The Third Portal: Chapter Sixty-Four

I blinked, then turned and started to focus on the air next to me. Dusk joined her power to my own, and we slowly started tearing open a portal in the air. As we did, Meadow began to take a map out of her pocket, unfolding it out until it was clearly displayed as a map of the globe. 

A few moments later, Kene stepped through, dusting himself off, and looking over the table. A round of introductions went through with Jinwei, who Kene hadn’t really had the opportunity to meet. Once they were finished, Meadow nodded to the maps, pointing out four distinctive routes that she’d marked onto it. 

“Jinwei, are you purchasing a direct portal to the Silent River Sect?” 

“Hah, what, do you think I’m made of money?” she asked, shaking her head. “Primes, no. I was planning on taking a ship there.” 

Meadow tapped the first route, one that would disembark from the port in Teffordshire and head to Delitone, then begin to head south. It would pass Obsidian Forest and Vinopae, then wrap around an archipelago of unclaimed lands, before heading east, making a stop at several ports in Kijani, before cutting through a river in the center of Tianzhu and stopping at a port in Feng Chui. From there, we would be able to head a bit northwest and into Zhuanzhe, where the Silent River Sect who was hosting the tournament was located. 

The path had a handful of locations marked, some of which I recognized. The path maneuvered in such a way that I would be able to use the time at port to visit Deepfall Cemetery in Kijani, as well as plead with the Sekhem Court while in Tianzhu. There was also a marker in Obsidian Forest, where I would be able to seek out something called a ‘Rebirth Tree’. 

It had been a while since I’d thought about the list of locations for pseudo-soul components that Orykson had given me, so I reached into the flower of memories that Aerde had granted me and began examining them again. 

Deepfall Cemetery was exactly what it sounded like, a cemetery. It had been used to hold the dead for an untold number of years, and it sank about a foot deeper into the earth each year, slowly submerging the aboveground layers into a perpetual downward spiral of eternal death energy. It could be a rich place to look for fragments of ghosts or shades that had lost everything but their structure. 

The Sekhem Court, meanwhile, was a group of powerful vampires in Tianzhu who had a unique, closely guarded magical ritual that allowed someone being turned into a vampire to retain all but one of their mana types, and even some of the structure of their legacy, by creating temporary, partial soul vessels, that then snapped back into the transformed vampiric body. It gave them the unique advantage of being able to retain some of their human magic, and that ritual may be useful for the forming of a pseudo-soul the hag could use.

The tree, on the other hand. 

“What’s a rebirth tree?” Jinwei asked before I could get the opportunity to. 

“It’s a rather rare mutation of dryad trees, when they’re altered by the introduction of significant carnomancy while also in a creation mana nexus,” Meadow explained. “Instead of hosting a living spirit, the tree holds a mess of natural flesh-based arrays. It has some use in alchemy, but its primary utility is in growing body parts. If fed enough blood and mana, it can grow limbs. Some mages tie their souls to the trees, allowing them to then take control of these processes, and construct bodies if their primary one is destroyed.”

“That sounds like Orykson’s soul vessel,” I mused. “But we could use it to grow a body for the hag?” 

Meadow nodded that we could, then added some explanation. 

“It sounds like it because some of the early spells used in constructing new bodies were derived from studying it, though it is limited. Growing an entire body at once usually kills the tree, or else leaves it in need of years of recovery treatments.” 

I pouted at the thought of a tree dying, but honestly, that was a fairly low price to pay for the construction of an entirely new body. 

“We’d have to go into the deep forest to get it, wouldn’t we?” Kene asked, frowning. “There are things in there that are supposed to be quite dangerous.” 

“I have confidence in your ability to negotiate and escape, especially if you go with them, Jinwei,” Meadow said. “It would give you a chance to sharpen your own prodigies against a competitor.”

“Hmm,” Jinwei started, but Meadow continued. 

“I also have a portal to the Amethyst Mask’s ascension opening from the Crysite Docks in two weeks. If you go with them, I’ll bring you.” 

“Done!” Jinwei said with a smile.

“It may slow us down, but it seems that path, as well as the next two, are likely able to stop to the east of Delitone and search for the time catch,” Edgar said, eyeing the map curiously. Meadow nodded and began to trace the second path with her finger.

This one didn’t go nearly as far south, instead beginning at Delitone and then cutting east. It must have been aboard an airship, as it went over huge swathes of the unclaimed lands before arriving in Aergarde, going toward the Tower City, cutting through a bit more unclaimed lands, then crossing the mountains into Jiangju. From there, we would be able to head south, into Zhuanzhe and the sect. 

The path had us stopping in Aergarde, where one of the projected locations of the Soul Laboratory, the research station where hundreds of false arcanists and occultists had delved into soul magic in the hopes of unlocking a way to truly fix false ascensions. Then in the Tower City, we’d stop to meet someone called the ‘Flesh Sculptor’, and in the unclaimed lands to the west of Jinagju, we’d be able to stop at the Thousand Totem Canyon. The massive spirit-trapping canyon was also full of threats, as it reanimated the ghosts and shades within, binding them to stone effigies, but it could be a potent spot to harvest magic.

“I assume the Flesh Sculptor is someone we’d get the body from?” 

“It’s not one person, but rather, a business that sells body modification services,” Meadow said. “They do a lot of legitimate work – wrinkle removal, transitioning, hair color changes, that sort of thing. They’re headed by a false occultist, though, and he’s been known to create body clones for high-ranking clients. They have no soul, but they’re physically alive.

“Both expensive sounding, and disgusting,” Kene said, wrinkling their nose. “But potentially useful.” 

While the first two paths would take the better part of four months to complete, when all the stops were factored in, giving me only another month or so before I had to head out, the next path was far and away the shortest, taking only a month. It started off the same, passing Delitone and heading east, but instead of veering north, it veered south. It would pass through the ocean, then over a portion of Vinopae, before skirting the edge of Kijani. From there we would be moving through the Moving Forest, which wasn’t exactly a country, but wasn’t exactly not a country either, as far as I understood things, where we would ride along through the unclaimed lands, past an area known as the blighted wastes, and finally right into Zhuanzhe. 

While stopped in Vinopae, we should be able to visit a place called the Office of Legal Transference. When outside of Kijani, we should be able to make a stop at Seven Fall Lake, where the occultist Corpselight had held his terrible laboratory.

“I assume the Office of Legal Transference is a firm that specializes in mind switching?” Kene asked. 

“Indeed,” Meadow agreed. “They keep a stock of bodies whose souls have departed, but who are otherwise alive, and also offer direct switching services. You might be able to buy a body from them.”

I made a face, remembering how Liz’s dad had liked to joke about getting that sort of firm to exchange our bodies, even after she’d started alchemical treatments for her transition. I shook the thoughts from my head and traced the path. 

It was short, giving me time to stay in Crysite and look for more treasures, or to spend more time in Greater Daocheng and look for other things there, but it was also the only path that didn’t have a direct connection to two of Orykson’s listed spots where components could be fetched.

That said, some of the spots that were on Orykson’s list – namely the canyon and the Shadebinder Sect – could theoretically be reached after we arrived. To play it safe, I’d probably be best served taking two more months here on Crysite, giving me a month to search out one of them. 

“The fourth and final path I won’t be able to join you for,” Edgar said regretfully. “It traces a path too far from the eggs.” 

I looked it over, then nodded in agreement. This path wandered in a strange, circular route across this half of the planet, first cutting around Mossford, through the river that cut Suntorch in half, and then through the Pelagic Metropolis of the Ocean Lord. It would then meet on an unclaimed archipelago to conduct trade with the Redsummer Isles’ remote exploratory fleet, and then move back up across southern Kijani, before just barely skirting along Tianzhu before dipping south again to move through yet another set of islands, each one an independent city state somewhat like Delitone, before circling to land in Central Daocheng. 

It was a weird, curvy, zig-zaggy, utterly mad route, and so long that we’d need to head out in just under a week, but it hit a lot of places. Not just in Orykson’s list, either – it traversed through swathes of nations I’d never been to, and lands I only sort of had heard of before, like the Pelagic Metropolis. Any or all of them could have spots for me to advance or pick up unique resources.

On Orykson’s list, it checked off multiple spots, allowing me to visit Wraithmist Gorge, where spirits of death and echoes of those spirits naturally spawned endlessly, Deepfall Cemetery, the Shadebinder Sect, and the Sekhem Court. 

There were just a few big issues with the course. First, it didn’t have a place to procure a body. That wasn’t an unsolvable issue – I could trigger my ephemeral rebirth and form one – but it would be inconvenient to not have a resurrection. 

Second, while it gave plenty of opportunities, it also came with equal risks. If I got stuck in any one of the myriad spots that I was visiting for too long, I could wind up being late for the start of the tournament, since there was essentially no buffer time. 

Which was the final issue: there was time. I would have to leave Crysite within days, which meant I’d miss Darius’ ascension to eighth gate. I might not need that, but it could be worth watching. 

“I can’t go there,” Jinwei said. “Not gonna miss feeling resonance at that scale.” 

“I do not think it is the best course for you all, but it is an option,” Meadow agreed. “You will need to use the Craftsman to bind the parts together, or else risk trying to get someone else to do it, or trying to do it yourself.” 

“I want to think on it,” Kene said. “Is that alright?” 

“I want to know what Kene has to say,” I agreed, nodding along. 

“That’s fine. Time is of the essence, but you can take a few days. Think it over, and we can start booking passage.”