Path of Dragons

Book 5: Chapter 17: The Singing Cliffs

Elijah slammed the butt of his staff into a wraith’s skull, using Storm’s Fury to finish it off. The creature absorbed some of the ethera from the spell, but it was incapable of completely negating it.

Because, as with all things, their ability to drain ethera had limits. The key to beating them – aside from physical damage, at least – was to overload them to the point where they could no longer take any more energy. After that, any spells aimed in their direction hit them with close to full power.

For his part, Elijah preferred just ripping them to pieces, but he couldn’t abandon his healing responsibilities and shift into one of his other forms. Instead, he was forced to remain in his natural shape and use his other abilities to supplement and support, rather than take center stage.

It reminded him a little of his time in the Sea of Sorrows. There, he’d been forced to employ a similar strategy. However, in the jungles of the excised world, he had to worry about a lot more than his own safety. To that end, he cast Nature’s Bloom, letting the healing ability settle onto Sadie. She used the rejuvenation to good effect, lashing out with her massive sword and nearly cutting a wraith in two. But she didn’t stop there. Instead, she moved like a whirlwind, slicing through any wraith dumb enough to get in her way.

Fortunately, the creatures were not known for their intelligence, and as a result, she mowed them down with little issue. Meanwhile, the others used their own abilities to dispatch the remaining wraiths. Dat flitted around the battlefield, riddling the creatures with stab wounds as he moved among them with impunity. For his part, Kurik was obviously the weakest of them, but he’d proved his worth before the battle had even begun, using his traps to separate the horde into more manageable groups, wounding them along the way. That strategy required forethought, but fortunately, he and Dat had established themselves as capable scouts. So, aside from that first encounter with one of the larger groups of wraiths, they had yet to be caught unaware.

Regardless, even with how effective the strategy was, Elijah found the whole battle a little tedious. After spending much of the past five years fighting alone, he couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed with his limited role. Sure, he could heal passably well – especially when his companions were as capable as they had shown themselves to be. However, that didn’t mean he preferred that role in a fight. Instead, he wanted to use his full suite of abilities, including his various shapes, to put his thumb on the scale of battle.

But if he did that, people might die.

And as much as he wished the situation was otherwise, he’d taken the role of the group’s healer, and he intended to fulfill those responsibilities regardless of how tedious he found it to be.

So, he healed. And he defended himself with his staff, augmenting his damage with Storm’s Fury. He didn’t even dare to use Swarm or Calamity for fear that they would take too much of the ethera he needed to reserve for healing.

Finally, they finished the battle off, and the best Elijah could say about it was that he’d kept everyone alive, he’d gotten a bit of experience, and best of all, it was over.

Afterwards, they regrouped, and he healed any remaining damage before they set off once again. Over the previous week, they had learned not to linger after a fight. If they did, they’d soon find themselves embroiled in another conflict.

“How close are we, Dat?” asked Sadie, following the Witch Hunter.

“A few miles,” he answered. “Maybe a little more.”

He’d been saying the same thing for the past few hours. It wasn’t his failure, but rather, the map’s shortcoming. The thing was not even close to scale, so they had been forced to rely on the changing terrain for hints as to their relative position. More than once, Elijah had offered to fly above the jungle’s canopy and scout things out properly, but he’d been refused.

And he understood why, too. The skies were certainly not safe, as he’d discovered on the third day of their journey. Fed up with the lack of information, he’d used Shape of the Sky and thrown himself into the air. He was immediately attacked by a flock of birds that tried to rip him to shreds, forcing him to land. He’d tried twice more, but with the same results, proving that taking to the sky was not an option.

Which left him frustratingly bound to the ground, playing a stifling role, and in the company of a woman who clearly hated him. She even resented when he healed her, as if the touch of his spells was somehow unclean. It was nearly enough to make him go his own way, and if Kurik hadn’t been part of the group, he might have done just that and damn the consequences.

But he had decided to be the bigger person, to turn the other cheek when it came to Sadie’s open hostility. He was just congratulating himself on his maturity when he heard a whistling sound.

“What is that?” asked Kurik.

“You hear it, too?” asked Sadie.

“I think we all do,” Elijah pointed out. That earned him another glare.

They continued forward, and Dat returned from his most recent scouting expedition. He said, “I think we’re here. Only a two-hundred meters up ahead.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Sadie asked, “What is it?”

“You’ll see.”

With that, they followed him through the jungle. The vegetation quickly turned much sparser until, finally, they reached a barren stretch that had been scoured clean by high winds. But that wasn’t the first thing Elijah noticed. Instead, his eyes were locked on the enormous butte formation looming over them. Aside from a few hardy bushes that dotted the surface of its cliffs, it was entirely free of flora.

Around the summit, thousands of birds not unlike the ones that had previously torn him from the sky circled, filling the air with their raucous cries.

“How tall do you think it is?” Elijah asked.

“A few thousand feet,” Kurik answered from beside him. “Maybe as much as ten. Depth perception gets a bit tricky at that kind of elevation.”

The wind picked up, filling the air with a whistling sound. That’s when Elijah noticed that the cliffs were pocked with holes, through which danced ethera. He could only barely see it, even with Eyes of the Eagle active, but he knew there was something there he was missing.

He took an inadvertent step forward, and a notification appeared before his inner eye:

You have reached the Singing Cliffs. To conquer the Challenge of Aesira, reach the top of the cliffs, find the Ivory Egg, and destroy it. Reward: Seed of the Whistling Wind

Elijah read the notification a second time. On the surface, it seemed a simple enough task, but he reasoned that there would be far more to it than he saw at first glance. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder if he might be able to mitigate some of the challenge by using his unique capabilities.

“Should I try to fly up there?” he asked, glancing back to see his companions’ glassy-eyed expressions. It was rare that he’d gotten the opportunity to see someone reading a system notification, but he recognized it nonetheless.

Sadie was the first to refocus, but the others followed suit fairly quickly.

“What’d you say, bro?” asked Dat.

“You all know I can fly. Should I change and try to reach the top?” he asked.

“Those birds ain’t gonna let you do that,” said Kurik.

“I say we should let him try,” Sadie said.

“Let me?” Elijah asked, narrowing his eyes. He didn’t like the implication of that. No one let him do anything.

“You know what I meant.”

“Please don’t start with the bickerin’ again,” said Kurik. Then, to Elijah, he said, “If you think you can make it, go ahead. I still don’t think it’s a good idea, but I ain’t here to tell you what to do.”

When Elijah looked at Dat, the Witch Hunter just shrugged and said, “You do you, bro.”

Sighing, Elijah glanced up at the cliffs. He didn’t think he could make it all the way to the top. Those birds certainly wouldn’t allow it. However, he did believe he could probably make it a few hundred yards up. Maybe as far as halfway before the birds even noticed him. That would make things far easier.

So, without further debate, Elijah transformed via Shape of the Sky, and as soon as his wings had fully developed, he launched himself into the air. At first, he made great progress, beating his wings to gain altitude.

And then the wind started up.

The first gust hit him like a cannon ball, sending him cartwheeling across the sky. The next gust didn’t give him a chance to recover before it smashed into him. Then, the next came. And the next after that. The gusts – which were more like bursts of air – kept coming, pushing his Constitution to its limit. More, he was thrown further and further off course until he found himself plummeting into the jungle.

He righted himself just in time to slow his fall, and he managed to tuck his wings close to his body as he tore through the canopy. He hit dozens of limbs on his way down, then slammed into the ground hard enough to fracture one of his ankles. He transformed immediately, casting Soothe the second he regained his human form. But even as his ankle – and a couple of other injuries he’d incurred – healed, he examined what had happened.

Those wind gusts carried with them an intense flare of ethera that felt vaguely familiar. He lay there as his wounds mended, using every available facet of his mind to search his memories for anything relevant.

And then it hit him.

Just after finishing the Temple of Virtue, he’d flown high above his island, where he felt something flitting about the clouds. At the time, he hadn’t truly understood what it was that he’d felt, but as he lay there in the jungle, he began to understand it.

“Air spirits,” he said to himself. Or perhaps they were spirits. He wasn’t sure what to call them, but their nature seemed obvious now that he’d been exposed to them on two different occasions.

And they packed quite a punch, making it impossible to fly in the vicinity of the cliffs. Moreover, he suspected that they would complicate any potential climb as well.

Elijah was still considering it when Kurik found him lying on the ground. The dwarf helped him to his feet, then said, “I don’t want to be the sorta dwarf to say I told you so, but…”

“Just say it.”

“I did tell you it wasn’t gonna end well.”

“You did.”

“Good thing you’re so durable.”

“Yeah. But I did find something out,” Elijah added. “Maybe it’ll make it worth it.”

Kurik shrugged, reaching out to help Elijah to his feet. “Whatever you need to tell yourself. C’mon. The others’re waitin’.”

With that, Elijah and Kurik returned to the rest of the group, where he went on to tell them what he felt. “I think they’re spirit spirits that represent air or wind,” he said. “I’ve felt them before, but they weren’t so hostile then.”

“How does this change things?” asked Sadie.

Elijah shrugged. “I have no idea. Knowing our enemy can’t be a bad thing, right?”

“Even if that enemy is incorporeal and probably immune to physical attacks?”

“Uh…”

“I think they’re probably less of an enemy we’re supposed to fight, and more of an obstacle we’re meant to overcome,” she suggested.

“That makes sense,” Kurik said.

Dat remained silent, tilting his head to the side as he listened to the whistling of the wind.

“It seems that we only have one way forward,” Sadie said, looking at the cliffs. “We must climb.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s going to get more complicated than that,” Elijah pointed out.

“Then we will overcome,” she countered. “We have no other choice, unless you wish to turn back.”

“No.”

“Good. Let’s go,” she said, striding forward across the wind-stripped land and toward the butte formation. The others followed. Elijah wasn’t worried about himself. He was a survivor in every sense of the word. Even if he failed to conquer the challenge, he would probably be fine. The others, he wasn’t so sure about.

But they were all adults, and they’d chosen their paths. Now, they all had to walk them.