Rain fell in heavy drops that reminded Elijah that spring would soon overtake winter. But it had yet to arrive, as evidenced by the biting cold that refused to relinquish its grip. Elijah ignored it as he pushed the small boat out into the sea. He had endured worse, and he knew his suffering had only begun.
He could only hope that it would be worth it.
Once the water reached his waist, he climbed into the boat, grabbed the oars, and started to row. With his enhanced Constitution, it was trivial to send the vessel cutting through the waves, and soon enough, he was skipping along the surface with some speed. Still, the strait was wide, and even as the darkness of full night enveloped him, he continued to row towards his destination.
Even with his augmented Strength, it took Elijah over two hours to cross the strait, partially due to the distance, but also because the boat itself had never been built for speed. Still, he made it without much difficulty.
Upon reaching the shore, which was just as rocky as that of his island, he climbed out of the boat and dragged it out of the sea. For his point of ingress, Elijah had chosen a spot about a mile up the shore from the edge of the settlement. He’d done so in an effort to avoid detection; after all, the town was well-lit, and it would have been tempting fate to assume he could arrive at the dock unseen.
Thankfully, the tree line was only a few feet from the shore, which allowed Elijah to quickly drag the boat under cover. Once that was taken care of, Elijah recast his enhancements – Essence of the Wolf, Essence of the Monkey, and Aura of Renewal – before casting Shape of the Predator. As always, One with Nature was still active as well.
Once he’d assumed the form of a mist panther, he set off through the forest. As he slowly padded through the woods, nimbly leaping over fallen trees and across the dips in the terrain, he sorely missed the awareness of his Domain. He hadn’t felt it back in the tower, but in the weeks since returning to the island, he’d grown used to knowing everything about his surroundings. Fortunately, One With Nature acted as a watered-down version of the skill. The breadth of knowledge it granted was far more limited, and it only extended a dozen yards around him, but it was much better than nothing.
Gradually, he covered the ground between his landing spot to the clearing surrounding the city. As he did, he tried to plan for what he would find. A hundred possibilities flitted through his mind, but they were all useless until he knew what obstacles might bar his way.
He reached the edge of the forest, then bounded up a tree until he was twenty or thirty feet from the ground. From that elevated position, he gazed out across the clearing at the settlement. The first thing he noticed was that it was far more developed than he’d expected. The buildings weren’t so different from what he might’ve seen from industrious humans, though the few residents he saw put the lie to that image.
Gnomes, dwarves, and goblins made up the majority of the population, but he also saw a couple of creatures he could only categorize as dark elves. Because of their onyx skin, refined features, tapered ears, and stark white hair, Elijah couldn’t think of them as anything else.
After watching for a while, Elijah resigned himself to the inevitable. He could only glean so much information from afar; he would have to enter the settlement if he wanted to find the dragon’s daughter and complete the task he’d been given. So, after only a little more hesitation, he descended from his perch and embraced Guise of the Unseen before setting off across the clearing.
However, after only a few feet, he felt something in the ambient Ethera shift, a feeling that was quickly followed by a sense of vague unease. When he felt that, he stopped in his tracks and retreated a few feet until he felt things return to normal. It took a few more passes before he found the line of demarcation. After a few more minutes of study – during which he followed the line across the clearing – he determined that it surrounded the settlement.
With that in mind, and without any other indications as to the purpose, Elijah set out to test it further. As he did, he determined that it clearly wasn’t dangerous, but there was something about it that tickled at the back of his mind. So, after finding a hollow that was out of line of sight of the settlement, he shifted back to his human form. Then, he crossed the line, and just as he’d expected, he felt nothing.
That cemented it.
The line wasn’t so different from the boundaries of his Domain. However, instead of granting awareness, it was meant to keep the wildlife away. Perhaps it even prevented dimensional rifts from forming. He didn’t know enough to draw any further conclusions, so he retreated out of sight and waited for his Ethera to regenerate. Once it did, he once again assumed the form of a mist panther and stalked forward.
After crossing the line, the sense of unease returned, but it wasn’t enough to dissuade him from continuing. Perhaps that was because he wasn’t truly an animal. Or maybe his attributes protected him. It might’ve even been One With Nature keeping the boundary from fully affecting him. Whatever the case, it was easily endured, so he continued to stalk toward the settlement.
As he drew closer, more of the town’s details became apparent. It was lit by what looked like gas lamps, though the light was different enough that Elijah thought they must have been powered by Ethera. The buildings themselves were made from a mixture of quarried stone and wood from the surrounding forests, and from an architectural perspective, were entirely unimpressive in their mundanity.
Elijah padded forward, keeping low and trusting the shadows and Guise of the Unseen to keep him hidden. Even so, he took great pains to avoid the residents. By that point, it was well past midnight, so there weren’t many out and about, but there were enough that Elijah had to choose his route into the city with care. Fortunately, there were no active defenses or guards; otherwise, he might’ve been found.
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Over the next few hours, Elijah explored the city, and as he did, he was struck by just how normal everything seemed. The residents were all mythological creatures – at least from his perspective – but they acted much as he’d have expected from humans. He saw them eating, drinking, laughing with their friends, and enjoying all sorts of leisure activities. He passed a few taverns, and he even crept into a couple of domiciles to see them sleeping. It was all just so normal.
And even when he was focused on the task before him, Elijah couldn’t help but be reminded of just how lonely he was. It had been years since he’d spoken to another human being, much less done something so mundane as hung out at a bar. Once, Elijah had taken that sort of thing for granted, but now, he knew just how valuable companionship really was.
More, the city – and the normalcy of its atmosphere – suggested that the world hadn’t fared as poorly as he had expected. Certainly, people had died, but if the collection of gnomes, goblins, and dwarves could live normal lives, then so could the human population that had been lucky enough to have survived the world’s transition.
Seeing the city also awakened within him a resolve to find other survivors. To search out his family. Before, it had seemed impossible. Now, though, he felt confident that he could traverse the world with some degree of safety. After all, he’d survived the Sea of Sorrows and the Primordial Jungle. Surely, that was more dangerous than whatever he’d find in Earth’s wilderness.
In any case, Elijah couldn’t focus on that. Instead, he continued to search the settlement for any hints as to where he might find the dragon’s daughter. Despite his efforts, as dawn approached, he still hadn’t discovered any leads. So, with the population beginning to stir, he had no choice but to retreat, quickly returning to the forest and settling in to observe the town by the light of day.
Soon enough, the sun rose, and the town came to life as hundreds of people set about their daily tasks. Elijah focused on two groups in particular, though. One headed into the surrounding forests, while another went to the mine behind the town.
After finding a secluded cave a few miles away from the city, Elijah settled in for a few hours’ worth of sleep. When he awoke, he took off through the forest to search out the townspeople who’d gone into the woods. The first group he found were loggers, while the second were clearly hunting the local wildlife.
From a perch on the thick branch of an oak tree, Elijah watched as the hunters took down a bear the size of a compact car. The beast put up a decent fight, but the group of five hunters were well-prepared and clearly practiced at their craft. So, the animal fell without inflicting much damage on its killers. After that, they set about processing the creature, and when they finished and headed back to the town, they left nothing behind.
After seeing that, Elijah continued to search the forest, and he came across more hunts in progress. None of them even vaguely suspected he was around, which, though unsurprising, was gratifying. Emboldened by that success, he followed each of the hunting parties until he could confirm that they weren’t keeping the dragon’s daughter hidden away. It took most of the day, but by the time the sun set, he’d ruled the hunters out as the kidnappers.
So, with night falling, he retreated to his cave and got a few more hours of rest.
When he awoke, it was nearly midnight. While he’d slept, the rain had returned in full force, which provided that much more cover as he crept toward the mine. It was situated at the base of one of the surrounding mountains, and the entrance was guarded by a few scattered buildings.
Elijah searched them, though he found nothing but administrative facilities that looked strangely reminiscent of what he’d expect from a similar human-run operation, a couple of storehouses filled with various mining supplies, and a guard post manned by a couple of dozing goblins. He also made a couple of discoveries along the way. First, the System’s translation feature apparently extended to the written word, so he had no issues reading the files in the administrative room. Second, that ability gave him a little context for the mining operation – chiefly that the settlement was called Ironshore, was run by a group known as the Green Mountain Mining Guild, and that they were almost exclusively interested in something called true iron.
None of that was pertinent to his task, so he only spent a few minutes reading the files. Still, it was nice to get some information about his neighbors.
He crept past the goblin guards, entering the mine. At first, he took things slowly, but after a few minutes, it became clear that the mine was entirely deserted. So, he sped up, abandoning Guise of the Unseen in favor of alacrity. He passed carts and piles of ore along the way, but for the first hour or so, he found nothing out of the ordinary. As far as he could tell, it was just an ordinary mine.
Then, Elijah noticed that the density of the ambient Ethera began to rise. As he continued on, he came to a fork in the tunnel. Down the left path, the Ethera remained mostly stable, but to the right, it continued to thicken. Reasoning that that had to mean something, he chose the right path.
Over the next hour, he was confronted with a few more such choices, and each time, he decided to follow the Ethera, reasoning that it would mean something. Along the way, he paid special attention to the senses granted by One With Nature – a good strategy, because otherwise, he never would have found his quarry.
He was slowly padding down the mine shaft when he felt something that shouldn’t have been there. To his left, he could sense the normal life – insects and the like – that indicated there should be a tunnel there, but when he looked, he saw nothing but a solid wall of rock. Curious, Elijah reached out with a paw, and to his shock, he saw it pass through the wall.
He snatched his paw back, then inspected it. It seemed the same as always, and he hadn’t felt any pain to indicate that it was dangerous. So, it only took a few seconds for him to conclude that the wall was some sort of illusion.
Still, even though such an explanation made perfect sense, Elijah felt a tremble of fear as he pushed through. To his relief, nothing bad happened, and he sighed in relief as he stepped into a new tunnel.
However, this one was different. Rougher. It didn’t bear the same wooden beams that supported the integrity of the rest of the tunnels. Likely, that was because it was so small. The rest of the mine’s passages were at least twenty feet across and just as high, but this new tunnel was maybe a quarter of that. Wide enough to permit passage of a couple of the small gnomes or goblins, but wider-shouldered dwarves would have to traverse it single file.
Elijah padded down the tunnel as it sloped dramatically downward, twisting and turning every few steps. Then, finally, he reached a point where it opened into a wide chamber.
It only took him a few seconds to confirm that he’d found his destination, because in the center of the room lay a large, curled form that could only be a young dragon.