Chapter One Hundred and Sixty Seven – 167Two men argued below the earth, in the dank sewer network beneath Haarwatch. The larger shouted, red faced and sweating at the smaller, a slight figure with a silver goatee.
"-he holds us in the palm of his hand, Teine!" Elder Hyde growled. "The council has fallen and the guild lost its Charter! We're gutted, you skinny fool! Unless we take it back!"
"No," Teine said in a flat voice. He was leaning close to the Domain entrance and studying it, along with thirty or so Bronze Rank Guilders. All of them were frantically scratching sigils into the stone with shimmering styluses. "I think not."
"What?"
"You think I don't know about Katan's movements? We don't all think with our biceps, Hyde."
Hyde gaped only seconds before he began boiling. "Listen here you little shit--"
"No, you listen!" Teine turned and fixed the huge gorilla of a man with a pale stare. Hyde froze as if he'd held a naked dagger to his throat. "This Domain is on the cusp! The shell won't hold unless we fix it, and fix it now, you enormous baffoon. All of my work, all of--it is ready to burst. If it does, then it won't matter if the Guild was aflame right now. I have to stop this."
Hyde flinched and turned to stare at the Domain entrance in horror. The crevasse had cracked further and further open, now wide enough to drive a wagon through. "What have you done, Uldred?"
"Not nearly enough," the Elder of Spirit snapped. "Now leave me, unless you want to test my--"
Teine gasped, turned to the gelatinous entrance while holding a hand to his waist. "No. No no no!"
"What?" Hyde's face paled and he searched the entrance for a threat. "What?!"
"Run, run everyone!" Teine's pulled a strange contraption from his side, and Hyde saw that it practically blazed with a crimson light. "It's--it's coming!"
ERROR!
Domain Failure!
Countermeasures Deployed!
It was like falling into dark water.
He felt an immense relief as the edges of the Domain split around them, and Felix and the Ravager King plunged deep into the liminal Void. Script circles flared to life around them, dozens of them, hundreds, until it was like they were moving though a dark and limitless molasses. They fell in slow motion, each movement an eternity as the Ravager moved its tendrils in order to devour Felix.
Unlike his arrival, Felix was going down. Not that it mattered. There was no up or down in the Void.
There was Will, and there was death.
Behind him, Felix could feel the Ravager King's mountainous fanged jaws peel open, inch by inch, while its barbed whiskers shifted and tensed within him. Beyond that and beyond the burning light of the Domain's failing protocols, Felix felt the Ravager's power. It animated the eldritch flesh that crawled inside his arms and chest, power that was spreading into him like a poison. But Felix had experience with poisons, and burning away said poison was nothing more than a struggle of Will.
And Felix had Will for days.
Not even required to flex his Skill, the poisonous potency of the Ravager was swept up in Felix's channels. Like a rushing river, it was brought to his core, where a newly formed ring of blue-white fire rotated and crackled with ferocious lightning. Within that ring there was a dark space, a vacuum that sucked up the poisonous cloud of power in moments. Pain spiked through him, but that was nothing new. The Song of Absolution and Sovereign of Flesh all but cancelled the sensation out. Felix was aware that it hurt, but it didn't matter. Instead he focused on digesting the potency he felt crawling through his core, and to his surprise it was done almost instantly.
Awareness blossomed within Felix, and suddenly connections he hadn't been aware of were revealed to his Affinity. Falling in slow motion, he could sense the immensity of the Ravager behind him in all new ways. The power present in those tendrils that still pierced him could be tracked back, his Spirit following them as his Mind tore free secrets hidden in its flesh.
The Ravager King was dying.
Without the Maw, it was decaying from within. Its evolution and design had been so propped up by the Maw's Mind and traces of its Spirit that when Felix had stolen its essence there was little else to support the creature's ponderous Body. Now Felix was Primordial, at least in part, and he could clearly sense the few glimmering Profane Sigils that still marked the beast's mountainous Body. A network of arcane markings wove through the King's innards, much like the Queen's core, and they bore the self-same connection to the Domain itself. Felix could sense power pull inward, siphoned from the countermeasures around them, dimming their brilliance one by one while also empowering the King.
If the Ravager absorbed the script circles that slowed them, Felix would not survive a single second.
Yet at the sight of those sigils, that newest part of him resonated like a struck bell. A network of glowing threads, silver-colored and otherwise, erupted outward from them both, a ragged web of the Envoy's design. In a flash, he understood.
The Envoy's sigils, the ones he'd been placing in the city. They formed a connection that breached the walls of the Domain itself. But what was their purpose...?
The ringing bell inside him shook harder, practically vibrating his brain. He could sense notifications piling up but held off from pulling them up.
Listen, Pit whispered. Their Affinity, joined by their convergence, sang out to them both.
Echoes of what the Ravager could sense filtered through him as they fell through the Void. Connections to the Domain and what lay beyond, all flashing through Felix in the frozen instants they struggled against the dying pocket realm's final defenses. They overwhelmed his Perception, until all he could sense was the flurry of sense images from beyond.
An alien Intent seized him, and the Void disappeared.
Sensation snaked through the streets, from hidden markings in alleyways and atop buildings, twisted sigils that flared with yellow-red light. Felix's Spirit soared, carried on dark winds as he beheld a city aflame.
"Hold! Hold the line!"
Waves of Acolytes smashed into a line of barely armed defenders. It was only the efforts of a few trained warriors, Bodie, Kelgan, and Yan among them, who helped keep their defenses from collapsing.
"Torch squad, unleash your Light!" shouted an Initiate currently locking blades with the heavily muscled Bodie. She grunted in effort, clearly trying to keep his massive hammer locked up, but the man was too strong. "Now!"
All around her, the front line of their Acolytes suddenly dropped to a knee, disengaging with their opponents while those behind them thrust forward with their halberds. They raised their right hands.
"Walls! Walls! Ice and Earth!" Bodie yelled, and activated a Skill. "Strength of Ten!"
The man's muscles bulged, and quite abruptly the Initiate could no longer match him. Her blade was thrown up, out of position, and she took a massive impact against her breastplate.
The Initiate was thrown into her own ranks, fouling whatever casting they attempted, but there were plenty more Acolytes than that. Bodie hurled himself backward just as defensive Skills activated, stone and ice yanked up from the ground before their people. A salvo of brilliant lights followed closely after.
"Agh!"
"Chevrons! Chevrons! Push!" Yan screamed so hard a vein on his forehead was near to bursting. He ran among the inexperienced fighters, fighting off some of the more capable zealots. Here and there, the defensive formations shifted shape into rough, acute angles. Then with a rumble they lurched forward and bashed several Acolytes.
They were fighting for their lives. Felix could identify several Dusters, many of which he'd saved from form the Inquisition. What was happening?
Then, in the distance, he heard it.
The howling.
It took the fighters longer to sense the trouble, but Felix knew them well. He'd been fighting them for hours, after all.
Revenants stampeded down the street.
No...
The monsters came, ambushing both sides with tooth and claw. Screams of horror only just began to fill the air when the pull of wild Intent seized him, and he was gone.
A pair of Guilders facing down an Initiate were sideswiped by a deformed Revenant, only moments before a second one took down the Initiate. They died near instantly.