14-48. A Long Way to Go
“Hold it.”
“I am holding it,” growled Elijah, his entire body shaking with the effort.
“Feel the ethera circulate through you,” cautioned Tura. “Trace the patterns within your soul. Sense the shape of the spell.”
“I’m trying!”
“Try harder.”
Elijah’s frustrations flared, and his focus shattered. A second later, Lightning Domain tore across the jungle, felling trees and startling what few animals hadn’t already fled. His shoulders sagged.
“Fuck.”
Tura tilted her head, saying, “Earth slang is so strange.”
“Don’t disagree,” he muttered, bending down, his hands on his knees. He spat upon the ground, but it didn’t help the nausea churning its way through his belly. He took a few deep breaths, then forced himself upright. Pushing his sweat soaked hair back, he said, “Sorry. Again?”
Tura shook her head. “That’s enough for today.”
“I can keep going.”
“Not at the level I expect. Be patient. You will get it.”
Elijah turned away. He knew he’d made progress, but the destination was so far away that it made the training feel almost pointless. The goal was simple – to learn the structure of his spells. However, the only way to do that was to hold a spell on the edge of activation without actually releasing it.
Elijah had some experience with doing that, especially since he’d attained his dragon form and learned to compound his spells. However, that was markedly different from holding them on the verge of activation. What made it even more difficult was that he needed to devote quite a lot of his mind to studying the intricate layers of ethera that comprised a spell.
In some ways, a spell’s structure resembled runes, but the complexity involved made it like comparing an anthill to the International Space Station. Sure, some of the parts were similar enough, but there was a world of difference between how those pieces expressed themselves.
Further complicating matters was that Elijah’s spells contained quite a lot of power. Most people in the Empire of Scale began the process of learning how to map their spells when they’d only just attained their archetypes. An impossibility for Elijah, who’d spent those days just trying not to starve to death on his island.
According to Tura, learning to map his spells was an essential skill that would enable him to eventually make changes.
“You won’t always have the system holding your hand, boy,” she’d said. “Eventually, it’ll do no more than point you in the right direction. After that, the rest of the process is up to you.
“I’ve seen talented people cripple powerful abilities because they never properly learned the basics,” she continued. “And I have also seen stubborn children overextend themselves during training often enough to recognize when enough is enough. Go. Rest. We will continue this tomorrow.”
Elijah knew better than to argue. Over the past three weeks, he’d been put through the ringer, and in a way that highlighted just how little formal training he’d previously received. Sure, he was strong. He had power. But he lacked any sort of refinement.
Part of him liked that.
Part of him was embarrassed.
And the third part told him that he would smash through his limitations and use them as kindling.
The beast. The man. And the dragon.
They were separate but intertwined. Codependent but individualistic. And all three facets of his identity had ideas about how to approach his training.
In a way, it all made sense. His bestial nature wanted to rely on instinct – like a guardian might. His human side felt insecure and wanted to fit in. And the dragon wanted to conquer everything and let the chips fall where they may.
Elijah’s task was to somehow marry those three into a rational approach.
He sighed. That was a lot easier said than done, and it showed how naïve he’d been in the past. His three-sided nature would likely continue to be an issue, maybe until he reached the ninth level of mind cultivation.
Or maybe it wasn’t a cultivation issue at all. Perhaps he needed to sit down with a qualified therapist and figure out how to cope with it.
When he’d asked Tura about it, she had been surprisingly sympathetic. However, she hadn’t given him any real help, mostly because she claimed that, as a drake, she’d never fought such battles.
After being asked about it, Birk had just grunted and told him to train harder.
“And drink this before you go,” Tura said, shoving a clay pot into his hand. It held at least a gallon of steaming liquid that looked and smelled a lot like chicken broth. From previous experience, Elijah knew that it would taste quite similar as well, though a lot richer.
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“Don’t have to tell me twice,” he said with a grin. Then, he upended the steaming pot and guzzled it down. It filled him with warmth and served to loosen his tight muscles. More, it cleared his mind and eased some of the tension he’d heaped upon himself. After that first big gulp, he lowered the pot and added, “One day, you’re going to have to tell me what this stuff is.”
“Bah. Trade secrets,” she said, poking him with her cane.
“I have a friend I think you should meet,” he said, thinking of Biggle. The two would get along very well.
“Maybe when you finish your training,” she allowed. “Now drink, or I’ll stop telling Birk to take it easy on you, eh?”
Elijah blanched, then went back to drinking.
By the time he’d finished, he felt bloated but satisfied. And it only took Tura a couple of seconds before she shooed him away, which was how he found himself standing just outside her hut, unsure what to do with himself. So, without any other demands on his time, he took to the skies using the Shape of the World Serpent. As he slithered through the air above the jungle, he lost himself in the dense ambiance of the natural world.
A few times, various winged creatures found their way into his wake, but he was faster than any of them. And after a couple of hours, he realized that he’d gone so far afield that he could no longer see Ashakar.
That left him with an increasing degree of contentment.
Despite only leaving Earth a couple of months ago, it felt like an eternity had passed since he’d truly ventured into nature and let it envelope him.
The draconic world was simultaneously intimidating and familiar. The trees were much like the trees he’d left behind on Earth, and though most of the animals were reptilian, they displayed many of the same characteristics he associated with the fauna of his home world.
He followed a vast river as it snaked its way toward a mountain range that towered miles above the surface. Eventually, he landed next to a series of waterfalls that culminated in a small lake that eventually fed the river.
The lake itself was bordered by beds of gravel and piled boulders, reminding him a little of his island. He found a relatively flat spot, where he settled down, his legs crossed as he enjoyed a sight that no human had ever seen before.
Well, no human from Earth, at least. There were some in Ashakar, but they’d come from vastly different worlds.
As he sat there, he felt various creatures stirring beneath the surface of the lake. He even caught sight of a scaled, eel-like beast as it briefly surfaced. But they all seemed content to leave him be.
And then, he saw a small reptile peeking out from beneath a nearby boulder. It looked little different than any other lizard he might’ve seen back on Earth. A lot like a gecko, if he had to place it. But its body was more muscular, and it sported a row of sharp teeth. Tiny wings – vestigial in nature – sprouted from its blue back.
It watched him with uncharacteristic intelligence. Not like a beast. Almost like a person.
That was when Elijah realized what he was looking at.
It was a young dragon.
Barely more than a hatchling, from what he could tell. He still wasn’t entirely clear about how it all worked, but he knew that recently hatched dragons were left alone to survive based on their own merits. During that stage, they were little more than beasts. Only as they grew did they begin to reach for sapience.
At some point, their parents began to guide their growth. Perhaps it was only after they’d proven themselves. Elijah wasn’t sure what prompted the beginning of that next stage.
It was somewhere around that phase when he’d first met Sara. Back then, she was a lot like a guardian, though one capable of speech and high reasoning. But her self-awareness was still developing – a process that usually took decades. The line between sentience and sapience was blurry, but the full development of the core was usually seen as the true beginning of a dragon’s life.
Sara had only completed that stage about fifteen years ago, verifying that dragons operated on an entirely different timescale than humanity.
Regardless, Elijah didn’t want to interfere with the young dragon’s development, so he decided to leave its chosen territory. With a simple leap, he used Cloud Step to gain a little altitude and shifted back into the Shape of the World Serpent. As night fell, he spent another couple of hours exploring, and for a while, he let himself forget about spell structures, the upcoming tournament, or draconic life cycles. Instead, he just enjoyed the comforting aura of nature in all its glory.
But eventually, his path led him back to Tura’s hut.
Where he found someone waiting for him.
Sara stood there, practically bouncing with enthusiasm the second she caught sight of him. He shifted back into his human form, then plummeted from the sky to land next to her.
“What’s up?”
“Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for like…forever!” she announced.
“Exploring.”
“Oh? Find anything cool? Like a wild wyvern? Or…wait…did you fight a wyrm?!”
“What? No. Are there wyrms around here?”
“There’s supposed to be one somewhere in the mountains,” she explained. “But my teachers all say that’s just a rumor. And of course, there’s the Dreadwyrm.”
“The what?”
“Dreadwyrm. You know, the transcendent wyrm that would kill us all if it weren’t for mother’s aura of prosperity?”
“I have literally no idea what you’re talking about.”
She rolled her eyes. “You are so clueless.”
“You’re not wrong,” Elijah said, glancing back the way he’d come. If there really was a wyrm in those mountains, he kind of wanted to meet it. The prospect also terrified him, but that just made it a little more fun to consider. Not that he was about to do that. Not for a while, at least. “Are you just here for a visit? Or…”
“Oh! Right. You’re coming with me.”
“I am?”
“Yep. I want you to meet my friends,” she said. “They’re all older than me, so they’re competing in the Fang too. And they’re super awesome and fun. You’ll love them.”
It didn’t take a burst of intuition to recognize that he wasn’t going to wriggle free of Sara’s plans. So, resigned to giving her what she wanted, he said, “Well, I need to take a shower first.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“Ouch.”
“You stink.”
“Yeah, no – I got that.”
She held her nose. “Really, really bad.”
Elijah clutched his chest. “My heart.”
“And you need to do something…” She gestured to his entire body. “With that.”
“You really aren’t sugarcoating it, are you?”
“Nope! You need to make a good impression,” she announced. “I’ve been telling everyone how awesome you are, and I won’t let you ruin that by being you.”
“I thought you liked me!”
“I do. Just not the smell. Or the look. And your personality could use a little work,” she responded, grinning at the ongoing joke.
“Fine. I get it. Clean up, and be on my best behavior for your little friends,” Elijah said, raising his hands in surrender. “Just give me like five minutes.”
She sniffed again. “Make it ten. Or better yet, fifteen.”
Elijah just shook his head and walked away. As he did so, he muttered to himself about inferior soap and rude little sisters.