The Third Portal: Chapter Sixty-Eight

Jinwei, Meadow, Kene, Dusk, Dawn and I all gathered together on the decks of Port Ruby, and Meadow tapped her cane against the thick, forged stone beneath her feet. I could feel a public teleportation platform a few feet ahead of us, and focused my attention on it. 

“You said you hired a portal mage?” I asked. “That must have been expensive.” 

“Oh, I didn’t pay,” Meadow said, waving her hand. “The mage owes me a favor – I helped her get through college.” 

Jinwei gave Meadow a strange look, and I realized then that Meadow probably hadn’t explained her status as Magi to the tall woman. 

“Where exactly are we going?” Kene asked. 

“The Crystal Cove. It’s actually where Darius grew up, and where I mentored him. An independent city-state, not entirely unlike Delitone,” Meadow explained. “We’ve got two missions while we’re there. First is to watch Darius’ ascension. Second is to visit the maskmaker who lives there. Though we’ll actually do that first.” 

“Let me get this right – you’re on a first name basis with the Amethyst Mask?” Jinwei asked. “I thought you’d just heard a rumor, or maybe caught a wind, about his ascension and booked a portal.” 

Dusk pointed out that she was still holding onto the gift from Elio to the Amethyst Mask, so it wasn’t like we weren’t going to meet him, and Jinwei just stared at her, as if re-calculating exactly where and how her life had gone from normal to absurd. I pointed at the hand with the glowing golden destiny mark. 

“You’ve got your own history and secrets. I’ve got mine.” 

“Sure, but I’m an Arcanist, I’m supposed to have freaky stuff. You’re just a kid!” 

Before we could continue our spat, the air over the teleportation platform shimmered, and a tall woman stepped out of nowhere. She had ruddy, dark skin, dark eyes, and bright yellow feathers instead of hair, and felt like she was in the middle of sixth gate, though it seemed like she’d been stuck there for quite a while. She had a spatial gate, but also a gate that reminded me of poison – nasty business, which I presumed to be from the bird side. 

“Meadow,” the woman said, bending over and giving the old woman a hug. 

“Good to see you, Erin,” Meadow said, squeezing as tightly as her frail body would allow her. “Are you doing well?” 

The pair chatted for a bit, before Erin finally came around to introducing herself to each of us. She eyed me, with my pair of companions. 

“Those are spellbonds, right? Not just friends. Carrying us all this far will be hard, and I can only take five people and their bonds.” 

I’d already been warned of this, so I reassured her that they were my bonds, and then stepped onto the platform.

The others followed me a moment later, and then Erin raised her hand. I felt a surge of magic, connecting together several different spells, then there was a flash of mana. The world around me seemed to stretch and bend, warping strangely in a way that none of Orykson’s immaculately commanded spells ever had.

Then it was over, and we were standing in a courtyard, and I waved my hand, letting Ed, Liz, and Siobhan spill out of Dusk. That got me an odd look from Erin, but we were made to clear off the platform before long. 

Processing through customs took a bit of time, but eventually, we spilled out into the streets of the Crystal Cove, and I got my first proper look. 

The streets of the city were similar to what I might have seen in Mossford. There were stylistic differences – the buildings here tended more towards being four or five stories, with sloped roofs in relatively triangular patterns and ornate awnings – but they were ultimately somewhat similar. 

The real differences were on the streets and in the sky. The streets were littered with hundreds of floating, crystalline lanterns, each one of them inset with a fingernail sized chunk of brightly glowing amethyst that cast everything in hues of purple and white. 

And the sky… 

The entire city was surrounded on all sides by canyon walls at least five hundred feet high, which curved in towards one another. They didn’t meet in any one spot, though, leaving it open to the sky above. But it wasn’t the sky that caught my attention – the walls were covered in amethysts. An uncountable number of tiny crystals speckled the walls, causing the sun to glint and refract across all of the city. 

And those were the smallest of them. The average crystals were easily the size of my fist, while several others were the size of my entire torso. There were a few dozen different ones even bigger than that, and the largest of all of them was squarely in the middle of the city, towering upwards and reaching into the sky, easily the size of a ten story building. 

Each crystal glowed with the purple of amethyst, but I got the sense that this was unusual, though I didn’t know why, and all of them seemed to hum. The tone wasn’t an audible one, but rather one in my mana senses, as if they were connected. 

I spread out my mana senses and felt the flecks of crystal in the buildings, where I hadn’t noticed them before due to everything being lit in purple. The crystals were so numerous that even the building stones were mostly made of them, and every single one of them was resonating together with an overwhelming amethyst power. 

“It’s a battery,” Jinwei said after a moment. “The whole city is a giant mana battery.” 

She was right. All of the power, enough to keep the entire city powered, was stemming from one single source, near the giant crystal in the center. He absolutely gushed power out into the air. 

“These crystals are why the Crystal Cove is able to sustain a significantly larger space than Delitone, complete with four suburbs on the surface,” Meadow said, tapping one of the lanterns. “They’re not just a mana battery, but also a natural mana accumulator. And Darius struck a deal with the mayor–” 

Her voice seemed to glitch slightly on the word mayor, and I guessed the monolinguistic spell was having trouble with the term. 

“To provide double the power he needed to ascend, in exchange for use. The Cove may even expand after this – Now, Malachi, we need to get you some masks.” 

“Masks?” Ed asked, and Meadow smiled, guiding us through the streets with the ease of someone who had lived there for years. 

“For the Elysian Mastery Tournament,” she explained. “The maskmaker’s masks, as well as a few other reputable sources, are some of the only non-bound or self-created magical items allowed in the tournament. You should not speak while we’re in the shop.” 

Jinwei looked us over, then vanished, and I presumed she’d meet up with us in time for Darius’ ascension, and both Liz and Kene peeled off as well. I’d not expected the pair to have anything to do, but both of them wanted to check in with the local branch of the library. The thought made me wince – I’d definitely let that relationship suffer. I just hoped my donations made up for it… 

Meadow led us through the streets until we arrived at a small shop, tucked away in the corner of one of the alleyways. Honestly, it looked more like I’d be mugged if I walked in than meet someone reputable enough to have influenced the Amethyst Mask or be known by Meadow. 

When we pushed into the shop, my impression of it shifted, and not necessarily in a positive way. The entire shop was dark, dark enough that I wasn’t sure I’d have been able to see if not for my ingrained spells. The walls were covered in masks from floor to ceiling, and even more. Long ribbons of silk hung from the ceiling, and masks had been tied through their threads, to allow the room to be filled with thousands of them. 

They ran the gamut from simple wooden masks with holes for a nose and eyes, to ones so detailed that they seemed to be more human than my own face, to ones that were clearly ceremonial. Some were tiny, meant for the small folk, while others were large enough that they could have fit my whole body. Each and every one of them felt… strange. More like the glasses that muted my senses for training than a proper magic item. 

In the back of the room, behind a stall with a glass case filled with even more masks, was the being who I presumed to be the maskmaker. Their form was shadowy, and they wore a plain ceramic mask with a face painted on. Around their neck, a half dozen other masks hung from a simple twine necklace.

The maskmaker had four arms, two humanlike and the other two almost as long as my entire body, and they had a dozen fingers on each of their hands, including the humanoid ones. Their stomach seemed to just be a mass of darkness over which they’d attempted to put on a suit, and they had no legs, just wisps of smoke.

Perhaps the most uncanny of all, the maskmaker did not appear in my senses. Not like they had a veil, no. Even something veiled should have appeared to either my lifesense or spatial senses, and most spirits would register in space or else my deathsense. 

No, it was as if there was nothing in the chair at all, no hands in the air, no suit, no smoke, and certainly no masks.

“Maskmaker,” Meadow said, nodding her head. “I’ve come for a set of three masks, one for the dragon, one for her sister, and one for her brother.” 

“The dragon?” the thing said, and its voice was soft while also filling the shop and grating on my soul. Not in a metaphorical sense – my soul mana actually shook under its voice, warbling slightly. 

Then its eyes snapped to Dawn, then to Dusk, then to me. It had no eyes, only inky blackness behind the holes, and it studied each of us. 

“Ah, I see. Yes. The dragon and her chosen kin. Three masks…”

It leaned forward and scuttled around the shop on its long, twelve-fingered hands, picking up masks and pressing them to my face, and to Dusk’s face. Not to Dawn’s face, though. The thing seemed amused by Dawn, not afraid, patting her head and causing her to flinch back. 

Ed opened his mouth, but Meadow shook her head, and he closed it again. 

Seconds stretched into minutes, until at last the maskmaker handed Dusk a small mask made of steel and bone, and decorated to look like a deer. 

“Nature spirit with a higher spatial affinity than average,” the thing muttered, then passed me a mask. This one was shaped like a fox, made of wood and painted with a white snout and face, but red ears. It would cover my eyes, but not much else, as it left my nose and mouth exposed. “And a Gumiho. And for the kin-not-kin-thing-prey-predator-bright…” 

The word the creature spoke was broken down by the monolinguistic spell, but the mishmash of ideas stung my ears. The creature clambered over to the glass case, unlocking it and removing a small, sky estragon-shaped mask, white with a black nose, then pressed it to Dawn’s face. 

“A sky estragon’s shade. Now begone, Springbringer, it is nearly time for me to close and hide in my hole and hide and hide and hide and hide… and make. Masks!” 

It used its multiple foot long arms to start pushing us back out the door, and then slammed it shut behind us.