Read Spellheart book 3 for Free Online! Click Here!

Haha! You fool! You’ve fallen for my clickbait! Now I will infiltrate your computer with my demonic malware that I bought off a demon from the lowest circle of hell (a very nasty place. Tiny cubicles and no water fountain).

On a more serious note, I’m still editing book 3, which I’m calling Memories of the Reborn. I’ve got a finished draft, there’s just a few bits I’m tweaking and rewriting. I’ll be sending out copies to beta readers sometime over the next few days (I meant to do it weeks ago but there always seems to be something new I want to add or tweak). However, none of the major changes I plan to make are in the first chapter, so I figured instead of a boring “I’m almost done for real this time guys!” post, I’d just post the first chapter.

I’m not completely sure on this front, but I’ve been told Amazon lets me post up to 10% of the story on the web. Considering the novel is pretty long (over 156,000 words, though I’m cutting a few parts) I should be able to post at least the first few chapters.

I’ve also started a Patreon. There isn’t anything on it yet besides a test post (same as the chapter below), but it seems like a lot of authors on Amazon use Patreon as a platform to post their content in a way that’s protected from getting spread all over the internet (which would break my KU contract with Amazon).

I have never used Patreon before, so if you guys could take a look and confirm that it does indeed look like an author Patreon account that would be great. I’d also be interested in knowing what other author Patreons you follow, that way I can shamelessly copy what more experienced authors are doing.

Without any further rambling from me, here’s Memories of the Reborn chapter 1!
Edit: 5/13/2020 -- I lied about being done with this chapter, I did end up changing quite a few things, but I'll leave this one up as is. Don't be alarmed in the version in the book is different.

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To evade the blazing heat of the sky above me, I was dancing between the shade of two trees of prodigious girth. I was out here, sweating and ankle deep in the mud while glaring up at my sad excuse for a sentry tower. This pathetic piece of scrap wood was one of the scant few defenses protecting me, my women, my son, and his unborn siblings from the looming threat at the edge of the forest we called home.

The sentry tower was made of round stakes of wood with the bark still on them and lashed together with nothing but rope. The ship that brought me to this world had modified my brain implant and installed an interface I’d been referring to simply as the system. This system identified the structure before me with a flash of text over my vision.

Crude Sentry Tower

Upgrade to Sturdy Sentry Tower? (50 points)

I accepted the prompt and watched my points vanish. I’d had a brain implant before coming to this world and using the implant had been much the same as the system I now possessed. All it took was a thought and my work was done. Now, all I had left to do was see what my points bought me.

Blue sparks filled my vision, floating through the air like shimmering particles of light. They danced and swirled in intricate patterns I couldn’t quite grasp before materializing as bits of wood or stone.

Where the crude sentry tower had been nothing but a lanky tower of wood, this sturdy sentry tower was anchored to the ground by a cylindrical column of smooth stone. Limestone, by the look of it. Instead of being exposed to the weather, the top of the sentry tower now had a wooden roof over it. Instead of hanging out in the open, the ladder leading upward was now sealed behind a wooden door at the base of the tower.

“Not bad for pushing a button.” I muttered to myself. Though, I remembered that 50 points usually meant fighting and killing a raptor with teeth the size of my fingers and the temperament of a hungover frat boy who just realized he was out of orange juice.

[Once you upgrade the rest and connect them with the wall, I think things will look rather nice.] Mac said. He spoke directly in my head through the same mechanism that placed text over my vision. Mac had been my robot butler before coming to this world. After arriving here, he’d turned into a dungeon core and the interface unit for the ship known as The Wanderer. As an unfortunate side effect, I could now receive his transmissions all the time, so long I was within range of the scanner. And I’d already made the mistake of upgrading the scanner to the point where it could cover nearly the entire Hearthwood forest.

[…just picture it Theo! White alabaster walls would match the cobblestones wonderfully, and make them absolutely effortless to keep sparklingly clean!] Mac continued, his enthusiasm for cleaning having not changed in the slightest despite no longer being an AI employed to mop floors.

“I’ll keep ‘easy to clean’ on the list, Mac.” I replied, thinking back to the ship as much as saying them aloud. “Though that’s going to have to come in second place to defensibility. We do have an enemy army on the way to loot and pillage everything we hold dear.”

[Yes. Do try to avoid letting them past the walls. Blood stains terribly easily, and there’s quite a bit of it between all the elves you’ve brought here.]

“That’s a challenge I’m willing to take on. Just give me fair warning the moment you sense them on the move again.”

I trod through the dense undergrowth to the next crude sentry tower, noticing it was already crumbling. Upon closer inspection, I saw mushrooms sprouting from the side of one of the supporting poles and tooth marks from a giant beaver on another.

I’d built this crude sentry tower no more than a few weeks ago, yet it was already rotting. The virility of life here on this world was astounding, but on a planet filled with magic, anything was possible.

Everything in this world was filled with tiny particles that took after the element from which they originated. The locals called these particles zeal. Water held water zeal, fire held fire zeal, and the air held air zeal. I had a personal preference for earth zeal, as that was the affinity of the spellheart I’d bound and since inserted into my body, making me a mage acolyte of the earth aspect. Though unlike most elves, I was also holding onto a mind aspect spellheart as backup.

I pictured the rising pillar of limestone that encapsulated the crude sentry tower, protecting it from the wind, rain, and potential invaders. What I was doing now was informal magic, as I had no spells or techniques for this. 

My familiarity with the Stone Obelisk spell certainly helped, and I even took the opportunity to cast that spell and summon a finger of stone nearby. The black tower sprouted from the earth like a stone tree, and the sharp angles cast an ominous shadow over the otherwise picturesque natural clearing. The Stone Obelisk spell helped me control informal magic like I was working now, speeding up the time it took to work and the rate at which I could influence the surrounding earth zeal.

With the help of the Stone Obelisk, I built a cylinder of stone around the crude sentry tower, exactly as I’d observed The Wanderer’s system construct. I checked to see if the system recognized my handiwork.

Crude Sentry Tower

Upgrade to Sturdy Sentry Tower? (20 points)

Sure enough, building the stone base manually cut down on the number of points I’d need to spend to upgrade the whole sentry tower. I could have tried to upgrade the whole thing manually, but I didn’t have the right magic to build a wooden roof and the Hearthwood didn’t have a locksmith who could make the lockable door to the sentry tower.

Since I’d saved as many points as I reasonably could, I upgraded this sentry tower as well and watched my points vanish. Two down, eight more to go.

Remaining points: 5400

I’d made quite a few points thanks to all the battles I’d fought against the Corpse Collector Company and Sharian in addition to hunting raptors in the dungeon below. Still, those points were rapidly being consumed as I made roads, tools, and defenses like these. Even though I felt like I had a big nest egg stowed away, I still needed to be as thrifty as possible.

My slow and methodical work was interrupted by an ambush.

An elf with shoulder-length purple hair popped out of a tree. I hadn’t even suspected that anyone had been hiding there, and if this assassin had been after my life I would have been in serious trouble. She was clad in a skin-tight black leather outfit that concealed a seemingly impossible number of throwing knives.

She plucked an ornate set of nunchucks from her waist and twirled them in a rather intimidating fashion… only to knock herself in the back of the head at the last moment.

“Ow! Still haven’t mastered these yet.” The purple haired ninja-elf said. She was none other than Eltiana Violet, the tribal chief and leader of the Hidden Serpent tribe.

After rubbing the back of her head, she thrust a finger in my direction and shouted. “Aha! A heartwielder would never have been able to raise three of those piles of rock one after another.”

“Not without some valuable potions, at least.” A green-haired elf appeared from behind a bush. Long green hair spilled down her bare shoulders and she dusted off the dress she was wearing. Her eyes scanned the surrounding terrain, always on the lookout for valuable ingredients.

“Even among the great clans, I’ve never seen a heartwielder exert so much power on their own.” A golden head stepped delicately over the forest floor in a dress more suited to a ballroom than a backwoods place like this. That was only fitting though, considering the wearer was Nela Songstone, the young lady and leader of what little remained of the once-mighty Songstone clan.

Behind her was another mage acolyte of her clan, Melise.

Melise shared her matriarch’s golden hair, though she wore it shorter, and despite wearing armor and having a spear propped against her shoulder she looked more like a young secretary than a warrior. Her face bore a girlish pout and her eyes were fixed in my direction. “Why didn’t you tell us, Theo?”

A blue haired elf slipped in behind them, glaring at the muddy ground that matched the wet splotch on her knees as she grabbed onto a nearby branch for balance. “Darn roots popping up out of nowhere…” she grumbled before glancing up and seeing me. “Theo! Everybody’s saying you advanced!”

“Blackgorge Fiendbody has that power, but not that control.” The largest woman of the bunch appeared. Unlike the others, this one had leather armor and pointed teeth, though her ears were still pointed. A necklace of teeth adorned her neck, and her skin was a bright green. She was an orc and stood out amongst the elves already present.

A small elf with hair that stood out only because it was a completely ordinary dirty blond pushed her spectacles back up her nose and folded a book up under her arm. She smiled lightly as she glanced around at the others. “Sorry Theo. They pried the secret out of me.”

All seven of these women before me were magical beings, masters of their own unique brand of magic. They were leaders among their own people, and their recent work had united tribal groups that had historically always been enemies. Even stranger, all seven of them were my women.

“Alright then. I suppose it’s no more use continuing to hide it.”  I reached into my pocket and tapped my mind spellheart. Instantly, the mind magic technique that had been concealing my new status as a mage acolyte from all but Illiel vanished.

I felt a slight tingly sensation, like something invisible brushing against my senses. “It’s true!” Sava confirmed. “He’s a mage acolyte!”

Nela cheered and Eltiana made to give Assyrus a high-five, only to pull back when she realized the blue-haired elf’s palm was also covered in mud.

“You advanced without us, Theo?” Melise pouted. “But I wanted to be the knife bearer at the ceremony!”

“Sorry ladies. I figured it would be faster and easier for Mac to do it in the medical bay.” I explained sheepishly. Truth be told, the only reason I’d been holding the Elementary Cultivation Concealment technique so long was because I was afraid this conversation would be a little awkward. Ascension to mage acolyte involved inserting a spellheart into the would-be acolyte’s body and fusing with it. Normally, the elves performed a seppuku-like ritual where they sliced open their own stomachs and clung to life with nothing but grit and determination.

That wasn’t my style. Especially when we had a fully functional surgical table. Despite having only been built with custodial staffing in mind, Mac was a competent surgeon and I trusted his skill more than any masochistic elvish ritual. Advancing through the orcish tradition of body cultivation had been painful enough, and I had no desire to experience the even bloodier elvish version.

“So how should we celebrate?” Assyrus asked the group. “When I advanced to mage acolyte, Chief Wisdom threw a banquet in my honor. I was young for a mage acolyte, so it was a big deal for us. But Theo’s a chaka! With him reaching mage acolyte, our entire clan has become stronger!”

“We certainly could use the moral boost, with enemies at the gates.” Nela said. “This will be good for the Hearthwood clan. With the destruction of our previous settlement, most of the Solar Essence Peaches I’d been trying to grow had been knocked down. We’ll have to harvest all the fruit soon or let it fall in the hands of the Corpse Collector Company. This will be a good excuse to distribute them.”

“I suppose I might be able to brew a diluted vitality and zeal potion to drink. Every sip saves a month of diligent meditation.” Sava added.

“I’ll have to go hunt down a few more raptors. We should be able to put together a decent feast.” Assyrus said. Yorik, Eltiana, and Melise all agreed to help Assyrus hunt.

“Alright then. The last party I planned didn’t turn out so well.” I said with a sad chuckle. Our clan’s only true mage died, and we barely defeated Matriarch Red Serpent.  “I’ll leave this one to you ladies. In the meantime, let me show you all the new defenses I’ve been working on.”

The elves had long since finished working on the crude earthen wall I’d wanted. Unfortunately, none of the tribes that I’d brought under the wing of my Hearthwood clan practiced earth magic. That meant I was the strongest earth-aspect cultivator around, and it was up to me to turn this pile of dirt into something defensible.

Luckily, it had already been built around all the old guard towers, so it wasn’t hard to push that dirt until it leaned over the outside ground at an angle. I’d asked Mac to look up medieval wall designs from earth and this was one of the simplest designs he’d found. The extra angle, along with some ridges on the edge, would make it much harder for attackers to climb over the wall with a ladder.

The other reason we’d chosen this design was that it was close to a blueprint already present in The Wanderer’s databanks. In an emergency, I wanted to be able to spend points to repair the walls instantly. That would be an unexpected and very valuable ability, should Mac figure out how to unlock the blueprint for our use.

“And this here is how the wall is going to look,” I announced as I climbed a pile of rock and dirt to gaze down at the only finished section of wall.

Assyrus stepped towards the edge and yelped as her foot slid through a hole along the edge of the wall. “Uh, Theo? I think you have a few holes in your wall.”

Eltiana helped Assyrus unstick her foot. “They’re perfectly square, so I assume you put them here intentionally?”

“Oh! I think I’ve heard of this design before! You drop things through the holes to repel enemies.” Illiel said, tapping her temple as she tried to come up with the name.

“Murder holes.” Yorik said simply. “Enemies come to the walls. You pour boiling oil down and light them on fire.”

Sava gave the murder holes a curious look, but the others looked disturbed. 

“Seems a little barbaric, don’t you think?” Melise said.

“Not to mention it’s only effective against those bound to the ground.” Nela said. “What about those coming in on flying swords? You might be able to reinforce the walls with enough zeal to stop a mage acolyte, but what if a true mage arrives? They’d simply blow the wall to bits.”

“Alright, it isn’t perfect. I plan to have one of those crossbows with iron-tipped bolts in each of those sentry towers. For now, we’ll have to rely on them being able to shoot down any flying adversaries.” Maybe there was a way to make the wall taller? The only way I’d stop aerial attacks would be to extend the wall into a dome that covered the entire city, but that wasn’t possible.

The girls continued to pepper me with questions about my walls, picking over every little detail. As we talked, I was beginning to worry that these structures weren’t going to be as formidable a defense as I’d hoped.

This world had access to medieval-level technology, and I’d been treating it that way. Against the purely mundane tools the Corpse Collector Company could bring to bear, this would be an effective defense. But The Corpse Collector Company wasn’t limited to mundane weapons. They had magic, just like us.

“Alright then, I’m all ears. How does a clan like ours usually defend itself?” I asked my girls.

“By having the strongest matriarch.” Nela answered, as if that were obvious. “With a powerful cultivator to rely on, reputation alone is enough to keep the wolves at bay. And should the clan ever face direct attack, the matriarch can annihilate legions of lesser experts. That’s why the great clans all at least have wizard-realm matriarchs protecting them, and a few of the stronger ones are rumored to have elves who have already reached the sorcerer rank.”

“Hmm… as far as your intelligence indicates, Kysalian is the only true mage in the forest, and she’s here to protect Sharian rather than to fight us. Given that the Corpse Collector Company is made entirely of mage acolytes and heartwielders, we should be evenly matched. Or we would be if it wasn’t for the vast disparity in numbers.”

“I imagine that’s the reason why they were sent to take care of us in the first place.” Nela replied. “Sending true mages or wizards against us would have been a waste of resources.”

“But if they attacked with overwhelming power, they could wipe us out without losses.” I argued. “Why send a force they know we’ll actually be able to fight when the Sakaku clan could just send a force we couldn’t possibly resist?”

“For one, their honor.” Illiel answered. “Slaughtering those weaker than you in mass is seen as… distasteful, though nobody would blink an eye at a true mage who killed a few mage acolytes who didn’t show proper respect. Additionally, true mage is the lowest rank at which an elf can be granted citizenship in the Queendom. At that point, everything they do is a matter of official record. Mass slaughters don’t look good if you want a position in court or the army.”

Yorik snorted. “It is to train the weak.”

We all glanced at her. “Well… I suppose that’s one way to look at it.” Illiel conceded.

“Fighting is the best way to grow strong.” Yorik continued. “Orcs know this. Elves do too, but pretend they don’t. Throw ten thousand heartwielders into a war and get a thousand mage acolytes. Let them fight and get a hundred true mages. Then they fight too. Ten wizards. Cull the weak, feed their bones to the strong.”

“Mage acolytes have mage acolyte-level resources.” Sava added. “Killing their peers can be very profitable for mage acolytes, but true mages have different needs and many things precious to a mage acolyte are useless to them.”

“This all sounds… inefficient.” I murmured unhappily. So we were nothing more than training dummies? “There has to be a better way.”

“It’s true that the reason the Corpse Collector Company doesn’t have any true mages is that they all leave the moment they advance.” Illiel said. “True mages have options, petty banditry and slave-raiding among the least of those. The Corpse Collectors have a few tricks for dealing with small clans and tribes with one or two true mages, but if we had more than that they wouldn’t willingly fight us.”

“So we just have to become true mages and we’ve already won the war!” I said with sudden realization. “I became a mage acolyte in a couple of months and have even refined one region. Eltiana’s already at the fourth region, and I’m sure the rest of you won’t let her stay too far ahead for long. How much longer could it really be before we all advance? A year? Two?”

The elves all glanced at each other sheepishly. “You’re an exception, Theo.” Sava said. “I didn’t expect to reach mage acolyte this decade, let alone true mage. Besides that, we couldn’t reach true mage in the Hearthwood, even if we refine all nine bodily regions. It requires resources we don’t have access to. Finding a source of vitality to reach mage acolyte is a bottleneck that blocks most heartwielders from advancing. We can harvest vitality from you instead of hunting for phoenix blood can help us reach mage acolyte, but I’m afraid it isn’t the same for true mage.”

Sava reached into the pouch at her waist and extracted a loose bundle of papers. It was her copy of the guidebook Dean left for me. “To be honest, I wouldn’t have even known the process for breaking through to true mage if not for this. For that gift alone, we owe the creator of this guide a big favor. But it says right here that to advance to true mage, you need an Aura Fragment from a true mage, either living or dead. Though getting an aura fragment from a dead true mage they would have either needed to be very powerful in life or have intentionally left the fragment behind.”

I glanced at the sheet of paper, and sure enough there was a drawing of an elf passing on a whirling cloud of mist from its own body to another elf kneeling nearby. It was titled ‘Inheriting an Aura Fragment.’

“I don’t suppose the Hearthwood has any aura fragments in reserve? Maybe from a true mage who died a long time ago?” I could tell by the faces of the surrounding elves that I needn’t have bothered asking. “Well then, we’ll just have to get some, or trade for them somehow.”

Before any of the girls could respond, our happy moment was broken by a malevolent roar in the forest just beyond.