Path of Dragons

Elijah leaped high into the air, narrowly avoiding the bullet, which slammed into a nearby tree, shattering its trunk in a shower of splinters. The tree tipped over with a creak, catching in the branches of its neighbors. Elijah barely noticed it because he was too busy dodging darts and dancing between other traps as they activated.

As it turned out, Shape of the Master changed everything. While Shape of the Scourge gave him access to Guise of the Unseen, the cindrandir form – or rather, the enhanced reflexes that came with it – had proven invaluable. When he felt the ripples that preceded each shot, his margin of error was so narrow that even a fraction of a second felt like an eternity.

Besides, with the prevalence of so many traps, Guise of the Unseen was almost worthless. It was difficult to maintain stealth when he found himself traversing a veritable mine field.

Another bullet bore down on him, but Elijah managed to dodge it as well. This time, it slammed into a berm, tearing through the loamy turf and leaving a massive crater. Elijah dashed behind another tree, breathing hard.

He'd lost track of how many days had passed since he'd begun his hunt. At least a week. Maybe as many as ten days. More times than he could rightly count, he'd found himself backtracking so he could recover. And even when he could continue forging ahead, his progress was glacial. He never knew when the next shot was coming, and it sometimes felt like the entire forest was riddled with traps.

Even when he'd veered off the trail of ethera he'd been following, he found himself subjected to one trap after another. It was as if the assassin could predict his every move. They were always one step ahead of Elijah, and the whole situation had long since left frustration behind, giving way to anger, exhaustion, and at least a trickle of fear.

There were only two reasons he hadn't ceded control to that last bit. First, he was stronger than the would-be assassin. That was obvious, and as a result, Elijah still hadn't been pushed to his limits. But the second factor was far more important. At any time, he could simply leave. The hunter never stopped him from retreating. If he so chose, Elijah could just fly away.

But that would mean that he'd always be looking over his shoulder, expecting another attack at the most inopportune moment. Elijah found himself in enough deadly situations that such a danger would almost assuredly prove disastrous.

No – he needed to take care of the hunter now, when he knew where they were. Anything else was unacceptable.

The problem was that the assassin knew it, too. They were baiting Elijah. Leading him on a merry chase through the jungle, clearly hoping to exhaust his resources enough so that when they made their move, the killing blow would prove final.

Of course, Elijah had tried every other tactic, and for once, his versatility had come up short. He'd even tried to fly, only to get shot while mid-air. That bullet had ripped through his wing and very nearly severed his arm. Since then, he'd not attempted flight. The Shape of Thorn had been effective at enduring the traps, but with that decrease in speed, he'd been a sitting duck. The only reason he'd survived the seven shots he'd been forced to endure was because he'd wasted Unchecked Growth.

Fortunately, the long hunt had very nearly exhausted its cooldown, so it would soon be available again.

Shape of the Master had proved the most effective, and he hoped that, just as he'd grown exhausted, so too had the hunter. They had to be running out of traps, and the same was true of their ethera and stamina. Elijah just had to keep going.

After a few more moments, the chaos abated. The trees still creaked, but the dust settled on a jungle that looked like it had been shelled by artillery. That wasn't so far off the truth of it. Only a few days before, he'd taken a couple of minutes to examine one of the bullets, and he'd been unsurprised to find that it was teeming with ethera. Some of that came from the material itself, but it was also covered in runes. On top of that, it had clearly been under the effect of multiple abilities. In Elijah's senses, it practically glowed with magic.

It was also almost a foot long and half the width of his wrist, meaning that not only did it harness the effect of those abilities, but it also managed to accumulate quite a lot of kinetic force. He'd felt that for himself, and more than once.

Despite the cessation of attack, Elijah couldn't relax. The hunter remained one step ahead of him at all times, and varied their strategy enough that he could never know what was coming. For all he knew, they were lining up another shot at that very moment. Or maybe they were relocating. Or throwing down more traps. They might even be retreating to their next location.

And all the while, Elijah was reduced to stalking through the jungle like he was being led on a string. It was more than just frustrating. Still, he didn't know what else to do, so long as he insisted on continuing his pursuit.

With that in mind, he kept going. At times, he moved erratically, changing directions suddenly and sprinting away. At other times, he moved methodically from one trap to the next.

And there were plenty of those. How the assassin managed to carry so many was a mystery that Elijah knew he wouldn't soon solve.

Three more days passed until Elijah found himself entering familiar territory. The first indicator was the smell of smoke. The scent of charred wood hung in the air, accompanied by the stench of human filth. Blood was there, too. The unmistakable smell of a massacre, though it had begun to fade.

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When Elijah exited the jungle and saw the city rising in the distance, he was unsurprised. He hadn't realized it, but the hunter had led him to New Delhi.

He crept forward, staying low so he was concealed by the tall grass that had overtaken abandoned farmland. He knew it wouldn't help. If the assassin could see him surrounded by dense jungle, then they would have no issues finding him in a prairie. Still, Elijah took every precaution he could think of.

It didn't work, as evidenced by another series of shots that had him dancing around like a monkey. Thankfully, there were no traps this time, and he managed to avoid taking a bullet. The barrage continued for a couple of minutes until, suddenly, it stopped. Silence enveloped the fallow farmland as Elijah caught his breath.

Then, he continued ahead.

Over the next three miles, Elijah experienced five more attacks, each coming along slightly different vectors. He imagined his attacker leaping across rooftops or sprinting down the stairs of abandoned buildings, all to get the proper shot. It was almost gratifying, knowing that the assassin had to work so hard, and for no real results.

Sure, the previous two weeks had exhausted Elijah, but he still had plenty of ethera and stamina to do the job. And as he entered the city, he knew that the buildings would give him more cover.

Of course, that also meant that there were more places to hide traps, which Elijah soon discovered when he took three darts to the back. By that point, he was an old hand at dealing with the toxin, and though it took a few minutes to get back on track, he managed it like the routine occurrence it had become.

Gradually, he traversed the slums. Sometimes, he vaulted to the top of the rickety buildings, thankful that his slight weight wasn't enough to tip the balance. Other times, he sprinted through alleys. All the while, he followed the thin trail of ethera that marked his quarry's path.

And then, it happened.

Elijah finally caught sight of his foe.

He had to use Eyes of the Eagle to do so, but he still saw the man – and it was a man – leaping from one skyscraper to the next. He sailed across the intervening distance, which was nearly a hundred feet, with ease. To Elijah, it looked like he hung in mid-air, his face clear as he took aim with what was obviously one of the rifles from Seattle.

The bullet erupted from the end of the barrel, and Elijah moved. An instant later, he felt the ripple, but by that point, he was already gone. The bullet slammed into a concrete building behind him, hitting with enough force to collapse a wall. The building fell a few seconds later.

Elijah was already gone.

However, in one facet of his mind, he couldn't escape the image of the man who'd been hunting him for so long. His attire was camouflage, and from it sprouted a hundred leaves and limbs that made him look like a flying bush. His face was pale, though he'd concealed it beneath green and black paint.

In short, he looked like nothing so much as a prototypical military sniper from the movies. Perhaps that was his background. Maybe he'd been an assassin well before the world had changed. That would explain his skill.

Not that it mattered.

Now that Elijah had seen the man, he felt reinvigorated in his pursuit. Under the cloud of dust, he sprinted forward. As he did so, he felt dozens of dart traps go off. But he was moving too fast for them to hit him.

As it turned out, his enthusiasm nearly got him killed when he leaped over a tripwire, only to have the wall next to him explode. The impact threw him into another building only a second before he felt another ripple. This time, he managed to twist himself out of the way, but still, he couldn't avoid the hit altogether. The bullet ripped through his abdomen, tearing a chunk of his side away.

Elijah hit the ground a second later, then rolled away to avoid a falling hunk of concrete. The building above him was collapsing, and despite his wound, he needed to move. As he leaped to his feet, he used Wild Resurgence. His flesh mended, and he leaped free of the falling structure. Another ripple slammed into his awareness, and he threw himself into a twisting leap.

He left a trail of blood in his wake, but he managed to avoid the attack.

It ruined whatever structure the building had maintained, and it fell. By the time Elijah hit the ground, he was already running. Another three shots followed, each one closer than the next, until he slid down a muddy canal that he hoped would take him out of the sniper's line of sight.

He took a few moments to compose himself as his body healed. He remained in the Shape of the Master, though. Shifting out of it, especially with the sniper so close, was too big of a risk. He needed the extra reaction speed. Still, the man was more than a mile away. And probably getting further by the second.

"Move," Elijah told himself, digging his fingers into the mud. "Fucking move."

He rolled to his feet, then sprinted down the ditch. Staying low, he dropped to all fours. The form was bipedal, but like most two-legged beasts, it could move fairly well on four. His path was meant to intersect the assassin's, though there was more than a little guesswork involved.

Elijah didn't care. If he kept going the way he was going, he would just get shot again. Playing the sniper's game was a good way to lose. He needed to shift the paradigm. He needed to play by his own rules.

With that in mind, he abandoned the trail, shifting into the Shape of the Scourge. The man couldn't have trapped the entire city. Just a defined path. So far, he'd predicted where Elijah would go, but that was now at an end. Once he'd taken on the form of the scourgedrake, he adopted the Guise of the Unseen. Under the cloak of stealth, he continued along.

Thankfully, no traps assaulted him as he approached the building where he'd last seen the sniper. A quick inspection showed him the broken window where he'd entered. It was nearly thirty floors up, but that didn't matter. Elijah didn't need to go up there. He just needed to find the exit.

Circling the building gave him exactly what he was looking for. A black, nylon rope descended from a window on the twentieth floor. It dangled almost forty feet above the ground, but it was clear that he'd used it to escape.

Taking a roundabout approach, Elijah found the trail, but he didn't follow it. Instead, he tried to predict the next perch. And it wasn't long before he caught sight of the man in the distance.

He was still more than a mile away and lying atop a roof in the distance. Elijah only saw him because of the glint from his scope.

But now that he knew where the man was, he didn't need to follow a trail. He had him right where he wanted him. So, under the influence of Guise of the Unseen, he continued to circle. As he did so, he paid close attention to his surroundings, but he found no more traps.

It wasn't until he reached an open plaza and felt something tingling against his senses that he realized that he'd been looking for the wrong sort of trap.

The first warning came from a projectile slamming into the ground. He looked up to see that it hadn't come from a rifle. Instead, it was just a hunk of concrete thrown by a monkey the size of a man.

Then, he saw another.

And another after that.

The first monkey let out a holler, and soon, the entire plaza – for multiple blocks – erupted into a cacophony as thousands of other primates joined in. Then, as one, they charged, and a new battle began.