Chapter One Hundred and Sixty Two - 162
The Queens were just beyond the cliff, coming in fast. Felix could feel them like burning stars in his senses, descending on their position. The Envoy cackled, and Felix saw Harn heft his axes, his intent clear. The insane construct had no purpose, not anymore. But Felix had questions that needed answers. Quickly, he stepped in front of him and Harn recoiled. From the look in his eyes, he hadn't expected Felix to appear quite so monstrous.
"Envoy! Is the Archon your master?" Felix asked, trying to ignore the warrior's regard.
"Oh," it gasped, something like lucidity returning to its eye-fires. "Ohh. You're him. It is making more sense now." It sneered. "You are supposed to be dead, Nym!"
Harn gave him a new, different look, but Felix ignored that too. "You said the Archon is planning to attack? When? Quickly!"
Another mad giggle. The Envoy tried to stand, but it's legs cracked further, the metal stressed beyond it's temper. "When you least expect it."
"Felix!"
Unfettered Volition!
Felix caught the Envoy's conjured blade in his clawed grip and felt it bite into his palm, though the pain was negligible. Felix bared his fangs and grabbed the bastard's opalescent core with his other hand. Its eye-fires flared in panic.
Ravenous Tithe!
Bloodline Progression is 88%
If nothing else, he could take its memories.
A shimmering stream of essence poured between Felix's fingers, sucked neatly into his chest. The fires in the Envoy's helm were finally snuffed out, and it collapsed bonelessly on the ground.
"Twin's breath, Felix," Harn murmured. "Is that your...?"
"Primordial Skill, yeah," Felix nodded. "We need to-"
He stopped and clutched at his chest.
"What is it?" Vess asked. "Felix?"
My core. It feels-- The essence roiled in his core, a sleek, shimmering collection of hues quite different from the yellow-red storm brewing within him. It stood apart, like a spot of oil in water. It feels--
Deep Mind is level 44!
Deep Mind is level 45!
Something scraped at him. The essence. It...something was inside it. Something important, he felt.
"Everyone, get to high ground and," Felix swallowed, careful not to cut his tongue on his sharpened teeth. "Carry me with you."
"What? Why?" Harn asked, but Felix didn't answer. He dove into his core, passing through the clouds of essence that boiled above it and lassoed the shimmering lights of the Envoy with his Will. Without hesitation, he thrust the lot of it deep into his core fire.
In his dual perception, both within and without, the world slowed until it stopped. Color leeched from reality as a wave of multi-hued Mana exploded outward.
He was in the Void again.
Pure darkness in all directions, one that reminded him forcefully of his own core. Felix stood on nothing, fully lit by an unseen light. It had been some time, but he knew what came next. Felix flexed his Will.
And the Void shattered.
Black gave way to unremitting white as millions of Envoys populated the space around him. The tall, thin construct extended in all directions, an unending centipede made up of millions, billions of Envoys. Each of them were in discrete positions and looked slightly different. It had thrown Felix for a loop the first time this had happened with the assassin, but he had come to realize what it all meant.
Iterations through time. They were memories in time. Pieces of the Envoy throughout its life, folded on itself and repeated into infinity.
It was beautiful. And nauseating.
Felix found he could intuit some of the details of the memories as he glanced at them, the smallest of pieces at least. He needed the right one. So he looked around, which was difficult, as the memories crowded his vision in increasingly complex ways. He saw Arcid after Arcid, some small, some large, but still the same one. It...
Among the twisting lines of memories past, Felix saw a selection that weren't constructs at all. Instead he saw a tall, slender creature with blue skin and a wispy, white beard.
The Envoy was a Frost Giant?
Felix reeled. He'd thought...the Arcids were constructs right? His Eye told him so...constructs are just magic robots...right?
He'd been assuming. After so much time on the Continent, Felix had still barely scratched the surface of what was out there. He'd been wrong. He saw it clearly now, as iterations of the Envoy replaced the slender Risi with a half-plated monstrosity, writhing in pain. He glimpsed snippets of those memories, snatches of fire and torment that put his own experiences to shame.
He would only have one chance at this. He had to pick the right one. Felix honed his Intent, an aspect of himself he still didn't quite understand, and focused on his need. He knew the Archon had something to do with the twisted sigils, that it had sent the Envoy on its way. An answer had to be here. He felt it in his soul.
I need to break the array.
Following the echoes of his Intent, Felix latched onto one that was near the cusp, where the Giant was not quite an Arcid yet.
The expanse dissolved into shades of darkness and fire.
And Felix found himself standing alongside a massive stone table, upon which the Risi was held down with bands of dark steel. Pieces of its legs and arm were being laboriously replaced by dark metal in a shower of sparks. Another, far smaller Arcid stood beside it, marking off items on a scroll.
The memory shuddered.
Quest Complete!
What? Felix stared blankly at the notification that populated before him. What Quest?
An Incursion of Risi - The giants have descended from the Hoarfrost, threatening your home. You long ago discovered their purpose, but now the last of them are eliminated! You did a good job...eventually!
Purpose 1/1
Risi Killed 500/500
Reward:
+1 Level!
+New Title
You Have Gained A Level!
You Are Now Level 34!
+3 to WIL! +2 to INT! +4 to DEX! +1 to END! +2 to PER! +2 to VIT! +4 to AGL!
You Have 5 Unused Stat Points!
New Title!
Frostbane (Rare)!
You have proven yourself to be an enemy of those that hunt in the frozen wastes. +10% damage against Giantfolk and 10% damage reduction from attacks by Giantfolk.
Why now? There were so many left when I left the Foglands, Felix blinked at the messages and it dawned on him. The Envoy.
He looked toward the Envoy's body down below, but it must have fallen into once of the expanding crevasses. The Envoy had been a Frost Giant before being turned into an Arcid, one of the first. An experiment. The Archon took the rest...he turned them all into these things.
It still didn't answer the question of why he'd completed the quest, but he wasn't about to say no to a free level and title.
The earth shook again.
"Vess! Look!" Evie pointed below. The Queens had changed. Their huge mouths split, scaled flesh forming into dozens of serpentine necks topped with triangular heads. Tentacles still proliferated around their bodies, and on their backs, a few of the tentacles had twisted and joined. As if...
As if they were growing wings.
"They can't fly, right? No way, right?" Evie asked, not taking her eyes off the Queens.
One by one, the Queens lifted into the air as they circled, until they were a spinning wall of scaled flesh. They had become huge, swollen abominations; hydras that undulated with a gargantuan grace.
"Fuck me," Felix whispered.
The waters poured in around them, crashing toward the cliffs, but the Queens rose from the flooding earth, above even their position. Soaring through the sky, the Queens redirected their flight toward the center of the island. Toward the bore.
"That'll lead to nothing good, I wager," Atar said. He had pulled out his collapsible staff and leaned on it heavily.
"I won't take that bet," Alister said. He was looking better, but not by much. "We have to run. We can't face them, or whatever the King is. We'll die without even putting a dent in them!"
The Queens circled the bore, three of them spaced out so neatly it was clear that a fourth Queen was missing. Without warning, their bodies lit up with hundreds, thousands of sigils and complex lines. Yellow-red luminescence flared bright along their skyscraper forms, and as if in answer the bore itself burst alight. In a flash, the water that had neared the cliffs was atomized and turned to less than dust.
The bore was taking on more power.
The waters hissed as they vaporized, and Felix could see the line pushing farther and farther out. Around the bore, the cracks widened, and the light pulsed with a steady beat that was nearly too low to be audible.
Felix considered what he knew. What the Archon had just inadvertently shown him. Could he win? And if not, could he at least keep them alive?
Felix took a shaky breath. Only one way to find out.
"I'm going in. We have to kill the Queens before the King is finished with...whatever it's doing," Felix glanced at the others. Harn and Vess stood nearby, watching him with serious faces, while Evie just rolled her eyes.
"Okay hero, let's slow down. Charging in there and dying is a great idea and all, but let's at least try to think of another plan," Evie said.
"What plan would that be, Aren?" Atar whispered. His face was stricken and pale, despite the swelling and flaking rash. "We are literally between a rock and the hardest of places. Three Tier III creatures."
"Not to mention an unknown that could easily be Tier IV," Alister added unhelpfully. "Now we can't even run, unless you're all immune to whatever that is!"
The nobleman gestured to the evaporating lake, now become little more than an empty bed filled with desiccated plants and cracking earth.
"No, we can't run," agreed Harn. His gauntlets creaked around the hafts of his axes. "We fight."
As the world fell apart around them, the air filled with the hiss of burning water and the rumble of breaking earth, Evie sighed.
"Shit."
