The Third Portal: Chapter Sixteen

If the ants held to their previous pattern, I would have a few hours before they attacked, so I turned options over in my head. I could try and make more potions, to seed the ground around the anthill with fire bombs and more stonesprout, but that could just as easily kill a myrmekes if I forgot one. Better to stick to spreading the stonesprout on the fly, and using potions in combat. 

Besides, there was one obvious thing I could do to improve my odds: Advance. 

I had spent a portion of my time on the boat ride to Crysite on digging, in addition to my spell practice, and I thought I was nearly done with my life gate’s first steps. My death gate wasn’t too far behind. 

Space and time were both… not quite as far along. I’d scraped out a bit of dirt from each of them, but I hadn’t made as much progress as I would have liked. And truthfully, I had no clue how my beastgate would operate. 

Sure, opening it to third gate had been essentially automated, but I’d also been halfway into third gate when the bond had been made. It might have just worked that way to help catch up. 

Regardless, I definitely wouldn’t be able to leap forward in all my gates and catapult into mid third gate, but I also didn’t need to. 

Fungal Armor was a third gate life and death spell that adapted and grew against attacks. It needed to be trimmed, or else it could easily overrun a mana-garden, but that was why I would be dedicating essentially my entire mid-third gates for those mana types to run it. I could probably take a support spell or two, but nothing else with life or death until I broke into the peak of third gate. 

Combining that with a layer of Foxarmor and Briarthreads would massively improve my ability to take hits from the desolants. Once I had my Foxstep back up and running, I’d be even harder to hurt, but pushing for two breakthroughs was already a big ask. I wouldn’t go for a third. 

I drew myself into my mana-garden, selected a long, boney white branch that I had trimmed from one of my trees for expressly this purpose, and walked over to my life gate. I shoved the stick into the ground and began to dig. 

I didn’t know how long it took. It could have been minutes or hours. All I knew was the steady wiggling and stabbing of my stick into the soil to loosen it, then I scooped and threw it into the air behind me. It wasn’t elegant, it was baser than that, more instinctual. One handful after another.

I dug and dug until finally, I felt my stick strike something else, something new. It was slamming into a firm wall, like striking a stone rather than dirt. 

There. 

I drew my hand back and called mana from across my life gate. I didn’t need to continue the pattern of doubling my mana to break through the mist wall, but it was still something of a breakthrough. 

I sharpened my will and began conducting it through the stick I was holding. I called for the power of the Guardian, and it came to me easily. I needed this power to protect, after all. 

I slammed the stick into the ground once, then twice, and then a third time. 

The mistwall flexed, then rippled, then broke apart into normal mist once again. 

Power swept through my mana-garden, compressing my power. When I’d felt Kene and Dusk break through, I had been able to sense the rush of power moving through their mana, soak into their foundations, and strengthen their walls, but feeling it was something else entirely. 

The wave of strength that passed through me was most comparable to when I’d invested multiple drops of destiny, fortune, and resolve into me at once. 

My power grew more intense, but it also grew more cohesive, and became easier to control. It was as if I’d been wearing gloves all my life, only to have them removed. It resonated with my staff, and felt more… mine… than it had before. It wasn’t just third gate life mana, it was my third gate life mana. 

When the power passed over the loose piles of dirt, they transformed into bricks. It reached the hole I’d dug and began to transform. 

Dusk’s steps had compacted into sandstone, and Kene’s had been altered with the blue crystal of Siobhan’s pathways. My own turned into a cream stone, speckled with brown that looked like the travertine bricks and tiles that were used along the coast of Mossford. 

I took a slow, steady breath as I felt the minor imbalance in my mana-garden caused by one of my gates advancing, while the others hadn’t yet. It wasn’t as bad as when I’d had two broken through to third gate while two were stuck at second, but it was still notable.

I picked up my stick and walked through my mana-garden, headed to my death gate.  

Falling into the smooth rhythm again was easy, especially with it being a mindless physical action, and before I knew it, I had crushed through the barrier to mid-third in my death mana. 

I contemplated trying to go for a complete breakthrough, but a quick pulse of my internal pocketwatch showed that nearly three hours had passed during my digging. No, it was better for me to focus on capitalizing on my gains, rather than trying to push for more power. 

I drew myself out of my spirit and began drawing in the air with my fingers, preparing the array for Fungal Armor, then flooding it with power. 

Plates of fungus appeared over my body, forming a chestplate, bevor, pauldrons, and vambraces. It crawled down to form faulds and cuisses that covered my thighs, and stopped. I examined myself as best I could. There was no helmet, gauntlets, or greaves, but it still covered my heart, gut, and throat, which meant most of my vitals were covered with the thickest parts of the armor. 

There were faint flows of life and death energy forming an invisible mesh over the exposed parts of my body, and poking at the exposed skin, it felt like there was a heavy blanket over it, resisting my finger. 

Some defenses on my head, then, just not as strong as the rest of my body. That was good. 

The armor was also slimmer than it had been on the shambler. I didn’t know much about plate armor, or the various designs, but this was a touch lighter and more mobile than I thought plate was supposed to be. With my short frame and the plates, I looked more like I should be skirmishing from the side in medium armor than tanking blows from the front. 

I supposed that was fair. Ed had dedicated most of his mana-garden to defense and containment. One spell, no matter how good, couldn’t give me the same level of defense that he had. 

I reached for the third and final potion that I’d been given as a reward for turning in the assassin that Orykson had probably set on my trail. This one was gray and blue, with an unpleasant, sludgy, chunky texture, and was called the ‘true shield of the titan’, meant to improve armor spells, shield spells, or other defenses. 

I popped the cork and drained it, swallowing quickly to try and get the awful texture out of my mouth, then washed it down with some water. A part of me wished that I’d tried to absorb it directly into my spirit, even though it would have been less effective. At least it wouldn’t have felt like I was drinking rotten milk. 

The power lit in my mana garden and rushed through it, targeting Fungal Armor and Foxarmor. Fungal Armor cracked up into the sky, moving into mastery, while Foxarmor drove roots into the soil of my spirit with a splintering sensation. 

As Foxarmor was ingrained, a huge burden of the cost was lifted. It had originally been two spells, which had grown together over years of casting and evolution, and half of it was supposed to be folded into the ingrained effect. As it ingrained itself, I no longer had to actively provide power to that half, and my entire body felt smoother and more in line with my spatial sense, as temporal, life, and spatial mana helped my body move to where it needed to be. 

I wasn’t any faster or stronger, not like I would be under a haste spell, but I was using what I had so much more effectively. It was almost disorienting, and I took several minutes to get used to walking with the new sensation. If I hadn’t already used Foxarmor in combat, and gotten used to the sensation while actively powering it, I would have been completely thrown off.

I let the spells cut off, then flexed my improved senses, trying to see how much they’d increased. I’d seen a substantial leap in power and dexterity when I’d moved fully into third gate, in no small part due to the petrified omnieye egg. The breakthrough to mid-third gate wasn’t quite as dramatic as that had been, but it was still noticeable, as I gained an extra few feet to the radius of my mana senses. 

That didn’t seem all that impressive, but when it came to the area of a circle, adding a few feet to the radius added a sizeable chunk to the overall area. 

I drew my senses back in and began climbing to the mouth of the anthill, checking on the various ant ghosts that hadn’t fulfilled their purpose in defending the nest. Some had, leaving behind ant-treasures that I’d allowed the colony to collect, but most of the others were itching to go on the counter offensive, much like the queen had been. 

I settled down near the entry and asked them to wake me when they spotted a patrol, then closed my eyes and tried to take a nap. Hours of combat and advancement took their toll on me, and even with my Quality Lifespan and full gate spells helping settle me and give me more energy than a normal person, I needed sleep. 

A part of me wished I’d taken  Reduce Sleep, to shorten the amount of time I’d need to sleep, instead of the Improved Sleep that helped add to my lifespan by slowing my body down while I slept. 

I pushed those thoughts away. Improved Sleep was better in the long run, even if Reduced Sleep would be helpful in this specific instance. It was like burning a candle. A slow fire would help it last longer than a massive blaze. Besides, contemplating on spells would keep me awake, rather than helping me sleep.

I felt like I’d only just started to drift off when the ghost ant sent a mental ‘invader’ signal to me, and my eyes snapped open. I blinked to clear my eyes, stretched, and cast Ghosteyes. 

It was even worse than I’d feared. 

There were forty-eight peak third gate ants coming towards us, like I’d expected, but there were also eight early fourth gate ants among them. 

I began drawing out my stock of fire bomb potions, then drained another hour-duration flight potion before sweeping off the ground and shooting through the sky. Once again, I wrapped myself in a veil, but this time, I didn’t cycle Mantle Dragonfire or call as many Pinpoint Boneshards for a simple, straight line offensive barrage as I could. 

Fighting against enemies who so severely out-muscled me, I had to fight smarter. I flexed my hand, then began layering together multiple casts of Transport Item, while also setting targets for six far more carefully selected Pinpoint Boneshard targets. 

The potions appeared on the ground in the middle of the ant formation, and bones slammed into them. The violence and sudden mana caused six fireballs to erupt out of the ground, the flames engulfing the ants.

I was already flying away when I felt the fourth gate ants unleash their own magic. Eight psychic attacks slammed into me at once, and I lost control of my body. 

I immediately poured power into Placid Mind and Impel Senses, trying to push away their attacks. Even with the difference in gates, my numerous sensory spells meant my mana-senses were far stronger than any single one of the fourth gate ants. My Nascent Truths screamed in me, my staff churned with power, and the wind of resolve whipped wildly.

But I wasn’t eight times as strong. 

I shoved and pushed out the attacks, but for each one I drove off, there were seven more attacks waiting for me. Mental attacks bludgeoned me, and my vision faded. I hadn’t blacked out, my mind was just so overwhelmed that I wasn’t able to process the visual information. 

Then I felt Hannah reach for me. She was terrified of combat, she didn’t want to partake, but she used the Ghost Tether and slid into my mind. As she did, she pulled on my other tethers, and a dozen legacies and half dozen dominions flowed into my mind, supporting me. 

Their combined power rang out, and for just a moment, I saw again, and felt again. 

Then, following a road of rainbow that stretched through the void, I foxstepped back to the nest.