Unbound

Wrath of the Twin Fangs is level 93!

Colossus of the Everflame is level 96!

Forgesteel Skin is level 82!

Harn flicked blood off his gauntlets. "I had that, kid.”

“You were taking too long.” Kevin wiped his sickle on the Adamant’s tabard. “We're here to kill them, not chat them up.”

Harn grunted. He tilted his head, listening to the roar outside the walls. "Beef’s still fightin’."

Hallow's armored Risen walked nearer, trailing bloody footsteps. "He is. The Adamants are proving more challenging than expected.”

“He need help?"

The Risen shook its head. "He has me."

"Just about," Shadow said, landing next to Harn with a quiet tap of his clawed feet. "Your Legion is good. Really good.”

Kevin flicked the tower wall with a finger, and a faint, shimmering shield appeared a few spans above its surface. “Good enough to get in here?"

Harn wasn't sure.

Archie walked up, breathing heavily and covered in blood. He waved away Harn's attention. "Not my blood. This is warded, huh?”

“From inside, looks like," Mauvim said. She, at least, looked untouched from the battle. "We can bring this down, but it will take time.”

“The Adamant said the Overlord's in there, doing ‘important work.’ Which means he’s busy making Essence Draughts." Shadow spat to the side. "Our recon says that takes time. He holes up in here for hours, sometimes days. He’ll be too busy to stop us."

Harn rolled his shoulders. "Let’s hope so. Archie. Can you slip through?"

Archie frowned. “Wards are complicated, but maybe." The Delven's voice lowered to a whisper. "Primeval Drift."

The man pressed his hands to the shimmering shield, and they passed through—yet they immediately stuttered and sparked, their shape dissolving into uneven lines of flesh and bone. He yanked them back, biting back a savage curse. "Fuu—! God damnit!”

He cradled his hands against his chest, though Harn couldn’t see a single thing wrong with them. “I can't get through that. It's like... There's too many Mana types inside it. I can’t find the right one to slip through."

"An oscillation array?" Mauvim stumped a bit closer to peer at the tower. “Hm. Advanced, and power hungry. It needs to be fed by multiple monster cores, likely Tier V at the minimum.”

Harn grunted. “How long can they last?"

"Days, if it isn't strained."

Harn turned to the tower. "And if it is?"

Mauvim smiled, her wrinkles gathering upon her cheeks like the kindly grandmother she resembled. "Hours, if it is at full capacity."

Harn ran his thumbs over the halves of his axes. He'd already bashed the Adamant into the ward, and the man's shield had caused it to flare dramatically. If he had to guess, it didn't have much left.

Shadow drew an arrow across the wards. Faint designs slashed into existence before fading to invisibility. "So, how are we getting in there?"

"We'll take our cue from the snake knights. Pure force. Bones!" Harn shouted, loud enough to echo over the battle beyond the ruins.

The Legion stirred and giants, Humans, Orcs, and even a few Goblins, all wearing blue cloaks and bearing a large mace, club, or hammer. Archie stepped back, still massaging his hands while the Bone Legion walked forward, hefting their weaponry.

Harn lifted an axe. “Let’s take it down.”

Geir, a Frost Giant, hefted a massive iron club. "Ready yourselves! Strike!"

They hit as one. The wall shuddered, wards flaring across its surface.

"Strike!"

They hit again, the wards tingeing into yellows and oranges, as pieces of it began to overload.

Harn took out his axes, flaring his Wrath of the Twin Fang. "Strike!"

The warding flared bright red. It was not Divine magic, and there were no Adamants to support its barrier—it was just a normal shield, and it buckled before them. With a roar of a landslide, the wall caved in.

Wrath of the Twin Fangs is level 94!

Dust and debris spread inward into a wide, hollow tower, featuring nothing more than a flat, circular expanse and a stretch of spiral stairs against the far wall. Massive cauldrons twice the size of a Human were set up all around the room at regular intervals, many of them sealed with glass plugs and thick gobs of wax.

A tall, bearded man stood in the center wearing a heavy fur cloak that covered him from wrist to ankle, while his head was adorned by a crown of horns, and his naked chest was draped with a necklace of skulls. He moved his hands as if conducting a symphony, controlling streams of ethereal liquid as it danced across the cauldrons. Figures in blue robes surrounded him, their sandaled feet walking among the foul liquids as they carried corpses and deposited them into those streams, only to have them picked up and placed in the large vats.

No, not corpses. Some of them were still breathing. "What in damnation is this?"

The choristers shook as if wakened from a dream, and only then did they notice the gaping hole in their wall. As one, they set down the weakly struggling prisoners. "You dare interrupt our holy ritual?"

"Those are the refinement jars they display at market," Kevin said in dawning horror. "The ones they served the Essence Draughts from." He nearly dropped his sickle. "Are you putting prisoners in them?"

"Lord Zennick is not to be disturbed. Kade! Kade! Remove these interlopers!"

Harn grunted, throwing a dented helmet. It rolled to the chorister's feet, still bloody, still slick with the Adamant's blood. "Kade ain't coming." He held out his axes, and they caught flame. "You got to deal with me direct."

The choristers shouted, and a wall of ice burst before them, before exploding into sharpened points that lunged for their throats. Harn bashed through them, his burning axes making short work of the ice, only to face down a second layer of metallic blue.

"Heads up!" Shadow warned, just as arrows shot over Harn's shoulders, a dozen on either side. They stopped in midair, as if seized by the barrier of force, before a charge at their ends burst, forcing the arrowheads deeper. The barrier cracked.

"Wrath of the Twin Fangs!" Harn's axes bit deep into the wounds created by the arrows, chunking away a piece of the barrier.

Wrath of the Twin Fangs is level 95!

The choristers said something, but their voices were muffled behind the shield. "They're trying something new!" Harn warned. "Bones!"

His Legionnaires were already there, having just cleared through the ice wall themselves, and their blunt weapons crashed into the force shield, hard enough to send deep fissures spider-webbing across its sides.

"Again!" Harn swung, too, and all at once, the barrier shattered into a thousand sparkling pieces of Mana.

"Fall!" cried the choristers.

Massive chunks of ethereal tendrils froze in midair, hurtling towards their army. The flying shrapnel slammed into the line of Legionnaires, blasting many off their feet, before arrows took down several of the choristers. Shadow leaped forward, his form blurring in the dim light of the tower's interior. Wyrmkin followed him, their bolts and arrows burying themselves with uncanny accuracy into the choristers' chests, heads, and necks. Shining Skills dropped one after the other, many choking on their own bile as a sickening rot spread rapidly across their flesh.

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The Legion followed.

Harn stepped through the massacre. With the choristers down, there was no one between him and the cloaked Overlord.

"Zennic, I presume?" Harn said.

“Simpletons.” The man threw his cloak back, revealing a body of sculpted muscle, and tore free the crown of horns. He wore no armor, merely thickened hide pants and bracers made of orichalcum. Before Harn could step closer, the Overlord's Spirit blasted outward, forcing the Legion to a halt and the Wyrmkin to their knees. Harn and the Unbound weren't fazed in the slightest, though, and Zennic grunted as if in acknowledgment. "Who are you?”

“Concerned citizens.”

“You trespass upon Divine business!”

"I'm thinkin’ of makin’ a habit of it." Harn pointed an axe at the cauldrons. "What’re those?"

"Our salvation." Zennic thrust his hand forward. "Venom’s Finger!"

Those streams of poison lifted from the ground once more, coming from a central well filled with the same sickening waters out in the Poison Fields. They shot outward, hurled at Harn and the others. The tendrils hit the Legion and instantly killed some of the rank-and-file, while others were slammed back into the tower walls.

Harn bellowed, his rage burning at his skin as he ran to the Overlord. The tendrils turned on him, and they were too fast to evade. He was smashed back, thrown to the earth as poison burned through the gaps of his armor.

Forgesteel Skin is level 83!

Harn clenched his teeth, struggling back up to his feet as Zennic walked closer. The Overlord's attention was on him and not his men. He could work with that.

"Your efforts are pointless." Zennic gestured, and his Venom’s Finger knocked Harn to the side, throwing him bodily into one of the refinement cauldrons. Its metal surface reverberated like a gong as his armor hit it, and Harn rolled, flipping over onto the top of its thick, waxen seal.

Zennic stepped forward, his brow furrowed and expression fevered. "You bastard! You could have broken this and ruined all of my work!" He bent down, ignoring Harn to inspect the sides of his strange jars.

Harn pushed himself onto his hands and knees, back aching and head still ringing. The man was close and unconcerned with his proximity to Harn’s axes, but a Status Condition rolled through him.

Status Condition: Concussion (Mild)!

Slightly woozy, he glanced down at his hands to brace himself…and into the glass plug atop the cauldron. Through it, he saw limbs of many sizes mixed among putrescent fluids and unnameable bits, but most alarming was a face. A child's face, awake and struggling to stay afloat. Harn looked to the Overlord, a new rage building in him. The skull-wearing, idiot madman was consumed by his inspection of the jar, appearing to have forgotten about Harn entirely, though his tendrils still whipped through the Legion like a reaping scythe.

"Everyone out!" Harn commanded. "Legion, retreat!"

His soldiers listened immediately, though they struggled against the Overlord’s Spirit. It dragged at them, forcing many to move far slower than they should.

Zennic looked up and chuckled. "Smart choice for a foolish man!" He straightened, standing up at full height and meeting Harn's gaze atop the jar. The Overlord's eyes glowed a bright, unnatural blue. “Perhaps they can make it to the tree line before I kill them all—”

A sickle swung for the Overlord, but a casual gesture and a limb of poisoned water smashed it aside. Kevin hauled back on his chain, catching his sickle in his small hands.

"Why are you doing this?"

Zennic straightened, his expression one Harn had seen before on mothers and schoolteachers dealing with idiot children. It was patient and long-suffering. "What else are the criminals of this world good for? It is a Mercy to end their sins, and by doing so, bring forth the Just world the gods have shown me."

Arrows fired at the Overlord's back, but those, too, were halted midair, trapped within a shield of thickened liquid. "I am using their Bodies as incubators for the Fellwin roots. They are useless to me in their unprocessed state. It was the Twins that revealed how they could be developed properly. A mortal core space is needed to refine them into Essence Draughts worthy of the gods.”

Kevin retched. "What the fu—You're making people into Essence Draughts?"

"The Mana leaves no trace of the criminal, if that is what you fear, Wyrm," the Overlord replied. When Kevin flinched, the Overlord smiled. "Oh, yes. I know who you are. You and your shadowy brother. The Twins have told me much of you. I am pleased that you've come here today, for it saves me the effort of having to breach your little fort."

"We're here to kill you," Shadow said, his voice echoing from around the tower. He was hidden well enough that Harn couldn't even tell where he'd gone.

"Try your little arrows again, Kobold. You are destined to fail here, for I am destined to succeed. It has been Seen."

"Not by me, monster! Binding shot! Viridian blossoms!" Arrows shot forth again, this time bursting into flowering vines that dug thorns into Zennic's bare flesh.

"Archie!" Harn bellowed, slicing toward Zennic again with his axes. "Save them!"

The man lifted an arm, blocking Harn's strike with his orichalcum bracers, as Archie, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, ran for the nearest metal cauldron.

"No! Do not touch the refinement jars!" Zennic tore his limbs free of the vines holding him, thorns leaving bloody trails across his torso without even a wince of acknowledgement. "Venom's Finger!"

Those tendrils tore through the air, keening as they rocketed toward Archie. Yet they weren't fast enough. He slipped through the jar's side like a ghost.

"What sorcery is this?" Zennic took a step toward the other jar, but Harn caught him in the leg with his axe. The Overlord screamed in pain.

"Your fight's with me," Harn said. "Colossus of the Everflame!"

Silver fire ignited across the man's leg, and Zennic roared as he kicked free of Harn's axe. He darted out of the way of the second strike, too, and brought his fist down against Harn's armored skull. Harn took it head-on, his arcanite helm absorbing most of the blow, but not the backhand that followed. Harn flew backward, skidding across the dirty floor and fetching against another jar, which rang once more like a gong.

Ahead, Archie phased out of his jar, carrying three coughing people in soaking rags.

"Defiler!" Zennic said as he noticed. "You're upending our salvation!" He hurled his arms forward, ten poison tendrils mimicking his movement, and shot toward the Delven.

Archie couldn't be touched. His phasing ability slipped them into the earth itself, and though the tendril whips were potent enough to dig furrows in the ground to expose the man and the people he carried, they were not enough to stop him; he slipped through them, too, as they came close.

The tendrils flared outward, propelled by their master’s rage, and swept at the retreating Legion. New magic seized his power, twisting it away from the soldiers and eroding his control. Zennic’s breath caught, and the glow in his eyes flickered. The Mana in his Venom’s Finger separated, blue and virulent green splitting apart, as men and women accompanied by an ethereal song stepped to the fore.

"Sorcerers!" Zennic cursed.

“Pay attention!” Harn buried his axe in the man’s back, sending him stumbling to the earth as his wounds ignited with silver flame.

Colossus of the Everflame is level 97!

Zennic screamed, less in pain than anger, and lurched forward away from the weapon, flesh tearing and blood burning against him. The Overlord spun on Harn, eyes glaring in every direction as he breathed heavily through his drooling mouth. Veins stuck out of his neck and snaked down his chest like thick cables full of pulsing blood.

"You interfere with our holy purpose! You flout the rule of law! Fine. I will no longer hold back." The man reached outward, and those veins increased, spreading across his arms and stomach like serpents beneath his skin. He breathed deep, and a light blossomed within him. It shone through his soft flesh, illuminating his bones beneath muscle and skin like shadows against frosted glass.

"You seem strong.” This time his voice carried with it a reverberation that was not of this Realm. "You will make a fine Essence Draught."

Blue force Mana surged around the man, cladding his bloody and naked flesh with metallic azure panels, solidifying into a set of horned armor replete with a sword twice the size of the Adamant Guard’s.

Kevin rushed in. The little Kobold was fast, faster than Harn by half, and Zennic still swatted him out of the air with the flat of his force blade. The Kobold hit the ground, cratering it and vomiting blood.

"First Law. Hand of Justice."

The tendrils of poison water surged outward again from that well, but they were changed. Shimmering blue light rose from within each of the dozen limbs, until segments of force Mana hardened around their full lengths.

"Kev!" Shadow cried, rushing toward his brother. The armored tendrils swung, catching both Kobolds and hurling them into the far walls. They flew so hard and fast that they tore apart the Legionnaires that were in the way, splitting their weaker Bodies like cords of gruesome wood. Their blood flowed back, adding itself to the grim tendrils' composition.

“Cage him!” Mauvim commanded.

The Chanters sang out a crescendo of majestic music that Harn couldn't understand, but immense shards of stone slammed into the earth around the Overlord, forming a circle. Inscriptions of shining glyphs depressed themselves and filled with magic faster than the man could bring his Hand of Justice to bear. An array solidified beneath him, and blades of light stabbed outward and into the Overlord, forcing him to suck in a pained breath.

He flexed, and each blade shattered against his conjured armor.

"He's clad in Divinity!' Mauvim shouted, her face pale. "He is a Vessel for the Twins!'

Zennic burst the restricting array with a flex of his arms before destroying the stone shards with a single swipe of his immense blade. Shrapnel exploded into the crowd, taking several Chanters down to the ground.

Harn barreled through it, sparks flying off his armor as stone clashed against metal. He lunged for the man's legs, but his opponent's axe lifted and slammed down on his arcanite blades.

"Defiler!" Zennic growled. "You die today!"

Harn rolled forward, dropping his axes before grabbing a smaller blade from the small of his back. He jabbed it forward, aiming for a gap that should exist in any normal armor.

The blade snapped as it hit the man's ethereal blue protection.

"You fool!" The man's armored tendrils grabbed Harn around the waist and hurled him into the tower wall.

“GUH!” Harn’s arcanite armor groaned beneath the pressure, but the sound was smothered beneath a deluge of sizzling poisoned water. The water flooded him, trapping Harn against the wall and seeping through his armor to burn at his flesh.

Born Trait: Body of Steel!

The openings of his armor closed, sealing him away from the poison, but locking his limbs in place as his joints went rigid. He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. And, through the roar of the tendril's might, Harn could hear the walls groan and begin to collapse.