Unbound

Atar tumbled across the deck as the skiff banked hard to port, smashing his leg hard against one of those rope spool things. He fetched up hard against the far side, gut pressed into the half-wall.

keep holding on, fool!

“I’m…trying!” Atar dug his gray fingers into the wood. It caved slightly beneath his Strength. He wasn’t a frontline fighter by any means, but enough Tempers would make anyone hardy enough. “Stop giving me orders!”

then let me loose!

Atar didn’t even bother responding to that. “Elowen! Keep this wreck still!”

“Impossible!” The Theron was a glowing beacon in the storm of dark Essence that roiled across the decks. Her gleaming purple and gold Core Manifestation flipped through its pages every time she adjusted the helm. “Your friend is shifting his Intent every few seconds! It’s all I can do to avoid it!”

They had descended into the cyclone of power that Felix had summoned around himself, until his scaled back was less than two hundred strides below. Clouds of smoke swirled inward, pulled unceasingly toward its open maw, and avoiding its incredible pull was pulling their ship apart the closer they drew to its midnight bulk. Here and there, crumbling structures tumbled across the sky with a deceptive weightlessness. Cut stone, twisted metal, and broken wood careened past them, each pass nearly tearing through their sails or hull itself. Only Elowen’s preternatural skill kept them aloft, as each turn of the helm’s wheel set them on an unerring course through the chaos.

Her Tome of the Witness pulsed like a sprinter’s heartbeat.

Atar stumbled across the deck as the skiff leveled out once again and gasped as a chunk of Tower grazed the forward sail before collapsing into smoke. “How in damnation did you lose to Felix before?”