The Third Portal: Chapter Thirty-Eight

I spat out a curse as my mind raced. I hadn’t managed to extract everything from the internals of this nexus point, but I had most of it. There was only one component left that was absolutely, completely, one hundred percent needed. 

A second crack ran through the gourd and I shoved aside a bundle of mana conductive linework, ignored one of the less critical components, and started reaching for the core of the entire nexus.

A third crack split the surface of the gourd as I ripped out the bright red stone that was covered in tight runes, tossed it into Dusk’s vault, and threw the gourd onto the floor. As the heavily cracked gourd shattered, I immediately started running, straining to cast Foxstep as quickly as I could. 

Out the door, atop a nearby stone building, onto the next roof.

Behind me, the building that had contained the nexus point exploded, a massive eruption of force ripping through the air. The shockwave knocked me off my feet, and I caught myself in midair with Immovable Lock, before teleporting away. 

There was a bright blur in my spatial senses as the slaughter spirit locked onto my position, folded in and out of existence, and then appeared before me. The glowing white orb of power that indicated the spirit was about to unleash a Force Beam spell at my head appeared. In the same instant, I struck out with Foxthorn, driving the hudau mana into the slaughter spirit’s center. 

When I’d fought it earlier, I hadn’t used the spell, because I had no clue how it would work with the strange inverse nature of slaughter spirits, nor if it could even hit the strange dreamstuff that the spirit was built out of. It was an attack on the mana-garden, so it probably should, but there was no guarantee, especially with the huge difference in power. On top of all of that, at the time, the goal had just been to hold it off long enough for us to activate the arrays within the boosted gourd. 

As the spike of hudau mana drove into the spirit’s mana-garden, I was glad I hadn’t tried to land the attack before. It forged itself, consuming the spirit’s mana, but the resonance within the garden of the spirit caused the Foxthorn spell to shatter. The shards actually blew back, scattering over my own mana garden, ripping at the grass and embedding themselves in trees. 

It had distracted the spirit enough for me to Foxstep out of the way, but the soreness in my own spirit from the blow was rough. If I hadn’t had the experience of wresting my spirit back under my control thanks to the root of resolve, I wouldn’t have had the strength to fight through it and Foxstep away. 

But I did have that experience, and I manipulated my mana to shove the shards out of my garden, their mana melting into the air around me, even as I chained together teleports to blur from rooftop to rooftop, the slaughter spirit in hot pursuit.

A wave of force punched through the building I was standing on, even as I focused and Foxstepped again moments before stone speared through my guts.

Then the spirit was in front of me, and I skidded to a stop. A lance of force rushed at me, and I slipped into Dusk, then teleported behind it and kept running. The spirit seemed to lose track of me for a second, but then its senses locked in on me again and it drove forward, force missiles streaming at me. 

I groaned as I pulled myself into Dusk. It was tracking me with mana senses – it was an arcanist level spirit, of course it was! 

I took a slow breath to calm myself. This wasn’t too bad – I’d gotten away, and I could just open the portal back to Port Ruby. 

Even as I thought that, I could feel the spirit cutting and poking at the fabric of the space where I’d vanished, trying to force its way inside. I didn’t think it should be capable of that, but then again, it was made of dreamstuff, and Dusk was asleep right now. 

The portal was out. I didn’t want to give it the time to break in. I’d need to move the entry point – which was to say, I’d need to move myself. And if it was using its mana senses to track me down… 

I started working to veil myself, slowing the movements in my spirit and blending them into the power of the world around me. For a moment, I debated activating Impel Senses, but a huge blank spot would stick out just as much as a beacon of mana would. If I’d been fighting a mindless automaton or construct, it would be fine, but the spirit had a degree of intellect. 

I could try to overpower the spirit, like I had with the leader of the Glowing Soil Guild, but I wasn’t confident it would work. The guild leader had been a false arcanist, and even then, I’d only barely been able to overpower him. This was a true arcanist, or at least a close enough approximation – I wasn’t entirely sure how slaughter spirit advancement worked when compared to normal spirits. Not only that, but even if I managed to dodge its attacks and overpower the spirit’s lock, I couldn’t maintain the lock at a distance, so the moment I got more than a little bit away, the spirit would be on me again. 

No, veiling myself was the best and cleanest method to escape. I just really wished I’d learned the aura masking spell from the Huli Jing first. 

I reappeared, and immediately Foxstepped away, working to blend myself in with the energies around me and the weave of space, while also resisting the urge to turn around and stare at the spirit. 

I managed to teleport twice more before the spirit spotted me through my veil. It exploded into movement, flickering in and out of reality again to cross the distance and unleash a pulse of force at me. The moment it vanished, I pulled myself into Dusk, not wanting to take the risk. It took a few moments, but as before, I felt it hammering against the entry, trying to force its way inside. Before it could get through, I slipped out, Foxstepping away.

It slowly became almost like a game after that. I would veil myself the best I could, then teleport until I couldn’t quite perfectly match the weave of space after the teleport, and then the spirit would erupt into violence. I pulled myself into Dusk to dodge the attacks, then the entire thing reset. Liz, Ed, and Kene all waited anxiously, unable to do much to help, since even Kene’s empowering spells would only make my location more obvious. 

Slowly but surely, I made my way out of the city, and to the edge of the slaughter spirit’s territory, where it seemed hesitant to keep chasing me. I built up quite the lead on it, at which point I started working to tear open the portal to Port Ruby.

When we finally stepped out, I took a breath of air, and Kene wrapped me in a tight hug. 

“I’m proud of you for not charging in headfirst,” they said. 

“I’m not that stupid,” I said, grinning up at them with my head on their chest. 

It was fairly late in the afternoon by that time, and we’d had to skip lunch in order to get all the array components, so we ate an early dinner together. The Earthwright Guild had begun mass farming, and while meat other than fish was still in relatively short supply, there were now almost a half dozen restaurants open in the area. We wound up eating at a restaurant that served cuisine from across Greater Daocheng. I ate some stewed garbanzo beans in a rich sauce, while Kene had a vegetable packed soup, Ed had a fish and onion dish served over rice, and Liz ate a tofu noodle bowl. 

Meadow showed up midway through the meal, eating a spicy tomato and fish dish of her own, and asked us to fill her in on what happened. After we ran through our day, she gave us a proud smile. 

“Well done, all of you. It’s no meager feat to take on and seal away an Arcanist slaughter spirit, even temporarily. And to tell you the truth, if you had a better matchup, say against a tempest one, I think you may have even been able to kill it by working together.”

“We also ran into something kind of strange out there,” Kene said, gesturing with his spoon at me. “I didn’t know what it was.” 

I pulled the strange thing that felt like a Lushloam seed, but not, from Dusk’s vault and passed the mason jar to Meadow. The old woman picked it up, swirled it a few times, then put it back down on the table. 

“You’re right that it’s similar to a Lushloam seed. The names for these are even less standardized, I’m afraid – the seeds are far and away the most common varieties that fall during the stars, but occasionally other blends do too, and this is one of those. It’s got a drop of fortune mana within it, which it uses to draw on surrounding energies of the right type and siphon power to them.” 

“What does it do?” Liz asked, leaning forwards. 

“If planted, it can preserve the way an area is, keeping it in its current state for years by nudging away any new energy and mana in the area to outside of it. It’s like putting up massive defensive wards, but without ever needing to apply any wards at all.” 

“I can see a few uses for that,” Ed nodded. “But I remember the Lushloam could be taken into the body or into the spirit too.” 

“When this is taken into the body, it strengthens a person’s spell resistance massively, by actively causing spells that strike you to funnel into the environment’s energy. Someone hit you with a fireball? The solar and desolation mana that make up the spell get transferred to local sources of solar and desolation energy. You can suppress it, to allow for beneficial effects to pass through.” 

“Oh, wow,” Liz said, leaning in, her eyes sparkling. “That’s incredible. And the spirit?” 

“It connects the user’s spirit to the environment, automatically funneling away waste power. That helps reduce the maintenance for the entire mana-garden, as inefficiencies can be funneled away, and can help speed advancement, as mana toxicity it also redirected out into environmental energy. Spells with a backlash can also funnel some of that backlash out into connected energy. It can even undo a small portion of the damage of a false breakthrough, and was the basis for the Garden-Rebirth Phials the Refiner created.”

Ed let out a low whistle and shook his head. 

“That’s a strong treasure. I know that there’s a sizeable cut for selling things, in order to supply salaries, services, and the rest, but I figure that we can probably get… six thousand points? Six and a half?”

“Hannah?” I asked aloud. 

“Split between Liz, Ed, Dusk, and you, that’s between fifteen hundred and sixteen seventy-five points per person,” the accountant ghost supplied. “And compensating Kene would be a whole kerfuffle, since they don’t have a point account here.” 

“I actually wouldn’t mind opening one,” Kene said. “I can sell some potions here for a decent price, if Malachi doesn’t mind running them back and forth, and help the guild with healing. I can do some good.” 

“Then that’s twelve or thirteen hundred.” 

Dusk appeared on my shoulder, rubbing her eyes and asking what we were talking about, and after filling us in, she said we should sell it if none of us wanted to use it. She couldn’t. 

“As cool as having a powerful magic resistance would be, it would be a waste to put so much power on me,” Ed said, shaking his head.

“I can already resist some incoming spells with my own,” Kene said. “Siobhan can also do the same, and her aura adds defenses to me.” 

“I’d consider it,” Liz said. “I don’t have the points right now, but if you’d accept repayment over time. But even then, I’m not sure. I’ve got my eye on the ginkgo, and this would get me a tenth of the way toward that goal.”

I considered it. The spiritual aspect wouldn’t be all that useful to me, since my soul mana could accomplish something similar, but having enormous magic resistance would be useful. 

Then again, would it be worth draining all of my points to pay my friends for their shares? I’d have enough to buy the timemind treasure outright if I sold it, and would be most of the way towards a prize like the spiritual tool, organshield crystal, or even a crystalheart.