13-10. Frozen in Ash
“I want to go.”
“You can’t.”
“Why?”
Elijah sighed, shoving a bit of monster meat into his mouth. He immediately chased it with a gulp of water, washing it down. The taste lingered, but not nearly so strongly as if he’d bothered to chew. Thankfully, his stomach was strong enough to break it down for whatever nutrients it could provide.
Another two months had passed since that first abominable meal, and eating monster hadn’t gotten any easier. To stretch supplies, they still ate it every other day. Any more, and they might’ve lost any desire to keep going.
But the day when they would need to survive exclusively off of hunting the natives was fast approaching. Only a few more prepared meals remained. A couple of days’ worth at most. They both knew it, too, which was why neither of them were in a good mood.
“You know why,” Elijah stated. “I can’t fight when I’m worried about keeping you alive.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“No. You can’t,” Elijah insisted. “You know that.”
Benedict glared at him, but he didn’t argue further. Because he knew the truth. Without Elijah, he had no means of survival. Despite his efforts in cultivation, which had pushed him to the edge of the next tier of soul, he’d had no luck in manifesting his own Mantle of Authority. Which meant that the second he stepped outside the tent, he would be assailed by the potent atmosphere of corruption.
Elijah took no joy in the man’s dependence on him. More than anything, he wished he could leave his often-temperamental companion behind. But doing that would spell Benedict’s death, which Elijah couldn’t stomach. Not after he’d invested so much time and effort in keeping his ally alive.
But one thing was certain – while he could tolerate Benedict, they would never be friends. Not really. The Warlock wasn’t just temperamental. He was moody, angry, and, most of all, broken in a way that Elijah struggled to fully understand. If he was forced to characterize their relationship, he would have described it as something akin to distant brothers who usually found themselves at odds.
Elijah cared about Benedict’s well-being. He just didn’t like him very much. And he suspected the other man felt something similar about him. They weren’t exactly like oil and water. Instead, they were more like baking soda and vinegar. When they mixed, volatility was inevitable.
“I’m tired of just sitting here.”
“You went hunting with me a few days ago.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“Why?”
“It just doesn’t,” Benedict insisted.
Elijah sighed, though he didn’t continue the argument. The fact was that the hunt in question had been a wholly disappointing affair. They’d killed their prey, but the things were so weak that even Benedict killed them with ease. That had been the whole point, of course. Elijah had found the things and, when he felt their dearth of power, he’d pegged them as perfect targets for Benedict.
Obviously, the man saw right through the ruse. It was like a father letting his son win a one-on-one basketball game. Even if it was good-intentioned, it just wasn’t real.
And it had resulted in the opposite of Elijah’s goal.
Which was why he wanted to leave. One of the reasons, at least. Benedict was not an ideal roommate, especially when their situation had them living practically on top of one another. The tent was no bigger than a single bedroom, which meant neither of them could escape the other’s presence.
Even if they’d liked one another, it would have eventually turned unbearable.
“I’ll be back in a couple of days. You have plenty of food and water,” he said. “Do you need anything else?”
Benedict just grunted, probably feeling like a latch-key kid.
Elijah ignored the man’s disdain, but he did reach into his Arcane Loop and retrieve one of the last prepared meals. He set it down, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he ducked out of the tent and tied the flaps behind him.
Once the defenses were secure, he took a look around. They’d continued to travel across the planet, and in the past couple of months, they had seen more of the same. The terrain was far from uniform, with stone forests, mountains, and plains aplenty. They had even stumbled upon a vast ocean that forced them to change direction. Even in the shallows, Elijah had felt some truly monstrous creatures. His instincts told him that they would rip him to pieces, but there was a part of him that wanted to test that out.
Of course, he couldn’t do so with Benedict in tow.
The man would never survive such a battle as Elijah imagined.
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
So, they’d spent three weeks following the coast until they found a land bridge that connected two separate continents. Another month saw them picking their way across that hellishly narrow landmass. Often, they were forced to take to the sky, which came with incredible danger. But it was better than wading across the waist-deep water that had flooded parts of the land bridge.
Through it all, they were forced to defend themselves. For the first time, creatures had descended from above, and they were just as powerful as Elijah had feared. More often than not, they found themselves fleeing desperately – a tactic that was only possible because the monsters of the sea were very much the enemies of those who lived above.
The resultant clashes gave Elijah and Benedict just enough room to escape.
Eventually, they managed to reach the other side, and after a week, they’d deployed the tent so they could both get some rest.
That was when Elijah found the weak nest of monsters that he’d hoped would make Benedict feel a little more in control. It hadn’t worked, and the resultant sullenness had now driven Elijah away.
He used Shape of the Scourge, then Guise of the Stalker before taking off across the terrain, which was characterized by craggy cliffs. In the powerful form, and using Cloud Step when necessary, Elijah set a blistering pace. Not only because he wanted to put some distance between himself and his roommate, but also because he had a destination in mind.
After an hour or two, he skidded to a stop, sending a cascade of loose pebbles to slide down a steep slope. For a few moments, Elijah just stared at the horizon, where he saw the unmistakable shape of a city’s skyline.
It was obviously abandoned, just like everything else on that excised world. However, the fact that most of the buildings were intact represented dual opportunities. The first was as simple as the satisfaction of his curiosity about the former residents. A man could learn a lot about people by examining their architecture, and he hoped that, through exploration, he could glean at least a few details about the fallen people.
But more importantly, there was a chance that they’d left something useful behind. Elijah had no idea what form those items might take, but he couldn’t deny that the possibility left him feeling giddy with optimism.
That lasted until, a few miles from the city itself, he encountered some of the natives.
Or what was left of them.
They were people. Humans, by the look. But something had turned them to solid statues of black stone. When Elijah touched one, it collapsed in on itself. There was no wind, so the crumbled stone simply fell to the ground like so much ash. From then on, he refrained from touching them.
As he walked among those blackened statues, he was astounded by the sheer numbers. There were tens of thousands of them. The total might’ve even climbed into six figures. When Elijah looked closer, he saw that each one bore a haunted expression. Like they saw their fate coming, but could do nothing to stop it.
Elijah moved through, a mixture of awe, horror, and distant regret filling him.
Was this what awaited Earth? With Elijah gone, they would struggle to conquer the remaining Primal Realms. Even with his help, their victory had never been guaranteed. Without him…
He pushed those thoughts aside. He couldn’t even rescue himself, much less affect Earth’s fate.
But no matter how much he’d tried not to think about it, he couldn’t escape the knowledge that he’d already been stranded in the abyss for close to half a year. Only a little longer, and the deadline for excisement would pass.
With a bestial sigh, he continued through the ashen graveyard of frozen corpses and approached the city. Curiously, it wasn’t built on rings like he’d seen in most of the other ruins he’d encountered. Instead, it looked remarkably similar to an Earthen city, with tall skyscrapers standing over smaller, squatter buildings.
It reminded him of New York.
Or Seattle, perhaps.
That feeling persisted as Elijah entered the city and beheld the wide avenues cutting between the buildings. It wasn’t exactly like what he might see on Earth. There were plenty of differences in style. Even the streets were made of paving stones, as opposed to concrete or asphalt. But in form, there were enough similarities that Elijah couldn’t escape thoughts of Earth’s impending doom.
Of course, the city wasn’t deserted, though.
Even if they couldn’t see through his stealth, Elijah saw plenty of monsters. Some were deceptively normal-looking, like the cockroach monsters he’d fought shortly after arriving in the abyss. However, there were just as many that defied normal description.
Elijah spent almost twenty minutes staring at an enormous creature clinging to the side of a skyscraper. Its tentacles stretched hundreds of feet from its main body, which resembled the mantle of an octopus, though it was covered in bristly fur that looked like it had the consistency of a wire brush. On top of that, the thing had seventeen yawning maws, each one filled with sharp teeth.
When a flying monster veered too close, the creature’s tentacles snapped out, then dragged the struggling thing into one of those maws. Elijah could hear the crunch of the thing’s bones even from hundreds of feet away.
While that octopus monster might’ve been one of the oddest-looking natives, it certainly wasn’t the most powerful. There were others roaming through the city that Elijah chose to give a wide berth, mostly because he wasn’t certain if Guise of the Stalker would work to keep him hidden.
His instincts told him that it would not, because many of those powerful monsters blazed with the power of demi-gods. And not the hollow sort he might’ve found in a Primal Realm, either.
Elijah chose not to test his stealth ability by tempting fate.
Instead, he continued through the city, searching the buildings for anything that might prove useful. He found nothing of note. There were plenty of items lying around. Some mostly rotted clothes and a few weapons he stuffed into his Arcane Loop. But for the most part, everything was so old and degraded that it had become primarily useless.
Still, he did find a few chests full of ethereum. Most of it was gold, but there were enough platinum pieces in there that Elijah managed to increase his net worth by no small degree. It was further proof that the planet had once been connected to the World Tree. After all, that was the only way to get ethereum.
For nearly a day, he explored the city, and along the way, he saw more of the same.
And he found plenty of bodies, too. They were all hidden behind sealed doors that took some effort to bypass, but when Elijah managed it, he found himself staring at desiccated corpses. From what he could tell, they were all human, though some details were lost to time and the environmental mummification process.
Elijah studied them for a while, wondering what their last thoughts might have been. It was clear that they’d sealed themselves away in the hopes of escaping the oncoming abyss. It had worked, too. They showed no signs of corruption.
But they’d died all the same. Probably from starvation. Or dehydration.
Imagining their deaths reminded Elijah of Honolulu, which left him in an exceedingly foul mood.
Because of that, he almost missed the plaza. Thankfully, he snapped back to reality just in time to behold something truly surprising. And wholly wonderful.