“Not too long-ago Mistress Gurthari and I ran into a cave that was populated by mindslaver parasite slugs. We wiped them out and collected their spellhearts. I’ve been crushing them one at a time before using my accumulation technique when we’re out in the middle of nowhere, where there are no minds nearby to naturally generate mind zeal.”
I picked up the biggest spellheart fragment that Illiel was holding. It was an ugly little thing. Not really amber colored, more brown than yellow. It was also misshapen. From what I’d seen of Illiel, Yorik, and Gurthari’s spellheart, mind aspect spellhearts were supposed to approximate a flattened disk, with smooth rims, two flat faces, and rounded edges. Mine was the closest to that perfected shape, after my recrystallization. Gurthari’s had been similar but not quite as well developed. Illiel’s was close to what Gurthari’s had been like, though a bit smaller. Yorik’s was a distant third, but her spellheart looked beautiful compared to the dirty globular mess before me.
“Why does it look so ugly?” I asked looking at the spellheart that had come out of one of these parasite slugs.
“That’s because mindslaver parasite slugs live short and brutal lives. They need to find a host quickly and then dominate their minds. They can’t survive on their own. The ones we found were mostly attached to a bunch of rats or fish, in a brutal little ecosystem, in a river contaminated with cold iron.” Illiel shivered at the mention of metal. “To get to the size it was the parasite that grew that spellheart had to have gone through several hosts and probably cultivated like mad for its entire lifespan without care for impurities. And look, that spot right there?”
Illiel pointed to a region of the spellheart, which was slightly clearer and poking out of the bigger spellheart as if it had been only partially fused to the main spellheart body.
“That’s from a different mind slaver parasite. The slug must have gone cannibalistic at one point and devoured one of its own kind. That’s the spellheart of a full-grown adult too. If we pulled that thing apart we’d probably see lots of smaller spellhearts that have been fully fused with the whole.”
“Oh? It’s possible to fuse spellhearts together?” This was news to me.
“Possible, yes. It simply involves adding more of the right kind of zeal and using it like glue. Before long both spellhearts will have become one. It’s not recommended though. It’s extremely difficult to get the spellhearts crystals to align properly unless you’re using perfect, flawless crystals. It will almost always lower the quality of your spellheart. That is, unless you bring them to a talented alchemist who can break one of them down and add it to the other one partial of zeal at a time. That’s the most efficient way to use the things, but alchemists aren’t cheap.”
“Huh. That’s what I just did with my recrystallization I guess. And what I’m going to do with yours.”
I actually improved the technique considerably with Illiel’s help. After all, I wasn’t really working with chemistry here, but with magic. Of course, the procedure wouldn’t be exactly the same. I was able to vastly accelerate the dissolution of the parasite slug spellhearts by adding a drop of my own blood into the water. Apparently having some of your own blood in the solution makes it vastly easier to apply the force of your own will. Sort of like building a lever. Now I had something in the solution itself to use to grip. Kind of.
“Here you are, one concentrated solution of mind spellheart solution! Now comes your turn.”
Illiel accepted the cup of elixir with trembling hands. She popped her own spellheart out of its casing around her neck and dropped it into the container slowly. That little crystal represented not only years of work on her part, but her path to power by becoming a mage acolyte. Risking it in any way had to be extremely painful. Still, the allure of easy progress was too hard to ignore. She dropped her spellheart into the container.
She cradled the vial of elixir in her hands, concentrating as she did so. I’d supersaturated the solution, so the physical material that represented the particles of zeal on the mystical plane would come out of solution easily, bringing their zeal counterpart with them.
I let her work in peace and quiet, simply observing as I did so. She was using her advanced zeal accumulation technique, I could tell. I could tell there was something special about the way the zeal was moving around in there.
I activated my mage sight. I’d gotten better at doing so recently. In it, I could see the zeal particles squirming around, like little worms. Just like Illiel said. From Illiel’s own brow there sprouted much bigger tendrils, which coiled together like a rope. That paled in comparison to the waving sea that surrounded her spellheart. That thing was like a giant octopus, waving its tentacles around and quickly drawing every particle of mind zeal into it. And it wasn’t like the little zeal-worms were trying to escape. If anything, they seemed almost eager to jump in. To join with the collective and become a part of Illiel’s spellheart.
The entire process was fascinating, and by the end of it I was pretty sure that I had a better idea of not just Illiel’s advanced zeal accumulation technique, but a better idea of zeal accumulation in general. I was beginning to think that if I applied the concepts I’d learned here to the stuff Sava had taught me for use with my earth spellheart I would be able to be able to make the process even more efficient.
While Illiel meditated, I got to work on the little bit of elixir that was left from what I used to enhance my own spellheart. There was certainly mind zeal left in this thing. It’s just I’d lowered the concentration to the point where the elixir was no longer saturated. If I had kept my spellheart in there any longer I would have been losing zeal as fast as I was gaining it. There had to be a way to raise the concentration again.
The way I saw it, there were two options. The first involved simply dissolving more mind zeal into the solution. Now that I had a mind spellheart bound to me, it was possible for me to draw on ambient mind zeal and force it into the elixir. The other option was for me to lower the amount of solvent in the solution.
I decided on doing both. I needed to get some practice with this mind spellheart, so why not?
I sat down and meditated not far from Illiel, drawing on the ambient mind zeal of the surrounding environment. There were bits here and there, concentrated around various people. It was flaking off them a little at a time, some in greater degrees than others. I noticed that there were greater concentrations of mind zeal around those doing thinking-intensive tasks. The elf making wood joints seemed to be generating more than the elf taking a late lunch. Perhaps mental activity affected the concentration of mind zeal a person generated?
That’s when I spotted one of Yulli’s mage acolytes. She was sleeping in a hammock that had been built for her recently. She was spouting off buckets of mind zeal. Her own mind tendrils were far bigger than either mine or Illiel’s as well. I wasn’t sure if it was because she was at the mage acolyte rank or because she was dreaming, though instinct suggested it was more the later than the former.
I swept out with my own tendrils. Luckily the mage acolyte’s hammock was right next to the door the building I was in. Likely, Yulli had intended the position to be a guard post for me disguised as a place to relax. It seemed that Yulli’s mage acolyte had taken it to be more a place to relax than to guard though. Discipline for her troops had taken a serious blow in the last few days. My guess was that now that they were somewhere safe, Yulli would be having a much harder time keeping her mage acolyte’s under control. They weren’t fighting for their lives anymore and were probably reverting to their old lifestyles. Sava would constantly complain about how the higher ranked elves lounged about all day without a care in the world whenever they weren’t cultivating or working.
At any rate, I was grateful that the elf standing guard over me had decided to take a nap by my side. It made collecting a sizable portion of mind zeal quite easy. Getting the mind zeal to go into the solute was harder than it was to get it to condense onto my mind spellheart, but I managed it. Slowly, the
elixir container filled back up with mind zeal. It was nowhere near the supersaturated solution it once was, but I had enough in there that maybe I could think about building up another coat on my spellheart.
Illiel was still concentrating on her own spellheart, so I got to work. The first thing I did was try to replicate Illiel’s advanced zeal accumulation technique. I had to extend tendrils of mind zeal from my spellheart and stick them throughout the solution. It was a little tougher to figure out how to get the tendrils to extend directly from my spellheart rather than from my own forehead, but I figured it out.
The rest was surprisingly easy. The countless little tendrils of mind zeal extended out into the solution around me and drew the particles of zeal in like fish in a pond. Bit by bit they were swallowed up. I quickly ran out of mind zeal in the solution, but luckily the sleeping elf had accumulated more around her. That made up a sizable portion of my second harvest, with the rest coming from scattered bits and pieces in the air and clumps from all the elves working nearby.
I pulled all those into the solution and started again, letting my spellheart grow a little larger yet again.
As soon as I finished with this, I was going to have to try going through this same process with my earth spellheart. Earth zeal was so much easier to find. With more zeal I’d have faster accumulation and this process would doubtlessly go countless times faster.
That’s when I remembered Sava’s grotto. There was that pedestal back there. When I meditated in that place, it was so much easier to accumulate mind zeal. Maybe if I placed a bowl of elixir on that pedestal this whole process could be accelerated to an even greater degree than it was. I’d have to perform this procedure on Sava as well, as a thank you for what she’d done for me thus far.
Sadly, I was denied a third harvest of mind zeal. The stuff didn’t seem to accumulate that quickly, and I’d already tapped out the area. There were no loose particles of mind zeal left. All there was were the tendrils that were directly connected to the foreheads of the various elves. I’d have to wait for those to naturally break off.
Or would I? What would happen if I just... encouraged a small fragment to snap off? It would certainly solve my supply problem. I picked the sleeping mage acolyte. She had the most mind zeal to spare, barring Illiel. So, I grabbed onto one of the flailing tendrils of mind zeal around the mage acolyte’s head and tugged. It wouldn’t come off.
I was about to give up when something beckoned me closer. My own mind tendrils were like sharks that had caught the scent of blood. There was a source of mind zeal around here far greater than the stuff I’d been gathering thus far. It was close to the mage acolyte’s head, at the source of the tendrils.
I sent a single tendril closer, probing at the mage acolyte’s head. Closer. Closer. Closer still.
Then suddenly something changed. My vision started to swim, and everything faded from sight. My vision turned black and I started to panic, but before long things started to become clear again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I was in a large chamber, and next to me there was a servant pouring wine. I recognized her clothing as the uniform of the Songstone clan, though it was pristine, as I imagined it had been before their fall. In the chamber was the sleeping elf I had seen before, though she wasn’t asleep here. Instead, she was sitting on a pile of floor pillows, spread out as she flipped through a pile of scrolls.
“None of these techniques will work for me. I need something special if I’m to reach the next level of cultivation. Oh, why did I choose to specialize in water zeal? All the clan’s most powerful techniques are for earth zeal!” the elf muttered to herself.
“Uh, hello?” I asked.
The mage acolyte blinked at me, having not seen me until I spoke up just then.
“You’re Theo! That chaka we found! But wait, you shouldn’t be here.” The elf frowned. “This doesn’t make sense. I remember I didn’t meet you until we were fleeing from the destruction of the Songstone clan... but here we are in my room at... oh I get it. I’m dreaming.”
The elf tossed aside the last of a pile of scrolls.
“Leave it to me to waste a perfectly good dream thinking about training. What ever happened to the dreams of my childhood? The ones where a hot, muscular guy with talent and power takes me in his arms and… She glanced at me, both smiling and blushing. “Well, maybe those dreams haven’t vanished completely after all.” She patted the cushion at her side, gesturing me to sit down next to her.
“You’re right. You’ve been training hard and deserve a break. I’ve been training myself, behind the door you’re guarding.”
The elf smiled. “Well your situation is a little different. All you have to do is sit around and fuck and you’re still immensely valuable to the clan. But me? I’ve got to work for my keep. I need to constantly be working to increase my personal power to raise not just my own standing, but also the standing of my clan as a whole. After all, having powerful experts is what keeps the enemies at bay. Though I guess we didn’t have enough to save the Songstone clan...” The elf had a sad look on her face for a while.
“That doesn’t mean I should slack off. I can still play a part.” I argued in my defense.
The elf smiled. “That certainly is true. If you made it to the mage acolyte rank you’d be around to serve the clan for a lot longer, and you would win us a great deal of respect for your cultivation base alone. If you made it to true mage, you’d make bigger waves than I would if I advanced to the wizard rank. If you were a true mage, I’d bet that a good portion of your children would be able to breeze through the heartwielder ranks or maybe even be born with enough native zeal to find themselves directly in the mage acolyte ranks. In ten or twenty years, your contributions would double the number of mages the Songstone clan could field. And if you made it to the wizard ranks? You’d have imperial dynasties and kingdoms eying you like unclaimed land on the border.”
”All right. Let’s not talk about my life in your dream. Surely your subconscious dragged me up to talk about your problems rather than mine." I decided to pretend to be a part of the elf’s dream, though I was quite certain I was real and had jumped inside her head through misuse of mind magic.
The elf snorted. “I guess you’re right, Theo.”
I was surprised she knew my name. Maybe the elves gossiped about me when I wasn’t around. “You have me at a disadvantage. I’ve never had the opportunity to ask your name?”
The elf snorted again, except this time she was blushing. “That’s because I never worked up the courage to tell you! When Yulli told me she needed some volunteers from the squadron to keep an eye on you, I begged for the position. Alas, little did I know I’d be keeping watch over a closed door. Ha! Poor Melise, you silly little girl.”
“Sorry to disappoint, Melise. I take it you were hoping for something more interesting?”
“More like something more arousing! The little girl in me was drooling over you the moment I first saw you. What few men there were back at the clan headquarters were weak, diseased things. They barely had the strength to get out of bed, and even then, they lacked the will or ambition for anything more. You’re different though. I can see it in your eyes, you have a plan, and know how to go about getting it.”
This wasn’t the first time an elf had lusted over me. It was still strange to feel so desired though. Back at home I’d only ever been averagely attractive. Sure, my muscle tone had improved a great deal ever since coming here, but it wasn’t anything spectacular. As of yet I hadn’t taken a good measure of the elf men in this world, but from the few cases I had seen I wasn’t impressed. Apparently, those had been above-average specimens. That was my only guess as to why an average guy like me could suddenly become so desirable here.
“Thanks, I guess.” I accepted the compliment with a shrug.
“Oh, it’s more than that.” Melise continued. The red flush in her cheeks was unmistakable. “I wanted a man who could... oh no never mind...”
&nbs
p; That piqued my curiosity. “What?”
“O-oh no... it’s not something I could possibly say. Especially not to you...” Melise stuttered.
“It’s only a dream.” I said softly. Inside my head the little devil within me was cheering at how easily the lie came out. “You can tell me anything.”
“A-alright. I g-guess it’s okay. It’s a fantasy I’ve shared with the captain after all.” the elf nervously tittered.
Her captain was Yulli. Any info I could get on her would be immensely valuable. I leaned in closer, placing my hand on Melise’s thigh. She didn’t pull away. In fact, she seemed to shift her body closer to me, as if she wanted me to be more possessive of her.
“It’s something I know will never happen... but I’ve always wanted to be at the mercy of a strong, handsome man. I want to be overpowered and held tightly in his embrace.” Melise bit her lip as her eyes darted to my face, judging my expression.
Whatever she saw must have been positive, because she continued.
“When I was younger, I desperately wanted the clan to send me off to serve as a guard in the temple of the fertility god, but alas, the clan didn’t want to make any offerings. I probably wouldn’t have been able to live out my fantasy there either anyway. I want to be completely at a handsome man’s beck and call. I want to serve him in bed, but also in life, tending to his needs and defending him as need be. That’s why I begged Yulli for this position.”
I concealed my surprised expression and nodded thoughtfully. “Do you perhaps feel like I’m the kind of man who could make such a fantasy come true?”
“You’re more like those powerful men in stories and legends than any male I’ve ever had a chance to meet. Certainly more likely to bring us glory and connections than Danori, who we brought with us. Sure, there are others males at higher cultivation ranks than you, but they’re not as driven. Most of the time they were simply told to drink elixirs daily until they reached their cultivation rank. Those that are able to cultivate well are fed sacred fruits and eat only the flesh of mystic beasts. They quickly reach the limits of their talent. But you seem like a man whose abilities are just beginning to express themselves.”
Zeal of the Mind and Flesh Page 26
