Chapter Two Hundred and Five - 205Pulling himself away from the Revenants was almost physically painful. There was a part of Felix that only felt alive when he was in the midst of a bloody battle, and a not inconsequential portion of his core that ached to eat as much Primordial Essence as he could manage. Yet his Will was not to be denied. His Bastion severed the ever-increasing Echoes from within, and Felix raced up the pump station steps.
I'm in control. Pit cooed in fierce agreement.
Abyssal Skein is level 36!
Felix slipped into the pump station just behind the last of the Tin Ranks. They had rushed across the battlefield after he'd explained his plan to Harn, driving through the horde as it followed after Felix with rabid abandon. He almost felt bad for the Guilders, had they all not tried to kill him. The Bronzes and Silver Rank would get out just fine.
With his Bastion reinforced and his Willpower flared, he only felt a little guilty for Dabney too.
"Burnin' Revenants took the damn doors," Atar gasped. He was red faced and sweating, his limbs all but shaking as he recovered against a large curved pipe. "Why'd I follow you people? If those things turn around, we're dead faster than a fish in the Dry."
"I don't know any shaping spells, do you?" An Iron Rank scowled, her chest heaving just as much. "How long will they stayoccupied?"
"Long enough," Harn said, stepping into view. "Get to Cal. We need ta find the Nest quick. I'll"
Stone Shaping!
A wave of mud-like stone spread from the floor, up the sides of the empty portal and all the way to the top. A web of metallic inclusions filled the mud-brown muck, enough to anchor across the entire archway. Altering the vibrations of the pattern as he sounded it, Felix ripped stone and metal from the foundation below them and put them all to work. With a grunt, he poured a final dose of Mana through the spell and cut it off.
Stone Shaping is level 45!
"Twin's teeth!" The Iron Rank stumbled backward from the newly formed door. Wall, really, as it had neither hinges nor handles, but was nearly seamlessly fused to the lintel and frame. "How"
"Felix," Harn sighed.
Abyssal Skein sloughed from his skin, the touch of the Void leaving him feeling oily and in need of a bath. He'd asked what the effect looked like, and apparently it was as if Felix was bleeding into existence when his Skein dropped. The Iron Rank blanched and saluted, as did a slew of others nearby.
Make An Entrance is level 43!
"Don'tOkay," Felix half-heartedly saluted them all, fist to chest. "Uh, at ease."
"Felix, will this hold?" Atar asked, already running his hands over the stone wall he'd made. "Those things cut through stone like parchment."
"It should hold off the Revenants, at least a little. I pulled some metal from the foundations into the matrix of the stone," Felix tilted his head side to side. "A Ghoul is another thing entirely."
"Best we can hope for," Harn grunted. "C'mon. We need ta move."
Felix was lead into the large open chamber of the pump station. It looked remarkably like a water pump station back home, with pipes and everything. The pipes were seamless rather than held together with bolted flanges and stuff, and sigils were inscribed into literally everything, but otherwise it felt eerily familiar.
"This place runs the whole city?" Felix asked. Harn shrugged.
"Don't think so. There're a lotta places like this around town, mostly movin' and cleanin' the water supply from the Ianus," the man supplied. "Tainted supply might not hurt us too bad, but Untempered's can't live without clean water."
Felix hadn't made it a habit to go to such places back home, but he recalled doing a field trip in grade school to the water treatment facility. What he hadn't recalled from that trip was the magnitude of blood and viscera spread out across the entire floor.
"Did any of the Guilder's survive?" Felix asked.
"We don't know, but there're tracks like things were pulled back into the tunnel," Harn said.
"Tunnel?"
"Back here."
They moved to the far end, where Cal, Vess, and Darius Reed stood near a massive, gaping hole in the corner wall and floor. Chunks of rock and dirt were scattered all over, and smears of blood liberally coated the area. Heavy claw marks, the kind made from a big ass Ghoul marred the stone. Among them were smaller tracks, and signs of many somethings being dragged deeper.
Of them all, the Hand caught his eye first. The Adept combatant merely gave Felix a once over, looking at the dark scales that he'd not yet dismissed. Visceral displeasure spike through the man's Spirit.
"Have you seen her?" Cal grabbed Felix's shoulder while he was preoccupied, and she gripped it with considerable strength. He almost winced.
"What?" Felix looked between her and Vess, the both of them spattered with blood. "Seen who?"
Vess chewed at her lip, and her dark brown eyes were soft. "Evie is missing."
"Faster, lads! We've heretics to catch and a city to save!" An Initiate cried out from the lead, his voice just loud enough to reach every one of the Acolytes following him. A Skill, Evie did not doubt, and a worthless one at that.
A shouting Skill? What for? Use handsign like an adult, Evie griped. She pulled her stolen cloak closer around her shoulders.
The lot of them were hustling through the muck of a sewer tunnel, row by orderly row despite the foul sludge that filled the passage and stained their pristine armor. Evie had secured a red cloak and helm for her disguise, but her armor was still leather beneath it all. She ran in the middle, hidden in their midst as they raced along.
She had followed the not-little girl's trail, though it had been difficult. Only a very judiciousone might say sagacioususe of her newly unlocked Affinity attribute let her keep up. There was a tenuous connection between Evie and the not-girl, one she didn't understand. Still, it allowed her to sense the bare whisper of her movements, like a half-heard song in a crowded tavern.
Eventually, that song led her to the redcloak encampmentfor all that "camp" was not the right word. The Inquisition had taken over the whole quarter, and it looked a proper city, as if the troubles of recent weeks had barely touched it's expensive walls. "Yyero's stinkin' ass, a spy," she has hissed, watching as the not-girl flitted into the depths of the enemy. But when her form once again flickered and faded, revealing a blond woman with dark armor and a black mask, then she truly cursed. "Not a spy. A Night-cursed Sworn."
The Sworn, if her Affinity wasn't wrong. It pulsed like a ringing bell at her understanding, and Evie knew the truth of it. It was the woman that kidnapped Vess back in the Foglands.
She's gonna tell them about the Nest. I've gottaShe peered around the sprawling encampmentI need to find out more.
Cal had always kept Evie from the big scout missions, even now, when she'd clearly proven her mettle. She'd fought a burnin' Domain Core! She was damn near Journeyman! Cal would say to hang back, report what she knew, be safe.
Evie had crept into the camp.
It was bustling, filled with merchants and messengers running up and down the causeways. Everyone looked a bit haggard, but those were the times. No one was sleeping well, not now. She followed the lingering traces of the Sworn, moving far more cautiously now than before, until Evie discovered a large, four storied mansion that was utterly packed with redcloak guards.
The Sworn had gone in there, not through the doors or even windows. Evie felt their connection strengthen the longer she lingered on it, paid attention to it. She watched that mansion for a fraction of a glass, feeling her Affinity flex and retract, like a muscle she had ignored all her life. Without warning, the muscle spasmed and flailed, and redcloaks began boiling out of the mansion like ants. And Evie knew exactly what had kicked their hive. House? Warren?
Regardless, they were going after the Nest, and Evie...she had to do something.
So now, cloaked and helmeted, she ran through the guts of the city. At first they were one large force, nearly six hundred strong, but after a while had split into three groups. Evie had tried to stick with the central group, the one where the Inquisitors and the Sworn were, but damn if she didn't get stuck with one of the flanks.
Evie had spent some time in the sewers. The tunnels pushing up at an incline meant one thing: they were going to city center, likely to the same place her friends were headed.
Gotta slow them down.
She just didn't know how yet.
"Since when?" Felix asked in alarm. His Perception had already snaked outward, pushing beyond the newly reinforced doors. All he could sense was chaos and rage out there. "She's out there? Alone?"
"No," Harn said, walking up and shaking his frog-mouth helmet. "I can't find anyone that saw her come with us when we left."