Unbound

New Titles!

Nascent Legacy (Legendary)!

You and your Companion have achieved something a rare few have ever grasped. A Legacy has taken root within you, waiting for the moment it will blossom. Find what feeds you, Felix and Pit Nevarre, and rise to the light.

Holder Of The Empyrean Regalia (Legendary) (Temporary)!

Echoes of another Realm, the Empyrean Regalia were forged by the Nym to honor their teachers’ memory and their Authority. While holding all three pieces, you have a greatly increased defense against attacks that target your Aspects directly.

This Title is temporary and will be removed if you lose possession of all three pieces. It becomes permanent the moment you bond to all three.

Felix didn't feel the impact of the stone when he landed, but his Aspects rattled, regardless.

"That sucked," Pit moaned.

The pair of them had settled somewhere dim, hard, and if the grit beneath his fingers was any indication, dusty as hell. The ache in his Aspect faded along with the Title notifications, but it still took him entirely too long to recognize the twisting lines of the Root brain, not ten feet away. His senses swirled, recalibrating, and they sent new fissures of dull pain through his Aspects.

"Did we die?" Pit wobbled, his weight directly on top of Felix.

"No." Felix tried to move his legs, but his Companion pressed them into the obsidian floor. "But it feels like it.”

“The stupid System." Pit spread his wings and winced, letting his weight flop down further.

"Pit,” he muttered. “You're crushing me."

"No, I'm not, faker." Pit shook his head, "And I'm too dizzy to stand up."

"A beast has emerged from this place? A Chimera!”

Felix glanced up from beneath Pit's bulk. Oh right. He was here.

A tower of a man hovered just inside the broken gold and obsidian doors. Winds swirled around him so tightly that they didn't stir the dust mere inches from his heels.

Felix's eyes blazed. That’s right. A real Paragon. His foundation was sturdy and wide as a river. A true threat.

The Paragon thrust a finger toward them. "You lay here in this sacred chamber, beast, lazing before the heart of my empire?"

"Oh," Pit chirruped, clearly intrigued. “You're the Emperor!"

The man's posture strained, and veins drew tight across his neck. His Spirit flared, pressing down on both of them. What little breath was in Felix's lungs was squeezed out by Pit's mass of feathers and fur.

Guhh!

"You kneel before Emperor Kanad! Skyward King, Soul of the Floating Lands, Undying Wind Upon The Mount. Tell me the reason for your trespass, and your deaths will be swift."

Pit squawked. "Your Spirit—"

"Suppresses your own, beast. You are nothing before me, and you will pay for the lives you've taken in my empire. Now tell me—"

Pit stood up.

Emperor Kanad sputtered, his monologue broken.

"Wow, yeah, that pressure really helped." Pit shook out his feathers. "I feel a lot less dizzy now."

Felix did, too. He sat up. Massaging his lower back, he had also felt the pressure of the Paragon's Spirit. It was powerful, certainly, but it had remained somehow distant.

"Two of you," the Emperor said, clearly startled.

Felix waved. His Mind was busy turning. The dizziness he felt hadn't fully disappeared, and he didn't want it to. There was something there. Music at the edge of hearing.

Pit tilted his head. "How come you're so strong, but your guards were weak?"

The Emperor blinked, resuming his stance as his gaze ticked between the two intruders.

"You feel the weight of my Authority, Chimera. I alone am worthy of it."

"The others, they were fragile," Pit said, nodding to himself. "You gave them bad Tempers on purpose."

Kanad bared his teeth, and those thick veins in his neck stood stark against his fine doublet. The winds around him whirled faster, now fully kicking up the dust. "Impudence. I once faced such arrogance before I rose to my Seat. All who claim empire do the same. You cannot let the rabble rise above their stations."

Pit laughed. "That's stupid." He flexed his wings. Do you think I can fly in here? Pit sent to Felix.

Felix glanced around. The Root brain chamber was of a decent size. Should be. Can you take him?

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Pit snorted but responded to the Emperor. "You keep people weak. What happens when someone like me shows up?"

Kanad's eyes widened. "Then it is up to me to defend the Empire. A trial of Champions is necessary."

"Okay. Trial it up.”

"Arrogant whelp!" Kanad lifted a hand, and a white-green Mana surged. "Die then! Howl Of The Primeval Ancestors!"

A wind blast, thirty feet wide and solid as stone, screamed toward them. The wind tore up the stones of the flooring, hurling them like shrapnel before its howling passage.

Pit braced himself in front of Felix. "Ouranic Dominion."

The wind hit—and it moved no further. Seized within the Chimera's control, it flowed around him, lifting him from the ground on a gentle breeze that nonetheless ruffled his feathers as if he were sitting in the midst of a hurricane.

"Very nice," Pit said. "My turn. Mantle of the Stormlord! Tempest Fugit!"

Explosions burst across the chamber as Pit blurred, flying forward after the Emperor. The man moved sideways, his own power marshalling into his hands and feet, smashing apart the spears of frozen lightning that sought out his heart.

Felix barely listened to any of it. In the space between question and violence, his Mind had been caught up. The battle was furious, but his Bond could not be denied—there was no fear in Pit’s Spirit. He was strong enough to keep the Emperor’s attention for a few minutes.

Time enough for Felix to hunt down his earworm.

He focused on the music that lingered alongside the remnant dizziness. Both were evidence of his interaction with the System, and he was loath to dismiss it. More than that, the distant music was coiling around a piece of himself that he’d finally identified. Felix pulled his Status up, focusing on where the sound clung tightest.

Omen: Magician

Path: Cardinal Fiend

Legacy: Four Are One

His perfect recall pulled back Lascalium's words, and Felix examined them from every angle. A legacy was the true map to his self. Was it Core Manifestation? Did everyone who reached Core Manifestation attain a Legacy?

No. Felix knew that wasn't true. Legacies had never been mentioned by anyone. It must then be a function of advancing his Omen. But…was his Core Manifestation a reflection of his true self? That's what Lascalium said, wasn't it?

The words were strangely muddled, twitching at the edges as his perfect recall struggled to retrieve them. The voice he heard instead was Pit's.

"I'd rather remain as we are. That's our strength.”

Bonds, Lascalium's voice echoed through his Memory. Bonds Are The Key.

Felix could feel them like tangled fishing lines throughout his core space. He had never looked for them there. The Bonds wound around everything, binding root and branch, Skill and core, Pillar and even the abyss itself. Some were thick as buildings, while others were gossamer thin, but there was such a preponderance that it coated his core space in an out of focus blue mist.

He pulled back, trying to find a new angle, and the mist shifted. Just beyond his core space and the latticework of Divine Tree roots, in the endless dark, he caught a glimmer. A pattern twisted out there, like a Skill but only a bare few lines of vibrations.

Felix blinked. The pattern was sparse, but traces of it wound through…everything. He couldn't grasp the details yet. He shaped his Intent, coupling it to his Will, and plucked at the central piece of it. A song rippled through him as all of his core space resonated.

Pit screeched, his own self shaking from the simple, plucked Bond. For an instant, Felix’s attention turned to the chamber. There, the emperor was busy striking Pit with a palm strike. His Companion attempted to avoid it, but Kanad’s Paragon Temper could not be stopped so easily. Damage radiated through Pit’s shoulder, and he was thrown back into the far wall, just as a whirling buzzsaw of wind Mana cut into his wing.

For a moment, Felix considered stepping in—but his friend could handle himself, and if he couldn’t, Pit knew how to ask for help. Instead, Felix turned his Mind toward his center.

Something was happening.

Hovering in the dark space between his core space and Pit’s, the pattern pulsated. Pieces of it pulled together, the Bonds between the Companions’ cores a thick mesh that seemed to feed it. As he watched, they formed a Skill of incomplete vibrations—a half-made planetoid that looked like it had been gnawed upon by some great beast.

Felix reached toward it, and knew on an instinctual level that it sat equally within his core space and Pit's.

"A potent showing, whelp," the emperor panted from the real world. Felix blinked open his eyes. He was still kneeling at the base of the Root brain, while the Paragon emperor stood at the far end of the room, crowding Pit against the wall. Blood ran down from Kanad’s lip, and his hands already showed signs of bruising. "It is not enough to evade my Authority."

Pit was bloody and battered, his wing wounded, but he wasn’t paying attention to Kanad. “Felix!”

A ringing chime shook the chamber. The emperor threw his hands over his ears, pivoting toward the Root brain. He gagged, his flight Skill guttering before holding steady.

Felix stood. In his hand shone a radiance too bright to look directly upon, and yet it cast no light at all. Felix could imagine what the emperor was feeling. It was an illumination that pierced the Spirit directly, but that was not all. With a flick of his wrist, it rang, a muted clattering that nevertheless sent shivers through Pit and the emperor alike. They fell back.

Felix held it up, regarding the Crescian Bronze curve of its bell and the obsidian handle. He could feel it begging to be bonded…but Felix also knew that it would require more power than Felix had to spare.

"Impossible! You cannot be worthy of it!" The paragon laughed, and there was a green madness in his eyes. "Give it here, boy!"

Kanad surged forward, Skills manifesting into armor and weaponry formed of solid air and something else. A burst of water surged across his limbs as he crossed the distance in a blink. He reached out.

Felix punched him in the face.

The emperor fell back, shock carved into his bleeding lip. "You dare strike the emperor!" He thrust himself back into the air, hovering once more as his power swelled into a wild gale.

Blue-white lightning crashed around Kanad. It forged itself into an amorphous weapon in his outstretched fist. Spear or trident, it flickered with a deadly promise. "You do not deserve that artifact. A mere Grandmaster could never use it. You are no Herald!"

Felix's eyes burned the exact shade as the man's lightning. "Why? I've got the Title."

Kanad's eyes widened.

Felix seized the Skill hovering between himself and Pit. The words came unbidden to his lips. "Half-Core Manifestation: Stormwrought Strings!"

Bonds surged throughout their core spaces, and Pit gave a startled yowl. It joined with Felix’s voice seamlessly, echoing through the connections that made the two of them separate and the same. Power traced back, leaping from Felix’s outstretched hand and Pit’s open beak, arcing into Emperor Kanad.

Something more than lightning surged, burning through Skill and armor alike before it burst him asunder. The emperor’s scream vanished just as quickly as his charred flesh, and in less than a second, Kanad was nothing more than a smear on the floor tiles.

You Have Killed The Skyward King!

XP Earned!

New Title!

Righteous Regicide (Legendary)!

Two reigning emperors have sought your blood, despite your wish for peace. They brought you war…and you brought them death. All stat debuffs from entering another empire uninvited are reduced by 5%.