PER: 1094
VIT: 1700
END: 1730
INT: 1516
WIL: 2290
AGL: 1033
DEX: 1147
Harmonic Stats
RES: 482
INE: 1866
AFI: 1286
REI: 584
EVA: 330
MIG: 455
ALA: 1475
FEL: 571
A massive tail, wide as a city block, swung through the haze. It took Felix full in the face, sending him hurtling down, down, down into the tiled floor of the Mana pool. Stone cratered, shattered in concentric rings that exploded in waves of catastrophic force. Shards blew upward, moving through the liquid that was like smoke, trailing bubbles behind them. Felix coughed up a streamer of vibrant blood, practically glowing with the System energies that still coursed through him.
Yet because of those energies, because of his Third Threshold, his wounds knitted before the Urges could reach him.
Unfettered Volition!
Felix shot back upward, a leap or swimming stroke propelling him into the murky depths. Jaws snapped and crashed all around him, claws seeking his flesh and life; but he was too small, too fast, too strong.
Adamant Discord!
Pivoting himself, Felix shot back downward, through the closing jaws of another Urge to slam, meteor-like, into it's damn skull. The Urge convulsed in surprised pain, its Spirit blaring it to the world, and crashed into the tiled floor of the well. Smoke and liquid swirled, parted, sloshed until silty debris made vision an impossible thing. For all his stats, terror welled up in him. It was all he could do to focus, while the beast below him writhed. He ran along its length, the liquid Mana still parting before him like smoke. Felix held an oversized card in his hand, its face brilliant with golden inlay, a sun that banished the dark to the farthest corners.
"'Beyond The Dark, The Light Awaits,'" Felix gasped.
"What does he say?"
"Only foolishness! He has attacked us! Us!"
"We end him!"
Felix bared his teeth, and from his waistband pulled the other object he'd been careful to keep with him. A feather as long as his forearm, black and night and crackling with potency.
"Mark of the Raven!"
"That upstart!"
"He invokes!"
The sibilant words overlapped, mixed with the rushing of waters as they came at him again. At his side, his Inheritor's Will burst into vibrant, green-gold light.
On me!
A figure of blazing Mana surged upward, looking exactly like Felix and lighting up the strange, dark waters. Green-gold light bounced off bony, bulbous forms, creatures of sinuous strength and terrible, nightmarish shapes. Almost all of the Urges hissed and plunged after Karys' phantom.
You...have...seconds only.
He'd make them count. The feather in his hand ignited, bringing a brilliant light to dark depths. The Urges that hadn't followed the phantom, the Urge of Rot and the Urge of Spite, convulsed, driven backward by the pure, white light. Holding the Nym statuette aloft, he cast Cardinal Flame through its enchanted substance. Red-gold flame erupted in a ring around him, worked by his Will and Intent until it formed a series of massive glyphs, each and every one the same as the last. He had seen it before in many places, even among the Archon's twisted works, but his was different. Changed by his experience with the Theurgy of the Rise, a combined form of siphon, life, and connection.
He called it Devour.
Driving his sword into the tiled floor, Felix reached into his pocket and hurled a stack of metal cards into the array he'd built. Each Omen card was snagged by a glyph, snapping into the sigils' centers as if magnetized. The cards lit with the same red-gold flame, an incandescent glow that grew all the brighter as the Omens truly ignited.
Affinity seized the threads that connected him to the Urges, threads of want and hunger, and he tied those into the array. His Intent and Will did the rest, directing a massive tide of Mana from his channels out into the well. It flowed from him in waves of almost-liquid vapor, thickened and potent and split into nine different streams in a circle.
The phantom faded, and Karys trembled in the ground, but Felix was ready. The Urges screamed, those closest already rounding on him. Those above charged as well, until all six came at him, maws agape.