nrsearcy

Path of Dragons 5 - Chapter 50 - Regrouping

A flood of insectile machines skittered toward the pair of companions, sending an avalanche of detritus bouncing down the slopes of the mountain of trash.  Elijah’s thoughts raced with various plans, though he discarded each as quickly as they came to mind.  But one stood tall above all the others, and he latched onto it as the only hope of escape. 

“Clench up!” he spat, already shifting out of his Draconid form.  His posture changed, and his forelegs lengthene...

Path of Dragons 5 - Chapter 49 - Detritus

The smell was the first thing that hit Elijah, and he was reminded of the few times he’d visited a local landfill back home.  Thankfully, those trips had been infrequent – just when he’d had to help his parents clean out their storage shed or garage – but the memories had stuck with him.  And they came flooding back into his mind as he beheld the challenge of Mortalum.

“Is this what the system thinks of civilization?” he muttered, staring at mountains of discarded ...

Chapter 537 - Overwhelming

The battle began just like any other, with two sides clashing.  The monsters utilized similar a similar approach to what they normally employed, though Abby knew better than to grow complacent.  The creatures had shown a remarkable ability to shift tactics at a moment’s notice, and some of her lesser commanders had found themselves on the losing end of a battle they’d thought would be an easy victory. 

“Idiots,” she muttered to herself.

Against these monster...

Path of Dragons 5 - Chapter 48 - Specks of Dust

“I’m doing this for two reasons,” Ron said when he arrived a week later.  As always, he wore his sparkly robe, but he’d covered it with a leather overcoat that fell almost to his ankles.  Beneath it, he’d donned a sturdy pair of hiking boots, completing his odd appearance with the fairy godmother style wand he’d tucked into a specially made holster on his hip.  Given his big and bearded lumberjack appearance, he was a study in contrasts.  Though when Elijah loo...

Chapter 536 - Progress Report

From his vantage high above, Zeke gazed out at the vast fields.  He didn’t know the names of the crops the farmers had planted, but he could feel the mana billowing from the expanse of farms.  The Artisan’s Terrace, which really didn’t qualify for that name anymore, had grown considerably larger, though he’d yet to hear the extent. 

“How big is this place now?” he asked, glancing at Eta, who’d taken it upon herself to develop the area.  She could fight,...

Path of Dragons 5 - Chapter 47 - Leaders

“I’ll meet you guys later,” Elijah said as he zeroed in on a familiar figure.  “Same place we stayed last time, right?”

Kurik said, “I need to restock on some trap supplies anyway.”

“I wanted to see if there was any news on the other challenges.  We have seven more to go,” Sadie added. 

Dat shrugged, “Guess I’ll just go hang out with Atticus.”

With that decided, Elijah focused on his surroundings.  They’d just ...

Path of Dragons 5 - Chapter 46 - Version Two

“Gods bedamned cold,” grumbled Kurik as he knelt beside one of the crops beneath the fortress.  He cupped his hands, shoving his fingers beneath the frozen soil.  From experience, Elijah knew that it took a fair bit of force to penetrate the ground, and in doing so, one would need to expose themselves to sub-freezing temperatures.  He likened it to thrusting his fingers into a pool of liquid nitrogen, though with their inflated Constitutions and Ward of the Seasons, they we...

Path of Dragons 5 - Chapter 45 - The Aftermath

“What the hell?” Elijah demanded, glaring at the Witch Hunter.

“What?” asked Dat, an expression of wide-eyed innocence on his face as he stood over the Ka’alaki Druid’s body.  “He’s not dead.”

Elijah looked closer, concentrating on One with Nature.  It had gone wild during the previous encounter, obscuring his senses to a large degree.  But now everything was back to normal, which let him confirm Dat’s claim.  The Druid was still alive, thou...

Chapter 535 - Smash

Zeke’s mind swirled with a million symbols, each one subtly different from the last.  There were pieces that were meant to fit together, but it was like trying to piece together a puzzle, if said puzzle was a three-dimensional depiction of the abstraction of an ephemeral concept.  And sometimes, those pieces needed to be adjusted so that they fit into the proper place.

So maybe the puzzle analogy was erroneous.

Whatever the case, it was entirely possible for Zeke to lo...

Path of Dragons 5 - Chapter 44 - Constant Threat

An arrow whistled past Miguel’s face, barely nicking his cheek before thudding into the wooden frame of the wagon.  He couldn’t spare even a second to ruminate on how close he’d come to being killed, because it was all he could do to sweep his sword out and knock an oncoming spear to the side.  Even when he used all of his Strength, he barely managed to redirect the weapon before using Impale.  As the skill took effect, he skewered the spear-wielder in the gut, then rippe...

Chapter 534 - Choices

“You don’t have to choose right this second,” Eveline pointed out.  “You can give it another couple of days.”

“Do you think that’ll change anything?” Zeke asked, already looking at his choices. 

“You can devote your full attention to it, rather than just whatever is leftover after you burned out on runecrafting,” she answered.  “You’ve been burning the candle at both ends, Ezekiel.  It might be beneficial to take a step back and relax fo...

Path of Dragons 5 - Chapter 43 - The Nature of Betrayal

Elijah immediately cast Healing Rain, then cycled Soothe onto each of his companions.  At the same time, he whipped around, searching for the source of so much movement in the ambient ethera.  Yet, he found nothing, even when he focused all of his attention on One with Nature.

“I have a really bad feeling about this, bro,” Dat said, holding his crossbow to his shoulder as he scanned their surroundings.  “A really bad feeling.”

“You jinxed it,” Elijah mut...

Weekly (most of the time) Check-In - 7/13/2024

Alright folks. First things first - I apologize about not getting to the check-in for the past couple of weeks. I've been super busy, and it mostly just slipped my mind. By the time I remembered to do it, it was already too late. So, that's on me, and I'm sorry.

That said, the past couple of weeks have been a bit hectic for me. Some of that is due to poor planning on my part, but it's mostly because there's a LOT on my plate. The writing always comes easiest, but when editing and ...

Path of Dragons 5 - Chapter 42 - Frozen

Elijah swung his staff, connecting with the little creature and sending it flying across the room.  After sailing through the air for almost twenty feet, it hit the wall with a dull thud before falling to the floor in a boneless heap.  But Elijah didn’t have time to admire the results of his attack.  Instead, the whole of his attention was required elsewhere – most presently, the fact that there were hundreds more of the monsters attacking his companions. 

If it ...

Path of Dragons 5 - Chapter 41 - Extermination

“This place is amazing,” Elijah said, leaning close to inspect the wall.  Like the rest of the fortress, it was made of mostly featureless stone.  However, it had the distinction of being run through with geometric patterns of white ice.  “These look like snowflakes, right?”

“They look cold is what they look,” Kurik growled, rubbing his own arms with a thick blanket thrown over his shoulders.

“It’s not that bad,” Elijah responded, looking from one ...

Chapter 533 - Flames of Reprisal

Zeke left the manor on a mission to test his latest skill, but to accomplish that goal, he needed enemies.  Rather than use an untested skill in a battle where his people might have to pay the costs of his lacking experience, he chose to do in a more quarantined environment.  That meant heading out into the wilderness.

Ideally, he would have gone into the dungeon arena where he’d once ground out a few levels, but that wasn’t feasible for a couple of reasons.  First, h...

Path of Dragons 5 - Chapter 40 - Into the Fortress

Cold pinpricks spread across Elijah’s face as he looked up at the sleet falling from above.  It was such a curious thing, experiencing natural rain in the middle of a subterranean cavern, and he couldn’t explain it.  His scientific mind tried, but nothing he considered really made sense.  It wasn’t that difficult to create weather in an enclosed space, but scaling it to the size of the cavern was where his rationalizations fell short. That left him with the same explanati...

Chapter 532 - A Foundation of Corpses

Zeke stood, overlooking the town and struggling all the while to repress his repulsion.  It wasn’t easy, considering the advanced state of decay.  He asked, “How many?”

“Seven thousand,” answered Adara.  “We couldn’t get an accurate count, but that’s the estimate.”

He just shook his head, then ran his hand through his hair.  It needed to be cut, but he hadn’t had much opportunity for grooming over the past few months.  First, he’d bee...

Path of Dragons 5 - Chapter 39 - Old Habits

As Elijah stalked through the fields, he was tempted to believe he was repeating the mistakes of the past.  Only recently, he’d nearly been killed because, in his hubris, he’d tried to take on too much responsibility.  But was that true?  Or had the incident in the ice fortress happened as a result of ignorance?  Perhaps the answer was tied to both.  In any case, there was a key difference between the two situations.  Before, he’d had no real reason to ente...

Path of Dragons 5 - Chapter 38 - King of the Hill

Sadie ducked beneath a horizontal club strike, then kicked out, crumpling the yeti’s leg at the knee.  It howled in pain, collapsing sideways and directly into the path of her oncoming blade.  The silvery metal of its armor – now dented and scratched – screeched as the Sword of the Morning bit into it, cutting through flesh and erupting in a spurt of pale blood. 

But the monster did not die. 

Despite Sadie’s exceptional Strength – it was the secondary...

Path of Dragons 5 - Chapter 37 - A Sapper's Burden

“I wish it didn’t have to be this way,” said Kurik, his eyes downcast. 

Elijah understood the dwarf’s emotions, largely because he had a complicated relationship with killing as well.  He’d wrestled with the realities of his own actions often enough to know that he couldn’t really say much that Kurik probably hadn’t told himself a hundred times over.  Still, he owed it to the dwarf to try.  After all, they were companions, weren’t they?  On the v...

Chapter 531 - Every Means

Zeke threw himself forward, tackling the Knight to the ground and locking his arms around the man’s neck.  He squeezed, feeling bones break beneath his grip.  Still, the Knight struggled on, his entire body glowing blinding light – a fact which epitomized the issue Zeke faced. 

The battle had gone as well as could be expected.  Even as his army of kobolds fought against the comparatively stronger contingent of Knights from the Radiant Host, he’d engaged their l...

Path of Dragons 5 - Chapter 36 - A More Measured Approach

“Yeti patrol sounds like a sick band name, bro,” Dat said, his eyes gleaming with excitement.  “Like death metal or something.”

“After everything I just said, that’s your takeaway?  I just admitted to doing something incredibly stupid,” Elijah said.  “I could have gotten everyone here killed.  And you’re talking about band names?”

Dat shrugged.  “Seems like the most important part,” he answered.  “Besides, we’re friends.&nb...

Chapter 530 - The War

Abby Summers, the High Inquisitor of the glorious Radiant Host, stood on the battlefield, her features twisted into an expression of disgust.  More than a thousand soldiers, each one loyal to the Imperium, all dead, and there was no sign of the monsters responsible for the resounding defeat. 

But she knew who’d killed them.  Or rather what.

Those bestial lizard-men had plagued the Radiant Host ever since they’d entered the territory that had once belonged to Lor...

Path of Dragons 5 - Chapter 35 - Yeti Patrol

Elijah loped through the halls without even attempting to conceal his presence.  With the restrictions upon Guise of the Unseen, it wouldn’t have done any good, which meant that he had no choice but to meet the challenge head-on.  However, that didn’t mean he intended to rampage through the lower levels of the Ice Fortress like some mad beast.  No – his goal was simple.  He needed to escape through the gate, and once he was outside the fortress, reestablish his steal...

Path of Dragons 5 - Chapter 34 - The Consequences of Hubris

For Elijah, being underground was always a unique experience.  He’d visited a few caves before the World Tree had connected with Earth, and he’d found that each time had filled him with unease.  Mostly, his discomfort came from generalized claustrophobia, but it went a little deeper than that.  More than once, Elijah had heard about people – usually divers – getting lost in caves and dying.  Spelunking was a dangerous pastime, and one that Elijah had tried but neve...

Path of Dragons 5 - Chapter 33 - Down Below

“Behind me!” shouted Sadie, planting herself at the mouth of the cave.  As the words left her mouth, she used her shielding ability, wrapping a glowing bulwark around her form.  Her greatsword and armor gleamed in the light, though the illumination dissipated after only a few feet.  Beyond that, only oppressive darkness lay. 

Dat and Kurik shot to their feet and took up their positions, ready to deal ranged damage to whatever had caused the eruption.  For hi...

Chapter 529 - Making Plans

The pools of the Crimson Spring stirred, sending ripples through the steaming water.  But there was no one there to see it.  No one but the enormous, metal man at its center, and he could see nothing.  Nor could he hear.  Blind, deaf, and dumb, he didn’t even know his name.

And yet, there was a spark.  A memory.  A world torn asunder by an eternal war between entities too powerful to comprehend.  From that terrible memory grew awareness, and from tha...

Path of Dragons 5 - Chapter 32 - Icy

“How the hell’re you not cold?” demanded Kurik as he rubbed his arms.  He was wearing a thick leather coat, gloves, and sturdy boots, but he clearly wished he’d packed something even warmer. 

Elijah grinned.  “A guy needs his secrets, right?” he replied with a wink.

“He ain’t even wearin’ any shoes!” the dwarf growled, gesturing at Elijah’s bare feet. 

Indeed, Elijah hadn’t made any concessions to the inexplicably cold weather they...

Chapter 528 - Out of the Abyss

Zeke floated in pervasive nothingness.  He struggled to feel anything, could not think, and failed to move.  In his most cognizant moments, he was reminded of the space between Earth and the Mortal Realm.  He’d spent eons there, content with similar nothingness. 

And yet, this was different, though subtly so. 

The ephemeral pain, barely felt but still definitely there, was probably part of that.  Before, the endless darkness was peaceful, and in the...