The Fourth Gate: Chapter Nineteen

I reached into my spirit and opened a path to Combat Echo. Within the spell there was a second version of myself, with all of my physical strength, and enough raw mana to match mine. It didn’t have all of my advantages, it was very close to my own level of power. I could see it in my mind’s eye, frozen in time, eyes peacefully closed. I snapped the protective barrier, and the other me fell forward from the tree. 

At the same time as I called my Combat Echo, I was drawing out more boneshards. The spear and the four strongest shards were all still under Hannah’s control, and there was a steady drain on my death mana as she used them to attack and harry Corra with Dusk. But I needed more than just those. I reached out for plants, and also began to cycle Mantle Dragonfyre, while I tucked the arrow away.

My Combat Echo appeared next to me, and his eyes flicked over the battlefield before he nodded. I felt his mana surging and growing, and he looked at me. 

“If I can crack it, can you finish her?”

“Yes.” 

He exploded forward, using a combination of Foxstep and Spriggan Step to cross the distance at speed. It wasn’t perfect, and it lacked the fluid grace that I would have expected from myself, but it was fast. He slammed boneshards down, drawing them from my spirit, even though he provided the mana. I started to reach out through the spell, and thought I could feel myself in both places at once, but shook the thought off. Now wasn’t the time for experimentation. 

I leapt forward and spread my senses out, using a combination of my full sensory suite with Impel Senses to push back the cat’s eye interference. It was rough, and caused my mana to drop rapidly, but I locked onto Corra, then unleashed Kludde’s Weight. It hammered against her shield as I teleported in and overcharged my mana to unleash an Arcanist level blademoss strike. Next to me, Dusk was spinning up whirls of snow and ice, obscuring Corra’s vision, Hannah was directing my spear with bones, and another me was locked in the air, slicing out. 

Her arm was projecting a high Arcanist level defensive barrier. A few of my attacks, like the overcharged blademoss, left scratches on the dome, but the litany of other, smaller, attacks simply bounced off. And the entire time, Corra was moving. She fired off a shot at Dusk that errupted into a fireball, then one at my double and me, all while drawing another one of the enchanted spikes. She threw it into the ground, and I felt a barrier weave around her, blocking mana senses. I could have overpowered it normally, but this was backed up by the fact that she was using a spell empowered to absurd levels by her headstone, had detonated the cat’s eye to further stop my senses, and had tuned the magic to block out me specifically.

My mana senses practically vanished as I fell out of the sky, and Corra swept her arm out. In dodging the fireball, Dusk had gotten within range of Corra, and a blade swept down. Dusk managed to re-adjust at the last second, moving so fast that even my enhanced eyes couldn’t track her. She slammed in, casting a combination of Sandstorm Lance and her shockwave spell. She’d clearly overcharged her mana, and with her at the very peak of fourth gate, it felt more like a false Arcanist than simply overcharged mana, but even that barely made a dent in the barrier. Corra’s blade arm swept out, crackling with lightning that had the sort of solid density of power that only came with age. 

While they fought, I drew one of my acid potions from my belt and chucked it at the spike in the ground. It hissed and burbled, then the spike erupted in a chaotic wave of mana, like a weaker version of the cat’s eye. It was still hard to sense through the mess, but it was enough for some Foxsteps. My double teleported into the air over Corra, then thrust his hand down, sending out a swooping wave of overcharged blademoss, Briarthreads, and Pinpoint Boneshards. I thrust my hands out and unleashed a wave of blademoss, spikes of ice from the succulent plant, and a wave of bones controlled by Hannah, matched by bones I was controlling, alongside Briarthreads. I flicked two fingers out and echoed the attacks, maintaining fourteen echoes all at once, while also keeping up my normal attacks, and leaving Fungal Armor, Briarthreads, and the Ivy Cloak swirling around me. 

Without my training from the Weaver, I wouldn’t have been able to manage such a massive wave of attacks. Frankly, if I hadn’t spent as much time as I could over the past two days getting used to Ghostmind, I wouldn’t have been able to have Hannah handle so many of the bones while Arthur guided the defensive suite. But if this tournament was good at anything, it was pushing me forward. With all the attacks closing in from all sides, even the continual power of the sixth gate level dome was getting stressed, splinters forming over it. 

Even with that training, pain was flaring through my spirit as my soul-stitches were shredded, the pressure from projecting so much mana out not lessened through the use of Ghostmind at all.

In the air overhead, red and brown light began to spark within my Combat Echo’s hands, and the power exploded down. Corra’s dome exploded into shreds, letting out a blue-white pulse of mana as it did so. My echo’s attacks, Dusk’s attacks, and my own spells, plants, and echoes all vanished, anything that had been making contact with the dome vanishing in an instant. 

I thrust my hand forward and Mantle Dragonfire exploded from my hand, pouring across the distance, right for where Corra was standing. For a moment, I thought that I’d just won the first round. Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t the only one who had been propelled forward by the tournament, nor was I the only one who could learn new tricks. 

Corra slammed her foot into the ground, a shockwave of power rippling through as the stones tore up, forming a vortex of boulders around her. My mantle dragon’s breath drilled through one in an instant, but an instant was all that Corra needed. Her arm flared, there was a warping of gravity, and then she was at the top of the dome. The movement had been so fast that it must have burnt out some of the enchantments in her arm, which was further reinforced by the fact that it was spitting sparks of mana around the elbow. 

She lowered her hand, and the arm transformed into a canon form again. Force rent through the air, hammering down, and I swept Mantle Dragonfyre up in the air to clash, beam versus beam. I threaded a bit of soul mana into my spell, but I had to be careful, as that wouldn’t replenish with an ordinary mana potion. 

As we both poured power into our respective beams, I realized that the soul mana was the only reason the fight was remaining even. If I hadn’t been empowering the Mantle Dragonfyre, Corra would have overpowered me. Not in an instant, but it would have been inexorable. That was the power of her approach. Perhaps, if I’d poured everything into Mantle Dragonfyre with a headstone like the Light of the Depths, or put everything into . 

But I’d chosen differently, and within me, I was putting the advantages I had to work. Though Corra likely wouldn’t be able to notice it, tiny patches of blademoss were appearing and vanishing, my yincaps were empowering my frost succulent, and Capture Moment was going haywire. More importantly, however, I was spending mana like water, pushing through the disruptions around me. 

Dusk and my clone hadn’t been idle either. My clone had to run through the air up to Corra’s level, while she used one hand to change the cartridge, and fired off a bullet that looked normal enough, but tore through my copy’s Fungal Armor like it wasn’t even there – nullsteel, probably. Blood sprayed from him, but he continued to make his way up, dodging the bullets best he could while maintaining the spell to lock his feet in place and not fall to the ground. Dusk, meanwhile, had crossed the distance a second after Corra had moved, and was firing off shockwaves and sandstorm lances, along with slowing spells, something that looked like a paralytic, a spell that was singing and made of an aurora-like halo, and another spell that felt like Kludde’s Weight, pushing down on Corra’s form. 

Corra was responding to her too, using a spell that I was familiar with from Ed: Stone Shield. The simple forged stone mana was popping into existence to block attacks, then dissolving again, while Corra used some sort of mineral to counter Kludde’s Weight. She seemed to be countering everything I could throw at her, and for a single moment, I wondered if this was what it felt like to fight me.

With a snap, the sphere of power re-formed around Corra, and I spat a curse under my breath. I supposed that it had been too much to hope that all she had done was lower the power to create a constant effect, and by breaking it, it had remained broken. But my own magic was also ready. 

I teleported into the air, an inch from Corra’s face, the dome barely visible as a ripple in the air between us, and my dragon’s breath struck. In the same moment, Hannah cast Reposition Anchor, and I fueled all of the Magical Echo spells I could, converting fourth gate mana down to support them all. A bullet tore through the air, penetrating through my armor, and I was forced to throw mana into Starfish’s Regeneration pain rushed through me. I thought that I’d already torn all of my stitches, but more spiritual pain rent through me as a few that had hung on popped open.

Dusk and my clone were there then, my clone bloody, and he slammed his fist into the shield, mana guttering out from him as he dumped his entire reserve into a detonation of plants, bones, and echoes, vanishing as the mana that sustained him emptied to nothing. The shield cracked, nearly breaking, then a spear crashed into it. It met the weak spot in the same instant that Dusk drew on her realm, flight spells flaring around her. She evaded the shield, and launched a lance into the same crack. 

The shield popped, dispelling all the spells hammering against it again. This time, however, I didn’t try to save an arrow for another instant. While Corra was frantically working on the crystal mana, I cast a simple spell. The arrow fell from Dusk’s realm, then shot forward and buried itself into Corra’s chest. There was a flash, and she vanished. An instant later, I vanished as well.

I let out a breath as I appeared in a new room. There was a mana fountain next to me, and a tall woman in sect robes rushed over, mana glowing from her hands as she started to tend to me. I stripped off my shirt to let her get to my shoulder, where I’d been shot, and poured myself a drink. As I took a long sip, I tried to figure out what I could possibly do to win the next round.