Path of Dragons 18 - Chapter 9 - Consideration (Patreon)

Illska was in a bad mood.

Worse than bad, really.  She was irritable, frustrated, and more than a little angry.  And for once, she didn’t have the option of simply rushing off to some unsettled corner of the multi-verse to take out her frustrations on the local monsters.  If she left the cave for even a short while, she would be attacked by the native wildlife.

Most of them were more than within her ability to defeat.  However, there were plenty that could easily subdue her.  Killing her would take a while, but she would be rendered helpless in moments.

That was what had happened the second she’d stepped through that portal.

Before her foot even hit the ground, she’d had a vine wrapped around her leg.  At first, she’d thought nothing of it, ripping her limb free with ease.  But then the toxins started to set in.  Her leg went numb, causing her to stumble.  That simple vulnerability left her wide open to another attack by those same cursed vines.  Before the orc had even followed her through the gate, she’d been wrapped in a cocoon.

The toxins left her entirely incapacitated and as weak as a mortal. 

The only saving grace was that the orc hadn’t done any better.  In fact, he’d succumbed even faster than Illska, which at least preserved a measure of her pride.  Not much, but enough to keep her from going insane.

Now, she was stuck in a cave and waiting for a mere demigod to save her.

Or that was how she thought of it, even if she knew the notion was, at best, an extreme mischaracterization of the situation.  For one, Elijah was no mere demigod.  He was the strongest demigod she’d ever seen, and perhaps the most powerful in the history of the empire. 

If not, then close enough that the distinction didn’t matter.

In addition, she wasn’t really stuck.  She could leave whenever she wanted, even if she couldn’t afford to venture too far. 

Briefly, Illska considered how her beloved would approach the situation.  In a lot of ways, they were so similar that people often conflated their personalities.  However, she knew Mano well enough to recognize just how different they were.  He wouldn’t have thought twice about leaving that cave and fighting the wilderness until either he died or the forest was subdued.

But Illska?

She knew her limits.  He did not.

Or rather, he refused to acknowledge them.  He often said that doing so gave them power over him, which was absolute anathema to his life philosophy.  Yet, it was also the reason he was a transcendent and she was still stuck at the peak of the deity tier. 

Illska was certain of it.

What made it even worse was that she knew precisely how to emulate her beloved.  All it would take was for her to leave that cave.  To head out into that wilderness and tackle its challenges head-on. 

Yet, she could not because she knew how that would end.  The prospect of death, in and of itself, didn’t frighten her.  Perhaps something came in its wake.  Maybe it all ended then and there.  Whichever was the case, she couldn’t affect it, so she simply accepted it and lived her life.  However, she was terrified of cutting said life short, of missing out on all the things she wanted to do, to see.  Of all the experiences waiting for her over the course of a life that would exceed tens of thousands of years.

Most of all, she feared leaving Mano behind.

Without her, he would have little reason to return from the abyss.  Instead, he would become one of those exceedingly powerful Warriors, doomed to an eternity of fighting a war against the Abyss.  Did it matter that he couldn’t win?

Mano didn’t acknowledge that.

Instead, he fought with everything he had, and not just against the monsters of the Abyss.  He fought the very concept of failure.  He fought against the good sense that told him to retreat and enjoy the life he’d earned.  He fought against the constraints of the system and the knowledge that nothing he did really mattered.

Not in the eternal war against the Abyss.  The Ravener was too powerful to even consider attacking, and his lieutenants were nearly as strong.  By comparison, even Emperor themselves would be destroyed by the least among them.  And that wasn’t even considering the lesser hordes that made their homes in the abyss.

Often, people thought of them as mindless creatures intent on consuming everything.  While the latter part of that was true, Illska had fought often enough in the Abyss to know that the first was entirely inaccurate.  They were anything but mindless. Instead, they were as intelligent and cunning as any dragon.

That made sense, considering that some of them had been dragons in their previous lives.  Or angels. Demons. Humans.  Members of every single race in the multi-verse had succumbed to the allure of the Abyss.  Some did it for entirely selfish reasons.  They wanted more power, and for various reasons.  Others believed they could harness the strength that came from their turn, then use that to help their people.

They never followed through.

Because once someone embraced the Abyss, they changed.  With that power came an insatiable lust for more.  They didn’t care about the costs.  They were unconcerned with how many people they had to trampled to get what they wanted.  They simply consumed.  Regardless of that veneer of civilization, that would always be the driving force behind every being that dwelled within the Abyss.

It infected the other side as well.  Those people fighting against the rising tide were just as vulnerable to its influence as anyone else.  More than once, Illska had caught herself on the verge of going too far, of giving in.  Just an inch, but that single step would be enough to put her on a path from which she could never return. 

She had watched trusted comrades spiral into becoming twisted versions of their true selves, all because of the Abyss’ influence. 

It was monstrous.

But it was also inevitable. 

That Mano had spent so much time fighting in the Abyss without letting it influence him was absolutely commendable.  He was as stalwart in his identity as anyone she had ever met, which was one of the reasons she’d grown to love him so dearly.

One among many, she considered.

Did he ever think of what he could lose, should he die? Or worse, give in to the pull of the Abyss?  Not that she ever witnessed.  Maybe those thoughts dwelled deep beneath the surface, but Illska didn’t really believe that. 

No.  Mano was never tempted.  Mano was never afraid of all the days he would never see.  He lived in the moment, savoring life the way it was meant to be lived.

Illska desperately wished she could emulate that attitude.

But here she was, sitting in a tent in a cave, afraid to venture out into Silvara.  It made her want to punch something.

Or to cleave a mountain in two.

“If you’re so worked up, you should just train.  I’m sure Ok’tarik would be happy for the company,” came the voice of that insufferable Sniper.  She looked up to see him sitting nearby, cleaning that monstrosity of a weapon. 

The idea of a firearm was not that new in the multi-verse. Though the weapons had never caught on in the Empire of Scale, there were plenty of civilizations who used them.  Despite her relative unfamiliarity with the concept, she still recognized that there were two schools of thought concerning their construction. 

The first was to basically put a wand – a simple apparatus through which spells could be channeled – inside a casing that improved the range and accuracy of the spell.  Generally speaking, most utilized only the most basic of spells, using the weapon to augment the lethality of otherwise mundane soldiers.

From what Illska understood, they were most popular among non-combatants who wanted the ability to defend themselves.  However, there were armies that utilized the technology to great effect. 

Then there were the ones like the weapon Gunnar carried.  They didn’t use spells, per se.  Instead, they employed ethereal to fuel a more mechanical process that lobbed projectiles at foes.  It was not unlike a crossbow or conventional bow, except that it was far more complex and more prone to failure.

It seemed that Earth’s craftsmen had been making that sort of weapon for centuries, and while they hadn’t quite perfected the process, they had come very close.  Then, when their world had begun its integration, they had adapted their technology to the existence of ethera, rather than simple combustion. 

In some ways, it was impressive.

In others, Illska considered it a massive waste of resources and a crutch.  Gunnar represented that idea very well, given that without his chosen weapon, he would have been far less lethal.

But even she had to admit that with it, he was more than capable of holding his own, even in situations where he was much lower level than his opponent.

Or victim, considering that the man wasn’t inclined to fight fairly.  He was at his best when his targets completely lacked awareness of his presence.

Either way, Illska didn’t precisely dislike the sniper.  But she didn’t like him, either.  Rather, she was just annoyed by his presence, likely due to her overall attitude. 

She shook her head.  “For what purpose?” she asked.

“To get better.”

“I…”

She’d been on the verge of saying that she didn’t need to get better, but that clearly wasn’t the case.  It was at that moment that she realized something she’d once known but had forgotten somewhere along the way.

In the past, she’d been so focused on gaining one more level, on taking the next step forward in cultivation, that she had begun to overlook a key component of self-improvement.  It wasn’t really about levels or cultivation tiers.  It was an overall philosophy, and one that her husband had internalized. 

He was always training.

Not because he thought he could gain levels out of it.  Not because he sought a feat of strength to add to his legacy.  Rather, he trained because he wanted to be better than the dragon he’d been the day before.

Illska had forgotten that in favor of the allure of verifiable progression.  The system was a great tool that allowed people to grow steadily stronger.  It codified something that should have been difficult to understand.  And in doing so, it fostered addiction to those numbers she saw in her status.

To the next ability evolution.

The next piece of gear with a few more attributes and a powerful trait. 

The steady grind had dominated her entire life, and now that she didn’t have anywhere else to go, she had no idea what to do.  Sure, she was aware that transcendents still gained levels.  And most still had a long way to go with their cultivation.  But at the moment, at the peak of the deity tier?  The numbers couldn’t go up.

The apathy that situation engendered wasn’t immediately apparent.  Illska had been living with it for years without ever recognizing its insidious influence.  She’d sought cultivation resources.  She had fought hundreds of increasingly powerful creatures.  She’d completed Primal Realms and participated in trials within ancestral worlds.  She had fought through tower after tower, hoping for a breakthrough that never came.

Was the real secret as simple as breaking free of the grind mentality that had dominated her life?  Was she meant to simply focus on other means of improvement?  Or was the answer some combination of factors that would meld together into a whole that she could not yet perceive?

Illska wasn’t sure.

But what she did know was that she would no longer neglect her training.  So, despite her disdain for following Gunnar’s advice, she pushed herself to her feet and said, “Maybe I will.”

He didn’t look up at her, save to give her the slightest nod of acknowledgement.  He never stopped cleaning his weapon, though. 

Not that she cared what he thought.

He might’ve given her a piece of advice that helped her to recognize a missing piece of her philosophy, but he was still just a demigod.  Chances were, he’d be dead in a few hundred years.

Sooner, if word of his dragon bane bullet came to light.

As annoying as she found the sniper, she wouldn’t let that happen. 

In any case, she quickly left the tent and headed to the other side of the cave, where the orc was meditating.  It was such an odd sight, seeing a member of his savage race so serene.  She already knew Ok’tarik was different, but that moment crystalized that assessment in her mind.

She nudged him with her foot, and he opened his eyes.

“We must train,” she said. 

He just nodded and stood.  “We must,” was all he said before launching into an attack that Illska barely saw coming.  She blocked the punch, then countered, finding nothing but air with her follow-up strike.

As she ducked under a wild haymaker and pounded her fist into the orc’s stomach, she couldn’t help but smile.  Whether training was the answer or not, she intended to enjoy getting back to her roots a little.