Path of Dragons

Book 7: Chapter 68: Whittled Down

Four portals appeared behind the skeletal guardian, each one framed by twisted bones. Above each floated an ethereal symbol that Elijah couldn’t interpret. However, he didn’t need them to know what each portal represented. The left-most was dedicated to cunning, the next to might, and the third was meant to denote stealth. The final was devoted to magic.

The Gate of Screams loomed over everything, casting them all in dense shadow.

“Choose,” said the guardian. “Delay, and you will be destroyed.”

The thing didn’t even twitch, but Elijah could feel its ethera swirl. And the density of the flow was great enough to tell him that if it attacked, no one would survive. They only had one way through the Gate of Screams, and it was by playing the game set before them.

“I will choose stealth,” said Zhang Yue. That was as expected. He had no other applicable abilities. He certainly wasn’t mighty, and he’d displayed no great level of cunning. He had no magic to speak of, either.

“Proceed,” rumbled the skeletal guardian. “Once the choice is made, it cannot be unmade. Nor are you permitted to delay. Go, or suffer the consequences of inaction.”

An expression of panic bloomed on the thief’s face. Clearly, Zhang Yue hadn’t intended to be the first through, but it looked like he wouldn’t have much of a choice in the matter. He was practically trembling at the prospect.

But no one got to his level – especially as a non-combat Explorer – without facing plenty of danger. So, the Thief quickly pushed his anxiety aside, steeling himself for what was to come. Then, he squared his shoulders and stepped forward. The approach was stiff, but after he passed the guardian, he relaxed a little.

Once he stood before the portal of twisted bone, he paused for a long moment, took a deep breath, then stepped through the third portal. It flashed with green energy as he crossed the threshold and disappeared. A pregnant silence reigned over the area as they awaited news of their companion’s fate. For his part, Elijah wasn’t particularly attached to the Explorer, but he didn’t dislike the man either.

He looked up, locked eyes with Sadie, and shook his head.

“His ability in stealth was lacking,” intoned the emotionless guardian. “The next challenger must now choose.”

Elijah’s mind whirled. The Explorer had possessed a powerful ability for stealth. Certainly, he wasn’t as high of a level as the others, but he was still competent enough in his chosen field.

And he’d been found wanting.

What was more, the challenges were clearly unforgiving. Failure meant death.

Dat stepped forward while the others were still reeling from their companion’s death. He announced, “I choose stealth as well.”

“Dat!”

He glanced back at Sadie and said, “I’ll be fine, bro. If I’m not, put what’s left of me next to Lisa.”

Nico ground his teeth, spitting, “You impertinent –”

“You’ll be fine,” Sadie interrupted. “But if not…if not, you have my word.”

“Thanks.”

Then, Dat stepped forward, passing the guardian as if he didn’t have a care in the world. A second later, he disappeared into the same portal that had killed Zhang Yue. For a moment, Elijah just stared at it, waiting for his friend to suffer the same fate. But then, Sadie’s voice cut through Elijah’s thoughts. “We need to do something with his body,” she said.

If they left it as it was, there was a good chance it would become a zombie.

“I’ll take care of it,” Nico stated, approaching the corpse. He pulled something from his pocket, then knelt beside the body. Upon closer inspection, Elijah recognized a lighter. “Stand back.”

Elijah did, and when he was at a safe distance, Nico clicked the device, sending a dense fireball at the corpse. It engulfed the body, burning it to ash in the space of only a few seconds. Finally, Nico extracted a clay jar from his pack and placed it next to the pile of ashes. Ethera swirled, becoming a tiny whirlwind that gathered the ash and deposited it into the jar. After sealing it, Nico stuffed the container back into his pack.

When he stood, he told Elijah, “It’s one of the first magical items we ever made. Burning corpses takes a lot of work, so we made a bunch of these lighters.” He held up the device. “Only works on corpses, unfortunately. It won’t even burn a zombie or a living creature.”

Elijah found the concept interesting, but he was a little too distracted by his friend’s situation to give Nico the attention he wanted. That prompted a frown, but Elijah ignored it. The man’s issues weren’t his problem.

Instead, he returned to Sadie’s side and said, “He’ll be fine. Ghost Cloak is a powerful ability.”

“So was Zhang Yue’s.”

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That was true, but Elijah had a little more insight into the comparative potency of the two abilities. With Soul of the Wild, he could still sense Zhang Yue, and without much issue. That put it on par with Dat’s normal stealth ability. By comparison, whatever ability the Explorer used to hide the entire group from undead threats was a little more powerful, but it was limited in scope. When it came to the more powerful Ghost Cloak, Elijah was forced to focus if he wanted sense Dat. That gave him some hope that his friend would be okay.

So, they waited, and soon enough, five minutes had passed. Then ten. When the duration of Dat’s absence approached half an hour, the guardian rumbled, “Your companion has proven his mastery over stealth. The next challenger must now proceed.”

“He made it!” Sadie exclaimed in an uncharacteristic show of excitement. She also threw her arms around Elijah and hugged him tightly. The embrace didn’t last more than a second before she remembered they had an audience, but by then, the damage had been done. Her brother glared at her.

He started to say something, but Sadie cut him off before he could even get started. “I’ll go next. I choose might.”

With that, she strode forward, leaving a stunned Nico behind. Only a moment later, he turned his ire on Elijah, saying, “Stay away from my sister.”

“What was that?”

“You heard me, Druid.”

Elijah tightened his grip on his staff. More than anything, he wanted to meet the Healer’s challenge head-on. He wouldn’t kill the man, but his instincts screamed at him to put Nico in his place. But then he recognized the error of that line of thinking. If he hurt Nico, Sadie would never forgive him.

“You know that’s not going to work out well for you, right?” he responded. “Even if I let you intimidate me into leaving her alone, I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you wouldn’t be as successful in manipulating her.”

“What are you saying?” the man demanded, puffing out his chest and trying to appear larger than he actually was. He was only about an inch shorter than Elijah, but in that moment, Nico seemed like a blustering teenager. Perhaps he wasn’t so far removed from that. He couldn’t have been older than his early twenties.

“She’s her own person, and she’s made her interest pretty clear. Nobody can stop her from doing what she wants,” Elijah said. “You telling me to stay away is only half of the equation.”

Nico started to respond, but just then, the guardian interrupted, “Your companion has proven her might. The next challenger must now proceed.”

Before anyone else could volunteer to go next, Nico stormed ahead, announcing that he would take the magic challenge. It was likely the only one the man could reasonably hope to conquer. More importantly, he clearly intended to get through the challenge so he could confront his sister. Elijah would have paid good money to see that meeting, but it seemed he would need to wait for the recap. Dat would surely share, even if Sadie probably wouldn’t.

Nico disappeared into the portal after only a moment, which left Elijah alone with Gideon. The man said, “You should not antagonize him. He will one day rule Heaven’s Bastion.”

Elijah didn’t care about that, but he couldn’t help but ask, “What about Sadie? She’s older, right?”

“She’s also female.”

“That matters?”

“To Song Tianwei, it does. To the people of Heaven’s Bastion, it is incredibly important. Regressive, certainly, but on this matter, their minds are set.”

Elijah wanted to argue with that stance, but in the end, he chose to keep his mouth shut. By that point, he knew Sadie pretty well, and he felt confident that she didn’t want to rule Heaven’s Bastion. Defend it, sure. She would lay down her life to protect her people. But the notion of governing tens of thousands of people was the sort of thing that would have frustrated her to no end. In that respect, she and Elijah shared a similar stance.

Finally, he said, “Like I told Nico, I don’t control Sadie. I like her, and she likes me. Maybe something will happen, and maybe this is just temporary. I won’t cut it off just because a spoiled kid wants to control his sister. She deserves better than that.”

Left unsaid was Elijah’s own feelings, but he didn’t think that would hold any sway with someone like Gideon.

“I think you misunderstand who I am, Mr. Hart,” Gideon said. “I fully support your courtship of Miss Sadie. An alliance would be most beneficial, both for Heaven’s Bastion as well as the world at large.”

“I don’t –”

“Your companion has proven his mastery of magic. The next challenger must now proceed,” the guardian rumbled.

At that, Gideon asked, “Do you want to go first? Or shall I?”

“You go ahead. There are still a few undead left, and I’m the only one who can take them solo.”

The man nodded, heading forward. “I choose cunning,” he stated. It made sense. He wasn’t as strong as Sadie, and he certainly had no real talent in magic or stealth. Cunning was likely the only real choice for someone like him.”

That left Elijah alone and considering his own path. In Shape of Thorn or Shape of the Master, he was likely just as strong as Sadie, but if the challenge prevented him from using his forms, he would struggle to match her strength. Guise of the Unseen was far less powerful than Ghost Cloak, so stealth was out. But magic seemed right up his alley. With Soul of the Wild, he could sense individual flows of ethera with a great degree of accuracy, which he suspected would aid him in the magical challenge.

Cunning was never even a consideration. Elijah felt confident in his intelligence, but his personality was too straightforward for him to be called cunning.

That decision was supported when, just as had happened with Zhang Yue, Gideon’s body came tumbling out of the portal. Elijah didn’t need Soul of the Wild to know that he was dead.

It should not have been a surprising turn of events. He knew that Gideon and Zhang Yue were both lacking in terms of levels. However, seeing the man’s frozen form still shocked Elijah, probably because he’d interacted with the man far more than he had with Zhang Yue. More, he couldn’t help but think that there would be consequences for the man’s death.

“He was not as cunning as he believed,” intoned the gate guardian. “Perhaps you will prove more successful.”

Just then, the gates dedicated to might, magic, and stealth winked out, disappearing in the space of only a moment. “What the hell?” Elijah demanded, taking a step forward.

“You are an ascended. The rules are different for you,” the skeletal creature stated evenly. “You must display all four traits. Cunning will be first, but you are required to pass all four tests.”

“And if I decide to skip your little tests?” Elijah asked.

The skeleton’s power flared, and Elijah took a step backward. “That is not an advisable course of action.” It glanced up at the top of the wall, where monsters of untold might awaited. “You are free to tempt fate and challenge the creatures atop the wall, but at your current level of power, you will be slaughtered. For you, this is the only way through. Make your choice.”

Elijah seethed, but he didn’t see any way around it. Perhaps he could shift into Shape of the Sky and fly over the wall, but he’d seen what stood atop it. Those creatures made the skeletal gate guardian look mundane by comparison. More, he’d already established that flight wasn’t really an option. There were creatures in the clouds, and though Elijah had only seen a few hints as to their nature, he knew enough to recognize that they would prevent him from following that course of action.

After all, the Primal Realm wasn’t really so different from a tower. There were guardrails against going off course. They weren’t as obvious, but they were there all the same.

“Fine,” he said. “Guess I’ll get this over with.”

With that, he stepped forward and entered the portal leading to the test of cunning.