Felix felt it the moment it happened. Panic and pain surged through his second strongest Link, a vile mixture of terror followed by a sudden silence.
Vess…!
He couldn’t feel her at all.
The Beast roared, swiping at the godslaves that piled onto him without hope of survival. Each bite took out dozens, mouthfuls of Divine morsels that the Twins could no longer steal away. Ravenous glee echoed through the manifestation, enough to set Felix’s trapped limbs to trembling in ecstasy as each snap of the Beast's jaws sent bits of Divinity coursing into his cores.
It was intoxicating.
Only the full force of his Will allowed Felix to wrest his attention away from its voracious appetite, and even then it was for a few scant moments. Time enough to reach across the darkness toward the bundles of Links that hovered just outside the bounds of his core space. Vess’ grew immense in his eyes, a cable the size of a subway tunnel, larger still, until it dominated his vision. His power funneled through the Link, propelled by his Boon of Bonds, sparking blue-white and red-gold—but it extended no more than a dozen paces.
Sliced clean.
He focused on the Link, but no matter how hard he flexed his Affinity, he couldn’t sense her location or even her Spirit. He couldn't do anything. He couldn't even turn the Beast's damn head to look back at the tower.
Hey! Idiot! I need to get back there! The Beast ignored him, leaping from the ravaged carapace of a Thousandfaced Centipede and tearing through two Fleshclouds before landing on a Hierocratic ship. Cannons fired, but they missed him as they were razed by blue-white lightning. Manifested jaws snapped through enchanted timber and sparking sigaldry, devouring every trace of power that crossed its path.
Each mouthful was glorious, the traces of Divinity bursting like fireworks above the boughs of his Divine Tree. The Beast howled, beyond words now. Fear had driven it away from En’cridhe, and a primal hunger drove it now.
Listen to me!
The command was weighted by every ounce of Felix’s monstrous Will and Intent. The Beast’s raw emotions rattled against his Affinity, shocking his hold over it. Strange muscles quivered within him, strained to the point of failure—but the hurt was familiar.
He’d used them before…back when he’d first summoned his Core Manifestation. Felix dove deep within himself and sought out the roots of his Manifestation.
He needed to understand.
At the start, I could only form the hands. The forearms came after. They were still the most defined portions of the Beast. His control has begun there. He tried to move an arm, but the fist piled forward, tearing into a Thousandface Centipede’s carapace and splattering it into virulent goo.
Come on!
Felix shaped what he wanted, infusing it with his Will and Intent. Move, damn you!
Absorbing The Skull Fragment Of Veridaan!
Progress 67%
The Core Manifestation is simply externalizing the internal.
His own words echoed within himself, spoken by his own perfect recall. Streamers of power roiled around him, pushing up from his core space and all the Skills that lay within. But they weren't streamers. Though they looked like liquid flows of Mana, they were more than that. They were patterns.
Externalizing the internal…!
Felix stared down at his core space and the spinning interplay of his Skills. They danced, bound into tight groupings as they rotated around the opalescent trunk. From above, through the branches and the Essence and Memories that clung to those boughs like starry nebula. His Skills resembled nothing so much as a thrumming constellation. They were a pattern, a vibration moving through space like the weaving of a thousand needles.
The songs of his Skills mingled into one.
The Beast isn't Veridaan. It isn't the Maw.
This is the Beast.
It’s me.
Empyrean Regalia Detected!
Light suffused his mind as a Crescian Bronze Crown sang against his temples, chasing the grief from his senses even as it sharpened his awareness of the Beast and the battlefield around him. The Chalice at his center sang, bright and bold, embedded now in the trunk of his Divine Tree—a shape carved out of red gold light that filled the opalescent trunk with an undeniable aura of power. His Body swelled, power flowing through him in ways he had not before experienced, reaching down through the roots.
Absorbing The Skull Fragment Of Veridaan!
Progress 70%
Felix could feel himself through every ounce of his Skills. His core space echoed with their song, reverberating with the collective weave of their patterns. For a moment, he could see it all; the totality of his Skills. It immediately began to fade.
What Is This?
This is me. Through a fraying sense of certainty, Felix reached out and seized the Beast by the scruff of its neck. He moved his hand, and the Beast’s arm smashed through a Manaship. You are me.
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The Beast pulled at his control, snapping up another mouthful of godslaves, but Felix bludgeoned it with his Will. Back to the tower!
His voice rang out, Chalice and Crown gleaming behind it, lending it weight and significance that bored into the purple-black smoke of the Beast's form. It flinched. With a reluctant roar, lightning surrounded the Beast.
They shot forward, borne atop a bolt. Headed for En’cridhe.
Felix could finally see it as they arced over the city. The top of the tilted tower was littered with fallen statues and crumbled pillars, around which the Unbound were still restrained. He saw Gabby lying in a heap of blood, and he saw the Hierophant standing over her. Of Vess, there was no trace.
The Beast bellowed, and Felix howled with it. Rage, absolute wrath, tore through his center, funneled through every inch of his being.
With a sweeping gesture, the Hierophant threw up wards that sprouted into ten thousand golden threads. They woven together in a blink as an immense machine manifested above the woman’s haloed head; Felix had just enough time to recognize it as the Core Manifestation he saw earlier. A loom made of light.
The Hierophant loosed a discordant scream and it thrummed across her threads as Felix impacted it. A wave formed across the warding, rippling up and over the Beast—threads surged forward, wrapping around his arms and back with all the savage finality of a python securing its prey. They tightened in the same motion, crushing the Beast and sending cracks spidering across the darkness encasing Felix.
“You’ve outlived your usefulness, Fiend.” The threads split, just enough to show Ocalla’s emotionless regard. “Begone.”
The wave became a scorching claw, each thread now burning with the light of the sun itself. They seared into the purple-black smokestuff of the Beast’s amorphous body, boiling through wounds made by the Chthonic Star mere minutes before. The Manifestation roared in pain and blind rage—and Felix felt it all now.
Lay of the Unfallen is level 144!
The Hierophant’s Loom of Light wove across the Beast’s shoulders and snaked over its neck before tightening like a noose. Soured Harmonies overcame his senses—and were met by another song entirely.
The Chalice and Crown resonated within him, and with each other. The Loom quivered, struck from between Felix and the Beast by that new song.
Empyrean Embrace!
Ethereal teeth snapped into the golden threads, chewing through them like axes through logs, as the Beast’s fists pummeled the rest of it apart. Ocalla jerked back, spitting blood as the Loom unraveled above her haloed head, and the light dimmed.
“Damned…Unbound!”
En’cridhe hummed and scattered sigaldry sputtered into a hasty pattern that stretched across its face…all the way to the Chthonic Star. In the space of a moment, the Star spun back to life and fired a beam that speared through Felix’s Manifestation. It cut deep, dissolving a massive chunk of the smoky body. The Beast flinched, howling in pain.
Felix couldn’t care less.
"Ocalla! I'll tear you apart!"
He ripped through the pain, and power stirred within himself—a feeling he had not experienced since he'd intentionally unleashed his Core Manifestation. One of his purple-black and red-gold fists spread open, his massive clawed fingers unclenching, revealing a blue-white eye at the center of his palm. It opened.
It burned.
A blast of concussive force ripped through the array, shattering it into golden sparks before sundering the tower itself in explosive fault lines. Statues tore from the sides, the stairs crumbling apart as chunks of En’cridhe sheared away, falling to the broken palace below.
Ocalla was thrown back, slamming into the fallen statues atop the tilted tower. Their bases shattered, and two of them collapsed atop of her in a thunderous heap. The sigaldry burnt out, and the Star dimmed, still spinning but no longer in the Hierophant's control. His Unbound friends stopped shouting, and the last remnant of the power of the Divine faded.
En’cridhe, the Star of Heaven, was broken beyond repair.
In the distance, their godslaves withered and vanished, puffing into nothing as their presence was no longer amplified by even a little. The Bloodstorm faded into empty clouds, until even they thinned beneath the afternoon sun and the rising moons.
The Beast clawed its way onto the side of En’cridhe, howling in triumph and giddy wrath. Silence The Hierophant, Scion! Hunt Out Her Divine Bonds!
The Will of the Beast faded, its voice similarly toned down. The lack of Divine presence was a calming balm on Felix's Mind.
The Wellspring Chalice Resonates With The Crown Of Elysium.
The Body Bows To The Mind.
Chalice and Crown gleamed within him, head and chest burning with a clarifying potency that bolstered him. Felix.
My Body, my Mind. Certainty overwhelmed him, clarity striking him through like a sword, and he took command of his Aspects. He was the master of his own flesh.
She Must Be Devoured!
This vengeance is mine, Beast!
Pulling himself from the creature's rage was like tearing off his own arms and ripping his skin free by meager inches. Felix screamed. The Beast howled.
You are me! The Body bows to the Mind!
His Core Manifestation gleamed through his center, rippling across the purple-black smoke before it reversed, whipping back into Felix’s core space.
Scion—!
The Beast burnt away in scintillating contrails, leaving only Felix as he stepped onto En’cridhe’s tilted surface. His legs nearly buckled, but he clenched his muscles tight, standing by pure force of Will. With the gesture the remnants of the bindings on the Kobolds and Sylphaen were snapped up and devoured by ethereal teeth.
Ondine stood, helping the boys to their feet. They immediately started to slip, but Felix flared Sonata of Dominance and formed a makeshift platform of simple stone, anchoring it to the busted tower top.
"Can you carry them?" He looked at Gabby, crumpled against the base of a column. "I'll get her."
Ondine's wings were free of chains, but the multicolored feathers were bloody and dripping. "No. The Hierophant pierced my wings. Until they heal, I cannot even fly myself."
"We can get out of here ourselves," Shadow Lord muttered. He flinched when Felix looked at him. "Sir."
Felix frowned, but tossed them a pouch from his waist. It clinked—the sound of tempered glass and sloshing liquid. "Drink those, they'll help you heal. Hold tight for a sec and then I'll help you all down.”
Ondine jerked her chin toward the fallen statue. "Does she still live?"
"Not for long," he growled. The Hierophant was unconscious and trapped under more high Tier stone than even he’d be able to shift. Everything in him wanted to kill her right then and there, but there was more going on than just that.
To the side, a Crescian Bronze artifact spat sparks, and where they landed, they melted the tower itself. A bomb, ready to explode.
Revenge second.
The Chthonic Star came first.