Path of Dragons

Book 4: Chapter 49: Cooler Heads Will Prevail

Elijah cartwheeled, skipping across the roof as his scales melted from the intense heat of the explosion. However, at least one facet of his Quartz Mind remained aware enough that he initiated a transformation into the Shape of the Sky, which completed as he went over the edge and began a plummet to the ground below. He beat his wings, pain arcing through him with every motion. The membranous material that comprised the appendages was ripped in places, scattering blood across the ground below, but they were still capable of holding him aloft.

And in his state, if he’d let himself fall from that roof, he might never have risen.

Still, flight was only barely possible, and he ended up expending far more energy than normal before he crashed into another nearby building. The moment he was back on solid ground, he initiated another transformation into his human form. Only then did he look at the state of his body.

Groaning, he took in what looked like third-degree burns that covered most of his skin. On top of that, he could feel multiple broken bones as well as what he took to be some sort of affliction coursing through his body and weakening him.

But it wasn’t the first time he’d been so grievously injured, and one facet of his Mind had already begun to cast Soothe, Healing Rain, and Touch of Nature. Completely healing would not be a quick process, but he felt confident that he could regain functionality in short order.

It wouldn’t be pretty, though.

“Elijah!” shouted Isaiah through the earpiece. That was when Elijah realized that the man had been yelling for some time. He just hadn’t quite heard it because his eardrums had burst from the cacophonous explosion.

“You don’t have to shout.”

“Are you okay? Do you need an extraction?”

“I’m fine,” Elijah said, having already healed most of the fractures. A few still persisted, but they weren’t so serious that they’d slow him down. More concerning were the burns. And the affliction, which had stubbornly hung on, weakening him. “Just need to heal for a second.”

“You may not have that long,” Isaiah stated. “Every Adventurer in Lakeshore is converging on your location.”

“What hit me?” Elijah asked.

“One of the claymores.”

“And what happened to ‘I see everything’, huh?” Elijah asked.

“I missed it. I don’t know how,” Isaiah admitted. “Are you sure you’re okay? You look…”

“Yeah, I’m fine. This isn’t as bad as getting digested by a whale,” Elijah muttered. Already, the burns had begun to scab over. It would take a few more minutes before it was completely healed, though. “Honestly, it looks worse than it is. And how do you know how I look, anyway?”

Then, he focused on a gap in his awareness. It was only about six inches wide, but he’d encountered stealth skills on enough occasions that he knew what that absence meant. “Oh. Drones, right? How long do I have?”

“Six minutes,” Isaiah said. “Based on their normal response times, at least. They’re being careful as they surround the building you’re in.”

“Should be enough,” Elijah mumbled to himself. He could have used Guardian’s Renewal to instantly recover, but he wanted to keep that in reserve. It was too powerful, with too long of a cooldown to use when his normal healing spells would suffice. “Just keep me updated on their movements.”

After that, Elijah focused on healing, flooding his body with Touch of Nature as often as he could. The spell had once been quite powerful, but of late, he’d noticed that its relative potency had really begun to lag behind. As a result, it took more casts to heal from similar amounts of damage. From what he understood, that was normal. Healing spells typically restored a static amount of life – or vitality, as the guides referred to it – but each person gained a larger pool of that life force as they progressed through levels and benefited from increased attributes. Because of that, people were harder to injure, but they were also more difficult to heal, requiring evolved spells to heal the same amount of relative damage. Or in Elijah’s case, more casts.

Fortunately, his pool of available ethera had grown quite a bit larger than it had been when he’d first acquired the spell, so he could effectively cast it without ceasing. His potent Regeneration could easily keep pace with any ethera he used.

The only issue was that it took more time.

Either way, he kept at it until almost ten minutes later, Isaiah said, “They’re coming in. I tried to delay them a little with a couple of my drones, but they didn’t last long.”

“It’s alright,” Elijah said, standing. He wished his Crook of the Serpent Healer hadn’t been damaged. Otherwise, his healing spells would have been far more potent. As it was, his skin was still beet red where the damaged skin had flaked away, but there were a few spots that were still scabbed over. His bones were in better shape, having mended almost completely. His right forearm still bore a fracture, and he suspected that the occipital bone below his right eye was chipped. However, neither injury was so severe that he couldn’t ignore them. He stretched a bit, then said, “Just keep me updated on what to expect. My detection radius is around fifty feet. So, let me know about whatever’s going on outside of that.”

With that, Elijah went silent and, once again, adopted the Shape of the Predator. Then, he let Guise of the Unseen settle upon him, and he disappeared into stealth. Before he’d transformed, he’d checked his buffs, and for one of the first times ever, he used Ward of the Seasons in a combat situation. There were Sorcerers among the Adventurers, and he wanted as much protection as possible from their spells. To make room, he forewent Aura of Renewal, largely because he intended to remain in his bestial forms, where the enhanced Regeneration attribute was only marginally effective.

He stalked forward, ready to slaughter everyone who’d come after him.

The building itself was the sort of office complex that were so common in any American city of sufficient size. Ten stories tall, mostly metal and glass, and completely unimaginative in its architecture. Just a giant rectangle that could efficiently and cheaply house all sorts of offices.

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Elijah had ended up on the sixth floor, which turned out to be the sort of cubicle farm in which he’d never wanted to find himself. The idea of slaving away in that kind of environment was one of his worst nightmares. The partitions were partially rotted away, and many had fallen, but the overall layout remained in place. All of the electronics were gone, presumably having been scrapped for materials or sold in one of Seattle’s many markets.

But the combination of features made the cubicle farm a perfect setting for Elijiah’s preferred style of fighting. As much as he liked Shape of the Guardian or his natural form, Shape of the Predator would always have a special place in his heart. Some of that was due to his relationship with the mist panther that had inspired his class, but it was also because it was the safest way for him to fight.

Until it wasn’t.

That was where the lamellar ape form came into play, though.

In any case, Elijah crept through the area, staying low to the ground like the stalking predator he was. So, when he sensed someone reach the floor, he was ready to pounce.

There were five of them – a mostly full group, from what he understood. Six was the maximum that could enter a tower, but most people considered five to be the core of any good group, with the final member being considered “extra” – at least in Seattle and Argos. Perhaps things were different in other parts of the world.

Their roles were easily identifiable. The defender wore thick plate armor the color of blood and carried a large shield that looked like a repurposed car door. There was a robed Sorcerer carrying a staff, a pair of men in leather armor and wielding daggers, and a woman who lagged behind the rest. That final member carried a scepter made of twisted silver and topped with a giant emerald. Her armor was chainmail, and by process of elimination, Elijah marked her as the group’s Healer.

And his first target.

“See anything?” asked the Sorcerer.

The defender said, “Negative. Stay frosty.”

It was only after she spoke that Elijah could identify her as a woman. Apparently, real armor didn’t make many allowances for feminine shape, and her head was encased by a large helmet that looked like a metal bucket.

“What do you think it is?” asked one of the dagger wielders.

“No idea. Somebody said it looked like a dragon,” answered the other.

“Dragons aren’t real.”

“They are so. I read about ‘em in a guide. Supposed to be really strong, too. God, I hope we’re not fighting a dragon.”

It was at that moment that Elijah pounced, barreling into the Healer, the momentum enough to throw her back through the door and knocking it from its hinges. Even as it splintered, Elijah bit, though his attack was stymied by a thick, golden, spell-wrought barriier that encased the woman’s entire body.

She screamed as his claws raked the plane of solid light, the sound of his talons against the spell like scratching glass. But it didn’t immediately shatter, which told Elijah that she had some power under her belt. That was okay, though, because he wasted no time before biting it again.

And when that failed, again after that.

Over and over, his jaws snapped shut with enough force to shatter stone. And after only a few seconds, the shield ran out of energy, exposing the woman to his natural weapons. By that point, the others had responded, rushing back through the door. Elijah bit down on her hastily raised arms, crushing the bone before he was forced to flee into the shadows.

A second later, the defender lumbered into the hall to stand over the fallen Healer. She shouted, asking the woman if she was okay, but the answer to that question was obvious, considering that both of her arms were only hanging on by a few strips of sinew. Without her shield spell, she’d stood no chance of resisting the power of Elijah’s jaws.

She made her discomfort known by screaming in agony.

The defender yelled out orders, but Elijah had already rushed around a corner, avoiding a clump of roiling earth that hit the wall with the force of a cannonball. No one immediately followed, which, after a couple of moments, allowed him to slip into a different room and adopt Guise of the Unseen.

Then, when he spied a missing ceiling tile, he got the idea to use that to his advantage. After all, people rarely looked up. So, he shifted into his human form – there was no way the flimsy roof could accommodate his huge draconid shape – and pulled himself into the crawl space above the tiles. Once there, it didn’t take him long to creep forward until he felt the five fighters directly below him.

That’s when he used Swarm.

A bunch of tiny gnats manifested, landing on the men and women who were hunting him. The manifested insects were so small, and their bites were so light that no one in the group even knew they were being loaded with afflictions. Of course, the Healer was still whimpering about her nearly missing arms. She was trying to heal herself, but apparently, the spell took concentration she could not muster. So, it kept fizzling out.

Then, the Sorcerer coughed, spitting up blood.

One of the melee fighters did the same, while the Healer wept.

“Disease! Cure us!” shouted the defender.

“My arms…”

“Concentrate, woman! If you don’t, we’re going to die!”

That snapped the Healer out of her misery, and Elijah felt her cast a spell. A golden globe manifested, pulsing once every second. Each one sent a ripple of ethera through their surroundings. It only extended for about ten feet, but that was enough to encompass the entire group. When Elijah saw the Sorcerer’s change in posture, it was confirmation that the Healer had cured Swarm’s afflictions.

So, when the globe winked out, he cast the spell again.

For now, that was his limit. He had enough ethera to cast it again – a few more times, actually – but he couldn’t afford to use the entire contents of his Core on one group. Because there were more out there.

Besides – he had a plan to finish them off.

To that end, the moment the group began to once again manifest symptoms, Elijah made his move, shifting into his draconid form, then using Guise of the Unseen before embracing Predator Strike and Venom Strike. Before the ceiling could collapse, he launched himself through the flimsy tile and hit the Healer like a runaway train. She’d used her shield again, which was as expected. So, the moment he hit, he used Flicker Step, teleporting behind the next-most-vulnerable person.

The Sorcerer never saw him coming, and his ethereal shield was far thinner than the Healer’s. More importantly, he was already under the effects of Swarm’s afflictions, which meant that he was slow to respond. And finally, the Healer had proven that she was prone to panic, so whatever abilities she might’ve brought to bear in defense of her companion were forgotten after being knocked to the floor.

So, Elijah bit through the Sorcerer’s ethereal shield, then clamped his jaws around the man’s head and squeezed. His skull popped like a melon, which only elicited more panic from the Healer. She tried to cast a heal on the sorcerer, but there was no spell that could regrow a head.

Her frantic efforts gave Elijah the opportunity to dart toward one of the melee fighters and rake his claws across the man’s leg, delivering Venom Strike as well as Contagion before, once again, rushing down the hall. The frustrated defender followed, shouting for the others to join her, but she was too slow to catch him.

Or that’s what Elijah thought until she used some sort of ability and leaped in his direction. He tried to dodge, but his feet were suddenly rooted in place, so he couldn’t avoid her descending shield slam as it crashed into him.

What he could do was initiate a transformation into his lamellar ape form, though. It took a second, which meant that the shield hit him mid-transformation, but as he was knocked down the hall, he finished shifting.

And when he rose, the defender took an involuntary step back.

Elijah could feel that a couple more of his bones had nearly been broken by the attack, but it was nothing vital. He could still exert the majority of his Strength. And now that he was in his guardian form, the pain only fueled his instinctive rage. He didn’t give himself over to it – not completely – but he did use that to numb the effect of the pain on his mind.

With a roar, he threw himself at the defender, ready to rip her limb from limb.