Path of Dragons

Book 8: Chapter 11: First Impressions

Sadie stumbled slightly when a wall of dense ethera hit her. Taking a deep breath, she steadied herself on what she thought was a tree. Then, it said, “Welcome to the grove. Please step to the side so as not to block the portal.”

She flinched away, her hand darting to the sword strapped to her back. She’d foregone her armor – largely because it was mostly destroyed in the Primal Realm – but even if her sword was well notched with a few cracks along the central spine, it was still a deadly weapon. Before she could act on her shock, Elijah stepped through the gate of flowering vines, then planted himself between Sadie and what looked like a humanoid tree.

That was when her mind caught up to the situation.

“Nerthus,” she said, remembering the spryggent Elijah had often described during the Trial of Primacy. “You’re much larger than I expected.”

“He’s a growing boy,” Elijah said, relaxing as reached up to pat the tree spirit on the shoulder. He looked up, saying, “You are getting pretty big, though. Pretty soon, this island won’t be big enough for you.”

“I have nearly reached my adult size,” Nerthus stated. “Until ascendence, at least. After that, I will begin to grow again.”

“That’s a relief,” Elijah responded. The tree spirit was already close to eight feet tall, so the notion that he would grow even larger upon ascendence was a little distressing. Before Sadie could contemplate it further, Elijah interrupted her thoughts and introduced her to Nerthus. “This is Sadie,” he said. “I think I’ve mentioned her once or twice. And Sadie, this is Nerthus. He’s like a brother to me.”

Sadie said, “From what you described, he’s more like your keeper.”

“That is accurate,” Nerthus agreed. “He is quite difficult to control. Like an errant child.”

Sadie glanced over to see Elijah rubbing the back of his neck. And against all odds, she let out a small chuckle. It was the first time she’d really smiled since…

The expression faded as she remembered Dat’s death. So often, it just crept up on her, ambushing her when she least expected it. She so wished that she could go a few happy minutes without being reminded that her best friend was gone. But even as that wish crossed her mind, it was clouded by guilt.

Dat deserved a little sadness.

He had earned her grief.

Resenting it was the height of selfishness, and she refused to go down that road. Not like her brother. Not like her grandfather. She would not be like them. She refused.

“What’s wrong?” asked Elijah, noticing the change in her expression.

She sighed. “Nothing,” Sadie answered. Then, she forced another smile, though she knew he’d see through it. Perhaps if she did it enough, it would transform into something more genuine. To keep herself from wallowing in the guilt and grief gripping her heart, she looked around.

And as she got her first glimpse of the grove, her breath caught in her chest. It was like a natural garden – Eden made real – and it defied easy description. The flora was bright and colorful, as if someone had turned the saturation levels up on the entire world, and she only recognized a few of the plants in evidence.

It was saying something that the eight-foot-tall tree man wasn’t even in the top ten of the most miraculous things she saw.

Even as she was overwhelmed by it all, her mind catalogued the features. The density of the ethera was the first thing she truly acknowledged, and it was far thicker than anywhere she’d been before. It was like dense humidity charged with an electrical current, and even that description was insufficient to truly convey the magical weight of it.

There was also an undercurrent of vitality to the atmosphere that felt like a thousand jolts of energy, all at once.

The terrain itself was mostly flat, and as she’d already noted, it was paradisical in nature. She recognized thick bushes bearing the fruits Elijah always carried around, but they were markedly less impressive than the enormous, white tree in the center. Its branches spread out for dozens of feet in every direction, and it practically glowed with potent ethera.

It was easily the most powerful natural treasure she’d ever encountered. Nothing else came close in comparison.

“Pretty cool, right? Would you believe this whole meadow was empty – except for the ancestral tree – when I got here?” Elijah asked, jerking her out of her reverie. Sadie didn’t know how long she’d been staring, but it was definitely longer than she’d intended.

“You made all of this?”

“Me? No. I just got things started. This place is Nerthus’ masterpiece,” he answered.

“I am merely a caretaker,” the spryggent stated.

“You don’t have to be modest, bud,” Elijah said. After that, the two went back and forth, neither of them taking full credit for the grove. The reality – as Sadie saw it – was that they were both responsible for its creation and upkeep. Nerthus was, as he’d pointed out, the caretaker, and he guided its growth, but without Elijah’s connection, none of it would have been possible. It was a symbiotic relationship that had resulted in the most magical place Sadie had ever seen.

Once the modesty competition had come to a conclusion, with Nerthus excusing himself to go check on the coffee trees, Elijah offered to take her on a tour of the island and its surroundings. Before they got going, though, she had to ask about the aforementioned coffee trees. “Wait – you used something called a Miracle Seed to grow coffee?” she asked, incredulous. “Not potatoes? Or some powerful herb that could be used in alchemy?”

“Nope!” he said, grinning.

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“What can I say? I’m addicted to caffeine. And this is magical caffeine, too. So, win-win.”

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“I don’t think that’s an appropriate label.”

“That’s because you’re a coffee-hating heretic. But that’s okay. I still like you,” he said. “We all have our flaws to bear.”

“Not a flaw,” she muttered. She’d tried to like coffee. She truly had. Back in her university days, all of her classmates had been enamored with the stuff, and she’d desperately wanted to fit in. But of all the drinks she’d tried at her local Starbucks, the only ones that had tasted even remotely acceptable were the ones that were basically just milkshakes with a coffee flavor. And even those were only bearable. No – as far as she was concerned, coffee was just an overrated, bitter drink that was only popular because of socialization and, obviously, because caffeine was addictive.

In any case, Elijah pretended that he didn’t hear her, and he happily proceeded to show her the rest of his island. It was a lot larger than she’d been led to believe, but with their attributes – and Elijah’s unerring ability to navigate even the densest tangle of flora – they had no difficulty traversing the terrain. It was much longer than it was wide – maybe six or seven miles by one or two – but that was still big enough to host a wide variety of fauna.

Sadie saw giant fluffy rabbits the size of golden retrievers, squirrels that gave off an ominous sense of pressure, and even a family of deer with crystalline antlers. Elijah introduced them as Bubba, Annabelle, and Susan – odd names for powerful beasts that made even Sadie a little uncomfortable, but she wasn’t one to judge.

Then, she was introduced to the foxes.

“Oh, my God – they are so cute!” she exclaimed as the little foxes danced around Elijah like excited puppies. They didn’t bark like dogs, though. Rather, they let out little high-pitched chirps that Sadie predictably found adorable. It was only when one of them nipped her finger, its sharp teeth cutting down to the bone, that she realized that they, too, were powerful creatures.

Elijah healed it, saying, “Sorry. They’re not house-trained. Or grove-trained, I guess? I don’t know. They haven’t been around many people, though. They’re not guardians yet – you can tell because they each only have one tail. Their mother had nine, so you know she was strong. You’d have probably lost a hand if she bit you. Nice fox, though, so long as she got her tribute. Not like that bastard of a clouded leopard. Now, he was just a little asshole, and there’s nothing else to say about that.”

Sadie had heard him complain about the leopard a few times while they were camping in the Zhangjiajie Forest, but she’d never seen the creature. Still, it was difficult to imagine such a beautiful beast – she’d seen clouded leopards in the zoo – being so temperamental. Chances were that Elijah had offended it somehow.

Despite Sadie’s brief bout with the fox’s sharp teeth, she was still delighted by their antics. The snow-white creatures were perfectly suited to the vale where Elijah had planted the frozen oak, and the area was at least twenty degrees colder than anywhere else on the island.

Eventually, they moved on, and Elijah showed her the coast as well as the enormous, monstrous crabs that he spoke of quite fondly. “These things tried to eat me when I first washed ashore,” he explained. “Tore my legs to ribbons. Back then, they were only about…oh, this big.” He held his hands about a foot-and-a-half apart. His voice was wistful when he continued, “They got bigger, though. I ended up surviving off a diet of mostly crab for the longest time.”

Sadie listened as he described his first few months. Despite the current, idyllic conditions of the island, it was clear that he’d struggled just as much as anyone else. His problems were different from what the people of Hong Kong had initially faced, but his survival was difficult nonetheless.

“Then I lost the cat,” he said. “I don’t think it ever considered me a friend or anything. I’m not even sure why it protected me, if that’s what it was doing. Most of the time, I believe it was only tolerating me while it protected its natural treasure. But even so, we had an understanding that might have become a partnership once I got stronger. I won’t ever know for sure. But after it died, things changed a lot for me. Suddenly, it was less about finding food and shelter and more about fighting Voxx and running towers. Oh, and killing this gnome Berserker who decided to invade my island.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d described his first run-in with civilization after the world’s transformation, but when he did so on the island, Sadie felt a distinct chill run up her spine. He felt no real remorse for killing those invaders. Not like he did with the people of Easton, who he’d killed in a quest for revenge for his sister’s death.

Briefly, she let herself feel Sense of Sin. It only lasted a moment, but the swirling darkness around Elijah had intensified to such a degree that she nearly stumbled away. In that moment, he wasn’t just a man who’d done some questionable things. He was a powerful and uncontrollable force of nature who wouldn’t hesitate to do whatever was necessary to protect what was his.

“Are you okay?” Elijah asked, reaching out to steady her. “You’re not hurt, are you? Some people take some time to get used to the ethereal density, but –”

She took a deep breath, shutting herself off from the ability as she said, “I’m fine. Really. Just an unsteady moment. You were talking about Ironshore, right? You’ve developed a positive relationship with them, haven’t you?”

“Oh, yeah. We’re totally cool now.”

As it turned out, that wasn’t entirely true.

After a short boat ride – that Elijah seemed extremely put off by – they arrived in Ironshore. The city itself was much larger than Sadie had expected. From the way Elijah had described it, she’d anticipated that it would be a small town of maybe a few thousand people, but it seemed that the population had reached into the low six digits. It wasn’t a metropolis on the level of somewhere like Hong Kong, but it was a decent sized city nonetheless.

In any case, Elijah’s characterization of being on good terms with the city’s inhabitants was more than a little exaggerated. Everywhere they went, suspicious eyes followed. People were afraid of him, and mostly, they treated him like a wild animal that might suddenly attack. For his part, he seemed oblivious to that attitude, grinning as he showed Sadie around.

The tour didn’t even come close to revealing Ironshore’s every nook and cranny, but it did give her a good sense of the place. And of its people, who ran the gamut from human to gnome and everything in between. Sadie had seen the represented races during the Trial of Primacy, but that had not prepared her for an entire city populated by what amounted to aliens.

Sure, there were plenty of humans, too, but they were in the vast minority, which left Sadie feeling like an intruder. Not that the people weren’t friendly. Most were, even if that attitude was likely driven by fear. But Sadie still didn’t feel as if she belonged.

Not until they finally reached the smithy.

“Carmen? You in here?!” Elijah called, barging through the door without knocking. “I have someone I want you to meet!”

The moment Sadie followed Elijah into the smithy, she was beset by intense heat and a wave of cacophonous hammering of metal on metal. It was so disconcerting that it took her a moment to find the source – a short but muscular woman who was banging on what looked like a hammer with another hammer.

The woman – Carmen, Sadie assumed – held up one finger to silence Elijah before she continued her work. Finally, after a few more strikes, she looked up and grinned. “You’re home.”

Elijah didn’t hesitate to throw his arms around his sister-in-law as they greeted one another. After they broke apart, the introductions commenced, and to Sadie’s surprise, she found that she quite liked Carmen. So much, in fact, that she didn’t even notice when Elijah left her alone with the Blacksmith.

While he was gone – running errands, it seemed – Sadie and Carmen talked about all sorts of things ranging from blacksmithing to the situation in Hong Kong. But after about an hour, Elijah returned. This time, he carried a trio of clay mugs.

“Here,” he said. “From the best tea place in town.”

Both Sadie and Carmen took the cups, and when Sadie sipped hers, she was absolutely floored by the amount of ethera it conveyed. More importantly, it was one of the tastiest beverages she had ever consumed. She enjoyed it as the pair caught up, contributing a few tidbits here and there.

But all the while, Sadie found herself growing both content and anxious. It was so easy to lose oneself in the comfort of a place like the grove or Ironshore, but that didn’t change the world’s situation. Sadie had responsibilities, and no amount of great tea or good company would change that.

Still, it was a nice break.