Path of Dragons - A LitRPG Apocalypse (BOOK TWO STUBBING AUGUST 15)-11-61. Larva
Elijah awoke to discomfort and immobility.
His uneasiness only worsened when he opened his eyes to see the setting. All around him, dragons hung, their bodies plastered to the wall by familiar resin. Elijah was no different, his arms and legs entirely immobilized by that same substance. Through it flowed a significant amount of ethera. More troublingly, he felt that his spells were far off – as if someone held them at a distance – and his body felt far too weak.
The message was clear. The resin was like the shackles he’d encountered back on Earth, and it was meant to assist in the confinement of powerful prisoners. Never was that clearer than when he glanced to his right to see one of the demi-god dragons, her silver-scaled body almost entirely encased in the stuff. She struggled against it, but to no avail. Like Elijah, she was entirely immobilized.
The next thing Elijah noticed was that he was completely naked. They hadn’t only taken his armor. They’d removed his clothing as well. His rings, too. The only piece of equipment that remained was his Antlers of the Wild Revenant, likely because they weren’t aware of its existence. It didn’t just become invisible. Unless Elijah willed it, the helm remained slightly out of phase with reality.
It was a small blessing.
For a few more minutes, Elijah struggled against his bonds, but like with the silver dragon, his efforts were useless. He had another tactic to try, but he didn’t want to use his Mantle of Authority until he was certain it would make the difference. At present, he had no idea where he was or how he was meant to escape.
He tried speaking to the closest prisoner, but the tetradrak was entirely out of it. He was conscious, but his eyes had rolled back in his head, and his body remained limp. Except for when he experienced seizure, which was far too frequent for Elijah’s taste.
His screams definitely weren’t a pleasant sound to endure.
Without Soul of the Wild, which was blocked by the resin, Elijah felt blind. Or entirely insensate, if he was honest. He didn’t trust his eyes. He knew that if he could only perceive things through the sense granted by his spell, he could figure out what was going on.
But that was impossible.
He struggled to ignore his frustration, instead focusing on his surroundings. The chamber looked almost like a natural cave, though Elijah had seen enough wasp nests to recognize when he was inside one.
The interior bore hexagonal combs typical to a wasp nest. Elijah knew that the substance used to create those cells was created by the insects themselves. Once, he’d found the process by which they ate wood and plant fibers, only to excrete a pulpy substance that hardened into the paper-like building materials, to be fascinating. Now, he wished he knew less, because inside of each of those combs was a larva.
He could barely see them wiggling around. The segmented, maggot-like creatures were alive, awake, and as he discovered after a few hours, ready to step into the next stage of their development.
He watched in horror as they broke free of their cells and descended upon the prisoners trapped in the resin. They wiggled forward, crawling across the hardened substance, instinctively driven toward the heads of their victims. The first to fall was a humanoid dragon across the chamber.
He screamed as one of the larvae dug its way through his ear, disappearing into his brain. He went stiff only a second later, then fell limp – presumably as the larva ate its fill.
Soon, the entire chamber was filled with screams, large and small.
The larva that chose Elijah was no different than any of the others, but when he flicked his eyes in that detestable creature’s direction, he thought he saw a glimmer of malice. Eagerness. Hate.
It inched forward, wiggling with glee at what it was about to do.
Elijah couldn’t break free. He even tried to use his Mantle of Authority, but the boughs of his soul wouldn’t leave his body. He was helpless. A victim. The larva reached him.
Its body was rubbery. Slimy. Grotesque.
The thing climbed across his neck toward his exposed ear. It was far too large to fit through that canal, but that didn’t stop it. Elijah gritted his teeth as pain exploded on the side of his head. Tears fell down his cheeks as his entire body clenched in agony. And after only a moment, Elijah was screaming right alongside all the others.
He pushed against his bonds. He tried to activate every single one of his spells. And each time, he failed miserably to so much as stir his ethera. Meanwhile, the larva wriggled into his ear, making room with its sharp mandibles. When it reached his skull, it paused for only a second before it scraped its way through.
By that point, Elijah’s voice had gone hoarse. His body had gone limp. And bile had risen into his throat, accompanied by a foreign, sweet taste that he knew came from the larva.
Elijah had no idea how long it took the creature to get through his skull. Hours, assuredly. By that point, the chamber had gone quiet. All the other prisoners had screamed themselves hoarse. The weakest among them had lasted mere moments. The strongest, for hours.
But one by one, they’d all fallen unconscious.
All but the silver dragon. She lasted longer than all the rest. And when Elijah felt the thing wriggle into his brain, he knew she would outlast him.
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Then, something changed. The creature stopped moving, and the familiar feeling of an ability being activated filled Elijah’s skull. He braced for the consequences, but as far as he could tell, it did nothing. Long moments passed. Then, the larva went insane. If its progress before had been painful, this sent things into an entirely different plane of agony.
Elijah stiffened, letting out a scream he never could have uttered in any other circumstance. And on instinct, he activated his stunted Mantle of Authority. It could not extend past his body, but with the larva inside, it was effective.
And the wriggling thing was almost immediately eradicated.
Disoriented, Elijah tried to figure out what was going on. But in his state, he could do nothing more than maintain the Mantle of Authority. And with it came the dual effects of purification and a surge of vitality. That, coupled with his natural regeneration, mended the damage that had been done.
It was no quick process.
In fact, it took days, during which he slowly regained his wits. As he did so, there was a part of him that wished he hadn’t.
The silver demi-god dragon had finally succumbed, and only a little after Elijah himself. For a long time, she remained limp, just like all the others. But then, just as Elijah’s brain became whole, he saw her twitch.
It was such a simple movement, but in that motion, he dared to hope that she too had managed to defeat the larva.
As it turned out, it was a false hope.
For days more, she remained unmoving. The other prisoners were not so lucky. The first that Elijah really noticed was his immediate neighbor. The unnamed tetradrak’s eyes snapped open, but there was no intelligence there. Nothing but a glaze of obedience that he recognized from what he’d seen outside the Primal Realm.
Most of the drachnids outside were either willing servants or slaves. But there were a few who had been mind controlled, not unlike the various beasts he’d seen during his trek to the Broken Crown. They all bore that same vacant expression, their eyes shining with nothing behind them.
That was when Elijah finally realized why he hadn’t met a similar fate.
The Antlers of the Wild Revenant were equipped with four traits. The first was the Crown of Authority, which allowed him to manifest a visible sign of his power. In his case, that meant letting the antlers, encased in green flame, show. He rarely used it, largely because he so infrequently had the occasion to intimidate someone. The second trait – False Grove – was far more useful, and it allowed him to create a rechargeable store of ethera separate from his core.
Then there was Hidden Authority, which kept the helm in a separate space.
But the one most pertinent to his situation was Plain Sight. Oft-forgotten, that trait allowed him to see past attempts at obfuscation and resist mental control. Clearly, that was why the larva hadn’t been able to take the reins, and his stunted Mantle of Authority had finished it off.
The other prisoners obviously didn’t have that ability.
When the silver-scaled demi-god opened her eyes, showing that she was under the larva’s control as well, Elijah couldn’t help but feel a note of disappointment. Didn’t she have any defenses?
But then again, if Elijah had lacked either his Mantle of Authority or the Antlers of the Wild Revenant, he would have succumbed as well. Or simply died. Either way, he was uniquely equipped to handle the larva. Clearly, the silver dragon was not.
None of the other prisoners were.
To say it was eerie, looking out over the chamber and seeing his possessed allies, was absolutely an understatement. None of them were capable of moving. That was expected. However, what wasn’t anticipated was the fact that they didn’t change their expressions. They didn’t blink. They just stared ahead, entirely motionless – like mannequins.
To distract himself, Elijah focused on other matters.
Like the fact that, at last, he had gained enough experience to pass into level two-thirty. In fact, he’d miraculously reached two-thirty-three. But more importantly, he’d gained a new ability evolution, and he hoped it would be enough to help him escape.
Congratulations! You have achieved the requirements for the evolution of the spell Shape of Thorn. Please choose a path:
Spores
Brambles
Bark
Become like the mushroom, guiding the evolutions into one of growth and regeneration.
Become like a field of thorns, following the path of reciprocity and confinement.
Become more like a mighty tree, focusing defense and endurance.
It was not what Elijah had expected. The choices weren’t the source of his confusion, but rather, the spell itself. Shape of Thorn had become a little outdated, certainly. But it still had its uses. If he’d had to guess, he would have hoped that Shape of the Sky was the next in line for evolution. Or one of the abilities subordinate to his various bestial shapes.
But as was usually the case, the system was difficult to predict.
Elijah could only accept it.
As he focused on the options, he couldn’t help but feel like he was at a crossroads. It wasn’t unlike when he’d chosen Shape of the Scourge, shifting the form’s purpose away from pure ambush. In this case, the options were much clearer.
Spores obviously came from his copious use of Nature’s Claim, and it would likely enhance that ability and focus more on pure regeneration rather than defense. Brambles would similarly shift him to control and, likely to a lesser extent, reflected damage. And finally, Bark would focus almost entirely on defense.
None would change the shape’s primary, tank-like nature. Instead, the three paths represented different routes to the same result. Regrowth. Control. Or defense.
The differences between the choices were fairly clear, but the appropriate decision was anything but obvious. As was often the case, the problem was that Elijah wanted all of them, and to an equal degree.
For a while, he went back and forth as he established pros and cons for each choice. As he did so, he couldn’t help but notice that every single one of his allies had fully succumbed to their larva’s control.
Before Elijah could make a choice, an unnoticed door slid open on the other side of the chamber. From it came a vespiran, his power not incomparable to the one Elijah had killed during the battle.
A demi-god, then.
He waved his hand toward the silver dragon, and the resin turned from solid to liquid, releasing the mind-controlled creature. It didn’t move.
Over the next few minutes, the demi-god repeated that action until, at last, he reached Elijah. He raised his hand, and Elijah prepared to pounce. But then, the vespiran cocked his head to the side and focused more intently on Elijah.
“Interesting,” he said. Then, he skipped over Elijah and released all the others. Without another sound, they all marched from the chamber, leaving Elijah entirely alone and dreading whatever might come next.
11-61. Larva
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