Even as a bolt of lightning, the abyss sapped Elijah’s energy. Vitality. Ethera. It didn’t matter. It all drained out of him in a mixed torrent, and when Lightning Rush ended, he found himself still short of his goal. The next landmass loomed over him, just out of reach.

  He extended his Mantle of Authority, filling his body with some measure of relief. But he knew it wouldn’t last long. His previous mad dash, coupled with the most recent drain, had left his core nearly empty. The boughs of his soul sputtered, weakening with every passing second.

  But his momentum carried him forward, seemingly only an inch at a time. Finally, he crashed through the diffuse shield, then slammed into a building. A spiderweb of cracks spread from the point of impact, and the structure groaned in protest. But it remained upright.

  Elijah couldn’t say the same.

  He rebounded from the building, then spiraled to the ground. He hit in a cloud of rock and dust. His body was more than durable enough to have survived, but the issue with his drained energy left him grossly weakened.

  His will flexed, and the apertures in his mind spread wide. He forced them to spin. Slowly, at first, but as ethera poured in, coating those whirlpools with energy, they sped up. He drank greedily, gulping ethera and funneling it into his parched soul. His branches screamed in protest, then sighed in relief as they were nurtured by the flow of energy.

  At first, only a trickle reached his core. One drop at a time, it began to refill. The second Elijah had enough to cast a spell, he returned to his human form and employed Blessing of the Grove. Then, as his wits overcame the panic within, he remembered Grove Conduit.

  He opened a channel to his grove, and a dense wave of vitality and ethera surrounded him. He breathed deep, relief flooding every cell in his body as he considered what he’d just experienced.

  Lying back, he took another deep breath, remembering the feeling of being drained. He’d only spent a few seconds in the abyss, and it had nearly killed him. His Mantle of Authority had protected him, and yet, it was not infallible. If he’d stayed any longer, it would have been broken.

  Elijah knew he wouldn’t have lasted long after that.

  It was a great reminder that, despite his advancement, he was far from invincible. He could kill demi-gods and stand up to abyssal monsters straight out of his nightmares, but he couldn’t survive such a hostile environment for more than a few seconds.

  But with that realization came some degree of optimism. As inhospitable as the abyss was, he had survived it. Only for a short time, but he suspected that very few people at his level could say the same. Even most demi-gods would struggle. That he’d managed to survive was a reason for hope if he ever saw one.

  With Grove Conduit suffusing the local atmosphere with the power of the Hartwood, Elijah was quick to recover. Within a few moments, he could sit up. A couple of minutes, and he had enough energy to stand. Even so, it took almost an hour before his core was entirely refilled. In that time, he healed the damage he’d incurred, mending fractured bones and repairing the corrosion that came from his exposure to the abyss.

  It resisted his efforts – far more than any other damage ever inflicted upon him – but he overwhelmed it with sheer power and stubbornness.

  During his recovery, he had taken stock of the setting, and he was unsurprised to find that the sky was swarming with battling dragons and wasp-men. Millions of them filled the atmosphere. It reminded Elijah of kicking a hornet’s nest. None of the participants much cared about goals or strategy. All they wanted was to kill one another.

  The only reason he could think of was that both sides thought the other had taken the Worldseed. But in reality, it could’ve simply been the result of ancestral enmity bubbling to the surface. Whatever the case, Elijah wanted no part of it. As he healed, he pulled himself into one of the buildings where he wouldn’t draw so much attention.

  It worked, though he knew it wouldn’t last long. It was only a matter of time before he was found.

  So, as soon as he recovered, he shifted into the Shape of the Scourge and took off across the broken city. Only an hour later, another massive earthquake rocked the landmass, sending cracks arcing across the floating continent. He sprinted along, knowing good and well that he wasn’t going fast enough.

  He had no chance of reaching his destination.

  Remaining in stealth was safer, but he simply couldn’t cover that much ground on foot. He needed to take to the skies.

  With no small degree of trepidation – and driven by fear of reexperiencing the abyss – Elijah shifted into the Shape of the Sky and launched himself into the air. He stayed low, skimming along the wide avenues, concealed by the tall, canyon-like buildings on either side.

  And like that, he pushed himself to his limit, covering hundreds of miles with every passing hour. The abandoned and ruined cityscape blurred. Elijah saw thousands of abyssals battling ground-bound forces, but he avoided those fights. That wasn’t to say he wasn’t forced into any encounters, though. He was. But each time he was attacked, he used Tempest Swarm to muddy the skies with lightning-infused flies that confused his enemies and empowered his flight.

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  He refused to fight, instead focusing entirely on pushing himself to his limits. He sped along, often forced to weave between buildings. Detours weren’t uncommon as he saw massive swarms of vespirans descending into the city.

  But he was faster. Nimbler. And far less distractible.

  Elijah used that to his advantage on multiple occasions, when stubborn swarms of wasps refused to leave him be. To deal with them, he led them into dragons and abyssals. Once engaged, they quickly lost track of him, and he moved on.

  The strategy was unsatisfying – after all, he wanted nothing more than to destroy the ancestral enemies of his adopted people – but Elijah was nothing if not practical. And his primary goal was escape.

  Still, he was forced to continuously remind himself that he was inside a Primal Realm. That none of it was real. That nothing he did – aside from survival – truly mattered. Not in the grand scheme of the multi-verse, at least.

  After two days – during which every single earthquake left Elijah wondering if he’d finally met his end – he reached the chain.

  And his heart fell.

  The natural chokepoint was absolutely swarming with wasps of every type. There were plenty of vespirans in there, but the bulk was comprised of normal wasps. Impalers. Mind-Needles. Binders. Spine-wasps. Brood-binders. Elijah recognized them all, either from his previous experiences in the Primal Realm or from what he’d encountered in the Painted Wastes.

  And to his horror, many had reached demi-god status.

  What was even more troubling was that there was no way he was getting across that chain without a fight. He landed a mile or so away, already shifting forms. A few errant wasps attacked him, but Elijah took them out with a quick swipe of his scythe.

  He took a deep breath.

  If they wanted a fight, then they’d get one. Elijah shifted into his dragon form. He could feel his vitality skyrocket, and the atmosphere trembled at his presence. Not enough to break anything, but the message was clear – the dragon was a higher-tier creature, and it could only exist in the proper environment.

  Thankfully, the Primal Realm could support him.

  He stepped forward, snaking through the ruins of a fallen building until the first link came into view. That was when he summoned Grove Conduit. Then, he tapped into False Grove before casting Eternal Plague. He felt the swarm fill him, bloating his chest and expanding until he verged on bursting.

  But he didn’t release it.

  Not yet.

  Minutes passed, and Elijah wanted to scream in pain. The wasps had noticed his presence, but they maintained their position guarding the chain. They knew he couldn’t escape without going through them, so they were content to wait.

  Elijah would make them pay for their arrogance.

  The minutes ticked by, turning into more than an hour. The constant pain of his constrained swarm rippled through him with every breath, but still, he didn’t release. Not until he’d used more than half the contents of his core. Then, at last, he dashed forward.

  The dragon form was immensely strong, so he covered those couple of miles in the span of a twenty or thirty seconds. And then, he was among the wasps. They attacked, swooping low just as he’d anticipated.

  Elijah opened his mouth and breathed a plague upon them.

  Millions upon millions of glittering dragonflies erupted from his mouth – a stream so thick that it looked like a solid, blue bar. At least until it split into a thousand directions. The first few wasps died in seconds, their bodies liquifying under the effect of so much venom, and the next few waves fared no better.

  Only the demi-gods among them managed to endure. Even as the swarm spewed forth, Elijah cast Nature’s Claim. But the dragon wasn’t just a powerful spellcaster. In that form, Elijah was bigger, stronger, and more deadly than he could ever hope to be as a human.

  He attacked with tooth and claw, channeling the lessons he’d learned in his most recent core vision. And the wasps fell in droves.

  But as powerful as he was as a dragon, Elijah was not invulnerable. His scales were hard, but the wasps knew precisely how to kill a dragon. They descended upon him, braving the Eternal Plague and piercing his flesh with their unnaturally sharp, needle-like stingers.

  Each attack sent a dose of toxins coursing through him. One or two wasn’t enough to bring him down, but a hundred rendered him sluggish. A thousand was enough to make him falter. Ten thousand would bring him down. If that happened, he couldn’t survive.

  To counter the effect, Elijah cast his various heals. Blessing of the Grove was the most effective, as it blanketed him with a cleansing effect. But unfortunately, Elijah quickly discovered another issue that came with being a dragon.

  Despite being more powerful than ever, his healing spells were far less effective than normal.

  It only took a moment for him to recognize the problem. Often, he’d likened healing to filling a receptacle with water. Each spell poured a specific amount of healing into a person’s body. Higher level people were just bigger containers, so they required more healing. Or more potent spells. Sometimes, both.

  And the dragon form was an enormous container.

  Even as Elijah tore across the chain, he knew he couldn’t keep up. He’d already killed tens of thousands of wasps, but he’d barely crossed a single link. If he was going to survive, he couldn’t just rely on his new dragon form. He needed to be smarter – and that meant utilizing every tool in his toolbox.

  To that end, he shifted into the Shape of Spores and went to work. The increased regeneration coupled with the form’s natural resistance to toxins to make him nigh invulnerable to the wasp venom. He trudged ahead, spreading his spores and killing wasps with every step.

  Hours later, he became bogged down and was forced to shift into the Shape of the Scourge. Spreading Blight and Ethereal Sepsis shone bright in the following battle. His sharp claws ripped through their natural armor, and every instance of his abilities leaped from one wasp to another.

  They practically melted.

  He also used Phantom Shift, the six semi-solid clones serving to both increase the spreading mayhem but to also confuse his opponents. He leaped between them, never staying in one place for more than an instant. The wasps were smarter than the average insect, but they were entirely incapable of targeting him, save by chance.

  Unfortunately, they landed enough hits that Elijah was eventually forced to shift back into his human form so he could heal. After that, he took on the Shape of the Master, which he used to dodge the suddenly slow-seeming wasps and, once he reached a hundred charges of Heart of Fire, bathe them in a massive Incinerate that covered more than half a chain-link.

  And considering those links were almost a mile long, that was saying something.

  Once he’d used that form’s most powerful ability, Elijah shifted back into his dragon form and repeated the process.

  Like that, he went, ever ignoring the ongoing earthquakes as well as the groans from the rapidly deteriorating chain. He didn’t want to think about the threat of the abyss. Instead, he focused entirely on the swarm.

  And link by link, he crossed it until, days later, he finally reached the other side.

  Only to see that his personal battle to cross the chain was only the beginning. Never was that clearer than when an enormous, eight-legged shadow fell over him.

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