The Third Portal: Chapter Fifty-Nine

No vote this week, I'm afraid.

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I looked at Dusk, and she panted, saying Idyll had managed to reach out to her after they’d come through the portal, and she’d come to get me as fast as she could. I nodded, scooping her up and teleported onto the roof of a nearby building. The building had partially collapsed, creating a small alcove I could hide in.

“I’m going to find Edgar,” I told Dusk. “Where is everyone else?” 

Dusk opened a portal next to me, and Dawn floated out, but Kene and Siobhan were gone. Hannah slipped into my mind, acknowledging me and thanking me for showing her such an amazing sight atop the mountain. 

Dusk cheeped like a bird, explaining that Kene had been treating Ivy’s injuries last she’d seen, and Siobhan had been defending them.

I grunted, then cast Crow Shade Messenger. I’d gotten so caught up in working to save people that I hadn’t actually reminded them to send people Ivy’s way. Some of the farmers I’d saved had likely requested it, but it was better to send a message, just in case. 

As the shades fluttered out of Dusk’s realm, bearing the message to Espen and Gakodi, I turned and focused on Dusk and Dawn. 

Dusk had broken through to fourth gate, and while it was clear she had quite literally just now broken through, the increase in her mana density would be a major boon for helping Idyll with whatever was going on.

Dawn, on the other hand, had broken into mid third gate, and her power felt even more solid than mine. I was guessing that she had ingrained all of her spells, and the sense I felt through my bond with her was giving me some weird impressions.

Both of their dominions had expanded, but I didn’t really understand that magic well enough to make much of an assessment on them. It was a little galling that both of my familiars were now more powerful than I was, but I couldn’t say I was actually that upset about it.

To my surprise, Hannah seemed to have advanced as well, enough for her legacy-borne exploratory dominion had blossomed into a full, complete dominion of her own. I still wasn’t entirely clear on that, but she felt like an early third gate spirit, rather than a first gate one. 

She also promptly receded into the back of my mind, not interested in the continual battle and combat going on around us. That thought, as well as Hannah’s advancement, sparked a thought: I wondered if Arthur had advanced as well, and I’d simply not noticed while summoning him due to everything going on. 

“Glad to see that all of you have done well,” I said, then turned. “We need to find Edgar.”

At that, I began to run power through all of my spells, while working to infuse resonance into my mana-senses. As I did, I felt a force reach out and spread golden light through my mana senses. Dawn’s magic mingled with my own, and the effect was immediate. 

While it wasn’t quite as dramatic as if I’d spun my soul mana through the spells, the increase was enough to feel almost like I’d taken on an entirely new spell and woven it through my magic. Not only did my range increase, but so too did the detail with which I could sense, and it even became easier to manipulate them. 

I locked onto Edgar’s position after several moments of searching. He was surrounded by what felt like two of the hives of desolants, judging by the fact there were nearly fifty fourth-gate presences in the area, and two fifth gate, accompanied by a veritable army of third gate soldiers. 

I sucked air between my teeth as I contemplated how I could help. I wasn’t able to take on so many at once, no matter how much power I built up. 

But maybe I didn’t need to. Edgar felt like he was in danger, but it wasn’t the same strong, overpowering flare that I’d felt with Ed, Octavian, and Liz.

These ants could hit hard, but their defenses were paper thin. We could take advantage of that. 

I touched the wall and began to cast a spatial anchor. 

“Dawn, do you have a dragon breath attack?” I asked. “If so, what’s it like? Dusk, I know you have a lot of weaker attacks: Snowglobe, Shockwave, Sandstorm Lance, and your hands, but did you happen to develop something to hit really hard?” 

Dawn sent me a wave of partial assent – she had one, but it wasn’t like mine. and a complex spell array entered my brain. It looked like complete and utter gibberish to me, and I wasn’t sure that even Orykson would have been able to parse it at a glance. I was pretty sure at one part, the flow of mana through it just dumped out into nothing, but I wasn’t entirely sure. 

Dusk made a so-so sound, saying that she’d gotten a spell to enhance some of her spells. She wasn’t able to hit quite as hard as Mantle Dragonfyre, but she was able to hit harder than she could before, even factoring in the increase in mana density. 

“Alright,” I said. “Here’s the plan I’m thinking of…”

I started with plants, weaving my mana into a pattern and connecting to their locations in Dusk’s realm, so I would be ready to help. Then I settled into as calm of a state as I could and began cycling Mantle Dragonfire. 

Next to me, I saw Dawn’s own dragon breath, which bore some similarities, but also some differences to my own. It built in the back of her throat, spinning like a top and slowly growing. Each time it grew too much, however, she crunched the power down, making the cherry-sized ball of power even brighter, and making it spin even faster. 

I completed the third loop. This was my limit while in battle, but I was doing an ambush, so I had time to pause and cycle it further. I pushed my mana manipulation skills, continuing to cycle as slow and controlled as I could, until it completed the fourth. I debated pushing for a fifth, but I was already struggling to push to a fourth. It was going to have to do. 

Dawn forged her self-harvesting crystals in the air, where they floated around her in a ring, almost like the depictions of a warrior surrounded by floating blades, or like when I spun my Pinpoint Boneshards around me. 

I drew soul mana out and began to connect it to all of my spells, and as I did, I felt Dawn’s magic rush through Dusk and me. She created a wave of amplification and blessing magic that worked through her Dominion, smoothing inefficiencies in my spells and adding extra oomph where she could. 

“Go!” 

I flared my mana senses out, then cast Foxstep. Dusk drew on my magic, doing the same, and we materialized in the air above and behind the ant queens, then we unleashed hell. 

Hands of earth from Dusk exploded across the battlefield, grabbing ant legs and ripping them into the ground, while shockwaves exploded from her fist, globes of snow spun through the army, and a sandstorm lance pounded into the ant queen she and Dawn were assassinating.

A wave of stonesprout materialized at the feet of the ant army, slashing upwards, pitcher plants turned and dumped acid on them, arcs of blademoss scythed through the ants, and a soul mana enhanced, four-cycle Mantle Dragonfire thundered down on my ant queen.

Dawn’s crystals rippled down and shot off in different directions, where they struck enemy ants. Instead of a physical impact, however, the crystals moved through the crowd as if they were ghosts, and the power flowed back into Dawn, where she poured the harvested mana into her dragon breath. 

Said breath exploded from her jaws, and the orb of spinning power flooded out, and where the beam struck, a wave of consuming, destructive, purifying light roared in a wave, rippling through an area around the queen. As Dawn maintained the breath, the area the dome of power covered continued to expand. 

Dawn had starsoul mana, which was meant to imitate the power of Destiny. Thus far, I’d mostly seen the positive, boosting effects of Destiny. 

My understanding of the force was admittedly limited, but the way I thought I understood it was that it was the sort of… natural course of the world. The riverbed through which the water of fortune ran, and the fish of resolve swam.

But from what I did understand, it had positive and negative effects. In the same way that the ties of fortune could cover negative luck and hatred as much as positive and love, Destiny had a cruel tyrant for every kindly hero. 

Dawn unleashed the attack of a starsoul dragon onto the queen, and while its physical offensive power was about average for a third gate attack spell, Dawn’s breath had a weight of supremacy to it that pressed down on their spirit directly. 

Unlike my Foxfyre, which burnt away physical mana, this slid into my spirit, directly attacking it. 

Unlike my Foxthorn, which pushed hudau mana into their spirit, disrupting them as they were forced to break it down, this bypassed the mana-garden entirely. 

It flooded their spirit with power, attacking them in a manner similar to what had happened to me when I’d overtrained for my duel against Mallory and had cracked my garden slightly. 

It was powerful, and a vector that not everyone had defenses against. I was sure a death mage like Orykson would have defenses, and if someone had strengthened their spirit like Kene had, they could resist. 

Or, in this case, if they were still two full stages higher than Dawn, its effectiveness was diminished. 

Diminished effectiveness or not, though, it still hit. Alone, it might not have killed her, its physical component being the weakest part. But when it was combined with the force of a fourth gate Sandstorm Lance? 

Both of the ant queens died beneath our assault, and the soldiers went into a frenzy, exploding with violence. Before they could turn their assault our way, however, Dawn dove into Dusk’s spirit, and we teleported back to the anchor I’d left behind, retracting our senses. 

We waited several long moments to give Edgar the time to finish off the mob of fourth gates. Though he was a false occultist, the older tortoise still had the weight of seventh gate mana backing him up, so we didn’t give him that long, before we extended our senses back out again. 

Sure enough, without the direction of their queens, and with the Arcanist level threats disposed of, most of the fourth gate presences were fading fast. None of them were able to send attacks at our minds through our mana senses, so we waited for Edgar to sweep them up, then Foxstepped next to him. 

“Ah, Malachi. I thought that was you appearing to destroy things from orbit. As well as Dusk and Dawn – my you all have grown, haven’t you?”

“Hey,” I greeted him, smiling briefly. “I need your help. Elio is on his way, but they destroyed the portal network, and are going after the Craftsman’s enchantment that’s keeping Idyll alive while she integrates into becoming a genius loci, instead of a worldspirit.” 

The enormous eyes of the turtle blinked slowly, and he nodded his head up and down. 

“I see. Where do we need to go in order to stop them? And who are they?” 

I shifted my eyes downwards, listening to the call of the winds. 

“I don’t know who they are, but we need to go downward. Beneath the earth.”