12-81. Conduits
Tendrils of corruption flailed as Elijah rammed the lattice of corruption at full speed. The shockwave from the impact of a twenty-ton dragon hitting the dome at more than four-hundred miles an hour was like a bomb going off. The force vaporized the black tendrils of corruption for dozens of yards all around, but the shield held.
The same could not be said for Elijah’s body.
Thankfully, during the run-up, he’d built a massive Nature’s Bloom within his chest. He let it loose, and even as he rebounded, bones broken and organs ruptured, the compiled spell settled onto him. The stars dancing in his field of vision cleared, letting him focus on the damage.
It was both more impressive and less effective than he’d hoped.
The evidence of the abyssal corruption hadn’t survived – at least at the point of impact – but the shield remained entirely intact. However, it did curve inward, almost like a dimple on an aluminum can. Though instead of thin metal, it was an ethereal shield that Elijah only now realized was the strongest he’d ever encountered. It held like tempered glass, shattered and flexible, but still intact.
He spread his branch-like wings and wheeled around, intending to take another run at it. He’d damaged it, so it stood to reason that he could break it entirely. He just needed a little more force.
Cutting through the space surrounding the disc was still a chore. The atmosphere was both thicker and more diffuse than normal, and it affected his flight more than he cared to admit. But Elijah wasn’t one to give up after one try. So, when he reached a suitable distance, he banked around and headed for another ramming attack.
The shield shimmered, and an aperture at the very apex of the dome twisted open. A veritable explosion of tentacles erupted from that hole. Only after a few seconds did Elijah recognize what they were.
“Abyssals.”
Each one was a collection of wings and tentacles that should never have existed in nature, their rubbery skin glistening with faint light – like they were coated in viscous mucus. Multiple heads sprouted from various parts of their bodies, and each face upon them screamed silently, exposing oversized and crooked fangs.
His companions clenched his spines.
They’d made it through the impact much better off than him, though that wasn’t terribly surprising. So long as they held on – which they had – they’d only received some internal injuries from the sudden stop. It was like being in a car accident, though without the benefit of safety features like seatbelts or airbags.
And while neither of them were Warriors, they were both sufficiently advanced to have the benefit of superhuman bodies.
Hopefully, their inflated durability would help them in the coming fight, because the abyssals were headed in their direction.
Elijah was more than happy to oblige their bloodlust, and he quickly altered course to meet them head-on. Both Hu Shui and Benedict shouted something he didn’t hear, and before he could get clarification, he collided with the tip of the proverbial spear.
He released the Eternal Plague he’d been building since seeing the creatures, so when he opened his mouth, he spewed forth tens of thousands of odd-looking, four-winged moths. They enveloped the first elements of the stream, but Elijah didn’t have a chance to see their effect, because he was soon inundated by tentacles, too-many mouths, and haphazard wings.
He met them with claws, fangs, and pure might.
For a few seconds, he fought alone, though he held his own well enough. For all that the abyssal creatures had numbers, he was a dragon on the verge of demi-godhood. Their rubbery flesh parted easily beneath his talons, and the creatures’ screams of agony – from every single mouth – proved that they weren’t immune to pain.
After the shock wore off, Hu Shui, Benedict, and the demonic knight joined the fray. Fighting on dragon-back was likely awkward, especially when said dragon was constantly in motion, but they quickly found their rhythm. Hu Shui was especially effective, flitting back and forth and devastating the monsters with his blades and spells. Meanwhile, Benedict hurled one curse after another at the creatures, weakening them in great swaths.
Before long, Elijah was entirely surrounded. The creatures fell upon him in droves, latching onto his emerald scales and attempting to tear him to pieces.
It was a valid strategy, and one Elijah had seen employed to great effect by the vespirans in the Broken Crown. Back then, he’d watched a swarm of insectile people down a dragon the size of a battleship.
But as loathe as Elijah was to give the wasp-people credit, they were far better equipped for swarm tactics than the abyssals. For one, each of the corrupted tentacle monsters fought as if they were alone. There was no coordination. Rather, they simply attacked in the most straightforward way possible.
No spells. No skills. They were like rabid animals.
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Only when Elijah caught a glimpse of blue skin did he realize the truth of why they made him so uncomfortable. And it wasn’t his druidic instincts showing themselves. Instead, he recognized what that blue skin meant.
It only took a single foray into the senses granted by Soul of the Wild for him to confirm what he already knew. Like the buildings in Sanctuary, the corrupted abyssals had all begun as djinn.
Was that the fate awaiting anyone who managed to survive exposure to the abyss? Elijah had seen something similar with the wraiths during the Trial of Primacy. Those pitiful creatures had been tainted as well. But this was different. More complete. And far more grotesque.
That disgust spurred Elijah on. If he’d needed any more motivation to kill the abyssals, that was it. With unparalleled fury, he ripped the monsters apart. He barely had room for rational thought, and he quickly sank into a trance-like state filled with fangs, tentacles, and rage.
Of course, the others continued their own assault, but he paid them no mind, save to heal whatever injuries they managed to take. Otherwise, Elijah held back on his spells. After all, he didn’t know what awaited within the dome. No doubt he would need all of his ethera for the final conflict.
Elijah wasn’t certain how long he fought. Hours, at the very least. If he’d been in a better frame of mind, he might’ve wondered how all those abyssal creatures had fit inside the dome. The space was admittedly quite expansive, with the disc measuring at least ten miles across. But there were so many abyssal monsters that fitting them all inside would have been an issue.
Eventually, the flow thinned, and finally, as Elijah bit one of the tentacled creatures in two, the stream ended. With the acrid taste of abyssal blood – like battery acid with a jolt of electricity – playing along his tongue, he took stock of the situation. That same blood, black and fluorescent green, mingled with various body parts to form a macabre cloud of surrounding viscera.
Elijah was eager to leave it behind.
So, he made for the aperture with all due speed. It was still open, but to his alarm, it had begun to spiral shut. It was much larger than he’d originally thought – maybe two hundred yards across – so it took a few moments for it to close. Even so, Elijah barely made it in time to slip through a crack.
And just like that, he and his companions had arrived on the final disc.
It was very different than what he’d expected. Strands of silver swirled through the air in complex patterns he couldn’t even begin to understand. He didn’t need to touch them to know that they were both solid and sharp enough to slice through him with ease. As a result, they formed a maze of razor sharp ribbons that he was forced to avoid on his way to the surface.
Thankfully, they didn’t extend all the way to the ground, so when Elijah and his allies finally arrived, they found a modicum of safety.
For now.
After everyone climbed from his back, Elijah shifted back into his human form, only to find the other two glaring at him.
“What?” he asked.
“I can think of a hundred other ways we might have gained entry,” Hu Shui replied. “There is a complex system of –”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“Were those true abyssals?” asked Benedict, cutting Hu Shui off before he could sputter a response.
Elijah nodded. “Not strong ones, though. There are much worse out there.”
Though Elijah really didn’t have much reason to believe that his context was accurate. After all, he’d only encountered abyssals in system-regulated spaces like the Trial of Primacy or the Broken Crown. Otherwise, he’d fought Voxx, which were abyssals, but ones who’d passed through the system’s filter to enter spaces attached to the World Tree. As a result, they appeared much more natural than the other abyssal abominations Elijah had seen.
They were still dangerous, though.
“What is this place?” Elijah asked, looking around. “Another altar?”
That was a reasonable assumption, though he suspected it was faulty. After all, the disc represented the convergence point for all the gathered energy. That was why he and the others had assumed it would be the site of the final battle.
Of course, the reality didn’t support that notion.
The disc’s surface was entirely flat and densely engraved with runes. Energy flowed through them, just as it did through the silver ribbons dancing through the dome’s atmosphere.
Then there was the spiraling ramp in the center. Elijah didn’t need to feel the corruption of the abyss to know that was where they were meant to go. He explained as much to the others, and they agreed. However, Hu Shui insisted on examining as much as they could.
With that in mind, they spent a few hours investigating the disc. It turned out to be a fruitless endeavor, and they approached the spiral descent no less ignorant than they’d been when they had arrived. Or at least that was the case for Elijah, who barely understood a tenth of what he saw. The others were better off, but they didn’t give voice to any revelations, so he had to assume that understanding evaded them as well.
So it was that they began their descent.
The spiral was almost identical to the ones that led them through the incubation chambers and to Sanctuary, though on a much smaller scale. Those spirals had been a mile or so wide, with a gradual decline. This version was much tighter and steeper. What’s more, there were no off-shoots or chambers. Just a seemingly endless corkscrew.
And finally, the air crackled with space magic that was so dense it overwhelmed even the threads of corruption. None of them needed to say it, but it was obvious that the spiral would lead them somewhere entirely different.
“It feels like this Primal Realm will never end,” Benedict muttered to himself.
“That’s how it goes. It’s just one obstacle after another.”
The Warlock didn’t respond to Elijah’s assertion. Instead, he remained silent as they continued on their way in silence that stretched on for hours until, at last, everything changed.
A gate loomed before them, its silver frame arcing with so much ethera that Elijah knew they’d finally found the end. No more false starts. No more puzzles. Just a bad guy to defeat.
He stepped through, only to find himself standing on yet another disc. This one was only a hundred yards across and surrounded by an even more impressive blanket of stars. It was like Elijah found himself in the center of a wholly different galaxy. Above loomed what Elijah could only call a black hole. It was invisible, but he could feel gravity bending all around it.
It was such a powerful sensation that he almost missed the ten other discs slowly rotating around their arrival point. In some ways, it felt like déjà vu, though there were enough differences – mostly in scale – that Elijah knew that events would not repeat themselves.
The other major hint was the djinn floating in the center of the platform. Elijah didn’t need to study him for long before he recognized him as the boss. At last, they had found Etkatiran, the architect of the Aureum and their ticket home. Now, all they needed to do was beat what felt like a mid-stage demi-god.