Elijah bent double, trying his best to suppress the feeling of nausea twisting through his stomach. Hands on his knees, he muttered, “I really don’t like that.”

“I don’t either,” Sadie agreed through clenched teeth.

“It’s like swimming through sewage and accidentally opening your mouth,” Elijah complained. Then, he glanced at the nearby priestess. “No offense.”

Clearly, the dark elf had no clue how to respond to that. On the one hand, she was obviously offended, and rightly so. Elijah was talking about a representation of her faith. However, she also knew that he was a powerful fighter and a highly valued emissary from a potential ally. One wrong step, and she could ruin diplomatic relations.

Elijah didn’t envy her position.

In the only move that made much sense, she chose to ignore his complaints. And him. She looked the other way, acting as if he didn’t even exist, which was probably for the best.

If it had been up to him, Elijah would have outright refused to take the teleportation. He’d considered it. But after a few of Sadie’s pointed reminders – that they just didn’t have the time for him to spend months traveling by foot – he’d swallowed his discomfort, pushed his instinctual disdain aside, and did what was necessary. After all, the Hollow Depths were a big place – with more combined surface area than Earth’s surface – and his instincts or pride weren’t a big enough reason to refuse quick and easy travel.

A big part of him still regretted it, even if he had to acknowledge the convenience.

After a moment, Elijah straightened to his full height, then took Sadie’s hand. Like that, they left the bone-like pillar of the illythiri teleportation network behind. The apparatus had been built inside a fortress under siege, so the sounds of battle could be heard even from well within the keep. Still, when he and Sadie reached the walls, he was still taken aback by the sheer scale of the attacking force.

“So many,” he said.

“They just keep coming, too,” Sadie said.

He’d been told what to expect from the trolls, but if anything, everyone had understated the problem at hand. Waves of the shaggy-furred creatures clashed against the walls, only to be cut down by spells or projectiles. Most of them lived through the first wave of attacks. Such was their nature.

The sentient attackers weren’t quite as regenerative as wild trolls, but they were obviously from similar stock. That the dark elves had kept the threat at bay for so long was a testament to their changing tactics, which focused on cutting the creatures down, then finishing them off.

For most attackers, just wounding them would have been enough. Not so with the trolls.

“How long until they breach the defenses?” he asked.

“A few days at least. This is the first phase. You don’t have to really worry until they bring out the bugs,” she answered.

Elijah tried to imagine a wave of trolls riding flying, mosquito-like insects, but in this instance, his imagination failed him.

“Do the dark elves ever win?”

“Illythiri.”

“What?”

“They don’t like it when people call them dark elves,” she pointed out. “I don’t know if I’d call it a slur, per se, but it’s definitely an annoyance.”

“Oh,” Elijah said, glancing at the nearest illythiri. “Duly noted.”

When he repeated his question, Sadie said, “No. Every fortress eventually falls. It may take months, but they’re all doomed.”

Elijah frowned. He understood the situation as well as anyone. So long as the Primal Realm remained unconquered, the threat would remain. The trolls were just too numerous and durable to stop. Or at least that was the case until they conquered the Primal Realm and reset its power. Only then would the Hollow Depths see any semblance of safety.

To Elijah, the road forward seemed clear.

“This is all just a distraction,” he said from atop the wall. “It doesn’t matter how many of these trolls we kill, does it? All that matters is punching through and conquering the Primal Realm.”

“You’re looking at it from the wrong angle.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, glancing at Sadie. She’d already drawn her sword and looked ready to leap from the walls and into the fray. In reality, Elijah wanted to do the same. He just didn’t think it would do much good. Even if they closed the spawn points – as they were known among the illythiri – the threat would just shift elsewhere. Another fortress was probably already under attack.

It was like bailing water from a sinking ship. Perhaps they could keep the vessel afloat, at least for a while, but eventually, the situation would overwhelm them. And then the ship would go down.

“They’re meant for grinding,” Sadie stated.

Elijah frowned. He’d already spent a few days in Eldrathûn catching up with Sadie, and aside from spending some quality time together, he and Sadie had discussed their response to the problem at hand. Currently, much of Sadie’s forces – including some of the elites – were fighting their way through various towers as they desperately tried to gain enough levels to take the fight to the trolls.

It was obvious that they wouldn’t soon complete that process. There were no quick fixes. No switches to be flipped. The only answer was hard work. Fortunately, everyone who’d come down to the Hollow Depths was willing to do just that. Still, they needed time, which was at a premium in the subterranean realm.

“That’s the next stage, isn’t it?” Elijah asked.

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Sadie nodded. “Once we’re done with a few more waves of towers, Ivin will show us how to take advantage of the trolls’ numbers,” she stated. “He and his elites have been doing it for years. This will be a different scale, so the danger is higher, but I think it’s the only way we will stand a chance in the Primal Realm.”

Elijah looked away.

He knew his perspective was a little skewed by his own successes, but it was difficult to imagine armies of thousands struggling to accomplish something he’d managed on his own. Still, he was also very much aware that the troll Primal Realm seemed like it was on an entirely different level than something like the Chimeric Forge.

Was it more powerful? Or was it just different? Elijah wasn’t certain, and he wouldn’t know more until he tested things out properly.

“Do you mind if I go down there and see what I can do?” he asked.

“You’re asking my permission?”

“This is your operation, Sadie. I’m not here to step on your toes.”

She glanced away, resting the blade of her sword against the crenellations atop the wall. The illythiri continued to pelt the oncoming trolls with various ranged abilities, including siege engines that fired spear-sized bolts from ballistae. They were devastating, but impaling a troll just wasn’t enough to stop it. More often than not, those wounds were little more than brief impediments.

“You know that’s not why we’re here,” she stated.

“I know. I just want to get a good handle on what they are. Maybe I can get a couple of levels too.”

“Do you want my help?” she asked.

He shook his head, “Up to you. I’m going to be moving fast, though.”

“I’ll stay here and jump in to support you if necessary.”

Elijah nodded, then said, “I’ll be right back.”

Without further conversation, he leaped high into the air, already casting Shape of the Sky. In only a second, he was gliding high overhead, his back only a few feet from the cavern’s ceiling.

The chamber itself was about twenty miles wide and slightly longer, so he had plenty of room to maneuver. It didn’t take him long to find the tunnel from which the trolls streamed, though the procession wasn’t quite as dense as he’d expected. Only a few came at any given time, but they bunched into an army a couple of miles from the fort.

At first, Elijah wondered why they hadn’t simply built the fort at the mouth of the tunnel and forced the trolls into a bottleneck, but then he remembered the map he’d studied before setting out. If he recalled the layout correctly, the area was honeycombed with tunnels, and to the point where they simply couldn’t guard them all. Instead, the illythiri had chosen to guard the exit. They had abandoned the futile idea of covering every entrance in favor of creating one strong checkpoint that would be much more difficult to overcome.

Perhaps that was the wrong strategic move, but Elijah chose to trust that the illythiri knew their business. And he didn’t really want to insert himself into such planning. At the end of the day, he didn’t really care much about the elves. Sure, all things being equal, he’d have preferred they survive. But he wasn’t there to save them – not even from themselves. Instead, he was there to save the world by dealing with the Primal Realm.

But before he could do that, he needed to know his enemy.

So, he landed in the wilderness just to the east of the entrance to the cavern. The flow of trolls was sparse enough that he managed to dip behind an outcropping before any noticed him. From there, it was simple enough to shift into Shape of the Scourge and adopt Guise of the Unseen.

Once he established that he remained undetectable from the trolls, he sprinted forward, entering the tunnel. It was a winding affair, but there were only a few off-shoots. He’d mostly memorized the map, so he knew to ignore them. Finally, after a few more miles, he reached another chamber.

This one was a low grassland, so he didn’t even need Eyes of the Eagle to see the settlement in the distance. It was a sparse creation of weathered stone festooned with bone decorations.

But Elijah was more interested in three factors. First, there was a distinctly different sort of troll there. Red-robed, and with much finer fur, these creatures were smaller and slimmer, and they simmered with a degree of ethera none of their more brutish fellows possessed.

Blood Priests. That was the name given to them by the elves, and Elijah felt it was a fitting moniker.

The other trolls in the area were armed and armored, and though they were of a size with the ones storming the fortress, they were armored in thick, black iron and armed with primal axes, clubs, and swords. They held themselves with far more discipline than the attacking trolls displayed.

Soldiers, and elite ones at that.

There was also a temple at the center of the small settlement. In a way, it reminded Elijah of the Ethereal Anchors surrounding the Labyrinth of the Dead Gods, though it shimmered with a very different sort of magic. It was hunger and vitality, death and conquest, all rolled into one.

Otherwise, there were plenty of blood beasts around, though they seemed almost docile. Or like they were in a stupor. Perhaps the dense aura of blood-attuned ethera had overwhelmed them.

Elijah also saw what he could only consider a stable, which contained dozens of giant mosquitoes that were currently feeding on any blood beast that came near. All in all, it was an odd mix of horror and organization.

Every couple of seconds, a semi-wild troll would step out of the temple. These were armed and armored, though their gear looked old, weathered, and of poor quality. No better than mundane equipment. However, they also carried themselves with barely-restrained furor that could only be guided.

The Blood Priests seemed well versed in doing just that, pointing those creatures in the direction of the tunnel and letting them loose. It wasn’t so much a command structure, but rather like unleashing a rabid dog upon their enemies, and it filled Elijah with trepidation.

He watched for more than an hour until he decided on his plan of attack. The idea was simple enough. He wasn’t sure if he could destroy the spawn point, but that wasn’t his primary goal. Sure, he would do it if he could, but more than anything, he wanted to find out how his abilities fared against the trolls.

So, the first step was to find his way to an out-of-the-way hollow, where he hunkered down and reverted to his natural form. A second later, he tapped into False Grove and conjured the Eternal Plague. So far, nothing had proved quite as adept at killing armies, and he hoped that it would be the same against the trolls.

However, it quickly became apparent that it would be a mixed bag. Some of the trolls died, so that was definitely good. But many more simply endured, relying on their regeneration to see them through. While they weren’t quite as durable as wild trolls – level for level – they were still able to survive the afflictions he inflicted upon them.

Certainly, he could have kept going, piling the negative effects on them and overwhelming their regeneration. But that wasn’t the point. He just needed to know if it would work, and how well. So, after only a couple of minutes, he cut it off. The tiny gnats he’d conjured dissipated, and when the proverbial dust settled, most of the trolls were still alive.

None of the Blood Priests had succumbed.

So, Elijah once again assumed the Shape of the Scourge, donned the Guise of the Unseen, then headed out to pick off one of the footsoldiers steadily trudging toward the tunnel that would lead to the fortress.

He found a lone soldier after only a couple of minutes, then treated it the same way he’d attacked the wild troll he’d killed weeks before. After removing its arms and legs, Elijah dragged it closer to the spawn point. Then, he infected it with Nature’s Claim, then Spreading Blight before tossing it into the middle of the settlement.

He made sure to hit one of the Blood Priests.

Then, he returned to Shape of the Scourge – and stealth – to watch the aftermath.

And it was better than he’d expected, but worse than he had hoped. A few of the trolls died, and everyone affected was obviously worse for wear. But they survived.

So, Elijah just shrugged and decided that there were only a couple other things to check out. But doing so would require him to wade into melee.

With a shrug of his shoulders, he stepped forward, ready to see just how durable the trolls really were. They could deal with afflictions, but could they cope with being ripped to pieces? Or burned to cinders? He was eager to find out.