Unbound-Chapter Eight Hundred And Eighty Nine: 889

Felix stood on the prow of a Manaship, running his hands admiringly across the railing. "This is very impressive.”

He admired the woven ropes leading up into complicated winches and pulleys that were heavily inscribed, as well as the lacquered railings that gleamed in dawn's strident light. He turned, looking at his companions. Florian Iretus, the young master of his House, stood there, flanked by his sister Mena and Captain Landis, leader of his House army.

"I never took you for a warrior," Felix said to the young man. He was supposedly eighteen, but he looked closer to fifty, all slender elbows and knees. Still, he was fitted in custom armor and was at the high end of Journeyman Tier, which was an impressive advancement from being barely an Apprentice the last time they had met in Ahkestria. His personal guards were also powerful, all of them Adepts, and numbered at least fifty.

"I've always been more of a thinker than a fighter," Florian admitted. "With my father now recovered from the fall of the Highest Flame, he's taken up our shipbuilding operations once more. My thinking has led me here. It has allowed me to spread my wings under Captain Landas, and it is how we made these for you, my Lord." Florian gestured to the ships around them.

Felix clapped the kid on the back. "You've done well."

Floating in the air, just outside of the risen Haestus Temple were thirty Manaships. They were great behemoths, fitted with side sails and keel sails that made them resemble enormous fish. Each sail was woven of a glittering cloth that oozed Mana. Dark panels formed the length of their hulls, not wood but Leviathan bone, salvaged from the corpses of the ancient giants of the Ahkestrian Sea. Emblazoned on their sides and sails was Felix's own House crest surmounting the Ahkestrian wave. fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓

They looked handsome as hell. Plus, each one was a galleon-class vessel, able to hold a thousand. All told, it was just enough, and that was considering that many of their number could fly under their own power.

Harn leaned against the gunwale. "It's about that time, yeah?"

"Yes." Felix clenching and unclenching his fist. "Get ready."

"Aye. Exemplars! To your ships! Ready on the Emperor's count." Harn jogged off, leaping across the gap between Manaships as he organized everyone with his commander's bellow.

"I suppose we'll head astern as well," Florian said. He bowed. "I beg your leave, your highness."

"Keep an eye out," Felix said as they left. "You'll want to see this."

The kid grinned, and his captain nodded mutely.

Felix considered the empty air before them. He stood at the prow of the flagship, so that nothing was before them but the empty sky above the teeming jungles of Gharion. His Territory map of Gharion told him exactly where the various Dark Passages existed, their beginnings and endings, but this was the first time he'd used them since completing the Pool of Halcyon Oaths. He brought up the map from his authority screen.

There are a lot fewer individual passages, but nearly all of them are connected now. He traced the path they were to take, committing it to memory. This will make things a lot easier.

New Title!

Chthonic Empyrean (Mythic)!

By traversing the full depth of the Pool, you have proven your commitment to walk the dark paths of deepest commitment. A Bond. As Siva was but a shadow of Veridaan, so too are Oaths a pale reflection of Bonds. The Void Nexus within you stirs as it reaches Apprentice Tier, Promising Greater Glories Ahead.

+Stabilization cost of significance is reduced by 25%

+Stabilization of all Passages are increased by 25%

+Size of Dark Passage rifts are doubled

New Title!

Empire’s Passage (Legendary)!

You have strengthened your connection to your people by traversing the very depths of your vows. The echoes of Veridaan call out through you, Scion, and from your center emerges a Bond none can deny.

+Apprentice Tier Increases Exemplar Limit From Nine To Thirteen!

+Limits On Passengers Greatly Reduced!

+Exemplar’s Gift - Allows all Exemplars to temporarily appoint their own Adjutants—three each—giving them the ability to expand the size, capacity, and speed of Dark Passage rifts.

The bonuses were incredibly useful for several reasons. They made the Passages safer, cheaper to create, and with his increases to Void Nexus, traversal would be faster than ever.

Most importantly, it meant capacity.

On his mark, his Exemplars lifted their hands, one on every leading boat. They joined with him, each having assigned three Adjutants to expand the Skill. Mervin and three Adjutants had opened up a path large enough to fit nine massive Manaships through them. What would happen with twelve Exemplars and thirty-six Adjutants enhancing his own power? He was curious to find out.

From the prow of the lead ship, Felix raised a single hand. Void Nexus.

He slashed downward.

The sound of whispering silk rose from nothing until it thundered through the assembled forces like a trumpet blast. The sky split before his hand, his four talons carving a wound to the skin of the world. A dark rift formed in the emptiness, looking like a patch of night sky in the newborn day, complete with blue stars that dazzled in complex nebulae. It was huge, the rift, bigger than the nearby Haestus Temple, certainly.

More than sizable enough for all thirty Manaships to enter.

Felix withdrew his hand. It tingled a little. "Lord Iretus. Forward, if you please."

Back at the helm, Florian laughed. "As you wish, your highness!"

They made passage through the dark, but no longer found them so cloying. The once shadowed skies and heavy clouds that dominated the Dark Passages had begun to clear, filling the night with stars. They were not just distant across the sky, but near—floating motes that passed by their ships close enough to touch. A few of them had done so, and the motes provided nothing more than a soft shiver of heat through people.

Happily, Felix no longer sensed dire creatures dwelling just out of sight. They had been chased off, or maybe walled away when the Titles and Skill strengthened the Passages.

The distant, enormous islands still floated by, but now they were covered in plant growth that had not been there before. It was still vast and mostly empty, of course, those rock island few and far between. The ground, if there was one, was still too far away to ever find.

There were even small structures on the islands they passed, nothing Felix could investigate at the moment, but they were definitely buildings of some sort. They all reminded him of the enormous abandoned port city they had found previously. The architecture was very similar, and just like the port, the stone was pocked as if a barrage of projectiles had blasted pieces of it away.

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"We must study these Passages," Tzfell said to him as they reached the second hour of their journey north. "What secrets might they hold?”

“If we survive the days to come, I'll be happy to send you back here."

The Dwarven Chanter patted his hand. "That's what I like about you, Felix. You have your eyes set forward, but you don't ignore what's behind."

"The old shouldn't concern us nearly as much as the yet-to-come," Mauvim said, coming up on his left. "But I do lament not having the time to peruse such ruins."

"Grandmaster," Tzfell said, bowing to the older woman.

"Hello, dear. Run along now. I've some words to share with the boy."

The Dwarven Chanter hesitated only a moment, "As you wish." She departed, leaving the two of them alone at the prow.

"A willful girl, that one," Mauvim muttered, staring at the space Tzfell had vacated. "You have her loyalty."

"Hmm," Felix hummed noncommittally. "We fought a lot of battles together. That earns a bit of trust." He studied the old Chanter. "To what do I owe the pleasure of your presence?"

"A pleasure?" The old woman cracked a wrinkle-laden smile. "A descriptor few would apply to me, even in my youth."

"I'm sure you weren't always so—”

“Sour and doddering? I've heard them all, Nevarre, and worse besides." She fixed him with a squint. "What do you think of me, your highness?"

"I thought you didn't care for my descriptors."

"Not my appearance. Blind gods know I don't care about that. I can tell you hold the Chanters in a certain regard. They're not all of us. Zara, Tzfell, and Laur are close to you. Even Isla, woman that she is, seems to be trusted. Yet I can tell that trust does not extend to all of us."

"I don't know all of you," Felix said. "That was the purpose of the Oath you swore.”

“An Oath that no longer binds us, I'll remind you. Siva's death unraveled them all, yet we have not immediately betrayed you."

"Yet some still did. It was through inaction more than anything, but they bypassed their Oaths and nearly blew up my city." Felix's eyes burned, casting a flickering light across the deck. "Are you asking me to blindly trust you all?"

"No. No, that would be too much." Mauvim sighed, her whole body leaning against her knobbly cane. "I am asking that you trust the Grand Harmony."

Felix's eyes dimmed. "What?"

"The Grand Harmony is the key to defeating the Ruin. That is the purpose of the Sorcerers of the Fallen Halls. To preserve the Grand Harmony and those that can perceive it, and to prepare the world for the Ruin's advent. If we perish before that day, if we're kept from our destiny, all will be lost."

Felix grimaced. "That sounds a lot like prophecy. Like that fate bullshit the gods like to peddle."

"Fate is nothing but a culmination of choices. It can be changed, but sometimes the cost of such changes are more than any can bear. The greatest Seers of the Golden Age witnessed this coming three thousand years ago when the Ruin first washed across the continent. Back when the Fallen Hall still clung to the heavens and called itself Empyrean."

"When they were located upon Etrionn," he said.

Mauvim looked at him sharply. "Zara was right about you. More intelligent than you look."

Felix bared his teeth.

Mauvim looked away. "Ahem, yes. Etrionn. Those Who Hold Up The Sky. The Walking City, filled with wonders no mortal has seen since its fall. Wonders such as the Singing Fields, the home of the Seers. Nothing like those born in this age—these were proper magi, endowed with all the gifts of their Race and privileges of their time. They saw a future beyond the end of their own, when the Ruin would come once more. It would do more than destroy, more than erase. The very skies would blacken, and the land itself would turn to dust."

Felix tried not to react to that description. That sounds like the Deadlands. Is that what the Continent will become?

"The Grand Harmony is the key to saving us. That is what the Seers witnessed. That is why they splintered from the Empyrean Halls, why they fled the last stand of Etrionn. They became the Fallen Halls, magi no longer, but Sorcerers bent on a single purpose: preserve the Grand Harmony and save the world."

"Your own belief system says that the Grand Harmony is literally everywhere," Felix pointed out. "Of course it would be involved in fighting back. It's involved in everything."

"The Seers specify that the Grand Harmony must be wielded against the Ruin. Not just extant. Only that will create the smallest sliver of a chance at survival. This is what we sought out the Unbound for. Why we prevented them from being seized by the Hierophant. To train them in the Chant, to elevate their frightening power through the Fallen Halls so that we might reach the Empyrean once again. Therein lies our salvation."

Quiet and cold, Felix spoke softly, there at the prow of his flagship. "Is there a reason you didn't tell me this sooner?"

"Choice is a thread easily broken. Sometimes it must be guided."

"And you're the Master weavers, right?" Felix laughed bitterly. "No wonder some of your kind turned against me. They were afraid the Big Bad Unbound was dooming the world somehow."

"As she said, you're quite smart.”

“How did they determine that? Which one of my many attempts to save people convinced them that I was a threat?"

Mauvim watched him, her Spirit undetectable and her ancient face unreadable. "I find it interesting, Felix. You do not seek Authority, yet find it thrust upon you at every turn. You've grown in power alarmingly quickly, gathering even ancient secrets from the Ruins' long grasp, and you command loyalty with an ease I've not seen since—for a very long time."

"Since when?”

Mauvim sighed. "Since Ocalla Marzul. It brought back a number of fears among my people.”

“You think I'm becoming another Hierophant?"

"It is a fear we cannot shake. It is that fear that drove the splinter in my Chanters, driving them to side with Ocalla. After all, she has always had a clear plan, while you would not even speak with us."

It was all Felix could do not to tear the railing off in front of him. He’d been betrayed because of what he didn't know, because of what they refused to tell him. He flared his Perception, tracking down every Chanter among his ships. He couldn't sense all of them, but most were within his range. "Why exactly should I trust any of you anymore?"

"Because we still seek the same end, Felix," Mauvim replied. "Ocalla's methods have been rejected by all of us that remain. Those that have betrayed the Seer's vision have been excised. You know this."

Mauvim's weathered voice was steady, but it flirted with the edge of panic.

"Yet you still fear me."

"Yes.”

Felix growled. "I am nothing like her."

"You'd be surprised. No one is born evil. It is the world that shapes them. Their choices. Ocalla was my friend once upon a time. She too wished to help people. She knew of the ancient Seers, and even now I don't doubt that she is trying to change that fate."

Felix opened his mouth, and Mauvim held up a withered hand.

"I know. She has done all the wrong things in pursuit of those goals. She has hunted us, killed millions over her long centuries. She must be stopped. Killed, even. What I must ask you, Felix, is if you have the conviction to save us, no matter what is required of you."

"What does that mean?"

"Exactly what I said. I cannot predict the Hierophant. She has long since grown beyond my power, and her schemes are long-lived and insidious. Yet what if she is right? She wields the Grand Harmony as well. What if the only way to stop the Ruination of our world…is to let her win?"

Felix took a step back from the old Chanter. He said nothing, but it seemed his expression was more than enough for Mauvim.

"I see that I have upset you. That was not my intent. I merely ask that you think on it, because there will be no second chances."

“For you?” he asked. “Or me?”

A horn was sounded from the crow's nest.

"Port spotted!"

The ship tilted, shifting toward the distant speck across the pale horizon. When Felix pulled his attention away from their destination, he found Mauvim stumping halfway across the ship.

Which is it, lady? You fear me becoming like the Hierophant, or you want me to emulate her?

He found the horizon again and watched as the floating island grew larger.

Let her win? Felix clenched his fist. Fuck that.

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