Path of Dragons

Book 9: Chapter 13: Only So Far

Elijah sat at the tallest point on his island, his eyes closed and his hands on his knees. It wasn’t quite the lotus position, but it wasn’t far off, either. His entire body remained relaxed, and his breath came slow and even. Inside, though, everything was chaos.

Before embarking on the journey necessary to reach the next level of soul cultivation, he’d considered himself fairly adept at controlling ethera. After all, he’d passed the test in the Desolate Reach, and that was the entire point. However, there was a distinct difference between external and internal control, and he sorely lacked in the latter.

Sure, he could regulate how much energy went into his spells, but that was like being proud he could crawl. Walking was much more difficult. And he needed to learn to sprint.

The problem came from the way ethera acted inside his channels. It wasn’t terribly difficult to activate a spell – it was more like opening the floodgates than actively pushing it one way or another. Making the ethera move without funneling it into a spell was much more difficult.

He could do it, of course, but only slowly and not without significant effort. There were other limits too – like those associated with reversing the flow or holding it entirely still – that were even more difficult to overcome.

Still, that was what he needed to do if he wanted to take the next step.

Or rather, it was one part. He still needed to expand his channels a little more, then solidify them further, but he wouldn’t pass to the next stage until he demonstrated perfect control over his ethera. It was supposed to be a long process, and not one that could be undertaken in a day. Many people failed in the attempt, forever stuck at the third stage and incapable of progressing further.

Elijah refused to be one of those people, though.

If it was difficult, that just meant that it would be that much more satisfying when he finally broke through.

Still, other people had done it, so he could too.

For hours, he remained entirely motionless until, at last, he let out a long, deep breath and opened his eyes. He couldn’t accomplish his goal in a single session. In fact, from what he could tell, it would require hundreds of hours before he could even take that first step.

But it was a good start.

With a sigh, he pushed himself to his feet and stretched as he looked out over the island. The landmass was fairly flat, but the hill he’d chosen still reached above the forest canopy, if only by a little. So, it gave him a nice view of the surrounding area.

Not that he needed it.

His locus extended over two miles out to sea, and within those boundaries, he could feel everything, right down to the smallest of organisms. Every speck of dust was laid bare to his awareness. He could see every leaf in every single tree. The family of deer slept in a meadow, while the growing fox kits chased one another through the Frozen Glade. There were innumerable other animals that made their homes within Elijah’s territory as well. From fat frogs to squirrels and even a few bears – the island played host to a thriving and varied ecosystem.

It was home.

But in a lot of ways, it also felt like a prison.

Elijah loved the grove, and he appreciated the advantages it gave him. It went much deeper than that, of course. It was a part of him, and he of it – in a way he couldn’t really explain. But his spirit was restless, and sitting in the grove left him feeling antsy and confined in all the wrong ways. ꭆàɴŏ𝐛Ε𐌔

He wanted to move. He needed to do something. And as important as laying the foundation for a step forward in cultivation was, it just wasn’t enough.

Still, Elijah took a few minutes to review the guides he’d recently bought. They all concerned various methods of cultivation, though none of them seemed to agree on the best practices. There were a few commonalities, but for the most part, Soul cultivation was a personal thing that depended on a person’s archetype, class, class evolutions, and even specializations. One of the guides even speculated that personality and attunement played a part in its expression.

Which meant that guidance was of limited value – or if it was more specific to his situation, extremely expensive. He needed to take what he could from the guides, then apply it to his situation as he forged his own path. It would be no easy task, but he was determined to make it work.

The good thing was that he could make some progress by devoting one facet of his mind to manipulating the ethera within his body while using the others to focus on other things. He wouldn’t make any great leaps forward like that, and there would come a time when even that strategy would lose its viability. But for now, it would help him lay the foundations for what was to come.

So, without further ado, he descended the hill and strode through the forest. He could have flown, but there was something comforting about a stroll through the forest. If he’d tried to hike through such dense foliage before he’d established his grove, it would have been almost impossible. But with the locus of his domain guiding his steps, he had no issues picking the perfect path.

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That let him enjoy the sights and sounds of his island. The chirps of birds, the buzzing of insects, the subtle rustling of small animals as they vacated the area – it was almost intoxicating, and that was before he even considered the effect of the dense ethera in the atmosphere, which clung to his shoulders like a mantle.

By the time he reached the grove itself, he was sweating – something that hadn’t happened much when he habitually wore the Cloak of the Iron Bear. It was kind of nice, working up a good sweat. It made him feel like he’d done something more active than just sit atop a hill and focus on laying the groundwork for cultivation.

With that pushing him forward, he spent the next couple of hours working out. None of the rocks on his beach were large enough to truly challenge him, so he was forced to get creative with his exercises. Even then, he was only moderately successful before he found himself running and swimming. The good thing about those exercises was that no matter how strong he got, he could always push himself to go faster. That created a challenge, even if he found himself circling the island a half-dozen times an hour. He had no idea how fast he ran – or swam – but he knew it was enough that he’d have gotten a speeding ticket on most highways.

Still, it felt like he was doing something, and that was what mattered at the moment.

Once he’d finished with that, he returned to his treehouse where he did something he hadn’t done for quite a while – emptied his Ghoul-Hide Satchel and catalogued the odds and ends he’d picked up along the way.

He held up one of the rings he’d taken from the Queen of Desolation back in the Desolate Reach. It was one piece among many he’d looted from her body, and he’d completely forgotten them all when he’d visited Atticus. There was barely a trickle of ethera in each individual piece of jewelry, and he suspected they were merely decorative. Still, he threw them in one of his storage boxes – alongside dozens of discarded daggers and other bits and pieces he’d gathered in his adventures – where he knew he would probably forget them.

Sure, he intended to take it all to Atticus at some point, but it just wasn’t high on his list of priorities.

The same was true of the giant shield leaning against the wall. He’d gotten that back in the Primal Realm as well, but it was so unwieldy that he’d just shoved it into storage to be forgotten.

One day, he’d need to clean all that out, too.

But not today.

The satchel also held a few forgotten hunks of dried meat that had clearly gone bad, a half-eaten grove fruit, and even a few scattered ethereum. In a lot of ways, it reminded him of the old backpack he’d used during school. Emptying it at the end of a school year was always an exercise in discovery – and not in a good way.

Eventually, he finished his task, then scattered some cleansing powder on the half-destroyed clothes he hadn’t seen since the last Primal Realm. They were a poignant reminder of just how much damage he’d incurred along the way, and he shuddered to think of how his body had been dissolved, broken, and even torn to pieces.

When that was finished, Elijah checked his ring to ensure that he had everything he needed. His gear was in there, as was plenty of food and water. He had no intention of ever being forced to eat monster meat again. The mere memory of feasting on flesh spiders was enough to give a man nightmares.

With that done, he took a shower, then soaked in the hot tub for a couple of hours. As he did, he saw Nerthus tending to the various flora within the grove. It was eye-opening watching him deftly manipulate the strands of ethera associated with those plants, and Elijah knew there was much he could learn from the spryggent.

That was for later, though.

For now, he had another task he wanted to accomplish. If he was going to enact his plan to become a true soap tycoon – and not just a flash in the pan that had dominated one auction – he needed to get to work expanding his production capability. He had no intention of devoting himself entirely to the endeavor – the world just wouldn’t allow that – so the best strategy was to make a bunch of it all at once.

And for that, he needed a lot of materials.

Specifically, he needed fat. Lots and lots of fat. He also needed lye. Hopefully, that wouldn’t require him to cut down half the trees on his island, which just wasn’t something he was willing to do. Cutting down a tree or two for specific purposes wasn’t a big deal, but massive deforestation was just out of the question.

So, he turned his mind to other methods of creating lye.

As far as he knew, he could create calcium oxide by heating limestone and combining it with water and soda ash – probably from kelp, given his available resources – but that had a few other problems. The first was the most obvious – he’d never done it before, and he didn’t want to spend weeks developing the proper method via trial and error. But the second was probably just as much of an issue. He’d need a lot of limestone and kelp to accommodate the scale of the project he had in mind.

And then there was the third problem, which was somewhat related. What made his soap special was that the source of the lye was on his island. He’d have to go to the mountains if he wanted to create calcium oxide from limestone.

He didn’t want to dilute the final product – or run the risk of negating the unique effects – so he discarded that option.

It really seemed like wood ash was his best bet, though he still hesitated. Fortunately, Nerthus soon put his concerns to rest.

“I can select appropriate trees,” Nerthus stated.

“I’m going to need like four or five hundred of them.”

“A small fraction of the total. The island requires pruning as the grove expands,” Nerthus explained. “This way, the wood will not go to waste.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am certain.”

With that, they set out to find trees. Nerthus flitted across the island, marking them rapidly. Meanwhile, Elijah set about cutting them down. Fortunately, with his attributes – as well as the high-quality axe Carmen had made for him – he could quickly and easily fell any tree Nerthus marked. Carrying them was a bit awkward, but after making his dolmens, he was well used to carrying enormously heavy burdens.

After a couple of days, he had nearly five-hundred trees piled in a dell near the center of the island.

Looking at the results of his labor, Elijah was struck by mixed feelings. On the one hand, he was satisfied at a job completed. However, on the other, he lamented the necessity that so many trees had needed to die. Certainly, Nerthus’ insistence that it was good for the island’s balance was reassuring, but even so, it went against his instincts.

Not that he couldn’t ignore them. He could. It just left him feeling a little off-kilter.

Whatever the case, now that he had plenty of fuel for the fires that would provide the ash necessary to make lye, he had another problem to solve. He needed fat, and a lot of it. So, as was usually the case when he needed something like that, he shifted into the Shape of the Sky and headed for Ironshore.

If anyone knew where he could find a beast – or preferably, a monster – that could give him enough fat for his purposes, the Hunter’s Lodge was it.