Path of Dragons 13 - Chapter 71 - An Inevitable Clash

“We should just kill them all,” Benedict said, without a hint of emotion. 

“That will not solve anything!” insisted one of the M’yakein’s council members.  Elijah had never learned their names, so he wasn’t certain what she called herself.  “And you can’t just kill the Synod.”

“He already killed one of them, and in the middle of Ithalon,” Zek pointed out.  “That’s why we’re in this mess.”

“So it’s the Reclaimer’s fault?!” asked Oshak. 

Elijah very much knew his name, largely because he’d become the self-styled leader of the cult dedicated to worshipping the so-called Reclaimer.  And considering that was just another label for Elijah himself, he had a vested interest in keeping an eye on them. 

The cult wasn’t that large.  Maybe a hundred people, all told.  Many of them were people whose children he’d cleansed, so Elijah understood the origin of their worship well enough.  However, that didn’t mean he was comfortable with it.  Far from it, in fact.  Yet, there wasn’t much he could do about it.  He’d tried, too.  On multiple occasions, he’d spoken at their meetings, insisting all the while that he was just a man trying to do the right thing, but his objections to their worship had fallen on deaf ears.

They had quickly become set in their ways, and there was nothing Elijah could say to change them.

“Of course it is,” Zek answered.  “He killed the Hollow Voice.  They can’t let that stand.  Why else do you think they chased us across the world?”

“They have never tolerated anyone outside their authority to exist,” one of the other council members responded.

Zek shook his head.  “Do you truly believe they knew nothing of Dravkein before they came for us?  Did you think they were entirely unaware of Malkein?  Evakein?  No.  They knew everything.  None of us were worth the time or effort it would take to kill us.  Not until Elijah entered Ithalon and killed the Hollow voice.  I don’t blame him for what he did, and I am grateful for everything he’s done for us since, but pretending he isn’t responsible for this is the height of dishonesty.”

It was one of the longest statements the old hunter had ever made – at least in Elijah’s hearing – but he had a good point.  Elijah had long known that he bore responsibility for the plight of Dravkein and the other settlements destroyed by Ithalonian forces.  That didn’t mean he regretted his actions.  Nor did it mean that he was wrong to take them.  But denying the consequences helped no one.

“Zek is right,” Elijah stated.  The entire council went silent at the sound of his voice.  “I made this mess, and I’ll clean it up.  I won’t ask any of you to fight.”

“Ask or not, I’m going to be there,” insisted Benedict.

There was a din of agreement, but not from everyone. 

Elijah knew better than to argue with the volunteers.  They were set on defending their new home, and not just because it was worth protecting.  Most of them were also fed up with the Synod and Ithalon in general.  Many had been cast out or forced to flee that city.  And the ones who hadn’t personally experienced that exodus had parents or grandparents who had. 

They hated the Synod and everything Ithalon represented.

Now, with Elijah’s help, they had a means by which they could make their enemies pay.  It was no surprise that many of them wanted to take it.

Either way, it had been made exceedingly obvious that something needed to be done, because the invading army had refused to turn back.  Instead, after resting for a day or two, they’d begun to move inland, and in a direct contradiction to Elijah’s orders. 

In truth, he’d never expected his warning to work.  From what he’d experienced in Ithalon, the members of the Synod were far too self-aggrandizing to acknowledge that they might be outmatched. 

Of course, Elijah wasn’t certain that was the case.  The last time he’d fought them, he’d been forced to flee, and he’d barely made it to safety.  However, a lot had changed since then.  Not only had he upgraded both his mind and soul, but he’d also reached demi-god status.  He had even gained a few levels.

Would that all add up to an advantage?  He had no idea.

But there were eight of them.  And they’d all attained a much higher level than he’d reached.  However, Elijah felt certain that he had an edge in combat experience, class rarity, and, of course, versatility.  If any of them had been through a fraction of the danger he’d experienced, he would have been incredibly surprised.

In the end, he was willing to bet on himself.

What he wouldn’t do was turn down help.

The problem was that, outside of a few higher level hunters and, of course, Benedict, M’yakein couldn’t muster much of a combat force.  It was to the point that Elijah would be shocked if there were more than a thousand capable fighters in the city.

So, even if they agreed to help, the assistance on offer would be quite limited.

Only Benedict could really turn the tide of battle, and that was only if he had plenty of time to prepare.  Thankfully, he did.

The argument went on for a few more minutes until someone pointed out that what they wanted was irrelevant.  The Ithalonians were coming.  Nobody could change that.  And if they were allowed to do what they wanted, then no one in M’yakein would survive the upcoming purge.

“We’ve all seen it,” said Qori, the leader of the city’s Farmers.  She was so mutated that she barely looked human.  However, Elijah had enjoyed his conversations with her, largely because of the passion she’d shown for her trade.  “I was only a little girl when they came to Okein.  I huddled in a concealed cellar alongside only twenty or so others while they rampaged across the city, destroying everything in their path.  When we finally emerged a week later, we found only the dead. 

“I will always remember that.  Ithalon has no mercy in it.  They will kill us all, should we give them the chance.  You all know it because you have lived through similar events.  Okein was my first experience with them.  Malkein was the second.  And then, Dravkein fell.  It is a miracle that we escaped.  And it is even more of a miracle that we found this place. 

“I, for one, will not be driven out.  I will not abandon the Reclaimer nor the Great Treebie.  The Synod comes, regardless of our wishes.  Reasons don’t matter.  They know we’re here, and they will no longer tolerate our existence.  We have no choice but to fight!” she shouted, slamming her hand against the stone table at the center of the room.

In the silence that followed, Zek raised his voice, “Qori is right.  We must fight.  I do not blame anyone who chooses to hide or flee.  But I won’t.”

A chorus of agreement followed.

After that, the council planned the response.  As Elijah had already noted, there wasn’t really much M’yakein could offer in terms of combat, so the thousand or so fighters they could muster would be used as a quick reaction force meant to respond to any attempts to bypass Elijah and strike at the heart of Druhmor. 

And they all trusted Benedict to be the backbone of their support strategy.  Surprisingly enough, he was onboard with it, too, which just showed how much he’d grown since Elijah had met him so many years ago. 

Once the meeting concluded, everyone went on their way to enact their parts of the plan.  Mostly, their jobs were limited to mustering the forces, but Elijah and Benedict had other tasks before them.

“I really hate this.  You know that, don’t you?” Benedict complained.

Elijah, who’d already shifted into his dragon form, craned his neck to look at the other man and said, “This is the fastest way.  Just suck it up and do what you need to do.”

Benedict opened his mouth to issue another complaint, but he thought better of it.  Instead, he grabbed hold of one of Elijah’s scales and used it to spring onto his back.  Soon enough, Elijah had taken to the sky.

The landscape flashed by below him as he made his way to the spot he’d picked for the confrontation.  It was far enough from Druhmor that Treebie wouldn’t be affected by collateral damage, and it lay in the midst of a wide expanse of open ground. 

For what Elijah had planned, that was necessary.

Upon landing, Benedict leaped free of Elijah’s back and immediately went to work.  The first task was to mark out a wide circle – maybe a hundred yards across and perfectly congruent – which he accomplished quickly and efficiently.  After that, he and Elijah retreated into the nearby mountains, where they quarried enough stone to make the ritual circle permanent.

The next day was spent carving the stone into eighty-one perfectly identical squares, upon which Benedict laboriously carved a series of runes.  By the time he’d finished, each one was densely inscribed, and to the point that even Elijah – who’d been working with runecrafting for years by now – struggled to discern the individual symbols.

Once those stones had been completed, they arrayed them according to the layout. 

A quick scouting expedition told Elijah that the invading army was still at least two weeks away.  Maybe as much as three, but no more than four. 

That gave him plenty of time to enact the next part of the plan – gathering sacrifices.

Ideally, Benedict’s rituals were better powered by the deaths of sapient creatures, preferably ones possessing dense vitality and coursing with ethera.  However, he could make do with non-sapient monsters, even if doing so required quite a few more sacrifices to achieve the same results. 

Fortunately, there were plenty of potential sacrifices around.  Elijah was forced to head outside the outer ring and dive into the ocean to get them, but by virtue of the power he’d gained, wrangling them wasn’t particularly difficult.  The only exception came if he went too deep and was forced to fight one of the truly dangerous creatures who lived in the depths.

Still, it took some time to cover so much ground.  In the end, he took nearly twenty trips, wounding the monsters at the culmination of each.  Benedict finished them off with a ritual that drained them of all ethera and vitality, though he only stored it away for a later summoning.

When Elijah watched the process, he was reminded of the system Benedict had built back in Benediction.  There, he routinely performed powerful sacrifices meant to both empower his people and summon guardians.  Since then, the Warlock’s skills had grown exponentially, which wasn’t a surprise, given that he’d spent most of the past decade in constant study. 

And if there was one thing the Gorvethians did well, it was runecrafting.  Their entire lives depended on the ability to keep the abyss at bay, and while they weren’t really capable of creating anything new, they had grown quite adept at adapting old designs for novel purposes. 

Benedict took that a little further and applied real innovation to the process, iterating on their ancestral plans until he’d created something new and tailored to his needs. 

In the end, Elijah spent the better part of ten days flying back and forth.  Thankfully, he only needed to dive into the ocean to fish for monsters.  They attacked him the moment he dipped below the surface, with many of them latching onto his scales in a vain attempt to burrow into his body. 

They could scarcely scratch him.

He also grabbed larger creatures in all four claws before flying back to the ritual circle site.  Elijah’s already-established circles robbed them of whatever power they possessed, letting Benedict quickly finish them off once they were inside his creation.

By the time he’d finished, his repository – which was a blood red crystal the size of a man – was pulsing with malevolent energy.  Benedict found himself amidst a cloud of similarly hued energy that he claimed he could utilize in an emergency.

“What will you summon?” Elijah asked.

“Something special,” Benedict answered.  “I’ve had my eye on a new dimension for a while, and I think this is a great opportunity to use it.”

“Not going to tell me anything else?”

“I don’t want to ruin the surprise,” came the smiling response.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to fish for more monsters?  Last time I checked, the army is still a few days away,” Elijah explained.  “It took them a couple of extra days to find the pass through the mountains.”

“I’m at capacity,” Benedict said.  “The others are in place as well.”

“Good.  Now, all we need to do is wait.”

“I’ve never been much good at that.”

“Me neither,” Elijah admitted. 

On the surface, he might’ve seemed like a patient man.  After all, he’d spent years alone, steadily working toward terraforming the continent.  However, the truth was that he was only patient so long as he had a task to occupy him.  And waiting for the army to arrive was just the sort of thing to test him. 

Thankfully, they didn’t need to wait much longer, because only two days later, Elijah caught sight of green armor glinting in the purple light coming from above.

“Looks like it’s game time,” Elijah said.  “You ready?”

“I am.”

“Good.”

Then, with nothing else to say, Elijah shifted into the Shape of the Scourge, adopted Guise of the Stalker, and sprinted into position.