Silence - Chapter 29

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Felix and Bateo were off again, the skimmer shooting off into the dark on Felix's Mana. The farmer was surprised at their speed and seemed concerned that Felix was wasting his Mana, but Felix had waved off his concerns. He had the Mana to spare—at least for now.

It also meant they made good time, reaching the first monolith in short order. While the interior wards were closer—the ones that hide Echo's Reach away from sight—they were also apparently fully functional, according to Bateo. The first monolithic ward stone made Felix gaze in concern at the wider Void beyond.

"It almost feels like being at the edge of a deep, dark ocean," Felix said. "As if your town is safer than out there."

"It usually is," Bateo protested. He had begun tracing the glyph that dominated the ward stone, his staff moving in slow, careful patterns. "The greater Void is a nightmare that never ends. Here, at least we have family and friends."

"You're not wrong," Felix said. He turned to focus on Bateo's process. It was pretty interesting, akin to writing with a fountain pen. The Mana held in the staff's pouch was released by Bateo's Will and it travelled down to where the staff touched the monolith. After a handful of minutes, he was done.

"Onward, Felix," Bateo said. "Six more to go."

"Aye aye, Captain," Felix said with a mock salute.

They flew in silence for a time. Felix thought incessantly of what he was going to do. Would he take his stolen pirate sloop and wander the Void, hunting for an exit? Maybe he could make returning to Echo's Reach a regular thing, like a supply run or something. It'd be nice to see Estrid and the kids in the future.

"Felix?"

"Hm?" Felix broke from his musing and saw Bateo's face quirked in an unfamiliar expression. Guilt and concern, maybe.

Bateo took a breath before speaking. "Those pirates you said you escaped...how long were you with them?"

"A couple days. Why?" Felix asked.

"Some of the neighbors have been spreading rumors, I think. About you." Bateo seemed almost embarrassed to be sharing the information with Felix. "They say you were a pirate too."

Felix laughed. "What? That's dumb."

Bateo grinned. "That's what I told them. You've told me too much, and done the same amount to help me, that I'd be a real fool to believe some beak-creakers."

Beak-creakers. That's a fun expression. Felix grinned. "Don't worry. I'm the farthest thing from a pirate there is—"

Danger, starboard side.

Felix recognized the acerbic tone of the Maw just as he saw a dark, hideous form loom out of the black.

"Down!" Felix screamed as he sent their skimmer into a dive. Bateo squawked in surprise and lost grip on his staff while Felix's hand on his cloak dragged him downward.

Teeth the size of Felix's arm snapped down on the staff, splashing a burst of brilliant, liquid Mana. A creature followed, flowing sinuously over their position in a wriggle of massive, scaled flesh. The light of the undifferentiated Mana lit it briefly, long enough to see the flash of ribbed fins and jagged spines.

Voracious Eye!

Name: Noctnatter
Type: Voidbeast
Level: 37
HP: ???/???
SP: ???/???
MP: ????/?
Lore: Dread serpents of the Void, the Noctnatter are one of rarest and most deadly voidbeasts to be found in the Cognitive Realm. Using their immense fins like sails, they navigate the gelid absence of the Realm by burning the stolen Mana of its victims. Like the Narhallow, the Noctnatter will trail pieces of its Mana stores behind it in order to lure in other voidbeasts, though in the Noctnatter's case it is a fishing tactic and they often eat the Tenebrils or Harrowings that come after them.
Strength: More Data Required
Weakness: More Data Required

The creature whipped about, rolling its slender, eel-like body on itself as it reoriented on them. The ribbed sails along its top, bottom, and sides billowed and snapped as the thrum of Mana filled them. It surged forward, practically unhinging its jaw as it flew.

"Brace!" Felix shouted before slamming Bateo down into the skimmer and pushing out as much Mana as the craft could hold. The Control Node whined, and the skimmer trembled, but it flew. It flew fast.

"SKKIIIISHAAAW!"

The Noctnatter flowed after him, twisting like a ribbon in the air. It's face was a series of eyes—three on each side of its skull—and a half dozen spines anointing its crest. Mana spiraled off of it as it swam, undulating frantically toward them.

Influence of the Wisp!

Enthrall Failed.

Blue wispfire bloomed along the Void serpent's length, but it failed to catch. Felix gasped a desperate breath.

Reign of Vellus!

He narrowed the focus with a pinch of Will, and the expulsion of force sent the pair of them careening sideways...and a bolt of lightning skittering into the Noctnatter's snarling face. It sparked along its crest—static on an aerial antenna—as it briefly went rigid.

The Maw pointed a sharpened finger at the beast. It hates the lightning! Hit it with that worthless goddess' spell again!

"Th-that's a Void snake!" Bateo hollered at almost the same time.

"I'm aware!" he shouted at the both of them. "Hold on!" Felix dipped their skimmer forward and up, looping back around the Noctnatter in a move that made Bateo shout and grab onto him. The serpent twisted on itself again, spooling and unspooling in his direction as if it had no bones at all.

Reign of Vellus!

Reign of Vellus!

Reign of Vellus!

Felix spammed the spell while he held the shape of it firmly in his Mind. A tight cone of electrical force swept outward into the black, beyond bright for the inky Void, and slammed repeatedly into the Noctnatter's stupid face.

"SKKIIII—! SKKI—! SHAAAW!"

It seized again, this time the electricity coiling off its crest and stabbing bright veins of blue-white lightning into its scaled hide. Felix twisted the skimmer, hoping to hit it with a second volley, when it snapped it's massive jaws at them.

"WHOA!" His Will and Alacrity jerked hard, sending the pair of them barrel rolling up and over the serpent's snout, just barely missing it's nightmarish maw. "It was faking!"

"They're very smart! That's what makes them so dangerous!" Bateo tightened his grip across Felix's chest. "Why is it here?"

"With the wards down, it must have wandered in!" Felix shouted back.

"No, they're a deep Void creature! They shouldn't be near us at all!"

Felix didn't have time to ponder that, as the Noctnatter came back around for another try.

It's clearly attracted to the skimmer's Mana output, but if it's as smart as Bateo says it is, then it already recognizes us as a nice meal. How do we shake this thing?

Rip it apart! the Maw was screaming. Her flat, yellowed teeth flashed in the light of Felix's kinetic lightning. Shred and rend and tear, Felix! You are the apex predator!

He tried to shrug off the Maw's strangely encouraging words and cycled through his many Skills. Acid punches and orbs did little, only splashed against its hide ineffectually, while there was no stone around them to shape. Influence of the Wisp didn't work, and his Mantle slid from its body like a cool mist. What's more, Felix noticed it's Mana total was increasing as the fight went on.

It's absorbing my spells!  Felix snarled wordlessly.

Shadow Whip!

A near-invisible tendril of shadow Mana snapped from Felix's outstretched palm, manifesting directly from his Gate, and slammed into the serpent. Strength flared, the strike set the Noctnatter back, hurling into it's crested skull like a falling I-beam.

"Hah! Take that!" Felix shouted triumphantly.

The Noctnatter spun, it's flat tail slicing through the air quicker than even Felix's Perception could follow. Felix twisted the skimmer and ducked...but the very edge of the appendage rammed into his friend's chest. With a tortured, wet exhalation, Bateo was hurled from the craft.

"Bateo!!" Felix flared his Will and dropped, but the damned snake was faster. It swooped toward the falling Korvaa, jaws wide. "No!"

His Mana flashed, a quarter of it vanishing into the Control Node on the skimmer. Felix plummeted, faster than he'd ever moved before, so fast that the skimmer itself exploded beneath him. He screamed in pain as heat and fire scoured his nerves, setting his broken resistances to vibrating within his core space. Felix clenched his teeth and cast through the pain as he fell at speeds way higher than terminal velocity.

Reign of Vellus!

Angled behind him, the blast of kinetic lightning shot Felix down faster. He impacted the Noctnatter's gaping, lower jaw, headfirst into the slick meat of the floor of its mouth. It's jaws snapped closed as Felix's sheer weight slammed them both into the not-ground of the Void.

Reign of Vellus!

Corrosive Strike!

Lightning lit up Felix's body and charred the green-pink meat of the Void serpent, yet before it could recoil, Felix hurled a single fist straight up. Acid burst searing through the roof of its mouth, melting its soft flesh and letting his fist straight up into its skull.

Wrack and Ruin!

Dark acid flooded from around his forearm, far more potent than his Strike. The majority of it pooled above, eating rapidly through whatever amounted to a brain the voidbeast had.

You Have Killed A Noctnatter!

XP Earned!

"Damn," he panted. The air was hot and wet and it stank. "Gotta get outta here."

Felix hesitated for a second but...what sort of Skill could he learn from the creature? It was only a point of Bloodline progression, after all.

Ravenous Tithe!

The serpent dissolved into dark smoke streaked with a thousand multicolored lights. It swirled as it gathered, before streaming into Felix's mouth and through his skull Gate. He breathed it in, but it kept coming. And coming. The creature had been huge, after all, and it was absolutely packed with stolen Mana. He took so much that it felt like his core space was stretched and distended.

Further Bloodlines Have Been Found. Processing 7%

Felix dropped several feet, stumbling as the monster turned to insubstantial smoke around him. He peered at his notification and frowned over the terrible roiling inside him.

The bloodlines advanced by three percent this time, he noticed. Was it the amount? Or the strength of the monster?

There was a groaning from close by, and Felix's eyes widened. "Bateo!"

He spun toward the sound and found the Korvaa crumpled on the invisible, slightly bouncy not-ground of the Void. One of his wings was bent at an odd angle and his arm was clearly broken.

"Oh my god, Bateo are you—do you need help?"

"Get—get my pack," he gasped through the clearly excruciating pain. "Bandages and—and a tonic."

Felix hurried to do so, quickly finding the farmer's pack half strewn across the Void. Finding the tonic and bandages was easy, however. The tonic was a faint shade of pink and the Mana within it extremely small, while the bandages were similar to what he'd used on Magda, at the end.

Clenching his jaws against that little blast from the past, Felix hustled back to Bateo and helped staunch his bleeding. The bandages sizzled and tightened, fusing his skin shut with an application of undifferentiated Mana.

"There, that should hold you over for a bit, but I'm gonna have to carry you," Felix said.

"Where's—hssshhh!—where's the skimmer?" Bateo asked.

"It uh, the monster destroyed it," Felix said with a wince.

"Damn voidbeast," Bateo muttered.

"Well, well, well. What has happened here?"

Felix winced again, but for an entirely different reason this time. He recognized that voice, and sure enough, above him hovered the brilliantly plumed form of Grand Detachment. He stood tall upon an impressively ornate skimmer. Beside him, also on their own transport, was the owl-like Knowledge, followed closely by five of the Rim Hunters.

"Looks like a voidbeast attack," one of the Rim Hunters said. He thumbed his beak, considering. "Only I don't see no voidbeast."

"Already burned away," Felix said. He fought to keep anything from showing on his face. "It was a nochtnatter."

"A nochtnatter!" A Hunter whistled. "They never come here. Not ever."

A few of the Hunters were giving Felix a sideways look, as if they didn't believe him. The peacock Conference Lord regarded him with a steady stare and smirk.

"My lord, why have you come out here? It is far from the Reach, and dangerous," Bateo said. He had muscled down the pain, but his limbs shook with the strain bowing. Felix wanted to grab him and straighten him up. No amount of manners were worth aggravating his injuries.

"We have come here," the peacock Grand Detachment declared. "Because we were told that someone had sabotaged the protection array."

"No!" Bateo said. "I—I had thought it strange they would run out of fuel so fast, but sabotage?"

"Indeed! Someone sabotaged our array and then led the voidbeasts in, distracting our Rim Hunters, before guiding more of them deeper into Echo's Reach itself!" The peacock thrust his blue arms outward, his wings and impressive fantail following. Dramatically, he stabbed at Felix with a clawed finger. "You! You were the only one capable of such a deed! The only one in the right places during all of it!"

Felix's gut dropped. "What?"

"Don't try to deny it! We have multiple witnesses saying you were at the head of a column of voidbeasts as they came into town. That you stretched out your hands and they descended on our village like beasts to command, same as you command the Honored Tenku!"

Hard looks and white-knuckled grips met Felix's astounded eyes as he swept them across the Hunters and Lord. At his side, Bateo sputtered.

"That is all nonsense! Felix has been with me! For days on end. How would he have time to slip away and sabotage the array?"

Detachment smiled, and it was a sharp thing, meant to cut. "You sleep Bateo. All of us do. How easy would it be for him to slip out into the dark while your household slept? How simple to drain the array? After all, we just saw him drain a voidbeast dry."

Felix clenched his jaw as the Hunters spoke up. "Yeah, he just...he ate something as he approached. I seen it! All smoke and lights and he, burn me, he ate it!"

"Felix?" Bateo asked. His voice was pained, but he was steady. Felix couldn't lie to him.

"Yeah, I ate the voidbeast. It's a Skill," he started, but was inundated with jeers and angry cries from the Rim Hunters.

"He admits it!" Knowledge, the snowy owl said. "Profane! Disgusting communion with the monsters in the dark!"

Small minded peons, the Maw hissed. It had swum the depths around them all like a shark, drawing close enough to touch the Korvaa. They seek to place their troubles on you. And someone among them is telling lies. The Primordial spun about the peacock features of Grand Detachment. I wonder who.

Felix kept a grimace from his face, but only barely. His Voracious Eye pinged the Rim Hunters as capable, and perhaps he'd be able to fight them, but the two Lords were strong. They had likely advanced themselves well beyond others, relying on access to Manabladders and the like to push themselves further. However it was done, Felix knew he couldn't face all of them, not together.

"I did not do anything to your array, and I've not led any voidbeasts into town," Felix said. "I've been on Bateo's farm my entire time here, and only left to let the Hunters know about the monsters. They were already facing them by the time I arrived!"

"Or they arrived ahead of you, chased from behind by your tricks!" Detachment sneered at him, much as he was able with a beak. "You are a stranger, and you've already enslaved the Honored Tenku to you. Who else would do such foul things to our fair community? Who else, but the one I found conspiring with Lord Wonderment just today?"

"Conspiring? Detachment, you did not mention this," said Knowledge, his feathers fluffed in alarm. "Wonderment is in cahoots with this stranger?"

"He must be! What else would they speak of? Why else would he show him the crypt?!" The peacock whirled on Felix again. "You see our treasures, boy? Is that it? Do you work for the pirates you say you 'escaped?'"

Felix ground his teeth. It was clear now. Nothing he said would stop their accusations.

"Fine, then I will leave—" Felix began, but was cut off by the raised weapons and screeching laugh of Grand Detachment.

"Leave!? You are banished! Never to be welcomed among our homes again!" The peacock gestured at the Rim Hunters, who closed in on their skimmers, blades held forward. "We claim your ship, junker though it is, and all you have left behind."

"This is unreasonable, my Lords," Bateo stuttered. "I do not believe any of these charges against my friend. He has only been a help!"

No one paid the injured farmer any mind. Knowledge, the mild-seeming owl, instead smiled viciously at Felix. "And the Honored Tenku will stay with us. It will do him well to be severed from your despicable enslavement."

"Pit is not enslaved!" Felix shouted, his frustration turning to furious incredulity. "He is my friend and Companion, System bonded! You can't keep him from me!"

"He will be saved from you, boy, whether you like it or not," Grand Detachment spat. "Hunters. See this thing out of our home."

The Rim Hunter's faces were heavy with anger and no little bloodlust. Whatever else the Lords had said, they bought it, hook and sinker. "Aye. With pleasure."

Felix had little choice. Either leave or risk his life fighting. The latter tempted him, but it was the Maw's words that convinced him otherwise.

Kill them, Felix. Rend their flesh and eat their Essence! Show them the cost of opposing us!

Much as he pained him, Felix gritted his teeth and let them march him at spear point away from Echo's Reach, the farm, and Pit. Out into the black.