Unbound

Sovereign of Tides is level 173!

Felix twisted, falling through the Ethereal head-first and fixed his gaze on the nightmare behind him. Every couple of seconds, he changed direction, whipping at right angles away from the once-god, but he wasn’t nearly fast enough. The Ruin was gaining on him.

Genesis Cascade!

Elemental power clawed at the Ruin, shaped to flame and ice. Myrrd cast it off, no more than a dismissive shrug—but Felix’s Will was truly terrible to behold. Despite his flawed shaping, pieces of cold fire detached from the Ruin.

Genesis Cascade is level 156!

Myrrd’s visage soured, a thunderhead of shadowed cloud, and Felix ran.

Sovereign of Tides is level 174!

Bonds flared and diminished along the edges of broken reality. Felix skimmed through the white mist. Sovereign of Tides allowed him to manipulate Bonds, much as Adamant Discord once had, but it was far more useful.

“Over here!”

Myrrd barreled through every obstacle, never bothering to take anything but a straight line. It made him predictable.

And easy to taunt.

Felix vanished, slipping between the dark spaces that littered the Ethereal. Unlike the Corporeal, which had silly things like gravity and solid-state physics, such limitations were a thing of the past.

By the time Myrrd reached him, he’d already emerged a thousand feet away. It drove the once-god nuts, which was good.

It let Felix hurt him.

Genesis Cascade!

Another piece of Myrrd’s Ruin split from his form. It wasn’t large—none of them had been—but it was a piece, one that Felix immediately hurled into the Desolation’s path.

It was promptly devoured.

Each missed attack made the once-god angry, more reckless, and distracted. By slow measures, Felix was whittling the god down to size. At the rate he was working, he’d be defeated in approximately thirty years.

Except, Myrrd was getting faster.

Felix leapt over a floating colonnade, twisting as he fell toward another Dark Passage—only to have the columns explode into shrapnel. It tore through him, scouring across his armored limbs and driving several pieces deep into his back. Felix grunted, his Health dipping for a moment; but worst of all was the laugh.

Got You.

The strike launched Felix like a bullet train. He smashed down through at least five different piece of large debris—so fast that he didn’t even see what they were made of. Something hard, judging by his aching Body.

Sovereign of Tides!

Bonds flared, but the Ruin was ahead of them. Myrrd brought his fists down hard, and cold flame flooded the hovel Felix stood within.

Felix! He’s really close! Let me—

No! Not until it’s time!

Felix blurred, skipping across a metal rooftop toward a fractal shape that folded into itself in some random pattern. He twisted through it, narrowly missing the unstable edges of…whatever it was, and tumbled onto the collection of jagged stone blocks on the other side.

The Ruin burned through them all.

Dark, cold flame and cloying clouds erupted through the fractal shape, burning its pieces into ash. Myrrd strode through the wreckage, his form lean and tight, without all the billowing clouds he usually bore. His scowl was almost human as his burning eyes fixed on Felix.

Enough Running. This Ends, Boy.

“You’re right. Pit!”

In a flash of light, his Companion appeared to the far left. “Hi!”

As one, they shouted. “Authority of Renewal!”

Significance burned, and every ounce of the Whalemaw’s potency vanished in an instant. Unite the Lost still resided within the Skill, largely untouched, and now it seized Myrrd and twisted him back toward true.

GAHHHH!

The once-god spasmed, his Body flickering in obvious distress. Pieces of him fell away, and the billowing clouds of Ruin dissolved into fading smoke.

“Not so tough now, huh?” Pit crowed.

Myrrd glared daggers at the tenku, struggled to his feet…and ran.

Sovereign of Tides!

Felix reached out and seized the Bonds that hung strongest around the once-god. The Bonds that stretched from Felix’s center and split into eight separate threads.

Myrrd halted mid-stride as his [Partial Cores] froze him in place. He struggled, but the hold Felix had was complete. He closed in, Mana dancing between his outstretched fingers. “These aren’t yours—”

Myrrd blurred, his limb swinging sideways toward Felix’s side. It was too fast, and Felix had drawn too close.

It hit.

Biting back his screams, Felix flared his Skill again. Sovereign of Tides!

The Bonds reignited, skewering the once-god into the chaotic sky of the Ethereal. White mist rolled over him, and the tendrils of hungry dissolution got to work. They tore at Myrrd, pulling a scream of agony from his cloudy throat.

“These are not yours.” Felix’s voice was no more than a whisper in the howl of the Ethereal, but Myrrd heard him. He couldn’t help it. “They’re mine.”

Myrrd howled, but it was the sound of guttering flames and empty skies and still water. It was the horror of nothing…forever. It tore at Felix’s Spirit, crashing against his Mind, and even drove a burning pain through every joint in his Body.

Authority of Renewal is level 157!

…

Authority of Renewal is level 165!

Claim the Cosmos!

Eight fragmented cores were ripped free of smoky flesh and consumed in an instant. Myrrd’s ragged bellow cut short at the same time the light in his eyes guttered out.

You Have Killed Myrrd, The God Of Annihilation!

XP Earned!

New Title!

Death of Ruin (Unique)!

You have killed Ruin itself, defying even the Empyreans and their claim that it could not be done! In so doing, you have discovered the power of annihilation Mana, a force of pure destruction that directly targets significance and burns it for fuel.

+Increased ability to shape annihilation Mana

+Increased defenses against annihilation Mana

Felix snorted. Who would I need to defend from, now?

Flesh returned to flesh, and the surplus of annihilation Mana dissipated swiftly, claimed by the Desolation, now that it was masterless. Muscle and bone ground themselves down, until there was nothing more than dust…and the shining arc of a familiar, shrouded core.

[Divine Core of Destruction]

Felix brushed it off, flaring Authority of Renewal, and its foul layers fell off like a dried husk. He flared it again, this time on himself. He frowned.

[Partial Core of Aatansii]

“Yeah, makes sense.”

Claim the Cosmos.

It vanished, pulled instantly into Felix’s center.

“It’s over,” Pit said with a cheer.

“Yeah.” Felix wiped sweat from his brow. “I’m done.”

He fell.

“Felix! What’s—” Pit loomed over him, golden eyes creased with concern. “You’re hurt! When did you get hit?”

“A…lucky shot.” Breathing was getting hard. Felix put a hand to his side, where Myrrd’s annihilation Mana had burned right through him. “My significance is guttering out, I think.”

“Then we get you more! Um, uh, oh!” Pit flew away and came back almost immediately, carrying in his massive beak a piece of half-dissolved building. “Eat this!”

“Claim the Cosmos.” The building vanished, snatched instantly into Felix’s center, but he could tell it wasn’t enough. “It’s draining out of me faster than I can take it in.”

“Use shaping! It’s annihilation Mana, right? Get it out!”

It was a good idea. Genesis Cascade sang out from his center, targeting his side and the Mana that had lodged within—and it came back empty. He couldn’t discern where he began and the Ruin’s final attack ended.

“I don’t think—” Felix wheezed. “Huh. Nicked a lung.”

“Stop playing around! Use—”

“I’ve already tried everything. Even flared Authority of Renewal. Didn’t work.”

Then You Have One Chance.

Felix and Pit were both startled by the corpse, but Felix was the first to smile. “Fancy meeting you here, Avet.”

The god of chaos and flame floated there, his Body a half-rotted man in a very nice doublet and pants. He flicked a half-cloak back over his shoulder as he looked around himself in disdain. It Is Not Somewhere I Often Choose To Frequent. Lucky For You, I Did.

“Lucky.” Pit narrowed his eyes. “What chance?”

One Chance To Survive, Dear Chimera.

Pit growled. “How?”

Take My Core. Restore Things To The Way They Were, Long Ages Ago. Do That, And I Bet Your Suffering Will End.

“Let me guess,” Felix said with a wheeze. Pieces of him were breaking apart rapidly. He could feel it accelerating. “You want to make a deal.”

No. No Bargains. No Compacts. Potent Magic To Be Sure, But What I Require Can Only Be Given Freely.

“No more riddles! Tell us,” Pit insisted, his remaining wings flexing aggressively. “Or I’ll—”

No Need For Threats. I Do Not Wish To Fight The One Who Avenged Me Twofold.

Felix nodded. “Sacrifice.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Avet snorted. A Foul Trick That Wasted Ages Of My Lifespan. And For What? The corpse gestured to the space where Myrrd once lay. Nothing At All.

So I Offer It To You Instead.

Felix’s breath hitched. “And in return?”

Avet smiled, displaying more than a few golden teeth. Just Make It Interesting, Eh? A Little Chaos, For My Sake.

Between one syllable and the next, Avet vanished…but in his place was a floating object no bigger than a plum.

[Divine Core of Change]

Claim the Cosmos!

It vanished, pulled immediately into Felix’s chest…and that was it.

Pit clacked his beak uncertainly. “Do we do something, or just—”

Felix gasped as light poured out of his eyes and mouth, followed swiftly by a wild song and seventeen [Partial Cores]. They flew from Felix’s chest harmlessly, but it didn’t feel that way to him. Each [Partial Core] cut an agonizing path from his center, until they floated in the air just above the two of them.

“It seems,” Felix managed between gasps, “that the [Partial Cores] will fix themselves.” He reached up. “But I’ll give them a boost, anyway.”

Authority of Renewal!

They spun, rotating around him like planets around a sun. [Partial Cores] snapped together like magnets, their varied textures and shapes reassembling, until they weren’t partial at all.

Four Cores hung in the air above Felix and Pit, each one possessed of its own dire gravity that drew them in. Felix tried to say something, but his voice faltered, and instead, names rose unbidden to his lips, like the words of a spell.

Kohsara. Supreme Primordial of Storms, Cardinal of the Living Spark.

Aatansii. Supreme Primordial of Rot, Cardinal of Inevitable Decay.

Orrinahla. Supreme Primordial of Growth, Cardinal of Renewal’s Rise.

Veridaan. Supreme Primordial of Oaths, Cardinal of Unseen Tides.

He spoke them, not as words or sounds, but as shapes and thoughts that had somehow burrowed their way into him. Their significance, lost for Ages, now poured outward, expressed through the melodic lilt of his voice and the green-gold glow of Authority of Renewal.

Authority of Renewal is level 169!

Each spoken name shook through him, greater than the last, until the air of the Ethereal howled in response. The cores spun, faster and faster, the power arcing off of them so great that it forced Pit’s fur to stand on end, until clouds of liquid Mana swirled around them in vibrant pools that spiked with crystalline shards.

Electricity flashed between the four cores, tangling amid the pale Bonds and the sizzle and burn of creation and entropy. Four primal forces, each one enough to raise up a dozen lesser gods.

Felix suddenly saw what had enticed the Divine so much. Broken apart, this was the power to do anything.

Together, they could do so much more.

Understanding flitted through Felix as the world dimmed into a single point of luminous, unending light. The Cardinals created everything. They were everything. A circle without end.

Four As One, he recited. A Legacy.

Felix fell, his significance fading fast. Pit caught him. “Hold on just a little longer!”

“I’m…trying, bud.” He huffed a laugh. “Don’t have much left to hold.”

The Cores spun faster, whirling until the four seemed to make a single hoop of faceted stone. It did nothing to stop the significance that leeched out of him.

“You need help!” Pit closed his eyes tight, as if focusing.

Title: Boon of Bonds Is Active!

As if tuning into a faded radio station, a chorus of distant but familiar voices assaulted his ears.

"Felix.”

“Felix!”

“Emperor!”

“The Fiend!”

“Colossus!”

“Kid!”

“He's alive!"

Mana, Essence, and measures of significance flowed through their Links. It wasn’t enough, but suddenly Felix could breathe, even as annihilation Mana ate away at their gift.

Then word spread.

Voices he’d never heard sang down the line. First a handful and then a dozen. A hundred. Thousands, each one offering what they could. Alone, they were no more than token donations, but together, their drips became a torrent. Significance poured through, a tidal wave of it, enough to satisfy the annihilation Mana for years to come.

Felix seized all of it. “Here goes nothing, bud.”

“Ready when you are.”

“Right.” Felix took a breath. Sovereign of Tides!

He seized all of the Primordial Cores at once, not even bothering to stop their blinding dance above him.

Authority of Renewal!

In the span of a single exhale, the world was undone.

Felix was aware of nothing and everything. He stood somewhere beyond the Realms, in a Realm without sense.

Here again.

Where?

Pit! You’re here?

Of course I did! Wherever you go, I go.

Felix smiled. Or he thought he did. He no longer had a mouth or a body to contain one. On the plus side, Desolation no longer tore at him.

So where are we? Pit huddled close. Somehow, Felix could feel it, though he couldn’t even sense himself.

I—

His words failed as pieces of his insides spun outward. There was no other way to describe the feeling—it was visceral, raw, and he had the distinct impression that he’d lost…something.

Instinctively, he dove inward to his core space and found he could. Suddenly, Felix was back, his visualized form as normal as ever—but that was all.

The Divine Tree was a plant no longer. It had continued its blue metamorphosis it began earlier, and now it was a labyrinthine maze of twisting lines. None touched, and no two went to the same place, but it still felt like a tree. The Bonds spread outward forever, cutting through the infinite dark outside his core space.

Below them, set around the crystalline blue trunk, were five immense blue planets. His Skills. Four were settled just above the roots, close enough to almost touch the translucent trunk. The last was outside the bounds of the core space, though its diameter overlapped the edges of his and Pit’s distant center.

What wasn’t there were the four Primordial Cores.

Felix opened his eyes…and the world had changed.

No longer empty, no longer senseless, Felix and Pit stood atop a green-tiled floor in the midst of an endless darkness.

Pit stepped up, shielding him from the shadows. “I think something’s out there.”

Felix didn’t think. He knew.

Rot drenched the tiles, dissolving them one by one beneath the warm hand of entropy. It soured the air and fouled the grout…yet where it passed, another touch followed. Green-gold swells of growth climbed across the crumbling stone, filling it with slender shoots and the roots of frondless moss. Death and creation, hand in hand, born from one another. Felix’s vision flickered, and it was more than that; the snippet of power before him was amplified and echoed, sent sprawling across the Continent and Void and Ethereal in equal measure. They would bring blessed death to the Realms once more, and in so doing, bring new life to every sea, field, or empty stretch of shadow.

Electricity surged, a spark of life that echoed between all things, even the dead. A brilliance leapt through Creation, carried on the back of a song Felix had never heard before. It rose and fell by turns, sharp percussion filling the gaps between its strains, while strident brass carved its melody from the air. Felix could hear it spread between the tiles at his feet and Pit, even himself.

The spark zipped from hand to hand, flitting down lines of faintest blue. That same sensation of spreading sparks returned, only this time, he could feel far more. The breath of a child a thousand miles away, the call of a Glitterhog in the forests of Sao’Thun, Felix could feel it all. He was Pit, and he was Vess, and he was everyone and everything that had or would exist. Felix knew it as surely as he knew his own name.

“The Cardinals,” Felix said quietly. “They’re all around us.”

“They are?” Pit spun. “All I can see is lightning and some…are those mushrooms covered in moss?”

Felix shook his head, and somehow he was also a man in Tavan saying no to a street vendor. “I—” He was a little girl holding a dagger, fascinated by the edge. “I think—” He was a Chimera, collapsed on the field, breathing their last. “They’re reforming.”

Flesh rippled across the dark tiles, filling the space that their power described. Bone and blood came first, and it was far slower than Felix expected. His Mind flickered, tossing him across Bonds he’d never seized.

“Felix?” Pit stuck his giant head into his face. “How’s your wound?”

Felix hadn’t even thought of it. Sure enough, his significance was still draining, there was just so much more of it now. He put a hand to his ribs, and they came away bloody. “Not good.”

“Avet, that dirty liar!” Pit’s ears laid back, and he let out a pained whine. “What else can we do?”

“Primordials don’t die. They just change.”

Bonds sang to Felix, jumping his awareness across empires and oceans. He was there, dying next to his best friend, and he sat atop a mausoleum, waiting for his father to come home from the north.

“What’re you talking about?”

“The Cardinals are being reborn, Pit…”

His Companion looked at him, head cocked to the side.

“And I think I’m one of them.”

It was what Avet had meant. Felix had suspected, but he’d hoped to be wrong.

Pit swallowed, his big eyes brighter than usual. He nodded. “Okay. Let’s go.”

“Go?” Felix shuddered as his awareness shifted six more times. It was happening faster. “I think this has to happen. The Cardinals are needed, or else the Divine will come back. If not now, then in the future. I–I can’t leave.”

“Never said that, dummy.” Pit leaned down, pressing his glossy feathered forehead against Felix’s. “Convergence.”

“No!”

Pit leapt into his Spirit, settling like a leaden weight. You really think I’d let you do this alone?

Felix sputtered, his Mind interrupted by two more Bonds. His skin twitched, pieces of it thickening into dark scales. “You’ll be trapped here, same as me.”

I told you, right? Where you go, I go.

Felix closed his eyes, but he couldn’t help the smile that stretched his face. This time, he could feel it for certain.

“Then hold tight.”

Sovereign of Tides!

Immediately, he could see the Bonds that kept wafting through him, and they were everywhere. The world beyond the Realms was awash in them, their pale lengths stretching across infinity to end here. Where Felix stood.

Genesis Cascade!

Elemental Mana surged according to his Will, claimed by dint of his might, even though he didn’t shape a single thing. Felix could feel the green tiles and the three others that slowly but surely were rebuilding their reality-defying forms.

He looked away.

Claim The Cosmos!

Every ounce of that Mana flowed into him, denuding the boundless energies of the world beyond Realms. New power flooded in after it, and Felix claimed that as well, a process as regular and as easy as breathing.

His Bonds sang, and power traveled up through them as well. It soaked into him, rippling his flesh with fine scales that crawled across Felix’s neck and jaw. His eyes burned like spotlights in the dark, and he readied his penultimate Skill.

Core Manifestation: That Which Binds All!

Armor sheathed his form, but this time, it hunched him over as his forearms grew too long and his spine twisted out of true. There was no pain, at least nothing Felix couldn’t handle, and the dark tiles were suddenly illuminated by flickers of red-gold and blue-white. His maw opened, and fangs bent outward like tusks.

He grew, back stretching with new scales and spines, while a second set of limbs broke free of his hide. Wings, four of them, emerged, along with his new arms, separate but just as vast. Feathers, iridescent as a raven’s, caught his own light and cast it back.

Pit screeched, and Felix growled through his fanged maw. Words were harder to speak, but it didn’t matter. Authority spoke for him, echoing across the empty tiles.

Authority Of Renewal!

That piece of Unite the Lost remained, and it sang, bolstered by his massive Will, intent, and newfound Authority. The Scion of the Unseen Tides called for Renewal.

Renewal was what he would get.

Piece by piece, flesh and bone, scale and fang, Felix secured what was and what must always be. Significance fled, but it was replaced, funneled from the very Bonds that had sent his Mind skittering across the Realms. No longer. Now he crouched above the dark tiles, their slabs so small now, as that which was Lost was returned.

Not just here. Not just him.

Everywhere.

Bonds sent his power arcing across the Realms. That which was Ruined by dark flame or starlight monstrosities was rebuilt and regrown. Lives could not be brought back, but crops returned. Cities were restored. Creation sang across the vast expanse of his Bonds, a network that touched everything, everywhere, both now and across the vast span of Ages.

With his Skills, the Cardinal of the Unseen Tides sang the first melodies of a song he’d heard since his first step on the Continent. Dissonance and Harmony joined together, two parts of a greater whole that only now sounded…complete.

He sang, and the Realms sang with him.

Not just across his Bonds, but from the three Cardinals beside him. His siblings. They crooned in voices vested with incredible Authority, and the might of it filtered down through every Bond all at once.

Lands flourished. Crops grew. The corpses of the fallen fed monsters and beasts alike. Creation itself echoed with the song of their Will.

He was everything, everywhere. He was Creation itself, and the restored Grand Harmony was the song of his limbs and gaze and thoughts. He was—

He was Felix.

It was too much. He couldn’t handle it all. Pit shuddered, too, buried deep in Felix’s Spirit, which even now was being subsumed by the Cardinal that grew around him. He needed to get out, even if it meant—

The Supreme Primordials rose beside him, each as vast as reality itself, yet they did not crowd. Their presence was a comfort Felix couldn’t understand until he saw the Bonds of Kinship.

They were family. He was them, and they were him. As inseparable as life from death or the spark of consciousness from the Bonds of connections.

Pit, we—I’m losing myself.

Yeah. Could be worse.

How?

We could be alone.

For one brief moment, Felix’s Will held them all…then the Cardinal Beasts sang with all the Authority of their being, and they were four once more.

Reunited.

Pit chirruped. We did good, I think.

I—Felix smiled as everything quaked—We did.

The vastness of all things crashed upon them, and no matter how Felix tore at it, he could not stop its descent.

He bared his teeth, and Pit howled, until it all went dark.