Unbound

Chapter Eight Hundred And Sixty Seven – 867

The training halls in Elderthrone were in the upper levels of what the locals called the Temple of the Eye. Elowen thought the name a bit fanciful, but then, the entire structure that Felix had built was nothing if not fantastical. He had Crafting Halls pumping out enchanted armor and weapons and elixirs by the thousands. A manor full of Sorcerers—beings in tune with the mystical Grand Harmony, ones that her teachers had told her only remained in myth. A surprisingly vast following of mortals and monsters that seemed to worship him as a god in his own right. It was an empire built on rebuilding ancient magics even the Lucent Towers did not fully understand.

Strange and stranger.

The Seat and Seal of Elderthrone was like nothing she’d ever seen before. Even the restored Authority of Levantier paled before its complexity, none of which she had been allowed time to study—not now, nor in her days at the Violet Tower. Her masters had always told her it was forbidden to delve too deeply into its workings, that it was something fit only for the leader of the Tower.

No wonder, she groused, walking the empty corridors. It is clearly central to the true power of the Continent. Territorial Authority. Who made these Seals? What power did they tap into to yield such powerful effects? That led her, once again, to a query she’d bashed herself bloody against more than once. Who made the System?

Elowen had never found an answer. If there was one—and she truly believed so—someone had destroyed the records long ago. The Ruin, most likely. She grimaced. Whenever I think I couldn’t hate it more, it proves me wrong.

Her metal hooves clopped heavily against the star-shaped tiles, echoing down the vaulted halls as if no one else remained within the Stronghold. She knew others were there, but it was a vast network of chambers and corridors that the relatively small number of people allowed within barely filled the largest of its rooms.

Still, it feels like I’m being watched. She flared her Perception, but she couldn’t spot a trace of anyone, and her Perception was fairly high. Was it one of the Emperor’s Shadows? Or just that preternatural awareness that suffused the entirety of the Stronghold, one that she was almost positive came from the Spirit Tree.

She shook it off and refocused. Find the stairs. Think about all the weirdness later.

When she received the request to walk down large spiral steps deeper into the Stronghold, she was more than a little apprehensive. The long walk itself was a bit nerve-wracking, though magelights lit the way and the faint glowing bark of the Spirit Tree was a warm comfort on her descent. The presence she felt grew stronger with every turn of the staircase until she stepped off of them and into a chamber filled with the roots of the Spirit Tree. Those roots led off into a central arch beyond which silver and golden light flashed.

Are these even the same type of Territorial arrays?

Elowen couldn’t parse any sort of meaning from the fractals, but she had an eye for patterns and shapes. There were a number of designs within the gold and silver inscriptions that her eyes flagged as similar to Levantier’s Seal. She had no doubt that the two Seals had similar functions, but likewise she was positive that Elderthrone’s was superior in breadth and depth.

Felix himself stood at the very center, atop a glyph, hands poking and prodding at the thin air. He was clearly accessing screens she couldn’t see. The rush and flare of Mana around him was clear, however—with each swipe and tap, magic shot across the Seal, radiating outward to disappear into the walls of intricately carved stone. It was almost elegant, as if Felix were conducting a symphony rather than interacting with the System.

Is this true Authority?

She'd seen it before when Grandmaster Tiir had used his Authority over Levantier, but that had been a pale shadow to this. Elowen could feel Felix's Authority in the air, that same presence she had sensed as she descended the steps, a presence that was not menacing yet loomed like a shadow between her and a distant sun. A tree’s shadow.

Elowen glanced back toward the roots. From this angle, she could see several inscribed lines leading back toward them from the Seal, glowing like embers of banked gold. She flared her Affinity, listening. Her ears twitched, and she glanced between the softly gleaming roots and the man that stood amidst gold and silver lights.

"Ah! Glad you could make it, Elowen," Felix said, interrupting her thoughts. He had turned toward her, and the lights of the Seal were already dimming. "How have you found things in Elderthrone?"

"Comfortable, surprisingly so. When you mentioned having a city in the far west, I imagined something a lot more rural.”

Felix laughed. "I'm happy to surprise.”

“The sigaldry here is especially impressive."

He looked down at the fractal patterns pulsing with light like a heartbeat. "Yeah, it's something, isn't it?”

“I meant your Glyphworks, actually."

"Oh, yes. Atar and Alister have been exploring every avenue they can up in that hall. They've provided a lot of very cool benefits for the city already."

"I imagine that Seat does its fair share, too," she said, nodding at the floor.

"Absolutely. None of this would work without it."

"Hmm.” She stepped closer. Her hooves passed over the edge of the Seat, and she felt a faint brush of silk against her skin, a tingle that washed across all three of her Aspects. Magic, older than the Nymeans. Ancient when they first discovered the Seats and Seats to bind their Authority to the land. She knelt, putting her hands close to the sigaldry bordering his glyph. "What is it like to use it?"

"Strange and exhilarating. It's like operating a machine as big as a mountain. Most of the time I'm just checking reports and crafting Quests, the equivalent of adjusting my seat recline on a sports car. The more complicated stuff gets handled by Karys."

“The Golem?”

“Not quite. Eidolon Exult. Formerly. It’s complicated.” Felix clapped his hands. “Anyway. I hope I didn't interrupt you by calling you down here."

"No, I was helping Archie, but he swiftly reached the point where more prep is pointless."

"I saw that."

Elowen raised an eyebrow. "Do you have spies following me?"

"I don't need spies." Felix hesitated. "Also, yes. Sorta."

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"What?" She tried not to be upset—Elowen had felt someone watching her after all. Yet annoyance rolled through her like a summer storm. "I thought I'd earned your trust."

"It's less about trust than it is about protection.”

“I would never hurt you or anyone here!"

"No, no. You misunderstand. Not my protection. Yours. The Shadows are watching out for you. They're instructed not to listen in on any of your conversations, but to interfere if there's any sort of threat."

"Oh." She considered things. "Yet they reported my activities."

"No, they didn't. I found that out myself when I visited Archie's core space shortly after you left. He told me how you'd helped him."

That took the wind out of her sails a little bit. "Are these Shadows watching us now?"

"Also, no. If you're with me, they can go take care of other jobs. Like I said, they're not spies so much as overly concerned minders." Felix smiled gently. "Either they bodyguard you folks or they cling to me, and I don't need them for that either."

"Folks?"

"Yeah. The Fiends' Shadows, as they like to call themselves, are spread out amongst all of my Linked friends."

"Linked. You've mentioned this before, in the Wellspring." Elowen looked back through the chamber's entrance, with the roots of the Atlantis Anima coiled against the cavern floor. “Just like how you and the Spirit Tree are connected.”

Felix rocked his head back a bit, and a small smile teased at his mouth. "Yeah. It's really similar. I never thought of it that way." He shook himself. "Anyway, it's a connection between me and a few others. I don't know if there's a limit to how many I can establish, but it comes with a few benefits. The biggest is that their growth has been accelerated.”

“I was hearing stories of that from some of your Legions. They claim that since the moment they joined, they've advanced their Skills at crazy speeds."

"I have connections to everyone I meet," Felix admitted. "We all do. Every single being has connections to the things they interact with. Some are stronger than others. I can leverage them in a way I still don't fully understand. Essentially, my power and experience tends to flow outward from me and across all of my connections."

"How is that possible?"

Felix shrugged. "I've thought about this a lot. We're pretty sure it's because I'm a Primordial and an Unbound. The gods seem pretty upset about that combination for some reason, anyway."

Elowen paced across his Seat, her hooves kicking up sparks with every step. "So you power-level people by simply being around them?"

"I don't have to be physically near them, but that helps more, I think. Connections, or Bonds as they're called, they're kind of magic-y," he said, wiggling his fingers. "They're intangible until they're not, and my influence just sort of slips towards people like water through a drinking straw. Links, though, those are different. If a normal bond is a straw, then a Link is a drainage tunnel. A lot more power can flow through them, which means the people I'm Linked to end up advancing even faster. Most tend to evolve their skills to higher rarities, too."

Elowen could follow the logic of what Felix was saying, even if it all sounded like pure fantasy—which took a lot, considering where they both lived. "This doesn't obey the laws of the System I've studied. Experience is earned by personal actions, not by force-feeding people through a tube."

Felix tapped his chin before he snapped his fingers. "What is experience?"

"As far as anyone has been able to determine, it's a combination of three elements: Mana, Essence, and significance. The exact measurements of them is up for debate, but it is believed that significance plays a larger role than the others."

"Right. So if I could harvest all of those at once and then share it with others, why wouldn't that count?"

Elowen gasped. "That would be cheating."

Felix grinned. "Guilty as charged, then. Monsters do something similar. Not the sharing bit, but the consuming of flesh and cores to empower themselves. It's the same principle. I just have more tools in my kit."

Elowen's mind whirled as she considered the implications and the possibilities. With enough people properly Linked, someone could lift the levels of a great deal of people—especially during a war, so long as you had a set of Skilled combatants. A bunch of scenarios flitted through her Mind, each more unreasonable than the last.

“You alright?” Felix asked.

“Fine,” she said

Her Mind was not at ease. She was not “alright” with the fact that she was each as unreasonable as they were fanciful, and yet, the idea was intriguing.

"So yeah, I called you down here because I thought you might want to establish a Link with me as well."

That brought Elowen up short. "That is—thank you for the offer, but I’ve got questions first.”

“Shoot.”

“WeI heard the benefits, as you listed them. What are the downsides?"

"Yeah, I thought you might say that. First off, I'll know where you are pretty easily. It’s not a GPS tag or anything, but it gives me a general sense of your location and a better window into your emotions too. Veiling your Spirit from me will be harder.”

“That isn’t so bad. A little Big Brother, but I once shared my location with an ex. Nothing is worse than that.”

Felix laughed, but the joy was short-lived. “The biggest risk of establishing a Link is that it might be dangerous to you. My friends have taken on extraordinary agony for me in the past. I can't guarantee that won't happen again. Going up against ancient gods…we don't even know what they could do with Bonds, or how it could be turned against us."

Elowen chewed at her lip, considering the man's words. Risk was something they were all having to stomach until the Ruin was defeated. She supposed a bit of danger wasn't so bad, all things considered, when the benefits could be quite enormous.

“Oh!” Felix said. “If it helps make your decision easier, I’ll tell you about the Title I recently received. It allows me to be a bit more deliberate with pushing out the power I've stockpiled. It's called Boon of Bonds, and I can only use it on people I've Linked, and even then, not everyone. It requires a certain amount of trust between everybody."

"Why are you offering me this?" Elowen asked. "We only just met. Hell, I tried to kill you, Felix! Whether or not I was in my right mind, why would you offer me this?"

Felix smiled and spread his hands before letting them drop to his sides. "I don't know. I guess because I want to help. It doesn’t cost me anything to establish a Link."

"It does, though. It deprives you of power."

"It doesn’t cost me anything I won’t get back,” Felix corrected himself. “Look. Every time I've pushed my potency onto my Linked friends, it's been for my benefit. Yeah, it helps them. Absolutely. And they've been able to do wonderful things with it. But it's so I don't explode. Consider this selfish, if you want, Elowen. But I figure I could help you and I could help me at the same time. What do you say?"

She was impressed. The earnestness that poured off of Felix was tangible. His Spirit was laid open to her senses in a way that few people who understood Affinity ever did. He was earnest and honest and a bit tired. But most of all, Elowen was surprised to hear the strident song of hope through him. It was strong enough that it made her cheeks ache as they stretched into a broad grin.

"You present an extremely compelling case, Felix. But tell me, why’re you doing this? Organizing everyone, I mean. Fighting for this world that isn't even ours against something that..." she shuddered as her Mind skipped across memories she could not recall. Visions that were barred from her sight. When she spoke again, her voice was a rasp. "The Ruin will destroy us all. Why not run away?”

“Why haven't you?" He shot back.

She considered her hooves. They were chipped and worn, despite the living metal that composed them. "I tried, but there's nowhere to go. I can't outrun what's coming." She looked back up. "You could, though. Something about you... I think if you ran, Felix, you'd survive."

The man frowned. "Run from the Ruin? I’ve considered it. You’d have to be a special kind of crazy to never want to run away from an obliterating force of…whatever it is.” He considered his feet too. Not hooves, but still clad in dark metal that had seen better days. “It’s never been a serious option for me, though.”

“Why?”

“If I hadn't met the people I have, or hadn't seen the things I've seen…I think probably, yeah. I could run away. Find a safe corner of the universe to hide in and while away my days farming or selling used cars.” His bright blue eyes met hers. “But I don't think I could live with myself after. I guess…I do this because I choose to care."

He smiled gently, but it wasn't directed at her. His eyes unfocused, as if he were staring at some vast distance—until he cleared his throat, refocusing them on her. "That's not always enough to make a difference, but thankfully, I can also punch really, really hard."

A laugh leaped from her throat, startling both of them. "That’s a really good answer. All right, Florida Man." The chains across her antlers jangled as she gave a firm nod. "How do we do this?"