The Third Step: Chapter Twenty-Five

We raced along the ground, following the path of the hounds, tracing the location of the asomatous through tracking magic that the strongest Arcanist of the pack was using. 

At least, Kene, Siobhan, and I raced. Dusk’s powers of flight had grown to the point where she would have easily been able to blast past us. I could have passed faster as well, if I’d used some of my teleportation spells, but that would have left everyone behind, and corralling the dogs into and out of Dusk had mainly just confused the tracking spells. 

We made a good pace, and Kene was forced to retire within Dusk several times, his own life magic not meant for body enhancement. I was better off, but far from perfect – my own body was significantly tempered, but I wasn’t a long distance runner. I pushed through a few times, using it as training to improve my body’s capacity to hold and cycle tempest energy in my lungs and bloodstream, but I still did retire in Dusk twice, just to help recover. 

After nearly six and a half hours of running, however, we started to slow, then stop. Though none of the cwn anwnn were capable of speech, it seemed like they were gathering their strength before the final stretch, allowing the weaker members of the pack to restore themselves before the final stretch. I used the time to allow my full-gate spells to restore my own energy, pushing myself a bit further. 

I was still a long way from the rich, overflowing source of power that I’d felt my full-gate spells reach when I’d been a second gate, pushing myself beyond my limits regularly. If you removed the soul mana beast core, the organshield crystal, and the effects of my roots, then I’d only pushed the growth of my Magister’s Body and Beast Mage’s Soul until they were about average for a peak third gate with dual body enhancements. That still meant I had a lot of potential left to grow with the life and death spells. 

I thought I better understood some of Ikki’s comments about the danger of growth spells. They were appealing, but I wouldn’t be able to rely on external factors to improve my power forever, and if I didn’t put in the work to push them, I’d swiftly fall behind comparable non-growth spells. 

That was all something for another time, however. For right now, I was as restored as I’d be able to get, and the pack seemed to be similar. We set off again, and after about fifteen minutes of running, the nest of the Flock came into view. 

The first thing that was obvious was the abundance of birds. In the trees all around the nest, there were hundreds of birds, maybe thousands of them. They ran the gamut from simple birds that had never awakened any sort of magic to ones that were nearing the pinnacle of Arcanist. As we approached, they began to squawk and screech. 

Perhaps understandably, given all of the theming around birds, the asomatous’ lair was recessed into one of the massive, three hundred foot tall trees that dominated the Obsidian Forest’s landscape. The hollow was filled with bones, mostly skulls, but there were others as well – I spotted some femurs, pelvises, and a few ribs. The mass of bone trapped within the tree had filled the entire space with a rich and powerful death energy, dense enough to be at least fifth gate, though verging on sixth. 

Hanging from the tree, feasting on the tree’s powerful life energy, and the abundance of death energy in the air, were long, thin strands of lichen tinged a deep purple, entirely unlike any lichen I’d seen before. It almost resembled ivy or hanging moss more than it did most lichen. The lichen spiraled out waves of mental energy, but it almost seemed tinged with spatial magic at the same time, like how shadow magic could at times mimic the effects of teleportation. Whatever it was, it combined with the death magic around us to form a near perfect environment for an asomatous. 

Scattered within the nest were the asomatous’ trophies, taken from the dead. A chaotic riot of magical items using a dozen different types of mana, it was an uncomfortable reminder that the asomatous was a killer. 

The flock emerged from within the hollow, stepping out to the edge of the hollow, and it surveyed us. Its strange eyes landed on me, then on Dusk, and I drew my hand back, prepared for the worst, but I called out to it. 

“We don’t need to do this, Flock. There are other threats in the forest that drive people off without pursuing them to the point of death. If you’re willing to just drive people off, away from the forest, then we can let you go.” 

The Flock threw its head back and laughed, the sound deep and high pitched at the same time, sending shivers down my spine. It looked back at me, and its mouth grew into a smile entirely too wide. 

“You made the mistake of following me back to my nest when you, unlike most, were given the opportunity to run. Then you think you can enter my home and make demands? You are not even fourth gate, let alone an Arcanist, and you’re certainly not me.” 

Then the asomatous exploded forward, and chaos swept through the fight. I instantly conjured my suite of defensive spells, feeling a crack of spiritual pain as the Ivy Cloak splintered upward into mastery and shoving it aside to focus on another time. Kene’s hands thrust into the air, and blazing amber light swept over me and the pack, even as flaming runes forged themselves to join our attacks. The pack leapt into action, matching the birds as they rushed through the air, an arcanist bird slamming into one of the arcanist hounds, even as flashing spells filled the air. 

Dusk blasted forward at her best speed, and for an instant, I thought that I could physically see the warped images of birds and estragon in the sky around her as she drew on her dominion and the power of her inhabitants. Her cloud raced forward, making the asomatous practically seem slow, and she actually intercepted the movement of the Flock, letting her slam her hand into the Flock’s strange spiritual body. There was a flash of gold, then Dusk was rebuffed, a lance of psychic rage hammering into her head and disrupting her cloud before the Flock returned to racing for me.

I only had an instant to teleport out of the way of the Flock’s strike before flinging a ball of Foxfyre in the way of a spear of forged ice flying at my head, knocking aside a wave of bones from a death-crow with the Ivy Cloak, forming a Combat Echo to punch out at a nearby bird with a maw of shredding teeth, and falling next to Dusk. She was pulling herself back up, rubbing her head, then she laughed. 

“What was that?” I asked. “You didn’t use any sort of spell, you just… punched it?” 

Dusk smarmily told me that she had been making a delivery, then I teleported us out of the way of a sweeping wave of force, spun, and dove at the Flock. I overcharged my mana and threaded a touch of soul mana in, then reached into her realm for blademoss. 

But not my usual, peak third gate blademoss. 

When I’d been on Crysite, I’d helped Gakodi boost some spiritshield-lichen infused blademoss to fifth gate, in order to let her fight against a false Arcanist. She’d won the fight handily, as the advancement to Arcanist was something of a force multiplier. Now, I reached for that same boosted lichen-moss combination that she’d used before. 

In the same moment, I drew on the power of my staff, of the Nascent Truth of the Guardian and the Druid, and tried to focus them into Enhance Plant Life, and into the material itself. I’d figured out the trick to infusing resonance into my senses fairly well, but infusing them into spells was a different matter entirely, like fumbling around in the dark to find the light panel, while wearing thick oven mitts, in a room that you didn’t recognize. 

I didn’t entirely fail, but nor was it a resounding success. I managed to infuse a bit of extra power from my Nascent Truths, but attempting to direct the power of the staff failed, requiring a lot more attention and will than I’d been able to direct. 

Still, the power of resonance, overcharged life mana, and soul mana was enough. I teleported right in front of the Flock, while the moss and lichen blazed to life in a crescent sweep. I only had an instant to see the look of shock on the asomatous’ face before I’d bisected it at the waist. 

Its entire lower half began to dissolve, curling away into wisps of ectoplasm that would rejoin the mana-energy cycle. Against a human opponent, that would have been a killing blow. Even against a spirit, the damage would take time to heal, and wouldn’t be forgotten easily. 

The flock screamed. The birds all around him seemed to swell with power, and the air grew thick with magic. Dawn held her hand up and cast Enforce Reality, trying to break this working, but she was still working at a power disadvantage. The birds seemed to sense what she was doing and began to dive bomb her, knocking her back and stopping her spell. Nearby, green light was flowing out of Kene’s hands, trying to stabilize the cwn anwnn who had taken the most grievous wounds, and– Danger!

I barely dodged out of the way of a surge of purple-black light that crashed into the area where I’d once been, then turned and teleported out of the way of a spiralling vortex of steel-tipped feathers. I leapt back as the remaining half of the Flock’s body soared through the air, screeching, and cast Placid Mind just in time to defend my brain from a dozen hammer blows. 

If it had only been one, then I would have been fine, but the Flock had restored its mana just as surely as the cwn anwnn had, and it had dropped some of the coordination of the birds to bring its higher advancement down on me like the weight of one of the enormous trees dropped right on my head. The defensive bubble of Placid Mind cracked as I frantically sought to repair it, then it shattered. 

I watched helplessly as I slammed to the ground, and the Flock left me for dead. It retook control of the birds around it and broke through the barrier of blue light Siobhan was maintaining around Kene. It cut them in half, a twisted mirror of what I’d done to it, leaving their body a raggedy mess. The hag rose up from Kene’s body, fleeing into the forest, but was cut apart with another of the black-purple arcs of light. Dusk did her best to give chase, but she was overpowered by the far stronger Flock. 

In the same instant that was happening, the strongest of the birds managed to slit the throat of one of the Arcanist cwn anwnn. That wasn’t enough to make it a decisive victory, but it turned the tides of battle, and the instant the Flock bit down on Dusk’s heard and returned to focus on the pack, the remaining cwn anwnn didn’t last long. 

As I lay there, blood leaking from the hole in my chest, the Flock floating over to finish me off, I heard a faint barking sound. In the same instant, a thought drifted into my head. 

Where was Dawn?