Path of Dragons-Chapter 54Book 8: : Return to Reality

One of Elijah’s favorite things was seeing how strangers reacted to visiting his grove for the first time. But regrettably, it was also one of the most stressful experiences he could endure. Letting people into the grove – even briefly – always came with the possibility that it would ignite the fires of covetousness in their hearts. With so much power waved under their noses, it wasn’t difficult to imagine someone becoming obsessed and trying to take what was his.

He chose to shift his focus away from that possibility, though. If these people had an ounce of survival instincts, they would recognize that messing with his grove was a very bad thing. That thought briefly flitted through one facet of his mind as he reopened his gate, allowing the final group to teleport from the Hollow Depths and into his grove.

The last to go was Davika.

The old woman moved much more quickly than her advanced age might have suggested, but she still wasn’t quick about it. She stopped in front of the portal, leaning on her walking stick as she glanced at Elijah. “Do you know what a leap of faith is?” she asked.

“I do.”

“Then you understand that I’ve put a lot of trust in you,” she reasoned. “Please don’t make me regret it.”

With that, she stepped through, and the gate dissipated. Not for the first time, Elijah lamented the spell’s limitations. For all that Roots of the World Tree was an incredible spell that gave him many options most people would kill for, it could only move twenty people at a time before it went on cooldown. That was an improvement over its first couple of incarnations, but it cemented the knowledge that his class was never meant to facilitate mass transportation.

Perhaps there was an evolution that would have pushed his development in that direction.

Or maybe that was the purview of the system and space mages like the ones who’d built the Conclave’s Transportation Network. Whatever the case, that wasn’t his role. He was thankful that he could do as much as he could, because otherwise, he’d have never been able to get the crash survivors back to civilization.

Sure, maybe one of the Sailors back in Ironshore could have navigated the maelstrom, but Elijah felt certain they couldn’t have done so without losing people to the giant birds, the harpies, or the untamed weather. He refused to put them in that sort of situation, preferring to do things himself, even if it was a bit of a waste of one of his dolmens.

He only had a few more, at least until he upgraded his core cultivation, so going forward, he needed to be judicious about how he used them.

However, his choice to build the Circle of Storms wasn’t entirely altruistic. That was most of it, certainly, but there was one other factor pushing him in that direction. The island – as well as the storm surrounding it – was unnatural. Elijah had felt that from the very beginning, and when he coupled that with the high ethereal density, he had come to the only viable conclusion.

There was a Primal Realm nearby.

He’d suspected as much from the very beginning, but he’d not truly accepted it as reality, largely because it felt a bit too coincidental. That everyone was looking for the missing Primal Realms, and he just happened to have one in his backyard? It beggared belief.

And yet, he couldn’t escape the facts, which all pointed in that direction.

Still, he couldn’t afford to go looking around just yet. Instead, he used Roots of the World Tree, focusing on the only available function and instantly returning to the center of his grove. The act of teleportation always took him a bit by surprise. It was a jarring sensation at the best of times.

His feet settled into the thick grass surrounding the tree, and he looked around. Twenty people stood nearby, each one gaping in awe at their environment. Elijah loved the look on their faces.

This 𝓬ontent is taken from freeweɓnovel.cѳm.

“I hate you,” Sadie said, marching toward him. She wore a simple outfit of cut-off shorts and a tank top, which he very much appreciated. What he didn’t enjoy was the annoyed look on her face. “You know that, right?”

“What did I do?” he asked innocently.

“First, you leave me in Seattle to handle all the boring administrative stuff,” she said. “Then, the second I get back to the island, you plop a bunch of people in my lap. Did you even think about what they were meant to do while you waited on your spell’s cooldown to lapse?”

“Uh…I thought Nerthus would take care of it.”

“He’s not your butler, Elijah. He’s not an Administrator. He has other responsibilities, like keeping this grove in top condition. That’s not easy for him, by the way – especially when you keep dumping people here without any warning.”

“Um…”

“And some of those idiots wandered off!” she went on, obviously exasperated. “Just no sense of self-preservation at all. Nerthus had to keep them from running into the crabs, which, by the way, are not nearly as friendly when you’re not around!”

“I’m…sorry?”

“Are you sure? You don’t sound sure.”

Elijah sighed. “I am. I didn’t think, I guess. I just wanted to get them out of there,” he admitted. Then, he gave her a good look and added, “I am happy to see you, though.”

She shook her head with a slight smile and responded, “I’m happy to see you too.”

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Then, they embraced, which lasted a little too long, because it was interrupted by a familiar, raspy voice. “Sorry to interrupt, but what do you intend to do with us?” asked Davika. “Where are the rest of my people? You promised us civilization.”

Elijah pulled away. He wanted to call the old woman ungrateful, but that probably wasn’t the best characterization. She was just straightforward and couldn’t be bothered with niceties. At her age – and with what was at stake – that was probably more than understandable.

After that, Elijah began the process of escorting the group to the dock. They were suitably impressed with the island, with more than one remarking on the incredibly dense ethera. However, because they’d been living so close to what Elijah suspected was a Primal Realm, they weren’t as shocked by it as some others who’d visited. Along the way, he did try to make it clear that once they left the island, it was off-limits from then on out.

He wasn’t certain how much they heard of his warnings, but if they ignored them, Nerthus would take care of it. Or failing that, he could defend it himself.

In any case, they reached the dock without incident, and the moment they saw the city across the strait, they reacted more as Elijah had expected. Tears gathered in their eyes and a couple of them even dropped to their knees as they beheld Ironshore in all its glory. Elijah didn’t miss the fear in some of their eyes, though. They had been living alone and underground for long enough that the prospect of returning to civilization – and one they didn’t recognize – came with a good deal of trepidation. Hopefully, that would dissipate once they reached Ironshore and saw that they had nothing to fear.

The city was wreathed in early morning fog, but even only partially visible, it represented something the survivors had long thought was entirely out of reach. For all he knew, they’d resigned themselves to never seeing civilization again. And now that it was less than ten miles away, they were overwhelmed with emotion.

“I never…I didn’t think this was possible,” Davika admitted. She remained stoic, her hands on her bony hips, but Elijah could sense her racing heart. “Thank you.”

“Just doing my job, ma’am,” Elijah said in his most professional-sounding voice. If he’d had a cap, he might have tipped it in her direction.

After that, he regretfully rowed one group across the strait while Sadie took the oars of the other rowboat to ferry the rest to the docks. Thankfully, when he reached his destination, there were already people there to handle the minutiae associated with getting the survivors settled. Gwenivere was among them, though she didn’t look particularly happy about how things had gone down.

Of course, that was probably her default expression. Or at least it was the only one Elijah had ever seen from her. So, he chose to ignore her clear annoyance and returned to the island. However, he had no intention of doing so in another one of those blasted boats. So, he leaped into the water and took on the Shape of the Sea.

Which was a bit of a mistake, because it bathed half the dock in seawater. Elijah chose to ignore that as well as the looks of shock and awe as he grabbed hold of the rowboat and pushed it out into the strait. On the way back, Elijah resisted the urge to explore some of the interesting things he felt beneath him and returned to his own dock without much in the way of hesitation.

He was just tying the boat in place when Sadie arrived.

She was, of course, soaked.

“Did I tell you how much I hate you?” she asked, leaping out of the boat. She was much quicker about tying hers off. “Rowing while wet is not fun. I’ll probably have blisters.”

“You know that’s not true,” he said with a lopsided grin.

Sighing, Sadie agreed, “Yeah. But I’m still angry. You really need to think things through.”

“Thinking isn’t my strongsuit. You know that.”

“You were a scientist.”

“A bad one,” he reminded her.

Shaking her head, Sadie asked, “Do you want to know what happened in Seattle?”

“Hot tub first. I’ve been dreaming about it for days.”

“Just the hot tub?” she asked.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but that hot tub is awesome,” he pointed out. “Hard to compete with that.” Then, he added, “But I look forward to your attempts.”

She rolled her eyes, and they continued on their way to the hot spring. Soon enough, they’d both stripped down and sunk into the scalding and rejuvenating water. “Oh, that’s the stuff,” Elijah sighed, tilting his head back. “Am I getting soft? It feels like I am. Too much pampering.”

“Just enjoy it while you can,” she said. “Things are about to get hectic.”

Then, she went on to explain what had happened during the rest of the summit. The first order of business concerned the people he’d asked her to search for. None of the names popped up on Seattle’s database, which had been compiled from information brought by all the participants in the Summit, so he had no option but to assume that his former friends and acquaintances were dead or unreachable.

Not the greatest thing to hear, but not terribly unexpected either.

“Do you want to hear about the Primal Realms?” she asked.

“Sure. Hit me.”

Sadie went on to explain what they knew about the Primal Realms that had been discovered, then detailed the potential locations of the remaining six.

“Five,” Elijah said. “I think I found one.”

“What? Really?”

Elijah described what he’d felt on the island and, more importantly, in the system of caves and caverns below. “I’m not certain, obviously, but it feels right,” he stated. “I’ll know more when I go back in a few days. I want to find it first, and then I’ll report it to Isaiah so he can disseminate the information. We can figure out how to approach it then.”

“I’m going to Russia,” Sadie revealed.

“What? Why?”

“Seriously? I just told you there was a Primal Realm there.”

“I mean. Yeah. I just thought…”

Elijah didn’t really know how to end that sentence, largely because he suddenly realized how silly his expectations were.

“You thought I was just going to sit around and wait on you, didn’t you?” she reasoned.

“Uh…maybe?”

“Elijah…”

“I know,” he said, letting his frustration show through. “I know, okay? It’s dumb.”

And it was. Sadie wasn’t just his plus-one. He couldn’t take her company for granted. She was her own person, and as such, she made her own choices entirely independent from what Elijah decided to do with his time. Still, he’d hoped that she would wait for him to explore the area around the island, then accompany him into the Primal Realm.

Pointedly, the idea of leaving it for someone else to tackle never even entered his thoughts.

“I’m going to partner with some good people,” she said. “Svetogorsk is –”

“Is that a person?”

“That’s the closest population center.”

“Oh. I’ve never been good with Russian names,” Elijah admitted.

“Nobody but Russians are,” Sadie pointed out. “Anyway – Svetogorsk is going all-out to hit their Primal Realm. They’re practically sending an army in there, and they want me to lead the way.”

Elijah didn’t respond – not immediately – but he could easily see Sadie charging at the head of an army. Likely, she could see it too, which was why she’d agreed to do it.

“Pursuit of Justice is telling me to go,” she added, filling the silence. “I try not to listen as much as I used to, but it’s pulling me in that direction. It’s hard to ignore.”

“Then you should go,” Elijah said.

“I wasn’t asking permission, Elijah.”

“I know. I’m just being supportive.”

“Stop pouting. We’ve got a few days until we split up. I suggest we use them wisely,” she said before pulling close and kissing him. Elijah forgot his objections after that.