12-75. Broken Road
A thousand streams of light, each one a different hue, extended upward. They coalesced into a single, rainbow beam that didn’t stop even after hitting the ceiling miles above. Their twins descended into the gaping abyss below the shattered pieces of the disc, their light disappearing after only a few feet.
“There are more coming,” said Hu Shui, his swords at the ready. “From all around.”
Without looking away from the spectacle, Elijah uttered, “I know.”
There weren’t just djinn coming. The shattering of the disc – or the Godroad – had alerted everyone in Sanctuary. A few automatons had already shown up, but Benedict’s black knight had stepped forward to meet them. The thing used no powers, instead relying on pure attributes and martial skill. That was more than enough to allow it to cut three down in the space of a few moments.
It was one of the few times Elijah had looked at a creature and acknowledged that its attributes exceeded his own, and not by a little. Could he defeat it? Certainly. He still had his spells and other abilities, which it seemed to lack. But it would not be easy. More surprising was that it wasn’t even a demi-god, which was the threshold Elijah had established for true threats.
The black knight represented something he’d always known but sometimes needed to be reminded – he knew very little about the multi-verse or his place in it. He had power, but there was always something out there with more strength. More dexterity. A better constitution or more powerful spells. His advantage lay in his versatility, which was something he needed to remember if he wanted to survive future conflicts.
He glanced at the Astral Duelist. “What do you think about the Godroad?” he asked.
“It’s broken. Obviously.”
Benedict looked up from where he’d collapsed to his knees. “Is it usable?”
“No.”
“So it won’t work?” Elijah asked.
“I didn’t say that. It will do something. It will take us somewhere. The question is where,” Hu Shui explained. “I barely understand it. In fact, that’s an overstatement. I could study this for years and only glean the most basic of –”
“You’re out of your depth. I get it,” Elijah said. “That’s what being in a Primal Realm means, especially when you’re first. From my experience, you just have to forge ahead and make do with what information you have available.”
“And what? Hope for the best?” asked Hu Shui.
“Something like that. But admittedly, I’m a little too straightforward for my own good. I see a goal, and I tend to go right for it. Did I tell you about my time in the Elemental Maelstrom?”
“More than once,” Benedict stated, though his voice quivered with fatigue. The Black Knight raced off to the edge of the plaza, cutting through a dozen djinn before they fully emerged from one of the side streets.
“Right. The point is that there’s probably some hints out there as to what we’re meant to do. Maybe something to make this all easier,” Elijah admitted. That had been the case with the Elemental Maelstrom, as proven by the guild group that had gone through the trouble of doing a host of side quests. By comparison, he, Oscar, and the pack had immediately set out from Stillstone without any real preparation. As a result, their path was much more difficult than it probably should have been.
Doubtless, the situation was similar in the Labyrinth of Dead Gods. The problem was that there was no telling if they’d already gone too far to begin such quests. For all any of them knew, they needed to start down that road from the very beginning. Either way, the shattering of the disc and the subsequently splintered Godroad meant that they didn’t have time to go back and scour the city for clues.
Punctuating that thought was an earthquake that ripped through the city with enough force to send Benedict sprawling to his hands and knees. Elijah and Hu Shui managed to maintain their footing, but only because they both possessed much higher dexterity attributes.
In the aftermath, during which a building fell in the distance, Elijah pointed out the time constraints, adding, “I think we should try it.”
“That’s suicidal,” Hu Shui argued. “If you expect –”
“Open to better ideas,” Elijah interjected. When neither he nor Benedict responded, Elijah went on, “Good. Glad we covered that we literally have no other choice. Look – I’ll go first, and then you two can follow.”
“I’ll send Vesimath, the Destroyer,” Benedict offered. “I can feel his presence, so if he’s instantly killed, we know it’s not a viable path.”
“Vesimath, the Destroyer?” asked Elijah.
Benedict pointed to the Black Knight. “I shortened it. It’s really Vesimath, the Destroyer of All Things, Bastion of the Third Gate, and –”
“King of the Andals? Protector of the Realms? Lord of the Seven Kingdoms?”
“What?”
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Elijah sighed. “I figured you for a Game of Thrones reader. Guess not.”
“I was waiting for it to finish,” Hu Shui said. “I guess it never will now.”
“I think that was the case before the World Tree came,” Elijah pointed out. He took a breath. “But that makes sense. We’ll send Vesimath in there to check things out. In the meantime, I’ll keep the djinn at bay.”
After that, Elijah shifted into the Shape of the Scourge. Despite the difference in attributes, it was still slightly faster than the Shape of Embers – a fact he attributed to their biology. Like its predecessor, the emberkin saint was better suited to short bursts of speed. Otherwise, it was clearly built to move a lot more deliberately. By comparison, the scourgedrake was a peerless hunter meant to run down its prey. And it moved accordingly.
Once he’d taken on that bestial form, Elijah switched places with Vesimath, the Destroyer. A moment later, he responded to the arrival of a group of djinn accompanied by a low-powered automaton. Killing the blue humanoids was trivial, requiring only a single swipe from his talons to decapitate the first few. The others fell just as easily, and the automaton, having expended most of its energy in the ongoing battle, went down only a few moments later.
And then, Elijah was off to the next group, which had already arrived.
It felt like playing whack-a-mole, though with quite a lot more blue blood and ethereal burns. Elijah ghosted among the enemy, barely visible to the naked eye – doubtless aided by Guise of the Stalker, which passively helped him avoid notice. Of course, that was ruined the second he attacked, but on the lead-up, it was invaluable.
Meanwhile, the Black Knight climbed atop one of the broken pieces of the disc and plunged into the prismatic light of the shattered Godroad. Hu Shui stood guard over Benedict, who still hadn’t recovered from summoning Vesimath. Likely, he wouldn’t for some time, and it wasn’t something Elijah could hasten with his healing spells.
Thankfully, Elijah didn’t need to maintain the perimeter for long, though only a couple of minutes in, he felt something that made him stumble. That very nearly got him hit by an automaton’s ethereal beam, but he recovered just in time to throw himself aside. Once the shock wore off, he threw himself back into rhythm and tore the thing apart.
Before he reached the next group, Hu Shui appeared beside him to say, “Benedict says it’s safe.”
“Ten-four.”
“What?”
Elijah shrugged his dinosaur-like shoulders, explaining, “Just trying something out. Never mind.”
Despite trying to mask his worry with humor, he couldn’t escape the trepidation building in his mind. He pushed it aside, then raced toward where he’d left Benedict. When he arrived, the Warlock articulated the situation, “He’s further away than expected, but he’s alive and not fighting.”
“Best we can hope for,” Elijah said. “Which one did he take?”
Benedict pointed to the nearest piece of the shattered disc. “I’ll go first. Follow in thirty second intervals.” He glanced at the perimeter of the plaza and saw that the dam had finally broken. Djinn poured out of every street, accompanied by automatons. And these weren’t the exhausted sort, either. The second they came into view, they let loose with a barrage of ethereal beams.
Thankfully, they aimed at one another almost as much as they targeted Elijah and his companions. “Make that ten seconds,” he amended. “Let’s go!”
With that, he dashed forward and leaped. The second he contacted the beam of light, he felt his stomach leap into his throat. It wasn’t unlike riding a roller coaster, though there was no wind or other evidence of movement. Instead, his vision filled with multi-colored light, and he felt like every single cell within his body burst into flame.
It lasted a few eternal seconds before he thudded down onto a metal surface. After only a moment, he rolled to the side – just in time to avoid Hu Shui’s arrival. The Astral Duelist was in much worse shape, so Elijah was forced to drag him out of the way before Benedict appeared in a cloud of particolored motes of ethera.
Suddenly, Elijah realized that Vesimath stood silently over his master, his axe blade resting against the ground. Seeing that Benedict was unhurt, Elijah turned his attention to their surroundings.
And when he did, he couldn’t help but gasp – an expression echoed by Hu Shui, and for obvious reasons.
Hu Shui breathed, “I never thought I would see anything like this.”
“Me neither,” Elijah agreed softly.
His tone failed to convey the breadth of the wonder in his heart. Often, he’d forced himself to appreciate the beauty of nature. Whether it was a family of otters playing in a mountain stream or a valley full of earthen pillars clad in clouds, Elijah had always taken the time to truly behold the wonders of the world.
None of that could compare to what he saw all around him.
The surface upon which they stood was a massive silver disc, the end of which he couldn’t see without using Eyes of the Eagle. Even then, the horizon was more of a suggestion than a true end point. But he could feel that it was only a dozen feet thick, with much of that space hollow. It only took a few moments for him to recognize that the entire structure was comprised of layers, the inside of which were made of other slowly moving discs. It reminded him of a mechanical watch, though far more complex.
Even then, Elijah barely noted the disc’s characteristics.
Instead, his attention fell almost entirely on the expanse of space all around him. Stars twinkled above and below, with a nebula looming large amongst them. Elijah knew that most photos of heavenly bodies had been re-colored to account for the limits of human perception. But this nebula stood out even brighter and more colorful than any image taken through a space telescope. It only took Elijah a few seconds to recognize that it was composed entirely of dense ethera.
The sheer size and scope of the heavens made Elijah feel smaller and less consequential than he’d ever felt before. It was yet another reminder that, on Earth, he was just a small fish in a puddle. In the rest of the multi-verse, he would encounter settings and creatures that could kill him with a stray thought.
Oddly, that realization was comforting, and it fostered a desire to set out for the cosmos to find novel worlds, new people, and incredible wonders that defied description.
It was enough to distract him from what he’d felt just before stepping foot on the shattered Godroad.
Ironshore had been invaded.
Since stepping into the Primal Realm, his locus had been uncharacteristically unreliable. But after overcoming the time loop, it had gotten much more accurate. He still only got a vague sense of what was going on, but it was enough to give him bursts of knowledge that he otherwise never could have gotten.
And the latest told him that an army stood outside of Ironshore even while chaos had erupted inside city limits. There was no indication who’d chosen to besiege his closest allies, but the fact that they hadn’t already been defeated was evidence enough that they were not to be taken lightly.
His friends needed him.
Despite that, Elijah was stuck. He couldn’t leave the Primal Realm until it had been conquered. So, he jerked his eyes from the wondrous heavens and turned his attention to the more important task at hand.
They needed to figure out what was going on, determine the win conditions, then satisfy them so he could return home and help his friends.