Path of Dragons

As he stepped through the portal, Elijah was feeling pretty good about himself. That lasted about half a second before the sound of battle echoed in his ears. That came only a moment before his vision returned, and he saw the source of the noise.

Sadie held her sword above her, blocking a descending axe held by a thirty-foot-tall skeleton. For only an instant, Elijah couldn't help but recognize just how silly it looked. She was even shorter than him, though only by half an inch, and yet, she was holding back a creature more than five times her size.

Then, she flexed, throwing the axe blade aside. As she did, Elijah took in the rest of the battlefield.

And it was a battlefield.

Hundreds of corpses lay in the snow, unmoving and mostly dismembered. Meanwhile, a dozen enormous skeletons charged, ready to end the fight. Sadie, meanwhile, leaped forward, swinging her sword in a horizontal arc that sliced through a handful of zombies that had tried to take advantage of the distraction provided by the skeleton.

At the same time, Dat leaped upon the skeleton's shoulders, hefted one of his shortswords in both hands, and drove the blade deep into the creature's skull. With an uncharacteristic roar, he retracted his blade, then repeated the action. Chunks of skull flew from the point of impact, but Dat wasn't finished. Even as he once again stabbed the monster's skull, it attempted to shake him loose.

That was when Sadie struck, hacking into its shin. Her blade bit into the bone, but it didn't make it all the way through. It didn't matter, though. Ethera swirled as she used some sort of ability, and a moment later, the smell of charred bone reached Elijah's nostrils. The monster's tibia snapped, and it staggered.

Dat followed Sadie's actions with a herculean effort of his own. He finally made it through the skull, and he didn't hesitate to thrust his hand inside. His arm went in up to the shoulder, but he yelled, "I can't reach it!"

"Make it work!" Sadie screamed back. She took a zombie claw to the unprotected part of her arm, sending a spray of meat and blood arcing away to pepper the already gore-strewn snow. Elijah was about to heal her when he saw that Nico had beaten him to it. The Healer was crouched in a small depression, armed only with a silver scepter. He directed a wave of ethera at his sister, and her arm mended after only a second.

It was far and away the most potent heal Elijah had ever seen him use, and it begged the question of just how powerful Nico really was. He had quite a few levels under his belt, and he possessed an elder core. Those two factors alone should have warned Elijah not to underestimate him.

But he'd ignored what should have been obvious, focusing on the man's conservative nature when it came to using his abilities. Clearly, that was a mistake.

Only a few seconds had passed, but that was enough to tell Elijah that his friends needed his help. What's more, they had given him the blueprint to dealing with the oncoming skeletons. The creatures were only a few seconds away, but that was enough to give Elijah the opportunity to shift into the Shape of Thorn.

By the time the transformation finished, he was already sprinting forward. He passed Sadie, whose surprise he felt via Soul of the Wild, and rammed into the first skeleton in line. His shoulder hit the thing in the knee, buckling the joint and cracking bone. He didn't stop to finish it off, though. Even as it toppled to the ground, he turned his attention to the next one.

He activated Savage Strength, then threw himself forward. The skeleton – which was armed with a sword as long as Elijah was tall – wasn't taken by surprise. It had seen what Elijah had done to its companion, and it was at least intelligent enough to try to stop. It skidded across the icy ground, struggling to keep itself upright.

Elijah didn't let it regain its balance.

Instead, he launched himself into the air, putting himself onto a collision course with the creature's skull. It tried to bring its sword to bear in a block, but Elijah couldn't have cared less about the blade. He crashed through it, sending the sword backward to bury itself in the monster's jaw.

Then, Elijah was there, hanging on for dear life as it went wild.

He used Domain of Vines, resulting in a hundred thick roots bursting from the frozen ground. They quickly wrapped around the skeleton's legs, tipping it over. But Elijah was more concerned with repeating Dat's feat. As the thing fell over, Elijah held on, and once it hit the ground – hard enough to send a spray of snow nearly ten feet into the air – he clutched his hands together and slammed them into the skeleton's skull. Cracks spread from the point of impact, but the bone didn't shatter.

So, Elijah hit it again.

And again after that.

It took two more times before he managed to break through, and when he did, he saw exactly why Dat had been so focused on his own task. In the center of the skull floated a fist-sized crystal. Powerful fluctuations of dense ethera washed over him, confirming that the crystal was the motivating force behind the skeleton.

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Elijah wrapped his claws around it and yanked it free.

Of course, it didn't come easily or without protest, but even as the crystal burned his hands, Elijah pulled it from the skull. It was like playing a game of tug-of-war with an entire NFL football team, and at first, Elijah didn't think he could win. But then, something broke, and all the power he'd directed at the task sent him stumbling backward until his back hit the snowy ground.

Elijah only took a moment to gather his wits, but even that was almost too much. He refocused just in time to see an axe blade screaming through the air, intent on splitting him in two.

He rolled away, avoiding the worst of it, but the strike shaved a good portion of the bark-like scales away from his back.

That awakened a rage in Elijah's heart that, most of the time, he managed to ignore. There was just something about intense pain that brought it out of him. He leaped to his feet, then ducked under a follow-up attack. He threw himself at the skeleton, latching onto its ribs. After that, he embarked on a furious quest to tear it apart, one bone at a time.

Elijah roared as he dismantled the skeleton, ignoring its feeble attempts to dislodge him. He didn't just use his hands. He used his jaws and vines as well. And after only a minute, he'd taken the thing apart. It was still alive, but without arms, legs, or a ribcage, it posed no real threat.

He wasn't satisfied, though. His rage was not sated. So, he looked around, locked his eyes on another skeleton, then threw himself across the battlefield, trampling zombies without a second thought. When he reached the creature, he hit it in the center of its spine, wrapping his jaws around the vertebrae and squeezing.

Those delicate bones snapped in a second, and suddenly, the skeleton's top half was falling backward while its legs continued on. Elijah's hands shot out, grabbing the thing's ribcage as he landed. Then, he pivoted, spinning in place before he tossed the thing at another skeleton.

Something hit him in the shoulder.

Elijah blinked, unsure of what had happened. Then, as the seconds passed, and he started to come back to himself, he realized that something was pinning him to the ground.

He struggled against it, but he couldn't move.

Someone laughed – a high-pitched and feminine sound that sent a chill up his spine.

And he forced himself to take stock of the situation, to see it with rational eyes. He'd been hit with a twelve-foot-long spear, and with enough force that fully half the thing's shaft was buried beneath the ground. That was why he couldn't move.

Just at the edge of Elijah's senses flapped a pair of wings attached to a demon. She wore sleek armor whose bulk couldn't hide how painfully thin she was. Her wings were tattered, with deep scars at the joints and gaping holes across their membranous surface.

But she was powerful.

Ascended, maybe. Or if not, close to it.

Elijah wasn't sure if he was stronger than her, but at the moment, it didn't matter. She'd gotten the drop on him, and now, he was a sitting duck. He struggled against the spear, but it was immovable. He might as well have been trying to uproot a mountain for all the good it did.

No – he only had one choice.

With a roar, he shoved himself upward. The shaft was long enough that he only made it about halfway before his momentum was spent. To maintain his progress, he grasped it with his foot, then shoved again. He didn't get as far this time, but he'd already proven the viability of his plan.

Unfortunately, the flying demon recognized that. She cocked her arm back, and another spear appeared in her hand. She let it loose, and Elijah knew he couldn't even hope to avoid it.

Then, Sadie was there, her sword tracing a line through the air as she knocked the spear aside. Such was its momentum that she could only redirect it by a foot, but even that was enough to prevent him from being impaled a second time. Read exclusive chapters at My Virtual Library Empire

After finally freeing himself from the spear, Elijah rolled to his feet, and his eyes quickly found Sadie. She wasn't in the best condition, with a huge gash across her back, but she was still upright.

"You took long enough," she said, never taking her eyes from the flying demon.

"They made me do all four tests," he responded, letting Shape of Thorn fall away. Via Soul of the Wild, he sensed that Nico was down, and his core was nearly empty. Dat was balancing on one foot, with the other having been twisted out of place. So, the second he had returned to his human form, he started healing.

Even while he cast, Sadie raised her voice and demanded, "Who are you? What do you want?"

The flying demon glared down at them. "I have no name. I lost it long ago in service to my Lady, the Queen of Desolation. Perhaps I will earn a new one by killing you, interlopers," she hissed. As she did, she hefted another spear. However, when she threw it, it was stopped mid-air by Sadie's Blessed Bulwark. It caromed off that plane of ethera, hitting the ground a moment later.

That infuriated the flying demon.

"Hold her off for a few more seconds so I can get everyone back to normal," Elijah whispered.

"Got it."

Elijah had expected Sadie to hunker down behind Blessed Bulwark. It had a high ethera cost, but it would last long enough for Elijah to heal the rest of the group. However, Sadie surprised him when she gathered a truly enormous amount of ethera, which she released in a wave of blinding radiance. A moment later, a pair of brilliant wings of white light emerged from her back.

She launched herself into the air, momentarily shocking the demon. Elijah watched as Sadie closed in on the enemy, and a second later, she brought her sword to bear. The demon managed to raise her spear just in time to intercept the oncoming blade, but the momentum of the attack launched her backward more than fifty feet. Sadie didn't hesitate to pursue, flapping her wings of light and propelling herself forward.

Elijah shook his head and focused on his own task.

With the amount of ethera pumping through Sadie, she couldn't hope to keep that spell up for long. And Elijah needed to use the time she'd given him to ensure that, when it petered out, they would be ready to assist her.

As he healed himself, Dat, and Nico, the sound of the titanic clash between angel and demon filled the air. He desperately wished he could help her, but he knew that, with Nico out of it, he had a different role to play.

So, he dedicated himself to doing so to the best of his abilities.