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

“It’s so much bigger than I expected.”

“Still feels small to me,” Mano replied.

Elijah didn’t respond, mostly because a solar system probably felt claustrophobic to his adopted brother. After all, he’d seen Mano’s moon-sized dragon form during the battle with the vespirans. The other reason for a lack of response was that Elijah was just too stunned to offer any retort.

She’evoth was too big to exist, especially underground. The cavern was at least a hundred miles tall, and the city had clearly been built to accommodate enormous dragons. It reminded him of the city from his second core vision – the one where he’d inhabited the body of the white dragon and lived through a schism between two separate draconic factions.

“I never thought I’d see underground towers,” Elijah remarked. “Especially ones this big.”

Indeed, the buildings were dozens of miles tall, with spiraling ramps circling the exterior walls. Upon those were dragons. Some were thousands of feet long, while others were more in line with Elijah’s size. None remained in their humanoid forms.

No one except Elijah and Mano, at least.

“Should I change shapes?” he asked.

Mano shook his head. “We’re not them,” he stated evenly.

“Is it because you wouldn’t fit?”

He just grunted.

“You sound like Birk,” Elijah pointed out.

“I could do worse than to emulate the greatest trainer in the Empire of Scale,” he said.

“Is that an official designation?”

Mano shrugged. “It might as well be,” he answered. “Anyone who says different is motivated by another agenda.”

Elijah sighed. “Politics.”

“And racism. Some look at drakes as if they are failures first, and people second,” Mano explained.

In a twisted way, that made some degree of sense. After all, drakes were just dragons who’d never developed an elder core. Before that line of demarcation, they were identical to their would-be superiors. It didn’t take much to turn that all-important detail into a point of derision.

Because all drakes could have been dragons. And some believed the reason they never reached that potential was because they were too weak – of will, body, or spirit.

Elijah had no idea if they were right, but the two drakes he truly knew were none of those things. Of all the people he’d met in the Empire of Scale, Tura and Birk were the most solid. Thinking of them in terms of failure just didn’t work.

“Building the city like this was a statement,” Mano said. “Remember that as you experience it. Remember what just happened. Come. I have no wish to see this city again.”

With that, Mano strode forward. Elijah hurried to keep up. “I get the feeling there’s a story there,” Elijah remarked.

Mano shrugged. “Many. None worth telling. It has been millennia since the last time I was here,” he explained. “And I had hoped to never return.”

“Touchy subject?”

Mano answered, “To say the least.”

That seemed like a good indication that Mano didn’t want to speak on the subject, so Elijah went silent. Instead, he focused on the city around him. Aside from the size and general layout, the next thing Elijah noticed was the architecture. Gone were the intricate towers from Ashakar. Instead, She’evoth’s architects preferred big, sweeping curves and clean lines.

Probably by mandate, given the controlling nature of dragons.

“The stone looks scaled,” Elijah remarked as they drew close enough to see details.

“Then it is appropriately named,” Mano responded. “Scalestone. It is grown on the surface.”

“Grown?” Elijah asked, casting his senses into the stone in question. That was when he felt it. Bacteria living within the microscopic pores throughout each stone’s structure. It wasn’t the guided layout he’d used with Thorn, either. Instead, it felt almost natural, though in a confined way that reminded Elijah of the parks he’d seen in Ashakar.

“Indeed. The fields on the surface are truly massive,” Mano said. “And one of the only sights worth seeing on this world. Imagine pillars of living stone, all connected via a web of vitality that affects everything within hundreds of miles.”

“Will I get the opportunity to see them?”

Mano nodded. “I may take you myself,” he said.

“I look forward to it, then.”

And Elijah did. If what he felt from the quarried stone was any indication, then it would be a truly transformative experience. Perhaps he would learn something important that he could then incorporate into Thorn’s structure. After all, the weapon was a growth item, which meant that it had nearly limitless potential. The only question was what methods Elijah would use to improve it.

Maybe the scalestone was the key.

This is a pirate copy — the real one is on NovelPhoenix.

Even if it wasn’t, Elijah felt that it would be an important thing to witness. From a Druidic perspective, but also to sate Elijah’s curiosity. He was still a biologist at heart, and the notion studying living stone was too interesting an opportunity to pass up.

Those thoughts accompanied Elijah as he and Mano strode through the city. The wide avenues were lined with tall, thin mushrooms that emitted a pleasant aroma. Elijah had seen plenty of underground trees in the Hollow Depths, but it seemed that the dragons preferred mushrooms over any other kind of flora.

When Elijah cast his senses into one such mushroom, he discovered that they were all part of the same colony. Far below ran a network of mycelia that connected them, and to his surprise, the root organism had reached the point where Elijah would consider it a peak deity.

“What happens if it reaches transcendence?” Elijah asked after noting his discovery.

“Impossible.”

“I’m sure that’s not true. Beasts can –”

“No. You misunderstand, brother. The fungi can transcend. The Mushroom Tenders simply do not allow it.”

“I see.”

“Do not judge them. If they did not constrain it, the creature’s transcendence would consume the planet,” he said. “And then, it would spread across this universe, taking everything and leaving nothing for anyone else.”

That made sense. Fungi could be viciously territorial. Even without the influence of ethera, they could be incredibly deadly. Often, when two fungal colonies met, they would engage in chemical warfare, releasing toxins and enzymes to kill or inhibit their competitors. Some even produced antibiotics specifically to suppress other microbes.

The most famous example of that behavior was penicillin.

But the horror didn’t end there. Zombie-ant fungus, instances where fungi laid traps for nematodes and insects, and some that shot their spores like weapons were the characteristics that immediately came to mind, but that was by no means an exhaustive list.

When magic was added to that mix, fungi went from terrifying to apocalyptic in short order.

“And they use it for decoration,” Elijah muttered, shaking his head.

“Hubris and pride often go hand-in-hand, brother,” Mano said. Then, he revealed, “I should know better than most.”

“Another story there?” Elijah asked.

Mano just nodded, refusing to elaborate, probably because there were too many examples to list. But at least the dragon was self-aware enough to recognize it as a problem. Most people never reached that stage of self-recrimination, dragon or not.

Even more impressive than the mushroom-lined avenue or the scalestone buildings were the dragons themselves. Aside from their varied size, which ran from a few dozen feet to hundreds of yards, they also sported scales in every hue. Some were dull and lifeless, but others glittered with the sheen of powerful attunements.

But there were no other emerald dragons.

Even green was uncommon, and Elijah saw a predominance of yellows and browns. Red was probably the next most common, though it was usually mixed with white. There were even a few blue or silver dragons around.

Though Elijah had to remind himself that those colors weren’t always indicative of an attunement. Some got their scales through genetics, which just reaffirmed to Elijah that nothing was ever simple. Probably for the best – it would have been slightly disappointing if there was an easy visual shorthand for draconic power. Dangerous, too, if enemies could use that to predict the flavor of their power.

Mile after mile went by, with their humanoid forms drawing quite a few annoyed, curious, or outright hostile glares. Elijah suspected that if he wasn’t walking next to a transcendent, things might’ve gotten ugly.

But then again, he probably wouldn’t have been allowed into the city in the first place, what with his nature as one bearing a gifted core.

How they had known he was a so-called “half-scale” was a bit of a mystery, though one easily solved through one word – magic. Did they have some sort of identification skill that could evaluate the origin of his core? And if so, was his really that different from a natural-born dragon’s? Following that was a question he didn’t really want to ask. If his core was different, did he really qualify as a true dragon?

He couldn’t produce draconic offspring, which was enough on its own to explain the prejudice he’d experienced. Yet, if there was an easily identifiable difference between him and other dragons, perhaps the bigots weren’t really bigots. Maybe they were just realists.

But that intrusive line of thinking only lasted long enough for Elijah to realize that he just didn’t care what anyone else thought of him. Sure, the situation was complicated, and he was far from unbiased on the subject. However, at the end of the day, Elijah knew his own identity, and it told him that he was as much a dragon as he was a human. And that was all that really mattered to him.

It was with that realization at the front of his mind that Elijah let Mano guide him through the city. The intersections between adjacent avenues were enormous affairs that reiterated just how small Elijah really was. The scale of it all didn’t just take him aback. It defied reason and expectation, and every time he let himself focus on it, he experienced a slight panic that didn’t go away until he turned his concentration elsewhere.

More than anything, he wanted to shift into his dragon form, if only to help deal with the scale. The city would look slightly smaller as a two-hundred-foot-long dragon.

But only slightly, given the size of everything.

It reminded Elijah of the first time he’d ever visited a big city. Not Seattle, which didn’t really count before the world changed. Instead, he thought of the time he’d visited Chicago as a child. He didn’t even remember the reason for the cross-country trip, but as a five-year-old looking up at those walls of skyscrapers, he felt truly insignificant in a way that had never really left him.

He’d felt something similar when he’d visited the redwood forest in California. Or New York. The mountains after the world had changed.

She’evoth made them all seem small.

Hours later, Mano and Elijah arrived at their destination. The second Elijah laid eyes on the palace, he knew it belonged to Kirlissa. The gold filigree, the ornate style, and the majestic towers were the first indication, but Elijah only needed to feel the aura to know it belonged to his adopted mother.

It was like fortune and prosperity, life and luck all rolled into one.

There were also real trees dotting the grounds. Bushes and grass, too. And not subterranean varieties, either. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make that portion of the cavern hospitable to surface-dwelling species. It made the manor feel alive in a way that no fungal colony ever could.

Mano didn’t break stride as he approached the massive, silver-and-gold gate. It opened of its own accord, letting loose a gust of vitality-infused wind that smelled like home. Or something so close that the distinction didn’t matter.

For all that Kirlissa was a dragon who sought to control everything around her, she at least valued nature in a way that most of her kind really did not. Sure, most dragons respected nature. They knew it was important. But it was just background. Something else to dominate and control.

It was their nature.

And yet, Kirlissa allowed her grip to loosen when it came to nature. Not a lot. It still wasn’t wild. But it was closer for the effort.

Elijah stepped inside, breathing deep. A knot in his shoulders relaxed as he felt some of his tension slip away. He hadn’t realized it, but he’d carried a good deal of discomfort from K’kayix. At last, he allowed it to fade.

Mano gripped his shoulder, reminding Elijah that he’d stopped walking.

“It is good that you feel the difference, brother,” he said. “Always remember that we are different than them. We are all dragons, but that does not mean we are all the same.”

Elijah vowed to remember that while he was in She’evoth. It was a beautiful and intimidating place, but it could never be home. Not like Esik. And certainly not like Earth.