Unbound

Chapter Seven Hundred And Forty Four – 744

As quickly as he left, the light resolved once more, and Felix found himself far away from the jungles of Jaast. The world around him took on darker tones, and the sound of rushing water filled his ears as his feet found solid ground. He stood on the precipice of a slanted underground reservoir. Hundreds of feet below, thousands of tons of water roared out of a sluice gate and into a glittering underground lake.

However, these were minor, forgettable details. Far more pressing was the swarm of horse-sized rats that rushed across the top of the reservoir. Their Bodies were corrupted and diseased, covered in oozing boils and scabs—and every single one of them was trying to dive into the lake far below…but were held back by a lone figure.

A bipedal lizard with green scales and bright orange markings stood in the gap. He resembled a crocodile more than anything else, with a heavy jaw and jutting teeth that were bared in a snarl. At least ten feet tall and wielding two glowing swords, the lizard-man ended a rat with every swing. They were bisected, lopped apart with shocking ease and sizzling fluids.

"Echoed slash!"

A Skill sent his first blow careening through two rats before replicating it. The exact same slash multiplied in a wide wave, echoed across the swarm with decreasing strength. It was more than enough, and even the last whisper of his power obliterated his opponents, felling at least thirty monstrous rats all at once.

Yet that was only a piece of the horde. More followed on their heels.

“Burning Barricade!”

The lizard hissed, crossing his blades and erecting a barrier of orange and silver light. The rats fell onto it, their fur burning and splitting themselves on the shield as if it were made of red-hot razors. More piled on, hurling themselves without care or concern upon the lizardman’s defenses even as they bubbled and split and died. Grunting with effort, he turned, his yellow eyes finding Felix across the reservoir.

"Are you just going to watch? Are you going to help?"

"Yes, and either you help me ghost or leave me alone!" The rats swarmed his shield, nearly overwhelming it, and he was forced to throw out two Echoed Slashes.

Felix clenched his jaw. "Where are you? I can't do anything from here."

"I'm below the white city," he grunted, splitting another rat down the middle. "In Amaranth!"

Felix was tugged back as the array pulled him onward, but he dug in his heels. "I'll find you!"

The reservoir vanished and he was yanked into a tunnel of light. The sensation of insane speed filled his head before he came to a sudden halt once more. His feet touched stone again, but this time it was uneven and the wind howled.

“A storm,” he muttered to himself as his Perception flared. He was standing on a narrow column of natural stone in the middle of a hurricane. The storm winds didn’t touch him, but he could still feel their incredible strength and it was a wonder the rock he was on had not been obliterated.

Rain fell in dense sheets around him, punctuated only by whipping hailstones propelled by the ferocious winds and the raging waves from what appeared to be an ocean. Other solitary rocks populated the area, upthrust from the sea that churned itself apart. Lights swirled among the wind and rain like motes of color, and it took perhaps a full second before Felix realized that they were, in fact, Sprites of air, water, and ice. The sharp-toothed creatures were blurs even to his advanced Perception, but they clearly were frolicking among the violent chaos.

Mostly, though, the Sprites followed one woman.

She flew past him, her hair like liquid silver and wide, colorless eyes that flashed in the Sprite's light like diamonds. Great feathered wings extended from her back, as muscled and powerful as they were colorful. Her wingspan was easily twice her height, which looked only slightly more than five feet, and they were spread, swirling with air Sprites as she flew into the hurricane winds even as they threw other creatures back.

And there were other creatures: strange shadow beasts pursued her through the storm. Faceless serpents and winged behemoths alike fought against the winds, clawed hands reaching for the woman. Red lightning surged with their every undulation, filling their forms with a terrible potency that only emphasized the unnatural holes where their faces should have existed.

Felix snarled. He had seen a face like that before.

Air, earth, and water magic surged in the winged woman’s wake, cast by other Sylphaens as they swooped in from above or below. The shadow beasts shrieked in pain and frustration as they were hit, and black shadow-stuff was torn from their forms. Red lightning answered their cries however, and several of the Sylphaen were blasted out of the sky.

"No!" the Unbound cried out, her body half-turning the way she had come, only to barely dodge the jaws of a twisted beast from the waters below. It was a shadowy mix of crocodile, shark, and writhing squid, and where it’s eyes should have been was only a vast, unending hole.

"Get…away!” Her voice was like thunder, and it was as if all of her frustration compounded in that moment. A hammer of water and air shot downward into half-open jaws and exploded outwards. The beast loosed a gurgling bellow before a stentorian snapping echoed above the storm's rage, and it went forever silent.

Damn, that was strong. Felix watched the woman fly off, still surrounded by Sprites, but now alone. She disappeared into the storm.

The array pulled him again, and this time he did not fight it. The watery storm vanished, replaced by a rooftop overlooking a dazzling cityscape.

Felix looked over the edge, and found he was incredibly high in the air and, judging by the towers he saw around him, floating. The towers he stood on were all wreathed in a similar curtain of light, and that sparked a memory.

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"The lucent towers," he muttered. "I'm in Levantier. The wizard city."

"Ah, that is too much.”

Felix whirled, surprised and annoyed at being surprised. A person sat not thirty feet away from him, centered within an array. She looked like a matronly woman, save for her hooves, heavily muscled arms, and deer's head, complete with antlers.

A Theron? Felix had seen people like her before, and though his Emperor's Vigilance didn't work in these visions, he was sure about that. Another Lost Race. Did they all gravitate toward them, or were they influenced, like me?

“I have reduced the distance between the third and fifth glyph pair, but I cannot eliminate the Dissonance,” a robed figure said from the side.

“No matter. We will try again.” As he watched, the Theron released streamers of Mana into the formation around her, and the glyph beneath her flared in response. The array flared with color as more Mana was siphoned from her, turning swiftly purple and blue and silver. More mages stood around her, each stationed in their own arrays at the periphery of the larger formation.

What are they doing? The array was incredibly complicated, far more than the one he was currently using. Felix’s senses tried to take it all in, but it was moving. Pieces of the array shifted, rotating in strange combinations that continuously altered the formation by the second.

"I need to clear the view," the Theron shouted. The mages scrambled, their arms waving in complicated gestures as they drew out new sigils into the air with various Mana types. The sigaldry came too fast and from too many directions for Felix to properly track at all, but he gathered a piece of what they were attempting. He recognized it.

"They're doing what I'm doing." Felix studied the circumference around the Theron. "Almost. It's from a different angle, though. There are no connections, no Link, and the way things are moving..."

He backed up. He'd missed it before, but now it was glaringly obvious. Silver threads wrapped around the Unbound's arms, hundreds if not thousands of them, and they twitched, pushing her hands into specific patterns as sigaldry formed beneath her.

Siva. She's controlling her already? Felix stepped forward, black claws lengthening. This ends now!

Light wound around him, tugging at his Mind, but Felix fought it, forcing himself to remain as he approached the Theron's array. Yet before he could do more than touch the very edge of it, the Unbound’s head snapped up. Her eyes blazed with an undiluted silver light.

BEGONE.

Felix fell back, hurled from the tower and into the empty air. His own array seized him and hurtled him into the vast distance.

Felix tumbled through space, falling more than traversing anything. Fury coiled within him like a burning liquid, but he couldn't indulge in it. Siva would pay, but not now. He had a job to finish, and if the gods had already noticed him, then he had nothing left to lose.

He flared the final piece of his array and reached. The blood atop the blank spot of his sigaldry flared and burned as white, undifferentiated Mana flowed through it. The thickening connection in his chest burned like a red-hot bar of iron in his bare hands. He held tight despite the pain and resistance, until a keening Dissonance in his blood cut through it all.

There!

White light steadied, becoming a courtyard of white stone and thin green trees. There was a crowd before him, all of them cheering as thirteen men and women were led to blocks on a stage. They knelt at each one, and a burly man in red pushed them over until they were laid out across the blocks.

Jesus, he swore. It's an execution.

Behind him stood two women, a giant Gigas and a relatively small Human. They were both wearing white, though the human was in robes and the eleven-foot-tall Gigas was set in a set of enameled plate armor.

It was the Hierophant…and his sister.

The fall of thirteen simultaneous axes shook the courtyard, and the crowd burst into cheers.

"A simple solution, but effective," the Hierophant said. She looked no older than her mid-twenties, though she carried herself proudly. A staff of white stone was in her hand, and she gestured with it. "You gathered up all the ringleaders of the riots?"

"Yes," Imara said. Her voice was rough. "This is everyone."

"Good. Next we can focus our efforts abroad."

The Hierophant's words were important. Felix knew that, but he couldn't keep his attention off his sister. She had never once looked at those condemned to die. And when the final blow fell, she had flinched.

Felix's mouth went dry. Imara would have watched the execution without issue. She wouldn't have felt a thing to see people die.

Gabby?

The light of his array flared again, pulling him onward, but Felix refused. He clung to the street of Amaranth, taking in the shape of his sister’s face as the Hierophant kept talking. The woman’s words were lost to the roar of distant winds, but Felix flared his Perception.

“...take them, and secure the Territory. I refuse to lose…footholds in…war…”

Flashes of black and silver burst around him, forcing Felix back. He shrugged them off but they persisted, clinging to him like paint and securing around his limbs like manacles. Blue and bronze light followed closely after, bashing into his head and chest, as distant voices intoned in an ancient tongue.

SHE IS OURS.

Red lightning blasted into him, and Felix lost his grip. The array burst, igniting the air with whirling lights that burned the sky, and blackened his chest. He fell, but landed only seconds later as he was thrust back into his body.

Felix’s eyes snapped open and he gasped for breath that, for a moment, wouldn’t come. Around him, the chamber was filled with steam and stone dust in great obscuring clouds, but he couldn’t care less. He slammed on his chest and he gagged as a streamer of black ichor poured from his mouth. Gallons of vile liquid ejected onto the array, sizzling like putrefied remains on the steaming array, but Felix couldn’t care less for the smell. He took deep, grateful gulps of air and steadied himself against the ground.

Archie ran up to him, waving off the smoke in the air. "Felix, are you okay? The whole thing just started burning through the rock!"

Felix looked around, ichor still dripping from his lips. Undifferentiated Mana sparked from various points of his array, where it was clear the entire thing had warped out of true. Before him, the stone itself had melted beneath what he’d expelled, and he grimaced.

“Whoa, that’s nasty. What the hell is that?”

Felix pulled in a sharp breath, and all of the smoke and steam was sucked into his Hunger. The air cleared almost instantly, though the stink of ichor remained.

Tzfell walked up, Laur in her wake. “My Lord, did you—?”

"I found them. All of them." Felix stood up and met all of their gazes one by one. "And we're in trouble."