Chapter 103: The Oaths That Bind Us

Feeling the searing heat emanating from their soul, they knew they had to work quickly. Stabilise the link, before it collapsed and left them crippled. They needed the skill. Now.

One half still floundered, unused to the rigours of true mental communion. The other knew what to do. They trusted, and they acted.

It was time for the bloodrite.

They knew, even now, that they could back out. Even splitting their minds, they knew they wouldn’t. Pain was acceptable, risk was acceptable. They would be forged anew, and rise above, or they would die.

Opening their eyes, they were treated to a mind spinning duplicated sight of their bodies. One stout, red, furred, and strong. The other tall, pale, lithe, and strong. They moved slowly, mortal flesh struggling to cope with the sensation that flowed across their link.

Their human body drew their hunting knife with a shaking hand. Their meles body raised their paw to their mouth. Diverting a modicum of effort, they suppressed theirHealth.

The sting of tooth and blade was lost in the all consuming pyre that lashed across their link. Heartblood sprayed. With theirEndurancethey would survive for a short while, but the oath had to be forged so that they could heal.

They clasped arms, anointing the stone below with the ichor of their covenant. Hearts thumped in sync.

“We areone, by the ritesof strife and adversity, the pact of the hunt,and the oath of fire and blood.

Be it searing sun,or frozen moon, we willendure.

Our bloodis our bond, unbroken in the face ofstorm and starfall.

We are thefangs in the night,and the heartbeat of the dawn.

Forged in bloodand pain, werise. Unity will be our sword,and loyalty our shield.

Witnessed by fate, and seen by the Arbitrator, let it be known.

Weareone.” They spoke, voices thrumming with the potency of an ancient pact revitalised once more.

The system noticed, and a familiar ding sounded in their minds.

**Ding! General Skill Available! Would you like to learn: Soulforged Covenant (Unique)?**

They accepted.

The might of the system thrummed. Two seeds of power, the realisation of their shared might, substantiated in orbit around their souls. The new shard joined the procession of their constellations of legacy skills, filling the missing slots, completing the preparation for their final ascension.

Their skills thrummed with anticipation, vibrating with barely concealed power as they waited for the final skill to be ready.

ThenSoulforged Covenantactivated. Power surged, torrenting from the skill to suffuse the ragged holes in their souls. Soulstuff melted, channelling and bleeding across the yawning chasm that was their link. Then it started to contract. Finger-length by finger-length, the tunnel of meaning and connection shrunk, pulling their souls into alignment.

As they drew together, the tears in the border of their centres widened. They gasped, feeling the last remaining shreds of difference dissolve. They writhed, the dissolution of ego as much agony as it was ecstasy.

Souls united, the bubbles of their soul’s dominions intersecting, woven together with arcane might and a harmonious thrum of unity that burst free from their souls.

Then a pearlescent shimmer burst into existence, sealing the bridge. It wasn’t a total severance, for that had become an impossibility with a shared centre. Yet, it was enough to delineate. They became he, and Kaius returned to himself.

“By the fuckinggods, what the fuck was that!” He called out, reeling backwards to slump into the bunk behind him as a rapidfire ping of dings screamed through his mind.

Porkchop groaned on the floor.“They said it would be bad-weird, but I didn't expectthat.”

Kaius shot him a wild look, before he burst into hysterical laughter. “Holy shit! We werewe, what the fuck! You can feel your claws!? That’s so weird!” he asked, the vivid memory of feeling his own handspan long nails clacking on the stone floor.

Snapping up, Porkchop stared at him in bewilderment.“That’swhat you took from this? Not the fact that, oh, I don’t know, we apparently share a soul-space now?”

Kaius giggled. “I think I should be surprised that you didn’t know that would happen, but I already know that becauseweknew that wasn’t going to happen. This is so fucking weird.”

He shook his head, trying to shake off the last remnants of discombobulation from having his entire sense of self dissolve. It didn’t work very well. Porkchop also felt the same, he couldfeel it. Far more intimately than their previous surface level link.

Previously it had been odd, but ultimately comparable to speech. Now, it was like he had a yawning window into the mind of his brother. Could feel his emotions, wants and intentions. Itshouldhave been overwhelming, but it wasn’t. He just knew him, like he knew himself. Like Porkchop now knew him. He thought he would feel exposed. Vulnerable. He wasn’t, it felt like coming home.

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Plus, he couldfeelPorkchop. Feel their distance, like he knew how far his hand was from his face. Sense the way he lounged on the stone, the weight of his body. A strange proprioception that extended through the bridge of their souls, bringing awareness with it.

“This is too fucking weird,” Kaius said with a shake of his head. “I’m checking my notifications.”

Porkchop grunted in agreement, too frazzled to go through the effort of putting his thoughts into words.

Still unused to feeling his friend so clearly, Kaius tuned it out and pulled his notifications.

**Ding! Soulforged Covenant has reached level 2!**

**Ding! Soulforged Covenant has reached level 20!**

Kaius looked on at the notification in shock, almost finding it impossible to believe that it had already capped.

“I already told you,”Porkchop said, answering his unasked question.“It levels based on our connection, and later -once we have our class and bloodline- based on simple cooperation. We’ve effectively been levelling it since we met.”

Kaius shook his head, still surprised at the strength of their connection. He decided to try something.

“Like this?”He asked, pushing the words through his mind towards the omnipresent barrier that he could feel separating them.

“Yeah,”Porkchop replied with warm encouragement.“Though we will have to work on beast-speak. You should be able to do it now, and it would be useful in battle.”

“Beast-speak? Like when we first met?”Kaius asked.

Porkchop nodded.“It’s a lesser form of our merge, a sharing of pure experience. A lot quicker and more precise. Anyway, we can do that later. Let's keep going through these notifications. Can you write it down? We’re probably going to be able to evolve the skill immediately, and I want to be able to share it with the Dens when we eventually return. It’s our history, and the cub was too bitter to ever share.”

Kaius nodded, fetching his half full notebook from his pack before he returned to take a seat. Then, with his pen ready, he pulled up the skill.

Soulforged Covenant:

Level 20

Unique

Two souls, one centre. A sacred pact between man and beast, unbroken forevermore.

Skill that creates a bond of equals, merging your soul-space with that of a willing greater beast. Allows perfect mental communication, proprioception, and a sense of their location within a certain distance. Experience, achievements, and feats are shared equally between both parties. In certain situations and when favourable, both parties are treated as a single entity in the eyes of the system.

Each level moderately increases the distance at which you can sense and communicate with your bonded companion.

After dutifully transcribing the description, Kaius read it once more with a cocked brow.

“Levelling bonus is a bit lacklustre for aUnique, isn’t it?” He said, looking at Porkchop quizzically.

Porkchop snorted.“If shared experience and preferential treatment as a single entity isn’t enough for you, I don’t know what is.”

Kaius grinned. “Oh please, I’ve seen the way you get about loot. You’re just as greedy as I am.” He set his notebook to the side, satisfied that the ink had dried properly, then leaned forwards to rest his elbows on his knees. “I suppose we’ll just have to hope for something good from our evolution, won't we?”

Porkchop stiffened, barely noticeable previously, but now Kaius could feel his friend’s mind practically screaming in excited anticipation of what they would receive. He understood it perfectly. A skill like this was a rare find, and to find out that they would be the first to evolve it as the final component of their legacies in the history of the Dens? Anyone who wasn’t would have to be a fool.

He turned his attention to the final notification that burned at the front of his mind, bringing it up with a flick of intent.

**Ding! 10th Skill Capped!**

**Ding! Completed Legacy Detected!**

**Ding! Initiate Special Skill Evolution - Soulforged Covenant?**

Looking up, Kaius locked eyes with Porkchop, receiving a slight nod in return. Taking a deep breath, he accepted the system's prompt as he felt Porkchop do the same.

He dropped into his soul-space as he felt the system descend, the undeniable power of the omnipresent force blanketing his soul. It made him feel small, like a gnat in the face of the burning might of the sun.

He watched his soulflare, burning light reaching new heights, engulfing the nebulae that were his resource pools to brush up against the locked points of his equidistant skills.

Right by him, he could feel -see-Porkchop’s soul doing the same.

His legacy skills started toSCREAM. Not hatefully, not with the avaricious violence that they belted out during each and every one of his skill mergers. Instead it was pure, a note of harmonised, utterly complete, joy. One of purpose fulfilled, of destiny made manifest.

It washed over him, the hairs on the back of his neck rising as they sang to a new crescendo. Thrumming, shifting with a scintillating platinum light. Where previously they looked like shards of the purest crystal hued with a metallic shine, now they looked liquid. Amorphous.

The system reached out. Implacable. Inexorable.

Ten chains of his purest essence were ripped free from his soul, entirely outside of his control. They plunged into his skills, all of them. A second later he was awash in their power. A storm of might and fury that threatened to drown him in its potency.

A typhoon only made worse by his exposure to Porkchop’s own. While he may not have felt it as keenly as his own experience, it was there, yanking at him.

Once more the system stepped in, bolstering him in the face of concepts made manifest. Then it began to weave. Chains of light, meaning, and understanding shot between the skills, before linking them in a great decagramic web.

With his soul -the totality of all that he contained- as the conduit, the firestorm of power rushed through the network. Sacred geometry magnified and refined the power, directing it to suffuseSoulforged Covenant.

It was more than the skill could bear. Great ripples shot through the liquid crystal, threatening to disperse the conceptual nexus into a fine mist. Constrained by the system until it boiled, the pressure grew more explosive by the second as it railed against the forced limits of an unclassed.

The system refused. Forcing the skill to maintain its shape as it packed more and more power into its tight confines.

Kaius knew an agony that he had never known before. Every facet of his being felt wrung out. Drained of all vitality as all that he was was scoured by an unrelenting forceful torrent of pure arcane might far beyond what his mortal form could tolerate.

His body, his mind, his very soul began to break down. Fraying at the seams.

Again the system refused. Forcing him to bear witness to its majesty.

Soulforged Covenantcould take no more. Even boiling with forcefully contained power, there was only so much the skills structure could take. It shattered.

The system swept up the refuse, forcing more current through his soul, whirling it into a raging typhoon that sucked at the surrounding power of the ritual. Kaius started to scream, eyes locked on the declaration of supremacy that occurred before him.

With deft will, sheer gaseous meaning was condensed, suffused with the purity of essence contained in his legacy skills. There, in the eye of the maelstrom, a new skill began to germinate.

One shining with the purest platinum light. The final member of the conclave.

It grew, and with a snap it was over. His centre returned to stillness, his ten skills locked in equidistant orbit around his soul, slowly dimming to its normal radiance.

The system withdrew.

A ding sounded in his mind.

Kaius blacked out.