Path of Dragons 18 - Chapter 35 - The Flow of Water (Patreon)

“I’m sorry.  Your what?”

“Oh.  Uh…I can explain.”

“How you have an orc son?  Sure.  Go ahead, Elijah,” Imal said, tapping her foot with her arms crossed.  Apparently, that wasn’t just an Earth thing.  The particular stance translated to  humans who’d been born in entirely different universes.  “I’m waiting.”

“Right,” Elijah said.  “So, here’s what happened…”

“Please tell me you didn’t sleep with an orc woman.”

“What?  No!”

“Then how –”

“Just let me explain, okay?”

“Waiting.”

Elijah wanted to point out that the only reason he hadn’t already gotten into it was because she kept interrupting, but he smartly chose not to go down that road.  Instead, he launched into an abbreviated explanation of how he’d come to have an orcish son.  He only hit the high points, but it was enough to make certain that Imal knew that he hadn’t been unfaithful, especially not with an orc woman.

As his explanation went on, her face softened into something that might’ve been approval.  Throughout, her eyes kept flicking to Callux, who hovered nearby, clearly wanting to meet the woman he’d heard so much about.

And he had been treated to many, many stories about Imal.  Most of them centered on how powerful of a water mage she was, but Elijah made certain to highlight her other characteristics.  Most notably, her kindness, beauty, and competence in nearly any task to which she set her mind.

In short, he’d built her up as something akin to a goddess, and Callux had learned that lesson well.

His description just happened to be very close to the truth.  After all, Imal had been uncommonly powerful before she’d even met Elijah, and since then, she had risen to every occasion to ascend to deity before he’d even reached the required level.  She was more than just his partner – she was an absolute force in her own right.

“Callux,” Elijah called, waving his son forward.  “Come meet Imal.”

Callux crept forward, his light footsteps and hesitant demeanor so out of place to anyone who’d seen other orcs and how they usually carried themselves.  He came to stand next to Elijah, one hand gripping his wrist as he trained his eyes on the ground. 

“Imal, this is Callux,” Elijah said.  “Callux, this is Imal.”

“Hello Callux,” Imal said in her sweetest voice. 

At first, Callux didn’t respond.  Instead, he maintained his downcast gaze.  Then, finally, he looked up and locked his eyes on hers.  A second later, an enormous grin returned to his face as he said, “You are so cool.”

It came out as a breathless whisper.

It also took Imal by complete surprise.  Whether that was because Callux’s vocabulary and mannerisms had clearly been affected by Earths’ norms or if it was because of his obvious adoration for her was a mystery. 

For his part, Elijah just stood back and watched as Callux immediately launched into an interrogation, mostly concerning Imal’s many accomplishments.  It wasn’t a surprising development, considering that he’d spent years telling Callux those stories.  He hadn’t really embellished much, but he had framed them like epic myths come to life. 

Callux’s favorite was actually their first meeting, when Imal and Elijah had fought in the Tournament of the First Fang.  He’d made certain that his son understood how close Imal had come to defeating him. 

Of course, Callux had also latched onto the romance aspect.  Like most boys, he’d tried to hide that interest, but it was there all the same. 

In a lot of ways, it reminded Elijah of the Princess Bride, where a young Fred Savage kept insisting that he didn’t like “kissing books” while his grandfather read him the story.  Yet, by the end, he had become invested enough in the love story that he had stopped objecting to the inclusion of those scenes.

Callux wasn’t so overt as that, but the sentiment was the same.

“Can I hug you?” he asked after he’d finally exhausted what his mind could process about meeting the hero of his bedtime stories.

“O-of course,” Imal answered, taken completely aback.

Then, the orc did as he’d asked.  From experience, Elijah knew just how good of a hugger his son could be.  And he didn’t hold back, either. 

“Okay, now go play with the fungi,” Elijah told his son when he released Imal.  “We need to talk about adult stuff.”

Callux clearly didn’t want to go, but he did as he was told, shuffling his feet along the way.

“I really don’t know what to say about him,” Imal admitted. 

“In a good way or a bad way?” Elijah asked, the muscles in his neck tense.  If Imal didn’t accept Callux, he had no idea what he would do. 

She answered, “He’s an impressive boy.  You did well.  I like him.”

Elijah hoped she would come to love him.  After all, he’d always considered his family a package deal for any potential relationship.  Sure – he’d lost sight of that after moving to Hawaii, but everything that had happened since then had reminded him just how important family really was.

That was a topic for another day, though.  In the meantime, he had other things fighting for his attention.  And one of them seemed urgent.

“You did it,” he said.  “I felt you when you arrived.”

She narrowed her eyes.  “From so far away?”

“It’s not that far,” he argued, though he knew it was objectively untrue.  His senses extended much further than they once had, extending all the way to the edge of the landmass and beyond.  He didn’t point that out, though. Instead, he asked, “What did you get?”

“Celestial.”

Elijah’s eyes widened.  “That’s a big jump.”

Indeed, her previous class had been the rarity below that, Arcane.  That put her in the upper tier of demigods, though not enough to mark her as absolutely elite.  Since then, she’d added quite a few feats to her Legacy, which was clearly why she had managed to jump into the Celestial rarity. 

It was easy to fall into the trap of believing it was normal to improve, but the fact was that it was quite rare.  The increased requirements meant that people usually fell a rarity or two. 

That she’d improved marked her as an elite.

But Elijah already knew that.  Imal was special.  Even if she’d come out with a Legendary class, he would’ve known that much. 

She hadn’t, though.  Instead, the system had verified what he’d already known.  And Elijah was immensely happy for her. 

“What’s it called?”

“Lady of the Tides.”

Elijah grinned. “Evocative.”

“I was hoping for Goddess,” she admitted with a slight pout.  “But I’m happy with it.  You want to hear something funny, though?  The other Celestial option I had was Rainbringer.”

“Oh, you should’ve picked that one!” Elijah exclaimed. “Think of the storms we could’ve made together…”

“You know I’m not really a weather witch, right?  I can provide fuel, but…well, you did the storm stuff,” she pointed out.  “Besides, Lady of the Tides felt better.  Isn’t that what you always say? Trust your instincts?”

“I don’t remember saying that.”

“You did.  You do.  All the time.”

“Doesn’t sound like me,” Elijah responded, grinning as widely as Callux had.  Perhaps that was where his son had learned it.

Imal punched him in the chest.  Surprisingly, it almost hurt.  That was a significant change from the last time they’d been together, where she couldn’t have physically hurt him if he gave her a thousand free shots.

Magically, she could have ripped him to pieces – at least given enough time and ethera – but with her bare hands?  Never.  Now, she could’ve probably bruised him.

“Your class came with a physical upgrade, huh?”

“That’s deity, not the class.  You haven’t been doing your research?” she asked.  “I can tell you’re close.”

“A few levels away,” Elijah said, staying intentionally vague.  He still had more than ten levels to go, but that wasn’t really his problem.  His levels would come.  What he was focused on was the job at hand.  And after that, cultivation.  Only then would he step into the deity tier.

“That’s cryptic.  So, are you going to tell me what you’ve been doing here?  Or why Orveth Kaal looks entirely different?” she asked.

“Oh.  Right.  You missed the war.”

Imal sighed. “You had a war?”

“I didn’t start it,” Elijah assured her, though he wasn’t entirely certain if that was the truth. Sure, the dragons had been the aggressors, but at the end of the day, they wouldn’t have done anything if he hadn’t been there to provoke them.  Still, existing in their trial didn’t mean he was at fault. 

In any case, Elijah went on to explain what had happened, describing as much as he could.  When he got to the bomb the earthlings had dropped on the dragons’ forward base, she was suitably impressed.  But Elijah could tell that a part of her didn’t really grasp the enormity of that explosion.

Or maybe she thought he was engaging in hyperbole when he described it.

Either way, he quickly moved on to the rest of the battle, culminating with the Poet reforming the planet. 

“Wait.  There were other dragons back in B’aseltion, weren’t there?” she asked.

“There were.”

Elijah had tried to put that out of his mind, but images kept cropping up at the worst times. 

“Oscar was the one to find them,” he said, looking away.  It was the first time he’d torn his eyes from Imal since her return.  “We went to investigate together.”

Then, he described what he’d found when they had arrived at the former site of the dragon tower.  It was no longer a tower at all, but instead, a haphazard collection of geometric impossibilities.  Bits and pieces of it twisted in all sorts of unfathomable ways, creating something that wouldn’t have been out-of-place in an M.C. Escher etching. 

Just looking at it had given Elijah a headache.

Exploring it was even worse.

The dragons, serpentors, and drakes that had remained behind had all been killed.  That wasn’t surprising, given what the Poet had promised should Elijah and his companions remain in Orveth Kaal to experience his song.  However, what did shock Elijah – and down to his core – was the means of their death.

“They lived for a while,” Elijah said.  “I could see their screams etched on those twisted walls.  Bits and pieces of them had been scattered across the tower, merging with the building itself.  Floating in the air.  I could feel their consciousnesses still in there.  Some of them, at least.  Fading slowly, but still there, being tortured by something they could never resist.”

Imal didn’t gasp.  She didn’t respond verbally at all.  Instead, she just put her arms around him and listened as he described the horrors he’d witnessed and tried so fervently to forget.

It wasn’t just a grim reminder of the Poet’s power.  Elijah had always known the dragon was nearly omnipotent.  After seeing that, Elijah had been gripped by the realization that, sometimes power wasn’t a blessing.

Sometimes, durability and longevity just made the torture of existence last that much longer.

Elijah had tried to destroy it.

He’d used every power at his disposal in an attempt to melt it, rip it apart, and perhaps give those people some measure of peace.

It hadn’t worked, though.

Days later, the Poet had found a distraught Elijah sitting on a nearby landmass, just far enough away that he couldn’t feel their screams.

“Power can be a curse.”

“You could undo it,” Elijah accused.  “Give them some peace.”

The Poet shook his head.  “Peace for them would mean the unraveling of everything I did to bind this planet together,” he revealed.  “A poem is only one wrong syllable away from ruin.  I have power, but even I cannot escape that fact.”

“Did you even try to find a way?”

He’d asked the question, knowing he wouldn’t get an answer.  When he finally looked over to where the Poet had been, the dragon was gone, leaving Elijah alone to reckon with his role in the torture of so many.