Unbound

Within the Foglands summer blossomed.

Golden sunlight shone from a cloudless blue sky, laying a thick blanket of warmth along the strong branches of a massive forest. Beneath those boughs, creeping through the emerald shade, flora and fauna thrived on the abundant life Mana that pulsed beneath everything. Cautiously, creatures of all stripes stepped from their dens and warrens and burrows, sampling the quietude in the air.

A'zek padded into a sun-dappled clearing, sniffing. The sleek, patterned fur on his head and shoulders shone in the morning light, ripping with his lithe musculature. In fact, it was just as glossy as the scales that covered his hindquarters, sweeping toward a long, barbed tail. He was a chimera—a harnoq, to be specific—and he did not like the silence.

For the first time in years, the Mountain Below did not rage.

A'zek had hunted his valley for decades, growing greatly on its bounty, and he knew how to spot a trap. The Mountain Below, the Domain that dwelled beneath the western range, was not quiet. It was waiting.

For what?

This was the question that plagued him—and his Companion, though the old man would not admit it. The danger posed by any Domain was great, but most were content with the resources they generated. They were self-contained...until they weren't. Eventually they fell apart, weakened by over population of their horrors, or drained of power until the shell around them collapsed. A'zek had dealt with two such Domain breaks before, and though the latter was simple to deal with, the former was a nightmare. A rush of monsters—even ones weakened by low Mana resources—was a threat to be taken seriously. And the Foglands had changed.

With the unraveling of the fog, and then the death or retreat of the Twisted Ones, their home had become both safer and unfamiliar. A'zek, who procured the food his Companion needed to survive, had delighted in the change at first. Prey was plentiful, but so too were the predators. The mortal Races had once again begun to hunt his land, Humans and Goblins and Orcs and Dwarves, all of them searching for treasures and meat.

Qzik claimed it was but the natural progression of the flow of causality, and that the Endless Raven would provide. A'zek was not too proud to admit that such explanations were lost on him. He was a creature of action, and he would not wait to find out why the Mountain Below had stilled. If it were to break, then he would be there to deal with it. He was a Guardian, after all. It was his duty.

The harnoq had secured food and safety for his Companion and set forth, crossing the wilds until he had come to the very foot of the western mountains.

He did not have to wait long.

From the calm morning, a storm erupted above the peaks as a blood-red disc rose into the heavens. Dark clouds appeared as if conjured, crackling with summer lightning and the promise of a cold deluge. A'zek would not have flinched at that, for the wilds were capricious at the best of times. No, instead his ear was fixed upon the Domain that shook the earth below.

Vibrations he could sense more than feel shook the wilds. Birds scattered into the sky, prey and predator alike howling in fear and challenge. A'zek spread his legs and pushed his Affinity deeper, down into the dusty brown darkness, to where the orange heart of fire pooled.

Wing and claw, A'zek gasped. It cannot be.

In a chamber of ice and fire, a golden giant raged.

Standing atop a plinth of dark metal, forged from the heart of the volcano he had called home for millennia, a figure in immense golden armor sagged. The Archon panted in exhaustion.

Reforged ruined, Marked beasts slain. Four of my Arcids reduced to scrap. The sour contempt he held within his false breast boiled. My plans of easy conquest, denied. He looked up, the eye-fires within his gleaming metal helm narrowing with concentration. But still...

The Archon hurled his Will against his cage, and the Domain screamed. It was not a scream for mortal ears, but one of Spirit and Mind, the locked Aspects of reality itself that bound Domains in place. The wall between the Archon and freedom was never thinner than it was now, and he would not be denied.

The Bloodmoon still rises!

A door appeared in molten lava, one larger and grander than any he'd manifested before. It rose from the liquid death as a black sentinel, an impossible barrier that had taunted him for centuries. The Archon was trapped within his Domain, imprisoned by Nymean precursors he barely recalled, to live in darkness until the end of time. But the Archon refused. He had recovered his shattered Mind and Spirit, took claim over his constructed Body and began to plan. And all of his schemes and machinations had led to this moment, when the Bloodmoon rose high in the sky for the last time, when the power of the Goddess of Tides could be stolen.

"Your power! Give it to me!" the Archon demanded, activating an array. A concussion of sound ripped through the volcano's heart, cracking the walls and sending stone splashing into the magma. Elaborate lines of maddening script illuminated along the plinth and up the sides of the chamber, twisted sigils that were focused all upon a single glyph beneath the golden warrior. He had learned much from the Labyrinth's ruins.

"Siphon!"

A'zek cowered as a spear of crimson energy dropped from the sky. A moon he had never before seen created a dark bridge of power between the heavens and the peak of the tallest mountain. A wash of ineffable music nearly swept him away, so powerful that it was all the chimera could do to hold onto himself. His senses howled in joy and pleasure, countered only when something else emerged from the mountain.

A yellow-red radiance that grabbed onto the divine light. Dissonant pain cut through the pleasure, a sound that devoured the other with an unending appetite. Tendrils of yellow-red grasped with gluttonous abandon.

It felt like one of the Twisted Ones, and the thought of that shook A'zek more than anything else. The power that threatened the Domain was not starved or weakened. It was monstrous.

The carmine energy surged through his array, funneled into the glyph at his feet and into the Archon. Power untold flooded his forged channels, filling his core nearly to the brim. Had he not built the array, he would have died then and there, cracked open from within.

"Domain!" he bellowed, and the mountain shook. Tendrils of power spread out from him, threads that converged upon the massive, black portal that towered from the magma. "I command you!"

Blood-red light suffused the portal's frame, lighting up sigils upon its surface that had been invisible only moments before. More and more pulsed from the Archon, only barely ahead of the flood that surged within him.

"BREAK!"

A flash of blinding nothing filled the volcano's core, as if the Void itself vented into his sanctum. His armor corroded until its onslaught, and he felt the death of over two dozen wurms behind him. The Archon screamed and unleashed the remains of his stolen power, fashioning it into a sword and shield. The light bent around him, and his Will thrust forward, directly into the center of the black portal.

ERR-0R!

Domain Failure!

Countermeasures Deployed!

Script circles flared to life around him, hundreds of them, thousands. They dragged at his limbs with the weight of mountains, and tore at his Spirit and Mind with vindictive might. Warnings and error messages cascaded across the Archon's vision, but he ignored them all, cutting through them with the dregs of crimson power.

Domain—!

Shell Integri—!

The Void shattered into blinding light and thunder subsumed them all.

When the light cleared and the echoes died away, the Archon stood upon his ragged plinth and beheld glory. The magma beneath his feet had cooled and hardened, darkening the interior of his volcano, but a brilliant new illumination speared into the space.

Sunlight. The Archon strode forward, hand outstretched. He could just barely touch the rays that cut through the dust and darkness of his Domain. No. Not Domain. I am free.

FREE! howled the Voice inside of him before devolving into mad blubbering.

"Arcids! To me!" he commanded.

Behind him, the grinding of stone indicated an opening door. His servants had hidden behind bulwarks for their safety, only the most stalwart of his wurms had come along to aid him without fear. He allowed that perhaps his Arcids were wiser, as fully a third of his wurms had perished. You will be remembered, my children.

"Master!" a chorus of voices greeted him as his eight creations burst through the opened doors. The Arcids were a variety of shapes and sizes, a side effect of their anomalous genesis. They were his lieutenants, built to serve him and no other. All of them went to a single knee before him, while glorious sunlight lit his golden form like fire.

"Master! Are we to rally and attack the city?" Number 55391 asked. It's pale armor all but glowed in the breeze that flowed through the sundered mountain.

"No. The Nym remains there and he is...potent," the Archon said. He was not happy to admit it, but the boy presented a danger to his plans that he could not predict. "A Master Tier aids him. A Chanter of the old magics."

He could tell by their confused silence that they had no clue what he meant, but the Archon didn't care. Explanations were for those who were required to think, and they existed to take orders.

"No, we shall speed up our timeline. Seek out the waterfall and the Temple it hides." He spread his arms wide, and yellow-red vapor rose from his charred and battered armor. "For the first time in Ages I am free. Let the mortals cower in their city, for these lands are mine."

A'zek came to among the branches of a tree. At first he thought that he'd somehow been lifted into the air, but the answer was simpler than that. As he stood on shaky legs, A'zek saw that all of the forest around the Mountain Beneath had been torn free of the earth when the base of the mountain itself had detonated. All around him was devastation on a scale he had never before seen.

How? He looked up, to the terrifying moon, but it was gone. As if it had never been. The Domain...is broken. Endless Raven save us.

Creatures began to pour from the darkness, things with chitinous sections and too many legs. Wurms that slithered through the stone itself. And enormous figures in icy armor and breathing a vivid purple-white vapor onto the sundered earth.

There was nothing he could do, not against them. Though it hurt his heart and ferocious pride, A'zek fled.

The Henaari needed to know about this.