Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 40 - The Broken Crown (Patreon)

It was visible from at least a hundred miles away.

The fortress shimmered in the sky, looming over the Painted Wastes like a monolithic sentry surrounded by a rainbow of light.  Even from so far away, and under the cloak of darkness, Elijah could see thousands of wasps swarming around the structure. 

His instinctive hatred for the insectile humanoids surged to new heights.  He swallowed it, just as he’d pushed it aside ever since his first encounter.  Knowing he couldn’t give in, Elijah set off across the painted wastes.  Under the Guise of the Unseen, he was entirely hidden from the area’s other denizens.

Which were almost entirely wasps. 

They’d even built huge mounds to house their enormous colonies.  The vespirans didn’t live in those nests.  And now, Elijah knew why.  They clearly preferred the larger structure floating in the distance. 

Over the past few days, Elijah had observed more of the vespirans, and he’d come away from that study both impressed and horrified.  The creatures were cold, arrogant, and cruel.  But they were organized as well.  More than once, Elijah had nearly garnered their attention, and that was with him sticking to his previous pattern of travel that hid from notice. 

It worked, but only barely.  If he’d lingered, he would have been discovered.  So, he’d kept moving, secure in the knowledge that the vespirans had earned his ire.  Still, he wasn’t blind to the knowledge that some of his hatred came from an instinctive place.  He accepted that.  Internalized it.  And he recognized that his rational thoughts and his instincts were in full agreement.

The spider-women, which he belatedly realized were drachnids, walked a fine line between allies and slaves.  They clearly occupied a lower caste that blurred the line between freedom, vassalage, and slavery.  However, not all of them wore collars.  Some were entirely willing, despite the treatment of their people.

Elijah couldn’t imagine living that sort of life, but he could acknowledge that he didn’t have the context to truly judge them.  He still did, his hatred for them almost as virulent as what he felt for the vespirans and the other wasps, but he at least recognized that things were probably more complicated than he could ever truly know.

As for the vespirans’ purpose, he was at something of a loss.  What he did know was that they very much liked to dig.  Wasp and spider alike seemed obsessed with digging holes.  Some were no more than a few dozen feet deep, but Elijah had found a couple that extended for hundreds of yards beneath the surface. 

He had no idea why they stopped, abandoning their work and moving on to another location, and that lack of knowledge was like a burr in his mind.  He wanted to know.  He needed to find out what drove them. 

But in the end, finding the Primal Realm was more important than anything else.  Once it was conquered, the wasps on the outside would lose much of their influence.  Elijah wasn’t sure what would happen to them, but he liked to imagine that they would simply retreat into the Primal Realm and reset along with the realm itself.

Whatever the case, Elijah continued on until a new day began to dawn.  Only then did he find an entrance to the Hollow Depths, where he took refuge from the dangers of the day.  The tension of traveling through enemy territory was slow to drain, and indeed, it never really left.  Even safe in his tent, far underground where the wasps wouldn’t follow, Elijah couldn’t let himself relax.  Not completely, at least.

It wasn’t as bad as it had been in the Chimeric Forge.  Back then, he’d been forced to sleep with one eye open.  More, he had been entirely unprepared for that Primal Realm, so he also had to eat whatever he could find.  Often raw. And even if he did so in one of his bestial forms, the disgust he felt at feasting on flesh spiders or other abominable chimera never really deserted him.

At least now he had prepared meals in his Arcane Loop.

“Small comforts,” he said, uncovering a plate.  It was a boar steak combined with some sort of purple root vegetable that tasted a bit like a potato.  Like all his other meals, it was delicious, satisfying, and filling.  When he was finished eating, he had to amend his previous comment, “Maybe not-so-small comforts.”

After that, he enjoyed a cup of coffee, a grove fruit, and a day of mostly uninterrupted rest.  When he awoke, his internal clock told him that sunset wasn’t far off.  So, he used his time wisely, taking a shower under the rain of Blessing of the Grove before donning his armor, and packing his tent away.  Finally, he used Shape of the Scourge and adopted Guise of the Unseen before heading topside.

As it turned out, his internal clock was accurate enough, though he’d arrived a touch early.  That gave him the opportunity to enjoy a beautiful sunset.  Even as the sun dipped below the horizon, the rainbow mist rose high into the sky, casting everything in a painterly aesthetic that made it seem both hyper-real and like a watercolor landscape that had jumped off of a canvas. 

That soon faded as darkness stretched across the Painted Wastes.  With the moon high overhead, silvery light filtered through the aurora-like effect of the pheromone-laced upper atmosphere to create a truly unique sight. 

Even amidst his hatred for the wasps and everything associated with them, Elijah could appreciate the beauty of it.  But like many other beautiful aspects of nature, danger lurked just under the surface.  It reminded him a little of his first encounter with the native Hawaiian green lionfish.  Or turkeyfish, as it was sometimes called.  Either way, like all lionfish, it was both beautiful and venomous. 

So long as they remained undisturbed, they were harmless, though. 

The wasps were not so docile, though.  They were clearly hellbent on conquest.  Or colonization, perhaps.  Leaving them alone wasn’t enough to allay their wrath. 

Even so, he could appreciate beauty where he saw it, even among his enemies, and he spent a few minutes doing just that before he finally decided to move on. 

One nice aspect of the Painted Wastes was that, aside from the occasional rocky outcropping, it was entirely flat.  That meant he didn’t need to make any detours, aside from leaping over various traps laid by the drachnids.  So close to the Primal Realm, they were far less common, but they still cropped up occasionally.

More difficult to avoid were the occasional processions of wasps and vespirans, which required Elijah to either wait them out or to go around.  He usually chose the former, which gave him a good idea of their natures as well as their capabilities. 

However, with every mile he covered, Elijah’s attention settled even more firmly on the fortress in the sky.  It was roughly circular, with jagged fortifications at regular intervals.  If it was any smaller than Kalki, Elijah would be surprised.  By all rights, it was likely even larger, considering how far away it was. 

It wasn’t until Elijah was within twenty miles that he realize that there was something beneath the fortress. 

As he drew closer, the shape resolved itself into something familiar.

At first, he’d thought it was just an irregularly shaped hill, but when he was only a few miles away, he saw it for what it was – a giant skeleton.  When he first caught sight, he thought it was the remains of a huge animal, like he’d seen during his first trip to Seattle.  Soon after the world had changed, they’d been attacked by a massive crocodile that had very nearly destroyed the entire city. 

But this skeleton was different, and in a variety of ways.  First, it was much, much larger.  At least a mile long, it was half-buried beneath sand and covered in webs.  Only when Elijah drew a bit closer did he recognize that the sand wasn’t sand at all.  Rather, it was one giant wasp nest. 

Still, it couldn’t conceal the skeleton’s true nature.  Not completely.  That was how Elijah established that, unlike the crocodile, the owner of those remains had never originated on Earth.

Given the setting, it didn’t take Elijah much longer to establish that he was looking at a dragon’s skeleton. 

When he’d closed to within a mile, that became entirely obvious.  The bulk of the skeleton’s shape remained on the ground, its body and tail stretching out for more than a mile.  However, its sinuous neck rose from the hill-like wasp’s nest, twisting around until it stopped only a hundred yards beneath the fortress. 

Webs, resin, and mud connected the skull to that fortress.

Only when he got a closer look did Elijah make the connection.  The structure was more than a simple stronghold.  It was that, Elijah was certain.  But it was also a crown, weathered by time and repurposed by the wasps. 

The enmity that had so far been left to simmer beneath the surface of Elijah’s mind suddenly boiled over.  He wanted to destroy it all.  To put right the desecration of such a noble creature’s corpse.  To avenge the dragon and destroy the monsters that had clearly killed it.

That explosion of anger lasted only a few seconds before Elijah wrestled control over his emotions.  If he attacked now, there was a good chance he would die.  There were just too many vespirans and drachnids around.  They were crawling all over the skeleton.  And that wasn’t even considering the giant swarms of other wasps. 

Elijah shivered at the cost of failure.

Death was one thing.  He could handle that easily enough.  But the notion of those breeders injecting him with their eggs while the mind-needles wrested control of his body was the stuff of nightmares. 

He had no intention of turning away, but he needed to maintain care as he approached.  And given the storm in his mind, that was easier said than done. 

Elijah took a few deep, hissing breaths before continuing toward the skeleton. 

When he reached the tail, he took a moment to acknowledge the size of the dragon.  He’d seen many huge dragons during his last core vision, but he’d somehow never expected to find such a huge version in real life.  However, he knew that they grew much, much larger.

Was it just a set piece for the Primal Realm, though?  Or was it represent the real remains of a true dragon?  Elijah wasn’t sure.  He had no way of finding out, either.  So, he forced himself to move on.

Climbing the skeleton was not easy, mostly because of the webs draped over the whole thing.  He could avoid them, but it took quite a lot of time and care to do so.  He managed it all the same, trekking up the spine, traversing the vertebrae, and eventually reaching the sinuous neck.

That ascent was even more difficult, and more than once, he found himself wishing the scourgedrake form had maintained its predecessor’s ability to stick to any surface.  He was still a good climber, but not nearly on the level of the blight dragon.  He made do, though, largely because he didn’t have much choice.

He certainly didn’t dare shifting into the Shape of the Sky.  Doing so would garner the attention from the entire nest of wasps.  And at best, he’d be forced to retreat, probably by using Lightning Rush.  At worst, he’d be forced into a battle he didn’t think he could win. 

Thankfully, Cloud Step didn’t deactivate Guise of the Unseen, and that was enough to bridge most of the gaps.  The biggest barrier came when he found himself perched on the skull and looking up at a hundred yards of open air.  Sure, there were webs, resin, and hardened earth connecting them, but Elijah knew that if he used those to ease his ascent, he would alert the wasps and spiders.

He chose to use Cloud Step, exhausting the last two charges to reach the entrance at the bottom of the fortress.  The second he entered, he received a notification:

You have reached the Broken Crown.  To enter the Primal Realm, you must find the portal. 

The Broken Crown. 

It was a fitting name for the Primal Realm, mostly because of its appearance.  However, he couldn’t help but wonder how the realm itself might manifest.  Certainly, it wouldn’t be more of the same.  Elijah had experienced enough Primal Realms to know that it would be something wholly different.

But not knowing was frustrating.

He set off through the stronghold, hoping to find the portal mentioned in the notification.  At present, he had no intention of entering.  That could wait until he was better prepared.  After all, he’d already eaten almost half his rations, and he wasn’t so naïve as to expect that conquering the Primal Realm would be easier than finding its entrance. 

No – he would find the portal, then retreat and prepare.  Perhaps he could even find some help, though he didn’t hold out much hope for that.  If he’d had so much trouble with simply reaching it, no one else on Earth could hope to survive what was on the other side.  Most likely, he’d go in alone.

In a lot of ways, that was fitting.  As far as Elijah knew, he was the only dragon on Earth.  So, it felt right that he should be the one to conquer the Primal Realm devoted to his adopted race.

As it turned out, the fortress’ layout was almost maze-like.  There were multiple layers, and Elijah felt certain that most people would lose themselves among its corridors.  Doing so would assuredly get them killed, because the place was crawling with vespirans.  Oddly enough, there were no drachnids, though. 

That fit what Elijah knew of the creatures.  They wouldn’t allow their slaves into such a place.

In all, it took Elijah two days to find the portal, which was made of twisted bone held together by resin.  He didn’t approach it, though.  The last thing he wanted was to get sucked in before he was prepared.

Just when he turned to leave, he felt something truly horrifying.  Just on the edge of Soul of the Wild, he sensed a swarm of wasps coming his way.  The way they moved told him it wasn’t just a coincidence, either.  Somehow, he’d been discovered.

Originally, he’d planned to leave the way he’d entered, but now, that didn’t seem likely.  So, he went to his second plan – activating Roots of the World Tree and teleporting back to his grove.

The spell took a few seconds to activate, so he got a good look at his pursuer only a moment before he disappeared.  The creature looked slightly different from the others.  His carapace bore a glowing pattern, and his face looked somehow even more severe.  More importantly, he was clearly over level two-hundred, which meant that he was a danger even to Elijah.

He never got the chance to attack before Elijah was gone.

When Elijah reappeared in the middle of the grove, he let out a sigh of relief.  The last thing he’d wanted was to get into a fight before he was prepared.  He’d done so too often in the past to think that it would end well. 

No – he would only fight on his own terms.

Nerthus appeared after only a moment, sprouting from the ground like a rapidly growing tree.  The spryggent was about to ask a question when Elijah cut him off, saying, “I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me, buddy.”