Path of Dragons 17 - Chapter 86 - War on a Different Timeline (Patreon)

Elijah’s feet shot into the ground, extending into a massive network of roots.  His torso elongated, pushing through the branches until it reached a height of more than a hundred yards.  His arms extended outward, multiplying into a thousand more limbs.  From those limbs grew more branches. And more after that. 

Next came the leaves, expansive and numerous.  Each one was larger than a human hand and run through with dense veins of ethera. 

At some point, his perspective shifted.  Or rather, it expanded.  He had no eyes, and yet, he could sense everything beneath his branches.  He had no ears, but he could feel every single vibration within a mile.  His skin had been replaced by hard bark, but that didn’t keep him from feeling the breeze or the cold dew on his trunk. 

For a moment, Elijah felt entirely disconcerted as he fell deeper into those alien senses.  It was like drowning in comfort, though with the existential terror that came from knowing that he wasn’t what his senses – and instincts – told him he was.  Briefly, those feelings completely overwhelmed him. 

Ironically, he might have lost himself, there and then, if the rest of the Plane of Nature had simply left him alone.  But it most assuredly did not. 

Elijah had always known that nature was a battlefield as active as any he’d ever experienced.  Never before had that felt truer than when his roots fought for primacy against other plants.  Or when he suddenly found the sunlight blocked by a larger, leafier branches.  Or when he felt vines creeping around his limbs and choking the vitality out of him. 

But Elijah was no normal tree.

He was a Druid.  And everything beneath his canopy fell under his domain.  Elijah flexed his power, casting multiple spells at once.  The first item on the agenda was to re-cast Blessing of the Grove, which dumped a torrent of rejuvenating rain onto the forest floor.  At the same time, a hundred flowers bloomed from between his leaves, bathing the entire area in a cleansing aura that beat back the toxins flowing through Illska’s and Ok’tarik’s bodies. 

Meanwhile, he cast Bough of the World Tree and Wellspring on his companions, flooding them with enough vitality to heal a transcendent.  They immediately woke and began to tear through the vines wrapping them in twin cocoons.  Ripping the barbed thorns from their flesh left behind jagged wounds oozing with toxins, but Elijah’s healing spells made quick work of such minor damage.

In addition, he focused on Soul of the Wild.  The blanket of nature-attuned ethera that had seemed so overwhelming to his human form was suddenly much more tolerable.  Still strong enough to smother him if he let it, but not if he maintained focus. 

He didn’t intend to let it drop.

Because the danger had not passed.

Thousands of thorny vines attacked Elijah and his two companions, wrapping and ripping in an attempt to overwhelm them.  Elijah intended to put an end to that, but in the Shape of Trees, he had no real attack capability.  He couldn’t move, either.  Not with his roots digging hundreds of feet into the ground.

So, he focused on his lone means of attack – Dictate of the World Tree.

He’d spent countless hours working with that spell and using it to control the growth of various plants, bacteria, and fungi.  So, when he embraced it, he thought he knew what to expect.

He still was not even remotely prepared.

Authority exploded out of him as the spell forcefully dragged his soul outward.  It wove its way through the surrounding forest, commanding every single plant to stop.

The vines froze.

Pollen in the air simply stopped moving. 

Even the wind obeyed his command.  Elijah flexed his will, and a pulse of soul-infused authority swept out through the forest.  Suddenly, Elijah knew everything beneath his branches just as intimately as he knew his island.  Every pebble.  Every leaf.  Every bacterial cell. 

Everything.

That knowledge passed within a second, leaving only echoes behind.  However, his authority persisted.  That wasn’t enough.  Elijah couldn’t maintain his grip indefinitely, and now that he was getting his mind under control, he had no intention of remaining a tree for the entire year they were stuck in Silvara. 

So, he reached out with his soul and shoved the branch into one of the vines.  For a second, the plant’s spirit smothered him.  In any other situation, it might have been overwhelming, but after what he’d just felt, it was nothing.  Elijah quickly pushed that aside and attached his awareness to the vine.

He followed the vine to its origin, and unsurprisingly, it grew from the same plant as every other vine in the area.  Elijah ruthlessly strangled it, growing his own roots to intertwine with its, choking them away by absorbing all of the nearby nutrients.  Meanwhile, he covered the plant with his branches, blocking the lifegiving sunlight. 

Then, he sent it a message.

It was simple enough: stop or die.  The plant wasn’t really intelligent, but the combination of Elijah’s actions and his order meant that the thing got the picture pretty quickly. 

Suddenly, the vines retracted, and the forest went still.

Ok’tarik and Illska tumbled free of the remnants of the vines, both wild-eyed and spinning to meet any new threats. 

Elijah tried to speak, but no words came.  Just a rustle of leaves.  Frustrated, he focused inward and found that he lacked the mechanism – magical or physical – to make any sound.  So, a little frustrated, he shifted out of the Shape of Trees and back into his human form.

Immediately, he fell to his knees, breathing hard.

Everything felt wrong.  His skin was too soft. His organs too slippery.  Everything was simultaneously too moist and too dry.  He wanted to dig his toes into the dirt and spread them through the earth.  He needed to feel the sun on his leaves and the rain on his limbs. 

He panted, that deep sense of wrongness rushing through him to create a false panic.  His adrenaline spiked, and his heart rate increased.  With some difficulty, Elijah closed his eyes and brought himself under control. 

It took almost thirty seconds.

When he finally looked up, he saw a trio of people staring back at him in disbelief. 

“What’s up?” he asked, forcing a smile he didn’t feel.  Being able to move his face felt wrong.

“What the ever-loving fuck was that?” demanded Gunnar.

“Uh…”

“Was that the new spell?” Illska asked.

“Yeah.”

“I do not like it,” Ok’tarik stated.

“It just saved your life,” Illska reminded the orc.

Ok’tarik just grunted in response.

Elijah pushed himself unsteadily to his feet, then rubbed the back of his neck.  His body felt both stiff and too limber at the same time.  “That was really, really weird.  How did it look?” he asked.

That was when Gunnar revealed that he’d taken on a form very similar to the ancestral tree growing in the center of the Hartwood Grove.  “But it was…I don’t know…more solid.  Not bigger.  Or I don’t think it was,” Gunnar added, clearly disconcerted by the event.  “But just…like it exists more fully than the tree back in the grove.”

“Interesting,” Elijah said.  Hearing that didn’t really surprise Elijah.  He suspected the origin of that solidity came from the way his soul intertwined with the spell.  It did so without his conscious input, which was a first for any of his spells.  Moreover, the power of the ancestral tree in the grove flowed from him.  Without his input, it wouldn’t have been nearly as large or powerful.  So, it stood to reason that his tree form would feel stronger – probably due to his advanced cultivation.

All in all, the experience left Elijah with a lot to think about.  Unfortunately, Silvara was no less dangerous just because he’d saved Illska and Ok’tarik from killer vines.  In fact, Elijah suspected it was just the beginning.

“I think we should establish camp here,” Elijah said.  “I’ll put up the tent.  It might be a little tight in there, but it’s the best we have for now.”

They all agreed.  After that, everyone started work on clearing a campsite.  The effort was complicated by the fact that hacking through the thick vegetation was incredibly difficult, even for peak deities like Ok’tarik and Illska.  On top of that, the forest floor didn’t seem to want to stay clear, with the flora growing back so rapidly that Elijah offered the only real solution.

He did so by using Dictate of the World Tree to guide the growth away from their campsite.  Even that was only a temporary measure, but one that would give them a little time to get their bearings and figure out a better strategy.

Still, it took a couple of hours to establish their campsite.  After that, Ok’tarik and Illska retreated into the tent to get some rest and heal from the recent war.  Meanwhile, Elijah and Gunnar took the first watch. 

Elijah wanted nothing more than to get started on his plan, but he refused to do so until his companions were at full strength.  In the meantime, he found it incredibly difficult not to let the aura of nature overwhelm him.  It was beautiful and terrifying in equal measure, and he wanted nothing more than to set off on a journey of exploration.

Doubtless, there were many wonders to find in Silvara. 

And Elijah wanted to see them all.

Eventually, Illska joined him sitting at the edge of camp.  She was clearly still exhausted, but just as obviously incapable of letting herself rest.  Elijah recognized the twitchiness that came from that state, largely because he’d experienced it often enough himself.

“Want to talk about it?” Elijah asked.

Illska shook her head.

“It might help.”

She still didn’t say anything.  Not until a few moments later when she let out a sigh.  “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Saving me.  Twice.”

Elijah’s brow furrowed.  “Twice?”

“You caught me as I fell after overcommitting in my final attack against Masasha,” she replied.

“Oh.  That.  I figured you did most of the heavy lifting when it came to beating her.  The least I could do was to make sure you didn’t end up crashing into the core,” he said.

“Do not do that.”

“Do what?”

“Undersell your contributions,” she chided.  “Without your efforts, Masasha would have defeated us.  Without you, I would have died.  Twice.  You deserve to look back at your actions with pride.”

“I didn’t do anything you wouldn’t have done.  Besides, this place is kind of hardcore,” Elijah said, glancing around.  “Without the tent, we’d have been overrun by wildlife two or three times over by now.”

“I am unaccustomed to weakness.”

“It’s not weakness,” Elijah pointed out.  “Think of it as a training opportunity.  You’re used to fighting more structured battles, right?”

“I am.”

“This is different.  The wilderness is…well…it’s wild.  You can’t let yourself relax, not even for a second.  One little mistake can change everything,” Elijah told her.  Then, he decided on a different tactic.  “Did I ever tell you about my first solo camping trip?”

She shook her head.

“Yeah.  I grew up going camping with my family.  My dad, me, my mom, and my sister,” Elijah explained.  “We’d all pile up in my dad’s Wagoneer and head out.  We hit all the big parks, hiking for days until we found the perfect spots.  And I guess my dad recognized that I was getting sloppy.  So, when I got old enough, he suggested I try it myself.”

Elijah shook his head.

“Almost died.”

“How?” asked Illska.

“Dropped my ferro rod too close to the campfire,” Elijah answered.  Then, he noticed her perplexed expression, so he had to explain what a ferro rod was.  That flowed into a lecture on camping norms back on Earth.  He finished by saying, “I can work with a friction fire, but back then, I wasn’t that good with it. Plus, it was a very wet environment.  Anyway, I couldn’t get a fire going.

“And it was late enough in the year that it got pretty cold at night.  Almost froze to death,” Elijah said.  “Even with my sleeping bag and thermals.  Thankfully, I wasn’t that far out, so the second the sun rose, I packed everything up and headed back.”

“What’s the point? I can make fire whenever I want.”

“My point is that it was such an innocuous mistake,” Elijah said.  “I knew better.  I’d been told how to treat a ferro rod.  But that didn’t stop me from dropping it too close to that fire.  Because when you’re out in the wilderness with no safety net, even the smallest mistakes can mean the difference between life and death.  That’s the struggle.  The constant attention.  It’s just like training.  You can keep going indefinitely, right?  But can you do that while pushing yourself to the limit?”

She shook her head.

“That’s my point.  Focus is the point.  This place will kill you if you let your attention slip for even a second,” Elijah said.  “But it’s not all bad.  I came here to train.  I assume you did as well.  So, it being hard makes it that much more effective.”

She didn’t respond for a few moments.  Then, at last, she said, “I see.  I will give it some thought.”

Without another word, she rose and returned to the tent.

A sigh from up above grabbed Elijah’s attention.  He looked up to see that the closest branch was a little bent, indicating that Gunnar was perched upon it.  “You have something to say?” Elijah asked.

“Just that it’s odd that you’re lecturing a peak deity on the verge of transcendence about…well…anything,” Gunnar remarked.  “You realize she’s thousands of years old, right?  There shouldn’t be anything for you to teach her.”

“We all have gaps in our knowledge,” Elijah said.

“True enough.”

Elijah said, “So, where…” 

He trailed off when he noticed the branch slightly quivering.  Elijah sighed. “And he’s gone.”

So ends book 17. I hope you all enjoyed it. We're going to be jumping right into book 18 tomorrow!