Chapter Two Hundred and Twenty – 220
Bastion of Will!
Sovereign of Flesh!
Felix was thrown hard against the burning surface of the Scale, though the sensation soon paled before the onrushing violet light. It seared against his exposed limbs, just as terribly as the rush of corrosive Essence stripped his already weeping channels. Something else rioted within the light, a piece of the Archon fused with the explosion; one last wave of that damn array to finish them all off, maybe. Felix tried reinforcing his Mind and Body against it, but he could feelif not seethe light breaking them down faster than he could regenerate. He could barely think. It wasHe
Ravenous Tithe!
This time, he widened his scope. The Scale, the ambient Essence miasma, the flash of power, opening his mouth wide and letting all of it pour into him. He'd experienced trying to breath in a hurricane, the impossible misery of it, and eating the Maw from the Ravager King had felt like wrestling a firestorm.
This was like taking a bite out of the apocalypse.The original appearance of this chapter can be found at Ñøv€lß1n.
His Body, Mind, and Spirit were washed by the torrent of unleashed Mana and Essence, buoyed on winds that sought nothing but to destroy him wholesale. It was madness incarnate. He screamed, and Pit chimed in chorus with him.
Status Condition: Spirit Damage +5% > 12%
Status Condition: Mind Damage +5% > 5%
Status Condition: Body Damage +5% > 5%
Spin it! Pit shrieked. Must! Spin!
Together they tried to do as they had with the Ravager King, moving the power through Felix's abused channels and spinning his ring core with greater and greater haste. Pit's channels were far more hale than his own, but being converged only a fraction of the power cycled through the chimera. It was all Felix could do to keep Ravenous Tithe activated, his core open to the unending blast wave, that Pit had to push the power along their converged channels.
Felix could sense shifts within his core, but he hadn't the attention to spare. The violet power thundered across him. Each passing second stretched into infinity, a violent cacophony of noise and light. Deep, earth-shaking vibrations filled the blinding light, Harmonics that called to destruction and devastation. And the Archon's own Profane energy, twisting that music into something worse.
Status Condition: Spirit Damage +5% > 17%
Status Condition: Mind Damage +5% > 10%
Status Condition: Body Damage +5% > 10%
Ravenous Tithe!
The ruby form above his spinning core flexed and trembled, and the Maw's inert instincts prodded him, tell him what he could use and what needed to be vented. Spin and pull, burn and expel; it was a pattern so familiar it had begun to happen without his knowledge. The abyssal vortex within his ring core devoured what it could, but even it's unending hunger was not enough.
Notes of discordant fury shook through him, a burring twang that marred the explosion's subtle Harmonics. And then it was gone, and a relative darkness took the vast chamber.
TERRITORY-WIDE QUEST ALERT!
Congratulations!
The Nest has been destroyed! The threat of their influence has been ended!
Territory Contribution is being calculated...
Territorial Authority has been granted!
Congratulations: Eliza DuFont!
No!
Due to
Felix couldn't focus through the pain, the horror of it. And the rumbling did not stop. Blearily, Felix saw thatsomehowhe was rushing toward the ceiling. Somehowwait! The enormous, granite face of his Nymean ancestor was falling. The entire chamber was falling apart.
"Stone...shaping...!" With a final push of his Mana, the ground turned to putty beneath him. Felix was sucked beneath the surface just as the colossal statue hit.
Into darkness.
Pain and pressure.
Felix's constant companions, they had become his world. He couldn't remember the impact of the stone above, or even where his physical Body was; he was simply floating, hovering above the deep darkness within his core.
Pit coiled around him, wing's outspread, trembling while Felix clutched at the tenku. Whatever had happened, the both of them had manifested within the darkness of his solar system. Celestial lights illuminated them, from both his planetary Skills and the blue-white sun of his core, highlighted by a steady strobe of lightning prominences.
Power spun through him. Mana and Essence and flickering shapes of yellow-red, all of it swirling through his veins like deadly magic cocktail. A vortex of that wild mix spun above his head, ceaselessly devoured by the black on black abyss within his core. Still, Felix could hardly breath. His Aspects felt compressed and for a moment he feared he was being crushed to death by whatever stones were now certainly crushing his physical Body.
But no, he could see his Health. It was steady, if low. Yet the pressure continued, both pushing and pulling on him. And immense, terrifying pain that was hard to describe. Like his everything was being peeled, layer by layer.
He needed to cut it off, something to break its hold. Hehe needed to sever it.
Bastion of Will!
"No. It is, however, a near certainty." Vellus tilted her shadowy head at Felix, curious. "Have you not seen the Quest notice?"
"That DuFont won?" Felix heaved a series of heavy breathes. His heart wouldn't stop racing. "Yeah I saw."
"Not that. This." Vellus waved a hand, and a blue box appeared before him. It was the same as before, except at the very bottom.
Due to conflicting levels of Contribution, Challengers have been chosen!
Each named individual can Challenge the holder of Authority. If they are defeated, the Authority falls to the Challenger!
All Challengers have three days to Challenge for Authority. After that time period lapses, no further Challengers are allowed.
Named Challengers:
Uldred Teine
Calesca Boscal
Felix Nevarre
Holy "Is this...I can Challenge DuFont?" Felix bared his flat, human teeth. "Good."
"You will never reach her, Felix Nevarre. The dregs of her army are still mighty against a lone attacker, and the defenses she can now summon will dwarf any such efforts. Even by the Fiend."
Felix looked at her. Her voice sounded..."What are you saying?"
"You have one chance to take it, to save your city and those you care for," Vellus said, flickering closer still. She was...larger than Felix had anticipated, and he realized he wasn't sure how far away the goddess truly was. "You only have to make the Choice."
"What choice?
"We are connected, Felix Nevarre. Through the Choices you've already made, time and again. The Titles you bear, the Skill's you've earned." The goddess drifted slowly closer, twitching all the while. Felix held back a gasp. She was no closer than before, but she loomed, a shadow taller than most buildings. "You only need to strengthen the Harmonic connection between us, thicken the ties that bind our causes to the Grand Harmony itself. A Choice will bind us both, and allow me to send you pieces of my power."
An Oath, he translated. Swallowing, Felix looked up at her shrouded face. "What do you get out of this?"
"An emissary. A true servant to complete the tasks I've left undone for millennia." Something like lightning flickered in her incomprehensible form, and Felix briefly tasted a coppery tang in his mouth. "This world has been too long without the gods. It cannot last, not now."
Felix hesitated. He remembered all too well the Chorister of Vellus, and farther back, the Sage of Vellus. Both driven insane by their connection to the goddess. "I've seen your emissaries. Your followers all end up crazy."
"Weakness. They are unable to retain the truth. The Grand Harmony shattered them, either all at once or in piecemeal. They were barely Chanters, but they were not Lost, or Unbound. You are all three, an existence I could not have predicted." Vellus rumbled, and this time Felix swore he could see a bleak, crimson mountain. Lightning assaulted it's peak. "You are my Chosen, ascendant. You alone shall receive my Boon."
That lightning, so familiar, coiled around Vellus' gargantuan form. The goddess flickered and twitched, growing closer and closer, while the blasted terrain he glimpsed within her did as well. She was a mountain of shadow, pressing against Felix with all the weight that implied. He panted, unable to maintain his gaze on that terrible place.
"Please." Vellus' voice was soft, whispered into the dark with a vulnerability that twisted Felix's heart. Something had broken this creature, god or not.
"I," Felix said, gathering his thoughts. Things swirled strangely, so close to the oddness of the goddess' being. "I think" he swallowed, pushing past the pressure that she exuded. "I think that I"
Distantly, Felix felt a wrenching sensation and he gasped. The goddess' pressure redoubled.
"Felix? What is your Choice?"
His thoughts felt murky, as constrained as his body. He waswhat was she asking?
"Your Choice! Do you wish to save your friends? Do you wish to save everyone?" Vellus' voice was thunder, destruction from on high that sparked Felix's primal brain.
"Yes," he croaked, unsure why he was trembling. "I will save them."
Hidden among the pressure, Felix felt cords tighten upon his soul. It was jarring compared to the immense but neutral pull in all directions. Intrusive in a way that Felix found familiar, and memories of the Maw dissolving into his Body flickered across his vision.
The strings of connection between them began to burn, blood and lightning crawling their lengths.
"No no no," Felix blinked, his eyes bulging. He pushed back the fog that clung to his senses. Felix tried to reject them, but the cords only tightened further. A vast presence pressed against him, slithering through his channels, into his core. "Not you too."
"You have Chosen, ascendant," Vellus crackled. She had expanded into his entire vision, so that crimson mountain within her was nearly life sized. "And I cannot let you waste it."
Felix screamed as azure lightning coursed through him. His screams seized in his chest, gripped by a hand bigger than entire cities. His head was forced forward, to peer into the darkness of Vellus' form.
"Behold. My prison, Felix Nevarre. Wrought for me upon my breaking, so very long ago." The mountain loomed, and a mist of bloody rain sprayed into the null space around him. It joined the lightning in tormenting his battered form. "Only the connection of those paltry few brave enough to embrace the truththe unfettered reality of their worldonly they have seen this. My choristers went mad when it took me, and even my Sages and Paragons were lost to its evil predations."
The shadow that was the world moved, leaning down until it's face was mere feet from his own. Felix could see nothing but curdling darkness, punched through by an endless storm of blood and lightning. "I am sorry for this, ascendant. You would not listen, and we have not the time. I have no other Choice. The others race against me, and our greatest failure returns."
The goddess' breath tasted of copper and burnt ozone. Blood and storm.
"I need you, Unbound. Few are they who can withstand the Ruin."
Her grip upon his soul tightened further, but Felix's screams were swallowed whole.
