The Third Portal: Chapter Fifty-Three

I reacted first, leaping away from the exploding stone and freezing myself in mid-air using an Immovable Lock spell. I used Foxswap to transport Kene into Dusk’s realm, exchanging him with a large stone, and turned my attention to Ivy. 

Ivy had caught his footing with a flight spell, one that radiated wings of greenish-brown light from his back. Without having the physical wings of a dragon, it wasn’t able to do much more than hold him in the air, but that was enough. Magic rushed into his hand, and he formed a Forest Dragon’s Claw. 

When it came to draconic claw spells, they were mostly nothing special. While there were some exceptions, such as the rare coral dragon, there was a reason that I hadn’t decided to pick one up, despite taking a dragon breath attack. They were a pretty generic physical enforcement, focused around the specific blend of energy that the particular draconic blend used. 

A telluric – no, tempest, slaughter spirits had it reversed – spirit was going to be tough. Regardless of the magic that was used, a body made of stone wasn’t the kind of thing that could or should be easily destroyed. The mana it was radiating was peak third gate, while Ivy was a newly ascended fourth gate. Ivy had an advantage in power, but not so much of one that the gap couldn’t be bridged.  

So when Ivy’s hand slammed into the stone, I expected it to chip, to hold off the spirit long enough to let Ivy build up a dragon breath attack. That’s what I was doing – I was cycling Mantle Dragonfyre, preparing to unleash it at the tempest slaughter spirit. 

Instead, the spirit’s form shuddered and exploded. The force that rippled out from the punch was enough to create a shockwave in the air that nearly knocked me off balance, and forced me to put a touch more mana into my Immovable Lock spell. 

Parts of the rubble began to coalesce and fuse back together, but a second claw attack from Ivy shredded it to bits. An instant later, Ivy was holding a lump of stone that radiated flecks of tempest mana. Spirits didn’t have cores like beasts did, and the mana was slowly fading from the stone, but it should serve as a good way to cash in the points. 

“And you call my life crazy,” I said. “I’ve never seen someone hit that hard at your gate.” 

Dusk nodded her agreement as she waved her hand, opening a portal up for Kene to rejoin us. 

“And I’ve never seen a third gate who was able to open international portals,” Ivy rebutted, causing Kene to laugh. 

“He’s got you there.” 

“Whatever,” I said, face flushing. “Let’s go.” 

I Foxstepped further up the mountain, and heard them scrambling to catch up. 

As we moved up the mountain, a handful of additional slaughter spirits attacked us, and Ivy usually dispatched them without too much trouble. None of them were stronger than early fourth gate, though, which had me starting to get a little bit nervous. 

A handful of animals checked on us as well, but I was able to handle them. A brief poke of my senses, occasionally cutting theirs off with Impel Senses, was enough to convince most that we weren’t worth taking a shot at. 

“I’m feeling more than a little useless now,” Kene grumbled. “I swear, why do I hang around combat mages?” 

“I don’t think your grandmother is a combat mage,” I pointed out. 

“Ugh,” was their only response. 

As we continued to hike higher and higher, the ground of the island sprawled out around us, a beautiful five-sectioned tapestry. At our current height, we couldn’t see all the way out to sea – well, with Surveyor’s Eye, I could, but the others couldn’t – but we could still see for miles: the chilly-yet-verdant land, the flowing rivers, the ruins of what had once been a city, and even the mount where the Myrkmekes lived. 

By the end of the first day, we had reached the zenith of the mountain. 

The first mountain.

That was where things started to get tricky. Only a few of the mountains were actually attached to the ground, while the rest floated. Several of their bases actually began at the midpoint or higher of the current mountain we were on, and there were entire other mountains hovering above those floating mountains.

If I’d been entirely alone, it would have been fairly difficult, as I would have had to use a combination of Foxstep and Immovable Lock to cross the distance between the small clearing where we were and the next mountain. If I’d been operating under the restrictions of the Beastgate, I would have failed entirely.

But I wasn’t alone, nor was I operating under the restrictions of the beastgate. I conjured my cauldron, Kene summoned their broom, and Ivy flexed his wings out of his shirt and lit them with his flight spell, and we simply flew to the base of the mountain.

That solution wouldn’t always work. There was a reason that professional fliers usually kept to elevations below five miles high, while we would need to go nearly double that. I didn’t entirely understand the magic behind it, but the way flight spells interacted with pressure, air currents, and ambient tempest energy could get thrown off. 

More than that, our bottled breath potions could help our bodies adapt slowly, but they weren’t instant. They reduced the acclimation time from weeks down to hours, but third gate magic couldn’t do miracles. It meant it wasn’t the best idea to just fly up as high as we could and stop. 

But to cross the gap between two mountains? It should be just fine. 

We began working to climb our way up the second mountain, and he strength of Ivy’s beast body and my own full-gates began to show themselves. Kene was frequently left lagging behind, and was forced to take breaks in Dusk’s realm, while Ivy and I had the increased tempest energy flowing through our lungs to allow us to keep pressing on. We made good time, and before noon of the second day, we were nearing the tree line, the point where plants were no longer able to grow healthily. 

It wasn’t a stark, instant shift, but rather a pattering. The trees slowly grew smaller, and then slowly grew scarcer. They’d mostly been reduced to bushes when I caught something odd out of the corner of my senses and flung my hand out, causing Ivy and Kene to stop. I cast Hiding Spider Veil, and drew my power in as closely as I could, then lowered my voice to a whisper. 

“Do you feel that? Out a little west of us, there’s a whole nest of slaughter spirits…” 

Dusk and Dawn, on the other hand, were taking a page from my book. Dawn slipped into Dusk’s spirit, and Dusk started veiling her mana. 

“Slaughter spirits don’t act that way,” Ivy said, shaking his head. “They’re solitary, and try to kill everything that isn’t already dead. That includes rival slaughter spirits.” 

“I’m going to try and sneak closer, and see what I can do.” 

“Here,” Kene said, pressing his finger on my forehead. I felt a surge of his blessing magic, but also something else. The solar energy around Dusk, Dawn, and me warped strangely, and my vision grew slightly less clear. 

“Invisibility?” I asked, and Kene nodded. I thanked him, while Siobhan began to cast lines of blue magic around them, a ward against detection that blocked my mana senses and even blurred them to my eyes.

I Foxstepped away, then began to creep closer, letting out a yawn. It must have been the elevation starting to get to me, I was feeling tired.

As I grew closer to the nest of slaughter spirits, the feeling began to grow stronger and stronger, and I felt Hannah doze off to sleep within me, while Dusk curled up on my shoulder. That snapped a warning to me, and I flared power through Placid Mind, forming a shell around my brain. 

A massive weight was bearing down on me, far stronger than I was. It felt like a true Arcanist, but also clearly an energy source, not a mana one. I drew out my staff, blasted my mana sensory spells, and began working to weave resonance into my senses, which should in turn focus Placid Mind. 

I slowly but surely ground back the mind-altering effect, but as I crept closer, I still wasn’t sure exactly what was going on. I couldn’t see anything at all, not even the slaughter spirits, but I could feel them around me. I ran power through Witches’ Eye, and only then did the illusion break fully. 

Nearly three dozen slaughter spirits, ranging from early first gate to mid fourth, were scattered around me, and every single one of them was asleep. But stranger than the slaughter spirits, there were three mountain lions, one of which looked to be so old as to be on death’s door, and several powerful mountain goats.

Strangest of all, however, was the copse of plants and mushrooms. The center of the clearing was a tree so black that I almost thought it was a hollowvoid tree. It wasn’t, but the mix of lunar, desolation, and death that it gave off was certainly spooky, while also helping rejuvenate the soil with liquid water and death. It was emitting peak sixth gate energy, far too grown and mature for me to be willing to touch. It must have been the reason the grove was here, and it seemed to be drinking mana from the slaughter spirits and animals, but leaving the energy to break down into the soil.

What looked like frozen blue pitcher plants were hanging off of the various trees, and a few animals not asleep on the ground were caught in a thick, powerful fourth gate acid they contained, and being broken apart for their nutrients. 

Rings of mushrooms circled the trees, each mycelial network roughly fifth gate. Their sprouted mushrooms were emitting waves of spores that mixed mental and temporal energy. I glanced around, noting the slow speed that snow was drifting outside, and with a touch of dawning horror realized that I was caught in a fifth gate haste effect. Not just a haste, but also a haste effect that had been combined with a sleeping spell.

In a fight, being hasted was great, but in this instance, it was just letting the carnivorous plants eat the sleeping creatures faster. 

I didn’t need Kene to help me identify these mushrooms, as they were more than a little famous – faerie nappers. Fall asleep for a quick nap, and wake up to find far more time had passed than you expected. There were stories of people sleeping away their entire lives. I thought they might also have some alchemical uses, but I wasn't sure.

As if the faerie nap mushrooms weren’t dangerous enough, they seemed to have formed a symbiotic relationship with some sort of nasty tree and some carnivorous frozen pitcher plants. 

I was tempted to back away, but I was also really tempted to take a sample. I wouldn’t try to take the black tree – that seemed like a bad idea, even for my rather low standards – but the pitchers and faerie nappers? 

Well, I was a plant and mushroom mage. 

Then again, while it had everything in its thrall right now, I might wake something up by taking samples, and I wasn’t strong enough to get much use out of either the plant or the mushroom right this moment.

Maybe it would be better to just mark it with a spatial anchor, and come back some other time. I’d mark it either way, to check on the nasty looking tree – it was the coming back later that was critical, not the marking. Should I?