The Third Portal: Chapter Thirty-Two

As we approached the power that was dominating this area of the city, I got my first good look at a slaughter spirit. Being a spirit of physical mana, the unnatural inversion that slaughter spirits underwent had indeed left it as a shifting mass of semi corporeal light. One moment it was a dog with crab legs, then the next it was a blazing furnace, then it was a copy of Ed with no head, then it was a slender shadow figure with a hat, then…

Even as its form shifted, it phased in a way that twinged my spatial sense in a very strange way. One moment it would be occupying a portion of physical space, but the next it wasn’t. I would have chalked it up to the spirit’s ever changing nature, if not for the fact that the parts that seemed physical didn’t match up with the visible parts. 

The moment its senses brushed my own, the spirit whipped around and launched itself at us, moving with a speed that I could barely track with my eyes, and the battle began. 

Ed leapt in first, Kerbos at his side, and he called on his full suite of defensive spells. His body shifted, metallic lines weaving into new shapes as he ran his mana through them as well. The enchantments formed though Kerbos bond hummed to life, strength, durability, and toughness all layering itself into the spell he was casting and the starlight iron carrying the magic more efficiently.

That, in turn, matched the power that the new natural treasure applied to his spirit. It acted like a meta spell to improve the structure of spells that shaped, conjured, or transformed stone, effectively transforming his skin from magical granite to magical quartz. 

Together, the two had a multiplicative effect on his spells, rather than simply additive. 

He summoned his Stone Shield and used his legacy to shape a spear from the earth, thrusting it out as the spirit closed in. It shot out a ray spell that shattered his spear in an instant, and he only barely used Earthen Skates to twist to the side in time to stop it from striking his hand. 

The spirit whipped out with more than two dozen lashing threads of force, each one as thin as a hair, but sending spikes of danger rushing through Ed’s spirit. He took seven of them on his shield before it crumbled, while Kerbos charged in from the side, covered in massive metal plates that made him look more like a moving cannonball than a dog, and knocking the threads askew. 

To Ed’s surprise, his draigg-blaidd bond slammed into the spirit and actually managed to strike it, knocking it off course. It lasted only for a second before the spirit surged back up and trapped Kerbos in a bubble, which quickly began to shrink. There was a popping as the plates around his dog vanished, and then a warp of space as Kerbos’ body was swapped with a stone. 

Ed re-conjured his shield, then charged the spirit to buy time, and the ray of force slammed down on him. His shield cracked, then exploded, and it struck his chest, where his enchantments squealed, but he didn’t stop. He tried to slide to the side, but the beam continued to bear down on him. He created a wall of earth for a moment, then shot away on Earthen Skates, but a cloud of force missiles rippled out of nowhere. They slammed into him, and the enchantments cracked. 

The moment they did, he vanished, appearing within Dusk. 

As Ed vanished, Liz leapt into battle, her shoes flaring with light. The overclocked artifact gave her access to a variety of movement spells. Paired with the haste and flight potions that she’d drunk, she was a blur as she unleashed a wave of Darkness Spears at the slaughter spirit. It didn’t have a shadow for the spell to erupt from, so she was forced to fire the three casts from her hands. 

Her full-gate spell hummed as it strengthened the hits, and she tapped into the ability she’d gotten from the bond: the ability to store the echoed copies of her spells that her legacy produced, saturating them in the desolation-improving effect of the spell for more power. 

She hadn’t lied when she said she didn’t have anything that could reliably strike an incorporeal being like this. She didn’t have a spell that could. 

But desolation magic was an inherently unstable power. When things built up desolation energy, they broke down, wearing away, their natural fault lines exposing themselves. She couldn’t hurt this thing, but if she could inject it with enough desolation mana, it might start to lose cohesion. 

Even in the worst case scenario, she’d just be trading away some of her echoes for a bit longer of a distraction. That wasn’t a terrible trade – there was no point in holding onto resources forever, waiting for the optimal time to use them, only to never be able to use them at all. 

She conjured her domain weapon, and the shadow sword glowed with power as she cut at the form of the spirit, twisting her body so that the beam of force it released whipped past her braided hair. She drove it into the slaughter spirit and unleashed four of her strongest echoes. 

A tidal wave of conjured water slammed into it from above, almost glowing silver with the raw desolation mana coming off of it. 

A shadow whip with a sharply gleaming tip that was packed with the force of ruination ripped into the dreamstuff. 

A spinning orb of acid that could devour most bodily energies, shedding droplets of bright destruction magic whipped inside its core. 

Her sword’s bound effect allowed it to grow on its own, with no need for mana sources of constant feeding of trimmings, but that wasn’t why she’d used it. That was for the effect it had gained when she’d bound it.

When she released the twin of a spell produced by her legacy through the trailing shadow echoes, both of them had their power improved. Each of her attacks was released through a different echo as she spun her blade, leaving more, and all three of the stored copies radiated power that felt almost like an attack that an Arcanist would release, rather than the simple attacks of a peak third gate. 

The spirit actually let out a scream as she used the jump spell in her shoes and enhanced it with the flight potion to fly out of the way of the massive sphere of explosive force that absolutely tore from the body of the spirit. It leveled the already ruined buildings around it, chunks of stone flying through the air, and she spun her blade, creating a cage of shadows around herself to deflect them. 

She let out a mocking laugh, then swung her sword down, firing off a Shade Blade and Acid Stream at the form of the thing. 

“You missed, you so–” 

She was forced to cut off her taunt as it crossed the space faster than she’d thought possible. She dropped the power of the flight potion, letting gravity take her, even as she sent a Darkness Spear and Shadow Whip at its underside. 

She twisted and landed on her feet, then jogged backwards so fast she was outpacing even an average flight spell, releasing bursts of the jumping spell in her shoes every time her feet touched the ground, angled to throw her back, rather than up. 

The slaughter spirit landed and followed in a trace of light and force, but its own body being made of dreamstuff actually worked against it here for once, causing its force spells to be somewhat less effective. 

Then it did that thing again, flashing and appearing before her, and she flicked her sword up to defend herself against the force beam that drilled down on her. Her sword held for a moment, then cracked, reforming into fragments in her spirit that would take time to pull themselves back together.

The force beam bore down on her head, and she vanished, appearing within Dusk. 

I let out a sigh as I changed Liz’s places with a stone, feeling the rush of tiredness entering my limbs as I did so. The Foxswap spell took a physical toll on the body as if physically changing places with the other person, or in the case of swapping them with something else, swapping the two objects with my muscles. 

It helped somewhat sidestep the natural resistance to forced teleportations that everyone had, as they had to match my energy with their own, but it also took a toll on my body. This hadn’t been as bad as it could have been, not with Liz and Ed trying to help, rather than stop, my teleports, but that hadn’t helped with the hundred pound boulders I’d been swapping them with. Still, the counterweight had still been better than trying to swap with nothing. The spell had been designed to use a counterweight.  

I glanced at my companions, who were gathered around the spirit gourd we’d boosted to fifth gate potency.

Dusk was sweating, pouring her magic into the plant. Next to her, Kene was doing the same, trying to condense as much life magic into its arrays as possible. Between the two, Dawn blazed golden light as her dominion reached into each of them. 

My own life mana also slid into the gourd, working to activate the incredibly dense arrays that it held, but now…

I took a breath, activated Harvest Distance, and Foxstepped into the battle. The spirit rushed at me, and I teleported behind it, only for it to spin like a top and unleash a wave of force missiles. 

I released Markus, who immediately began rapid-firing his crossbow at the thing as I teleported again, going a hundred feet back.

It crossed the distance almost as fast as I had, completely phasing out of reality, then back in. I couldn’t use much life mana, not if I wanted to keep boosting the gourd, but I used Fungal Entwinement to empower the spiritshield lichen, then sliced out with blademoss. 

My arc sunk into the spirit in unison with a massive ballista bolt from Markus, and the thing let out a scream as a solid chunk of its dreamstuff was shaved off, far more than I had expected. It fired its beam down on me, but I was gone, having already teleported away. 

It whipped around, then phased outside of space a second time. I teleported, but it didn’t appear over me. 

Instead, the slaughter spirit tore Markus apart. The force dispersed his ectoplasmic shell, sharply draining my death mana as it tried to restore it, but the slaughter spirit’s warped dominion broke Markus’ ghost into shreds. I closed my eyes for a second, a surprising feeling of loss coming over me. 

I hadn’t liked the ghost, and he was only an imprint of someone who had died long ago, rather than the whole being. Many didn’t even consider them to be people, so much as echoes of people. 

It still hurt to watch. 

I teleported in front of the spirit and thrust my hand out, sending a flicker of soul mana into the combined spiritshield lichen and blademoss cut, and again I managed to actually deal surprising damage to the creature as its form seemed to waver and shift silver for a half a second. But it detonated in a massive wave, forcing me to slip back into Dusk for a moment. 

When I re-appeared, the ground and several more of the houses were gone. The slaughter spirit fired its beam down on me, and I teleported away, only to be hit with a chain of force that wrapped around my body tightly. The beam swept down, and I pulled myself into Dusk again. The bindings were still with me, and these were far too strong for me to just teleport out of, despite trying. 

I waited, not wanting to, but having to, and after roughly a minute, the spell faded away of its own accord. I emerged back into the battle, then immediately Foxstepped aside as a cloud of missiles overwhelmed the area. It released another chain, having determined those were best to get me, and I chained together Foxsteps, leaving behind Material Echoes, which the chains latched onto, until –

It was ready. 

I ripped a portal open behind the spirit. It tried to release a beam inside, but Siobhan was working in concert with the bwbatch’s magic, and a wall of blue light stopped the beam just long enough for me to shove all the soul mana I had into the gourd. 

The now active gourd. 

With all of our power straining to its limits, the spirit was sucked into the spirit trap of the gourd and vanished. The world went still for a moment as the gourd shook, but then held firm. 

Dusk flew down then, pulling the long-term spirit trap that Kene’s grandmother had given her, and connected it to the gourd. It wouldn’t seal the thing forever, but it would buy us hours of time. 

I let out a long sigh as Dawn let out victory wiggles in the air, and I gave Liz, Ed, and Kene a fistbump. I pulled Dawn onto my shoulder, Dusk onto my other, gave Siobhan and Kerbos some victory scritches. 

I spared a moment to walk to where Markus had been torn apart, and I knelt, giving thanks to the dead hunter for his final sacrifice. After taking a long moment, I rose, and smiled at my companions. 

Hannah drifted out, and spoke aloud. 

“A ruined city, huh? Shall we explore?”