Unbound

Chapter Three Hundred And Forty – 340

Chapter Three Hundred And Forty – 340

Felix stepped over the glimmering lines of his Seal, trailing wisps of swirling Mana vapor as he approached the smoldering second chamber. It didn't feel like anything, though Karys acted as if a solid wall prevented him from advancing. He flexed his Will and Intent, and the armored Paragon took a surprised step forward before regaining his equilibrium. They stepped into the dark together.

It wasn't complete dark, though aside from the faint Mana vapor wafting from the array beneath his feet, it was as dark as he'd ever seen it on the Continent. His Manasight could pick out the ambient Mana in the air and earth with relative ease, only in the Temple had he encountered places that seemed utterly devoid of it. Or warded against my sight, he thought. The stones are too advanced to be touched by my Stone Shaping, why wouldn't the Mana be affected too? The questions is, why? To keep others from seeing details of the workings? It was a conscious choice, he had to assume. There was too much artistry in the Temple for it to be anything else.

So they followed the glimmering lines of sigaldry into the room, his Perception gleaning what it could from the limited light source. The chamber was just as large as the last one, and he walked for about thirty feet before encountering a complicated glyph in a radial arrangement of sigils. More lines of inscription extended outward, like the spokes of a wheel, pushing toward the unseen edges of the room. Each line described concepts Felix was starting to grasp. Simple, elemental markings for fire, ice, air, light, shadow, and so on all tangled with sigils he still could not identify. All of the work he'd done with Hector and the books he'd read and the intrinsic knowledge granted by the Skill itself, none of it gave him even a hint at what the array was doing.

Bracing himself, Felix stepped into the central glyph. Immediately a window appeared.

Greetings Autarch.

The Second Chamber Is Available.

Do You Wish To Activate?

Felix shared the window with Karys, who simply shrugged. "I do not see the harm. It will consume some of the power your Seat and Seal have been gathering, but there appears to be plenty at the moment."

"Hm," Felix said as he looked around, squinting into the dark.

Hesitation Detected.

Do You Wish To Activate Auxiliary Power Only?

"Karys? How smart is this array supposed to be?" Felix asked, unnerved. He showed the new notification to him.

"A measure of intelligence to the System is expected. It" Karys halted, his eye-fires narrowing. "The holes in my memory still plague me...your Seat and Seal are simply predicting options for you. I...I do not recall more. But as you gain more Authority you will find yourself with greater options. That I know. And this seems like the more cautious option. I would suggest accepting its suggestion."

Yes. Activate Auxiliary Power.

Beneath him the glyph pulsed and ignited, sending out waves of power in all directions at once. The faint glimmers of Mana brightened to a steady stream, liquid and gaseous light pouring outward toward the walls, where they crested and splashed like breaking tides. Beneath, sigils sparked into gleaming life, describing more of the same overly-complex workings that raced along the ground, the walls, the ceiling. Intricate arrays bloomed, illuminating the chamber around them better than a dozen lamps, and revealed the true reason for the room.

"Blessed ancestors," Karys whispered.

There were nine of them, set into the walls but taking up enough space to encroach on fully half the square-footage of the chamber. Each one was forty feet tall and circular, though the similarities between them ended there. They were filled with carvingsmade of them, evensculptures made of glittering metal and polished precious stones. Felix could see the star and vines motif continued as in much of the Temple, but also water. Mountains. Lapis-lazuli skies, cold iron peaks, serpentine and silver trees, all of it done in exquisite detail and alluring composition. The sculptures were layered atop one another, building depth within the circular formations even as they depicted breath-taking detail.

He walked toward the nearest one, which looked like a tropical jungle formed around the towering, split peak of an iron mountain. Each step revealed a glimmer of brilliant ruby hidden in the clever crevasses of the iron, like streams of molten lava. The great, gaping center of itthe empty hole in the circular artifactwas filled with a darkness that the chamber's illumination did not touch. It...called to him, like an old friend. "What are they?" Felix asked.

"I never knew a Heart lay within these lands," Karys said, as if he hadn't heard Felix.

Felix drew his hand back, wresting control of his impulses. He realized his hand was only inches away from the shadow cast by the layered structure, and he could feel a bone-deep chill emanating from it. He shuddered. That it had affected his Willpower was...terrifying. "Whatwhat's a Heart?"

Karys spread his golden and iron arms, turning slightly to include all of the chamber. "This. A Heart of Darkness it was called, once upon a time. II remember pieces of it." He took a step toward the circular artifact before Felix, then another. "Shadowgates. All of them are Shadowgates."

Felix swung back toward the split peak and dark beneath. Voracious Eye!

There was a sense of heavy resistance, like the object was fighting back against him. He hadn't had anything push back like that in a long while. Felix doubled up his efforts, throwing his Will against the resistanceit crumbled.

Name: Shadowgate

Type: Artifact (enchanted)

Lore: Built by the Conclave, a united league of nations, the Shadowgates were built as stabilized Passages between the members of the Conclave.

"Passages?" Felix said dully. He blinked. "Fast travel? Like a portal?"

"I do not know what you mean by the last, but yes, the Shadowgates were ways in which our people would quickly travel between points in the Empire." Karys carefully touched a stream of carved ruby. "These took artisans decades to craft, requiring the greatest talents in alchemy, sigaldry, and smithing to come together for a project of such vast scope it beggared some nations." Sparks trailed from Karys' fingers, drawn from within the rubies. "So finely tuned it still holds a latent charge to this day."

"Wait, so we can jump across the Continent with these?" Felix asked. His heart started hammering and he licked his lips. "Anywhere?"

"Not anywhere. Each Shadowgate is paired with one other permanently. Some places act as hubs such as thisthe Hearts of Darkness." Karys took a shaky breath, sounding like a bellows.

Felix walked around the sculpted mountain, looking it up and down. "How do they work?"

"II do not know. Or recall, if I ever knew. I do know they pierce the Realms, riding along ancient roads in the Everdark. How they do so is beyond my understanding," Karys said.

"Wait, wait," Felix said, his head popped back around the frame of the artifact. "Everdark. Don't tell me that's"

"You may know it as the Cognitive Realm," Karys provided.

"The Void," Felix said, his voice going sour despite himself. He walked back around the gate, until he could look into those shadows that gathered in the center of it. "Those aren't just shadows, are they."

"Indeed not, though they do not carry the potency required to access the Passages as they are. These Shadowgates are inactive and need to be reconnected to their ancient pairings before they could be of use to us." Karys pointed at several dull inscription lines, just as wildly complex as all the rest. "Your choice to provide only auxiliary power keeps them banked, but it would require far more than Mana to bring these to full function."

Felix swallowed as he stared into the dark, realizing why this portal hub was called a Heart of Darkness. Why they were called Shadowgates. The Void. The abyss inside him roused just as his one Void Skill span a tad faster. I can't escape you, can I?

He hadn't had the greatest of experiences in the Void. He'd been trapped there, in fact, accosted by pirates and monsters both. The Whalemaw was still there, a creature that had taken a great deal of the Maw's Primordial Essence into itself. So were the Korvaa of Echo's Reach, though he assumed they had all fled that place after it had been burned and gutted. His thoughts lingered on Estrid and her kids, on whether they had survived. Could I...could I bring them out with a Shadowgate?

"Does this transport you through the Void directly?" he asked.

"Yes and no. It was not my field of expertise, but it relied upon what the ancients called Dark Passages, which are naturally forming tunnel between points in space. They exist all over the Continent, but all are short. It is hard to use a liminal space for a lengthy period of time, else you draw...unwanted attention." Karys shuddered. "There are some truly terrifying beasts within the Everdark."

"Tell me about it," Felix said dryly. "Liminal space though. The same as Domain sheaths and the Omen Paths. Which means it's not truly the Void, just Void-adjacent." Which meant he couldn't reach his friends; that hurt. Hope coming and going in a flash, like he was leaving them all over again. "We couldn't reach the Void directly, right?"

"That would be unwise," Karys said. "That would require greatly damaging a Shadowgate. And...the Void is not a place for the living. Not for long, anyway."

"Mm," Felix said, studying the Shadowgate even closer. "What was the Conclave?"

"Ah. Yes," Karys backed away from the Shadowgate and folded his dinner plate-sized hands before him. "When the War was in its infancy, the greatest nations united to defend themselves and those lesser Territories that would be crushed in the conflict. The Conclave was a tool of sanctuary for countless millions."

"The Nymean Empire and who else?"

"The Prismatic Towers. The Orrestry. Ahkestria. Many more," Karys said. "Most I fear are no longer extant upon this modern landscape."

Felix had never heard of any of those places, but he filed them away to ask Vess about later. It was past time he learned more about the world outside of the Foglands. If the Hierocracy wanted to destroy himor would soon, as he fearedthen maybe having nine different escape options would come in handy.

"How do we reconnect them?"

"Well, these seem to be in relatively good repairlikely preserved by the enchantments in the Temple. So the first step would be to fully activate this chamber, as the Seal suggested. Then..." Karys drifted off, looking around once more. Felix followed his gaze across gates resembling forests and strange cities and even a series of clouds. They were all done so realistically that in the flickering light of the silver-gold array lines they seemed alive. Real. "I cannot remember the how of it. I would need to inspect them far more closely."

Felix nodded. "Do it. Just be careful."

"Very well. Do you wish to assist? I believe you would be of great use, for many reasons."

He wanted to, but shook his head anyway. "No I have to figure out how to use these Spirit Fruits." He quickly told Karys what he'd sensed in Pit's monster core.

"Those sound like impurities from the Spirit Fruit's digestion. Pit was able to absorb a direct stat gain due to his deep connection to you, garnering him an Unbound advantages. But not enough. They must be driven out and cleansed from your Companion's system, or else they could weaken him permanently," Karys said. "I seem to recall elixirs that could do such a thing in an instant."

"Do you remember them?" Felix asked, hopeful. Hopes that were dashed when the golden giant shook his metal head. "Damn. Well, that doesn't change my plan, I suppose." He snapped his fingers as something occurred to him. "Thresholds. Do you know if they apply to beasts and monsters?"

"Not as such. Those creatures with a Type as opposed to a Race will typically experience evolutions, rather than Tempering themselves with Essences. That is where the Tier designation came from; Tier 0 beasts have never evolved, while Tier I beasts have evolved once." Karys ran a hand gently over a tree worked in silver and golden bronze. "Pit is an anomaly, but no more so than any chimera. He has not evolved at all, right?"

"Uh, not that I know of," Felix said. "Not unless you count all the growing he's been doing."

"I do not. Monster cores will strengthen and grow until they are ready to change, typically into a form that their Type determines. Chimeras are different but..." Karys growled, a sound like lawnmower engine failing to catch. "The holes...they sneak up on me when I least expect it. I know nothing of chimeras, other than that they are different than any standard beast."

"I'll have to see if I can strengthen his core any further then. Perhaps push it toward an evolution, or whatever is next for him." Felix stepped away from the Shadowgates, back to the central glyph.

"If you seek more, I recall that there once were Beast Masters who devoted their advancement to the nurture of many Companions. If you can find information on them, then you might be able to glean a better path forward," Karys said.

"Thanks," Felix said. His thoughts drifted to the Farwalker, the only person he'd ever met with a Companion besides himself. "Do you want me to fully activate the chamber?"

"No, not yet." Karys leaned over, his eye-fires like flashlights in the darker portions of the gates. "Let me study this while it is still mostly quiescent. Besides, if they have been damaged by the passing of Ages, then activating this chamber could likely ruin them completely."

Visions of an easy escape hatch crashed and burned in Felix's Mind, and he stepped away from the central glyph. "Yeah, I don't want that. Keep me updated though."

"As you wish, Felix."