Spellheart 10: Chapter 41 (Patreon)

We made our preparations. When we returned to the Primordial World, we would return in style. And by style, I meant with the best weapons and armor we could get.

We had the ruins of an entire planet to pick over, so there were plenty of raw materials for the taking. The rapidly cool molten iron core of the planet was particularly easy to swipe from, and I filled the Smith's Workshop with just about as much iron as I could need for the foreseeable future.

Mac’s scanner proved adept at sniffing out the remains of ancient, powerful monsters that hadn’t survived the explosion. There was also no shortage of gemstones or treasure chests previously hidden in secret ruins and now ripe for the taking. Plus, many of my allies had artifacts from battles fought and won long ago.

They’d been saving these special materials for the day when they’d find a craftsman or collection of craftsmen who would accept them as payment to create a set of Demigod equipment for each of them. That special day had finally come.

From all of us, I collected a Tail of the Shadowstep Baboon. Slime of the Blood-seeking Toadbeast, Eye of the Lasernewt, Frozen Spines from the Ice Giants, and dwarven ore of the finest quality.

I was no dwarf, but with my Smith’s Workshop and Alchemist’s Laboratory, I didn’t need to be. The Dwarven ore was a mixture of several metals, mainly cobalt, tungsten, vanadium, chromium, and manganese. Obviously, the dwarves were making iron alloys of various sorts with these things.

I had my Demigod friends produce a few valuable pieces of dwarven weapons and armor, and I analyzed them to identify the exact alloy. One could have been stainless steel, but with the extra step of funneling zeal through the steel until it became like adamantium. Another might have been tool steel, with some special magical properties.

The metals from the dwarfs had Damascus striations, which suggested the dwarves were folding and forge-welding the metal back together to make it uniform. I had some more advanced processes at my disposal, so I cast ingots of higher quality and of the right alloy. The dwarves had a good reputation, so presumably they'd dome some research figuring out what metal worked best for what jobs. Someday I'd redo that research myself with a more scientific mindset, but for now I'd just copy what they'd done. After a few days of working the metal with the tools at my disposal, I had an appropriate number of tips, spikes, arrowheads, and other weapon edges.

This was the sort of thing elves preferred, and would work well for my matriarchs and allies. Weapons of solid iron alloys were both incredibly expensive and dangerous to the wielder. They would prefer to use more traditional materials for most of their weapon’s body. Sometimes that meant bronze alloys of various sorts, since those held enchantments better than all but the finest wood. More often though, it was body parts from vanquished monsters. That was where most of the materials we gathered went.

Sam, Dean, and I, however, had no such biases. For myself, I set about building a new version of Spell Eater. My current version was damaged, so a new one was overdue. It was bare bones for now, but I realized giving Spell Eater some sort of internal energy reserve mechanism would be advantageous. I also massively overbuilt the enchantments. That way, if I ever needed to absorb that powerful conceptual energy from a Mana Generator, my weapon would last much longer.

For Dean, the weapon he wanted was obvious. A big axe. He lent me his existing model, a large hunk of ironwood as dense as could be, lined with actual iron on one edge and steel on the other. The combination let him hack through just about anything.

It was a good idea in practice. Apparently, Dean had done much of the crafting himself. He didn’t have the tools at his disposal that I did, so it hadn't been the prettiest blade, but we could change that. He even helped me with the forging in the Smith's Workshop.

We swapped out the Ironwood with Adamantium, embellishing with mithril along the enchantments where appropriate. I etched in designs to interact with gravity, which was possible only because that was one of my own concepts. This axe could be light as a feather or heavy as a mountain, depending on what Dean wanted while wielding it. The edge was far sharper than before but would not blunt. A falling leaf that chanced upon it would be sliced clean in half.

Sam was even easier. For him, I built a revolver. He was a distance fighter, and a gun would suit him well. I made him a bunch of bullets, some with their own effects based on standard elemental magic and a few that he could fiddle with himself. I suspected he could hit these things with some sort of fate magic bullshit, like making it so that the bullets killed someone in the past.

For the elves, I was leaving most of the design work up to Argona, though I weighed in for Nela, Assyrus, and Tivana since I knew them all personally. A new spear for Nela, a pair of nimble swords for Assyrus, and one slightly larger sword with an impossibly keen edge for Tivana. All would be heavily enchanted and suitable for a fight at the Demigod level.

After that was everyone’s armor. I still had my Jade Armor I could summon up at will, though I hadn’t because my skin was now more durable than it was. Still, an extra barrier might come in handy at some point, so I cast a bunch of adamantium plates and slipped them into the jade armor. They would hopefully take most of the damage, and the smooth-flowing magical jade would serve as humble glue.

I crafted several full sets of scale mail for Nela, Assyrus, and Tivana. The three of them liked the look of polished, enchanted metal. The others preferred a more traditional outfit that looked more like a shapely cultivator’s robes, like what so many of them wore.

For them, I made something more akin to brigandine. Their clothes would look like normal robes from the outside, but they are well protected on the inside.

With the processes and materials in place, crafting lower-lived iterations of the weapons and armor we’d made was possible. But I would leave that to the rest of my women. Plenty of Sorcerers in the city now could use equipment like this.

With everyone suited up and ready for battle, we gathered around the newly repaired and integrated room aboard The Wanderer.

Would you like to activate the Primordial World?

Enter your coordinates below.

“Anybody got some coordinates?” I asked.

“How wide a range will the portal accept?” Sam asked curiously. “If it accepts anything, then in theory, we could set it up right at the entrance to the new world we’re taking everyone to. It will make transferring the lower-level cultivators far safer.”

The Wanderer did indeed accept any coordinates, which was a hopeful omen of the future. Unfortunately, we didn’t have those coordinates yet. We’d have to explore first. Thankfully, Sam knew a few familiar locations in the Primordial World, and we entered those.

“Alright, everyone, hold down the fort! We’ll be back with glad tidings soon enough!” I waved by to everyone who’d come to watch us depart. Then, we Demigods stepped through the portal and back into the Primordial World.

***

We arrived in a familiar town. It was the same one Sam and Dean had been exploring when they got captured by the Timeweaver spiders.

“I would have thought this place would bring back bad memories for you?” I asked Sam.

Sam shrugged. “The spiders are dead. That’s what matters.”

Dean seemed a bit less convinced, and he drew his axe while he eyed the surroundings warily. After drawing a few sharp looks from locals, he reluctantly put it away. Though the way his fingers twitched suggested he was ready to draw it again in an instant.

Most of my companions had spent far more time in the Primordial than I had, and between the lot of us, we had the names of people worth speaking to.

“What we’re looking for is people. We need to hunt down somebody from the right time period and then ask them where they crossed over to the Primordial World. We should be able to take the same route and follow them home,” Sam said.

“Right! So we just have to find someone with an outdated fashion sense!” Yeminel thrust a fist in the air, her other hand on her hip. “I’ve got a keen eye for things like this...”

I bit my lip. Tivana had once whispered to me that all the Demigods I’d picked up from the Primordial World had been wearing outfits her mother would call old-fashioned. Most did not reach the Demigod realm quickly, and most stuck to the sensibilities of their time of birth.

Still, she was a good sign that we could identify someone from the right time and place by looking at their clothes and mannerisms. I memorized them. Arriving a few decades or centuries early to the world we knew and loved would be just fine by me. It would mean a little peace and quiet before the action began.

Our best lead was simply asking questions, so that was what we did. A lot of the elves around these parts were from the era of the Elven Star Dominion. That would be too early for us, since I had no desire to live through the destruction of that ancient empire.

Eventually, I found someone. “Pardon me, you wouldn’t happen to be from the World of Sanctuary and Serenity, would you?” I asked a Sorcerer. She’d been quite wary when Tivana tried to wave her down and had even started running. Thankfully, a bit of Earth zeal had turned the dark alley she was running through into a trap with no exit.

“I-I’ll give you everything I have!” said the panicked elf as she held up her hands and slowly slid to her knees. Clearly, Demigods didn’t have nearly as good a reputation here in the Primordial World as they did outside it. Those I’d met from the Elven Star Dominion were a little more happy to rob people than I thought reasonable.

“Relax, we’re not here to rob you. We just want to ask you some questions. And we’ll pay you for the opportunity...” I pulled out one of my largest zeal crystals. Normally, I wouldn’t have been willing to part with something like this for a simple conversation, but the addition of three pseudo-Immortal Ascendants meant that the prisons were making more of these things than I could use. I’d given Mac permission to dump them into the Mana Generator for points since so many were coming in.

“Oh, why didn’t you say something?” the Sorcerer stood, straightening her clothes.

“We did,” Tivana replied dryly. We had indeed made the same offer, but the Sorcerer immediately started running and screaming. It had been awkward and would no doubt start a few rumors unless this elf returned happy and healthy to clear them up for us.

“I want to know about where you’re from.” The elf smiled and bowed. “I am from the Hearthstone Empire! Year three hundred and forty-seven.”

“What calendar is that?” Tivana asked.

“Three hundred and forty-seven years after the arrival of our glorious lord and savior, of course!” the elf said proudly. “He came to us when we were barbaric savages, lost and alone. The glorious Patriarch and his followers taught us new ways, slew the terrifying elemental lords, brought countless powerful matriarchs to their knees, and built a mighty empire! I’ll have you know, my mother’s roommate’s boss was adopted by a thirty-seventh generation descendent of the almighty Patriarch.”

I scowled. Some rotten bastard had stolen my title! I was the only Patriarch I knew of across the whole Ten Thousand Worlds. And what was with the Hearthstone Empire? Clearly theft. I shook my head in distaste.

Try as we might, we couldn’t quite nail down the era the elf was from. It sounded unfamiliar to me, similar to the Elven Star Dominion in terms of technological progress, but not nearly as spread out.

“It’s probably from some time in our future, then,” Tivana suggested. “On a timeline where the world was not destroyed, your name would have spread far and wide, and many would seek to emulate you.”

“It’ll do us little good then...” I sighed and tossed the elf her zeal crystal as promised.

Our next three encounters proved equally unproductive. There were elves from many eras nearby, past and future. We ended up moving to a new town Sam knew of about an hour’s travel away and trying our luck there instead.

Despite a few promising leads, that place also turned out to be a bust. There were definitely elves there from the recent past, but none from our recent past.

That was the trouble with parallel timelines. It added another dimension of complications to figuring out where and when someone was from. Too many of these elves were from versions of the World of Sanctuary and Serenity that sounded completely alien to us.

They spoke of worlds where the Planetary Defense Array had long been returned to its natural state. Of worlds where the Elven Star Dominion had become a peaceful trading democracy and was friends with all its neighbors instead of bitter rivals.

There were even quite a few more from the civilization run by this Patriarch of the Hearthstone Clan and his mighty empire. Damn dirty name thief. At least he seemed to do a decent job, as evidenced by the number of Sorcerers and Wizards he had spilling out of his realm and into the Primordial World.

We returned to camp, or in this case, the Inn that Sam had rented near the center of the latest settlement. We had booked out several rooms, but there were doors in each of them that could be opened to combine them all. We all met in my room, which I shared with Tivana, Nela, and Assyrus.

“Alright! Here are our best leads!” Lyssandra smiled wide as she hauled in a pair of gagged and blindfolded wizards. “This one here is from an era that sounds very promising. It’s underdeveloped following the recent end of a golden age. All the continent names are correct, as are the major historical events the two of us can remember.”

She gestured to the other gagged and blindfolded elven wizard. “And this one here is a little more recent, but she said she was from something called the Moonbow Royal Family. Apparently, as far as I can tell, she and her family are from the continent we were just on.”

Tivana and I shot a glance at one another. The Moonbow Clan was quite proud that they descended from the royal family of a nation that was destroyed at the end of the last golden age. Perhaps this was a scion of that very clan?

We had Lyssandra take off the blindfolds and gags, and we each ran the pair of wizards through a battery of questions. They answered every one of them in the way we hoped. Spirits lifted, we circled up and spoke.

“It’s a bit early. Over four hundred years before the date we’re looking for,” I said.

Lyssandra shrugged. “Better centuries too early than a minute too late.”

“Besides, this will give us more time to prepare,” Nela added. “By then, the rest of the matriarchs of the Hearthwood Clan will have reached Demigod.”

Dean shrugged. “I’m chill. I’ve got pretty much everything I care about back in the Hearthwood, so whether we arrive yesterday or ten thousand years in the past doesn’t matter much to me.”

“For me as well,” Sam agreed.

There were nods of agreement all around.

“So it’s settled! Now we just have to convince these two Wizards to lead us to their home.” I nodded back at the pair of frightened elves staring back at us with wide eyes.

Lyssandra nodded sternly and produced a leather crop, which she slapped against her palm. “Leave it to me.”

“Well, hold on just a second there, Lyssandra.” I held up a hand while the other reached into my Dimensional Storage for more zeal crystals. “There are better ways than violence.”

Though my new companions might see nothing wrong with it, kidnapping people off the street and forcing them to tell us information seemed like a bit of a bad-guy move. While I’d certainly done some less-than-heroic things here and there, I preferred to think that I was an overall positive influence on the world.

Sure, some people might have their clans destroyed or be subject to decades of slavery, but usually, those people deserved it. I helped the innocent when I could, and so far, I’d no reason to think Lyssandra’s two captives deserved to be treated harshly.

I knelt down before the two bound and gagged elves with a smile on my face. “Hey, you two. Sorry about my friend there. She’s just a little over-excited to figure something out, and we could really use your help. I promise you’ll be fine after, and you’ll be compensated very well.”

The two eyed me warily.

“Really!” I widened my smile a little further than felt natural. “I promise we’re not the bad guys here.”

Then the wall exploded. I shielded my face as debris whipped into our shared room. Someone certainly knew how to enter. My heart dropped when they announced themselves.

On the other side of the wall was a row of battle golems, all of them ready for a major fight. Hovering among them were several unfamiliar elven Demigods wearing outfits that made it clear they were from the Elven Star Dominion.

If any doubt had left in me, it vanished a moment later.

“Freeze criminal scum! You’re under arrest for an illegal prison break!”

So much for not being the bad guys.