Path of Dragons 16 - Chapter 9 - Growth (Patreon)

“I can’t get over it,” Elijah stated, staring into his steaming mug.  It contained some sort of spiced, mildly narcotic tea with a fancy name he couldn’t remember.  He’d barely tasted it before he had decided he hated it, which would assuredly come as no surprise and as a great disappointment to the proprietor of the tavern.  She had taken it as her life’s mission to convert him into a tea-drinker.  So far, she had failed.

And as far as Elijah was concerned, that would continue.

But at the moment, he wasn’t interested in tea.  Or any other beverage, for that matter.  Instead, his attention, filtered through Soul of the Wild, remained fixated on Cyran.  The dragon sat on the other side of the tavern amidst a group of sycophants, laughing and going on as if he wasn’t a piece of garbage.

To them, he probably wasn’t.  Did they know what he’d done to Sara?  How he’d pinned her down and threatened the unthinkable?  Or did he keep that kind of thing to himself?  Perhaps only bragged about with his closest comrades.  Those who thought the same way.

Imal sighed. “We know.”

“We should kill him.”

“We’re not going to kill him, Okar,” she countered in a long-suffering tone.

Okar snorted at that.  He probably felt a similar disdain for Cyran.  It might’ve even been more vehement, given his relationship with Sara.  If Okar thought he could get away with it, he probably would’ve already buried a sword in the dragon’s back. 

And Elijah would’ve helped him bury the body.

“He was being mind controlled,” Imal reminded them both. 

“So he says,” Okar pointed out.  “Perfect excuse.  Oh, I didn’t mean to do all those terrible things.  It wasn’t me.  I wasn’t in control.  It was the conveniently catatonic mind mage that made me do it.”  He took a large swig of some sort of concentrated brew.  When he slammed his mug down on the table, he did so with more force than he truly intended.  The sound echoed throughout the tavern, briefly interrupting conversation.  Okar slurred, “Bullshit.”

For a second, no one in the establishment said anything.  The silence stretched on, awkward and unwelcoming until some brave soul broke it by resuming their conversation.  That shattered the spell, and soon enough, the bar went back to normal, filled with the din of a hundred discussions.

A few people even laughed.

“Everything he’s done since then supports the assertion that he wasn’t himself,” Imal said.  “He’s a hero.  He saved hundreds of lives, and since then, he’s worked tirelessly to defend the Vengeance and cleanse cells.  Everyone loves him.”

“Doesn’t change that it’s bullshit,” Okar countered. “Right, Elijah?”

“Yeah.  Probably,” was his distracted reply.  “It just feels like…I don’t know…a betrayal.  Or like morality doesn’t even exist.  It’s only about…”

“Survival,” provided Palikina, who’d curled up into one corner of the booth where she was easy to forget. 

“Survival,” Elijah echoed.  “It’s that, but it’s also this weird thing where people are so eager to move on from a person’s horrible actions.  All they have to do is one good deed, and everyone forgets everything that came before.  Like the cheating.  Or what he did to Sara.  Or whatever else he did that we don’t know about.”

Elijah was certain that Cyran’s sins didn’t end with those two actions.  But even if he’d spent a century killing babies, the people in the Vengeance wouldn’t have cared.  Because at the moment, he was helping to keep them alive.  And not in a terrifying way, like Elijah.

In a lot of ways, it was just like Earth.  There was a saying that said that everyone liked comebacks.  Another that everyone deserved a second chance.  And probably dozens of others meant to promote forgiveness and stay any judgement based on singular mistakes. 

Maybe that applied to someone like Cyran.  The situation was murky at best.  But Elijah just couldn’t move on.  He couldn’t bring himself to trust that Cyran had turned over a new leaf, that he’d broken free of Skahan’s control to show his true, nobler colors. 

And making it even worse was that Cyran had saved his life.

Elijah hated him for it, because it forced him to confront the hatred that felt so comfortable brewing in his heart.

Then there was the reality that, had he chosen to go that route, nobody would have stopped him from killing Cyran.  Oh – they definitely would have tried.  Or failing that, they would have wanted to.  But it was obvious that there was no one aboard the Vengeance who could truly stand up to Elijah.

Not in a fair fight.  Probably not in an unfair one, either.

That meant that the only restraint Elijah faced was of his own making.  And he very much wanted to discard those self-made constraints and simply end the other dragon then and there and move on, secure in the knowledge that he’d done the right thing.

“I’m more interested in the bigger picture,” Imal said.

“Bigger than killing the bad guy?” asked Okar.

“He’s not the bad guy,” she sighed.  “Or if he is, it’s more complicated than that.”

“Not to me,” came the dangerously whispered response.

Imal ignored it.  Instead, she went on, “Like I said, I’m thinking about the implications of that.”

She gestured to a group of K’levehar non-combatants hovering in Cyran’s orbit. 

“They’re not traditional allies, are they?” asked Elijah.

She shook her head.  “Not at all.  My master was…he was an exiled member of the Ophios Clan,” she answered.  Then, she went on to explain that they were a subordinate to the Dravith Clan, which made a lot of sense, given Imal’s attunement.  Clearly, her master had shared that focus on water.  “A few of his other students were outer members of the main clan, and they had a habit of gossiping.  Most of the time, they didn’t even acknowledge I was there.”

She shook her head.  “Anyway, I picked up a lot of information about the way the clans work.  About alliances and, most of all, about their state.  And one thing that was always consistent was that the K’levehar Clan was barely holding on to their status.  Their focus on non-combat pursuits made them wealthy, but it’s a tenuous sort of power, especially when they don’t have any real combatants of note to back them up.”

“Which is probably why their outpost fell so easily,” Elijah reasoned.

Imal nodded.  She didn’t like to talk about that battle, probably because so many people had died.

“It looks like they’re cozying up to the Vaels,” she went on.

“Obviously.  They tried with the Vyrins, too.  But the only person here with any pull with the main family is sitting at this table and has no interest in that kind of thing,” said Palikina.  Then, she looked at Elijah and blushed. “Sorry.  No offense.”

Her form shimmered a bit, almost as if she wanted to disappear.  Elijah pretended not to notice.

But he couldn’t deny that she was right.  Whether he liked it or not, he was Kirlissa’s favored child.  To the K’levehar clan, the fact that he was adopted didn’t really matter.  He had as much influence as anyone else in the entire trial, and with one of the most prosperous clans in the Empire of Scale.

However, he’d brushed off any attempts at currying favor, spending more time in the mushroom caves with the Farmers than he did meeting with other people of high station.  Or as often happened, he ended up flying off to explore.

So it had been for the past few months since he’d returned from his evolved mushroom’s cave.  And more than anything, he wanted to just head back out and spend the rest of the trial there.  The only reason he didn’t was because if he went in that direction, it would make the Vengeance much more vulnerable.

After all, the orcs hadn’t disappeared.  They were distracted by infighting, and they’d suffered a sizable defeat.  But their population was countless.  Everyone knew they’d come back because that was how the cycle went.  The only real question was whether it would be during the demigod trial or if they’d lick their wounds until the deities entered the ancestral world.

Elijah needed to stick around so that if the orcs did attack, he could help fend them off.  Or at least buy enough time that they could escape mostly intact.  Because he had no illusions about killing them all.

In addition, he knew he couldn’t take his friends with him.  The surface of that sky island wasn’t safe from orc patrols, and the cave itself was full of deadly fungal spores.  Anyone else would likely die from infection within a few days if they ventured inside.

So, for now, Elijah was stuck on the Vengeance, save for a few short forays into the wild and untamed reaches of Orveth Kaal.

Even then, he’d often been forced to defend his absences, chiefly from Liona, but also infrequently from Imal.  She didn’t accuse him of anything.  In fact, she never even implied he was in the wrong.  However, she had pointed out on more than one occasion that people had noticed that he wasn’t around very often.

And everyone knew he wasn’t off clearing cells or fighting orcs.

That had fostered no small degree of resentment, especially from people who had seen what he had done against the orc fleet and didn’t quite understand why he couldn’t repeat that over and over until all the orcs were gone.

Could Elijah have explained himself?  Could he have conveyed the cost of using his soul to augment Flames of Renewal?  Or could he have explained the scope of the orcs’ population?  That despite killing so many, he’d barely made a dent in their overall numbers?

Sure.

He could have said all those things.  But at the end of the day, he resented their lack of gratitude and the dearth of trust.  He didn’t feel like he should have to explain anything, especially after saving their lives.

Which echoed the lesson he’d learned from the dragon prisoner.  It had been two months since his single session, if it could even be called that, and he still hadn’t entirely internalized the intended message.  Power was freedom, even if it only meant being able to ignore dragon politics.

“What are you thinking?” asked Imal, jerking Elijah back to the present.  The conversation had continued while he’d pondered the nature of power.

“Just realizing that the prisoner was right.  More than I wanted to give him credit for,” Elijah responded after only a second. 

Imal just nodded.  He’d said the same to her more than once as he’d processed the implications of that singular lesson.  The characterization of the system as something like a prison had stuck with him, especially in light of what he’d seen during his various visions of the first dragon and the pre-system Empire of Scale. 

No one could deny that the dragons were more powerful back then, and the prisoner seemed to imply that the system had a lot to do with why that was the case.  Elijah wanted to know more, but the other times he’d gone to visit the imprisoned dragon, his presence had been rejected.

Which wasn’t supposed to happen.

It was just further proof that the prisoner was no prisoner at all, and that he was more than capable of escaping Orveth Kaal if he so desired.  More, it seemed to confirm that he was a transcendent, which Elijah had already suspected from that very first meeting. 

“At least Alrhok seems to have made some friends,” he said, gesturing to the big dragon.  He’d practically been adopted into the K’levehar clan, and according to everything Elijah had seen, his future seemed bright.  The only issue was that he’d become a little more standoff-ish with Elijah, cutting short the few conversations they’d had in the past couple of weeks.

It was almost like he was ashamed of latching onto another clan.

Did it make sense?  Not really.  But then again, Alrhok’s situation wasn’t an enviable one.  His family had all but abandoned him for turning away from a path to which he was ill-suited.  He probably didn’t want to seem like he was trying to leverage their friendship for some kind of gain.

“We should keep an eye on him,” Imal suggested.  “I know some of those people, and they’re not the best sort.”

“What do you mean?” Elijah asked.

“They approached me a few months ago, asking me to switch sides.  Covertly.”

“They wanted you to be a spy?”

“More like a saboteur,” she corrected.  “I turned them down.  Obviously.  But there’s nothing to say that they won’t ask him to do something similar.”

“It’s not like he can do much,” Okar said.  “He’s a second-tier fighter with no clan.  The Vaels won’t give him any authority, which is why he latched onto the K’levehars.  He can’t really do much harm.”

“Still.”

“I will watch him,” Palikina said in a small voice.

Imal looked at her.  “To protect him.”

Palikina didn’t say anything for a moment.  Then, she muttered, “Sure.”

Elijah just shook his head.  There were still three more years left in Orveth Kaal, and he had to admit that he was looking forward to moving on.  Not just from the threat of orc attacks, but also from dragon politics.

He leaned back, and let out a sigh. 

“You okay?”

Elijah glanced at Imal.  “Just wishing for fewer complications, that’s all.”

“That’s the dream.”