Unbound

Bastion of Will!

Sovereign of Flesh!

Felix was thrown hard against the burning surface of the Scale, though the sensation soon paled before the onrushing violet light. It seared against his exposed limbs, just as terribly as the rush of corrosive Essence stripped his already weeping channels. Something else rioted within the light, a piece of the Archon fused with the explosion; one last wave of that damn array to finish them all off, maybe. Felix tried reinforcing his Mind and Body against it, but he could feel—if not see—the light breaking them down faster than he could regenerate. He could barely think. It was—He—

Ravenous Tithe!

This time, he widened his scope. The Scale, the ambient Essence miasma, the flash of power, opening his mouth wide and letting all of it pour into him. He'd experienced trying to breath in a hurricane, the impossible misery of it, and eating the Maw from the Ravager King had felt like wrestling a firestorm.

This was like taking a bite out of the apocalypse.

His Body, Mind, and Spirit were washed by the torrent of unleashed Mana and Essence, buoyed on winds that sought nothing but to destroy him wholesale. It was madness incarnate. He screamed, and Pit chimed in chorus with him.

Status Condition: Spirit Damage +5% > 12%

Status Condition: Mind Damage +5% > 5%

Spin it! Pit shrieked. Must! Spin!

Together they tried to do as they had with the Ravager King, moving the power through Felix's abused channels and spinning his ring core with greater and greater haste. Pit's channels were far more hale than his own, but being converged only a fraction of the power cycled through the chimera. It was all Felix could do to keep Ravenous Tithe activated, his core open to the unending blast wave, that Pit had to push the power along their converged channels.

Felix could sense shifts within his core, but he hadn't the attention to spare. The violet power thundered across him. Each passing second stretched into infinity, a violent cacophony of noise and light. Deep, earth-shaking vibrations filled the blinding light, Harmonics that called to destruction and devastation. And the Archon's own Profane energy, twisting that music into something worse.

Status Condition: Spirit Damage +5% > 17%

Status Condition: Mind Damage +5% > 10%

Status Condition: Body Damage +5% > 10%

Ravenous Tithe!

The ruby form above his spinning core flexed and trembled, and the Maw's inert instincts prodded him, tell him what he could use and what needed to be vented. Spin and pull, burn and expel; it was a pattern so familiar it had begun to happen without his knowledge. The abyssal vortex within his ring core devoured what it could, but even it's unending hunger was not enough.

Notes of discordant fury shook through him, a burring twang that marred the explosion's subtle Harmonics. And then it was gone, and a relative darkness took the vast chamber.

TERRITORY-WIDE QUEST ALERT!

Congratulations!

The Nest has been destroyed! The threat of their influence has been ended!

Territory Contribution is being calculated...

Territorial Authority has been granted!

Congratulations: Eliza DuFont!

No!

Due to—

Felix couldn't focus through the pain, the horror of it. And the rumbling did not stop. Blearily, Felix saw that—somehow—he was rushing toward the ceiling. Somehow—wait—! The enormous, granite face of his Nymean ancestor was falling. The entire chamber was falling apart.

"Stone...shaping...!" With a final push of his Mana, the ground turned to putty beneath him. Felix was sucked beneath the surface just as the colossal statue hit.

Into darkness.

Pain and pressure.

Felix's constant companions, they had become his world. He couldn't remember the impact of the stone above, or even where his physical Body was; he was simply floating, hovering above the deep darkness within his core.

Pit coiled around him, wing's outspread, trembling while Felix clutched at the tenku. Whatever had happened, the both of them had manifested within the darkness of his solar system. Celestial lights illuminated them, from both his planetary Skills and the blue-white sun of his core, highlighted by a steady strobe of lightning prominences.

Power spun through him. Mana and Essence and flickering shapes of yellow-red, all of it swirling through his veins like deadly magic cocktail. A vortex of that wild mix spun above his head, ceaselessly devoured by the black on black abyss within his core. Still, Felix could hardly breath. His Aspects felt compressed and for a moment he feared he was being crushed to death by whatever stones were now certainly crushing his physical Body.

But no, he could see his Health. It was steady, if low. Yet the pressure continued, both pushing and pulling on him. And immense, terrifying pain that was hard to describe. Like his everything was being peeled, layer by layer.

He needed to cut it off, something to break its hold. He—he needed to sever it.

Bastion of Will!

The pain swiftly retreated before the Essence of Sever that he'd Tempered into his Skill. Nearly all sensation fled, banished as Felix floated in the pregnant darkness of his core space. Even the light of his Skills and the flickering fire of his core ring were muted...until they disappeared too.

But the pressure remained.

It pulled at him, from all directions at once. A familiar, irresistible tug at his Mind, Body, and Spirit that suspended him. It was the same as when he'd first awoken in the Pathless' cathedral.

"Pit? Can you feel this too?" he asked, but there was no answer.

Pit was gone.

"PIT!"

Felix's voice, shouted with all his might, was without echo. Muffled as if he were in a room draped in thick cloth. All of this was terribly familiar, even the surge of fear that tingled in his belly. As before, his Mind quested outward, and Felix felt a smooth stretch of bonds attached to him. Pulling at him in all directions. He knew more now, and though he couldn't see the bonds, he knew what they felt like.

Threads. A million, a billion strings of connection. They felt smooth but that was only because they were each so tiny it was hard to separate them. They constrained him, though he could move his invisible limbs in the dark. But he was immobile, fixed at this point by the weight of them.

Felix tried to flex, to twist, but the threads would not shift. A weight greater than he'd ever experienced pulled at him, and he'd just had a sculpture the size of a mansion dropped on him. The only saving grace was that it was pulling him so evenly that Felix felt...balanced. As if no one thread were stronger than the others.

"What is this?" Felix tried to navigate toward his Bastion, to the small world he'd made of the mental Skill. But he remained, strung up in the dark.

"So you have found it."

Felix gasped in surprise. Below—ahead?—of him, a figure resolved out of the dark. They were little more than a silhouette, but it was one he recognized. The proliferation of joints in its limbs was a dead giveaway.

"The deepest part of you, unveiled," Vellus said, turning its featureless head as if appraising the space. "An endless darkness put upon by eternal, untiring forces. How...bleak."

"Why—how are you here?" Felix asked.

"Our connection grows tenuous the longer you refuse to seek the Shrines, Felix Nevarre. I had given up hope on reaching you, especially after your Companion refused me," Vellus said, twitching unpleasantly. Everything about her felt disjointed and raw. She hurt to look at, but Felix couldn't even blink. "But here, deep within your core, here our connections thrive."

Pit? Felix queried, but still there was no answer. "Where am I?"

"When you cut yourself off from sensations with your Bastion, it did more than sever them. You unmoored yourself—temporarily, of course. Without your Perception, without even your core to ground you, your Self drifted into this place. An expression of that which animates you, of what moves your very soul."

Darkness that reminded him of the Void and eternal bondage to things he didn't understand. That...was not a great sign. He would have hoped for a happier scene. But Vellus gave him the clues he needed. If Bastion got him here, then it would get him out. Bracing himself for the pain, he deactivated his Bastion.

And nothing happened.

What the hell? "How do I get out? The redcloaks have Authority!" That fact burned, for all the effort he'd put into it. Only to fail. "My—people are in danger!"

"The forces acting on you are beyond your understanding, Felix Nevarre. Even deactivating the Skill the led you here is not enough to escape the gravity of significance that binds you." Vellus twitched, and suddenly she was closer. "I can help you fix it, however."

This sounds familiar. Felix scowled at the goddess. "For what price?"

"What is freedom, true freedom, not worth?" Vellus replied. Evasively, Felix thought, but everything about her was so alien it was hard to tell. "I will say that your plight is not your only concern. Your city is being overrun, its defenders dying by the dozen. And your friends are in dire trouble.

"I know that! That's why I need to get out of here!" Felix said. He was fighting to stay calm before the goddess' hedging. "They could be dying right now for all I know."

"I can show you."

Despite himself, that got his attention. Felix felt his stomach twist. He knew the goddess was manipulating him; everyone else had, after all. Everyone except his friends.

"Show me," he hissed.

Vellus reached her too long arm out, sideways, and plucked something. A shimmer of light rippled down a thread in two directions, toward him and off into the distance. His Affinity sang in tones so complex he couldn't follow. The light raced toward Felix, and then it all merged. He saw.

He saw a darkness gathering in the Foglands, thick and viscous as the fog that had once dominated it. The forest and mountains beyond the Walls pulsed, shaking with the approach of something terrible. Dark clouds raced across a sky that had been overcast ever since the Ravager King fell. The clouds thickened, purpling above the city, pregnant with a tempest Felix knew was almost upon them.

A golden figure shone in the darkness, and around his towering form were a legion of monsters. Blue armored hands coated in living ice ripped through the earth. They were free. Golden gauntlets followed, an elaborate armor built in an ancient Age.

A moon rose above it all, soaked in blood.

Felix fell, falling backward off the Wall, yanked through the city by Vellus' hand. He saw white armored zealots swarming like disturbed ants, weapons shining and voices raised in a fanatical chorus. They fell upon stone shaped walls around a series of warehouses. His walls.

Felix gasped, but the vision did not stop.

Redcloaks perished under the weapons of their Tin and Iron Ranks, but it wasn't enough. Their few Bronze Ranks made a dent in the tide of Acolytes, enough to make the Inquisition hesitate beyond the walls. Men, women, and children were gathered up and moved away, back into the fortified warehouses. He saw Thangle weaving elaborate illusions around the civilians, his Obfuscation at work. Hector was frantically inscribing the walls, hoping to repair them maybe, while Aenea was passing out tonics and potions as fast as she and her apprentices could manage.

But then she appeared, holding his hooked sword aloft. A red-gold aura surmounted her head, not quite a halo so much as a crown. There was the sound of rumbling stone and the titanic clatter of something being released. From the clouds overhead came a rain of light upon the encampment. It scoured the earth, burning through leather, metal, and stone.

Nothing survived.

Felix jerked back to himself, his Affinity reeled back like a snapped line. He couldn't move, but he shivered in horror all the same.

"Is—is that happening now?" he demanded. If he could have, he would have grabbed the goddess' gangly body and shaken her. "Did that really happen?!"

"No. It is, however, a near certainty." Vellus tilted her shadowy head at Felix, curious. "Have you not seen the Quest notice?"

"That DuFont won?" Felix heaved a series of heavy breathes. His heart wouldn't stop racing. "Yeah I saw."

"Not that. This." Vellus waved a hand, and a blue box appeared before him. It was the same as before, except at the very bottom.

Due to conflicting levels of Contribution, Challengers have been chosen!

Each named individual can Challenge the holder of Authority. If they are defeated, the Authority falls to the Challenger!

All Challengers have three days to Challenge for Authority. After that time period lapses, no further Challengers are allowed.

Named Challengers:

Uldred Teine

Calesca Boscal

Felix Nevarre

Holy— "Is this...I can Challenge DuFont?" Felix bared his flat, human teeth. "Good."

"You will never reach her, Felix Nevarre. The dregs of her army are still mighty against a lone attacker, and the defenses she can now summon will dwarf any such efforts. Even by the Fiend."

Felix looked at her. Her voice sounded..."What are you saying?"

"You have one chance to take it, to save your city and those you care for," Vellus said, flickering closer still. She was...larger than Felix had anticipated, and he realized he wasn't sure how far away the goddess truly was. "You only have to make the Choice."

"What choice?

"We are connected, Felix Nevarre. Through the Choices you've already made, time and again. The Titles you bear, the Skill's you've earned." The goddess drifted slowly closer, twitching all the while. Felix held back a gasp. She was no closer than before, but she loomed, a shadow taller than most buildings. "You only need to strengthen the Harmonic connection between us, thicken the ties that bind our causes to the Grand Harmony itself. A Choice will bind us both, and allow me to send you pieces of my power."

An Oath, he translated. Swallowing, Felix looked up at her shrouded face. "What do you get out of this?"

"An emissary. A true servant to complete the tasks I've left undone for millennia." Something like lightning flickered in her incomprehensible form, and Felix briefly tasted a coppery tang in his mouth. "This world has been too long without the gods. It cannot last, not now."

Felix hesitated. He remembered all too well the Chorister of Vellus, and farther back, the Sage of Vellus. Both driven insane by their connection to the goddess. "I've seen your emissaries. Your followers all end up crazy."

"Weakness. They are unable to retain the truth. The Grand Harmony shattered them, either all at once or in piecemeal. They were barely Chanters, but they were not Lost, or Unbound. You are all three, an existence I could not have predicted." Vellus rumbled, and this time Felix swore he could see a bleak, crimson mountain. Lightning assaulted it's peak. "You are my Chosen, ascendant. You alone shall receive my Boon."

That lightning, so familiar, coiled around Vellus' gargantuan form. The goddess flickered and twitched, growing closer and closer, while the blasted terrain he glimpsed within her did as well. She was a mountain of shadow, pressing against Felix with all the weight that implied. He panted, unable to maintain his gaze on that terrible place.

"Please." Vellus' voice was soft, whispered into the dark with a vulnerability that twisted Felix's heart. Something had broken this creature, god or not.

"I," Felix said, gathering his thoughts. Things swirled strangely, so close to the oddness of the goddess' being. "I think—" he swallowed, pushing past the pressure that she exuded. "I think that I—"

Distantly, Felix felt a wrenching sensation and he gasped. The goddess' pressure redoubled.

"Felix? What is your Choice?"

His thoughts felt murky, as constrained as his body. He was—what was she asking?

"Your Choice! Do you wish to save your friends? Do you wish to save everyone?" Vellus' voice was thunder, destruction from on high that sparked Felix's primal brain.

"Yes," he croaked, unsure why he was trembling. "I will save them."

Hidden among the pressure, Felix felt cords tighten upon his soul. It was jarring compared to the immense but neutral pull in all directions. Intrusive in a way that Felix found familiar, and memories of the Maw dissolving into his Body flickered across his vision.

The strings of connection between them began to burn, blood and lightning crawling their lengths.

"No no no," Felix blinked, his eyes bulging. He pushed back the fog that clung to his senses. Felix tried to reject them, but the cords only tightened further. A vast presence pressed against him, slithering through his channels, into his core. "Not you too."

"You have Chosen, ascendant," Vellus crackled. She had expanded into his entire vision, so that crimson mountain within her was nearly life sized. "And I cannot let you waste it."

Felix screamed as azure lightning coursed through him. His screams seized in his chest, gripped by a hand bigger than entire cities. His head was forced forward, to peer into the darkness of Vellus' form.

"Behold. My prison, Felix Nevarre. Wrought for me upon my breaking, so very long ago." The mountain loomed, and a mist of bloody rain sprayed into the null space around him. It joined the lightning in tormenting his battered form. "Only the connection of those paltry few brave enough to embrace the truth—the unfettered reality of their world—only they have seen this. My choristers went mad when it took me, and even my Sages and Paragons were lost to its evil predations."

The shadow that was the world moved, leaning down until it's face was mere feet from his own. Felix could see nothing but curdling darkness, punched through by an endless storm of blood and lightning. "I am sorry for this, ascendant. You would not listen, and we have not the time. I have no other Choice. The others race against me, and our greatest failure returns."

The goddess' breath tasted of copper and burnt ozone. Blood and storm.

"I need you, Unbound. Few are they who can withstand the Ruin."

Her grip upon his soul tightened further, but Felix's screams were swallowed whole.

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