Path of Dragons 16 - Chapter 46 - Misdirection (Patreon)

The world devolved into a realm of fire, sending a wave of flames to consume everything.  The ships went up like bundles of matchsticks, burning so intensely that their crew turned to ash in the barest of seconds.  The fire didn’t stop there, though.  It burned much of the mundane ash as well, turning them into the vitality infused version that the ability would soon harness to grow the forest.

And that was just the first wave.

Eight more followed, with each one more explosive than the last.  At the center of it were two figures.  One was Elijah, who emerged burned just like everything else.  The only difference was that his soul latched onto the ashes, merging with them to become a free-floating spirit with a slightly detached consciousness.

His attention remained on his enemy. 

Normal orcs burned down to nothing.  But Ok’tarik was anything but normal.  The first few waves blistered his skin, and for a second, Elijah expected Flames of Renewal to finish the job.  However, the orc chieftan once again surprised him by raising his ivory spear toward the sky and letting loose with a surge of ethera more powerful than any Elijah had ever felt before.

It tasted like space, reminding Elijah of the blue-scaled dragon he’d fought at the end of the Broken Crown Primal Realm.  Which made absolutely no sense, because Ok’tarik had yet to display that sort of attunement.

The only explanation was that it came from his spear, which blazed with blue light that rivaled the flames for intensity. 

That energy collapsed onto Ok’tarik, forming a sphere around him.  When the flames – or the ashes – drew closer to him, they swirled around in a diffuse cloud that ultimately ended up being absorbed.

Even Elijah felt the pull.

The bubble grew denser, and it wasn’t difficult to see why.  For every bit of ash it absorbed, the atmosphere inside became more untenable until, by the seventh wave, it burst entirely.  That exposed Ok’tarik to the full breadth of the two strongest waves of fire. 

And he fared just as Elijah had expected.  His skin continued to blister and what little fat decorated his body started to sizzle.  Still, he maintained the shape of his body, even if the end result looked more like charred meat than a living orc. 

Elijah floated above, watching a forest grow into fruition.  Ok’tarik didn’t move.  Nor did he fall.  He simply floated in mid-air, supported by nothing but ethera.  That didn’t last long, and when he fell, it was upon one of the roots. 

For Elijah’s part, he felt his body begin to reform into the emberkin saint, but he didn’t allow it.  Instead, he shifted into the Shape of the Magus, the transformation taking slightly longer because he had to wait for the reformation to complete.  Once it did, he shifted into the form of the dragon toad.

As he did, he used Eye of the Magus and saw something even more beautiful than he could’ve ever expected. 

He knew the atmosphere had retained quite a bit of heat.  It dissipated a little more with each passing moment, but it would take quite some time for it to return to normal.  As a result, dense flows of fiery ethera wove between the newly formed trees.  Each one contained a universe of flames within, and in Shape of the Magus, Elijah knew precisely how to use them.

With a flick of his mind, he grabbed hold of one flaming river, wrapped his consciousness around it, and forced it to shift course.  It hit another flow, merging into something much larger.  Unfortunately, that was when it started to falter.

It needed fuel.

And Elijah knew precisely how to provide it.  The first step was to fan the flames with wave after wave of air ethera.  He dragged it from above and below, feeding it into those rivers. 

But that wasn’t enough.

So, it was a good thing that there was plenty of more mundane fuel just lying around.  With a herculean effort, Elijah shoved the combined flows into the forest.  It immediately caught fire, sending thick columns of smoke into the air.  He continued to fan those flames, all the while grabbing hold of more fiery rivers to combine with the one he’d just created. 

In seconds, the entire forest was aflame.

Elijah didn’t stop there.  He didn’t just want a forest fire.  He needed an inferno on par with the surface of the sun.  And the Shape of the Magus was well-positioned to provide just that.

As he fed the flames, the forest burned. 

And at the center of it all was a dragon toad, conducting the symphony of fire like it was his personal orchestra.  He didn’t move because he didn’t need to.  It was as if all his practice coalesced into that singular moment, and when it did, the elements responded to his touch as if they were an extension of his very being.

The fire could no longer burn him. 

Not because he was impervious.  He certainly wasn’t.  But rather, because he wove the threads of air and water so tightly around him that the flames simply could not penetrate.

The same could not be said for the other figure floating in the center of that inferno.

Ok’tarik burned. 

His flesh flaked off, dropping toward the unseen planetary core.  But still, he survived.  And he wasn’t going to remain in place.  Instead, he grabbed hold of the local ethera, forming an invisible surface.  Then, he used it to shove his body away.

Elijah pushed the furnace-like atmosphere to new heights of heat, but it wasn’t much longer until the fuel ran dry.  The trees were gone.  There was no more air, and even with Elijah’s command over the local flows, he couldn’t feed it fast enough to maintain the flames.

They petered out, gone almost as quickly as they had ignited. 

By that point, Ok’tarik was hundreds of yards away.  His body was shriveled and burned to something resembling charcoal, but the vitality within him remained strong and unceasing.

Elijah leaped forward, but as he drew closer, Ok’tarik also sped up.  And Elijah didn’t catch him until they outpaced the devastation wrought by Flames of Renewal.  That brought the scope of the orcish fleet into true focus.

Because as much damage as Elijah had done, there remained too many ships to count.  And they had all turned away from the Vengeance to focus on him.

“Shit,” he croaked, shifting once again.

This time, he took on the Shape of the World Serpent.  It was just in time, too, because a hail of harpoons and cannon fire erupted from the armada only a second later.  Elijah dove, ramming through the burned-out wreckage of a pair of smaller ships before pouring on the speed.

He couldn’t outrun the attacks.

Not unless he used Dimensional Leap, and he wasn’t prepared to do that just yet.  However, the combination of his Scales of Eternity, his Mantle of the Chimera, and a quick cast of Wild Resurgence stood him in good stead as he was buried beneath the bombardment.

It only lasted for a few seconds before he burst free and into open air.  Even that short duration left great gashes in his serpentine body.  Dripping blood, he redirected and accelerated to top speed.  His wounds healed as he circled behind a small landmass that was quickly destroyed by another volley.

By then, Elijah was gone, though.

And it wasn’t long before he returned to the fleet.  He rammed straight through one ship, then wove between two others.  The first vessel was directly destroyed, but the other two only succumbed to another indiscriminate barrage.

The orcs wanted him dead, and they didn’t care how many of their own they had to kill to accomplish that feat. 

But Elijah wasn’t worried about them.  His lone goal was to kill Ok’tarik.  Or in the likely event of failure on that front, force him to retreat.  That seemed like the only chance for escape.

That notion was based on an examination of previous trials.  According to Furyo, the records were pretty spotty, but every now and again, a special orc would rise to power.  When that happened in the past, those like Ok’tarik had united the others of their kind to field a unified horde.

It hadn’t happened often, but it was clear that cutting the head from the snake was the only way to stop them.

So, Elijah didn’t run away.  Instead, he pushed deeper into the fleet, tracking the still-recovering Ok’tarik, all in the hopes of finishing him off.

It wasn’t long before Elijah caught up, but when he did, he reaffirmed that killing the warchief would not be an easy task.  Already, the charcoal-like skin had flaked off, and the orc had begun to fill out.  Even as skeletally thin as he was, his physical abilities didn’t seem like they’d been adversely affected.  He still moved with the full weight of a deity, and when he saw Elijah coming, he stopped his retreat and charged.

Elijah shifted, this time assuming the Shape of Withering.  He used Plagueburst, coughing up a ball of venom that he spat into Ok’tarik’s path.  Just before they collided, Elijah used Ride the Wind to summon an updraft that took him just out of Ok’tarik’s reach. 

In his condition, the orc chieftan wasn’t quite as nimble, though.  More importantly, he was incapable of dodging the roiling ball of ethereal venom in his path. 

It exploded with typical potency, burning through everything its path.  Elijah couldn’t outrun it, and in his current form, he had no real defense against the shockwave.  Suddenly, he felt some small fraction of the damage he’d inflicted upon his enemies. 

And it was agonizing, even without the soul-destroying part.  Thankfully, he only caught a splash before outpacing the wave of force. 

By contrast, Ok’tarik got a face-full of it, and it wasn’t pretty.

Elijah left a trail of Cloud of Decay before shifting back into the Shape of the Magus.  As soon as the form took hold, he began to manipulate the comparatively smaller flows of fire.  This time, he didn’t need to add air, though.  Because in the distance, a turquoise-scaled dragon had summoned a massive windstorm that had already begun to sweep across the fleet.

Cyran had held up his end of the plan.

Of course, the plan had gone off the rails almost as soon as Elijah set foot outside the Vengeance, but one of the key components of his fighting style was that he was nothing if not adaptable.  So, with that in mind, he leaped across the fleet and straight into the windstorm.

It was larger and more intense than any tornado back on Earth.  Through velocity alone, the wind would’ve stripped the skin from a mortal’s body.  Maybe even an ascendent.  And the entire structure was at least two miles wide. 

So, when Elijah directed those flames inside, they had plenty of room to propagate.  On top of that, the ships made for perfect tinder, with the smaller ones going up in seconds.  The larger among them were quite a bit more resistant, but downing ships had never been the point.

They were after more important prey.

Thankfully, even at a distance, Cyran was more than capable of directing the flaming tornado with minute control.  As it tracked toward Ok’tarik’s position, Elijah continued to feed it more and more fire.  And soon, the whirlwind was more flame than wind. 

Even in the middle of battle, Elijah couldn’t help but stare at the magnificence of it.  The orcs were similarly mesmerized, though not by appreciation.  Rather, they were terrified.

For the first time, Elijah wondered if driving them into retreat might be a possibility.

But they had to take care of Ok’tarik.

Elijah leaped into the center of the tornado, which overlapped with solid ground, where he continued to push the flames outward.  And eventually, the windstorm reached Ok’tarik.  It swallowed the orc whole, but as expected, it didn’t kill him.

In fact, Elijah couldn’t help but consider the reality that they might not be capable of killing the durable orc.  What would they do then?

Elijah didn’t have an answer to that question.

However, what he did have was a plan, and he intended to stick with it until the very end.

 Or until he had no choice but to admit defeat.