Dao Divinity 2 Chapter 6

Dar had spent more time with Sasha than he’d planned on, but every moment had been incredible. By the time Sasha had rolled over, curling up next to him with a soft smile on her face, the daytime celebration had wound down and people were enjoying dinner by the communal hearth.

As he walked over, Dar saw the group of leaders sitting together, waiting for him.

“Hello. I’m assuming we didn’t get much done today?” Dar sat down to get the update first. He could go grab food after.

Bart guffawed. “We got the kilns marked. We just need a hand from you tomorrow to enchant them. A few men piddled around this morning, and we have a handcart full of limestone to try baking tomorrow.”

“The children had a wonderful education today in the birth of a new demon. I think many of us adults learned quite a bit too. She’ll be joining the kids in lessons.”

Dar did a double take. “The new demon be learning with the kids? Do we think that’s such a great idea?”

Someone tapped Dar on the shoulder and he turned to Marcie, who had a steaming bowl of food she was holding out to him. Inside was a mixture of grilled meat and vegetables, all with some sort of beany puree. It looked a little like hummus, but it must be made with soy since they hadn’t harvested any chickpeas.

“Thank you, Marcie.” Dar gave her a nod before turning back to the group. “She could be dangerous.”

Rex spoke next. “Doubt it. Since you brought her out of the forest, she’s been shell-shocked, but she hasn’t tried to leave yet.”

Dar looked to Glump for confirmation, and Glump nodded his agreement.

Considering it, Dar decided to try to balance the risk. “Maybe we should have someone from the guard nearby. I don’t think anything will happen, but it will make everyone less tense.”

Everyone nodded, and Rex said he’d put someone on duty.

Russ joined them then, two of his girls steadying him as he sat down.

“Welcome back.” Glump smacked Russ on the back, eliciting a groan from the gnoll and gaining glares from Russ’ two women.

Russ turned his big dog-like head to Dar. “I hear you brought the new demon back to the village?”

“Yep.” Dar could feel the tension mounting in the demon. He knew he’d succeeded where Russ failed, and the young male demon might not take losing well.

“Good. She deserved that much.” He grunted in acceptance as one of his women brought him his meal. “What else did I miss?”

The group filled him in quickly on the various happenings since he’d gone off to hunt. While they were talking, Cherry slipped up to Dar’s side and joined the conversation.

“Food and shelter are still the priority. I don’t think that’ll change anytime soon.” Dar simplified. “But at least we don’t have any issues with water since the river is only a short walk away.”

“Maybe you should think about getting something set up to boil water, or melt snow in large quantities.” Russ said between mouthfuls.

That… actually wasn’t a bad idea. “Bart, that might be a great thing for you guys to try once you feel like you have the hang of concrete. We could just make a heated catch basin, with the option to turn up the heat and boil the water.”

“I’ll add it to the list. The women are asking for clay to start making dishes, and we’ll get men back to woodcutting tomorrow. We’ll have our hands full in the short term.” Bart took his scrap wood and carved out a list.

“It’ll be worth it. Hearthway is growing fast.” Dar agreed.

“What about winter?” Samantha asked, one of the few times she’d brought anything up in the leadership group that didn’t have to do with the children. “People are starting to get a little worried that we won’t be ready in time.”

“Cold is obviously going to be a problem. I can enchant heat into a lot of our items to make it less of a problem. And I know we are saving the pelts from Russ’ kills; that’ll help. The biggest issue, and what we cannot solve once winter comes, is food.” He looked at Cherry. They’d be able to hunt, but crops were needed to make a bulk of the village’s diet.

“We needed to let the soil rest, anyway. We might have to move to a new field if we’ve depleted the current one too much.”

Because they’d been forcing the plants into a growth season every day, there was no way the soil was recouping nutrients it needed. “Try and push through another few days. Let’s get a small crew to till a field out on the other side of Hearthway, and you can start there if the current one runs out of nutrients.”

“More foreign knowledge?” Samantha asked, arching a brow.

“Your farmers probably already do this, but the husks from the last harvest, the leaves, and rain. All of those bring nutrients back into the soil. With how quickly we are speed harvesting using our dao, they won’t have time to recover.”

“Will it ever recover?” Samantha prompted.

“Yes, it just needs a rainy season to wash minerals from the cliffs back into the soil and for the debris to decompose. If we can move where we are harvesting every week, we should be able to sustain the growth we are forcing on the soil.”

Bart spoke up. “I think we are wrong. The largest concern is housing.” He looked across at the village. “No offense Cherry, but those huts don’t make great insulators. Even if we have Darius’ help with heat, it won’t stay inside. We have a month to get housing for over a hundred people.”

“Agreed. We’ll need housing as well. We’ll tackle all of this one thing at a time. We’ll get some of the concrete made up, and we can lay a single foundation. Until then, we’ll focus on lumber and food.” Dar looked around the group for any dissenting opinions, but nobody spoke up.

Glump raised his hand. “If you can get water on the ground, I can move the mud to make room for your foundations.”

Dar and Bart nodded at that. The old blacksmith using the scrap of wood to etch it into his chores.

Needing a break from all the village planning, Dar turned to Cherry. “Can you make me a new hut? I need a place to practice in solitude.” Dar hadn’t had a chance to experiment since he’d sat by the stream working on learning his dao. And he didn’t want to do that out in the open.

“I can’t guarantee you won’t be disturbed here in the village. What if I block off a cave entrance?” Cherry offered.

Liking the sound of that, Dar gave her a smile. It would be perfect. “Let’s do that. I need to grab Sasha’s book of Dao first.”

“And what would you be trying to do?” Cherry followed along.

“I tried something the other day—” he started to explain, but Cherry cut him off.

“You mean when you vomited blood?” Her tone was clear in her disapproval.

Dar rolled his eyes. “It was going well until someone interrupted me. So, we’re fixing the problem by making it private. Good to go.”

Cherry squinted her eyes at him, not quite buying it. But Dar had a feeling she’d end up giving in, so he just kept moving.

Dar paused and ducked inside their hut to snatch the book of dao characters. He glanced over at Sasha, who was still passed out with a smile on her face. She didn’t even stir as he moved around, so he darted over, giving her a kiss on the cheek before he left the hut. He and Cherry headed toward the nearby cave.

“So tell me more about this stupid plan you have that leaves you vomiting blood.” Cherry prompted.

Dar laughed, pulling her into him as they walked. “It’s not like that. I just need to be able to focus. I used the channels I made in my body for moving mana, tracing out the Dao character within them. I can’t even describe it very well, but it felt so much closer than it ever had before Cherry. I think if I kept going, I would grasp the dao.”

Cherry stopped and turned slowly to him. “And which dao character were you… experimenting with?”

Dar started to answer her, but then as he took in her expression, he realized she knew he’d been focusing on combustion recently. He paused, pretty certain if he answered it would not go over well.

But it didn’t matter, because Cherry saw right through him, throwing her arms in the air. “Drasils above! You were experimenting with combustion. What if you essentially enchanted your body with it and blew yourself to kingdom come? What if you took out the whole village with you? Dar, this is not something you can do so casually.”

Dar went to quickly reassure her, but he realized she was right. He wasn’t really sure what would happen when the dao finally clicked. Accepting she had a point, he reached up to pull her to him. “Okay. Fair enough. Maybe this time I try something a little less harmful, like Sasha’s dao of softness?”

Cherry harrumphed. “Promise me you won’t experiment with the combustion dao. I’ll block off one of the caves and even send Amber and Marcie up there to stand guard. But Dar, I don’t want to lose you.”

“Have you heard of anything like this before?” He’d been meaning to ask, but too much had been happening.

“No, but you are the first immortal. Demons have their crystalized mana, and spirits have mana infused souls. Neither of us made channels in our bodies for mana like you have. I’m not even sure how I’d start to implement such an idea.”

She trailed off before meeting his eyes again. “This is dangerous. Please don’t push yourself too far.”

“Cherry, I’ll be careful, but I also need to grow faster than the rest of the ancient races. We might have a peaceful break here, but what happens when Bellhaven or a large pack of devils find us? Heck, we aren’t even ready to deal with winter.”

He realized he was starting to shout and lowered his voice. “Cherry, I need to try this if it can speed up my dao.”

“Fine.” Cherry stomped forward towards the cave and checked inside, coming back outside after a moment. “If I end up helping you kill yourself, know I’ll never forgive myself. Don’t you dare leave me with that, Dar.” She shook her finger at him, a stern face warring with clear worry for him.

He gave her his best smile. “I’m not going to push myself that far. Plus, I’d be an idiot to miss out on all your love.” He squeezed her hips playfully and managed to bring a small smile to her lips.

“On second thought, you owe me one now. I’ll collect later.” Cherry shooed him inside.

Dar could tell she was apprehensive, but he also felt confident that he’d been on the right path. He’d made far more progress than when he’d studied, and like Cherry had said, he was something new.

He needed to follow his instincts when his body was telling him something. There was danger in experimentation, but something about this felt far more like an opportunity.

As Dar walked into the cave, darkness surrounded him. His eyes adjusted a bit, but he could barely make out much more than a few feet ahead. Stepping back to grab a nearby branch, Dar held his hands around the end, heating it until it lit on fire.

“Stay safe.” Cherry waved from the entrance as he went further inside the cave.

Looking back, he watched as thick vines closed around the entrance, giving him his isolation. He had to admit; it was a little eerie. He’d been travelling with somebody or out in nature for so long, being isolated in a cave felt odd.

The space within the cave wasn’t large, maybe ten square feet. It was one that they had marked off as a potential winter home or storage if they could get housing up.

At the moment, there wasn’t anything but a few boxes of dried beans. They were using the cool cave to keep them fresher.

Not bothering with any of the boxes, Dar sat down in the center of the cave.

As his bottom settled on the cold, damp ground, he let loose a blast of heat that warmed and dried off the stone. He smiled. He’d gotten so used to the dao that things like that came second nature. It was easy to forget all the extra benefits he was getting from his new body.

Settling in, Dar pulled out and flipped open Sasha’s book, searching through the pages until he found the soft dao that made up her dao of silk.

The character was harder to focus on than combustion, but he accepted it was the right first step. If it did something to his body, he always had his hard dao to rely on to set himself back into some sort of balance. Combustion seemed harder to counter. He was more likely to end up in a lethal mess.

Focusing on the soft character, Dar started. He looped mana through the channels he had made when he had become an immortal once again, working to identify the ones that would line up into the character he wanted.

He traced the pattern while he stared at Sasha’s book. Unlike attempts to copy a dao character with writing, his channels were built to handle mana. And the mana channels and dao were inextricably linked. Mana fueled his daos when he put them to use.

Tracing the pattern in his body once, Dar felt something settle within him. He kept his focus this time, cycling two more times, each faster than the previous. Soon, the cycles bled into each other, and he didn’t have to study the character in the book. Instead, he focused on continuing to direct the dao character in his channels, feeding mana into the channels and keeping the cycle going.

Dar’s eyelids grew heavy, and he settled down into a meditation, imprinted the shape on his body and mind with each passing.

After a while, the constant cycling made his channels, something he thought were more metaphysical than anything else, start to ache. The aching built, but Dar could feel that the dao was just on the peak of settling into something more, so he continued pushing his body through the ache.

There was something helping him. He could feel his intersection with Sasha’s dao path as they had intertwined themselves together as dao companions. Dar continued cycling the mana, even as he ached to stop, reaching further and further just to touch a hint of the dao.

All of a sudden, mana surged up from him in a push to solidify the character. It was a rush, and Dar did his best to manage the increase properly, filling it into one solid character, all lit up at the same moment.

As it settled into the character, something clicked in Dar’s brain and soul. The soft dao settled into place beside the other four within him.

Breathing out a heavy breath, Dar fell over sideways, completely exhausted.

“Ha. I did it!” He yelled to no one, ignoring the hard ground in his complete happiness.

Learning that dao had taken everything out of him, and that was just with one lesser dao that his dao companion had already brought him closer to. But it had worked. And Dar couldn’t wait to keep experimenting. It was a small step, but it held tons of opportunity.

Dar tried to lift himself off the cave floor, but his muscles gave out and he smacked back down on the stone floor.

Okay, maybe I need a minute. Still can’t believe that worked.

After lying there for a few minutes huffing the cool cave air, Dar tried to get up again. This time he almost made it, but then he fell back down, his body not able to keep himself upright. He’d really done a number on himself.

There was noise from the entrance of the cave, and the vine covering split apart. Cherry stood on the other side, her eyes wide as she took in Dar’s collapsed form on the ground.

“Morning Cherry.” Dar tried to play it casual, pretending he meant to be on the ground and was examining some nearby dirt, but based on Cherry’s face he wasn’t fooling anybody.

“Morning?! It’s already past noon, you idiot. And you look like you are about to die.”

“Not dying. I promise. But hey, guess what? It worked.” He knew he was grinning like an idiot.

Cherry sighed and shook her head. “Oh. Good. So now you’re satisfied and will keep trying to kill yourself. I’m so glad. What am I going to do with you?” As she took in his state, a look of further concern spread on her face. “Can you walk?”

“Nope.”

With a huff, she raised her arms and vines snaked in, lifting Dar off the cold cave floor and carrying him out. “We need to talk about this later with Sasha. I’m sure she will also have an opinion.”

“Of course.” Dar had more sense than to argue when Cherry was riled up. “I think I can walk if you can get me on my feet.”

Cherry narrowed her eyes, but shifted him upright and held him with a few vines as he tottered his first few steps. “We need to get some food into you. Come on.”

She stayed close as he started towards the communal hearth. There always seemed to be something there to eat.

Marcie was hanging around outside the cave, and Dar realized she must have gotten Cherry. “Thanks, Marcie. I’ll be okay.”

She rushed forward and wrapped Dar in a hug before fleeing.

Damn, he really made them worry, didn’t he?

“I think heavy labor like trying to go set the palisade or help with woodcutting is out for me today.” Dar voiced aloud. “But I think I can go enchant the kilns.”

His minder glowered at him. “If you can’t stand up on your own after lunch, I’m having Sasha tie you up in ribbons and put you to bed.”

“Yes, dear.” Dar smiled, taking that bet. He was feeling stronger as they went. It seemed like it was just an initial bout of weakness after forming the new character.

Given how sturdy his body was both as an immortal and as an enchanted body, he was fairly sure what he’d just done wasn’t repeatable for others. He just had too many advantages for what he just attempted, yet he wound up as weak as a kitten.

Still, it was a potent tool to be able to progress his dao path like this. He was already wondering if there was a way to refine this process and enable someone else to do it, but that would mean another person would need to become an immortal.

His mind immediately went to the dao fruit in his inner world. He could bring things in and out, could he bring a dao fruit out for another human to eat?

All his thoughts disappeared as Cherry put a bowl of food in front of him. Dar didn’t even know what it was before he was devouring the whole bowl of semi-liquid food without it touching his tongue.

“There’s more. Please don’t choke.” Cherry stayed standing, ready to take the bowl back from him.

“Thanks.” Dar wiped the inside of the bowl for more and tasted it this time. It was a simple boiled and crushed corn, sort of like grits. “Did I miss anything?”

“A few people were wondering where you were. I’m also positive that if I didn’t hide you in that cave, you would have been interrupted.” She stepped away briefly to get more of the grits.

“That’s exactly why I wanted my own space. The cave was a great idea.” Dar ate a little more slowly, but it felt like his stomach was a bottomless pit.

“More?” Cherry started to take the bowl.

“No. I’ll let this settle first and see if I still need more.” He stretched his body, which was already starting to rouse after the food. He stood of his own accord. “Let’s see about these kilns, shall we?”

Cherry pursed her lips at him. “You know where they are. I need to get back to the field. Don’t make me have to come back here to carry you again.” Concern shown in her eyes over any sort of anger.

Catching her before she could leave, Dar gave her a kiss. “Thanks, really Cherry. Sorry to worry you, but it worked, and I might do it again.”

She let out a small huff and kissed him on the cheek. “We’ll talk about it with Sasha later.”

Dar made his way over to where Bart had marked the kilns. Even if he had lost half the day, he needed to do his share.

“Well, I was wondering if you’d pop up today.” Bart waved Dar down.

“I was working on some things related to my dao path this morning, but what do we have here?” He looked down at the three pits dug into the ground, topped with large stone lids.

“Here.” Bart grunted as he lifted one of the lids and revealed what lay underneath.

There were three layers of material, sand on the outside, loose stones and then a final layer of clay. All of it led to a hole about five feet deep and two feet wide.

Dar reached down and touched the clay; it was dried but not hardened. Of course they didn’t have a kiln yet to harden them. “You want these to turn off and on, right?”

Bart chuckled. “Yeah, that’d be nice.”

Dar hung the top half of his body down into the unfinished kiln. “I’ll get to work then.”

Sasha had taught him the basics. He could simply carve the dao character into the clay and be done. Depending on how deep and how large the character was would lead to how much heat it produced.

He wasn’t quite sure how big to do it, but Dar followed his intuition. It had looked like fancy scrollwork the first time Sasha had showed the conditional rules to enchanting, but he’d learned the simple parts and he carved those into the clay.

Using his new dao of softness to make it malleable even though it had already dried, Dar was able to dip his finger into the clay and cleanly build the enchantment.

Connecting the dao character to the scrollwork, Dar then connected it all to the large stake markers that Bart had used for each of the kilns. The way he’d tried to design it, the further the marker was pulled out of the ground, the hotter the kiln would get. And pushing it all the way in would stop all heat.

It might not be perfect, but it would have to do for the moment. When he’d explained it to Bart, Bart had been nearly giddy, moving the marker up and down to his delight.

Laughing, Dar had moved on to the others. He spent hours perfecting the enchantment, realizing an error when he was working on the third and going back to redo the first two. It was tiring, but in the end he was satisfied with a job well done.