Path of Dragons

Book 6: Chapter 21: In Pieces

With Ron’s sparkly robe wrapped around his waist like a towel, Elijah looked down on his dismembered legs with narrowed eyes. “This is really weird,” he said. He’d sometimes wondered what would happen if someone with a powerful enough spell were to mend an amputated limb, but now, it seemed that he knew the results firsthand. His legs had grown from his torso, while the lower half he’d once called a part of his body had become nothing more than a big hunk of lifeless meat.

“Tell me about it, bro. I’ve never seen that Miracle heal so much damage before,” Dat said, standing beside him with his hands on his hips. “That thing ripped you in half. What did it feel like?”

“Fantastic,” Elijah deadpanned. In reality, he had difficulty describing what he’d felt. Part of that was because he was fairly certain that he’d been in shock ever since having his spine severed, but it was also due to the sheer oddness of the situation. Not many people could say they’d been cut in half and lived to tell the tail. And the ones who had were in no condition to look at it objectively. By all rights, Elijah should have been a blubbering mess of a man as he contemplated a life without anything below his legs. But there he was, completely healthy and feeling better than he’d felt since coming into the Trial.

It made sense, at least insofar as he applied the logic of the situation. Magic was powerful, but it seemed Miracles were capable of exceeding even his lofty expectations for all things ethereal. He’d heard a few stories about strong healers being able to help someone regrow a limb, but that was a long and difficult process that usually took months. And he’d sprouted a new pair of legs – as well as another all-important appendage – in the space of a couple of seconds.

However, whatever reasoning supported what had happened, Elijah couldn’t quite wrap his head around it. The human mind – even enhanced by cultivation – wasn’t meant to deal with that kind of thing, and he was wracked by feelings of confusion, guilt, and gratitude.

But if there was one thing Elijah was good at doing, it was burying his feelings in an oft-ignored corner of his mind and hoping it went away. So, that was what he did, though even with that flimsy quarantine in place, he couldn’t quite escape the residual emotions racing through him.

“I think I’m still in shock,” he said. “The medical term. But I guess the other meaning kind of works, too. I shouldn’t even be alive.”

“But you are.”

And he had Sadie to thank for it. “Is it always so…powerful? Her Miracle, I mean.”

Dat shook his head and glanced back to where Sadie was trying to mend her armor. “No. Faith works differently than ethera. In a lot of ways, it’s closer to experience. The more we act according to our nature, the more Faith we accumulate. For me, that means hunting down evil monsters and killing them. But for Sadie, it’s different. She gets faith for becoming an instrument of justice. I know that sounds vague, but that’s how she describes it. Regardless, it’s not quantified in our status, but we can feel it in our Cores. Building and building without letting up. I don’t know if there’s a limit to how much Faith we can store.

“But that’s just quantity. Quality is different. It comes from emotion. From the surety that we’re doing the right thing. Love helps, I guess. So do things like avenging an unjust act. The more intense the emotion, the stronger the Faith is.”

“So you’re saying that Sadie felt really strongly about…what happened to me?”

Dat shrugged. “Maybe. It might have been a reaction to the lich. Or both. I’ve learned not to look too deeply into Sadie’s motivations,” he said. It took Elijah a few moments to realize that the Witch Hunter had dropped his affable demeanor in favor of something far more somber. Serious looked odd on Dat’s face. “Anyway, I’m glad she did what needed to be done. We don’t stand a chance without you.”

“I think you’re selling yourself short,” Elijah said self-deprecatingly as he ran his hand through his hair. Thankfully, he hadn’t been entirely denuded like he had after so many other major battles. Though he did quickly come to realize that something else was wrong.

The network of channels he’d so meticulously carved for his ethera to travel throughout his body were riddled with disconnections. More, even the undamaged parts were thinner and more ephemeral than they had been before he’d been bisected. It was almost like those pathways were more memory than real. As a result, his ethera had begun to pool in places, which definitely didn’t seem like a good thing. Moreover, he sensed that if he tried to use any spells that incorporated his legs – like his transformations – he would have more than a few issues.

“Damnit,” he said, kneeling beside his legs. Thankfully, he still remembered all the patterns, so he felt confident in redrawing his pathways. And fortunately, he didn’t think he’d need particularly thick ethera to do so. The afterimages of his channels would make it easier to rebuild the network, meaning that he felt almost certain that he could do it just about anywhere.

Silver linings, he thought bitterly as he thought back to how painful the process of carving those channels had been.

But then again, the alternative was that he would have died. Or been forced to live his life without legs. So, perhaps he was looking at things all wrong. Sure, redrawing his pathways would be frustrating, but compared to the alternative, he knew he was lucky.

However, with that realization came the surety that he didn’t have any time to waste on the discomforting situation before him. So, he knelt next to his former lower half and began the process of stripping his equipment free. To preserve his modesty – or whatever, considering it wasn’t really part of his body anymore – he retrieved a towel from his Ghoul-Hide Satchel and covered the more personal bits.

“You okay?” asked Kurik, who’d approached while Elijah was busy with his task. The dwarf seemed fully recovered, though he was rattled by what they’d just experienced. That was understandable, considering that, against the necromancer, they’d come closer to death than ever before. Even the battle against the Immortals had been less potentially deadly.

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“I’m fine,” Elijah said. “But taking my pants off like this is really weird.”

He tried to force a smile, but he feared it looked more like a grimace. So, he wiped the expression from his face and focused on the task at hand. After only a few more seconds, he managed the feat and retreated out of sight to once again don his armor. It fit the same as always, but it still felt constricting in a way he couldn’t quite quantify. Like he was wearing someone else’s clothes.

In any case, he pushed that discomfort aside, piling it onto all the other feelings he didn’t want to deal with, then returned to the main chamber. There, the others were gathered around a small, silver chest.

“Waiting on me?” Elijah asked.

“Of course,” said Sadie, who’d completed the repairs on her armor. Even though she’d had an expert forge a new set back in Nexus City, its durability had quickly degraded during the fight against the necromancer. She’d done what she could with her magical putty – Elijah had no idea where she’d gotten it, and she refused to reveal its origin – but the once-impressive set of armor looked like it was only a few good hits from falling to pieces.

The woman herself didn’t look much better off. Sadie rarely appeared fragile, but standing there in the center of that chamber – with the body of the necromancer rotting nearby – she seemed somehow less substantial. It was as if a strong breeze might blow her away.

Was that because she’d used her entire store of Faith? Or was it something else at work? It was easy to forget that Sadie was a human being, and as such, she was obviously afflicted with all the same issues as everyone else. She wasn’t just an unthinking automaton of justice. She was a twenty-something woman who was just as in over her head as everybody else.

In that moment, Elijah wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms around her and just give her a hearty hug. She needed it. He knew that. But just as surely, he recognized that he was the absolute wrong person to provide that comfort. Despite her insistence that she didn’t actually hate him, the evidence that she at least disliked him was too dense to ignore.

No - Elijah wouldn’t be going down that road. Even if she was amenable – and maybe she was, given the way she looked at him at times – he knew that any relationship that came between them would be fraught with toxicity. Even simple friendship seemed impossible. The best he felt he could hope for was tolerance.

So, he said, “Thanks. Let’s see what a Pendant of Vitality is.”

As they discovered when Dat opened the chest, the item was precisely what its name suggested. A thin golden chain supported a small emerald, and when Elijah looked closer, he saw a current of dense ethera swirling within the gem’s interior. More importantly, he felt thick vitality emanating from the emerald, suggesting that it was an extremely powerful piece of equipment.

Elijah definitely wanted it, but given that he’d taken the last item – the Shard of Nature’s Might that was still sitting in his satchel – he didn’t think it would be fair if he took it for himself.

Dat used Hex of Scrying, and though he couldn’t determine the item’s exact effects, he could rule out the possibility that it was cursed. In addition, he said, “It gives strong bonuses to Regeneration and Ethera, and the whispers say it might be good for a Healer. I can’t be any more specific than that, though.”

“Seems like a pretty easy decision then, right?” Elijah said.

Sadie agreed, nodding her head as she added, “It’s obviously best for Ron.”

“I…I can’t take –”

“Just take it, bro,” Dat interrupted.

“Take care of the Healer, and the Healer’ll take care of you,” Kurik said.

Ron looked from one person to the next, then let out a sigh. After that, he reached out to take the amulet. He slipped it over his head, then bound it by injecting some ethera into the gem. Immediately, his eyes glazed over, but that only lasted a second as he read the effects of the item. When he did, he let an uncharacteristic whoop, then pumped his fist, saying, “Fifteen points in both Ethera and Regeneration!”

After a little experimentation, he also revealed that after donning the Pendant of Vitality, he could cast his spells more quickly. “It’s not a huge difference, but it’s noticeable, especially on Wave of Mending. This could be big.”

Elijah was happy to see that Ron was so satisfied with the item. More, he only felt a tiny twinge of jealousy, largely because his own Snake Totem still put in good work every time he used one of his afflictions. Making those effects last longer didn’t seem immediately impactful, but he’d seen the modifier really shine during their most recent battle.

Besides, he wasn’t a Healer. It was more useful sitting around Ron’s neck.

Once the loot was taken care of, they looted the pieces of the unnamed necromancer’s staves, then took everything the ta’alaki had been wearing. In addition, they gathered the shattered remnants of the crystals Dat and Kurik had broken while Elijah had been enveloped by the rotting flesh of the zombie amalgam. They didn’t feel like they held any energy, but there was a chance that they could still be useful.

After they’d taken everything they could, the group set out for the exit. Crossing through the empty halls came with an eerie feeling that was made even odder by the tiny tendrils of life returning to the atmosphere. It wasn’t enough to make anyone comfortable, but without the influence of the necromancer, the area seemed to be normalizing.

That was a relief, though Elijah knew that if another group were to embark upon the challenge, they would find it much the same as when he and his companions had first arrived. He had no idea how such a thing would work – even a quantum physicist would probably struggle to explain it – but he didn’t really care enough to investigate. It was clearly system shenanigans at work, and he was content to let it do its thing without his exploration or interference.

After all, if it was a malicious entity, surely Kirlissa would have said something. No – it was a tool, and he intended to treat it as such.

After descending from the floating pyramid, they reached the site of their old camp. The only remnant of their previous occupation was the cold fire pit Kurik had dug on the first day. Otherwise, it looked much the same as the rest of the area.

“I need to take care of something,” Elijah announced. “But before I sink into meditation, I want to thank everyone for having my back. Especially you, Sadie. I know what you did isn’t normal, and I’ll always remember that you saved my life. So, thank you. Everyone. I wouldn’t be alive without any of you.”

Sadie blushed, mumbling something about him not worrying about it. Kurik said, “And you best not forget it. Especially when it comes time to share out the loot.” He waggled his eyebrows as he grinned.

Ron said, “Saving people is kind of in the job description. But you’re welcome. It feels good to come out on top.”

And Dat said, “That’s what friends are for, bro.”

That brought a smile to Elijah’s face. He could acknowledge that he wasn’t the easiest person to befriend. Social awkwardness aside, he tended to keep people at arm’s length. However, he had to admit that – aside from the taciturn Sadie – the rest of his group had finally passed the line from companion to friend.

It was with those good vibes suffusing his thoughts that he settled in to take a look at the notifications begging for his attention. The first one pushed his grin even wider than before.