Path of Dragons 14 - Chapter 2 - Unsuitable

The thread felt thicker.  Almost real, but still too ephemeral to count as an actual connection.  But so long as it still existed – as long as Elijah could feel it – it was all he needed to guide his path home.

He had been at it for longer than he cared to understand.  Months?  Years?  In the void, time didn’t exist.  Nor did it matter.  Not to his quest to return to Earth.  He’d lost count of how many other dimensions he’d visited.  Dozens, at the least, though in the wake of his encounter with the terrifyingly powerful manta monster, Elijah had shied away from entering any new dimensions.  That lasted until the hunger and dehydration had pushed him to the edge.  After that, he’d had no choice but to find some place to rest.

Most of the dimensions he’d visited since were peaceful, if borderline incomprehensible.  With the Dimensional Monocle as his guide, he managed to avoid the truly odd ones.  It only gave a brief glimpse through the veil between realities, but what he saw was enough to drive some people mad.  They weren’t just confusing.  They were entirely incompatible with his understanding of reality.

Thankfully, the monocle gave him enough insight that he could avoid plunging headfirst into madness.

There were still tinges of that in the comparatively safe dimensions, though.  Even the peaceful realities were dangerous, and he’d been forced on more than a few occasions to fight or flee well before he’d completely recovered.

But so far, he’d survived.

However, it wasn’t until recently that he decided that he could use the void.  For one, the constant pressure definitely helped to advance his body cultivation.  Not all at once, but it was good preparation for when he felt ready to take the next step. 

That was a long way off, though.

What felt much closer was core advancement.  It had been impossible back on Gorveth, but barely a day had passed that he hadn’t exercised his cultivation.  Was it ready?  Maybe.  Probably not.  But when he saw a dimension of fire that resembled the surface of a star, Elijah truly began preparations for advancement.

That particular dimension wasn’t perfect for his purposes.  Despite the fiery landscape, it was relatively light on ethera.  But it still sparked the idea, and even weeks later, it stuck with him.

The void wasn’t perfect for his core exercises, though.  The atmosphere – or lack – was oppressive, but it was also nearly devoid of usable ethera.  So, Elijah’s efforts were only moderately effective.

However, he began to factor ethereal density into his choice of where to rest.  And when he entered those realities, he spent at least a few days – after recovering – of each stop just cultivating his core. 

It was a struggle.

For one, each reality seemed to come with its own rules regarding how ethera expressed itself.  In some cases, it presented as a visible lattice of energy.  In others, it was similar to Elijah’s native dimension.  In most realities, it was heavily attuned, usually according to that dimension’s native theme. 

And that meant that most realities were useless for his purposes.

The search did give Elijah some additional insight into how to identify various attunements, which he used to anticipate the flow of ethera in ways he’d never really considered.  It was educational, and he managed to sharpen his senses a little more with each passing day.

As time marched on, Elijah gradually increased the size of his core, forcing his roots to expand a bit more with every cycle.  Not by a lot, but it soon reached the point where he felt he was ready to take the next step.  So, as he continued to follow that almost-real connection between Treebie and the World Tree, Elijah began to search for an appropriate place to advance his core.

In a perfect situation, he would have found one that resonated with his attunement.  But it seemed that nature-based realities were few and far between.  Even when nature was present, it was subservient to the various other affinities, and not by a small degree.

And in the end, Elijah chose to compromise his standards.

The world he chose was at least familiar in terms of its layout.  And in fact, it reminded him of the abyss.  But unlike Gorveth, which lacked the ethereal density to support his core cultivation, this place made Elijah feel like he was swimming in solid energy.

It was too bad, then, that it was almost entirely fire-attuned.

Elijah slipped through the crack in the dimensional fabric and slithered into the new reality.  A wave of intense heat buffeted him, and his rainbow scales sizzled. 

Scales of Infinity made for a great defense against the forces of the void.  The ability even gave some limited protection against other destructive elements, particularly the corrosive abyss.  And Elijah suspected the Shape of the World Serpent would be perfect for space travel. 

Yet, against fire and heat, it was only marginally effective.

So, Elijah shifted into his human form and immediately regretted it.  His clothes, all of which were high quality, immediately disintegrated under the effects of the ambient heat.  His skin blistered as well, though his silver-tier body held up well enough that it only took a quick cast of Wild Resurgence to reverse the damage.

When he felt safe, Elijah took a moment to examine the setting.

The world was one of fire, black stone, and magma.  If there’d been a few suffering souls about, Elijah might have likened it to hell.  But as it was, Elijah found himself thinking back to Cinderath, the lava kraken he’d saved back in the Trial of Primacy.  Did it live in a place like this?

Maybe.

Though Elijah knew that it wasn’t a great comparison.  For all that Ignis, the Realm of Fire, was an alien place, it was also connected to the World Tree.  And Elijah suspected that would make all the difference. 

It did make him wonder if that was what differentiated those connected realms from the dimensions he’d seen during his journey through the void.  Was it simply the World Tree’s presence that made them different?  Or had the World Tree targeted them because they suited its purposes?

That was an interesting thread of thought, but Elijah hadn’t come to the fiery dimension to address metaphysical questions.  Instead, he had a very distinct purpose.  He wanted to take the next step in his core evolution.

To that end, he spent a few hours searching for a perfect location, which he eventually found in the form of a massive crater filled with fluctuating flows of lava.  Geysers of molten rock soared into the air, only to fall as burning rain.  The air was hot enough that it never really cooled.  Instead, it just flowed like water back to the source.

Elijah stood at the edge of that roiling lake of lava, the smell of sulfur, smoke, and a hint of copper filling his nostrils.  There were beasts living in that lake.  He could sense them easily enough, though they felt ephemeral.  Like bubbles of air given sentience. 

In any case, they also seemed reasonably peaceful.

Even so, he hesitated.  The lake was powerful enough for his purposes.  The air sizzled with more than just heat.  Energy swirled above the lake of lava, coalescing into blue, ethereal vapor.  If anything, it would be too much for him to handle, which was the source of his hesitation.

But when had that not been the case?  He’d endured so much.  He’d marched ahead into forces – and battles – he never should have been able to endure.  That was his defining trait.

Yet, he knew he wasn’t invincible.  He could feel his own vulnerability, like a solid entity perched on his shoulder. 

“I can handle it,” he muttered to himself, his voice carrying only an inch or so from his mouth.  Sound worked differently in this reality, as evidenced by the lack of noise coming from the exploding geysers.  They erupted with the force of volcanoes, sending shivers through the land.  By all rights, they should have been deafening, but Elijah only heard them as a dull thump. 

He took a deep breath, clenching his fists against the scorching air in his lungs.

And then, he waded forward.

Even with Wild Resurgence pulsing through him, he struggled to keep up with the damage done to his legs.  Still, he continued forward, even as the immense heat tore through him, burning through his flesh and blackening the bones beneath.

He grunted silently at the pain.  It didn’t even make it past the regrown spores of his mind. 

He took another step.  Then another.

He’d long since placed all of his gear inside his Arcane Loop.  So long as it was bound, it could regenerate alongside his body.  However, each time it did, it would be damaged.  Aside from his ring, the only other piece he’d not removed was his Antlers of the Wild Revenant.  It protected him from mental attacks, and though the trait had been quickly overcome by the manta, that brief moment of protection was probably the only reason he’d managed to escape.

So, the helmet stayed.

Thankfully, it was incredibly durable, on account of Hidden Authority, which shifted the helmet into a separate space.  Nothing could touch it, there. 

In any case, everything else remained in his Arcane Loop, so he didn’t need to worry about anything being destroyed.

Nothing but his body, at least.  And that could be regenerated.

As he waded forward, Elijah considered shifting into the Shape of Embers.  That form was much more suited to the environment.  Yet, Elijah remained in his human form, as much a show of defiance against the hostile reality as because he felt that the constant damage was useful for his endeavor.

The lake of lava was shallow, so at least he didn’t need to swim to reach his destination at the center of the crater.  That didn’t mean his trek was easy, though.  By the time he arrived, the pain had long since overwhelmed his spores to take root within the leaves of his mind. 

He quarantined it as best he could, but he could feel it reaching out.  Growing.  Like a disease meant to overwhelm the tree of his cultivation.  He couldn’t contain it, either.  Instead, he simply embraced it.  He welcomed it.  He lived it.

Then, at last, he settled in, sinking down to his knees.  He closed his eyes and focused inward. 

Elijah took a deep breath, opening every aperture of his mind.  They swirled, dragging dense flows of ethera into his soul.  The branches burned.  If he’d tried something like that before advancing his mind or soul – or his body – to the fifth tier, he would have been utterly destroyed.

Even now, destruction felt imminent.  It seemed unavoidable as vast torrents of fire-attuned ethera scorched through every fiber of his being.  His body turned to ash, and yet, he held his spirit in place. 

It burned too.

Though Elijah had long since learned that his spirit was far more enduring than any other aspect of his being.  It wasn’t something he could directly cultivate, but it grew stronger with every advancement he made.  It was more than that, though.  Every time he survived, every time he managed to endure a wave of pain, every injury, physical or emotional – they all served to strengthen his spirit.

In a lot of ways, it was more of a representation of who he was than any of his various forms.  And it would not fall prey to a little fire.

Buoyed by the strength of his spirit, Elijah settled in to work.  As he did so, time lost any sort of meaning – even more so than when he was in the void, largely because he didn’t need to pay attention to bodily functions.  Instead, his concentration remained solely on the process of cultivating his core.

That was when he first recognized two issues.

The first should have been predictable.  And in some ways, he’d already known it would be a problem.  The fact was that fire-attuned ethera just wasn’t that effective for his purposes.  He could make do, but it would take quite a lot more effort for him to reach the point where he could take the next step.

And even then, the results would be inferior.

The second problem was more serious.

He needed something that resonated with his nature.  With the dragon, the beast, and the man.  Most places in his reality met at least some of that criteria, especially if they were strong enough to support his cultivation.  However, the fiery reality where he found himself was so disconnected from anything he knew that it just wasn’t suitable for use in his advancement. 

If he’d been a creature of fire, perhaps it would have worked.  If he could make use of that attunement, he could have pushed things forward.  But as it stood, it was like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. 

Which was to say that he stood no chance of advancing his cultivation in such an environment.

Still, Elijah remained in place for a long time, just trying – and failing – to make it work.  Until, at last, he admitted defeat.  Once he did, he used Shape of Spores, then Mycelial Regrowth to reconstitute his body.  Once that was done, he retreated from the lake of lava, returned to the Shape of the World Serpent, and slipped back into the void.

The disappointment clung to him like a cloak, but Elijah wouldn’t allow himself to surrender to depression.  Not now.  After all, his path remained the same, and he was still determined to get home.