Path of Dragons 14 - Chapter 6 - The Passage of Time

“Elijah.”

He didn’t move from where he was lying in his mossy bed.  It hadn’t been used in decades, but it remained in perfect condition.  Probably Nerthus’ work.  The spryggent had yet to actually speak, but Elijah knew his friend well enough to recognize the pain, elation, and anxiety behind Nerthus’ eyes. 

“Elijah!”

“Huh?” he asked, looking up to see a crowd of people surrounding him.  They were all familiar faces, but he found little comfort from their presence.  Because someone had finally answered his question.

“Are you okay?” asked Ron, gray having crept into the hair at his temples.  That wasn’t the only sign of aging, either.  He still looked like a man in his forties, but the subtle crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes and the gray in his stubble told a story Elijah never wanted to hear.

Ron had been called in to heal Elijah’s many wounds, but those injuries were enough to stress even the high-level Healer.  Part of that was due to Elijah’s advanced cultivation and powerful constitution, but it was also because the wounds carried with them a hint of the void. 

And the indescribable pressure that came with it.

A simple healing spell wouldn’t do much to wear it down.  So, Ron had been at it for hours, with very little to show for his efforts.  All the while, Elijah had worked to fight the void with the power of his mantle, but it was slow going.  He’d made progress, but it would likely take weeks – or perhaps even months – for him to complete the process.

“I told you to just let me take care of it,” Elijah muttered.

They hadn’t listened.

None of them wanted to respect his boundaries, either.  Since he’d gotten back to the island only a few hours before, Elijah had been forced to endure more hugs and pats on the back than he’d experienced in his entire life before heading into the Labyrinth of Dead Gods. 

In a way, Elijah understood it.  The hugging was easily explicable, and a normal reaction to a reunion with a loved one.  He even welcomed it, to an extent.  The other touches came from people wanting to reassure themselves that he was real. 

The worst perpetrator was Carmen, who’d never really cared very much about what he wanted.  She was family, though.  By marriage, sure, but that didn’t matter to either of them.  She was as much his sister as Alyssa had ever been, so he was willing to endure whatever unwanted touching she intended to inflict upon him.

But that wasn’t the source of his brief moment of shock.  Instead, that came from the answer to his question.  He’d asked how long he’d been gone, and someone had finally given him a response.

“Thirty-two years,” he muttered, repeating the answer Ron had given him.  “I…it didn’t seem that long.”

But that was a lie.  His time in Gorveth had often felt even more extensive than a few decades.  And the void lacked any true sense of passing time. 

Still. 

Three decades was a long, long time, and it served to explain how so much had changed in his absence.  He’d only seen a bit of it first-hand, but the return of his locus meant that he felt everything so keenly that he didn’t really need to lay eyes on it to know what had happened.

Suddenly, Miguel’s appearance made so much more sense.  By now, he was nearing fifty years old.  And Elijah was past seventy. 

In the context of his current lifespan, it wasn’t much.  He wasn’t certain how long he was meant to live.  Not exactly.  But what he did know was that his potential could be measured in multiple centuries.  Undoubtedly, everyone who’d gathered around him would live similarly long lives.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Carmen assured him.  She didn’t look much – if any – older.  If she’d gained a single wrinkle, Elijah would have been incredibly surprised.  If anything, she looked healthier and more vibrant than ever.  Or maybe that was just the effect of faulty memories.

Deciding to move on from the dissonance between the people in his memories and the reality standing before him, Elijah asked, “What happened after I…you know…after I left?”

Carmen was the one to answer.  Resting her callused hand on his arm, she said, “Hu Shui came as soon as he got out of the Primal Realm.  He told us you were still alive, that you’d fallen through a portal to the abyss.  And Nerthus said you were still alive, so we all assumed you’d just pop up out of nowhere.”

Ron interjected, “But some of us expected it a lot sooner than others.”

“Ain’t my fault I’m realistic,” grumbled Kurik, who’d come over from Ironshore as soon as someone told him that Elijah was back.  “That kinda thing ain’t normal.  I knew he’d survive ‘cause can’t nothin’ kill him proper.  I just knew it’d take ‘im a while to get back.  And I was right, don’t you forget.”

“It’s not about right and wrong, Kurik,” Carmen pointed out.

“Sounds like somethin’ somebody who was wrong would say.”

Carmen started to respond, but Miguel cut in, “We knew we couldn’t wait to go after the remaining Primal Realms.  Thankfully, the guilds had already found the Sphinx realm.  It’s called the Hall of Riddles.”

“Who conquered it?” Elijah asked.

“The guilds laid claim to it.  They led an alliance between them and the Frozen Moon Clan.  Took them almost eighteen months to conquer it, and they lost three quarters of their people.  But they managed it,” Miguel answered.

“Frozen Moon Clan?”

“Vinnie Santoro.  From Philadelphia.”

Elijah narrowed his eyes, vaguely remembering the man.  His only real experience with him was when they’d clashed during the Seattle Summit what felt like a lifetime ago.  And at Lamar’s wedding, though that memory was better left alone.

“He doesn’t seem the altruistic sort,” Elijah reasoned.

That brought a harsh laugh from Carmen.  “You can say that again.  He didn’t do it out of the goodness of his heart.  He didn’t even do it to save the planet.  He did it because he wanted equal rights to the Primal Realm,” she explained.  “Which he got.  He used it to take over Philadelphia.  Completely.”

“Shit.  Lamar and Helen?”

“Living in Seattle now with what’s left of their people,” Miguel provided.  “We still hold an alliance with them, but…well, they don’t really fight anymore.”

“What?  Why?” Elijah asked.  He remembered Lamar and Helen as being adventurous sorts.  And they wouldn’t have given up Philadelphia without a fight.

“The angel realm,” answered Ron, a shiver flowing through him.

Elijah looked from one person to another, and he saw real trauma behind every eye.  “You all went,” he guessed.

“We didn’t have a choice,” Carmen breathed.

“With you gone…”

“It’s not his fault,” Miguel stated evenly. 

“I wasn’t saying it was,” Ron stated, his words laced with subtle frustration.  “I’m just telling him why we all went, Miguel.  There’s no judgement.”

“That would be a first for you,” Miguel growled.

“Enough.  We don’t need to revisit that,” Carmen interjected, looking back and forth between the two.  Her expression dared them to argue.  They did not.  Instead, they both looked away, almost in shame.  Then, Carmen turned her attention back to Elijah, saying, “We all had to go because it was all-hands-on-deck.  Nobody had the option of sitting it out.  So, we followed her in there.”

“Her?”

“Sadie.”

“Where is she?” Elijah asked.

Carmen shrugged, and everyone fidgeted, clearly uncomfortable with that question.  “It’s been nearly five years since I last saw her.”

“Less for me,” Miguel said.  “But still a while.”

“Oh.”

What followed was an awkward moment, largely because everyone could guess what was going through Elijah’s mind.  As ridiculous as it was to expect it, he’d hoped to find Sadie waiting for him.  But three decades was a long time.  No wonder she’d moved on to other things.

After that, they explained what had happened in the angel Primal Realm, which was called the Court of Light.  Just like when Elijah had visited the Broken Crown, Sadie had found the Primal Realm related to her elder core much more difficult than it should have been. 

Many had died.

Elijah didn’t ask for a full count, mostly because he didn’t want to reopen old wounds.  But the implications were there.

“Lamar hung up his shield after that.  A lot of people retired once the threat of excisement was gone,” Miguel said.  “And I guess, from there, life went on.  Since then, there have been a few wars.  A couple of attempts at invading the grove.  But we made it through.  These days, everyone knows not to underestimate us just because you’re not here.”

“I am here now, though,” Elijah stated.  “How close did you all cut it?  The Primal Realms, I mean.”

“A week,” Carmen said.  “If we’d been any slower…”

“We weren’t,” Ron pointed out, resting his hand on Carmen’s shoulder.  “We did it.”

“I’m more interested in what you’ve been doing for three decades,” Biggle said.  “And how you took so much damage.”

“Oh.  That’s not really much of a story,” Elijah answered.  “Got stranded in the abyss with Benedict.  Spent most of that time trying to get home.”

It was a very short answer, but Elijah wasn’t really ready to recount the story of his time on Gorveth.  Perhaps once he’d had time to process, he would go into it in detail, but not with everyone staring at him like he was the star attraction in a zoo. 

“Is that all?”

“Well, I also spent a while traveling through the void.  I don’t recommend it,” Elijah said.  “It’s not…pleasant.”

That was an understatement.  Elijah sensed that a few of his friends had progressed to the demi-god tier, but he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that none of them would survive even a few seconds in the void. 

“Elijah, you can talk to us,” said a frowning Carmen.

“I know.  I’m just not quite ready for that,” he replied.  Then, he grinned.  “But on the bright side, I did sort of terraform an entire continent.  And I helped to create a hybrid tree that was sort of on the verge of achieving sapience.  It also served to cleanse abyssal corruption, so there’s that.

“Oh.  And Benedict survived, too.  Nobody asked about him, but he made it.  He’s back on Gorveth – that’s the planet where we got stranded,” Elijah went on.  “And he’s even got a kid now.  Little Louis.  Between you and me, I think the kid was named after the character from Interview with a Vampire.  Benedict says he wasn’t, but, well, I saw a bunch of Anne Rice books in his place in Benediction, so…”

“Benedict?” asked Carmen.

“That crazy guy from the Trial of Primacy.  He went with you into the Labyrinth, didn’t he?” Ron asked.

“Uh…yeah.  Didn’t Hu Shui tell you?”

“He just told us you were alive,” Kurik answered.

“Oh.  Well, Benedict’s alive.  And we owe him a lot for helping solve the Labyrinth.  I also wouldn’t have made it back without his help,” Elijah pointed out.  “He’s…he was the only friend I had for a long time.”

“Any friend of yours is a friend of ours,” Carmen said.

Elijah shrugged.  “Not that it matters, I guess.  Not like any of you’ll ever see him.  He’s still back there on Gorveth, and I don’t know how to get back,” he said.

Which wasn’t entirely true.  He could remember the way well enough.  In fact, he suspected that if he reentered the void, his return to that excised planet would be far quicker than his last trip.  However, he had no intention of undertaking that journey anytime soon.

“I think we need to let Elijah recover,” Carmen said.  “Ron?”

“I’ll do what I can, but he mostly just needs rest.”

With that, everyone filed out.  At least until there was only Carmen left.  She remained by his side for a few more minutes until she spoke. “I’m happy you’re back, Elijah.  You don’t know how much we all missed you.”

“I…I missed you all too,” he said.  But he couldn’t quite escape the reality that he’d come back to a home he no longer recognized.