Path of Dragons

Book 5: Chapter 73: Two out of Three

Elijah thrust his claws through the chest of an oncoming beast, and before it could latch its unnatural tentacles onto his arm, he shook it free. The creature fell, its screeches reaching a crescendo before the sound was cut short by the monster below. Elijah didn’t look down to see the results of his actions. He had neither the time nor the desire to witness that particularly grotesque scene.

Instead, he bent his knees and threw himself at another tainted beast, tearing through it with all the savagery he could conjure. Anything less than that, and he would be overwhelmed – either by the corruption flowing through him or by the monsters that had followed him into the chamber.

He hit one pillar, then bounded to the next. Fortunately, he had just enough Dexterity to maintain his balance as he tore into the wave of monsters. He couldn’t duck or dodge. There were too many for fancy maneuvers. Instead, Elijah fought like the savage beast he resembled, his claws and teeth ripping through the monsters with animalistic ferocity.

There were none in the group that were nearly as powerful as the sloth-beast, so he managed to hold his own. Still, even as he fought, letting his instincts take over, he was well aware of the creeping advance of the corruption. It flowed from his Mind, infecting his Body and Soul, and eventually, it would reach his Core. Common sense told him not to let that happen.

So, he pushed back, trying to contain the spread as much as possible. What he couldn’t corral, he purged, and like that, he regained some semblance of an equilibrium. However, seeing the monsters arrayed against him gave him plenty of hints as to his future if he didn’t figure out how to banish the corruption entirely. As he fought, the monsters took a back seat to the real fight raging inside him, and eventually, both battles reached their conclusion.

The last monster fell to the writhing tentacles below, marking a decided victory. The fight against the corruption was a draw, though, and Elijah had all he could handle simply holding it in place.

However, that did allow him to take stock of his situation. He’d only made it to the second line of pillars, but there were forty more rows, each one spaced almost thirty feet apart, between him and the other side, where yet another shard lay.

He settled down on his haunches, narrowing his eyes. The pillars he’d so far touched were bare on the top, but all the others were decorated with various symbols. It didn’t take a genius to recognize that it was a puzzle of some sort, though he wasn’t certain what shape it might take.

Shaking his head, Elijah chose not to play the game at all. Instead, he shifted into the Shape of the Sky and took to the air, soaring over the first three rows of pillars. Then, something stuck him, lashing through his wing and sheering down to the bone. The force sent him cartwheeling into one of the pillars, and when he crashed atop it, the thing immediately started crumbling.

Awkwardly scrambling to his feet, Elijah leaped to the next. Even with one of his wings injured, he managed to glide a bit, but a moment later, another invisible force – heralded by a surge of ethera – slashed into his other wing. He hit a different pillar, but this one didn’t crumble. Instead, a gout of fire burst forth from the center, bathing Elijah and the rest of the area in intense flames.

Elijah leaped again, his body blistering as he initiated a transformation into his human form. He landed feet-first on another pillar, already casting Soothe. With only a couple of facets of his Mind available, and in tremendous pain, he struggled to make sense of everything. However, when the pillar exploded into shards of ice, he was ready for it.

It wasn’t until two pillars later – one of which had crumbled while the other had buffeted him with powerful winds – that he saw the pattern for what it was. There were five symbols. One denoted fire, another heralded wind, and the third stood for ice. The fourth meant that when he stepped upon the pillar, it would fall apart.

But the fifth – Elijah hoped that it would be a safe haven. The only problem was that there were comparatively fewer of those, and they were well spaced across the column-strewn chamber. Still, as he leaped from the latest fire-breathing pillar, Elijah knew he didn’t have any option but to commit totally to his plan. In his human form, he soared through the air, twisting when he felt the pulse of ethera that announced one of the attacks that had ripped through his wings. He narrowly avoided it, but the maneuver meant that he was going to come up short of his destination.

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Stretching his injured arm out as far as he could, he realized that one wasn’t going to be enough. So, Elijah let go of his staff and grabbed hold of the edge of the pillar with both hands. As he hung by his fingertips, the weapon clattered against the column, then disappeared into the mass of tentacles below.

“Shit,” he growled. The Staff of the First Dragon had been an incredibly powerful piece of equipment. And now it was gone. But it was better that than falling to that beast. One-armed, Elijah pulled himself up, half expecting the pillar to crumble beneath him. Yet, it held firm, giving him a few moments to get his bearings. He used his healing spells to patch up his injuries, but it was only enough to get him functional. It would take far longer to completely heal, and with the corruption steadily straining against his control, he knew he couldn’t afford to take that long.

In the back of his mind, Elijah wondered if he’d made a huge mistake by coming alone. It had made sense when he’d made the decision, but the latest challenge had already pushed him to his limits. And he wasn’t even two-thirds of the way through. However, he knew that the others would’ve had no defense against the corruption. Perhaps no one in the entire Trial could stand up to it like Elijah could. After all, while there were a few who could rival – or even surpass – his attributes, he felt certain that no one had reached the same level of cultivation he had. And there weren’t many who could boast the core of an elder race.

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No - if his companions had come with him, they would have died.

Or worse, been corrupted.

Was it instinct that had prompted that decision? Had he known, deep down on some intuitive level, not to bring them? Maybe. Or perhaps it was hubris once again rearing its ugly head. As much as he wanted to work on that, there was a fine line between being confident enough to do the things he did and letting that confidence push him too far. It was a balancing act that he knew was still a work in progress.

Despite his frequent mistakes in that arena.

Regardless, he couldn’t begin second-guessing his actions when he was on a timer. He couldn’t keep the corruption at bay indefinitely, so the moment he was well enough to continue, he turned his attention to the other pillars. It didn’t take him long to pick out the glyphs denoting the safe columns, so after taking a couple of deep breaths, he shifted into the lamellar ape form, then threw himself at the closest one.

His destination was clear – on the other side was another of the pieces of the Broken Branch of the World Tree – so he only needed to reach it. As he leaped from one pillar to the next, Elijah fully expected something else to go wrong. Perhaps the tentacle monster down below would suddenly climb out of its pit and kill him. Or some other trap would activate. But he reached the other side without encountering any other problems.

So, he was incredibly cautious as he approached the dais containing the shattered piece of the Broken Branch. He even activated Iron Scales, just in case something attacked.

Nothing did, and he collected the piece without issue.

However, the moment he touched it, the whispers went wild, becoming screams in his mind.

You let them die! Selfish! Powerless! Weak! Arrogant!

The screams cut right through him, causing physical pain that stabbed into his mind. On and on it went, shouting insults that hit far too close to home. Elijah gritted his teeth and focused inward, seeing that the corruption had begun to boil over. He clamped down on it with his not inconsiderable willpower, and the voices dimmed.

A little.

But he could tell that he wouldn’t be completely rid of them until he completed the challenge. Or that was what he hoped.

He returned the way he’d come, leaping from one safe pillar to the next. But when he reached the other side, he very nearly missed the ledge when he saw something he never could have expected.

A crowd of people, all ripped and torn, faced him. There were humans, all dressed just as they’d been when he’d killed them back in Easton. Gnomes and dwarves, all glaring at him accusingly. Some individuals, he recognized. Like the red-mohawked gnome. Or the woman who’d been Roman’s second-in-command. A hundred others stood out to him, too, though he couldn’t even remember the details of when he’d killed them.

That brought him up short.

He’d killed so many people that he couldn’t even recall who they all were.

“You killed us,” they intoned in a monotonous voice. “You could have saved us. You could have been a hero. You could have…”

Elijah shook his head and, with no small degree of effort, ignored them. They weren’t real. It was all in his mind, as he confirmed when he reached out one hand and saw that his hand passed through them with no resistance.

The chorus continued, but Elijah refused to do as they continuously implored him. He would not consume the shards of crystal he had collected. Not for all the power in the world.

“Fool!” they shouted.

He ignored them, pushing on. As he traversed the tunnels, retracing his steps to the main chamber, the shouts reached a crescendo. Each yelled insult and every accusation cut deep into his Mind, shaking the very foundations of who he was. Everything began to unravel. The twisted rope of willpower he’d woven between the facets loosened its grip, and the corruption seeped out.

He screamed, falling to the ground and clutching his head. “Stop! Stop!”

But it wouldn’t.

It felt like someone was driving ice picks into his skull while beating him over the head with a sledgehammer of guilt. And then, suddenly, it stopped.

Tears streaming down his cheeks, Elijah looked up, and all the figures were gone. Instead, only one remained.

“Alyssa…”

His sister looked exactly as he remembered her, wearing blue jeans and an old Nirvana tee-shirt. She was young, too. Early twenties at the latest. Which didn’t make sense. Not until he remembered that he was looking at a memory. A flicker of thought made manifest.

“They’re not wrong, you know,” she said, kneeling beside him. She gave him a tight smile – the same one he’d grown so used to growing up – and continued, “Those little crystals in your bag could give you a great deal of power. With those, you’d reach the peak of the Mortal Realm in no time at all. Noone on Earth could stand against you.”

“But?” he croaked, his voice nearly gone from all the screaming.

“No buts. That’s just the truth, Elijah. You know it. So, the question is – why do you continue to resist?” she asked. “Why do you insist on taking the hard road when the other path is so much more convenient?”

“It’s…wrong…”

“Is it? Taking help when it’s offered is wrong? Why?”

Elijah wanted to answer, but the reality of it was that he had no idea why he felt the way he did. Those pieces of crystal in his satchel were powerful, it was absolutely true. However, they represented something that felt entirely antithetical to who he was. On their own, perhaps they wouldn’t send him down the wrong path, but they would represent the first steps towards…something bad.

“That is a childish way of looking at it,” she said. “You can’t save me. I’m gone. But with enough power, you can help everyone else. Like Miggy. Or Carmen. That pretty knight who’s been following you around. You could save the world, if you had enough power.”

Elijah’s hand crept toward the satchel.

But then he stopped.

He couldn’t say why he pulled away. Nor could he articulate what he found so objectionable about the notion of consuming the power in those shards. All he knew was that every instinct he had screamed at him to resist, that if he stepped one foot down that path, he would regret it.

“Idiot,” Alyssa said. “All that opportunity, and you are too afraid to take the leap.”

Then, she flickered and disappeared. A moment later, the accusatory memories returned to echo those sentiments.

Only then did Elijah recognize that he’d made it back to the main chamber. So, with corruption flooding his Mind and memories screaming insults in his ears, Elijah picked himself up and trudged down the third and final hallway.