Path of Dragons

Sadie slammed into the wall, her pauldron crumpling as the impact sent a web of cracks spreading across the concrete surface. But the armor – as well as Bulwark of the Faithful – did its job, preventing her bones from shattering. It was a good thing, too, because if she’d been stunned, even for a moment, she would have had her head taken off by the scything claws of the latest monster. As it was, she narrowly managed to duck beneath the corroded blade, which bit into the concrete, slashing more than a foot deep into the wall.

She sprang away, rolling to the side as another claw sliced into the floor. When she regained her feet, she was forced to leap backward, and another oncoming blade skittered off her armor. The weight of the blow still staggered her, but she maintained her footing well enough to offer a counterattack. Her own blade arced out, hitting the mantis-like robot in the torso. The attack sliced deep, and sparks of ethera flew, but the creature was far from disabled. It responded with a downward attack that speared through her shoulder.

Knowing that she didn’t have a choice, she grabbed hold of the monster’s other scythe and pulled it close. The creature went wild, kicking at her with its multitude of sharp legs. The flurry ripped through her armor like paper, tearing into her flesh and sending blood flying with every passing second.

But she’d accomplished her goal. At last, the monster was still.

“Hit it with everything you’ve got!” she shouted hoarsely.

And her companions did just that. Dat fired his red-glowing crossbow bolts, Kurik leaped from the wall with his hatchets in hand, falling upon the monster’s back with the power of some sort of skill, and Benedict hit it with a bolt of pure darkness. Despite his boy-band good looks, it was easy to forget the man. His spells weren’t flashy, and most of the time, they were entirely undetectable. However, without his efforts, the fight against the beetle would have been far more difficult. It was only in the wake of that battle that she’d recognized the corrosion affecting the thing’s softer parts. When Sadie had asked about it, Benedict had revealed that his spells were slow-acting but powerful, causing escalating levels of rot and corrosion.

He'd used those powers at the start of the current fight, and Sadie suspected that without them, there was absolutely no way her attacks would have done anything but annoy the powerful mantis robot.

Benedict’s beam of darkness hit alongside everyone else’s attacks, and the effects were explosive. The first volley didn’t kill the thing. Nor did the second. But the third tore through its damaged carapace and destroyed the vital machinery beneath. By the fifth volley, the creature staggered drunkenly away, and Sadie finished it off with a massive overhand strike that sheered it nearly in two.

Throughout the fight, Ron had never stopped healing, so by the time it was finished, Sadie’s injuries weren’t nearly as dire as they should have been. They still hurt, but that was the life of a defender. No matter how potent her abilities, she felt the pain of each landed attack.

“Your armor is kind of messed up, bro.”

Sadie looked down. The armor had been with her for years, and now, it was mostly ruined. It could still be effective, but it wouldn’t be long before she needed to think about replacing it.

“It happens,” she said, trying not to feel the sense of nostalgia racing through her mind. Or was that grief? After all, she’d gotten the armor just after her first tower run, back before she’d known anything about the undead threat. Back when Lisa was still alive.

It had been two years since she’d died, and there wasn’t a day that went by that she didn’t replay those events. It was worse for Dat, especially when the anniversary of Lisa’s death had just passed.

But she couldn’t allow the tragedy of her sister’s death to distract her. The living depended on her to remain focused. So, she asked again, “Are there any more of them?”

Kurik shook his head. “Not that I saw,” he answered. “But some of them things can use stealth.”

They’d been inside the compound for almost an hour by that point, and they’d had to fight every step of the way. There weren’t nearly as many enemies as there had been in the courtyard, but each one they found was almost as strong as the beetle. Just surviving had required every ounce of teamwork they could muster, and even then, it was barely enough.

“I think this is the way,” Dat said, pointing down an adjacent hall.

Sadie knew better than to distrust his directions. There was an ability at play, though it was one she didn’t understand. Dat was full of surprises, but he was as reliable as they came. So, after ensuring that everyone was in as good of condition as they could manage, she set off down the hall. The others followed.

“Stop.”

Sadie turned to Kurik and asked, “What?”

“You take one more step, you’re gonna lose that leg,” he said, pointing at a slightly discolored bit of concrete on the floor. The whole area reminded Sadie of a vast warehouse, though one that had been inexplicably divided into hundreds of rooms and a labyrinth of hallways. Along the way, they’d passed what were clearly manufacturing lines, with robots building robots, but they’d done nothing to disrupt the process. They had one goal – to kill the Engineer – and they wouldn’t be distracted from it.

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“There’s a trap there?”

“More like a security feature. Give me a minute,” he said, stepping forward. In seconds, he’d removed that bit of floor and was tinkering with a set of wires beneath. After a few moments, he pulled a small crystal from within the tangle of machinery and let out a sigh. “She’s a beauty, ain’t she? High-quality power crystal. Ain’t seen one of these since I left home.”

“What is it?” asked Benedict, leaning closer.

Kurik went on to explain that it was essentially a battery, and one with a multitude of uses. “Back home, they use these to power lights and such. But this one, it could’ve powered my clan’s whole compound. This powerful of a crystal is military grade. Meanin’ that the trap it was runnin’ would’ve turned you to ash.”

“Damn, bro. Good thing we have you here.”

The dwarf didn’t respond, save to give Dat a nod. After that, the group moved more cautiously, but all the while, Sadie was thinking of Elijah. There was no guarantee that killing the Engineer would help him, but she had to believe that it couldn’t hurt the Druid’s chances of survival.

If he was even still alive. It had been so long, and there had been so many robots following him.

That wasn’t a productive line of thought, though. So, she focused on the task at hand. Fortunately, they weren’t attacked by any other robots, but they were slowed by a multitude of traps. Each one took Kurik a little while to dismantle, which slowed them down. But at least he seemed excited to acquire so many power crystals.

Finally, they reached a large hallway that ended in a pair of immense double doors. Beyond those doors, Sadie could feel a powerful wave of ethera.

“That’s not ominous at all,” Dat said. “It’s practically burning my nose hairs.”

Indeed, Sadie felt the hairs on the back of her neck standing straight up. It wasn’t just dense; it felt like it had been charged with a potent current of electricity. But that told her they were on the right track. So, without any further hesitation, she strode forward and pushed the doors open.

Inside was a huge chamber, at the center of which was the largest power crystal they’d yet seen. It was at least four feet tall and half as wide, and it emitted a startling amount of ethera. It was embedded in a metallic column, from which flowed hundreds of wires in every direction. Every couple of seconds, a wave of electricity raced around the room in a circle.

But Sadie was focused on two other details. One – what looked like a console was set into the pillar, and, though it might’ve been a leap of intuition, she believed that it might hold the key to conquering the challenge. Even if it didn’t provide a direct benefit, the presence of such a console suggested that it might at least give them a hint as to how to proceed.

The second detail was even more concerning. Hundreds of mechanical spiders – each one about two feet wide – crawled over the wires like they were part of a web. She wasn’t sure of their purpose, but every now and again, the spiders would shoot a beam of molten plasma into various parts of the web of wires.

What made their presence even more concerning was the fact that, when Sadie opened the door, the spiders had clearly taken notice. Now, they were all staring at her.

“This isn’t good,” she muttered to herself. “Not good at all.”

* * *

Elijah was about to die.

He knew that down to the very core of his being. And yet, he refused to give in. So, as much as he recognized it as a bad idea, he threw himself upward and directly into the wasp’s flaming stinger. It erupted before his leap reached its apex, bathing him in fiery agony. Yet, his momentum was great enough that he managed to reach the stinger, and with charred hands, latch on.

Despite his actions suggesting otherwise, Elijah was not suicidal, though. And even as he yanked himself above the wasp’s eruption of fire, he used Guardian’s Renewal.

But to his horror, it met with significant resistance. Once before, in the fight against Thor, the ability had struggled to live up to its description, so he knew it wasn’t foolproof. And yet, the fact that it didn’t immediately prompt a complete recovery was more than a little surprising.

Within, the burst of vitality that came with the ability warred against the flames, mending his scorched body even as the fire raged through him. Back and forth, the two forces battled until, at last, one began to wane.

Guardian’s Renewal – as stalwart as it had been – was pushed back, steadily and surely giving ground to the fire. Elijah roared in agony, and nearly lost his grip on the monster’s stinger.

In the past, he might have scoffed at the notion that someone could will themselves to survival. That they could simply dig a little deeper and fend off certain death. Yet, that was precisely what Elijah did. He didn’t know where he got the strength to yank himself up that stinger and to relative safety, but he soon found himself clinging to life only a few feet above the still-ongoing flames.

His body was more than scorched. He’d moved past pain as his body’s nerve-endings had been burned to nothing. With his grip failing, he dug his claws into the metal stinger and climbed, one inch at a time, until he reached the wasp’s abdomen. Once there, he used the uneven ridges of its exoskeleton as handholds, eventually finding his way to its back.

Only then did he let himself rest.

Transforming back into his human form, Elijah went through the motions of healing. He could scarcely think. He barely knew where he was. Instead, he acted on autopilot, casting one spell after another as his flesh reformed. Eventually, he managed to recover his wits, and it was just in time for his nerves to reform and send wave after wave of burning pain throughout his body.

He endured, hanging on for dear life as the wasp searched for more threats. And he healed, one agonizing second at a time. The good thing about burns was that the body knew precisely what to do with them. He didn’t have to set or reset any bones. Instead, he only needed to give his body the fuel it needed to do its job.

However, even as he healed, he knew that he’d assuredly picked up a few new scars. More troubling was the fact that Guardian’s Renewal, which was his personal get-out-of-jail-free card, had failed. Clearly, he’d reached the point where the combination of his body outgrowing the ability and the sheer damage output of some of his enemies could overwhelm the skill.

So, he’d have to be a little more careful in the future.

The ridiculousness that he had that thought while lying on the back of a plane-sized wasp, after being literally melted by a beam of fiery death was not lost on him.

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