The Third Step: Chapter Twenty-One

The sensory boosting potion that we had made had a duration of around a minute and a half. We could have made it last longer, but we’d have needed to sacrifice the degree to which the range was boosted, or reduce the overall number of potions we were creating so drastically that it would have looped right back around to having a lesser overall duration again. 

But with each one only lasting for a short while, and with Seven League Step requiring ten minutes to cast, we couldn’t use a potion at two stops, and we needed to get the most out of each individual stop. I didn’t regret picking up the flowers, but I quickly scooped Kene up, cast Antburden, and began to teleport from one massive tree branch to another, trying to get the most out of Kene’s range as I could while we were there.

Within my mind, Hannah began musing, and she used her dominion to project the calculations out for Kene, Dusk, and Dawn to hear. 

“Let’s see. With a radius of roughly ten miles while boosted, that’s… about three hundred fourteen square miles. With eleven potions to boost that, and rounding down due to things like fields of interference and the like, that’s about three thousand, four hundred square miles, or a bit over two million acres of searched land. How big are the cordoned lands?” 

“A bit less than eight million acres,” I responded, recalling what one of the information pamphlets that I’d read through at the naturalists building said. “They’re big.” 

“Admittedly, you’re also taking some assumptions,” Kene said. “My maximum range might be eleven miles in any direction, but that’s without anything blocking me. Half the trees in this area are so dense with life energy that they interfere in Locate Plants.” 

Hannah was about to respond when I caught something at the edge of my senses, a sharp, unfriendly presence that prickled at the winds of resolve. They carried only one word: danger. 

Sensing my thoughts, Hannah immediately shut up, and Kene, who saw my face, went silent as well. I immediately began pulsing my mana senses out in as wide of a pattern as I could. With all of the boosters, Kene’s divination spells might be able to reach further than me, and Dusk might be the most advanced mage in the entire group, but when it came to the scope and fidelity of mana senses, I was still the strongest of our group many times over.

There were lots of things in range. In such an old and wild area, animals that had gathered enough mana to awaken their magic weren’t exactly uncommon, and there were stoneshaper martins in the trees, sparrhunks in the trees, and choruks skittering around in the leaf litter. None of them were what drew my attention, though – even predator animals like the martins were unlikely to attack a contingent of third and fourth gate mages travelling together. Not when there was easier prey to be had. It wasn’t that they couldn’t present a threat, especially if they attacked together, but they wouldn’t have spiked my senses like that without reason. 

There!

At the edge of my senses, I could feel a slippery presence draped in death, lunar, life, tempest, and desolation mana. A death crow, and a powerful one at that. This was in the middle of fifth gate. It had been trying to slip out of my range, but the instant that I got a read on it, it turned and began flying right at us. 

“Death crow incoming,” I warned, placing Kene on the branch next to me. 

Orbs of light began to swirl around me, projecting shielding, boosting, and blessing spells from Kene and Siobhan. In the same instant, I was working on conjuring my own defensive spells. Fungal Armor forged thick plates of turkey tail mushrooms over my chest, shoulders, arms, and legs. Brairthreads formed a cage of spinning, sharp briars around me. A cloak of long strands of ivy swirled out from my back, phasing through my tail, which lashed at the odd sensation. The ghostly form of Arthur began to channel his protective dominion through me, joining with the power of the Guardian as I prepared to defend my friends and family. 

At the edge of my senses, the death crow began to unleash ungated mana from itself, and my eyes widened as I realized what it was attempting to do. The power that all beasts gained at Arcanist was the ability to command lesser creatures to their side, the Beast Tide. I’d seen Edgar use it to push people on the Beastgate Trail Trail, and it was probably in use with the desolant queens working to command and coordinate their soldier ants. 

Already, two of the stoneshaper martins, one early and the other peak fourth, were under its sway, racing across the trees, aiming for Kene, who the bird had identified as being the vulnerable one. 

Dusk whistled out that she’d drive them off, I just needed to take the crow, and I agreed. Dawn and Dusk shot off to either side of Kene, crystals of golden light slamming through one, while Dusk conjured spheres of snow and lances of sand.

I let my mind block out their fight, trusting them to manage their own battles, and turned my attention to the task of stopping the bird from summoning more allies. But how? 

The answer came quickly to me, in the form of the newest spell that I’d learned: Kludde’s Weight. With the death crow still several hundred feet out, I powered my sensory spells, focused the power of my staff and Guardian, focused all of my mana senses onto the bird, and cast the spell. A hammer of pressure slammed into the bird, and despite the fact that it was two gates higher than I was, it was still only the size of an ordinary crow. Its flight was knocked off course and it crashed into a tree, the power leaking from its arcanist ability flowing away, no longer able to focus on me. 

Despite the fact that its body mass and size weren’t larger than an ordinary crow, it was still a beast, with an energy-enhanced body and two gates of higher advancement. Within moments, it had righted itself and flared up into the sky. Spinning knots of shade material – not shadows, but the very spiritual essence that shades were made of – began to gather at its wings, prepared to launch out at me. It pushed at me with its own mana senses, lessening the pressure of Kludde’s weight. 

I shifted my mana senses, bearing down the pressure on different parts of its body, even as I teleported forward and caught myself in mid-air with an Immovable Lock. Spears of shade-stuff launched at me, only to crash into the mid fourth-gate barriers produced by Kene and Siobhan. The enfield yipped excitedly even as more spells hammered down. A few of them cracked and slipped through, but my briars and ivy spun to catch, redirect, and lessen the blow, so that when it crashed against my armor, it merely left scratches and shallow cuts. 

I cast Mold Aura, then drew on my time mana and prepared to leave an echo. Or rather, a few of them.

A Combat Echo exploded from me, hammering a palm-strike laced with Foxthorn into the bird’s side before it faded away into nothing. Mana forged itself within the complex magic of the bird, but it was still an Arcanist. The spears were disrupted only for a second before the bird dove down, claws trailing with sickly green light. Another Echo appeared, as I used Reposition Anchor, causing it to intercept with a slash of Briarthreads, driving the bird back a step, but only for an instant. A wave of pale green sliced through the echo, and the bird went for another dive, shadow and green light mixing together as it rushed for where I seemed to be. I cast Magical Echo to slow it down, but the bird still cracked through the shields that Kene and Siobhan had provided… 

And slid through the Refine Image enhanced Lesser Image Recall. I let the illusion and Mold Aura spell fade, then released the barrage. 

In the moments where the bird had been distracted by my illusion, I’d drawn out six of my Pinpoint Boneshards, set them to points along my shoulder, conjured a ball of Foxfyre in each hand, and fueled my yin-caps and frost succulent to prepare it for an attack, before quickly using Capture Moment on them, as well as my Briarthreads. 

When I released my attack, a flurry of dozens of briars, twelve shards of bone, four balls of purple kitsune flame, and two spikes of frigid ice all raced down and slammed into the bird, rattling it and sending it spiraling off to slam into another tree again, feathers lightly singed, magic burnt and disrupted, and drops of blood. 

If I’d been trying to kill the bird, I’d have used Mantle Dragonfyre, but that would be both foolish and cruel. If this bird wasn’t a member of the Flock, then it was probably targeting us for a meal, and simply thought that humans in the wood were likely to be unprepared for its magic. And if it was a member, then killing one of them would be far more likely to bring down its full ire. Sparing it might buy us a touch of leniency. But I hadn’t felt anything from the bird indicating a connection to a greater power, so I hoped it was just a lone bird. 

The bird drifted into the air, and I watched it warily, slowly starting to gather power for another attack, just in case. It was floating away from me, so it was possible that it was leaving, and it didn’t seem to be releasing more of its arcanist ability. And yet, it wasn’t quite leaving, either. 

Dusk floated up next to me, and Dawn to my other side. I nodded to both of them as they communicated how they’d driven off the stoneshaper martins without killing either one, something that warmed my heart. Dawn gave me a curious thought about the bird, and I shrugged. 

“I don’t know what it’s doing. I don’t want to fire on it and potentially kill it, but I also don’t want to let it do something to hurt us.” 

That was when I felt it. A presence, at the very pinnacle of what fifth gate could achieve. No, it was boosted beyond those ordinary limits through an abundance of time, training, and the plunder of the deep forest. An old spirit of emotion, an asomatous born from a hatred of humanity and a love of birds.

The Flock’s power rushed down through the bird before us. It was still unstable, focused in too many bodies to fully work through this agent, but it wouldn’t stay that way forever. I immediately teleported over to Kene. 

“We need to go,” I said, but Dusk had already beat me to it, shoving Kene through the portal to her realm. 

Siobhan resisted – something unusual for her. She was normally spoiled, perhaps even a bit lazy, interested mostly in keeping Kene from being hurt. But now she tugged at my senses, trying to direct me to follow her, even as the power of the Flock burned, slowly stabilizing into the bird behind us.