Unbound-Chapter Nine Hundred And Sixty Six – 966

Gabby pressed herself against the bare wall, her Intent and Will drawn taut as drumskin. The obliteration of the room had twisted tiles and plaster and stone to dust, but it ran up against her Authority. Glitching fragments of light flared against the perimeter, each spark like a needle stabbed into Gabby’s brain.

Where the hell did everyone go? Had everyone really gone through the Third Door without her? Why was she alone?

The unstable Mana raged beyond her barrier, slowly creeping closer as her Will strained against its pressure. All that was left was a few feet of tiled floor and the bare stone where the Third Door once stood. The threshold was still there, marked out in deep crimson wood, but that was it.

They left you.

Gabby swallowed. Beyond the sizzling edge was a textured darkness that swirled in unsettling eddies. She bared her teeth through the haze. “Shut up!”

A laugh, high and haunting, threaded out of the dark. The infinite void bulged, moving like the surface of a deep sea. Something was out there.

They left you to die.

Her circle twitched, losing several inches all at once. Dust swirled, taken by the dark and Gabby’s Will shook—compromised by a thrill of bright fear. She clenched her teeth against it, swallowing the fear and clutching the doorframe. It glowed where she touched it, a soft red-gold radiance. It reminded her, uncannily, of her brother and her Will steadied.

He cannot help against this.

Lines of pale blue looped around her shoulders, yanking Gabby off balance. She twisted, hands clutching hard against the doorframe. Tendons strained at her neck and her armor dimpled beneath the threads, sparks flying. She held on…until a dark claw wrapped around her throat.

Only I can save you. A face swam out of the dark. Her face. Only I can give you the strength to fight this corruption. I am the Light in the dark, and I burn with righteous wrath.

“I’m done with you!”

You’ll never be done with me. We are bound, heart and soul. The claw tightened. I am you.

The barrier shrank. Gabby’s Will and Intent faltered, shaking under the thick arms of her double, while at the same time an inexorable rage rose within her. Rage at Imara…and at herself. She’d fallen into this world and been tricked into becoming a Vessel for the Pathless, but it had been her choice to Bargain her soul with the gods.

Our choice. Imara seized her with a second hand. I am the Light and the truth. Your only way forward.

Her Will broke. The tiles shattered. Gabby lost her grip, her entire frame lifted by Imara’s claws. She was pulled from the door by the throat—until she wasn’t.

What nonsense is this?

A blue-white cord had wrapped around her wrist. “I—these are—”

They were the same strings that bound her to her Bargain, except these were brighter. They anchored her to the doorframe where it glowed a vibrant red-gold.

“Gabby! I have you!”

Gabby twisted her head back to the empty wall. “Vess?”

“Hold fast!” The voice came from the new cords, and where they touched her Gabby felt only an electric warmth.

They are too late, Imara sneered. Where were they when you came to this land? Where were they when you were trapped in the Deadlands? When the choice was between death or servitude? Betrayers and tricksters.

We have survived. Together.

We need no one else!

Those claws pulled at her, implacable as the righteous wrath that boiled within her alter ego. It was all Gabby could do to hold on, but the cord never failed. It even extended, steel-like cables winding between her fingers and across her palm—it didn’t break her armor, but she could feel it on her bare flesh. It wasn’t pain. It felt like freedom.

"You are not alone!”

Another cord stretched out, blue-white tinged by brilliant purple-white. It snagged her shoulder just as a third, flickering with blackened-green, seized her bicep. They shifted, cords turned to gauntlets and gloves and fuzzy fingers. Her hand was squeezed, the cords transformed into red-silver armor embossed with golden Dragons.

“You must only hold on!”

Imara snarled. Don’t trust them! Only I will—

Gabby pulled back, assisted by the others, and the claws fell away. Something deep in the dark roared with a desperate Need.

You’ll never be rid of me!

Cord-hands hauled her back at breakneck speed, away from the dark. Gabby winced, but instead of the bare stone wall she hurtled through a curtain of light and sound. Her heels hit something solid and the cords vanished with a sizzling pop of thunder. She stumbled to her rear, skidding across an indeterminate surface that yielded beneath her weight.

The dark was gone. Imara was gone. Gabby laid on her back, staring up at a swirling ceiling of shifting lights. The others crowded close, all of them sweating and breathing heavily, as if they’d been running for miles.

“We’re all here?” Ondine asked, wings tucked close to her body.

Vess smiled, reaching out and helping Gabby to her feet. “Yes. Now we are.”

Gabby clung to Vess’ hand like a lifeline. There were no words, but the woman’s Spirit was warm and bright. She patted Gabby on the arm and brought her closer to the group.

"Where is here, exactly?" Archie asked. "This just looks like another hallway.”

“Strangest hallway I've ever been in." Beef stuck his hammer into the walls and it was nearly wrenched from his grip. Winds roared past them, revealed in that moment, only to die away as soon as his hammer was tossed free. “Holy heck!”

Gabby looked up, through the shifting lights. They were surrounded by winds and clouds, boiling above and to every side. Lightning chased through them, sporadic but bright, as thunder rolled across the length of it. A length, Gabby noticed, that seemed to extend forever. “It looks like we have a walk ahead of us.”

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"As good a plan as any." Vess took point. Yintarion at her side, followed by Evie, the Kobolds, Elowen, Beef, and finally Gabby and Ondine at the rear.

The walk was strange. Each step seemed to shift the storm, driving it in new directions. Sideways, upward, backward. It was dizzying. It felt like she was on some sort of carnival ride. By the sixth step, it felt like she had not moved at all. But still, they carried on.

Then it was done. Between one step and the next, the thunder ceased and the clouds faded in discrete patches, like windows opening around them.

“Blighted Night,” Evie cursed. “Look at that.”

The gaps in the clouds revealed a landscape that Gabby knew well. Amaranth lay green beyond, lit by a bright sun and filled with rows of growing grain and babbling brooks. She took a step closer, but the vision faded; the skies blackened and the earth charred, turned to ash as it withered. The sun went dark.

Another step and they were in the mountains. These too crumbled away, peeling back as a wave of glitching, unstable Mana tore it asunder. Rocks fell apart, disjointed from the whole as magma boiled from the center of the land. It turned into geysers that speared into the air, filling everything with a cloying ash.

They moved again. Gabby couldn’t stop her feet.

It was a forest again, a swamp, a desert. Each time the landscape peeled away, rotting at rapid speed, as if every step took them years into the future. Celestial bodies dropped from the sky, enormous things that Gabby immediately recognized as a moon. The same bronze disc of Yyero that had dropped in her Second Door, now careened into the land, driving new mountains around its impact and draining entire seas. Others fell too—all of them—until the Continent burst around their corridor in a firestorm of apocalyptic proportions.

“Get down!” Yin warned.

Dust and debris rushed over them, crashing through the flimsy storm. Gabby threw up a shield of golden light, while Beef and Elowen erected chitin and telekinesis in equal measure.

Jagged moonshards tore through anyway.

“Primeval Drift!”

A small hand on her back was the only indicator Gabby had that she’d been saved. A massive moonshard pierced through her torso—through five of them all at once—but it didn’t hurt. She waved a hand through it, pushing her fingers into the glowing stone as if dragging them through pudding.

“Don’t mess around,” Archie grunted.

More debris crashed into them and Gabby held her shields, patching it against lesser impacts. Her arms shook, wobbling with the fury of it, and a tremulous song shaking at her center, extending from the damp Gnome.

“Archie?” Beef asked.

"Everyone can walk forward now and get the hell out of this place,” he said with a thick voice. “Slowly! You move too fast and I’ll lose it. And no one let go of me."

Together they did just that, moving achingly slow through their own shields and the surrounding moonshards, now dull and heavy as any exploded stone. They slid through them, the sensation like trying to breathe through concrete. It clutched at Gabby's lungs, and the light vanished from her eyes as her head submerged entirely. Then they were through, out the other side, and into blasted terrain not unlike what remained of Amaranth.

The corridor of storms was gone.

"That's Levantier," Elowen said in horror. "It's gone."

Gabby looked up from where Archie sat on the ground, nose bleeding and legs shaking. She fought back a gasp, but Beef and the twins provided one for her. The Lucent Towers were more than gone, the entire mountain was flattened. Shards of divine moon stuck up from everywhere, a field of shrapnel standing stones.

"Is everyone unharmed?" Vess asked.

"More or less." Archie had laid on the ground. His shaking had stopped. "Anyone got a Mana Potion?"

Gabby handed him one, wordlessly, from a pouch at her side. He took it, eyeing it distrustfully. "Straight from the Hierophant's stores.”

"Like that’s a reassurance,” he groused. “Fuck it. If this kills me, I’ll haunt your ass.” He slung it back. "Gah. Still tastes like shit."

Yin coiled around Vess, the length of his sunset scales protecting her. “We've been flung into the future.”

"A possible future," Elowen corrected. "This seems to be what happens when the gods all fall. But the Chthonic Star is gone. How could their chains be broken?"

"Authority.” Everyone turned to look at Gabby. “The chains. The moons. It’s all bound up with Authority. If you have the right amount, you can break it open.”

Evie folded her arms. “That…makes sense. Unnervin’ though.”

“So anyone with enough juice can just,” Kevin gestured around them.

“Pretty sure it takes a lotta juice.” Ondine bent, picking up a smaller shard of moon. It crumbled in her hand. “Something else is at play here. I think—”

A discordant yowl came from above, like a thousand strings playing a hundred wrong chords. The sky bent away, clouds fleeing before a dark fire that descended like a midnight sun.

Gabby swallowed. “That’s—”

“The Ruin,” Yin finished. “It’s here!”

Not Quite.

Gabby swung around, Brightblade gleaming in the twilight as the others did the same. Skills flashed, clinging around hands and feet and mouths, but were held off.

There was nothing around them.

Without warning, the lot of them lurched forward as they were lifted bodily into the air. Elowen gleamed and Vess sprouted wings, but both were coated in crimson light as an invisible hand forced them down. A chunk of stone tore from the ground as they were all raised up into the sky.

Calm Yourselves. I Merely Wish To Give You A Better View.

Gabby gaped, sword raised and armor gleaming as a figure resolved out of the charred earth. An enormous skeleton, larger than mountains, held them within its twisted hand. Its Body was threaded with gold and crimson metal, riveted together, as if the plating were the only things holding it together.

"Avet," Gabby said through gritted teeth. "Is this the Path, or is this you?"

A Curious Question. Perhaps Both.

“What do you want?" Vess demanded, striding forward.

To Show You This.

Avet gestured and around them, scenes and views flickered past as if magnified before their vision. People prostrated before the blackened sky and inside Shrines of the gods. Others hid in fortified bunkers beneath the earth, lit or painted with the symbol of the Pathless. Still more fled into the south, where the lands rose up into the heavens.

Prayer. Fortification. Flight. All Of It Fails.

In each vision, people were torn apart by creatures made of stars. Shrines were sundered, bunkers were cracked open like eggs, and the rest were chased down across canyons and desolate trenches filled with boiling waters. The creatures found them all, and none stood a chance. Their wounds filled with a dark fire that consumed them from the inside out, turning masses of thousands into nothing more than greasy smoke.

Thunder roared. The skies erupted. Things crawled from beyond, enormous like Avet, warring with star-filled monstrosities that burned away their flesh with every strike. They were no less horrible than the beasts. Gabby's eyes and soul hurt to look at them, like staring into the naked sun. They were flesh and stone, both and neither. Eyes sparked like rising moons and backs flexed with muscles cut from chipped crystal and stubbled carapace. They were covered in too many joints across too many limbs, filling the horizon and bending the blackened sky.

My Brethren Fall.

The gods were swarmed by unstable monstrosities. The clouds split, releasing molten power like rain upon them. A dark fire washed across their boundless bodies, battering against shields bent at unmatched angles through colors that didn’t exist. The Divine struggled mightily, laying low millions of abominations with every movement, but they couldn’t beat the breaking sky.

It opened up, and stars rained down upon them.

Gabby gasped, and even the dark shadow inside of her had gone still. “What is happening?”

The Consequences Of Their Actions. Avet smiled quietly. His teeth were as big as buildings. Our Actions.

"Be less cryptic!" Archie snapped. "Explain literally anything!"

You Must Fight, Delven King.

"King? I'm not—"

All Of You Must. Only Then Do You Stand A Chance.

Gabby clutched her Brightblade. She hadn't realized she'd summoned it, but its warmth gave her comfort. "Against what?"

A Dissonance on a grand scale tore through their ears. Their knees buckled. The mountains beyond them tore apart, and pieces of the gods vanished. Burned by black fire.

The End Of All Things.