The sky collapsed. Twisting cyclones of blackened dust dropped from the heavens around the Manaship, tearing through a cluster of Eels that emerged too close. Their dissolving bodies joined the cyclones, adding to their girth as they howled across the heaving landscape. The anomalies surged, bright lights gathering into points that looked nothing so much as a cluster of bulbous alien eyes.

Panic seized the deck.

"Get off the railing!”

“Down from the masts!"

Cries of direction from Evie, Captain Loquis, and Battlelord Ari rang out in the cloying darkness as the ship lurched around the descending cyclones.

The clouds swept toward them.

Elowen's Core Manifestation flared as she raced through the descending anomalies, the golden pages flipping frantically as the Manaship’s deck pitched and rolled. Wind tore at them all, forcing people back and down, until most crouched low amid the safety lines and shrouds. The anomalies poured after her, their immense forms stretching obscenely with appendages that varied between insect, squid, and things that looked upsettingly humanoid. The columns of dust poured after them, arms reaching for their hull in great, pendulous swipes that buffetted the deck with gale-force winds.

Felix ran to the stern and sounded his Skill. Adamant Discord sang within him, crackling lines extending from his fists as he reached out—but he was beaten to the punch.

“Ascendent Growth!”

A flourish of plants grew along the central mast and the inscribed lines of the Nymean deck. Weeds and moss sprang up, pungent and bright, releasing clouds of dusty spores that spiraled around the mast in the ripping winds. Vines of thorns crawled upward, thick with deadly protrusions before it filled in with heavy, waxy leaves and bright orange blossoms dripping with fragrant pollen. Kevin leaned at the base, hands pressed to the deck, his life and poison Mana pouring from him in a wave of wild growth. Clinging to one of the waxy leaves as the vines climbed higher, was Shadow.

The Kobold held out a hand and a glowing monstrosity bigger than his entire body and formed within his grip. It congealed from black and blue Mana into a liquid arc studded with points of radiance that shifted through a bright spectrum. Shadow reached out and plucked free an arm-length thorn, it’s tip laden with a sizzling yellow-orange fluid.

“Arbalest Arcana.”

The thorn quivered beneath his Skill, reshaping itself into a thick arrow replete with fletching and a wickedly barbed tip. He put it to his bow in a smooth motion and a string of liquid seized its feathered end.

“Multishot Massacre! Deadly Darkvein! Piercing Echo! Sanguine Serration! Pinpoint Burst!” Mana gathered around Shadow with each Skill, rushing around his bow and singular arrow in waves of condensing light. It crushed together with every syllable, packing so tightly that it turned from liquid to a slow halo of crystalline spikes. Green-gold, violet, bloody crimson, and thick velvet-black collapsed into the thorn arrow as Shadow pulled it backward to his fuzzy ear.

“Eat shit, dustbucket.”

The thorn arrow screamed the moment Shadow released it, its barbed tip tearing through the night sky like a flock of irate hawks. The wind buckled around it, a cushion of air that split at its tip as thunder followed its wake. Quick as a blink, the arrow slipped through the ship's shields with a sizzling sigh, just as the Mana flooding it burst in all directions. Thunder snapped and the thorn-arrow duplicated itself into thirty identical clones, each spiraling with their own twisting streamers of power.

Felix grinned. Oh hell yeah.

The volley of arrows zipped forward, punching into the side of the nearest anomaly. It reared back, its dusty face obliterated by an explosion of Mana that provided light, if not any heat. The anomaly reared back and a song like wind scratching across broken metal cut into Felix’s Affinity like a knife. He gritted his teeth against it, but he could feel the soldiers belowdecks falling to their knees.

“If it screams, it feels pain!” Shadow seized another thorn. “If it feels pain, it can die!”

I like this guy.

The ship lurched forward and Felix slid across the deck before fetching against the railing. Elowen drove through the gap Shadow’s attack had made, but the creatures were fast—even the Sunaran ships were no real match for the speed of the things.

“They’re traveling through the clouds!” Evie gripped her chain hard, scanning the skies. “There!”

Two dropped down from above, cutting off their escape. Eye lights swarmed, crowding toward their decks as greedy appendages swept over them. It caught one of the rear sails, biting into it with what looked like mandibles the size of office buildings. The sail disintegrated, raining black dust upon the helm and forcing Elowen to dodge aside. The only benefit was that the creature's jaws did not tangle them, and she drove the ship down and away from its reach.

"Don't let it touch you!" Evie shouted, guiding giants and Legionnaires alike into the center of the ship. One of the anomalies resolved into a huge mouth and it surged from portside.

Felix reached out, seizing the Mana in the air, but it bucked his control. Fire blossomed at his fingertips just as he intended, but it was nowhere near the level of working he wanted. He could feel the Mana's instability, and the Beast growled in his chest.

The Riot Of This Realm Cannot Bear You, Scion!

Flee This Place!

This book was originally published on NovelBin. Check it out there for the real experience.

I’m trying, idiot!

Yeah, he’s trying! Pit squawked back at the Beast, which settled back into his Companion. The tenku was leaping about the deck, Nimbus of the Moon raining down all around the ship. The brilliant beams of light sliced into the clouds, but they didn’t do enough. My Skills aren’t working right! Felix we gotta run!

The creature blasted through flames and moonlight, unfazed.

"It's like some sort of Disintegrator," Beef said, as Hallow formed into a wide helmet over his face.

"A Dustbringer." Archie flipped his molten daggers into his hands. "That's a better name."

"I don't care what it's called," Ondine said. "How do we destroy it?"

Felix wished he knew. Elowen kept them ahead now, weaving above the upsetting, heaving geography below, as more of the anomalies leapt down from above, lunging with wide mouths bigger than their entire ship.

“Precision Mines!” Wendell sent out a swath with a sweep of his hands, launching them into the creatures that drew closest. They exploded in the inside of their open maws, and Shadow followed up his first shot with another, and another, until the thorns were flying from the ship like rain.

The creatures were driven back, but they bought themselves a matter of seconds at best.

"Everyone get belowdecks!" Felix shouted over the roaring wind.

Claw members and Unbound alike scurried down the stairs, while giants leaped into the hatch down into the hold. A tendril of dust swept the deck after them, hitting the foremast and disintegrating it instantly.

“I’m losing control here!” Elowen warned.

Sonata of Dominance!

Astrum Ascendence!

Felix let sing his Skills, flaring Affinity and Intent with all the strength he could muster. He reached deep and grappled his Will with the shaky foundations of reality itself. On a normal day, he’d have to try so much harder to even feel the walls between the Coporeal and the rest of the Realms, but now the instability drove the sensation directly into his grasp. He enclosed it, the amplified Sonata now a circle of his Will that cradled wild Mana even as it tried to run riot. In a matter of seconds, Felix layered his Intent across his locus of control…and he ignited it all.

A true wildfire shaped across the anomaly's invasive cloudflesh, and Felix compressed it into a solid bar of white flame. The Dustbringer recoiled back, but not before its appendage dissolved entirely.

Sonata of Dominance is level 139!

…

Sonata of Dominance is level 141!

Astrum Ascendence is level 126!

…

Astrum Ascendence is level 133!

Felix swept the beam outward toward the other cyclones, but the power failed no more than a hundred yards away. Its compressed Mana turned wild once more and diffused amongst the dust clouds, no better than Pits moonbeams.

Shit!

More were coming for them, and there was nothing they could do against them.

He only had one idea. Felix reached for his Authority and found it, though it was distant. Standing in the Territory of another, he had little power over the grander sweep of the Continent—but he'd won his war. Here, in this world, that meant something.

Authority Screen Accessed

Map Of The Territory Available!

"Yes," he said, pumping his fist.

He pulled up the Territorial map before him and memorized it with a single glance. Dark Passages littered Amaranth’s vast countryside, just as he’d hoped—and they were picked out plainly across the map thanks to a Skill he had and his connection with the Pool of Halcyon Oaths. Unfortunately, they were not nearly as solid as they were in his true Territories. Here they were fuzzy and flickered, shifting position by miles in moments. But it gave him an idea.

If he were lucky, it also gave them a chance.

Felix ran to the prow. "Evie, get back!”

She spun her chain, frost flinging away from her in a ring. "This thing won't stop me."

"That's not what I mean," he said, before reaching out. "Void Nexus!”

His hands gathered in the folds of reality itself, catching not air, but something beneath it, a thicker substance that was as thin as the most ephemeral of thread. His claws pierced the air and tore across the world, splitting a hundred-foot wide rent into the sky. The black of the Void met his eyes, twinkling as always with a smattering of foreign stars that beckoned to him with a sweet, lilting song. This time, however, the edges of the rift were flickering, wild, and bucking against his Skill.

It had to be good enough.

"Elowen!”

“On it!"

The ship careened, turning sideways as it evaded the clutches of yet another anomaly. Clouds closed in, piling against one another as they hunted for their meal, reaching with hundreds of stolen limbs—all of them falling short of Elowen’s preternatural piloting.

With a final gasp of speed, they shot through the rift. The crow's nest ripped apart as it crashed into the edge of the uneven opening and another two sails tore apart before the darkness closed in.

All at once, they were pressed, crushed by a pressure Felix was unused to feeling in the Dark Passages. The field of stars glittered around them, an infinite tapestry of jewels he couldn’t reach as the world squeezed them. All of it collapsed into a single point of light that swelled around them and burst.

They were through.

Quiet descended. Felix turned and cut off Void Nexus. Immediately, the rift vanished and the anomalies were left behind.

Felix leaned against the railing, breathing heavily.

Pale sunlight, sourceless and omnipresent, filtered around them. The silver-blue expanse of the Dark Passage lay spread out in all directions. Rocky islands hung suspended in the thin air, and clouds gathered close to them. The islands were as big as mountains, filled with towering trees and forests that even from a distance, Felix could tell teemed with strange life.

Ondine walked back up from the hold, glancing between the sky and Felix. Her expression was hard to read and her Spirit was closed, but it looked something like glee. "You can open a pathway to the Void too?"

"No, not the Void. These are shortcuts on the skin of the world.”

“What is the difference?”

“It's Void adjacent, at best." Felix looked back to the helm. "Elowen, get us moving. We don't want to linger here."

"Yeah," she said from across the ship. Her robes were torn and she was out of breath, but she seized the wheel without hesitation. "I had a feeling."