Path of Dragons-Chapter 55Book 9: : Bridges of Flame

It was an awe-inspiring and wholly impossible scene. The floating mountain was enormous. Elijah already knew that. However, it certainly wasn’t large enough for what he saw before him.

Towering spires of jagged black rock stood tall and proud, connected by bridges of flame. Or that was Elijah’s first thought, at least. Looking closer, he saw that the structures themselves were actually made of crystal and that the flames in question danced beneath the opaque surface. They cast the entire chamber – which was miles across and taller than he could see without Eyes of the Eagle – in glimmering orange light. Far below was an angrily bubbling pool of lava.

“Are we inside a volcano?” he wondered aloud, glancing at Oscar. The other man’s skin was still beet red, though the constant healing from Blessing of the Grove soothed it with every passing second. The dogs were a little worse off, with patches of hair having been singed away. It left them looking almost mangy, but when Elijah focused on Soul of the Wild, he could tell that they were perfectly healthy.

For his part, Elijah had experienced no lasting consequences from his swim through molten rock. Sure, it had hurt, but that was nothing new. He’d long since resigned himself to spending Primal Realms in agony, and he’d developed strategies to deal with that pain. Still, he didn’t look forward to the day when his strategy failed, and he was forced to cope with it directly instead of shunting it off to an ignored facet of his mind.

Oscar shrugged. “I don’t know,” he answered. That elicited a bark from Escobar, who danced around like he was happier than he’d ever been before. Maybe he was, given his attunement to fire.

“So, you know the question here, right?” Elijah asked.

“What?”

“I’ll give you a hint. We’re in a fire challenge.”

“I can see that,” Oscar replied.

“What does fire do?” Elijah asked. Then, before Oscar could reply, he said, “It burns. So, the real conundrum is whether or not we get dressed before heading forward. Normally, I wouldn’t bother. I spent most of my first tower just free –”

“I would prefer to wear clothes,” Oscar interrupted.

“They’re probably going to get burned off. But sure. Modesty is the best policy.”

Jackson and Freddy barked in agreement.

“What do you know? You’re always naked,” Elijah told them as he summoned his clothes from the Arcane Loop. In only a few moments, he was dressed. Then, he added his armor to the mix. It was far more durable than the clothes he wore under it, so he suspected it would survive much longer. On top of that, he was certain that he could put the extra attributes to good use.

“You really should get some armor,” he said to Oscar, who wore the same worn clothes he always did. An old tee-shirt bearing some unrecognizable symbol, a pair of shorts that might’ve once been khaki pants, and some sandals. With his unkempt beard and long, wild hair, he looked like a homeless man. “You know, the offer to come back to my grove still stands. You could use the peace and…quiet.”

The last word was only a little more than a whisper as he remembered that it hadn’t been that long ago that people had come to his grove with ill intentions. Could he really promise safety, now? Maybe. With the combination of Kurik’s and Nerthus’ efforts as well as the message he’d sent to the world, the grove was safer than it had ever been.

But that didn’t say much.

If he was there, sure. He could repel a significant invasion on his own. He’d done it before, and he could do it again. However, events always seemed to conspire to keep him away. Part of that was due to his wanderlust. He knew that. But it was also because the world was a dangerous and unpredictable place.

“Maybe,” Oscar allowed in a quiet voice.

Elijah knew better than to push. Oscar was not a trusting man, and probably for good reason. So, he decided to let the topic drop and focus on the task at hand. He looked out over the chamber, following the path of the fiery bridges with his eyes. It didn’t take him long to figure out the intended route, which ended far above in another cave. The path wasn’t precisely maze-like, but there were enough off-shoots and dead ends that following it without a plan would result in quite a lot of backtracking.

So, Elijah sank to his haunches and gradually marked the route in his mind. His efforts with mind cultivation hadn’t made him more intelligent, and they certainly hadn’t improved his memory. However, he’d always been good at pattern recognition, so it only took him ten minutes to memorize the appropriate path.

That was important, because he knew it wouldn’t be as simple as taking a stroll. Elijah was certain that there was more to it, even if he wasn’t certain how the additional challenges would manifest.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

Oscar nodded, and the dogs barked.

“Alright. Follow me. Stay close so you’ll continue to be healed.”

With that, he stepped onto the bridge. The moment his foot fell upon the glassy surface, ethera swirled. A second later, dense flames swirled up his leg, searing through his defenses and blistering his skin. He fell backward to safety after only an instant, but in that time, his leg had been charred beyond recognition.

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Gritting his teeth in pain, he muttered, “I should have expected that.”

Already, he was casting his heals, but to his horror, the fire had left behind subtle remnants of ethera that stubbornly clung to the wounds. Gradually, he shoved his own ethera against it, but it wouldn’t budge. In fact, the more he struggled, the more brightly it burned.

It took him a depressingly long time – all of which was spent in agony from the remnant flames – to put two and two together. But once he did, he latched onto the counter with every available facet of his mind.

Suddenly, his ethera stilled. Every muscle tensed. His heart stopped. And he ceased breathing.

One of the dogs barked insistently, but Elijah wouldn’t allow himself to acknowledge it. In his mind – every single facet – there was only him and his forcibly stagnant ethera. Finally, after an agonizingly long time, the foreign ethera retreated and he knew some degree of relief.

Once it was entirely gone, he tentatively cast a single spell – Wild Resurgence – and let out a sigh of relief when it didn’t have to fight against any other ethera. Gradually, his leg healed, though as he’d expected, the armor on his upper thigh had been ruined. Fortunately, he hadn’t picked up any more scars.

“What happened?” Oscar demanded, kneeling beside him. Idly, Elijah realized the man had been there the whole time, but he hadn’t let himself acknowledge it. He spent the next couple of minutes explaining the foreign ethera. After that, Oscar asked, “What triggered it?”

“I’m not sure,” Elijah said. But given what he’d read on the arch far below – as well as his method of expelling the fiery energy from his body – he had an idea. He would need to test it, though. Pushing himself to his feet, he said, “Don’t freak out if I get burned again.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Experimentation.”

Then, he steadied his nerves and stepped forward. The second he felt the ethera stir, he yanked his foot back. It wasn’t quick enough to avoid all damage, but it wasn’t nearly as severe as it had been the first time. Still, he was forced to spend long minutes stilling his ethera and forcing the energy out of his body before he could heal the damage.

The third time, he tested out his theory by preceding that first step with a stilling of his ethera. The idea was simple – he was meant to control the fire within, and he took that to mean that he needed to hold the energy in his channels stagnant.

The fire didn’t come immediately, but it still bathed his leg in flame. As Elijah spent the next fifteen minutes healing, he realized that it wasn’t because the method didn’t work. Rather, moving while holding his ethera still was an almost impossible feat. To date, he’d coupled his cultivation method with holding his body entirely inert. That felt natural. Yet, it was also wholly inadequate to the task at hand.

He sighed.

“Once again, this is going to suck,” Elijah said. “That seems to be the pattern here. It’s just one big Primal Realm of suck.”

“What? Have you figured it out?”

He nodded, then explained his theory to Oscar. It hadn’t been confirmed – not a hundred percent, at least – but he had enough evidence that he could safely say he was on the right track. The problem was that neither Oscar nor the rest of the pack had any experience at stilling their ethera.

“Well, you’re about to get a crash course. I hope you’re talented,” Elijah said with a manic grin.

In truth, he was looking forward to it. He always worked better under pressure, after all. And as it turned out, Oscar was uniquely talented in the task of soul cultivation. He’d already progressed to the second tier, which was quite a feat, given that he’d done everything on his own. By comparison, Elijah had multiple guides, his grove, and Nerthus.

It just confirmed that Oscar hadn’t gotten to where he was by accident. He was talented in his own right, and if Elijah hadn’t existed, he would have been the strongest person on Earth.

Still, it took three days before Elijah managed to get his own ethera under complete control. It was almost a month later before Jackson managed it, but after that, the dogs, then Oscar reached their goal in quick succession.

Well, quick when compared to the rest of the time they’d spent there. In all, it was nearly a month and a half before everyone was ready. Escobar was still a little shaky with the technique, but with his immense attunement to fire, he wasn’t in nearly as much danger as everyone else.

During that time, Elijah got to know Oscar and the dogs a lot better. In some cases, like with the pack leader himself, first impressions were mostly accurate. The man was quiet and introverted, but he was also a surprisingly deep thinker. He was clearly intelligent, though what little he’d revealed of his history said that even before the world had changed, he’d been dealt a difficult hand.

The son of Cuban refugees, he’d grown up dirt poor and had been forced to help support his family from a young age. Mostly, he worked odd jobs doing menial labor, but he’d dreamed of becoming a veterinarian. He’d even gotten a scholarship to the University of Miami, which he’d attended for two years until his father was injured in a workplace accident.

With the bills piling up, Oscar had had no choice but to drop out of school and go to work full-time. Certainly, he’d intended to go back at some point, but as the years passed, that dream gave way to the harsh realities of life.

Fortunately, he’d taken solace in his job, finding work with animals in a local no-kill shelter. He wasn’t a veterinarian, but at least he felt like he was doing something to help the animals he’d come to love so much.

That was when the World Tree had reached out and changed everything. From there on, Oscar had struggled to survive. First, it was the fall of Miami, which happened with such rapidity that Oscar had had no choice but to flee. He’d helped his parents and siblings to safety, but because of some sort of disagreement he wouldn’t talk about, he’d ended up setting out on his own.

He clearly regretted it, but he also expressed no interest in a reunion.

Elijah couldn’t get any more information out of the man, and he knew better than to pry.

As for the dogs, they were an open book. Sophie and Jackson were both incredibly clingy and protective, while Escobar and Freddy were the free spirits of the pack. Ray and Maymay rarely left one another’s sides, while Digby was a loner.

For whatever reason, they all seemed to love Elijah, though. At first, he thought it was his attunement, but in retrospect, it was probably just their nature. Dogs were amazing companions even before Earth’s transformation, after all.

In any case, having some friends around definitely softened the blow of being inside the Primal Realm for so long. If Elijah had been alone, he would not have fared so well. But with Oscar and the dogs, the situation was so much easier to bear.

However, now that everyone had mastered – at least to some extent – the necessary technique, it was time to move on. So it was with some degree of anxiety that Elijah stilled his ethera and stepped onto the bridge. When the fire didn’t come, he almost let out a sigh of relief, but he knew himself well enough to recognize that doing so would ruin his efforts. With that in mind, he maintained his calm demeanor and continued forward.

Behind him came the dogs, with Oscar pulling up the rear.

No fires plagued their passage, confirming that they were on the right track. Now, they just needed to trace a path to the top and overcome whatever other obstacles the Primal Realm threw in their way.

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