Path of Dragons 13 - Chapter 73 - Snatched

Elijah’s talons ripped through a soldier’s throat, sending a spray of blood and bits of flesh into their closest ally’s eyes.  The woman reeled, but only long enough before Elijah kicked her in the chest.  She flew backward, her breastplate so dented that it had split apart, knocking a few other fighters aside.  By that point, Elijah was gone. 

A hundred attacks fell upon his position, but most missed him entirely due to his use of Phantom Shift.  Six copies of his scourgedrake form stretched in front of and behind him.  Elijah flickered between them, never staying still. 

Still, the volume of attacks meant that he still took a few hits.  Most of those glanced ineffectually off his scales, though a couple managed to wound him.  Unfortunately for his opponents, those injuries only persisted for a moment before Wild Resurgence mended the damage.

Meanwhile, Elijah sliced through the army, inflicting Spreading Blight and Ethereal Sepsis upon his enemies.  He constantly shifted directions, making him even more difficult to pin down, and as long minutes passed, the afflictions continued to spread. 

So far, the members of the Synod remained apart and unwilling to join the fight.  They were biding their time, using their army to wear him out.  Unbeknownst to them, that strategy just wouldn’t work against Elijah.  If he could fight a flesh tree for a month, he could keep going against the army for as long as it took to put every last one of them down.

Soon enough, Benedict’s summoned creatures joined the fight.  They looked like a mix of octopi, snakes, and humans, and they moved with a sinuous grace that made them extraordinarily difficult to target.  They were also strong, both in terms of ethera and vitality, and Elijah estimated that the most powerful among them were equivalent to demi-gods.

According to plan, they primarily targeted the most important members of the army.  Healers, first.  Then, commanders.  And finally, heavy damage dealers like mages and Rangers. 

Elijah added his own attacks to that hierarchy of targets, sowing as much chaos as he could along the way.  Every now and then, he glanced back at Benedict, mostly to ensure that no one in the army broke off to go after his companion.  And he was surprised to see that Benedict had used the demon form he’d employed back in the Labyrinth of Dead Gods. 

That was enough to tell Elijah that his friend had everything well in hand.

Gradually, Elijah continued to spread his venom among the rank and file until, at last, one of the demi-god members of the Synod chose to enter the fray. 

Elijah saw it happen.  The other members of the Synod tried to stop her, but she jerked away from her fellows and charged across the intervening mile to reach the army.  Once she was in range, she raised her hands and let loose with a spell.

A flood of vitality erupted from the Bloomless Sovereign, only to sweep across the battlefield and settle upon the chaotic army.  Elijah basked in the feeling, only to recoil after the barest second.  The vitality was familiar, especially to a Druid.  But it was coated in a film Elijah could only identify as corruption.  It was thin and barely perceptible, but his senses were well-attuned to what it represented.

He blistered across the field, leaping between stunned soldiers until he bore down on Marith.  She never had a chance to react before he hit her with Stormbind, interrupting her ongoing spell.  Perhaps more importantly, his talons tore through her meager armor and pierced her chest.

She panicked, lashing out with all the strength her progression would allow.  Her blows rained down on Elijah like they were nothing.  To him, she possessed the strength of a child, either because of her lacking foundations or due to her class.  Whatever the case, it didn’t matter.

He eviscerated her chest, turning it into a cloud of blood and flesh.

But he never saw Vhalor coming.

The Emerald Tyrant hit him like a missile, sending him skipping across the battlefield for more than three hundred yards until he hit a massive boulder.  It split, calving like a glacier as he fell to the ground. 

Multiple bones had broken under Vhalor’s blow, but Elijah paid those injuries no mind.  Wild Resurgence pulsed through him, and his bones reset while his mind cleared.

When he rose to his feet a second later, he saw that the Bloomless Sovereign had recovered, though her armor had been destroyed by his attacks.  Her chest was bare but unmarred, while the Emerald Tyrant stood over her.

And at last, the other members of the Synod had chosen to join the fight.

They arrayed themselves behind Vhalor, while Marith glared at him. 

If Elijah could have smiled in his current form, he would have.  At last, the real fight could begin. 

He raced across the field, dodging oncoming attacks and covering the ground so quickly that the Synod had no hope of reacting in time to stop him.  With each step, he transformed.  His body elongated, and his scales shimmered with emerald power.  At the same time, branch-like wings erupted from his back. 

By the time he reached the group of demi-gods, he found himself facing a massive fireball.  He ran through it, gritting his teeth as his scales melted beneath the flames before he burst through to the other side.

The Emerald Tyrant remained in front of Marith, ready to defend the most obvious target.  Elijah bore down on them, only to have a massive mirror manifest before him.  A second later, his reflection leaped free and rammed him.  Elijah ignored it, charging through without hesitation.

After all, it could only display a fraction of his true power.  That hadn’t necessarily been true during their last engagement, but Elijah had grown quite a lot stronger since then.  And the Mirror Saint’s conjured reflection couldn’t hope to match him.

At the last second, Elijah shifted directions.

Vhalor’s sword cleaved the ground, cutting a forty-five foot ravine into the earth.  Elijah flared his wings to regain control as he initiated another transformation.

By the time he reached his true target, he’d shifted into the Shape of the Sky.

The Flame Warden never had a chance to react before he found himself in Elijah’s claws. 

Elijah launched himself into the air, beating his wings with mighty purpose.  Lurien roared in outrage as he aimed a column of fire at Elijah’s ribs. 

It burned right through him, emerging from the other side, not stopping for hundreds of feet.  The intensity of those flames seared Elijah’s organs, bursting his lungs and nearly stopping his heart.

He continued to beat his wings as the fire melted him from the inside out.

And then, once he was oriented in the proper direction, he used Lightning Rush.

As always when he used the ability with a passenger, Elijah felt like he was being ripped in two.  It wasn’t as bad as it had been before his recent class evolution, but it was also further complicated by the fire still burning in his chest. 

Thankfully, it didn’t last long.  Only a few seconds, and he returned to the normal expression of Shape of the Sky.  In that time, he’d covered close to a thousand miles – which left him entirely alone with the Flame Warden. 

His passenger’s screams cut through the air as a corona of fire wreathed Elijah. 

He shifted the agony into its own cluster of leaves right before he hit the ground and tumbled across a mountain.  As he rolled to a stop – with Lurien still in his claws – he shifted forms once again.  This time, he took on the Shape of Spores. 

Even as he became a fungal guardian, he activated Mycelial Regrowth. 

It was just in time, too, because a second later, Lurien finally regained his wits enough to explode into a massive pyre.  Nearby stones melted into an orange-and-black slurry, and Elijah’s fungal flesh burned as quickly as it could regenerate. 

For a few moments, the two sides warred.  Life versus fire. 

And eventually, the flames sputtered.  That was all Elijah needed to seize the advantage.  His massively buffed regeneration took hold, shoving him forward to a full recovery.  Meanwhile, Lurien had clearly neglected his mind cultivation, because his own ethereal regeneration couldn’t keep up with his massive output.

Even as the flames started to die out, Elijah wrapped his arms around the man and squeezed with all his might.

Lurien screamed as his bones creaked, then broke.  He begged for mercy as his ribcage collapsed and his organs began to burst.  And soon enough, even those screams died as his eyes popped from his skull. 

He fell limp, but Elijah didn’t release him until he felt a surge of experience push him to level two-fifty-six.

He tossed the man aside, already shifting back into the Shape of the Sky.  Once that transformation took place, he threw himself into the air and flapped his wings.  Soon enough, he pushed himself to his top speed as he raced back toward the battle more than a thousand miles away.

With Lightning Rush on cooldown, he couldn’t achieve nearly the speed he’d reached on the way out.  However, due to his recent advancements in cultivation and the evolution of his class, Elijah was faster than ever before. 

He covered the intervening distance in a little less than an hour.  When he caught sight of the battle, he initiated another shift.  So, when he landed among the army, he did so in the form of the emberkin saint.

He hit with a roll that allowed him to avoid an oncoming blow from an enterprising demi-god.  It only took Elijah a second to recognize the attacker as the man who’d accompanied Vhalor during their brief meeting.  Elijah snapped out a flame-wreathed punch that melted his helmet to his head. 

The man screamed.

Elijah ignored him.

Instead, he plunged ahead into the bulk of the army.  Despite Elijah’s absence, the Synod hadn’t joined the larger fight between the army and Benedict’s contracted creatures.  It didn’t matter, though.  The army held its own.  Not easily, but they had numbers and organization on their side.  So, while the tentacled beings put up a staunch resistance, their fate was inevitable.

Elijah danced between the soldiers, dodging attacks and building charges of his Seed of Ashes.  Given the number of assailants, it wasn’t long before Elijah passed the one-hundred mark. 

That was when the Synod finally joined the battle, and with more fury than Elijah could have expected.  Suddenly, he found himself surrounded by mirrors.  At the same time, a pair of knights – one clad in silver, the other in gold – rushed in.  Orvelis and Tessarion.  The twins known as the Unblemished and the Sculpted Grace.  According to what Elijah had learned in Ithalon, they were beauty incarnate.  Perfection in motion. 

Elijah smashed his fist into one, then kicked the knee out from under another.

They screamed like everyone else.

The Stillborn, in the form of a shimmering white shadow, descended.  Everything on the battlefield stuttered and stilled.  Elijah threw his master-tier Mantle of Authority out wide, smashing through that domain like it was nothing.  Daelith recoiled, his blurry shadow resolving into the shape of a man as he drifted back the way he’d come.

And then, Vhalor was there.

Despite his heavy armor, he moved like a snake, and his first strike very nearly took Elijah’s head.  However, his enhanced reflexes stood him good stead, and he narrowly managed to duck the blow.  That allowed him to preserve the charges of Seed of Ashes.

But as the twins recovered, he knew that wouldn’t last long.

The Stillborn returned.

And Searathe’s reflections leaped free of the mirrors to add their weight to the ongoing attack.

Elijah welcomed them all, turning the entirety of his attention to dodging the oncoming blows.  Without having to worry about going on the offensive, he was much safer than before.  Even as the barrage of missed attacks churned the earth and sent mundane soldiers flying, Elijah kept his wits about him.

And then, finally, he reached two hundred charges.

The second he did, he let loose with the Flames of Renewal, and the world erupted like a volcano.