Unbound

"I can't see anything!" Pit screeched over the wind. "Can you still feel it?"

I can. Talk through the bond. Felix sent, holding tight to the pommel as his friend bucked against unruly air currents. It’s easier.

"Nope! In this weather, talking out loud drops my Stamina by twenty points a word.” Pit panted, his chest heaving beneath Felix’s legs. “I'm getting so many bonus points right now!"

Felix grinned. He couldn't blame his friend. He was similarly caught up in the excitement of the Crucible. Exertion and reward hadn't come so hand-in-hand in a long time. While Felix wouldn’t exactly call it easy, it almost felt like cheating.

He needed to push himself harder. So far Felix had been keeping himself to physical fights in addition to his unrestricted Skills like Adamant Discord and Empyrean Embrace, but he’d yet to reach the limit of those stats in any real sense. Sure he’d been up against the wall a couple times, but with a little teamwork they’d made it through the Kings largely unscathed.

Well. They’d healed fast, at least.

The rewards were more than ample. Quite aside from the stat points, the power of the three Kings and their Domains roiled within Felix. It beckoned him, begging to be used to fuel his many Skills. Specifically, Sovereign of Flesh, which ate into his Essence store at a steady clip. The storm was brutal on his Stamina and Health as well, despite riding atop Pit. And it was only getting worse.

Beware, Scion.

Challenge Comes.

The wind thickened ahead, and the heavy sleet was punctuated by golf-ball sized hailstones just as lightning burst in the near distance. Thunder followed. Felix squinted, ignoring the painful wallops of ice. They were flying low because of the storm, but even so, they had been passing near the tops of the range. Before them, however, the mountains rose higher than all the rest.

A lot higher.

“You’re saying these moved?” Pit scoffed, nearly choking on the relentless wind. “Each of these are bigger than the Undermount!”

Pit wasn’t far off. The Dwarven Undermount had been massive in scale, but so too were the dual peaks ahead. Forests clung to their lower slopes, each tree as tiny as a toothpick in comparison, while the upper reaches were thick with ice and snow. Between the two peaks, where the distance faded into a total whiteout, his sense of the Queen burned.

She’s in that valley. Felix jerked his chin forward and Pit crowed, driving his four wings against the world. He was moving slower now, and a quick check of his Status gave Felix pause. Your Stamina is really low. You need to conserve your energy.

“I’ll be fine!”

I believe you, but humor me. We don’t know what this Queen will bring to the table.

Pit grunted by way of answering and sped up. Soon, they were swallowed completely by a slurry of rain, ice, and snow. Felix had to suppress a startled gasp as a wet chill joined the battering the hail was giving him, spilling through his Garment no matter how he altered it. It was colder by far than even the brutal wind and the weight of nearly frozen rain clung to him, dragging his Garment down across his shoulders and chest. It accumulated across Pit's neck and body, though his wings continuously flung it away as they beat in a beleaguered rhythm.

Felix steadied his Mind. He was getting better at ignoring the worst of the cold. His Will was still mighty despite the Crucible's weight, and Willpower could persevere through a lot. He gave up his worries over his Body and shifted his focus onto his Title. Rigorous Regicide III told him that the Queen loomed ahead, somewhat closer than before. The distance was misleading—not just because of the low visibility, but because the Queen’s presence had been a vast marker in his awareness since he’d felt it after Hova. As they passed the full breadth of the massive mountains, that presence expanded until it encompassed the entire area around them. Felix's head snapped up, eyes wide as he scanned through the impenetrable white. A valley stretched below them, the edges only barely visible from their altitude.

Down.

Pit dropped into a wide, descending spiral, his head craning in all directions as the both of them kept on the lookout. They dropped thousands of feet before the details of the valley floor became even remotely visible. At perhaps five hundred feet from the ground, they hit the tops of the tallest, most ancient trees. Pit skimmed them, his paws tapping their aged crowns, but still the ground below was merely a series of faint silhouettes. Unmoving boulders, frozen over streams, and not a single moving creature.

Until there was.

She came out of nowhere. Perhaps it was the colorless hue of her broad back and the fur that coated her like armor, or maybe it was her shape. The Queen was massive—far too long, at least thirty feet, with at least thirteen furry limbs stretching down her length. Her head was that of a tusked boar, crowned with quill-like spines down it arched back, all the way to its wide, fan-tail of gleaming Mana crystals.

Unseen Beholder.

A barrier held against him, but Felix’s was just as relentless as Pit—the resistance failed, and details swarmed across his vision.

Name: Queen Kharina, First Of All Children

Type: ????

Level: ????

Lore: A creature beyond this Realm, Queen Kharina is the last of her kind. Manawrought and blood spawned, she has known nothing but violence since her sire’s fall, and has instilled those lessons within her own children. She is the matriarch of Kings, the ancestor of princes, and the daughter of a far off shore. Pity her, for she knows none.

Strength: She Cannot Stop

Weakness: She Will Not Stop

The Queen was strong. Very strong. His Skill put her somewhere around Paragon at the very least. It was a problem, but an expected one. What he hadn't expected, however, was how she seemed to be made up of all the Kings and even some elements of the Princes. Her movements weren’t ponderous or inelegant, but with a lightening liquidity that resembled the undulating motion of a ribbon on the wind. She dashed across a stream bed, crashing into a tree before snatching up some small creature Felix hadn’t even noticed. It died, squealing between the Queen's jaws. Felix grimaced.

The Queen stilled.

Perhaps it was the beating of Pit’s wings, or their scent on the wind, but the creature lifted its bloody tusks up and looked directly into Felix’s eyes.

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“Fuck.”

The Queen bellowed. Before they could move, Mana crystals hurled their way, each flaring with enough power to punch through Pits' wings. His Companion spun into a barrel roll, the spear-length Mana crystals missing by mere inches.

“Nimbus of the Moon!”

Silvered beams struck down onto the forest floor, drawing out brilliant sparks of flame from the earth. The Queen threaded through the scouring from the heavens, more nimble than even King Hova.

Felix put his hand on his Inheritor’s Will. If he could, he’d slice the thing in half. "Get closer!"

"I'm trying!" Pit swooped lower, rotating as they passed through between the branches of thousand-year pines. His size was a disadvantage in the close canopy, forcing the tenku to squeeze through, his wings snapping branches from trunks as they chased after the speedy Queen. "I can’t—she’s disappeared!”

Felix flared his Perception but it was no use. He almost seized the buckle of the Crucible, but stayed his hand. They could do this. “Focus! Keep all your senses engaged. She can’t hide from us forever.”

The Title was overwhelming his Perception even more than the belt—from rock to root, everything felt like the Queen.

Their only warning was a snuffling roar. Too late to avoid, the Queen leapt atop the Pit, its tusks goring into his barding, and driving the pair of them sideways through a pine tree, through not one, but two separate pine trees, as a dozen furred claws reached up to tear feathers from Pit's wings.

Warning!

Your Companion’s Health Has Dropped To 20%!

"Convergence!" Felix leapt off of Pit's back, his Companion vanishing in a flash of light. The Queen screamed in confused anger, falling back to the ground less than a hundred feet below. It twisted, rotating to land on its feet easily, and Felix caught himself up against a pair of branches. He stilled, watching the Queen below as she shook her head, snow and blood scattering to the ground.

His friend's blood.

"Oh, you little asshole. Adamant Discord!" Felix crashed into the Queen’s back, lightning leading the way—too fast, it seemed, even for her. His full weight smashed into her lower spine, all of his restricted Strength focused through a single, brutal fist.

The Queen floundered, her hindquarters smashed into the snow. She squealed, a sound like a thousand rusty breaks clamping down, but didn’t recoil. She twisted, tailing flinging upward like a scorpion’s.

Sucking in air, Felix threw himself aside but not fast enough. A gnarly gouge tore across both legs, Mana crystals slicing through Garment and scale with apparent ease. He fell back, the snow turning crimson around his feet, as the Queen twisted bonelessly in pursuit.

Lightning hauled him away, sideways through a forest as tusks split the earth. Felix fetched up against the wide trunk of a tree, and bark splintered beneath his feet, only to shatter as the Queen charged through its gargantuan trunk. The entire tree groaned, falling in a crashing cacophony.

For her part, the Queen was relentless. She didn’t so much as pause before flowing over the wreckage, warty snow hunting after Felix’s lightning-quick form. He stayed on the move, keeping himself just ahead of her as he sped across the snowy earth. Lightning arced with every pull of his arm, a pull that burned at his aching muscles, one that he tried to alleviate with his legs where he could but found the Queen’s tusks mere inches away. She wasn’t just fast, she was cunning too—each time he tried to ascend into the trees, to gain some distance from the beast, the Queen cut him off. Mana crystals flew into his path and quills of scorching acid homed in on his broad back. Each time, she drove him back to the earth. To her.

"Fine then!" Felix kicked off another tree, redirecting himself sideways as the Queen barreled past. Sonata of Dominance!

His Will spread, seizing control of his surroundings all at once—and not at all. For the first time since gaining the Skill, Felix found no purchase on the Mana directly around him. Ice Mana filled the air, and all of it was under the Queen's control. Her indomitable, beastly Will was thick as iron and twice as strong. Bound by the Crucible, Felix could only lash weakly at it.

Felix gladly gave it up. He didn't want ice anyways.

What he needed was fire.

Mana poured from him, his own power, untouched by the Will of the Queen. It congealed around his fists, pouring forth in cones of yellow flame. The Queen was scorched, fur burnt and quills cracked across her humped back, but the fire went out almost as soon as it caught. There was too much power in the frigid cold and the Queen’s own indelible aura. Simple flame was no match.

Felix ran backward, leaping across broken trunks and tangled underbrush. The Queen charged after him, undeterred by the flames that licked her snout and back. They ran through fields, the Queen just behind Felix as the Realms dragged at his legs with every footfall.

Sonata of Dominance!

Astrum Ascendance!

The fire turned red-gold—burning all the hotter—and while her Health barely moved, it forced the behemoth to flinch. The Queen crashed through trees, their thick boles splintering before her charge, and her pursuit was thrown off. A little, just enough to keep her at bay. Astrum Ascendance flared within him, and it was like trying to pull a milkshake through a thin straw. The Skill still worked, but it took precious seconds before its pattern quavered across the hue and cry of his Sonata. The fire’s heat intensified, the red-gold light searing through fur and fat, diverting the Queen’s goring tusks.

It helped, but it wasn’t enough.

I can sense more, but it’s—there!

Felix turned, chasing down the fleeting sensation of a different sort. Ice crowded him everywhere save for his own manifested Mana…and something else. A tether of lightning sent him skidding across the bubbling surface of a mud pit. The Queen was close behind, her many legs squelching through the muck fast enough to hurl it away in a v-shaped wake. She was neither slowed or discouraged, even as the mud boiled around them. Felix focused on something else entirely, however. Steam filled the air, clinging to him with a humidity that was swiftly punished by the arctic winds. His fire burned slightly brighter as he pulled something from the air, but that too was yanked from his grasp as the Queen settled closer, her dominion unimpeachable.

He didn't need the fire Mana in the air. Where there was mud and the stink of sulfur, there was far more than just a momentary diversion.

Sonata of Dominance!

His Will quested beneath the surface, into the earth where fire lived. It sat there, deep below the pits of mud yet closer than he expected. His Will stretched across it, threading through like a net, all the while something else bucked. There was a faint resonance he couldn't identify. Was it reacting to him, or to the Queen?

Let's find out. Sonata of Dominance!

Astrum Ascendance!

Wild Threnody!

Power pulled upward, Mana and Essence threading through his Will and Intent that he shaped beneath their feet. The Queen came to a stuttering stop. It twisted its massive boar's head at him, curious despite the tiny, maddened intelligence in its eyes.

"Yeah, stay right there," Felix said. The Queen bellowed, her feet pawing at the earth before she hurled herself forward in a charge. “As you wish, your Majesty!”

Sonata thrummed, singing beneath his grip as the Queen vaulted forward…just in time to meet a cresting wave of liquid magma. Heavy, molten stone and metal crashed upward, scorching up against the Queen's chest as she tried to drive right through it. People forget, and Felix supposed monsters did too, that lava isn't like water. Lava is heavy; you don't sink into it, it crushes you. Nightmare heat rippled the air around them as the lava lapped, powered by ungodly pressure deep below the earth that Felix merely pulled free. It soared upward, spattering the forest and setting off a thousand wildfires all at once.

Felix shaped the lava into flows, each one heaving into the Queen as it still struggled across its burning breadth to reach him, teeth gnashing and tusks hurling. Wounds opened up on his pale fur, and Felix shaped tendrils of lava into them. As it bellowed once again, he forced the rest of it into its open mouth. The Queen bucked, heaving in sudden realization, a terror it had never processed before. It burned, still not understanding.

You have Killed Queen Kharina, First Of All Children!

XP Earned!

Felix stared at its corpse as it hollowed out, a mournful dirge scratching across his Affinity. He knew what it felt like to be far from home. She was more animal than anything else, but for a moment Felix thought there was a scrap of intelligence behind her eyes. Felix thought on the last line of her Lore.

Pity her, for she knows none.

He was bloody and his Companion still whimpered in his chest—but Felix bowed as the Queen of the Sunsend Peaks burned.

“Good fight.”