Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 74 - Alive but not Living (Patreon)

The Worldseed pulsed with so much power that, even with his Mantle of Authority protecting him, Elijah felt his hand disintegrating as it drew closer.  To counter it, he’d shifted into his human form so he could use all three of his healing spells.  Blessing of the Grove came first, bathing him in powerfully rejuvenating rain as a blazing sunflower grew at his feet.  The petals were made of fire, while the disc at the center looked like a miniature, white-hot sun. 

Next came Nature’s Bloom, healing his damaged body with a single, massive pulse of vitality.  In twenty seconds, another, secondary surge of life-giving energy would come.  Elijah piled five casts, one on top of the other. 

And finally, he used Wild Resurgence, filling him with a gentle stream of healing that managed to even it out. 

It was the first time he’d managed to cast three spells at once, and doing so very nearly broke his mind.  Still, he managed to hold himself together long enough to truly see the Worldseed. 

Unsurprisingly, it was roughly circular in shape, though slightly irregular in arrayment.  Power flowed unevenly through it, with the right side featuring slightly more potent energy.  From the top flowed the weakest stream, which was probably why the shell had broken directly above it.  Otherwise, it looked strikingly similar to a white seed, though one more than a few yards tall and a little less than that in width.

Elijah finally touched it, and briefly, he felt the energy within.  The dense flows of ethera swirled in a convex pattern, mingling with equally thick flows of vitality.  There were other elements there, and once again, Elijah was reminded of a normal seed.  He’d experienced something similar when he’d studied and manipulated the ancestral tree seeds he’d planted outside the Primal Realms. 

However, those were far less powerful.  Still, Elijah felt that if he was just a little more powerful, he could have manipulated the Worldseed all the same.  He recognized many of the parts.  Fire.  Earth.  Water.  Wind.  All the elements were there.  Other flavors of ethera – attunements, he believed – were represented as well. 

Was that how life came together?  Was that what gave vitality the impetus to become something more? 

Elijah didn’t know, but in that moment, with the complex pattern of power woven through the Worldseed laid bare before him, he felt like he understood more than he ever had.  Just a little more time, and he was certain that he’d reach an epiphany.  That he could transfer that knowledge to any number of breakthroughs. 

But then, he felt a wave of pain arc through his body as his Mantle of Authority further destabilized.  Knowing that he didn’t have much of a choice in the matter, Elijah decided to table such exploration for another day.  After all, the notification he’d received upon entry into the Primal Realm had been clear about the goal.  He was supposed to obtain the Worldseed.  And now that it was right in front of him, he was eager to do just that.

But when he tried to put it into his Arcane Loop, it resisted. 

Suddenly, Elijah felt a spike of pain within his mind as an alien intelligence wrapped itself around his consciousness and began to squeeze.  He countered by pushing even more ethera into his Mantle of Authority – more than he ever could have before upgrading his specialization – but that only held it to a stalemate. 

The implication was clear.  The Worldseed was alive. 

Sort of.

Elijah could feel that it occupied some gray area between life and inanimacy.  Alive, and yet not.  Or perhaps it was just alive in a different way than Elijah could comprehend.  There was also a rudimentary intelligence there.  A need to protect itself, though he expected that it was more like a Venus fly trap’s reflexive action than the result of conscious thought.

It did have a memory, though.  And it wasn’t shy about sharing it with Elijah.  Suddenly, a cascade of images, sounds, and feelings slammed into him, overwhelming every single leaf in his mind.  He floated there in semi-liquid fire, completely insensate. 

He had no way of knowing how long it lasted.

It could have been seconds or years, for all he could perceive.  He was incapable of seeing – or feeling – anything but the flood of memories inflicted upon him. 

He saw the planet’s birth as the Worldseed – a tiny, tiny thing – attracted matter and energy to it.  He witnessed the slow build of its landmass, one layer of rock after another.  He felt as life took hold, then died out, then took hold again.  Over and over until it finally stuck.  Great beasts flew through its fiery skies as even larger creatures dug through the planet’s mantle.  Eventually, they began to evolve, one after another until they took on recognizable forms. 

One in particular caught Elijah’s eye.

A tiny fire salamander who died to protect her egg and birth the very first dragon.  That lone creature gave rise to an entire race, and soon enough, they became the dominant species.  They took over the planet, establishing superiority across its surface.  Then, the light of true sapience took hold, and they began to band together.  They built cities that spanned the entire planet until some calamity struck.

They broke apart, abandoning the planet as it drifted into the abyss. 

That was when the monsters came, constantly digging for the core.  The planet fought back.  The wildlife left behind by the dragons survived for a while.  But then, the monsters won.  The planet fractured, and a period of upheaval followed.  Enormous volcanoes erupted, earthquakes shook the terrain, and the very atmosphere ruptured. 

Everything – including the abyssals – died.

The planet’s demise was not instant.  Far from it.  It was powerful.  Solid.  Elijah couldn’t understand the timescale, but he suspected it spanned billions of years.  Slowly, the Worldseed’s power diminished until it could no longer hold the world together.

It broke.

The Worldseed sealed itself off, but it could sense the planet’s pieces slowly drifting apart.  At least until it felt something pierce its body and drag everything back together.  The chains.  The transcendent dragon known as the Red Tyrant. 

It was all so clear.

But then, the armies arrived.  At first, there were other transcendents, but the pieces of the planet could not bear their presence.  They very nearly destroyed what was left before they retreated in hopes of preserving the Worldseed.  Deities were next, and though their arrival didn’t cause nearly the same level of destruction, the planet could not bear their presence either.  Not for long, at least.

The sweet spot was demi-gods.

They weren’t powerful enough to travel straight to the fragile Worldseed, so they were forced to begin their journeys on the outskirts of the broken planet.  Elijah was among them. 

He knew the rest of the story, but the Worldseed didn’t spare him its memories.  It showed him thousands of battles across the cluster of landmasses that its planet had become.  Some, Elijah recognized as ones in which he had participated, but the vast majority of them were entirely unrelated to his journey. 

It seemed that he’d only witnessed a tiny portion of the war.

Finally, he broke free of the memories, only to find that his spells had lapsed.  He pushed himself to repair the damage inflicted upon him, but he knew it was a losing cause.  The reality was that if he was going to survive, he needed to change the environment.

And given that he couldn’t move the Worldseed, he only had one option available to him. 

It just so happened that it coincided with one of his short-term goals.  For months, he’d diligently continued to prepare his core for the next step.  He wasn’t quite where he wanted to be.  In fact, he was convinced that he could take his preparations a little further.  Yet, he knew he couldn’t find a better cultivation environment than next to the Worldseed. 

Nearly infinite ethera at his fingertips.  Elijah only needed to harness it.  The setting only made it feel even more appropriate.  Like it was his birthright.  After all, his draconic race had been born on that very planet.  It was where they had risen to prominence.  So, using it to fuel his advancement into the next step of cultivation felt right in a way that Elijah could scarcely wrap his mind around.

However, with so much power came danger.  Elijah knew that survival was anything but assured. 

He pushed those thoughts aside, buoyed by the pride of a dragon.  Or perhaps it was arrogance.  He was no stranger to hubris, after all. 

Whatever the case, he didn’t hesitate to open himself up and begin the process of absorbing the dense ethera rolling off of the Worldseed.  It entered his mind like a wildfire, burning through his soul without mercy.  Pain unlike anything he’d ever felt tore through him, and he didn’t dare quarantine it in another section of his mind.

Instead, he forced himself to feel it.  To endure it.  To let it scar him.  He allowed it to inundate him in the hopes that it would leave him changed.  That scathing energy filled his core to bursting, expanding the confines until Elijah knew he could take no more.  Then, he forced it out.  It burned its way through the boughs of his soul, only to join the rest of the ambient energy.

And then he did it again.

Over and over, he cycled the power through his system, slowly expanding his core, inch by metaphysical inch.  With each instance, a bloated feeling filled him, mingling with the pain to create an amalgamation of discomfort that defied ready description. 

Or maybe discomfort was too soft of a word.  Torture might’ve been better suited to Elijah’s situation.  Not that he had the ability to think in such terms.  Instead, the entirety of his mind remained dedicated to controlling the flow of energy, lest he overfill the core until it burst.  If that happened too soon, ruined cultivation would be the least of his worries.

Gradually, his core expanded, both in its inert state as well as when he filled it to its maximum capacity.  Elijah kept going, cycling the process multiple times until, at last, its elasticity was spent.  The core couldn’t be contained within his body, and yet, it still remained the center of his entire system. 

It didn’t make sense, and what’s more, it was not tenable.  If Elijah stopped, the entire system would collapse in on itself like a dying star. 

Elijah held it in stasis only for a second as he took a metaphorical breath.  The solid shell around the Worldseed had begun to degrade.  The horde of monsters, dragons, and vespirans continuously clawed their way through.  He knew they were out there, ready to devour the treasure at the center of the planetary core. 

And him, too.  His energy had merged with the ethera coming from the Worldseed until they were practically one.  That had not been his intention.  He just wanted to drain it so he could survive. 

But it didn’t matter.  It couldn’t.  Elijah could only keep pushing and hope he somehow emerged on the other side. 

To that end, he gritted his teeth – what was left of them, after everything he’d endured – and opened the floodgates for more ethera.  His core flexed just a little more before he activated Nature’s Design. 

The spell used almost no ethera, but even diverting that much power was almost enough to throw him entirely off-balance and ruin everything.  But he maintained control, guiding the flows of ethera through his bloated core.

His Mantle of Authority dissipated, exposing him to the full fury of the Worldseed’s power.  And yet, it did not burn him to ash.  Instead, he’d fully incorporated its power into his own.  They were attached.  Integrated.  It was a part of him just as he had become a part of it.

Was this the true reason everyone wanted the Worldseed?

No.  Elijah was certain of that.

The power flowed through him, and he guided it into his own core, absorbing the seed and using it to bolster the imagery he’d already established.  Doing so was the most painful thing he’d ever experienced, and yet, it also felt right in a way he couldn’t quite explain. 

It also took a subjective eternity until, at last, the Worldseed was no more.  Only Elijah floated in the center of that mass of liquid fire. 

That was the first stage of his core cultivation completed.  Now, he just needed to push forward into the next, which he knew would be much more difficult than any that had come before.