Path of Dragons 16 - Chapter 34 - Disillusionment and Anger (Patreon)

Communicating with a nearly mindless fungus was tricky.  However, Elijah had a couple of tricks up his sleeve that would make the process that much easier.  The first was Thorn.  Or more specifically, the new ability he’d gained with its evolution.  Fungal Growth would allow him to form a connection with Fungee and conjure his spores. 

And they weren’t temporary, either.  They were real spores that would persist indefinitely, growing into pockets of Fungee-related colonies.  One day, they might even physically reconnect with the originator. 

More importantly, those spores tended to infect the other fungi, overwhelming and assimilating them.  They didn’t completely take over, but they did result in a hybrid that was already predisposed to listening to Elijah’s commands. 

The other trick was related but subtly different.  Over the past year, Elijah had learned to talk to Fungee, which gave him no small amount of insight into communicating with the fungi in his mushroom cave. 

He didn’t enjoy perfect control over it.  Nor did he want that.  As far as Elijah was concerned, controlling any living thing was the realm of tamers.  And that was as far from what Elijah wanted as was possible.  Instead, he preferred to convince the fungi to do what he wanted it to do.

It was a fine line, but to Elijah, falling on one side or the other made all the difference.  And he knew precisely where he belonged.  In fact, he didn’t think he could cross it even if he wanted to.  His nature simply wouldn’t allow it.

Elijah had spent the past eighteen hours alternating between using Fungal Growth, Dictate of the World Tree, and Breath of Life on the contents of the cave.  And it had grown well past his wildest expectations, with mushrooms, fungal tendrils, and a slime-like lichen covering the walls. 

The last was the most interesting, because lichen wasn’t completely fungal in nature.  Instead, it was a symbiotic partnership between fungi and algae.  Before the World Tree’s touch had injected magic into the situation, algae drew energy from photosynthesis to produce sugars that fed the entire structure.  In this case, it necessarily substituted ethera for sunlight. 

The relationship made both organisms stronger, and together, they created a densely ethereal atmosphere that had become almost suffocating.  The fungi thrived, filling the air with drifting spores and covering the walls in writhing tendrils.

Unfortunately, when he’d returned to the Vengeance, he had found that the surface of the mountain had been scoured clean of fungi.  In addition, someone – probably one of the K’levehar – had sealed the cavern’s ventilation shafts.  It should’ve been fatal for the fungal colony, but that symbiotic relationship with algae had allowed it to thrive in ways that even Elijah couldn’t have predicted.

He was still angry that they’d tried to slaughter his creation, though.  Sure, it was dangerous.  And Elijah understood the need to control its spread on the surface.  However, the efforts to kill the fungi altogether was both shortsighted and offensive.  In addition, it made him wonder if they had forgotten the role the fungal colony had played in the previous battle against the orcs.  Without it, none of them would have survived.

It was just further evidence that the dragons didn’t respect him or his subordinates.  Nor did they appreciate his efforts.

Elijah could feel the distance growing between him and the Empire of Scale with every passing day.  Perhaps it was always inevitable.  For all that he’d thought an entire society of dragons was a novel and fantastic idea, he had been grossly disappointed in the reality of what it meant.

They were people, but so many of them had leaned into the worst parts of their nature. 

Of course, that could’ve just been a characteristic of his experiences.  There were plenty of decent dragons out there as well.  So, maybe they weren’t as doomed as he sometimes thought they were.

He quickly shifted away from his disappointment in dragons.  It was nothing new, and he didn’t want to dwell on it.  Instead, he focused on the fungi, which was far more rewarding to consider.  It wasn’t Fungee, but it was similar enough to establish a relationship. 

Like a less evolved version.

Gradually, Elijah pulled away, then looked around.  He could feel the Vengeance’s alarm, and it coincided with his expectations for the orcs’ arrival.  So, without further ado, he shifted into the Shape of the Magus and reopened the tunnels leading to the surface.  The surrounding earth resisted his touch, but Shape of the Magus afforded him enough expertise and power to brutishly force the issue.

Then, he broke free. 

Fungi rushed out to slither across the surface.  Spores exploded into the air like fungal geysers, and giant mushrooms sprouted all across the landscape.  Meanwhile, Elijah hoped that the leaders remembered to dole out those amulets meant to protect them from fungal infection. 

Because if they hadn’t, some of his so-called allies were going to have an extremely bad experience.  For some reason, that didn’t bother him as much as he expected it to.

With the tunnels open, Elijah got a better sense of the orcs’ disposition.  They still hadn’t reached the Vengeance, which meant he had time to move on to the next phase of his plan.

He’d grown much more proficient since the first time he’d summoned a storm, but the basics remained similar enough that he used a nearly identical technique.  The first step was to saturate the air with water, and luckily, that process was helped along by Imal’s efforts.  The entire time he’d worked on his fungal warfare, she’d been humidifying the air surrounding the Vengeance, and to the point where a low mist clung to the craggy surface. 

Elijah took hold of that, accentuating it in a way that only he could.  Part of it came from air and fire, which was why he could accomplish things alone that usually required at least a partnership. 

Soon enough, clouds began to form overhead.  And after only a couple of hours, those clouds turned black.  They blotted out the light, turning everything monochromatic. 

Just off the coast of the sky island, ships loomed like shadowy mountains.  Elijah felt the shamans’ domain descend upon him, and he shuddered.  His efforts grew sluggish until he slammed his Mantle of Authority against it.  The multiple clashes with those abilities had honed his mantle to a sharp edge, and it sliced through their restrictive efforts with shocking ruthlessness. 

It only extended across his cave, but that was enough.

Because he had built the storm – and the new fungal colony – specifically to exist within those domains.  The storm was almost entirely atmospheric, driven by natural forces as much as it was fueled by ethera.  So, even with the enforced stillness that resulted from the domain, it continued to build, whipping the clouds into a frenzy.

Those harnessed the rising heat spewing from the tunnels to continue the storm’s intensification.

In addition, Elijah’s steady use of Dictate of the World Tree had steered the fungi away from ethera dependence.  It was still a magical organism, but most of its defense mechanisms were biological in nature.  Because of that, the spores were largely unaffected by the shamans’ domains.

By contrast, the tendrils that had snaked across the ground remained mostly inert.  That wouldn’t be the case if an orc came close, but for now, they looked almost harmless.  However, they worked on a similar concept to a Venus fly trap in that it was covered in tiny hair-like cilia.  Each one of those functioned as a lever-like mechanosensor.  Bending it deformed the cells at its base, opening the mechanosensitive ion channels.  In that way, a mechanical stimulus was transduced into an electrical one, creating receptor potential.

If that receptor potential crossed the appropriate threshold, it fired an action potential, which was a genuine electrical signal not so different from what existed in the human nervous system.  But instead of being propagated through neurons, it traveled through fungal tissue.

The real heart of the system came in the fact that it required two action potentials within roughly fifteen seconds.  When that threshold was achieved, the trap was sprung.  In the case of a Venus fly trap, it simply closed, imprisoning whatever insect was unlucky enough to be caught.  Then, it digested them slowly.

But the fungal tendrils differed in that those action potentials triggered a surge of ethera that sent them to snake around any potential enemy.  It effectively woke them up. 

The surge was contained within the tendril itself, the outer casing of which had been specifically bred to defend against external ethera.  It was meant to protect the fungal colony against hostile domains. 

In short, it was insulated from the shamans’ abilities.  Not eternally.  The second the ethera started to surge, the domains began their assault.  By Elijah’s calculations, it wouldn’t take them more than a minute to foul the outer defenses.  Once they were compromised, it wouldn’t be long before they once again fell inert.

But by that point, they would’ve already done so of their own accord.  The second the ethera stopped flowing, the domains would cease their attacks.

Elijah was particularly proud of that creation, and he was eager to see just how well it functioned. 

It wasn’t long before he sensed it first-hand, and he watched – through a combination of Soul of the Wild and his ongoing connection to the fungi – the tendrils worked precisely as they were meant to.  The orcish victim never saw it coming. The tendril activated, whipped around its legs, and dragged it to the ground.  Moments later, it had formed a cocoon around the creature and subjected it to a strong dose of spores and acidic goo that quickly began eating through the orc’s flesh.

Accompanying that orc’s screams was a peal of thunder and the splatter of rain.  All three were answered by the sound of cannonfire, both from the ships as well as from the Vengeance’s weapons. 

Elijah ignored it.

Inside his cave, he was entirely safe.  So long as he kept his Mantle of Authority deployed, the orcs couldn’t affect him. 

Lightning fell among the ships, slamming into their masts and spreading destruction across their decks.  Elijah could scarcely sense what was going on out there, but even he could hear the screams of orcs as their charred bodies were thrown free of their vessels.

But that first volley of lightning bolts did little to down the ships.  So, it was good that there was a lot more coming.

In only a few moments, the sound of thunder drowned out cannonfire and screams alike.  Lighting lanced down from the clouds in a constant barrage.  A single bolt might’ve been incapable of destroying a ship.  But where individuals failed, the collective weight of thousands succeeded.

It wasn’t long before ships began to list, crashing into one another and sending the entire fleet off course.  Some ended up crashing into the Vengeance, their stout prows fighting a brief battle against reinforced rock.

The rock won.

Invariably.

The shattered ships spilled their cargo of warriors, oarsmen, and even a few of the weaker shamans onto the Vengeance.  They stumbled free of the wreckage, uncomprehending of the situation. That brief bout of befuddlement was all the opening the fungal tendrils needed.

They snapped out, revealing themselves as a forest of spongey vines burdened with aggressive intent.  The tendrils lashed the orcs, wrapping around them and dragging them to the ground.  The orcs struggled, but their confusion persisted even as they were wrapped in cocoons and dissolved into a meat slurry meant to feed the fungi.

Of course, none of those orcs were the cream of the crop.

There were more powerful entities among them, and they resisted the tendrils without issue.  They weren’t even deities.  Just powerful demigods, but they survived all the same.

Thankfully, they were less resistant to the lightning, the volume of which increased with every passing second. 

At the same time, Elijah twisted various elemental flows around one another.  He wove with the expertise of a true mage, manipulating those rivers of attuned ethera into familiar shapes.

Water for fuel.

Fire for violence.

Air to whip the atmosphere into a frenzy of warring pressure.

And earth to keep it all tethered to reality as well as the Vengeance. 

The wind scoured the surface of the mountainous ship while rain fell in great sheets, turning the ground into a quagmire of swirling mud that further hid the dormant fungal tendrils. 

The storm was apocalyptic in scope, stretching across dozens of miles.  Already, the natural atmosphere had begun to respond, to mimic the cataclysm Elijah had created.

But he was just getting started.

Even as he pushed more and more ethera into it, the other dragons, serpentors, and drakes burst free of various hatches scattered across the mountain.  They ran, flew, or bounded across the surface and hit the remaining orcs like a tidal wave of scales and blades.

And thus, the battle began.

Elijah could only hope it wouldn’t turn into a slaughter of dragons.