Book 13: Chapter 39: Mockery in Motion

Path of Dragons

The world ignited.

And Elijah ignited with it.

His every cell burst into flames that burned brightly enough to briefly rival a star. The first pulse lasted no more than an instant, and it sent a ring of flame tearing across the landscape. The flesh tree sizzled, and its smaller branches burst with boiling pus and glistening fat. The second pulse continued that trend, raking across the landscape and melting the rocky ground. The roots trapped inside that slurry of superheated earth boiled.

On and on those pulses continued until, at last, the ninth blistered through the area. Elijah’s body finally succumbed, turning to swirling ash that joined the tempest he’d created. He drifted along, his awareness – his very spirit – leaping from one flake to the next as he observed the devastation.

For more than a mile surrounding the flesh tree, nothing remained. Just ash and molten rock. And at the center of it all stood a charred pillar of roasted flesh. More than a dozen feet of its grotesque trunk had sloughed away, puddling at its base and filling the air with the smell of rotted and roasted meat.

If Elijah had possessed a body at that moment, he might have vomited.

Instead, he drifted in the air, panic and fury warring within his mind. The creature was still alive. He could feel its macabre vitality pulsing along its form. And he could hear its screams, like steam hissing free of a kettle, compounded a thousand times over and combined into a single sound that felt almost physical in nature.

A mortal would have been slain by that sound alone.

Elijah’s lack of a body muted his senses, so it did not affect him at all.

Gradually, the ashes settled, coating the ground like fresh snowfall. Ethera and vitality churned within, dragging vast torrents toward Elijah’s awareness. Even as his body rebuilt, cell by cell, fresh vegetation – the sort that hadn’t been seen on Gorveth for thousands of years – bloomed.

The tree went wild, its trunk vibrating as its surviving limbs slithered through the air.

That was when Elijah felt it.

The perversion of it.

The mockery.

The transformation.

The flowers wilted. The nascent trees petrified, then crumbled. And the flesh tree dragged the remaining roots towards its body. With every passing instant, they changed. They twisted around one another, becoming extensions of the tree itself.

That bulbous mass beneath the ground continued to vibrate, churning the molten rock into a rapidly cooling whirlpool that pulled everything inward.

And then, just as Elijah returned to solidity, it erupted from the ground, revealing a massive maw filled with tentacles where teeth should have been. Each of those tendrils ended in another mouth, which contained even more of the same. On and on it went, like looking into a reflection of a reflection.

It was more than disconcerting.

Elijah didn’t have time to focus on such mundane details, because the second he materialized, a thousand coopted roots rushed in his direction. At the same time, the bulbous bit of fleshy root continued its climb from the earth, hoisting itself aloft on hundreds of semi-rigid tendrils. It rose more than three hundred feet into the air, the massive trunk swaying far above.

Elijah dodged, slithering between the web of mucus-covered roots and narrowly avoided being encapsulated in their meaty embrace. Even as he ducked beneath one tendril, he leaped over another. Then, he contorted his body, tucking his arms close as a group of other roots – connected by tiny strings of flesh and a snot-like substance – store through the air.

He narrowly avoided them.

But more soon followed. Thousands of them, all moving in erratic, barely discernable patterns. All with a singular focus – capturing him and presumably consuming his vitality.

Fortunately, Elijah remained in the Shape of Embers, which came with a multitude of advantages. Not only did it increase his attributes by a significant amount, but it also featured a significant boost to his reaction speed. That, combined with other passive traits like Lupine Reflexes and Heart of the Tempest, allowed him to stay just ahead of the monster’s attacks.

In addition, the Cloak of Embers swirled around him, furthering his advantage.

It was barely enough, though. Elijah leveraged every single available leaf within his mind toward keeping track of the erratic movements. Doing so strained his mind, pushing him harder than he could have imagined. The leaves trembled under the strain, but they remained intact and functional.

Meanwhile, the tree added another layer to its attacks by spewing streams of blood and mucus at Elijah. The combination sizzled with corruption and clung steadfastly to every surface. Elijah knew he could escape its sticky grasp, but it would slow him down. Not by much. Rather, it would be just enough to get him killed.

On and on, the fight went. The passage of time seemed to slow – likely because of Elijah’s potent reflexes – and the following few minutes felt like hours. He remained just ahead of the monster’s attacks, but he knew he was on borrowed time. The sticky mucus had begun to pool, and the roots had continued to multiply. They formed a cage all around him, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before they began to contract.

Then, Elijah reached two hundred charges of Seed of Ashes. He darted forward, narrowly avoiding the creature’s attacks. He leaped. As he soared through the air, a hundred fleshy roots ripped towards him.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

That was when he unleashed Herald of Regrowth.

His attributes surged with power just before he hit the fleshy trunk. A second later, the roots arrived. With that influx of strength, he shrugged them off. At the same time, he brandished his Wildfire-wreathed claws and dove into the monster’s maw. It closed around him, and a thousand mouths latched onto him, instantly draining his vitality and filling him with corruption.

Elijah countered with two abilities. His Mantle of Authority exploded from him, ripping through the monstrous mockery of nature. The creature screamed in pain, its many mouths recoiling. As he cast Wild Resurgence, Elijah threw himself deeper into the monster’s gaping cavity, ripping through and burning its flesh with every passing moment.

It parted before his powerful claws, spewing boiling pus and hissing blood with every attack. But as effective as that tactic was, it paled in comparison to the damage wrought by his Mantle of Authority. The creature reeled, and it tried to spit him out. Absolute Grasp kept Elijah firmly planted amidst the moist and moving cave of flesh.

He continued to rip and tear, ever searching for something vital. A brain, perhaps. A heart. Anything that might give him the means to end the monster’s life.

And yet, he found nothing.

Even as Herald of Regrowth waned, Elijah had made no real progress. The monster’s biology made no sense. It was neither plant nor animal. In fact, it resembled nothing with which he was familiar, and to an extent that his instincts told him that it should not exist.

But it did exist, and as a mockery of nature that he could not allow to live.

Even if he’d been capable of fleeing, he wouldn’t have. Killing the monster was at least as important as any other task before him. Perhaps more so, even if logic said otherwise. His instincts insisted upon it.

So, he continued on, even after Herald of Regrowth faded. The creature responded with renewed fury, sacrificing thousands of its slithering maws at the altar of Elijah’s Mantle. Perhaps it believed it could simply overwhelm him. Or drain his energy. There was a good chance that it didn’t think at all. But the fact was that its strategy was entirely useless.

Elijah’s mantle had endured too much to fall before such mundane attempts to corrode it. Until that moment, Elijah hadn’t realized just how much stronger it had become. If he’d encountered the monster when he’d first arrived in the abyss, perhaps its strategy would have worked. Now, it was wholly ineffective.

He used that to his advantage as he continued to rip through flesh and tendril alike.

But his own strategy was no more effective than the monster’s. The difference was that Elijah had options. He just needed to wait for the opportunity to use them. He couldn’t kill the monster the easy way. There was no brain to destroy. No organs to rupture. So, without that, he would just have to overwhelm it with sheer damage.

Fortunately, he had just the tools for that job.

And with his Mantle of Authority extended, its attacks were weakened enough that they weren’t a real danger – unless he made some serious mistakes.

With that in mind, Elijah shifted into the Shape of the Scourge and went to work. He didn’t bother aiming his talons. Nor did he direct the following cast of Lurking Swarm. Instead, he just focused on eviscerating as much flesh as he could manage. Venom soared through the monstrous tree-creature’s body, instances of his afflictions piling atop one another in a cascade of ethereal venom.

On it went for more than two hours. Elijah never let up. He didn’t really bother with blocking the creature’s ineffectual attacks. Instead, he just dug through its flesh like he was searching for treasure.

But by the end of that second hour, the afflictions had reached the limit of their effectiveness. More would still do a little extra damage, but they’d reached a point of diminishing returns.

Elijah had other options.

So, he shifted into his dragon form. The monster’s flesh gave way to his massive body, and he continued to rip and tear. But more importantly, he cast Eternal Plague. This time, the spell conjured tiny, burrowing mites that surged forth into its flesh. At the same time, Elijah continuously cast Nature’s Claim, and mushrooms sprouted all around him as ochre spores filled the air.

He never stopped his physical attacks, either.

Meanwhile, he countered the ethereal drain by opening the apertures within his mind as wide as he could possibly manage. That allowed him to keep the spells going for hours more. Thousands of mites became millions, and eventually, millions surged into the billions.

More and more, until even Elijah couldn’t count them. They burrowed through the creature’s flesh, but when they reached the edge of his mantle, they inevitably succumbed to the corruption. But before they did, they bathed the monster in massive amounts of potent venom.

That spread throughout its flesh, entirely unimpeded.

Hours passed.

Then more than a day.

Elijah could feel the creature weakening. More, he could sense it rampaging across the desolate landscape as its primitive mind searched for some means of escape.

There was none, for the danger lay within its body.

Of course, Elijah was forced to rest Eternal Plague on more than one occasion. As powerful as his mind was, he couldn’t regenerate enough ethera to completely counter the drain. But that was okay. While regenerating his ethera, he shifted into the Shape of the Scourge and reapplied Ethereal Sepsis as well as Spreading Blight.

The cycle continued, and Elijah found himself both impressed and appalled by the monster’s ability to regenerate. And its overall power. Without his Mantle of Authority, he would have long since fallen prey.

But with it, he could survive.

And that was enough to keep him going. However, after nearly a week of constant damage, Elijah realized that he needed something more to push it over the edge. It was weakened. It was damaged. But to kill it off, he would need more.

So, on the tenth day, Elijah once again shifted into the Shape of Embers. By this point, the monster’s many maws, which seemed endless, were so weakened that he found dodging their pitiful attacks easy. And soon enough, he built two hundred charges on his Seed of Ashes.

Then, he once again let loose with Flames of Renewal.

This time, the fire was far more effective.

Each pulse of flame turned those slithering maws to ashes, burning the massive tree from within. However, when Elijah reformed from the ashes, he was disappointed to find that the thing still wasn’t dead.

Was it possible that he just didn’t have the power to accomplish his goal? Even with everything he’d thrown at the monster, it was still alive. Weakened, certainly. During the course of Flames of Renewal, it had tipped over. The trunk lay on the ground, quivering in agony.

And yet, it still lived.

Angry at the failure, Elijah channeled his frustration into determination, and he repeated his process.

Three more times over the course of another month, he cycled Eternal Plague, the venom from Shape of the Scourge, and Flames of Renewal.

And finally, on that third time, when Elijah reformed from the ashes, he felt the monster shudder as death approached. Taking no chances, Elijah shifted into the form of the fungal guardian, then activated Throne of Spores.

His fungal tendrils ripped through the monster’s charred and envenomed flesh, entirely unimpeded. The thing seized. It tried to muster a few maws to counter his attack. But they were weak. They could barely even move, they’d received so much damage.

Meanwhile, Elijah’s tendrils burst free of its body, showering the surroundings with gore, pus, and burned meat. They snaked down the trunk, infested it for hundreds of yards until Elijah flexed his will.

They exploded from the trunk, eviscerating it entirely.

And at last, Elijah felt its vitality wane to nothing.

His massive shoulders slumped as, for the first time in months, he saw the violet streaked sky above him. He sighed in relief, content that he’d finally slaughtered the abomination.