The yellow-orange grit cut at him as he ran, razors on the wind that split open the gash at his side again and again. Clouds of it pummeled him, almost tearing the tattered crimson cloak off his wide, chitin-covered shoulders. The sands rattled off his armor, blasting thin chunks from it with each new gust, and only his weary use of Chitin Forging kept any of it whole. The wind shifted, and the cloak at his back twisted and snapped, flaring open wide enough to display its emblem. A clenched white gauntlet atop a black shield, all of it superimposed above a golden sunburst on blood-red cloth. He tossed his horns and snorted, expelling jets of sand before tucking his head against the wind and pressing on.

 

 

His Health wasn't getting better, and they had almost found him twice. The sandstorm—furious and loud in a way that he felt in his bones—would rage for hours yet, at least. It was cover only a crazy person would take advantage of; luckily, he'd gone nuts months ago.

 

"Monster! Unbound!"

 

A form materialized out of the storm, a tall figure wearing crimson plate and an identical cloak. A heavy, two-handed sword lifted, ignited, and golden-orange flame lit the sands. The figure didn't shout anything else, only charged in a flash of Agility that his Perception couldn't track. Still, he'd fought the Paladins enough to recognize their opening move—it was always the same. A charge and overhand strike.

 

He dropped his head and took the blow straight to his curved horns. The Paladin gasped.

 

"You noobs never expect that," he growled.

 

And then twisted.

 

The Paladin screamed as the greatsword was wrenched from their grasp, its still flaming blade hurled with a casual jerk of the neck. His hand snapped outward, clamping onto the Paladin's helmet, palming it before yanking them off balance. Slamming them into the shifting dune beneath their feet.

 

"UAGH!"

 

The Paladin hit and flared with golden light, flipping themselves to the side even as his mighty stomp collapsed the sands. The over-armored idiot pulled a side sword, a toothpick compared to their usual blades, and charged again. This time they screamed.

 

Black-green Mana rolled out of his channels, spearing into the sands. Despite the Paladin's Agility, they never made it into melee range.

 

 

A tail made of bone and chitin shot upward from beneath the sands, flashing directly through the Paladin's breastplate. A needle-like tip—as long as a shortsword—stabbed up behind the warrior, covered in blood.

 

"Sick," he said with a queasy swallow. Blood drenched the sands, and the Paladin's Health dropped to nothing.

 

As did their body.

 

He winced, his own wounds bleeding again. There wasn't time. If he found me, then the rest aren't far behind. Hurriedly, he spread his large hands and let more of that black-green Mana gather from his palms. It coiled, tensing with a purpose he hadn't given it yet. He'd learned this trick through a lot of trial and error, but it worked. Usually.

 

 

The Mana shot out and down, injected itself into the Paladin's wounds. Filling them. With agonizing slowness, the corpse twitched and jerked, rising unsteadily to its feet. From within it's dented helmet, its once-Human eyes blazed with necrotic energy.

 

 

"Over here! The creature runs!"

 

Adrenaline pumped into his veins, and he pivoted on the spot. The sound had come from close by, but directions were hard to judge in the storms. Terror overwhelmed his anger, and he fled.

 

"With me, you two!" he hissed. Behind him, the ex-Paladin lumbered after with surprising speed, while beneath their feet a small wave disturbed the sand, following in his wake.

 

Safety. He knew it was nearby. He only had to make it there alive.

 

 

Dad, he whispered to himself. Dad, I-I don't want to die.

 

 

A discordant yowl tore through his senses, and Felix jerked awake. Through the haze of sleep, he could still hear a faint, thrumming melody on the wind. It was gone in a moment, but not before Felix's Affinity could catch impressions of towering sand dunes and a terrible storm.

 

"Was I a Minotaur?" Felix muttered to himself. It had felt real—extremely so—enough that he checked his own Health.

 

 

He sat up completely, rising from the rock-hard bed, silently praising his Body for its lack of aches and pains. Sleeping on stone like this would have twisted his spine to hell back on Earth. It was dark, the room around him lacking windows, and the one door closed so cleverly it made hardly a seam in the stone. He'd found the chamber after a day of exhausting talking and exploration, the former with his friends and new allies, and the latter concerning what remained of the Temple itself. The room he had found was a bedchamber, judging by the empty bed-slab that dominated it, though no other furniture survived the Ages. It had been enough.

 

The bed-slab dwarfed him, but Pit slumbered deeply at his side, sized more like a smallish elephant than any dog he'd had before. Felix scrubbed his face with his hands and smoothed down his wild mane of hair as he swung his feet tot he ground.

 

That Paladin said "Unbound." And a Minotaur...A Minotaur was among the seven other Unbound he knew of; the ones he had been shown in his Omen Path. Felix doubted very much it was a coincidence. Not the way my life is going.

 

"Felix. Good morning."

 

 

All three Skills surged within him, bringing him to his feet while Mana swirled about his fists in clouds of acid and lightning, lighting up his crude bedchamber. A tall, golden-hued figure raised it's mismatched hands in a gesture of peace, and even before it spoke again, Felix let his Skills fade.

 

"Karys. It's early." As he said it, Felix flared his Perception and let it spread outward, beyond his enclosed room and into the Temple itself. His Authority hummed, pushing his awareness even further so that it swept beyond the Temple and into the forest and river and mountains and—he cut it off. Felix blinked. Nothing seemed much changed from the night before.

 

Karys stood before him on new legs—a new Body entirely. Felix still hadn't gotten used to the ancient Paragon walking around in the Archon's old armor, but the ten-foot tall body was modified now with pieces of dark iron they'd salvaged from the battlefield. His entire right arm was a smaller version of the left, darker and thinner, but seemed functional enough. The construct had a self-repair function, but it had been gutted when Felix had cleansed the Profane Sigaldry from its chassis. Karys' expertise with Eidolons was all that kept the thing running. He jerked himself into a stilted bow, though the golden helmet that passed for his head never took its eyes off Felix.

 

"Yes, I apologize for the hour. I know you have spent yourself the last day since claiming this Territory." Karys took a step closer, clattering only slightly. "But you asked that I awaken you before the day had lapsed."

 

"Oh," Felix said. "Right. I did."

 

A day ago, Felix had...acquired, he supposed, the Territory of Nagast. Claiming Authority through a strange array beneath the Temple, he'd taken on a new set of responsibilities as well. Seeing to them, his people as well as his enemies, had taken much of the night and following day. All the while, he was holding off Tempering his Skills, too worried, too concerned that the shadows would contain yet more enemies for him to face.

 

"If you wait much longer, your Skills will begin to Tier up whether you are ready or not," Karys said.

 

"I know," Felix said. He brought up his Status.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

His resource pools had grown tremendously, as had his stats thanks to his new Race and Path. The Skill levels didn't reflect all of his gains, however, as his Bastion of Will was currently clamped tight around a handful that were primed to Tier up to Adept.

 

"Watch over me, please."

 

"Of course," Karys replied.

 

Clenching his jaw against the pain, Felix dove down into his core space. He plunged into a sea of darkness, yet one punctuated by points of brilliant light. His dual cores—a rarity apparently—were shaped like two rings made of liquid flame and lightning, stacked atop one another like a sandwich. The red-gold [Cardinal Beast Core] sat atop the blue-white [Thunderflame Core], each spinning in an opposing direction so that they ground against one another, each revolution producing arcs of potent, multi-colored energy.

 

Between them, where the hole of a ring would be, there was instead an abyss that was darker than the shadows that surrounded them all. It echoed with a hunger that had changed over the months, a willful desire to consume and grow, but one that listened in a way. It can be bargained with, at least. That's a lot better than the Maw.

 

Pushing through both cores and, somehow, through the abyss too was a branching shape that looked like a tree or veins, depending on your perspective. It was colored crimson-black and spread both upward and downward, weaving its way into the two Pillars that supported his cores. Strengthening them with its power. A Vein of Divinity, the System had called it.

 

Surrounding all of this was a field of lights that revolved around the center. Like stars, they shone brightly all on their own, convoluted patterns of light and vibration that represented each Skill Felix had learned. Since his defeat of the Archon, they had attained a heft that was not present before, as if the light and sound had gained mass. It was, according to Karys and his friend Harn, due to the addition of significance to his core space. A solidity of being that came with great power and time, a feature he had stolen outright from the Urges beneath the Temple.

 

And not the only thing he'd taken.

 

Above his cores and Skills, a stormy cloud of Essence boiled and flashed. It resembled nothing so much as those nebulas he'd see in colorized space photos, or sci-fi movies; a tempest of light and shadow, solar winds and crackling, cosmic energy. That, above all else, was what would help him Temper his Skills.

 

Below, another painful pulse of sound and pressure swept through him, originating from one of the closest Skills. His Bastion of Will, which resembled an orb of greens and blues while its pattern shifted and thrummed, barely containing the Skill it held back.

 

Felix stepped back into his body, awareness returning, and let himself stretch. Pit snorted once, before falling quiet again, and Felix was careful not to wake his Companion. The guy's day hadn't been any better than his own, and while his new, bigger form needed less sleep most of the time, eventually they all had to pay the piper. Pit could use a few more hours.

 

So could I, he thought, before banishing it. No time to sleep. Too much to do.

 

"If I do this, I'll be out for hours. What's tomorrow look like?" Felix asked.

 

"You have a delegation from the Henaari here to see you."

 

"Really? That was fast. Wyvora only left...six hours ago."

 

"Mhm. A'zek has remained closed-lipped on the issue, but I believe there are some internal politics at hand."

 

Felix rolled his eyes. Last thing he wanted to deal with was politics of the Henaari. "I'm sure they'll love that we imprisoned three of their Dawnguard."

 

Since Felix had saved them from the Mana well, Ifre and her underlings had been held in a stone-shaped chamber just inside the waterfall Temple, where his people could keep an eye on them. After they had found the wicked dagger in the Archon's chest, it had only taken his Voracious Eye and two seconds of thought to connect them to the Raven and Henaari. They'd attempted to take over his Temple, claim it for the Raven. He was half convinced they'd been told to kill him too. Ifre, however, wasn't talking.

 

"Well, that's a problem that can wait. Nothing else?" he asked. After his dream, Felix felt a sense of danger looming over him. A threat he'd forgotten. "Have we heard from Zara?"

 

"No, and I see no way for her to contact us in such a short amount of time. She was headed in the opposite direction the same time you left, yes?" Felix nodded. "If you had retained the Mark she had placed on you, then perhaps. But the Spirit Tree cleansed that and all the others too." Karys tiled his golden head. "You are stalling."

 

"I can't help but feel there's something we missed. Something important. Zara was securing Haarwatch from the Inquisition, and when I enacted the Mirk Enclosure it should have sealed off access to any Territories outside my...my own." Felix licked his lips and began pacing. He had felt the barrier lock into place, similar to the fog that had once given the Foglands their name, but more powerful by far. Whether that was because of the ancient Nymean array he'd used or because of his Authority, Felix had no idea; what he did know, was that it wasn't just a smoke screen. The Mirk Enclosure physically prevented people from entering his Territory. "It feels like something is watching me over my shoulder. Waiting for my defenses to drop."

 

"There are no threats, none that you or your team has not already defeated. Even your former enemies are recovering, and the Haarguard watch them night and day." Karys heaved a metallic-tinged sigh. "You are strained in Mind and Spirit. You need rest, true rest."

 

"Yeah, well I'll get rest when I'm dead, apparently," Felix said. He blew a short, powerful blast of hair through his nostrils. It was forceful enough that it kicked up dust in his chamber. "Fine. Then I'll begin. You will...still watch over me?"

 

"Of course." He didn't mention that Felix was repeating himself.

 

Felix took another deep breath, flaring Meditation and attempted to steady his thudding heart. He sat down, cross-legged on the floor, and dove into his core space once more.