Path of Dragons

Book 6: Chapter 83: The Carrot and the Stick

Yloa released his underling, letting the pitiful creature fall to the floor. He had given them so much. He had sacrificed everything for the future of Ka’arath, and yet, none of them were grateful. They spat in his face, naming him tyrant. Dictator. Villain. He was all of those things and more, but most of all, he was their savior. Without him, no one on his planet would have survived.

So, when the system had announced that it was giving them a chance to escape their ruined planet, he’d thought his diligence was finally being rewarded. If ever there was a Feat of Strength, then shielding an entire continent from the Abyss should have qualified. So, it was with some optimism that he had sent his hunters out to satisfy the requirements of the task set before him.

However, the participants in the Trial of Primacy had proven to be much more powerful than he ever could have expected.

Or the Shackles were far more restrictive. He’d forgotten what it felt like to be a mortal, and so had many of his most powerful followers. Certainly, they were all much stronger than they had been when they were true mortals, but that didn’t seem to matter. The Hunters had killed a few, but mostly, their efforts had been stymied. At first, Yloa had blamed them. He had punished quite a few. But as the invaders had toppled one challenge after another, he had come to realize that the participants were much more capable than he could have anticipated.

And he was far more limited.

If he or his champions had been permitted to leave the Seat of Thunder, things would have turned out differently. If the system hadn’t given the participants in the Trial a safe zone at the center of the continent, the Hunters could have overwhelmed them.

If.

It was such an insidious word that brought with it too many excuses. A hundred factors contributed to the situation, but knowing the reasons didn’t change the circumstances.

Now, the system, in all its hatred for true innovation, had ripped his greatest achievement to shreds. The shield he’d erected around the continent was in tatters, and he could feel it as keenly as if his actual body had been wounded.

He took a deep, hissing breath before looking up. They were all there. The Houndmaster. The Captain. The General. Even Boss K’nok and his Enforcer, Barag, had come when he’d called. They all had proper names, but he preferred to think of them in terms of their titles. Those were far more important, after all.

The Mage lay at his feet, having paid for his cowardice.

“Does anyone else suggest treating with these people?” he asked, his voice echoing throughout the chamber. Once, his throne room had seemed so opulent. So comfortable. Now, he saw it for the gilded prison it had become. He could not leave the Seat of Thunder. The moment he’d taken the task upon himself, he’d consented to playing the role the system demanded of him. He could still act as he pleased, but he was prevented from taking the battle to the invaders.

“We will fight,” announced the General. He was a veteran of thousands of battles, having climbed from nothing to take command of Yloa’s armies. Now, he only had a few thousand soldiers under him, but his powers as a Tactician remained. “I have already given the order to activate the Seat of Thunder’s defenses.”

The Guard Captain echoed the General’s plan, pledging his own guards to the task. The Houndmaster was characteristically silent. Despite the failure of her Hunters, she was still an asset Yloa could not afford to lose. So, he ordered her to patrol the grounds. She consented with a curt nod.

Finally, there was Boss K’nok.

“The way I see it, you need me a lot more than I need you,” the brutish criminal said. Yloa had enlisted the ka’alaki’s help thousands of years before. And his assistance had been instrumental in winning the war. As a result, he’d been among the first who’d taken up residence in the Seat of Thunder, where he’d taken advantage of his position to create an empire of criminality. Of course, most of that had fallen with Ka’arath’s excisement, but K’nok’s nature hadn’t changed. He still broke Yloa’s laws when he wanted to. “What do I get when we repel these invaders and escape this cursed planet?”

Yloa wanted to kill the impertinent criminal.

But he knew he couldn’t afford to lose him. Not when he was so close to getting away from Ka’arath. There was an entire multi-verse out there for him to exploit. He would not die in exile. He refused.

And Boss K’nok had hundreds of cunning fighters at his disposal.

Once the criminal had served his purpose, Yloa would do what he’d wanted to do for centuries. Not before, though.

“What do you want?” Yloa asked.

“Ethereum, to start. Resources for me and mine. That means natural treasures. The kind only a transcendent can get.”

“Very well. You will have your…trinkets.”

“Then I’ll do my job,” K’nok said. “They won’t get through the Underseat.”

Yloa hated that name, largely because it was so literal. Beneath the Seat of Thunder was a maze of slums where many of the servants’ families lived. Most were pitifully inbred abominations, and if he could have afforded to slaughter them, he would have. But he and his immediate underlings liked having servants. So, they’d let the creatures continue their woeful existences where they wouldn’t be seen by their betters.

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“Good,” Yloa said. Then, he took a final look at his latest notification:

The participants of the Trial of Primacy have been tasked with your demise. Survive and earn your escape. Reward: Passage to a Connected Planet

Yloa knew that the others had not been given the same opportunity. The task was his alone, meaning that even if they succeeded, he would be the only one to leave their world behind.

The other task still existed, though. If they managed to kill all of the invaders, Ka’arath would be purged of the Abyss and reconnected to the World Tree. But Yloa knew that wasn’t going to happen.

He no longer cared.

So long as he escaped, that was all that mattered. He was the best of them. A lasting mark for their planet that would survive the Excisement. He owed it to everyone who’d come before him. All the brave people who’d died for the cause, who’d put their trust in him. He would be their legacy, and in a very real way, he would immortalize his people.

But first, he needed to survive the swarm of insects the system had set upon him.

* * *

Elijah awoke slowly, and without opening his eyes, he focused on One with Nature. He was surrounded by people, most of which were injured to varying degrees. There were even a few that had very recently succumbed to their deaths. Their bodies were still warm, but there was nothing left of the people they’d once been.

He forced his eyes open, then sat up. Sensing so much human misery was one thing, but seeing it with his own two eyes was something else entirely. There was so much blood, and he could feel the seething corruption within. He immediately reached for the ethera in his core and cast Healing Rain. Those nearest to him flinched at the first couple of rain drops, but they quickly realized that it was restorative and relaxed.

“You’re up,” came Sadie’s voice.

He glanced over to see her sitting beside him. Dark circles stood beneath her eyes, and it almost looked as if she’d been crying. No doubt, the sight of so many injured people had hit her hard, probably reminding her of what she’d left behind on Earth. His senses told him that her own core was almost entirely spent, and it didn’t take him long to determine that she’d assuredly spent it healing the injured.

Because of course she had.

The woman was often cold, but she truly cared about the well-being of others, and she never thought twice about the personal sacrifice involved in helping them. It was a noble thing, and a characteristic that Elijah greatly admired.

“Yeah,” he said, running his hand through his sweat-slick hair. “How long was I out?”

“Almost a day,” she stated. “People have been trickling in ever since. Most of them end up coming through here.”

It was then that Elijah recognized the room as the infirmary where he’d first found Ron. He also saw the Healer himself working among a group of patients.

“How bad is it?”

“Very.”

He sighed and hung his head. The past version of him might have felt guilty. After all, if he and the others hadn’t been quite as hard-charging, they never would have unlocked the tenth challenge. But with everything he’d been through, he knew it wasn’t his fault. If anything, the system was to blame, but even that wasn’t entirely accurate. It was just doing what its nature dictated.

“How many have died?”

Sadie shook her head. “We’re not sure. There are a lot of people still unaccounted for,” she answered. “But general consensus is that at least half of the people who were outside the Nexus are dead. The only silver lining is that there weren’t that many people out there. Most of them were inside the town when it happened.”

“Hard numbers?”

“At least a hundred. Almost a dozen made it back here but were too far gone to save,” Sadie explained.

Elijah didn’t know how to respond to that. He wanted to a list so that he could ensure that the few people with whom he was acquainted weren’t among the casualties, but asking for that kind of thing seemed a little callous.

He did it anyway, and he discovered that Delilah and Lamar’s team were okay. The same couldn’t be said for a few others Elijah had met along the way, and both Oscar and Benedict were still missing. He wanted to believe they’d both be fine, but he’d seen those giants. He’d felt the increased power of the wraiths. If Shape of the Guardian hadn’t recently been upgraded to Shape of Thorn, he might not have survived.

And none of his companions – save for Dat, perhaps – would have.

“So, is there a plan?” he asked.

She shook her head. “It seems like most people are content with staying in the Nexus Town until the Trial is over,” she answered.

“What about the task?” he asked.

“With what’s out there, I don’t think many people are going to want to risk it.”

Elijah shook his head. He could understand their reticence, but he knew enough to expect that the system wasn’t going to let them just hole up without some consequences. There was going to be more to it.

Now that Elijah was awake, they both lent their efforts to healing the injured people, and after a few more hours, they’d done what they could. Ron chose to stick around in case other patients showed up, but he shooed Elijah and Sadie away. The pair went their separate ways, and Elijah eventually ended up at the Consortium headquarters, where he found Atticus and asked how they’d fared.

“We’re fine,” he said. “But I don’t know how long it’s going to last.”

“What’s going on?” Elijah asked.

“You don’t feel it?”

“What?”

“The atmosphere. The corruption. It’s subtle, but the levels are rising,” Atticus explained, holding up a glass prism. “One of my people built this to track it. When it turns black, it’s too toxic for us to survive without being…changed.”

Elijah looked at the curio held by the Merchant. It was a cloudy gray, which he didn’t really know how to interpret. However, now that he knew what to look for, he could feel the subtle corruption in the air. What’s more, it didn’t take a leap of logic to understand just how bad things could get. After all, he’d just heard the story of what had happened to the natives who’d been infected by the abyssal corruption.

Would that happen to the people in the Nexus?

He had no idea if it would get that bad, but he could recognize the issue at hand. While everyone wanted to just wait the Trial out, he’d just discovered that they were on a timer. Either they conquered the final challenge, or the corruption would grow powerful enough to irreparably change them. At best, they would simply die, but at worst…

“We need to call a meeting,” he said. “Everyone needs to know about this.”