Path of Dragons-Chapter 51Book 8: : Circle

For a couple of hours, Elijah sat in the center of that glade, familiarizing himself with the ambient ethera. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but of late, he’d begun to wonder if he’d been shortchanging his dolmens by forcing himself on their locations. Certainly, he’d gotten good results, but he felt there was something important missing from the equation. With that in mind, he’d set about trying to figure that out.

And so far, he’d come up with nothing.

Perhaps his dolmens weren’t meant to slide seamlessly into the environment. Maybe they had another purpose he couldn’t quite see. Of course, there was another possibility – that they were simply supposed to facilitate the use of Roots of the World Tree and nothing else – but Elijah refused to believe that was the case. Nothing about being a Druid was simple or singularly oriented, and he was convinced that the dolmens were no different.

He probably just wasn’t at the stage where he could ascertain the other purposes. Maybe he even needed another advancement. Whatever the case, he couldn’t afford to spend weeks just sitting around and immersing himself in nature. People were depending on him.

With that in mind, he returned to where he’d left Mako and let the Wayfarer know what was going on.

“So, you’re going to build a magic teleportation circle?” he asked skeptically. “You can do that?”

“I can.”

“And you can fly?”

“Affirmative.”

“And heal?”

“That too.”

“What can’t you do, man?” Mako asked.

“Uh…I’m not much of a crafter,” he said. “Though I did recently become a soap tycoon. And I made this bad boy.” Elijah brandished his scythe. “In fact, I make all my staves. It’s kind of a hobby.”

“What kind of class lets you do all of that?”

“Well, I’m a Druid by archetype. My class is a little weird, especially since ascension.”

“You’re Ascended? What does that mean?”

It was then that Elijah realized just how isolated the survivors really were. For years, he’d taken the availability of information as a granted. Sure, he didn’t know everything. Not by a long shot. But he’d learned plenty via guides and the more experienced people he’d met along the way. Without access to a Branch – or any outsiders – that just wasn’t possible for the crash survivors.

So, Elijah explained the basic tiers of advancement. Mako gasped when Elijah revealed that he’d progressed past one-twenty-five, revealing that the highest level in the settlement was Davika, who had some sort of Sorcerer variant that veered towards water manipulation. He ended his explanation, saying, “So, that’s kind of the gist of it. You’ll learn more when we get to Ironshore.”

“Is that where you live?”

“Sort of. It’s complicated. So, here’s what I need you to do. I’m going to be working on this for at least a week,” he explained. “In the meantime, I need you to get your people ready and work on getting them to the closest safe zone you can find. Once I’m finished, I’ll ferry them down there so we can get you all to civilization.”

“What if –”

“This isn’t the time for what-ifs, Mako.”

“Mac. Just call me Mac. But what if you don’t come through? Or if something happens to you? Moving that many people is going to be difficult, and if we abandon that settlement, it’ll be overrun in a few days.”

“Look down there, Mac,” Elijah said, pointing to the forest far below. Clouds had rolled in, partially obscuring the view, but the bioluminescent flora was still visible. “Wouldn’t you rather live down there than in that cave? Even if I don’t do what I said I’d do – which I will, but let’s say I don’t. Your people will have a much better life down there than up here.”

That was probably true, too. However, Elijah had sensed enough powerful beasts in the forest to know that the survivors would probably have a rough time of it. Still, it was definitely better than having to worry about malformed abominations like the flesh spiders that plagued the upper caves.

“Yeah,” Mako said, running his hand through his hair. “Guess you’re right.”

After that, it wasn’t long before the Wayfarer set off. It would take days for him to return to the settlement, then quite a bit longer to escort everyone to one of the safe areas. Still, Elijah questioned whether or not he’d have enough time to properly build his next dolmen.

As he resumed the Shape of the Sky, he wished he didn’t have to waste one of his dolmens on his current mission. Certainly, it would be nice to have one in the Hollow Depths, but he’d have preferred to use it much further away from the grove. However, what he wanted and reality were two very different things, so as he flapped his wings and took to the sky, he pushed those thoughts out of his head.

Soon enough, he was soaring above the forest in search of proper building materials. By all rights, he didn’t need anything special. He’d built one of his dolmens out of self-made concrete, after all. But with the relative weakness of the ley line intersection, he knew he couldn’t afford to shortchange the rest of the process.

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So, resolving to find the best materials he could, he spent hours flying around barely above the trees, and keeping one facet of his mind on Soul of the Wild. At first, he lost himself in the sheer vitality of the place. He’d never thought that there could be so much life belowground, but what he felt rivaled the most densely populated rainforest. It wasn’t on par with his island, but he’d never have expected it to be.

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With that vitality acting almost as camouflage, it took Elijah a few hours just to adjust. Once he did, it only took half a day to find what he was looking for. He landed near a huge column of stone that would have been called a mountain if it’d been on the surface.

Was it load-bearing? Elijah didn’t think so, but he didn’t understand much about how such a space could exist in the first place. By the laws of physics, it should have collapsed in on itself. Just as he normally did, he ascribed it to magic and focused on what he’d come to do.

Most of the pillar was made of simple limestone, though there were other sedimentary layers that suggested other types of stone. It was infused with some degree of ethera – just like everything else – but it wasn’t particularly special. However, what did qualify for that classification was a hundred-yard-long seam of pale blue stone. It had the look of blue chalcedony, though when he ran his fingers along its surface, he could instantly tell it was much more durable than the soft stone of pre-World Tree Earth. It was also streaked with white, giving it a unique appearance.

More importantly, it was absolutely packed with ethera.

Elijah immediately got to work quarrying it. Thankfully, he wasn’t forced to shift into Shape of Thorn and use his claws. Instead, he had a pickaxe forged by his sister-in-law – she knocked it out in a couple of hours when he asked her about mining tools – that tore into the surrounding rock like it was nothing. The calcite-like material was a little more resistant, but Elijah considered that a good thing.

It took him more than two days to quarry the stone, mostly because of the awkward positioning. Hanging hundreds of feet above the ground made everything more difficult, but in the end, he managed it all the same, carving twenty-seven huge hunks of stone from the enormous pillar.

The process was neither quick nor painless, but a part of Elijah reveled in the physical labor. If it had been easy, it would have been robbed of much of its significance. The fact that it was difficult made him appreciate the process all the more. In that way, he felt somewhat like how he imagined Carmen must have felt when she forged a mighty weapon or a stout piece of armor. A portion of the value lay in the difficulty involved.

That was especially true when Elijah embarked on a quest to carry the stone to his building sight. He could not do so in the Shape of the Sky. It was too heavy. Instead, he shifted into the Shape of Thorn, hefted one on each shoulder, then trekked across the unfamiliar landscape. Along the way, he learned a little more about the local wildlife. It really wasn’t so different from what he might see on the surface. There were mammals and insects, reptiles and amphibians. He even found a few birds, though they seemed flightless and had more in common with turkeys than eagles.

But one thing was obvious – despite those similarities, the local fauna was absolutely unique. Never was that clearer than when he saw a cat with six legs or a buzzing dragonfly that was at least as big as he was. It was like he’d walked into a primordial and wholly alien world.

And he loved it.

The variety of life astounded and astonished him, leaving him awestruck and wishing he had more time to truly explore the area.

That wasn’t to say there weren’t plenty of dangerous predators about. There were, as he discovered when he saw a long-legged hippopotamus type creature get savagely mauled by a massive reptile that reminded Elijah of a Komodo dragon.

Oddly enough, there weren’t many natural treasures around, and none were strong enough to attract or promote the growth of guardians. Which was a shame, because Elijah would have loved to see what sort of powerful creature such an environment could cultivate.

Regardless, it took most of another day to get all the blocks back to the ley line intersection. The stone was much heavier than it should have been, which made carrying it an absolute pain, especially when he needed to do so over uneven terrain. He managed it all the same, though, and soon enough, he’d stacked it neatly on the edge of his build site.

Only then did the real work begin.

First, he rough-shaped the stones, this time using his claws in Shape of Thorn. He had a set of stonecarving tools in his satchel, but there was just something about using his claws that gave the process a personalized feel. What’s more, he had more control over his own limbs than he did over the picks, chisels, and files from the set he’d gotten back in Ironshore.

As he worked, he bathed the area in his personal ethera, using Blessing of the Grove and a shapeless and directionless Nature’s Design. Together, they absolutely flooded the area with vitality and his particular flavor of ethera, which was a necessary component of building any dolmen.

The rough shaping only took a few hours, and then he moved on to working on more detailed work, like the tenons and mortice holes that would keep everything in place. It was tedious work, mostly because everything needed to be exact, but with his multi-faceted mind, Elijah had no issues.

By the time another day had dawned, which was marked by what appeared to be a day-night cycle dictated by the ebb and flow of the bioluminescent flora, he’d completed that step. After digging the holes in a wide circle, Elijah put everything together. Over the next few hours, he adjusted and re-adjusted everything until the trilithons were perfectly spaced.

Only then did he step back and take a look at his mid-project progress.

He stood there for a long while, just staring at the circle of stones and wondering what he was going to do next. Every dolmen needed a theme, and to date, he’d been inspired from the beginning of each project. That was not the case with this one, and he found himself staring at it and wishing for some inspiration.

It was more than four hours later when a seed of an idea blossomed into something more fully formed. With feverish inspiration, he stepped forward and started to carve.

The first step was to turn the rough shapes into something perfectly uniform. It wasn’t difficult, just time-consuming – especially when he was itching to get the rest of the dolmen carved. Such was the nature of inspiration. When it hit, Elijah couldn’t rest until he’d seen it through.

So it was with the dolmen.

He chipped away at the stone, arduously carving various designs into the hardened material. All the while, his ethera billowed and roiled like a storm. Not even the animals dared to come close.

In the end, it was nearly a week after Mako’s departure that he stepped back, his eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep, and beheld his creation.

And when he did, he couldn’t keep a smile from his face.

It might not have been the best place for a dolmen, and he certainly hadn’t wanted to put one so close to home. But gazing at the carvings, he knew he’d outdone himself regarding the artistry on display.