Path of Dragons 17 - Chapter 70 - Warring Cataclysms (Patreon)

Elijah held himself together – literally clutching his legs under his lone good arm as he crashed into the Vengeance.  Nearby, Kurik and his apprentices were finishing a dragon off, hacking through its spine with comically large axes.  Or they would’ve seemed like a joke, had they not been covered in blood and swung with such unerring precision.  As it was, the picture was more horrifying than humorous.

Not that Elijah had the wherewithal to focus on them.  He was a little preoccupied with the damage done by the spiderwebbing rifts that had nearly destroyed his body. 

Nearly.

Having his legs severed and one arm completely ripped to pieces would have qualified as something much more inclusive than that simple label.  However, Elijah had been saved by an ongoing Wellspring and a quickly cast Bough of the World Tree, combined with Blessing of the Grove.  Even then, the three healing spells were really only capable of keeping him moving.

Repairing the damage would be much more difficult.

Thankfully, he’d managed to guide himself to the Vengeance’s surface, where he hoped to get some help. 

That came in the form of Miguel landing beside him.

He leaped free of Trevor’s back, then raced to Elijah’s side.  “What do you need?” he demanded. 

“Healer,” Elijah choked.  He’d been in the Shape of the World Serpent when the spatial storm had nearly killed him from the inside out, which was probably the only reason he’d survived.  Had he been in any other shape – without Scales of Eternity – he would have been utterly destroyed.

He knew that not only due to personal experience, but because he had seen multiple dragons explode into arcing rifts that sliced through their defenses like they didn’t even exist. 

And those were all deities.

The orcs had fared much worse.  Elijah had no way to acquire real numbers, but he estimated that they’d lost half of their fleet.  And that was just in the first few seconds of Masasha’s explosion of spatial energy.

She was growing stronger by the second.

Because she had descended into wyrmhood.  Elijah didn’t need a Scholar to confirm it.  He had seen it in her eyes.  Whatever kind of person she had been, that was over.  She had given herself fully over to the wildness of her attunement. 

Now, there were two space-attuned wyrms fighting in the distance.  Maybe forty miles away from the Vengeance, though distance was a little difficult to gauge, given their enormous size and the lack of real landmarks in the open atmosphere of Orveth Kaal.  The distortion from the rifts made it even worse.

Miguel didn’t hesitate to act.  He reached down and scooped Elijah into his arms, heedless of the pain he caused.  Then, he sprinted across the surface of the Vengeance.  The jostling didn’t make Elijah feel any better, but he gritted his teeth and bore the pain as well as he could.

Meanwhile, his healing spells worked on the damage.  He could recover – eventually – but reattaching limbs and regrowing so much flesh was a time-intensive affair.  Even with his power, it would require hours for him to fully heal. 

Especially now that he’d already used Mycelial Rebirth. 

But real Healers?  They could work much more quickly.  And the vitality he could create with Bough of the World Tree, Wellspring, and Blessing of the Grove would provide them with plenty of fuel. 

Miguel barreled through one of the entrances, where they found a hospital.  It wasn’t a temporary facility, either.  Someone had had the bright idea of putting medical centers near all the entrances, anticipating a situation similar to their current circumstance. 

It was a good thing, too.  Because most of the patients wouldn’t have made it much further into the Vengeance.  Everywhere Elijah looked, he saw wounded people.  Dragons.  Humans.  Dwarves and elves.  Some were missing limbs.  Others had been burned beyond all recognition but somehow still clung to life.  Still others had been poisoned or experienced any of a wide variety of other wounds. 

Blood coated the tile floor and had been splattered across the walls.  The normally pristine white beds had been stained red, while dozens of people rushed about.  Some were Healers, but most were other non-combatants acting as assistants and runners.  It should have been chaotic, and in a lot of ways, it was.  However, everyone working in that clinic had drilled for just such a crisis.  They knew their jobs, and they’d been at it long enough for everything to become routine.

Still, in that brief moment, Elijah saw just how exhausted everyone was. 

Further evidence that the battle was being fought on multiple fronts.  In the skies above, on the surface of the mountainous ships, and in the bowels of the Vengeance. 

Just then, the ship lurched, then dropped.  The descent lasted only a second, but in that time, Elijah’s stomach had jumped into his throat. 

Alarms exploded into a shrill klaxon that no one could ignore. 

Miguel maintained his footing, still rushing across the clinic’s main floor.  There were no beds available – not until he saw that one of the patients had already died.  Unceremoniously, Miguel shoved the corpse away, then laid Elijah in the previous patients’ bloody sheets.

“Healer!” he shouted, his voice carrying over the alarm. 

It didn’t take long for someone to respond.  She was an exhausted, sturdily built woman in what had once been a white smock.  The blood had stained it the color of rust. 

She took one look at Miguel, then at Elijah.  Her eyes widened as she realized the identity of her patient.  Then, she went to work.

Elijah maintained his own healing spells, forcing his soul into Blessing of the Grove.  Clouds gathered across the ceiling before dumping rejuvenating rain onto the clinic.  That water did more than just heal the patients.  It washed away some of the blood as well, only to end up flowing into the drainage grates along the floor.

At first, Elijah didn’t recognize the Healer, but then, a realization dawned on him.

“Seattle,” he said aloud, remembering the lone time he’d met the woman.  She ran the largest hospital in the city.  Or at least, that was the case at the time of their only encounter.  It was just after the war elves’ attempt to take the city, and Elijah had distracted himself by working to heal the victims.

“Used to be,” she said.  “Now shut up and let me work.”

Elijah followed her orders, but his mind continued to whirl with questions as to how she had ended up in Orveth Kaal.  That was just one facet, though.  The rest of the leaves were dedicated to figuring out what to do about the warring wyrms outside.

Only a few minutes had passed since Masasha’s fall, and already, the world was beginning to unravel.  Or rather, whatever power motivated it through the void had begun to fail.  When that happened and that connection was severed, the world would end up cast back into the abyss.

It was just a theory, but the idea left Elijah cold with fear.

And more than a little angry.

He wasn’t that concerned about everyone in the Vengeance.  The shields would protect them – temporarily, at least – from corruption, giving him a chance to engineer a retreat back to Earth.  However, Fungee couldn’t leave Orveth Kaal.  Neither could the orcs. 

Elijah wasn’t prepared to lose them all.

By the time the Healer reattached his legs, Elijah hadn’t found a solution.  There was always the obvious – kill both wyrms – but he wasn’t certain he had the power to do that.  Maybe the blue wyrm whose name he didn’t know, but not Masasha. 

She was beyond him, and not by a small degree.  Even before her descent into wyrmhood, she was too strong for Elijah to defeat.  Now?  It would be like going to war with a mountain.

“Stop thinking of the problem.  Think in terms of assets,” Miguel said, still standing guard.  That he had correctly predicted Elijah’s thoughts was proof that his nephew knew him better than most.

“Assets,” Elijah muttered as the Healer continued to work.  She’d gotten his legs reattached and was working on rebuilding his arm.  An uncomfortable thing to endure, but Elijah ignored it.  Instead, he kept his attention trained on the situation at hand.

The most important asset was Elijah.  Not because he was deadlier than most, but rather, because without him, escape was impossible.  Root Nexus was his spell, and it wouldn’t work for anyone if he died.  Sure, his storm still raged outside, and he could probably kill a few dragons, but that wasn’t the most important thing.

Beyond Elijah, Illska was the only person capable of affecting the fight between the two wyrms.  She was the only viable weapon.

The Vengeance was durable, but its cannons were mostly inconsequential.  The few Vyrin dragons left were strong enough, but they were almost entirely uncontrollable.  Elijah didn’t even know how to reach them.

A few others like Miguel could contribute, but even together, the battle didn’t seem winnable. 

“We have to retreat,” Elijah said at last.  The words were like a burr in his mind.  He hated admitting it, but the fact was that Earth’s forces were too weak to fight against a pair of peak deity wyrms. 

Punctuating that thought was another altitude drop, followed by a violent shudder that arced throughout the Vengeance. 

“I concur,” Miguel said.

“Get to Jessup.  Organize the retreat.  I’ll get to Illska, and we’ll cover everyone,” Elijah said, sitting up.  His arm was still injured, but he could feel his fingers.  That would have to be enough.  He could finish the healing himself.

“You’re not leaving, are you?” asked Miguel.

Elijah shook his head.  “No.  I can’t.”

Miguel fixed him with an unreadable gaze, then nodded.  Did he understand Elijah’s reasoning?  Probably not.  But then again, Miguel was a father, and one who would do whatever it took to protect his son.  So, maybe he did understand that Elijah couldn’t abandon Fungee.

Nor could he leave Ok’tarik to his own devices.  The same could be said of the other orcs. 

When Elijah’s quest to conquer Orveth Kaal had begun, it was born of spite.  However, over the years, he’d come to see it as something else.  Not a home.  Not a possession.  A place worth protecting. 

And he wouldn’t give up on it just because some space-attuned dragon lost control.

However, that didn’t mean he was willing to sentence the rest of the Earth expedition to death.  Failure was too likely, and even success would see the face of Orveth Kaal entirely changed.  It had already begun, and Elijah didn’t think it would end after a few hundred miles. 

The place was shattering.

Elijah didn’t believe that was avoidable. 

But the planet had shattered before, and it was still there.

Did he have a real plan for saving it?  No.  But he did have something like a plan for dealing with the two wyrms.  It wasn’t complex, and he wasn’t sure it would work.  Even if it did, the collateral damage would be obscene.

Thus, the retreat.

He was prepared to explain all of that to Miguel, but it turned out to be entirely unnecessary.  His nephew trusted him.

That came with a weighty responsibility. 

“Thank you,” Elijah said to the Healer as he swung his recently reattached legs off the bed.  They twitched a bit, but otherwise, they felt mostly normal.  They weren’t.  Elijah could feel that the healing wasn’t entirely finished.  But it was good enough to keep him going. 

“You need rest,” she told him.

Another drop followed by a quake made it clear that there was no time for that.  Elijah just said, “I’ll spend a few weeks healing once this is all done.”

Then, he turned to Miguel. “First order of business is to rescue everyone who needs rescuing,” he stated.  “While we’re doing that, non-essential personnel can head back to Earth.  Tell Jessup.  He’ll know how to organize it.”

Miguel nodded.  “What will you do?”

“Back into the fray,” Elijah answered.  “I’ll be a scout for now.  Once we’ve found all survivors…”

“I’ll stay too.”

“No,” Elijah said to his nephew.  “You’ll lead them back to Earth.”

In that simple order was an acknowledgement that Miguel’s place in the grove was incredibly important.  The Hartwood Grove wouldn’t exist without Elijah, but Miguel was one of the pillars upon which the organization had been built.  Without him, it would inevitably fall. 

Miguel nodded again.  “Let’s do it, then.”