Path of Dragons

Book 6: Chapter 81: The Tenth Challenge

After Dat failed to adequately describe what he saw, Elijah shifted back into his human form and retrieved a mirror from his Ghoul-Hide Satchel. Then, he activated Shape of Thorn and, once his transformation was complete, took a look for himself. The mirror was only eight-inches tall and about half as wide, but it was large enough for him to get an idea why Dat couldn’t give him a good description.

The first thing that came to Elijah’s mind was the root raptors he’d encountered toward the end of his first tower. Like them, his new form was reptilian in shape – the frame was like a slimmed down version of the lamellar ape – but his arms and shoulders were covered in roots and vines that grew out of his bark-like scales. In addition, large thorns formed a crest upon his head that flowed down his back and to his tail.

Now he understood why Dat kept saying he looked like a thorny lizard-chimp. In retrospect, that seemed accurate enough, though at nearly twelve feet tall, the comparison to the small-ish primates was more about shape than size.

More importantly, as he stretched and moved, he discovered a few things about his new form. First, it was strong. Very, very strong. For some time, he had felt that he lagged a little behind everyone else in terms of raw attributes. He’d made up for it in variety and core cultivation, but knowing that most people his level were stronger and faster than him was a bit of a sore spot.

He suspected he didn’t have to worry about that anymore.

The second thing Elijah realized was that those extra points in his Dexterity attribute were more than necessary. The gap between it and Strength had only widened, and he felt even clumsier than before. A lot more powerful, sure. But he knew that if he hadn’t spent so much time in his lamellar ape form, training himself to get the most out of his Dexterity, the evolution would have been virtually unusable. Fortunately, he had spent that time, and as a result, he was just able to keep himself under control.

Still, he wasn’t quite comfortable yet.

After familiarizing himself with his new form – and enduring the group’s questions about it – he also discovered that, despite their appearance, his scales weren’t actually made of bark. Instead, they were made of the same keratin that comprised all scales. For some reason, that made him feel a little better.

Finally, after toying with the vines on his shoulders and arms, he found that they were, indeed, plant-like. He could feel them, too, just like any other part of his body. His first thought was that, like the scales, they were cleverly disguised as something they weren’t. However, One with Nature – as well as the simple feel of them – told him otherwise. He really did have vines growing out of him.

Elijah couldn’t disagree with that assessment. There were plenty of animals that had evolved to look like plants – the leafy sea dragon, stick insects, and many others – but none that actually were part plant. So, the only real explanation was, as seemed so often the case, magic.

Or maybe he just had incomplete knowledge of how plants and animals fit together. It was something that he intended to investigate going forward, but for now, he needed to focus on more important things. In the time that he’d spent making his choices and inspecting the results of his newly evolved spell, the time to move on had come.

Making that clear was Sadie, who stood nearby with his arms crossed and a frown upon her face. The only thing missing was a tapping foot.

“Fine,” he announced before she could say anything. Because he wasn’t quite as comfortable as he should have been in the Shape of Thorn, Elijah shifted back into his human form. “I guess it’s time to go, right? Sorry about the delay.”

“It’s okay. Your new form is…interesting.”

“It’s cool is what it is, bro,” added Dat.

Kurik grunted, “I don’t like it. Plants and animals shouldn’t mix.”

“It seems powerful,” Ron stated.

Elijah ignored Kurik’s response. Instead, he said, “I think it will be. Not quite used to all that Strength, though. Are we ready?”

Everyone was, so they began the trek back the way they’d initially come. The interior of the tower was much the same as it had been on the way in, which was to say that it was entirely deserted. So, aside from taking basic precautions to curtail the impact of any potential ambush, they didn’t linger. Soon enough, the group reached the door leading outside, and when Sadie led them through, she immediately launched into an attack.

When Elijah followed, already shifting into his new form, he saw something curious. There were hundreds of sentry golems around, but aside from the one Sadie had just cut in half from shoulder to hip, none of them were moving. In addition, Elijah could feel that their cores were entirely bereft of ethera.

“They’re not active,” he said, stating the obvious.

“But those cores ain’t damaged at all,” Kurik said with a gleam of greed in his eyes. After that, he enlisted their help to get at the potentially valuable components. Sadie and Elijah worked to crack the things open – easier now that they were inactive – while Dat and Ron dragged them closer. Neither could move the huge things alone, but together, they could manage the task well enough.

Kurik, of course, pried the inert cores free and threw them into his new storage space. He clearly intended to get plenty of use out of the Key of Twisted Ethera.

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The process didn’t take nearly as long as Elijah might have expected, and after only a couple of hours, they’d harvested everything they could from the golems. Elijah himself took a decent amount of the metal from which they were constructed, hoping to give it to Carmen when he got home. He wouldn’t get much use out of a ton of metal, but she probably would.

Kurik grumbled about having to use his storage space to hold Elijah’s scrap metal, but he did it nonetheless.

Once that was finished, they took one last look around and headed away from the tower. When they stopped by the library, they found that it was completely sealed shut. So, there would be no exploiting it for information they shouldn’t have had.

That only left the trek to the edge of the campus, which they completed in less than an hour. Without having to fight their way through sentry golems, they probably could have gone a little faster. But no one was in a hurry, so they simply strolled along as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

At first, Elijah tried to talk to Sadie about plans for the future – after all, there was still a city to save from a Primal Realm once they got back to Earth – but she was too focused on their surroundings to carry on a conversation. Because of that, the journey to the edge of the challenge was undertaken in relative silence.

Finally, they reached it, but the second Sadie led them across the line, Elijah knew something was wrong.

Part of it was the notification he – and everyone else – received:

“What the –”

Dat never got the rest of his exclamation out, because at that moment, a few things happened. The world shook violently as if under the effects of a massive earthquake. Alone, that was bad enough, but even as some of the buildings gave way before the tremors, another notification loomed large in Elijah’s mind.

Elijah didn’t have time to appreciate the gravity of the notification. Instead, he was more concerned with the third occurrence. Up until then, the barrier holding back the Abyss had loomed over everything. But suddenly, something ripped through. It took Elijah a second to marry what he saw to something he could understand, and even then, he was a little hesitant to call it a claw.

For one, it was the size of a suburban house, only hinting at the size of its owner. For another, everything about it was just wrong. It had scales, but they weren’t stationary. Instead, they moved like the world’s most ghastly feathers. And beneath those feathers glowed eyes that flickered back and forth.

The claw itself was just as odd. One second, the scythe-like appendage was rigid, and the next, it seemed to move like a tentacle. The combination made Elijah’s stomach twist, and every instinct told him that he was looking at some thing that should not have existed. It was so far beyond the scope of nature that it went past offensive and into the realm of pure terror.

It was only a moment later that he felt Sadie’s hand clamp down on his upper arm and drag him away while she shouted, “Run!”

Elijah stumbled as he felt that sense of wrongness pervade the atmosphere and flood his senses. It seeped into everything, infecting it with an artificial hunger – an oily greed – that he couldn’t ignore. Fortunately, or perhaps sadly, he recognized it. After all, he’d felt something similar, albeit weaker, in the fallen grove.

He shoved it aside, locking it away as he jerked his attention from the creature that seemed to rip its way into his reality. To their credit, none of his companions seemed to have succumbed to the corruption. Instead, they ran from the sight of the monster they knew none of them could ever hope to fight.

They sprinted away, leaving the Academy Arcana behind and entering the forest. With the corruption seeping in, the once-majestic trees had taken on a sinister aspect that Elijah couldn’t quite place. They resisted. They refused to succumb. But he almost wept for their eventual fall.

There was nothing he could do about it, though. Instead, he ran. Ron tripped over an exposed root, but Elijah was right there to keep him from falling. Sadie led them away for miles and miles until the corruption started to fade. It didn’t dissipate entirely, but the effect was far less prevalent.

They’d left the monster behind, but none of them expected that to last.

“What the hell was that thing?” Ron demanded when they stopped for a brief rest. He was bent over, hands on his knees, as he tried to catch his breath. “I…it felt all…wrong.”

“That’s the Voxx, I think. Or that’s what they look like when they’re not filtered through the system,” Elijah said. “Give me a minute. I need to check something.”

Without further hesitation, he shifted into Shape of the Sky and, before anyone could object, threw himself into the air. A couple of flaps of his wings took him above the canopy, and he got his first good look at what the challenge had done. For a long moment, he just gaped at the aftermath.

Then, he dipped back into the forest, landed, and after transforming, said, “We have a huge problem. The good news is that the shield holding back the Abyss isn’t completely broken. The bad news is that there are holes. And…and there are more of those giants. A lot more.”

Elijah had stopped counting at twenty, but that seemed like more than enough. They all seemed focused on their consuming their immediate surroundings, but Elijah didn’t think for a second that that would last.

“That’s…that’s not so bad. At least we can get away from them,” Dat said. “That’s –”

At that very moment, Elijah felt the earth stir as every wraith within the effective radius of One with Nature awoke and began to dig themselves out of their subterranean hibernation. And they did so with far more vigor than they’d ever before displayed.

It didn’t take long to figure out why.

The wraiths were natives who’d been infected by the Abyss. The only reason they’d become relatively weak was because they’d been deprived of that source of power. But now? They’d just gotten an influx of that corrupted energy.

“Everyone get ready,” Elijah said. “This is going to get really bad.”

The first surge of wraiths erupted from the ground and immediately homed in on any living thing in the area. They ripped into majestic trees, pounced on any wildlife they could find, and even tore through the underbrush. But it only took a second or two before one felt Elijah and his companions. An instant later, the first wave crashed through the forest, intent on consuming the invaders in their midst.