Path of Dragons 16 - Chapter 18 - Horizons (Patreon)

With silent footsteps, Ok’tarik followed. 

It was the first time in more than a century that he’d stepped so lightly.  And a large part of his mind rejected the necessity.  He was Ok’tarik Mik Vis.  Not some ordinary orc.  He needn’t hide from any threat.  Even a wyrm as powerful as his prey. 

He corralled those thoughts and pushed them aside.  They were more than simply useless.  They were actively harmful to his goal.  He needed to be more than just a mindless orc who let his instincts guide him.  He needed to be thoughtful.  He needed to rely on reasoning. 

Could he survive if he surrendered to his nature?

Certainly.  He might even be stronger.  However, he knew that his story went deeper than mere survival.  The future of his people depended on him finding a better way to live.  On his embrace of logic and empathy.  On learning to live as a sapient creature, rather than something only a little better than a beast.

With that in mind, he focused on the newer parts of his personality, and he was rewarded with the foundational reinforcement of his path. 

On, he continued, using every ounce of hunter’s skill he’d learned so long ago.  He channeled the patience he’d acquired while stalking the wilkin fox.  The attention to detail he’d needed to corner that wily creature. 

The wyrm was a much more intelligent beast.

Far more powerful, too.  If he made a mistake, he would not live to regret it.  Now that it was wounded, the creature would let loose with the entirety of its power.  Like a cornered animal with the strength to topple mountains with little more than a thought.

Ok’tarik leaped over a shallow stream, his feet thudding down on the other side. 

Too much noise.

A simple splash of water and the squish of mud, but it was enough to alert the forest’s residents to his presence. 

And they responded appropriately.

In the trees up above, a creature emerged from camouflage.  It was nine-limbed and covered in bark-like scales that made it difficult for Ok’tarik to track.  Those limbs were more than seventy-feet long.  Four clung to branches, while the other five shot out in an attack.

Ok’tarik had encountered such creatures in the past, though none so well-developed or as large.  The Ruins were home to some truly powerful variants of familiar beasts.

He leaped aside, narrowly dodging the oncoming limbs.  A couple nicked him, but they didn’t do much damage.  However, they did envenom his flesh, sending tingles through his muscles.

He rolled to his feet just in time to catch another limb.  He flipped his hips and used his leverage to enable a mighty heave.  The beast resisted.  It clung to the trees.  But Ok’tarik was no normal orc.  He had the power of a high-tier deity who’d pushed past the normal constraints.  He let out a grunting roar as ethera coursed through his muscles.

Ok’tarik won the contest, ripping the beast free of its perch and sending it in a long arc that ended with it smashing into the ground.  The earth fractured beneath it, and its bark like scales ruptured.  It writhed in obvious pain, but Ok’tarik wasn’t content with a simple win.  Instead, he pounced on its slim body – such as it existed – and began pounding it with his fasts. 

They fell like hammers, each blow eliciting a whistling scream.  The beast filled the air with a gag-inducing musk, but Ok’tarik ignored the fetid smell, instead focusing on the task at hand.

He pulverized the beast’s body, pushing it to the brink of death.  Then, he utilized the same technique he’d developed to deal with the other orc warchiefs and latched onto the thing’s core of power.  It was a lot looser in animals than it was in a sentient creature like an orc, but it was tight enough for Ok’tarik to grab hold of it with his own power.

Then, he yanked it free.

Or he tried to.  Unfortunately, it resisted.  Tendrils of web-like ethera remained attached, keeping it in place.  So, he pulled ever harder, but even after a handful of seconds, the attachment stubbornly persisted.  It only took a few more seconds for him to realize that he was wasting his time.

It didn’t matter how hard he pulled, it wouldn’t detach.

So, he changed tactics, reforming his will into a sharp blade of ethera and slicing into the tendrils.  They flexed, but the sharpened edge managed to cut through them.  At the same time, Ok’tarik continued to pull, and the combination accomplished what neither technique could have managed alone.

The core came free.

The beast seized, its limbs going limp as its torso shook uncontrollably.  Ok’tarik ignored it.  Instead, he extended his will into the loose cloud of ethera and siphoned it away.  Pain erupted across his body, and most of that energy escaped through his permeable system. However, he’d developed the process quite a bit since his first use.  And he managed to contain more than ever before.

But that was when he recognized another issue.

The energy wasn’t exactly compatible.  When he shoved it into his own core, it burned, creating an explosion of conflicting ethera that nearly ruptured the ephemeral membrane containing the essence of his power.

His face twisted into a rictus of pain, Ok’tarik turned his willpower toward the problem at hand.  With a deft but mighty touch, he cupped the energy in ethereal hands and forced it into shape. 

It resisted.

Just like the beast’s core had fought back.  But he had far more command over his own system than he enjoyed concerning a foreign animal’s.  He took complete control, containing the explosion of energy that resulted from the mixture of incompatible ethera.  And gradually, the reaction played out, and over time, the two acclimated to one another’s presence.

Finally, after more effort than Ok’tarik could easily quantify, they mixed.

Quite a lot of that energy was lost in the transition.  If it had been water, he would have said that it had evaporated.  But the metaphysical explanation was much more complex than that simple analogy implied.  He certainly didn’t understand it, mostly because of the pain he endured during the process. That made it very difficult to focus on anything but keeping as much of it contained as he could manage.

He’d managed to make some headway when dealing with orcs, but with the tree-beast, Ok’tarik couldn’t do more than keep it mostly contained while his dominant ethera converted the foreign energy into something useful.

He let out a sigh as the extra power coursed through him.

Then, he picked himself up and looked around.  The battle had toppled more than a few trees, but more importantly, it had attracted quite a lot of attention.  As he discovered when he saw a pack of small quadrupedal beasts stalking among the tree line.  They moved with feline grace, though they were scaled.

Not surprising.

Orveth Kaal had once belonged to the Empire of Scale, which meant that most of the native beasts were reptilian in appearance.  There were other animals imported by the system, but they were the exception rather than the rule.

Whatever the case, Ok’tarik knew he was in for a fight.  He squared his shoulders, turning to keep an eye on the circling beasts.  It wasn’t long before one member of the pack took advantage of his turned back and launched itself in an attack.

Ok’tarik had been waiting for precisely that moment.  He whipped around, catching the leaping animal by the throat.  Its momentum sent its back legs forward, and the beast quickly adjusted, raking him with its claws. 

He grunted at the miniscule pain and squeezed.  The creature’s throat collapsed under his grip. 

But before it died, the rest of the animals pounced. 

In moments, Ok’tarik found himself in the middle of a wild melee with more than a dozen of the beasts.  Each one would have been more than capable of killing a normal deity-level orc, but Ok’tarik had long surpassed his peers.  With that strength as a foundation, he wrestled the first monster to the ground and stomped its head into mush.  That pattern continued, with him picking them apart with his bare hands and feet until only one remained.

It was the biggest among them, but Ok’tarik had already managed to break its leg.  The hitch in its step was pronounced, but it didn’t slow the best down by an appreciable degree.  Instead, it still moved just as sinuously before, stepping over its dead pack members as it circled Ok’tarik.

When it finally charged, he met it with a shoulder tackle that took it by surprise.  In seconds, he had driven it into the ground.  He was rewarded by the sound of cracking bones as he pummeled it with his fists.

It resisted.

It fought back.

But in the end, it was entirely incapable of defeating him.  And before long, Ok’tarik pushed himself to his feet.  Covered in blood, he looked around, chest heaving.  There were more beasts out there.  He could feel them.  But they didn’t dare attack.  Not after what they had seen.

The savagery of what he’d just accomplished had done what nothing else could – it had established him as an apex predator even among likeminded beasts.  They had no interest in testing him where the others had failed.

Through savage violence, he had gained a little peace.  There was a lesson there, he was certain.

In any case, Ok’tarik didn’t hesitate to resume his hunt.  The wyrm was still out there, and he intended to take a more impressive trophy than a simple horn.  The creature’s head would work nicely, but he also wanted to drain its power.

After all, it still possessed an elder core.  Ok’tarik lacked the context to truly understand what that meant, especially with his only source of information being a tortured dragon.  But he knew enough to recognize that it would be a powerful boon.

And that kind of power was addictive, even in theory.

So it was with renewed eagerness that he set off through the jungle.  Along the way, he found more than a few fights, but he defeated those challengers with the same ruthlessness that characterized every other battle over the course of his life.  Hours passed into more than a day, but he still didn’t find the wyrm’s trail.  He’d begun to worry that he would never rediscover it when he finally caught the ethereal scent.  It was faint.  Old.  But it was enough for Ok’tarik to follow.

He tracked it across the ring, and it grew ever stronger with every mile.  Two more days passed, during which the beasts became bolder.  Soon enough, he was forced to make another example – this time, against a bipedal creature with thick fur and a deceptively orc-like face that left Ok’tarik a little rattled.

Despite questions about the beast’s origins, Ok’tarik killed it the same as he had destroyed every obstacle in his way.  With every enemy he overcame, he grew a little stronger.  The amount wasn’t really enough to make a difference in the upcoming fights, but he reasoned that the cumulative effect would stand him in good stead.

After all, the horizon he’d noticed still loomed in the distance.  One day, he would reach it.  And pass it.  He only needed to keep pushing forward, and he would be rewarded.  He would reach his destination and perhaps find a new horizon. 

That thought frightened him, though he was loathe to admit it, even in his own mind.  It was also comforting in a way that he couldn’t rightly explain.

Finally, he reached the inner edge of the ring.

Before him stretched nothing but open air.  The trail led into the expanse, likely indicating that the wyrm believed that he was incapable of following.  That was not the case – not for Ok’tarik.

So, as he stepped onto a plane of ethera, he focused on the next inner ring.  There were nine of them, after all.  He’d already passed one, so eight more remained.  And if he needed to, he would keep going all the way to the core itself. 

That wyrm would fall.

Of that, Ok’tarik had no doubt.

The only question was how long it would take for him to track the cowardly creature down.  With that in mind, he continued his pursuit, ready to reach the next horizon.