Path of Dragons

You are weak.

The whispered words hung in the air, and for a long moment, Elijah didn’t respond. Then, his mind wrapped itself around the fact that he was not alone. Still standing on the pillar at the center of those slimey webs, he whipped around in a circle, searching for the speaker.

“Who’s there?” he called, his voice echoing in the cavernous chamber.

No one answered.

A shiver went up his spine, and his heartbeat quickened. But Elijah wouldn’t let his fear control him, so he shoved his mounting terror aside to focus on what mattered. He’d found one Piece of the Broken Branch of the World Tree, and now, he needed to collect three more.

He took a deep breath, and he nearly choked on the smell of so much corruption in the air. It wasn’t the odor of decay, though that was buried in there. There was the iron-rich aroma of blood, too. The musky smell of unwashed flesh as well – the moist tendrils comprising the webs and covering the tunnels beyond the chamber, no doubt. But there was something worse woven through it all. Something alien. Something that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up straight.

And that same odor, only in more ephemeral form, clung to his Mind. Even though it had been isolated, kept there by thick ropes of ethereal willpower he’d woven between the nine facets of his Mind, it had left a disgusting residue behind. He tried once again to purge it, but that film remained behind, mingling with something else more native to his body.

You revel in your weakness as if it is a strength, as if it gives your struggle meaning. It does not. Power is all that matters. Morality is a fiction. A lie to convince the strong that weakness is a virtue. You are not one of them. You know you are better. Superior. You deserve to embrace it. Anything less is a betrayal of your own potential.

This time, the whispered voice was stronger and more insistent, yet when Elijah once again searched the area, he found no speaker. He was alone.

“Who are you?” he asked, his voice trembling. It was one thing to fight against terrible monsters, but it was something else altogether to hear disembodied voices. He couldn’t do battle against something he could not sense.

Elijah clenched his fists, resolving to ignore the whispers. Even after he spent a few minutes searching the surrounding area – and his own Mind – for any sign of a threat, he found nothing. He was entirely alone, which made the voice all that more disturbing. However, there was nothing he could do except to push on.

He still had a task to complete, after all.

So, after reaffirming the cage of willpower he’d built around his mind, he shifted into the Shape of the Sky and flew across the chasm. The many-legged abominations that had guarded the pillar were all dead and rapidly rotting, so for a while, he was beset by some measure of peace.

Yet, the whispers continued, and with every step, they grew more frequent.

You could not save your sister because you were weak. You slaughtered an entire city because of your guilt. You killed hundreds. Thousands. All because you were too impotent to find another way.

As the voice enumerated Elijah’s misdeeds, scenes and images from his past flashed into his mind. The panther, dying because he didn’t have the power to heal it. The mercenaries that had invaded his island, dead because he couldn’t see any other way to repel their intrusion. If he’d had more power, perhaps he could have simply captured them.

Then came the bear. The people of Easton. All those who’d died when that guild leader – Elijah couldn’t even remember the man’s name – had sacrificed his people so he could stand toe-to-toe with Elijah. If he’d been a bit stronger, perhaps none of that would have been necessary.

Over and over, Elijah’s shortcomings were made abundantly clear until, after a couple of miles of tunnels, he shouted, “What do you want?!”

There was no answer.

Because the voice wasn’t real. It was all in his head. Elijah knew that, and yet, that did nothing to dilute the message. Perhaps it made it that much more potent. After all, if the thoughts were his, then he could trust that they were telling the truth.

He shook his head, pushing forward in the Shape of Venom. Cloaked in Guise of the Unseen, he passed the curious eggs with no small degree of caution, though he could tell that, for all that they maintained the barest spark of life, they were inert. Once, they might have posed some sort of danger, but upon closer inspection, Elijah suspected that they were just what they appeared to be – eggs that had never had the opportunity to hatch.

Was the whole place a hatchery? With their semi-reptilian nature, it wasn’t out of the question that the ka’alaki – or the ta’alaki – laid eggs, so it was definitely possible. Perhaps he would never know, though what he did recognize was that they’d been long since coopted by the corruption. Even if they did hatch, they would be just as monstrous as the wraith-creatures he’d recently defeated.

Contemplation of that possibility drowned out the whispers for some time, but eventually, the distraction faded, and once again, Elijah was confronted with his many failures. It would have become monotonous if it wasn’t for just how deeply those whispers cut into his mind.

And then, just as he reached the main chamber and went down the second tunnel, the voice changed.

You can become powerful enough to save those you love. A Broken Branch of the World Tree is a peerless treasure.

The whispers faded, but understanding blossomed in Elijah’s mind. The piece of crystal in his Ghoul-Hide Satchel was the key. He only had to consume it, and he would be rewarded with more power than he could comprehend. Elijah had no idea what form that strength might take – attributes or cultivation, maybe even a spell or something he’d never considered – but he knew in his heart that consuming that treasure would push him to an entirely different tier.

Before Elijah knew what he was doing, he reached into his satchel and retrieved the crystalline shard. He could feel the power wafting off of it, threatening to consume him.

Or to elevate him.

Even holding it was intoxicating. His ethera shifted, then flowed faster than it ever had, cycling through his core and sending power coursing through his limbs. When he looked at his status, he saw that his attributes had jumped by almost twenty points. The boost was temporary – he knew that – but that little taste prompted him to wonder if it could become permanent.

He hadn’t felt such an influx of power since he’d attained the Dragon Core.

Power the likes of which you have never seen, at your fingertips and waiting to be consumed. You can save them. You can be the patron Earth deserves. The hero it needs. You can have everything you have ever wanted. You only need to take it.

Elijah blinked.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Power. Heroism. Those weren’t the things he wanted. Certainly, he wanted to protect his planet, to save people if he could. He wasn’t a monster. But all the rest? That just felt…wrong.

That was when he sensed the bits and pieces of corruption clinging to the framework of his Soul. It was barely noticeable, like a film of dust sticking to a mirror, and yet, it had begun to seep into him in a way he couldn’t have anticipated. He’d thought it was contained, that he had it under control.

But he hadn’t.

Never was that clearer than when he looked at his arm and saw deep bruising traveling from his fingertips and up his arm, following the branching pattern of his Soul. Were those bruises real? Or were they simply manifestations of the struggle inside?

Elijah had no answers to that question, but as he made his way through the tunnels, encountering much of the same, he latched onto two things. First, he had no intention of giving in to the whispers. Not only was he suspicious of any form of easy power – decades of stories about how that tended to work out poorly certainly influenced him – but the whispers’ insistence on consumption felt wrong on the most basic of levels. And given his corrupted surroundings, it didn’t take a leap of logic to make the connection between those whispers and the denizens of the Abyss.

Once, Nerthus had warned him of the Devourers, a label for people who took and took from the environment, consuming everything that could offer them even a modicum of power. At the time, Elijah had likened them to greedy corporations who’d stripped Earth of her natural resources. However, now that he’d felt the corruption seeping into him, he knew it went far deeper than that. There was a hunger associated with that corruption, a need that he knew could never be met. Even if he achieved god-like power, it would still drive him to seek more. To consume until there was nothing left of the multi-verse.

It was the influence of the Ravener.

He could feel it – or her, if the stories he’d heard were to be believed – looming over the corruption, lacing it with her will.

Elijah steeled himself against her corruptive influence, forcing himself to move on. For the next mile, nothing changed. The eggs continued to populate the tunnels, but they remained entirely inert. Along the way, the corruption within him ebbed and flowed according to his efforts. If he leveraged the entirety of his Mind toward combating it, he could purge or contain it. However, anything less than the full weight of his willpower was insufficient to keep it at bay. As a result, he was forced into a stop-and-start cadence characterized by long pauses meant to corral the taint threatening to overwhelm him.

And all the while, the whispers – ever more insistent – continued, berating him for his weakness while offering him the solution to all of his problems. Elijah did his best to ignore it. He even tried arguing with that insidious voice, but to no avail. He could only endure it.

On and on he went, with every second feeling like an eternity until, at last, something changed.

A beast whose species he recognized hung from the ceiling. Soft, green fur. Long, sloth-like arms tipped with wicked claws meant for climbing trees. Sharp tusks jutting from its flat face. It was the same type of creature he’d recently saved from a hunter’s arrow.

Yet, it had clearly been corrupted, as evidenced by the waving black tentacles jutting from its back and the dead eyes sunk deep into its skull. Unlike the corrupted wraiths, it wasn’t limp-limbed, though. Instead, it was in full control of its body. More, power wafted off the thing, misting into black-laced ethera that surrounded it in a cloud of corruption.

Elijah stopped, looking up at the thing hanging from the ceiling, and his heart bled for the poor creature. How long had it been corrupted? Was it still in there, somewhere, screaming for release? Elijah knew he couldn’t cure it. He’d tried that with Artemis what felt like a lifetime ago. But his healing spells were entirely ineffective against the corruption that had woven into the cat, and he knew the same would be true if he tried to fix the sloth-like creature hanging above him.

If he’d had a Rejuvenation Potion, as he had before, perhaps things would be different. But he didn’t, so he knew he only had two choices available to him. Either he could put the beast out of its misery, or he could simply sneak past it. In his state, still fighting against the corruption attempting to rampage through his body, Elijah chose the latter.

He crept forward, careful not to even graze the red tendrils scattered across the floor. His progress was slow, and more than once, he was forced to take advantage of his superhuman coordination to leap from one open spot to the next. All the while, the corrupted beast loomed over him, the waving tentacles sprouting from its back giving the impression that they were searching, that they were always on the lookout for anything to consume.

A shiver ran up Elijah’s spine as he deftly maneuvered across the tunnel. And then, just when he thought he was going to make it through undetected, the entire situation changed. Suddenly, the tendrils on the floor and walls came alive, moving with palpable hunger. The sound of wet squelching filled the air as Elijah’s blood went cold.

Mid-leap, he couldn’t avoid the writhing tentacles.

He alighted to the floor, his foot barely scraping against a mass of tentacles. But he knew it would be enough to spell his doom. Abandoning any attempts at remaining undetected, he dashed away, and it was just in time to avoid the descending claw of the corrupted sloth-monster.

It roared, the sound warbling with throat-bound mucus as it dropped to the floor and launched itself at Elijah. He knew he couldn’t stand up to the creature. He’d felt the power of the one he’d healed, and while he could have beaten it, the one chasing him was at least twice as large, with power that far exceeded the level its size suggested. Whether it was some ethereal instinct or just common sense, Elijah knew that if he fought that creature, he would die.

So, he ran, shifting into the Shape of the Sky and flapping his powerful wings in an effort to escape. He sped down the tunnel, banking at every turn. Behind him, the massive monster pursued, slamming into walls anytime it tried to turn. Still, the fact that it kept up despite those delays was enough to reaffirm Elijah’s decision to flee.

As he did, all of the progress he’d made with the corruption was torn asunder, and it rampaged through his mind and body unchecked. Elijah tried to corral it, but with most of his mind focused on staying ahead of the monster, he slowly lost ground. But he couldn’t let that distract him. Even a second’s hesitation would see him caught by the monster, and while he didn’t intend give in – to the beast or the corruption flowing through him – he knew how that would end.

On he went, flying more precisely than he’d ever managed before. Along the way, he sped past dozens of other monsters. Some were more sloth-beasts like the one still in hot pursuit, but Elijah recognized many other creatures from his travels through the jungles. They’d all been corrupted, sprouting waving tentacles, the sight of which turned Elijah’s stomach.

But none of them were fast enough to catch him.

Then, suddenly, after miles and miles, the tunnel opened into yet another chamber. This one was even larger than the last, and it sported dozens of pillars, the tops of which were at the same level as the floor. They were evenly spaced, with various runes etched onto the top surfaces. Elijah ignored them, because he was far more concerned with what lay at the bottom of the chamber.

Hundreds of yards below, a mass of corruption far more powerful than anything he’d ever felt, writhed. It was composed of those same rust-red tentacles, but Elijah also saw gaping eyes looking up at him with undisguised hatred. The sheer weight of that gaze interrupted the rhythm of Elijah’s wings, and he nearly crashed into one of the pillars.

He righted himself just in time to avoid that fate, though he did clip the top of the column, sending him skidding across it. That delay allowed the sloth-monster to catch up to him. The creature sailed through the air, its unnatural tentacles waving hungrily as its claws stretched toward Elijah. He couldn’t escape.

So he resolved to take another route.

Initiating the shift into the lamellar ape, Elijah threw himself at the beast. The second the transformation completed, he used a skill he’d often neglected:

Bestial Charge

Charge an opponent. Shielded from harm while charging. Maximum distance based on Strength. Current: 152 feet. Shield efficacy based on Constitution. Only usable while under the influence of Shape of the Guardian.

He hit the beast like a runaway train. It railed against him, ineffectually scraping against the ethereal shield. Mid-air, Elijah threw the entirety of his considerable Strength behind a simple punch. It hit the monster’s shoulder like a hammer, and because its wicked claws could find no purchase on the shield of Bestial Charge, it was knocked away.

It hit one of the pillars, shaking it to its very foundations. Stunned, the sloth-beast fell, and it only took a moment before the tentacles down below – ever hungry – latched onto it.

The beast was consumed a second later.

Elijah hit the wall, but unlike the monster, he was ready for it. He dug his own claws into the surface, then launched himself away. As he did so, the rest of the beasts he’d passed along the way reached the chamber. They let out a collective roar, and Elijah landed on one of the pillars, skidding to a stop only a few inches from the edge.

It was just in time to allow himself to brace for the oncoming charge.

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