He floated in gelid darkness, buffeted by currents he could not see. There was no thought, no memory or experience beyond the now. There was no him.

 

 

Then there was. Thoughts and phrases trickled into a space in the dark, a swirling configuration of whispered light and sound. Patterns formed from them, twisting around and through one another, weaving and knotting in the strangest of ways, until the whole of it ignited into riotous song.

 

 

Memory flashed into place. Memory of a yacht, of lightning and a beach. Of forests and fog and monsters. Of a vault hidden in the earth, suspended behind wards and traps enough to kill the greatest of adventurers...and the creature within.

 

A terrible cry echoed into the dark depths. Cold fluid coursed around his patterns, pressing them down, deeper. The far off bellow came again, and again, each time closer. He had no eyes, but he knew he shined brighter than anything else in the depths—a torch in the night, glimmering prey among the waters. Beneath, something moved.

 

 

The thing was rising, a mountain made flesh, with teeth and eyes and in such quantities that all that he was froze as Memories of the vault stormed through his patterns. Of a creature born of blood and hunger and delirious madness. Of—

 

 

 

A Memory—an instinct buried in his bones—surged to the fore, of refutation. Of stark denial of what would not be! A piece of him locked into place, and as it did he felt the patterns of light and sound solidify and rise to a tyrannical crescendo.

 

 

All that he was pulled inward, yanked from vast distances in the deep, until the patterns of his Mind were joined by new points of incredible starlight. Spirit formed, a nebulous curtain around him, a cloak of ephemeral energies that sunk into and expanded outward from his patterns. A split second later, the rest of him rushed close, until a solidity encased limbs he could finally feel, and senses that were more than just transient impressions. His Body flexed and joined in the dancing interplay of Aspects, weaving among his Mind and Spirit as if it had never left.

 

 

The entirety of him gathered, pressed together by sheer, unbroken volition.

 

 

The behemoth rose, a screaming snarl on its mile-wide maw, and he met it.

 

And there was light in the dark.

 

 

Felix jerked awake to the sudden, thunderous sound of splintering wood. His Mind whirled, tossed from nightmare to a sudden drop as the bed he laid upon split, and he fell unceremoniously onto hard, cold tile. Immediately,  he pressed up from the ground, throwing himself back to his feet fast enough that the air made a keening noise in his ears, arms up and ready to fight.

 

Only to find himself utterly alone in a master suite half the size of a football field. What's more, his left hand was partially stuck in a splintering piece of bedframe, with sheets and mattress stuffing still floating down all around him.

 

"Oh," he muttered, more than a little embarrassed. "Glad no one saw that."

 

Felix pulled the wood apart as easily as ripping a thick piece of clay, and disentangled his legs from silken sheets. He was wearing a short sleeved tshirt and gym shorts for some reason, and they seemed particularly odd on his surprisingly muscular frame. His limbs felt weird, like they were too long for his body, and everything around him seemed off in a way Felix couldn't put a finger on. One thing he could see, however, was more concerning.

 

His arms were scaled.

 

The room he found himself in was far finer than any he'd stayed in before, and Felix quickly found an entire wall dominated by a mirror with a golden, scrolled frame. He placed himself in front of it and willed his Garment to remove his shirt. The magical clothing obeyed, and Felix held up his arms in front of him. Black as midnight, the scales covered him from fingertips to mid-bicep, turning from fine, glossy things on his hands, to more rugged and heavier as they extended up past his wrists. Small claws adorned his fingers, nothing as brutal as his usual talons, but very much not Felix's normal hands.

 

"What the hell?" he asked the air. His Sovereign of Flesh wasn't active, he could feel that, and as he inspected himself in the mirror, he was reminded that he'd changed even more than he realized. His feet were tipped with small talons and covered in scales as well, these extending all the way to his mid-thigh.

 

 

The Skill activated easily and the scales vanished completely. Yet the moment he ceased to run the Skill, the scales and claws returned. This...was just who he was now.

 

"Great," he muttered, twisting this way and that. More than the scales, the rest of his Body had undergone some significant remodeling during his Primordial baptism. His shoulders were wider, his limbs longer, and his general proportions were simply bigger. If he had to guess, Felix would have put his new height at six and a half feet tall, easily six or seven inches taller than before. "Not gonna complain about being taller, I guess."

 

He felt a little wobbly—all knees and elbows like a newborn horse—but that was fading fast. Energy pulsed in his center, threading through his veins like rivers of molten lava. Felix's muscles felt denser than ever, and his joints responded so easily to his movements it was uncanny. He'd figured he had a powerful Body before, but this new one was in another league.

 

Felix checked his Status.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

His  could feel the notifications waiting for him, things that must have built up during his time unconscious, paying back the Adept Temper he'd finally earned. He toggled them open.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A glitch like static sizzled through Felix, before everything blinked back into order with a deep chime. System energy roared through his cores, echoing back outward into his Aspects in a cataract of power. Felix gritted his teeth, more than used to the sensation of leveling up. He was blindsided, however by a glut of information that flooded his potent Mind as the increasing weight of Authority pressed itself into the weft of his Spirit. It hurt at little as his Mind started to heat up, a scorching burn as new, Territorial information found pieces of his Mind and drilled into them. Bits of ancillary knowledge floated up, things like tax rates and yield from the crystal mines, but they were fugitive concepts, fading just as quickly as they arrived.

 

The Authority, however, spread itself throughout his Spirit. It joined seamlessly with his extant Authority, a mantle that spread out to fill his giant room to the brim with an invisible, intangible potency.

 

 

 

 

Putting aside the annoyance of that Primordial Slayer Title he'd almost gotten—again—Felix focused on the things he could affect.

 

"Karys? Which should I do?" Felix asked, but the buzzing of his Inheritor's Will was absent. In fact, none of his weapons were anywhere in the large, palatial room and Felix advanced his worry from sleepy confusion to mild concern. Even his vambraces and greaves were gone. Still, he was more than dangerous enough without armor or a blade. If he'd been captured by some Master or something, they'd realize their mistake soon enough.

 

Once he gave it a little thought, the decision before him wasn't so hard to make. He could pick Karys' brain later about other things, but to Felix there was only a single solution.

 

 

 

 

A trickle of more information fed into his Mind, while at the corner of his vision the castle icon of his Authority Screen flashed at him. He toggled it open and quickly navigated to the Maps subsection. There he found two sub categories, one labeled as Nagast and the other as The Leviathan Depths. He selected it. A half-fogged map of the former Expanse expanded before his eyes, with Ahkestria nestled a little north of its middle.

 

"Wow, that's...that's a lot," he said. "Almost as big as the Foglands...and its mostly underwater now."

 

That would affect his Beacon placement a great deal. The Beacons were crystalline lampposts that allowed people in his Stronghold to immediately store and retrieve supplies from his Storage Facility, and it was the precise reason he'd chosen it over one of his Crafting Halls. The benefits of increased production speeds wasn't worth losing more resources during crafting, not for him. Access to his Storage Facility from multiple Territories away? That would prove useful, for many reasons.

 

Thunder rattled the window casements, and for the first time Felix realized the light in the room had faded to a dull, dim gray. He could still see perfectly, but if the lighting were to be believed, night was soon to set. He strode to one of the many tall windows and peered out onto lush, grassy grounds and thick with trees, each heavy with fruits and nuts. Beyond them, through the haze of driving rain, were tall walls made of bright orange stone. Even that color was leached, faded beneath the crackle and gloom of the storm above their heads.

 

"Maybe I'll wait on placing the Beacon, for now." Felix needed to figure out where he was, and why he was there. Last he knew, he had been in the Tomb when the exhaustion of his Adept Temper had knocked him out cold. Now his Map told him he was in Ahkestria again...and the open sky meant he was at the top, in the Risen Ward. "Who's mansion is this?"

 

The room gave him little in the way of clues, other than it was someone obscenely rich. That left the Matrons, Masters, or one of those merchant lords he'd heard about. And seeing how he hadn't been chained up or collared, Felix was leaning toward his allies having somehow found him. With a minor effort of Will and Mana, his Garment shifted into a full-sleeve blue tunic, black, waist-length jacket, and dark trousers ending at calf-height leather boots.

 

There were three exits from the chamber, one leading to a huge closet, another to a long, tiled hall and smelling of water and soaps, and a third that was the most ornate of them all. That one he eased open, and found a smaller antechamber, filled with sumptuous, well-padded couches and thick rugs. A fire burned merrily in a fireplace bigger than Felix, and all along the walls were framed oil paintings depicting bald, scowling men and severe-looking women. Atop one of the long couches and neatly filling it up, was a mass of feathers and fur that he recognized.

 

Pit, Felix sent with a smile. The tenku snorted, clearly asleep, and Felix's smile grew before it froze. His friend was different than before, smaller and sleeker by a great deal. The tenku had always resembled a fox and raven mixed together, but now the black of his feathers and russet of his fur seemed to radiate a vibrancy Felix had never seen before. He was naked, without his barding or saddlebags, and Felix could easily perceive small flashes of lightning coursing down his sides and pinions. In fact, his wings were changed too, covered with a number of crimson feathers on the interior while his outer flight feathers were all a brilliant cyan. The sparks of electricity seemed to congregate on those far more than the rest.

 

The shape of Pit's head and sleek, glossy black reminded Felix of Lord Wonderment. The raven-like Korvaa from the Void. You've changed a lot since then, he sent quietly. We both have.

 

A second, daintier snort caught Felix's attention, and he belatedly realized there was another person in attendance. Vess sat only a couple chairs away, covered in a thick blanket with her head propped up on a chair. Her mouth was open as she lightly snored and her dark brown hair was mussed, but even so she was beautiful. The firelight played off her dark skin, shining off a number of metal objects she cradled loosely against her chair. Weapons. His weapons.

 

“She’s been waiting here all night.”

 

"AH!" Felix shouted and skipped backward. He hadn't heard anyone else come in, and when he looked, Felix only found Pit sitting up and staring at him with his big golden eyes. "Pit? Who said that?"

 

"I did," Pit said in a high tenor. He sounded like a teenage boy, of all things, just without the cracking tone.

 

"Wha—you can talk?" Felix asked. This was blowing his mind, and when the back of his knees hit a chair, he sat down happily. "Since when?"

 

Pit lifted a wing, letting lightning crackle impressively along its length. “My Evolution. A'zek said it could affect many things about me...and then you ripped apart a Primordial and shoved it through us.”

 

Felix paused. He did do that didn’t he? “But you're okay? It didn't hurt your or anything, right?"

 

Pit trilled, his version of a laugh, same as it always was. "I'm fine. You worry too much."

 

"This is weird," Felix said, before lifting his hands to cut off Pit's frown. "Awesome for sure, don't get me wrong. I know we could talk before, but doing it out loud feels a little nuts."

 

"It was...odd for me, too. Everyone reacted about the same as you when they found out." Pit trilled again, pleased. "The Fiend's Claw even started bowing to me. That was pretty nice."

 

Felix frowned. The Fiend's Claw was his personal militia of sorts, and they had a distinct problem with hero worship. Still, it was hard to blame them; Pit was hard not to like. "What else changed in your evolution?”

 

"Take a look," Pit said and flexed a wing. A series of blue boxes rapidly appeared in front of Felix's face, each one more wild than the last.

 

"Whoa."