Path of Dragons-Chapter 64Book 8: : Connected in all the Worst Ways

With that in mind, he tossed the remains of the flesh spider – they actually had bones, which seemed both right and wrong, considering their nature – toward the nearby, vine-covered wall. The fleshy tendrils snapped out like whips, wrapping around the bones, and dragging them into the mass of gooey vines. Apparently, there were mouths under there. Many, many mouths with serrated teeth that could easily cut through flesh.

Elijah had discovered that only the day before when he’d fallen asleep a little too close to one of the walls. With a shiver, he vowed to never make that mistake again.

With a tired sigh, he shoved the butt of his scythe into the ground and pushed himself to his feet. A second later, he arched his back, stretching stiff muscles. No matter how high his Constitution was, sitting in such an uncomfortable position still made him sore.

Once he’d limbered up, he smothered the fire with his bare feet, then left it behind. In any other place, he’d have buried it, but the ground was mostly stone, so that just wasn’t possible. Besides, if a fire caught and burned the entire system of ravines to the ground, he wouldn’t have been too upset.

Or at all, if he was honest.

The place was a blight on the world, and if he’d had the capability, he would have scoured it of all the malformed life within.

Without further delay, Elijah left the little cubby behind and stepped into the main ravine. It was exactly as he remembered it – grotesque and populated by mutated monsters. Thankfully, nothing attacked him – which wasn’t always guaranteed, even when he thought the coast was clear.

More than once, he’d been ambushed by what more rock monsters. The creatures were perfectly camouflaged and extremely lethal. What’s more, he could scarcely even feel the life within them, which shouldn’t have been possible. The only explanation was, of course, magic. Clearly, the things – which he’d decided to call mimics – were capable of using some sort of ability to hide their presence.

Which wasn’t ideal, but then again, nothing in the Veinroot Hollow was.

Elijah continued along, his every sense trained on his surroundings as he tried to focus on everything all at once. He’d forced himself to pay attention to every stray sound, each individual smell, and most of all, the sense he gained from Soul of the Wild. It wasn’t always foolproof, but it usually was the best he could get in terms of providing a warning.

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For the next two days, he continued along. Dozens more monsters fell before him as he followed the ever-increasing pulses of life within the flesh vines. What had started off as barely noticeable had slowly grown into a veritable drum beat that he couldn’t have ignored even if he wanted to.

And then, at last, he found something different.

The ravine widened into a large, open basin. The edges were still covered in vines, but the rim featured sharp, jagged rocks that looked like uneven fangs. However, Elijah was far more concerned with what was on the ground.

Vines grew from the walls, snaking across the rocky floor and leading to a figure in the center. At first, Elijah wasn’t sure what the thing was, but then he saw some familiar features that shocked him. More than ten feet tall, with unnaturally long limbs and a thin frame that bordered on emaciation – the thing looked strikingly similar to many of the Vey’thaalians Elijah had met back in the last bastion of their kind.

However, there were also quite a few key differences.

The most obvious was that hundreds, if not thousands, of gooey vines grew from their body, obscuring their legs beneath a skirt of wet tendrils of flesh. The monster’s every breath preceded the pulse of vitality Elijah had been following for the past couple of weeks.

As macabre as that was, Elijah’s attention was drawn to the thing’s fourteen black eyes. They covered its entire head – even the back – each one blinking independently of the others.

“You come,” it said, its voice sounding like it was coming from a hundred places all at once. “A Druid and a dragon. Interesting.”

It took Elijah a moment to find his voice, but when he did, he managed to keep his disgust and fear out of his tone. “Who are you?”

“I am the first of my kind. The last as well. Unique. I am the pinnacle of evolution.”

“That really doesn’t answer my question. What is your name?”

“Name? I had a name, once. Long, long ago. I have forgotten it,” the thing stated, its vines – or tentacles, Elijah supposed – rustling wetly. “Do you come to join me? The Fleshwright can do much with such peerless material.”

“Who is the Fleshwright? What did they do to you?”

“To me? No,” the creature said, suddenly rising. Only then did Elijah recognize that it featured legs not unlike the flesh spiders he’d come to loathe so thoroughly. “For me. I have been ushered into ascension. I am a god amongst mortals. You can experience the same evolution. No wasted parts. No pointless attention to aesthetics. Function over form. A perfect creature meant for a singular purpose.”

“And what purpose is that?” Elijah asked, unable to keep a slight quiver of fear from his voice. He could feel the vines creeping up from behind him even as the monster rose to its full height of more than twenty feet.

“Power. It is the only thing that matters in the multiverse. The chimera know this. That is the Fleshwright’s purpose. Power through constant improvement,” it stated as its tentacles quivered. Beneath it were hundreds of eggs that looked more like embryo sacs. “We will take this world and complete the Fleshwright’s work.”

“And what is that purpose?” Elijah asked, tightening his grip on the Verdant Fang. He’d already embraced Dragon’s Echo, and he was ready to tap into the Antlers of the Wild Revenant’s False Grove. For what he had planned, he would need as much ethera as he could get his hands on.

“To defeat the Ravener, of course. Others focus on self-improvement,” the creature explained, stepping forward on those unnatural legs. “The Fleshwright, in his infinite wisdom, understands the truth.”

“What’s that?”

“No one can do it alone. We must all evolve. We must all achieve perfection. Only then can we overcome that monster,” the creature revealed. “You will be our first dragon, though. You should feel honored.”

Before Elijah could make a pithy response – which he definitely intended to do – the room went wild as the tentacles flailed about. Before, they’d only displayed a limited range, but now, they were as articulate as any limb. Hundreds of them shot toward Elijah all at once, obviously intent on wrapping him in a cocoon of flesh and doing unspeakable things to him.

Clearly, he had no intention of allowing that.

He burst into green flame as he embraced Nature’s Flame. At the same time, he let the fiery green Antlers of the Wild Revenant appear. And finally, he let loose with the spell he’d prepared.

Lightning arced out from his body, spreading across the room and charring the fleshy vines. Elijah pushed it to its limits, screaming as the smell of burned meat filled the air. The creature before him seized as electricity flowed through its body. The embryo sacs beneath it burst, the fluid within hissing as it boiled.

The monster’s young screeched – a sound Elijah heard even over the sound of his spell – but he met it with a roar of his own. Not to be outdone, the monster screamed as well, though with a striking combination of grief and fury that left Elijah briefly stunned. He didn’t let interrupt his spell, though. Lightning Domain lasted only a few seconds, but in that time, Elijah had poured the entire contents of False Grove into the spell.

The second it faded, he let loose with the next spell.

Eternal Plague filled the air with crackling ethera that quickly manifested in a horde of tiny mites that descended on the monster. Elijah pushed it even harder, finally dipping into the contents of his core. With every passing second, hundreds – then thousands – of conjured insects fell upon the monster. He willed them to attack the tendrils, banking on the thing’s connection to the fleshy vines to allow the afflictions to transmit to the rest of its body.

Elijah kept it going for a few more seconds before the monster recovered from the electricity-induced spasms and came for him. He dodged a clump of reaching vines, slicing through them with his scythe before diving over another bundle. He rolled to his feet, Eternal Plague still going.

Then, something smashed into him from the side, sending him tumbling across the basin until he rolled to a stop. He was upright in the space of a second, but that short interruption was enough to foul his spell.

The air erupted with the sound of the monster’s inarticulate screams, but at the moment, Elijah was far more concerned with the thousands of vines coming in his direction. There were dozens of flesh spiders as well. Some were the size of a mule, while others were only as big as his hand.

All were capable of hurting him.

Elijah didn’t hesitate to recast Lightning Domain. He gasped as an incredible amount of ethera drained out of his core, but it was well within his expectations, so he quickly recovered from the sudden use of so much energy.

Once again, electricity arced out, and the monsters were no more capable of resisting it than they had been the first time he’d cast the spell. However, when the spell ceased, far too many had survived.

With that in mind, he once again used Eternal Plague, sending his ethera plummeting past the halfway mark. As hundred more insects manifested, Elijah could only hope it would be worth it.