Elijah barreled through a pair of zombies, throwing them aside with so much momentum that when they hit the wall, they splattered like bugs. Still, he knew they weren’t truly dead because their brains remained undestroyed. He didn’t take the time to finish them off, though. Instead, under the influence of Shape of the Guardian, he threw himself toward the giant skeleton on the other side of the chamber. He had one task, and he couldn’t stop for anything.
He leaped, kicking off the ground with as much Strength as he could manage, and hit the skeleton with enough force that the massive, thirty-foot-tall creature staggered backward. Elijah didn’t bother with an attack, though he ached to tear it to pieces. Rather, he climbed the thing’s ribcage until he reached the silver-chained crystal around its neck. Latching his claws around the white hunk of rock, he ripped it free. Then, without skipping a beat, he threw himself backward.
As he flew through the air, Elijah transformed into his natural shape, and before he hit the ground, he was human once again. He lashed out with his Feral Spire, destroying a zombie’s head, then shoved the crystal into his Ghoul-Hide Satchel. After that, he used Shape of Venom, adopting the form of a blight dragon. In the much smaller shape – it was only five feet long and low-slung – he raced among the zombies’ feet, biting them and injecting his potent venom.
Thankfully, his sense of taste was almost nonexistent in the form, else he’d have likely vomited from all the rotting flesh. As it was, he could easily ignored the disgusting situation and focus on inflicting as much damage as possible.
Meanwhile, the others had formed up behind Sadie, and they were steadily mowing down anything that came near. That was the normal strategy, though the addition of one of the skeletons had necessitated a slight adjustment. That was why Elijah had separated from the group.
In truth, he preferred his current role, running around, completely independent from his companions. It let him use his versatility to greatest effect without pigeonholing him into a task for which he was ill-suited. The last thing he wanted was to be stuck behind Sadie and casting Storm’s Fury over and over again. Or worse, healing others while they did the real fighting.
There was a chance that he’d become a bit of a battle junky, but was it so wrong that he enjoyed using the full suite of his abilities? Was it such a bad thing that he liked fighting against overwhelming odds and gaining the advantage? There was a primal satisfaction that came along with overcoming an enemy in battle, and Elijah was far from immune to those sorts of feelings. He’d felt them as a boxer back before the world had changed, and they’d grown even more intense as he gained power.
And then there was the experience that came with every kill, bolstering those feelings with the positive reinforcement of progression. With that in mind, his preferences were easy to understand. Still, Elijah knew he needed to keep that budding battle mania in check, lest he overreach. Just knowing it was there helped him rein it in.
Gradually, the zombies began to drop. That was the good thing about Envenom. The toxin it injected into Elijah’s enemies was magical in nature, and as a result, it could kill creatures that more mundane venom never could have affected, much less slain. The only downside was that it had a slight stamina and ethera cost to create the venom, which meant that theoretically, he could eventually run out of steam. He’d yet to find those limits – and he had definitely tried – but he knew they were there all the same.
Regardless, it wasn’t long before his venom did its work and the chamber was littered with the inert and putrefying bodies of his enemies. He wasn’t wholly responsible for the victory. Ron, Dat, Sadie, and Kurik had done their fair share as well – as evidenced by the pile of bodies accumulated in front of the Crusader. However, Elijah was satisfied to see that he’d killed more than all of the others combined.
And after a titanic battle, he’d taken out the skeleton as well. He couldn’t help but smile inwardly at his accomplishments.
Once everything was dead, Elijah shifted back into his human form. As he did, Sadie shoved her way through the piled bodies, which tumbled down the rotting slope a second later.
“That was reckless,” she said, sheathing her sword on her back. “You didn’t have to stay out here.”
Elijah shrugged. “It seemed like the best strategy. I can’t really do much if I stay behind you,” he said. “I’m better running around out here.”
At that, she just shook her head. As she did, Dat and the others stepped through the small opening she’d made. The Witch Hunter looked around, then said, “Damn, bro. They really aren’t dissolving like they did down below.”
“I think this is probably where all of them came from in the first place,” Elijah guessed. “When we killed them in the tunnels, they came back.”
“How does that work?” asked Ron.
“Ain’t no point in tryin’ to figure it out. None of us are necromancers.”
Elijah just shrugged at Kurik, who looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I was just going to say magic. That’s usually the answer.”
“You don’t want to go deeper than that?” Ron asked. “Weren’t you a scientist before all of this? Where’s your curiosity?”
“I was a really bad scientist,” Elijah admitted. “Like, I did my job and everything, but I think I liked the idea of doing science-y things better than actually doing them.”
Before Earth had been touched by the World Tree, Ron had been a surgeon. But even before that, he’d done his undergraduate work in biology, and from the man’s demeanor, he’d been far better suited to scientific work than Elijah had been. As a result, he looked at things from a far different perspective. While Elijah was perfectly fine with using magic as the explanation, Ron had demonstrated an intellectual curiosity that begged him to go much deeper than that. Perhaps he should’ve been a Scholar.
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In any case, a zombie-infested pyramid wasn’t the place to discuss their differences. So, Elijah asked, “Should we destroy the crystal?”
Over the past few hours, they’d encountered six other skeletons, each of which wore the same crystals around their necks as their ground-bound cousins. The first, Elijah had destroyed, which had elicited a reaction he hadn’t expected. The moment its milky white surface had cracked, a blood-curdling scream had erupted through the corridors within the pyramid. More troublingly, the entire structure had rumbled ominously, as if it was under the effect of a weak and very localized earthquake.
Or skyquake, maybe, considering that it was floating thousands of feet above the ground.
Whatever the case, it was an alarming event, and since then, they’d been hesitant to destroy the crystals. However, Elijah wasn’t certain that was the best idea. The challenges were clearly based on the planet’s history, but they were also contrived by the system. Nothing was there by mistake. So, he had to believe that they were intended to do something with the crystals.
But was the intention destruction? Or was it something else. None of them knew, and even Dat’s Hex of Scrying gave no hints as to how to proceed. For hours, they’d aimlessly walked through the pyramid’s corridors, but none of them knew anything about their eventual destination.
“Not yet,” Sadie answered. “We don’t know what it will do.”
“I think we should,” Dat countered. “That scream was probably supposed to tell us that destroying the crystal caused the boss pain.”
“Boss?” asked Elijah.
“Like a video game,” Ron said. He shrugged. “Seems to fit. For what it’s worth, I don’t think we should break those crystals until we know what they do. What if it brings the whole pyramid down? Sadie and Elijah might survive that, but I won’t. Neither will Kurik.”
“I might,” the dwarf countered. “I’m hardy.”
“Your Constitution is the lowest here, bro.”
“I’m more than my attributes,” Kurik insisted. “Quicker you realize that, the better off you’ll be.”
“Point taken,” Ron said, holding up his hands. “Didn’t mean to offend.”
“Aw, don’t be like that. I didn’t mean –”
“This is beside the point,” Sadie interrupted. “Let’s get back on track. I don’t think we should destroy any other crystals.”
“I think she’s right,” Elijah said.
She narrowed her eyes. “You do?”
“What?”
“You don’t normally agree with me.”
He shrugged. “First time for everything, I guess.”
After that, the group moved on, and within twenty minutes, they found themselves in another chamber containing hundreds of elite zombies and a giant skeleton. Utilizing similar tactics to the previous encounters with such forces, they dispatched their enemies quickly and efficiently before leaving the rotting corpses behind. In the crypts below, Elijah had grown accustomed to the zombies simply disappearing once they died. Now, though, he was reminded of just how grotesque rotting corpses could be. It wasn’t just the smell, either. There was an aura about them that made everything in the pyramid that much worse. He could smell it, sure. But he could also taste it. And being immersed in it made his skin crawl.
Not to mention the pervasive, spirit-deep cold.
More than anything, though, Elijah’s discomfort could be traced back to the ineffectiveness of One with Nature. He’d grown so accustomed to it that he’d begun to use it as a crutch. So, when the feedback from his more mundane senses didn’t match what he felt via that singular ability, it created a disconnect between the two. Fortunately, his Jade Mind was up to the task of pushing that discomfort to the back of one facet where it couldn’t really affect him.
Not too much, at least.
Like that, hours passed into multiple days. Every now and then, the group would stop to rest, but the aura of rot, death, and cold prevented any of them from relaxing. Still, they kept going, passing through one corridor after another. Hundreds of giant skeletons fell, and Elijah began to wonder if the pyramid was larger on the inside than it seemed from without. But he discarded that notion as irrelevant. Even if it was, it wouldn’t change anything.
Fortunately, there were only so many ways to go, so it wasn’t a maze, as Elijah had originally feared they would need to overcome. Progress was so mind-numbing that he had to consciously force himself to pay full attention. The zombies weren’t quite as deadly as some foes, and the skeletons were fairly easy to deal with so long as one knew how to attack them. Yet, they were all powerful enough to end the group’s journey if Elijah and his companions didn’t take it seriously.
Even with that in mind, it was easy to fall into a pattern of mechanically playing their roles. Elijah was in one such a dissociated state when things finally changed. It was so sudden that he just blinked in response to something new.
Sadie stepped forward, planting herself at the front of the group. Meanwhile, Elijah shook his head and took in the scene. They’d found themselves in a massive, hexagonally shaped room. On each side was a chamber containing an empty pedestal, and Elijah could feel the roiling ethera contained within each area.
However, he was more interested in the figure standing at the center of the room.
On the surface, Elijah could recognize a ta’alaki, though this specimen was far taller than normal. Thinner, too. Even with their voluminous – yet degraded – robes, their figure looked almost skeletal. Beneath their hood were hollow features and eyes burning with teal energy. Each of their four hands held a staff, three of which were tipped with giant, black crystals. The fourth was empty, though Elijah could see shards of onyx embedded in the crown of that staff.
“At last,” came a hissing voice that seemed to emanate from everywhere all at once. “You have come. We have been waiting.”
Then, the pedestals lit up with teal energy. A second later, the air ripped open, revealing five portals to another world. Elijah had seen something like it before, but instead of leading to the Abyss, this led to a hellscape of pure death. Dense and deathly energy slammed into the sense associated with One with Nature, briefly stunning him with the sheer weight of it.
It was the Underrealm.
Elijah knew that the second he felt it.
And it was the source of the ta’alaki’s power.
Those thoughts barely had a chance to flow through one facet of his Mind before skeletons – each one at least thirty feet tall – emerged from the five portals. Then another wave came. And another after that. Elijah could barely make out anything on the other side of the portals, but he could see plenty of shapes waiting to cross over.
“You are strong. Perhaps you will be the final step necessary to defeat the tyrant emperor,” the voice rasped. “We will see.”
Elijah and his companions hadn’t remained stationary. Instead, they’d fallen into their normal tactics, letting Sadie take the lead while the others remained in the rear. However, it quickly became apparent that that was not a viable strategy when Elijah heard a squelching sound from behind. He glanced backward and saw a formless wave of rotting flesh – which looked like every last zombie they’d killed within the pyramid had somehow merged into a slurry of decaying meat – was rushing toward them.