Path of Dragons - A LitRPG Apocalypse (BOOK TWO ON KINDLE SEPT. 2)

For Elijah, trauma was a truly insidious thing. It was so easy to quarantine and forget about it. And yet, it never went away. If he wasn’t careful, it could very easily compound into something he couldn’t handle. For the most part, that wouldn’t be too much of a problem – at least, until he tried to take the next step in his cultivation. Only then would he be forced to deal with it, and all at once.

With his advancement into the garnet tier, he’d taken some steps to overcome that issue, resulting in eighty-one leaf-like facets that could be discarded and regrown. However, doing so was far more complex and time-consuming than he’d first envisioned. Not only did the process require him to process his trauma – whether the origin was physical or emotional pain – and deal with it appropriately, but growing new leaves took time, ethera, and focus.

And if he put it off, things would just get worse.

So, in the wake of his passage through the Restless Sea, Elijah was determined to regain lost ground. After all, just surviving the sea had taken the vast majority of his focus, so his trauma – much of which had come during the journey itself – was left to compile.

But now that he had a little time, he resolved to deal with it.

First, though, he needed to cover his proverbial tracks. He didn’t know if anything had sensed his arrival on the new continent, but he wasn’t going to take any chance. Once he’d taken a little time to recover his strength, he gathered everything and set off across the terrain, using Guise of the Stalker for cover.

That turned out to be a prudent precaution, because it wasn’t long before he found himself among powerful monsters. They weren’t nearly as ubiquitous as they had been in the Restless Sea, but they were far more numerous than they’d been on the other continent.

Probably because the ethereal density was much higher, which in turn was all but certainly due to Druhmor’s presence. It was still a long way away, but according to Zek, its influence could be felt for thousands of miles.

In any case, Elijah was well-versed in land traversal. He could sense which areas to avoid, and he managed to pick his way across the landscape without garnering too much attention. After only a couple of days, he found himself climbing a mountain range. Without Absolute Grasp, he might’ve had difficulty with some of the obstacles, but that trait, along with Cloud Step, allowed him to maintain Guise of the Stalker and avoid unwanted attention.

A week later, he was still surrounded by mountains, but the wildlife – monstrous as it was – had grown much more diffuse. Elijah took advantage of that by finding a deserted cave large enough to accommodate his tent. For added protection, he also piled a few boulders in front of the entrance.

Finally, he settled down to rest and take care of his mind.

The process was simple enough, and it had come intuitively. He didn’t need to learn anything to shed his leaves. But just because it wasn’t complicated didn’t mean it was easy. Instead, the difficulty came from the emotional cost of confronting his fears, the echoes of his pain, and, most importantly, his regrets.

Elijah sat in his tent, tears streaming down his face as he relived everything he’d endured, as he faced off against the warring desire to ignore the offered class evolution and the promise of its power. He felt all the loneliness that came from his long isolation. He let the knowledge of Earth’s likely fate suffuse him. He forced himself to feel.

And then, he let it all go.

Ephemeral leaves drifted away in the wind of his mindscape. Meanwhile, they were replaced by new growth. In the end, Elijah discarded twenty-two leaves. By the time he’d finished, he felt simultaneously exhausted and somehow lighter than ever.

Only then could he truly rest.

Elijah wasn’t sure how long he remained in that cave. It might’ve been a few days or a few weeks, but time blended together so thoroughly that he couldn’t really mark its passage. But when he finally emerged, he felt like a new man ready to face any obstacle that stood in his way.

That feeling accompanied him as he continued his journey through the mountains. At times, he found abandoned remnants of a long-dead civilization. Half-buried ruins were the most common, but he also saw a few monuments that were more intact. The most striking among them was a wide plaza that stood atop one of the tallest peaks in the mountain range. Elijah first saw it from miles away, and he couldn’t stop himself from investigating the phenomenon.

When he arrived at that peak a few hours later, he found himself awestruck.

The area was in pristine condition and entirely untouched by corruption. A semi-circle of statues stood before him. Each one rested upon a thirty-foot pedestal made of snow-white marble trimmed in gold. They pulsed with dense ethera and vitality that served to repulse the corruption.

The surrounding plaza was no less impressive.

It was constructed from hexagonal pavers that were in turn made from the same green-tinted marble Elijah had seen back in Ithalon. Each one bore nine concentric hexagons, the lines comprised of nearly microscopic glyphs. Elijah leaned close, studying them with Eyes of the Eagle. And yet, he could scarcely perceive them, much less understand their underlying structure.

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The purpose was obvious, though. Each paving stone emitted a billowing cloud of ethera and dense vitality, which served to encapsulate the entire peak in its protective embrace.

But even that marvel couldn’t hold Elijah’s attention for long. Not with those statues looming over him.

There were nine of them, each one made of milky white crystal that reminded Elijah somewhat of the sliver of the Branch of the World Tree still sitting inside his Arcane Loop. It obviously wasn’t the same material, but the relation still felt obvious to him.

The subjects were humans, each one depicted in a heroic pose. Five men. Four women, all surrounded by attuned ethera. It was only when Elijah studied the statue cloaked in fire that he made another connection.

They were meant to depict the Synod’s forebears. The deific men and women who’d founded Ithalon and saved their people.

They were heroes, all. And yet, they were also the authors of Gorveth’s doom. Because of their petty infighting, they’d sentenced their planet to excisement. If they’d simply worked together, perhaps the world would have remained connected to the World Tree.

It was a complicated legacy. A massive mistake followed by an attempt to make it right. Did that mean they were ultimately good people, that they tried to rectify the problem they’d caused? Had they truly changed? Or had they simply accepted that they needed their lessers, and they’d taken actions to ensure they would always have followers?

Elijah had no idea, but looking at those statues, it was difficult not to see them as heroes.

Perhaps that was the entire point. Maybe that was why the monument had been built in the first place.

Elijah spent a few hours studying everything, taking as many notes as he could along the way. In doing so, he discovered a much smaller statue standing behind the semi-circle of deities. This one was made of much cheaper materials – just the stone native to the mountains – though it felt somehow more alive than all the rest. It was also far more detailed, even though it showed signs of erosion.

It depicted a simple woman, maybe five feet tall. In one hand she held a hammer. In the other was a chisel. Her features were nothing special. The sort of looks that were easy to lose in a crowd. But somehow, the beauty of the statue brought tears to Elijah’s eyes.

He laid his hand on her shoulder, and he felt something unexpected.

Warmth.

Life.

Power.

It all mingled together, filling him with something indescribable. An essence that felt like hope and vitality and a stubborn refusal to give in to the corruption, all mixed together into something that sent Elijah plummeting to his knees in awe.

And then he saw it.

A simple vision of a woman laboriously constructing those crystalline statues. The nine subjects stood by, haughty and powerful, watching her work. She did so alone, but not because she wanted to. Rather, she had no choice.

But as she worked, something new blossomed inside her. A level of joy she hadn’t felt in decades. Before, she had watched her entire world falling victim to infighting, hate, and selfishness. They were doomed. The world would soon be excised, and everyone would die.

However, in that moment, she felt hope. She felt satisfaction. Even though she knew she wouldn’t live much longer, she was happy. She’d lived a long life, and she had accomplished so much. It was easy to see the oncoming excisement as a punishment, but she chose the other route. She chose to look back and smile at what she had left behind.

Her work flashed before Elijah’s eyes. Buildings. Statues. Grand monuments.

It was only then that Elijah realized that the first city he’d visited, where the presence of the Ravener had very nearly overwhelmed him, had been her home. She had built that domed pavilion and the surrounding plaza.

And then, one of the deities – whose statue was cloaked in fire-attuned ethera – had burned an entire army to ashes.

When the visions ended, Elijah felt as if he knew the woman, body and soul. He also knew that the statue was no statue. Rather, it was her. She was long since dead. Her spirit had departed. But in the end, she had sacrificed herself to power the monument.

Not because they forced it upon her. Rather, because she had fully given herself to her craft. She had reached inside, and she’d found that there was only one way forward. One way to tell her story, to preserve her people’s tale.

She’d infused the entire monument with her life’s energy, which was why it had stood the test of time.

Elijah sighed and pulled away.

It was so easy to know that the world had been excised, but it was something else altogether to see the despair. To feel it. To experience it through someone else’s eyes.

Part of him wanted to blame the World Tree. Or the system. Elijah wasn’t sure which was more at fault. But he did know that it was necessary. If planets like Gorveth were allowed to remain connected, they would become a point of infection for the World Tree.

Excisement was no different from cutting off a limb infested with gangrene.

No – it wasn’t even that extreme, in the grand scheme. It was more like removing a cancerous mole.

But having seen the sculptor’s story, having felt her emotions, Elijah found it difficult to look at it objectively.

He glanced back at the semi-circle of statues. There they were, standing so proudly. As if they were true heroes. Elijah wanted nothing more than to tear them down. Doing so wouldn’t have been easy. The sculptor had done her work well. She had built them to last. But Elijah believed he could have managed it.

Yet, what good would that do, save to erase the memory of her accomplishment? The deities had clearly meant for those statues to memorialize their lives, to turn them into subjects of worship. But in the end, it had immortalized the sculptor. Next to her accomplishment, Elijah didn’t find their strength to be very impressive.

He spent a few more hours sitting before the statue of the sculptor. She was gone. Dead. But the echo of her life remained, and Elijah found some measure of comfort in that. Sadness, too. A little despair as well. But hope was more pervasive than any other emotion.

He chose to focus on that.

Days later, he remained in place. Impatience screamed at him to move on, but that feeling lacked potency. He didn’t need to rush. Earth’s fate was already decided. And by now, no one was waiting on him.

So, he stayed.

It was only weeks later, when he’d had a chance to process everything, that he decided to move on. That time was not wasted, though. It recharged him in a way that no amount of rest could have. And more than that, it filled him with hope and dread. The former, because the sculptor – and her work – still stood. The latter, because Elijah took her life as a cautionary tale. A warning about power, selfishness, and the unflinching necessity to do what the situation required.

He took those feelings with him as he left the statues behind.