Path of Dragons

As Elijah circled the tallest tower in the region, he felt a combination of electricity, ethera, and death dancing across his wings. He banked, avoiding a bolt of teal lightning, then latched onto the spire at the top of the tower. Like that, he remained stationary for a few seconds, just surveying the scene below him.

From the ground, the forest of towers seemed random, but with the advantage afforded by his current vantage point, Elijah could see a pattern laid out before him. The towers numbered in the hundreds – perhaps even into the thousands – and they stretched for miles along the coast. The ubiquitous aquamarine lightning cast everything in a teal glow as the sea roiled as if it was under the influence of a violent storm.

Yet, there was no rain.

No wind.

It was an eerie setting, and the only comparison Elijah could conjure was the hours before a hurricane came ashore. The atmosphere was calm, but on the edge of bursting with natural fury. Making it worse was the aura of death hanging in the air. It wasn’t strong enough to rot his flesh from his bones – not like in the tomb – but it did leave him feeling even more uncomfortable. Adding to that was the knowledge that, with one wrong move, the entire region would be flooded with various undead creatures that would happily tear him limb from limb.

He let out a hissing sigh, pulling his attention away from the environment. He’d been scouting for hours, so none of it was new information. However, as accustomed to the discomfort as he thought he was, the constant barrage of needling fear and pregnant anticipation left him increasingly on edge.

It would have been so much easier if he could act, if he had something to fight. A goal to reach. But he could only observe, which made the anxiety induced by the environment so much worse.

Closing his eyes, he focused on One with Nature. There was very little life in the area, but thankfully, it wasn’t nearly as devoid of vitality as the tomb. As such, Elijah could get a vague notion of tower’s interior. Unsurprisingly, it was entirely hollow, with one of those floating black crystals at the center of the top floor. Having seen precisely what he’d expected to find – which was exactly like all the other large, sealed towers – he prepared to move on.

But as he flared One with Nature to its limits, he felt something slightly different.

He focused entirely on his senses, pushing with every facet of his Mind until that tiny detail became clear enough to understand. Since taking the Connection specialization, Elijah had noticed that it had enhanced One with Nature in more ways than set forth in the description. The effective radius and potency of the ability was well-documented – and extremely powerful – but he’d begun to notice that what he could sense had broadened as well.

He'd always been able to feel ethera, at least to some degree. At first, he’d only sensed the density of energy in the air, but as he’d grown more powerful, he’d learned to discern between types of ethera. On top of that, he could feel when people were casting spells or using abilities.

But as he pushed his focus to new heights, Elijah’s sense for ethera deepened, and as a result, he could feel a thin thread of energy connecting the black crystal at the the top of the tower to something underground. More, he felt something so obvious that he was absolutely shocked he hadn’t noticed it before.

The ground beneath the tower was hollow.

There was a chamber down there, and with a little more inspection, Elijah felt that a tunnel extended from that chamber, connected to another, then went on to form a dense labyrinth far below the surface. Troublingly, those tunnels were not empty. A few were flooded, but that was to be expected from the proximity to the ocean. No – what worried Elijah was that there were clearly undead monsters down there.

He couldn’t feel most of them. Indeed, after only a few dozen feet into the tunnels, the senses afforded by One with Nature went dark. After his experience in the tomb, he could guess why.

Finally, Elijah focused on the chamber directly beneath the tower, and he quickly discerned the reason he could feel even as much as he did. There was life down there. It was well-contained, and if he hadn’t recently taken the Connection specialization, it would have been far too faint for him to feel. Yet, now, it blazed like a small star in his senses, so powerful that he wondered how he hadn’t immediately noticed it.

Elijah threw himself from the spire, then glided down to the ground. When he landed, he shifted into his human form, then focused on following the tunnels below. The vital energy only extended so far, and after that, the lack blinded him. However, he got a good enough picture to confirm his previous assertion that there was an extensive system of tunnels below the ground.

After a few minutes of mapping what he could sense, he shifted back into Shape of the Sky and flew to the next large tower, which was more than a mile away. There were dozens of smaller spires in the intervening space, and many of them were crumbling or broken, but none of the black crystals at their bases were connected to a source of vitality, so the tunnels beneath were completely obscured to Elijah’s senses.

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The next large tower was similar to the last, which was to say that it was entirely sealed and the black crystal on the ground floor shared an ethereal connection with a source of life. That allowed him to map the surrounding tunnels.

Elijah kept going after that, hopping from one sealed tower to the next, and he found much the same beneath each one. Hours passed as he explored the area, working his way back to where he’d left the others. So, when he finally reached them, he had a good idea of what they were dealing with.

He landed just outside of their camp, then shifted back into his human form before approaching the rest of his group. They all looked anxious, but that wasn’t surprising. The atmosphere – even a little ways away from the towers – was unnerving, and they didn’t even have exploration to distract them from it.

“What did you find?” asked Sadie, shooting to her feet.

Elijah ran his hand through his hair. Thankfully, it had grown back after his experiences in the Citadel of Innovation, but it was still shorter than he liked. Sitting next to the fire, he leaned close and said, “God, it’s cold around those towers.”

“I thought your cloak kept the cold at bay,” Ron remarked.

Elijah shrugged. “It’s a different kind of cold,” he said. “Not physical. It’s more…”

“Lifeless,” Dat said. “I felt it, too. It’s the same in certain parts of Hong Kong. It’s a cold that seeps into your bones, even when it’s warm.”

Sadie said, “Not unexpected. The place stinks of undead. I don’t want to be here any longer than absolutely necessary. So, I’ll ask again – what did you find?”

“Tunnels. Or maybe crypts, given the scenario. I can’t be certain, but I think they extend across the whole area, connecting the big towers,” Elijah explained. Then, he went on to recount everything he’d found during his scouting expedition. He finished by saying, “But I don’t know how to get to the tunnels. Maybe we can just dig our way down, but I feel like that’s the wrong way to go about it.”

Indeed, Elijah was well aware that his straightforward problem-solving strategies had made already-dangerous situations much deadlier in the past. For instance, he’d discovered that the system had built in methods to overcome the obstacles within each challenge. Elijah – and to a lesser extent, his group – had chosen to simply tackle those issues head-on, effectively running the whole scenario on hard-mode, conquering them through sheer power.

So, while digging into the tunnels was probably possible, Elijah expected that it would almost certainly make things much more difficult than they needed to be.

The next hour passed in mostly fruitless discussion where the group attempted to brainstorm the problem. However, it soon became clear that they wouldn’t figure it out by sitting in camp. So, Elijah and Dat set off back into the forest of spires and continued their efforts at exploration.

For Elijah’s part, he focused on mapping the tunnels as best he could. Thankfully, the area was devoid of all life, so they were given free reign of the entire region. Still, the entire time he was among those spires, Elijah felt a sense of impending dread. It was like he stood on the edge of a fight or flight response, and there was no relief in sight.

Fortunately, he was well versed in dealing with stress, so even if it was uncomfortable, Elijah managed to keep his mind on the task. Over the next two days, he acted as a cartographer. The mapping device – which he’d gotten from the Artificer back in Argos – helped, but its range was too short to penetrate the tunnels. Yet, it was not completely useless, as Elijah found when he saw what appeared to be a random spot that was highlighted on the old Gameboy screen.

He approached the indicated location, which happened to be at the edge of the challenge area, with no small degree of caution. It turned out to be unnecessary, because he reached the spot without issue. Standing in place, he looked around, but there was nothing in the area. Just more barren landscape, and it was close enough to the challenge’s boundary that the rocky terrain wasn’t even broken up by the ubiquitous towers.

So, once again, Elijah sank the entirety of his focus into One with Nature. He found nothing – at least at first. But then, he detected a wisp of vitality flowing into a small crack beneath one of the lifeless, grey rocks. Without hesitation, he hooked his fingers under the boulder and heaved.

Only a couple of years before, he would have struggled to lift so much weight. However, because of the strides he’d made with his attributes, he managed the feat without much issue.

But he found nothing but bare ground beneath.

Frustrated, Elijah kicked a rock. Even as it sailed through the air, he felt an implosion of life draining into the ground. That only lasted a few moments before it ceased, but it was enough to let Elijah home in on a tiny fissure – maybe a quarter of an inch long and half as wide – that descended into the earth.

He knelt beside it, then ran his hand over the crack. When he did, he felt a slight difference – almost like the air pressure had subtly dropped. More importantly, via One with Nature, he could feel a thin thread of life energy flowing into that crack. So, he ran his hand over the ground, brushing away smaller rocks and dirt, and to his surprise, found that the crack extended much further than he’d first expected. A little more work, and Elijah discovered that it was perfectly straight until it took a sudden ninety degree turn. A few feet later, it turned again.

That was when he realized it formed a square.

For the next few minutes, Elijah excitedly uncovered a slab of worked stone, in the center of which was a simple depiction of a flame. More importantly, beyond that slab was an open area that he would have bet connected with the system of tunnels.

What was clear was that, at last, he had found an entrance. So, after spending another half hour completely excavating the slab, he returned to the camp to reveal his findings to the rest of the group. However, when he did, he saw that Dat had already returned, and after a bit of discussion, he discovered that the Witch Hunter had found another entrance on the other side of the region.

“So, which one do we use?” Elijah asked.

“Flip a coin?” Dat suggested.

“We are not choosing based on a coin flip,” Sadie said with a roll of her eyes. “I suggest we investigate it properly, then make a decision based on our findings.”

“I don’t think it matters, bro.”

“We’ll see,” Sadie said, already gathering her things.

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