Book 13: Chapter 54: The Inevitable Passage of Time

Path of Dragons

Gorveth shuddered with a dense blast of ethera that tore across Druhmor and out into the abyssal landscape of the excised world. It wasn’t the first time Elijah had experienced such a pulse, which left flowers blooming in its wake, but it was far denser than any that had come before.

And given what he felt from the tree, it marked a significant event. The end of an era, perhaps, though Elijah couldn’t be certain until he investigated it more thoroughly.

But before he could do that, he knew he had a chore he needed to see to. With that in mind, he shifted into his draconic shape and took to the sky. A few flaps of his wings sent him gliding toward the outer edges of Druhmor. As he flew, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride and accomplishment at what he’d managed to cultivate.

Aside from the black sky streaked with purple corruption, the area looked little different from what he might find back on his home planet. Many of the seeds he’d transplanted to Gorveth had come from Earth, so even if he hadn’t spent the past couple of years cultivating them, he would have found them very familiar.

Greens and reds and blues, yellows and whites – so much color on a planet that was usually bichromatic. And yet, it was all balanced on the razor’s edge of sustainability. Without his frequent input, all of Druhmor would eventually wilt away. Within a few years, nothing of his efforts would remain.

It was a depressing thought, but he sensed that the tree’s development – whatever it was – represented hope.

Or maybe that feeling was born of his need to feel something other than rote depression.

In any case, that sense of optimism accompanied him all the way to the outer ring of trilithons. And to his surprise, he reached his destination before his would-be enemies. He landed just inside the runic circle and cast three spells, all at once.

The first was Eternal Plague, then Lightning Domain, and finally, Nature’s Claim. His scales shimmered as he held all three within his chest, building with every passing moment. As they compiled, the three spells remained initially separate, but inevitably, they soon began to mix. To blend.

The combination wasn’t literal because the spells were yet to actually cast. Rather, they were held on the verge of fruition, like clogging a pipe. Only instead of the building pressure of a stream of water, it was half-harnessed ethera. And with all three spells casting at once – a new ability that had come with his emerald mind – they could not remain entirely separate.

Within a few minutes, the first monsters arrived. Enormous abominations crossed the Abyssal Moat, trampling the vegetation Elijah had so meticulously cultivated. Thankfully, they were hardy plants, and it would take a more focused effort to destroy the product of all his hard work.

The first wave of monsters roared with unmitigated hatred as they attacked the seemingly indestructible trilithons. The creatures pounded car-sized fists against the indomitable stone, but to no avail.

Elijah had no idea why his creations were so durable. Perhaps it was because the base material, having been bathed in so much ethera over the years, had evolved into something far surpassing simple stone. Or maybe it was a characteristic of his design, which might have served to fortify it. Certainly, the ritual circle – for that was what it was – sapped the monsters of some of their strength, but even that didn’t account for how ineffectual their attacks proved to be.

After all, the trilithons remained intact even during Elijah’s months-long bout of mind cultivation. If it didn’t break then, there was a good chance that the ring would still stand after years of abuse.

Ironically, if the creatures had simply bypassed the monuments, they might’ve had better luck with the next ring. That one was much weaker, largely because it funneled most of its energy outward. The same could be said for all but the innermost circle, which Elijah sensed was just as durable as the outer ring.

Either way, the monsters were incapable of destroying the ring but equally unable to ignore it. As a result, their pounding on the outer circle of trilithons was entirely ineffectual. Yet, Elijah knew he couldn’t simply leave them be. All it would take was one brief moment of reason for one of the monsters to step past the barrier and destroy everything Elijah had worked to build.

Even so, he didn’t immediately attack.

Instead, he allowed his spells to continue to build as more monsters tromped through the Abyssal Moat. A handful of abominations became hundreds of unique creatures. And as hours turned to more than a day, that number climbed into the thousands, reaching a point where Elijah stopped even trying to estimate how high the figure had ascended.

Instead, he just focused on the mass of tentacles, limbs, teeth, and eyes. At times, the monsters took swipes at one another. Smaller creatures died under the titanic footsteps of the much more formidable abominations. Still others climbed over the macabre hill of slimy flesh, just to get a chance to attack the trilithons they were entirely incapable of toppling.

And all the while, Elijah’s trio of spells continued to compound. The process sent deep pangs of pain trembling through his chest and arcing throughout his body. However, the fungal spores within his mind absorbed much of the discomfort. Through them, he still felt the pain, but it was muted. Far away. Like echoes of someone else’s agony.

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That allowed him to push the spells further than ever before. To date, Elijah still hadn’t found his limit, but he suspected that his body would give out well before the pain forced him to stop.

His scales shimmered as waves of power passed through them, and dense arcs of ethera flashed between his antlers. An emerald haze surrounded his body, growing thicker with every passing hour.

By the time he chose to unleash it, the effect was devastating – even to those vaunted, demi-god level monsters.

Lightning arced between the column of glittering dragonflies suspended in a cloud of yellow spores that quickly spread to encompass the entire horde of monsters. It covered nearly a mile, even as Elijah’s Mantle of Authority slammed into them. They reeled, trembling with obvious pain as the corruption within each monster boiled.

The lesser creatures simply exploded from the combination of the mantle and arcing lightning. The more powerful among them stumbled as a web of electricity scorched its way across their bodies. The dragonflies descended, then. Hundreds of millions of them, all armed with potent afflictions that soon spread through them all.

Enormous yellow mushrooms exploded from their shoulders and backs, showering everything in a dense wave of gore. The cloud of ochre spores grew denser, eliciting another wave of fungal infections that cascaded into yet another.

And all the while, Elijah continued to breath devastation upon them. Days’ worth of each spell, compounded into a single stream, took almost two minutes to discharge. And by the time he’d finished, only a few of the strongest remained upright.

Elijah leaped over the ring of trilithons and ripped into them. His claws tore them apart even as his teeth sawed through their still-tough flesh.

Though Elijah was outnumbered and outleveled, it wasn’t even a contest.

Even with all the advantages in Elijah’s favor, some of the monsters managed to persist for an entire day. By the time they fell, their bodies looked like someone had shoved a turkey leg into a garbage disposal. Sizzling tassels of flesh hung from black-blooded torsos, accompanied by massive yellow mushrooms. Arms and legs had been ripped from their bodies, and even their teeth had shattered.

And yet, they didn’t give up until every ounce of vitality within them was gone.

In the end, Elijah stood atop a mound of flesh – more monsters had come during the fight – exhausted but exhilarated by how far he’d come. It wasn’t that long ago that he would have fallen to a single one of those monsters. But now? He was fighting hordes.

However, he couldn’t escape the reality that things would have been very different if the battle had taken place elsewhere. Around Druhmor, Elijah had every advantage, and though he’d used those to great effect, he knew just how tenuous his edge really was.

One mistake.

One gap in his defenses.

That was all it would take for everything to fall.

Such was the nature of survival in the abyss, and it was a reality he’d accepted long ago. It sharpened him in a way nothing else could have, but it also came with a significant cost. Elijah could feel himself growing wilder. Harder. He gravitated more towards the beast with every passing month.

He could have stopped it.

He recognized the dangers inherent in fully giving himself to that side of his identity. Yet, he chose not to, and for one simple reason – it was necessary. Without that wildness – without the beast – he would never survive.

Because beasts didn’t lament the lack of company. They didn’t grow lonely. Instead, they did what was necessary to survive. Day in and day out, until their time ran its course.

That attitude was the only thing keeping Elijah from going insane.

Thankfully, his mantle did most of the work of cleansing the meat during the battle, so it only took a few hours of concerted effort to complete the job. He ate his fill – without even bothering to cook it – and used the rest to fertilize Druhmor. By the time that was finished, an extra week had passed.

He returned to the tree and shifted back into his human form. Doing so pushed the bestial identity away – if only a little – and he knelt beside the six-foot-tall sapling to inspect the change he’d felt before the monsters had arrived.

When his fingers brushed against the trunk, he felt something that reminded him of a static shock. The hairs on his arms quivered under the influence of dense ethera combined with vitality and what he’d come to regard as the World Tree’s essence. He sharpened his mantle into a single point, then gradually pushed the needle-like bit of his soul into the tree.

Instantly, he was inundated with the force of its spirit, which, even with his advancements in cultivation, still felt briefly overwhelming. Like staring down an oncoming tsunami. But he was firmly enough rooted that he could stand, even under such a powerful force. That made it no less intimidating, though.

He weathered that feeling and focused his attention on inspecting the tree’s structure. The trunk and the short limbs were no different than the last time he’d examined them, but it only took him a moment to turn his focus onto the source of his previous exclamation.

The tree’s roots had grown much more rapidly than any other part of its body, and even in the weeks he’d spent dealing with the monsters, they had nearly doubled in depth as well as the breadth of their coverage. Currently, they reached more than a hundred feet down and had expanded past the innermost ring.

Even that wasn’t that surprising. Ancestral trees were extremely magical in nature, and they tended to spread their roots much wider than other plants. But there were two factors that truly shocked him.

The first was that the roots emitted dense ethera that countered any ambient corruption, even overwhelming it to the point of cleansing the general area. It only extended a few feet from each root, but given the breadth of its spread, that covered quite a lot of ground.

But Elijah was far more focused on the second surprising characteristic.

“Is this a natural formation? Or are you following my lead?” he asked the tree.

Predictably, it didn’t answer, leaving Elijah to inspect the pattern of the roots. They didn’t grow haphazardly. Nor did they follow a normal arrayment characteristic of other trees. Instead, they grew into the shapes of glyphs, and in a very familiar sequence that mimicked the patterns he’d coaxed out of the vegetation of Druhmor.

The tree was growing its own runic circle.

And judging by the amount of energy running through it, it would be far more powerful than anything Elijah had created on his own.

That showed Elijah a path forward that he could not deny. He’d already set the stage for something truly wondrous. Now, he only needed to stay the course and ensure that it had a chance to grow to fruition.

In short, he needed to embrace the fundamental, nurturing nature of his archetype. Often, he’d ignored that side, depending on Nerthus to grow and tend to the Hartwood Grove. Now, he would make up for lost time and fully become the Druid he was always meant to be.