Path of Dragons

Elijah had no intention of engaging the servitors in a straight fight. There were only ten of them, so he felt reasonably sure that, using Iron Scales, he could endure whatever they could dish out. Yet, if he missed even one attack, he ran the risk of becoming infected. And if that happened, he had nothing to stop it.

In other words, infection meant death.

So, with that in mind, he positioned himself at the edge of his range – which was around twenty yards. Then, he ducked behind a spiny hedgerow and cast Swarm. He desperately wished he hadn’t.

Hundreds of maggoty white grubs climbed out of the ground to latch onto the servitors’ bare legs. None of them even recognized the danger, and Elijah wasn’t going to put himself at risk just to save some people whose help was not guaranteed. Instead, as soon as the first Swarm dissipated, he cast it again. And again after that.

With every passing second, the servitors grew weaker until they were incapable of standing up to the tower natives. After that, the battle wound down fairly quickly, with Elijah’s potential allies ruthlessly finishing the monsters off. Once they did, Elijah pushed himself to his feet and waved at the men and women who’d been fighting the servitors.

They didn’t seem surprised.

In fact, they were relieved to see him, for some reason. As Elijah approached, he saw that each one wore thick chainmail beneath their ripped clothing.

“Are you all okay? Do you need healing?”

“We are uninjured, stranger,” said a woman as she stepped forward. She was blonde, with a thick braid, but otherwise unremarkable features. “Are you here to slay the Creator?”

“No. That fell being is far beyond any of us. The Creator is vulnerable, though. We have sundered his defenses. His horde has abandoned him. If you slay him, the servitors shall lose all power.”

“You’re saying that if I kill this Creator, the ghouls will die?”

“They will.”

“Okay. That’s added to the list, then,” Elijah said. Indeed, if he could kill the ghouls, getting into the manor would become much easier. “Is there another entrance besides the main one? I need to get inside.”

“The Creator has a key,” the woman answered. “If you slay him, you can take the key and enter the mansion through any of the entrances.”

“And those red shields?”

“They will drain your blood from your body if you pass through them without a key,” she stated.

“Fantastic. Guess it’s time to kill a Creator, then. What can you tell me about him?” he asked.

As it turned out, the answer to that question left a lot to be desired. Other than giving him directions to the Creator’s Crypt – because of course it had set up shop in a crypt – the woman could offer no more information. She did reiterate the dangers inherent in being injured by the servitors, but she also noted that the Creator and its closest abominations were incapable of inflicting such an affliction.

She also refused to accompany Elijah, claiming that she had another mission. When he asked about that, she went silent, choosing not to elaborate. Obviously, Elijah would have to assail the Creator on his own. So, after thanking the woman for the information, he shifted back into his draconic form and headed off into the forest, following the woman’s directions.

After thirty minutes, he reached his destination.

The entrance to the crypt was another mausoleum, though instead of black marble, this one was constructed of white stone trimmed all in gold. A fortune had to have been spent just on the decorations, which trended toward art deco, but with more of a gothic flair. In any case, the door was open, so after spending a little time searching the surrounding area – which was entirely free of servitors – Elijah headed inside.

On the other side of the door was a steep set of stairs, and with every step, Elijah felt the temperature drop. More, when he reached the bottom, he saw glowing green liquid flowing on either side of the connected hall. It bubbled and sloshed, though Elijah wasn’t brave enough to touch it.

In any case, he continued on, padding down the corridor, which was about ten feet wide, until he reached a large chamber a few hundred feet in. That’s when he received his first sight of the Creator.

It was about nine feet tall, and unnaturally thin. For clothing, it wore a thick, black robe trimmed in yellow stars, and otherwise, it was covered in dirty bandages. In the few spots where its skin was exposed, thick scabs were visible.

When Elijah entered the chamber, the creature was bent over a cauldron, stirring it with a giant ladle. Lining either side of the room were six – three to a side – bulbous abominations that took the basic shape of people, but were clearly pieced together from some other, far larger type of creature. The disparate pieces had been sewn together with thick wire, and they had only blank skin where their faces should have been.

The floor was made of iron grates, below which was that same bubbling green liquid. Every now and then, the Creator would bend down, dip his ladle into the green substance, and add it to the cauldron. As it worked, it hummed tunelessly.

As horrifying as the scene was, the smell made everything infinitely worse. A mixture of methane, rot, and something sickly sweet made Elijah’s stomach turn.

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But he ignored it. Instead, he focused on the presence of the amulet around the Creator’s neck. It matched the description he’d been given, so he felt confident in marking it as the key to entering the manor.

The way Elijah saw it, he had three options. First, he could simply pounce on the Creator and hope he could kill the creature before it had a chance to react. Something told him that was a long shot, though. This wasn’t just some random servitor, but a creature of some importance to the tower. And from his experience, that meant it would be difficult to kill.

The second option was to engage in hit-and-run tactics. The corridor was long enough that using that strategy might be possible. He could attack the Creator, then dart back up the corridor and use his spells to keep his distance. Slowly, that would whittle the monster down.

But that risked bringing the servitors into the mix. They weren’t in the area at present, but who was to say that would continue to be the case? Surely, the Creator could call its creations into battle. And if that happened, Elijah would certainly die – either from the onslaught of ghoulish monsters or via the curse they carried.

The third option was to ambush, then switch into his lamellar ape form and take whatever punishment they could dish out. That was an all-or-nothing tactic, though, without much in the way of margin for error.

In the end, Elijah decided on a combination of the first and third option. He would ambush, then adjust from there. So, with that in mind, he stalked forward, the iron grates beneath his feet cold. The green liquid bubbled and popped, adding its ambience to the Creator’s strange humming.

Elijah leaped, pouncing on the monster’s back and aiming a vicious bite at its skull. However, the moment his jaws latched onto the thing’s head, it let out an unholy screech, then collapsed into a pile of bandages. Elijah hit the floor with a metallic clang, then wheeled around, looking for a creature that was not there.

The bandages snaked across the floor, unraveling as they went in different directions. Elijah pounced on one, ripping it to shreds, but the others were too quick. They reached their destinations, wrapping around the abominations and climbing their stocky torsos until they wrapped around their heads like blindfolds.

That’s when five monsters shuddered to life. The sixth remained stationary as the others rumbled forward. Elijah knew better than to remain motionless, so he dashed toward one, using Venom Strike before raking his claws across its leg. He kept going, bounding off the wall to change direction before aiming another strike at the next monster. Without stopping, he dashed toward the next in line.

Then, everything went wrong.

The grates opened, and a series of tentacle-like bandages erupted from the bubbling green liquid, wrapping themselves around Elijah’s form before he realized what was happening. He thrashed, ripping himself free, but even more bandages emerged to replace them. Meanwhile, the abominations dropped into the pool of liquid, but rather than being melted by acid or poisoned, their skin took on a shimmering green tint as they were obviously empowered.

Elijah only noticed that much because of One with Nature, but he didn’t have any time to do anything with that information. Instead, the entirety of his attention was required to keep himself from being yanked into the green liquid. While it might have been empowering for the abominations, it certainly wouldn’t have that effect on Elijah.

Fortunately, the entire floor didn’t disappear. Instead, there remained a grid of two-inch wide beams, to which the grates had been attached. That didn’t seem like much to work with – and it wasn’t – but it was enough for Elijah.

But he lacked the Strength to break free of the bandages.

So, he engaged Shape of the Guardian, transforming into a lamellar ape and ripping them apart with ease. In that form, his Dexterity was distinctly lower than his Strength or Constitution, but it was still high enough to let him balance on the thin beam.

Elijah leaped at the nearest abomination, colliding with the creature with all the force he could muster. The impact sent the thing staggering, but it was not nearly as devastating as he had expected. Still, it was something, and Elijah latched onto that thin opportunity – as well as the monster – and began pummeling its faceless head with everything he could bring to bear.

Bones cracked beneath his fists, but he only had a few seconds before the other abominations closed. As they did, Elijah noticed that the beams upon which he’d been balanced had begun to retract, leaving only a pool of green. More, the bandages clearly weren’t going to remain idle.

So, he did the only thing he could do.

As the abomination reeled from his assault, Elijah shifted back to his human form and started casting. He first used Soothe, then Healing Rain, and Swarm. As a series of tiny hands manifested, each one with a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth in its palm, Elijah cast Calamity. The moment he finished, he used Shape of the Predator.

Chaos reigned as he took on the form of a draconid, and he used it to great advantage, aiming one Venom Strike after another at the abominations as he leaped from one to the next, clawing and biting as often as he could manage. In seconds, he’d loaded each one with enough afflictions to fell an elephant.

But they showed no signs of slowing down. Indeed, they almost looked like they were growing stronger.

As the winds of Calamity sloshed the green liquid, Elijah caught sight of the Creator. The creature was huddled near its still-standing cauldron, but it had folded itself so completely that, until Calamity had exposed it, the monster had remained hidden.

And if it was hiding, that meant it was vulnerable.

Elijah could use that.

So, he leaped. As he sailed through the air, the Creator clearly sensed him. It tried to skitter away – without its bandages or robes, it was a mass of leaking pustules and scabs, skeletally thin and unnaturally long-limbed. But when it lurched to the side, the monster was ungainly.

Elijah hit it like a missile, tearing into its sore-stricken flesh with reckless abandon. It screeched, and the abominations lumbered in for a rescue.

It was too late.

Elijah snapped out, clamping his jaws around the monster’s thin neck. He flexed, and his teeth closed with irresistible force. Flesh parted, and bones snapped as all sorts of bodily fluids – blood and pus among them – squirted into Elijah’s mouth. He ignored it. Instead, he shook his head back and forth, rending the flesh until it could hold on no longer.

The monster’s body crumpled to the ground as Elijah killed it. The moment it died, the abominations fell inert. At the same time, the green liquid drained away, revealing an entire floor full of soggy bandages.

But Elijah hadn’t escaped unscathed. The green liquid had been an incredibly powerful acid that, even in that brief few seconds of contact, had eaten through Elijah’s feet almost to the bone. But now that it was gone, the combined power of Soothe and Healing Rain washed the damage away.

Still for good measure, he shifted back to his human form and used Touch of Nature until he returned to perfect condition. Only then did he reach down and snatch the amulet from where it had fallen from the Creator’s neck when it had been decapitated.

He took a deep breath.

The source was dead, which meant that he had assuredly defeated the first floor of the tower. Now, he just needed to progress to the second, and he would gain a reward. More importantly, he would be that much closer to conquering the tower and saving the elves.

With that in mind, Elijah shifted back to his draconid form, let Guise of the Unseen settle onto his shoulders, and padded back the way he’d come.

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