Path of Dragons-Chapter 75Book 8: : The Prime Core

Elijah clung to the ceiling, looking down at a mass of golems. There weren’t just thousands of them. Not even tens of thousands. If there less than hundreds of thousands, he would have been immensely surprised. The things stood shoulder-to-shoulder, entirely unmoving, and filling the entirety of the forge.

Among their feet were small monsters slithering between their thick legs of mingled rock and metal. Elijah could sense thousands of hand-sized flesh spiders among them, but there were many varieties with which he was entirely unfamiliar. They were all grotesque, though – mutated combinations of various beasts so twisted that they could scarcely move without significant pain.

They were clearly failures.

But it seemed that for its final assault, the Prime Mechanique – if that was even the proper name for the mountainous golem that had once masqueraded as a mere factory – was leaving no stone unturned. The failed and malformed monsters could still be deadly, after all. And even if they did nothing but act as cannon fodder, they would have done their job.

It was a grotesque waste of life, and even though Elijah wanted nothing more than to rid the entire world of those mutated monsters, he couldn’t escape his disgust at the Prime Mechanique’s callous treatment of its creations. The entire situation seemed tailor-made to push all of Elijah’s most sensitive buttons – so much so that it had become difficult to concentrate on the task at hand.

But with every lurching stride, the creature drew closer to Vey’thaal. Elijah knew the people living there weren’t real – not in the strictest sense. However, he still felt the need to save them, and not only to conquer the Primal Realm. There was something else there. Whether it was natural empathy or something less definable, Elijah wasn’t certain, but it drove him forward nonetheless.

With that in mind, he skittered across the ceiling, focusing almost entirely on Soul of the Wild. Aside from the mass of mutated monsters slithering among the golems, there wasn’t much to sense in the otherwise lifeless forge. However, Elijah wasn’t looking for vitality. Instead, he’d homed in on the swirl of ethera.

It was thick enough that he almost expected it to be visible – like a magical fog perhaps – but it remained entirely transparent. With the sense he’d gained via Soul of the Wild, he could feel it easily enough. The flows, the currents, the pools – they were all laid bare before his perception.

Because of that, he found it fairly simple to trace it to a grid of ethereal flows. Not easy – not by any stretch – but simple. If he’d lacked even one of his advantages – in terms of attributes, cultivation, or the power of his spells – he never could have followed the pattern. But as it stood, he could see that the flows weren’t random. Instead, they formed a massive grid that suffused the entire golem.

Elijah tried to concentrate on the ethereal lattice, but his efforts were complicated by a few factors. The first – and most obvious – was that the massive pistons had never stopped pumping. As they did so, they spewed fire and molten metal in every direction. In addition, the golems clearly knew he was around, and at times, would randomly fire off balls of slag. Most didn’t even come close, but there were so many of the things that every now and again, they got lucky.

And finally, the lurching steps of the mountainous Prime Mechanique rocked the entire structure, threatening to dislodge him from the ceiling with every stride.

To call it all distracting would have been a vast understatement, but Elijah endeavored to ignore the superfluous details and focus on the task at hand. Because after nearly fifteen minutes of constant concentration, he’d finally found a thread to follow. It was little different from any of the rest, save that when it pulsed, it did so with slightly more ethera. After following it for a few minutes, Elijah also discovered that he could sense the direction of the flow, which told him that almost every ethereal current stemmed from that one conduit.

It was clearly the key.

Elijah just needed to follow it, going against the current until he discovered the source. So, amidst all the distractions – he was forced to dodge quite a few balls of motlen slag – he did just that. It twisted throughout the forge, circling the mighty pistons and even dipping into vats of melted metal. Elijah couldn’t discern rhyme or reason for the pattern – at least at first – but then it dawned on him.

The whole thing was a glyph, not unlike those carved onto his staves.

Certainly, they were far more complex and created on a much larger scale. But in retrospect, it seemed obvious. The only reason he hadn’t seen it sooner was because he was too close. If he’d seen it from far above, it would have been immediately apparent.

Once he had that information in hand, the task of following that thick conduit of ethera was even easier. Elijah did so, traversing the miles-wide forge until, at last, he reached a point where it descended into the ground. That wasn’t the first time it had gone out of range of his senses, but when he found where it resurfaced, he immediately noticed the change in direction. No longer was the energy flowing out. Rather, it flowed back the way it had come.

The implication was clear.

If there was a power source – which was precisely what he was looking for – it was down there. The only problem was that Elijah had no idea how to reach it. So, he widened his search and, after a few more minutes, discovered a small grate that he’d scarcely even noticed. The only reason he realized it was there was because there was steam flowing up from it – which wasn’t uncommon but still notable. There were plenty of other columns of steam in the forge, and most were entirely innocuous. However, in this instance, that steam was absolutely saturated with ethera.

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Elijah decided to take that as a hint.

He dropped to the floor, then immediately shifted into his human form. The second he did, the golems in the area noticed him. They surged, but Elijah did his best to ignore them as he hooked his fingers between the slats of the grate and yanked it free. As he did so, he was already transforming into the Shape of the Master – a requirement because none of his other forms were small enough to fit.

He dove inside the moment the transformation had completed, and it was just in time to avoid being buried under a hundred balls of molten slag. He dragged himself downward, then took the first branch he could find. Another ball of fiery metal smashed into the spot he’d just vacated, but now that he was out of sight, he felt a little more secure.

After all, the golems were far too large to make it through.

The same could not be said for some of the mutated monsters that swarmed in behind him. Thankfully, none of them were strong enough to do much real harm, though even as he swatted them, he couldn’t avoid getting bitten multiple times. Most were venomous, but the worst they could do to him was cause a bit of nausea, which he countered with a quick cast of Wild Resurgence.

Elijah ignored the grotesque things as he pulled himself through the duct. The Shape of the Master wasn’t boneless, but it was quite malleable, so he managed to squeeze through some truly tight spaces along the way. To guide him forward, he relied on the density of the ethera. If it felt thicker in a particular direction, that was the one he chose.

And gradually, he twisted his way through. Eventually, the flow of monsters ceased, after which he made much better time. Then, suddenly, he found what he was looking for.

But it was not what he’d expected.

Below him boiled a huge expanse of ethera-drenched water. To Elijah, it felt like he was looking down at a roiling lake, though from what he sensed within, it obviously contained the source of the ethereal flow. He dove in.

And immediately, he regretted it. Not only was the water boiling, but as he dove deeper, he felt a familiar pressure descend upon him. After a few hundred feet, he knew he had no choice but to shift into the Shape of the Sea. He did so, and when the transformation completed, he let out a sigh of relief. Not only did the vastly increased attributes protect him from the boiling water, but the pressure as well. With that done, he was free to seek out the source of the ethera.

As he swam, he realized that the entire pool – which must have been miles wide – contained violent currents that would sweep him aside without issue. The first time he experienced such a flow, he very nearly ended up being tossed into a massive pipe that looked extraordinarily familiar.

After an intuitive leap, everything clicked together.

The Abyssal Glassworks had never quite fit into his concept of what the Primal Realm was all about. Certainly, that space was populated by mutated monsters, the same as everywhere else. However, it had felt more like a tower than any other place he’d visited.

Now, after what he’d just seen, it made so much more sense.

Sure, the connection to the pool probably only existed because of magic – Elijah imagined there were probably portals that allowed the water to flow through – but to him, the purpose was obvious. After all, water was perfect for cooling things, and with the pulsing ethera down below, Elijah could only believe that the source was truly massive. It would need quite a lot of cooling in order to function.

Thus, the pool – and the connection to the Abyssal Glassworks, which provided the flow of fresh and cold water. It was tenuous logic, but Elijah felt comfortable with it as a theory.

Not that any of that really mattered, save for Elijah to wonder if he’d made a few different choices, would he have been able to bypass the ravine. Maybe. Perhaps not. But he couldn’t dwell on what might have been. Instead, he needed to focus on the here and now.

With that in mind, he pulled himself free of the current and swam ever deeper. As he did so, he was nearly caught in even more powerful flows. However, so long as he focused on Soul of the Wild, he could avoid them.

For thousands of feet, he descended, and with every flap of his flippers, the heat intensified. It went well past boiling temperature, but because of the immense pressure, it remained liquid. Fortunately, his enormous Constitution kept him from feeling too much of the heat, though he knew that if it got much hotter, he’d start to take damage.

Still, he had no choice but to keep going, albeit with Wild Resurgence coursing through him.

It seemed that he’d been thinking along those lines a lot lately.

He forged ahead, and with mighty strokes, he continued his descent until, at last, he felt the source.

It wasn’t a heart, like he’d found inside the other golem. Instead, it was a massive sphere – maybe two or three hundred feet across – and covered in densely inscribed runes that reminded Elijah of circuitry. He could feel the power in it, pulsing like a heartbeat and sending thick flows of ethera into the conduit he’d followed into the pool. From the other side, ethera flowed into the sphere, creating a loop.

As soon as Elijah closed in on the thing, the pieces of the sphere started to spin, and in all different directions. It was only then that Elijah realized that it was entirely made of concentric circles.

He didn’t have time to study it, though, because only a moment later, thousands of metal vines, each one tipped with claws or barbs, erupted from the sphere. And they all seemed intent on ripping him to shreds.

Elijah didn’t have time to fight them, and what’s more, if he shifted out of the Shape of the Sea, he would likely die. His human from had no defenses against the pressure or the immense heat, much less the bombardment of damage promised by those metal tendrils.

So, he decided not to even try to fight them.

Instead, he activated Savage Strength, then propelled himself forward with a mighty stroke of his fins. The Shape of the Sea was big and strong and durable, but it was also incredibly fast. The combination was that, when he pushed himself to his limits, he became a massive battering ram. The vines slapped against him ineffectually as he blistered through the water.

He slammed into the sphere at more than two-hundred miles an hour.

The results were catastrophic, both for him and for the sphere. The sound of wrenching metal filled the pool, followed by what sounded like a screech. Elijah barely heard it. Indeed, he blacked out for a few moments, and when he came to, he realized a couple of distressing things.

First, he had a massive headache that probably indicated he’d cracked his skull. That supposition was supported by his inability to focus properly, regardless of how many facets of his mind he dedicated to the task. That made the second issue a little hard to understand.

Elijah felt himself flying upward on a massive current of water. Beside him floated the remnants of the core, twisted out of all hope of recognition.

Then, suddenly, Elijah burst free into the light. He felt the extra attributes from Shape of the Sea disappear as he flew high into the air on a geyser of superheated water. As he tried to make sense of it – which was not easy, considering his broken skull – he heard the same robotic voice that had started it all.

“Prime core destroyed. Eliminating waste. Shifting to back-up cores. Power at thirty-two percent.”

Even as that voiced echoed across the landscape, Elijah once again felt himself slipping into unconsciousness. Before he blacked out, he used his last thought to force out a final instance of Wild Resurgence. Then, everything went dark.