Unbound

Archie fell through the street and, for a brief moment, it was as if he ceased to exist.

It was always like this. Using Primeval Drift wasn't like closing his eyes. When he phased through solid matter, his sight stopped functioning entirely. His ears were deaf. His voice was muted. There was no color nor light, and even if there were, there was no way to take in that information—it was as if he were trying to look through his elbow. It wasn't just dark. It was a void of all things.

Thankfully, he had Blindsense.

Vibrations rippled through him as the Skill mustered, translating through the pattern in his chest and into his Mind. The world around him took on varying levels of clarity, extending outward in a fifty-foot radius. He could feel it through his skin, thrumming against him in lieu of light and sound. Closest, he felt rock and root, but he ignored them and narrowed his focus ahead and above, where the street and a certain snake knight resided. He flared Primeval Drift and shot forward.

The many layers over the earth tried to trip him up, each material slightly different from the rest and none of it uniform. Loam and rotting vegetation were everywhere, packed between layers of stone and wood where the road had sunk and been built anew. Deeper, clay clung wetly around tiny underground rivulets where rainwater pooled. He navigated it all, adjusting himself as he passed through with increasing Skill.

Primeval Drift is level 80!

All at once, the people pressed to the earth came into clarity. Above and ahead of him, he mapped them out: a dozen figures laid out on the ground, four shuffling pairs of guilder feet, and a massive, sinuous weight coiled around a heavy metal wagon. A vast pressure rippled across his attention, like a hammer dozens of feet across pressed heavily onto the prone figures. Liquid pooled around them, and their screams were bright vibrations into dust and dirt. The knight’s Skill was killing them.

Focus, idiot! Get ‘em and get out!

He sped to the surface, the waves of pressure shoving back at him like a heavy breeze, but no more. His hands broke through, grasping two arms before his Skill flowed around them. Into them, really, turning their solid flesh into trembling echoes.

They all dropped back.

Archie zipped away, carrying the two of them in his arms as if he were falling sideways through the earth. The street vanished, replaced by thick walls that flashed above him. Two, four sets rose up before he stopped, until the screams were only faint quivers across his Blindsense. He stumbled out through a wall, a little ungainly to be sure, but then he was dragging two bodies behind him. They both dropped, too, hitting the cracked stone floor like sacks of potatoes.

The two figures collapsed, gasping for air.

“Sorry,” he muttered, taking several deep breaths. "There's no air in the earth."

They were in a basement, two blocks away from the knight. Blindsense told him no one was home.

The armored Elf he'd saved pushed himself to his knees, surprising Archie by reaching down briefly to check on the Gnomish woman. She was barely conscious. They were both bloody, though the Elf was strong enough to pull a dagger on Archie. "Who are you?"

“Seriously?” Archie slapped the dagger out of the Elf’s hand. "Wait here. Be quiet."

He dove back into the ground. He repeated the maneuver, slipping through the earth to grab two more that he could touch at once. The moment his hands breached the surface, he felt the crushing pressure again. It hurt, like taking a hammer to his fingernails, and his Health flashed downward in steady chunks. Echoes of it even ricocheted through his head like the world's worst hangover. But it was only a moment, and then he was back in that basement, where he dropped off two more gasping bundles of shitty armor.

Again.

He slipped into the earth.

Nine more people remained. Archie moved towards their greatest concentration, near the wagon where they’d been fighting hard against the guilders. If I’m lucky, I can grab four. Maybe five. He drew closer, Blindsense parsing the differences between wagon wheel, serpent belly, and bloody victim.

There!

He swung his arms, intent on flailing his hands into as many as he could reach, but the pain screamed at him. A primal fear spiked down his arm, stabbing into his brain stem with a vicious panic he’d not felt in a few days at most. He acted on instinct, grabbing the closest idiot and hauled ass.

He wasn’t fast enough.

A column of force blasted into the earth, cratering the roadway. A shockwave ripped into Archie, hurling him down into the dark. In the span of a second, he was spat through twenty feet of layered stonework and out into a stinking darkness.

He splashed, the shock of cold water as much as the pain of impact sharpening his senses. Archie flailed, as did the Goblin next to him. He shoved them. “Stop freaking out!” Archie coughed up a bit of fetid water. “Eugh. Fuck me, that’s gross.”

His eyes told him nothing, save that he was surrounded by water and darkness, or what he hoped was water. It smelled of rain and tasted like mildew. He spat again. He was pretty sure they were in a sewer. He really hoped it was just the rainwater kind.

"What's happening? Where am I?" the Goblin asked as they found their feet.

"Hold on. I'm getting you out of here."

"Who are you?"

Archie didn't answer. He just grabbed the flailing goblin and flared Primeval Drift once more. They sank down through the water and stone pipe before diverting up and around, Blindsense leading the way. The Goblin fought against him, pushing at Archie’s hands like a crazy person. It was a strange sensation, not to mention terrifying; if he let go of them, the Goblin wouldn’t like what happened. They’d shoot off toward the nearest gap in solid matter, no matter how big. If they were lucky, they’d be entombed in the sewer pipe.

Thankfully, the idiot was weak, even compared to Archie. His grip never faltered, and less than ten seconds later, they slid out of the basement wall with as much grace as he could muster. The basement was getting full, and the Elf and friends had their weapons drawn on him seconds after he emerged. Archie tossed the Goblin onto the ground, where they started hacking up water. It came up as thin and green.

Ugh. "Here. Another friend of yours."

"Why are you doing this?" a Human girl asked. She couldn’t be more than fifteen.

The Elf slashed his dagger, as if cutting the girl’s words apart. "Forget why. Can you save the rest of them?"

"That's what I'm trying to do. Just stay here and—"

An explosion rocked the basement, sending everyone stumbling to the side as debris and dust rained from above.

“Take care of them." He pointed at the gasping Goblin. "I'm going for the rest."

“Wait—!”

He didn't.

Archie flared Primeval Drift, swimming faster through the earth than ever before. He knew the roadway’s makeup now, the patterns of its chaotic composition flaring through his Skill like synaptic bursts of intuition. The ground shook once more, rattling, but not stopping him.

Blindsense is level 78!

Understanding swept through Archie, radiating from his core space as the vibrations clarified around him. The Skill being used wasn’t aimed at him. Several of the shapes above him stilled entirely.

The knight was killing them all.

"You slithering bastard."

Knight Adamant Sol never smiled when criminals screamed beneath the Weight of Mercy. Of course they did. Their Spirits and Bodies were being crushed in tandem. All Adamants were required to submit to the weight before their training was done so that they would know that pain, as well. So they could know the truth.

Mercy was not weakness.

Mercy was a landslide, backed by the heavy iron of law.

These Wyrmkin, these terrorists, had ambushed law-abiding guilders going about their Territory-sanctioned duties. It could not be allowed. Mercy was not for them, but for those they brutalized in their vain campaign to tear down all that the Overlord had provided Morva and towns like it.

For the Wyrmkin, there was only death.

"Find them, Kekorath," he urged, patting his mount along her neck. The Servani swung her head about, tongue cracking like a whip, but it was fruitless. She hissed.

She sensed nothing, same as Sol.

"Do not blame yourself," he said. "We face an unpredictable foe.” A powerful Skill was being used, and Sol did not know its provenance. “It struck from there, below the road. It allows them to move freely through solid surfaces."

He tightened his grip on the reins. "Kekorath, they will rise again. Be ready."

Sol pulled back his Skill, letting the criminals take a few more wheezing breaths. They would be disposed of soon enough. In the meantime, he required concentration. Those guilders who still lived had already stumbled free of his weight, allowed out by the Adamant's Will. They did not pervert Justice to their own ends. They did not rail against the rule of law.

Something stirred in his Perception, and a Wyrmkin began to vanish. Sol unleashed his power. The ground splintered, cratering where he struck it. The Goblin and whatever stowed away vanished as if falling into a bottomless pit.

"Twins’ teeth," he swore.

Sol flared his Perception, pushing it to the limits of his Adept Tier Body. He could hear the bloody breath of wounded terrorists like bellows, and the clink rattle of guilder weapons as they watched from the sidelines. He sensed nothing of his true foe, however. It was as if he were fighting a ghost.

“Something—” There was a shudder, a whisper just beyond his hearing. “There, beneath—”

Without warning, Kekorath lunged, her jaws slamming into crooked stone. She smashed through, bashing apart cobbles and layers of bricks, but her teeth caught nothing but a cowering rebel, still prone from Sol’s Weight. Blood smeared across the street, and while the Servani took her meal, Sol sawed on the reins in frustration.

"Curb your hunger! This is no time for food!"

The Servani ignored him and gulped down the criminal, armor and all. Sol was more frustrated by the fact that he’d missed his target once again; he did not mind if the cretins died. Whether to the Twins’ Justice or his Servani's hunger did not matter. He'd intended for the criminals’ ends to be swift, but this ghost flouted Justice by aiding their escape.

For that, he would make them all feel the full burden of his God's sacred testament.

Twins, hear my prayer.

He dropped his Skill entirely. For a moment, shock rolled through the bloodied Wyrmkin, but it only lasted a heartbeat: almost as one, they bolted, scattering in all directions. Most raced for an alley or a side street too narrow for his Servani to enter, but Sol did not move.

Deliver unto us those who would profane your laws.

The Adamant had observed one thing about this ghost: it had to touch its targets to make them intangible. And it was far harder to grab a moving target.

Tiny, pale hands reaching through the ground, chasing the speeding boots of a fleeing rebel.

Kekorath hissed, and Sol acted.

“The Weight of Mercy!”

He narrowed his Skill, focusing the impact in a way he rarely attempted. The iron force within his chest fought against it, wanting to expand, but that only added to its incredible force. Now only five strides across, the beam blasted into the ground where the creature hid, smashing into the rebel and reducing them to greasy red paste.

The ghost, however, vanished.

Sol growled to himself, then spun, flaring his Skill once more. Another rebel was yanked into the wall of a building, and Sol's Weight shattered it entirely. The hovel busted apart, bricks crushed by his power, and revealed an empty kitchen covered in mold and creeping moss.

"Disgusting,” he muttered. How could anyone live in such filth?

With a casual gesture, the knight ripped open the rest of the wall, blasting through a worn table and chairs.

Nothing! They're not here!

Only four rebels remained. He wheeled Kekorath around and spotted two pale hands grasping onto the buckled straps of their greaves. “Cease your lawlessness! Submit to Justice!”

Sol stopped holding back. He unleashed the full might of his Temper, putting the whole of his Spirit into his Skill. Force Mana screamed from him, congealing above his foes in an instant before dropping. A column twenty paces wide dropped, blasting through the fronds of a jungle tree and hurling all four of them into the earth.

There was no notification.

They had escaped!

Sol shouted and his Servani hissed. “No! You will not!”

He narrowed his Skill once more, turning twenty paces into ten.

Five.

One.

A beam of incandescent blue hit the cobbles like a hammer from heaven. Sol screamed as he drove it deep into the earth and swept it across the alley. The street tore apart, cobbles bursting in all directions as the road was obliterated. Stone turned to sand, spraying upward like water flecked with a stream of vibrant crimson.

“Seize!”

Kekorath lunged forward, her jaws snagging the busted masonry and ripping it aside. Yet when Sol leaned over in his saddle, he saw nothing beneath the ruin of his Skill, save for dirt and scattered droplets of blood.

Primeval Drift is level 85!

Archie stumbled into the basement with the last of the Wormfriends, or whatever they called themselves.

"Four more armored idiots," he muttered, letting his Skill drop as they entered the dim room. "The last of them," he said to the other person he'd grabbed along the way.

"Thank you, Arch," Beef said. “I know how much you didn’t want to—oh dang, you’re hurt.”

Archie glanced down. The wound was where his neck met his shoulder, and he couldn’t see it, but he could feel the blood tricking down his back. “It’s fine. Health got shredded, but nothing I can’t fix.”

He pulled out a Health Potion and downed it.

Beef nodded. “I just wish I could’ve got out there. It was all I could do to keep this one still.” His enormous hands were cupped around a wriggling black lizard. Fafnir clearly didn’t like being restrained, though. She bit him. "Gah!"

The tiny Hatchling leaped from Beef's hands and plopped gracelessly to the floor. She immediately took off, though, swiftly investigating the basement and the gaggle of idiots that huddled in the corner.

"A Dragon," one of them said. Her nose was bloody, and her cheek had deep markings where she'd been pressed into the road. "You have a baby Dragon?"

Beef pinched his hand. Fafnir had drawn blood. "Oh! Oh no, she's not."

"Not only do you save our lives, but you have shown us a wonder such as this—something we could not have expected to see in all our lifetime.” The Elf that Archie had saved first stepped to the front of the idiots. He was still bloody but looked a bit more composed now. He didn’t even have his knife out anymore. "The Wyrms will want to speak with you."

Archie raised an eyebrow. "The worms?"

"No. Wyrms. An ancient creature born of Dragons. They lead us."

Suddenly the sloppy designs on their armor made sense. It was a dragon's head split into yellow and purple colors down the middle.

"Dragons," Beef said excitedly. "Archie, say we can visit some Dragons. Yin will be so jealous."

"Who are you people, exactly?" Archie demanded, ignoring the teen. "Why are you picking fights against Snakeboy and the greasy guilders?"

The Elf straightened, lifting his chin. "We are the Wyrmkin, the only resistance against Overlord Zennik and his destructive greed.”

“And a Wyrm leads you."

"Two of them. Twins, in fact."

Beef nudged him. "Arch?"

"Yeah, I heard." He cracked his neck. Now they were getting somewhere. "Sounds good. Take us to your leaders."