One advantage of switching priorities to the Hollow Depths was that Elijah had already made all the preparations necessary. So, he wasted no time before teleporting to the Circle of Webs, where he found something truly surprising. Given his previous experiences, it probably shouldn’t have been, but still – he was a little shocked when something the size of a labrador came shooting at him the second he appeared in the center of the stone circle.

It hit him with enough force to send him tumbling onto his back.

But by that point, Elijah had identified his attacker, so he wasn’t nearly as alarmed as a man getting assaulted by a giant spider probably should have been.

“Ow,” he muttered as the arachnid flopped down on his chest, its little pincers working back and forth. It practically vibrated with excitement. “How the hell did you get here?”

Indeed, the spider was the same one he’d left behind back at the guardian tree, though it had grown quite rapidly. He’d only been gone for a month or so, and in that time, it had reached nearly ten times its old size. Was that normal? Or had it benefited from the blood beast slurry he’d left behind?

He had no idea.

What was even more curious was how the creature had survived a trek across the Hollow Depths. Elijah had seen first-hand how many hostile animals made their home in the system of tunnels and caverns, and he never would have expected such a young spider to have made it.

How it had found the dolmen at all was a mystery as well, though he simply assumed that the arachnid possessed some sort of tracking ability. Or maybe an instinct that helped it find his trail. One way or another, it had arrived, and judging by the webs surrounding the stone circle, it had been there for quite some time.

As Elijah pushed the spider away, he said, “I guess I should probably name you. I bet Miggy would give you some stupid name like Webby or some such.”

His nephew had once named a giant turtle Snappy, so he wasn’t the most creative person in the world when it came to names.

Then, Elijah grinned. “I think I’ll name you Pete. You like that?”

The spider shivered in excitement, probably more because of the attention than because it could understand Elijah’s words. Still, he chose to take it as approval.

He stuck around the Circle of Webs for a few hours, watching Pete skitter around. Elijah imagined that the arachnid was excitedly showing the area off. Kind of like a person giving a tour, though with a childlike enthusiasm that prevented him from dwelling on one thing for longer than a few seconds.

It was an endearing display, which prompted no small degree of regret when Elijah was forced to depart. As much as he wanted to stick around, he had responsibilities. Sadie needed him, and far more urgently than the last time she’d requested his presence.

Fortunately, the spider seemed to understand things a lot better than the last time he’d taken his leave. Pete followed him for a few minutes, but when Elijah reached that chamber’s exit, he turned around and returned to the dolmen it had taken as its home.

Going forward, Elijah needed to ensure that he didn’t bring just anyone around the Circle of Webs. Pete might’ve acted like an enthusiastic pet around Elijah, but he was still a deadly beast who would attack most people without a hint of hesitation or remorse. To him, Elijah was a friend and protector, but just about everyone else would be potential food.

But then again, anyone else could just use the illythiri teleportation network. Elijah refused to go down that road, and his recent trip into the Painted Wastes gave him some hints as to the nature of his aversion. It didn’t take a leap of logic to wonder if the goddess worshipped by the illythiri church was actually a drachnid. And given that the Primal Realm dedicated to dragons featured such spider-women as enemies – at least outside the realm itself – it was likely that there was some ancestral animosity between them and dragons.

Or maybe he was just making connections based on convenience rather than real evidence. Either way, his disdain for the illythiri system remained as strong as ever, and he didn’t think that would soon change.

Thankfully, Elijah had his own teleportation system, which meant that the distance he needed to travel was vastly reduced from his first trip. He hurried through the tunnels and caverns, remembering to avoid dangers he’d found the first time through. He also stuck to the Shape of the Scourge, using Guise of the Unseen and the form’s incredible speed to cut down his travel time.

It only took a day or two for him to reach Eldrathûn, and though he skirted the city itself, Elijah quickly saw the evidence of a lost war. The illythiri might not have admitted defeat yet, but it was obvious that they wouldn’t last too much longer.

Clearly, Sadie’s plea for help had not been unwarranted.

He followed her directions, bypassing a half-dozen forts on his way to the front lines. A few more days passed, and with every new bit of information he learned, the elves’ desperation became increasingly clear. The fortresses were hives of activity, overflowing with soldiers meant to defend them. But even more troubling was the scent of blood in the air. That, coupled with increasing density of ethera, told Elijah that the trolls’ advance had continued nearly unabated.

Sadie and her army had obviously failed to stem the tide. That had never been the primary goal, but Elijah knew her well enough to read between the lines of her message. She might’ve positioned herself as a cold and calculated military lead – and she was – but she could no more bypass people in need than she could simply stop breathing. She claimed that she’d only tried to save the illythiri fortresses at Ivin’s insistence, but Elijah suspected it hadn’t taken much convincing.

No – she wanted Elijah there as much for his help as to push the decision to ignore the doomed fortresses onto him. And he would shoulder that burden. Not only because he knew it was necessary, but also so that the part of Sadie that wanted to help people would be preserved.

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In any case, it wasn’t as if they stood a chance of saving everyone. Even with his help. He was just one man. And as powerful as he was, he couldn’t defeat an entire army of trolls alone. Or more accurately, dozens of armies, all spread across the Hollow Depths and closing in on Eldrathûn with every passing week.

Whichever characterization proved most accurate, Elijah knew he couldn’t stop their advance. He hurried forward, eager to help but unconvinced that he could do much to stem the tide of trolls.

A few times, he found swarms of blood beasts slowly pushing forward. They weren’t part of the troll armies, but rather, a consequence of the Primal Realm’s existence. They fed off a combination of ethera, vitality, and blood, rapidly multiplying so long as they had fuel for the growth of their swarm.

The trolls themselves were a terrible foe, but Elijah couldn’t help but remember how much effort it had taken to destroy the last swarm of blood beasts he’d encountered. And contrary to the trolls, the blood beasts didn’t even have the good grace to grant any appreciable experience. They were low-leveled, relying on their numbers to overwhelm their prey.

He also saw plenty of other blood-tinged creatures. Mosquitoes the size of sedans were the most common, but there were also leeches and ticks to worry about. The latter two were characteristically enormous as well. Elijah also saw plenty of blood-sucking fly variants, frogs large enough that they could devour those giant mosquitoes in one gulp, and a host of different reptiles that seemed to feed off blood.

Of course, there were less mundane creatures as well, ranging from the wall octopi that seemed so common in the Hollow Depths to some truly horrifying blobs that were comprised of shifting, semi-coagulated blood and bits of bone. Elijah chose to call the latter blood oozes, because he was almost as bad at naming things as his nephew.

Thankfully, none of them seemed capable of seeing through Guise of the Unseen. Or perhaps he just wasn’t interesting enough for them to hunt him. There was also the chance that they knew that if they attacked him, they would lose. Elijah didn’t much care about the reasons for being left to his own devices. He only cared that they didn’t immediately attack him.

Less constrained were the flora, specifically the vines that grew in every forest. Elijah watched as they snaked around their prey, their thorns piercing even the thickest of hides as they slowly constricted any creature slow enough to be caught. There were even a few variants that drained their victims of blood.

Elijah almost fell victim to the first few he encountered. They could move incredibly quickly, and to the point where his only advantage came from his various reaction speed buffs. Without them, he would have been ensnared.

Thankfully, after seeing them in action, he only needed to pay attention in order to avoid their grasp.

And then he reached the first troll spawn point.

He’d seen its like before, though it was at first difficult to see the similarities between the encampment before him and the one he’d destroyed in his first trip into the Hollow Depths. The first had been crude and primitive, with a predilection toward wood construction. But this one was made of stone that glistened with ethera. The trolls guarding it were much higher leveled, too.

Each one was equipped with a full set of blackened iron armor that put Elijah in mind of the second tower he’d run. Back then, he’d mistakenly identified a truly detestable monster as a troll. He still didn’t know what that creature was, but he knew better than to put it in the same category as the creatures in front of him.

What’s more, those guards were just the tip of the iceberg. Inside the encampment, which looked more like a permanent fortress than anything else, were robed blood priests that practically glowed with power. If any of them were lower than level two-hundred, Elijah would have been greatly surprised.

For a while, he watched them, wondering if he should simply attack. Conversely, he could keep going and eventually find Sadie’s position. From there, they could make a proper plan of attack.

Elijah knew which he preferred.

Never one to willingly leave an enemy at his back, Elijah prepared for battle. For him, that meant finding a secluded spot where he could tap into False Grove and conjure an Eternal Plague to mete judgement upon his enemies.

He almost chuckled at that characterization, wondering if Sadie’s attitude had rubbed off on him.

Unsurprisingly, he only half meant it. He certainly didn’t hate the trolls with the same vehemence with which he loathed the wasps or their arachnoid slaves. His feelings toward them didn’t even reach the same level as his disdain for the denizens of the Chimeric Forge. Instead, it was most like looking at a nuisance. An infestation on the same plane as a newly discovered colony of termites. Or cockroaches.

They needed to die. He was onboard with that. But hatred didn’t really come into it.

In any case, the current biome was a forest of giant mushrooms, so it didn’t take Elijah long to find an appropriate location to stage the initial phase of his attack. He settled atop a huge amanita that would’ve given an ancient oak a run for its money, at least in terms of size. It felt old, too. Like it had been there for centuries, even if Elijah knew that couldn’t be the case.

Regardless, he knelt upon the edge, looking down on the troll fortress. From his height of a couple hundred feet, they looked much smaller than they really were. Like insects he needed to exterminate.

He embraced Dragon’s Echo, then False Grove before casting Eternal Plague. Instantly, a thousand flies manifested, followed by a thousand more just like it. Elijah pushed more and more ethera into it, countering the drain with his increased ability to absorb ethera from the environment. Even that couldn’t really keep up, though, and he was quickly forced to embrace Grove Conduit.

Bathed in the grove’s combination of ethera and vitality, his regeneration skyrocketed. Thankfully, Nerthus had planned for it, and so long as Elijah didn’t go overboard, the effect on the grove would be minimal. He would likely still complain, but that was the spryggent’s normal response to basically everything Elijah did. It was part of his charm.

It wasn’t long before the atmosphere was full of those conjured flies. And when they descended upon the trolls, they did so as an enormous tidal wave of afflictions that would kill most creatures in seconds. The trolls were made of sterner stuff than that. Elijah had some experience with them, so he was well-acquainted with their immense regeneration. Thankfully, they weren’t as vital as their wild cousins. If that was the case, Elijah would never finish so many of them off.

Even so, Elijah had never intended Eternal Plague to destroy the encampment. Sure, a few of the lowest level among them died, but it was only ever meant as the first salvo. And in that respect, it worked wonders. The resulting afflictions would go a long way toward nullifying their regeneration so that when Elijah finally fell upon them with all his fury, he would find nothing but soft targets.

It had the added benefit of causing plenty of chaos among the trolls. The ones closest to death let out unholy shrieks of terror and pain, while the others cast spells meant to eradicate the threat. But they never knew their efforts amounted to little more than a fruitless treatment of symptoms. The true threat remained far above, looking down on them without pity or remorse.

He kept Eternal Plague going for almost two hours until, at last, he decided he was ready to attack them in truth. He rose from his perch, already initiating a shift into the Shape of Scourge. Then, once he’d taken on the raptor-like form of the scourgedrake, he leaped free of the mushroom and fell upon the trolls like the weapon of mass destruction he had become.