13-8. The Better Part of Valor
The monsters were difficult to describe.
One part spider, another part octopus, and a third part wholly terrifying eldritch creature with a multitude of mouths, screaming, simian faces, and enough tentacles to make a man o’ war jealous.
Elijah met them in the Shape of Spores, fighting tentacles with fungal tendrils born from Throne of Spores. The tendrils lost. Repeatedly. But even as Elijah ripped the enemy apart, one by one, he knew just how outmatched he was. A dense cloud of yellow spores filled the air and infected the macabre foes, but it wasn’t nearly enough to truly defeat them.
For one, each and every enemy was at least of a level with him. And on top of that, there were hundreds of the monsters arrayed against him. They wrapped their tentacles around him, blanketing him in corrosive suffocation until he struggled to even move.
But at least they left Benedict alone.
Mostly.
Elijah felt the Warlock’s power surge as an arc of blood erupted from his slashed forearm. He swept his arm out, and the blood responded to his call, forming a ritual circle that quickly opened a portal to hell. A hundred tiny devils – each one no bigger than a sparrow – leaped free, already wreathed in black-rimmed flames. They screeched, tossing fireballs within seconds of entering the abyss.
Unfortunately, the creatures didn’t last long.
The corrosive atmosphere immediately assaulted them, and they dissipated into motes of burning flesh within a second of exiting the portal. However, it still took a few moments for them to die, and they used that opportunity to fill the air with the smell of burning tentacles.
It was just the opportunity Elijah needed to tear free off the initial surge.
By that point, Benedict was well into the process of packing the tent away. Elijah wasted no time before surging forward and tackling Benedict. Using every ounce of strength at his disposal, he sprinted away. The monsters remained on his heels until Benedict completed his task, bundling the tent into a small package that quickly disappeared into Elijah’s Arcane Loop.
“Hold on!” he shouted. Benedict didn’t respond, but did dig his fingers into Elijah’s fungal flesh.
A second later, Elijah leaped, kicking off of Cloud Step to gain a little altitude. The maneuver didn’t work as well as he’d anticipated, because a few of the octopus abominations slingshotted themselves after him. They wrapped their tentacles around his legs, slowing him just enough to allow their allies to mimic their actions.
Elijah felt himself being yanked back into the fray.
So, he used another instance of Cloud Step for leverage before initiating another transformation – this time, into the Shape of the Sky. He was flapping his wings a second later, barely capable of staying aloft.
Then, Elijah used Lightning Rush.
He instantly regretted it. Using that ability with a passenger was always painful, but doing so with a dozen terrestrial octopus monsters clinging to his legs was far, far worse. Elijah wasn’t certain if that was because they were hostile, corrupted, or just too numerous. But one thing he did know was that it felt like he was being ripped into two pieces.
As a bolt of lightning, he tore across the sky, his Mantle of Authority flickering. Each time it disappeared – even for the space of a millisecond – he felt the true power of the native monsters. They tore into him, draining ethera and vitality, only to give way to his renewed mantle.
Over and over, that process repeated until, a couple of seconds later, Elijah returned to the normal Shape of the Sky. His briefly disoriented passengers still clung to his legs as he coasted through the air. Within moments, he crashed into the ground in a tumble that took a few hundred more feet to dissipate.
Elijah didn’t have time to recover, either. The mad monsters crawled all over him, wrapping their tentacles around his body. To counter that, he used Tempest Swarm. Even as lightning-wreathed insects manifested around him, he initiated another transformation, returning to Shape of Spores.
This time, he wasted no time before using Mycelial Regrowth.
His body mended as quickly as the remaining creatures ripped his fungal flesh asunder, but now that he wasn’t quite so outnumbered, Elijah gave as good as he got. Benedict hadn’t escaped the tumble unscathed, and one of his legs was twisted the wrong way. However, he pushed through the obvious pain to contribute a few more imps to the cause.
Together, they managed to overcome the handful of monsters who’d come along for the ride. And at last, Elijah managed to rip the final creature in half. It showered the ground with black blood, joining the mass of viscera the fight had already accumulated.
Breathing hard, he tossed the two still-wriggling pieces aside. Adrenaline coursed through his veins as he wheeled around, looking for more. But they’d left the rest of the horde far behind. Hundreds of miles at the very least.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“I think that’s all of them,” Benedict unhelpfully supplied.
Elijah’s instincts screamed at him to continue the fight. He didn’t like relying on retreat. But sometimes, that was the only option. Especially with the comparatively fragile Benedict along for the ride. If Elijah had been alone, he might’ve stayed to fight.
Shaking his head, he pushed those thoughts aside. Benedict might have been a burden, but he would not abandon his ally. They weren’t friends – not exactly. And though Benedict’s company was often an exercise in frustration, Elijah couldn’t imagine leaving him behind.
Even if it would assuredly improve his chances of survival.
“We need to move,” he grunted, already transforming back into the Shape of the Sky. Physically, he was completely healed. “Climb on.”
For once, Benedict didn’t complain. Probably because he knew how quickly those creatures could move. There was no guarantee they could track them across hundreds of miles, but caution was a necessity for survival.
Once Benedict was firmly ensconced on his back, Elijah took to the skies. He flew only a dozen feet above the ground, which slowed his progress. However, going much higher just wasn’t an option. The upper atmosphere hosted some truly terrifying creatures that would rip Elijah to pieces without even exerting any effort.
He’d barely glimpsed them, but he knew they were up there. Fighting one another and waiting for weaker prey to overstep their power. Elijah wasn’t going to make that mistake.
He kept going for the better part of a day, covering hundreds more miles along the way. As he flew, he considered the situation on the excised planet. He had no idea why the most powerful creatures refused to descend to the surface, and despite hours of thought, he found no answers.
At last, he landed among a series of rolling hills that must’ve once been quite beautiful. It was easy to imagine them covered in grass and hosting thousands of species of animals, insects, and other life. Now, the region was entirely barren, and the terrain was pockmarked with tiny craters. Even the dirt had solidified into black-and-blue gravel that reminded Elijah of home aquariums.
He landed with a series of crunches, kicking up a rooster tail of tiny pebbles before he came to a stop.
And then, silence reigned.
Benedict climbed off his back and stumbled on numb legs. He fell to his knees as Elijah returned to his human form.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Will you be?”
“Probably,” Benedict mumbled, already massaging his legs. His recovery had progressed quite a bit over the previous weeks, but he still wasn’t back to full strength – no matter what he insisted. Far from it, in fact. Even if he could usually move under his own power, he still had a long way to go when it came to fighting.
Elijah cast Wild Resurgence, which elicited a word of appreciation.
“Well?” asked Benedict.
“What?”
“The tent!” he exclaimed.
“Oh. Right. Almost forgot,” Elijah said with a crooked grin. Then, he retrieved the bundle from his Arcane Loop. The second it hit open air, he knew the evolution had worked better than he had any right to expect. Without an appraisal ability, there was no telling the tent’s new grade, but it emitted a subtle hum of quiet power that told Elijah it was at least as powerful as it had been under the gnome’s control.
Over the next few minutes, he struggled to deploy it, which brought more than a few curses on his behalf. However, it wasn’t that long before he’d managed the task.
As he’d seen just before the monster attack, the item’s exterior had transformed from something similar to a pup tent to one resembling a cabin tent. The walls were four or five feet high and completely vertical, with a sloped roof that resembled the category’s namesake.
More importantly, Elijah could sense the tent’s improved defenses.
With no small degree of anticipation, he pushed through the entrance, and he was rewarded with a disaster scene. The contents of the interior were scattered all across the much larger space. And considering Elijah’s nature as a collector of all things he considered interesting, there was a lot of junk scattered across the floor.
With a groan, he stepped fully inside.
And the groan immediately turned into a gasp.
“Oh, that’s the stuff,” Elijah said, taking a deep, satisfying breath. The air inside the tent tasted clean. Sterile, but entirely devoid of corruption.
When Benedict followed him inside, he mimicked Elijah’s reaction, though there might’ve been even more relief behind it. He collapsed to his knees, tears in his eyes.
Elijah wasn’t sure if that came from actual relief from the effects of the corruption, or if it was just the result of finally getting a win. Either way, he felt something similar, and for a long while, he just stood there, basking in the lack of corruption.
Eventually, he was forced to turn his attention to the mechanics behind that relief. The tent was a miracle. There was no doubt about that. But it was also limited, mostly by his own energy. Because it was bound to him, it drew much of its fuel from his core. And the drain was not negligible.
If Elijah had to guess, he would say that, without his input, it could remain deployed for a little less than a week before its reserves were gone. After that, the draw on his core would increase significantly. A little more examination told him that it would recharge much more quickly when it wasn’t in active use.
But for now, it was exactly the win they’d needed.
At last, it felt as if they had established a foothold, and the result was that both of them felt more optimistic than they had since the beginning of the Labyrinth of Dead Gods. It was also the first time in months that either of them had a chance to truly relax.
Elijah finally let his Mantle of Authority drop.
He took a deep breath, luxuriating in the feeling of nothing. It wasn’t until that moment that he realized how much his soul had been aching. Funneling that much ethera through his branches had left him ragged, and to the point where he suspected that his soul was in almost as bad a shape as Benedict’s. The only difference was that Elijah’s was much more powerful and conceptually sturdy than his companion’s. In short, he could take it, while Benedict was ill-equipped to endure that sort of damage.
Now, though, Elijah could finally rest and recover.
“I’m sorry,” Benedict said, obviously relieved.
“For what?” Elijah asked.
“For everything. I’ve already said it a few times, but I know I haven’t been the best company,” the Warlock replied. “I just…I just couldn’t see a way out. I still can’t. But this is a good step in the right direction. I’m sorry for doubting you. I’m sorry for being insufferably negative. I’m just…I’m sorry.”
Elijah laid back on a bed of pillows, saying, “It’s alright. We all have bad days.”
“It’s been a bad few years.”
“We all have those too.”
Then, without further conversation, he finally allowed himself to fully relax. He was asleep in moments, and for the first time in a long while, he did so with a note of real optimism woven into his subconscious thoughts.