"ENOUGH!"
The mists returned, and the forest, and the sound of bugs and wind and smell of imminent rain. But it felt hollow now. A lie. At some point, Pit had even returned back to his original size. His NotMother stood in her darkness, a shadow of something once living, heaving a breath that made the forest around them tremble.
No, it did tremble. It shook, and the trees swayed.
"It has found me. You share his Titles, but it's not enough time!" The creature writhed more, now turned flat, like a leaf or page of a book. "Speak to him, Chimera. Beast of Harmony, Child of Guardians. You must protect him. It is coming. He must find the shrines, quickly. He is no longer the only one on the Path."
Pit tilted his head. You are hurt.
"I am far more than that, Wild One," the shadow said. It's eyes flashed with a brilliant, familiar blue. "Now run."
The Bastion was falling apart.
"No!" Felix strained his Willpower and Alacrity, trying with all his might to halt the collapse. He still didn't understand how it had happened. All he had done was try to rip out the hole the Maw had left when the entire fortress began to topple. "Back. Together!"
But the Bastion didn't respond, not as it had before. Only a few chunks of masonry were affected, sizable though they might have been. They shifted back, settling into place among the crumbling remains while the rest hit the grassy earth with the force of cannons. Each impact tore godawful wounds in the grounds, gaping holes filled with loam and traceries of crimson metal. Waves of fury and fear and grief pummeled him with each exposed vein. It was terrifying, but Felix couldn't tell if that was his emotion or not. Crimson energy swirled all around the Bastion, clouds of vermilion streaked with bright spots of white hot feeling. It crawled into him, through him. Felix couldn't help it.
He screamed.
Felix's limbs crackled with blue lightning and flickering, golden fire. Fangs erupted from his maw, face breaking and reforming to fix his new, powerful jaws. His eyes burned, piercing azure light that seared the red clouds all around him.
Bastion of Will is level 54!
"NNnnnnG!" Felix threw himself forward, hands first to the ground. He hit with a muffled thud that split the grass and dirt, releasing another stream of vaporous carmine light. "BACK! TOGETHER!"
Bastion of Will is level 53!
What?
It was coming apart, all around him. His Skill...Why?
SKEEAAAAAW!
CONVERGE!
Far above, a black speck shot through the once-blue sky. Storm clouds gathered upon it, fissured with lightning. Pit plummeted, a comet of black light that slammed into Felix's Spirit from orbit. The earth around them exploded. Earthen clods shot into the air, propelled by azure lightning and clouds of burning light. Felix's Harmonic Stats, bolstered by Pit's convergence, surged in response. "STOP!"
All around him, for dozens of feet, everything froze.
Pressure beset him on all sides, an all encompassing sensation that threatened to tear him apart completely. His focused his fractious Intent, bearing down upon it with all the Willpower he could muster. His Bastion was breaking apart, infected by the Revenant's emotional stain. Felix couldn't remove it, couldn't even touch it, so that left only a single path: he had to filter it out.
Reign of Vellus!
Reign of Vellus!
Reign of Vellus!
Lightning shout out from him and into the earth and walls around him, focused beams of wrist-thick electricity. Felix grabbed at everything he could, be it falling walls, shattered tower, or the very earth itself.
Reign of Vellus!
Reign of Vellus!
Reign of Vellus!
Felix cast it all, over and over. He felt Dual Casting rank up again and again as his Mana drained at a prodigious rate. Far faster than even his regeneration could handle. Through sheer force of Will, Felix held on.
Bastion of Will is level 52!
God damn it! What else could he do? He'd only ever sundered Skills apart. Holding them together, healing them, he'd never--
Unfettered Volition, he remembered. Craning his neck, Felix could just see the decaying, pentagonal facade of his central tower. Emblazoned on that tower was the pattern for his movement Skill. He'd once somehow connected it to his Bastion; not a combination of evolution, but an...integration.
What if--what if he did more? But how?
From within his Spirit, Pit's own fury rose to match Felix's, and the tenku let out a powerful and lingering cry. It swept through the area around him, setting his lightning aquiver as it passed, vibrating the very air. The cry didn't end, but grew stronger as it spread, evoking reverberations from all around them. The clods of earth, the stone, even the traceries of metal echoed the sound, catapulting its resonance ever further. The walls shook. The winds.
The sky itself.
Urged by a shared instinct he knew better than to question, Felix sent his Affinity coursing along those vibrations. Sweat poured from his brow, his core aching as Mana drained from him like a sieve, but his senses shot outward faster and faster. The sky, heavily clouded and rumbling with dark promise, rocked.
There!
REIGN OF VELLUS!
One last burst of magic exploded from him. Felix poured nearly all of his remaining energy into it, letting the lightning form into a beam of blue-white radiance, surging into the sky. The column pierced the dark-bellied clouds and split them apart. He tore a hole in the sky, revealing a familiar darkness studded with the glittering star patterns of his myriad Skills.
Affinity and Alacrity quested outward, no longer held at bay by the limits of his Bastion. Felix knew what he needed. He grabbed one, then two Skills from the ephemeral ether of his core, pulling them down, down through the sky and into his Bastion. Once the shimmering Skills crossed the barrier into his Bastion, they transformed. They became secondary suns in the sky, mountains of raging power that boiled the clouds from around them and set winds shrieking in tumultuous gales that uprooted trees beyond the broken walls. Though it was like gripping twin infernos, Felix did not quit, he hauled them down, down, into his Bastion until they were just feet from the tallest tip of his tower.
BASTION OF WILL!
The world around him let out a melodious hum, joining with the calamitous fury of emotion that sheared at the edges of his Mind. The Skill quivered beneath that combination of sound, a discordant tone that soothed Felix's mind but only set his teeth on edge. This was his Bastion, his Skill, and it was his to control!
Meditation!
Deep Mind!
Felix sounded their patterns and the suns came alive, their former heat only a precusor to their new intensity. Normally passive Skills by their nature, that had never stopped Felix from tracing out their patterns. Meditation was to counterbalance the rage, for regeneration of Body, Mind, and Spirit while his Deep Mind was to strengthen his Bastion's connection to his Mind. For that is what this place was; his Bastion was a safeguard, a fortress for his Mind and Spirit, a world sheltered from the terrors of the Continent.
And he'd be damned if he gave that up just for some jerk ass Revenant's.
"BACK!"
The lightning thundered around him, blooming outward into branches, each flicker of force connected to a piece of his Skill. Felix raised his trembling hands, now scaled and tipped with bleeding claws, and grabbed at the air beside him. Pit screeched in tandem, his own strength joined with Felix's.
"TOGETHER!"
With a mighty heave, he pulled his arms inward. An eruption of blue-white light and concussive sound shook everything. Felix's veins stood out like cables in his neck and arms, and he screamed through clenched fangs. His jaw popped, the force too much for it and teeth shattered, but still he pulled. The light of twin suns expanded until everything was awash in glorious golden radiance...
...and then, it vanished.
Relative darkness followed, and the sudden cessation of resistance found Felix's arms limp as noodles. Ragged and panting, mouth bleeding and eyes burning with brilliant, sapphire light, Felix sat up.
Grass, dirt, entire fields that had been torn asunder and filled with crimson vapor had largely slithered back where they belonged. The process had been reversed, for the most part. The walls around him had reconstituted, but huge, glaring cracks crazed the surface. They shone with a fitful, vermilion radiance.
It had worked, but Felix knew it was only a band-aid. He turned and beheld his pentagonal tower; still he could see the pattern for Unfettered Volition etched into one side, and on two more were Meditation and Deep Mind. The both of them linked now to his Bastion; connected but not combined or evolved. Like stars that rotated around each other.
Bastion of Will!
Felix could feel his heart settled and his mind calm, while all around him a wind kicked up and the many, many cracks in the earth and stone all flared with bloody light. The metal that represented his new, emotional flaw was not going anywhere, but at least this Bastion was working once again.
Bastion of Will is level 53!
Bastion of Will is level 54!
Bastion of Will is level 55!
Ah, excellent. Felix sagged with relief. He feared the Skill would break. Pit you're a lifesaver.
I am a Beast of Harmony. Child of Guardians, his Companion said.
...What?
But Pit didn't reply, only huffed a tired breath and faded into sleep.