Unbound-Chapter Nine Hundred And Seventy – 970

Title: Boon of Bonds Is Active!

Felix struggled to hold his center, standing atop the Fiendstone cliff. They vanished from around him, lost to his senses just as much as the bubbling bellows of the Echo far below. The unstable Mana was the last piece he sensed, a bad taste in his mouth that refused to go away. He followed it, toward the Links that hung bright and mighty just outside of his core space. The instability stained them, spiked over with growths like spurs on their lengths.

His friends were in danger.

“I’m Here,” he said into his Links. Significance rolled through his voice. “Hold On.”

Power flooded from him, soaring along the Links in his soul toward those closest to him. It was rough going, however, with the connections sputtering like a kinked hose. The Echo—and the Door in its chest—languished in the magma-like Mana below, worsening the influence of the instability. It wasn’t good, but the only other choice was to hold his Adamant Discord and be unable to help his friends at all. So Felix grimaced, bearing down on his Title and pushed power through the Links.

Corruption Detected.

Unstable Mana.

Standby.

The unstable Mana was tearing them apart. Worse than forming their Pillars, this drained his significance, Essence, and Mana in vast amounts no matter what he did. He would only have a bit of time to handle them. Felix focused; he needed to see.

Resonance Established.

Links Unveiled.

His vision swam, light spinning out into patterns of violence.

Vess ran atop a Dragon’s spine, the golden scales set off by spines of bright crystal. Glitching monstrosities tore through reality, claws and indeterminate wings meeting empowered Spears.

Felix blinked.

Evie leaped from an icy battlement, chased by wraiths made of static and starlight. Her flail lashed out, bashing—

Blink.

Archie stood, trapped on an empty throne big enough for a giant as he defended against hound-like creatures made of liquid fire and smoking flesh. Blink. Beef was lifted up by a thousand Risen hands, reaching to the sky where Fafnir flew, fighting against a pair of centipedes the size of skyscrapers. Blink. Elowen stood surrounded by sigils and books that floated around her in arcane patterns. She moved a hand and they shifted as creatures spawned from the bookshelves, their bodies made of twisting paper and empty leather bindings. They—Blink. Ondine sat in an overgrown palace on a lawn of grasses and wildflowers. She was surrounded by things rising from the earth, creatures of root and rot, while behind her, young children with small wings cowered—Blink. Kevin strode through a forest, animals bowing to him as the plants turned to face him as if he were the sun itself. Thunder shook them all, and the skies opened up. Blood rained down and—Blink. Shadow stalked through misty forests, bow nocked as wolves the size of horses leaped atop a massive stag. A twig snapped. Shadow tumbled forward, narrowly avoiding the leap of a pale wolf. He spun, arrow trained on the beast, but it’s maw opened too wide and darkness poured out from between its teeth. The arrow loosed, it—

Blink. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

Felix staggered, back in his core space as his Links vibrated with increasing intensity. They’re all struggling with their Paths. The Echo it’s—infecting them.

He could feel it. The Paths they trod had been twisted awry, each of their enemies turned on their heads as that corruption stole through the Omen Door. If things continued as they were, there wouldn’t be an Omen Path anymore, for any of them. They were close to finishing—he could feel that in his bones.

They just needed someone to clear the way.

"System! I didn't choose this!"

The words speared through Felix. A Link far more strange and complex shook within his soul, termoring his hammering heart as visions of golden light filled his Mind. Fire followed, and the sharp crackle of bursting windows and crumbling drywall.

"This isn't my Path!"

Felix could hear his sister. She stood below, in the house they’d grown up in, trapped by her own Path. Here, however, there was no corruption or instability. This was a choice made against her Will. The System bucked against it. The choice was invalid and impure. Her Path was collapsing on itself.

Divine Trickery! Right This Cacophony, Scion!

He didn’t argue with the Beast. Felix flared his Title, Intent shaping the deluge of power toward his sister—potency enough to reshape her fate.

He hoped.

The Beast roared in a rage Felix had not felt since he'd last faced down the gods. Misshapen! Rotten! Befouled!

The System bucked against the false choice as if in agreement with the Beast. It leapt at Felix's power, soaking up his significance.

Unite the Lost!

His Will and Intent firmed as significance drained from like water from a sieve. It poured toward the Path of the Light, surrounding it. The golden radiance that suffused Gabby within their parent's home broke, shattered beneath the weight of his power. His sister screamed in agony as new Paths opened up in every direction. Glitching and jagged, they moved with every moment, too fast to glimpse let alone read. She stumbled to her feet, hand reaching out.

He clenched his jaw. For a moment—barely more than a second—Felix held the Path options still.

Gabby slapped her hand forward.

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Bells rang out, and Felix was cast out, thrown into the dark of his soul as the rest of his Links thrummed in dire warning. They became pinpricks of light in the dark, too minute to open again. He shoved his strength at her, and the Link widened, expanding with significance.

It Will Not Be Enough!

Felix returned to himself and the Fiendstone cliffs. Below, the crater boiled. Geysers of unstable Mana rose up around Felix, soaking the cliff with a final, sizzling miasma. The Mana was no longer a molten, prismatic orange. Instead, now it was suffused with darkness, and the moonshards that studded his Fiendstone edge soaked it all up. They swarmed with shadowflesh, rising up into massive creatures with jittering spikes throughout their bodies that jolted and shifted with every movement. Like a sound wave made physical.

A sharp, high drumbeat tore at Felix, ripping at him as he stood stock still, his power focused on his friends. The monsters struck and he tanked it, his skin sheathing itself in thick armor that turned their blows aside. The creatures piled atop of him, tooth and claw, but no matter what they attempted, he merely lifted his shoulders and gave not a single inch. He didn’t attack—he couldn’t. Unite the Lost required all his focus, and holding the feed into his now-distant Links was more important than anything else.

Fiendstone cracked beneath unstable Mana, their glitching Bodies slicing through his shaping. The cliff crumbled, and Felix shifted, nearly losing his footing. He scrambled back, arms still up defensively, as Unite the Lost shook in his core.

The monsters surged.

“Tempest Fugit!”

A volley of frozen spears crashed into the unstable moonbeast's bodies, exploding them into fountains of dark ichor as Pit and the Chimeras flew in low, their Skills razing the Fiendstone cliff around him.

"Legionnaires, rank up! Forward!" The Claw ran forth in orderly segments, their powers shaking the earth and spiking the ground with elemental magic as Blades, Bone, Fist, and Arclights did their mighty work.

“Ruatha Taa Fo!” Battlelord Ari and the Berserkers led the charge as moonbeasts deformed, growing larger and more erratic as that instability funneled further into them. The Witches cast curses and fouled footing as his people came to call.

No! They needed to get back behind the protective fortress he'd made. He didn't need them to come here. They were all going to get killed.

You Are Fools! Without warning, the flood of unstable Mana pulled back, abandoning the raging moonbeasts. It reversed past Felix’s feet and back down into the crater, where it all swirled in a maelstrom.

The Echo rose from its center.

Felix craned his neck. The crater below him was empty, the unstable Mana entirely absorbed by the Echo as it stretched upward, its wild, janky strings of flesh reaching for the sky. Skeletal limbs snapped outward with thunderous crashes, clinging to the edges of the cliff as it climbed out. A spider emerging from its nest.

Fall Before The Night!

Mountainous pressure swept outward. Felix recognized it—it was entirely too close to the power of the Divine. Chimera dropped out of the sky, thrown by the force of its Spirit as an empty face in the center of its unraveling flesh lit up with a baleful neon pink light.

"Support the Fiend!" Loquis cried. “Kill them all!”

The moonbeasts rose up, greater in number beneath the gaze of the Echo, but his people did not stop no matter what Felix wanted. Their eyes burned blue, struggling against the monsters even before the Echo swung.

A skeletal limb tore across the landscape, just above Felix’s head. Barriers and berms and walls of ice and shadow met the Echo's charge and were demolished. Men and women fell back, Bodies pulped by the Echo’s foul blow, before a gutteral roar rang out. Wendell rushed forward, his immense frame hurled into the breach as he swung his dual swords. Air and heat exploded outward, hurling the Echo’s limb away from the army and drawing a strangled yowl from its empty face.

Somehow, the Spirit of the Echo climbed, piling atop of them all with incomprehensible intensity. Felix locked his knees in place, barely able to keep standing, and his people fell entirely. He could do nothing about it—his power leeched from his core faster than he could recover as the Omen Door sizzled at the center of the Echo. Around him, the Territory itself crumbled, the crater beyond turning into loose ash and chasms spiking through in every direction, revealing a glittering darkness beyond in the gaps between.

The sky cracked, thunder chasing dark lightning that spiked up from the unspooling threads of the Echo's flesh, and the Void pressed closer. Felix could feel it like a cold glass pressed against his skin. Worse creatures flooded upward through those gaps; voidbeasts twisted askew by the same unstable Mana that radiated from the Echo’s Body. They fled that pressure, turning on Felix’s army in waves. Spirit crushed or not, his people unleashed their Skills. Magic tore through the creatures, blunting the rush, but not entirely.

Blood soaked the field.

The Echo laughed.

Perfection. I Have Attained Its Perimeter! Yet Hunger Rages Within Me. The Echo shoved its too many limbs into the chasms, and the Void flooded through. Textureless black subsumed skeletal appendages, rife with streamers of colorless, undifferentiated Mana that soaked into the Echo like water into parched earth. Dark Satiation!

Felix winced, legs quaking as the Echo’s power grew. Its Spirit soared while its Body coated with a thick, pebbled hide. Its minions died, and even the waves of voidbeasts vanished beneath its endless consumption as tendrils of jagged night stretched in angular patterns into the heavens.

Sonata of Dominance!

The earth bucked beneath his Will as he shaped a wave of it backward, away from him. It hit his army, rolling them up, pushing their entire force back toward the fortress nearly hundreds of yards away.

Loquis struggled to his feet, lightning surging around him. “Emperor! Why—!”

“Run! All of you!” Felix lifted his hands, scales thickening around them in midnight segments as the Echo descended. A flurry of dark chaos tore through him, the caustic edge of its instability searing through his scales instantly.

Unite the Lost!

He reaffirmed his connection, hoping his friends had not fallen on their own Paths. His Links were blacked out, his vision blocked, but his power was moving through. The Echo raged, crying in wordless fury, no longer making threats or accusations. It didn’t need to—every ounce of its being was bent toward Felix’s gruesome demise.

Warning!

Your Health Has Dropped To 40%!

Warning!

Your Health Has Dropped To 30%!

Empyrean Embrace!

The chaos poured through him, sparking through his channels. He gagged, his Embrace nearly undone. It was caustic and vile, invading his senses with a violence that matched the Echo’s intensity.

FOUL! UNCLEAN! The Beast cried. It roiled within him, pulling sharply away from the disgusting deluge in his core space.

Then clean it!

The Beast cried out wordlessly, a rumble shaking through Felix's Aspects as the creature reared from the abyss at his center. There Will Be Consequences!

Choke it down or die in the next minute! Choose!

Teeth rattled at Felix’s soul, but the Beast surged forth, taking the unstable power into itself with a mighty chomp.

Pieces of it remained, and yet the pieces that remained were still decent. Essence and menna poured into Felix to fuel his sovereign. Sovereign flesh amplified his healing, closing the scales that the Echo ripped apart again and again.

Then the earth shook, a crash reverberating through Felix's spirit. He turned, horrified to see moonstones draped with golden threads hurled upon the ground, and in its center, a sideways door. The Omen Door was torn free entirely. It flickered, pieces of it starting to degrade as the front began to peel away in strips.

I Am Free! the Echo cried, jubilation unmistakable in its foul voice.

Felix looked up, meeting its empty gaze. His eyes burned. "That was the only thing keeping you alive, bitch."

Empyrean Embrace!