Demigod Device

Can poison Glimmer and create small amounts of Shadow-black (if used without the keystone)

## Behind the pages

### Appearances

* Teddy Garson and The Demigod Device
* Teddy Garson and The Liberation of Anderland (mentioned only)

The **Demigod Device** was a fictional machine created by the Ancients in the Heath which featured predominantly in Teddy Garson and The Demigod Device as the titular MacGuffin. In the book, the device is described as the deified magnum-opus of the Ancients' inventions which had the ability to harvest the magical power in the Heath with the use of a rare keystone. Believed to be lost alongside the civilisation, the device became a point of interest to many opposing individuals after the rediscovery of the keystone alongside other relics in Anderland, all with differing incentives to use it, such as Teddy Garson, Paige Holden, Professor Ansis Gall and Charles Aldering.

## Incentives to use

### Aldering

Unlike others, Aldering used the Demigod Device before its official rediscovery by the Infernal Cult and Teddy. Initially, he desperately attempted to operate it without the Divinity Keystone in a futile attempt to leave the Heath after having been stranded there by Enola. The machine did not work properly, and only secreted a poisoned, corrupted form of its Glimmer fuel which Aldering caught a lethal dose of on his right hand, scalding it to the point of skeletal decay. Aldering managed to take control of the material, which he called "Shadow-black" and began to spread it in the area surrounding the Device's temple to gain control over the wildlife, occasionally returning to the machine to produce more Shadow-black. He began to use his growing army and any operational Ancient equipment to dig in the Heath, hoping to one day find the keystone and use the machine to return to Anderland. In addition, Aldering used the Shadow-black as the base material to forge the curses he had already been experimenting with. As time went on, he planned to use the combined power of the Demigod Device, the curses he had split across Anderland and the Heath and his Shadow-black to spread his cursed influence across both worlds.

When Teddy entered the Heath, wielding Fidelis and carrying the Divinity Keystone, Aldering kidnapped him and offered him his freedom if he could reclaim the recently-stolen Divinity Keystone from Professor Ansis Gall and turn it over to him alongside Enola, discreetly worried that, if Teddy used the Demigod Device, it would eradicate all of the Shadow-black in the Heath and make him the ruler of that world due to his Glimmer connection, made apparent by his possession of Fidelis. When he set Teddy free and he did not comply, Aldering sabotaged their arrival at the Demigod Device and took the keystone by force, murdering Enola and operating the machine as he watched Teddy cradle her dying body. He fed some Shadow-black and his Heath-bound half-curses into the core of the device, offering to leave the Heath "unscathed" as compensation for using an undivided curse on Teddy before launching his new age in Anderland. Aldering corroded the keystone shortly afterwards to make his work irreversible, and left the Heath, closing the entrance behind him.