Spellheart 9: Chapter 15 (Patreon)

My expression darkened as Prince Tivir continued.

“She belongs as the crown jewel of a Sacred Grove, not as some half-baked attempt at recreating long-lost elven spirit cultivation!”

“Whoever this elf is, I’m sure she prefers to make her own choices,” I replied.

Prince Tivir snorted. “Elves are silly little creatures

Mayatania had told me something of leaving the World of Woods and Wilds in search of Sava under her former identity. I had hoped that would be the end of Sava’s past coming to haunt her, but apparently not. I would have to get the full story out of Mayatania after I’d dealt with this guy.

I felt my blood boiling to even greater heights at his words. There was surely something clever I was supposed to say. I should trick him into thinking I would give up Sava and Mayatania, buying enough time for Argona to get Mac operational again or for Sam and Dean to arrive.

But even as such thoughts flowed through my mind, my body was already moving. In all the Ten Thousand Words, no man or monster would make me even think about giving up one of my lovers. Yet, even implying that I would do such a thing lit up fury enough within my heart that this Prince Tivir had to die, demigod or not.

He didn’t expect me to be as fast as I was. That was a common problem with people who considered me a normal sorcerer. Elven Spirit Cultivators tended to be slower and favored hurling long-ranged spells of various sorts. But I also had my Orcish body cultivation, a much more brutal cultivation system for fighting up close and personal. An orc warrior got right up in their enemy’s face and matched their brawn with a brutish strength of their own.

I suspected whatever magic this Prince Tivir used was more akin to those of elves than those of orcs, so he was caught entirely by surprise when my fist connected with his jaw.

The impact was thunderous, and I felt his teeth rattle in his skull. The sonic boom followed moments later, and the gust of wind stripped the leaves off the nearby trees.

Prince Tivir was sent flying backward. He struck a broken building, was carried bodily through the remaining walls, and flew out the other side. When he finally came to a stop and left a crater twice his own height in the city street, he shakily climbed to his feet and rubbed his jaw.

“You... you hit me?” Prince Tivir said, more surprised than angry. “Well then, I suppose we’ll have to do this the hard way.

I cracked my knuckles. “Funny. I was just about to say the same thing.”

Stone Obelisks rose from the earth in all directions, surrounding Prince Tivir like a cage. I squeezed my fist, and the sharpened points of each obelisk shrunk inward and created a shell of many spikes. I squeezed with all my magical might, hoping to skewer the demigod a thousand times.

But just when I thought I had him, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“My turn,” Prince Tivir said, appearing behind me through some magic I couldn’t place. He cocked back his fist and threw a punch every bit as powerful as the stomp I’d intercepted earlier.

Unlike him, though, I was prepared to take a hit. I twisted and took the blow on my shoulder, deflecting much of the force. I was still thrown backward and sent hurtling toward the intact portion of the city, but I threw up a wall of earth to catch myself and land on my feet. Then, a moment later, I was back in the fray again.

We exchanged blows, and I threw my all behind each punch. Earth zeal and body cultivation intertwined and reinforced one another, making each stronger than the sum of their parts. That was something I’d been practicing more of lately.

I was surprised to find myself able to match a demigod, though. For so long, their grand powers had seemed like an elusive, unreachable height, and here I was, repeatedly punching one in the face. Maybe I just liked wiping that smug grin off this guy’s face, but it was just something satisfying.

After a flurry of exchanged blows in the blink of an eye, the two of us backed away to catch our breath and survey one another.

“You’re tough for a sorcerer,” Prince Tivar said. I noticed with satisfaction that he had to wipe a drop of blood from his chin. He scowled at the stain it left on his sleeve.

I reached into my Dimensional Storage and withdrew all my Sword Storm blades. Hundreds of steel-tipped weapons appeared around me and swirled in a cloud that promised violence.

“You have seen nothing yet,” I snarled.

I waved my hand, attacking with all my flying weapons at once. Again, Prince Tivana’s form shimmered, and he disappeared. This time I was ready, though, and I turned just as he appeared behind me. When his form solidified, I hand one hand around his throat, and the other cocked back for another punch to his jaw.

This time I aimed him straight for the ground, and the crater his impact left was even greater. He was bleeding from more than just his lip now. His eyes were bloodshot, and the fine suit he’d arrived in was shredded down each side.

I panted as I loomed over him, grinning all the while. Then I lifted my boot and slammed it down on his chest, cracking the earth in all directions.

Prince Tivar coughed and spluttered. His entire body shimmered and disappeared. He appeared in the air again, and I whirled to face him once more.

“Alright, you asked for it. Here I was trying to play nice...” Prince Tivar growled.

Tivir’s eyes glowed with otherworldly light. He muttered something under his breath, and the air around us grew thick and oppressive. The very earth beneath my feet trembled with the force of whatever he was doing.

The earth zeal I thought I’d laid claim to rebelled against me, and it took all my concentration just to maintain control. I wasn’t sure what he was doing, but it was like no magic I’d ever felt.

“Prepare to face the full power of my Sacred Grove!” Prince Tivar growled.

The ground around me split, and a massive, otherworldly tree split the cobblestone street. It had red bark and blood-colored leaves shaped into sharpened points. It was even larger than the massive trees of the Hearthwood forest, and just looking at those leaves, I knew that every one of them was as sharp as a razor blade.

Though no wind blew, those leaves fell from the tree and whipped around Prince Tivar, spinning around him in a cyclone before heading straight for me.

I held up my hands to shield myself, but the sharp leaves cut tiny paper cut-like lines across my hands anyway, despite the toughness of my body.

“Ha! Death by a thousand cuts! Many an orcish warrior has fallen to this power!” Prince Tivar grinned.

I scowled back at him and cast Layered Durability. The sticky barrier stopped the leaves immediately, trapping them in place and preventing them from touching me.

“I have more tricks than body cultivation,” I growled as I launched myself toward Tivar again for another punch.

Prince Tivar crossed his arms to catch my incoming blow.

“Not bad. Maybe you’re immune to my attack, but can you say the same for your children?” Tivar pointed his hand toward Castle Mac, and the needles swarming around me flew toward the open windows.

“No!” I growled, and my assault redoubled in intensity. I had to put this bastard down, and I had to do it soon.

In my fury, I’d almost forgotten I wasn’t alone. Tivana had exchanged blows with this demigod before my arrival. My fighting had given her a few moments to patch herself up and drink a vitality potion. I’d also seen Melise’s magic at work, reversing much of the damage the attack had done.

As someone with control over fate, she could even reverse death if she got to the scene quickly enough. She’d been using her spells to restore Castle Mac and everyone inside it to their former state. By now, she was nearly finished and was making moves to join the fight against Prince Tivar.

With them joining the battle, he wasn’t fighting one sorcerer, but three of us. Well-versed in fighting together, we all attacked as one. Fate, space, and earth zeal all struck together, and just when Prince Tivar thought he could count them all, I started mixing in my new concepts of gravity and identity. The spell he wielded guttered out as I converted whatever energy he’d been working with type of earth zeal usually found in animal dung.

A sticky brown ooze dribbled out of his upheld palm. Then all three of our spells landed direct hits on him, completely unimpeded by any defense.

“Agh!” Prince Tivar cut back a cry of pain as he was thrown backward yet again, only this time, he was battered far worse than before. With two additional sorcerers to help me, we’d put the demigod on the back foot. I was starting to think we were really going to beat him.

But when we went to hit him with our follow-up attacks, we were greeted with a shimmering wall of energy. Fluttering flower petals wound around Prince Tivar, and as we beat on the barrier, a few of the petals shriveled up and fell to the ground. But new flowers blossomed at Prince Tivar’s feet one after another and replenished the shield.

“My father warned me that using my full power on this world would be dangerous,” Prince Tivar began. “I didn’t want to wake up your Planetary Defense Array. But I suspect someone already did that for me, so it shouldn’t be too risky to do this!”

Strange energies billowed around him, and that same otherworldly light blossomed in Tivar’s eyes again. Power filled him, this time far greater than ever before.

“Brace yourselves!” I yelled.

I spread Layered Durability over the entire settlement to shield the Hearthwood from whatever was about to come. Meanwhile, I kept up a constant barrage of attacks with my Sword Storm blades to nip away at his shields and prepared every other spell and technique I could muster to throw at this man. Finally, he drew a small knife from his belt with a teardrop-shaped ruby in its hilt. Just the sight of it set me on edge.

Universal Analyzer Analysis:

The Satyr Sacrificial Dagger is an integral part of Sacred Grove magic. It allows a satyr to consume all the energy of an entity that is bound to their Sacred Grove, expending their entire lifetime of power to charge one attack.

“He’s preparing something big!” I warned.

Then Prince Tivar reached into his coat pocket and drew out a glowing ball of light. I recognized it immediately. It was an elvish wisp left behind after an elf died or had yet to manifest. It was a brilliant glowing green, just like those the Greenstem tribe of elves often left behind.

Prince Tivar plunged his sacrificial dagger straight into the center of the wisp, and the ruby in the dagger’s hilt absorbed the wisp entirely. Whatever elf that wisp had been or might have become had been utterly destroyed.

My heart leaped at the sight. I’d seen plenty of my elven companions reduced to wisps at one point or another. But, from the depth and color of that wisp, it had come from an elf in the early wizard realm.

The air shuddered in all directions, and nature zeal filled the air. Yet, it had a lingering flavor, like it was not just the zeal that someone had seized control over, but the very zeal from their bodies. Though the realm was only at the wizard realm, the pressure I felt from that power was astronomically greater. I almost felt a gentle elven hand resting on my shoulder for a moment.

“Attack!” Prince Tivar growled. Roots and vines sprung from the ground, and for once, my beloved Hearthwood forest turned against me. All the nature zeal in our surroundings poured forth in an unending barrage of attacks. Though each attack on their own was only in the wizard realm, there were so many of them, and they were cast so frequently that they came one after another.

A thousand q1uesting tendrils of angry vines whipped across the three of us, finding gaps in even my Layered Durability Shields to attack us. As quickly as they appeared, I cut through them with my Sword Storm Blades, but more grew to take their place. Even the grass turned as sharp as razors and nipped at my heels.

I saw Sava standing on the balcony of the castle. Though she was only in the wizard realm herself, she was the Hearthwood’s strongest nature cultivator. She would be best suited to wipe out the growing tide of nature zeal and the plant life it puppeted.

Moments passed, and my other matriarchs joined her. Alone, Sava was outmatched. But Eltiana, Assyrus, Nela, and Yorik soon joined her. With more wizards joining the fray, they were able to reinforce my shield spell and brace against the constant barrage of attacks. We were gaining ground.

But Prince Tivar was already making another move.

From his pocket, he withdrew another wisp, brown like the color of stone. He thrust his sacrificial blade into it, destroying it just like the first. This wisp was slightly weaker than before and was only at the peak of true mage. Throwing another aspect into his barrage of attacks made fighting all the harder.

The next few minutes were fierce as me and my two sorcerer companions battled our way to Prince Tivar, weathering all manner of attacks across various aspects. The power from the wizard he’d sacrificed guttered out as it ran out of power. I sensed the lingering feeling of will I had been feeling from it disappeared as the elf who had owned that power vanished forever. The earth aspect of energy followed soon after, but Prince Tivar had sacrificed others to replace them.

He reached into his pocket for yet another wisp, and from the glow of this one, it looked like another wizard. I wasn’t willing to let that happen.

[Minerva, are you close enough now?] I asked.

[I’ll have to be...] Minerva shot back in reply.

I felt her concentrating, and a skeletal form manifested behind Prince Tivar’s back. It was a Corpse Lord, one of the most powerful undead Minerva could manifest. So generated on such short notice, this one took tremendous power and was weaker than usual, but it would do.

Minerva’s Corpse Lord reached out and snatched the glowing wisp from Prince Tivar’s hands. Someone more used to fighting their own battles would have reacted to the unexpected turn of events instantly. Still, Prince Tivar seemed the sort of princeling more used to winning through overwhelming power. Now that his power wasn’t overwhelming us, he was on the back foot.

He had only barely turned to kill the Corpse Lord with a stab to the skull from his dagger before snatching back the wisp and moving to sacrifice it by the time I got to him. One of his sacrifices had erected a shield around him, but it was only at the wizard realm, and I tore through it like wet paper. Prince Tivar’s eyes went wide as I bore down on him with Spell Eater, and I lashed out with a stab straight for his heart.

Prince Tivar tried to dodge, but I grabbed his arm by the wrist and held it in place. Then, I felt my spear point hit home, and the many enchantments running down the length of the latest generation of my weapon went to work.

I’d lost count of how many improvements Argona and I had made to my trusty spear. Still, as the adamantium point siphoned the zeal and vitality from Prince Tivar’s body, I knew they were working. Power flowed into the spear in great heaving waves in time with the beating of the prince’s heart, and with each pulse of power, the siphoning force grew all the greater. Lines of purple poison spread throughout Prince Tivar’s body, and I realized I’d gotten lucky for once. It seemed that satyrs were as vulnerable to the poisoning effects of cold iron as elves were.

A loud beep played out in the back of my mind, and I heard a pleasant jingle I hadn’t heard in a long time. It was the sound of Mac rebooting.

[Argona’s getting me online again. Wow! I nap for five minutes, and you make a mess of the entire city!] Mac said.

A grin split my face. [Glad you could finally join us. You’re just in time for cleanup. Let me just finish taking out the trash...]

By now, Prince Tivar’s eyes were wide, and he knew he was in dire straights. The smug, condescending look was gone from his face and replaced by a look of wide-eyed terror. I hadn’t thought I’d see such a look on the face of a demigod so soon.

[How can I help?] Mac asked.

[Are those Sentry Towers online?] I asked.

[I’ve halted the upgrades. Argona is getting them operational as soon as possible,] Mac promised.

I dug my spear point deeper into Prince Tivar’s chest, and blood spilled down his shirt, staining his suit. He gripped the head of my spear with his hand, and the flesh there smoked and smoldered. There was a lot of resistance as I tried to shove my spear deeper, and I wasn’t sure if it was his chest, his hand, or some sort of energy barrier at work. Likely a combination of all three.

But I didn’t catch what Prince Tivar was doing with his other hand until it was nearly too late. He rubbed his thumb against one ring on his finger. I noticed it had the same droplet-shaped ruby that his sacrificial dagger had, but this one was much smaller.

“You’ve truly forced my hand,” Prince Tivar wheezed, blood dripping from the corners of his mouth as he did so.

Another elven wisp manifested in his palm, larger and greater than all the others before it. It was the brilliant amber of fate zeal, like Melise’s hair. She spotted it at the same time I did.

“Get back!” Melise warned.

He squeezed, digging that ring into the wisp until it popped.

I let go of Spell Eater and jumped aside. If I hadn’t, I might have died then and there.

The shimmering golden light of fate enveloped Prince Tivar’s body, and when it faded, Spell Eater fell to the ground. I used my Sword Storm abilities to send it back to my hand, and when I did so, I noticed the tip was rusty, like it had aged a hundred years in the mud.

With my growing control over the zeal in iron and all the metals that came from it, I forced all the rested metal to flake off and fall to the ground, leaving my weapon pointed and ready for battle again.

“What spell was that?” I called Melise.

“The Fury of Days Yet to Come!” Melise called in reply. “This is bad. We have to interrupt it before it finishes!”

“What is it?” Tivana yelled over the magic roar even as she fired off a slicing thread of space zeal at Prince Tivar’s form.

“He’s allowing himself to be possessed by his future self, granting him access to power he’ll have a hundred years in the future! Sam the Fateweaver invented the spell. I don’t know how he learned it!” Melise shouted.

Borrowing power from his future self? I grimaced. The next time I saw Sam, I would give him my thoughts on fate magic. Namely, it was way too frustrating to fight against for a non-combat aspect.

Of all of us, Melise had the best chance of interrupting the fate spell. But I could tell at a glance even she would have a tough time. Between the brilliant glow of that amber-colored wisp, I would have been unsurprised to discover it had belonged to an elf at the very peak of the sorcerer realm. Perhaps even at the beginning of demigod. For all her recent gains in power, she would have a tough time unraveling a spell at that level under ordinary circumstances.

Now that the entire wisp’s being was being expended at once by Prince Tivar’s sacrifice, she stood no chance at unraveling it.

The light faded, and all evidence of Prince Tivar’s wounds disappeared. His suit was back in place, just as fine as it had been before, only now the top few buttons were undone. Prince Tivar’s hair was a little longer and his beard a little scruffier, but that was nothing next to the manic look in his eyes.

“Hearthwood Clan, we meet again,” Prince Tivar chuckled. “I’ve spent the last hundred years preparing to finish this fight and spent no small share of resources. Even when I harvest every wisp in this forest to replenish my Sacred Grove, I’ll have barely restored what I’ve spent here.”

“You haven’t won yet,” I growled in reply. I was going to say something more, but I suddenly had the wind knocked out of me.

I blinked, and I was tumbling through the air. I had to review my senses from moments before figuring out what had happened.

Prince Tivar punched me. He was so fast that even my keen senses had missed the near-instantaneous action.

The next blow came a moment later as Prince Tivar faded and appeared behind me, but this time I was ready. I sliced through the air where I suspected he would appear with Spell Eater, forcing him back and giving my internal injuries a moment to heal.

He’d done quite a number on me with just that one punch. I had broken bones and bruised organs aplenty. But these days, I was far too tough to be put down that easily, and internal damage especially was something my body could heal in moments.

A heartbeat later, it was like I’d never been struck in the first place, but that only lasted a moment. Prince Tivar came at me with his Sacrificial Dagger. He wielded it with a deftness he’d lacked during our last exchange. Now it wasn’t just a tool for slaughtering helpless wisps, but a weapon he wielded in battle.

He parried Spell Eater’s edge, bringing it to a stop so he could catch the spear’s handle with his sleeve-wrapped hand. I expected him to go for my throat with his blade, since that was the obvious target. But Prince Tivar aimed lower, straight toward my core at the base of my spine, my dantian.

I twisted my his, so he stabbed me in the hip instead. The pain I felt was immense. Agony flowed through my body, and it felt like my very soul was being sucked out of my body into that dagger. I shuddered to think what would have happened had he actually struck what he was aiming at.

“Doesn’t feel so good, does it?” Prince Tivar chuckled as he twisted the knife deeper. “Have a taste of your own medicine and know that your weapon is a crude imitation.”

I tried to wrench Spell Eater free from his grip to stab him, but it was useless. Then, realizing I was trapped, I activated Molecular Rearrangement to try to slip away. My body turned to smoke, but when I manifested again, I was in the same place, tethered to Prince Tivar’s dagger by the wound in my hip.

He was doing something. I either had to break free or figure out what.

His grip on Spell Eater was far stronger than before, and he grinned when I noticed.

“Like that? I planted a thousand iron-root trees and watered their roots with the blood of the strongest orcish body cultivators my father’s forces could capture,” Prince Tivar grinned. “The cultivation methods of the inferior races are but fertilizer for the Sacred Groves of the Satyrs!”

I was feeling desperate, so it was time to dig deeper into my more unusual abilities. I had already hit him with every passive skill, but now I threw my mind magic and Minerva’s full power into the mix. She began draining the vitality from him and transforming it into death zeal.

[He has a lot of power! I could make a hundred corpse lords from him!] Minerva said as she drained the Prince.

I gave her a wordless grunt of agreement. Anything she could do to help would be a welcome reprieve. Meanwhile, I used my mental manipulation spells to target Prince Tivar directly.

Even though that aspect was far weaker than my earth cultivation, Prince Tivar winced when my mind brushed against his. He hadn’t realized I had mental powers and had done nothing in his hundred years of preparation to ready himself to counter them. My mind brushed his thoughts aside effortlessly, scouring his mind clean and causing him agonizing pain.

“Get out of my head!” He yelled, letting go of his Sacrificial Dagger to claw at his temples. Meanwhile, Tivana and Melise peppered him with spells from behind.

I put some distance between him and me and tore the dagger from my hip. Immediately, I felt much of my lost energy flow back into me. My hip was functional again with a moment of healing, and though I was tired, I wasn’t out of the fight yet.

A tinge of madness filled Prince Tivar’s eyes, and blood dripped down his cheeks like tears. Rage and humiliation billowed off him in waves, and I joined Tivana and Melise in peppering him with spells.

Prince Tivar scanned his surroundings, and to my surprise, he ignored the tree of us even as we bruised and battered him. Instead, his eyes locked on a mage acolyte peering through a window behind my Layered Durability spell. I had a sinking feeling in my heart.

He dove right for her. He pierced it easily with my barrier spread as wide as it was. When he reached the mage acolyte, he jammed his open hand like a blade straight through her center. That same hand wearing the ruby ring pierced her core. Her body disappeared in a puff of white light, leaving behind only her wisp. He clenched that wisp in his hand, just like all the others.

The wisp popped like a balloon, and he turned all the power that poor mage acolyte had acquired throughout her entire lifetime of cultivation to his own dark purposes. A hundred spells headed our way, many of which I recognized. They were Waterbeetle tribe spells meant for durability and deflection. Though they were only at the mage acolyte level, the fact that their specialty was defense made it much harder to land clean hits on Prince Tivar. We couldn’t stop him from landing on another mage acolyte and doing the same thing over again.

We chased him through the city, but within a settlement as dense as the Hearthwood, there was always an elf within reach. He cut through a dozen more mage acolytes in moments, sacrificing them one after another to throw spells at the three of us and slow us down. We were making progress until he grabbed hold of a true mage. Unfortunately, I didn’t recognize the mage in question, which meant she was probably a recent arrival.

She let out a sharp shriek of pain, and my eyes met hers briefly before Prince Tivar killed her.

Then he set his sights on someone I recognized, and my blood turned to ice. Argona helping Mac get the sentry towers online. But, to my horror, I saw Prince Tivar’s eyes lock onto her at the same time mine did.

“No!” I shouted. Prince Tivar ran forward, but I did the same.

I no longer cared about the many defensive spells surrounding the Satyr. I had to get to him before he got to Argona.

But despite all my strength and speed, he made it to her first. His shadow loomed over her, twice her height and full of mad fury. Argona didn’t even have time to blink and figure out what was happening when Prince Tivar jammed his fist through her stomach in search of her wisp.

[We’re online. Activating Sentry Towers!] Mac said in my head.

The Level-Reducing Sentry Towers hummed to life, power blazing through all of them. Then, just like before, Mac targeted them on Hearthwood’s enemy. Six arcing beams of energy struck Prince Tivar and drained him of his strength.

The defenses that had battered me moments before evaporated as the zeal within them was drained away. I tore through what was left of them with bloody hands. Then I reached Prince Tivar, hand still wrist-deep in Argona’s stomach, with a frown on her face. Her half-human nature was more apparent on the inside, and prying out her wisp took longer than expected. That little vestige of her heritage from me was probably the only thing that saved Argona from utter destruction.

My daughter lay in a puddle of her own blood, and the man who did it was within my grasp. The next few moments were a haze of blistering fury. I wasn’t sure how long had passed, but Melise tapped me on the shoulder.

“Theo, Argona’s in the Medical Bay. I could reverse most of the damage with my fate magic, but she’ll still be out for a few days...”

I blinked, clarity returning to my eyes.

<Note>

Theo has bad luck with envoys, doesn't he? He keeps killing them.

Also, I'm pumped to have both written and published six chapters this week. My backlog is the same size I started! Alas, doing my taxes in a bit is probably going to rob me of a writing day. But hopefully my backlog can cover that.