Chapter Five Hundred And Seventeen – 517
Felix grappled with the power, his screams not abating in the slightest as he rode the current down into his dark core space. The process, which was normally as simple as breathing, was now fraught as he teetered on the razors edge of burnout. Not since the Ravager King had he felt so bloated with power.
Im here! Pit cried out.
Just as with the Ravager King, Pit was a steady presence in his Spirit; the tenku siphoned pieces of the Abundance Animas power, rotating it through his own whirling star before sending it back down into Felixs core space.
It wasnt enough. Unite the Lost had brought back more power than it had cost to enact the Skillfrom a standpoint of conservation of energy, it made no sense to Felix. Yet he hadnt the time to waste, figuring it out. He fell, emanating gold and silver trails that burst from him like solar flares. He was the sun, carrying a light that threatened to burn everything within him to dust.
II tooam here!
Vess appeared, her hand upon his physical shoulder transferred, phantom-like to ripple beside Felixs descending form. She flickered and resolved into a brilliant Link, a cable made of solidified silver wind. It flowed and flashed, grasping at the power that spun off of Felix and nearly bucklingbut she held on.
I have it! Vess words spilled out between stifled screams. I cana guttural growl tore through their LinkI can shoulder the burden!
Goddamn, he was impressed.
Felix was filled with the might of the resurrected Abundance Anima. Its power, and a portion of its truth. Its significance. The screech of a tenku and the roar of a dragon ripped through his consciousness just as Felix emerged into scintillating chaos.
What Have You Done! Nym! What Trickery Is This?
Light blossomed among his core space, igniting the expansive dark with the light of a hundred orb-like particles and illuminating the sprawling, congealed mass of writhing purple-blue tentacles at his center. It flinched from the light, as if the gold and silver radiance hurt, and indeed its Essence-flesh charred and sizzled away into embers where it tried and failed to cross the boundary of Felixs core space.
This Thing Hampers Me! You Should Not Be Able To! What Fell Artifact Has The Withered Given You?
The Creature let loose a bellow like twisted horns descending into basso fury and atonal, squealing violins. Waves tore through his core space, puckering the very fabric of his inner reality before it rebounded from those glimmering orbs in a cascade of golden-silver sparks.
Felix landed among the branches of his Divine Tree, and the crystal branch rang like a bell. The Creature might seem trapped, but it wasnt fool proof. He needed to buy time.
The Spirit Trees power still bloomed from Felixs visualized form, still poured in from the seemingly endless font of the Abundance Anima. Pit flickered into being beside him, a dazzling collection of lightning caught between wings of ice. Vess too, though she was a mere whisper, a cord that could have been a silver spear thrust through the nearby branches. Loops of golden-silver connected them to Felix, a constant flux of energies that threw his overgrown hair into a windblown mess. Youre as stupid as you are ugly, he said.
The crumbling, collapsing sinkhole that served as the Creatures skull swung toward Felixs voice, and its jaw hung open in a wordless, malevolent hiss.
With a flare of Felixs mighty Intent and Willpower, he shoved his borrowed power down through his feet. The Divine Tree beneath him rang again, and this time the bell felt like it was the size of a planet. All that time preparing, Felix had built up his Divine Tree, and now it blossomed. As if fruit upon a galactic tree, nebulas of swirling golden-silver swelled into gaseous giants, spreading in an almost perfect circle around Felixs entire core space.
The Creature spun, its skull tracking the sprouting trees with alarm. Tendrils lashed, rebounding from the Skills below as it was hedged in from all directions. This Is Impossible!
Crystalline roots rose from the shadows, bursting with opalescent shoots as their too-thin sapwood swelled into enormous, twisting barriers. The wood grew thick, rugged bark, turning vibrant with the thrum of newfound energies as Felix fed rivers of vigor into his Tree. It wasnt just power and vitality though. It was Essence and Manaand a portion of the Abundances very being. It was significance, matured and turned back around to the hand that brought it from the edge of Ruins oblivion.
All at once, across his entire core space, saplings erupted straight up from the barrier of roots. The baby trees thickened and grew, turning to adolescent copies of the Divine Tree itself, as sigaldry revealed itself across the expanse of crystalline root and branch.
The Creature spun, its broken skull hurling at the risen barrier of light and branch. A chorus of vibrations met the Creatures substance and cast it back, burning its questing tendrils into spasming husks of charred Essence-flesh. How? it roared. How Have You Done This?
You idiot, Felix stepped forward, his feet splashing among pools of liquid light. Sigaldry spun out further and further. I said you made a mistake, and you never once asked what that was.
The barrier shrieked, pressed to its utmost limit by the Creatures furious assaultbut it was utterly subsumed by the tolling sound of ten thousand chiming bells and the stentorian peal of a crystalline tree the size of a town. Golden-silver sigils connected, finally connecting the last bits of the sprawling design Felix had worked into the Seal.
"You said you claimed flesh and Dissonance. That you controlled them. Felix bared his teeth, revealing a mouthful of bristling fangs. Those are mine."
Sovereign of Flesh!
Though it was not a true Body, the Creatures Essence-flesh was more than valid as far as his Transcendent Skill was concerned. Immediately Felixs Willpower locked over the Creatures own, and its writhing form was hauled bodily from the edges of his core space. The barriers faded back into quiescence, their waterfalls of sparks gone, as Essence-flesh was pressed and packed into a far more restrictive space.
You Cannot! Nym! This IsI Am Above You!
It fought, tooth and nail, but it was useless. All of its strength seemed to fail before the Title-boosted onslaught of Felixs Will, and the fury of his sovereignty.
Sovereign of Flesh is level 85!
Sovereign of Flesh is level 88!
Tendrils of Dissonance and Harmony spat outward from its collapsing form, waves that tried to send fissures of pain and torment through Felixs Mind. They met instead the stone-fastness of his Bastion, flared as hard as he could manage. The Creatures assault battered into him, shaving stone and sending cracks through his modified Mind Skill.
You Cannot Hold Me! Your Body May Be Mighty, But Your Mind Is Weak!
More cracks spread through his Epic Skill, and pieces of his reforged walls began to shear away. Felix screamed as lances of pain cut through his resistances like red hot pokers. The Creature howled with mad laughter.
Yet, he dared to turn away from his Bastion entirely, putting everything on the line as he pressed a massive chunk of his Mana toward the Seal itself.
Cardinal Flame!
The Seal ignited, bathing the endless dark with a dome of impassible light and the overwhelming strains of a concerto so complex it beggared the imagination. It was the music of many things. Dissonance and fury, expansive hunger and aching silence as the Creature rebounded from the threshold of his Bastion. The Creature reared back, struck suddenly dumb as everything hit it at once.
Very distantly, Pit trilled in triumph.
You Cannot Contain Me! The things head pivoted within the cage of Willpower Felix had forged, and its pulsating Essence-flesh twitched in unresponsive outrage. I Am Eternal And Elemental! A Goddess!
Fuck the gods, Felix growled. Hunger!
The tiny solar system around him shuddered, the light of the Tree and Seal dimming as if an object suddenly cloaked them all. The Creature stared down at the darkness it had so far ignored. A darkness that was bending the light and sound all around it into a halo of shuddering, inescapable Need.
Sic em.
