BOOK 11: CHAPTER 62: ZHYRATHA

Over the next three weeks – as far as Elijah could tell – six more groups met the same fate as the first. Each instance was worse than the last, and not just because he was forced to endure the pain of a wasp larva boring through his skull and trying to take control of his mind.

But he had no choice in the matter. He couldn’t extend his Mantle of Authority outside his body, which meant that he had to wait until the larva was fully inside his skull before he could purge it. The intervening time between larval migrations was almost as bad as the attacks themselves. The anticipation of the pain was part of it, but knowing the fate of the other dragons contributed as well.

The only saving grace was that most of them were insensate.

In the second and third waves of prisoners, Elijah had tried to communicate. And he’d managed to warn a demi-god dragon of what was coming. The blue dragon managed to resist a little longer than any of the others had before or since, but in the end, he had succumbed.

After that, Elijah had stopped trying. Instead, he’d focused his attention inward. Specifically, on his cultivation. Most of his time was spent on his core, slowly absorbing what ethera he could, then expelling it to repeat the process. That took up the majority of his focus. The rest went into examining the rest of his cultivation system.

Mostly, it was familiar, but there were some bits and pieces that needed refinement. He worked on those, hoping to perfect the system before he took the next step in his core cultivation.

He knew it was just busy work meant to distract him from his fate. So far, he’d tried everything to escape, explored every avenue available to him. But nothing had worked. He was trapped, and in an inescapable situation.

It was only when the seventh group arrived that Elijah shifted his focus from a lamentation against his circumstances to something more productive. He needed to take a more organized approach.

The first step was to establish the problem. He couldn’t access his abilities. The resin shackles blocked them. So, it stood to reason that he needed to get rid of them. But how?

He spent days thinking of and discarding potential solutions. Most were based on fanciful hope, and the others were simply unmanageable.

But then, he drilled down even further. Once, his father had given him some advice that had stuck with him even decades later. Elijah didn’t remember the nature of the problem he’d faced, but the solution his father had given him was to ask a simple question.

“What are you good at?” he’d asked.

When Elijah hadn’t answered, he’d explained that the most viable solution to any problem focused on a person’s talents. Whatever made them special – whatever they were good at – was what would provide them the best opportunity to solve their issue.

Back then, Elijah had taken it to heart. And now, without any other options, he chose to once again heed that advice. So, what was Elijah good at?

“Being an idiot, if you ask any of my friends,” he muttered bitterly to himself. It was only partially true. Sure, most of his companions liked to tease him about his habit of leaping before he looked. But they didn’t truly think he was stupid. They just knew he was impulsive. Flighty, at times. Elijah could acknowledge that they weren’t wrong.

That wasn’t a talent, though.

After a few more hours, during which he looked at himself as objectively as possible, Elijah remembered something Kirlissa had pointed out. In addition to having an extremely strong attunement, he was uniquely talented in the realm of cultivation. As far as he knew, no one else on Earth had advanced nearly as much as he had.

But was that something he could use?

Maybe.

He went back to his examination of his cultivation, eventually settling on his soul. He knew he couldn’t take the next step. That would require months – if not years – of preparation and a much denser atmosphere of ethera, and that only when he knew how he wanted things to progress. However, if he really thought about it, he already had what he needed.

The Mantle of Authority.

He just couldn’t express it properly. So, how did he get it to spread outside his body?

For another week – and another cycle of prisoners – Elijah focused on the problem at hand. His first solution was to simply push harder. He leveraged every ounce of willpower he possessed toward the goal, but it did no good. It was like clawing against an impenetrable wall. s

No, he realized.

The problem was that he was pushing against everything all at once, and in every direction. What would happen if he concentrated it? Would it react like pressurizing water? Would the stream become even stronger if he focused on only one branch?

It could work. Elijah felt certain of it. But he’d never tried anything of the sort.

That wasn’t true, either. During his time in the Painted Wastes, he’d often found himself traveling during daylight. The only way to do so without attracting the attention of the wasps was to extend his Mantle of Authority, which nullified the insects’ pheromones. But he couldn’t keep that going indefinitely, so he’d found a workaround where he pulled his branches close to his body so as to conserve his ethera and the structural integrity of his soul.

As far as Elijah was concerned, that was proof that he could manipulate it. He just needed practice. And if nothing else, his imprisonment had given him plenty of time to himself. So, he dove into it and was immediately stymied. Over and over, he attempted different techniques, but he made no real progress.

Still, he kept at it.

But before he could make any real progress, everything changed. The vespiran he thought of as his jailer returned, but he didn’t collect the latest batch of prisoners. Instead, he buzzed across the chamber, alighting right next to Elijah. He leaned close, his arrogant face only inches from Elijah’s.

“Interesting,” he repeated. Then, he waved his hand, and Elijah’s shackles detached from the wall where he’d been suspended for weeks. He didn’t fall, though. Instead, he floated next to the jailer. “Prepare yourself, reptile. The High Druid awaits.”

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

The wasp-man flew across the room, ignoring the prisoners stuck to the walls. Elijah floated behind him, his ethera still blocked and his attributes vastly reduced. He struggled to move, but it was no easier than if he’d remained adhered to the wall.

The paper-like door retracted, revealing a long hall. The same hexagonal design decorated the walls on either side of the corridor, but there were no larvae growing inside. The hall slowly twisted and declined, digging deeper into the nest. Along the way, they passed swarms of bestial wasps as well as other vespirans, but Elijah saw no drachnids, spiders, or any of the mind-controlled dragons.

Not surprising.

The wasp-men were unlikely to welcome other species into their home.

A musty smell pervaded the area, at odds with the cold air flowing through the tunnel-like hall. More importantly, Elijah felt a sharp increase in the ambient vitality. That was also unsurprising, given the jailer’s comment about a High Druid.

Still, Elijah chose to reserve judgement until they reached their destination. Which they did after only a few more minutes.

The hall ended in a circular chamber just as large as the one where Elijah had been imprisoned, though that was where the similarities ended. Most of the nest featured a preference for hexagonal designs decorating the walls, and this room was no different. However, it was also ringed by elegant columns, with a hardened resin floor that had been polished to a high sheen. Geometric, polygonal patterns had been carved into the floor, then filled with glimmering green gems.

But Elijah’s focus was entirely on the vespiran at the center of the chamber. Until that point, all the vespirans he’d seen had been male presenting. He’d considered the possibility that they simply didn’t have genders, and his perception, based as it was on human features, had misled him.

Seeing the vespiran at the center of the chamber put that idea to rest. She was clearly female, with a similarly alien beauty to the drachnids. And just as it was with those monstrous spider-women, it held a predatory glint that was only accentuated by the fact that her naked torso had been fused with a wasp’s abdomen.

Her chitin was green and black, not unlike his scourgedrake form, and it slashed vertically through her fleshy torso, becoming large and jagged spikes extending from her shoulders.

She held the Verdant Fang, its blade glistening in ethereal light emitted from glowing globes scattered across the ceiling.

The second Elijah had laid eyes on her, his adrenaline had spiked. If he’d been capable, he’d have thrown himself at her like a wild animal. And that desire only grew more potent when he saw his weapon – the one he’d made himself – in her delicate hand. He pushed those thoughts deep down, knowing that they wouldn’t help him.

He needed to be rational, to wait for a proper opportunity to strike. And that had not arrived.

The jailer telepathically dragged him through the air until he was only a few feet in front of the vespiran woman. Up close, she looked even more alien and intimidating from afar. That was likely because she loomed over him by nearly a half-dozen feet. The Verdant Fang looked no larger than a sickle in her hand.

Finally, she spoke.

“You are a Druid,” she stated, her voice cutting through him like a knife. The sound itself wasn’t unpleasant. Indeed, it was melodic. But the sheer arrogance of her tone was like a dagger in his back. “Is this how you resisted the controllers?” When Elijah didn’t answer, she shifted her eyes, making contact with his, and commanded, “Answer.”

“You’re doing this all wrong.”

“What?” she asked, obviously surprised that her order hadn’t been immediately followed.

“You’re doing it wrong. There’s an art to interrogation. You have to offer me something. A reason to cooperate. Maybe you tell me you’ll set me free. Or you’ll spare my companions. That last one won’t work, by the way. I don’t care about the dragons,” Elijah said. “There’s your leverage.”

She flicked her free hand.

The jailer nodded.

A moment later, the resin shackles on his wrists went up. The ones on his ankles went down. His bones popped and crackled as his body felt like it was being ripped in two. Elijah refused to scream, though.

Instead, he gritted his teeth in a grimace that was supposed to be a smile as he growled, “That’s the spirit. Negative reinforcement doesn’t really work, though. Not that I expect a bug-lady to have made much progress on the psychology of torture.”

The tension ceased, but echoes of pain remained.

“Bug…lady?”

“Wasp woman?” Elijah breathed, sagging. “Insect female? I don’t know.”

“My name is Zhyratha. You may refer to me as High Druid.”

“Is that supposed to impress me?” he asked. He could tell she was a demi-god, though he struggled to otherwise estimate her power. “I met an arch-druid once. It didn’t go so well. He’d been corrupted by…well, corruption, I guess.”

“Impossible.”

Elijah tried to shrug, but the resin shackles wouldn’t allow it. “I don’t know what to tell you. It’s the truth.”

“You are no normal dragon,” she stated, leaning closer. Elijah wished he could take one of his bestial shapes and bite off her face. Or failing that, that she would come just a bit closer so he could do so in his human form.

“Guilty.”

“Do you even know the history of your people?”

“I know enough.”

“Obviously not,” she said, pulling back. “Do you know what it means to be the enemy of a dragon?”

“I’ve got all sorts of creative answers to that question. Let me loose, and I can demonstrate.”

She shook her head. “They are power incarnate,” the wasp-woman said. “Individually, they are tyrants. Together? They are an unstoppable force. Our only recourse is to take what scraps we can while wearing them down. We dare not meet them in a fair battle. We would be destroyed. And yet, they seek to exterminate us at every turn.”

“You’re the victims here, huh?”

“Of course. The weak cannot victimize the strong. We can only resist where we may. Take what we can. Fight the battles we can win.”

“And no matter what you do, you’re justified because they are the oppressors, huh?” Elijah asked.

“Justice has nothing to do with it. We do what we must in order to survive.”

“If you say so,” Elijah responded, his tone flippant. He wasn’t one to disregard oppression, but he also knew just how slippery of a slope some of her rhetoric could be. If the entirety of vespiran culture revolved around those ideas, then they could commit just about any atrocity against their oppressors and feel morally justified in doing so. And perhaps those feelings would be accurate. But in his experience, that wouldn’t be the case. The bounds of acceptability would slowly expand until they were just as bad as their enemies.

At least according to their twisted perception of right and wrong.

“I am not here to convince a dragon of anything,” she lied, clearly wanting to continue the debate. Elijah chose not to engage. So, she changed topics, saying, “Emerald scales. Nature attunement. You are a Druid. Why are you not in your grove?”

“Not that kind of Druid. Why aren’t you in your grove?”

“I am.”

Elijah opened his mouth to respond, but then he truly focused on the nest. And suddenly, the climbing vitality made much more sense. Surprisingly, neither the ethereal density nor the vitality were as dense as they were back in the Hartwood. In every way that mattered, it was weaker than his island. In fact, it didn’t even approach the density around the trees he’d planted in Argos or Ironshore.

Was that because it was inside a Primal Realm? Or because it was almost assuredly meant to be temporary? Was it only an extension of her true grove? Or was there another factor of which he was ignorant?

Elijah had no idea.

But when she drew within a few inches so she could continue speaking, Elijah knew he’d found the opportunity for which he’d been waiting. He flexed his Mantle of Authority, concentrating it into four points. Wrists and ankles. The ethera built within him, feeling like his soul was about to burst. But still, driven by necessity, hate, and adrenaline, he pushed more energy out of his core and into those four branches of his soul.

The conduits stretched, distorting like overblown balloons. Still, Elijah pushed against the barrier confining his Mantle of Authority within his body. Zhyratha’s eyes widened in alarm, and she began to gather ethera.

A shout erupted from her mouth, warning the jailer.

But by that point, it was too late. Elijah finally broke through. The resin turned to liquid and dripped down his wrists and ankles, their restrictive power broken.

Elijah didn’t hesitate to embrace his latest form.

He cast Shape of Spores.