"Get us down there," Felix said. “Carefully.”

They approached the lip of the crater in a looping curve, descending slowly. When they drifted too near the crater, however, Pit’s lurched and fell. Flapping all four of his wings frantically to stay aloft, they were shaken by the opposite of turbulence, dropping them a dozen feet at a time before Ouranic Dominion took hold once again.

“I hate that!” Pit croaked. “My Skill keeps cutting out!”

Felix stroked Pit’s feathers, just behind his barding. “We’ll make it through.” He pushed calm assurance across their bond—a feat of guile, considering that he was poised to Converge with his Companion the moment they were truly in danger.

It wasn't only him struggling though. Scylla's flight path faltered again and again, her flying Skill waning with every other beat of her wings. It confirmed something Felix had long ago realized: Chimera could never fly on pure mechanics alone. They needed their Skills, their magic.

Scylla warbled in dismay as she dropped further, her legs flailing as if she could find purchase on something. Pit swooped under her, catching her body on his massive, bus-sized back. She barely even bumped into Felix, so large was their size difference.

“Welcome,” Felix said through his teeth. “Hang on.”

Scylla only gave an uneasy chirrup, and hunkered down.

Her weight made them drop a bit further, but Pit's own personal Mana pooled around his wings, offering some buffer against the wild instability.

"I've got you. I've got you," he said. Scylla cooed appreciatively, her legs set wide and braced.

Felix glanced back. "You good?"

Pale green eyes narrowed. Her tail was bushy and lashing. "I'm fine.”

“Right.”

They continued downward, backing away from the crater now, but every circuit made Ouranic Dominion flail out of Pit’s control. They teetered, the both of them nearly unseated, before his Companion recovered.

“This is nuts. I’ll get off here.” Felix stood up, bracing against Pit’s helm.

Pit chuffed, annoyed at the air as much as Felix. "Fine, I’ll follow you down."

"No, you won’t. Stay away from the crater, and that’s an order." Not waiting for a response, Felix dropped off his Companion’s back. He fell, and there was no Skill singing within him as he shot down at least three hundred feet before landing with a deep, resonant crash at the base of En’Cridhe. The earth shook and small pieces of moon rock were hurled over the lip of the crater.

“Whoops.” Felix held very still until the tremors stopped. Thankfully the tower didn’t go tipping over the edge, but he didn’t trust his luck. He took a few cautious steps forward—the ground was a little soft beneath his heavy tread, but it didn’t immediately break apart.

The tower loomed ahead, emerging from between exposed bedrock and the upthrust shards of a goddess’ prison. He stepped slowly onto its lower portions, and where the wide staircase once wrapped around its outside now it was a pit filled with dirt and carvings that were remarkably unharmed.

Nymean craftsmanship. Goddamn. He leaned down, touching the side of an exposed face that was at least five feet wide. Whatever those folks had made their things with, it stood the test of time…and the destruction of a fallen moon, apparently. Other statues were unmoored from their original positions and now stuck through the piles of debris at odd angles, still whole save for some minor cracks. It was shaping magic, he was certain, but on a deeper, more fundamental level than he'd ever managed.

It groaned beneath his weight.

Don't land, bud. I don't think this is going to hold for long.

Pit had retreated back toward the ship, and his flying was noticeably less inhibited by the unstable Mana. Scylla, however, still clung to his back.

Nonsense, I'm going to come down there with you. The tenku banked into a dive. I'll just approach on the ground.

"I'm not sure we can," Scylla said, and Felix was surprised he could hear her through their bond. Even without focusing, Felix could sense Pit’s surroundings easily. The pale tanku nodded into the distance and Pit groaned

Territor

Creatures had began to claw their way up out of the terrain between Felix and the ship.

Looks like we're going to be busy anyway, Pit sent just as his wings lit up with moonlight. Beams blasted from the sky, fitful and thinner than usual, but enough to scour the earth where a dozen voidbeasts had gathered. I'll take care of them.

"We will," Scylla corrected.

Together, they flew off to bring death to the shadow.

Felix focused on the tower.

He couldn't sense the Seat or Seal. He touched his temple, summoning the Crown of Elysium. It settled on his head and pulsed, giving him a sense of the Seal’s proximity…but nothing else.

Tch. Must be the crater’s interference. Felix banished the crown and slowly made his way forward, step by step. At first, everything held fine, but as he progressed into the horizontal tower, further from where it was secured and the lip of the crater, it groaned with his weight.

Though smaller than Beef or Wendell, he had them both beat in weight. His density had only increased with every Temper he'd chosen. While extremely useful in battle, it was far less so for balancing above a molten pit of insta-death liquid.

Sonata of Domination!

Each step was cushioned by shaped air, absorbing some of his weight as he proceeded. It wasn’t enough. Once he reached the halfway point where, picking his way across sideways staircases and the shattered visages of once beautiful sculptures, every step set the tower shifting. It rocked, flexing beneath his tread until Felix could walk no further. Another step and he was certain that the entire tower would go tumbling into the crater.

Adamant Discord!

He pulled at bonds to the air, lifting himself up on a tether of crackling lightning. The tower immediately lifted by scant inches, relieved of his weight.

The connection thinned and snapped, lightning flying free. Felix fell back, landing on En’Cridhe and setting the thing tilting dramatically. It groaned, stones falling from the rim, but it settled back into place with a crash.

“Shit.” The interference was too much. He needed…Felix perked up.

Bonds, he had learned, did not have a range limit.

Adamant Discord!

Felix had spent a long time soaring the skies of the Continent. There was a deep familiarity between him and the heavens. While the connection was fitful here in Amaranth due to the instability, he was the emperor.

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He reached to the north, south, east, and west. Each strand was thin but it was joined by a hundred others, snagging distant horizons that all lay under his Authority.

Adamant Discord is level 146!

Felix stretched himself beyond his limit, through the thin, wild Mana of Amaranth and into Gharion, Ahkestria, Jaast, Levantier, and Nagast itself. There, his Authority was an unshakable as the crown on his head.

Will and Intent held his Skill together, rising as the Chant poured through him. Mana burned by the bucketload as lightning gathered in his grip like a thousand cat’s cradles. Strings sparked blue-white and blinding, filling the dark sky with bolts that streamed across countless miles.

Distantly, he was aware of creatures falling—twisted abominations like the glitching Eels and the armadillo bats. Their deaths were a string of notifications across his vision that he immediately dismissed. They didn't matter. They certainly wouldn't push him up any levels, not if they died to something so simple. The lightning was weak. It was a discharge of what it was truly doing, a sort of aftereffect from seizing the Bonds between things. A friction. Anything that perished to that amount of lightning was likely far below his Tier.

He lifted himself up. This time the movement was smooth and uninterrupted. Mana around him flexed and swirled, jerking away from his display like oil and water, but it didn’t matter. He rose a dozen feet at first and, with a flexing of his arm, he swung forward. Lightning clinging to his right hand dissipated and clung to his left, until he shot right off the lonely edge of En’Cridhe.

Felix’s breath caught in his throat as he soared over the crater and its chaotic brew far below. It bubbled and spat, geysers of unstable Mana firing off in random directions. They plowed through the earth where they hit, leaving nothing behind except empty holes. He swallowed, and slowly lowered himself down over the tilted top of the tower.

Bonds glitched in his hands, failing and vanishing…but many others held firm. He fought against the urge to reach for more—the ones he held were already straining his Will and Intent. His Mana was emptying almost as fast as it regenerated. Any more and he would start to run out entirely.

He had to be quick.

Tethers of lightning wreathed around his left fist, as the wide, circular top of En’Cridhe lay bare before him.

Chunks had been sliced out, pieces where the Chthonic Star had obliterated sections of the tower. Other parts still had chunks of golden threads, bundles clinging together like muscle fibers in the fissures created in a battle he remembered all too well.

Felix bared his teeth at those but didn’t pause any further. He resummoned the Crown. The moment the weight of the Crescian Bronze settled against his brow, he could feel it. The Seal, just beneath the surface of the stone. His snarl turned to a grin, and as he hung above the empty air, Felix brought up his completed Quest notification.

Lay Low The Golden Sun!

You have defeated Ocalla Marzul, Hierophant of Amaranth and the leader of the Hierocracy. Your Authority has been expanded! You may now claim all Territories formerly under the Authority of the Hierophant!

ERROR!

Due To System Overload, Authority Cannot Be Accessed Remotely!

Traverse To The Location Of The Seat And Seal To Claim The Conquered Territories.

You Have Traversed To The Seat And Seal Of Amaranth!

Do You Wish To Claim The Territory?

Yes.

The top of the tower burst alight. A gush of liquid gold and silver roared from between the stones as a fractal pattern arose like a stain. It emerged in splashes of liquid light, cascading sideways toward Felix and in defiance of gravity and the very unsteady laws of physics, it wrapped around him like a scaffold of light, clinging to his limbs, chest, and head. It inundated him with a power that washed against his senses, a power he'd never felt before—at least not so concentrated.

At the very center of the Seal, a glyph formed, one he was all too familiar with: a sunburst held in the grip of a white fist. The glyph of the Hierophant.

With a slash of his hand, he obliterated it.

The center of the Seal emptied, turning to dark stone. The scaffolding crumpled there, fractal patterns retreating like a disconnected circuit. Pieces were left bare, empty of power and light. A question he did not need translated. An answering light welled within him.

Red-gold and blue-white, it rose from Felix's chest, surging across the Seal's construct, pouring into the center. It filled the emptiness, and a new glyph formed in its place. A burning eye surmounted by a crown. The glyph of House Nevarre.

The tower around him dropped ten feet, nearly throwing Felix from the Seal itself as it misaligned. Its top now pointed decidedly downward into the crater as the rocks around it crumbled. Felix panted through gritted teeth. The light of the Seal cut into his skin like wire until he managed to slacken his hold on Adamant Discord and lower himself.

Felix Nevarre.

You Who Would Claim Empire.

Why Do You Rule?

The question was a familiar one. He’d been asked it a few times now. Once he'd been unsure of his answers, but no longer.

“I rule…because of the Bonds of Fellowship.”

An incandescent blue-white and red-gold surged from Felix, pouring along the construct directly into the Seal.

Your Answer Is Accepted.

With a tidal wave of power, the Seal shot backward into En’Cridhe itself. Its light now tinged with Felix's colors as it filled in every crack and crevice, every empty cornice and shattered window, restructured by binding radiance. Even the statues were reinforced, each of them rising up in chunks, their pieces hovering in broken mimicry of their full glory.

A strange euphoria rushed through Felix as power swept outward through deep channels he couldn't see and could barely sense. A tarnished golden light swelled at the forefront. It roared, taking his Perception along with it. Suddenly he no longer clung above the crater. Instead, he sped through blackened skies and across land that heaved like the sea. People fled around him, crying for mercy from glitching behemoths that dropped from the sky. Then he was beyond the borders. Into new lands—cities on the edge of cliffs, fortresses nestled within sheltered valleys, lands of floating chains and waterfalls that flowed upward. Farmland across plateaus, and cities built atop a great forest. Pieces of the Hierocracy Felix had yet to seize. All of it laid out before him—all of them now in his grasp.

The channels surged and the sense of tarnished gold vanished entirely. The lands disappeared from his Perception, but they tingled at the edge of a newfound awareness.

The Empire Of Amaranth, Designated ‘Hierocracy,’ Is Dissolved!

Authority Stands In The Breach!

Do You Wish To Claim It?

Yes.

The tower shook beneath the weight of the power, shedding earth around its bulk by the ton. It dropped and the light construct crashed into Felix, but pieces of the moon resonated even as the crater crumbled. Gold and silver surged among the moonshards, an En’Cridhe lifted, rising back up as if the land were trying to undo its damage. Felix lifted with it, held between the power and his own Will, until the tower stopped at a forty-five degree angle. The earth was reinforced with threads of red-gold and blue-white that pulsed outward into the land, trailing blooms of grass and twiggy saplings in its wake. The Territory was reasserting itself, and that hazy unreality crept backward; chaos brought to order.

But nothing could be so simple.

The moonshards around him flickered, their light suddenly dimming as they oozed with liquid shadow. The form overflowed into jellied mounds, and En’Cridhe shuddered as red-gold and blue-white radiance guttered out. It fell, the light-bound tower tipping back into the crater even further than where it had started, the scaffolding of the Seal dragging Felix back down with it.

He cursed. Light filled Felix, a brilliance that scoured his veins. It wasn't painful, but it was arresting. Adamant Discord snapped out of his grip, leaving him hanging only by the Seal itself. He wasn’t trapped—were he to flex his limbs the construct would shatter, and so would his claim. He knew that in his bones.

The tower groaned, but didn’t fall. Yet.

Felix took shallow breaths, mustering his Will to throw behind the System’s workings when the moonshards lifted. “Oh come the fuck on.”

The lesser pieces rose up, shining from within murky flesh, save for where they erupted out of the new-forged hide. Insects, serpents, and furry ape-like horrors climbed up on trembling limbs, molten moonshards functioning in place of arms, legs, and even heads. Shadowflesh bound them all together into a mishmash of nightmarish proportions. They raged, screeching out a cold frost into the air.

Felix answered them, his own roar blasting the closest back a dozen feet. They were at the base of the tower, no less than three hundred feet away.

Too close.

You Have Claimed A Broken Empire.

Do You Wish To Unite Or Forsake?

Finally! Unite!

Unite the Lost burned in his chest, fed with the glut of significance he carried within himself. That arresting power of the Seal surged, reaching its tendrils into him in a way that no Territory ever had, as if growing vines into his channels. Unite the Lost pushed them aside, not needing their power or their guidance. A song rolled out of him through the soles of his feet and palms of his hands.

The world bucked, rippling like a stone-struck pond. The monsters fell back, the wave of vibrations tearing through them. Several dozen were killed, spattered into smoking goo and glowing rocks.

Felix gritted his teeth. Around him, the rest of the moonshards blazed with sudden yellow light as the molten crater swelled.

ERROR!

Territorial Instability Is Too Great!

Eliminated The Source Before Trying Again!

A mighty crash tore Felix's attention downward. A hand and arm twice the size of En’Cridhe, with too many fingers and swollen joints, rose out of the glitching Mana, slick with power across dark shadowflesh littered with moonshards. It slammed into the crater's edge and shouldered a vast head and torso from the chaos.

A voice rose within it, shaking across Felix's Spirit as an empty face met his own.

Unclean Defiler! Ascendant!

DIE!