Path of Dragons 17 - Chapter 39 - The Child (Patreon)

“That’s a really big baby.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“When you forge weld titanium, you have to use a noble gas to shield the metal against oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen,” Carmen stated.  “If you don’t, the metal will become too brittle and fail.”

Elijah blinked.

“You said to tell you something you didn’t know.  I’m willing to be you didn’t know that,” Carmen said with a grin.

“It was an expression,” Elijah muttered.  “Not a literal –”

“I know.”

Elijah shook his head, then ran his hand through his hair.  It was still damp from sweat, a product of hard work and the hot and humid environment within the cabin.  That was the thing about growing a miniature forest in an enclosed space and dumping thousands of gallons of magical rain on it.  It tended to create quite a lot of humidity. 

Given that the rain came from Blessing of the Grove, said humidity was full of vitality, creating a much better environment for healing.  However, no one would ever confuse that for comfort.

Even Elijah found it frustrating, and he’d developed quite a tolerance for hostile atmospheres.  Ironically, he’d have preferred if it was outright damaging.  At least then he would know how to combat it.  In the case of such dense humidity, it was just uncomfortable, which was much more difficult to counter, save for the obvious.  But he wasn’t able to leave, so he had no choice but to endure it.

Not that it really mattered.  It was good for Makit, so that was all Elijah really cared about. 

Well, not all.

But in respect to the room, it was the only focus.

However, even Elijah needed a break from time to time.  He could go for days – weeks or months, even – but not without consequence.  The only time he could get away with pushing himself to his absolute limits was when cultivating, and that was because there was an effective rebirth on the other side of the labor. 

Battle was the other situation where he refused to hold back or take breaks, but that was a different sort of situation altogether.

Regardless, Makit’s condition wasn’t urgent.  She was stable, which meant that Elijah had some leeway. 

Stable didn’t mean well, though.  She was still weaker than any orc Elijah had ever seen, and she couldn’t even push herself upright.  More, her mind seemed to have been affected as well, and she found it difficult to concentrate on anything for more than a few moments.

Would she get better?

Elijah had no idea.  Despite all his power, he wasn’t a real Healer.  His solution to most problems was to throw vitality at it, though in slightly different ways.  People like Ron had specialized skills and spells to do things Elijah could never do.

But he’d done his level best, and she was alive.  That had to be enough for now. 

“You did what you could,” Carmen said, glancing back at the room. 

“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” he asked, still staring at Callux.  He was already walking, though entirely unsteadily.  However, given that he’d only been alive for a few days, that was incredible.  It reminded Elijah a little of watching a foal taking its first steps, though somehow even more awkward.

“What do you mean?” asked Carmen, turning around to lean against the ship’s railing.  “Big guy seems happy.”

That much was true.  For the first time in Elijah’s memory, Ok’tarik seemed content.  He periodically passed glances toward the cabin where Makit still rested, but her apparent recovery, incomplete though it was, had satisfied him.  Or at least it had freed his mind to focus on his son.

“That isn’t the point,” Elijah sighed, bending to rest his elbows against the rail.  He looked out over the vast expanse of Orveth Kaal, struggling to organize his thoughts.  Finally, he said, “I shouldn’t have done it.”

“What?  Saved the woman?”

“No.  I shouldn’t have given Callux the core,” he answered.  “I had no idea what would happen.  And that over there – it’s not a mushroom or a tree.  That’s a little boy.  A child.  I could have killed him.  Or worse.”

Carmen didn’t immediately respond.  When she did, her tone had shifted into much more serious territory.  She said, “You’re right.  You shouldn’t experiment on children, unborn or otherwise.  But here’s the thing, Elijah – I could stand here and chastise you for it.  I probably should.  The harsh reality is that I don’t think it would work.  You’re not going to stop unless you want to stop. 

“And I don’t think you’re there yet.”

“I won’t do it again.”

“Yes you will.”

“You know that?”

Carmen shrugged.  “I know you, Elijah.  I know that sometime in the future, you’ll encounter a situation where you’re sure that doing this again is the only option,” she explained. “It might not be soon, but it’ll happen.  And you know how you’ll react, right?”

“You seem to have an idea.”

“You’ll think back to this moment, and you’ll remember that everything worked out just fine,” she explained.  “You’ll remember little Callux over there playing with his father.  You’ll remember that the mother survived.  And if he turns out to be as special as he seems to be, you’ll think about what he became.”

She turned to him.  “That will be your excuse.”

“Doesn’t sound as much like an excuse as it sounds like a bunch of good reasons to keep going,” Elijah countered.

“And that’s the trap.  The results will make you forget about all the ways it could have gone wrong,” she said.  “If you make it to the other side every single time you blindly leap across a ravine, then you will never stop to consider what would have happened if you came up short.”

“You’re saying I can’t learn my lesson unless I fail.”

“I’m saying that some people need to get burned before they believe the stove is hot,” she argued.

“I’m not a child.”

“I am well aware, Elijah.  Maybe you need to remember that too.  More importantly, I’d love to be proven wrong,” she said. 

Elijah sighed. “This would be a lot easier if you screamed at me and called me a monster.”

“You’d just argue back.  Or leave.  And I’m not here to fight you.  I just want you to understand what’s going on in your own head.  I can’t police your actions. Nobody can except you.”

Elijah shook his head and went silent.  Having no external limits was both intoxicating and terrifying.  Rules of conduct existed for a reason.  It was easy to be ethical when one didn’t have the power to flout those rules.  But when he had no one to answer to but himself?

That was when things grew far more difficult.

Because Carmen was right.  Every time he experienced even a little regret over his actions, there was a part of him – a big part, if he was honest – that kept reminding him that everything had worked out.  No harm, no foul.  No dead baby, no mad scientist vibes.

Did Elijah’s self-awareness make it any easier to combat? Not really.

“How are things going with the orc crafters?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Slowly.  Frustratingly.”

“How so?”

“I’ve been making gears.”

“What kind of gear?” Elijah asked.

“Not gear as in equipment.  Literally gears.  Big. Small.  Doesn’t matter.  I’m seeing those stupid things in my sleep,” she explained.  “The worst part is that I don’t even know what they’re being used for.  I think that old bastard is just making me do it for his own amusement.”

“The work-slave?”

She cringed away at the term. “Don’t call them that.  It’s weird.”

“That’s literally what they call themselves.”

“I’m not calling them that.  They’re workers.  Or laborers.  Craftsmen.  Pick one,” she said.

“Fine.  What about the others, though?” Elijah asked.

“They’ve seen more progress, but I think that’s because they’re not trying to access the Star Forge.”

“And you are?”

“Of course.  Do you know what that thing is?” she asked.  Then, before he could answer, she went on to explain that the anvil – really, the whole chamber – was just the visible part of a much larger machine.  “I think the whole city fuels it.  Maybe the entire landmass.  If I had to guess, the Star Forge is why the Empire of Scale wants this planet back so badly.”

“You think so?” Elijah asked, somewhat surprised.  He’d thought something similar, but it was entirely unconfirmed, and the idea seemed a little far-fetched.  It was much easier to believe that the empire’s desire to reintegrate the planet was based on draconic pride.

Now, he realized how naïve that belief was. 

Dragons might be proud creatures, but they were not stupid.  Nor did they do things without very good reasons.  More importantly, Elijah had felt the Star Forge.  He had seen it with his own eyes, and he had some inkling of just how powerful an apparatus it really was. 

Carmen’s theory put that into better perspective.

It didn’t really change much in the short term, though it did mean that if he completed his plan and reached his goal of taking Orveth Kaal for himself and for Earth, he would need to be cognizant of the empire’s reaction.  After all, if they’d gone through all the trouble of establishing the lost planet as an ancestral world, then they wouldn’t think twice about snatching it from Earth’s clutches.

Would Kirlissa protect him?

If she could, sure.  But there were two issues with that.  The first was that Elijah didn’t like the idea of leaning too hard on her for protection.  She clearly didn’t mind, but there was something about the idea that really frustrated him. 

Maybe he just found it difficult to depend on other people too heavily.

The second problem was more troubling.  There was a civil war brewing.  The skirmishes had already begun.  And when war came, people died.  Even the powerful were at risk. 

Did Elijah really believe that Kirlissa might fall?  No.  He found that difficult to fathom.  However, he still had to recognize the possibility for what it was and how it might affect him going forward.

More accurately, he needed to plan for Earth to stand on its own two feet, metaphorically speaking.  How could they do that when transcendents were involved?  Elijah wasn’t sure.  But he was ready to take that challenge on, mostly because he didn’t have a choice in the matter.

For better or worse, Earth was his responsibility.  Even if he didn’t care about the rest of the planet, which he did, his grove was one of the most important aspects of his identity.  It also fueled his power in a way that he didn’t quite understand.  So, Earth got his protection just by virtue of being the planet where his grove was located.

Plus, it was his planet.

That had to count for something.

“Tell me more about what they’re doing,” Elijah said.

Carmen was more than eager to do just that, and she soon lost herself in an explanation of the expedition’s goals.  Elijah knew a lot of it already, but he’d never really cared much for the specifics.  In this case, he listened as much because it provided a distraction from his questions on morality and let him focus on much more concrete issues. 

Like the relationship between Earth’s crafters and the orcs, which was rocky at best.  For all that the work-slaves were far meeker than their combat-ready counterparts, they were still orcs.  As such, they only respected strength.

Fortunately, no one who’d come along for the ride was weak. 

Still, there’d been a few demonstrations to establish the pecking order – a grim necessity to get the orcs to cooperate.  After that, things had fallen into a predictable arrangement.

“They’re making strides,” Carmen said.  “It’s not as easy as putting our engines or cannons in their ships.  We’re trying to streamline their entire production protocol.”

“What’s the bottom line?  What’s the best case scenario?”

“Best case?  Their new fleet will be at least thirty percent deadlier and more defensible than before.  Realistic?  Twenty-ish.”

Elijah didn’t react.  Twenty percent better didn’t seem like a lot, at least until he remembered that the orcs were already capable of holding their own during the deity trials.  In the last one, they’d won. Mostly because of Ok’tarik, but the victory still counted. 

“What about the kid?  What are you going to do with him?”

“I’m not sure,” Elijah admitted.

“You know you can’t leave him here.”

“I know.”

“Can he leave?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then shouldn’t that be priority number one?” Carmen asked.  “Figuring it out seems kind of important.”

It was.

But something else seemed more important.

“I want to give Ok’tarik a few more days with his son before we start down that road.  He deserves it,” Elijah said.  “They both do.”