The Third Step: Chapter Eleven

Dusk laughed, and it sounded like the rustling of leaves in the wind, and she immediately bolted off toward the house. As she did, she called out behind her that we would have to wait until after the house tour was over! 

We passed through the front doors and through into the kitchen. It hadn’t changed much – the wooden counter had been expanded by about a foot with cabinetry beneath, and the windows had grown larger, but it was by and large the same. Still, I wasn’t about to start complaining about expanded counterspace. It felt like no matter how much or little I had, I found a way to use every square inch while cooking. 

Much as before, it led out into the living room, with the communication mirror on the wall, and the old, battered furniture that Kene’s village had provided. It was about the same size as well, though slightly longer, allowing for us to put in a proper dining room table once we had the space, rather than eating in the kitchen. It still had the two rooms that led off into the alchemy lab and the bedroom, but there was now a third door joining those two, as well as a door on the far wall that presumably led to the two-story tower. 

I started to head to the new door, but Dusk shook her head and pointed at the alchemy room. I didn’t argue, and when I pushed it open, I was surprised to see a sprawling mini-city, with a screened door opening onto a back porch, which in turn led into where the picnic tables and faerie circle mushrooms were. 

The mini-city covered the room, with a path in and out just barely big enough for me to walk through, and it climbed up the walls. I saw homes of various sizes, fit for an assortment of the small folk, from the bwbatches to the brownies to the fungal folk. Some trailed in and out of the back door, and at first I wondered how, until I spotted that at the bottom of the larger, human-sized door, was a small folk sized door. I glanced back, and sure enough, there were various doors built into the walls and door, letting the smallfolk navigate the house with little trouble. 

Dusk pointed to one of the houses, proudly declaring that she’d built her own house within the house! She might still sleep curled up on my pillow if she wanted to, but she also might sleep in her house. The house next door would be for Dawn, though she might need to find a place outside if she kept growing. 

“That’s a wonderful idea!” I said, pulling her into a quick hug, tail lashing in excitement for her. Her comment about Dawn growing was strange, since I hadn’t noticed the tiny noodle dragon change in size, but it was always possible Dusk had more insight into our sister’s alien mind than I did. 

“It’s very thoughtful,” Kene agreed, nodding. “It does beg the question, though: where is the alchemy lab? Is it just next door?” 

Dusk shook her head, and I thought I caught a sense of wry amusement and strange geometric patterns from Dawn as we headed out into the third door, the new one. This one had a wooden frame for a bed, a wooden nightstand, and some shelving built in, as well as a shuttered window. There was no bed yet, but it could potentially turn into a decent guest room, which felt like it would be increasingly important as Dusk continued to gradually allow more people into her. 

With that, we passed into the new door, which led into the tower. The bottom floor had been transformed into an alchemy lab, with massive windows interspersed throughout the room in order to vent the smoke and heat that alchemy regularly produced, but there was something else in the room too – in the center of the room was a clay pot with a bonsai tree in it. Moss-like lichen draped from the boughs of the tree, and the moment Kene spotted them, he let out a gasp. 

“Is that?”

Dusk cut him off, nodding her agreement that it was with a cheep. 

“What is it?” I asked, walking over and extending my mana senses. The tree was fourth gate, but its power felt smooth and gentle, rather than dangerous. For a fourth gate plant, it wasn’t especially powerful feeling, and it had almost no mana I could drain, all the power being bound up in its internal magic. The moss felt similar, though subtly different, with much more of its power flowing out to take command of the air around it.

“It’s a toxin tree with regulation moss,” Kene said, sounding wistful. “They’re hard to find, but absolutely amazing.” 

“Toxin tree?” I asked, studying it doubtfully. “It doesn’t feel toxic to me.” 

“It’s not,” Kene agreed. “But it can absorb a massive variety of toxins and break it down for sustenance. They’re not useful for anti-toxins, since it’s a complex reaction that takes days to work through, but they’re great for preventing an alchemy room from building up toxins when you use things like Soultoad Seat.” 

“Oh, that’s useful,” I agreed, nodding, then poked the moss-like lichen. “What’s this?” 

“It regulates air temperature around it. You can make it into a potion, sure, but it’s not especially potent – it won’t put out fires or anything. But it helps the air in the room remain a pleasant temperature, even if you have three cauldrons at once.” 

I nodded approvingly – I was getting close to the point where I would need to restock my alchemy supplies, and not having to air out the room as thoroughly or worry about the blistering heat would be pretty nice. 

We walked up the spiral staircase to the second level, a largely blank room with some scattered straw on the floor, and walls covered in ancient-looking reinforcement spells. They were definitely better than nothing, but I was confident I could blast through them if I tried. 

But that wasn’t the point of a sparring room, which was clearly what this room had been designed for. A few training staves, swords, and daggers made of wood were on a rack against one wall, and there were some dummies made of burlap and more straw. I examined them and nodded, thanking Dusk, before we headed up to the roof, with its small awning letting us look out over Dusk’s realm. 

When we finished, Dusk clapped and leapt down from the roof, chiming that we needed to summon Ikki for the last part. I raised an eyebrow, but agreed, Foxstepping down to the ground. 

“Hey! I can’t teleport!” Kene shouted. I glanced up, then Foxswapped with them, before Foxstepping back to the ground. 

“Sure you can. It’s only when I allow you to.” 

They rolled their eyes, but I caught a small smile at my antics as we walked to Ikki’s spell anchor and manifested him. He appeared, then turned to me. 

“I see you have formed Combat Echo in your body. Have you ingrained it, or do you only have a base understanding?” 

“The latter, but that’s not why I summoned you,” I said, nodding to Dusk, who waved for us to follow. We walked over to the outer wall of the tower, and she gestured. With a flex of her dominion and legacy, a passage parted in the dirt, leading beneath the tower. 

Kene paused, but I started walking down the stairs. Ikki and Kene joined me a moment later as we stepped off the stairs and into a small room with only a single feature, a stone pillar absolutely covered in curling spellcraft. It was strangely done, though, in a style I didn’t entirely understand that most closely reminded me of Orykson’s attempts to transcribe Dawn’s freaky magic. 

The entire thing radiated a mix of Dusk, Dawn, and my own magic, and I could feel an enormous amount of power pulsing within the spire. It was seventh gate, approximately, but it felt vast even for a seventh gate spell. 

In one of our lectures, Orykson had discussed the way many spatial mages formed mana debts through pills, or else stockpiled restorative mana sources or elixirs, to give themselves massive amounts of power, dedicating it and hours of work to constructing a single, large pocket space or demiplane. He rarely needed to do it these days, but even for him, constructing large astral planes like the one that the library utilized would require him to use similar methods. 

This felt like a seventh gate mage had done something similar, stocking up a truly absurd amount of magic in a single place, many times more than their garden could hold. When Ikki saw it, a complex look came over his face, and he sighed. 

“I suppose it was inevitable, given your magic, but I had hoped that we would have more time. Dusk, please open a portal, and give me one moment.” 

He closed his eyes, and for a second I felt a vast power reach out – Ikki’s true attention, not just a peak third gate simulacra. Something passed between them, and Ikki’s eyes opened again, and he nodded. 

“You may shut the portal again.” 

He turned to face me, then flicked his gaze around the room and crossed his arms. 

“Malachi, Kene, Dusk, Dawn, even Siobhan if she can hear me, you should listen to me. I know that it is easy to view these sorts of tools as useful tools. They are. I do not deny it. This is not as dangerous as some, but it is still inordinately dangerous. I don’t even know how you got one.” 

Dusk piped up, explaining that she’d consumed a time catch, and focused nearly all of the temporal energy into the stone, suffusing it with Dawn’s crystals and my own magic. Ikki nodded as if that made perfect sense.

“Hold on, I still don’t know what exactly she’s done,” I said. 

“Activating the magic on the stone will lock all three floors of the tower in accelerated flow of time,” Ikki said simply. “When activated, a bit more than three and a quarter hours will pass in Dusk’s realm and the world at large, but the tower and those in it will experience two weeks.” 

“You said it’s not normal, but you thought we had more time,” Kene said. “I’m guessing most time mages construct something like this at, what, seventh gate?” 

“Some begin even earlier, with applying the third gate temporal haste spell to an area via enchanting skills. Arcanists usually have less extreme versions. But yes, false and real temporal Occultists usually construct something like this. I myself have, as have Orykson, and we have even cooperatively cast things like it. I’m not surprised a time catch could manage something like it, though – even I cannot create time catches on command.” 

“Why is it dangerous?” I asked. “Also, how often can it be used?” 

“Once, then it must be manually recharged. You may be able to do that with time, but transforming buckets of third gate magic into a lake of seventh gate will take… Well, I would not expect you to be able to use it with any form of regularity until you are at least sixth gate yourself.”

Once, until I was sixth gate…. Maybe at fifth, I could squeeze in an extra use with time, but it would be essentially one use until then. Still, getting an extra two weeks of training essentially on demand was an incredible tool. 

“As for the risk, there are layers. The easiest one is time – if you activate something like this once a month, then you will age at half again the rate you should. Yes, it will let you develop faster. But I cannot tell you the number of people who have thrown away their lives within accelerated time, squeezing out a bit more power before every fight. A two hundred year lifespan can be reduced to less than a century and a half. And it gets worse as you become increasingly capable of increasing the degree of time dilation.” 

“What if you’re immortal, or at least absurdly long lived, like you are?” 

“That is where the next layer of risk comes in: isolation. Even the most introverted of humanity are social creatures who require contact with the outside world. Spending days, weeks, months isolated from everyone or everyone but a select few? It is especially dangerous in pocket spaces where it’s not even possible to step out and see the world around you, which is why this is less dangerous than some, but still inordinately dangerous.” 

He pointed at me, then at Kene. 

“Have either of you ever spent two full weeks alone? Truly, really alone? No ability to call someone, even if you want to. No ability to speak to anyone at all, no matter how much you want to? Not even the passing of a stranger, or the comfort of a new letter?” 

“It must get easier with time?” I asked, shifting uncomfortably.

“As you adapt to the isolation? Yes. That forms a new danger though. Let’s say you’re an immortal, and you slowly adapt to the isolation. A decade passes, a short time for an immortal. In that time, you use this once a month. You have now spent more than four and a half years with only you and perhaps Kene and Dusk.” 

“Immortal dissociation,” Kene said, and Ikki nodded to him. 

“Already, immortals can often disconnect from others, a particular breed of mental damage we call immortal dissociation. Why connect with those who will only live for a short time? When using methods like this to train, the effect is exacerbated many times over. From your perspective, you will only see them two thirds of your time at best, and they’ll live for a short time.” 

I licked my lips and nodded, and Ikki’s face softened.

“I am not saying to never use it. I am saying that, no matter how powerful you become, it is never something to be used lightly.”