Felix pressed his hand against the wall, but all he felt were the carved blossoms that he saw with his own eyes.

"Why the restriction?" Pit asked.

Felix pressed harder and grunted in surprise. The wood didn't even groan under his considerable Strength. Restricted as he was by the Crucible, it should have still been more than enough.

"Gah!” He dropped his hand. “Probably to prevent someone from spoiling their advancement with premature knowledge. The same thing Zara always told us." Felix shook out his wrist, staring hard at the carved wall. "What I don't understand is why hide it from me? I can't even see it without you."

Felix knew a lot about Core Manifestation. He knew it was an externalization of his power after internally developing his Pillars and Tempering his Skills to at least Master Tier. He knew that his Skills made up the largest portion of the mysterious process, solidified by significance until it all congealed into a Core Manifestation—what many called the Tapestry Stage. Every other detail of his core space played their part as well: his Divine Tree, the Divine and Primordial influence on his Pillars, the shape of the revolving Skill-planets, some connected by gleaming ribbons of light to his dual Named cores. Even the abyss with the Beast inside.

Felix frowned. There was a lot to him. Compared to people who worked their way up with a handful of Skills and a focused visualization of their core space, he was too much. For all of Vess' visualization training, the influences on him were too great and too frequent to be ignored.

Hmm, the Beast grumbled from below. You Hestitate Too Much, Scion. Devour The Obstacle Before You.

No. That’s what got me here. In the beginning, Felix had gained too many Skills too fast. His capabilities had been so spread out and ungainly that he’d had to consolidate them to progress. He had certainly grown more powerful by doing so, but his progress had always been wide, taking what he could and advancing as fast as possible to outstrip whatever new horror faced him down.

The Beast hummed, like a livewire too close to the ground. It Is Your Choice.

Except, for once, Felix was unsure where to go.

He put his hand out. The wall was still solid, though in a few places he could tuck his fingers into carved gaps between flower and vine. Pit leaned forward and somehow passed straight through the wall. Felix couldn't make sense of it. Pit was disappearing between one step and the next, as if they were both walking into separate layers of reality.

Pit backed up, looking up at where Felix knew the warning had been etched across the opening. "Only people that have ‘found their footing’ can enter. That isn’t very helpful.”

Felix snorted. “Not so much, but I don’t think it’s meant to be. My issue is that I don't know how to approach my Core Manifestation, and I think we need to address that before I can enter."

"Well, what were you thinking of? You said before you had some ideas, but we haven't talked enough about it.”

“It's been busy, I know, Pit. I was thinking about using the Beast like it had used me back in Levantier. A great, hulking form that can go toe-to-toe with the gods when they've fully manifested. Something like the Echo, with Noctis's power still in it, would have been beyond us. But with the Beast, maybe..."

He pressed against the wall again, this time with both hands. The wood didn’t so much as creak. "What are you thinking of, buddy?"

Pit sat back on his haunches. "Well, I see our Core Manifestation as us."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not sure how to explain it, but... I don't need more claws and teeth…or giant arms of smoke like your Beast. Everything we've handled, we've handled as us.” Pit chirruped-barked, the sound of a sharp bass loud in the quiet library. “We can take care of things as we are, together."

"Huh." The thought wormed its way inside of Felix, an idea he hadn't really considered. Remain as they are? Exalted Conjunction rolled across his core space, Mana filling out its patterns. Together?

Exalted Conjunction is level 103!

Felix’s hand, still pressed against the wall, suddenly fell. He stumbled, catching himself quickly before rearing back to inspect the archway, covered in sigaldry and a warning, the same one he'd seen through Pit's eyes.

“Wha—? Is that all it took?” Felix inspected the archway, running his hands over the gilden sigaldry. “The wall’s gone for me now.”

“What did you do?”

"Nothing.” Felix frowned. “That’s not true. I guess maybe, Pit, I was thinking of things without you. And I shouldn't have." He reached out, ruffling his friend's feathers. "Like you said: we're in this together, right?"

Pit chirruped. "We are."

Together, they stepped through the archway. A brief, painful flicker caught against Felix's skin, but it was a passing shock, nothing truly awful. It faded almost as soon as it began.

A Choice Has Been Made.

The archway, clouded with dark, bloomed with new light. Blue-green and bright, like a summer's afternoon. Felix lifted his hands, shading his eyes as their steps took them into a tiled chamber and jolted in surprise as his feet splashed into a puddle.

“Water?” Felix blinked through the light. “Holy crap.”

If the Skills Library was designed like ripples in a pond, the Records Room was a tsunami. Tiled in star-patterned stone, it spread out before them in a long hallway. To their right, the wall was fifty yards away and marked by regular hexagonal columns and low benches. The hall itself stretched for twice that length, with a high, rounded ceiling filled with magelights. The room was coated entirely in a layer of warm water, unmoving and ankle-deep, gleaming in the false summer’s sun.

To his left, the wall was obscured—by a wave. There the water rose up, lifting into a foam-flecked crest high enough to brush the distant ceiling. It wasn’t frozen, but the water was still, as if arrested at the height of its momentum by some unflagging Will. Motes of light were trapped inside the wave, tangled amid thousands of dark roots that spread out from the nearest wall. Roots of the Aberrant Soil, one and all, they emerged from the floor and walls, thick and skeletal like fibers from the flesh of Etrionn itself.

Pit splashed in the water. "It's real. It's salty, too.”

“I'm more surprised at how warm it is." Felix walked forward, the liquid never growing any deeper than his ankles, even as it rose up to the wave. Inside, the motes wiggled beneath the water’ distortion. He sank wrist-deep into the wave. It was warm and crystal clear, like a tropical ocean, but far deeper than it looked at first. “These motes are farther back and I expected.”

Those motes weren't just sitting a few inches deep, they were layered atop one another, nestled in a labyrinth of roots that extended for who-knew-how-far. Felix reached for the closest one and it fled, roots curling around the mote to pull it out of his grasp.

"Hey!” Felix grabbed at another, but it did the same.

Stolen from novelbuddy, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Pit tried, too, plunging his paw in there and swiping around frantically, but the motes acted no differently, fleeing away until a space around them had cleared, leaving only swirling waters.

Felix grimaced. Clearly, it wasn't an issue of having the proper footing or whatever, like the doorway had been, or if it was, they were both screwed. "Let me try something else."

Marshaling his Will and Intent, he pressed forward with the phantom limb that was his Authority. Without moving, he reached for the motes once more. This time, he felt the difference. His Authority caught on something, but it was vast and sunk deep in the wave. Just as before, the roots did not allow him to get close, and they folded into themselves—flowers without a sun.

Hand dripping, Felix stared at the roots. “We’re missing something.”

“Maybe you need to think about your core space, like, what you need?”

“That's not a bad idea." Felix frowned, closing his eyes as he tried to order his Mind. His ideas were jumbled at best. Flitting across the different concepts that could possibly work, he envisioned his core space, the Divine Tree stretching up with a nebula of Essence and captured Memories in its branches. It was surrounded by Skill-planets, each revolving around the dual rings of his Named cores while the abyss swirled below it, and the Pillars held it all up.

It was a strange place, Felix knew, one that was not easy to explain to anyone, but all of it felt right. Each piece he'd added had been added by necessity, but they’d always fallen into place where they were needed. The planets spun, their vibrations forming their shapes, the ribbons of light for those nine Skills he'd Tempered anchored around his Tree. The abyss pulled, rolling like a dark ocean where the Beast laid in wait.

It was chaos, but all of it meant something. Power, certainly, but more than that. The grinding of his cores produced Harmony and Dissonance in equal measure, and that rolled through him, inundating his Skills, bathing them in its chords.

Ahead the roots flexed, jittering about as the motes within the wave were reorganized and sorted as if at random. They rolled sideways, the bits of light pushed back and forward in unpredictable, almost organic motion. A few fluttered close to his fingertips, but then they moved away, glimpses sparked across his mind. It wasn't enough to bring a single one directly to him, but he saw something, a flash of a Memory.

Lightning? Adamant Discord is like that. Merely thinking of the Skill brought the roots closer. Adamant Discord hummed within him, and the roots stretched forward, proffering a single gleaming mote of light.

Felix touched it.

A vision spooled up around him. It was a Memory of a man clad in furs and pieces of broken chainmail who raised clenched fists into the skies. He bellowed a wordless rage into the heavens as his core space surged. From atop a mountain, lightning coursed through his arms as he cast it about, hurling it into a forest where trunks shattered and kindling burned. Beasts emerged, racing toward him with slavering jowls and hungry eyes. The man roared and met them, lightning scouring their Bodies with each savage blow.

Felix stepped back from it, separating himself from the fur-clad man. The lightning was powerful, and the way it interacted with his Body was utterly interesting, but it wasn’t what Felix needed. This man embodied elemental lightning, but Felix never had—Adamant Discord operated by Bonds. The lightning was only ever a side effect.

The Memory dissolved. The mote moved away, clutched back into the roots.

"So not lightning. Bonds. I need Bonds. That is so much of what I do." He focused again. The tendrils roiled like a million insect legs, pulling and pushing, and the motes rose up from the dark depths. Flashes of light skittered across Felix's Mind with visions of strange people and places. They weren't what he needed. Again and again, nothing solidified in his grasp, but they were getting closer. He focused.

Bonds. Bonds of Fellowship. Bonds of Kinship. Bonds of Enmity.

A mote reached his fingers. A Memory pulled him in.

Another mage, clad in iridescent robes, sat within an ancient spire hewn from the mountain. Oaths and Bonds swirled around them. Pale blue lines and silver chains twined through the mage's hands as their spells skittered outward, cast across them like lightning rods. Instantly, Felix knew this mage could affect people across the world. Diffused by distance, their reach was still monstrous. Miles away, someone bellowed and a flash of bitter flame scorched the horizon.

Felix frowned. It reminded him very much of the work he'd done with Bonds in the past. It reminded him of Pit and his Exalted Conjunction.

The Memory faded, and he blinked, pulling his hand from the warm water to see Pit standing there, a single paw in the wave. The tenku's eyes had gone cloudy and his beak was agape. The Roots of the Abyssal Soil had wrapped around his paw, almost to the edge, but it retreated as Felix watched. The mote folded back into the tangled mass beneath the wave.

Pit blinked, coughing as if he'd risen out of the water himself.

"What did you see?”

“I tried to find something about storms and flying, you know?” Pit shook himself. "But I saw someone's Core Manifestation that was turning into a creature with wings made of clouds. They…became the sky."

"Really?"

"Yeah, storm clouds gathered around them like wispy armor and their Body grew huge. It expanded into this giant construct thing packed with electric power and winds and rain and—" Pit shook his head. "It wasn't right. Feels like it took a turn too far from where I wanna go."

Felix nodded. "I'm seeing the same problem. We need to combine our powers to manifest our core space.”

“Easier said than done."

"Well, let's think. There’s gotta be similarities, right?"

Pit snorted. "Yours is a space tree with a monster hiding beneath it…and mine's a forest."

"Right," Felix snapped his fingers. "The forest you grew up in, right? And in your center are those intertwining trees?"

"Yeah, my Skills are the trees and they all combine into one giant one, all wrapped around my core."

"A star-shaped core, right?"

"Yeah. Every Evolution the core gets more complicated. It's an eight-pointed star now.”

“I also have a tree connected to my dual cores and my Skills."

"You think they're connected? Like the Spirit Trees in their Groves?"

"I hadn't really thought of it like that." Felix couldn't see a problem with the idea. The Atlantes Anima and all the Spirit Trees Felix had been planting around his Territories had formed a Grove that had not only strengthened the powers of the Trees but empowered the Shadowgate network.

Was that the right path for them though?

Felix plunged his hand back in, Mind focused on their connection—immediately a mote leapt to his fingertips as roots clenched his wrist. It melted into him, bearing with it a Memory of a small person sitting in a field. The ground was empty all around them, tilled earth was mostly dust, dry and lifeless. Yet as the figure spread their hands out, their Authority rolled from them, and the world was transformed.

“Whoa.”

The soil grew darker as life poured into it, shooting upward with sudden sprouts and leaves. Grass, weeds, flowers, and trees, all laden with berries and fruits, exploded outward in a rolling wave that filled the valley with a sudden ecosystem from whole cloth. Creatures appeared too, monsters sprouting from between a splitting earth and a fecund vine, life woven entirely from this Core Manifestation. Not for battle but restoration. And in the distance, Spirit Trees loomed, rising high into the sky. A dozen of them clung nearby, huddled close together as people in robes sang to them.

The Green Wilds. The Wild Threnody. Peace and violence, two parts of a whole. Words and phrases flitted through his mind, his memory. Wildness, that's what the Elders of the Grove called it.

Felix and Pit, Chimera and Nym, both of them Primordials, both with Harmony and Dissonance at their very cores. And there was a wildness in them. Felix had known that from the start. A chaos burned in them, counterpoint to the Harmony that surged through all the world. Drove them to fight against…everything.

Unprompted, Pit's words echoed back through his perfect recall. It's just us.

“Felix!"

His eyes snapped open. Memory was disturbed as the motes nearby fled, scattered by the harsh sound. Or perhaps it was his own sudden indecision. Any epiphany, if there was one to be had, fled beyond the horizon and Felix growled, "What?"

A staticky message rose from his hip. The sword spat green gold sparks. "The army has been attacked in Hevaan… casualties! …they have…in danger! Marzul has…not just Dwarves…Greater Elementals—-"

The message cut off with a sharp whine and a fountain of sparks. Felix winced, irritation fanned into wrath and no small amount of fear.

“Vess…Gabby…”

“Scylla? Karys! Is Scylla alright?”

“He can’t hear us, bud. Etrionn is blocking it again.” Felix gripped his blade before bearing his teeth at the Record wave. “We have to go.”

They could have spent days here trying to find what they needed, but in the end, these were all someone else's Core Manifestations. All they could do was give them hints, and time was running out.

He needed the Bell. Now.