Path of Dragons

Book 8: Chapter 47: Webs of Flesh

In general, babies were cute. There was just something about their overlarge heads and absolute innocence that made them adorable. Elijah was well aware that most of that effect could be chalked up to evolutionary instincts meant to ensure the protection of young, but that didn’t stop it from working.

But despite looking a lot like human children, harpy babies were anything but cute. There was a wrongness to them, the result of which far exceeded any discomfort he might have felt from their looks alone. And they were vicious, too. If anything came within a couple of feet of one of the harpy nests, the little monsters swarmed like land-bound piranha. When there wasn’t enough to go around, they attacked one another with sharp beaks and nascent claws.

The entire situation was horrifying.

Despite knowing that he would be ripped to pieces by the hundreds of thousands of other harpies on the mountain, Elijah wanted nothing more than to go on a quest of eradication. It wasn’t just his duty as a Druid – they were monsters, after all – but the twisting feeling in his gut shoved in that direction as well.

But he restrained himself, and not just because he didn’t want to be ripped to shreds by all the adult harpies in the area. He also did so because he’d finally sensed a path into the tunnels below.

He looked down and into the dark abyss. The cave was almost completely vertical, characterized by jagged walls and an ominous atmosphere. The gap was only around three feet long and half as wide, so Elijah knew it would be a tight fit. Those close confines were likely the only reason the harpies ignored it.

Or maybe they just had no interest in exploring the subterranean world beneath them.

Elijah didn’t know, and if he was honest with himself, he didn’t care. Surrounded by such monstrousness, the only thing on his mind was leaving the mass of harpies behind, lest he do something that would get him killed. So, he cautiously crept forward, then slipped into the crevice.

As he’d suspected, it was a tight fit, and as he squeezed through, he knew he left a little blood behind as those jagged rocks bit into his scales. It wasn’t enough to truly injure him. Rather, the small abrasions were more like skinning a knee after a fall. It still drew a little blood.

That was a small comfort, though it did little to stop the pounding in his chest.

For nearly twenty feet, he inched his way down, further and further until, at last, he sensed an open space via Soul of the Wild. It was hundreds of feet away, but he knew he could make it. It would just be uncomfortable. Down and down he went, leaving bits of his scales and blood behind along the way.

Finally, he tumbled free of the tiny crevice, landing on his feet after a forty-foot drop. Water splashed upon impact, though because of Guise of the Unseen, he expected to remain undetected.

A good thing, too, because he knew he wasn’t alone.

At first, he thought it was a spider. A monstrous one to be sure, but a spider nonetheless. It was at least six feet across, with a bulky body that suggested quite a lot of heft. However, when Elijah focused a little closer, he sensed something that put the lie to his initial impressions.

The thing only had five limbs – so definitely not an arachnid.

The second that realization settled into his thoughts, Elijah saw that the entire cavern – which was around a hundred feet long and twice as wide – was covered in webs. Only the spot where he’d landed was clear, and it took him a moment to reason out why. Almost as if to prove his suspicions, the steady drip of water from above sent tiny echoes throughout the cavern.

Clearly, the water had fouled the webs, so the spider-thing had stopped bothering.

Good for Elijah, bad for it.

Only, when he looked closer, he realized that he wasn’t surrounded by webs at all. They looked like they served the same purpose, but the strings had entirely different characteristics. It was difficult to tell via Soul of the Wild alone, and even with his improved vision, Elijah had difficulty making out details in the pitch black of the cave, but if he’d had to assign a single descriptor to the strings, it would have been fleshy.

Before he could look closer, the spider-thing moved.

That’s when Elijah got his first good look at it.

And he was absolutely horrified by what he saw.

As he’d already ascertained, the thing was no spider. In fact, it looked more like a disembodied hand than anything else, complete with long, click-clacking fingernails that looked extremely sharp. Focusing on Soul of the Wild, Elijah’s senses were nearly blinded by the sheer wrongness of the monster. By comparison, it almost made the harpies seem like natural creatures.

It skittered toward him, and Elijah tensed.

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It shouldn’t have been capable of sensing him. Guise of the Unseen wasn’t infallible, but it was a powerful ability made moreso by his advanced core cultivation. Yet, Elijah’s instincts told him that he’d been found.

So, wanting to make the first move, he acted, embracing Envenom and Predator Strike before leaping at the monster. The second he was in the air, the monster reared on its back fingers, revealing a gaping, circular maw of rotating teeth. He twisted in the air, but he had no way of stopping his momentum, so he couldn’t prevent himself from ramming into that terrifying mouth.

Teeth cut through his scales with ease, ripping through his flesh down to the bone. Thankfully, that was where it stopped. Elijah grunted in pain, completing his attack, sinking his fangs into the fleshy monster and injecting his venom. Even as he did, he activated Lurking Swarm, manifesting a dozen crystalline spiders that leaped onto the monster’s back.

It bucked, trying to dislodge the newcomers, and Elijah used that to pull himself free of the monster’s mouth. Even as he landed and rolled across the ground, he could already feel the monster’s health waning. It was an ambush predator, which meant inferior defenses and high potency attacks.

But just because it was waning didn’t mean it was done.

Elijah pushed himself to his feet, then resumed his human form for the second time since arriving on the island. He immediately cast his trio of healing spells. First came Blessing of the Grove, which bathed cave in rejuvenating rain even as a blue sunflower grew beside him. Then, Soothe, which he knew was beginning to become a little outdated, but still helped take the edge off. And finally, Nature’s Bloom.

Due to his multi-faceted mind, he could cast them all practically simultaneously, though there was a slight gap between when they took effect. Usually, he thought of it almost like he was queueing up the spells; the only delay came from the fact that they couldn’t activate at the same time.

In any case, Elijah had grown accustomed to leveraging his multi-faceted mind to great effect, and this instance was no different. The healing spells – as well as the shield from Blessing of the Grove – settled onto him. Still, he stumbled to his knees, inexplicably weakened.

It took Elijah a few moments to realize that he was under the effect of some sort of affliction. Thankfully, his healing spells kept him alive, but upon closer inspection, he could feel two disparate energies fighting a war within him. He re-cast Nature’s Bloom before forcing himself to his feet.

Only a couple of seconds had passed, but by that point, the flesh spider had managed to dislodge and shatter the phase spider swarm. It looked just as unsteady as Elijah felt, and its fingers trembled as it tried to skitter toward him.

He hit it with an oft-forgotten Storm’s Fury.

It spasmed, its muscles twitching uncontrollably as a second instance of the spell slammed into it, courtesy of Dragon’s Echo. Then, Elijah charged forward, his legs like jelly beneath him, and swung the Verdant Fang. Green fire illuminated the monster, and Elijah nearly stumbled at the gruesome sight.

But he retained enough control to complete his swing, burying the scythe-like blade deep in the monster’s fleshy body.

It didn’t die, though.

Not until Elijah yanked backward, splitting the weakened creature at the knuckle.

Only then did it slump to the ground, its grotesque fingers splayed wide.

Elijah stood there, panting as he tried to settle himself. It was almost an entire minute before his healing spells managed to banish the affliction, and even then, he wasn’t certain if that was because it had simply run its course. Whatever the case, he survived, and he immediately felt little better.

At least until he heard a thousand clicking sounds coming from the far side of the room. It only took a second for Elijah to see that the cavern terminated in a tunnel, and from that direction came a swarm of fleshy hand-spiders. Each one was no bigger than a normal hand, and they crawled all over one another in their haste to reach him.

“Nope. Just nope,” he breathed.

Then, just as they drew within range, he cast Lightning Domain. Whips of electricity shot out from the end of the Verdant Fang, enveloping the swarm. Elijah pushed it to its limits, scorching the little monsters as he poured ethera into the spell. Thankfully, they were even more vulnerable than the larger version, and they quickly perished, filling the cavern with the smell of burning flesh.

Elijah didn’t hold back, though. If even one of those creatures survived, it would be too many. So, he kept the Lighting Domain going for its entire duration, even though they’d died after only a second or two.

When the spell ended, Elijah planted the butt of his scythe into the rocky ground and took a deep breath. It was a mistake. The smell of charred flesh was nothing new, but he was absolutely taken aback by just how much the odor reminded him of barbecued pork.

He quickly stifled a gag, then looked around. Most of the fleshy strings had been destroyed by Lightning Domain, but the ones that remained intact reaffirmed his initial suspicions. They were like strings of human skin, delicate and grotesque. Some bits even had hair on them.

Seeing that cut Elijah’s inspection short, and he took no more time examining the macabre lair of the hand-spider. Instead, he quickly shifted back into the Shape of Venom, took on Guise of the Unseen, and proceeded to the tunnel.

After only a hundred or so feet, Elijah stumbled into another cavern. This one was deserted, but it still played host to more of the fleshy webs. More disgustingly, there were multiple carcasses in one corner, and when Elijah inspected them, he discovered two distressing things.

First, he didn’t recognize the creatures, which appeared to be a cross between lizards and rats, with a little bit of mole thrown in for good measure. To call them grotesque would have been an understatement, and the only reason Elijah didn’t dwell on that feeling was that he found the hand-spiders to be far more disturbing.

The second thing he found was the remnants of membranous eggs within those carcasses. That made it clear that the small hand-spiders he’d just encountered were juveniles, and they’d been hatched while inside the other monsters.

It was almost enough to make Elijah retch.

But he held it in, quickly leaving the disgusting lair behind. Over the next few hours, Elijah found more of the same, though he thankfully didn’t encounter any other full-grown specimens. He did eradicate thousands of the smaller ones. He didn’t need to. He could easily bypass them under the Guise of the Unseen. But the things were so wrong that he couldn’t stop himself from exterminating them.

Elijah’s enthusiasm for that extermination probably went a little too far. It wasn’t long before he found himself actively searching for them, and at some point, he even found another full-grown monster, which he killed a lot more easily than the first, largely because it didn’t sense him coming.

He did make progress through the tunnels, though, and as he went along, he found that he was following a rough path along the length of the island.

And then, he found evidence of habitation, and not by flesh spiders. Instead, it manifested in the shape of a wall made of salvaged metal. More importantly, it was guarded by a man carrying a large spear.