Spellheart 10: Chapter 37 (Patreon)

I’d lived longer than I had any right to on this world of cultivators and magic. And if there was one thing I’d learned while staying here, it was to listen to your gut. And right now, my gut was telling me that if I was being told the world was going to explode, I’d damn well listen.

“You think it’s real? Maybe it’s a metaphor?” Sam suggested.

“When someone says a world is about to be destroyed, there aren’t many ways I can take that except literally. Come on, everybody, back to The Hearthwood!” I yelled as I opened a Pocket World Passage and started ushering people through.

The moment I stepped through myself, I started issuing orders.

“Mac, people are going to hate this, but we’re having another emergency drill. Get everyone into the bunkers. And I do mean everyone. Our people, vassal clans, any refugees we took in, the whole palace in Deania, everyone!”

[You’re right, they aren’t going to like this...] Mac replied, but he could sense the urgency in my tone. I heard sirens blasting in the distance and a few disappointed cries from citizens who were only just settling back into their everyday lives.

We were fortunate the destructive nature of the war had led us to take in more and more people outside the Hearthwood. By now, we’d completely evacuated our minor settlements and had even brought in most of our vassal clans and their direct subordinates.

The Rakaren Queendom was here now, as well as the Circle of Necromancers. The Lifekeeper Sanctum was trickling in, along with the Golden Sword Sect. Packing in all of Deania would have been impossible if Dean hadn’t built so many spatially compressed bunkers.

The entire day passed, and people started looking at me strangely with my insistence that we all remain within the bounds of The Wanderer. Even I was thinking that I was being overly paranoid.

Then the sky changed color.

“Everyone, take cover!” I yelled as those few who hadn’t listened to me scrambled for the nearest bunker. Most made it, but not before the beam of light struck the energy shield protecting the city.

I had only ever seen something like this once before. Back when the Witch of Frozen Blood was trying to take over the world. Just as before, the barrier around the world lit up with a bright blue glow.

This was the ancient shield that had protected the homeworld of the elves ever since their creator had made both it and them. This was the tool that would someday make this world a utopia just like the one I’d seen in the other universe. And as before, I expected the shield to hold.

But it did not.

When the light spread across the barrier, something shifted. Instead of resisting the burst of energy, the barrier flickered and then faded. The energy didn’t overpower the barrier, though. It was more like it was simply turned off.

The beam descending from the heavens was pointed toward us, and at first, I thought it would strike me exactly. But as it slowly descended, I realized the angle was slightly off. It wasn’t headed for us at all. It was headed for The Challenger.

Crimson light beat against the unbreakable alloy of The Challenger, and after a moment, proved that the ship’s hull wasn’t so unbreakable after all. The enormous beam of light from the heavens cut through hull and into whatever lay beneath it. The center of the beam seemed brighter and more powerful than the rest, and my chest tightened as I realized exactly what part of the ship that beam was centered on.

It was targeting The Challenger’s Mana Generator.

“Mac, seal the doors!” I yelled as every bulkhead slammed shut. Just destabilizing the flow of energy from that thing was enough to blow up half a supernaturally powerful ship and make the ambient zeal within it go wild.

I knew exactly what whoever had fired that beam had meant it to do. They wanted to destroy the containment sphere surrounding the Mana Generator, something I’d always feared might happen to The Wanderer. And something I’d been terrified of doing myself while disabling The Challenger.

“What’s happening out there? Is your scanner reading anything?” I asked Mac.

[Massive energy overload. All I’m getting is static on all sensors.]

The ground shook and trembled, quaking as the world shifted left and right. My companions and I were tossed from one side of the Command Center to the other. Normally, The Wanderer dampened such things to the point that they were imperceptible, but whatever violent explosion was occurring beyond these walls was so great that we were still tossed about.

“Uh... Theo?” Dean waved his hands in the air, stuck in the center of the room. We were all floating weightlessly, and suddenly, I had a terrible feeling about what had just happened.

Dean waved his hands a bit, and eventually I used the Gravity concept to get everyone back on the ground. Using the concept became far easier than before, likely due to my visions aboard The Challenger.

Once settled, I braced myself for the bad news.

[Oh dear... what a mess...] Mac sighed. [I have an update for you now, Theo.]

I shook my head. “I think I need to see this for myself. Can you make an airhatch? I don’t want to lose the atmosphere in here.”

Mac spent the next few minutes building an air hatch for us. The fact that he agreed it was needed didn’t bode well.

When it was finally done, I was the first out the door.

“Well... shit...” I sighed. The air was so thin that they didn’t travel far, but I was sure the slump of my shoulders carried my meaning just as well.

The sky was no longer blue. There was a big black night overhead, though sunlight was still beating down. It was bright, and the ground was hot to the touch, yet it was still cold enough to turn water into ice.

Behind me, Dean’s lips moved in what I was pretty sure was another curse. The others stared up at the empty sky with grimaces on their faces. We’d all been there when I’d destroyed the World of Woods and Wilds and knew what the place had looked like then.

We spent the next few minutes surveying the damage. The Challenger was nowhere to be found, but the explosion the destruction of its Mana Generator had triggered created a wave of force that cracked the World of Sanctuary and Serenity in two.

There was little left of the place except for big chunks of empty rock floating around in space. The fact that Mac and I had worked so hard to reinforce the earth zeal in and around the city meant that we’d all gotten blown off in one big chunk. We were fortunate that most of the city was intact, and if we could get the shield back online, we might be able to hold an atmosphere again. We’d be a bit of a bubble city floating in the void, though.

This was bad. Very bad. I pinched my temples with my thumb and forefinger.

What the hell had just happened? I won, hadn’t I?

Louis and I had our big climactic battle, and I beat him to death. The Cult of the Unblinking Eye was dead and gone. My enemies had fallen at my feet. The world was safe, and all I had to do was disable the big golem factory overhead, and I could look forward to centuries of bliss hanging out with my friends and having fun with my women.

So why the hell did my planet just blow up!?

I felt fury building in my chest. Every time I felt I had won, every time I thought I was safe, something like this happened and ruined my happiness when it was so. Damn. Close!

I was just fortunate the war and siege meant I was able to save most of my people. And a world where I was thankful for being attacked and placed under siege was a damn cruel one.

After surveying the damage for a bit. I realized it would be a lot of work to reassemble a planet. I couldn’t just wave my fingers and make one appear. The expression on the faces of my companions made me suspect they were thinking along the same lines.

I waved them all inside, and we returned to somewhere with an atmosphere to talk.

“Well, I guess it’s finally time to move on.” Dean shrugged. “Glad I brought my people here to help out with the big fight. Feel bad for some of the kiddos, though. Some of my early kids are all in the Primordial World. They’re going to be awfully confused at what happened to the family house.”

“I’m glad I brought the Fateweaver Society to the Hearthwood,” Sam said. “It means when we set up on a new planet, I won’t be starting from scratch.”

“That is true,” Lyssandra smiled. “We all have enough people to restart elven civilization. No need to partner up on an occupied world. Let’s just start from scratch.”

“Oh, we should find a nice, warm beach planet! I know one! It’s got a few big monsters on it, but if we gang up on them and exterminate them, the planet should be a fine place to settle,” Yeminel suggested.

Arien glanced at the others. “We have the forces to conquer a continent for ourselves, even on a settled planet. Anyone who doesn’t have an Immortal Ascendant would be easy to defeat. We could even enslave the locals for a few generations to give our workforce a boost during the early colonization. Once we need more skilled labor than slave labor, we can free and integrate them.”

I scowled at my companions. “That’s it? You guys are just going to give up on the world we all called home?”

“There’s nothing left of it, Theo.” Sam shrugged. “Sure, you might be able to find a few chunks of the world’s crust we can save, but it won’t exactly be a planet anymore. It’s over. Just be glad we were lucky enough to save most of what we cared about.”

“Yep.” Dean shook his head. “I went hundreds of years having nothing to do with planet busting, and now I’ve been part of two in less than a year. You know, planet busters have a bad rap in the Ten Thousand Worlds. A lot of Immortal Ascendants don’t like it. Ten Thousand Worlds sounds like a lot, but when people blow them up left and right, things can get tight.”

I sagged against the wall, energy leaving me as I slumped.

This... it was all too much.

Sure, I could pick a new world and call it the Hearthwood. I could even make sure to find one with a big forest and seed it with all the monsters I remembered. My family would even be there with me.

It would be okay, but I had earned my peaceful retirement on the world I’d come to know and love! I wasn’t about to sit down and accept some shoddy substitute.

While the others recruited Mac into their efforts to find a new world, I stewed in my growing anger. It took me a while to figure out what bothered me the most.

It wasn’t just the fact that the planet blew up. That was something I was lucky to escape with so few losses, and for that, I was relieved.

No, the thing that really bothered me was the fact that I hadn’t seen this coming in the slightest. The world was gone, but who destroyed it?

And why?

The Cult of the Unblinking Eye at least I knew were my enemies. They attacked me because they wanted The Wanderer. The Satyr King wanted Sava. The Witch of Frozen Blood wanted to eat everyone’s souls and reanimate them as vampires. Matriarch Crimson Dragon wanted to rule the Hearthwood.

But who had destroyed the World of Sanctuary and Serenity?

That was the real problem. If I couldn’t figure that out, who was to say they wouldn’t follow me somewhere else and do it all over again?

How was Elara tied up in all this? She seemed so kind when I spoke to her. She truly cared for everyone, which was more than I could say for most Demigods. But how could she have left that note for me if she didn’t know the world was going to be destroyed in advance?

And if she knew the world was going to be destroyed in advance, that suggested she was involved with its destruction.

There was a mystery here, and I didn’t like it one bit. It seemed like I hadn’t quite earned my peaceful retirement yet after all.

I stood, fear and sadness turning to resolve as I rose to my feet. I had a goal again, and I felt new strength flow through me.

“Mac, if you can access Argona’s bunker, I’d like to talk to her.”

[She selected the Drafter’s Study for her bunker. She was already inside it when the order to retreat to safety began and has continued working straight through current events. Though the lack of gravity seems to be proving a minor nuisance to her enchantment work.]

“Of course she chose the Drafter’s Study...” I chuckled. “Well, tell her I’ll fix it for her. In the meantime, I want her help activating the waystation we set up. Get those shields up. I’ll go to the World of Struggle and Strife and buy some air from the orcs. We’ll fill the place up and get it liveable again. In the meantime, I want her and everybody else who knows how to control a golem using our spatial infrastructure to look for anything valuable that survived the planet’s destruction.”

[Orders sent. Argona is expecting you.]

I cracked my knuckles. The work of the Patriarch was never done.