Spellheart 10: Chapter 6 (Patreon)

After settling the matter with the protesters and convincing them to disperse, I invited them all to hang around the Hearthwood a little longer. Mac was about ready with a Mana Generator upgrade, which would bolster the zeal distribution throughout the area. The Mana Generator upgrade would hopefully enable the creation of more Level-Reducing Sentry Towers.

Those things had saved my rear more times than I could count, so as far as I was concerned, the more of them we had, the better. For all I knew, an Immortal Ascendant planned to drop from the sky and wreck all my stuff again. I wanted to be prepared for just that sort of catastrophe.

“I missed this feeling,” Assyrus said as she sat next to me, cross-legged and eyes closed.

“Me too,” I chuckled. Though I was beyond the need for ordinary zeal, the sudden rush of cleaner and fresher energy was like a breath of fresh air. Plus, the power of the Mana Generator was something beyond normal zeal, and the more I exposed myself to it, the more I understood exactly what made it different.

I embraced the pulse of energy as all the others in the Hearthwood did. This one was stronger than any upgrades to the Mana Generator before it, and it might even be felt in neighboring countries. I gathered a few sparks of The Wanderer’s strange energy and saved them for later. Perhaps they’d come in handy when contemplating my concepts a little more.

Until then, I admired the Hearthwood. My new clock tower was complete, and my kids had done a remarkable job putting together something to tell time. It looked similar enough to a clock tower on Earth that I suspected either Mac or Sam gave them a few hints. While technically cheating, at the end of the day, a clock tower was what I wanted, and a clock tower was what I got.

Massive and intricate solid bronze gears spun in the open air. The pendulum swinging toward the bottom had a weight of solid gold as wide as my entire body outstretched. Each swing seemed to take a little longer than a second, but I hadn’t demanded any specifications for timing. Just having the clock tower was a massive improvement, and it meant all the city workers could mark the times of their shifts from start to end.

The elevators and trolleys were both also a success. The mechanical systems whirred to life, chugging along in a never-ending circuit. Neither was seeing particularly heavy use, but I hadn’t gone out of my way to tell people what they were. Perhaps once people got used to the things they grow brave enough to use them.

Down by the river, several mills and factories were churning away. Apparently, my attempt at harnessing hydroelectric power had gone over better than I thought.

But most apparent were the effects of all the street lights. They’d been an afterthought to me. Heck, most of them hadn’t even been put up by me, except for casting my Stone Obelisk spell a few times in quick succession.

Now, shining crystals of light lit the streets in the early morning. With lighting like this, it was clear we were a city that never sleeps.

I was proud of the Hearthwood. It seemed only yesterday it was a tiny band of struggling survivors. We’d been through hell repeatedly, and yet we were still here, now stronger than ever.

I sensed several breakthroughs around the city. The burst of freely available energy was enough to push many over the edge and allow them to break through to the next cultivation level. And unlike most times I’d seen this happen, the sudden advancements weren’t confined to the wealthier regions of the city.

There were three bright flashes of light in the city’s poorer districts. Perhaps these were powerful guests slumming it in the city. But I hoped they were locals who had no future anywhere else. But here in the Hearthwood, even the elusive rank of True Mage was within the reach of everyone, thanks to the detailed and cheaply available cultivation guides we provided to our citizens.

Far closer to me, I sensed several flashes of light toward the top of Castle Mac. Those would be my own kids, on the complete opposite end of the social spectrum of the poor district. My children had everything they possibly needed to succeed. And now, a few of them had pushed those gifts of mine further than I dared hope. I felt a smile touch my face. I wondered who they were and how to tell them I was proud of them.

But then, a light far brighter than all the others lit up next to me. I turned to regard it and saw Tivana with a thick crease over her brows.

Was she having a breakthrough? But as far as I knew, she was already at the peak of the Sorcerer realm. If she was having a breakthrough...

I jumped to my feet. “Tivana’s having a breakthrough!”

I stood behind her as close as I dared. I didn’t want to interrupt her breakthrough, but at the same time, I wanted to be ready to help.

We were sitting on one of the balconies of my tower, and I pulled on the curtains around us. The dense swirl of energies around Tivana would be terrifying to most low-level cultivators. And higher-level cultivators might want a piece of it for themselves. I solved both those issues by cloaking Tivana from prying eyes and prying magic. My aura wrapped around hers, creating a sphere of calm zeal to prevent unexpected perturbations from disturbing her potential ascension to Demigod.

I watched and waited. I’d like to say I was calm and patient through the process, but that was anything but the case. I nervously ran my fingers through my hair, anxious sweat beading on my brow.

I wanted to hold her hand. To bring her back into that unity we shared during dual cultivation. That way, I’d be able to help. But Tivana had initiated this process on her own, unbeknownst to me. I’d known she was close, but not this close. Had she been attempting to master a concept while I wasn’t looking? Or had some of my concepts rubbed off on her?

Zeal swirled in on her, growing thicker and denser. To my magical sight, it went from gas to liquid and eventually to a solid mass of raw power. It vanished into a whirlpool concentrated in the center of Tivana’s abdomen, more disappearing than could possibly fit.

A Demigod’s soul defied conventional logic. At our level, the spirit and the magic coursing through it were more important than the flesh and blood that housed it. Tivana was making that transition now. My nervous fingers dug into my hair.

The energy was swirling in smooth and healthy patterns. She was doing it! It was working. But then, as the flow of energies reached its zenith, there was a stutter.

That tiny stutter was all it took for her control to snap. Her grip on the flow of energy was tenuous at best. Now it was gone.

The flow of power shifted, twisted, and then began in reverse. Spatial zeal whipped out in all directions, tearing chunks out of the nearby walls.

Things had gone from perfect to disastrous in the blink of an eye. It took me a moment to figure out what was happening. She’d gone from filling her core with new zeal to having everything spill out of her at once. If this process continued, she could lose her entire cultivation.

That would be very bad because nobody below the wizard realm could survive in a storm of spatial zeal like the one she was in. Heck, I was pretty sure she wasn’t dead already because she was still full of power from my World Titan Fiendbody. That improved her physical durability to the point that even her own zeal going wild inside of her body wasn’t enough to kill her. Anyone else would be torn apart from the inside out from a backlash like this one.

I had to do something but had been caught off guard. I hadn’t dreamed Tivana would be ready to attempt her breakthrough this soon, but here we were.

I moved my zeal closer to her, hoping to contain the damage and reverse the flow of zeal back in the proper direction. But it slipped from my grasp. I could protect the city, but I couldn’t save Tivana. Not without more help from her.

I would have to take direct control of Tivana’s cultivation, and there was only one way to do that.

We needed to dual cultivate immediately, and there was no time to waste.

“Tivana!” I grabbed her by the shoulders. Strands of spatial zeal lashed at my skin, covering me in a thousand paper cuts. I ignored them, though any one of those attacks would have sliced anybody else in half. “Tivana, can you hear me?”

She grit her teeth. The serene expression she’d worn moments ago had vanished, and now she had her brows drawn tight in intense concentration. I sensed the tiniest nod from her, but that was all.

I grimaced. These were less than ideal conditions. Taking control of her zeal required her handing over her zeal to me. She was already so strained with her failing attempt at a breakthrough that I wasn’t sure she could spare that kind of attention.

But it would have to be enough anyway.

I gathered her wrists in my arms, pushed her back to the ground, and planted a kiss on her lips. We hardly had time for foreplay, but Tivana’s was a body I knew well.

In one quick motion, I slashed apart her clothes and left her naked on the balcony. My own clothes came undone rather fast, and with an effort of will through my body cultivation, I was soon as hard as stone.

I pressed my cock against Tivana’s entrance, brushing my head along her clit. Three quick strokes and a deep kiss later, and I slid into her with familiar ease.

I let my body do the rest on its own accord while I focused on Tivana’s cultivation. Her zeal seemed distant, as was her mind. She struggled against her power, but I could help her if she let me.

Slowly, my will slid in beside her, and my focus joined hers. It would never have worked if her trust in me was anything but absolute. As it was, the process was slow and tenuous.

I focused first on reinforcing her body. The fact that the lingering essence of my World Titan Fiendbody was already present made it easier. I didn’t have to establish a connection, just reinforce the shadow of my power I’d left behind with the real thing.

I could feel Tivana’s body being stitched back together. My regeneration could keep up with the storm of spatial zeal, but that wasn’t true for hers until I lent her my power. As one problem was solved, a dozen more came up. I had to channel her remaining power and slow the drain of zeal. I had to restore the structural integrity of her dantian. Then I needed to redirect the flow of zeal in the proper direction. And then, I had to figure out exactly what concept Tivana had embraced to allow for this breakthrough.

My mind flickered on the edge of hers. My Mind Cultivation formed a bridge between us, and we shared thoughts and impressions. She hadn’t intended to make a breakthrough at all. Still, something about the burst of zeal from the Mana Generator had resonated with the lingering impressions of concepts that I’d introduced her to.

But what? That was the one thing I couldn’t help Tivana with. Not if I didn’t understand the concept myself.

As I dealt with all the other issues, I slowly eased myself into Tivana’s mind. She was holding onto that concept like a life raft, but it was elusive and strange. Like viewing a color I’d never seen before. If I wanted to understand it, I’d need to come to the same realization she had.

She could sense my confusion, and I could feel her mentally taking me by the hand. She planned to show me what she’d found. I followed her.

The world faded away even greater than before. My vision swirled, and suddenly I was looking out of unfamiliar eyes. It took me a moment to place myself. I was inside Tivana’s head, viewing one of her memories.

Her mother loomed over her while Tivana knelt on the floor. She looked the same as she did now since all elves manifested as adults, but somehow she seemed smaller and younger nonetheless.

Queen Lyanva demonstrated a basic but elegant working of zeal by warping space so that an object in one hand suddenly appeared in her other hand with just a tiny flick of her wrist. It wasn’t enough to be a throw, and yet it crossed a considerable distance anyway. I was no spatial cultivator, but I could tell when someone was compressing space when I saw it.

“Zeal is fuel that lets us do the impossible,” Tivana’s mother said.

The vision faded and was soon replaced by another years later.

Baroness Jynna stood on a wall overlooking Bronzeridge. Nearby, an enormous monster as tall as the city’s spires ambled closer to the city. It was clearly at the wizard rank, as was Tivana herself. But the Spirelords of Bronzeridge were only True Mages, and Jynna was only a Mage Acolyte. They would stand no chance against the beast coming their way unless Tivana stopped it.

“It’s no good. That monster’s too strong! Stopping it is impossible!” Jynna pleaded.

“Nothing is impossible,” Tivana replied.

The vision faded, and soon, I appeared elsewhere. A group of elves stood around Tivana with expressions of adoration on their faces. One of them stepped forward.

“He did it, he drove back the orcs, and now this army from the Cult of the Unblinking Eye as well!” an eager elf lifted her fists in the air in victory around. “This Patriarch from the Hearthwood Clan is really something, right?”

“He really is,” Tivana agreed.

The other elf flashed Tivana a coy smile. “You’re pretty amazing yourself, Princess! Maybe you ought to scoop him up and claim him for yourself.”

Tivana shook her head. “Ha. I think that’s impossible.”

“Maybe for me. But not for you, Tivana,” the other elf replied.

The same word resonated repeatedly throughout my visions, growing louder each time. Every experience Tivana shared held a tiny sliver of the foundational truth she’d mastered. And as she shared her experiences with me, I began to understand it myself.

Impossible was the best word to describe what Tivana had come to understand. It was a subtle shift, less noticeable by far than Identity or Gravity, both of which I’d shared with her.

Perhaps my two concepts had laid the foundation for this one, since there were similarities on a foundational level. Within the grips of this concept, anything was possible.

If ten billion elven heartwielders threw themselves at a Demigod-level Elder dragon, ten billion elves would die. But with Tivana’s concept, there was just the tiniest chance one of them could succeed. It was so infinitesimally small it could hardly be said to exist at all, but it was there.

If one of those ten billion brave souls was particularly fearless and threw themselves down the dragon’s throat with a sword in hand, their dying gasp might give them the slightest fraction of an opening to strike at the dragon’s core from deep within the beast, triggering a chain reaction not unlike the one Tivana was experiencing now.

This was the sort of power that Tivana sought to wield. The power to turn infinitesimally small probabilities into ones that could truly happen. To place her hand on the table of fate and tilt the odds in her favor.

It was bold, audacious, protective, heroic, and everything else I loved about the woman.

She would master this concept. I would make certain of that. No cloud of spatial zeal would stop us.

Now that Tivana’s concept was clear in my mind, I could use it to some limited extent. Perhaps a change was occurring in my body as well, but as blended as she and I were right now, I couldn’t differentiate the two of us.

I placed my will beside hers, both of us shoving and pushing the falling walls of her spirit back into place. Slowly and with great effort, we mustered our strength and returned things as they were.

But I wasn’t interested in leaving Tivana just a Late Sorcerer. This was her transformation to Demigod. These walls needed to be taller. Her body tougher. Her mind sturdier. When she emerged, she would be reborn as I had been.

I wasn’t sure how long we spent at the process. Minutes, hours, maybe even days. It didn’t matter. No amount of work would be too much for a woman as dear to me as this princess.

Eventually, our consciousnesses separated from where they’d been deeply intertwined. A pair of warm, soft mounds were pressed against my face. I could have lifted my head from them and woken myself at any time, but I chose not to for many minutes longer. As a result, I felt Tivana stir before I did.

She shifted her weight up onto her elbows, moving my head from side to side. I felt her hand on the back of my head.

“Dear... ahem...” Tivana tried to wake me.

“What?” I grumbled, still not taking my head out from between her boobs.

“Perhaps we should take this inside? The balcony and wall you had before is... um... well it’s not there anymore.”

“So?” I grumbled. Now that she mentioned it, the ground did feel rather rough like a pile of broken stones. Tivana’s backlash had probably flattened a good chunk of my new tower. I’d been shielding the area with a bubble of protective energy, but everything within my bubble was fair game.

I finally opened my eyes to see what the damage was.

Tivana’s storm of spatial zeal had shredded everything below us. There was nothing left of the balcony we’d been on. Nor the staircase leading into my tower.

No, we were lying in a crater just outside the tower. Nearby, dozens of people were rushing forward with shovels in hand.

At first, I thought they were trying to dig us out, but a few minutes later, I realized they weren’t shoveling dirt. They were hauling away shovelfuls of sticky white seed smeared over every surface. In the distance, I could hear Sava’s voice.

“Hey! Someone stop her! Authorized workers only. This is a restricted substance of the Hearthwood!” Sava yelled.

She was too slow though, and I felt an elf jump into the pit with Tivana and me. As she did so, she made quite a splash.

Apparently, Tivana’s breakthrough to Demigod had been a lot of fun for both of us. While my mind was busy melding with hers, my body had lots of fun of its own. Was it wrong to feel a little jealous of myself? Just how much had I missed?

I scrambled to my feet, only slipping once. I pulled Tivana up into my arms and held her close, then crouched low to grab the other elf who’d thrown herself into my puddle.

Wait a moment. Was she in the middle of a breakthrough? I looked closer. She’d been a true mage until moments ago, but now she felt more like a wizard. Apparently, all she needed was a little splash of extra vitality, and for that, she’d been willing to do anything.

I shook my head. I hoped it was worth it for her. Sava would probably tally up her debts to the Hearthwood and make her spend a long time working them off.

<Note>
I forget how quiet you guys are, at least compared to Amazon Apocalypse readers. The silence in the comments is kinda eerie.