Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 81 - Shattered (Patreon)

Heralded by an earthquake that very nearly brought the building down around Elijah, the world broke.  He barely managed to escape before the structure completely collapsed in on itself, but in his haste, he almost skidded over the edge of a cliff that hadn’t been there when he arrived.  He spread his wings to arrest his momentum, but he was forced to use Cloud Step to reverse course. 

Once he came to a stop, he peered over the edge to see nothing but darkness. 

Another earthquake ripped through the landmass, sending the crack arcing down an avenue and into the distance.  Suddenly, the two halves drifted apart, telling Elijah that his convalescence had come to an end.

He wasn’t entirely recovered, but it would have to do. 

He ran, reaching a sprint after only a moment.  Then, he bounded high into the sky and extended his wings.  Flapping them a couple of times, he was on his way.  And that told him two things.  First, his wings in his human form were not really meant for all-out flight.  If anything, he mostly just glided.  If he wanted to truly fly, he would need to let himself assume his full dragon form or shift into the Shape of the Sky. 

But for now, it was fine. 

The second thing he realized was that the Broken Crown had truly shattered.  Everywhere he looked, pieces of the landmass had broken apart, and he feared that the chains had been severed.  If that was the case, he had no idea how he was meant to reach his destination. 

But there had to be a way.  He just needed to find it.

Banking to the side to avoid another falling building, he initiated a shift into his dragon form.  His body grew, and in a very different way than when he cast one of the spells tied to his bestial forms.  Those were a product of ethera.  With his dragon form, it was more like letting himself expand. 

Soon enough, he was flying along, and in doing so, his suspicions were confirmed.  It wasn’t as fast as Shape of the Sky.  Somewhere between his maximum footspeed and that purpose-built form. 

Either way, the landscape flashed by, and it was only a day later that he reached the chain.  Fortunately, it was still intact, though judging by the deep groans coming from those massive links, that wouldn’t be the case for much longer. 

That wasn’t the biggest problem, though. 

As soon as Elijah saw the thousands of wasps buzzing around the chain, he banked, hoping to hide his presence.  But it was extremely difficult to conceal the arrival of a fifty-foot long, emerald scaled dragon.  And the vespirans responded exactly how he’d expected them to.

Thousands of them took to the skies, and within a moment, they’d darted among the ruined buildings.  Elijah immediately knew they were faster than him.  Not a surprise, considering he’d seen them fighting dragons since the first day of his arrival into the Broken Crown.  His only option was to fight.

He banked around a corner, then climbed.  Two beats of his wings took him all the way to the top of the building, and he immediately flipped over into a dive.  Tucking his wings close, he timed his attack perfectly, hitting the vespirans the second they rounded the corner.

The first creature exploded on impact.  The second was ripped to pieces by Elijah’s massive claws.  And the third found draconic jaws clamped around his abdomen.  The crunch of carapace followed a moment later, and the wasp-men plummeted from the sky soon after. 

Then, the battle was truly on.

Elijah ripped through the swarm with claws and teeth and sheer size.  The creatures fought back, but their stingers were incapable of piercing his durable scales.  There were no demi-gods among them, after all.  And by that point, those were his only real threat.

Lightning danced around his wings as he cast Lightning Domain.  The tendrils of electricity extended further than they ever had before, scouring the air for more than two-hundred feet all around him.  The wasp-men had no defense, and within a few seconds, they fell from the sky.

Elijah had killed them all in the space of less than a minute.

The power of his dragon form was undeniable, but he’d also discovered a detriment.  Lightning Domain had cost nearly thrice the normal amount of ethera to cast.  It was at least that much more powerful – probably more – so the ratio was unchanged.  But the implications were clear. 

The dragon form packed quite a punch, but it needed a lot more energy as well.

He would take the trade-off for now, especially considering just how much more powerful his body had become.  Not only did he get the benefit of his upgraded cultivation, but that was multiplied by becoming a dragon. 

He felt almost unstoppable.

Which was why, when he ran into a demi-god vespiran, he made the mistake of challenging it head-on.  The creature was fast, though.  Too fast for Elijah to track, and in the first pass, the thing ripped a massive gash in his side. 

Obviously, this was no low-level demi-god.  This was one of their elites.

And like everything else in the shattered world, the wasp-man wanted the Worldseed far more than he valued his own survival.  The thing’s attitude wasn’t quite as extreme as the ones that had directly assaulted the planetary core, but it definitely wasn’t rational, either. 

Elijah faced off against it, still learning to maneuver his new body.  In a lot of ways, it was similar to using the Shape of the Sky.  But it was so much bulkier.  A lot less agile, too.  It was like comparing a motorcycle to a pickup truck. 

But unlike the Shape of the Sky, the dragon form had a distinct advantage in that it had full access to every spell Elijah could cast in his human form.  So, as he layered heals onto himself, he also began channeling Eternal Plague.  However, he soon discovered that he didn’t need to release it right away.  He could let it build.

So, he did.

His chest bloated, his body straining against the ethera as one second turned into two, and two turned into three.  The vespiran bore down on him, screaming something incoherent.  Then, just before the creature hit him, Elijah opened his mouth and released the swarm.

Thousands of blue dragonflies flew free of his mouth, immediately coating the vespiran in a glittering azure cloak.  The wasp-man faltered, and Elijah hit him full speed.  Some of the dragonflies were crushed by the impact, but there were always more.  After that first salvo, he let Eternal Plague cast normally, and it ate through his available ethera with unprecedented greed. 

Elijah added Nature’s Claim to it as he ripped and clawed the stunned creature.  Mushrooms – much larger and more numerous than before – burst from the vespiran’s carapace, sending an arc of spores and viscera to pepper the sky.  The opportunistic dragonflies used the sundered chitin as another entry point. 

Meanwhile, Elijah’s claws and teeth flashed as he grappled with the wasp-man.  The wings went first, but it wasn’t long before Elijah had his jaws wrapped around the vespiran’s humanoid waist.  He squeezed.

And the already weakened creature’s flesh tore.

Elijah barely even realized the battle was over until he saw two halves of the thing plummet to the ground.  He flapped his wings to stay aloft, stunned at how easily he’d killed the demi-god.

But he’d paid a price, too.  Every spell he’d used had cost far more ethera than normal, emptying his core at such a rapid pace that he knew that if he kept going, he’d be tapped out in minutes. 

The message was clear, and it reaffirmed Elijah’s previous suspicions.  Dragons could hit hard and fast, but they lacked staying power. 

That was fine, though.  As long as it served a purpose, he was fine.  Though he had to admit that he was a little disappointed that it wasn’t the be-all, end-all form he’d hoped it would become. 

In any case, he pushed forward and onto the chain. 

This one was hundreds of miles long, and it went straight up.  Along the way, Elijah fought multiple other swarms, though none forced him to use any spells.  So long as that was the case, he could simply rely on the dragon form’s natural physicality to win fights.  However, the long flight served to highlight another issue.

The form needed fuel.

His body drank ethera like it was going out of style, and not just when he was using spells.  In addition, his stomach had already begun to rumble with hunger.  If he kept going for much longer, he’d start to lose energy from starvation alone. 

In addition to that issue, Elijah was also forced to confront something even more troubling.  The problem presented itself when, as he flew over a particularly corroded link, it snapped in two.  The sound alone sent shockwaves through Elijah’s body and very nearly knocked him off course.  But even though the chain hadn’t completely broken – the link was still hooked over another – that wouldn’t remain the case for much longer.

Elijah shifted into the Shape of the Sky, knowing he needed more speed.  That turned out to be the proper course of action because only a few moments after he arrived at the next landmass, another crack resounded through the shattered world.  A moment later, a chain with miles-long links rebounded under the massive tension and fell upon the continent sized landmass.

Predictably, that began a chain reaction of earthquakes that sent cracks throughout the hunk of land.  Elijah sped along, dodging falling buildings, swarms of vespirans, and the occasional dragon as he strove to outrun the calamity. 

Along he went, dipping and diving between various obstacles until, at last, his luck ran out.  He was a long way from the next chain when everything fell apart.  He felt it when the shield broke and a massive wave of nothingness slammed into him. 

His heart stopped.

His body froze.

His ethera ceased to move. 

Reflexively, Elijah exploded with his Mantle of Authority, and beneath the boughs of his soul, the nothingness retreated.  He could still feel it chipping away at him.  At the very essence of his spirit.  But for now, his heartbeat resumed, and he could once again move. 

More troublingly, he could see everything clearly.  Before, the shield had entirely blocked his vision, but now, the entire abyss was laid bare.  And he very much did not like what he saw.

For one, there was a massive, planet-sized red dragon in the distance.  It was thousands upon thousands of miles away, but Elijah could see every single detail like he was standing right next to it.  The glistening scales.  The flames along its crest.  The chains wrapped around its legs. 

And the abyssal monsters that had latched onto it.  They were smaller.  Weaker.  But there were so many of them, and they stuck to the Red Tyrant – for who else could it be – like leeches, gradually sucking the life out of it. 

For another, he saw the Broken Crown in all its glory.  A comparatively tiny cluster of rocks held together by the thinnest of margins.  A hundred or more rocky landmasses had already drifted away, only to be consumed by the abyss.  It did nothing to the rock itself.  But Elijah could sense that it sucked the very life and every ounce of energy out of those hunks of land. 

And any non-abyssal creature that happened to be on them.  Elijah watched as they rapidly wilted into desiccated husks of lifeless matter. 

He ripped his eyes away from the horrifying sight.

Knowing that he could just as easily find himself in the same situation, Elijah flapped his wings, but he found that he couldn’t move.  Gradually, the abyss ate at the edges of his Mantle of Authority, and it shrank a little more by the second.  He pushed more ethera into it, but the extra just spewed out into the nothingness, only to be absorbed and dispersed. 

Panicked, Elijah looked around, searching for some means of escape.

That was when he saw it.

The continent-sized city.  It was still intact.  Still connected to a chain.  And he needed to reach it, preferably within the next five minutes.  Any longer, and he would not survive.

The only problem was that it was at least five thousand miles away.  Maybe longer.

Knowing he didn’t have a choice, Elijah dug deep and gradually reoriented himself in the appropriate direction.  The second he had, he shoved as much ethera as he could into Lightning Surge.

And just like that, he streaked across the abyss as a bolt of electricity, hoping that he could make it before he was swallowed by the abyss.