Chapter Four Hundred And Eighty Six – 486
Felix trained alone for a time. He pressed his Skills, conjuring shapes out of the limited light in the closed cavern, or summoning fists of acid to sizzle and sputter against boulders. His heart wasn't in it, however, not like before.
Auroral Forge is level 28!
Auroral Forge is level 29!
The gains ended there. His Aspects ached, but far worse was the realization that things were spinning out of his control. The anxieties that had been burning at his Mind were inflamed by the one-two punch of Vess' risky plan and the Fathom's contact. His team was limited, featuring a kid and his pet rock, a manipulative Chanter, and an uncertain warrior. Beef was a good egg, but he was too younghe'd fight, Felix didn't doubt that, but the Minotaur's skillset was limited. Hallow would follow Beef, of course, but its Risen weren't strong enough to face down a Depthwurm let alone the Fathom itself.
Pit he could trust, of course. Isla, however, was apparently working to drastically weaken Vess. Perhaps she meant well, and perhaps the timespan was not as immediate as Felix fearedhe doubted Vess would be so foolhardy as to introduce a glaring weakness into her core space right before a fight. A fight, he reminded himself, that she desperately wished to take part in.
Maybe she is willing to attempt this mysterious process soon, he mused. Vess was very dedicated to eradicating draconic Types, and the Fathom most of all. Worse than her going after the supposed dragon directly was the idea that she would do so after damaging her Aspects and Temper. At the very least, the Fathom knew of them, and depending on what it gleaned from Felix in their brief connection, it might even know they were coming.
Felix's training soon lapsed into a long, quiet bout of thinking.
The water flowed around him as he sat in the center of the small cavern, sloshing in time with the pressure that fed inward from the crevasse. Silt and debris settled, until the water was crystal clear, and Felix could hear nothing over his Sunken Ward except the beat of his own heart.
I can't do anything about Vess and Isla, not without pushing them away. If she chooses to go through with something like that, it is her choice. That decision hurt him to make, but it was the right one. Focus instead on what you can affect.
Felix dove into his core space.
Down among the crystalline tree, burning dual cores, and dark, endless abyss at the very center, Felix regarded his Skills. They glimmered, masquerading as celestial bodies, and he sought out one in particular.
Sovereign of Flesh, he thought, isolating the Skill among the revolving multitude before crooking his finger at a number of others. Cardinal Flame. Green Shaping. Auroral Forge. Rime Shaping. Manasight. Theurgist of the Rise. Invocation. Dual Casting. Manaship Pilot.
All of them were caught up in Felix's inextricable Willpower, pulled into the orbit of Sovereign of Flesh. As a Transcendent rarity Skill as well as one he had Tempered with multiple times, it was far larger and more complex than the others. Cardinal Flame and Theurgist of the Rise came close, while Manasight and Dual Casting were the smallest. Yet even the less complex patterns of those Uncommon Skills were hellishly convoluted, each trough and crest within them a unique vibration. Felix flared his Affinity, confirming once more the threads of commonality in the songs of every single Skill that he gathered around his Primaryand once he did that, he got to work.Ñøv€lRapture marked the initial hosting of this chapter on Ñôv€lß¡n.
What little Essence Felix had was drained by the process, and his Mana too. His regeneration fought to keep up, pulling more and more Mana from the environment around him to fuel his cores. Chthonic Tribute also flared over and over again, almost an instinctive reaction at this point, consuming boulder and sand and thick bedrock all around him, but the Essence of inanimate objects was so thinit was all Felix could do to keep up with the demands of the formation of a Skill Array.
Felix focused instead on weaving the delicate rhythms and chords together, tying the edges of one Skill to another. It was a process that was similar to combining Skills and somehow distinctly separate. Where combining was subsuming multiple abilities into a unified, often totally dissimilar whole, a Skill Array was about working in concert. Like his Bastion of Will, Sovereign of Flesh soon drew the other Skills closer and closer to itself, until each one rotated around its glistening shape like tiny moons around a swirling gas giant.
The closer the Skills moved, the more Felix could feel the invisible connections between them solidify. It was like utilizing his Adamant Discord or Skein of Fate: as each Secondary Skill joined the Array, a pulse of power flashed between it and the Primary. It moved too fast for anyone normal to be able to perceive it, but it was there, a wrist-thick cable of relevance. The cable repeated, Skill after Skill, a strobing connection that seemed to grow more brilliant with each additional addition to the Array. It grew heavy, a solidity that weighed on his core space with incredible pressure until everything abruptly pulled inward, and a surge of vigor shot outward in all directions, ripping Felix's awareness up and away.
Felix sucked in a ragged, wet breath, and opened his eyes.
Sunken Ward!
Voracious Eye!
Name: Spectacles of the Fledgling Scholar
Type: Accessory (Enchanted)
Lore: Designed and inscribed to enhance the reading speed and comprehension of the wearer, these spectacles are tools used by the mages of the Lucent Towers on their more promising students. They are rare creations and quite difficult to create, the secrets to doing so kept hidden among the gleaming spires of Levantier.
Improved Cognition I - Reading comprehension and knowledge retained is increased a minor amount.
Leaf On The Wind I - Reading speed is increased by a minor amount.
He was wearing glasses. Little circular lenses of gold crystal had been cut and set into a frame made of thin silver. They were perched atop his beak, unwavering despite Pit's movements. > Felix asked.
Pit tilted his head, paw held over the page he was reading. >
> Felix wasn't mad or anything, just impressed. He did wish that he'd had glasses like that, back when he'd had to learn to read from scratch. > Felix crouched down and read over his Companion's shoulder. >
Notes From The Blastlands. It's a book on war strategies and stuff.>> Pit looked a little embarrassed almost. >
Next to him were six more volumes, all thick and inscribed with sigils declaring them memoirs and treatises.
> The tenku warbled in delight, his feathers and fur ruffling. >
Felix looked around. >
Pit gestured with a paw, back toward the hanging fronds. >
>Or were they proceeding with their plan? His worries returned, but Felix pressed a portion of himself closer to his Hunger. The emotions were pulled away, devoured by the abyss within him. >
Pit groaned as if he'd been asked to climb a mountain and run a marathon. >
Felix had already started swimming forward, back toward the fronds. >
Fine.>>
