Spellheart 10: Chapter 18 (Patreon)

After hunting down our confiscated things and erasing any remaining evidence of our arrest, we slipped out of the station unnoticed. Normally, a group of Demigods and one homeless Sorcerer would be spotted just about anywhere. But as long as I was whipping out the mind magic I figured I might as well make us stand out a little less than well.

The denizens of the Elven Star Dominion didn’t react as much as elves of the modern era would if they saw us, and just being human normally drew plenty of eyes. Counteracting that effect let us slip through the crowd largely unnoticed.

“That wasn’t too bad,” I remarked while glancing over my shoulder at my companions. “I really thought breaking out of prison with you guys would go much worse. Sam and Dean, I mean. The rest of you, I’m sure, are law-abiding citizens.”

“It’s much easier to be law-abiding when you can make the laws whatever you want.” Queen Lyanva nodded sagely at her own bit of wisdom.

“That it certainly is. As it is, I think it’s best if we lie low for a while. We’ll leave the Primordial World a bit and hope things mellow out, and we don’t get anyone hunting us after this. Sounds good?”

A few of them mumbled something in agreement, but Elara spoke up.

“I’m confident I erased any hard evidence of our presence. If your memory wipe worked as well, then we should have been completely forgotten. In the rare event we are not, I have ways of checking on things.”

“Besides!” Dean began, “If we were wanted criminals, we would have been arrested ages ago for the crime we were going to commit one day. Isn’t that right, Sam? Sam, talk about some funky time travel stuff, please. Make me sound smart.”

“Hard to do, but you might have something resembling a point.” Sam shrugged. “While the iterations we interact with are largely linear and run parallel to the primary timeline we’re from, we have interacted with elven law enforcement from closer to the end of the Elven Star Dominion. If there was ever going to be a warrant out for our arrest across the entire elven territory, we would know about it.”

“We’re safe! I knew it. I’m a genius,” Dean said to congratulate himself.

I shook my head. I might have been able to come up with a good retort if I wasn’t focused on maintaining my spell.

“Anybody else needs anything in town? Or shall we beat a hasty retreat?”

“I’ve lost interest in shopping,” Queen Lyanva said.

“There is nothing I need that can’t be obtained outside of the Primordial World,” Elara replied.

The others nodded along.

“Alright. Then it’s time to find our friends who never showed up and get out of here.” I led our group down the winding streets, mostly thanks to directions from Valanda. She took us through several shortcuts.

“They should be back where we parted ways. Just a little further. If you know any more of those shortcuts, Valanda, lead us there.”

“There are sometimes powerful Sorcerers looking to rob people down those alleys...” Valanda glanced back at me and the rest of our group. I gave her a feral smile in return. “But I guess your group probably isn’t worried about that. Alright, this way.”

I was a little worried about overtaxing my Unnoticability spell, so I wanted to make this trip quick and relatively quiet. I was covering quite a few powerful people at the moment, and I was trying to keep the magic as subtle as possible lest that draw attention on its own. Things like this were much tougher in the Primordial World, where the average power level on the streets was far higher than what I was used to.

The fact that there were no sirens or search parties yet was a good sign. Maybe we really had nothing to worry about from local law enforcement.

But that just made more room for other worries.

What had Louis and Ethan been expecting when they had me arrested? They had to know a facility like that one couldn’t hold me if I wanted out.

And who was Liora Starwhisper, the Immortal Ascendant they’d gotten to report us? How was she involved with the Cult of the Unblinking Eye? Assuming my theory that they were the ones after me was even true, that is.

We soon found the general area where we were supposed to meet up with our allies, a courtyard near where we’d split. The streets were surprisingly deserted, which was odd. Back when we’d split ways, this seemed like a common place to meet up. The area had been crawling with small groups like mine, getting food from some of the local vendors.

Those vendor stalls were still there, but most of them lacked a vendor manning them. In fact, the whole place seemed like a ghost town. I had to search to find one vendor hiding behind her stall.

“Excuse me,” I asked. “Have you seen four Demigods around here? About this tall. One of them was mostly naked. They should have been hard to miss.”

“Yes!” the vendor squeaked, eyes wide with terror. She pointed a trembling finger, and I whipped my head around.

Something was happening on the other side of the square. Something absolutely terrifying. A bad feeling crawled up my spine as I turned.

Between keeping my barrier up, the chaotic zeal of the city, and the narrow corridor I’d just walked through, I hadn’t noticed the dense mass of zeal just across the courtyard. It was so tightly controlled that not even a single stray particle flowed away from the central mass. To my Spirit Sight, it was almost a wall of fire zeal.

I couldn’t do that with Earth zeal, and Earth zeal would be far more cooperative for something like this than fire zeal. This was something nobody I’d ever met from zeal accumulation to Demigod could do. Which meant this could only be.

“Oh shit...” Dean took the words out of my mouth. “We might have to get out of here, guys. Sam and I have a few tricks for escaping angry Immortal Ascendants, but our tricks aren’t infinite.”

“Anybody seen our allies?” I asked. I was getting an increasingly bad feeling about the situation.

“Look!” Tivana pointed into the fire. She must have sensed something using her spatial zeal. To follow her gaze, I had to swing my hand and force the Fire zeal aside. That was a tougher task than normal, thanks to the unusual density of whatever fire spell had been cast here.

“There’s a wisp!” I said as I caught sight of a golden spot of light burning among the flames.

“I got it!” Dean yelled. He jumped over the flame, only to be immediately sent flying backward with his clothes on fire. “I don’t get it! Damn, that’s hot! It must be some sort of flame barrier.

It took Tivana, Dean, Lyanva, and I all working together to pierce the fire spell. That opened up just enough of a pathway for the wisp to sense us. The moment it did, it started flying in our direction.

“Come to my safe and strong arms, whoever you are!” Dean called out. He twisted his hands, and a shimmering patch of distorted space appeared before him. As the wisp flew through it, every meter she flew toward us put her three meters closer to us.

The wisp flew right past Dean and into my arms, where it hid itself under my arm. I felt it tremble against me.

A Demigod wisp like this one was similar in some ways to its lesser kin. It was a sphere of energy combined with a soul and left behind when an elf died. Unlike lesser wisps, though, Demigod souls were in full control of their wisps even after they died and were even capable of some limited use of their magic. It wasn’t as good as a real body, and the Demigod involved was quite weakened, but unlike anyone else, a Demigod wasn’t defeated when they were reduced to a wisp.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the get-out-of-jail-free card it initially appeared. It might save a Demigod from a bad accident during an alchemy experiment, but it wouldn’t save them from any enemies capable of killing them when they were in the flesh. At most, it gave Demigods a decent chance at surviving an ambush if their killer couldn’t finish them off quickly.

But the fact of the matter was that wisps weren’t impossible to destroy, and anybody capable of killing a Demigod was probably up for the job. I realized that’s what this barrier must have been about. The spell was meant to hold the wisp in place until the soul within was completely destroyed.

Already, I could see the wisp bleeding power. She didn’t feel like a former Demigod, more like a former Wizard or a weakened Sorcerer. And from the state of the zeal within, I couldn’t even tell who it had belonged to.

“Sam!” I yelled.

“On it!” Sam replied as he bent fate. Something resisted him, and the flesh on his hands started to burn. Sam gritted his teeth even as his hair started smoldering. The wisp hiding under my arm grew brighter and stronger by the moment. “That spell is a strong one. There’s a concept of fire concealed within the actual fire spells. It’s dead simple, but there’s so much strength behind it...”

“Sam, your hair is on fire!” I warned him.

Tivana reached up to his head and started patting out the flames. Then they started springing up over his clothes and the ground around him. It spread to Tivana’s hands, and soon, she was struggling to put them out as well.

I focused on the fire, using Identity to imagine it as frost instead. That was a direct contradiction to the aspect powering the supernatural flames, and the two powers canceled out. They didn’t leave quietly, though. I felt pain stab through my head like a lance through my forehead, and blood dripped out of my nose.

“Got it!” Sam said as the wisp suddenly flashed into light. Sam’s spell sputtered out just as Yeminel appeared on the ground, naked and sporting a number of burns across her body. She crouched in a battle pose with her hands crossed over her chest like she’d been blocking something.

“Run! Flee! I better get my hundred virgins in the afterlife for this noble sacrifice...” Yeminel gasped as she held her pose with her eyes closed.

“Hey, hey. Wake up, we’re here.” I gently slapped Yeminel across the face a few times to get her to open her eyes.

“Ugh? Wait, you’re part of my hundred virgins? Really?” She looked me up and down.

“No. You’re not dead. Quick, we need to find the others and get out of here!”

“So you all saving me wasn’t a dream?” Yeminel shook her head and gathered herself. Though she might have looked like a beauty-obsessed beach girl, I couldn’t forget that this was a powerful Demigod. When she needed to be ready for action, she could steady herself from an unexpected death and the following resurrection with hardly a thought.

“No dream.” Sam smiled.

“Where are they?” I asked, repeating my earlier question.

Yeminel snapped to attention after a single breath. “If we want to save them, we’ll have to hurry. But last I saw from them, it didn’t look good...”