The Third Step: Chapter Fifty-One

To my disappointment, the Skehem Court did not allow me to see their ritual chamber. I supposed that was to be expected – they were already giving me materials for it, if they also let me see the spellwork and enchantments, then to their minds, it was as good as leaking the entire ritual to the rest of the vampires in the world. 

That actually caused me to pause for a moment. 

I didn’t really hate the Sekhem Court for the Sekhem part, but rather for the Court part. They were terrible rulers that oppressed their people and led with a might-makes-right mentality. The fishing company was infinitely better run than the Court, but that wasn’t due to the company being… Well, I had been about to say human, but I didn’t even know. They could have been humans, beasts, vampires, werewolves, spirits, or even a bundle of constructs for all I knew.  

I wasn’t sure that the idea of a company being better than a court was inherently true, but in this case it was. But if I really wanted to get involved in breaking the power of the Sekhem court, then their ritual to allow people to retain some of their mana types, and the metaphorical dust of their legacy to be reworked into the Sekhem one would be a good way. Sekhem would still be stronger, but other courts might be able to rise, at least a bit. Someone like Riley would make a good vampiric leader… But those were all ideas and plans for a future where I was strong enough to rob the court blind. 

For now, I could do little enough. I was given a small storage ring with a linked spatial pocket containing the ritual components, as well as an elixir vial that was – of course – blood red. It felt potent, useful for Kene’s stability, but I was absolutely going to make sure it was identified by Kene and Meadow both before Kene drank it.

After the niceties with Prince Dhruv finished up, I was tempted to simply step into Dusk’s realm and prove I could leave. I’d already outright stated I was capable of it, but… No. If I ever did return to rob them, it was best to let them think I had been bluffing like the Prince had said. Instead, I allowed the vampiric bodyguards to escort me out, met Kene at Keerthana’s shop. They spoke for a bit, while I tracked down Ivy, who had been having better success than me, but was still mid-negotiation. He said he’d make his own way back, so I returned to Kene, snapped open a portal to Dusk’s realm, and we left. 

When we emerged back on the boat, Dusk cried out in happiness and rushed over to me, throwing her tiny arms around my neck and pulling me into a hug. I scratched her head with one finger, then began to pet Dawn, who emerged, wiggling. They both seemed curious about how it had gone, so I told them to go get Meadow, and once everyone was ready, I started recounting the tale, sliding the vial of soul strengthening elixir to Meadow and Kene to examine. 

Once I’d told my story, Dusk whistled that when we went back, she was going with me. She didn’t care if she was seen as less than human there, or if people would think she could be captured. She was only a stone’s throw away from completing her fourth gate, and was confident by the time the tournament was over, she would be ready to ascend to Arcanist. If they respected strength, they would have to respect her. 

Dawn’s mental images were hard to parse as always, though at least this time they didn’t give me a nosebleed. Still, I got the sense she wanted to accompany me as well, a stowaway in my soul if nothing else. As she sent the thoughts, I focused on something else, something that had slipped my notice when we’d first come through. 

“You’ve ascended to fourth gate!” I told her. “Congratulations!” 

Dawn just stared at me, blinking her translucent golden eyes at me a few times before she tilted her head and whacked me with her tail. In a strange way, the whack actually made me feel… better. 

“Well, for all the issues that the Court caused, at least you got what was needed,” Meadow said, her eyes crinkling softly at the corners. “We can remove some of the tracking and delayed release toxins they placed in the soul strengthening elixir, and it should help.” 

I took a slow, deep breath, then let it out. I shouldn’t have been surprised they wanted a tracker and a guarantor that I’d keep up my end of the deal, but going so far as to spike a potion was just… disgusting. Before I could say anything, Kene took my hand in theirs and looked me dead in the eye, smiling softly before kissing me on the cheek. 

“Thank you. You didn’t need to do that.” 

I smiled at them wordlessly for a moment, before turning and letting out a slow sigh as I pulled out the second storage ring – the one that I’d taken from the Sekhem after our fight.

“I also got this, for whatever it’s worth.” 

I activated the ring, and allowed the contents to spill out over the table. Most of the contents were – predictably – blood related, including some containers of actual human and beast blood that I returned to the ring to be donated to a local hospital. 

But blood was far from the only thing stored in the ring. There was a considerable amount of money stored within, more than I’d expected. After conversion, it would be worth several thousand Mossford Standard Silver, which I figured I could donate a third of if to some charities back home, then place the rest in the same investments that were currently managing the wealth I’d gotten from the Myrmekes.

The vampire that had owned the ring also had a small store of different healing pills, all in a bunch of different bottles. Many of them were for specific, blood-related conditions that I was unlikely to experience, like hypercoagulation, but others were for speeding along the natural recovery process. I didn’t heal quite as fast as a Sekhem did, but they’d still be useful for me. We separated out the more unusual ones and sent them to a hospital alongside the stored blood, but I kept some of the regenerative pills, just in case. 

Advancement resources made up a decent bulk of the ring’s wealth, and they were of… mixed utility. I had initially written them off, since I didn’t have vampiric mana, but not all of them were only usable by vampires. There were several body tempering resources, which I presumed were used for empowering the Khet enhancements to the body. Some were simple, essentially just supplements meant to fuel the energy levels of someone at the peak of third gate, and others were more complex. One of the more potent was unfortunately not quite as useful to me, as it primarily flooded the body with energy to allow a spell or legacy to capture that power and work it into them. That might have some minor use with Quality Lifespan, but to maximize the growth of my full-gate spells, I was going to need to drain myself and let them grow back stronger, not take in external power. 

The best of the body tempering resources, however, was a set of six tinctures that were designed to help flush wasted or damaging bundles of energy from the body. They weren’t going to instantly undo all of the damage that I’d done to my heart and mana channels by fusing them early, nor would they completely remove the thin lines of desolation building up in the bones of my hands from repeated fractures. 

What they would do was help remove small portions of that damage, as well as work alongside Quality Lifespan to ensure that the locked energy within my body wasn’t accidentally locking down anything that I didn’t want to make a permanent part of my strength. It wasn’t a revolutionary transformation, but it was a solid and dependable improvement. 

While that might have been the best of the body tempering resources, the best parts of the ring weren’t in body tempering, but rather in ascension specific resources. The vampires I’d fought had both been at the peak of third gate, preparing to advance to fourth, and thus had been preparing for it. There was a forger stone, which would melt into a spell that forged mana and reinforce it. I was absolutely going to use that on either Fungal Lock or Fungal Armor – the locking spell had several meta spells working in conjunction with it, while the adaptive armor spell was one of my strongest spells. 

There were a handful of weaker treasures that would burn up in ascension to provide some minor benefits to my strength, mana density and give me a bit of a headstart with my mist, and perhaps the single best item of all: the meru-stream. The item needed to be laid along the spine during an ascension, at which point it would slowly melt through the skin and into the spinal cord.

I had done a lot of reinforcement to my bone, and to many of my internal organs like my heart, gallbladder, and kidneys, but having a tougher spine was definitely not something I was against. It was called the energy highway and the central pillar of the body for a reason, after all. But the strengthening of the spine wasn’t the main purpose of the meru-stream, but rather, a useful side effect. Its primary purpose was in assisting the spine’s function in accordance with the brain. Most of a person’s senses, including about two thirds of  their mana senses, passed through the spine in order to get to the brain and be processed. The meru-stream helped the spine, well, streamline the process. It was a passive thing, not going to alter my active perception of the world, but I would be better able to make use of the information I had coming in. 

Alongside my already powerful senses, development from the Runelight Lens, the gate carving pattern I’d chosen, the Timemind, and whatever the Ghostmind spell did, my ability to take in and sort through a lot of information was going to be much sharper than someone might expect out of someone who wasn’t a knowledge mage. High quality senses had been a massive strength for me thus far, and this felt like the perfect treasure for me. 

Well, maybe not perfect. There was the one that the leader of the Beastbody guild had mentioned, allowing you to use a mana meditation inside your body’s energy. And the spellbinder rose that Orykson had talked about. And something that would heal the damage to my mana channels. 

Well, regardless, the meru-stream was an excellent pick for me to expand on my ability to process my already potent senses.

I swept my hand out and transferred most of the treasures that I was going to use during my next ascension into Dusk’s vault, while putting things to donate or sell back in the ring I’d taken off the vampire. With that done, Meadow looked through the one containing the ritual components and reassured me that it didn’t look like anything had been tampered with. She wasn’t an expert on blood, soul, or vampiric rituals, but she was still an experienced and powerful mage, so I thanked her for the advice.