Unbound

The creature was a nightmare made entirely of ice, shaped like a real stag except standing fifty feet tall at the shoulder with its head and antlers lifting another thirty beyond that. The latter were stark against the night, each a piece of frozen lightning that captured shadows in their angled prongs, while its hooves pawed at the earth. The jungle broke beneath it, dirt and trees tossed up into the terrifying veil of wind that whipped around its gargantuan form.

Worst of all, it was watching him.

Archie couldn’t breathe beneath its stare. The Elemental’s empty eyes were pits of wrath that stabbed at his chest, weighing against his ears with a discordant squeal. It was metal ground against stone and styrofoam. He squeezed his Affinity shut just to keep thinking straight, but the villagers weren’t so lucky. They fell back, bodies convulsing as they clapped dirty hands over their ears to no effect. Kids cried, too young to understand any of it, but more than old enough to understand pain and terror.

"Descend!"

Roland, atop Thalgrym the wyvern, and a cohort of Dragoons and Chimera dropped from above. Their Spears and Skills burst against the Stag's antlered head. The Superior Elemental didn't so much as flinch—instead, it turned its empty gaze on them, and its hurricane winds shifted.

The Chimera bashed into one another, their wings bent and broken by the gale. Dragoons shouted, their Skills sheathing their friends in powerful wards—but it did little to stop them. They careened into one another, their flight uncontrolled as a newborn chick, before the hurricane tossed them into the dark jungle.

“Endless Cut!” Archie flung his Echoblade. Two copies of it sailed outward, spinning like buzzsaws into the winds. Despite the whirling debris and powerful force of Mana, they sailed through the Elemental’s shroud without a moment’s interruption and scored twin gashes across the Stag’s massive neck.

Ichor poured out like light, pieces of it caught up in the hurricane as his echoes returned to him.

"It worked!"

The Stag turned its empty gaze on him. The beast pawed the earth as its bone-white antlers lowered.

"Oh no. It worked.”

A soul-rattling noise flew from the Stag’s lips, and the hurricane around it answered in kind. It howled, intensifying around the beast’s muscles as they bunched—and it exploded forward.

Archie unsnapped the buckles around his chest. The tethers fell away, dropping a few that were relying on his steady weight. He ran.

“No! Don’t leave us!”

Their cries were lost to the stormwinds as the Stag closed in. Archie couldn’t stop to explain that the thing wasn’t headed for them. He angled his run, moving away from the villagers as fast as he could, and the Stag followed. Its massive hooves covered the ground in only a few mighty bounds, but that was enough. Its thundering hooves ripped up the jungle wherever it landed, but it wasn’t on them.

Someone screamed. It might have been Archie. He was too busy to notice. The creature was there, on top of him, goring at him with its antlers.

"Tread The Worldvein!"

He slipped through the attack, but the power in its Body burned at him like the coldest of flames. Archie gasped, his Skill preventing air from reaching his lungs, and he tumbled forward into the dark earth. The ground exploded above him, stabbing at him despite his incorporeal form.

Warning!

Your Health Has Dropped To 55%!

His Skill shook, trembling inside of his chest. The pull from below was stronger than ever, and Archie had to leverage all of his Intent to divert himself. Not now! Up!

Tread The Worldvein cut off, and Archie was spat upward into the sky. He emerged from the jungle—now flattened and frosted—before he skimmed the diamond-like hide of the Stag. Air poured around him, too much to manage a breath, but he didn’t need it. Archie flicked his wrist, and his Echoblade flung two copies into the Stag’s side. Two more gashes tore through it, deep and welling with light.

More!

"Tread The Worldvein!"

Archie shifted its vibration, swimming through the air now like water. He shot downward, straight towards the Stag's back, and rebounded from its thick hide as if he'd smashed face-first into a tank.

"Oh god," he groaned. Magic poured around him, sparking up against his Skill, forcing his hand away from the thing's freezing flesh. "I can't get in. What the—cheating bastard!"

The Stag bucked, throwing Archie off to the side. He flew through the air, crashing through the trees before he arrested his fall. He sank back to the earth, Skill cutting off as the Stag came to a calamitous stop before snorting out curtains of freezing fog. It shook its head, antlers too bright for the unnatural night.

“Fine!” Archie forced himself to his feet. “I tried, Gabby!”

It charged again.

“If I can’t get to your slave array, then I’ll just take you out.” Archie bolted, no longer angling his run as he took great leaps toward the Stag. He hurled his blade, its echoes tracing triple paths through the air. All three of them zipped close—and missed.

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But the Stag flinched.

Gotcha! In its moment of indecision, Archie hurled himself straight up, slamming his body into its leading forelock. He clamped down, his hands sinking into ice and strange, pliant flesh.

"Tread The Worldvein!"

His magic surged, but his hands didn’t even try to sink into its flesh. Instead, Archie pulled down. The Stag’s leg sank with him, dropping its leading limb a sudden twenty feet into the ground.

A deep, shattering bellow escaped the Stag’s lips, and it tumbled, tripping over itself and smashing face-first into the jungle floor.

Tread The Worldvein is level 121!

…

Tread The Worldvein is level 124!

Archie released his Skill, and the leg shot upward, kicking back toward the Stag with a sharp retort. Ice cracked, and luminous ichor sprayed all over, splashing across his chest as he ascended as if shot from a catapult. The leg sent him flying high over the Stag’s downed antlers, and Archie flared what remained of his Mana. His Skill stuttered through its pattern, the vibrations of air sending him spinning wildly across icy prongs and down an ichor-slicked neck. The Stag bucked again and hurled Archie free. He crashed into the jungle, skidding across the underbrush in an ungraceful lump.

Eugh. He could only groan as he decided which part of himself to coddle. Everything hurt. Blarg. Faah.

Warning!

Your Health Has Dropped To 15%!

Status Condition: Broken Hip (Major)!

AGL, DEX, And END Reduced By 20%!

"Are you okay, mister?"

Archie blinked back tears enough to see one of the kids creeping closer. A little girl, she reached out a hand to him. “I’m fine,” he grunted, words finally forming through the pain. “Go back to your parents. It’s not safe.”

Across the jungle, the White Frost Stag stood up once more.

“Now, kid!” She scurried off, but not far enough. Archie dashed the moisture from his eyes. “I don’t have time for this!”

The Stag was covered in clumps of earth and broken trees that had tangled amongst its antlers, but it didn’t look half as bad as Archie felt. The damn thing found him easily, and now its eyes were no longer empty but filled with an unmistakable malice.

Archie brandished his Echoblade. “Bring it on, you big slab of venison!”

The Stag regarded him for only a moment…before it charged away.

What?

Toward the villagers.

“No! Mama!” the little girl cried from a ways off.

“Stay there!” Archie forced himself to his feet and tried to run, but a shooting pain seized his hip. “Shit!”

He couldn’t run. Even if he could, he wouldn’t make it in time—the Stag was only a few bounds away from the villagers, even as they scrambled in all directions.

Don’t just stand here and watch! He shoved his feet forward, pain searing up his back now. Do something!

Tread The Worldvein quaked inside of him, unable to activate—he lacked the Mana, and he was fresh out of Elixirs.

Everything slowed. The Stag’s charge became mired in molasses as it made its final leap. The villagers screamed, and small Skills sprouted in the dark around them. Sparkbolts and Shadowjaws manifested too far away. Too slow. Too weak.

He—

His core space shook.

The city at his center heaved as the belltower rang with wild noise. The cracks that had cut across his markets and squares widened, their Fiendstone shine now given over to a deep, earthy hue. The people within him, full of personality and expression, rushed forward to the edges of them, even as the cobbles vanished into their widening maws. A wave of sound rose up, competing with the bells—a chant of voices that punched at Archie’s jaw.

It wasn’t fear.

Within him, the people of his core space looked at the widening fissures in their home, and they cheered.

Deep within, rising between the chanting cheers, the bells, and the rumbling earth, came something else. Syllables Archie had never heard before, and yet they formed words he’d known all his life.

“Core Manifestation,” he whispered. “Claim Of The Worldvein.”

In a rush, the city within split open, and then Archie was back, standing before the White Frost Stag. It approached, a freight train of unending ice, and the cold of it seared against his exposed skin. He couldn’t question how he’d moved so far so fast, he could barely think at all. Instead, there was only the pressure flowing out of his Gates and into the bedrock far below.

The jungle vanished.

In its place, a hundred-foot spike of gleaming, otherworldly stone erupted from the earth. It did not heave pieces of earth and stone to either side, but passed through it all like a ghost, as if the spike had always been there.

Primordial Stone crashed into the Stag’s chest, puncturing it through its middle and tearing it upward. The creature bellowed as its winds howled around its thrashing hooves. The spike of Primordial Stone took every blow, ringing out like the sweetest of bells as it continued upward into the sky.

Just as suddenly as it had appeared, it lurched to a halt. Molten metal sprayed free from thousands of crevices across its rugged surface. Gold, silver, even mithril and orichalcum splashed onto the Stag's throat, haunches, chest, and beyond. It coated the trees and pieces of mountainous ridge, flying so far as to hit a company of Ironclads heading in their direction. The Dwarves fell in the thousands, smote by boulders of searing metal.

Archie stood, flummoxed and pained, but wildly elated. His hands shook, but he knew what to do: he clenched them both and pulled down.

The Worldvein pulled back, retracting into the earth—but neither Primordial Stone nor its golden gifts would give up its claims. The Stag, the Ironclads, even the trees and stone upon which the molten metal remained, all were dragged down like specters through the earth. In moments, the very battlefield itself was gone.

Archie collapsed to his knees.

Some time later—he wasn’t sure how long—that same annoying child tugged on Archie’s arm. They were too small to do much more than that, but he let them think otherwise. He smiled as he stood. “Thanks, kid.”

“Are the bad men gone?”

Archie looked around. The jungle was silent save for the distant cries of soldiers. Around them, there was only the dark jungle and a massive pale flower in full bloom.

“Yeah,” Archie managed. “They are.”