Path of Dragons 16 - Chapter 13 - A Collective Effort (Patreon)

The ship exploded, sending splinters arcing a hundred yards in every direction.  A handful of orcs disintegrated upon impact, but most survived long enough to slam into the ground nearly half a mile below.  In the Shape of Withering, Elijah burst free of the cloud of blood, iron, and wooden shards, already transforming. 

He hit the ground a second later, having taken on the Shape of Spores.  The moment his feet hit the ground, he activated Throne of Spores, manifesting thousands of mycelial tendrils that snaked along the surface of the sky island.  They erupted from the ground, wrapping around orcish legs, and yanking them off-balance. 

Many of them resisted, hacking at those fungal tendrils with jagged axes and swords, but some were taken entirely by surprise.  In seconds, they were wrapped in cocoons and being crushed to death.

Elijah sensed his tendrils as if they were extra appendages, and when the first orcs burst, he felt the blood and pulverized flesh oozing between them.  Like crushing an orange between his fingers.  Gooey and pulpy, though with sharp bones intermixed.

So probably not like an orange at all.

At the same time, Okar lanced in, leading the way with his swords.  He was like a bladed dervish, spinning and leaping as he darted from one enemy to the next.  In his current form, Elijah could barely even sense the halfling, he was moving so quickly.  In his wake followed a trail of corpses, diced into tiny pieces that only barely resembled the remnants of living creatures.

Not to be outdone, Palikina made her own presence known, appearing and disappearing like a stuttering video.  One second, she’d have her daggers rammed into the skull of an orc, and the next, she’d be a hundred yards away, clipping the hamstrings of another.

Between them, they cut twin swaths of carnage through the orcish forces.

There were plenty of other combatants, too.  Like Bogoni, who served as an anchor for an entire squad of mages.  They fired off devastating spells while he protected them from orcish reprisal. 

Somewhere far away, Kalyn fired one crossbow bolt after another.  She must’ve gained a new ability, because her shots flashed with a new level of power.  When they hit, they exploded like artillery, digging deep craters in the sky island and exploding any orcs unlucky enough to find themselves near the point of impact.

And as always, she never stopped.  So long as she could fire from a protected position, she was one of the most devastating members of the coalition.  What’s more, she was almost entirely indefatigable.  She didn’t rely on ethera nearly as much as a true mage, so she could keep going for hours more.

But then there was Cyran.

He preferred to fight in his dragon form, and for good reason.  He came in like a tornado made of razors, cutting a wide path through the orcish army.  He didn’t concentrate on those, though.  Instead, he focused on the ships. 

Between his wind powers and the might of his dragon form, Cyran was more than a match for their defenses.  Where ethera failed, muscles and claws won out.

Imal was the real stand-out, though.  The constant struggle against the orcs had forced her to adapt.  No longer did she shove all of her power into a single, mighty spell.  That meant that exploding orcs was out of the question.  It just took too much ethera.

However, she had adapted by learning to manipulate smaller and ultimately more important bits.  Like the water in an orc’s brain.

All around, orcs just fell, their eyes bulging and blood oozing out of their ears.

They weren’t dead.  Not strictly speaking.  But they were comatose and, most importantly, out of the fight.

Elijah knew that Imal couldn’t do that on her own, but with the help of the space mage – Hira – Imal could accomplish a lot of things that would’ve otherwise been impossible.  The two weren’t friends, per se.  In fact, Imal looked upon her partner-in-magic with marked disdain – a fact she made very clear to Elijah most evenings when they were talking about their days.  But the pair had learned to work well together, and to devastating effect. 

There were other standouts in the battle.  Like the earth mage who kept entombing orcs in solid rock.  Or the fire dragon who looked like she was a scaley flamethrower, spewing fire with every punch or kick.  There were plenty of others who held their own.

Meanwhile, Elijah played his part, commanding the battlefield and keeping the orcs from gaining a real foothold. 

Could he have done a lot more damage if he’d used one of his more offensive forms?  Certainly.  However, doing so would have come with a pair of consequences he couldn’t really embrace.  The first was that others would surely have a much harder time.  His tendrils served as both a distraction and as battlefield control that made everyone else that much more effective.  Without them, more people would certainly die.

And second, he couldn’t really keep Flames of Renewal or Cloud of Decay from affecting his allies.  The tradesmen had developed some amulets that could help with the latter, but the process of creating them was difficult and time-consuming.  On top of that, the necessary reagents were rare enough that they couldn’t hope to outfit everyone.

With the former, there was no defense.  Flames of Renewal would destroy everyone in its area of effect, allies and enemies alike.

So, Elijah was hamstrung.

Still, he didn’t mind so much.  Shape of Spores had always had a special place in his heart, and that connection had only grown more potent as he’d worked with his various mushrooms. 

He still hadn’t revisited his dedicated mushroom cave, but he’d spent more than a little time in the much smaller fungus room inside the Vengeance.  And most of that was in Shape of Spores, where he’d really begun to study what made the form tick, so to speak.  What he’d discovered was a much more thorough integration between fungus and beast than he’d first suspected.

It wasn’t just symbiosis.  There were fungal and animal cells in his body, but both had been altered to such an extent that they displayed characteristics of both.  It wasn’t an equal blend, though.  Animal cells were still mostly animal, and fungal cells were similarly fungi.  Yet, the fact that they had even begun to alter themselves suggested that with enough evolution and time, the line between the two would disappear entirely.

Elijah didn’t expect to ever reach that point.  The spell itself would evolve well before he had time for biology to work its particular brand of magic.  But it still gave him an interesting perspective on what to expect if he ever visited the planet of the form’s origin.

One tangible effect of all that study was that he’d gained significantly more control over his tendrils, especially when he slipped a sliver of his soul into the mix.  Only enough to create a subtle, metaphysical burn, it didn’t really do any damage.  In fact, Elijah saw it the same way he looked at a good workout.

Sure, it hurt, but in a satisfying way that told him he was on the right track for improvement.  It was that philosophy that had helped to achieve his previous cultivation milestones.  He’d lost count of the number of times he’d been destroyed, body, mind, and soul.  That had tempered his cultivation system in ways that most people never experienced. 

Certainly not ones who relied on external aids like potions and cultivation chambers.

Either way, Elijah split his focus between the process and the effect of Throne of Spores.  The first, so he could feel the subtle evolution of his understanding played out over the entirety of his pseudo-domain.  The second, in an effort to protect his allies.

In both endeavors, he was brutally effective.

Together, he and the rest of his dragons, drakes, and serpentors gradually brought the orcs to heel.  Most of the grey-skinned and brutal creatures ended up dead, but a few managed to tap into their survival instincts and flee.  Some of Cyran’s people pursued, eager to gain even the small drops of experience those orcs represented.

And maybe they thought they were doing good.

Elijah had a difficult time believing that, though.  No matter what else happened, he couldn’t look at Cyran or the other Vaels in a favorable light.  Too much bad blood.  Too much pain. 

If he could get away with just killing them all…

Elijah shuddered at the incomplete thought.  He didn’t want to be that kind of person, but it was difficult to resist the pull of absolute power.  For at the moment, that was what he wielded. 

Sure, there were countless people stronger than him, but not in Orveth Kaal.

If he chose to slaughter Cyran and the rest of the Vaels, no one could stop him.  Such was the temptation that Elijah’s life on the Vengeance had become, and it was incredibly difficult to resist.

And that temptation frightened him enough that he’d pushed it aside altogether.  It was dangerous, and not just for his moral compass.  Sure – that was part of it.  Killing people shouldn’t have been his first response, even if it would make things markedly easier.

Instead, he also had to worry about the consequences.  Because Cyran had backing.  Maybe it was a little flimsier than it had been before the tournament, but it still existed.  The last thing Elijah needed was to exit the ancestral world to find an angry transcendent waiting on him.

Or worse, make his home a target for revenge.

Earth would find it difficult to stand up to a deity, and that was if everyone worked together.  Which they wouldn’t, Elijah was certain.  And they would stand absolutely no chance against a transcendent.  Such was the reality of their situation, less than a century removed from experiencing the touch of the World Tree for the very first time.

One day, they might grow strong enough to stand on their own, but for now, their only real defense came from anonymity.  Or failing that, simply being too inconsequential for anyone of note to turn their eye upon Earth.

With that in mind, Elijah didn’t think it was a good idea to kill a scion like Cyran.  Not unless it proved absolutely necessary, in which case he wouldn’t hesitate.

Or maybe it was better to categorize it as him leaping at the excuse.

In any case, those thoughts flitted along in the background of his mind as he focused on the battle.  It went much like so many before it.  For months, they’d fought dozens of such fights, though this one was different.  Not so much in scale, but in the goal they wished to achieve.

Because like had been the case with the Dravith outpost, this fleet had besieged another group of representatives from the Empire of Scale. 

The Tyrix Clan ranked in the middle of the great clans, but even so, they’d clearly been pushed to their limits.  Their defenses remained intact, so no grand rescue was necessary.  But it was obvious that they wouldn’t hold on for much longer.

So, the united clans aboard the Vengeance had decided to lend aid, and once the orcs were defeated, they would offer the Tyrix Clan the opportunity to join forces.  Because if they were meant to survive, the Vengeance gave them the best chance.

It wasn’t just a floating mountain anymore.  Instead, the forest had gradually integrated into the entire structure, expanding the landmass into a small island.  The only difference was that it was equipped with so many ethereal engines that it was still mobile.  At full tilt, the Vengeance could outrun most orcish ships, though doing so would require quite a lot of ethera.

The Engineers and other Tradesmen had developed convertors to make that possible, but if they pushed too hard for too long, the drain would outpace the supply.  Instead, they normally moved at a much more sedate pace, relying on their weapons and the defenses built into the mountain-ship to keep them safe.

In the event of a true attack, they always had Elijah with his swarm, spores, and the storms he could summon with Imal and the other appropriately powered mages.  In short, the Vengeance was more than just a floating fortress.  It was also a weapon in and of itself, and one capable of destroying whole fleets.

If the orcs were a little more intelligent, they would have fled the second they saw it on the horizon.  However, their combative natures wouldn’t allow that kind of self-preservation.  As a result, most days saw at least a little combat, which the demigods used to their advantage, gaining power with every fight.

Even Elijah had benefited, though not to the same degree.

He’d passed four-twenty, reaching level four-twenty-three, and he still hadn’t received another evolution.  He hoped to get one at four-twenty-five, but he didn’t really expect anything until four-thirty.

Or later.

The variable intervals really threw him off, but there really wasn’t much he could do about it.

The battle lasted for a few more hours until the last of the orcs died or fled, at which point the Tyrix clan’s leaders exited their floating fortress and met with Liona and the other people in charge.  Elijah had no real interest in whatever negotiations would follow, but he knew his presence would help.  So, he shifted back into his human form and hovered over the proceedings.

In the end, the Tyrix leaders recognized just how precarious their situation was, and they agreed to board the Vengeance.  So long as they got a few concessions and made it clear that they were equal partners, at least.

Considering their expertise with wind and other related attunements, they had a little more to offer than most.  So, they were welcomed with open arms.

And just like that, another clan was added to the Vengeance.

Another variable that might be the one to tip the balance into chaos, because even Elijah could see that each addition came with a host of old rivalries, feuds, alliances, and personal problems.

Hopefully, they could keep things together a little longer – at least until the end of the trial.

He wasn’t optimistic.

But if things truly devolved, he had an escape hatch – a comfort when everything else seemed so uncertain.