Path of Dragons

Elijah forced himself to watch, but all the while, he found himself wishing he hadn’t. Still, he didn’t look away while Sadie cut the woman to pieces. She started small, just removing a single finger, but over the course of the next few hours, the wounds grew steadily worse until the woman had become a mass of wounds, the sight of which finally forced Elijah to look away.

“Interesting,” Sadie said.

“What?” Elijah asked, feeling sick to his stomach. He had few issues with killing, but torture was something altogether different. Unlike most instances of torture, at least this had a viable purpose, though. They had never intended to enhance an interrogation, but rather, to see how the Immortals’ power worked. And in that endeavor, they were successful.

“As far as I can tell, they truly are immortal. When I cut pieces off, they just come back. She’s scarred by it, and there’s a component of pain as well, but we can’t dismantle them,” Sadie answered.

“I think I’m gonna be sick, bro,” Dat said from nearby. He’d watched the whole thing too, growing increasingly pale the entire time. Elijah sympathized with how the Witch Hunter clearly felt, largely because he’d experienced similar discomfort.

“Do you think I enjoy this?” Sadie demanded. “I don’t. It is necessary, and I will not shy away from that.”

“I know.”

For his part, Elijah didn’t intend to contribute to that conversation. He’d thought he was as committed as anyone else, but seeing what he’d just seen had put the lie to that way of thinking. He had lines he wouldn’t cross, and he had just found one. Making it worse that it had been done at his suggestion, though he suspected that Sadie would have come to a similar conclusion.

Still, he was grateful that Sadie could do the deed because, as she’d just said, it had needed to be done.

“I suspect it wouldn’t work,” Sadie answered. “I’m certain it wouldn’t be pleasant. Like water boarding. But –”

“What ‘bout tyin’ ‘em up and throwin’ ‘em in a barrel before tossin’ ‘em into the deepest part of the sea?” Kurik asked. “Might not kill ‘em, but it’d put ‘em outta commission, right?”

“That’s cold, bro.”

“Didn’t say I’d like it,” Kurik countered. “Just sayin’ I’d like that a fair bit more than gettin’ killed by unkillable assassins.”

“That’s fair,” Elijah said. “Sadie? Would it work?”

She shrugged. “I’d just encase them in cement,” she said. “But yeah.”

Throughout the frank discussion, the scarred Immortal’s eyes had widened in horror. Clearly, she hadn’t considered the implications of being incapable of dying. Would she starve to death? Or perish due to dehydration? Both were terrible ways to go, but living through that without end would assuredly be quite traumatizing. And the woman knew it.

Still, she’d refused to say a single word throughout Sadie’s experiments in dismemberment. That wasn’t to say that she was silent. She most certainly had not been, filling the air with a cacophony of agonized screams. Sadie had calmly remarked that it proved they were capable of feeling pain, at least.

But in the end, they’d discovered what they could, and it came time to make some hard choices. Elijah gave that predicament voice when he asked, “What do we do with her?”

“Feed ‘er to something nasty,” suggested Kurik without hesitation. When everyone looked at him, he just shrugged. “Won’t kill ‘er, but it might put ‘er outta the fight for a bit. Added bonus, she suffers a little more.”

“That’s a bonus?” asked Dat.

“When somebody tries to kill me? Sure. I ain’t in the business of forgivin’ that kinda thing.”

“It’s not about punishment, bro. It’s only about –”

“That’s not relevant,” Sadie interrupted. “We’re not here to debate the merits of vengeance. We need her out of the way. That’s it. So, what can we do to make sure she stays gone for as long as possible?”

“Kurik’s idea is probably best. And we passed plenty of beasts along the way who could make a quick meal out of her,” Elijah said. “Not that I wish being digested on anyone. It’s probably the most effective way to get what we want, though.”

“I don’t like it,” Dat said with a shake of his head. Then, he ran his hand through his hair. “But I don’t know any other way. We can’t take her prisoner, right?”

“Where would we keep her? And if we had a jail, what’s to keep her friends from rescuing her? This is the best way, Dat. I don’t like it any more than you do, but I don’t want to put anyone else in danger,” Elijah said.

No one else had any objections.

Well, no one but the Immortal woman, who finally voiced her own opinions by alternating between begging them not to do it and vowing eternal vengeance at the hands of her Lord if they did. Elijah ignored her pleas as well as her promises of reprisal. The reality was that the Immortals – presumably at the insistence of their Lord – had made the first move. So, if anyone was to blame for what was about to happen, it was her.

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Elijah shifted into the lamellar ape form, then grabbed the woman around the waist, and took off across the jungle. Without the others around, the beasts were unlikely to bother him, an expectation that remained true as he made his way to where he’d last seen a large, reptilian animal that looked big enough to swallow the Immortal whole.

As it turned out, the creature – which looked like a giant toad crossed with a lizard the size of a pickup truck – took a little coaxing to eat the Immortal, but Elijah solved that issue by drawing blood. That perked the beast right up, and it gulped her down in the space of a moment.

She didn’t stop screaming the entire time.

Unsettled, Elijah returned to the group, and with the weight of what they had just done settling on their shoulders, they set off for Nexus Town. The next couple of days were filled with silence as they all wrestled with their actions. They’d just sentenced a woman to a life of torture. Even if she was rescued, it would still be a traumatizing experience that no one truly deserved.

But as they kept telling themselves, it had been necessary.

Finally, Elijah found the distraction he needed when they stumbled upon a raised aqueduct. Standing upon pillars hundreds of feet tall, it cut through the jungle for miles in both directions. Pieces of it had been torn down by creeping undergrowth, but what was left over had been fairly well preserved, revealing the architecture as well as the artistry of the structure.

“You find this so interesting?” asked Sadie, interrupting Elijah’s study of the ruined aqueduct.

Elijah glanced back and asked, “Don’t you? I mean, this is evidence of an entirely different civilization. What I find really fascinating is that it actually resembles Roman aqueducts. Not exactly. Obviously. But there are enough similarities that you have to wonder if there’s a connection.”

“There can’t be that many ways to build raised ditches.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“So, what are you saying? That this place and Earth are connected?” she asked.

Elijah shrugged. “I have no idea. But it’s definitely neat.”

“Neat?”

“It’s a valid word.”

“Sure it is,” she said, glancing back to where Dat and Kurik were resting. They’d decided to make camp near the aqueduct, mostly because Elijah had insisted. “You really get into this sort of thing, don’t you? Were you an architect or something?”

“What? No. And you say that like being interested is bad.”

“Not bad. Useless,” she said. “We’re here to do a job, lest you forget. I have thousands of people depending on me. I must grow stronger, or people will die.”

“I’m aware,” Elijah acknowledged.

“You say that, and yet, you’re here admiring pretty architecture. We don’t have time for this.”

“And what else should I be doing?”

“Cultivating. We could have kept going for another hour or two as well.”

“I am cultivating,” Elijah stated. Indeed, three facets were working on a technique he hoped would work for taking the next step toward a Jade Mind. He hadn’t gotten any results yet, but he had good reason to think that he soon would. “And life is about more than obligations.”

“That’s easy for you to say when your people aren’t dying.”

Elijah was about to respond, but then he thought better of it. The fact was that he had no room to judge her. She was dealing with problems that he’d never had to consider, much less solve. Regardless, it wasn’t his place to tell her how to live her life. Especially when it came to responsibility, which Elijah had been trying to avoid for quite some time. Even before the world had been transformed, he’d put more stock in doing what he wanted than in achieving goals.

Of course, he’d changed a little over the years since Earth had experienced the touch of the World Tree. But perhaps not as much as he’d thought. At least he wasn’t just going through the motions anymore, though.

“You’re right. I’m sorry,” Elijah said. He sighed. “Sometimes it feels like we live in completely different worlds. Maybe we do.” He shook his head, then after a few moments, announced, “I’m going for a walk.”

With that, he turned and left her behind. It wasn’t until he’d gone about a hundred feet that he realized that he was following the aqueduct. That seemed as good a direction as any, and he spent the next hour – in the dead of night, no less – strolling through the jungle. After a couple of miles, the structure hit a sharp decline, and a hundred yards later, the trough disappeared underground.

“Should I do it?” Elijah asked the jungle, looking at the gaping hole in the ground. He didn’t sense anything dangerous about it, but that didn’t mean it was safe. “Oh, who am I asking. Of course I’m going to do it.”

Then, without further thought, he leaped into the huge, stone trough and descended into the darkness. The first thing he noticed once he was completely underground was the musty smell. It was mildew and algae and rot, all rolled into one. The trough had become a tunnel, dark and dank. A trickle of water flowed down the center, hinting at its former majesty.

Elijah shifted into his draconid form, largely because its night vision was superior to that of his natural shape, and he spent the next few minutes padding down the tunnel. Some of it had partially collapsed, though there was still plenty of room for Elijah to squeeze through, and eventually, he reached a giant cistern that was filled with sparkling water.

And miraculously, it was illuminated by a series of torches mounted on the walls. At first, Elijah thought that it hadn’t been as abandoned as he’d expected, but when he tried – and failed – to extinguish one of the torches, he reasoned that they were magical in nature. The circular space was at least two hundred feet wide and likely twice as tall, with a coffered ceiling that reminded Elijah of Renaissance architecture. Moreover, there existed a series of frescoes that had been painted between the richly carved edges.

To get a better look, Elijah transformed into the Shape of the Sky, then flew toward the ceiling. When he got there, he latched onto the raised edges, then leaned closer. For a couple of hours, he studied the paintings, which depicted a battle between three mighty warlords, each with their own sizable army. The species reminded Elijah of the wraiths, with their four arms and ivory skin, though the ones in the frescoes were far more muscular.

Many of the details had been lost to time, but Elijah was still awed by the ruins of what had once been a mighty civilization. He’d already seen plenty of evidence to suggest as much, but every new experience in the excised world hammered it home. The natives had been quite advanced, which made him wonder just what had happened to result in their separation from the World Tree.

Perhaps he would find out before the Trial was finished.

As much as he wished he could stay and study the frescoes, Elijah knew he needed to get back to his companions. So, he reluctantly returned the way he came, with musings on the fall of mighty worlds dancing through his mind.

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