Path of Dragons - A LitRPG Apocalypse (BOOK TWO STUBBING AUGUST 15)

“I really don’t like this,” Elijah said, focusing on the sense granted by One with Nature. So close to the forest, he could feel its atmosphere so intensely that it verged on overwhelming. His previous supposition that the forest was in pain was only partially accurate. Nature didn’t cry out, but strangled by shadow, it did whimper slightly. It was like looking at an abused animal. A beaten dog that cringed at every turn. “This place is evil.”

“Worse than the Spires of Fallen?” asked Dat.

Elijah nodded. Bad things had happened within the challenge of the Underrealm. But the very nature of the world around it hadn’t been changed. That was not the case with the forest laid out before them. Perhaps in another frame of mind, Elijah would have marveled at the endurance of nature, that it could persist through such a torturous existence. However, with the metaphysical whimpers of a ruined forest filling his mind, he could only feel sadness.

It was tinged with anger, though.

“Do you want to sit this out?” asked Sadie. “We should be capable of –”

“No,” Elijah said, his tone firm. He didn’t want to turn away and flee. Instead, he wanted nothing more than to find the culprit who’d corrupted nature so thoroughly that it felt like an enslaved and abused animal. And when he did track them down – whoever they were – he would unleash the full fury of nature’s vengeance upon them.

As a Druid, his role was often to protect. To nurture. To heal.

But there was another side to who he was, and one that he’d only let loose a handful of times. It harkened back to when he’d stalked those hunters and slaughtered them for their indiscriminate murder of the guardian bear. Or when he chose to kill the people who’d invaded his island.

Looking at that shadowy forest and seeing the twisted shapes of the trees within, Elijah was driven to avenge the injustice imposed upon nature. In that, all three parts of his spirit were aligned.

“I’m fine. Let’s just do this,” he stated.

By that point, their pattern of exploration and travel was well established. So, Elijah shifted into the Shape of Venom and slipped into stealth. Dat did the same, and together, they set off into the shadowy forest. Since coming into range of the challenge of the Umbra, the rain had been pervasive. As a result, the atmosphere was overcast, with very little sunlight peeking through the clouds. Every now and then, lightning lanced down from the clouds, briefly illuminating the area, but even that was insufficient to truly pierce the gloom.

And it got worse the second Elijah stepped into the forest itself.

The darkness behaved like fog, drifting between the gnarled trees and obscuring everything outside of a three-foot radius. Ten feet away, Elijah could see nothing but black mist.

Then there was the cold.

It was similar to what he’d felt around the Spires of the Fallen, but different, too. The amorphous chill of fear versus the rigid cold of a corpse. It was as if the warmth of the sun had entirely faded, giving way to the chill of eternal night. To call it uncomfortable would have been a vast understatement.

Normally, Elijah wasn’t prone to intense fear. He felt it from time to time, but it was usually fleeting – the result of an extremely dangerous situation. However, the note of terror wafting through his Mind was ubiquitous and enduring. It was like stepping foot into an alien world where nothing made sense, and the resulting feeling twisted his stomach into knots of anxiety.

He shunted that discomfort aside, quarantining it in its own facet of his Jade Mind. Although he quickly discovered that that strategy, which he usually used to deal with intense pain, was insufficient in dealing with the shadowy fear. It stretched out its tendrils, infecting every other facet of his Mind with formless anxiety. It was weaker, but still there, ubiquitous and undeniable.

With a subtle shiver, he continued on. The others would soon follow, and he needed to do his job as a scout. Gradually, he covered ground until, at last, he received the notification he’d expected: