Path of Dragons-Chapter 88Book 7: : Shattered

Elijah was out of tears.

Yet, the ones he’d shed felt like too few. His grief felt too shallow. Dat deserved more. He deserved wailing sorrow and anguish and vows of revenge. But the author of his demise was already gone. There was no one else to blame. All that was left was to wallow in grief, pick up the pieces, and move on.

Which was the source of Elijah’s guilt.

Sadie broke that spell as Nico approached. Without a word, she pushed herself to her feet, wheeled on her brother, and grabbed him by the throat. “You intentionally let him die!” she accused, lifting him from the ground. “Admit it. I can see the sin curling around you. Admit it!”

Elijah sprang to his feet and intervened, saying, “Don’t do this, Sadie. Let him go. Even if he’s responsible, you’ll never forgive yourself if you let this happen.”

For his part, he didn’t care if Nico died. The man certainly hadn’t ingratiated himself to Elijah, and he’d proven he was petty, cowardly, and unreliable. Still, Elijah knew enough about family to be certain of his statement. If Sadie killed her brother, it would be the first step down a very dark road. Maybe that was inevitable, but Elijah wouldn’t forgive himself if he let it happen under his nose.

Sadie stared at her choking broker for a second before she released him. He fell to the ground, gasping for air. “You disgust me,” she growled. “I’d hoped you would be better, that you would learn to be someone worthwhile. But you refuse. I’m more disappointed in you than you can imagine.”

“You think you have the right to judge me?” he coughed, massaging his neck. Sadie’s grip had left a bruise – a testament to how serious she’d been.

“Yes.”

Her voice was cold, lacking the familial tone she’d always used with her brother. She didn’t say it outright, but the implications were clear. He was still her sibling, but that designation meant less now than it ever had.

“We need to get out of here,” Elijah interjected. Against his better instincts, he added, “Sort out your differences when we get out of the Primal Realm. There are still people depending on us.”

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Nico’s eyes widened. He had clearly forgotten about the former prisoners they’d left near the bolt hole. They were safe back there, but they couldn’t escape without assistance. After all, the area was still dominated by undead, and returning to the portal in front of the wall was the only way out. It had been inactive last Elijah had inspected it, but he had a feeling it would now be open.

Sadie said, “He’s right.”

With that, she gathered Dat’s body while Elijah took whatever he could find on the demonic Queen of Desolation’s corpse. The staff was clearly the most valuable, but she also wore a couple of rings and a pendant that featured a sizable emerald. All of the jewelry glowed with subtle currents of ethera, so he suspected they were enchanted. He wouldn’t know more until he got them all appraised.

After slipping the loot into his Ghoul-Hide Satchel – much to Nico’s irritation – Elijah led the group in their descent from the platform. Thankfully, the door had reopened, allowing them to return the way they had come.

In a way, it was much easier to move on when he had other responsibilities on which to focus. Of course, doing so only increased his guilt, as if concentrating on their escape from the Primal Realm was a betrayal of Dat’s memory. Elijah knew it didn’t make a lot of sense. If Dat could have offered an opinion, he would have fully supported focusing on staying alive and rescuing the prisoners.

But Dat wasn’t there. He couldn’t give his opinion. He couldn’t joke or offer tidbits of keen insight. He was gone, and as far as Elijah knew, there was no coming back from that.

Elijah was no stranger to loss. His parents had died shortly before his high school graduation, and the spiral of grief had led him to move thousands of miles away from home. It hadn’t offered much real relief from his emotions, but it had been a distraction. The same was true of his reaction to the news of his sister’s death. In that instance, though, he’d embarked on a quest for revenge and slaughtered thousands along the way. A whole city had fallen by his hand.

He couldn’t let himself go down that path again, but he worried that Sadie would take that road. She had experienced plenty of grief as well, but Elijah wasn’t certain how she would react to the death of her best friend. She looked at Dat as family, and the effect of his passing would surely be very impactful.

Those thoughts flittered through one facet of Elijah’s mind as he progressed through the spire, leading his remaining companions to the prisoners. The group of people were suitably shocked at the loss of Dat, but they hadn’t had a chance to really get to know him. On top of that, he hadn’t been responsible for their well-being in the same way that Nico had, so they weren’t nearly as broken up about it as they probably should have been.

Elijah wanted to tell them just how much Dat had sacrificed, but he knew they didn’t have time for him to do so. The Primal Realm had been defeated, but judging by the rise of deathly ethera, the threat was not finished.

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Supporting that notion, the trip from the bolt hole’s exit was characterized by constant battle. It provided a good distraction – especially for Sadie, who attacked the problem with uncharacteristic brutality. She didn’t hold back as she cleaved her way through hordes of undead monsters. Meanwhile, Elijah focused on keeping them on track while ensuring the safety of the refugees.

Nico healed, though he was just as stingy with his ethera as ever. Elijah filled the gaps there as well.

Perhaps predictably, the former prisoners adored Nico. His healing spells were flashy and obvious, so they could easily recognize his efforts for what they were. By comparison, Elijah’s spells – aside from Blessing of the Grove – had no real visible component. And Elijah had heard more than one prisoner attributing the nourishing sunflower to Nico.

After all, he was the Healer. They all recognized him, and it was so much easier to give him credit than to acknowledge the contributions of a stranger like Elijah. Never did he feel more out-of-place than in the middle of a bunch of people where he was so obviously different.

Not that he tried to gain their acceptance. He didn’t. He was too distracted – by the task he’d taken upon himself, the constant battle, and his grief over Dat – to care much about how the prisoners saw him. Nico clearly felt differently, but then again, he wasn’t affected by Dat’s death.

Not at all.

So, he basked in the attention, reveling in their adoration. Meanwhile, Elijah and Sadie did what was necessary.

Eventually, they made it back to the wall to find that the gate was open. Elijah didn’t know if that was the Primal Realm rewarding them for their victory or if the old man had provided them a means of escape that didn’t include summiting the wall. Regardless, it gave them a free path of escape, so they took it without question.

Along the way, Elijah made certain to collect any loot they’d left behind. That included the shield wielded by the demon commander of the undead army. It was much too large to carry around in his Ghoul-hide Satchel, so he instead stored it in the ring paired with the spatial anchor back in his grove. He’d purchased a new one the last time he’d visited a Branch, but he’d yet to use it because of its limitations. Predictably, Nico didn’t seem happy that Elijah had claimed the loot for himself. His ire was easily ignored, though.

They also got a bit of a shock when they ran into Gideon.

Or what was left of him.

He shambled in their direction just like any other zombie. Due to the circumstances of his death – and the cold preserving his flesh – he looked strikingly similar to when he was alive. Yet, there was nothing of the man left, and Sadie wasted no time before decapitating him. The body crumpled to the ground, and she stepped over it like it was no different than any of the other thousands of zombies they’d slain.

Nico opened his mouth to object, but he stopped himself a second later. Instead, he recruited a couple of the stronger prisoners to gather the man’s remains and carry it across the battlefield and to the portal. As Elijah had predicted, the interior shimmered with ethera, telling them that it was active.

“Is there anything else we need to do in here?” asked Elijah.

“Rewards,” Nico said.

“Not the time,” Sadie stated. “We’ll sort through it when we get back.”

“But –”

Sadie didn’t let him finish before she led the way through the portal. Elijah gestured for Nico to follow, then waited until the rest of the prisoners did the same. At last, he left the Primal Realm behind, fervently hoping that he would never need to revisit it. It had taken too much from him.

Elijah appeared on the other side, and after only a few moments spent in reorientation, he soon discovered that they had reappeared at the base of Mount Longhu. That meant they wouldn’t have to deal with the defenders, but they still needed to cross the city.

Without Zhang Yue, that wouldn’t be easy.

Elijah’s prediction was not inaccurate. At first, they were forced to battle just as hard as they had in the retreat from the Citadel of Sorrow. Yet, their experiences in the Primal Realm had prepared them well, and they managed it without too many issues. Eventually, they arrived at their destination.

Heaven’s Bastion loomed over them like a monolith.

And of course, that’s when things went wrong.

“Not letting those people in here,” said the guard, his eyes flashing with ethera as he used some sort of identification ability. “Some of them are necromancers.”

“You can’t be serious,” Sadie spat. “They’ve been through hell. Let them in. That’s an order.”

“We don’t take orders from you, ma’am.”

“Then take them from me,” Nico interjected. “Put them on the first floor. Get them healthy. Feed them. Then we’ll sort this out later.”

The guard looked a little wary, but he nodded and said, “Fine. But if Song Tianwei objects…”

“I’ll take responsibility,” Nico said.

That surprised Elijah, but he was in no mood to question it. In fact, he wanted nothing more than to relieve himself of the burden the prisoners represented. That would give him the opportunity to truly grieve his friend. After that, he just wanted to return to the grove where he could…

He wasn’t sure what he would do there. His other responsibilities hadn’t disappeared, but with the loss of Dat, they seemed further away than ever. The last thing he wanted was to jump straight into another ordeal, even if he knew that was probably what would happen.

The events of the world didn’t just stop because he wasn’t in the mood to confront them.

Unfortunately, the guard also balked at allowed Elijah inside, which snapped something in his mind. Before he knew what was happening, the guard was on the ground, and a half dozen weapons were aimed in his direction. He was just about to shift into Shape of Thorn when Sadie stepped in to defuse the situation. That didn’t help as much as it probably should have, and the guards didn’t back down until Nico intervened, healing the wounded sentry and vouching for Elijah.

“What the hell was that about?” he asked when he and Sadie separated from the others. “I came here to help, and we accomplished our mission, but now they’re treating me like a criminal?”

“I don’t know,” Sadie said. “But I’m going to find out. First, we need to take care of Dat. I…he didn’t have any other friends here, so it will just be you and me at his service…”

“I understand,” Elijah responded, glancing at their friend’s body. They’d wrapped it in some cloth they’d found along the way, so they didn’t have to look at his familiar but now lifeless features. But Elijah could feel them via Soul of the Wild. “Do we need to make any other preparations before we lay him to rest?”

“I’ll take care of it. We can’t afford to wait.”

The implications were clear. If they didn’t do it soon, they ran the risk of Dat becoming a zombie. So, it was with heavy hearts driven by practicality that they headed to the Shrine of the Fallen, where not that long ago, he’d walked in Dat grieving for his fallen love.

He reached out to grab her hand. “We’ll do it together.”