Dao Divinity 2 Chapter 2 (Patreon)

They stepped off the wild trail and onto a path that had been worn down in the few days they’d travelled it.

Up ahead, the village sprawled out, a collection of small huts nestled up against the stone cliffs and following the new palisade wall out from the cliffs. A few caves in the cliffs were enclosed by the partially complete palisade wall, but no one had taken up residence in them.

Dar and Bart had been having men dig out stone so they could build some more fortified structures.

The huts were nice for now, but summer was over and the leaves had turned into a rainbow warning of the winter to come. Dar wasn’t convinced the huts would stand up against the brunt of a winter storm, and there wasn’t enough space in the caves as they were at the moment. Dar had also seen first-hand how quickly devils could burn down a town. He liked the idea of having something that would be harder for them to destroy.

So the cave mining was a two-part solution, to both improve their dwellings outside the cave, and to expand the caves should they need them for shelter this winter.

As they continued into the center of the village, they came up to the large communal space. The open area was split in half by a massive fire pit. One side had tables on the outskirts and was dotted with rocks and log stumps for seating closer to the fire pit. The other side was wide open for larger projects, such as the trees that were being dragged in now.

The area had naturally become a gathering point. The entire village came together to eat meals and work on projects. It had helped build their community and ease some of the tension between the different groups of demons, spirits, and humans.

Dar gave Glump a nod and broke off, spotting Sasha busying herself around one of the tables. She was so focused on her task that she didn’t see him approach, so he stopped just a bit away from her and smiled as he watched her work.

Her long raven black hair was not as tidy as it was when he’d met her. She preferred to pull it back with a ribbon now, and she’d abandoned her large witchy hat. He’d found her attractive before, but there was something more natural about the way she styled herself now. Although she still wore dresses despite the heat and the labor they were all doing.

Tailoring clothes seemed to be a deep part of her as a demon. She also had strong ideas about his wardrobe. Given that he was the leader of this new village, she made sure he looked the part.

Sasha was a demon, of what she had purposefully kept to herself, and even naked in bed he hadn’t found a sign of anything hinting at what animal she’d been before she touched upon her first dao.

Sasha had formed the greater dao of silk and used it to become a seamstress for the wealthy of Kindrake, creating fanciful dresses and enchanting them to be better than anything a human could make.

Sliding up behind her, Dar wrapped his arms around her midsection and pulled her close.

“Dar!” She let out a surprised squeak. “I was working.” Her objection was weakened by the way her body molded into him as she pressed her hips back into his own. “Is someone excited to see me?”

“Always, dear. What are you working on?” He leaned down and gave her a kiss on the cheek while he studied what she’d been doing. There was a large cloth laying on the table. It looked like she’d been working to enchant it.

“Trying to fix the bed problem.” Sasha muttered, clearly frustrated with her progress. Dar ran his lips along her cheek and up to her ear, nibbling a bit as he went and enjoying the contented sigh he got in return. Placing his hand on her waist, he slowly started sliding his hand up her body until he reached her bountiful chest, eliciting a slight moan. “You really are an animal sometimes.” Her voice was breathy.

Sasha’s dao of silk was made up of three lesser dao, soft, fibrous, and elasticity. Mostly the first and last, when applied to her body, making it the softest body Dar had ever encountered. He loved the feel of her and took the opportunities he had to touch her.

At first he’d avoided doing anything where others could see, but the culture in Granterra was far more open than what he’d known on earth. It was one of the thing’s he’d been forced to get used to after arriving in this world.

“How does this fix the bed problem?”

She gave him a playful slap on the wrist as his hands got a little too friendly. “If you’d settle down and study enchanting a little more, you’d see and not have to ask.” She gave him a stern face before continuing. “I’m trying to make the cloth not only be soft, but make anything below it soft and elastic as well.”

“So then we could drape it over a rock and have a bed?” Dar asked, taking a closer look at the enchantment. The characters were blurry, evading his ability to actually read them. That happened whenever you tried to look at a dao you hadn’t yet understood. He wanted to push through it, but the previous times he’d done that had ended in nose bleeds.

“Exactly. Now, how’s your dao going?” Sasha flipped her focus back to him.

“Nothing yet.” He tried and failed to hold back a heavy sigh.

Sasha reached down into her dress and pulled out a book. He knew it actually came from the enchanted pouch tied to her thigh, but it was always interesting to watch her pull odds and ends out of her dress. “Study the combustion dao character. Sometimes working on something else is what you need to clear your mind and make progress.”

Dar took one last squeeze of her hips before he freed Sasha and took the book. “Love you.” He kissed the side of her head and flipped it open.

She’d labeled the pages since he’d last looked at it. He smiled to himself. He’d been asking her all the time, which was which. It looked like she’d wanted to streamline it a bit.

Sasha, like many demons and spirits, recorded what daos they knew so they could share with their dao companions. The closest thing they had to marriage.

Besides the three dao’s he hoped would form the greater dao of granite, he had heat. Sasha’s combustion dao would be a perfect pair for him to build closer to fire. The dao of granite he wanted would best help the village build, but fire would be great in combat and defending the village.

With Lilith, a powerful demon gone, seals were breaking and more devils were entering the world. According to her words, before she’d passed on, he had a destiny to stop them.

For now, he sat on a stump close to the fire and tried to trace the character for the dao of combustion. His finger moved as his eyes tracked the lines of the character, hoping to use his muscle memory to imprint the dao character into his mind.

But the character grew fuzzy, and his eyes slipped from the character, losing focus. He tried not to get too frustrated. Demons all spoke of the years it typically took them to reach their next dao.

He was a marvel for reaching four lesser daos in such a short time period, but he’d set the bar high for himself. He needed to grow more powerful to protect the village he was trying to create. Devils were already becoming more bullish in their attacks; it was only a matter of time before he’d need all the firepower he could get.

Frustrated, Dar felt his mana swirling around with his tumultuous feelings. He wondered if he should go for a run or something to work off the extra energy, but as he sat feeling it move through his body, Dar realized that it actually felt like it was trying to build to something.

Closing his eyes, he looked at his inner body and all the channels that he’d created to move mana around his body. They were a network of near infinite possibilities.

The mana continued to swirl, certain areas flickering with a bit of extra mana. The arcs and lines almost formed characters. Dar watched the mana swirl, a thought forming. He knew that mana and dao were closely linked, so it made sense that the two might somehow be connected. And there was something in the shapes he was seeing that felt… right.

Pushing out any other thoughts, Dar focused again on the character he’d been studying for combustion. Instead of tracing it with his finger, he began to flow his mana through his channels, working to find the ones that would line up to create the shape.

Dar had part of it formed when he lost his focus and the mana bled out back into the broader channels, losing the shape. Taking a deep breath, he went back to work, making sure to keep his breathing steady and focus on where he needed the mana.

After a few more failed attempts, he managed to pull mana into the shape he needed, and hold it through an entire cycle of his mana. His body resonated with the dao character in a more intimate way than he’d ever had studying by tracing the characters.

In his excitement, Dar loosened his focus slightly, and the mana started to drain into its normal pattern, and pain began to wrack his chest, his chest squeezing with the extra pressure.

Slamming all the distractions in his mind to the side, Dar breathed deeply, concentrating only on the dao character and reforming it before it had completely dissolved. His body continued to resonate with the dao of combustion with each pass, growing greater and greater. He kept his focus, refusing to let his overexcitement mess it up.

“Dar. Get up! We need you.” Someone shouted, shattering his concentration.

The dao character crumbled, and Dar came to, leaning over and puking up blood. It felt like his entire core was being shredded.

“What did you do?” He could hear Sasha run up behind him. A slight ripple on the wind told him her ribbons were out, and she was ready to fight.

The other voice backed away as Dar continued spitting out blood, but Dar heard the person in the background talking to another villager. “But we need his help to carry Russ back.”

Sasha’s voice broke through then, turning on whoever had spoken. “As you can see he’s in no—”

“What happened to Russ?” Dar growled through the pain. It was a sudden event, though he was feeling weak from it, it wouldn’t stop him.

“Dar, please.” Sasha came up behind him and rubbed a hand in slow circles on his back.

He raised a hand, waving her concern away. “Not as bad as it looks. What’s wrong with Russ?” He managed to lift his head and see who he was talking to.

The voice had been one of the younger spirits in the village and one of Russ’ women. Claire went hunting with him most days. Dar couldn’t remember what her dao was.

“We were attacked by a demon. She was too fast.” The woman looked like she was on the edge of breaking down.

Dar spit out the last of the blood in his mouth and sat up, wiping his chin. He knew he probably looked like a mess, but now wasn’t the time to be concerned with how it looked. Russ needed his help.

“Show me.” He leaned over, pushing himself up to stand. He was a little lightheaded, but he’d be fine.

“Dar.” Sasha pulled at his sleeve.

“I’m fine. We’ll talk when I’m back. Despite what it looks like, I think I made progress with something new.” He gave Sasha a kiss on the forehead, ignoring the scowl on her face that said she thought he should rest.

Turning to Russ’ woman, he nodded. “Lead the way.”

Claire darted out to the woods, clearly not wanting to waste a second with more words. Dar increased his pace to keep up with her as she wound around the granite cliffs to the break in between them. He’d been in this area before. The break seemed to be caused by an inlet to the Bell river once upon the time, but it was now a nice path into the northern forest on the other side of the cliffs.

He had to work to keep an eye on the woman in the woods; she blended in well. Her pale green hair was like the underside of an oak leaf. And right now, it was braided up and swishing back and forth as she picked her way through the quiet forest.

Dar knew the quiet of the forest was a sign; there was still danger near.

“How much farther?”

“Not much more.” Her head snapped to something that Dar didn’t make out and then cut a ninety-degree angle, still rushing through the forest. “Almost there.”

She didn’t have to say anything because Dar could hear people up ahead.

When they came into view, Dar was stunned. Russ was bleeding badly on the forest floor. Three of his other girls were angled around him, holding spears and watching the trees.

They looked at Dar as he approached before taking a few steps away from Russ, making room for Dar to check on him.

Russ was a demon, a big burly demon that kept his coyote face and neck. He only blended to more of a humanoid shape at the shoulders, but he kept his patchy fur all the way down to his feet. From what others had said, many of the male demons tended to stick with many of their previous animal traits because they associated them with strength.

Dar leaned down, feeling for a pulse. It was still there, but weak. He was in bad shape, covered in cuts. “Okay, we need to move him.”

“That’s what you are here for. We couldn’t move him and defend against it.” A demon girl with a pair of rams horns curling out of her head said, hissing a bit as she said ‘it’.

Dar nodded. He would get the full story out of them later. If there was danger around, they needed to move. He wasn’t sure how much longer Russ had in him.

Hefting the demon over his shoulder, he nodded to them and they started to move as a group, keeping their circle around Dar and watching into the trees.

“What are we looking for?” Dar asked, starting to loop mana through his channels so he would be ready to use any of his dao if he needed to.

“Demon. Cat-like. Very fast.” Ram girl spoke in clipped, clearly agitated words.

Dar nodded, keeping his head up as he hauled Russ. The demon was bulky, almost as big as Dar. Luckily for them both, Dar’s body was covered in enchantments. Carrying him back to camp wasn’t a problem. But if they got in a fight, that would get trickier. He wasn’t sure how to balance Russ without hurting him further if he was forced to fight.

“Maybe if it attacks, you should run with Russ.” The Claire spoke.

“No, if this is a big cat, that’s exactly what it probably wants. If we scatter, it can try to pick one of us off.” Dar wanted to ask all of their names, but now wasn’t the best time.

A branch cracked and Dar’s hand shot up, prepared to blast heat at their enemy.

He and a doe stared at each other for a moment before the doe shot off deeper into the woods.

Dar and the girls let out a collective breath, and he lowered his hand. But just as his arm was halfway down, something flew into him from the other side.

Pain laced up his arm as he tumbled to the side. Dar drew on his hard dao for his skin and to protect Russ.

Whatever it was kicked off Dar, right in the stomach.

He righted himself, earning a wheezed grunt from Russ. Crouched on the ground before him was a cat girl. She was slim with curves in the right places, and mostly human with fluffy cat ears and a tail. She had a jaguar pattern to her ears and tail, the black circles with darker red-ish coloring on the inside.

Dar knew a few guys back on earth that would be in heaven right now. And he had to admit, there was a cuteness to her, even when she was in her battle stance.

But she would have been cuter if her hands weren’t dripping his blood on the forest floor.

She licked her plump pink lips, looking at Dar, but it wasn’t sexy at all. It looked more like she was ready to eat him as she crouched low, reading to spring again.

“Ha!” The ram demon jumped forward with her spear, but the jaguar girl did a small hop and twisted her body around the spear, lashing out with her hands like they were claws.

Dar could sense the mana in her hands as they tore right through the girl’s clothes. The ram girl was barely able to get out of the way.

She and the others settled back into a ring around Dar, trying to guard Russ, but it didn’t slip his notice that her clothes were rapidly being dyed red.

“Keep moving. We don’t have to kill her.” He needed to get them out of the forest and back to the village. He could come back later and deal with the jaguar girl.

“But she hurt Russ. We need to fight back.” Ram girl tried to argue, but she was slapped upside the head by one of the others.

“We leave now. Thank you, boss, for helping with Russ. I know the two of you don’t always get along.”

Dar’s eyes never left their attacker, who at the moment was stalking in a slow circle around them, waiting for an opening. Luckily, she didn’t have one. The girls held the ring steady.

“We keep going. Come on.” Dar stood and touched his own wound. It wasn’t deep enough to prevent him from moving, but he was sure Sasha would throw a fit when he got back.

He didn’t need to remind the girls again as they moved as one, keeping the feral cat girl in their sights. She didn’t take another swipe at them. Instead, she simply perched, watching and waiting for them to slip up.

Eventually, she slipped back into the trees. But given her last attempt to attack them, Dar wasn’t going to slacken his attention.

The girls led him back a ways before they pointed out a split tree that looked like it had been struck by lightning. “Turn due east here and we can find our way back to the village.”

Ah, that’s what she’d sighted earlier. They are using the tree as a landmark to find their way back. They probably had a few they’d developed in the short time they’d been hunting this forest.

“If I wanted to come back out here by myself, how would I get back to the area we were at before?” Dar asked.

“Up the paths from the cliff, stay straight till you hit the split tree, turn due north and keep going. There’s a ravine with a bunch of rotting wood. If you hit that, you went too far.”

Dar nodded. He’d partly asked to keep their minds sharp. They were starting to relax.

“The path down to the bottom is up ahead.” The ram called.

Dar cast one last look back at the forest, but he couldn’t see anything. With a small shrug, he followed the girls down out of the forest. As soon as there wasn’t an overhead canopy for the jaguar demon to hide in, they all relaxed and focused on picking up speed and getting Russ back to the village.