BOOK 9: CHAPTER 73: THE RHYTHM IS GONNA GET YOU

Lightning arced from one crystal to the other, blistering through the air with deadly finality. It was the signal Elijah and the pack had been waiting on. They sprinted forward as one, leaping to the now-inert crystal. The sky titan was still a couple hundred feet away, but that was close enough for Elijah to attack. Even as he leaped from that crystal to the next, he used Dragon’s Echo and cast Storm’s Fury. A dense bolt of lightning erupted from the end of the Verdant Fang to slam into the huge air-attuned creature.

And it had absolutely no effect.

At the same time, Escobar peppered the sky titan with fireballs. They did some good as they burned through the swirling wind and melted the thing’s glassy bones. However, each ball of fire represented little more than a pinprick of comparative damage. The fire-spitting dog would run himself out of ethera will before he downed the creature.

Certainly, if he’d had time to cast one of his more powerful spells, that could change. Yet, such was the situation that if he stopped for more than a few seconds, he ran the risk of falling behind the pattern. If he got hit by the arcing lightning between the crystals, then he would die. Maybe not with the first hit – especially with Elijah there to heal him – but it would create a chain reaction with an inevitable end.

Vaguely, Elijah saw that they couldn’t return to the silvery bridge from which they’d come. It was blocked by a dense flow of wind that would throw anyone into the clouds below.

And that, Elijah had found by virtue of long experience, was a recipe for unmitigated disaster.

No – they had to play the game, which meant staying always ahead of the rhythmic and powerful lightning as it arced between the crystals. That was complicated by the sky titan itself, who hadn’t remained idle. Instead, it lashed out with one spell after another, sending bolts of wind-wreathed lightning in their direction.

Elijah didn’t need to see it happen to know that if any of them were hit, they’d be sent to plummet into the clouds.

And Elijah was the only one who had any chance of surviving that. Even if he did, he’d likely garner the attention of the sky lords who lived below. The rules were clear, and they had no choice but to follow them. Fortunately, Oscar had come up with a plan, and Elijah had every confidence that it would work.

So, the group never stopped moving as they leaped from one crystal to another, always in an effort to stay just ahead of the lightning. They outpaced it slightly, which gave them time to pepper the creature with whatever ranged abilities they could bring to bear. Unfortunately for the pack, that was limited to Ray and Maymay’s debuffs, Escobar’s fireballs, and one of Oscar’s few attack spells, which conjured a series of ethereal hatchets – each with different elemental effects – that he could throw at enemies.

For Elijah’s part, he alternated between healing any damage the pack incurred while tossing out his own attack spells. Storm’s Fury was mostly useless, so he focused on Primal Swarm. Specifically, he used Eternal Plague, constantly funneling ethera into the spell so he could conjure a massive swarm of hummingbird-esque creatures that constantly assaulted the sky titan.

The problem was that it was surrounded by swirling wind, so very few of the slight creatures made it through. Elijah knew he’d run himself dry of ethera long before the thing died.

It wasn’t about him, though.

Not right now.

As much as he wanted to shift into the Shape of the Sky, take a long lead-up, and dive-bomb the titan, that wasn’t the plan. For one, it probably wouldn’t work. The winds surrounding the creature were so intense that Elijah would be thrown far off course before he even reached his target.

For another, this was only the first phase, as described by Oscar on the basis of Freddy’s inspection. There were two others that would allow Elijah – and the other melee fighters – to shine. They just had to stay ahead of the lightning until the fight got to that point.

So, Elijah kept it up, healing where necessary and, above all, staying prepared for the next phase.

It took more than a hundred revolutions around the titan before Oscar shouted over the howling wind, “It’s coming! Shields up!”

Elijah was already shifting into the Shape of Thorn, and as the transformation took place, he stepped in front of the dogs, who huddled close together. The rhythmic lightning ceased, and the air stood briefly still. In that time, Elijah took the form of the thorned sentry and activated Domain of Vines.

Just as a mass of roots erupted from his body to wrap around the crystal, he hunched his back against the coming storm. It only took another moment before an explosion of wind and lightning erupted from the sky titan. It hit Elijah like a runaway locomotive, straining his grip on the crystal as his back was scorched by jagged and dense bolts of electricity.

Before his transformation, he’d cast Blessing of the Grove, but the healing from that spell was quickly overwhelmed. He added a Dragon’s Echo-aided cast of Wild Resurgence, sending a surge of vitality into his body.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

However, it was immediately obvious that it wasn’t enough.

With every passing moment, the lightning burned through his defenses. And that was with the dogs’ shields taking some of the damage. If any of them hadn’t huddled behind the massive form of the shaped sentry, they would have been burned to a crisp.

Elijah took it all.

But he knew he needed more.

With a surge of willpower, he attacked the foreign ethera pummeling his body. It was difficult to pin down. Less solid than water. More controlled than fire. It cut through him with ease, eroding his massive constitution.

He pushed back and immediately failed.

With that, he shifted his tactics from sheer opposition to more of a guiding hand. It took far more concentration, but he managed to redirect the foreign ethera out of his body. Certainly, it did plenty of damage along the way out, cutting through him like a razor. It didn’t kill him, though.

The explosion of wind and lightning continued for more than thirty seconds. It was enough to have killed him a dozen times over if he’d left it unchecked and unopposed. However, he managed to survive it with only minimal damage.

When it ceased, silence reigned.

He blinked in surprise.

Oscar and the dogs flowed around him, and vaguely, he was aware that they had leaped from the crystal. Not to another, but rather, at the sky titan itself. He turned, still a little dazed, only to see that the wind barrier had fallen, and the giant creature had become mostly inert.

Not completely, though.

With every passing moment, it pulled dense flows of ethera into twelve focal points throughout its massive body. Most were located at the joints of its arms, but one existed in its torso. The final was in its head.

That deluge of ethera didn’t go to waste, either. Instead, every pulse of energy brought the thing back to life. Its limbs twitched, then shot out to attack the dogs. The crystal arms were many-jointed and long enough to dwell in the depths of the uncanny valley. That meant the pack was never out of reach.

To their credit, they worked together, staying bunched as Oscar swirled with thick ropes of ethera that connected him to the dogs. Empowered by his abilities, they targeted one of the focal points, which was physically represented by a slight depression and a gem that now glowed with blue energy.

Elijah knew he couldn’t allow them to go at it alone.

So, after only a few moments to recover, he took a run-up and leaped across the intervening distance. As he did, he shifted into the Shape of Venom. Now that there was no wind barrier, he had no problems with using Lurking Swarm. He activated it the second he hit the slick but craggy surface of the creature’s torso.

Alongside his phase spider swarm, Elijah bit into the creature. His fangs mostly skated off the glassy surface, but they scored it just enough to inflict his venom upon it. The spiders were a little less successful, but with the sky titan mostly inert – or distracted by the dogs – they managed to survive long enough to get a few good bites in.

So it went for the next few minutes until Oscar shouted, “Retreat!”

Elijah knew what was coming, but he didn’t look forward to it. Still, he shifted into the Shape of the Sky, then yelled, “Hop on!”

The dogs piled onto his back while Oscar clung to one of his talons. He threw himself at the nearest crystal, which had already started to glow with ethera as the rhythm verged on resuming its beat. Just before he landed, another explosion of wind threw him forward with enough force that he broke one his wings.

He clambered for purchase on the crystal surface, but it resisted his grip.

Thankfully, Sophie proved her worth when she activated some sort of ability, then latched her powerful jaws onto one of his legs. It hurt. Her bite was forceful enough to break his bones, and she didn’t hold back.

The pain was only exacerbated by the force of the wind, which was enough to send jumbo jets careening across a runway. Yet, Sophie remained firmly rooted in place. The other dogs – and Oscar – clung to Elijah’s body as they were whipped around. He felt his wings twist and break, but when the gust ceased after almost ten seconds, he was still alive.

And no member of the pack had been lost.

That was a win.

Elijah shifted back into his human form, but he didn’t have a chance to heal before Jackson and Sophie grabbed hold of him and leaped to the next crystal. Being dragged through the air did nothing to help his wounds, but it was preferable to being scorched by the resumed rhythmic lightning beat.

He focused in on the task of healing, which was much easier when he didn’t need to expel any harmful ethera. His bones snapped back into place, binding together with the sheer force of the injected vitality. Still, it took almost ten minutes for him to reach the point where he could once again move under his own power.

During that time, he saw that his efforts hadn’t been wasted. Thick tendrils of black corruption stretched from one of the sky titan’s power nodes to the other, forming a web across half its body. The limbs on that side were far more sluggish than their twins on the other, which told Elijah all he needed to know.

Their plan was working.

The only problem was the cost, which was undeniably high. Still, by the time the next explosion came, Elijah once again adopted Shape of Thorn. This time, Domain of Vines wasn’t available, so he latched onto Sophie, who once again activated her anchor ability. Elijah was still scorched – and as he was clinging to the defender dog, she was as well – but they both managed to survive.

After that, the entire pack repeated their actions, attacking the sky titan. This time, though, Escobar remained in place, and he used that time to cast a truly massive fireball that hit the enormous creature while Elijah and the pack returned to the crystal. It hit with a level of power normally reserved for modern bombs. The resultant shockwave nearly threw Elijah off, but he managed to cling to the crystal long enough for Sophie to once again anchor him.

This time, his skeleton wasn’t contorted to the point of breaking, so his recovery didn’t take nearly as long.

For the next few hours, Elijah and the pack continued the pattern. Each foray into melee range brought with it damage to one of the nodes, and eventually, they shattered the first. However, the going was incredibly slow, and their margins were extremely thin. One mistake and everything could go wrong.

It was a good thing, then, that they’d learned to work together so well.

Still, the process was not without its issues, and they cut it close nearly every time. They did manage to destroy the nodes, though. As the last one in the creature’s torso exploded into shards of crystal, Oscar said, “Phase three!”

They’d been waiting on that moment for quite some time. But even so, when the creature burst into a thousand shards of crystal that immediately started to swirl, it still managed to surprise them.