Path of Dragons

Elijah stumbled along, his fingers trailing across the wall as a thousand accusatory voices screamed in his mind. He no longer paid attention to their visual representations, instead simply trudging through them like the figments of his imagination they were. However, he couldn’t ignore the steady spikes of agony stabbing into his brain.

He passed a familiar-looking egg containing a particularly large ka’alaki, realizing that he’d seen it before. He had been wandering in circles for hours, too distracted by the pain, the voices, and most of all, the corruption, to think straight. But on and on he went, too afraid to stop, to take even the slightest pause. If he did, he questioned whether or not he could force himself to resume his journey.

“Selfish!”

“Murderer!”

“Weakling!”

Over and over, the shades of his slain enemies accused him. At first, it had been easy to ignore, but the longer they remained, the more impactful their words had become. Guilt was not a new emotion for Elijah. He was well-acquainted with regret. But what he felt as he slowly stumbled through one corridor after the next was uniquely powerful, and to the point where he could never hope to brush it aside.

Endure, he told himself. That was his only hope of survival. So, that was what he did. If the way had been any more complex than it was, there would have been no chance of him making it. If he’d been attacked, he would have succumbed. But fortunately, the path remained clear, and Elijah sank within himself, deeper and more fully than even the most intense bout of meditation.

That’s when he saw it.

The corruption had suffused every part of his Mind. On the surface, his efforts at containing or purging it had worked, but the deeper he looked, the more he saw how fully it had rooted itself to the essence of who he was. Like a malignant tumor of filth, it clung to him, spreading with a ravenous need to destroy his very identity. And with every passing moment – with every step he took – it expanded a little more. Greedily. Hungrily. It meant to consume him entirely.

The moment Elijah recognized the danger, something inside of him awoke. It was pure in a way Elijah had never seen, and at first, he thought it was his spirit. The ephemeral core of his being that would persist long after his death, that would respond to the Call and join the collective that Nerthus referred to as the Mother.

But that wasn’t all it was.

His identity was in there, too. The wholly human parts of him that refused to give in, even when every objective truth told him that he stood no chance of survival. The parts that connected with others, the pieces of him capable of love and compassion and hate and anger. His hopes and dreams, fears and nightmares. His strengths. His weaknesses. And everything in between.

It was him, laid bare in a way that no level of introspection could ever achieve. Nor could he fully comprehend it – not in any way that mattered. But one thing he recognized straightaway was that it was the source of his willpower, and it connected to those tendrils he’d wrapped around his Mind.

Finally, he could feel something bestial, lurking in the dark, waiting to pounce at any moment. It, too, was part of his spirit, though only connected by the thinnest of threads. But more than anything, he saw that it roiled with unspent rage. It wanted to be let loose, to be wild, to ignore everything but the most basic of desires.

Three sides.

The corruption.

His human spirit.

And the beast within.

One did not belong, and yet, it was far too strong for either of the other parts to overcome, and with every passing moment, the corruption grew stronger. Somewhere deep down, Elijah knew that if he didn’t do something soon, it would overwhelm him. It would consume him, just as it had everything else within the expansive circle.

So, Elijah gave in. Not to the taint. Instead, he embraced his human and bestial sides in equal measure, drawing strength from both as he pushed back against the corruption. It worked, but only for a moment before the taint shoved back, spreading with even more rapidity. He let out a roar – both in the physical world as well as in his own Mind – as he struggled against it, and yet, it was not enough.

He couldn’t contain it.

Nor could he push it away.

And even with all his power, he knew he could only endure for a few more moments. For a few seconds, he shoved with every ounce of willpower he possessed. The ropes he’d used to corral the corruption as well as connect the facets of his mind flared brighter and more powerful than ever before. But it was not enough. Elijah could see them fraying with every passing moment.

Then, instincts flowed through his bestial side, suffusing his Mind in a way he only felt when giving into the rage that came with the Shape of the Guardian. And those instincts told him that if he could neither contain nor expel the corruption, there was only one other option.

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He needed to destroy it.

Elijah surrendered to the beast inside of him, letting it take control as it lashed out at the corruption. The entire thing was in Elijah’s mind, but still, he got the impression of a furious, yet physically outmatched animal defending his territory. It still wasn’t enough, though. After enduring that initial surge of aggression, the corruption shoved back, surrounding the beast and attempting to overwhelm it.

Gritting his teeth, Elijah refused to let that happen. With the piece of his human awareness that managed to persist alongside the bestial wrath, he latched onto his spirit and created yet another tendril of willpower, connecting the two. A wave of power swept through the beast, giving it a brief swell of strength that allowed it to rip through a little more of the corruption.

That spurred Elijah’s efforts forward, and he shoved as much of his spirit as possible through that narrow space. And for a moment, it worked, but after only a second, he recognized that it wasn’t enough. So, he built more connections. One after another until the ephemeral membrane between the two sides of his Mind shared so many bonds that they very nearly merged.

Despite the massive influx of power, the best he could manage was a stalemate.

Elijah kept going, his bestial side warring against the corruption even as he funneled power from his human spirit into the fight. He screamed. His bestial side roared. And still, it was not enough.

And it never would be, he realized. Even as the two sides grew so close that they began to intermingle, Elijah knew that he was destined to fail. He could not win. The corruption was too powerful. It had been allowed to run rampant for too long. And it was far too ravenous to be denied.

Except there was another part of Elijah that he had only barely begun to understand. As he’d recently been told by Kirlissa – in the form of Kurik – he was a dragon, too. And the dragon inside him, straining against the constraints of his Core, wanted to fight, too.

He let it loose, just as he had the beast within.

Until that moment, Elijah hadn’t really considered himself a dragon. Despite what his patron had said, he was still just a human who’d gotten lucky enough to have been granted a powerful Core. But the moment he freed the dragon inside of him, he realized that it, just like the beast, was a part of who he was. Of who he would become.

It merged with the other two parts of him – his human spirit and the beast within – seamlessly, using them both to launch itself forward with unmatched fury. And miraculously, the corruption retreated. That wasn’t enough for the dragon, who threw itself into the fight, ripping and tearing with fang and claw. The taint could not stand up to it. And with Elijah pushing to contain it, there was nowhere for it to flee.

It was a massacre.

The corruption that had, until that moment, seemed so powerful, fell with barely a whimper, and soon enough, the dragon stood victorious in his Mind. Yet, Elijah knew that he wasn’t finished. The entire battle had given him more insight than he could easily process, but one fact stood above all, clear and obvious.

There weren’t really three parts of him. Not really. The divisions he saw were fabrications. The walls between them had been manufactured. And if he wanted to step forward, he needed to change the paradigm.

He snatched at the thick ethera all around him. It was denser than any he’d ever felt, and after the battle, it was perfectly clean. The corruption had been defeated, inside and all around him. It would return, and the rest of the area was still infected. But for now, Elijah drank in the thick ethera, funneling it into his Mind.

He rebuilt the frayed tendrils of will and ethera he’d used to connect each facet of his Mind, though he didn’t stop there. Instead, he wove them into all three sides of his identity – the dragon, the beast, and the human – and when he was done, he tightened the ropes. At first, the three sides didn’t want to move. They wanted to remain separate. Yet, Elijah persisted, leveraging every ounce of willpower he could muster towards the task.

Finally, they shifted.

One ethereal inch after another, they came closer together. As he pulled, Elijah built hundreds – then thousands – of other connections, but the burden didn’t ease. If anything, it grew more difficult with every passing moment. Still, he pushed.

It wasn’t the same sort of battle that he’d fought against the corruption, but it was no less difficult for the differences. And it required every ounce of power within Elijah to move those three sides ever closer until, at last, they started to overlap.

That was when the difficulty increased exponentially. Elijah let out a pained gasp, but he barely maintained his grip. In a lot of ways, he felt like Atlas, carrying the world on his shoulders. He knew he couldn’t endure. He knew he was on the verge of failure. And yet, he kept going. Whether it was a simple force of will or he tapped into a hidden well of strength, Elijah had no idea. And with the whole of his Mind focused on the task at hand, he didn’t have the mental capacity to figure it out.

For a subjective eternity, Elijah pushed. He shoved. He dragged with all his might. And slowly – ever so slowly – the three pieces of his identity began to mingle. At first, they tried to remain separate, like oil and water. However, the more pressure he applied, the more he saw them merge together.

Unsurprisingly, the dragon was the most resistant, but eventually, Elijah wrestled it – or himself, as it were – into submission. He might be a dragon – but he wasn’t just a dragon. He was a human. And, though he’d tried to deny it, he was a beast as well. He was all of them. And together, they became something else. Something stronger than any of them alone.

Finally, everything snapped together, and a wave of ethera pulsed through his mind. Then, it exploded outward, sending a fresh spike of pain through him. It faded after an instant, and at last, Elijah felt peace.

After a few moments, he realized that he’d collapsed to all fours. His chest heaved as he tried to catch his breath, and his muscles felt simultaneously energized and weak, like he was riding a wave of adrenaline after winning a twelve-round boxing match. He opened his eyes to see a stone floor covered in black gunk.

There was a notification begging for his attention, but he didn’t have the opportunity to read it before he heard a voice, and this one wasn’t confined to his mind.

“Impressive. I did not think you would survive the corruption,” it said. Elijah looked up to see a ta’alaki looming over him. The snake-tailed native of the excised planet gazed down at him, their eyes carrying a note of pity. They turned away and let out a hissing sigh. “I wish I had been strong enough to say the same.”

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