Unbound

Chapter Eight Hundred And Thirty Six – 836

The air was filled with the sound of rasping bellows and rushing power. Skills flourished, searing across Felix's vision as the abominations swelled upward toward freedom.

Sonata of Dominance!

Stone peeled off the mountain, assembling outward according to his sharply honed Intent. He brute forced it all, sounding the Skill within him until the light from above vanished; the dark rock congealed into a blockage above him, sealing the chasm for hundreds of yards in either direction…and leaving a single opening above Felix.

A bottleneck.

“Come and face me,” he growled.

Monsters smashed into Felix without stopping, their gaping maws and rippling flesh as inexorable as the tide. Tooth and claw scraped across his scales, sparking across the black plates and tearing what remained of his Garment. Felix struck back of course, flaring his Sonata to oppose each and every monster that came against him.

Fire was met with water, air with earth, and light with shadow. Always its opposite, or close enough; always seeking the weakness at the heart of each opponent. They fell, rent by ice and flame and sizzling acid. Felix struck faster, commanding the Mana around them as if wielding a scythe—and the Kept fell like wheat.

Still, there were too many. Monstrosities and abominations slipped through his grasp, his Sonata not nearly as all-encompassing as he required. At the edges of the fight, creatures were seeking out the far ends of his blockage.

Can’t have that! His Sonata wasn’t enough alone. Astrum Ascendance!

Vast piles of monstrosities fell, dropping away from him in a thick mist. Hundreds clogged the walls, speared by stone and ice, and the rest were simply floating flakes of char.

Shit. He cursed at himself more than anything. This is pointless if I don't focus!

He cut off Astrum Ascendance. It was a crutch—a powerful one, for sure—but he was meant to utilize the Sonata of Dominance alone. He would never push it to Grandmaster if he cut its influence with an amplification Skill.

Empyrean Embrace.

Clamping his will around the monstrosities, Felix consumed them all in one fell swoop. Every last bit vanished, leaving him alone in the darkened chasm. The Fifth and most of the Sixth Layer was gone…and so were his friends.

Felix frowned. At the center of the circle of statues, there was a void where a platform once stood, and below it a cylindrical tunnel of crystal led downward. He reached toward his Authority as the Warden and information filtered across his Mind: the platform had activated during the attack and his friends had been transported lower. Deeper into the mountain.

Right. They'll be safe there. Thunder and a concussive blast of air shook the Wellspring, and stone dust rained down from above. I hope.

Something roared, and lightning danced across Felix’s legs as his connection to the Wellspring trembled.

Or…not.

Creatures rose from the dark, like leviathans in slow spirals toward the surface. Three creatures more powerful than the last hundred he'd faced all together.

The first was a hulking beast on six legs with a wide back, thick with muscle, and covered in golden eyes. Rods of steel speared upward from its spine, and lightning sizzled across it, driving its fur to stand on end. Close behind it, a fleshy abomination covered in pustules and oozing liquids that slipped through the thinnest of air. Around and between the two of them was a billowing fog that contained a figure as elusive as shadow itself. ȓ𝒶Nố𝖇ĚS

Unseen Beholder.

Primordial of Blooming Iron - Metal, Lightning, and Blood

Urge of Shifting Plague - Rot and Poison

The Dream Eater - Illusion and Shadow.

Felix could identify their attunements easily now. They weren't like people, hiding their power within a core space. Their Mana boiled across their bodies, pulled from the world as fast as they could manage.

The Primordial roared again, breaking free of the pack. It galloped up the chasm wall leaving a trail of crackling blue-white light. The Urge gave a wet screech, and the shadow fog spread wide across the chasm, both of them speeding up.

Felix tried again, pressing his Unseen Beholder once more, but all he could pull was their names, attunements, and strength. They were all Tier VIII—an equivalent of high Grandmaster.

That’s all I need to know.@@novelbin@@

The Primordials' gallop turned into a full-blown charge as the pustule latched on and the cloud streamed behind. Felix’s heartbeat quickened, his blood sounding like deep drums in his ears. His greatest epiphanies had always come in battle. This is just what he needed.

Cutting out Adamant Discord, he plummeted into their midst, face first, claws bared, flaring Sonata of Dominance alone.

An Elemental abomination, a Primordial, and an Urge. For once, however, the creatures worked together. Poisons sprayed upward, drenching Felix and throwing off his trajectory by the smallest of margins. Just enough for the Primordial's tail to catch him and smash him aside.

Felix impacted the wall and it shattered. He was buried, lodged more than twenty feet into a crater that disgorged massive chunks of dark stone and remnant crystal. They clattered explosively into the chasm below, and the Primordial batted them easily away.

“You little—” Felix barely even felt the hit, but it was annoying. He pushed up, detaching his body from his own personal crater with a sound like a gunshot going off. The Primordial snarled, it’s golden eyes gleaming, and Felix leaped forward—

And stepped out onto a porch.

What?

It was autumn. The cold was just nipping at his ears as a wind blew bright orange leaves down off the maple tree that stood in his front lawn. He could see mountains in the distance, tall and purple beyond a forest of impossibly tall trees, and a river babbled in the near distance.

Felix turned, spotting the swing that needed more oil on its chains so it would stop creaking, and the door to the house that he'd built himself. "That's…odd.”

He remembered building the house, just like he remembered planting most of the forest from the remnants of six seeds. He blinked, examining the trees again. They were Spirit Trees, and they filled the air with a spice that was less scent than it was an aura of pure magic.

“Watch your strikes! Aim for center mass and you’ll find the target.”

Vess was in the yard, sparring with a number of people he recognized. Legionnaires and alchemists and Chanters. They were using padded spears. He remembered that she had retired her real one years ago, after—

Evie was there too, laughing at something Harn grumbled as they chopped firewood. Eidolons stood nearby, their arms loaded up with enough lumber to burn for six winters.

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It was…nice.

Peaceful.

Felix took a soft breath and for some reason his chest hurt.

Claws on the wooden porch made him turn. Pit, smaller than normal, sat on his haunches at his side. His big golden eyes looked up at Felix.

"You have to wake up."

"I know." Felix smiled softly. “But this was nice.”

“Watch out!”

Felix thrust his arm up, catching the heavy paw of the Primordial of Blooming Iron. It smashed him back, shattering more of the chasm's wall before Felix found his footing. The dark chasm was filled with the scent of blood and poison as the beast roared into his face, its unblinking eyes gleaming, but Felix did not budge.

He punched.

The Primordial’s roar cut off as it was hurled back, out of the crater but not so far that it was outside of Felix's reach.

Sonata of Dominance!

Stone teeth snapped out of the mountain, forged from the bedrock to slam through the Primordial's flesh. They pierced it, tearing its iron hide and releasing a storm of lightning from its searing blood. The monster screamed and metal coated the earth in response, sprouting from it like razor-sharp flowers that arced with electricity. The metal rushed for Felix.

"Here's something I learned from Zara," he snarled, before shaping water and fire across the encroached metal. Lightning caught it, but the water was heated to steam and frozen almost at the same time, releasing a deluge of distilled liquid across the metal flowers. The lightning fizzled out. "Distilled water isn't conductive at all."

He shoved the water down into the metal, freezing it as it went, turning it brittle before he flexed the earth, shattering it. The Primordial lurched forward, uncaring for the tearing of its bloody flesh—Felix flexed his Intent and the stone jaws snapped shut, crushing the beast entirely.

"You can't die," he said, "but I've got that figured out too."

Empyrean Embrace.

The Skill snapped up the Primordial, and for a second, Felix could almost make out phantom teeth in the air.

Plenty of time to test it again.

Before he could turn from the Primordial’s remains, poison and fetid rot splashed across Felix’s shoulders and sizzled against his scales. It sought out his Mana Gates, eager to tear him apart from within, but Felix met it with searing flame. Poison boiled to steam and the creature screeched.

Felix whirled, spotting the Urge of Shifting Plague as it tried to back off, but it was too late for the monstrosity. He sent fire after it, and the air around the clinging Urge burst into an inferno. Its flesh baked and its pustules charred before they popped against the crags. Water followed, boiling its red-hot effluvea even as its flesh flaked away.

He devoured it, too.

Yeah. Definitely teeth.

Felix took a steadying breath. His Aspects were truly buzzing, unleashed as they were, and it made him feel dizzy and giddy in equal measure. One more to go.

He perched on the edge of a deformed stone, surveying his surroundings. The Dream Eater was nowhere to be seen, so Felix flared his Perception and immediately spotted it. The elemental abomination was sliding up the walls like a shadow, hiding itself in the earth's cracks.

You can’t hide from me.

Sonata of Dominance!

From a distance, he surrounded it in light. The Dream Eater recoiled soundlessly from the golden radiance, its shadows shriveling and its foggy illusions hemmed in even as it flung out a dozen spindly limbs to shield itself. It bounced off the cliff, but half those hands snared a ledge.

“No, no.” Felix adjusted the vibrations, changing light to earth as stone arced around its form, sealing it. "Come here!"

The rough orb detached from the wall and dropped. Felix kicked off, shattering the stone beneath him as he shot upward, flame gathering around his limbs in a red-gold radiance. He sent that forward, surrounding the falling stone before melting it into slag. It splattered into the rough cliff, and the Dream Eater burst free, its shadow and fog billowing powerfully from a rent in the molten stone.

Felix brought down a taloned hand against the Eater, but his hands passed straight through it. The thing wasn't physical enough to hurt, and it swarmed up his arm like a surging tide. Dark tendrils of fog stabbed out, through his neck and into his head.

"Wrong move," he hissed.

His Crown flared, casting it back as its spindly limbs contorted into an expression of twisted pain. Bronze light congealed against its ambiguous limbs, hardening them. Exposing them.

In an instant, Felix changed his pitch, turning the stone beneath them into spears of gleaming steel. He drove them up, through the congealing metal of its chest, striking them against one another. A spark leaped from them, and Felix seized it with the strains of his Sonata. Shaped it, until it became a conflagration of light that burned the Dream Eater from the inside out.

Shadow was ripped asunder and the Dream Eater yowled mentally in agony, but the dark only returned when the light faded. It wasn’t enough.

So Felix reached for the dark.

One of the elements the Sonata had the easiest time shaping, shadow leaped to Felix’s Will as it crashed against the Dream Eater’s own. It flexed, straining its strange form with all it had and for a moment the abomination held Felix off—but only a moment. The very next, Felix’s powerful Will overcame the Dream Eater, and he seized its being directly.

He tore away its shadow Mana like a pilfered knife from a deranged toddler. The abomination didn't speak, but its Spirit quailed in mortal terror.

With illusion its only weapon and Felix's Mind a fortress it could not access, it could do nothing but run.

It tried.

It failed.

Felix found the point between light, sound, and shadow where illusion dwelled in the vast spectrum of Harmony.

"There you are," he said, seizing all the bits of its being—before crushing it entirely.

Notification swept over him, there and gone in an instant as Felix swept them aside. His Mind was working too furiously to worry about the System.

The Sonata. He’d learned so much. Facing Mana down with its opposite wasn't the answer, and neither were multiple streams of power. It was like unto like. My Will against theirs.

Dominance.

Like a puzzle piece finally fitting into place, he felt it.

Finally.

Sonata of Dominance is level 125!

…

Sonata of Dominance is level 130!

Grandmaster Tier!

You Gain:

+300 AFI

+300 RES

+...

Divine Essence Detected During Formation!

[Essence Of Woven Machinations]

ERROR!

Essence Has Been Altered!

Do You Wish To Restore Its True Nature?

Y/N

Yeah. I do.

Power ripped through him as Unite the Lost engaged the Essence Mote…but Felix couldn’t focus on it, for a deeper sound shook the depths. A shockwave of power ripped upward through the mountain, and his Authority screamed at him.

WARNING!

An Active Breach Is Detected!

The Seventh Layer Is Compromised!

A vast thing shifted far below, beyond the sight of normal eyes. Thousands of feet below, where a faint crystalline light reflected off of fallen shards.

Unseen Beholder!

His vision blurred, yet the Skill didn’t fail so much as malfunction. The creature that rose against him was so corrupted and twisted that the System couldn’t fit it into its structure at all. Their information was a maze of tangled lines and cryptic symbols. The boundaries of the notification box was broken, smearing azure and gold across Felix’s vision even as the pale letters stretched in unnatural directions. All he could gather was its power.

And a name.

Primordial of Tenebrous Aeon - Tier IX

Low Paragon Tier. The thing was flooded with decay, blood, and shadow Mana. It was a being of ancient properties so big that it filled the bottom of the chasm like a river of flesh and blood. Wounds covered its hide, opening and closing like mouths, but exposing a terrible rot within itself. Limbs uncountable wriggled upon its blubbery sides, bent in unnatural angles as it pushed against the chasm.

It’s attention speared upward at him, and Felix felt its regard like a physical weight. He grunted, and the rock around him exploded into shrapnel.

Divinity Has Been Shed!

True Nature Restored!

Primordial Essence Detected During Formation!

[Essence Of Maestro’s Movement]

Great. Felix grimaced as Unite the Lost faded and a new crescendo began. I’m gonna have to fight while Tempering. Again.

WARNING!

Containment Failed.

All Are In Peril.

The Tenebrous Aeon Is Free.

Flee.

“No chance,” Felix laughed, baring his teeth as he dropped to meet them.