Path of Dragons

Book 5: Chapter 24: Killin' Field

“I want to go on record as saying that this is a stupid plan,” Sadie said, looking up at Elijah. “You’re going to end up dead.”

“Aww. I didn’t know you cared,” he said, stretching like he was getting ready to run a marathon. He didn’t really need it. As far as he could tell, he physically couldn’t pull a muscle. But it was more the principle of the thing.

“If you die, it will make completing the task more difficult,” she said without hesitation.

“That’s…very pragmatic.”

“I care, bro,” Dat said, ducking under one of Elijah’s outstretched arms. “But she is kind of right. If this goes wrong, we’re going to need to find a new healer.”

“I’m not a Healer.”

“You’re our healer,” Dat said with a grin. “Little ‘h’.”

Elijah ruefully shook his head, but he didn’t bother arguing – largely because they were right. There was every chance that his plan would go wrong, and if it did, it wasn’t out of the question that he’d end up dead. But in his defense, he truly believed he could pull it off.

“If I do die, Kurik gets my stuff,” Elijah stated.

“Give it to Carmen. She’ll know what to do with it,” he insisted. “Not that I intend on dying.”

“I don’t think most people intend to die, bro.”

“Technically, everyone intends to die eventually. That’s kind of a constant,” Elijah said. “But I get what you mean. If it makes you feel any better, I’m pretty hard to kill. I once got digested by a whale, and I’m still here. So, I think I can handle this.”

And he truly did. However, he was self-aware enough to recognize the role bravado played in that assessment. He needed to believe his plan would work, mostly because, after spending the past couple of days trying to figure out a plan, it was the best they could come up with.

Which probably said more about their available options than about the plan itself. Regardless, Elijah felt confident that he could at least escape if things went sideways. And that would have to do.

To move the conversation away from his possible death, he asked, “Does everyone know their roles?”

“Everything’s set up,” Kurik stated.

“I’ve been thinking. I should be the one to do it, bro. I’m fast, especially with your speed buff. And you might be needed back here,” Dat said.

“What if they catch you?” Elijah asked. “You know they’d rip you to shreds. Same with Kurik. The only one who would stand a chance against them is Sadie, and –”

“She’s too slow,” Dat said.

“I was going to say that we need her to play a different role. I think she has a perfect amount of speed,” Elijah said diplomatically.

Sadie rolled her eyes. “I’m not so fragile that I need you to stroke my ego. I can move quickly when necessary, but evading a multitude of enemies is not my forte,” she said. “I know my limits.”

That was more than a little surprising to Elijah, but he wasn’t going to argue. Regardless, the plan had already been made, and everyone had agreed to it. So, there was no point in discussing it further. With that in mind, Elijah said, “We all believed this to be our best plan, and so long as everyone does what they’re supposed to do, we’ll be fine.”

Of course, there was quite a bit more pressure on Elijah than on anyone else, but that seemed fitting, considering he was the party’s highest level. More importantly, he had plenty of experience engaging in plans precisely like the one laid out before them. But at least this time he had a little backup and the expert assistance of a dwarf who really enjoyed his traps. A little too much, if Elijah was honest.

After only a few more minutes, Elijah finished his preparations, then shifted into his draconid form. The transformation still brought a gasp from Dat, though Sadie and Kurik maintained stoic expressions.

“So cool, bro.”

Elijah ignored him. Instead, he took a deep breath before setting off across the forest. The first leg took a few minutes to traverse, largely because if he stepped off the established path, his plan would have been over before it even began. In any case, Elijah took his time, and eventually, he reached the safety of the untouched forest. That’s when he engaged Guise of the Unseen, and a few minutes later, the reason became obvious when he passed the cenote full of aviaks. The creatures were still blissfully unaware that Elijah and his party were so close.

That would soon change.

But not yet.

Elijah passed the huge sinkhole without pausing to investigate. He knew what was down there, as he’d spent a good portion of the last couple of days observing the creatures. They weren’t quite to the point where Elijah would have called them civilized, but they were communal. If he’d had to place their level of societal development, he would have said they were somewhere between primates like gorillas and the earliest ancestors of humanity.

But he knew they were monsters. He’d felt that back in the caves, and looking into the cenote had served to confirm that impression. If they’d been beasts – or worse, a collection of guardians – he might’ve hesitated before killing them. Knowing that they were monsters freed his conscience, even if he wasn’t entirely sure what differentiated between them and natural beasts.

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Back on Earth, he’d learned that the creatures he referred to as monsters – like the swamp hydra or the harpies – were never intended to end up there. They were like guardians without a natural treasure to protect, though everything Elijah had learned felt like an incomplete explanation. Perhaps the difference was simply that they weren’t natural creatures. Be that because they weren’t supposed to be there – like on Earth – or some other reason, what Elijah felt was the discordance between what they were and what was natural.

It was also possible that Elijah was missing something obvious. There was so much out there that he didn’t understand, so he was used to carrying on in ignorance.

Besides, he couldn’t afford to think too hard on it, and definitely not for very long. The fact was that the aviaks just felt wrong, they were in his way, and they’d already tried to kill him. Those factors made his path pretty clear, so far as he was concerned.

He’d already selected the spot where he would kick the plan off, and now, he just needed to get there, then set everything into motion. With that in mind, he gradually crossed the plateau until, at last, he reached his destination. It was a seemingly inconspicuous dell, barely thirty feet across, but it was distinguished by one, simple trait – the wraiths were particularly close to the surface.

They were only about five feet down, which meant that they wouldn’t be difficult to awaken. In fact, one of the big reasons Elijah had chosen to employ Guise of the Unseen was so that he could avoid just that.

At least until it was time to get things going.

For a few moments, Elijah remained in the center of that clearing, where he forced himself to reconsider his plan. Because once he made his move, there would be no going back. He would need to keep moving until he saw it through to the end.

But they’d been over it. They’d considered a hundred different plans, and none of them stood even the slightest chance of success. Perhaps things would be different if they had a different skillset available. Maybe if he had been a proper Healer, or if Dat had been a dedicated damage dealer rather than a scout. The same was true of Kurik, whose skillset was key to the plan’s success. The only one who seemed to fit into a traditional role was Sadie.

In any case, there wasn’t another viable option – at least not that they could think of.

So, Elijah reaffirmed his commitment to the plan, then shifted into his lamellar ape form. After taking a deep breath, he clasped his claws above his head, then brought them down with every point of Strength he possessed.

And considering he could easily lift multi-ton boulders, that was quite a lot of force indeed. His fists hit the ground like a meteor, digging a huge crater into the ground and absolutely destroying the first few wraiths slumbering below.

But there were a lot more to take their place.

The monsters awoke immediately, then started digging their way out of the ground. Elijah was already moving, though. He’d launched himself away from the point of impact, transforming into a draconid along the way. He didn’t pause long – just enough to recognize the chain reaction that came from disturbing the wraiths – before he raced away.

Normally, he would have found a safe spot to drop out of combat, then reengage Guise of the Unseen. However, that was the furthest thing from what he wanted, and he made just enough noise, digging into the ground along the way, so that the wraiths would know precisely who was responsible for disturbing their hibernation.

Predictably, the creatures erupted from the ground in a wave that expanded from the original point of impact. Dozens of the monsters hurled themselves after Elijah, waking more with every step they took. Soon, those dozens became hundreds, and in turn, those hundreds became thousands.

Elijah lost count after that. Even with One with Nature, he could scarcely differentiate between individuals among the mass of bodies following him. He only knew there were a lot, and that if they caught him out in the open, he’d be done for. So, he ran, pushing his quadruped body to the limit as he raced between the trees. For their part, the wraiths moved less like a group of individuals and more like a tidal wave of spindly, blue-and-white limbs. More than once, they uprooted trees in their fervor to catch Elijah.

However, in his draconid form, he could move extremely swiftly, so he had no issues staying ahead of them. Though the situation still unnerved him, and rightly so. One wrong step, and they would wash over him. If that happened, he would die.

He dashed among the trees until, at last, he reached his first destination.

The cenote.

Without skipping a beat, he launched himself high into the air. As he ascended, the first of the wraiths followed suit, leaping after him. But Elijah had already begun another transformation – this time, using Shape of the Sky – and the moment his wings developed, he beat them against the air, climbing even higher. Predictably, the wingless wraiths plummeted, crashing through the flimsy weave of grass and vines covering the pit. They fell gracelessly, alerting the entire settlement of aviaks along the way.

It didn’t end there, though.

The wraiths were so determined to catch Elijah that the mass couldn’t halt its momentum in time. And they too plunged into the depths.

But Elijah had his own issues to worry about, because even if he had wings, the sky was not his territory. The eagles had left them alone for the final part of the climb, but Elijah had soon learned that they roosted at the tops of those tall trees. And the moment anything went higher than a few dozen feet, the golden raptors reacted with characteristic violence.

Eagles swooped in, tearing into his vulnerable body. Not wanting a repeat of his last encounter with those murderous birds, he quickly dove, hitting the ground on the other side of the cenote. Once he hit, all but one of the eagles broke off the chase. The lone holdout found death at the end of Elijah’s snapping jaws.

After that, he didn’t hesitate to shift back into his draconid form and begin the final phase of his plan. He ran away from the pit, his ears filled with the sound of aviaks battling against wraiths, with a number of the smarter – or perhaps luckier – blue-and-white creatures in hot pursuit.

That was part of the plan, though there were quite a few more than he’d expected. At least a couple hundred. Maybe as many as a thousand. An intimidating force, though one he had some confidence they could handle.

Soon enough, Elijah reached what Kurik affectionately called the Killin’ Field. It had been chosen because it was the only place on the entire plateau that wasn’t littered with wraiths beneath the surface. And because of that, the group had been free to spend the past two days digging dozens of trenches, and at the bottom of each one were plenty of sharpened stakes, upon which Kurik had used his skills.

Optimisticaly, they’d hoped to thin the herd of wraiths, but more realistically, they knew the traps would at the very least slow them down. More importantly, assuming the creatures wised up to the presence of the situation, the traps would serve to funnel the monsters into a narrow corridor where their numbers would count for very little.

To aid that, they’d also built a series of earthen bulwarks, each one lined with more sharpened stakes and bearing the power of Kurik’s skills. Any monster that came into contact with those would end up having a very bad day.

Or that was the idea.

As Elijah picked his way through Kurik’s Killin’ Field, he heard the monsters’ gleeful yells turn into agonized screams. Then, finally, he caught sight of Sadie, who had planted herself between two earthworks, her sword gleaming with power. Elijah barreled past her, then immediately shifted into his caster form.

He whipped around, staff at the ready, just in time for the first monsters to crash into Sadie. She met them with her sword, and like that, the battle was on.