Chapter One Hundred and Eighty Five - 185

Chapter One Hundred and Eighty Five - 185

Felix tried to calm down, wrangling the nest of vipers that writhed in his chest. He tried to think calmly, to strategize. His Manasight flared and details were picked out in the tunnel. The floors were relatively smooth and the walls were coarse and pockmarked from excavated ore. Dusty brown and grey-black vapor swirled everywhere, threaded through with various metallic hues from the ores that studded the walls. It was like standing in a shimmering night sky, while before him the miners crowded back, threads of green-gold life Mana coiled about with crimson blood Mana.

The old man, however, blazed like the sun.

Orange fire and golden light Mana vapor hurtled through his aura, suffusing the green-gold and crimson of his Body so much that the latter was barely visible. The sense of solidity and control Felix garnered from the man was astounding. In many ways, he reminded him of Zara. But he couldn't be a Master Tier combatant...could he?

Voracious Eye!

Name: Charl Hornsworth

Race: Human

Level: 52

HP: 2465/2465

SP: 2554/3014

MP: 922/1137

Lore: Humans are multitudinous on the Continent. They are statistically weaker than most Races, especially at lower levels. This Human appears to excel at the redirection of force.

Strength: Agility and Dexterity far higher than average for their level.

Weakness: Slightly lower than average Strength for their level.

Aside from Hornsworth's information, Felix's Voracious Eye snagged the man's advancement. He was only at the upper end of Journeyman, a far cry from the last few Initiates he'd fought, yet not nearly as Skilled as Felix had assumed. How was he kicking Felix's ass? The man was like fighting a river, if said river had a sword made of fire.

Hornsworth raised a bushy grey eyebrow at Felix and tapped his foot. Felix snarled and dove back in, pushing Unfettered Volition for all it was worth. Visceral frustration mounted with each missed strike, each dodged advance, mutating swiftly into a burning rage that burned at his Mind.

Peace! Trilled Pit from far away. Calm!

But it wasn't time for calm; it was time for action. Rolling beneath Hornsworth's horizontal sword sweep, Felix snapped a claw at the man's leg in the hopes of hamstringing the bastard. Yet the leg was gone before he connected, and his opposite boot caught Felix in the temple. The kick wasn't particularly hard, but it rang his bell, and Felix had to hurl himself ungainly to the side to avoid the Initiate's flaming follow up.

Felix propelled himself into the wall about ten feet distant, cracking into it hard enough to make his own Health drop several dozen points. He looked back, stilling his head as if to encourage his vision to stop swimming, and saw that Hornsworth was once again standing still. Waiting.

What a jagoff, Felix grimaced. He got back to his feet slowly, watching the Initiate for any sudden movements. The man was impossible to predict. Then something caught the edge of his perception and Felix suppressed a grin.

From the darkness, a spiked chain shot out at the old man. Snaking through the air like a living thing, it altered direction twice as it wove toward the Initiate, moving faster than most anyone in the tunnel could track.

Harnsworth slid through her attack without even looking at it, and when Evie's chain changed direction, he simply lifted his sword and deflected the chain into the ground. He had to look to do that, at least. Evie ran through the rubble, twirling her chain with renewed fervor. She seemed almost as pissed off as Felix felt.

Felix frowned and watched them, hoping to see some way past the man's impeccable defense and trying to bank the fury that was building up within him. Which is how he noticed that the miners were slowly beginning to lessen in number. At first he feared that they had somehow hurt them, but when he spotted two more of the Untempered workers vanish into the darkness he realized what was happening. Thangle was Obfuscating a few people at a time and getting them out.

The Gnome's a genius.

And he wasn't alone.

Evie ducked low as a silver spear shot over her head and straight into the Initiate; the projectile, unseen until the last moment, was barely avoided. A terrible screeching sound shredded the air as his breastplate and left pauldron were scored by the arcane missile, but he wasn't impaled. The spear instead slammed into the ground immediately behind the Initiate.

"Thangle!" Felix shouted and rushed the old man. As expected, the Initiate wove around Felix's lunge, turning the man's own kinetic energy against himself and hurled him through. But this time, Felix managed to grab hold of Hornsworth's fluttering red cloak. Yanking hard on that, he slowed himself down and pulled the Initiate off balance. The man took two steps and re-centered himself easily while Felix fell heavily to the ground, which was not exactly the result he was hoping for; but it was good enough.

Vess' silver spear sat between the two of them, one prone and the other holding aloft a flaming sword. His mild voice belied the intensity of his gimlet eye. "Do you seek forgiveness, child?"

"Not really," Felix grunted. "Thangle! Now!"

An instant later, both the spear and Hornsworth vanished from Felix's senses and he thrust his hand outward until he could feel the tingle of active magic. "Mine!"

Ravenous Tithe!

A tiny stream of Mana surged into Felix's channels, a chaotic mix of ambient earth, fire, and shadow. At the same time, the space before him imploded with the sound of a screaming gale, and the Initiate was thrown backwards.

Finally!

The old man's legs and right arm were torn up, the enameled metal scored so deep that in some places it was cut righ through. Blood welled along his limbs and Hornsworth gasped a series of pained breaths through his mustache. He looked up at a Felix as the young man got to his feet.

"How did you--"

"Vess! Thangle! Again!"

Another spear tore from the darkness and plunged into the earth, yet before Thangle could cast his Obfuscation circle again, the Initiate leaped aside and ran. The old man vanished back out through the rubble in moments, his insane Agility blasting past all of their Perceptions.

Felix stood a moment longer, fists up, worried that he'd come back. When seconds turned to minutes, he figured it was safe enough. The wave of relief that spread through Felix at that moment was nearly enough to send him to his knees.

"Twins' teeth, that greybeard was spry," Evie said from the nearby darkness. "Did he put you through a wall?"

Felix grunted in annoyance and ignored the question. "Thangle, did you get everyone out?"The debut release of this chapter happened at Ñòv€l-B1n.

"Almost," the Gnome said, and Evie jumped about a foot into the air.

"Sure, Rory," Felix said. He understood that Alchemists were pivotal in creating Essence Draughts so that folks could Temper, but apparently that put a lot of value on their heads. "What do you mean, 'got loose?'"

"Hmph. I would have thought your people a little more knowledgeable, Roridan," Aenea sniffed. Felix looked up to see her staring down at the both of them. "The Guild lost their Charter. Any binding Oath sworn to them has been nullified."

That explained little to Felix, but he nodded as if it did. He could always get clarity from the others later. "I see."

Aenea snorted. "A poor liar as well as a sloppy commander. Tell me you didn't teach him to fight, Roridan."

"Excuse me?" Felix stood up and stared at the woman. "We just risked our lives to save you--"

"And did a piss poor job of it. Your technique is sloppy and your teamwork is abominable. Perhaps if you'd have worked together, you could have captured these men instead of murdering them," Aenea said, pointing at the corpses piled unceremoniously on one of the empty wagons. They were all draped in their own red capes.

That familiar rage swelled from within Felix's chest, though this time Pit didn't try and stop him at all. "Listen, lady, I don't know who you think you are, but--"

People! Incoming!

Pit's words dug at Felix's attention, pulling him up short. He realized he was only inches away from the Alchemist and let himself settle back on his heels. "We have company."

Rory got to his feet pretty quickly for a man with a bum leg. "Inquisitors?"

Felix tilted his head, listening to Pit. With a heated glance at Aenea, he offered a smile to the Dwarf. "Friends."

Reinforcements had arrived.

Led by Kelgan and Yan, more than thirty Tin Rank volunteers had marched the distance between the camp and mines. It wasn't far, thankfully, which meant they had arrived before dark had settled on the city. Being nearly mid-summer, they had close to two more hours before night truly arrived and the danger from roaming Revenants multiplied.

"Killed a lotta the bastards. Good," Yan said by way of greeting Felix. "Our scouts reported more redcloaks nearby, but they scarpered. I assume you're the reason, hm?"

Felix gripped the man's hand and Kelgan's. Unlike Yan, the spearman was tall and lanky with a full head of light brown hair and an even fuller beard. A no-nonsense spear of plain steel was in his grip, the handle well worn. An actual weapon as opposed to Vess' conjured ones. Kelgan grinned at him. "Felix."

"Kelgan. Yeah, we had an Initiate get away. Must have met up with them and changed their plans." Felix shook his head. "Which is good because this place is rough. You got anyone that can change wards? I'm about to have a look but I'm not exactly an expert."

"Oh? You're in luck. We've got--" Kelgan began, but was cut off by a panicked shout.

"Where is she? Aenea!"

The Alchemist's stern face lightened considerably as a man with curly brown hair and a well trimmed beard pushed through the other Tin Ranks. He was wearing a rough helm and leathers, but he moved as if he'd never worn the gear in his life.

"Hector!"

Hector rushed to Aenea and took her into his arms. "You're alive! Thank the gods!"

Kelgor leaned toward Felix with a smirk. "We've got him. Some sorta scriptie, wouldn't let us leave until we agreed to take him to his wife."

As annoyed at the Alchemist as he was, Felix found himself cooling off just a bit as the two of them embraced and put their foreheads together. He tried not to listen in, but his Perception was a curse at times. His ears clearly snagged on Hector's voice saying "the Fiend," followed by a startled look from Aenea. At Felix.

"Soo, was the trip here as uneventful for you as us?" Felix asked Yan.

"Eh, we saw two or three Revenants, but none that got close. Either they were scared or are getting smarter. I don't like either option, because I know they're not scared of us," Yan said, spitting to the side. "These Tin Ranks have about as much killing intent as a clutch of field mice."

Felix couldn't argue with that. Though they had volunteered for the trip and training, the three dozen men and women were looking around the work yard, clearly unnerved. It was obvious that most of them hadn't seen a dead body until very recently, especially when a few kept looking between the dead redcloaks and Felix.

Things fell into place quickly after that. The Tin Ranks started patrols of the area and generally helped the miners clean up and get the place going again. A lot of the volunteers were family members of the miners, so once some tearful reunions were complete, everyone was moving with a pep in their step that Felix hadn't seen since arriving at camp that morning.

Hector turned out to be a treasure trove of knowledge. He was a Bronze Rank Guilder, damn close to Silver too, but only in a singular area: sigaldry. The wards the miners mentioned were harder to parse and alter than anyone had anticipated, and though Felix's sigil Skill was Legendary, it didn't help him brute force past the fundamentals he'd yet to learn. Hector made short work of it all.

"The central glyph is writ large, a combination of two or more sigils and acts as the core of any array. Secondary sigils will orbit this glyph, with tertiary sigils branching off from there. Each one, as you no doubt know, is a modifier on the original glyph." Hector was remarkably amenable to explaining his process to Felix once asked, though some of the finer points didn't make sense to him yet. He filed away the sigils and arrangement of the wards in his memory to study later. "Changing these allows us to at least provide a minimal barrier to any people that might try and approach the mine. At least ones without a ward key."

"Fascinating," Felix said. The written form of magic was something that filled him with a sense of wonder, even after seeing it countless times in the past few weeks. "Could we erect something like this around the camp?"

"It would be expensive," Hector said. "Monster cores or someone acting as a Mana battery would be needed. Here, the mines' wards are designed to pull from the city-wide net of energy siphons. Old scripted paths that flow up the mountains to absorb as much ambient Mana as they can handle."

"Really?"

Hector nodded. "Its usually just enough to maintain the Wall and general defenses, but for some reason the Mana in the city is...strange. Caustic, almost."

Felix pursed his lips at that, but didn't comment. How was he supposed to reply? 'Watch out, you might fall into a coma at some point, but we're not yet sure'? He couldn't see that going over well.

Using Stone Shaping, Felix raised a few more short walls to block off alleys between buildings and other access points. With Rory's guidance, they were able to turn the one way in and out into an easily defensible, certainly deadly path. They planned to keep operating the mine, after all. Yan and Kelgan were going to stay on for now along with the Tin Ranks, to provide protection as well as escorts for each shipment of ore that would go out. Their crafters would no longer be without material, iron at least.

Food and drink were being parceled out by Yan as Felix and the others mounted up to ride back. Pit decided to walk on the ground with them, and it turned out, was strong enough to carry Felix in that manner. It was weird to get used to the tenku's loping gait, but his Dexterity was high enough, he'd manage.

Arrayed on the wagons were his friends as well as Rory, Aenea, and her husband. A few of the miners came with them, those that had family back at the camp, and those who weren't sure if their family had lived or died. The last group was particularly heartbreaking to listen to, as Felix's Affinity kept feeding him their emotional state and it was best described as whiplash. Happy to be free of the redcloaks, followed by fear that their wife or child or parents were gone.

More than that, it forcibly reminded him of his own family, gone farther than most. A world away, at least. Where were they now? Did they miss him? Felix hoped that they had found some sort of closure, because he was certain that there was no way back to Earth. Not in this life.

Unbidden, their voices echoed in his Mind, recollected sounds but vivid just the same. Damn magic brain, he cursed. If he'd been alone, maybe he'd have embraced it, looked to see where that rabbit hole led. But sitting atop a chimera and padding through the abandoned ruin of a monster-filled city was neither the time nor the place.

"Let's get moving. I'd rather not be out here when it hits full dark," he said. "C'mon, Pit."