Unbound

Chapter One Hundred and Eighteen - 118

The room was inundated with light. Vibrant, electric luminescence shimmered in steaming flows from the sigils on the floor. The Mana vapor shot upward like inverted waterfalls, crashing into the ceiling where it collected and swirled. Felix tore his eyes from it and stared around in naked fascination. The chalk markings were almost blinding to normal vision, but to his Manasight it was a riot of intense colors. The smell of dark green river bottoms and fecund, misty forests filled his ears, while roars and caterwauls assaulted his nose and tongue. The rows of monster cores had lit up along with the sigils, blaring their potent cries into the warded room. The dense, gem-like objects released a sudden, brilliant surge of sensation, images and scents flashing past his Perception too fast to catch.

The outermost row went dark.

"You must be quick, lad!" Rory grunted, a light sheen of sweat on his brow even after only seconds of effort. He held his hands outward, his wrists haloed by complex sigils written in the air itself. "The ritual will hold on the strength of the monster cores. But ye'll not have any for yourself if ye don't hurry!"

Felix's heart-rate spiked, but he only nodded. A final look at the tempest of Mana around him, and he closed his eyes and plunged into his core. Reality was supplanted by his own internal landscape, the brilliant blue-white fire of his core illuminating his tiny corner of this darkened world. And world felt right. As he hurtled downward, Felix saw an infinite darkness expanding in all directions, one that reminded him viscerally of the Void save for a certain puissance that thrummed against his inner ear.

What's the difference between this and my Bastion? Or is it the same?

A series of powerful vibrations sent ripples through the thickened air, and Felix saw that they were coming from his Bastion of Will. Its pattern was one of the most complex, either because it was higher leveled or maybe higher rarity. The fact that it reacted to his thought was incredibly intriguing, but he didn't have the time.

Later, he promised himself as a swell of pain shot through his core. So long as I make it through this.

Felix turned back to the fire that raged inside of him, while azure lightning flashed in time with his own frantic heartbeat. All around the thick, potent darkness was filled with patterns painted in light, some even more complicated than his Bastion of Will. They had become increasingly familiar to Felix over the past few days, most especially his five newly Tiered physical Skills. They glimmered like stars; not as cold, distant lights, but raging infernos filled with a power that sent electric thrills up Felix's spine. Their vibrations shook the air, each a different pitch as they passed before his eyes, revolving around the ever-burning fire.

He oriented on Acrobatics. There was no inferno there, no nuclear engine bursting with barely-bridled might. Instead fitful sparks of light coursed its broken pattern, a bare suggestion of what it once was. It keened like a child sawing on an out of tune cello, atonal and without purpose. It's burr rattled against his inner ear and Felix gritted his teeth against the sensation. Cold dread gripped him while spikes of pain lanced his body.

From the depths of his memory, nearly unbidden, Rory's remembered voice surfaced. Step one is to wrench open the broken Skill, almost but not completely sundering it. Ye think ye can do that, lad?

"Only one way to find out," Felix gasped, the pain easing by just the slightest of margins. Like the Dwarf said, Felix had no alchemical draughts to do this for him, so he had to rely on his Willpower alone. Luckily, he had that in spades.

As he'd attempted before, Felix closed with his broken Skill. Even doing that sent fissures of pain down his arms and back. Tiny lightning bolts shot from his heels up the back of his legs, and his bones creaked with the strain, his teeth rattling with a vibration so fine yet so...wild.

Many times during training he had attempted to embrace his broken Skills, but had been rebuffed every single time. Now, as he drew closer and closer to its cleaved pattern, he felt the jagged edges of dissonance claw at his mind and body, somehow drawing blood for all that he wasn't even really there. Distantly, Felix could feel a warm liquid run down his chest and ribs. His actual chest and ribs.

Pain Resistance is level 46!

Firming his Willpower, Felix closed again, slowly, cautiously. He listened for the song of its pattern, the rapid rat-ta-tat-tat beat that once dominated the Skill. He moved closer with the staccato vibrations and braced himself for the shearing leaps of atonal progression where the pattern was twisted and snapped. But like a corrupted audio file, it resumed back at the start each time.

Suddenly within arms-reach, the Skill was brilliant. Felix had never appreciated its beauty before it had been sundered, but now that he was so close it was obvious how remarkable the Skill had been, how it had so much room to grow. Growth that would never happen now, not in the same way.

With tentative hands, Felix gripped the edges of his Skill and felt the life and light pulse against him. It felt like holding a burning hot light bulb, a revving engine, and nothing at all. Another surge of discord was coming up, and Felix had to act.

It's now or never.

Gripping tight, he pulled, straining now with his muscles or brawn, but with his mind. With his Willpower. The worst pain he had ever experienced exploded through him, instantly seizing his body and dimming his sight. Black crowded his vision, one that was different from the darkness around him; this promised not potential, but oblivion itself. It tore through him like a red hot spear shoved through his bowels, ripping at his mind like ice against his extremities, demolishing his nerves before eroding them completely.

Felix gritted his teeth and felt something crack in his jaw.

This. Is not. Enough!

Pain Resistance is level 47!

Acrobatics stretched in his mental grip, the pattern blazing hot as its potential flared for perhaps its last time. Felix pulled with his Willpower and agonizingly, murderously slowly the Skill snapped, strand by strand. Felix's scream shook his entire inner world, and every corner of his core screamed with him.

He'd done it.

Now for the rest.

He strained to hold Acrobatics together. The broken Skill wished for nothing more than to burst apart at the seams and snap the final flickering lines of its original pattern. Rory's voice once more intoned in his mind, and Felix wasn't sure if he were hearing it from the source or just remembering it.

This is where Intent comes into play, Felix. Ye must use your Willpower to hold the broken Skill together after almost shattering it, but your Intent must draw the other Skills in by visualizing what you need. Net them, lad. Forge them into your new Skill.

His Skills normally revolved around his fiery core like planets, but arresting the movements of Acrobatics had thrown that revolution into disarray. Skills trembled and moved in unclear ways now, no longer orbiting his center but performing wider and wider elliptical paths.

Felix reached out with his Intent, trembling like a newborn foal as he flexed muscles he hadn't known existed. Running was the first, and it stuttered to an slow stop as Felix turned his Intent upon it. Slowly, far slower than he wanted, it began to reverse its course back toward him...and Acrobatics.

Carefully, Felix guided the blazing Skill into the near-dead carcass of the other, pressing their patterns together and clamping tight with his Willpower. He felt his mind grip onto something and figured it was working, at least a little. With a pained gasp, Felix pressed on, gathering toward him first Swimming, then Free Climbing. Each one was harder than the last, a trial of an untested strength he'd never before utilized. His Intent felt bruised and sore, but Felix kept advancing. Eventually he pulled in Relentless Charge and finally, Physical Conditioning though he could feel that the last had burst several blood vessels in his true eyes.

Now piled atop one another, Felix held onto them desperately with his Willpower; hoping against hope that he might--

SYNERGY DETECTED!

Fuck yeah!

The Skills Running, Swimming, Free Climbing, Relentless Charge, and Physical Conditioning Have Synergy With Acrobatics!

Do You Wish To Evolve Them?

Warning! Evolution May Result In Death And Cannot Be Stopped Once Begun.

All Choices Have Consequences.

Continue? Y/N

Felix mind trembled as he hesitated over both the unfamiliar and familiar words.

Evolution...no one had referred to it as that, just combination. But that was a momentary blip in his thoughts. His true focus was on the second to last line.

All Choices Have Consequences. He had seen those words again and again from the System, but only during....Why did he see them again? Obviously there were going to be consequences, but was this another warning from the System? Why? The Skills in his grasp shook with wild vibrations, each of them pulling in a separate direction. If he slackened for even a moment, they would explode outward, and Felix knew somehow that none of them would be the same. That if he failed here, he'd break them all. Worst of all, his Willpower, mighty as it was, wasn't going to last much longer.

Continue. Yes.

Evolution In Process...

Rory was sweating like a pig.

He took an unsteady breath, fighting against the ritual's need for power by supplying his own Mana. It wasn't massive, but it would give the boy another minute at least. He clearly needed it.

Felix was trembling in the center of the room, his naked flesh prickled with goosebumps and covered in terrible, bloody scratches. Where those came from he could only guess, but Rory assumed the ritual was not going as planned. The boy shook like a leaf in the wind, as if a simple breath would knock him over. He was on the edge.

C'mon, lad. Ye can do it.

Rory had seen true steel in the strange child, something that reminded him of Magda. He had a drive and a powerful need for strength; whatever it was, the Dwarf just hoped it would be enough. Then a burst of light crackled across the chamber, the entire room abruptly lit up by a cold, azure lightning that spread outward and above the boy before dissipating. It was almost as if--

Don't be daft. Rory shook himself and poured more of his own Mana into the ritual. The boy is almost there. C'mon!

When Felix had closed his eyes, thirty six monster cores were set up in the strange array, part of Rory's arcane ritual. Three of them went dark before he'd even started, but the rest had shone on. Now, Felix could sense that only twenty remained, the others consumed by the ritual itself. He hoped it would be enough.

Power buzzed all around him, as if a thousand angry hornets waited just beyond sight. It lingered among the cores, not yet drawn into the ritual, waiting only for him to draw it into himself.

Oddest of all, Felix could sense the ritual's strange lattice of Mana all around him, a delicate construction that he didn't understand in any significant way. But he knew, somehow, that it would be easy to pull in the power of the monster cores, that it would take only a thought to begin a near instant process.

But he had a better idea.

Ravenous Tithe!

Ravenous Tithe is level 9!

...

Ravenous Tithe is level 14!

His core shook with an earsplitting groan as what looked like thousands, upon thousands of gallons of monstrous essences streamed through his channels and into the infinite sky above his burning flame. It seemed less infinite now that it was filled a melange of crackling energies, many of which were straining and struggling against one another. Like angry beasts in a cage.

The sky pressed low upon him, but the fire of his core didn't care. It flared, a corona of brilliant lightning spider-webbing up and into the essence clouds, like a storm in reverse. Immediately, wisps of power were sucked into his core, sending gouts of incandescence out toward Felix and his gathered Skills. The energy flowed past him and he was untouched, but the same was not to be said for his sundered Skill.

The wild vibrations he fought against suddenly quieted, and somehow Felix could feel the nourishment the monster essence brought to his Skills. Bolt after bolt erupted from his fiery core as more wisps were transformed into an incomprehensible, healing light. Felix felt an uncontrollable laugh bubble upward, his Willpower slackening in just the slightest while his Intent held still to his desires. Rory had been quite specific about the importance of Harmonic Intent. As far as Felix understood things, it was all that was shepherding his disparate Skills into a unified whole. Each burst of rarefied light sent waves of energy pulsing through the amalgamation of Skills, forging new patterns of light that spread over the entire mass like wildfire.

That laughter died away only a moment later, as the monster essence was suddenly yanked away from his fiery core. Felix could barely see past his blue-white flames, but he knew with a profound certainty that things were not as they should be. Instead of the essence being subsumed and transformed by his fire, it was being directly siphoned by another Skill.

Bastion of Will?

The complicated pattern of vibrating light was flaring with a firestorm of power, a steady stream of essence pouring into it like water down a drain. Worse still, Felix could feel none of its supposed strength. Whatever was happening, the potency of the monster essence wasn't being absorbed by him.

But that makes no sense, he murmured in dismay. What else except--

A detonation rocked his core, so extreme that his Skills flared in sympathy, a sudden, symphonic melody. Instantly, he knew it came from his Bastion. Without moving an inch, Felix's mind fell deeper within himself, dropping through darkness and into a blue, summer sky. Below him spread a squat, square fortress built of unnaturally dense stone the color of smoky obsidian. A massive crack ran up and across the central tower, splitting the construction nearly in half. Felix gasped in horror.

Oozing from the breach was a monstrous being, one he had thought long weakened. It's twisted shoulders squeezed from the deep fissure in the tower, and it's massive, ungainly head roared in blistering rage and a familiar, awful hunger.

Free! Free!

Even as Felix catapulted downward, monstrous essence swirled in the air around his Bastion. Great, opaque clouds of flashing violence twisted and spun, pulled toward the Maw's open gullet. Its almost anemic seeming body, horror that it was, began to fill out and gain muscle mass as he watched. The Primordial was nowhere near its original power, but it was more than enough to pull itself free from the final wreckage of the tower.

Sweet sustenance, Felix Nevarre! The Maw clawed its way forward, stretching on the crack flagstones of his inner bailey. It cackled madly, turning its insane eyes up toward his falling form. Now let us test this devilish prison of yours, hmm?

The Primordial blasted forward, leaving yard long furrows into the stone itself. With a resounding crash, the Maw collided shoulder first with the outer wall. The entirety of his Skill shook with the impact, and Felix reeled as if hit by a humongous pillow of air.

He was thrown bodily from the Skill, landing with a teeth-jarring crash upon the surface of his core.

"What the hell? WHAT THE HELL!" Felix blazed with a fury that felt like liquid magma in his gut and veins. The evolving Skill behind him trembled beneath his gathered Will, still held together by little more than hopes and wishes. The rage almost masked the acute distress that suddenly speared through his head and heart. His Willpower quaked.

Though he couldn't spare the attention or time to open his true eyes, Felix knew the sigil array had only moments left of its life. The framework of Mana that had allowed him to absorb so many cores at once was failing, as it no longer had enough magic to power itself. After all, it had accomplished its purpose: he had absorbed twenty monster cores, supposedly more than enough to handle his Skill evolution. Rory was likely pleased, happy to have had the sundering ritual work. How would he have guessed that a Primordial asshole was stealing all of that potency for itself?

Felix's Willpower strained like never before as he held it all together, despite the fact that the evolving Skill was now pulling at him, attempting to draw power where none was available. Except...Felix gasped as he felt something tear loose from his chest, projected mental construct that he was. A bright red light, pulsing with vitality, was ripped from him and sucked directly into the evolving Skill.

Ugh! What--?

Another light was wrenched from him, this one a flickering yellow and far larger than the red. In quick succession, a blue light followed after, easily double in size again. Felix knew, near instantly, what it meant. He could feel his Mana total dropping, dozens of points at a time, his Health and Stamina matching it at only a slightly slower pace. Absent of any other power source, the System was stealing his resources to power the new Skill.

Another burst of shimmering lights were snatched from his chest, their exit a lacerating counterpoint to the awful strain as the Skill quaked ever greater. The vibrations were returning now, nearly shaking itself apart and only held with the barest shreds of his brutalized Willpower.

That molten wrath returned, searing his guts as Felix watched his Health, Stamina, and Mana drop with every breath. His throat burned at the loss, at the pain, at the cruel, bullshit agony of everything. As if in sympathy, his visualized core around him trembled as well, the dense darkness shaking like a living thing, like...

Like it was vibrating.

Felix seized upon that thought, flaring his anger ever higher as his blue-white core fire responded. It burned higher and higher while that strange lightning crackled outward. His Skills resonated, each of his two dozen abilities letting out a series of pure, penetrating tones.

His Skills blazed with light, their patterns flashing and pulsing like the veins of beings of light and sound. But loudest of all was the evolving conglomeration of Skills before him, their tones nearly seizing his muscles with their proximity. But, more than that, Felix realized a fundamental truth.

Manasight is level 41!

Fire Within is level 35!

...

Fire Within is level 38!

The Skills he was so desperate to combine matched with one another, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle too big to comprehend. Their waves paired, crest to trough, a collection of notes that created a strident harmony. That harmony resounded through his core, creating ripples that flushed his inner space with sensation and emotion both, echoing off something beyond himself. A vibrating source from without. With an almighty roar, Felix pulled on that vibration all around him, and like he was drawing a massive bow across strings, a wild, aching melody sounded. Flashes of electric blue and a bright, luminous gold sparked through his entire core, lighting the darkness. He pulled again, using what little remained of his Intent to squeeze the sounds from his gathered Skills.

A hesitant, haunting series of notes burst through the darkness, churning it from within. Then it escaped him, the harmonics sounding on their own as they gathered speed. A cascade of blue and gold sparks burst across his core. Something powerful, something vital was being siphoned off into his evolving Skill, and it scintillated with a growing light that soon turned blinding.

The vibrations, the music, swelled into a triumphant crescendo.

Evolution Complete!

You Have Formed A New Skill!

Skill Level Has Been Reset!

Unfettered Volition (Epic), Level 1

You are Will incarnate. Nothing can contain you, nothing can stop your Will made manifest. Consumes Mana and Stamina when activated. Speed is increased by a small amount with level. Mental strength consumed reduces a small amount per level.