10-65. Ripples
"You will leave him be," came an authoritative voice. "You have no authority here."
"I have authority wherever I go, goblin," another, more feminine voice responded. "You will relinquish the creature or suffer the consequences."
"Be certain you are prepared to inflict those consequences," the first stated evenly. "You are not in your city. You have no walls to protect you. If you push this, you will die. I give you my word as High Speaker of the Leopard Tribe."
"Big words for someone who will surely die right alongside me."
"So be it."
Elijah's vision came into focus, and as he took in his surroundings, confusion gripped his mind. For a moment, he had no memory of what had happened and no clue where he was. However, it was only after a few panicked seconds that it all came rushing back to him. He tried to move, but he was bound, and not just by the mundane. His ethera was sluggish, and he could not push his abilities to activate.
His panic rose and he lashed out. His jaws snapped open and shut, and his entire body writhed. Still, he could not move. He couldn't cast any spells. He was trapped.
Only then did he open himself up to his Mantle of Authority. The branches of his soul shot out, severing whatever nullifying effect that had been inflicted upon him. Suddenly, he could feel his spells. His ethera ran free. And the bindings keeping him pinned in place were no longer enough to confine him.
He shot to his feet, only to belatedly realize that he remained in the Shape of the Scourge. Much of his shoulder was missing, though his arm remained thankfully attached. However, he suspected that, even after he'd healed, he would have added another scar to his collection.
As he moved, the people surrounding him reacted. The first person he recognized was Anupriya Pandey, and she looked just as dangerous as ever. However, the power surrounding her felt muted. As if she lacked something.
And under the effects of the Mantle of Authority, she clearly couldn't muster the ethera to activate any spells. She was trying, though. By comparison, most of the other humans in the area – a tent, he idly realized – collapsed. A few remained conscious, even if they fell to the ground, though a couple maintained their footing.
Then there were the goblins.
Elijah recognized two of them. The first was Okarin, the leader of the Leopard Tribe he'd met in the mountains. But the second was where Elijah's true focus landed. He'd met Venka in the Trial of Primacy, where they'd allied in an effort to reach the Nexus Town. Along the way, they'd lost Venka's friend, Grod. And even though Elijah hadn't known either of them for long, the loss hit him hard as well.
Despite the short duration of their friendship, Elijah considered Venka a stalwart ally.
More interestingly, the hill goblin seemed just as strong as Anupriya, and he maintained consciousness despite the power of Elijah's Mantle of Authority.
With the presence of the hill goblins, who Elijah trusted far more than the leader of Kalki, he relaxed. Only slightly, but the panic faded into mere apprehension. He demanded, "What happened?"
As he spoke, he resumed his human form. The metal bindings around his wrists slipped away, clattering to the floor. Before a second had passed, he was already casting his heals. Vitality washed over him as a sunflower incongruously bloomed in the center of the tent, and Wild Resurgence settled onto his shoulders.
The wound in his upper torso was slow to mend, though. Bones had been destroyed, and organs had ruptured. That he was still alive was a small miracle – or the result of his body cultivation and high attributes. Without either, he never would have awoken.
He also cast Nature's Bloom, then focused on the few people who'd maintained their feet. "Is anyone going to answer me?"
"You."
He narrowed his eyes at Anupriya. "Yeah. Did you think I was someone else? Again – what happened? The last thing I remember was killing war elves. You're welcome, by the way. Then something hit me."
"We don't know," Venka said. "Good to see that you survived. Our Healers did not think you would. You're stronger than you look."
"What are you?" demanded Anupriya. "Man or monster?"
"What?" asked Elijah.
"Are you a man who masquerades as a monster? Or are you a monster who takes the form of a man?" she elaborated, shaking with the effort of remaining upright with the full weight of his Mantle of Authority on her. Venka bore it better, but Okarin was barely holding on.
Elijah let it lapse.
Even as the branches of his soul retracted into his body, he felt what was left of his ribcage rebuilding itself. It would take a while. Thankfully, with his constant healing and high Regeneration, he needn't worry about infections.
Probably. He did remember Ron talking about the potential for bacteria to level, though. If that was the case…no. He chose to trust his spells to keep him alive.
The release of his Mantle of Authority came with a wave of relief that swept across the room. He hated using it like that. He much preferred to let it spread out according to its established purpose. Renewal and cleansing. However, he knew that, in combat, the more basic use was probably more effective.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Would it always be possible to use it like that? Maybe. But Elijah suspected that it would become more difficult as the Mantle evolved. As he grew, so too would his purpose be refined.
"You know I'm a man," Elijah said. "I wouldn't have been on the power rankings otherwise."
"If you are that man," she stated, still tense. Her hand had never left the hilt of her tulwar. "You may have been replaced by a clever monster."
He shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you," he admitted. "I am who I am. I can take on bestial forms. That's my class."
Elijah wasn't particularly happy about revealing so much about his class, but it wasn't as if the nature of his abilities was a secret. He wasn't an open book, but he didn't really hide things, either. On top of that, he suspected that, from Kalki, they'd watched his attack on the Third Army, so they had taken at least some measure of what he could do.
"What happened with the war elves?" he asked, his voice far more sedate than it should have been. Inside, his emotions whirled with anticipation, anger, excitement, and some degree of fear. He had just come within a few scarce inches of death, after all. Had that attack been just a little higher, his head would have exploded.
And he didn't think he could survive something like that.
He added, "Was it one of them that hit me? The leader, maybe?"
"The war elf army has been destroyed," Venka stated. "Some escaped, though they are being hunted as we speak. They will be dead soon."
"But was it one of them that hit me?"
"We believe it was someone else," Anupriya answered. "A long-range attack from miles away. To the east."
Elijah frowned. "I see."
Not long after that, Anupriya gathered her people and left the tent. She clearly didn't care for Elijah. Or maybe she was just afraid, which was valid enough. She had just watched Elijah systematically dismantle an army that had plagued her people for months. Perhaps even years. Doubtless, she wanted nothing to do with him and wanted nothing more than for Elijah to get out of her hair.
He wanted the same, though he knew it would be some time before he could move. Even now, the adrenaline had begun to fade, and he felt the weakness that came from his injury. It wasn't limited to the damage done by the attack itself, but rather, there were multiple abilities at play. He used his Mantle of Authority to root them out, though the foreign ethera proved even more stubborn than what he'd experienced in the Elemental Maelstrom.
"How long was I out?" he asked Venka a few minutes after Anupriay left. It was his tent that played host to Elijah's recovery, so he had stuck around. Meanwhile, Okarin and the other handful of hill goblins had retreated. They too were terrified of Elijah. Not surprising, given what he'd done to them via his use of his Mantle of Authority. That could not have been pleasant.
His friend answered, "A little less than a day. You are lucky to still be alive."
"I don't think it's luck," Elijah revealed. Then, he told Venka about the feelings he'd experienced of late. "Sometimes, it's like someone is watching me. And I felt something else just before that attack landed. I flinched. Just a little, but it was enough to keep me from having my head exploded."
"Ripples."
"What?"
"They are called ripples," Venka said. "When one grows powerful enough, they can sense disturbances in the local ethera. Likely, the person who attacked you has been stalking you for some time. And doing so, they used abilities, sending out ripples that you've begun to sense."
"Can you sense them?"
Venka shook his head. "I am far too weak. It is an ability that comes only with high levels and advanced cultivation. I'm surprised you've grown so much," he said.
After that, the conversation soon turned to Venka's story. He'd been in Alabique when the war elves had attacked, and through his efforts, managed to affect a retreat.
"I…I did what I could," he revealed, staring at the fur-lined floor. "But I could not save them all. We found our way into the mountains, where the war elves refused to follow. We took refuge in a system of caves, where we nursed our wounded back to health. Many more died."
"I'm sorry," Elijah said. If he'd acted sooner, rather than spending so much time doing nothing on his island, perhaps Alabique could have been spared.
"You are not responsible for the entire world," Venka said. He had grown since the Trial of Primacy, in both levels and maturity. That was not surprising, considering that the vast majority of settlers who'd come to Earth were young and inexperienced. Some, like the illythiri, had forcefully halted their progression at level twenty-five so they could take advantage of the subsidization of travel by the system, but most had barely even begun their respective journeys.
And they'd all experienced loss. Life on a newly touched planet was not easy, even when one had the advantage of a few levels and advanced knowledge of the system. It might've been even more difficult for the settlers, who'd only ever known the security of settled worlds.
Though Elijah didn't truly believe that. The fact that most of humanity had died in the immediate wake of the World Tree's touch supported that belief.
"Eventually, we emerged from those caves and reunited with the Leopard Clan," he explained. "It was clear that the war elves could no longer be tolerated. So, we gathered the clans and moved closer to Kalki."
He went on to say, "The idea was simple enough. The elves could not move on until they took Kalki. An attack was inevitable. So, we resolved to bide our time until the Third Army had exhausted itself on Kalki's defenses. Then, we would attack."
"How many do you have?" Elijah asked.
"Not nearly enough for pitched battle," Venka answered, elaborating that the idea wasn't to attack directly. Rather, they would engage in guerilla tactics that would slowly bleed the Third Army dry. "By the time they reached the main pass – and the defenses therein – they would be much weakened. Even if they found their way to the other side, they would become shadows of their former selves. If we survived."
"I see," Elijah said.
"So, when we saw you attacking them, we took that as an opportunity. It seems that Anupriya Pandey saw something similar," Venka reasoned. "We converged just after you were hit, though we could not pull you to safety for quite some time. The battle was fierce, and many lives were lost."
Elijah shook his head at that. He'd done what he could to kill as many of the war elves as possible, but it seemed that his efforts were insufficient to the task at hand. He'd known from the beginning just how much of a threat they posed, and his delay had gotten many people killed.
After Venka finished his explanation, he rightly recognized that Elijah needed to focus on his convalescence. So, he left him alone in the tent. As Elijah sat there, surrounded by the vitality of his healing spells, he couldn't help but reassess his performance in battle.
On the one hand, he'd killed two-thirds of an army. The remainder had managed to resist the combined forces of Kalki and the hill goblin clans – and that was even with Elijah's afflictions still running rampant. By all rights, he'd saved quite a few lives.
However, he knew he could have done better.
That was almost always the case, though. Elijah was far from perfect. Even with his superhuman abilities, he was just as flawed as ever. He often made mistakes. Sometimes, the same ones over and over because that was how his brain worked. But other times, he just wasn't smart enough to see opportunities for change.
But he knew he needed to be better. The world demanded it of him.
With that in mind, he continued to assess his performance as he focused on rebuilding his ruined torso. It was no short process, so he'd have plenty of time for self-recrimination.