Unbound

Congratulations!

You Have Absorbed The Essence of [Clarion]!

The stars froze.

They fell.

Great streaks of blue, green, and crimson light dropped from the sky—a rainfall of incandescent starlight. They pelted the copper-domed palace, tearing holes through its shrouded structure where they didn’t ricochet like oil upon a heated pan. Yet the greater portion struck him.

Blast after blast, streak after streak, hurtled into Felix, each bolt from the purpled dark a tonic of power that his flesh drank up like parched earth. Heavenly comets and congealing nebulae swirled around him—through him—until he was suffused with a brimming radiance.

With that illumination…came the song.

Harmony and Dissonance rang out within him, a rousing melody and counter-melody that drew up hidden depths within him as Astrum Ascendance ignited within his chest. The cold flame of amplification burned bright, rolling across his shoulders and down his arms until Felix's hands were pillars of cold flame, distant like the stars themselves.

The night sky opened up before him, even as it fell atop his chest. A distant starfire sang in the dark, a blazing heat surrounded by infinite cold—and something else. A presence…watching from beyond the dark. Felix's feet left the copper dome, his body lifted by a swell of power and music, held aloft upon a raging gale of Harmonics, while Dissonance tore at his clothes and flesh like iron teeth.

That presence stared at him without eyes, though Felix felt that if he met them, he would recognize them. The dark burned blue and white, as explosion after explosion rioted through his heart and Felix became aware of his Body, already in the process of Tempering as it clashed against his Spirit, now swelling with [Clarion] power.

It felt different than before. Master Tier had been an order of magnitude stranger than any previous, and Grandmaster felt stranger still.

Felix gritted his teeth, fighting down the chaos that raged within him. Screams tore at his ears, and only when warm blood rushed from them did he recognize his own voice. His Pillars chimed, their powerful foundation holding him steady against the storm of light, even as it tried to carry him off into the cold dark.

All at once, the light faded.

It was done.

The last of the starfire sank into his glowing chest, and he dropped, hands and knees on the ground, the copper dome deforming beneath his weight. He took a breath, and looked back up. n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

The night sky was empty, but he gleamed like the sun.

Two Spirit Skills down. Magus of the Grand Design had Tempered back in his fight with Siva. He only had one remaining.

Let's fucking go.

Adamant Discord is level 125!

…

Adamant Discord is level 137!

Grandmaster Tier!

You Gain:

+350 AFI

+300 INE

+...

Divine Essence Detected During Formation!

[Essence Of Covetous Fingers]

ERROR!

Essence Has Been Altered!

Do You Wish To Restore Its True Nature?

Y/N

A different Essence, and another error. Felix licked his lips. Siva's influence warped them all. It makes sense that her significance will restore them. 𝙧�

Felix selected yes.

Unite the Lost roused within him once more, activated by the System as it rolled through his chest. Significance poured out from him, snatched away from his center, where it had only just begun to settle. The power that he'd stolen from Siva returned to wash away the vile film that coated the essence that boiled at the edge of his Skill.

Layers peeled within his Spirit, and he became distinctly aware of Unite the Lost struggling against the Divine alterations. It surged within him, the pattern of the Skill flexing and shifting as pattern met power—it burgeoned beneath that Herculean effort, expanding even as it changed beneath Felix’s eyes. A certainty wriggled within his heart as the Skill hovered at level 99, teetering on the cusp of something greater.

Divinity Has Been Shed!

True Nature Restored!

All resistance vanished. Felix’s ears popped, and a new savage wind swept across the empty night.

Primordial Essence Detected During Formation!

[Essence Of Tidal Sovereignty]

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Broken Path and Fatebreaker Titles Found!

Grandmaster Tier Bonus Added!

Primordial Nature Resonates With [Essence of Tidal Sovereignty]!

Unbound Nature Resonates With [Essence of Tidal Sovereignty]!

Calculating Effects…

Choose A Feature:

Doldrums - Still Waters Run Deep

Riptide - Rapid Water Will Rise

Maelstrom - Deep Water Will Devour

The night brightened so suddenly that Felix had to squint his eyes before reassessing his surroundings. The copper dome and the dark, rambling ruin of the mysterious palace were gone, replaced instead by a vast expanse of water.

He stood atop a flat ocean, waveless and serene. It was a liquid mirror, reflecting nothing but the leaden skies above. Felix twisted, looking in all directions, but the world was a flat plain of featureless water across a boundless horizon. He touched his chest, where a memory of pain and bright, cold fire still echoed across his nerve endings. He was whole and untouched.

Doldrums, whispered that soundless voice. Still Waters Run Deep.

Out of the corner of his eye, Felix saw movement. He peered down, squinting against the glare of the omnipresent sun. As his eyes focused beyond his own muted reflection, he beheld the green-gray depths. Sunlight filtered through it in hazy beams lit by flecks of detritus and the near-invisible trails of hidden currents.

Unnerving.

There was movement again, this time off to the side, where a shape wriggled past his view. A broad back and spined fin too wide to be seen in full before it dove deeper. Another swam through a sunbeam, its dozen fins sweeping at the water as its too-long body twisted, and the pallid, milky expanse of an eye blinked up at him.

Felix swallowed and stepped back, while understanding flowed through him like a cold stream. Doldrums was a simple vision, if terrifying. There was a deceptive calm all around him, but danger lurked below, in the hidden depths.

A roar caught his ear, loud enough to be an explosion, and Felix spun, turning toward the source to see the flat horizon now shifted, disturbed, into an undulating wave that surged from the east.

Riptide, said the voice. Rapid Water Will Rise.

Felix ran. The surface of the water actively fought against him, pulling at his feet and forcing him to flare his Strength and Agility to their maximum. Water exploded around him, ripped to either side in a massive wake as he blurred across the sea.

It wasn’t enough.

The wave slammed into his back, the white-capped surf hurling him forward, end over end. Things flashed by him, serpentine, clawed, pale-eyed, and wriggling. Felix fought for breath, swimming for the surface in a confusing tangle of flesh and sea. He shot out into white rapids that hurtled him through standing rocks that had not been there only moments before. Felix sucked in a tight breath. The rocks thrust up from the sea as if they were the blades of a hundred swords, each standing hundreds of feet high, with the bladed edges turned toward him. The waves broke upon them, releasing arcing jets of spume that recombined into churning rapids.

He kicked hard to the side, evading the first and the second sword, but then the chaotic pull was too much for even his Strength. Too close to evade the other stones, he swam into the current, twisting past another handful of obstacles with bare inches to spare.

He was not the only one.

A many-legged creature snared him, grabbing at his legs and pulling Felix down below the surface. It twisted around him, scale and claw and slimy maw pressing against his legs and arms, fouling his mobility as the wild currents smashed them into the broad side of stone. Breath driven from his lungs in great bubbling gasps, Felix slashed outward, his claws tearing open cold flesh wherever he could reach. Yet he couldn't tell where the thing ended or began, whether it was one creature or many, only that he tore it apart, piece by piece, as the waves bore them down upon stone blades.

He screamed, shoving himself through the water and dragging the monstrous creature along with him.

"I'm too small to cut you up," he bellowed as he surfaced. "But this isn't!”

He twisted, bringing the creature's body around within his clasped legs and dashing it against the stone sword. It split in two and released a gurgling, sonorous cry that made his head swim as he tumbled free of the rock.

He fetched up against another standing stone and dug his claws into the side, climbing up its slick edge. From there, he watched the creatures thrash in the water, bereft of their target. A bright flood of red-gold ichor tinted the waves, and Felix bellowed in primal triumph. More and more of them met their doom upon the rocks, while the others gave up and dove deep below.

Felix understood. Riptide was a Feature fraught with peril. Yet, from that deadly dance came exultation. He grinned, though his heart pounded in his chest. He felt alive.

Until the stone broke beneath him.

He plunged back into the water, the current driving him downward faster than ever before. The serpentine monstrosities were driven away and he swirled inward, bobbing back toward the surface as the ocean split before him. It was no longer white-capped rapids, but a twisting current that roared into the sky. A massive hole opened up, large enough to swallow dozens of ships all at once: a whirlpool, churning the grey-green water into a black abyss.

Maelstrom - Deep Water Will Devour.

Creatures far larger than before lunged from the spinning sides of it, thrashing outward with hooked tendrils and finned claws. He dove away from them, swimming with the current to speed past before kicking backward toward the edge of the whirlpool.

He failed. Its pull could not be denied.

The creatures came for him, unmoored by the current themselves as they were pulled ever deeper. A many-headed monstrosity briefly surfaced as it was tugged toward the dark center of the maelstrom. And there, where the thundering waves churned, a monstrous maw at least a dozen times larger snapped over the beast. Eyes of electric blue met Felix’s through the thin layer of water as its black scales shone with a midnight purple light. It screeched, a buzzing tear against Felix's eardrums, as red-gold radiance blossomed from between its teeth and its maw stretched wide.

Felix kicked harder, flaring his Strength and Agility with all of his Might as he fought against the maelstrom's pull. Still, he could not escape entirely. Those blue eyes tracked him with an unnatural intensity and Felix gasped for air, more than water pressing against his chest as he tried to formulate a plan—to even understand what he was looking at.

The maw loomed ever closer, each snap like the crash of a landslide.

Deep in his bones, Felix knew the way out. He had to make a choice. Quickly.

Features! Um—the Doldrums were too much like a lie. He paddled, kicking frantically against the current. It was stasis, and I can’t afford to stay still. Not now, not ever. Riptide was an eternal struggle, but one that was worth the fight. And the maelstrom—Felix grunted as a creature slashed at him before slipping past and into the maw of the beast. The maelstrom was inevitable.

Power, he’d been told, came from making each Skill more of what it already was. To deepen and enhance, rather than alter.

As that greedy mouth stretched wide and those eyes blazed with blue-white lightning beneath the waters, Felix knew what Adamant Discord needed to be—what he needed it to be. He floundered, pulled within those enormous, bone-white teeth.

"I choose Maelstrom!”

Midnight jaws closed and all things went dark.