Path of Dragons 16 - Chapter 47 - Vitality, Unrestrained (Patreon)

The center of a tornado was an odd thing to experience.  In nature, the wind funnels were small enough and moved so quickly that it was almost meaningless.  Compared to the eye of a hurricane – to which, it was structurally similar – it was no more than a pinprick.  But given that Cyran’s tornado remained in one place and was much, much larger than any natural wind funnel, Elijah found himself sailing through a relatively calm atmosphere.

The most prevalent sensory detail was the roar, directionless and felt more than heard.  Elijah’s entire field of vision was covered by flames, miles high and so dense that he felt like he’d descended into the sun itself.  Then there was the pressure.  Elijah’s ears screamed, the water inside his body boiled, and everything looked flat, taking on a monochromatic orange hue that made the world seem more alien than normal.

The one small mercy was up above, where a sliver of blue greeted his eyes.

From a physics standpoint, it wasn’t exactly reasonable.  Given that the entire tornado was magical in nature, it was unique in more than just size.  Cyran fed it oxygen from above, fueling the flames with a deft touch that Elijah could never hope to emulate.  It behaved not dissimilar from a bellows combined with a convection oven, pushing the heat to ridiculous levels that felt uncomfortable even to him.

Adding to that discomfort was the fact that Elijah also couldn’t breathe, partially due to the pressure but mostly because the flames consumed all of the oxygen before it reached him.  Thankfully, the Ring of the River King rendered that unnecessary.

As he sailed through the oxygen-less air, Elijah looked down to see Ok’tarik standing in the center of a quagmire of melted rock, which had turned glassy and oddly jagged.  He was surrounded by a sphere of pulsing ethera, though it shrank a little with every passing moment. 

Elijah hit him like a runaway train, popping that bubble and shocking the orc out of what looked like a meditative trance.  For the briefest of seconds, Elijah felt like he’d gained an advantage.  Fire lashed all around him, drawn from the tornado to slam into his enemy like whips of pure plasma.  At the same time, he clamped down on the orc’s shoulder, churning his already-burned muscle with the raging inferno within his mouth.

But then Ok’tarik recovered.

Not physically, but rather mentally.  And the second he did, the fight shifted.  Suddenly, Elijah found himself at the wrong end of a wrestling move as Ok’tarik grabbed hold of his upper body, twisted, and slammed him into the ground.  The molten rock splashed, searing him between the crystals on his back.

Agony arced through him, felt but summarily dismissed into its own leaf.  Elijah struggled to right himself, but now that Ok’tarik had a good handle, he wasn’t going to escape. 

He bunched his legs and pushed, launching Ok’tarik away.  However, before Elijah could even hope to recover, the orc summoned a plane of ethera in his path.  He bounded off of it, sending the sound of cracking glass echoing even louder than the raging fire tornado. 

He launched himself back at Elijah.

Before Elijah could move, a spear exploded through his chest, releasing a swirl of wind.  That extra oxygen caught fire, resulting in an explosion that once again sent Ok’tarik flying away.  It also destroyed Elijah’s soft underbelly, spilling his airy guts all over the place. 

More importantly, it necessitated a shift, because Wild Resurgence just wasn’t going to cut it when it came to healing that grievous an injury.  So, without further delay, he took on his dragon form.

Before that transformation completed, Ok’tarik had returned.  Elijah dodged to the side, still growing into shape as the orc buried his spear in his front leg.  Vitality surged out of him, up the shaft, and into Ok’tarik.  His flesh mended with every pulse.

Elijah swatted at him, spreading his wings in a roar as he cast multiple spells at once.  Wild Resurgence was already going, so he added Blessing of the Grove and Bough of the World Tree to the mix.  In addition, he directed Nature’s Claim toward Ok’tarik, who’d briefly tumbled into a molten rock.  It collapsed on top of him in a shower of lava, but Elijah knew that wouldn’t be enough to kill him.

True to Elijah’s expectations, Ok’tarik rose only a moment later.  Still dripping superheated rock, he leveled his spear at Elijah and advanced.  He moved deliberately, each step cutting through the pool of molten rock like it was nothing more than water.

In the meantime, Elijah’s wings caught fire, though he paid it no attention.  Despite the pain, the damage was minimal enough that it made no difference in his healing.

As the wound in his torso mended, he and Ok’tarik faced off.  An emerald scaled dragon with burning wings, versus a much smaller orc, a cloak of molten rock flowing down his shoulders.  They were surrounded by a still-swirling tornado of fire, with glassy earth, melted and in shards, beneath their feet.

Then, they both attacked at the same time.

Ok’tarik dashed forward, while Elijah opened his mouth and spewed a thousand wasps in the orc’s face.  They hit like tiny missiles, stinging the warchief and spreading instances of venom through his body.  At the same time, the fungi of Nature’s Claim finally took hold and erupted from his back.

Ok’tarik paid it no mind.

Elijah lashed out, swinging like an angry bear.  And miraculously, Ok’tarik managed to block the attack.  His smaller form flexed, his feet skidding across the molten ground.  But a hastily summoned plane of ethera brought him to a quick stop.  Then, he shoved against Elijah’s foreclaw, sending it wide.  A second later, he’d buried his spear back in Elijah’s chest.

Vitality – some of it from the various healing spells coursing through his body – surged through the spear.

And Elijah watched in horror as his enemy’s injuries healed even more rapidly than before. 

“You want vitality?” he grunted.  “So be it.”

Then, he opened his mouth and summoned the Breath of Life.  However, he didn’t allow it to come forth.  Not yet.  Instead, he conjured his Mantle of Authority, pushing it to its maximum potency without enlarging the area of effect.

The result was a small tree, blooming above his head.  It wasn’t nearly as large as some of the previous incarnations.  However, it looked more real than any other.  More solid.  Like he could reach out and touch the bark. 

Elijah couldn’t spare the attention required to truly appreciate it, though.  He grabbed hold, then compressed it down to nothing more than a seed.  And then, he pushed that seed into the Breath of Life, where it became something else.

Something predatory.

Something fungal.

It wrapped around the Breath of Life, spreading through it like a mycelial network.  And with it came the same directive he’d identified within Fungee and tried to corral.  It was a mandate to grow, to consume, to become everything. 

And it infected the Breath of Life, turning it into something hostile.  Not to life itself, but rather, to anything that wasn’t it. 

Elijah let it loose.

Ok’tarik rushed through the cloud of green mist, though only by momentum.  He stumbled and fell to his knees, skidding to a stop after only a few feet.  His back rippled, then expanded.  Giant tumors swelled through his skin, deforming his muscles.  One exploded in a shower of gore that immediately boiled away, while another kept going until it looked like the orc had grown a massive hunchback. 

And that wasn’t the limit.

Cancerous growths emerged all across his trembling body. Some were fleshy and looked like boils or cysts.  Others looked like nothing more than swollen knots beneath his skin.  Still others were cutaneous horns.  Even his tusks became misshapen, growing burs across the otherwise smooth surface.

Ok’tarik wasn’t the only thing affected, either.

The ground beneath his feet erupted with mushrooms and plants, the latter growing into flame-petaled flowers that swirled with smoke and ethera.  Mycelial tendrils wrapped around their stems, gradually converting the plants into a hybrid between vegetation and fungi. 

Elijah kept the weaponized Breath of Life going for as long as he could, and Ok’tarik writhed in pain as even his bones reacted.  They cut through his skin in splinters, and if it hadn’t been so hot, the entire area would’ve been painted with his blood.

Finally, the Breath of Life sputtered to a stop, leaving Elijah to marvel at the result.

Ok’tarik had become an unrecognizable lump of flesh, bone, and cutaneous growths.  He quivered, his spear jutting from what had once been his hand.  It had become a roll of meat that had grown around the ivory shaft. 

Elijah stepped forward, intending to end the orc’s life.  After all, he didn’t enjoy the suffering of any living thing, and he regarded it as a mercy to end Ok’tarik’s now-miserable life. 

However, before he’d taken a single step, the quivering ceased. 

The fleshy lump contracted before it began to vibrate at a much higher frequency.  Elijah felt a massive surge of ethera before it exploded with enough force to knock him back a few dozen feet.  The eruption sent blood and meat, along with melted rock and shards of glass sailing through the air.  Some of it hit Elijah, but most of it burned to ash before it reached him.

Still, it was distracting enough that he involuntarily winced away.

When he refocused on the site of the explosion, he saw a freshly reborn Ok’tarik.  He emerged, fully formed and naked, from the gooey remnants of the flesh sack.  He still clutched his spear, though he looked down at his other hand and flexed his fingers.  There was no evidence of the damage he’d previously sustained.

It only took Elijah a second to recognize that Ok’tarik had harnessed the massive surge of vitality and redirected it toward healing his injuries.  The degree of control that would take was beyond impressive, and it took him aback.

That brief bout of shock allowed Ok’tarik a chance to recover his wits. 

Then, he charged.

Elijah let loose with another surge of hornets from Eternal Plague, adding Nature’s Claim to the mix once again.  Then, he renewed his healing spells just in time to meet Ok’tarik’s charge.

What followed was a chaotic exchange of thunderous blows that sent them both reeling.  Elijah could barely keep up, but he did manage to rip through Ok’tarik with a claw strike that sent him tumbling.  Meanwhile, Ok’tarik moved like a more brutal version of Okar, never wasting motion and maximizing the lethality of every attack. 

The burning tornado continued to rage all around them, though without Elijah’s constant input of fiery ethera, the flames had died down a little.  They were still hot enough to melt rock, but the temperature was dropping a little with every second.  It would be hours before it descended to tenable levels, but it had clearly reached a crescendo.  Everything was downhill from then on.

Even so, it had already killed thousands, and more were dying by the second.  That steady stream of experience – as well as his previous efforts over the past couple of months – had pushed him steadily closer to four-forty.  If he could’ve spared a moment to look, he would have realized that he’d already passed the four-thirty-seven mark. 

Not that it mattered.

A few more attribute points weren’t going to make the difference he needed to overcome Ok’tarik.  For the first time, Elijah had begun to understand what it was like for his enemies to face him.  The ability to keep fighting through injuries and to come back from the brink of death – or after plunging over that cliff – was more than simply frustrating to combat.  It made victory almost impossible.

Still, he had a couple of other tricks up his sleeve.

So, after that clash, he shifted into the Shape of Embers, with a brief delay, just so he could recast his healing spells.  As the wounds he’d incurred knitted themselves back together, his body shrank into the emberkin saint.  He brandished his spear as he recovered his footing. 

Ok’tarik held his ground.  He knew what the form meant.  He’d faced off against it a couple of times, and each one had ended with a massive explosion that had nearly killed him.  Clearly, he was wary of a reoccurrence of that situation.

But that was okay.

Flames of Renewal was on cooldown.  But Herald of Regrowth was still available. 

Elijah cautiously stepped forward, his Cloak of Embers waving in the wind.  Fire enveloped his arms and legs, then snaked down Thorn to set the spearhead alight. 

And so, the fight continued.