Chapter Two Hundred and Thirty Eight – 238DuFont was thrown back by a column of energy that stabbed the sky like a brilliant spear. Her armor and Tempered skin melted before its onslaught, and unimaginable pain wracked her for the first time since the Song of Fury had begun. A swelling of Sorcerous music surged within the boy, something that sounded entirely too similar to her Authority.
Primordial Spark Detected!
Divine Spark Detected!
The Primordial Spark she knew aboutthe Authority had told her as much. But the spark of the Divine? How? DuFont braced herself against the blue-white light of the Fiend's discharging Skill, and Analyzed him. She could tell he was no more than Journeyman, but his power...how was he so strong? Her Analyze couldn't tell the stats of someone else, but she could feel the edges of it all. His stats were far higher than they had any right being. Had she not enacted the Song of Fury, DuFont feared she would be no match for him.
A gold bordered notification blipped into her vision, and Eliza stifled a gasp.
Warning! Unbound Detected Within City Limits!
Recommend Immediate Evacuation Of The City.
Unbound? Impossible. That little shit
The song crested, swelling to greater heights, and Felix struggled to his feet. She had split him open like a logthe armor on his chest and shoulders revealing bright blood beneathbut now his flesh shuddered and twitched as it healed over. The boy's eyes glowed that uncanny, piercing blue while similarly colored Mana vapor poured from his mouth like steam. He clawed forward. Up. Out of the crater she had created.
Her own Song of Fury was wearing thin; she knew it would not last much longer. The Song boosted all three of her Aspects and pushed her into Master Tier but...against an Unbound...She had to end it. Fast.
No wonder he had proven so hard to kill, and how he had accomplished the impossibilities that had been laid at his feet. Before her was a monster far worse than anything the Foglands could produce.
It was a demon.
Sovereign of Flesh!
Felix stood on shaking legs, his body broken but healing. He stared at his clawed hands, at the black scales that thickened and crawled over him. But it wasn't his transformation that he saw, it was a legion of threads he could feel touching every inch of his body. They were more than simple connections, however. They were lines of influence, weighted with a daunting potency.
Adamant Discord!
His new Skill flared and blue-white Mana flashed all around him. Lines of it shot in all directions, a spiderweb of power that sent a swath of the street itself heaving. The ground buckled and cracked, while a recoil of pain assulted his Mind, Spirit, and Body in equal measure. The worst migraine, cramp, and panic attack he'd ever experienced, and it lasted all of a second. Felix blinked it away, his Temper and Skills shrugging most of the effect off.
Felix no longer felt the uneven surges of Reign of Vellus. That Skilland whatever affiliation with the goddesswas gone. He couldn't look into his core space, but all he felt now was a vast sense of connection.
Unity.
He felt the shift in the air as DuFont came for him, and not only because her heat Mana filled the street with an unbearable warmth. He felt the pull of her, distinct from the air and the earth and the flames. He dodged aside and her mangled arm of stone and steel crashed into the cobbles.
Dodge is level 52!
"Stand still!" she snarled. She was charred from his attack, and her arm had been broken down until it was more framework than bulk. "Your time here is done, Unbound!"
Felix started as the word came out of her mouth, enough that he took a spear of golden Mana right to the chest. Felix flew back, his wounds reopened and scorched for extra measure. He gasped in pain before his Song of Absolution kicked in.
"You seem surprised, Unbound. Did you think your secret would remain hidden?" DuFont's arm reformed, drawing in chunks of masonry from around her. A hulking limb formed atop her joint, studded with jagged protrusions that would shred anything it touched. In her right, she whirled her stolen Crescian Blade. "I know and soon so will everyone else. The Authority has told me to destroy you. Even if you survive today, Felix, the Church of the Pathless will hunt you down for the rest of your miserable life!"
Heat Mana pooled along her new arm, her Spirit as boosted as her Body, and even at a distance Felix felt his scales blister. She came at him, faster than he could track, but Felix threw himself aside anyway. He felt the threads shift with him. He felt them so clearly, it was almost as if they were...pulling him.
Adamant Discord!
Felix saw his Mana spool out of him again, but this time it followed lines in the direction of his dodge. Like a fish on a line, he was yanked into the distance, and just in time. The building behind Felix collapsed in a detonation of brick and mortar, not once but twice as DuFont entered and exited the structure. An aura of heat and light baked the air, distorting it as the stone around her boiled.
There was no more talking. The ten foot Inquisitor screamed and sprinted at him, her boosted Body simply eating up the distance. Felix pulled on those threads once more, whipping to the side just out of reach of each explosive swing. The arm impacted the ground, the buildings around them, and each time a flameless blast of power left molten stone and charred rings in her wake.
Adamant Discord is level 55!
Dodge is level 53!
With each flare, the threads of connection between him and everything around him tightened. He pushed and pulled on them with his Willpower and Strength, ping-ponging himself around in flashes of blue-white lightning. It strained his all of his Aspects, each wrenching change in direction, but he grit his teeth against it. Felix was ahead of DuFont, and that was all that mattered.
Another hit from that arm of hers...He didn't finish the thought. His Health had fallen below half again. Sovereign of Flesh and Meditate were working overtime, but the sheer presence of DuFont's aura was siphoning Health from him at a steady rate.
Sovereign of Flesh is level 54!
Sovereign of Flesh is level 55!
Wrack and Ruin!
As he sent himself up and over a nearby roof, Felix sent an orb of acid down at the maddened Inquisitor, and she didn't even bother dodging it. It hit her shoulder and sizzled, doing minor damage but she wasn't even slowed.
"You cannot defeat me, Felix! Your poorly planned attack failed," DuFont sneered as she leaped atop the roof. It creaked ominously under their combined weight. "Your friends are dead or dying. They've all abandoned you. Even the Authority has rejected you! You lost, Unbound."
Felix hunched, dizzy with pain and an omnipresent ache. His core burned bright, but his channels were raw and bloody. "You're...an idiot, DuFont."
Felix felt the rigid threads all around him, strong enough to break stone but no hindering his movement in the slightest. It was like...gravity. A force that bound everything together, a shimmering connection between all the others that spooled from the top of his Bastion of Will. It was what he felt back in that null space, when he was immobile. The Unseen Tides.
"Oh," Eliza chuckled. She strode forward, armored feet smashing through the clay roofing tiles. "Please enlighten me, wise one."
It wasn't people, like Oathbindings or the nebulous emotional connections he'd formed.
The Pull of Significance. Unseen Tides. The threads that bind me to...everything.
Even his enemies.
"You got too close."
Adamant Discord!
"Harn!" Evie lifted him up, propping him onto her shoulder; she had to shift his mass into herself just to lift him. He was hot to the touch, but no longer molten, thank the gods. "You can't be dead. Wake up!"
The blades in his back had been formed of shadow Mana, and once the Sworn had gone down they had dissolved. Which was just as well, because Evie didn't have the stomach to start yanking blades out of her friends. She banged on his chest, but the metal was so dense it barely made a sound. "Wake up!"
"Gods yer loud," he complained. His voice slurred, but suddenly his weight lessened as he found his feet. "What happened? Where's the Sworn?"
Evie laughed, but cut it short. It was too close to a sob. She pointed to the ground not twenty paces away. "Takin' a nap."
Harn grunted and took off his helmet. It came off with a click and hiss, like air was escaping his kitunderneath his face was bruised and bloody. "She dead?"
"Not yet." Evie hadn't been pressed to check. "I woulda run her through, but you were over here looking so pathetic and dead, so..."