Path of Dragons 17 - Chapter 81 - Mercy (Patreon)

Elijah found the answer to one mystery when he drew closer to the wyrm and saw Ok’tarik feebly clinging to the creature’s exposed innards.  He’d clearly seen better days, judging by his charred black skin.  However, given the sheer amount of vitality coursing through him, Elijah expected that the orc would make a full recovery.

Not soon.

And he certainly wasn’t currently a threat to anyone.  The only reason he’d survived as long as he had was because the thrashing wyrm never even considered the possibility that the enemy was half inside its own body.  Would that last indefinitely?  Assuredly not.  But for now, Ok’tarik was safe.

Elijah didn’t immediately attack the creature, largely because he knew precisely how dangerous it could still be.  The spatial field surrounding it was dense with rifts, each one corrosive enough to cut through Scales of Eternity.  Complicating matters was the field’s shifting nature.  With every passing moment, it quivered, moving just enough to make traversal through it almost impossible.

However, almost was not completely.

And Elijah was willing to push his luck, though not in his current form.  Instead, he climbed above the blue-scaled wyrm, not stopping until thousands of feet separated them.  Once he reached a sufficient altitude, he shifted into the Shape of Withering and took on the Guise of the Stalker. 

Stealth fell upon his shoulders like a comforting blanket, giving him a brief moment of peace during which he could finalize his plan.  It wasn’t a complicated maneuver, but considering that he’d recently used every other major attack, it was the only strategy available to him.

With that in mind, he turned over and used Ride the Wind to hover in place.  The wyrm was so large that even from half a mile above it, Elijah could easily make out its every detail. 

Such a waste.

The wyrm had once been a powerful dragon, and it had given that up for what?  A shortcut to power?  Elijah didn’t know its backstory.  He had no idea what might have driven it over the edge.  But he recognized that he would never make that choice.

It was tempting to throw off the system’s shackles.  Doing so would obviously give him a little more power.  The cost was too high, though. 

Of that, he was absolutely certain. 

Knowing that the wyrm had made that choice elicited a combination of pity, disdain, and no small degree of anger.  Pity, for obvious reasons.  Disdain, because Elijah abhorred weakness, especially when it culminated in someone taking an unnecessary shortcut.  And anger, because at the end of the day, he remained a dragon.

And no dragon could look upon a wyrm without feeling a little anger.

Elijah suppressed those emotions as best he could, but for the first time in a long time, he failed to quarantine them.  Instead, they seeped into multiple leaves before he simply focused his attention elsewhere.

Most notably, on coughing up one Plagueburst after another.  He could complete the process in less than a second, and he decided to do so.  By the time the first hit the wyrm, he’d managed twenty-five Plaguebursts.

As the first exploded upon the wyrm’s head, Elijah tucked his wings and dove.  Using Ride the Wind to augment his speed, he covered the distance in the blink of an eye.  Falling Talon activated, so when he finally hit the wyrm’s head, he did so with enough force to tear through the weakened skull to absolutely destroy the brain.

It was a quick death.

Like a gunshot to the base of a person’s skull.

And when Elijah erupted from the other side of the skull, he was coated in viscera.  Without a second’s hesitation, he banked and grabbed Ok’tarik’s unconscious body.  After using Wellspring, he sailed away, dodging between quivering spatial rifts as he returned to where he’d left the Poet.

Along the way, he clipped a few rifts, but for the most part, he made it back unscathed.  A minor miracle, all told.

He deposited Ok’tarik on a nearby hunk of rock, then faced the Poet.

“The wyrm’s dead.”

“I saw.”

When the Poet didn’t offer anything else, Elijah found himself wanting to scream.  He restrained himself, though.  Instead, in as calm a voice as he could manage, he asked, “What now?  You said you could repair Orveth Kaal.”

“Of course I can,” he said.  “And I will.  If you wish to live through it, you will be elsewhere when I begin.”

“I don’t understand.”

The Poet glanced in his direction, then opened his mouth to speak.  However, the sound that came from his throat was like nothing Elijah had ever heard before.  They weren’t words.  Not really, but there was structure there that suggested a language.  Elijah couldn’t focus on understanding them, though. 

Instead, he couldn’t get past the blood pouring from his eyes and ears.  His every sense was overwhelmed as power swirled all around him.  Rainbow colors flashed before his eyes as tears mingled with the blood dripping down his scaley cheeks. 

And the venomwing stalker didn’t even have tear ducts.

The sound was beautiful, terrifying, and domineering all at once.  Thankfully, it only lasted for a split second before the Poet closed his mouth.  Elijah’s regeneration took over, repairing some of the damage wrought by the sound, but it was far from enough.  In fact, Elijah was forced to shift into his human form and cast all of his healing spells before he felt any real relief.

When he had recovered, he asked, “What was that?”

“A poem.”

Elijah opened his mouth to offer a retort, but he thought better of it.  He’d known the Poet had begun as an Entertainer and presumably taken a class related to poetry.  However, he’d never really considered the implications of that.  Now, he’d gotten a glimpse of what a transcendent poet could really do.

Of course, he’d heard a transcendent Singer’s song once before, but it was obvious that that particular dragon had been holding back.  Even if they hadn’t been, Elijah suspected that they’d have struggled to display the same degree of power the Poet had so casually issued.

After all, he was considered the most powerful dragon in the Empire of Scale.  At that level of strength, even a non-combatant could rewrite reality.  It went far beyond doing damage.

Suddenly, Elijah realized that the Poet was talking.  He held up one finger and let his healing spells work for a few more seconds, repairing his eardrums.  Once they were more or less intact, he said, “Sorry.  Kind of burst my eardrums there.  What were you saying?”

The Poet narrowed his eyes.

“You are an infuriating little dragon,” he stated.

Elijah shrugged. “Part of my charm.”

The Poet looked like he wanted to say something else, but he held his tongue.  Or maybe he was debating whether or not he should destroy Elijah altogether.  If it came to that, there was nothing Elijah could have done about it, so there was no real sense in worrying.

“I was saying that if you remained in Orveth Kaal, you would certainly die,” the Poet stated.  “Therefore, you must leave.”

“I’m pretty durable.”

“That was a single word of a poem I composed before Orveth Kaal’s first shattering,” the ancient dragon said.  “Even the memory of you would cease to exist if you attempted to endure the poem I intend to use to bind Orveth Kaal together.”

“Oh.”

Then, something occurred to him.  “There are others here.”

“The orcs will live.”

“No.  I’m talking about some people from Earth.  They –”

“You have a week to evacuate.  Whether you choose to use that to extract them is up to you.  Anyone who remains here after that week will surely perish,” the Poet informed him.

“Why a week?”

“Because that is how long it will take for the planet to become completely untethered,” the Poet answered, the words coming out as a bored lecture.  “When that happens, there is nothing I can do.  I must act before that.”

“Fair enough,” Elijah admitted.  “A week.  I can work with that.  How long will it take you to…uh…repair it?”

“A year.”

Elijah nodded.  “A  year it is.”

“Remember that you must be prepared to claim Orveth Kaal when you return.  If you miss this opportunity, do not expect me to step in,” the Poet said. 

“What do you mean by claim it?”

“You will need to figure that out on your own, whelp.  Now go.  I need to focus on preparation.”

With that, the Poet turned away and closed his eyes.  It was clear a dismissal as Elijah was likely to get, so he wasted no more time before shifting back into his dragon form and going to collect Ok’tarik.  Not long after, he landed on the rock where he’d left Kurik and Maya and had them climb onto his back.

The last stop was to find Illska, who remained where he’d left her.  She was awake and mostly fine, though she looked even more drained than ever.  Soon enough, she informed him that she had been forced to use what little ethera she’d managed to regenerate to protect herself from the blast.

That elicited an eager interrogation from both Maya and Kurik as to the severity of the explosion.  Illska had had a front row view, so she was more than capable of describing exactly what she’d seen.

Elijah had never seen a pair of more pleased people than Maya and Kurik when they were told just how destructive the explosion had been.  To Elijah, it sounded like a combination of a nuclear explosion and Flames of Renewal, but even he acknowledged that that was probably a bad descriptor for something wholly unique.

Either way, the two were very happy with the results of the Vengeance’s sacrifice.

“Next time, we’re going to build it even bigger,” Maya said.  “And more durable.  We won’t have to correct the dragons’ mistakes this time, either.”

Then, she revealed that she’d already begun to draft designs in her head. 

That discussion – mostly between Kurik and Maya – took them all the way back to where they’d untethered Fungee from the Vengeance.  When Elijah entered the cavern, he found an extremely distraught fungal colony, and he spent almost an hour calming Fungee down. 

It worked, but not completely.  So, when Elijah sent Kurik and Maya back to Earth – via Root Nexus – the fungal colony kept a tendril around his waist.  Like a clingy child.

Elijah allowed it because he could feel Fungee’s continued distress.

Of course, neither Kurik nor Maya wanted to leave.  Not until Elijah made it clear that they would be destroyed if they stayed.  Even then, they seemed a bit sulky about the idea.

Illska was a different story. 

“You’re not going back to Earth,” she said.

Elijah shook his head. “I have different plans.  Why?”

“I’m coming with you,” she said.

“But –”

“This is not negotiable.”

It only took one look for Elijah to recognize that she wouldn’t be swayed.  So, he shrugged and told her it was fine by him.  However, he did add, “You might not like where we’re going, though.”

“What of me?” asked Ok’tarik, who still hadn’t really recovered.  His skin was scabbed, and he barely felt alive.  But he was getting better with every hour.

“The Poet said the orcs will be fine. I assume that meant you too,” Elijah said.  “But you’re welcome to come too.  If the system will allow it.”

“I…I will try.”

“You didn’t even ask where we’re going.”

Ok’tarik said, “It does not matter.”

Elijah could understand the sentiment.  After all, Orveth Kaal was a prison for orcs.  Any escape would be better than staying.  Of course, the ancestral world was also the orcs’ home, which meant that the situation was much more complicated than that simple exchange suggested.

Either way, Elijah wasn’t sure if the system would allow Ok’tarik to leave.  It had blocked him from going to the Empire of Scale, so there was no guarantee one way or another.

When it came time to leave, Fungee tried to stop him.  He tried to tell the fungal colony that he would return soon, but Fungee wasn’t easily convinced.  In the end, he let Elijah leave, but he clearly didn’t like it.

So it was with a guilty conscience that Elijah set out for Agmar.  That was the next stop before he left Orveth Kaal to the Poet.