Path of Dragons

The cave swirled, a storm of ethera, water, and vitality. But it couldn't compare to the formless tempest his mind had become. Without those facets – or even the partition that came with his very first step on the path of mind cultivation – he was very nearly overwhelmed with the sheer volume of information that came from his locus. He could feel every single cell of every single organism, and for miles around his island.

Before, he'd not really noticed it, but now, he couldn't ignore that the boundaries had drawn strikingly close to the mainland. Only a few hundred yards away, in fact. He could feel something butting against it, an opposing force that surrounded Ironshore, but he wasn't entirely certain what it was.

Nor did he have the bandwidth to investigate.

Because he was currently having trouble stringing two thoughts together amidst the deluge of information, and if he didn't get to work soon, he would never finish the process. Utilizing the intense measure of concentration that came from his experiences, Elijah focused on the image he'd developed.

And to his despair, he realized that it was insufficient to the task at hand. A dozen leaves would not be enough. Instead, he needed at least a hundred. With that thought gripping his devolving mind, he harnessed the ethera around him. The ethera in the cave had decreased, and not by a small amount. But such was its density that he hoped it would be enough.

Accessing the ethera was difficult, largely because his mind had become a formless aperture – more like a gaping hole – instead of the tight whirlpools of the past. He couldn't regulate the flow, only manipulate it once it came under his purview.

His body immediately became suffused with energy coursing within him, and yet, he found himself capable of withstanding it. That would not have been the case, had he not already taken the fourth step in the cultivation of his body and soul. As things stood, it was just enough to give him a chance at survival.

But he needed to grasp that chance, and with both hands.

Through force of will, he managed to wrap his intent around the incoming flood of ethera. It wanted to create another partition, to send him back to the first stage. Elijah would not allow that. Instead, he clamped down on it, applying as much pressure as he could muster.

When he began to shape it, he did not create another gem-like facet, though. Instead, he created a leaf, not unlike those associated with the Branch of the World Tree. Perhaps that was where the idea had come from, though as he continued to mold it, he took more inspiration from the ancestral tree at the center of the grove than from the guides he acquired from the Branch.

They resembled maple leaves, though with one fewer prong on each side, and Elijah's creation was similar. The biggest difference was what the leaves represented, which existed in more than three dimensions. When he was finished, the crystalline leaf was attached to a tight whirlpool.

Instantly, it was nearly overwhelmed, though Elijah closed the aperture in order to preserve the structure.

That only put more pressure on him, though he used that to spur him forward. The second leaf formed more easily than the first, largely because he already knew how. The same was true of the rest of the first ten, but on the eleventh, Elijah found that the ethera was much more difficult to mold.

Still, he persisted, though it took him much longer. A couple of hours for each instance. And the next ten proved even more difficult and took much longer to shape. At first, the ethera was like clay, but with every ten he created, the process was more like trying to mold stone with his bare hands.

The only equalizer was his indomitable will.

By the sixtieth, though, even that had begun to fade. Not only that, but his body, after spending untold weeks submerged in that cave, had begun to weaken. To counter that, Elijah cast two spells. The first was Grove Conduit, the use of which he'd hoped to avoid. But needs trumped his desires, and he did what he had to do to keep going.

The second was Blessing of the Grove, prompting the growth of a sea anemone that looked like purple sunflower. That bathed the entire area in both vitality and ethera, nourishing and healing his body so he could continue his work.

That gave him a boost for the next few leaves, but it wasn't long before he was forced to pull even more ethera from Grove Conduit. The False Grove repository went quickly as well, though that took him almost to leaf number seventy.

By that point, his mind was growing very crowded, which meant that he wouldn't reach the threshold of his initial assessment. Hundreds weren't possible, but he intended to get as close as he could to the century mark.

To that end, he leveraged the entirety of his focus. The torrent of vitality and ethera slowed to a lazy stream, and the pressure of keeping all the other apertures closed weighed down on him. They wanted to open, even just a little bit, but Elijah knew that doing so would begin to solidify everything.

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He couldn't allow that.

So, warring with the ethera, trying to ignore the seemingly infinite sensory feedback from his locus, and carving his intended shapes became progressively more difficult with every passing second.

There were no shortcuts. No clever metaphors. No sister to comfort him. Just raw effort, will, and stubbornness. Thankfully, Elijah had all three in spades.

He bulled his way through one leaf after another. Days continued to pass. He felt people coming and going through the grove, but he refused to acknowledge it. Finally, he finalized the eightieth leaf.

One more.

Nine had always been a powerful number to him. Maybe to the multi-verse. Instinctively, he gravitated toward it. So, nine sets of nine had a nice ring to it. Eighty-one leaves in total.

But getting there would exhaust his will. Even if he managed it – and he was far from certain of that – he wouldn't have anything left. Already, the ethera in the cave had fallen to almost nothing. The sea fauna had long since fled, and the vegetation had wilted under the pressure of his need. Only the leviathan's bones remained, and even that coralline colony had begun to crumble.

Elijah reached within.

His core responded, pushing ethera up through his soul and into his mind. At the same time, he drained every last drop of ambient ethera from his surroundings, killing the leviathan's bones in the process. One polyp remained, but it was barely hanging on. Elijah couldn't allow himself to worry about that.

Instead, he shaped the final leaf.

Doing so was like carving a sculpture from granite, using only his fingernails as tools. In that endeavor, Elijah had some experience. Certainly, it wasn't like using his claws to carve a dolmen, but it wasn't so dissimilar that the lessons weren't transferrable, either. Even so, it was no quick process.

The leaves weren't just symbols. He carved the veins. Every nook and cranny. The stems as well. Aside from the crystalline structure, they looked as real as any true leaf. Yet, it was all in his mind. The leaf. The ethera. The process itself. All representations of his will. But real as well.

Elijah couldn't spare a thought for the existential crisis that might follow from such a revelation, so he bent the entirety of his available thoughts to the task at hand. And gradually, the final – and eighty-first – leaf took shape.

Then, just as the last drop of ethera drained from Elijah's core, it was finished. A wave of exhaustion, both mental and physical, washed over him. Yet, he still wasn't finished. He could not allow himself to rest.

The leaves were finished, but they'd yet to be integrated into his system.

Moving them was not difficult, but in his state, even forming a coherent thought strained his abilities. Still, he persisted, hanging the first leaf from a branch of his soul. It was all just imagery. The physical representation of his soul manifested in branching conduits that suffused his entire body. But that didn't make it less real.

It melded with the branch as if it was meant to be there.

The next leaf followed the same pattern. Then, the next after that. Over and over, with darkness slowly closing over his mind, he placed the leaves where they were meant to be.

It should have been an easy task. Nothing compared to what he'd already endured. But Elijah was spent. Exhausted, body, mind, and soul. It was like running the last few hundred feet of a marathon. At some point, he would simply give out. He could only hope that it happened after he crossed the finish line.

Ten leaves.

Then twenty.

Fifty.

Seventy-five.

They rustled in a non-existent wind, begging him to open the apertures in his mind. They were purpose-built, and they needed to fulfill that purpose.

The next five moved via a series of stops and starts. Tears of sheer exertion joined the salty water all around him. Sweat, too. Hunger gnawed at his belly while thirst muddled his mind.

One thought rose above all others, though.

Finish.

That was it. Finish the task. He didn't allow himself to think of anything else. Everything else in the world was secondary. Only moving those final leaves into place could matter.

And at last, he was on the eighty-first leaf.

Its place was at the very top of what he now recognized as a tree. It was missing the roots, but its shape was unmistakable. Elijah climbed, branch by branch. He felt as if he was dying.

He hadn't eaten or had water in months. He hadn't rested, either. His body was strong. Superhuman, even. Yet, there were still limits, and Elijah had found his. Still, he climbed.

Hunger. Thirst. Exhaustion. They were all meaningless next to his task.

Then, at last, he placed the final leaf. Relief flooded him as he finally let go, and for a moment, everything was still.

It was right.

Darkness closed around his mind as he lost control of the apertures. They flared open, and yet, only a trickle of ethera entered. There just wasn't anything left.

Grove Conduit had long since lapsed. So too had Blessing of the Grove. And the cave, drained as it was, didn't have nearly enough ethera to satisfy his need.

Then, just before unconsciousness overtook him, he reached out for the last bit of ethera and vitality left. That single remaining polyp of a powerful natural treasure. He embraced it, draining everything it had.

His apertures drank it greedily, but he knew it was only enough for a few moments.

He forced his body to move, but he was too weak. He reached a spot only a few feet away from the cave's entrance before it gave out.

Even as darkness closed in, he saw a shape. He couldn't make out what it was, but it felt comforting. It felt right.

And then, at last, he succumbed and knew nothing but darkness.

He awoke on the beach, with both Nerthus and Nara standing over him. A quick look at his mind told him that all eighty-one one of his apertures were open and pulling dense flows of ethera into his parched soul. From there, it followed those branches down to his core, which had begun to resemble a seed.

Then, he focused on Nara, connecting her with the blur he'd last seen within the cave. Clearly, she had pulled him through the submerged tunnel and onto the beach.

"You saved me," he said. "Thanks."

Then, he took one last glance at the notification he'd received while unconscious:

He only had a brief moment to notice that the leaves of his mind had taken on a reddish hue before he once again began to lose unconsciousness. He had just enough time for a brief smile of satisfaction before he succumbed.