The Third Step: Chapter Twenty-Nine

The Flock took a long moment, hovering in the air, and the sole standing Arcanist of the cwn anwnn pack growled, preparing to lunge. I held out my hand and tried to project an aura of confidence and calm. The dog didn’t quite understand, but it also didn’t attack.

“I never want to see any of you again,” the Flock said, then turned and shot toward its nest. There was a moment where once again, I felt the mental mana warping in a way that felt altogether too similar to space to be a coincidence. I tensed, prepared to step into Dusk’s realm if there was even an iota of an attack. 

Items in the nest began to vanish, especially the skulls and strange hanging lichen. It didn’t take everything – it couldn’t, not with how weak the Flock was right now – but it took the things that it most cared about, the trophies of the foes most hated and the materials to slowly rebuild its body from mana. 

And just like that, the Flock was gone. 

I glanced at the cwn anwnn, then let out a long, tired sigh. There was an argument to be made that I shouldn’t have interfered in the natural process of territory disputes, but it was far and away too late for that. The Flock attacking the cwn anwnn  was an annoyingly realistic possibility, as its natural feelings of hate and resentment grew over time, and it found itself unable to forgive and forget the territory dispute. That hate was paltry compared to its hate of humans, and of me specifically, but it might well do it just to lash out at me indirectly. 

My tail lashed in annoyance as I worked through the mental problem, and I tapped my fingers against my palm. Attacking the cwn anwnn pack wouldn’t inherently be a violation of our agreement, as it really was a very normal thing for animals to fight over territory. 

Dusk floated over on her cloud and flopped down on my shoulder, whistling that she could just take them into herself. That would protect them, as well as help her use some of their magic to work with my ghosts, making us synergize better as a whole. When I asked if they’d have enough land in her realm to be comfortable, Dusk just let out an annoyed snort and told me that she wouldn’t have suggested it if she hadn’t already calculated the environmental impact. 

At that, I flicked my finger and tore open a portal to her realm. Herding the dogs into their new environment was a bit of a challenge, and in the end, I wound up luring the uninjured ones with a mash of leftover mushy peas and chicken, while helping Kene move the injured ones into the protected area. Once we had done that, they pulled me into a hug, and I hugged them back, squeezing tightly. 

“I want to hear everything, but first, we should look at the body,” Kene said. “Even if it’s too destroyed for us to use for the hag, we should probably move it.” 

“I wonder if Orykson will take it?” I wondered aloud. “I doubt it. He’s mostly interested in the more unique elements of the body bound to my spirit, and those will probably only linger when and if I die for real.”

Kene gave me a strange look, which I thought was unfair, and we approached my body. The Fungal Armor that I’d been wearing, as well as all my defensive spells, had all faded away, leaving a body that was horribly burnt, had a number of broken bones, and was impaled on the boughs of a tree. Other than that, it was in better shape than I’d expected. Oh sure, the burns and breaks were awful, but I had partially expected myself to be reduced to nothing more than a blackened set of bones. 

The strangest part was what my body felt like to my mana senses. My body was so rich in energy that I was certain it could have been used as a mana source, and possibly could have been used for the creation of advancement resources. Like I’d expected, the area where I’d fused my mana channels into my body, and filled in the cracks with forged resolve mana, had dissipated entirely, the spiritual nature of mana unable to inhabit a purely energetic thing like a dead body. The energy circuits of all my spells were there, and that brought on the thought of trying to feed the corpse to my staff as a method to advance it, which… was rather disturbing, in large part due to the fact I thought it might work. 

To my surprise, however, my beastcore tattoo and the hudau heart had each survived in some capacity. The beastcore was no longer filled with soul mana, naturally, but it was still a rich ball of hudau energy. Not as good as a hudau stone, which could directly advance someone, but an excellent resource for creating advancement potions of nearly any type. The hudau heart, meanwhile, had remained filled with the balanced fusion of energy, and was sitting there. It wasn’t likely that the same recipe would work on my body as worked with hudau tortoises, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone could use the body as a method to create a potion to grant it to someone else, especially if they used the beastcore. 

I glanced at Kene, curious what they’d think about the body, only to see them frowning and pursing their lips. 

“It’s… not terrible,” Kene finally said. “There’s some severe injuries to the brain. I’m fairly certain that with enough potions and time I can reconstruct the grain, patch up the lungs, and repair the skin. We’re talking about months, maybe a year, though. And the skin won’t be pretty, plus I can’t replace the energy flow patterns in the brain that were damaged.”

“That’s probably a good thing, though – it means that the hag will have few, if any, of my memories,” I pointed out. “We also have time. Not a ton, but we can do it.”

“I’ll need a lot of help. You’re going to have to use your preservation extraspatial pocket spell to create a place where I can store this, which is going to take an absurd amount of mana. Then I’m going to need to stick it in at least fourth gate preservation liquid to further slow decay. We’ll need a cauldron big enough to fit the entire body in.”

“Ughhhhh,” I said, drawing out the sigh. “You’re telling me that I need to do enchanting? You’re lucky I love you.” 

“I know you do,” Kene said, surprisingly serious. I paused and looked over at them, then took their hand and squeezed it. 

We spent a little more time going over the body, just to make sure it would work for the hag, before I sent the body into Dusk’s vault, and we turned our attention to the contents of the nest that the Flock had left behind.

First things first, I examined the long, hanging loops of lichen emanating the 

“Dreamwalker lichen,” Kene said. “It helps… access… the world of dreams, emotions, and the unconscious mind. Though I’m not sure that’s right. I’ve never been there, but as far as I understand it, it’s not really a ‘place’ or a ‘world’, despite its name, so much as a different axis of the normal world that’s hard to walk along.”

“I don’t know too much about it, but I’m guessing that’s where the Flock flew to leave us so quickly, and how it teleported the bombs onto me? I could feel space behaving oddly, kind of like how it can when people are shadowstepping.” 

“I think so, yeah. But like I said, I’ve never been, my knowledge is limited,” Kene said. “But it’s probably worth looking at moving some into Dusk’s realm. It’s not directly useful in combat, but it has some potion uses, and if you got any sort of psychedelic mushrooms that worked by projecting people’s minds along the dream axis, then it could help boost them.”  

Dusk nodded her agreement and hopped off my shoulder, floating over to begin collecting the long, looping materials. As soon as she’d finished, she turned her attention to the bones that had been left behind. Though the Flock had taken the strongest ones, the ones that had been Arcanist level sources of death, there were too many for the flock to take everything, and the sum total of everything here could likely be measured out as at least two dozen fourth gate death sources, which Dusk absorbed, explaining that she was going to break it down and further empower the energy cycle within her, enriching the soil even further.

Mana sources were somewhat the name of the game when we stepped into the now boneless tree hollow. Though the Flock hadn’t taken them off of every single plunderer that it had killed, mainly taking the ones that had most interested its hateful bird-brain, but that was still at least seven or eight dozen mana sources. 

We spent a while sorting through the massive pile, first setting aside the ones that could be re-incorporated into the environment without disturbing anything, like the various glowing seeds and stones. Once we were left with the things that weren’t likely to be useful to the ecosystem around us, we began to sort them as well. 

First were the ones that could either be crafted into useful potions for our group, or could be directly absorbed by someone to restore mana, like the spinning sphere of spatial energy that was nearly impossible to even touch without using a teleportation spell, and kept its energy entirely contained within the spinning sphere. I’d be using it, as well as plenty of other spatial and temporal treasures, to keep a continual flow of mana when I constructed the space of slowed decay for Kene.

The Flock hadn’t used any sort of organizational system, just cramming things wherever, which meant while sorting through the mana sources, we found a variety of natural treasures, enchanted items, and a handful of spatial rings. 

The spatial rings were set aside to be dropped off with the Naturalists. If I had all the time in the world, it might be polite to bring it personally to everyone who had lost someone beyond the cordon, but there wasn’t time. We could probably have kept them, but I wanted the families to at least get some solace.

The natural treasures were also sorted first by which ones could be incorporated back into the forest without trouble, then we went through the rest, though truthfully, most natural treasures weren’t able to be returned to the environment once they were harvested, which meant it was almost an inverse of the mana sources, leaving us with far more items that we needed to look at than we could put back.

By and large, the leftovers weren’t particularly impressive, or else weren’t useful for us. Things like a palisade-acorn, which massively boosted mana concentration and improved spell growth, but fused your walls and gate to prevent any further advancement from ever happening. The lightning-struck light, which was an excellent natural treasure that could be used by a first or second gate tempest mage to dramatically improve the potency of any future lightning spells they learned. Or growing-bark, which somewhat increased the amount of first gate life mana someone had, which was fine, but the amount of growth was relatively minor for me now. 

But even amongst the things we couldn’t use, there were a few stand out treasures that we actually could incorporate…

Dawn seemed enamored with a sparkling opalescent stone. It shed almost no power at all, only the barest amount of solar energy that I thought might be the reason for its coloration. Still, she seemed to love it, taking it in her jaws around with her as she floated amongst the trees. I insisted that she also take a couple of other items as well, and she picked out a few things she dubiously thought might be of use to her, but she was the most enamored with the stone. 

Kene found something more conventionally useful, a line of natural energy flows that was similar to a ritual or large array, which they could use to improve their ritual healing spells. There was also a golden soul potion that they tried to force on me, but I insisted that they take it, as it would help go the extra mile to reaching the needed level of soul stability. 

Dusk, on the other hand, got something that was eerily familiar, as Kene had used one in the past: a tribulation stone. The treasures, if absorbed shortly following an ascension, would thicken the mists in the mana-garden, in exchange for improving mana density by a considerable amount. Not quite an ascension’s worth, but still considerable, at least as much as two or three drops of destiny. She wouldn’t be ascending to Arcanist anytime soon, but it was oddly reliving for both of us that once she was one, she’d be a bit slower, buying me time to catch up.

Much like Kene, I wound up selecting two things. The first was a chunk of calcified eye from an omnieye, which in addition to everything I’d collected on Crysite and the mana sources, finally rounded out the list of components I’d need to progress my Runelight Lens to fourth gate. The second was a large, if slightly withered, mushroom fruit that would strengthen one of my fungal spells. 

And so, with the nest empty, piles of things that we needed to distribute throughout the cordon, a body for the hag, and a pack of hounds taking up residence in Dusk, we turned and started the long journey back toward the cordon.