Spellheart 10: Chapter 17 (Patreon)

Suddenly, the walls around us felt narrow and confining. I could see the restlessness in my companion’s eyes. We’d been here too long already. No one reached Demigod by giving in to helplessness. Each of us was one word away from smashing our way out of here.

I had been calm for one reason and one reason alone. My Pocket World Passage. These cells could do nothing to hold me, and the Hearthwood was only ever a single step away. I could have escaped this cell with all my allies at any time, and there was nothing these guards and their battle golems could do to stop me.

The only thing stopping me was that Yeminel, Ariel, Lyssandra, and Melaris never arrived. I wasn’t about to abandon them.

“We can’t just sit here. And if Yeminel, Ariel, Lyssandra, and Melaris haven’t found us by now, they probably didn’t realize we got arrested. In all likelihood, they’re standing around our meeting spot waiting for us to return so we can leave together.”

Elara climbed to her feet as well and dusted the grime of the prison cell off her. “What do you propose?”

I flexed my arms, shattering the restraints and holding them behind my back. I glanced at Elara’s wrists, then at Tivana’s. With a thought, I turned enchanted metal into wet clay.

The zeal from all those enchantments was still there, this time loaded with Earth zeal. And all Earth zeal was mine to command. With a wave of my hand, the restraints folded in on themselves until two clay spheres brimming with power hovered around my head.

“Exactly what I said. It’s time to break out of here.”

I grabbed the bars. The iron in them would burn the flesh of any elf, but not me. I felt the muscles of my back tense, then flex. This stuff was from the Primordial World, tougher and stronger than ordinary iron. So good it might even be worth adding to the next iteration of Spell Eater.

After a groan and a tremendous heave, the bars I was holding bent, twisted, and came loose. I stepped out into the hall, a free man.

“Holy crap,” Valanda whispered in the cell next door.

Sam and Dean were already working on breaking themselves out. Neither of them had my body cultivation, but with the two of them working together, they were slowly managing it. I walked up to Valanda’s door.

“I told you I owed you. I can get you out of here if you want. You’re not going to be welcome here in the city after a break out like this one, though.”

“The only thing I have left to lose here is the massive debt on my shoulders. I’ll come with you if you’ll have me.” Valanda met my gaze from across the cell door.

I shoved my finger right through the keyhole on her cell door, turning the tumbler within into a pile of broken parts. I grabbed the door, swinging it open as I heaved and twisted. The door popped free a moment later. That should be enough special iron for a magic spear or two. The door vanished into my Dimensional Storage.

I helped Sam and Dean with the last of their cell door. Only a few moments had passed since our breakout began, but already I heard an alarm ringing overhead.

“We’ll try to do this bloodlessly. I don’t want a massive manhunt on top of us every time I go into the Primordial World,” I said, shouting over the siren.

“We can try.” Sam grimaced. “But I don’t think we’ll succeed.”

There were several shouts up and down the corridor from other people asking to be freed. I ignored them as I plastered on a calm expression of absolute confidence. Things would go smoothest if I could simply intimidate the guards into submission.

The three officers who’d arrested us stood waiting for us, all lined up in front of the bespectacled elf who’d booked us.

“We’re leaving. Record it as us being released, please. Demigods have important things to do, and for us, the future of the entire World of Sanctuary and Serenity lies in the balance. Countless future generations are depending on us, and we really don’t have time to deal with bullshit, so...” I trailed off, jerking my head toward the door.

The bespectacled elf wore a deep scowl on her face, but after glancing up and down at the seven of us, she seemed to realize she and her guards weren’t up to the task of stopping us. All of them were Sorcerers, and only three of them were in Demigod golems.

“Good. We’ll leaving.” I turned my back, and the others followed me, but as soon as I did so, I sensed the bespectacled elf diving for something beneath the desk. I shot one of the two clay orbs I’d gathered back over my shoulder just in time to intercept an energy beam.

My clay orb was consumed completely. Whatever she’d tried to shoot us with was powerful. Most of us would have been alive but badly hurt if that surprise attack had landed. But it had been aimed mainly at Valanda. Had she been struck, she would certainly be dead. From the paleness of her face, she knew I’d just saved her life.

“That was a mistake.” I spat. I sent the other clay orb forward toward the elf. She shrieked and held up the device she’d fired off like a shield. That was alright by me, though, since I wanted to disable that weapon, not kill her. My clay orb wrapped around the trigger mechanism, and with a thought, I shifted it back to the enchanted bronze it had once been using my Identity concept.

The bespectacled elf seemed to realize her weapon was now useless, and she tossed it aside before pointing at me and shrieking.

“Guards! Don’t let them escape!” the bespectacled elf ordered the three officers in their battle golems.

“Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” I replied. My warning fell on deaf ears. Behind me, my allies sprang into action.

They must have figured the whole bunch of us were new Demigods who barely knew how to fight. Or maybe they thought the prison cells had drained us of all our zeal before we managed to escape. Maybe the Immortal Ascendant who’d put this into action really was that scary.

But then my mind flashed back to the dark look Louis had cast me. There was only one group I could think of that would have issues with me and my companions. Naturally, their tool of the trade was mind magic, and that’s what I suspected was at work here.

Sam twisted fate to slow time around one golem. From there, he and Queen Lyanva grabbed one arm each and tugged until the limbs fell free. The small arms of the elven sorcerer hiding behind layers of enchanted bronze looked like tiny noodles in comparison to the massive metal exoskeleton she’d been wearing.

Within mere heartbeats, the entryway became a battlefield. Elara and Tivana squared off against another one of the battle golem officers, each bringing spells to bear. Tivana spread her hands wide, and a thread of spatial zeal materialized between her fingers. When one of the golems brought its clunky fist up for a punch, Tivana sliced a chunk out of the hand.

Elara’s attack was even more direct. Her eyes shone with a flash of electric current, and the air smelled of ozone. She darted forward and placed an open palm on the golem’s body, and a moment later, it froze as still as a statue. The hatch on the golem’s back opened up, and Elara grabbed the pilot by her shirt and tossed her onto the ground.

Valanda and I stood against the leader of the golem officers. She glanced at me for support, clearly anxious about the coming fight.

“Uh... I’ll try to distract it?” she suggested.

I shook my head. “Keep the one in back from running away. There’s something I want to check for.”

“Got it!”

“And you, Minerva. Summon some skeletons, ghosts, or something. Find our stuff so we can get out of here. And make sure nobody comes to check on what all the noise is about.”

[Understood, Master,] Minerva replied.

As the golem and the elf piloting it charged toward me, I met it with a tackle. It was a massive hunk of metal, and I was just a man, but I had a few tricks up my sleeve.

I used my Gravity concept, lightening the force weighing it down. Meanwhile, I shifted gravity behind me, making me fall toward my target. The result would have been surreal to see. I knocked the golem clean off its feet and onto the ground, clearing the way for Valanda to rush forward from behind me and do something similar to the bespectacled elf who was trying to sneak out the door.

From there, I put my hands to work. I dug into the bronze plates of the battle golem, latching fingers around joints and limbs. I pried and twisted as the metal bent and buckled before eventually snapping away entirely.

“Your suit isn’t strong enough to take me on. Nor is it strong enough to fight my companions,” I said conversationally as the golem pilot pointlessly struggled to get out from under me. “You see, I’ve built plenty of golems myself, as has my daughter, Argona. Getting them to the Demigod realm is all well and good. It requires a certain level of toughness and power. But just being in the Demigod realm doesn’t mean a war golem can match an actual Demigod. After all, these suits don’t exactly come with the wide array of abilities any Demigod ought to have mastered.”

By the time I finished speaking, I could see the pilot’s trembling bare skin beneath the metal plates. I was nearly through. Metal and cloth came away between my fingers. A bit more bending and shoving and there!

I grabbed the elf inside and hauled her out of her armor. I must have accidentally torn away her clothes while pulling her out of the golem. Either that, or they piloted these things naked. I suppose that wasn’t the worst idea if they were being controlled by circulating zeal.

Whatever the answer was, this elf was terrified. She hadn’t signed up to fight Demigods.

“Shh... quiet.”

“I’m quiet! I’m quiet!” the terrified and naked pilot pleaded none-too-quietly.

“You ever meditated before?” I asked.

“I cultivate?” the elf suggested. “Look, I was just following orders! I didn’t mean to shove you that one time, walking you to the station. I just tripped! Honest mistake, sorry! It definitely had nothing to do with you being, well... you know.”

“Shh... cultivate now,” I urged her. And what exactly was it that I was supposed to know? I would have asked her if I hadn’t been in a rush.

She closed her eyes and started muttering under her breath. It seemed almost like she was praying, though the elves I knew worshiped no gods. Strange.

Whatever she was doing, it cleared her mind enough to make searching it with Mind Magic considerably easier. Most of my mind magic was focused on mental defense and improving my own mental capabilities. I hadn’t wanted to be like the Cult of the Unblinking Eye after all.

But I had retained enough power to be able to search the mind of someone willing like this, especially when I was looking for the work of another mind cultivator. Sure enough, this one had been tampered with, albeit very lightly. I couldn’t be sure with so little time to search her, but it seemed to be a subtle suggestion not to think too hard about whether arresting me was smart or wise.

“Who was it that told you to come after us? Think!”

Unfortunately, I got nothing from that. She must not have met them directly or otherwise, had those memories thoroughly erased. Still, the presence of mind zeal on its own was enough to lead me to suspect Louis and the Cult of the Unblinking Eye. They’d acted even sooner than I thought they would.

By now, the fight was over. I checked with the other two battle golem pilots and saw little other than the simple suggestion left in their heads. It was the bespectacled elf who’d been truly twisted. To put it into physical terms, she had three massive knots in her thoughts. One made her hate me and my companions the moment she saw us. Not just regular hate either, but an irrational, desperate desire to destroy us. It was like I’d personally killed her favorite pet every few years after she’d gotten good and attached to them.

Another knot seemed to place her in charge of the others. She wasn’t technically supposed to be giving orders in this department, but between the latent suggestions placed in the heads of the golem pilots and her own position, nobody thought to question her when she gave the order to arrest us. Or to stop us from escaping.

The third knot I wasn’t quite sure of. Maybe Illiel could figure it out. Whatever it was, though, probably wasn’t good for any of these elves. I reached out with a tendril of mind magic and severed them all. It wasn’t the cleanest way to patch up a mind, and the bespectacled elf especially would be scatterbrained for a few decades, but it was better than being under someone else’s control. It would also have the bonus of wiping any exact memories of today, which would hopefully cover my ass and prevent us from getting another arrest warrant out on us, this time with some actual evidence to back it up.

“I just wiped some memories. Do any of you guys know how the paperwork here works? I want to know what they think they have on us.”

“Already on it,” Elara replied. I turned to see her standing behind the console where the bespectacled elf had been seated. The thing she was interacting with looked a bit like a crystal ball half-embedded in the stone pedestal before her. “It’s as we thought. Someone tipped the local department off that we were in town and might be up to no good.”

“Can you figure out who it was?”

“Yeah. These tips are always logged. Looks like the name was Liora Starwhisper. At least that’s what she gave for the records. A new Immortal Ascendant and not one I recognize, but she was here and gave the order. I even have an impression of her zeal to work with.”

“An elf?” I frowned. There went a lot of my theories. I thought it might have been Louis or Ethan using Mind Magic to trick people into thinking they were an Immortal Ascendant. “What aspect is the zeal?”

“Looks fire-based to me. Fairly straightforward, too. Rare for that type to reach Immortal Ascendant without doing something a little more esoteric with their zeal. Normally, Immortal Ascendance requires more creativity.” Elara made a discontented noise. I imagined not reaching Immortal Ascendance was a sore spot with her.

“Crap. Fire-aspect zeal at that realm means we really are dealing with an Immortal Ascendant.” I felt my fists tighten. It was time to get out of here and regroup in the safety of the Hearthwood and its defenses. We just had to figure out where those missing new allies of ours had disappeared to...

“Let’s get out of here. Hopefully, they have spare clothes for that one.” Tivana looked between the naked elf golem pilot and the others, who were all fully clothed. Then she turned to me. “I think you stripped her naked while disarming her. Probably out of habit.”

“What? I would never!” I frowned, thinking back. Maybe that hadn’t just been metal I was tearing away. “Okay, maybe I would.”