Path of Dragons 17 - Chapter 38 - The Cost of Miracles (Patreon)

The cabin was a mess.

Blood covered the flora that had grown to cover the floor and walls, while the flowers quivered with excitement.  They filled the air with their sweet-smelling pollen, though that aroma could scarcely compete with the coppery scent of blood. 

Neither Elijah nor Ok’tarik could focus on anything but the child, though.

He was roughly the size of a four-year-old human, at least according to Elijah’s probably inaccurate assessment.  That was the least of his unique traits, though.  Black scales covered his forearms and lower legs, and his tusks – usually tiny on orcish children – gleamed like polished ivory, stretching up to his cheeks. 

His skin was deep green, with slightly lighter veins visible. 

But his eyes were the most unique thing about him.  The irises shimmered like emeralds amidst a sea of pure white.  In the center were pupils that promised absolute destruction.  Together, they amounted to an altogether unsettling fusion of nature, domination, and purity. 

They also glimmered with unlikely intelligence.

Elijah didn’t need to look further to know that the child was sapient.  Nor did he require Soul of the Wild to tell him that the infant’s core had already reached the first stage of development.  He had no idea what it might be called, because the baby didn’t feel like a dragon. Nor did he feel like an orc.  Not completely.  Instead, there were elements of both, with something else holding them together.

Ok’tarik breathed, “He…he is…”

“Perfect,” Elijah supplied.

Before either of them could say anything else, a weak cough drew Elijah’s attention to Makit.  She wasn’t doing well.

Despite the dense vitality within the ship’s cabin, her wound still hadn’t healed.  In fact, when Elijah looked closer, he saw that something was keeping it open.  Something was killing her.  It only took a second for him to recognize that the umbilical cord was still attached.

With a swift chop from Thorn, he severed it.

Or at least, he tried to.  The band of flesh was so tough that it didn’t immediately give way.  Instead, it took seven more hacks to get through.  However, once that tiny bit of incomprehensibly durable flesh parted, Makit finally relaxed.

Her wound didn’t heal, though.

Elijah knelt beside her, his attention shifting from the miracle of the child’s birth to the orcish woman dying on the floor.  A few minutes of work, and her belly had shrunken down to something closer to normal.  It was still swollen, but that would last for a while yet.  In the interim, Elijah knew he needed to act fast, or she definitely wouldn’t survive.

The problem was that the ongoing Blessing of the Grove nor his other healing spells did much good.  Sure, they imparted a good deal of vitality, but the wound stubbornly remained open.

Elijah shifted his attention to Soul of the Wild and dove in, metaphysically speaking.  It only took a second for him to recognize the problem.  Her injury – the one he’d inflicted upon her – wasn’t just physical in nature.  It cut through her very soul, probably down to her spirit.

Fortunately, Elijah knew how to fix that.

Without further hesitation, he extended his Mantle of Authority into Bough of the World Tree.  It was his most focused healing spell, and for what he had in mind, he needed absolute control.  Because he didn’t intend to simply flood Makit’s body with vitality, which was how most of his healing spells were meant to work.  Instead, he wanted his spell to function more like a true Healer’s.

To do that, he wrapped Bough of the World Tree in a cocoon of his soul.  He spun the intangible filaments around the structure of the spell, not unlike how a moth would form the basis of its own chrysalis.  However, true change wasn’t the end goal.  Rather, Elijah wanted to treat it like a spool of thread, but to do that, he needed to slowly steep the soul-structure in the vitality of the spell, encapsulating each thread.

He got to work.

The process wasn’t difficult.  Nor was it slow.  But it required a level of concentration that strained even Elijah’s well-cultivated mind.  One leaf after another fell to the task until the entire canopy was dedicated to creating the structure he needed.

Finally, Elijah created a needle from one of the thorns on his soul.

Was it perfect?

No.  But he hoped it would do.

He knelt close, both physically and with his wholly concentrated focus.  The needle pushed forward, slipping through Makit’s flesh with ease.  Not surprising.  She was no great specimen in terms of cultivation, and she had been grossly weakened by the unique pregnancy. 

Her soul was strong, though.  Stronger than Elijah had any right to expect.  It resisted for an entire half minute before the needle pierced it.  After that, whatever stubborn resolve she had held in reserve melted before the sheer force of Elijah’s soul.  He threaded the filament through the wound that existed in two realms.  In the physical world, it closed tightly, held together by a glowing thread.  Slightly out of phase with that reality was where the real work happened.

If closing the physical wound was akin to its normal counterpart, then Elijah supposed that closing the injury to Makit’s soul was more like doing complex embroidery. 

Thankfully, it didn’t rely on nimble fingers, but instead, a flexible mind.

Elijah had that at his disposal.

He worked, completely undistracted by the outside world.  Meanwhile, his spells continued to pulse, maintaining the vibrant atmosphere he needed to get the most out of the process. 

Hours passed.

Makit waned, coming close to death.  Yet, Elijah stubbornly refused to let her pass.  He held her life in his hands, gripping it so tightly that it simply could not escape. 

Then, after close to eight hours, she began to improve.  Not rapidly.  And certainly not completely.  But her life gradually absorbed more vitality until she almost appeared healthy. 

By that point, Elijah had closed the wound and flushed out most of the toxins she’d accumulated.  The child’s draw had left behind vast expanses of desiccation.  In the physical world, it presented as necrotic flesh.  In the metaphysical?  Something close to corruption, but not quite as antithetical to nature.

Elijah excised it all.

And then, when there was nothing left to do, he finally let out a deep sigh and rocked back on his heels.

“Is she…”

Elijah glanced up at Ok’tarik, seeing concern in his eyes.  He still clutched the sleeping child in his arms, though Elijah noted that the baby had been cleaned up.  He looked healthy.

“She’s alive,” Elijah answered, glancing back toward Makit.  Even after everything he’d done, she remained incredibly weak.  To his senses, she barely even existed.  Only a thin thread of vitality said otherwise, and it was entirely dependent on his ethereal stitches.  If they faded, even for a second, she would die.

Even with them, there was no guarantee of a true recovery. 

Elijah pushed himself to his feet, stretching tired muscles. 

“Are you leaving?” asked Ok’tarik.

Elijah shook his head.  “No.  Not until I know she’ll survive.  Just needed to move around a bit.”

That seemed to satisfy the orc, who nodded.  Then, he patted the child’s slowly heaving back, adding, “This is Callux.”

“I would’ve gone with Orcee.  Hard ‘C’, obviously.”

“That is a bad name.”

Elijah shrugged. “Only if you have bad taste.”

Then, he turned his attention back to Makit and resumed his vigil.  He had no idea if she would survive, but if she did die, it wouldn’t be because he didn’t try hard enough to keep her alive.

                          *

“I’m not going to mess anything up!” shouted Carmen.

The orcish craftsman grunted in obvious disbelief.  Then, he promptly ignored her.  Carmen felt like smashing her hammer into the old orc, but two things held her back.  The first was the most obvious – she was meant to work with the foul creature, and she couldn’t do that if she resorted to violence after every bout of frustration.

But the other, far more impactful issue was that she felt certain that he would wipe the floor with her.  Probably while looking down on her with utter disdain.  Because he was a deity-tier orc, and not a weak one, either.  Without hesitation, Carmen would call the old orc the most powerful she’d ever seen, save for the one who’d gone off with Elijah.

The only reason she hadn’t already gone off to do her own thing was because of the Star Forge, over which the old orc had complete dominion.  Not as defined by the system.  As far as she could tell, orcs didn’t work like that.  But if anyone came close to the anvil at the center of the massive chamber, they would quickly find him barring their way.

Carmen had discovered that firsthand.

Still, she’d hung around long enough now that he verged on allowing her to approach it.  She didn’t want to sully their burgeoning relationship, so she swallowed a thousand insults she wanted to spew and focused on the task at hand.

The old orc had simply shoved a hunk of metal into her hands and pointed to a gear lying next to one of the forges.  It glistened with power, even if it seemed crudely made.  Doubtless, that came from the material, rather than the technique.

Or that was what Carmen had initially thought.

The gesture’s meaning was easy enough to discern, so she immediately went to work trying to replicate the item.  It was at least three yards across, meaning that the piece of ore she’d been given was barely sufficient to the task. 

But Carmen was a master Blacksmith.  A demigod who’d forged thousands upon thousands of items over the years.  Sure, she usually focused on weapons or armor, but a gear wasn’t so different in composition. 

The moment she’d started working, the old orc had begun to hover over her.  And he hadn’t stopped since.  It was infuriating, and it made her feel like an apprentice rather than Earth’s preeminent Blacksmith.

The whole scenario was almost enough to distract Carmen from the sheer majesty of the Star Forge as a whole.  Not quite, though.

From her first glimpse of the place, she had known it was special.  Not only did the fires of the forges burn hotter than any she’d ever seen back on Earth, but the crown jewel at the center was something she’d never encountered.  That anvil was a focal point for a much larger machine.  The entire chamber was.

And she suspected that Agmar as a whole – or whatever the dragons who’d obviously built it had called it – existed to funnel energy into that singular piece of equipment.  Was that how the orcs had managed to create the things they’d made?  Carmen believed so.

But she also felt certain that it had influenced the old orc as well.  He’d spent so much time around it that some of its power had rubbed off on him.  Kind of like low-impact cultivation over thousands of years.

Or that was how she explained his apparent level.

None of the other craftsmen came even close, and as a result, they were much more accepting of the Earth expedition’s Tradesmen.  Even now, as Carmen forged a gear, they were all busy assessing the orcs’ creations.  Once that was done, they would develop a plan to modernize orcish industry.

Carmen was invested in that.  Truly, she was.  But what she really wanted – needed, perhaps – was to work at that anvil.  And to make that happen, she needed to earn the ancient orc’s respect.

So, she slammed her hammer down, one strike after another as she forced it to conform to her will.  The metal was stubborn, though.  Even with those insanely hot forges making it more malleable, it took every point of Carmen’s not-inconsiderable strength to move the metal. 

But when it finally shifted? 

Carmen had rarely felt anything so satisfying.  That only spurred her on, creating a feedback loop that kept her going for one hour after another.  She didn’t rest.  She didn’t need to, so long as she kept her ethera-use to a manageable level.  And with her experience in the craft, she was more than capable of controlling it down to the most minute level.

Then, at last, she finished the shaping.

The next step was to harden the metal via heat treating.  After shoving it into the forge, she took a step back and wiped a forearm across her forehead. 

“You are not untalented,” came a crackling voice. 

Carmen looked back to see the old orc hovering over her shoulder.

“But you are not finished.”

“I’m aware.”

“Do not waste your effort.”

Carmen just nodded, though she wanted to punch the orc in the face.  Denying herself that very simple pleasure, she refocused on the forge.  She watched as the metal slowly turned from the color of brass to far redder.  Once it reached the appropriate temperature – as evidenced by her ability, Eye of the Smith – she reached in with her bare hand and grabbed it.

Her thumb and forefinger left the tiniest of indentions on the surface, but she considered that her maker’s mark.  A second later, she dunked it into a stone basin of extremely energetic water.  It boiled immediately upon first contact. 

Normally, she would have used oil, but in this case, that just wasn’t available.  Rather than ask for something that the orcs didn’t typically use, she had chosen to play by their rules.  That meant using water for quenching, which was a lot less forgiving.  One little flaw in the metal, and the whole thing might shatter.

There were no flaws, though.

Carmen had seen to that.

Finally, she yanked it from the water and, once the steam dissipated, inspected the work. 

Some people might’ve called that a finished product.  Her hammer work was so precise that the gear probably would have worked without any further refinement.  However, Carmen’s expectations were far stricter than that.  So, she immediately went to work with her files.

They bit into the metal with a satisfying sound. 

Normally, she would have done the shaping before quenching, but she had seen the orcs working with that metal.  So, she knew that wasn’t their way.  Was it a mistake?  Or a quirk of the material?  She didn’t know, but she had no intention of bucking their tradition.  Not yet, at least.

Later, she might help them refine their process, but at present, she was there to prove a point.  She could use their techniques and still come out with a superior product.  Maybe then that old smith would let her near the anvil.

Those bitter thoughts accompanied her throughout the process until, hours – perhaps days – later, she finally pulled back and accepted that she was finished.

At last, she presented a perfect gear to the old orc.

He took it, tilted it back and forth, then said, “Acceptable.”

Without another word, he handed it to another orc, then turned toward the center of the chamber.  As he stepped onto one of the spoke-like bridges that led to the anvil, Carmen hurried to follow.

Finally, she was going to see what she had come to see.