12-73. Seed of Ash
Elijah didn’t really have time to note his appearance, though he couldn’t ignore the ash-white scales nor the increased height. More importantly, he could feel the ashen cloak billowing from his shoulders, almost like it was another appendage. He sensed the fire down below, as well, though that was cloaked in a thin membrane that he attributed to the imps’ influence. To Elijah, it felt like plunging his hand into a serene pond, only to find that it was covered in a thin sheen of invisible oil.
Regardless, he couldn’t dwell on appearances or that feeling. For now, he had work to do.
Even as he felt Hu Shui disappear, he focused on the surrounding automatons. They’d continued to climb free of the massive creature’s joints, seemingly born of pure ethera. Each one glistened with barely contained energy, telling him that they were all poised on the edge of demigodhood. One little push, and they’d reach it.
The giant automaton itself was well into that stage, though Elijah had no way of knowing just how far. It felt similar to the creatures he’d fought in the Broken Crown, albeit not quite as overbearing as something like the highest-level abyssals he’d encountered.
But in the new Shape of Embers, Elijah felt more empowered than ever before.
And as serious as the situation was – three massive automatons to defeat, a host of smaller creations to fight, and a Primal Realm to overcome – Elijah was very eager to see how his new form held up. After a glance at his status, he realized that the buff to his attributes was even more overbearing than expected, with almost three-hundred points being added to every category. He could feel the influx of power down to his very bones, which only increased his anticipation for what was going to come next.
He embraced Wildfire, and his extremities burst into flame. Within a couple of seconds, the metal beneath his feet turned blistering orange. In a moment more, his stance began to slip, on account of the top layer of the automaton’s metal fuselage turning into a semi-liquid slurry. Thankfully, it remained solid enough for Absolute Grasp to maintain his footing.
By the time he realized that, the smaller automatons were upon him. Each one had produced a pair of sapphire-bladed axes – one in each hand – and they wasted no time before aiming them in his direction. Elijah ducked, marveling at how much slower they appeared. It wasn’t that his reaction speeds had grown faster. If he had to guess, they were about the same as they were before the form’s evolution. But Cloak of Embers affected his enemies as well, slowing them by nearly as much as it hastened him. With those two pieces combined, Elijah felt untouchable.
He dodged the first few blows, testing his new form’s flexibility. And he wasn’t disappointed. The emberkin saint clearly traced its lineage back to a salamander-like creature, and in that form, Elijah was capable of contorting his body in ways that would dislocated his human joints. What’s more, when he finally struck out, he did so with whip-like speed, smashing his fist into one of the nearest automaton’s legs.
It crumpled beneath the blow, the metal exploding from the massive force. The inertia of it sent the creature flipping sideways before it tumbled free of the nearly vertical surface. Elijah paid it no attention until, suddenly, an ethereal fire burst from its back, thrusting it upward until it regained its position.
He almost groaned, acknowledging that dealing with them wouldn’t be as easy as just knocking them from their perch.
Even as it clanged back into place, Elijah continued his assault, gaining momentum as he acclimated to the influx in attributes. As he did so, his ashen cloak spread across the surface of the automaton a little with every dodge or landed attack.
Only a few seconds into the fight, and he’d already crushed four legs. But that was when the larger automaton decided to enter the fight as more than a setting. Ethera gathered, then arced out, spreading across the vertical battlefield. Elijah’s reaction speeds were so enhanced that he saw it coming from a mile away. He leaped free, dodging the lightning-quick field of unbounded ethera, then used Cloud Step to spring back into position as the deadly pulse faded.
He landed atop an automaton and hit it with seven punches – each one denting its metallic husk – before bounding to another. And another after that.
Beams of nearly solid ethera blistered through the air, but they were too slow to hit him. Or rather, Elijah was just too fast.
On it went, with the squid-like automatons joining the fight as well. Elijah knew that, from afar, he probably looked like he was entirely overwhelmed. However, from his perspective, he had everything in hand. Him against dozens of peak ascendent automatons, and he was winning. Even if it probably didn’t look like it.
And he hadn’t even unleashed his other abilities yet.
But as the charges of Seed of Ash continued to build, Elijah knew it wouldn’t be long before he could show them the full might of the Shape of Embers. When he passed fifty charges, he very nearly jumped the gun and unleashed it right then and there. From the way the power danced within his chest, he knew that it was even more potent than a hundred charges of Heart of Fire, and not by a small degree. A minute later, and he reached seventy-five. Then a hundred. And to his shock, it kept building.
It didn’t stop until he reached two hundred, and by that point, his entire body was smoking. He felt the impending fire deep within him, powerful enough that if he didn’t free it soon, he would be burned to a crisp. He tried to push it further, but two hundred seemed to be the limit.
Elijah unleashed the Flames of Renewal.
Whips of fire arced out from his body, swirling in every direction before curling in on him – not unlike a solar prominence, but with pure fire instead of plasma. It was hot enough to melt right through the automatons’ metallic fuselage, but as powerful as those whips were, they were just the beginning.
Within a second or two, they’d gathered into a cocoon of fire that enveloped Elijah entirely before bursting out into a wave of flame that seared through everything within a hundred yards. The nearest automatons melted into slag with that first wave, but the others managed to hold themselves together. At least until the second wave hit them. The third finished them off, but it kept going, burning through even the chest plate of the massive automaton upon which Elijah perched.
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With every pulse, Elijah felt something within him growing. An impending explosion he could neither control nor stop. It was as inevitable as it was painful.
And then, after the ninth wave, Elijah exploded.
Whatever was left of the smaller attackers instantly vaporized. The same was true of the huge automaton’s fuselage. It didn’t melt. It didn’t turn to slag. It simply evaporated, filling the air with the smell of scorched ozone followed by an acrid tang that would’ve set most people to retching.
Then, the core exploded, but miraculously, even that was overwhelmed by Flames of Renewal.
Elijah barely acknowledged it.
Instead, at the center of that corona of flame, he burned. His ash-white scales blistered in an instant, and his organs burst from expanding gasses. His eyes popped, and his brain fried. He only managed to endure it by shunting the agony into quarantined leaves, one after another until most of his mind was entirely occupied by the torture.
And that was in the second it took for the explosion to play out. After that, Elijah’s pain faded – probably due to the lack of nerves – and he beheld the destruction he’d wrought.
Ash, as dense as a blizzard, fell from the sky.
The automaton, inert and seizing with the remnants of ethera still coursing through what was left of its body, tumbled. As nothing more than a clump of ashes, Elijah drifted above it, serene and disconnected.
Over the next minute, ash piled upon that massive creature, burying it under tons and tons of powdery residue. Elijah’s awareness drifted down until he settled within those white mountains.
For a second that stretched into an eternity, Elijah felt peace.
And then, the ash swirled as vitality, dense and vibrant, enveloped him. Those dune-like mountains rolled across the fallen monster’s body, accumulating into one massive pile that rose hundreds of feet into the air. In that moment, Elijah was so connected to everything that he’d become one with nature in a way he’d never before experienced.
Arcs of vitality coursed though the mountain of ash until the began to converge on a point within the ash dune. Elijah followed those rivers of life to a small seed buried at the heart of the mountain. It blossomed, rapidly growing into a familiar tree that fed life into the ash. With that, his body rebuilt itself, cell by cell. First came his skeleton. Then, his circulatory and nervous systems. His organs. Muscles. Scales. Finally, he took a breath.
When he opened his eyes, he saw nothing but a green and rolling meadow where the automaton had once been. Casting his senses out, he could still feel the metal skeleton buried beneath the greenery, but it was rusted and inert.
That was when he remembered that the Flames of Renewal wasn’t only about inflicting massive damage upon his enemies. By the description, it was also meant to promote life.
And in that purpose, it had delivered.
Elijah took another breath, smelling the unmistakable scent of a forest. Flowers and grass, dew and earth. At the edge of the meadow – which extended nearly three hundred yards in every direction – he could also feel the Aureum attempting to reassert its authority. Tendrils of djinn-flesh crept from the surrounding buildings, trying to overwhelm the bastion of true nature Elijah had created.
It failed.
Miserably.
Even as Elijah took stock of the aftermath of Flames of Renewal, he saw dozens of trees sprout. They grew rapidly, becoming a forest in the space of seconds. That gave him some comfort, but the feeling only lasted for a few seconds until he thought of his companions.
He shook away the feeling of peace as he embraced the urgency of the situation.
Still in the Shape of Embers, Elijah raced through the still-growing forest in the direction he’d last seen Benedict and Hu Shui. The forest continued to spread, creeping up the ruins of the skyscraper that had fallen to the explosion. He climbed that small hill, feeling mossy ground beneath his feet. He reached the summit and looked around.
The forest continued to expand, and so rapidly that it had enveloped an entire skyscraper. What’s more, Elijah could feel every inch of it almost as keenly as his own domain, and he was happy to see that true nature had already overwhelmed the djinn-based copies festooning the city of Sanctuary.
The trees of renewal mercilessly smothered the blue-trunked versions, draining their ethera and repurposing it for their own continued growth.
That allowed Elijah to sense his allies, who’d taken shelter behind a skyscraper nearly a mile away. He raced across the forest, only to be accosted by more automatons that flooded the area to bar his way. Barely slowing down, Elijah dealt with them by destroying their arms and legs, then throwing their torsos as far away as he could manage.
They countered by self-destructing, the first knocking Elijah aside with the force of the explosion. He tumbled through his expanding forest, already feeling his injuries mending. The increased attributes – specifically constitution and regeneration – that came with Shape of Embers worked in conjunction with the massive spike in vitality that suffused the atmosphere to send his natural healing through the roof. It wasn’t on par with Shape of Spores, but it was still powerful nonetheless.
More importantly, it was enough to deal with the injuries he sustained with that first explosion. Now that he knew it was coming, Elijah countered it by destroying the automatons even more quickly, then tossing them aside before the self-destruct sequence could complete.
Then, finally, he reached his companions.
“What was that?” demanded Hu Shui.
“New shape. New abilities,” Elijah said, already shifting back to his human form. The other two had sustained more than a few injuries, and while they were alive, neither was in the best shape. Elijah took care of that with a few quick casts of Wild Resurgence and Nature’s Bloom. Even as their wounds mended, Elijah asked, “What happened?”
“We were going to ask you the same thing,” Benedict sighed. “One moment, we’re sitting in that skyscraper minding our own business, and the next, a war breaks out. Those automatons emerged from the ground, and the closest one attacked our building. We have no idea why.”
Elijah frowned. “From what I can gather, it’s a rebellion, of sorts,” he said before explaining what the captive djinn had told him.
“They’re effectively fighting themselves?” asked Benedict.
“It makes sense,” Hu Shui stated.
Elijah narrowed his eyes at the Astral Duelist. “Does it?”
“After a fashion,” he answered. “They are part of this…what did you call him?”
“Etkatiran. He’s the architect of this whole situation.”
“Right. They’re all part of Etkatiran, but only in the way that we’re part of the World Tree. Sort of. He’s not nearly powerful enough to rival that connection, but he’s clearly intelligent enough to understand that he can’t play the same role without giving them some autonomy. That’s why they’re all isolated. That’s the point of this whole structure. I think that whatever event it was based on completely quarantined itself from the World Tree,” he said, tapping his chin. “But that’s not possible in a Primal Realm, so it’s all just simulated.”
Elijah nodded. “The sterile ethera.”
“Right.”
“The vacuum and the null zone weren’t meant to keep the sacrificial djinn out. They were meant to keep the World Tree out,” Elijah reasoned.
“It clearly failed,” Benedict pointed out. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here. More importantly, where are we meant to go?”
“I think I saw another Godroad,” Elijah said. “Or something like it. And there was corruption coming from it. Almost like a Rift.”
They all agreed that was the way they were meant to go, but a few explosions in the distance made it clear that their way would not be unopposed. After all, there was a civil war going on, and that was the least of their worries. The two building-sized automatons were even more distressing.
“Can you do that again? The fire explosion thing?” Benedict asked.
Elijah shook his head. “Soft cooldown. I think it’ll remain unavailable for a few days at least.”
“Damn.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve got a few more tricks up my sleeve,” Elijah said, gripping his companion’s shoulder. Benedict flinched under his touch. “Relax. We’ve got this.”
Elijah could only hope he wouldn’t be proven a liar.