Path of Dragons

As he left the Seat of Benediction behind, two things occurred to Elijah. The first was that he didn't need to solve the world's problems on his own. By all rights, he probably should have left the devils to Benedict. He already had them in check – at least from how he described the issue – and there was no indication that situation wouldn't continue.

Certainly, he'd rationalized it by telling himself that he was just trying to get Benedict's help with the Third Army. But he knew he was lying to himself. Not about the help itself; that was probably on offer, should he tend to the devils. No – it was more about the necessity of that help.

Elijah had been considering it for a while, and he thought he had a decent plan to combat the Third Army. So, he didn't need Benedict's help. Not really, though it would be welcome.

The reality of it was that Elijah found himself heading west largely due to one very simple factor – he was curious. The devils had a distinct ethereal signature unlike any other creature he'd ever sensed. He'd spent a few hours down in the dungeons, and aside from being disgusted with the conditions, he'd come away with far more questions than answers. If it wasn't for his instincts, he'd have concluded that they were like the golems he'd destroyed not so long ago.

They were different, though. More real, for lack of a better way of putting it. Their vitality wasn't stolen – not like with the golems – and they felt as natural as any other normally occurring creature on Earth. But they were odd, which was the source of his intense curiosity.

Even if he placated his conscience by telling himself that his pending investigation stemmed from, in a roundabout way, a desire obtain Benedict's help, he knew it wasn't true. He was just curious.

And, if he was truly honest with himself, he didn't really want to return to the grove and all the responsibilities it represented. A silly notion, considering that he was the one in charge, but life seemed so much easier when he didn't need to worry about grove development or new members.

"You're just being immature," he muttered to himself as he descended the steps from the plateau. One of the passersby glared at him. He was obviously out of place, and mumbling to himself didn't help him fit in at all. He gave the woman a smile that just exacerbated her grimace. "I should've stayed in stealth."

Thankfully, he left her behind pretty quickly, but the odd looks from every other pedestrian followed him all the way to the base. That reminded him of the second realization he'd encountered – walking the city without Guise of the Unseen to conceal his presence was a very different experience. For one, he'd learned that the city was actually called Benediction, and the Seat of Benediction referred to the pyramid at its center. Only the interior was called Sanctum.

None of it was terribly creative, and by all rights, he should have connected the dots well before he saw Benedict. But it fit.

For another, he'd discovered that the residents were incredibly xenophobic, and to the point where they probably would have attacked him had the oni patrols not kept everything under their watchful eye. The demonic ogre-like creatures were brutal in the enforcement of the law – which prohibited any violence in the city, excepting the duels that broke out periodically – and none of Benediction's residents wanted to draw their ire.

It was an oddity to realize that the citizens feared those creatures far more than they did Elijah. Quite a change of pace, and he wasn't certain he liked it. There was a part of him that wanted to make an example of a couple of oni, just to prove that he was the proverbial king of the jungle.

He'd never act on that impulse, but he had to acknowledge that he wanted to. Otherwise, he couldn't overcome it.

The traversal of the city was also telling in that it laid plain the problems – and merits – of their twisted morality. Most of the issues lay in the fact that it didn't seem terribly sustainable. There was a reason humanity didn't routinely practice cannibalism, and it was less about disgust and more about health consequences. Populations that lacked an aversion for the practice usually ended up with kuru – a classification for often deadly diseases caused by misfolded proteins called prions. They also risked a host of other medical conditions caused by transmittable diseases, nutritional imbalances, and heavy metal accumulation.

In short, the people dumb enough not to recognize that pattern were doomed to die off, thus pruning themselves – and the traits that told them cannibalism was okay – from the genetic pool.

Maybe those problems wouldn't persist now that people were under the influence of inflated attributes, but Elijah didn't think so. Most probably, they would just be replaced by other, ethera-based issues. Though that idea was likely a result of his moral aversion to the practice, so he couldn't be certain that he was an objective authority on the subject.

In all probability, no one on Earth was.

For all that Benediction had its problems, it was also a well-organized place with hard and fast laws that governed the population. That culture of order had given them the surety to build a city that functioned at least as well as any other settlement he'd encountered. Nobody starved. There was no poverty. No beggars in the streets or crime that Elijah had seen. They were backwards and misguided – at least from Elijah's perspective – but they also seemed happy and well cared for.

Benedict might have problems of his own, but he'd created a city and government that served the interests of its people. That was commendable, even if Elijah found it difficult to accept some of their cultural practices.

Either way, the place gave him the creeps, so he was more than happy to leave it behind. Of course, the entire region was under Benedict's control, so it was some time before he found himself free of its cultural footprint.

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According to Benedict, the borders of his kingdom were marked in the east by a dense forest. The woodland acted as something of a buffer, beyond which was the territory of the blue devils, which were actually called asharii, according to the Warlock. He'd learned their name from his scouts, most of whom were equipped with some sort of identification ability.

From what Benedict had told him, things got strange within the woodland, though the Warlock had difficulty explaining precisely how. Elijah wanted to experience it for himself, so he'd resolved to remain on foot. So, once he reached the tree line, he shifted into the Shape of the Scourge and adopted Guise of the Unseen. Under the cloak of stealth, he progressed into the forest, his senses ranging as far as he could manage.

It didn't take long before he saw the first oddity.

A squirrel, no larger than normal, suddenly disappeared, then reappeared within the branches of an entirely different tree. Elijah hadn't even felt a swirl of ethera before it had teleported, which didn't make much sense. So, he followed the squirrel, focusing multiple facets of his mind on the ambient ethera surrounding the creature.

And then it teleported again.

This time, though, Elijah sensed it. The way the ethera moved was unlike anything he'd ever seen. Elegant was the first term that came to mind, but it barely scratched the surface of what he'd felt. By comparison, his own spells were clumsy. Like a child with a crayon compared to a master painter.

To date, Elijah had only paid nominal attention to how his spells actually worked. He couldn't ignore the most basic concepts, but he'd not delved any deeper, choosing instead to focus his attention on more concrete things like his cultivation or gaining levels.

Perhaps that was a mistake.

Normally, the expression of his spells was something akin to tracing lines in the ethera. It happened automatically, meaning that he didn't need to concentrate, aside from activating the spell. The system just took care of the heavy lifting. But watching that squirrel teleport was something else entirely. The ethera oriented itself into thin strands, then wove around itself in a mind-bogglingly complex way. The result was that Elijah barely even sensed it, but he also felt certain that the act took almost no ethera.

Efficiency and elegance.

More importantly, it only took one more witnessed teleportation for Elijah to come to the conclusion that it could also result in a much greater expression of power. His mind immediately leapt to spells like Domain of Lightning and Primal Swarm. Could he adjust them so that they were more efficient? More powerful? He'd long known that the power of those spells was more of a range than a specific potency, but he suspected that if he had half the mastery over ethera displayed by the squirrel, he could exceed even his most generous estimates.

Elijah followed the squirrel for a little longer, and he was rewarded when he saw it teleport much further than before. It was practically confirmation that his assumption was accurate. Eventually, the squirrel disappeared, obviously teleporting far out of his range, and he lost track of it altogether.

Over the next day, Elijah saw more oddities. Teleporting creatures were just the beginning, and he witnessed a host of other displays of astute ethereal manipulation. The strangest among them was the owl that seemed capable of time manipulation.

If Elijah hadn't been on the lookout for the subtle handling of ethera, he might have thought the thing possessed of incredibly high attributes. With how quickly it moved, the bird would've had to possess double Elijah's attributes. The first hint that he was on the wrong track was when it targeted a mouse. The little creature was almost as quick, but when the owl targeted it, the thing slowed to a crawl. It could barely even move, much less avoid the airborne predator that swooped in, snatched it in its claws, then flew away.

It all happened in the space of a second, but seeing it in real time, Elijah felt certain that a spell – or whatever the bestial equivalent of it – was at work. It was an odd sight to be sure, especially considering that a fairly weak creature seemed to have so much greater control over ethera than he did.

As he continued along, he found many more strange sights, like an illusory glade that was really a trap for a nest of giant spiders. Fortunately, the illusion was rendered entirely ineffective by Elijah's Soul of the Wild. A few local beasts were not so lucky, and Elijah saw a bobcat get snared in their webs.

He might've tried to save it if the spiders didn't kill it nearly immediately. He reasoned that it was just the circle of life, even if watching the arachnids drain the creature of fluids was a gruesome sight.

Once, he grew entirely disoriented and realized that he'd spent an hour wandering in circles. As it turned out, that realization came in the nick of time, because he was being stalked by a praying mantis the size of a golden retriever. When he broke free of that disorientation, the insect gave up the hunt.

That it could affect Elijah – even with the oft-ignored but always active Plain Sight trait from his Antlers of the Wild Revenant – was distressing. If he'd been paying attention, it never would have worked, but he'd been distracted by the setting. Resolving to maintain focus, he continued on.

Eventually, he left the dense thicket of forest behind, progressing into a more diffuse woodland. As he did so, he sensed a sharp increase in the ambient ethera, all but confirming what he'd suspected from the very beginning. After all, he'd experienced enough Primal Realms to recognize when one was nearby.

At first, he was elated at the discovery. Finding the Primal Realms in a world the size of Earth's current incarnation had always been the diciest part of the proposition. And if they didn't find them all, the world would be excised. However, it wasn't long before Elijah thought better of that excitement.

The notion of plunging into another Primal Realm so soon after finishing the Elemental Maelstrom was one he didn't want to consider. He did keep going, though. Finding it was of paramount importance.

He resolved to keep his wits about him so he didn't stumble into a repeat of what had happened with the Chimeric Forge. Getting sucked into a Primal Realm against his will was definitely not part of his plan.

After another day of travel, during which he encountered more odd sights, Elijah discovered his first asharii in the wild. And he was surprised to find that each one wore copious amounts of gold jewelry. Bangles hung from their wrists, rings adorned their fingers, and each one wore an elaborate torc of twisted gold around their necks.

Perhaps even more interestingly, they surrounded a small temple, around which swirled a rich lattice of ethera with threads so thin that Elijah could scarcely tell where one ended and another began. Upon seeing it, he made a striking connection, though – it reminded him of the threads he manipulated via Nature's Design. Vaguely, he could sense various attunements, but more strongly, he felt what seemed like ethera in its purest, unattuned form.

From that came the realization that the blue creatures were not devils at all, but rather djinn. One of the extinct elder races, and they were obviously far more skilled at ethereal manipulation – or magic – than anything Elijah had ever seen before.