Path of Dragons 16 - Chapter 26 - Impact (Patreon)

It was a little concerning that Elijah’s comfort zone included ramming things at high-speed.  He’d used the strategy often enough that the system had taken it into account when formulating the skills for his latest shape evolution.  What that said about him was anyone’s guess, but if Elijah had managed to maintain consciousness, he might have been a little worried.

As it was, unconsciousness overtook him, if only for a few brief seconds before Wild Resurgence and the ongoing Blessing of the Grove jerked him back to wakefulness.  When he awoke, he found himself buried in a large crater, with most of a ship atop him. 

He shifted, but one of the issues with forcing himself into such a large form was that his body was much heavier.  Normally, that wouldn’t have mattered that much.  The bonuses associated with Shape of the Primordial Deep were so impactful that he could move easily enough.  However, when combined with untold tons of rock, wood, orc bodies, and iron, it became more of an issue.

As his mind cleared, he forced his thoughts into a straight line.  That gave him the wherewithal to understand a couple of factors.  First and most concerning was that the orcs had not been defeated.  Enough of the shamans had survived that their overlapping domains remained intact, though it only took Elijah a second or two to recognize that they featured quite a few cracks. 

He’d damaged the array of domains, but it had not been destroyed.

The second issue was that The World is an Ocean was on the verge of deactivation.  With that would come a significant decrease in his attributes as well as the end of Aquatic Body Control.  He would become a sitting duck.

And finally, the entire island had begun to shift beneath him, evidence that its stability had been significantly compromised.  The only reason it held together at all was because of Fungee, whose many tendrils acted to reinforce the structure and keep it all tied together.

How long would that last?

Elijah could feel the fungal colony straining.  More importantly, he could sense Fungee’s pain.  The domains continued to negatively impact him, and it wouldn’t be long before he became too weakened to hold the island intact.

That meant Elijah needed to act, and quickly.

So, he shifted, taking on the Shape of Withering and adopting Guise of the Stalker.  Before the pile of rubble could collapse atop him, he slithered through the gaps, climbing ever higher until he managed to find his way to the surface. 

That was when he was greeted by a distressing sight.

The large and enhanced orcs, with their muscles bulging with potential and ethera, had already begun to search the rubble.  They knew he was still alive, and their rage lent them the kind of focus that only true fury could manifest.

Elijah was lucky they couldn’t see him.

On the plus side, the shamans’ ship had been destroyed by Elijah’s turtle kamikaze, though most of the spellcasting orcs were still alive.  Battered, bruised, and more than a little disconcerted, but they were still upright.  For the most part.

And they’d formed a series of concentric circles, with their leader standing at the center.  He was tall and wide-shouldered, but relatively slim for an orc.  He was attired similarly to all the other shamans, which meant that he wore an ornamental headdress that looked like it had been fashioned from the head of a scaled wolf-like creature not so dissimilar from a draconid.  He also carried a tall staff with upturned fangs forming flange-like protrusions at its head. 

More troublingly, he felt like a full deity.  Not as powerful as the first shaman Elijah had killed months before, but still not to be taken lightly. 

Elijah summoned a gust of wind that filled his wings and sent him into the sky.  He didn’t use Cloud of Decay, though.  Instead, he circled for a few seconds before tucking his wings and diving, claws-first.

Falling Talon fell upon the lead shaman like a missile.  Elijah hit him right between the shoulder blades, his massive talons ripping through the creature’s spine without issue.  A surge of ethera countered the damage, but Elijah had never planned to kill the thing in one shot.  Instead, he dug his talons in, then summoned another gust of wind that threw him high into the air.

Then, suddenly, he was past the edge of the island and over open sky.

He released the shaman just as the remaining ships opened up with their harpoons.  Elijah tucked his wings and dove, descending past the lip and to relative cover.  Orcs on gliders followed, but Elijah threw them off course with Ride the Wind.  That fouled their vector of attack, giving him the opportunity to slither among them. 

He’d spent quite a lot of time practicing with Ride the Wind, and it, combined with the instincts that came with the shape itself, gave him nearly perfect control.  The glider-orcs seemed to possess an instinctive understanding of wind – to the point where Elijah suspected they each had some degree of air-attunement – but it was nothing compared to the control of the venomwing stalker.

Elijah conducted the currents like a maestro, changing directions suddenly and without warning.  At the same time, he pushed the gliders aside and threw their attacks off.  They never touched him.

Meanwhile, he ripped the gliders and their pilots to pieces, spreading Wither and Virulent Rot among them.  He was also forced to keep his Mantle of Authority active, just to counter the weight of the shamans’ collective domain.  He’d cut the head off the snake, which meant it was much weaker, but it would take quite a bit more to completely overcome it.

Elijah danced through the air.

To an outsider, his movements probably looked erratic and ill-planned.  But the reality couldn’t have been further from that perception.  He pushed himself to think ahead, incorporating the lessons learned from his combat training with Okar.  It wasn’t quite the same, but it was close enough that he could apply similar principles to fighting in any of his forms.

It wasn’t long before the glider pilots joined the lead shaman in a steady fall that would eventually kill them.  Meanwhile, Elijah flew beneath the island and resumed Guise of the Stalker.  Once he reached the other side, a quick gust of wind took him above the landmass, where he deployed Cloud of Decay.

The shamans panicked.

Even without their leader, they maintained a significant degree of power.  However, they were far less efficient at directing it.  As a result, the enhanced orcs – who’d gone back to trying to rip the island to pieces – had become slightly weaker.

That was enough to verify that Elijah was on the right track.

He picked another target and dove.  Before the shamans could react, he’d launched himself back into the air and was gliding away.  A lot like the eagles he’d seen hunting mountain goats long ago.  The biggest difference was that his flight relied on summoned updrafts rather than their more controlled ascent.

And size, of course.

His thirty-ish foot wingspan was three times that of even the largest pre-World Tree eagle’s. 

Of course, the shaman fought back, stabbing at his legs with what looked like a curved ritual dagger.  But the creature was far too weak to do enough damage before Elijah released it to its long and deadly fall.

After that, Elijah just resumed the same loop.

Diving below the island, taking on Guise of the Stalker, gaining altitude on the other side, and then deploying a round of Cloud of Decay.  Once that was finished, he snatched another shaman.

Over and over. 

The first ten loops were accompanied by significant tension, but every dead shaman weakened the domain a little more.  And it wasn’t long before it broke altogether.  In addition, the enhanced warriors continued to lose steam.  The combination meant that it wasn’t long before Fungee gained an advantage. 

Even Imal made her presence known via massive geysers strong enough to throw the orcs free of the island.  The ones that landed at the edges of the island met Fungee’s vengeful tendrils and were ripped apart, usually from the inside out.

Few of the orcs lasted long after that.

Still, there were a lot of them, and the vast majority remained on their ships.  Elijah mostly ignored them, save for when they launched volleys of harpoons and cannon fire at him.  A few instances wounded him, but not so severely that Wild Resurgence couldn’t mend the injuries in short order.

Regardless, killing the orcs without using Shape of Embers was a death-by-a-thousand-cuts sort of situation.  Effective, but time-consuming.  More importantly, it required significant concentration, and he didn’t have the benefit of grossly enhanced reflexes to buoy his fighting capability.

However, he’d already decided to keep that shape in reserve, just in case the whole attack had been a trap.  There was still a good chance that the warchief might show up, and Elijah knew that if he was caught off-guard and without his full suite of abilities, he would lose that fight.

On and on it went until, hours later, even the orcs’ bloodlust couldn’t stand up to the unmitigated reality that they could not win.  After the last of the shamans fell, they began a retreat.

Or, given the chaos of it, retreat might’ve been too generous a label.  They scattered in every direction.  The ships that were still intact quickly outpaced the more damaged vessels, but it seemed that orcs went by an every-man-for-himself sort of philosophy.  They certainly didn’t wait around to guard their fellows.

Elijah harried them for a while, but once they had made it clear that they weren’t going to stop anytime soon, he turned and headed back to the sky island.

And what he saw was a disaster.

Fungee had managed to hold the island together, but only barely.  Huge hunks of rock had already been lost, and one side of the once-subterranean forest had been exposed to open air by a yawning cave.  Any animal capable of fleeing already had, but many of them were terrestrial. 

And they were all terrified.

Elijah landed in the middle of the cave’s opening, only to find Imal cradling a scaled, fawn-like creature.  It trembled in her arms, its eyes darting in every direction. 

It broke Elijah’s heart.

“Are they gone?” asked Imal.

Elijah nodded. “For now.  I don’t know how long that’ll last, though.”

“What are we going to do?”

Elijah admitted that he wasn’t sure.  The first order of business was to somehow repair the island.  If he couldn’t, then much of his work would have been wasted.  Certainly, the Root Nexus and the dolmen would fall into that category.  Without an anchor, they would be useless.

But he was far more concerned about Fungee.

He knelt beside the red-and-white capped mushroom and rested his hand against the spongey surface.  Then, he pushed his soul into Fungee’s consciousness.  Once he’d made the connection, Elijah attempted to convey what he needed from the fungal colony. 

The ask was simple enough for Fungee to understand, and in moments, he’d already gotten to work.  He wove his tendrils through the various pieces of the island, forming a net-like mesh that would keep it intact while Elijah did what was necessary. 

Of course, Fungee didn’t need to do it alone.  Elijah shifted into his dragon form and used Breath of Life before casting Dictate of the World Tree in an attempt to funnel as much vitality into Fungee as he could manage.  The fungi harnessed all that excess energy to efficiently grow past his normal parameters. 

And slowly, everything came together.

Imal helped as well, manifesting a dense wave of humidity that provided perfect growing conditions. 

Meanwhile, Elijah left the cave to guide the fungal tendrils on the surface.  It was all Fungee, but the further those tendrils were from the origin, the less control he had. 

Gradually, the island was saved.

In the end, it was still unstable, but it would hold at least until Elijah could take the next step.  To do that, he needed to explore.  So, he returned to the yawning opening and told Imal what he planned.

“I’ll stay here and protect Fungee,” she said. 

“Are you sure?”

He’d actually suggested that she come with him, and he was surprised to hear her alternate plan.

“I’m sure.  Do what you need to do.”

Elijah nodded and said, “I’ll be back soon.”

Then, he shifted into the Shape of the World Serpent and slithered away.  He needed to find somewhere safe to park the island.