Path of Dragons 16 - Chapter 48 - The Spear (Patreon)

Elijah skipped across the still-molten ground, activating Absolute Grasp.  The heat blistered his back as he skidded to a stop only a few dozen feet away from the eye wall of fiery tornado.  As he reset his feet, he let out a string of curses under his breath.

It was the sixth time he’d had Seed of Ashes reset.

This time, he had managed to accumulate sixty charges before Ok’tarik landed a blow.  The problem wasn’t that the orc was faster than him.  He wasn’t.  The chieftan was stronger, but that wasn’t a huge issue, either.  The biggest obstacle was that Ok’tarik was clearly a veteran of centuries of battle, and as such, his technique was flawless. 

Rougher than Okar’s, certainly.  He lacked the halfling’s refined grace.  However, Ok’tarik’s skills were just as effective, even if they were far more brutal.  He tended toward savage bursts of speed that continued to catch Elijah off guard. 

The level of required focus had finally exceeded his ability.

As he reset his stance, Wild Resurgence sent a pulse of vitality through him.  The burns on his back healed, and the wound he’d just taken – a gash across his hip – mended.  He stepped forward, returning to the fight.

Ok’tarik remained in place, waiting for Elijah to make the first move.

Had he figured the Shape of Embers out?  It was a duelist’s form, meant to be reactive, at least until he unleashed one of the two ultimate abilities.  Flames of Renewal was on cooldown, but he still had Herald of Regrowth available.  He just needed to build enough charges on Seed of Ashes to fuel the ability.

But he couldn’t do that if he kept getting hit.

Elijah shoved his frustrations away and focused on what really mattered.  No matter how many times he got hit, he needed to keep going.  Not because he wanted to win.  He wasn’t certain that was even possible.  But what he could do was put Ok’tarik out of the fight long enough to ensure the Vengeance’s escape. 

Just a short lead was all they needed.

The fleet would remain an issue, but Elijah hoped that, without their leader – even for a little while – their cohesion would dissolve.  That might give the Vengeance an opening.

He resisted the urge to sigh at that thought. 

There were a lot of ifs in his plan.  A lot of maybes, too.  But that was just the situation, which far exceeded difficulty and ventured to the edge of impossibility.  Whether or not they overcame it was at least partially up to luck.

And Elijah getting Ok’tarik out of the way.

With that in mind, he stalked forward, slowly twirling Thorn.  Suddenly, he leaped at Ok’tarik, who responded with a sweep of his spear.  The two weapons clashed, the sound loud enough that it echoed above the roar of fiery tornado surrounding them.  It also signaled the beginning of a furious exchange that resulted in Elijah peppering Ok’tarik with half a dozen stab wounds.

When he disengaged, the orc maintained his position.  His wounds were ignored, but their bleeding stopped after only a second or two.  However, Elijah could feel the results of his attacks taking root inside Ok’tarik’s body.

Because every stab wound had been accompanied by Fungal Growth, which spewed a puff of spores into the injury.  With Soul of the Wild, accompanied by his Mantle of Authority and utilizing Dictate of the World Tree, Elijah prevented them from growing.  Instead, he forced them to remain dormant.

It was the first part of his new plan.

He couldn’t really keep up with Ok’tarik.  Not perfectly, at least.  However, the orc tended to ignore what he seemed to consider flesh wounds.  That category included anything short of disembowelment. 

That meant that Elijah had plenty of room to infect his opponent with the fungal spores he could conjure with the trait tied to Thorn’s recent evolution.  So long as they remained dormant, Ok’tarik had no reason to purge them.  They would also constitute a relative time bomb, just waiting for the proper moment to explode.

Until then, Elijah would continue his strategy, hoping to build enough charges of Seed of Ashes to allow him to activate Herald of Regrowth at full strength.  He had one more card up his sleeve, but he wouldn’t activate it until the absolute optimal time.

He circled a few steps, taking note of Seed of Ashes. 

Fifteen charges in one exchange.  And it had taken every ounce of concentration to dodge Ok’tarik’s attacks. 

Ultimately, that was the problem.  He could exchange blows with the orc and keep it up for days.  Maybe indefinitely.  They were evenly matched, at least when it came to the issue of durability.  Or regeneration, more appropriately.  But escaping an exchange completely clean?  That was far more difficult. 

It wasn’t so dissimilar from the problems he faced while training.  It was easy to mindlessly continue on.  To put one proverbial foot in front of another.  But to focus on doing things properly?  To maintain intense concentration where every detail was important?

That was difficult.

Fortunately, Elijah had quite a lot of practice.  He’d long maintained a strict training regimen, even going back to his earliest days after the world transformed.  On Gorveth, that routine was one of the major reasons he’d kept a grip on his sanity.  So, it only took a flip of a mental switch to put him in that mindset.  Once he did, his movements began to flow much more advantageously. 

Over and over, he darted in.  Each time, he managed to inflict multiple wounds upon Ok’tarik.  And in most cases, that meant more instances of Fungal Growth. 

Sooner than he would have expected, he reached a hundred charges in Seed of Ashes, but he kept it contained.  By that point, the intensity of the fiery tornado had begun to fade.  The wind was still present, but the flames had died down.  Not a lot, but enough that the eye became noticeably cooler. 

By one-twenty-five, it was only a little hotter than a Blacksmith’s forge.  One-fifty, and it had fallen to the temperature of an oven.  One-seventy-five, and Elijah could once again breathe the air.  And when he reached two-hundred, it was like standing in a desert at dead noon – barely uncomfortable. 

Still, as the temperature dropped, maintaining concentration became increasingly difficult.  Not only did he need to pay close attention to every single movement, including both his own and Ok’tarik’s, but he also had to forcibly constrain the spores he injected with each landed blow. 

Because they wanted nothing more than to grow.  Blocking that took every other leaf within his mind. 

So, it came as quite a relief when, at last, he let them follow that dictate.

They did so all at once. 

Ok’tarik stumbled in place, his flesh writhing as the spores began to grow, extending mycelial hyphae throughout his body.  They connected, intertwining with one another to form a network that soon sprouted a hyphal knot.  Elijah saw Ok’tarik’s skin bulge outward, not unlike cysts, before bursting to reveal the primordia formations.  In less than a second, those burst as well, spewing more spores into the air.

But more importantly, mushroom stalks grew, expanding into a series of perfectly formed caps.  In only two seconds, Ok’tarik was absolutely covered in fungi.  Elijah immediately dashed forward and used Dictate of the World Tree. 

It was the first time he’d ever used it in any form but human, dragon, or Shape of Spores, but he’d known it would work.  To his surprise, it didn’t afford him any real control over the fungi, but that had never been the point.  It knew how to grow.  How to infest.  What he wanted was to imbue it with a sliver of the World Tree’s essence and force it to realize the potential established by Fungee, its originator.

The spell resisted slightly, but using his soul, Elijah punched a hole in that resistance.  A second later, the tiniest splinter of the World Tree’s soul slipped into the fungi.  An explosion of awareness followed as the mushrooms radiated an entirely new level of power.

It wasn’t even close to Fungee.

Nor even the colony in the fungal cave aboard the Vengeance.

But it was significantly stronger than it otherwise would have been.  Ok’tarik fell to one knee, almost dropping the spear.  Yet, even with his body ravaged by rapidly expanding mycelia, he maintained his grip. 

Elijah intended to end that.

Finally, he used all two hundred of the charges he’d built within Seed of Ashes, funneling them into Herald of Regrowth.  His body surged with increased power, and the flames at his hands and feet danced with new strength.  He lanced forward, faster and more decisively than ever before.

When he hit Ok’tarik, he did so with vastly increased attributes. 

The orc never saw it coming.  Nor did he have the capacity to do anything about the attack, even if he had.  Elijah thrust his spear, and it pierced Ok’tarik’s skull, entirely unopposed. 

Even with the fungi compromising his durability, the orc was too tough for a single attack to do the trick.  The blade barely went through Ok’tarik’s skull, much less destroyed anything vital.

But it was a start.

Elijah didn’t hesitate to whip the spear around and aim his attack at the very same wound he’d just inflicted.  However, Ok’tarik had begun to take hold of his body.  Mycelial strands rushed out of his body, twitching like alien tentacles.  The mushrooms had begun to rot as well, flaking off in great chunks.

He was strangling it with willpower alone.  An impressive feat, but one Elijah couldn’t truly appreciate.  Instead, he continuously thrust at Ok’tarik’s forehead.  Each strike hit roughly the same spot, and it wasn’t long before he’d turned the area to a mushy combination of bone shards and pulverized meat.

Ok’tarik groaned, swinging his arms wildly but with unfocused lethargy.  Like a punch drunk boxer.

Still, he had power.

And when one of those attacks came a little too close for comfort, Elijah knocked it away with his spear.  That left a tiny, hair-thin cut on the orc’s forearm.

More importantly, it gave Elijah an idea.

With Herald of Regrowth still going, Elijah had plenty of strength and dexterity to alter his next attack mid-swing, and he aimed Thorn at the cut he’d just inflicted.  This time, the blade bit much deeper, largely because the strike was far more intentional. 

Ok’tarik grunted at the slight increase in pain, but he didn’t stop flailing, blinded by the mushrooms sprouting from his eyes.

Elijah hit the arm again, finally contacting bone.  Then again.  And again after that.

Over and over, he hacked at it like he was trying to chop down a tree, and gradually, he notched Ok’tarik’s bone.  It was a testament to the orc’s sheer durability that, even with all of Elijah’s strength – enhanced as it was – he couldn’t do more than that. 

He wouldn’t be deterred, though.

As he kept going, Ok’tarik gradually overcame the fungi.  But to its credit, it wouldn’t surrender without a fight.  Even as the orc destroyed it, presumably through willpower and body control alone, it made a go at regeneration. 

Meanwhile, Elijah continued to attack that same wound.  Finally, he broke through one bone, only for Thorn to become lodged in the other.  Without even thinking about it, he released the spear and latched onto Ok’tarik’s arm.  At the same time, he increased his weight with the Ring of the River King and fastened his feet to the ground via Absolute Grasp. 

Then, he twisted.

Ok’tarik howled.

Elijah ignored it.  Even when the orc finally regained enough of his wits to pummel Elijah with his free hand, he refused to stop.  He wouldn’t let go.  The sound of cracking bone was even louder than Ok’tarik’s screams.  And then, at last, the wrist dislocated.  At the same time, Thorn fell free, having been dislodged by all the twisting.  It clattered to the now-solid ground.

Elijah retrieved it, then shoved the blade into the orc’s wrist, and started sawing through the flesh.  Without the joint’s connection, it wasn’t long before Ok’tarik’s hand flopped free. 

And with it came the spear.

Elijah retrieved it immediately, then dismissed it into his spatial storage.

It didn’t want to go, either, but he was not without willpower of his own.  So, he used his Mantle of Authority, sharpening it to a point before shoving it into the weapon’s shaft.  The resistance ceased almost immediately, and the spear disappeared.

A second later, Elijah found himself flying across the eye of the weakened tornado, and it took a moment for him to realize that Ok’tarik had finally overcome the fungi to kick Elijah directly in the chest.

He bore it well.

But even as he tumbled to a stop, Herald of Regrowth dissipated, leaving him without the boost to his attributes.  However, he’d accomplished his goal of weakening Ok’tarik.  Not by destroying bits of his brain, as had been his initial plan. Rather, he’d deprived the orc of his weapon, which he suspected had played a large part in his massive regeneration.

Elijah almost expected a speech.  Maybe an accusation or an order.  But Ok’tarik offered neither.  Instead, he stepped forward, the remnants of the mushrooms flaking away to reveal his grey skin. 

With that, the battle continued.