Path of Dragons

Book 6: Chapter 18: Going off Script

Book 6: Chapter 18: Going off Script

Elijah lowered his staff and cast Nature’s Rebuke. It had been incredibly effective against the zombies, so he expected it to do just as much damage against the tidal wave of rotting flesh coming his way. The spell hit the mass, and for a moment, he thought it was going to work. Layers of flesh disintegrated beneath the power of the spell, prompting a wave of hope. Then, rolls of rotting meat surged, closing in around the gaping wounds until, only a moment later, no evidence of Elijah’s efforts remained.

“We’ve got a problem here!” he shouted. “A big, big problem!”

Kurik turned, and his eyes widened. The mass filled the entire corridor, and to Elijah, it looked like someone had wrapped decaying silly putty around a bunch of moving ball bearings. Except he could see zombified faces in the mass as well. Reaching limbs, grasping claws, and gnashing teeth were apparent, prompting a wave of nausea that twisted its way through his stomach.

So, maybe not like silly putty at all.

“What do we do?!” the dwarf breathed.

“Here,” Elijah said, dumping the crystals out of his bag. “We need to destroy these. I’ll protect the rear. Everyone else needs to fight the skeletons.”

Even as he gave those instructions, the horde of giant skeletons surged forward as one. They didn’t move quickly, but they didn’t really need to, either. Elijah and his companions couldn’t escape – not with the mass of roiling and rotting flesh blocking the only exit – so they didn’t need to waste their energy on a mad rush.

But Elijah knew just how quickly those skeletons could move. He’d fought dozens of the things already, and they were a terrifying foe – especially given that none of the new ones had the glaring weakness he’d exploited with the others. No crystals hanging around their necks meant that they were largely invulnerable to any attacks Elijah and his companions could level in their direction. Even Nature’s Rebuke was little more than a slap in the face against such durable foes.

Elijah couldn’t concern himself with that, though. His job was to protect the rear, and if he was going to do that, he couldn’t afford to split his focus. So, after discarding the crystals, he shifted into the Shape of the Guardian. By the time the transformation had completed, the mass of zombified flesh had closed to within fifty yards.

He used Savage Might.

Then, without further delay, he raced forward. A second later, he crashed into the mass, ripping and clawing with every ounce of fury he could muster. Ragged chunks of rotting meat flew into the air, creating a miasmic cloud of blackened gore, unidentifiable fluid, pus, and, most importantly, death-attuned ethera that sent a chill deep into his bones.

Elijah roared, ripping and clawing as he tapped into the three aspects of his spirit. The beast in him drove his savagery, the dragon refused to give in to the odds, and the oft-ignored human searched for a method to defeat the mighty foe.

Behind him, the skeletons finally reached Sadie and his companions, and the sound of their conflict echoed through the immense chamber. At the same time, the disembodied voice continued to hiss meaningless statements about finally defeating the tyrant.

For his part, Elijah couldn’t afford to pay any attention to that, because it quickly became apparent that his efforts – for all their fury – were almost entirely ineffective. He’d ripped a wide gash into the amalgam of zombified flesh, but it still surged forward with agonizing inevitability. Eventually, it would reach his companions, and the battle would effectively end.

They would fight on.

None were the sorts to give up. However, the writing was on the wall. If they let themselves be sandwiched between the two sides of the enemy’s attack, they would fall. Not soon, and not without taking their own proverbial pound of flesh, but their demise seemed almost fated.

Elijah refused to surrender to that.

So, he sprang backward, and even as he shifted back to his human form, an explosion of force sent him staggering forward. The pyramid shook, and the ta’alaki’s voice erupted into a scream. It took Elijah a second to realize that Kurik had finally destroyed one of the crystals.

Fortunately, that caused the mass of zombified flesh to recoil – if only for a moment – which in turn gave Elijah the opportunity to complete his transformation and cast Swarm. Then, he used Nature’s Rebuke and Calamity. The familiar spells swept in, and hundreds of buzzing flies descended upon the mass of flesh. It ignored them, and to its peril. For the duration of the spell, the flies bit the amalgam hundreds – if not thousands – of times, inflicting one affliction after another. Flesh rotted rapidly, disintegrating in seconds as the malicious effects swept through the creature.

It wasn’t enough, though.

So, Elijah once again shifted. The situation did not call for the brute force of the lamellar ape. That was meeting it on its terms. Instead, he needed the power of the blight dragon. Shape of Venom transformed his body, and he raced back into the fray, climbing the walls and dropping down from the ceiling. Immediately, he started biting.

He would not give in. He would not fall before a mindless slurry of zombified remains. So, he continued his cycle, adding more healing to the mix. He also pushed himself to remain in his blight dragon form as long as possible.

Ironically, it was not the monster itself that pushed him over the edge. It was the pervasive aura of death that had slowly crept into his body, suffusing his every cell until he could scarcely move without ripping muscles and ligaments.

Elijah shifted back into the lamellar ape form, and activated his final hope. Guardian’s Renewal swept through him, healing the damage that had been wrought. However, as had happened on a few other occasions, it was immediately clear that it wouldn’t be enough.

Vitality fought with death-attuned ethera, creating a stalemate where his body was destroyed and renewed multiple times with every passing second. Elijah knew that the moment Guardian’s Renewal gave out, he would die.

He couldn’t do anything about the constriction inflicted by the mass of rotting flesh, but the aura of death reminded him of the corruption he’d endured in the fallen grove. In the beginning, he’d tried to purge it from his body – and with some success – but it had ultimately been an affliction of the mind. Still, it was a lesson he hadn’t forgotten.

So, he shoved his resolve behind that same technique, and he squeezed the undead aura with every ounce of willpower he could manifest. At first, it did nothing. Even as the power of life and death warred within him, he hung in limbo. Then, something broke. An explosion erupted all around him, the shockwave tearing through the monster.

And then it all imploded.

Death rushed into the vacuum, smothering him beneath a mountain of ghastly energy. It seeped through his skin, suffusing his organs and infecting his bones. Elijah screamed as pain wracked his entire body. He was dying. He knew it. Agony tore through him like a wildfire, a herald of what was to come.

His fate was knocking on his door.

But Elijah hadn’t gotten as far as he had by giving up. The dragon, the beast, and the human all coalesced, and he squeezed with all his might. The result was a single drop of deathly energy, given liquid form by the sheer pressure he brought to bear, that seeped out of his chest. Then another came. And another after that.

Even as the monster tried to crush him, Elijah was wholly focused on purging himself of that deathly energy. Along the way, he picked up hundreds of other forms of tainted energy. Leftover corruption. Sickness. Imperfections. Toxins of every kind. It manifested in the form a thick sludge that came from every orifice and leaked from every pore.

Elijah pushed. And squeezed. And he was remade, better and more perfectly pure than ever before.

A notification flashed before Elijah’s mind’s eye, but he couldn’t spare it any attention. The pressure continued to squeeze, and the deathly energy pushed against him as furiously as ever before. But it could find no purchase. Elijah’s bones refused to break, and his muscles would not give way.

He was just too strong. To durable.

And he had a monster to kill.

He shifted back into the blight dragon, and he tore into the mass of flesh with more savagery than ever before. His body sang with power as he ripped through the monstrous mass of necrotic flesh, inflicting hundreds of instances of afflictions along the way. They built and built until, at last, the amalgam of zombified meat lost cohesion and fell apart.

Elijah flopped to the ground, covered in pus and gore.

He felt good.

Really, really good.

But he didn’t have time to revel in it. Never was that made clearer than when he heard a feminine scream echo down the hall. Elijah turned, seeing that he was hundreds of yards away from where he’d started. But he also saw the giant skeleton looming over a fallen Sadie, and he knew that he was too far away to help her.