Unbound-Chapter Nine Hundred And Fifty Nine – 959

Unbound-Chapter Nine Hundred And Fifty Nine – 959

The Tower.
Chaos And Revelation.
The Path Continues.
When the darkness and light cleared, Vess found herself standing on a sharp cliff. Below her, storm-tossed seas rattled the bones of the earth, which stretched high into the air in lonely peaks. These were lone islands, cast into shadow by the ceaseless lightning above.
The storms rattled the air, but it wasn’t the weather that captured her attention. Among the storm and drowning out its furor was the noise and chaos of war.
Chimeras flew across the sky, engaging in a dire battle with unnatural monstrosities. These creatures were formed of segmented shells and writhing tentacles. Their Bodies gleamed, lit with a light that was both shadow and bloody crimson and filled with more power than Vess was accustomed to witnessing.
Sunara. Why am I here?
Thought called to memory, so sudden and convincing that it took Vess a moment to realize they were false. She remembered taking the Shadowgate from Elderthrone after fighting with Felix. She frowned.
Fighting? Why?
It was answered just as instantly. Vess glanced around herself. Her allies were in short supply—apparently her fight with Felix had been about organization. She’d demanded the others to go to Jaast and Levantier to support the other teams. All she had taken to Sunara was a battalion of Legionnaires. She remembered yelling at Felix—for not trusting her spear or her dedication. She could handle Sunara alone she had claimed.
Vess cringed.
That wasn’t me. Just a version.
She looked at the chaos in dread.
An idiot version.
The sky shook with thunder and illuminated with celestial light, highlighting vast shapes that hid in the clouds. Bodies of vast size, bulbous and finned, surrounded by a halo of power. Stormwardens. Their immense tentacles undulated, threading through the dark clouds. The Stormwardens were covered in the same slick shadow and arcing crimson as the smaller monstrosities. Each swipe of their limbs tore Manaships from the sky. These craft were far less advanced than the Nymean ones they had found in the true timeline, and they had no defenses against the behemoths. They fell, ripped apart and engulfed in fireballs before they careened into the sea.
"Yin, we need to get up there." Vess didn't know what this Path led, but it started here. “Yin?” She cast about, looking for her Companion, but he wasn’t there. She felt for their bond and gasped. It wasn't there either.
New false memories rolled through her, and they were knives into her heart. She recalled the Battle of Haarwatch when Yintarion of the Cerulean Sky had crashed to the earth. She remembered being there, among the flooded field and the cannon fire from the High Guard. There hadn’t been time—for either of them.
There was no bond with Yin because he had not been saved.
Her heartbeat sped up. The memory shook through her, as visceral and immediate as if she were living it at this very moment. The High Guard had closed in too fast. Three of them, too powerful for Vess to handle, let alone survive. Yin, finally freed of the gods’ influence, had made his final choice: he'd sacrificed himself, his corpse exploding in a cascade of golden light. It had shattered the High Guard, destroying their Bodies in an instant while shielding Vess…and in his final moments, gave her the last gift he could offer.
Vess looked down at her hands. What she'd taken for her glaive was instead a massive spear, forged of spiraling bone layered with golden scales and crystalline accents. A weapon built from a dragon's remains, given willingly. It sang in her hands, dawn itself captured in solid form. It was, without a doubt, powerful beyond measure, and Vess nearly threw it into the sea. It sickened her.
That wasn’t me,
she repeated to herself.
Just…just a false version.
Chimeras fell. Sylphaen warriors with wings of white and silver were torn from the sky, slashed to pieces by barbed tentacles. But it wasn't one-sided. Korvaa flew on the back of wyverns, marshalling bright magics that sundered clutches of the horrors, crashing them into cliffs, lighting up the sky.
The fight was ongoing, but it was clear that her side was losing.
An explosion burst above Vess, and she stepped back as a clutch of tentacular horrors crashed into her cliff. She lifted her bone spear high, slicing through the debris that approached her as the monsters wriggled madly within the crater they’d made. Their limbs stitched back together into a nonsense horror that clambered up and rounded on Vess.
“Come then, you vile—”
A storm of white-green wind blades slashed into the earth, pulping them into nothing before blasting them off the edge of the cliff in a gale. Ondine landed next to them, crushing the earth where they'd once laid. She carried no weapon, only twin arcs of solid air Mana.
"Lady Dayne, are you… you?"
Vess lowered her spear. "This is the Second Door."
Another monster landed, and Ondine hurled her arcs. They hit at the same time and burst, venting a hurricane through its flesh until it ballooned—and popped.
"Good," the princess said, arcs reforming in her hands. "Then we must tackle this fight. The Path is asking us to handle this chaos. That is clear. Did you hear the Omen?”
“The Tower."
Ondine nodded. "Sudden upheaval. Awakening. This is going to get worse before it gets better."
Vess gripped her vile spear, suppressing her disgust. "Worse than this?"
A sound like a thousand screams in a thousand pitches, layered over top one another, tore through the clouds above. Stormwardens, no more than shadows within the clouds, began to break through. Their limbs were wreathed in crimson lightning, miles-long tentacles slamming down onto stone islands, shearing them away into the sea as countless members of their army fell.
"Little remains. The Legion. The ships. My..." Ondine swallowed. "My Guardians. I watched them die to these corrupted creatures.”
“What's different this time? Is it the unstable Mana again?"
"No, worse.”
The End Approaches, Princess!
DEATH!
Noctis and Vellus. Of course.
Possessing all of the Stormwardens as well as the creatures that faced down the chimeras. Their influence was palpable. It was the chilling sensation she'd detected whenever those horrors drew close. More were on their way, clearing through the Chimeras that protected their position.
"We need to get to the gods," Ondine said. "Stop them. That is the path."
Vess' grip tightened on the spear, its smooth surface made her want to hurl it away, but she couldn't. Not in this moment. She gestured to the horde. "Can your winds hold them back?"
"Not all of them. The monsters, clearly teamed with divine might."
"Then we pave the way. Together. On The Wing!"
Solid Dragon wings beat downward, launching Vess into the air. And Ondine followed, her multi-hued feathers a match for Vess' movement.
Vess launched forward, her spear leading the way. The spiraling bone punched through the lead horror, boring through their hide. They burst, no more than paper before flame. A crackle of lightning and golden radiance followed each movement. It split the horde, each thrust effortless as if propelled from within the weapon itself. It was incredible, beyond any Masterwork weapon she’d ever wielded…and she wanted nothing more than to hurl it into the sea.
It was nothing beside the loss of her friend, even temporarily.
A whirlwind closed in around them, shaped by Ondine's bright fists. Their enemies were caught up, helpless targets offered up to Vess' mighty Skill, which in this alternate present, she learned had a new name.
“Slaughtering Tempest.”
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A hundred bone spears, each as powerful as the one in her hand, manifested around her. And with a flexing of her will, they went out to do their dark deeds. Golden light disturbed the dark storm. The horde was obliterated around them.
Yet it only lasted a moment. Shadows returned, and so did the horde. There was no end to the beasts between them and the Stormwardens. The gods hid behind their multitudes.
They were being overwhelmed, Skill after Skill, spear strike after strike they ended the horrors. The Chimeras fled their wrath, safe now to retreat as the clouds dropped low.
You Would Dare Face Us, You Pathetic Creatures.
We Cannot Be Stopped.
We Are Inevitable.
The Unbound Are Ours.
This World Is Ours.
Fighting Makes No Difference.
The tentacles of the Stormwardens dropped low, the skies boiling as they burned. Bloody crimson lightning wreathed the horizon, and the up-thrust cliffs shattered from the mere force of the Stormwarden's descent. Six of them crawled out of the heavens, the crushing weight of their SpiritS pressing against the both of them.
"
You
will fall here!" Ondine cried, "Corporeal Rift."
Just as she had in the real battle in Sunara, Ondine tore a hole through the realm—a split in reality that looked only vaguely similar to Felix's own technique. This, however, was raw and raging as the edges of the world split open. The seas around them vanished beneath a widening dark, textureless and endless. The air roared as it was pulled in, and the Stormwardens drifted, pulled off center by the power of the sudden pressure.
A mad scream was all the gods had in answer, as crimson lightning slashed into the rift, widening it. It split, cutting down through cliff and sea, tumbling rock and boiling waters into it as if thrown into an endless drain. The rift spread, uncontrolled now, as Ondine was yanked forward, her wings beating uselessly against the air.
Vess reached for her, attempting to pull her free, but they were both caught up, thrown into the rift along with the hordes and the Stormwardens themselves. They tumbled forth, surging down into the featureless black notated only now by the omnipresent lit monstrosities that surrounded them.
"Slaughtering Tempest!”
Her bone spears tore through them all, opening up a gap that Vess took that pulled Ondine through, away from the rift and where the divine horde funneled in alongside the torrential downpour of seawater that was the least of their problems.
A sour, spoiled noise that crawled across her skin. Vess recognized it from her chambers, from that creature that had assaulted her in her First Door. Unstable Mana bubbled and roared and the Void puckered with it, disgorging amorphous shapes that latched onto the god beasts, joining with their tentacles and shelled hides to form horrors that left streaks of broken static in the world.
The unstable Mana roared, summoning monsters into the Void with them. Malformed things that split the Memory apart at the seams. It tore around them, but that was the least of their worries.
"What happened?" Vess demanded.
"I don't know. Everything spiraled out of my control. That has never—I haven't—”
“It doesn't matter," Vess said, falling as they fell through the Void, wings struggling for purchase. "Can you close it?"
Ondine firmed her jaw. "Yes."
"Then we get through and we leave the gods behind. Come!" Vess flared On The Wing, rising up through the Void and the torrential downpour of an ocean around them. They wove through monsters and static-born rifts that sent water boiling and freezing in strange turns.
Ondine followed. "Will and Alacrity, we use them to maneuver in the Void. They are more effective than Skills here!"
Vess didn't know about that, but she knew On The Wing, and it propelled her further and faster, surging through the falling morass of enemies, seawater, and twisting tendrils. The Stormwardens reached for them, but Ondine struck them with her power. Wind, lightning, and storms crashed into their tendrils, but the Divine-clad creatures resisted, her Skills spilling from their iridescent hide like oil and water, until Vess drove her bone spear forward.
Divinity-infused flesh resisted that too, but only for a moment. The tentacle burst, a hole blasted through its thick muscle and cartilage. She flew onward through the gap, her wings trailing streamers of air Mana that thundered in her wake. Ondine followed, her wind arcs spiraling around her now like buzz saws, deflecting the Divine's regenerating flesh that tried to close as they passed.
Tendrils constricted, pulling closer, hemming them in as they fought to reach the rift. Eyes of immense size loomed ahead, glaring at her, orange as tallow lanterns and bright as the sun.
What Happened To Your Faith, Dragoon?
You Let Siva Die. You Let The Dragon Die.
Vess bared her teeth, but the spear in her hands burned at her.
Fortune Falls. None Shall Be Spared!
“Neither shall you! Slaughtering Tempest."
Vess hurled her spears forward, all hundred of them at once. They blasted through the Stormwarden's eye, shredding it to pieces and plunging them into darkness, before driving forward and bursting against bone. The creatures howled, a voice separate from the gods. Disgust and despair coiled through Vess' heart. Such wondrous creatures turned to such awful ends. Yet the howls of pain stopped. The behemoth didn't die. It regenerated swiftly, filled with prismatic darkness that couldn't be stifled even by her mighty, calamitous spear.
You End Here, Dragoon!
The Fiend Is Next!
They closed in, mountainous tentacles constricting now, diverting all the water away. There was only skittering lightning and cold shadow that pressed against them. Spirits crushing Ondine and Vess back against back, their weapons carving through flesh only to have it regenerate near instantly. A wall that could not be opened.
The song twisted. A deep Dissonance cut through the Divine's melody. All at once, the constricting paused.
What Manner Of Trickery Is This?
A bubble of hysterical laughter teased at Vess' chest. She knew the sound. She'd felt echoes of it before, teasing at the edge of Felix's Mind. Below them, the tentacles moved, and massive lantern eyes swiveled downward.
Below them, a vast shape resolved out of the Void, miles wide and dotted with too many eyes and a maw bigger than the largest of Stormwardens.
The Whalemaw swam upward, surging with glee.
Cardinal!
Noctis cried.
Madness Suits You. Die!
Crimson lightning surged, backed by chill shadow, and a beam of blinding force cut through the Whalemaw's massive face. A bloody chasm opened, revealing a deep, dark ichor that crawled like maggots. Those creatures pulled together, closing itself, bone and muscle replaced by glistening purple eyes and teeth.
The gods screamed, and Vess couldn't even enjoy their horror. She dove away, hauling Ondine with her.
Teeth slammed shut only paces from their feet and the Whalemaw snagged two of the Stormwardens at once, bursting them like grapes. All at once, the light was drained from them. Divinity itself flared and faded.
VILE BEAST—!
The screams of Noctis and Vellus cut out all at once, and the Void shook as more of that static spread as the rift above them widened further. The seas poured down like rain, unstable Mana flickering and surging, rushing for the Whalemaw. Its flesh split into a hundred thousand mouths, each eagerly consuming a piece of its foes. They died instantly, and the Whalemaw expanded, the same static bursting across its hide and somehow incorporating into it.
Jagged trails of split Mana filled the Void, vented from the beast like exhaust from a Mana engine. Its claws flexed, the rift broke wider, and the seas rushed in as well, followed by toppling cliffs and entire islands that crashed around them.
The Whalemaw rose, headed for the Corporeal Realm.
"We must stop it! Ondine!" So much would be destroyed if they let it loose on the Continent.
Vess gathered herself, launching forward through the remains of the Stormwardens, only to find a restraining hand upon her ankle. "What are you doing?"
Ondine pointed. "It has come!"
Below them, nearly hidden by the veil of tumbling seas, a doorframe had appeared.
The Door Beckons.
Leave Or Perish, Ascendents.
Vess hesitated. The Whalemaw threatened the very world itself—she couldn’t leave that, but the Door would only be offered so many times. She couldn't defeat the Whalemaw, not alone, not even with this cursed spear in her hand. She closed her eyes.
They ran.
The Whalemaw was preoccupied with the rift above them. Its insane, endless bulk rose up, undulating through the Void, as large as a landmass itself. But it was not a creature of singular appetites. Its flesh reached for them, splitting into vile tendrils tipped with maws of their own. Vast serpents that were nothing more than parasites on its skin. They snapped at them, tearing at their Mana even as it propelled them forward.
On The Wing stuttered and failed. Her draconic wings vanished and Vess plummeted into the dark, caught only by the outstretched grip of the princess.
"Will and Alacrity!" Ondine shouted above the roars.
Vess marshaled her stats, pressing against the Void with them as if she were commanding her Skills to move. It thrust her forward, not nearly as fast as her wings, but it controlled her rapid descent through boiling seawater and hissing parasites.
It wasn’t enough.
The parasites were relentless, and Vess’ Spears did little more than delay their serpentine strikes. Wind arcs fired and Spears launched, tearing apart crimson corruption and ichor-stained teeth, but all of it reformed instantly. The creature was undying and Vess could hear it. Feel it. A new melody flowed through its keening song.
Divinity.
"It's unstoppable," Ondine shouted. "This abomination…not even the gods can withstand it!"
Maws snatched at them, but the pair twisted between snapping mandibles and clutching tongues.
The door.
It was mere paces below them.
Ondine reached out, fingers cutting trails through fallen water and suspended debris. Touched the shining dark between the frame, just ahead of a dozen parasites.
“Slaughtering Tempest!”
A shield of Spears thrust outward, driving the crimson monstrosities back, giving them a moment. Ondine seized her shoulder and fell into the door, cheering. Vess twisted, looking out into the black…and saw it. A keening, triumphant roar as the Whalemaw crossed through the rift, expanding now into Sunara.
The portal slipped over her, thrusting the pair of them away from the Second Door…and leaving its world to be consumed.

Chapter Nine Hundred And Fifty Nine – 959