Silence - Chapter 16

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Manaship Pilot is level 10!

Felix's ability to steer and provide power to the sloop increased with every passing hour, yet the ship's integrity degraded fast. After roughly half a day, Felix wasn't so much flying the ship as he was nudging it as they coasted through the frictionless Void.

Mana Manipulation is level 24!

+3 WIL

+4 AFI

+6 ALA

His mental reserves had long since been dredged. Felix forced his Mind to hold together just enough to keep gliding slowly through the dark.

Help? Pit offered. He was currently tucked tightly against Felix's side, ears back and nervously watching the dark.

"Dunno how, bud. Not like we can get out and push," Felix muttered. Currently a fist-sized piece of bone was outpacing them as it floated past. "It's be nice if you could fly though. Wings and all. You sure you can't?"

Pit stood and flicked his ears. His wings spread out, russet and black plumage a match for his fox/raven aesthetic; he flapped them, once, twice, three times. He lifted perhaps an inch with each flap, but it was clearly too much for the tenku. He collapsed to the deck, panting. A plaintive whine echoed across their bond, and Felix ruffled the bird-dog's head.

"Hey, good job anyway. That looked really hard."

Pit chuffed in self-pity, which turned out only to be a ruse for more pets and food.

"No more, bud. We have to ration what's left of the food or else we'll starve," Felixi said, pulling the burlap sack away from his greedy friend. "I don't think I need as much food as I did before, and you definitely don't need any more any time soon." Felix looked up at the Maw, floating near the broken mainmast. "Why don't I need food as much anymore?"

The Maw rolled an eye down at him, altering her hovering to better see Felix. You're Tempered, are you not? What use is mortal sustenance as you proceed down the path of immortality?

"Immortality—That's what Tempering is?" Felix said, with a raised eyebrow. "I thought it was just strengthening your stats and...stuff."

And what would you call it as you pursue perfection in Body, Mind, and Spirit? What name would you use when you reached said perfection? The Maw held out its hands, chipped and broken fingernails spread wide. Immortality. It is the endless fox the hounds of the finite have long pursued, yet so few come close enough to even see their prey. Most fall, never having caught even the barest hint of its scent. It scoffed. Pathetic.

Felix ignored its aggressive rhetoric. While the Maw was fearsome, and had almost killed him only a few short days ago, he had grown used to its toothless anger. Just so long as it didn't try and touch him again, Felix could happily ignore the ghostly Primordial. Most of the time.

And as usual, the Maw only half answered his question but Felix could tease out the meaning himself. He'd Tempered into Apprentice Tier as he fought against the Primordial originally, and that had apparently changed his Body enough that hunger and thirst bothered him far less than normal. He checked his Temper Formations.

Body: Moving Mountain

Mind: Godeater

Spirit: Dawnwalker

His Body made him denser, faster, and stronger, while his Mind further enhanced his Willpower and cognition. His Spirit...was a mystery, at least to him. Other than being a function of magic and part of his core space, Felix had little idea what the Spirit even was. He looked up at the Maw, who had returned to gazing intently into the dark. Was it even worth it to ask?

He was tired and his head was killing him. His Mana was scraping the bottom of the barrel, barely kept above twenty percent by his regeneration as the sloop pulled more and more from him for less and less effect. He was so tired he hadn't even been able to work on his Mana Gates, and was likely leaving a trail of Felix-scented Mana like chum for sharks.

Felix fumbled out the map, which had been well worn in recent hours. Estimating their position—and unsure if the map was to scale—Felix plotted their course, such as it was.

So if these lumpy shapes are floating rocks, then that was behind us by about four hours. We left at this angle, I believe, so that would put us...He tapped the map. Right in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing noted on the map anywhere nearby, not an outpost or town, and even the rocks had dwindled away. We're lost.

Even if they were near a marked settlement, there was no scale on the map. The distances were essentially meaningless and could be hours or weeks away. Maybe farther. The Void, as the Maw consistently pointed out, was way bigger than anything he could conceptualize. It felt like outer space, if space had no stars or planets, but had air. Or something like it.

What was he breathing?

Felix groaned. So many things, so many mysteries. He'd gone from the beginnings of understanding the Continent to here, a place that made less sense than everything else put together. Chased by pirates.

Pit chuffed once, twice, and headbutted Felix's legs. The dog-sized tenku rubbed himself against him, before sitting down at his feet. Felix smiled.

At least he had a cool dog.


* * *


"What's he doing?"

"..."

"Ugh, you're the worst," Bridgven moaned quietly. "There's a sound ward up and everything! Can't you break your vow of silence once?"

The slender Elf ignored her, wholly focused on the spyglass they were using. The two of them were huddled atop a cutter, a small single-masted ship similar to the sloop they watched. The only difference was theirs still functioned. They'd been ordered after the Mana-filled wretch after he'd given them the slip in the rock fields.

"He's talking to himself again, huh?" Bridgven muttered. Celat nodded and the bard snorted. Quietly. "Already got the Void-madness, eh?"

Celat gestured, their long, thing fingers forming shapes almost too fast to follow. "Okay, sure. Maybe he's talking to the dog...bird...thing. That's still weird."

Bridgven sighed and ran a hand through her white hair. They were coasting at a considerable distance, ordered to observe and report only for some reason known only to Captain Nokk. They were even running sound and void wards, effectively keeping them hidden from the eyes of an Apprentice Tier. The biggest problem was that it was burning boring. The Half-Orc couldn't even play on her mandolin; too loud, she'd been told in a series of curt gestures. Too much for the wards to hide.

"Ugh, just wake me up when he does something interesting," she said before nestling back onto the bench. She tucked her long coat around herself and tipped her hat forward, mind set on sleep.

Celaat said nothing. They simply watched.

And waited.


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Felix was half dozing, Pit's big body nestled awkwardly in his lap, when something screamed.

He jolted awake and slammed his arm into the Control Node, hard. Eyes squeezed shut, he hissed out a low, pained breath before gathering his wits. "What the hell was that?" He scrambled to his feet and looked over the low railing. Around him was the Void, endless and featureless. Unchanged from before he fell asleep. Except...

"Is it darker?" he asked.

Indeed.

Felix jumped and his hands swung before his Mind caught up with him. The ignition of bright green Mana lit up the sloop, but his Corrosive Strike slid right through the Maw's body. It looked at him, decidedly unimpressed.

Are you finished?

Felix didn't quite stumble, but the lack of connection made him shuffle his feet in a series of half steps. It was an improvement over his old body, which would have had him falling flat on his face. Felix regained his center and scowled at the Maw. "Were you trying to scare me?"

Oh did I scare you, poor boy? It cooed, condescension writ large across its stolen features. Were you afraid it was a voidbeast, come to take you in the night?

"Shut up," Felix snapped. "I heard screaming. What was it?"

The Maw regarded him for a long moment as their boat coasted listlessly. Then it raised an emaciated arm and pointed one of those too long fingers.

We have touched the edge of liminal space.

"I'm sorry?" Felix looked where the Maw was pointing. It was where he thought the Void had somehow darkened, as imperceptible as black on black might be even to his increased Perception. "What's liminal space?"

Transitory. Neither here, nor there. You should be familiar, as you've traveled through it before. Many, many times.

"I think I would remember that," Felix said.

The Maw fixed him with a squint. You traveled in liminal space when you were brought to the Continent. I doubt your mortal Mind held onto much of that journey. More recently, you floundered through the boundaries of that insufferable neighbor of mine.

Felix blinked. "The Archon? You mean—?"

The acid sea and monsters within were the defenses of his Domain, a place of power. I was quite surprised to see you manifest your Will as you had. The Maw chuckled. Then again, Unbound do not pay heed to the rules as written.

Felix's perfect memory flashed back. The sea that wasn't, the segmented horrors in the water, the waves that threatened to topple him. He had made a ship, a boat crafted from nothing but his Willpower, as that place had operated under strange rules.

"So this is a Domain in here?" As far as Felix understood, Domains were basically the same as dungeons in games back home. The Archon's place under the mountain was one such place. "Then whatever is inside can enter the Void too? Why are you touching it?"

They had drifted closer to the patch of darker shadow. The Maw dragged its hands through it, and the Void shimmered.

No, idiot child. The Domain is locked by its own laws. The sheathing of voidstuff is merely a border between realms, one that keeps a Domain separate from the Realms. Nothing from the Domain can leave, nor can anything from this side enter. Not unless the sheathing is broken, and to do that one would need far more power than you—or I in this state—might muster.

It looked repulsed by that fact. Weakness did not agree with the Primordial.

"Grimmar. The duel for the ice shard," he looked over his shoulder, half expecting it to still be there. Just like his hooked sword and notebook, it was left behind. "That was also in liminal space? Grimmar called it the Void."

Grimmar was a simple creature. Born and bred for violence and naught much else. It clucked its tongue. Your duel was within a liminal space, one made for such contests. But all liminal spaces are drawn from the Void.

"All—" Felix paused. He thought on the Sworn's Memory and others, where the world seemed to shatter around him. "The Memories I take...in some of them I've been in a dark place that breaks into some of the most insane imagery I've encountered."

Indeed. A representative model of your victim's Memories. The Maw paused from toying with the shimmering dark to smack its lips appreciatively. Delectable. How I miss the taste, already. That Harrowing you ate was lacking in history. Leaves the flavor a bit hollow, I find. But yes, all liminal space. Where the Mind of Creation touches upon its Body and Spirit.

"The Mind of Creation? What Body?" Felix tried to keep his frustration banked as the Maw was finally offering up interesting information. "That Sage, Old Mungle, he said the Void was the place between Minds. Said it was made of the gods' own Minds."

Mm.

"So the Body is...the Continent?" Felix asked.

The Corporeal. He learns. Slowly.

Felix clenched his jaw at that. "Then what's the Spirit? Is it—" his own Mind groped at his recent memories. "—is it the Desolation I've heard about?"

The Maw looked at him, its claw once more passing through shimmering voidstuff. Desolation. A fitting name for it. Yes. The Spirit Realm, the Ethereal is a confluence of all things. A maelstrom of energies left over from Creation. The pirates had a shell made of it's energies. A feat I had not—It is an unwise power to dabble within.

Felix thought on Nokk's words, on the sigil that supposedly created a shield of Desolation energy around the pirate base. "You're afraid of it," he accused and the Maw recoiled. "It can destroy even the Unending Maw, can't it?"

The Maw bared its teeth at him, flat and human-looking. It leaned forward, looming above Felix like the monster it was; Then it stopped. Feeble, moronic Felix Nevarre. You worry on my destruction, when yours is far closer. Beware. They come.

The shimmering dark erupted around them, and out of it came dozens of writhing Tenebrils.

"Whoa!" Felix leaped back from the railing as the tentacular voidbeasts burst across them. He deflected their wild, barbed limbs, dropping two with hastily thrown punches. "I thought you said nothing could come out of the Domain!"

I did. The Maw said, now suddenly atop the foresail. They did not come from the Domain, however. They came from the sheath itself.

Perhaps the Primordial said more, but Felix was to inundated with mottled grey voidflesh to hear it. Bursts of purple-white and green-white Mana shot from Pit's position, Frost Spears and Wingblades slicing into the horde with abandon, yet they did not stop. The things swarmed as if possessed, latching onto sails and railing, lashing anything within reach. They focused mostly on where Felix stood.

On the Control Node, he realized. The Mana.

"Pit! Get down!" Felix shouted. "Reign of Vellus!"

A 360 degree burst of electricity and force erupted from him, hitting everything in a range of about thirty feet. The Tenebrils were hurled backward, many of them slammed into the mast and deck, while more were simply flung back into the Void. Without thinking, Felix pulled the cutlass from his waist and slashed outward.

"Gaaah!" He screamed, clutching his own arm, half expecting it to be a bloody mess. He dropped the sword in anger and frustration. "That Skill's broken, idiot!"

Mantle of the Long Night!

Influence of the Wisp!

Felix let his Mana burst around him, feeling it churn up from his core and out of the Gates in his elbows, hands, and feet. The purple-white Mana of his Mantle surged first from those Gates, whirling around him in a visible cloud of mist that immediately coated the deck in a layer of ice. Immediately following that came a pulse of vibrant violet and orange Mana from the base of his skull.

Fire Within is level 36!

You Have Enthralled Tenebril (x32) for 5 Seconds!

Their bodies began to burn under the effects of the blue wispfire while the arctic chill of his Mantle sank into  their pliable flesh, turning it cold and rigid.

Corrosive Strike!

Corrosive Strike!

Felix lurched forward, his acid-infused fists driving through one and then another voidbeast. Their bodies squish-shattered into lifeless pieces on the deck, colliding with the railings and masts as he mowed through them all.

Pit didn't slacken either, and soon jagged icicles and ripples of wind tore through even more.

It was all over in thirty seconds.

Unarmed Mastery is level 26!

Corrosive Strike is level 27!

Influence of the Wisp is level 27!

Mantle of the Long Night is level 15!

"Haah...haah." Felix took several deep breaths, watching the creatures for any sign of movement. When nothing seemed to be twitching, he looked to his Companion. "You okay, bud?"

Pit nodded before preening one of his wings. The poor guy was covered in their dark blood.

"Maw! What the hell?" Felix shouted into the sails, but he couldn't see the rawboned Primordial.

You cleaned them up quite nicely, it said. Even though he was half expecting it, Felix still started. The Maw grinned. Though I admit, there were less than I expected. The Domain's defenses must have stopped quite a few.

"Defenses...? No, you know what, I don't care. You almost got me killed. Why didn't you say things could enter and exit from the Void?" Felix demanded.

Did you sustain injury? The Maw looked at his right arm. One you did not do yourself?

Felix clutched his arm, where even now he could see faint bruising underneath his skin. Exactly where it had hurt when he'd tried to use the sword. He scowled at the Maw. He wouldn't have any broken Skills were it not for it's schemes. "You—"

He interrupted himself this time, because suddenly the black on black of the Domain was...gone.

"Where'd it go?" he asked, leaning forward over the railing. Hard as it was to see, he couldn't spot it anywhere nearby.

Domains do not stick in one place, the Maw said, as if it were something every child knew. Why would they?

"So it moved here, does that mean it moved on the Continent?" Felix looked at the Primordial's skeletal face, wondering if he'd notice if she lied. "How's that possible?"

It isn't. Don't be ridiculous. A Domain may grow or shrink based upon its potency, but it is fixed to is original placement.

"Then where'd it go?"

Domain's only touch lightly on the Void. As I said. They sheath it only. The sheath is simply sourced elsewhere. The Maw rolled a hand, as if debating something with itself. Of course, there are those more...tidally locked with the Void. But they are of uncommon power, and no something you would see in this stretch of emptiness.

Felix shivered, though it had nothing to do with the ice melting on the boards. He had enough of voidbeasts and mysterious Domains. He walked back to the Control Node and fed in his Mana, letting the sloop lurch forward.


* * *


"You see that?" Bridgven said. "Kid killed a whole flock of Tenebrils like nothing."

Celaat gestured.

"Well sure, they're not as strong as Harrowings or Nightvipers, but they're tough. You see those Skills?" The Half-Orc shook her head, marveling at the taste of Mana in the not-air of the Void. "He's been piloting that sloop for hours and he still had enough to fight off all those voidbeasts."

Their own ship slipped in Felix's wake, leaving plenty of space between them. Bridgven bared her teeth at the dark.

"This kid's too strong to be a new arrival. And how he's handling that ship? He's working for someone." She tightened her hands on the Control Node. "We gotta find out who."