The Third Step: Chapter Five

After Meadow grew tired and decided to take a nap, I flickered back to my room using a couple of Foxsteps, then opened a portal in my room and wandered to my scrying mirror. I tapped the glass and injected a bit of ungated mana, shaping the number for Elio. The mirror flashed in waiting a few times before the weathered old face of the ancient dragon appeared. 

“Ah, hello Malachi,” the old dragon said, squinting at me. “I’m guessing you’ve broken into early fourth gate, and are looking to get the other spells I owe you?” 

“No, just broke into the final step of third gate,” I said, shaking my head. “But I am interested in the spells, at least to write down and have for future reference.” 

“Children,” Elio snorted, a puff of multicolored smoke curling from his mouth. “Always rushing ahead. Very well, let it not be said that I do not uphold my promises.” 

He held up a finger, which was more like a claw than a human finger, and traced a complex shape into the air. It was somewhat like a breath attack spell, but it also clearly ejected the mana and forged it into a shape. The telluric, physical, life, and other elements seemed to draw upon the body, but I wasn’t sure why or how. 

I was tempted to say it was Gemstone Dragon’s Claw, but it was a fourth gate spell, while that was usually first gate, sometimes second. I studied it as I wrote it down, tilting my head back and forth, but before I could guess, Elio spoke aloud. 

“Ornamented Staff,” he said, raising his hand and casting the spell. A vibrant, multi-hued wave of crystal forged itself into his palm, slowly spreading itself out until it had formed into a long, elaborate staff of shifting and shimmering gemstones. Truthfully, it was so ornamented that it was very nearly a scepter, rather than a quarterstaff. 

“The Jewel Blade, one of the top ten prizes in crysite, is based on the sister to this spell. That one is meant for domain weapons, to imbue more spellcrafting power into a physical tool. This one is meant for staves, to do the exact opposite,” Elio explained. “It will coat your staff in powerful crystals, heavily defensive in quality. The crystals will absorb portions of the energy from people and objects they strike, which can then be released in a wave of mixed energy based on what it has absorbed, mingled with gemstone dragon energy.”

To demonstrate, he flicked his finger and brought a target dummy over to him. He whacked it twice, with the gems slowly glowing brighter as he charged them, then he slammed it into the dummy’s chest. There was a pulse of light as the physical force discharged in a wave of multicolored light. 

“This pairs well with the power of the loupe, as well as with your existing fungal spells,” Elio explained, spinning the staff of crystal slightly. The gemstone loupe seemed to merge with the staff, forming a twisted spike at the top. “When you are eventually fourth gate, it should be a nice synergy for you.”

The gemstones dissolved away, and I clapped. It felt slightly awkward to clap to someone through a communication mirror, but I did it anyway. Elio rolled his eyes, but he smiled ever so slightly. 

“The final spell I have for you is fifth gate,” he said, drawing the spell out in the air. I felt my eyebrows creep up as the spell kept growing in size. I knew that the fifth gate was big, but the size of this spell was utterly ridiculous. I wound up having to grab a second sheet of paper to fit the spellform’s full size onto it. 

“Oracle’s Crystal,” Elio said when he finally finished. “You are aware that, upon breaking into fifth gate as a true Arcanist, you will gain the ability to step into your soulself?” 

“I am,” I agreed, as Elio cast the spell and conjured what looked like a head sized chunk of quartz. Impressive, but hardly something that screamed a fifth gate spell. “This spell manifests a paired set of crystals, one within the soulself, and one outside. They allows you to help clear the mind, in a way. It isn’t a mind boosting spell, or a focusing spell, it’s a… thinking spell. Contemplation upon the crystal is simpler, easier. And most importantly of all, it assists in listening to the winds. With enough concentration, it’s even possible to project the images from the winds onto the crystal.”

I let out an impressed whistle and nodded my appreciation. It definitely earned the name, if nothing else. Being able to show other people what I could see with my winds, and get their perspective, as well as the perspective of their winds, was enormous. Even being able to focus on the winds more clearly was a reasonably impressive benefit. 

After making sure I had both spells copied down, Elio and I chatted for a while longer, with him asking after Edgar, and with me asking about Idyll. Idyll was still a long, long way from being able to truly use her magic again, but with the integration of the Terminarch’s title into the lands of Crysite, she was no longer at risk of just breaking apart. Better still, she could now manifest herself a body virtually anywhere on the island without strain. 

After we finished our talk, I turned and pulled out the test orb for the Elysian Mastery Tournament. Despite all of the preparation that I’d put into getting ready for the tournament, I hadn’t actually fully cleared the orb yet. It was a complex gauntlet of challenges, starting at early third gate, then slowly increasing the power of the opponents and obstacles every fifth challenge. Right now, I could reliably get past mid fourth gate, but the first challenge for peak fourth was where I ran into a wall. 

And I needed to do it as fast as possible. 

I tapped the orb, then drew myself into it. The world faded around me, and I was suddenly in a region of dark space, an utter void of darkness. I immediately channeled spatial sense and vampiric senses to find the hidden door in the darkness. As I did, I started to cycle Mantle Dragonfire, slowly and steadily. The instant I found the door, I teleported to it and stepped through, dropping my sensory spells. 

This time, I appeared in an area filled with swirling blades, each and every one of them glistening with the strength of early third gate cutting enchantments. There was a pattern to the blades that could be learned through studying them, though the pattern changed every time the orb re-started. I’d spent a while trying to find a greater pattern all of the patterns fell into, before eventually I opted for a different route.

I flared Fungal Armor, Enhance Forging, Briarthreads, and my new Ivy Cloak spell, drew on Arthur’s power to infuse his defensive domain with them, then launched into the challenge. Blades slammed into me from all sides. The enchantments changed each time too, but there were only so many ways a cutting enchantment could be made before it started to repeat common elements. 

The blades were thrown away by my armor, and I began to run through the room. I hadn’t found a way to break the teleport lock on the chamber, annoyingly, so I was forced to sprint until I found the door, then jumped through. I immediately dismissed my armor spells and cast Witch Eyes and Placid Mind, as well as empowering my mana senses once again. 

I was in a room with a hundred different platforms, all of which were slowly fading in and out of existence. Ten of the platforms were real, and were teleporting throughout the room, while the rest were just illusions. Each real platform contained a key, and with at least five keys, the door could be unlocked. 

My mana senses crashed over the room, and I found five real keys immediately, Witch Eyes cutting through the illusions. I held up my hand and cast Teleport Object, pulling all of them to my hand, then stepped through the door that the keys melted into, dropping Witch Eyes. 

I immediately started falling, but caught myself with an Immovable Lock and flexed my senses out. I was in a long, narrow pitfall, with spikes at the bottom and an air current perpetually pushing me down, but it was still only early third gate. 

The moment I found the door set into the rockface, I teleported to it and was shifted into the next challenge.

A giant boar, covered in heavy metallic plate armor, rushed at me. I’d initially tried a few different methods to pacify the boar, like draining all of its energy until I knocked it out, but none of them had worked. The test itself, speaking in a strange, whispery voice, had eventually confirmed for me that the point of the illusion was to test my ability to put down a thread, and I’d needed to kill it.

So I unleashed Mantle Dragonfyre right into the beast’s face. The boar was early third gate, but it had a powerful defensive set of spells and a legacy that made it tougher than it should be. With the fact I’d been cycling my dragon’s breath since entering the challenge, though, the boar dissolved into red light, which formed yet another doorway.

I leapt through and began the mid-third gate part of the challenge. I was caught in a cloud of poisonous gas that I was forced to use a combination of holding my breath and Starfish’s Regeneration to pass through, swam through an underwater obstacle course with the help of a water breathing potion – thankfully, my potions weren’t actually expended in the orb – and resisted an assault of sleep magic on my mind while running through a maze-like cavern. I was ensnared in a massive wave of goo from an immortal slime-like creature that continually conjured more goo with its mana to trap me. I burned through the forged mana with Foxfyre to find the exit, and then was faced with the mid-third gate boss, a giant insect that was felled by another released blast of Mantle Dragonfyre. 

Forward I went, tearing through the peak third gate challenges. I’d been able to take them on while I was only a mid-third gate, so now that I was truly a peak third gate, none of them were especially challenging. I moved through a puzzle that required the use of mana senses to trace the exit with ease, teleported through a tile puzzle, fixed a broken spellform, and found a real crown in the middle of an illusionary treasure room. Then I looked through the kitsune guardian’s illusions with Witch Eyes, burned through its protective forged armor with Foxfyre, and put a Mantle Dragonfire through its chest. 

On and on, I tore through the challenges with the practiced ease of dozens of failed trials, taking a few nicks here and there from the more dangerous trials, until at last, I felled the mid-fourth gate boss – a pinky nail sized butterfly with devastating sonic screeches – with the use of six repositioned anchors that opened into waves of mass enhanced blademoss from every direction, covering too much area for it to be able to evade. 

As the red light from the mid-fourth gate boss transformed into a door, I stopped and let my spells fade, then took a breath. I’d failed this challenge every time so far, but with my new strength and spells, I might stand a little more of a chance. 

I didn’t let myself relax long. This was a timed test, and it was time to see if I could finally break my limit.