Path of Dragons 14 - Chapter 3 - Underlying Structure

As Elijah’s bare feet crunched against the crystalline surface of the planet, he found himself humming Annie Lennox’s Walking on Broken Glass.  It helped distract him from the pain that came from his trek back to his tent.  Once he reached it, he glanced back the way he’d come, only to see a trail of blood stretching into the distance.

Outside the cave, the air glittered with snowflake-like shards of sharp crystal.  Tiny bits of those flakes infested the wounds on his arms, keeping them from healing. 

The trek to the cave had been one of the more painful things he’d ever endured.  The entire dimension was sharp.  The ground.  The air.  Even the water, such that it existed.  But even then, he’d found some measure of refuge in the cave.  And to his surprise, it proved to be one of the safest environments he’d discovered during his long trek through the void.

He flexed his Mantle of Authority, pushing the glassy splinters free of his wounds.  They spilled onto the ground, clinking like the glass they resembled.  Ridding himself of them took nearly an hour – at least by Elijah’s reckoning – but once they were gone, he was free to heal himself appropriately.

When he finally ducked into the tent, he was forced to admit that exploration had been a bad idea.  He’d only made it a few hundred yards before he’d been forced to turn back.  Any further, and he would have been cut to ribbons.  And with his healing restricted by the presence of those glass splinters, he couldn’t do anything to mend the damage. 

It reminded him of his first encounter with the djinn outside the Labyrinth of Dead Gods.  There, the asharii had weaponized shards of pure ethera which prevented spellcasting.  However, in this reality’s case, it went much deeper.  If he allowed those splinters to worm their way deeper, his entire cultivation system might be compromised.

Once more, he was reminded of just how dangerous these alternate dimensions could be.  Never was he allowed to forget that he did not belong.  That his presence was antithetical to their metaphysical structure or the physical laws that governed the very nature of reality.

If he could have avoided entering those foreign dimensions, he would have.  But the fact was that he simply couldn’t endure the omnidirectional pressure of the void indefinitely.  Eventually, he was forced to rest.  To recover.  And despite how hostile many of the dimensions were, they were better than the void.

And the glass dimension – which was what he’d taken to calling his current refuge – was better than most.  At least it wasn’t full of aggressive beasts.  In fact, Elijah hadn’t felt a single living creature since his arrival.  That meant that as soon as he entered the tent, he was safe.

He needed it, too.

His body was a ragged mess.  The constant pressure of the void had grown no stronger.  But it had worn him down, and to a degree that he dreaded reentering that space. 

Not that he had much of a choice.

He’d gone too far to turn back, though regret for his choice had begun to set in.  It was accompanied by a genuine fear that he would be stuck in the void for all eternity, jumping from reality to reality in an endless quest to return to Earth.  Making it even worse was that he felt like the training wheels had been removed from his path of progression. 

On Earth or Gorveth, he’d known that he wouldn’t turn a corner and find his way blocked by a seemingly omnipotent transcendent.  That was no longer the case.  The manta he’d encountered was just the first in a long line of ultra-powerful entities from which he had been forced to flee.

In most cases, they ignored him, though their unrestrained presence was enough to nearly kill him.  The worst were the ones he couldn’t even see. 

So, while a place like the glass dimension was uncomfortable, at least he wasn’t immediately unmade by some entity whose power he couldn’t even comprehend, much less resist. 

Fortunately, the tent’s defenses held up well enough.  Without its protection, Elijah had no idea where he would be.  He probably wouldn’t have even survived Gorveth, much less the various hostile environments he’d found attached to the void.

As he settled, Elijah took one of his notebooks out of his Arcane Loop and made a tally mark.  It was one of many, meant to keep a record of his time in the void.  He couldn’t count the days, but he could track the number of times he’d stopped to recover. 

Forty-two.

And that wasn’t even counting the times he’d entered a dimension only to discover that he couldn’t survive inside.  There were plenty of those.  Elijah felt he was a fairly resilient person, but some of those realities would doubtless give him nightmares for years to come.

He shook his head and leaned back.

Closing his eyes, he let his mind wander to his friends and family.  Some, back on Earth.  Some on Gorveth.  He couldn’t help but wonder if he’d ever see any of them again.  Maybe Benedict had been right to caution him against traveling the void.  Back then, ignoring that advice had seemed like such an easy decision.  After all, he’d spent such a long time testing his abilities and learning the nature of the void.

And yet, that had not prepared him for the sheer weight of time.  It was one thing to endure constant pressure for a few days.  But for months?  For years?  It had worn him down, exposing his fragility in a way that nothing else ever had.  It was like walking around with bare nerve endings waving in the wind.

Seeking a cessation to that pressure had driven him into some truly terrifying mistakes.  His standards for refuge had fallen much further than he could have imagined, and at this point, he only cared that a dimension was survivable.  So long as it came with an end to the void, he could accept any amount of pain.

Elijah sighed, tears of mingled relief and lingering pain wetting his cheeks.

In the end, he had no choice but to bear it.  No going back.  No staying still.  There was only forward momentum.  One day, he would find a way back.  He only needed to follow that thread of connection. 

At times, he’d begun to question if it truly existed.  He’d even considered the possibility that it was a mere figment of imagination.  A trauma response to all the pain he’d endured.  He had even begun to wonder if he’d imagined it all.  Earth.  Gorveth.  His friends and family.  Even Treebie.

He knew that wasn’t the case.  He knew they were real.  That his memories were genuine.  But a tiny pinprick of doubt remained, needling him until he could no longer ignore it.

“Or maybe I’m just going insane,” he muttered to himself, happy that his current environment at least conducted sound.

He remained there for a few more days until he was fully recovered.  His supplies had begun to run a little short, so he was forced to ration.  Thankfully, he had packed years’ worth of meals, so he wouldn’t starve anytime soon.  But just because he wouldn’t starve to death, that didn’t mean it would be comfortable.

So, when he did decide to leave, he was far from satisfied.

After packing up the tent, he shoved it into his Arcane Loop and shifted into the Shape of the World Serpent.  Before he was forced to deal with too much glass, he used World Coil and reentered the void.

And he immediately knew something was wrong.

That small sense was the only warning he got before something attacked him.  It moved so fast that Elijah couldn’t even begin to dodge.  So, he did the only thing he could think of and used Dimensional Leap.

He was already in the void, but apparently, there were layers.  He disappeared into the nothingness, only to see something he never expected.

In the distance floated a bridge.

He tried to move towards it, but Dimensional Leap was far too short-lived to allow him to reach it.  And he was forced to reemerge into the void after only a couple of seconds. 

Thankfully, whatever had attacked him was long gone. 

Briefly, Elijah wondered if he’d imagined it.  However, the gaping wound in his side was evidence enough that he hadn’t. 

Was it a beast?  Or another dimensional traveler?

Elijah had no way of knowing.  But he was far more interested in the bridge he’d glimpsed.  Was there something beneath the void?  Was there some structure to it?  Or was there something else going on?  Something he had no way of understanding?

Once more, Elijah was forced to admit defeat. 

He didn’t know enough about dimensional travel to even begin to guess what was going on.  And what’s more, he feared using Dimensional Leap again.  The ability wouldn’t be available for a day or so, but even then, he feared exploring that other dimension until he could understand its nature.

After all, what if it was home to some transcendent monster?  Or what if Dimensional Leap failed to send him back to the void with which he’d grown familiar? 

No – following the thread was the most important thing.  He wouldn’t use Dimensional Leap unless he was attacked again.  Otherwise, he would just keep going the way he was going and hope for the best.

So, on and on he went.  Gradually, his supplies continued to dwindle, and he found that his rest stops grew more and more infrequent.  When he did stop, he only stayed long enough to physically recover before returning to the void.

He was attacked two more times over the course of the next ten cycles, and he managed to catch a glimpse of the second one.  The entity was vaguely humanoid, with two arms, two legs, a torso, and a head.  However, their entire body was concealed beneath a heavy, hooded robe.  They did carry a massive staff made of crystal, topped by what appeared to be a massive snowflake. 

Elijah had no idea what that meant, but he could feel their power in a visceral way that told him in no uncertain terms that he had no chance of surviving a fight.  If he’d had to guess, he would have put them at the deity-tier.  Maybe a transcendent, though only if the leap from one to the other was much less profound than the one from ascendent to demi-god. 

He suspected that wasn’t the case.

Regardless, Elijah knew he didn’t want to fight.  So, as he had the other two times he was attacked, he slipped into Dimensional Leap and left them behind. 

The bridge was closer here, though Elijah still couldn’t see any details.  When he attempted to get closer, he found his way blocked by a powerful shield.  He banged against it, but it didn’t even shimmer under his tantrum.

Soon enough, he was back in the void, his attacker nowhere to be seen.

He continued on his way, hoping against hope that he wasn’t attacked.  With Dimensional Leap on cooldown, he had no way of escaping. 

He was so worried about that that it took him some time to recognize something incredibly important.

The thread had gotten thicker.

More real.

Elijah felt that he could almost see it, it was so solid in his senses.  With that buoying his mood, he slithered through the void.  Only a little further, he kept telling himself.  Just a bit closer, and he would find…

Something.

He wasn’t certain what that would be.  Maybe he could just find refuge in a world from his reality.  Perhaps a connection to the World Tree would allow him to use Roots of the World Tree to teleport back to his grove.

Elijah had no idea which form salvation might take.

But one thing was certain – the thickening of the connection served to renew hope and speed him on his way.