Path of Dragons

Book 2: Chapter 22: The Back Door

Book 2: Chapter 22: The Back Door

One moment, Elijah was striding across a meadow and through a big, blocky doorway, and the next, his bare foot touched down in something warm, wet, and squishy. That alone would have been bad enough – especially when it got between his toes – but what made it even worse was the horrid stench that suddenly enveloped him.

“Oh, God,” he muttered to himself as he tried not to gag.

He was markedly unsuccessful, especially when he had the chance to truly take in his surroundings. Before him stretched a wide body of water, from the center of which rose a steep edifice topped by a menacing wall. The water itself wasn’t an inviting or placid lake. Instead, it was a seething moat, below the surface of which writhed something Elijah’s instincts told him was absolutely deadly.

That water was also the source of the horrible stench tickling his nostrils. For a moment, Elijah had difficulty placing it; it was like rotten eggs mixed with vomit and hot garbage. But after only a few seconds, he recognized the smell for what it was.

“Sulfur,” he sighed, though he knew there was more to the smell than that.

It was an odor usually associated with swamps, but after a brief look around, he discounted that possibility. The lake – or moat, really – notwithstanding, the area was incredibly arid, with very little in the way of vegetation to be found. Instead, large, rocky pillars jutted up from the ground, twisting high into the sky, which was discolored by a setting sun.

Beneath Elijah’s feet was mud, or at least he hoped that was all there was, considering that, across the expanse of roiling water, Elijah saw a wide grate from which flowed some sort of disgusting sludge.

The moment he realized that the area was inhabited, he shifted into his scaled panther form, then embraced Guise of the Unseen. And it was just in time, too, because only a few seconds later, a loud screech filled his ears before a wide shadow fell over him. He looked up to see an enormous, winged creature soaring a hundred or so feet above his position.

At a glance, it looked like a bat, but there were two issues with that assessment. First, even if his perspective was a little skewed by the distance, he judged its wingspan to reach at least thirty feet. Maybe as much as fifty. And that would make it ten times the size of even the largest bat back on Earth.

But that was within Elijah’s experience. He’d seen plenty of oversized animals, so he knew that his concept of proper size wasn’t really relevant in terms of identifying creatures. After all, he only had to remember the size of the crabs on his island to confirm just how much larger things could get in his new world.

In any case, he was far more concerned with the second problem with his initial identification. He was no chiropterologist, but he felt confident that bats weren’t supposed to have horns. Of course, that could have been a mutation, too. He’d seen hares with horns back on his island, so who was to say that giant bats couldn’t have them as well?

Elijah watched as the enormous, horned bat glided toward one of the jutting towers along the wall, where it landed. Just before it passed out of view, he caught a glimpse of something big and bulky upon the creature’s back, but he had neither the time nor the visual acuity to identify the rider.

Only once he’d gotten his bearings did Elijah bother to read the notification he’d received upon entering the tower:

Welcome to Reaver’s Citadel, Level One. To advance to Level Two, complete the task before you.

The Reaver’s Citadel was obviously the keep positioned at the top of the plateau in the center of the lake. Elijah read the next notification:

Task: Reach the dungeon and defeat the Warden.

Optional: Rescue the prisoner.

But still, that wasn’t his first objection to that option. No – that distinction belonged to the smell. That, coupled with the sight of that sludge slowly oozing out of the tunnels, gave him a good idea what was going on, and he could confidently say that it was absolutely disgusting.

Perhaps it wasn’t meant for sewage. Maybe his nose had fooled him on that front. But he didn’t think so, and for that reason, he shied away from what was obviously the optimal path. With that in mind, he found himself crouched approximately twenty feet from the two ogre guards.

That close, they looked even larger and far more menacing than they had from a distance, and Elijah’s eyes kept flicking toward the huge battle axes they wore strapped to their backs. It wasn’t difficult to imagine that, with their obvious strength, the creatures were more than capable of bisecting him with a single blow.

He crept close, taking one careful step at a time. With Guise of the Unseen, Elijah felt confident that he wouldn’t be seen – especially at night – but he knew it was far from perfect. If he put one foot out of line, he would be seen. Fortunately, he had ample experience sneaking around.

As it turned out, his confidence was entirely misplaced.

The moment he came within ten feet of the guard house – and the pair of ogres stationed on either side of the bridge’s entrance – a blindingly white light erupted into being. Suddenly, Elijah felt his stealth being stripped away and exposing him to the hulking ogres. For the longest of instants, he stared at them, and they stared right back at him. Then, confusion turned to rage, and without any more warning, the closest ogre ripped the axe off its back and leaped forward with a bestial roar.

Elijah’s instincts had been honed by much worse circumstances. In the Sea of Sorrows and the Primordial Jungle, he’d often had to deal with ambush predators, so his reaction to the charging ogre was completely intuitive. He crouched low, then dodged to the side just in time to avoid the descending blade of the ogre’s axe. The miss threw the creature off balance, opening it up for a counterattack, but Elijah had no intention of getting into a straight fight.

Instead, he used the opening to gather his wits and dash away. Both of the ogres roared angry challenges, but Elijah paid them no attention. Instead, he raced along the terrain, dodging behind rocky protrusions at every opportunity until, at last, the white light faded. But even then, he didn’t slow.

He kept running well after the reactivation of Essence of the Wolf told him that he’d exited combat. In fact, he circled the moat, racing across the terrain for miles along the circumference of the roiling body of water until, at last, he felt his safety was assured. Only then did he let himself slow to a stop.

Elijah knew how fortunate he was to have escaped. Perhaps he could have defeated the ogres, but he knew it would have been a pyrrhic victory. Doubtless, that blindingly white light had been an alarm, of sorts, and like all alarms, it would have brought with it some sort of response. It wasn’t difficult to imagine that, if he’d stayed and fought, he would have quickly been buried under a mountain of bulky ogres.

No – retreat had been the right choice.

But now, if he was going to accomplish his task, he only had one available option.

Once he’d caught his breath, Elijah shifted back to his human form and, after using Eyes of the Eagle to look at the nearest grate, muttered, “I really don’t want to do this.”

He didn’t have much choice, though. So, he took a deep breath, getting a nose full of the foul odor in the process, then settled in to regenerate his Ethera. Once his core was completely full, he renewed his enhancements, then switched to his guardian shape.

What it lacked in stealth, the form made up for in sheer durability. The scaled ape form had one other thing going for it, and that was the fact that it was much better suited to swimming than the predator form.

Shaking his head, Elijah loped forward and waded into the water.