Spellheart 10: Chapter 20

“We need to seal that spatial tear before something nasty comes through,” I told Dean.

“Agreed. It’s a damn good thing you’ve got three Demigods of the spatial aspect, huh?” Dean grinned, but I sensed a knot of tension on his brow.

[The new defenses are ready, Theo,] Mac said in my mind. [Shall I sound the alarm bells?]

“Not quite yet, but tell our forces to rally. If Dean and the others can seal this thing, it might be a false alarm. But I want to be ready just in case they can’t.”

Dean, Tivana, and Lyanva worked together to seal the spatial tear, and as the minutes passed, it looked like they were succeeding. I caught brief glimpses of the things on the other side of that spatial tear, and they weren’t anything I wanted to get to know any more than I already did. Too many eyes and teeth.

Likely, that was some band of ferocious beasts that could normally only be found on distant, uninhabitable worlds. Either that, or they were strictly denizens of the Primordial World.

Slowly but surely, the seal zipped closed. As the last of it vanished, we looked at one another as though about to start celebrating. But before we could let out so much as a cheer, the spatial tear opened again, this time bigger than ever. And this time, it had brought friends.

“Shit! I’ve got the big one in the middle. You two, get the ones on either side.” Dean quickly began working his magic again, but this time, he was working on his own. Even still, he seemed to be succeeding, though much slower than before.

Queen Lyanva was barely holding her own. The tear she was working on wasn’t getting any bigger, but it wasn’t getting any smaller, either. How long should she keep that up?

Worst off was Tivana. As the newest spatial Demigod and by far the youngest, it was clear that she was far beyond her depth. Sweat poured down her brow as she closed her eyes and strained herself.

I wanted to help, but I was no space cultivator. I could coax the other elements into listening to me, but not on this level. Whatever was clawing at the other side of Tivana’s spatial tear would soon break its way through.

[Shall I sound the bells now?]

“Do it.”

The alarms went up around the Hearthwood. A few had stopped to stare at the spatial tears overhead, pointing with wonder and surprise. Now they knew we didn’t have things as well in hand as we might hope.

“Send a message back home!” Dean said through gritted teeth. “This is the sort of thing where we’ve got to call in the whole family. Sam’s crew too. We need the cavalry for a job like this.”

I relayed that message to Mac.

[We’re fortunate we upgraded the Teleportation Array. Otherwise, we’d be in for a traffic jam,] Mac said. [First, all these Demigod allies’ friends of yours, and now Sam and Dean’s subordinates as well? We’ve already got three dozen new Sorcerers and more than two hundred Wizards here.]

As the spatial tears continued to rage above us, the first of our allies began to arrive from the Teleportation Array. I directed any with a spatial aspect to join Sam, Dean, and Tivana. Mostly, this was people from the royal family, but my new Demigod comrades had a few subordinates with those aspects as well.

But despite the reinforcements, I could sense growing danger. The three tears our Demigods were working on sealing were the largest, but as time went on, smaller tears opened up one after another. More unknown, hostile monsters stuck their heads up with malevolent intent.

A siege was coming, more intense than any we’d ever faced before.

Fear gripped me. I was afraid for my family. Afraid for everyone who’d come to call the Hearthwood home. These were the people under my protection. They were depending on me to protect them, as I always had.

But amidst the fear, a strange calm settled over me once again. There was clarity in realizing Dean, Lyanva, and Tivana’s efforts would soon fail. These monsters would come to pick a fight. And if it was a fight they wanted, then a fight was what they’d get.

“Everyone, get ready!” I called out, my voice carrying over the din of the gathering forces. “You know your positions. Get to them!”

Tivana let out a sharp, pained yelp as the monsters on the other side of the barrier finally got the better of her. In that one instant of inattention, tentacles as thick as tree trunks wormed through the open tear and forced it wide. Soon, the tear became so large it stretched from one end of the Hearthwood to another, and all tentacled horrors came crawling out.

Void Kraken (Late Demigod, Level 57)

This gigantic, otherworldly horror of tentacles is capable of crushing buildings with a single swing of its many limbs. Beware their tough skin, the toxic gasses, and the many whip-like smaller tendrils that can project from up to a hundred meters away.

Seven-Headed Eldrich Hydra (Mid Demigod, Level 55)

Not to be confused with dragons, these seven-headed beasts grow two heads each time they are slain. Each head can shoot beams of sinister purple energy that poisons anything it touches, and they are unkillable except under unique circumstances.

Abyssal Reapers (Early Demigod, Level 52)

Slender and fast, these horrors phase between dimensions to evade barriers and defenses to attack their target’s souls directly.

“Mac, get those shields up and start relaying my words to our troops through the intercoms,” I yelled. The Hearthwood’s energy barrier had been a work in progress the last time we were attacked, but it had come a long way since then.

Moments after giving the order, the city’s energy barriers activated. Most of the spacial tears were high enough to end up outside the shield, but not the one that just opened. We’d have to deal with that one the hard way.

“Those Abyssal Reapers sound a lot like those monsters we fought before! There’s a good chance they can phase right through the shields. I want all spare Demigods ready to take those things out before they can get into the city. All citizens below the Wizard realm, get to your designated spatially compressed bunker!”

Dean had been generous enough to share his special bunkers with me, and I’d expanded on them greatly with the help of The Wanderer. I felt the life signs of countless tens of thousands of people wink out by the moment as they vanished to safety down their designated route. Any other city would already be halfway to crumbling by now, but we’d faced so many gargantuan threats that a few hundred rifts unleashing apocalyptic monsters of incredible power were just another day for us.

The Sentry Towers by the walls were the first to open fire. There were a lot more of them now than I remembered, and now all of them were fully automated. Repeating crossbows had been replaced by something more akin to automated turrets as they spat out kinetic and energy projectiles by the thousands.

Individually, the little blasts would have been little more than insect bites to Demigod-level monsters like the ones coming our way, but these were coming in so fast and so numerous that they were slowing down the Hydras and the Krakens.

Now that they were spilling out of the open rifts in force, I was getting a better grasp on their numbers. There were at least three hydras and two krakens. The Reapers were the most numerous and also the ones we had to watch out for the most. If any of them were going to phase through the walls to our spatial bunkers and slaughter our civilians, it would be them.

Thankfully, the energy beams some of the sentry towers were firing were doing a number on them. And it was just about time for...

“Now Mac! Activate those Level-Reducing Sentry Towers!” I yelled.

Beams of familiar rainbow energy struck each of the Reapers. As it did, they went from Demigods to Sorcerers, making them far less intimidating.

Yeminel and Melaris were back on their feet, and with the advantage of a whole realm, they could hack their way through the invaders. I even saw Valanda rushing down one of the Reapers. Despite her formerly impoverished state in the Primordial World, she seemed to be an amazingly capable melee combatant. She’d found a sword somewhere and was hacking her way through a Reaper. Every time it rematerialized, she’d cut another limb off. I needed to introduce her to Assyrus. She could join her and Yorik’s sparring group.

The bulk of the Hearthwood’s armed forces stood atop the walls surrounding the city. During peacetime, these people upheld law and order throughout the city and the lands beyond. But during a battle like this, they’d just get slaughtered by these powerful foes.

So, instead, the lot of them were working together to empower large arrays that gathered power and fired off massive projectiles from an enchanted bronze tube. Put another way, they were the heavy artillery.

Guarding them were rows and rows of golems. Some were controlled by Mac, others by dedicated golem pilots among the armed forces. All of them would be put to the test. I shot a glance back toward where I knew Argona would be. She had a Demigod-level battle golem far larger than the ones I’d fought in the Primordial World, and knowing her, she’d flee to that thing instead of her designated bunker.

Once upon a time, I would have been mad about that. But she wasn’t a newly manifested Heartwielder anymore. If she was determined to fight for the Hearthwood alongside her brothers and older sister, I couldn’t stop her.

At the thought of Argona, I scanned the walls. Dulik was up there, of course. My half-orc son would never miss a battle. Thankfully, he had a good head on his shoulders and knew his own limits. I could trust him to stick to the walls. Being a body cultivator, he wouldn’t be of much use firing magical artillery, but if anything came up those walls they’d be glad to have him there.

Comela was there, leading from the front. She fired off blast after blast of powerful magic from the artillery piece she’d been given command of. To my surprise, I found Segolas there with her. And he was following directions for once. It probably helped that a lot of the others on that same artillery piece were also members of my family. I was both proud and worried that so many were fighting together for the Hearthwood.

I dove into the fray to help finish off the Abyssal Reapers. My aid wasn’t exactly needed, but I wouldn’t stand by and let these things roam my city streets while I stood and watched.

I hacked three of them to pieces in quick succession. By the time I was done, all the ones that had appeared were dead, but there would no doubt be more of them trying to slip through those open rifts as the battle grew to greater intensity.

“Watch out for more of those things. The towers will help. We can’t let them run loose in the city.” there were nods of agreement all around. With the reapers dealt with, I turned back to the Hydras and Krakens. Those would take a bit more blood and sweat to put down.

We were doing it, though. Slowly but surely, we were beating back these monsters coming to attack us. We hadn’t even deployed the new and improved golem army yet, and already we were kicking in the teeth of our enemy.

That should have set me at ease, but instead, I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck.

Could we have been underestimated again? Not likely. Not after fighting the Cult of the Unblinking Eye so many times. Not after they, or whoever it was that was after me, deployed a mind-controlled Immortal Ascendant to come after us. If that hadn’t stopped us, a few Demigod monsters attacking my home turf certainly wouldn’t.

No, this was just the opening salvo, I was sure. The only question was when the main attack would come. And what form it would take.

<Note>
Got Covid again. Sucks, but its not too bad this time since I've gotten it before and had the vaccines before that. I am going to take it somewhat easy for a few days though, since this is the sort of thing I worked hard to make a 20 chapter backlog for.

I figure I'll catch up on my reading. I'm going through Mob Sorcerery right now because a lot of people told me to read that. Any other recent must-reads?