The Third Portal: Chapter Fifty-Five

I left a Material Echo behind me, teleported behind it, left an illusion, and teleported again. I cast Mold Aura, whipping my presence around, and cast Foxfyre, leaving a Captured Moment in each one as I moved.

The balls of Foxfyre seemed to singe and burn at the spirit, and Dusk let out a cheer. Each ball was a lot less effective than the soul mana empowered Mantle Dragonfyre, but they were more efficient than my spiritshield lichen, being meant to chew through physical mana – like the body of spirits.

I wove in and out of the fireballs, into and out of Dusk’s realm, and shredded through suits of gradually less mana-expensive Fungal Armor. Then I felt it, and I grinned.

“Gotcha.”

I flexed and spun soul mana through my spirit, this time not using it to overcharge a spell, but for the purpose that the spell that Dusk’s gift had been meant for – restoring mana. Then I cast a few new spells.

First, I spun a Spatial Anchor in my finger, then cast Reposition Anchor, teleporting it right in front of the spirit. Then I cast Magical Echo, and each of the Capture Moment balls of Foxfyre scattered across the battlefield flared to life. Dozens of balls of purple fire suddenly blazed up, each one capable of slightly injuring the spirit.

Next came the Converge Echo spell. All of the balls of purple light streaked towards the anchor, right where the spirit was. It shifted, trying to escape through the shadows, but Dusk cut that off, so it turned and began to flee. I cast a quick Reposition Anchor again, then teleported and released the last of my attacks.

A wave of purple flame crashed into the spirit from one side, and from the other, a massive beam of red and brown light erupted from my hand, the power of a three-cycle breath.

That was the last of my attacks, but it wasn’t the last of the attacks that hit the slaughter spirit.

A pillar of light, glowing bright enough to force me to blink my eyes clear. Though the mana pouring from the attack was fourth gate, the force it gave off was not lesser than the attacks of the slaughter spirit.

Ivy floated overhead, his green flight spell holding him in place, while his hands were glowing with light. The impressive flaring of the Forest Dragon’s Breath continued to crush down on the slaughter spirit, even as my attacks faded.

Ivy landed in a crouch, and I saw the spirit, dazed, but still intact. All of its rings had shattered, but it dove into shadow. Dusk threw her hands out, casting Enforce Reality, but the spirit’s body warped, twisting like a fish caught on a hook. Dusk started swearing, her voice a tinkling of raindrops on a thatched roof, and I launched into action. I was out of soul mana, but I overcharged my mana and lobbed a barrage of Foxfyre with one hand, drawing out my moss and lichen combination with the other. My attacks lashed through the space.

Ivy unleashed another horrifyingly powerful ray of light from his hands, tearing the spirit through, but it erupted from his shadow at the last second. It was tiny now, having lost most of its power to escape Dusk’s grasp, but it was still there.

Ivy reacted in a manner befitting a dragon. He punched out with his claw attack, glowing with his hyper-concentrated mana. But the power, no matter how concentrated, was still purely physical. It might have caused the wisp to tremble, but then again, it might not have – the wisp was in pretty bad shape.

It unleashed the same enormous, acre-sized wave of flame that it had used against me, and Dusk and I took refuge in her realm. The instant we were in, I tore open a portal, while Dusk called on water from her Nixies, beating back the flame to let me cast Foxswap on Ivy. This time, the spirit had clearly overcharged the spell, as it blazed with deadly power.

He appeared in the realm next to me, looking fairly bad. He had some sort of rootlike armor covering him, mixing with his scales, but it clearly hadn’t been meant to stand up to fire. His absurdly potent mana was probably the only reason that he’d survived it at all – I wasn’t sure my own could have done the same. Even with his armor, he had several long, serious burns over his legs and arms, though his torso and head seemed unhurt.

Dusk slammed the portal shut and cut off her streams of water. I cast Transport Item to summon a healing potion and tossed it to Ivy, while downing one myself. I wasn’t too badly hurt, but the flame and light had left me with some burns of my own, I just hadn’t noticed in the heat of the battle.

“I hate incorporeal enemies,” Ivy grumbled. “Why couldn’t it have been a –”

“Where’s Kene?” I interrupted. “Dusk, I know it’s hurt. Can it get back in.”

She shook her head, saying that she was confident that she’d be able to hold it off for at least another ten or fifteen minutes, but it was knocking at her metaphorical door.

“Kene’s fine. They went looking for you, but when you blasted your power over half the mountain, I came to get you. They went invisible and hid.”

“Great,” I said, then overcharged my mana. “We need to finish the spirit off. It’s hurt, but it’s not dead. Still, there’s no way it can survive another major barrage. I’m too tapped out for another big wave like I did before with the Foxfyre, so I need to make this strike matter.”

Ivy nodded and then glanced at me curiously.

“Was that Mantle Dragonfyre? I’ve never seen it before, but it matched the feel of the eggs.”

“It was. It’s not great against incorporeal enemies – it wouldn’t even hurt this one if it didn’t have so much light in it.”

Ivy just nodded and waited as I slowly, methodically, gathered up power for a Mantle Dragonfyre, running through four different cycles. I was nowhere near able to do that in combat, but out of combat?

Then, with the remainder of my mana, I conjured Foxfyre. Purple balls of fire materialized in the air over my hand, only about four of them. Ivy raised his hands, gold light starting to build in them.

Dusk tore open her portal right in front of the slaughter spirit, and we shot into motion. I flung waves of purple flame, unleashed a wave of Mantle Dragonfyre, and Ivy released his own overcharged dragon’s breath.

The combined power of our attacks melted the snow in an instant, tore the broken and tired slaughter spirit, and left a long, melted groove in the stone of the mountain. As one last mark of violence, the slaughter spirit exploded, another intense wave of overbearing flame that forced Dusk to snap the portal shut and blast it with water. Even then, the fractions that got through were enough to reduce two trees to little more than ash, and left Ivy and I covered in burns.

Dusk slowly opened the portal again, slamming it shut an instant later. She looked up, and in a voice like creaking branches, said the fire was still going.

“Lingering Flame. Normally way too pricy for combat use, but if you’re dying anyways, might as well… Primes.”

“Nah, it’s not too bad,’ I said, “The attack’s what, a few hundred feet in every direction? I’ve got this.”

I leapt up, and rather than opening a portal or stepping out, simply Foxstepped as far up the mountain as I could. The air seemed to flicker oddly for a moment, but with the spirit dead, it wasn’t able to pull any more tricks, and I landed safely outside the ring of still-burning flame. I waved and opened a portal next to me, letting Dusk and Ivy out.

Dusk looked at the fire, then at Ivy, before whistling to ask how long it was going to last.

“Depends on the ambient solar energy. Theoretically forever. Realistically, with such a powerful effect needing to be maintained… A few hours? Not sure.”

“Interesting,” I commented, sighing. “How are we going to prove we killed it to collect the points?”

Dusk peeped up, this time asking me why I wanted points. After all, she’d already done the thing we had talked about, getting Elio to upgrade her cloud. Ivy gave her a strange look, and in all honesty, so did I. She shrugged and said she didn’t mind – she’d just thought we were done with that.

“Well, there are still things I’m aiming for,” I said. “There are also things like the spiritual tools that would be useful to you, Dawn, and me. And to say nothing of the general advancement resources.”

Dusk shrugged and said she really didn’t think that we needed those, except maybe whatever treasure I was after.

“You are a strange little spirit, Dusk,” Ivy said.

“Hey, only I’m allowed to bully my sister,” I said. “But he’s right, you know. You are a strange little spirit.”

I turned to Ivy.

“Alright, let’s go get Kene.”

“I thought you wanted to know how we’d get points for it,” Ivy said, a touch of amusement in his voice. “But sure. This way.”

He began setting off, and I Foxstepped next to him, then started making my own way.

“We’ll have to fill out a truth potion backed report,” Ivy said. “It’s pretty simple, honestly. Just swearing that we killed this spirit on this date, and hadn’t already turned its death in for points.”

A small, greedy part of me wanted to look for loopholes in that statement, but I shoved it down. Not only was that just greed talking, but it was also actively dangerous to skew the number of Arcanist slaughter spirits on record.

The thought of numbers reminded me of the strange release of a powerful spirit that had destroyed records, and from there to some of my training with the Huli Jing, and then to Espen’s training on moving my arrays. I snapped and glanced at Ivy.

“Tonight, I want to examine your spells, if you don’t mind. I’ve recently gotten a way to move the locations of my biological spell arrays, and I figured that there was nobody better to ask.”

“How did you get there? We were talking about points. But yeah, that’s fine. Is it like a beast’s form?”

“I’m not sure, actually, but I don’t think so. It’s a gradual nudge of spells through my full-gate spells, which I think is different.”

“Ah, yeah, totally different. I designed my form to a template in my mind, then used the power of my spellbond to bind the form to me. It happened all at once.”

“Another random question, if you don’t mind. How does your spellbond grow? I get how a beast core could, but…”

“Ah, yeah, no worries. We gradually gain the ability to draw our the in-between state of our two forms. That’s how I form my wings on the fly. My mom can temporarily shift her hands into claws for a single strike, and is able to give it the physical might of her full draconic form. Eventually, it lets us have the best of our original form in a human package. Plus, we can structure our energy circuits in ways that help us build them better. You have Analyze Life, right?”

I flickered the spell on and examined Ivy.

“Looking at other people? How scandalous!’” a voice called from nowhere.

“Kene!” I said happily, spinning and spiking my mana senses, then pulling them into a hug. “Glad you’re okay.”

“Me too,” Kene said, their invisibility fading. They looked over the partially healed burns covering Ivy and me both, then frowned. “What, exactly, happened to you two? You look like you got off worse in a fight with a housefire.”

“So, funny story…” I started.