Spellheart 9: Chapter 1 (Patreon)

“Try to focus,” Dean said around a mouthful of snacks. “Feel the Primordial World and bend it to your will! Like bending a lovely elf girl, you just met over--“

“That’s more distracting than helpful, Dean,” I sighed, cracking an eye open at my old friend. He tipped his back of toasted snacks into his mouth, guzzling them down like they were water. Crumbs washed over his cheeks and made a small pile on the ground before he emptied the bag and dropped it with a mound of others right next to him.

Ever since he discovered the Hearthwood had reinvented junk food snacks, he’d filled a bag of holding every time he walked through my city.

“I admit, cultivation is more a natural thing for me. It’s tough to put into words,” Dean shrugged. “I’m not the kind of cultivator who sits crosslegged and explains what he thinks and feels. I just feel what I can do and get it done. That’s how I learned space magic. From what I hear, you have primordial aspects to your zeal already. So there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to touch on the same thing.”

I’d already touched on the Primordial Aspect of Identity. It was one of the powers that had helped me defeat the Timeweaver Queen the last time I’d been in the Primordial World when I went to save Sam and Dean from a horrible fate at the hands of those skin-stealing monsters. Now, their cavern in the distant past was nothing more than an irradiated crater. We’d blow it up with a nuclear bomb.

Unfortunately, because time travel always makes a mess, I still had to guard against the spiders even though we’d killed them all. Thankfully, their time and ours weren’t entirely unliked. There was just enough linearity to the connection that I was hopeful I’d never see another Timeweaver again.

But if I did, I wanted to hone the power that had been so useful against their queen the last time we’d fought.

To that end, I’d recruited Sam and Dean’s help. They were old friends of mine and had been happy to lend a hand. The only trouble came when Anya the Seer, one of Sam’s old loves, came off to take him home again. After that, I was certain the two of them had a lot of catching up to do.

That left Dean to help me on his own. While Dean was lots of fun out on the town and plenty handy in a fight, he was a lot less helpful l than Sam when it came to practicing cultivation.

“Be one with the rock, Theo!” Dean whispered directly into my ear as I held a stone in my hands.

The stone was the object of my current experiment. The Timweaver Queen, who’d mastered the same ability and been able to transmute one substance into another through mere force of will and the power of Identity zeal. After weeks of work, I was fairly certain I’d figured out what that was and what it meant. I should have been able to replicate her ability on my own. Only try as I might, it wasn’t working.

“Run your hands up the stone’s body, feeling every curve. Squeeze and kneed it between your fingers. Taste the salt on its surface and imagine what it would be like to brush your lips against it...”

I cracked an eye open. “I’m thinking your subconscious is telling you to return to the palace. Thank you for your help so far, Dean.”

Dean sighed and rolled off the boulder he’d been using as a seat, a couch, a bed, and a curling iron while I meditated in the Primordial World.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. Somebody’s got to stay here and ensure you aren’t eaten by some giant Kun Peng while you’re meditating. I suppose if you really don’t want me cheering you on anymore I can let you cultivate in privacy for a bit.”

“Thank you.”

“Oh, and the key to using these primordial zeals is putting your will behind what you want to do. Don’t just imagine it happening. Imagine yourself making it happen,” Dean said as he left.

I closed my eyes again as soon as Dean set his mind to building a grill and cooking some hamburgers. To my surprise, his parting words of advice were exactly what I needed.

I’d closed my eyes to focus, so I wasn’t really sure what had changed or when. But when I opened my eyes again, the stone was a solid sphere of diamond as large as my fist.

It worked! I actually did it! I had taken an ordinary rock and imposed my will on it!

Through the sheer force of concentration, I had taken what was and replaced it with what I thought it should be! I shot to my feet in giddy excitement. I hadn’t been this thrilled with myself since shooting my stone spike spell!

I admired the diamond a moment before tossing it into my Dimensional Storage. I’d show it off later. For now, I wanted to see if I could do it again.

So I snatched another stone up from the ground at my feet and set it in my lap. I tried my best to think the same thoughts I’d been pondering before, and sure enough, when I opened my eyes, the rock was the deep yellow of solid gold.

“Heavier too...” I muttered as I tossed the gold in my hand. My earth zeal penetrated it, and I knew it was pure all the way down to the core.

A few more tests, and I could perform the feat without closing my eyes. The transformation was gradual at first, like a ripple washing over the surface of a lake. As the ripple passed, the substance behind it changed from what it was to what I wanted it to be. Now, this was real magic!

I did find that I was unfortunately limited with what I could make. Minerals were easy, probably because of my earth affinity. Gemstones, too came naturally. So I could make all the iron I needed now with just a quick trip to the Primordial World. Or uranium for the reactors, for that matter.

Other things were harder. No matter how hard I concentrated on a rock, I couldn’t make a butterfly. Nor a computer chip, even though the latter should have been possible since I could make crystals of silicone just fine.

I thought I was using the wrong source material, so I plucked a few strands of nearby wild grass and tried to change them. No luck. Worse, changing the grass into anything but the grass was incredibly difficult. I couldn’t manage to turn it into anything fancy without a lot of effort.

After more experimentation, I found the best solution for me was to take the strand of grass, turn it into this plain, mottled gray stone, then turn it into whatever I wanted. Eventually, I turned the strands into a set of solid ruby spikes as long as my arm. Perhaps someone in the Hearthwood could find a use for them.

I went to fetch Dean. I found him chopping firewood around the corner with his axe, which was a tough thing in the Primordial World. The trees here made what we had back home seemed like twigs by comparison. Even a demigod like Dean had to put his back into splitting a log here.

“Ready to go? And here I was, setting up the campfire! I thought I’d catch a few fish or something, and we could relive those days you missed while you were napping.” Dean pointed to a few sharpened sticks around the campfire. “Heck, I could even reheat that one I saved for you!”

“...or we could go back to the Hearthwood and get a proper meal cooked by any number of professional chefs,” I said. “Let’s just head home. My treat.”

Dean sighed and picked up the logs he’d split for firewood. They would no doubt be some sort of heavenly treasure back on the World of Sanctuary and Serenity thanks to their incredible strength and exotic powers from growing in the Primordial World, but no doubt Dean would just burn them for firewood.

We returned home, and as promised, I treated Dean to lunch. He’d helped me quite a bit lately, and I owed him for everything he’d set into motion for when I eventually emerged from The Wanderer. We had a good time, and I nearly forgot my next appointment of the day.

She must have figured out where I was from Mac, because she came to the restaurant and sat down beside us just as Dean finished devouring a massive molten chocolate lava cake. The thing was the size of his body, and yet he ate every bite in minutes and licked the plate clean.

I turned to the instructor for my next appointment.

She was taller than most elves and more beautiful, too, though I knew I was biased. Her shining silvery hair hung straight down her back, contrasting sharply with the tight black outfit she wore halfway between leather armor and a dress. She had a blue sword on one hip, and her full lips were pulled up into a smile.

“Hello, Tivana, we won’t be much longer!” I promised.

Dean blinked at his empty plate, frowning. I nudged him, and he turned to look at Tivana. He broke into a smile as soon as he saw his granddaughter. It was strange to think my friend had a granddaughter, but I’d been asleep for more than four hundred years. He and Sam both had legions of descendants that even they barely knew about.

Still, I was dreading the day Dean realized just how involved I was with not just one but two of his descendants.

“If it isn’t my perfect, pure, and innocent little granddaughter!” Dean laughed as he tossed the plate aside and rubbed Tivana on the head like she was a little girl. The gesture was a little odd on a grown woman, but Tivana accepted it with all the grace of a well-trained princess.

“It is an honor to see you again, grandfather. When you return to the capital, please pass along my best wishes to my mother and Captain Amisra,” Tivana bowed.

I wasn’t quite sure what the Deanian Royal Family had worked out for their internal pecking order, but Tivana was treating him as though he was still the king he was before he left. That would probably work out fine since I couldn’t picture Dean doing any actual ruling. He was more of the delegating kind of king. Truth be told, I suspected his daughter mostly delegated as well. It was a wonder Deania had stayed together as long as it had.

I grimaced as Tivana bid her grandfather goodbye and didn’t feel at ease again until he left for the capital. I didn’t dare wrap my arm around Tivana’s waist until he was far outside the borders of the Hearthwood.

“Now that your gramps is finally out of the picture, what do you say you and I spend some quality time together again?” I planted a kiss on her cheek, and she blushed.

“Not so fast, patriarch.” Tivana tapped me on the nose. “You have flying practice today.”

“Aww, can’t it wait? At least long enough for you and me to visit some quiet, secluded room with a very durable bed...”

Tivana planted a kiss on my cheek, just as I’d done to her a moment ago. Then she whispered in my ear. “If you can make it work, I’ll give you a reward.”

“Now that, my dear, is wonderful motivation.”

<note></note>

Originally I planned on holding this back a little longer, but I know the Spellheart-only fans are getting a little grumpy that I'm working on Paladin 4 instead of Spellheart 9. I'm sitting on a few of these, so I'll be posting them as I edit them. Though they are liable to change between now and the final version because I haven't started seriously writing this, just doing some weekend work when I'm in the mood.

No schedule on it yet, unfortunately. Getting Paladin 4 done is highest priority, but once I'm finished with that I'll hopefully have a good start on this one and be able to finish it quickly when I put on my serious pants. I will aim for 1 per week, at least until my current backlog of the first 10 chapters or so runs out, but I make no promises since I'm only really working on this one when the words are flowing.

Dec 25 note: I messed up and sent chapter 3 out to everyone, so I’m just going to send out 1 and 2 to everyone as well.

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