Spellheart 10: Chapter 32 (Patreon)

Everything was bigger aboard The Challenger, including the Mana Generator. While the one above the Hearthwood was a glowing orb the size of my chest, this one was enormous. It was as big around as the facility we launched rockets from in the Hearthwood.

But at the same time, I got the distinct impression that it wasn’t any more powerful than mine. The energies were the same, but they were far less concentrated here. What was a constant swirl of light blue light aboard The Wanderer was in here a sparse spiral of light that traveled through a larger empty spherical chamber.

It was far thicker than zeal could ever be, but here, with the power more dispersed, the differences and similarities were clearer to see.

My objective was clear. I needed to figure out how to cut power to the engines or otherwise disable this thing. Both weapons and engines would be useless if there was nothing to power them.

Under other circumstances, I might try to destroy the Mana Generator itself, but something this powerful would likely release more power with its destruction than the World of Woods and Wilds had when I blew it up. Like my own Mana Generator, it was simply too dangerous to destabilize excessively. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t use it.

That same power could be circulated haphazardly around the engine room and, if allowed to run wild, would surely do deep structural damage to the ship within. It was something Mac had warned me about during my early days bonding with The Wanderer.

I was lucky that this thing was similar to my own Mana Generator otherwise I would have been at a complete loss when faced with it and the exotic energy within. Fortunately, I’d spent considerable time studying The Wanderer’s power source, so the mechanics of this one were clear to me.

I noted the differences right away. For one, while this Mana Generator was far larger, the energy was less dense. The room was bigger though, so I was unsurprised. The Challenger seemed much less keen on the reality-warping space bending features The Wanderer loved so much, so this might very well be the uncompressed size of The Wanderer’s Mana Generator.

The lack of spatial compression would make this one a little easier to work with. A modest perturbation in the power flow should hopefully overload whatever safety mechanisms were in place for the ship’s weapons and engines, destroying both in the process. The only question was how to make that happen.

Earth zeal would not be sufficient for this task as it had been back then. Studying it further, if I wanted to destroy the Mana Generator, I would need to use its own energies against it. This might have been an impossible task for any other Demigod, but I’d been exposed to the higher-order energies of my own Mana Generator for a long time.

Just recently, I’d felt how it interacted with the World Titan Fiendbody, so I knew how much I could safely take. Hopefully, it would be enough.

I had hoped my new recruits would be able to tear the place apart with me, but everything in here was too sturdily built for that. The place was made of the same metal as the hull of The Challenger. If I had difficulty bending it, these Wizards would find damaging it impossible. Clearly, the designer of The Challenger knew this was a weak spot.

So instead, I waved my Wizard assistants over and opened up my Pocket World Passage. I wanted that ready for me to dive through when this thing was ready to blow. And as long as I was getting it ready, I figured I might as well send these ladies through. There was no point in them dying with The Challenger when they’d been so helpful to me.

“You all, through the portal. Find someone at the Sorcerer level. Tell them that the Patriarch of the Hearthwood is the most handsome, heroic, and clever. Also that his wit and charm have convinced you to surrender. Oh, and that you are incredibly envious of their--“ A loud noise echoed from somewhere else in the ship, and I had to cut my instructions short. “Anyway, get through there and surrender!”

If they looked for a Sorcerer, odds were decent they’d end up in the hands of one of my matriarchs. They’d probably be locked in the prisons somewhere until they could be treated, at which point their whole time with the cult of the Unblinking Eye would be nothing more than a bad dream.

They ran through, and the moment they were gone, I jabbed the tip of Spell Eater into The Challengers Mana Generator. The barrier proved a little tougher than I thought, which was a bad sign. This might take more power to trigger an energy overload than I thought.

Despite my misgivings, I cocked back my arm and jammed Spell Eater into the barrier. The energy within twisted and swirled in a little eddy around the tip of my weapon. The power was already swirling toward me, eager to escape. If only I could haul this energy back to my own Mana Generator. It probably represented hundreds of thousands of points.

Visions filled my mind of connecting a big jumper cable connecting Spell Eater to my Mana Generator, but I didn’t have the time for that. Nor any idea what kind of metal might conduct this type of power. I would have to do this the painful way. Instead of a cable, I would have to use myself for any energy collection and storage I might need.

I held on for dear life as the energy influx began. Power flowed through Spell Eater, but my weapon could only contain so much of it on its own. The enchantments Argona and I had so carefully etched into the variety of iron alloys lining the weapon glowed with power. Too much power. If I forced them to take on much more of it, they’d come apart completely and I’ve have blown my chance to disable the Mana Generator.

This was going to be the painful part. I started pulling on the power. It came eagerly, barely contained within Spell Eater. Once again, it felt like hot magma flowed through my veins. Anyone without the World Titan Fiendbody would already be crippled. Within me, I could sense Minerva trying to help me. If I was filling a bucket, she was struggling to hold on to a spoonful.

[Can’t... take... more...] she groaned.

I shifted her deeper into my body. She shouldn’t have been handling any of this power. She was a spirit made entirely out of zeal. Who knew what kind of damage handling a different kind of energy could do to her?

“You’ve done plenty already, Minerva.”

I drew more energy into myself. Sweat beaded on my brow, and power filled my body. All one hundred and twenty-eight particles of the World Titan Fiendbody within me took their fill, and then after that, the energy poured toward my core.

I strained to contain the powerful energies flowing within me, but only for a moment.

“That’s got to be enough...” I said through gritted teeth. Then I reversed the flow of energy, pushing power back out of Spell Eater’s tip.

Energy streamed from my weapon in thick currents. It might have looked like a laser beam if it were ordinary zeal, but with this power it was something far more energetic. I had to dig my heels beneath me to keep Spell Eater lodged in the Mana Generator’s containment sphere. Otherwise, both my weapon and I would be thrown across the room.

As I grit my teeth in determination, I realized giving my all wasn’t enough. The ship hadn’t even trembled from that sudden surge in power. I’d need to give it all and then some. So that was what I did. I started again, absorbing power and building up to an even more explosive crescendo.

More power flowed into me, and more shot right back out to further destabilize the Mana Generator. Blood seeped out, first through my ears and the corners of my eyes, and then spilling out of my very skin. I spat some up on the floor and kept pushing.

The world around me spun just as the shell surrounding the Mana Generator broke down. I was doing it! I was almost there! Just a little further...

I heard a sound akin to cracking glass. A strange feeling overtook my dizzy head. For a moment, I saw myself as someone else.

My mind flashed to a man of impossible size. Bronze skin, broad shoulders, and an imperious gaze, he gazed out over creation like an aloof god. He stood floating in space, his body so big he was nearly as large as the nearest star. He held out his hand and spoke a word I could not discern, but that word was a command. Cosmic dust swirled from all corners to form a molten core, then a shell to surround it. Soon, he was holding a world in his hand, barren and dull, but it was a world nonetheless.

My thoughts shifted, and another vision appeared before me. It was the same massive figure but now shrunk down to more normal proportions. He gazed over the barren landscape of his new world and found it displeasing. With a thought, he turned the densely packed space debris into gravel and dirt.

He scooped a fistful of the newly made dirt in his hand and turned it over between his fingers. Then, I witnessed a feat even more impressive than the time Grognak the orc Wargod made diamonds in his clenched fist. This man turned a simple rock and stone into a seed the size of a fingernail.

No quantity of zeal could accomplish such a feat, only a concept. He must have used something like my Identity concept, only far more developed and with far greater control. I had only recently learned how to turn one simple substance into another. Something as complex as making a seed was completely beyond me. It would require complete knowledge of how a seed worked on the molecular level and to be able to visualize all of that in a single instant.

It was an incredible feat... but not one that was completely beyond my capabilities, if only I knew how to do it.

The man planted the seed and several more like it, and they took root. The next vision came from who knew how many centuries later, but what had once been barren rock was now a grassy meadow surrounded by towering trees.

The man knelt on one knee, playing with dirt and mud the way a child might. Soon, the mud he shaped took the form of a bunny so realistic that only its color revealed it wasn’t alive. But the more I watched, the more the brown mud shifted and lightened until, eventually, it became fur. Not long after, the bunny jumped on its hind legs and hopped away.

This man had created an entire planet and then filled it with life. It was a wonderful sight.

And that was all it would have been to me if I hadn’t experienced Tivana, Assyrus’ and Nela’s recent breakthroughs. There was something more to these flashes of insight. I could feel it.

Whose memories were I viewing? And what concept were they trying to pass on?

It wasn’t like with my women, who each spoke a word I could latch on to as we jumped from one memory to the next. This was a more elusive idea and not one I was ever intended to perceive. It had to be coming from the energy I had coursing through my body. I’d certainly never felt this much flowing through me before.

More images flashed through my mind, and the strain grew greater. I shrugged off the pain to force myself to focus. Perhaps there was no word to put my mind to, but there had to be a hint in these visions somewhere.

I reviewed them twice over before I realized what the hint was. I ignored the sights and sounds of a being of tremendous power making a world and instead focused on the feeling coursing through him.

It was the same as the energy flowing through me now.

That realization ran through me, settling into place and feeling right as it did so. I had long since known the Mana Generator contained a higher-order energy, but until now, all my attempts to cultivate it had failed one after another.

Had I finally grown strong enough to put my old theories to the test?

How much longer could I risk taking this power to myself? And how much longer before the Mana Generator exploded? I wanted to be out of here and through my Pocket World Passage when it was ready to blow.

But eyes opened or closed, I saw a bright white haze. I’d probably blinded myself with all the power running through me. It would heal soon enough, but right now, being blind was inconvenient. My spirit sight told me roughly where I was in the room, but watching the colors and swirls within the Mana Generator needed real eyes.

Still, feeling along the containment sphere with my magical senses did give me a few hints about how things were going. The containment sphere was holding, but the elaborate pipes and tubes around it were bursting one after another. Power was leaking out of the Mana Generator and spilling into the room around me. Already, the room was hot enough that things were spontaneously catching fire.

I would have to hope so because looking myself over with spirit sight told me that I was in even worse shape than the Mana Generator. I was burned and blistered worse than I’d ever been before. Taking in that much raw conceptual power was hard on a physical vessel, even one as tough as mine.

So far, I’d only ever seen humans come back from the dead as evil clones. My companions might turn into a wisp and resurrect, but that wouldn’t be the case for me. I needed to get out of here before my body fell apart completely.

I tore Spell Eater free and brought my attention back to my body. As soon as my attention was back on it, my troubled state became instantly apparent. My entire body ached, burned, trembled, and just about every other unpleasant sensation all at once. All together, it was enough pain to make a lesser man go mad.

I shrugged it off and waved my hands about until I used my spirit sight to find the passage. I was just in time too, because I heard furious footsteps echoing out behind me. Normally, my senses were quite keen, but there wasn’t much left of my ears, so I suspected whoever was making those sounds was very close.

“You!” He shouted. I thought it was Louis, but it was hard to tell with how much everything hurt.

I tried to reply but found my mouth no longer capable of speech. He raised his arm to cast something, and I raised Spell Eater. My weapon was still overflowing with power plundered from the Mana Generator, and I fired it at him.

Whatever happened must have been effective, because the shriek of pain came through loud and clear despite my wounds.

I slammed the Pocket World Passage closed behind me and stumbled into The Wanderer. From there, I stumbled with one hand, tracing the wall to the Medical Bay. Mac guided me, since I could still hear him loud and clear.

[I’m clearing a bed for you. And the hallway. If you go out looking like that, people are going to think you’re another one of those void monsters?]

I tried to croak out a response, but the best I could manage was a mental reply.

[That bad?] I asked.

[Yes.]

Mac directed me to step into a large vertical container filled with something that seemed thicker than water. I wasn’t sure what it was, but after all the recent upgrades, I wasn’t keeping complete track of the new features in every room.

What I did know was that the liquid was cool to the touch, and it made me feel itchy all over. That was good, though, because as soon as I felt that itchy sensation, I realized how much of my body had gone numb. I was in rough shape. Rougher shape than I had been that time the Sunspire King put a hole in my chest where my heart usually was.

But that wasn’t anything that couldn’t be fixed through the liberal application of magic. So, I concentrated on healing. That potent energy from the Mana Generator still swirled and twisted through my burned and scarred channels, but I’d gotten better at containing it.

In fact, I’d even gathered some small portion of it to reinforce the one hundred and twentyeight particles that made up my World Titan Fiendbody. That slowed the rate at which it was damaging me and made repairing myself despite the intense flow of energy a lot easier. Whatever was in this tank I was floating in was also quite helpful.

I felt that a normal person placed in a tank like this one could regenerate lost limbs, organs, and eyes and perhaps even turn back the clock by a few decades. Those features were all wasted on me since the World Titan Fiendbody could do that on its own. But I was grateful for the help, which accelerated my natural healing considerably.

I cast my mind to repairing my body. I wasn’t sure what was happening outside, but I needed to be ready for action as soon as possible.