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Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 26 - Hardship

Elijah crested a hill, only to see the city of Rubibi stretched out below him.  It was still a couple of miles distant, and the fading light of dusk cast the white buildings in shades of orange.  They matched the much more vibrant coastline, which featured similarly hued sands that were made to look even brighter by the close proximity of the teal water.  Unlike the open sea, the protected bay was calm, featuring only a few placid swells. 

In a lot of ways, it looked...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 25 - Inhospitable

It took two days before Elijah had completed his preparations.  In that time, his friends, along with the next wave of soldiers meant to conquer the troll Primal Realm, headed down to the Hollow Depths.  The difference in Ironshore’s population probably wasn’t noticeable to most people, but Elijah only had to look at the city’s training facilities to recognize just how many people they’d sent to war.

Most of them weren’t ready.

They probably knew it, too. ...

Chapter 744 - Timeless

Time.

For the most part, it was a meaningless measure.  To Zeke, that was even more true.  He didn’t age.  He barely felt its passage.  The only factors anchoring him to everyone else’s perception of time were exterior to his existence.  The constant check-ins with his tower were both frustrating and illuminating.  It was easy to see a pattern forming, too.  It didn’t happen quickly, but after a while, the people with whom he met grew older. ...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 24 - A Dragon's Place

Elijah threw his arms out wide, saying, “Good to see you!”

Ron, who’d just arrived at Mama Lou’s gave him a tight smile, accepting the hug like the old friend he was.  The embrace was short and included a lot of masculine back-patting before they broke apart.  “How long are you in town?” Ron asked.

Gesturing toward his favorite booth, Elijah answered, “A few days at most.  I need to get moving soon.”

As they settled in across from one another, ...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 23 - The Pain of Letting Go

Elijah’s fingers danced along Sadie’s bare shoulder, but as distracting as she was, his attention fell squarely on external factors.  Specifically, concerning his immediate future.  He had spent the past few weeks mentally preparing to assault the troll Primal Realm, and now that eventuality had been denied him.  His presence wasn’t just unnecessary.  It would be detrimental.

In short, he felt unwanted.

And given that normally, it seemed that he was being...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 22 - Cloak and Dagger

Gunnar lagged far behind his target, his hands in his pockets as he tried to look as uninteresting as possible.  He was dressed much like everyone else in the area, which meant that he’d been forced to visit a local Tailor and buy something expensive, fashionable, but casual. 

He hated the result, which made him feel like he should be heading toward some country club to play a round of golf with a bunch of idiots who thought money and pricey status symbols were the most impo...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 21 - Tension

I did a slight edit concerning yesterday's chapters. The first was to make it clearer why Elijah chose to endure the elves' teleportation system (basically that Sadie convinced him that they didn't have time for him to spend months traveling by foot everywhere; he agreed to swallow his instincts). The second was to make Sadie's motivations for bringing Elijah down to the Hollow Depths clearer. The gist of that addition to their conversation was that when she sent that message, ...

2025-07-24 15:00:46 +0000 UTC View Post

Announcement (Death: Genesis)

I'm moving today's and tomorrow's chapters for Death: Genesis back a couple of days. They'll be posting on Saturday and Sunday now (next week's chapters might not start until Tuesday, but the schedule should be back to normal by next Thursday). I apologize for the inconvenience, but I've been a bit swamped lately and I'm not happy with how they turned out. So, I need a couple of extra days to play with them.

The story's coming up on the ending (only thirty or so more chapters), and...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 20 - Lacking

A raging inferno swept across the settlement, engulfing the temple and burning a hundred trolls to ashes.  Elijah never stopped moving.  He couldn’t, because he was far from finished. 

Even as the fire from Incinerate petered out, he dove to his right, hit the ground in a roll, and came to his feet just in time to separate a troll from its lower legs.  The creature fell with a wet plop, but by that point, Elijah was already gone.  With each step, he transforme...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 19 - Know Thy Enemy

Elijah bent double, trying his best to suppress the feeling of nausea twisting through his stomach.  Hands on his knees, he muttered, “I really don’t like that.”

“I don’t either,” Sadie agreed through clenched teeth. 

“It’s like swimming through sewage and accidentally opening your mouth,” Elijah complained.  Then, he glanced at the nearby priestess.  “No offense.”

Clearly, the dark elf had no clue how to respond to that.  On th...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 18 - Ravages of War

Kneeling among the remnants of a ruined building, Elijah studied the city of Eldrathûn from afar.  With Eyes of the Eagle, he could only just see over the formidable wall surrounding the massive settlement.  It was a hive of activity, with hundreds of thousands of people going about the business of their daily life.  It was like someone had kicked an anthill, though instead of a small mound of dirt, the city was a monumental achievement of crystal and black stone. 

...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 17 - Undercover

Gunnar knelt next to the wall, feeling for a seam in the stone.  After a couple of seconds, he found the tiniest of gaps and jammed the blade of his survival knife between the blocks.  He didn’t immediately pry it loose.  Instead, he ran the edge of the weapon along the seam, leaving a trail of cascading mortar to pile on the floor.  He traced a rough square, approximately two feet across.  Every few inches, he felt slight discharges of ethera as the runes lost cont...

Chapter 743 - The Spaces in Between

This time, Zeke let everyone know that he expected to be occupied for quite some time.  Perhaps even longer than it took for him to learn how to manipulate the threads of reality.  Their reactions were predictable. 

Pudge took it stoically, trusting that Zeke knew what he was doing.  That it was necessary.  Still, he was obviously disappointed in the choice, though it was almost as if Pudge had expected it all along.  Perhaps he had, which said a lot about ...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 16 - Storms

Elijah glanced at the cavern’s distant ceiling, and upon seeing a dense bank of dark clouds rolling in from the north, decided to take shelter in his tent.  He only barely made it inside before a storm erupted into a fury, sending a cascade of rain to descend upon the parched desert. 

It was fitting.

Even as Elijah listened to the steady drumbeat of heavy drops of rain on the tent’s silky material, he lay back on his fur blanket.  It had been made from the same ...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 15 - Long Overdue

Elijah heaved the last stone block into place.  Even as it slid into the hole, he let out a sigh of relief.  He glanced from one to the next, appreciating the symmetry on display.  Eighteen uprights, each one roughly the same size stood in a circle that would soon become his latest dolmen.  However, to say he still had a long way to go was an understatement.  He had barely even begun, and he still had a lot of work to do before he could use Roots of the World Tree to ...

Chapter 742 - Negative

The ball of amorphous goo floating in the center of the room shimmered with mana, divine energy, and something Zeke couldn’t quite discern.  Looking closer, he saw that the threads only made up a portion of the thing’s mass, and there was meaning in the space between.  Mass, even.  It was an oddity for which he had no real explanation, except that he wasn’t nearly as perceptive as he believed himself to be. 

“Is there something between the threads?” he aske...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 14 - Fertilizer

“Stop it,” Elijah muttered, though he knew it would do no good.  The little spider was adorable, but feeling it crawl around in his hair was more than a little off-putting.  His mind kept telling him that those furry, little legs were smaller pests, and he wanted nothing more than to rake his fingers through his hair to dislodge them. 

Thankfully, the spider understood his discomfort – or maybe it was just restless – and it leaped to his shoulder, where it settled...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 13 - Crumbling

Elijah ripped a blood beast from his chest, throwing it toward the ground with enough force to splatter it within its shell.  Even as he did, he wheeled around, catching another with his scythe.  The blade bit deep, but it didn’t slice through the thing.  Not entirely. 

It didn’t matter.

The creature burst from the impact, and Elijah paid it no more heed.  Instead, he turned his attention to the next few, casting Nature’s Claim while maintaining Eter...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 12 - The Power of Blood

Only a few feet from the cavern’s ceiling, Elijah circled the tree.  The swarm of blood beasts, slithering and squelching disgustingly, surrounded the entire island upon which it stood.  Their numbers reached well into the hundreds of thousands, and with every passing moment, more joined via two distinct streams of shelled lamprey-mouthed leeches. 

As he glided, he considered his options. 

His first impulse was to simply land among them, then use a combinatio...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 11 - The Spider in Her Web

Elijah sank to his knees, exhausted by his efforts.  He’d managed to cleanse one chamber, leaving a blanket of vitality behind, but the corruption continued through an adjacent tunnel.  It grew much weaker, and to the point where he suspected it wouldn’t take much more effort to complete the job.  But he’d pushed himself to his limits.  Now, he needed rest.

With that in mind, he remained in place, his knees digging into the loamy turf as he meditated on his cor...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 10 - The Fallen Forest

A deep gloom hung over the skeletal forest, casting the barren trees in flickering shadow.  Only the scarcest glimmer of light penetrated the darkness from above, which, rather than providing much-needed illumination, only served to create a more malevolent atmosphere. 

Elijah stood at the edge of the forest, his heart beating wildly as he clutched a ridge of stone at the mouth of the tunnel.  He’d been subconsciously following the sense of corruption for some time, tho...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 9 - The Long Way

Elijah wanted to just swallow his instincts and use the dark elves’ teleportation network.  Every rational thought in his head screamed at him to do just that.  He ignored them, and not by choice.  He suspected that if he submitted to their teleportation, something terrible would happen.  Maybe by his hand.  Maybe from some unforeseen circumstance that he could feel but not understand. 

He couldn’t risk that.

Almost literally. 

When he ...

Chapter 741 - A Needed Meeting

The Ways were busy, and Zeke almost felt anonymous.  Certainly, there were a few stray glances here and there.  Most people could feel that he was fundamentally different than them.  But they had no idea just how far above them he truly stood.  That was freeing in a way that he should have but failed to predict.

“How far is it?” he asked, glancing toward the kobold who’d been assigned to escort him.  Pudge would have done it, but as a fairly new greater go...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 8 - Unreasonable Disdain

The next morning dawned cold and wet, and the damp had invaded Elijah’s room.  Some of that was mitigated by climate control enchantments – common in many inn rooms he’d visited over the years – but they were clearly unequal to the task.  Extending his senses, he could feel their sputtering supply of ethera, and he idly wondered whether that was the result of poor craftmanship or just the enchantments wearing out over time. 

Either way, as he pushed himself uprigh...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 7 - Hafnarfjörður

As the spires activated, Elijah focused on the swirl of ethera.  He could just make out the spell’s complex lattice of ethera before he was whisked away, only to reappear hundreds of miles away.  He wasn’t entirely certain how far he’d traveled, but the change in the weather made it clear that Hafnarfjörður was practically a different world.

Sheets of freezing rain descended upon him, obscuring his sight for miles around.  Thankfully, he only needed to step into t...

Chapter 740 - Reasons

“I don’t know what matters anymore,” Zeke admitted.  He glanced at the memorial urn containing Tucker’s ashes.  It sat in a place of prominence, surrounded by a hundred other memorials.  They all belonged to men and women who’d done some great service for Pudge’s people.  Heroes, all. 

Even Tucker.

Especially him, Zeke supposed.  Over the past few weeks, he’d heard many stories about Tucker’s exploits.  Like when he busted a block...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 6 - Choosing a Direction

“You think it’ll work?” asked Elijah.

Nerthus nodded, answering, “Of course it will work.  I only remember pieces of my old planet, but it uses similar architecture.”

Elijah frowned.  “What is that like?  The not remembering, I mean.  You remember your parents, don’t you?  And you know more about the system than I do, even now.”

Nerthus looked down, then shifted uncomfortably.  “Those are difficult questions to answer,” he ad...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 5 - Vespid Raiment

The next morning, Elijah awoke to the sound of birds chirping.  He glanced at his open balcony, only to see a pair of robins perched on the branch-like banister.  He contentedly watched them for a few minutes before they flew away.  Only then did Elijah climb from his mossy bed and stretch his arms out wide. 

It was the best he’d slept in a long, long time.  Maybe since before he’d been diagnosed with cancer.  Almost a decade of bad sleep tended to wear...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 4 - Inciting Wonder

Ramik invited Elijah to breakfast, but he was forced by his full stomach to refuse.  Instead, he left the goblin mayor to manage his city.  For a while, he just wandered.  Mostly, he stuck to the docks, where he spent almost half an hour admiring the huge ships and busy workers.  Whatever anyone else had to say about the people of Ironshore, they were industrious.  From the mines to the whalers, and everyone in between, they knew how to get work done. 

It w...

Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 3 - Being Better

Gunnar dwelled on his name.

Throughout his life, even going back to his childhood, when he’d established himself as a uniquely talented shot, he’d often thought it a fitting moniker.  He’d even shortened it to Gun, as if to say he was an extension of the weapons he routinely used.  And that had continued even after the world had changed, as he’d devoted his entire class to the use of rifles.  He was a sniper.  His name was Gun.  And that was all he could...