Chains Unbound

Fawks’s heart pounded wildly. He flew as fast as he could, soaring from one floor to the next. He hugged the ceiling, hoping to avoid resistance – but there was none.

After only two floors, he suddenly found himself just a few meters from the barred wooden door he had seen in his dream. He faltered, swallowing hard. But the chaos below urged him forward.

He approached the door and peered through the little barred window. It was dark inside. A faint glow came from the spot where Selora lay, yet still he could not make her out clearly.

But how was he supposed to get inside the cell? He had no time to think. The uproar beneath was swelling. Then he remembered Bard’s words: “In this world, imagination itself shapes what is real. Theoretically, there’s no limit to what can be imagined.”

He pressed the tip of his fox-tail into the keyhole, shut his eyes, and clasped his hands together in concentration. When he opened them again, a key shimmered weakly between his palms, flickering as if it barely held shape. He felt more exhausted than ever. His eyelids sank heavily. The desire to free the princess slowly gave way to the primal instinct to survive.

And then Bard’s warning returned: “Practically, there are limits. If anyone overreaches beyond their capacity or their calling, they’ll die.”

But there was no turning back. The die was cast. Slowly, almost trembling, Fawks placed the fragile key into the lock and turned it – It worked!

The door creaked open, and the weary boy saw Selora standing tall, chains stretched forward from her wrists. She was not the girl of his age he had first assumed – she looked older now, a young woman, nearer to Cecile’s years.

“You’re older,” he murmured, half-delirious from exhaustion. A sudden wave of drowsiness crashed over him. All he wanted was to lie down, to close his eyes, to faint.

“Release me,” she said, her voice sweet but edged with command, her face still soft and beautiful.

Fawks stumbled forward two steps, then dropped to his knees, drenched in sweat.
“I cannot!” he confessed.
“I have no strength, no breath left in me.”

“Will you then abandon me here to die?” she asked, lowering her face close to his, locking eyes with him.

He was almost hypnotized by her gaze. Weakness weighed on him like iron.
“How?” he whispered.

“Look at my chains,” she said softly. “See how thin and fragile they are? With just one motion of your hand, they could be shattered.”

Fawks took a length of chain near her feet and pulled hard, hoping a link might give.
“It’s impossible! Too strong.”

“My dear Fawks,” she coaxed, “you need only to imagine it broken – and it shall be.”

Then Fawks’s expression twisted – not quite rage, but a fierce, desperate resolve. He raised one hand high, ready to strike, while with the other he gripped the frail chain. His eyes blazed bright blue.

♦♦♦

Cecile’s painted wall shook under the relentless pounding of axes and swords. The blows drove deeper with every strike, the barrier retreating inch by inch. In the darkness she could hardly see what was happening, yet she forced herself to keep painting, reinforcing the wall as long as her strength would allow.

Then a powerful voice thundered from beyond:
“Enough of this!”

And suddenly, her painted wall dissolved into nothingness, swept aside by the figure of the Watcher himself.

“What are you doing here?!” he demanded, his brilliant white-irised gaze terrifying.

But then he froze, his expression shifting to something like awe – or horror. “What have you done?!” he whispered, before suddenly striding past her, ascending the stairs with an inhuman swiftness, agile as a predator.

“We’re only trying to free the princess!” Cecile called, trying to justify herself, scrambling to keep up – but she could not.

“Fools,” she heard his voice echo above.

Her legs screamed with exhaustion, but she forced herself upward.

As she climbed, she heard the Warden cry out, “Noooo!” And then came a sound – otherworldly, metallic, faint at first like a tiny bell. It grew, louder and louder, until it crashed into a deafening, unearthly clang, one that surely reverberated across the whole of the Common Ground.

When Cecile reached the landing, the sight before her tore the breath from her chest. Her heart felt like it left her body – devastation unlike anything she had known.

There was Fawks, staggering above the delicate shattered chain that had bound Selora until that very moment. His small body swayed, then crumpled, collapsing beside it as if all life had drained away.

Fawks!” Cecile cried, her voice breaking with anguish and despair.

“It’s happened then…” the Watcher muttered darkly, brows drawn together. “The Void is set free.”

“Ha!–ha!–ha! Finally!” she laughed at him, striding out of her cell as if she owned the place.
“We meet… and I’m free.” She twirled slowly, half-dancing, showing off her freedom triumphantly before him.

She was still more beautiful than songs or tales could recall – and yet, as terrifying as anything could be.

The Watcher stood unyielding, jaw clenched, fists tight. A strange force radiated from him, as if the very space around him expanded. At the far end of the corridor, everything around the Void began to crack wide open, substance dissolving like ice drops on hot iron. The air between them was charged, literally electric, as she drew closer with the unhurried grace of a satisfied cat.

Cecile felt only the instinct to run. A dreadful certainty: whatever happened here, she would not survive it. She would be nothing more than collateral damage, caught between these two white-eyed titans – like the countless young hippos trampled beneath raging bulls fighting for dominance.

She glanced back. All the guards behind her had already fled.
But, Fawks was over there… still lying inside Void’s cell.

“I forged those bonds,” the Watcher growled at the Void. “I can forge them again.”
In his hands, as if offering a necklace, shimmered a brand-new chain – thin, gleaming.

The Void hesitated for a moment, staring at it, but her arrogance soon returned.
“You made them, yes… but you didn’t bind me with them.”

The Watcher stayed silent, his fury smoldering.

“Ah, right… the Warden did!” she added with a mocking smile.
“And where is your precious Warden now?” She arched a brow.

“Already on his way. Didn’t you hear how loud the breaking of the chain was? It was heard loud and clear to the furthest reaches of the outskirts,” the Watcher said, eyes never leaving hers.

“My dear Watcher… haven’t you heard? No one lives on the outskirts anymore!”

He growled deep in his chest.

“And soon,” she hissed, “there will be no Common Ground either!”

“We’ll see about that,” he snapped, bracing for battle.

Cracks split across the walls. The top of the tower threatened to collapse at any moment. Stones rained down, rubble clattering around them.

“Ha!–ha!–ha! What will you do now? Bind me – or hold your world together, hmm?”
She flicked her hand, and the roof came crashing down.

The Watcher dismissed it with a sweep of his power, casting the wreckage far out of the city.
“I will do what I must!” he roared back.

“Your efforts are futile, old man!”

She stomped the floor, and a great crack split three ways – one tearing directly toward the cell. The ground beneath Fawks gave way, leaving him dangling half over the abyss.

Cecile reacted instantly. Two swift strokes of her brush, and her painted rhino charged head-on at the Void.

But the Void brushed it aside with a caress – the same way the Watcher had dismissed Cecile’s painted wall earlier.

Though it was nothing to her, the very fact such a weak creature resisted seemed to enrage her beyond measure. She shrieked, a piercing cry, and the ground began to quake, a gargantuan earthquake. The earth split, and the cracks widened – not just in the tower, not only through Orrendale, but as far as Cecile’s eyes could see.

From the city below came a swell of chaos: screams, cries, the high-pitched wail of children, even the panicked scream of a horse. The sounds rose with the dust and stone, carried up the tower – helpless, raw, and unending.

The Watcher spread his arms wide, straining to hold together as much of the Common Ground as he could, freezing its very fabric. The tearing slowed, but the quake thundered on, as the Void glided closer, unstoppable.

Then – the Tower split clean in two, top to bottom. The ground beneath it ruptured as well. Fawks slipped into the chasm that yawned open beneath him.

Cecile did not hesitate for a heartbeat. She dove headlong into another fissure on her side, plunging into the chaos…