The Third Portal: Chapter Five

When I slipped inside, the attendant looked up and greeted me with a blunt, “Oh, it’s you,” before she immediately returned to reading her novel. I gestured around. 

“Which of these do I need to charge to get to Port Heliodoor?” 

“Yellow,” the attendant grunted. I wondered if she’d had to deal with an annoying mage or something, considering that this was definitely not what she’d acted like before. I shrugged, then walked over to the smooth disk of yellow crystal. Dawn slipped into Dusk’s realm so as to not draw too much attention to herself after the teleport and I began pouring mana into the portal.

Charging up a full portal spell like this took a lot of mana, and if it weren’t for the fact that I had so many gates, and was able to draw on the plants in Dusk’s realm for extra power, I definitely couldn’t have charged it up all at once. The fact that I was able, despite that high cost, actually got me an interested look from the attendant, but before she could say anything, I stepped through into Port Heliodoor. 

The moment I stepped through and spread my mana senses around me, I could feel and see the difference between this little outpost and Port Ruby. The gateway I’d stepped through was located in roughly the center of the camp, and camp was definitely the right word. There were a dozen or two tents set up, four of which looked larger and semi-permanent, while the rest were smaller, temporary measures, probably from teams or people on missions waiting for their mana to replenish before they could take the portal back. 

The entire camp only covered about five acres, beyond which the scrub was much thicker, coming to my knees, and partially covered in frost. As I spread my mana senses out to the border, I could feel the powerful mental wards. They seemed to be set up in four concentric circles, though I wasn’t sure I was supposed to be able to sense the fourth. It was clearly an arcanist level ward, but it was incredibly faint and feather-light, drifting at the edge of my senses. 

The people in the camp ranged wildly in power, but none of them were weak. They ran the gamut from those in early third gate all the way to a potent presence that was definitely an Arcanist of some sort. Compared to a random spot in Mossford, where you were as liable to run into a false Arcanist as you were to run into someone who’d only ever cast some basic ungated spells, the average power here was much higher, probably about peak third gate. 

The Arcanist’s presence felt strangely familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d felt it before, and I didn’t feel Edgar’s Hudau mana. Even as a false Occultist, he should have lit up like a beacon, which probably meant that he was out in the wilderness beyond the wards, and outside of my range. 

Within my mind – or was it my spirit? – I could feel Aerde’s laid out plan starting to tick. The first step of the plan to remove the hag from Kene was to strengthen Kene’s soul, and it was one that I would also be undertaking. While it didn’t matter to most people, those who pursued advancement usually wound up seeking out some sort of soul strengthening. 

The tightly bound and woven furls of knowledge set off a beacon within me as information began pouring in. Crysite hadn’t always been abandoned. Four hundred and fifty hundred years ago, an Occultist known as the Song of Spring had draped the island in his Title, and ruled it until his death two and a half centuries ago. 

The spell didn’t go deep into details, but from the history courses I’d taken in school, I remembered something about that. It had been a pretty short lived kingdom that had allied with Mossford but had been constantly getting into near-constant skirmishes with Dragontooth. Their king had been immortal, but after some dragon had killed him in battle the nation had been left with no clear line of succession, and in the following century the population had either been worn down by monster attacks or else immigrated to Dragontooth, Mossford, Thornfront, and even Delitone. 

Putting the two bits together, I was guessing that the king was the Song of Spring, and that after he died, his Title had faded from the land and caused a surge of slaughter spirits. Orykson probably sponsored the resettlement, if I were to guess. He didn’t seem like the kind of person who would want to waste money on a kingdom that was going to be constantly under siege until they found a new Occultist. 

That wasn’t what Aerde’s information packet really cared about, though. It was more interested in some of the experimentation and research that the Song of Spring had performed before he died. Given their continuous conflict with Dragontooth, the long dead man had done all sorts of research into the improvement of his soldiers. 

The first idea he’d struck on was to create a massive soul strengthening formation, with the hope that using it on children who were born within it would be born with stronger souls and legacies. I was betting that Orykson had probably sponsored that too, out of interest, if nothing else. 

It had… mixed results. 

People who grew up in the formation did indeed have stronger souls than those born outside. They had been shown to have a slightly higher mana density and ability to adapt to more natural treasures, as if the whole population had been fed a few golden soul potions while growing up… But it hadn’t actually improved their combat power much. Their legacies weren’t any stronger than any other large population and they tended to have a normal amount of gates. 

The mana density and ability to take in more treasures was nice, but ultimately the cost for the experiment had outweighed the benefits. Adjusting for inflation was difficult, but the information packed suggested that almost a quarter of a trillion silver in today’s Mossford standard silver had been spent each year – more than half of the entire national budget of Crysite. 

None of that really mattered for me. I mean, it was an awful misuse of funds that any politician in Mossford would be mocked out of their office for even suggesting nowadays, but it wasn’t exactly relevant to my needs. 

What was relevant was that getting within a hundred miles of the old formation had activated one of the packets within Aerde, and it had reserved a portion of my knowledge energy to keep a divination to it constantly running. 

I looked out westward, where Aerde’s divination was pointing me, and pursed my lips. How mad would Kene be if I went running off to pursue this lead? 

Pretty mad, I rationalized. There was a good chance that I could run into something big and nasty that wanted to eat me. It wasn’t so bad if it was just an animal upset I was in its territory, but if it was something like a slaughter spirit, it could get messy. 

Dusk slapped me in the cheek, her tiny hand more like a poke than a slap, and she asked what I was doing. 

“Oh, sorry,” I said, then explained everything to her. Dusk made a sound like the gentle rustle of wind across grassy plains that translated roughly to a ‘hrm’ sound. I nodded, and then Hannah spoke up in the back of my head. 

“I want to see the ruins of a citywide spell array,” she said quietly. “But I can’t see more things if you die, so maybe don’t?” 

Given that this imprint of her memories and spirit had lingered because she’d felt like she’d never gotten to see or do anything with her life, the first bit didn’t suprise me. The fact she was able to put together that my death would be bad was a little surprising.

“You’re extremely lucid for a ghost,” I mused, then nodded. “And you’re right. I’ll see about tracking down Edgar. That was the original reason for me being here, after all.” 

“Mathamatics helps,” Hannah told me. 

I mentally squinted at her as I began walking towards the Arcanist spirit that I could sense, unsure if she was joking, guessing with her metaphysical gut, or actually correct.

On one hand, it sounded like absolute nonsense. 

On the other, ghosts were imprints, and if someone had built up knowledge and mental energy by doing math, it did make sense that their imprint would be ‘clearer’, so to speak. 

I resolved to ask Orykson the next time I saw him, then arrived at the semi-permanent tent with the slightly familiar Arcanist presence. Its two flaps had been tired open with short lengths of rope, so I stepped inside. 

The arcanist standing in tent turned and looked at me, and I stared at her. She was a tall, pale woman with short cropped dark hair and eyes, and she radiated creation mana. I squinted at her. She looked incredibly familiar. I’d been expecting someone from Phantom Hand, given what Ivy had said, and the presence of creation magic, but… No, she felt and looked familiar, but also… Not.

“Sorry if this is rude, but are you related to Mallory Emsley Cromwell?” I asked. 

“She’s my daughter,” the woman said, and her voice was stern and firm. “I haven’t run into you before, but I can’t know every member of the guild. Phantom Hand's guildmaster is out on assignment currently. What did you need?"

“I thought you were a politician who was in jail for embezzlement charges,” I blurted out, the words tumbling out before I could stop them. Mrs. Cromwell’s hands flexed and she looked at me irritably. 

“I was released on probation to assist with the settlement,” Mrs. Cromwell said crossly. “I’m surprised Mallory didn’t tell you that. Who are you?” 

I considered that identifying myself as the person who’d beaten her daughter in a legally registered duel probably wasn’t the best idea, but I also didn’t want to lie to her. 

“I’m not a member of Phantom Hand,” I told her, “just an independent beastmage. Do you know where Edgar is?” 

“I know four Edgars, be more specific and answer my question,” the older woman snapped. 

“Edgar the giant tortoise beastmage?” I said, then winced. “And I’m Malachi Baker.” 

The woman’s eyes narrowed, and she pointed at the entry to the tent. 

“Get out,” she said. “I don’t know what kind of prank you think you’re pulling, but it isn’t funny.” 

I squared my feet and glared at her. 

“I am not going to get out. I need to find Edgar. That’s why I portaled out here to begin with.” 

“Then who are you really?” Mrs. Cromwell demanded. 

“I’m really Malachi Roth Baker,” I snipped back, then pulled both of my IDs out and passed them over to her. She stared at them for a moment, then swept me with her mana senses, lingering for a moment on the tattoo that formed the basis for my soul mana beastcore. 

“I should apologize. A human with the same name beat my daughter in a duel a while ago, right before I went to prison. At first I thought you were a member of Phantom Hand because of the tail – I haven’t run into any phantom foxes before, only read about them – but when you asked about her, my sentence, and then said you had his name, I thought you were playing some sort of prank on me."

I nodded and made a noncommittal humming noise, trying to not smile, even though it was kind of amusing that she thought I was a phantom fox. I didn’t know what a phantom fox even was, but it sounded worth looking into. I didn’t have any real stealth spells, and while I would never be a specialist, picking up something of the sort could be nice.

“You were looking for the false Occultist, Hudau Tortoise Edgar?” she asked. 

“I was!” I agreed.

Mrs. Cromwell gestured to a map that was laid out on a table nearby and began pointing out some spots. 

“I don’t know exactly where he is at the moment, but this was his planned travel route…”