Unbound

White hands slipped through the bloody mess as corpses collapsed to the floor. Quick as lightning, they struck at the rest of them. Claws slashed through legs and bellies as personal shields were shattered and a riot of sound and motion ignited the air with tumultuous magics.

Felix thrust his own hand forward before the Nymean woman stepped in the way. “Hey! You gotta move—!”

Rinella spat a single shining word, and the claws met a cluster of crystalline shields around everyone in the chamber. They crashed into them, unable to pass.

“Impressive. As expected of a Grand Magus.”

The hair on Felix’s neck lifted as a creature poured through the whisper-thin cracks in the walls. More pale hands clambered out, flowing into a humanoid form that seemed made of them, interlocked and molded into lithe limbs and narrow shoulders. It looked most like a Sylphaen, complete with wings formed of interlocking claws, and a narrow, angular face set with sharp ears and too-large eyes. Most notable of all, however, was the familiar golden orb that deformed their chest, small hands holding it aloft in a cavity where their lungs and heart should have resided.

“Vessel of the Weaver,” Rinella said, her voice a low rumble that crackled at the edges. Frost gathered along her back in traceries of wings. “You cannot be here, traitor.”

“I walk wherever the light of my goddess shines,” they said, and Felix heard a sickly Harmony in their timbre. “Fortune smiles upon me this evening, for Her light has spied upon a darkling den of usurpers.”

I killed you already. Felix clenched his jaw. This is her Memory.

The Vessel didn’t move, but silver threads burst from its golden orb. They spread, faster and far stronger than their gross hands. Crystalline shields shattered. Magi and warriors fell back.

Skein of Fate!

Felix seized them all with his Authority…and severed them at the root.

Skein of Fate is level 122!

Skein of Fate is level 123!

The Vessel fell back. “You…” Their eyes filled with silver light and that orb in their chest pivoted toward Felix. You Severed Them. How.

“This is your Memory.” Felix bared his teeth. “Think about it.”

He rushed forward, flaring every ounce of Agility and Strenght he possessed before slamming into the Vessel’s chest. They shot backward, impacting the wooden walls and sending rippling, oilstain flames in all directions.

I Cannot— The pale arms surrounding the golden orb clenched. You!

Those pale hands unfurled, chest and wings latching onto Felix’s arms and legs as if to prize him loose.

“How sweet,” he snarled. “You remember me.”

Felix tore his limbs free all at once, sundering the Vessel’s flesh easily. “But not everything. That didn’t work last time either.”

He jammed his black claws onto the golden orb. Empyrean Embrace!

The Vessel was more powerful than anyone in this room, save for perhaps Rinella. They were invested by a full measure of Siva’s very own might, and could not be underestimated.

But Siva was already dead. She just didn’t remember yet.

Empyrean Embrace is level 121!

…

Empyrean Embrace is level 124!

The golden orb shattered, and the Sylphaen Vessel was torn in half. Their pale flesh sublimated, turning into gleaming, silver smoke that he devoured until their was nothing left.

“Merciful Spirits.” Lohar ran his hands across the splintered floorboards where the Vessel had once stood. “They’re gone. The Vessel…and Siva herself. No trace of their Essence remains.”

Rinella looked past Lohar and stared directly at Felix. Her mouth worked silently for a moment before she forced words out. “How did you do this?”n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

Felix wasn’t sure what to say. He was from the future? Where they’re still fighting, despite her desire for peace? Memory or not, he had no desire to shatter this woman’s dreams. “I learned it from an enemy.”

“From…? Which front did you say you’re from?” she asked, her gaze sharpening. “Who was your commanding officer?”

“About that—” Something crawled across his awareness. He lifted his head just as the world rocked. The bunker tipped, walls lurching sideways as if he were riding within the belly of a vast ship across stormtossed waves.

“Did everyone feel that?” he asked, looking around. Judging by the blank stares coming his way, they hadn’t.

Maelstrom. We Are Inevitable.

That’s not Hunger.

“Something else is coming,” he said, turning slowly in a circle. “Something worse.”

“You are stalling,” Rinella accused.

“I’ll answer every question you have after this—” He felt a growl, so far away it was just a vibration at the base of his skull. “A Threat approaches.”

“There is nothing worse than a Vessel. Not in this war,” Lohar said. “And it didn’t stand a chance against you.”

“That was just an echo,” he muttered. And already dead. Felix was unsure if he’d be able to demolish a real Vessel so easily. “This is a Primordial.”

Rinella fished out a small Belais crystal and consulted it. “There is no trace of Primordial spawn.”

Felix backed up, hands crackling. “This isn’t spawn.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“We’ve contained the worst of the Primordials already. The others have all died.”

Primordials Cannot Die.

We Can Only Change.

The sound was coming from the walls. The ceiling. The floor. All of them, all at once, and none of them. It moved between his glances, staying ahead of his Perception like…

Like I’m being hunted.

The others stared at him as he turned in place, but their weapons were drawn as lightning crawled up Felix’s arms.

“Release your Skill, newcomer,” Rinella ordered.

Felix ignored her. He had bigger things to worry about.

A door slammed open, somewhere deep inside the bunker.

You Hide Within These Walls, Hoping That They Will Save You.

Another door slammed, hard enough that the floors shook.

A Feature Of Defense At The Expense Of Courage.

The roof cracked. No one looked up.

A Coward’s Recourse. Walls That Block Out All.

Good Or Ill.

“Who are you?” Rinella demanded of Felix. “By the Will of the Herald, you will reveal yourself.”

He opened his mouth, but the words were snatched out of his throat by a concussive blast. The wall before him sundered, crashing across Nymean mages with shimmering debris. None reacted, not even when chunks of masonry smashed them flat to the floor…nor the dark creature that filled the broken space beyond.

You Know Who We Are.

Rinella gasped.

“Run, lady!” Felix cried.

The Beast leaped upon him.

Felix fell to the ground, but he landed on dirt and moss.

The Beast was gone. He was alone.

Almost.

Scale - Venture Forth. The voice was hot against the back of his neck; yet when Felix turned, nothing was there.

He stood up, taking in his surroundings once more. Felix was in a jungle now, and judging by the humid, almost tropical feel of the place, it was somewhere far to the south. Jaast, maybe?

It was night and though his vision was incredible it was still dark enough to make the shapes of trees and vines into unfamiliar presences. The sky was the kind of dark only available in the deepest of wildernesses, and a spray of unfamiliar stars shone across the firmament.

In the far distance were tall, elegant structures carved from bone-white stone, while close by the span of an ornate, elevated roadway swept across the landscape. Statues stuck out from their support pillars, alternating between sleek harnoqs and antlered Kobolds.

The bunker is far away from here. How much time passed between this vision and the last? Felix shook dirt from his pant legs. What he couldn’t shake was his worries for Rinella, Lohar, and all the others. That wasn’t how the Memory went. I was never really there. What happened when Siva really attacked?

How many had survived?

“Careful, magus,” a tall, heavily armored Orc said. He held a sword made of frozen green light and watched the jungle around them as if he expected something to leap out at them.

Felix wasn’t going to bet against that, given his track record. Still, this was a new vision. He needed to know what was going on. “Careful of what?”

The warrior twisted his hands and his sword brightened, banishing some more of the dark. “Our quarry. The Vessel’s guards are wily creatures, blind but their other senses are sharper than any mortal’s.”

Beyond his helpful warrior were more sword-bearing figures, all of them armored in that curious mix of robes and platemail that seemed to signify a Magus of the Golden Empire. Many of them were Nymean, at least twenty of the thirty around him, and they moved with a particular grace. As if the jungle parted before their steps all on its own.

It took Felix a second, but his Mind eventually caught up to his ears. “The Vessel’s what?”

The Orc frowned. “The guardians it flaunts in our faces. Are you alright, magus?”

“I’m fine, just clearing my head.” Felix cast out his Perception, hunting for any sign of these guardians they were hunting. Nothing but jungle surrounded them for at least a mile, though every square inch of it teemed with life. “The Vessel they guard. Which Vessel is it?”

“Is this a test?” the Orc asked, gruff voice unsure.

“Could be. Answer the question.”

“Siva’s. After their assault on the Sunaran sanctuary they were forced south, and our company has been hunting them ever since.”

Sunara. That’s where the bunker was located, I think. “And the sanctuary?”

“It was destroyed, magus. All lives lost.”

Felix closed his eyes, suddenly mad at himself for asking. They were dead anyway, he reminded himself. But I could have gone on pretending.

He cleared his throat. “I’m Felix.”

The Orc bowed. “You honor me with your name, magus. I am known as Dobrak, though I have not earned my Swordname.”

Felix carefully kept his attention spread as they walked through the underbrush. “Swordname?”

Dobrak bowed again. “I forget that magi do not dabble in death as we do. In the days before the War, we would have been the same. We would have kept our Peacename for all our lives, never daring to hold a weapon. Yet the War changed all of us.” Dobrak tightened his grip on his hilt, and his armor shifted silently with his careful footwork as they moved forward. “A Swordname is chosen by our deeds on the battlefield. My granddame was known as Vanna Plagueburn, for defending the north against the Vile Risen of Yyero. I hope only to earn a name that would not dishonor her.”

Felix stared at the guy’s broad back as Dobrak blazed a trail through the jungle. “I’m sure you’ll earn a really good one.”

“May the Spirits allow it, magus.”

His Perception twinged, and Felix shoved his clawed hand forward, snagging a figure out of the shadows by the neck. It was a short, Gnomish woman with skin that looked like ashen dirt, and she kicked ineffectually in the air. “Magus! Please!”

Felix dropped her, and she landed heavily. “Sorry.”

“I—my apologies, magus. I should have signaled my return.” She took a breath, rubbing at her collarbone all the while. “My excitement got the better of me. The beasts reside a half league ahead.”

Dobrak’s sword flashed brighter. “Lead on.”

She vanished into the ground, swallowed whole—like Archie.

The other magi must have gotten the same message, because everyone was suddenly moving twice as fast. Their pace ate up the remaining distance, led through by the occasional emergence of their Stoneswimming scout.

“Don’t you want to put out that sword light?” Felix suggested.

“The guardians are blind.”

“What about the Vessel? I know they aren’t.”

Dobrak glanced at him over his shoulder. “That’s why we are here, magus. The Vessel left them behind. They are vulnerable…and so is Siva’s slave.” He stepped ahead, sword held in a guard position. “We kill them here, and it will leave the Vessel open for the assault to come.”

Assault? “What—”

Dobrak lifted a hand, signing for silence.

Ahead, within a circle of upthrust stones, easily a hundred creatures milled around in the dark. They were bent and twisted, all of them walking on four legs, though a few had wings of feathers or flesh. Pale hands stretched across their fur or scales, latched tight enough to draw blood, but also holding closed terrible wounds that bled a slow, white ichor.

Felix flinched, feeling a wash of pain from their collective Spirits that would topple a giant. Yet not a single one moaned in pain, and it was easy to see why: every creature’s mouth was stitched shut with silver thread. The same thread that bound their eyes and throats.

Oaththreads.

Dobrak handsigned before bowing his head low.

Felix clenched his fists, diggin his own claws into his palms. The pain provided a surge of clarity, pushing him beyond the rage that threatened to consume him.

Siva, you sick fuck. I’m so glad I killed you.

The guardians were all Chimeras.