Unbound

Between one backward step and the next, the dark flesh parted, and Felix found himself in yet another new place.

"Don't trust the Beast, huh?" Felix rolled his neck. It cracked and sent a shudder of relief through him. "I knew that already, Grim."

He looked around. As if the blasted spirit tree hadn't been bad enough. Now, he stood before a wide pit within which boiled a miasmic stew. It took him a minute or so to realize that he was staring at the remnants of a magic city, replete with soaring crystalline arches and beacons of strange energy. The center of the city, however, had collapsed entirely. That miasmic stew bubbled and sloshed, filled by the oozing trails that poured from nearby open windows and gaping doorways.

The remains of living things.

A Primordial raged in the muck, biting through armored warriors that tried and failed to face it’s strange might. Its body was wild and corrupted, the flesh grown too much across its bony frame.

Fleshcurse. Felix could almost see the crimson rot exuding from the Primordial's body, infecting the ground and all things that lived within the radius of its power. The creature was mad, and whenever it wasn’t attacking Nymean warriors, it was snapping at its own limbs as it writhed in the muck, demolishing more of the city as if by accident.

He flared Emperor's Vigilance. Only a single line populated his sight.

Name: Primordial Of Vanished Horizons

Manaships appeared around him—or perhaps they had been there all this time—but now armies of the Golden Empire dropped from their decks. Magi and warriors alike descended, riding Chimeras and Dragons as they sought out the Primordial. Song and magic coiled together, firing from their hands as one.

It vanished, letting the salvo of power demolish the vile muck instead. Space warped, leaving strange trails of light that twisted across circular points in the air. Felix frowned, eyes tracing across the landscape to find the thing, and only barely noticed it reappear…this time directly above the Manaships.

It’s slipping through liminal space, he realized. Across the horizon.

It slashed out, its limbs spreading farther than they should as its power broke through the Manaships and the wards they contained. The sky exploded.

Engaging With A Struggle You Cannot Win Is Not Valorous.

It Is The Binding Of Pride.

Felix frowned at the voice of the Beast once more. He very much missed Hunger.

The scene shifted, moving hours, perhaps days later, as the Nym bound the Primordial within a mountain fastness. Magical constructs leveraged the coiled, unconscious flesh deep within a familiar Mana Well, before lowering the entire structure into a dark chasm. As the circular seal settled over its top, Felix spied others in the distance—not just two or three, but hundreds, all contained within a vault too vast to comprehend.

The Nym had filled the interior of the mountain with more than one monster. Prisons for creatures they could never kill.

You Must Listen, Scion.

"What are you talking about, Beast? They won this fight."

They Did Not End Their Enemy.

They Merely Postponed Their Own Defeat.

Again the vision switched without warning. Another battlefield spread out before him, and Felix growled at the casual destruction of an interminable war.

He stood before a tall city between two mountain ranges where a dark forest was toppled and deep crevices had torn the land. The city wasn't as big as he remembered, but Felix could tell it was Shelim. He knew those towers anywhere, and that meant—

A roar split the air.

Felix narrowed his gaze, spying an army of magi that were currently facing down a massive creature. It appeared to be a cross between a prowling tiger and an armored dragon. It had too many eyes and far too many mouths, and its flesh flowed like liquid.

It was the Unending Maw.

"This isn't the same enemy, Beast."

No. It Is Not.

A note crawled up Felix's spine and he turned, just in time to witness the moons as they rose above the mountains. They peeked through the clouds, glimmering every so faintly as Shelim’s fate unraveled. Bronze, yellow, and silver.

Felix bared his teeth at the sky. Siva’s watching.

The Maw moved, its Body splitting into a thousand different barbed shapes that speared through the Nymean army. People died as its jaws crunched. The Maw glowed with power, turning the very earth into smoke as ranks of magi were ripped into Essence and Mana.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

A horn sounded, and the Maw froze, it’s too-many eyes widening.

From the sky came light and fire. A new army arrived, carried upon gilded clouds that resolved into a dozen massive, bone-white ships. All of them were haloed by multicolored Mana, sparking off of them in crystalline arcs. At their center, a figure floated upon the breeze, draped in diaphanous robes but no armor. Instead, she held in her hands a hooked sword, a crown of Crescian Bronze, and two other objects.

The Herald. Felix squinted. With my sword and crown—but what are those?

One object was in the Herald’s off-hand, and the other was strapped to her hip—but in both cases, they were foggy and out of focus, as if his eyes refused to linger on anything like specific details. No matter how he flared his Emperor's Vigilance, all he could sense was that they radiated a halo of power that only added to the Herald's already incredible Spirit. She dominated the horizon and she was doing nothing.

The Maw froze. The Herald lifted Inheritor's Will and one other foggy item.

"Stay your hunger, Veridaan! Let not the Ouranic slaves bind your Fate.”

The Maw snarled but said nothing. Instead, it grew a thousand vast wings from its twisted form and launched itself to the sky. Madness burned in its eyes.

The Herald lifted her chin, her dark curls catching the light of the setting sun. Her eyes flashed. “Then fall before the Chthonic Host.”

Music swelled and it was a sound beyond anything Felix had ever heard—so vast he couldn't comprehend any of it, save that it shook him to his very soul.

The vision blurred, moving forward faster than he could track the sounds tumbling across his consciousness. Felix couldn’t halt it any more than the march of time itself, but this dashed away his focus with every passing second. In his bones, he knew that if he lingered too long on the strains of Memory he’d be torn apart.

Power clashed.

Mountains moved.

In the end, as things resolved once more to his sight, a crater had been broken into the deepest foundations of the earth. The Maw was within it, unconscious, with a towering spike of Crescian Bronze through its heart.

The Herald floated just above it, bloodied, and the host around her broken. Her great ships had been knocked to the ground, their bone-white husks half-consumed as sunset smeared the world into a sanguine orange.

"I know this ending," Felix said between short, panicked breaths. His head still rang from the chaos of the battle, and the song would not flee his memory. "The Henaari—”

Know Nothing.

Truth Cannot Be Saved From The Deleterious Ruin.

The sunset vanished, as did the Maw's captured body and the Herald's host. Shelim was restored, spreading out before him as it never had in real life. Towers rose to the sky, each one so distinct from the other that Felix could easily identify his tower. Vvim's.

The sight was marred by a calamitous thunder. It cracked across the sky as the blue broke open, and purple-black fire rained down. Meteors of it fell out of the charred firmament, each one impacting the earth before erupting into a wave of boiling static. Towns dissolved before it, their domed structures turning to dust as the black heat came close. It rolled over the wilderness like a tsunami, heedless of forests or mountains as it devoured the structures of the Nym.

This Is Your Enemy, Scion.

Remember It Well.

The black wave rolled across him, and his vision glitched. Shapes bent and refracted, turned out of true as reality itself rejected him.

And through it all, he could see the traitorous moons.

The Chthonic Host.

Learn From Their Failures, Scion.

Deep beneath the earth, a slumbering Primordial twitched within its cage.

You Cannot Forge Power From Flawed Stock.

Valor Is A Lie.

Restored Or Not, Siva’s Stolen Potency Does Not Serve You.

Reject It.

Seek Another Source.

“I don’t have the time!”

You Are The Scion.

We…

Creation Bends To Our Will.

Around Felix, the Ruin flexed, its false image parting like curtains. Felix saw a monstrous hand reach out toward a Manaship, tearing through sigil, ward, and mage with ease.

They died, turned to smoke that poured into the black flame.

Take Their Power, Scion.

Forge Thyself Anew.

New Essences rolled through Felix. Motes of potency that sang of Adept and Master Tier Tempers…even a single Grandmaster.

System notifications blipped into his vision, crowding him as much as the Beast’s insistent monologue. Pressuring him. As if—

Felix’s eyes widened.

As if they were both afraid.

Pieces clicked in his Mind as the Tempering visions settled into place, and Felix’s heart pounded a rapid tattoo across the dark.

The Beast was afraid. Of what? Felix swallowed. It’s afraid of the gods and the Ruin.

It’s afraid of failure.

“No.” He swiped closed all of the notifications and the System flashed red at him. More came, pressed by the illuminated smoke that overtook the black flames of Ruin. Felix flared his Will, shaping his Intent into a blade that sliced the notifications in half.

They burst, sizzling back into Essence and Mana.

“I choose what I’m Tempering,” he said. “And I’m taking [Essence of Undaunted Sight]!

Felix could sense a resonance with the Essence, and with one Feature in particular.

It Has Already Failed Your Task.

It Is Flawed.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

You Do Not Know What You Risk—

Fuck off.

His Emperor’s Vigilance needed to complete its own pattern to push itself to Grandmaster. It needed to become more of what it already was…and Felix could see the path.

“An Emperor must be brave,” he said, voice echoing around him. “He must have goals. But without judgment, all those goals and bravery will dissolve away. Without judgment, there is no action. Without action, there is no advancement.”

Truth will lead me to my goals. The Feature burned within him, humming hard enough that his limbs trembled.

All else is smoke and shadow.

“I choose Verdict!”