The Third Portal: Chapter Forty-Five

I stood in front of the board until my time was starting to run down, then teleported into line and started making my way up to the clerk to redeem the reward, bouncing back and forth on the balls of my feet, still debating. 

When I reached the attendant and was forced to lock in the choice, I ran through the options one last time. I almost changed my mind, then settled. In the end, the biggest factor was that if I missed the timemind, then I’d still be able to use the Ghostmind spell to make up some of the difference. If I missed the Organshield crystal, then I’d be entirely out of a defensive tool. 

“I’d like to purchase the Organshield crystal,” I said, slapping my ID down. 

The attendant started rattling off a rote reply, so dryly and quickly that her voice sounded almost like a recording enchantment. 

“We don’t provide loans for items that are in the top ten as a matter of course, unless you’re purchasing land. If you –” 

“No, I have the points,” I said, shaking my head. “Right here, see?”

She blinked and picked up the card, scanning it over, then blinked again. 

“Oh, Primes, this is going to be a pain,” she muttered under her breath. She spoke quietly enough that if it weren’t for my ingrained Vampiric Senses, I’d have missed it entirely. 

“Alright, I’m going to have to get my manager, they’ve implemented higher levels of security with the top ten rewards, ever since someone was found making fake points,” she said, stretching and standing. “And with our record books getting blown up, it’s going to take even longer to authenticate than normal. I’ll copy over the paperwork, and we’ll try to get it to you by the end of the week.”

“Alright,” I said, frowning. “Why were your records blown up?” 

“Oh, someone had spirit trapped a slaughter spirit they couldn’t kill, and brought it back here to get an Arcanist to destroy, but it got loose in the customs house,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “We got it, but not before it blew up a bunch of stuff. ” 

I hadn’t really heard about that, but between training, visiting Mossford, and the endless hours working on the array, I hadn’t exactly been out and about for the past three months. I would have written it off, if it weren’t for the fact that the winds of resolve and fortune had both twitched in my spirit at the revelation, and I wasn’t entirely sure why. 

I called out for the Nascent Truth of the Druid, straining to try and improve my understanding of what they were telling me. But even with the power that my staff offered me, I was still only able to channel a fraction of a Nascent Truth. Nothing came through.

I let the topic go. If I was going to be caught up in it, then I’d get caught up in it. I’d figure it out when the time came, and until then, I was going to stay in my lane. Especially with my training sessions two thirds finished, a top treasure on its way, and the soul strengthening array almost complete.

I passed the card over to the woman, who used a spell to memorize the information, then passed it back to me. I thanked her, then quickly chained teleports together until I arrived at the spot where I’d agreed to meet the Huli Jing for our training. It was out in the fields, near the edge of one of the walls. 

I spotted her lounging against a tree, her five tails swishing through the air in a gesture that I recognized as abject boredom. She radiated powerful magic, a blend of solar, lunar, mental, knowledge, creation, desolation, tempest, and tinges of other things a bit less prominently. She was clearly at the very peak of fifth gate, and if she were a human, I even might have suspected that she’d broken one of her gates through to sixth, while the others lagged at fifth. Given she wasn’t, I didn’t know exactly what was going on, but I waved. 

She waved and strode towards me, then I felt a hand clap onto my shoulder. I whipped around to see… nothing. I turned back to the illusion and unleashed my senses out on full blast, remembering what Meadow had said about their Mold Aura spell allowing them to shift the seeming location of their presence to the mana senses. 

Flaring out all around me, I could sense that I was encompassed within her mana senses, but that wasn’t exactly surprising. I spun and combed my senses through the area around me, looking for her real body, which was clearly invisible. 

A palm struck my chest. She might not have designed her body entirely for physical strength, but she was still a beast that was at least two stages higher than I was.

I was thrown back by the force of her blow, catching myself in the air with Immovable Lock, where I ran Refine Image and Lesser Image Recall together, leaving a copy of myself in the air behind me as I teleported off to the side, near the illusionary self she’d left by the tree. 

I spun my senses through the air, looking for the real her, but her power still seemed to be emanating from the illusion. I did my best to block it out entirely, conjuring my Runelight Lens and casting Impel Senses to lock the area. 

That was a mistake. 

Five orbs of Foxfyre, each one the size of a musk melon, slammed into me, fired not from the invisible woman, but emerging out of the illusion itself. I conjured up Fungal Armor and Foxarmor, but this spell was designed to cut through forged mana. The purple flame melted through my armor like a blowtorch cutting butter, with enough speed that Foxarmor barely slowed it, let alone stopped it. She’d clearly reduced the power of her attacks, because they only left me unpleasantly warm, but not injured. 

I teleported away, leaving another refined illusion of myself behind, and started running Starfish Regeneration. A foot connected with my spine, knocking me forwards and off balance, and I teleported. Still spinning and out of balance, my hand glowing with Foxthorn, I slapped the invisible woman. The power coursed into her, but her command over her spirit was enough to blow away the power injected into her mana-garden. 

I hit the ground, letting out a ‘wumph’ as the air shot from my lungs, and felt her tap my neck with a claw, clearly indicating a loss. She took a few steps back and let the illusions fade, appearing in front of me, her presence actually linked with her – probably – real body this time, while her false self vanished. 

“Not terribly done, kit,” she said, nodding her approval. “Though… what exactly are you going for? Are you pretending to be a phantom fox?” 

“Something of the sort,” I said evasively. “I’m going to be aiming for a spot in the Elysian Mastery Tournament as an independent if I can, and when I’m there, I want to get people thinking I’m a kitsune. Huli Jing? Gumiho? I’ve heard all three.” 

“Different breeds,” the woman said with a shrug. “But if you’re going to be doing that, then you’re going to need to get better with your illusions. The teleportation trick is a pretty neat one, but it’s not going to work against an opponent with finely tuned senses.” 

She gestured at herself, her fox ears twitching. 

“It also won’t work in the Arcanist division, if you did manage to get that far. You might be able to pull your trick off in the Spellbinder division, but anyone good enough to reach Arcanist for real is going to be able to immediately pick up on which of your illusionary bodies is the real one or not, just by sensing where your presence is.” 

“Well, then it sure is fortunate that I have you to teach me those magics, and how to use them, isn’t it?” I asked with a cheeky grin. She grinned back at me, and both of our tails twitched in unison. 

“Alright, can you actually cast them? I can show you the Mold Aura spell all day long, but I’m not entirely sure how compatible you’ll be. Your spirit is strange six ways to Creday – you’ve clearly got a deep mana imprint, and it seems like soul mana, but you’re weirdly coherent for all of the madness.” 

That actually caught me off guard – I was used to my mentors knowing about things like deep mana and soul mana, but I wasn’t at all used to hearing it from other people. I supposed it made sense that a powerful arcanist like her knew about it, I just hadn’t been expecting it. 

“What, you think you’re the only one in the world to earn something like that? Nah, I’ve got a few things of my own.” 

She winked at me, and her mana and energy shifted slightly, letting me get a better sense of her. Even though she’d used her spellbond to give herself a human form, I could distinctly feel a beast core formed on her hand, glowing with the sort of intense golden power that I associated with destiny magic. 

It was clearly the source of her strange half-step ascended magic, and it was also flowing into her body to make her stronger than she should be. In some ways, it was similar to my own soul mana beast core, but it was also clearly quite different. 

I considered what I’d heard about her being banished to set up the guild on Crysite because she was considerably more powerful than the guildmaster, but lacked the political acumen to navigate the waters of Mossford’s guild landscape. I’d dismissed it at the time, but I could absolutely buy it now. 

I’d just noticed a tendril of what felt like void power wrapping around her neck when her veil settled back into place, letting me get a general sort of sense for her power, but making it harder to scan her body for specific information. 

“Alright, kit,” she said, nodding her head. “Let’s start with Foxfyre. Every breed of nine tailed fox has some minor variation on it, so for your little ruse, you’ll want to be able to cast it, and if you can manage Mold Aura, you can manage it.” 

She flicked her hand and pulled paper and a pencil from the storage ring on her finger, then began sketching. 

“It’s a pretty complex attack for a mage who focuses only on battlemagic, but given the way you threw around those armors, I think you can manage it. It burns through forged mana and matter, making it great for blowing holes in those Phantom Hand pricks.:” 

“It can also be cast through an illusion, right?” I asked, taking the paper eagerly and starting to sketch the spell into the air. 

“That’s its ingrained effect,” she agreed, crossing her arms and watching as I conjured the large purple fireball. It hovered over the top of my palm, doing nothing, and I willed it in the direction of the guild leader before me, using a bit of basic mana manipulation.  

It… did nothing. 

“It’s not a fireball spell, kit,” she said, her lip curling into a grin. “You can’t just use mana manipulation. You gotta use your body. Throw it like a ball.” 

I flicked my hand at her, envisioning the orb moving like a dodgeball at her, and it flew out of my hand. She batted it aside and gave me an approving nod, then wrote out another spell.”

“Good. Now, here’s the Mold Aura spell. If you can pick up on redirecting your presence quickly enough, and can learn to disguise your attacks, we can have some real fun sparring.” 

I grinned and started sketching the spell.