Chapter One Hundred and Sixty Six – 166The books Felix had read and memorized were not complicated things. Above all else, they stressed the fundamentals of sigaldry: opposing glyphs to enhance effects, modulating the effects of primary sigils with smaller secondary sigils. Basic theory and craft. But most of all, they emphasized the importance of connections.
To form a proper array, one needs connections. Or, to put it another way, a link to your goal. You can get away with glyph pairs and scripted links, like the obstacle course Rory assembled. Those allowed the sigaldry on all the disparate pieces to communicate with one another, programmed to know how they fit together and to do so by merely feeding them Mana. They were a complicated work of art as far as Felix's understanding went, and his working was far, far simpler.
He'd overlaid several arrays to work in conjunction with each other, but not very well. Mostly that just increased the Mana load, which even now drained him almost to nothing. For the best results in a working however, one needed a real connection between the array and what it is looking to achieve. Felix already had a connection to the Maw. Stronger than any other. He'd died fighting the Maw, more or less.
Using the Maw as a focus, Felix felt his array finally catch, even as an interminable heat built up in his core and notifications streamed past his eyes.
All Choices Have Consequences.
Stand By.
He'd devoured the Maw. Considering the tattered remnant it had become, it had been easy. But as his simple array caught hold within the Ravager King, and Felix felt the heat of his Bloodline Progression burn through his gut and chest, he realized he'd underestimated the effects. The Ravager had been trying to digest the Maw's Mind itself, mixing it with its Primordial essence until they were One. Like drawn to like, the Maw's pieces clung to one another like iron filings on a magnet.
The Mind he'd pulled into himself raged, and the same notification flashed by again and again. Stand By. Felix held on as his Body and Spirit shook, hard enough that he barely noticed the writhing pain of the mountainous dragon beneath him.
"What have you done!" Its titanic voice shook the sky in its confusion. "I--I cannot hear my god! I CANNOT HEAR!"
Blue-white lines of fire manifested across a relatively small section of the Ravager King's back, geometric designs overlapping in rapid succession. Felix fed the Queen essence that clogged his and Pit's cores, dumping the nigh toxic quantities out and into the section of the array he'd designated as a siphon. A rush of power fled his channels, along with the last of his Mana, and a final corona of blue-white sigils flared into existence above the Ravager's hide.
The yellow-red glow of Profane Sigaldry guttered out. The Ravager King floundered, and fell from the sky.
It worked!
"BETRAYAL! FIEND! VESSEL OF LIES!"
Felix plummeted beside it, unable to hold back a scream of primal terror. Torn from the beast's hide by the wind, Felix fell mere feet above it. That was all that saved him, as the Ravager flailed it's serpentine neck, belching out plumes of green fire in every direction. Its wings beat hard, pushing at the air to keep itself aloft. It only succeeded in jolting Felix's body, slamming him back onto its iron-hard scales. Frantically, he grabbed the edge of one, his talons finding bare purchase.
Without warning, a verifiable sea of bloody essence ripped up out of the scales around him. It was a thick and dense syrup that smashed against his Body, burning across even his strengthened skin. Felix screamed, his fanged maw open to the sky. The essence wormed its way into him through his mouth, his nose, his eyes, his pores. Any way it could.
Like drawn to like.
He hadn't just torn a broken piece of the Maw's Mind...he'd taken all of the Maw from the Ravager King's belly. Every single piece of what gave the Ravager such power; that made it a Primordial.
The King bellowed titanically, but its voice was a distant rumble beside the tempest that roared in Felix's ears. Intuitively, he shared the corrosive burden with Pit who took more of the Maw's essence into himself without hesitation. But even with Pit's help, Felix couldn't handle it. His core, previously pushed to near-breaking by the Queen's foul essence, felt like it would shatter under the deluge.
It's too much!
They fell toward the broken earth, and Felix couldn't even release his Companion so that he could fly away. Without each other's support, the power would tear them both apart.
Pit! Felix groaned, mindlessly gripping the sharp edges of the Ravager's huge scales.
Breathe, the chimera's voice cooed. Breathe.
Feathers rested against his arms, a warm, fuzzy lump against his back.
Felix breathed.
Do as me, Pit said to him, a chorus of senses and birdsong. Words weren't needed through their bond, but it always sounded like words to Felix. Do as this.
The sensation of a spinning wind, of unseen eddies ruffling feathers. Memories new and old, of flight.
As they fell, Felix tried to copy his Companion. Tumbling end over end, he fought.
A storm inside, a raging inferno that thundered with lightning. His core was a tempest untamed. Inch by inch, he pushed at it, visualizing what he needed. Slowly, achingly slowly, it moved.
It spun.
"Felix!" Vess shouted and white knuckled her spear so hard she felt she'd break her hand. She couldn't stop watching her friend fall from the sky atop that abomination. "We have to do something!"
"We have to run!" Atar shouted right back. He was propping up Alister, though his Stamina was more than strained. "That was the plan! The array activated and we go!"
"Ugh stop yelling," Evie groaned. She held her hip and her head simultaneously. "How do you mages get over losin' all your Mana like that?"
"We...don't do it...often," Alister panted. The man was looking worse by the second, and they would be in the same state soon enough. Their wardstones had only minutes left.
Vess turned back toward the sky, where the draconic beast was flapping its wings powerfully, it appeared to have slowed.
Elemental Eye!
Swirls of noxious crimson power clouded her vision: corrupted blood Mana. She focused past it, willing her ability to draw a bead on Felix. But the movements of the creature had obscured his position. Still, the Skill adjusted.
Elemental Eye is level 37!
Vess could see a strange flux of Mana swirling around the Ravager King, yellow-red and a vibrant blue-white that were popping and smashing together with all the force of a thunderstorm.
Felix, where are you?
"Vess, we have ta go," Harn said to her in a low voice. Vess pulled her gaze away from the sky and turned to see the rest of them moving further away. Evie lingered close by, still leaning on a borrowed spear. "We gotta get outta the Domain before it collapses."
"And Felix?"
"It was his plan," Harn reminded her. Vess clenched her jaw and looked back up just in time to see the beast breath another cloud of green flame. Even from such a distance, a wave of heat washed over them, instantly drying out her eyes and making her skin tighten.
"That is a dragon," Vess said. She looked back at her friend, her best-friend, and grinned. "My family has a thing about dragons."
Harn just met Vess' eyes briefly. "Aye. It certainly looks like one."
"Shit," Evie snorted and leaned off the spear. "I gotta see this."
Harn clapped her on the back and walked away. "Good luck, kid."
But Vess wasn't watching him anymore. She hefted her spear and looked around. She needed--ah, there.
Pickings were slim, but she needed to be as high as possible for this next part.
Stand By.
The instant the Mana in his core began to move it became a blazing ring of blue-white light and crackling discharge. The Maw's essence, distilled and thickened so graciously by the creatures of the Domain, was pulled into that whirlwind until it spun above his core in a similar fashion. Until an internal suction suddenly yanked a generous portion of it inward, into the spinning flame.