The Third Portal: Chapter Twenty-Four

I frowned, tossing the numbers back and forth in my brain until it made my head want to explode, before Hannah laid them out with a somewhat more serious tone than she usually had. 

“I think it’s going to come down to if you can be completely certain and dedicated to working with the guild for the ten month period. If you can, then I think you’ll edge out slightly ahead in the long run. But if you can’t commit to it, then…”

I nodded and huffed out a breath, puffing some of the air out of my face, and as I did, I caught the mountains out of the corner of my eye. Miles high, it loomed over everything on the island, even from way off in the distance. 

I would need to climb it. 

Elsewhere on the island, the soul strengthening array lurked, hidden by who knew what. If I was lucky, it would just be sitting in caved in ruins, but there were good odds that some beasts or spirits had been drawn to a site of powerful mana. 

And then there were the major research facilities on Orykson’s list, like the Sekhem Court, Deepfall Cemetery, Thousand Totem Gorge, or any of the others. I was factoring in time to explore those, but…

None of those were a perfect solution. They were all half-right attempts that I might be able to forge together into a decent attempt, with the help of the spells Orykson and Aerde had laid into our deal, but they would all need time to take before they were ready.

Kene’s soul would need time under the soul strengthening array as well. 

I nodded decisively, and signed the contract to take five thousand points up front, then Dusk, Dawn, and I turned and extended our power as one. There was a humming, rainbow light swirled, and the Aurora Toad and Hex Ermine leapt from Dusk’s realm. 

As the light settled onto them, we began pushing to open the portal. I could feel the fairy-circle mushrooms rush into our effort, providing a substantial amount of mana, and with less time and strain than we’d ever had before, we tore open a glowing golden portal, right into Mossford.

Meadow applauded politely from where she was standing, watching us, and Liz whistled. 

“Not bad,” she said. “It really goes all the way to Mossford?” 

Dusk let out a slightly tired, but not exhausted, sigh and chirped like a bird, confirming that was where the portal let out. Liz held up her communication mirror – this one a compact mirror, rather than a full wall-sized one – and on the other side, I saw her grandfather, standing in our backyard with eight other people. 

“Impressive!” he said, his voice slightly distant due to the enchantments on the miniature mirror. “We’ll be heading through, now!” 

A moment later, the air shimmered, and Liz’ grandpa appeared on the other side. Liz, her pleated braids flying, practically slammed into him with her hug, tackling him back. He let out an ‘omph!’ noise, before teleporting behind her and pulling her into a tight hug as well. 

The others who had been with him trickled through a moment later, shaking my hand and introducing themselves to me. There were so many that even though I tried to remember everyone’s name, the only one that really stuck out in my memory was Harverery, and that was only because it was so strange. I’d heard the name Harvey before, but Harverery? What had his parents been thinking? 

I did note that all but one of the eight officials were peak fourth gate mages, with the strong, well settled feeling of someone who had been at that gate for decades, while the last was a false Arcanist. 

It took a while for them to get things settled down, but eventually Mr. Davies made his way over and held out his hand. 

“Thank you son,” he said. “It’ll take us a bit to get everything up and running, but I can promise that the guild isn’t likely to forget what you’ve done. Setting up a second branch this early is an advantage.”

“It’s not a problem, Mr. Davies,” I said, shaking my head. “I mean it. I was going to set up a portal anyways, and this helps everyone.” 

“Call me Lincoln,” he said. “You’ve more than earned it.” 

“I… You’re still Liz’s grandpa,” I said, and he laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling. 

It took us a bit of time at the customs house to get the points transferred over, but the first thing I did was immediately pay off the rest of my land costs, and buy the potion of the Nascent Truth of the Druid. 

Combined, they ate almost a thousand points, sure, but both were things that I needed to do. If I paid off the land over months or years, I’d lose out to interest, and the potion…

“You’re sure I can’t just manifest it naturally?” I asked Meadow. 

“You could, but it’s a style of training that takes years, even decades, and has largely fallen by the wayside,” Meadow said. “It involves memorizing hundreds of years of magical and historical lore, insights into reading the future, trials of legal argument, and specific skills to train memory. And on top of all of that, potions like this are rare to find.” 

On her advice, I paid out the points and was given a vial from the attendants. The potion was a dark purple color, with flecks of green and black and brown swirling in a somewhat irregular upside down vortex. It felt weak, but also… not. 

I had somewhat expected it to feel like forest mana, or hudau mana, but the closest feeling I could get from it was somewhere between ungated mana and soul mana. I couldn’t place what gate it was at – it felt oddly slippery, while also being strong. 

I didn’t dwell on it too long, as I removed the rubber stopper and downed it. 

The insight slammed into me like a wave, and I shuddered. I had heard what Meadow had said, but now, for the first time, I felt like I understood it. 

Though the modern conception of the word had largely just come to mean someone who worked with plants, animals, and nature magic, that was only a tiny fraction of what a druid was. To call a druid a nature mage was like trying to call an ocean a bunch of water – it wasn’t entirely wrong, but there were so many layers of nuance missing. 

I saw myself sitting in a cave, reciting an entire epic poem aloud while an old man watched on. Each time I got a single word wrong, he grunted at me, and I was forced to start over. Ten years and ten days, going through ten million words, until I could be given a random line, and use that to recite the entire rest of the book’s worth of content. 

I saw myself tending a vast garden, with a three hundred foot tall, towering tree in the center. The flowers around the tree could be made into a poultice, and the old crone who was helping me tend to the flowers showed me how to make them, a skill that came in handy when a sickness swept through the nearby town faster than the local healer could recover his mana. 

I saw myself meditating in a temple carved into  on the Winds of Destiny, Fortune, and Resolve, learning to read them with the same skill and precision as the Oracle of the Purple Sun. Each night, I would tell her my predictions of the future, and each night, I would be gently told how they were wrong over a cup of steaming tea. 

I saw myself wrestling a giant, heavily scarred bear, using spells of strength that called life, telluric, lunar, solar, and physical mana as one. I was only a second gate human, but as I used my beast spells, I slowly grew to be able to match the beast. Each time I did, it let itself release a little more power, forcing me to work even harder to match it again. 

I saw myself standing behind a smooth wooden table, listening as two local guild masters argued. I was weaker than either of them, a third gate to their fifth, but my understanding, knowledge, and wisdom afforded me a position to act as an intermediary. They argued ceaselessly over a perceived slight to the other one’s honor, and I was forced to reign them in and find a compromise that suited them both. Neither walked away happy, but they both walked away without bloodshed, which was the hallmark of a good compromise. 

I saw myself standing over a hole in the ground as the daughter of someone I did not know was laid into it. The ghost of the daughter stood next to her mother, and the mother was weeping. I layed the spells over the grave site, calling on a familiar pattern of power to stop necrotic magic from causing her to rise spontaneously, and giving her the blessing so that her soul might find peace in the great unknown. With that done, walked over, comforting the grieving mother before speaking to the child’s ghost. I asked what I could do for her, and set out on a quest.

I stood before a class of thirty young people, not one of them older than sixteen, and I raised my hand, shifting the mana flowing out of me into the ungated light spell. A moment later, the soft white glow filled the room, and I began to give a long, quiet lecture on helping each of them sense their ungated mana, and then shape that into spells. One of the students, the child of a powerful mage, caused a massive burst of light and smirked, pointing out that his was brighter than mine. I flooded my ungated spell with power until it blinded the entire room, and held it there for long seconds, before telling the child that this exercise was about teaching the skill to shape mana, not to throw power into spells.

I shuddered and my eyes snapped open. I braced myself as I felt the potion calling out, and a third and final Nascent Truth settled into my spirit. The scenes faded away as it settled in, no longer like memories, but rather more like a half-remembered dream. 

As I flexed my spirit and pushed on the truth of the Druid, it spun and pulsed, resonating with many of my spells, maybe even most of them. I focused it onto a single spell, then onto my winds. As I did, I got brief impulses about something, but it was too faint for me to identify. I relaxed the effort then and sighed. 

Some time ago, Alvaro had told me about the types of resonance, and had said that people who insisted a naturally manifested truth was superior to one granted by a potion were just being pretentious. I was in the unusual position of having both, and as I flexed Druid and Gaurdian in tandem, I could feel… not much difference. 

I did think that Alvaro had glossed over some of it. I had earned the truth of the Gaurdian in a moment of quiet contemplation, rejecting the false prize that I’d been offered, and through my own action, and I thought I understood how to use it a little bit better through that. But Druid wasn’t weaker or less capable, I was just less used to it. Still, I could fix that with time. 

I popped my neck, which had gotten a bit stiff as I processed the potion, and Meadow smiled. 

“How does it feel?” 

“Good,” I said. “Now, I want to go find someone.” 

“Oh?” Meadow asked. 

“I just spent what felt like a decade, but also no time at all, studying the art of moderation and negotiation,” I said. “It might not have really been me, but I have a suspicion that I can check something off my wish list. I’ll be right back.”

I teleported into the Customs House again, speaking to an attendant for a bit, before teleporting back to Meadow and flashing her a grin. 

“Shall we?” I asked, offering her my arm to lean on.