Unbound

Chapter Eight Hundred And Thirty Eight – 838

"You know me.” Not him, exactly, but Felix saw no reason to correct the thing.

Lips split open across the end of the Primordial's tiny head, just beneath those three black eyes. Large, flat teeth shone pale against its black tongue.

I Know What You Portend, Scion.

Felix grunted, trying to move his limbs but failing spectacularly. "And what is that?"

The End.

"The end of what?"

The Primordial twisted him, turning Felix about like a toy, examining him from heels to hair. You Are Incomplete. Where Do You Keep It?

"Keep what?" Felix managed through gritted teeth.

Ah. It held him above the eyes and mouth, and for a moment Felix feared the thing was going to swallow him whole. Rooted And Bound. Fitting.

It means the Beast. Felix licked his lips. This was a chance to get information. He just had to survive.

He cleared his throat. "You're more lucid than I expected for a Primordial."

A Madness Is Within Me, But The Veil Is Parted. Thanks To You, Scion.

Felix blinked. "You know it was me?" The Primordial didn't bother to answer him. Felix supposed that was a dumb question anyway. "I can remove it completely."

No.

"I can. I've done it before—”

To Lesser Beings.

“The Primordial of Withering Dust was strong—”

A Splinter Of A Splinter. Its black eyes narrowed. Weak. Without warning, a wriggling finger pressed upon Felix's Mind. Or at least, that's how it felt for the instant before it was rebuffed by his gleaming crown. The Primordial hissed, a sound like a thousand serpents ready to strike.

A Formidable Defense. One I Have Not Seen For Interminable Ages. Black eyes flicked to the side, though the movement within them stilled. That Sword.

Its mouth widened into a smile that was unnervingly human. Primordial And Nymean Inheritor. You Walk A Line None Have Ever Survived.

"Survived?" Felix asked.

The Flesh Curse Devours All, Save You.

“You mean the Nym tried this before?"

Oh, Yes. Tried And Failed. The Path You take...It Was Broken For A Reason.

“The gods broke it."

Yes. They Feared Ascendants Most Of All. Challengers To Their Power.

“The Nym were trying to challenge them by... Doing what? Becoming Primordial like me?”

They Fought The Gods In Blood Battle That Lasted Centuries. The Nym Tried A Great Many Things Before Their End.

Felix licked his lips. "When you touched my Mind, what were you doing?”

Was The Withered Alive When You Cleansed It? Were Any Of My Kin?

An anger gathered in the Primordial, sparking across its Spirit in chaotic bursts. Its teeth sharpened for a moment before they flattened out once more. The sparks didn't vanish, but they were suddenly banked down to embers. ꞦἈ₦Ỗ????ΕS̩

"The flesh curse is growing back," Felix realized.

As It Must.

“Then let me remove it all!" @@@@

No. You Are Too Weak To Remove It While I Still Live. It peered at him, each of its three eyes blinking separately. So Small For A Cardinal. It Truly Is A New Age.

Felix licked his lips, trying to keep up with the Primordial's words. He was walking a tightrope now, and on either side, there was only death.

"This Cardinal...It's Veridaan?”

Who Else Commands The Bonds Of All?

“I'm gonna guess and say no one."

Veridaan. Kohsara. Orrinahla. Aatansii. Cardinal Beasts All. None But The Cardinal Of Unseen Tides Could Be Your Progenitor, Scion. Just As Mine Could Be Naught But The Cardinal Of Inevitable Decay.

Wait.

Unseen Beholder is level 136!

...

Unseen Beholder is level 140!

A singular piece of information broke through its vast spirit, clarifying across Felix's mind as if it were a piece of blurry text come into focus.

Race: Scion of Inevitable Decay (Superior)

“You’re a Scion too.”

tired. i will...be fine soon.

Flame landed back within his nest at Atar's center and he diminished, his birdlike form shrinking upon his perch until he was nothing more than a collection of slumbering embers. Alive, but quiescent.

Atar opened his eyes, but only glowing wards and empty darkness greeted him.

"Well, what now?" Atar asked.

Far above, something roared.

Felix spun around the Primordial, a bolt of lightning kindled by red-gold flames. The Tenebrous Aeon twisted with him, its blubberous bulk slipping across the chasm as its many arms clutched at the walls in an attempt to follow Felix's wild agility.

The Primordial roared, its eyes filmed over with madness. It’s sharpened maw along its thin neck snapped at him, far more flexible than the rest of its body as it chased him down.

Sonata of Dominance!

Shadow and necromantic Mana tore into the beast’s flesh, but no matter what Mana Felix manipulated, his attacks were quickly healed. His shaping magic proved useless against the Primordial, even after his Tempering. So, he relied instead upon an old standard: tooth and claw.

Flaring adamant discord, he launched himself down, winding across the snapping length of its neck directly into its back. Where the flesh had split open and new undead spewed forth.

Felix slashed his claws, pulverizing the undead even as he widened the wound straight through blubber, muscle, blood and bone. He tore deep into the creature's flesh, each blow driving him further inward. Undead grappled with him, clawing at his body and attempting to restrain his limbs, but they were too weak. With casual strikes and slashing motions, he rendered them nothing more than piles of animated kindling.

In moments, he burst through a fibrous wall of ligaments and into a cavernous space filled with murky green ichor. A massive core sat at the center, glowing with a light that resembled a luminescent oil spill. Cancerous flesh clung to it, webbing it to the walls of its mighty ribcage, and growing from it like pustules of repugnant cartilage and thick, slick tendons.

Empyrean Embrace!

Ichor and flesh poured into him, emptying the vaulted ribcage into his core space in a matter of seconds. The Primordial’s core was cleansed once more...but this time, Felix spread his influence wider. Like a bloodhound, he chased down the flesh curse throughout the immense Body he was entrenched within.

Sovereign of Flesh!

His Authority over flesh itself resounded with his Will and Intent. Compared to previous attempts, it was remarkably easy to gather up all that was the flesh curse within the Tenebrous Aeon.

"I have too many questions for you. You're not dying today!”

He consumed it all.

Power poured into Felix, stuffing his already packed core space until it felt like he was ripping apart at the seams. The Divine Tree within him groaned, bending with the weight of power that pressed against it. The latticework boundary of his core space shifted and cracked, slowly breaking under the weight of Essence, Mana, and significance. More vicious than any mauling, pain lanced through Felix like needles in every joint.

I Am Too Much For You Alone! Embrace Your Darker Half!

The Beast? No chance of that!

Felix had done this before without Hunger or the Beast—he just needed his friends. He reached out, stretching his Will toward the Links he’d established with his closest friends: Atar, Alister, Harn, Beef, Archie, Evie, Vess, and Pit. All of them. His Will went out, intent shaping what he needed to happen as the request echoed across the distance between them.

In moments, he had their answers. A single word, echoed eight times.

Yes!

Power poured through their connections, splitting up the dissolved Essence, Mana, and significance from the flesh curse and distributing it among them all evenly. Yet all too soon, they were full. One by one, his friends cried out, falling back under the onslaught of power. Felix cut off the connection, afraid of hurting them.

Potency still rushed into Felix from an unending font into a vessel that was very nearly at its limits. Yet he couldn’t risk spilling even a drop. There was nowhere for the curse to go but outward, and without the Primordial to hold it within its flesh it would spread wildly... but first it would infect his friends who were still there within the wellspring.

No. There has to be a way!

A tingling caught Felix attention, one that rippled outward from him in convoluted lines. Connections. The Chanters, the Giants, the Legion. All of the people he'd saved in all of the Territories he'd united. Felix sensed hair-thin connections that spread outward from him like spider silk. Even as he recognized that, pieces of the power he held slipped into those connections, trickling power to everyone he’d ever helped. It was more than Felix could easily visualize in his Mind, and yet it was not nearly enough. Rivulets compared to the tidal surge that overwhelmed him. More tried to pour through, but Felix had to hold it back there too, just as with his friends' Links. His connections to others were too thin to contain any sizable amount of the Primordial's power. A normal person would be torn apart by the sheer weight of it.

Do Not Fool Yourself, Scion.

Undead rose from within, but this time it was a far bigger corpse that gathered before Felix. It was as if the skeleton of the Primordial had been removed to flow freely within itself. It reassembled into an undulating facsimile of the creature, held together by ligaments and rotting bones.

To Live Is To Change.

It rushed at Felix, swimming through the ichor, mouth wide.

But Death Is A Choice Too!

Sovereign of Flesh!

Sonata of Dominance!

Empyrean Embrace!

"Fire joins, journey's transformation, one above all." Tempered Skills leaped to his Will and Intent, their Grandmaster Features gleaming among their unique patterns. Sovereign of Flesh and Sonata of Dominance joined in a red-gold conflagration, bound together into something greater than itself. Flesh and bone split at his command, boiling away its Body even as ephemeral teeth swallowed it whole.

Felix seized the power as the undead vanished into a cloud of devoured smoke. He diverted its power through his stuffed core space, down into the dark recesses of his Hunger. The still black disk spun anew, sparking to life with red-gold flame and blue-white lightning at its edges. Essence, Mana, and significance roared through Felix like a waterfall into his center, and each splash threatened to upset the cage that Zara had erected within him.

In order to live, he had to risk it.

Yes.

The Primordial relaxed, even as its Body dissolved around him. The spinning edge of the black hole inside of him gained speed with each rotation, until those sparks became rivers of accreted radiance. It pulled, harder and harder with every turn, until the power could do nothing except bend to its grasp. Every ounce of the Tenebrous Aeon, foul and fair, poured into Felix in an unending deluge.

Rise Up, Scion.

Heir To The Mantle.

Inheritor Of—

Its voice vanished, the last piece to be consumed, and then silence joined the darkness within the Wellspring.

Save for far below, where a gleaming star began to shine.