Spellheart 10: Chapter 35 (Patreon)

The explosion had my ears ringing. I had to get creative with my Earth magic to stabilize the ground beneath me while letting everything else give way. The blast threw dirt and debris everywhere. I heard Dean spluttering in surprise behind me. Still, all my other allies were ready for it and were using this moment of shocked surprise to prepare their hardest-hitting offensive abilities.

I was hit hard, but I knew it was coming. I had one arm over my face and walls of earth pulled up around me. When the tremors stopped I pushed the walls aside and them crumbled.

When the dust settled, Louis still coming at me, a bit bloody and battered but still alive. I knew I was tough enough to survive being at ground zero of a nuclear bomb, but I was suprised Louis could shrug it off as well. Perhaps I should have used a bigger bomb, but I was afraid of my friends getting caught in the blast.

“That all you’ve got?” Louis yelled as he swung for me and missed. I had to time this perfectly, and I was fingering the digital pocket watch in case things went wrong.

“I’m just getting started,” I replied. The explosion was my opening move, and in one blast, it revealed a unused part of the dungeon. Unfortunately, this was beyond Mac’s range, so I couldn’t add true Level-Reducing Sentry Towers. But there was one trick I hadn’t pulled yet.

My evil clone had done a lot of work on figuring out how these sentry towers worked on the most fundamental level. He hadn’t enjoyed losing the sense of security they provided. So, bit by bit, he did something similar.

Based on his tests, the Level Reducing Sentry Towers used some unknown mechanism to revert a person’s energy reserves to a lower level. It was similar to the way being in the Primordial World often felt like being depowered. Or simply going to a world with much higher ambient zeal.

The hard part was making that work. However, The Wanderer made that possible. It was beyond his understanding or mine. Thankfully, neither of us needed to understand it since that function was handled entirely by the shining gemstones embedded in the top of each tower. The rest of the structures merely supplied high-quality power heavily laced with the might of a powerful concept. Thankfully, I had a lot of that at the moment.

If the Cult still had their little spy device, they might have seen me prying out the crystals from a few of my towers deep in the city’s center. Fortunately, that little avenue of spying had been cut off by a helpful fairy who was now stuffing herself with as many pastries as she could eat. I had debated trying to get her to fight for us, but ultimately, I had opted to use the towers instead. Fairies were hard enough to control under ordinary circumstances. In a fight, who knew what that one would do? Besides, I wanted to finish this with my own hands.

So we hollowed out a space underneath where our peace talks would occur. Yes, it was generally a war crime to plant a bomb ambush somewhere like this, but in my defense, he attacked first, just like I knew he would. I was merely preemptively preparing to defend myself.

“The fu--“ Louis shouted as a beam of multicolored light struck him. I’d been waiting nearly a month for this moment.

“That’s all you’ve got!?” I grinned as Louis’ fist struck my cheek with all the force of a wet napkin. “My turn.”

I lifted my hand, swept his fist aside, then cocked back my own. I didn’t hold back as I planted my feet, threw back my shoulder, and lashed out with a right hook.

My knuckles connected with his jaw. Something cracked at my touch, but I was just getting started. Most of him wanted to go flying, but these fake sentry towers didn’t pack the punch of the real thing. I couldn’t afford to throw him in the wrong direction.

So I grabbed him by the hair and yanked him back toward me. I brought my knee up to his face, smashing it in with a sudden jerk.

I glanced at the headset in my off-hand, then tossed it into the dirt. I could pick it up again later. This was more important.

With two hands, I finally turned and picked Louis up with both arms.

“Mac, drop the shield!” I yelled as I threw him bodily into Castle Mac. Louis flew end over end and flopped face-down in the middle of the street. I jumped over the wall to follow him. I landed right in front of him, leaving Ethan surrounded by all my Demigod allies. I dealt with the Cult of the Unblinking Eye’s leader.

I glared at Louis as he slowly pulled himself together. Now that he was inside the walls, my worry was gone. The hard part was finished. I’d gotten him inside The Wanderer’s range. Several nearby buildings crumbled away to reveal real Level-Reducing Sentry Towers. These were far superior to my imitations, and the damage they could do was much more severe.

From the looks of things, my bootleg version had only brought him down to Early Demigod. But these might take him all the way to Sorcerer. I held up my hand. They were there if I needed it. But for now, I had some aggression to work out.

“You think you can come here to my home, threaten everything I’ve built again and again, and still get me to bend over and let you have your way?” I asked as I grabbed Louis by the hem of his shirt. “No, Louis. That’s not how this works.”

“Impossible!” Louis struggled to breathe. “I won! He told me so!” He was coughing up blood between sharp breaths now.

I laughed. “I don’t think time travel works as you think it does, Louis.”

He struggled in my hands and eventually tore himself free by ripping away his own shirt. Beneath his shirt, he had an athlete’s body, strong and toned. I couldn’t let myself be outdone, though, not when everyone in the Hearthwood with a window watched this fight. I tore my shirt off with one smooth jerk, flexing a chest a notch bigger than Louis’.

I wasn’t sure what body cultivation art Louis followed, but I knew the World Titan Fiendbody had it beat.

What followed was largely a one-sided beat-down. I’d been holding back a lot of frustrations lately, and suddenly, the man responsible for most of them had volunteered to be my punching bag.

I had to control the fight completely since an equal battle between Demigods would have destroyed good portions of the city. I took every punch Louis threw and shrugged it off, absorbing the kinetic energy while replying with my own, each directed downward to the earth that both Mac and I were reinforcing with all our power.

“You’re trick’s finished!” Louis proclaimed as he wiped blood and snot from his cheek and flicked it to one side. “Now I’m going to--“

“Mac, hit him again!” I said, and the towers to either side of us blasted Louis again. He didn’t have time to finish speaking before I was on top of him again, beating him to a pulp once more.

Louis hastily reached into his pocket for an item. I wasn’t sure what it did until he activated it, but a shimmering blue barrier appeared around him. The sentry tower blasts bounced right off him. That had to be another artifact. Well, two could play at that game.

I reached into my pocket for the digital pocket watch. If ever there was a time to use this, it was now. If Louis got the upper hand for even a moment, most of my city would be gone.

I jammed my finger into that redo button and time rewound. Louis was reaching for the shield item, but I tackled him to the ground right on time and knocked it from his hands.

“Mac, hit him again!” I yelled as I rolled clear.

Louis had more tricks up his sleeves, but so did I. I’d already taken his most valuable artifacts from him, and panic was written clear across his face as he realized he was rapidly running out of options.

“Damn you! You stole that from me! That was mine!” Louis accused when he spotted the digital pocket watch.

“And you stole it from someone else.”

He glared at me, rummaging through his clothes for something else. The moment he came up with something new, I reversed time and took it away from him. He was out of options, which was the end of the line.

There was a time when I would have been horrified at the thought of killing a man with my bare hands. Maybe I would have insisted on a trial and an execution or a bunch of other bullshit to make me feel better about the subject.

Truth be told, I’d probably still do that when the opportunity allowed. But not today.

This man and his organization had nearly brought me to ruin and gotten my loved ones killed more times than I could count. If I didn’t feel the last of his life squeeze out between my fingers, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to get a good night’s sleep again.

By the time my comrades rejoined me, I stood over a bloody hole in the ground. It was a familiar sight to me, though I hadn’t always been the one standing above the hole.

Nela landed behind me. My chest was heaving, more from adrenaline than from the fight. For all Louis’ might, it hadn't been much of a battle in the end.

“Are you alright, Theo?” she asked, caressing my shoulder. She didn’t seem to care about the blood splattered against it. None of it was mine, anyway.

“I’m fine. Better than fine, actually.” I blinked to clear my head, then waved my hand to cover the mess I’d made. “Where’s Sava? There’s no sense in letting what’s left of Louis go to waste. We’ll refine him into potions to strengthen my family. Maybe then he can undo some small portion of the damage he’s made.”

“I’ll let her know,” Nela replied. “As for our fight with Ethan, it proved even easier than you thought. What you said must have really gotten into his head because he surrendered with little of a fight.”

“Did he now? How interesting. Well, if he’s willing to prove himself helpful with deciphering the secrets of The Challenger, I’m not against sending him back to Earth. He may have worked against me, but if he was a clone, I guess it wasn’t even really him.” I ran my fingers through my hair.

Was it really over? Had I finally won?

As the seconds came to pass, I became increasingly certain that everything had worked exactly to plan. I was so used to my schemes failing that I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. But so far, I’d seen nothing to suggest it would.

The two Immortal Ascendants were still waiting aboard The Challenger, but without orders to direct them, they’d be much easier to deal with. Doubly so if we got Ethan to cooperate. We could even take the two alive. I might even get the chance to examine both of them while I figure out if whatever mind magic was controlling them could be fixed. That might give me insights into my continued work on Immortal Ascension.

I showered, changed clothes, gave a victory speech to the city as I lifted martial law and the emergency measures I’d put everyone under to keep them alive, and retired to my Personal Chambers to celebrate. Assyrus dropped the headset off on the table from where I’d left it in the mud, for which I was thankful.

Day turned to night and then day again, and still all was well. I had my personal celebration, but now was the time to congratulate my new allies, deal with the ship and the Immortal Ascendants aboard it, and eventually discuss long-term plans. With the Cult of the Unblinking Eye finished, we could finally get down to the business of shutting down the Planetary Defense Array and turning this world into something more like the utopian version of the planet we’d all met in.

Tivana arrived, along with her mother Lyanva. Sam and Dean showed up together. My matriarchs trickled in individually, occasionally interrupted by Lyssandra, Melaris, Arien, and Yeminel. It was quite the collection of Deimigods, second only to our big meeting about a month ago.

But one person was missing, and she was perhaps the most important member of our little group of everyone since she was the golem expert from the Elven Star Dominion among us.

“Hey,” I asked, looking around with a frown. “Has anyone seen Elara?”