> Lady Isla muttered, as bars of iron and stone closed around them all.

Vess couldn’t help but agree. The survivors of the root tunnel had been tossed to earth after Felix’s violent display, and while the largest part of her cheered for him, the rest was keyed up with twitching anxiety. Too many Fathom spawn surrounded them, not to mention the enormous Lindwurms that held each of them in their clawed grasps. Yet the draconics had released them all, choosing instead to bundle them together in a cage they summoned from below.

Felix had held the glare of the Lindwurms through the entire process, and though the terrifying beasts bared their teeth and curled their lips, none drew close to their group until the cage was finished. Even then, they hesitated, until the largest forced the smallest to swim over and seize the top of the cage. With a lurching rush, they all rocketed off into the dark.

Now they were traveling across the blasted terrain at the bottom of the lake, moving fast enough that the ground beneath them was rendered a blurred, murky haze. Vess sat atop the crude, twisted bars, her Mind ignoring the discomfort to focus on the trouble they were facing. Lady Isla, Beef, Hallow, and Felix were beside her, sat or laid out in various states of consciousness. The War Naga were arrayed around them in a protective circle, filling up the majority of the cage with their weapons propped outward. Lavix was nearest the heiress, her scaled length trembling along with her grieving Spirit. The loss of Toa’ut and other warriors was hitting them hard, for all that their weapons and furious gazes were steady.

Vess placed her hand on Lavix’s warm scales and caught the Naga woman’s frayed attention. She said nothing, but Lavix’s Spirit quietened, just a touch. The Naga nodded, before turning back to the monstrosities that surrounded them.

There were so many.

The Fathom spawn spread out in all directions, a horde as uncountable as any she had encountered. Reminds me of the Domain under Haarwatch, right before it burst. The Archon’s servant had collected all of the monsters in one spot, and it had been a nightmare to handle even the tiny portion they had faced. Felix had been right to surrender, though it soured Vess’ stomach.

> Lady Isla said. Beef was unconscious, as were the two remaining Bodies of Hallow. The Chanter cradled Beef’s big head in her lap, hands intermittently glowing with green-gold Mana as she attempted to wake him.

> Felix said.

> she demanded.

> Felix muttered. Vess frowned. He looked strained in a way she had seen before; likely when he had faced another too-powerful opponent.

He split himself between aiding Beef and us, she reminded herself. Vess still couldn’t understand how he had accomplished such a thing. Small wonder he is injured.

> Lady Isla said, her voice low as she gazed at the undulating masses around them. The Lindwurms were watching, likely listening too, and it was clear the Chanter was choosing her words carefully. >

> he asked, flashing a sharp, handsome smile.

> This time Lady Isla’s tone was a rumble that somehow shook Vess’ inner ear. As if the Grand Harmony was bleeding through her voice.

Felix simply raised a finger to his lips. > he said…before collapsing backward in a heap.

> Vess cut off her own scream with a titanic effort of Will. She floundered for that feeling in her chest, the one that had been growing above her core space. The Link thrummed, skittering away from her grasp

Felix! What is going on? Are you alright?

Vess? Oh right, the Links. Yeah, I’m fine. I just have to—ugh—I just have to handle some things. He paused and all Vess could hear on the line were the sounds of a distant thrumming.

That is not a good explanation. We are trapped and headed toward the Fathom, Felix. Vess took a breath through her nose, the magic of his Sunken Ward tickling against her sinuses. Tell me you have a plan.

The thrumming increased, becoming more and more chaotic as strange, half-heard notes flitted through their connection. Oddly, Vess could almost perfectly visualize Felix, as if he were standing inches from her—he looked surprised, and then guilty. Yes. Sorry, I was—the sarcasm was for Isla. I have a plan. Mostly.

Vess’ irritation melted—a little. That is a relief, because I simply wish to tear into these monstrosities with all that I have. Does your plan include destroying the Fathom and its kindred?

The image of Felix solidified completely before her, and he flashed that handsome grin again. Make sure Isla doesn’t wake up Beef. He’s putting his core space together, and he needs all the time he can get. He took a breath, but the smile didn’t fade. Me too, actually. Wish me luck.

Before she could respond, the connection vanished. Vess opened her eyes, only to find Lady Isla staring daggers at her.

> she asked. >

Vess let the smile—one she hadn’t known she was wearing—fall away. >

The Chanter jerked backward, as if Vess had slapped her, but the surprise faded quickly. An expression of repentance flooded over the woman, though as usual Vess could feel nothing of her Spirit. >

> Vess said with a sniff. Her eyes flickered outward, taking in the rushing waters and shifting mass of spawn that surrounded them on all sides. > Vess settled her partisan across her lap while she attempted to pull her concerns away from the slumbering Unbound beside them.

> Lady Isla asked, her voice more deadpan than her smile suggested. <>

> Vess said, her voice hard. >

This time, Lady Isla’s smile dropped fully into a grimace. >

Vess idly rolled her partisan in her lap, fighting the urge to grip it tight. >

Felix set aside the Link with Vess, hiding it away from himself. As much as he wanted to tell Vess everything—to reassure her—he didn't have the time. Reassurances would have been lies anyway. Felix only had scraps and inferences to work with, after all, and now they were being carried to the Fathom at speed.

He had to work quickly.

Drifting down toward his dual cores, Felix let his Mind settle. Tried to at least. The pain of his recent exertions as well as the bundle of howling song that was his Fiendforge were twin knots in the fabric of his consciousness. Here, within his core space, the latter even had a physical presence.

The pattern of Fiendforge was huge and complex, as befitting its Unique rarity. At first glance, it appeared to Felix as a massive planet streaked liberally with dark clouds that blanketed its shape in shadow. Blue-white lightning flashed among them, as if the surface were suffering under a single, world-spanning storm. It wasn’t, but the only places where there was a break in cloud cover featured angry, magma spitting volcanoes. It was a world that looked to be still forming from scratch, as Earth would have looked billions of years prior—except, unlike Earth, this celestial body was sparking with ripples of red-gold and blue-white energies that escaped its bounds and speared outward…to vanish into the dark.

Yet the ripples weren’t vanishing, but traversing the strange pathways between internal worlds. Slipping across the Link with Beef, the Skill sounded its pattern again and again, maintaining the connection over the chaos of the other Unbound’s core space. The whole of the Skill was drawn taut, a vice turned tight. It was a constant drain on Felix’s mental acuity, not to mention his slowly dwindling supply of Essence and Mana.

That was the other reason for the tension and pain. Felix had consumed the Ooze Behemoth and, for the first time, had not immediately divested himself of its power. It was one of several reasons why he’d demanded a meeting with the Lindwurm’s master—he needed the Ooze’s potency, and that meant risking the Fathom’s attention. Yet the moment the Lindwurms had agreed to take them into the depths, the mystifying attention of the Fathom had dropped away, as if satisfied or perhaps no longer quite so curious. They were a known entity, now.

Killing the one Lindwurm was a risk, and Felix had briefly sensed the Fathom’s renewed interest after its death, but it was necessary. If they were to make it out of Khasma, then Felix needed to make a few gambles. Thankfully, their master’s attention had drifted away once again, as something like reassurance had puckered the waters between Lindwurm and Fathom.

That had been interesting to witness, and he filed it away for later.

The closer he drifted to his cores, the more the pain and tension faded. Down past the branches of his Divine Tree, a crystalline formation that glittered with stolen power and spread over nearly the entirety of his core space. It sparked along his senses, the Lindwurm and Ooze’s repurposed strength sizzling as it hung in stasis as bits of it were siphoned off and into his Fiendforge. Down the immense trunk, thicker than any skyscraper back home, until the coiling roots vanished into the splashing waves of melodious Harmony and crashing Dissonance as his [Thundflame Core] and [Cardinal Beast Core] ground eternally against one another. He let both wash over him, a background radiation that Felix had long since learned to ignore. Eventually even that faded, everything faded, and Felix stepped onto the edge of a yawning abyss at his very center.

“Hello there, Hunger.”

FEED?

Felix could feel the thing’s attention shift to the swirling clouds of Essence and Mana that festooned the Divine Tree. Its attention was a bared blade, an open maw, but it was oddly calm. Felix was still uncertain what his Hunger was, other than some piece of his Primordial nature, but for all its danger, he felt a certain empathy for it. All it knew was its own needs. Plus, it had helped him before.

He hoped it could do so again.

“I’ll feed you after this, but for now, I need that for what I’m planning.” Felix stepped a bit closer, feeling more of his core space go silent. “I need your help to focus. You down for that?”

A profound silence met his words. The looming black at the center of all things did not answer.

And then it did.

…DOWN.

Felix blinked. “Uh. Alright. Cool.” He took a bracing breath, for all that this was a visualized Body. “Then let’s start now.”

He stepped into the abyss.