Path of Dragons

Elijah crouched, his claws digging into the bark as he balanced atop a tree branch. Far below, he saw a lone hunter. The creature was much like the others he’d already fought – four arms, chalky skin, and with a pseudo-reptilian face – but it had the distinction of being alone. Elijah had been following it for some time after he’d stumbled upon another site of battle, though this one wasn’t between the hunters and the Trial-takers. Instead, the group of natives had been attacked by the marble-skinned monsters. Upon seeing the aftermath, Elijah had gotten a better idea of how it all worked.

The monsters drained ethera and life force, as evidenced by the dried husks that were the corpses of their most recent victims. Elijah had tracked the lone survivor of the most recent attack, and he intended to use its solitude to get a few more answers.

So, he crept forward, instinctively balancing on the branch until he was directly above the native. Then, he used Predator Strike before leaping free. To its credit, the hunter sensed his presence a moment before impact, but that didn’t give the creature enough time to react appropriately.

Elijah hit it in the back, his claws ripping through its flesh and destroying its spine. The momentum of the attack drove it to the ground as its legs collapsed underneath it. It growled in pain as it flailed its four arms, yet Elijah refused to let it regain any semblance of an advantage. His jaws closed around one of its shoulders, and he was rewarded by the sound of crunching bone.

And more screams, though he tuned those out.

He snapped out again, the force of his bite crushing more bone. Two more times, he repeated the action, disabling the creature’s other two arms. It still tried to wriggle free, but with none of its limbs in working order, its efforts were useless.

That’s when Elijah shifted back to his human form, then used his staff as a lever to turn it over. He crouched beside it, saying, “Answer my questions, and I’ll heal you.”

It hissed and spat, growling, “I would rather die!”

“I don’t intend to kill you.”

“I’ll stop the bleeding. Just enough to keep you alive. Then, I’ll leave you here for those other things to find. What they do looks painful,” Elijah remarked coldly. “As far as I can tell, they suck the ethera right out of you, right? Life, too. That can’t be fun.”

“Just…just kill me…”

“No.”

“Please…”

“I told you the deal. Answer my questions, and you can go traipsing off wherever you came from,” Elijah said. “Don’t, and you’ll be food for those things. Now, you should probably make a choice pretty soon, because I’m pretty sure they can sense our presence. There are fifteen of them about thirty yards that way, just sleeping away. I think I could probably wake them up, though…”

The hunter answered, “Ask your questions.”

“What are those things?” Elijah asked. “And why are you here?”

“This is my home. My world. Where else would I be? You are invaders, slaves to the heartless system, and you deserve to be eradicated,” hissed the creature.

The answer wasn’t entirely unexpected. Elijah had already figured out that the hunters were natives of what the system called an excised world, though he didn’t know what that meant. So, that was his next question.

“Long ago, we faced an invasion from the Abyss. We fought back with everything we had, and the system punished us for it. That punishment took the form of permanent Excisement from the World Tree. We should have fallen to the Abyss, but the Transcendent kept the Ravener at bay. Now, we have earned the opportunity to once again connect to the World Tree, and we will not fail.”

That was a lot to take in, but Elijah followed the chain of events well enough. “And the other creatures? The blue-and-white monsters?”

“Wraiths. They are part of our punishment. As you say, they are fiends who live off of stolen ethera and vitality.”

“And your people? What do you call yourselves?” Elijah asked.

“We are the chosen ones. The kilari.”

“I see,” Elijah said. Via One with Nature, he felt the slumbering wraiths stir. It seemed that his interrogation had been detected. So, he said, “Thank you for your cooperation.”

Then, without further discussion, he shifted back into his draconid form and lashed out with his claws. They sliced through the kilari hunter’s neck, and after only a moment, the native’s neck erupted into a fountain of white blood. As it died, Elijah leaped toward a nearby tree, using his claws to ease his ascent as he made his way toward his previous perch. He’d just embraced Guise of the Unseen when the wraiths closed in on the corpse and fell upon it with ravenous fury.

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Elijah watched as they drained what little life and ethera remained. It only took a few moments before the body was entirely drained. Afterwards, the wraiths milled around for a few minutes, looking entirely confused by the lacking sustenance, then wandered away to settle back into hibernation.

In some ways, Elijah felt a bit guilty about lying to the kilari. However, he only had to remember the laughing cruelty of the hunter who’d killed Grod to banish any remorse. The hunters had already established themselves as the enemy, and Elijah refused to give them the benefit of his sympathy.

Still, he’d learned what he wanted to know. The previous encounter hadn’t been one of chance. Instead, the kilari had been tasked with hunting them. Probably by the system itself, which promised to reward their whole society with a new connection to the World Tree. With that as the prize, it was no great mystery why they would commit themselves to the task.

But Elijah suspected that there was more to the story. He felt that the kilari captive had been truthful enough, but his answers smacked of indoctrination, as if he’d been reciting facts he’d been forced to learn.

Or maybe Elijah was just reading into it. They were an alien species, so there was a good chance that his interpretation was completely off base.

Either way, the interrogation – short as it was – had given him some context for what to expect going forward. Not only would they need to deal with the local wildlife and the Trial’s challenges, but they would also have to find a way to combat the wraiths as well as the kilari hunters. Were those the only issues they might face? Elijah had no way of knowing.

With that in mind, he set off through the jungle. He did so beneath the concealment of Guise of the Unseen, so he wasn’t forced into battle. However, he did sense quite a few deadly predators about. Some seemed similar to those he might find on Earth, but others were wholly alien, with far too many limbs and often brimming with ethera.

Oddly, there were few creatures he would classify as herbivores. Instead, the closest the local wildlife came was with the scavengers, most of which seemed vicious in their own right. That made the entire ecosystem feel off-balance, as if there was a giant hole in the so-called circle of life. Elijah reasoned that the wraiths were responsible, though that suggested that the infestation was far more prevalent than he’d first suspected. Certainly, there were thousands of the monsters out there, and fortunately, most were in deep hibernation, but even that high number seemed insufficient to completely derailing the natural order.

Was it possible that they’d driven all the prey animals to extinction?

Maybe.

They certainly seemed voracious enough. However, such a shift – even on a regional scale – carried with it terrifying connotations.

Those thoughts flitted through one facet of Elijah’s mind as he carefully picked his way through the trees until, at last, he found his way back to the group. Most of them were still asleep, having taken shelter in a deep cavern that he and Venka had subjected to intense scrutiny to ensure there were no prior claimants to the territory. It was safe, which gave the beleaguered group leave to rest.

For his part, Elijah wasn’t very tired, so he’d set off to find some answers while the others rested.

He shifted back to his human form, then leaped to the ground, landing lightly. He strode forward, passing through the underbrush for a few dozen yards before arriving at the mouth of the cave. It was guarded by one of the shield-bearers. He gave a start at Elijah’s sudden appearance, but he quickly mastered himself. He asked, “Anything out there?”

“More than you want to know,” Elijah answered, pushing past the man. “Just keep your guard up.”

“Yes, sir,” the shield-bearer said.

Elijah hadn’t even bothered to learn any of their names. In fact, he probably would have left them behind if it wasn’t for the fact that they had something he needed. One of their number had an Explorer class that gave him some insight into which direction they needed to go in order to find the Nexus Town. And as it turned out, he and his companions had been traveling in the wrong direction, which just highlighted the man’s usefulness.

So, in exchange for his services, Elijah had agreed to help protect the group until they reached the Nexus Town.

Upon entering the cave, he quickly found Venka. For some reason, Elijah was much more comfortable with the hill goblin than with the humans. Perhaps it was because Venka didn’t look at him like he was some sort of monster. The humans were willing to take his help, but they were clearly terrified of him.

“You’ve got blood on you,” Venka stated without looking up. He held Grod’s gem, between his long fingers. The rest of the ogre’s equipment had been buried with him – at Venka’s insistence. The humans had been unwilling to argue with his wishes, though Elijah had heard a few people grumbling about good gear going to waste.

“I found one of the hunters and asked it a few questions.”

“Him, I think. They’re all male. It implies that they’re unthinking animals. They aren’t. I could see it in their beady little eyes. They’re malicious and cruel,” said Venka.

Elijah wasn’t sure how much of that assessment was based on the fact that one of those hunters had killed the hill goblin’s friend, but he didn’t really dispute it, either. After all, he’d heard the venom in the captured native’s voice. The hate. And the arrogance. Maybe a hateful heart was warranted, given that their planet had been excised from the World Tree, which, as far as Elijah could tell, was like throwing an entire world to the wolves.

After Elijah explained what he’d learned, he said, “I think this Trial is going to be more complicated than we thought. A lot of people are going to die.”

“Not me,” Venka stated. “The second we get to that Nexus Town, I’m going home.”

“Really?”

Venka shrugged. “I know when I’m outmatched,” the hill goblin said. “Only reason I came was because of Grod, anyway. Now that he’s gone…”

He trailed off as he once again locked his eyes onto the red gem.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know if I told you that. If I could have stopped it…”

“Wasn’t your job to protect him. That was on me.”

While that statement was, on its surface, true, it didn’t make Elijah feel any better about the situation. Instead, he couldn’t help but wonder how the battle might have gone if he’d used the full suite of his abilities sooner. If he’d used Shape of the Guardian in the beginning – rather than holding back – Grod might have survived.

“It’s on both of us,” Elijah said quietly.

Venka said nothing in return. Instead, he continued to stare at the gem, clearly lost in the memories of his friend. So, Elijah left him to it, retreating into his own mind as he considered the way forward.

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