The Third Portal: Chapter Twenty-Seven

While the healer’s heart was something that I’d taken for granted, Orykson’s tacit acknowledgement that it was worth bowing out of his team for the Elysian Mastery Tournament had brought my attention back to the small, silver leafed plant. Talking to Gadoki about its nature did a lot to explain why. 

Dusk was sustaining the plant in its own unique ecosystem, feeding it power without allowing it to drain the surroundings. 

If you didn’t have a worldspirit on your side, helping with that, the arrays could grow rapidly in cost, as the plant would normally absolutely absorb everything around it for power. Even at third gate, like the plant was at now, the healer’s heart could kill everything within a dozen feet of it in any direction, and put a strain on the ecosystem for hundreds of acres. 

Dusk appeared midway through the conversation and mentioned she thought she could probably contain one or two or two more of the plants, but more than that would begin to strain even her. 

She actually let Gakodi enter the plane, in order to help with the budding of the new plants, which were scattered around Dusk’s desert section. 

“If you can donate even three leaves a month, that would be a great help,” Gakodi said seriously as she finished. “It might not sound like much, or be much to you, but when we’re measuring out life saving potions, halving the mana toxin in someone who is right on the edge of the toxin hurting them seriously can save their life.”

“I’d be happy to do that, and more if I can spare it,” I agreed. “Oh, and I think that training with the guildmasters would be the best.”

After that, Gakodi collected some samples of the Blademoss, and we began training. I spent a day training her, as well as the young woman who would be participating in the guild duel, flashing between the pair with Foxsteps. 

It was strange. Gakodi was much stronger than I was, but her combat instincts were just… terrible. She hadn’t developed them at all. I couldn’t help her in spellcasting, but I conjured my armor, and did my best imitation of an earth mage, before also roping in Ed to help train her during his off time. When I explained the situation, his face grew flat and angry. 

“That shouldn’t be legal, to hoard life saving resources like that, especially when the island is so… Rough.”

“I can’t change the law,” I said. “But I can change this.” 

Ed, Kerbos, Liz, and to my surprise, Octavian, all joined in on the training of the Hyacinth Heart guild, which allowed me time to operate the portal for Liz’ grandfather. 

It was only two days later, with my guild duties complete, and having passed the basic alchemy tests for the Hyacinth Heart membership, that I was finally able to return to the plot of land that I’d picked out, and focus on opening another portal. A personal portal, this time. I’d offered to let Ed through, but with him just getting settled in as a farm guard for the Brighteyes, he didn’t think trying to take time off was the best idea right now. 

As I drew power from my spatial mana, and from the ring of mushrooms that Meadow had gifted me, Dusk hesitantly peeped up. I glanced at her and tilted my head. 

“Of course I don’t mind if you stay here. But do you mind if I ask why?” 

Dusk let out a complicated sound, layering together the rushing of the wind, burbling of a river, and gentle clumping of snow, as she explained. 

There were a lot of reasons she wanted to stay, as it turned out. One of them was privacy  – this would be the first time in two months that I’d be able to see Kene, and she wanted to give us alone time, which I appreciated. 

But it wasn’t the only reason. The conversation with Orykson had sparked a bit of interest in her getting an upgrade to the immortal’s cloud natural treasure that she’d been using. It was already incredibly powerful, supporting all of her flying magic, but if she could tune it further, she thought she might be able to stand a real chance at participating in the Elysian Mastery Tournament’s flying events. 

She figured that she could spend the two days a week I was working on guild stuff, as well as time that I spent with Kene in Mossford, on earning some points of her own, in order to earn that prize. 

And the last reason was one I hadn’t realized – she wanted to spend time with Idyll. The older worldspirit, now turned genius loci, had a lot of information on worldspirit and general spirit aspects of magic that could help both her and Dawn. 

“That makes a lot of sense,” I agreed. “Do you want me to give you two thousand, five hundred points, since you’re the only reason I can get the guild deal brokered?” 

Dusk let out a sound like the buzzing of bee wings as she thought, then said no. I was the one who had to stand there, open the portal, and let people go back and forth. She was providing the method, yes, but I was putting in the effort. And besides, even though it shrunk the realm, she thought she liked having parts of her stitched into Ddeaer, and thought she might be able to do something with it and her Authority, when she became an Arcanist. 

“So certain?” I teased. 

Dusk sniffed haughtily, and told me if I couldn’t manage it, she’d just have to drag me there. I chuckled as Dawn appeared in the air next to her, and she bonked my head with hers, in an affectionate goodbye.

“Alright, alright. You two enjoy yourselves, but if you get into trouble, don’t hesitate to reach out. It might take a bit to open the portal, but I’ll be there as soon as I can.” 

With that, I stepped through the shimmering golden portal, and into my dad’s backyard. I made my way inside, then into the bakery, where he was working behind the counter. The moment he saw me, he hurried up in boxing away the cupcakes he had been working on, then rushed to give me a hug. 

“Ah, it’s good to see you,” he said, squeezing me tightly. “I’m glad it wasn’t six months this time, but two months is still a long time. Especially without Ed here either. How is Ed? How is Liz?”

I helped him take orders until the shop was quiet, and then he made some coffee for us, and we took a seat. I recounted most of what I’d been up to, as well as what I knew of Ed and Liz, before turning the question on him. 

“How are you? How’s the bakery? Have you put any more thought into making a second location on Crysite?” 

“Oh, I’m doing alright, just working,” he said, laughing. “The bakery’s doing well, better than usual, actually. I should actually thank you – with guild members shuffling through the back yard, several of them have been stopping in for coffee and pastries, to account for the sunlight difference.” 

“I’m glad to hear it!” I said, nodding. “I’d be lying if I said it was all part of my master plan, but I’m glad nevertheless.”

My dad laughed, then took a long sip of his coffee. 

“When it comes to trying to expand, I don’t think so,” he said. “I thought about it, but it was never my dream to run a bakery empire or a massive chain. I do like the idea of being able to be closer to you and Ed, but you’ll be gone in half a year, off to the tournament. What are you doing after that?” 

“I don’t know, not really. Probably delving into the Sepulcher or gathering the last few resources I need before I can manage a Sepulcher dive,” I said. “But does it need to be a massive chain? Plenty of mom and pop shops manage to open a second location, or even three.”

“Maybe," my dad said, grunting as he took a bite of the chocolate filled pastry. 

We spent a while longer catching up, but he had to get back to work before long, as customers started coming in for early breaks, and I headed to a gold conversion store. After depositing the check for seventeen thousand Mossford standard silver into my bank, I turned to casting Seven League Step.

As I blurred to my teleportation platform and started casting another, I let out a sigh of relief. Casting it was so much easier, now that I didn’t have to deal with the interference of the root of resolve. 

Before noon, I was in Kene’s village again, and I strolled into their alchemy shop. 

When we’d first returned after the six months that they’d spent with me on my adventures, it had been empty, and Kene had been frantically working to meet the healing needs of the village.

Now, it was back to normal, a small wood burning stove in the corner providing heat against the spring rain while the lights glowed with the sterile light of a pharmacy or hospital, the sharp contrast creating an atmosphere unique to Kene. 

Before Kene noticed me, Siobhan erupted from behind one of the shelves, leaping up and gliding on her wings until she had her front paws on my stomach and was giving me happy fox kisses. I laughed and scratched at her

Kene emerged from their alchemy room a moment later, grinning, and I took them in. They’d changed their hair again, this time dying it purple with pink streaks, and their tattoos were only partially geometric, suggesting that the hag was being pushed down well enough. They gave off the feel of being almost peak third gate, and I was guessing they’d dug out the steps for life, but not solar.

But more than that, they looked… right. 

During the time that they’d been in Puinen and Delitone, Kene had withered a bit. He liked to help people, and while a pharmacy job did that a little bit, there was no substitute for his home village. It showed in an ephemeral way I couldn’t trace, but was there nevertheless. 

They pulled me into a tight hug, and I squeezed back. 

“It’s so good to see you!” they said. “How have you been?” 

And so, for the second time that day, I launched into an explanation of my misadventures. I went into a bit more depth with Kene than I did my dad, going into the need to take Dawn up the mountain, and the information on the soul arra. I made sure to do my best to point out my attempts to not charge headfirst into danger recklessly against the desolants, before going into my plan for the Glowing Soil Guild, and I ended the story asking for what Kene had been up to. Kene leaned back when I’d finished.

“Primes, you had a crazy first week, didn’t you?” they asked, a smile curling at the corners of their lips. “But… I’m proud of you.” 

I flushed a little at that, enjoying the praise, and Kene waggled their eyebrows for a moment, causing me to turn red. Their smile turned into a full blown smirk at that, and they needled me for a bit, before turning back to the topic at hand. 

“I’d be happy to join the team in tracking down the soul array. Like I said during our previous talk, I’m not opposed to joining you for short stints. I just want to be back at the village in a reasonable timeframe.” 

“It’ll probably take a bit of time for me to get everyone together anyways,” I said. “I’ve got training to go through after the duel, and everyone else has things to do. Liz is busy with helping her grandfather and Octavian is doing missions. But you never answered how you’ve been doing.” 

“Mmm, that makes sense,” Kene agreed. “As for me, I’ve been great. The Erlins bull wound up finding a mana source in the grass and broke into first gate, so now they’re trying to work on raising it to third. Oh, and then there was a brief bout of stone-gut after…”