Path of Dragons 17 - Chapter 80 - Staying Behind (Patreon)

“Maya?” Elijah gasped, recognizing the voice.  “What the hell are you doing still here?”

“You think I’m leaving my baby behind to crash against the core?” she demanded, the feed crackling with static.  “If she goes down, I’m going to make damn sure she goes out with a bang.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” came another voice.

“Kurik?!”

“Who else would it be?” the dwarf spat.  “Keep her steady, Maya.”

“Don’t backseat drive.”

“Vengeance ain’t got any back seats,” Kurik pointed out.

“Guys.  Shut up,” Elijah pleaded as he watched the Vengeance slowly grow larger.  It was obviously going at full speed, aided in no small part by the localized gravitational pull created by the fight between the two wyrms.  By his estimate, it had about two minutes before it reached the wyrm – which meant that they were on a timer.

“I hope you have a plan,” he said into the phone, already racing across the intervening distance.  “You’ve got about thirty seconds to explain everything.”

It was Maya who answered, succinctly reiterating that she had no intention of letting the Vengeance fall without doing a bit of damage on its way out.  Apparently, the ship’s systems were even more damaged than Elijah had known, and there was absolutely no way to recover.  As such, Maya had come upon the bright idea of using the Vengeance in a kamikaze attack.

That was where Kurik picked up, adding that he’d helped her rig the ship to explode upon impact.  “Ain’t sure exactly how big of an explosion we should expect,” he admitted.  “Maybe as big as the bomb we dropped from the Comet.  Maybe bigger.  There’s a lot of volatile ethera in there.”

“Lots of bombs, too,” Maya added cheerfully.  “Tied them to the crystals and –”

Elijah landed on the surface of the speeding ship.  “Where are you?” he demanded.

“Bridge,” answered Maya, while Kurik popped his head up only a hundred yards away and waved.  Elijah didn’t miss the broad smile splitting the dwarf’s beard.

“Freaking lunatics,” he muttered to himself.  Then, into the phone, he asked if there was anyone else onboard.  There wasn’t, so he told Kurik to wait there while he went to fetch Maya.  To her, he said, “Rig it on autopilot or something.  I’ll be there to pick you up in about fifteen seconds.”

He glanced along the ship’s trajectory.  “Make that ten,” he said, already shifting.  This time, he took on the Avatar of Storms and immediately embraced Way of Storms.  Thankfully, the unscheduled evolution hadn’t robbed Way of Storms of its predecessor’s elemental control, so he could still manipulate the stone that comprised the ship’s fuselage as well as ever.  In only a couple of seconds, he’d already begun to burrow his way to the bridge.

He reached it after eleven.

“Hop on,” he croaked to Maya.  She’d once again upgraded her spider legs.  They were still metallic, but they looked disturbingly natural – if one disregarded the little hands with opposable thumbs at the end of each leg. 

Maya didn’t argue.  Instead, she punched a few buttons on the main console, then shoved a lever forward before obeying his orders. 

“Hang on,” he ordered, leaping back through the hole he’d dug.  By the time he reached the surface, another five seconds had passed.  It took Kurik two more to join Maya on his back, though he looked markedly discomforted by her spider legs.

Elijah ignored both of them, already leaping high into the air.  He shifted into the Shape of the World Serpent, then pushed himself forward.  At the same time, he asked Gunnar for a status update.

“Further away than you,” Gunnar said.  “Picked up Illska on the way.”

“Ok’tarik?” Elijah asked.

“No phone.  He’s still fighting that big bastard back there,” Gunnar answered, his voice distorted by increased static.

“Shit,” Elijah muttered.  He wanted to save the orc, but he couldn’t do so without putting everyone else in danger.

Besides, there just wasn’t enough time.

Elijah didn’t even look back and instead pushed himself to move faster.  He knew it wouldn’t be enough, so he said, “Sorry about this.”

“What are –”

Maya never got a chance to finish her question before Elijah used Dimensional Leap.  In only a moment, he was in the void.  Both Kurik and Maya screamed, but not in surprise.  Rather, their skin was being melted from their bodies by the corrosive atmosphere.  Elijah cast Wellspring on both, weaving as much of his soul through the spell as possible.

He didn’t let Dimensional Leap go for its full duration, instead cutting it off after a little less than a second.  Even that was almost too much for his two passengers to bear.  He burst back into Orveth Kaal, already looking for a place to land and tend to his friends’ health.

He didn’t get more than a second into his search before a massive explosion lit up the horizon behind him.  After five more seconds, a shockwave hit him.  He fought against it, but even with all of the world serpent’s power, the best he could do was ride the wave until it dissipated a little.

That took him more than twenty miles away.

Thankfully, it was right toward a sizable landmass, upon which Elijah landed.  Already, he’d shifted back to his human form and deposited both Kurik and Maya onto the ground.

When he looked at them, he saw very much what Soul of the Wild told him to expect.  Both figures looked like they’d experienced third degree burns over their entire bodies.  Kurik’s beard was gone, and his clothes were in tatters.  Maya’s clothes were a little better off, and her wounds were slightly less severe.  However, her spider legs twitched this way and that, and the joints had corroded so much that they didn’t want to move properly.

Elijah wouldn’t let their wound stand.

He immediately descended upon them, taking on his dragon form to lend his healing spells more power.  In less than a second, he’d added Blessing of the Grove to the ongoing Wellspring.  As the summoned cloud dumped rejuvenating rain on them, Elijah cast Bough of the World Tree.  Over and over until he started to see improvement.

Suddenly, Maya gasped and shot upright. 

“What the fuck?!” she growled, her eyes wild.

“Sit still.  I’m healing you.”

“What the…what the hell was that?” she demanded.

“The void.”

“What?  Why did you take us into the void?”

Elijah pointed with one of his wings, and she turned her head.  The scab on her neck cracked, but thankfully, it didn’t ooze any blood or other fluids.  Elijah continued to heal her as she looked toward the horizon, which was still burning.

“Was that…”

“That’s where the Vengeance exploded.”

Inadvertently, she smiled.

Elijah tried to roll his eyes, then realized that, as a dragon, that just wasn’t possible.  So, he simply raised his eye ridges as he continued to work.  After a few more moments, Kurik woke up. 

And he didn’t waste any time before demanding to know how big the explosion was.

“I think we’re about a thousand miles away,” Elijah answered. “Felt the shockwave even here.”

“Damn,” groaned Kurik, lying back.  “Wish I’d have seen it.”

“What the hell did you even do?”

“This ‘n that,” Kurik answered.  “Not really as good with crystals and such.  Not like plants.  But I can still make it work.”

“Clearly,” Elijah said.  “Now, shut up and let me heal you.”

As it turned out, it took about two more minutes to finish the job.  Thankfully, both were nearing peak demigod, which meant that they both possessed significant durability.  And Elijah suspected that Maya specifically had some sort of ability meant to protect her from foreign energy. 

The end result was that they might’ve even survived without his healing.  Probably not, but they’d have had a fighting chance.  Elijah’s influx of vitality spared them any scars, though. 

Unfortunately, Kurik’s beard didn’t regrow, which left him looking oddly childlike.  It also embarrassed him greatly.

“There used to be a guy in Bogota who sold mustache growing potions.  I’m sure by now he’s expanded to beards,” Elijah suggested.

Kurik didn’t respond.

So, Elijah asked, “Did you get experience?  I didn’t.”

Maya and Kurik both shook their heads and said that they hadn’t been awarded any kill energy.  That meant that the wyrm was still alive.  Probably injured, but alive.  Oddly, Elijah found that reassuring, and it only took him a few moments to realize why.  It also meant that Ok’tarik had probably survived.

If he’d died in the blast, at least Kurik would have been awarded some experience.

As comforting as that notion was, it also battered Elijah with the return of urgency.  If Ok’tarik was alive, as logic suggested, then he was probably injured.  Which meant that Elijah still had work to do.

Now that Kurik and Maya were on the road to recovery, Elijah said, “Stay here.  I’m going to check it out.”

As he shifted back into the Shape of the World Serpent, Elijah took stock of his reserves.  The healing hadn’t really affected the contents of his core.  Those spells were fairly low-cost.  However, they were draining enough that he didn’t really regenerate much.  That, combined with his previous efforts meant that he only had a little more than a third of his normal capacity available to him.

That would need to be enough.

Elijah coiled, then shot forward.  It didn’t take long for him to realize that the danger to Orveth Kaal hadn’t passed.  If anything, the spatial damage had accelerated, sending the rifts hundreds of miles from the epicenter of the explosion.  Elijah wove through them, and when he got to within a couple hundred miles of ground zero, he started to feel something wrong in the air.

It was a little like radiation, but not exactly the same.  It also reminded him of corruption, but more natural.  It didn’t take a genius to recognize it as the fallout from the explosion.

He’d heard that the detonation of the Comet’s payload had resulted in something similar, telling him that Kurik and Maya had used some of the principles that went into making that bomb to augment the effects of the Vengeance’s destruction. 

The only saving grace was that they’d decoupled the ship from Fungee’s island before heading back.  Otherwise, Elijah might’ve been a little more distraught.

Soon enough, he found himself dodging hunks of rock, which he quickly realized were the remnants of the ship.  Between those and the increasingly dense spatial rifts, Elijah’s journey back to the site of the explosion took far longer than it should have.  When he reached his destination, he found one thing he’d expected and another he very much did not.

The first was the wyrm, with half its body having been charred from its skeleton.  Somehow, it still lived, though it was obvious that it would soon succumb.  That didn’t mean it had stopped being dangerous, though.  Even Elijah could feel the spatial fluctuations all around it, and he guessed that if he drew too close, he would be ripped apart by the turbulence.

However, he was far more focused on the surprise.

“I didn’t expect you here,” Elijah said, coming to a stop beside a tiny hunk of rock.  Upon that rock sat an old dragon who seemed to have gotten his fashion cues from old kung fu movies. 

The Poet didn’t even open his eyes.  Instead, he just said, “Then you weren’t thinking.”  Finally, he opened his eyes and flicked them toward Elijah.  “Obviously.”

“What are you doing here?” Elijah asked.  “I thought you’d be in your cell.”

“Did you think I would let Orveth Kaal shatter again?”

“Kind of.”

“Then you do not know me at all.”

“Now that is obvious.”

The Poet sighed, then said, “Kill the wyrm, and I will tell you how to stop this planet’s destruction.”

Elijah took a page out of Gunnar’s book when he said, “Pass.”

“Pass?”

“It means I don’t want to stop Orveth Kaal’s destruction,” Elijah lied.  “Not unless I get something out of it.”

“You will doubtless get the first spot in the trial.  That should be enough.”

“It’s not.  I want the planet,” Elijah said. “And I have some ideas about how to take it.  I just want you to stay out of my way, because I have no intention of returning it to the Empire of Scale.  I’d rather just let it fall apart.”

“You would not.”

“Did it look like I’m terribly attached to this place?” Elijah asked, gesturing at all the spatial rifts.  “I’m not.  If I can’t have the planet, I’m going to keep it here long enough for me to get my reward, then head back to Earth.”

“You do not negotiate with me, whelp.”

“Seems I do,” Elijah countered.  “Look – you don’t like the empire either.  I know you don’t.  And I promise I’ll protect this place as best I can.”

“You are only a demigod.”

“For now,” Elijah said.  “We both know that won’t last much longer.  Give me your blessing, and I’ll go kill that wyrm off.  Once it’s down, we can get started.”

The Poet tapped his chin.  “If I agree to this, I will be forced to change my plans.  That will take longer than expected.”

Elijah shrugged. “I’ve got time.”

“Very well,” the Poet said.  “Kill the wyrm, then vacate the planet.  I will pull everything back together.  When you return, be prepared to claim it.”

Elijah nodded. “Deal.”

Then, without further conversation, he slithered forward, intent on putting a wyrm out of its misery.