Path of Dragons

Normally, Elijah enjoyed the sound of birds chirping in the morning. However, after a night of heavy drinking until he blacked out, he found the cacophony to be the height of annoyance. For a long time, he just lay there, reveling in his own misery until he finally pushed himself upright and cast Soothe. It helped, though it took almost the entire runtime of the spell before his headache faded and his stomach stopped roiling.

He almost regretted it.

After all, he’d consumed nearly five gallons of the potent liquor he’d gotten back in Valosta. He should have spent the entire day paying for his excess. Without those consequences hanging over his head, Elijah knew how easy it would be to turn back to the bottle.

He’d never been one to try to drown his sorrows, but then again, he’d never lost a sister, either. And now that he didn’t have the dolmen’s construction or getting everyone settled to distract him, he could give himself fully to the grief.

And the anger.

That was there, too – inescapable and inexorable.

Swinging his legs off the bed, Elijah bent over, resting his elbows on his knees as he stared at the floor. At least drinking the night away had given him some reprieve. But he knew he couldn’t do that every time he didn’t want to deal with his emotions. Not only was it unhealthy, but it was also more expensive than he could manage. Alcohol wasn’t cheap in Ironshore, and his free supply was now gone.

Perhaps he could learn to ferment his berries into wine.

Shaking his head, Elijah ran his handd through his hair and let out a long sigh. Alyssa wouldn’t have approved of any of it. She would have scolded him like she had when he’d gone down a similar route right after their parents had died.

Elijah was an adult, now. Not only did he have responsibilities, but he also had goals. More importantly, Miguel had begun to look up to him. It hadn’t been long since they’d been reunited, but the young man clearly craved examples to emulate. He had Colt, and that was great. From what Elijah could tell, Miguel couldn’t have picked a better man to model himself after. But he’d latched onto Elijah as well, which came with a responsibility to put his own self-pity aside and be there for the young man.

They all had to do that. Carmen had managed it, and so could Elijah.

With that in mind, he climbed to his feet with another sigh, but the next intake of breath nearly made him gag. Drinking himself into a stupor was messy work, and the smell of his strenuous labor hung off him like a cloak. That cemented Elijah’s first order of business, and he wasted no more time before taking a shower. His homemade soap made a world of difference, picking up the slack where his spell had left off, and when he exited the bathroom, he felt like a new man.

However, he couldn’t escape the reality of the night’s excesses, so he spent a little time gathering bottles and cleaning the bedding. Finally, a little more than half an hour later, he was ready to start his day. Like always when he was home, he spent the next couple of hours training, though he wasn’t afforded the opportunity of another sparring session with Colt.

That wasn’t to say that the other man wasn’t training on his own. He was, and Miguel was with him, but they were doing their own thing, practicing sword katas in the grove.

So, Elijah focused on his own routine, and after the previous day’s efforts, he managed to alter his regimen to push even his massive attributes to their limits. Around three hours after he’d begun, he felt a rowboat enter his domain, and a second later, he recognized that Carmen had finally returned. He left her to her own devices for another hour, and in that time, she arrived back at the grove, where she watched her son’s training.

Elijah found her sitting on the roots of one of the trees that comprised the outer ring of his grove, and he joined her. The first few minutes, they simply watched, but then, Elijah asked, “Did you have a productive introduction to Ironshore?”

“I did,” she said. “You know they don’t have a proper blacksmith? They have some people with classes specializing in processing ore – making alloys and such – but no one to work with the final product.”

“I’m guessing you’re going to fill that role?”

She nodded. “I’m building my own smithy,” Carmen answered. “A proper forge, like I had back in Silverado.”

Elijah winced. “That name…”

“I know,” she said with a wry smile. “I didn’t name it, though.”

“Do you know what happened to it?”

She shook her head, saying, “I don’t know. I’m sure Roman wouldn’t have abandoned it. That Cold Iron is too useful. Though they don’t have any smiths worth a damn, now. Not unless someone stepped up, and I know everyone who might’ve. They’re all average at best. Lazy, unmotivated, and untalented, at worst.”

“Ouch. Tell me how you really feel.”

Carmen shrugged. “You don’t know how it is in a city like that,” she responded. “By and large, people aren’t really built to excel. They do what they have to do to get what they want. Most of the time, that means survival with a few conveniences. Some distractions. And for a crafter in Easton, the bar is incredibly low. You can get pretty rich just making run-of-the-mill equipment. The incentive to push higher just isn’t there, except for personal motivation. They think they’re safe. They believe the danger has passed.”

“It hasn’t,” Elijah said. “There are more than towers out there.”

He’d read a couple of guides about the progression of dimensional rifts. The most common expression of those anomalies was spontaneous manifestation. A powerful Voxx would simply tear through the membrane between universes and enter one of the planets connected to the World Tree. In a lot of ways, these were the most dangerous, because they could be far more powerful than the Voxx attached to dimensional rifts and towers.

Above those were primal realms, which, as Elijah understood them, were like towers on steroids. They were bigger, more complex, and far deadlier than towers. As a result, they could accommodate up to twenty people, as opposed to the comparatively smaller groups that could challenge a tower. But even more troubling, those primal realms could exert influence on the world, transforming the terrain to fit their theme. The guide he’d read used a magmatic cave as an example, explaining that in such a scenario, the land surrounding the primal realm would take on the fiery traits of the realm.

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But there were bigger threats out there, too. Ancient realms. Battle worlds. Trial planets. The list went on and on. The fact was that they’d joined an extremely dangerous multiverse, and even if the people of Easton had attained some semblance of safety, that would not remain the case for all eternity. Eventually, they would be threatened, and if they didn’t have the strength to stand up to those threats, they would die.

Elijah couldn’t worry about that, though. Especially considering that he had yet to decide whether or not Easton needed to share its leader’s fate. His instincts told him to simply remove the city from the map, but his sense of morality – as sometimes skewed as it was – wouldn’t let him do so without significant consideration.

“I’m going to be gone for a couple of weeks,” he said.

“Is it…is it time?”

“No,” he answered. “I’m not going to Easton yet. I’ll be close, but I would rather not be disturbed unless absolutely necessary.”

“What are you doing?”

Elijah said, “I’ve been working on my Soul cultivation for a while. If I don’t finalize it now, I’ll have to spend a little time each day keeping it fresh. I don’t want to be distracted while I do what I need to do in Easton, so I need to push through to the next step.”

“Cultivation. Alyssa had started working on her Body before she passed.”

“Ask Nerthus about it if you want some help. He’s the one who put me on the right path,” Elijah suggested. “If he can’t help, I could give it a shot. I’ll be honest, though – most of what I’ve done probably isn’t replicable.”

“I’ll ask him. If not for me, then definitely for Miguel. He’ll be getting his archetype soon, and I know how powerful cultivation can be.”

“Anything that gives him a better chance of survival,” Elijah agreed. “I’ll help where I can, but…after…after I do what I need to do.”

After that, Elijah left Carmen to her own devices as he prepared for what he intended. Once he’d left his valuables behind in the treehouse, he set off across the island and, upon reaching the beach, he disrobed and waded into the cold water. Soon enough, he dove beneath the waves and was swimming toward the crevice that would lead him to the cultivation cave.

He took his time, slowly making his way as he mentally prepared. He couldn’t afford to let extraneous thoughts pollute his mind, so even after he reached the cave, he spent nearly three hours forcing himself into the right headspace. He did notice that the ethera density had risen to unprecedented levels, and the flora had responded in kind. It was a practical jungle of kelp and other sea plants, with plenty of small fish, water bugs, and other marine creatures having arrived to take advantage of the thick energy.

If Elijah had to guess, the ethera in the cave was at least twice as dense as it was in the heart of his grove. The rest of the island was even thinner, though compared to the outside world, it was an ethereal paradise. For cultivation purposes, all of which required extremely dense ethera, there probably wasn’t a better location in the world. Even if there were a few places that could rival it – the world was huge now, after all – Elijah’s cave was entirely sustainable. He could use it over and over again, and from what he could tell, it would just keep growing stronger.

A good thing, too, because the requirements to reach the next levels of cultivation would assuredly be quite steep.

In any case, Elijah swam to the center of the cave, then focused on his task. He didn’t start the process yet. Instead, he continued to meditate as he established the right frame of mind.

Hours later, he felt he was ready.

The first step was to swirl the ethera in his Core, which wasn’t particularly difficult. He’d already started cycling the energy in preparation for taking the next step in his Core cultivation, so he’d learned the basics of moving ethera. Still, it took time and the focus of all but a few of his Mind facets.

Elijah fell into a rhythm, pushing and pulling the ethera to create a whirlpool of energy that stretched his core to its limits. The pressure continued to build until, at last, he gave it an outlet, guiding the gathered ethera to a single point that marked the genesis of his first channel – and the system of channels he intended to build.

It was like an explosion going off inside his body, and Elijah had to harness every ounce of his willpower just to keep from gasping at the sudden spike of pain. Cultivation, it seemed, required significant pain tolerance.

But that single explosion was only the beginning, and over the next few hours, he continued to swirl his ethera, then focus its pressure toward that same point. And slowly, the channel began to take shape, snaking out from his core and up his torso, forming the main trunk of the intended pattern.

Not coincidentally, the pattern he’d memorized looked very much like a tree.

That pattern was a long way off, though. He’d allocated two weeks for the process, but after excavating that single channel, he knew it would likely take even longer than his initial estimate.

Still, once begun, stopping short of completion was not an option. It was possible to resume the process, but that would affect the result. And Elijah wasn’t willing to take anything but the best.

So, he leveraged his Mind as well as his considerable willpower – and tolerance for pain – to continue on. After the first trunk, he used the same method to carve the branches which would take ethera throughout his body.

The first step of Soul cultivation, which he’d taken what felt like a lifetime ago, had decentralized his pathways, but that was only preparation for the second step. One had to break the system down before it could be rebuilt, better and more efficient – and more personally meaningful – than ever.

Gradually, Elijah forced the channels into being. The trunk was first, then the limbs. And finally, the branches. Later stages would build upon those efforts, creating a more elaborate system, but for now, the rudimentary design was enough.

Throughout the process, Elijah was keenly aware of the cost of any potential mistakes. He wouldn’t die. Nor would he lose the ability to use ethera. Rather, the system would simply be less efficient. And given that every subsequent step built off the initial foundation, getting it right was an absolute necessity.

Days passed into more than a week, and eventually, he passed the bounds of his estimated time of completion. Yet, on he went, digging the channels through his body. At some point, he stopped processing the pain. He was aware of it, but it was distant. Unimportant. However, he grew ever more exhausted until manipulating his ethera felt like trying to stir molasses.

Even so, he pushed on.

And finally, after he’d long since lost track of time, the task was done – a fact that was verified by a flash of ethera that hardened the walls of each channel. That was expected, but in his state of intense fatigue, Elijah was still startled. Suddenly, all the ethera in his body dissipated.

For a moment, he was drowning in nothingness.

Then, the apertures in his Mind opened up, and ethera flooded back in. However, unlike before, it didn’t simply diffuse into his body. Rather, it followed the well-defined channels he’d spent so long carving.

And it moved so quickly that Elijah had difficulty tracking it.

The Soul wasn’t some ephemeral thing. In a very real way, it connected everything about his ethereal system, and those channels concentrated the ethera, keeping it under pressure to force it to go much faster than ever before.

Elijah let out a watery gasp that sent bubbles toward the cave’s air pocket above. Then, he read the notification he’d expected:

For a while, he just floated there, satisfied with his progress. Then, he looked down to see that the process had drained the cave of most of its ethera. Fortunately, the plant life hadn’t died, as it had when he’d cultivated his Body of Stone.

That was a relief, at least.

But more than anything, Elijah was glad to have taken one of the necessary steps before he could embark on his quest for revenge.

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