Path of Dragons

Elijah twisted away from the lacerating pain, trying at the same time to keep a grip on the monster’s bony shoulder. But he couldn’t do both at the same time, so his hind brain kicked in, forcing him to flee the agony cutting a long line into his scales. Against that, his Iron Scales were wholly insufficient, and he let out a roar of pain all his own. It joined the monster’s anguished whimpers.

No matter how quickly Elijah moved, though, the pain persisted, and soon enough, he saw why. A small dart – no bigger than his human thumb – was embedded in his scales, and when he yanked it free, he found that a series of long, writhing white tendrils came with it. As they left his body, they left behind a stinging pain that felt like the world’s most painful jellyfish sting.

From the inside.

The second the last of the tendrils had left his body to dangle from the dart, Elijah tossed the projectile aside. Or at least he tried to. However, the tendrils had left his entire side so numb that the best he could do was a slight shrug as he dropped the thing onto the carpeted floor. The tingling numbness spread quickly, encompassing the entire left side of his torso and all the way down his hip before, at last, slowing to a virtual stop.

But the effects didn’t stop with simple numbness. Instead, with the sensation having spread to his chest, he soon found that his breathing had shallowed to the point where he knew he wasn’t getting enough oxygen. That, in turn, caused him to panic.

In only a second, Elijah was panting with anxiety, with his mind whirling for a solution.

Meanwhile, the injured Reaver had begun to recover, its shattered bones shifting grotesquely as they reset. As it pushed itself to unsteady feet, it let out a hiss of pain. Then, it cocked its arm before following it up with a backhanded blow aimed at Elijah’s face. He tried to dodge, but with half his body not working properly, he only managed to shift enough to avoid taking the attack head-on.

“Pitiful beast,” the creature rasped as Elijah crashed to the floor. Then, it kicked him. “You attack me? In my home?! How dare you?!”

It kicked Elijah again. The blows didn’t hurt. In fact, he couldn’t even feel them, even if he knew they’d left some damage behind. Instead, the pervasive numbness had started spreading again, telling him that he needed to do something to stop it, lest he lose all bodily control.

So, between kicks, Elijah shifted back to his human form, then cast Touch of Nature, which pushed the numbness back just enough that he could roll out of the way of the next blow. He could do nothing about the follow up kick that took him in his side and launched his much lighter body into the wall.

Once again, via One with Nature, he felt the odd grooves in the wall. Suddenly, one facet of his mind arrived at the answer.

Traps.

There were traps in the walls. How could he have missed that? Why hadn’t he paid more attention? If he had…

No. He couldn’t go down that road. Instead, he used Touch of Nature once again, though a good portion of the spell’s power went to healing his ribs. Meanwhile, the Reaver continued to rant about intruders and trespassers, spitting out insults that made him sound like an indignant aristocrat who’d stumbled upon a thief.

Which wasn’t so far from the truth, really. Except that the aristocrat in question was a monstrous creature with skin like a cadaver and arms and legs that were about two sizes too long for its skeletally slender body.

As that useless thought skittered through one facet of Elijah’s Quartz Mind, he used the others to search for a strategy to escape his dire situation. Because even with Touch of Nature, he was only barely able to push the numbness back. So, with the monstrous Reaver kicking him, he didn’t have much opportunity to change his circumstances. Still, being launched a few feet away had given him just enough time to attempt a gambit.

So, he shifted his staff just enough to aim it at the Reaver’s feet, then cast Storm’s Fury. His aim left a lot to be desired, but he still managed to clip the monster’s foot with his spell. That sent its leg into brief spasms, which gave Elijah an opening to cast Healing Rain. The nurturing precipitation fell from the sky, soothing Elijah’s injuries and working toward pushing the numbness away.

It was incapable of doing the job alone, but with another application of Touch of Nature, he gained even more ground. More importantly, when the Reaver recovered a second later, the healing spells gave him the necessary control to avoid the worst part of the next kick. Though he did feel a rib shift a bit, even when he only took a glancing blow. It was healed a second later, and he continued with that strategy.

With another facet of his Mind, though, he started casting another spell.

Even as he shifted and rolled around on the floor, trying his best to dodge the Reaver’s swinging kicks and stomping feet, a swarm of blood-sucking mosquitoes manifested and swooped down on the unsuspecting monster. It was a testament to how worked up the thing was that, at first, it didn’t even notice the summoned insects.

Which made for a perfect scenario for the little creatures to do the maximum amount of damage.

Or at least that was how Elijah comforted himself as the reaver’s uncoordinated barrage of attacks continued. He wasn’t just getting the snot kicked out of him. He was distracting and delaying the monster.

It was strategy, not incompetence.

Of course, he didn’t quite believe that, even as one facet of his Mind tried to convince him of it.

After a handful of seconds, the Reaver finally noticed the mosquitoes sucking its blood. However, by that point, it was too late for it to stop the cascade of afflictions they brought with them. Soon after, it abandoned its quest to kick Elijah into submission, opting instead to try to dislodge the pesky insects. It was mostly unsuccessful in that endeavor, but more importantly, the thing’s antics gave Elijah some much-needed breathing room to cast Touch of Nature a couple more times.

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Soothing healing washed through him, banishing the numbness almost entirely. Tiny white tendrils were ejected from his body with every instance of the spell. If Elijah would have been a little less occupied with his own survival, he certainly would have been disgusted at the things that had been in his body. As it was, though, he was far too focused on the task at hand. Because now that the numbness had been overcome, he felt like he finally had the upper hand.

So, after casting Touch of Nature one last time and healing the damage he had left, he swept his staff out, catching the Reaver mid-kick. With Elijah’s still impressive Strength working for him, he managed to knock the monster’s leg out from under him.

The Reaver tipped over, but before it fell, it caught itself with one of its enormously long arms. Then, it skittered backward in a crab-walk that took it further down the hall. Elijah tried to cast Snaring Roots again, but he didn’t have enough Ethera to fuel the spell.

In fact, the constant healing had sapped almost the entire contents of his core. He didn’t remember spending so much Ethera, but he supposed he must have gone into a daze or something.

Or maybe the numbing tendrils had had a secondary effect of draining his Ethera.

In any case, the situation had changed, and he had no choice but to adapt. So, he used the one spell he could and once again shifted into the Shape of the Guardian. It had always been his least costly spell, and as such, it gave him the best chance to survive the encounter. As he threw himself to his feet, his body transformed, taking on the strange amalgamation of lizard and primate. Then, he raced after the Reaver.

The first trap he triggered almost took him by surprise, but he’d dedicated one facet of his mind to keeping track of the changing conditions, and as a result, he became aware of it just in time to avoid the debilitating dart. It was a close enough call that he shifted another three facets of his mind to that task. As he continued his pursuit of the monster, he was forced to react to more trap activations, twisting and turning his immense body as he sought to avoid a repeat of his first encounter with the darts.

He managed it.

Barely.

But it slowed him down to the point where he only barely managed to keep pace with the Reaver.

With the distance between his prey and the end of the long hall steadily shrinking, Elijah knew he needed to change tactics. So, he harnessed every point of Strength he possessed and flung himself down the hall. However, he didn’t go directly at the monster. Instead, he bounded forward, bouncing from one wall to another and keeping just ahead of the traps. With his Strength, he could move incredibly quickly, but when he did that, he couldn’t really control himself very well. So, he removed that part from the equation, just pointing himself in a direction and going. Like that, he stayed just ahead of the triggering traps, though he knew that if he slowed by even a millisecond, he would be peppered with darts.

So, he didn’t slow, and as a result, he crashed into the Reaver in barely a couple of seconds. The creature was more than a little surprised at Elijah’s rapid pursuit, so it didn’t even react before it was bowled over. Elijah knew the danger hadn’t ended, though, so he wrapped his hand around the monster’s slim waist, then used the monster’s body as an impromptu shield against the closest trap.

The darts thudded home in the Reaver’s struggling body.

It did not possess Elijah’s high Constitution. Almost immediately, one of its arms went limp, quickly followed by the rest of its body. In only a few seconds, it was a dead weight, flopping around like a corpse. But it lived. Elijah could sense that much.

Without knowing what else to do, Elijah returned the same way he’d come, traversing the hall on his way back to the Reaver’s quarters. Along the way, he continued to use the monster as a shield, intercepting the darts as they came. With multiple facets of his mind focused on the traps, he could anticipate their activation well enough to facilitate his passage.

By the time he reached the apartments, the Reaver had taken nine darts in various parts of its body, and as a result, it was only barely clinging to life. Elijah ended it by banging its head repeatedly against the ground. It took quite a few blows, but eventually, he managed to kill the thing.

The resultant experience gave him another level, but more importantly, the monster’s death completed the final level of the tower.

He sighed, letting the creature fall from his claws. His shoulders slumped as he shifted back to his natural form and realized just how close he’d come to losing. He shuddered to think of what would have happened had he succumbed to those darts.

A few seconds later, a notification told him that he’d completed the last level:

Congratluations! You have completed Level Three of Reaver Citadel. Grade: A To complete the tower, progress to the exit.

He was a little disappointed he hadn’t gotten the highest possible grade, but he was a little too relieved for that to last more than a second or two. He’d conquered the Reaver’s Citadel, and though it hadn’t been quite as harrowing as the Keledge Tower, it certainly hadn’t been easy, either. His abilities had been stretched to their limits, and as a result, he’d been forced to learn how to use every tool in his kit.

That was the true reward.

Of course, there was a more tangible reward waiting for him as well, and it only took a second for him to find the silver box. It was lying next to the huge ogre staff he’d dropped when he’d been forced to transform to his human form after his failed attempt at an ambush.

He bent down and opened the lid, resulting in another notification:

Reward for completing Level Three of Reaver Citadel: Claws of Gluttony

The item inside was a strange one. At first glance, it looked like a disparate pile of black iron. However, when Elijah pulled it from the box, he realized that it was precisely what the name suggested. Composed of a single leather cuff that was connected to five distinct and hollow claws via a series of thin, black chains – it looked like an awkward thing to wear. That suspicion was confirmed when he tried it on as well.

He checked his status, and once again, disappointment blossomed when the item didn’t live up to his expectation. This time, he didn’t even get any attribute bonuses. Indeed, the item seemed no more than ornamental in nature. So, he took it off and threw it into his pack.

Hopefully, he would soon find someone who could help him identify the items he’d acquired in the tower. And perhaps buy the ones he didn’t need. If not, he would have to go back to Ironshore where he knew he could get that kind of information.

Not that he wanted to do that just yet. He could travel between Ironshore and Norcastle much more quickly now that he knew where the second was located. However, it was still a long trip, and one he didn’t want to reexperience just yet.

In any case, he scoured the Reaver’s quarters, coming away a little disappointed with his haul. There was very little in the apartments that wasn’t nailed down, and what he could take probably wasn’t worth it. Still, he found some tiny golden statues that looked like they might be valuable, so he figured that it wasn’t a total loss. He tossed those into his pack as well, then set about searching for the exit.

The search only took him a few minutes, and he found the exit in the bathroom of all places. With a shrug, he stepped through the door and was transported back into the real world.

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