Chapter Sixty Seven - 067"My lord Champion!"
Grimmar paused his inspection of the Song, which crooned so lovely into the air, and turned to his subordinate. "What is it?"
The kin before him was older and seasoned, a battle veteran Grimmar had taken out on many raids against their enemies. However, the elder kin's name slipped from Grimmar's mind almost instantly, leaving only a curious blank in his memories. The old kin cleared his throat and pointed to a few smudges on the floor. "They were here, my lord. They fled that way."
Grimmar straightened to his full twenty five foot height and grinned, pushing his massive teeth outward in a display that he knew all of his men found extremely upsetting.
"Good. They're close. I know it." Grimmar turned to his men, each of which avoided direct eye contact. "We run! The enemy has revealed themselves!"
This would all end, soon.
Felix woke up and felt like twelve pieces of shit held together with scotch tape and dryer lint. Everything hurt. Even his hair.
"Uglhgbl," he groaned. His lips and tongue felt a little numb, as if the nerves had been blasted to smithereens. He opened his eyes to black feathers and huge golden orbs that stared wetly at him from an inch away.
"SQUAWK!" A rush of warmth flooded his chest, and Pit nuzzled his glossy head against Felix's face for an entire minute, scratching at him with his sharp beak. Luckily Felix had grown more than strong enough to withstand a few pokes, otherwise the tenku's razor sharp beak would have ripped him open.
"Okay," Felix croaked as he waved the affable chimera away and sat up. Or tried to; his core muscles were like jelly, lasting no longer than a simple flex before going wobbly and dropping Felix back to the ground. "UNF!"
"Alright alright. Take it easy," Magda stepped over from his left and helped the Nym to a sitting position. "That was a nasty Temper. Maybe those Rare Essences hit you harder than you thought."
Felix's mouth felt dry as if stuffed with sand. "What do you mean?"
"I said Rare Essences would strain ya, right? Too much Mana in your channels can stretch and tear em, burn em out if your not careful. And unless I miss my guess, you just Tempered your Spirit," Felix nodded and she continued. "Temperin' in the middle of a fight...you got some balls. That's usually a sure way to get dead."
Felix grimaced and looked around himself, noting the dark greasy smoke still wafting into the air all around them. It was a dark counterpoint to the pale fog, thicker and more potent. He sighed. "Thank you for keeping me alive. If you hadn't shielded me..."
"You woulda pulled something outta your hat, I'm sure. Frankly kid, you're ridiculous. I've never met someone who advanced so quickly or accumulated so much strength as fast as you." Magda shook her head and sat on a tilted stone. "But still...there's something wrong with you. Your Spirit I mean. But...huh, it's more than Mana strain, since your channels don't seem the worse for wear. My senses ain't the best, my Ironblood Body and Stonesteel Mind were formed for durability not sensitivity. Story of my life," She added in a mutter, still peering at him. Felix felt exposed under that gaze, piercing even without the green glow of her Nighteye spell.
"Did somethin' happen to you? Was it that giant fuck? Did he break one of your Skills too?"
Felix swallowed painfully, throat still dry. "No. Grimmar didn't do anything to me, thankfully."
"Well somethin' nasty got you at one point. Maybe scarred your Spirit. It has to be why your Temper went so bad."
Unbidden, the image of the Dread swam up from the dark depths of his mind, a mass of tentacles and eyes that extended into infinity, orange and inhuman. Of hooks and barbs and deadly danger mere moments after his arrival.
"Yes," he said in a quiet voice as events started to replay behind his eyes. "Something did."
Magda watched him closely, Felix's tone drawing her brows down contemplatively. She waited, letting him gather his thoughts, but a few minutes passed before he spoke. Felix, caught up in memories, vividly remembered the Dread's dire form in the brackish waters of the Bitter Sea. Moreover, he recalled the horror and pain he felt when the thing had wrapped its hooked tentacles into his flesh, piercing his left forearm and left ankle as it pulled him slowly deeper into the water.
Felix shuddered within the power of his perfect memory, almost surprised that he was not choking on the Dread's acidic ichor but breathing cold, humid air instead. The pain of those wounds and of the sharp, burning blood as it coursed down his throat echoed into the present. Felix felt his core flare with a terrible, aching hunger. The dark smoke swirled around them, and for a second all he could envision was tearing into one of those insectoid fish hybrids. With his teeth.
Sweat poured down his face despite the cool air, and Felix realized that his hands were shaking. He clenched them together, the spasm flitting through his forearms and biceps like an electric shock. He felt a laugh bubble up from his chest, one that shook his weakened abs unpleasantly. A soft warmth butted against his back, nudging him before putting a raven-like head over his shoulder and cooing softly. Impressions flitted through his chest, his pact, compact messages of warmth, of a nest, of...safety.
Companion Pact is level 24!
"Love you too, little bird," Felix scritched the tenku's head, moving to the side of his neck as Pit's uninjured wing briefly wrapped around him. Leaning back against that comfort, Felix felt a weight drop off his chest, one he almost hadn't realized he'd been carrying. He starting talking, not filtering his words or gauging responses, the words pouring out of him in a deluge that had been a long time coming.
"I arrived here less than a month ago. I...woke up on a tiny spit of sand in the middle of a green ocean. I was alone, and I had no idea where I was or how I got there," Felix said.
Magda tilted her head but didn't interrupt.
"I uh, I fell in the water," he continued, the remembered splash and bite of the Bitter Sea washing over him. "Something grabbed me. A monster. It latched onto me and tried to...to pull me into the deep. I remember thinking that I was gonna die. I turned and saw its glowing orange eyes and tentacles, and I knew that this thing, this mythic bastard was gonna eat me. So, I did it first."
He laughed, a small sound in the echoing chamber. "Ate it, really. It's blood was nasty and burned, but it was worth it. The thing let go. I got out of the water and ran my ass off."
Magda's snort interrupted his narrative, and Felix was confused as she began to laugh. "You got grabbed by a Mythic? And you lived because you...you bit it? Haha!" She shouted in laughter, the echo of her voice carrying far in this strange lake room. "That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard!"
Felix blushed even as he frowned at the Shieldwitch. "That's what happened. I don't know why it let me go. Maybe I just surprised it, I don't know! It nearly killed me as I ran down the sand spit, though. It didn't let me off easy, and those wounds nearly killed me."
"From a Mythic creature? I would expect so. Never seen one myself but they should be able to kill either of us with a single swipe of their claw, paw, tentacle, whatever. What level were you when you got away?"
Felix swallowed again, forgetting that his throat was still dry. Magda caught his expression and tossed him a full waterskin; filled from the lake, no doubt. He took a swig. Here goes nothing. "I uh, I didn't have a level."
"What?"
"I didn't have a level at the time. Or a status screen. Or Skills or anything," Felix felt his heart pound in his chest as he admitted these things, watching the shield warrior's face and hands, half ready to run away. He knew he was faster than her, now. "Where I'm from, we don't have levels."
Magda stood up, wincing slightly as something twinged in her side. "What do you mean? Where are you from?"
Felix scratched his neck, uncomfortable under her stare. "I'm from a place called Florida. On Earth. And in my home there are no adventurers, Titles...no magic."
"Noctis wept," Magda's hand drifted closer to her mouth. "You're Unbound."
"What?" Felix straightened. Magda took a step backward as he did so, which didn't escape his attention. "I've head that term before. What does it mean?"
"Unbound. Unmoored. Untethered to this world but brought in just the same. How?" Magda watched him with wide eyes, refusing to blink. Felix saw her body language shift subtly, her arms in front of her torso. Shields out.
"I don't know how," he answered slowly. Last thing he wanted to do was spook her. "That's what I'm saying. I woke up on the beach, got attacked by a nightmare, and when I woke up everything starting going weird."
"Weird how?"
"Well I...I went through character creation," Felix shrugged a shoulder. At Magda's blank look he grunted. "Ugh. I got to choose my Race, my Omen, and my Born Trait."
"What!" Magda's voice boomed out, and this time her arms swept out in astonishment.
"Except I didn't. Not really," the words were coming fast now that he was saying them, the truth spilling out like leaking balloon. "For some reason, all I got was some error messages from the System, and then it told me that my Race and Omen were already picked. The only thing I really got to pick was by Born Trait."
Magda started pacing, the stone beneath her shifting and clattering with her every step. "Your Race...what...the stories talk about the Unbound, call them demons, monsters. Calamity personified. But you're so...."
"Human-looking?" Felix asked. Magda only stared. "Are you asking what Race got picked for me?"
She nodded, and Felix grimaced.
"Nym."
Magda went remarkably still, but the tension in the air was suddenly thicker than the fog. Felix felt sweat pour down his back and he had the very serious urge to run as far away as he could. "I'm not Nym though! Not really. I was human before I cam here. The System just...changed it on me. Like I said, I didn't get to choose. Didn't even get to see many other options."