Unbound-Chapter Eight Hundred And Eighty One: 881

Felix shot through the darkness. It was a rift in the world that reminded him of nothing so much as the tear at the center of the Pool of Halcyon Oaths, with the same heat-shot haze around its aperture. Still, it was a visceral shock when he slammed to the dusty earth just beyond. Ground crumbled like ash beneath his leaden limbs, and his thoughts were sluggish.

Here again. Felix glanced up at the blackened skies and crushed mountains of the Deadlands. He was surrounded by blasted terrain and empty air. The rift back to Elderthrone was behind him, wavering with incredible heat, and his knees creaked as he pressed himself to standing.

Where is it?

The thought was reflexive, because there was no missing the connection he had followed. The Bond of Enmity arced through the crushed grasses and toppled hills, extending for hundreds of feet before it curved out of his sight. Without a word, Felix took off after it.

Sweat beaded his brow and his breath came fast as he ran, the ground crumbling at each step as if he were jogging through sand. He passed around a hill, spraying earth in his wake as he skid down a dusty gully and into what may have once been a small forest. Now it was nothing more than a copse of withered trees, little better than charcoal sticks littered across the barren ground.

In the center of it was another rift, and the Bond led straight to it.

Felix approached cautiously, catching his breath. The Bond of Enmity extended through the rift without issue, but he was not going to just leap through. Angry as he was, even Felix knew that was stupid. He sidled closer, lingering at the edge of the tear, heat pouring off the edges like a blacktop in the summertime. There was a pull at his center. The Bond of Enmity wanted him to move forward, as if beckoning him down a long hallway. He resisted.

Through the heat haze of the rift, the Bond split, heading in opposite directions across a city that spread out for miles. Blue-tiled roofs lined with golden caps, steeples, and weathervanes filled his sight. The buildings varied in quality and craftsmanship, ranging from poor hovels to soaring manors, all of them done up in shades of white. Wrought iron decorated the meanest of homes, while gold filigree and statues of white marble filled the courtyards of sprawling mansions. It was a city Felix had never seen before, but one which had been described to him many times.

What was different, however, was that the streets were swelled with fungal growths, filling wide thoroughfares with a rotting jungle prowled by thousands of creatures that from his distance looked no more than ants. He knew them, though, for they were the same as what just attacked his city. Horrors and Abominations and shadowbeasts and more. Things he found hard to describe. Insectoid monstrosities and strange shapes that he could not quite make out through the haze of the rift.

Most of all, the tower at the very center, and the palace it rose from, gave its location away.

"Amaranth," Felix whispered.

En'cridhe, the Star of Heaven, rose like a spear into the blue sky. He squinted through the heat haze, trying to make out details of the shining palace. Something about the rift interfered with his Perception, but he was almost certain that he could see a bronze smudge across the topmost section of the tower.

The Chthonic star. Has to be.

A new Bond swam into his awareness, one that had remained vague and fuzzy for months. Now it snapped into sharp relief. Purple green, green gold, and seawater blue—all of them folded over a deep darkness. Not quite Links, but not far off either.

Somewhere atop En'cridhe, the three captured Unbound were being held. Those Bonds of connection led directly to there.

The Kobolds and the Sylphaen are still alive. He tilted his ear toward the rift, and they're untouched.

Something about the connection made him sure of that—but where was the Lizard? That thread was absent, not just veiled as it had been in the past, but vanished entirely.

They wouldn't have killed him. They need him. Right?

Felix delved toward his connections, flaring Adamant Discord once again. He could feel the bundle of potent bonds that were the Unbound, they jutted from his center like a fistful of cables, and he counted them again. Eight were clear, with one thicker by far.

"Gabby," Felix murmured, shying away from the thought of his sister. Getting too close to her might risk her position, whatever her plan might be.

Near to her connection, however, he saw a nub. A nub that faded away as it extended away from his center. Felix smiled. The Lizard was still there, but he'd hidden himself somehow. It was not like Gabby’s own veiling, or even the work of the gods to fog up his awareness of the Unbound—for that had to have been the interference he’d noted in the past. This was something deeper.

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Could he have a Void Skill, like Abyssal Skein? It would explain how he stayed hidden all this time. If he’d Tempered with it, a Skill like that could be powerful indeed.

The Hierophant, the Pathless, and now the rest of the gods and their minions have been looking for the Lizard with all the powers they could muster. For weeks, if not longer. Staying ahead of gods and their lackeys was more than impressive especially considering he was right under their noses—Felix wasn’t sure even he could have held out for so long.

The question remained, however: why hadn't they made the captured Unbound into Vessels yet? The fact that he had no answer to that worried Felix. If they had had possessed Unbound Vessels, then Felix wouldn't have won the fight for Elderthrone.

Felix clenched his jaw. I'd have died.

He stepped closer to the rift, not quite touching it, as he peered down into the corrupted city. This is what Elderthrone would have become, had he failed today…what it still could become, if their assault flounders. Even so, it was clear that the gods had held themselves back. They weren’t turning the Unbound into Vessels and they didn’t come at him with everything they had. What, then, were they waiting for?

So caught up in his study of the distant city below, that Felix didn’t notice the strangeness. The Deadlands around him stifled his abilities, and the rift itself was a foggy window at best—he didn’t notice the swell of Harmonies until it was too late.

Interloper!

Felix kicked backward, slipping away from the ashen earth as it fell away into nothingness beneath his feet. Yet again, Felix forgot. His stats were hampered, and he only leaped ten feet away.

Not far enough.

The Deadlands deformed around him, and metallic blue hands thrust from the earth. They seized him, the rift to Amaranth sealed, and those disjointed fingers clenched tight until he screamed.

Foolish Ascendent! You Are Not Our Peer!

Godflesh split his black scales and two dozen fingers curled around his ribcage. Spears of pain lanced through his chest, echoing across not just his Body, but all of his Aspects at once. He couldn't even scream.

You Are A Parasite! A Pitiful Relapse!

Two heads, spun around each other until they were inseparable, split the mountains. They crumbled as the fierce gaze of the Twins fixed on him. Felix sucked in a ragged breath.

“Eat! A! Dick!”

Felix slashed at the hands, lopping off chunks of metal that bled electric light, and a scream sounded from the depths of that empty world.

BEGONE.

The Bond of Enmity he'd followed were shoved away until they were as impossibly distant as the stars in the sky. His sense of the fleeing gods vanished, and Felix was hurled backward through the collapsed hill behind him, shattering it against his back as bones snapped in his shoulders and pelvis. That did not stop him, however—he flew onward, tumbling across the crushed plains before he hurtled through the rift back to Elderthrone.

It sealed up the moment he passed through, and Felix rocketed to earth, shrieking across the sky like a dark comet. He crashed into the forest below, punching a furrow miles long into the uninhabited wilds. Animals fled as trees snapped and exploded, rocks shattering beneath him, and even the river bursting around his passage before he was buried into the base of a distant mountain.

He laid there for a time, wheezing into the dirt as everything that had happened to him slowly caught up. Agony consumed Felix’s everything, but a tiny part of him still knew how to survive.

S-sovereign of Flesh…

His Skill mustered, its pattern singing into the infinite dark as Essence was consumed to marshal his flagging regeneration. Flesh and sinew knit back together, bones patching themselves as his limbs reset, and his pulped body reformed.

Time faded to haziness, there in his crumbled crater.

Sometime later, he sat up with a groan. He was more tired than he'd been in a long time. His Stamina and Healther were full, but that had nothing to do with it. The Vessels had caused him pain. They'd almost made him lose control of his Skills. Almost killed him even. But that last hit from the Twins… Felix bared his teeth at the sky. That last hit was the real threat. freewёbnoνel.com

The Twins had struck at him with much more power and presence than the gods could muster through shoddy Vessels. The Deadlands was clearly far more dangerous than Felix assumed. Just as his claws had sliced through the Twin’s godflesh, their crushing grip and contemptuous hurl had cut into his significance. Siva had done that too—an attack that wounded him deeper than flesh. Only his Pillars had kept him stable, and the same was true now. His Aspects were rock steady, but they still rang with the impact.

I feel like shit, but less shit than before. He patted his torso, prodding gently. Reaching Grandmaster Tier must have helped.

Felix winced as he climbed back to his feet. If the unchained gods could mete out attacks like that, then they were all in a great deal of danger. He could last for a while, with his Pillars and his ability to stock up on significance…but anyone else would be cut down at the first strike. Which meant that if the Hierophant cut their chains, his friends had no chance against the gods at all.

Unless they had Pillars.

Fiendforge! Felix almost slapped his forehead in frustration. He quickly checked his core space for the Skill and was relieved to find it still intact. However, it was in chaos.

"Pit," he cursed under his breath. His Companion still held the Skill, but Pit’s Spirit was in disarray. "Hold on, buddy.”

Lightning crashed, and the crater was left empty, save for the dark remains of an emperor’s blood.