14-81. Accepting Transcendence

The old man looked almost entirely human. The only hint at his draconic nature was a smattering of scattered scales on his leathery neck. Otherwise, he reminded Elijah of old outdoorsmen who’d spent their entire lives outdoors. Wrinkled, tanned skin. Long, tangled, salt-and-pepper hair. His beard, which trailed all the way down to his waist, played host to twigs and leaves, while his clothes were dirty and threadbare.

He looked unbearably ancient and entirely homeless, but his crystal clear blue eyes twinkled with a sort of self-awareness that Elijah found difficult to ignore.

So it was with his power, which enveloped him like a localized bank of fog, spreading out across the entire vale.

“You did well,” he said, his voice raspy and strong enough to cause earthquakes. A single whisper could reshape the world, had that been his goal. “I thought you would fail.”

“Rijh es Gialle.”

It didn’t feel right to call him The Mountain, and not just because he was no longer the size of one. It seemed like he’d made a conscious choice to return to his humanoid form, and that necessitated the use of his true name.

“That name sounds strange to me. I was once that man. Perhaps I could be again,” he said. “But it is time to do something I should have done thousands of years ago.”

“You’re going to transcend,” Elijah guessed.

A broad smile creased the man’s wrinkled face, exposing blindingly white teeth that stood in stark contrast to the rest of his appearance. “I am.”

“Why now?” Elijah asked.

Rijh looked away. “I do not know. Perhaps seeing you reaching for excellence served as a reminder of the man I once was. Of the drive that once sustained me,” he acknowledged. “Or maybe sacrificing the tree showed me that there is nothing left for me to protect. I expect figuring out the reason will occupy me for at least a few decades.”

Elijah could only nod.

“She sent you, did she not?”

“Who?”

“Kirlissa.”

“I did,” came a voice from nearby. Elijah didn’t need to look to know that Kirlissa had arrived.

“No projection?” asked Rijh. “That must be painful.”

“A small price to pay to usher an old friend into the next phase of existence,” she responded. She laid a delicate hand on his bony shoulder. He flinched a little at her touch, but he relaxed soon after. A second later, his gnarled fingers found their way to hers. He let out a sigh as a tear traced its way along the lines etched into his cheek. “Are you ready, Rijh?”

He didn’t answer her. Instead, he locked his eyes on Elijah’s. “You have given me a gift, young Druid.”

“And you have done the same for me,” Elijah said. “Thank you.”

“I felt the hate inside you.”

“I wasn’t hiding it,” Elijah responded.

“Good. Hate has its uses. Vengeance can be justice. If I had the chance to punish the insects who slaughtered my people, I would take it. I would inflict a thousand deaths upon them and slaughter their entire species,” he stated, his voice trembling. “But I am an old man filled with regret. Do not let the past define you. Take your vengeance. Inflict your punishment. Make your statement. Then, move on. No good can come from dwelling on a past you cannot change.”

And Rijh would know.

“I’m surprised you aren’t trying to talk me out of it,” Elijah said. Then, he glanced at Kirlissa and added, “You too.”

She knew good and well what he had planned. Perhaps not the extent of it, but she was perceptive enough to recognize that he intended to cross some lines. Maybe she even saw the similarities to his attitude and the one he’d adopted after his island had been attacked by pirates. That had resulted in him destroying an entire settlement. Guilty. Innocent. It didn’t matter.

“I have no right to stop you,” Kirlissa stated.

Rijh added, “I have relayed my thoughts on vengeance. I encourage it.”

“We are not humans, Elijah,” Kirlissa pointed out. “We are dragons. You would do well to keep that fact in the front of your mind. There will be consequences for your actions, just as the consequences currently stalk young Skahan.”

“I’m good with that.”

“I will protect you from direct action by those more powerful. But you will need to deal with your peers on your own,” she said.

“That sounds fair.”

“You are too calm by far,” she said. “However, I haven’t the time to address this. And neither do you. Your next round is in three days. You will need it to recover and prepare. In the meantime, I can remain on this planet no longer.”

She glanced at Rijh. “And my old friend has something he needs to do.

“I have long since learned patience,” he stated. “What is a few days?”

“Enough to let old habits creep in,” she persisted. Then, Kirlissa extended her hand. “Come. Let me show you what it means to transcend the system.”

Her hand hovered a couple of feet from Rijh. He stared at it, some of his old hesitation creeping back into his posture. There was fear there, too. Not of the journey, but of leaving behind the past upon which he’d long dwelled. Finally, he took her hand.

Shifting his gaze to Elijah, he said, “Make the boy pay.”

Elijah nodded.

Then, Kirlissa and Rijh disappeared, and only in their absence did Elijah truly grasp the full weight of their collective presence. It had weighed down on him like an invisible weight on his very spirit, and now, he felt lighter than ever.

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Finally, he could examine the effect of his new grandmaster soul.

When he cast his gaze inward, he saw the familiar shape he’d constructed. It still looked like the branches of a tree, but considerably more complex. Every surface was covered in barely perceptible glyphs, each one pulsing with power and meaning. Meanwhile, the thorns jutted from the branches like the weapons they were, unfathomably sharp and infinitely deadly.

Instinctively, Elijah knew that anyone who attacked his soul would be shredded by those fang-like thorns. More importantly, they would enable his plan.

When he extended his Mantle of Authority, Elijah discovered that it covered the entire vale. It affected hundreds of yards in every direction, though it was strongest within a dozen feet of his body. Every few yards after that, it grew slightly weaker. However, because the baseline was so much stronger, Elijah suspected that, even at the limit of its influence, his mantle was at least as powerful as it had been before he’d reached the sixth tier of his soul.

That was good.

However, he knew he didn’t have time to inspect it further, because he would be fighting in three days’ time. So, without further ado, Elijah shifted into the Shape of the World Serpent and took off in the direction of Tura’s hut.

The journey took a few hours, and when he arrived, it was under the cover of darkness. Still, Tura met him at the door.

Back in his human form, he approached.

“You did it.”

“I did.”

“It wasn’t a question, boy,” she stated. “What you did was irresponsible and ill-advised. You know that, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“And yet, I get the sense that you would make the same choice had you another chance.”

“I would.”

She shook her head. “Fool boy. Come inside. There’s a lot to talk about. And you look like you haven’t eaten in weeks.”

Elijah hadn’t. If his calculations were correct, the cultivation of his soul had taken the better part of three months. Even with his constitution and cultivation, that was a long time to go without food. The results were obvious – he was thinner than he’d been since some of his earliest days on Druhmor, with gaunt cheeks, sunken eyes, and a beard that had grown out of control.

At least his clothes had survived, though.

“Tell me everything,” Tura said, gesturing toward one of the stools surrounding her table. As Elijah took a seat and began his story, she busied herself with throwing ingredients into her cauldron. Elijah was well aware that her soups and stews were as much alchemical concoctions as meals, and he suspected that this one would go a long way toward countering some of the effects of starvation.

In any case, he told Tura the story of his soul cultivation, beginning with his encounter with The Mountain and ending with Kirlissa and Rijh disappearing.

“The empire gains a new transcendent, then.”

“Who am I fighting next?” Elijah asked after a few more moments. By then, Tura had set a massive bowl in front of him. It was full of what smelled and looked a lot like chicken soup.

“Not the one you want.”

“Is he projected to win the next fight?” Elijah asked, oddly hopeful. It felt wrong. But he couldn’t enact his plan unless Skahan won. Only then would he enter the arena against Elijah. Otherwise, drastic and much more dangerous measures would need to be taken. Elijah hoped to avoid that.

Tura nodded. “He will win.”

“You seem sure?”

“The boy is a mind mage the likes of which this empire hasn’t seen in centuries,” she stated. “Someone leaked his evaluation results. Not the full report, but enough to establish him as the favorite to win it all. Especially after what he did to the Ignari girl. If you win, you will face him. Perhaps not in the next round, but the next after that.”

“Good.”

“What do you intend?” she asked.

“I think it’s better if I don’t say,” Elijah answered, dipping his spoon into the soup. “Kirlissa approves.”

“I don’t.”

“I know.”

“Does my guidance mean nothing to you?” she asked.

“It means everything,” Elijah acknowledged. “But we’re different people, Tura. I can’t let this go. I won’t. Not until –”

“Bah! Dragons and self-destructive grudges.”

“This isn’t a grudge, Tura. It’s consequence,” Elijah pointed out.

“Eat your soup.”

Elijah sighed, knowing that he wasn’t going to convince her. And she had no chance of deterring him from taking the path he’d chosen. They were at an impasse. However, the good thing about family was that, even though disagreements were inevitable, they didn’t have to be the end. She didn’t approve, and that was that. Elijah could live with it, so long as she could live with him ignoring her advice.

And clearly, she would.

For the next few minutes, Elijah ate like a starving man. During that time, Tura described his next opponent. He was a dragon named Palir es Umbranix, a stealthy assassin whose fights were normally over before his foe even found him.

“How will you fight him?”

“As a dragon,” Elijah said.

So far, most of the tournament’s participants had fought in their humanoid forms. Partially, that was because they tended to be more comfortable in those shapes. By practical necessity, that was how they spent the bulk of their time. In addition, there existed cultural reasons – chiefly that the ability to take on a humanoid form was one of the most visible differences between a sapient dragon and one that still hadn’t reached that stage.

Most never did.

And those on the verge of succumbing to their bestial instincts – like Rijh – eschewed the humanoid shapes entirely.

But Elijah didn’t care about any of that. He would use the most appropriate shape for the job. So far, that had been his various bestial forms, but that was as much because he wanted to keep some of his aces hidden. He no longer needed that strategy, and the upcoming fight against Palir would be as much a statement as the one he intended to make against Skahan.

For a while, Elijah ate in silence.

Tura tended to the soup, adding more and more ingredients as Elijah went through one bowl after another. Ethera and vitality spread through him, controlled and flowing into his starved flesh. By the time he’d satisfied himself, he’d gone through seven bowls. Already, his body had begun to recover.

It was while he and Tura enjoyed post-meal cups of some restorative tea that Elijah felt a pulse of ethera wash over the hut.

“It is time.”

“What?”

“The birth of a new transcendent. Come, boy,” Tura said, pushing way from the table. “This is a sight worth seeing.”

Her cane clicked against the wooden floor as she made for the exit. Elijah followed as another pulse of energy swept past. It was stronger than before, but not unpleasant.

Once outside, Tura summoned her cloud. Birk appeared out of the nearby jungle.

“You felt it?”

“Of course. Come. You must see this as well.”

Together, they climbed aboard her cloud, which rose above the jungle. They settled only a few dozen feet from the canopy.

With her cane, Tura pointed at the night sky, saying, “There.”

It didn’t take Elijah long to recognize a twinkling star, brighter than all the others.

“Is that Rijh?”

“The old dragon has finally chosen to ascend?” asked Birk, awed by the sight of the brightening star. “They will allow it?”

“He has risen from his malaise,” Tura said. “Thanks to our young friend.”

Birk clearly wanted to ask more questions, but at that moment, another pulse swept over them. Elijah’s breath caught in his chest.

“Use your mantle, boy.”

Elijah obeyed her order and deployed his soul. It spread out for more than two hundred yards, nearly visible to the naked eye. Elijah and his two companions sheltered beneath it, and when the next pulse came, the mantle sapped some of its power. It was like a stand of trees acting as a windbreak.

The pulses kept coming, one after another until they began to bleed together into an ongoing wave that seemed both eternal and endless.

Then, suddenly, reality trembled. The world stood still. No one breathed. No one moved. Everything froze.

It lasted for only a scant few seconds, but it felt like hours. When it broke, it did so like the inhalation of reality itself. The wave of energy reversed, taking every ounce of atmospheric ethera with it. Elijah felt like he was drowning.

Only his mantle kept him from collapsing. It frayed at the edges, his soul trying to merge with that unfathomable inhale.

It went on for a few more seconds until, once again, reality stilled.

That lasted a bare instant before something exploded in the sky. To Elijah’s untrained eye, it looked like a supernova combined with a nebula, but in every color of the rainbow.

Even as Elijah stared at it, awestruck by its beauty, the atmospheric ethera returned, slightly denser than before.

“Thus, a transcendent is born,” Tura said. “If we are lucky, we will see his emergence.”

“It’s not instant?” Elijah asked.

“Of course not. He will not emerge for at least a few centuries. Perhaps much longer. This is a grand thing you have witnessed. We are all fortunate beyond measure.”

Elijah could only agree. He also found it difficult to tear his eyes away, and none of them moved until well after dawn, when the light from that new celestial body faded alongside the stars.