The Third Portal: Chapter Fifty-Seven

The power continued flowing from the sky. 

Perfect advancement. 

I didn’t know how long it would last. This high up in the air, on the edge of space, Internal Pocketwatch was struggling to calculate time. 

I didn’t know how far it would bring me, but I could make some guesses. It was improving Ivy least of all, followed by Dusk, Kene, and Siobhan, so it seemed to have diminishing returns at peak third gate or early fourth gate. Either way, it should drive me to the peak of third gate, at the very minimum. 

It was clear, easy power. Power we’d earned through battling slaughter spirits and climbing atop the mountain. 

I turned aside and thrust my hand into the air, pulling on my connection to Dusk and forcing the portal to Port Ruby open.

I couldn’t leave my brother, my sister-in-law, or my friends in danger. What kind of person would it make me, to accept a little bit of advancement in exchange for their safety. 

Maybe I couldn’t help, sure. But if I could help, and chose not to, simply because it would slow me down a little bit? 

That… was not me. 

It would not be me. More than that. It could not. 

There was a flex in the air as the portal started to open. Just a tiny amount, the size of a silver coin, but that was faster than I had ever managed to open a portal over such a distance before. 

“What’s wrong?” Kene asked, putting their hand on my shoulder, and only then did I realize that they didn’t know. 

“They’re in danger. All of them. My brother, Liz, Octavian, even Damien and others.” 

“How do you know?” Ivy asked, turning to look away from the gleaming meteor-that-wasn’t. “Even your mana senses shouldn’t reach all the way out there.” 

“Not my mana-senses. The winds of fortune.” 

Ivy looked into the sky, where the tiny trickle of power was flowing into him, then at the rest of our ragtag group. 

“I’m going with you. This isn’t really doing much for me anyhow. The rest of you should stay here until you’ve gotten the most benefits. Malachi, are you sure you don’t want to stay here?” 

I was focusing on expanding the portal, but it was slow going. While I’d managed to breach the first, tiny little space in an instant, it would still take minutes for me to open it into a human-sized passage. 

“I can’t. Besides, this will take a few minutes. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and it will be done by then, and I’ll be fourth gate?”

Everyone here knew that wouldn’t happen, not unless the rate of the power coming down on us suddenly increased. 

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Kene said. 

“I’ll try,” I said, gritting my teeth and sending spatial mana into the effort, as well as drawing on the circle of mushrooms in Dusk. 

Dusk reached out with her own power to try and help me, as did Dawn, but Dusk’s dominion was occupied in protecting her from the environment, and Dawn’s somehow seemed occupied by the power coming down from space. 

Seconds turned into minutes as I sweated, forcing open the portal. The spells in my spirit continued to grow, until all in an instant, they exploded. 

There was a cracking as Fungal Armor ingrained, and I felt the speed at which the armor could adapt to attacks sharply improve. 

But the power hadn’t just been focused on Fugnal Armor. It had worked through my entire mid-third gate: Foxswap, Area Psychometry, Reposition Anchor, Refine Image, Hiding Spider, Converge Echoes, Spatial Harvest, and Magical Echo.

Every single one of them burst into mastery at once, regardless of how close or far from mastery I had once been. That was deeply strange, but I didn’t have time to think on it, as the portal tore open and I dove through it, Ivy a moment behind me. 

As we stepped out, I sucked in a lungful of smoke. If not for the bottled breath potion already running through my lungs, I would have been coughing and spluttering wildly, but with it, I only let out a slight wheeze. Ivy did the same, and we whipped around. 

The fields of crops, established for only a handful of months, were burning.

Slaughter spirits rode through the fields. I saw spirits of every sort – the frozen ice bodies of solar spirits, the windy bodies of telluric ones, the strange, fractured crystal and nothingness of spatial spirits, and more. 

But there weren’t just slaughter spirits. There was a distinct smell in the air, popping ash-willow and saltpeter. It was light, but with my ingrained senses and improved body, I was able to catch it. 

Fire bombs. 

Someone had released fire bombs across the fields.

Before I could even finish taking that in, Ivy tugged on my arm and pointed in the direction of Port Ruby. 

It was also burning, and I could hear the sounds of violence from here. I spat out a curse, then turned back to the field of slaughter spirits, then to the city. 

“I’ll take the field of spirits. Most of them aren’t Arcanist level,” Ivy said, rolling up his sleeves. “At the very least, if I get overwhelmed, I can retreat. Probably. Go deal with the city – you’re better at search and rescue than I am. Though… Send me help?” 

“Got it,” I agreed, flickering away in a Foxstep. The last thing I saw before I vanished was Ivy thrusting his hands out, golden light bright enough to singe my eyes forming between his palms.

I chained Foxsteps together, chasing down the nearest connection, until I appeared next to Octavian. He, Araceli, Simion, and Roh were all standing in front of the Hyacinth Heart guild’s hospital, battling together, against a group of over a dozen familiar looking enemies. Almost two dozen others had died already, and their bodies had been piled into a barracade, further limiting the lines of attack that their enemy had. 

Not slaughter spirits. 

Desolants. 

Aracaeli released a wave of her crackling breath at one, but they were outnumbered. She couldn’t take to the air, or she’d make herself an obvious target. Roh was laying in Octavian’s hair, clearly exhausted beyond his ability to fight, while Simion was playing defense, knocking attack spells out of the way and firing shards of metal to intercept. Octavian was acting as the general, weaving spells to amplify and protect his familiar. 

Gakodi was behind them, channeling healing magic into their forms, but that wasn’t going to stop their mana from running dry. 

They’d done well, but all of them were clearly tired, and had been holding this spot for quite a while. 

I landed next to them, then Foxstepped among the ants, slamming palms into their sides and casting Foxthorn, then using Foxarmor, Fungal Armor, and Briarthreads together to dodge and shed blows as I teleported to the next one. 

“Malachi?” Octavian asked, sounding surprised through his exhausted state. 

“Hey Tavi!” I said, teleporting out of the way of a strike and disabling another, flicking Fungal Locks as I did.

Octavian didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, as he and his familiars began taking down the ones I had disabled. I felt a bit bad, but Desolants were a menace, and they would have gladly made my friends into food. 

“Are you okay?” I asked, landing next to him again. 

“Better now,” he said. “But there are going to be more of them. I guess you’d know that, though…” 

“Hello Malachi,” Gakodi said. “I didn’t expect to see you again.” 

“I didn’t expect Desolants to attack. Can we use this guildhall as a safe space?” 

“Of course, but we will need more defenders.” 

“Not a problem, I’ll get you some soon. Just hold out a little longer.” 

I tapped one of the ant corpses, placing a spatial anchor into it, then continued to place anchors into as many of them as I could, until I only had enough first gate mana to keep up Harvest Distance, before teleporting away.

I appeared next to Liz next. She was riding astride a unicorn – where in the world had she found one of those? – and had a pair of civilians behind her. She was lashing out with her domain weapon, echoes trailing through the air, cutting down second and third gate ants around her. Except, every time that they fell, they rose up a moment later. 

Neither Liz nor I spoke, since she was tied up in battle, though the civilians screamed, and the unicorn did give me a very, very wary looking glance, even shifting to step away from me. If I recalled, most non-sapient unicorns tended to avoid men, so the fact it didn’t like me was… weirdly affirming.

But I had my mind elsewhere. I sensed for the source of the resurrecting ants, and found it a moment later – a tree was actually a peak fourth gate death slaughter spirit, animating them to try and kill her. For all of her power, the sheer numbers were acting as a blockade, stopping her from closing in and attacking the tree directly. 

Well, I could fix that. I started cycling Mantle Dragonfire, while manipulating my other spells in a tight weave of magic. Arthur appeared, knocking ants out of my way, and empowered by my spirit lantern mushrooms. I shot spikes of ice from the frostbite succulents and yin-cap combo, sliced out with briarthreads, and slashed out with bones and briars. 

Ants died en-masse, letting us approach the tree, but it shifted back, using its dominion to animate and move its roots, looking almost like a dryad moving their tree. 

That was fine. I continued the assault, then teleported behind the tree, thrust my hand out, wove a touch of soul mana into the spell, and sent a beam of Mantle Dragonfire right into the roots of the tree. I swept upwards, cutting it in half, and it tried to create something not entirely unlike Fungal Armor, but it was too late. For all its power, I’d struck hard and fast, and magma did a pretty good job of destroying trees. 

Liz cut down the rest of the ants, and I pointed to the guildhall about a thousand feet away. 

“Hyacinth Heart is going to be a safe zone. They need defenders. Drop off the civilians, and help Octavian, he’s almost out of mana.” 

Then, before she could question me, I teleported again. 

This time, I appeared in the store of Damien, the enchanter who had helped me with some of the arrays. They were standing outside of their shop, fighting a group of ants, while a handful of the industrial, non-combat enchanters were in the store behind them. 

They were using an enchanted blade, crackling with lightning, and wearing a suit of what seemed to be shimmering, metallic armor, running with lines of every time of energy, and set with a set of fourteen shimmering harvesting enchantment crystals set in a ring around the head, like a crown.

There was a dull, but familiar sensation from the armor. Each time one of the desolant’s attacks struck it, power from the attack was sent into the environment, where the magic in the crystals activated, draining the excess and empowering the armor further. 

The magic resistance item I’d found in the slaughter spirit’s territory. I didn’t know what Damien had done to it, but they’d clearly combined it with at least one other natural treasure, and done a lot of enchanting. 

I teleported into the room behind them, where the industrial enchanters were cowering. One screamed and I shushed them. 

“I’m going to teleport you to a safe spot,” I told them. “Don’t resist. That will waste mana, and make it less likely I can teleport the next person. Got it?” 

I waited until all of them had nodded, then waved my hand and Foxswapped them with the anchored dead ants, before stepping out next to Damien and repeating what I had said about Gakodi’s guildhall needing defenders. 

They deactivated the armor, the gray metal flowing up to the crystals, which grew closer together, and fed into a spatial warp, until Damien was left with a crystal and metal bangle. 

“Can you teleport me there?” they asked. “I’m still having trouble moving more than a few feet from where I activate the armor, and I don’t trust myself to run there without it.”

I nodded and tapped their forehead, swapping them with a dead ant, then turned and teleported away again. I had more people to check on.