by Bruce Sentar
He nodded. Good employers never have trouble getting talent. “What about men?” He had no interest in adding men to their group, but he felt a bit selfish saying that out loud.
“Honestly, it just doesn’t seem to work very well. Spirits and demons that take a male form tend to be aggressive and territorial. Though, the number of male spirits is incredibly low too. Demons are closer to half and half.”
“Really?” Dar nearly choked on his stew.
“You could ask Cherry; she has a larger sample size to base that off of. I understand it to be something like one in ten spirits are male,” Sasha said.
He let that idea float around in his head. “So you know, I’m not really interested in another male joining our close knit group. I’m fine if they want to work for us… but I’d probably fit right in with those territorial demons when it comes to anybody else being with my women.”
“Got it.” Sasha winked. “But it should be fine. It’s not like any of us are going to need to step away to be satisfied with that dao character keeping you going…” She licked her pink lips.
A slight heat rose in his cheeks. Even with his stamina, she took everything he gave with her soft, flexible body.
“Anyways, I’m okay with it as long as they work for the group. So, I’d like to formally ask you: Sasha, are you okay with the potential of Cherry joining our dao companion relationship.”
“I get a choice?” She blinked in genuine surprise.
“Of course. It’s important that we all agree.” It was baffling to him she would think she didn’t get a say.
“Yes, I approve of Cherry and the two girls,” Sasha answered happily.
A frown crossed his face at the last part.
“You don’t have to court them. Just accept their physical advances and treat them well,” she reminded him, noting his unease.
Sasha seemed so interested in satisfying him and building out his world, that he realized he wasn’t sure if his plans made sense with her goals. “Sasha, what do you want in life? I know you want to follow your dao, but what do you want to do?”
The witch sitting next to him blinked. “I... I don’t know.” She took a moment to collect herself like she had never considered that question before. “I’ve been chasing my own dao path for over a century. I chased physical enjoyment once, but it came and went like a breath of fresh air. Nothing more, nothing less. At some point, you just live life aimlessly.”
She stared up at the stars as they lit up amongst the dark sky. “I wandered as a tailor and an enchanter hoping to make things for a while, putting my own stamp upon the world so to speak.” She looked like she was going to continue, but then just shrugged and smiled, staring back up at the stars.
“No. Go on.” He put his hand on her thigh. “I want to hear it.”
Her eyes made contact with his, vulnerability showing in them before she began speaking again. “In the end, I just want to make something. Something that can stand the test of time, and one day a thousand years from now, I can point to it and say it’s mine, I started that, with pride.”
She was looking back at the stars as she continued. “I know it’s so silly. I don’t even know what to make besides clothing, which obviously doesn’t last for thousands of years.” She pulled at her skirt, fidgeting in her discomfort.
“Makes perfect sense to me.” He shifted the bowl to one hand and grabbed the hand she had in her skirt, giving it a squeeze.
“Really?” She looked back at him.
Nodding, he continued. “I think more people feel that way than you can imagine. People back home would buy the right to name stars in the sky, just to leave their mark on the universe and own something so much bigger than themselves.”
Sasha snorted and doubled over in laughter. “They’d buy stars? Under what king’s authority could they claim them?”
“You know, I don’t know if they really stuck or if they started renaming at some point. What I mean to say is everyone wants to leave their mark on the world. No one wants their hard-treaded path in life to be covered with the next season’s storms. Here though, you are immortal. You’ll live forever, and you have the opportunity now to do something. So, what will it be?”
Sasha’s mouth opened and closed several times before she bowed her head in thought. “I think you are going to change the world, Darius Yigg. I think if I stay by your side, I could build a family, a house. One that would leave its mark on the world. I’d like to be a part of that.”
Chills raced across his skin as she lifted her face to meet his gaze. “I’d love that, Sasha.”
He leaned over to kiss her and pull her into the hut behind them, everything else and dinner forgotten.
***
Dar wasn’t sure when he fell asleep, but when he opened his eyes, he was inside his inner world.
The bodies of the trolls and mantis were scattered throughout the yard. While it was grotesque looking, he was glad to find that, despite being there for over a day, there wasn’t a rotten smell. It smelled like fresh cut grass.
Sighing, Dar pulled the shovel out of the pile and went to work dragging each of the corpses over to the soil and rolling them in their own shallow grave.
The little dao tree was growing before his eyes with each new corpse.
Leaning on his shovel, Dar watched a new bud unfurl from the tree. This one he thought was from the mantis, and he could sense something from it. He hoped it was a dao related to speed.
The trolls were buried one after the other, and a total of three new buds grew from the little tree. But none were very close to maturity.
“I guess it couldn’t have been that easy, now could it,” he said, inspecting the tree.
Was there anything else he needed to bring into his inner world? Did the tree need water?
Without much else to do in the time while asleep, he took the shovel and stepped away from the loamy patch to dig. He figured he’d see if he could dig a basin and fill it with water for the tree.
He didn’t tire in his inner world as he dug the basin, so it didn’t take too long to complete. Standing back to admire his work, he made a mental note to bring in some stones and maybe clay to better hold the water. He’d seen similar materials along the riverbed, so it would just be a matter of being able to sneak away for a bit.
Checking back on the little dao tree he counted three fruits that had formed not long after the direwolves; they felt savage and were only half-formed. Then there were half a dozen fruits from the trolls that felt heavy and solid, like they spoke of earth and stone. There was also the half-formed fruit from the hellhounds, he knew for sure this one was another fruit of the dao of heat. What he’d do with it, he wasn’t sure yet.
Finally, there was a single fruit that radiated sharp danger from the mantis.
***
The next morning while they walked, he saw the opportunity he had been waiting for. Everything was relatively quiet, and nobody was paying him much attention. He turned to Sasha.
“Could you pull the cart? I want to go do something in the river.”
Sasha grinned. “If you’re not planning on it, you should probably bathe while you are there.”
Dar rolled his eyes and gave her an exaggerated laugh. “Maybe I will.”
She took the handle without complaints and kept on with the rest of the caravan.
They had followed along the river during the journey, so it only took a few minutes before he was by the edge of the river. The caravan was still moving past slowly, so he killed some time, wanting privacy for what he was about to do.
Taking off his clothes and hanging them on a branch, Dar waded into the chilly river.
“Fuck, it’s cold.” No one was around to hear him, but somehow saying it aloud made a difference.
“Of course it is, but you can warm yourself up, idiot.” Cherry’s voice came from the tree he’d hung his clothes on.
The dryad was sitting on a branch, swinging her legs as she watched him. “Oh, don�
��t stop on my account, you were putting on quite the show.”
Dar didn’t try to hide himself at that point; she’d already seen him anyway. Instead, he focused on his body, letting out a bare trickle of his dao of heat, warming the water around him. The current quickly whipped away the warm water, but it did enough to keep his skin warm from the chilly water.
“That’s better,” he said, “So, why did you follow me out here?” He dipped his body into the river and found a smooth stone to start scrubbing himself with.
“It’s boring in the caravan, and I figured you’d be doing something at least more entertaining than walking all day.”
“You could stop pretending to be an airhead around everyone. That might make things better.”
Cherry narrowed her eyes before she spoke. “Wait until we get to the city; you’ll understand then. I do this to protect myself and you. And now that I’ve sworn myself to you, people would also come after you.”
“No one wants a silly, young spirit, but they’d really want a wise and powerful one?” He was starting to understand why she hid behind the mask.
“Yes. Me focusing on my tree makes me seem unideal to work with. They’d have to spend far too much energy trying to threaten or persuade me from the tree to get me to do anything they wanted. It’s a lot of hassle. But enough about me, what are you doing out here in the stream?”
“The space inside me, the one with the tree... I wanted to build a small pond. Just in case the tree needs water,” he clarified.
Cherry nodded. “Most trees do need water, but I think the tree inside you is more mysterious than you give it credit for. And the space within you is unique as well. I’m not sure if Lilith made that or if it’s a part of you.”
“Does it matter?” Dar asked.
“No, I suppose it doesn’t. Still, it’s a curiosity of mine. But I also came here to see if you can bring some fish inside your little world.”
He paused, trying to decide if his navel would pull something living into him. It would open up opportunities, but it also seemed strange to have something alive in him.
“Well then, don’t get too bored watching.” Dar sank deeper into the river and started pulling stones from the riverbed into his inner world.
“Can you pull things back out of your navel?” Cherry asked as he worked.
Dar paused, not sure what the answer was. So instead, he decided to give it a try. Focusing on the stone in his hand, he sucked it into his inner world, and then he tried to imagine it coming back out.
When nothing happened, he furrowed his brow, concentrating on the image he had of the stone back in his hand.
Letting out a sigh, he shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Or at least, I don’t know how.”
“That’s fine, just curious. Do you have enough stones? I want to see if you can catch a fish.”
By that point, he had cleared out a section of the riverbed. It seemed like enough to start lining his pond, but that would come after adding some sand and clay to the bottom. Digging his hands into the bed, he pulled up some large sections of the silt and clay that made up the riverbed.
Making conversation as he worked to make it less weird that he was being stared at, Dar called out, “So, why promise to serve me once we get into the city? You said they’d know if you weren’t working for a wizard, but as you said, I’m not the man you thought I was.”
Cherry stayed up in the tree, her legs swinging with the wind. “Because you are a good man. I doubt I’d find a better one.”
“That doesn’t seem like enough to make you bind yourself to me.”
“Of course not; you still don’t understand this world. That’s clear from the way you act and talk, so you’ll just have to believe me. Good men are hard to find and if you do find one, you grab him and hold on tight. Added bonus if he’s the first of his kind and immortal.” She winked at him.
Dar shook his head. “You’re right, I don’t understand. Decent men are that hard to find?”
“Decent wizards are. Spirits and demons are a bit better; good ones exist. But so many of us lack any real drive to do anything. We’ve lived a long time, Dar, a long time without doing much besides pursuing our own dao.”
That didn’t sound that much different than Sasha. The dao path seemed to become the focus, and other goals took a backseat, although Cherry seemed more worn down with it all than Sasha.
“How old are you?” he asked.
Cherry shrugged. “Old enough to see humans build kingdoms and have them collapse. Old enough to know that everything fades with time.”
It wasn’t a straight answer, but Dar chalked it up to ‘very, very old’. Part of him was okay with not knowing the answer.
After collecting what he needed for the tree, he shifted to Cherry’s idea. Bending over in the shallow area of the river, he let his hands dangle down by his shins. He hadn’t tried to catch fish like this since he was a kid, but he knew trying to chase them with his hands was a recipe for a lot of wasted time.
The trick was to let the fish come and swim between his hands and then grab them before they could get away.
“Got it, very old. But you’ve done this fight with a different version of me before, so doesn’t this also seem tedious?” He kept his focus on the water, waiting for prey.
“I believe in fighting the devils; I always have. And yes, we spent a long time fighting with Lilith to do that, never quite getting there. But now that you are back and on your own dao path this time, I can’t help but be curious if Lilith was right. Maybe this time will be different, and you’ll be able to do it.”
“No pressure,” Dar chuckled half-heartedly, seeing Cherry in the reflection of the river.
She was staring at him with a look of concern. “Dar, I fear that with Lilith gone, the devils will grow out of control. There is a world of pressure.”
“Right, I get that. But it’s just a saying,” he explained. “You say it as a joke when there is a lot of pressure.”
“Oh, well then, yes. No pressure.” Cherry smiled.
Dar was glad to see her more carefree, but his focus shifted as a curious fish began swimming near his legs. Just a few more inches and… he slapped his hands together on the fish. It went limp for a moment, stunned.
Grabbing the slippery fish, Dar tried to pull it into his inner world. That seemed to frighten the fish and it came out of being stunned, fighting to escape his hands.
His inner world pulled, but the fish fought back and managed to slip out of Dar’s hands and plunked back into the river, darting away as fast as its little fins could manage.
“So, did it work?” Cherry asked, a half-chuckle on her lips.
“No, it felt like it was fighting to escape,” Dar answered.
Cherry frowned. “Maybe it needs to be willing.”
His mouth opened, but no words came out for a moment. He didn’t exactly want to try this with something that would be willing like a person or a pet.
As he took another step, the plants on the edge of the riverbank caught his eyes. “These might help us know.”
A plant was still alive, and if it died, it wouldn’t bother him. Scooping up the soil around a weed, he sent the entire thing into his inner world, content that it could survive the day until he went to sleep.
“What’s next?” Cherry asked.
Dar was already dunking his hands back in the river to clean them off before standing up and letting a burst of his heat dao dry his skin.
“Now I get dressed, and we catch back up with the caravan.”
Cherry pouted. “Where’s the adventure in that?”
“Sometimes we have to prepare before we go kill things.”
Chapter 17
The caravan trudged ahead. So far, they had spent a week and a half on their journey, but they hadn’t encountered any more devils since seeing the ferryboat moving along the river.
As they reached the mouth of the Bell River, the pace of the group picked up. Apparently, the c
ity was close. Murmurings of excitement rose across the group as they pushed forward. Based on all the chatter, they would be there by mid-day.
Hope was flowing through the group. Even those who had been quiet the whole trip seemed to add an extra bounce to their steps. And as they continued moving, signs of a city became more and more common. A group of woodsmen that had been hunting came to the caravan at one point.
Their expressions as Count Tint recounted their story were grim. They didn’t offer much besides wishes of good luck as they made their way away. They commented that they’d have trouble finding animals near such a large group.
Knowing they were coming up to the city, Dar had spent the past few days working to collect additional materials for the pond in his inner world. Once they reached a more populated area, he’d run a higher risk of somebody seeing him, and he wasn’t sure what types of resources they’d have.
The fish and any other attempts at bringing living animals into his inner world ended with them resisting. But he had managed to get a number of plants to grow at the edge of the pond. He was pleased with the progress so far.
If he expanded it, he might even be able to get a little vegetable garden. So far, he had only found a few wild radishes.
The murmurings of the townspeople grew louder, and he scanned to see if there was a new threat. It didn’t take long to spot what had grabbed their attention. Smoke wafted over the tree line, splitting into individual streams as the city came into view.
Dar took in Bellhaven, which was massive compared to the town they’d come from. It sat on a flat plain, the back half of the city opening up into a harbor that connected with the ocean.
Towers dotted the area outside the city, and he could see what looked like wooden spike walls that ran between them, creating a barrier for the fields outside the city.
It was different than the middle age farming he had expected. The fields were almost fortifications in themselves.
