Path of Dragons

A steady flow of gelatinous sludge dripped down into the drainage tunnel. The smell alone was enough to turn Elijah’s stomach, but he was even more concerned with the persistent drops clinging to his scales. Most of them were confined to his upturned face, which made it all the worse.

Further complicating his situation was the enduring pain of the caustic ooze still burning its way through his scales. It wasn’t enough to derail his thoughts – especially after he’d spent so much time in the belly of an orca – but it was just distracting enough to be a constant irritation. Elijah ignored it, though not without a significant expenditure of willpower.

Thankfully, that was where his Mind cultivation came in handy. In addition to increasing the effect of his Regeneration attribute – and by no small degree – it had also further partitioned his mind into nine distinct sections. It wasn’t quite like having nine brains working for him, but it did give him the ability to quarantine distractions in such a way as to let him focus on the task at hand.

One of those sections was dedicated to the awareness of his Domain back on the island, another focused on One with Nature, and a third housed the pain waging a steady war through his body. The other six were entirely focused on climbing the tunnel wall toward a shaft that would lead him to the floor above.

Inch by inch, he climbed, moving so deliberately that it took him full minutes to move each foot. His caution wasn’t unfounded, either. The troll, despite its clear captivity, was the size of a fully-grown bull elephant, and Elijah wanted nothing more than to avoid its notice. One slip-up, and the thing could flatten him without even trying to. And if he actually drew the thing’s ire? He didn’t want to consider that.

So, he climbed and he hid, cloaked by Guise of the Unseen, and he eventually, he reached the six-foot shaft that led topside. It was only about two feet wide, which meant that in his scaled panther form, it would be a tight fit. However, he didn’t dare shift back into his smaller human form. Doing so would rob him of his stealth, and that would almost assuredly spell disaster. With that in mind, he resigned himself to a brief bout of claustrophobia as he wedged himself into place.

The going was tough, mostly because he couldn’t extend his claws more than an inch or two. However, Elijah was nothing if not persistent, and he slowly covered the distance to the top of the shaft. Fortunately, the grate meant to cover the top had rusted away, meaning that he could barely fit through.

Still, it was an even tighter fit than the shaft itself, and as he dragged himself through, the shards of rusted iron that had once been the grate scraped painfully against his scales. The remnants of the grate were incapable of piercing his natural armor, but it was still incredibly uncomfortable. He shifted that discomfort into another partition in his mind.

Meanwhile, the troll’s pustules continued to burst, sending a steady stream of oozes to collect in the cistern far below. And even though the massive creature was only ten feet away, Elijah forced himself to ignore it, save for a basic awareness of its position.

Elijah had no idea what had alerted the troll, but one second, the thing was sitting and staring into nothing, and the next, an enormous fist was falling in Elijah’s direction. He ripped himself free of the shaft, the sudden movement tearing one of his scales free, then launched himself to the side, narrowly avoiding the descending fist.

It hit with thunderous impact, shaking the floor and sending Elijah off-balance. He quickly righted himself – partially due to his inflated Dexterity attribute, but also because of the instincts of the scaled panther whose form he’d taken – then bounded away. The troll roared in fury, erupting into violent motion as it dove for the intruder.

Elijah used every point of Strength he possessed to propel himself forward, but the Troll’s might clearly outstripped his own. The result was inevitable. Elijah knew it even as he felt the monster gaining on him with every passing millisecond.

But just before it caught up, the sound of rattling chains heralded Elijah’s saving grace. The bindings pulled taut, stopping the troll in its tracks. It roared in frustration, anger, and obvious agony as it reached out with dirty, meaty fingers, but by that point, Elijah was far out of range and sheltering on the other side of the room, where he turned to face the bound monster.

It was entirely contained by the thick chains attached to the manacles on its wrists and ankles, but still, Elijah wasn’t as worried about the metal as he was about the brickwork to which the bindings were attached. However, it quickly became clear that he was worried about nothing.

Well – not nothing.

The troll was certainly worth every ounce of trepidation Elijah could muster. And yet, it was obviously incapable of attaining its freedom. Otherwise, it would have already done so.

Even so, it certainly presented a problem in that it had clearly detected him. Until he lost its attention, he wouldn’t be slipping back into the sheltering embrace of Guise of the Unseen. With that in mind, he reluctantly turned his back on the slavering monster and took stock of his location.

The good thing was that the room was plenty big enough for the both of them. Bound as it was, the troll couldn’t reach past the room’s halfway mark. But the good news came with a significant degree of ill tidings, largely due to the fact that the room looked like nothing so much as a jail cell. Aside from the tentative confirmation that the troll was the prisoner his optional task had charged him with freeing, that meant that Elijah was trapped.

The room’s lone exit – which was large enough to permit passage from something even as large as the troll – stood on the other side of the cell, and it was barred by a door made of ancient timbers bound by thick iron bands. Elijah finally let Shape of the Predator fall away and resumed his human form. His bare feet were silent against the cold and clammy stone floor as he crossed the intervening distance and grabbed hold of the door’s ring-like handle. To Elijah’s dismay, when he tried to push or pull it open, it remained steadfastly stuck in place, assuredly due to a lock on the other side.

“Stuck,” he muttered to himself, confident that his voice wouldn’t carry over the sound of the still-raging troll. He fell to his haunches, then began the arduous task of healing himself from his previous contact with the oozes. As before, the caustic burns stubbornly resisted his efforts, but he pushed through it, using far more Ethera than healing such small wounds should have required.

Meanwhile, the troll continued to growl and spit, but Elijah mostly ignored it. Bound as it was, the monster posed little danger. However, he wasn’t so arrogant that he didn’t devote one of the nine facets of his Mind to keeping tabs on the creature.

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It was due to this small bit of attention that he came to realize that the monster wasn’t simply angry. Nor was it feral. It was in pain, a factor made obvious by its bloodshot eyes and the increased volume of its screams that accompanied each popped pustule.

Elijah crouched, his staff across his knees as he gave the situation some thought. The nature of towers was a little confusing. On the one hand, the environments were clearly manufactured, and that meant that there were intended paths to victory. However, on the other, there were less obvious ways to overcome each obstacle. So, he wasn’t limited by the system’s intentions.

But the fact that his task had mentioned the prisoner meant that it might be the key to victory – at least for the first task.

Elijah was busy giving that some thought when the sound of a turning lock assaulted his ears. Or maybe he’d felt the ogre on the other side via One with Nature. Sometimes, his senses mingled together, obscuring the actual source. Either way, he leaped to his feet and, at the same time, shifted into a scaled panther.

It was just in time, too, because at that moment, the door swung open, admitting an ogre. However, this ogre wasn’t like the others. It was just as tall, but instead of being built like a powerlifter, its body type could best be described as morbidly obese. Roles of fat cascaded down its body, squishing together until Elijah couldn’t tell where one ended and another began.

He just had time to note its attire – a fur-covered loincloth held in place by a thick, leather belt – before he sprang into motion. His claws flashed, ripping into the ogre’s stomach. The flesh parted easily, spilling blood and fat onto the floor, but it wasn’t the disemboweling blow Elijah had hoped it would be.

More, the ogre responded far more quickly than its body type might’ve suggested, and its fist smashed against a bounding Elijah mid-air, the impact hitting him in the ribs and sending him skidding across the jail cell’s stone floor. He came to a sudden stop when he slammed into the wall. He felt his bones crack under the impact, but he shunted the agonizing pain into its own facet of his mind, and it was a good thing, too, because he needed all of his available concentration to avoid the ogre’s follow-up blow.

He leaped to the side as its pudgy foot came crashing down, narrowly missing his darting form. But Elijah knew better than to fight an entirely defensive battle, so he dashed in, raking his claws across the back of the ogre’s leg. Muscle split under the influence of Elijah’s claws, and the ogre stumbled.

That allowed him to leap upon its back, where he dug his claws into its bulbous flesh. Then, snapping out like a striking snake, he latched his jaws onto the base of its skull. Harnessing every point of Strength he could muster, he flexed the muscles of his jaws, and after a brief moment of resistance, he was rewarded with the sound – and feel – of crushing bone.

The ogre flailed as it desperately tried to dislodge him. However, the creature’s pudgy arms were just inflexible enough to keep it from reaching him. So, even as Elijah clamped down on its skull, it slammed its back against the wall. With the full weight of its massive body behind the blow, the force it brought to bear was enough to crush multiple of Elijah’s bones.

Still, he held on, knowing that if he let go, the creature would be free to finish him off. He was already too injured to continue the fight in any other way, he continued to flex his jaw even while the ogre crushed him against the wall. Gradually, those cracking bones began to shatter, and then, suddenly, the integrity of the skull collapsed entirely, giving Elijah free access to the brains they were meant to protect.

The taste of iron and salt played across his tongue as his teeth ripped apart the ogre’s brain. Still, it remained upright for a few moments until, at last, it could go on no longer. It fell forward, hitting the ground with a thunderous crash that threw Elijah free.

A second after he rolled to a stop, he tried to rise, but too many of his bones were broken. The partition in his mind was incapable of holding back the tide of pain, and for a brief second, it enveloped him. Ruthlessly, Elijah thrust it back where it belonged, and with the weight of his willpower holding it in place, he let his body shift back to human form.

The moment he did, he realized just how dire his situation was. He hadn’t been so injured since being digested by the orca guardian back in the Sea of Sorrows. He forced himself to look down at his body; one of his legs had been turned the wrong way – a sure sign of a compound fracture and probably a dislocated knee as well. He knew that it was even more serious than it appeared because, left like that, the blood flow would likely be interrupted, and the leg would die out.

In addition to that, he had multiple broken ribs as well as what felt like someone stabbing him in his lower back. Finally, there were multiple other contusions, each signaling another problem. The only solace was that, even with all of his broken ribs, it didn’t feel like any had punctured his lungs.

“Silver linings,” he muttered to himself as he looked up at the still growling troll. At least he wasn’t covered in a bunch of caustic blisters like his cellmate.

With a pained breath, Elijah channeled Ethera from his core and through his soul, fueling a cast of Healing Rain. A wave of relief washed over him as the soothing precipitation fell on his injuries, but he knew it wouldn’t be enough to heal him. Indeed, even Touch of Nature wouldn’t do anything until he embarked on the arduous task of setting his broken bones.

So, that was what he did.

Reaching down, he grabbed his lower leg, then gently twisted it. Pain lanced through his shin and up the entirety of his leg. Nausea followed soon after, making him feel like vomiting. However, he persisted, knowing that if he wanted to keep his leg, it had to be done. At first, it wouldn’t move, though. A gentle tug wasn’t enough. He needed something altogether more violent.

So, taking a deep breath, and with tears in his eyes, Elijah wrenched it back into place. He let out a loud, agonized cry, and for a moment, he blacked out from sheer shock. But he recovered his wits soon after, then continued the agonizing task of setting his broken bones.

Being melted by stomach acid was painful, but there was something altogether different – and arguably worse – about the pain he was forced to endure while setting those bones. Some of that was due to the fact that he was in complete control of it, which made things so much worse. But it was also the differing nature of the pain. Either way, he wouldn’t have wished either situation on even his worst enemies.

Even so, Elijah kept going until, at last, he’d accomplished the feat.

After that, it was a simple task of continuously casting Touch of Nature until he ran low on Ethera. Then, he rested until he’d regained enough to repeat the cycle. Over and over, he kept going until, at last, he managed to banish the pain altogether. Not long after that, he’d healed himself entirely.

Once that was done, he sagged against the wall and glanced over at the troll. Over the hours – or it might’ve been as much as a day – since Elijah had begun his healing, the creature had grown accustomed to his presence. It still wasn’t in a good mood, but it had at least stopped growling.

Elijah was staring vacantly at the creature when something occurred to him.

Healing Rain had a diameter of around thirty feet, which meant that its edge extended just enough to affect the troll’s lower legs. And to Elijahs surprise, where the rejuvenating precipitation had fallen – continuously over the past day – the cysts had all but disappeared.

Was that why the troll had calmed down? The rest of its body was still just as disgustingly infected as the rest, but those legs – they almost looked healthy.

Elijah glanced at the door, then back at the troll.

He still hadn’t accomplished the first task, which was to defeat the Warden. That meant that the ogre he’d killed wasn’t the guardian of the level – which was troubling, given how close it had come to killing him. Certainly, it hadn’t been an optimal fight; the monster had come upon him when he was incapable of using Guise of the Unseen – or Predator Strike – but it was still a healthy reminder that towers were meant to be challenged by entire groups, and the difficulty reflected that.

So, it was entirely possible that the Warden – wherever it was – might be far too strong for Elijah to defeat alone. Still – he didn’t have to be alone, did he? There was a potential ally only a dozen or so feet away.

Elijah glanced back at the troll, and as he did, an idea began to take shape.

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