Dao Divinity 2 Chapter 11 (Patreon)

“Thank you for protecting Shelia.” Rex said once they had gotten clear of the woods. The chittering of the spiders within hadn’t stopped, though. It sounded like there were many just past the tree line.

“No problem at all. We are all in this together.” Dar leaned against a tree and looked back at the forest to see if they would follow out of the forest.

“They won’t chase clear of the trees.” Rex offered.

“Well, earlier I was told they were too afraid of fire to come close. That turned out to be not quite true. I’d rather verify for myself than be caught off guard.” Dar grumbled, a little upset and embarrassed about the risk they had taken.

He’d felt confident taking Rex and the others to go investigate, thinking that they’d be home free with the fire. Turned out it just meant the spiders had to get a bit more crafty. Not to mention some of them outright ignored the fire.

“For what it is worth, I’ve seen ettercaps and spiders retreat from a single torch and not bother a demon. What happened in there was unusual behavior.”

“It’s fine, Rex.” Dar could see his doubt. Rex thought he’d failed him. “We all made it out fine. And next time, we’ll be ready. That’s the main point of going to scout. Although I do wish we’d been able to wipe those creepy buggers out.”

“Yes, boss.” Rex bowed out and went to see his women; Shelia was pretty shaken up.

While Rex cared for the women, Dar stood watching the edge of the forest. So far they hadn’t spilled out, but the chittering was far too close to the village for his comfort. Part of him had expected something to come; it had been too quiet recently.

Now that they’d investigated, he had a feeling that the massive ettercap fortress had blocked anything else coming from the south, but had likely decimated the nearby area and had ventured further out to find more food.

They were lucky it was deep enough in the woods that they weren’t bothered when they’d originally travelled to the spot. Who knows how long it had been there, with so many devils present.

But they needed access to the woods. They couldn’t afford to lose their connection to lumber. Dar thought about the number of warriors they had. He couldn’t take everybody away from the village in case there was another attack, and he wasn’t sure if they’d have enough for whatever was within those walls.

Frustrated, Dar ran his hand through his hair, trying to figure out how they’d even try to attack the fortress. No doubt there were traps and alcoves woven into it, ready to snatch up any prey bold enough to enter. Their best bet was actually tearing it down. But given how long his heat dao had taken to burn through the quickly constructed web, Dar wasn’t very confident in that approach.

His only thought was upping the firepower. Gunpowder didn’t exist, but there were other means of creating explosions. The dao of combustion he’d been working on, and Cherry had steered him away from, seemed like his best bet. And who knew, maybe the lesser dao could lead to a greater dao. This devil sighting seemed like a first sign of more to come. Dar wanted a greater dao with more firepower than the granite he was already close to.

The chittering started to quiet, making Dar scan the forest again. As he did, his eyes locked with an ettercap that had stepped up to the edge. The ettercap just stood there, studying him, before it turned back into the forest and the chittering faded away completely.

Dar let out a breath he’d been holding. They seemed to be keeping to the forest, at least for the time being. He watched for another few minutes before turning back himself and heading into Hearthway.

Bart was the first leader he came across, working with all the men who’d been cutting lumber, reassigning them to help at the farm or work on the few projects that were going on in the village.

The blacksmith spotted Dar and stopped what he was doing, asking the question on everyone’s mind. “Are they coming?”

“No. Not right now. They retreated after they saw we left the forest, but after our encounter, I’d expect them to become more territorial. But this isn’t a small nest. There is a massive colony of them, maybe eight or ten miles southeast from the village. We’re going to have to clear it before we can do much in the forest.”

That caused a few sharp inhales from the men. The woodcutters shivered, not realizing how close to that danger they’d been.

“How big? Can we muster up our men and drive them out?” Bart switched from fact finding into solutioning. That was one thing Dar appreciated about him; he saw every problem as a nail to hammer.

But this wasn’t a matter of just hammering the ettercaps away. “Rex, how many do you think there were?”

“Hundreds, maybe up to a thousand?” But Rex looked hesitant. “If I’m honest, I’ve heard of a colony before, but even that was only around twenty. That was massive.”

“Yeah, it was like a spiderweb fortress, or a small city.” Dar agreed, putting it in perspective for everyone.

“Do we move? If we can’t deal with it…” Bart was already looking for the next solution.

Dar shook his head. “It would be dangerous to try and head back to Bellhaven. We could head north to Kindrake, but winter is coming on fast.”

“We wouldn’t make it to Kindrake before the first snowfall.” Rex supplied. “It might be better to prepare to bunker down here for the winter.” He hesitated.

“Does winter slow down the ettercap?” Dar asked, thinking if they followed the normal pattern for spiders, they might not be an issue.

“Yes, at least supposedly. They typically wrap themselves up in big cocoons and find tight spaces to retain heat and sort of hibernate.” Rex answered, but he still looked uncomfortable.

He doubted himself. Dar knew his prior assessment had rattled the demon’s confidence in his knowledge about the devils. And it was hard to trust a fact enough to risk everybody’s lives on it.

“Okay, so we continue to prepare to bunker down.” Dar announced, making the decision. “Bart, we can try logging the northern forest, at least for the short term. I know it isn’t quite as old…” he trailed off in thought and had another idea. “Or we can try across the river. Timber floats.”

“Still don’t have a boat.” Bart said.

“I know, but I have an idea for one.” Dar was already hatching a new plan. “But we can get to that later. Today, let’s focus on what we have immediate resources for. Send the guys into the northern forest to see what they can bring back for today.”

Bart looked over his shoulder at Frank, who had been listening to the entire thing and was nodding.

“I got it. We’ll see what more we can get done today.” Frank gave a lazy salute and gathered his people to do the newly assigned task.

Dar patted Bart on the shoulder. “Let’s see about this branch scraper we thought up.”

The blacksmith grinned. “Already started. We picked out a rough blank that we should be able to finesse into the tool.” He made his way back over to the enchanted forge that Dar had helped set up.

As they walked up, Dar watched several men who were working around the forge repairing various tools. The men barely looked up from their work, clearly focused on getting the tools the town needed ready. Not wanting to distract them, Dar made a mental note to try to remember to thank the men personally at the next dinner.

Bart had moved ahead and was pulling out a rough form of the tool they’d been designing and laid it down on his anvil with a pair of tongs. “So, we need a curved bill, two protrusions for handles, and then to blade the bill.” He started hammering with that in mind. It was interesting for Dar to watch as Bart paired off two sections, bending them outwards for the handles, and then started on rounding and stretching the bill.

Bart reheated the metal often, continued hammering it into shape several minutes at a time.

“What do you think?” Bart pulled away after his last bit of hammering.

“Let’s see.” Dar picked up the red hot piece of metal and Bart nearly lost it.

“You can’t touch th—” The blacksmith stared at Dar as he didn’t react to the heat.

“Dao of heat, remember?” Dar smirked and looked at the piece, turning it around even as it was starting to cool off. “I think this looks about right. Definitely good enough to give it a try and go from there.”

The tool was the shape they discussed, but it was all a bit theoretical. There probably was something they’d missed that they would find as they put it into practice, especially at scale.

“You scared the crap out of me.” Bart admonished, grabbing a rag and wiping his forehead.

Dar shrugged. He hadn’t really thought about it very much. It was part of who he was now. “This goes in the water bucket?”

“Yes please.” Bart stepped away from the forge and held his arms out, cooling them off in the fall wind.

The bucket of water hissed for a moment before it settled down and Dar pulled out the tool. If this worked, they’d put a wooden handle on it so it would be easier to use.

“Can you run this out and see if a woodcutter can give it a try for a few hours?” Dar asked.

“Not going to go try it yourself?”

Dar shook his head; he didn’t feel comfortable leaving Hearthway so soon after the threats in the nearby forest. “I’m going to stay in case we have a problem with the ettercaps.”

“Ah, makes sense. In that case, I’ll be happy to bring it out to them and get further away from those creepy things.” Bart smiled to himself as he took the tool from Dar and headed out.

Dar turned, starting to walk back out into town, and scanning for places he could be useful.

A small growl was all the warning he got before Neko pounced on his shoulders and clung to him.

“Oh, come on.” Amber came up panting. “Sorry Milord.”

“It’s fine.” He lifted the demon off his shoulders. “Were you causing trouble?”

Neko at least knew enough to shake her head. “Neko. Good.” She said with a smile.

“Well, aren’t you learning words quickly?” Dar put her down where she molded herself up against his side like a house cat wanting attention.

Amber huffed. “She is learning quickly, Milord. But she was kicked out of the field by Cherry this morning. I guess she got bored with picking crops and started tackling and scaring people through the cornstalks.”

He tried not to laugh as Neko looked up at him with wide, innocent eyes of someone who knew they did wrong. “Neko. Good. Amber. Bad. Scare people. Scare Neko.”

“Really now? That’s what we are going with?” Amber huffed and looked ready to dunk the poor cat girl in the lake.

Dar stared at her for a few moments, thinking of what to do with her. “Well, I’m done early for the day. Why don’t the three of us go for a walk and see if we can’t teach Neko a few new words?”

“That would be wonderful.” Amber smiled.

“Maybe we can even lure her over for a bath.” Dar said conspiratorially.

His maid gave him a wicked smile. “Oh, yes. I hear she loves baths.” Her tone dripped with sarcasm.

Dar felt like after watching the woodcutters, he didn’t have enough eyes on what was going on. There had to be more places they could enchant and improve the processes.

Their first stop were the kilns where workers were shoveling cooked limestone out into a simple wheelbarrow. Others then used hardwood bats to crush and break the limestone down further until it was powder. Dar knew that powder would get mixed with sand in the river and crushed granite from the cliffs.

Dar snagged a particular stone that called to him and stuck it in his pocket.

“Boss, is everything okay?”

“Yes, you are all doing great. I’m just watching.”

He nudged his fellow worker with an ‘I told you so’ look.

“Actually, hold up a second. Don’t mix that in the wheelbarrow. Let’s crush it all up and cart it over to the site.” Dar didn’t see the value in mixing before they carted it all across. It would create way more trips and be a pain to get out of the wheelbarrow.

Dar helped them move the materials over to where the foundation was being laid, and he tried not to sigh. There were mounds of cement already starting to dry, but they had yet to make a large dent in the total foundation.

“Okay, let’s dump all of this in that corner and mix it in the hole.” Dar pointed to a corner of the hole and the men got to work mixing it all in the space for the foundation. It was probably not the best with mixing the soil into the mixture, but they needed to speed up the process.

Together, they mixed the whole kiln worth of limestone into the foundation with gravel and sand.

Neko and Amber pitched in, though Neko wasn’t quite as helpful as Dar would have liked. In the end, they made short work of mixing the foundation, leaving a nice ten by ten foundation with a few sunken logs to build on. A solid base that something more sturdy than Cherry’s hut could be built upon.

Dar still had time to kill before dinner, so he moved through the center of the village, where women and children were doing more idle tasks like weaving or pottery. They were chatting away, working and watching the children who had long abandoned the field.

Continuing on, Dar could see the cliffs proper, where men were coming out of a main cave with barrows of crushed stone and smiles on their faces.

Dar gave them a friendly wave and ducked inside.

“Dar.” Neko held close to him as her eyes adjusted to the darkness.

“It’s okay, Neko. We are expanding the cave, getting stone for foundations, and possibly creating a storage and shelter.”

The temperature dropped several degrees as they stepped into the cave. Soaking up the chill, Dar contemplated that there might be options for a cellar or a place to keep cool the next summer.

Still, they had winter to get through. His plans for summer would need to wait. “What do you think Amber? Is it cool enough for food storage?”

“For the winter? It’ll make terrible meat for later and heating it up can be a pain.” Amber gave her opinion, blinking her eyes as they adjusted to the darkness too.

“Frozen meat won’t kill you. It just doesn’t taste quite as good. We might even want to pack the meat in snow if we have any game after the first snowfall.”

Amber wrinkled her nose. “Whatever you say, Milord.”

He wanted to keep the village as happy as he could. No one wanted to be miserable for the winter.

“We’ll see what else we can do, Amber. Contentment is a very real concern, especially in the winter where people don’t have the ability to do much. Bored and upset people can be as dangerous as a storm at times.” Dar scratched his chin. “Still, I think we just need to accept it is going to be a harsh winter.”

“We are all tough people.” Amber nodded, but the nod continued on as a pondering look crossed her face. She seemed to be talking herself into what was to come.

“What did you do during the winters in the past?”

“Lots of celebrations, and mostly just trying to keep warm. If you make heater stones for everyone, it will be a very different winter for most.”

Dar hadn’t realized the stones would change their lives so much; it seemed so basic. “So you gathered firewood and stayed indoors in the past?”

“Kids played in the snow, sled down hills, and celebrated. But for the adults, there was a bit more stress. They had to work to try to keep the younger children from seeing their fear as they worked to keep a fire going and food in everybody’s bellies when everything is much more scarce.”

Dar nodded along. It would take a lot of extra shelter and resources to be able to comfortably ride out a winter. This world was still in survival mode for most. “Well, let’s hope we can get those solved so we can make this winter a little more comfortable.”

“En.” Amber nodded excitedly. “I think winter here will be far better than it has been in the past.”

Dar smiled at her optimism. Maybe he was being too harsh on himself for the winter preparations. If they spent the whole winter trying to survive, that would mean they would continue to forage and hunt through the winter.

They reached the men that were working away in the cave. Men were using bronze pick axes to chip away at the cavern wall. Dar wanted to jump in and help, but he’d proven that his strength didn’t always help when they were cutting trees. And here a misstep could mean collapse.

“How are you doing, hunky chunk of man meat?” Amelia smiled up from where she’d been sitting, working to pull salt out of the ground using her dao. So far, it looked successful. White crystals rose around her in a circle.

“Really, that’s what you are going with?” Dar snorted.

“Oh, darn. I guess I’ll have to keep trying. Come here to take me for a spin?” She wiggled her eyebrows at him.

Dar just shook his head. She wouldn’t stop even if he asked. “No. We had some trouble out by the woodcutters, so I’m just doing rounds around the village to see how everything is going.”

Bending down, Dar snapped off a salt crystal protruding from the ground, bringing it to his lips to give it a small lick.

Yep, it tasted just like the salt he was used to. And Amelia had maybe twenty pounds of it in the circle around her.

“That was fast.” Dar commented.

“I’m good at what I do. And you can lick anything of mine you like, Stud.” Amelia’s amethyst eyes twinkled playfully in the dark cave.

“Not stud.” Dar and Amber said together.

“Okay. Not stud. Sheesh, give a girl a break. It’s not my fault you’re panty dropping hot.”

Dar rolled his eyes.

Amber was blushing, while Neko just stared back and forth between the two of them.

“Hey kitty cat, can you speak yet?” Amelia changed her target.

“Neko good.”

Amelia barked in laughter. “Yes, I bet you are going to be really good. You know you’re hot as hell? If the big guy takes too long with me, we can pair up and have a real good time.”

Neko tilted her head at that.

“She didn’t understand that.” Dar defended her.

“Oh, you’d be surprised. We have almost perfect recall. It’s why she’s learning so fast. Though she’s still a little feral, so doesn’t quite understand the quality behind saying more than a few clipped words.”

“Really?” Dar paused to try to figure out if it applied to him as well. And now that he thought about it, he was way better with names and faces in the village than he would have been in his previous life.

“I wondered if your memory would be as good too? How about it?”

It wasn’t a secret in Hearthway that Dar was an immortal, but Amelia was the first to question just what that meant.

“Yeah. It’s all surprisingly clear. I’d been taking it for granted.” Dar realized he didn’t fully understand his transformation as much as he thought he did.

“So, just come to lick my salt, or did you need anything else?”

“I’d love to hear what you were doing before I interrupted. Looked like meditation.”

She smiled. “What do I get in return?”

“I didn’t realize this was a transaction. Here I thought I was the leader in this town.” Dar arched a brow, waiting to see if she would continue to challenge him. She backed down, giving him a small pout before launching into explanation.

“It was a bit like meditation. There’s no large vein of raw salt here. But if I focus, I can tap small quantities among the naturally forming minerals. But they are often too small to really push their way out, so I have to try and wiggle them into larger and larger clumps and bring them through the surface.” She waved at the surrounding circle. “Once I get them big enough, I can push them through and collect a large number of stragglers and bring them to the surface.”

Dar found her use of her dao interesting, but he was most interested in her meditation. “Ever used that meditation to try to progress on your dao path?”

“Not without a bit of inspiration. Same thing as trying to force the dao characters.” It sounded a lot like what Sasha and Cherry had described, but he was curious if working meditation more into his routine could change anything.

Having what he needed, Dar turned to go, but Amelia stopped him.

“Wait, are you going to take that salt without paying?” She gasped.

Dar looked down at the crystal. It was pretty big, and he knew salt had quite a bit of value in this society. “How much do I owe you?” He was thinking about grinding it up and giving it to the cooks for seasoning.

“Bend down here and let me have a look.” She said with a straight face.

Dar bent over her with the crystal in his palm, but she grabbed his head and kissed him.

Her lips were salty, giving off a bit of a saltwater taste as he pulled away..

He was more surprised than anything and backed up. It certainly was skipping a few steps, steps Dar thought were important.

“Damn.” Amelia said with a smirk as she touched her lips and a flash of remorse across her face.

“Neko, yes.” Neko pointed to her own lips.

“Of course sexy.” Amelia practically tackled the demon with a kiss.

Dar watched as the white-haired spirit and the jaguar demon started making out against the wall. Neko even started purring and rubbing herself up against Amelia before the spirit had to come up for air.

“Oh, you are going to be a fun little kitty, aren’t you?”

Dar cleared his throat. “If you two are done, I think supper is probably starting.”

All three girls’ eyes slid down to his pants. He didn’t have to look to know there was a serious tenting issue down there right now.

“Milord, would you like me to fix that for you?” Amber asked with all the seriousness of a maid just going about her duties.

Dar ground his palms into his face, not sure what he was going to do with all the women in his life.