Path of Dragons

"Survivors?" asked Dat, suddenly appearing nearby.

Elijah glanced his friend's way, answering, "I don't know how many there are, but the old guy in the test –"

"You need to answer for Gideon's death!" Nico shouted. "He wouldn't have failed the test!"

Elijah set his mouth in a firm line before turning to face the nearly hysterical Healer. Then, he asked, "Are you accusing me of something?"

Nico took a step back at Elijah's tone, but he maintained, "Gideon wouldn't have failed. He was one of the best we had. Better than you."

Elijah shrugged. "If you're going to accuse me of something, have the courage to say it outright," he warned.

"Nico."

The Healer glared at his sister for interrupting. "What?"

"Be careful."

It was at that moment that Nico recognized that he wouldn't get any protection from his sister. Elijah saw it in the changes in the man's expression. Surprise, then realization, followed by fear. He quickly covered it with a sneer, but Elijah saw it well enough that he had no doubts about what he'd witnessed.

"There will be an inquiry when we return to Heaven's Bastion. Grandfather will not be happy that Gideon's dead, and he will have questions," Nico stated, trying to save face. He glared at Elijah. "You had better have satisfactory answers."

Then, he stalked off. Where he was going, Elijah had no idea. Save for the Wall and thousands of slain zombies, skeletons, and the demonic lancer, there was nothing around for hundreds of yards. After only a few minutes, Nico's steps faltered as he clearly realized the same thing, but he soon resumed his gait, having gone too far to admit his error. He stopped about forty yards away, where he started pacing back and forth and muttering to himself.

"Is he going to be a problem?" Elijah asked. Continue reading at My Virtual Library Empire

Sadie sighed. "I don't know him anymore," she stated. "He was always like that, but it was never this bad. I don't know what happened while I was gone, but he's gotten so much worse."

"You never saw him like everyone else did," Dat interjected. "Lisa knew. That's why she tried to avoid depending on him. She said he would turn on her the second he thought it was advantageous."

"He would never betray family."

"He would never betray you or Song Tianwei," Dat corrected. "Lisa was different, at least in his eyes. The only reason you never saw it was because he acted so differently around you. He hates me now more than ever, probably because you chose me to accompany you instead of him."

"He was better suited to take care of things here," Sadie insisted.

Dat shook his head. "Maybe. But he doesn't see it that way. He thinks you abandoned him," the Witch Hunter stated. "Or maybe that you don't trust him. I don't know exactly what's in his head, but I can see that he resents you now. It won't be long before he turns on you. He probably already has, and we just haven't seen the fruits of his labor yet."

Elijah shouldn't have been surprised. He knew better than anyone that Dat was far more than the affable companion he'd always presented himself as. Even so, every time Dat graced them with his keen insight, Elijah found himself stunned by the man's depth.

"I really need to stop underestimating you, man," he said.

"No worries, bro," Dat replied. Then, he glanced at Sadie, who seemed lost in thought. Seeing that she wasn't going to ask the obvious question, Dat did the honors. "You said there are captives? Where? And how do we rescue them?"

Elijah pointed toward the haunting keep atop the mountain the distance. "Up there," he said. From his Ghoul-Hide Satchel, he retrieved the map he'd gotten from the old man and handed it to Dat, adding, "This shows where they are."

Dat studied the map for a moment before saying, "This is a route into the castle. I think we'll remain unseen. There's a disused bolt hole here."

"Bolt hole?"

"Informal term for an escape tunnel. Lots of castles used to have them," Dat said. Then, he sheepishly added, "I watched a lot of history videos on Youtube."

"Where does it lead?" Sadie asked, finally coming to terms with her misconceptions about her brother. Or maybe she'd just set them aside to deal with at a later date.

"According to this map, it will take us to a storage room. From there, we can just follow the path to the dungeon," Dat explained. Then, he pointed to a sentence that had been scratched into the parchment. "Beware the Chainspeaker. What does that mean?"

Sadie answered, "It's obvious, isn't it? That's probably the guard."

"Fancy name for a guard," Dat remarked.

Elijah said, "A fancy guard, then. So, we're doing this, right?" He glanced at Sadie, asking, "What's your brother going to say about that? He doesn't seem like the savior type. No offense."

"None taken," she responded, shaking her head in resignation, then glancing back to where her brother had stopped to rant to himself. "Do you think he's going to be okay?"

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"I don't know," Elijah answered truthfully, but in the back of his mind, he knew that if Nico kept down the path he'd chosen, things would not end well. If he hadn't been Sadie's brother, Elijah would have put him in his place the second he started lobbing accusations his way.

But he was Sadie's family, and that complicated things. Elijah would never claim to know everything about her, but he knew enough to recognize that if he hurt her little brother, she would never forgive him.

Even if Nico deserved it.

"Let's just stay on task," he said. After that, they analyzed the map in detail. As they did, they all noticed that more undead had begun the long trek down from the castle. Looking at them via Eyes of the Eagle, Elijah asked, "Do you guys wonder where they're all coming from? Like, I know they're coming from the castle, but how are they made? They need a bunch of bodies, right? Where are those coming from?"

"I don't know," Sadie admitted.

"Probably magic, bro," Dat answered.

"Right. But Primal Realms are supposed to be different, aren't they?" Elijah asked. "They're bigger than towers, but they're also static systems. They don't reset until they're conquered. There are no floors. Just a big free-for-all."

"That back there felt like a floor," Sadie said, gesturing toward the wall.

"But we could have bypassed that. The old man said he set those up to help us. It had a distinct, in-universe justification. I'm betting the zombies have something similar," he reasoned. "Maybe we –"

"None of this matters," Nico interrupted, having just returned. That earned him a glare from Elijah, which the Healer somehow managed to ignore. Elijah wondered if he would similarly ignore a quick cast of Storm's Fury. It wouldn't kill him. Probably. But it would definitely teach him a lesson about interrupting. He refrained, though, and Nico continued on, ignorant of how close he'd come to getting a bolt of lightning to the face. He said, "We have two jobs. Rescue the captives, then defeat the queen. They're both in the same place, and neither task requires us to know where the zombies are coming from."

"In my experience, the more information we have, the better. But fine. Let's get going, then," Elijah said, showing more restraint than he felt as he strode away. After a few moments, the others followed.

The next few hours were characterized by extreme boredom. Trekking through chest-deep snow was no one's idea of fun, but it was necessary. Soon, they left the valley behind and, following their map, made their way into the mountains. Everyone there was equipped with decent attributes, so they had no real trouble with the terrain. However, they all felt the sting of Zhang Yue's absence. The man had been low-leveled and useless in combat, but his group stealth ability had saved them quite a lot of time. Now, they were forced to defend against every undead mountain creature whose path they stumbled across.

And the mountains were full of them.

Most were just zombified versions of normal animals – not unlike what they'd seen in the city and its surroundings – but there were plenty of alien monsters as well. Elijah had just finished ripping the head off one such creature – a zombified yeti – when he said, "This is ridiculous. I miss Zhang Yue."

Sadie was responsible for killing three others, while Elijah's kill count rivaled hers. Meanwhile, Dat had slain two, while Nico had kept them alive. Pointedly, he'd never thrown a heal towards Elijah. Which was fine by him. He'd rather know where he stood than expect help when it would not be forthcoming. He was used to taking care of himself, so it only took a slight adjustment in his mindset.

For her part, Sadie recognized her brother's refusal to heal Elijah, and she'd confronted him about it. However, Nico had claimed that he was just conserving ethera, adding that if he thought Elijah was in true danger, he would heal him. Elijah doubted that very, very much, but he didn't argue.

Neither did Sadie.

But Elijah did exchange a glance with Dat, who clearly didn't expect much healing from the man either. Changing the subject, Dat agreed, "Zhang Yue was a great man."

"The best," Sadie stated evenly, yanking her sword out of a monster's chest.

After that, every time they were forced to fight, they all extolled Zhang Yue's virtues. Elijah's favorite was when Dat said, "Zhang Yue was a mountain of a man, both in body and spirit. A true hero who held the undead threat at bay while we humbly followed in his footsteps."

"I heard that when Zhang Yue walked into a room, shadows asked his permission to stay," Elijah responded.

"Indeed!" Dat exclaimed. "The very ground was afraid to make noise when he stepped upon it."

"You people are ridiculous," Nico complained.

"Bro. Just go with it."

"No."

Dat rolled his eyes. Clearly, Nico didn't understand that humor – especially when it was bad – was often a coping mechanism. Sometimes, for fear or trauma, but just as often for boredom. The trek through the mountains qualified for both situations.

They continued on, slowly winding their way through the snow-covered wilderness. Killing the demon lancer and the rest of the undead had given Elijah a good bit of experience, and on the second day of their journey, he gained another level, pushing him to one-forty-two. The others made progress as well, with Dat reaching one-twenty-four. Sadie, of course, remained at the peak, and without the availability of a Branch, she couldn't ascend.

Thankfully, all of that experience wouldn't go to waste, because it would be banked for when she finally chose her evolved class. Probably. Elijah wasn't sure exactly how it worked, but that had been the case for him.

Nico kept information about his class and levels to himself, though even with his refusal to heal Elijah, he must have benefited greatly.

Finally, Dat announced that they'd reached the location of the bolt hole's exit. Elijah focused on Soul of the Wild, quickly finding the tunnel in question. It was buried beneath two feet of rocky soil and another three feet of snow, but it was only a matter of minutes before they managed to uncover it.

"That's going to be a really close fit," he said, gesturing to the narrow tunnel. "But at least there's no sewage."

"Sewage?" asked Nico, briefly forgetting that he hated Elijah.

"Yeah, man. The best way into a castle is through the sewers. Everyone knows that," Elijah said. "One time, I had to dodge these caustic oozes – turns out that they were actually pus from a troll's burst cysts. Well, I called it a troll. It occurs to me that that's probably not what it was. Anyway, if you've never played real-life Frogger with acid oozes, you just haven't lived. Now, the second time I used the sewers to enter a castle, it was –"

"Elijah."

He looked at Sadie. "What?"

"Not now."

"I'm just saying – at least there's no sewage. That has to count for something, right?"

She rolled her eyes. "Just go."

"Fine."

With that, he shifted into the Shape of the Master. Then, he wasted no time before scampering into the bolt hole, marveling at just how much room he had to move. The others were much more cramped. So, he couldn't help but turn back and say, "Ah, the advantages of being a Pixar lizard." He stretched his short arms out wide. "So much room. I mean, technically, I don't think this form is a lizard. It's amphibious, so it's more salamander than lizard. Probably a bad characterization, considering it's almost assuredly dragon-based."

After giving Sadie his closest approximation to an amphibian's smile, he added, "But my point is – it's cute, small, and not cramped at all." He gave a small laugh. "Rhyme not intentional, but I'm owning it."

"I hate you," Sadie growled, hunching over as she crawled into the tiny tunnel.