Unbound

Chapter Four Hundred And Fourteen - 414

Chapter Four Hundred And Fourteen - 414

Suspended within Felix's Spirit, Pit could only watch as Felix fought the red-shelled Haim. Points of light danced before Pit's eyesaccess to Felix's sensesand he let out outraged squawks as bursts of light Mana broke over his Companion. Over and over again. The sigaldry around them kept Felix hemmed in, flaring with caustic radiance each time he stepped too close. Felix was hurt and bleeding, but so was Haim. The protection the Paladins held was failing.

A notification tried to pop into view, but Pit dismissed it, unread. He knew what it said, what it wanted, but it wasn't the time. He had to focus on his friend. As he watched, Felix flowed forward, flipping over a spear of blinding light, and struck hard. Haim fell back, breastplate dented and blood exploding from his mouth. Pit trilled in wrathful joy.

Haim shouted something heated and bitter, spitting more blood with each word. From below, a sunset-glow manifested as a beam ripped up through Felix, throwing him off of his Cloudstep and into the sigil cage. Felix screamed and his Spirit shook. Pit didn't hesitate.

Convergence!

A flash of blinding light forced Haim to throw up his arms, shielding his face as Pit manifested in the outside world once more. More importantly, the displacement set Pit just outside the restricting cage of golden sigils, and he dropped before either the High Judiciar or Felix could react. His damaged wings left a trail of blood and feathers, but they were enough to allow Flight to guide him down.

Straight into the Primordial.

Poisonfire!

Wingblade!

Frost Spear!

All of his offensive Skills activated one after the other as he descended like a burning comet of virulent fire. The Primordial's strange body parted before his onslaught, burning and freezing and sliced open in turns, and Pit punched down into its heart. His huge size was finally an advantage as the bone and scale fought back, claws and splintered ribs tired to tear at him. Pain lanced across his shredded wings, and lines of blood and torn skin and fur decorated those parts of himself that were not armored, but the Master Tier barding proved its worth. Javelins of immense strength hit and left deep gouges in the metal, but it held.

Rake!

Bite!

Rake is level 73!

Bite is level 70!

Poisonfire is level 72!

He tore deeper and deeper, digging for his goal while desiccating dust tried to wither his limbs and lungs. Pit's connection to Felix staved off the worse of its effects, but the flesh curse seeped into him regardless. He felt his breath shorten, even imagined he could feel his organs clenching in distress, but he didn't care. Instead Pit summoned all of his Mana and Stamina into furious attacks, diving further and spreading Poisonfire with every passing moment.

Pit! Felix sent along their bond. Get outta there!

The tenku ignored his friend; Felix meant well, but he was overly protective. Pit knew that sometimes he must fight, even when it was dangerous, even when it drove his Companion to fear.

He kept digging, until he encountered the edge of the bronze sword and changed angles. Deeper! Must go deeper!

Bones shattered and dust swirled, all of it attempting to close against Pit like the nightmare throat of the Maw. Then he saw it: a pulsing, fleshy sac bigger than Pit's entire body, wingspan included. It was pierced directly by the immense bronze sword, pinning it to the tiled floor, almost rooted to it by veins of throbbing, scaled flesh.

The Primordial reacted by attacking him with everything it had. Tides of bone and snapping whips of dusty ligaments thrashed into Pit, bashing him into the ground before wrapping around his broken wings. Pit shrieked in agony as the ligaments tightened, pulling at the fine bones in his wings and ripping free feathers and flesh with clawed tendrils.

Wingblade!

Frost Spear!

Poisonfire!

The green, poisonous flames along Pit's body flared up, burning at the Primordial while ice and air exploded outward, over and over.

Wingblade is level 74!

Frost Spear is level 74!

The Primordial's assault wasn't stopped, or even paused much, but it severed at least a few of the restraining tendrils. Pit struggled forward, his vision flickering as his Health dropped lower and lower. The curse was settling into him, and he felt dry and dusted, each inhalation a throatful of glass shards. But he wouldn't stop.

With the quivering edge of his beak, he reached the Primordial's core. It throbbed grotesquely, and Pit took a single, final breath. Felix...I'll save you.

He jabbed his sharp beak forward, stabbing into the core and accessing his ignored notifications. Buzzing Dissonance tore from the fleshy core, while within him a vibrant, wild Harmony rose as if in opposition.

Your First Evolution Is Ready!

Do You Wish To Access It?

Y/N

Yes!

Congratulations!

You Have Accessed Your First Evolution!

Path Detected!

You Walk The Path Of The Guardian Beast!

Adjusting Evolution Choices...

Bone spurs and blade-edged ligament-lashes stabbed and slashed at Pit, but the worst was the Mind-numbing Dissonance that blasted outward from the Primordial's core. Pit felt his blood dry up, his muscles tear and Poisonfire die out. It was killing him, but he refused to stop. But as the notifications began to pile up, each brought with it a burst of Harmonic potency that cut through the Dissonance, layer by layer.

Choose One Of The Following!

Wardenwing Tenku

Savageclaw Tenku

Frostspire Tenku

All of a sudden, Beef's head was clear. He dove aside, barely dodging the overhand strike from a glowing Golem, before fixing his eyes beyond his enemies. The Primordial had stopped swelling and clawing outward, and instead was folding against itself somehow. Something was happening, but he couldn't say what, only that the Primordial's Willpower had pulled back. It was more than enough for Beef, though.

"Hallow Rise!" Beef shouted, letting loose the majority of his Mana. Blackened green lines of vapor shot out of his channels and into the nearest Dustwights around him. Their grotesque faces slackened before the dark light within their corpses was forcefully replaced by Hallow's consciousness, and their eyes shone green. "Attack!"

Close as they were, Hallow could almost read Beef's Mind, but that was unnecessary. All of his available Risenthirty of them nowrushed forward, flowing around the Golem and engaging instead with the Paladins just beyond his reach. Inscriptionists fell, blindsided by his undead horde.

"Seismic Shatter!" Beef bellowed, and the barest thread of his Mana and thick streamers of Stamina poured outward into a conical blast. Earth Mana rioted, the tiles beneath their feet shattering, launching upward, and raising a cloud of obscuring dust. The Nightfall Golem charged right through it, unharmed, but when the sunset magic of its Body smashed into Beef's position...it hit nothing but bare ground.

"Ground Pound!"

Beef soared through the air, leaping fully clear of the Golem and brandishing his great maul. He landed, maul first, atop a Paladin. Armor screeched and tore, and the man didn't get up. Beef stood, just outside the pitched battle between Risen and Paladins. The Golem was turning around, but while its attacks were lightning quick, its Body wasn't.

"Make a hole!" he shouted. The Risen jerked aside, puppets on strings, shoving the Paladins aside with brute Strength, and opened a pathway to center of their operation. A many-sided box of golden light hovered in mid-air, surrounded by flickering sigils and filled with a swirling brilliance. Beef couldn't look directly at it, so he didn't.

God I hope this works!

He reached back and, with all of his mighty Strength, hurled his maul through the air.

Pit! Hold on!

Pain lanced upward from far below, and it was all Felix could do to contain his fear and rage. Pit was down there, in the twisting mass of Primordial, dying slowly by ten thousand cuts. He could see his Health dropping second by second, but Felix couldn't get away from Haim let alone the sigaldry cage that restricted his movements.

"The Pathless wants you dead," Haim said through gritted teeth. Blood poured down the man's face, a fact that pleased Felix. Less pleasing was the glowing blade that hovered inches above Felix's throat, held at bay by Felix's own oversized sword. They both hung in mid-air still, Felix atop his Cloudstep and Haim hovering among the restrictive golden glyphs. "Glory be to God, for His wisdom is unending."

"Says I'm dangerous, huh?" Felix grunted, pushing back at the High Justiciar. The muscles in his arms were cramping, the fissures in his Body growing wider with each passing second. He had a crazy amount of Strength, but his damaged Journeyman Body wouldn't let him apply the full effect of his stats. Soon he feared that even blocking Haim's swordplay would prove impossible. "Did, unf, did he mention why?"

"The Pathless does not answer to you, heretic," Haim said, before vocalizing another Skill. A rippling edge was applied to his sword, and Felix's own blade began to rattle from its effect. "You must only obey and perish."

Felix's Perception tingled, stabbing at his Mind with sudden warning. Beyond Haim's shoulder, he could see Beef and his Risen fighting the Inscriptionists. Felix smiled. "You aren't curious? I mean...you're retrieving Unbound." Felix shoved, hard, forcing the Paladin back by an inch or two. "I'd have thought...you'd want to bring in two Unbound."

Haim flinched, his yellow eyes widening. "Two?" he gasped, just as the world was bathed in gold.

A cataclysmic explosion rocked the Tomb, releasing not fire or force, but a blastwave of violent light. Haim screamed, the golden light resonating painfully, and Felix surged forward.

Cloudstep!

Kicking off a new platform, Felix swung as hard as he could with his Fang. Haim was sent flying backward without resistance, his Body still convulsing with that writhing light, and Felix quickly dismissed his Cloudstep. He dropped.

Pit! he sent along their bond. I'm coming!

Adamant Discord!

Lightning flared all around Felix as he descended faster than he'd ever moved in his life. He shoved his Blade of the Fang downward, spinning it as he accelerated. He hit the hole Pit had made in the Primordial's Body, and he ripped through the half-healed opening.

"Get out of my way!" he screamed into the beast.

The connection between him and the Primordial was one of the strongest he'd ever utilized, turning from ephemeral to waist-thick steel cable in an eyeblink. Mana discharged from the spell along that tightening connection as he pulled, sending charring blasts of blue-white lightning outward into the abomination's bone-flesh. The wild cacophony of Harmony of the outside world faded, replaced by the overwhelming noise of Dissonance as he drilled deeper. Bits of the Primordial fought back, but Felix imbued the Blade with Corrosive Strike. Where the lightning of Adamant Discord or his Strength failed, the acidic Skill sliced through weakened bone.

And then he was through.

Felix landed atop bare ground in an expanding ring of crackling lightning and riotous thunder. He scanned the area, quickly finding his friend. Pit was bound to the ground, wrapped in tendrils of leathery flesh and a cage of bone that was trying and failing to enclose him entirely. Most surprising, however, was the constant wave of System harmonics that was blasting from Pit's core, disrupting the Dissonance all around them.

He quickly attempted to pull his friend back into his Spirit, but the Convergence failed. Something was blocking it. Felix rushed to Pit's side, pushing his senses toward his friend and gathering the bare edge of the circumstances. Interference. The Primordial's core just inches away, and Pit's attempts to Evolve...Felix swallowed, panicking for a moment before ripping a section of bone cage away from his friend. He placed his hands on his bloody back, and focused.

Convergence!

The resistance was there, but with physical touch it was easier to brute force. Pit vanished in a flash of light. The cage of bone and ligaments collapsed down, but soon moved to cover the Primordial's throbbing core instead.

Pit! he sent, but all he received in return were a strained series of chirps and trilling growls. His friend's Health was still dropping for some reason, and the struggles were becoming weaker and weaker. Notifications blipped and vanished before Felix's eyes, snippets of what Pit was seeing.

WARNING!

Primordial Detected!

Primordial Of Withering Dust Has Interrupted

ERROR, Evolution Interrupted By Primordial Being!

Choice Cannot Be Verified!

Shit, no. Felix's Mind raced, trying to come up with a solution. He'd been told Pit was likely on the cusp of his Evolution, but to happen now? I have to destroy this thing's core.

Felix stowed his giant sword and grasped the layers of bone that had crawled atop the throbbing core. With a grunt of exertion, he tore them off, piece by piece, only to have them regrow. Javelins of ribs and bindings of leathery flesh tried to jab at him, restrain his movements and kill him, but Felix hunkered low, taking blow after blow to his wide back as he focused. He went faster, cracking bone and tearing open his fingers, until the barest hint of core flesh was visible. Felix dug his fingers into the unpleasantly spongy surface, and activated his Chthonic Tribute.

Chthonic Tribute Failed.

What? Felix bared his teeth in frustration. A jagged femur jabbed him in the leg, shattering against his Armored Skin, but followed by dozens of others. Don't do this to me! Eat the damn thing! Chthonic Tribute!

Chthonic Tribute Failed.

His Hunger fought against him, railing at the idea of absorbing anything else. CANNOT TAKE. WILL NOT.

"You stupid! What good are you then?!" Felix raged. He could feel the potency of the Primordial all around him, but most of all beneath his bloody fingertips. It was far greater than the Ravager King ever was, closer to the might of the Whalemaw. Only, the Will behind the Primordial of Withering Dust was chaotic and incoherent. Felix could even feel an echo of those words it had sent to him, reverberating through the wild mess of its disgusting Body.

THE MADNESS MUST END.

I CANNOT CONTROL THE CURSE, BUT YOU CAN TERMINATE IT.

Understanding flashed through Felix like a bolt of lightning.

The flesh curse isn't letting it die, he realized. It was keeping its Body alive, viable, despite being trapped here for Ages and for wanting nothing so much as death. But...isn't the flesh curse part of its nature? All Primordials have it, according to everyone I've spoken to. Unite the Lost might do it, but it'd drain every ounce of significance I have to do it. And that...would that kill me? Or just fuck me up real bad?

Within the Dissonance that buzzed against his Affinity, and that resonance of its sane Will among the insanity of the flesh curse, Felix saw something else. No more than a glimmer, but with his hand atop the Primordial's core he could trace it. Deep, deep down, he felt a familiar sort of energy. Felix's Mind leaped, darting between ideas with reckless abandon, forming a shaky hypothesis that burned brighter the longer he considered it.

That can't be right. Can it? Felix grimaced, the Primordial's attacks against him now drawing blood. Only one way to find out.

Manasight.

Felix screamed as his eyes burned, literally catching into blue flame as he perceived the sea of chaotic, unfathomable energies all around him. Dissonance and Harmony waged war against one another, clashing and smashing in an outsized display that reminded him of his own dual cores. In the breach, multi-colored glyphs danced among them all, ever-changing in shape and texture. Patterns folded and unfolded as images seared themselves into his eyes.

A piece of the Divine. A Primordial's corpse. Their cloaks were tossed aside and though it was barely a fragment of their true potency, reality itself was buckling under the pressure.

Felix's eyesight burned away, blackness consuming his vision. But Manasight never relied on his eyes, despite its name. He could smell the colors of Mana, of chaos, hear the stink of rotting death and pungent floral decay of brilliant light.

The connection was there, hidden among the confluence of opposing forces, all but invisible. A blazing cable the size of continents, drawn taut between the Primordial of Withering Dust and the far distant sky. A similarity he cannot deny, and a pattern that repeated itself into infinity, echoed all around them by the now-faded golden sigaldry.

A piece of the Primordial, the fragment that animated its undead Body, echoed the strains of the Regalia itself. A dire shard of the Divine, buried deep within the Primordial's being.

The flesh curse is Divine, Felix realized. That's how the Pathless was going to absorb its power. And it's how I neutralized the curse too...because I have a fragment of the Divine in me.

Yet with that realization came a sudden and overwhelming terror. Sound vanished and his vision was miraculously restored, the darkness replaced by a burnt and blackened sky holding all six moons. Monstrous figures strode the heavens, chained to it by incomprehensible formations that boiled the stars. All at once, their vast gazes turned downward.

To him.