Chapter Four Hundred And Ninety Six – 496
Ephemeral Evocation is level 9!
As with the Memory hed stolen from the illusion array, Felix was deposited directly into the action. He dropped to the floor, skidding atop a layer of loam that had been scattered across dark marble. Felix stood as soon as his feet found purchase, quickly realizing his Body had returned to its mostly-Human appearance. He flared his Perception hard, attempting to take in everything at once.
It didnt ask me to view the Memory. Didnt even warn me that there was one. Felixs cores spun, grinding against one another as if to mimic the agitation that filled him. Whats going on?
Typically when things went weird, it involved forces that were far beyond Felix. He was more than prepared for the Fathom to suddenly appear before him, monstrous and hugebut the chamber remained silent. Perhaps too silent. The foliage that had overrun the vast room surrounding the Spirit Tree was mostly absent. In its place was a series of glass-lined enclosures, inscribed with sigils to seal and strengthen them. Almost every one was shattered.
Plants were scattered in all directions, but not as it was in the present. No dense network of roots had taken hold, nor had vast mounds of earth built up in discrete hills and valleys. Felix could still see the marble flooring, inlaid with gold and precious stones to form half-glimpsed sigaldry. Free of vines and foliage, the walls were lined with arcane instruments that glowed with various forms of Mana vapor. In the very center, unhindered by invasive growths, was the Spirit Tree.
And it was dying.
Felix took a concerned step forward before stopping. Just a Memory, he reminded himself. See where it leads.
Blue-ooze had already made its way into the chamber, pooling around the Trees roots on the left side. He watched thin tendrils slap outward, slowly squelching higher. As they did, the ooze took on a distinct purple hue that bled through its form like dye in water.
This Was The Last Day.
Felix jolted, his attention snapping outward from the crawling ooze. There was no one in the room with him, however. No one but the Tree itself. The Last Day? he asked.
Watch, Inheritor. Beware.
Without warning, Felix was hurled from the Spirit Trees chamber, rushing along some tight corridor at breakneck speed. His Body had vanished, rendered into a simple set of eyes that slipped up through the oozing walls of the hallway, past flashing sigaldry and into the vast, dark pressures of the deep waters beyond.
Roots, he realized. Im traveling along the Spirit Trees roots.
Indeed, as he flashed through the water he rose, granted a new vantage of the shattered terrain. The water was more clear than it was in reality, and Felixs vision spread for what seemed like miles. Roots branched out in all directions, but the largest and thickest followed a curving arc across the unbroken earth, until they reached another lone tower in the depths. Cast to a far distant time, this tower looked nothing like stone, but a living thing of wood and wavering fronds. A familiar aura hung around it.
Another Spirit Tree? Theyre connected?
Not other. One.
Felixs eyes widened at the voice, just as his blistering progress through the waters blurred into unfathomable speeds. Roots spread out, the thickest still describing a curving arc as tower after tower interrupted the roots at set intervals. The aura was always the same, resplendent and proudand filled with an ineffable sense of loss. The Spirit Tree was there, spread among the waters like a massive network of coral. A single organism that had clearly been grown deliberately, based on the precise way the roots were laid out. Those spoke volumes once Felix noticed them, twisted and bending in whorling designs. In fact, the longer he sped around the Abundance Animas network, the more he saw. Patterns grown into root and branch and leaf.
The Abundance Anima was waking up.
Another blast flowed from the Spirit Tree, hurling the shed detritus from its bole as life took hold. The Green Wild sang, an enkindled chorus of destruction and rebirth, a bright, glorious violence alongside a deep and verdant tranquility. Flower bloomed from the corpses of the Wickerjaks and the dimming crystal above them surged to newfound radiance, until sunbeams shone along the dancing branches far above. Creation followed destruction, hand in hand; two sides of the same coin.
Harmony and Dissonance.
There was no warning as the Skill cut off, only a mountainous weariness that sat atop his back, and a sudden, unnatural silence.
I...Am Whole.
Thank You.
Felix sat, almost but not quite crushed by his exhaustion. He patted the thick root next to him. "Don't...don't mention it."
"Your sacrifice will not be forgotten, Felix Nevarre."
It was a mark of his fatigue that Felix didn't immediately summon a hailstorm of acid or lightning or do much else but turn his head toward the deep, smooth voice that had spoken. A man stood beside him, well-shadowed by the branches of the rejuvenated Spirit Tree. He was tall, somewhere between Felix and Beef, but slender with fine, angled features. His long hair was pulled back into a series of braids, and his skin was almost the exact brown of the Tree's bark. Were it not for the white robes that hugged his lean frame, Felix supposed the man could be lost among its surface. The man stared at Felix with eyes that were entirely blue, without whites.
"Sacrifice?" Felix asked, tensing slightly. He might have been exhausted, but he still had a little left in the tank. His Mana and Stamina were already refilling. "I hope that's not a threat, stranger."
"Not a threat, not to one who possesses Unite the Lost. You have expended so much of who you are, the stolid foundation upon which your Aspects balance. Giving such a bounty away will kill you. A life for a life." He shook his head, and a sense of deep regret and sorrow rang out from him. "You have restored a piece of my Companion. Were it in my power, I would save you. As it is, I will ensure that you are not forgotten."
Felix chuckled. "Oh, that." With an effort that sent a quiver of strain across his cores, Felix pushed himself to his feet. "Just give me a couple minutes and I'll be alright."
The man blinked, his thin brows furrowing on his dark face. "I do not understand. How is this possible?"
Felix wasn't sure how to answer that. "Well, I didn't really use my own significance, at least not a lot of it. Are you actually here, or is this some sort of spiritual projection or something?" He reached out, flicking his hand through where the man stood. There was nothing there, though the man's form didn't waver or anything. "Yeah. I thought so."
"Wha?"
"Unf, my head hurts," Felix said, wincing as his thoughts tried to jump at the thing he'd glimpsed in the Memory. He forcefully wrested his Mind free of it, but it cost him. "That's not going away anytime soon. Wait. You said Companion?"
The illusory man regarded Felix with curiosity, alarm, and a considerable amount of sudden fear. "You're Unbound."
"And you," Isla shouted, shoving her way through the flowering underbrush. She was followed by Pit, Vess, Beef, and all the rest. "You are Nymean, aren't you?"
