Unbound

"It's an outpost," Harn muttered under his breath. "Look, you can see the fortifications."

"Made with ice," Nevia said in wonder.

"No," Vess said and pointed. "Covered in it. This place was attacked."

They had descended the peak, making their way silently toward the smoking dwelling. From a distance, all Felix's Eye could identify were pieces of the whole: a wall, a roof. It wasn't until he got closer that they could see what its function might be, as well as the size of it. Up above, it looked like a simple dwelling, but it was clear now that within were several structures and built up with stone walls that rose half their height.

The ice was a new addition, as were the signs of combat. Splintered wood and gouged stone proliferated, speaking of an assault from the west. The ice had been grown up and over the walls that originally existed, and the smoke they had spotted was the black stink of rotting monsters.

"This was clearly designed to defend against something from the west," Vyne pointed out. "If something came from Haarwatch they could descend as we did, bypassing the walls entirely with a few Skills."

"Most Tempered aren't stopped by walls alone," Harn grunted. "I'd expect any fortification worth its weight to have a few wards. And this one seems full of em."

"Why? It looks like whatever did this didn't leave anyone alive," Atar said. His eyes flickered between the ice and columns of black smoke that dissipated only thirty feet above the walls. "Why defend a place you've abandoned?"

"No clue. I suggest we find out. I ain't leavin' an unknown at my back." Harn pulled his axes from his belt.

"Harn's right. We need to find out who did this and who exactly even had an outpost in the Foglands," Felix said and saw a few nods of agreement.

"No one should be out here," Alister agreed. "Haarwatch is the only way into the Foglands, and it's been closed off for months."

"Not the only way," Vess pointed out. "The Risi made their way from the Hoarfrost. There are likely many ways into the Foglands for the determined."

"We'll find out," Felix said. "Keep close together, standard formation. We're moving."

Abyssal Skein!

Voidstuff boiled from his veins, spreading out of his channels and into the air. Felix gripped it with his Will and Intent and sent it coursing around the connections he'd formed with all those present. His friends, and even the guards soon vanished under it's influence.

"This feels...unpleasant," Davum said.

Kikri rubbed her hands together. "Like bathing in thick, cold oil."

Abyssal Skein is level 44!

The pattern of the Skill pulsed in Felix's core. Ripples undulated across the entirety of the Skill, but luckily only he could feel them. It was true, the Skill was unpleasant. It reminded him viscerally of traversing the Void. Still, it was useful considering most of their company had no Stealth Skill.

They moved ahead, approaching the outpost from an angle. They were still slightly above the structure and had he been alone and uncaring about stealth, Felix might have dropped into it from above. As it was, the sparse slope was drenched in the mountain's morning shadow and provided at least a little coverage. Abyssal Skein did the rest.

The gates of the outpost were open, but not broken, as if whoever had been within had just left them open. Evie and Harn took the lead, creeping low and faintly humming of power held in abeyance. Felix followed right after, less cautiously as his Perception swept the area. A slight fissure passed through him as they passed the gate, and Felix clenched his fists, but nothing followed. It was there and gone in an instant, and his Manasight spotted no other wards in the walls. Neither his Primary or Harmonic senses could pick out anything other than ice and death.

He was proven right as they entered a courtyard of packed earth, around which were three large buildings. Laying at the center of the courtyard was an enormous body, easily twelve feet tall, blue, and covered in jagged armor made of ice.

"Reforged," Felix said.

The former Frost Giant was clearly part of an assault. It's body was riddled with gashes and arrows, shafts that had broken even it's powerful ice armor. It's head was half severed, and the wounds were all pouring black smoke up into the air. They had found the source, at least.

Harn sucked in a breath, but waved off Felix's concerned look. "Spread out. See if there are any survivors, Reforged or otherwise," Harn ordered. "Take care. The wards were dispelled on the walls, but there's no saying they'll be dispelled elsewhere."

There was little else to the outpost, which didn't surprise him. The entire place felt...temporary, despite the clear skill required to make the buildings. Felix had expected log cabins or something like them, but all three of the structures were built with an eye to detail and ornamentation. Delicate designs surrounded doors and windows, organic shapes that wove into complex patterns across the lintels. The roofs were steeped and formed with tile, and glass was set into the windows.

The Construction Skill existed, but what combination of Skills would be required to fashion an entire house in the wilderness? Or had they carried all the materials with them? Both options seemed far-fetched, yet here it was.

Pit, go around and check the back. See if there is another entrance.

His Companion chirruped in agreement and trotted off while Felix slowly walked toward the central structure. He climbed the steps and swept his senses through it all the while. There was nothing but stone and glass and wood, nothing except—

What is that? To Pit he sent: I'm going in.

Pit warbled back at him. I wait.

Felix opened the front door, one built for people a good deal taller than him, and saw a wide, empty area. Polished floorboards, simple plank walls, and thick joists, all surrounding what Felix could only describe as an altar.

Is this a Shrine? Felix stepped forward carefully, watching for the moment when he'd be stopped. The altar was filled with circular shapes, elaborate interconnecting round lines that all converged at the top of a carved and stylized plinth. A series of pebbles, shiny and dull, were arranged atop the plinth and at the feet of a statue of a bird carved of a dark wood. It's wings were outstretched, as if it were expanding, and its eyes gleamed. A trick of the light, clearly, as it was definitely an inanimate statue.

Probably.

Felix kept walking though, until he came right atop the altar itself. The System didn't deny him access or call him names at all.

"What does that mean, though?" he asked himself.

Voracious Eye!

Name: Shrine of the Endless Raven

Type: Shrine (Urge)

Lore: Built to venerate the Endless Raven, it was designed with the Urge's favorites items and shapes. Offerings of items discovered in exploration are placed upon the altar, in hopes of gathering the favor of its dark munificence.

An Urge? Not Divine? Felix scratched his jaw. What's the difference?

Felix walked around the altar, looking for something, anything to answer his questions. More feathers and beads and shiny stones, things Felix would imagine would please a raven, but precious little else. Until his hands found a slight depression at the rear of the plinth.

"Ooh, what's this?" Felix ran his fingers over the depression and found a faint ledge. He pulled, and a small draw popped out. Felix was delighted, feeling a rush of discovery.

Exploration is level 45!

Huh. Felix tilted his head at the notification. He didn't normally gain levels from opening something. He turned to the draw again, and found within it a single, palm-sized book. Manasight revealed nothing more than the staid flow of harvested wood Mana and the clinging tendrils of shadow. No traps or wards, at least not of the magical variety. He lifted out the book and immediately recognized the script.

"Henaari," he whispered. The foreign script was mostly illegible, but he immediately fished his own battered notebook out of his satchel. The latter half was filled with his own messy scrawl, but the first part was chock full of notes in the hand of the Henaari he had found dead just outside the Waterfall Temple.

"This was a Henaari encampment," Felix said.

"Aye, so I feared," Harn stated. He walked into the shrine, followed by Atar and Vess. "The architecture said as much, but I had hoped to be wrong."

"Why?" Felix asked. "Aren't they just explorers or something?"

"Because the Henaari follow the guidance of their godling," Vess said with a grimace of distaste.

"Godling? You mean Urge?" Felix asked. He pointed to the altar. "When I analyzed the shrine I got info on the Urge called the Endless Raven, but I've seen mention of it before."

"Your luck is its own kind of endless, Felix," Vess stated. "The Henaari follow the guidance of their dark godling and it always, always leads them into trouble."

"Of one sort or another," Harn agreed. "Doesn't surprise me to find them in the Foglands, but it likely means things are worse than we hoped."

"We already knew that, though," Atar said. He had walked further in and was running his hands over the halo of circular carvings behind the shrine. "We're following Felix, and worst-case scenarios follow him like they're tied to his waist." He gasped as he came to the bird carving. "This is beautiful."

"Profane," Vess said with a grimace. Felix sometimes forgot she was fairly religious herself, her family had a long history of devotion to the old gods.

"What's the difference between an Urge and a god, then?" Felix asked.

"Passingly little," Atar said offhandedly, but Vess' huffed a breath.

"A great deal, in fact," Vess said. She also walked closer to the altar, though her hand was firmly around her partisan. "The gods live within the Ethereal, where all souls go when we depart the mortal world. The...Urges live among us, defined by the facet of belief that forged them, fueled by the blood and sweat of their slaves."

"Slaves?" Felix asked, alarmed.

"Slaves is a bit much, Vess," Atar said. "It is merely a mutually beneficial contract of power. The Urges an embodiment of an...archetype, and there are those that bind themselves to them for access to that potency. The Henaari are among them, a nomadic Race dedicated to the tenets of the Endless Raven: exploration and bringing light into the dark places."

"Slaves in all but name, tied to the Will of a being none can fully trust." There was a real heat to Vess' words, something Felix had only heard rarely from the heiress. She typically got along so well with everyone that it was kind of jarring.

"Either way, Henaari on our same path is a bad sign," Harn interrupted. "We need to move. I feel like your Quest ain't gonna go as good as we hoped."

Felix sighed.

Just his luck.

Felix could tell Nevia wasn't pleased to leave. She had already cast a number of spells, judging by the amount of purple-white vapor that hung around her hands and shoulders, and seemed intent on prying the icy armor off the Reforged.

"Just a touch longer! I've almost discovered how the armor is generated!" The Dwarf pled with Harn, but the man was as implacable as ever.

"We are tight for time, mage. Wrap up your investigation in ten," he ordered before doing a final sweep of the outpost.

Furious, the mage soon lost control of the spellforms she had built up, and a blade of ice sheared right through the meat of the Reforged's chest.

"Tch! Now I can't see the attachment," Nevia growled and yanked back on the armor, revealing a grisly wound that was belching more of that black smoke. "I—" Beneath her fingers, a series of yellow-red symbols flared to awful life.

Knees buckled and everyone within eyeshot fell to the ground with a pained groan. Everyone, that is, except Felix, Atar, and Alister. They all had plenty of experience with Profane Sigaldry. At most, the two mages flinched, but it passed quickly. Felix didn't even do that, though his core space quivered in response to the dissonance of it.

Felix leaned over the smoking corpse. He saw the edges of some sort of array, likely involved in creating the Reforged in the first place. Felix was aware they were a lot like Golems, except built from living things, but the process was far more complex than that. He only knew enough to recognize he didn't know anything about it all. "Hm. Atar, Alister, you've got half a glass. Scribe as much of that as you can."

"Good idea," Alister said and the two mages pulled scrolls and inkwells from their packs. "We won't be able to get much before it finishes decomposing though."

"Anything is better than nothing. Nevia," Felix called out. The woman looked up at him, frustration clear on her face. "You've got the same time to check out it's armor. Make it count."

She pursed her lips and nodded, returning to the body once again.

"Everyone else prep to leave. And keep an eye out for anything else."

The time passed rapidly, and none of the mages found what they wanted. Atar and Alister had pages of confusing scrawl, while Nevia hadn't been able to find the connection between the ice armor and the Reforge's snuffed Spirit. The latter was clearly impossible to do after death, and the Dwarven mage had latched onto the idea of capturing one of the monsters alive next time.

They moved on, descending the mountain and into the forested foothills just below. Vegetation was thicker there, and though the ground was far less rocky, the going was far slower. Strange, Mana-fed flora and fauna abounded in whichever direction Felix looked. Even the insects he spotted were leveled in the teens.

The trees and thick undergrowth were so numerous and hearty that they had to cut a path. Harn took thte lead there, wielding his silver axes with deadly precision. Vinesnakes, Thorncrawlers, Emberflies, all died as his axes bisected the trees and shrubbery they hid within.

"Alright, you five, take point," Harn grunted at the Haarguard. They looked at each other in confusion, having spent much of the journey nestled between Felix's friends. Harn gestured impatiently. "C'mon, I ain't got all day. There's a lot of XP floatin' around this forest, and you're all higher leveled than it. Clear the way and earn your keep, eh?"

The lure of abundant XP was enough, and Kylar soon led the way into the forests with both of his swords flashing as best he could.

"Is that the best idea?" Felix asked Harn as the followed in the Haarguards' wake. "They're competent, but what if they run into something really tough?"

Harn shrugged. "Reason Cal sent them was to bolster our numbers, but also to train up a team she saw some potential in. She told me they beat a clutch of Clay Golems and almost fought off a Steel too."

"Oh," Felix said, remembering. He hadn't thought it terribly impressive. "That's true."

Harn snorted, the sound echoing through his helmet. "We ain't all Unbound, Felix. That's pretty good for a team with little to their name. We can't all break a training room and fight down an Orichalcum Golem."

Felix winced. "She told you about that?"

"Told me? She damn near shouted the attendants outta the Manor when she found out," Harn chuckled. This was probably the most pleased Felix had seen the man. "Told em you weren't allowed down there without special permissions. 'We don't have anything to challenge the Fiend,' she said."

Felix was a bit crestfallen at that; he'd just wanted to test himself, after all.

"Ah don't worry about it, kid. Cal's all bluster now that she's too busy to use those knives of hers," Harn patted him on the shoulder. "Look at it this way: she doesn't want you to waste your time. Plenty of challenge here in the Foglands though, once we get deeper. Were it not for the doom n'gloom of your Quest, I'd be right excited."

"Still worth gettin' a little eager though," Evie added. She idly spun her chain, making sure to keep it clear of the considerable foliage. She was practicing, Felix realized. "Can't wait to put this chain to real use. Those Aurochs were fine and all, but I want somethin' fast and mean. Like—"

"Tier II! Tier II!" Vyne shouted out, and the earth quaked beneath them all.

Evie looked up at the sky. "Huh. Is this what's it's like, bein' religious?"

"Not exactly, Evie," Vess said with a faint smile. She eyed the branches above them. "Race you to it?"

Evie immediately lassoed a branch with her chain and hauled herself into the canopy. "Hm? I couldn't hear you over me winning!"

"Leave somethin' for the Iron Ranks to fight!" Harn barked after them.

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