Spellheart 9: Chapter 7 (Patreon)

“Thousands of giant dragons that fly through space?” My mind returned to the massive dead dragon in the center of the Hearthwood. It had been the center of Segolas’ cultivation path, and the entire Circle of Necromancers to the north had coveted the amount of death zeal it emitted. And that was just a dead juvenile. I shuddered to think what a live, fully grown dragon of this type could do. Especially if it was in a swarm with thousands of its kin. I took a deep breath, dreading the answer to my next question. “Is it anything like the one you killed in the Hearthwood?”

Dean shook his head. “Oh no, definitely not. That was a small juvenile dragon, traveling alone. It was a powerful individual because of all the fights it had enhance its Bloodline Origin Awakening cultivation--“ I was just breathing a sigh of relief when Dean continued. “--But this dragon swarm will be way more powerful. There will be adult versions of that same dragon along with thousands of offspring not quite hungry enough to set out on their own but hungry enough to devour an entire planet's worth of elves if we give them a chance!”

“You sound entirely too happy for what will likely be a tough battle.” I grimaced at the thought of the cities that didn’t know they were about to be destroyed.

“Oh, it’s not that bad. With Sam’s Fate powers, we can usually reverse time and save the people who get eaten. They’re more likely to survive than those struck by collateral damage!”

“Collateral damage?”

Sam cleared his throat. “When a dragon large enough to have its own atmosphere crashes into the ground from a supernaturally powerful blow, the entire planet can wind up destroyed by the impact. Fortunately, the old Planetary Defense Array surrounding the World of Sanctuary and Serenity is still active in mitigating the worst of the projectiles. Still, we’ll need all hands on deck to keep the earthquakes to a minimum. But that should be far easier now that we have you, an earth-aspect cultivator.”

Dean chuckled. “You should have seen the time we helped the orcs with their Dragonswarm! One of those big buggers splattered down and shattered a continent!”

“That was your fault, Dean.” Sam cast him a look of annoyance.

“But Grognak still paid out!”

“If by paying out, he implemented the displaced elf restitution program to allow any elves unhappy on the World of Struggle and Strife to return home during their regularly scheduled pilgrimages, then yes, he paid out. The pay we were supposed to get went to damages for the destroyed clans to rebuild their cities.”

“So I take it once the little guys are taken care of, I’ll play support while you drive back the demi-god level dragons?” I asked.

“That about sums it up. If there’s anything more powerful than the two of us can take, we’ll have to hide behind the Planetary Defense Array and hope it holds. Those things have taken quite the beating over the years, and who knows what the Frozen Blood Witch and Grognak did when they modified it.”

Despite my earlier comments, I licked my lips with anticipation. At first, I thought I just wanted some points, but these days the nuclear reactors spread throughout the settlement were all funneling straight into the mana generator, creating as many points as I needed with no effort on my part at all.

When was my last good fight? Not since the Timeweaver Spider Queen, and I’ve been working hard on my abilities. I was more powerful than ever before, and I wanted to test how much my hard work had really paid off.

That explanation would have disturbed me if I’d still been the same Earthling I was when I arrived. But those days were over, and now I was the Patriarch of the Hearthwood Clan. The only laws of this land were those the strong enforced with their personal power, and to protect my family, I would need to be as strong as I could be.

And so, like Dean, I smiled at the thought of battle. “When do we leave?”

***

Sam had to return to the Fateweaver Society to figure out the exact location of the attack. He would alert all the other Fateweavers to the danger. With their help, they’d identify each major disaster before it was going to happen.

Dean headed to the capital, and Tivana and I accompanied him. We huddled in one of the capital’s smaller restaurants while waiting for news from Sam. I’d have suspected our presence would draw attention. Still, either Dean or Tivana must have hidden our presence because nobody paid us any more attention than they would an ordinary trio of heartwielders chatting after a long workday.

Sam arrived late with a tired and worried expression on his face.

“I have bad news and good news,” Sam said.

“Aw crap. Is nobody else showing up?” Dean asked. “I want to fight the big guys, not spend weeks mopping up little critters because all the powerful elves and those Unblinking Eye chumps are sticking their heads in the sand.”

“They are showing up. However, someone recently nudged fate so the dragonswarm would touch down on this side of the planet, right over Deania.” Sam’s face was grim.

“Wait, they changed where the attack would happen?” My eyes widened. Fate zeal didn’t have as many direct uses for combat, but with enough time to prepare, it seemed there was nothing it couldn’t do.

“Pretty much. Obviously, we can’t let that happen, so we’ll need to nudge it back into position. We’ll hit it from multiple angles. Dean will drop some snacks to distract the Dragonswarm for a few minutes. I’ll work with fate zeal to set things straight, and Theo can speed up the planet’s rotation. Between the three, we should be able to aim the Dragonswarm at the ocean. Even if they alter fate again, what we’ve done should be too much to counter.”

“I’m sorry, you want me to what?” Did I just hear him ask me to speed up the rotation of a planet? I was an earth cultivator, not a planetary terraformer.

“Our divinations say that you make it happen when we ask you to do it. I don’t know how, but apparently, you find a way.” Sam shrugged.

“Any hints?”

“Not a clue. Which I suppose is a hint unto itself. It means whatever you do is some powerful magic.”

I grumbled to myself a little. “Alright, I’ll do it. But don’t blame me if I can’t figure it out.”

“Then it’s settled. I’ll need to take care of things on my end starting now. There’s no time to waste.”

“Wait!” Dean said. “Do you think dragons prefer giant hamburgers or hot dogs?”

***

Dean had to settle for a collection of giant monster corpses obtained courtesy of the hunters of the Hearthwood. I didn’t know what they were, but according to Mac, they were the only things that were both dragon-sized and readily available in bulk in our local market. So, after buying a few more for sale in the capital, Dean was fully equipped for his mission.

Sam returned to the Fateweaver Society, which only left Tivana and myself figuring out how to speed up the rotation of a damn planet.

I wish Sam had at least been able to give me a hint. But he hadn’t.

Unfortunately, Tivana wasn’t of much help. She was a space cultivator, and other than suggesting I push really hard, she didn’t know how to make what I wanted to happen work.

If this were merely a problem of brute strength, Dean would have handled it. And if it were merely an application of earth zeal, surely Sam could rally a few thousand earth aspect cultivators of a high enough cultivation to make some change happen.

I already had a hunch that the solution had something to do with science rather than magic, so I conversed with the only mind I knew who had the background to help me.

“Mac! How do I speed up a planet’s rotation?”

[We could try cleaning and lubricating the bearings. That usually works for spinning things.]

Mac chuckled at his own joke, and I grumbled.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized maybe Mac was right. Maybe speeding up the planet was as simple as making what it rotated on rotate faster?

That this was a planet and had nothing resembling bearings was of some concern, but not the end of the world. If the world had an iron core, maybe I could speed that up. My aura fragment gave me far better control over metal than I had over earth. But who knew what increasing the speed of the planet’s core would do? Sure, I could probably slow it back to normal after the danger passed, but it still seemed like a big risk. Plus, it would take days of continuous effort on my part, and I wasn’t sure how much time Sam and Dean’s time would buy us.

“Mac, how far does the deepest dungeon you’re in contact with go? I’ll need to get as close as I can to these bearings to clean them.”

[Several go fairly deep, but only one that isn’t filled with endless hordes of exceptionally powerful dungeon-dwelling monsters. Things get quite dangerous close to the core.]

“Perfect. Give me the coordinates.”

[Certainly... but... Theo, you know a planet doesn’t spin on bearings, correct? I am attempting humor. Either my logic processors have gone faulty, or yours are.]

“I know, Mac, but I suspect you were closer to the solution than you thought.”

***

Mac’s path down to the center of the planet was half a continent away at the very edges of his perception. I wouldn’t have found it if he hadn’t guided me to the exact location.

The dungeon within it was relatively weak, and the monster under the direct control of the dungeon core was only at the wizard rank. It was, however, of the Earth aspect, and its power was above what I’d been expecting for a dungeon at its level. Fortunately, with my current abilities clearing the dungeon only took a few hours, and I soon reached the real prize.

“Here we are, Minerva. A hole in the ground.”

Minerva suggested I drop a stone down to gauge the hole’s depth. I did so, and even after an entire minute of waiting, I didn’t hear a clink.

[It narrows down no larger than a mouse hole after a few hundred meters and then to something the size of the head of a pin. There are a few blockages on the way, but the real benefit is the fact that there is both a chamber at the bottom and there is a continuous ley line of earth zeal leading straight downward. Your Unearthly Movement skill should take you all the way to the bottom with relative ease,] Mac explained.

“How deep is it again?”

[Just shy of three thousand kilometers.]

“Pretty damn deep.”

[There may be another solution we haven’t thought of yet.]

“No, this is the only thing we’ve come up with, and I have no more time to dawdle. If I don’t go now, I never will. Wish me luck!”

[Good luck.]

And with that, I dove nose-first into the bottomless pit. On the way down, I stretched out my hand and sank myself into the ley line.

The feeling was odd at first. In the past, I’d traveled horizontally across the surface using this ability. The one exception had taken me to the bottom of the Myriad Monsters Sea, where I’d had to fight off a bunch of sea creatures. Heading straight down carried a distinct sensation with it. It wasn’t one I cared for.

On top of the disorientation was the feeling of the earth calling me. This happened every time I used Unearthly Movement, and it was one reason I wasn’t regularly making trips across the planet using the skill. My body was a bit too attracted to the call of the zeal, and for a long time, I’d worried that I’d merge with it permanently if I let my guard down. The last time something like that happened, it had resulted in my evil robotic twin.

That was a foe I wasn’t looking forward to facing. I’d always thought a copy of me would be a logical, reasonable creature. Or at least someone I could work with, sort of like Sam and his temporary clone. But alas, it seemed my experience with duplicates was more of the evil twin variety, just like Dean. If my twin had left the planet, I might have been able to ignore it, but instead, it was in a pocket dimension in what remained of the Devilbeast Wilds. I wasn’t sure what it was up to, but I was certain I wouldn’t like it. From our brief encounter, it seemed like this planet wasn’t big enough for both of us.

But that fight would wait for another day. For now, I had a planet to spin.

On the way down, I felt other presences besides myself swimming through earth zeal like fish swimming through the sea. Most scattered at my slightest touch, but a few swam closer to investigate. Mac hadn’t been lying. There really were some powerful creatures down here.

Almost all of them were some variant of earth elemental. There was nothing but sheer bedrock around me, and that was rapidly giving way to magma. There were creatures that could survive a swim in magma, but only elementals could survive without any sort of food.

They were far more powerful than any of the naturally occurring elementals I’d seen on the surface, too. I couldn’t make out their true forms since we were all simply energy flowing through the stone, but I was certain if any of those creatures ever came to the surface, they would be massive and powerful. It would take someone at Tivana’s level, at least, to drive them back.

The elementals nipped and bit at each other. Though there was no food down here, perhaps they could grow a little stronger by consuming one another and combining their energies, slowly climbing the food chain until one supreme elemental existed with the combined power of millions of lesser creatures. I would have to make this trip quick because I had no intention of running into such a creature.

Thankfully, my World Titan Fiendbody had enough earth zeal in it that I could feign the appearance of a powerful earth elemental, at that was enough to send anything beneath the sorcerer realm running in fear. Even the bigger sorcerer elementals were wary of me, and I suspected clashes at the sorcerer level were rare. I’d never had to fight while submerged in a ley line before, but after observing the elementals around me, I quickly got the hang of it.

Minerva had been a death spirit for a long time, so she had a good idea of how to fight like this. I couldn’t really speak to her as I didn’t have a physical body, but my will alone was enough for her to take action and defend the two of us against minor elements. While she wasn’t used to fighting with so much earth zeal pressing down around her, these elementals were equally unfamiliar with death zeal, and so she took care of the little ones quite handily.

That gave me the time I needed to study the elementals’ fighting techniques in this underground place. A battle like this was a bit like two blobs of slime wrestling as one elemental’s energy tried to devour the other. It was at the peak of the sorcerer realm, and it must have thought it could take me. It nibbled at what felt like my shoulder, and I turned it on in an instant.

It had already detected my World Titan Fiendbody, but I’d withheld my Earth Cultivation for just this sort of scenario. My body cultivation wasn’t my only source of power. Using my other abilities, I wrapped around the elemental and squeezed. The thing exploded in my grip into a cloud of energy that scattered in all directions. I couldn’t possibly chase it down, but I didn’t need to. My grip had held on to a substantial quantity of earth zeal, and I kept it with me, curious at what form it would take when I became flesh and blood once again.

I re-emerged in a pitch-black cavern, just as Mac promised.

“I hope that wasn’t too uncomfortable for you, Minerva.” At heart, Minerva was an elemental spirit just like those earth elementals. But unlike those earth elementals, she was of the death aspect. The only reason she could travel through stone like we just had was that my powers wrapped around her completely. To anyone studying my body, she would just look like another part of my cultivation, and that was just how my Unearthly Movement skill treated her. “I’m sure you felt quite helpless there.”

[Yes.] She whispered that one word in her mind, and somehow I didn’t think she’d mind going through that again. She always did like a warm, tight, magical embrace.

I was equally glad for her presence. We were on the edge of Mac’s range, so talking with him would be difficult. This hidden cavern near the planet’s core would have been quite spooky if I had been completely alone. I debated opening up a Pocket World Passage up to bring some people in from the Hearthwood. The cavern I was in was certainly big enough. The cavern ceiling stretched high overhead, and the ceiling was rounded instead of made of natural stone. Someone had built this chamber. No wonder there had been a tunnel leading all the way to the surface. It had probably been some sort of air vent once upon a time.

I detected metal around me, which was odd for anything constructed by elven hands. Alloys of iron could be even more dangerous than pure stuff to them.

My enhanced senses could see in even the dimmest of light, but down here, so deep, there was no light at all. My magical senses meant I wasn’t hindered in the least, but if I brought others down here, they would be. Besides, there was something different about being able to examine an area with your own eyes that made everything feel more real.

Unfortunately, despite my profound magical powers, I’d never mastered a single ability that could create light.

“Minerva?”

[No light spells in my arsenal either, master.]

“Well damn.”

And so I was reduced to sending a note through my Dimensional Storage to Mac for help, and he sent back a bundle of tablets with a light enchantment on them. I still preferred flashlights since these square things needed two hands to hold, but they worked well enough, especially when I used earth zeal to stick them to the walls of the room. The zeal here was dense enough that those enchantments would keep running for a long time.

[It looks like an enchanter’s workshop, but I don’t recognize the devices.]

“Close,” I replied. Unlike her, I did recognize the devices. There were microscopes, centrifuges, incubation chambers, and a microwave. Complete with all the glass beakers and the cabinet full of long-dried solutions, I knew what this was. “It’s a laboratory.”

[Like the Alchemist’s Laboratory you let Sava use?]

“Exactly, though this one seems to be based on more science than magic.”

I found a notebook sitting in the center of the room. There was a primitive drawing of an elf there. She seemed different from the elves I knew and loved. Her eyes were wider, her brows drawn sharper. Her ears stuck far past her head, and her cheekbones were sharper than I was used to. An early iteration, perhaps?

Looking further, that was certainly what it appeared to be. I’d know the elves were a created species, but this was the first time I’d seen such clear evidence of it. The distant ancestors of the elves I knew could have been made in this very laboratory who knew how many years ago.

I decided to leave the investigation to my people in the Hearthwood. I sent a message back that I was opening up a Pocket World passage and anybody who wanted to come look around at a piece of forgotten history was welcome to come. I didn’t expect many. All the metal in the place would mean they’d have to wear environmental hazard suits. We had plenty because I sometimes needed elves to help out in the Smith’s Workshop, so I told Mac to make those available to the public for anyone curious and willing to do a little research to contribute to the clan’s libraries.

I suppose I shouldn’t have left the invitation so open because the moment the door opened up, an enormous crowd of elves was waiting on the other side.

“Theo! Theo!” Sava said, licking her lips. “Where’s the best stuff in this lost and forgotten ancient ruin? Quick! I need to grab anything related to alchemical research!”

I should have guessed this would happen. To the elves, ancient ruins often meant free cultivation supplies and riches to whoever explored them first. It was only natural that they’d be eager to look around themselves.

Unfortunately for them, this laboratory had little in the way of cultivation supplies at all. In fact, it seemed like the people who worked here hadn’t known cultivation would be important to the elves they were creating because it wasn’t even mentioned in the notes I’d been reading.

I passed along the bundle of notes to Sava before turning my attention back to the reason I’d come here. Now that a Pocket World Passage was open, I could converse freely with Mac again, and he pointed me in the direction of the tunnel leading downward.

There was a hatch at the edge of the laboratory, and it looked like once upon a time, it had been air-tight. Looking at the laboratory from the outside, it felt like the place had been designed to exist in space, not deep beneath the earth. In fact, it was rather reminiscent of the crude space stations I’d been creating in orbit.

Unlike the cavern, the tunnel leading downward was purely natural. It was also quite slippery.

At first, I thought it was wet, but that wasn’t right. The cave was far too hot for liquid water to adhere to the surface. That was when I realized the stone had smushed under my boot. Prodding it again with my foot, I realized the rock was as soft as butter.

The stone was nearly molten. I was close to the planet’s core. I probably should have guessed as much from the heat, but I was still adapting to just how durable my new body was. In my head, a candle flame still felt like it should be hot enough to burn me. But these days, dipping my hands in lava would be no worse than dipping my hands in a bowl of hot soup would have been when I was an ordinary human.

The environmental suits the elves behind me were wearing were designed mainly to keep iron dust out, not heat. I shut the door tight behind me and latched it closed before moving a rock in the way so an overly curious elf looking to see what was behind the metal hatch wouldn’t roast herself by stepping into this blistering heat.

Then I strode down the tunnel, stepping with arms held wide to keep from falling. It felt a bit like walking downhill over a mountain of snow.

Like snow, I eventually decided that sliding down would be faster than walking. I checked behind me to make sure nobody was looking, and then the illustrious Patriarch of the Hearthwood Clan tore a chunk of stone out of the wall, reshaped it into a sled, and let out a long cheer as I rode it all the way into the magma lake below.

I landed in it with a splash, sending a fountain of lava in all directions. The magma was no doubt letting out a huge amount of noxious fumes, but I, fortunately, didn’t need to breathe all that often anymore, so the smell didn’t ruin the experience.

Then I got to work. The first thing I did was try to shift the flow of the magma to make it rotate faster. If I made the magma spin faster, it would presumably carry the crust with it. That would, in turn, make sure the place this dragonswarm touched down wasn’t in Deania.

But I had no luck. Even for someone of my prodigious power, it wasn’t working.

Could I try making a barrier of stone? Maybe I could slow down the flow instead?

But the current fought me. For all my power, I was like an ordinary man trying to stop a train with my bare hands.

I scrunched my brows in concentration. There had to be a way.

And at that moment, I realized what I had to do. There was a reason why Sam said I had to be the one to handle this task. Lately, I’d been experimenting with the aspect of Identity, and its power was what I would need to use.

Using Identity, I could do things even magic could not. There was only one workable solution I could come up with on short notice, and that was to change the material the planet was made of.

By lowering the density of regions of the mantle, I could reduce the planet’s mass. The angular momentum of the planet would stay the same. If measured, that momentum would be equivalent to the planet’s mass, velocity, and radius all multiplied. I planned to decrease the planet’s mass, but the angular momentum would stay the same. Since the radius wouldn’t change, the velocity would have to increase the further I lowered the mass. And that means we would have one slightly faster rotating planet!

...In theory, at least. Nobody I’d ever heard of had tested this sort of thing in practice. But Sam said I succeeded when he asked me, and if this wasn’t the trick I was fated to use, I didn’t know what was.

Finally realizing what I needed to do, I got to work.

I sank my hands into the magma, willing it to change. Affecting things outside of the Primordial World was both easier and harder than doing so within it. It was easier because things within the Primordial World were sturdier. Everything within it was solid, and the dense higher-level energies rendered it much like this world had been when I’d been weaker.

In contrast, the World of Sanctuary and Serenity was like wet clay within my hands. It was easily molded and reshaped according to my will. The trouble was, it had a certain bounciness to it. There was a resilience to the matter that pushed back against me. It was soft and easily shaped, but it almost felt like something else was fighting me. Its attention was weak and distant. Wherever I looked, I could win, but I knew as soon as I turned my attention away, the planet would go back to the way it had been before.

That was odd. I hadn’t felt this pull with individual objects on the surface, but perhaps affecting an entire planet was different. I had noticed how excruciatingly precise the strange orbits of the Ten Thousand Worlds had to be to avoid colliding with one another as the eons passed. Perhaps I’d finally brushed up against the force maintaining that harmony.

Regardless, after fighting it for a few minutes, I realized I didn’t actually need to fight it. I didn’t want to permanently alter the planet in any way. That sounded like a disaster waiting to happen. I just wanted to tweak things for a few hours so Deania wouldn’t have to deal with a bunch of dragons attacking it. If I could keep the force trying to restore things to normal at bay for a few hours, my work would be done.

So that’s what I set about doing.

Another problem soon arose when I realized I couldn’t use my ability too deep within the magma. As a result, I wasn’t in the exact center of the world. I was off to one side. That meant I was decreasing the mass of one portion of the planet, effectively shifting the center point of the world away from me. This would result in a serious wobble to the planet’s rotation until we restored normalcy. I did my best to counter the effect, but I was certain I was the cause of more than a few earthquakes on the surface.

At the end of the day, all I could do was hope for the best. Especially when I sensed a few creatures within the magma set their sights on me. Unlike the earth elementals from up above, these creatures were more like fish than golems. They were beasts that swam through a world of molten iron and stone, each deadly and ferocious. As I was concentrating, a metallic claw rose from the magma lake, reminding me of the Mechanobeast I’d fought rather recently.

Ironclaw Magma Ravager (Late Sorcerer, 49)

This monster was born deep within the planet’s core. Its true body stretches more than a hundred kilometers long. It survives by consuming smaller metallic organisms that thrive on the heat and light the molten metal of the planet’s core produces. Its blades can sap zeal from anything it touches. Upon death, it divides into several smaller and slightly weaker monsters.

“Crap.” I sighed. Sam hadn’t said this was going to be easy.

<Note>

Sorry for the delay! I'm starting to fall a bit behind on Spellheart, and this chapter went super long.