13-11. Black Branches
The structure rose hundreds of feet into the sky, its base planted in the center of a wide plaza of pure white stone. Despite the howling wind and the obvious age, no debris or dust stuck to those pavers. Even the erosion, evident everywhere else Elijah had been, failed to destroy their surfaces.
That left the glyphs carved into them entirely exposed.
Elijah knelt beside one, momentarily distracted from the building more than half a mile away. The glyphs were predictably indecipherable, and Elijah expected that even Benedict or Hu Shui would struggle to make sense of them. However, they were clearly still active, at least to the degree that protected them from the elements.
He spent a few minutes painstakingly copying the patterns. Each tile was identical to the others, with the patterns seeming to flow from one to the other. Elijah copied a few of them into his notebook, though he expected that one was enough. Better to be thorough, though.
After he was certain he’d documented every detail, he turned his attention to the main attraction. The circular building in the center of the plaza was more than just impressive. It was a few hundred feet wide and perhaps twice as tall, ending in a tiered dome made of pure gold shiny enough to reflect the purple-streaked black sky.
Otherwise, the building was comprised of white columns trimmed in the same gold. When Elijah approached them, he found that they were just as unblemished as the plaza’s paving stones, though they lacked any but the most basic decorations along the deceptively narrow capitals.
Elijah counted nine tiered layers, each one a little narrower than one below, until it reached the dome.
He stepped past the first ring of columns, only to find himself staring at a crystalline tree. In form, it appeared much like any other Branch of the World Tree, with a spreading canopy that stretched from one side of the building to the other. That made it much larger than any Branch he’d seen on Earth.
It was also pitch black, and it looked almost like onyx, as opposed to the clear crystal comprising every other Branch he’d encountered.
In a daze, he strode forward, his emotions warring with his instincts as he drew closer. When he finally laid a finger on the trunk of the crystalline tree, he felt a surge of corruption that nearly overwhelmed him.
A notification flashed before his mind, though it was fractured into a thousand pieces. He couldn’t read it before it disappeared.
Elijah’s Mantle of Authority surged, seemingly of its own accord. The branches of his soul intertwined with crystalline limbs, wrapping around them and fighting to suffocate the corruption within.
Pouring ethera into the mantle, Elijah fell to his knees. His energy – physical, mental, and ethereal – merged into great torrents. The corruption responded in kind, battling the purity of Elijah’s essence.
And winning.
Bit by bit, Elijah was overwhelmed until he had no choice but to retreat. However, even when he broke away from the tree, he found that the assault continued. Somehow, he managed to shift into the Shape of the Scourge, but when he tried to activate Guise of the Stalker, it failed to envelop him.
Gradually, Elijah dragged himself from the building. Then, the plaza. With each passing moment, the corruption surged through the building, and when he looked back, he saw that the white stone had already turned black. The pristine golden dome had begun to corrode, and thick tendrils of black corruption had begun to creep across the plaza.
Elijah reached the edge of the square, and the pressure upon him decreased. Only by a minute amount, but it was a sign that he could escape. He continued on, and with every foot he traveled, the presence of the abyss – or more probably, the Ravener – decreased.
Until, at last, when he was on the edge of the city, the pressure disappeared entirely.
That left Elijah weaker than he’d been since arriving in the abyss. His Mantle of Authority was frayed, the mostly destroyed branches of his soul fraying in a nonexistent wind. Teeth gritted, he dragged himself into one of the buildings and into a corner. There, he panted in mingled adrenaline and agony. Where one began and the other ended, Elijah had no idea.
Until that moment, the Ravener had been a distant, mostly mythological figure. Like the boogeyman from children’s stories. Eat your vegetables, or the Ravener will come for you!
But that brief contact with the corrupted Branch told Elijah just how real the entity was. If it was any weaker than the World Tree itself, he would have been surprised. And if it had wanted to, it could have crushed him entirely.
Like the World Tree, though, that wasn’t its purpose. It wasn’t concerned with an ant like Elijah. No – he wasn’t even an ant. Compared to the Ravener or the World Tree, he wasn’t even a single-celled bacteria. He might’ve qualified as a quark, though even that was probably giving himself too much credit.
Whatever comparison he wanted to use, Elijah had nearly been overwhelmed by the Ravener’s unfocused presence. If he’d been even a little weaker, he would have been utterly consumed.
That fact drove his situation home even more than the previous months of struggle.
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For a long time, he simply sat there, huddled against a wall and wrestling with his own weakness and the existential dread that came with the hopelessness of his circumstances. Another him might’ve expected tears. They were certainly warranted. However, Elijah’s cheeks remained dry. Apparently, scourgedrakes were incapable of crying.
Hours later, with his soul still in shambles, he felt something that jerked him out of his bout of self-pity. In response, he pushed ethera through his channels – and instantly regretted it. He kept going, though.
Because what else was he going to do?
And his ability activated just in time to shield him from the wave of monsters flowing past the building. Thankfully, he’d outpaced the Ravener’s presence, so Guise of the Stalker had activated without delay. Otherwise, he would have drawn the attention of the creatures outside.
The tide of monsters continued. Many of them were far too powerful for Elijah to rightly gauge their progression. Demi-gods, and not new ones, either.
They raced in the direction of the plaza, obviously responding to the pulse of corruption Elijah had inadvertently caused. Eventually, he found himself on the third floor, where he stood on a balcony overlooking the wide avenue below. The monsters stalked and slithered amongst one another, forming a river of monstrous corruption. As he had expected, they flowed toward the tiered building in the distance.
When Elijah caught sight of it, he nearly blanched at the transformation.
The white-and-gold had been completely enveloped by a wet tangle of black tendrils, and he suspected that the plaza itself had been overwhelmed as well.
All because he’d touched the corrupted Branch.
For a long time, Elijah just watched the congregation that quickly turned into a bloodbath. From his perch, the ensuing battle between those powerful creatures looked like nothing so much as a churning sea. And eventually, everything was so drenched in black blood that it might’ve actually qualified as a body of water.
The brutal struggle was both mesmerizing and disgusting, and even from such a distance, Elijah could feel their hunger like a tangible thing. Like the dark side of nature made manifest.
He turned away, both literally and metaphorically, and left the city behind.
The following journey passed in a blur. Most of the local monsters were in the city, so he saw very few natives. And the ones he did find were too weak to give him pause.
In their haste to reach the city, the horde had trampled the ashen people, leaving nothing behind.
Elijah regarded that as a great tragedy, though he wasn’t certain why he felt that way. And he was in no mental place to examine those feelings, either. So, he simply moved on. At some point, he reached familiar territory, though he didn’t immediately return to the campsite. Instead, he simply circled, lost in thought.
Or more accurately, he couldn’t get the fractured system notification out of his mind. He felt sure that it represented the chance to evolve into a demi-god. His class choices would be there. All he had to do was pick one, and his power would skyrocket. More, he could continue his path of progression.
Maybe that was the only way he could escape the abyss.
Certainly, there was no lack of targets to kill. Each monster represented a walking – or often, slithering – sack of experience that could push him through the demi-god stage and into becoming a deity.
But the system notification had been broken. Even if he could have picked one, he couldn’t even see his options.
And worse, there was a chance that those choices would be somehow corrupted. After all, the Ravener’s presence had integrated into the Branch. It only made sense that it would influence his options.
There was a part of Elijah that was just desperate enough to go back and try to evolve. After months living in the abyss, struggling to survive, it was just about the only sliver of hope he had left. Yet, his every instinct screamed at him to discard that notion. The Ravener’s lightest touch was intolerable, both to the dragon and the beast within him.
Only the human considered pushing those aside.
Once, Elijah had brought those three into balance, but it was not a lasting thing. It required constant vigilance, lest one overpower the others.
He struggled to keep his humanity in check.
Finally, he returned to the campsite and entered the tent. There, he found Benedict meditating. It looked like the man hadn’t bothered taking care of himself at all. Not only did he smell, but a patchy beard decorated his face. His long hair hung limp and greasy, and he looked as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks.
“I didn’t think you were coming back,” he said without opening his eyes.
“I wasn’t gone that long.”
“Three weeks.”
“What?”
“That’s how long you were gone,” Benedict said, his eyes finally flickering open. “If it wasn’t for the tent maintaining its defenses, I would have thought you were dead.”
Elijah frowned. It hadn’t felt like three weeks. From his perspective, only a couple of days had passed. But with some degree of effort, he managed to push through that perception. In doing so, he realized that he’d spent much longer huddled in that building than he’d first thought.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to stay gone that long.”
Benedict just shrugged, then asked what had happened.
Elijah told him, leaving nothing out. Predictably, Benedict was quite interested in the copied glyphs, so Elijah handed his notebook over. However, he was even more intrigued by the corrupted Branch.
“You really think it was your class evolution?”
Elijah shrugged. “I don’t know. It makes sense, though,” he admitted.
“We should go back.”
“What?”
“If you evolve –”
“I would be subject to the Ravener’s influence,” Elijah interrupted.
“And? Would that be so bad? We didn’t question it when we tied ourselves to the World Tree, did we? Maybe it wouldn’t make a difference,” Benedict predicted. “Maybe it’s the only way we can survive.”
“Have you looked around outside?”
“Of course.”
“Does that look like how you want to spend the rest of your life?” Elijah asked. “That’s what it means to live in the shadow of the Ravener. It infects everything.”
“So does the World Tree.”
“There’s no way you equate the two.”
Benedict shrugged. “One unknowably powerful entity is the same as any other, right? We’re just insects to them. If they’re capable of thought at all.”
“They are.”
“Gods and monsters,” Benedict remarked with a shake of his head. “We’re out of our depth. We can’t keep doing this, Elijah. I know you want to stay true to whatever being a Druid is, but is it worth dying?”
“It is.”
“I wish I could say the same thing,” Benedict muttered.
“Let me make one thing entirely clear,” Elijah said. “If you give yourself over to the Ravener, I will kill you. Not because of the betrayal. Not because I hate you. But because I won’t watch you subject yourself to that.”
“It would be for my own good, huh?”
“If that’s how you want to think of it, yes.”
While that statement was true, there was far more to it than simple compassion. Those other factors played a role as well, but more than anything, Elijah refused to allow his natural enemy to grow any stronger. And despite everything, that was what Benedict represented – an opportunity for the Ravener to add powerful potential to the abyss’ ranks.
“Good to know,” Benedict mumbled.