Unbound

Chapter Eight Hundred And Fifty Nine – 859

Felix and Pit were led to the edge of the Pool of Halcyon Oaths, which lay as still as glass before them. Felix took a steadying breath.

"Okay, you ready to go in?"

"Of course I am," Pit said. "But is it just me, or did that guy never give you the calculation?"

"Oh," Felix turned back to Knowledge, who stood only ten feet away. "Hey, you never gave me my survival odds. What are they?"

The Geist folded its small hands into its sleeves. "Judging by your Temper, the potency of your Aspects, and your hand in the death of a Divine, I judge your chance of survival is at five percent."

The construct bowed, flickered, and disappeared.

What?

"Hey!" Pit shouted up at the ceiling. "What's that mean? Get back here! Explain!"

The construct didn't return, no matter what they said or requested. Felix had the ultimate Authority in his stronghold, but Knowledge was a strange creature. He knew it grew smarter and more informed the more Shadowgates he opened, and with all of the influx of new information, perhaps whatever Knowledge had passed for a Mind was being changed. Felix shuddered. He wasn't sure he liked the idea of a super smart ghost-robot haunting his Stronghold, but that cat was already well out of the bag.

“Are we? That little monster said five percent. Doesn't that concern you?”

“I mean, we've had worse odds, right?"

Pit opened his beak and then shut it. "I guess you're not wrong, but knowing the odds makes me feel all queasy."

"Yeah, me too," Felix admitted. "There's nothing we can do about that. My need to know outweighs the risks.”

Pit let loose a long, suffering sigh. “At least there won't be those centipede spider ladies this time, right?"

"Silver linings," Felix said with a smile.

"Not anymore." Pit splashed at the surface, rippling its mirror sheen. Where before it was like quicksilver, now the Pool looked like normal water, albeit with a distinct blue glow. It was transparent, same as standard water, but as Felix peered into its depths, he realized that he could not see the bottom as it faded into a deep, impenetrable darkness. Even his Perception failed after only several hundred feet.

He wasn't sure which version he liked the least.

"What's the plan then, Mr. One Percent? How deep are we going this time?"

"Well, without Siva there, I figure we can go all the way to the bottom."

"Bottom? What's at the bottom?"

"No clue, but the gods are making moves. I want to max out what I can get from this thing while I still can. This place was the center of Siva's power. Who knows what the gods are going to do with it."

Pit swallowed. "Okay. Then let’s do it. Convergence."

In a flash of light, Pit and Felix joined together, the large tenku disappearing and a heavy weight settling in Felix's Grandmaster Spirit.

"Oh, it's roomy in here," Pit said. "This is way better than your last place."

“Glad you approve. You ready, bud?"

"Always."

Without giving himself too much time to think, Felix jumped in. He slid through the surface with no resistance, almost as if he wasn't touching liquid but smoke that poured around him, cooled against his limbs even as it tugged him deeper. Felix blinked, enjoying the clarity—the tarnished silver hue had vanished, replaced now by that cool blue. While at his feet, dark water moved around him in swirling currents, beckoning him further.

Just as before, he pulled in a deep breath and allowed the not-liquid into his lungs. It filled him up, strangling his throat and chest, and panic coiled across his long limbs. Felix forced himself to calm, stilling his Body and exhaling slowly. On a count of five, he inhaled again, slow and steady. Instantly, the pain vanished and his breaths came easy, as if he still stood above the surface.

Ugh, I hate that part, Pit moaned.

Feels worse in person, Felix sent back. Here we go.

They dove deep, kicking downward into a thick current that soon gripped them. Considering all the other changes in the Pool, it was almost a relief as the dark rush pulled them deeper. Azure shadows bloomed around them, thickening until Felix could see nothing but his own body—that was lit as if by an omnipresent light, unaffected by darkness as if he were entirely separate from the environment. Yet as they swam further even that faded, and the hold of the Pool slid over them, cold and dark and relentless. Sight gone, there was only the loud silence of his own rushing blood, pounding in his ears.

Light! Pit cried out, but Felix couldn’t have missed it. It was a lone point of illumination in a sea of shadow, as colorless as the water and searing to behold.

They swam for it.

Almost immediately, sound returned. The splashing gurgle of rapids below him, where the bottom of the Pool churned against that faint, blinding light. With a final kick of his feet, Felix broke through it. He fell out into open air, yet almost immediately splashed back down as his sense of direction inverted itself. Felix gasped, spitting up liquids that curled from his lips like smoke. It floated upward, crowding against the surface of a dark tunnel as he hurtled down it, alongside the crash of cresting waves.

Oh! I remember this. Next should be—yep, there it is!

Ahead, the tunnel opened up into a wide basin that poured the rushing river out into a vast emptiness. Felix recognized the tunnel too from their previous visits, but it was the view beyond that caught his attention. They shot forward, spat out into that emptiness as if from a cannon, yet they did not fall. Willpower and Alacrity flared and Felix floated among the dark expanse.

“This is very different,” he muttered.

The gleaming emptiness wasn’t truly empty, but the web of tarnished silver Oaths that once criss-crossed it was gone. In its place were similar lines, but these were ephemeral and cast in the faintest of blue. Even as he watched, they shifted, some fading while others grew thicker and more textured. It extended onward in every single direction: up, down, left, and right. Lines of light, etched across the horizon.

Connections, Pit said.

"Bonds," Felix corrected. "The Beast called them Bonds."

With a minor effort of Will and Alacrity, Felix propelled himself forward. He found no resistance as he had once before. There was no longer any great power pulling him inward, and as he reoriented himself away from the tunnel's basin and its cascading waterfall, he was less than surprised to find that the moon that had once sat here—moon that was both satellite and somehow Siva’s eldritch flesh—was gone.

Interestingly, though, it had left something behind. To be fair, it was less of a thing than it was an absence—a void where there once was a moon. The blue darkened there, shadowed by the absence of things that once were, and as Felix drew closer he could hear it. Echoes of a song just beyond his hearing, reverberating across the connections that crisscrossed around but never through that space.

Felix, I don't know if we should go there.

"I don't think we have a choice, Pit. I need to see."

Hnng. Okay.

“I can send you back if you want me to.

No, Pit snapped. I'm not leaving you.

"Love you too, buddy."

Pit chirruped, pleased. Then let’s jump into the weird darkness.

"I'll be careful."

Felix thrust them forward, shooting ahead faster than before. He dodged through the connections, but he needn't have bothered. None stopped him. They faded to intangibility as he approached, even the thickest of them. For a moment, Felix considered activating Adamant Discord in that place—but he held back. Later, he promised himself.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He reached the dark absence quite quickly, and it was like stepping from sun-washed waters into a cold current. As he’d noticed before, nothing was within the radius of the former moon’s grave.

Almost nothing, Pit said. Look.

At the very center, there was a crack. Felix drew closer, cautiously floating down through the shadowed emptiness.

Pit shivered within him. It feels bad here.

Felix could feel it too. It was like a toothache, only all over his body and soul. It was far from the worst pain Felix had felt, but it was insidious as it set off an aching echo throughout his core space…one that was taken up by the grinding notes emerging from his [Thunderflame Core] and [Cardinal Beast Core].

Dissonance and Harmony and…What is that?

The split in the world grew large before them, the edges of it wavering as if it were burning underwater. Through the center, however, was a place so devoid of moisture it made Felix reflexively swallow. Blasted terrain spread out before him, loomed over by burnt skies and sundered mountains. Vast plains extended toward a crooked horizon, every inch of them flattened as if crushed beneath a terrible weight. Thick, chunky plumes of dust rose into the sky—stationary, for he suddenly knew that no wind had ever breathed in that place.

Felix knew the place. It was where he’d witnessed the gods gather, twice before.

We're not going in there, are we?

Felix stepped through the crack.

Of course we are, Pit groaned.

The moment he stepped in, Felix felt weight return to his body. His floating limbs dropped to the earth with a thud, his footfalls crunching against broken grasses and rocks like hammberblows. Vegetation and earth alike crumbled like ash beneath his heels. Stale air filled his lungs and the world felt simultaneously hot and cold, yet neither.

Eugh, that smell.

“How’re you smelling anything?”

You smell it, I smell it. Pit perked up inside his Spirit. And it feels like we're being watched.

Felix didn't share the feeling of being watched, but he agreed about the smell. Aside from a whiff of char and salt, it had the deadness of winter when all smells died away yet without the promise of snow. It took him a moment to realize why it crawled up his spine the wrong way.

"The Green Wilds.” Felix looked around his Affinity flared hard. “They're gone. Absolutely gone. I can’t hear anything.” It was as if the Grand Harmony itself didn’t exist anymore. “What kind of place is this?"

It was utterly empty of all things save the shell of the Corporeal Realm, as if it were…painted elements on top of paper mache. Felix swallowed, his throat dry. There was no moisture in the air to speak of, no life at all.

But there was movement.

Felix kicked off the crumbling earth, dropping low behind a broken ridge. In the distance, beyond the silhouette of a low mountain, a gargantuan shape rose up. The metallic blue thing shifted, lifting four angular limbs that bent in upsetting ways as they stretched toward the blackened skies.

The Twins, Pit whispered, despite being hidden away.

Angular and metallic, yet upsettingly organic, the Twins were joined as one figure. It wasn’t that they were simply conjoined, but wound through one another. Limbs emerged through ribcages and and shoulders at severe angles, yeah they moved fluidly as if they were liquid. They were twisted, just like all the gods that Felix had ever had the displeasure of meeting.

His Mind twitched but held firm despite the cognitive dissonance of simply viewing them. His Grandmaster Temper was thankfully enough to avoid the spiral he’d experienced before in Khasma with the Creature. Now he only grimaced.

Why are they like this? he wondered. It was eerily similar to what the Primordials had become after the flesh curse ravaged them. Was that their punishment? To make the Primordials look like them?

The Twins are doing something, Pit. We gotta see what they're doing, right?

I don't know why you're asking me, Mr. One Percent. You know I’ve got your back.

Felix’s grimace faded. Abyssal Skein!

The Void Skill was a calculated risk—he had no idea what Skills might do in that place—but the cold, oily presence wrapped around him without issue. It was just as dead as the world around him, as if the place had been steeped in the Void’s nullifying powers. Felix sank into the crumbling fabric of the world, his Aspects covered like a blanket smothering a burning flame and felt a dire sense of urgency. He knew that no matter if he was extinguished or ignited, the stealth effect wouldn't last long.

He ran, and it was hard. Felix found himself panting after only a dozen yards, his chest aching and his muscles burning with greater ferocity than he'd experienced since first coming to the Continent. It was like his stats had been made less effective somehow, or that the world he had invaded was just that much worse.

Felix wasn't sure which frightened him more.

Still, he made it to the mountain’s crushed foothills and across a narrow, rocky defile to where he could see the enormous dual god leaning over a deep chasm. The Twins tore their limbs through it, the four arms with too many joints bending and hauling back on the ashen earth, excavating a vast hole into an unfathomable darkness.

What the hell is it doing? Pit wondered.

Digging, I guess.

Is it looking for something?

Felix stepped closer, trying to get a better angle to view the chasm, when the blackened sky ignited. A comet of bright orange and crimson fire streaked across the heavens. The Twins snapped their heads up, their conjoined bodies twisting in a sudden nightmare of unfurling flesh and creaking bones. Felix ducked low, hiding behind a boulder, and the world rang out with a discordant burr.

The charred skies flared with crimson-orange and for the first time in that place, Felix felt heat wash against him. It vanished only seconds later, along with all trace of its light. When he dared to peek out again, hoping against hope that he wasn’t found, the Twins were gone.

As were all signs of the chasm.

That comet, Pit asked, what was it?

Felix wished he knew. Clearly something that spooked the Twins.

Pit frowned. You think they ran away?

I hope so. The other option was that they were hunting them, but the Twins were too large and noticeable to sneak up on anything in that dead place. They weren’t hiding.

He was ninety-five percent sure.

Nervously, Felix scanned the terrain. From his higher vantage point, he saw the dead and blasted landscape all around him—but he also spotted something new. A piece of the nightmarish land that wasn't grey and lifeless. It was brown and yellowed, sure, as if late autumn had suppressed a piece of the world. Yet even from a distance, he could see there was more to it than everything else.

He sprang down the mountain, trying for stealth, but sliding across several bits of rock as his ungainly limbs struggled in the strange gravity. He stumbled to the bottom gracelessly, reaching the slice of ground that spread outward in a wide cone toward the horizon. The yellowed section of trampled grass cut through the terrain like a scar, part of the empty lands and yet distinct. Separated from the greater whole.

Felix reached down, pulling up the weeds and finding the soil there on the surface to be wet. It was enough of a marvel that he pushed his hands deeper, ripping a hole in the earth. The soil didn't crumble like ash in his hands. In fact, he found the thriving roots of weeds buried deep, at least three feet into the earth there.

What does this mean?

The further he dug, the warmer the ground became. That thick, rich smell of loam poured over him and it shook through his senses like he’d been hit with a hammer. As if it were the first time he’d ever smelled anything. The scent pulled at him.

There was a glimmer of blue.

At first, he feared the Twins had found him, but even as he sprang to his feet, Felix realized that it was coming from his chest. A connection as wide as the scar of yellowed grass and fertile soil was before him, connecting him to the place. A bond larger than anything he'd ever experienced, the exact size and shape as the wedge of half-living land.

He focused on it.

The bond sang, dissonant and terrible—except for a silence that dwelled below him. Like a negative on film, it lurked in the absence, defined by that emptiness that echoed across Felix’s senses. He squinting through the blinding light, but there was nothing around him, only dead earth and—

He started. The sound of the bond was bouncing off of something else, too, drawing an almost anti-resonance from a spot within his chest.

Pit do you—?

I do!

Taking a breath, Felix reached inside, visualizing his core and joining Pit as the two of them fell down to the roots of his Divine Tree. There, the faceted lengths dangled above the Skill-locked abyss.

Pit squawked. "What the heck is that?"

Tangled in those roots, held so closely that it was easy to miss unless you were truly looking, was the source of silence. It was a chunk of bone the size of a tank, pitted and yellowed with age and entirely encased by opalescent roots.

Name: Skull Fragment Of Veridaan, She Who Was Broken

Type: Artifact (Primordial) (Enchanted)

Lore: A piece of Veridaan, known as the Supreme Primordial of Oaths, and the Cardinal of the Unseen Tide. It echoes with a piece of her power, long thought Lost.

Xovak’s Greater Approach - An enchantment designed to reduce the size of an object or creature.

Xovak’s Greater Binding - An enchantment designed to bind an object or creature to one’s Aspect.

Felix couldn’t believe what he was seeing. "That's…something I found in a vision.”

In a vision?

"My Tempering vision. How could it be real?"

Felix reached for it, but the abyss trembled. The darkness swirled faster and faster, sparking with midnight energies that clawed against his senses. A muted roar echoed from below, and Felix felt more than saw an enormous monolith shatter.

The Challenger’s Sea! Zara’s Skill is failing!

Yet the roar did not last. It faded, and Felix was faced by a buzzing notification.

Primordial Nature Detected.

Scion Of The Unseen Tides Detected.

Beast Awakened.

Prerequisites Met.

Felix swiped it away. Ahead, pieces of the fragment were slowly dissolving as the roots clenched tighter. They dropped like dust into the spinning abyss below.

Absorbing The Skull Fragment Of Veridaan.

Progress: 1%