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Chapter 493
🕑 Added 2022-08-30 01:19:14 +0000 UTCSo fun news! I'll be in Atlanta from Wednesday til next Monday for DragonCon! I'm a professional attendee doing all the things and such, meeting fans and authors and seeing the sights. Even doing a panel or two. Should be a fun time.
Updates will continue as usual even while I'm gone Wednesday, Friday, and the following Monday.
Thanks folks!
* * *
"What are you on about?" Isla demanded. "Did you eat the array? That was a complex working that deserved to be studied, not demolished."
"Speak up faster," Pit chirruped at her.
Isla glowered at the tenku, hard enough that the horse-sized Pit took a step back. "If I had known his intentions, I would have. Now. Explain. What are you trying to do, Felix?"
Felix simply sat down at the base of one of the dull pillars, and closed his eyes.
"Boy," she warned.
"He has most likely consumed a memory and will review it. The process is quick," Vess explained.
Felix cracked an eye, frowning first at Vess and then Isla, who appeared intrigued. He could almost see her jot the detail down into some mental list she kept of him. "Vess..."
The spearmaiden had the grace to look a little ashamed, before she frowned right back. "There is no point in hiding that detail, Felix. Too many know, and hiding it now would only decrease the trust among this team."
He considered that a moment, attempting to hold his Spirit as close as possible. He was mad that Vess revealed another of his abilities, but then he'd never explicitly told her not to, and she was right: all of his friends knew. He was pretty sure Darius and some of the Claw knew. The Fiend's Shadows definitely did. Keeping secrets was impossible once more than a few people knew the truth. Felix grunted something vaguely agreeable and closed his eyes again.
"How does this woooooo—" Isla began, before her voice warped into a wobbly tone that bled in every direction at once. Time, or his perception of it, slowed to a crawl as the world was leached of color. A ripple undulated from within him, spreading outward in a dramatic slow motion...before all things shattered.
* * *
This time there was no hall of possibilities or chain of moments. It was strange that he'd been able to steal a memory from an array of all things, but perhaps that was an effect of his Ephemeral Evocation, which increased his chances of gaining Memories from his targets. Ideas for future uses flashed across his Mind, before the shattered darkness resolved into something more.
Felix stood in the same place, upon the same pink marble floors, yet chunks were missing. Beside him, four creatures the same size and fur-to-skin ratio as a grizzly bear struggled with a large pink slab of marble. They wrestled it down, setting the slab into the flooring with far more grace than Felix expected from their wide forms. They laughed as it settled in, big breathy guffaws that revealed short, pig-like snouts and tusks the size of daggers.
"I am always impressed with their Strength."
The voice was light and appreciative, belonging to a waif-like figure in white robes and a deep hood. In fact, all of three of the people behind Felix wore the same robes, a formal sort of thing wrapped around their torsos and draped from their shoulders. It let them cut a striking silhouette while allowing it to remain free flowing. Three of the four wore the drapery tucked back, clipped somehow to their belts of woven vines. The small figure was staring through Felix as if he weren't there, presumably watching the boar-like laborers lift another slab from a hovering wagon.
"The Orken are mighty warriors and even greater craftsmen. I am more impressed that they agreed to come down here at all," said a large, brawny man with the head and hooves of a stag. Bronze and silver adorned his antlers, with several chains strung among the tines. "I have heard they are not fond of the depths."
"And the Theron are? I seem to recall you bleating in alarm at every bump and jostle during our descent, Lovarius." The diminutive figure laughed gently. It did not sing of cruelty or derision, but of simple, friendly jokes.
"That is beside the point," Lovarius the Theron said with a snort. "I simply abhor the tight confines in which we find ourselves."
"The sea is but another frontier to forge our Paths," said the third and final figure. They stood head and shoulders above the deer-like Theron, but shy of the Orkens' bulk. Familiar appendages tensed along their back, each one clad in a white chitinous shell that left their tips surprisingly delicate-seeming. A Yttin. "Within these walls, a new Path beckons us all. I am eager to see where it leads."
"As are we all, Pxal. It is why we cam down here, after all." The smallest of them lowered their hood, and Felix goggled. It was a Geist, the same Race as Vvim. They scratched at their cheeks, while overlarge eyes the color of cloudy skies looked wistfully at the pillars that were now glowing. "Well, with this construction, the confines won't seem so onerous I think." She patted the nearest pillar, the one Felix had previously settled against, and a puff of aquamarine vapor wafted outward. "An entire hall dedicated to soothing illusions and sprawling vistas, keyed to that which brings you the most comfort."
Felix clenched his jaw. He tried not to think about what it suggested, that the array had called up the Foglands instead of his apartment back in Fort Lauderdale. Or even his mother's house. Tried, and failed. What did it say about him, that the most stressful time in his entire life was his comfort?
The array is definitely broken, he decided. Yeah. That had to be it. Otherwise he had some trauma he needed to unpack and approximately zero time to do it in. Think later.
"..comfort, hah. You think this array will truly keep our Minds away from...from that thing we watch?" the Theron asked, before shuddering. His fur bristled all along his shoulders and exposed arms, like rippling waves. "How could it?"
The trio of robed folks had continued talking, and Felix was lucky his Mind was so resilient. The pace of his thoughts could ratchet up to considerable speeds, and all that existential worrying had taken up only a couple seconds at most. The Geist was still talking about the "Hall of Green Pleasures" as they dubbed the chamber, describing the convoluted process in which they spun out the array itself. Similar to the process in which Karys was put into his Eidolon form way back when, the array utilized Memories themselves in glyph-strewn formations that twisted across one another with a mathematical precision that made Felix's head swim. It was incredibly complex, and he didn't understand half of the terminology that the small ferret-like Geist used, but Felix smiled despite his earlier misgivings.
Knowledge, after all, was power.
"...and that's why it works so well," they finished, looking proud of themselves. The Geist gave a sharp little grin to the Theron. "Did you follow that, Lovy?"
"Did I follow it? I created half of it. I only—I only asked you about your half to be polite," the deer-man said before glaring at the others, as if daring them to call out the hitch in his voice. "I do not need reassurances about our work. It is pristine."
"Of course."
Shit, so I'm missing half the details? Felix wanted to shake the information out of the stag-looking Theron, but it was a Memory, and Felix couldn't exactly interact with it like that. The rules were hazy and shifting, much as any dream might behave, but Felix knew it with a cold certainty. This was a snapshot in time, somehow captured by the array as it was formed, an additional Memory among its glyphs. But could I rewind it? Review it again? Maybe then I could pick out some more.
Ephemeral Evocation is level 4!
He tried, earning himself another Skill level, but the best Felix could manage was pausing the Memory in mid-stream. Even that took an extraordinary amount of mental strength, and in mere seconds Felix was panting with renewed exhaustion as his Mana and Stamina both began to bottom out.
"Gah!" he exclaimed, releasing the Memory to flow freely. There was a stutter, as if he were watching an old movie, and the film had been jostled on the reel. Just the slightest hitch before it resumed, the three white-robed individuals jerking in place as their words tumbled senselessly over one another. But in that moment, Felix spotted a tall, lithe man standing in the stairwell not twenty feet distant, wearing robes almost identical to the three others. The man's face was sharply angled, like a Human but more severe, with eyes just a touch too large. He hadn't been there before.
He looked directly at Felix—not through him at all, but at him—and crooked his finger. Before Felix could do more than take a step, the man vanished, striding up the staircase with a preternatural speed.
No, he realized with a jolt of fear and curiosity. Not a man. A Nym. Felix hesitated. Wait. What did they say about a thing they watch?
The Memory unspooled, rippling before it burst once more.
* * *
"Can he not hear me while he's like this?"
"No, as he has described it to me, it is an intensive process. Lady Isla, please. Do not touch him."
"I was simply—"
Felix jolted to his feet.
"Whoa, you move fast!" Beef burst out, his meaty hands reaching out to grasp Felix by the shoulders. "You okay, Felix?"
Felix blinked away the rippling world, finding the color restored and himself missing a small chunk of time. Everyone stood in different positions around him, with the War Naga guarding them from both directions. "How long did that take?"
"Uh, like ten minutes?"
"Damn, used to be faster," he muttered. His new Skill was to blame.
Ephemeral Evocation is level 5!
...
Ephemeral Evocation is level 8!
Speak of the devil, he thought. The Skill allowed him to maintain greater fidelity in the Memories he stole, as well as facilitated a larger chance to get them in the first place. In exchange, it meant he had to be under for a longer period of time. Did it also allow me to see that Nymean guy there? But how did he see me?
Isla snapped her fingers before his eyes, disrupting his train of thought. "Felix, Vessilia has informed me on the details of your little ability. I will let slide the particulars of where you learned such things, and instead ask you the more pertinent question: what did you learn?"
Felix scowled. "Do not snap your fingers at me—"
His stomach heaved.
"Felix!" Vess cried out, and he could very distantly feel his body falling to the ground. Distantly, because Felix was already dropping down, delving into his core space like an arrow loosed on a target. He arrived, blasting through the Essence-strewn branches of his Divine Tree...to find the black hole at his center was boiling.
That can't be good.
Felix! Pit was suddenly there, flapping his enormous wings to stay level with Felix's visualized Body. Felix, what's going—oh no.
That's what I said. Felix nodded into the boiling black, a constant stream of Essence and Mana the only thing that limned it against the greater dark of his core space. It feels like I'm gonna throw up, but with everything. All of my Aspects, somehow. Can a Mind puke?
Below the black hole that represented Felix's untamed, Primordial Hunger was a cauldron of foul bubbles and forces that Felix couldn't quite make sense of; when he looked too closely it felt like he was sliding sideways off of a ledge. With a sickening lurch that nearly made him eject from his core space altogether, the black hole...burped.
Gross.
It certainly looked disgusting as a large, ichor-strewn bubble expanded upward at incredible speeds. Felix drew Pit away just as it burst, releasing a massive, glowing sphere of screaming energy.
Whoa! Felix reversed course, reaching out to bobble the thing in his visualized hands. It burned him even before he touched it, scorching through his faux flesh so deeply that only his incredible Willpower and Intent could grapple with it.
The Song of Absolution is level 86!
Armored Skin is level 81!
Armored Skin is level 82!
The thing was a screaming bundle of chaotic noise. Dissonance came off it in waves, and it was that which burned him. Rapid-fire realizations cascaded through Felix, his Mind struggling to categorize the sensations he was enduring. It didn't burn so much as killed a pieces of his visualized Body with every pulse, every off-tempo beat. It strained his already exhausted faculties, scoring deeply into him.
"Why. The hell. Did you spit this out?" Felix shouted down at his Hunger, frantically searching for a place to put it. Usually something so dangerous would be thrown into the black hole, to be swallowed up safely...but clearly that wasn't going to work. "Take it back!"
TAKE. GIVE.
Even through the searing pain, Felix was surprised enough to suck in a stilted breath. "What?"
EQUAL.
"Equal? To what I've given you?" Was his Hunger...repaying him for feeding it? That was so out of left field that Felix couldn't parse it.
WATCH.
Without more warning than that, a great shift occurred in Felix's outstretched grasp. As if it were unlocked, the burning sphere expanded, growing and spreading outward in a bundle of swirling noise and patterns. Chaos tilted, twisted, realigned.
It surged from Felix's grip, rocketing downward into the revolving rings of his core space. The ones that spun ceaselessly around his dual cores and the event horizon of his Hunger. It landed, bobbing once, before blooming in a shower of heavenly light.
New Skill!
Illusory Double (Rare), Level 1!
Illusions are but lies made real. Create an illusory double of yourself for a moderate Mana cost. Double cannot interact directly with the Corporeal Realm. Fidelity of illusory self increases slightly with Skill level. Cost decreases very slightly with Skill level. Number of illusory selves increases with Skill level.
"You gave me...a Skill?"
His Hunger was silent once more. Felix stared between his new Skill and the black hole that sat at his center. It had never given up the meals it took from his Essence and Mana.
This was new.
He watched the Skill spin, waiting to see if it soured or turned caustic again. It did not, and in fact the chaos of its song had stilled to an elusive, phantom melody. Unsure what else to do, and still massaging his visualized hands, Felix stepped back into himself to find Isla complaining.
"—he won't talk to me."
"If you tried speaking to him civilly, then perhaps he would, Lady Isla."
Still got my back, he thought with an inward grin. "Okay. I'm good now."
"Felix! What was that?" Beef asked. He looked shaken, like he'd seen a something horrendous.
How bad do I look? "I'm fine, man. Just had to do some...housekeeping."
Isla raised her eyebrow skeptically. "And what of this Memory you consumed? I presume it told you the purpose of this place?"
"It did," he admitted. He thought about everything the Geist, Theron, and Yttin had said. "I think...I think this is a research facility."
