Path of Dragons

Book 4: Chapter 23: Crossing Lines

A bonfire blazed, casting the entire square in flickering light as the amassed people – each attired in high-quality clothing that marked them as members of the upper class – roared their approval. In the center of the plaza were a group of soldiers, each clad in blue-and-white, and at their feet were dozens of corpses. The autumn pre-dawn morning was cool enough that Elijah could see steam rising from their still-warm bodies.

“The traitor does not deserve a statue!” yelled a man in a slightly more elaborate uniform. “She fostered rebellion in our midst, undermining the king and putting us all in danger!”

That brought another cheer from the gathered aristocrats and soldiers. Each and every one of them bore the signs of battle. Or slaughter, given the clear number disparity. It wasn’t surprising. As Elijah had made his way through the city, he’d seen guards and their wealthy supporters ganging up on much weaker and less numerous groups of people they clearly marked as inferior. Though he’d noticed that they only did so when they had an advantage, either in power or numbers. In any even battle – which were rare, given the soldiers’ obviously higher level of progression – they were far less aggressive, often fleeing to join one of the larger groups.

Retreat was not a bad strategy. Indeed, it was intelligent. Still, it struck Elijah as cowardly, though that could have been the result of the opinions he’d formed in his short time within the city.

Of course, he’d killed many such groups, but he couldn’t get them all.

None of that was on his mind, though. Instead, he only had eyes for the situation at the center of the square. Dozens of guards had thrown ropes over the statue of a heroic woman clad in heavy armor and carrying a spear. It wasn’t a perfect likeness, but the artist had been talented enough to capture Alyssa’s spirit. So, Elijah had no trouble recognizing his sister.

More, Carmen had told him of the existence of such a statue, which had been built after she’d heroically sacrificed her life in the tower. Or at least that was the story Roman and his flunkies had told the population. Carmen had a different impression, though. Once she’d learned the truth, she had come to the opinion that the monument’s construction had been rooted in Roman’s guilt. Elijah wasn’t so sure that was the case. For a man who could murder his own friend, and for no reason but to increase his own power, guilt was assuredly an alien concept.

Either way, Elijah didn’t care about the origin of the statue. Instead, he was far more concerned with the fact that the aristocrats and guards seemed hellbent on tearing it down. In the corner of one facet of Elijah’s Quartz Mind, he could see the logic that had led them to that action. Before her death, Alyssa had been a rallying point for those who didn’t like the way Roman had run the city, and afterwards, she had become a martyr. Even though most never knew the truth of how she’d died, her opinions had continued to hold sway among the downtrodden, and she had become a symbol of the rebellion. Even putting that insurrection down hadn’t changed how they saw her.

That was why the aristocrats and guards wanted to destroy the statue. The action was as much a symbol as a representation of aristocratic frustration that had come to a head in the ongoing unrest Elijah had begun by freeing the prisoners. He’d seen plenty of familiar faces during the fighting, so it was no secret what had started the latest revolt.

His mind went white with rage, and before he knew what he was doing, he’d dropped his draconid form – it was terrible for dealing with multiple opponents, anyway – and resumed his natural shape. Then, he cast Calamity.

The spell was unique in that, originally, he’d thought it had a cooldown. However, as his store of ethera grew, he discovered the truth. That was reflected in the spell’s description:

When he had first gotten access to the spell, it had taken more than half of his ethera, so he could only use it a single time. However, as his pool of energy grew, the system’s description had elaborated on the soft cooldown. The end result was that, now that he had the ethera to support it, Elijah could cast the spell a handful of times before he ran dry of energy.

It was a little frustrating that the system had waited so long to reveal that to him, but in retrospect, it didn’t matter that much. By the time it became relevant back in the Reaver’s Citadel, he’d already seen the difference, and he’d long since adjusted his expectations.

All of that flitted through one, isolated facet of Eliijah’s mind as he leveled his most devastating spell at the crowd. There were no innocents there. To him, they all deserved precisely what was coming to them.

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And given that most of them were low-level, what was coming was a degree of destruction they’d never experienced and were ill-equipped to endure. Even over the howling winds and thunder, Elijah could hear their collected screams. That only spurred him on, and the moment the spell played out, he cast it again.

Then, a third time, draining his ethera by a significant amount.

One part of Elijah simply didn’t care about those sorts of details. With so much anger coursing through him, he couldn’t be bothered with simple details like the amount of ethera in his core. However, he retained enough capability for rational thought that he cut himself off from casting a fourth instance of the spell.

By that point, the guards had mustered their response. Some had fallen, but they possessed enough Constitution to endure Calamity, albeit not without some injuries. There were a few Healers that had begun the recovery process, though. The healthy guards quickly sighted in on Elijah as the originator of their suffering, and they charged – defenders in the front, with the melee damage dealers following soon after. Only a few Sorcerers had made it through the barrage of Calamity unscathed, but they were the most powerful among the group. And they quickly leveled their power at Eliijah.

He welcomed the challenge by shifting into his lamellar ape form.

The transformation caught the charging defenders by surprise, and a few stumbled to a stop. That only stoked the fires of Elijah’s bestial instincts, and he let loose with a massive roar that shook every loose stone in the square. Then, he charged, catching them by surprise.

The first swipe of Elijah’s claws was rebuffed by stalwart armor that, upon impact, sent a jolt of cold up his arm. It was uncomfortable, but it did very little damage. More importantly, while the armor negated the slicing attack of his claws, it did nothing for the immense momentum he could bring to bear. The impact sent his first victim rocketing into another guard, and the pair ended up getting tangled with a third.

Elijah leaped upon them, smashing his fists against their armored forms. That armor protected them for a few moments, but eventually, Elijah’s assault found the limits of whatever protection it could provide. First, it only dented, but soon enough, those dents became cracks. And before long, Elijah had completely destroyed the metal plates.

Once that happened, the guards were defenseless before his fury.

In only a handful of seconds, he crushed them beneath his fists, shattering bones and rupturing organs.

That’s when the others finally fell upon him, pelting him with a hundred different attacks. A few managed to bypass the defenses offered by his thick scales. Fireballs burned him, ice missiles tore into him, as did arrows and blades. Most were rebuffed by Iron Scales, which cut their damage by ninety percent.

Still, the sheer volume of attacks meant that some were going to get through, and even the ones that didn’t bypass his defenses added to the aggregate damage he was forced to endure. But Elijah had been through it all before. If nothing else, he could withstand pain like few others on Earth.

And even as he was buried beneath a barrage of attacks, Elijah didn’t remain still. Instead, he marked his first target with Brand of the Stalker before gathering himself and leaping across the square.

Often, he used the ability without thought, marking his foes simply to get the boost to his damage. However, there were also times when he used it to keep tabs on his intended prey. Most recently, he’d done so while tracking Laramie. Otherwise, he would never have found the man.

In the middle of a battle, it served a similar – albeit still different – purpose, letting him keep tabs on a single individual who needed to die before all the others.

Elijah landed atop the woman, crushing her to the ground. She’d used some sort of shielding ability at the last second, but the plane of ethera had shattered under Elijah’s massive weight. That exposed her to his ensuing attacks.

She died after only two swipes of his claws. The first ripped into her face, but the second tore out her throat. A few healing spells landed upon her after the first, but Elijah knew she would bleed out before they could finish the job. Still, he took a moment to crush her skull, just to make sure.

Then, he turned his attention to the other Healers.

What followed was a massacre, both bloody and horrifying, as Elijah let the full weight of his savage instincts take over. Usually, he kept them in check, shunting them off to their own facet. Yet, that was impossible when every part of his mind shuddered under the effects of his unbridled rage.

He leaned into it, letting it envelope him as it never had before.

No longer was he a man inhabiting the body of a beast. Instead, he was fully an enraged animal. Suddenly, his body moved with coordination it had never before possessed, his attacks becoming both more brutal and graceful at the same time.

Elijah reveled in the bloodlust as well as the power, creating a level of carnage most people could scarcely imagine, much less endure.

It wasn’t enough, though.

His ire could not be sated. His hunger for death could never be satisfied. Yet, he kept going, moving from the Healers to the Sorcerers and Rangers in turn. The defenders attempted to redirect him, using a few skills and abilities to hem him in and block his efforts. Elijah barely noticed them, barreling through each attempt with unfathomable fury.

A few times, they managed to draw his focus via one ability or another. Some were similar to the one the mercenary had used in Roman’s quarters, but others were more subtle. The most effective was an ability that incited an obsession within Elijah. His every thought centered on one man, and everything else seemed inconsequential.

As a result, Elijah rushed him, feeling as if there was no one else on the battlefield. Even as a hundred other attacks fell upon his back, Elijah kept going. He never escaped that ability. Instead, it only ended when he killed the defender. If Elijah hadn’t already killed all the Healers, he might’ve been in trouble, but without their influence, the defender couldn’t keep up with the level of damage Elijah could bring to bear.

After Eliijah broke free of that ability, his fury mounted to unprecedented levels, and any subsequent attempts to manipulate him broke upon the bulwark of his unfettered rage.

In the end, he found himself alone amidst a sea of corpses.

With his breath coming in ragged gasps, Elijah took a few minutes to regain his tenuous grip on his sanity. When he did, he saw that his hide had been torn to tatters. Even with copious use of Iron Scales, he’d taken enough damage that, without significant healing, he would be incapable of going on.

But he wasn’t concerned with that at the moment.

Instead, he only had eyes for the state of his sister’s statue. Because the efforts to topple it had been successful. Alyssa’s stone form had fallen, and upon impact, it had shattered into four distinct pieces.

Elijah let the form of the lamellar ape fall away, and he knelt beside her dislodged head, tears of frustration, pain, and grief once again falling down his cheeks.