Path of Dragons

“This is unnerving,” Ron said, his eyes flicking back and forth at every hint of movement. Elijah wasn’t certain if the Healer could actually see the shadow slayers surrounding them, or if he felt them via some latent intuition. Perhaps it was like feeling someone’s eyes on you. Whatever the case, he agreed with Ron’s statement. If the man knew just how many of the creatures were out there, he probably would have gone from discomforted to outright terrified.

“Eyes on the prize, bro,” said Dat, holding the candle aloft as they moved through the forest. The first leg of the journey, which had required them to grab the candle closest to the edge of the forest, head back to the others, and escort them forward, was the most difficult part. The candles could only burn for so long, and they were clearly meant to last only so long as it took to get from one candle to the next. The detour back to the edge of the forest had taken far too much time, and as a result, they were in very real danger of being stranded in the middle of the Vale of Whispers without the light to protect them.

As a result, Dat had wasted no time, setting a pace that Ron – being the person with the lowest attributes in the group – struggled to maintain. Fortunately, they still had the benefit of Essence of the Wolf, which increased their movement speed by quite a bit. That was probably the only reason they stood any chance of making it to the next candle location.

Even though the group wasn’t forced into battle, the journey was just as nerve-wracking as the trek through the crypt-like tunnels beneath the Spires of the Fallen. Elijah did wonder if they would have any chance against the shadow slayers, though. The creatures weren’t incredibly durable, but they were extremely fast and absolutely deadly. On top of that, the forest was awash with the monstrous things, meaning that they would almost assuredly be overwhelmed.

Perhaps if they found a bottleneck, they would stand a chance, but the forest seemed to lack naturally defensible positions. They could build some, but that would require time, which the steadily burning candles would not provide. In addition, the shadow slayers seemed capable of moving in three dimensions, meaning that even if they couldn’t necessarily fly, they could do a decent imitation by flitting from one tree to the next, which would render most defenses moot.

The result was that the group needed to proceed through the challenge according to the rules it had set up. That meant going from candle to candle until they found a way to illuminate the shadows.

Fortunately, he and Dat had explored the forest well enough that they had a good idea where they would find the answers to that challenge. The only issue was the finite protection of the candles, so they knew they couldn’t afford to tarry.

The group’s passage seemed to enrage the shadow slayers. The creatures churned the ubiquitous darkness, furious in their impotence. Elijah did his best to ignore them, but it was difficult when he knew just how lethal those creatures could be.

The first leg of the journey took a little less than an hour, and in that time, the candle had burned down to almost nothing. Dat held it aloft, with barely a quarter of an inch worth of wax remaining. The used portions had simply dissolved the moment it had melted. So, when they reached the next candle, their arrival came with no small degree of intense relief.

“Are we sure about this?” asked Sadie.

“It’s the best option we’ve found,” Dat stated. “We’re not getting into that palace. It’s too well-guarded. Besides, I don’t think we’re meant to just barge in. This is a puzzle, bro.”

“An easy one,” Elijah said. The idea was simple. There were five temples scattered across the forest, which surrounded the palace at the center. Dat had suggested that they formed a pentagram, which had been confirmed by Elijah’s artificed map that marked each location when he visited them. More importantly, each temple contained two features that suggested they were incredibly important.

The first was the presence of a series of braziers that stood at positions of prominence within the temples. That suggested that they were the entire point of the structures. Second, they were well-guarded by shadow slayers, who surrounded those areas in numbers previously unsen – a detail that seemed to indicate vital significance.

But those were the facts. Elijah was more interested in his instincts, though. Nothing in the challenges was there by chance. That meant that if there were five intact temples within the Vale of Whispers, then they were important. The braziers and the guards simply supported that notion.

So, their goal was to reach each temple, ascertain their purpose, and use them to overcome the challenge.

It wasn’t a complex plan, but it was the best any of them could conjure. As Dat had indicated, the palace was too well-guarded to infiltrate. The place was also sealed tight, meaning that going in under the cover of stealth wasn’t an option. The temples represented their only clue as to how to overcome the challenge of the Umbra.

The second leg went much better, with the candle only burning down halfway before they reached the next one. Fortunately, it wasn’t wasted, and through some incomprehensible magic that Elijah couldn’t track, the leftover wax was added to the new candle. That gave them a little leeway which turned out to be necessary to allow them to reach the next candle.

And then, finally, they arrived at the first temple.

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“That’s a lot of skulls,” Ron said, staring at the structure. The entire building seemed to have been made of ka’alaki skulls that had been used like bricks. The Healer added, “And webs.”

“I don’t like spiders,” Kurik muttered. “Don’t like ‘em one little bit. Got webbed by a drachnid when I was a wee one. Was stuck to a tree for three days ‘fore they came and got me.”

“What’s a drachnid, bro?”

“Spider people. Mostly peaceful, but this one was an asshole.”

“You had a spider-bully?” asked Elijah.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But –”

“Leave it, Elijah,” Sadie chided. “We have other things to worry about.”

“Oh. Right. Like the giant shadow spider guarding that temple,” he acknowledged.

“It’s actually called a shadespinner, bro,” Dat said. “And they’re kind of interesting. The ghosts said that they aren’t actually shadow attuned. They feed off creatures that are, and they use sources of light for protection.” ṝ𝓪₦ȯꞖЁș

Elijah nodded. The spider inside the temple didn’t feel the same as the shadow slayers, which supported Dat’s explanation. However, it was also clearly a monster. Otherwise, he might’ve tried to commune with it as he had with Cinderath. That wasn’t possible with monsters, though – at least as far as Elijah could tell.

Perhaps someone with more experience would fare better.

Regardless, his inability to get through to monsters meant that they had little choice but to fight the creature. Shadespinners were extremely territorial and quite aggressive, according to Dat’s Hex of Scrying, which only reaffirmed what Elijah felt via One with Nature.

“So, same plan as always?” asked Elijah. “Bear in mind that I can’t use stealth, so my opening won’t be quite as damaging as it usually is.”

“I think we’ll manage,” Sadie said, her face expressionless. She wasn’t the most demonstrative of people at the best of times, but of late, she seemed almost robotic in her demeanor. Like she was wearing a mask.

After establishing that no one had any addendums to their plan, Sadie advanced. She’d kept her sword drawn the entire time, so she was already prepared for battle. The same was true of everyone else. Dat held his crossbow to his shoulder, while Kurik kept an arrow nocked, but the string undrawn.

Meanwhile, Elijah had shifted into Shape of Venom. The idea was to pile on the damage as quickly as possible and in a burst of attacks, bring the shadespinner down before it had a chance to fight back. Not very sporting, but the best way to fight a creature with potent venom of its own.

Ron could offer a cure to most afflictions – one of his newest spells – but no one was eager to test it.

Sadie took the lead, with Dat, then Kurik, and Elijah following close on her heels. Ron was in the rear, holding the candle so that Dat had the use of both of his hands. The second Sadie stepped inside, she used her personal shield. And it was just in the nick of time, too, because less than an instant after Bulwark of the Faithful sprang into being, a glob of sticky webbing splattered against it.

Sadie charged through the projectile, but she stumbled to a stop after only a few steps. She had unwittingly charged right into a dense patch of webbing, and her feet had become stuck to the ground.

But Elijah wasn’t worried about her. She could protect herself better than anyone he’d ever met. Instead, he was more concerned with the hulking example of arachnophobia looming on the other side of the room. The spider was shaped like a black widow, with spindly legs and a shiny carapace. However, instead of black coloring, it was a white so pale that it was nearly translucent. That feature was only magnified by the flickering flames of the bonfire burning in the center of the room.

Its body measured nearly fifteen feet long, with its legs spreading far wider. It was a nightmare given form, and one Elijah wasn’t eager to combat. Especially in his comparatively fragile Shape of Venom, which had been stripped of the protection provided by stealth – its only real defense mechanism.

So, as soon as he followed Sadie into the temple, he used his Dexterity to great advantage, darting to the right. In seconds, he was skittering up the inner wall until he reached the ceiling. Once there, he flipped upside down and shot across the surface until he was directly over the shadespinner. It gave no indication that it had seen him, and he’d avoided the patches of webbing covering most of the interior.

He dropped, but just as he let go, the monster turned its bulbous abdomen in his direction and let loose with another shot of webbing. Elijah twisted in mid-air, though he knew there was nothing he could do to avoid that glob of white webbing.

He used Flicker Step.

He hated employing the ability so early in battle, but if he didn’t use it, he knew he’d end up mired in webbing. That could prove fatal.

He slipped through the shadows, emerging atop the spider. Then, he bit down. His fangs, even powered by his prodigious Strength, barely penetrated its chitinous exoskeleton. But that was enough to deliver Envenom. More importantly, it also came alongside Stormbind, which interrupted the creature’s ability to shoot webs.

It was just as Elijah bit the creature again that Kurik’s and Dat’s projectiles landed. The shadespinner reared on its back legs, screeching in pain as one of Dat’s crossbow bolts exploded. Meanwhile, Sadie – who was still stuck to the floor – used Blade of the Avenger. As the enormous sword exploded from the floor, accompanied by a metallic hiss, the shadespinner attempted to dodge. However, it couldn’t move nearly quickly enough to entirely avoid the blade, and a second later, one of its legs flopped to the floor, completely severed.

Elijah bit the creature again, injecting even more venom. The shadespinner bucked, trying to dislodge him, but the blight dragon form was capable of clinging to any surface. And that included spider carapaces. So, he was nearly impossible to dislodge. Over the next few minutes, he bit the creature one time after another while the rest of his team continued to attack.

And it wasn’t long before the shadespinner started to fade. Familiar black tendrils spread from where Elijah had bitten it, though the creature persisted far longer than expected. Before it fell, three more of its legs had been severed, while it bore a gaping hole in its abdomen where Dat had shot it with one of his crossbow bolts. Meanwhile, Sadie had taken a few hits herself, though she had the advantage of having a powerful Healer in her pocket.

Predictably, Elijah’s venom proved the creature’s end. By that point, a web of black tendrils had spread across most of its body, and it had weakened so much that it could barely move more than a few twitches at a time. Then, anticlimactically, it simply flopped to the ground.

All in all, it had taken almost thirty minutes to kill the creature, but no one had been seriously injured. It was a nice change of pace for the challenges, though Elijah knew enough to expect it to grow much, much more difficult.

But more importantly, they needed to figure out what to do with the brazier at the center of the temple. It was the key to the whole challenge, and Elijah didn’t think they were meant to carry it like one of the candles.

“Well, any ideas?” he asked, having shifted back to his human form as he stood atop the fallen shadespinner.

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