Path of Dragons

“Behind me!” shouted Sadie, planting herself at the mouth of the cave. As the words left her mouth, she used her shielding ability, wrapping a glowing bulwark around her form. Her greatsword and armor gleamed in the light, though the illumination dissipated after only a few feet. Beyond that, only oppressive darkness lay.

Dat and Kurik shot to their feet and took up their positions, ready to deal ranged damage to whatever had caused the eruption. For his part, Elijah readied his staff and prepared a couple of heals. Meanwhile, he focused on the facet of his mind dedicated to One with Nature. However, despite feeling the site of the explosion, there was no culprit in evidence. All he felt was inanimate rock and ice.

Then, what he’d assumed was inanimate moved. Coils of ice and stone shifted, and a great worm burst forth from the ground. The explosion sent a shockwave tearing across the valley and into the cave, with sharp shards of shale riding alongside the ripple of air. Elijah flinched, hiding his exposed face from the projectiles, saving him from a few minor wounds. The same couldn’t be said of Dat and Kurik, who were caught completely unaware.

Sadie was predictably fine, with the rocks clanging off her armor without causing any harm.

Elijah cast Healing Rain, not willing to waste ethera on anything more powerful.

“It’s a worm!” he yelled. “Made of rock and ice.”

That’s when it struck, crashing into the cave with enough force to crack boulders. However, they were saved by the comparatively small size of the cave. The rock worm’s mouth was at least twenty feet across, so it couldn’t get to them. Yet. But judging by the way the cave had shaken, it was only a matter of time before the monster tore through the suddenly flimsy-seeming rock.

Moreover, Elijah finally got a good look at their assailant. Or its circular mouth, at least. Lined with teeth that glittered like gemstones, it was quite an imposing sight.

“I am not getting digested again!” he growled, aiming his staff at the deepest part of the creature’s mouth. Then, he let loose with Storm’s Fury, sending a bolt of lightning out. It hit with the sound of cracking stone, showering Elijah and his companions with a cascade of pebbles. But when the dust settled, his efforts had done little good. As far as he could tell, the worm’s craggy mouth was entirely unharmed.

The same was true after Dat and Kurik employed their own attacks, shooting crossbow bolts and arrows its way. They did less than Elijah’s lightning, clattering off the rocky surface of the inside of the monster’s mouth with no discernible effect. Sadie’s sword did a little more damage, dislodging one of the glittering teeth, but that wasn’t nearly as encouraging as it probably should have been.

Because the monster had not remained idle.

Instead, its teeth began to rotate, chipping the rock of the cave mouth away like the world’s largest saw.

“This isn’t working!” Elijah shouted after a couple of seconds of similarly terrible results. No one seemed to hear him over the cacophonous sound of rock grating against rock, but they’d all seen the same thing. None of their abilities were suited to destroying stone. Perhaps if they’d had access to someone with fire abilities, they might’ve melted the ice that seemed to hold the whole thing together. But they didn’t, one of the downsides of having a less well-rounded group.

The moment that realization hit him was when things got immeasurably worse.

It exhaled, peppering them with a cloud of icicles that hit like bullets, digging into their flesh. Dat gasped in pain as one glanced off his skull, while Kurik took a few in the chest. The sturdy dwarf remained on his feet, but Elijah could see blood gushing from the wounds.

He used Soothe on the less-protected members of the party, ignoring the cuts he’d sustained on his own face. Sadie had escaped mostly unscathed, though her armor bore a dozen new dents and scratches, hinting that it wouldn’t hold up indefinitely. By comparison, Elijah’s Armor of the Boar King was almost entirely unmarred, save for a couple of shallow grooves along the chest.

Seeing that Soothe wasn’t going to cut it, Elijah cast Nature’s Bloom on Dat and Kurik, bringing them closer to full healthiness. Yet, the problem persisted. The worm hadn’t gone anywhere, and judging by the increased fury of its efforts at sawing through the hill, it wasn’t going to give up.

So, Elijah cycled through his abilities, one by one. First, he used Swarm, but to no effect. The little tick-like insects he conjured were incapable of piercing through the monster’s rocky flesh. Similarly, Calamity was ineffective, save for a spreading a few tiny cracks, similar to the results of Sadie’s attacks.

But then he used Nature’s Rebuke.

Nature’s Rebuke The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Curse an entity to endure the power of nature, doing damage over time. Triple damage against unnatural creatures. Lasts two minutes.

The monster shuddered as the spell hit it, and to Elijah’s surprise, it let out a screeching scream that spoke of pure agony. As the spell ripped through the apparently-unnatural creature, the ice holding it together melted. The rocks that formed the bulk of its body loosened, and bits stared to fall off.

Obviously troubled by that – at least inasmuch as something like that could be troubled – the monster tried to retreat, pulling away from the cave and sliding beneath the ground. A few moments later, Elijah felt the telltale influx of experience that told him that they’d managed to kill it.

Elijah let out a deep breath.

“What happened? Why did it leave? How did it die?” demanded Sadie.

“That was me,” he answered.

“You killed that thing? Nothing we were doing even scratched it,” she countered. “How?”

“Specialized spell.”

Her eyes narrowed, clearly indicating that she wanted a more elaborate explanation. However, Elijah wasn’t willing to give her one. She’d gotten better of late, but Elijah hadn’t forgotten the way she had treated him in the beginning. Revealing all of his secrets to someone whose abilities screamed at her to hate him seemed like a stupid idea.

“What was that thing?” asked Dat. “It seemed –”

At that moment, the cost of their victory became apparent when the ground collapsed beneath them. One second, it was there, and the next, it all went tumbling down. If Elijah had had even a moment’s warning, he would have shifted into Shape of the Sky, but as it was, he found himself falling before he could process what was happening.

As it turned out, it was probably for the best that he didn’t try to use his flight form, because even as he fell, the entire hill fell with him. For a second, Elijah fell through open air, but after only a few moments, he hit a sloped surface. As he skidded down the steep decline, huge rocks and clumps of dirt hit all around him. It was only by the grace of sheer luck that he wasn’t immediately crushed.

The same couldn’t be said for his companions.

Sadie took a boulder head-on, and for the briefest of instants, Elijah thought she’d died. But relief flooded through one facet of his mind as he realized – via One with Nature – that she’d managed to activate a skill to protect her. Dat was clipped by a few rocks, but he seemed okay. Strangely, the one who was least impacted by the landslide was Kurik, who seemed to dance between the rocks as if he was a balletic geomancer.

The awareness of his allies flitted through Elijah’s mind as he fell down the slope. He could have stopped himself, but that would have let the wave of earth and rock catch up to him. So, he rode the momentum until he reached a yawning crevice, which he slipped through. That crack in the earth narrowed significantly, funneling him into a vertical shaft that eventually led to an expansive cave.

Elijah fell through open air for a handful of seconds before, at last, he hit solid ground. He rolled, trying to avoid the landslide, but the funnel had prevented all but the smallest rocks. So, while getting hit by those shards of rock hurt, it wasn’t life-threatening.

Picking himself up from the ground, Elijah looked around for his companions. He’d felt them with One with Nature, but he wanted to see with his own two eyes that they were okay. Sadie was the first one he saw, but she was clearly the least injured. Her class seemed to focus on Strength and Constitution, so if anyone was going to survive, it was her. By comparison, Dat was the worst off, having sustained a broken leg, a couple of shattered ribs, and a lung that had been punctured three times.

Kurik had a couple of scrapes and some serious contusions, but he’d survived intact as well.

“We’re lucky,” Elijah said when the dust settled. He’d gathered everyone into a tight clump so they could benefit from Healing Rain while he saw to Dat’s more severe injuries. “Do we know what happened?”

“Cave-in,” Kurik said. “My planet has these big, burrowing insects. And every now and then, their tunnels get out of hand. Nobody knows they’re even there until the ground falls out from under ‘em. Looks like that’s what happened here. That big worm’s been digging ‘round here for years. But when it came up to try to eat us, it probably upset the balance. Then, it tried to go down too quick and everything fell apart.”

That explanation made as much sense as anything else, though when Elijah looked around, he couldn’t help but frown. The cave they’d fallen into just didn’t look right to him. too many straight lines.

“This isn’t natural,” Elijah said. “Something built this cave.”

“It may be the monsters the report spoke of,” Sadie pointed out.

That was a distinct possibility. The scout had mentioned some giant, hairy bipeds, but from what Elijah had gathered, they were not sophisticated enough to have built any infrastructure. At best, they were like the orcs, who used tools and had a basic idea of a society, but were not advanced in any way.

“I don’t think so, but I don’t have any other explanations.”

While Elijah focused on healing, Sadie stood guard. Meanwhile, Kurik set out to scout the area. When he returned a few hours later, he looked troubled. “It ain’t good. It ain’t good at all.”

“What’s going on? What is it?”

“More of them worms, for one. Yetis, too, all marchin’ ‘round like they ain’t monsters. Some of ‘em are even wearin’ armor and such. But that ain’t the worst of it.”

“What is it? More monsters?” asked Elijah.

“It gets gods bedamned colder down there.”

“What?”

“It ain’t natural! It ought not be cold underground! It’s a place of fire and coziness!”

Elijah grinned as he shook his head, and Dat let out a chuckle. Even Sadie snorted, though she tried to cover it up with a cough.

“You surface people don’t know how it’s s’posed to work. That’s all I’ll say about that,” he growled, crossing his arms.

After that, they continued to recuperate until, at last, Dat was entirely healed. That was when Elijah suggested that he check things out himself, saying that he had some experience with that sort of thing. “In my second tower, I had to sneak around and kill a bunch of ogres. This might be similar.”

The reality was that he wanted to get a better look at things so he could determine how to combat the situation.

“What about us?” Sadie asked.

“Trap up. Use my tent. Just stay safe for a couple of hours while I check things out.”

“You are not a scout,” Sadie stated.

Elijah shrugged. “I’m close enough. Remember – I mostly fight alone. I’ve been doing everything for a while now. I’ll be fine.”

She obviously wasn’t thrilled about it, but for whatever reason, she chose not to make a big deal out of it. Elijah told himself that it was because she trusted his judgement. Whatever the case, when he got no further pushback, Elijah shifted into his draconid form and took off across the cavern. Once he was out of sight for a few seconds, he used Guise of the Unseen, then headed down the connecting tunnel.

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