Path of Dragons

Elijah chipped the last bit of wood away, then ran his thumb over the pawn’s head before holding it out to inspect. It wasn’t perfect, but his whittling skills had improved since he’d first washed ashore. And using the knife he’d taken from the gnomish invader was much better than using the flint-bladed knife upon which he’d once relied. So, at least the chess piece was recognizable.

He set it down on the homemade board, where it joined all the others he’d carved. Finally, after four nights of work, he’d finished the set.

Leaning back in the chair, he looked down at the small pile of wood shavings and sighed. It had been almost a week since he’d returned from the tower, and he’d spent much of that time in total relaxation. Sure, he still had to pick the incredibly nourishing berries from his garden, and he’d spent a little time fishing as well, but after spending the past few months in a struggle for survival, none of that seemed so onerous.

But as he sat there, Elijah had to admit something to himself.

He was devastatingly bored. At first, whittling his chess board had been enough to stave off his boredom, and because of that, he’d stretched the process out quite a bit. However, now that he was finished, he couldn’t help but wonder what he was supposed to do with all his free time.

If he’d been back home in Hawai’i, he might’ve gone out hiking. Or hung out with his friends and coworkers. Perhaps gone on a date with Lacey. Maybe he would have planted himself in front of his laptop and watched some trashy television or the latest, greatest prestige drama. He could’ve gone to a football game. He could’ve played basketball. Or headed down to the gym to workout. The modern world was replete with near infinite ways to waste time and relax, but stranded on his island, opportunities for recreation were slim.

Which was why he’d long since taken to carving various bits of wood.

Still, that could only occupy him for so long before he started to go a little crazy.

The fact was that, with his basic needs met, and with the safety his home represented, boredom had truly begun to set in.

Sighing, Elijah decided to do something he’d been putting off for some time. So, he rose from his seat – which had been grown from the floor – and prepared for a little excursion. Or more accurately, a project that had been sitting in the back of his mind for months before he’d entered the tower.

To put it simply, he wanted to make some soap.

At the most basic level, he understood the process well enough. He needed to make some lye, then melt some fat, and add the two together. He’d even seen it done a few times when he was young. But vague memories were not enough to make him confident that he could do it. Still, he was willing to try.

So, the first thing he did – after slipping on some shorts he’d cobbled together from the last remnants of the cloth he’d taken from the invaders – was grab his equipment. Staff in one hand and the axe he’d taken from the dwarf in the other, he descended from his tree house and into the early morning air. It was cold, but judging from the lack of bite in the wind, winter was close to giving way to spring.

His first task in his quest for soap was simple: find lots of wood.

So, axe in hand, he set off into the forest and set about the arduous process of gathering fallen branches, which he dragged back to his old cabin. It was just as decrepit as always, but at least the smell of rotten crab had dissipated in the months since he’d last visited. Once there, he cleared an area, then once it was free of debris, he started piling his branches. It took most of the day to get enough, but by the time he’d finished, he had enough for a sizable bonfire.

He lit it, then sat back to watch as the flames enveloped the meticulously stacked branches. Once that was done, he found a large tree whose trunk was nearly two feet across, then set about cutting it down.

With his enhanced Strength, Elijah was only held back by his tools. Luckily, the dwarven axe was well-made, and the tree fell after only a couple of hours. By that point, night had begun to fall, so he retreated back to his tree house, where he spent the night whittling before going to sleep.

The next morning, he returned to cut the fallen tree into two sections before rolling them next to the remains of the bonfire. Elijah added some additional branches, then started the process of turning the rounds of lumber into a pair of barrels, which, over the next few days, he accomplished by slowly chipping away at the interiors of both. It really wasn’t so different from how he’d created his bowls, just on a much larger scale.

In the end, it was an entire week before he was satisfied, and by that point, he’d managed to accumulate a huge pile of wood ash. So, after lining the bottom of the largest barrel with sticks, then layering some pine straw overtop that, he started shoveling ash inside. Once the barrel was full, he took the smaller barrel, which he estimated would probably hold about twenty gallons of water, to the stream, where he filled it.

Then, Elijah started pouring water into the larger barrel, stopping only when he’d created a soupy mess that he covered with a layer of sticks and moss.

With that done, he dropped off his tools at his tree house, then shifted into a panther and went on the hunt.

Given his awareness of everything on the island, locating his prey was laughably easy, and he quickly hunted down and killed a large boar. The only tricky part was avoiding its lethal tusks, but Elijah was experienced enough with hunting dangerous prey that he had no issues with that.

Once the animal was dead, he shifted back into human form and dragged the three-hundred pound carcass back to the cabin, where he processed it. The meat and edible organs went back to the tree house’s cold storage, but he had other plans for the layer of fat he took from the animal’s back.

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After cutting it into chunks, he gathered the old pot he’d long ago found in the cabin, then started melting the fat down over a smaller fire he’d built. Once it had turned to liquid, he poured it through a piece of cloth – again, taken from the clothing he’d looted from the invaders – and into one of his bowls.

He repeated that process a couple of times until he had nothing but pure fat, which he left to cool and harden.

With that done, his next task was to gather something to make the eventual product smell a bit better. For that, he harvested some pine oil before retiring for the night. The next day, he poked a hole in the bottom of his large barrel and drained the ash water into the smaller receptacle.

The dark brown color looked right, but he needed to check if it was appropriately alkaline. To do that, he tasted it. Normally, he’d never have done that – that was a good way to get your tongue melted – but he had access to Touch of Nature, so he wasn’t afraid of playing loose and fast with his own health.

Fortunately for his tongue, it was only slightly alkaline. Unfortunately for his project, that meant he needed to repeat the process. So, he filled the barrel – better categorized as a lye hopper, considering its use – with more ash, then poured the water back in. It took three more rounds over the next week to get it where he wanted, but by the time he’d finished, he was satisfied with the results.

So, after straining it a couple of times, he boiled the resulting liquid into a more concentrated solution.

Finally, he was ready to make his soap.

The remaining process involved melting the fat, then adding the lye water before spending the next three hours stirring it. During that time, he added a bit of pine oil and a few pinches of salt he’d gotten by boiling seawater. Eventually, the mixture took on a pudding-like consistency, telling him that it was ready. Upon reaching that point, Elijah poured the white substance into a mold he’d whittled for that purpose and took it back to his tree house.

After that, it was just a matter of waiting a few weeks until everything hardened.

All in all, it had taken Elijah a week to finish the project. But now? He was back to having nothing to occupy his time. So, without anything else to focus on, he returned to his Grove and, while flaring Nature’s Bounty, circled through the garden. He was on his third revolution when he noticed that the ancestral tree had subtly changed.

Before, it had taken the appearance of a massive and ancient oak tree. It wasn’t one, but that was how it had looked. But now? Its brown–grey bark had begun to skew closer to white, and its leaves – which, given the season, the presence of which was more than a little incongruous – were distinctly lighter. In addition, the Ethera in the area felt noticeably thicker than before.

He shook his head, knowing that the Shard of the World Tree was responsible.

Was that the extent of the changes he could expect? Or was there more in store?

There was no way to know, but Elijah couldn’t help but wonder if he’d made a big mistake. In any case, after finishing his rounds, he set off to explore more of the island. He was aware of everything in his territory – which stretched across the whole island – but there was a distinct difference between that awareness and actually laying eyes on it. To Elijah, it felt like the difference between seeing photos of something and experiencing it.

So, with that in mind, he began a thorough exploration of the territory he’d claimed. That occupied him for the next few days, though when he reached the cliff overlooking the tower, he got an incredible surprise.

He could feel the seafloor.

His Domain only extended a few feet past the cliff, but it had definitively grown. Which, according to Nerthus, should not have been possible. So, Elijah used Ancestral Circle to teleport back to his Grove, then marched toward the ancestral tree to demand some answers.

Nerthus responded to his calls with some alacrity, and when Elijah told him what was happening, the tree spirit said, “It must be the shard. The boundaries of your Domain are no longer as fixed as they once were.”

“Does this mean it’ll keep growing forever?”

“No. This planet is too large, and the Ethera is too diffuse,” Nerthus answered. “But with luck, your territory will soon encompass the tower. If that happens, you will not need to conquer it again.”

“I don’t understand,” Elijah admitted.

“The excess Ethera the tower is meant to contain will go to fueling your Grove,” Nerthus said. “It’s not dissimilar from how the Grove prevents the manifestation of other dimensional rifts.”

That was when Elijah realized that, since returning from the tower, he’d yet to see or feel any other Voxx incursions. When he asked Nerthus about it, the tree spirit explained that his Grove drained any dimensional disturbances of Ethera, keeping them from forming.

“It won’t completely disable the tower, but it will keep it from overflowing,” Nerthus finished. “Assuming that your Domain grows that large, of course.”

That was a weight off Elijah’s shoulders. Even if he was a little bored, he’d been dreading going back into the tower. If it was necessary, he’d already decided he would do it, but now, it didn’t seem like he’d have to.

Not unless he wanted to.

It was just a seed of a feeling, but Elijah had begun to move past some of the more horrible aspects of his time in the tower. He could acknowledge that they were terrible, but time had begun to heal those wounds and blur the memories. Instead, he’d started to focus on how much he had grown as well as the triumph he’d felt upon conquering it.

“That is not uncommon,” Nerthus said when Elijah had explained what he was feeling. “This universe is built on Strength, and the most efficient way to progress is to challenge dimensional rifts and conquer towers.”

“I see,” Elijah said. “What is to prevent me from conquering it again, then?”

Indeed, if that was the best way to grow stronger, then it made sense to simply repeat the process over and over.

“Diminishing returns,” Nerthus said. “Doing so will not gain as much kill energy. Of course, you can still earn money, but –”

“Money? I didn’t get any money.”

“Of course not.”

“Explain.”

Nerthus sighed. “The System rewards killing Voxx more than anything else, and the same goes for killing creatures in the towers,” he said. “Some of that reward comes via kill energy – which is just another form of Ethera, by the way – but the bulk of the reward is monetary. If you wish to collect your reward, you only need to go to a Branch of the World Tree, which will read your status and give you your reward in the form of currency.”

“I…and where do I find one of a Branch of the World Tree?”

“Major population centers,” said Nerthus.

“Like the settlement across the strait?”

“Perhaps, if they imported one. For natives, someone will have to first join the Cult of the World Tree as an Envoy, which will grant a spell to grow a Branch,” Nerthus explained. “It really is exciting. Most people in the wider universe never get to see such a thing.”

“So, you’re saying that when I reach one of these Branches, it’ll be able to tell what I’ve killed, and they’ll just give me a bunch of money,” Elijah summarized.

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s good to know,” he said. He had no idea how the System’s monetary System had been implemented in the world at large, but he suspected that, as was always the case in any society, money would be incredibly important going forward.

Not that it did him much good. He was still stuck on his island, and though he felt confident about crossing the strait, he certainly couldn’t do so until his domain rendered the tower safe.

So, he really wasn’t any better off than before. But on the bright side, at least he’d have some soap in a couple of weeks.

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