Chapter One Hundred and Eighteen - 118The room was inundated with light. Vibrant, electric luminescence shimmered in steaming flows from the sigils on the floor. The Mana vapor shot upward like inverted waterfalls, crashing into the ceiling where it collected and swirled. Felix tore his eyes from it and stared around in naked fascination. The chalk markings were almost blinding to normal vision, but to his Manasight it was a riot of intense colors. The smell of dark green river bottoms and fecund, misty forests filled his ears, while roars and caterwauls assaulted his nose and tongue. The rows of monster cores had lit up along with the sigils, blaring their potent cries into the warded room. The dense, gem-like objects released a sudden, brilliant surge of sensation, images and scents flashing past his Perception too fast to catch.
The outermost row went dark.
"You must be quick, lad!" Rory grunted, a light sheen of sweat on his brow even after only seconds of effort. He held his hands outward, his wrists haloed by complex sigils written in the air itself. "The ritual will hold on the strength of the monster cores. But ye'll not have any for yourself if ye don't hurry!"
Felix's heart-rate spiked, but he only nodded. A final look at the tempest of Mana around him, and he closed his eyes and plunged into his core. Reality was supplanted by his own internal landscape, the brilliant blue-white fire of his core illuminating his tiny corner of this darkened world. And world felt right. As he hurtled downward, Felix saw an infinite darkness expanding in all directions, one that reminded him viscerally of the Void save for a certain puissance that thrummed against his inner ear.
What's the difference between this and my Bastion? Or is it the same?
A series of powerful vibrations sent ripples through the thickened air, and Felix saw that they were coming from his Bastion of Will. Its pattern was one of the most complex, either because it was higher leveled or maybe higher rarity. The fact that it reacted to his thought was incredibly intriguing, but he didn't have the time.
Later, he promised himself as a swell of pain shot through his core. So long as I make it through this.
Felix turned back to the fire that raged inside of him, while azure lightning flashed in time with his own frantic heartbeat. All around the thick, potent darkness was filled with patterns painted in light, some even more complicated than his Bastion of Will. They had become increasingly familiar to Felix over the past few days, most especially his five newly Tiered physical Skills. They glimmered like stars; not as cold, distant lights, but raging infernos filled with a power that sent electric thrills up Felix's spine. Their vibrations shook the air, each a different pitch as they passed before his eyes, revolving around the ever-burning fire.
He oriented on Acrobatics. There was no inferno there, no nuclear engine bursting with barely-bridled might. Instead fitful sparks of light coursed its broken pattern, a bare suggestion of what it once was. It keened like a child sawing on an out of tune cello, atonal and without purpose. It's burr rattled against his inner ear and Felix gritted his teeth against the sensation. Cold dread gripped him while spikes of pain lanced his body.
From the depths of his memory, nearly unbidden, Rory's remembered voice surfaced. Step one is to wrench open the broken Skill, almost but not completely sundering it. Ye think ye can do that, lad?
"Only one way to find out," Felix gasped, the pain easing by just the slightest of margins. Like the Dwarf said, Felix had no alchemical draughts to do this for him, so he had to rely on his Willpower alone. Luckily, he had that in spades.
As he'd attempted before, Felix closed with his broken Skill. Even doing that sent fissures of pain down his arms and back. Tiny lightning bolts shot from his heels up the back of his legs, and his bones creaked with the strain, his teeth rattling with a vibration so fine yet so...wild.
Many times during training he had attempted to embrace his broken Skills, but had been rebuffed every single time. Now, as he drew closer and closer to its cleaved pattern, he felt the jagged edges of dissonance claw at his mind and body, somehow drawing blood for all that he wasn't even really there. Distantly, Felix could feel a warm liquid run down his chest and ribs. His actual chest and ribs.
Pain Resistance is level 46!
Firming his Willpower, Felix closed again, slowly, cautiously. He listened for the song of its pattern, the rapid rat-ta-tat-tat beat that once dominated the Skill. He moved closer with the staccato vibrations and braced himself for the shearing leaps of atonal progression where the pattern was twisted and snapped. But like a corrupted audio file, it resumed back at the start each time.
Suddenly within arms-reach, the Skill was brilliant. Felix had never appreciated its beauty before it had been sundered, but now that he was so close it was obvious how remarkable the Skill had been, how it had so much room to grow. Growth that would never happen now, not in the same way.
With tentative hands, Felix gripped the edges of his Skill and felt the life and light pulse against him. It felt like holding a burning hot light bulb, a revving engine, and nothing at all. Another surge of discord was coming up, and Felix had to act.
It's now or never.
Gripping tight, he pulled, straining now with his muscles or brawn, but with his mind. With his Willpower. The worst pain he had ever experienced exploded through him, instantly seizing his body and dimming his sight. Black crowded his vision, one that was different from the darkness around him; this promised not potential, but oblivion itself. It tore through him like a red hot spear shoved through his bowels, ripping at his mind like ice against his extremities, demolishing his nerves before eroding them completely.
Felix gritted his teeth and felt something crack in his jaw.
This. Is not. Enough!
Pain Resistance is level 47!
Acrobatics stretched in his mental grip, the pattern blazing hot as its potential flared for perhaps its last time. Felix pulled with his Willpower and agonizingly, murderously slowly the Skill snapped, strand by strand. Felix's scream shook his entire inner world, and every corner of his core screamed with him.
He'd done it.
Now for the rest.
He strained to hold Acrobatics together. The broken Skill wished for nothing more than to burst apart at the seams and snap the final flickering lines of its original pattern. Rory's voice once more intoned in his mind, and Felix wasn't sure if he were hearing it from the source or just remembering it.
This is where Intent comes into play, Felix. Ye must use your Willpower to hold the broken Skill together after almost shattering it, but your Intent must draw the other Skills in by visualizing what you need. Net them, lad. Forge them into your new Skill.
His Skills normally revolved around his fiery core like planets, but arresting the movements of Acrobatics had thrown that revolution into disarray. Skills trembled and moved in unclear ways now, no longer orbiting his center but performing wider and wider elliptical paths.
Felix reached out with his Intent, trembling like a newborn foal as he flexed muscles he hadn't known existed. Running was the first, and it stuttered to an slow stop as Felix turned his Intent upon it. Slowly, far slower than he wanted, it began to reverse its course back toward him...and Acrobatics.
Carefully, Felix guided the blazing Skill into the near-dead carcass of the other, pressing their patterns together and clamping tight with his Willpower. He felt his mind grip onto something and figured it was working, at least a little. With a pained gasp, Felix pressed on, gathering toward him first Swimming, then Free Climbing. Each one was harder than the last, a trial of an untested strength he'd never before utilized. His Intent felt bruised and sore, but Felix kept advancing. Eventually he pulled in Relentless Charge and finally, Physical Conditioning though he could feel that the last had burst several blood vessels in his true eyes.
Now piled atop one another, Felix held onto them desperately with his Willpower; hoping against hope that he might--
SYNERGY DETECTED!
Fuck yeah!
The Skills Running, Swimming, Free Climbing, Relentless Charge, and Physical Conditioning Have Synergy With Acrobatics!
Do You Wish To Evolve Them?
Warning! Evolution May Result In Death And Cannot Be Stopped Once Begun.
All Choices Have Consequences.
Continue? Y/N
Felix mind trembled as he hesitated over both the unfamiliar and familiar words.
Evolution...no one had referred to it as that, just combination. But that was a momentary blip in his thoughts. His true focus was on the second to last line.
All Choices Have Consequences. He had seen those words again and again from the System, but only during....Why did he see them again? Obviously there were going to be consequences, but was this another warning from the System? Why? The Skills in his grasp shook with wild vibrations, each of them pulling in a separate direction. If he slackened for even a moment, they would explode outward, and Felix knew somehow that none of them would be the same. That if he failed here, he'd break them all. Worst of all, his Willpower, mighty as it was, wasn't going to last much longer.
Continue. Yes.
Evolution In Process...
Rory was sweating like a pig.
He took an unsteady breath, fighting against the ritual's need for power by supplying his own Mana. It wasn't massive, but it would give the boy another minute at least. He clearly needed it.
Felix was trembling in the center of the room, his naked flesh prickled with goosebumps and covered in terrible, bloody scratches. Where those came from he could only guess, but Rory assumed the ritual was not going as planned. The boy shook like a leaf in the wind, as if a simple breath would knock him over. He was on the edge.
C'mon, lad. Ye can do it.
Rory had seen true steel in the strange child, something that reminded him of Magda. He had a drive and a powerful need for strength; whatever it was, the Dwarf just hoped it would be enough. Then a burst of light crackled across the chamber, the entire room abruptly lit up by a cold, azure lightning that spread outward and above the boy before dissipating. It was almost as if--
Don't be daft. Rory shook himself and poured more of his own Mana into the ritual. The boy is almost there. C'mon!
When Felix had closed his eyes, thirty six monster cores were set up in the strange array, part of Rory's arcane ritual. Three of them went dark before he'd even started, but the rest had shone on. Now, Felix could sense that only twenty remained, the others consumed by the ritual itself. He hoped it would be enough.