Threshold: A LitRPG Adventure (Unbound Book 5) Read online

  THRESHOLD

  Unbound Book Five

  NICOLI GONNELLA

  Copyright © 2022 by Nicoli Gonnella

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  To the Papermates.

  Longtime friends, D&D players, and a constant source of encouragement and love. You folks rock.

  CONTENTS

  Newsletter

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Afterword

  About Nicoli Gonnella

  About Mountaindale Press

  Mountaindale Press Titles

  NEWSLETTER

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  CHAPTER ONE

  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 overpopulation 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, 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, 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 t
rapped 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 under 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 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 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, and 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. Its 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 these 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 Age, I am free. Let the mortals cower in their city, for these lands are mine."

  A'zek blinked to awareness among the branches of a tree. At first, he thought that he'd somehow been knocked out and 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, 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.

  CHAPTER TWO

  "Intent and Resonance are both important to any grand working. But it is Affinity which defines the result. Keep careful watch over it."

  -Landrus k'Nand, 1458, Second Age

  Zara Cyrene was late.

  She was not in the habit of being late. The Grand Harmony was built upon exacting intervals of time, and the Cantus Sodalus had long stressed that its Chanters emulate its benign punctuality. Trailing Felix as he worked upon the Territory Quest had helped her hone that ability, but it had also strained her in ways she had not expected. She had been sent to find the Unbound, gather them, and educate them, but she hadn't expected to care. His near encounters with Primordials and the Divine—impossible as it seemed—had put her Will to the test. She had nearly intervened.

  Compassion was not always a virtue. Not in this.

  The wild days following the Inquisition's defeat and DuFont's death had since occupied much of her time. From teaching the young ones more about the Grand Harmony to giving what aid she could to the new Lady of Haarwatch, each and every moment had been filled with the fervor of enterprise. It was an invaluable opportunity for the Cantus Sodalus to gain influence on a rising ruler, and one with true System Authority? Even stunted as it was by DuFont's unwise expenditures, it was a powerful tool for any ruler.

  Already, Quests had been issued, and not by the System, but by Lady Boscal herself! It was a revelation to Zara, a way of interaction with the System that none but the Hierophant enjoyed. Evidently, true System Authority holders could issue Quests in relation to their Territory. Though, so far, the only ones they had been able to access were requests for raw materials like ore, monster cores, stone, and lumber. The people had gotten to work quickly, but it was a long haul toward getting Haarwatch on its feet.

  Still, Zara had great hopes for Cal and for their continuing alliance.

  That exuberance had led to her current quandary. She had become wra
pped up in the new challenges Cal faced and had lost track of time. So now Zara rushed, flitting through the rain-soaked streets on a late summer's evening, headed for the quarters she had long thought destroyed. The walls remained standing, however, as well as the expensive glass at the front. Above the door, a nine-pronged star greeted her, a decoration from an older tenant, yet it had proven strangely prescient. Who would have guessed the Unbound would have come to her as a Nym, albeit one on his way to something far stranger?

  She passed inside.

  There were no books within—they had long been moved to another location—and the inscribed sigils upon the walls had long faded in potency. She caressed them as she passed, igniting them with a minor effort of Will, and was greeted by a rustle of phantom feathers. The rafters above her head filled with close to two hundred birds, varied in type and level to a casual Analyze, though harmless enough. As she passed the counter, one specific avian, a small but fluffy owl, landed atop the weathered surface.