Spellheart 9: Chapter 51 (Patreon)

We slammed the door shut to the Alchemist’s Laboratory. Mac disconnected it from the door it had previously been bound to in the Hearthwood, and then we took the route through The Wanderer’s hallways.

“Father! What’s going on!” Comela asked. She had a collared elven captive over her shoulders.

“You... when did you get here?” My head whipped around. “This isn’t a battle you can fight, Comela. Take cover with your siblings in one of the other rooms. Or go calm the citizens in the bunkers, if you must.”

“I can help, father! I helped against the monsters, didn’t I?” Comela stared me down with wide eyes. There was a certain sense of firmness to them, and I wasn’t sure I could talk her out of helping. Not with what little time I had.

I grunted. “Fine. You stick with your mother. But you aren’t fighting on the front lines.”

“And what about me?” Another figure appeared beside Comela. It was Segolas.

“You too?” My brows drew tight.

“I fought to defend the Hearthwood before, remember? Before Comela or any of the others were strong enough to stand beside me. I’ll do it again today,” Segolas said. His eyes were just as hard as his sisters’.

“Okay, fine. But no direct combat for you. You can send your skeletons out to assist. Comela, monitor him, and don’t let yourselves get caught outside the castle. You can’t fight Wizards directly, let alone Sorcerers and Demigods.”

“But maybe I can!” Argona poked her head out from where she’d been taking cover with many others inside the Hydroponic Farm’s room. That was one of the few chambers large enough to house my prodigious family’s size.

“Argona? Absolutely not. No way.” With her, I put my foot down. “You’re a non-combatant.”

“I won’t be in combat. My golem will be. It won’t be ideal, but I’m pretty sure I can control it remotely.” Argona wrung her hands together.

“It’ll be a massive target. It’ll probably be destroyed.”

“Any moment they’re targeting my golem will be the time they aren’t targeting you and our mothers. If ever there was a time to sacrifice my precious creations, it’s now.” She winked at me. “Besides, I got more from the salvage after the battle in the capital than you think. I bet I could build a new golem at the Sorcerer level from scratch, given time and resources.”

I glanced at Comela again. “Keep an eye on her, too, please.”

“We’ll all make it out alive, or none of us will!” Comela wrapped her arms around her two siblings.

“Stick with just that first part!” I shouted, though I could spare no more time for them. As we talked, I heard a tremendous crash. That would be the upper floors of Castle Mac being turned to rubble.

I flew up the steps to the Cultivation Chamber, which opened to my room on one of the upper floors.

With the door flung open, I found my room far dirtier and far more brightly lit than it ever should have been.

Beams of sunlight shot down through the gaping hole that had once been the ceiling. The floor was intact within the room itself, though something had sheered off most of my balcony.

I took a step out toward the handrail-less outcropping of stone and surveyed my enemies.

The Cult of the Unblinking Eye’s remaining Wizards and Sorcerers were raining down spells on us. Each hit the castle walls like a battering ram, but with how heavily Mac had reinforced the stone of the castle, they weren’t doing much damage on their own. The thunderous crashes were coming from the remaining Satyr Demigods.

There were four of them left, and they were making their presence known.

“There he is! I see him!” One of them pointed in my direction, and I braced. Maybe there was one last trick I could try.

“Mac, is there anyone staying in the Pocket World Passage?”

[There won’t be in a minute. Clearing it out now.]

The first Satyr Demigod hit me with the force of a landslide. He flew down from where he’d floated in the sky with the cultists and struck me fist-first. I crossed my arms to block. The earth trembled, and blood rushed to my face. My temples pulsed with the tremendous pressure.

I locked my heels, but even still was pushed back. He had the edge on me.

“You’re strong. But not strong enough!” the Satyr Demigod growled as he shoved his fist toward me. My back hit the far wall as I pretended to be at my limit.

In actuality, I was just waiting for an opening.

At the ground near our heels, a dozen adamantium Sword Storm blades shot into the air and skewered the Demigod from behind. They sunk deep into his flesh, Demigod or not, and made him look like a pin cushion.

“Argh!” He screamed. He let up with his shoving to reach for the Sword Storm blades behind him. These weren’t ordinary chunks of adamantium. They were enchanted needles filled with the power to siphon away zeal. Though he was a Demigod for now, I hoped to drain him of enough power that we’d be fighting on even terms soon.

“You think you can destroy my home and get away with it?!” I spat.

But the other Satyr Demigods and the forces of the Cult of the Unblinking Eye weren’t about to stand still while I took one of their own apart.

While one had felt like a landslide, getting struck by the other three all at once made me feel like I expected a stone caught between two tectonic plates might. Immense forces collided all around me. Dust billowed in the air as tall as a mountain, blasting into the air and then dispersing in the shape of a mushroom.

The collision of three Demigods striking me from all sides at once resulted in a tremendous explosion. Even Mac’s zeal-reinforced stone cracked beneath my feet.

I blocked two of the blows well, redirecting the force away from myself. But with only two arms to block with, the third Satyr struck my ribs. I felt something crack.

As strong as the World Titan Fiendbody was, this was power beyond the Gold realm. I would have had to push my body cultivation to Diamond if I wanted to endure a punch like this.

I coughed, spitting up a mouthful of blood as I was sent flying backward. But I had no time to rest.

“Elves! Get him!” The cultist overhead shouted. I recognized that voice. It was the clever one. He’d given good orders one time too often.

I launched myself off the ground. My World Titan Fiendbody would knit together my broken bones and damaged internal organs in mere moments. But in a fight like this, those moments might as well have been an eternity.

I watched my target’s eyes widen beneath his drawn-down black hood. He wore a suit beneath his robes, and I was surprised to notice how young he looked. I would have thought him to be a teenager if not for his Demigod cultivation.

He backpedaled in the air, but as good as he was at giving orders, he clearly wasn’t a combatant himself.

My target panicked. I sensed Mind Magic around him and realized he’d expected to be concealed by an invisibility spell. But I was a powerful Mind cultivator myself and had pierced his defenses as soon as the battle began.

Realizing his invisibility had failed him, he used an ability similar to Twisted Step, making himself appear half a meter in front of his actual location. If I fell for the decoy, I would have struck nothing but empty air.

But I didn’t fall for the decoy.

Both my arms still burned in agony from blocking the attack of the last two Demigods, so instead of straining the healing fractures within them any further, I produced a rod of unshaped metal from my Inventory.

It was a Sword Storm blade I hadn’t finished forging yet, but all I wanted was a handhold.

I grabbed it in midair, fixing it in place with my power and using it as an anchor as I twisted around it and whipped my heel around with a kick so fast the air cracked. I shifted myself forward, past the false image of the Demigod cultist and toward his real location.

My blow struck the cultist directly in the face, and though he was a Demigod, he didn’t have any body enhancements to speak of.

His teeth splintered, flinging everywhere like discarded pebbles. His jaw broke, too, and he fell from the sky to collide with the ground.

That one blow was all I had time for before the Satyrs were on top of me again, but it was worth it. Behind me, the attacking elves had fallen silent as they waited for further orders. It would take time for the cultists to realize their companion was no longer capable of speaking.

Time my own companions could use to great effect. Already, I sensed Yorik, Tivana, Melise, Nela, Assyrus, Eltiana, and all the others darting between blank-faced elven soldiers and making sure they would not be fighting in this battle any further. A moment later, Comela and Segolas joined them.

“Don’t just stand there, attack him!” One Satyr jammed a finger toward the remaining two Cultists who hovered in the air nearby, staring at the empty patch of air where their companion had been in shock.

The remaining two cultists scrambled away from me as fast as they could.

“Useless humans...” the Satyr growled under his breath. Then, he and the remaining Satyr Demigods shot toward me.

I led them away from the castle. They were targeting me, not the Hearthwood, and they probably didn’t want to risk killing Sava by collapsing the entire castle complex.

So long as she didn’t show herself, they would hopefully focus all their efforts on me.

Just as I hoped, the four Satyrs followed me, including one particularly angry one whose back was still studded with spikes of steel and adamantium. Even now, they continued to drain away his zeal and scatter it into the air.

A more skilled cultivator might have been able to isolate the spikes with their aura and stop the drain, but the Satyrs cultivated strictly through passive means. Their understanding of their own powers and the fundamentals of how they worked was very lacking compared to other races.

When they were nearly on top of me, I heard a tremendous grating noise. Rubble was shoved aside, revealing the underground storage complex where Argona kept her biggest and best golems.

The roof and debris came away, and a massive stone hand reached up and grabbed the wounded Demigod.

His companions stopped, alarmed and afraid at first due to the sheer size of the golem. But then they got a good read on the power it was emanating, and their faces shifted to contempt.

“It’s only Sorcerer! Stop messing around and get out of there!” one of the Satyr Demigods shouted to their trapped companion.

But Argona triggered the golem’s fingers to squeeze harder, and the Demigod within her grasp turned red. His body should have been more than strong enough to survive the forces against him, but drained of energy as he was, the golem’s grip was inescapable.

He popped like overripe fruit, exploding into a fountain of blood and gore.

“By the king!” The Satyr, who’d been taunting his comrade a moment ago, held his arm over his face as his former companion’s blood washed over him.

“Nice one, Argona!” I grinned and changed directions.

The three remaining Satyr Demigods turned on Argona’s golem then. Now that they were taking it as a serious threat, it wouldn’t last long.

One shot forward at high speed, both fists held ahead of him as he flew straight through the golem’s eye and popped out the back of its head. Another darted within the reach of the golem’s arms and went straight for the joints to disable it.

The third went straight for the torso. That was where the control mechanism was and where the driver normally sat. If he attacked there, the golem would go down for good. So that was the Saturday I decided to keep busy.

Sword Storm blades hovered by my side, and I grabbed onto one of them to fling myself through the air. As I did so, I locked gazes with the Satyr I was hunting.

He cocked back a fist, but all I wanted was to make eye contact.

Petrification!

I focused and utilized one of my hidden trump cards. These Satyrs hadn’t seen me use my concepts to their full effect, and after the fight with my evil twin, I’d done a bit to enhance the ability I’d used on him to new levels.

It hadn’t worked on him, but after fighting him and a few of these Satyr Demigods, I was pretty sure my doppelganger had more tricks up his sleeves than this Satyr did.

The corners of his eyes started to turn pale gray, and his head locked in place. His fingers trembled as the effect spread. I focused with all my might, using the concept of Identity to transmute flesh and blood into stone.

Without a spell I knew like the back of my hand to guide me, I would have failed right away. But I knew this power. I knew what it could do and had experienced it from both ends myself.

The Demigod fought back, and my progress stalled by the time the Petrification effect reached his shoulders. But that was all I needed.

While casting the spell, I’d been rushing forward. I twisted in the air and slammed a boot against the Demigod’s head.

The only part that had still been organic was the brain deep within his skull. The skull and face shattered like cracking an egg.

The now-headless Demigod toppled end over end before crashing into the ground far below.

I turned to the remaining three Demigods, but that was all the time Argona could buy me. The Demigod she’d been controlling from afar now looked like a giant piece of cheese. Holes lined its body from the ground to the top of its head.

It fell backward, devoid of zeal, and collapsed back onto the pile of debris that had formerly been a city block of the Hearthwood. When it struck the ground, it crumbled into a thousand boulder-sized pieces.

The three remaining Demigods turned their gazes toward me.

I retreated as fast as I could, eyes on the spot I had been planning to make my final stand-in.

Buried among the rubble lay four towers meant to guard the Hearthwood against all threats. The Level-Reducing Sentry Towers had saved me against foes more powerful than myself more times than I could count.

“Get ready, Mac. We need to time this perfectly. If you can hit all three with the beams at once, I’ll have a few seconds to wipe them all out. That’s all the time I’ll need...” I whispered.

[Acknowledged. Preparing Sentry Towers...]

Two of the Satyrs rushed forward, but one stayed back. He was eyeing the rubble carefully and shot a glance from the castle to the tree line.

My eyes widened.

He knows!

“Wait!” the wary Satyr called out to his allies. “It’s those tower things we were warned about! Don’t go any closer!”

The other two Satyr Demigods stopped in their tracks and glared at me.

“Come on out of there and fight us like a man!” One of the Satyrs glared at me.

Another picked up a chunk of stone that had previously been the foundation of a building. “I know how we can drive him out!”

He threw the massive boulder at me. Behind me, the others picked up boulders of similar size.

What followed was like a game of dodgeball, except I was the only one dodging, and instead of balls, the Satyrs were throwing chunks of rock the size of city blocks.

“Almost got him that time!” A Satyr shouted after I slipped beneath a flying chunk of stone.

“What do you think you’re playing at! You can’t hide from us!” the largest of the three remaining Satyrs roared as he chucked another boulder at me.

I ducked to avoid it, then scooped up a stone of my own. I reshaped it with Earth zeal until it was a perfect sphere, then whipped it with a combination of spirit cultivation and raw physical strength.

It soared at high speed and struck the large Satyr in the chest. It knocked him out of the air but otherwise seemed to do little damage.

I had cast several spells, including Layered Durability, to make myself harder to hit. I tried to hit them with my Sword Storm blades, but at this range and with all three clumped together and on their guards as they were, they quickly caught my weapons and turned them into bent pieces of scrap metal.

I even thought about trying for another Petrification, but I knew without making the attempt that I didn’t have it in me. My mastery over the concept of Identity wasn’t so great that I could use it freely, especially against foes as powerful as these.

Frustratingly, this meant that besides throwing their attacks back at them, I had no real means to retaliate. I couldn’t leave the protection of the Sentry Towers without being torn to pieces by three hostile Demigods. And they refused to approach.

I would have been content to bide my time and wait for Sam and Dean to arrive, but mine wasn’t the only fight to watch.

Nearly a minute had passed since I knocked the teeth out of the leading member of the Cult of the Unblinking Eye during this attack, and after a bit of wild gesticulating, he’d gotten his companions to order their elves to fight back against my matriarchs and children, instead of simply allowing themselves to be captured and killed left and right without resisting.

I didn’t like the odds of my family against three Demigods. I was barely holding my own against three, and these three were meatheads and fairly predictable. While not as physical, the Cult of the Unblinking Eye had tricks nobody else knew. Not to mention, they still had a few dozen powerful elves under their command.

The only saving grace in that fight so far was that it looked like Tivana and Melise had dealt with the last of the enemy Sorcerers, either by killing or capturing them. That meant my companions were more than a match for the forces arrayed against them, not counting the Demigod cultists.

So long as those cultists continued to stand back and watch their subordinates fight, that is.

Not long after I had the thought, the worst came to pass. One of the cultists had enough of watching their forces get demolished by my family, and he stepped into the fight themselves.

He scanned my women, but instead of going for Melise, Tivana, Yorik, or anyone who could defend themselves, he chose an easier target.

Segolas froze, only able to move his eyes as powerful mind magic locked him in place.

“A male elf. How rare. Too bad for you, we hate male elves,” the cultist sneered. He plucked a small dagger from within his robes, much like the dagger Illiel herself once wielded as a Secret Keeper for the Cult of the Unblinking Eye.

He brought the dagger up and aimed it straight for my son’s throat.

Though I could see the attack, I might as well have been a million miles away. My feet were already moving, abandoning the safety of the Sentry Towers as I rushed back toward Castle Mac.

Time seemed to move in slow motion as the three Satyr Demigods grinned wide and rushed to intercept me. I wouldn’t be able to rush over and block it in time.

But someone else was. Comela, his sister, threw herself at the Demigod, completely heedless of the difference in power between the two of them. She slammed into the Demigod’s side with her spear and let loose her most powerful lance of golden sunlight at point-blank range.

It did little more than singe the Demigod’s robes.

“Alright, if you want to die too, you can!” The Demigod reached out and grabbed Comela by the air. He dragged he tossed her sideways back at the castle walls, but Comela twisted and landed on her feet.

Segolas struggled against whatever mental hold the demigod had over him. His limbs shook, and his body trembled. Blood leaked from his nose, mouth, ears, and eyes from the tremendous strain as he struggled with the magic.

But the might of a Demigod’s spell was too much.

A golem threw itself at the Demigod. It was made of sleek adamantium and lined with powerful enchantments. I recognized bits and pieces from the turtle golems I’d seen in the capital. Argona had actually managed to cobble something together after all.

It was only a little bigger than I was, but from the power it emanated, it packed as much punch as several True Mages put together. Argona sat inside it, half exposed as she manipulated the control mechanisms within.

Argona and the golem grabbed the Demigod’s arms as Comela climbed back to her feet and fired another beam of energy at him. Though still frozen, Segolas gathered enough of his power to send several of the skeletal warriors he’d had standing nearby and threw them at the Demigod.

“Argh! Enough!” the Demigod shouted. He twisted his arm and snapped the metal limbs of Argona’s golem. Then he swept his dagger through the air and sheered the skeletal limbs off of Segolas’ undead.

He turned toward Comela with fierce eyes and froze her in place just as he’d done to Segolas.

Then he reached out with a cold and ruthless hand for Argona and picked her up by the throat.

“Now, good riddance--“

He never finished. A hand much like my own grabbed him by the top of his head.

“Hands off my family,” the owner of the hand said. Strongly built and taller by the cultist by a hand, he looked much like I did. But he wasn’t me.

It was my doppelganger. My evil twin, though perhaps not so evil at the moment.