The Third Portal: Chapter Seven

“Is it going to transform my heart?” I asked. 

“The spell’s biological array is in the heart, which will cause it to turn it a whitish-gray, which will look… interesting… with your resolve veins. But it’s more to do with being the heart of your entire mana-garden,” the old tortoise said. “I suspect it will pair very well with that kirin’s spell.” 

“What does it actually do?” I asked. 

“When you channel mana through it, the mana regeneration is naturally shifted to where it needs to go with far less loss,” Edgar explained. “Say your life mana is full, but your death mana is completely dry. Converting it through ungated mana is going to have a massive amount of loss. Using the Hudau’s heart could let you pass the effort your spirit is spending to maintain your . There is some loss, as the spell takes mana to cast, but it’s still cheaper than conversion.”

“That seems useful, certainly, but… Not as extreme as I expected,” I admitted. “I mean. It could help me restore my time mana when it’s depleted, since that’s so far behind life, space, and even death. But…”

I trailed off, not wanting to ask if it was really enough to drive a species to extinction.

“You’re not thinking broad enough, then. The spell isn’t limited to refilling gates. Let’s look at your Ephemeral Rebirth, your time mana’s ability to let you return from a mortal wound. That requires you to fill your spirit with a vast amount of mana and energy, correct?” 

“Right, but I can do that normally,”  I said, then paused. “Wait. Are you suggesting I could refocus my mana regeneration to charge that power, so that it filled automatically, rather than needing me to fill it?”

“You could, and what’s more? If you become deft enough with manipulating the spell, you can partially shift things, instead of making it all or nothing. Reduce what your spirit is sending to life, and channel it instead into Ephemeral Rebirth. Some loss, but incredibly beneficial. Or once that ability is full, you could shift it to refilling and expanding your soul mana. That will grow incredibly slowly, but I can’t imagine why this wouldn’t help.”

“What does it do when ingrained?” I asked, leaning in. 

“It allows that redirected growth to go to your walls. It’s horribly inefficient, but when your spirit is full, it will burn excess regenerated mana to push at your walls, helping you grow them upwards and increase your mana capacity automatically. This compounds on your staff’s resonance, which I believe works somewhat similarly.”

“That’s… practically a second mana meditation, all on its own. In fact, I’m pretty sure there are mana meditations that do exactly that!”

“There are,” Edgar said, then grew more somber. “It’s a dangerous power. Tell those you trust, but do not be unwise with it. If someone learns you have it, they may wish to cut out your heart and take it for themself.” 

I sobered up immediately and settled my hands in my lap. I looked at him and nodded. 

“I will.” 

Edgar stepped back and poked his head at the spell. 

“Go ahead and cast it, then, so that I can wipe this clean and remove the evidence that you know the spell.” 

I raised two fingers, sketched the spell once with my beastgate mana, and then poured a bit of power into it. I was immediately struck with the strange sensation of being more aware of my own spirit. It wasn’t entirely unlike the time that I’d cast the world tortoise spell, or when I’d bonded my temporal gate to the intersection of my full-gate spells.

I could feel the stream of power flowing out of my spirit and into my gates, and I burned some mana to shift things around a bit. My life mana, being reinforced by so many harvesting spells, was ahead of all of my other gates, so I shifted a fraction of the magic I was producing to flow into my time gate. Since it was entirely without a harvesting spell, it was incredibly far behind.

I tried to shift a fraction, at least. Manipulating the natural regeneration was like trying to draw delicate facial features with oven mitts on, and I accidentally took far more than I'd been intending, cutting my life regeneration to almost nothing, while skyrocketing my temporal recovery. It wasn’t perfectly efficient, since the Hudau Heart did require some of the throughput, but it was the fastest that I’d ever felt my temporal mana recharging. Ever. 

I shuddered and rolled my shoulders as I undid the change before I stopped casting the spell and allowed my spirit to settle. 

“Is this spell altering the third layer of my soul?” I asked, “I know that the top layer is the mana-garden, then the third is the mana source. I don’t know much about the second or deeper, but I know that the legacy is there somewhere.” 

“Legacies are generally considered to be a part of the fifth layer, though there is some debate, since the soul isn’t as simple as a layered cake. Each layer has endless crossovers and interactions. The Hudau Heart is a good example of this,” Edgar explained, settling back on his haunches as magic swirled out of his shell and obscured the spell he’d written on the ground. “The Heart, being a spell, rests in the first layer. It also changes the first layer, but it re-routes the internal mana channels that are naturally formed between the first and third for spiritual restoration. You could argue that it's changing the soul mana layer in this way, but it’s really only changing the interaction between them.” 

“Where do spirit bonds exist? Or resonance? Or deep mana?” 

“Spirit bonds exist in the first layer, though they can also interact with others, as your soulbond with Dawn shows. Resonance slowly stretches deeper and deeper, the further you advance. It starts in the ungated mana, of course.” 

Dusk whistled that what he said made sense. My staff was in my ungated mana, as was her Nascent Truth of the Worldspirit, Kene’s Truth of Succor, or Dawn’s weird Truth. I glanced at the noodle-shaped spirit, wondering what exactly her Nascent Truth was. I hadn’t been aware she’d had one, but it did make sense. 

“But upon a proper ascension to Arcanist, it grows a lot in power and breaks into the second layer. Occultists blend their resonance into their soul mana. I never reached that far myself, but I believe that Titles have something to do with it? I’m not entirely sure.” 

“And deep mana?” 

Edgar snorted and shook his head. 

“I have no idea. I developed the Wind of Destiny, and can touch on the Wind of Fortune, but I never developed roots. I understand they’re in the mana-garden for most, but I cannot claim to fully understand. If I were to guess…” 

He trailed off and I poked the leathery skin of his arm. 

“If you were to guess?” 

“This is baseless speculation, but I don’t think there is a ‘deep mana’ layer. I think deep mana is more fundamental, the material that the soul itself is forged from, and that winds are learning to listen to the ones around you, roots are learning to draw out the latent potential and connection, and the well is learning to catch the deep mana constantly around us.” 

He shook his enormous head. 

“As I said, baseless speculation and musing. I was never a great mage, not at this sort of thing. My specialty was more in spell structures, altering and engineering new spells, and in the transmutation of existing natural treasures to improve them. Speaking of which… You’ve taken in a coalheart, no?” 

“I have!” I agreed, a little relieved to have shifted the topic away from something as heavy as the nature of souls. “Why?” 

“It’s a natural treasure not unlike the inkstone. Excrete the excess oil it produces and bring it to me, and once I have enough, I should be able to make a refinement elixir that will help it produce more mana. All I’d ask is to keep half the oil for my experimentation.” 

“Sure,” I agreed readily. It wasn’t like I could get much use out of the oil anyways. I thought that it might be a decent idea to use some to feed the mycelium of Beast Mage’s Soul, but I could do that whenever. Giving some away for a free improvement was great. 

Dawn vanished, slipping into Dusk, then appeared a moment later with a scroll in her jaws. She dropped it in my hand, and I unrolled it, then snapped. 

“Right! Thanks, Dawn!” 

The tiny starsoul dragon wiggled around happily and licked my face. It felt weird. Her spirit-body was semi-corporeal, similar to my tail, and it gave me a strange tingly feeling in the same way.

“I have some stuff that you may find interesting, and that you might want to look at on your own,” I said.

I opened the scroll and laying it out for the tortoise to read, before reaching into Dusk and pulling out the research paper on E-7B5-3L1, which I’d nicknamed Hudau’s Harvest, and the spell guide for Empowerment, the second gate hudau spell. 

“I don’t know if you already know these, but I figured you might be able to get some use out of them, since I don’t know if you have a harvesting spell for your hudau mana? And I was thinking about the Curse of the Wild Spirit spell, but I don’t know. The scroll is so old, and had so few details…” 

Edgar let out a hum and leaned in to examine them. There was a surge of mana as he sketched Hudau’s Harvest, then I felt the energy around us rush towards him. It started melting and reshaping, fusing together from a mix of random things into the perfect whole that was more than the sum of its parts that was hudau mana.

It wasn’t very efficient, as far as harvesting spells went. I could feel Edgar pouring buckets of mana into the spell to keep it active, and getting back… Slightly bigger buckets? Perhaps I should have thought that analogy through better. But ultimately, even with the power provided by his false Occultist spirit, the spell took so much power to run that he was barely able to net positive. 

“Interesting,” Edgar said, letting the spell go. “Do you mind if I take the paper? As it is, it’s not very useful, but I think I could learn to make it much better, given time.” 

“By all means,” I agreed. The paper floated up and vanished into what looked like a twisting of portal-ant magic, before Edgar moved onto the Empowerment spell. He shook his head. 

“This is interesting, but not very good. It was clearly designed to be used by someone who had a Dominion, Authority, or Title. Perhaps if I was a much better mage, I could use it, but as it stands, it’s best given to Dusk or Dawn. It’s not too closely tied to being only hudau mana. Any dragon could use it, and either of them have complex enough mana.” 

Dusk whistled that they couldn’t really use it, since her dominion was tied explicitly to existence and the energy of the world around her, not to magic, and Dawn was putting a full-gate spell there. Edgar nodded and studied the scroll. This didn’t take long, and he nudged it towards me. 

“This is from a heritagefox,” he said. “I’ve seen it in use.” 

“A what?” I asked. 

“Like hudau tortoise shells, their fur is made of hudau heritage stone,” Edgar said. “They’re found in northwestern Elohi, and there are less than thirty left, if I recall. I made the journey once, to speak to those who might have some understanding of me. But you’re missing half the spell.” 

“So it won’t work?” 

“No, as it stands, it will, it’s simply limited to touch. But it should be able to be threaded through your mana senses, striking at anyone who your senses can break through the veil of. It’s still a useful spell, either way.”

“If I cast this half-complete version, when I learned the other half, could I add it?” 

“Easily,” Edgar said. 

“Perfect.” 

I sketched the spell, then ran power through it. My tail blazed with colorless light. I played around a bit, and got it to project through my hands or feet as well, which opened up a good bit of utility. 

“Well, this has been fascinating, and it's lovely to see you again, but you should probably begin heading back,” Edgar said. “It will be getting dark before too long, and some of the stronger night predators will likely consider you to be a very tasty snack."

"What about you?" I asked, frowning.

"I'm strong enough that none will want to bother me," Edgar responded, shrugging his titanic shoulders. "I've almost finished capturing the wasps that weren't teleported out, though."

"How about you tell me about that and everything else you've been up to while I prepare my teleport back?" I asked, beginning to cast Seven League Step.