15-14. The River King
Using Aquatic Body Control, Elijah shrank down to the smallest size he could attain, which wasn’t much bigger than a normal sea turtle. Doing so did nothing to mitigate his attributes, so he shot through the water like a bullet. However, he had no intentions of playing that part and instead used his smaller stature to get closer to the three-hundred-yard-long hippopotamus.
The river churned as the beast whipped around, its maw yawning wide. The scent of decaying meat flowed through Elijah’s nose as he noticed something he should have seen from the beginning.
For all that the animal looked like a normal hippo, it clearly wasn’t one. And not just because of its immense size. That was part of it, but there were plenty of other differences as well. Like the sharp, tusk-like teeth lining that mouth. Individually, they weren’t so different than what one might find on a natural hippopotamus, but the difference lay in the quantity.
There were dozens of them, and they bore serrated edges perfect for cutting through tough meat.
Elijah pushed himself faster, using a burst from Whirlpool to give him a boost. The jet of water pushed him to previously unattainable speeds, allowing him to narrowly avoid the creature’s closing jaws.
They clamped shut, sending out a wave of force that quickly turned into a tidal wave-sized calamity. Elijah fought through it, ramming into the thing’s skull. The impact dug through the hippo’s tough hide, but Elijah only made it a couple of feet before his momentum shuddered to a stop.
He immediately shifted, this time taking on his human form. As he did so, he rammed his hands into the gooey fat and stringy flesh coating the beast’s skull. At the same time, he embraced Absolute Grasp so he could maintain his footing. Only then did Elijah focus on Soul of the Wild.
His awareness arced out, penetrating deep into the beast’s brain. At first, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. It was comparatively larger than the relatively small brain of a normal hippopotamus, but other than that, Elijah’s first inspection yielded no real results.
Other than the tendril of foreign ethera he’d taken to indicate the presence of a Tamer. He still believed that was what he felt, but it looked so different from what he’d discovered in the wolves he’d freed from enslavement back in New York.
He gathered his soul and shoved a tendril of his Mantle of Authority into the beast.
A second later, he lost his grip.
Part of it came from the wave of sheer rage coming from the beast’s thoughts. It wasn’t just angry. Or territorial. Its fury had subsumed every other emotion, completely taking over its thoughts.
If they could even be called that.
But more than that, he recoiled from the snaking worms of ethera that latched onto the extension of his soul. They found no purchase, largely because of the thorns covering every branch. However, Elijah still felt the oily things deeply enough to shock him.
It was just a shock, though.
Like accidentally touching something slimy when you didn’t expect it. More importantly, their presence showed Elijah exactly what he was looking for. He reaffirmed his grip and put the full weight of his grandmaster soul behind his Mantle of authority. He didn’t do so recklessly, though. Instead, he extended it like a spear, stabbing deep into the beast’s brain.
Or perhaps it was more like a scalpel, because he left the hippo’s mind untouched. Even as the beast bucked and swirled, he searched out the slimy tendrils that represented the Tamer’s control. They fought back, twisting and turning, attacking and retreating. However, Elijah was a hunter.
A predator.
He knew how to stalk his prey.
Long minutes passed as he searched out the ethereal worms, and when he managed to corner them, he used his thorns to mercilessly tear through them. Over and over, he repeated the action until he lost count of how many he had destroyed.
Dozens, at the very least. Probably hundreds.
The beast raged. Elijah ignored it, focusing entirely on the task at hand.
And then, at long last, he ripped the final worm apart. It dissipated into motes of ethera, leaving the hippo’s mind entirely uncorrupted by the Tamer’s influence.
It didn’t stop, though, and it was quickly apparent why. The worms had carved thousands of tunnels through the beast’s mind, destroying vital parts of its identity. In doing so, they’d only left the rage behind.
Still submerged, Elijah focused on trying to heal the hippo, but the damage was more than physical. It was that, but it went deep into its mind, destroying pieces of its soul along the way. It was a fundamental change not dissimilar from cultivation, but instead of enhancing the creature, it had broken its identity.
Even so, Elijah’s attempts to heal it continued unceasingly. He pushed vast quantities of vitality through the beast, even using his Mantle of Authority to banish any lingering parasites or other impurities. Yet, his efforts were in vain. For the hippo, there was no recovery on offer.
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Elijah growled in frustration, bubbles streaming toward the river’s surface as he finally admitted that his efforts were useless.
The beast still needed to die. That might’ve been the reason he’d started hunting it in the first place, but that didn’t mean he was happy about it. He was going to get what he wanted, but in doing so, he would sacrifice some part of himself that needed to heal and protect the natural world.
Failing that, he would avenge the beast.
There was a Tamer out there that needed to die.
As soon as that reality settled into Elijah’s thoughts, he found a tiny thread of ethera extending from the hippo’s mind, across the river, and toward the north. He pushed away from the hippo’s skull, leaving it to thrash wildly in the river. It had no goals. No thoughts. Just an unquenchable and undirected rage.
Elijah burst through the surface, already shifting into the Shape of the World Serpent. The hippo followed, launching itself from the river as it targeted the only living creature in the area. Elijah slipped to the side, easily avoiding its clamping jaws before speeding away to the north.
The connecting thread whipped around like an untended water hose, but Elijah only needed a direction. Once he got close, he’d find the Tamer the old-fashioned way.
Fortunately, he only needed to travel a mile or so before he found a small settlement comprised of only a handful of buildings. It only took a glance for Elijah to recognize that it was almost entirely deserted, but he saw a wisp of smoke snaking its way from the chimney of the largest structure.
Perhaps it had once been an inn or some other communal building. Like all the others in the settlement, it possessed a quaint construction, with wooden shingles and whitewashed walls. The only difference was that it was two stories tall, while the other buildings were confined to a single floor.
A road passed nearby, though it appeared to have fallen into disuse.
Maybe the village had once been a waystation along that thoroughfare. Otherwise, there really wasn’t much reason for its existence. It was too far from the river, and outside of a single fallow field, it had no farms.
Elijah did see a small mound that might’ve been a mass grave, though. Maybe it was just the influence of his bias, but it didn’t take an active imagination to land on the idea that the Tamer had killed everyone in the village. The kind of person that could do what was done to the hippo was exactly the sort who would resort to mass murder.
He landed outside the inn, already transformed.
Elijah ripped the door from its hinges, tossing it aside like it was a piece of paper. Then, he stepped inside.
It didn’t take him long to home in on his prey.
The old man huddled in the corner, drool leaking from the corners of his mouth and blood tracing a path from his ears. A wild mane of white hair stood upon his head, and fair-quality leather armor protected his chest.
His eyes widened.
Elijah stepped forward, his feet slapping against the wooden floor. A second later, something slammed into his mind. Elijah didn’t need to feel the wiggling tendrils of the spell to know that the man had tried to infect him the same way he’d infected the hippo.
Using his soul like a bludgeon, Elijah slapped it aside with contemptuous ease.
The man recoiled.
“Usually, this is where I ask why,” Elijah said.
“I didn’t –”
Elijah cut him off. “But in this case, I don’t care.”
Then, he summoned Thorn and swung. The blade flashed, barely visible in the building’s dim interior. There was a slight shudder as it sliced through a hastily summoned shield, but it wasn’t nearly strong enough to stop Elijah’s strike. A moment later, the man’s head detached from his body, sailing through the air until it hit a nearby wall. It tumbled to the floor with a loud thunk.
The Tamer’s body slumped, blood spurting from the stump of his neck, following the slowly declining beat of his dying heart. Elijah stood there until the flow ceased, and all the life had drained from the man.
Through Soul of the Wild, he knew there was nothing else of value in the building. The Tamer had somehow managed to reach the demigod tier. Probably by forcing the hippo to destroy villages and kill the local wildlife. However, without his enslaved animal around, he was unquestionably weak. Far weaker than his progression would have suggested.
It hadn’t been a fight. Rather, an execution. In short, Elijah found it extremely unfulfilling. Necessary, but disappointing.
He closed his fists, squeezing them tightly.
Then, without further consideration, he turned and left the building behind. The monster he left behind didn’t deserve a burial. He didn’t deserve sadness or regret. Only an ignominious death before being entirely forgotten.
Elijah didn’t bother using Shape of the World Serpent. Instead, he threw himself into the air, bounded off Cloud Step, and leapfrogged his way back to the river. There, he found a scene of battle.
The hippo had found its way to the riverbank, where it had been ambushed by Rakhan and his hunters. They’d set a series of traps that had immobilized the mad beast, but even Elijah could see that it was only a matter of time before the animal escaped their clutches.
Meanwhile, Rakhan rammed his long spear into its side, though it stopped after only a foot or two. The hippo bucked, whipping its massive head around to try to clamp its jaws onto the hunter. Yet, Rakhan was a demigod and a veteran of countless hunts. He leaped backward, ripping his spear free in a fountain of gore.
At the same time, bow-wielding hunters launched a flurry of glowing projectiles in its direction. They hit with a wide variety of effects, but the creature’s hide was far too thick for the volley to do much beyond superficial damage.
Deciding to take matters into his own hands, Elijah shifted into his newest shape, taking on the form of a dragon toad before leaping onto the beast’s head. Using Absolute Grasp, he attached himself to the rough, grey hide.
Then, he focused on Way of the Magus.
Specifically, he concentrated on fire. In a second, he felt a flickering flame manifest within his throat. He built it up, stoking it with ethera and his ability until he could barely contain it.
He opened his mouth and spit a roiling ball of dense flames, right into the beast’s head. Skin charred, while fat melted. The flame dug all the way to its skull before stopping.
However, Elijah wasn’t finished.
Far from it.
He harnessed the dying flames, continuing to stoke it back to full force. It bloomed, bright and hot. The hippo bucked, slinging its massive head back and forth. But Elijah held firm, using Way of the Magus to whip air currents into the fire, feeding its continued growth.
The hippo went even more insane.
Some forgotten instinct screamed at it to return to the water, but the traps held it in place. And gradually, the beast’s skull heated. Degree by degree, until its skull had melted. Then, the liquid surrounding the brain – cerebrospinal fluid – boiled. And with it, so did the brain itself.
It filled the air with a smell not dissimilar to burned bacon.
Elijah continuously fed the fire with both ethera and oxygen until, at last, the beast collapsed.
And so a true river king died.
Elijah took no joy in the act, barely even noticing the flood of experience that sent him to the next level. Instead, he could only lament that it was necessary.