Adamant Discord!

Skein of Fate!

The world bloomed open to Felix, a haze of connections that spread like spider’s silk in every conceivable direction, but he rocketed down toward the depths upon a thread the size of an ocean liner. The water boiled behind him as he all but became the lightning he rode upon.

>

The shadow bubbled and shrieked, flaring outward in jagged spikes toward Felix’s outstretched claw. He ignored them, focusing all his might, all of his Hunger upon the Creature’s Essence—and the spikes and claws of shadow dissolved.

No! Impossible! the Creature howled, while the Fathom’s body contorted into spastic knots.

Below, a glorious golden light filled the waters, as Vess lifted her hand one last time and sounded the connection between her and the Dragon. Felix still couldn’t believe that, but it had given his Hunger time to mobilize itself, and beyond the surprise all he felt was gratitude.

I Am A Sliver Of The Night Itself! Heretics! Anathema!

A Willpower contested his—something ancient and terrible and stronger than any mortal combatant Felix had ever faced. The cavernous face of the Creature loomed in every piece of the shadow Felix was devouring, and it raged. It bucked his Skill, refusing the pull of Felix’s Tribute, but he had an answer for that too.

Title: The Call of Defiance Is Active!

+25% Willpower When Contested By A Foe Of Divine Or Greater Advancement!

Title: Born of Will Is Active!

What Is Beyond You, If You Have The Will?

Like the slow bend of heating steel, the Creature’s Will warped under the steady increase of pressure. It may have been Divine, it may have survived countless Ages, but it was no match for an Unbound forged in the harshest of flames.

Your Will! How?

Felix offered no answers, only bore down harder, his Hunger roaring against the Fathom’s unthinking pain. Shadow, ooze and Creature stripped from the Dragon’s hide, piece by foul piece, revealing soiled golden scales and a mane that floated limply among glittering, crystalline horns.

Release Me, Heretic! Whatever Pact You Have Sworn To The Primordials Will Not Save You From The Wrath Of The Divine!

“You think I care?” Felix shouted into the water, his Adept voice so powerful it blasted through his Sunken Ward. “Chthonic Tribute!”

The pressure redoubled, peeling the Creature from the Dragon to the sounds of shattering stone and snapping wooden beams; its hold on the Fathom was deep and thorough. Felix grimaced through the pain as his core space filled, packed fuller than ever and still there was more. The Creature, sliver of Noctis and whatever else, felt endless.

Do I even have the space?

I DO. EAT! his Hunger roared, and Felix could only oblige.

A deal was a deal, after all.

Foul Little Thing! Begone! The Creature hauled on its stretching tendrils, still bound around the Dragon’s forelimb, and slashed toward Felix. A clutch of searing icy crescents formed, launching through the water at breakneck speeds, and Felix regarded them with his Eye.

Engaged as he was, he could not eat the attack. Nor had he any intention of tanking it. Only one thing for it.

Strained and struggling with devouring the Creature, Felix still managed to force Mana outward and into the First Glyph on the blade at his hip. Surging up into his left hand, the crooked blade of his Inheritor’s Will slashed upward, igniting the glyph with power just as the crescents hit—splitting water, ice, and the darkness itself on the razor edge.

A cataclysmic reverberation tore through the water as empty space was carved into the wake of Felix’s sword. Harmless, unshaped Mana split to either side of his weapon, the spell rendered into harmless vapor. The cavitation collapsed on itself, booming in every direction as the Creature stared at the sword in horror.

Herald. The word echoed from its empty face like a tolling bell, final and undeniable. Nym—!

A brief, staccato howl of panic sounded…and the Creature was consumed.

Felix recoiled from the last smoking tendril and, for a time, simply tread water.

> Beef said, breathlessly, before his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed onto the shattered ground.

“Master! No!” The Lindwurms cried, their own Bodies twisted up as if in terrible pain. Their limbs had started to burn, somehow, their scales igniting as if from within as smoke poured in bubbling coils from their mouths. “Heretic! What have you done?”

> Vess shouted, conjuring her Spears around her like a halo of violence. >

> Felix said, forcing his voice to resound in the too-still water. >

“You–!”

> Felix interrupted, lifting a single finger. >

The Lindwurms stared at him, not only pain but fear scrawled across their Spirits. One by one, the remaining five Lindwurms snapped shut their jaws, and banished the heat from within their breasts. Then they surprised him.

They bowed their heads, and words flowed from their lips.

"We surrender to your strength, monarch. We are yours, bound by Oath and Power. Upon our honor shall we serve, or else upon our honor shall we die."

Congratulations, Autarch!

You Have Vanquished A Threat!

The Lindwurms (Moontouched Lindwurms) Have Joined Your Fledgling Nation!

+25% To All Positive Relations With Draconics!

Still Moontouched, huh, he observed. He shoved down his concern over this new and clearly Divine-afflicted group of followers. He had worse things to handle now. “Good,” Felix said to them, before grunting in sudden, sharp pain.

>

> Felix bent, his Body wracked by a splitting, tearing pain within his gut and chest.

> Isla said, kicking off the broken ground to swim toward his floating form. Pit beat her to him, flowing to Felix’s side like iron to a magnet.

> he said, scratching at his friend’s ears. Pit warbled and his wings spread around the two of them.

Isla stared through the feathers, aghast. >

Felix grunted again. The force of the Creature’s release from the Fathom had been like a cable under tension; the moment it snapped, it clattered down through his channels and into the wide abyss of his core space. It was running wild now.

He didn’t have enough time.

> Felix forced a breath from his lungs, and a crackling miasma of Mana and Essence poured from him. >

With you. Always.

> Felix said through a rictus grin. >

> Isla demanded. She dodged away from the sputtering mass of Mana and Essence. >

Pit vanished in a flash of light, adding the weight within Felix’s core and yet lightening it at the same time. Felix breathed back in, sucking back the clouds of Mana and Essence that had escaped. “The Creature isn’t dead. It’s not even contained, really.”

>

Spikes of agonizing pressure stabbed through Felix’s gut, as if something were trying to tear itself free. “It's not happy. Run, or I can’t be blamed for what’s about to happen.”

Felix didn’t wait for her response, and was only dimly aware of Vess shooting upward toward them on a pair of huge, spectral wings. Oh. Cool.

He dropped into the dark.

His core space was under assault.

From within the nebulous clouds of Essence that hovered above his Divine Tree, masses of endless tendrils had sprouted. It gathered the Essence and Mana together, congealing it into huge appendages that lashed about in all directions, snagging on Skills and his cores with equal measure. Each hit was a fissure of savage pain that nearly blinded Felix as he descended…but then, he’d felt worse.

Felix bore the torment as he drifted to a stop within his core space, his small form floating before the cloud of stolen Essence that was once the Creature…and what was swiftly becoming the Creature once again. A horrifying skull pressed against the formless clouds, faceless and crumbling, just as bad as it had been in the Memory he’d experienced—Felix’s Mind stuttered for a brief moment before his Bastion of Will clamped shut.

Nymean.

Felix forced himself to watch the oozing, faceless skull of the Creature pull itself from the muck of its Essence. His Bastion blazed, burning down below within its array like a distant spotlight, and Pit’s thrumming voice soothed his straining Mind.

You are strong! Fight that jerk!

Teeth formed among the wreck of a corpse, perfect and too-square within that shattered visage. They snapped and clattered, a jaw testing itself as words tumbled from its unformed throat.

Foolish, Foolish Child. Release Me And Perhaps You Will Be Allowed To Live.

“I gave you your chance,” Felix said. His Perception flitted over the whole of his core space, feeling at the layout. Assuring himself. “You refused to take it.”

And So You Brought Me Here? To The Center of Your Power? Clueless, Overconfident Nym! I Can Feel My Power Growing With Every Passing Heartbeat As You Draw In More Of My Essence! I Am A Sliver Of The Divine! I Cannot Be Bested By Nym’s Nor A Primordial’s Heinous Plots!

“You’re not getting out of here,” Felix said, his voice calm. He probed at several spots of his core space as surreptitiously as he could. “That Dragon is free of you.”

Dragon? Do You Think I Care What Shape My Vessel Takes? No. No, You Shall Do Nicely In His Stead.

The Creature spread itself wider, clinging to his Skills now instead of tearing at them. Seeping over the celestial bodies and toward the spinning rings of his core.

Two Cores? Quite Novel. And Potent, Despite The Rickety Foundations, it said as it avoided the black void at his cores’ center. And A…Tree…What Is—

Felix spoke up quickly. He couldn’t let it inspect things so closely. Not yet. "You control with flesh and Dissonance, Creature. I can hear it."

The Creature tilted its vast skull toward him. The gaping hole where its face should have been conveyed no expression, but it seemed amused by his clear attempts to stall.

Yes. The Primordials Might Be Anathema, But They Do Have Their Tricks To Teach. To Steal. The Creature stilled, and a vast quiver overtook its formless Spirit. I Do Not Understand. I Have Your Cores Within My Grasp! None Can Withstand Me Once I Have Taken Hold Of Them. You Should Be Afraid. You Should Be Angry!

“Oh I am,” Felix said. “Your kind makes me downright furious.”

My Kind? I Have No Peer But The Arc Of The Heavens Themselves, Whelp!

“No peers?” Felix snorted, and the trembling in his Mind faded, just a touch. “Every petty dictator and wanna-be tyrant is just the same. Every guild elder, city lord, and mad god. I’m sick of it.”

For the first time, the Creature hesitated. What Madness Do You Speak Of, Nym?

“You want to know why I brought you here? Why I let you, a big blob clearly designed to possess the beings you get hold of?” Felix felt the pain in his Mind fade entirely before the clean burn of his fury. Pit screeched in harmonizing agreement.

What Madness? The Creature demanded, its questing tendrils forgotten. What God?

“I did it because you made a mistake.” Felix bared his teeth, and at his center, his Hunger roared.

Relentless Resolution!

Cloudstep!

Felix hurled himself from his core space to find his Body already moving. Kicking off shattering platforms of Mana, Felix rocketed the last fifty feet to the bottom of the Breach, where hill-sized hunks of ice wove between the twisted statuary. He hit one of those hills, his landing blasting silt and rime in a floating explosion of debris, and revealing the desiccated husk of an ancient root.

He grasped it, and hoped his friends had gotten far enough away.

Unite the Lost!

A gargantuan surge of Essence and significance flooded out of him, pouring not just from the Mana Gates in his palms, but from all of them. He lit up, a torch of power in the darkest depths, while within him the faceless Creature screeched in sudden terror.

The Seal! No!

The Seal! Yes! Pit rejoined, bugling his joy.

Felix couldn’t pay attention to their cries—he could only focus on hanging tight to the root. Power overwhelmed him, energies that he hadn’t the first clue how to wield, but which were bridled and tamed by the soaring pattern of his Skill. Harmonies swelled, accompanied by the atonal rasp of Dissonance that curled through melodies and rhythm, seemingly without rhyme or reason. The root between his fingers swelled, flooded with sudden vitality as time itself sloughed from its ancient bark. Gold and silver sigaldry etched themselves to life, formations that looked grown rather than created by the hands of a person, and a vast blaze of once-hidden light burst forth from the floor of the Breach.

The Abundance Anima Has Been Restored!

Restoration In Progress!

30%!

Felix screamed, the flow of Essence and Mana and significance burning bloody furrows inside of him. Scorched and raw, his channels spat red-gold radiance and blue-white wrath as the weight of countless enemies and the mighty power of the Creature itself—from the Ooze Behemoth—was depleted.

70%!

85%!

The words of their phantom friend echoed through Felix’s memories. Seek the center. Strengthen the Tree.

95%!

100%!

Congratulations!

The Abundance Anima Has Been Restored!

A sudden chorus sang out from high above them, and Felix fell back with a ragged groan. In the dark waters, far up at the edge of the frozen Breach, a glorious electrum ring burst to life. The chorus rang out, higher and more pure than anything Felix had heard before—as if the Grand Harmony were extolling its very existence.

A flickering, too-tall man in white robes appeared beside Felix. His face was split in a broad smile and his Spirit sang with astonished joy. “You did it!” Paxus cheered.

“Not done yet!” Felix shouted back.

“Of course! Press on, young Autarch. I’ll follow your lead!”

Felix stumbled forward, his legs suddenly refusing to work. Pit shrieked in terror as flashes of red sparked in Felix’s vision. The Creature was going wild inside him. “Not much time!”

Green Shaping!

The Skill sputtered and failed, Mana sizzling through the riotous haze of power that still cloaked the Spirit Tree’s roots. I don’t have the Mana to force through the interference…that I created. Felix laughed, incredulous, as the Creature tore through something inside of him and blood poured from his nose. Gotta touch it!

Felix threw himself forward, powered just by his arms, but fiery, Mind-numbing pain made his Body spasm. He landed, inches too short of the root, but Felix stretched as a paroxysm of agony rippled across his entire being. He reached out his hand…and someone took it. Felix blinked up through bloody, floating tears to find Vess grasping his hand and elbow.

> she said, simply.

Nothing more was needed.

Together, they lunged forward, and Felix’s hand made contact with the root.

Green Shaping!

Theurgist of the Rise!

Theurgist of the Rise is level 85!

He shaped the wood, inscribing an array he’d made a thousand times before. In battle, to raise a town, and to support a friend. Now he scratched it out to save himself, and everyone within the Territory.

Siphon.

The Seal thrummed, the chorus rising to a fever pitch as the Abundance Anima sang out a paean to its glorious rebirth. Beside him, Paxus laughed, understanding swelling through his Spirit. The phantom laid his incorporeal hands upon the root as well, and the swelling chorus spun, pivoted on its head as the pitch and cadence flowed in a new direction.

The siphon array lit up, bright as the sun, and the waters boiled around them all.

Paxus shouted into the churning, turbulent waters. “As without, so within!”

The power of the Seal of the Breach flipped, turned inward. Into Felix himself.

He screamed, and Vess screamed with him.