Path of Dragons-Chapter 17Book 9: : Wonder

A trail of bubbles followed Elijah as he swam through the frigid ocean waters. Up above was an enormous ice floe that covered as far as he could see in every direction. If he drew close enough to the surface, he could feel the leopard seals, polar bears, and walruses that made their homes in the area. Every now and then, he’d feel various birds as well.

How Morin’s ships managed to break through the ice without sinking was a mystery to him, though he assumed the answer was the same as always – magic. Likely, their captains were equipped with skills to mitigate the damage to their ships’ hulls. Or maybe the ships themselves had been infused with enough ethera to make them virtually indestructible.

Either way, Elijah had long since left worry for those issues behind.

Instead, he was focused on what he felt beneath the surface. All around him was a dense collection of life, ranging from whales to narwhals and thousands of species of cold water fish. Just like everywhere else, much of the wildlife had experienced some degree of mutation caused by exposure to the World Tree. In most cases, they were simply larger than they would ever have been before Earth had changed, but in a few, they’d developed other characteristics that set them apart.

Like the thirty-foot-long pike with teeth that looked like they belonged in a shark’s mouth. Or the seals that could swim at speeds of over a hundred miles an hour.

But the worst were the orcas.

Even before the world had changed, they had been vicious predators that were far too smart for their own good. But Elijah saw more than a few pods that displayed frightening levels of intelligence that sent a chill up his shell. If he’d been anyone else, he might have been frightened.

No – he was frightened. Even if he knew they were far below him in terms of levels, they were large and fast and smart. It wasn’t difficult to imagine all the ways they could make his life difficult.

Thankfully, they seemed entirely disinterested in him. Part of that was probably because they recognized his superiority, both in terms of size and levels, but he knew that his attunement was doing some seriously heavy lifting as well.

Elijah also saw the whales that made the area such a good hunting ground for Morin’s fleet. They resembled blue whales, and he suspected that was what they’d been before the world had changed. None were particularly high level, but with their immense size – more than a hundred feet long – they could provide a ridiculous amount of meat and oil.

And they were so common that he didn’t think there was any chance they’d be hunted to extinction, which was a significant worry he’d carried in the back of his mind. After all, that was very nearly what had happened to blue whales in the past, and he wouldn’t stand for a return to those days.

In any case, they seemed safe for now. He would keep an eye on things going forward.

He dove, feeling the cold even more keenly with every foot of descent. Not for the first time, he wished he’d worn his Cloak of the Iron Bear. The Mantle of the Chimera was a great piece of gear – better than his old cloak in every way but one. But that one trait had saved him so much discomfort over the years.

Fortunately, he wasn’t going to die to simple exposure, especially in the Shape of the Sea. With his incredibly high constitution, it would take truly insane temperatures to really hurt him. Magical frost would work, but with how thin the ethera was in the area, he didn’t think that was very likely.

But he definitely didn’t want to get pulled into another Primal Realm, so he kept his senses alert for anything out of the ordinary.

After only a few minutes of swimming around a few hundred feet below the surface, he felt a subtle shift in the local ethera. It wasn’t a huge surge in density, but it was definitely noticeable. So, he swam in that direction, and he wasn’t surprised to find that it continued strengthen.

Then, thousands of feet below the surface, he found the seafloor. He’d expected a barren expanse of silt and rock, but instead, he found something entirely different. Ice grew from the ground, wrapping around itself in dizzyingly complex shapes. That deep, he normally wouldn’t have been able to see at all due to the lack of light, but the ice gave off a subtle blue glow that cast everything in eerie light.

He descended, but he quickly found that the ice structures were far larger than his first impression suggested. They were hundreds of feet tall, and they extended far into the distance.

He flicked his flippers, sending his massive form gliding forward through the water. He remained only a few scant inches above the tallest structure. Far below, he felt a wide variety of crustaceans. Each of them were clearly attuned to cold, and their bodies had been affected accordingly. Giant lobsters with shells of ice, fish with crystalline fins, and octopi made entirely of ice were only a few examples.

It was like he’d inadvertently stepped into a new world.

And he couldn’t look away.

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Often, people talked about reaching for the stars and seeing the heavens. However, for Elijah, there was enough wonder in the natural world that he didn’t need to look skyward. All he had to do was go for a swim. Or a walk. Maybe a short flight. And he would see something absolutely astonishing.

For the longest time, Elijah just skimmed over the top of the forest of icicles as he followed the sense of increasing ethera.

He felt the creature before he saw it.

A dense blob of ethera – rhythmically pulsing amidst the forest of ice – suggested it was well into ascendency. Elijah swam toward it, curious. Then, he saw the creature, and if he could have in the Shape of the Sea form, he would have grinned. 𝘙𝘈Ŋò฿Ε§

It was a crab, its shell at least as broad as Elijah was long, and with enormous claws that looked like they could cut a building in half. The crustacean was entirely white, with ice growing from its shell and encasing its claws.

Beneath it was a potent source of ethera that radiated a sense of cold that cut right through Elijah’s constitution. He glided closer, and the crab backed away, snapping its claws threateningly. Little bits of ice dislodged with the violent movements.

Elijah didn’t move closer.

Instead, he remained in place as he studied the thing. That’s when he felt it. The crab was injured, its shell cracked with clear blood leaking with every beat of its heart.

After casting Wild Resurgence, he didn’t hesitate to shift back into his human form. The second he did, the cold and pressure closed in on him. He didn’t let that stop him. Instead, he cast his other heals before drifting closer to the crab and using Nature’s Bloom. Because he wasn’t sure how much ethera he might need, he tapped into the False Grove trait of his Antlers of the Wild Revenant to fuel his spells.

The crab initially tensed, but as the healing latched onto it, it relaxed. He swam down to its shell and laid his hand on the white chitin before continuing his task. Over and over, he cast his suite of spells until the wound began to heal. He watched as it slowly knitted itself back together.

He’d long since exhausted the False Grove, so he switched to his own pool of ethera to both heal the crab and combat the effects of the cold and pressure on his own body. In the past, he might not have managed it. Thousands of feet below the surface, the pressure was intense.

It was a subtle feat in and of itself. If he’d been a normal human, so much pressure would have killed him nearly instantly. But now, he just needed a bit of healing to endure it.

Well – a lot of healing.

Without that, he’d have died too, and pretty quickly.

Regardless, he kept himself alive, and he managed to heal the giant crab. From its size and shape, Elijah thought it bore a striking similarity to king crab. However, because of its color and immense size – not to mention the feeling Elijah got from it – it was obviously a guardian.

And below it was its treasure.

Elijah was extremely curious about it, but he had no intention of disturbing the creature further. It had a right to its treasure, after all.

Eventually, the crab settled down, recognizing him as an ally. It even let out a few streams of bubbles that Elijah interpreted as a contented sigh. Crabs typically weren’t the most intelligent creatures, but with this one being a guardian – plus magical – he couldn’t say for sure just how smart it was. For all he knew, it was more intelligent than he was.

In any case, they both enjoyed their truce.

Of course, Elijah did so while shunting the cycle of crushing pain and healing into one facet of his mind. So, some of the pleasure that came with making a new friend was lost on him.

It was also fairly distracting, so he didn’t even see the attack coming.

Not from the crab. Rather, something huge suddenly loomed over him. It was at least half-again as large as the blue whales he’d seen, so he didn’t even need to cast his senses out to know it was the leviathan that had been attacking Morin’s ships.

The attack itself was a nearly invisible blade of water that came at him faster than he could blink. It cut through the water, aiming to bisect him. However, his new crab friend raised a hasty claw, blocking it with a surge of ice-tinged ethera. The icicles covering the appendage went flying in a shower of bubbles, and the shockwave crushed the ice sculptures for hundreds of feet in every direction.

For his part, Elijah went tumbling backward on a wave of water. Before he went more than a few feet, he initiated a transformation into Shape of the Sea. With it came relief from the pressure and cold, though he was far more interested in its outsized attributes and maneuverability in water.

The second he completed the change, Elijah kicked his flippers, propelling him toward the hulking creature in the distance.

And it was enormous.

Larger even than One with Nature suggested. Two-hundred feet long and incredibly bulky, it looked like someone had mashed a shark and a whale together, then exaggerated all the most aggressive features. Row after row of teeth lined its mouth below seven sets of eyes. Its pectoral fins were slightly longer than they should have been, and its dorsal fin rose high above.

Even more distressingly, the creature was ascended and felt like it was on the cusp of reaching demigod levels. In its presence, Elijah felt incredibly small and underpowered.

His first instinct was to turn tail and run, to swim away as fast as possible. Maybe even surface and take to the skies. Yet, he knew that wasn’t really an option. For one, it was precisely the creature he’d come to hunt. He could feel its monsterhood with every pulse of One with Nature. It needed to be culled.

Perhaps even more importantly, Elijah knew that abandoning the crab – and the treasure it guarded – to the creature would only make it stronger. In fact, if he left it to its own devices, it would likely grow in power until it ventured closer to Ironshore. If that happened, it would truly become a menace, and not just to a few whaling ships.

No – it had to die.

So without further ado, he pushed himself forward, already casting Wild Resurgence to mitigate the damage he knew he’d take. He gained speed quickly, which surprised the leviathan – or that was the impression Elijah got, because the thing never even reacted before he rammed into it at full speed.

It wasn’t quite as devastating as his attack on the prime core back in the Chimeric Forge, but it was more than enough to do some damage.

That was what he expected, at least. Instead, he hit the thing’s bulbous body, then violently rebounded. He cartwheeled backward as the leviathan went in the other direction, but by the time Elijah recovered his poise, it was obvious that his initial attack had done almost no damage. The only indication he’d done anything at all was a series of small lacerations and ripple of ethera.

But that was okay. If nothing else, he’d proven his versatility. If one attack didn’t work, he had plenty of other options.