Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 64 - A Grove Untended (Patreon)

Elijah stomped on a floundering vespiran’s head, and as its skull cracked underfoot, he felt brains and other fluids squish between his bare toes.  He ignored it, whipping his head around to investigate the chamber for more survivors. 

There were none.

Silence reigned throughout the space, and dead bodies carpeted most of the floor.  In some places, they were piled three or four deep.  And that didn’t even include the ones that had liquified under the influence of Fungal Spread or Throne of Spores.  In the wake of those abilities, a blanket of mushrooms – of all varieties – had spread across the room, and a cloud of spores still suffused the air.

He breathed it in, reveling in the pleasant smell.  To him, it was a bit like fresh cooked bread.  But to others, it probably smelled much worse – like rot and decay.  He rolled his shoulders and started looking for his gear.  He didn’t find it in that throne room, so he shifted into the Shape of Spores and began his search.

Or as he soon discovered, the extermination.

His spores hadn’t spread far outside the Druid’s chambers, and not every wasp or vespiran had responded to her call.  Just the strongest among her followers.  The weakest remained behind, though when they caught sight of Elijah, they attacked with similar ferocity.

He had no issues dispatching them.

However, he quickly discovered that the nest was far larger than he’d first thought.  At least as wide as a professional football stadium and extending dozens of floors underground.  There were also ten levels above the surface. 

As Elijah searched and killed, he felt an earthquake shake the nest.  At first, he thought it would tear the seemingly flimsy thing apart, but it didn’t take him long to realize that it was extraordinarily stable.  He also soon recognized that it was no true grove.  Rather, it was more like what he’d built around his Primal Realm trees.  It was part of his grove, and yet, it was not. 

Still, he was very disappointed in its power.  There was little chance that anyone – even if they were a tier above him regarding power – would be able to kill him in his own grove.  Not only did he feel empowered there, but he also knew every blade of grass like the back of his hand. 

If their roles were reversed, someone like Zhyratha wouldn’t have lasted fifteen seconds, demi-god or not.

It took nearly ten hours to search the entire nest, though he found his equipment about halfway through.  The rest of that time he spent ensuring that none of the wasps or vespirans had survived.

And killing them felt good.  Too good, in fact.  It was enough to frighten him, even if he shoved that feeling deep down.  Taking pride in winning a battle was one thing, but enjoying squashing living creatures that couldn’t realistically fight back was something else entirely. 

Unfortunately, all of his equipment hadn’t survived.  He should have anticipated the destruction of the Vespid Raiment.  After all, it would’ve been like finding a set of armor made of human skin.  He would have destroyed such an abomination without hesitation.  And yet, he was still disappointed. 

After finding his Arcane Loop, he finally dressed in one of the spare outfits he’d bought back in Ironshore.  Despite being on the verge of Complex grade, it wouldn’t give him any attributes or traits, but at least it would keep him covered.  And hopefully, it wouldn’t disintegrate at the end of a glancing blow.

“This is why I spent most of that first tower naked,” he muttered to himself as he trudged toward the exit.  Before reaching it, he shifted into the Shape of the Scourge and took on the Guise of the Unseen.  Then, he stepped through, only to see that he was stranded in the middle of an army.

And what a strange army it was.

There were vespirans, drachnids, spiders, and wasps, but there were also dragons.  Though it only took a single glance before Elijah knew that those dragons had been mind controlled.  They moved stiffly, with vacant expressions, and there was something about them that screamed a lack of purpose. 

Even if he hadn’t witnessed what he’d seen while being held captive, he would have recognized that something was wrong.

And he couldn’t let it stand, either.

Especially not after he recognized the silver dragon.  She stood stock still in the center of the swarm, and from a distance, she almost looked like a statue.  But the subtle rise and fall of her ribs told Elijah that she was a living, breathing creature. 

Staying low to the ground, he trusted Guise of the Unseen to keep him hidden as he crept forward.  Weaving between the enemy, Elijah wanted nothing more than to lash out, to start spreading his venom in every direction.  But he kept himself under control until he finally reached the silver dragon.

When he extended his senses, he couldn’t help but slump in disappointment.  Her mind was gone.  Or it might as well have been, for all that the larva had spread its gooey form throughout her skull.  It looked almost like a neuron, though one made of that disgusting, maggoty flesh that even extended down the dragon’s spinal cord and infected other parts of her body. 

Elijah knew that she wasn’t in control, and even if he managed to destroy the larva, she would die immediately.  That much of her brain was missing. 

However, while he couldn’t save the dragon – or any of the others who’d been similarly taken over – there was one thing he could do.  He could avenge them.

Did it matter that they weren’t real?  That they were simply constructs created by the Primal Realm and populated by volunteer souls that wouldn’t be harmed by what happened in the Broken Crown?  No.  Should it have?  Probably.  Elijah didn’t care, though.  For now, every part of his identity – the dragon, the beast, and the human – wanted the same thing.

He crept back into the nest, then climbed to the highest level.  Along the way, he was forced to kill a few extra wasps.  His previous massacre had been discovered, though without the High Druid’s leadership, no one knew how to respond.  Still, Elijah knew it wouldn’t be long before the entire nest was awash with wasps. 

He needed to act before that happened.

Once he reached the top floor, he found his way to the outermost band of chambers.  There, he was forced to kill a sleeping vespiran, but he didn’t let that delay him for more than a few seconds.  Once its head had been severed by a brutal slash of Elijah’s claws, he transformed into his human form, then stepped closer to the wall and ran his hand along the interior of the hexagonal comb. 

It had a texture like paper, though it was much harder than that would suggest.  With the Verdant Fang, Elijah cut a tiny hole – maybe two inches square – in the wall.  Then, he tapped into False Grove before casting Eternal Plague.  He funneled the resulting swarm through that hole, then sent them out to infect the surrounding army of vespirans and their allies. 

Within a few minutes, the entirety of False Grove had been exhausted, but it had given Elijah a good start on the exponentially building spell.  He switched to powering it via the contents of his core, then fell into the deep, meditative state it took to truly push the spell to its limits.  Not only did he need to constantly funnel ethera through his soul and into the spell, but he needed to keep up a constant pressure so the swarm of tiny gnats would manifest as quickly as possible. 

In addition, he had to use a similar technique to absorb vast quantities of ambient ethera through the eighty-one apertures in his mind.  That energy would go a long way toward replenishing his core.

With any luck, he wouldn’t even need to use Grove Conduit. 

As the conjured swarm descended upon the enemy, they went wild.  Without leadership, they had no idea what to do.  Most went with their instinctual response, which was to attack the swarm directly.  That did very little good. 

It also played right into Elijah’s hands.

Because if they were focused on his swarm, they wouldn’t look for him.  It was like a doctor treating the symptom rather than the cause of an illness.  Sure, it might make the patient feel a bit better, but it was ultimately useless.  So it was when the vespirans attacked his swarm.

For hours, he continuously pumped ethera into the spell, subtly directing the swarm of gnats along the way.  He couldn’t directly control them, but he could influence them to attack specific targets.  And there were so many of them that that was all it really took to wreak havoc among the enemy.

Oddly, the controlled dragons were the first to fall – a clear indication that much of their power had been drained by the larvae.  But soon enough, the wasps and spiders began to die.  The drachnids too.  Finally, the vespirans themselves went down.

Not all of them, of course.

There were demi-gods among them, though Elijah had begun to understand that not all demi-gods were created equal.  Some were like Zhyratha and were cut above the rest.  But others were weak in comparison.  Sure, they were stronger than their ascended counterparts, but they were not the world-ending threats he’d been led to believe.  In addition, most of them were highly specialized.  Generally, if they could survive his Eternal Plague, they weren’t truly capable of doing much damage.  And if they could do a ton of damage, they probably couldn’t survive his swarm.

Or that was true of the run-of-the-mill soldiers.  The elites among them could clearly do a lot more.  So, even when Elijah let Eternal Plague lapse, they were still standing.

But not for long.

He immediately shifted into the Shape of the Scourge, then took off under the Guise of the Unseen.  Some of the swarm had backwashed into the nest, so there was nothing left alive.  So he reached the exit within a minute.

That’s when he completed his execution.

The first few elites he killed went down quick and hard.  Severing their heads seemed to work remarkably well, and now that they’d been sufficiently weakened by Eternal Plague, it was easy.  However, the elites hadn’t reached their status by being completely clueless, so it wasn’t long before Elijah found himself at the center of a very angry and extremely dangerous mob of vespirans.

That was just what he wanted.

Using Phantom Shift and flitting between his copies, he threw himself among them, biting, clawing, and stinging any creature that came close.  He didn’t care about the damage he took.  He was durable enough to survive whatever they could dish out, at least long enough for Wild Resurgence to mend his wounds. 

But the enemy had no Healers among them, and before long, Spreading Blight and Ethereal Sepsis brought them down.  One by one, they fell until only the strongest remained upright.  Elijah circled him, his stinger-like tail whipping back and forth like a cobra ready to strike. 

The vespiran spoke, but Elijah chose not to acknowledge his pleas for mercy.  He barely even heard them.  Instead, he darted in low, dodged a wasp stinger, then sprang toward the wasp-man’s throat.  His jaws locked around the creature’s neck an instant later.

And then he squeezed.

The chitinous armor cracked under the pressure.  Then, it shattered entirely.  Flesh parted a second later.  Bones crunched.  The vespiran must’ve been a Warrior, he was so durable.  But after everything, his constitution was too compromised to protect him.  His head fell free a few moments – and quite a lot of screaming – later.

He collpased.

And at last, Elijah looked around at the carnage he’d wrought.  The entire nest was dead, right down to the last larvae.  There was a part of him that knew he should’ve felt at least a little guilty at all the death.  But he didn’t.  In fact, he felt energized in a way he’d not felt since…well, ever. 

He wanted more.

He needed to sprint off across the broken planet and hunt down any other vespiran armies that might be out there.  However, Elijah knew just how silly that was.  He’d gotten lucky that the leader was a Druid.  Just about any other archetype, and they would have been much more difficult to defeat.

Not to mention that without his Antlers of the Wild Revenant, he’d have been mind-controlled just like all the other prisoners.  Next time, they might attack him in a way that bypassed his defenses.

Besides, the goal wasn’t to kill wasp-people.  The goal was reach the Worldseed.  In service of that, he took a deep breath, then took off at a dead sprint.