Unbound

Chapter One Hundred and Sixty Five – 165

They hit hard. So hard they bounced.

For all that he'd turned and braced against the Queen's bulk, the thing was dissolving fast. Felix hung on tight, digging his claws deep into the iron-hard flesh, but by the second impact there wasn't much left of the Queen to protect them. Like a popping water balloon filled with a dark, iridescent smoke, streamers of its essence fled in all directions. Including into the bore.

Felix's muscles felt like they were on fire, too tense and too loose all at the same time. His ribs were definitely broken, at least two of them, and he felt like he'd lost more than one of his fangs. He'd braced against the impact, but that had possibly made it worse. It was only the strange cushioning of the Queen's flesh sublimating into essence that had given him any relief at all. As it was, he had tumbled free after the second jolt, sent rolling hard along the splitting earth, entirely too close to the yellow-red inferno.

What Dwells Beneath is level 36!

His Spirit screamed however as it tried to contain a huge chunk of the Ravager Queen's essence. With a flash of light, Pit emerged from within him, stumbling upon manifesting and groaning with the same strain. It was far more than either of them had dared to hold before, and even divided among them it felt like the both of them would split open.

The sound of a System message trilled in Felix's ears.

You Have Killed A Ravager Queen!

XP Earned!

A rush of energy slammed into his core, waves of vibrations that upset the fragile balance Felix was attempting. Like an overturned plate, the essence cloud fell from his core, smashing down into his core fire. It was a storm front of flashing light and foreboding darkness, a corrosive violence he couldn't tame.

The lot of it burned.

Hold it tight, bud! Don't let it into your channels! Felix could barely manage the thought, and had to hope Pit got the message. He didn't even know if tenku had Mana channels, but he did know that any Maw-touched essence burned like fire. If he let it run wild, it'd eat him from the inside out.

And he couldn't let it out, or else it'd pour right into the bore.

But the System didn't let up. They had taken down a substantial threat and an enemy over twice their level. Felix could feel System notifications begin to build up, yet the thick smog of essence acted almost as insulation to the arrival of the gold-blue vibrations. It was almost painful, a muffled sort of pressure in addition to the burden of holding in all that essence.

What Dwells Beneath is level 37!

"Uugh." Voices from behind him made Felix turn shakily, and his breath flowed a bit easier as he saw his friends piled nearby. Remnants of purple-white Mana vapor still steamed from their clothes and armor, but they seemed relatively unharmed. Save for the minor convulsions every single one of them were undergoing. His Eye told him each of them were gaining several levels as he watched.

Somehow, the essence was causing the System power to bounce and rebound within his core, preventing the Harmonics from integrating with the rest of his Body, Mind, and Spirit. Shaking, he leveraged his Willpower and Song of Absolution; Felix got unsteadily to his feet.

Bits of the essence burned up in his core fire, and the waves of disruptive power was soaked up by his monstrous form. His altered muscles slowly felt less pain and damage, and the red bar of his Health gradually, visibly crept upward. Felix figured by the time he processed a quarter of the essence, he would be fully healed. Except it was too slow a process to help with the System reverberations, which were sending more and more pain into his packed core.

Furious bellows shook the sky as Felix stood, and the gargantuan forms of the other Queens swept in from the sides. Each with thirty plus hydra heads and bodies too large, too impossible to fly, each with a murderous Intent burning within their eyes.

Oh damn, Felix thought with a lurch to his stomach. I hope--

Blinding white fire poured from first one, then both queens as they swooped overhead. Six dozen streams combined into far more than enough fire to turn him to charcoal, and all of it was headed straight for him. Felix squeezed his eyes shut and threw his arms up into the air, as if that would do anything.

Yet, he was still alive.

Cautiously, he peeked out, and beheld his most ironic savior yet. The fire bent in mid-air, churning against an invisible current, and was being sucked wholesale into the crevasse before him. Toward the damn Ravager King.

Holy shit, Felix felt his heart catch up to his mind, thudding so hard it felt likely to burst from his chest. Holy shit that was close. Pit--?

Pit offered a weak chirrup before dropping to his haunches. His pink tongue lolled from his beak and his wide golden eyes blinked unsteadily. He hadn't been hit by the flames and heat, but Felix could feel the essence putting pressure on their bond.

The ground shuddered beneath their feet.

"What do I do?" Felix asked himself, leaning down to hug his Companion. He scratched at his friend's ears, hoping it helped even a little. "Zara, what did you think we could do here?"

His plan to devour a Queen before it could finish whatever ritual they were enacting had worked...sorta. He'd eaten the damn Queen, but some of it still fed the King. And the others...he looked up. They'd stopped breathing flame and had instead lit up entirely with yellow-red sigils. Their bodies, once lightly scrawled with arrays became absolutely covered. Lines speared outward from them, sinking into the cracks in the widening hole before him, each revolution spinning them together into some sort of woven pillar.

"How could we stop this?" he asked no one in particular. "Harmonics? What--ugh," a muffled vibration shook his core. "What could the Harmonics do here?"

The sigils flared even harder above him. The Queens bellowed, their rage turned to triumph as one, then the other abruptly began to fall.

"Holy--!"

The sigils upon their bodies ignited like oily fire, like lightning made of blood, bursting across their flesh as they shouted in ecstasy. They dissolved before his very eyes, dissipating long before they reached him or his friends and their essence poured into the bore. The woven pillar of yellow-red energy held onto the essence like the eye of an unnatural hurricane. Hot winds buffeted Felix and Pit both, almost pushing him backward.

Pit squawked in concern, barely able to keep his eyes open. He was sensing something below, but Felix felt it too.

The King is coming. It's almost awake. He felt a dumb, slightly hysterical laugh bubble up from his chest. At least the Queens are gone now.

Zara said one of them had to be there, to use the Chant. To recognize the Harmony. But how could that help here? The answer had to be there, because otherwise Felix could feel hopelessness claw at him. Because if he couldn't figure this out, he and all his friends were dead.

Felix could see the remnants of Harmony in these twisted echoes of life, but how did that help? What did the Harmony have to do with it at all? The dissonance that the Domain had devolved into was the Maw's nature, played out on a wide scale. He imagined what such a corrosive and contagious influence could accomplish in the greater world. What havoc it would wreak.

He shuddered.

Having lived with the Maw in his head for weeks, Felix felt he knew more about it than perhaps anyone else. About its personal brand of insanity. It was a survivor. It called itself the Unending Maw, said it survived the Ruin itself, whatever that entailed. He had witnessed it using Harmonics and whatever you called the opposite end of the spectrum. Felix had started to envision them as something like Order and Chaos.

How would someone tame Chaos though?

The Archon's done it, he realized. As the world around him shook itself apart, and his friends slowly got to their feet, Felix relived the edges of his most recent memory. He's taken the Chaos and forged a magical script from it. An inversion of Harmony, of Order. So then--

Theurgist of the Rise. His new Skill. The one he'd gained after applying his understanding of the ancient Sigils of the Primordial Dawn to the Profane Sigaldry of the Archon. The knot of knowledge that represented his new Skill and gave him a limited understanding of it confirmed it. The Skill was a combination of two opposing magics. The thin line between Harmony and Dissonance.

Could he use that?

Suddenly, a very bad idea entered his head, incited by another instinctual piece of knowledge in his newest Legendary Skill. But he could make it work...right?

Just probably not alone.

He forced himself toward his friends, shouting over the racket of an ending world. He explained the plan and his friends groaned.

"How do we do this?" Harn asked, taking his helmet off. His face was red and bleeding in several places, not to mention a large portion of his hair and eyebrows were burnt to hell. "I don't figure you expect us to swing an axe at this thing."

"Yeah. What can we even do?" Evie asked, propping herself up with one of Vess' conjured Spears. "We don't exactly got much juice left in us."

"No juice needed, I don't think," Felix shook his head and tired to envision what was needed. "Just...stand where I tell you. But I'll need an Oath from the two of you," Felix amended, helping Atar and Alister to their feet.

"What? Why?" Alister's skin was puffy and bleeding in spots, but his eyes were sharp and suspicious.

When Felix explained why, Atar pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and sighed. "It's worth a shot. Fine." Alister agreed shortly after, and Felix spun the Skill into existence. He turned to the rest when it was done.

"Everyone assemble around the hole. Spread out, as far as you can," Felix's mind was racing as he went over designs he'd memorized over the past month. The books at Zara's had included quite a bit on sigaldry, but a lot of it had been beyond him. "Atar, I need your help for this part. The seeking array."

The mage nodded, not even bothering to object. "Alister, you can help too. You've studied sigils."

"A tad, yes," Alister said.

Felix took them to the edge of the bore, where Pit still sat. The tenku was quiet and pained he could feel; Felix just hoped he'd be able to end this soon. Convergence. I'll need you safe for this next part, buddy.

Pit gave a tired chirrup before vanishing in a flash of light.

They got to work.

Theurgist of the Rise is level 48!

Theurgist of the Rise is level 49!

Stone Shaping is level 34!

...

Stone Shaping is level 39!

Cutting marks into the rock with his Skill, even at a large distance proved do-able. It just cost him more Mana and tore at his channels more than usual, but...Felix didn't have much other choice. His Architect of the Rise Title helped immensely, as the positioning and alignment of all the disparate pieces seemed to assemble in his mind at speed. Atar pointed out where Felix's ideas made sense and where they didn't, the mage's greater Skill at normal sigaldry aiding them more than he'd hoped. It wasn't complex, his working, but aside from a few scrawled symbols, it was more than he'd ever done before.

As the earth lurched under his feet, Felix hoped it would be enough.

Something had started moving below them.

"Run. Get into position," Felix ordered Atar and Alister, face grim as the earth split and collapsed before them. "When I give the signal, give me everything you got."

Frantically gesturing in broken handsign, Felix oriented his friends around the bore, before reaching out with his Affinity. He sought their connections, the Oathbindings that connected them all to one another. Ghostly, silver threads extended from Felix to Evie, Vess, and Harn, while two newer ones touched the mages. They blazed bright in his mind's eye, despite the hurricane of dark essence that still swirled atop the bore.

Then the hurricane was sucked violently downward. The pull that Felix had been fighting against since arriving disappeared entirely. Yet the rumbling beneath them increased in intensity until everything was vibrating. Something was moving upwards, and fast.

If a baby Ravager can do it, so can I, Felix thought with a swallow. Then he activated his array.

Power surged across their bonds, and the silver threads became awash in a blue-white radiance.

"Ah!"

"Egh!"

"Hrm," Harn grunted.

Each of his friends felt a chill sensation flow over them, as if their entire bodies had been dunked in icy water. Around them, sigils shaped into the stone filled and began to emit a blue-white light, while complicated lines extended between them all. Evie, Vess, Harn, all of them found a larger sigil traced beneath their feet, made up of the connections between the other glyphs.

Then they all began to connect. Lines of blue-white fire traced above the opening of the bore, a massive net of tightly written sigils. Mana poured from Felix at a rate he couldn't believe. He'd run out in seconds.

C'mon, you big dumb monster! Faster! He cast a tendril of Shadow Whip out into the very center of the array, letting it dangle in the wind that began to blow upward.

The earth quaked, and a trumpeting roar blasted from the hole, nearly bowling over the lightest of them. Gale-force winds erupted into the sky before a blur flashed up and out of the bore. Blue-white lines of power snagged against its form, latching onto it.

Yes! Felix grinned, before his Shadow Whip also caught at the beast's hide, and he was ripped off the ground. AHHHHHHHHHHHOLY SHIT!

What Dwells Beneath is level 38!

...

What Dwells Beneath is level 42!

Shadow Whip is level 34!

Shadow Whip is level 35!

The air itself tore at him as Felix held onto his dark lifeline. The creature sped upwards at a speed he could barely comprehend, and only his enhanced, monstrous Strength let him hang on.

What Dwells Beneath is level 43!

What Dwells Beneath is level 44!

His Mana pool dwindled faster and faster as he hung there. Felix gritted his teeth and made a calculated risk.

Reign of Vellus!

A burst of kinetic lightning sent Felix hurtling just high enough to make contact with the body of the Ravager King itself. Burning a sizable portion of the dense essence within him, his talons barely found purchase enough to let him climb up onto its back. Wedged between two immense scales, Felix had a moment to take a breath as the thing's ascent began to level out.

Voracious Eye!

Name: Ravager King

Type: Primordial

Level: 1

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

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

MP: ?????/?????

Lore: A newly born Primordial, arisen through the interference of dark power and nefarious Intent. It bears the hallmarks of the Unending Maw, though it is not the same creature.

Strength: It is very large, very fast, and very strong.

Weakness: ???

Level 1 Primordial? Great. Just great. Felix braced a hand against the scale before him, still terrified he'd fall off. This close he could see the maze of yellow-red arrays that littered the King, a mess of sigils that repeatedly attempted to flood his mind with aggression and hate. Flexing his Will, Felix crushed those impulses and tentatively peeked over the edge. Maybe that means its weaker than the Maw, but it's still got a five digit number for Health.

The Domain was far below, so far that he could almost see where they had started. They sat near the upper edge of the Domain, and it was as if they were looking out into a whole other world. Or a different part of the Continent, maybe. The Domain didn't appear to just end, but seemed like it kept going forever.

Yet within the confines of what he knew was the Domain, everything had been reduced to dust. Or perhaps ash. Just piles of bleached particles void of life or Mana. Felix paled himself, and clutched at the scales beneath him.

Work. Just work.

Wings the size of small ponds cracked like thunder as they whipped open, and the beast jerked upward. Felix, caught unawares, barely managed to prevent himself from smashing face first into its iron-hard scales.

"Vessel, you have come for Her?"

The voice was huge and rumbled through every piece of him that was touching the new Primordial. Felix looked up to find the Ravager King had somehow bent back upon its own spine and was looking at him. It twisted its neck further, spinning it entirely around before leveling a huge blue-green eye at him. Its face was lizard-like and angular, with massive fangs and a crest of thick, rigid scales across its forehead and neck.

It was a god damn dragon.

"Excuse me?" Felix shouted into the wind.

"If you have come for the Mother, you are too late. She is with Us, now," the Ravager King blinked half of its pupil-less orbs, the rust-red flesh smoothing over before reforming slightly out of place. "We are One."

"Great," Felix yelled, trying to stall for time. "That's just uh, excellent! I'm very happy for the both of you!"

"We have felt your steps upon our Domain, Vessel," the King intoned, and the rest of its body rotated to keep Felix in its sight. "Though We slept deep, We dreamed of such wondrous things beyond Our realm. One of them was of a piece of the Mother, the greatest of pieces, coming closer and closer to Us. To home."

Felix shuddered, and used the movement to hide the repositioning of his hands.

Deception is level 18!

"We thank you, Vessel, for carrying Her as you have. It is a great service you have done Us." The dragon's scales shone with yellow light between their joins. "Together, We have become something more than We ever were apart. Now, when We break free of this world, We shall show Our Father Our true worth."

Where are you? Felix's senses quested within the Ravager King as it spoke to him, born along the tides of the blue-white array he'd laid out before. A Seeking Array, they called them, a relatively simple array meant for finding certain objects. Deep below it delved, questing inside the mountainous dragon's Body. He just hoped it would work.

Something stirred inside the Ravager, and with a lurch of fear and hope, it felt deadly familiar.

"Do you wish to join Us as well, Vessel?" The Ravager King asked. "Your services cannot be underappreciated, not by Us. You may join Our grand being and survive to see Us reestablish the proper order in your world. You do not deserve the fate of lesser prey."

"Prey?" Felix asked, less than idly. "Who do you consider prey?"

"Everyone, Vessel. Everyone."

Felix blanched, and glanced over the side of the Ravager.

"Yes," it rumbled, a pleased, hungry mountain. "Them too. The first of many, thanks to my Father. And to you."

Great. Felix swallowed then grimaced as he felt a sharp tug at his Spirit, like a fish on a line. The Seeking Array send reverberations back toward him, squealing against his senses as a presence latched onto it.

It won't work...Felix Nevarre, a familiar voice whispered to him. It sounded thready and weak, a woman lost in the desert. It has...torn me to pieces...and nearly...consumed me. You cannot de-fang this beast...not...alone. Let me aid you.

He could feel the Maw's Will oppose his own, its devious Mind attempting to burrow into him like a beetle. All of his fears, his anger, his hate came rushing to the foreground, inflamed by its touch. Felix clamped down on all of those emotions, cutting the Maw's influence off like chopping off a limb. He felt it howl in pain.

I don't trust your help, Felix hissed. And I need it even less.

Without another second, Felix felt the Maw extend itself along his construct, a sharp, toothy spear aimed for his core. As far as attempts on him went, it was by far the weakest and slowest. Felix stopped its thrust with his Will alone, and the array began to collapse upon the Maw's remnant Mind.

Ravenous Tithe!

A red light so dense it was like liquid blood oozed from between the Ravager's scales. It shot directly into Felix, straight through his core and into his crackling flame. Power flared and burned, and the light grew agonizingly bright. Felix gasped.

You Have Consumed The Mind Of The Unending Maw.

Bloodline Progression is 100%

Stand By.