The Third Step: Chapter Nine

Though we technically landed in Delitone the following day, we did so at a secondary port. I didn’t even have the chance to say hello to Oli

Though we technically landed in Delitone the following day, we did so at a secondary port. I didn’t even have the chance to say hello to Olive, Kater, and Thea, as Edgar immediately led us off into the thick marshes and lagoons, pushing steadily northeast, towards where he could sense the time catch. 

If I’d opened a portal to Delitone from Crysite, we could have set out even earlier, but then we’d have just waited around in Delitone for the boat to Obsidian Forest, and had to deal with bidding to get a cabin from someone who’d disembarked in Delitone. At the time, Edgar had agreed that taking the boat was the smart choice, but now that we were this close, he seemed remarkably impatient.

Our group was small, and we were able to move lightly. I teleported in long skips, flitting over the unstable ground, while Edgar’s massive bulk and strength was enough to let him push through most of the muddy wetlands without issue. Jinwei seemed to be teleporting as well, but I was able to mostly lay that as the lie it was – I caught flickers of spatial transportation every once in a while, but most of the time, she was using Mold Aura and illusion spells to get where she needed to be. 

Dusk and Dawn simply flew overhead and Ivy used bits of forest magic to firm up root pathways, while Meadow and Kene waited within Dusk’s realm. Hannah manifested herself, enjoying the opportunity to study the wetlands, a very different environment from Mossford, filled with cyprus, olive, and fig trees. 

A few times, creatures swung by our group to check us out, but with a false Occultist, a destiny-marked Arcanist, and four powerful spellbinders, nothing tried to bother us. We were still close enough to Delitone that slaughter spirits were essentially nonexistent, but I expected to see a handful as we moved through the landscape. 

That night as the sun went down, Edgar tried to insist we kept moving through the darkness, pointing out that I could see in the dark, as could Jinwei, but was ultimately outvoted by everyone, and we spent the night in Dusk’s realm. Jinwei, Ivy, and Edgar didn’t have specific beds, since the cottage was only two bedrooms, but it was still safer than camping outside. Meadow simply dissolved her simulacra for the night, and reconjured herself in the morning. 

The following morning, I made breakfast for everyone, a massive plate consisting of blending together roasted red peppers, tomatoes, leaks, and spicy pepper paste into a sauce, then poaching eggs in it, and serving it with a quickly thrown together flatbread. After eating, we headed off again. 

It took us nine more days of walking before we reached the ruins where the time catch was located, and it was far and away the easiest camping trip of my life. The Beastgate hadn’t allowed me to sleep in Dusk’s realm, and even though climbing the floating island range had, it was still filled to the brim with slaughter spirits, so thin on air that we had to use potions to survive, and so cold that we had to take steps to prevent hypothermia. By contract, Edgar needing to active a simple first gate enchanted item to generate an insect repelling ward was practically living in luxury. 

When we did eventually find the ruins. Kene emerged to walk along the slightly firmer ground, while Meadow stayed in Dusk’s lands, and after another day of walking, I was surprised to find a group of other people. A group of around twenty had set up a camp, complete with some elaborate ward circle. 

“Hey there!” a man who looked to be in his mid-fifties, with dark skin, dreadlocks, and a bushy beard said, walking away from the camp and closer to us. “I’m Doctor Chris. I didn’t realize MU had sent any additional archaeologists out to Retrik with us!”

He paused as he examined us a little closer – Jinwei’s guild outfit, a tortoise the size of a house, a heavily tattooed witch, a dragon, two spirits, an enfield, and a fox-man, and let out a rueful chuckle. 

“Nevermind. Still, I wouldn’t expect to see guilders or freelance combat mages out this far in the wilderness,” he said, before frowning and growing slightly concerned. “Did our camp wards bring you? Is there a slaughter spirit?” 

“Nothing of the sort,” Edgar said, his voice rumbling. “I’m here on a quest, looking for some evidence of more of my kind who were lost. Do you know what Retrik’s relation to Hudau Tortoises was?” 

I leaned over to Kene and whispered, asking what Retrik was. 

“Ancient kingdom. Its entire treasury was burgled shortly before the fall of the Empire of Death, and then a serfdom uprising essentially destroyed what was left of the nobility. A lot of those serfs wound up settling in the newly established Mossford, or else went further north to what’s now Dragontooth.” 

I nodded and thanked them, before tuning back into doctor Chris’ answer. 

“...hard to come by, given everything, but I personally suspect that Retrik’s Mage Corps was forcibly breeding and killing the poor turtles en masse. According to every record we can find, their entire military were at least third gate mages – quite rare, considering the time period – so they had to have had the resources from somewhere.” 

Edgar’s face visibly grew angry at that, and the doctor gave a sympathetic nod. 

“Yes, the people of the past had every bit of capacity for cruelty and hate as people do now, and tended to have far less education, and what they did have tended towards an even steeper bias than in academia today – not that today’s perfect, but…” 

The doctor seemed to realize he was starting to ramble then, and trailed off before clearing his throat. 

“Well, that’s another topic. If you came hoping to find a clutch, I’m afraid they’re likely all dead now. I don’t want you to get your hopes up. Even if they’d been behind the king’s own preservation wards, Retrik fell so long ago…” 

“No, no,” Edgar said. “Just… A feeling. Thank you, doctor, we’ll leave you be. Though, if you do need a slaughter spirit taken care of, and can’t call in reinforcements from the university, feel free to contact us.” 

We made a bit more small talk before we eventually pushed on, journeying closer to what had once been the capital of Retrik, and toward where Edgar could sense the time catch through his connection to fortune. 

Eventually, we found ourselves in the ruins of what had clearly once been a great tower. Even now, there were four stories to it, and the masonry was thick and solid, despite hundreds of years of rain and brackish water doing their best to wear it down. It was wide enough for the entire bakery to fit comfortably within it twice over. In its prime, it had likely been twice as tall, and the markings on the walls had likely glowed with the power of enchantments and wards to defend the tower. 

“It’s here,” Edgar announced, coming to a stop within the tower. He looked around, as did most of the rest of our group, but none of us actually saw anything. Nearly as one, we all pulsed our mana senses out. Kene, Dusk, Dawn, Siobhan, and Ivy had blank stares, but Edgar, Jinwei, Meadow, and I all turned to look down. 

“There’s a knot of temporal magic down there, it has to be the time catch,” Jinwei said. 

“It’s an open cavern as well, the weave of space not warped by objects, though the air’s probably stale,” I said. Thanks to Orykson, I could handle that, but it was worth mentioning.

“It’s down there for certain,” Edgar agreed in a rumble. 

“The loop hasn’t been used before,” Meadow said thoughtfully. “But it’s also so old that it’s begun to decay. The time differential seems to be about a thousandfold, and the loop resets every one and a half minutes or so.” 

“That’s… What?” I asked, screwing up my eyes. Hannah shifted her new dominion, and I let her speak through me, using my voice. “A minute outside of the loop is roughly sixteen and a half hours in the loop. That means the time-catch covers just shy of one day.” 

Kene eyed me, and I shrugged, mentally thanking Hannah, then voiced my own question, looking at Meadow. 

“How many loops do you think the Time-Catch has left? We have to assume the worst case, that there’s only one clutch of eggs, at the minimum size of two. Are there enough loops left?”

“Forty-one, maybe a few more, but those will be less stable,” Meadow said, nodding. “It should be enough to meet the minimum threshold of fifty.” 

“Well, before we start planning that, how will we even get down there?” Kene asked. 

“Edgar can transform into a giant drill to tunnel through the earth at incredible speeds,” I said, waving my hand. “I’m not too concerned.” 

“It’s a spell I picked up from a mole, not a drill. But yes,” agreed Edgar. “I can get us down there without too much issue. More importantly, we have to ask if we are going to enter the loop ourselves, or if Dusk should consume it.” 

I turned to look at Dusk, wondering if she could. She confirmed that it was definitely possible – with how much she’d limited her size upon reaching fourth gate, as well as her new appetite from reaching fourth gate, she’d be able to handle it without issue. 

“Which gives us the most eggs?” I asked, and Meadow pressed her lips together. 

“That’s difficult to say,” she admitted. “You don’t know where the eggs are within the loop, nor if you’ll be able to reach them in time and completely suffuse them with mana to stabilize them as a part of reality before the loop resets. Dusk can’t completely control what she converts, though she can weigh her hands on the scales.” 

I nodded. The last time she’d absorbed a loop, she’d created a vault, a vault guardian, an entire cottage, a few plants, and slightly slowed the aging of anyone who lived within her realm. The creation of the vault guardian had come from the sheer violence that had been in that loop, given an output to defend her. 

“So it sounds like if we go in, we have the potential to get more eggs, but we also have the potential to get less,” Jinwei said. “It depends on our ability to find and break into wherever they’re being kept within a day. Dusk absorbing the loop – weird as hell she’s able to do that, I don’t like it, but okay, sure – is going to guarantee a medium return.” 

“If we assume Dusk can manifest about half, and there’s the minimum number of eggs, that’s forty-one. If there’s even a single additional egg in the clutch, let alone the normal maximum of six, she’ll clear the bar easily,” I added, with Hannah helping me run some of the calculations. “But there’s also whatever she’s going to be able to do with the temporal dilation of the loop, and the rest of the contents. Last time, I got a house.”

“Inversely, spending an extra month of training before the EMT could be a big deal,” Jinwei pointed out. “I know it’s only a month, but Arcanist is a long road. It could help me get closer to digging an extra set of steps!” 

“If you could actually spend that time training,” Kene rebutted. “We don’t know how much time it should take. And this isn’t for you – it’s for Edgar. You’re going to have months to train on the boat anyways. Edgar, what do you think, given this is your fortune quest?” 

“I think we should allow Dusk to absorb it,” he rumbled. “I have faith in the little spirit being able to go above the fifty percent mark, and I cannot risk failing due to not being able to locate them. Fortune showed me where the time catch was. I doubt it will help within the loop.” 

“I fully think we should enter,” Jinwei said. “We should be able to find the eggs. We’ve got power on our side, and we can get it down to a routine. Even if it takes us a few loops, we can definitely get it marked down.” 

I glanced at Dusk, trying to gather my own thoughts, while I also waited to hear what she thought.