Path of Dragons-Chapter 76Book 8: : Blood from Metal

Elijah jerked awake to the roar of wind. freēwēbnovel.com

A piece of metal smashed against his face, pulling him fully back to awareness. And he did not like what he saw. Still in the Shape of the Sea, he twisted in mid-air and saw that he was still miles above the surface. If he’d been back on Earth, he felt certain that he would have been in space. As it was, he was spared that fate – apparently, on this planet, the atmosphere stretched much farther before ceding to the void.

Or maybe the system just hadn’t bothered to create space at all.

Regardless, as Elijah fell, he saw thousands of miles of ruined landscape stretched out below him. In the far distance, he saw Vey’thaal, but it wasn’t the only stronghold. However, a quick use of Eyes of the Eagle told him that all the other cities had long since fallen. They had become mere ruins, overwhelmed by swarming and mutated monsters.

It was a pointed reminder that trying to play god and manipulate nature was a path to ruin. If he’d ever harbored such intent – and he hadn’t – the sight of the Vey’thaalian’s world would have cured him of those ideas. Nature was better left alone to dictate its own evolution.

Even as that thought flitted through one facet of his Jade mind, Elijah took stock of the state of his chelonoid body. And it was not a pretty sight. His shell was cracked in multiple places, but none were so grievous as the giant rift that had been torn right down the center. Toward the front, many of the underlying bones had been broken, and that was nothing compared to the state of his internals. Elijah could scarcely breathe, and his heart felt like it was on the verge of giving out.

But his head had gotten the worst of it.

With every passing instant, it felt like someone was jamming a dagger into his eyes, and his entire face felt like it had been twisted beyond all recognition. He didn’t have the heart to use Soul of the Wild to inspect it.

In short, he wasn’t certain how he’d managed to survive, save for his increasingly superhuman body, afforded to him via high attributes and an advanced state of body cultivation.

Regardless, even if he’d managed to live through turning himself into a submerged battering ram, he didn’t think he could do so through the upcoming impact. Not in his currently fragile state.

So, even as water and debris fell beside him, Elijah initiated a transformation into the Shape of the Sky.

Even if it represented his only option, it was a grave mistake.

Sometimes, it was easy to translate how injuries in one form might affect his others. For instance, if he broke an arm, then his wing would bear that injury upon transformation into his flight form.

However, when it came to things that didn’t have analogous parts – like his shell – it became a little murkier. So, Elijah hadn’t expected his wings to be twisted all out of shape.

Wind whistled by as he plummeted from the sky, but knowing he only had one shot, Elijah didn’t arrest his momentum. Not until he was only a couple hundred feet above the monster-infested ground. When he reached that point, he snapped his wings out – to the best of his ability – using the broken appendages like an impromptu parachute.

He couldn’t fly.

But he could keep himself from splattering against the ground. In that endeavor, he was only mildly successful. He slowed his fall, but he still hit hard enough to shatter a few of the bones that had only been fractured.

Calling it painful would have been woefully insufficient, but Elijah had long since accustomed himself to dealing with all sorts of agony. So, he shunted the pain into another facet of his mind, sealing it away so he could think straight.

Because his crash landing had drawn some attention.

Even as one of the enormous golem’s footsteps sent tremors rippling across the land for hundreds of miles, monsters swarmed toward the small crater carved by Elijah’s descent. He arduously shifted into his human form, then activated Nature’s Flame. Green fire erupted from his scythe as he channeled ethera into Wild Resurgence, then Blessing of the Grove, and finally, Nature’s Bloom.

By the time he completed those three casts, the horde had arrived. Flesh spiders descended on him even as dozens of other mutated monsters joined them. Elijah couldn’t identify most of them – a testament to the sheer variety enforced by the chimera’s attempts at playing with forces it couldn’t understand – but they were all deadly in their own right.

They ripped into his prone form, negating some of the healing he’d just established. Meanwhile, he struggled – and failed – to rise. When that didn’t work, he cast Lightning Domain in an attempt to clear some space. Tendrils of electricity erupted from his body, then whipped around, frying anything that came within a hundred feet. However, it was destined to be a temporary reprieve, because the monsters just kept coming.

Knowing that he needed to change the paradigm, the second Elijah felt Lightning Domain flicker away, he used Shape of Thorn. The transformation into the thorned sentry took a little more than a second-and-a-half, and by the time it completed, the swarm of monsters had once again returned. However, they found his durable scales far more difficult to damage.

That was not the reason he’d adopted the form, though.

Rather, he’d done so to take advantage of Unchecked Growth. He used the ability, and immediately, the massive influx of Regeneration began to work on his body. Normally, if he wanted to heal bones, he needed to set them properly. However, Unchecked Growth worked a little differently. The incredible increase in his Regeneration attribute – and the healing that came with it – knew the shape his body was meant to maintain, and he suspected that, at some point, it would be capable of regrowing severed limbs.

He hadn’t reached that point, though.

For now, he was thankful that it shifted his bones back into place. That, coupled with his still ongoing Blessing of the Grove and Wild Resurgence, quickly returned his body to peak condition.

At the same time, he activated Domain of Vines. Thousands of roots and vines erupted from the earth. Some impaled monsters. Others constricted them. Regardless of the method, the spell absolutely massacred a large swath of the mutated creatures, and as soon as Elijah felt Unchecked Growth run its course, he shifted back into the Shape of the Sky and took to the air.

Because as much as he wanted to slaughter the unnatural beings, he had a more important job to do. The voice had revealed that the prime core’s destruction had sapped the mountainous golem’s power, leaving it at a mere thirty-two percent. Apparently, that wasn’t enough, because it had not ceased its implacable progress toward Vey’thaal.

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When Elijah reached it only a few moments later, he saw that it had entered the lake. However, the thing was so tall that the water only went halfway up its stout legs. As for the results of his previous attack – his efforts had torn a gaping hole in the thing’s back, from which a steady stream of water geysered more than half a mile above the golem’s head.

After evading a flock of harpies, he landed on the monster’s shoulder. Thankfully, the area was mostly clear of monsters, so he was able to shift into Shape of Venom and adopt Guise of the Unseen. Once he was cloaked in stealth, he once again made his way back to the wound in the monster’s chest.

Upon entry, he found that the smaller, self-repairing golems were still there, though he couldn’t fail to notice just how many had fallen permanently. Many of their limbs and other parts had been repurposed, jammed onto other golems and creating more monstrous versions of the original creatures. Some bits had been left on the floor of the great forge, though. It didn’t take long for Elijah to figure out that those were the ones that had been infected by his previous use of Envenoms. That had ruined the parts, further confirming that the things were – if not entirely susceptible – still affected by his powerful afflictions.

In any case, he ignored them, instead clinging to the ceiling as he set out to find the remaining cores. Elijah focused on Soul of the Wild, giving it every ounce of his attention, and he saw that the grid of ethereal lines was still present. The flow was much weaker, though – his previous efforts had born noticeable fruit.

Unfortunately, he could discern no pattern to the flow. It seemed like everything was coming from all directions at once, and no matter how much he studied the grid – or tried to follow one of the threads – he found nothing.

That’s when the seed of an idea sprouted in his mind.

He returned to his inspection of the fallen golems, paying close attention to the discolored bits that represented the effects of his afflictions. It looked a little like rust and oxidation, though there was a bit of overt corrosion there as well.

An idea took root.

And with the golem steadily approaching Vey’thaal, he knew he didn’t have time to hesitate. He needed to act, and soon, or the Vey’thaalians would be slaughtered and their last city destroyed. Elijah wasn’t so unempathetic that that potential eventuality didn’t spur him to haste.

Soon enough, he was skittering across the ceiling and looking for a very specific type of place. It needed to be isolated, the space confined. No golems. No monsters. Just an empty room.

In the end, he found what he was looking for after only a few minutes of searching. It wasn’t much more than a closet containing bits and pieces of golems, but it was enough to give Elijah a chance.

He seized on it.

Once he was inside, with the entrance blocked by a spare hunk of metal he’d found lying nearby, Elijah shifted into his human form. Then, he activated Nature’s Flame, cloaking his scythe in green fire that would enhance any nature-based spell he channeled through it. Then, he tapped into the Antlers of the Wild Revenant’s False Grove, giving him access to a secondary – if much smaller – pool of ethera. Finally, he used Dragon’s Echo, which would replicate any spell he cast.

Once that was done, Elijah used Eternal Plague.

Instantly, hundreds of tiny flies manifested all around him. They immediately attacked the walls, and to Elijah’s immense satisfaction, they were capable of inflicting their afflictions upon the massive golem. But he knew a few little fly-bites wouldn’t be enough. He needed more.

A lot more.

Thankfully, the nature of Eternal Plague was perfect for providing precisely what he needed. With every passing second, ethera drained out of his False Grove and poured into the spell. That energy, in turn, converted into more conjured insects. The growth of the swarm was exponential. Hundreds quickly became thousands, and thousands soon became hundreds of thousands. They poured out of the gaps in Elijah’s impromptu door until there were millions.

But then, False Grove was entirely tapped.

Thankfully, Elijah had his own pool of ethera to channel into the spell. The only hiccup was the transfer of one to the other. He managed it just in time to prevent the spell from resetting, which kept the conjured flies coming.

Soon enough, Elijah realized it wouldn’t be enough. The golem was enormous, and the afflictions were clearly only partially effective. Whatever resistances the smaller golems had were in effect for the larger version as well, and though Elijah saw tendrils of corrosion flowing from his small room, he knew it wouldn’t make a difference until it spread much further and far faster.

He shoved more and more ethera into the spell, but his pool of ethera gradually dissipated.

He still needed more. He fumbled in his satchel, retrieving the other potion he’d gotten from Biggle. He downed it in a single gulp. It tasted like charcoal and salt water, though the second it went down his throat, a surge of ethera flowed into his core. Unfortunately, he only had one.

The spell continued, conjuring millions of flies.

But mere millions wouldn’t cut it. Billions were necessary. Trillions, if he could manage it. Elijah wouldn’t be satisfied until they spread across the thing’s entire interior.

His current pool of ethera was not enough. He’d known that since the beginning. The ethera potion helped, but it only delayed the inevitable. Fortunately, he had a plan. He didn’t know if it would work, but he was more than willing to try. There wasn’t much in the way of an alternative.

So, he tapped into Grove Conduit, pushing it with multiple facets of his mind. And the spell responded, filling the small room with the power of his grove. That manifested in a concentrated atmosphere of ethera that quickly became visible in the form of a blue fog.

Elijah drank it in, opening the apertures of his mind as wide as they could go. Then, he stretched them even further – until his head felt like it was splitting in two. His soul’s conduits were pushed to their limits as well – to the point where he felt certain he was going to burst from the strain.

But he didn’t.

Countless hours of cultivating his body, mind, and soul had not gone to waste. He rarely pushed them to their limits, so he was more than a little surprised to find that they could handle far more than he’d ever thought possible.

He didn’t spare that much thought, though. There would be time for introspection later. For now, he continued to pour the power of his grove into Eternal Plague, conjuring millions upon millions of tiny, disease-spreading flies.

The first sign of success came in the form of a distant rumble and an explosion. That, in turn was followed by the disembodied voice of the golem declaring that power had decreased to twenty-five percent.

With that success spurring him forward, Elijah continued to pull ethera into his mind and through the conduits of his soul.

Of course, that wasn’t without consequence. Pushing himself to his limits came with no small degree of pain. He tried to ignore it, but it felt like fire coursed through his veins and his mind was being assaulted by a multitude of ice picks. Yet, he couldn’t stop.

Not until the golem was dead.

Over the next ten minutes, Elijah’s ethera continued to dissipate. The influx from Grove Conduit helped, but it could only go so far. There were always limits, and Elijah felt certain that he was on the verge of finding his.

However, with every passing moment, the golem’s interior was swarmed with uncountable more affliction-bearing flies. They didn’t simply attack the prime mechanique, either. They infected everything. Elijah couldn’t even begin to control them, so they attacked anything vaguely resembling an enemy. The monsters died first, but it wasn’t long before the smaller golems – even with their resistances – fell, covered in flies.

Soon, only Elijah and his primary target remained.

And every couple of minutes, it announced a decrease in power. What had begun at thirty-two percent quickly became twenty. Then fifteen. Then five.

“One percent power. Beginning shut-down procedure.”

At first, Elijah let out a sigh of relief. But then, just as he let Eternal Plague lapse and his trillions of flies dissipated into the ambient ethera, he felt a massive explosion. The golem tried to make another announcement, but its voice crackled with so much distortion that Elijah couldn’t make it out.

That’s when everything started to fall apart.

Literally.

Elijah felt bits and pieces of the golem break free of the whole and fall out of range of Soul of the Wild.

That – and the sudden influx of experience – told Elijah that he’d completed his goal. However, he didn’t have time to check his notifications. Not with the golem falling apart all around him.

He rushed out of the small closet and was initially shocked by just how much death he’d caused with a single spell. That only lasted a moment though, because the thought was interrupted by the suddenly tilting floor and the screech of protesting metal. Briefly, Elijah felt weightless as the golem tipped over and fell – with him still inside.

It smashed into the lake a second later, and a torrent of water came rushing through the wound in the golem’s chest as Elijah was thrown from his feet. Thinking quickly, he used the last of his ethera to initiated a shift into the Shape of the Sea. It was just in time, because only a moment later, a wall of water smashed into his now-massive form.