Elijah was uncomfortable.

  It suffused his entire body, infecting his mind and threatening to overwhelm his good sense. He tried to quarantine it, but the feeling persisted, like a sharp rock in his shoe. Not enough to cause pain – not immediately, at least – but more than enough to force his frustration to build upon itself until it outgrew the root cause.

  So, by the time his meeting with Colonel Jessup came to an end, a subtle snarl had twisted his resting expression. And given his power, that put everyone else on edge. In turn, their fear served to irritate him further. The cycle continued until, at last, he leaped free of the fort, used Cloud Step to gain altitude, and transformed into the Shape of the Sky.

  A few flaps of his wings, and he was rocketing across the Painted Wastes. It didn’t take too long to reach the Broken Crown, but by that point, some of his frustrations had begun to fade.

  Not entirely.

  But enough that he didn’t think it would overwhelm him.

  The only way he could explain it was that it felt like some random person had suddenly moved into his house and refused to leave, citing some loophole in tenancy laws to counter any opportunity to remove them. It made him feel impotent and violated, and neither was a subtle feeling.

  What’s more, it didn’t take Elijah long to realize what had happened. He’d long established that the myths about dragons and their hoards held more truth than initially expected. The only difference was that their covetous and prideful nature tended to focus on more than simple treasure.

  In Elijah’s case, that meant an overbearing need to protect his grove. And the need was only exacerbated by the practical concerns. As a Druid, it was central to his power. More, as a man, it was his home. Thus, any violation of his grove – which included the satellite trees he’d planted in Argos, Ironshore, and near various Primal Realms – was tantamount to a violation of his person.

  And now, Sadie had usurped a piece of his authority. Did it matter that he loved her? That he would have gladly given her any of his possessions? Not really. Not to the primal part of his draconic nature, at least.

  Dealing with that was on his mind as he visited the Broken Crown and set about destroying the vespirans who’d managed to take hold of the area. They were much weaker than him, so the fight was more like a slaughter. He didn’t bother using any spells. He didn’t need them, and there was something viscerally satisfying about ripping the hated race of wasp-people to pieces with his claws, teeth, and bare hands.

  Elijah reveled in it, as much because it served as a distraction as because it let him vent his frustrations on a hated and ancestral enemy.

  Unfortunately, the fight didn’t last as long as he might have liked. Within hours, the desert floor was littered with the pieces of his adversaries. Blood coated the ground, so thick that it suppressed pheromones drifting up from the cracked earth.

  And in the wake of the extermination, Elijah’s frustrations returned.

  It was obvious that it would not be cured until he dealt with the situation more directly. So, still coated in the blood of his enemies, he activated Roots of the World Tree and returned to the grove.

  He appeared only a few feet away from where Nara was conducting a lesson for the children. They all turned toward him, only to look on in horror.

  Nara immediately asked the older children to take their younger counterparts away, then approached him.

  “What is wrong? Where did all this blood come from?”

  “Wasps,” Elijah growled. “And nothing’s wrong.”

  “That’s untrue,” she stated evenly. “Tell me. Perhaps I can help.”

  Elijah took a deep, steadying breath. Then, without further hesitation, he explained the situation. Putting his frustrations into words wasn’t the easiest thing he’d ever done, but, by the end of his explanation, he felt he’d said enough to engender understanding in the sea elf Druid.

  “I see.”

  “Any advice?” he asked.

  “Go to Argos. Examine the tree. And talk to Sadie,” she answered. “But clean yourself up first. If you show up in the city looking like that, you will cause quite a panic among the residents.”

  Elijah looked down at his bloody and ichor-soaked clothes. “Fair point.”

  With that, he took Nara’s advice and cleaned himself up. Afterward, he donned a new outfit, then headed to the Conclave Spires. A few minutes later, he teleported to Argos.

  The second he arrived, he recognized the change in atmosphere. It had shifted only subtly, though to him, to a noticeable degree. Lacing the normal feeling of vitality was a sense of rigid order. There were other, less powerful threads in there – nine, in fact – though he couldn’t quite wrap his head around what the others represented.

  He didn’t like them, though.

  It was like looking at a curated garden. The removal of the wild part of wilderness changed it from a monument to the natural world to a manmade achievement. A laudable one, but not to the same degree as something that had formed truly organically. Indeed, it was as if Elijah was watching a scene in a movie, rather than witnessing something real.

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  Something true.

  It sent a shiver up his spine, though he suppressed his anger and strode toward the city. He barely noticed the new development, and when he met the guards, he did so with far less enthusiasm or kindness than was his custom. They read his mood, allowing him inside without issue.

  Not that they could have stopped him, but he’d long since decided to play by society’s rules so long as they did as well.

  Traversing the city came with an odd feeling. On the one hand, the atmosphere continued to irritate him. That, combined with the familiar sights and sounds that he’d always found so comforting, left his emotions slightly confused. Those mixed feelings only became more tangled when he reached the Temple of Virtue.

  In most ways, it looked the same as always. The classical architecture hadn’t changed. However, it had transformed just as surely as the tree at its center. The most obvious was that the statue of Alyssa looked even more noble and alive than it had when the Sculptor had completed it. In fact, if Elijah hadn’t known better, his initial impression would have suggested that a stone woman that looked strikingly like an idealized version of his sister stood atop the temple.

  But the statue didn’t move. It wasn’t alive. It was just an inanimate object that had been infused with enough ethera to mask its lack of life. Otherwise, the color had changed to silver and gold.

  The same was true of the rest of the Temple of Virtue. The material was still dragonstone, and some of the green remained in the detail work. However, it was as if someone had transmuted the material into something entirely different. And its power had skyrocketed.

  The final change Elijah noticed was that tiny glyphs – so small that they were barely visible aside from making the surface of the building look textured – had been carved into the stone. It didn’t take long for him to recognize that it contained a repeating pattern, though it was one he couldn’t interpret.

  An oddity, considering that the system had granted everyone Earth the ability to understand most languages.

  “Mr. Hart?” breathed one of the Hartwood Foundation workers as he entered the building.

  “Hello, Samara,” Elijah said, remembering her name. She’d been one of the first Healers to set up shop in the Temple of Virtue, and in doing so, she’d managed to accumulate a decent amount of power. She hadn’t quite ascended, but it wouldn’t be long before she did. For a non-combat Healer, her progress was quite impressive. Elijah also managed to keep his frustration from coloring his voice as he asked, “Where is Sadie?”

  He knew the answer to the question. She still hadn’t left the chamber where she’d spent the past week cultivating. But he’d found that it was best not to reveal the extent of his sensory capabilities. Not only would keeping the public perception of his abilities vague give him the means by which to surprise his enemies, but he also knew that people often had very strong reactions to the knowledge that they were being watched.

  Of course, Elijah didn’t exactly watch anyone. He just knew what was going on within the locus of his domain. The reality was that he just didn’t care about most of it. History told him that that was a distinction that would likely make no difference to the people who were worried about him knowing every detail about their lives.

  So, he played his role and let her guide him deeper into the facility, which had been expanded since its original construction years before. The mountain was now honeycombed with various chambers, most of which functioned as domiciles for the resident Healers. The Temple of Virtue also housed the local headquarters for the Hartwood Foundation, which had become a pleasing hive of activity.

  Finally, they reached the chamber.

  If Sadie had still been in the midst of cultivation, he would have left her to her own task. Even as irritated as he was, he would never interrupt something so important. He could feel that she’d long since finished, and he suspected that she was currently examining the results.

  So, he didn’t hesitate to push inside, where he saw her in all her glory. The first thing he noticed was how her newly evolved power sizzled within the chamber’s atmosphere. Her naked body was coated in a sheen of glistening sweat as she sat cross-legged in the direct center of the room. And she had never been more beautiful. Certainly, she had never been so powerful.

  Elijah knew that the effectiveness of cultivation existed on a scale. Just because someone managed to reach the next stage didn’t mean they were entirely equal with someone else who’d done the same. Not only was the type of core – which was usually dictated by attunement or racial characteristics – a factor, but the method mattered as well. His own efforts had put him at the top end of every scale, and he suspected that his recent use of the Worldseed had sent him into a different realm altogether.

  It was the same as his Soul Cultivation, which had been enhanced by his efforts to directly connect to the World Tree. That had been so powerful that the system had been forced to step in, lest he be lost amidst the backlash of so much information. It had given him access to Soul of the Wild, which had evolved from the original One with Nature. And it was probably one of the main reasons he’d developed his Mantle of Authority.

  He suspected that Sadie’s situation was similar, and it wasn’t difficult to understand why. She’d spent years preparing her core, but she’d lacked the method to take the next step. Likely, all that dedicated preparation had pushed it further than if she’d have advanced the second the core was ready. Or maybe her attunement was just that strong. Certainly, it matched the nature of her angel core.

  Whatever the case, her advancement had been powerful enough to put her stamp on the entire temple, which would have been impressive if the transformation of the tree hadn’t frustrated Elijah so much. The intrusion into what was his threatened to send him over the cliff of annoyance and into a blind rage. He refused to allow it, but he could do nothing to change the base emotion. Instead, he could only endure and adapt, which came with a significant degree of struggle.

  Sadie’s eyes opened the moment he entered. Her body tensed, the details of her trembling muscles standing out in the harsh light of the chamber. Then, she saw him and smiled.

  “I did it.”

  Those three simple words – or perhaps the emotion and relief behind them – cut through Elijah’s draconic pride and to the emotional core of who he was. Or rather, to the love he held for her.

  When he returned her smile, it was genuine.

  “I felt it,” he said, stepping inside and closing the door behind him. Suddenly, they were all alone. Their respective power twisted the atmosphere, mingling and mixing until it felt almost identical to what Elijah sensed from the tree.

  Nature.

  Order.

  Could they coexist? And if so, were they destined to make one another stronger?

  Elijah wanted to believe it. He desperately needed to. But there was enough of the wild within him that a part of his very being rejected the notion. He pushed that aside, sequestering it alongside his frustrations. And with a bit of focused concentration, he shed that leaf within his mind.

  The underlying feelings remained, but suddenly, Elijah felt lighter. Happier. But most of all, he was proud of Sadie for accomplishing her goal

  So, he sat across from her, looked her in the eye, and, with a much easier smile, said, “Tell me everything.”

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