necariin

Chapter 365

Feeling a little under the weather, but that doesn't stop the chapter train! Enjoy!
I'm going to take a nap, lol.

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"What's goin' on here?" Captain Gregis slurred. He didn't bother standing like those near Felix. "Ioldo! Stop the screamin'!"

"He—this little townie attacked me!" Ioldo cried, clutching his broken finger.

"Oh really?" The captain stood...or tried to—he found his footing less than stable as he pushed up from his bench....

Chapter 364

Happy New Year! 2021 was shitty for most, so let's hope for a better 2022.
Enjoy!


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Primordial in the desert. Undead. Paladins hunting our Unbound friend. Felix huffed a frustrated breath. Things are getting complicated.

Felix marched down the hall, Mind turning over with these new facts and threats. The information he'd gotten from the Prioress had been enlightening. While the Paladins hunting down heretics was vague, it jived wit...

Chapter 363

Happy New Years Eve! Enjoy!
Another chapter up tomorrow too!

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The Wraiths fought hard, moving like greased shadows in the confines of the sick room. Their emaciated forms looked like they could barely hold their own weight, but they left cracks wherever their feet slammed into the stone flooring. Blackened green Mana spooled off them in waves of vapor as they burned some sort of movement Skill, leaping off floor, walls, and ceiling to attack him fro...

Chapter 362

Normal update schedule is M-W-F-Sat, and that is no different this week either. New Years Eve and New Years Day Chapters! Start 2022 off right!

Enjoy!


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The Mender fairly flew up the steps ahead of him, robes gathered in her hands. She was older, but spritely, and somewhere around her Journeyman Formation as well according to his Eye.

"Please, this way."

She led him up another flight of stairs that twisted around the interior of some tower...

Chapter 361

3600 words this time. These chapters have been getting longer lol. Usually I aim for 2500.
Well, enjoy!


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Bogfeld's streets weren't as complicated as they had felt when he was rushing, but still it was a warren of ill-planned byways. They'd taken two wrong turns and leaped over a stone wall before reaching a modest square and a slight crowd. A bunching line of injured folks—Humans, Hobgoblins, and Dwarves mostly—were trotting up a hilly path toward a ...

Chapter 360

Merry Christmas!
Hope you all have a wonderful day, and I'll see you again on Monday!
Enjoy!

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Felix walked down the path, his metal boots crunching against the stone and dirt. His silvered greaves remained the same as always, as did his pants and tunic, but over it all he shifted his Garmet to form into a nondescript brown cloak. It was an easy task for the magical item, even when he added a deep hood to it and altered the cloaks details. He made it a tou...

Chapter 359

Merry Christmas Eve!
Enjoy! Another chapter will be up tomorrow!

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Felix rushed to the shoreline, skipping over rocks and trees, all of them overturned, broken apart, and festooned with the gory remains of Jadorak. He was everywhere, and he would have thought it pretty gross if he'd have paid it any mind. Instead, Felix landed atop a thirty-foot tall stone split unevenly down the middle. He scanned the choppy surface of Haestus Lake, searching for hi...

Chapter 358

Enjoy!

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The Deepking and Garox led them through a door cleverly hidden in the walls. It was huge, clearly sized for some grand procession or creatures of far greater dimensions than the Nym themselves. The Abyssal Serpent fit quite easily, and the enchanted flows of water along its length had obviously been modified by the Naga to make upward traversal a comfortable prospect for them. Who precisely had laid the inscripted arrays was put to rest as Garox altered...

Chapter 357

Enjoy!

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Congratulations!
You Have Extended Your Authority, Autarch!

The notifications trilled at him pleasantly, and Felix felt a weight settle atop his shoulders. It was there only an instant before vanishing, but in that instant all of him was pressed to its very limit. Mind, Body, and Spirit screamed in pain and subsequent relief, as if he had condensed a week of extreme physical exertion into a single moment. He fought to stay standin...

Chapter 356

Enjoy!

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Below, huh?

Felix looked over the railing of the barge and into the black, steaming water. It was so opaque he couldn't see further than twenty or thirty feet, but just as before Felix felt at the thick coils of the Deepking and something else, at the very bottom of the chamber. If it was what he thought it was, then Felix knew exactly what the crafty snake wanted them to do.

The Abyssal Serpent rumbled, contemplative. "Do you hesit...

Chapter 355

Enjoy.

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The water thundered around them like a windless hurricane, a growl so immediate that it shook Felix's guts while the fall simultaneously sent them fleeing into his chest cavity. White waters surged all around them as the descended at an insane speed, the ice barge ill-suited to such exploits and smashing into every outcropping and fallen masonry that littered the spiraling river. A river that bore a clear resemblance to a expansive set of stairs.

...

Chapter 354

Enjoy!

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Okay. Okay, not so bad. You can handle one giant snake, Felix reassured himself. Pit?

Ready. Always. The tenku's feathers rustled, sounding like a hundred papers being shuffled.

Let's take it easy for a moment. Maybe we can avoid a fight, Felix sent. Pit rolled a dubious eye at his back, which Felix promptly ignored.

"Hi there," he said, voice echoing in the expansive chamber. Water streamed from pal...

Chapter 353

Enjoy!

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Darkness parted, and Felix fell much further than he expected. He hit the ground with a muted grunt, unhurt but surprised. Orienting himself, he looked behind him only to find his team huddled together in a dark chamber...but no Shadowgate.

Look up, Pit sent to him. The tenku was pawing at a nearby wall, green and black with strange plants.

Puzzled, Felix saw the glimmering face of a Shadowgate mounted to the ceiling of all places. More...

Chapter 352

Enjoy!

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There was a terrible, stomach churning lurch before Felix's leading foot found solid ground. Well. Solid-ish.

He looked around, that lurch having transformed into a nauseating twist. All was a blank darkness, an infinite black in every direction. His feet stood on something, but there was nothing there, just an echo of an echo of what ground may have been. Pit trundled in after him, his armored head pivoting in all directions as he parted the thick, l...

Chapter 351

Enjoy!

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It was shortly after dawn when the lot of them assembled on the first floor of the Nymean Temple. They clustered around the trunk of the Spirit Tree, eyes roving the still-damaged chamber or the oddly smooth bark of the Atlantes Anima. At the head, next to the Tree itself, Felix stood while his team conversed quietly among themselves.

"Almost time. Where's Vess and Harn?" Evie asked.

"They'll be here," Atar said while Alister double checked ...

Chapter 350

Forgot to schedule this one! Enjoy!


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Time flew on leaden wings. Felix, finished with the diplomacy of his position, retreated to the Alchemical Lab and spent the next six hours working at Aenea's side. Four painful failures behind them, Felix and Aenea had finally done it. A Cleansing Potion, the limit of their combined Skills, and shining bright with all the power of a selection of Tier II herbs, distillations, and topped off with a hair of the dog that bi...

Chapter 349

Enjoy!

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Evie ducked beneath the glacially slow swing of a mace, tucking up into her opponent's guard and stomping the inside edge of his foot. She flared her Born Trait, enhancing her own mass as she did so for emphasis. The Boneman—as they hilariously called themselves—yowled in pain and shifting himself back, choking up on his weapon to strike down at her...but he was ten heartbeats too slow, and Evie already slid through his grasp. She flicked her chain,...

Chapter 348

Enjoy!


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"Why concern yourself with Isla's charge? Eh? Have you resolved your issues with the...Primordial child?"

A small head hovered above a beaten copper basin filled with aquamarine liquid, connected to its pool by shimmering threads that animated its puppet-like facsimile. The head pivoted and peered up at Zara, it's rheumy eyes flexing in a way that a normal face could never have accomplished.

"No, Mauvim, and new challenges await us," Zara sa...

Chapter 347

There are a few details in this chapter (and ongoing) that reference things that happened in the Silence arc. Context clues should make things apparent, but I wanted to be clear about that.

Enjoy!

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As a group, they all descended into the bowels of Felix's Temple. Vess had seen the Seat and Seal before, but none of the others had, and their reactions were pretty amusing. Evie stared in slack-jawed amazement, first at the huge Spirit Tree roots and then at the...

Chapter 346

Enjoy!


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A ritual was needed.

Felix sat amid a wash of sigils and glyphs, all of them radiating around him in a spiraling array of confusing concepts. Sigils for Mind, Body, and Spirit were circled by dream, air, fire, water, and lightning, those circled by yet more in a formation of at least six different arrays.

"Wh—where did you learn this?" Atar asked the Naiad. Zara only grunted, scraping a stra...

Chapter 345

Enjoy!

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"Where—how did you approach without my noticing, Felix?" Zara asked.

Felix only shrugged. "My Agility and Dexterity are pretty good now."

"That shouldn't matter, it's your Aspects that resonate with the Grand Harmony," Zara said, her own Spirit still doing that shuddering spasm. Felix frowned. "I can see you, but you feel..." she blinked. "Everywhere." She looked up, directly at where the Tree was soaring above them. "Spreading around us l...

Silence - Chapter 42

4/4


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"Until such time that the Foglands are deemed safe, the Haargate shall henceforth be shut! If any seek to use the Haargate, they must first gain a Writ of Permission from an Initiate of the Order. All others are forbidden, on pain of death!" The Inquisitor who spoke was old, but possessed of a vibrancy that couldn't be denied. He jabbed a finger at the gates. "Worse than death stalks those forests! We have come to eradicate that threat, so worry no mor...

Silence - Chapter 41

3/4


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Howls shook the Void. The Whalemaw's hunger consumed its thoughts entirely, and its great Body quivered with unceasing Desire.

Need! Its Need was escaping!

The Whalemaw bellowed furiously, mercilessly whipping and cajoling its spawn to act. The small creatures, once prey, became part of itself with a breath of its great power. Now they could retrieve the boy, take back what it Needed above all else.

It screamed and screeched, a millio...

Silence - Chapter 40

2/4


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The Whalemaw bellowed again as Felix pulled the cutter out of it's reach, extending their lead by another hundred yards. It's toothy gob gnashed like a landslide, it's incalculable bulk an impossible force sweeping toward them. But they had survived.

So far.

Felix grunted and focused on not passing out. For three hours he'd been pouring his Mana into the Control Node, pushing the small craft as hard as he could through the dark. The Manash...

Silence - Chapter 39

The last batch of chapters! Enjoy!
1/4

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Stone island whizzed by them, faster than they ever had, faster than was wise if he were being honest. The cutter was twice the ship his sloop was, and if it didn't have quite the heft of a galleon it also didn't need as much energy from him, mental or Mana. At the speeds they travelled, they were riding the bleeding edge of his Willpower, Agility, and Dexterity, each last-moment dodge and weave taking everything from him ...

Chapter 344

Enjoy!


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Felix had a great time introducing the crafters to the two remaining Halls. Hector and his people—five Humans, a Half-Elf, a Gnome, and three Hobgoblins—had stared wide-eyed at the smooth white stone and gleaming gold and silver arrays that traced about each workstation. Alister was there, along with his Henaari apprentices, and the lot of them were almost as flummoxed as the new arrivals. Felix introduced them all, and soon Hector was talking a...

Chapter 343

Enjoy!


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"He is still unconscious, your Grace. The Autarch struck him quite powerfully. I'm...surprised we found so little harm done," the Henaari woman said to Vess as she led her deeper within the single-story healer's ward. They hadn't any dedicated healers yet, not unless those mages in the Legion had such talents, but a few Henaari herbalists manned the halls in order to better care for their scouts and hunters. The woman leading Vess was tall, with the...