Path of Dragons

Book 6: Chapter 89: The Seat of Thunder

“This is weird,” Elijah said. He turned to Kurik and added, “It’s weird right? It’s not just me, is it?”

“’Course it’s weird. Everything ‘bout this place and you people is weird,” the dwarf grumbled. “But Explorers have weird abilities. Everybody knows that.”

Elijah muttered, “I’m part of everybody.”

“You know what I mean. Don’t linger,” Kurik said. “These kinds of spells have limited range.”Nôv(el)B\\jnn

With that, the dwarf hurried across the waves in an effort to keep up with Helen. Elijah looked down at his own feet, marveling at the fact that he was standing atop the surface of the sea. The Explorer had used an ability to allow them to walk across the water, but as Kurik had mentioned, the spell didn’t have an infinite range, and its effect faded the further from Helen a person was.

Already, Elijah’s feet had begun to sink into the water.

Not trusting that, he initiated the transformation into Shape of the Sky, then flapped his wings. He knew better than to fly too high, so he skimmed across the surface of the sea. As he did so, he circled around the others in an effort to ensure they weren’t attacked by anything – either from the air or from below. One with Nature found no significant impending threats, and the beasts below ignored the group of people jogging across the surface.

That would have probably changed if they’d actually become submerged.

Regardless, a group of what amounted to superhumans could cover a couple of miles in quite a hurry, so it wasn’t long before they reached the shore of the island known as the Seat of Thunder. Elijah landed next to Sadie, saying, “Flight won’t be possible here, I don’t think.”

To punctuate his statement, a bolt of lightning slammed into the ground only a few hundred feet away. An instant later, a wave of booming thunder rolled across the group. It wasn’t long before another lightning bolt hit on the other side of the party. It was much worse up above, where lightning arced amongst the heavy clouds. Even the atmosphere felt charged with electricity.

After they found shelter beneath a rocky overhang, the group decided to send out scouts so they could get the lay of the land. For that task, Dat, Elijah, Helen, and a Ranger from Ikan’s group volunteered. Soon enough, Elijah had shifted into Shape of Venom, then set out toward the north under the guise of the unseen.

It wasn’t long before he found the evidence of a dock. It wasn’t massive, which Elijah interpreted as meaning that it had never been meant for commercial purposes. Rather, it reminded him of the sorts of docks where rich people back in Hawaii kept their superyachts moored.

Of course, it was mostly destroyed. Largely, time and erosion were to blame for the worn stone columns and missing pieces, but he recognized enough scorch marks to conclude that the ubiquitous lightning had done plenty of damage as well. After a little inspection, he saw a fallen pillar into which a power crystal had been embedded. The few runes that had survived told him that it was magical in nature, but he didn’t have the skillset to determine its purpose. It was interesting, though – especially to Elijah’s inner Indiana Jones.

Sadly, he didn’t have time to investigate it properly. Instead, he was tasked with a simple mission. The first step was to get the lay of the land, which he could do in the process of doing his primary job – discovering a way into the palace in the distance. It loomed large and menacing, perfectly symmetrical in every way. If Elijah had been back on Earth, he would have said that it was clearly built upon an eastern aesthetic. There were elements of the style that strongly reminded him of Chinese temples, though he saw enough differences to mark it as wholly alien.

The color helped with that. The building had been made almost entirely of deep blue stone, featuring flecks of gold that pulsed in rhythm with each lightning strike. It was almost like those stones drew power from the storm raging overhead.

The Seat of Thunder occupied more than a third of the island, which meant that it was miles wide and tall enough that it didn’t look squat. Rather than a compound of buildings – as one might expect – it was comprised of a singular, enormous structure that defied Elijah’s sense of scale.

To call it an impressive sight was a vast understatement, and the moment it had come fully into view, Elijah spent a long few moments just staring at it in awe. He was no student of architecture, but he could recognize a work of art when he saw one. Clearly, Yloa had put a lot of thought, time, and effort into the creation of his home – as befit a ta’alaki who’d once ruled the entire world of Ka’arath.

In a way, he still did. Or what was left of it, at least. The Abyss had claimed most of the planet, but the parts that remained habitable by his people were held in Yloa’s charged grip.

And Elijah was going to kill him.

In doing so, he would sentence the last vestiges of a once-proud race to death. It was justice, he told himself. After everything the Lightning Emperor had done, he’d earned plenty of retribution. It was also necessary. There was no choice in the matter. If Elijah and the rest of humanity’s most powerful people wanted to get back to Earth before succumbing to the corrupting influence of the Abyss, they had to do so by going through Yloa.

That was the system’s dictate.

Still, that didn’t mean he was okay with what it meant. Yloa could die a thousand deaths, and Elijah wouldn’t spare him a thought of compassion. Sure, the ta’alaki had probably felt justified in the beginning, but he’d become a monster in the process of his rebellion. He’d earned his fate. What gave Elijah pause was the dissolution of an entire world’s worth of history, development, and culture.

The only comfort he could offer himself was that he hadn’t made that decision. In a way, the system hadn’t either. It was all Yloa’s fault. He’d crossed a line, and his people were forced to pay the price. It was a simple equation, and one with which Elijah couldn’t really argue. However, he was still regretful that the path to which he had committed was so necessary.

As Elijah crept closer to the palace itself, he saw that the surroundings had fallen into gross disrepair. The ground was scorched and strewn with boulders, though there were remnants of what it once been. Dry fountains, cracked and featuring fallen statues, were the most prominent features, but there were also lone trees, expertly manicured and perfectly placed, that had somehow managed to survive the storm’s onslaught. Elijah even found and subsequently steered clear of a mostly intact temple – not unlike the one where he'd been assaulted by a horde of golems. If the ruins he’d seen back then were impressive – and they were, regardless of the site’s obvious degradation – then the new one was absolutely awe-inspiring.

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The golems he saw were much the same, but lightning arced between them, hinting that their natures were somewhat different than the other ones he’d encountered. Elijah had no intention of finding out if they were more powerful, so he moved on soon after discovering the area.

The path he followed oscillated between barely detectable and perfectly preserved. In his mind’s eye, it wasn’t difficult to imagine what it might have been. He envisioned it being used by parades of powerful natives, not unlike the propagandic displays back on Earth where totalitarian states displayed their military might. The intact parts of the path certainly supported the notion that the builders’ primary goal was to show just how powerful and wealthy the owner was.

For Elijah’s part, he was impressed, but some of that was undercut by his knowledge of how everything had ended. It was difficult to put much stock in a regime’s power when one knew that they’d not only been defeated by a rebellion, but doomed their entire world in an attempt to cling to said power. Still, he could appreciate it for what it was – a representation of the artisans’ skills.

Gradually, he made his way up the path until, and along the way, he saw multiple enemies. Some were native hunting parties, but he also saw hulking creatures that looked like someone had pumped ka’akali full of growth hormones and forced them into incessant training. Their muscles bulged with power, and they were half again taller than the other natives.

They also seemed a little deficient in terms of intelligence, as they followed a well-prescribed path through the grounds. They never veered away, and they didn’t even flinch when lightning struck nearby. If Elijah had lacked the benefit of One with Nature, he might have wondered if they were monsters or automatons. But he could feel their nature well enough to recognize that they were fundamentally no different from the other natives.

Regardless, they were easy enough for him to avoid. Guise of the Unseen made him virtually undetectable, so he had no issue passing them by. The rest of the group would not be so fortunate, though, and Elijah had no interest in fighting those hulking creatures just to enter the Seat of Thunder.

Eventually, he reached the palace itself.

Or rather, the gate, which was a massive thing that perfectly fit the proportions of the city-sized palace it guarded. The gate itself was at least fifty feet tall, and it was set into a wall that towered over it by no small degree. It was also flanked by two temples, much like the one Elijah had seen before, and it wasn’t difficult to imagine that the golems within the space defined by those carved columns would come alive at the first hint of a threat.

At first, Elijah considered climbing the dark blue walls, but now that he was close, he saw that the flashing gold was not just for show. They pulsed with electricity that he knew would make any attempt to climb the wall an exercise in pain. Even if a potential intruder could endure such a thing, it would be quite difficult.

And finally, there were more guards patrolling the top of that wall, eliminating that line of thinking.

Elijah studied the area for quite some time – both with his mundane senses as well as One with Nature – and he found no gaps in the Seat of Thunder’s first line of defense. So, it was with some frustration that he retreated and resumed his search for an alternate route. The last thing they wanted was a full frontal assault. Perhaps that was a winnable strategy – which he very much doubted – but even if they managed to come out on top, it would not be without cost.

Which was how he eventually found himself on the coast, where he circled the island in search of a back door. He found more than a few entrances along the way, but they were all well-guarded by defenses that seemed largely impenetrable. So, he continued on, and he was just starting to prepare himself for the notion that they might not have a choice in the matter when he felt something far below.

It was just on the edge of One with Nature’s effective radius, but he felt it clear as day. Buried within the bedrock was a tunnel. It was small – barely more than three-feet in diameter – and he felt all sorts of disgusting things within, but it was an avenue of entry that bore investigation.

So, he followed it outward, periodically losing it due to changes in elevation, until he reached the coast. He didn’t hesitate to dive off a cliff and into the churning waves before swimming ever deeper. It wasn’t until he reached a depth of almost two-hundred feet that he discovered the opening.

After that, Elijah swam through water of questionable cleanliness until he reached the entrance – or exit, given the nature of what he suspected was a draining pipe – where he found his way blocked by a set of sturdy bars.

But like almost everything on the island – and across the whole continent – the bars were subject to an incredible amount of degradation. Still, when Elijah shifted into the Shape of Thorn and set about dislodging them, it took the entirety of his Strength, augmented by Savage Might, to bend them even an inch. He kept at it, levering them apart until, at last, the gap was wide enough for a human being to slither through.

Once that was done, he shifted back into his blight dragon form, adopted Guise of the Unseen, and swam inside. He used his ability to stick to any surface to ease his passage – while trying not to think about what, precisely, he was swimming through – and eventually, he made his way up the pipe and to a cistern. Only a little more searching, and he found a grate leading to what seemed like an underground city.

And just like that, he’d infiltrated the Seat of Thunder.

However, it only took a little concentration on One with Nature before he saw a host of issues they would need to overcome if they intended to use the pipe to enter the city-palace.

For one, it was anything but unpopulated. Hundreds – if not thousands – of ka’alaki roamed the area. Some seemed like combatants, but most were obviously downtrodden laborers. It was too much to hope that they wouldn’t fight any intrusion, but Elijah was less worried about them than the fighters, some of whom seemed reasonably strong, that he felt among the populace.

From within the drainage pipe, Elijah observed the area for quite some time, but he didn’t find anything new. So, armed with that information, he retreated the way he’d come, braving the questionable contents of the pipe until he reached the open ocean. After that, it didn’t take him long to circle back around to where he’d left the rest of the party.

However, when he got there, he found that strife had inevitably struck the group.

“If it wasn’t for you idiots and your try-hard behavior, none of us would even be in this situation,” growled one of the war elf’s party. He was a human, though one wearing attire with a distinctly elven cut. He shoved his finger at Ron, adding, “So pardon me if I don’t worship at your altar, man. I’ll work with you, but don’t expect me to be happy about it. You’re the whole reason we’re in this mess. If it wasn’t for that freak you all follow, you’d be dead. So don’t even think about acting all superior with me.”

Ron held his hands up, saying, “I wasn’t –”

Elijah chose that moment to let Shape of Venom – and Guise of the Unseen – fall away. “Is there an issue here?” he asked, staring daggers at the man he’d decided was a wannabe elf.

The man paled. “No. Just…stressed is all.”

“I can understand that,” Elijah said, choosing de-escalation when every instinct told him to rip the man in two for daring to try to bully the Healer. “We’re all wound up. Not the time to argue amongst ourselves, though. I’ve found a way into the Seat of Thunder.”