Silence - Chapter 08

The monotonous terrain whipped passed them at incredible speeds. Sitting on the prow of the Manaship, the only place he felt somewhat safe, Felix marveled at their pace. Some sort of magic propelled the ship forward, and he could see it looping around the innards of the ship in bright, green-gold lines. Life Mana, he was certain, pulsing excitedly despite the lusterless grey of the strange deck. It wasn't made of wood, that was clear—where would someone find wood in the Void? But he couldn't place it's construction, and it rebuffed his attempts with Voracious Eye.

So instead, Felix spent his time watching the crew. He marveled at the speed and grace with which the crew operated the Manaship. Orcs, Goblins, Humans, Dwarves, even a few birdlike creatures called Korvaa flitted up and down the ropes and decks. They moved nearly as fast as he did, and Felix couldn't figure out why. Each pirate had been analyzed and catalogued in his perfect memory, and he'd soon discovered his Voracious Eye had the ability to sense a target's Tier in a vague way. The crew—with the exception of Captain Shirtwaist—were on the higher end of Apprentice Tier. Felix had only just entered Apprentice Tier, but his Primary Stats had reached the First Threshold. He imagined that some would be stronger or faster than him, but all of them?

He was missing something.

Felix tried to investigate further, but every single one of them had that same resistance to being analyzed. His Voracious Eye had pushed through it, but it was odd. The Maw, feeling particularly helpful, had said it was the nature of their core. The Void had infected them, she said, influencing the composition of their Mana systems. That concerned him, yet when he'd asked for clarification and the Primordial has simply drifted away.

The knowledge that the Void itself was invading the pirates made him want to shut all of his Gates. Yet he had made little progress on that front. Felix had only successfully freed up both palms and elbows; he still had five more Gates to go. Mana Manipulation had boosted, at any rate.

Moreover, the few times he'd seen the pirates activate an external Skill, the Mana vapor that had poured from their Gates was dim and washed out. He recalled seeing a similar phenomena during his fight; the flaming cutlass had seemed awfully feeble. He had chalked it up to weaker Skills, but that didn't feel right. In comparison, Felix's own released Mana vapor was vivid and rich.

The only exception among the pirates was Captain Shirtwaist and her balista she kept slung on her back. She all but glowed with a green radiance, similar in effect to the Manaship itself.

It replaces them with itself.

Felix started, nearly falling over the prow of the Manaship. A few pirates nearby pivoted to watch him, their hands on their weapons, but Felix made a show of inspecting some coiled rope. When they were sure he wasn't trying to escape they went back to "ignoring" him. Felix hissed under his breath. "What are you talking about?"

Pit swiped at the Maw's location, but his claws passed right through the spectral Primordial.

Get away, beast. The Maw hovered a bit higher, out of the Rottweiler sized tenku's reach. The Void is replacing their cores with itself. You asked for elucidation, so there you are.

"What? That's not clarification, that's a bomb. What—how does it do that? Is it dangerous?" Felix's breath came a little quicker, and he felt a fissure of pain as he tried to calm it down. Damn broken Breath Control.

Dangerous? The Maw let out a bitter laugh, like a buzzsaw cutting steel. Only in the sense that it gradually weakens your Skills—a decay that happens the faster you use them—while they advance at a progressively slower pace. Once your Skills break apart, your core soon follows. And after that?

The Primordial spread its skeletal hands, palms up.

Felix licked his lips and regarded the crew around him. A few on the lines were using some sort of utility Skill, letting their knife float alongside them. The Mana that surrounded it was fitful and pale, barely visible were it not for the ceaseless black around them. "So the System just...falls apart out here?"

Again, that same buzzsaw laugh. You think the Grand Harmony reaches us here? In this dark silence? You've banished us to the end of all things, Felix Nevarre.

"Grand Harmony. You mentioned that before, and I've got things called Harmonic Stats. What is it?" Felix had some ideas, but they were guesses at best. In spite of the Maw's antagonistic attitude, he hoped she was feeling generous again.

The Maw was silent a moment, as if contemplating something. Its stolen face looked almost sad, but Felix knew better than to believe it. It was a creature of madness as much as hunger. When the silence stretched on for several minutes, he chastised himself for even expecting some sort of answer.

The Grand Harmony is the music of the spheres, it said without preamble. Felix looked back up at the Maw. The great vibrations that are and always have been. The foundations of creation. It met his gaze, and her eyes glowed with a bloody crimson light. It is your System you so foolishly clutch to.

"The System doesn't reach out here? That's why Skills grow weaker and people don't level up and advance properly?" Felix asked.

An apt summary, if limited. The resonance of the Void is all but nonexistent. The music is thin here, enough that even I am beginning to feel some light strain.

"Music," Felix snapped his fingers and frowned. "You used music before, in the Labyrinth. But it wasn't a harmony."

The Maw smiled, showing too many flat, off-white teeth. No. No it was not. But the Void is something else. It is an absence, a Realm of silence. It is slow, but that silence will weaken a mortal's foundation until it simply crumbles apart. The Void is averse to life. It does not want us here.

"How long, exactly?" Felix asked, poking at his core. Everything felt normal, but who was he to say? "How long before it starts affecting me?"

If I were to guess, I would say the youngest of these pirates is two centuries old, the Maw said with a careless shrug. It's likely the Void has deeply affected them for the last century.

"Two hundred years? There's a few that are human. How's that possible?" Felix asked.

Advancing increases your lifespan by a significant amount, though...most of these creatures should have withered to dust long ago. The Maw ran her fingers through the air, as if playing an invisible harp. Time...time is strained here in the black. It does not flow as it does upon the Continent, nor does it touch the denizens of the Void more than it has to. Tempered as you are, without a single ounce of further growth, I expect you would live for several centuries here in the Void, Felix Nevarre. Plenty of time for your core to wither and die.

The Maw let loose a louder, even more atonal guffaw. Congratulations, Unbound.


* * *


Their journey was perhaps half a day, if Felix's internal clock was any measure. He snatched some desperate bits of sleep while Pit watched his back, and vice versa, but the two or so hours he'd managed only left him grumpier.

The Maw's words of warning were still on his mind, writ large across his thoughts like a countdown clock. How long before the Void broke him down? Years, surely, but what if it was happening as he sat there?

He poked at his core space, watching as his Skills slowly rotated around a blue-white ball of fire and lightning at the center. It resembled a solar system, with his highest level Skills closer to the blue-white sun and revolving quickly around it, while his lower leveled Skills lingered in the back.  The Skills were three dimensional etchings of light, drawn on the darkness of his core space and filled with humming noises. Each one looked and sounded different, unique patterns for each Skill.

A few of those Skills were darkened, even sparking in places where the patterns were severed and dangling. These were the broken Skills the Maw had savaged during their fight. They did not revolve as the rest, or glow. In fact, each tiny pulse of light through them sent a stabbing pain into Felix's Aspects that was hard to ignore when he was within his core space.

Is the Void affecting me now? Nothing really looked different. He looked up, above the spread of his personal solar system, to a cluster of roiling clouds. The clouds were dim and barely perceptible, but Felix had grown and he could sense a vague shape and pale colors slowly manifesting. A part of him knew it was a representation of the Harrowing he had eaten, just as he sensed a sort of...connection between it and his Ravenous Tithe Skill.

I've eaten a voidbeast. What'll happen when it's finished digesting?

Fire Within is level 35!
Mana Manipulation is level 17!
Mana Manipulation is level 18!

Felix worried at his core and Mana Gates all the while, slowly chipping away at the metaphysical rust that had accumulated on them. He had sequestered himself at the prow of the ship, just before the bowsprit and an elaborate carving of a man and woman in agony. It was remarkably well done, but it skeeved him out a bit and he'd tucked down below the taffrail to better focus on his Gates.

Shouts in the rigging soon stopped him though; they were approaching a massive stone island. It was far away, but the details were picked out in his Tempered vision as if they were an arms-length away. A collection of eclectic and ramshackle structures sat on the island, all of which were combined into something approaching a castle. There were parapets and even a few towers. That impression was further cemented as they drew closer. Felix could see at least two dozen ballistae that were pointed in the ship's direction, mounted atop crenelated walls. Two or three figures were manning each huge weapon, though they looked more bored than hostile. A dim Sparkbolt shot into the sky—a signal, no doubt—and the Night's Wake dropped elevation until it came down under the makeshift castle.

At that moment, a massive flock of invisible Harrowings made themselves known. Screeching out of the dark, the triangular monstrosities attacked the Night's Wake, only to be met by the quick fire of green Mana cannons. The bulk of them fled, angling instead for the defenders on the castle walls, and though they had ballistae lined up, not a single one fired.

What? Why aren't they doing anything? Felix stared as the pirates began to get out...ropes?

Just as the Harrowings reached the walls, a shimmering plane of white force suddenly snapped up around their impacts. With a pang, it reminded Felix of Magda's Force Wall, but the power felt different, more primal. Terrifyingly so.

The Harrowings crashed into it and those in the lead immediately began to dissolve, flesh and bone and tooth and a thousand eyes all turned to blackened mush. The rest banked hard, their inertia still seeding destruction among the flock. Felix could see bone and cartilage and gooey red muscle turn to carbonized nothing as the white shield atomized their bodies.

Blighted Night, the Maw muttered. Felix glanced at her in surprise. There was fear in her voice.

They tried to fly away, only to fall into the sparkling nets of the pirates. In short order, the majority of the flock had been captured and was hauled into a side hatch. The Harrowings' screeches turned quickly from rage to dismay and fear.

"What the hell was that?" Felix muttered to his friend, but Pit wasn't paying attention.

The tenku chirruped in clear awe as the shadow of the massive stone island drifted over them, bigger than any they had seen yet. There were holes cut into it above them, and Felix spotted some movement among the openings. He shivered. Murder holes, he realized, where people could dump boiling oil down on them. Yet they were unaccosted as the Night's Wake slipped into a large open air dock.

The shouting only increased as the pirates boiled across the deck like ants on an anthill. Curses and washed out Skills bloomed with light around him, and the Manaship was guided into a set of blocks along the stone dock. The entire area was wide open and featured at least six other ships, of varying sizes, including an absolutely massive ship. It was easily twice the size of the Night's Wake with masts as large as redwoods.

Voracious Eye!

Name: Hippocamp's Fury
Type: Manaship
Lore: Manaships are vehicles designed from rare materials and powered by Mana to propel them through the skies. Or, in this case, the Void. This one has been modified with extra weaponry is larger in all dimensions than those you have seen.

Interesting. Analyze is comparing things now. That's...useful.

"Alright, boy. Time to disembark," Captain Shirtwaist said behind him. Felix spun, his hands already out, before he realized she was standing at least ten feet away. He felt his face flush but refused to be embarrassed. These people had kidnapped him, after all. "My you're jumpy."

"I wonder why," Felix muttered. She heard him though and gave him a sharp smile.

"You're a funny one, eh? Here," she threw him a black cloth. It was threaded with golden stitching along the edges, small shapes embroidered in a complex sequence. Felix's Manasight flared and he saw remnant Mana flowing through them, like a thick grease.

Voracious Eye!

Name: Deadman's Blindfold
Type: Cloth (Enchanted)
Lore: Stitched with sigaldry to dampen the senses and dizzy the Mind. Effect only active when worn.

What an excellent item name, murmured the Maw. She floated around him in a small circle. Doesn't seem ominous at all!

"We don't got any elision collars, so this'll have to do. Put it on. If you don't, well..." She smiled wider than before. The two Orcs beside her fondled the swords at their sides. Felix knew they were only ten or so levels higher than him, but their position at the upper end of Apprentice Tier had him nervous. Plus their Strengths and Weaknesses were still a mystery. Only the "Ram" had given him more information, likely because they had actually fought.

Felix put the blindfold on, which was large enough that it covered his entire face. It smelled like an armpit.

"Good boy," Shirtwaist whispered in his ear, and Felix jumped. He hadn't heard her move at all. In fact, he found he couldn't hear much at all, not to mention see, and the armpit smell was invading his sinuses as if it meant to take up residence. He could, however, sense the Mana that began to circulate around the cloth. It tasted like the color puce and glooped through the sigils like mud. "Put one on the mutt, too."

It took some coaxing, but Pit let them blindfold him as well. Simmering with anger, Felix silently coaxed the tenku down from attacking the pirates outright. We might defeat them now, but not all of them. Not here.

They were led down the gangplank, one of the burly Orcs having grabbed the back of his tattered collar and led him downward, across a deceptively wide expansive of relatively flat ground, and then up a series of stairs. The path wound left and right, up and down; Felix was certain they were intentionally misleading him, in spite of the blindfolds.

Blind Fighting is level 22!
PER +1!

The joke was on them, however, as his passive Blind Fighting Skill helped boost his Perception enough to make things out. Added to that was his perfect recall thanks to his Born Trait and Felix could repeat the same pathway as many times as they asked. He had even gained a point of Perception, which would have been amusing were Felix not scared for his life.

Eventually, they came to a halt in a room that felt large but not excessively. Without warning the blindfold was ripped off Felix's face, and he was greeted by a blazing fire and several figures. Blinded by the fire's relative intensity, it took him a heartbeat or two to focus enough and see a trio of men sitting at a wide table spread with maps.

"Captain, I'd like to introduce ya to our new find," Shirtwaist said, gesturing to Felix. "The one I sent word about. He's freshly arrived to the Void, he says."

"Oh, really?" asked a voice, and the center figure stepped closer. It was a small grey-skinned man, shorter than Felix by a head, wearing a tricorn hat and long dark coat that swirled behind him. It was made of a thick, rough leather dyed a dark, dark purple and beneath it he wore a white shirt with a puffy collar. Suddenly smiling, the man tipped his hat back with a finger and huffed a breath. His teeth were sharp, like a shark.

Voracious Eye!

Name: Captain Ruan Nokk
Race: Nixie
Level: (Hidden)
HP: (Hidden)
SP: (Hidden)
MP: (Hidden)
Lore: Nixies have a deep connection to the waters of the Continent. Though related closely to the Naiads, they are distinct Races. Most notably is their grey-green skin and gills that allow them to breath both water and air.
Strength: More Data Required
Weakness: More Data Required

Voracious Eye is level 28!

"So you're the one that fought my whole crew. Yer a tough sonuvabitch ain't cha? Not many folk get slammed by the Ram and get back to their feet," Captain Nokk laughed, and Felix saw that he had two rows of those sharp fangs.

Felix smiled as well, showing his own teeth. Something inside of him bristled at the man, and it wasn't his grey skin or strange, colorless eyes. "I'm full of surprises, Mister...?"

"Captain, actually. Which you know, seeing how you already Analyzed me," Nokk smirked. "Captain Nokk, infamous leader of the Ten Hands, the rough company you've had the pleasure of meetin' and the bloodiest killers in all the Bitter Sea." The others in the room shifted slightly, and Felix felt the vaguest sense of threat from all of them. Like he was smelling violence. Captain Nokk grinned again, shrugging a single shoulder. "Back when we sailed it, that is. Now it's the Void for us."

"Sounds like quite the story, Captain," Felix said cautiously, Perception spreading out farther and farther, watching for any sudden movements. "I'd love to hear it."

Nokk laughed, a hissing thing that slithered across the dark air. "And I'd love to tell it, me boy! Come! You and your friend look ravenous. We've lived another day in this benighted pit!" He turned to his crew and threw out his arms. "So what happens next?"

The men and women around him smiled with rotten teeth. Those that came in with Shirtwaist cheered. "We drink!"

Everyone began filing out of the chamber, through a wide doorway and down a set of uneven stairs. Captain Nokk turned back to Felix and extended a hand. "I promise my men will not attack again. Will you join us, Mister...?"

"Felix. Felix Nevarre." Felix realized he was hungry. It had been...several days since he last ate? Was that right? Pit trilled across their bond, agreeing. "We'd be happy to join you."

Felix was led down, into the darkness.