Spellheart 10: Chapter 39

While the headset might not have revealed its secrets to me, I still had another lead. The Planetary Defense Array. That was where the Fairy of the Immortal Glade had seen Elara and an unknown someone fleeing just before the blast destroyed the world.

But I wasn’t foolish enough to assault an ancient artifact of unknown power that had survived from the distant past all the way until now after guarding the World of Sanctuary and Serenity from who knew how many threats. No, there was a reason I’d recruited so many Demigod allies for this.

I called for a meeting, and they trickled in one at a time. Each of us had split up on our own accord and had scattered throughout the surrounding area. Like me, Dean, Nela, Lyanva, Tivana, and Assyrus had been picking up things in the void surrounding the world.

Arien, Melaris, Yeminel, and Lyssandra had been switching between consoling their followers and helping spread the word that we had a plan and that everything would be alright. I probably could have done the same, but Mac could talk to people far faster than I could. I’d like to think my people had seen me overcome impossible odds enough times that they had full faith in me.

We rallied surprisingly quickly. My matriarchs would keep an eye on The Hearthwood. With Mac to scan for incoming debris, they should have plenty of warning for any trouble hurtling their way. And if they really got in trouble, I handed Comela a secret stash of cookies. They would hopefully be enough to convince the Fairy of the Immortal Glade to do something if they needed the help.

“Alright, everyone, our goal is simple. We’re going to break into the remains of the Planetary Defense Array.” I pointed to a cluster of debris Mac was projecting in The Wanderer’s Command Center.

“There’s not much point in disabling the damn thing now, is there? The world is gone...” Melaris said, face grim. She must have been looking forward to starting a new life in the land she came from.

“I would argue otherwise. Now is a perfect opportunity to study the array. Better than we were ever going to get under normal circumstances.” I shot a glance at the porthole nearby. “You saw as well as I did that the energy beam that destroyed the world passed straight through the shield. That means somebody disabled it. And if the shield is offline, odds are a lot of secondary features are offline as well. This turns what would have been an incredibly difficult infiltration mission into something much more viable.”

“To what end?” Melaris asked. “We can study the damn thing to our heart’s content, but it’s not like we can bring it with us when we settle a new world.”

“Aren’t you hungry for knowledge and ancient secrets, Melaris?”

She gave me a blank stare in reply. Apparently, recent events had been too much, even for a Demigod.

“Alright,” I sighed, standing straighter. “I don’t know about you, but I have no intention of going to some barren world, eating bad food, and never seeing the familiar comforts of home again. Not when I know there are countless iterations of the World of Sanctuary and Serenity floating through the Primordial World. I promised everyone a utopia, and I will get one even if I have to drag it out of an alternate timeline!”

Melaris’ expression brightened, as did a few others. I hadn’t intended to make a rousing speech, but apparently, that was just what everyone wanted to hear.

“That’s right. Who's to say having our world blown up is the end of our plan?” Tivana smiled as she thumped my shoulder. “As long as we’re still here, we won’t give up.”

Moods lifted, we went into the specifics. I’d lead from the front again and trigger any traps or Defenses the Planetary Defense Array might still have active. From there, we’d force our way into the array component. Several just like this one had been orbiting around the planet in a sort of detached ring, but this was the one the Fairy of the Immortal Glade had pointed out to me.

Soon, we were outside The Wanderer and relying on hand signals to communicate. I waved my open hand forward, and the others followed me. As we approached the facility, I realized it was much larger than I had initially thought. What had looked like little more than a lumpy cube from afar was actually a sprawling vessel every bit as large as The Challenger.

It featured a lot of bronze in its construction, as artifacts from the Elven Star Dominion often did. Elves from the era I was used to switched to wood because it was easier to find and shape, but back before the collapse of their empire, the elves had more than a little fondness for metal.

When this thing was active, it had two beams of bright light shooting out of either side of it and connecting it to other facilities just like it, but now those lights were dim. In fact, there were precious few lights at all illuminated along the structure’s length. Perhaps it had lost its connection to its power source after the planet’s destruction. If we were lucky, that would make entry easier.

We spread out as we approached, all of us expecting combat golems, laser beams, or something to challenge us. Fortunately, nothing did. We circled the facility a few times until Nela found something that was probably a space dock for ships.

I was busy figuring out what would be the smartest way to force open a way inside when something finally lit up along the edge of the facility. Nothing came to attack me, so I figured it was the kind of flashing light meant to attract attention rather than kill you.

I followed the light to a control console embedded in the nearby wall. There was a shiny array of buttons lined up in a familiar fashion. If the symbols on the buttons had been numbers, I would have instantly recognized it as a way to enter a passcode. That was probably what this was, but I didn’t recognize the symbols. I turned to my companions, who shook their heads one by one.

But eventually, Sam drifted toward the console. He held up his hand, and fate zeal twirled around his finger and over the console. Suddenly, signs of wear on the buttons became far more apparent. There were four keys used far more than the rest.

I realized what he was doing a moment later as he ran through different combinations of those same four keys. On the sixth try, I heard a click and the whirr of something large and metal moving. Dean flashed Sam a big thumbs-up, and I headed inside.

The door slowly closed behind us, and when it locked, a loud hiss sounded from up ahead. The facility was filling the dock with air, and before long, we could breathe normally.

“Nice. I always hated that about space. The lack of air is bullshit. How are you supposed to exchange witty banter with your enemy when they can’t hear you?” Dean gestured to the rapidly pressurizing chamber.

“More than one foe has fled after facing your witty banter,” Sam chuckled.

“I’m surprised nobody has attacked us yet. Seems like the defenses really are down.” I looked around the dock. A few ships were here, each covered in dust and with a few cobwebs. They’d been here so long the spiders who made those cobwebs had long since died, along with whatever they were eating. I spotted a very dim wisp floating in the cockpit of a ship. She must have been there since before the fall of the Elven Star Dominion.

“This place is probably running on reserve power.” Lyssandra warily examined our surroundings. “But low power doesn’t mean defenseless. The Demigods from the Elven Star Dominion might all be massive bitches, but the elves of their age knew how to build stuff.”

I tapped on the door to the docked space vessel. Both it and the wisp inside would be worth bringing back to the Hearthwood. The ship might interest Argona, and the wisp inside would interest me. I had long meant to compare the life cycles of elves before and after the collapse of the Elven Star Dominion so I could pinpoint exactly what Grognak and the Witch of Frozen Blood did to them.

The latch proved amenable to Sam’s trick with the keypad out front, so soon we had it open.

“This is our ride home,” I announced as I opened the doors. Yeminel waved her hand to get a cool breeze blowing through the ship while she pinched her nose. There were more wisps in the back of the ship, more discarded sets of clothes, and a few iron-laced manacles.

Perhaps this had been some sort of prisoner transport ship? It would explain why it only opened from the outside. I shunted those thoughts aside for another time. For now, we had an entire facility to explore.

We stuck together as we explored the compound. One benefit of having a group of all Demigods was the restraint our party had. It was why we hadn’t brought along any Sorcerers or Wizards, though we could have certainly covered more ground with their help.

Elves still eager to reach higher cultivation levels would have dove head-first into these ruins, each trying to tear their way through them for lost secrets or forgotten spells. They’d be desperate for anything to give them a leg up over their kin and push them to the next level.

In contrast, Demigods were more subdued. Most of my party had long since reached the limits of where their talent could take them. My companions from the Primordial World especially had been thoroughly humbled by their peers from the Elven Star Dominion. They knew their place in the world and had turned their attention from accumulating personal power to building clans, schools, and other organizations to pass down the knowledge they’d accumulated over centuries.

Also, Dean still remembered the horror movies of Earth we used to watch.

“I know exactly how this will go if we split up,” Dean had grumbled when I brought the topic up. “Sam and I form one group, while you form the other with our eight lovely ladies! And then we’re going to be the ones that end up getting chased around the abandoned spaceship by some ghost...”

“Alright, Dean,” I chuckled. “We’ll stay together. Besides, we need Sam in case we encounter any more locked doors.”

There were a few security checkpoints to breech and a few things that could be considered traps. It was remarkably like delving into a dungeon, though this place certainly wasn’t intended to be such by its makers.

The first of the traps came as a series of autonomous golems. We spotted one slowly inching along the floor, sweeping up dust. At first, I thought it was merely intended for cleaning, but when we appeared, it launched itself in our direction.

“It’s probably going to explode!” Yeminel shouted as she blew it back with a gust of wind. “Destroy it!” Arien and Lyssandra were on top of it a moment later, each bashing the little autonomous golem with ruthless ferocity. A shame, really. I was certain Mac would have appreciated acquiring another cleaning golem design. I threw the scraps into my Dimensional Storage. Perhaps Argona could still reverse-engineer it.

The next trap came in the form of a door that refused to open. Dean shoved on it with all his might, which was considerable force for a Demigod. To be so sturdy, the door had to be made with materials from the Primordial World. Eventually, the entire doorframe cracked, and an avalanche of cleaning and maintenance supplies fell on Dean’s head.

“Surprise attack! Destroy them!” Yeminel screamed as she threw a gust of wind at the falling debris.

The final trap was one of those odd orb devices. I’d seen Elara use one of these things before, and I got the sense they were basically computers for the Elven Star Dominion. Unfortunately, none of us were from the Elven Star Dominion, so none knew how to use the things.

“I think I saw Elara manipulating the zeal inside the orb. I think that’s the equivalent of keys,” Sam suggested.

I did as Sam suggested, but it all seemed like a bunch of nonsense to me. If they were keys in a different language, we could have used Sam’s trick again, but the way mind, space, and elemental zeal swirled together told a pattern I didn’t know how to read. Surely, there was a trick to these things; I just didn’t know what the trick was.

“If you destroyed it, do you think it would open?” Yeminel suggested innocently. We all held up our hands.

“I think this requires a bit of a more delicate touch...” I cautioned her.

As I sat down, completely stumped by the orb, it struck me again how much easier this would have been if Elara had still been at our side. She’d manipulated the orb at the prison in the Elven Star Dominion with all the skill of an expert after sitting down and looking at it for a few moments.

Why had she left us? And where had she gone?

“Wait, I don’t think this is supposed to be here. At least not until recently.” Sam reached for the desk near the keyboard and pulled out a note. Several were there already, so I had paid little attention to it. Now that Sam pointed it out, though, this one seemed fresher than the others. Like it had been left a few hours ago instead of centuries in the past.

Now that I was looking at it, the note was written in modern elvish instead of the ancient dialects of the Elven Star Dominion. More than that, though, I recognized the handwriting. The tightly packed letter had the same look as Elara’s last message to us.

I read the note aloud. “Mind, earth, fire, air, mind, water.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dean asked.

I frowned. “I think that’s the equivalent of a keyboard shortcut. Let me try.”

I performed the sequence exactly as directed. The orb seemed sensitive to timing, so it took a few tries. But when I did, I heard a loud click. The sound of a door sliding open followed it.

Sam wandered over to it and took a peek inside. Shortly after doing so, he waved to the rest of us to join him. “Guys! I think we found it! This is the control room!”