Unbound

Chapter Four Hundred And Ninety Two – 492

Chapter Four Hundred And Ninety Two – 492

"What the hell is all this?" Beef asked. He jostled into Felix, bumping off of his back like a wall. "Sorry. It's freaking me out."

"Is it a defensive array?" Vess asked. She too crowded close, pressing her shoulder against Felix and Isla's. "You said it recognized your Authority, Felix. Can you clear it?"

Authority, clear the fog, Felix ordered, but there was no response from the bundle of command within him. Authority?

"Of course not," he muttered. Whatever part of the tower that had been communicating with him had gone just as silent as the room they were in. "Seems like this is a feature, not a bug." He waved his hand through the fog. It was so thick it barely moved at all. "If it's an array, then its well hidden. Perception, even Manasight, only picks out water vapor...and the floor."

"The Grand Harmony is strangely muted...the fog is...woven of silence itself," Isla said, her voice catching with something Felix couldn't quite parse.

"Isla?"

The small blonde Chanter started before busing herself with wiping her hands on her skirts. "It is simply disturbing. The Grand Harmony should not be silenced."

Felix reached out with his Affinity, finding much the same as Isla. The room was utterly quiet and still. It felt like the Void in some ways, though not as complete. He could hear the faint rumble of his team, after all, not to mention the small stretch of pink stone at his feet. It was less a sound and more of a pressure or presence, a vibration very unlike living creatures. Inanimate objects didn't have a Spirit, not that Felix had ever seen, so while they were composed of Mana and Essence, they were also made up of a lot of other ill-defined "stuff" that didn't sound the same to his Affinity. Felix had noticed it a long time ago, when he'd been practicing with his Hunger. A chair or bedframe didn't contain much Essence at all, a decent amount of Mana, and a lot of nameless filler he'd never been able to identify.

Significance, maybe? It was a question he should have asked Zara when she was around, and Felix breathed sharply from his nose in annoyance. There was never enough time, and for all his vaunted memory, Felix was too distracted by...everything he had on his plate. He risked a look at Isla. Should I ask her?

Felix's breath turned to a snort. Pass.

In any case, the silence was almost complete. It made everything feel close and intimate, made a touch worse by how everyone was crowding him. Vess and Pit were both visible unnerved, their heads on a swivel as the fog swirled thicker and thicker around them. Hallow was impossible to read, as usual, and Beef...Beef's open book of a Spirit was relieved, of all things. "Beef, you good?"

"Huh? Oh yeah. Yeah." The Minotaur took a breath so big it made the leather straps on his breastplate creak lightly. "It was freaky at first but now it's like...nice. It feels like home, kinda."

Felix blinked. "Huh. You're right. It does."

The silence was like those late nights back on Earth, when everything was asleep and the quiet was so loud. It reminded him that on Earth Felix had never once heard the mysterious sounds of the Grand Harmony, even by accident. Is that because Earth doesn't have the System? Or does it mean...that Earth doesn't have the Grand Harmony, at all?

"Toa'ut? Lavix? Are you all feeling okay?" Felix asked.

The War Naga were vague shadows in the mist, towering well over Beef's head before one of them leaned in close. The familiar features of Toa'ut resolved from the fog. "We are well, but it is hard to hear you, even from so close. I would suggest we do not split up, my Lord. I...do not trust this murk."

Felix nodded "Let's take it one step at a time. Everyone, behind me. Weapons at the ready." If the place wasn't going to listen to his Authority, then who knows what the hell they could expect.

He led the way, stepping cautiously down the hallway. Felix focused, attempting to force his vision through the cloying fog in every way he could conceive. Nothing seemed to work. They walked slowly, cautious step after cautious step, but the end of hallway never materialized. Felix was starting to feel a little annoyed, and even Beef's contentment soured to the tune of anxiety. "No one's observation Skills are working, right?" he asked.

"Nope," Beef answered, a bit too quickly. Pit, Hallow, and the War Naga all answered in the negative.

"Elemental Eye is drawing nothing but the earth Mana directly beneath our feet. Everything else is" Vess swallowed. A woman who had faced slavering monstrosities without batting an eye, and fear came off her in waves that Felix couldn't help but sense. "Everything else is blank. Like there is nothing out there."

Nothing out...there. Hm. Maybe I'm doing this backwards. Felix, still walking, pushed his Affinity not outward, but inward. He pressed at his Manasight, sounding the depths of its pattern before focusing the vibrations back outward with the shape of his Intent. It rose, riding along his channels until the song of power welled at the back of his eyes, just as it always did.

Manasight.

The world immediately around him sprang into chaotic disarray as vaporous whorls of Mana became visible. At this point, Felix could always see the hidden world of Mana, but he had to focus to see in further detail. This was that, but amped up to eleven. And still, there was nothing beyond the small circle of his team, and even the long tails of the Naga faded as if slowing erased from existence itself.

"What are you doing?" Isla asked, irritation clear in her voice. "You're so close I can hear you fumbling around at the Grand Harmony like a courting farmer."

Felix raised an eyebrow at the comparison. In his opinion, he was pretty damn good at using the Chant to enhance and activate his Skills without the System. "I'm fumbling?"

Isla sighed, that irritation turning inward, much as his Affinity had done. "I won't say you're unskilled, Felix. We both know that would be a lie. Instead, you are simply not as refined as you can be. Accessing the songs of Creation encompasses so much more than simple Skills."

Hm. Zara had never said that, but it made sense. The Grand Harmony was supposed to be the underpinning of all things, everywhere. To have it be limited to Skill activation would be silly. "Are you offering to teach me, Isla?" he asked.

The Chanter picked an invisible speck of dust from her shoulder and flicked it away. "Perhaps. For a price."

Of course. "What price?"

"Nothing onerous, boy. Simply answering a few questions."

"What questions?" Felix asked, his mood souring again. Anything to dig up some secrets. This lady... "I've already agreed to tell you a bit about my time on Earth. What else could you need?"

The Chanter smiled. "It is less a matter of need, and more a matter of inquisitiveness. I wish to understand those that would save us from..." She looked around at the Naga, before emphasizing her words. "...the threats that are coming."

That wasn't entirely unreasonable, he had to admit. The woman drove Felix up the walls, but getting to know him wasn't the worst thing that could happen. And yet his stubborn nature reared its head. "I'll figure it out myself, thanks."

"Youaah!"

Whatever Isla was going to say to him was suddenly lost as she let out a high-pitched shriek and begin to tumble. Felix reached out, easily snagging her around the shoulder with his large, scaled hands. For a brief moment the Chanter clung to his arm, held out at a forty-five degree angle over a sudden, sheer drop. Felix only entertained the idea of dropping her a little.

He reeled her in.

"Siva's Grace. The stone simply stops," Vess said, kneeling at the edge of the pink marble. Ahead, the fog swirled and eddied in various directions like a landbound cloud, but through it they could finally see more than unrelenting mist. Trees rose from it, thin trunks filled with branches and thick, green leaves. Fruit hung from a few of them, white and red kelaar and purple galgan, a stonefruit the size of Felix's head. "Why is there a forest in a tower built at the floor of a lake?"

"I wish I knew," Felix said. Though he couldn't see the ground, Felix had seen the kelaar trees many times in his travels across Nagast. Based on the rough height and age of the trees, Felix estimated the drop around twenty feet. Nothing that would hurt any of them, even if they had fallen. A high pitched song wafted up from his core space, a lilting melody that smelled of growing things and deep, fertile loam. In a way Felix couldn't explain, the song drew his eye around the sudden forest, and he spotted more plants he recognized. "I'm more interested in why all of these plants are from the Foglands."

Aria of the Green Wilds is level 87!

"Food," Pit said with a warbling growl. "C'mon! I'm gonna eat every fruit I find!"

The tenku leaped outward, but let out a strangled gurgle as Felix snagged the back of his barding. Pit's wings flapped ineffectually twice, before Felix yanked him back to the ground. "Pit! No eating until I figure out what's going on here. This isn't just a forest under the lake, it's the Foglands. See?"

Felix gestured into the swirling mists, and slowly the forest around them was growing lighter, until he could make out the shape of a distant cliff, upon which hung a gargantuan tree that dwarfed the crag it clung upon.

"The Spirit Tree," Vess said with wonder. "How?"

"An illusion. It must be. I do not know this Spirit Tree you speak of, nor have I ventured into the Foglands, but this is all impossible." Isla pivoted, taking in as much as possible. "The exterior of this structure was quite large, immense even, but not so large as to contain a horizon within its walls."

"Illusion?" Beef said, just as a pale blue wisp of light landed on his finger. "I can feel this thing on my hand though. How's that work?"

"Careful," Felix warned. "Those things can be nasty."

"It's a lightning bug, Felix. I think I'm strong enough toOUCH!" Beef slammed his hands together, crushing the weak Body of the wisp. It flashed once, before going dark. "That thing bit me!"

"Wait til you feel a horde of them," Felix said, eyes panning the forest. "If this is an illusion, it's the most convincing one I've ever seen. Manasight is working again, but it's picking out the flows of life, earth, water, and shadow from the forest. I don't see how this is being made," Felix finished with a growl. He did not want to be stuck in a hallway for hours or days while they tried to figure it all out. "What is the point of this place?"

"Wherever the illusion is originating from, it is invasive. It is no coincidence that we see the Foglands, Felix. Zara told me you have a mental defense Skill. Do you sense an intrusion with it?" Isla asked.

Felix frowned. Of course. Why hadn't he thought of that? Now that Isla said it, it was obvious that he should check his Bastion of Will...and immediately seized upon a spiraled thread of Intent that was meddling with his thoughts. It attempted to get him to ignore his Bastion again, but Felix's powerful Mind grasped the Intent and followed it down, deep into his core space where he fell into the blue-green world of his mental defenses.

Bastion of Will!

He landed among the towers of his Bastion, the glassy stone shining in the bright midday sun. With a flex of Affinity, Intent, and Willpower, Felix flared the normally-passive defenses of his mental fortress. His thoughts clarified immediately, able to now trace that first thread of foreign Intent to a dense pattern of distraction that huddled close to the exterior curtain wall. Felix shifted it, pulling the bulk of the pattern away from his walls and holding it tight. His cleared thoughts pinged upon further threads, each vibrating to a subtle, intricate melody that led him all around his Bastion's interior. Each length of Intent he bundled into an ever-widening mass in his hands, but it never seemed to end, as each handful seemed to produce another somewhere else within the walls. However, the buzzing touch of the Intent sent a sober realization hurtling through Felix's consciousness.

"It's scraping my memories," he said as he returned to full consciousness. His team looked at him questioningly. "The tower slipped a bundle of Intent into my Bastion of Will, bypassing my defenses and accessing my Mind. All for this." He gestured to the forest ahead of them. "To fabricate the Foglands from my memories."

"Foul magic," Toa'ut rumbled.

"Cool," Beef and Pit said, in tandem.

"Did you see its source, boy?" Isla asked.

"No, but I can do this," Felix said, before closing his eyes in concentration. Mana and Essence flooded his Bastion, drawing out the gorgeous song of its pattern from the Skill. He pressed his Affinity to find the connections still lingering within, while his Intent flared his mental defenses to their utmost. The Skill Array sang, spinning like a top as several Skills engaged all at once.

Bastion of Will is level 91!

Skein of Fate is level 48!

Like the slamming of a door, the illusion of fog and forest vanished with a puff of illusory air, the hall returning to it's pink marble glory. Felix panted. The effort to exercise the invasive touch of the working had tired him out more than fighting Fathom spawn for hours...but he wasn't done.

"It's gone," Beef said in wonder. He reached out and touched the wall that they was only a few feet ahead. "That was so real."

"Felix, there is something else," Isla warned. "I hear it"

"I know," he grunted. "There."

Among the pillars, those that glowed with a soft aquamarine light, there twined dozens of those threads of Intent. Felix could hear an atonal buzzing form them all, but it was their pattern more than their noise that drew his attention. They twisted and tangled like waves of sound turned inward on each other, and were emanating from the pillars themselves.

Felix strode up to the nearest one. He could smash them all with ease, but he had no clue just how much they were supporting the ceiling. Bringing a tower down onto their own heads wasn't something Felix had any desire to experience, so he did the next easiest option. He grasped the pillar and reached outward among the tangling threads of Intent with his own, tracing it from one pillar to the next. Then again, and again, over and over until Felix was straining to grasp the gossamer thin threads at all.

Chthonic Tribute!

Intent burned like a lit fuse, sparking back toward Felix in a wave of combusting smoke. A slurry of Mana and Essence poured into Felix, diving through the base of his skull and directly into his core space. All at once, the pillars went dark.

"Look," Vess called out. At the far end of the corridor, now only a short distance away, was a set of spiral staircases that led up and down. "The illusions are fully broken."

"Yeah," Felix panted, ignoring the very interested look in Isla's eyes. "The whole room was a big illusion array."

"But why?" Vess asked.

Ephemeral Evocation is level 2!

Ephemeral Evocation is level 3!

Target's Power Has Been Fully Digested!

You Have Gained A Memory!

Would You Like To View Or Save?

Felix licked his lips. "Let's see if I can find out."