Path of Dragons

Book 3: Chapter 14: A New Challenge

“How did we only get a C-Grade out of that?” Elijah complained, looking at the item he’d found in the silver reward box. It was a pair of boots, called Footpads of Silence. “It was flawless.”

“I’m just glad to be outta the water,” Kurik remarked, looking at his own set of footwear. He held them up. They were grey, with dark soles. “Manta Ray Boots.”

All the others had received similar items, though with different themes. None of them would share the names, though. Apparently, outworlders were prone to secrecy.

Elijah tried his new shoes – slippers, really – on, and the moment he did, One with Nature winked out. “Ugh. Useless,” he muttered. Apparently, the system wanted to keep him barefoot. Or maybe it was his Druid archetype. Whatever the case, he wasn’t going to render One with Nature useless just for a pair of shoes. Besides, wearing them felt odd, after going so long without any shoes.

So, he took them off and stored them in his pack. The others were quick to bind their new equipment, and rightly so. Any additional attributes or abilities would inevitably prove to be a boon. Hopefully, Elijah could find someone to buy his new and useless shoes, because he had no intention of wearing them.

Kurik pointedly looked at Elijah’s bare feet, then at the pack, and shook head. Elijah just grinned and shrugged, saying, “Not my style.”

“What’s the deal with this place, then?” asked Ssethik, his hands on his hips as he gazed into the jungle.

“Well, there are a bunch of dinosaurs out there, for one.”

“What’s a dinosaur?” asked the Rogue.

“Like a dragon?”

“No. Sort of. I don’t know. They’re not intelligent, though. Just animals. Deadly ones, though. And then there are the sasquatches,” Elijah explained. “They’re tool-users, but I don’t know if they’re sapient or not. Probably best not to worry about it, though. They’re aggressive, which means if we see them, we should probably treat them as enemies.”

He stretched – after spending so long in the sea, his body needed a little time to adjust; to aid that, Elijah summoned Healing Rain, which added rejuvenating precipitation to the storm assailing the beach where they’d come ashore.

“After that comes a maze. That’s what’s going to take the longest,” he said. “There are sasquatches in there, too. And these big, bipedal lizards made of roots and branches. I called them root raptors in my head, but I’m now beginning to realize that that’s kind of stupid,” Eliah said, raking his fingers through his wet hair. “But that’s about it. We just need to get to the maze’s entrance, then find our way to the center. Once we do, we’re done with the tower. Easy peasy, right?”

It was not.

Hours later, as Elijah and the others fled yet another group of sasquatches, he cursed his statement. The problem was that he’d never even considered the reality that he’d spent almost the entire time in the Primordial Jungle – and the maze, afterwards – in his draconid form. And as was the case more often than not, most of that span had been beneath the cloak of Guise of the Unseen.

So, he’d snuck past the vast majority of the dangerous monsters that lived in the Primordial Jungle. That was impossible now, what with him having to bring a few people with absolutely zero skill in stealth along for the ride. As a result, their little group had spent the past few hours either fighting or fleeing.

Elijah ducked under a branch, narrowly avoiding an arrow that thudded into the trunk of a nearby tree. Then, he grabbed the branch, redirecting his momentum and sending him back in the other direction. As he did, he used Shape of the Guardian, assuming the form of a lamellar ape as he crashed into the sasquatch that had been hunting them.

The monster barely staggered, but that was enough to give Elijah the opportunity to bring his claws to bear. One swipe, then two, and he opened up a couple of gaping wounds that sent blood spraying across the jungle.

But he wasn’t done.

Indeed – he was only getting started. The sasquatch was enormous, durable, and faster than it had any right to be, but the moment Elijah had taken it by surprise, he’d gained an advantage he refused to surrender. So, he kept the pressure up with continuous attacks that eventually sent the monster to the ground. It reacted with predictable fury, but its weapons had tumbled free when Elijah had crashed into it, and its hands and feet were poor replacements.

In that way, it was disturbingly human.

Elijah didn’t let that dissuade him from doing what was necessary, though, and he pummeled the thing with all the considerable Strength he could bring to bear. On top of that, his efforts were accentuated by his equipment. The Sash of the Whirlwind lent him Haste, while the Claws of Gluttony made any wound he inflected bleed more freely than normal. That, in turn, weakened the monster to a noticeable degree with every passing second.

And in the end, it was enough to give Elijah the edge he needed to finally bring the fight to a close when he wrapped his arms around its neck and squeezed. Its bones didn’t break, but with the blood flow to its brain suddenly ceasing, it died after only a few minutes. Apparently, its anatomy was disturbingly human as well.

Once the monster was dead, Elijah fell to his back, his breath coming in deep and ragged hisses. Like that, he lay for a few moments before finally pushing the enormous creature off his body and rising to his feet. A nearby commotion was all the indication he needed to recognize that the battle wasn’t finished, and he shifted into his draconid form before letting Guise of the Unseen envelop him. Then, he padded toward the noise, reaching the site of an ongoing battle.

Kurik faced off against another sasquatch whose feet had sunk into forest’s loamy ground. Nearby, Nia held her staff aloft as she chanted furiously. At the same time, Robolo crouched atop a limb, his hand outstretched toward a dinosaur that looked like a carnivorous version of a triceratops. It swayed on its feet, clearly bespelled.

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Ssethik was nowhere to be seen.

Kurik tossed his axe at the sasquatch, hitting it in the thigh before running forward. The creature swiped at him, but he dropped to his knees, grasping the axe’s handle as he skidded between its legs. Then, he bounded up the trunk of a tree, climbing it with the dexterity of a monkey before launching himself at the monster’s back. Ethera swirled as he activated an ability, and he descended upon the sasquatch’s back with undeniable force.

The monster’s back split beneath the axe’s bite, and it howled in rage, turning far more quickly than its bulk would indicate was possible, and it took Kurik with a backhand that sent him flying across the jungle and into the brush.

That was when Elijah struck, using Venom Strike as well as Predator Strike as he leaped upon the monster’s back and clamped his powerful jaws on its skull. It burst in only a second, and the monster fell limp. Elijah knew there was no time to waste, so he darted to the triceratops, embracing Guise of the Unseen before again using Predator Strike. His subsequent attack ripped through the creature’s thick, pebbled hide, dragging a gaping laceration in its belly. Intestines spilled out, spelling the beast’s doom, but as Elijah had discovered on multiple occasions, gut wounds were not quick killers.

The triceratops went wild, bucking and biting anything close. Trees fell before the massive monster, but Elijah bounded free, shifting to his human form as he rolled to a stop. Then, he summoned Snaring Roots, binding the beast in place. Healing Rain came next, and he hoped it would be wide enough to reach the fallen Kurik.

That was when Ssethik struck.

Not the beast, though. Instead, the goblin Rogue had finally chosen to attack Elijah.

For his part, Elijah had known it was coming. The goblin didn’t cut a trustworthy figure, and what’s more, he’d been warned more than once that Ssethik had been friendly with the fallen Eason Cabbot. As such, the attack didn’t really come as a surprise.

But it did come at an incredibly inopportune moment.

With his attention on the triceratops, he only noticed Ssethik at the very last moment. That was probably what saved him, as the dagger meant to pierce his heart missed its target by only a couple of inches. However, even that was enough to send an eruption of blood and flesh to splatter against the ground. What’s more, Elijah fell to the ground, where he sprawled on his hands and knees for a split second before he swung his staff in a backhanded blow meant for the goblin.

It hit nothing but air as Ssethik used his stealth ability to disappear.

That was fine, though.

Because Elijah followed that up with Calamity.

The ground erupted as hundreds of bolts of lightning filled the suddenly deadly air. The triceratops took the brunt of the damage, but via One with Nature, Elijah found Ssethik when he caught a stray bolt of lightning. That was when Elijah used Brand of the Stalker.

Once that was done, Elijah took his time finding his feet. Ssethik had fled the area, but that didn’t matter. Wherever he went, Elijah would find him.

So, he aimed Storm’s Fury at the triceratops. It fell twitching to the ground, which allowed Elijah to shift into his lamellar ape form and finish it off. As he did, he noticed that Ssethik’s attack had come with a powerful poison, but it had been counteracted by Healing Rain, which, with the Serpent Healer’s Crook, had been accentuated far beyond normal. Still, the poison was still strong enough to send a wave of dizziness through Elijah’s body. So, he took a moment to use Touch of Nature.

That served to close the wound in his back as well.

He turned to Nia, who hadn’t moved from where she’d hidden behind a bush, likely having spent the entirety of her core’s contents.

“I’m going to hunt down Ssethik. If you knew what he intended, you’d better not be here when I get back,” he said. “Because if I find out that you did and that you failed to warn me, I’ll make sure you end up just like him.”

Then, he strode off through the jungle. However, he didn’t immediately chase Ssethik down. Instead, he found Kurik, who was just rising from presumed unconsciousness. Elijah quickly told him what had happened, which elicited a string of curses, then began healing the dwarf. It was remarkably easy, and it only took two casts of Touch of Nature.

Another benefit of his new staff.

Or perhaps it was due to Kurik being a lower level.

Either way, Elijah was grateful for how quickly he ushered his friend to recovery.

After that, he used Shape of the Predator, then Guise of the Unseen before stalking toward Ssethik. The goblin Rogue had taken refuge a few hundred yards away, where he waited – presumably, hoping that Elijah would prove incapable of hunting him down. So, when Elijah pounced, the goblin displayed an expression of surprise.

Elijah pinned him to the ground, his claw digging into the goblin’s chest as he demanded, “Why?”

“Why? You killed my friends!” Ssethik hissed, dragging his dagger from his belt. He never got the chance to bring it to bear, as Elijah snapped out, crushing the goblin’s skull with a single flex of his powerful jaws. The dagger fell to the ground, and Elijah pulled away.

He’d known for a long time that it was coming. The angry glares of the people of Ironshore had mostly faded, but there were still plenty who regarded him as the enemy. Ssethik was clearly one of them.

But he still didn’t know what to do about it. He’d hoped that saving the city would help. And it had. It wasn’t enough, though. His only solace was that it didn’t seem to be a pervasive attitude anymore, so Elijah figured that his only response was to grow strong enough that any attempts at revenge would be rendered useless.

Whatever the case, he gathered the goblin’s equipment, throwing it into his pack before returning to the others. When he reached them, they were all quick to assure him that they’d had nothing to do with Ssethik’s assassination attempt. Elijah chose to believe them, if for no other reason than because they hadn’t actively tried to help the Rogue.

“Let’s go,” he said. Then, without another word, he shifted into his draconid form before stalking off into the jungle. From there on out, he didn’t bother trying to include the others in his hunt. Instead, he simply cleared the way, escorting them to the maze’s entrance.

After that came the long and arduous process of finding their way through the labyrinth. It was easier than Elijah’s first visit to the maze, largely because One with Nature had expanded, and as a result, he could feel dead ends much more quickly. Still, finding their way through the maze was not the work of a day. Instead, it took nearly a week before they encountered the root raptors.

Elijah killed the first few without the group even knowing they were there, and a few days after that when the alpha finally attacked, Elijah countered it with his lamellar ape form. What followed was a long and drawn-out fight that required Elijah to use Guardian’s Renewal.

But in the end, he emerged victorious.

Kurik tried to speak to him about what had happened, but Elijah was in no mood. Instead, he silently led them to the exit, where they received an F-Grade, presumably because they’d lost one of their group. Elijah didn’t care. Nor was he concerned with the worthless sword he was awarded. Indeed, all he really wanted was to leave the tower behind, take care of the remainder of his errands, and leave Ironshore behind for a while.

Perhaps when he returned sometime in the future, it would be on better terms.