12-84. Stutters and Stops
Elijah and his companions landed upon the disc, ready to finish the fight. The instant their feet touched the silver ground, the world shifted. Thousands of silver rings – delicate and ephemeral, yet still solid – manifested around the disc. Before anyone could react, they started spinning, reminding Elijah of a gyroscope. Or an armillary sphere, though with many times more concentric rings that never stopped moving.
Within seconds, those rings had become a silver blur.
But Elijah was more concerned with what was happening right in front of him. Or rather, what had happened. Etkatiran had transformed, sprouting nearly a dozen more arms and a thousand more tentacles. His azure body was surrounded by a dark halo of corruption mingled with pure, white ethera.
And his eyes – all three of them – shimmered with madness.
“You have no idea what you have done,” he said, though his mouth never moved. Instead, the disembodied words came from everywhere all at once, and it echoed in Elijah’s mind with more than simple sound. There was command there. An inescapable degree of power that threatened to defeat him with sheer force of dominance.
And laced through it was a thin tendril of dense corruption, like a glass of water spoiled by a single drop of black ink.
Elijah’s stomach clenched at the mere feel of it.
“The Great Work will not go unfinished. We. Will. Be. Free!” the djinn-turned-monster declared, his multitude of arms arrayed similarly to Depictions Elijah had seen of the Hindu goddess Kali. Or maybe that was just an effect of the deeply azure skin, which had become so dark as to border on pure black. “The tyranny of the –”
Elijah didn’t wait for the monologue to continue. With every passing second, he could sense the escalation of power. And it wasn’t just above. It was below as well, a teeming mass of abyssal corruption that felt ready to erupt at any moment. Currently, something held it at bay, but he knew from experience that it wouldn’t be long before it all exploded.
It was better to get the fight over sooner rather than later, if only to avoid that eventuality.
So, he attacked.
Thankfully, he’d been fighting alongside Hu Shui and Benedict long enough that they could anticipate his reaction to the Etkatiran’s speech. When he charged, they came right along with him. Hu Shui gathered ethera around him, ready to use his abilities as needed. At the same time, Benedict wasted no time before dragging his dagger along his forearm. Blood gushed from the wound, though it didn’t fall. Instead, he grabbed hold of it with his will and forced it into a complex series of glyphs.
A second later, a fat imp crawled out of the resultant portal. It fluttered in place for only a moment before rocketing off toward the massive djinn. Then, it just stopped.
So did Elijah.
Both Hu Shui and Benedict did as well.
An instant later, Elijah found himself back where he’d started, though still running in place. The second he reached the previous furthest point, he was once again back where he’d begun. The same was true of Hu Shui and Benedict, and it reminded Elijah of those old cartoons where characters would leave one side of the frame only to reappear on the left edge of the scene.
Only instead of a two-dimensional animated scene, it was real, and wholly disconcerting.
He skidded to a stop, only to realize that motion wasn’t the issue.
“It’s time!” he shouted. “A loop!”
Hu Shui nodded as if it was confirmation of what he’d already expected.
Even as they experienced one loop after another, the rings continued to spin. And as a result, Elijah felt the atmospheric ethera thicken. At the same time, the impending explosion of corruption down below kept building. He could feel reality itself flexing under the strain.
Hu Shui and Benedict worked in starts and stops, with the latter tracing hundreds of runes with his own blood as Hu Shui offered direction. Over the course of the next few minutes, during which time continued to stutter, they worked through various combinations until, at last, they came upon something that worked.
Time lurched, and Elijah stumbled to the silver ground. He skidded forward until he came to a stop a second later. Without hesitation, he bounded to his feet and raced in to confront the djinn.
Etkatiran had not remained idle. His tentacles waved menacingly, twisting into various shapes as he directed the flows of ethera into complex spells. Instinctively, Elijah knew he wasn’t relying on system-wrought abilities, but rather, sheer ethereal manipulation.
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In a lot of ways, it was mesmerizing. It also opened Elijah’s eyes to what was possible outside of the system. For all that it had helped, there would come a point when it became more of a restriction than a hindrance. Perhaps that wouldn’t happen until transcendence, but it would happen nonetheless.
And if the Labyrinth of Dead Gods had taught Elijah anything, it was that he was entirely unprepared for that kind of challenge. He’d gleaned a little knowledge about runes and ethereal manipulation, but even then, he’d confirmed something that he’d already known. He was no great mage. He would never be able to cast unrestrained spells like Etkatiran.
Instead, Elijah was a creature of nature. Of instinct. He could consciously guide his abilities, but at his best, he relied on intuition as much as intellect. It was further confirmation that no one could be all things, all at once. On the surface, that might have been disappointing for some. But for Elijah, that realization came with a distinct sense of relief.
Leave the complex equations and spellcasting to people like Benedict and Hu Shui. In the meantime, Elijah would focus on accentuating his own strengths. Perhaps one day, he could exceed his own limitations, but the time for that was not in the middle of the final battle of a Primal Realm.
Still, he couldn’t escape the reality that he was ill equipped to deal with the djinn’s spells. So, he relied on his own nature to see him through.
Soul of the Wild gave him constant feedback as to what was going on all around him, and even if it was mostly focused on life, it had long since begun to encompass ethereal flows as well. Usually, he kept that in the background, but now, he let it dictate his actions.
It was a good thing, too, because only a moment after he’d embraced that feeling, he sensed a dense flow of invisible ethera blistering toward him. It was as thick as a man’s waist and so potent that it could easily tear a hole through his torso. Even in his dragon form.
Thankfully, he sensed it just in time to keep that from happening. He planted, pivoted, then leaped to the side, all in the space of a single moment. The beam of ethera still clipped him, searing its way through his hip, but the damage was comparatively minimal.
He healed without even thinking.
Under the influence of Wild Resurgence and Nature’s Bloom, his flesh knitted itself back together. At the same time, Elijah summoned Blessing of the Grove to deal with any additional damage. And finally, he used Grove Conduit – not to enhance his power, but rather, to infuse the area with his particular blend of vitality and attuned ethera.
He did so in the hopes that it would shake the foundations of Etkatiran’s domain.
Even as he cast those spells, he sprinted toward the djinn. He only took three steps before the world compressed under the weight of a massive spike in gravity. It didn’t simply press down on him. Rather, it came from every direction, and it threatened to squish him into a tiny ball of flesh.
He countered it with Mantle of Authority, which was further enhanced by the miniature domain he’d created via Grove Conduit. The gravity didn’t cease, but it did weaken.
The other two were unaffected, and it only took Elijah another second to recognize that it was a localized effect. An attack in the form of a ball of enhanced gravity, meant to neutralize or kill him outright.
A dozen more flows of ethera arced toward him, but not in straight beams. Rather, they snaked around like slippery eels, ready to punch a hole in Elijah at any given moment. He dodged, already shifting into the Shape of Embers. As he did so, he could only wish he hadn’t already used Flames of Renewal.
If ever there was a moment to explode with the force of a volcano, the fight against the djinn was it.
But even without that all-powerful ability at his disposal, Elijah still had Herald of Regrowth, Wildfire, and Cloak of Embers going for him. And of course, the additional attributes and enhanced reaction speed that had been a hallmark of that line of spells since he’d gotten Shape of the Master.
In the form of the emberkin saint, Elijah continued forward. But he quickly discovered that in order to cover a single step, he was forced to travel nearly a hundred feet. He wasn’t equipped to understand how it all worked, so he forged ahead, flaring his Mantle of Authority even as he dodged the multitude of ethereal ribbons aiming to poke holes in him.
The mantle was the only reason he survived.
Not only did it slow the snaking beams by a significant degree, but it also weakened whatever effect Etkatiran had used to stretch space. Even so, it took every ounce of Elijah’s concentration to avoid being skewered by those blistering streams of invisible energy.
With each one, he built a charge on Seed of Ashes. It only took a minute or so before he was bursting with unspent energy, with the seed entirely saturated with potential. Yet, he did not activate Herald of Regrowth.
For all that it would send his attributes skyrocketing into an entirely different tier, he needed a plan before he unleashed the full weight of his power.
Unfortunately, a shift in the battle took that decision out of his hands.
Somewhere behind Elijah, Benedict and Hu Shui had continued to work on countering the djinn’s spells, and at last, they managed to break the containment of stuttering time. It shattered with a sound like breaking glass, filling the air with the smell of burned wiring.
Not to be outdone, Etkatiran countered their counter.
Time and space returned to normal, and suddenly, Elijah had a free shot at the djinn, who was only a couple dozen feet away. He hovered in the center of the platform, his tentacles twisting into living runes. Elijah leaped, ready to activate Herald of Regrowth.
But just as he reached the djinn, space shifted.
Elijah missed his target by a hundred feet, though he managed to land in a graceful roll that brought him back to his feet. It was a good thing, too. If he’d stumbled, even for a second, he might’ve lost every charge he’d managed to build.
All around him, pools of ethera had coalesced into blue flesh. In the time it had taken him to leap, each one had grown into a full-sized djinn on the cusp of demi-godhood. Despite their brief existence, every single one of them surged with enough ethera to become realistic threats.
They waved their arms, tracing complex patterns as they filled the air with various spells. Elijah had fought enough djinn during Sanctuary’s civil war to recognize their tactics.
And he knew that he wasn’t ready to fight so many.
Even as dozens of spells bore down on him, Elijah activated Herald of Regrowth.
His body erupted with the embers of a forest fire as his attributes surged. His Cloak of Embers swirled, slapping down the oncoming spells in a mimicry of his Mantle of Authority. And with so much power coursing through him, Elijah went on the attack.