Path of Dragons

“Here’s how I see it,” said Elijah. As he spoke, he pointed to a rough diagram he’d scratched into the mud. It had begun to rain, so the lines he’d drawn had started to fill with water, but everything was still visible. “Three wasps patrol the area here. They’re evenly spaced, so they’ve got the whole facility covered.”

“That’s what I saw, too,” Dat said. Kurik agreed. The three of them had spent the past three days scouting the compound’s defenses, and what they’d found was not encouraging. “Those sensors are the real problem, though.”

“Sensors?” asked Sadie.

“All around the perimeter, there are these small bugs that look like fireflies,” Elijah said. “They remove all stealth abilities and will raise the alarm if they detect anything.”

“Can we just destroy them?” Benedict asked.

“Kill ‘em, and the whole facility responds,” Kurik answered. “All three wasps, hundreds of them cockroach bots, and the two beetles.”

“Beetles?” Ron asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I think they look more like ninja turtles, bro.”

The characterization wasn’t inaccurate. The robots were bipedal, with huge, armored shells on their backs. However, instead of mutated, pizza-loving turtles, they resembled upright beetles with enormous pincers that could cut through steel like it was nothing. According to Dat, they were the highest-level creatures guarding the facility – aside from the wasps, which defied his attempts to inspect them – and they represented the final hurdle.

“Whatever they are, they’re strong,” Kurik said. “Round about the power of that top aviak, unless I miss my guess.”

“How likely is that?” Sadie asked.

“Not likely. I know how to assess a threat.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “So, do we have a plan?”

“I think we should kick the hornet’s nest,” Elijah said. “Or more accurately, I should. Then, you all head inside while I deal with the aftermath.”

“That’s too dangerous, bro.”

“Absolutely out of the question,” Sadie said.

Ron added, “I can’t heal dead.”

“I think it’s a great idea,” Benedict said. Everyone looked at him like he’d gone crazy. “Not like that. I’m just saying that it looks like what you’re all saying is that we can’t beat these things in a straight fight, right? But we don’t have to, either. The task didn’t say to kill all of these robots. It only wants us to beat the Engineer. So, the next best thing to killing everything is sneaking past them. We can’t do that because of the stealth-sensing fireflies, so the only option is misdirection. And he’s at the top of the power rankings. He’s the best suited to survival.”

It was the most Benedict had said since he’d joined the group, and he’d broken it down precisely how Elijah would have. “I knew I liked you,” Elijah said with a grin. “All in favor of Elijah-gets-chased-by-a-bunch-of-bug-bots?”

No one raised their hands. What they did do was erupt into a series of arguments as to why he should not, under any circumstances, go through with that plan. That left Elijah incredibly annoyed, but listening to others – even when they were wrong – was part of being on a team.

“I’m still waiting to hear someone else’s brilliant plan,” he said, making a show of stretching. He added a yawn. “I guess we could just give up. No shame in quitting, right?”

“Shut up,” Sadie groaned. “Just shut up.”

“I’m just saying –”

“I’m thinking!”

“Well, here’s a little nugget to add to your thought process. I’m pretty sure we get bonus points for being the first to conquer a challenge. So, no rush. Winning isn’t important, right? Someone has to lose – I mean, lots of people will lose – so who says it can’t be us?”

She threw a rock at him. Elijah easily dodged it, but he wasn’t able to duck beneath the next one, which hit him square in the forehead. It didn’t hurt – not with his Constitution – but he very much didn’t care for having things thrown at his head.

“Seriously, bro. Just stop.”

Elijah was about to respond – and angrily – when he thought better of it. Then, he sighed and sagged his shoulders. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I just don’t like sitting still. I’m pretty sure I can make that plan work, though.”

“Too much risk,” Sadie said, her irritation still coating her voice. “And I apologize, too. I shouldn’t throw things at you, regardless of how annoying you’re being.”

“Apology accepted.”

After that, their discussion was a little more civil. However, it was no more productive, which meant that no one could figure out a better plan for infiltrating the facility. Eventually, even Sadie had to admit that his idea gave them the best shot at success, so they built around it, establishing a few extra steps.

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Once they’d finalized the plan, everyone began their preparations. Mostly, Elijah just helped Kurik, and a little less than a day later, everything was ready. So, he spent another hour centering himself and preparing for what was to come. If he failed, not only would he die, but everyone would be caught out in the open. And that just wasn’t acceptable.

“Are you ready?” asked Sadie, standing over him.

Elijah looked up and gave her his best smile as he said, “I was born ready.”

She groaned.

“What?”

“I don’t get you sometimes,” she said. “One minute, you’re making cracks about cheesy vampire books, and the next, you’re talking about the majesty of nature. Who are you, really?”

“Not sure what you mean.”

“Are you the weird jokester? Or are you a serious person?” she asked.

Elijah thought for a moment, then said, “Guess I’m a little bit of both. I’m serious when I need to be. Like right now. Total game face on.”

She just rolled her eyes.

After that, the group split up. The plan called for them to hide in a particularly dense pile of garbage about a hundred yards from the facility’s perimeter, while Elijah went to the other side to prepare for his feigned assault. So, as they went to their assigned location, Elijah slipped into Shape of the Predator, then adopted Guise of the Unseen before circling around.

Along the way, he passed dozens of insectile robots, each one destroying a piece of the trash mountain. Ethera was involved somehow, but Elijah had no idea what the process really entailed. All he knew was that the acrid odor of burning rubber filled the air, and the metal monsters looked like they were eating trash.

Regardless, Elijah had no issues evading them as he circled around to where he intended to begin his part of the plan. As he did, he studied the facility itself. There was a low wall encircling the compound, but it was far too flimsy to hold anything out. Instead, it seemed more symbolic than anything else. Either way, it was absolutely lousy with the firefly robots, which buzzed around in swarms of a hundred. They blinked away merrily, looking as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

Beyond that perimeter fence, there was an open area filled with dormant cockroach robots. From their tests, Elijah knew that they would awaken the moment anyone came into range – or when the fireflies alerted on an intruder – which meant that any potential invader would need to fight a horde not dissimilar from the one Elijah and his group had battled when they’d first entered the Citadel of Innovation.

Finally, Elijah looked up to see the giant wasps hovering around a thousand feet overhead. They circled the compound lazily, though he’d seen how quickly they would respond to any threat.

Elijah didn’t see the beetles, but he knew they were there.

Once he was in position, Elijah settled in to wait for around an hour, just to make sure that his companions were in place. During that time, he focused on his cultivation. His latest experiment was to loop ethera around the various facets, then drag them closer together. Doing it gave him a headache, but he felt like he was on the right track. When everything came together – brief as those moments were – he felt a slight increase in his cognition speed. At first, he’d thought it was a mirage, but after a few tests, he’d confirmed that it was, in fact, real.

So, he reasoned that he was going in the right direction. There needed to be some adjustments, he was well aware, but he felt he’d finally cleared a huge hurdle. Now, he just needed to put in the right amount of effort, and everything would work out.

Maybe.

Or he might just as easily cripple his Mind cultivation by going down the wrong path. Whatever the case, it wasn’t as if he could simply ask a mentor for advice. When he got back to Earth, he fully intended to seek out a Librarian, but he knew the chances that one would be powerful enough to find that particular answer were pretty slim.

In any case, the cultivation, while a little painful, helped with the stress of what he was about to do.

But eventually, the time came to act, and given that Elijah was not one to shirk his duty – especially when it was his plan in the first place – he refused to let his trepidation dictate his actions. So, without further ado, he crept forward and planted himself just on the other side of the wall. Then, he shifted into his caster form, and before he was detected, he cast two spells.

First came Calamity, which swept through the courtyard of the facility with typical fury. Hundreds of cockroach creatures came online, and dozens of other types revealed themselves as well. Some of them were the ranged variants that could sling molten slag at their enemies, but the millipede and normal beetle monsters were there, too. In short, there were so many variations of enormous bug-bots that Elijah had a little trouble distinguishing between them.

But that was fine.

In this case, he didn’t need to know his enemies. He just needed to get their attention. And Calamity was the perfect tool for that job.

He also cast Swarm, though he didn’t direct it at the mass of huge bug-bots. Rather, he targeted the fireflies. The glittering swarm was incapable of affecting the bigger robots, but the conjured insects were the perfect size to take out the fireflies. So, that was what they did, dive bombing the flashing creatures with ruthless efficiency.

But Elijah didn’t stick around to watch. Instead, he was already running along the fence, sprinting as quickly as his legs would carry him. He knew he couldn’t outrun the creatures in his human form, but he hoped it would be enough for him to finish the rest of his plan.

He circled the facility, aiming more spells at the fireflies. Storm’s Fury proved particularly effective at taking them out, as the little creatures were so clumped together that the current had no trouble leaping from one to the next. Thankfully, it was a cheap spell, too.

Just when Elijah was patting himself on the back, two problems showed themselves. The first was expected, and it took the form of the wasps aiming their giant stingers at him and letting loose with three columns of fire. But this time, Elijah wasn’t sitting still, and he managed to evade them. However, he did feel his back blister from the sheer heat of the trio of attacks.

That distraction – if getting third-degree burns on his back could be categorized as such – was probably why he never saw the teenage mutant ninja beetles bearing down on him. One hit him like a truck, sending him tumbling across the junk-filled landscape for more than thirty yards.

Knowing that he only had a moment to act, Elijah immediately initiated the transformation into his lamellar ape form, completing it before he came to a stop. It was still barely in time to protect him from the next hit, which came in the form of a leaping beetle-bot that brought its claws down on him with enough force to completely dislodge a few of his scales.

But Elijah was prepared for the attack, and so, he responded with one of his own, hammering into the robot with all the strength he could muster. The two-handed attack staggered the beetle, and Elijah knew he had an opening to follow-up with something even more devastating.

But he wrangled his instincts under control, turned, and then fled.

And hundreds of robots, three enormous, fire-spewing wasps, and a pair of powerful bipedal beetles followed in hot pursuit. As he ran, Elijah could only hope that he’d gotten them all.

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