Chapter Three Hundred - 300You Have Gained A Level!
You Are Now Level 52!
You Gain:
+2 to PER! +2 to VIT! +4 to END! +5 to INT! +6 to WIL! +4 to AGL! +7 to DEX!
You Have 10 Unused Stat Points!
Abyssal Skein is level 49!
Felix gasped, the nothing of the Void within him crackling and gelid against the heat of the System energy that surged from without. Red-gold and blue-white sizzled and popped with tiny explosions in his core space. Skills spun, revolved around his cores, hurtled away from the now screaming pattern of Abyssal Skein.
Felix clenched his teeth against the pain. Aspects strained, Skill pressurized, he felt things would simply snap. A sundering from which there was no return.
But the Skill held. He held.
"Everyone," he grated. "Run."
Felix collapsed. The last he knew was the bloody remains of a Core-Slaved Skink.
He rose, held aloft by unknown hands. Coarse hands, hard and sharp, digging. Clawing. Felix screamed, and blood flowed. It flashed.
He fell. Hands and knees, he swung outward, scattering his enemies. They became as smoke, as water that crashed to the ground and tried to wash him away.
He stood. A key was in his hand. Crystalline and clear, glimmering in its own light. In his other hand was a large feather, enveloped in its own darkness. He watched that darkness, and it enveloped him too.
Nothingness surrounded him, an infinite span of shadow. The Void. Swirling shapes in it resolved into creatures, deadly shapes he'd once run from in the black. Monstrosities that now chased...Zara, of all people, as she rode within an impossible ship of pure light.
He reached for them, but the darkness fled into a door surmounted by a blazing, eighteen-sided star. It resembled nothing so much as an immense, glaring eye of verdant lightning. Beyond the threshold was a green murk, thick and viscous. Without hesitation or control, he plunged through and it splashed like water.
He was subsumed in the murk. Cloudy green surrounded him, covered him, tried to creep up his nose and down his throat like it had a Will of its own. He fought. He felt things touch him, terrible horrors no worse than the Void. Different in features, but familiar. They grabbed at him, tore, not hungry but desperate in their wants. Their needs.
Freedom
Revenge.
Revelry in blood.
They dragged him deeper, ever deeper, and the green pressed in. Though eyes and ears and mouth, they clawed within. He screamed, and it was drowned by thickened muck.
KAW!
Wings of darkness swept them aside and descended on him. Feathers made of birds made of feathers shielded him and dragged him up, away, into the light that shined just beyond the dark.
NOT YET.
The screams of a million birds shattered the dark, and Felix resurfaced into the fading light.
His Mind was cloudy, but Felix could tell he was draped over the back of his Companion. And they were running, racing even through a forest of thin pines. The incline was sharp, not quite forty five degrees, but high enough that every rock and needle tossed by their relentless sprint hurtled off into the air, off the mountain most likely.
There was a screech above them, a powerful sound, and Felix arced his head upward. Massive flyers followed them, not Skinks but monsters with bat-like wings and dozens of sharp legs. More centipede than serpent. It dove through the branches, hissing and clacking, but bolts of blue light sent it reeling backward. Others flew among them, bird-like creatures of feathers and leather skin, bolted with panels of dull iron.
Great. More constructs. And according to his Eye, all of them at the high end of Tier II. They were fast, but his team wasn't defenseless.
Arrows shot through the thin canopy in a constant barrage, Kikri conjuring and firing arrows almost simultaneously as they ran. Vyne was beside her, the shield warrior guarding them both from the retaliatory spines and spikes shot by the constructs. Each step brought her to a thin pine, which she pulled arrows from with her Green Shaping and imbued them with tight knots of force Mana. The arrows were mostly distraction, as the Elf didn't have the Strength to penetrate the constructs' defenses, but each arrow scratched their hide just a bit more. Felix saw her hit the same spot over a dozen times in rapid succession, dimpling the thing's chest.
Monsters came for her, spines shot from the flying centipedes like arrows of their own. They hissed and melted where they landed, and the Elven archer barely avoided them. Vyne's stone skin and metal shield weren't enough, but the kid was clever. He didn't so much as stop them as deflect the projectiles, using their own momentum against them. Spines skittered from his shield and embedded in the very trees Kikri was pulling fromthe plants exploded all around them, half melting from the impact alone.
Luckily, the Journeymen were also on the offensive. Silver spears skewered monster after monster, while a heavy spiked chain would slap one out of the sky. Crimson balls of fire and more columns of blue light splashed and slammed against their bodies, torching their feathers and crushing their segmented legs in equal measure. Those wounded beasts that fell were quickly dispatched by Nevia, Kylar, and Davum. Ice and sword and great axe rose and fell as they fought to keep pace with the rest of the team.
His friends were taking the enemy apart, the only issue being numbers. So many monsters littered the sky, too many. Felix's eyes flicked down the slope, and he could spot plumes of black smoke rising like a cloud of pollution into the sky. Mounds of bodies were behind them, carpeting the forest floor.
How long have they been fighting? How long was I out?
Felix? Pit sent. Are you okay?
Aching and sore, but okay, Felix sent as he leveraged himself into the saddle properly. Pit warbled in concern. I'm good to fight. Probably.
His sword buzzed and glowed green-gold. If you are not certain, do not try, Felix. Pushing yourself is well and good, but too much will cost you.
Felix grimaced, feeling a pain in his chest that radiated to his limbs. I appreciate the advice, Karys. But I don't have a choice. They need help.
Do they? Karys asked.
A screaming sawblade of sound cut through his senses. Affinity pinged it, a sound like an anvil ringing, like a hundred blades condensed into one and hit with a hammer the size of a house. Silver flame burst above them, consuming at first one then two, then all of the monsters in a cluster. Harn laughed, already falling from where he'd leaped out of a tree. He landed along with dozens of still-burning corpses.
Above, storms of wind swelled and burst, the air Mana whipping like knives through the centipedes and birds. They died by the score, spear after glittering spear detonating atop their wings and chests and heads. Vess herself fell atop another, spearing it through its metal plating and into a third, skewering them all atop her partisan. She rode their flailing bodies to the earth, smashing through acid-burned boughs and Green Shaped trunks alike.
Others screamed in rage and fear, the former overcoming the latter, but were met with a punishing length of spiked chain. One so heavy it smashed their bodies to the ground hard enough to crater it. Evie swirled among them, a tornado of icy metal and cold precision, her normal smiling face replaced with a seething grimace.
Behind her, flame and force followed, each burst of Mana ending a monster with pitiless grace. And still, the Haarguard finished all that they could, arrow, axe, sword, ice, and shield all doing their part.
I may have...judged too quickly, Felix admitted.
Indeed, Karys said. Pit chirruped in agreement.
Felix could admit when he was wrong, but he still felt sour. Not at his team, but at his own decision-making. They'd been fighting together for months. How had he misjudged their abilities? The sour, bitter sensation compounded and concentrated, no longer emotional but physical. Immediate. Felix checked his core space and found his Abyssal Skein Skill chipped and faded; not broken but not whole either. What's more, his Essence stores were empty again. The hard light of Karys' and Vvim's Memories were all that hung above his cores and Skills.
Was this you? he asked the abyss. He half expected an answer, but none came.
Back to himself, Felix raised a hand and twined it into the expanding black smoke of the murdered beasts. He gripped it with his Will, it and all the rest it mingled with, and he breathed it in.
Ravenous Tithe!
He fed the power directly into his cores, letting equal amounts flow into each. His [Thunderflame Core] and [Cardinal Beast Core] belched out ribbons of light, streamers that hurtled wildly into his core space until Felix seized them as well with the force of his Willpower. Utilizing his honed Intent, he sent the refined Essence into his damaged Skill where it pooled against the pattern and shook with sympathetic vibrations. The stress fractures he could sense eased and settled. Not fully healed, but mended.
He needed more Essence.