Spellheart 10: Chapter 89 (Patreon)

I’d always considered myself scholarly but practical. I never thought I’d be the type to sit in a room twirling a magical headset in my hands and contemplating fate. And yet, here I was.

Did I have the guts to do what I had to do?

If I used this thing as planned, I would trick Louis into committing countless atrocities on this world I’d laid claim to. The Cult of the Unblinking Eye, under Louis’ leadership, would lay waste to this place. If it all happened under Louis’ watch, I could hold myself above such things. I’d put an end to them, after all. I deserved to be proud of that.

But if I took this step, suddenly I would be the guiding hand over Louis’ shoulders. The puppeteer he least suspected. His actions would be his own, but he would be following my advice as he did it. All the crimes he committed while dogmatically following the orders of the one speaking to him through the headset would be mine to carry. It was a dark thought.

I could simply ignore my plans. From what Sam told me, Fate would take care of the temporal discrepancy. The world I knew and loved might come to pass, form, and be destroyed. And it would even happen by my own hand. I didn’t have to do this.

But I would not stand by passively on the sideways. When the game is at stake, a winner wants the ball. I would force this world into the shape I wanted it, whether or not fate agreed with me.

I put the headset on.

“Mac, prepare to alter my voice. I want to sound just like you remember Louis’ future self,” I replied.

[Done,] Mac replied.

Then, I waited for the voice on the other side to begin speaking. Ted was long dead, and this little trinket should have been passed along among the human clones aboard The Challenger. Louis would find it soon. I just had to be patient.

Eventually, a voice spoke up from the other side of the headset.

“Hello? Does this thing work? I heard it gives good cultivation advice, and to be honest, I really need it. We fucked up big, and the Elven Star Dominion got most of us...” Louis explained. It was strange to hear him panic like this. He sounded like a normal guy. A lot like Ted, actually.

“Lay your worries to rest, Louis. And settle in. You’re going to be in this world for a while. Don’t worry. It is extremely well sealed off from the Primordial World, so the Elven Star Dominion will not be hunting you down here.”

I suppressed a chuckle. No wonder my world had been considered the boonies when Sam, Dean, and I left it for the first time. All the portals to the Primordial World had been sealed up long ago during my fight with The Challenger.

“Stay here? This place is even more barren than the world I landed on!” Louis protested. “There’s nothing here.”

“There are plenty of elves manifested where you are every day. It’s fine. Just stay put.” Apparently, he thought little my landscape remediation project for the place where I fought him and his older clone.

“And why should I listen to you?” Louis demanded.

I leaned back in my chair, prepared to lie through my teeth. This was the moment I’d been waiting for.

“Because, Louis. I’m you.”

“You’re me?” he asked, voice full of skepticism.

“That’s right. I’m you from the future. I’m wise beyond your years. If you want things to go your way, then you should listen and do exactly as I tell you.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and for a moment I was worried I overplayed my hand. Then Louis spoke again.

“Okay. Tell me what to do.”

And so I walked Louis through, establishing the Cult of the Unblinking Eye. The organization that would one day terrorize my younger self to no end.

***

While I worked, the entire Fateweaver Society dedicated itself to sensing fluctuations in fate. I repaired, maintained, and manipulated the world until they gave me the thumbs up everything was on the right track. With no one working against me, it was surprisingly easy.

I devoted myself entirely to my goal of realigning this world and turning it into the one I knew. Every mountain and forest had to be perfect. Even Louis and the Cult of the Unblinking Eye had to be exactly as I remembered. I worried over them since the only lever I had to pull on them was whispering in Louis’s ear.

But fate was kind to me there. He established his headquarters exactly where he was supposed to, and he started mind-controlling the local elves exactly as I’d been warned he would. The other clones awoke one at a time until, eventually, there were a few core members of the Cult of the Unblinking Eye, including a copy of Ethan.

I was feeling increasingly bad about the Ethan I had in my dungeon. How many copies down the line was he? If my project worked as I hoped, the real him was dead many worlds and hundreds of years ago. I would release him someday, but not until this whole business was finished. That was increasingly looking like a four hundred year sentence.

Matriarch Grand Hydra came to meet with me for her usual report. “Cathala and the scouts we left have established themselves in the forest known as the Devilbeast Wilds and will rename themselves the Hidden Serpent Tribe to continue monitoring the situation.”

“And is there any sign of The Wanderer appearing?” I asked.

“No, but there have been mentions of several low-level humans being sighted across the various continents. The ones we hear about are usually killed and refined for their vitality. Presumably, the ones that aren’t killed have already been captured by high-level matriarchs and are being kept secret.”

I drummed my fingers against the table. “There won’t be many of them left by the time I come around. I will direct Louis and his people to hunt down and secure the imprisoned humans and their artifacts. I think that happened in my timeline.”

No wonder the Cult of the Unblinking Eye had swiftly taken over. They were survivors who had hundreds of years to cultivate and grow in strength, and they landed right in the time when the first wave of humans was dropping in. I’d often complained that I’d left The Wanderer so late compared to my friends and enemies, but now I see most people got screwed one way or another.

The day The Wanderer finally appeared brought mixed feelings in my heard. For one, it looked very similar to the trap the Cult of the Unblinking Eye had set for me. Sam and Dean left The Wanderer, and I had Matriarch Grand Hydra take me to their location to spy on them from afar.

It was them, exactly as I remembered them. Smaller, weaker, confused, and afraid. But it was them.

“This is not another trap, is it?” Matriarch Grand Hydra asked me.

I shook my head. “No, this time, that’s the real deal.” I shot a glance at Melise, who confirmed my findings with her fate magic.

“Fateweaver Samuel and Dean the Destroyer can not appear on this world now. To do so would distort the delicate strands of fate that are only now mending. If this world is to merge back in with the primary timeline, they must remain out of the way. We will have to find another world for them and their companions to reside on,” Melise said.

I’d had a similar conversation with Sam, so I wasn’t surprised. I did want to confirm that I was free to move, though, which had been the point of bringing Melise along to read fate.

“Can I move freely, though?”

Melise nodded. “Assuming your past self does not prematurely awaken, fate will be fine without our interference.”

“Good. Let’s wait for everyone to depart. I want to see my past self up close and personal.”

The group of survivors eventually left to find freshwater and go fishing. That was my opportunity to get to the large red box. I gave the door a little knock, turned the knob, and stepped inside. There was no barrier preventing my entry.

“Hello?” I called to the empty vessel.

There was no response, but I had the dim feeling of recognition. The Wanderer recognized me, though there was no Mac to translate its feelings into words on my behalf.

I ran my hands across the familiar and yet strange surroundings. This was eerie. But stranger than the ship’s interior was the man floating in suspension before me. He was me, younger, dumber, and with a lot of hell yet to go through before he came out on the other side.

I glanced at the console beneath his feet. There was a dial there that read six months, and it was counting down the minutes day by day.

I frowned as I stared at it. Six months? That wasn’t right, not right at all. If I woke up in six months instead of four hundred years, it would destroy everything I was trying to do.

Yes, my past self would probably kick The Challenger and Louis’ ass, given equal footing. But this world would never merge with the primary timeline if that happened. We’d forever be a small isolated pocket of space, and the events that led to the true destruction of The Challenger would occur beyond my control. Worse, my hands would be tied by fate the moment I awoke.

Grimly, I realized what I had to do. I was about to be extremely unfair to my younger self and turn a difficult challenge into a nearly impossible one. I adjusted the dial as far as it would go, turning a six month wait into one that would take hundreds of years.

“Sorry buddy. Fate of the world and all.” I gave the stasis chamber a pat as I departed.

***

Time passed. Keeping fate on course required my full attention. The Cult of the Unblinking Eye grew stronger, and I did nothing to stop them. Sam and Dean roamed the land, and a few Sorcerers from neighboring clans and kingdoms eyed them hungrily.

I couldn’t afford to let them get captured, though, so I dropped in to ask them to kindly stay out of the way.

It felt good to play the secret protector for my weaker friends. The two of them had done the same for me. I even left a few gifts for them to find to help them on their path to Demigod-hood.

I even left Dean a few secret manuals in a treasure chest at the bottom of a dungeon. They contained the barest scraps of information on a Dual Cultivation technique. That technique would one day form the basis of my own version of the cultivation methodology. A methodology that Sam and Dean were currently putting to full use back on the utopian version of the World of Sanctuary and Serenity we were hoping to replicate across all worlds soon.

One year turned to ten, and then ten to a fifty. Years became a century, then two, but the passing of time did not diminish me or my companions in the least. Comela and Segolas raced along the ranks to Sorcerer and eventually Demigod. At that point, the pair of rival siblings left for the Primordial World to seek greater fortune there, and I knew I could trust them to look after one another.

Argona also reached the Sorcerer realm, and the enchantments she crafted would one day be valuable across all the Ten Thousand Worlds when the sky was full again, and there were other worlds to visit. In the meantime, she continued to hone her craft.

Generation after generation of my children manifested, lived, and even died. The latter was particularly difficult for me, but such was the fate of an Immortal Ascendant.

It was difficult to let Elara go as well. I had to drop her off on one of the Worlds of Sanctuary and Serenity from the distant past though. What had only been a push of a button from me would require a lot of work on her part. She would guide the various infiltration enchantments to ensure the destruction of The Challenger went properly.

The Hearthstone Continent grew and expanded all the while. We absorbed or destroyed the coastal clans lining the edge of the continent. None of them were anything special when we arrived, but after gaining access to the resources we had for sale, a few of them reached the Wizard realm and started oppressing the other clans. I decided non-interference was impossible so long as we were trading with them and gave the order to annex them all and take complete control of the continent.

A few hundred years into things, I opened up the Primordial World portal to all who wanted into it. My realm was bursting at the seams with Wizards and Sorcerers by then, so I didn’t really have much choice. With no other worlds to visit yet, there wasn’t anywhere to explore except for the Primordial World.

Opening up that portal meant we had a constant inflow of rare and exotic resources. I could see quite easily how a few hundred years in the future when all this was said and done, the Hearthwood would become a society that could surpass the Elven Star Dominion of old. And this time I would make sure we didn’t make quite so many enemies.

The only really tricky thing regarding keeping fate aligned was Yennas. I needed a future version of her to get captured by the Cult of the Unblinking Eye and mind-controlled so that her original wisp could take over the body in the future after traveling back to the past. Perhaps there was some mind-bending, confusing causality trick I could pull to make it all work, but I decided to just use my nifty new clone vats, stolen from The Challenger, to fix the problem.

One mind-controlled and empty-headed copy of Yennas sufficed to patch things over. If all worked out, then the body she was wearing now had been this very clone. In fact, the trick worked so well that I made a few hundred more clones for the Cult of the Unblinking Eye to control. The Cult still thought they were brainwashing people, not realizing I’d pulled the wool over their eyes centuries ago. It was funny, really.

As time wore on, I reduced my active hand in the world, slowly relying more and more on my Matriarchs to govern and influence the place. When the time came for my past self to awaken, I would have to step back and watch from afar, as I could not exist in the same world as him.

Gradually, my name faded from the eyes and memories of my people until their Patriarch was a mythical figure and a hero out of stories and legends to most. A few knew me to be the father or husband of the most powerful matriarchs of the land, but little more.

That was just the way I wanted it. When I returned, I didn’t want the new Sorcerers and Wizards to recognize me.

I wasn’t idle during this time. The nature of Immortal Ascension became increasingly clear to me as the years wore on, and I realized there was further to reach. Unfortunately on this small and isolated world disconnected from fate, I could not reach beyond the beginning of Immortal Ascension. The world was simply not strong enough for my strength to increase. As it was, I was like the weight of a sun pulling this entire world’s zeal around my orbit. A tiny pond was not large enough to fit a whale, and that’s exactly what I was.

Still, thanks to The Wanderer, I could still practice and train in other ways. My ability to transmute one material to the next climbed to new heights, and my concepts became more akin to reality warping than magic. When I gave a command, the very laws of the universe themselves seemed to bend to my will.

I wasn’t sure what that made me, but certainly not a newly ascended cultivator anymore. Until I had others to measure myself against though, I wouldn’t know.

[Theo, you asked for an update when the time finally came?] Mac asked.

“I know, Mac. It’s time.” I closed the door to The Wanderer, shutting it behind me. “It looks like I’ll be staying in here for the next few years.”

Thankfully, Matriarch Grand Hydra and the others would monitor events while I watched history unfold.

<Note>
The final chapter of Spellheart releases tomorrow! I'm a little scared.