Path of Dragons 17 - Chapter 13 - For the Colony (Patreon)

Elijah didn’t hesitate.

Even as balls of caustic goo sailed through the air, he activated Mycelial Rebirth.  The enhancement to his regeneration came with a surge of vitality that took his breath away.  Suddenly, his heart beat faster.  His every breath came more quickly.  He even felt the trail of spores more keenly.

However, it gave him no new strength.  So, even as the sticky substance hardened, he remained trapped.  Because of that, he had no opportunity to escape the new volley.  It hit him head-on, splattering across his face and encasing the rest of his body in rapidly hardening goop. 

When it finished, Elijah’s entire body was covered in something that resembled marble and gave even less.  Fortunately, Mycelial Rebirth was more than up to the task of countering the other part of the attack.  Even as the hardened substance continued to eat through his flesh, it regrew at such a rapid pace that it more than made up for the damage.

But he was still stuck.

As expected, given what he knew of termites.

That was the core reason Elijah had used Mycelial Rebirth – not for the regeneration, but rather, to fuel his next ability.  He’d not really used Bracken Crown very often, but it worked similarly to its predecessors in that its strength was dependent on his regeneration attribute.  Because of that, it worked hand-in-hand with Mycelial Rebirth.

So, when he activated it, it came alive with unprecedented power.

Massive, bone-like stroma exploded from every part of his body.  They cut through the hardened goo with ease, shattering it into a million pieces.  But the spines weren’t just limited to his immediate surroundings.  They came from every surface across the entire tunnel.

Many impaled termites.  Others trapped them.  There were even quite a few that formed a wall to block the next volley. 

Elijah surged forth, breaking free of his temporary cage and leaped into battle.  In seconds, he’d cut a dozen overgrown insects down, but not without consequences.  Despite being significantly less durable than the mandibulate termites, the nasute soldiers were no pushovers.  Not only were they much faster, but their ability to issue ranged attacks made them an absolute pain to deal with.

Elijah forged ahead, using Mantle of Thorns and the ongoing Bracken Crown to break free each time he found himself encased in goo.  Yet, he knew he wasn’t making quick enough progress, because he soon realized that the rhythmic pounding had increased in pace.

What’s more, he could feel more termites coming through the tunnels he’d already mapped.  In seconds, he would be surrounded.

Elijah decided to go all out.

With that, he reached deep into his soul and grabbed hold of the branches.  Even as he did, he continued to fight, splitting the leaves in his mind between each task.  Once he had a good grip on his soul, he embraced Mycelial Army, funneling a massive torrent of ethera into the structure of the ability.  It drank greedily, pulling a full third of the contents of his core into the metaphysical runes.

Elijah didn’t allow it to activate.  Not yet.  Instead, he wrapped his soul around each glyph, encasing them like he was wrapping them in live wire.  They responded, vibrating painfully with each revolution of his soul.  Still, he didn’t allow it to activate.  Not yet.

Not until he’d completed it.

With every passing second, the runes threatened to unravel.  They weren’t meant to hold that much ethera for that long.  Elijah held them together through sheer force of will, with his soul lending the entire structure of the ability some degree of reinforcement. 

But that support was a double-edged sword.  It kept everything together, but it also further destabilized it.  The result was a wildly volatile spell that, if it spun out of control, would instill quite a powerful backlash on Elijah’s system.

Was it dangerous on its own?

Not really.

In the middle of a battle, though, it would doubtless spell his death.  Sure, he’d survive for a while through sheer regeneration, but Mycelial Regrowth had its limits.  And it would eventually run its course.

After that?  Elijah wouldn’t last much longer.

So, he worked quickly but carefully, all the while forging through the nasute soldiers, slicing through individuals with every step. 

Then, at last, he was satisfied.  He released the spell as carefully as he could.  It rushed forward, radiating ethera from his body until the energy – and the extensions of his soul – congregated into a dozen steady streams.  They each terminated about twelve feet from his position.

For a second, it seemed that nothing would happen.

But then, Elijah felt them.  Tiny mushrooms, perfectly formed to look like nothing so much as a ring of fly agarics.  However, it was only a second before the reality of their nature took shape. 

They grew.  One foot, then two.  By the time they reached three feet tall, they had grown arms and legs.  Once they pulled free of the earth, they had topped four feet.  There, they hovered until their arms and legs sprouted huge, needle-like stroma. 

They descended upon the termites with ruthless precision.  Nominally, Elijah had control over them.  They had no minds of their own, instead functioning on preprogrammed instinct.  As such, without his input, they were poor combatants.  With it, they became an absolute menace.

Part of that was because they filled the air with their own debilitating spores, adding to the already powerful effects of Fungal Leech.  They also summoned abilities similar to Throne of Spores – Bracken Crown’s predecessor – creating a field of tendrils that latched onto the termites,  restricting their movement.

In addition, they enjoyed similar regeneration to Elijah.  And given that he remained under the effect of Mycelial Rebirth, that meant that they became virtually unkillable.  The termites tried, but no matter how much damage they inflicted, the mushroom men continued to regrow.

And finally, each time they reformed, they did so larger and stronger than before.

By the time a minute had passed, they were of a size with the mandibulate soldiers.  A second minute saw them towering the size of giants.  And when Mycelial Rebirth final ran its course, they could scarcely fit in the tunnels.

The devastation was horrific.

Everywhere Elijah looked, he saw the remains of termites.  At some point during the fight, some of the larger soldiers had arrived, but by that time, the mushroom army had grown large and strong enough to squash them like the bugs they were.  By comparison, the nasute soldiers had no chance at all. 

It had become a massacre.

Through it all, Elijah steadily carved a path through the tunnels.  His form was perfectly suited for such an endeavor, mostly because his ongoing spores formed a domain-like effect that served to further destabilize the mound’s suffocating aura.

But even without Mycelial Rebirth, Elijah was a nearly unkillable menace.  Every time his spores infected one of the termites, it sent a surge of vitality back to him.  And that connection didn’t stop until their bodies overcame the infection or they died. 

Usually when the latter.

And with the increase to regeneration brought by Mycelial Rebirth, he was unstoppable.

The only real danger was getting pinned down.  If that happened, Elijah would eventually be overwhelmed.  And even if he survived, it would be far from pleasant because he got the feeling that, once he’d been immobilized, the termite soldiers would take him to the queen.

Getting eaten wasn’t really something he wanted to experience.

Again.

It had happened before – multiple times – and he’d survived.  But it wasn’t something he wanted to revisit.  Especially given what he expected to find once he entered the termite queen’s chamber.

So, he kept moving forward.  The mushroom men served to break the line and grant Elijah some momentum, so even after they’d dissipated, he found no trouble keeping moving. 

The slaughter was both epic and disturbing.  Depressing, too.  Elijah still didn’t like termites, but he couldn’t escape the reality of his actions.  He’d slaughtered them in their own home. 

That didn’t feel very Druidic to him.

Still, he maintained his commitment, largely because he didn’t see much choice in the matter.  If he wanted an alliance with the orcs, he needed to complete the hunt.  And the termites offered the best chance to do just that, while also satisfying the requirements of another of his goals.

It made perfect sense.  But that didn’t mean Elijah had to like it.  He most definitely did not, and less with every passing minute.

Still, he had come into the colony for a reason.  His logic remained sound, and he pushed those feelings aside in favor of practicality.  To that end, he continued through the tunnels.  Along the way, he considered using his other forms.  Particularly, Shape of Withering would have been well-suited to sneaking through.  Perhaps he could have avoided having to kill so many if he’d done so.

Yet, he still remembered the feeling he got from the form, and he suspected that the instincts that came with the venomwing stalker would push him toward more violence.  He could resist it now that he knew what to expect, but that would create a distraction he didn’t want to deal with.

His other forms might’ve been just as viable.  Both Shape of Embers and Avatar of Storms could have leveled the entire mound, especially when acting from within.  However, Elijah suspected that the queen’s aura might serve to suppress some of his more devastatingly offensive abilities.

He could adjust.  He would.  But for now, Shape of the Reaver was more than up to the task at hand.  Slower, maybe.  But safer.  And at the moment, that mattered more than simple speed.

With that in mind, Elijah trudged ahead, wading through the colony of insects and leaving a wake of destruction and spores to coat the tunnels.  He never let his mind wander, though, and for good reason.  One little mistake wouldn’t get him killed or captured, but it could have started a chain reaction where he found himself in increasingly dire circumstances.

Could he recover from such a situation? Almost certainly.  But Elijah strove for perfection.  An unachievable but worthy goal.

On and on he went, trekking through the labyrinthine mound.  It stretched across most of the continent-sized landmass, with thousands of mesa-like mounds acting as access points for the surface.  It also extended well beneath the earth, meaning that Elijah was forced to travel through thousands of miles of tunnel.

At times, he made his way unopposed.   Other times, he found his path blocked by another army of termites.  Some forces were mixed.  Others were comprised solely of one type or another.  The result was that Elijah could never let himself relax.  Even as days passed into weeks, he maintained a constant level of stress that tangled through his mind.

Fortunately, he wasn’t forced to travel blind.

Not only did the darkness fade before the power of his soul-infused spores, but over time, Elijah also managed to get a sense of the place.  And through it all ran a thread of vitality and ethera that felt stronger – conceptually and literally – than any of its surroundings. 

Elijah suspected that would lead him to the queen.

As he continued on, he discovered that the thread was more like a web, to which each of the termites were connected.  He didn’t think it was a hive mind, per se.  But it was close enough to invite comparisons. 

Either way, the trunks from which those branching tendrils of ethera and vitality grew led him deep into the termite nest and to his intended destination.  So, after more than a month of fight, Elijah found himself looking down on one of the most grotesque sights he’d ever witnessed.

 In truth, he should have expected it.  He knew enough about termites to predict what form the queen might take.  However, there was no way to prepare his mind for a bulbous blob of a termite that stretched out for hundreds of yards. 

And when he looked upon her, she turned her tiny head in his direction.  A second later, a powerful wave of mental energy slammed into his defenses.