Spellheart 10: Chapter 1 (Patreon)

“Come on, Theo. It’s just a little party,” Dean said over a board game.

My old friends and I sat at a table in the newly reconstructed Castle Mac playing a board game. Something still wasn’t quite right about the pieces, but we’d gotten as close as we could remember.

Sam was winning, but he often excelled at this one in particular. Dean and I had few armies left on the board and desperately fought over the gold mine. Obtaining it would be our last chance to oppose Sam’s burgeoning trade empire.

“A little party that will include the entire leadership of the Cult of the Unblinking Eye...” I grumbled. “You know as well as I did that I just killed four of their members.”

“They will be sworn to uphold the peace,” Sam muttered, gaze fixed intently on his cards. “There will be lots of elven Demigods there to ensure they don’t cause trouble. And don’t forget about us. We’ll be there too.”

“It would mean a lot to my daughter,” Dean added. “If you don’t come, she’ll be the only new Demigod there. She was always a shy girl.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

The Queen Lyanva I knew drank, danced, and sang with her citizens. Not just the nobility, but random elves off the street.

She was also no stranger to playing pranks of all manner on them. Her pranks could range anywhere from stealing your underwear to ‘accidentally’ strapping you down in her dungeon.

In short, the innocent young elf Dean imagined when he thought of his daughter had probably vanished long ago as she came into her own as a tricky and pervy queen. I couldn’t imagine her being embarrassed about anything, let alone a simple party.

But Sam and Dean seemed quite intent on me going with them, and though I didn’t want to go, I couldn’t deny that the idea of meeting most of the world’s Demigods all in one place was rather intriguing.

I had some rather hard questions for them if they would all show up at once.

Starting with why hadn’t they done anything about the Planetary Defense Array? The part the Elven Star Dominion constructed was clearly faulty and in dire need of repairs, modifications, or just a general shutdown until they could get it to stop harvesting people for their souls.

Even simply disabling it and just leaving the original shield portion gifted by their creator would be fine. We could do without the armies of automated war golems if it meant our towns and cities wouldn’t get attacked every few centuries. The shield was enough to fend off things like a Dragonswarm, which was all we really needed.

Also, why had they not acted when the Witch of Frozen Blood had attacked the planet with the intent of claiming it? Saving the world had fallen to me, a humble Sorcerer at the time. If any of the other Demigods had stepped in, that climactic fight with Illiel as the Witch of Frozen Blood’s avatar would have been a lot easier.

The entire Deanian Queendom was in shambles thanks to an orc invasion, followed by an army from the Cult of the Unblinking Eye, a vampire infestation, and then finally a massive golem attack.

It was a wonder the nation was still standing at all. The only reason the royal family hadn’t been attacked during their time of weakness was because I’d traveled to every neighboring country and conquered them all to make them into my vassals.

The situation in Deania was so bad that Dean and his daughter attempted to close down the kingdom entirely and reduce the royal family to a small family of elites and their retainers without the restrictions of rulership. Sam had done the same thing when he converted his faction into the Fateweaver Society.

“There will be free food,” Sam offered helpfully.

I figured there was no more point thinking it over. “Alright, fine, I’ll come. But I can’t promise I won’t have some choice words for everyone there. Especially the members of the Cult of the Unblinking Eye. They’ve attacked the Hearthwood for the last time.”

“Don’t worry, buddy, we’ll be there to back you up whatever happens. Just try not to pick a fight with every Demigod there. If you break the rules of the conclave, we’ll have to find another planet to live on, and I suspect that’ll be a major pain in the rear.” Dean grinned.

“I’ll restrict myself to just words. Within the conclave, at least...”

The time would come when the Cult of the Unblinking Eye paid for their betrayal. But that time would have to wait until I’d realized the full power of The Wanderer’s upgraded abilities provided by the QCA.

Now that I was a Demigod I could at least match the power of the Cult of the Unblinking Eye’s most powerful members. But I’d feel safer if a few of my matriarchs were Demigods too.

Some, like Korra, were far from that level, even with my recent new advancements in Dual Cultivation theory.

But others like Tivana had been at Sorcerer long enough that it might not be impossible for me to push them over the rest of the way and make them full-fledged Demigods themselves. Any additional backup would be appreciated, but loyal backup that I could trust, like Sam and Dean, would only come from my existing companions.

“How long do I have before this conclave?” I asked, looking at Sam. Dean also looked at him.

“We haven’t agreed on a date yet,” Sam replied. “But I wouldn’t expect it for at least six months. Demigods move slowly. We can afford to when our lifespans stretch into thousands of years. While most Demigods free themselves of the responsibilities of rulership so they can focus on adventure, cultivation, or simply leisure, the various tasks we get up to often take considerable time to break away from.”

I nodded. “So I’ve got six months to come up with some backup...”

Could I do it? Could my women do it?

We’d have to push hard, but somehow I was pretty okay with that.

“I want to get to the Mid Demigod realm before the conclave. It wouldn’t do to show up and be the weakest Demigod there. What do you guys recommend?” I asked.

Sam’s eyebrows rose. “Besides greater patience?”

“Training in the Primordial World!” Dean grinned. “Hell yeah! Let’s kick some giant monster ass. This will be great. I could use somebody else on the front lines. Sam’s always in the back playing support.”

“My power set isn’t exactly conducive to punching a giant sky whale whose poop turns into islands,” Sam replied.

“Well, gentlemen, seems like we have a plan.” I moved one of my last pieces on the board over to Dean’s gold mine. “Also, Dean, your gold mine is mine.”

“Damn it! You distracted me from the fighting with your talk of fighting...” Dean grumbled.

***

Sam, Dean, and I made a plan for another adventure into the Primordial World. In the meantime, we had a lot of work to do ourselves.

With the normal infrastructure of Deania in shambles, it fell to Dean to ensure Deania was clear of monsters. Unfortunately for the people of Deania, Dean saw anything beneath the wizard realm as nothing more than a pest, so I ended up lending him some of my forces to help clean the place up. If I hadn’t, there would have been who knew how many giant village-destroying monsters still wandering the countryside who were too weak for him to hunt down.

Sam and the entire Fateweaver Society were busy using their Fate magic to heal the wounded and reverse time on destroyed infrastructure to restore it to its proper place. With their unique ability to reverse the flow of time, they were best suited to fixing broken things.

Few were powerful enough to reverse death like Sam could, but reversing the crumbling of a stone wall was much easier. They were also doing an admirable job of peering into the future to see where there might be a major famine or monster attack, allowing us to deal with issues before they cropped up.

I would certainly not want to be a criminal with the Fateweaver Society on patrol. I’d seen more than one aspiring criminal hoping to take advantage of the chaos find themselves in a cell the moment they made the decision.

“You know, isn’t that a bit unethical? You’re arresting people who haven’t done anything wrong yet. They just thought about committing a crime, not actually doing it.” I turned to Sam for an explanation.

“Well, our perception of the future doesn’t firm up until there’s a high probability of an event happening. Seeing every future is impossible.” Sam shrugged. “But I guess technically it isn’t fair.”

“Technically, we’re absolute rulers and can do whatever we want!” Dean took a swig from an entire barrel of ale he carried over his shoulder. More than a little spilled and trickled down his shirt in the process. “I, Dean, hereby declare that deciding to commit a crime is a crime!”

“Thrilling.” I rolled my eyes. “Just don’t come to the Hearthwood with that kind of half-assed justice.”

Earth magic was the second only to the Fateweaver Society’s fate magic in terms of pulling civilization out of the ashes. While Sam and his companions could repair what was broken, they could only build something that had been built before and since been broken. They were helpless to create something that was actually new.

And that’s just what I planned on doing. Having so many of Deania’s cities ruined was actually an opportunity. Under most circumstances, it was hard to get any sort of large-scale civil works project done.

Nobody wants a coal plant in their backyard. The leather working facility smells awful. Building a damn will cut down on the local fish population. It’s always something.

But when most of the nation has nothing left but a smoldering ruin, people are desperate for anything. So I diverted a few rivers, made some dams, built some roads, replenished some aquifers, made a couple harbors, built some irrigation canals, flattened some mountains, dug up some mines, and generally improved the state of things in Deania. If Sam and Dean were thrusting the responsibility of running this nation into my lap, I wanted it to be a good nation.

So that meant making getting things in place to run themselves. Famines were entirely preventable. I just needed to ensure there was more than enough usable land to go around. Besides, more cheap food usually meant more subjects. And more subjects would mean greater prosperity for the entire nation, assuming I kept the food and goods flowing to them.

One problem at a time, though. I could modernize Deania’s social structure when I was properly settled on a throne. For now, establishing extra waterways would be a job well done.

Now that I thought about it, maybe I could expand some of them into rivers. Most low-level rebels were confined to marching their armies around the surrounding terrain, since only powerful elves could fly.

Hell, the Orcs had a massive army and still had to march on foot. I could prevent such a rebellion and invasion from happening again with a few more rivers and strategic, well-guarded bridges and fortresses. Just a few here and there...

When I started, I just wanted to get the elves here back on their feet, but as I got into the project, there always seemed to be one little extra thing I could do to improve the productivity of the local land or fortify it against rebels, criminals, or invaders.

Becoming an emperor wasn’t supposed to bring such simple pleasures into my life, but I found them anyway.