by Bruce Sentar
“That’s not too hard,” Dar said, pleased with the success.
Sasha shrugged. “It really isn’t. The higher order the rune, the harder it is to draw. And if you are trying to do something specific with the rune, size matters. So, if you were going to enchant some cloaks with heat for the winter, you’d need to be careful with the size of it or you could cook the person who wore it.”
“They could cover it to turn it off though,” he pointed out.
“Yes, but I’d rather not rely on that to prevent someone from being cooked, and I’m not sure the piece wouldn’t just catch on fire before that. Don’t forget, if you trade it or sell it, people generally aren’t happy with combusting after a purchase,” Sasha teased, taking her wand back.
Dar nodded, already thinking about how to sell small, enchanted stones as heaters for the coming winter; the leaves were just starting to turn into their fall colors. No doubt something like that would be practical. Stones would quite literally be dirt cheap, and he could sell a number of small ones for people to spread throughout their home.
“I can practically see the gears turning in your head, Dar. But remember, we can’t let anyone know you actually possess a dao.”
His whole plan fell apart at that. He was so going to blow the secret at some point. “We could lie and say you made them?”
“Someone would eventually figure it out. Observe enough to realize you were always around when they were being made or realize I don’t have the dao required. It would come out eventually.”
“Good point,” Dar sighed. He hadn’t given up hope yet, but he reluctantly acknowledged it was complicated.
“Cheer up. I’m sure you’ll have no problem once we get to Bellhaven. People treat wizards almost as well as royalty.”
He wasn’t ready to give up yet on the possibilities, though. And he’d already had an idea he wanted to run by Sasha. “Do you think that I could make a stone hot enough for a blacksmith to work out this sword?”
Pulling out the blade, he cringed again seeing it. The blade was rippled from where it had been bent back and forth, and there was now the addition of several large cuts where the mantis’ arms had collided with it.
“Maybe. We can ask if there is someone who’d help you. But I think that sword might have to be retired soon. When we get to town, there might even be some people selling iron weapons.”
“What about steel?” Dar asked, wanting the best.
Sasha frowned. “I haven’t heard of ‘steel’.”
Surprised, Dar tried to remember what he knew about steel. He wasn’t an expert, but he’d spent some time at a steel mill. If he could put out enough heat to melt some crude iron, he could remove some of the impurities.
It might not be high grade steel, but it likely would hold up better and closer to steel. He’d have to check out a blacksmith when they reached the town and see their practices. While his approach may be stronger in terms of the materials, they might have a dao-based solution that was even better.
“Dar, I know you want to have fun with your new dao, but you should focus on becoming stronger with your body and skill. A stronger weapon only makes up for so much,” Sasha insisted.
He knew she had a point, but he still wanted to get more value out of his dao. “I get that, but I also need to learn how to use this dao as I work on others. And we both know it could take a while to be able to form another or get to a greater dao. I want to make the most of this.”
The process took someone like Sasha or Cherry years and years. He had what felt like a cheat with the dao tree, but he’d still have to see what the trolls and mantis would add to it. He was still figuring out how the tree worked. The different bodies may all have different dao and just be the start of various fruits. Regardless, he was excited to see what they would hold.
His time with Sasha the night before had definitely been worth putting it off, but now he was itching to get back into his inner world and find out what would happen next.
Sasha waved in front of his face, drawing his attention back to her from his thoughts. “Before you go using it too much, you need to get more consistent control over the dao. You just blasted it during the fight in the woods. There wasn’t a lot of mastery in the shot, although I’ll give you that it was effective.”
Scratching the back of his head, he acknowledged her point and gave her a sheepish grin. “You were in danger and I just… just blasted that thing to kill it.”
She smiled back at him, and there was a softness in her face, like she wanted to not deliver as strong of a blow. “And a focused attack from a single finger would have been FAR less draining, and maybe even quicker.”
He sighed; she really was right. He had definitely overdone it, and in the end, left them more vulnerable to future attacks. If he had essentially made a blow torch from his finger, that might have been enough. “I see.”
“Don’t just see the issue. Practice,” Sasha encouraged him.
Dar focused on his finger and the dao of heat. He could feel the channels of mana within him connecting across his body. There was one that spread into each finger, and he focused on the dao of heat, pushing the mana into one of them.
At first, it was a weak feeling of heat, but as he kept pumping mana out, pressure built up and the small spout of heat made a frail rumble. The air became so hot that it exited the space fast enough to create sound waves.
But that wasn’t good enough. The time it took him to build up that level of output was about fifteen seconds. He needed something much faster if he was going to make a weapon of it. He wanted to be able to switch more rapidly between sword fighting and dao fighting.
“That was good,” Sasha encouraged, motioning for him to continue.
Shaking his head, he tried again. Drawing the mana from his inner world, he channeled it through his chest and to his hands, making a loop. He held that loop, cycling without an outlet as he built up the pressure he’d need to make a small but powerful jet of heat.
Once he sufficiently pressurized the mana in that loop, he opened a tap on his finger, making sure to point it away from any wandering eyes.
A small rumble came to life from his finger, the air around the finger rippling with the heat.
“Oh, what did you do differently?” Sasha asked, clearly more pleased than the first attempt.
That time it had taken him about five seconds to pre-compress his mana and produce the same effect. “I concentrated the mana in my body before releasing it,” he tried to explain the feeling of it to Sasha, but he really wasn’t sure what the right terms were.
Sasha nodded, but he could see that she wasn’t following.
He sighed to himself. Part of being the first of a kind meant exploring what that meant on your own. He was still figuring out how different his new immortal body was from a demon’s body, but based on Sasha’s face, the channels were a difference.
Wanting to confirm, he asked, “Do you have channels in your body for the mana?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Demons crystalize mana somewhere in their body, typically near the head.”
Crystalize. Dar had been picturing mana as a vapor, maybe even closer to a liquid at high pressure. Yet Sasha and other demons had gone all the way to creating a solid out of it.
“Then how do you use it to interact with dao?”
“It sort of resonates constantly with the dao I’ve mastered, growing each time I add one,” she explained.
He turned to Cherry, knowing she was listening in. “What about for spirits?”
Sure enough, she popped right into the conversation as if she’d been a part of it the entire time. “Our bodies are formed of mana. Our soul is able to control it, much like the crystallized mana in Sasha, only ours isn’t physical.” She leveled a strange gaze at him. He wasn’t quite sure how to read it, and he wished she’d share more about how she was feeling.
“We need to talk about what your plans are once we reach Bellhaven,” Cherry said, clearly wanting to
drive the conversation.
“Well, it seems like my disguise as a wizard is already working out for me.” At her puzzled look, Dar gave her the short version of his interaction with the count. She nodded along. He watched for other signals from her, but she wasn’t giving anything away.
He was worried about her ever since their last conversation when Cherry had been torn between the reality of Dar, the man she had once loved, and Dar, the adventurer she was with now.
As he wrapped up, he gave up on it for the time being. “So, I’m planning to keep to the ruse that I’m a wizard and start a house in Bellhaven. I’m too weak to fight the devils en masse right now. I need to establish a base and grow from there. The city seems like a decent place to start.”
“Are you sure the city is where you want to setup?” Cherry asked. “If consuming devil corpses is your path to growth, it may be difficult there.”
“It is the logical step, but I’ll keep my mind open. At least the city is a good place to start.” Dar shrugged not seeing another clear option at the moment.
Cherry nodded slowly, clearly pondering something before seeming to come to a decision. “Then I, Cherry, do so swear upon my dao to follow your instructions as long as they do not harm me or those I care about. And they must not impinge upon my own virtues.”
Dar felt a weight settle on his shoulders.
“What was that?” he asked.
Sasha’s face next to him was completely pale. Her next words came out in a shocked whisper. “The dao is the order of the world. Swearing upon it is a binding contract for those of us that have a dao. It’s likely what Count Tint thought you already established with Cherry, but I didn’t think it would ever actually happen. It takes complete trust for her to do something like that.”
“Thank you, Cherry,” Dar said, giving her a half-bow and making sure he put full weight behind the words. Taking a breath, he wanted to make a vow of his own. “I, Dar, swear upon my dao to uphold your virtues to the best of my ability and to not mistreat you or bring harm to you through secondary methods.”
Both Sasha and Cherry gasped as Dar felt the weight shift and settle between him and Cherry. He instinctively knew that the promise made could not be broken. The weight was clear that a misstep would be like bringing a guillotine crashing down upon him.
“I didn’t even think about it,” Cherry said, wonderment in her voice.
Sasha nodded. “Me neither. He can swear upon his dao.”
“It seemed very formal but was that such a big deal?” he asked. The weight had lifted slightly, seeming to settle into place as fact.
“If you intend to honor what you say, then it isn’t anything. But should you break your word, your dao will crumble along with it,” Cherry explained. “It is also how wizards keep a hold on demons and spirits to borrow their power.”
“Ah.” Many things became clear in the power dynamic that existed. He had struggled with how wizards came to control such powerful beings. Obviously, Cherry had a loyalty to him, but he imagined others did not. “What made you do that now? You know I wouldn’t have asked it of you.”
“You may not, but they will ask,” Cherry said with a stern tone. “When you enter the city, they may even ask me to swear an oath not to harm anyone.”
Dar frowned. “But if humans can’t give the oath back, then they aren’t bound by the same rules?”
“Right. They do it because they are afraid of us,” Cherry said simply.
Nodding, they continued on for a while in silence, processing all that had just happened. It hadn’t been a large ceremony or anything, but somehow the weight of those oaths felt momentous. He couldn’t help but feel lucky to have Cherry on his side.
But if they were going to work together, he needed to know that she was doing it for him, and not just for the Dar she used to know. Looking over his shoulder, he started in. “So, about yesterday…”
“Yes, yes. You two were very loud. I think you nearly broke Sasha.”
The witch blushed heavily and studiously examined the ground.
But he wasn’t going to let Cherry off that easily, and he knew she was making him uncomfortable in hopes of avoiding it. So he went more direct. “You know that wasn’t what I meant. How are you doing with our discussion on the Dar you used to know?”
Cherry harrumphed. “You’re not him, or at least, we can’t pick up where it was left off. So you might as well not be at all. But if…” She stopped speaking, somehow pretending like she hadn’t just started a sentence.
“If?” Dar prodded, realizing he was going to have to coax this whole thing out of her.
“If something were to grow between us, we’d have to start over.” Cherry let it out in a rushed breath, clearly frustrated at having to share those feelings.
Dar looked at Sasha to get her reaction, but she hadn’t even flinched with the mention of something forming between him and Cherry.
“Just like that?” he said.
Cherry nodded. “Just like that. I’m old, but I’m not indecisive.”
“Okay. Then as your wizard, what am I supposed to do?” he asked.
Cherry looked him up and down. “You put on some nice clothes, for starters. I assume our lovely witch did those. But we need to get you some things that are a bit more… wizardly.”
Sasha groaned. “I’ll help with the runes, but please don’t make him look like a wizard.”
Cherry laughed while Dar looked between the two of them. Once again, he was confused. “What is so objectionable about wizard clothing?”
“When you wear things based on if they are enchanted or not… they tend not to match.” The well put together witch shuddered.
He laughed, imagining powerful wizards dressed like they’d assembled the outfits out of free clothing bins, or characters in games that wore ridiculous pink clothing because the stats were better.
Chapter 15
The girls had continued to explain to Dar about life in the city while they walked. He was good at adapting quickly when he would arrive in a new town, but it always helped to have some information ahead.
Bellhaven was generally considered a well-to-do and decent place to live. It was the ducal seat for the territory and the second largest city of the kingdom, behind the capital itself.
But it still seemed like the customs would put Dar outside of his comfort zone. They had gone into detail on what was expected of him as head of the house and as a wizard, and it didn’t sit well with him.
Dar wondered if the city was really where he wanted to live.
“Sasha, I don’t think I’m capable of back-handing someone for getting in my way.” He shook his head, squeezing his eyes closed.
Maybe he could work himself up and do it once. Maybe he’d need to hire somebody he really couldn’t stand to make it easier? He shook his head. This was ridiculous.
Cherry chimed in, “It is what is expected of someone at your station. Force is needed to assert that your time is more important and that you are at the top of the hierarchy.”
He groaned; it just sounded like a terrible manager to him. He had dealt with enough of those, people who just yelled at workers in an attempt to maintain their authority instead of actually leading. Perpetuating that was not on Dar’s to-do list.
As they continued talking, Dar began concluding that he just wasn’t going to fit in with the people of Bellhaven, but it was his best option at present. A sheltered city would give him the space and resources he needed to grow and train his dao. He wouldn’t stand a chance against the broader and more powerful devils without it.
To grow his dao tree, he had a feeling he’d also need to venture out. There was likely less to kill within the city to feed his tree. He wondered if rats had dao within them.
“We’ll deal with it when the time comes.” He gave the girls his best concession, wanting to move off the topic.
He could tell Sasha was about to object, when the train of refugees started to slow down as the sun peaked in th
e sky, causing Dar to pull Cherry’s cart to a halt.
Looking over the crowd, Dar had to admit that they looked better than they had the first day. The people of the small town had somehow managed to gather more personal possessions as they went. Small carts were now being dragged all throughout the group, the wheels made from cross sections of a tree and the bed made from lashings of branches.
As soon as they stopped for a midday break and meal, the townspeople didn’t just plop on their arses and rest. Many of them went straight to making food or working on their latest project.
“Milord,” Amber said groggily from the bed of his own cart.
Turning, he looked at her mop of messy, hazel hair. “How did the conversation with your father go on repairing my sword?”
She nodded. “My father will work on it if you can really get something hot enough for him to make it workable.”
Perfect, that would make this easier. “I was wondering if I couldn’t get him to take a look at my sword.”
Dar held up the poor weapon and Amber winced.
“I think that isn’t much better than scrap metal. Plus, there isn’t a forge out here for my father to work.” She pulled herself up by the edge of the cart and gracefully tumbled out. Her skirt pulled up, flashing her underwear underneath.
He had already anticipated those problems. “Let me worry about that.” He pointedly ignored her moment of wardrobe failure.
Amber didn’t seem to be flustered by it at all either; instead, she seemed to be watching him for a reaction.
Maybe she did it on purpose.
“This way, milord.” She turned away and led him through camp. Her hips moved with a little extra swish with each step.
She was really trying to get his attention, or at least really wanted his favor. From what Sasha had explained, it was normal for female workers to try and secure their positions through enticement. Amber glanced over her shoulder to make sure she had his attention and caught him watching. Her smile lit up and she continued.
