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Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 48 - Outsider

“What level is it?” Elijah asked. 

Helen shook her head.  “A little over two-hundred,” she answered.  “But I sense that its power stems more from cultivation than from levels.”

Elijah nodded.  “I kind of got that impression as well.”

The way the giant troll moved was a warning sign to anyone with any sort of battle experience.  It was strong and fluid, entirely confident and in control.  It reminded Elijah of the various titans h...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 47 - Step by Step

While trekking across the Painted Wastes, Elijah was surprised at how far the influence of the dragon Primal Realm had stretched.  Its effect spread for more than a thousand miles in every direction, and the wasps ranged even further.  After all, he’d run into them in the ash cloud over Rubibi, and he expected that some even flew further out to sea. 

But the influence of the troll Primal Realm was even wider.  Sometimes, it felt like the entirety of the Hollow Dept...

Chapter 751 - Peace and Quiet

Zeke sat next to the pond, staring across the placid water as the sun set over the mountains.  The twilight interplay between light and darkness had always soothed him.  There was just something about dusk that reminded him of summer evenings at the ballpark, back before the weight of expectations had changed the meaning of the sport he’d once loved. 

Simpler times.

Simpler, childhood goals.  Back then, all he’d ever wanted was to have fun.  To hang ou...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 46 - Punching Through

Elijah leaped high into the air, kicking off of Cloud Step and slamming into one of the mosquito-riding trolls.  His talons flashed out, infecting the troll with both Ethereal Sepsis and Spreading Plague, but that was only a secondary goal.  Rather, his intention was to kill the mosquito. 

After all, trolls might be capable of regenerating from just about any damage, but their mounts certainly were not.  Elijah severed the thing’s wings, pretending it was a wasp, t...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 45 - I Know

“I don’t like it.  It’s too risky,” Elijah said, leaning back in his chair.  It teetered on the edge of tipping over, but with his dexterity, he managed to keep it balanced.  At least until Kurik reached over and pushed him.  He kept himself from falling over, but only by grabbing the back of the next chair over.

“Stop doin’ that.  It’s annoyin’.”

Elijah began a retort, but then cut himself off.  He told himself he was being the bigg...

Announcement (Death: Genesis)

Tomorrow's chapter of Death: Genesis will be slightly delayed. I'll try to get it up by afternoon, but it might be Wednesday before I publish it. Thanks for understanding!

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 44 - Arrival

Elijah brought his fists down, pummeling the final troll into submission.  And for these creatures, that meant death.  There was no quarter expected, nor any given.  The only way Elijah could have taken a captive was if he managed to completely subdue one of the things.  And given their regenerative capabilities, that just wasn’t in the cards. Not without specialized equipment, at least.  Even then, it would be more trouble than it was worth.

After all, their ...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 43 - A Massive Threat

One advantage of switching priorities to the Hollow Depths was that Elijah had already made all the preparations necessary.  So, he wasted no time before teleporting to the Circle of Webs, where he found something truly surprising.  Given his previous experiences, it probably shouldn’t have been, but still – he was a little shocked when something the size of a labrador came shooting at him the second he appeared in the center of the stone circle.

It hit him with enough for...

Chapter 750 - Restraint

People.

Zeke had almost forgotten how much he both loved and hated them.  On the one hand, it was gratifying to see that everyone hadn’t been infected with the evils of the Radiant Host.  In that respect, the people inside the fortress town were entirely innocent.  However, the suspicious glares they threw his way said quite a lot about how they treated strangers.

He wanted nothing more than to simply disappear and leave them to their distrusting natures.  Ho...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 42 - Home Again

“You know,” Elijah said.  “Sometimes, it’s easy to forget just how good we have it here.”

Nerthus, who was busy tending to one of the juvenile pillar trees, didn’t immediately answer.  Instead, he focused on his task, sending dense flows of ethereal into the tree’s roots.  Elijah tracked the lattice of energy as it traveled up the trunk and extended into the branches.  The tree itself was only around fifteen feet tall, and the branches were arrayed more...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 41 - Military Man

It was all wrong, and in so many subtle ways that it grated on Gunnar’s nerves.  As he strode through the compound, his back straight and his eyes forward, he wanted to point out all the small inaccuracies.  All the ways the soldiers moved wrong, how they acted wrong, how they looked like a bunch of cosplayers pretending to be soldiers but lacking the knowledge to pull it off. 

Mostly, it reminded him of all the times he’d watched movies featuring military situations....

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 40 - The Broken Crown

It was visible from at least a hundred miles away.

The fortress shimmered in the sky, looming over the Painted Wastes like a monolithic sentry surrounded by a rainbow of light.  Even from so far away, and under the cloak of darkness, Elijah could see thousands of wasps swarming around the structure. 

His instinctive hatred for the insectile humanoids surged to new heights.  He swallowed it, just as he’d pushed it aside ever since his first encounter.  Knowing...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 39 - The Spice of Life

Elijah crouched low, his body only inches from the cracked earth as he stared into the ravine and witnessed the ongoing battle.  Tens of thousands of spiders, newly hatched but still deadly, fought against just as many wasp larvae.  Some fighters were ripped to pieces by their enemies, but another spider-woman perched above it all, watching as impassively as Elijah did.

The fight itself was brutal.  Primal.  Savage in every single way imaginable.  And yet, she d...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 38 - Deeper and Deeper

The tinkling sound of a ringing bell filled the silence as Gunnar pushed through the door.  The shop – called Twill – was full of secondhand clothes, most of it discarded by the well-off elites of Seattle.  A few men and women browsed the racks, looking for something to fit their specific needs. 

It was one of many such shops scattered throughout the Undercity.  Getting something made by a Tailor wasn’t that expensive.  They all needed to work just like ev...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 37 - Resin

The spider felt wrong, and in a way that sent fear and anger coursing up Elijah’s spine.  Fear, because the thing was terrifying to behold.  With a body nearly fifteen feet long and spear-like legs that made it feel even larger, the thing was sheer arachnophobia given physical form. 

But Elijah had never had an issue with spiders – at least the non-fleshy sort.  What he found truly horrifying was that it wasn’t really a spider at all.  Not completely, at l...

Chapter 749 - Going Back

“You can’t do it!”

Zeke ignored the drone, just as he had been for the past couple of days.  The thing had found him the second he’d set foot into the Ways, and it had been following him ever since.  Somehow, it had discovered Zeke’s intention to descend into the Mortal Realm, and it very much disapproved of the notion.

Not surprising.

From the outside, it probably looked like he was hellbent on destroying the entire realm.  In most cases, that would...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 36 - Detestable

The Painted Wastes were disorienting, and not just because of the shimmering rainbow of colors.  That wasn’t pleasant, but as Elijah trekked through the desert, he found himself affected by the oddly flavored ethera.  Part of it came from the sheer density, which had long since exceeded the levels he associated with Chimera Island, but there was something else in there.  Something that left him constantly angry. 

And it wasn’t something as simple as a different a...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 35 - The Painted Wastes

The Painted Wastes.

When Elijah had first heard that name, he’d questioned whether it was figurative or literal.  As he stood atop the enormous cliff overlooking the region, he knew the answer.  A vast expanse of cracked desert stretched toward the horizon.  In some ways, it looked much like the Badwater Basin in California’s Death Valley.  Vast stretches of land featured similar desiccation cracks that formed polygonal patterns. 

However, from those c...

Chapter 748 - Lattice

Zeke did not want to move.

As he sat on the balcony, his eyes closed, he didn’t allow himself to study the threads.  Still, they beckoned him forward, promising to reveal all the answers to questions he’d never even considered asking.  Aside from the Creator, he likely knew more about those strings of power than anyone else alive.  Perhaps more than anyone else who’d ever existed.

And yet, he knew he’d only scraped the surface of their mysteries.  Then ...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 34 - One Forward, Two Back

The troll vaulted over the rampart and sailed toward Sadie.  Most of its fur was gone, sacrificed at the altar of Kurik’s traps, and its torso bore the marks of a hundred fast-healing wounds.  Sadie met its flight with Final Verdict.  The blade bit deep into the creature’s exposed stomach, stopping only when it hit the troll’s rigid spine.  She ripped the weapon free, splattering intestines across the wall walk. 

It battered her with its iron-shod club, th...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 33 - Lost Seas

It was not a waste of time or effort.

It would actually save time in the long run. 

It just made sense.

As Elijah neglected his true mission to find the dragon Primal Realm, he kept telling himself that what he was doing was a good use of his time.  And he believed it.  But his recent resolution to focus on the necessities still contributed to a subtle feeling of guilt that told him he should have long since moved on. 

Not only had he spent weeks bu...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 32 - The Brutality of Catharsis

Manual labor could be a cathartic experience.  Sometimes, it felt like hypnosis by repetition.  In this case, the job was incredibly gruesome, and to the point where he needed that hypnotic effect. 

After a few hours, he barely even noticed that he was carrying bodies.  He just did the work.  Day after day, he made the trek from the enormous pyre he’d built and back into Honolulu to gather bodies.  He’d vowed to leave no one behind.

Helpfully, mos...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 31 - Desiccated Past

The soft echo of footsteps followed Elijah up the stairs as stifling heat threatened to suffocate him.  The building had not been built with airflow in mind, and without active air conditioning, it would’ve been sweltering even before Honolulu had been set down in the center of a desert.  Now?  It was like an oven.  Sweat poured down Elijah’s face, soaking his clothes beneath his armor. 

Elijah paid it almost no attention, though.  Instead, he was wholl...

Chapter 747 - The Soul of Morality

“So, she’s still around?” Zeke asked, standing at the head of the table.  Present at the meeting were Talia’s top lieutenants, each one a powerful lesser god in their own right.  Talia, of course, was there as well, though she’d remained silent throughout.  Instead of speaking, she’d let one of her people – a ghost-like woman with a chilling voice – explain the issue. 

The crux of the problem was, of course, Shar Maelaine, the so-called sun goddess.&n...

Chapter 746 - The Limits of Power

Accidentally scheduled this Death: Genesis chapter for 8PM instead of 8AM and just realized. Sorry about that!

“I hate being like this,” Zeke said, mostly to himself, though Talia was close enough to hear him.  After she’d given him a short tour of the city, they’d fallen into old habits – and her bed.  Though she’d made it perfectly clear that they weren’t reconnecting.  It was just a physical release between two p...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 30 - We Can Never Truly Go Home

Elijah chose not to approach in one of his bestial forms.  Doing so would have felt somehow disrespectful, but of whom, he wasn’t certain.  Honolulu was obviously deserted and half buried in the sand.  Few of the city’s streets were even visible, and many of the traffic lights and signs were only partially exposed. 

But the city was instantly recognizable, especially to a man who’d lived there for most of his adult life.  He’d arrived at the tender age o...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 29 - Standoff

“You’re Elijah Hart,” said a man of middling height.  His shoulders bore a couple of chevrons, which Elijah interpreted as being a sign of his rank within Seattle’s military.  He didn’t know what rank they indicated, but he was clearly the group’s leader, as evidenced by the fact that he’d stepped forward. 

The others didn’t seem certain what they were supposed to do.  A couple pointed their rifles at him, their fingers inching closer to their trigger...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 28 - Distant Grief

Eventually, Elijah internalized his own reprimand.  Nearly dying had a tendency to prompt self-growth. And even if Elijah was so hardheaded that it took multiple such instances to hammer it home, he could learn lessons.  So, as he moved forward, he did so carefully. 

The area past the mountain range – and the Ring of Fire – was a desert.  From a geographical standpoint, it made perfect sense, and Shane had already described it well enough that Elijah knew what to...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 27 - Lessons Reiterated

I saw some complaints about not explaining Rosabella's class. And I'll be perfectly honest - I thought I'd included it in one of the recent chapters. It was in my outline and everything, but I guess I skipped over it. So, I added it onto the end of chapter twenty-three.

Elijah awoke to the pervasive smell of sulfur.  He shot upright, blinking in confusion as he was greeted by the sight of a normal inn room.  It wasn’t much differ...

Chapter 745 - A New Sanctuary

“So,” Zeke said as they strode through the Ways.  It felt like every single eye followed them with each step.  Zeke barely noticed his surroundings, just that the city upon the platform felt even more crowded than ever before.  “How have you been?”

She didn’t answer, leaving Zeke to follow along in silence.  As he did, he finally allowed himself to see the state of the city’s residents.  Most were the same as ever – lesser gods going on about one e...