Path of Dragons

Book 1: Chapter 19: Not Alone

Elijah crouched at the tree line, watching the crabs scuttle across the rocky shore. Then, he tossed a bit of fish entrails only a few feet away from the most isolated crustacean. It took the creature a moment to notice it, but when it did, it wasted no time before skittering across the rocks and gobbling it up. That’s when Elijah tossed another bit of fish guts a little further away. After the crab found that one, too, he repeated the process. That’s how, a few feet at a time, Elijah led the crustacean away from its fellows. Once it was sufficiently isolated, he struck.

Not with the homemade spear in his hand, but with magic.

A thin bolt of lightning, barely visible in the harsh light of the winter sun, descended from the sky to hit the crustacean in the center of its muddy brown shell. It let out a shriek as it convulsed, its limbs spasming out of control as it flopped to the gravelly ground.

But Elijah knew from experience that it wasn’t dead. It would take two more strikes – and all the Ethera in Elijah’s core – for the monster to succumb. He quickly re-cast the spell, to similar results. Finally, he finished it off with a third cast. Elijah sighed.

For all the excitement he’d felt when he’d gotten his first attack spell, it had proven to be a bit of a mixed bag. While the spell did allow him to hunt in relative safety, it wasn’t nearly as powerful as he’d hoped it would be. Clearly, the Druid archetype was no mighty wizard, even if it gave Elijah a single attack spell.

Rising from his cover, Elijah trotted to where the crab had died, then set to harvesting it. He’d done so dozens of times over the past eight weeks, so he found the task boring but ultimately necessary. After all, with the onset of winter, the fish had retreated into deeper waters, leaving his once-fertile fishing hole desolated. The crabs – along with his stores of mushrooms and berries – were his only consistent source of food. Sure, Elijah managed to kill a few hares and squirrels here and there, but those instances were so infrequent that he knew he couldn’t rely on them when it came to his survival.

Of course, if things got really bad, there were always the bugs he felt crawling through the earth. They wouldn’t be pleasant, but Elijah expected that they would provide some sustenance. Still, he wasn’t quite at the point where he needed to resort to eating insects. He was tired of crab, but it was still better than eating crickets and grubs.

“Yeah. My standards are sky high,” he muttered to himself. Other animals had no problems eating bugs. It was the same with many human cultures as well. But Elijah found the idea disgusting. Even so, he knew that if he got hungry enough, he’d start digging through the dirt like any other hungry animal. Only, he had an advantage; with One With Nature, he could feel everything within a few feet, and the ground was no barrier to the ability. No – he was perfectly suited for bug hunting. He just didn’t want to do it.

So, he hunted crab. Fortunately, there seemed to be an endless number of the creatures – which didn’t seem all that surprising. Purple shore crabs had always been very populous, and the onset of the System hadn’t changed that. At first, Elijah had wondered if the creatures would simply starve – after all, with greater mass came the need for a more plentiful food source – but that problem had been solved by the corpses of sea creatures that regularly washed ashore. Most were half-rotted and bore severe wounds, but the crabs didn’t seem to mind. They had always been scavengers, after all.

Soon enough, Elijah finished harvesting the crab, putting the meat in a huge basket he’d woven from sticks, dried reeds, and leaves. Once he’d finished, he set the basket aside and repeated the process, killing and harvesting another crab. He didn’t need the meat for himself, but still, he felt compelled to feed – or perhaps pay tribute to – the panther, which he’d only seen a handful of times over the past eight weeks.

Gathering his huge basket – it was at least three feet across – Elijah began the trek back to the cabin. About halfway there, he felt the presence of the panther bearing down on him. It wasn’t as suffocating or terror-inducing as it once had been, but it was still enough to make him sweat. He set the basket down, then piled half of the meat on the forest floor.

“Your tribute, your majesty,” he said, his voice loud and slightly mocking. “Feels sort of like it should be the other way around, though. You’re the mighty hunter, right? You should be feeding me.”

The forest stilled, and a wave of oppressive power washed over Elijah. Unperturbed, he said, “Fine, fine. You’re the king around here. I know my place.”

The feeling disappeared. Elijah wasn’t certain if the cat could understand him – he suspected that it could, after a fashion – but he didn’t really care. The panther hadn’t killed him yet, so he didn’t think it was suddenly going to change its mind over a snarky comment. Besides – Elijah had studiously held up his end of the bargain by providing food. The cat had no reason to kill him.

But it was still a wild animal, wasn’t it? As such, it was unpredictable. There was no telling what might set the panther off. Then again, it was far more intelligent than any wild animal Elijah had ever seen – even dolphins or chimps. So, applying his previous experiences might not be the best idea.

Whatever the case, they seemed to have a mutually beneficial arrangement, and Elijah wasn’t going to do anything to mess that up. So, he added a few handfuls of crab meat to the pile before saying, “There you go. Next time one of those monsters attacks, remember who feeds you, yeah?”

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Predictably, the panther didn’t give voice to his agreement. Nor did it show itself at all, and without the cat’s oppressive aura, Elijah would have thought that he was talking to empty air. But he knew the cat was there. It had heard him. And he suspected that it understood. That would have to be enough.

With that, Elijah continued back to the cabin. Along the way, he kept an eye out for mushrooms and berries, but with the onset of winter and his constant foraging, he found nothing. It would have been troubling if he hadn’t amassed a significant store of food.

And it had finally gotten cold enough that he didn’t have to worry nearly so much about spoilage, even with the crab meat. That was a boon, even if it came with the decidedly less pleasurable side effect of him being cold all the time. He’d tried his best to guard against it, making rudimentary clothing out of woven grass and the few rabbit pelts he’d managed to acquire, but it was mostly ineffective.

Still, with his increased Constitution as well as the constant enhancement that came with One With Nature, it wasn’t so bad. Even though the days had continued to grow colder, he felt that, unless things got much, much worse than was normal for the Pacific northwest, he would survive. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but that was true of most of his life now.

After storing everything away in raised boxes he’d carved, Elijah added some more wood to his fire, then set off toward his budding Grove. The trip was mostly uneventful, save for when he ran into a rapidly decomposing monster corpse. It looked different than the one he and the cat had fought. Smaller. And somehow less oppressive. However, it was still an alien creature that could – and would, if it got the chance – rip him to shreds. Thankfully, the panther seemed to take hunting them as its personal mission, and over the past eight weeks, Elijah had run into a handful of other monster corpses.

Leaving it behind – there was nothing useful about it – Elijah continued on his way until he reached the Grove. In some ways, the meadow containing the huge tree was the same. The dimensions hadn’t changed; nor had the tree itself. However, about thirty feet from the natural tree line, there was now a ring of saplings. They were barely taller than Elijah himself, but even that much growth was so abnormal as to be considered miraculous. Part of their rapid growth was due to his daily usage of Nature’s Bounty, but Elijah suspected that it was also a characteristic of the trees themselves. After all, they’d come from acorns he’d gathered from around the majestic tree at the center of the meadow, and he knew good and well that it wasn’t normal.

The ambient Ethera of the area had also increased significantly, and Elijah could keenly feel its nature aspect. It was soothing and energizing, and it increased the Regeneration of his core significantly. Normally, it would take him two hours to regenerate the Ethera in his core, but in the Grove, it was cut down to a quarter of that.

And that increased Regeneration had allowed him to make abundant use of Nature’s Bounty, which in turn, had continued to increase his Regeneration. It was a perpetuating cycle, and one for which Elijah was extremely grateful. Without it, his Grove would have taken much, much longer.

After completing two circuits through the circle of saplings, Elijah went deeper into the Grove until he reached ten neat rows of turned soil. From that soil sprouted dozens of small plants that would, Elijah hoped, eventually become berry bushes that would, in turn, make gathering food much easier. But the bushes were in their infancy, and it would be weeks before they bore fruit. Still, the fact that they’d sprouted at all was a good sign for Elijah’s long-term survivability.

Elijah planted himself in the center of his nascent garden, crossing his legs and activating Nature’s Bounty. His spell’s range was just wide enough to encompass the entire garden – by design – so, once activated, he only had to sit and keep it going. So, that’s what he did; however, as he did so, he focused on the network of pathways and channels that constituted his soul. It was metaphysical in nature, so his only concept of how it worked came from feeling the Ethera as it traced its way through the network. However, a few weeks before, he’d discovered that he could guide and accelerate the process, dumping extra Ethera into the spell and making it more potent.

Or that’s what he thought. There were no manuals to read, and Elijah could only go by what he felt. But he expected that it was one of the reasons behind the garden’s rapid growth. In any case, it didn’t seem to be hurting anything, so he kept at it, pushing at the boundaries of his soul’s pathways.

That was how Elijah spent the next few hours until his soul started to ache. The first time he’d discovered the process, Elijah had pushed through the pain. A mistake, as it happened, because he’d eventually pushed himself too far, resulting in an inability to use any Ethera at all for the next two days. So, the moment he felt that ache in his soul, Elijah cut the spell off.

Looking up, he saw that there was still plenty of daylight left, so he decided to explore a little. He still had little concept of the area beyond his immediate surroundings, so he’d resolved to spend a bit of time each day in exploration. Before he started, though, Elijah knew he needed to refill his core. So, he waited about twenty more minutes before he set off toward the east.

Clutching his new, homemade flint-bladed spear, Elijah trekked inland through the dense forest. One hour passed, then two. Along the way, he gathered the few mushrooms and berries that had managed to stubbornly resist the effects of winter. He also saw signs of game, but he didn’t run into any animals.

Eventually, though, Elijah crested a small hill only to find himself atop a sheer cliff that dropped off at least two-hundred feet. Below him, the canopy of the forest ran on for at least a couple more miles until it abruptly ended at the sea.

“It’s an island…”

Indeed, Elijah could see the curve of the shore a few miles in the distance. Of course, it still could have been a peninsula, but he didn’t think that was the case, for some indefinable reason. In any case, Elijah could see more land stretching across the horizon in the distance. Miles of turbulent sea separated Elijah from the mainland, but at least he wasn’t stranded in the middle of the ocean.

Finally finding a use for Eyes of the Eagle, Elijah embraced the spell, then channeled Ethera from his core and through his soul. Immediately, his vision sharpened, and he could see the distant shore as if it was only a few hundred yards away.

And what he saw was both troubling and exciting.

It seemed that he was not as alone as he thought he was.

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