Path of Dragons

Elijah passed into the tunnel, careful to avoid the tendrils of corruption spread across the floor. Fortunately, it was far denser on the walls than the ground, which gave him plenty of room to pass through without touching them – something he wanted to avoid, and not just because he thought that treading on those tendrils would bring unwanted attention. They were also incredibly off-putting, and in a way that turned Elijah’s already-roiling stomach.

As soon as he’d made his way inside the hall, darkness enveloped him, completely obscuring the way back. He could still see, but everything was cast in a red hue that sent a shiver up his spine. When he glanced at the entrance to the tunnel, he only saw an opaque wall of black nothingness.

Shaking his head, he continued on. With each step, the corruption he’d quarantined in his Mind grew more insistent. More, he could feel it all around him, almost as if it as a swarm of maggots trying to burrow into his skin. It wasn’t pain – not exactly – but rather, something akin to an itch that no amount of scratching could ever hope to relieve. With that feeling of something crawling all over him, Elijah pushed on, shoving his discomfort into its own facet of his mind along the way.

That strategy was effective enough, but he couldn’t ignore the fact that he was running out of facets. What would happen when he had nowhere else to put the corruption? He shuddered when he considered where something like that might lead.

To distract himself from those thoughts, he studied his surroundings. The moist, red tendrils covering the walls and ceiling were so dense that he couldn’t even see the stonework underneath. However, he could feel it via One with Nature, and what’s more, he could sense the power flowing through those carvings of various flora. It made his own dolmens feel positively inert by comparison.

How much power did the Druid who’d created it possess? More than Elijah could comprehend, he was certain. So, how did it become so corrupted? It wasn’t just a corrupted connection he felt, the Call of nature that had somehow been twisted into something terrible. The taint he usually associated with the Voxx was there, as well. It was a triumvirate of wrongness – the tainted Call, the corruption of the Voxx, and a distinct disconnection from the World Tree – that had all blended together into something wholly different and incredibly troublesome.

Elijah wanted nothing to do with any of it.

And yet, he couldn’t escape it, either. With every step, it seeped into him, and all he could do was quarantine it so it couldn’t affect him.

Gradually, he pushed through, following the hall as it twisted and turned, descending ever deeper into the ground. At one point, it doubled back, passing through the main area – albeit much lower than he had been before – before disappearing into the other side.

Or polyps, he amended. Each bulbous growth was at least five feet tall and about half as wide, though they weren’t uniform in size. They were composed of more snaking vines, between which was a translucent membrane that only hinted at what was inside. But Elijah didn’t need to look to know what they contained.

Desiccated ka’alaki and ta’alaki, even thinner than the wraiths on the surface, floated inside each cocoon. Peering closer, Elijah saw two things that made him take a step back. First, there were hundreds of small tentacles growing out of their skin. That was disturbing enough, but it was the second detail that truly horrified him.

They were alive.

Barely, almost as if they were in deep hibernation, but they were definitely not dead. How long had they remained in those cocoons? Years, surely. Decades? Centuries? It could have been millennia for all he knew.

But Elijah couldn’t do anything for them, so he continued on, passing thousands of them as he covered one mile after another. With every progressive step, the nausea churning inside him intensified, though it was solely due to the corruption he’d tried to quarantine in his mind. Instead, it was a natural consequence of his disgust.

The tunnels continued to twist and turn, and after a while, Elijah began to wonder if he’d been mistaken when he’d initially felt the monsters. One with Nature had been practically smothered by the corruption, so he could only feel around twenty feet all around him. It was enough to make him wish the ability was even less efficacious.

Slowly, the malignant mass in his Mind spilled over into another facet, and Elijah knew he needed to do something about it before it completely overwhelmed him. So, even as he continued his trek, he harnessed his willpower to manipulate the thick ropes of ethera woven between the facets of his mind, squeezing the ones containing the corruption. The magnitude of his headache increased a hundredfold, but he pushed through it.

Pain, he could endure.

It was a skill he’d developed as a boxer, honed while fighting cancer, and embraced to its fullest extent during his experiences following the touch of the World Tree. Elijah might’ve been found lacking in a wide variety of areas, but regarding the endurance of pain, he felt he was an unsurpassed talent.

So, even as his head felt like it was on the verge of exploding, he continued to squeeze. Then, a single drop of corruption seeped out of the skin on his forehead. It was horrible, like the most foul-smelling drop of sweat to have ever existed, but Elijah was only subjected to its filth for a moment before it evaporated into the air.

With that, he felt slightly better.

Yet, it was only the beginning. The drop had seemed small, but purging that small amount had removed a sizable amount of the corruption in his mind. So, he did it again. This time was no easier than the last, but Elijah tackled the task with characteristic tenacity. The same was true of the next after that.

Seven more times, he purged himself of the filth. As he did so, his mind absorbed a little more – like trying to wring out a towel in the rain – but his persistence pushed the danger down the line. The absorption rate would eventually outpace his ability to purge it, but for now, he only needed to hold on long enough to complete his task.

That meant he was on a timer.

So, without further hesitation, he resumed his journey through the tunnels, stopping every mile or so to purge another drop. The intensity of headache increased with every effort until he couldn’t contain the tears flowing down his cheeks. In those moments, there was only pain, the purge, and his persistence.

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Nothing else mattered.

So, even though it took him by surprise when he found that he’d reached his destination, it likely should not have. He staggered into the chamber, and very nearly tumbled over the edge of a large sinkhole. Barely stopping himself before he plunged into the abyss, he stepped back and gaped at the sight before him.

The hole itself was jagged, like some giant had reached down with its sharp claws and dragged an entire fistful of earth away. The same rust-red tendrils blanketed the area, and in the center of that ragged hole was a pillar, upon which rested a single shard of glittering crystal.

But Elijah only spared a second to study what was obviously the Piece of the Broken Branch of the World Tree, because it was exceedingly obvious that he was not alone. Indeed, he’d finally found the many-legged creatures he’d sensed far above.

From a distance, he might have thought they were arachnid in nature.

Regrettably, Elijah was close enough to see how wrong that assessment was. They were wraiths, though unlike any he’d ever seen before. They had all the same pieces – four arms, spindly frames, and hollow eyes – but they also had a few extras. Sharp, segmented limbs of black chitin sprouted from their backs.

From their legs.

From their heads.

From every patch of exposed skin.

The rest of their bodies – save for their mouths – hung limp, as if they were already dead and had been hijacked by some parasitic organism. That would have been Elijah’s guess for what was going on if it weren’t for the screams. Hundreds of them, all piercing Elijah’s ears at the same time, pushed him over the edge. Suddenly, it felt as if his brain had been shattered into a thousand pieces, and he lost his grip on the corruption. The willpower he’d woven in and out of each facet of his mind dissipated into nothing, and suddenly, he felt the tidal wave of filth crashing into his Mind and infusing his Soul.

He pushed back.

Desperately, he tried to wrangle it back into submission, and after only a few moments, he managed to curtail its spread. However, he couldn’t do more than that because the spider-wraiths had followed their chorus of screeching screams with a charge across the web of rust-red tendrils. For a moment, all Elijah could hear was the squelch of their chitinous legs impacting the webs, but that quickly turned to a clacking sound as they left the pit behind and raced across solid ground, clearly intent on devouring him.

Elijah acted on instinct, turning to run. It only took a moment to see that a curtain of wet tendrils had sprung up behind him, though. The way out was blocked. The only way out the situation was through the spider-wraiths.

He turned back to the rushing monsters, seeing their limp bodies carried along by the sharp legs. Each one had hundreds of black appendages, and they rolled more than crawled. Elijah didn’t have time to consider just how creepy it was. Instead, he needed to act.

He used Flicker Step.

Disappearing into the shadows, he felt himself cross the distance between him and one of the monsters. When he emerged, he bit into the nearest creature and used Envenom. It screamed as the powerful affliction took hold, and less than an instant later, its body started to dissolve. Even as clumps of liquified flesh fell from the dying creature, Elijah pounced on another.

He sank his fangs into its limp shoulder, only breaking the skin enough to inject his venom before bounding away. He leaped from one monster to the next, repeating the process dozens of times in the space of a minute.

But his body felt amazing.

He felt stronger than ever, like he’d shed ten pounds and replaced it all with pure muscle. He ripped through the spiders, though not without taking a few wounds here and there. The creatures attacked via conventional methods, stabbing him with their sharp legs. However, they also fought like wraiths, trying to wrap their limbs around him so they could leech his ethera.

By that point, though, Elijah knew how to fight wraiths. He’d been doing it for months.

Still, the sheer number of monsters was a problem, and one it took every ounce of Elijah’s considerable experience to overcome. Complicating matters was the necessity of keeping the raging tide of corruption at bay. If he could have stopped, even for a moment, he might have wrangled it back into submission. But the wraith-monsters kept the pressure up, forcing him to spend most of his attention combatting the threat they represented.

Elijah never stopped moving. When he couldn’t bite the creatures, he used Venom Strike and let Insidious Malady do its job. Meanwhile, he was forced to shift into his caster form from time to time, healing himself and casting Swarm and Storm’s Fury from afar.

And like that, Elijah managed to endure until, at last, there were no more monsters left to fight.

He settled down, his breath coming in hissing pants as his tongue flicked back and forth. There were no more monsters. He’d killed them all.

But he’d paid the price.

The corruption had broken through, and once again, he found himself in the same situation that had nearly overwhelmed him in the very beginning. He fought against it, pushing back as hard as he could. But it was no use. He couldn’t get it all. So, Elijah made a choice.

A little wasn’t going to immediately kill him.

Holding as much of it in place as he could, Elijah focused on rebuilding the ropes of willpower that he’d woven through his mind. As he did so, bits of corruption raged throughout his body, and because he couldn’t spare even an ounce of attention for it, it tore through him unchecked. He could feel its taint. The contamination poisoning him down to his core.

It was manageable, though. He just needed to finish his task, and quickly enough that he wasn’t overwhelmed.

Slowly, he rebuilt the framework of his Mind, and the second he felt it solidify, he hunted the corruption within him. For that, the instincts that came with the Shape of the Predator – and its newly evolved form – were invaluable. It wasn’t like stalking a rabbit or some other prey animal, but there were enough parallels that he could feel the impact of the instinctual hunter.

One mote of corruption after another was corralled until, finally, Elijah managed to shove them all back where they belonged. Then, feeling like he was going to burst, he gradually twisted that malignant mass until the taint seeped from his very pores. One drop at a time, he purged his body.

That was when he realized just how potent the ethera in the area was. It exceeded even his cultivation cave back home, and he could feel that it would only grow thicker when he finally reached his goal at the center of the cavern.

He didn’t know what that meant, save that the shard that was his goal was incredibly powerful.

Once he’d purged what corruption he could, Elijah shifted into the Shape of the Sky, then flew across the expanse and to the pillar at the center of the web. At first, he wondered why he didn’t try that in the beginning, but then he flew through a nearly invisible web of tendrils and felt the corruption seep into him. There was no way he could have dealt with that while the monsters were around.

No - he’d made the right choice, at least in so much as there was one.

He landed gently, then shifted into his human form. On the pillar, the density of the ethera was so potent that he felt like he was swimming. It was also clean. Elijah stood there for a long moment, basking in it until he realized that his very presence had a corrupting effect. In only seconds, the purity of the ethera had become tainted – if only a little.

So, knowing his respite couldn’t last forever, Elijah saw no reason to prolong things. Instead, he reached out and grabbed the shard. It was like wrapping his fingers around molten steel, and he could feel his soul sizzling beneath the powerful current of ethera. His actual body was fine, but the shard was so strong that it could eventually burn the channels he’d so arduously carved to ash.

He quickly shoved the thing into his Ghoul-Hide Satchel, and the burning ceased.

“Well,” he muttered to himself. “That’s one piece gathered. Here’s to two more.”

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