Words fly upon wind,
Broken song made whole again,
The Fiend is rising.

-Unknown

Small brown birds crowded among winter bare branches, their tiny eyes as bright as their plumage was dull. Diffuse, pallid light spread over everything, blanketing the forest in a hush that even the birds respected. Not a single chirp escaped them, though they shifted on tiny feet as they bore quiet witness to the fall of thick, silent snow.

Felix could feel them there, little sparks of life and blood Mana coiled around threads of air and shadow. With his Manasight, he picked those pieces apart just as he did the thick trunk of green-gold and dusty brown that sat at the heart of the trees beneath them. Around him, more beasts filled the still forest, far more than he would have ever guessed back on Earth. There was the fast beating heart of the hare two hundred yards away, hiding from the snowy fox that stalked it. The slumbering Glitterhogs beneath a low mound, and the family of Mana Voles atop a still-living log.

There was also the unmistakable tread of metal feet.

He made quite the target, standing at a bit over six and a half feet tall and layered with lean muscle. He was all but naked, his chest and arms as bare as his feet, and only a thick pair of leather pants maintained his modesty. Black scales covered his arms and legs, but his taloned hands were empty. Muscles bunched beneath pale skin as he shifted his stance, tracking the sound of metal even as it slowly circled him.

They’re behind you now, chirruped a voice in his head. 

I’m aware, Pit.

There were no other sounds than that single set of footfalls, and even those slipped across Felix’s ears as if greased. Felix pressed himself, letting sound and taste and touch swirl around him in a zone entirely too wide to deny. Nothing but the steps called out to him…and he distrusted that immensely.

They’re going to attack from two sides, Pit said.

I can handle this myself, bud.

Abruptly, snow crunched and a tree trunk cracked, a staccato report louder than a cannon blast. Metal shrieked through the air, moving so fast it drove the wind before it in a series of hazy ripples. Felix twisted and snapped his hands out, trapping the hafts of twin axes between his dark talons. Silver flame gushed, rolling off his midnight scales without effect as red paint oozed from their edges.

“Really, Harn,” Felix said, a touch annoyed. “You were so loud.”

The man holding the axes wore a full suit of platemail, including a frog’s mouth helmet, and he barked an echoing laugh. “That was the point, kid.”

Felix’s Perception flared and his reflexes took over. He rolled to the left, releasing Harn’s axes while behind him came the unleashed fury of a dozen suddenly-unmuffled shouts. Steel and ice and lightning coursed through the space Felix had only just occupied, ripping apart the snow and earth in a fountain of debris. Felix danced backward, spotting the Legionnaires from between nearby trees. They flinched when they met his gaze.

Someone’s hiding them. Felix’s attention caught on something, just beyond the tree-line. He grinned. How rude of them.

More Skills rained down on him, but Felix flexed his legs, digging his clawed feet into the earth before vanishing entirely.

“He’s gone!”

“He’s using Stealth!”

“He can’t! He said no Skills!”

Felix flashed through the forest, faster than any of them could track. He knew it by the way they spun, all of them attempting to look in a different direction. Yet they moved as if in molasses, whether they were cloaked Henaari, armored Legionnaires, or bulky Yttin warriors. None of them could match Felix’s speed.

His unarmed blows were soft but precise, and none escaped until the last fell into an unconscious heap. Nonlethal takedowns had been the smallest of what Felix had learned these past few months, but perhaps the most useful. As the last Legionnaire buckled beneath his hand, Felix scanned the forest, now gone silent again. He still hadn’t found the mage that was muffling the soldiers.

“Third Talon down. Who’s next?” he asked, waving away notifications of their defeat.

“Me!”

A blackened-green hammerblow dropped from the sky like a meteorite, missing Felix by the barest of margins as he skidded backward through the snow. Beefhammer, all seven feet of Minotaur, stomped forward to claim the space Felix had ceded. His body, more than twice as wide as Felix’s own, was clouded by a haze of frost that clung to his icy armor.

“Getting faster, Beef,” Felix said with a wide smile. His teeth were sharp, and his eyes blazed sapphire. “Not fast enough, though.”

“Keratin—!”

Felix didn’t let him finish, launching a sharp jab into his armored chest as chitinous spikes thrust from the earth. His scaled fist shattered them and blasted into Beef’s icy armor hard enough to toss the Minotaur back several feet. He stomped forward, eager to bring Beef down, but was met instead by a deluge of crystals the size of daggers.

“Gah!” He threw up his forearm, letting the bulk of them shatter against his skin. “Hey!”

“Back away, Felix Nevarre,” Hallow demanded in her echoey voice. She stood over four feet tall now, a bundle of vaguely humanoid rocks and crystal, with small blackened green gemstones dotting her face like eyes. “The next will be aimed at your neck.”

Felix set himself, ignoring the surge of dull pain from the sigaldry at his feet. Despite their blows and Skills, a glowing array persisted all around them, hidden just below the snow, slowly pulsing in time with the stone disc at his waist.

Beef stood from the ground, dirt and ice cascading from his shoulders, glowering from beneath the red-gold glow of his horned helmet. “Hey, that was fast, man. You said no Skills.”

“And I meant it. That’d defeat the purpose of this.” Felix lifted his legs, showing the teen Minotaur and Homunculus his scaled and clawed feet. Like his hands, they had been permanently changed into something a bit more…ferocious. “I’m staying in contact with my array.”

The lack of shoes was on purpose—his whole attire was—but bare feet were needed to make the entire setup function. Lines of orange, blue, and red-gold glimmered in complex, meaningful patterns that were echoed by the array key that hung from his belt. Each time his feet came down, the key lit up and those lines pulled at him, dragging warmth from his bones and replacing it with a bitter chill. It was draining his Mana and Stamina, which in turn was limiting his Skill use. He could have used some of his Skills if he wanted to…but this was training, after all. Felix took a breath, centering himself as he let the siphon array work its magic on him. 

“So no Skills,” Beef repeated.

“None,” Felix confirmed, before lifting his hand and beckoning them both. “Now, I don’t have all day. Again. And don’t hold back.”

Beef grinned. “You asked for it. Geir? Let’s give him hell.”

“Aye.”

As if from between frozen gusts of wind, Frost Giants emerged, ranging in height from ten to fifteen feet, and silent as the moons that currently climbed the horizon. Weapons and armor hammered out of brutal ice and steel glimmered in the diffuse winter light, and their eager breath filled the air with a ragged fog. Felix rolled his shoulders as they stepped forward, each footfall louder than the last as whatever spell had silenced them faded, until the cacophony of crunching snow filled the field.

“C’mon then,” Felix laughed. “Fight me!”

Geir and his fellow giants roared, spears and axes and clubs lifted high, as ice spiraled outward from them all. Felix burst forward, tearing furrows in the earth as he slipped between Beef and Hallow, and smashed headlong into the Frost Giants’ charge. Ice met flesh before shattering into prismatic shards that blasted back toward the giants even as an axehead descended on Felix’s form. Flaring his Agility, he sidestepped the blow, letting it pass mere inches from his left shoulder and delivering a brutal palm strike to the haft. Steel snapped, and the first Frost Giant had only time to widen his eyes before Felix’s second strike took him in the jaw.

You Have Defeated Egill, A Risi Warrior!XP Earned!

Felix flowed through them all, kicking apart their icy workings before they could truly shape into a solid defense and dropping the giants low with a single punch a piece. Breastplates buckled as readily as their knees, which was a good thing, as Felix didn’t have the Stamina needed to keep moving that fast for an extended period of time. Already his steps were dragging, his motions slightly more stilted, and he grit his teeth as the last of the giants fell.

Still not used to this. Gotta go slower. More precision, less power.

Crystalline daggers pummeled into his side. They broke into pieces against his incredibly tough Body, but it still didn’t feel great, and Felix slapped the last few out of the air. “Those are getting sharper.”

Hallow was strafing around him, her chunky stone legs plowing through the deep snow as her eyes glowed green. She didn’t answer. Instead, she swung an arm and a dozen more faceted daggers hurled in Felix’s direction. He dodged them easily, and walked right into the path of a raging Minotaur.

“Relentless Charge!”

Felix knew the Skill well; it propelled Beef from a standstill to a meteoric collision in an instant, and there was very little most people could do against that much mass. Felix, however, was not most people—as Beef appeared, head down and horns angled toward him, Felix burned his Stamina and flared his Agility once more to reach out and seize the teen. Black scaled hands gripped orichalcum coated horns, and heaved.

“WHoOAAHHHH—!”

Beef had barely a moment to scream as his momentum was used against him. Felix grasped and lifted, spinning at the same time as he redirected the force of Beef’s charge and sent the Mintoaur flying through the air. Twenty, thirty, forty feet he soared, bashing through tree after tree in a detonation of branch and bark.

“Michael!” Hallow cried out, rushing to him and ignoring Felix entirely. He let her go; she’d be able to administer aid to the kid in the off-chance Felix had actually managed to hurt him.

Felix flexed his hands, checking his arms and torso for wounds he might have missed, but he remained unharmed. His Health regen was basically nil, same as his Stamina, but hurting him was far harder than exhausting him. Still, red paint tagged his arms and sides—small dots from each of Hallow’s daggers to mark where he’d been hit. Based on the scoring system Felix had designed, each bit of paint on him was a point in the attacker’s favor, representing bringing down his Health by a portion. With twelve thousand points of Health the chances of them taking him down that way were incredibly low, however, so he had designated two places as “instant kills”: his head and his heart. If one of them managed to land a strike there, it was over.

If they can get me tired enough, that might even be possible. Felix felt a flutter of nervousness in his belly, and he grinned. This is fun.

Without warning, the meadow around him flared with green-gold radiance. From below, wooden walls sprang up, carved and detailed as if by expert craftsmen yet conjured in an instant, until a veritable maze of structures surrounded him. Felix turned slowly, taking in as much as he could as walls cut his lines of sight and angled roofs rose higher, dimming the already weak winter sunlight.

“Henaari,” he breathed. “Clever.”

The first volley of arrows smashed into his back, driving him forward a half step before Felix found his footing. Skills laced them, fire and shadow imparting a sizzling snap onto his unprotected skin while red paint daubed his spine. Felix cursed, annoyed at being caught flatfooted, and blurred into motion.

The second volley did not reach him.

Walls shattered before his approach, just as the ice before, and Felix used it to stymie the Dawnwalkers’ shots as well as bludgeon those unfortunate to be hiding in his path. Like a speeding train, Felix barreled through the maze of crafted halls, bashing into Henaari spear warriors without pausing to count them all. His Stamina steadily reduced as he ran, each powerful pump of his legs or calculated punch dwindling his finite resources, but keeping track of it all was actively hindering Felix’s fight. He got his belly marked with a slash of paint twice before he stopped gauging his Stamina bar and started letting loose.

It took less than ten seconds to hunt each of the Henaari down and incapacitate them.

“You’re a damn menace, kid,” Harn said, crunching across the scattered wooden debris. His axes burned with a steady flame, silver light licking across the man’s armored knuckles. “I’m impressed. Weaving those Pillars really made a difference.”

“You’ve all improved too.” Felix nodded at the enemies he could hear groaning into the snow all around them. “I didn't expect to get hit this much.”

Harn tilted his head, the motion somewhat alien with his slitted full helm covering his features. “True enough. That’s more red on you than I’ve ever seen.” Harn idly twirled his axes. “Makes me proud.”

“Me too—” Felix started to say, before finding Harn far closer, far faster than he expected. 

“Wrath of the Twin Fangs!”

Felix blocked the first hit, but the second scored a line of red across Felix’s bicep, painting his skin with more than just pigment as blood splashed outward. Silver flames burned at him, singeing his normal skin but Felix slapped the weapons away with a scaled hand. They were nothing to his changed flesh, after all.

They two split apart, Felix sliding several paces while Harn skipped back, clearly thrown by Felix’s slap. “Oho! Got ya that time!”

“Distracting me with sentiment, now?” Felix laughed. “You're getting tricky in your old age.”

“Old? I’m a hatchlin’ compared to those old monsters you’ll have to face. Just tryin’ to keep you on your toes, son.” Harn set himself. “Seems like it's working.”

Felix frowned, but couldn’t ignore the truth of Harn’s words. He tried to ignore the burning in his bicep, but the way it lingered was unusual for him. He had tons of resistance to pain, but the warm wetness and knowledge of an open wound was…troubling.

Watch out.

A sword the size of a small wardrobe bashed into the ground just behind Felix, scattering snow in a powdery explosion that he neatly dodge.

Pit…

I’m helping!

“You were to hold him in place, Kastos,” Darius said, straightening. He hauled back and freed his huge blade from its foot-deep rut before resting it casually on his shoulder. “Not give him a pithy warning.”

“Maybe I didn’t want you to get the points, hmm?” Harn gave one of his axes a lazy twirl, trailing that silver flame behind it like a comet. “You said we’d get double the points if we took you down without help, right?”

Felix grinned. “If.”

Harn laughed, rough and loud. “I’m eager to see these prizes. I heard we raided a few Domains.”

Darius scowled, his huge sword gaining a sudden, ethereal glow. “I care little for prizes. I am here to challenge you, Felix. Be prepared.”

They came at him like a whirlwind of steel and flame. Their Skills flew in violent bursts upon the forest floor, crescent air blades and silver flame chasing after Felix’s darting form. Harn and Darius were both Adepts—the latter almost ready to advance to Master Tier—and they had might to spare. Trees were sliced apart, shattered, and burned as Felix kept ahead of their strikes. He was relying entirely on his stats and Temper, deflecting blows that came too close to him with his bare hands and the terrain. Try as they might, they could not touch him.

“C’mon!” Felix shouted. He slipped between the savage net of strikes Darius was weaving, batting aside the crescents of white-green air Mana with the flat of his hand. His Stamina was plummeting like a rock, but he had enough for this. “Hit me!”

Darius screamed, his Spirit reflecting the frustrated rage on his face. A song of annoyance danced upon the air. “Wind Drake's Dive!”

All at once, the air tightened and dropped, like a hammer from the sky. Felix had no time to avoid it—in fact he realized he would have to either take the hit…or oppose it directly. He stood beneath the hammer of air Mana and reared back with a single fist.

The air exploded.

Harn and Darius were thrown back, the snow and dirt hurled into the air, as all around them the dense trees were hit with razor-sharp near-invisible shrapnel. When the powder and frozen loam settled, Felix stood alone in the field, clenched fist upraised and his eyes blazing with a sapphire light. Victorious.

“Bonds of Dominion! Tooth and Claw!”

Purple-white chains manifested all around Felix, snaking around his limbs in an instant before drawing taut, and exposing his heaving chest to the blades of a length of true chain. He flexed his Will but felt a frisson of alarm as her Skill pushed back at him, far harder than he expected. As if in response to the unspoken threat, something unfurled inside of him. A danger that Felix hadn’t seen in months.

A fist, clawed and scaled, rose up from within Felix’s core space. It sizzled with red-gold flame and sparked with blue-white lightning, yet its form was dominated by a vivid purple glow that seemed to be pulled from the edges of his Hunger itself.

No! Back! He shoved the power away, Willing it to dissipate before it could unleash itself. Not here!

As if possessed of its own Mind, the enormous, clenched fist struggled upward against Felix’s Will. It pressed toward his channels, seeking egress in a way that scared him far more than some minor binding. Waves of power flowed from the fist like a tsunami, relentless and primal. 

Enough!

Felix’s Will finally scattered the fist, rendering it into motes of ephemeral light that surged out into his core space. His Will carried onward, bashing against the binding that dared to hold him and blasting it to pieces—but not before he felt a sharp tug against his skin.

Right across his chest.

“Aw, damn it,” he hissed through panting breaths. He bent forward, resting his hands on his knees before raising a finger to his chest and dragging it through the paint. “You got me.”

“Instant kill!” Evie crowed, dropping from a nearby tree. It was leaning drunkenly, having been completely severed at its base after Darius’ deflected attack, and her leap caused it to topple noisily to the forest floor. Brown birds scattered, streaming into the air, but she didn’t pay them any mind. “I win!”

Felix rubbed the paint between his fingers, thinking. He wasn’t mad just…surprised. “Were you waiting in the tree the whole time?”

“The whole time.” Evie stretched, hands pressed to her lower back. “You can’t imagine how many knots I’ve got now. You guys took forever and went all over the place.”

“Evie. Of course you’d snake the point,” Harn said, taking off his helmet and exposing his scarred and battered face. He was beaming. “Even managed to hold him for a heartbeat. That’s some impressive movement, kid.”

“It truly was,” Darius agreed. “How did you stop him?”

“Binding Skill. Locks folks down real quick while I hit ‘em.” Evie shrugged. “Though I think it was mostly cuz I have a really long weapon. Harder to avoid, even for freaks of nature like Felix.”

Felix rolled his eyes at that and, while they continued to chat, busied himself with the array key at his waist. He had no need to keep it running anymore. With a brief coupling of his Willpower and Intent he cut off his connection to the thing, which in turn sent out a sizzling pulse of red-gold energy across the snow. The array was deactivated, and Felix immediately felt his inner reserves begin to refill.

Where was my warning about Evie? he asked Pit.

She hadn’t moved since you started the fight. I thought you knew.

Felix had sensed her up there, but in the back and forth between Harn and Darius, he’d honestly put her out of his mind. He’d been too preoccupied with the literal army he was fending off. That Skill of hers…Bonds of Dominion. It interacted strangely with me. And…that. We need to talk to her.

You talk to her, Pit chirruped, and his voice started to fade. I’m sleepy.

Felix let him go, likely returning to his own core to rest. Instinctively, he checked his Companion’s Status Conditions again.

Status Condition: Curse of Flame

Duration: Permanent

Curse of Flame

When this Masterwork weapon deals an injury, the curse born by its blade ensures that said injury is permanent. The curse of flame is to burn, forever.

He had to stop himself from grinding his teeth. Too much activity took a lot out of Pit, though he’d gotten a lot better than before. Felix tried his best not to dwell on it, but it was hard. There were downsides to sharing his every thought and emotion with a Companion.

“Alright. What do you want?” he said, distracting himself and clapping his hands to get Evie’s attention. Her, Harn, and Darius turned to him, and the same look of discomfort crossed all their faces. “What?”

“It’s just weird,” Evie said. “Seeing a man’s clothes crawl around him like a snake.”

Felix glanced down. “Oh.” His Garment, reacting to his thoughts and renewed glut of Mana, had reconstituted into a tunic and thick, woolen jacket. “You’ve all seen that before.”

“Just unsettling, is all,” Harn said with a shrug. “But you were talking about prizes, eh? What was the reward for hitting him once?”

“Free reign in the Storage Facility,” Evie said, an eager gleam in her eyes. “I heard you found some interesting items in that Domain near Shelim.”

Felix sighed. “Fair’s fair. Go talk to Karys about letting you in. You can take one thing. Just…don’t make a mess, Evie. ”

The woman raised hand to her chest, a pantomime of shock writ large across her face. “I would never!”

“Get outta here.” Felix shooed her away, and she gave him a mocking curtsy in her leather armor before leaping back up into the trees. “Beef?”

“Ungh, yeah yeah. I’m up.”

Felix had heard the Minotaur trudging toward them well before he came into view. He looked worn but he wasn’t limping or bleeding—Felix’s Voracious Eye confirmed he was fine, just bruised. Hallow was at his side, lumpy hands lifted as if to catch the far larger Unbound. “Can you rouse the rest of these folks and get them back to the Stronhold?”

Beef stretched his lower back and something popped. “Yeah. I got it. Dang dude, you hit me hard. How many trees did I go through?”

“Five,” Hallow answered.

“Tch, man.” Beef turned and started stumping toward the fallen Henaari and Frost Giants.

Felix watched them go with a rueful smile. “Now, unless you two want to follow me to a meeting with Zara, you’d best get back to your normal duties.”

Harn shrugged, as if either option didn’t bother him much, but Darius didn’t move. He sheathed his ridiculous sword behind his back and put his hands on his hips. “We have not trained your Sword Forms in days, Felix. I had thought you would ask that of us, instead of this…game.”

“It wasn’t a game. I needed to test my training array and you’re the best fighters here.” Felix shrugged. “Made sense to me.”

“Then why not use a sword. We could have achieved two objectives at once.”

“Man’s got a point,” Harn agreed.

“I won’t always have a sword on hand…and honestly, with my stats I don’t need to focus on technique. Not against anyone here, at least.” Felix winced. He didn’t like how arrogant that sounded, but Darius and Harn just bobbed their heads in agreement. “Erm. I need to know how to face opponents with superior techniques and of a superior Tier, but the latter are in short supply.” Felix gestured to the array key at his waist. “This training array is meant to make fighting a lot harder for me. Level the playing field, so I don’t dominate with sheer stats. I can’t exactly go out and find something in my weight class that wants to have a friendly spar.”

Darius considered him a moment longer before nodding. “Hm. I understand.” Without another word, the man walked off.

For his part, Harn just chucked Felix on the shoulder. The sound of his steel gauntlet on Felix’s shoulder was like he’d punched a rock. “Whenever you want me to come and try to kick your ass, you just holler, yeah?”

“Will do. I’ve some tweaks to make to the array, plus some alchemical ideas to try. Are you going back to the Forge?”

“I am. My apprentices have been workin’ on some side projects, and I need to check them before we try and complete their Quests.” Harn sighed happily, looking at the blasted landscape around them. “It was good gettin’ out here and doin’ some damage. A nice break from bein’ Forgemaster and all the…everythin’ that requires.”

“Yeah. I get it.” Felix had a lot on his plate too. “When I get my next version working, I’ll come find you, man.”

“See that you do, kid.”

Harn followed after Darius, jogging slightly to catch up with the far taller man. Felix watched them go, then turned his attention to the trampled forest. He checked his Mana, finding it just about full already.

“Not gonna leave things like this.” He focused, plucking at the Skills that revolved within his chest. “Green Shaping.”

Mana spun out of his core, a great swath of it that looped through his channels, out of the Mana Gate in his feet, and into the earth itself. The Skill, sounded by his Affinity and shaped by his Intent, sang of green-gold life and life answered. The broken boles and shattered trunks of those trees closest to him bloomed with sudden roots, and the thick tendrils wound around their open wounds like patchwork bandages.

His Manasight traced the fading core of life Mana in each tree, and tracked them as he pumped more Mana into them. Felix had been practicing with his shaping Skills a whole lot these past three months, but this wasn’t something he’d perfected. It was a bit sloppy and certainly didn’t look great, but it worked. Life Mana spread, hitting more and more trees in an ever widening circle, until all of the trees that his spar had knocked down were replanted and alive.

Green Shaping is level 83!

There. Felix took a steadying breath and let his Mana recover. He’d spent a lot, and just because it regenerated fast didn’t mean it wasn’t tiring to use, especially when the process was so complicated. Ugly as hell, but it’ll do.

“Let’s go see what Zara wants, Pit.”

Distantly, he heard a soft, agreeable chirp.