Path of Dragons

Throughout the night, Elijah kept adding fuel to the fire, so by the time morning came, he was still tired, and his meager store of firewood had been vastly depleted. But he’d managed to keep it going, so there was a chance that he wouldn’t have to go through the grueling process of creating a friction fire again. Of course, he’d have to make sure it had plenty of fuel while he went about the tasks he had planned for the day, but that was unavoidable.

There was a reason most survivalists never left home without a ferro rod, after all. Starting and maintaining a fire was hard but ultimately necessary work. Elijah was only thankful that he had plenty of experience with it. Otherwise, he’d have a lot of cold nights ahead of him, and his chances of survival would have plummeted.

Either way, the moment the night turned to dawn, Elijah was up and stretching. He was sore from the previous day’s exertions, but not nearly as much as he might have expected. He almost felt like he had before his body had been ravaged by cancer, radiation, and chemotherapy. He still wasn’t quite there, but that bone-deep weakness that, for months, had been his constant companion had disappeared.

As he stretched, he went over his tasks for the day. His first goal was to refresh his store of firewood. It wouldn’t be easy because he could only really gather fallen limbs and sticks, and most of those had been rotted by the constant humidity and frequent rainfall. However, it was all he could do until he could create some tools. He had some plans for how to do that, but he knew it would all be trial and error; he had no experience with that kind of thing, so he knew it would probably lean more toward the latter. He could figure it out, though. If cavemen could do it, then he could, too.

But that wasn’t a short-term task. For now, he needed to focus on immediate survival. So, after getting loose, Elijah set out from the cabin and started gathering fallen branches and sticks. Like that, he spent most of his morning until, finally, he had accumulated a sizable pile inside his cabin. Most of the wood was wet, but he hoped that the protection of the cabin’s roof would give everything a chance to dry out.

After feeding a bit more wood into the fire, Elijah went searching for another walking stick. Or staff, given that he intended to use it in his upcoming crab hunting expedition. It took another couple of hours, but he eventually stumbled upon a birch tree whose limbs would make for a fine staff.

He only had to get to them, first. The few that had fallen to the ground were long since rotted, so he had no choice but to climb a few feet up the trunk and somehow cut a limb loose. He even saw a likely target that wasn’t that far out of reach.

Fortunately, the tree itself wasn’t that big around, and with his newly recovered Strength and endurance, Elijah found it fairly easy to climb. Then, once he reached the limb, he wrapped his legs around the trunk and got to work. With his hands free, Elijah placed the rusted knife’s edge on the branch, then used a rock he’d recently gathered to hammer out a cut.

With his legs burning from the exertion, he continued at it until he’d made a sizable notch that dug a quarter of the way through the branch. If he wanted to make it all the way through, he’d be up there for hours, and he knew his energy reserves wouldn’t last that long. So, without much other choice, he took a deep breath, then reached out to the branch with both hands.

Finally, he let go with his legs and swung free. The branch held for a split second before a loud crack filled the air. Then, Elijah fell a dozen feet to land on the leaf-strewn ground. The impact knocked the breath from his lungs, and he felt something in his ankle twist, but he’d accomplished his goal.

In normal circumstances, it would have been stupid to do such a thing. The chances of injury – which were obviously well-founded, judging by the throbbing in his ankle and what he suspected were a couple of broken ribs– were too high. However, Elijah had a healing spell in his pocket, and, because of that, he’d already decided that he could be a bit reckless with his body. So long as he didn’t incapacitate himself by hitting his head or something, he felt confident that he could heal himself from whatever injuries he might sustain.

Still, there was the pain to worry about, but it was a small price to pay, given that something like the staff would improve his chances of survival.

But it was easy to make that kind of judgement before he actually had to endure it. Now that he felt the consequences of his actions, he’d begun to question whether or not he was an idiot. Even so, what was done was done, and he had more than enough experience dealing with pain and discomfort. Not only had he spent quite a lot of time in the boxing gym – and all that entailed – but he’d also been through the horror that was cancer and chemotherapy. He could handle the pain of a twisted ankle long enough to heal it.

Still lying there, Elijah looked inward and grabbed the Ethera in his core, dragging it into the pathways of his soul. Once he was flooded with the magical energy, he embraced his lone spell. He placed his hand, which glowed with verdant Ethera, on his side and used his spell to heal the broken bones.

The first application didn’t do the trick, but the second pushed the pain into the background. A third, which exhausted the Ethera in his core, finished the job, letting him breathe freely.

Sighing, Elijah sat up and inspected his ankle.

“That’s definitely not a sprain,” he muttered through gritted teeth. In the time it had taken him to heal his ribs – which was no more than a couple of minutes – the ankle had already started to turn purple. It was also swollen to twice its normal size. Perhaps it was broken as well.

That really brought home the stupidity of his actions. Just because he could heal himself didn’t mean that he was invincible. While it would doubtless help, he had a limited amount of Ethera at his disposal, and regenerating it took time. Time he could have spent trying to accomplish the hundreds of other tasks he needed to button up before he felt his survival would be assured.

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Lying back, he let out another deep breath. Magic was helpful, but it wasn’t the cure all he hoped it would be.

Elijah let out a little chuckle. He’d only been using magic for a day or so, and already, it felt mundane. It was just another tool in his toolbelt, not a miracle that would solve all his problems. Perhaps in the future, it would be more impactful, but for now, it was too limited to do much more than heal small injuries.

As he lay there waiting for his Ethera to regenerate, Elijah’s mind wandered. And then, suddenly, the feeling that something was watching him returned. It was buried within that pervasive sensation of belonging that had come courtesy of his druid archetype, but it was there, all the same. Slowly, he turned his head in the direction he thought it was coming from, and he saw a brief flash of movement in a nearby clump of trees.

Then, it was gone. The feeling. Whatever was stalking him. Everything. Only his One With Nature remained.

Clearly, he wasn’t alone in the forest. That wasn’t really a surprise, but he’d hoped that he could avoid any major predators. There was a chance that whatever had been following him was just a curious herbivore, but he felt almost certain that that wasn’t the case. After all, a simple deer wouldn’t have sent a chill up Elijah’s spine.

Probably.

It was just further evidence that he needed to curtail his risky behavior. If something attacked him while he was injured, he wouldn’t last long.

For the next few minutes, Elijah kept his inner eye on his core while his physical eyes scanned the area. But nothing came, and, eventually, he was able to heal his ankle. It took four uses of Touch of Nature, which told him that the injury was much worse than he’d first suspected.

“Stupid,” he muttered to himself as he climbed to his feet. He inspected the branch he’d risked everything for. It was long – probably ten feet – straight, and about two-inches thick. A little bigger than Elijah preferred, but he hoped to whittle that down. Eventually. For now, though, it was a good stick.

Using the same method he’d used to notch the branch before taking it down, Elijah arduously undertook the task of bringing it down to size. It took a while – most of which was spent banging the rock into the knife blade – but he managed to cut a roughly five-foot section. He also carved one end into a rough point; for what he planned, it needed to act as both a spear and a staff, but it couldn’t be too delicate.

He dragged the rest back to his cabin, where he intended to cut it into firewood.

Waste not, want not, he thought, tossing the unused portion into the corner. He’d get to that later. For now, hunger gnawed at his belly, and he wanted to use his staff for its intended purpose. So, after popping a few bunchberries into his mouth and taking a quick trip to the stream, where he washed his face and drank his fill of water, Elijah slowly made his way back to the beach.

There, the crabs waited, looking entirely disoriented.

It wasn’t a surprise. Purple shore crabs usually lived under rocks, and their diets consisted mostly of algae and the rare small animal. So, suddenly being the size of a mid-sized dog was understandably disorienting to the creatures. As a result, they milled around, their instincts telling them to find a rock to hide under while their size prohibited any such action. In a way, it was sad.

Or it would have been if Elijah hadn’t recently woken up to a herd of them desperately trying to eat his legs. No – not trying. Succeeding. He’d had the wounds to show for it, too.

Clutching his stick, Elijah knelt down as he studied his intended prey. The monstrous crustaceans were big enough that they were a threat, but their disorientation meant that they had yet to adjust to their new size. If they had, the things could end up being a real terror – especially if they were capable of traveling inland.

Elijah could easily imagine a scenario where a horde of giant crabs swept through the area, devouring everything they found. Including him and his cabin. But he couldn’t worry about that right now. He wasn’t there to cull the population. Instead, he just wanted some meat.

So, he watched and waited until one of the crabs separated itself from the others. It skittered down the shore, which was comprised mostly of slippery, wet rocks. The crab was completely ignorant of how it had made itself into attractive prey.

Elijah felt something ignite in his mind. When he was younger, he’d spent quite a lot of time hunting and fishing with his father. Those were some of his fondest memories. But back then, he’d never felt so focused as he did at that moment. It was like the spirit of a great predator flowed through him.

He stalked forward on bare, silent feet. Holding the staff in both hands like a spear, he followed the crab until it was almost forty yards away from the rest of the group. But still, it wandered, stopping ever so often to nip at some bit of kelp. Any other time, Elijah might have remembered how many nutrients he could get from seaweed, but in this instance, his mind was laser focused.

One step after another, he moved forward, steadily gaining on the brown-ish purple crab. His progress was slow, but that was intentional. He didn’t need to go quickly. He just needed to do it right.

Finally, when he was only feet away, he pounced, swinging his staff at the comparatively delicate backmost leg. His first strike connected with a solid crunch, but the crab whipped around without any hesitation, nearly latching onto Elijah with its enormous front claw. He dashed to the side, narrowly avoiding the skittering creature, but it scuttled after him.

He ran, quickly outpacing the oversized crustacean. When he was twenty feet away, Elijah looked back to see that the crab had lost interest. Apparently, even if it had grown quite a bit, it hadn’t gotten any smarter.

So, Elijah circled back around until he was once again behind the crab, then stalked forward and repeated the process. This time, he put a little less force into the blow so he could maintain control and avoid the creature’s response. Once again, his sturdy stick hit with a solid crack, and he darted away. The crab’s pursuit came much more slowly this time.

Elijah’s hit-and-run tactics continued until, at last, all of its legs were broken, rendering it almost completely immobile. Still, it wasn’t dead. In fact, judging by its barely audible hisses and whistling screeches, it was in quite a lot of pain. It was a cruel way to kill something, but without proper tools, there was nothing more Elijah could do.

But he didn’t have to prolong the kill.

So, he carefully approached its rear once again, and, using his stick as a lever, flipped the crab over onto its back. It tried to snap at him, but Elijah had expected that, so he was already backing away and circling back around to the rear.

Once there, he approached the helpless creature, located the proper position, and used his staff like a spear. It took a handful of strikes to get through even its softer underbelly, but eventually, he pierced through the shell and severed the nerve center closest to its head. Then, he repeated the process on the one near its rear, killing it. Throughout the whole process, the crab snapped its claws ineffectually, but so long as he was careful, Elijah didn’t have to worry about that.

Still, what he had done was an incredibly inhumane way to kill something. But given his lack of equipment, there was no other way to do it.

Sighing, he looked down at the crab’s corpse. He wasn’t looking forward to processing it, but he knew that it would only be a matter of time before the other crabs sensed the presence of food. So, taking out his rusty knife, Elijah bent down and got to work.

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