The Third Step: Chapter Twenty-Three

The golden light slammed into the form of the Flock, and the ancient asomatous let out a ear-rending scream. It thrust its hand down, and birds dove in, intercepting the wave of light as it ripped through the air and pounded down on the spirit. The Flock flared its wings out, curling them in around itself like a shield of spiritual feathers, and Dawn continued to unleash a wrathful beam of justice against the spirit of hate. 

The cwn anwnn arcanists arrived then, their hunting spell latching onto the spirit. Each one grabbed one of the wings and began biting, tearing, chewing at the ectoplasmic substance, and Dawn’s light slipped through the gaps created by the hounds. 

Then there was a flicker of spatial magic as something was drawn from a storage ring, or some other artifact. The item felt oddly familiar, like the emergency recall bands that had been in use on Crysite, and my eyes went wide. 

“Teleportation!” I warned. Dawn understood, and compressed her beam, her own dominion channeling through the spell, and other spells working to focus its power. The beam went from the thickness of a watermelon to as thin as a pencil, punching through the wings and spearing the Asomatous through the heart. Golden mana began to eat away at the spirit from the inside. 

I got one last look at the ancient spirit. Its wings were torn and damaged from the cwn anwnn arcanists, and its talon-like legs were gushing ectoplasm from the rest of the pack’s efforts. Dawn had carved out a chunk of its chest, and someone had managed to crack its beak-like nose. Then the spell completed, and the piece of paper with the pre-charged Seven League Step fluttered to the ground, its single use of magic spent. 

I stared at the area where the spirit had been moments before, then let out a long, tired sigh. Wounds like that on a human or a beast would be fatal, but a spirit didn’t actually have a heart or lungs to pierce, nor blood to lose. Dawn had managed to do some damage, yes, but it wasn’t a permanent wound. The Flock could still gather its strength and still come back for us. 

But we had still weakened it. It would take time to gather the death and mental mana needed for it to restore itself from all the damage, and it would also take time for it to put together an assortment of birds powerful enough to challenge the cwn anwnn pack, Dusk, Dawn, Siobhan, Kene, and myself. 

For an instant, I contemplated casting Seven League Step and giving chase. Most of my mana was burnt out, sure, but the Flock was so weak. But even if I was okay with killing the spirit and was confident in being able to do so if I caught it – neither of which were true – I didn’t know which of the cardinal directions the talisman had carried the spirit, nor if it had other magic built in to carry it more than seven leagues. My attempts to follow would at best be just guessing, and at worst would leave me separated from everyone to be picked off by the Flock or some other predator. 

The cwn anwnn who had been chasing the Flock turned and began running back towards the rest of the pack, while I petted Dawn on her head, and placed Dusk on my shoulder as I contemplated if I even wanted to kill it. 

I wasn’t sure. Asomatous weren’t humans, they were spirits of emotion. They weren’t possessed of the same freedoms and mind as humans. In that way, they were more like ghosts, and I knew that even if she tried to hurt me, I wouldn’t kill Hannah. If she tried to kill me I’d spirit trap her, talk to her, maybe even forcibly return her to a graveyard, but I wouldn’t kill her.

And worse, unlike ghosts, asomatous were capable of change. Not fully, but they were complete beings, not just imprints. An asomatous of hate might never be able to shift its core identity away from hate, but it could change what it hated. A peak arcanist bent on killing all humans and feeding their bodies to its birds was dangerous. A peak arcanist focused on destroying all blueberry pies, on the other hand, was just an annoyance that could be easily dealt with. 

But could the Flock turn itself around? Arcanists were limited on a fundamental level. I didn’t pretend to understand the full scope of what a Clarity of Purpose, Intrinsic Limitation, or Origin of Power were, but the way that Meadow and Orykson talked about them, they weren’t just suggestions that could be pushed aside. They were firm, immutable portions of a person, a loss of free will and choice that was needed to open the way to further power. If the Flock had defined its Purpose around killing humans, then it might be too late for it to change. 

That brought a somewhat frightening thought around higher advancement. Meadow had stated that all three of the resonance enhancements were refined as a person advanced. What she meant by that wasn’t exactly clear, but I suspected that if someone had formed a Title like the Warrior, they would struggle to see non-combat solutions to their problems. 

I was only third gate, nearing or at the point where even most combat mages stopped focusing time and money on advancement. I was a long way off from needing to worry about Titles, and even my three resonance enhancements were some ways away. 

But I couldn’t help but feel like it was all tied together – chasing after the Flock, my own resonance enhancements to be, the operation of Titles, and more. They were connected, at least to me. The Flock wasn’t an ant that might have twenty words to communicate at best, and was otherwise largely mindless. It was a person. A limited person, sure, but so was Meadow, Orykson, Ikki, and even Liz’s grandfather. 

I was broken out of the murky, muddled thoughts by Kene taking my hand and squeezing it gently. 

“You all did well,” I said, and Kene just shrugged.

“I’m not one to advocate for death or killing people, but… I wish Dawn had been able to kill it. Or the cwn anwnn, I’m not picky.” 

That hit me harder than they probably meant for it to. Kene had the Nascent Truth of Aid, and they were confident in the belief that the Flock needed to go. I sighed, then jerked in surprise as a cold nose touched my hand. I looked down and laughed, seeing one of the cwn anwnn had come over for pets. Dusk whistled and hopped off my shoulder, floating gently through the air and landing on its head, where she began scratching behind its ears. 

I studied the hounds around me as I patted haunches of the cwn annwn that Dusk was currently petting. The pack seemed to be fairly well-fed, with no immediate health concerns. A few of them had fleas, worms, and other such conditions that came with living in the wild, but none of them were in poor health.

Peering deeper with my mana senses, I could sense a good bit of their magic. They weren’t spirit-beasts, those rare few creatures that had both the bestial ability to take on new forms as well as the spiritual ability to create a dominion, but if I wasn’t so familiar with beast magic, I might have thought that they were. Their first gate mana seemed to be pretty standard – sensory spells, a bite spell, a mana storing spell, so on and so forth. They were somewhat interesting in their construction, especially the mana storage spell, which seemed highly over-built, but I couldn’t use any of them, and they weren’t interesting enough to warrant further study. 

Their second gate was also interesting, as it was a full-gate spell, but of a sort that was radically different from any full-gate I’d seen before. Namely, none of the power actually went into the garden, but instead spilled out in the region around them. After a bit of studying and comparison, I thought it was the source of the almost-dominion around them. The spell was projecting out death mana, which would automatically seek out and empower friendly ghosts, shades, and possibly even more complex creatures less based on death mana, like nature spirits. 

I grabbed some paper and wrote down the spell, just in case – I didn’t have any plans for a remodel, but I never knew if it would come in handy. I snorted as I realized that this was probably part of how Edgar’s initial collection had come to be. With it noted down, I turned to studying their third gate. It contained the Cwn Annwn’s Hunt spell, which had allowed them to lock onto the Flock and actually hurt it with their bite spell while further empowering their friendly spirits, but I saw the issues that Meadow had forewarned me of.  

I had death mana, so that was no issue, and my body’s reserves of telluric, knowledge, mental, solar, and lunar energy would be enough to let me cast it. It wouldn’t even be that draining for me. But the issue was abnegation and desolation. Human bodies didn’t have much of either naturally, and though I’d increased the natural amount easily ten or fifteen times over through my spellcasting, if I tried to place the spell in my death gate, I might only be able to power it for a second or two, assuming that it could take enough of a hold to let me cast it at all. I wasn’t confident that I could.

Removing the sections of the spell where that energy type was particularly distinct would be doable, though I’d want to have Meadow or Ikki check my work before I cast it, but like Meadow had suggested on the boat, I wasn’t sure it would give me the universal ability to interact with intangible spirits. 

The reduced version could let me hit any death based spirits, as well as most mind based spirits like the Flock and other asomatous, but it would be far less certain to strike other insubstantial beings like shadow elementals or nature spirits that were blending into their environment. That wouldn’t be the end of the world, and it would still be a useful spell for me, but it was still a limitation. 

I wrote down the spell in full, then curiously examined what other third gate spells they had – spells for empowering their pack, making them able to act more powerful as a collective whole, spells for tracking prey over long distances, spells that allowed them to break down and eat enemy ghosts for power, spells for processing other animals, and a few other things. I wrote a few of them down, and was preparing to try and take a peek at fourth gate – just as a little preview – when Kene approached me. 

“Siobhan thinks the pack wants to go after the Flock,” Kene said. “Not now, but once everyone’s recovered their mana. They’re growing antsy, and they’ve clashed a few times. I was wondering if you wanted to go with them?” 

I pressed my lips together, thinking. On one hand, if the cwn anwnn were harrying the Flock, it might buy us time to find the rebirth tree and escape the forest. But there was no guarantee that the pack could take down the Flock, and having five additional spellbinders with them could make all the difference. Time was another factor to consider. We weren’t horribly crunched for time, but nor did we have an abundance of it.