Unbound

Chapter One Hundred and Nineteen - 119

Skills Lost:

Acrobatics

Relentless Charge

Running

Swimming

Free Climbing

Physical Conditioning

Apprentice Tier Benefits Forfeited!

Shit, Felix cursed as his Mind was inundated by the System messages and a profound weakness swept through him. All choices have consequences, huh?

He should have figured this would happen. When Acrobatics had broken, he had lost the Apprentice Tier bonuses, so if entire Skills were to be subsumed...the bonuses were lost, likely sacrificed to power the forging of his new Skill. Felix did a quick mental calculation: he'd lost 78 entire stat points from the merger.

God damn fine print! Is that why people don't combine more than two Skills into a broken one?

A rattling, discordant cry shook his core again, and for the first time a piercing pain lanced through his Bastion of Will. The Maw was almost free. It hadn't been able to affect Felix before, but it had been emaciated and weak then, neatly defeated by its own hubris and Felix's desperate sacrifice. Now it had reclaimed some potency, namely the nearly twenty monster cores worth of essence provided by Rory. Essence that should have gone to him, forcing him instead to feed everything he had into his new Epic Skill. A brief glance confirmed that he'd lost 110 points of his maximum Mana, 80 points of his maximum Stamina, and 50 points of his maximum Health.

Health:

810/863

Stamina:

745/831

Mana:

1382/1382

I really hope you're worth it, Felix frowned at the pattern that emerged from the dense darkness all around him. It breached the shadows like a great sea beast, its lines etched in light and humming in a complex weave of sounds. It wasn't the most intricate Skill he'd inspected, not even the most convoluted one he owned. That distinction belonged to his only Legendary Skill, Etheric Concordance. However, what struck Felix was despite its novel appearance, he could still identify pieces of it, tracks of the pattern that once belonged to Running or Swimming or the others. It burst into fervent light as it settled among his other Skills, taking its place in the revolving solar system of his core.

Felix beckoned, and the brilliantly surging symbol for Bastion of Will floated toward him. It burned brighter than ever before, but there was a frenetic violence to that light, a crimson hue that had begun to stain its labyrinthine pattern. Two more times pain struck across his back like a barbed scourge, sending Felix's mental form stumbling to a knee. But then the Skill was before him, floating inches before his trembling grip. He knew he had to get back in there, fight the Maw off and imprison it back in his mental dungeon. But how? It was too strong for his Bastion, that was clear.

His Skills revolved around them, Felix and his Bastion both. Now that he was listening, each was letting out a series of near constant chimes. It felt similar to running his hands up and down a keyboard, except with more...purpose behind it. A story almost, writ large in the tonality of his strange cosmic core space. Then, as his new Skill came back around, Felix felt a stirring in the Bastion before him. It was nothing he could see, as the Skill was still shuddering and stained by whatever the Maw was attempting, and nothing that he could hear. At least not at first. Felix hooked his Intent around his new Skill and pulled it closer, shifting it free of its circuit. The pattern fairly leaped at him, responding so well that he nearly overshot it's placement.

As the two Skills came closer, Felix could hear a humming begin to form between them. There was a...a bridge or something connecting the two Skills. Quickly parsing the Skill descriptions, Felix realized both seemed to have his Willpower as their predicating force. A strange sort of harmony was present there, arcing above and below his senses in a way Felix couldn't quite grasp. A strain of syncopation barely registered to his ear, a term he hadn't heard since high school music class, but it was there. Felix let the music guide him, the progression of pitches and chords pulling him into a turbulent yet steady connection joining the two Skills. It was as if he could--

SCREAAAW!

A distorted roar buzzed through him, shaking his bones so hard that his ligaments screamed in protest. Felix was thrown from wherever he had just found himself, suddenly staring at the twisting sigil of his Bastion of Will. The Maw was growing stronger still; his fortress wouldn't hold.

Come and face me, Felix!

With a gulp and a clench of his jaw, Felix did the only thing he could, what he had to do: he leaped back into the Skill.

A wall of crimson burst before him, and its touch felt like shards of jagged glass on his skin. But then Felix emerged into a blue sky, falling faster and faster as the square fortress of dark stone appeared far below him. The Maw was a large speck within the inner bailey, a writhing mass of rangy muscle and yellow bone.

It hasn't broken through yet, Felix confirmed with relief. He scanned the fortifications of his Skill and noticed the outer walls still held, but they were cracking in so many places. It was only a matter of time, unless he did something. But what?!

The skies above his Bastion were typically cloudless, but Felix spotted dozens crowding the Skill. They were dark and ominous, no doubt generated in response to the Maw's attack. He had to move faster. Felix streamlined his body and attempted to cut down his wind resistance. As he fell with greater alacrity, Felix plunged heedless into the nearest cloud.

Then things got weird. His senses were enveloped by a dark mist, so much so that he could no longer perceive the Bastion around him. All too suddenly, the mist cleared and Felix landed face first on...low pile, beige carpeting.

What the hell?

He stood up quickly, and realized he was standing in his old office. Cubicles filled the space, hundreds of feet wide, while large windows let in mid-afternoon sunlight for those chosen few near the edges. Felix stood in the center of it all, pre-fabricated walls segmenting the pathways and filled with the industrious clatter of a thousand fingers typing. For a brief, dizzying moment, Felix couldn't remember why he was here and what was happening; then something inside of him screamed back at the confusion, pushing it back from his mind.

Not again!

The world around him snapped into focus. Felix recognized his old office job, even his old cubicle. He also recognized that something had been in his head, trying to fool him. The taste of the false memory was familiar, something that had been done to him before; in it he was an engineer at the firm he'd worked for, designing attractions for theme parks. But Felix had never been an engineer. He was a desk grunt, doing data entry and purchasing for the sales team. A drone punching in and out in the sterile fluorescent light.

A memory stirred in his mind, the edges feeling rough and clawed at; of staring at the engineers and designers at the company and wishing he'd made half of what they did. It had once been a powerful yearning that dominated Felix's rather bleak life back home, but it had become a gray, faded thing in the time since. Yet still, that same something gripped him, somehow squeezing his memories like a sponge, but it was using that old desire to do it. A desire that meant nothing to him now.

He focused his Mind upon it, and the compulsion was excised. There were nebulous workings in the air, transparent and red as blood. They hovered about his head like flies looking for a perch, too stupid to give up.

"Mondays, right bud?"

Felix blinked and looked to his left. His coworker and cubicle mate was a heavy-set man with a wild beard and completely shaven head. He smirked at Felix like they were sharing a joke. Distantly, he dredged up the man's name.

"James, what," Felix licked his lips. "What's going on?"

"Just the ol' grind, m'dude. Whoa, hey man. You been working out?" James' sleepy eyes blinked in confusion. "Lookin' like uh, swole or whatever. Pilates?"

There was a shout from the other end of the floor, and Felix saw a spume of papers being tossed into the air. James leaned back in a chair that was clearly not meant for his girth and grimaced at Felix. "Shiiit, boss is pissed."

Stomping echoed through the room, the sharp clack of heavy heels apparent despite the thin carpeting. The crimson constructs roiled around him, still too afraid to latch onto him again, but unable to stop hovering.

What are these? Felix gazed at the complicated creations, but they blurred and twitched whenever he tried to pin them down. He could only barely study them out of the corner of his eye. They look like...like sigils?

The stomping grew in intensity, and James' eyes had gone round in panic. "C'mon man! Do work or somethin'! She's gonna kill us if we're not making calls!"

James pulled his phone out from the cradle and started feverishly dialing. Felix felt panic spike through him as well, but not because he was afraid of getting in trouble. It was a memory, after all, and not a very accurate one either. The colors weren't quite right, and James had never fully shaved his head. His wife would have hated it too much.

No, the panic he felt was because those clomping heels didn't sound like the tread of an angry boss, but like the enraged stomp of a monster. A hungry one.

"FELIX!" his boss roared and dust shook loose from the ceiling. "FELIX!"

Desperate, he reached out toward the crimson construct that darted about his head. It was delicate, made out of a latticework of Mana so intricate it actively made no sense to him. Whatever secrets it held were far too complex for Felix's own understanding. But, the one thing he could determine was that it led off into the distance. Far into the distance.

Sigils of the Primordial Dawn is level 22!

Sigils of the Primordial Dawn is level 23!

Suddenly Felix understood the tiniest portion of the leech-like Mana working. All too close, cubicles began to fall and scatter as something started to charge through them. A terrible roar ripped through the office, and James dialed his phone furiously.

With a frantic exhaled breath, Felix sent his own crackling Mana vapor into the construct. The latticework flared into brilliant, bloody life and he was torn away, the world itself shredding into a million motes of crimson light.

Mana Manipulation is level 11!

Mana Manipulation is level 12!

The construct dropped him in a forest before disappearing. Felix crouched, gathering his bearings, but it was an easy task. He knew exactly where he was, or rather, what memory he currently occupied.

He stood within a temperate forest, the scent of a vinegar sea still tainting the breeze. It was the western edge of the Foglands, almost where he'd first arrived on the Continent. And surrounding him in all their technicolor glory were seven Sharpwing Skinks. Their wings buzzed as they hovered, their fat tails twitching below themselves as they eyed him with hunger. Felix laughed.

"Skinks? C'mon!" He hadn't feared the nasty reptiles for a while now, not since he'd fallen into the Archon's Domain. With a gesture and minor expenditure of Mana, all seven Skinks that crowded near him were blown apart, azure lightning scorching their flying pieces. "At least give me a challenge."

As if in reply, a buzzing sound filled his ears, soft at first but growing increasingly louder. More were coming. A lot more.

The buzzing was more than their wings, though. There was a note of dissonance in his ears, an clash of chords deep in his bones that sent spasms of pain across his flesh. Lines of fire etched up his forearms as his muscles split and reshaped themselves, skin pierced by jagged barbs that pushed their way out. Felix folded in agony, his hands lengthening into cruel claws. His teeth began to itch, and one of them already fell out. Felix spat it into the brush.

What Dwells Beneath is level 5!

"Uugh," he growled, his voice rougher than usual. Yet another change. He felt more shifts inside of himself as that discordant pressure built, flesh reshaping to someone else's plan. Felix clenched his jaw and looked for that construct again. It was his way out.

He flared his Manasight, and his vision went almost entirely grey. Whatever these worlds were, they were not constructed of Mana which, while confusing, was a stroke of luck. In contrast, the ruby red Mana construct stood out like a torch in the night. His Perception pinged on it, writhing around some two hundred yards away. Felix dashed forward, ripping through brush and low foliage as if it wasn't there.

As he drew near, he realized a new challenge. The crimson construct was twisting and writhing in a large forest clearing, but when he relaxed his Manasight Felix saw that the latticework was embedded completely within the largest copse grub he had ever seen. It undulated before him, its fleshy, banded body pushing over trees and shattering rocky outcroppings. It was bigger than a house, and its business end was just a pink circle filled with teeth.

Unfettered Volition!

Felix couldn't spare the time to think about this; he attacked. Flaring his new Skill instinctively, he rocketed forward, easily evading the jet of acid the grub began to release. The stream followed him, chasing after his form like a fire hose five times the normal size, but Felix kept ahead of it. He felt suddenly faster than he'd ever been before, easily double the effect he got when using Relentless Charge and it was only level one. More than that, though, Felix felt more agile than ever before, his progression not a straight line but a curving, serpentine movement that was both unpredictable and swift. In an eyeblink, Felix was before the immense copse grub, but he didn't stop. His Skill had touched his Mind, leaving behind the smallest of instincts behind; it was like he both knew and had no clue what he was doing in that moment. He leaped onto the slick flesh of the grub.

And he ran up it.

Insanely, Felix's speed or some aspect of his Skill kept him on the surface of the grub, his Far-Afield Boots gripping surely to its gooey skin. Snarling with his new voice, Felix jammed his right hand down into the beast while he ran. His curved talons cut through the layers of blubber and split it like an overripe melon. The belly of the beast burst, its skin too weak to hold its putrescent internals, but he kept going. Felix ran onward, upward, all but flying past the banded segments of the mutated copse grub until flung himself straight up in the air above it.

Unfettered Volition is level 2!

Unfettered Volition is level 3!

He hung for a moment, suspended by inertia and the dwindling effects of his Unfettered Volition. In that split second, Felix's Manasight caught the edge of the writhing, crimson construct through the green and pink maw of the grub. Spinning his body almost effortlessly, Felix dove down, flashing past its jagged fangs and into the moist, stinking embrace of its guts. Momentum was on his side however, as he rocketed down into its bowels, just close enough for his expelled Mana vapor to engage with the construct.

The world exploded, again.

Not losing you this time! I'm not getting stuck again!

Mana Manipulation is level 13!

Mana Manipulation is level 14!

Once more, the latticework construct twisted and shifted through worlds of shattered light. Felix clung on with all he had, pushing more and more Mana vapor out into the convoluted sigils to somehow cement his grip. But then a wave of pale blue light suffused his senses, and the construct itself changed, seemingly on the fly. Felix could no longer hold on. As if it became a ghost, the construction passed through him and his Mana, disappearing entirely.

Felix was thrust into another world, stumbling along a wet, darkened street before a pale ranch-style home. This one more than familiar.

It was his parent's home.

Blink.

He was inside suddenly, sitting at a dining room table. Felix's head spun, his senses coming to terms with the abrupt relocation. Light came from his left, through a familiar open doorway. Someone was bustling in the kitchen there, moving dishes around, and the unmistakable scent of food being prepared filled the warm air.

"Felix Nevarre."

The voice belonged to a woman. She was standing at the other end of the table, and Felix hadn't sensed her at all. She was turned toward the large window behind her. Felix could only make out her silhouette and an oddly shaped blouse she was wearing. It sounded...like his mother, but Felix somehow knew it wasn't. That pissed him off.

"Who are you?"

The woman didn't turn, only raised a teacup to her unseen lips. Felix couldn't quite suppress the image of skeletal fingers, of strings above her limbs. A puppet.

But for whom?

"Unfettered Volition. A...fascinating Skill," her voice said between quiet sips. "That it was entirely forged by your Intent and Willpower is very impressive, Felix Nevarre."

Felix's vision split. There was no better way of describing it. The woman was in front of him still, facing away and sipping on tea. Yet she was also standing atop a wild mountain the size of a planet, chained to its face as a rain of lightning and blood scoured her. That face was wild and terrifying, her eyes filled with a blood-stained final gasp.

The woman sipped her tea again.

Felix backpedaled, knocking over his chair as he cast about for some way out. Where was the construct?

"You'll not find it, Felix. This is not one of the Primordial's tricks." She took another small sip of her cup. "I merely wished a look at the mortal ascendant who rides so close to our realm."

Questions swirled in his mind, but Felix repeated himself. "Who are you?"

"There is no time, Unbound, and there are rules even I must obey. I am here as fog, slipped between breaths. A stolen moment." She considered him, back still turned, her shining eyes reflecting off the blackened glass of the window. The sounds of the kitchen had gone ominously silent. Felix knew this wasn't real, he wasn't at his parents home, yet still the silence clutched a dread claw in his guts.

"Think clearly on your Skill. On its name. You fight a dangerous battle, ascendant, on a Path more than broken. It was shattered." A delicate hand (twitching, screaming) set down the teacup, but never once turned back toward Felix. Its face was fixed outward, regarding things Felix dared not contemplate. "I cannot see it all. But you must choose your own way, Felix Nevarre. Never give up that choice. You will lose everything if you do."

A screaming anguish, a blood-curdling cry that sent uncontrollable spasms up into his arms. Felix's vision split again, and something impossibly, unfathomably large writhed in utter agony. Its screams were storms of arctic blue and its shudders were tidal waves of blood and force. Its presence was a mountainous weight upon his Mind and Spirit, and everything that composed Felix strained with the effort of merely existing. It very nearly scoured him away, but the vision disappeared abruptly.

Deep Mind is level 33!

...

Deep Mind is level 38!

He doubled up, gasping, and nearly missed the figure drop its teacup. It had shattered on the tiled floor.

"I've said too much," it hissed. "And never enough.

"You must never stop, ascendant. To stop is death." The figure twitched, it's womanly form turning strange. It had too many joints, it's hair didn't lie still, and the shadows of its flesh boiled. "I haven't time enough. They're coming. Run, boy."

Felix didn't have to be asked twice.

Unfettered Volition!

He held his arms up, shielding his face and neck as he burst through the large picture window in the front of his old home. Glass, wood, and plaster showered the street along with him, but Felix landed easily as his enhanced stats and Skill enabled Body was neither harmed nor even disoriented by the demolishing movement. Without pausing, Felix took off down the wet street. He didn't truly know what that creature was, but he felt it just as she did. Something was coming for him, rushing from all sides. He felt it at the edges of his Perception, but also as a flare of twisted, crimson energies to his Manasight.

The Maw...so, who was that? He knew the creature he'd just spoken to was something else, but who else would reach into the Maw's twisted lies to speak to him, of all people? And why?

And what is that drumming?

Felix ran up the side of a two story building and alighted on the roof, barely even crunching the shingles beneath his enhanced density. Those bloody forms were still closing in on him, but he tilted his head and focused. He listened. Echoes of a beat sounded in the distance, wild seeming, almost running counter to the faint hum of everything else. It was a syncopation buried in the layers of the false world he'd been transported to; the hum of his Bastion was there, but underlying it were offbeat progressions that built a strange complexity into the tone. Now that he heard it, Felix felt it everywhere around him, a resounding chorus that was shouting at him to do something.

Felix reached out and embraced it, flaring Unfettered Volition and hearing that off-beat grow stronger and more pronounced. The building beneath him began to shake and tremble, vibrating hard enough to send shingles skittering off the roof. Twisted forms covered in bone spurs pelted down the streets around him, hundreds of them from all directions, headed unerringly toward Felix. He pressed harder, burning his Skills like miniature suns, and the harmonics shook the sky itself.

Unfettered Volition is level 4!

...

Unfettered Volition is level 10!

Bastion of Will is level 44!

Bastion of Will is level 45!

RES +2!

INT +4!

The world dissolved into jagged, blue light.