Path of Dragons

Book 6: Chapter 25: Masks

Elijah leaned back, his arms resting against the granite rim of the hot spring. Despite the slightly sulfuric smell and the rough edge of the rocks under his arms, he couldn’t have been more at ease. Since being transported into the Trial of Primacy, he’d had very few chances to relax. It seemed that each day brought with it a new danger, and even though most of those situations were of his own making, he had to admit that he’d been in desperate need of a break.

Fortunately, after traveling for four days toward the next challenge, he’d found the hot springs. They were unlike anything he’d ever seen before, taking the form of a terraced mountain where each tier played host to a huge pool of scalding water. Clearly, it was no natural formation, with the terraces having been carved by the planet’s natives, and it prompted visions of hundreds of those alien creatures lounging about. Perhaps the mountain had once been a tourist attraction.

The thought brought with it a slight giggle, then a relaxed sigh as the hot water seeped into his muscles. He’d never had a hot tub, but he’d always imagined that it would be quite an enjoyable amenity to have at his disposal. Perhaps he could get Nerthus to work on one when he returned to the grove.

Or maybe it would be his next project when he got home.

“God knows I’ve earned a few weeks without something trying to bite my head off,” he muttered.

It was just as the words left his mouth that he felt someone approaching. It only took a second before he realized it was Sadie. She was still more than a hundred yards away, but she was clearly making her way in his direction. That wasn’t so surprising. The other terraces were difficult to reach, which was why he’d chosen his current location for himself. Because of that, a meeting seemed inevitable.

The last thing he wanted was for his relaxing afternoon to be interrupted by someone who clearly hated him, so with an annoyed sigh, he pushed himself out of the water. A few moments later, Sadie arrived just as he was pulling on his shirt. He couldn’t help but notice that she’d taken off her armor, opting for an oversized maroon sweatshirt emblazoned with the Harvard logo.

“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t know you were using this one. I’ll –”

“No – it’s fine,” Elijah said, waving away her comment. “I was just leaving.”

He raised an eyebrow, asking, “Are you sure?”

“Of course.”

“Because I’ve gotten the distinct impression that you hate me. Now, I’m not arguing that it’s not deserved. I can be annoying at the best of times,” Elijah said. “I’m aware of my shortcomings in social situations. So, if –”

“It’s fine, Elijah.”

To punctuate that statement, she took off her sweatshirt, revealing a black, one-piece swimsuit. Before Elijah could embarrass himself by staring, she slipped into the pool. She looked up and said, “So? Are you going to just stand there gaping like an idiot? Or are you getting in?”

As a response, Elijah once again undressed down to his underwear, then stepped into the water. Sinking up to his neck, he let out a relieve sigh. “I really need to have Nerthus build one of these when I get home.”

“You have mentioned this person before. Who is he?”

“A spryggent,” Elijah answered. “Kind of a tree spirit. Like a person made of twisting roots and branches. When I met him, he was only about a foot tall and couldn’t even leave his tree. But now, he’s got full run of my island and can even visit Ironshore. Oh, and he’s about five feet tall. Really good guy. I’d be dead without him.”

“How so?” she asked, her voice devoid of the vitriol it usually carried when directed at him.

“Well, I don’t know if I’ve told you about what I was going through when the world changed, but long story short, I was flying home to die,” he said. “Cancer, and not the treatable kind. I felt it from the moment I was diagnosed. The doctors tried. I went through chemotherapy and radiation, but I knew I wasn’t going to make it.”

“But you did.”

He shrugged. “I guess I didn’t factor magic into my calculations,” Elijah said with a half grin. “Maybe I should have. Anyway, the plane crashed – there was this huge bird that tore it to pieces – and I ended up washing ashore on a deserted island. I don’t –”

“Wait,” Sadie said, raising a hand. “You survived falling out of crashing plane? How?”

“There’s this storm off the coast of my island,” he explained. “I didn’t know it at the time, but I guess the wind kept me from hitting as hard as I should have. Or that’s my theory for now. Then I was saved by a dolphin and pushed ashore, so –”

“A dolphin saved you?” she asked incredulously. “You’re kidding, right?”

“There are many documented cases of dolphins saving people.”

“I guess, but –”

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“Anyway, my dolphin buddy saved me, and then I was briefly eaten by giant crabs. I fought them off, but I was still, you know, dying. I tried to fix it by allocating my attributes into Constitution, but that only bought me a little time. It wasn’t until I found Nerthus, and he helped me with my Body cultivation that I overcame the cancer,” Elijah explained. He knew precisely how many coincidences it had taken for him to survive, but he didn’t think he was all that unique. Anyone who made it through the immediate aftermath of Earth’s transformation had likely experienced just as many lucky turns.

Many more hadn’t gotten so lucky, but they were no longer around to tell their tales.

“That’s not what I imagined when you told me you had your own island,” Sadie admitted.

Elijah shrugged, saying, “It was pretty rough in the beginning. For months, I only focused on finding food and shelter. Then, I was almost killed by one of the Voxx, and things started snowballing from there. My island was invaded by a gnome with a mohawk. Like a big, red mohawk. He led a group of mercanaries onto the island, and I killed them all. Then –”

“All? How many?”

“Forty-nine.”

“How could you –”

“They were going to take my grove. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“Why?”

“I…I…don’t know.”

That was only partially true. Before he’d become a Druid, Elijah would have taken one look at such an invading force and run. However, after creating the grove, the notion of abandoning it to someone like Eason Cabbot was unthinkable. He would defend that island with his life, and he wouldn’t regret it one bit.

For a moment, Sadie just stared at him, but then her expression softened and she looked away. “I feel the same sometimes,” she admitted. “I’ve told you about Sense of Sin, but I can’t really explain it fully. It’s more than just cloud of sin around you. It’s a feeling. Something deep in my gut that I can’t explain, telling me that you are…evil. I’ve tried to control it. I want to ignore it. I know it doesn’t tell the whole story. But…but I feel like I’m being pushed in a direction I don’t want to go.”

“If it makes any difference to you, your skill isn’t wrong. I’ve done a lot of bad things, Sadie.”

“Killing people who invade your home isn’t –”

“That’s just the tip of the iceberg. I don’t even know how many people I’ve killed. God,” he said, running his hand through his wet hair. “Do you know how uncomfortable that makes me to admit? It must be in the thousands at this point. I think most of them deserved it, but…but in some cases, I just can’t trust my own judgement. For instance, there was this time I made friends with a guardian bear…”

Then, Elijah told her about killing the hunters. At the time, he’d felt entirely justified in his actions, but since then, he’d come to realize that he’d ceded control to a combination of his attunement, his class, and his own frustration.

“That’s when I tipped over the edge,” Elijah admitted. “That’s when I really became a killer.”

“I don’t…I really don’t know how to respond to that.”

“You don’t have to agree with what I did. Like I said, I felt like I was doing the right thing. It felt like justice, and maybe it was, after a fashion. I don’t think they were good people. I saw cruelty in them. But I had no right to kill them,” he said. He took a deep breath, then said, “But I think the reason you have such a strong reaction to me is because of what I did in Easton.”

“Easton?”

“They were calling it something else when I got there. Valoria, I think. Stupid name thought up by a stupid man,” Elijah said. “That was where my sister lived before all of this happened.”

Then, he told Sadie what he had learned of Alyssa’s contribution to that city’s establishment. He didn’t know everything, but he’d gotten most of the details out of Carmen. He shifted, and a small wave rippled out from his motion.

“Roman killed her,” he continued. “Betrayed her in a tower and lied to everyone about how she’d died. When I found out, I held it together for a while. I needed to be strong for Carmen and Miggy. I needed to make them safe. But over those weeks, hatred festered in my heart. So, when I finally got to Easton, I couldn’t hold it in. I saw it for the cesspool it was. I hunted down his lieutenants, and then I infiltrated his palace. I executed most of his guards. It was easy. Too easy. Most of the time, they never saw me coming. I don’t know if those people were evil, but in my mind, they were still complicit in everything I saw in that doomed city.

“Then, I cornered Roman. In my head, I’d conjured images of some epic battle,” he went on. He snorted derisively. “But that’s not what happened. I killed him without even straining. He had a few levels, but he was a weak man. I thought that would be the end of it, but as I was leaving the city, I saw a statue of my sister. They’d torn it down. And…and I lost it. From that moment on, I didn’t hold back. I killed hundreds. Maybe thousands. Most of them attacked me first, but not all.” He paused for a moment, then repeated, “Not all.”

He hadn’t intended to confess so much, and it wasn’t until he’d finished that he realized what had happened.

“You got another skill, didn’t you?” he asked, his voice even.

“I…I did,” Sadie admitted.

“What does it do?”

“I don’t know,” she said, hanging her head. “The description is vague. All it says is that in my presence, the guilty shall be unburdened. I…I didn’t know it would –”

Elijah pushed himself out of the water. “It’s fine. I didn’t say anything to you that someone else couldn’t have. Kurik knows most of it. So does Atticus. Delilah knows a little, too. But next time you want to know about my past, you should just ask,” he said without looking at her. He could practically feel the shame radiating from her.

He didn’t want to blame her for it, but at the end of the day, Elijah was still a human being. Sure, he was also a dragon. And a beast. But emotionally, he was the same man he’d always been.

And he didn’t like having his mind manipulated. So, he said, “Get a handle on that skill, or you’re going to have an even harder time going forward. Some people might not be quite so forgiving as to let it slide.”

As Elijah gathered his things and left the hot spring behind, he realized just how isolated Sadie must have felt. Few people in the Trial were without sin, so she was constantly exposed to the worst parts of everyone’s past. Now, she’d gotten another skill that would make being around other people that much more difficult. He hadn’t been lying when he predicted that others might react extremely poorly to the manipulation of her latest ability. At best, it just made people tell the truth. At worst, it was meant to force them to reveal their deepest, darkest secrets.

That wasn’t going to end well.

With that in mind, he focused on One with Nature, and he was surprised to find that Sadie remained in the hot spring, her face buried in her hands as she wept uncontrollably. It should not have been such a shocking scene – being emotionally distraught was probably the most normal reaction she could’ve had – but for some reason, Elijah would never have imagined her crying.

Every instinct told him to turn around and comfort her, but he resisted that impulse, knowing good and well that his presence would only make things worse. As much as he wanted to help – and surprisingly, he very much did – he chose to keep going, climbing to a higher tier to continue his relaxing afternoon in peace. Meanwhile, he kept a close eye on her via One with Nature.

She continued to weep for almost an hour until, suddenly, she wiped her eyes and adopted the same stoic expression she normally wore. But Elijah recognized it for the mask it was.

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