Unbound

“Yours?” Tern asked as Felix strode from the elevator’s inscribed surface. He followed, the rest close behind. “What Authority does the Warden hold over these Kept?”

Felix gazed up at the statues that surrounded the circular platform they’d landed upon. Everything was made of the same dark stone, but the platform was bone-white with veins of burnished gold, and that material extended up into the statues themselves. “The Warden keeps them locked up. That’s the point of this Mantle.”

There were nine statues, each twenty feet tall and facing outward, away from the elevator. Though their individual faces all looked different, Felix had seen enough of their kind to identify them as Nymean. Necks a bit too long for a Human, features a touch too angular, and eyes a bit too intense. Moreover, each brandished two weapons. Swords, spears, maces, the variety changed without pattern. The star, however, grew only more complicated with its spiky points.

It went from a two pointed star, shaped like an orb with two spikes at the top and bottom, all the way to a nine-pointed star.

Felix pointed at them. “Those aren’t here for decoration. Those weapons they hold? Those stars? They represent defense against the things that exist here. Not to eradicate, but to contain.”

“Because those Threats that the Nym could not kill were sealed away,” Atar said, nodding along. “We know this.”

Felix continued walking, stepping off the circular platform and onto the long pathway. The moment he did, golden magelights ignited above the grooved edges, burning like small, dancing flames.

mmm.

“Don’t even think about it,” Atar warned his Urge.

“We have no idea how this place is designed. One damaged sigil and we could be freeing an unknown terror from its crystal cell.”

“Plus, you’re greedy,” Alister added, poking at Atar’s chest.

“You still haven’t explained why we’re here,” Tern said, hustling after Felix. Elowen was close behind, along with Zara and Darius.

“A couple reasons.” Felix raised a finger. “One, you wanted to see what the Warden’s responsibilities were. Here you go. Two, I spent a good deal of power on pulling Levantier out of the Ruin’s clutches—”

“The Ruin?” Tern’s eyes widened. “Is that how your Skill functions?”

“Unite the Lost accesses something beyond the Ruin’s power to destroy, restoring things to how they were before its touch,” Zara explained. “At the cost of Essence, Mana, and significance—as I said.”

“That’s impossible. Beyond impossible. Nothing can be retrieved from the Ruin.”

“The Primordials beg to differ.”

“Anyway,” Felix interrupted. “I need to restock what I spent here.”

“This place used up all the power you took from a goddess?” Atar asked, looking around in dismay. “Those towers and rotundas are nice and all, but hardly worth that.”

“I’ve still got some left. Plenty, really, if all I intended to do was sit here and rule wizard city—but I’ve got bigger fish to fry.” Felix bared his teeth at the green-gold glow around them. “I have a feeling I’ll be needing all the significance I can get soon enough.”

“That’s fair. Amaranth awaits,” Alister said.

“Yeah, and that lines up with my third point: I need to finish Tempering into Grandmaster. My Aspects are unbalanced, because I have one final Skill left.”

“Your Tenth Pillar,” Zara said, understanding dawning on her.

Felix pointed at her. “Sonata of Dominance. My shaping Skill. I gotta get it to Grandmaster, and that means I need to push myself. What better place than this?”

“So you plan to…” Elowen swallowed, glancing around them as they came to a stop along another hexagonal platform. It was fifty feet wide and contained only three Nymean statues around it. The green-gold crystals towered around them, each squirming with cloudy silhouettes. “You plan to free them?”

“I plan to kick their asses,” Felix clarified.

“The Temples and this place were made to contain these abominations,” Tern said, his bushy gray eyebrows furrowing. “You said it yourself: the Nym couldn’t kill them.” ⱤАɴο𝖇ΕS̈

“The Nym had one critical disadvantage.” Felix banished his tunic and jacket, leaving his scaled chest bare. “They weren’t me.”

He reached out toward a nearby crystal, its nearest facet ten feet wide and twice that in height. A shadow sat within it, filling up more than half of it, though little could be gleaned from eyes alone.

Do You Wish To Release A21?

WARNING!

Doing So Removes All Restrictions Placed Upon The Kept.

The creature within the crystalline cell shifted, writhing about as if aware of his scrutiny. Along with his Warden’s Mantle came a sense of the creatures locked away in the Wellspring. He knew it was a complicated monstrosity, something more than tinged by a Primordial’s flesh curse. What’s more, he could feel the power within its corrupted Body, Mind, and Spirit in a way he never had before. Empyrean’s Embrace echoed within him, not activated but resonating with Unseen Beholder, until they rang with the same notes.

Felix knew, in that moment, that the monster wasn’t enough for what he needed.

None of them, alone, would be enough.

Do You Wish To Release The Entire First Layer?

Yes.

“Felix?” Zara said, her voice rising higher with concern. She could certainly feel some of what he was doing. “What are you doing?”

“Piling on the pressure,” he said, before a sharp crack sounded across the Wellspring. It was followed by another, and another, until a chorus of chiming notes like splintering glass filled the air. “Stay within the ring of statues and you’ll be fine.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

The topmost layer of crystalline prisons exploded outward, and nightmares rushed free. Lifting himself upon a bolt of lightning, Felix rose to meet them.

Each was the size of a giant, though they varied in shape as often as nature, the creatures shot upward toward the surface. Felix assessed them all as he flashed upward, his Mind shaking under the strain of it: a howling abomination, formed of dark winds and snarling flesh, it’s wide maw was a tunnel into a riot of screaming noise. A crawling inferno of burning metal that slashed into the walls, and a wraith formed of darkened ice that steamed into fog in the warm chasm. Fastest of all, already nearing the upper levels, was a rotting colossus of infested earth, its many arms blurring at speed.

Warden!

A Breach Is Imminent!

Do You Wish To Access Your Arrays?

Felix had Defensive and Offensive Arrays designed to fight the Kept if they ever broke free; they were nasty spells, costing huge amounts of Mana but promising powerful results within the bounds of Levantier.

He had no intention of using them.

Unseen Beholder!

Each abomination before him was composed of many Mana types, and Felix knew them all in an instant—Unseen Beholder and his Authority fed him the information at a glance. Some consisted of three primary types, but that wasn’t an issue. Tern had once told him to only shape multiple types of Mana at once, and that’s what he did.

Sonata of Dominance!

He reached the Frost Wraith first.

It unleashed a numbing barrage of screaming ice that tried to blot out his vision with insidious Status Conditions. Felix altered his Sonata, changing the pitch with his Affinity even as his Intent shaped his control. Ice met flame and golden light, exploding into searing steam as the shadows fled from his radiance. The Wraith screeched in anger, too dumb to be afraid, and tried to slash at him.

Felix expanded his reach, flaring light and fire at the center of its chest.

You Have Killed A Manawarped Frost Wraith!

XP Earned!

Empyrean Embrace!

He devoured it without halting, and it was like the Wraith simply ceased to exist. No smoke nor residue remained.

The Howling Abberation screeched as it fell from above, dropping its threshing flesh atop Felix’s own. Before it touched him, however, Sovereign of Flesh whirrled to life. Black plates of scale folded outward across his skin and muscle like the armor of a knight, even as his physical form doubled in size. Essence engorged him, forcing a scream from Felix’s throat just before his face was encased in a featureless black helm. Blades of bone and piercing sound Mana crashed into him, but it did nothing more than shake Felix.

“Get Off Of Me.”

He burned with red-gold, the cracks between his scales igniting like the heart of a furnace, and a deep electric blue burned across his helmet and up his dark talons. The Howling Aberration did not relent, its Mind consumed in its long incarceration.

Felix altered his Sonata once more.

Flesh and sound met fire and lightning and burst apart, ripped away from his armored hide like a cast off cloak. The Howling Aberration managed a final, ineffectual roar—before it was rent asunder, and consumed.

You Have Killed The Howling Aberration (Moontouched)!

XP Earned!

The last two did not turn toward Felix; damaged Minds or not, they were intent upon escaping the Wellspring.

Felix came to them.

The Crawling Inferno speared its twisted metal into the walls, climbing rapidly across the dark stone between green-gold crystals. It cared little for Felix until he was practically on top of it, and then it lashed out with impressive speed. Flame speared outward, followed closely by sharpened, half-molten metal—

Felix shaped water and ice, blocking the metal even as the torrential chill turned its inferno to steam. The monstrosity skittered further up, lashing at him in mangled fear, but it was already doomed. Ice encased the thing and, with a flex of his Will, was shattered.

You have Killed The Crawling Inferno (Manawarped)!

XP Earned!

Above, the Blighted Colossus leaped from the wall—but not at Felix. It slammed into the crystalline shaft at the roof of the Wellspring, where the elevator rose to access the rest of the Keep. Its many earthen hands scrabbled for purchase, molding into the stone to anchor itself, before it swung right for the shaft.@@novelbin@@

“You’re pretty fast for a big guy!” Felix hauled back on Adamant Discord and shot upward on a bolt of lightning, easily intercepting the Colossus. “But not fast enough.”

It belched out a putrescent green-brown fog that clung to the shaft and Felix like slime. It burned, searing away most of his pants, but otherwise leaving him untouched.

“Really?” He reached for his Sonata. “My turn.”

He sounded it, altering the vibrations until the earthen titan before him trembled. Acid, earth, and rot rolled through the thing, swirling among its variegated hide like ingredients in a cake. He enshrouded it with flowing water, transmuting its flesh into mud and its acid into weakness. Even rot could not compete as a torrent of Mana washed it all away.

You Have Killed The Blighted Colossus (Moontouched)!

XP Earned!

Felix consumed this one too, and as before, his Empyrean Embrace snatched it up. Yet when he inspected his core space and his Skill, Felix felt little change.

This is too easy. Felix frowned as he descended back toward his friends. “Are you okay down there?”

“We’re fine,” Alister said. “Nice helmet.”

Felix let it dissolve, the featureless faceplate folding back into his flesh effortlessly. Now that he wasn’t holding his Aspects so tightly, his Tempered Skills flowed almost too easily. He still felt unbalanced and incomplete, but at least he wasn’t worried about demolishing buildings down in the Wellspring.

The others looked a little frazzled, but none of them were hurt. The statues had done their jobs nicely.

“Did you achieve your goal?” Zara asked.

“No.” Felix looked ahead, where the chasm spread into the mountain’s depths. “I need more.”

“I Analyzed those creatures,” Elowen said. “They were somewhere around Master Tier, but they felt…wrong. Unnatural, strange as that is to say for this world.”

“Manawarped and Moontouched,” Atar said. “Nasty creatures.”

Felix grunted in acknowledgment. One of the creatures had contained much in the way of Lore, merely a minor note calling them “aberrant” and their designations of Manawarped and Moontouched, two things he’d encountered multiple times in the past. The former on creatures that had been altered by an overabundance of Mana in some way, possibly through Primordial means, and the latter were twisted by the Divine.

“You need more than Divine touched abominations?” Darius still had his wide sword out, the edge of which was gleaming with unreleased air Mana. “What else is down here?”

“A lot worse. That was only the First Layer. There are seven Layers, in total.”

Elowen looked nervously toward the still-glowing crystals further down the chasm. “You’re going to fight them all? Alone?”

Felix shrugged. “It’ll get dangerous. I won’t blame you if you all want to leave here.”

i saw that crawling inferno. we’re not leaving all this delicious power to you alone, autarch.

“I’ll see if I can save you some.” Felix grinned and let his helmet form around his head.

Atar peered at him. “How do you see in that? There aren’t any holes for eyes or breathing.”

“It’s like it’s not there.” Felix tapped a talon to the hardened, black plane of armor. It had a sharp sound to it, like a knife on pottery. “No idea how it works, but it’s cool as hell.” He looked to them all. “Ready? Now’s the time to leave if you need to.”

They all exchanged glances, but none moved. “We’ll remain here, Felix,” Zara said. “Ready to aid you if you need help.”

“...I appreciate it, Zara.” He laughed. “I might just take you up on that.”

Do You Wish To Release The Second Layer?

“Brace yourselves. Yes. Release the Second Layer.”