Spellheart 10: Chapter 9 (Patreon)

“Don’t get mad that someone messed up your stuff,” Sam chuckled. “After all, we’re not exactly home anymore, even though some parts might be familiar. You’re not Patriarch of this place.”

My eyes were locked on the area where Castle Mac should have been. There looked to be a settlement there surrounding the dungeon entrance, but not anything as complex as the Hearthwood’s main city. There was, however, a much larger settlement where Queenshold was in my world.

But even more interesting to me, there were four massive towers spread throughout the Hearthwood. It took some time to recognize them, but I soon discovered several of them were the ruins I’d explored. Here they were in all their glory, standing erect and unsunk.

“So, are we in the past right now? Is this how the Hearthwood was?” I turned to Sam.

Sam shook his head. “Nope. We traveled sideways rather than back. This is what we generally consider a utopian branch of the World of Sanctuary and Serenity. Their Planetary Defense Array was never messed with and is still operating at full power. Even though the Elven Star Dominion here never expanded beyond its home system, it was never invaded, either. That makes it a nice quiet place for us Demigods to have a meetup.”

“When Sam says they haven’t expanded, that just means they haven’t conquered new worlds,” Dean added. “They haven’t been lying about, though. You’ll notice the energy concentration here is nearly as great as in the Primordial World. These elves decided to improve what they had rather than go looking for more. You’ll find the trees here are insanely tough, and there’s hardly anyone below the Wizard realm. Cultivation resources are cheap and easily available to everyone.”

“That’s right. There’s food, resources, and wealth aplenty. Not just because there’s more to share, but because there’s just more of everything for everyone. A Demigod here will live a life a hundred times better than back home,” Sam said. “It’s been tempting to move to this world or one much like it. We probably would have if we hadn’t been waiting for you.”

I ran my fingers through my hair. “Would that be the reason why nobody seemed to care about the Witch of Frozen Blood taking over the world? I was surprised a dozen hidden Demigods didn’t come out of hiding to jump her. Or at least jump Illiel’s mother before she could invite the Witch in.”

Sam chuckled. “Yeah, they were probably off-world at the time. Trust me, when you’ve really done some exploring, any Demigod staying back home is slumming it. We live in a trailer park as far as Demigods go. But shh. Don’t say that at the party.”

Confusing things from the past slowly started to make more sense. It had always seemed strange to me that the Demigods of the World of Sanctuary and Serenity seemed like absent rulers. There were occasionally one or two you’d hear about, but most of the time, they weren’t particularly active.

Those that were seemed mostly like Prince Tivar and the like, ruling over large swaths of an entire planet. I’d have thought most elven Sorcerers would be beholden to an ancient and powerful Demigod overlord, but that hadn’t been the case. Instead, the majority of nations with a leader on that level were independent.

As we traveled closer to this alternate version of the Hearthwood, some of the settlements in this version of Queenshold came into view. The buildings were smaller than what we’d built in our version of the world, but all the buildings had a sense of sturdiness to them nothing from our world could rival.

Just as Sam and Dean said, these buildings were like something out of the Primordial World. If Tivana had her breakthrough here, she wouldn’t have left more than a few gashes in the stone. Back home, she’d wrecked half the tower.

It didn’t have anything to do with local construction methods. It was merely the fact that the building materials here were innately stronger. A wooden beam was still a wooden beam, but despite a similar appearance, these could take one of my punches, while those back home would crumble to dust with a flick of my finger.

We landed in the settlement, Sam leading the way. That was when something even more familiar than the area we were in appeared before me.

“Welcome, Demigods. You’re here for the party, I assume?” asked a familiar blue-haired warrior. It was Assyrus in the flesh, though she was dressed in a formal gown rather than the armor I was used to.

“Assyrus?” I asked, nearly jumping in surprise.

She turned to me, blinking in surprise. “Do you know me, sir?”

“I... ah...” I shot a glance at Sam.

“He knows someone like you. Don’t mind him.” Sam waved away the concerns of this alternate version of Assyrus. “But yes, we’re here for the party. I have our invitations.”

Sam handed the invitations over, and we entered the facilities beyond. It was essentially an open-air courtyard surrounded by larger buildings on all sides. Elves at Wizard and True Mage were laying out food like common servants as they prepared.

“We’re early, so take some time to familiarize yourself with the place. Demigods don’t do much fast, so the party will last about a week. There are bedrooms off to the side if you wish to claim one.” Sam pointed to the chunk of the building to the right of us.

“Oh, it’s that kind of party?” I chuckled.

Dean laughed. “Ha, I wish. Strange thing with elves, the ones that you don’t want always want you. The ones that you do are bitter old hags whose love lives have dried up so long ago, not even my renowned charm can dampen them again.”

“Generally, if you want company, you have to bring your own.” Sam nodded between Tivana and me.

“Understood.”

Tivana and I picked a room. There were two beds included, and Queen Lyanva tried to claim one until we kicked her out and made her take the room next door. After that, we scoped out the scene a little. The facility was large, but not so large we couldn’t learn the ley of the land in a minute or two of walking around it.

Thanks to the dense energy in the area, my magical senses didn’t extend nearly as far as I was used to. To my magical senses, it was like wading through honey when I’d been used to dry land.

All in all, it seemed pretty mundane for a secret gathering place of the world’s most powerful individuals. There was even a poker table and an open bar. It seemed like the sort of thing I’d have attended at a cousin’s wedding. There was nothing overly extravagant about it, just a normal, everyday party to meet up with some old friends.

We doubled back around as people started arriving. Now would be the best time to get to know people without a crowd, and since we were the new Demigods on the block, we wanted to make good first impressions.

Tivana had the fact that she was Dean’s granddaughter to worry about and that her mother was here as well. Ordinarily, close relations like that would be a boon in terms of making new connections. But with her particular family relations, she was just as likely to spend time correcting any false impressions of her as she was to be awarded instant respect because of them.

With that in mind, the two of us straightened our hair and clothes and wandered close to the gates. There was no announcer here as there sometimes was during fancy balls or royal gatherings, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t treat it like a formal affair. It certainly wouldn’t hurt.

“Look who made it to the big leagues,” asked a familiar male voice. He sounded bright and cheerful, though not as bright and cheerful as he’d been when we met before. It was Ethan, the man who’d tried to orchestrate some sort of peace treaty between the Satyr King and me and whitewash my impression of the Cult of the Unblinking Eye.

Neither of those plans had worked out. The Cult of the Unblinking Eye was still not on my list of friends, and now the Satyr King and all his men were dead or drifting through space without so much as a single Sacred Grove between them. Whatever the Cult of the Unblinking Eye had been planning with, their aid would have to be rethought from the ground up.

I had no doubt that Ethan was at least elbow-deep in all of it. He seemed to be the face of the Cult, but I would meet the true head of the serpent sometime today.

There was only one problem. Ethan was dead. Killed by my evil twin. And yet here he was before me now.

I made no effort to hide my shock.

"Ethan? How are you alive?" I asked.

"Ah, Theo, we meet again," Ethan nodded politely in my direction. "I hear rumors of my untimely early demise reached you?"

"Not just rumors. I saw you die with my own eyes," I replied.

Ethan gave me a tight lipped smile. "Is that so? Well, you needn't worry. Our leader, Louis, is a man of many talents. One of them is a form of resurrection."

"A form of resurrection?" I asked curiously.

"I am alive again, and that's what matters," Ethan said.

Coming back from the dead was a subject of keen interest to me, given how often I risked my life and how many loved ones I had who'd missed me if I met an unfortunate end. If not for my poor experience with clones, I might have tried splitting off a chunk of my soul for an emergency backup. But given Sam and Dean's stories and my own recent encounter, I knew that was a fifty fifty chance of him turning evil.

But the Ethan standing before me seemed exactly as I remembered him. Well dressed, polite, and smiling. It seemed like a perfect resurrection if ever I'd seen one.

But no matter how long I waited for an answer, I received no explanation from Ethan. It seemed he had no interest and satisfying my curiosity. That was only natural, I supposed, considering a clone of me was what killed him.

“And who is the lovely lady on your arm?” Ethan asked to break the long silence, though now his smile seemed increasingly forced.

“Tivana, Princess of the land formerly known as the Deanian Queendom. I’m not sure what we’ll be named going forward, but I would like to hang on to the princess title either way. Assuming the Patriarch allows it.” Tivana cast a bright smile at me.

I pulled her close. “Have you heard any of the hundreds of ridiculous titles Dean has for himself? You can call yourself anything you like in my realms, Tivana.”

“Ah, young love...” Ethan’s lips bore a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I shall leave the two of you to it then. As we’ve already met, I don’t want to hog all of your time.”

“Didn’t we meet before as well?” Tivana whispered to me when Ethan was gone.

I shrugged. Tivana had been there during negotiations with the Satyr King, but Ethan hadn’t paid much attention to my elven entourage. I doubted any elf who wasn’t a Demigod was all that memorable to him, and back then, she’d just been another Sorcerer.

Next, we met two elven Demigods. Ashryn Aranli and Nimue Panas. Both were silver-haired elves, speaking of tremendous age for a Demigod.

Each cultivation tier doubled an elf’s overall lifespan so that by the time they reached Demigod, an elf could live to be more than five thousand years old without much effort.

“Pardon me, but you are from our branch of the World of Sanctuary and Serenity, yes?” I asked, just making sure this Demigod really was one of us. Ashryn seemed like just the sort of ancient and powerful Demigod who should have come out of hiding to fend off the Witch of Frozen Blood.

“Yes, we’re from the same world branch, poor and pathetic though it is these days...” Ashryn waved her hand. “In my youth, we held such promise. We were the Elven Star Dominion, and our power reached beyond worlds. Now we’re a pathetic and sorry lot. Not worth saving, really. I spend most of my time in the Primordial World these days, doing little more than interacting with other elves and trying to convince them of the folly of messing with the Planetary Defense Array. It was fine as it was, and trying to turn it into a weapon was our undoing.”

I was surprised by that. “You think you can undo the past. Truly?”

Ashryn shrugged. “Where do you think this shard came from? It’s just a branch of what could have been when some mighty being of the past decided to twist fate. It might be utopian here on the ground, but the empty sky betrays its true nature.”

I glanced at the sky. It looked the same as always to me.

“Look deeper. Do you see Ten Thousand Worlds out there?” Ashryn asked.

Now that she mentioned it, I did not see anything up there. There were distant stars, surely, but no words plain for viewing. Or massive celestial objects right there in range. It was just... empty sky. “You’re right. The sky is empty.”

“Exactly so. This branch contains only this one world. No wonder the elves here never martialled their ambition to conquer the worlds beyond their own. There are no worlds to conquer.”

I chalked that up to the strange nature of infinity. Apparently, infinity was not infinite, and though some worlds seemed utopian, they could not replace my own. Apparently, the World of Sanctuary and Serenity I knew and loved was more important than I thought, though the Demigods here might try to deny it."

“Why not do more then?” I asked Ashryn. “Why not avert the disaster that befell the Elven Star Dominion? Change the past for the better.”

Ashryn gave me a sad smile. “Time is a scary thing, young human. Perhaps an Immortal Ascendant might toy with it so, but not me. Our world is worth less than animal dung in the street. Talking to the people back then is one thing. But to interfere directly is far harder. Our eternal fate is to be failures. As far as I am concerned, the other elves earned what Grognak and the Witch of Frozen Blood did to them. We deserve it.” She shot a glance at Tivana before departing for the buffet table.

Tivana and I exchanged a glance.

“Well, that was both cryptic and depressing...” I muttered.

Tivana shook her head. “No wonder we’ve never been able to count on the Demigods for aid.”

Nimue shared Ashryn’s ancient look and was probably from the same generation, but had entirely different features. While Ashryn was pale and thin, Nimue was darker-skinned and somewhat heavy-set. She wouldn’t be fat in human terms, but as far as elves went she was a bit on the bulky side.

That was a tough feat to manage, especially for a Demigod. But the moment she entered the party she had headed straight to the chocolate fountain and was throwing down one chocolate strawberry after another.

Her dark skin was lined with tribal tattoos that crossed her entire body, and she wore a wrap of leaves around her waist in a manner that looked positively ancient. She also didn’t bother wearing any sort of top. That was the one part of her where her Demigod power was clear. An impossibly tough body meant superhumanly perky breasts that needed no support, despite each being as large as melons.

“You are Nimue, I hear?” I asked the elf.

“Yup,” the elf said. She gestured to a plate of strawberries by my elbow, and I passed them to her. Like a machine, she dipped them into the chocolate fountain, then swallowed them one after another in one bite.

“I am Theo, and this is Tivana. I’m told you’ve been around a while?” I gestured to myself and then to Tivana.

“Been around some four thousand years.” Nimue shrugged.

“Ah, you must be very, very knowledgeable about the history of our world!” Tivana exclaimed.

“Not really,” Nimue replied, instantly killing Tivana’s enthusiasm.

“Could I ask you a few questions about the fall of the Elven Star Dominion? We just spoke with Ashryn. Have you ever thought about restoring that ancient elven empire?”

“Nah,” Nimue replied, still busy eating.

“Okay then. It was a pleasure speaking with you. We won’t interrupt you any further.” Tivana and I slipped away, not wanting to get between a hungry Demigod and her food.

Thankfully, the next few elven Demigods we met were a bit more normal. Less depressing than the first two, though I could sense beneath their facades of normality, there was a quiet and defeated acceptance of them all. No wonder they so rarely interacted with Sorcerers.

Most Sorcerers were commanding, haughty, and ambitious. Most of this crowd acted like they’d just watched their favorite dog get put down the week before. They wouldn’t exactly mix well. I did bump shoulders with a couple of the Demigods who’d shown up to help us fight off the dragon attack. Those, at least, were less depressing to talk to, though aggravating in other ways.

Like Ashryn and Nimue, most of these were survivors from the Elven Star Dominion, all batches from the original elves of ancient days. After a few exchanges, it became clear that we’d gotten lucky with Ashryn and Nimue. The rest of the Demigods wouldn’t have been out of place as villains of a high-school comedy.

“They’re just letting anyone come these days, aren’t they?” one of them asked with a raised eyebrow as she looked Tivana up and down.

“Excuse me? I’m a Demigod, just like you, you know.” Tivana placed her hands on her hips.

“A Demigod, maybe. But not one like me. You’re a lesser breed of elf. And not one I care to associate with.” the arrogant bitch of a Demigod strode off with a flick of her hair and a sway of her hips.

“This isn’t going too well, is it?” Tivana sighed. “Here, I thought I’d make some useful connections. There isn’t a single person here I could turn into an ally that I didn’t already know...”

I placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, though I didn’t really have any words to say. The nerve of that woman...

Ashryn was right in some ways. There was a reason the Elven Star Dominion fell. With an attitude like that, I couldn’t imagine the elves of ancient days having many allies.

Ethan came by a while later to introduce me to another man also from the Cult of the Unblinking Eye. He looked like a sharply dressed business man, and from where I stood, I could tell he was more powerful than Sam, Dean, Ethan, or anyone else in the room that I’d met. Most of us were Early Demigods, but this guy had to be a Late Demigod.

I wasn’t intimidated, mostly because I only sensed mind magic from him. He didn’t have anybody or other spirit aspects of cultivation worth noting, but the sheer density of his mind magic was incredible. Besides that, he was a human, which means he probably packed more of a punch than other Demigods.

“Theo, let me introduce you to someone very important. He’s eager to meet you. This is Louis, leader and founder of the Cult of the Unblinking Eye.”

Louis was a sharply dressed man with curly black hair, lightly tanned skin, and a sharply trimmed beard that ran down his chin to a point. It added to his angular features and gave him a look that reminded me of an aspiring mafia boss. The hair on the top of his head was shaved smooth, giving him the classic tough-guy look while still remaining professionally dressed. He had a moderate tan and features there were generally impossible to place as being from any one particular part of Earth.

Louis’ eyes gazed out into the distance as he pressed a finger against an earpiece hanging over one ear. He was listening to someone speak through it, though even I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

“I’m surprised you got that thing working here. Did the Cult of the Unblinking Eye put up cell towers or something?” I gestured to the earpiece.

Louis ignored me for a moment of awkward silence. It seemed like the leader of the Cult of the Unblinking Eye lacked Ethan’s charisma, but made up for it with power.

After whoever he was listening to finished speaking, Louis turned to me and spoke. “So you’re the kid who blew up the World of Woods and Wilds?”

“That was me,” I hesitantly replied.

“That’s going to be a pain in the ass, but I admire your spirit. You’re in,” Louis said.

“Excuse me?” I blinked in surprise.

“You’re in the Cult of the Unblinking Eye. Your orientation starts as soon as this party ends. Don’t bother bringing your own elves. We’ll assign you some already improved with Mind Magic.”

As Louis spoke, his eyes stared off into the distance as though looking straight through me. He kept one hand on his earpiece the whole time.

I gave Louis a thin-lipped smile in reply. “I truly appreciate the offer, Louis, but I’m quite content hanging out with Sam, Dean, and my little crew.”

“They’ll regret not joining us,” Louis said. “As will you if you refuse this offer.”

By now, my smile had turned into a frown. The Cult of the Unblinking Eye was already on my to-be-destroyed list. And here was their leader, eager to antagonize me further. I had little patience left for them, though this certainly wasn’t the time to pick a fight.

“Woah, what Louis means to say is that what went down between you and the Satyr King was none of our business. Bygones are bygones, and you can still join the Cult if you wish! No hard feelings.” Ethan stepped between me and Louis, waving his hands eagerly.

But I had already gotten the picture. Joining the Cult of the Unblinking Eye would probably be the last mistake I ever made. I could tell from the look in Louis’ eyes that he probably wanted to deal with me as much as I wanted to deal with him. But neither of us was going to make a move with so many other Demigods present. Sooner or later, though, one of us was going to wind up dead. It was just a matter of time.

“We want that ship of yours,” Louis said. “It’s the key we’re missing. We could do so much more with it than you can. We could even open the way back home. Don’t you want to go home?”

I felt Tivana’s grip on my wrist tighten.

I laughed and shook my head. “I have a home. It’s called the Hearthwood.”

I turned and left. No need to linger and let myself get worked up over the Cult of the Unblinking Eye. I had thousands of years to deal with them, after all. And with our improved defenses, even Demigods like them wouldn’t be able to harm me at home. Time was on my side, and Louis seemed to know that.

“Hey, Theo! Tivana! Over here!” Dean waved me over and whispered. “Cover me while I spike the watermelon!”