Path of Dragons

For the next few weeks, Elijah fell into a rhythm. With winter tightening its grip on the area, the days shortened, and the nights grew longer. However, to his surprise, the cold didn’t seem to bother him much at all – which was a good thing, because aside from a makeshift blanket he’d stitched together from rabbit hides, he had little protection against the elements. Certainly, he’d closed the cabin off by piling moss and leaves across a few upright limbs, but he’d never been much for bushcraft. He knew some of the basics, and he could survive passably well, but Elijah knew he’d never be much of a builder.

So, his continually decreasing susceptibility to the cold was more than welcome, though he had no idea if it was due to his Body of Wood or his increased Constitution attribute. Perhaps it was both. Either way, it significantly increased his chances of surviving through the winter.

Fortunately, the crabs didn’t seem to care what time of year it was, so his hunting continued apace. However, he did worry about the lack of vitamins and carbohydrates in his diet. He did what he could to supplement his meals with seaweed that he gathered from the shore, but it was a poor substitute for a balanced diet. When his cache of berries and mushrooms ran out, he’d be in real trouble.

Which was why he’d taken to spending much of his day trying to force his garden to grow. It was going well, and the bushes had nearly reached maturity, but it would still be some time before they sprouted anything edible. The same could be said for some wild onions he’d planted nearby.

To pass the time while he sat in the middle of his garden blasting the plants with Nature’s Bounty, Elijah busied himself with whittling. It was something he’d picked up from his father, but he hadn’t practiced carving in quite some time. Years, in fact, so he was more than a little rusty – an issue that was further exacerbated by the lack of a proper knife. He had his stone-bladed knife, but it was nowhere near as good as working with a steel blade. Still, so long as he went at it deliberately, he could carve something approaching recognizability.

His first attempt had been Fremont, the dog he’d been forced to give away, but that had come out looking more like a child’s interpretation of a horse. Which meant that the only recognizable traits it bore lay in the fact that it had four legs and the proper basic shape. Still, with basic survivability taken care of, Elijah had quite a bit of free time – and he’d have more as winter truly embraced the island. So, he’d kept at it.

And day by day, he improved. Even as his technique grew more practiced, his focus shifted as well, and he stopped trying to carve figures. Instead, he wanted to replace his walking stick with something a bit more elaborate.

Which was how he found himself combing the forest for the perfect material. The hunt hadn’t gone that well. The branches he’d found were almost all rotten, and even the ones that weren’t were bent too far out of shape to be useful for his purposes. Still, he persisted until he found a wrist-thick branch that had only just fallen from a hickory tree. Elijah had no idea why it had fallen, but he suspected it had something to do with the fact that the base looked as if it had been chewed through by some small animal. Couple that with the winter winds that periodically swept through the island forest, and it wasn’t that difficult to figure out.

Branch in hand, Elijah trekked back to his cabin and set about straightening it. In the beginning, he only had some vague ideas about how to go about the task, but he did know that it had something to do with saturating the wood with steam. Through trial and error, he’d come across a decent, if a labor-intensive method of steaming the wood, then bending it into the proper shape.

Before he’d advanced his Strength, Constitution, or Regeneration, Elijah never could have kept it up for long enough to make the shapes stick. And even with his improvements, he was forced to periodically use Touch of Nature to stave off fatigue. He was also aided by One With Nature, which accentuated his physical capability to the point where he suspected that he’d reached the peak of human potential. Perhaps he’d even exceeded it. Whatever the case, it worked, even if it was a grueling process that took days. It would have been much easier if he’d had clamps and proper woodworking tools, but out in the wilderness, that simply wasn’t the case.

Either way, it was good practice for his spells and an even better workout. After two days of working on straightening the stick, Elijah’s Strength finally ticked over to ten. His Dexterity still lagged behind by a couple of points, but he had some ideas about how to remedy that – once he finished his staff.

Once the staff had been straightened, Elijah set about carving some decorations into it. When he started, he just focused on the process, uncaring about the result. Afterwards, he would liken it to absently doodling; however, it wasn’t long before his little stone-bladed knife seemed to take on a mind of its own as it carved fanciful designs in the sturdy staff. Soon enough, it started to take shape, and only when it was half-finished did Elijah realize what he’d taken for inspiration.

The staff looked remarkably like the tree spirit’s limbs – as if someone had intertwined dozens of small vines into a single structure. At first, Elijah was surprised that his mind had taken him in that direction, but the more he thought about it, the more appropriate it seemed. So, he continued along, only now he was conscious of the direction he wanted to go.

As he carved – a process spanning weeks and consisting of him steadily scraping the barely sharpened stone blade against the wood – Elijah found himself continuing to flare Touch of Nature. As always, he kept One With Nature active as well, and often, it was accompanied by Nature’s Bounty as he coaxed his garden into maturity.

Once he’d finished the process, the staff looked almost natural, as if it had been grown rather than carved. In addition, even when Elijah let his spells fall away, it practically pulsed with what he’d begun to consider his own flavor of power – a result of its constant exposure to his Ethera, no doubt.

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But it needed something else.

And Elijah knew precisely what that something was. During his exploration of the wilderness, he’d stumbled upon quite a few beehives. More than once, he’d considered pilfering the honey – not only would it provide a bit of variety to his diet, but the hive would give him access to beeswax, which had all sorts of uses. However, he’d so far decided against it because he had no apiculture skills.

And Elijah had no interest in getting swarmed, even if, from a rational perspective, he knew he could heal whatever damage a few stings might cause. With his advancement in Constitution and his body cultivation, the bees might even be incapable of penetrating his skin.

Of course, that was assuming they hadn’t evolved like the crabs had. Some animals had appeared mostly unaffected by the planet’s conversion, but others had been completely transformed. For instance, most of the hares he’d encountered were just normal rabbits, but he’d caught a few glimpses of some rabbit-like creatures that actually had horns. Who knew if the bees he’d stumbled across were similarly transformed? He’d observed them a few times, and they didn’t look any different, but there was no way of telling if they had other new defenses. Perhaps they were even more venomous than normal, which was a terrifying thought. It was one thing to get a painful sting, but it was something else entirely if they were suddenly deadly.

Even so, Elijah had come to trust his ability to heal, and he’d decided to attempt to harvest one of the hives. To that end, he’d chosen one close to the stream; if they swarmed him, he intended to cut and run, submerging himself in the frigid water until they lost interest. But he hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.

Using an ember he’d carried from the cabin, Elijah started a small fire at the base of the tree where the hive was located. Then, he added green pine needles to make the fire smoke more than normal. Finally, he waved the smoke in the direction of the hive. He only had a vague idea of how it was supposed to work, but he knew that smoking the hive was the most effective method. So, that’s what he did, waiting for a few minutes until he scrambled up the tree and, using his stone-bladed knife, cut a huge chunk of the honeycomb away.

Thankfully, the bees in the hive were incredibly lethargic, and though he picked up a few stings, it was nothing like the swarm he expected. Before long, he’d filled a shallow, wooden bowl he’d carved with the stuff, and he retreated, using Touch of Nature to heal the stings he’d received.

“Easier than expected,” he muttered to himself as he made his way back to the cabin. Along the way, he felt the presence of the panther, but he said, “No fish right now, your majesty, and I don’t think you want to eat beeswax.”

Still, he left a big chunk of it out, just in case he was wrong about cats and their tastes. After all, he wanted to do whatever it took to stay on the panther’s good side because he’d seen exactly what happened to things that drew its ire.

When Elijah made it back to his cabin, he stoked the fire and placed the honeycomb into a pot of water. Then, he set it to boiling. Once the honeycomb had melted, he strained the soupy mess, then repeated the process until, at last, he had a disc of golden wax. Grinning, he set it aside and retrieved his staff.

Fortunately, Elijah’s father had taught him how to make his own finish, which combined beeswax, turpentine, and linseed oil. While it would have been much easier to simply go to the store and buy the materials, Elijah had learned how to gather and prepare the proper materials from their sources. The linseed oil had been the easiest because flax – especially in the quantities that he needed – wasn’t difficult to find. After that, it had been a simple process of drying the seeds, then crushing them. It would have been better to boil the result, but that came with a host of problems, chiefly that it was difficult to do so without the oil combusting. There were ways to avoid that – primarily additives – but Elijah didn’t really know how to source them. So, he’d decided to simply use the raw paste, even if it wasn’t ideal.

The turpentine had a similar issue in that, ideally, it needed to be distilled, but Elijah had chosen to simply boil it and hope for the best. The results were mixed, but he expected that it would work well enough.

With the various ingredients in hand, Elijah added them together like his father had taught him, resulting in a paste that he hoped would seal the wood of his new staff. Sealing wasn’t absolutely necessary, but he had time to kill and a desire to do things properly. After creating the sealant, Elijah dipped a corner of his shirt into the mixture and started massaging it into the wood.

He went slowly, and it took him most of a day to finish the process. Meanwhile, he continued to use his various spells, almost on instinct as much as because he needed them. Finally, with his hands cramping despite his constant usage of Touch of Nature, he finished.

And when he did, he got a couple of surprises.

First, the weeks’ worth of carving the staff had resulted in his Dexterity increasing to the point where it matched his Strength. That was somewhat expected, even if he’d been too distracted to pay much attention to it. However, the second surprise was that the System recognized the completion of the staff with a notification:

Congratulations! You have created a unique item [Staff of Natural Harmony]! This item will serve to enhance any spells, skills, or techniques with a nature aspect. Grade: Simple

“W-what the…”

Sitting in the center of his budding Grove, where he’d been flaring his Nature’s Bounty, Elijah was dumbfounded. He’d simply meant to carve a cool-looking walking stick, but it seemed that he’d overshot that mark by quite a bit.

Excited, he monitored his spell, but its area of effect hadn’t grown by a single inch. In fact, it seemed exactly the same as it had before he’d finished the staff. And he knew good and well that Nature’s Bounty had a nature aspect. It was right there in the name! So that meant he was doing something wrong.

After a few minutes of frustrating experimentation, Elijah figured it out when he actively chose to channel his Ethera through the staff, as opposed to simply using his body. Instantly, the area of effect associated with Nature’s Bounty grew by almost ten feet. More than that, though, the associated atmosphere of Ethera felt heavier. Denser. More potent. Elijah couldn’t be sure, but he interpreted that feeling as the spell being stronger, and not just in terms of its area of effect.

Which meant that the force he could bring to bear had just grown. Not only would his Grove and garden benefit from the increased power of Nature’s Bounty, but he suspected that channeling Storm’s Fury through the Staff of Natural Harmony would result in a more potent effect as well.

“A grand achievement for one so young and inexperienced,” came Nerthus’s voice, though when Elijah looked up at the majestic tree at the center of the Grove, there was no physical representation of the spirit. Instead, the voice was disembodied, which somehow seemed even more magical. “I have chosen my guardian well, it seems.”

Then, Nerthus’s presence faded away before Elijah had a chance to ask any questions. He was about to head back to the cabin when a new notification flashed before his eyes, this one even more interesting than the one that had announced the completion of his staff.

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