Unbound

Chapter One Hundred and Fifty Nine - 159

Voracious Eye.

Name: Ravager Queen

Type: Primordial-Spawn

Level: 75

HP: ?????/?????

SP: ?????/?????

MP: ????/????

Lore: Born of the Maw's blood and a Sub-Core, this abomination has fed upon one of the four corners of the Domain. It gains great power from its consumption.

Strength: Extremely resilient to physical and magical damage. Contains a powerful ecosystem of predators within its own flesh.

Weakness: Internal Attack

Three of them...all are Tier Two. He could sense it, just as he could sense the advancement of others through his Voracious Eye. As Felix fought for breath, the three of them all began to rampage among the gathered Primordial-Spawn, slamming their massive circular mouths down into the horde. Hundreds disappeared in seconds, and the hundred foot long tentacles along it's face grabbed more still. The worst of it all, however, was that the horde didn't flee in terror; they stood, stock still, and died.

Just as his friends still laid out on the ground, each of them unmoving. Even Harn, armor finally cooling, was sprawled out, limp with unconsciousness. Felix felt dizzy. All of them were going to die.

"They are almost ready, little wolf. Once this rabble is gone, it will be time. Time for your city to burn." The Envoy laughed hysterically. It wheezed for breath, a strange sound, stranger still for all that it was a construct. Did it breath? Had the Archon built lungs for it? Why?

The Envoy peered at Felix. "I hear your fear. Your desperation. It is...unseemly for one such as us."

Us? Thoughts like confused fireworks went off in Felix's mind as he struggled for breath, and rage suffused him. He leveraged his Strength against the constructs metal hand, but only managed the smallest of gasps. Then even that was gone. The Arcid's grip tightened, holding him solidly around the throat and shoulders. It pinched off his air supply completely, and likely bruising his spine. Felix's Endurance and Vitality were both remarkably high, but still the Envoy's hand was choking him.

Status Condition: Asphyxiation

"Such rage! You've the teeth of prey, but I sense in you a similar Spirit; a predator, stalking in the darkness. A Hoarhound hiding in the snow." The Envoy smiled, it's visor stretching with an unnatural creak. It had no mouth but its amusement was clear. "Our kind can smell one another, haah! And you stink with death and the claimed potential of hundreds. Exquisite!"

The construct looked back out among its creations. Its eye-fires compressed in obvious pleasure. Felix's chest burned. It felt like fire crawling up his skin. "The expended breath of prey curls amid your shadow. Glorious. And you brought it here, for us. All for us."

From the corner of his darkening vision, Felix saw a flash of yellow-red light. Though they appeared carved into it, the array lines and sigils on the Envoy's arm had flared and moved, somehow. It now radiated from his chest, and crawled up onto his neck with all the fury of a house fire. It hurt. The damn thing was branding him.

A squawk of fear shot through his heart, but Felix's dizzying thoughts hurled a warning at Pit. Stay back!

It's only pain. This is nothing. Nothing!

Felix clamped his Will down upon his Mind and pushed down the agony. It was less than nothing.

It was training.

The Song of Absolution is level 48!

Stretching his thoughts out, he tried to understand the array that coiled around his chest and neck. It defied his knowledge, its twisted form a perversion of the script he had come to know. But he knew it well enough. The tunnel had been an adequate teacher while his Mind picked up the slack.

Siphon was there, but that was only part of it. An intrinsic part, but not the focus of the array. No, it was a sigil that looked vaguely similar to the one for seal. It was modified by a few others he could parse, such as body, air, and anger for some reason. The last pulsed with a steady, uncompromising heat. It was the intensity of a volcano, moments before eruption, an ignition of dark passions that stirred his chest just by looking at them.

That anger seemed to be foundational. He spotted it throughout the array, all secondary or even tertiary sigils. Felix knew that he were to check the platform below them he'd find even more of its insidious heat.

Why? What's the point?

Vertigo assaulted him as his Vitality began to fail. Felix nearly buckled under a rush of new-birthed pain and pressure.

"You are like the other," the Envoy rattled, it's voice curious. "Resilient. Much too much. What are you, little wolf?"

The sigils twined around Felix's neck, a noose of liquid light. He felt it drawing tighter than before and the air trapped in his lungs felt suddenly compressed. A balloon ready to burst. A fine net of energies wrapped themselves around his flesh, and Felix could vividly see their insane designs.

The lines are...what? Lines of power? Like a circuit? They fluxuated at he watched them, surging and flaring in irregular intervals. Almost at random. No...not a circuit...it's alive. Writhing...around something...

"You are doing it wrong," the Envoy said, an angry rattle in their manufactured throat. "Now is the time for screaming. For begging. Break yourself to pieces against my hide, let loose your bowels, SOMETHING!"

The boy only stared back, his blue eyes distant.

"No, no! Look at me!" The construct shook the little Human, dragging him closer to their metal encased face. "Stare into these forged eyes! Who are you?"

Fires of the Golden Lord.

A rising song smashed against the Envoy's Skill, shoving it back. The construct blinked in astonishment. A Skill gifted by the Archon himself, rebuffed by a...a Human?

Furious, the Envoy tried again, but this time it engaged the force of the Profane Sigaldry upon its skin. A shearing dissonance cut through the melody that surrounded the boy, and their Skill followed easily in its wake.

The Envoy grinned beneath their metal face.

Name: Felix Nevarre

Race: Unknown

Level: 33

HP: 843/1316

SP: 988/1313

MP: 3843/3843

Lore: Unknown

Strength: Willpower

Weakness: Agility

"What is this? What IS THIS?" The Arcid seethed. "Unknown?"

It was impossible. The Fires of the Golden Lord could not be evaded, and the power of the Profane could not be denied. It was impossible.

Yet the Envoy had been blocked, somehow. However, it had told them the boy's advancement; which served only to confused the Arcid all the more.

"Apprentice Tier?" The Envoy began to laugh, a manic sound always in the back of their throat. They squeezed harder and a mental command sent Profane Sigaldry skittering across the not-Human's skin. "Cold winds of old, strange indeed! I shall love to take you apart, child. Piece by bloody piece!"

The boy twitched and sucked in a tight breath, but no screams came forth. It was...it was like he didn't even feel it! The Arcid looked down at their free hand in confusion and dismay. "No, no, no NO! I don't LIKE this!"

The boy's pain and fear quietened until both were all but gone. The bright scrabbling of a mad wolf faded into a steady solidity that the Envoy did not know how to interpret. No matter how the Arcid squeezed or cut, the strange Human failed to respond.

It was infuriating.

The Master gave it a purpose. A goal. If it was not reached, then...and this boy, this Unknown was a threat to their plans. They must know more.

The Envoy looked deeper. They reached out to the boy, to the connection they could feel forming between them as the Profane Sigaldry did its work. Within him was a creature of teeth and claws, but there was more. The Void.

Thoughts, memories that weren't their own thrust to the foreground of the Envoy's Mind. The touch of the Void is unusual in one so young. And the truncated strings of Fate...the howl of lost significance, severed...willingly?

They shook their head. The thoughts spoke strangely of such meaningless things.

The boy was a threat. He was marshalling himself for something. The Envoy knew it could survive it, but was disquieted by the fact that the Profane Sigaldry did not envelop him in utter agony. As if the child had been bathed in its light before...or possessed the strength to withstand it.

Strength! A boon for my King! The Envoy cackled wildly, throwing it's dark helmeted head back in glee.

No. A colder voice intervened from within their Mind. The Envoy's head snapped back downward. A danger. Unknown.

Kill it.

The Song of Absolution is Level 49!

Deep Mind is level 42!

Sigils of the Primordial Dawn is level 40!

...

Sigils of the Primordial Dawn is level 44!

Notifications came and went, but Felix had shut it all out. Even his own burning lungs were dim impressions, muted by his Will and his resistances. He didn't have enough time. Either he'd suffocate completely or the Envoy would tire of its game and kill Felix outright.

He focused. The Sigils became everything. They were dense and eldritch, but that kernel of familiarity persisted. He chased it down, his Mind grabbing at whatever it could. That was how he recognized that they were each twisted in the same way. Each marking took the original Primordial Sigil and nearly inverted it. It meant the same thing, impossibly, but it was being twisted by an additional force. But the inversion left weird, droning gaps where the Sigils were once whole...yet the array didn't fall apart. They worked, despite being broken. Why?

Harsh emotion washed against him, pulsing from the sigaldry in random waves. It was molten hot, but a heat of the Mind and Spirit. He had to resist it with his Bastion; the emotions were insidious as they tried to climb into him and implant themselves. A flex of his Will tore them out, root and branch.

Deep Mind is level 43!

It's the anger, he realized. It's filling in the cracks, somehow. Providing a scaffolding to...what? Break down the Mind and Spirit? But why--?

He felt on the cusp of something important, but he'd run out of time. Pain, above and beyond the choking and crushing stabbed through his Body. He resurfaced to find the Envoy's face a mask of wild rage, and one of it's overgrown fingers had sharpened into dark metal claws that tore into his ribs. Sensation and affliction returned in a rush, and Felix let out a gasping cry.

"YES! HEHE! WITNESS YOUR END, IMPOSSIBLE CHILD!"

The Envoy roared in ecstatic glee, having grown another three feet in height. Now it loomed over Felix like a child holding a toy, one it intended to tear apart at the joints. Fear slammed back into his veins as Felix struggled impotently against the Arcid's grasp, unable to even pull away from the blade of cold metal that pierced his guts.

"Yessssss. That is what we want. That is what we want!" The Envoy hissed in obvious pleasure. "Feel the pain and fear before you perish! Feel--!"

The world abruptly tilted as the Envoy's arms shot up into the air. Felix barely had time to register the surprise on the mad Arcid's face before he was tossed. He soared through the air, high enough that he saw the construct stumble and spin around. Behind him several people had gotten to their feet.

"YAAAAEERGH! Stupid stupid Human!" Dark blue blood poured from the metal around the Envoy's knees, yet it still loomed far taller than its attacker.

"Come down here and say that," Harn grunted.

Felix had just enough time to register that the man had somehow bulked up his silver armor and held his two burning axes to the sides before near-invisible Mana constructs pulled him into the bored hole.

Toward the Ravager King.

"SHIT!"

His hands hit the side of the bore, but it was too smooth to grip. A force beyond gravity yanked him down, down.

Shadow Whip!

Reign of Vellus!

Stone Shaping!

He sent out pulses of Reign of Vellus and Shadow Whip, even flaring Stone Shaping. Nothing worked. His Mana was sucked down into the hole before it could activate. Torn from his channels the moment it left his body, it felt like.

He tumbled through the air, the bright opening growing smaller before he gave in. He didn't have a choice. A snapping pain enveloped his body as he shifted.

What Dwells Beneath!

The change was fast since Tiering, but the pain was worse than before. Adrenaline and his Song of Absolution let him ride the worst of it, giving him enough clarity to throw his deadly talons forward, into the smooth stone walls. A screeching crumble fill the chasm as his claws dug in and brought him to a jerking stop.

Bloodline Progression is 81%

What Dwells Beneath is level 32!

His body screamed as all of his weight focused on his shoulder joints, but thankfully they held. Felix took a shaky breath as he realized he'd stopped, and that even the dire sigils had evaporated from his flesh. He could breathe again! He was safe.

The air shook with a deep, menacing bellow. One that came from the darkness below.

Safe was...relative.

The Ravager King was down there, perhaps waking already. Felix's senses were a jumble. His Manasight was all but useless. If he fully opened up that Skill all he would see would be a chaotic torrent of power being shunted down below. A neverending feeding trough for the King.

Mana: 3417/3843

Mana: 3389/3843

It was eating his Mana, even as he hung there. He had to move, and fast.

Explosive blows cracked the air above him, and Felix dragged his attention back up. He had fallen perhaps...sixty feet? The opening looked little bigger than the moon in the sky of Earth. He dug his talons deeper into the wall, a difficult task as the stone was resisting his intrusion. The wall of the bore was lined with more of the same intricate lines, though these were all the same sigils, repeated over and over. Siphon. Anger. Gorge.

Felix's anxiety doubled just as he felt Pit call for him. Tapping into their connection, he warded the tenku away. Help Harn!

The last thing he wanted was his Companion sucked into a giant feeding tube.

Mana: 2932/3843

Unfettered Volition!

Bracing himself a moment, Felix let himself sigh in relief as the internal technique was left untouched by the twisted sigaldry. Hand over hand, Felix pushed his hands up and into the walls. He tried not to look at the dark, scaled sections of his arms or the weirdly jointed nature of his fingers any more than he had to, instead focusing all of his energy on climbing out of that hell hole.

His Mana dwindled, faster and faster it seemed. But Unfettered Volition was Epic ranked for a reason, operating with impressive efficiency and his transformation Skill proved its worth. The enhanced Strength and Endurance of his shifted form let him fairly scurry up the wall.

He made it to the top faster than he anticipated, each step easier than the last as the pull of the sigaldry grew less and less. Coming to the lip, Felix peered cautiously out.

People were still trapped against the platform, still banded down by metal-laced stone bonds. The worst, those too far gone to the Domain's corruption, were little more than red dust. Their essence trickled into the bore like sand in an hourglass. His instincts in this form wanted him to reach out to the essence as it passed, to take it into himself. Better he have it, after all, than the enemy, right?

The rational, human part of his mind wanted to reject that idea but...A scream sounded, and the clash of steel and flesh increased their tempo. His friends were fighting for their lives. He looked and saw Harn battling the gigantic Envoy, while the others...the Bishop had returned. And it wasn't alone.

Dozens of Revenants surged against the others, held at bay by the flailing chain and scorching Sparkbolts of Evie and Atar. Closer by, Vess and Alister fought tooth and nail against the Bishop itself.

He needed the power, and the Ravager didn't.

Ravenous Tithe.

The swirling essence of the corrupted victims twitched in the maelstrom at the top of the bore, but it refused to come to him. Grimacing, Felix shoved a taloned hand into the edge of the Mana whirlpool. He bared his teeth and his voice grated against his throat.

"Ravenous Tithe."

The dusky essence flowed into him, winding around his outstretched arm and plunging itself down Felix's throat. Out of sight but somehow sensed, Felix felt when those worst-affected collapsed into piles of ash. A steady stream of power coiled within his core, sparking with a variety of colors that glittered in the light of his revolving Skills.

Bloodline Progression is 82%

Ravenous Tithe is level 36!

The power didn't stop with just a touch of it, but all of it. If he had attempted this before eating the Larval Ravager, Felix felt he would have exploded from the inside out. But that abomination had pushed his core's limits, hollowing out the darkness. Now the corrupted essence didn't come close to filling him up.

Bloodline Progression is 83%

And frankly, he was hungry for more.