Chapter 520

Monday's chap! New chapter going up tomorrow!
Enjoy!


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<<That’s—that’s a heavy ask.>> Felix managed to keep his tone level, because he could feel the weight of the Dragon’s Spirit behind the words; he was serious. Buying for time, he adjusted the Garment around his shoulders. Mana flowed into it, restoring its torn appearance into a short jacket, tunic, and loose trousers. He looked to Vess, but she was still staring down the languid Dragon, and was shaking a bit. Pit shrugged, but stayed huddled at her side, one wing over her shoulders. <<Why would I do that? I put a lot of effort in not killing you in the first place.>>

“You—” The great, golden eye blinked. A loud whumph pulsed through the water, followed by a second and a third. The Dragon was laughing. “You stayed your hand?”

Felix raised his eyebrows. “Well, yeah.” He flared his Voracious Eye. “You’re strong, remarkably so even without the Creature attached to your hip, but I gave the Creature a chance to stop its actions. It chose not to listen. But you weren’t in a place to be making any choices at all.”

Another giant, golden blink. “Choice,” he rumbled. “Words of the Nym.”

<<Are they? That makes sense.>>

“You are…Nymean?”

<<More or less,>> Felix said with a shrug. <<Does it matter? The System might mock me with the slogan, but it’s not wrong. Everyone is entitled to choose their path, and all choices have consequences. The Creature was blind to that—and now it’s gone.>>

“Gone…I do not believe that, but you have come closer than any other, Child of Nym.” The Dragon’s nostrils widened, snorting in a great lungful of water and silt. “You smell of Authority. A great deal of it. Claim mine as well, then. These old scales hold potency yet. Let my death be the catalyst to advance you beyond your enemies.”

<<You will not be dying, Yintarion.>>

The golden wyrm jerked his enormous head, the largest movement yet, as Vess floated down before him. “Dragoon. An offshoot of the Betrayers themselves. Do not think that you have a say in my fate.”

It was Vess’ turn to flinch at that, and Felix found himself lost. Something had gone on between the two—Dragon and Dragoon—and it had something to do with their connection. For there was a great Link between the two of them, for all that Felix didn’t think anyone else could see it. The chain of meaning was bright gold, different from the Links he held with Vess, Beef, and the others. In fact, it reminded him mostly of his bond with Pit, were it not lacking something intrinsically vital.

<<She saved you,>> Pit pointed out, zooming around the Dragon’s snout on his enchanted fish’s tail. He turned in lazy corkscrews through the water, his wings cutting bubbling trails in the languid liquid before landing in a heavy burst of cloudy sand. <<She cut the gap into the Creature’s hold on you. Without that, Felix and I wouldn’t have been able to separate you.>> Pit let out a low, throaty trill. <<We’d have eaten you, too.>>

Yintarion seemed at a loss for words in the face of this entire experience. Felix felt for him; he’d been there before. Vess, however, pressed her advantage.

<<The Primordial of the Withering Dust it,>> she hesitated, licking her lips. Her dark brown eyes were locked to the Dragon’s golden one, but everything else about her from the twist of her lips to the set of her folded arms, demonstrated a frantic urge to be away. With what seemed like monumental effort, his friend forced her hands to her sides and squared her shoulders. <<A connection was established. A Link. I can no longer feel it, but it let me glimpse into your Memories. The Primordial—it gave me Skills, powers that no Dragoon has ever held, which bridged some uncanny gap between our Minds.>>

“Primordial? You cannot trust the touch of them. They are cursed.”

<<I am aware. This one was…” Vess looked to Felix, who nodded. “This one was cleansed of its curse. Its power was pure, simply too much. It changed many things within my core space. My movement Skills, spearwork Skills, even my specialized taunt. Now—the Lament, it—>>

“The Matriarch’s Lament was one of the evolved Skills of those Dragoons that reached Adept Tier.” Yintarion’s mouth twisted, much the same as Vess’, as if he tasted something sour. “Rana bore that Skill.”

<<Tr–truly?>> Vess asked. The stoic anger in her Spirit had been wavering, but now it collapsed entirely. In its place was a glimmer of distant silver light. Felix smiled as he identified the vibration.

Hope. Huh. Where’s this gonna go?

“I…am aware of your aid, little Dragoon. But our…connection…does not give you power over me or my decisions. As the Nymean said: choice is paramount.”

<<Then I choose not to kill you,>> Felix said.

Yintarion gave a frustrated huff, and his breath alone toppled several of the nearby statues. “Authority or not, you will not stop me from this, boy.”

<<I will.>>

A cold silence stretched between them, punctuated only by the uneasy groans of a slow-waking army of Nagafolk, and the faint, almost inaudible cursing of Isla.

“You ate the Creature.”

<<I did.>>

“How?”

<<Trapped it.>> Felix waved his hand. <<Not really important, but it is gone. Or will be in time, anyway.>>

“Impossible. It was a sliver of a goddess. You cannot eat a god.”

<<Who told you that?>> Felix asked. He was genuinely curious. <<Everyone is always so confident about that.>>

The Dragon narrowed its one eye, the only one he could see from his vantage point. The thing’s head was so huge, Felix would have had to swim thirty feet over its snout to see the other side. “You claim to eat gods and cleanse horrors beyond knowing. You burn brightly with power, so-called Nym. Too much power. What are you, really?”

Felix grinned. <<I—>>

Just as the words formed on his tongue, Felix’s core space gave a sudden, dizzying lurch as a sizable chunk of the Creature’s potency fell beyond the event horizon of his Hunger. Not only devoured, but digested. Yet his world quaked with a cataclysmic murmur of discontent.

MORE. FE-LIX.
MORE.

A great suction pulled at his insides, like a vacuum had been shoved into his veins. All of the swirling impurities, the sizzling bits of char and purple-blue haze of uncaught Essence-flesh was seized and hauled wholesale into his Hunger. The blockage around his Perception and Affinity was snatched away, replaced by a keenness that set his Divine Tree to ringing. Felix stumbled to his knees, and the messy chaos of his senses snapped back into abrupt, intense focus.

FELIX!

The scream cut across time and space, rippling through his core like a dozen messages in a bottle. He could feel how old they were—how urgent. Days, hours, minutes, all of it colliding at once as visions of fire and fury filled Felix’s Mind like a bucket beneath a waterfall.

Someone was screaming.

Men and women in blue coats and purple capes were falling, severed by blades of golden light or obliterated by flame. Ships rose from dark forests, and figures in milky-white armor stood imperiously upon their decks. Executioners.

<<Felix?>> Vess was saying, attempting to pull his too-heavy frame up from the ground. Pit was under his torso, doing the lion’s share of the work. <<Felix what’s happening? Is it back? Has the Creature returned?>>

<<Haarwatch,>> he gasped, and almost fumbled Sunken Ward in his disoriented state. <<We need to get to Haarwatch. Now. They’re dying.>>

Vess let out a strangled sound. <<Across the Continent? We would first need to get back to Haestus, and then from your Stronghold to Haarwatch. It is weeks of travel!>>

<<We've already lost too much time.>> Felix blinked, gaping at the rising amount of clarity that digesting a chunk of the Creature had afforded him. He still felt the connections of things, vivid as ever, but now there was a twisting he could feel, like a wind made of cool glass. It hid from things, tucked into the fabric of deepest shadows, places where the realm had been worn immeasurably thin. The renewed Seal thrust it into sharp relief, but it wasn’t a function of it. <<Too much time has passed. Weeks. And yet…how long have we been down here?>>

<<Days—>> Vess said.

<<Three weeks in the Breach alone,>> Isla also said, with the same amount of confidence. The women traded surprised looks before the Chanter pursed her lips.

“Time moves strangely within the Breach,” the Dragon said. It was staring at him again, his curiosity more apparent than ever. “The Creature’s nature bends it, and it has been here for a very long time.”

<<Noctis. Goddess of the Night,>> Isla said, swimming closer. <<But not only the night. Her power held sway over the liminal spaces. The Dark Passages were her demesne.>>

Felix’s head swirled with ideas. Some…riskier than others. Paxus? Paxus are you still alive?

Faintly, as if from an immense distance away, he heard the phantom’s voice. All of them did. A tricky question, that.

Fuck, Felix sent in relief. <<You weren’t blasted apart. Can you open the Seal here? The Abundance is getting stronger and I don’t want to hurt it.>>

No.

<<Huh. Do we chop down the trees, then?>> Beef asked. He had his maul slung over his shoulder and an uneasy smile on his face. <<Doesn’t seem right, honestly. The Abundance has been like, top tier support this whole time.>>

<<We’re not doing that,>> Felix agreed. <<Paxus. Any other ideas? We need to get out of here and to Haarwatch immediately.>>

Look below.

All sensation of the phantom Nym vanished after that, and even the Abundance Anima would not respond to Felix’s inquiries, other than to indicate it was recovering.

<<Below? What does that mean?>> Beef asked, already looking into the deep cracks they’d driven into the lakebed. It offered nothing but shadows and sand. <<We’re at like, bedrock right now, right?>>

<<Spread out! Look at anything you can!>> Vess commanded, then was swift to act. She soared through the waters, lightning crackling from her partisan as readily as spectral dragon wings formed atop her back. She hit a nearby column hard enough to snap it in half and send the base tumbling aside.

Beef ran after, chitin spikes thrusting from the earth like pry bars, tossing apart the broken remains of the Creature’s odd temple. Homunculus Hallow, still uncharacteristically silent, hung about his neck, while the Multipede clattered behind like a loyal dog.

<<Pit,>> Felix said, finding his Companion already at his side. <<What do you think?>>

The tenku sniffed the air, then turned fully around, just as a rumbling voice spoke.

“Nym-Who-Is-Not.”

The Dragon had been quiet during the entire exchange, though it was clear he heard it all, even Paxus’ messages. Now Felix looked at him, and realized he’d reared up, just a touch, so that his head was no longer resting on the broken earth.

“My time enslaved to the Creature’s Will is hazy, but I retain scraps as I said.” He took a deep breath that was still shaky for all its terrible heaviness. “If I aid you, will you grant me peace? I cannot go on as I have, not after Ages of torment. Not after losing all that mattered.”

Felix and Pit watched the Dragon for a long, measuring moment. Unsurprisingly, their Spirits were united in their opinion of the former Fathom, and Felix nodded with every earnest bone in his body. <<I will.>>

The mountainous Dragon almost deflated, his Spirit sounding as a gong of ancient sorrow and tired triumph. “Very well. The statues. I can feel a piece of the Creature hiding in the one I just knocked over.”

Felix clarified senses felt it too, once he focused on them. It was extremely faint, as if only a fraction of a fraction had been invested into the monstrous sculptures…but there were a lot of them around the Breach.

<<Wow. Talk about contingency plans.>>

“Gather them up, as you did the Creature itself. Provide the fuel, Nym—” Yintarion bared his teeth, and the shadows fled from his golden gaze. “I shall pave the way.”

<<Oooh!>> trilled Pit. <<The fun begins!>>