13-30. Flames
Elijah burned.
And the world burned with him.
Pain blossomed within, sweeping through his body so quickly that even Flames of Renewal couldn’t keep up. If he hadn’t recently put himself through so much punishment, he never could have endured it. Not and managed to hold on. But his experience atop that obelisk, where he’d let himself dissipate to little more than a few cells, proved necessary for more than simple cultivation. It allowed him to persist even as Flames of Renewal caught up.
When the ability came through, it did so with a burst of dense flame that pushed the enemy’s attack back. Only an inch or two, but even that was enough to give Elijah a second to breathe.
Of course, that didn’t last long. In only a moment, he erupted with fire that burned his body to ash. It burst into the air in a wave of flames that whipped out from him like a solar storm. Then, the second pulse came. The third followed soon after. It kept going, with Elijah at its center, until he exploded.
The building’s columns – already half melted – were instantly vaporized. The bits of the pavilion that didn’t immediately melt went flying through the atmosphere until they passed out of range of Elijah’s Soul of the Wild. His ash-white scales blistered in an instant. His organs sizzled, then burst. His every sense was quickly overwhelmed by sheer pain, and everything went dark.
Elijah felt his body burn to nothing, but by then, it was a familiar sensation. What’s more, it was the price he was forced to pay for his most destructive ability.
He collapsed into a clump of ash, and at last, his pain passed into nothingness. For a few brief moments, he felt peace unlike anything he’d ever experienced. A storm of ash swirled in the air, then piled on the ground like snowdrifts.
Meanwhile, Elijah disconnected from everything. He floated in the air, his awareness flitting from one flake of ash to another as he looked down on the destruction. The pavilion was simply gone, the tiles turned to glass and the columns long melted. The domed roof had been thrown miles away by the force of the explosion, and miraculously, the Branch of the World Tree survived.
It had taken on an orange tint, and the air around it shimmered with heat. But it was still there. Still solid. And disappointingly, still corrupted.
Seconds passed as the ash continued to compile until it covered everything.
Then, it swirled under the effect of a nonexistent breeze.
Dense flows of vitality erupted into being, slithering through the piles of ash. It pulled Elijah down and into a tiny seed of power. It bloomed into a massive tree, ephemeral and pulsing with energy. And beneath it, Elijah was rebuilt, cell by cell, until he was once again whole.
That was when he realized something he should have seen from the very beginning.
The red-armored man had not been swallowed by the flame. Instead, he floated a few dozen feet above the melted plaza, held aloft by wings of flame. Meanwhile, he’d dropped his molten sword to gather the fire of Elijah’s eruption into a dense ball. He grasped the roiling sphere of flame in two hands, slowly compressing it.
Elijah couldn’t see his face past the heat shimmer, but he could feel the intense concentration. It pulsed with power and the potential of a nuclear bomb. More, even. However, that energy dissipated with every passing second. The ball shrunk until it was nothing more than a marble of tense flame.
That too disappeared after another moment.
The man – who could only be Lurien, the Flame Warden – let out a sigh. Smoke billowed from his mouth as his shoulders slumped. Only slightly, but still noticeably.
Finally, he spread his hands and stared Elijah down. “You will pay for that,” he intoned, his voice as raw as a raging inferno. “Just as you will atone for your other crimes.”
All around the Arbor Crown, men and women stepped forward. They all wore red robes and were armed with staves made of charred and gnarled limbs. They were untouched by the shimmering heat.
The Flame Warden pointed at him.
And fire followed.
Elijah darted aside, narrowly avoiding a dense column of flame. It splashed against the already-melted ground, peppering him with molten stone and superheated glass. Elijah ignored it, shifting the pain into its own cluster within his mind. Smaller beams of fire exploded from a hundred leveled staves. Elijah leaped high into the air, then sprang from Cloud Step.
That was when he rammed into something solid.
A sound of cracking glass filled the air as the sky shattered. Impossibly sharp shards of glass descended upon him, cutting through his ash-white scales. One very nearly severed his arm as he caught a glimpse of another figure. They were barely visible, instead looking like they were made of faceted glass.
The Mirror Saint.
Below, fire bloomed.
Above, the glass ceiling reformed. Equally reflective walls manifested all around him. Then, his reflections leaped free, slamming their fists into his body. The blows didn’t come with anything close to his normal power, but they were more than enough to send him rocketing back and forth between the reflections.
Until he’d finally had enough.
Elijah slammed through the false ceiling, accepting the resultant wounds along the way. His body was ripped to shreds, but most of those lacerations were superficial. Painful, especially because the glass embedded itself into his flesh. To counter the effects – which drained both vitality and ethera – he pulsed his Mantle of Authority.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
The glass dissolved.
Meanwhile, he kicked off another Cloud Step while using Wild Resurgence.
And he shifted, taking on the Shape of the Scourge. The transformation completed just as he collided with the surprised Mirror Saint. Up close, he could see that she was a woman, and one with predictably perfect features. Elijah realized that just as his jaws clamped down on her glass-encased head.
The jagged sound of teeth skating across a mirror echoed across the plaza. At the same time, Elijah raked the woman’s lower half with his talons. The mirror armor proved a match for his attacks.
But Elijah countered with his tail, which moved with such speed and dexterity that the woman simply couldn’t react before it had stabbed into her vulnerable joints. There, the armor was thinner – a fact that he used to his advantage. He punched through, sending venom coursing through her flesh.
She reeled, trying to tear herself away.
Elijah kept up the pressure.
Tiny needles of flame ascended, punching into his body and scorching through his flesh. But Elijah wouldn’t allow something like that to stop him. Especially since he could heal the damage with Wild Resurgence.
Elijah’s tail danced, constantly searching for other openings. The Mirror Saint panicked, shielding herself as best she could. Twisting and turning, she summoned more mirrors to block his attacks.
She wasn’t fast enough, though.
Elijah’s reflections leaped free of every reflective surface, burying him under a tide of smaller scourgedrakes. Meanwhile, the reflections of the emberkin saint leaped from one falling shard to another in an attempt to reach him.
He ignored them all, piling one instance of Ethereal Sepsis and Spreading Blight atop another. The Mirror Saint staggered in mid-air, her breath coming in ragged gasps as she attempted to throw him free.
Elijah stubbornly clung to his perch.
Then, suddenly, everything stopped.
The flames dancing along his scales ceased to flicker. The Mirror Saint’s face froze mid-scream. Fifty beams of fire grew inert, forming a dense web all around Elijah. And more importantly, Elijah found himself incapable of moving.
It was as if he’d been paralyzed.
Even the ethera in his core ceased to roil.
A man loomed over him like a white shadow. Nine concentric rings of pure light surrounded him, spinning in a way that reminded Elijah of Etkatiran’s armillary spheres.
A hand extended.
Elijah tried to dodge, but he couldn’t move. Even gravity ceased to matter. It drew closer, feeling larger with every passing instant.
Panicked, Elijah threw his Mantle of Authority wide.
It hit the white shadow – who could be none other than the Stillborn – like he’d taken a physical blow. The outer rings shattered, while the others spun even faster. But most importantly, the Stillborn recoiled, and suddenly, Elijah could once again move.
Then, he felt something slam into his back.
It ripped him apart, sending the familiar sensation of toxins coursing through him. Freed from the Stillborn’s aura, Elijah whirled around, but he saw nothing. In the meantime, another column of flame washed over him.
Wild Resurgence kept him conscious, only for another attack to hit him from behind. This time, he didn’t spin. Instead, he focused on Soul of the Wild, and he was rewarded when he sensed the faintest of ripples in the air. It betrayed the presence of his attacker only a second before they flitted away.
An arrow hit Elijah in the shoulder.
It barely penetrated before it exploded into an unfurling knot of razor-sharp ribbons of metal.
That was when he shifted, taking on the Shape of Spores as he fell. Another Cloud Step kept him aloft as he activated two abilities in tandem. The first was Mycelial Regrowth, which sent an undeniable surge of vitality coursing through him. It overwhelmed the lingering toxin and rebuilt his body. At the same time, he used Throne of Spores.
Below, massive, fungal tendrils erupted from the glassy ground. They wrapped around the red-robed fire Priests, who reacted predictably by trying to burn them out of existence. That filled the air with a cloud of yellow spores. The tendrils also searched out the origin of that arrow, finding a squad of archers led by a woman whose features reminded Elijah of the elves back on Earth. She was only missing the pointed ears. Otherwise, she displayed that same unnatural perfection that had always felt so alien to Elijah.
She loosed a stream of arrows that tore through Elijah’s Shell and exploded against his fungal flesh. Still under the effects of Mycelial Regrowth, Elijah was mostly unaffected. That gave him leave to continue his attacks on the Mirror Saint.
She’d tried to escape his clutches, but a hundred tendrils erupted from his back, wrapping around her legs. They constricted, squeezing with such strength that her armor began to crack.
Meanwhile, the unseen assassin fell upon him with renewed fury. Elijah ignored him, save to mark his existence.
More fighters poured into the plaza, only to find themselves fighting Elijah’s tendrils. They hacked and slashed like they were trying to make their way through a dense jungle. Their efforts were effective, but that effectiveness also spelled their doom. It wasn’t long before people began to collapse under the effects of the cloud of ochre spores that came from each destroyed tendril.
Elijah paid it no mind, keeping the bulk of his attention where it belonged – on the reeling Mirror Saint who’d tried to trap him. He hammered her with balled fists and his club-like tail. Her armor cracked, but she replaced it as soon as it shattered.
Finally, he breached her helmet, crushing her delicate cheek.
Only a second later, Elijah felt something grab him. Then, he was rocketing toward the ground. He tried to stop himself with Cloud Step, but he lacked any remaining charges. He hit the cooling floor with a massive impact that sent a powerful shockwave tearing across the plaza.
Men and women went flying backwards, stopping only when they hit one wall or another.
All except three figures.
One was the familiar Flame Warden, who’d encased himself in so much flame that he looked like a floating bonfire. The second was a woman in what appeared to be a homespun robe. She held a simple shepherd’s crook, though her form was just as perfect – if less alien – as the archer’s. From her bloomed dense vitality that snaked out to encapsulate the injured men and women.
But Elijah was far more concerned with the man in the center.
Encased in emerald armor, he pulsed with so much ethera that Elijah’s first impression pegged him as a deity. But he wasn’t. Rather, he was just a powerful demi-god. Moreover, Elijah knew who he was.
The Emerald Tyrant. The most powerful man in the world.
Elijah felt Mycelial Regrowth begin to peter out. With that spent, he wasn’t so keen on continuing the fight. So, he stomped on the ground and used Thunder Clap.
Lightning arced out, briefly stunning everyone in the plaza.
It wouldn’t last long, though.
Elijah used the time to take on his dragon form. His body grew, snaking out into a length of more than a hundred feet. Even as he spread his wings, the members of the Synod recovered from Thunder Clap. And they weren’t happy.
The Emerald Trying charged.
Elijah did the same.
The resultant clash once again sent everyone in the plaza crashing backwards.
Everyone but the Emerald Tyrant. He stood firm. Elijah skidded backward nearly fifty feet. That confirmed his fears – that Vhalor was stronger than him. But not by that much.
The Emerald Tyrant didn’t speak. Instead, he loosed a pulse of ethera, and even as he advanced, a massive sword manifested in his hand. With every step forward, he grew until, by the time he reached Elijah, he was more than twenty feet tall.
Elijah met him, a spell already building within his chest.
And so, as the air shook with the fury of their impending clash, the battle continued.