Silence - Chapter 40

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The Whalemaw bellowed again as Felix pulled the cutter out of it's reach, extending their lead by another hundred yards. It's toothy gob gnashed like a landslide, it's incalculable bulk an impossible force sweeping toward them. But they had survived.

So far.

Felix grunted and focused on not passing out. For three hours he'd been pouring his Mana into the Control Node, pushing the small craft as hard as he could through the dark. The Manaship was far faster than the behemoth itself, but while Felix wasted time and energy weaving through the stone obstacles, the Whalemaw chased, deceptively fast, utterly obliterating any rocks in its way.

The Corrupted Narhollow kept closing the distance, never tiring, forcing Felix to push himself harder than he ever had before. He had eked out a tiny lead in the last twenty minutes, only bare seconds after they'd nearly been bitten in half. But he knew he couldn't keep it up, he was burning out and his Mana regeneration no longer kept pace with the amount of Mana he'd poured into the ship. It also didn't help that he'd been bleeding from his chest much of the time, his Health regeneration barely able to keep him conscious.

Pit screamed, his echoing Cry launching out at the Whalemaw to no effect. The tenku shot Wingblades and Frost Spears at the thing, but nothing worked. The spells never made it to the beast's hide, fading into useless Mana before being swallowed by the Void.

You'll never beat it. It's...all powerful.

Felix heard a sigh of longing escape the Maw's rawboned neck. He cast a glance at it, baring his teeth as he saw their boney hands almost reach out toward the beast. He blinked, forcing moisture to alleviate his burning eyes. It felt like weeks since he last slept.

Yeah...heard that one before! Felix smiled tightly as he felt the Maw's incensed glare rake across him. Wasn't true then, and it's not true now!

Oh yes, your supposed 'victory' over me. How has that been going for you? Been enjoying the sights? The Maw smiled primly and gestured all around them.

This time it was Felix's turn to glower, and he focused back on the turbulent path ahead of them. The Maw was certainly right about one thing: Felix did not feel he had won against it, and he wouldn't, not until he could get rid of it for good.

The Whalemaw roared again, and the sound of more rocks crashing into one another drowned out his thoughts. He pushed on, faster and faster. It was all he could do.

Their ship crashed and banged, sliding through the field around them at a breakneck pace. Already the sides of the cutter were ragged and splintered, and the sail was all but gone. Only half the mast still stood, the other half having been sheared off by a close call nearly an hour ago. The only thing keeping it running was his Willpower and Mana. The way the Maw begrudgingly described it, a Manaship used the frame and construction around it to function in the way a normal ship would, but took the majority of its guidance and power from the script core—Mana engine—and control orb. The inscriptions around the plinth and orb were elaborate and confusing, but Felix assumed they were well made. They hadn't fallen apart yet, unlike the rest of the cutter.

All of a sudden, Felix felt an uncomfortable rush through his entire body. A heady, awful power echoed through him, almost an inverse to the deadening quiet of the Void. It crashed like a waterfall, roaring in the silence. Then the rocks around them opened up, the path clear for the first time in hours. They shot off into the emptiness, and Felix's stomach dropped in mingled awe and horror.

"The Desolation."

A massive hole in the black revealed a blinding white radiance that was everything the Void was not. Heat and sound and life and matter all compressed and crushed into a blinding miasma of utter destruction. The song of it was a strident cry, a never ending crash that was all noises at once, screaming for his attention. Felix twisted his head, recoiling from the cacophony, and focused on their approach. It felt as if they had slowed down somehow, though Felix knew he had not. However, the rocky islands around them that had been moving laterally this whole time, now accelerated. They rushed in a tightening spiral around the white hole, and where they found the edge they fuzzed over. He watched as the rocks vanished instantly, as if erased from existence.

Felix gulped.

No! I've changed my mind! Flee from this place, Felix Nevarre! It is better to die in the jaws of that beast than here! The Maw was in a panic, and it spat and snarled at him from inches away. He felt an odd sensation at the base of his skull. Perhaps the Maw had the right of it. Perhaps he should—

"Enough!" Felix flexed Bastion of Will, and the Maw's form surprisingly flickered and vanished for a few seconds. Time enough to focus. To—there! A lopsided orb of pure black, darker than the Void around it and highlighted against the Desolation. The liminal space...and hopefully a Temple within. "There it is!"

Felix grinned and accelerated. His Mana was draining fast, but it didn't matter. They were almost there!

KRAKOOM!

The rocky islands behind them exploded outward in wild, parabolic arcs as the mountainous mass of the Whalemaw burst out into the empty Void. It's mouths screamed in rage and pain and hunger, and Felix's felt an echo of it all within him, a burr in the air that shook his blood the closer the beast came. The Maw within him called out to the Maw within the Narhollow. They wanted to be one.

"Fuck!" Felix dove, just barely staying ahead of the monstrosity. But his eyes blurred and mind felt muddled. His nerves and concentration were shot. He wasn't going to be able to make it. The Corrupted Narhollow swam toward them with the inevitable onslaught of an avalanche, of a tidal wave. Nature given psychotic, ravenous form. Teeth the size of houses stretched and popped, its jaws pushing outward from its mouth in a grotesque display as it attempted to swallow them whole.

Yes...yes! I feel you! The Maw cackled wildly as it reappeared with its arms spread wide, and Felix hadn't the concentration to banish them again. I feel your Need! I see now! You only wish to be whole! Take this boy! I need him not!

Felix snarled wordlessly at the Maw, but then green explosions burst abruptly against the Whalemaw's hide, detonations an order of magnitude greater than Felix had seen used before. The Corrupted Narhollow flinched, it's jaws descending prematurely and sending a shockwave of force into the stern of Felix's ship. They were sent reeling.

The galleons had arrived as well, still crewed by those cursed pirates, their flesh now bulging growths of teeth and muscle. They fired again, and this time their shots arced up and over the Whalemaw, blasting near the cutter and fueling his downward spiral.

Felix screamed through his teeth, hauling hard against the Control Node, but his Will was sapped. He tried desperately the regain control of their cutter, but it was impossible. The ship had been too damaged, the hull and mast devastated by debris before and was jettisoning shards of void bone in every direction. Felix gripped hard to the control plinth with his arms and what was left of his fatigued Willpower, commanding Pit to do the same.

Ten, twenty, thirty more shots landed  in the Void near him. He felt their heat and their force, hurling them ever faster toward Desolation, and panic crawled up Felix's throat. He barely noticed that more had hit the Whalemaw's fleshy expanse, bursting its bubbling flesh and blasting craters that quickly became terrible weeping sores. The monstrosity cried out, the rocks all around them quaking in sympathy.

NO! The Maw shrieked as the creature writhed in unexpected pain. My power! You don't know what lies within that place, Felix Nevarre! You fool!

Felix bared his teeth and pushed for all he was worth. Every last scrap of power he had, concentration, endurance, everything went toward guiding the ship toward the Temple. The cutter shook and spun, pieces of it shearing off as it hit rock after rock, prow cracking as they rammed into another floating island. An errant blast of the pirates' balistae had them careening in a wild spin.

"Pit! Converge! Brace!"


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The black enveloped them, softer and more viscerally than he could have ever anticipated. It felt like a hand the size of a mountain combed through everything he was, had been, or could be...his teeth and hair and toenails had been touched as equally as his face and forearms. He felt violated, but it only lasted a second, and then he shattered through it all. To his Manasight it was a hectic blur of colors and odd, circular shapes, there and then gone.

They emerged into a storm. A literal thunderstorm, with clouds and everything, with Felix's nearly shattered cutter slicing through their dark masses. For the first time in weeks, Felix felt the sensation of real air and rain, though it sliced against his skin like iced razor blades.

"What the hell?" Felix gaped in all directions. Lightning danced in the skies, arcing from thunderhead to thunderhead in a dance too fast to predict. "Where are we?"

The liminal space. We've entered the Temple's protective sheath.

Felix's thoughts flashed back to the apparent liminal space around the Archon's Domain, where he'd piloted a ship in a stormy sea of acid. The place could have been the sky above that one, and Felix might have assumed that if the Maw hadn't insisted that liminal spaces are not connected. Sharp, brittle-sounding pops cut through the air, and Felix looked back.

Harrowings had followed, at least a hundred, and all of them coated in the vile corruption of the Whalemaw's Mana. They screeched in furious joy when they saw him before diving in an alarming burst of speed.

Felix gasped and fed his own Mana into the Control Node, shoving what was left of his mental strength at the Mana engine below. The cutter shuddered and shook, but it burst forth, speed coaxed from somewhere.

You Have Entered Into The Domain Of Another.
Beware!
It Approaches!

The message flickered against Felix's senses just as powerful thunderbolt lit up the sky. The clouds, suddenly luminous, revealed a massive, terrifying shape. It appeared to be a serpent as tall as a house and miles long, yet it vanished as soon as the lightning stopped. But Felix's Perception was engaged now, and it drew his eyes, catching bare glimpses of a huge blue-black expanse of scales between the knurled faces of cumulonimbus clouds.

Voracious Eye!

Name: Dark Defender [DAMAGED]

Nothing else came up, only a series of scary question marks. In his distraction, the Harrowings had almost caught up. Burning talons stabbed at the railing, feet behind him. Felix cursed as he drove the ship into a dive. He felt the Harrowings holding on for all they were worth, but the rush of dark clouds and random, crackling lightning made it hell.

He dove, faster.

A massive, serpentine face loomed beneath them, a creature from a primeval nightmar. Blue-black and scaled, its eyes like twin moons flashed.

Felix screamed and pulled up. Up!

The fangs of the Dark Defender snapped shut, seizing the trailing Harrowings in its house-sized mouth. Felix didn't care, he only wanted to escape.

"What the hell! What the hell!" he was screaming, and Pit seemed ready to fall over in fright.

I told you! This is dangerous! There are Guardians!

Lightning surged, and thunder loud enough to shatter the world shook the skies. When he emerged from the clouds and into the clearer sky, he found burning crimson Harrowings waiting for him. They dove upon him, talons slashing.

Reign of Vellus!

The Harrowings were thrown aside as a dome of force and weaker lightning forced them back. Charge broken, Felix sped through them all, not caring a whit that the cutter was being shredded to flinders.

You'll never make it out! Never!

"SHUT UP!" Felix shouted, and he drove the ship forward, toward what he felt was the exit. He was positive when the Dark Defender rose up through the clouds, its black shape followed by coursing electricity. It coiled through the air and spat a lurid bolt of lightning directly at them.

Ravenous Tithe!

On instinct, Felix reached out and snatched at the bolt, feeling left hand and arm fry and blister as he did so. Yet the bolt shuddered, destabilized just for a moment as blistering potency surged into his Mana Gate. It hit his core, and he cycled it right back out, his Skill already humming.

Bloodline Progression is 20%

Reign of Vellus!

Supercharged by the stolen Mana, narrowed until it was a spear of force no more than three feet wide, blue kinetic Mana and crackling lightning surged. It hit the Dark Defender, snapping its mouth shut and tossing up its head, just for a moment. Just enough time to blast passed it, but not enough time to avoid its retaliatory strike. The shape end of its tail smashed into the cutter, all but splitting it in half and sending Felix hurtling into a wall of utter darkness.

The dark consumed him.


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You Have Survived.
The Challenge Is Incomplete.
Be Wary, Young Nym.

Careening out of the dark, they hit something with a dreadful crunch. Thrown from the craft, Felix crashed in tumbling arcs, sending wide cracks spidering across the stone ground. Blearily, he raised his head from the crater he'd formed. Blurry shapes above him twirled and spun, and for a moment he didn't understand what he was seeing. Then a green bloom of fire ate across the sky and everything snapped back into focus. It was the Whalemaw followed closely by the compromised pirates, all of them hurling everything they had at him.

Felix flinched as a ballista bolt of green flame struck true, Charging away, but the strike didn't manifest. Instead it bloomed above, as if against an invisible barrier.

The Domain sheath. It protects us. For now.

The Maw stood wearily atop the rocky island, its gaunt face even more withdrawn and shadowed than usual.

"What's wrong with you?" Felix asked as he gathered himself. With a flash of light Pit jumped out of his Spirit and alighted on the island.

The Maw didn't answer, but it also didn't float about. That was new and strange.

Felix turned, taking in the terrain around him. Every muscle screamed at him to stop, but Felix didn't have time. His eyes darted around, finding shattered pieces of dark bone and leather scattered all across the tilted stone floor. Pit huffed and puffed, but seemed more exhausted than injured.

The cutter had snapped in half, obliterating itself against a rocky isle, throwing the Nym and Pit free of the wreckage which had probably saved their lives. The majority of the ship had ricocheted off the island and now drifted away in a tight spiral. Felix followed the debris with his eyes, shielding them against the glare of the Desolation. It was extremely close, and the Void seemed...thinner there. Within moments the remnants of his ship were consumed and...unmade.

"Holy...Pit I don't know if...if this was the wisest idea."

Pit, exhausted as he was, only snorted in amusement.

He could feel a tug on his body, as if the Desolation was trying to drag him into it as well. Pulling his awed gaze away, Felix's eyes were instead drawn to the side, where a set of stairs had been carved into the rock. Pulse rising, Felix looked around him, but only found more craggy stone. He followed the steps as they curved strangely, impossibly around and beneath the island.

The Temple. He was on top of it...or below it, really.

"Pit! C'mon!" Flexing their Will again, Felix and Pit clung to the stone and followed the curve toward the bottom of the island. A broken building laid out before them, cast into silhouette by the glare of the Desolation behind it. Without wasting a second, Felix and Pit flung themselves into its halls.