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Path of Dragons - Chapter 45 - Under the Sea

Arrayed before Elijah was a maze of coral and seaweed. Even as he floated only a few feet above the seafloor, he forgot the conflict of the previous day. Instead, he focused entirely on the setting in front of him.

Elijah had been diving many times in the past. He had his scuba license, and he’d been an avid free diver before being stricken with cancer. More, he’d watched countless videos of the depths and studied even more photos and texts while earning his doctorate. However, he�...

Mistrunner 4 - Chapter 3 - Three Choices

I hate Templars. They have so much power, and yet, they choose to allow the occurrence of one injustice after another, always claiming that if they intervened, the consequences would be worse for everyone. And my response is simple: tell that to all the people you let become enslaved.

Alistaris Cargat

The next day found Patrick and me making our final preparations to move on. The plains had been a good place to train, re...

Path of Dragons - Chapter 44 - Guerilla Warfare

The sun shone bright in the clear, blue sky as Elijah padded across the tundra. His steps were so light that he barely even left prints across the snow, but even as cautious as he was, he still moved quickly enough that, within a couple of hours of sunrise, he spotted the first sign of civilization when he saw a dark plume of smoke twisting in the air. Soon after, a series of buildings came into view.

Reminiscent of the architecture of the ulthrak village, the buildings’ walls were co...

A Little Help Here

If you've enjoyed Path of Dragons (or any of my stories, really, but mostly PoD), I would ask that you head over to Royal Road and leave a rating and/or review.  I'm really invested in this story (I'm loving it), and I definitely want it to be successful.  Ratings and reviews will help immensely with visibility, giving more people a chance to take a look at it.  So, if you haven't already, could you all please take a couple of minutes and throw a rating on the story?  Here...

Path of Dragons - Chapter 43 - Why We Fight

They weren’t real – not as he recognized reality, at least. Elijah knew that without a shadow of a doubt. However, that didn’t seem to matter when he was surrounded by suffering people. Even if those people happened to be humanoid walruses. He had been at it for hours, and he was soaked with sweat that had mingled with precipitation from Healing Rain. He gasped, pulling his hand away from his latest patient.

He was tiny. Barely more than toddler-sized, and with tiny nubs for tusks...

Chapter 395 - Brick by Brick

Even as his thunderous steps cracked the tiles beneath his feet, Zeke wove a braid of pure destruction, powered by his twin attunements and held together by his Will. At first, it tried to escape his grasp, but that was no less than he expected. After all, each individual piece was enough to stretch the locus of his control to its limits, but altogether, it was everything he could do to keep them together for more than a split second.

A good thing, all told, because with every passing i...

Path of Dragons - Chapter 42 - A Druid's Purpose

Before Elijah swam to shore, he took a moment to take on the Shape of the Predator. However, the moment he did, he got a bit of a surprise when he suddenly realized that mist panthers were apparently very poor swimmers. He could stay afloat, and he could move a little, but his frantic flailing ruined any chance at maintaining Guise of the Unseen. So, he let the transformation drop and treaded water until he’d regained enough Ethera to comfortably approach the village.

By the time he d...

Path of Dragons - Chapter 41 - The Entrance

Elijah stalked the Voxxian monster as it, in turn, attempted to do the same to him. Of course, because he was cloaked in Guise of the Unseen, it had no clue where he was – which was precisely how Elijah liked it. As a mist panther, he was only marginally more durable than he was as a human, so caution was a necessity, rather than a choice. Fortunately, his abilities made it easier.

Taking one careful step at a time, he silently closed with the monster. It was a bit bigger than the ten...

Path of Dragons 1 - Chapter 40 - Preamble to Disaster

Elijah stalked forward, moving as quickly as he dared without rendering his Guise of the Unseen ineffectual. The ability was usually very effective, to the point where he could sneak up on most animals without fear of being detected, but it had its limits – chiefly, that if he moved too suddenly or into bright lights, he would be seen. It was still just before dawn, so bright lights were no threat, but he had to be careful to keep his movements under control as he hurried toward the invadin...

Path of Dragons 1 - Chapter 39 - The Illusion of Peace

Elijah leaned against the ancestral tree, slowly chipping away at the hunk of wood that he hoped would one day become a recognizable figure. But even with the knives he’d taken from the invading trio that had killed the guardian panther, it was slow going. And the results of his attempts at carving were scattered at best.

Gradually, he whittled the hunk of wood down to a basic shape. When he finished, he hoped it would resemble the first Voxxian monster he’d encountered, but he knew...

Path of Dragons 1 - Chapter 38 - Towers and Rifts

As summer laid its hand over the region, the island transformed. Flowers bloomed, fruit ripened, and wildlife became more active than ever before. Elijah was no exception, spending his days hunting and exploring. It wasn’t long before he’d visited every corner of his island, and his efforts as a hunter were more successful than not. In short, he began to thrive.

However, despite his efforts in keeping the island clear of Voxx, he’d only barely progressed to level nineteen. Fortuna...

Path of Dragons 1 - Chapter 37 - Survival Isn't Living

Elijah bounded off the embankment, using his enhanced Strength to launch himself at the enormous crab. At some point within the past few weeks, the crabs had experienced another growth spurt, and they had reached absolutely gargantuan proportions. With claws as big as motorcycles and a body that would rival a Volkswagen bus in size, it truly had earned the monster label.

With that increase in size came the mixed news that they’d begun preying on one another. Usually, when he came with...

Path of Dragons 1 - Chapter 36 - Climbing the Ladder

Elijah stalked forward, his feet falling silently against the forest floor as he followed his prey through the forest. Even if it hadn’t made so much noise, there was no mistaking the scent that it emitted. To Elijah’s sense of smell, the odor was a combination of rotten eggs, something similar to cheap cigar smoke, and the sickly sweet scent of decomposing fruit. It was, to put it mildly, extremely off-putting, and he wanted nothing more than to get as far from the smell as he could mana...

Path of Dragons 1 - Chapter 35 - The First Step

Carmen stood in front of her forge, staring at the flames. She had built the thing herself, and to exacting specifications. However, she knew just how much room there was for improvement. Still, as she walked around it and inspected the brickwork, she was more than happy with the results.

The forge itself was a little more than waist high, made of thick bricks she’d made herself using a local clay deposit she’d found near the lake. The process hadn’t been as onerous as she’d exp...

Path of Dragons 1 - Chapter 34 - The Black Sheep

Eason Cabbot ran his hand along the thick bristles of his blood red mohawk as he sat at the desk he’d been given. Ostensibly, he could have commandeered any building in the budding settlement of Ironshore – that was what his contract had said, at least – but he knew better than to make any power moves. For one, it wouldn’t do much good. He was just the head of security, and as such, the miners and other settlers wouldn’t follow him. For another, he had no aspirations of rule. Instea...

Path of Dragons 1 - Chapter 33 - The Shape of a Predator

Elijah opened his spellbook and looked at the new additions:

Despite the lingering feelings of sadness, a sense of excitement washed over Elijah when he saw his new spells. Essence of the Boar and Essence of the Monkey were both impressive enough, but his eyes were immediately drawn to Shape of the Predator. Still, he forced himself to focus on what he considered the more mundane spe...

Path of Dragons 1 - Chapter 32 - The Cost of Improvement

As Elijah knelt on the beach, he stared at the slain panther. But he didn’t really see it. Instead, all he saw was what he’d just done. Strangely, he didn’t feel the least bit guilty about the people he’d helped kill. They were invaders and defilers, and if he wanted to protect his island and the Grove, killing them was necessary. However, he couldn’t help but keenly feel the loss of the panther who had, on more than one occasion, saved his life.

Was it silly to mourn the loss...

Path of Dragons 1 - Chapter 31 - Invaders

Elijah heaved a rock above his head, pushing as high as he could. As soon as his elbows locked out, he dropped it back to the ground. Once it settled into the soft, spongy forest floor, he bent down, his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. If he’d had to guess, the rock weighed somewhere around a hundred-and-fifty pounds. Maybe two-hundred, depending on the density.

Lifting that kind of weight might not have seemed all that impressive, but given his relatively small si...

Chapter 394 - The Prodigal Son

“You’re not real,” Zeke growled, his fingers tightening on his hammer’s grip. “You can’t be real.”

For a long moment, his father sat languidly on the elaborate and impressively jeweled golden throne. Cocked to one side and leaning on one of the armrests, he looked little different than the last time Zeke had seen him. But gone was the look of disgust the man had worn when the doctors had told Zeke that he’d never play baseball again. Back then, he hadn’t even said a wo...

Weekly Check-In (11/12/23)

I'm sure some of you might have noticed that I recently tossed thirty chapters of my new story, Path of Dragons on here.  So, this is probably a good time to let you all know that I'm going to be adding it to the schedule starting tomorrow.  So, I'll start it off with a ten chapter dump tomorrow morning, and then, for the first two weeks of release, you'll see two chapters a day.  Then, for the following two weeks, you'll see a chapter a day.  And after that, we'll go to f...

Path of Dragons 1 - Chapter 30 - The Network

Nothing happened – at least not outwardly, but Dirk’s eyes briefly glazed over. It only lasted a second or two before he refocused. “It’s done,” he said.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” said Carmen, who, like everyone else, was on the edge of her seat after Dirk took the class. “That’s it? What kind of ability did you get?”

“Not an ability,” he said. “A spell.”

“Yeah? What’s it called?” she asked.

“Um…it’s called Branch of the Wo...

Path of Dragons 1 - Chapter 29 - Envoy

“I know it’s not a new Playstation, but…happy birthday.”

Miguel looked down at the weapon in his hands. It was a compound bow not unlike the one Roman still carried, but it had been made from scratch by Carmen. The same could be said for the wide variety of arrows in the paired quiver.

Alyssa and Carmen had gone back and forth trying to decide on an appropriate gift for Miguel’s birthday. In the past, he’d usually gotten various electronics, games, or toys like Legos. ...

Path of Dragons 1 - Chapter 28 - A Portal to Hell

Elijah spent the rest of the day preparing his mind for what was coming. Nerthus couldn’t tell him much about what he could expect to find on the other side of the dimensional portal, so he’d chosen the route of pessimism. Judging by his experiences with the Voxx and the corrupted bear, he thought expecting the worst was likely appropriate.

That night, he slept fitfully, and not just because he still wasn’t used to sleeping under the open sky. Instead, his imagination had gone wil...

Path of Dragons 1 - Chapter 27 - Locus

Elijah let out a deep breath as he slowly opened the Ethera-bolstered partition in his mind. For the first few seconds, he only let a trickle of sensory input through while forcing the rest to remain sequestered away, but over the next couple of hours, he gradually released the rest. And to his surprise, it wasn’t nearly as overwhelming as it had been before he’d cultivated his Opal Mind. At most, it was moderately distracting, though even that was manageable.

As far as Elijah could...

Path of Dragons 1 - Chapter 26 - Domain

It was like a bomb going off in Elijah’s head. If he’d thought using One With Nature was a little overwhelming, then the deluge of sensory input that came when he’d completed the Grove nearly crushed his mind into pulp. He could feel everything, right down to the smallest insect, screaming inside his head. But more than that, he knew things he had no business knowing.

Like the existence of forty-two squirrels within a hundred yards of the Grove. Or exactly how many trees comprised...

Path of Dragons 1 - Chapter 25 - The Ladder

Elijah wasn’t sure what it meant. Certainly, on the most basic level, the list floating before his inner eye was easily understood. There was no mistaking that much. But the implications were far more difficult to figure out. Still, he studied it, starting with a simple message:

Five months have passed since the World Tree reached this   world, giving inhabitants enough time to establish themselves. These are the future leaders of your   planet: 2023-11-13 04:25:00 +0000 UTC View Post

Path of Dragons 1 - Chapter 24 - The Monster

Alyssa leaped toward the monster before she even took the time to properly analyze it. Using Impale, she thrust her spear forward, but to her horror, the creature’s heavy scales turned the blade aside. Off-balance, she couldn’t arrest her momentum quickly enough to keep herself from ramming into it, shoulder-first. It took the blow, skidding backward only a few scant inches.

She stomped on its talon-like foot, using Shockwave at the same time. Disoriented, the monster lashed out wit...

Path of Dragons 1 - Chapter 23 - Supply Run

Winter had come, blanketing the region around the settlement in a thick layer of snow. The temperatures had plummeted well below freezing, and as a result, food – as well as every other necessary resource – had grown scarce. Alyssa and a few of the other hunters with martial archetypes hunted as much as possible, and other members of the growing community frequently gathered supplies from the remnants of the town.

But the pickings were growing slimmer by the day. Already, the local ...

Path of Dragons 1 - Chapter 22 - Woodworking

For the next few weeks, Elijah fell into a rhythm. With winter tightening its grip on the area, the days shortened, and the nights grew longer. However, to his surprise, the cold didn’t seem to bother him much at all – which was a good thing, because aside from a makeshift blanket he’d stitched together from rabbit hides, he had little protection against the elements. Certainly, he’d closed the cabin off by piling moss and leaves across a few upright limbs, but he’d never been much ...

Path of Dragons 1 - Chapter 21 - Nerthus

Elijah awoke shivering in the middle of the night. Winters in the Pacific northwest could be brutal, and it seemed that his island was no exception. Fortunately, his initial investment into the Constitution attribute had combined with his Body of Wood as well as One With Nature to give him significant protection from the elements. He was still cold – after all, the temperatures had dropped well below freezing – but his experiences told him that he was at no risk of frostbite or other issu...