Path of Dragons

Elijah continuously looped ethera around the facets of his mind. It slowed his regeneration quite significantly, but his instincts told him that he was on the right track concerning the cultivation of his Mind. He wasn’t certain what he was missing, but the moment he found it, he was certain that he would be able to take the next step.

Especially in the Swamp of Ill Omens, which featured much higher ethereal density than anywhere else on the planet – that he’d visited, at least. His new cultivation cave would be better – especially after having a few weeks to grow more potent – but he’d yet to experience that inevitable increase.

Part of him wanted to return to the edge of the swamp and ferry his companions deeper into the bog so they could bask in the increased power. Perhaps they could take advantage of it and step forward on their respective paths. But he knew just how difficult it would be for anyone without a nature attunement to survive. He had no doubts that they could do it, but the trip that had taken him most of a day would have probably been a journey of weeks for them. Each step they took would have brought with it a serious chance of death – and it was not the sort of danger that was easy to overcome. It was one thing to fight wraiths and hunters, but another thing altogether to battle insect-borne diseases, leeches, and ambush predators.

No - the more time he spent in the Swamp of Ill Omens, the more he was certain that he’d made the right choice by insisting on attacking the challenge alone. Plus, if Elijah was being honest with himself, being constantly surrounded by people – even if he liked them – had begun to grate on his nerves.

He hadn’t always been like that. Once, he’d enjoyed company as much as the next person. However, spending vast swaths of time alone had left its mark on his personality, and he’d come to value his solitude to a high degree. Elijah didn’t consider himself completely antisocial, but he certainly had his limits for companionship. That, as much as a desire to learn more about the planet and its natives, was probably responsible for his frequent exploratory trips into the ruins dotting the jungle.

He could admit that much, at least in his own mind, though he would never have done so aloud.

Regardless, Elijah focused on his developing method of Mind cultivation as he traversed the swamp. The Shape of Venom was perfectly at home in the wetlands, and even when he was forced to swim, he did so with ease. His ability to move through the water didn’t rival that of amphibians or aquatic reptiles, but at least the evolved shape was better equipped for the terrain than its predecessor.

More than once, Elijah had attempted to use Shape of the Sky to ease the burden of travel, but each time, he’d faced significant obstacles. The jumping spiders were still around, ready to pounce on anything flying through the air, and that threat was only one of many that kept him on the ground. The worst of them were the tiny, flying snakes – they had wings and everything – that spewed lightning at anything that came into their territory. They wouldn’t have been so dangerous if they didn’t have a frustrating ability to completely avoid his senses until he was right on top of them. More than once, he’d retreated to the ground with singed wings.

Not for the first time, Elijah considered the notion that the system had put them in place to restrict the mobility of people whose abilities allowed them to fly. Which really annoyed Elijah, considering that he desperately wanted to depend on Shape of the Sky’s abilities more fully.

But there was no reason to dwell on those resentful emotions. The system was all-powerful, and railing against it was pointless. Instead, he resolved to simply accept the rules – or restrictions – and work within the confines dictated by the system. That was the only way he’d survive.

So, he continued on, traveling ever deeper into the swamp. It covered at least as large of an area as the marshlands south of Argos, which meant that, even with Shape of Venom easing the burden of travel, it was two days before he saw something to point him in the right direction. Until that moment, he’d been progressing deeper into the swamp, following the increasingly dense ethera while hoping that he wouldn’t miss anything important.

That led him to a vast hole in the ground.

It was at least two-hundred yards wide and, as far as he could tell, perfectly circular. It reminded him of the cenote where they’d found the egg in the first challenge, though when he approached the edge, he saw how wrong that notion was. The edge was worked stone, carved with hundreds of unfamiliar glyphs that somehow kept the murky water at bay. When Elijah looked over the edge, he couldn’t stop himself from letting out a hiss of surprise.

And awe.

It wasn’t a hole. It was an entrance.

A set of stairs spiraled down from the edge, traveling along the outside of the circle until it reached a ledge approximately a hundred yards down. The stonework was far better preserved than any of the ruins Elijah had yet seen, though there were no artful frescoes or other portrayals of the natives. Instead, the carvings depicted snaking vines, expansive trees, and other wild flora.

It took Elijah’s breath away, and not just because of the artistry involved. That was certainly a contributing factor, but the true instigator of his quickened pulse was the feeling of belonging he felt when looking at those carvings. It took him a long moment before he realized why it felt so familiar.

It was an ancestral circle, not dissimilar from his dolmens. Yet, it was far more powerful than anything he had created.

An instant later, something terrible gripped his senses, and he fell to his stomach. A second later, he retched, spewing bile into a puddle. It wasn’t a smell. Nor was it simply a sense of foreboding. It was corruption, and not the sort he’d felt around the Voxx. It was something else. Something much, much worse.

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It was the antithesis of the connection he felt via One with Nature, and it both horrified and disgusted Elijah so much that, for a while, he could think of nothing else. With no small degree of self-control, he shoved those feelings into a quarantined facet of his Mind. They spilled over a second later, infecting another. Then another after that. Elijah warred with that corruption, shoving them back with every ounce of willpower he possessed.

By the fourth, he’d managed to thicken the walls of his makeshift quarantine just enough to contain the corruption seeping into his mind. Even then, he knew it wouldn’t last, so he spent the next few minutes piling onto that barrier. At first, he didn’t even realize what he was doing, but after a moment he came to recognize the truth.

The looping ethera he’d used to connect the facets during the cultivation process carried with them more than simple energy. They were conduits for his willpower. It was only after that realization that he could predict the purpose of reaching the Jade Mind. Quartz had split it, and in doing so, it had splintered his willpower. It was a necessary step, strengthening him so that he could process all the information to which he had access. Without it, he never could have borne the weight of his domain, the sensory input of One with Nature, and the concentration necessary to cast his spells in battle.

Yet, it also made him vulnerable.

And now, that weaknesses had left him exposed to the corruption below. He no longer had the luxury of progressing his Mind cultivation at his own pace. If he didn’t get a handle on it soon, he would be corrupted just like the ancestral circle he had yet to even enter.

But there was still something missing. Something prevented him from bringing the full weight of his willpower to bear on the problem.

He couldn’t take that final step, no matter how tightly he wound those conduits around the facets of his mind. The best he could do was use them to keep the corruption locked away.

Mostly.

A little continued to leak out, but after a few more minutes – or it might’ve been hours, for all that he could keep track of time in his state – he figured out how to purge those few drops of corruption before they could stain his Mind. Still, they left a slight residue behind that perpetuated the nausea flowing through him.

He could function, though, which meant that he could finally take stock of his situation. When the corruption had overcome him, he’d fallen to his stomach, still at the edge of the circle, so he fully expected to have remained there. Yet, when his awareness returned from his impromptu cultivation session, he found that he’d fallen to the ledge below.

And he was not alone.

A ka’alaki loomed over him, much larger than any Elijah had ever seen. He slithered away, putting his back to the wall. However, he needn’t have reacted so abruptly. The figure remained stationary.

It was a statue, though one so lifelike that Elijah had initially mistaken it for the real thing. Supporting that error was a flicker of vitality within the statue.

Then, its eyes opened, bathing Elijah in red light.

He flinched away.

“You are a curious one,” came a resonant voice. “A Druid? Yet you are alone? Join our collective, brother. You will be welcomed.”

“Collective?” Elijah asked, casting his senses out. There was something buried in the corruption, though it was so weak that he’d initially missed it. The moment he touched it with his mind, he felt the same pull he’d felt during his first steps on the path of cultivation. It was nature in the most collectivist sense, and there was a part of him that still wanted to surrender, to join his spirit with that of the natural world. He might have done just that if it weren’t for two factors. First, he was ready for it, and he clung to his sense of identity firmly enough that he refused to be dislodged. Second, the corruption was far stronger than the Call, tainting everything so thoroughly that the very notion of giving in brought with it a potent sense of nausea. “Don’t you feel the corruption?”

Elijah knew the answer to that question before he’d even asked it. That taint enveloped the statue so thoroughly that Elijah could scarcely feel anything else. More, it was visible to the naked eye, taking the form of rust-colored tendrils that enveloped the figure of the ka’alaki. In most places, they’d solidified to the point of resembling reddish stone, but in others, they were still moist and coated in bloody mucus.

The entire area was the same, with those tendrils creeping along the walls and sullying everything they touched.

“There is no corruption. There is only the Call. We will save them. We will preserve my world. If you will not assist us, then you will be destroyed. Just like all the rest.”

Then, the thing struck.

The mucus-covered tendrils struck out, moving almost too quickly to see. However, Elijah was ready for them, and with the high Dexterity that came with the Shape of Venom, he had no issues dodging the oncoming attack. He twisted around the wet tentacles, unwilling to even let them graze him. They slapped into the wall with a grotesque squelching sound, but by that point, Elijah was already on the statue. His fangs sank into the ka’alaki’s shoulder, injecting his potent venom before he bounded away.

A bit of the corruption slid into his mouth, but he had no issue spitting it out. However, it was more than physical, and if he’d failed to get a handle on the taint, it would have added to the corruption of his Mind. As it was, he quarantined it with all the rest, flexing his willpower to such an extent that it felt like he was strangling the facets of his own mind. It gave him a slight headache, but that was far more preferable than letting the taint run rampant.

Elijah darted away, the tendrils chasing him until he’d covered more than a dozen feet. That’s when they hit their limit, and they retreated to their previous position, wrapping around the statue like nothing had happened.

A few seconds later, the statue-like figure crumbled, and a significant amount of experience flowed into Elijah as the thing died. He barely paid it any mind. Instead, the moment its defeat was assured, the bulk of his attention shifted to his surroundings. Spaced evenly around the ledge which encircled the pit were dozens of statues that looked identical to the one he’d just slain. However, he was more concerned with the red, vine-like tendrils that stretched from one edge to the next, criss-crossing the opening like a spider’s web.

As he let Guise of the Unseen envelop him, Elijah remained motionless as he inspected the area. There were three exits, each going in a different direction, and via One with Nature, he could sense hundreds of creatures above, below, and in every direction. Distressingly though, he could not quite make sense of their anatomy. They weren’t entirely hidden from his senses, but they weren’t completely visible, either. What he felt suggested a multitude of legs, but beyond that, he could sense nothing else.

Looking up, he saw the same rust-red vines stretched across the opening and obscuring the sky. How he had made it through, he had no idea. Nor did he know how he hadn’t seen it from above.

Magic, probably.

That was usually the answer to his questions.

Whatever the case, this challenge felt far more personal than any of the others. It was like it’d been created just for him. Was it to test him, though? Or was it intended to corrupt – or kill – him? He had a feeling that he’d find out sooner rather than later.

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