Unbound

Chapter One Hundred and Sixty Eight - 168

Screaming in terror, Felix and Pit hung on for dear life.

The Ravager King had exploded from the demolished Domain Shell, tearing apart nearly a thousand yards of dense sigaldry with a body bigger than the Eyrie itself. Felix would have been scraped clean of the Ravager's head were it not for the level of mindless fury the creature was experiencing. A near constant wave of awful, vicious heat poured from it's gaping jaws, a torrent of green fire that melted a hole before it. The heat was excruciating, so much so that Felix could feel his Song of Absolution growing heavier and heavier within his core as notifications built up against the block he had on them.

Huddled low behind the bony crest of the Ravager, Felix had only sensed the cacophony of pulverized stone, atomized earth, and the putrid light of its flames. When it all ended, he'd found himself clinging desperately as the maddened Ravager tore into the sky itself.

Where the Inquisitor's Manaship had been waiting.

For all that the Ravager had been a Primordial the stretched out length of a mountain, it had lost a lot of its mass crossing the Void. The decay Felix had sensed had only accelerated. But that wasn't enough to stop it's fury.

The Manaship opened up with a volley of shots, each one a blinding sun to Felix's Manasight. They struck true; whole sections of the Ravager King's jaws and teeth were torn apart. A lance of golden Mana even speared down, tearing a deadly furrow in the beast's neck and nearly severing it entirely. The blast continued onward, shearing sideways through the Ravager and directly toward Felix.

Ravenous Tithe!

Unfettered Volition!

Felix hurled himself away while simultaneously taking a chunk of the potent Mana hurtling toward him. A surge of burning light Mana rioted through his channels and sunk unceremoniously into his hungry core, and the edge of the beam he'd so carefully dodged only burned him a little.

But all of that was not enough.

The shuddering remnants of the Ravager's jaws closed on the Manaship, shearing the structure in two and resulting in explosion that burst even more of the Primordial's head. The ship careened wildly to the side, spinning from Felix's view, and not just because of its trajectory. Felix, having dodged the golden lance, had fallen to the side of the Ravager's colossal neck, holding tight by only a single Shadow Whip.

*RRUUUUMBLE*

Below them, the Eyrie collapsed into a ever-widening pile of rubble. Huge clouds spiked up into the air, filled with brown earth Mana and flashes of less identifiable types. Sparks and blooming red explosions filled the dust, and the warm wash of thousands of expended Mana constructs surged into air already cluttered with the busy ambient power of a city.

Lights below him, fires and lanterns. Like a sea of stars. He could see it two ways, hanging from his tentative thread, one with his normal eyes, and one with Manasight. The ambient Mana lit up the night like phosphorescent winds, patterns flowing through streets and homes. The sky around them was otherwise dark; the sun was close to setting, but storm clouds had also started to roll in. What was left of the evening sun was soon blotted from sight, and thunder crawled along the distance.

The Ravager King roared in defiant challenge.

Head gone, the Ravager King should have been dead. It wasn't, though Felix could sense its dissolution was happening faster and faster.

Not fast enough, he thought, flapping his wings as he tried to remount the beast. The King's frantic undulations were a rollercoaster. Every time he'd get the lift, the gargantuan abomination would shift dozens of yards in either direction.

The mountainous wyrm was too big for the sky. It coiled upon itself as it's devastated face and neck twisted and rotted away. Still it beat its wings, and it's disgusting body began to bubble and ooze. A new mouth ripped from lower on its neck, where the flesh hadn't quite torn apart. New teeth pushed through the quickening fat and scaly hide.

Just hang on, she said. Felix grimaced. Sure. Easy.

He let go.

Unfurling his wings, Felix leaned upon Pit's instincts and let the warm currents from below them guide and lift him back up and around. He followed the loop of the monster's body as it rippled and tore, and he could see that whatever it was attempting was only hastening its end. One loop and a handful of seconds later, Felix landed heavily upon the back of the Ravager once more. Were it not for Unfettered Volition, he would have landed on his face, but thankfully the Skill worked well even mid-air.

"You stupid, stupid child," it seethed as it twisted and split its own flesh. Cracks chased along the Ravager's scales, the strain of such a movement too much for its weakened state. "You've doomed Us..."

Its voice was a heavy, wheezing crackle, a death rattle through the bellows of its stories-thick chest. Felix didn't bother answering as he was too busy building up an orb of acid in his hands. Wrack and Ruin had been somehow affected by his newly empowered core, as if more Mana and power had been packed into the spell, making it nearly the size of a miniature basketball. Felix focused and compressed it, pressing on it with his Will and Intent even as he poured more and more Mana into it.

The Ravager's new face emerged from its half-neck, a stunted thing of jagged lines and quickly solidifying bones. Blue-green orbs, pupilless, resurfaced atop its slick scales. Its eyes passed over him, scanning the world around them both.

"It is glorious," it breathed. "And it is doomed, just as We are, Vessel. Before We die, We will take you and your city with Us. By the will of Our Father. For Our Mother."

Its newly formed mouth dropped open and the titanic sound of a sucking bellows filled the air. The ambient Mana around them faded, pulled into its mouth as the Primordial's hunger ate it all. For the first time, Felix realized how dark it was; without the ambient Mana of the world to guide him, it was like being struck blind.

Below, in the streets of Haarwatch he could still see the flow of Mana. But even there it flickered and dimmed, guttering before a heavy breath. Flickers of the connection Felix had shared with the Ravager fed him dizzying snippets as Skills responded sluggishly, or outright failed as the Revenants faltered down on the ground. Deaths on both sides began to pile up rapidly.

Felix bared his teeth, fangs still, and bore down on his spell. It wasn't strong enough. He could add and compress all day and Felix felt it wouldn't be strong enough to end this. Not if the full might of a Manaship's guns and a high Tier offensive Skill couldn't do more than slow it down.

Thunder rumbled, closer this time. Above, the skies lit up with hidden bolts, jagged discharges that were still trapped in the clouds.

Felix cast about for something...anything. He peered at the Ravager with his Manasight, but that was like looking into the sun, so bright did it shine with stolen power. A dense network of yellow-red lines formed upon its face and neck, quickly extending passed Felix to cover its entirety. He flinched back from the Profane Sigaldry, but found they had no power to hurt him any longer. Instead, he found himself staring at the twisted sigils and...No, that--that would be...foolish....right?

Pit warbled, annoyed.

I know! But can you think of a better way?

The tenku whistled resignedly, and Felix dashed off. He let his wings rot away, they were only a hindrance to his movement. Bits of his flesh reabsorbed into his body as the feathers and strange bits of bone appeared to rapidly disintegrate. He scanned the ever moving scales of the beast, searching along the scribed lines for a sigil he recognized. One he could use.

There.

Felix had to leap off one undulating section of the Ravager and latch onto the next with his talons. A simple pull upward sent him flying another twenty feet, where he landed with something resembling grace. Right on top of a bright, yellow-red sigil.

The symbol for siphon.

Felix swallowed, but his throat was dry and rasped against itself. It's one of the basics of sigaldry. Like calls to like. He slammed his hand down, digging his talons deep into the scales without much effort. He breathed deep.

Ravenous Tithe!

It was like trying to inhale a hurricane. A storm of power pressed against him nearly immediately, as the Ravager's bounty sudden became his own.

"WHAT!? NO!"

To say it was a struggle would be giving it too much credit. The Ravager was a Primordial built and raised to be a world devouring monstrosity, an apex predator designed to ride at the vanguard of a war of death and destruction on a scale Felix couldn't even comprehend.

The power tore through Felix, scouring his channels on its way toward his spinning core. There, the ring of blue-white fire blazed barely bright enough to compete with the radiance streaking toward it.

Felix hadn't been born to this, but the last world devouring monstrosity had set its eyes on him, and he'd killed it. Again, and again.

The Maw was dead.

Long live the Maw.

Vess limped out of the collapsing tunnel, praying to Siva that it last just one more second. One final shove, and the floating raft of silver spears made it out. She could see the sky, dark as it was.

Evie moaned atop the raft, and Vess patted her armored boot absentmindedly. It looked like it was about to rain.

"Almost back, Evie," Vess panted and wiped the blood from her eyes. "We made it through and we are--"

A roar shuddered across the city, one that was so loud the earth itself rumbled with it. The tunnel behind her, long strained, finally fell in on itself and sent a cloud of fetid dust all over the both of them.

"Avet's black Night," Vess cursed. She hobbled further out from the wreckage of what she thought was once a residential tenement. The sky suddenly became awash in brilliant, multi-colored light, as if the sun at noon had reappeared. "What-?"

A feeling of unbridled rage pressed down against her, the hand of a god made of pure hate, and Vess fell to her knees. Behind her, the raft of spears clattered to the uneven ground. Evie gasped awake.

Then, without warning, the presence vanished.

"What the shit was that?"

Harn, armor beaten and torn, stopped and looked up as the sky burned.

"Unbound," he cursed. "Blood and ashes, kid."

Grunting, he hefted his grip around the two mages and kept walking.

"You better survive."

The power burned through him, and Felix didn't have the breath to scream. Yet instincts he'd stolen from an ancient asshole agreed with Pit's own advice, and he listened. He spun his core, rotating it as fast as it could go and focused on simply withstanding it.

The ambient Mana the Ravager had tried to steal was suddenly his, a city's worth of it. It was all he could do not to choke on it as it became clear that the Ravager could not fight back against his pull, and far more than just Mana flowed into Felix.

It's defenses against him had been destroyed when Felix had taken the Maw's Mind from it, and subsequently the remainder of the Maw's influence. But its flesh was still grown amidst a slurry of Primordial blood and twisted harmonics. It was a faint, but concrete connection.

It was all the Hunger needed.

The Ravager King withered before him, it's Body failing to keep up with Felix's appetite. Muscles, ligaments, blood, anything and everything that made the Ravager the threat that it once was.

The screams of the Ravager tore at Felix's ears, but he couldn't spare the time to listen to them. He was a python trying to eat a rocketship. The power that emptied into him was filtering out through his Body, his Mind, even his Spirit. The Maw's inert instincts prodded him, telling the Nym what he should keep and what was useless to him.

The breakdown and expulsion of Mana burned around them both like twin suns, as Felix kept the Ravager's Strength, Vitality, and Endurance but tried to reject the powerful rage that simmered among every cell of its being. He kept its blood and broke down its bones and muscles, but couldn't keep it all.

So it went to Pit as well.

Endless, timeless seconds, minutes, hours passed. There was nothing but the Hunger. Spin and pull, burn and expel, spin and pull, burn and...

He didn't even realize he was falling until he hit the ground.

*KRAK!*

Fallen stone split beneath his booted feet as he landed. Felix stumbled as if drunk, and his head reeled. He could barely see as the world flashed rapidly before his eyes, small blue boxes flickering with static jumping into his vision before disappearing again.

He'd taken in so much...so much, in so little time. Envoys and Queens and Kings and...and the Maw.

Felix was on the ground, somehow. He didn't--He wasn't--

Mother...Father....Why have you forsaken Us?

The words vibrated from somewhere deep inside of him, and they faded slowly, until only silence remained.

Complete and utter silence.