Unbound - Chapter 620

“Imara!”

The second district of Birchstone was blazing beneath the benediction of a holy inferno when the voice accosted her. Imara looked up from the corpse she had just torn apart and let their armored halves clatter to the uneven flagstones. “Faer.”

The old man hobbled from a side street, his white robes identifying his position to the Inquisitors that now filled the entirety of the district. Those closest bowed as he passed, as was befitting his rank beneath the Hierophant. “What have you done?” he demanded.

Imara frowned. “Done? I have done what is right.”

“Right? You have killed hundreds! Thousands! This—this will incite a war not just with the Red Shield Hinterlord, but all of the Rimefang Clans. The Hierophant did not give you the authority to—”

“She gave me the authority to do what needs to be done,” Imara said, cutting off the old man’s blathering. She felt a bit of heat in her chest, but it vanished moments later, consumed by the Light.

Faer looked at her as if he’d been told he was being put to the torch. “No. I cannot believe that.”

“War is inevitable,” Bellar stated. “The Light must reach all, and the Dwarves have refused it too long. It is time we cracked open their mountains.”

“Bellar.” Faer’s mouth twisted. There was little love lost between the old priest and the Inquisitors. Imara had learned that during their travels. “The Pathless does not seek war. Order. Strength. Purity. This…chaos does not serve Him.”

His wrinkled face was smudged with soot and his hands were red with burns, something that immediately leaped to Imara’s attention. That spark of anger reignited. “You’re injured. What happened?”

She did not appreciate Faer’s constant objections, but to hurt a Hierei was to damage the Pathless. He waved aside her concern.

“I am fine. I stopped to offer aid to those that needed it.”

Bellar rolled his eyes. “Pointless. They are god-touched heathens.”

Faer’s dull eyes flashed with anger. She could almost…hear it. “If you wish to bring the Light to the Dwarves, the population must survive your arrival.”

Bellar clucked his tongue. “They were given a chance. The Dwarves have refused our offers of mercy.”

“Imara. Child. Please rethink this. The Hierophant—”

“The Hierophant willed this,” Bellar interrupted. “We have explicit orders from the Voice of Light to bring back the Gnome…and to secure the Hierocracy’s foothold in the Rimefangs. Soon, she plans to claim all of them entirely.”

Faer blinked, his aged face gone pale. “Madness…”“It is the Will of the Pathless,” Imara stated, her voice as unyielding as her burning gaze. The spark of anger had died once again, and she felt steadier. Stronger. “I am to carry out that Will. I am Chosen.”

Tears welled in Faer’s eyes. “My child. I–I have failed you—”

Stretching her arm out, Imara caught a descending hammer moments before it impacted the old man’s skull. He blinked at it, but she merely turned toward the street ahead. Through the charred remains of a nearby stables, thirty Dwarves in matching armor walked into view. Tabards of black and white with three red shields in the center, and in their hands were short hammers.

“Titan,” the one in the center said. “Leave our city and never return.”

The hammer tried to retreat across the air, but she held firm. It glowed and sparked and steamed…and went nowhere.

The Gnome! You Need To Reach Him!

Imara shivered, the burning heat in her Mind making the inferno around them seem chill by comparison. “You cannot stop me.”

One of the Dwarven knights stepped forward. “We must try.”

All at once, the Forge Knights unleashed their Spirits. A powerful pressure descended on them all, shoving many of the Initiates to their knees and even the Inquisitors trembled. To Imara, however, it was less than a soft breeze.

Begone, Insects.

All at once, their Spiritual pressure vanished. It was overwhelmed and subsumed beneath a tidal wave of godly might. Imara felt it flow through her, as if her flesh were a conduit to something bigger than she could ever hope to become.

The Forge Knights recovered faster than Imara expected. They flashed forward, all of them lifting thick heater shields that glowed with Mana. Imara surged forward as well, arms spread to meet them. She laughed, and all but felt Hierei Faer glance at her in surprise.

Where they met, the world descended into fiery chaos.

Great gongs and horns echoed through the palace, now going off constantly. They dashed by a wide window and Felix saw a slew of Cloud Chariots zipping across the cavern ceiling toward the gates, each one filled with armored soldiers.

“She’s reached the mountain,” Tzfell announced. “Those signals…they’re too frequent to mean anything else.”

“Running outta time,” Harn said.

Evie grimaced but picked up her pace. “Then let’s not dawdle, right?”

Ahead, the corridor stretched onward toward a wide, open doorway framed by silver-green mithril. Laur pointed at it. “There! We need to go in there and ascend to the base of the palace.”

“Thought you said it was close?” Beef shouted in annoyance.

“No, I only said it was above us.”

Vess sucked in a sharp breath. “The door!”

Ahead, the open doorway closed as a smooth mithril door slid down from above. Or tried to, at least, as it met two Spears and a clutch of chitinous legs. Their group rushed forward, slipping beneath the halted door and onto a narrow walkway that terminated ten feet into the chamber. Beyond that, the room opened up into a wide barrel of a room that extended both up and down into darkness.

“Uh, what now?” Evie asked.

“Huh. It’s an elevator shaft,” Felix said. First elevated trains, now this.

Beef looked around, careful not to shift too much on the narrow platform. “So is there like a button to call it?”

“A moment.” Tzfell gestured and a wave of her Mana spread outward. Liquid shaped like silver geometric shapes snapped onto the walls, configuring itself into odd, shifting patterns. “The enchantment requires a keyform, but I’m forcing it to engage.”

A humming grew, until angular, Dwarven sigaldry shimmered into visibility and a stone platform formed at the end of their walkway.

“Climb aboard, quickly,” she said, strain evident in her voice.

Everyone did as they were asked, with the Chanter stepping on it last. Once there, she grunted and the geometric shapes all rotated thirty degrees before a new thrumming began. The stone platform rose up, slowly at first, but gathering greater and greater speed. Tzfell trembled, her magic barely holding onto the strange interface she created, and Felix could do nothing but wait.

The stone walls flashed by, so precisely machined that it barely seemed they were moving were it not for the occasional walkway that whipped past—and the intense amount of wind. The air pressure was a literal weight, growing with every floor they ascended, until Evie and Laur hunched their shoulders against it and everyone else had to shield their faces or else be unable to see or breathe. The weight slowed them down, increasing Tzfell’s trembling tenfold. That, at least, Felix could remedy.

Storm Shaping!

The wind split around them, seized by his power so that they rode within a fluctuating bubble of calm. It was simple enough as it was just normal air, but it made all the difference as they reached the final floor and Tzfell collapsed. The geometric patterns flickered out, and the stone platform immediately dropped…but not before Beef summoned giant insect legs from the walkway itself. They grasped the platform at an angle, but prevented it from falling back down the shaft.

Everyone leaped off, Felix with Tzfell in his arms, and they crowded onto the small walkway. “Another door,” he said.

“Shut tight, too.” Evie tried to shove a dagger beneath the metal. “How’re we openin’ this?”

“I’m fine, Lord Autarch,” the Dwarven Chanter protested. Felix set her down, and she straightened her robes. “Thank you.”

Felix inclined his head. “Laur. Is the weak point close?”

“Beyond this door, within a thousand strides.” His eyes flashed, Mana swirling in them like chromatic pools of oil. “The patterns ripple from here, and they have not shifted.”

“Alright.” He walked up to the door and set his hand against it. The metal was hard and cold, but he activated his Manasight and saw into it. The flow of it, the vibrations of its hidden structure. He couldn’t see through it, the material was too high Tier for that, but that wasn’t required. “Chthonic Tribute.”

The mithril fought against him. Not like Crescian Bronze with a Will of its own, but like all things it had a certain inertia. A persistence of form, one could call it. It bucked against his control, and sigaldry around the chamber activated…but Felix spread his Intent. The sigaldry was snuffed out, its relatively weaker Mana consumed, until the door was undefended. The metal buckled beneath his Will and turned to a thick, silver-green liquid before vanishing into his bottomless Hunger.

They stepped into a wide corridor and Harn whistled. “If we weren’t already breakin’ and enterin’, I’d say we ain’t supposed to be in here.”

The floors, walls, and ceiling were all of that midnight stone flecked with diamonds that made up the exterior of Nightfall Palace, and appeared to have been cut from a single piece. Or perhaps the corridor had been bored out from the stalactite that hung from the Clan Hold’s ceiling. Geometric knotwork patterns abounded, framing the path, light fixtures, and large doorways—all of them made of gold that had been inlaid into the black stone. Statues of serious looking Dwarves filled the alcoves between doors, each one at least twenty feet tall and set with hundreds of lit candles at their bases.

“These are the Hinterlord’s private quarters,” Tzfell said. She’d composed herself and peered around the area. “Laur?”

“This way.”The Elf led them down the hall, past several intersections and through three adjointed chambers, stopping every hundred feet to peer at the walls and feel the air. Strangely, the halls were utterly empty, as if the Hinterlord and all his staff had evacuated his own palace. It was quiet, the only sound the tread of their boots and hooves on the stone…and even that was heavily muffled by his Abyssal Skein.

“The weak point is…there.”

Laur gestured to an utterly nondescript wall between a large potted tree with orange leaves and a painting of some pinch-faced matriarch. The wall was smooth and unmarked.

“Judging on the resonance of these patterns, the official entrance to the Undermount must be close. Archibald must have exploited the proximity and used his unique Skill to bridge the gap, leaving us this tunnel.” The Elven Chanter peered at the empty wall, his eyes swirling with Mana again. “Fascinating. The ripples are moving, as if it were a liquid and not a solid. I think—”

“We’re wasting time,” Felix said. “Laur, how do we get in?”

The Elf blinked. “We must force the weakness open to allow us to enter.”

“Force it?”

“Feel out the edges of the pattern with your Affinity. Do you feel it?”

Concentrating, Felix did as Laur asked and after fumbling for a minutes or so, he sensed the first flashes of a strange, jagged design. “I think so.”

“Find the center. Place your Intent squarely upon the point of confluence, and apply your Willpower to leverage the wards apart. When you are ready, I will craft a temporary opening through this tunnel.”

Felix found the center. It was like a swirling whirlpool, those jagged waves rushing toward it before pushing back out again. “Ready.”

He shaped his Intent into a sharpened point and thrust it through the center…before hurling his Willpower in all directions. It was surprisingly easy, like twisting off the lid of a pickle jar someone already loosened. The whirlpool widened, pressed apart by the sheer mass of his attention, and the wall before them buckled and snapped. A hole large enough to drive a bus through collapsed into the wall, as if the stone were falling sideways instead of down, and a frenetic surge of crackling Mana filled it.

“You—what is happening?” Vess asked, alarmed.

“The Autarch has done something impossible again,” Yintarion said thoughtfully. “Has anyone kept a tally?”

“This shouldn’t have occurred. My Lord, you cannot rip the weak point open yourself! The wards won’t—!”

All around them, new alarms blared. Horns of a higher pitch sounded from what seemed only feet away, before they turned tinny and vanished. Magelights flickered and went dark, leaving their party standing before the blue-white light of a crackling vortex.

“Is it open?” Harn asked.

“It is, but—”

“Everyone in!”

They all piled through, Vess and Yintarion first, followed by Pit, Evie, Beef, and the rest. Felix brought up the rear, his attention the only thing keeping the vortex open.

He leaped through, and it snapped shut.

Across the mountain, standing amid the confusing tunnels of the Clan Hold’s defenses, Imara perked up. Ballista bolts, concussive pillars of force, and blades of mithril had been rained upon her army for what seemed like hours, but now they stopped. In fact, the wall of shimmering lights before her shuddered and winked out, as did a thousand other enchantments within range of her senses.

The Dwarves started, all of them looking around in mounting horror. Their defenses were utterly compromised.

Imara pressed her hands to her chest. “Thank you, Pathless, for your aid.”

The glow of gold around her brightened to a blinding inferno, and she lifted her bare hands to the sky. “Inquisition! Advance!”