Path of Dragons 13 - Chapter 72 - The Devil Within

Green, silver, and gold armor glinted in the ambient light as column after column of disciplined soldiers descended the mountain.  They filled the pass, snaking along for nearly a mile. 

Benedict had seen armies before.  He had even fought a few – particularly the war elf army that had attempted to invade his territory.  With enough summoned creatures, he could stand toe to toe with any force.

And yet, when he looked upon the forces of Ithalon, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of fear.  The sheer numbers they could bring to bear made up for part of his dread, but the bulk of his anxiety came from the eight figures who’d stood at the head of Ithalon’s government for hundreds of years.

Eight demi-gods at the peak of their powers. 

All M’yakein could muster to fight them were two people.  Certainly, Elijah was the lynchpin upon which their entire strategy depended, but Benedict’s summoned forces would also play a significant role.  Less important were the thousand or so other fighters waiting in the wings to lance in if everything went wrong.

Until then, it was just Benedict and Elijah.

And Elijah had already disappeared, leaving Benedict to feel like he was standing all alone against a force he could never hope to match. 

He wasn’t ashamed to say that he was afraid.  After his childhood – and the years leading up to Earth’s transformation – he was intimately familiar with fear.  Normally, it presented as a formless dread hanging over him.  Rationally, he knew it came from the mere echo of his father’s memory, but that didn’t make it any less impactful.

Now, it was more solid.  The origin was obvious.  And to a degree, Benedict found that comforting.

So too did his preparations contribute to that feeling.  He was as ready as he could manage.  The essences of a thousand monsters filled his reservoir.  The product of hundreds of other sacrifices hung off his shoulders like an ephemeral cloak made of crimson fog. 

He could feel the power coursing through him, begging to be used.  Soon, he would do just that and summon an army of his own.  The only reason he hadn’t already opened the portal and dragged them into his reality was because of the limited duration.  He needed to wait until the very last second so he could get the most out of his summoned force.

Until then, he stood alone.

Nearby, the permanent ritual circle stood.  It was no more than a channel for his power – a spell writ large in solid reality – but even so, the stones pulsed with subtle energy.  They pulled against their surroundings, draining a trickle of ethera from the scrubby plants. 

So far, Elijah hadn’t had a chance to fully terraform the area, so it featured only sparse vegetation.  Not like the inner circles embedded within the continent. 

That was part of the reason Elijah had chosen it for the site of the upcoming battle.  A good decision, because when everything was said and done, nothing would remain standing.

Not if things went right.  And certainly not if the plan went awry.

Somewhere down below were Treebie’s roots.  Why Elijah had given such a powerful entity such a ridiculous name was a mystery.  Or given the  man’s personality, perhaps not as inexplicable as Benedict might have wanted to believe.

Whatever the case, they were down there, and within them rested the key to saving the entire planet.  That was worth protecting. 

And Benedict knew enough about the Synod to recognize that they wouldn’t allow Treebie to exist.  At best, they would corral the tree and use him for their own benefit.  At worst, they would try to harvest him so they could distill his essence into a usable form. 

Because at their core, the Synod didn’t care about Gorveth or its people.  They only cared for themselves.

And for that, they needed to die.

Those thoughts and many more rushed through Benedict’s mind as the enemy army drew closer.  Once they were a little more than three miles away, Elijah struck.

Benedict didn’t actually see his attack.  Rather, he only saw the resulting chaos.  The neat columns erupted into motion as they attempted to shift into defensive formations.  But Benedict knew from experience just how difficult Elijah was to pin down – especially when he was in  his scourgedrake form.

Peering closer, Benedict caught a few glimpses of green-and-black scales, but nothing more.

Thousands of soldiers turned inward to meet the threat he posed. 

And that’s when Benedict started to cast.

Dense flows of ethera and vitality rushed out of him and into the circle he’d built.  The runes upon the stones lit up, the resulting illumination coalescing into free-floating symbols of red light.  They flashed, then began to rotate as the energy within the conjured crystal reservoir joined the flow. 

Faster and faster, they spun, sending a column of light to pierce the sky.  Through it all, Benedict forced the conduits of his soul to expand.  Elijah had built his own soul based on anatomical principles and the structure of a tree.  That would never have worked for Benedict.  Instead, his soul was a collection of interlocked ritual circles that he’d built to form an overall structure that amounted to more than the sum of its parts.

Those circles spun in time with the one before him, as the apertures of his mind – also rings of glyphs – flooded him with ethera.  Meanwhile, his core, which took the form of a black portal that led to nowhere he could discern, drank it all before spitting out tightly controlled bands of energy that soon joined the streams feeding into his cast ritual.

His spell was, unfortunately, no quick endeavor.  It also didn’t escape notice, as Benedict found when he felt a dagger ram into his back.  It sliced neatly through his flesh, shattering his ribs and liquifying his liver.

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

After all, his attacker was a demi-god.  Indeed, he’d been targeted by Vaedren himself.  The Assassin King.  A man who, according to Zek, was famous for his lethality even before he’d taken his place as a member of the Luminarch Synod.

That Benedict wasn’t immediately killed was the result of a single ability.

Spirit Repository

Store your spirit elsewhere.  Duration: 1.3 Days

The spell’s description was simple enough, but the effect was anything but uncomplicated.  Chiefly, it did three things.  The first was clear – so long as his repository remained undamaged, Benedict could not die.  Of course, at the end of its duration, it would begin to degrade.  Within a few hours, it would shatter and release his spirit into the world.  If it didn’t have a body to return to, it would dissipate into nothing, and he would die.

The second effect was that it shielded him from pain, muting all physical sensations by a significant degree.  That trait allowed him to maintain concentration, even as powerful venom coursed through his body, eating his organs and scorching its way through his skin.

But the third effect was more of a consequence of the first two than a true benefit, and it made him feel as if he was puppeteering his own body. 

In short, despite finding himself on the receiving end of a lethal attack, Benedict managed to continue his casting. 

Vaedren did not take his failure lying down, though.  In the space of a single second, he peppered Benedict’s back with a dozen more stabbing blows.  It was simultaneously overkill and completely useless.  Benedict could not currently be killed – not unless Vaedren discovered the Spirit Repository he’d buried more than two miles away. 

But severed muscles and liquifying flesh made the fight to remain upright a losing battle.

Benedict managed it, though only long enough to complete his spell.

Even as the energy within the portal coalesced into a rip in reality, Benedict collapsed.  A second later, he stopped breathing, though he maintained consciousness.  More importantly, he watched as the untethered tear expanded into a jagged-edged portal, beyond which was pure darkness.

Then, something slithered out.

At first glance, the creature looked a lot like the corrupted abominations they’d spent the past week sacrificing.  However, the tentacles writhing from its head weren’t haphazard or ill-formed.  Instead, they were entirely congruent – a trend followed by the rest of its muscular body, which featured two extra arms and a snake-like lower half that slithered rather than walked.

It was clad in thick sheets of matte-black armor and carried black spears in each hand. 

When Benedict had first made contact with the dimension, he’d found that it was unlike any of the others he’d discovered.  He was incapable of simply yanking a creature out and forcing it to obey his will.  Instead, getting the creatures to fight for him required a contract. 

Thankfully, they only wanted ethera and vitality, which he’d already provided.

And the ability to kill, of course.  They were a bloodthirsty race who valued combat above all other things.

In any case, the first to pass through the portal was their leader, and as such, he was the strongest among them.  Benedict had difficulty translating its power level, but he suspected it was well into the demi-god tier.  Not that they acknowledged such measures.  Instead, they had an entirely different means of quantifying power.

While the leader was the first to pass through, it was not the last.  Indeed, a steady stream of creatures soon followed until more than a hundred fighters had appeared.  Only then did the portal wink out.

Unfortunately, Vaedren didn’t attack them. 

In fact, Benedict wasn’t even certain the Assassin King remained in the area.  He’d never seen the demi-god.  Only felt the bite of his dagger.  He’d likely assumed his job finished the moment he’d landed an attack, and had retreated to lend his weight to the rest of the battle.

Benedict lay there, entirely unmoving as his summoned army swept up the slope and joined Elijah’s ongoing efforts.  The inability to move his head made it impossible to see anything else.

So, he lay there for a long couple of minutes until he felt someone approaching.

At last, Vaedren had reappeared.  And this time, he hadn’t bothered to maintain his stealth.

“How do you still live?” the man muttered to himself as he kneeled next to Benedict. 

The demi-god cut an unassuming figure.  His leather armor wasn’t so different from what the Ithalonian scouts wore.  Higher quality, certainly.  But it still stood in shades of white that should have made him stand out. 

From what Benedict had learned, that choice of color was very much intentional, and it had been chosen to make a statement of power.  Even wearing stark white, they could travel entirely unnoticed.

But Vaedren had made a mistake by assuming that his enemy was helpless.

Benedict intended to make him pay for it, too.

He waited, letting the assassin poke him a few more times as he puzzled at Benedict’s continued survival.  Then, when Vaedren dropped his guard, Benedict pounced.

He cast his most powerful spell.  The one he’d held in reserve all this time.  The one the armies of Ithalon had no reason to know.  He used Devil Within.

His body writhed under its influence, then expanded.  His clothes ripped apart, and his skin darkened into a deep red.  The damage done by Vaedren mended in a heartbeat, and the fire within his expanded body scorched the venom away.

He rose, flapping his enormous, bat-like wings.

Vaedren attempted to use a stealth ability, but Benedict cut it off with a rapidly summoned Disintegration Beam that cut through him.  He screamed as the spell scorched his flesh. 

It was not a lethal attack, but it prevented Vaedren from disappearing.

Benedict stepped forward, flexing his mighty claws.  The ability had a long cooldown.  Months, in fact.  But with that came significant power that would only last for a few minutes.  His attributes had skyrocketed, but the infusion was more impactful than simple numbers.  He was just better, and in every way.  A true physical powerhouse that could rival any Warrior.

The ground shook beneath Benedict’s feet as he stepped toward the panicking assassin. 

Vaedren leaped backward, avoiding an oncoming blow.  To counter that, Benedict summoned a whip of pure fire – it came with Devil Within – and sent it cracking forward. 

Despite Vaedren’s status as a demi-god, he couldn’t avoid the blow.  When he moved to dodge, the whip followed with unerring accuracy.  It snaked out, pursuing him for a few extra feet until, at last, it reached him.

The whip wrapped around his leg, scorching through armor and flesh alike.  He screamed as Benedict yanked it backward.  And suddenly, the leg flew free, detached from Vaedren’s body.

The demi-god collapsed, screaming in pain as if he’d never been hurt before.  Perhaps he hadn’t.  After all, he preferred to attack from stealth.  Few enemies would ever know he was there before they keeled over from those attacks.

But Benedict was different.

After all, Elijah wasn’t the only one who possessed an elder core. 

With Devil Withinin still coursing through him, Benedict dashed toward the scrambling, one-legged assassin.  Even without that all-important appendage, Vaedren could move very quickly.  But Benedict was quicker.

When his path intersected with Vaedren’s he wasted no time before reaching down with a massive, clawed hand and wrapping his fingers around the still-screaming assassin’s head. 

It felt so small.

So delicate.

Like an egg.

He lifted.  Vaedren’s remaining leg writhed as he scratched and clawed at Benedict’s thick wrist.  His efforts were inconsequential.  Even when he managed to bury his dagger in Benedict’s forearm, the Warlock only felt a slight sting.

That was one of the benefits of Devil Withinin.  So long as it remained active, he was all but invulnerable to most attacks.  The fires burning inside of him turned any afflictions to nothing, and his hardened flesh mended within moments. 

But it wouldn’t last long.

So, without further hesitation, Benedict squeezed.

Vaedren’s screams reached new heights.  They were music to Benedict’s ears.  So too could that be said of the rewarding sound of cracking bone that came soon after.  Only a couple of seconds later, the assassin’s skull collapsed.  Brain and other liquids oozed between Benedict’s fingers as Vaedren’s body gave one last spasm before going limp.

Benedict dropped his now-headless victim.

A moment later, Devil Within fell away.  His body shrank back to its normal size, and the power faded away.  Thankfully, his body had been completely healed.

However, his contribution to the battle was done.  Now, Elijah and the summoned army were on their own.

He looked down at the slain demi-god and decided that killing the detestable man was more than worth burning the long cooldown.