Bondsmith

Ra’azel’s soul was crying out, power was slipping from his grasp. Pieces of the power he had stolen, that he had grafted to himself were fading, as if they had never been there in the first place. The agony of it was too great.

The constructs made out of the Soul of another flickered out of existence, the power he had infused in them, vanishing. His mind was rocked, as if something was being torn from his very thoughts. He forgot where he got the power in the first place, then he forgot that he had ever even had it at all.

It was like a physical blow that he didn’t expect nor see coming. He fell from the sky and struck the ground, unable to move, to even think.

Confusion wracked his thoughts, his memory of the battle turned obscured by a fog. Damage to the ground changed, like illusionary images rotating in and out of existence. The hole in the sky blinked out and the falling island was whole.

His failsafe triggered; memory captured on his mental constructs detected the deviation. It was one of the most powerful constructs he had ever made, one of the most important that he had perfected the design long ago. It was bound Time, carved out by Space and Void, a universe of its own. Inside was as separated from the reality he existed in as it possibly could be. And at its core was a copy of his mind, updated constantly.

Once the deviation was detected, it reached back out and overwrote his memories, injecting what he had forgotten.

Ra’azel remembered, and was awed and afraid in equal measure. Something had erased time itself, no, it was more than that. It had changed it in a way that left no traces, that altered reality itself as if this was what it had always been. It wasn’t time, it was more than that.

I want that power. He thought to himself. Knowing what he could do with it. To reach out to the tapestry of the world and make changes. It would finally give him the tools he needed.

He tried to move, but his Soul and body ached, both from the effort of the fight and from what had happened. His Soul might not have ever experienced what had happened in the previous version of reality, but an echo remained, because his Soul was different. He was old.

He shook his head and raised his eyes to take the situation in. Immediately, he reacted, triggering a rune string that flickered to life powered by his Soul and the Air around him. It pulled on the Essence, compacted the Air and surrounded him in a shield.

A fist hit against its surface and cracks spread all over, the Air kept together and hardened by his Soul breaking under the impact.

A drake with pale green scales wearing armor crafted with this version of Framework’s rune alternatives. It was battered and broken in places, but the eerie orange orbs in his eyes glared at him with an inner power.

The Drake advanced, and Ra’azel knew that he was in trouble.

Ra’azel carved two runes, attempting to bend space and put more distance between them. For a moment it worked, then the world around them shifted and Ra’azel found himself underwater. It was like a dream, and yet reality. Water rushed around him, it surged through his nostrils and mouth, it was pressing down on him.

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The drake swam forward, and Ra’azel pulled out a cube from his storage. It landed in his palm, and with a quick tendril of his will and Soul he triggered it. It blazed with light, and in the same moment expelled a tiny sphere of collapsed Space. The water started surging toward it, creating a whirlpool as the localized implosion traveled forward. The drake lashed out, his claws glowing with power. The implosion shattered, an explosion rippled out and sent Ra’azel flying. The water winked out, and he fell and rolled across the ground.

He was on a rocky surface, a terrible storm howling above him. The drake arrived; a wand covered in formations in his arm. He pointed, and a beam of harsh light lanced out.

Ra’azel already reacted. A wall of protection appeared in front of him as his construct was triggered. It was curved like lens, and the light attack fractured and was sent flying in all directions, cutting up the ground.

Ra’azel got to his feet and pulled out a leather book. He put his hand on it and the rune on the binding activated, the rune strings within the pages came to life and pulled the pieces he stored within. Shades and Spirits jumped out of the book, manifesting fully and surging forward, attacking the drake.

Ra’azel got a moment of reprieve as the world around them shook and flickered, different landscapes coming into being as the drake fought, destroying the spirits.

Ra’azel focused, carving runes into the space in front of him. But the drake was too fast. A moment of distraction, of weakness and the drake punched through. He hit Ra’azel like a mountain caving in his armor and shattering runes. A clawed hand grabbed his shoulder and pierced through biting into his flesh.

His countermeasures activated, and so did the drake’s. Formations met constructs, then explosions and spatial rifts sent them both tumbling through the air, dust and debris pelting them as the visage of the shifting landscapes around them shattered.

Ra’azel groaned as he hit the ground, back on the floating island, he raised a hand to carve a rune but his opponent was faster and shattered his forearm in an instant, the world itself bent to the drake’s will hitting him in ways that he couldn’t protect himself against.

As the drake slammed him against a side of a cliff, cracking it and sending rocks falling down on top of them, Ra’azel couldn’t help but be envious of the power these people were granted.

Ra’azel himself was no match for their sheer attributes. He had no Levels, no Cultivation Realms, no Skills. All he ever had was the body he was born with, that he had trained, that he had augmented himself. He was a pale shadow compared to them, his attributes could not match theirs.

His time in the Ethereal, becoming a shade, had helped some, but it wasn’t enough. There were only two reasons why he was able to keep up. First was because he was augmenting his body with his Soul, burning it to make his attributes higher. And the other was because he had one attribute that was as great or higher than theirs—his mind. The one part of his body that he had improved over a long life, and honed in the Ethereal Realm.

Ra’azel could think in fractions of time it took them. He could use his mind to activate constructs and react faster than his body could move. He could match them with already prepared constructs that bought him time to carve runes.

He had lost his advantage. The drake had him, whatever happened that had caused the world to get rewritten had made him lose a step, and the drake had exploited the moment.

He matched Ra’azel’s constructs with his own, and the gifts the chosen had from the Framework reduced Ra’azel’s options down to barely a handful.

Once, Ra’azel was a Bondsmith of an entire world. He had bound the Aspects and commanded them with barely a thought. His runes had augmented him and them, made reality itself obey. And then he was betrayed, reduced to a mere soul. His body destroyed, he turned into a Shade. A being of Ethereal existence. Time in the Ethereal Realm had given him power, it had made his Soul stronger, but he did not grow in the same way that other Shades did. He had no connection to the Framework other than his existence in it.

In that prison, he had spent countless ages plotting his escape. Countless ideas and designs. In the end, he got lucky, he escaped the prison with the help of a human chosen, and in him he planted one seed that would allow him to escape the Ethereal Realm too.

He had made many plans after his escape from the Felltower. Seeds that had turned unnecessary. But now, as his armor was being torn from his body, as the drake cracked his spatial anchors and prevented him from pulling more constructs, Ra’azel was left with the only weapon he had ever been able to truly rely on.

His Soul.