Elijah fell.

  His heart leaped into his throat as he caromed off the walls of the vertical shaft. The fall didn’t end for more than thirty seconds, when he slammed into the floor. A moment later, Hu Shui, then Benedict fell atop him.

  “Ow,” he groaned, already casting Nature’s Bloom on his companions. While he could easily survive a fall at terminal velocity, and without ill effect, the same could not be said for Hu Shui and Benedict. After all, they lacked his overblown constitution and advanced body cultivation, so they both broke bones upon impact.

  Sometimes, it was easy to forget just how fragile they really were. Both had plenty of levels to their names, but their classes were definitely not built for durability.

  He lay there until he felt his allies’ bones mend, then pushed them aside. Benedict let out a wince of pain, while Hu Shui suffered in silence. Meanwhile, Elijah took stock of their arrival point. And the corridor looked much the same as any other, save that the atmosphere felt heavier than ever.

  And it wasn’t just the thick ethera weighing them down. Elijah had felt its like in the past. In the Elemental Maelstrom, in fact. Back then, the Unyielding Path had nearly broken him, and he’d been forced to resort to desperate measures to overcome that challenge.

  While it was similarly flavored, the atmosphere in the corridor wasn’t quite as comparatively heavy, but it was still incredibly restrictive. He felt like he weighed a hundred times as much, which made even rising to his feet an exercise in frustration. Not because he wasn’t strong enough to do it, but rather, because the extra weight threw off his perception.

  “Everyone okay?”

  “No,” Benedict replied.

  Hu Shui answered, “I will live.”

  But neither made any effort to rise. For his part, Elijah turned his attention to the corridor and said, “I’m going to scout ahead. Try to adjust. I’ll be back in a few minutes so we can keep moving forward.”

  With that, he padded ahead. Thankfully, the earth-attuned atmosphere remained consistent, which was a nice surprise. He’d half expected it to grow more restrictive the deeper he went into the labyrinth. If that had been the case, he’d have had to proceed alone. Hu Shui and Benedict hadn’t quite reached the limits of their bodies, but they weren’t far away, either.

  Now, at least they could contribute, which wasn’t always the case.

  The past few weeks had been an exercise in frustration. After leaving the shadow wing, they’d immediately ventured into the fire-themed area. Only a few hundred yards into that branch of the labyrinth, it became clear that neither of his companions were equipped to survive such a destructive force. Thankfully, Elijah could counter it by sheltering them beneath the boughs of his Mantle of Authority.

  Unfortunately, that limited the help they could provide. If they concentrated, they could push through the mantle and cast spells, but the results were much weaker than normal. That left Elijah feeling as if he was dragging them through the Primal Realm rather than engaging the challenges together.

  Not that he could have gotten far without them. The time loop would have surely ended him, because it was obvious that he lacked the foundations to solve the puzzles scattered throughout Eden. Perhaps he could have learned, but he’d quickly discovered that, even though he possessed above average intelligence, he wasn’t nearly on the same level as people like Hu Shui.

  Or maybe it was just a different type of intelligence.

  Benedict was similar, but he arrived at the same destination via a very different path.

  The end result was that Elijah knew good and well just how valuable his two companions really were. Without their help, he would already be dead. So, if he needed to carry them to the end, he would.

  With that in mind, he pushed ahead, timing the first few traps – or regulators – along the way. After a while, he returned to gather the pair before dragging them through the obstacles. Hu Shui could have probably made it on his own, but Benedict certainly couldn’t have.

  Either way, they slowly made their way through the wing until, at last, they reached the final chamber. Like the others before it, it was characterized by a massive pit in the center of the room and populated by creatures that were, presumably, native to the once-connected plane. In this case, the creatures were serpents made of segmented stone that could burrow through the ground. When they latched onto his legs, they increased his weight by another hundred times, which put a strain even on him.

  Thankfully, they were slow-moving, which made them perfect targets for the Shape of the Master. Within an hour, he’d turned them all into molten slag.

  “Do we even know if this is necessary?” asked Benedict when they’d returned to the main chamber. Thankfully, the wing’s increased gravity ended when they had defeated the stone serpents, which offered a little relief.

  “I think it’s pretty obvious that it is,” Elijah answered. “Or at least that’s what you two said before. I chose to trust your judgement.”

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  Indeed, when they’d returned from the shadow branch, the pair had examined the chamber and declared that they would need to clear every wing before they could continue. Their explanation was simple enough – there was no other way to go, and they assumed that cutting off the residual flows of attuned ethera – caused by the realm natives – would provide a new route.

  So far, they’d defeated four wings – shadow, earth, fire, and ice. They still had at least four more to go, with the final gate being a combination of all of the others. According to Hu Shui, that route would be different, and he’d advised saving it until the very end. Benedict had agreed, though Elijah wasn’t certain of their reasoning.

  “It is necessary,” Hu Shui stated without hesitation. “The runes are –”

  “Up to interpretation. You know that as well as I do,” Benedict maintained. “For all we know, this is all just a fa?ade meant to slow us down.”

  “I don’t think so,” Hu Shui responded.

  Elijah added, “For what it’s worth, I agree with Hu Shui. Primal Realms aren’t always a one-to-one recreation of what they’re meant to depict. The scenarios have been rearranged to offer a viable path to the end. And needing to conquer each wing makes logical sense.”

  That pretty much settled it, though Benedict wasn’t particularly happy about it. Notably, he didn’t make any suggestions for alternatives, which led Elijah to believe that his issue wasn’t really about their chosen plan. Rather, he was nearing the end of his rope, which was not an unexpected eventuality. Nor was it surprising. For all that Benedict had reached a high level, he’d not struggled in the same way that Elijah had. Even Hu Shui had been forced to overcome paralysis. By comparison, whatever Benedict had gone through paled.

  The result was that he simply wasn’t prepared for the hardships they’d faced so far, and it had affected his already-fragile mindset.

  Elijah vowed to keep his eye on the man going forward.

  They chose the gate representing a connection to the plane of air – or Aesira – next, and they were quickly confronted by an overwhelming gale that swept through the entire corridor. It was strong enough that Elijah was forced to activate the secondary trait of his Handguards of the Wild Revenant, which allowed him to cling to any surface. The other two attached themselves to him via a series of ropes.

  Once again, Elijah found himself dragging his companions forward.

  At the end of the tunnel, they were faced with a series of wind wisps, which looked like twisted ribbons of air. They attacked by surrounding their prey and removing the atmosphere altogether. To kill them, Elijah used a combination of Eternal Plague and Nature’s Claim.

  Hu Shui and Benedict took out a few themselves, and through various means. The most interesting was when Hu Shui used an ability that sent a whirlwind of ethereal blades bouncing around the room. Benedict summoned a pair of imps that managed to burn the wind whisps out of the air.

  The next few wings went by without issue. The nature-dedicated one was the easiest, probably because of Elijah’s attunement. The whole corridor was overgrown with vegetation, with many of the plants being carnivorous. Elijah destroyed them without mercy or hesitation.

  And after battling through airborne piranha, more magical automatons, and a horde of zombies native to the Underrealm of Alta Terra, they overcame the challenges associated with each wing.

  Finally, they returned to the main chamber to find that the final gate – associated with Mortalum – had changed. Not only were the runes surrounding it lit up with blue ethera, but the interior of that corridor now shimmered with golden light. When they drew closer to it, Elijah couldn’t shake the feeling that something even more fundamental had changed.

  “It shifted,” Hu Shui stated.

  “What do you mean?” asked Elijah, glancing toward the man.

  “In space. Perhaps in time. It leads to a different location than before,” he answered. “It is…incredible.”

  “How does this change things?” Benedict asked.

  “It means I was right,” Hu Shui answered. “If we had attempted to conquer this wing before the others, we would have been lost.”

  Elijah ignored the pair, stepping forward. As he drew closer, a curious sensation prickled his skin and raised the hairs on the back of his neck. Only when he crossed the threshold did he realize what was happening.

  He backed away.

  “This is going to be a problem,” he said.

  “What is it?” asked Benedict.

  Elijah gestured toward the gate. “Take a look for yourself.”

  The other man did just that, followed by Hu Shui. Elijah watched as their faces paled the second they entered the corridor. When they came back, neither looked happy about the development.

  “No magic,” Elijah said.

  “How is that possible?” asked Benedict.

  “I don’t know,” Hu Shui answered. After a few seconds, his eyes widened, and he said, “I believe I have read about places like this. They’re called null zones, and they usually only exist in very specific scenarios. From what I remember, they do not manifest naturally.”

  Elijah sighed. “That tracks. I think I have an idea. It feels like my Mantle of Authority, though more formless,” he explained. “It’s like someone – or something – stilled the ethera in that hall. I’m pretty sure it means we’ll have to fight without magic.”

  “I can’t fight without magic,” Benedict stated.

  “I will be much less effective as well,” Hu Shui added.

  Elijah shrugged. “Let me try some things,” he suggested. Then, he used Shape of Spores, transforming before he walked through the gate. Almost immediately, he felt a massive drain that nearly depleted his entire pool of stamina before he could retreat. The same was true when he tried to enter the hall in Shape of the Scourge. However, Shape of the Master was entirely unaffected. When he tried to enter in his dragon form, he collapsed immediately and was forced to claw his way back to the main chamber.

  “Are you hurt?”

  Elijah shook his head, though after resuming his human form, he found himself exhausted. To counter that, he ate one of his pastries. Still, it took almost half an hour for him to recover.

  “I can enter in the Shape of the Master,” he said. “I don’t know why it’s immune when my other forms aren’t.”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Not to me,” Elijah replied.

  Benedict supplied the answer, saying, “Magic. Those other two forms are almost entirely dependent on it. And that dragon one is even worse. None of those three could exist without ethera. The small one is a lot better.”

  That made a little sense to Elijah. After all, the Shape of the Master was a spell that he’d gotten as a mortal. By comparison, the other two – as well as the dragon form – were acquired much later in his development. It stood to reason that they would require more magic to maintain.

  “The problem is the same. Without magic, we’ll be much weaker,” Hu Shui pointed out.

  Elijah shrugged. “I’ll be fine. Just follow my lead,” he said before taking on the Shape of the Master. Once the transformation was complete, he stepped forward and into the Null Zone.

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