Chapter Three Hundred And Forty Two – 342
"You cannot be serious!" Vess hissed at the man, trying and failing to keep her voice down. The silence was so leaden even an Untempered could have heard a pin drop down the street. "Here? Now?"
"When else?" the Hand replied, his gaze never once leaving Felix's own. "What say you, Fiend?"
Felix only frowned, but his eyes were unblinking as well. "And this will solve it? Put all our grievances to rest?"
"It will satisfy my honor, Autarch," the big man said in his smooth baritone voice.
That's...really stupid. But what else did I expect? "Yeah. Okay." Felix rolled his shoulders. "Duel it up, then."
"Men," Vess hissed in frustration.
The crowd burst into frenzied whispers, quiet enough but not to someone with a few Tempers under their belt. It was more like a tide of sibilant susurrations; distracting at best. The Spirit of the crowd, however, was an entirely different beast. It blared, a great horn for those with the proper ears to listen, and that clawed at his balance like nothing else. He could feel the Legion watching, along with the Giants and Henaari, and among them Zara. She pursed her lips in annoyance, but didn't interfere. For that he was thankful.
Felix shut it all off as his friends cleared the market-turned-air dock, returning it to its first use: an arena of battle. He stretched his arms, always a good choice even when you have supernatural Agility and Endurance, and took to the center of the cleared space. The Hand followed after. He was still wearing his fancy armor and cape, and the massive sword hung in its sheath along his back.
"You accepted far faster than I expected, Fiend."
Felix shrugged. "You said this would end our beef. That's good enough for me. You sure you want to go through with this though?" Felix let his eyes flick to either side of them. "Last chance to back out. We can talk this over if you really want to resolve the whole Vess abandoning you thing"
"Enough," the Hand growled. He pulled free his giant greatsword and the thing just about pealed like a bell in his hand, high and clear. "I'll only be satisfied with your blood on my blade, boy. That will end our beef."
"Fine," Felix said, before raising his fists in a defensive position. "Let's get it over with."
Zara and Harn followed them out into the center. She raised her hands to the crowd and the whispers fell silent. "A duel under the auspices of Oath and Blood has been proposed and accepted! These two will fight until one can no longer continue, or until surrender. Killing is forbidden, but all else is acceptable." She fixed them both with her ice blue gaze. "Do you understand the terms?"
"I understand and welcome them," the Hand intoned.
"Yeah," Felix said. "Harn? What're you doing here?"
"I'm here to interfere in case things get heated," he grunted. "Keep the strikes clean and we won't have a problem."
"You question my honor, Onslaught?" The Hand gripped his heavy blade so tightly it groaned. "You dare think I'll kill your little protg?"
"I'm not here to stop you," Harn shot back. The Hand frowned.
"Gentlemen. Let us get this over with," Zara said. "Begin!"
The Hand lashed out with a big, booted foot, hitting Felix square in his chest. He took the blow head-on without flinching, sliding back thirty feet before halting himself, which was more than enough time for the Hand to unsheathe his immense sword and imbue it with a brilliant flow of white-green Mana.
"Windblade!"
Similar to Pit's attack, a crescent of compressed air Mana tore through the intervening space. It tore up the earth, leaving a trail of dust in its wake, and while it was too slow to hit Felix it did obscure the Hand's location. Only for a moment, but that was all he needed.
"Wind Drake's Fall!"
The crowd screamed. From above, a mesh of white-green Mana lashed downward at lightning-fast speeds. It hit the earth, slicing straight through stone and hurling even more dust into the sky, coiling it together into a dust devil beneath the mid-morning light. Felix grunted, enmeshed in it all; he funneled his power and Intent through his core.
Sovereign of Flesh!
Silence seized the crowd, and Felix leveled his gaze all around him. He could feel it blaze, crackling with blue lightning. "This is over. Go."
None protested. In seconds, the marketplace-turned-arena had transmogrified back into a silent field of dusty stone.
Later, Felix watched the sun sink closer and closer to the western mountains, small as they were. As early as it was in autumn, the light was still warm and plentiful, though he'd felt an occasional chill in the breeze. A harbinger of things to come.
He had let his friends do their jobs, leading the various groups to their assigned housing. Felix had made sure to build enough housing, crude as his workings often were; the Henaari were good with making things more homey, at least. With Vess and the Synod's help, he'd even done some rudimentary city-planning. All the stone and wooden houses now made proper streets and pathways throughout his Stronghold.
So now everyone was settling in or doing one of the myriad jobs their settlement required. From hunting to gathering and planting in his underground Garden, a facet of his Stronghold he had not spent much time within. Quests were still being accomplished, the standing order of materials and information feeding back into his Resource menus. Aside from his repeated failures with alchemy, things were looking good. Not "stand up to a foreign invasion" good, but decent enough.
Meanwhile, Felix had retreated from everyone else. After that little showing, he had felt the fear spinning untamed in the people's Spirits. Fear of him. It wasn't a new sensation, but it made him uncomfortable every time; even if it was well-deserved. He looked at his handsfully human ones nowand at his unmarked Garment. It had torn when the Hand had attacked him with those blades of air Mana, but the thing had repaired itself quickly. Now he wore a long-sleeved tunic with an asymmetrical collar he could prop up against the wind. He might not be affected by the cold, but he could still feel it in a sense, and he was a Florida boy. Cold wasn't his favorite. But the Garment and his skin beneath, they were leagues above where he had been only a few short months before...he'd beaten the Hand! That felt a little unreal, considering how long he'd worried about that guy gutting him for giving Vess the wrong sorta look.
But now what? Would the man be fine after he woke? Or would he rage about the loss? Felix hadn't a firm enough grasp on the Hand's personality to tell, and Vess had disappeared with all the newcomers so he hadn't been able to ask. He knew he should go and track Zara down, confront her about the Mark she'd left on him, or ask what the Cantus Sodalus was, or any number of responsible, leader-type things. Instead, he sat silent atop the Temple cliffclose enough to the waterfall to feel its light spray and far enough to not be entirely embroiled in its thundering cacophony. Curiously, as his Perception advanced it grew not only more sensitive but more exactly and malleable. He could, if he wished, block out the noise of the waterfall entirely and focus on the other sounds around himself. Felix had played with that aspect of his stats in the past, but as the hours passed into late afternoon, he simply sat there. Taking it all in.
He still heard the footsteps behind him, of course. He wasn't deaf.
"You're lookin' right sad," said a sharp, familiar voice. Felix turned, truly surprised.
"Rafny? I didn't know you were coming too."
A dark-haired Dwarf stood several strides away, arms akimbo. "One of us had to, you big lug. Establishing a Stronghold and a Forge and you didn't tell us? Elle was in fits, I can tell you." She peered at his face. "You don't look much like a monster."
Felix laughed. "That's just my....battleform. No, I'm not calling it that." He waved his hand. "Uh, my transformation. I can't keep it going too long. Burns up a lot of energy."
"Naw, not what I mean. Though that bulk is somethin' impressive, for sure," she said, walking closer and peering uncomfortably at the cliff's edge. "Everyone down there is hootin' and hollerin' about the Fiend. The Fiend and the Night Of A Thousand Lights. The Fiend and the Endless Fog. The Fiend and the Ice Witch. The stories they tell..." she chuckled nervously before backing from the drop. "They paint you up a great deal. The Ferocious Fiend."
Felix hadn't heard any of those stories before, but he could probably guess the contents of most of them. He shook his head. "I'm just me. Been through a bit, but"
"You're more than that to them, I'd say," Rafny jerked her chin toward the ledge. "They're afraid of you."
Felix sighed. "I know. I try to counteract it, but everything I do just feeds the flames."
"Oh, you misjudge me," the Smith said. She tested her weight against a small boulder nearby, half-grown over by tufts of stringy weeds. "It's good. It's a solid thing, fear. Keeps them in line, especially those Frost Giants. That was a bit of a surprise." She laughed. "But they way they looked at you. Like a Primordial come alive."
"Hm," he said. "If I'm going to lead them in any capacity, I'd rather they respect me than fear me."
"Bah, respect is fear given time enough to hew off the edges. Let em sit in the fire a bit, soften em up before you take the hammer and shape em. Yeah?"
Felix laughed. "You've got a way with words. Anyone ever tell you that?"
Rafny grinned. "Not ever. So!" She clapped her hands loudly together. "You gonna show me that Forge, or what?"
"All this, so you could angle for access to my Forge?" Felix stood. "Shameless Dwarf."
"Fool Human," she shot back, eyeing the cliff uncertainly. "Stop playing on the edge of things. You make me nervous. I came up to see the Forge, and you. Figured I'd need your permission before I could get near the thing. The Alchemist is probably mustering the guts to do the same thing."
"Oh, nope. I mean, yes, but you can also ask Harn. He's the Forgemaster now," Felix said. "Wait, Alchemist? Aenea is here too?
"She and her husband took ship the moment Cal put out the word. Somethin' about a 'treasure trove of alchemical reagents' in the Foglands." Rafny raised an eyebrow. "And Harn's your Forgemaster? He and I should have words, then."
Felix closed his mouth, and quelled the rising excitement in his guts before gesturing ahead of himself. "I'll lead the way, then."
