“Just grab the reward, and let’s go!” shouted Elijah, struggling to maintain his balance. It wasn’t just an earthquake. Nor was it simply a volcanic eruption, though in one facet of his Mind, Elijah wondered how he could be so dismissive of one of the most destructive forces in existence. However, he felt confident that, with his Dexterity making him more coordinated than anyone in pre-World Tree human existence, he should have had no trouble keeping his feet. Yet, there he was, stumbling around like a drunken idiot after a long bar crawl. That, along with the dense ethera racing in every direction, told him that something else was at play.
Not that there was much he could do about it at the moment. The only avenue was to escape, so, even as Dat opened the silver reward box, Elijah ignored the notification that he’d completed the challenge of Ignis and turned his attention to the problem at hand. Chiefly, the issue centered around the fact that they had miles upon miles of bridges to cover, and judging by the steadily increasing potency of the rumbling below, they didn’t have much time to do so.
No one wasted time on conversation. Instead, they all sprinted from the platform, which collapsed only seconds after they’d departed. Elijah didn’t spare a glance backward, but he felt the onyx structure disappear beneath the pool of magma. He was only grateful that it didn’t take the entire network of bridges down with it.
As they sprinted along the black crystal surface, they passed dozens of corpses. Some belonged to giants, others to the magma-forged gargoyles, and Elijah even saw a few piles of ashes he knew had once been ashassins. He paid them no heed, knowing that they didn’t have the luxury of inspecting the bodies and taking loot. Instead, he and the others dodged around or vaulted over the often-massive corpses.
What Elijah belatedly recognized as a volcano rumbled far more powerfully than ever before, and he nearly lost his feet. Sadie did stumble, but Elijah was there to catch her on the way down. A second later, she was upright and sprinting. Ron fell next, a particularly vicious quake sending him careening out of control until he rammed into one of the railings. It cracked under the stress, though Dat reached out to grab the man before it collapsed entirely.
After that, they all experienced similar falls or stumbles as they continued running, but together, they managed to avoid any disasters. However, when Elijah glanced back, he saw that the bridges had continued to collapse behind them. And seeing the rate at which they fell into the magma, he knew they wouldn’t have time to escape.
Not if they kept going the way they were.
“This isn’t working!” he shouted. “We’re not going to make it!”
“Don’t see any other options!” Kurik exasperatedly spat in return.
But Elijah did. While he knew that there was normally no way he could carry all four of his companions while in the Shape of Sky, he thought he had a trick up his sleeve that might give him the Strength necessary to accomplish that feat. So, he yelled, “Everyone latch on once I transform! Kurik and Ron, legs. Sadie on my back. Dat, wrap your arms around my chest.
Back when they’d been faced with the problem of how to get up to the undead pyramid, Elijah had considered an optimal weight distribution in case he needed to fly everyone up at once. Ultimately, he’d realized that doing so just wasn’t possible, but he put those plans to good use as he shifted into his winged form.
Despite knowing all the problems with Elijah’s plan, the situation was desperate enough that no one questioned it. Even as he completed the transformation, everyone obeyed his commands, piling on in the directed order. The Shape of the Sky was not a creature of Strength, and because of that, Elijah felt every extra pound as his companions latched onto him. He ignored the strain, and the second they were in place, he used Savage Might.
Not wasting any time, he beat his wings more powerfully than ever before, and despite the weight, he managed to lift off. It was just in time, too, because only a moment later, the bridge collapsed beneath him.
In the past few months, Elijah had been through a lot. He’d been tested in myriad ways, from mental to physical and everything in between. However, fighting against gravity was a new kind of challenge, and one he strained to overcome with every flap of his multi-colored wings.
Gradually, he climbed, using every point of his Savage Might-enhanced Strength to propel him upward. All around him, the collapse of the webwork of bridges outpaced his ascent, and he was forced to focus more than one facet of his mind on dodging falling debris.
Sadie, upon his back, lent her assistance by shielding him when he was incapable of avoiding the falling shards of onyx, but each impact set him back. Her shield protected him from damage, but it did nothing to mitigate the lost momentum. For that, Elijah could only rely on himself. He strained with every muscle, using every ounce of hard-won flying experience he’d acquired since his first transformation into the dragon-like creature. Yet, it was obvious that it wasn’t enough.
Far below, the volcano continued to rumble and bubble. It was on the verge of eruption, and if Elijah didn’t get well clear, he and his companions would perish. But all he could do was continue to push. To keep flapping his wings as powerfully as he could manage.
Then, when he was only halfway to the entrance to the keep, the volcano finally erupted.
The oxygen in the air ignited, with Elijah and the others along with it. As he was burned alive, every facet of his Jade Mind screamed in agony. It wasn’t just fire, either. Nor was it limited to suffocation. Instead, he was assaulted by dense fire-attuned ethera that tore through his limited defenses with ease.
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The only thing that kept him from succumbing immediately was Ward of the Seasons, which managed to block the worst of magical fire. Still, the mundane flames that came with it were more than enough to turn him to ash.
Yet, he didn’t die.
Even though there was a part of him that wished it were otherwise, if only to stop the pain. It took Elijah a few moments to recognize that Ron was steadily pouring ethera into his most powerful healing spell, delaying what was seemed, more and more, like inevitability. Sadie tried to mitigate some more of the damage by using her shields, but as rapidly as she cast them, there was only so much she could do.
The ignition of the air was only the preamble to the real event, though, and a moment later, a shockwave of immense proportions tore through the cavern. Elijah’s delicate wings broke under the onslaught, but by that point, they weren’t that important. One way or another, they were getting out of the volcano.
Without their attributes, which made them superhuman, as well as the constant attention of Sadie and Ron, they all would have been pulverized into jelly. However, because of those factors, they held themselves together long enough to ride the shockwave ever higher.
The top of the mountain exploded only moments before they reached the cavern’s ceiling, and briefly, Elijah saw open sky. A second later, that was obscured by a cloud of ash that seemed to pervade everything. He and the people clinging to his body like it was a life raft soared ever upward, and if Elijah had been capable of rational thought amidst all the pain, he would have come to the inevitable conclusion that he’d reached the end of his path.
But then, the worst of it passed. Ron’s healing – which was still ongoing – began to outpace the damage, and Sadie’s shields held for a split second longer. All the while, Elijah’s body seemed like it was unmade and reconfigured again and again with every passing moment.
It came as something of a surprise when they flew clear of the eruption, and it took Elijah a few seconds to remember to fly. But by that point, Savage Might had run its course, and his tattered wings were in no condition to hold them aloft. So, they fell more than they flew, hitting the ground and tumbling across the rocky landscape until they came to a rest only a few feet from a river of lava.
For almost a minute, no one said anything. Elijah could feel that everyone was still alive, and what’s more, Ron’s efforts had ensured that no one was in danger of dying. Yet, that didn’t mean they were in good condition. Indeed – everyone was more broken and battered than at any time that had come before.
Except Elijah. He was just as injured as the rest, but he’d endured much worse. So, he kept his wits about him enough to shift back into his human form and cast Healing Rain. That helped ease Ron’s burden, but there was no escaping the fact that the Healer had his work cut out for him.
Finally, after Elijah had a chance to gather his thoughts, he said, “That certainly was an explosive situation.”
Sadie groaned. Dat laughed. And Kurik just lay there, suffering in silence. Whether the source of that suffering was Elijah’s bad joke or the situation they’d just endured, Elijah had no idea.
“Seriously, is everyone still intact?” he asked.
Sadie said, “I never want to do that again.”
“Which part?” Elijah asked. The challenge of Ignis had certainly been different than all the rest, and it had ended with a bang none of the other challenges could match. “Look on the bright side. If we ever actually go to Ignis, we have a friend waiting for us. All in all Cinderath wasn’t a bad guy. Or girl. Or agender behemoth from a different reality.”
“Says you,” Kurik muttered. “That thing woulda eaten me in a second if you weren’t there. You ever think about bonding a creature like that, you best not bring it back to Earth.”
“No thanks. It was a guardian and a sapient creature. That would be like bonding another human.”
“You think that don’t happen?” Kurik asked.
Elijah was about to say that such a thing was impossible, but then he thought about the Immortals. Or the guild leader back in Seattle. It looked different, with contracts and such, but those people had been bonded to their leaders just as surely as a beast to its tamer.
Of course, Elijah didn’t approve of the notion of a tamer in the first place. Instinctively, he felt it implied an unequal partnership, as if the beast in question was subservient to its master. If Elijah were to ever bond a creature – other than the mist panther that had protected him during the first part of his journey – he would only do so on equal terms. Otherwise, considering the intelligence displayed by the guardians he’d encountered, it would be no better than slavery.
Those thoughts and more flickered through Elijah’s mind as he continued to convalesce. It only took a few more minutes before he progressed to the point where he was no longer in danger of keeling over, but still, he didn’t move. Instead, he focused on the notifications he’d received in the wake of the conclusion of the challenge.
The first was predictable:
You have conquered the Challenge of Ignis, Emberstone Keep.
Reward: Seed of the Ash Lotus
Of course, Elijah hadn’t actually taken possession of the item in question. Dat still held onto it, but Elijah would have been lying if he didn’t admit that he was curious as to what the item did. Was it similar to the Seed of the Whistling Wind, which had given Dat a permanent boost to Dexterity? Or was it an actual seed that could be planted? If it was the former, Elijah had no intention of claiming it, but if it was the latter, he wanted it for his grove. Who knew what sorts of miracles Nerthus could create with a seed powerful enough to have been a reward for one of the challenges?
The next notification was far more exciting, though. At some point during the battle, he’d progressed his level, as denoted by the system message floating before his inner eye:
Congratulations! You have reached level 105. Attribute points allocated according to class and specialization.
Elijah wasn’t terribly interested in the level itself or the attributes that came with it. Sure, he liked getting stronger, but he was far more concerned with what it meant. At level one-hundred and five, he would get a new spell or an evolution. With that in mind, he eagerly shifted his attention to the next notification.