Path of Dragons 17 - Chapter 66 - New (Patreon)

“That is not normal.”

“What is it?”

“Do something!”

Dragons prided themselves on many things.  Their strength was the most defining, but they also saw themselves as unflappable.  Courageous.  Dominant.  And at times, just.  Though their version of virtue was alien to most other races.  Subtly, but surely different, and to an extent that it became something unrecognizable.

Whatever the case, they did not panic.  Even when facing down transcendents and hordes of vespirans, they kept their wits about them. 

Or so they claimed.

The reality of it was that they were just as prone to terror as any other creature.  Perhaps more so, because they possessed the context to know when they should truly be afraid.

Eyik was not most dragons, though.  He knew that fear was a useful motivator, and one that should never be ignored.  And at that very moment, he was afraid. 

The most distressing part was that he shouldn’t have been.  The situation was well in  hand, and though he had lost a few dozen under his command, those were acceptable numbers.  The battle was practically won. 

Even with those damnable orcs, who’d arrived just when Eyik and his people were on the verge of claiming complete victory.  By that point, the humans had retreated into their admittedly impressive fortress, where they were probably preparing to leave the ancestral world altogether.  That they could do so was a marvel, though one not in dispute.  No one quite understood how it was even possible, but they had all accepted it nonetheless.

Either way, their retreat would have been a win.

Eyik didn’t need to kill them.  His mandate was to get rid of them, mostly so that the dragon expedition could claim the top spots on the Ledger.  He didn’t care about politics outside of Orveth Kaal, and he never really had.  His only real concern was progress. So long as he had another step in front of him, he would continue to climb. 

The empire could burn for all he cared.

But now, looking up at that odd cloud, he felt a tremor of true fear climbing up his spine.  It wasn’t large.  Just big enough to encompass the Vengeance and its surroundings.  Maybe a few miles wide at most. 

It was tall, though.  Like a mountain in its own right, it extended for miles into the sky.  However, that wasn’t what made it so fear-inducing.  Nor was the yellow-and-green hue that disturbing.  Eyik had seen a lot of oddly colored clouds in his day, so that wasn’t anything new.  Not really.  Some of those sightings had even occurred in Orveth Kaal. 

Instead, what made Eyik uneasy was the dense vitality contained within that cloud.  Presumably, the other dragons felt something similar.  Thus the panic that they would never admit to. 

“There’s something moving in there,” said Hovar, his voice far louder than decorum dictated.  He never could contain himself.  But he wasn’t wrong.

Eyik looked closer, but he couldn’t see much more than swirling clouds.  Every other second, he caught sight of an irregular shadow, but there were no more hints as to what was going on. 

“Disperse it,” he ordered.

Hovar nodded eagerly, then relayed the command to a pair of wind mages from the Tyrix clan.  The two – brother and sister, if Eyik wasn’t mistaken – took to the task with unbridled enthusiasm.  They gathered ethera, then cast their spells.  The sky responded with swirling winds that tickled Eyik’s spines.  The Tyrix siblings guided the air into twin funnels, then pushed them forward.

They rammed into the cloud.

It was like surf crashing against a cliff.

The backlash of the failed spell staggered the pair of wind mages.  “That is no normal storm,” claimed one, breathless and fearful.  A shameful display if ever there was one.

Eyik wanted to make an example, but he chose not to.  There were other priorities at the moment, and there would be a time to remind them that they were dragons.  Not scurrying rodents.

He had no issue with fear.  It was a useful emotion.  A tool to be employed in appropriate situations.  The true problem came when dragons – the preeminent race in the multi-verse, and one with a proud history of dominance – showed it.  They weren’t above it, but everyone else didn’t need to know that.  Showing one’s emotions, especially ones like fear, could only give enemies opportunities for exploitation.

“What is it?” he demanded, his voice stern.

“I…I don’t know.”

“Then –”

Before he could finish his sentence, the storm exploded.  Lightning arced out in every direction, igniting the air with greens and blues.  At the same time, the cloud expanded into hundreds of columns.  They didn’t extend up and down, but rather, outward, reaching out like the arms of some tentacled monster.

Then came the buzzing.

At first, it was barely even noticeable, but as those columns of green-and-yellow mist drew closer, they filled Eyik’s senses like nothing else could. 

He had lived through dozens of vespiran attacks, and he knew the sound of their wings.  But there were no vespirans in Orveth Kaal.  He knew that as surely as he knew his own name.

The mystery only lasted a few moments before a swarm of mutated monsters rocketed from those columns.  In most ways, they looked like the hornets native to the ancestral world.  The creatures were a menace, sweeping through Orveth Kaal like a plague.  The only solace came from the fact that they rarely stuck around long enough to cause real issues.

They swooped in, devoured what they could easily find, then moved on.

Eyik didn’t think this new swarm would do anything of the sort.  Nor did he believe they were the same sorts of creatures.  Maybe they’d begun their lives that way, but somewhere along the way, their paths had diverged.  Not only were they many times larger, but most of them had grown armored chitin to protect their bodies. 

And that wasn’t even considering the spines.

Eyik had never seen anything like it, but the things were covered in bone-like protrusions.  They also flew in jerky spurts, almost as if they weren’t quite in control of their own movements.

But that didn’t rob them of any speed.

In a twitch of Eyik’s brow, the swarm was upon them.  Millions of them. Billions, perhaps.  And they kept coming.  The dragons didn’t lack for reaction, though.  They fired off hundreds of spells, and in only a few instants.  Whole swaths of that swarm were destroyed, individual insects exploding into motes of ethera.

But there were so many.

Too many.

They couldn’t kill them all.  As a tide of inevitability, the swarm descended.  Eyik tried to learn the identities of every member of the expedition.  From the lowest serpentor to the most powerful dragon, he at least knew their names.  So, he was well acquainted with the identity of the first dragon they attacked.

Mok es K’levehar.

He was an earth-attuned defender and one of the most durable members of the entire expedition.  He could withstand attacks from peak deities and keep moving forward, mostly due to his unique combination of high constitution, suitable attunement, and high-rarity class.

The mutated hornets cared nothing for his vaunted defenses.  Most of their stingers broke upon impact, but a few managed to find the softer and less protected bits.  Like his eyes.  The thin webs between his claws.  His orifices.  They swarmed him, covering his entire body with twitching legs, spines, and fluttering wings.

He roared, lashing out blindly at the still-descending swarm.  He killed thousands.  Hundreds of thousands.  But he couldn’t get them all.

Soon enough, his body began to twitch.  Then, he fell into a full-blown spasm, his legs moving erratically as his wings folded into his body. 

Eyik was so enthralled by the sight that, for a few moments, he couldn’t force himself to act.  Instead, he just watched in horror.

That hesitation spelled the dragons’ potential doom. 

Even as the orcish fleet continued their attack, so too did the storm advance.  And it had more in store than just a swarm of mutated hornets.  The little monsters continued their inexorable flight, and the storm proved just as unavoidable.  Soon enough, it hovered overhead, sending down arcs of lightning to scorch draconic scales.

That was when the mist descended.

Green.  Yellow.  Destructive.

Eyik felt it the second it made contact with his flesh, burning through not only his body, but scouring his soul as well.  All around him, dragons howled in confusion and pain as their well-laid siege turned to chaos. 

The floating mountain fortress let loose with wave after wave of cannon fire.  In any other situation, Olarika could have stopped it with one of her shields.  But now?  She was too busy trying to fend off millions of mutated hornets while that green mist scorched her soul. 

An alarm went off in Eyik’s mind.

He whipped around to see a savage orc bearing down on him.  The moment he laid eyes on the creature, he knew it was different.  No bigger than a normal orc.  No less primitive.  And certainly, no less vicious. 

But the power surrounding it was unique – a mix of vitality and ethera that Eyik couldn’t quite comprehend. 

And that wasn’t even considering that the creature sprinted toward him on thin air.

Eyik barely had time to raise a shield before the thing hit him with a lancing charge.  Its spear slipped through the shield like it was nothing and ripped a massive gash in Eyik’s shoulder.  It would’ve been his throat had he not reacted so quickly.

The orc rebounded, flipping backward to avoid a hasty swipe from Eyik’s claw, then planted its feet on open air.  It crouched in a stance, spear outstretched.  It almost seemed intelligent.  Civilized.

A ridiculous notion.

Hovering in place, Eyik studied his opponent.  The spear in its hand was powerful.  A relic from when the ancestral world had been populated by dragons, no doubt.  There was something in the orc’s eyes that said it was different. 

Almost like a reasoning creature.

Orcs weren’t intelligent, though.  Cunning at times.  Brutal. Savage.  But never intelligent. 

Eyik had spent his entire life training for battle, and more than half of that putting those lessons into practice.  So, when the orc once again attacked, he met it with a quick block.  Spear met razor-sharp claws, and miraculously, neither gave way.  Proof enough that the primitive-looking spear wasn’t orcish work.

They weren’t capable of that.

It was also all the evidence Eyik needed to know that his opponent would be no easy mark.  He beat his wings, summoning a cadre of conjured blades that he sent at the orc in a storm of sharpness.

His attunement and class worked in unison.  Sharpness and the Master of Blades coalesced into something extraordinary.  He had the power to transcend the system.  All he needed was time.

Or so all his tutors told him.

Whether that was true or not would be a tale told across eons.  At present, he was a long way from reaching that point, even if, in the back of his mind, he considered it inevitable. 

Miraculously, the orc stood its ground.  Suddenly, its spear became a blur, and when the storm of blades dissipated, the creature remained standing.  Bloodied, certainly.  Trembling slightly.  But still upright and ready for whatever came next.

Eyik’s brow furrowed.  He wanted nothing more than to fight the rest of the battle in his dragon form, but his teachers had all hammered home a simple reality – as powerful as that form was, it was not suitable for every fight.  Sometimes, it was a detriment.

This was one of those cases.

The orc was dangerous and fast, more than capable of exploiting the disparity in size.  So, without further hesitation, Eyik shifted.  The moment he did, he realized his error. 

His natural form was much more durable than his humanoid shape, which meant it was far better suited to dealing with the green-and-ocher fog.  It scorched through him, blistering his soul and providing a distraction for the orc’s next attack.

It came in low, transitioning into a sweeping attack that nearly took Eyik’s leg.  He managed to get ahold of himself just in time to avoid losing the limb, but it still nicked his shin.  The blade sliced through his armor as if it wasn’t there.

He took a deep breath.

He knew he couldn’t ignore the fog.  Nor could he overcome the irritant in short order.  But he could embrace it, as he had with all the torturous training he had endured in his youth.  He could use it as fuel.  As motivation. 

So he did.

His mind came into focus, and he steadied himself. 

The orc recognized the shift and transitioned into exploratory jabs.  So continued their duel.  Even amidst so much chaos, Eyik couldn’t afford to lose focus, not for a second.  Such was the power of his odd opponent.

But somewhere in the back of his mind, Eyik couldn’t help but see it as a worthy challenge.  Not the orc.  But rather, the fact that such a primitive creature could attain such combat prowess.  If it could, then Eyik had no excuse not to be much, much better. 

A comforting thought after so much praise.

The orc lanced in, and the fight continued.  Eyik was almost happy to meet the attack.