Path of Dragons

“Uh…should we loot?” asked Ron.

“No,” Elijah said, still staring at Sadie. The woman had just displayed a terrifying amount of power, effectively forcing a powerful enemy to surrender without a fight. That, among other things, needed to be addressed. “We need some answers first. I’m not going another step until I’m satisfied with the explanation of what just happened.”

“But –”

“He’s right,” Dat said. His gaze hadn’t wavered from his longtime companion, either. “We need to know what’s going on.”

With that, they approached Sadie, who hadn’t moved from her position standing over the ka’alaki woman she had just beheaded. By all rights, it should not have been possible. Elijah had felt the elder assassin’s power, and he knew that it should have taken dozens of attacks just to get through her neck, much less sever her head.

“I know what you want,” Sadie said without looking back. Her sword had stopped glowing, and its tip rested on the floor. When the Crusader looked back at them, her cheeks were wet with tears. “I just don’t know if I can give it to you.”

“Just tell us what you did,” Dat coaxed.

“I…I don’t know. I was looking at her, and I saw so much…so much sin. Then, something came over me. It was like I had finally found my purpose. I knew exactly what to do,” she said. “It was Confession. I poured so much ethera into it. I used Faith, too. It didn’t just make her tell the truth. It made her confront her own sins. She already regretted it, I think. She knew she had gone astray. She was guilty and…and it was too much. So, when I offered to end it for her, she accepted it.”

Sadie looked away. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she muttered only a second before bending double and retching. Black sludge erupted from her mouth, then puddled at her feet. When Elijah looked at it, he felt pure evil.

All power had a cost. Most of the time, it was counted in ethera or stamina, but Faith seemed to muddle some of those lines. And clearly, part of the price of Sadie’s actions was that she’d been forced to take on the sin of that ancient assassin. And given the ka’alaki’s confession, there was quite a lot of evil in there.

However, seeing what had happened, Elijah couldn’t help but draw parallels between her fate and what Sadie could potentially do to him. He thought he’d made peace with the guilt over what he’d done in Easton, but the weight of so much death still pressed down on him at times. What if Sadie caught him at a weak moment? Would he then beg her to put him out of his misery?

What of the others? None of the hands in their party were clean. They’d all killed. They’d even tortured a woman into becoming a monster. Would Sadie decide to absolve them in the same way she’d relieved the ka’alaki assassin of her guilt?

Those were all good questions, but in the end, it all boiled down to whether or not Elijah trusted Sadie. If he did, then none of them needed to worry about her. If not, then he knew what needed to be done.

Because if he didn’t trust her, she was far too dangerous to let live.

“I know what you’re all thinking,” Sadie said. “Because I would be thinking the same thing.” She shook her head, adding in a quieter voice, “I am thinking it. I’m too dangerous.”

“You’re not –”

She cut Dat off, saying, “You know I’m right, Dat. There are only two choices. You kill me now before I have a chance to turn my powers onto you. Or I go my own way. That’s the only way any of you will be safe.”

“I go where you go,” Dat stated firmly.

“And what happens when I decide you’re guilty, too? What if I decide to absolve you of your sins?”

“You won’t.”

“You don’t know that, Dat. You can’t. Because I don’t. When I started talking, I had no idea what I was going to do. It was like my instincts took over,” she said. “I could’ve fought them. I think. But it wouldn’t have been easy, and in my heart, I didn’t really want to, either. Not with her. She deserved it. I think she wanted it,” Sadie said.

In Elijah’s experience, there were two distinct brands of evil. There were those people who were simply born wrong. They possessed no conscience. They felt no distinction between right and wrong. They simply did what they wanted to do. Sometimes, that manifested in small evils like theft or dishonesty, but other times, it took the form of monstrous actions.

There was an aura about being in the presence of someone like that. They could usually hide it, but the moment they took off their masks, it was obvious that something about them was just wrong. Elijah had seen documentaries about serial killers who’d been caught and imprisoned, and after that, he couldn’t deny the existence of true evil of the most primal sort. He didn’t see how anyone could.

But the other form of evil was situational. The result of a steady decline where each decision resulted in moving further away from morality. Until one day, those people looked around and saw what they’d become. By then, it was too late to turn back. Too late to right the wrongs. A lot of politicians were like that. They began their journeys with the best intentions, but one compromise after another – all in the name of the greater good – would lead them down a dark road of corruption. Before it was all said and done, they were even more dangerous than the other sort.

More troubling, too, because it was a path that anyone could follow.

Elijah wasn’t sure which version of evil the assassin had been, but in the end, it didn’t matter. She’d gone too far, and the only way out was to give up. Sadie’s ability gave her the nudge she needed to do just that.

“Is it mind control?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No. It just…it just forces honesty,” she said. “With oneself as much as with other people. She couldn’t stand up to her own scrutiny, and so, she surrendered. There’s no way I could have killed her otherwise. Even weakened as she was…”

“Do you really think we should fear you?” Elijah asked.

“I…I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Then there’s only one answer,” he stated, stepping forward. When he put his hand on her armored shoulder, she flinched slightly.

“Just do it,” she said.

“What? I’m not going to kill you, Sadie,” he said. “Nobody here is. The problem is your ability, right? It’s always affecting you. The way I see it, we need to deal with the source of your issues. So, that’s what we’re going to do.”

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“How?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Cultivation,” he said. “Specifically, of your Mind. If we get you to Quartz, you’ll be able to quarantine Sense of Sin in its own facet. I do it with my domain and One with Nature. And pain. It makes it infinitely easier to ignore them.”

“And how am I supposed to do that? We don’t have time to –”

“We’ll take the time, Sadie. I can fly us to the cultivation cave in a few hours. After that, I can guide you through the process,” Elijah offered.

“If we’re attacked in the air?”

“You can protect me.”

“You’re putting a lot of trust in someone who just –”

“Is there a reason I shouldn’t trust you?” he asked. “You’re not planning on absolving me of my sins, are you? If you are, I should tell you that I’m completely at peace with the things I’ve done. I regret some of them, but I’m not really one to dwell on the past.”

That wasn’t entirely true. More often than Elijah liked, he found himself ruminating on his previous actions. It would take a true monster to be able to completely move on from some of the things he’d done. Still, he felt that, because of his superior cultivation, he expected that he would fare better than most against Sadie’s influence. Or maybe it was due to the dragon within him, which seemed to look upon Sadie’s abilities with no small degree of dismissiveness. Elijah trusted himself far more than he trusted Sadie’s restraint, but she didn’t need to know that.

“I…”

Dat said, “You need to do it, because we’re not going to kill or abandon you. You’re family.”

Ron added, “I think this is the only way, and if Elijah thinks it’ll work, I believe it too.”

All eyes turned to Kurik, who seemed surprised at the scrutiny. “What?” he asked. “I ain’t part of this conversation. From the beginning, I’ve just been along for the ride.”

“Bro. You’re part of the group.”

Kurik groaned. “Fine. Go with the Druid. He’ll set you straight.”

After everyone had voiced their part, Sadie let out a long sigh that contained no small amount of relief. “Okay. But first, we need to collect our reward, loot what there is to loot, then get out of this challenge.”

“We should probably get to the next challenge so that the others can start scouting things out,” Elijah said.

“No. I mean, the others can start the journey, but I don’t think I can relax until I take care of this,” she said. “I don’t trust myself, Elijah.”

“If you say so,” he agreed, realizing that the situation was far more dire than he’d first suspected. Was she so close to losing control that she couldn’t wait a week or two before fixing the issue? It seemed so.

Once they’d agreed to a plan that would see Dat, Ron, and Kurik heading toward the challenge of the Etherum, everyone started scouring the room for treasures. However, aside from the tiny ball of light and the reward for defeating the challenge, there was nothing to take. Even the ka’alaki assassin’s robes of shadow had dissipated the moment she’d lost her head.

The Umbral Shroud turned out to be a cloak that looked as if it had been made of shifting shadows. Given that Elijah already had a cloak – with which he was very happy – he didn’t see any reason to disagree when everyone else decided that it should go to Dat. After insisting that someone else should get it, the Witch Hunter finally agreed to take it. Despite his protests, he was obviously happy with the turn of events, as indicated by his wide grin.

“Looks cool, right?” he asked, turning back and forth. “Thirty points to Dexterity, too. And I can see in the dark now.”

“No active abilities?” Elijah asked.

Dat shook his head. “No. Not that I’m complaining, bro. This is awesome.”

“You’re just happy because it matches your outfit,” Ron pointed out.

Dat neither confirmed nor denied that assertion, though Elijah thought that the lack of a denial was confirmation all its own. Regardless, once that was taken care of, they had nothing else keeping them in the Vale of Whispers, and none of them wanted to delay their departure.

With Dat leading the way, they had no issues navigating the forest on their way out, which allowed Elijah to check his own notifications. Aside from the system’s declaration that they’d defeated another challenge, he also saw that he’d finally reached level one-ten. That came with the normal increase in his attributes, which were displayed in his updated status:

Name	Elijah Hart
Level	110
Archetype	Druid
Class	Animist
Specialization	Connection
Alignment	N/A
Strength	192 (126)
Dexterity	180 (114)
Constitution	197 (137)
Ethera	174(136)
Regeneration	205 (127)
Attunement	Nature
Cultivation Stage: Adept
Body	Core	Mind	Soul
Iron	Whelp	Jade	Novice

While Elijah was happy to see the state of his ever-rising attributes, he was far more interested in the next notification:

Congratulations! You have satisfied the requirements for the evolution of the essence line of spells. Please choose a path:
Wild Infusion	Savage Spirit	Feline Agility
Combine all of the essence line of spells into a single augmentation that provides an equal benefit to all attributes.	Combine all of the essence line of spells into a single augmentation that provides a benefit to all attributes, but with an emphasis on Strength.	Combine all of the essence line of spells into a single augmentation that provides a benefit to all attributes, but with an emphasis on Dexterity.

Elijah stumbled over a fallen tree.

“You okay, bro?” asked Dat.

“Uh. Sure. Just…distracted,” Elijah said in a vast understatement. He had hoped for a spell evolution, but he hadn’t expected to evolve multiple spells at once. However, it seemed he had a big choice ahead of him, and he didn’t see a lot of specific information on how to do that.

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