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Chapter 496
🕑 Added 2022-09-06 22:58:51 +0000 UTCBack from DragonCon! It was very fun, with lots of cool things to see, do, and experience. Definitely recommended if you can go.
Enjoy!
* * *
Ephemeral Evocation is level 9!
As with the Memory he’d stolen from the illusion array, Felix was deposited directly into the action. He dropped to the floor, skidding atop a layer of loam that had been scattered across dark marble. Felix stood as soon as his feet found purchase, quickly realizing his Body had returned to its mostly-Human appearance. He flared his Perception hard, attempting to take in everything at once.
It didn’t ask me to view the Memory. Didn’t even warn me that there was one. Felix’s cores spun, grinding against one another as if to mimic the agitation that filled him. What’s going on?
Typically when things went weird, it involved forces that were far beyond Felix. He was more than prepared for the Fathom to suddenly appear before him, monstrous and huge…but the chamber remained silent. Perhaps too silent. The foliage that had overrun the vast room surrounding the Spirit Tree was mostly absent. In its place was a series of glass-lined enclosures, inscribed with sigils to seal and strengthen them. Almost every one was shattered.
Plants were scattered in all directions, but not as it was in the present. No dense network of roots had taken hold, nor had vast mounds of earth built up in discrete hills and valleys. Felix could still see the marble flooring, inlaid with gold and precious stones to form half-glimpsed sigaldry. Free of vines and foliage, the walls were lined with arcane instruments that glowed with various forms of Mana vapor. In the very center, unhindered by invasive growths, was the Spirit Tree.
And it was dying.
Felix took a concerned step forward before stopping. Just a Memory, he reminded himself. See where it leads.
Blue-ooze had already made its way into the chamber, pooling around the Tree’s roots on the left side. He watched thin tendrils slap outward, slowly squelching higher. As they did, the ooze took on a distinct purple hue that bled through its form like dye in water.
This Was The Last Day.
Felix jolted, his attention snapping outward from the crawling ooze. There was no one in the room with him, however. No one but the Tree itself. “The Last Day?” he asked.
Watch, Inheritor. Beware.
Without warning, Felix was hurled from the Spirit Tree’s chamber, rushing along some tight corridor at breakneck speed. His Body had vanished, rendered into a simple set of eyes that slipped up through the oozing walls of the hallway, past flashing sigaldry and into the vast, dark pressures of the deep waters beyond.
Roots, he realized. I’m traveling along the Spirit Tree’s roots.
Indeed, as he flashed through the water he rose, granted a new vantage of the shattered terrain. The water was more clear than it was in reality, and Felix’s vision spread for what seemed like miles. Roots branched out in all directions, but the largest and thickest followed a curving arc across the unbroken earth, until they reached another lone tower in the depths. Cast to a far distant time, this tower looked nothing like stone, but a living thing of wood and wavering fronds. A familiar aura hung around it.
Another Spirit Tree? They’re connected?
Not Other. One.
Felix’s eyes widened at the voice, just as his blistering progress through the waters blurred into unfathomable speeds. Roots spread out, the thickest still describing a curving arc as tower after tower interrupted the roots at set intervals. The aura was always the same, resplendent and proud…and filled with an ineffable sense of loss. The Spirit Tree was there, spread among the waters like a massive network of coral. A single organism that had clearly been grown deliberately, based on the precise way the roots were laid out. Those spoke volumes once Felix noticed them, twisted and bending in whorling designs. In fact, the longer he sped around the Abundance Anima’s network, the more he saw. Patterns grown into root and branch and leaf.
No. Not a pattern. An array. A huge hundred mile long array that branched through the entire area that he knew now as Khasma. The ground was still shattered in the vision, but it seemed healthier, with even more greenery among the ravines and chasms. At least until Felix spiraled out far enough that he could see the whole of the Tree’s growth. The roots and Trees grew around a center, and there, far below him, Felix perceived a hollow shaft big enough to swallow Ahkestria with room to spare.
An abyss.
Words fluttered back to Felix, recalled from a previous Memory, as if the deer-man himself whispered them into Felix’s ear. “You think this array will truly keep our Minds away from...from that thing we watch?”
Look.
Dark hands grasped Felix’s shoulders, then his jaw, guiding his vision with a gentleness he couldn’t refuse. Suddenly possessing a Body again, Felix was wracked by the gelid crawl of something visceral inside him. An instinct, a message from his hind brain that had nothing to do with the System or Skills. It stalked through him, a twisting chill across his spine and heart and lungs until he realized he couldn’t breathe. The sound of discordant chaos speared up at him, driving barbed hooks into that crawling, primal fear.
Below, in the dark depths, something shifted. It writhed. Like a moon slipping free of eclipse, a vast, pale face fixated upon him.
And it grinned.
* * *
“Got you!”
Felix was aware of rushing wind and the sensation of falling when a pair of huge, hairy hands grabbed at him. Felix’s Mind stuttered and shook, still consumed by a pale visage he could not unsee…yet one he could no longer envision. It’s features melted and sank, dropping down into the eternal dark like a hole in the world itself. He landed, uncontrolled and heavy, as someone screamed beneath him.
The scream brought him back, and Felix blinked to find himself splayed across the lumpy earth and staring up into the dim outlines of wide branches and deep blue leaves. Everything felt unmoored and wobbly, but Felix twisted until he saw Beef writhing on the ground only ten feet away. Tears poured down his face and his arms were twisted into two extremely unnatural positions. Guilt and worry thrummed against Felix's Spirit, but they were as distant as Isla's sharp words.
"Hold still, Michael! I need to reset your shoulders! Damn fool, trying to catch him! You are not strong enough!" The Chanter was practically on top of Beef, her hands weaving liquid strands of Mana into a complex net around the Minotaur's arms and torso. She looked to Felix, and rare concern was etched across her features. "Felix. Are you alright? What happened when you consumed the corruption?"
Felix didn't answer, because the ooze inside of him took the time to remind him of its presence. It roiled—a barely contained storm that wracked his core space with tempestuous winds. That wasn't all, however, because Felix could also feel a vast presence shifting its attention toward them all, as if all the music around him had dropped several octaves. For a brief, terrifying moment, he feared it was the sunken thing in his Mind...before recognizing its familiar cadence.
Fathom. He panicked, jolting to his feet so fast that the earth depressed all around him as he sped off.
"Felix! What are you doing?" Vess and Isla shouted after him, almost in unison.
The Wickerjaks, small and large, reached trembling claws out at him as he blasted by, but their strength was gone. Felix's clawed feet smashed across their brittle bodies, now entirely devoid of that purple light. He paid them as much attention as his friend's queries. He'd been thrown farther from the Spirit Tree than expected, but the distance vanished swiftly beneath his heels.
What's happening? Do you need help? Pit sent, trying and failing to keep up with Felix's mad dash.
"Just stay clear, bud!" Felix skidded to a stop at the base of the Abundance Anima. The vines and fronds upon its surface had withered to husks, and the Tree itself was little better. A thin dirge threaded through Felix's Affinity, pinging against his Aria of the Green Wilds to bloom into knowledge: the Tree was dying, fast. Grasping all of the churning potency within his core space, Felix seized it with the twin pincers of Intent and Willpower, before sounding the resplendent strains of his most mysterious Skill. "Unite the Lost!"
Essence, Mana, and significance surged forward, spun through the oscillating pattern of his Skill before metabolizing into something more. Beneath Felix's outstretched palms, the Spirit Tree quivered and quaked, rippling like the constricting surface of a massive serpent. And just like a snake, the desiccated vegetation shed from it like a second skin, its bark peeling in great strips wherever the flood of Felix's Skill washed over it. A concussive blast ripped through him, forcing Felix to dig in his heels as a wave of pressure savaged the underbrush in all directions, and devastating those Wickerjaks that remained. Their Bodies were mowed down, the little animation left in them torn loose before becoming rooted where they stood.
The Abundance Anima was waking up.
Another blast flowed from the Spirit Tree, hurling the shed detritus from its bole as life took hold. The Green Wild sang, an enkindled chorus of destruction and rebirth, a bright, glorious violence alongside a deep and verdant tranquility. Flower bloomed from the corpses of the Wickerjaks and the dimming crystal above them surged to newfound radiance, until sunbeams shone along the dancing branches far above. Creation followed destruction, hand in hand; two sides of the same coin.
Harmony and Dissonance.
There was no warning as the Skill cut off, only a mountainous weariness that sat atop his back, and a sudden, unnatural silence.
I...Am Whole.
Thank You.
Felix sat, almost but not quite crushed by his exhaustion. He patted the thick root next to him. "Don't...don't mention it."
"Your sacrifice will not be forgotten, Felix Nevarre."
It was a mark of his fatigue that Felix didn't immediately summon a hailstorm of acid or lightning or do much else but turn his head toward the deep, smooth voice that had spoken. A man stood beside him, well-shadowed by the branches of the rejuvenated Spirit Tree. He was tall, somewhere between Felix and Beef, but slender with fine, angled features. His long hair was pulled back into a series of braids, and his skin was almost the exact brown of the Tree's bark. Were it not for the white robes that hugged his lean frame, Felix supposed the man could be lost among its surface. The man stared at Felix with eyes that were entirely blue, without whites.
"Sacrifice?" Felix asked, tensing slightly. He might have been exhausted, but he still had a little left in the tank. His Mana and Stamina were already refilling. "I hope that's not a threat, stranger."
"Not a threat, not to one who possessed Unite the Lost. You have expended so much of who you are, the stolid foundation upon which your Aspects balance. Giving such a bounty away will kill you. A life for a life." He shook his head, and a sense of deep regret and sorrow rang out from him. "You have restored a piece of my Companion. Were it in my power, I would save you. As it is, I will ensure that you are not forgotten."
Felix chuckled. "Oh, that." With an effort that send a quiver of strain across his cores, Felix pushed himself to his feet. "Just give me a couple minutes and I'll be alright."
The man blinked, his thin brows furrowing on his dark face. "I do not understand. How is this possible?"
Felix wasn't sure how to answer that. "Well, I didn't really use my own significance, at least not a lot of it. Are you actually here, or is this some sort of spiritual projection or something?" He reached out, flicking his hand through where the man stood. There was nothing there, though the man's form didn't waver or anything. "Yeah. I thought so."
"Wha—?"
"Unf, my head hurts," Felix said, wincing as his thoughts tried to jump at the thing he'd glimpsed in the Memory. He forcefully wrested his Mind free of it, but it cost him. "That's not going away anytime soon. Wait. You said Companion?"
The illusory man regarded Felix with curiosity, alarm, and a considerable amount of sudden fear. "You're Unbound."
"And you," Isla shouted, shoving her way through the flowering underbrush. She was followed by Pit, Vess, Beef, and all the rest. "You are Nymean, aren't you?"
