“One of your people said something that made me think they thought they were saving me.”
Nela grimaced, trying to blink her eyes clear. “I may have told them you were in the clutches of a cruel tormentor. An evil herbalist that was experimenting with death potions. It could have been true for all I know. I was one of the youngest and weakest daughters of the old matriarch, and with only a spare half-bonded spellheart I’m weak, so I can’t rule through force of arms. I needed a good story to motivate them.”
I chatted with Nela for several more minutes. Eventually she got one of her arms free of the surrounding dirt, but I did nothing to stop her. She was freely providing me with a lot of good information. More than that though, I felt like we were developing a bit of a relationship. Enough that she’d let me negotiate with her directly, and giving the physical circumstances of our negotiation I was more or less able to control the discussion.
I ended up asking her why males were so valuable to elves. According to her, elvish men are fairly rare because they have problems condensing enough zeal to even form a physical body, let alone cultivating with a spellheart. This played an important part in why I was personally valuable as well. Anybody could tell just from my physical appearance that I was healthy, and thus it was assumed that I had a substantial amount of zeal in my body. This was very rare for elvish men and could only be accomplished by brute forcing the male elf’s body with countless incredibly valuable techniques and training aids, such as elixirs.
“Why would you bother? If elvish men are so weak, why bother trying to train them to be more powerful?” Sava had given me an explanation already, but I wanted to hear it from somebody else.
“There are a couple of reasons for that. One of the main motivations for bonding and cultivating a spellheart is that as zeal accumulates in your body your lifespan is extended. Not as much if you merge your spellheart into your body and become a mage acolyte, cleric acolyte, or seer acolyte, but it is still a substantial amount. A male who lives longer can produce more children, which benefits the clan. Beyond that though, children are born with an innate amount of physical power that is intrinsic to them. That’s power they don’t have to train for or cultivate. They have that immediately. The amount the children start with is determined by the bloodline they inherit from their parents, the mother and father.”
“There are plenty of mothers who are powerful. My own mother was a sorcerer, levels above common elves in terms of power. But my father was just an ordinary male at the third layer of zeal accumulation. As a result, I was born with talent determined by a loose average between them. I was blessed with a reasonable degree of power, but I wasn’t born at the acolyte ranks, like the children born to a powerful mother and father both. If the younger generation is strong, then the future of the clan is assured. The trouble is, powerful mothers take decades to bear even a single child.”
I nodded my head in understanding. “I see. Having a father who is healthy and has at least a reasonable amount of zeal and a decent bond with a spellheart means any children start at a higher point. While mothers are limited to producing children infrequently, fathers are not. Thus, a strong elvish man can sire an entire generation of powerful warriors relatively quickly.”
“Now you see. Don’t worry, you’ll be well treated. Our resources are scarce nowadays, but we’ll see that we meet your desires. We can’t assign anyone to be your full-time caretaker, but I’ll make sure everyone treats you with respect. You’ll live a life of comfort, at the highest standard we can provide. And if we come across any items that can improve your cultivation base, they’ll be yours.”
I tapped my chin thoughtfully. “Truth be told, you make a tempting offer, though not for the reasons you think. I’m not really interested in sitting around and being pampered. That being said, the resources your clan could provide just in terms of information would be valuable to me. I think we can come to an arrangement. I just need a few conditions fulfilled,” I grabbed Nela’s hand and tugged her fully out of the dirt and waved my hand. I was getting really good at controlling earth zeal, and that simple motion was enough to clean most of the grime from her clothes and body.
Nela dusted herself off anyway, and she held out her hand, expecting me to give her back her spellheart. I withheld it. Nela’s companions had long since recovered from Yorik’s spell, and some were glaring at me with unkind expressions, despite Nela’s standing order to sit still, half buried in the dirt. That was nice, but Nela herself had admitted that her authority over the Songstone Clanswomen wasn’t absolute. I’d be holding onto their spellhearts and returning them as I saw fit.
“First condition. Sava, the herbalist you noticed, gets to join your clan. I’m used to her and I like having a familiar face around here. Same goes for Yorik.”
“The orc?” Nela shook her head. “An elf we can manage. Outsiders are occasionally adopted into clans under strenuous circumstances, and our current situation certainly counts as that. We can use every boost to our numbers that we can get. But I can’t say the same for the orc. The orcs have been the historic enemies of elf kind. If I even tried to make her an honorary clan member I would be making more enemies than friends for the Songstone Clan.”
“Fine, she’s my personal retainer then. She’ll follow my orders and will be allowed to act under my authority.”
Nela looked like she was going to balk again, but when she saw my unwavering expression she acquiesced. “Done. Now we must hurry. We need to secure food and shelter before winter comes. Ghessa will show you...”
“That brings me to my second point,” I interrupted, “I want to have some formal standing in your clan. I want to be the patriarch.”
Nela blinked. “Patriarch? What’s that?”
“I noticed you were called matriarch. Patriarch is like the same thing, except for men.”
Nela pondered that for a moment. “I’ve never heard of such a title, but if that’s what you want, then consider it done. You’re the Songstone Clan patriarch now.”
I glanced around at the Songstone Clan members. “You hear that? Everyone who wants their spellhearts back should come and bow to their new patriarch!”
Congratulations on gaining political power! May your reign be eternally interesting… [+500 points]
And thus began my takeover of the Songstone Clan.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ONE OF MY first acts as patriarch was to send a delegation along with Sava to the central location of the Riverweed tribe. The purpose of this mission was mostly to establish the authority to do such things, but it also gave me the opportunity to place some of Nela’s Songstone Clan members under Sava’s authority. She was still hesitant to leave the Riverweed tribe, even though the last time she’d been there she’d only gotten greedy eyes over her surge in cultivation. It was her family and home, and it held an irreplaceable fondness for her. Still, she insisted that the Songstone Clan would be a wide notch better than joining up with the Riverweed tribe for me.
“A tribe is just a tribe, but a clan is a clan.” Sava had said, as though it were obvious the latter held far greater prestige.
Sava returned from having gone to the Riverweed tribe to talk with the tribal elders, what she found turned out to be of vastly greater importance than I’d expected. The reason why Riverweed tribe cultivators never showed up, even with a fight going on along their borders, was because they had much bigger problems.
Mainly, their entire grove of tree houses was now a smoldering ruin.
Sava managed to find her half-sister in the ruins and brought her back home, where the Songstone Clan members had erected a temporary camp.
“They’re… gone…” Katiana said, eyes half glazed over.
I sat across from her in one of Sava’s larger chairs. “The whole Riverweed tribe? What happened?”
After a bit of talking, I managed to get the full story out of the distressed elf. Their neighbors, the Crimson Dragonfly tribe, were trying to unite this whole region und
er their own banner. Apparently, they’d already managed to subdue the two tribes closest to them, having exterminated the Claw Tamer’s tribe and gotten the chieftain of the Hidden Serpents tribe to pledge loyalty as a subordinate to them.
With the might and resources of three tribes under their belt, the Crimson Dragonfly tribe restyled themselves as the Crimson Dragon Clan and were now vying to take over the entire Hearthwood forest. There were four major tribes left, with the Riverweed tribe being the largest.
No doubt, now that they’d wiped out the main political heart of the Riverweed tribe, they would be waiting for many of the Riverweed cultivators who were only loosely affiliated with the tribe, such as Sava who lived out on the fringes of their territory, to change their allegiance over to them.
It might have worked, but now the remnants of the Songstone Clan were establishing themselves in the area. Sure, they were pitifully weak. But Nela said if they had a few weeks to establish themselves, they could use some of the treasures they’d escaped with from their clan to fortify the surrounding area to impenetrability. Many of the Songstone survivors had been servants, but despite that they had mid or high-quality spellhearts. It would take them time to adapt their skills to combat, but with training they could easily become the Hearthwoods foremost power.
“The first thing we need to do is establish a base of operations for our new clan headquarters. From there we can start building,” Nela said at the first meeting of the Songstone Clan. And the first meeting in many generations that all known living members of the entire clan were present and accounted for. When their clan had been whole, not a single one of the Songstone Clanswomen present would have had the standing to attend a meeting of elders. Now, they were the elders.
There were others present who hadn’t been directly involved in attacking Sava, me, and Yorik. They were mostly old and young, though curiously enough, elves didn’t age like humans did. They popped into existence as young women and died of old age more mature, but still lithe and beautiful, with only white hair to show for the passing of hard years. It was like their range of ages was restricted between eighteen and thirty-five. There were some examples of both present. Almost all the faces I hadn’t seen earlier were on the younger side. Many members of the older generation chose to stay behind and cover the retreat of the younger survivors, choosing to forfeit what years remained to secure the safety of their descendants. It was a futile defense, but many of the elves saw it as an honorable end.
“Now, we need to start scouting for a good place. Obviously, we need to pick a location that has abundant zeal for us to cultivate but is still within the scope of what we can defend with our current strength. An area with lots of sunlight would have the right balance of zeal. We’ll spread out in teams of two and— “
“That won’t be necessary, Nela,” I interrupted. She glared at me.
“We already have a place. Sava picked it a while ago, and I’ve long since started building structures and defenses. We can fell a few trees to get the light you want in and turn this place into something impressive.”
“Here? You want the mighty Songstone Clan to be based out of this... mud fort?” Nela gestured around. It’s true, the buildings I’d made were partially dilapidated. Most of them were mud-brick constructions, and most of those were early attempts of mine which had collapsed in on themselves.
“To be fair, you did attack the place. I’ll have you know the walls I built were quite sturdy before your fire lackeys started throwing fireballs at them.”
One of the aforementioned fire lackeys let out a cold snort.
Nela continued shaking her head. “Leave this to us. We need fields to cultivate crops and sacred fruits in. We’ll need to set up an alchemical refinery as well. It would be best if we found a small local village that we could take over. We could press the inhabitants to work for us for a few years, then once we…”
I shook my head. “Forcing conquered subjects to do menial labor without reward is a disaster waiting to happen. You don’t want the Songstone Clan to become a clan of petty tyrants, do you? Besides, I defeated you with just the three of us. Do you think you could even fight a local village or tribe?”
“I admit,” Nela said, “that I moved too quickly against you. We could convert the spellhearts and treasures we took into enough power to dominate this forest, but that would take time. I need a month or more to train and bond with my spellheart. Many of us would need several. But we will be strong enough soon. But what would you have us do if not fight for dominance in this small forest?”
“Build here. Invest time and energy into this place. Sure, it isn’t developed, but it has abundant natural resources. The nearby river is full of fish, the forest has mystic beasts aplenty, there are fruit-trees scattered here and there. People will come willingly if you build something enticing.”
“We will not forage for food. The Songstone Clan won’t lower itself to become a tribe of scavengers.”
“So, you don’t like hunting or fishing. Fine. The weather is good around here. We’ll cut down some trees and start building wooden structures. Cutting trees with clear land up to where we can start planting crops and orchards. We can clear grazing land and sell the wood to get us through the year before we can start planting. There’s a nearby town that we can resupply through. Sava’s got contacts there that can get what we need.”
Nela shook her head. “The Songstone Clan had many small tribes under their command that eked out an existence in just the manner you speak of. How could we, given our pride and reputation, lower ourselves to such a state?”
“You’re too proud to farm your own food, but you’re not too proud to turn yourselves into bandits? Because that’s what you’d be if you go through with your plan to take over some tiny hamlet that can’t even be considered a tribe.”
“I... well...” Nela was at a bit of a loss. Many of the Songstone Clan members could see the logic in my words and saw the future that would await them if they didn’t tighten their belts and learn to do the work that needed to be done.
“But... I don’t know how to do any of that,” Nela said sadly, “the Songstone Clan owned several profitable mines. We collected rare and precious gemstones. Many envied our position and sought to supplant us, but we were immovable. At least, until the mines ran low.”
“Sounds to me like you spread yourselves thin. You had a single resource you depended on to support your power base. When that resource ran out, you had nothing else to turn to, and your clan’s foundations vanished from under you. Consider this a harsh lesson. Now we start from the ground up. And for most people the ground up means first making food. No society functions without food, so that’s the resource we’ve got to lock in first. Don’t worry about your inexperience. I’ll be here to help you.”
With that, Nela agreed to my idea of establishing a base of operations, at least temporarily, at the site of Sava’s camp. Hopefully Sava wouldn’t have too much of a fit. She was upset at me already for inducting her into the Songstone Clan while she was unconscious, though with the Riverweed tribe nearly destroyed, she likely would have found herself in the Songstone Clan anyway. This way she wound up with a position of importance.
From then on, my days were packed. I directed the elves of the Songstone Clan, young and old, into clearing the surrounding forest. It went surprisingly fast. I’d forgotten that I wasn’t working with humans here, I was working with magically empowered elves. They were superhuman in just about every way.
The same zeal that had produced such incredible changes in my body had been at work in theirs for years, and the results were impressive.
The fact that they didn’t have any axes hadn’t proved to be an obstacle. But a couple had learned to focus sunlight into something akin to a laser, which allowed them to slowly burn even the massive trees of the Hearthwood down, given enough time. Soon I learned to organize my work crews into different groups based on who had what abilities. Though the core of the clan worked with sun
light zeal, there was always a need for other types of cultivators. As such, I was able to rally together a few elves with water and earth spellhearts and set them to work performing tasks best suited to their magic.
Earth type cultivators stayed back at the base, shaping the foundations for various buildings according to a layout I’d designed. I wanted this place to look like a proper fortress when I was done, with room for dramatic expansion when necessary. My original wall was massively expanded upon, and several large longhouses were constructed for temporary housing while we got our full facility up and running.
While the Earth elves laid the foundations, the wood elves collected lumber, removed stumps, and even began planting fruit-bearing trees. Through the use of their spellhearts they were able to get the plants to start growing immediately. They’d still need stuff like water and light, but through magic their growth could be massively enhanced.
We’d still eat through the supplies me and Sava had stocked up in a week, but by then I hoped to have a crop of wheat in. Much of the land we cleared had gone to further that cause.
Yorik was pitching in to correct the food shortage by hunting day in and day out. She’d brought back an impressively large moose just the other day. Even with several dozen people, the creature had enough meat on it to feed us all for a while.
Zeal of the Mind and Flesh: A Cultivating Gamelit Harem Adventure (Spellheart Book 1) Page 20