Spellheart 9: Chapter 42 (Patreon)

Though we’d just left the place minutes ago, we were soon headed straight back into the Devilbeast Wilds to search for Ethan. It felt odd to be looking for someone who was part of an organization that was once our mortal enemy, let alone searching for an immensely powerful Demigod whose magical might was enough to shake continents.

Come to think of it, I had to search the Primordial World for Sam and Dean, so Ethan would be the third Demigod I went out on a search and rescue mission for. It seemed this was becoming a recurring theme, and I suspected this wouldn’t be the last time I played this role.

I could already imagine myself many years in the future out on a similar search for Comela after she reached Demigod and started adventuring through the Primordial World. Maybe I could get Argona to help me invent tracking devices. That would certainly make this sort of thing easier.

While all my kids were confined mostly to the Hearthwood and relatively easy for me to track down, that wouldn’t last forever. They’d start wandering further from home as they grew more powerful, and it would be that much harder for their overprotective father to hover over their shoulders.

I shook the thoughts of my children from my mind. Ethan was the one I was looking for today, and hopefully I wouldn’t be looking for my kids like this for a long time.

I took us to the same place we exited from.

“Yeah, I can sense the dimensional barrier getting weak here. You said your edgelord castle is on the other side?” Dean hefted his axe over his shoulder.

“It’s not my edgelord castle. It belongs to my evil robot twin,” I replied.

“Who was built from a missing fragment of your soul? In other words, the desire for an edgelord was buried inside you all along.” Dean raised an eyebrow.

“...Maybe.”

Dean gave me a pat on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. I went through an edgy phase too. Why, when I was at True Mage, I wore all black and made each one of my girls do the same! We roamed the land like bandits, taking what we wanted. But eventually, people started giving me gifts to stop the raids, and those gifts became tributes. Before I knew it, those tributes became taxes, and people were calling me king. It was all downhill from there. I miss those early days.”

Dean swung his axe and cut open the portal to the Devilbeast Wilds. My companions and I followed. Sava stayed behind because she was still weak and needed time to recover, but everybody else canceled our victory celebration to come right back in search of Ethan and, hopefully the Librarian of Sacred Groves.

We entered already inside the throne room, though it was much the same as we’d left it. The only difference was both the altar Sava had slept on and the petrified statue of my doppelganger were gone. He’d been here in our absence. No matter what I did, it felt like he was always one step ahead of us.

“Yep, those early days roaming the land as a feared bandit king were the best!” Dean let out a hearty laugh.

Tivana looked uncomfortable. “Pardon, ancestor, but I was told you were roaming the land to protect the innocent and bring order to a warring and feuding realm under the rule of a few tyrannical clans?”

Dean snorted. “Yeah, one of my kids decided to spin it that way. In reality, the only reason they stopped fighting one another so much was because they eventually realized the bandit king roaming their lands was a bigger problem than anybody else! I was pretty much untouchable then, thanks to the fact that I had two wizards by my side. All they could do was gnash their teeth. Well, that, and set up an ambush where they tried to catch me alone.”

“The battle of the Broken Mountain, where you defeated the seven great tribes of the east and set the foundation for Deania?” Tivana asked.

Dean shook his head. “Yep. After I defeated them all, the matriarchs of those tiny tribes all offered themselves up as concubines. I should have kept fighting, but what kind of man can resist an offer like that? Besides, there was this one matriarch. Really bad attitude, but a really nice ass and really down to get freaky. Actually, I think she might have been your grandmother, Tivana. Let me think...”

“Oh...” Tivana pouted.

I saved Tivana from being overly disillusioned by her clan’s glorious history. “We’re looking for somebody under the effects of an Unnoticability spell. Illiel, you’ll have to help out everybody without mind magic. Do you have any perception-enhancing spells in your arsenal?”

“Several, actually. One that should work well on others,” Illiel replied.

“Good. Cast it on everyone here.” I waved at my companions.

Dean took a step back, clutching his anti-Mind Magic pendant. “I’m good, but the rest of you can have at it.”

Illiel cast her spell, though she and I would rely primarily on our own mind magic abilities.

The now-eyeless statues to either side of the long hallway stared blankly at us, at least until Dean grumpily chopped their heads off with his axe. “There’s nothing here.”

“He must have gone back outside then,” I suggested. “Everybody, stay close. We don’t know if my doppelganger is still around here. And if he is, I don’t want him catching anyone off guard.”

We moved with caution out of the throne room and onto the steps outside. In the distance, the skeletal trees of the Devilbeast Wilds loomed overhead, though all around us, every branch and monster lay dead and toppled upon what had once been a forest floor.

“Two teams. Tivana, Dean, Yorik, and Illiel, you three scout around the left side. I’ll take everyone else. This way, we’ll both have a mind cultivator with us.”

“Sure.” Dean shrugged. “Just don’t blame me for kicking your evil twin’s ass if I see him! He owes me a fight.”

I chuckled. “If you do get in a fight, just call for backup. I want to teach my evil twin a lesson as well. Who knows, maybe I can eat him and gain his power or something. That’d speed up my plans to reach Demigod.”

I meant it as a joke, but Dean nodded seriously. “Yeah, that could work. If you were lucky, you’d hit Demigod right away and gain his Strength concept as well. My last evil twin tried the same thing. It’s the main reason I stay away from all the cloning techniques. I like to keep this soul right where it is, thank you very much.”

“Really?” My eyes lit up. “Seems like something of a cheat. You’re telling me I can chop myself up into little bits and pieces and then recombine with them and become that much more powerful?”

Dean nodded. “Seen that done before. It’s a bit of a brute-force approach. Risky, too, if some of the soul fragments die. But some people stuck at Sorcerer do just that. If they can get a thousand bits of themselves to the Wizard realm, it sometimes works. Risky though. Sometimes clones don’t want to join back up. I’m guessing that’s the case for yours.”

My eyes roamed the black castle. “Well, he hasn’t exactly volunteered...”

Our two groups split ways, circling the castle and the surrounding grounds in search of Ethan. I had hoped we’d find him crouched in a bush somewhere. If we were really lucky, he’d already be on a rescue operation to find the Librarian of Sacred Groves. That would save me the trouble of looking for her myself.

But as the minutes passed, I began to slowly lose hope of that. Ethan wasn’t making his presence known, wherever he’d hid to lick his wounds after the battle. I’d sensed him casting his improved Unnoticability spell. So where was he?

We caught scattered signs of someone’s passage. Here, an upturned branch, there is a boot print.

“Smaller than Dean and mine, right?” I asked my companions as I placed my foot beside the print. Dean’s boots were about the same size as mine, so the prints couldn’t have been his.

“And much bigger than ours...” Nela said as she inspected the print. Despite being smaller than mine, it was much larger than the prints of any elf in my party.

“It’s gotta be Ethan’s then, right? But where is it headed?” My eyes scanned our surroundings. The print, unfortunately, led nowhere. If there were more prints to be found, I wasn’t seeing them.

I was growing frustrated with the fruitless search and started wondering what I could do to speed it up. Maybe it was time to unseal that last nexus and let the Devilbeast Wilds rejoin the Hearthwood. Then, I could use Mac’s scanner to search the entire forest for anomalies.

A Demigod-level unsociability spell could probably fool his sensors at first, but if we analyzed his data enough, we’d spot anomalies by hand. Maybe if we—

My thoughts were cut short by Dean’s voice, piercing the eerie silence.

“Theo! You might want to see this!”

“We’re on our way!” I shouted in reply. My companions and I sprinted around the corner, covering the ground in rapid strides and ready for a fight. But when we turned the corner and saw Dean and his team, we realized they weren’t fighting.

They were standing over a gruesome scene. It was all too reminiscent of what I’d done to Prince Tivar when he invaded the Hearthwood. In fact, I was pretty sure it was identical.

“Well, shit.” I cursed. “Are we sure it’s him?”

Dean held up a broken and tattered necktie. The same one Ethan had been wearing when we entered the Devilbeast Wilds.

What little remained of Ethan’s body was unrecognizable, covered in debris and rubble all around him. The pit he lay in was three times his height, and I jumped into it with a grimace on my face.

“Maybe we can resurrect him or something?” I asked hopefully.

Dean shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Humans aren’t elves. There are ways to seal a human into a wisp-like state, but if the body’s still here, that didn’t happen. Nope, your evil twin went to town on Ethan’s face, and this is what’s left of him. He really didn’t like Ethan, I guess.”

I sighed. “It’s the Cult of the Unblinking Eye he didn’t like.”

Melise shook her head sadly at the sight. “What a waste... just when we were finally getting along with the Cult of the Unblinking Eye...”

“Weird. The plants are growing all around us.” Eltiana pointed around the pit.

“That’d be the Vitality,” Dean explained. “The amount we release when we die is one of the less cool things about being human. Some tree-hugger types want to kill us for it. Or suck us dry, and not in the fun way.”

I nodded along. As a human, Ethan possessed a tremendous amount of vitality. Vitality that elves would have fought tooth and nail over. To most people and creatures throughout the Ten Thousand Worlds, this vitality was the limiting factor in their growth. It was the resource they competed over, like nitrogen to a nutrient-starved field of crops.

Now it was spilling out into the ground around us. From its sheer density, I had little doubt that the Devilbeast Wilds would grow and flourish in record time. Alchemy ingredients would grow wild and abundant.

But I wasn’t about to let his remains seep into the stone. I waved my hand over him and scooped what we left into my Dimensional Storage. Demigods were hearty creatures, though those who cultivated Mind Magic exclusively, like Ethan, were less so than most.

If I was lying there as little more than paste, my body might regenerate. Especially if someone brought me back to Mac and the Medical Bay. I would do the same for Ethan hoping he could manage a similar feat, but I had my doubts. He didn’t strike me as the type of Demigod to have regeneration skills.

“Let’s get him to the Medical Bay. This is going to mean trouble for the Hearthwood Clan.” I shook my head. The Cult of the Unblinking Eye would want an explanation, at the very least. In fact, if all they wanted was an explanation, we would get away easily. Odds were they’d want blood.

My nails ground into my palm. My evil twin had caused trouble for me for the last time. It was past time I did something about him.


<Note>
This book outline was originally two outlines in my series-long outline. Right now, I'm trying to figure out which outline gets the title. "Tyrant of the Devilbeast Wilds" or "King of the Satyrs."