Unbound

Flesh of the Wakened Earth is level 90!

…

Flesh of the Wakened Earth is level 96!

Starsteel’s Descent is level 94!

…

Starsteel’s Descent is level 98!

Harn picked up his axes, his Skills singing within him like a damn chorus. It was good, but it was distracting—he needed to focus on the tower.

"Watch for movement," he said to the Legion as they spread out.

"Ow,” Archie groaned, holding his skull. “What the fuck did that accomplish? Other than give me the worst headache of all time."

He was bent over and bleeding, sitting on a piece of stone that had impaled itself halfway into the mud. He wasn't the only one. Harn clocked more than a few of them, holding tight to their heads or clutching at minor wounds. The Overlord's Spirit had affected all of them, but his final attack had been something else.

The Kobolds were a little out of it, too. Apparently, their combination form could only take so much damage, because once the smoke had cleared, the two separated with a surprisingly resonant pop.

"Need a hand?" Harn turned to see Beef stepping out of the crowd. He helped the Kobolds back to their feet with a crystal-armor hand that was cracked in a dozen places.

"You look seven shades of shit, kid. How'd it go?"

Beef grinned, blood marring his teeth. "We won. How about you?"

"We won, too," Kevin echoed, rubbing his chest. "That dumb Skill still hurts, though."

"That dumb Skill is the only reason we're alive," Shadow pointed out.

"Yeah, what was that?" Beef looked between the two of them. "When Hallow and I got here, it looked like you were all..." He gestured with his hands, mushed together.

"Unique Skill," Kevin explained, checking himself over for wounds. "Song of the Dragomir. We can combine our aspects together. We get a whole new set of Skills and everything."

"Whoa, that's peak. How'd you manage to get that?"

Kevin sat against a chunk of masonry and laughed. "By accident. We were trying to figure out new combo attacks by layering our Skills real fast and ended up blending them into a whole new thing.”

“Helps that we're twins, apparently," Shadow added. "That was a prerequisite for the Skill."

"Dang, I've never been so disappointed to be an only child.”

“Bet your Christmases were better."

"Enough chatter," Harn said, raising his voice to capture the attention of the Legion as well. "Squads, form up. Final sweep for survivors. End the enemy, save the prisoners, then get back across the Poison Fields. I don't want to breathe this shit any longer than I have to." ȑ

"Aye, sir!" Everyone within earshot saluted and got to work. Soldiers grouped up before spreading out over the rocky island, though they gave the newly collapsed tower a wide berth. There were other parts to investigate, places that hadn’t exploded where enemies could be hiding in ambush. Harn flared his Perception across the inner area, peering through the clouds of settling debris and fingering the haft of his axes. His Health was almost at half, and those Legionnaires that survived were worse off. He didn’t want to leave an enemy at their backs when they left that gods-infested place.

“You killed all the Adamants?”

Beef nodded. “Yeah. Hallow and Fafnir helped me clean them up just about the time this place exploded. What happened here?”

“The Overlord attempted to channel more of the Divine’s power than he could handle,” Mauvim said, stamping out of the dust to peer at the chunks of fallen masonry. “It burned him up from the inside out.”

Beef swallowed. “And they wanna do that to us?”

“Unbound are different. You are not beholden to the same laws as we natives.” Mauvim twisted her gnarled cane. “An Unbound Vessel would be a fearsome foe. You’ve seen the result.”

Harn remembered all too well, and from the look on Beef’s face, he did, too. Imara. Gabby. Whatever. If I don’t see another zealot for my entire life, it’ll be too soon—

He stopped moving, flaring his nostrils. The fields smelled like burning trash, but this was clean, like quenched metal. Harn pulled his axes free.

Beef lifted Bedlam and looked around. "What is it?"

Harn glanced up. Ahead, a segment of the earth rippled into silent, silvered shadows, and a figure strode out.

"Titan!" Archie yelped in fear, falling back over himself.

Imara, fully armored and shining with power, stood at the edge of the battlefield. Wisps of Mana pulled from the broken tower behind her, pieces of metallic blue that joined with a shimmering aura already surrounding her.

“Speak of the Night,” Harn muttered as he spun his axes. “And it comes a’callin’. You’re not wanted here, lady.”

"He's not here.” She ignored him entirely and looked vaguely upset.

“Your brother’s busy somewhere else.” Harn kicked off his back foot, surging forward. “But I got time for a second dance!”

“Don’t waste my time,” she said before lifting a single hand. A mighty presence rose with it, and Harn crashed into her Spirit like running into a wall. “Tidal Forces. Putrid Waters. Rousing Flame.”

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Mana poured off the Titan, and she practically pulsated with a strangeness Beef didn’t have a name for; it tore at him, hitting him in the chest and shoulders like a physical force.

Beef! It rises!

A shadow fell across him, and Beef whipped his head up. A wall of steaming, boiling water rose above the ruin's edge, tinged with streamers of metallic blue. Beef hurled his hands outward. "Entropic Paradigm!"

The water fell, and chitin rose.

Great slabs of it shot upward, entropic energy converted to thick panels sandwiching heavy crossbraces. Poisoned water crashed against it, a spray surging over the edge as he wove his Intent into massive support structures, and the chitin met in the center. It sealed against literal tons of liquid as it crashed against them, cutting them off from all light as the waves entombed them. Darkness enveloped their bubble, and Beef fell to his knees.

Light bloomed, rising from the hands of Chanters, and Mauvim pointed a gnarled finger at Imara. “She channels the Divine!”

What? But the Pathless died—?

Silver flame roared as it crashed against the Titan's armor, enveloping her entirely in his strange power. Blue sparks spat from her pauldrons and breastplate, but she all but ignored the first attack. Only on the follow-up, where Harn pivoted into his far more destructive Skills, did she move. Imara wove between his strikes faster than Harn by an incredible degree—she wielded no weapon, but her fist struck the man like a wrecking ball.

Harn went down.

The Legionnaires shouted, and Skills rained down on the Titan faster than Beef could track.

I gotta get in there! But he couldn't shift his attention from the crushing pressure above. Hell, he couldn't even move.

Hallow, can you—?

I cannot. My Risen are outside the circumference of this wave. The Legion out there is fine, but they are just as stranded.

The flagstones beneath him buckled, as if the weight of the world pressed him into the earth. Already, acid was trying to eat through his barriers. With whatever the Titan had done, the Fields were more powerful now than ever before. A terrible heat radiated through the walls until the dark was broken by a pale red glow, his chitin only a few degrees from melting through.

He was low on Mana, but that didn't matter for this Skill. He seized the entropic energy all around him, so plentiful there in the heart of a deadly battle in the midst of a dire swamp.

Entropic Paradigm is level 94!

Beef gritted his teeth, and the crystalline armor around him pressed down, extending blackened green pillars to prop up his arms and chest.

I am here, Beef.

The pressure eased by small measures, and he redoubled his efforts. Chitin thickened, cutting down the crimson glow, only to fail somewhere else.

Entropic Paradigm is level 95!

Hallow’s Protean Aegis is level 95!

Skills flew at the Titan, too many to count, but all they could do was hold the line. If the Legion couldn't defeat Imara, perhaps they would die. But, if Beef's chitin failed, they were doomed.

We are the shield that cannot be breached, Hallow whispered to him.

Beef bared his teeth. Together we rise.

Archie hesitated, standing near the warming wall of chitin. He knew the material well, having spent so much time with Beef. Beyond it was a wall of poison and acid-infused water, sizzling and hot enough that he could feel the heat through the glowing chitin…but nothing his Primeval Drift couldn’t handle.

The Legion is outside. They’re probably hurt and in need of rescuing, I could—I should worry about them. It was the responsible thing to do, the right thing…but if he were being honest with himself, he was afraid. He wanted to run.

Another Legionnaire cried out, falling to the casual blows of the Titan. A mound of defenders was growing around her glowing blue armor as she calmly walked forward through the Chanter's ensnaring spells and blistering bolts. With every step, she drew closer to Harn and the Kobolds who were trying to wake him up.

Running is smart. You could escape and live a long and happy life. Run to where, though? To whom? Nearly everyone Archie knew in this world was right there, in that very room. He drew his daggers. They glowed with molten light, beating back the blue that swelled around them. Could I…?

The Titan’s azure radiance intensified each time she repelled another defender, and in the seconds Archie labored over his decision, a few of the Chanters fell to her attacks.

Could I do it?

A frost giant cried out, falling to his knees as his hubcap-sized fist was caught by glowing gauntlets.

He'd been so afraid for so long. Afraid of death. Of her.

Archie was good at two things: running his mouth and running away.

It’s time to stop being afraid.

He couldn't defend for shit; that was Beef’s deal. He was the shield.

Archie was a knife.

“Primeval Drift.”

He shot down into the dark, blind to all but the vibrations from above. He tracked them, passing beneath the brave Legionnaires until he rose on the other side of the Titan. His ascent was silent and rapid, a shadow swimming beyond the limits of stone and up into the air, slipping through the barriers of metallic blue force that gilded the woman as if they were nothing.

Blindsense is level 80!

Primeval Drift is level 85!

…

Primeval Drift is level 96!

Sorry, Felix. It's her or us. He drove his molten daggers toward her neck—

“Die, godslave!”

The Kobolds, combined once more, crashed into the Titan, their dark sickle clutched with two hands. They caught her on the shoulder, the hooked blade jerking the woman to the left and just beyond the path of Archie's attack. He missed.

Idiots!

The Titan pivoted, turning with the sickle strike, and drove her fist into the Dragomir's gut. With a loud pop, the Kobolds split apart, eyes bulging in surprised agony. They didn't even get a chance to fall before she caught them both by the necks.

"Weak," she muttered. "How have you managed to survive ‘til now—?”

“Fanblade!"

Fanblade is level 87!

…

Fanblade is level 96!

Archie stabbed at her, whirling daggers carving a deep furrow across her armored side. The Titan jerked aside, armor splitting as blood sprayed from the wound. Archie was pleased to see her genuinely surprised.

"You!”

“Primeval Drif—" His words cut off, bitten through when the Titan's backhand drove his chin upward. Blood gushed in his mouth, and his head rang louder than any bell—Archie didn't even feel movement. There was only her fist…and then the chitin wall.

He cratered it.

“Archie!” Beef yelled.

Agony spiked down his spine. Water spat through the wall above. As it broke, pressurized streams scored deep lines in the stone.

Streams that swiftly expanded.

"Thank you, Archie." The words were faint through the deafening groan of cracking chitin, but he knew the Titan’s voice too well. “That made this easier.”

Something beyond sight flexed the world, and she vanished into silver shadow.

Taking the Kobolds along with her.

Above, the poison water roared as the chitin wall collapsed.