BOOK 9: CHAPTER 83: THE MEMORY OF TITANS

The four-armed titan looked down on them with contempt and disappointment.

The creature was much larger than Elijah had expected, towering over his group by hundreds of feet. Elemental ethera swirled around its arms, the disparate attunements occasionally clashing to create miniature maelstroms. Behind it was a massive obelisk made of what looked like white marble, though it pulsed with so much energy that Elijah knew it was something too magical to exist on Earth.

“You are not what I expected,” the memory of titans revealed, its booming voice loud enough to rupture eardrums. Elijah’s high constitution attribute kept him safe, but it still wasn’t pleasant. The dogs let out a series of pitiful whines, evidence that it was even less comfortable for them.

Elijah healed them with a hastily cast Blessing of the Grove.

“Nature,” the titan rumbled. “Disgusting. Contaminating. The elements are pure. Untainted by creeping life. You are an abomination. If you were giants, I would obliterate you for merely existing. But I am constrained by my purpose. You may turn and leave, if you wish. To stay is to court death. Make your choice, little ones. I will not offer again.”

For a moment, Elijah considered turning back. There was a possibility that they’d missed something important that might make their task of completing the Primal Realm much easier to complete. But after glancing at Oscar, then the dogs, he knew he couldn’t do it.

They were ready.

Eager, almost.

And if Elijah was honest with himself, so was he. As much as he wanted to believe he could live a peaceful life and make all the safest choices, he knew he just wasn’t that guy. Others might spend years planning and searching Primal Realms for every secret that might give them an advantage.

But Elijah just wasn’t built like that. And despite his preference for planning, Oscar wasn’t either. The dogs were even worse. If they saw an obstacle, they went at it according to their canine instincts. Sure – they flanked and used basic tactics to accomplish their goals, but at the core of who they were, they were still dogs.

And dogs were fairly straightforward animals.

So, when Elijah nodded at Oscar, the man gave him a subtle nod in return. The dogs shifted in place, their claws clacking against the stone surface of the pyramid. Then, Elijah turned back to the gigantic memory of titans and said, “If it’s all the same to you, I don’t think we’ll be going anywhere. In fact, I’ll give you the same option. Give up, and I’ll make your death as humane as possible.”

The titanic creature looked down on him for a long moment, clearly confused. Then, he let out a slight chuckle powerful enough to cause an avalanche. Then, in a whisper that felt like it buried Elijah alive, it said, “So, you have chosen hubris, then. You will not live long enough to regret it.”

Before Elijah could react, the titan clapped its hands together, and a full-blown maelstrom erupted around them. It wasn’t the relatively weak version that had come from the occasional clash of elemental energy, but rather something more akin to the surrounding storm.

It should have ripped through Elijah and the pack, but the Marks they’d earned flared to life, protecting them. Elijah himself was the best off, largely because of Aegis of Elements and his Mantle of the Chimera. Though the dogs were better protected than ever, courtesy of a new spell – or evolution – Jackson had earned. Bubbles of force surrounded them, pushing against the power of the maelstrom. The spell wasn’t enough to shield them entirely, but it did drain some of the ethera.

That gave Elijah and the others an opportunity to attack.

They lanced in, moving at different speeds and angles and hit one after the other. Elijah was second in line – after Digby – and the Verdant Fang sliced into the creature’s heel without issue. Horrifyingly, the wound healed in less than a second, and by the time Elijah retreated to prepare for a second pass, it was like he’d never attacked.

He looked around for some hint as to how they were meant to defeat the thing. But there was nothing. The top of the pyramid had only one feature – the obelisk – and Elijah could tell that it was not connected to the Memory of Titans. It was important, as evidenced by the power flowing through it, but the energy went in the wrong direction, disappearing into the pyramid itself.

Trying a different tactic, Elijah embraced Dragon’s Echo, then Nature’s Claim shortly after. The spell landed without issue, followed by a green echo as the spores took hold within the monster. After only a second, the Memory of Titans stumbled as an enormous outgrowth of mushrooms erupted from its knee. A moment later, another smaller explosion of fungi followed.

But Elijah didn’t stop to admire his handiwork. Instead, he was already casting another spell. This time, he tapped into False Grove as he channeled ethera into Eternal Plague. Unfortunately, he encountered a similar issue as the one seen when fighting the air titan, and the conjured insects were swept away by vicious winds.

He poured more ethera into it, hoping to overwhelm the defensive winds, but it was useless.

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Meanwhile, Escobar completed one of his spells, slamming a giant fireball into the titan’s chest with the force of a bomb. This attack didn’t send it staggering backward, though. Instead, the creature took it stoically, absorbing the fire. Within the thing’s chest, it built into an inferno. 𝑅₳ΝỘ฿Ě𐌔

That’s when the titan laughed.

“You think to use the elements against me?!” it bellowed, shaking the world with the volume of its voice. Elijah suspected the giants outside the maelstrom itself could have heard it.

In any case, he had no chance to consider it because, even as the question echoed in his mind, the inferno burst free of the Memory’s enormous body. It exploded like a volcano, then swept forward in a tidal wave of fire. Neither Elijah nor the pack had any opportunity to avoid it.

In fact, he only managed to cast one instance of Wild Resurgence on himself before he found himself enveloped by the hellish inferno. The fires were hotter than anything he’d ever experienced, but he only had to endure them for a brief second before his instincts took over.

In a tactic learned during the Crucible of Fire, Elijah stilled his ethera. But he took it much further, slamming his soul against the flames as he extended his mantle of authority to envelope the most vulnerable dogs. Sophie, Jackson, and Digby had been too far away, but Elijah managed to get Ray, Maymay, Oscar, and Freddy.

His mantle of authority extinguished the fire – at least in a twelve-foot circle around him – and in that way, they endured. Oscar activated some ability to help the dogs recover while Elijah cast his own heals, though it moved sluggishly.

The fire persisted for almost a minute before it retreated.

When it did, Elijah saw the other dogs lying on the ground around the titan. He rushed forward, but Oscar beat him to it, ending his sprint by dropping to his knees and sliding across the still molten surface of the pyramid. He came to a stop next to his dogs and immediately activated what felt like an extremely powerful ability.

Oscar wilted, his shoulders slumping in exhaustion. But the potent flow of vitality slammed into the dogs after only a moment, and within a second, their burns retreated. Even their fur regrew.

When Elijah drew within range, he cast his heals, but he couldn’t offer more because the titanic creature was still just as much of a threat as before. It extended its trident in his direction, and a jet of water erupted from the jagged tines and hit Elijah as hard as he’d ever been hit.

He felt his skeleton creak, and he knew that if he wasn’t immediately tossed backward, his bones would have been shattered. As it was, he ended up being thrown aside, passing the edge of the pyramid and soaring through the air for more than a mile before he started to arc toward the odd forest.

Elijah used Shape of the Sky, finishing the transformation before he hit the ground. He snapped out his wings, gliding over the top of the trees before banking around and heading back toward the pyramid.

To his immense consternation, Elijah saw that a giant wall of water had erupted from the titan. It swept forward, enveloping the dogs. Elijah climbed, furiously beating his wings as he gained altitude. As the tidal wave bore down on him, he used Savage Strength, giving himself just a little more power.

It was enough, though only barely.

He cleared the top of the waves by only a few feet, then immediately turned his climb into a dive that sent him back to the top of the pyramid. To his relief, Oscar and the dogs hadn’t been swept away, and it didn’t take Elijah long to see why.

Escobar stood before them, hovering ten feet above the ground as a wall of dense flames finally sputtered out in front of him. Steam filled the air, suggesting that he’d simply burned his way through the wall of water.

But after only a moment, the chihuahua fell. He was limp before he hit the surface of the pyramid.

Elijah couldn’t do anything about it, though he beat his wings as furiously as he could in an effort to return. The memory had other ideas, and before Elijah covered even a mile, he felt the bite of the wind fighting against him. Soon enough, he started to lose ground. Despite his efforts – and he bent every single one of his attributes toward the task – he soon found himself going backward.

Even when he used his mantle of authority, it was strangely muted. Like he’d slammed his own will against something much stronger. That shock sent him tumbling backward for another half mile before he managed to right himself.

The maelstrom loomed behind him.

If he let himself be thrown into that storm, he might never return to the pyramid in time to save the pack. So, he did the one thing he could think of and embraced Lightning Rush.

He became a bolt of electricity, then streaked across the sky. However, the wind was no normal wind. It was air-attuned ethera given physical effect, and it acted on lightning just as it affected his physical form.

Elijah struggled against it, pouring ethera into the ability to push himself faster. Further. And after a second that felt like an eternity, he gained ground. The next half second sent him rocketing toward the titan, and with enough force that he managed to stagger the creature even further.

He rebounded, his bones finally breaking beneath the impact.

Elijah refused to let that stop him, though. Before he’d gone more than a few feet, he’d already initiated the transformation into the Shape of Venom. As the form of the blight dragon took hold, he used Flicker Step. Appearing on the titan’s broad back, he immediately cast Lurking Swarm.

The wind was nearly powerful enough to rip him free, but Elijah stubbornly held on, slamming his fangs into the creature over and over. The phase spiders summoned by his ability attempted to do the same, but they were quickly swept away. But before they did, they at least managed to inflict a little venom upon the creature.

He knew it wasn’t enough, though. The sheer size of the titan – not to mention its obviously high level – meant that Elijah’s venom alone would not be enough. Still, as he usually did against larger and more powerful creatures, his goal was to wear it down. No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than he suddenly found himself falling upward.

The sensation was so odd – like gravity had suddenly reversed – that he briefly froze.

And a second later, everything flipped around, and he lost his grip on the titan’s back. He only briefly got a chance to see that he was miles above the pyramid before he was hit by a column of air.

If he’d been any less durable, it would have punched a hole right through him. As it was, he once again felt bones break. An instant later, he was hit by another pillar of wind going in the opposite direction.

Then another after that.

Over and over, he was tossed back and forth until, at last, he managed to extend his mantle of authority. The wind stilled. Then, battered and broken, he fell toward the ground thousands upon thousands of feet below.