BOOK 9: CHAPTER 84: ELEMENTAL

Tornadoes swirled all around Elijah as he fell. With his bones broken, he could scarcely move his arms, and pain racked his entire body – evidence of many more injuries. He didn’t have time to wait for his normal healing spells to work their magic. So, he embraced the Shape of Thorn.

Doing so sent waves of pain throughout his body, but he endeavored to ignore them as he took on the form of the thorned sentry. The second it completed, he used Unchecked Growth, sending his regeneration attribute skyrocketing. His bones snapped back into place, and in seconds, he was entirely healed.

But he was still falling.

Rather than shifting into the Shape of the Sky and trying to fly through the swirling winds, Elijah chose to remain in the Shape of Thorn. He slammed his arms against his sides and became a living projectile aimed at the author of his pain.

The Memory of Titans never saw him coming.

He hit like a missile going a couple hundred miles an hour. Still, with his durability, it wasn’t enough to break his bones. However, it was enough to briefly stun him. Thankfully, he avoided a significant blackout and immediately activated Domain of Vines. Roots and other natural tendrils snaked out of his shoulders and back, quickly wrapping around the Memory of Titans, restricting its arms.

Of course, the creature didn’t allow it without fighting back. It ripped through the first few vines, but Elijah’s ability was filled with so much vitality that it quickly outpaced the titan’s efforts, binding its limbs. Meanwhile, Elijah was pelted by wave after wave of elemental effects that ripped through, burned, or otherwise tore him apart.

With his regeneration, he bore it well. However, it wasn’t long before his screams rose above the cacophony of elemental powers. At the same time, he ripped and clawed, repeatedly stabbing the creature with his tail.

During this time, the dogs weren’t idle.

With the titan’s attention on Elijah, they were free to attack without pause. And they used that opportunity well, darting in and out and ripping gaping wounds in the creature’s legs. Digby even climbed to its neck and used a stealth attack to destroy the thing’s spine. It regrew almost instantly, but Elijah knew that every bit of damage they could inflict would add to the burden on its vitality.

And it wasn’t infinite.

It couldn’t be.

They just needed to outpace it.

In an effort to do just that, Elijah activated Thornbound Legion, and his mites leaped free of his body and buried into the titan’s flesh. Once there, they added to the afflictions already inflicted by Elijah’s previous efforts with Envenom, Insidious Malady, and the phase spiders’ bites.

But it wasn’t enough.

Even as Unchecked Growth began to wind down, the creature was still going strong. In fact, Elijah could feel something building within the titan’s core. Something dangerous. Knowing he didn’t have much time, he leaped free and sprinted across the top of the pyramid. He got there just in time, using Domain of Vines to gather the dogs to him.

He spread his mantle of authority, enveloping them in its protective embrace just before the atmosphere erupted with elemental power. Fire and air, earth and water – they all clashed together, creating a much more destructive force than they could have alone. Elijah flexed his mantle, pulling in huge quantities of ethera and flooding the branches of his soul.

The dogs yelped and cried out, shaking in discomfort as Elijah held them tight with his vines. But as much as he struggled to endure what he was doing to them, it was necessary. Without the mantle of authority, they all would’ve been ripped to pieces by the empowered and localized maelstrom the titan had created.

Elijah wasn’t sure how long it lasted.

Minutes, likely. But it felt like hours. The sheer volume of ethera flooding his soul scorched its way through his channels, resulting in a spirit-deep pain that he knew wouldn’t soon fade.

But they survived.

That was all that mattered. And when the storm settled, the entire top of the pyramid had been stripped bare. Indeed, the forest below was gone, leaving only glittering sand behind. All around Elijah and the dogs, the glassy surface of the pyramid’s summit reflected the still-roiling light of the lightning dancing around the titan.

The creature stared at them in consternation, its confusion obvious.

“Still here,” Elijah muttered, pushing himself to his feet. His vines had long since fallen away. The dogs flanked him, holding themselves tall and proud. Meanwhile, Oscar lurked behind, pacing like a wild animal on the verge of attack. Perhaps that was a good description, given the enraged ethera boiling around him.

The titan looked down on them with anger laced with respect. But there was something else in there, too. Exhaustion. The conjured storm had come with a cost.

Elijah could also see the effects of their attacks. Wounds covered its legs, unhealed and ragged. Dense flows of venom coursed through it, visible in the flashing light. And its shoulders sagged with fatigue.

They had begun to wear it down.

Suddenly, ethera flashed down its arms and into its hands. A second later, weapons manifested. A fiery axe in one hand. A scimitar of pure crystal in another. A giant hammer in the third, and of course, the trident it had held since the very beginning in the fourth hand.

Then, it stepped forward.

With its size, the thing could cover a lot of ground with a single stride, and it was on them in a second. That’s when the axe flashed forward, moving with such velocity that even if it hadn’t been aflame, it would have ignited the air. Elijah dove to the side, and Jackson and Sophie both summoned shields. Those planes of ethera barely slowed the weapon’s descent, but it was enough that it allowed the rest of the pack to dodge its inevitable fall.

It hit with a geyser of molten rock as it shattered the glassy surface of the top of the pyramid. None of them had any opportunity to appreciate the spectacle because the trident came at them a second later. It stabbed out, its tines as big as Oscar and aimed at the concentration of dogs.

At the same time, the scimitar came in, swinging like a pendulum at Elijah. Instinctively, he knew he couldn’t endure such an attack. If it hit, it would cut through him, not stopping until it had completed the job.

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He dodged.

He wasn’t quite fast enough, though, and the crystal blade sliced free a good portion of his back muscle. He grunted in pain, but he couldn’t stop. Instead, he cast Wild Resurgence, then initiated a transformation into his most appropriate form – the cindrandir.

As Shape of the Master altered his body, he continued to dodge. It was a good thing, too, because the scimitar never stopped moving. The only thing that saved him was the fact that the creature was so much larger. As such, it was a lot like trying to swat a fly.

Still, it came close. Too close.

But then, Shape of the Master completed the transformation, and it wasn’t a second too soon. Even as the world slowed – at the behest of his increased reaction speeds – he saw the giant, rocky hammer’s descent. It blistered through the air with the speed of an avalanche, but to Elijah’s improved perception, it moved in slow motion.

It was a good thing, too, because even with that, he barely managed to throw himself out of its path. When it hit, it did so with such a vicious impact that it sent earthquake-like ripples across the entire top of the pyramid.

Elijah leaped over them, flipping as he summoned the Verdant Fang to hand. He didn’t intend to fight a purely defensive battle. In seconds, he’d dodged four more attacks as he built stacks of Heart of Fire.

Meanwhile, the dogs had regained their poise and leaped into action. Ethereal shackles bound the titan in place, though they had to be reapplied every few moments because it kept breaking them. At the same time, another binding held the arm bearing the trident completely inert. Elijah could scarcely see the spell, but he could feel the dense flows of ethera. They felt a lot like his roots, though with a different flavor that reminded him of pure energy.

Jackson and Sophie played defense, often leaping in front of the other dogs and creating a bulwark behind which the rest of the pack could work their magic. Freddy and Digby attacked, continually worrying the creature’s legs. Every attack ripped free a chunk of its flesh – which ranged between crystalized air, meaty blubber, and rock – but the thing was so huge that any progress they made was little more than a pinprick.

But its regeneration was much slower than before, which gave Elijah some hope that his plan would work.

Of course, the dogs weren’t entirely safe. They took more than one glancing blow that turned into grievous wounds, but Elijah kept Wild Resurgence up at all times. Even so, the only reason they weren’t immediately killed was Oscar.

Thick bands of ethera – stronger than any Elijah had ever felt from the pack leader – lanced out to envelope the dogs. They moved faster, hit harder, and regenerated more quickly than ever before.

Oscar couldn’t keep it up, though.

Elijah knew just how much ethera the man was using, and even if his regeneration attribute was on par with Elijah’s – doubtful, but possible – his mind cultivation would only allow him to absorb so much energy. He would soon flag, and when that happened, dogs would start dropping.

But he couldn’t do anything about that. Instead, he joined Freddy and Digby, lashing out with his scythe as he continued to build charges of Heart of Fire. By the time he’d built fifty, the titan’s left leg looked like it had been chewed by a very large bear. Still, the creature fought on, its various weapons like a whirlwind of potential death. Ethera crackled in the air with every swing, and on both sides of the fight. Each time one of the shields broke, it sounded like a gunshot. But Sophie and Jackson continued to summon them, one after another.

They were good at their jobs, and they could keep going for hours. Elijah had seen it throughout the Primal Realm.

The rest of the dogs were similarly competent. The only one who seemed mostly ineffective was Escobar, who’d spent most of his ethera on his previous spell. Still, he continued to absorb more as he prepared for another cast when the time was right.

For his part, Elijah kept up the pressure – both on himself and the massive enemy. The first, because he knew just how precious each charge of Heart of Fire was. If he let himself be hit – even once – he’d have to start over. And Oscar and the dogs couldn’t shoulder that burden.

Already, they’d begun to flag.

Soon, they would start to make mistakes.

Those thoughts raced through one facet of Elijah’s mind as he darted in, slashing through the creature’s leg, then retreated. Flipping back and forth, he dodged one attack after another until, at last, he reached seventy charges.

Then eighty.

Ninety.

One hundred.

He activated Child of Fire.

The surge of physical power hit him like a ton of bricks, and he threw himself forward, riding the wave of hundreds of additional attributes. He was stronger, more coordinated, and more durable than ever before. And he used that to leap upon the sweeping scimitar, run along the edge of the moving blade, and bury his scythe in the titan’s neck. He ripped it free in a shower of crystal, rock, and molten blood.

But he didn’t stop there.

Indeed, with such an influx of attributes, he moved with rapidity that could scarcely be tracked with the naked eye. Multiple swings per second found their way to the titan’s neck, and soon enough, he’d torn a gaping hole in the creature’s throat.

That was when he felt the first wind blade coming.

It felt like it did so in slow motion, but he knew that if it had come before he’d used Child of Fire, he probably wouldn’t have sensed it. As it was, he leaped over the blade, then ran along the titan’s shoulder and buried his scythe blade in the thing’s joint. He leaped down to the next arm’s joint, dragging another wound before ripping it free.

A second later, he’d done the same to the lower joint.

Meanwhile, the wind blades kept coming. Elijah cast out his mantle of authority, and his will went to war with the titan’s. The massive creature won, but not by much, and Elijah’s efforts slowed the blades enough that he had no issue dodging them. That gave him just enough time to finish his task.

The scythe bit into the joint again and again until, after only ten seconds, the arm flopped to the ground.

The titan flailed in anger and pain, but Elijah ignored its attempts at dislodging him. Instead, he set his sights on the upper arm.

At the same time, the dogs used that distraction to rip into the titan’s legs, again and again. The lack of reprisal fostered more aggression, and the dogs used that to their advantage. Even Jackson and Sophie abandoned their defensive posture to add their own strength to the mix.

They were defenders by nature, but they were also extremely strong. Their participation in the attacks tipped it over the edge, and they overwhelmed the titan’s regeneration, severing the leg at the ankle.

It tipped over.

By that point, Elijah had nearly detached the second arm, and even as the creature hit the ground, he finished that job.

One-legged and two-armed, the titan flailed and rolled, but Elijah and the dogs could smell the blood in the water. Even Oscar lent his own vicious attacks to the mix, hacking with his hatchets. But Elijah did most of the work on the remaining arms.

By the time Child of Fire ran its course, the enemy only had stumps where its limbs had once been. But it was still alive.

Escobar was ready to end that.

“Clear the way!” Oscar shouted.

Elijah had been working with the dogs long enough to know what that meant. He scooped up Digby in one arm, then raced to the edge of the top of the pyramid. At the same time, the ethera above the fallen titan roiled with fire. It manifested in what looked like a gate to hell, and from it slithered a giant serpent made of pure fire.

And it wasn’t like the one Escobar had summoned during the Ring of Elements. This one was much larger, more solid, and far, far hotter.

It descended upon the crippled titan like a python, wrapping around the creature and constricting it. However, Elijah was even more interested in what happened beneath the surface of the flashy spell. The fire serpent didn’t just crush the titan. It absorbed the thing’s fire ethera.

Of course, the titan fought back. Not with its now-detached limbs, but rather, with its magical prowess. Great tornadoes erupted into being as waves of water crashed into the serpent.

But the fire fought through, using the titan itself as a battery.

Even so, when it finally dissipated after thirty or so seconds, the titan still wasn’t dead. Elijah and the dogs advanced, ready to finish it off. The mighty tornadoes had become little more than dust devils, and the waves were weak and ineffectual.

Elijah approached in his human form.

The creature’s head loomed above him, as large as any boulder he’d ever beheld. Thousands of tons of elemental fury. It turned toward him and spat, “You are weak. You will not survive the Legacy of Titans.”

Elijah didn’t listen.

Neither did the dogs.

Together, he and the pack hacked into the thing’s neck, and nearly five minutes later, they managed to decapitate it.

Elijah’s shoulders slumped in exhaustion. The battle hadn’t lasted that long. Not really. But it had felt like an absolute marathon.

Just as he’d begun to relax, Elijah felt the pyramid rumble as the earth surrounding it erupted into waves that swept outward, destroying whatever parts of the landscape had miraculously survived the titan’s efforts.

Then, Elijah felt the atmosphere still – only for a second – before the ground imploded beneath his feet.