Unbound-Chapter Nine Hundred And Seventy One – 971

Felix tore into the Echo, its strings of flesh pulling toward him like paper toward a shredder. They spun into his unyielding maw as the Echo's voice turned to screeching atonal chords. Power flooded through him—Essence, significance, and Mana—but it was wrong.

Corruption! Too Much!

His core clenched. The twin rings within him sparked as the abyss convulsed, and the Beast rose up, hurling the Mana away from him. Out of him. Felix wretched, vomiting it back up in a tidal slurry that splattered to the earth. It was inert for all of a second before it lurched back to join with the Echo's stretching shape.

The creature rose further, its jagged streamers hitting the sky now. The clouds parted, ripped asunder as it merged with the janky, glitching flesh.

“Beast!” Felix grabbed at his chest. "What are you doing?”

Ridding Us Of This Rot! It Will Destroy Us!

“I’ve eaten worse!”

Moonlight speared down into the dark landscape, almost as bright as the sun. Three of them were high in the sky: the dual blue of the Twins, and the brassy Yyero.

Brother! the Echo cried. Aid Me!

Felix snarled at the moons, daring them to do anything—but they were silent. Instead, between their gleaming faces came a darker flare. Insidious violet shone, distant and small, but not for long. Violet darkness roared down from the heavens in a pillar of dark flame.

Empyrean—!

The Skill canceled, the Beast cutting off Felix's access. The Lost! It Comes!

The Echo lifted its empty face up into the tumult, its hollow corridor wrenched backward by the onset of star-flecked violet. Power gushed, overflowing the creature’s glitching flesh, forcing it to expand beyond itself. Its body spread out of the crater and along the horizon as new jagged tendrils split the ebony clouds like roots through rotted soil. Bright eyes sprouted along every inch, clouded with flame and teeming with a dark consciousness. They swiveled, turned inward in random, mad directions as flames ate across the Echo's flesh. The thing screamed, its voice changed by ten thousand timbres all howling at once.

HIM! the Echo cried. Ascendent! Cardinal! Fiend!

All at once, every eye turned on Felix. His limbs snapped down, pinned taut by the attention of the creature. Those voices congealed, a martial chorus shouting across a battlefield, stentorian and sibilant all at once.

It spoke.

Felix’s burst. Warm wetness ran down his lobes as his vision clouded and he almost passed out. His mind, spirit, and body alike shook from the power of its voice. Yet meaning, he heard not a single piece of it and yet meaning spiked through his mind. They weren't words or even images. It was a simple, unadulterated need. Burn.

Dark fire flushed through the Echo, ripping parts of it into nothing before rolling outward toward Felix and his people beyond. Sonata, Sonata of Dominance. Feenstone barriers burst from the earth. Bulwarks against the flame, the dark flames advance, but they ate through them. The fire shifted as if alive, it twisted. Devouring the Feenstone before twisting toward its source like a hound catching a delicious scent. Drawn to Felix like a magnet, the flames turned, rushing him.

Scion. Run.

"If I run, it goes for my people.” Felix hurled Fiendstone barriers into its path, slowing it imperceptibly. “Will we live if we stand in its way?”

Hear Its Need. It Devours Significance. You Hold Enough…For A Time.

Felix hurled his hands and Fiendstone rushed up around him, encasing him in thick, iridescent blocks.

The Ruin hit.

Dark flame rushed across him, swirling over and around his Fiendstone, until it roared up into a towering pillar. Felix sucked in a tight breath, and the Ruin ate through the blocks. It washed against his scales, colder than any arctic gale, and all but melting his heavy plates. Distantly, he heard cries of dismay from his people, but they were lost beneath his narrowed concentration.

Felix reached for his Regalia. Crescian Bronze flared as the Crown settled across his brow and the Chalice ignited his chest. His Mind steadied and his Body flushed with newfound strength, surging across his scales and reforming them.

The Lost Is Weakened But The Regalia Will Not Last Long! Get Away From It!

This is weakened?! Felix grunted, pieces of himself eroding no matter his bolstering artifacts. His Body and Mind thrust back at the Ruin’s flame, but his Spirit quailed. He felt it shake inside of him; a bird rattled in its cage. Bonds of bright blue sparked from his limbs, tethered into the air and earth. For a moment, Felix held.

FLEE!

"Shut it!" Felix's eyes blazed as he pushed back at the Beast, the Echo, and the world itself. "Sonata of Dominance!"

His Will ripped outward and the world bucked against him. The corrupted Mana was worse than ever under the Ruin’s dire influence and it fled Felix’s sphere of control. The ground opened up, chasms yawning open beneath his feet, and only the tethers of crackling blue kept him aloft. Beneath, the ashen earth split into textureless black as the Void pressed close.

Felix grit his teeth, fangs cracking, as he marshalled his Will and Intent through the lens of his Sonata. He reached further and for every extra inch he mustered, the unstable Mana fled him—but not all of it. Pieces lingered, particles of its former glory, and Felix clutched at them. They vibrated in erratic patterns, soured now by the moonfall and the Echo’s fell presence. It was as if they’d turned against themselves, waves crashing against waves, cancelling each other out.

We just need a bigger wave!

He flared his Skill, Mana and Essence thrown into the wave. A new song, pitched from his chest, sang through his Affinity and shaped by his relentless Intent. Colorless and unattuned, the Mana surged along with it into the surrounding area…and immediately soured amid the dark violet flame. The chasms beneath him widened, the Void beckoning as ash tumbled into its featureless depths as the Ruin devoured the song in a vast, unending silence.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

His scales burnt away, and his legs gave out. Lightning crackled across his back, blue lines snapping one by one. Violet flame closed in.

You Need More, Scion! You Need The Three!

He didn’t have the full Regalia and there was nothing Felix could do to change that now. All he could manage was his first and best solution.

More power.

Astrum Ascendence!

Wild Threnody!

Unseen Beholder!

Lay Of The Unfallen!

Each of his Skills sang from him, joining with his Sonata, each an incomplete piece of the Grand Harmony. They shook outward, grasping towards something Felix couldn’t name—something only his Affinity assured him existed. Deeper chords rang out, sparking across a wellspring of his power, the blue lines resetting themselves into his back and arms with bolts of discharged electricity. Choruses without a name or voice vibrated at his center, taken up by a guttural howl that shook his very bones.

Forget Not The Bonds, Scion!

Lightning surged from him, extended outward into the sky where it played among the charred clouds and glitching Echo-flesh. Felix saw none of it—he was surrounded by dark flame, frozen by its touch, eyes withered into nothing as his instincts raged.

Sing, Scion! Chant The Harmonies Of Beginning!

Yet Felix had no talent for singing.

All he could do was scream.

“Get The Fuck Off My World!”

The dark fire exploded, bursting around him as a piece of that song flared within it. The violet heated, turned to a brighter, more gleaming shade, as a crescendo of indelible brass flushed through Felix. And not just him. The Beast reared up, no longer cowering in the abyss. Its claws reached out, midnight-black and gleaming with banked potency, same as Felix’s own. Together, they spoke.

“Adamant Discord!”

The Bonds around him ignited, lightning surging down their lengths, and the Echo's power pushed back. Beyond the flame, beyond the dark, violet flames, its flesh steamed and popped. Bonds of Fellowship and Kinship sang out their fervent chant, spiraling through steel lines that sliced clean the glitching bulk. The Echo choked. The beam of ruinous power faltered, the sky gone dark as the Echo’s purple eyes turned wild across its corrupted flesh.

Impossible! We Are Divine! I Am The Night!

“Your moon’s set.” Felix lifted his head, the song gathering on his shoulders, streaming around him like a mantle. "It's breakfast time. Empyrean Embrace!”

Die, Thief!

The dark flame—once cast out—poured into them, and the Beast cackled, giddy with a madness Felix couldn't deny.

The diluted Ruin flushed through Felix, unmaking pieces of himself as it tore through, and the Beast roared. Unite The Lost!

That’s…my…line!

Significance burned through his Skill, fleeing the Ruin's touch and repairing pieces of himself that his Empyrean Regalia couldn't bolster. But his Tempering was no match for its power. Even weakened and transmitted through the Echo, it was too much to bear.

Felix locked his knees, eating everything he could. Uniting the Lost surged, rewriting what the violet shadow erased as Felix frantically consumed everything he could. Violet plumes were snatched back, pulled from his distant allies and into Felix’s channels, where it scoured him bloody. Diluted Ruin emptied him, bit by bit, shaking the nebula from his Divine Tree and withering the opalescent latticework roots at the edges of his core space—but the Beast and his Regalia were not idle. They protected his deepest formations, the Pillars and Skills and his Named Cores all held on, bolstered by the ceaseless grind of Unite the Lost. Patterns were half erased and vibrations were truncated, but the weave of stolen significance fueled their recovery in the next moment. It left Felix gasping, haunted by a melancholy vacuum that spun in constant spirals through the center of his being.

It wasn’t pain; it was deeper than that. A rawness that wounded his Spirit and even his Mind and Body, despite the Regalia. Yet there was no choice. Felix held on, for to release the Echo’s diluted Ruin was to let it consume his friends and allies.

That wasn’t an option.

And in the aching silence between ravenous mouthfuls, Felix heard something else. An orderly sound that cut through the chaos of distended Harmony, sharp and familiar.

The sound of creaking hinges.

A blaring cacophony shattered the silence, too loud and strident to ignore. Felix threw up an arm, fire burning through his channels, unmaking him faster than Unite the Lost could keep up. Then, it was gone. The Ruin's flame was hurled away, back into the squealing mass of the Echo, and leaving Felix blinking against revelation. His Links spread wide, flooding his senses as the Omen Door was rent asunder.

The Kobolds stood together, twice as tall as before and gleaming with power. Ondine flapped beside them, her wings wide and possessed of an otherworldly hue. Archie hadn’t changed, save now he hovered in the air and a pair of blades spun around him like buzzsaw drones. Beef shouted, his hammer swinging out to sunder the earth, ripping up spikes that crashed into the Echo's side.

Felix gasped, his flesh remade from the ceaseless wounding, but he couldn’t tear his attention off of his friends.

Hallow walked behind Beef, no longer wrapped around him, but refined into a tall woman in truth now, with horns that curled backward like a ram's. Evie unfurled her flail, and icy wisps danced down the length of it. Creatures formed from frost and wind cavorted around her feet, more ghost than alive.

“Abomination!” Yin roared, flying from the unfurled light, his crystalline horns shining with a

captured sunrise. Easily the size of Pit, he charged forward, the dawn’s light crashing into the Echo’s stagnate midnight. Ruinous potency ate at him, nipping at his claws and scales—but Yin wasn’t alone.

“Galebound Glory!”

Vess followed, her Spears slinging around her like missiles as they exploded, bursting apart the Echo's jagged tendrils. She joined her Companion, landing atop the Echo and slicing into its retreating flesh.

Blood Of Yours, Scion, the Beast snarled, its tone somewhere between intrigued and disdain. She Lives.

Gabby strode forward. Her armor was broken and her lip bloody, but she seemed calmer than all the rest as she reached a hand forward. “Brightblade Crescendo.”

A blade manifested in her grip—thirty feet long and half again as wide, all made of brilliant golden light.

The Echo screeched in pain as the Drake and Titan's light fell upon it. All eleven, Companions included, rushed forward as Skills blazed upon weapons, bare fists, and gleaming appendages of solid Mana. Elowen shot ahead, her golden-purple stark against the near-black violet that soaked the Echo. She hurled both hands forward, and Vess launched by her, lit by telekinetic force.

“Yin!” she cried. Bat-like wings stretched from her back, so real they looked stolen from a Dragon directly. Amplified by Elowen’s power, she zeroed in on the creature's eyes, her Spears bursting them into dark violet fire as her own glaive slashed forward, cutting through golden threads that still lingered in the Echo's flesh.

Dragoon! the piece of Noctis railed. She Said You Were Dead!

"She was wrong, creature! Draconic Legacy!" Carried past the Echo, Vess landed atop Yin as he wheeled about. Immediately, the pair of them were sheathed in wind and light, forming a spectral Dragon that more than matched the size of the twisted Echo.

Felix laughed, pain forgotten, melancholy shed. He shouted, and Vess grinned.

The pair launched forward, screaming with dawn's light as they met the last line of shadow. The Echo’s tendrils drew close, its blinded eyes burning with what flames remained, and its empty face howled.

Dragoon and Dragon flew through it, spectral claws rending it apart in a spray of unstable viscera. Mana spattered outward, and the connection to the Ruin far above finally sputtered out.

You Have Defeated The Echo Of Noctis!

XP Earned!

Defeated. Not killed. Felix reached out. “Let’s fix that!”