Book 13: Chapter 38: A Tree of Flesh

Path of Dragons

The smell arrived well before Elijah saw the abomination.

Like rotting garbage, sewage, and ozone tied together into a wholly grotesque amalgam that very nearly prompted a gag. And as Elijah trudged ahead, still under the Guise of the Stalker, it only grew stronger. Each passing mile brought the odor into starker relief until Elijah felt as if it had seeped into his very pores.

Normally, he’d have long since grown accustomed to such a smell. But this time was different. He couldn’t ignore it. He couldn’t acclimate. And it suffused everything. Elijah half expected to look down and see a river of muddy sludge squishing between his talons.

But no such appearance occurred. Instead, the terrain remained the same as it had been for the past month since he’d left the mountains behind. Just an endless plain, broken only by the odd river of corruption. Even the monstrous wildlife were scarce, making the entire expanse look like the surface of the moon. But somehow even more lifeless.

Oddly enough, the atmospheric ethera was even denser than normal – like a fog of energy accompanied the horrible smell.

Once, the region had been the world’s breadbasket. Rolling plains full of crops that fed the entire planet’s population. Now, the subtle hills had been worn smooth by frigid winds, and the area was so lifeless that, even with those farming discs he’d seen back in Ithalon and Dravkein, nothing would grow.

Elijah hunched his shoulders against the cold and leaned against the scouring wind. Despite the lifelessness of the expanse, he maintained stealth – if only because he’d learned a hard lesson about relaxing in unfamiliar environments. In the mountains, he’d decided to stretch his legs as a human, and he’d nearly fallen prey to a cleverly-disguised monster that used its natural camouflage to ambush him.

He'd managed to defeat it, though the venom it inflicted upon him had plagued him for more than a week. For a while, he’d thought he was going to die. None of his healing spells managed to banish it, and even his Mantle of Authority only served to weaken it slightly.

The second week had him wishing it had killed him. It was like the worst bout of food poisoning he’d ever experienced, only accompanied by a massive fever that made every moment feel like an eternity of suffering. In terms of sheer torment, it fell only a little short of what he’d been through while climbing the obelisk.

Thankfully, his body finally banished the toxins, and he’d spent the following couple of weeks slowly recovering his strength. Unfortunately, that made quite a dent in his supplies, which had already begun to dwindle. It wouldn’t be long before he’d be forced to once again resort to an exclusive diet of monster meat.

Elijah was not looking forward to that.

His stores of water were still in good shape, at least. Back in Dravkein, he’d acquired a runic sieve that would purify the planet’s tainted water supply, but the last thing he wanted was to be forced into drinking that horrible stuff.

In any case, he’d found his way out of the mountains and into the desolate and frigid plain. Trekking across it would have felt monotonous if the smell and increasingly dense ethera hadn’t told him something terrible was coming.

On Earth, he might’ve gone the other direction with his expectations. In that scenario, he would be sprinting toward what increasingly felt like a natural treasure. But he knew that wasn’t what he would find when he finally reached the source of the smell. Not on an excised world.

His first glimpse of it came from more than a hundred miles away. At that point, it was just a dark splotch on the horizon, but it soon resolved into something truly horrifying.

When Elijah came within fifty miles, he stopped and beheld it using Eyes of the Eagle. As he did so, a subtle gasp escaped from between his fangs.

In form, it looked like a tree devoid of its leaves. Its branches spread for more than a mile all around, while it reached high enough into the sky that its crown was no longer visible. But the longer Elijah looked, the more incongruous the thing appeared.

The most obvious problem was that, rather than being made of bark and wood, it was a thing of subtly rippling flesh. The limbs looked more like tentacles than branches, and its fat trunk jiggled in the howling wind. A sheen of mucous reflected the violet light from the rivers of corruption decorating the sky, while thick, fleshy roots emerged from and descended into the ground for miles in every direction.

The closest was only a few hundred yards from Elijah.

He knelt, then leaned forward until he was on all fours. As his front claw made contact with the ground, he cast his awareness out. It didn’t take him long to recognize the danger surrounding him.

Roots extended before and behind him, surrounding him so thoroughly that he was afraid to even breathe. And those tentacle-like flesh roots weren’t uniform in size. Instead, they branched out into a web of wriggling digits that he was surprised he hadn’t sensed them the second he’d come into range.

It only took a little more examination for him to recognize why he hadn’t. The second his focus shuddered, he found it difficult to concentrate on those things. It almost felt like mind control, but given that he was still wearing the Antlers of the Wild Revenant, which protected him from such things, he quickly discerned that it was just a stealth ability at work.

Suddenly, the desolation made more sense.

But Elijah wanted to verify his theory, so he retreated, pausing every so often to concentrate on the ground. After a few hours, he was fairly sure that he was right, but by the time a day had passed, he was absolutely convinced that the tree’s roots extended all the way to the mountains.

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He ranged for a while until he saw how it hunted. A pair of flying monsters fell from the sky as they tangled with one another and fought for supremacy. The second they fell within a few dozen feet of the surface, fleshy roots erupted from the ground, wrapped them in a hundred tendrils, and dragged them under the dirt.

It happened in the space of a second – almost too fast to track. If Elijah hadn’t been specifically looking for it, he’d never have seen it. But the implications – that he’d been walking through a killing field without even knowing it – were sobering to consider.

But there was something else brewing beneath the surface of his mind, and it was decidedly angrier. Outrage and disgust were the most prominent emotions, but there were dozens of other, lesser feelings buried in there as well. Above all, though, was a need to right the wrong he’d witnessed.

He intended to destroy that abominable mockery of arborescence, one way or another.

After committing to that, Elijah headed back the way he’d come, his anger and frustration building with every passing second. As the thing loomed larger and larger, Elijah’s offense at its very sight grew. The thing should not have existed. The image of a tree was not meant to be coopted by the abyss, and the fact that it had done just that served to fill Elijah with an anger so potent that he knew it was irrational.

And yet, he couldn’t deny it.

As he drew closer to the abomination, he realized that it was even larger than he’d first believed. Its fatty trunk stretched at least a hundred yards wide, and a bulbous mass – like a meaty version of a root vegetable – shuddered beneath his feet.

Elijah had no intention of letting it be, but he managed to keep himself from attacking straightaway. The thing was on the level of a demi-god, and not a weak one. He’d watched the speed of its roots. He’d witnessed its power. And he knew that if he wasn’t careful, he would meet the same fate as those unwitting monsters it had caught.

So, he watched. He waited. He observed, all the while looking for patterns or weaknesses.

There were none.

The creature barely moved, save to feed. Dense flows of corruption flowed from above, suggesting that it somehow absorbed the much more potent abyssal atmosphere in the upper atmosphere.

Like a mockery of photosynthesis.

And the thing was tree-like in other facets, as well. The systems bore a striking resemblance to what Elijah found familiar, though it had all been corrupted by carnivorous intent.

Had it once been a true natural treasure? Or some sort of sentient tree creature, like Nerthus, but with a larger emphasis on the arboreal side? Or was it an amalgam of monsters that had come together? Elijah had seen something like that a few times.

In the end, it didn’t really matter.

Elijah couldn’t leave it alive. Not only would his sense of offense not allow it, but he could never escape the guilt of letting it live. And finally, he sensed a pain there. A deep sense of wrongness that felt like a scream for help.

So, he attacked.

His talons bit deep into its bulbous trunk, and great streams of fat and pus came pouring out of the wounds. Meanwhile, Elijah’s Ethereal Sepsis and Spreading Blight took hold. At the same time, a dozen or so crystalline spiders pounced on the tree, inflicting their venom upon it.

The moment Elijah exited stealth, the thing responded. Its limbs waved, and roots – thick and thin alike – exploded from the earth. A shower of dirt joined the spray of gore from the wounds Elijah had inflicted, and soon enough, he was covered in both. He never stopped attacking, though. He needed to build as many instances of his afflictions, and before the thing forced him into a more durable form.

As the roots tore through the air, intent on wrapping around him, he ascended that grotesque trunk. Each time his talons sunk into the meaty surface, his abilities built upon themselves.

However, it wasn’t long before the thing showed another ability.

Bony thorns exploded from every surface, and without warning, Elijah had only the slimmest chance to dodge. Still, he avoided two such protrusions. But he couldn’t manage to evade the third. Not completely, at least.

It tore through his side, skating along his ribs and ripping away flesh and scales alike. Elijah sprang away, already transforming. Before he hit a hastily summoned Cloud Step, he’d taken on the Shape of Spores. Then, he dove back in, already activating Throne of Spores. He also cast Nature’s Claim, over and over again, as he landed on the trunk.

Great fungal tendrils emerged from the ground, wrapped around the waving roots, and began to crush them. A high-pitched scream filled the air until more hastily summoned thorns pierced Elijah’s tendrils.

But that was the point.

Yellow spores erupted from every wound, suffusing the atmosphere with an ochre cloud of infection. Meanwhile, Elijah hammered the fleshy monster’s trunk. The coat of blubber absorbed the blunt impact, rendering his attacks mostly useless.

But the Shape of Spores had claws, too.

He switched strategies as he bit and tore. Pus and fat filled his mouth with the acrid taste of befouled meat, but he ignored it. Instead, he continued to fight and cast, trying his best to hammer it with as many afflictions as possible.

Eventually, he knew he’d exhausted that avenue of attack. So, he shifted once again – this time, into his dragon form. His body surged with power as he cast Wild Resurgence and Blessing of the Grove before focusing on a pair of spells. The first, he kept contained within his chest, but the second, he let loose immediately.

Lightning Domain arced out, shocking everything within a hundred or so yards. The smell of charred meat wafted into Elijah’s nostrils as the flesh tree shook under a potent spasm. As the spell continued to build, Elijah attacked.

And this time, his claws bit much deeper.

The might of an angry dragon was not to be dismissed.

Pushed by his incredibly fury, Elijah carved a massive trough into the creature’s trunk. On and on he went. The monster once again summoned thorns, but the majority of them glanced off his emerald scales. The ones that did pierce him were ignored. The wounds they left behind were healed by Elijah’s ongoing spells.

And all the while, he fought.

Nearly an hour passed, and in that time, Elijah had dug more than a hundred feet deep.

At the same time, his chest felt like it was going to burst. Finally, he unleashed Eternal Plague. A million glittering moths erupted from his mouth in a wide stream that soon filled the wound he’d inflicted upon the monster. They spilled out, overflowing the writhing hole and skittering up the trunk. With every passing second, more emerged, and they wasted no time before biting the enemy.

Potent venom joined the other ongoing afflictions, and the combined effect weakened the creature. It grew more sluggish, but Elijah knew it wouldn’t be enough.

It was never intended to be, though.

The second he’d laid eyes on the thing, he’d known what he needed to do. He just wanted it softened up for his intended strategy.

Finally, he sprang free, already transforming a final time.

He shrank, his emerald scales turning ash white while a cloak of embers trailed away from his shoulders. He landed on a Cloud Step, then finally let himself hit the ground.

Even weakened, the monster was still powerful. Its roots erupted from the ground, ready to drag him down below to be digested.

Elijah dodged.

Again and again, he used his enhanced reflexes to his advantage. The roots never came close, but the sheer volume of attacks aimed at him was enough to fill his Seed of Ashes.

Once it reached two hundred charges, he unleashed his most powerful ability. If Flames of Renewal couldn’t kill it, he didn’t know what could.