The Third Portal: Chapter Sixty-Two

Elio, the Terminarch, the last member of the rare, mutated breed that was the gemstone dragons, slammed into the earth in front of the wave. Instead of Edgar and Idyll, the wave struck glowing, multicolored gemstone armor, and while it did dig a deep furrow into the material, the force of destruction was not enough to dissolve through it completely. 

The Terminarch rose up, massive in his full, draconic glory, his scales’ jeweled surfaces further faceted by the armor that he wrapped around himself. The armor was already repairing itself from the damage the Lady of Destruction had done to it. 

“No further!” the Terminarch called, and his voice rang out like the wrath of an angry magi – which I supposed, he wasn’t that far away from. “Not one more death shall fall at the hands of you and your kin this day!” 

The Terminarch’s Title was reaching out, swimming through the land, and… changing it. I didn’t understand the scope of what exactly was going on, but resonance rushed through the land as it fell under the protection of the Terminarch. Slaughter Spirits would no longer be allowed to form here, and the world itself would be filled with the rigid stability and resonance of the final gemstone dragon in the world. 

In the sky above, lenses of gemstones began to glow, like the three pairs of wings that adorned Elio’s body, and a riot of colors erupted from them as Gemstone Dragon’s Breath spread out over the land. Each type of dragon’s breath had its own benefits and negatives, and while this breath wasn’t the most powerful, it was thorough, scouring and bending to track down every single Desolant. Like a bloodhound with a scent, the waves of multicolored light bent out of the way of everyone that was not the Terminarch’s target, reflecting off polished gemstones and focused through lenses, until at last, there was only one desolant left on all of Crysite. 

The Lady of Destruction scuttled back, her own title sparking and trying to do the opposite, rip apart the world, tear and destroy and leave nothing left, but her claim over this land was weak. The Terminarch had claimed this land and this land alone, while the Lady of Destruction would bring her destruction anywhere and everywhere. The Terminarch’s power rang out as the greater of the pair.

It was not so much that he could strike her down in an instant, or such that he could completely stop her, but it did weigh the scales in his favor.

Then Idyll’s dominion and authority, of which Elio was a part, just as surely as I was a part of Dusk and Dawn’s, joined with Elio’s new Title.

With that, I better understood what he had done when he’d altered the land. Though he couldn’t disperse the damage done to her spirit, he could truly finish the work of binding her to this world – and solidifying the magic that bound them together, siblings by choice, if not by blood. 

Their combined magic blazed even brighter as Edgar trundled forward and began to cast a mingling of a half dozen varieties of dragon’s breath. Rainbow light flared around the tip of his nose as the magic combined together, and for just a moment, I felt as if the damage to his spirit might come undone, if only the magic were to activate in full. For now, though, it simply spread through the multitude of dragonfyre attacks, fusing them into a greater whole than they were alone.

Elio’s title reached out and touched on the fused dragonfyre, acknowledging Edgar as another who bore that same, deep loneliness, the feeling of being the only one left of a dead species. 

The last Gemstone Dragon, the only broken Worldspirit turned Genius Loci, and he who believed himself to be the last of the Hudau Tortoises blazed together in a unified display might, and their attacks crashed through the Lady of Destruction, until she was no more. 

With her death, the battle was wrapped up quickly. Elio hadn’t managed to quite literally scour every single desolant on the entire island, but Aerde appeared and gave him a divination with the handful of scattered survivors and independent colonies that had broken away from the supercolony. While he departed to root them out, I returned to the gymnasium where I’d left Ed.

“Glad to see you!” I said, pulling him into a tight hug. He let out a grunt as he hugged me back. 

“You’ve gotten stronger,” he said. “But I’m glad to see you too. Thank you for sending people my way. We managed to get almost four hundred people in this gym alone.”

While I’d helped to save them, nearly a hundred people had died in the attacks, and fifty times that many were injured by either desolants or from the fires. While that number felt massive to me, it was actually quite light while viewed in an objective sense. I didn’t like that – I wished I could have saved every single one of them. Maybe if I was an Occultist, I could have, but as things were, I had to be satisfied that I’d done the best I could. 

It was a stark reminder of the reason that we had so many combat guilds and battlemages on the island first and foremost. While we had begun to integrate farming and food guilds, we still weren’t wide open for everyone yet. 

If we had been, things might have been much worse for everyone. A single desolant might be much frailer than a comparable battlemage, but they could still hit pretty hard. If Port Ruby had been filled with non-mages, then it would have been a charnel house. 

I wasn’t the only one to have noticed the fact that humans had been involved, and once I led people to the spots where someone had planted firebombs in the fields and laid wards over the main ant-hole, the Brighteyes launched a full-scale investigation into everyone on the island. Amusingly enough, even I was made a suspect. I was cleared quickly, thanks to Idyll, Edgar, and Elio, but I had to be checked over. 

In the days that followed, I began to notice that something in my spirit had changed. The kirin spell, which emulated the power of Fortune, had strengthened significantly. Thanks to the major roots in my full-gate spells, some of that power had spilled over into them, strengthening and improving my body, and even the organshield crystal that I’d taken into me. 

Though the amount had increased, what had really improved most was the synergistic effects of my spells. When I unleashed all my plants together again, for example, I could maintain the output for much longer, and it even hit harder, thanks to the ingrained effects. My beast magic continued to seem to build on one another, giving me a more dangerous edge than I’d had before.

Not only that, but my eyes’ ability to feel the ties and bonds that I’d formed seemed to grow as well. I wasn’t able to reach out and draw on those bonds for power or anything of that sort, but I was able to much more clearly sense my connections. It was unusual, and took quite a bit of getting used to, almost like I’d ingrained a new sensory spell.

As reports continued to roll in, Elio managed to ferret out a handful of groups that had been connected to the Desolant attack. Each time one was caught, they simply vanished, leaving no trace at all, just like the gray haired man that I’d seen commanding the wave of ants against Idyll.

“Do you think it’s the Space King?” I asked Idyll one evening as she surged and flexed her authority across the land, enriching the soil and working to improve the lands in hopes of establishing her own Title. 

“Why?” Idyll asked, floating next to me. 

“Well, she’s one of Orykson’s rivals, and he’s the only person I’ve seen who can teleport without a ripple like that. I figure his rival might be able to make artifacts that do the same. Motive and means.” 

“Interesting,” Idyll mused. “I suppose it’s possible.” 

Time continued on, and after a few weeks, rebuilding efforts had gotten far enough for normal operations to continue. With Elio’s new Title, there were no more slaughter spirits being born on the island, but those that had formed in the centuries between the death of the Song of Spring and the rise of the Terminarch still had to be hunted down. 

It was frustrating to Elio, though – the people who I thought had worked with the Space King had also been the ones sabotaging the points system, and the entire structure had to be re-worked. Some of the records were able to be scavenged, pieced together by knowledge mages, or recovered via psychometry, but other records had been completely destroyed. 

Those whose records were lost completely were given compensation packages, to mixed results, though most realized it was the best that could be done for them. When even looking through temporal and mental imprints wasn’t able to turn up any sort of record, there wasn’t much that could really be done for it. 

To my embarrassment, a few days after official rebuilding efforts began, Elio hosted a mass event, inviting everyone on the entire island. Tens of thousands of people poured in, and Elio gave a grand speech, thanking everyone, and providing massive platters of roasted elk, tubers, and fish. 

That wasn’t the embarrassing part. What was embarrassing was when he began to call people up on stage in order to award them for extraordinary valor during the crisis. 

The first person called up was the Huli Jing guild leader, giving me an opportunity to finally learn her name: Jinwei. She had apparently destroyed almost a full third of the Arcanist level queens scattered across the islands. Given her powerful, destiny-forged beast core, I couldn’t say I was shocked. 

She was awarded a flat disk in the shape of a starburst, made of multicolored gemstone, which Elio proudly stated to be the Crysite Medal of Valor, as well as a growth item crafted by Elio, something she seemed pleased with. 

Gakodi, the leader of the Hyacinth Heart guild, was called up next for her extraordinary services in the battle, and was offered the medal as well as significant expansion of official resources to the guild in the form of a massive grant and series of scholarships for those of her guild who wanted to become medical doctors, rather than healers or alchemists. 

The people called up continued on, highlighting various people for their actions in and after the battle, like Edgars assistance against the Lady of Desolation, the Candleseer’s guildmaster creating divinatory pathways to shepherd people out of the city, a lone healer who had life and spatial mana that had teleported around to save those in critical condition. 

It was when Elio moved onto the next individual that I began to feel my face flush. 

“This group, who are all merely Spellbinders, managed to coordinate the protection of both the Hyacinth Heart guild and one of the safe houses, assisted in guiding Edgar to Idyll’s defense, and exterminated several hundred soldier ants, dozens of psychic ants, two ant queens, and an Arcanist level slaughter spirit.”

There was a slight muttering at that, as some people seemed incredulous about our ability to have done all of these things. I shifted, even more embarrassed. Dusk whistled curiously, wondering who it might be, while Dawn, curled around my other arm, just gave her a look. 

“Malachi Roth Baker, Dusk Baker, and Dawn Baker, please come forward!” Elio called. 

I flickered onto the stage next to him, not able to meet the eyes of anyone in the crowd. He presented me with the gemstone starburst, pinning it to my chest, then placing one into Dawn’s jaws, and one into Dusk’s hands.

“I present the Crysite Medal of Valor to Malachi, Dusk, and Dawn,” Elio said. “In addition, I would like to offer them this set of spiritual tools as thanks.”

He waved his hand, and a chest lined in velvet appeared. Inside lay a series of glimmering tools, each one only the size of my palm. There was a shovel, a chisel, and a sickle, made of a silvery metal that I recognized as a similar material to what Octavian had gotten from the starfall, as well as three bronze picks that seemed more like pills than tools to my spiritual senses.

“Thank you,” I said, flushing even redder, which I wasn’t sure was possible. “My only regret is that I wasn’t able to save more people.” 

“We all wish that,” Elio agreed gravely, then nodded to indicate I could vanish.

He continued to call forward people, including Ivy, and after the tenth person, he stopped. 

“While I have highlighted those who I believe to have had the greatest impact on saving lives, there are many others who contributed. The contributions of all of our defenders are not to be underestimated, and all those who partook in the battle, acknowledged on stage or otherwise, will find points appropriate to their contributions folded into their portfolios tomorrow morning. Now, please: eat, drink, remember the dead, and celebrate the living.”