Path of Dragons

The moment Elijah left the metro behind, he realized that he’d just jumped out of the proverbial frying pan and into the fire. There were tens of thousands of zombies around, and more than a few were the augmented version he’d just killed with Incinerate. Thankfully, they didn’t immediately react to his arrival, so he had enough time to shift into Shape of Sky and leap into the air. Flapping his wings, he gained altitude, but as had happened before, it wasn’t long before the bat-like creatures responded.

They poured out of the skyscrapers’ top floors like someone had kicked a hornet’s nest, and Elijah instantly knew he only had one way out. Before he could enact his plan, he needed to get above the skyscrapers, so he continued to gain altitude, narrowly avoiding being ripped to pieces by divebombing monsters. Finally, more than a thousand feet from the ground, he aimed himself toward the edge of the city, then used Lightning Rush.

He became lightning, streaking across the sky faster than at any time in the past. One second passed, and Elijah passed the boundaries of the city. Another second went by, and he was in the wilderness. He didn’t resume the normal Shape of Sky until half a second later, and by that point, he’d traveled hundreds of miles into the forested region around Hong Kong.

He glided for a few more miles before his speed dissipated. Wanting to get a sense of the area, he landed in the first clearing he found. It was barely large enough to accommodate Shape of Sky, which was technically his largest form when taking his wingspan into account. Still, he had enough practice with the form that he managed the landing without difficulty.

Then, he shifted back into his natural shape and let out a sigh.

As he did so, he could only think of the mistakes he’d made over the past few hours. He had survived, but that wasn’t the point. He’d gone into Hong Kong high on his recent advancements, and he’d never even considered that the zombies – or the flying creatures – could pose much of a threat to him.

And he had been wrong.

It was just another reminder – which he’d sorely needed – that even though he’d made a lot of progress regarding his personal power, he was not invincible. The world had advanced as well, and it was still a dangerous place that required caution to survive. With that in mind, Elijah just sat in the middle of the clearing, spending the next few minutes centering himself.

That helped, at least a little, and when he opened his eyes, he was ready to confront his current situation.

Because of his cultivation advancements, Lightning Rush lasted almost half a second longer than it had the last time he’d used it. In addition, it had felt faster – if such a thing was possible. As such, he’d traveled much further than he’d intended. Before, Lightning Rush was enough to take him somewhere between seventy-five and a hundred miles, but with the additional duration and speed, he knew it was at least twice that. Maybe more, considering he didn’t have much frame of reference for the distance traveled.

That meant he had a long way to go before he returned to Hong Kong. Thankfully, the time constraints weren’t nearly as onerous as he’d initially suspected, largely because the Primal Realm – or the shrines associated with entry – wouldn’t be active for another ten days. So, he had time to spare.

With that in mind, Elijah shifted into Shape of Venom, adopted Guise of the Unseen, then slipped away from the clearing. The surrounding forest wasn’t much different from many other sub-tropical regions he’d visited, with a predominance of evergreen trees, thick undergrowth, and a thriving animal population. The region itself was fairly mountainous, and Elijah suspected that he’d reached the foothills leading to a sizable range.

Elijah wandered for a bit, mostly just to satisfy his curiosity. After all, it wasn’t every day that he got to visit an entirely different part of the world, and he couldn’t pass up the opportunity for exploration. In addition, he planned to eventually establish a dolmen in the area, so he remained on the lookout for an appropriately powerful intersection of ley lines. Often, those locations were characterized by natural treasures, but Elijah had found a few – like where he’d built the Dragon Circle – that lacked such obvious signs.

Regardless, it soon became clear that there was nothing of note. No natural treasures. No settlements. Just more of the same things he’d found in the rest of his travels. He was just about to start making his way back to Hong Kong when he finally felt something different.

It wasn’t a ley line, though. In fact, it didn’t feel natural at all. Instead, as Elijah followed his instincts, he quickly surmised that it was the exact opposite of natural. As he trekked through the wilderness, a mixture of trepidation and fear crept into his heart. Something had gone horribly wrong, and it was his duty to address it. Still, with what he felt, he questioned whether or not he’d even be capable of fixing whatever was wrong.

The closest he’d ever felt to what he experienced was when he’d stumbled upon the battleground in the desert surrounding Seattle. Back then, he’d been compelled to cure the aura of conflict in that area, and he suspected he’d stumbled upon something similar, though wholly different.

When the vegetation started to thin, Elijah’s dread climbed to new levels. And soon enough, it was gone entirely. More, he felt a tingling in his skin that told him that he’d come under the effect of some low-level affliction. It wasn’t enough to truly damage him – his Constitution and Regeneration were too high for that – but it was too strong to ignore. What’s more, with every few hundred feet traveled, it got worse until Elijah was forced to counteract it by keeping Soothe active at all times.

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By that point, the local flora had thinned to almost nothing. Just a few sickly bushes and dead trees. On top of that, there were no animals in the area, either. Corpses, sure. Lots and lots of creatures that looked like they’d just keeled over. Skeletons as well, indicating that the issue had been ongoing for quite some time. In short, the region had descended into desolation.

However, Elijah was encouraged to see that all life hadn’t been conquered. Scattered throughout the area were plants that seemed to have adapted to the poison in the air. They weren’t species that Elijah could recognize – just scraggly bushes with tiny flowers – but they seemed healthy enough. In addition, Elijah stumbled upon a few sunflowers, a couple of dense clumps of ferns, and a handful of trees that had managed to adapt.

Upon studying these via Soul of the Wild, Elijah found something incredibly interesting. He’d always known that plants were simpler – structurally, at least – than animals, and because they lacked central systems, they were capable of rapid adaptation. And what he saw in the surviving plants supported that. They weren’t immune to the poison in the air, but they were capable of halting the growth of damaged cells while funneling resources to healthier portions. Thus, they’d managed to survive where animals had not.

But even then, there were a few standouts. Specifically, the sunflowers were quite interesting, largely because they eschewed the strategies of the other plants, and instead seemed to metabolize the poison and use it to fuel their growth. Because of that, they were incredibly vibrant, and many had grown far larger than normal. One, in particular, was the size of a dinner table.

Elijah stayed and studied that particular specimen for more than an hour, marveling at how adaptive life could be. But eventually, the tug of the wrongness in the air pulled him away. He needed to discover its source, and not just to satisfy his curiosity. Rather, it felt almost like a compulsion. ᚱÂNÖꞖĚꞨ

So, he moved on from the large sunflower, and for a couple more miles, he found nothing else noteworthy. The poison in the air continued to grow more potent, but by that point, that was expected. He knew he had to be closing in on the source, so when he crested a steep hill and laid eyes on a collection of half-destroyed buildings, he wasn’t surprised.

Two enormous smokestacks, both at least a few hundred feet wide at the base and aroudn three times as tall, stood slightly apart from the ruined compound. A few much narrower cylinders jutted from the other side of the complex, though one had collapsed entirely.

It only took one look for Elijah to make sense of the scene before him. It was an abandoned nuclear plant, and from the poison in the air – which until that moment, he’d yet to identify – it had experienced a meltdown. Memories of what had happened to places like Chernobyl and Three-Mile Island flitted through his mind. Both disasters had been before his time, but those events echoed across recent history, rendering large swaths of land entirely uninhabitable due to radiation.

Elijah’s heart beat a little harder as he realized that, if he’d been even a little less durable, he might’ve already died. His experiences with cancer were not so far removed from the present that he had forgotten what it had felt like. And due to that, he desperately wanted to flee.

However, it wasn’t long before his good sense took over. He knew his body well enough, and because of that familiarity, he was certain that he’d experienced no lasting damage. Part of that was due to his constant use of Soothe, but it was mostly because of his advanced cultivation and high Constitution attribute. In short, he wasn’t really in any danger from something so mundane as radiation.

Still, it was yet another reminder that there were plenty of dangers out there that could easily kill him. The levels of radiation in the air weren’t currently a danger, but would that have been the case if ethera had mixed with it? He wasn’t sure, but he resolved to be a little more careful going forward.

Regardless, Elijah also knew that he needed to investigate further, and not just because of his nature-based cultivation. Sure, that was a big part of it. Intellectually, he recognized just how much damage the radiation could do to the environment. In addition, he felt it down to the very core of his being. But even more than that, it didn’t take him long to imagine some hapless traveler stumbling upon the area. If that happened, they would surely die.

Elijah didn’t want that possibility on his conscience.

So, for a variety of reasons, he descended the hill toward the disaster laid out before him. Within a few steps, he felt the radiation levels rise considerably, but it was still well within his ability to mitigate. He kept on, finding a road leading toward a gate, which he bypassed, stepping into a parking lot. There were a dozen cars present, most of which were intact. The tires looked like they were dry-rotted, and the glass had taken on a slightly darker hue. In addition, some of the paint on the older vehicles had bubbled, though most of the cars looked to be in decent condition.

Elijah thought about removing some of the metal for Carmen to experiment with, but he decided that it was probably contaminated. While he could survive such exposure, he didn’t think many other people could. So, he forewent that idea.

A moment later, he saw a sign proclaiming that the plant had been owned by Aug Energy, which meant that it probably wasn’t Chinese in origin. Not surprising, considering how jumbled the entire planet had become, but interesting nonetheless. The sign also featured a stylized horse as a logo, with a bunch of writing beneath it that had been rendered illegible by time and decay.

Further exploration revealed more of the same. When he entered the compound, he found what he’d expected. He’d never entered any power plants before, but he’d seen enough on television to know what was coming. And the interior of the Aug Energy Nuclear Plant lived up to those expectations. Mostly, the interior featured a bunch of pipes and machinery whose purpose Elijah couldn’t guess at, but he also found an office, a locker room, and a large control room.

And finally, he came upon the armored building where the nuclear materials were located. He didn’t need his senses to recognize it, either. He saw a gaping hole in the side of the structure, beyond which was a huge mass of toxic metal mixed with sand and concrete.

The elephant’s foot.

That was what they’d called it in Chernobyl, and he knew that it was one of the most corruptive substances on the planet. From a few dozen feet away, Elijah could feel it breaking down his body, and he recognized that if he went even a few steps closer, its toxicity would outpace his ability to heal via Soothe. He could probably endure it with Nature’s Bloom and Blessing of the Grove, but he didn’t see any reason to tempt fate.

What he did know was that he couldn’t just let it stand. He had ten days until the Primal Realm opened, and he could only hope that it would be enough to begin the process of healing that the land demanded.

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