Path of Dragons-Chapter 77Book 7: : The Slow Death

Elijah used Flicker Step, instantly appearing on the demonic Chainspeaker’s back. But when he bit down, his fangs were nearly deflected by rustling chains that had somehow superimposed themselves in front of his mouth. He adjusted, and his right fang managed to nick the demon’s shoulder. It wasn’t more than a scratch, but that was enough to deliver his Predator Strike-enhanced Envenom.

An instant later, a chain looped around his middle and hoisted him into the air. The damage was done, though. And perhaps more importantly, the enemy had been so distracted by Elijah’s attack that he never even noticed the swarm of phase spiders closing in on him.

Mimicking Elijah’s attack, they pounced, one after another. By default, the arachnids were cloaked in stealth that exceeded the potency of even Dat’s Ghost Cloak, but when they attacked, their true forms were revealed. The spiders looked like glass sculptures, and they were just as delicate. They were destroyed the moment they bit the Chainspeaker, but the conjured creatures succeeded in delivering their potent venom.

By that point, Sadie had reached the demon, and the second she got into range, she swung her recovered sword in a wide arc meant to cut the creature in two. The Chainspeaker looked boneless as he bent double, avoiding the attack before thrusting out his arm in Sadie’s direction. Chains unwrapped from his forearm and sped forward, writhing like snakes as they attacked Sadie.

She fended them off, but she was forced to retreat.

Elijah used the distraction to initiate another transformation. This time, he used Shape of Thorn, then activated Thornbound Legion. Ethera raced out of his core and through the conduits of his soul while, at the same time, a powerful wave of fatigue swept through him.

One cast of Primal Swarm – or its variants – wasn’t that taxing, but two in quick succession was more than noticeable. A third time would be nearly exhausting.

But Elijah knew better than to hold back. The Chainspeaker was incredibly powerful, and Elijah had no intention of leaving anything in the tank. When he used Thornbound Legion, a thousand tiny thorns grew out of his body, then shot free in every direction. Upon hitting the ground, the sprouted tiny legs, then raced forward as Elijah mentally commanded them to attack.

As one, they surrounded, then leaped upon the Chainspeaker. Before he could sweep them away, the little creatures rammed their spikey bodies into his flesh and burrowed deep. He managed to pluck a few away, but the vast majority of the conjured mites splintered, inflicting yet another affliction upon the demon. This one wasn’t about damage, though. Instead, it was meant to inflict a host of debuffs that would lower the Chainspeaker’s attributes and severely hamper his Regeneration.

But Elijah wasn’t finished.

Neither was Sadie, who, like Elijah, used the Chainspeaker’s split focus against him. She seized upon his distraction, ramming her sword into his stomach up to its hilt. The blade burst from his back in a shower of blood, meat, and thorny splinters. Elijah knew better than to trust that the wound would slow the Chainspeaker down, and he raced forward, intent on finishing it off.

He never got there.

A storm of chains erupted from the ceiling, lashing out at both Elijah and Sadie. The sound was deafening, but at first, the chains struggled to get past his natural defenses. However, with every passing second, they picked up speed until they began to strip his scales from his body. To combat it, Elijah activated Unchecked Growth, then added Domain of Vines.

Time was ticking down. If he didn’t do something soon, the Chainspeaker’s domain would return, and they would all die. Or worse, be imprisoned next to all the other captives.

Vines burst from the floor and writhed all around Elijah’s recovering body. They formed a living cocoon, shielding him from the worst of the storm. Meanwhile, other vines encircled the Chainspeaker. His chains fought against the vines, and at first, it seemed that they were winning. They ripped through Elijah’s roots and vines like they were nothing.

But the advantage of Domain of Vines had never been in their durability. They were strong, but not that strong. Instead, the reason they were effective lay in the sheer amount of vitality they could channel. With Unchecked Growth driving them, their ability to regenerate was nearly infinite. When one was struck down, another two took its place, overwhelming and clogging the demon’s chains.

That was only the first part, though.

The second came when Elijah barreled into the Chainspeaker, tackling him to the ground. His efforts were rewarded by hundreds of chains tearing huge chunks of his flesh away, but those wounds sealed only a moment after they were inflicted. Such was the other advantage of Unchecked Growth, and Elijah used it to the extent of its advantage. He took hits he never could have otherwise endured, all in the hopes that he could tear the Chainspeaker to shreds.

In service of that goal, he ripped the creature apart.

But no matter how much he tore and shredded the creature’s body, no wave of experience came.

“Fifteen seconds!” shouted Dat from the back of the room.

Just then, a bloody hand, stripped of flesh, rammed into Elijah’s stomach hard enough to lift him from the ground. He landed a couple of feet away, but even that short distance was enough to allow the Chainspeaker to slither away.

Sadie was there waiting for just such a thing to happen, but when her sword descended, the demon snaked out of the way. The blow that should have cleaved him two only served to sever an arm.

“Five seconds!”

Elijah knew they’d failed.

He yelled, “Free the prisoners! Get them out!”

Then, as Unchecked Growth ran its course, he began another transformation. This time, he resumed his human form. By the time he cast Blessing of the Grove, Soothe, and Nature’s Bloom, Dat’s domain-canceling ability petered out.

Immediately, Elijah felt his attributes fall.

To counter that precipitous drop, he embraced Shape of the Master. For the third time in only a minute, he cast a variant of Primal Swarm. This time, it manifested as a swarm of fire beetles. There hundreds of the fist-sized creatures, and each one glowed with fiery light. Their wings glittered like onyx as the first wave descended upon the Chainspeaker.

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By that point, he had become a truly miserable sight. Most of his leather wraps had been ripped away, and huge chunks of his pale flesh had gone with it. That, along with his missing arm, was the only reason Elijah held out any hope at all.

The first few fire beetles hit the demon like grenades, filling the dungeon with the deafening sounds of explosions. They weren’t terribly potent, but Elijah hadn’t expected them to me. He recalled the spell’s description:

Infernal Plague

Conjure a swarm of fire beetles that will detonate on impact with enemies. Detonations do immediate damage and inflict a slowing affliction upon foes. Strength of detonation dependent on Ethera attribute. Potency of affliction based on Core Cultivation.

Only useable in Shape of the Master (or appropriate evolutions).

The power of the explosions was based on his Ethera attribute, which had been lowered considerably by the Chainspeaker’s domain. However, his Core remained as powerful as ever, which meant that the slowing affliction inflicted by each exploding fire beetle was unaffected.

Elijah could only hope that the creature’s chains would be slowed right alongside his body, because that was their only chance of victory.

Those thoughts raced through Elijah’s mind as the transformation into the Shape of the Master completed. The explosions continued, wave after wave, until the fire beetles were no more. The Chainspeaker stepped through the final eruption, and he looked no worse off than before, save for a few singe marks.

“Cheap tricks,” he rattled. Then, he focused on Elijah’s small form. “What is this adorable thing? I must dismantle it immediately!”

The chains came from every direction.

Elijah saw them coming from a mile away. But with his attributes having been so thoroughly reduced, his body struggled to keep up with his reaction speeds. He leveraged every facet of his Jade Mind to the task at hand, using the lessons he’d learned in the fight against the old master and his three-hundred warriors.

It was enough.

Though only barely. He dodged each chain by scant inches, and he knew that if he made even a slight error in judgement, he would die. He didn’t have any other tricks. No more game-changing abilities. Not with his attributes having been so thoroughly bottomed out. The Shape of the Master was his only chance, and he seized upon it with every fiber of his being.

Frustrated, the Chainspeaker shouted something unintelligible, and the ferocity of the storm of chains reached a fever pitch. All the while, Elijah remained in a trance-like state, knowing that if he let up, even for a split second, he would die.

So would the captives. Hong Kong would fall. Dat would die.

And he’d lose Sadie.

He refused to lose someone else. He would not allow it.

Despite the impairment foisted upon him by the domain, Elijah found new levels of focus that spurred his body to an entirely higher realm of control. Each of his forms were more than a few extra attributes and access to new abilities. They were that. But they also came with hidden advantages.

With the Shape of Venom – and its predecessor, Shape of the Predator – he became a peerless hunter. Shape of Thorn activated his protective instincts and taught him how to harness his rage. Shape of the Sky came with an innate understanding of airborne maneuverability. Each of those aspects had taken time to coax out of the forms, but they were there all the same.

Shape of the Master allowed him to reach the levels of focus he needed to live up to the name of the ability. With that, he pushed himself harder and harder, and as the ferocity of Heart of Fire began to mount, he realized something important. If he unleashed Incinerate, he would kill everyone in the room.

Thankfully, Sadie and Dat understood what was coming. As such, they’d developed a plan to counter it. Even as Dat unlocked and ushered the weakened prisoners to the door, Sadie defended them from the chains. Her sword moved like a weapon half its size as she deflected one attack after another.

If the Chainspeaker had focused on her, she never would have been successful in her mission. However, with the bulk of his attention on Elijah, his chains lacked speed and power.

That observation almost cost Elijah when he narrowly avoided a pair of chains coming from opposite directions. He did so by springing backward, knocking one away with his staff while dodging the other.

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His actions only served to infuriate the Chainspeaker further. More chains descended from above and attacked from every side. Elijah’s staff became a blur as he blocked more than he dodged. That didn’t help him build charges of Heart of Fire, but it did keep him from losing the ones he’d already acquired.

Minutes passed. In battle – especially one as furiously contested as the current one – that was an eternity. And yet, Elijah never once lost focus.

Finally, Dat managed to lever the door open, and the men and women who’d been taken captive began to pour of the dungeon. The Chainspeaker screamed something unintelligible, then turned to direct his chains at the crowd waiting for their turn to escape.

Seeing what was happening, Elijah leaped at his foe, twisting as he gained altitude, and smashed the Feral Spire across the back of the demon’s head. It snapped forward with a mighty crack that echoed across the dungeon.

Elijah continued his momentum, planting his feet on the demons’ shoulder and somersaulting to safety. When his bare feet slapped against the dungeon floor, he was between the Chainspeaker and the escaping captives.

More importantly, he’d finally reached a hundred charges of Heart of Fire.

But it was too soon to let loose with Incinerate. He couldn’t do that until everyone was gone. So, he raised his staff and waited for the chains to adjust. They did, and far more quickly than Elijah had anticipated. They glistened with ethera, telling him that if they managed to make contact, he would be done for.

It was a good thing, then, that he had no intention of allowing that.

He resumed his evasion, and with every passing second, the Chainspeaker became ever more frustrated. But to Elijah, that wasn’t important. The demon was already frothing at the mouth, with flecks of blood and spittle spraying with every snarled word, so a little more recklessness wasn’t going to change anything. No – all Elijah cared about was maintaining Heart of Fire until the prisoners escaped.

Moving more than a thousand people didn’t happen quickly, so Elijah had his work cut out for him. Fortunately, he was up to the task, if only barely.

The closest call came when, suddenly, the chains surrounded the Chainspeaker, obscuring him from Elijah’s vision. However, as was his habit, he’d opened the fight by using Brand of the Stalker. So, the demon blazed bright in his mind’s eye, and he had no trouble dodging an attack that otherwise would have been unavoidable.

Gradually, the minor migration from dungeon to hall finished. Dat yelled out, letting Elijah know, but he didn’t wait. He knew what was coming.

They all did.

After all, they’d seen what he could do back on the island when he’d killed the undead squid. The dungeon was about to become a very uncomfortable place to be. The door clanged shut, and suddenly, Elijah was alone with the Chainspeaker.

Without further hesitation, he opened his mouth and released the flames he’d held captive for far too long. They erupted from his throat with more fury than ever before, and chains that should have impaled him the second he stopped moving became molten slag. A second later, even that was gone as the metal became so much superheated vapor.

The Chainspeaker never knew what hit him.

He didn’t melt. Nor did he turn to ash, as Elijah had hoped. Instead, when the flames ceased, the demon had become a charred husk.

The dungeon glowed red with the heat, and suddenly, Elijah felt a wave of unbearably high temperatures wash over him. His skin blistered as the dungeon became an oven, and he collapsed. Before he fell unconscious, he had the presence of mind to resume his human form and cast Blessing of the Grove.

The last thing he saw before blackness overtook him was a blooming sunflower with petals of fire.