The Third Portal: Chapter Thirty-Five

As we approached the third orb, the houses around us began to change, growing larger, more intact, and with much more overgrown rosebush everywhere. I didn’t know if rose had been especially popular among the wealthy people of the ruined city, or if it had just adapted especially well to the environment, but there was a lot of it, basically anywhere we looked. 

There were a lot fewer ghosts lingering in this part of the city, presumably since the wealthy elites had more space to spread out, and thus tramplings were far less likely to happen. 

The one ghost we did spot, however, immediately set off a tingling in my resonance, as the Truth of the Guardian felt a kinship with it, as well as a present, but less potent, resonance with the Truth of Benevolence, and with Druid. I called us to a halt and began approaching the ball of death mana that was the guardian ghost. 

When I finally got a good look at the spirit, I felt my heart break. The ghost of a large, black and brown shepherd dog was curled up around the steps of one of the large houses, and when I approached, the ghost raised its head and let out a soft bark. 

“Hey bud,” I said, kneeling next to the spirit. It was surprisingly powerful, its dominion coherent enough that I thought it might have been a fourth gate dog in life, but that power had long begun to fade away. As he was now, the ghost felt more like a peak first gate, perhaps early second, than he did the ferocious guard dog he had once been in life. 

I spun a Ghost Tether out, and extended it to the dog, trying to offer it some degree of solace. The dog’s ears perked up, and he raised his head to look at me, then lay back down, sending a pulse through the Truth of the Guardian. 

I understood, then, through the hints of the resonance running through me and a burst of Lesser Psychometry, the story of this dog, and it took effort for me to hide the anger that I could feel bubbling up in my stomach. Not at the dog, who had done nothing wrong, but at the people who had left the dog behind. A rich couple had purchased the dog, tied them here on a leash, and made them guard their house. They’d trained the dog, funneled resources to them to accelerate their growth to the peak of fourth gate, but otherwise, simply left them here.

The shepherd dog had stayed, and done his job. He had guarded the house, even when there was nothing to guard from, which was most of the time. This was a wealthy neighborhood, an f-sharp rated area – whatever that meant. The Song’s version of the Lightwatch had patrolled here plenty, and the rating of the area meant that duels were extremely limited in scope and allowance. 

There had been one or two instances where the dog had been needed to do his job, driving off someone who tried to break into the house when the owners were out on vacation, but by and large, the dog had spent his life tied to a chain in the yard, or on the stoop. 

Then the song in the air had died, and the people had begun to leave the island. The people who lived here had been some of the slowest to leave, not wanting to take the buyout, which they considered a mere pittance. 

When they had left, they’d packaged up everything they considered to be of value, and that hadn’t included the dog. He was getting old, and had been raised up through potions and elixirs. The dog wasn’t one of the owner’s bonds, getting an extended lifespan. Magic had done a lot for the dog, but it could only do so much, especially then. 

And so, the dog had been left behind, with the only kindness the owner had bothered to give being the removal of the dog’s leash, to let him hunt for food. 

He hadn’t understood, and so, had returned to the home. Every day, even as he got older, and slower, he returned here, until he eventually passed. And even now, his ghost guarded the home, waiting for the people who had raised him to return. 

They never would.

As I was pulled away from the stronger than normal visions, I was crying, and holding onto the ghost. I pulled him onto my lap and radiated death mana as gently as I could, letting it soak into him. The ghost of an animal was an unusual thing, unless there was an area with high death mana concentration, which was the only reason I could deduce that the dog hadn’t already faded. 

It might have been hypocritical of me to cry for the dog, but only bow my head for Markus. In fact, it probably was. But I’d put up with Markus begging me to kill semi-sapient beings, random animals, and just about anything that caught his eye since the moment I’d picked him up. I wished he had been able to fade peacefully, content. But he had gone out in a way I thought he would have approved of.

I conjured another ghost tether, and tried to impart my meaning into it, reaching out with all three of my nascent truths. I summoned my staff into my hand, and tried. 

Getting resonance to change the world before Arcanist was difficult, and infusing it into my senses was already nearing the limit of what I could do. But I wasn’t trying to directly manipulate something. I wasn’t trying to force my heart to keep beating, the way Kene had done with their own heart during the Idyll-Flume’s destruction. 

I just needed the ghost to understand. 

Some intangible force passed between myself and the spirit, and I felt it take the tether. Power surged through it, passing back into me, and I recognized the sensation. This dog had been a guard, and it still was. Much like Siobhan had chosen Kene to defend, the dog chose me, imprinting on me as its new owner. 

I poured death mana into the bond, trying to restore the original power that Arthur – that was the dog’s understanding of himself, as passed through the link we shared – had once held. 

Though my mana had mostly restored itself, Arthur’s power was so degraded that it took a lot to restore it. Like boosting an enchantment or improving a plant, it took much more than just a bit of third gate mana to get him to the border between peak second and third gate, and by the time I’d gotten him roughly to early third, my death mana was all but dry. I drew some more from the blood carnations to give him the last little boost into early third, but was forced to stop there, or else risk having no mana for anything that might happen. 

Kene pulled me into a hug, and I glanced around. It took a little bit to explain exactly what had happened, but once I had, they all took turns petting the ghost dog, and we headed off again.

We did briefly stop in one of the houses that had some things of note, but most of the houses had clearly been looted long ago, probably during their exodus. Liz and Ed were able to strip some gold from the enchantments in a few of their houses, and we even stumbled across a home security vault that had been holding some minted gold and platinum coins from the era, which we’d need to get appraised, but there wasn’t too much of note. 

When we reached the facility, I found that it, too, had been hidden. I wasn’t sure if the Song of Spring hadn’t trusted rich people, if it had been shoved underground because of some magical reason, or if the wealthy of the city had considered it an eyesore and demanded it be hidden away. Maybe some combination of them all?

When Dawn opened the passageway for us to get underground, I immediately noticed that this array nexus was different. The first thing that struck me was the lights. None had been burnt out. Even the tables of panels had remained on, blinking their status lights and mysterious enchanting indicators

I spread my mana senses out, and caught it then. There, standing at one of the tables, was a knot of death energy. It wasn’t very strong, but it was surprisingly complex. Having found the ghost, I cast Analyze Death, and was able to make out the form better. She was tall and broad, with her hair tied back in a ponytail, and wearing a leather smock and goggles. When we had entered, she turned to face us, and after a few moments, materialized fully, letting me drop my Analyze spell. 

“Oh good,” she said crisply. “I had wondered when you would be back. Where are the tanks?” 

“What?” 

“The tanks, fox, the tanks!” she snapped. “Where are the tanks?” 

I glanced around, then spotted a pile of tanks, and pointed to them. They were all full, as far as I could tell, but had been shoved off to the side in a pile. 

“Those are the tanks I already connected to the machine,” the enchanter said, as if speaking to an idiot. “What did Song tell you? I’ve sent dozens of notifications to him.” 

“New orders, I’m afraid,” Ed said, stepping in and projecting authority and leadership around him. “Project’s cancelled, it took too much of the budget. That’s why so many are gone.” 

“Oh, primes curse it all, that’s why the other five went dark?” 

“It is,” Ed confirmed. “We’re going to attempt to reclaim critical components and construct a miniature version in a demiplane for use on an experimental individual, so as to not waste resources. You’re one of the people who will be taking part.” 

He jerked his thumb at me. 

“The phantom fox is the other. Despite his looks–”

“Hey!” I protested, and Kene snorted. Ed continued smoothly, as if I’d never interrupted. 

“He’s great at reclamation, should be able to handle getting the stuff out of the big ball. We also have the subject. I’m here with my partner as security,” Ed finished, pointing at Kene, then Liz. 

“Good to know,” the ghost said.

I tossed her a ghost tether, which she took, almost accepting it without thought. She immediately meshed in with the instructions Aerde had left, and we began moving in unison, shutting off different parts of the array, powering them down gradually so I wouldn’t fry myself with the density of mana permeating the node. 

Once we finished, I opened it and began pulling out internals, the enchanter – who I learned was named Damaris – providing color commentary as I did.

“Primes, this node’s contents are worth more than all of us make in twenty years,” she muttered as I pulled out a glowing purple sphere, nested with little tubes, and tossed it into Dusk. 

With the new ghost working with us, we stripped the place bare in record speed, even with the time needed to let the enchantments cool, and we headed out. As we did, Damaris fell silent, and Hannah let out a snort. 

“Lightweight,” she muttered to me, causing me to laugh as well. 

We began heading out of the wealthy district of the city, when I paused. One of the homes we were passing by, a massive sprawling stone mansion sitting on four acres of overgrown land. 

That wasn’t the thing that had caught my attention, however. There was a large source of abnegation sitting just below the surface of the mansion. We peeled off and started making our way through the abandoned house, until we found ourselves in the basement, facing a huge vault door. I could sense other forms of power within the vault, but they were blanketed out by the thrumming abnegation magic within.

“Should we try and break in?” Kene asked. 

“They had to have cleared it out before they left,” Ed said. 

“I mean, there’s no sense in leaving active defenses on an empty vault,” Liz pointed out. “There’s gotta be something in it.” 

“I can sense something inside, but I don’t entirely know what,” I pointed out. “I was kind of hoping it was just a powerful abnegation natural treasure. Do we have time to break into the vault?” 

I checked Internal Pocketwatch. We’d spent about four hours already, and we could probably keep the slaughter spirit locked up for six or so, before the enchantment ran out of power. 

“We could always try to come back,” Kene pointed out. “See about finding Edgar and returning. I mean, we have two more days before Ed needs to get back to work, and the spirit will need to be destroyed eventually.” 

“Assuming no other looters move in,” Liz said. “There’s already one. Who knows what kind of stealth specialists may come in.” 

I grumbled as I stared at the massive steel door.