Spellheart 10: Chapter 31

The first thing I did was focus on regenerating from my injuries. I wasn’t in any shape for a real fight, but after half a minute of concentration, I was feeling human again. After that, I entered my Dimensional Storage for new clothes since what I’d been wearing had burned away.

When I stood, dressed for battle again, I took in my surroundings.

I had hoped to land in a control room so I could start flipping levers and turning dials. No such luck on that front, though. The rest of the chamber was more themed after the bronze age than the style of the rest of the ship. The odd contrast between the futuristic and distant past gave the place an eerie, alien feeling.

I recognized the furnishings and appearance of where I’d landed, though. Between the marble walls and the mosaic floor tiles, this was the style of the Cult of the Unblinking Eye’s main compound. Which meant I’d walked these very halls before.

When Ethan tried to get the Satyr King and me to resolve our differences, he’d given me a tour of the place. While I hadn’t seen everything, I had seen a few hallways that I wasn’t allowed to go down at the time. Surely those places led to somewhere important! All I had to do was find somewhere I recognized.

I wandered through long hallways and opened a few rooms. I remembered them being full of elven servants before, but all the people who would normally take care of this place were probably gone now. Most of them had probably died assaulting my walls. If the Cult was willing to dress Wizards and Sorcerers up as maids, they would probably also throw them at our defenses as fodder.

I had to be careful and fast here. I wasn’t sure what sort of surprises the Cult might have, but if I was struck by something similar to the Level Reducing Sentry Towers, I’d need to retreat quickly. I suspected my entry hadn’t gone undetected, and at the very least, Louis would have to be really foolish not to install some cameras inside his ship. I certainly had plenty inside The Wanderer.

The one thing that I didn’t want to happen was to run into Louis or his Immortal Ascendants. He was probably keeping them close, and either of them could do some serious damage to me. Meeting them would also mean an immediate retreat.

Since I could get out of here at any time, it was worth taking the risk to attack from the inside. I just hoped it would pay off soon. Destroying a few walls or pillars wouldn’t do much of anything.

The ship’s important features had to be somewhere up. I had entered down and to the right of the bridge, which meant going closer to it would likely lead to vulnerable targets. Though doing so did run the risk of bumping into the people I didn’t want to meet. I debated internally for a while. I wanted to shut down the engine and ground this thing, but was I willing to risk a confrontation?

My mind went back to all the familiar faces of the Hearthwood. This couldn’t go on. I had to end it. If I was fast, I’d hopefully be gone before any such confrontation could take place.

I jumped up the stairs and ran down several halls at high speed. Finally, I got lucky as I recognized a hallway Ethan had shown me. This was where he’d shown off the national treasures of various nations conquered by the Cult.

From there, my search went much faster. There was a hallway on the left side where I’d come in. From there, two right turns and... there!

I came across a metal door that looked nothing like the others. It was locked, but fortunately, it wasn’t nearly as tough as the ship’s hull. I carved through it as easily as slicing a pumpkin and made my way inside. The sight before me reminded me a lot of The Wanderer’s control center.

There were blinking lights and oddly shaped glass tubes left and right. Like aboard The Wanderer, most of these did nothing. But some of them must not have been entirely for show. I couldn’t figure out which was which on short notice, but I didn’t need to when the only thing I had to do was start smashing.

I found myself oddly surprised. It had been all too easy to get to this point. There had been no defenders to confront me. Nor any automated defenses. An invader like me going through The Wanderer would have encountered both by now.

I whirled Spell Eater overhead, hacking and slashing randomly at my surroundings. Desks and consoles were sliced in half, one after another. The constant rattle of broken glass scattering along the ground was music to my ears. A siren blared overhead, and water sprayed down from a fire suppression system overhead.

Midway through smashing the control center I’d found, the defenders I’d long been expecting finally showed up. Only when they appeared were they quite underwhelming. The Cult of the Unblinking Eye really had overcommitted to their assaults because the only crew they had to throw at me were a handful of Elven Wizards. Twelve of them spilled into the room, spells at the ready.

“Seize him on the orders of the great master!” One elf said, looking more lucid than the others. None of the other wizards spoke, so I assumed that the others were just mind-controlled puppets placed under her care. I confirmed this theory a moment later when I looked her over with mind magic and sensed little strands of mind zeal stretching her head to those of the other wizards.

It didn’t look like something she’d cast herself, more like something created by an item. Now that I looked closer, I saw a hair band on the elf’s brow. That had to be the item of control in question.

In a flash of movement, I cocked back my arm and threw it straight through the lead Wizard’s chest. She blinked in surprise, not even realizing she was already dead. Really, a Wizard should have known better than to fight a Demigod. Not without more backup than this.

I collected her wisp and grabbed the hair band before it clattered to the ground. It was a bit small for my head, but it could wrap around my arm easily enough.

“Stop! New orders for all of you. Help me smash stuff!”

“Yes, mistress...” one of the mind-controlled Wizards replied in a robotic, monotone voice.

I winced. I would have fixed that if I hadn’t been so pressed for time. But I knew from experience that these mind-wiped warriors of the Cult didn’t take new orders easily. The massive reduction in intelligence was a real sign of poor craftsmanship on the Cult’s end. If I’d been evil, I would have filled this place with crazed, obsessed women desperate to do anything to please their Patriarch.

I couldn’t deny how useful they were, though. More hands made light work, and the women quickly hacked apart the room. The sprinklers overhead went off when I tore some pipes out of the wall, though I had no sign that anything vital had been deactivated.

I asked my new minions to lead me to something vital, but they weren’t conscious enough to know the answer to that question. Perhaps I should have captured their leader instead of taking her out so quickly.

They followed close behind as we hacked through the next three locked doors I found. Upon destroying the third room, the entire ship started tilting sideways. I wasn’t sure if it was something I did or the work of my allies outside, but we were finally dealing serious damage to this monstrosity.

The last locked door I found contained something truly unexpected.

“Ethan!” I jumped back when I saw Ethan floating in a tank of liquid. He had a mask over his face, and his eyes were closed. I expected him to jump out at me and fight me any moment now, but he remained where he was.

Now that I looked a little closer, maybe this wasn’t Ethan. He seemed younger than the one I’d met. He was wearing nothing but a big metal diaper, which suggested he was staying in this tank for a long time. Nutrients would come in through the mouthpiece and out through that thing.

He wasn’t the only guy floating in a tank, either. There were other people I recognized as well. Tim was there, along with the Sunspire King and many others from the Cult I’d fought over the years.

“Clones?” I asked aloud, though none of my new minions answered me. “What are so many clones doing here?”

Surely, the Cult of the Unblinking Eye knew that making clones was playing with fire. Had they figured out some trick that I hadn’t? There appeared to be a considerable amount of mind magic around each clone. More than what was needed to keep them simply asleep.

The Ethan I’d met had most certainly come out of one of these vats, which was why his new clone looked younger than the rest. It probably took time to develop, and had to be restarted from scratch after the old one was set free to walk about after the original died.

Or had that been a clone as well? Likely so. Perhaps this was why Louis had been so willing to sacrifice his fellow humans to create a pair of enslaved Immortal Ascendants. They were just clones.

A theory came to mind. One that would explain everything.

Louis mentioned wanting to win a battle royale and join the humans who had once ruled over the Ten Thousand Worlds. You didn’t win a battle royale by getting your enemies to surrender to you. Just giving up their artifacts wouldn’t be enough. I knew that even if I lost The Wanderer, I had the power and the connections to keep fighting, anyway. And I didn’t think it was even possible to break my bond with The Wanderer without killing me.

The only way that sort of thing would work would be if the original was killed, the bond severed, and then a clone was created to fill the original’s role. Louis probably killed all the original humans who joined him and only ever showed off clones as members of his club. That’s how he transferred their artifacts over.

I suppressed a laugh. It had all been a scam from the start. I should have guessed as much. In a world where I’d been foolish enough to join the Cult of the Unblinking Eye, I would have long since been killed and replaced by a mind-controlled clone. Would Sam and Dean have been able to tell when I finally met them again?

Perhaps one of the Cult’s newest members was Issac, who my clone had watched fight the Cult of the Unblinking Eye to his last breath. There is a bit of cloning here and a bit of mind control there, and suddenly, a former enemy signs up to join, minus one precious artifact that could have made him a competitor to Louis.

I shook my head. This wasn’t what I was looking for, but perhaps its existence was something I could use. Learning that he wasn't the original would probably disturb Ethan, and I saw an opportunity to exploit the resulting wedge between the two leaders of the Cult of the Unblinking Eye.

Just as I closed the door behind me, there was a burst of energy from somewhere deeper inside the ship. It wasn’t related to anything we were doing, which meant it had to be either Louis’ work or that of my allies. A sound followed shortly after that, starting as a dull thrum and turning into a roar. A weapon to retaliate with, perhaps?

No, that was a power source. And it had a familiar feel to it. The energy fluctuations reminded me of the laser beams I’d absorbed but in a purer, unmodified form. I ran toward it, and as I got closer, I realized there was something even more similar than the laser beams. This thing felt just like the Mana Generator.

Could I interfere with the flow of energy to the engines? If I could, this thing would fall from the sky for sure. And maybe I could disable the weapons while I was at it.

“This way!” I led my new minions through the halls in the sound's direction.

<Note>
I think Battle Royale is always spelled the French way with an extra E. Not 100% though. Some people might use Royal.

Also, there were some questions about how far we are in the story. I'm estimating we're a little more than 1/3rd through, though some of the chapters in act 2 will be longer, so maybe 70-something chapters? I'm hoping to be publishing the ending of this book sometime in April, assuming everything goes smoothly.