Unbound

Chapter Three Hundred And Fifty Two - 352

Chapter Three Hundred And Fifty Two - 352

There was a terrible, stomach churning lurch before Felix's leading foot found solid ground. Well. Solid-ish.

He looked around, that lurch having transformed into a nauseating twist. All was a blank darkness, an infinite black in every direction. His feet stood on something, but there was nothing there, just an echo of an echo of what ground may have been. Pit trundled in after him, his armored head pivoting in all directions as he parted the thick, liquid-smoke of the gate. He chirped, the sound deadened.

We return.

"Yeah," Felix said with a grimace. "Back in the Void. Or close enough."

Behind them, the Shadowgate was a patch of darkness over the infinite Void; black on black, invisible to normal eyes. To his Manasight and Affinity, it was a riot of elemental Mana tendrils, each one interwoven into the form of a massive circle. As his friends and team disgorged from the smoky dark, ripples of power spread outward, flashing up and around them like lightning and just as quick. Zara was among the first to stride out, and her carefully controlled expression slackened with wonder.

"Astounding. Do you see this, Felix?" She gestured up around them. "A protective sheathing surrounds us...extending from the gate toward our destination."

Felix could see it, barely. It danced in the Void, hidden from his Manasight by the dark. His Affinity, however, could hear it plain as day though he had thought it was all coming from the Shadowgate. It was, in a sense, but the threads of power weaving around them were those same connections he'd had to sacrifice a portion of his significance to fuel. A corridor was formed, extending into the distance; toward the other gate, he had to assume.

The others filed out, every one of them stumbling on entry as if the ground were thickened mud. Unlike Zara, Pit, or Felix, everyone else struggled with their footing and gaped at the blank darkness around them. All of which slowed down the procession a great deal, forcing Felix to start pulling folks forward so that the gate wasn't clogged up. Once through, the sixteen ward-bearers hustled to the edges of the group, several falling in their haste, but all of them eager to do their job. Felix engaged the array just as the last of their company entered the gate; the process tugged a good chunk of Mana from his cores, which was taxing but more than manageable. A bright pattern of sigaldry and glyphs expanded beneath their feet and above their heads, flashing into existence with flares of blue-white and red-gold before subsiding to a smoldering, nigh-invisible silver.

A pressure descended, not unlike the pressure of the Spirit Tree but more intimate. Instead of a heavy mattress atop their shoulders, it was a cloak that hugged their Aspects tightly, pulling everything inward.

Hopefully it's enough to avoid detection by the worst of the voidbeasts.

"What now?" Alister asked. His blue and silver battlerobes were bright against the Void.

"Now we walk," Harn grunted.

"Walk? In this?" Atar said. He could barely lift his legs, exactly as if he were wading through knee-high water or mud. "We'll not make it far, not at any true speed."

"Is it supposed to be like this?" Evie asked. "Seems bad for transportin' anythin' at a reasonable pace."

"The Shadowgate is providing a stream of power, holding the path while we are within and requiring no excess effort on our part," she said. "The footing might not be ideal, but this...this is superior to the Dark Passages scattered around the Continent."

"You made a path, last time we were here," Darius pointed out. "Can't you do that again?"

Zara had explained to Felix her trick, what she had done during their jaunts through liminal space. She shook her head. "I am still not at my strongest, and a journey such as this would beggar me of what little strength remains."

Vess, Atar, Alister, and, surprisingly, Darius looked concerned at that admission. Evie and Harn, however, seemed to hone in on it.

"You're too weak? Why'd you even come?" the chainfighter asked. "Coulda stayed back in your shiny new house."

"I've a duty, Miss Aren. We all do, but I more than most. I'll see it through, to the end."

Felix caught Darius nodding in approval. "Either way, we're here now. And I'll not have us move so slowly."

"Can you do as Zara did?" Vess asked. "Forge a path?"

"Should be able to," Felix said. "Got the Mana for it, but...there's something else about this place." Felix could feel it now that he'd been within the gate for so long. Shapes and colors flashed at the edges of his senses. He focused on them, feeding them his Mana and even a measure of Essence, guiding himself along the strands of connection and significance that threaded the corridor between gates. And then, a result.

Sympathetic Connection Detected!

Skill Extant!

Do You Wish To Proceed?

Y/N

For all that the message made no sense, Felix could feel its meaning. Intent, baked into the System message, enough that he answered 'yes' without questioning it. Abruptly, the humming darkness transformed itself. Matter erupted from nothing, stones beneath their feet and soil and weeds, then thick trees with roughened bark and wide, grasping branches. It drew on Felix's cores, and on his Intent, but mostly it drew on a particular Skill. Connections swelled and firmed, until the path was worn, ancient stone pavers in a wild wood. Around them, further, an entire world unfolded. Black nothing turned to rolling hills of green grasses and patches of more dark forest, while above the sky lightened to a robin's egg blue. Strands of mutlicolored light streaked across the heavens, moving from a distant spot on the horizon, where sat a fortress of dark stone.

It was his Bastion of Will.

Pit perked up, looking to Felix with an excited glimmer in his eye. What's this?

I'm not really sure, bud.

"Noctis' tits," Evie said, staring around her. "Did we arrive already?"

"No, this is just a...reflection," Felix said.

"Of what?" Zara asked.

"Is that a castle?" Atar said, shielding his eyes against the midday sun. "Is that the sun?"

"Something like that." Felix gestured down the weed-strewn path. "Let's get moving. We should all be able to keep a quick pace now."

And so they did. Felix was able to avoid too many questions by taking the lead and plunging down the wooded causeway, his Strength and Endurance matched by no one, no matter how they tried. He worried, at first, that his Bastion would make their array meaningless, but he could still feel the effect of the array. The environment-shift seemed almost like it was...meant to happen. The place where his Intent and Skill had slotted into the gate's corridor had felt purposeful. Was this what the ancient Nym did when they travelled? Someone would envision a world for them to race across?

Were they really in his Bastion?

That last bit was something he thought about a lot, though he didn't have a way to test it without stopping everyone and wasting more time. Ultimately it wasn't important, except to satisfy his curiosity, and Felix let the urge flow over him. Away. He focused instead on keeping everyone going; on getting out.

They ran for hours.

The forest was unending, and though the terrain immediately around them altered, his view of his Bastion fortress never varied. Always it was just over a hill, the pentagonal tower in its center blazing with strand of light. The forest thickened and thinned, but it never went away completely, not even as they appeared to approach the bitter green sea that abutted his fortress. It made the world feel a bit like a treadmill, and it grated at Felix's nerves. Once or twice, he felt rumbling along his Bastion, like something scratching at a door. Each time it faded in moments, and holding it all required too much of his focus to pay it much mind. After the sixth hour, that changed.

"Something feels...off," Zara said. She labored beside him, keeping up with his light pace he'd adopted after the first few hours. Felix could have left them behind easily, but that defeated the purpose of bringing them in the first place. Zara gestured to the trees on their right. "There's movement, in the trees."

None of them slowed down, but Felix practically heard a dozen pairs of eyes pivot toward the thickened copse as they passed. Observation Skills fired off, some exuding streams of Mana and some only singing in Felix's earsa new development, that. The scratching he had felt earlier intensified, almost growling against the fabric of his Bastion before it went suddenly slack. Moments later, an Arclight mage shouted.

"Monster!"

Writhing shapes moved through the woods, mostly obscured by the dense trunks and greenery. But Felix didn't need his Voracious Eye or even to see their whole bodies to identify themthe flash of mottled grey tendrils and swooping, squid-like movements told Felix all he needed to know.

"Tenebrils," he said in a hiss. "Swarm hunters, but they're cowards." He raised his voice. "We have nothing to fear from them unless they get you alone. Don't get separated and we'll be fine. Let's keep going."

"You heard the Autarch! Move, double-time!" Darius bellowed. The company, Henaari, Legion, and Frost Giants startled; Felix was certain most of them didn't realized they'd stopped to stare. They all ran on.

Felix kept the Tenebrils in sight as he ran ahead of the rest, Evie, Vess, and Harn close behind him. The mindless balls of hunger and barbed tentacles wafted through the trees, moving at a remarkable clip but otherwise not doing anything overtly threatening.

"They...they don't seem like much," Evie panted. Her Agility was remarkable but her Endurance had always been on the low side. "Why don't we clean them up and move on?"

"Because Tenebrils are rarely alone," Felix said. Pit growled. "Worse things follow in their wake. And I'd rather have them as bait than be on the hook myself."

"Smart," Harn grunted. His armor moved soundlessly, the many tiny plates of it gliding across one another as if greased. "Little fish to distract the big ones."

"Big fish..." Vess considered the flitting shapes, still at least a football field length away from them all. "What sort of predators to such creatures have?"

"I'm hoping you don't find out," Felix said with conviction. A clamor shook his Bastion, something he felt in his chest more than around himself. "But I don't think we'll be so lucky."

A scream ripped across the idyllic forest, several tones all jumbled together into one enormous voice. From the left and cutting across their path came a nightmarish serpent clad in dusk-colored scales and festooned with spiny fins that arced like sails. These fins cut through trees and stone alike, beyond razor sharp, as it undulated at the swarm of distant Tenebrils.

"Halt!" Darius shouted, barely stopping the company from marching right into a whipping fin bigger than a Frost Giant. The creature, a nochtnatter, was absolutely massive and it plowed a terrible furrow through Felix's Bastion.

And more were coming.

"Run!" Felix shouted, just as their right exploded into movement. Six more hundred-foot long serpents burst from the depths of the forest, taking wild passage toward their Company and the Tenebrils beyond. Mouths the size of a mini-van hinged open, revealing teeth like swords and multiple lashing tongues. "No!"

Felix shouted at his team, but it was too late. Fireballs and force pillars, ice chains and air spears all exploded against the voidbeasts, not to mention the crackles of lightning and various weapon Skills that skittered off their hide. All around them, the Bastion quaked, while Felix could hear the music that made it all begin to shudder and fail.

"It's unraveling!" Zara shouted. She sang, full-throated and furious, conjuring walls of green-blue water out of nothing that severed two of the nochnatters' heads. "Felix!"

"I know! I can feel it!" he bellowed back. "Stop fighting! Run!"

The order was taken up, his words echoed frantically, and everyone took off at a manic sprint. The aquamarine walls failed seconds later, those massive void serpents tearing across where the company just stood. Bloodied and apparently smart enough to know why, the nochtnatters chased after.

"They've pierced the sheath," Zara said through her gasping breaths. She held a hand to her side, just under her shortribs, but she ran with the relentless form of an Olympic sprinter. "More will come, and fast."

"What do we do?" Felix asked, casting his senses as wide as he dared. He could have pushed further but to do so would have blanked out his present eyesight; what he felt was enough. Hundreds of voidbeasts were pouring in, some from the entry the Tenebrils had made and others from the gaping abscess torn by the nochtnatters. Movement and his own hectic hurry made identifying which kind of voidbeast difficult, but Felix didn't doubt all of them would be deadly under the right circumstances.

"All we can do is reach the end. Any further attacks against them will unravel this place you've constructed for us," she said through her teeth. "And could end up hurling us into the Void itself."

Great. Felix could already feel the strain against the array he was holding, not to mention the Bastion all around him. Right now, he could feel those tears in the sheath like holes in a piece of paper; only his Will was holding them together, keeping them from spreading. More presences ripped through the breaches, drawn as much by their kin as the prospect of sustenance. They attacked one another as often as not, but there were too many for that to matter much. Thousands now, all bearing down on them.

"We're not gonna have much choice!" Alister shouted over the roar of beasts and clatter of armor. The woods were flooding with dark shapes. "Look!"

Ahead of them was an absolute frenzy of void flesh. Scales, rubbery skin, and appendages he'd never before seen roiled through a riotous pile of thrashing limbs and fangs. Felix could feel the Bastion tear even further, weakening ahead of them like water on paperas if one wrong step would shatter his Bastion entirely.

The company couldn't afford to stop. Monsters chased them from all sides, hemming in their path. Felix growled and Pit joined him, their bond burning bright.

"Enough!"

Cardinal Flame!

Red-gold fire ignited across the ancient causeway and ear-piercing screams shook the daylight air. Sigils of flame, earth, and force were inscribed in the air, as crude an array as Felix had ever made. But it worked. Flames speared from them and into the ground, burning so hot, that several trees were turned to charcoal in a blink. Explosions of molten earth followed, rendering Void flesh into brilliant explosions of multi-colored Mana. Darker red flames followed his, ripping into scales and skin, while silver spears chased after them. Bursts of air Mana fueled the flames, enhancing their hungry mouths as it tore a hole in the monstrous horde.

Adamant Discord!

Lines of connection blazed to life in Felix's hands and he hurled them aside. Lightning slithered like twin whips in his hands, and the corpses and thrashing bodies of the voidbeasts were tossed from their path. He felt his Mind and Body strain, though his Spirit felt less of it as he held back monsters and onto his Bastion at the same time. Veins protruded from his neck like steel cables, his arms tensed as if made of steel. Thankfully, they knew what to do.

"Advance!" Darius hollered, just as Harn and Vess and Zara all said the same. The company ran on, bursting anew with desperate speed as two nochtnatters grew ever closer to their rearguard. Too close. Teeth flashed, just barely missing the Frost Giant's packs.

"RAHH! Tua ra falla!" one of the Frost Giants bellowed, turning on the nearest serpent with his huge axes made of ice and stone. He brought it down in a crescent arc, its impact enough to slam the void serpent's body into the earth and it's length thrashing behind it. Hundreds of voidbeasts fell to its sharpened fins and scales, but the giant was thrown as well...straight into the hungry horde.

No! Felix tried to spare the strength to stop it, but it was too late. The voidbeasts were on him in a blink, splattering the devastated forest with dark blue blood. Goddamn it!

Onward, until they approached a cliff. The briny, acidic scent of the sea assaulted their noses, now suddenly ahead of them. Darius didn't stop, merely maneuvered down the cliff face, still following the slab-stone path they had been set upon. As Felix ran at the center of the pack, hurling off monstrosities as he did so, by the time he came to the cliff it was clear where they had to go.

"The exit gate," he said. An orb of shadow hovered atop a chain of tiny jagged islands, each one ten to fifteen feet away from each other. The islands were more like exposed roots of stone, and they were no bigger than twenty feet wide, not nearly enough to hold everyone at all times. Darius and the others led folks to the water's edge, where the acid sea hissed against the sands. "Hold on!"

Stone Shaping!

Sand and raw stone ripped up from the water, crude bridges between islands. The moment they came into existence, his people leaped atop them, racing for their lives. Felix followed after while Pit took to the sky.

Wingblades and Frost Spears lanced into the voidbeast horde, as did the attacks of his friends. Their magic was deteriorating the strange connection to his Bastion, but Felix felt that was inevitable at that point. Already he could see darkness devouring the sky and distant hills, could feel the green leached into nothing, like an ache in his heart. Felix held onto his Bastion with everything he had, but it was sand through his fingers, slipping inexorably into the Void.

Someone shouted, but Felix was too focused on the beasts and his Bastion to know what was said. Pit screeched and dove, heading for the Shadowgate, and Felix realized that almost everyone had made it through. Finally.

The Bastion was awash in monstrosities, so many that the beach was a graveyard of hideous corpses and gnashing teeth.

We're through! Pit sent to him, but his voice was distant and growing further away. Felix!

"Then there's no more reason to hold back," he said.

Cardinal Flame!

Adamant Discord!

Rain of Cataclysm!

Fire and lightning shook through the skies as his Bastion truly failed, ripping across hundreds of voidbeasts as they clawed for him and sending them all hurtling backward beneath plumes of incandescent flame. From above, Mana coalesced into a storm, unleashing a deluge of virulently green power onto the beasts. Acid rain tore through them, each sizzling drop a bullet from the sky.

Notifications he'd been suppressing flashed by him. One hundred, three hundred, seven hundred...twenty-five hundred voidbeasts killed. XP surged through his core space, pushing him ever closer to that new level, but Felix didn't care. He laid about himself with power until nothing remained, until only a tiny sand spit existed beneath his feet within the unceasing, infinite Void.

Dead. Everything's dead. He took a strained step backward, more hurt by holding the path than the fight. Good. I

A caterwauling cry shook the Void, and sent a thrill of terror through Felix. It was enormous, a mountainous sound that quivered the burning flesh all around him like an earthquake. A primal, furious Need assaulted his Mind, and Felix gasped in recognition. He'd lingered too long, used too much power without his protection array.

The Whalemaw had sensed him.

What was worse, that Need he felt was an echo. The Whalemaw desired his power...and the feeling was mutual.

Cutting off the sensation with his Willpower, Felix turned and leaped through the Shadowgate.