Unbound

The halls of the Violet Tower were quiet, but unlike outside, Apprentices and Journeymen were ever present. Mages moved swiftly up and down corridors, speaking in clipped tones and shifting materials from one room to another. Everyone seemed to have work they needed doing, which was great for Felix and his friends. Their off-white robes meshed well with the Apprentice robes, and so long as no one slowed down enough to notice the lack of purple, they could pass easily enough.

“Through here,” Zara gestured. Tern had given them detailed instructions, at least on the layout at the main level. “It should be at the end of this corridor.”

Their boots whispered softly against plush rugs, the only sign of softness in the Tower’s design. The hallway was lined with a dark, polished stone, flecked with quartz-like inclusions, and inlaid along the edges with complicated gold knotwork reminiscent of Dwarven architecture. In fact, a lot of the Tower seemed similar to structures Felix had seen in Red Shield Hold.

"Did Dwarves make this place?" he asked as they navigated another turn.

Zara nodded but kept her voice low. “They were among the first denizens of Levantier. They intended to mine the star metal from the meteor that cratered this mountain, and they discovered the Vent and its impressive properties.”

"So they built all of the Towers?"

"No. I heard they'd just built the old city,” Atar said. “That fortress down near the Vent where it opens up into the earth.”

Alister raised an eyebrow at him, and the fire mage looked affronted. "What? It's a city of mages. I'm not completely ignorant of this place."

"Just surprised, my love. You're not typically interested in much besides sigaldry and fire magic."

"I'm offended." Atar smirked. "However, I hear the Carmine Tower has a record of excellent fire Skills."

Alister laughed. "Of course. And they, along with the Violet, Aquamarine, and Cadmium Towers, were the only ones created by the dwarves. The rest were made well after the founding of the city."

"Interesting,” Felix murmured.

Alister slowed. “Wards ahead.”

A white stone door, as polished as the floors themselves, loomed ahead at the end of the hallway. It had wainscoting carved into it, creating panels in the white rock that was further engraved with glyphs that had no meaning to Felix.

"Yes, this should lead us up," Zara peered closely at the front of it. "It is a lift. Felix, the key."

"Right." He stepped ahead of Zara, putting his hand to his chest, and he felt the dark iron key against his skin. With his other hand, he reached out and tapped the white door. A ward rippled against his finger. It felt warm, the same as the searching ward on the skiff. The warmth resonated against the key touching his chest, and a tendril of sensation slipped into the Mana Gate in his skull.

Open.

A bell rang. The white door opened on greased tracks, revealing a hexagonal chamber large enough for dozens of people.

"It's like a service elevator," Felix noted, stepping inside.

Alister followed. "You never saw the inside of the Eyrie, did you?"

"Uh, no. I knocked it down before I could actually visit the place."

"You didn't—" The mage clenched his jaw. "The Eyrie falling wasn't your doing. It was Teine's and the Archon's."

Felix turned to his friend. "I know that. I felt guilty for a while, but... Are you okay, Alister?"

"I'm... fine. This lift merely brings back memories. The Eyrie had one, too, though not so large as this.”

“Nor so fine," Atar added. "This thing is luxurious."

"No buttons, though," Felix said, looking around. "How do we use it?"

"Put your hand there," Zara suggested, pointing to a large, orichalcum plate set into the wall and edged with dwarven scrollwork.

Felix did so, and the iron key grew warm once more as a series of sigils impressed themselves upon the metal plate. There were numbers, from one all the way to seventy-five.

"Huh.” He selected the one marked sixty, and the doors immediately closed. The sensation of movement was immediate and a touch jarring. He bent his knees, bracing against the acceleration. Felix had flown higher and faster before, but he wasn't expecting the damn elevator to go off like a rocket.

In moments, they reached the sixtieth floor, and the doors dinged open.

"Stick close to Felix," Zara reminded them.

Atar waved a hand. "Yeah, yeah, I remember."

"Abyssal Skein," Felix muttered for the benefit of his friends. Oily dark enveloped them all, and the mages shuddered.

"Never gonna get used to that," Alister said, shaking his arms.

Felix pressed a hand to the key on his chest as he stepped out of the elevator, Tern’s words rolling through his memory.

"Remember, Felix, the ward key will get you through the basic defenses of the Tower, but it will not penetrate the inner wardings above floor sixty-five.”

“How do we get beyond that?"

"Visit my chambers. You'll have to, anyway, to find my notes on the Chthonic Star, if they still exist. A method for destroying it might be there, and the keys to the higher levels might remain as well. I had spares hidden, and if Tiir was sloppy, they lie there still. Failing that, you'll have to rely on your own ingenuity to get past the wards."

"He'll just end up eating them," Atar had said, not looking up from a book he'd plucked from the shelves.

The memory faded from recollection as the hallway presented itself. It was uninteresting, to say the least. The floor was covered in a plush rug, decorated with delicate embroidery, and had enough room to march an army across it. Art hung from the walls, but all of it was bland landscapes or purple tapestries that featured nothing but more dwarven knotwork. Doors lined the hallway, and the other corridors branched off in curving loops, following the rounded shape of the tower. Everything, from the wainscoting to the hardware on the doors, was identical, and it made the place quite confusing.

"Here," he said, coming up to a pale wooden door. Like all the rest, the lintel was carved with dwarven designs, but unlike the others, Tern's chamber had a nine-pointed star hidden in the knotwork. Felix reached out to touch the latch, but the key flared hot against his chest. He jerked his hand back.

Zara’s eyes widened. "What is it?"

Felix held a finger to his lips and tilted his head toward the door. "Someone is inside."

Atar stepped back. "Doing what?"

"Give me a sec. Keep watch."

Zara pursed her lips, but nodded. Felix flared his Perception, and aided by the ward key, he easily pierced the chamber's defenses. Within, he picked out the sound of two average-sized men shuffling around several large rooms and throwing items onto the floor.

"They're tossing the place," Felix frowned. "They’re looking for something, maybe."

He focused again, putting all of his attention on the intruders, and the hallway faded from his awareness. A room beyond filtered into view, pieces of it only described by the shape of feet shuffling through discarded papers and hands that upended drawers.

"Why are we doing this?" one of them asked. He was a bit breathless. "I thought Tern's notes were valuable."

"All of the important stuff is with the Tower Master now. The rest of this is junk," one of them said. He held up a book, and Felix could perceive countless tabs sticking from its pages. "Notes on Auroch hunting by tribes of the southeastern coast?" He dropped it. "Useless gibberish. We just came here to do a final sweep, but I'm not wasting my time going through all this. They're doing the last firing test today, and there's no chance in damnation I'm missing that."

"Good point," the other mage agreed. He lifted a stack of papers, and a curtain of flame engulfed it all.

"Atar," Felix hissed.

"I feel it–it’s mine." Beside him, Atar's gray hand reached out until it was inches from the door, and he grasped at the air. Within, the fire winked out before it could do more than char the paper's edges.

"Blood and ash," the mage muttered. "The madman must have fire wards woven into the walls."

"Makes sense," said the other. "Lots of things to catch fire here."

"That's not my point, idiot. Now we'll need to strip this place down to the laths!”

“We could just carry this stuff out—”

“And waste all that time? This place is a sty!"

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Uh, we did that."

“Shut it!”

"Fine, fine," the other held up his hands defensively. "I'll get the crowbar."

"No, I have a new spell I’ve been meaning to try out. Siva's Unraveling!"

A flare of power shot through the room and Felix's awareness. The walls split, unspooling into silver and purple strands as the plaster tore free from the laths beneath. Boards, paintings, and a large framed map crashed into the ground. Felix jerked back, the spell tearing at his Perception like a cheese grater on flesh.

"Fuck, that Skill is nasty,” he muttered, rubbing at his ears.

“What do we do?" Atar asked, looking up and down the hallway. "No one’s around. Do we enter and take care of them?"

Felix licked his lips. "If they have a special Oath Skill, I'm betting Siva's paying closer attention to this place than others. They’re probably completely wrapped in those silver threads, and if we take them out, Siva might notice."

"Felix," Zara said.

He glanced at her and the water that swirled around her hands. "You sure?"

"Open the door, Felix."

Sucking in a tight breath, Felix clicked the latch before throwing it open. Inside, the mages looked up, their pale faces surprised when the door opened by itself. Abyssal Skein still sang within Felix, and all they saw was an empty corridor.

"Did you forget to close the door?"

"No, it doesn't matter. Let me use my Skill again.” The taller mage lifted his hands. “Siva's Unravel–!”

“Hobbling Deluge."

Water ripped forward, threads spiraling outward to strike both mages. It hit their mouths first, choking them as it shoved its way into nostrils and throat, while their arms and legs were snagged in cords of elemental water stronger than steel. Bound, they fell to the ground, no longer moving.

"I haven't killed them," Zara clarified as she stepped into the room. "They're only bound, and their minds overloaded for the moment. An attack such as this should remain beneath Siva's notice, but you were right about their deaths. The Goddess of Fortune has her eyes turned to this place."

"Yeah," Felix agreed. He and the others stepped in, closing the door behind them. "How long will that keep them down?"

"Perhaps half a glass. Less if they have a Body worth their Tier."

"Well, how about we just be safe, then," Felix said, before seizing the Mana in the room. He flared elements of earth, fire, life, stone, and ice together, weaving them in a pattern that had become his signature. A Fiendstone box encased them both and manacles replaced the water, sealing their limbs against one another before covering their mouths. "That'll hold them far longer."

"Aren't they going to run out of air in there?" Atar asked.

"They'll be fine. There’s holes in the sides. Get to searching.”

"I can't find anything," Atar said in frustration a short while later.

"I too have found passing little.” Alister pushed a foot through the mess of papers and broken quills that littered the floor. “They truly tore this place apart.”

"I may have found something," Zara said. One portion of the wall where the mage's unraveling had broken it revealed the corner of a metal box. With some judicious application of Strength, Felix was able to rip it free of the wall.

“A lockbox,” Atar said. “Made of orichalcum. That seems significant.”

"This certainly looks like a place you'd hide another ward key, doesn't it?" Felix held it up to his friend. “Can you open it?”

"Give me a moment." Felix set the lockbox onto a dented table and stepped back, letting the mage work. Atar ran a gray hand over its surface, and a number of sigils rose up, as if swinging from the depth of the metal to impress themselves into its front. A complicated web of circles and glyphs formed, spreading like a spiderweb across the lockbox, all originating at the lock itself. "This looks like it's opened by recognizing Tern's own handprint, which we don't have. But I may be able to work around it.”

While Atar worked, the others went about organizing what they could. There was plenty of information there, it was just scattered and covered a great deal of subjects, none of which were of particular interest to any of them. The mating habits of certain monsters, the gear ratio used in Mana engines, even something that looked like the bare-bones development of a spell meant to make hot tea. Zara snorted when she saw that.

"Aha!" Atar pumped his fist. "I've got it."

There was a soft click, then a hissing of released air as the sigils on the lockbox flashed briefly. The front of it opened up into segmented triangles that folded over themselves until it revealed a shallow box within which laid two items.

One was a key made of mithril and marked in much the same way as the iron one Felix had around his neck. “This’ll come in handy.” Atar pulled it out and handed it to him, and Felix strung it alongside the other.

The only other thing in the box was a sheaf of paper. It was quite thick, enveloped in cords of twine, and on the front of it was a scrawled note.

"Felix. You need to see this."

Felix took the sheaf of paper from Atar, too. The note was written in a crowded, crabbed handwriting, as if written very, very fast.

“If you find this, then you've forgotten. Read and remember.” Felix slipped the cord off of the sheaf of papers. Scanning the first page, then the second, then the third, Felix frowned. "These are all notes on the Vent."

Felix took a moment and read through, his powerful Mind and high Perception allowing him to tear through the words at a remarkable pace. His frown only deepened as he read. “Apparently, Tern did extensive research on the Vent when he was reconstructing the Chthonic Star. There’s notes here about Mana output and absorption rates for different metals.”

“Anything specific on the Star itself?” Zara asked.

“Nothing yet.” He flipped through more pages. Here and there, he saw mentions of Elowen. She was the primary investigator, apparently, and one of Tern's favorite students. Had the mage forgotten that, too? Elowen was apparently the one who had the idea that the Vent could be harnessed as a power source for the Star, likening it to geothermal power, a concept which Tern found fascinating.

For several pages, his notes devolved into theories on how to use the heat and pressure from the earth to move what Elowen called a ‘turbine’ in order to generate lightning. "For what?" Tern had written in large letters, before yet more extensive notes exploring the idea. Felix switched through those fairly quickly.

"They actually went looking into the Vent," he said aloud. "I thought they said that people died by going down there."

"No," Atar corrected, "he said they had to use special equipment."

Alister leaned over him, peering at the diagrams on the page. "What was their purpose in going in there?"

"I'm getting there," Felix said. He read further. “It says here that they needed to secure a mobile power source.”

“They were after the source of the Vent’s emanations,” Zara concluded. “To utilize this weapon of theirs even beyond the confines of Levantier.”

Felix read on, consumed by the notes. They’d entered the Vent, a small team descending into the volatile confines of a large cavern system below the city. At the bottom, they’d found the primary shaft, and it was there that Tern had started writing faster. His handwriting became almost illegible, but Felix could parse enough of it. According to him, the Vent was not just a pool of liquid Mana—it was something far older. Felix flipped the page and was faced with a very familiar structure, sketched out in rough dimensions by Tern’s hand.

Felix sat the paper down and closed his eyes. "It's a Mana Well.”

Zara pulled the diagram to herself. "A Nymean one?"

"According to this, it says that it was punctured by the meteor that formed Levantier’s caldera. At that point, the power within was released, pooling into the surrounding countryside. Those Dwarves you mentioned? They formed an outpost on top of it. But when the potency and usefulness of it was discovered, that's when the city was formed." Felix tapped the diagram. "But Mana Wells aren’t sources of power. They’re prisons. So what’s down there?”

He flipped through the pages, searching for more details, until he came across an illustration of a strange, twisted skull. He read the note below it.

"Found in the well, the only inhabitant and source of Levantier’s potency. Dead, as far as we can tell."

Beneath it was further information that someone had been able to pull with a Master Tier Analyze. All they recovered was its name: the Primordial Vanished Horizons.

"Oh, shit," Felix said. He showed the illustration to his friends.

"Blighted night," Alister cursed. "Another Primordial.”

“Other than that name, there's nothing else. But the notes say that the Primordial was dead, rotting at the bottom of this league's deep shaft.”

“That’s something, at least.”

Felix worried at his lips with his teeth. "Primordials can't die. That doesn't mean their power can't be changed."

Within him, his Hunger shifted.

She was listening.

Vess had already relayed what the Grim had told her: that the gods had stolen their power. Siva in particular had stolen a large portion of hers from Veridaan, the Supreme Primordial of Oaths. The same Primordial that Knowledge said created the Pool of the Halcyon Oath.

How long has this Mana Well been here? The Primordial has been trapped there at least since before the Golden Empire fell. Did the gods steal its powers, too, reducing it to a slavering monster once they’d layered it in the flesh curse? Is that why the Primordials are all so warped?

He looked further down the page. There were annotations, written in the same cramped hand that he'd come to recognize as Tern’s.

“Note 1: Possible link to Cardinal Beasts? Discuss with Elowen. Mana Type is undifferentiated, but fire, air, water, and lightning are easiest to manifest from its flow. Could that indicate the powers of this Primordial?

“Note 2: The Mana Well’s long containment has served to trap the worst of the Primordial's features into the liquid itself. The undifferentiated vapor that escapes is free of the transformative properties primordials usually incite. Do not touch the liquid, however, as it will render flesh from bone. Failing that, it will twist you into a monstrous harbinger of its dead Will.

“Note 3: Don’t do that.”

Felix wanted to curse, but no words could quite encompass what he was feeling. "The Primordial's flesh curse is in the liquid Mana. That’s…not good.”

Alister licked his lips nervously. “What does that mean in regards to its use? They use the Vent, but the flesh curse clearly hasn't infested the city.”

“Because they aren't using the liquid Mana," Zara said. “The enchantments of this city run upon the vaporous emanations from the Vent, which must be sufficiently diluted. If they were to tap into the liquid directly, as this Chthonic Star no doubt will have to, then they'll be channeling all of the vile power of a cursed Primordial.”

Atar paled. “Would they infect their targets with the flesh curse, too?”

“There is no doubt in my Mind.”

"Blighted Night,” Alister cursed. “A Primordial. Could they actually destroy the binding chains on the gods, then?"

"I cannot imagine how, but this Star is too dangerous. To let them even try is purest folly."

"It doesn’t change the plan," Felix said, cutting through their conversation. "We'll shut it down and take the Unbound out of here, one way or another." He set the sheaf of paper down on the table next to him.

After a bit more searching, they found nothing else. The mages had truly stripped it of all important information, so unless they wanted to barge into the Tower Master's offices, they were going to have to wing the next step of their plan.

Walking back to the elevator, they all felt a pressure settle onto them. It was distant, but distinct. Zara pursed her lips. "Is that our target?"

Felix looked up, though all he saw was a carved and paneled ceiling. "Yeah, that’s her. She felt like this in the vision, too, but now she’s flaring her Spirit hard. Something must be going on."

"Is that what I feel?" Alister asked. He had started to sweat. "I thought walking these halls was just getting to me. I feel like I’m burning up."

"If she keeps this up, it's only going to get worse," Atar said.

if she keeps this up, she will die. that much strain is too much to maintain for long.

"She's Unbound, and probably a Grandmaster, who can tell how much she can handle?

even unbound have their limits.

"We'll hurry, regardless." Felix reached out and accessed the elevator once again. "Follow me, and be ready for anything."

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