Elijah lowered his staff and cast Nature’s Rebuke. It had been incredibly effective against the zombies, so he expected it to do just as much damage against the tidal wave of rotting flesh coming his way. The spell hit the mass, and for a moment, he thought it was going to work. Layers of flesh disintegrated beneath the power of the spell, prompting a wave of hope. Then, rolls of rotting meat surged, closing in around the gaping wounds until, only a moment later, no evidence of Elijah’s efforts remained.

“We’ve got a problem here!” he shouted. “A big, big problem!”

Kurik turned, and his eyes widened. The mass filled the entire corridor, and to Elijah, it looked like someone had wrapped decaying silly putty around a bunch of moving ball bearings. Except he could see zombified faces in the mass as well. Reaching limbs, grasping claws, and gnashing teeth were apparent, prompting a wave of nausea that twisted its way through his stomach.

So, maybe not like silly putty at all.

“What do we do?!” the dwarf breathed.

“Here,” Elijah said, dumping the crystals out of his bag. “We need to destroy these. I’ll protect the rear. Everyone else needs to fight the skeletons.”

Even as he gave those instructions, the horde of giant skeletons surged forward as one. They didn’t move quickly, but they didn’t really need to, either. Elijah and his companions couldn’t escape – not with the mass of roiling and rotting flesh blocking the only exit – so they didn’t need to waste their energy on a mad rush.

But Elijah knew just how quickly those skeletons could move. He’d fought dozens of the things already, and they were a terrifying foe – especially given that none of the new ones had the glaring weakness he’d exploited with the others. No crystals hanging around their necks meant that they were largely invulnerable to any attacks Elijah and his companions could level in their direction. Even Nature’s Rebuke was little more than a slap in the face against such durable foes.

Elijah couldn’t concern himself with that, though. His job was to protect the rear, and if he was going to do that, he couldn’t afford to split his focus. So, after discarding the crystals, he shifted into the Shape of the Guardian. By the time the transformation had completed, the mass of zombified flesh had closed to within fifty yards.

He used Savage Might.

Then, without further delay, he raced forward. A second later, he crashed into the mass, ripping and clawing with every ounce of fury he could muster. Ragged chunks of rotting meat flew into the air, creating a miasmic cloud of blackened gore, unidentifiable fluid, pus, and, most importantly, death-attuned ethera that sent a chill deep into his bones.

Elijah roared, ripping and clawing as he tapped into the three aspects of his spirit. The beast in him drove his savagery, the dragon refused to give in to the odds, and the oft-ignored human searched for a method to defeat the mighty foe.

Behind him, the skeletons finally reached Sadie and his companions, and the sound of their conflict echoed through the immense chamber. At the same time, the disembodied voice continued to hiss meaningless statements about finally defeating the tyrant.

For his part, Elijah couldn’t afford to pay any attention to that, because it quickly became apparent that his efforts – for all their fury – were almost entirely ineffective. He’d ripped a wide gash into the amalgam of zombified flesh, but it still surged forward with agonizing inevitability. Eventually, it would reach his companions, and the battle would effectively end.

They would fight on.

None were the sorts to give up. However, the writing was on the wall. If they let themselves be sandwiched between the two sides of the enemy’s attack, they would fall. Not soon, and not without taking their own proverbial pound of flesh, but their demise seemed almost fated.

Elijah refused to surrender to that.

So, he sprang backward, and even as he shifted back to his human form, an explosion of force sent him staggering forward. The pyramid shook, and the ta’alaki’s voice erupted into a scream. It took Elijah a second to realize that Kurik had finally destroyed one of the crystals.

Fortunately, that caused the mass of zombified flesh to recoil – if only for a moment – which in turn gave Elijah the opportunity to complete his transformation and cast Swarm. Then, he used Nature’s Rebuke and Calamity. The familiar spells swept in, and hundreds of buzzing flies descended upon the mass of flesh. It ignored them, and to its peril. For the duration of the spell, the flies bit the amalgam hundreds – if not thousands – of times, inflicting one affliction after another. Flesh rotted rapidly, disintegrating in seconds as the malicious effects swept through the creature.

It wasn’t enough, though.

So, Elijah once again shifted. The situation did not call for the brute force of the lamellar ape. That was meeting it on its terms. Instead, he needed the power of the blight dragon. Shape of Venom transformed his body, and he raced back into the fray, climbing the walls and dropping down from the ceiling. Immediately, he started biting.

The roiling flesh closed around him, trying to suffocate him with sheer pressure. And it worked. Elijah could feel his bones cracking under the force of so much weight as the rotting flesh enveloped him. Cold death raced through him, strangling the very vitality within him.

But Elijah was a Druid. Life was his bread and butter. So, he persisted, his endurance propped up by the triumvirate of his spirit. Within, the dragon roared in defiance, the beast lashed out with every single bite Elijah inflicted, and the human clung to consciousness with an iron grip.

He bit. He clawed. And hundreds of instances of Envenom raced through the amalgamated monster. Additionally, each attack carried with it Insidious Malady. Normally, it didn’t have the chance to truly build – it was a slow acting, disease-based skill – but the volume of attacks meant that even that gradual escalation became a truly terrifying amount of damage.

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As he fought and clawed, the monster continued its efforts at constriction. Still, Elijah fought on. His Jade Mind helped keep him on track, though eventually, even that wasn’t enough – especially when Savage Might ran its course.

Bones cracked beneath the pressure, and Elijah’s body began to fail. The mechanical connections of his joints counted for nothing when they were attached to crushed bones.

Pain raced through him until it lost meaning. In his Mind – in his very spirit – there was nothing but the task at hand. Every tiny scratch he inflicted brought with it Insidious Malady. Every bite carried Envenom. And even more than that, every second he continued to fight, his resolve cemented itself even further.

He might not win. The creature might end up killing him.

But he certainly wasn’t going to give up.

However, the more rational part of him took hold, and, realizing that he wasn’t going to survive much longer in his current form, Elijah let the Shape of Venom fall away. As soon as he crossed the threshold into humanity, he loaded himself with all the healing he could muster, then cast Swarm again before using Nature’s Rebuke. Finally, he re-cast Calamity, hoping that it would just stack damage onto the amalgamation of zombified flesh.

Once he’d finished casting his suite of spells, he embraced Shape of the Guardian. Tiny mites manifested all around him, and they burrowed into mass of decaying flesh, inflicting a vast array of afflictions. Meanwhile, Sooth, Healing Rain, and the after-effect heal of Nature’s Bloom mended his broken body, staving off death just long enough for the transformation into a lamellar ape to fully complete.

And last, the effects of Calamity – blades of wind, rumbling earth, and devastating bolts of lightning – ripped their way through the blob of necrotic flesh from the inside out. The monster writhed as hundreds – perhaps even thousands – of afflictions tore through it.

In the form of the lamellar ape, Elijah continued to rip and tear. Biting and clawing, he leveraged his high Strength to great effect, and with his increased Constitution, he managed to stave off the worst of the crushing effect. Still, he couldn’t resist it for long before his bones – already weakened – began to once again break.

Elijah could read the situation as well as anyone, but he’d already established a pattern that seemed to be working. So, once he felt the effects of Soothe start to wear off, he once again shifted into his human form, cast a few heals – as well as his offensive spells – before shifting into a blight dragon to inflict as many instances of Insidious Malady and Envenom as he could manage. Then, when he felt his bones giving way to the constriction, he repeated the process, taking on the Shape of the Guardian to tear into the monster via another avenue.

The damage – both from and against Elijah – continued to build. The monster quivered, practically melting under his onslaught. Meanwhile, even as Elijah repeated his cycle countless times, his Jade Mind worked overtime, funneling massive amounts of ethera through its nine apertures and into his Soul. Without it, he never could have managed to cast so many spells. He’d have long since run out of energy.

But with it, he could keep going for some time yet.

The same could not be said for his body. Even in the durable form of the lamellar ape, Elijah could feel his bones breaking with every passing moment. The ongoing heals took care of most of that damage, but he fell behind a little a time. Inevitably, he’d eventually reach a tipping point where he simply couldn’t endure.

Vaguely, Elijah was aware of a series of ongoing explosions. Presumably, the others were busy destroying the crystals, but it could just as easily been the result of the battle against the skeletons. He couldn’t worry about that, though. It was all he could do to manage his own affairs, much less concern himself with how everyone else was engaging the enemy.

Elijah continuously used Iron Scales when he was in his guardian form, but even that wasn’t enough to allow him to gain any ground. He continued to fight, but even though he made an enormous amount of headway, he knew he was progressively being pulled further and further into what felt like an endless mass of necrotic flesh. Still, he knew that no monster was limitless. Even Halima had been defeated.

And he was a dragon.

He would not give in. He would not fall before a mindless slurry of zombified remains. So, he continued his cycle, adding more healing to the mix. He also pushed himself to remain in his blight dragon form as long as possible.

Ironically, it was not the monster itself that pushed him over the edge. It was the pervasive aura of death that had slowly crept into his body, suffusing his every cell until he could scarcely move without ripping muscles and ligaments.

Elijah shifted back into the lamellar ape form, and activated his final hope. Guardian’s Renewal swept through him, healing the damage that had been wrought. However, as had happened on a few other occasions, it was immediately clear that it wouldn’t be enough.

Vitality fought with death-attuned ethera, creating a stalemate where his body was destroyed and renewed multiple times with every passing second. Elijah knew that the moment Guardian’s Renewal gave out, he would die.

He couldn’t do anything about the constriction inflicted by the mass of rotting flesh, but the aura of death reminded him of the corruption he’d endured in the fallen grove. In the beginning, he’d tried to purge it from his body – and with some success – but it had ultimately been an affliction of the mind. Still, it was a lesson he hadn’t forgotten.

So, he shoved his resolve behind that same technique, and he squeezed the undead aura with every ounce of willpower he could manifest. At first, it did nothing. Even as the power of life and death warred within him, he hung in limbo. Then, something broke. An explosion erupted all around him, the shockwave tearing through the monster.

And then it all imploded.

Death rushed into the vacuum, smothering him beneath a mountain of ghastly energy. It seeped through his skin, suffusing his organs and infecting his bones. Elijah screamed as pain wracked his entire body. He was dying. He knew it. Agony tore through him like a wildfire, a herald of what was to come.

His fate was knocking on his door.

But Elijah hadn’t gotten as far as he had by giving up. The dragon, the beast, and the human all coalesced, and he squeezed with all his might. The result was a single drop of deathly energy, given liquid form by the sheer pressure he brought to bear, that seeped out of his chest. Then another came. And another after that.

Even as the monster tried to crush him, Elijah was wholly focused on purging himself of that deathly energy. Along the way, he picked up hundreds of other forms of tainted energy. Leftover corruption. Sickness. Imperfections. Toxins of every kind. It manifested in the form a thick sludge that came from every orifice and leaked from every pore.

Elijah pushed. And squeezed. And he was remade, better and more perfectly pure than ever before.

A notification flashed before Elijah’s mind’s eye, but he couldn’t spare it any attention. The pressure continued to squeeze, and the deathly energy pushed against him as furiously as ever before. But it could find no purchase. Elijah’s bones refused to break, and his muscles would not give way.

He was just too strong. To durable.

And he had a monster to kill.

He shifted back into the blight dragon, and he tore into the mass of flesh with more savagery than ever before. His body sang with power as he ripped through the monstrous mass of necrotic flesh, inflicting hundreds of instances of afflictions along the way. They built and built until, at last, the amalgam of zombified meat lost cohesion and fell apart.

Elijah flopped to the ground, covered in pus and gore.

He felt good.

Really, really good.

But he didn’t have time to revel in it. Never was that made clearer than when he heard a feminine scream echo down the hall. Elijah turned, seeing that he was hundreds of yards away from where he’d started. But he also saw the giant skeleton looming over a fallen Sadie, and he knew that he was too far away to help her.