Path of Dragons 18 - Chapter 34 - Reunion (Patreon)

Elijah lifted his head, sighing contentedly as he opened his eyes to behold the sum total of years of work.  Oddly, he wasn’t certain if the product was the complex system of hyphae, fungal tendrils, and ethereal bonds or if he considered his son’s development the greater accomplishment.

No.

That wasn’t even close to true.

As proud as he was of his work with Fungee’s satellite colonies – and the implications associated with what came next – Elijah took far more pride in the orc Callux had become. 

By Elijah’s sometimes-faulty reckoning, his son was closing in on thirteen years old, most of which had been spent in Orveth Kaal.  That befit his heritage as an orc.  Or rather, as a part-orc.  Callux contained within him a multitude of ancestries, ranging from orc and dragon to human and whatever came with having a splinter of the World Tree implanted within him while in the womb.

He looked the part, too.

Callux had long since abandoned any semblance of a child’s body, and he looked much like the other orcs Elijah had encountered in Orveth Kaal.  He favored Ok’tarik especially strongly, though he possessed some of Makit’s features as well.  However, Callux was to other orcs as the World Tree was to other trees. 

Elijah didn’t like to throw around words like perfection, but that was what he saw when he looked at Callux.  Some of that could be chalked up to a father’s pride, but the orc was objectively better than any other member of his species.  He was stronger, faster, smarter, and better able to regulate the aggressive tendencies of his species.

Was it racist for Elijah to acknowledge those?

He wasn’t sure.

But the reality remained that despite years of work to integrate the orcs, they continued to resist the pull of human civilization.  Maybe that was just a culture characterized by constant war showing its face.  Or perhaps there was some genetic component.  Elijah suspected the system’s restrictions played an outsized part as well.  But the fact remained that orcs, in their current state, were just different than humans.

And while the two races could coexist at least somewhat peacefully, managing the relationship was better suited to separation than integration. 

Callux represented something else, though.  Maybe he could be the bridge that tied the two people together.  Or perhaps he was unique and would only ever be what he’d always been – himself.  Whatever the case, he possessed a demeanor that somehow managed to harness the aggression of an orc without becoming a slave to it.

Ok’tarik did that as well, at least to some extent.  But where it was always a struggle for the elder orc, it came naturally to Callux. 

By most measures, Callux was a fully developed adult. 

And soon enough, the system would acknowledge it.  A year.  Maybe two, Elijah believed.  Even from nearly fifty yards away, he could feel something within his son. 

Was that because of Elijah’s connection to the World Tree?  He was still an Emerald Archon, and he could sense things other people could not.  Did that include knowing when someone was about to awaken?  Perhaps.  Elijah hadn’t been around enough children to say for certain. 

But it felt right.

What would that mean for Callux?  Would the system acknowledge him?  Or would it sentence him to the same life as other orcs? 

Elijah wouldn’t allow the latter to happen.  If he had to move worlds, he would, if it only meant that Callux could grow up free of that oppression.

That thought led him to the other source of pride.  At last, he’d finished the first phase of his task.  Eighty-one satellite colonies, each and every one of them connected to one another and with a sliver of the World Tree nestled within them. 

Alone, that was enough to warrant excitement, but Elijah had taken things much, much further.  The enchantments he’d built around each satellite colony were meant to not only empower their development, funneling vitality and ethera inward.  They did that, and Elijah had gone through multiple iterations to perfect the design he’d begun to develop on Gorveth. 

But that had never been the true point.

No – Elijah didn’t just want to grow a powerful superorganism.  That was just one step on the road to reaching his goal of claiming Orveth Kaal.

Instead, those living enchantments would serve to bind the world together in a way that nothing else could.  It was a means of putting his stamp on Orveth Kaal, of infusing it with his particular signature.  And in a lot of ways, those enchantments mimicked the original circle he’d built to establish his grove.

If it worked the way he wanted it to – and he had no reason to believe it wouldn’t – those runic circles would establish Orveth Kaal as something akin to a pseudo-grove.  An extension of his power, similar to the one he’d started on his island.

Or maybe Orveth Kaal would become something more like the Hartwood Grove’s offspring. 

Elijah wasn’t sure why, but that felt more correct than any of the other descriptions or analogies.

Either way, he still had a lot of work to do.  Finalizing the enchantment designs while infusing each satellite colony with a splinter of the World Tree was a huge first step, but it was just that – the first part of a larger plan.  The biggest hurdle had been cleared, but Elijah still had a long way to go before he could call the job complete.

But first, he wanted a break.

So, he pushed himself to his feet and stretched.  In the distance, Callux noticed him moving, but didn’t pay much attention. Instead, he continued to spar with a hundred or so with the fungal colony’s tendrils.  They weren’t particularly good training partners, but what they lacked in skill, they made up for in exuberance and numbers.

To most people, being surrounded by a hundred fungal tendrils would’ve been a horrifying state.  For someone like Callux?  It was just another day.  The young orc had grown up around Fungee and his offspring, and that had had a profound effect on not only his development, but also on what he considered normal. 

Either way, he was happy, which was what Elijah cared about most.  Everything else he’d done regarding Callux’s upbringing had been in service of that singular goal.  Of course, complicating that was the world in which they lived, where strength mattered when it came to someone’s pursuit of happiness.

Especially someone like Callux, whose road would be a difficult one fraught with danger and, almost assuredly, racism.  Had his people earned their reputation? Certainly.  Should Callux be held accountable for things he’d never done, for wars he had never fought?  No.

But that was just how the world worked, and denying it was a good way to set his son up for failure.  Callux needed strength.  That was the only way he could ever be free to seek happiness. 

To that end, Elijah had employed a host of trainers and teachers, each at the top of their field.  Miguel – when he was available – had taken Callux’s martial instruction as his personal goal.  He didn’t always train the orc himself, but he ran the program.  The trainers all answered to him.  Or more importantly, were expected to meet Miguel’s exacting standards.

Oscar had taken over Callux’s wilderness training, taking him on month-long trips into Orveth Kaal’s wildest places.  Elijah would have preferred to do that himself, but with his responsibilities, that just wasn’t possible.

Ikiajh taught Callux about farming.  Palikina – who’d finally shown up with Gunnar two years after the re-opening of Orveth Kaal – taught the orc about stealth.  Gunnar contributed, mostly because he and the stealthy dragon were rarely separated from one another. 

Even Maya, with her spider-legs still attached to her hips, took Callux’s lessons to heart, teaching him all about the wonders of engineering.  He listened, though he’d shown early on that he just didn’t have the interest necessary to make a career of it.

Then there were the bad influences.

Kurik and Biggle.

Neither seemed to understand where to stop and embrace caution.  Elijah had figured that out when he’d found Callux being slowly digested by one of Kurik’s trap-plants.  Of course, the dwarf didn’t consider it much of an issue, claiming that he was more than tough enough to last another few days.  Then, he’d gone on to tell a long story about how he’d learned to swim.

His father had simply tossed him into an eel-infested lake.

“’Course, I sank.  Dwarves ain’t swimmers, even that young.  But you know what I did?  I figgered it out. So will the boy,” he’d claimed, his chest puffed out and his hands on his hips.

By comparison, Biggle’s influence was fairly benign.  Most of the time, at least.  The Alchemist seemed to delight in using Callux as a lab rat, having him ingest or inject all sorts of odd potions. 

“In the name of science!” Biggle had exclaimed when Callux showed up with an oozing rash covering half his body.  Making it even worse was that Callux was delighted by the whole affair, squeezing those pus-filled abscesses and giggling when they squirted halfway across the room.

Clearly, it didn’t hurt.  But it still grossed Elijah out enough that he briefly forbade Callux from spending time with “uncle” Biggle. 

Carmen was worse.

Not in that she would harm him in any way.  It was the opposite.  She let Callux run wild, doing whatever he wanted to do.  And given that she spent most of her time in Agmar working in the Star Forge, that meant he usually got into quite a bit of trouble with the other orcs. 

He wasn’t as aggressive as most of his people, but Callux wouldn’t just stand by and let them bully him.  The adults knew better, but the children?  They had a lot to learn.

And Carmen took quite a lot of delight in watching him put the others in their place.

When Elijah called her bloodthirsty, she had just shrugged and said that nobody had died.

Oddly enough, the steadiest influence on Callux’s development was his father.  Ok’tarik had continued to grow past his orcish ancestry, becoming quite a bit more contemplative.  And because he was Callux’s father, that meant that the younger orc idolized him as much as he wanted to take after Elijah. 

It was a good thing, too. 

If everyone in Callux’s life acted like Biggle, Kurik, or Carmen, then he’d end up dead, insufferable, or so horribly unhinged that the other two were preferable.

For his part, Elijah did what he could to teach Callux, usually modeling their time together after what he remembered from his childhood.  As far as he was concerned, his parents had done a phenomenal job teaching, loving, and providing stability, and he could do far worse than to emulate their efforts.

Maintaining those responsibilities while accomplishing his task had slowed him down a little, but Elijah didn’t lament that reality of raising a child.  In fact, he cherished every second he got to spend with Callux, largely because he knew precisely how short-lived it would be.

Because when Callux awakened, he would go to be trained by Birk and Tura.

Elijah had already set it all up, and as much as he wanted to keep Callux around, he knew good and well that the training he would receive in the Empire of Scale was too invaluable to pass up.

It was the same reason Miguel and Hope had sent Eli there.

The young Healer was still being trained, which was a testament to how thorough Birk could be. 

Maybe the two would end up as friends.

Or better yet, party members.  After all, they would need to venture into towers and Primal Realms if they wanted to level properly.  Elijah hoped they would stick together.  That was the whole point of family.

Either way, Elijah wouldn’t be there to hold Callux’s hand.  Not only would it be detrimental to his development, but it would also pull Elijah away from necessary tasks. 

Callux wasn’t his only child.

He still had Fungee to see to.

Just as Elijah started toward Callux, he felt something in the distance.  He wanted to think of it as a disturbance, but that wasn’t entirely accurate.  Rather, it was the passage of a deity, and not a weak one. 

Using Soul of the Wild alongside his semi-locus, he focused in on the deity. 

The second he realized her identity, his heart thumped a little faster.  He was running before he even knew what he was doing.  So, when Imal appeared in the entrance, she only had a moment to brace herself before he wrapped her in a tight hug, picked her up, and kissed her soundly.

When they broke apart a few seconds later, he breathed, “I’ve missed you so much.”

Imal smiled broadly at him, then looked over his shoulder. “Why is there a giant orc grinning at us?”