Path of Dragons 5 - Chapter 40 - Into the Fortress (Patreon)

Cold pinpricks spread across Elijah’s face as he looked up at the sleet falling from above.  It was such a curious thing, experiencing natural rain in the middle of a subterranean cavern, and he couldn’t explain it.  His scientific mind tried, but nothing he considered really made sense.  It wasn’t that difficult to create weather in an enclosed space, but scaling it to the size of the cavern was where his rationalizations fell short. That left him with the same explanation he’d used to explain hundreds of other experiences he’d encountered since the world had changed. 

Magic. 

“You’re really weird, bro.”

Elijah glanced back to the shallow cave, where he saw Dat staring at him.  The others were huddled around a campfire, their eyes locked onto him.  They’d been resting and healing for some time, but even so, everyone still looked exhausted.

“What?”

“That rain is freezing,” Sadie said.  “And you’re staring at it with this odd expression like it’s the most fascinating thing in the world.”

“I mean…it’s a subterranean storm,” he said.  “That’s pretty interesting.”

“It’s weird, bro.”

Elijah frowned, then glanced at Kurik.  The dwarf just shook his head and said, “Can’t disagree with ‘em.”

“You all don’t think this is cool?  Come on.  It’s raining underground!  And these plants are amazing.  They’re actually two organisms living in symbiosis.  Or the ice is more like millions of tiny organisms mixed with inorganic material that form a network –”

“Wait – the ice is alive?  That’s awesome, bro.”

“Right?  I thought I was going crazy there for a second,” Elijah replied, feeling some level of vindication.

“You probably still are,” Sadie said. “Dat’s just being nice.”

“Seriously?” he asked, fixing his eyes on the Witch Hunter’s pudgy-looking face.  Dat wasn’t fat – not precisely – but his face had a roundness to it that made him look that way. 

Dat shrugged.  “Nothing wrong with being nice, bro.  And it is interesting, the way you described it.”

Elijah sighed, recognizing pandering when he heard it.  “You’re all missing out.  Don’t you ever look around and just appreciate the world for what it is?  The setting of my first tower – at least part of it – was underwater, and you wouldn’t believe how beautiful the bottom of the sea was.  I mean, it was really deadly, too. And I couldn’t cook my food for the whole time I was in there…”

“How long?” asked Sadie.

“Uh…a month or two, maybe?  I don’t know.  It all blurred together, especially after I got digested by the whale.  Tracking time is kind of difficult in towers.”

“You spent months inside of a tower?”

“Uh…yeah.  But that was just my first time through,” Elijah admitted.  “I was a lot quicker in my second one, and I got through the third in like a day.  But that was because the elves I was with got bitten by vampires, and there was a timer before they were converted.  So, I had to do a speed run.”

“How many towers have you conquered?”

Elijah shrugged.  “A few?  I also ran the first one multiple times,” he answered.  “It was the hardest, but I’ve gotten it down to a science.  I can get through it in a day if I don’t get too sidetracked.  But it doesn’t give as much experience as it did the first time, and the rewards kind of suck now.”

“The Sea of Sorrows ain’t beautiful.  That place is a death trap,” Kurik muttered.

“I think it’s pretty.”

“Everything there is tryin’ to kill you!”

“Yeah, but how many people get to say they’ve seen a monstrous orca the size of a blue whale?  Or a forest of kelp and coral?  I swear, it’s like I’m the only one in the whole world who can look at what happened to Earth and feel a sense of awe,” Elijah said.

“Easy to say when you live in paradise,” Sadie said quietly.  “Our experiences since the world changed are very different.”

“I was in Mongolia recently.  Or what used to be Mongolia, I guess.  And you know what I found?  A bunch of people living and working together.  They struggled, sure.  They had to fight for what they had.  But there was peace there, too.  I tried a bunch of new foods and met some interesting people.  The same in Argos,” Elijah pointed out.  “You’ve been there.  You know what they have.  That’s the model of what’s possible in this new version of the world.”

“You only like Argos because they practically worship you there,” Sadie said.

“They do not.”

“They kind of do, bro.”

“Okay – so what if they do treat me well?  I’ve helped them a lot over the past couple of years.  I’m part of that community.”

“And what if something happens to them?  What if, suddenly, there’s an apocalyptic threat that kills half the population in that city?” Sadie asked.  “That’s what happened to Hong Kong in the early days.  We were all fighting an invasion of zombies.  We worked together, but we also saw our families killed.  Our friends and neighbors eaten alive, then converted into undead.  So pardon me if I can’t really see the beauty in a little subterranean rainstorm.”

“That’s not connected,” Elijah said.  “You can’t go through life hating the world.”

“I don’t hate it,” Sadie said.  “I resent it.  There’s a difference.”

Elijah was about to respond when he thought better of it.  Their experiences since the world had changed were too different for them to find common ground.  Maybe Sadie would come around, but given what he knew of the threats facing the population of Earth, Elijah thought there was a better chance that he’d become just as cynical as she clearly was. 

It was a rational response to the trauma she’d experienced.  By comparison – at least from a psychological perspective – Elijah had had it easy.

Regardless, he chose the high road of keeping his contradictory opinions to himself.  Instead, he focused on the next step in conquering the challenge ahead.  They would soon infiltrate the Ice Fortress, where they would presumably need to confront the so-called Betrayer as well as any remaining foes.  It would doubtless be just as harrowing as what they’d experienced so far.  Perhaps more so.

But there was something else on his mind, too.

“I want to harvest these plants before we go back.  As many as we can hold.  And I want to try to keep some of them alive,” he said.  “At least for a day or so until I can plant them somewhere else.”

“Why?  What do you have in mind?” Sadie asked.

“Back home, I have this underwater cave where I’ve been growing a lot of ethera-rich sea plants,” he answered.  “And you know how cultivation requires increasingly dense ethera?  That’s what the cave is for.  And I was thinking about trying to create something like that here, except with these instead of kelp and stuff.  The only problem is that I can’t put it inside the boundaries of the challenge.  Even if we could do it again – which I don’t think will be possible – it’s not feasible to have to go through all that just to cultivate a little.  So, if I can’t come back to the plants, I want to take the plants with me.  But I guess that all can wait until after we complete the challenge.  I just wanted to give you all a heads up.”

Still, Elijah did gather a couple of plants, stuffing them into his Ghoul-Hide Satchel before the group set off for the fortress’ gates.  Unsurprisingly, it was manned only by the chainmail-wearing, lower-leveled yetis, and the group had no issues with dispatching the guards.  After that, they used their combined strength to lever open the gates, and just like that, they were inside.

“This place is huge, bro.”

Elijah said, “I know.  It’s positively labyrinthine.”

“Don’t need no fancy words to know it’s big and complicated,” Kurik muttered.

“That’s what labyrinthine means.”

“If you say so,” the dwarf growled.  He’d been in a surly mood ever since he’d revealed the nature of his class, and it didn’t seem that anything but time would lighten that load.  Still, Elijah resolved to offer his ear to the Sapper once the challenge was complete.  He might not be able to come up with any real solutions to the dwarf’s unease, but he could at least listen.  Sometimes, that was the best anyone could do.

Regardless, the group spent the next few hours exploring the halls.  As Eliijah had noted the first time through, the architecture was about as simple as it could get, with nothing but straight lines and sharp edges.  There was a utilitarian appeal to it that he couldn’t deny. 

Gradually, they mapped the area, encountering more guards along the way.  After fighting the elite yeti patrols, the weaker versions were comparatively easy to deal with – at least so long as they all kept their wits about them.  If they lost focus even for a moment, that would change.  Normally, it wouldn’t result in immediate injury, but one mistake usually caused a cascade of errors as everyone tried to adjust. 

So, by the time they reached another set of gates – this pair was far more elaborately carved – no one was in a great mood. 

“Open it now?” Elijah asked.

“Might be risky, bro,” Dat said, reaching out to touch the giant stone doors.  They were at least twenty feet tall, and the carvings along the surface depicted more of the muscular, four-armed creatures Elijah had seen in the frescoes that decorated the cistern he’d recently visited. 

As soon as Dat touched the doors, a heavy grinding sound emerged from the edges, and they began to swing inward. 

“I didn’t do anything!”

On the other side, a trio of yetis – each one larger and more heavily armored than any they’d faced before – stood.  They seemed very much surprised to see the newcomers, but that lasted only a moment before they hefted their weapons and charged. 

Unsurprised, Sadie leaped forward to meet them head-on.  At the same time, Dat did the opposite, retreating while bringing his crossbow up.  It was a move they’d practiced dozens – if not hundreds – of times, and that experience stood them in good stead.  Meanwhile, Elijah and Kurik enacted their own well-learned strategies. 

Even as a glowing Sadie met the trio of yetis – each one almost twenty feet tall, and with enough muscle to make them look bulky – with a furious horizontal slash from her sword, Kurik and Dat peppered the enemy with arrows and crossbow bolts.  At the same time, Elijah aimed for the rear-most monster and cast Snaring Roots. 

Vines of organic ice erupted from the ground, snaking around the creature’s feet.  Those tendrils weren’t strong enough to resist the yeti’s strength, but were more than capable of tripping the monster.  As Sadie clashed with the other two, the third fell on its face, where even more roots snaked around its body and wrapped it in a cocoon of icy vines. 

Elijah cast Healing Rain, then Soothe, on Sadie.  It was just in time, too, because only a second later, she took a vicious club-strike to the head.  Elijah winced at how quickly her body whipped around from the momentum of the attack.  But Sadie was made from strong stuff, and she shouldered the blow with only a stumble.  Whatever aftereffects she might’ve been forced to endure were mitigated by Elijah’s healing.

Meanwhile, Kurik and Dat utilized every ability in their arsenal, piling the damage onto the nearest yeti.  Its armor was durable enough, but it could only stand up for so long against such a barrage.  For the other, Sadie used Blade of the Avenger, and a giant sword burst forth from the ground, slicing into the yeti with contemptuous ease.  However, unlike the other instances where Elijah had seen her use the spell, this one didn’t result in a yeti’s immediate death.  Instead, it only injured the huge creature, slicing off one of its legs. 

Elijah cast Snaring Roots on the now one-legged monster, and it fell to the ground just like the other.  So, for a few seconds at least, the group only had to deal with a single opponent, and they overwhelmed the thing in short order.  The next to die was the one Sadie had injured.  It put up a decent fight, but being unable to stand made its position quite precarious. 

The third ended up being the most difficult to kill, and it took almost five minutes of combined attacks to finish it off.  They managed, but not without some difficulty.  And in the aftermath, as Elijah healed the wounds they’d incurred, Sadie fixed Dat with a glare and said, “From now on, don’t touch anything.”

He opened his mouth as if to offer a retort, but then looked at the dead yetis before saying, “Good idea, bro.  No more touching.”