The Mountains That Howl were strangely named. While they did howl, they most certainly were not mountains. Where the Tangle ended, the ever-descending lake floor dropped dramatically, resolving into a sheer cliff that opened into dark water. The drop alone was a little unnerving, but what made it worse was the ripping current that ravaged the edge of that cliff. They swam closer, and Felix could perceive a twisted rippling that broke up the dark abyss before them. > he asked Toa'ut. > Isla offered, speaking over the slow-talking War Naga. > > Tao'ut intoned. > Felix focused his Manasight, though it was difficult to separate water and shadow from itself. Slowly, the glowing brilliance of the Mana currents resolved into distinct patterns. They flowed in tight circles, spinning around a central point that was at least thirty yards across. Their mouths were open and undulating through the dark water, moving with the ponderous motion of a whale, and descending somewhere far below that was not so much shrouded in shadow as drenched in a vast distance. They're massive cyclones, he realized. Whirlpools. Felix looked out and perceived hundreds of them, cutting the emptiness with a furious chaos. Manasight is level 73! > he said, before explaining it all to his friends. > Beef asked. He looked askance at the depths before them and rubbed his arms. The water touched them but didn't at the same time, so the fur along his bare biceps was dry and fluffy. > Pit chirruped thoughtfully. > Lavix shook her head. > > Vess added. She leaned forward on Lavix's back, peering into the dark as her own eyes flashed with a prismatic light. > Felix scratched his chin; his beard was growing fuller now, and his claws felt good against his skin. > > Toa'ut said. Great. > > Rou'd said, the third of the leading trio. Pit was nestled nimbly atop his back, fish tail banished, and Homunculus Hallow clung to the tenku's saddle like a barnacle. > > Isla asked. > Toa'ut shifted, creeping closer to the edge of the cliff. > Felix swept his attention back to the Tangle behind them, unable to spot much beyond the prolific fronds and the overwhelming presence of life Mana. He didn't doubt that the ambush they'd slaughtered would be found eventually, and with the Den so close they'd be swarmed as soon as they were. The War Naga were already staring into the dark with eager expressions on their dour faces, Spirits apparently alight at the idea of challenging themselves in the wild currents. Vess was right there with them, leaning forward as if she wanted to leap off Lavix and tackle whirlpools on her own. Beef was worried, Pit and Hallow curious, and Isla considered the cliff with something akin to disdain on her face. > he asked the Chanter. There must have been something in his tone, because Vess tore her eyes from the drop to stare at Isla as well. > Isla set about rearranging her skirts. > Felix pursed his lips, but ultimately nodded. > With far more deliberation than Felix had expected, the War Nagas slipped off the edge of the cliff and swam out into the raging current. Immediately they were caught up, pulled sideways and down as they navigated the very edge of the nearest maelstrom, but Toa'ut and his warriors undulated powerfully, their thick Bodies forging a path through the riptide. > Pit shouted. He had to fight to keep his wings closed against his sleeker Body, something he clearly found harder now that he'd reduced in size a bit. > > rumbled Rou'd. > The floor of the area was slowly revealing itself, layer by layer as the occluding Mana was thinned and dispersed by the howling currents. Now Felix heard the sound of them as well, and there was definitely something wrong with the sound. It was dissonant, though not in the same way as his core space or a cursed Primordial—instead it was like the Harmony all around them had been twisted ever so slightly out of tune. Soon, Felix spotted why. The vortex that they rode the edge of was composed of deep water and shadow Mana, all swirling down into gargantuan gaps far below. Those chasms split the earth but were not empty—were, in fact, utterly filled with wriggling growths. They looked slick, like slime given life, the same dark-blue ooze that Felix had seen on so many of the Fathom spawn. As they pressed further, slipping skillfully from one vortex to the next, he could see that the ooze carpeted the lake bed. It was clearly not restrained to the bases of the vortexes alone, spreading up and across the rocks like an infection. > Felix pointed out. His allies looked at it with the same disgust that roiled in Felix's gut, but only Isla seemed to notice the true wrongness of it all. They briefly locked eyes, and the Chanter nodded. > she warned. > > Beef said, just as a school of silver fish flashed past their location. > The fish weren't big, perhaps the size of a football, but there were hundreds of them in the undulating mass that tore overhead. It was clear to Felix that they were utterly caught up in the vortex, and all of their frantic swimming did nothing to slow their swirling descent. Before the Naga could navigate across the currents, the entire school hit the writhing layer of ooze...and was consumed entirely. Beef swallowed. > Their progress was slow, as the corridors between the many maelstroms were both narrow and ever-shifting. Often their guides had to wait several minutes, treading against the ceaseless currents, until two of the vortexes moved far enough away from one another to safely pass. Even then, the sheer Strength and Endurance required to battle the pressure was immensely draining. The War Naga took turns in the lead, rotating every couple minutes so that they could all benefit from riding in one another's slipstream, which reduced the drag of the tides by a decent amount. More than once Felix thought of using his various Skills to force their way through, but the dual edge of concern stopped him. The first worry was one of stealth, and the second was a question of sustainability. He could—perhaps—push through the Mountains That Howl, could even utilize his Abyssal Skein to hide them from enemy eyes...but after experiencing the sheer immensity of the vortexes, Felix doubted he could maintain stealth for everyone while also shouldering aside what appeared to be hundreds of swirling cyclones of water and deadly ooze. It was better to take the slower approach, he decided, at least for the time being. It wasn't only the push and pull of the water that hampered them, however. Down between the vortexes, the blue—almost purple—ooze absolutely crawled with creatures. There, enormous things like sea anemones bloomed, almost entirely covered in the ooze and listed as Manawarped Hexanthus. Some sort of monstrous polyp, like the coral within the Tangle, just gargantuan. A variety of the polyps filled the glowing lake bed, from the tendril-festooned Hexanthus to the stalk-like, almost flower shape of the Stolonex. All of them swayed and rippled with the buffeting edge of the vortexes, but more than once Felix saw them lunge toward another ill-fated school of fish. The things were mobile. A number of times the churning maelstroms forced their party low, within a hundred yards of the nasty things, and Felix had tasted the sheer, grasping malice from the nearest ones. In fact, they felt remarkably like the Slaughter Nettle. > Felix wondered aloud. He didn't expect an answer, so was surprised when Vess spoke up. > Felix could see that, almost lost among the overwhelming mass of rippling water and heaving monstrosities. > Beef moaned as he pulled tight on the chitinous straps he'd fashioned around his legs—more than once he'd almost been pulled out of his seat by the maelstroms. > > Vess' voice was heavy and without embellishment. A lead bar hitting hard-packed earth. > As if the Divines were looking down on him and spitting, Felix felt a tingle at the utmost edge of his senses. Their circuitous route had allowed them to progress perhaps a tenth of the way across the expansive Mountains That Howl, too far for him to feel things with his Perception, but close enough that his Affinity recoiled from a wave of malicious Intent. Back toward the Tangle. Through the black he could see a mass of darkness that rolled toward them like a storm cloud. He stared, unable to parse it all for several moments, and it was Vess that shouted the warning. > > Toa'ut rumbled, a tension rolling through the War Naga. > > Isla said with dripping derision. > Yet as they watched, treading water between maelstroms, the thousands of Hatchlings, Amphitere, and Draktopi advanced. The vortexes took their due, pulling down huge quantities of their numbers, spinning them inexorably into the oozing crevasses, but the horde did not stop. More pushed on from behind, until the waters darkened even further from their sheer numbers. Bursting from the lead of the horde, not one, but two Depthwurms raced toward them, absolutely eating up the distance between them. > Felix said. > > Toa'ut warned, and dove, straight into the heart of a vortex. > Beef screamed, echoed by Hallow in both of her forms. The maelstrom roared as they truly entered its influence for the first time. Felix and his crew all hunkered down close, pressing their bodies as tightly as they could to the scaled backs of the Naga. The currents were monstrous, whipping them faster and faster as they rotated and sank deeper into the dark waters. A hundred feet was lost in a second, just long enough for their guides to reach out and grasp onto each other's tails, and jolt forward. They jerked, twisted perpendicular to the spinning tides, and for a moment Felix felt as if they were going to swing out of control—but the War Naga gave a concerted bellow, and their muscular Bodies thrashed as one. The entire team rocketed out of the vortex, just as the suicidal Depthwurms thundered into their space. Pit shrieked, absolutely thrilled, and fired off a dozen bolts of frozen lightning. The magic sank into the nearest Depthwurm's hide before bursting into crackling, charring static. Pit's Tempest Fugit is level 77! > Felix shouted, mobilizing his Intent and Affinity to send a Chant enhanced stream of Cardinal Flame straight into the Depthwurm's face. Scale and flesh boiled away, forcing the monster to pull away from its pursuit, at least temporarily. The others sent waves of Skills at the other one; lightning, Spears, crystalline darts, and huge wedges of iron-hard chitin all smashed into its scales. More than a few shattered, ripping open gaping wounds in the powerful Fathom spawn as the War Nagas kept swimming with everything they had. Between swirling maelstroms, Toa'ut and his warriors sped without time to pause or calculate their chances of getting yanked into the depths. That first incredible dive had given them enough momentum that kept them just out of reach of the Depthwurms, though not even their speed would have been enough had Felix's team not laid down suppressive fire. Still, Fathom spawn fell upon them. Hatchlings riding Amphitere, Broodvipers atop Drakin, and entire pods of Draktopi survived the culling of the vortexes, too many for Felix to accurately count. Enough that their strange shrieking coalesced into a wildly upsetting chorus that pummeled at Felix's Mind. A strident, atonal note shivered through the ooze around all of them. Meaning danced at the edge of his awareness, hot and coppery on his tongue like blood. It was violence, stoked and stacked until it blazed in the Spirit of everyone Fathom spawn arrayed against them. Madness shone in the Hatchling's wide, white eyes as they thrust their crude tridents after their quarry. Levin bolts sizzled outward, deflected by shields of green-gold luminescence, shields that drove that madness to greater heights. Chthonic Tribute! Felix snatched the song out of the air, grasping at the threads he could barely sense among the horde. A connection to a greater Mind, trembling through the ooze that adorned each and every one of the Fathom spawn, and it resisted his grasp. The song was violence and madness, but it was almost automatic; a threat response that consumed the horde entirely, echoing off the ooze upon them as well as below. Felix gathered all of the threads he could, every single one within range of his Affinity, and pulled. Chthonic Tribute! All at once, the ooze in a three hundred yard diameter turned into flashing, bitter smoke and raged toward Felix's channels. The horde faltered and flailed, screaming with incomprehensible pain. They fell into the rolling cyclones, carried mercilessly down below where even the monstrous polyps were recoiling from Felix's terrible blow. Chthonic Tribute is level 87! The Essence and Mana of the ooze hit Felix like a truck, spinning down into his core space like molten glass, just as scalding and twice as bright. He grasped at it tentatively, amazed at the sheer potency that wafted from it all. Connections flourished and thickened, links to the ooze's source that firmed with each passing instant. It sang, a new, strange chord in Felix's ears...that immediately twisted out of tune. Something noticed him. That Mind shifted, orienting on Felix for the first time. Focusing. A great, bitter rage ripped across their newfound link, as nightmarish as any Primordial he'd encountered. And just as strong. Bastion of Will! Felix frantically sounded his mental Skill just as that titanic presence came crashing down on him. It hit with all the weight and fury of a tsunami. Bastion of Will is level 88! ... Bastion of Will is level 90! Blood burst, his Aspects groaned, and something within him smashed and cracked—but his Bastion held firm. A roar of frustration ripped across the stolen connection, detonating along a colossal distance as it raced for Felix's head. Every instinct Felix had screamed not to let that sound reach him, and he flared his Cardinal Flame with all of his might. Cardinal Flame is level 85! Grasping the remains of the ooze within his core space, Felix shoved the lot of it into the greedy depths of his Hunger. All of it, all at once. The connection sundered, torn apart by the force of the dragon's own roar, and Felix recoiled back onto the hard scales of his War Naga ride. > Beef was shouting. His arms were held wide, waving his chitin-shaped war club above him. > Felix suppressed a groan as he leveraged himself back to a seated position, and cast outward with his Perception. The remains of a Depthwurm spun listlessly in the near distance, and the water all around them was clouded with dark ichor and bits of flesh. Most were caught up in the maelstroms around them, sucked down to the lake bed, where he could dimly sense the ooze was rapidly regrowing. Two of their escorts were missing—dead, he suspected—and half of those remaining bore weeping wounds that clouded the swirling currents. What's more, they were still well within the maze of howling vortexes, though they'd found a spot of calm. The chase had eaten up several miles perhaps, but they had a great many more to go. > he cursed. > Vess asked as Lavix swam closer. > > Isla stated. She looked at Felix, her hair floating in the water yet untouched by the wet. > With a dim trilling noise, the System shoved a static-strewn notification before Felix's eyes. > he said. >