Path of Dragons-Chapter 57Book 7: : The Pearl

Under Guise of the Unseen, Elijah swam forward, passing through a dense clump of kelp until he saw his goal. His heart jumped into his throat as he beheld a once-magnificent clam. There was nothing else nearby. No fish. No other sea life. Just an enormous clam the size of a small SUV.

It was obvious that, at one point, the clam had been beautiful, with an iridescent shell that radiated so much ethera that it created its own swirling current. However, it had just as clearly been affected by the death-attuned ethera, because the shell looked as if it had begun to rot, with large, black splotches marring its shimmering surface.

Elijah was well aware that clam shells were incapable of rotting. At worst, they could be subject to erosion, much like any other mineral. But it didn’t seem that the new world followed that particular rule, because the second he came within range of the creature, he recoiled from the deep-seated sense of death and decay. The clam was still alive inside its shell, but clearly, it wasn’t far from succumbing.

A little panicked, Elijah swam forward, already shifting into his human form. At the moment, he didn’t care if something attacked him. Nor was he particularly worried about the pearl he felt inside the clam’s shell. Instead, the only thing that concerned him was healing the guardian before him.

The second he reached the creature, he laid his hand on its shell and cast Soothe. At the influx of vitality, the clam spasmed, vibrating its shell so violently that Elijah felt a sense of vertigo wash over him. His eardrums popped, and his body felt like it had come under immense pressure.

He ignored it.

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Often, healing was painful.

He cast Blessing of the Grove, but instead of a sunflower sprouting from the harbor floor, it was a huge sea anemone that had the same rough shape of a flower. Elijah barely paid attention to it, choosing to focus on the clam instead.

The vibrations continued, growing far more violent. So, Elijah was forced to use Soothe on himself as well. Finally, he used Nature’s Bloom, casting it over and over again as he tried to usher the clam back to health.

For almost half an hour, Elijah poured ethera into the clam, but after only fifteen minutes, he knew it wouldn’t work. He couldn’t stop, though. He refused. It wasn’t until his ethera bottomed out that he was forced to admit the obvious and give up on healing the magnificent creature. When he pulled away, the entire area was clouded with his blood. He hadn’t even realized it, but the powerful vibrations had caused internal injuries. The only reason he hadn’t been permanently affected was because of the effects of Blessing of the Grove.

Without it, he would have probably died.

And yet, despite his sacrifice, the clam was no better off than before his arrival. If anything, its condition had grown much worse.

Unsure what else to do, once he’d regained a little ethera, Elijah swam forward and laid his hand on the creature’s shell. Then, he used Soul of the Wild, pushing his soul into the clam.

He immediately blacked out, but only for the briefest of instants. When he regained consciousness, an entire world opened up to him. Suddenly, he knew the guardian’s entire history. It was not a terribly exciting journey, and the highlight was being plucked from some other ocean and thrust into Earth, but it was also more profound than almost anything Elijah had ever experienced.

But over it all was a single command: Kill me.

Elijah broke contact, and if he hadn’t been underwater, he would have been gasping for air. The clam wanted to die, and he understood why. It was in incredible pain and had been for years. Moreover, it could feel its body slowly surrendering to undeath. With its limited ability to move, it had tried to escape the region of undeath, but even though it had spent two years in the endeavor, it had made very little progress. What’s more, it had grown far too weak to continue, settling in its current location.

The only reason it was still alive was the powerful natural treasure that was its charge to guard. Like all guardians and their natural treasures, the relationship was symbiotic between the clam and the pearl.

But Elijah had no words to describe how he felt about the clam’s request. It reminded him of the two other instances where he’d killed a guardian. The first had been the panther he didn’t have the ethera to heal. That had been a scarring – yet undeniably rewarding – experience. Then, there was the boar who’d rampaged throughout what had once been the Mongolian steppes.

Both experiences had deeply affected Elijah.

And yet, he knew it was part of being a Druid. He felt that in the deepest parts of his spirit. He was there to nurture and protect life, but sometimes, the only thing to be done was to end a creature’s suffering.

So it was with the clam.

Pointedly, he didn’t even consider the pearl he’d come to retrieve. As far as he was concerned, Hong Kong could rot before he killed a guardian in cold blood. And if anyone else tried to do it, they would find just how terrible of an enemy he could be. The very notion got Elijah’s blood pumping in a way it hadn’t moved since Easton.

However, he couldn’t deny that a mercy killing was necessary. He felt it now. No matter how much ethera he used, he could never heal the clam. Because it wasn’t truly dying. Instead, the undeath had infected it so deeply that it had changed the creature’s nature. Soon enough, it would be like all the other monsters roaming the harbor.

And it did not want to endure that fate.

So, Elijah shook his head and tried to convey that he was sorry for what was about to happen. Then, he crossed his legs and closed his eyes as he recovered his ethera. He knew the clam was on the verge of passing the threshold into undeath – he’d felt it – so he wanted to be ready for anything.

It only took about thirty minutes of focused meditation to fill his core, and when he finally reached that point of saturation, he used Shape of Thorn. It was far and away his physically strongest form, and he knew he would need every point of Strength to enact the plan he had in mind.

Strangely, when he looked down at his arms, he saw that the vines that usually curled around him had become something else. In a way, the tendrils reminded him of the sea anemones he’d once studied, but there were elements of kelp in there as well. What’s more, his scales had lost their bark-like texture, replacing it with something more coralline in nature.

What hadn’t changed was his Strength, though – and that was what was important. He glided forward, skipping across the seafloor for two steps before reaching the clam. Then, he hooked his claws into the seam of the shell and pulled. The thing didn’t budge. It did vibrate, though, and far more violently even than when he’d tried to heal it.

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Elijah wouldn’t be deterred, though. The clam had made its wishes clear, and as much as he wished the vibrations were a sign that it had changed its mind, he knew that wasn’t the case. It was just a natural defense mechanism that it could not control. So, he levered his claws deeper, yanking even harder. Still, it wouldn’t move. What’s more, even his increased Constitution wasn’t up to the task of withstanding the vibrations.

So, he did the only thing he could think to do, using Unchecked Growth, then Domain of Vines. Hundreds of tendrils matching the curious growths on his arms and shoulders burst forth from the silty seafloor, then wrapped around the clam, and pulled. To give them a little extra power, Elijah used Savage Strength. Finally, the clam moved. At first, it was just a small gap, but with every inch it opened, the task grew easier until, at last, it was open.

Elijah recoiled from the sight before him.

The soft flesh of the clam was almost entirely rotten, and it radiated death like few things Elijah had ever felt. Seeing that, his resolve hardened, and he directed his vines to wrap around the clam and yank it free of the shell. It resisted, but without its shell’s protection, it was all but defenseless.

Elijah tossed it onto the seafloor, then immediately shifted into the Shape of Venom. Before he even bit the thing, he knew it would only take one dose of Envenom to finish it off. It was almost there already.

So, he swallowed his disgust and did what he needed to do. Biting into the thing sent the taste of rancid eggs lancing across his tongue. It was more than just taste, though. It infected him on a deeper level. And while Elijah knew it wouldn’t hurt him – not like the squid’s oozing flesh – it definitely wasn’t pleasant.

But then again, nothing about the task was.

That thought flowed through him as he watched the clam finally die. It didn’t stop there, though. Instead, it rotted before his very eyes, dissipating into the ocean as tiny microbes.

It made him sick.

What was even worse was that killing the clam had actually awarded him another level, telling him just how powerful the guardian had become. Usually, he celebrated every level he gained, but this time, he just wanted to move on. Still, one-thirty-nine. He was only a single level from another ability or spell evolution.

That was something, at least. A silver lining.

After a moment, Elijah turned his attention to the shell, which had begun to break down the moment the clam had been torn free. What was intact was the large, basketball-sized pearl at the center. The thing was made of similar stuff as the shell, which meant that it had the same iridescent look. However, it also featured swirls of deep blue that glowed in the scant light on the harbor’s floor.

Elijah didn’t want to dwell on what had happened, so he shoved the pearl into his satchel – which stretched his carrying capacity – then shifted into the Shape of Venom before using Guise of the Unseen.

It was just in time, too, because only a moment later, a swirl of water announced the arrival of a large marine creature. Elijah was nearly swept up in the current of the van-sized creature, but he managed to maintain his footing as he looked up at the massive fish. It was clearly a tiger shark, but as with many of the beasts in the area, it was undead. Many of its ribs were exposed, and huge chunks of flesh were missing. The edges of those wounds were rotten, and Elijah expected that if he could smell underwater, it would have emitted the odor of decaying fish.

The creature swam around, obviously confused, and it wasn’t difficult to see why. It had come for the pearl, which it suddenly couldn’t detect. That was not surprising, considering that the satchel had become part of him upon his transformation. He had no idea how it worked, but clearly, the pearl was no longer detectible.

A good thing, too, because he very much did not want to fight the enormous shark on its home turf.

Thankfully, it wasn’t long before the thing recognized that nothing was there, and it soon swam away. Elijah once again struggled to maintain his footing before the massive wake of the fish’s departure, but once it was gone, he started back toward the island. As he swam, he considered the clam’s fate.

Normally, he wouldn’t have been so concerned with such a relatively simple organism. Bivalves were incapable of feeling pain – or really any sensations at all – but guardians were clearly different.

It had needed to die. It had wanted it. But Elijah hated that he’d been the one to meet the terms of its wish.

Those thoughts accompanied him as he went back to the island, but he’d not found any peace by the time he reached the temple. Before he entered, he shifted back into his human form, retrieved the pearl from his Ghoul-Hide Satchel, then stepped inside.

Sadie looked up from where she’d been studying one of the pillars, and the second she laid eyes on Elijah, her expression brightened. She even smiled, which made everything just a little better.

“You got it, did you? Good,” said Gideon, ruining the mood. “Let’s get this thing over with so we can depart this detestable temple.”

“Good to see you too,” Elijah said, striding forward. If the man didn’t watch out, he might just become the object of Elijah’s ire. After being forced to kill the clam, he was already close to the edge. So, it wouldn’t take much to push him over. And if that happened…

Elijah shook his head, banishing those thoughts. Instead, he stepped closer to the pedestal, then asked, “Is everyone ready.”

“Yes. Go. Now,” said Gideon.

Elijah glanced at the man and said, “I really wasn’t asking you.” Then, he looked at Sadie, then Dat, and asked the question again. When they confirmed that they were, Elijah set the pearl on the pedestal.

A beam of light shone down from above, casting the interior of the temple in blue swirls that reminded Elijah of a sunny day after it had been filtered through the surface of the sea.

The voice returned, saying, “Balance the tides of the mortal realm and the spirit sea. High meets low, calm meets storm. In harmony, the blessing shall be born.”

In the aftermath of that cryptic poem, Elijah looked around, asking, “Any ideas what that means?”

“I think I know,” Sadie said, glancing from one pillar to the next. “Just give me a minute.”

Then, she started rotating the pillars. Each one was comprised of four distinct pieces that could move independently of the others. They all bore various symbols that Elijah couldn’t even begin to interpret. Sadie clearly knew what she was doing, though, because it wasn’t long before the pillar she’d been manipulating sounded a loud click. A second later, a beam of light tore away from the top of the pillar and hit the pearl.

“Yes!” she said, pumping her fist. “One down.”

“Uh…Sadie…whatcha doin’?” Elijah asked.

“It’s simple. See those symbols. They represent high tide, low tide, a rising tide, and a falling tide. And those frescoes on the tops of the walls? They’re instructions on the sequence to get the results we want. I didn’t know what they meant until I heard the poem, but now it’s obvious.”

“Not so obvious to me, bro,” Dat said, squinting at the indicated frescoes. “Those don’t look like moons to me.”

They didn’t to Elijah, either. But he wasn’t going to argue with something that was obviously working. Nico didn’t have any such reservations, “Wait. I don’t see it either. What if you’re wrong and it’s a trap?”

“I’m not wrong,” Sadie said, already rotating the pillars. “Just trust me.”

“I trusted you before. And now Lisa’s dead.”

She stopped.

And for a long moment, there was no movement or sound. Then, Dat stepped toward Nico, wrapped his hand around the much smaller man’s neck. Nico tried to resist, clawing against Dat’s hand as the Witch Hunter lifted him into the air. He leaned close and said, “Do not speak her name, coward.”

“Dat,” Sadie said.

Gideon tried to move in, drawing his sword, but one look from Elijah was all it took to stop him in his tracks.

“Dat!” Sadie shouted. “Let him go! It wasn’t his fault!”

Dat glanced at Sadie, then back at Nico. He dropped the Healer, who fell to the floor, gasping for air. “I’ll be outside,” he said.

Then, without another word, he disappeared, obviously under the effects of Ghost Cloak. There was no indication that he’d actually left, though.

“Go ahead, Sadie,” Elijah said. “We’ll deal with this later.”

Sadie looked at her brother before glancing toward the door. A war of indecision played across her face before, at last, her steely resolve returned. Then, she resumed her manipulation of the pillar. It soon clicked into place, just like the other, and shined more light on the pearl.

The third and fourth followed the same pattern, but even when Elijah received a notification that they’d each gotten the Blessing of Water, he had no idea what Sadie saw in the puzzle.

However, with that notification, they’d gained two of the three blessings. Now, there was only one left before they could finally enter the Primal Realm. He only hoped that it wouldn’t be too late.