Spellheart 10: Chapter 38 (Patreon)

When I restored gravity to the Drafter’s Study, Argona was thrilled.

“Now I can get back to work!” Argona said. "Now that the battle is won, I've been working on some forest remediation golems!" Argona said happily. We’ll need to replant most of the Hearthwood.”

I grimaced. “Ah... about that. I think we'll need to do a little more than just replant.”

“What do you mean, Dad?” Argona asked.

I decided it would be easier to just show her. She gasped in surprise when I pointed her to the nearest porthole and showed an empty sky overhead.

“What happened? The sky is black!”

“Normally, the sky is blue because of the scattering effect of light from the sun by molecules in the atmosphere. As we no longer have an atmosphere, the sky is no longer blue,” I explained.

“No... atmosphere?” Argona suddenly looked nervous. She was right to be.

“I’m afraid so. The planet’s gone.” I shook my head sadly.

“What? How? Why!?”

I shrugged. “Beats me. Some asshole with a giant space laser blew up the planet.”

“Do you know who?”

My expression darkened. “No, but sooner or later, I will find out.”

The destruction of the planet meant Argona had to reshuffle her priorities. There was little point in building her forest remediation golems when there wasn’t a forest to remediate.

Instead, I got her on my project of scouting the planet’s ruins for anything worth saving. Having done this once already, I knew how many benefits looting a destroyed planet could give.

Picking up a few new landmarks would dramatically boost the ambient zeal wherever we settled. The more we could bring with us to wherever we were going, the more we’d have.

Soon, teams of golems were jumping between space stations and taking images of everything worth looking at. We identified a few key targets, most small enough that I could leave them to my matriarchs or Argona’s Planetary Defense golems to haul toward the Hearthwood.

I also spotted a giant space fish floundering alongside the broken core of the world. Apparently, a giant ancient lava beast was also dwelling in the core of the World of Sanctuary and Serenity, just like the World of Woods and Wilds. This one hadn't even had the chance to put up a fight before its planet was destroyed.

Someday, a new world would no doubt form around that broken molten core. Some of the remenants of the World of Sanctuary and Serenity might even survive. I imagined an event like this one was how the ancient human facility we discovered underground had gotten buried so deep.

The giant lava space fish might even survive to see that day, assuming nothing came to kill it in its moment of vulnerability. But the world that formed would not be the same as the destroyed one. The World of Sanctuary and Serenity I knew was gone, at least in this timeline.

I scoured the area, face grim, as I surveyed the devastation. There were a lot of wisps floating around here. In a way, elves were quite lucky to have this strange state between life and death. Perhaps these wisps would one day wander to another world.

Or rather, that’s what would happen if I hadn’t picked them up myself. I could always use a few more elves when it came time to resettle.

Scouting debris was not the only thing I had Argona and her subordinates working on for me. They were also busy scouting what had been the sky over our heads.

Where had that beam of energy come from? And who had destroyed the world on us? I needed to find that out if I ever wanted to feel safe again.

The hard work associated with getting us pulled together well enough was enough to take my mind off current events and get me focused again in the here and now. The more I worked, the better I started feeling about things. Yes, a powerful and mysterious figure may or may not want to destroy me.

But that wasn’t anything new. I’d been fighting for my life ever since I’d come to this world. Sooner or later, he, she, or it would slip up and give me a clue about what they wanted.

Along the way, I found a familiar face. The Fairy of the Immortal Grove had apparently been away from the Hearthwood when the explosion went off. Now she was drifting through empty space with a big pout on her face.

Before, I’d been unwilling to risk bringing her back with me to the Hearthwood, but she’d proven pretty useful lately. As long as I could control her, she might be a good way to intimidate people in the Primordial World or on another planet.

I could run around shouting, ‘We have an Immortal Ascendant! Tremble in fear!’

Never mind that our Immortal Ascendant was a scatterbrained fairy who could be won over with pastries and hardly seemed capable of fighting at all. As long as I could keep that part to myself, she’d seem quite terrifying to the average Demigod and might dissuade anyone from attacking us.

So, with a big cake in hand, I hunted her down to bring her home. She was sitting in a tree, rubbing her eyes as she swung bare feet and looked out into the void. I saw a few tears on her cheeks and wondered if maybe I’d chosen a bad time.

“The world is a meany...” the fairy grumbled to herself. “My fun happy place goes boom. Then I find a new fun happy place, and it goes boom too...”

I wasn’t sure how to hear her loud and clear through the empty void, but her words reached me anyway. She had to be doing something magical, which I took it as an invitation to sit next to her. I placed a hand on the fairy’s head and gave her a gentle pat.

She ignored me at first, but then I brought out the cake. Her eyes lit up, and she wiped away the tears before taking a big bite. I waited for her to finish, and when she did, I jerked my thumb back the way we came.

She must have gotten the message because when I took off again, she followed. She seemed excited to find her big tree was still intact in the middle of the city, and she ran right up to it. Just as before, it held a bit of its own atmosphere through magical means, and the two of us met under its branches.

“You saved my tree again. Thank you, Pastry Man of the Hearthwood! I forgive you for blowing up the world,” the fairy said.

“You’re welcome, little fairy whose name isn’t Bob.” I smiled as she jumped up to one of the lower branches. “You’ve been very helpful to me, and I want to return the favor. Let me know if you figure out who blew up the planet.”

“It was your sparky friend!” the fairy said.

My heart dropped to my stomach. “Dark purple hair, large chest?”

The fairy nodded and held two big empty fistfuls over her chest. “Big honkers! She could smash people with them!”

“You saw her, though?” I leaned closer. “You saw Elara blowing up the planet?”

“Well…” the fairy shrugged. “She left with the mean guy’s friend.”

“The mean guy? Who was the mean guy?” I frowned, trying to think of who it could be.

“The mean guy you beat up! He had a friend. His friend was very fast. Very sneaky, too. I almost didn’t see him!” The fairy smiled wide, clearly proud of having spotted someone I’d missed completely.

I stood straighter, suddenly shocked. “Louis had a friend? One I didn’t even see? How? Where? What’d he do?”

“He said a lot of boring stuff.” She shrugged. “He liked to talk into a thing on his ear.” The fairy shifted her voice lower. “Hey Louis, you need to beat up the Pastry Man of the Hearthwood and take his boat!”

“Do you remember anything else of the conversation?” I asked, reaching into my Dimensional Storage for another treat.

The fairy eyed the cookie I produced with a hungry expression.

“Nope. But they went to the big floating place in the sky! The one with the scary metal people.” She gestured overhead. One of the facilities of the Planetary Defense Array was still floating there.

Son of a bitch. It looked like I had a lead.

“Thank you. You’ve done more than you know,” I told the little fairy. “Your tree is still back in the Hearthwood, and you’re welcome to stay there with us as long as you want. And if you remember anything else, there’ll be plenty of sweets in it for you.”

The fairy didn’t seem like the most reliable of sources, but she was a source. It was a single piece of the puzzle, but this one piece could lead me to others. And with others, I would start putting this thing together.

I had two things to look into now. A headset and the remains of the Planetary Defense Array. First one, then the other.

I made my way back to The Wanderer, through it to my Personal Chambers, then sat down and placed the headset in question on my ear. It took longer than before for the voice to answer.

“There you are. I was wondering when you’d say hello again,” the voice began.

“Who are you, really?” I asked suspiciously.

“I’ve answered that question already. I’m you from the future,” the voice replied.

I shook my head, though there was no way the entity on the other end of the line could have seen the gesture. “Don’t give me that crap. I know Louis bought it, but I’m not him. I’ve talked with Sam, and your story doesn’t add up. Time Travel doesn’t line up in the neat and orderly way you’re suggesting. You can’t be a future version of me, not with any accuracy, at least. At most, you’re a shadow of what I might become. But I don’t think you’re even that.”

The voice on the other end of the line chuckled. “Are you so confident that you understand the full width and breadth of the Ten Thousand Worlds? There’s more to this realm than you know, Demigod.”

“No,” I scoffed. “If that were the case, why didn’t Sam’s future self speak up through the headset and tell him as much?”

The voice on the other end of the line was silent, but I sensed the beginnings of frustration bubbling over.

“You see,” I continued, “I think Sam knows fate magic at work too well for you to fool him. So, you didn’t even bother trying. It was the only way to cover your tracks. I don’t think this artifact lets you communicate with your future self at all, does it? Who are you, really?”

I tried to think of what I might say if I were a frustrated Immortal Ascendant dealing with a stubborn Demigod version of myself who refused to believe I was who I said I was. I would probably force myself to calm down and then ignore the problem of my identity. Providing good information about the future would be proof enough.

The voice on the other end gave a short chuckle, then made a sound similar to me settling into my chair.

“Alright. Maybe I’m you, maybe I’m not. But that doesn’t matter. I know you’re calling me because your planet blew up. Awful shame, that. Yours wasn’t the best iteration of the World of Sanctuary and Serenity, but it was nice.”

“I can’t imagine Louis constantly kept you on his ear to state the obvious.”

“Not in a talkative mood, I see. Alright, how about this? There’s more to the Planetary Defense Array than you could understand. Do not disable it with your little crew of misfits. Otherwise, the city you saved will never have the chance to settle new lands.” The voice spoke in a clear and matter-of-fact tone, but the threat was clear. Like the Cult of the Unblinking Eye, he didn’t want me anywhere near the Planetary Defense Array.

“What are you doing with the array? And why not go near it?” I asked.

“That’s for Immortal Ascendants to know and for you to find out, little Demigod,” the voice replied. “As for why your world was destroyed, you only have yourself to blame.”

“What? What do you mean by that?” I demanded.

“The Challenger. You couldn’t be allowed to gain access to it. Combined with your own artifact, you could traverse the entirety of the Ten Thousand Worlds. As well as many of the lands beyond it. You are not worthy of that kind of power.” Now the voice sounded bitter. Whoever this was, they liked the thought of me combining The Wanderer with The Challenger even less than the thought of me messing with the Planetary Defense Array.

“You’re not me. That much is obvious.” I frowned as I ran my fingers through my hair. “The only question is, who are you really?”

I waited for more, but no further answers came. The headset was quiet, leaving me with more questions than answers.