Chapter Three Hundred And Seventy One - 371

Chapter Three Hundred And Seventy One - 371

The others tried to protest putting himself in danger, but Felix ended the arguments by simply walking toward their creepy bone house. They needed information, and aside from the doom and gloom of the skeletal remains, Felix knew he could handle himself against most things. So what if the place looked like death's vacation home? He'd eaten Primordials and gods. Well, one god. Part of one.

"Felix!" Zara said, her tone sharp enough to cut stone. His team was gathered at the first wagon, with the company spread out further beyond it, and everyone was watching him walk across the night-purpled sand. "Have a care. The Song does not sit well within."

"...Right." He nodded, acknowledging her warning. She offered nothing else, so what could he do? Be right back, Pit.

Worry filtered back to him, hidden by a bright confidence. Be safe.

You know me.

Felix turned away from them all and tried to stride confidently up to the blackened corpse. It loomed over him, easily four stories tall, but the gaps in the ribs were narrow where they were not filled in with rock or covered in flapping leather sheets. The only entry was a gaping hole, where one massive redwood-thick rib had been smashed apart. Without breaking his stride, Felix ducked into the dark.

And dark it was. The way ahead was utterly impenetrable even to his Perception, and the breeze that traversed the interior was hot and warm, like breath. If that wasn't unnerving enough, the floors were sliding sand and the walls were a mix of stone and bone, barely wide enough for his shoulders. Felix followed it by touch, mostly, following a solitary path that wound around inside the structure like a maze, flaring his Manasight as best he could. He was able to pick up the barest hint of earth Mana from the sands and stone, but they were thin and dullthe bone all around him buzzed at his Affinity, a resonance that seemed to drag the Mana down and away. It was like walking through a dark room with a dying flashlight.

The path soon splintered in many directions. His Manasight and perfect memory served him well, allowing him to at the very least know his way back out. But finding his way forward and remembering the way back to two very separate things. Felix simply guessed at each junction, following the warm breeze whenever he could feel it. More than once he had to turn back as he hit dead ends and small alcoves filled with bones and tattered cloth. After the fourth such misstep, Felix growled in annoyance and yanked his khopesh free of its sheath.

"Karys? Do you know anything about all this?" he asked. The sword buzzed, its timbre almost an exact opposite for the numbing sound from the bone walls.

"Oh," Karys voice said, sounding far away. "That is remarkable. Where are you, my Lord?"

"Alone in a house made from a giant skeleton," Felix said. He gave his Chancellor a quick run down of the Yttins and their odd home. "What's remarkable?"

"The sensation of resistance. My Perception cannot gain purchase around anything but the sand at your feet and your own body." Karys still sounded like he was down the hall and behind a closed door, so muffled was his voice. "Only a truly powerful creature could exude such a forbiddance, even were it still alive. It is likely encompassing the entire settlement, and why you cannot Analyze them."

"Ok, one question down," Felix said. He grimaced as his foot went through something that cracked and then was upsettingly soft. A bug of some variety. "A thousand more to go. What do you know of the Yttin?"

"Yttin," Karys said. He went silent for so long, Felix was worried he'd lost him. "II am unsure if this is a correct memory, but I believe they were among the elite in Ahkestria. Warrior-monks of some variety."

"Bit spindly for warriors," Felix said, ducking beneath a thickened clump of cobweb. It stretched across the path, almost invisible in the gloom.

"Perhaps they used Agility based Skills...My experiences with the Sunbright Jewel and its citizens was limited, that much I do recall."

"Hm. It was called the Sunbright Jewel before the sea dried up?" Felix asked.

"Yes. It was renowned for its crafters, even among the Golden Empire, and that is saying something," Karys said. "Lost, as all the rest was, during the War."

"You've mentioned this War a few times. War with who?" Felix asked. He stepped up and over a collection of bones that formed an odd, pyramidal staircase. Up and then down, back to the sand.

"The War against the...against the Enemy..." Karys struggled, and the green-gold Mana, already muted, flickered uncertainly. "I cannot recall their names...They were opposed the Empire, sought to bring us low, to eradicate the works of our people and allies. Descendants of the Deathless."

"The who?" Felix stopped in his tracks, staring at his blade. "What are the Deathless? Karys?"

But Karys had gone silent.

Felix panicked for a few minutes, which was how long it took his Cardinal Flame to quest into the sword and check on its integrity. Its deepest recesses were opaque to him still, but the glow of life Mana was still there, just heavily muted by the bones all around him. Frustrated, Felix slammed the blade home in its sheath and prowled forward. The sooner he was out of the bone maze, the better.

Rooms and alcoves dotted the halls, small spaces meant for a small people. Many were festooned with cloth of various garish colors, as well as creations of paler bone. Furniture, made of their food, clearly. Tables and rudimentary chairs, all bound up by thin white cords that looked a lot finer than the hempen rope he'd seen in Haarwatch. They were interesting to see, but he kept moving, following the hot wind deeper and deeper down into the earth.

Finally, after a half hour's descent, he felt a strong breeze roll across him. His Perception followed the currents though he couldn't see around the maze like corridors, the darkness having gotten only deeper as he went. He didn't look forward to fighting in it, if he had to, but that's what his Blind Fighting Skill was for he supposed.

I should train that more, he mused as he ducked under another thick, wavering cobweb. The tunnels weren't made for tall people, at least not explicitly. There was a lot of ducking. I can't expect to always have the upper hand on sightedness. If the Raven and now this place teaches me anything, its that even my Perception can be stymied.

He took a couple more wrong turns following the strengthening wind, but eventually he found a large antechamber somewhere deep below the bluffs. Blackened bones traced the walls and ceiling, reinforcing it like support beams, and the floor was just as sandy as the passageways. What was different, were the hundredsnothousands of threads criss-crossing the ceiling and walls. Some were just layers and layers atop one another, until pieces of the bone and stone were obscured by a gauzy white. Others were delicate and complicated looking webs spun between prominent vertical bones, as if they were on display.

Shadows edged the corners of everything in a way that Felix didn't notice at first, but movement caught his eye. Then a sound, like falling tiles or hollow heels on wooden floors.

"Who's there?" he asked.

The clicking sped up, until it resolved into a new noise. A voice speaking the common tongue. "New. You are."

Poke.

"No."

Prod.

"Attuned to lightning?" It grabbed him with two hands, four, and squeezed his shoulders and neck. "No, no, no. Tell us. What are you?"

"Enough!" Felix screamed, and flared Adamant Discord. Lightning lit up around him as connections sprung into his vision. They were thin and dim, but not the ones attached to the shaman. There was a link between them that was as thick as a keg and too bright to look at directly. Lightning surged along its length as he pushed, and the shaman's hairy limbs were wrenched back inch by quivering inch.

The shaman hissed, and two other legs speared at his face. Felix ducked his head, letting them hit the crown of his skull. It sent him skidding backward across the floor, and the mountain leaning against him vanished entirely. The creature skittered backward, two of its eight limbs blackened by Felix's power, and it hissed at him again.

"Cursed! We are both of us cursed!" it howled, before it lunged for him.

Stone Shaping!

Stone Shaping is level 76!

Stone Shaping is level 77!

Spikes of stone ripped from the earth, stabbing into the beast over and over, while more blocked its path. Felix saw fully half of his Mana vanish in an instant, as the pattern of the Skill had all but refused to cooperate. It's this damn skeleton cave! It's fighting everything I do!

The shaman tore through the rough-made sandstone, screaming in pain and rage and

And he punched it in the face.

Corrosive Strike is level 65!

Wild Threnody is level 70!

The creature's head snapped up, its disgusting legs flailing and grasping at Felix as it tumbled backward.

Shadow Whip!

Felix grappled the spider horror, dark tendrils wrapping around its fleshy neck and yanking it forward. But he stumbled. That mountainous Will crashed into him at the same time Felix's second fist hit the shaman, and the both of them were hurled back, into the sands.

FELIX!

Pit's voice was thin, but terrified. All Felix could do was push against the weight bearing down on him, a weight that was so very familiar and utterly unknown. Primordial. It hissed and burned across his arms and chest, against his throat and face, but it did no more than scald. It was hot and dry, an oven wind filled with countless motes of sand, a million teeth tearing at him, crushing him.

Get...OFF!

Adamant Discord flared and flashed, sending pieces of the Will blasting off of him, but it simply reformed. It slammed down at him once more, and the chamber of bones vanished. Images flashed instead, of wind and sky and heat and the merciless sun, all of it cutting at his Will like knives. Felix pushed back against it, but it was like fighting a landslide.

And yet...and yet he felt a hard nodule within its mountain, something firmer than the indestructible sands. Felix reached for it, shaping his Intent into a razor's edge and cutting upward through its Will for the briefest of moments. For a desperate instant, he could find no trace of what he sought, but his blade of Intent struck true. A bead of bizarre potency crackled across his senses, worse than all the weight of its Will.

"You're not the first abomination that demanded things from me! I'll tell you what I told the Unending Maw!"

Felix screamed.

He seized it.

"Fuck off."

Chthonic Tribute!

Unite the Lost!

Light and shadow slammed into Felix in a hurricane of force while streamers of red-gold flame and blue-white lightning surged back out. He lifted from the earth, buoyed bodily by the immense streams of Essence that dove into his channels, searing him and his core. Bone shattered, and the screams intensified, two voices raised in agony...until he fell to the sands with a final, heavy thud.