Path of Dragons

“It occurs to me that I’m not invincible,” said Elijah, looking up at the massive Singing Cliffs. Then, he glanced at Kurik and asked, “Do you ever feel that way?”

“All the damn time. Like a normal person,” the dwarf grumbled.

“Oh.”

“Don’t you dare tell me you ain’t never considered it,” Kurik said.

“I mean, obviously I have,” Elijah admitted. He’d spent far too much time – especially right before the world had changed – thinking about his inevitable death. However, of late, he’d lost sight of the notion that he might pay the price for his overconfidence. Even after seeing how many people had already died in the Trial, he’d lacked a certain context. Instead, he’d kept going, thinking that there was no way he could possibly bite the bucket. “It’s just that lately I’ve been thinking more about how these death-defying circumstances can benefit me. That doesn’t leave much room for thoughts on mortality.”

“Level-blind,” the dwarf said.

“Huh?”

“That’s what we called it back home. Level-blind. You get so focused on progression that you forget about everything else,” Kurik explained. “Sometimes, it’s just that people don’t see the mine for all the rocks. They miss important details. That sort of thing. Other times, they forget about the people that care about them. Loved ones and such. And then there are the ones like you.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Elijah asked, glad that neither Sadie nor Dat were close enough to hear the answer he expected from Kurik. Dat would probably just laugh it off, but that damnable woman would use it as fuel for her inexplicable hatred for him. She already loathed him, so it was best if he didn’t do anything to make it worse.

“You forget you can die, same as anybody else,” Kurik answered. “Now sure – you think about it, you know you ain’t immortal. But in the heat of the moment, in a battle or some such, you don’t act like you really think you’re in danger. Lots of people have died for thinkin’ like that. You gotta be careful you don’t end up lettin’ it get too far.”

Elijah wanted to argue, but then he thought better of it. Largely because Kurik was right. Ever since coming into the Trial, he’d treated it as nothing more than a means to an end. It was his opportunity to progress. And he was right to think of it in those terms. However, he also needed to remember that it was a deadly challenge meant to push the most powerful people on Earth past their limits.

Hundreds had already discovered that for themselves.

Elijah was just a little slower on the uptake, apparently.

He sighed, then ran his hand through his hair. His fingers snagged on his headband, reminding him just how ridiculous he must’ve looked. No wonder Sadie didn’t take him seriously.

Finally, he said, “You’re probably right. Going forward, I need to remember that.”

“See that you do. I don’t think Carmen or Miggy can take it if you don’t make it back,” Kurik said.

“Anyone ever tell you you’re pretty insightful for a surly dwarf?” Elijah asked with a sideways look and a crooked grin.

“All the time,” Kurik stated with a perfectly straight face. “Now, we gonna climb this mountain? Or are we gonna just stare at it?”

“I don’t think it’s actually a mountain. More like a butte formation. Or a mesa, maybe. A plateau, definitely,” Elijah said.

“Don’t none of that matter. It’s an overgrown rock.”

“It does to me,” Elijah countered. “Words matter, right?”

“Not when they all mean the same damn thing.”

Elijah just shook his head in disbelief and said, “Whatever. I think it matters. If they weren’t any different, then –”

“You coming, bro?” called Dat from a few dozen feet away. He slapped his hands together in anticipation. “I think I see a way up. There are ladders about a hundred meters up.”

Elijah glanced at Sadie, who was staring up at the cliff in intense concentration. Was she avoiding looking at him? Or was she just that interested in the cliff’s face? He chose to ignore the display of hostility, and instead, offered Dat his most winning smile as he said, “I’m ready when you are.”

After his resolution to take the situation a little more seriously, Elijah forced himself to study the cliff face in earnest. To do so, he used Eyes of the Eagle, and sure enough, he saw the series of rope ladders Dat described. They were around a hundred yards up, and they extended as far as he could see. The reason no one had noticed them before was because they were almost identical in color to the rest of the cliff face. More, they were irregularly spaced, which made them even more difficult to see.

Seeing that, Elijah started to see the issue in greater detail. The ladders might help them – assuming they were stable – but to go from one ladder to the next, they would need to traverse the cliff face horizontally. It would be quite precarious, especially considering the howling winds, the spirits, and whatever other dangers the system had in store for them.

Still, they’d all chosen to challenge the Trial for valid reasons. In Elijah’s case, he wanted to both satisfy his own adventurous spirit as well as take the opportunity to grow stronger. But Dat’s and Sadie’s situations were far more serious. They wanted to grow more powerful as well, but their reasons were less about personal strength and more to do with saving their people from inevitable death.

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That left Kurik, whose reasons for participating were his own. Though Elijah suspected that the dwarf had come to the Trial of Primacy because he’d experienced true weakness back on his own planet, and he wanted to avoid that if he could. Or maybe there was something else going on. Elijah counted Kurik as one of his few friends, but that didn’t mean he had any true insight into the dwarf’s innermost thoughts.

His own mortality wasn’t the only thing he’d begun to ignore of late. He’d also neglected his relationships with his friends and loved ones. Aside from Miguel and Carmen, he’d rarely given much thought to anyone else’s goals. Or their plight. That included Kurik, who Elijah had begun to think of as more of a prop than an actual person with hopes, insecurities, and dreams, along with everything else that came with life.

But that was nothing new. Elijah had always been a little self-interested and very much obsessive. Those two traits intersected with his pursuit of power.

Now was not the time to start making overtures of friendship, though. The Singing Cliffs would no doubt prove to be quite dangerous, and Elijah needed to be at the top of his game if he wanted to survive.

They all did.

So, he pushed those thoughts aside and focused on the task at hand. The others did as well, and they spent the next few minutes discussing the most obvious path. There were two issues with that, though. First, they could only see so far, and as such, their plans would end after a couple hundred yards. The second problem was that they all knew the Trial would throw them a few curveballs before they managed to defeat the challenge. Nobody expected it to be easy, either.

“Nothing for it but to do it,” Elijah said, stepping forward with the intention of getting things started. However, Sadie cut him off with a glare.

“I go first.”

Elijah wanted to argue, if only because the woman truly got under his skin. However, in this instance, he chose to be the bigger person. So, he gave her his best smile, gestured at the cliff, and said, “After you, then.”

That was obviously the wrong thing to have said, because her glare only intensified. But she didn’t say anything else, instead choosing to take a deep breath, exhaling through her nose before turning back to face the cliff. Then, without further hesitation, she grabbed hold of a rocky protrusion, and began her climb.

“Ain’t gonna be easy, climbin’ in armor,” Kurik said.

“I know, bro. She said she wanted to be ready for a fight,” Dat stated.

Elijah chose to remain silent, largely because he knew Sadie was more than capable of hearing everything they said. He had no intention of prostrating himself before her – as she seemed to obviously want – but he didn’t want to antagonize the woman either. With that in mind, he thought silence was the best policy.

Once Sadie had made it about ten feet up, she dropped a rope that she’d tied around her hips and legs. It hit the ground, and Elijah stepped forward to leash himself to her before beginning his own ascent. For all their preparations, they hadn’t expected to have to climb mountains. So, aside from bringing plenty of rope, none of them were prepared for the task at hand. That meant they had to make do, creating a makeshift harness to distribute the weight properly.

For real mountaineers, the whole thing would’ve been made of nylon and clipped together with heavy duty carabiners, but they had to work with the supplies they’d brought. Still, everyone there possessed superhuman – or in Kurik’s case, superdwarven – physiology, so they had good reason to hope that it would work.

Over the next fifteen minutes, the process repeated itself until they were all clinging to the cliff. The wind wasn’t pleasant, but so long as they were careful, it was manageable enough. However, the constant whistling was more than a little annoying, and not only because the sound gave him a headache. Also, it made communication with the others almost impossible.

Still, they reached the first ledge after a little more than half an hour. The ridge was only a couple of feet deep and around ten feet wide, but that was enough to give them a little respite. To ease their nascent fatigue, Elijah cast Healing Rain as they rested.

Both the pause and the healing were largely unnecessary so early in the climb, but they had no idea how far they still had to go. And so, they’d chosen to take every precaution on their way up.

As it turned out, that was a good idea, because after that short rest, things got significantly more difficult. Not only did the wind pick up, with the gusts reaching a velocity usually reserved for tropical storms, but the handholds they relied upon became more infrequent and much more difficult to grasp.

But the real problem was the spirits. The invisible bullies never missed a chance to cannonball into the members of the party. The first time had taken them completely unaware, and the only reason Dat didn’t end up plummeting to his death was their use of the connecting rope. Even with the Witch Hunter’s weight spread between them all, it was a close thing.

Still, they managed to recover. More importantly, they were much more conscious of the dangerous wind spirits after that. So long as they maintained their focus, the spirits’ attacks weren’t enough to dislodge them. However, the constant threat left them all feeling quite harried.

At last, they reached the first rope ladder.

It did not give them the respite they’d hoped to find, though. The material was sturdy enough, but the ladder itself only extended a few dozen feet before ending at another ledge. This one was even narrower than the last, and the group was forced to shuffle sideways for another hundred feet before ascending an even shorter ladder that ended in yet another ledge that was only six inches deep.

Further complicating matters was the continuous wind, which, once they reached the fifth ledge, climbed past hurricane velocities. And always, the spirits were there, hitting them at the most inopportune times. The moment any of them looked vulnerable, the ephemeral creatures would strike. More than once, they were all knocked free of their precarious positions.

Except Elijah.

Over time, he’d learned to feel them coming via One with Nature. Even that powerful skill didn’t offer much in the way of warning, but it was enough to keep him from being taken entirely unaware. The others weren’t so lucky.

On and on, they went, and after a thousand feet, they were all exhausted. It wasn’t just physical, though that was part of it – especially for the physically weaker Dat and Kurik. Instead, their fatigue was more mental than anything else. For his part, Elijah tried to help via copious use of his various healing spells. But there was only so much he could do.

Sadie yelled, “Ledge up ahead! There’s a cave, I think!”

That was all any of them needed to hear. At their wits’ end, they all clambered over the ledge and, sure enough, there was a shallow cave. From below, they’d all seen the cavities that pockmarked the cliff’s face. However, they hadn’t expected the first they encountered to be so deep.

Kurik sagged to the ground, panting with exhaustion. Dat joined him, but both Elijah and Sadie remained alert.

“This cave isn’t empty,” Elijah said, gripping his staff.

“I know,” Sadie muttered.

Just then, a screech echoed from the back of the cave, confirming what Elijah had already felt via One with Nature.

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