You are reading the series:

Chapter Three Hundred And Forty Six – 346

A ritual was needed.

Felix sat amid a wash of sigils and glyphs, all of them radiating around him in a spiraling array of confusing concepts. Sigils for Mind, Body, and Spirit were circled by dream, air, fire, water, and lightning, those circled by yet more in a formation of at least six different arrays.

“Whwhere did you learn this?” Atar asked the Naiad. Zara only grunted, scraping a strand of aquamarine Mana across the final section. “I don’t even see how it functions…where is the input? The output?”

“I’ve learned many Skills in my years.” Zara straightened with some effort. “To explain everything you do not know would take several lifetimes, child.”

“Are you up for this?” Felix asked, cutting off Atar’s angry retort. He was concerned for the woman despite everything Zara had hidden. “I can tell you’ve strained your Spirit, and your Body”

“You look like ten leagues of bad road,” Evie said, hands on her hips.

Vess’ face was serious, but Felix spotted a faint twitch on her lips. “I echo her concern, Zara. Should we not wait? Until you are in greater health.”

“We cannot. Perhaps his link will persist, or perhaps it is degraded by the day. I have no way of knowing which.” Zara wiped her brow, but her face was steady; resolved beyond any effort to dissuade. “We begin.”

As instructed, Felix let himself drift down into his own core space, letting sound his Meditation, Deep Mind, and Bastion of Will. Zara had given him some bare directions for this process; he was to let his senses drift, searching his core space for the thread of connection that was the cause of his spate of unsettling dreams. For him, that meant utilizing his Bastion of Will, the fortress within him that was a world of its own and contained the impressions of several other Skills. Meditation, Deep Mind, and Relentless Resolution were each inscribed upon the five-sided tower in his Bastion, and as the fortress hummed to life each of them pulsed in sympathetic vibration.

Most important, however, was the silver lightning rod that stuck from the very top of that tower. It was looped with countless, colorful strands that arced down from the sky before returning again into that clear blue. Each of those strands were a connection that Felix had established in the world, one for every person, creature, and thing he had influenced in some way…and those that influenced him.

Felix strummed those threads, the mental projection of his fingers combing across them even as his Affinity sought out the one he needed. There were so many, it would take him an entire lifetime to even count half of them…and this was the amount after only a half year on the Continent. How much would this swell in the years to come? How would Felix be required to change by then?

Or…or could he actually go home? Could Zara truly send him back to Earth? To his family?

To see Mom? Or Gabby?

A strident call came from beneath his fingers as a dozen strands vibrated to raucous life, and Felix was scalded. He hissed, the pain overcoming his impressive resistances. He beheld ten threads, flush with opalescent hues, each singing at a pitch only slightly different from one another.

What was it? The thought of home? Of Earth?

The threads blazed with life again, though some far more than others. One, a light that was predominantly ebon-gold all but drowned out the others; its thread felt the thickest of all. The strongest. Yet when he reached for it, the light turned his hand away, like a wall separated them. Beside it, a thread of black-green and sandy-brown illumination threw wild shadows over the rest, and was the second-most robust of the connections.

Why?

Unwilling to waste time, Felix gripped the second thread. He found no resistance, and the moment he made contact he was ripped off into the distance. His Bastion faded into streaks of blues and greens, until he felt like he was bridging a vast divide between the here…and a place impossibly distant. Barriers of light came and went, shattering as he traversed them, breaking into tiny, razor-edged stars that sliced at his Will. Felix screamed, but he would not relent. He would hold!

All the world became a hurricane of light.

Until it stopped.The debut release of this chapter happened at Ñòv€l-B1n.

With a floundering quake, forward movement became a relentless quiescence, and Felix was abruptly aware of fine, red sand beneath his feet. Heat packed in around him, like a jar half-again too full with insufferable temperature, made all the worse by brilliant flare ups strong enough to melt sand into smears of thin glass. Sound came soon after touch, and Felix immediately recognized the roar of chaotic battle.

Sandstorms swirled around his position at the edge of a silken dune, and vivid displays of light and fire Mana streaked into the skies and down again onto the earth. All the land was rolling dunes, with the barest hint of red-orange mountains to the southeast, but most of it was blotted out by the whirling tornadoes of sand and flame. Among the dunes and storms, figures in bulky red armor wielded golden weapons against a shambling horde that seemed to…emerge from the whirlwinds themselves.

“Hallow! I can’t control them!”

Felix spun. Whatever this was, his senses were weirdly bluntedso much so that he hadn’t noticed the hulking Minotaur only three feet behind him. He was staring not at the clashing forces, but at a charging contingent of more shambling forms. Undead, he realized with a sickening lurch. He could see threads of writhing colors stretching between the walking dead and strange sand-twisters. The whirlwinds are full of undead.

“Hallow!” the Minotaur bellowed again, his tone fully panicked now. He was dressed in worn chitinous armor, much as before. “Why can’t I take control?”

A voice, cool and calm and distinctly feminine came from beneath them. “They are still bound to the Tomb, Michael. You cannot take possession of them until you take the Tomb as well.”

The sands parted as a horse-sized scorpion rose from beneath, its barbed tail lashing and massive claws clacking. Blackened green light shone between the cracks in its carapace and from its eight beady eyes, but the calm feminine voice was absolutely coming from its form. Behind it, three more shapes rose, a segmented Multipede and two humanoid figures in broken crimson platemail. As with the undead and the whirlwinds, threads wove among the glowing figures and all of them led to the Minotaur.

+10 AFI

+10 ALA

+10 EVA

“is my home! What is the Hierocracy doing there? We’re not apart of your union!” Atar was on his feet and shouting when Felix came to his senses. He jabbed a finger at the space above Felix’s head, where a projection of his experience was supposed to have been displayed. It had worked, apparently. “Those sands are inviolable!”

“The why is simple. They are hunting an Unbound,” Zara said.

“Thethe bull…man?” Vess asked. “That was…that is an Unbound? The same as Felix?”

“All Unbound choose the Race as they arrive, as well as a few other advantages,” Zara explained. “That is what the old texts say, and Felix’s own experiences support it.”

Felix stood, combating a momentary dizziness before mastering himself. “She’s right. He must’ve chosen a Minotaur during his arrival.”

“Minotaur? That’s what he was?” Evie asked. “Looked about as tall as Karys. Burlier, too.”

“A Lost Race,” Zara muttered. There was already a scroll in her hand, and it was half covered in cramped notations that she added to as she spoke. “Possibly with a Strength and Endurance bonus at each level. Do you know how strong he is? Will he survive those Paladins?”

Felix’s Mind flashed back. It had been chaotic, but he’d gotten a fair measure of the guy. “He’s tough. Hurt though. I don’t know how long he’ll last on his own.”

“He had those…bugs with him,” Vess said. “A curious Skill. Might they be Companions to him?”

“That looked like a Slayer Scorpion, and the other was a Multipede, both deadly denizens of the Scorched Expanse,” Atar explained. “My home.”

“I’m more concerned about the hundreds of walking corpses we just saw,” Evie pointed out. “Was that your Unbound friend’s doin’?”

“That’s just the Expanse. Undead are a…recurring problem,” Atar said. “But this is beyond their normal activity. Why isn’t Ahkestria taking action? Those Paladins, the undead; my Master would never have let things get so bad.”

Felix’s memory roused again, summoning the last image he’d captured from the Minotaur’s Mind. “Ahkestria. Is it covered in a burning sandstorm?”

Atar stilled, his brows furrowing. “Yes, but only when attacked. It keeps the city safe from the undead and a long litany of past invaders…you don’t think? The Paladin’s would never dare to attack the City of Embers!”

“I got a flash, a memory, from the Minotaur. He’d seen that city, and it was covered up by a storm as nasty as the columns of soldiers trying to enter it.” Felix shook his head and carefully extracted himself from the formation. “That’s where the guy was headed, at the end there. To the city.”

“Then that is where I must send my order,” Zara said, tucking her scroll back into a pouch at her waist. “A Chanter by the name of Isla was to be tracking this particular Unboundthat she is not with him makes me quite nervous indeed. Tough or not, this Michael must not be allowed to fall.”

“Then we should go there ourselves,” Atar said. His Spirit simmered with barely lidded rage. Clearly what he’d seen had affected him more than he was letting on. “I could speak to my Masterformer Master, and find out what is truly happening there.”

“You will never make it in time,” Zara said. “The trip would take months, if you were lucky, and events would have far outstripped our small glimpse here.”

“Then what? Let things fall apart, as they did in Haarwatch?” Atar asked. Evie, much to the fire mage’s surprise, spoke up on his side.

“Haarwatch was bad enough. I ain’t lettin’ that happen to someplace else,” she said.

Vess nodded. “If we have a way to help, then we must pursue it. Sure there is some manner of aid we can provide? Zara. How do you reach these other Chanters?”

“An ancient artifact, bound to my order. But it is not fool proof, and messages move slow,” Zara explained. “I’d like nothing more than to throw everything aside and rush after this child. They’re like you were Felix, moving blind through the world. That he fights against the Paladins speaks to his character, but few can withstand multiple battalions of the Hierophant’s elite soliders.”

“Then there’s nothing we can do?” Evie asked. Her hands gripped at the chain wrapped about her waist. “I don’t like the idea of leavin’ anyone against those odds.”

“We…I might have an option,” Felix said carefully. “It all depends on our luck, though.” He gripped his sword. “Karys? Hope everything’s dusted off; I’m bringing some people into the Temple.

“We need to see the Heart of Darkness.”

[Back to Homepage]