beef raised his eyebrows. “You can make cloth now?”

Felix wagged his hand. “Eh. More like leather. Some of those Crawlers were pretty messed up.”

“Unfit to be Raised,” Hallow agreed.

Beef grimaced and stood quickly, wiping his hands against his thighs. “Gross.”

“How’s your Skill?” Felix asked. “I heard it evolve all the way from the back of the battle.”

“You did?”

“Hard not to,” Harn added. “My Affinity ain’t much to write home about, but it was like you were screamin’ at the top of your lungs.”

Beef shuffled his hooves. “Huh. Did it—was it cool?”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“You tell me.”

Beef briefly outlined his evolved Skill and mentioned a Title that seemed to go along with it. Felix committed the details to memory. “So you can use entropy…I wonder if that has to do with Essence and Mana.”

“I think so. That’s the stuff you pull out of the things you eat, right? All that black smoke?”

“Right. Significance too, if they have any worth speaking of.” Felix rubbed his chin. “But entropy seems to be something that encompasses the entire process.”

“So it’s death?” Harn asked.

“The process of chaos applied to order, I think was the definition I read somewhere. It’s not death, not to my understanding, but it’s part of it. If life could be considered orderly and functional, entropy is the breaking down of it. Which makes sense that you feel so much of it here, in a swamp where rot and decay are all over the place.”

“Yeah it’s, like, a heavy blanket around us.” Beef fanned himself with his hand. “I swear, the heat is made up of it.”

Interesting. Is the heat Mana I’m seeing just released energy from the creatures that die here? Felix rubbed his scruffy chin. Dying releases heat and stuff, right? Swamps are full of rotting stuff. Makes sense to me.

“Oh hey, the bull’s awake.” Archie slid down the path, his feet buried up to the ankle in the low Tier stone of the path. He popped back out, barefeet slapping as he took several long steps to stop his momentum. “You good?”

Beef nodded. “Head hurts a bit, though.”

“Not your leg or ribs? Thought you busted those.”

Beef frowned, putting his hands to both parts of his body. “Hey wait, yeah. How am I standing up?”

“I have a Skill, called Sovereign of Flesh, that lets me mold exactly that,” Felix explained. “Mending some broken bones took some energy but it wasn’t too hard. Your Health regeneration did the rest.”

“Wow.” Beef continued to pat himself down, checking gingerly for wounds. “Wow!”

Felix tried to ignore the shame that rolled about his chest. He certainly avoided looking at Harn. He’d tried several times now that the Pathless’ light was removed from Harn’s wounds, but Sovereign of Flesh had failed to regrow the man’s legs. Or rather, he could, but ensuring they worked as proper legs and feet was beyond him; the best he’d managed were fleshy slabs filled with thick, unjointed bone.

They’d had to chop those back off when Harn started screaming.

I need to know more about anatomy, and I have no clue where I can find information like that. Not to mention he would have to reform the man’s pathways and Mana Gate in his feet. I can heal myself without issue though. This shouldn’t be a problem.

Tzfell claimed it was a subconscious difference; Felix could heal himself because his Aspects had a map of his Body and could follow it. Healing someone else was like wandering into a maze in the dark; add in their Mana system and that maze became four dimensional. It was, she said, why healing Skills were so rare and most had to rely on alchemy and herbalism to manage. Her own Skill was more of a battlefield mending than anything else, sufficing for simple wounds at best.

Harn cleared his throat. “The both of you…I’m impressed with your resolve. High Journeyman Tier or not, there ain’t a lotta fighters that could’ve faced those Crawlers and survived.”

Beef just about glowed from the praise, and even Archie’s skepticism wavered. The Delven unfolded his arms from across his chest and gave Harn a nod. “I—thanks.”

“Course, you coulda ended that fight in half the time had you trained properly.”

Both of them wilted slightly, and Archie’s arms folded right back up.

There’s the Harn I know. “And yet Beef Tiered up a Skill, evolved it, and fought his hardest. Archie wasn’t a slouch either. I saw you skim the top of the water when you jumped out after Beef.” Felix grinned. “You're improving Stoneswim fast.”

Archie raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t think you spotted that. I raised Stoneswim by four levels in that fight, but that wasn’t why I skimmed the water. That was just momentum and my movement Skill.”

“Movement Skill?” Harn asked, curiosity peaked.

Felix held up a hand, forestalling their conversation. “My point is, you saved each other in a desperate situation and pressed at your limits. That’s where we need to be, if we want to survive. And if you want to grow more, I’m gonna need to know all of your Skills.”

“What? Why?” If Archie could have folded his arms harder he would have. Beef opened his mouth, but the small Unbound waved his hands furiously. “Stop. I know. Training. Well, if you wanna know my Skills, then I wanna know yours.”

“Sure.”

“Felix and Harn already know mine,” Beef added. “Most of the team knows.”

Hallow bobbed her misshapen head. Harn just grunted.

Archie snapped his jaw shut. “Well…shit. I didn’t think you’d all agree that fast.”

“We’ve got nothing to hide, man. And knowing each other’s Skills will only let us operate more effectively. For instance, if you had known that Beef could Raise corpses through Hallow, then you could have killed off one or two of the Crawlers alone before going after him. Hallow could have backed you all up with much less fuss and certainly less injuries.”

“Huh. Damn. That’s a good point.”

“I know.” Felix grinned. “We’re Unbound. I’m positive I can get you and Beef to Adept Tier fast, and Master Tier after that. You’ve already had a taste of the improvements you can go through.

But I need you to be all in.”

“I’m in!” Beef said proudly.

“I know you are, buddy. What about you, Arch?”

A series of complicated emotions rippled through the Delven’s Spirit, audible to Felix but too complex and fleeting to be easily picked apart. After they left, what remained was a tired but steely resolve.

Archie said nothing, but Felix smiled wide. “Perfect. To start us off, here are my Skills.”

A blue window popped up before each of them, and Harn whistled appreciatively while Beef laughed.

Archie, however, flapped his jaw uselessly. “Wha—how?”

“How what?”

“The stats—your Mana–I don’t—” He urgently stabbed a finger at the Status Screen in front of him. “What the hell?”

Harn grunted. “They always say that.”

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