Unbound-Chapter Nine Hundred And Sixty Nine – 969

Adamant Discord!

Felix strained, feet braced against the opalescent edge as tethers of brilliant lightning thundered between his fingers. Steel cables of blue-white, each as thick as his chest, stretched over the cliff and down to the glitching Echo. The thing writhed, a fish on a hook, tearing at itself in its fury.

Adamant Discord is level 138!

The Echo boiled in tandem with the craters deadly stew, somewhere between liquid and gas and pixelated fragmentation. It’s limbs stretched and bent, deforming in a frenzied attempt to reach the crater’s chaotic Mana.

Adamant Discord is level 139!

More tethers snapped as others were torn feee or evaded. Sweat poured off of Felix’s chin, the alternating blasts of furnace heat and arctic chill enough to impact even his sturdy Body.

“You’re not getting away!” he snarled.

Another limb shot for the bubbling surface, but Felix’s hate was strong. It grew with every idiotic, selfish movement from the Echo. Bonds of Enmity ensnared its questing fingers, dragging them back up with a whipcrack bolt. The creature bellowed.

You Cannot Stop Me Forever! This Territory Falls As You Stand There, Doing Nothing!

Felix gritted his teeth hard enough he felt a molar crack.

Let Me Go, Fiend. You Stole From Me, Turned Me Into This. It quirked it’s empty face at him. Yes. I Am Not Whole. My…Something Vital Is Gone.

“Ocalla took it from you!”

Lie All You Want. The Bonds Of Enmity Are Strong, it admitted. But You Are Weak.

Felix!

His Affinity soured, screaming at him. Vess? Evie?

Their voices were strident and sharp. Knives from the dark that scattered pieces of his Will. Others joined in, each of them swelling into a bright cacophony.

All of them were in trouble.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

The Echo laughed. Your Enmity Is Corrupted!

The screams intensified, a surge rattling through Felix's Spirit. It was an electric thrill of panic and fear; a sudden, terrible danger.

His friends were hurt.

…Felix….

…I don't know where I am….

…I can't do this….

…too much! The Paths aren’t…!

Pressure piled on him, climbing across his Aspects as furiously as the Echo’s relentless weight pulled at his shoulders, drawing his Will away from the Bonds of Enmity that he held fast.

Pathetic Sentiment! Enmity Spoiled By Kinship! A Cardinal’s Weakness! A mad laugh clattered off the crater’s crumbling walls. Vaunted Choice Squandered! Moot!

Felix clenched his scaled hands across the Bonds, lightning surging between the two of them. "Choice is never wasted, asshole.”

With a ragged gasp, he cut loose his Adamant Discord. The Skill winked out, and the Echo roared in triumph as it careened into the crater with a mighty splash.

“And I choose to end this!”

Title: Boon Of Bonds Is Active!

Golden radiance flooded Gabby's home, tearing free walls with beams of incandescence. Wood pulped and drywall crumbled to dust before catching flame. Gabby dodged aside, the beam slicing through the staircase at a sharp angle. She barely noticed the fist that rocketed toward her jaw.

The blow smashed Gabby back, sending her falling down the stairs and into the doorjamb. Her back shattered the wood, opening new gaps that blazed with small pinpricks of golden light.

"I've had enough of your insolence," Imara said. She kicked at Gabby, catching her in the thigh. But her foot was caught, and Gabby twisted. Imara leapt into it, lifting her other foot into a resounding boot across Gabby's neck. It pitched her forward, stumbling into the dining room, and hitting the table. The table skidded across the room, clinking against the thick window.

"I'm sick of your weakness," Imara spat. Gabby threw herself aside, just barely dodging the flying knee that came for her chest. Imara shattered the dining room table, crushing half of it into the broken window.

New beams of golden light flooded inward, filling up the space, forcing Gabby away. Fire was spreading now, the rugs catching quickly as the wallpaper spread a char across its surface. It surged, and Imara snarled as she emerged from its depths.

Gabby seized Imara from behind, arms locking around her shoulders and neck before squeezing tight. Imara shoved her head backward, crashing against Gabby's face. The pain lanced across her nose, and blood flooded her mouth. Gabby lost her grip on her foul double and stumbled back toward one of the golden beams.

She caught herself on a squared pillar between the entryway and dining room, her face too close to the beam's slanted length. For a brief moment though, her eyes swam in that radiance, and she saw that the beam was not only light.

Where it passed, the world was changed.

The house had gone, and they stood inside of a city she only vaguely recognized. Paladins, Inquisitors, and Priests flowed in orderly lines, their red and white cloaks stark against the charred ruins of countless people. She saw herself standing tall among them, her face twisted into a sneer, her eyes alight with blinding gold. She gestured, and entire Territories burned. She stepped forward, a deep red cloak snapping in an unfelt wind above armor that was Aurum Armory perfected. This alternate version of herself stepped onto the deck of a Manaship, the Void spread out before her. A fleet sailed with her, across the dark expanse.

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Toward Earth.

Gabby rolled out of the beam, catching hold of her Mind again. Bent low, she breathed heavily through a swell of chaotic, quivering emotions.

"You have seen it," Imara said, her expression the same self-righteous mark Gabby had seen in the vision. "The glory of what will become."

"Glory?" Gabby stood up. "What part of wholesale slaughter is glorious?"

"Still you fight us. Still you are weak. It is pointless. I am you. Perfected."

Gabby’s fist caught Imara across the jaw, splitting her lip. The thing stared, incredulous as she spat a wad of blood onto the broken floor.

Gabby lifted her fists. "Alright Ms. Perfect. Prove it!"

Gabby swung a left hook, but Imara ducked beneath it, twisting her armored body and thrusting an uppercut into Gabby's chest, knocking her back. The blow hit front and center, but Gabby leaned into it, tilting inward as the force of the strike lifted her straight up into the air. Pain radiated from her sternum, but Gabby raised her fists overhead and brought them crashing down, landing on Imara's shoulders and driving her into the floorboards. That was what she expected, but Imara was more talented than that. The insane double flung herself to the left in a horizontal roll, her limbs slashing outward. Gabby lifted her forearms, her feet not even touching the ground yet. She tanked the hit, but metal and pure Strength ripping through her unprotected skin.

Gabby fell back, cradling her wounded arms.

"You are nothing before me!” Imara pressed forward. Three jabs in quick succession connected, bashing Gabby across the shoulder, kidneys, and jaw. She fell back, Imara's spiked gauntlets drawing gouts of dark blood. "We will walk this path, and on it, we will find our rightful place."

Beams burst through the second-floor ceiling, cutting into the ground, and falling around her like windows into a nightmare. Gabby backed off, evading them as Imara chased after. Terrible things caught the edges of her Perception, visions of herself burning across the Caribbean as naval ships fell before a flying armada.

"I create a future for us," Imara said, stalking through the golden light. "A future worth all of our sacrifices."

She struck again, driving her heel through the floorboards and making the table of heavy glass souvenirs rattle. Gabby leaped backward past the table and up the stairs. Imara followed with methodical steps, her boots gleaming gold and leaving burning footprints in her wake.

"You're brainwashed! Everything you are is a lie!”

"I am the truth!" Imara's voice shook the house, sending cracks through the walls. "I am what saved us from every adversary, every challenge! I am the reason we live!”

“You're not real!”

“And you’re just a voice in my head, girl." Imara drew her hand back and her Brightblade formed into a wavy flamberge. "It's time you were silenced!”

She lunged.

Desperate, Gabby parried the strike with the flat of her unarmored hand. The edge sliced through her palm, but it caught on her bone, giving enough sizzling resistance. She shoved the flamberge aside, burying it in the wall and threw all of her weight into Imara's armored chest. The woman may have been better at fighting, she may have been the one to train all of those hours, but Gabby knew her home. She tackled her double down the stairs, shoving both of them straight through the air.

Imara snarled something, and heat gathered around Gabby like a halo, the walls cratering as more golden light flooded in.

It was too late.

They landed, smashing into the crystalline display. Imara screamed as a hundred heavy souvenirs pierced her back, driven by their immense combined weight straight through her spine. Her hands grappled with Gabby, clawing at her jaw and neck, shoving blindly. Gabby held her down, grappling with her double’s flailing arms. Imara was just as strong as Gabby—the same, no matter how much the woman’s blood burned like liquid gold. Gabby pushed her hands back, shoulders shaking with the effort.

"Imara—!"

Gabby snatched up the largest of her mother's souvenirs: a melon-sized replica of a geodesic sphere.

"Get out of my house!"

She brought the sphere down, fracturing Imara's skull. The woman howled, surprise and agony joined into a foul harmony as each wound flooded with gold, burning Gabby to the quick. Yet she was relentless. Once, twice, a dozen times, the dome met skull and flesh, Gabby's hands lifting and falling. Imara pushed at her, but soon those hands lost their Strength, and the light faded.

Gabby didn’t stop until the dome shattered. Only then did she stumble back, burnt and dripping. Imara's corpse twitched on the floor, staining her mom's favorite rug.

You Have Killed ???????!

XP Earned!

An explosion rattled the house, and light arced across the entryway, burning through the front door and blocking any exit with a vision of Paladins marching through suburban streets.

"System," Gabby gasped, spinning in place. "I didn't choose this!"

Golden beams speared through the upper level, bursting parts unseen, followed by a dull thump and roar of flames as her home burned away. Gabby rushed the window, hurling the remains of the dining table into the beam that blocked her way, hoping that it would do anything at all—yet the table was eradicated in golden flame, the beam undaunted.

"This isn't my Path!"

Her limbs felt bogged down. She tried to run, to escape out the back door, but it was as if her Mind had been cut from her Body. Her legs shook, arms dead at the shoulder, and as she passed over the bloody corpse of Imara, pale blue lines manifested from every direction. They were there, already wound around Gabby’s wrists and ankles and neck. They pulled her back.

Even so, Gabby’s Strength and Endurance were beyond impressive. She flared both, surging through the restraints to take one step and then another. Yeah each movement cost her more, and the very floor buckled beneath her—wood folded and snapped as easily as a wrinkled rug. Her Stamina cratered and she fell to her knees. Blue lines swarmed her form, wrapping across her belly, chest, and thigh.

Imara was dead, but the Bargain still persisted.

These ties again! Gabby bit at them, but she couldn't touch them, let alone cut them. They held her tight. What did Avet call them? Bindings. They bound her as surely as the gods’ own chains. Just as tight as…as when they’d grasped her hand.

The door… Gabby remembered it vividly. These same bonds, pale blue and unbreakable, had reached out through the Third Door. Vess, Beef, and all the others had helped her—saved her—against Imara and her wretched Bargain.

Bonds Of Kinship.

Gabby jerked back, eyes wide. The light was still burning her home, but the flame had turned an almost metallic red-gold. They swelled and died away, clearing a path through her mother’s debris to frame a figure at the door. Though golden beams speared down around them, they were in total shadow…save for the distant, blue-white light that limned its very edges.

Bonds Hold Us Together.

"Felix?" She couldn't see the figure’s face, but she could tell that it smiled.

Bonds That Cannot Be Broken.

It reached out a hand. Her Bargain hauled her to the ground, but she pushed forward, her arms trembling as she reached out. Blue-white lines snapped into existence, a bolt of lightning stretching between the shadow and herself. She wrapped her fingers around it, and they felt like steel cords, taut with a strength she didn't possess.

The Fiend Offers His Aid.

Do You Accept?

"Yes!”

All Choices Have Consequences.