Path of Dragons - A LitRPG Apocalypse (BOOK TWO ON KINDLE SEPT. 2)

The air shimmered as a wave of heat washed over Elijah. He barely felt it as he focused on the oncoming rapier. It moved with blistering speed, and despite his vastly improved reflexes, he couldn’t avoid it entirely. It clipped his shoulder, slicing neatly through the amphibious flesh and searing it closed with the same blow.

He let out a gasp, but he couldn’t stop moving. Not if he wanted to avoid being skewered.

Because the duelist wasn’t just fast. He moved so quickly that it was practically teleportation. The only reason Elijah had any chance of dodging was because of his high attributes and the inherent reflexes associated with the Shape of the Master.

The rapier hissed through the air in a slash that should have taken his head off. Elijah ducked underneath it, adding a single charge to his Heart of Fire. However, he couldn’t even begin to worry about that. Instead, his mind – every available facet – remained focused on tracking his opponent and controlling his body.

Fortunately, if there was one area where the chardandir form excelled, it was in the realm of proprioception. He had perfect control of his compact body, so he spent the next few moments dodging blows and building his charges.

Then, the dogs struck.

Jackson was the first attacker, but he was quickly flowed by Sophie. They nipped at the duelist’s ankles, ripping through the flesh and sending bits of crystal scattering across the ground. The duelist was unaffected, though, and he quickly turned on the retreating dogs. In less than a second, Jackson had been impaled.

Elijah screamed, “No!”

He leaped forward, his scythe screaming through the air, but even as the weapon chipped the duelist’s crystalline body, Jackson burst into flames. Despite his intentions to remain in the Shape of the Master, Elijah knew he only had once chance of saving the dog. And he didn’t hesitate to resume his human form and rush to heal Jackson. Blessing of the Grove came first, then Wild Resurgence. By the time he reached his destination, dropping ot his knees and skidding to a stop, Nature’s Bloom was on the cusp of casting.

He let it loose, then summoned his Cloak of the Iron Bear from his Arcane Loop. He tossed it over the still-burning dog, smothering the flames even as the heals set in. Elijah could feel the duelist rushing towards him, but he couldn’t do anything about it.

Thankfully, he wasn’t alone.

Sophie let out a growl and barreled into the creature’s legs with so much force that he very nearly went sprawling to the ground. He regained his balance, but not before he rammed into one of the pillars. It shook with the impact, cracking and showering the ground with rock.

At the same time, Ray and Maymay joined the battle, and with a surge of ethera, they slammed their curses into place. Meanwhile, Freddy leaped upon the duelist’s back and clamped his jaws around the nape of his neck. The crunch of shattering crystal filled the air only a second before Digby appeared out of thin air, taking a chunk out of the monstrous humanoid’s hamstring.

They too were made of crystal, but from the way the duelist stumbled away, the attack was effective.

That’s when Oscar came in.

He fought like a two-legged wolf, racing in and slashing at the duelist before retreating. Swirling with ethera, he cast one spell after another. The first was clearly meant to aid in Jackson’s healing, but the others imbued the dogs with additional attributes. When he released the third spell, they were enveloped by dense cold. Ice sprouted from their backs and frost encased their teeth.

After that, the battle shifted.

The once-blistering wind grew cold, and rime stretched across the pillars. The duelist stumbled as the fire around his rapier guttered out. The dogs never stopped, rushing in and taking chunks out of his legs.

Meanwhile, Elijah pumped every ounce of ethera he could muster into Jackson, willing the vitality forward to combat the foreign energy nesting in his wounds. It battled back, but against Elijah’s will-driven spell, it flaked away, bit by bit until, at last, it came free and dissipated into the atmosphere.

Only then did Jackson begin to heal.

“He’s okay,” Oscar growled between gritted teeth as he skidded to a stop in a shower of scree. “Rejoin the battle. I can’t keep this going much longer.”

Remembering the plan, Elijah recast Blessing of the Grove and Wild Resurgence before resuming the Shape of the Master. As he transformed, he threw himself back into the fight, adding his scythe to the mix.

He blended right into the dogs’ fighting style, almost like he was one of the pack. He wasn’t. He knew that. But he’d battled beside them often enough to anticipate their moves almost as well as he could his own.

With that they whittled the monster down.

Along the way, Elijah dodged almost two-dozen attacks, and his Heart of Fire slowly filled.

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Then, Oscar’s ability ran its course. The second the flow of ethera petered out, a burst of flame erupted from the pillars, followed by spewing lava, showering the entire area.

Elijah dodged and deflected, narrowly saving the charges of Heart of Fire. However, the dogs weren’t so lucky. Yelps of pain echoed even louder than the localized eruptions, but Elijah resisted the urge to shift back into his human form and heal them. Oscar could take care of his pack.

Holding onto his charges was far more important at the moment, because he suspected that it would be the only way they’d finish the thing off.

Once the eruptions ceased, Elijah had tipped over the halfway mark. To him, that was good enough, but before he had a chance to activate Child of Fire, everything changed. The duelist exploded into fire and ash, then stepped into one of the pools of magma. Elijah raced forward, but before he could take a single step, the monster disappeared into the pool of molten rock.

He reappeared a dozen feet away and nearly skewered Oscar before disappearing once again.

Elijah sank into Soul of the Wild, searching for any indication of where he might appear next. The dogs went wild, barking and pacing while Oscar used his abilities to help mend their wounds. The heals weren’t that potent, but they would need to be enough, at least for now.

Thankfully, none of the pack were low leveled, and they had the attributes to endure the small bits of damage incurred by the lava storm.

Just as Elijah verged on despair, he felt a ripple in one of the magma pools. Nothing happened, so he almost dismissed it. However, a second later, he felt another ripple – barely even noticeable, even with his senses – in a neighboring pool. Then another. And another after that.

Elijah acted, racing across the space, his scythe at the ready.

So, when the creature erupted from the pool in a shower of lava, aiming his flaming sword at Ray, Elijah was there to intercept the intended blow. He knocked the rapier aside, then followed it with an uppercut that sliced through crystalline flesh with ease. The wound started at the monster’s groin, traced an arc upward until separating from the duelist’s torso just beneath his sternum.

The creature howled in fury and pain as he stumbled backward, spewing a shower of lava-like blood. Elijah followed, hammering him with one blow after another. The dogs joined in, attacking far more aggressively now that they sensed vulnerability.

But before they could finish the creature off, he fell into another puddle of magma and disappeared.

“Shit,” Elijah growled, knowing they’d almost defeated the duelist. “Almost had him.”

A laugh bubbled up from the lava, and not just the puddle where the monster had disappeared. Instead, it emanated from all of the pools all at once. It built and built until it was loud enough to shake the remaining pillars.

Then, dozens of crystal statues climbed free of the puddles. They all looked identical to the flamewrought duelist, though without clothing or weapons. In unison, they raised their hands and shouted, “Pyroclastic Execution!”

Fiery ethera swirled.

Elijah had just enough time to recognize the unique feeling that reminded him of the invasive energy he’d dealt with while crossing the bridges of fire. He shouted, “Stillness!”

Forcefully, he brought his own ethera to a screeching halt. It was just in time, too, because only a moment later, rings of fire burst forth from each of the crystal statues and swept across the space. When the flames reached Elijah, he was burned. However, with the stillness of his ethera, he provided no openings for it to penetrate any further and take hold.

It still hurt. It did plenty of damage. But it was all superficial, and compared to everything else he’d experienced in the Crucible of Fire, easily ignored. The second the ring of fire passed through him, Elijah leaped into action. As he did, he activated Child of Fire. The influx of attributes surged through him, and he immediately attacked the statues. The first one shattered into a million pieces after the first blow.

However, before he could attack the next, another wave of fire erupted from the remaining statues. Elijah once again stilled his ethera, holding it perfectly in place as he sprinted to the next. It fell just as the ring of flame passed through him, blistering his skin but once again failing to take hold.

He attacked the next statue. Then, the next after that. Vaguely, as he raced from one statue to the next, he was aware of Oscar and the dogs following his lead. They made for a pitiful sight, having been grievously burned, but they had learned the same lessons he had.

And though they weren’t quite as durable, it was clear that the flames weren’t capable of doing any lasting damage.

It wasn’t pretty, though, and the smell of burning fur filled the air, mingling with sulfur and ash.

Elijah ignored it, though. The dogs would need to take care of themselves at least for a little while longer. In the meantime, he knew his time was ticking down, and if Child of Fire wore off before he’d finished his task, it would be that much more difficult. Fortunately, once he got going, he could move extremely fast. He used every point of his enhanced physicality to throw himself across the space, going from one statue to the other and leaving a wake of shattered crystal behind.

With every wave of fire – and there were multiple with every passing second – Elijah’s body was even more gravely burned. He tucked the pain away into its own facet, though by the time he shattered the last statue, it had begun to spill over into another.

That was when Child of Fire ran its course.

Elijah stumbled, already shifting back to his human form. When it took hold, he cast Blessing of the Grove, and the rejuvenating rain soothed his burns.

The flamewrought duelist had no interest in letting him heal, though. He emerged from another magma pool and stumbled, clearly on his last leg. His clothes were gone, revealing a body of cloudy orange crystal that oozed flows of lava from a hundred different wounds. He staggered free, his rapier still clutched in one hand.

Elijah pushed himself to his feet.

“That all you got?” he growled, holding his staff at the ready.

“You have not begun to experience the fires of my –”

Oscar hit the creature’s knee in a shoulder tackle that buckled the joint. The duelist collapsed with a sharp crack before the rest of the pack descended upon him. Escobar, who’d sat out most of the fight because his fire spells would have been useless, savaged the duelist’s face, while the other dogs tore him apart like a pack of savage hyenas.

As they attacked, Elijah pushed his healing spells as hard as they could go, tapping into Dragon’s Echo and the partially filled False Grove along the way. And by the time they finally finished the monster off, they were well on their way to complete health.

Elijah ran himself out of ethera, then sank to the ground. Leaning against one of the pillars, he said, “Well, that sucked just as much as I expected.”

Oscar sat beside him and agreed, “Yeah. Yeah, it did.” He glanced at Elijah, then asked, “You did one of these by yourself?”

“Yep.”

“How?”

“With great difficulty,” Elijah answered. Escobar snuggled into his lap. “Believe me – I’m glad you’re here. Having company around makes it a lot easier.”