Unbound

Archie sat atop the bell tower at the center of his strange, endless city. He watched as the skyline, filled by vague skyscrapers, was veiled by torrents of dark smoke and falling ash. Below him, and far closer, people flowed through the streets like rivers. Each carried coins that caught the light, no matter how murky the sky might seem. Those coins passed ceaselessly among them. Thieves moved through the crowds, stealing purses here and there, while many individuals walked into shops, buying the items they needed before walking away, their hand carts heavy with materials.

The ash fell like snow, but none of it collected on him. He shivered. It was a pity he couldn’t evade the cold.

“Clever.”

Felix was behind him, walking along the ledge. "Are you using the wind to keep the ash from you, or does it simply not collect on you at all?"

"It's wind,” Archie grumbled. “I don't know how to visualize whatever the hell you're talking about."

Felix looked up at the clouds scuttling across the low sky. He cupped his hand, letting ash fill the dark scales of it. In just moments, he had a decent handful of large flakes. "Just visualize not sharing the same space with it. That should fit your Skill set, right?"

His eyes glowed brighter, blue fire centered by pupils of red gold. The ash slid out of his hand.

No. Through his hand.

"Did you come here to show off, or is that just a side perk for you?" Archie asked.

"It is, but I've been visualizing my ass off these past few days."

"I saw that." Felix walked to the wall's edge, and then a bit further, floating upon his Will. "Those star patterns have increased down below. Did you do that on purpose?"

Archie looked outward. "Sort of. The first ones appeared after I took one of your pure Essence Draughts, right? Well, I noticed they kind of helped me with handling all that power you keep shoving at us."

Felix turned around, still floating in midair. "Really?"

"Yeah, see there?" Archie pointed down at his city. Despite the ash clogging up the distance, it was easy to make out the stars marked out in opalescent lines around everything. They cut across buildings and down the streets, forming a pattern that was only truly visible from high up. At the farthest edge was a nine-pointed star, but it didn't stop there. An eight-pointed star was nested within that, and then a seven, on and on until it reached a three-pointed star surrounding the bell tower itself. All of it picked out in opalescent stone that Archie now knew was Felix's special shaped material.

"All that significance packs in there, inside your Fiendstone. It increases as it goes inward, star after star, until it piles up here, around my core." Archie patted the wall beneath him. "Where I can make use of it."

Felix peered closer. "You've organized your Skills around the stars, too.”

"I did. I also moved them out of tents and stalls."

"I see," Felix said, a wide smile splitting his face. "Shop fronts. Fancy. Very impressive."

"Not just impressive, but there's more variety in the products that each of them offer, and they're harder to steal from."

Felix raised an eyebrow. "Isn't that how you activate your Skills? Stealing pieces, or the products from your vendors?"

"I said harder, not impossible. Haven't I told you? I'm the best. Besides," Archie waved a hand, "I have thief crews now, visualized and running about the streets. They move where and when I say, and since they're basically little copies of me, well, they get the job done."

Felix continued to stare down at the core space, and Archie could tell the guy was studying things. Frankly, he was more than happy to let him. Archie was proud of what he'd made. It had taken a lot of long hours and Vess' visualization exercises to make all those changes, not to mention making the small copies of himself complete with daggers and the ability to walk through walls. That one, he'd stolen from Felix. After a walk through his Void Sanctuary had shown him the little ashen Delven assassins creeping through his city, Archie had figured that turnabout was fair play and stole the concept right from the scaly bastard.

"Interesting," Felix said after a while. "The people. Is that new?"

Archie nodded. The people that walked his city streets were no longer blank slates or mere gestures of figures. Now, they all had distinct facial structures. Races were separate from one another, and they varied in height, weight, and age.

"Yeah, it's new, but it wasn't as hard as I thought it'd be."

"Does the detail help?"

"Surprisingly, yeah. It's like the more I make them real, the more coin they’ve got to spend. The other day I even heard two of them have an entire conversation."

Felix raised both eyebrows. "Really?"

"It was boring, complaining about the weather of all things." Archie chuckled. "Ash every day."

"That's very interesting."

"It's mostly cosmetics, not like this." Archie gestured back at the bell tower behind them.

Felix walked across the air and peered a bit closer. Unlike a normal bell tower, the place was sealed shut, closed in by thick walls of metal and stone, and capped by a roof of red tiles that was choked in ash.

"What's inside?" Felix asked.

"A circle of bells, all set up to rotate while they ring. My core."

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Felix walked around the circumference of the tower. "Not as loud as I figured they'd be, this close, even with these walls in the way."

"Soundproofing," Archie said. "The noise was so annoying. Besides, the sound doesn't really matter that much."

"The Grand Harmony begs to differ."

"I'm not one for music, man. For me, it's all about the vibrations."

Felix’s eyes brightened. "Explain what you mean by that."

"The bells, the way they shake when the clappers hit the lip, the air quivers like liquid, you know? It's like me moving through my targets." Archie gestured with a hand, pushing the flat blade of his hand forward as if through a wall. "It transfers outward through all the streets. You can feel it, but you can only barely hear it."

Felix looked at the bell tower as if he could see through it, his eyes glowing once more with a strange dual coloring. For all Archie knew, the guy could see through it. He had some strange abilities after all.

"The location for your Pillars is where?"

"At the base of the bell tower." Archie jerked his chin off the edge. “Near those buttress things.”

"Flying buttresses?"

"Whatever they're called. Beef told me about them, so I thought they'd make sense for some supporting Pillars."

Felix nodded along. "Looks good to me. You feel ready?"

"No."

"You gonna do this anyway?"

"Do I got a choice?"

“Always.”

Archie frowned. “If one of the choices is ‘death by god monster’ then that’s no choice at all.”

Felix sat on the wall next to him. He was big and solid and radiated heat like a furnace…more real than the tower he sat on. “Sometimes life or death is the only meaningful choice we get to make.”

“You sound like a fortune cookie.”

Felix clapped a hand to his stomach. “Oh my god. I haven’t had Chinese food in so long.”

“When we get back to Earth, I’ll take you to my favorite spot.” Archie poked his finger at the man’s face. “You just gotta make sure I survive, alright?”

Felix grinned. “With the promise of Chinese food? I guess I’ll have to.”

“Then—” Archie shuddered. The wind was so cold. “Then I guess I’ll be weaving.”

"Good man." Felix patted him on the back before shoving himself off the tower. He floated easily in the air, descending slowly. "I'll do a quick check and then you can show me how it works."

Archie just shrugged and watched as one of the scariest men in the world began to go over the very center of his power. And strangely, Archie didn't feel a single bit of fear.

Archie lingered there a moment, atop his little world, and enjoyed that feeling. Trust, huh? What a weird world this is.

After a while, he realized ash had piled up on his pants and across his shoulders and arms. He'd forgotten to keep up his wind visualization. He went to start it again, but hesitated.

"Visualize not sharing the same space, huh?" Archie focused, emptying his Mind before holding his Intent tightly. In the distance, the crowd rushed toward one of his shops, pressing through the doors of a glass-fronted establishment. Primeval Drift didn't activate, but it shook through him as thieves stole pieces of gold from the register with every transaction.

Just let it flow.

The ash fell away from his limbs, floating free into the empty air.

"Huh.” He gave a small laugh. "That's not so hard."

Felix rose into the darkness between core spaces, moving away, around, and at right angles to the Links he still held gripped within the depths of his Spirit. There, he found Pit, floating motionless in the black, waiting for him.

"Are they all ready?" he asked with a squawk.

"As much as they'll get. What about you?"

"I can handle anything," Pit scoffed. "I'll be ready to swoop in if something bad happens.”

“Remember, you can't help them weave like you did with me. It'll screw them up.”

“Yeah yeah." Pit clacked his beak several times. "Doesn't mean I can't give advice, though, right?"

"If advice is out, then we screwed up bad by making those booklets." Felix lifted his hands, and red-gold fire kindled across his palms.

Fiendforge.

Within his chest, the Skill unfurled like the fingers of a great hand. Felix held that image, shaping it with his Intent as Fiendforge thrummed away. Each piece of his Skill was a claw that he set against one of his friend's core spaces, and now he extended the last of the seven. Like always, it clamped around Archie’s core space and held it fast—like a vice, it secured the dark edges of his space, where the man’s visualization faded into the vast emptiness that connected them all to the System.

The others thrummed in time, each claw holding steady as it spread through the dark. His Links with each of them lit up, thick with red-gold flame around a crackling core of blue-white.

It was a weird feeling.

Fiendforge had grown a lot since the last time Felix had used it. Holding all seven of his friends took effort, certainly, but it wasn’t straining him as it might have in the past. There was a thinness to his Skill, each claw not quite as solid as it was for a single target, but that couldn’t be avoided. They didn’t have the time to weave their Pillars one by one, and if Zara and Karys were correct, weaving them all at once would help them.

He hoped that was true, for all their sakes.

There are too many things that need doing.

Felix could sense the System itself as it passed through his Skill, like a breeze that was by turns scorching hot and blisteringly cold—and that was just the baseline connection.

What'll it feel like when they actually start weaving?

"I might need you to Converge with me later to bolster Fiendforge, Pit."

His Companion tilted his head. "I can do it now, if it'd help."

"No. For now, we need more eyes on them in their core spaces. The hard part starts later."

He checked his Mana and Essence. Fiendforge was a clear drain on his power, but his regeneration was keeping up and the stock of his Essence and his significance was more than enough. All seven of his friends were held tightly. Securely.

“It’s time,” he said into the dark, and the words resonated outward, spreading along the Links that bound them together. Felix felt it as they all turned their attention toward him. He was represented in different ways in each of their core spaces, and in that moment he was keenly aware of them. He shone through stars, moons, and gemstones—always some form of illumination in a dark sky.

"Fiendforge is holding you steady," he said. "But it is just a tool. It will provide you with the pressure you need to shape your future. I know some of you are rolling your eyes—Archie—but it's true.”

Someone laughed. Evie.

“This will be one of the hardest things you've ever done. But I know all of you can do it.” He flared Fiendforge and his power flushed along the Links, gleaming with radiance on the other ends. “Go kick some ass.”

And then together, Pit and Felix rose back into awareness of their Bodies. The both of them opened their eyes, seated next to each other at the head of his seven friends and their various Companions.

"Good luck," he whispered aloud.