Chapter Three Hundred and Twenty Five – 325So Felix hurried, moving through the last of the rooms he'd unlocked as Karys urged him onward toward the Control Node. The Garment flowed around his limbs like a cloud, a whisper of weight that allowed for complete range of motion even though his pants were mimicking jeans. As he ran, he tried different materials, cycling through cotton, silk, even corduroy...though the last was a mistake. No matter how free flowing and loose it felt, the speeds at which he ran produced a godawful noise that would have woken up the dead.
He had tried a couple times to make it into armor, but whatever restrictions were in its arrays prevented it from mimicking steel and thick, boiled leather. Perhaps if he tinkered with it, but that would require him to study the tiny glyphs he sensed all along its design, hidden in seams and along individual threads. Felix wasn't sure he had the time, but he added it to his list of tasks.
He was holding the Dwelling Stone in his arms as he ran, it's glowing depths casting wild shadows all around him. It was far heavier than he expected, and it grew heavier the closer he came to his destination. Luckily for him, Felix's Strength was more than up to the task. Pit had caught up with him soon enough as well, the enhancements he'd undergone doing wonders for his Agility. It was nearly at a thousand points, lagging only behind the tenku's Willpower. Felix wouldn't have been surprised if Pit could match any number of standard Journeyman combatants.
"Race you?" he offered with a grin.
Pit only chuffed an annoyed laugh. Let us wait. I would test you in the wilds.
"You're on."
The Control Node turned out to be the center of the odd array at the roots of his Spirit Tree. Seven chambers, interconnected by star-shaped archways and filledutterly filledwith the most complicated sigiladry Felix had ever seen. Only the first room was lit, however, ever since he'd claimed the Territorial Authority over Nagast. Ever since he'd become the Autarch.
He wasn't a fan of the title.
Karys was waiting for him, standing just outside the array. It wasn't that the constructed man couldn't enter it, but was a sign of respectanother detail from the ancient Nymean culture that Karys trotted out every once in a while. The array was a sign of Felix's Authority, and to trod upon it was a personal insult in addition to being potentially deadly. Ancient sigaldry such as this might have done any number of things to an unauthorised person walking atop it.
"In the center, Felix," Karys pointed. "That is the Control Node. Or it will be, once you step upon it."
Felix chewed at his lip, hefting the Dwelling Stone in his arms. Pit chirruped cautiously, poking a curious beak at the nearest lines of light, lit up with gold and silver. They looped around the first chamber in dizzying patterns that Felix still couldn't make heads or tails of, but at the center he knew all too well what he'd find. A glyph, on that was shaped like an eye of fire and lightning, surmounted by a nine-pronged crown.
His personal glyph.
"Felix!"
Before he could walk out into the array, the sound of shouting and clattering fall of metal and booted feet announced the arrival of Evie. She sped into the room, her own high Agility burning at full. As such, she barely caught herself before she ran right over the glowing lines.
"Noctis' tits, what's this?" she asked before shaking her head. "Wait, no, not important. Felixwhat are you wearing? Gah! Nothere's trouble."
Felix gripped the Dwelling Stone and Pit perked up. "What kind of trouble?"
"Giant kind."
He groaned and pushed the Dwelling Stone into Kary's sturdy arms. The damaged construct barely held onto it, and joints in his newly fashioned arm creaked ominously. "Felix! You should use this immediately"
"Does it have a time limit, its potency?" Felix asked. When Karys shook his head, Felix shrugged. "I'll play house after I resolve this. Justjust keep an eye on it, yeah?"
Karys glanced between the stone and Felix, the former already slipping to the floor. "I-I shall give it my all, then."
Felix patted him on a tarnished golden pauldron. "Thanks. And I'm serious. I'll be back as soon as this is settled."
"Of course. Your people come first. Just know that this might have solutions all its own."
Felix nodded and followed Evie out of the first chamber, back toward the thickest piece of the Spirit Tree's lowest roots. The room was mostly rubble, but Felix had fallen down here a day ago and his body had punched a series of holes from the upper levels. After securing the Territory, he had made sure to fashion some half-decent hand holds to climb back up, but couldn't get Stone Shaping to work on the Temple rock, even this far down. So he had to settle for shoving his fingers into the walls and creating a crude ladder. It was this that Evie quickly grabbed and started climbing.
"Quickly! When I left them, they had that Witch glaring daggers at Vess and Harn."
Felix frowned. Pit?
His Companion nodded, and in a flash of light, leaped into Felix's Spirit and vanished from the physical world. He was a noticeable weight, but Felix was made of heartier stuff these days. He eyed the ceiling and the holes that led up into the open air, some six hundred feet above. He reached out, feeling along the threads that connected Felix to his friends and the Spirit Tree itself. Other threads were there of course, less potent connections to the air and the earth, as well as a set of vibrantly thrumming ones. Threads that were very familiar. Felix frowned.
Adamant Discord!
Lightning surged around his body before he hauled back with the force of his Aspects. All of him was sent flying straight up, through the holes at such a speed that thunder followed in his wake.
"Oh come on!" he heard Evie shout in annoyance.
Felix laughed, and lightning danced across his teeth. He pulled.
A bar of lightning burst from the topmost level of the Temple, flashing through stone and dark and falling water. The waterfall that once careened off the cliff nearby was now filtering into the Temple and flowing ceaslessly into the lower levels. Luckily none of that reached the array chambers, but it was something he had to address at some point probably. There was no one around the opening, thankfully, something Felix had checked on but was still nice to confirm with his actual eyes. He shot up and into the sky, cresting almost seven hundred feet from the bottom of the roots to a space several hundred feet shy of the lowest branches of his Spirit Tree. Hovering there, for a moment, Felix took in the Foglands.
All around was forest, mountains, or lake. The sun barely rose above the eastern horizon, filling the sky with pinks and oranges that mingled among the scudding clouds. Birds wheeled through them, huge things far away, and the branches of his Spirit Tree was wreathed in the lowest of the clouds. Below, at the base of his Temple, where the Archon had ruined the land with massive reservoirs for some unknown purpose, his people had made camp. The reservoirs had been destroyed and the sigaldry running them ruined, though not before Atar and Alister made copies. Finding out what the Archon had planned was one of their top priorities; the last thing Felix needed was for a defeated enemy to bite them in the ass.
Crude stone homes covered that open space, enough to create the idea of a small village. All of the homes were relatively large, around two thousand square feet. In part this was because it gave his team room to move inside, but also because their other occupants needed the space. Those other occupants were now all congregating around a larger homeone that Felix had designated as his own before he'd found the rooms in the Temple.
Felix scowled as he fell, letting gravity take hold of him. The ground sped upward, wind roaring in his ears, as Felix fell faster and faster. Just a hundred feet shy of the top of his cliff, he flared Adamant Discord once more. A bolt of lightning shot downward as force pushed back up at Felix's feet, slowing his descent with a single, potent pulse. He landed with barely a whisper of his boots.
Showoff, Pit sent.
Felix's scowl threatened to turn into a smirk, but the situation below the cliff kept it in place. Around his dwelling, dozens of blue forms stood arrayed behind two huge women with flowing locks of white hair. Frost Giants, the lot of them, headed by two that called themselves Witches. They were hundreds of feet below him, but Felix's powerful Perception picked out their words easily.
"doesn't he show himself?" one Witch asked.
"The Autarch does not answer to you, Frost Giant. No matter the rank you hold within your tribe." Vess said. He winced at her use of the title, but the woman was a stickler for proper etiquette. "He will emerge from the Temple when he is ready, and no sooner. You may return to your quarters until he doesthe same ones the Autarch saw fit to build for you."
The Witch's snort turned to a sneer. "I do not answer to you, Human. I shall wait here until the...Autarch graces us with his presence."
Felix hadn't heard quite so good a cue before, and took a standing leap off the cliff. He flared Adamant Discord, except this time it was behind him, adding to his considerable speed.
Etheric Concordance!
Sovereign of Flesh!
Huge wings of leather, scale, and feathers burst from his back, pulled from Pit's features and grown more powerful with his mastery over his own flesh. The cupped appendages caught the wind like twin parachutes, each of them thirty feet long, but only slowed him enough that Felix hit the earth with a rumble rather than snapping his legs in two.
Etheric Concordance is level 75!
Adept Tier!
You Gain:
+15 AGL
+15 DEX
+15 EVA
Etheric Concordance Has Grown! Allows For Reverse Convergence! You May Rest Within Your Companion's Spirit Now!