The Third Portal: Chapter Two

“Idyll!” I said, reaching out and extending my hand, while Dusk buzzed over to the older worldspirit on her cloud. 

“Malachi. I am glad to see you are well,” Idyll said, bowing her head slightly. “I recognize Roh, Araceli, Octavian, and Elizabeth. Who are the rest?”

“This is Simeio,” Octavian said. “And that’s Kerbos, and his bond, Ed.” 

“Liz’s fiance,” I supplied. 

“Define me in every way but as my own person, why don’t you?” Ed grumbled good naturedly. “I’m Ed, it’s nice to meet you.” 

The worldspirit bowed, her form flickering slightly, and Dusk let out a small cry of distress, waving her hands. Dawn’s magic flowed into Dusk, and their dominions merged, amplifying and pouring into Idyll, who shuddered and seemed to stabilize, if only slightly. 

“And who is this?” Idyll asked, studying Dawn as if seeing her for the first time. Dawn wiggled slightly, then dipped her head to the worldspirit. Idyll bowed back, then looked at me. Her face suddenly became serious, and she turned to me. 

“You need to be careful. Be very, very careful. There is a reason that most of what falls is not alive, and that which is…” 

Idyll’s eyes turned up to the sky. 

“Well, you should be careful. Forcing fate has its consequences. Forcing Dawn’s survival doubtless cost her much.” 

“I used some drops I collected, fed them to her right after she fell,” I said, and Idyll relaxed. 

“That will help, and you may have acted swiftly enough for nothing to have come of it at all. But you should be wary of any power that you are offered that seems too good to be true, even if it doesn’t seem to have a cost. Especially if it means taking a seemingly small step in a bad direction."

I thought about how mere weeks ago, I’d had to force my root of resolve to stop taking in power, or… Something would have happened. I didn’t know what that something had been, but I had pushed myself away from it.

That had been from resolve, which was probably why Meadow hadn’t been able to warn me, but if I had to be on the lookout for something from destiny because of Dawn, I would. I wasn’t going to abandon her just because she might have caused some trouble. 

“Thank you for the warning,” I said, “but how are you? After all… that… I can’t imagine you’ve done well.” 

“I am surviving,” the older spirit said. “My mana-garden was completely destroyed, crushed in on itself, filled with rubble. I may never recover to my old strength, let alone reach the level I could have if the Sage hadn’t been putting chains and clamps on my potential.” 

She gave a small smile. 

“But I may recover some of my strength. I’ve managed to release most of my ungated mana, for example, which gives me command over my dominion and authority back.” 

Dusk shook her head, letting out a distressed sounding sparrow-peep as she said that Idyll’s dominion had felt broken. 

“It was, but it’s healing,” the older spirit said. “It took a great deal of work to stitch it into this land, and I’m still too weak to stop the formation of slaughter spirits.” 

“What exactly are those?” Ed asked. “I heard about them when I was signing up for the transfer paperwork to become a member of the watches here, but I never got a clear answer.” 

I let out a slight sigh of relief, suddenly very glad that I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what they were, and then Octavian laughed. 

“Ah, I suppose you all wouldn’t have ever encountered one, huh?” he said. “You’ve got enough Arcanists and Occultists to cover the continent.” 

“I have, once,” Liz said. “My grandfather killed it before it got anywhere near the ship, and explained that they rarely show up in the oceans.” 

“You seem to be in good hands,” Idyll said. “Elio will doubtless want to meet with you when he has the chance, but in the short term, I’ll send a friend of yours to meet you and get you settled in.” 

“Thank you,” I said, bowing to her. “And… listen, I know it’s a long shot, but if there’s anything that I can do to help you, just say the word.” 

Idyll’s form flickered several more times, then vanished. Everyone turned back to Octavian, who cleared his throat. 

“Alright, so, fair warning, I’m not some loremaster,” he said, Roh currently plopped atop his head and munching on strands of his hair. “I’ve fought slaughter spirits that have shown up at the outskirts of our territory, but that’s a far cry from being an expert on the lore of magic. But – how are spirits created?” 

“They’re born from natural confluences of mana,” I said, thinking back to some of the missions where I’d captured spirits for the watches. “If there’s a lot of telluric mana in an area, it might spawn a telluric elemental, or some other form of earthen spirit. Asomatous spirits are born from confluences of emotion impacting natural death mana, ghosts are echoes, so on and so forth. There’s more to it, but that’s the jist. Spirit souls just kind of… materialize.” 

It was the same unfortunate reason why I couldn’t just throw a bunch of death mana into a blender, grab someone whose soul had been knocked from their body, and fix Kene’s hag problem – spirit souls, human souls, and beast souls were all distinctly different.

“Right,” Octavian agreed. “Slaughter spirits are another thing like that. You know how people unlock more power at Arcanist? 

“Do you mean an Arcanist’s Tower?” Liz asked, knitting her eyebrows together. “Or wait, spirits unlock an Arcanist’s Authority, don’t they?”

“No. Well, nothing you said was wrong, but I’m not talking about the Arcanist ability, so to speak. Or I am, but, I’m not.” 

“All Arcanists get some things,” I said, recalling a conversation with Azalea. “Like massively expanded mana senses. Azalea could expand them out over miles.” 

“Yes!” Octavian said, pointing at me. Simeio barked at his excitement, which caused Kerbos to start barking, which in turn set off a chain reaction until Araceli slapped her tail against the deck and let out a warning growl. 

“Sorry about that,” Octavian said sheepishly. “Anyways. Yes. There are a couple of universal abilities that all Arcanists get – massively empowered resonance when doing specific things, as well as a boost to all your mana, including senses. But being more resonant with the world also quiets it down, your magic kind of… settles things around you. When there are patches with wild magic and no Arcanists of any sort, then most of the time, the created spirits are normal, but once in a while, you get a slaughter spirit instead.”

“What do they actually do, though?” Ed asked, scratching Kerbos behind the ears. 

“They’re rather like elementals, at least the ones I’ve run into, but their magic is twisted to become its inverse, and they’re driven to destroy everything in the natural order,” Octavian said. “A lunar elemental’s body will glow and produce waves of light and flame, as if they were a solar elemental, but still attack using lunar spells. A death elemental will  be made of plants and muscle, while attacking with skeletons. A wind elemental will have a body made of dia–” 

“Hold on, back up. What do you mean by saying that they’re driven to destroy everything in the natural order?” I asked. “You can’t just skip over that.” 

Octavian’s face soured at my question. 

“They kill animals, plants, people, whatever they can get their hands on. Nearly all of them have some form of sacrifice legacy, allowing them to get stronger the more they kill.” 

“That sounds… kind of like human supremacist propaganda,” Ed said warily. “If humans haven’t conquered a place, then it just prod–”

“No,” Octavian cut him off. “Humans have nothing to do with it. In theory, all humans – primes, all sapient life – could die off, and if enough animals and natural spirits reached Arcanist, they’d be able to stop a slaughter spirit from being created.” 

“That’s why they rarely show up in the oceans,” Liz added. “Sure, sea monsters can be a big problem for ships, but the very existence of so many old, slumbering monsters beneath the waves keeps them from forming.” 

“Exactly,” Octavian agreed. 

“Orykson’s Title is stretched over all of Mossford, maybe even all of the Mossford Alliance, and it stops the formation of slaughter spirits,” I speculated. “And Idyll’s realm was under her Authority. Then in Delitone, we never got super far from the walls, which means we were still under the power of the city’s Arcanists, wards, and even the beasts of the Dragon Sanctuary. That’s why Ed and I have never seen one before.”

It wasn’t entirely unfounded speculation, to be fair. Orykson had all but spoon fed me the information when he’d talked about how his very presence meant that Mossford needed to spend less on containing spirits than a place like Kijani, who had no Occultists to protect the land with their Title.

“I don’t know a whole lot about Titles,” Octavian admitted. “But that sounds about right. If nothing else, the fact you’ve got some true Occultists and several false ones, as opposed to only the forced breakthroughs in Delitone is why you’ve got so few or none at all. I’ve only seen them near the wards, or when I’ve gone to help clear them out.” 

I closed my eyes and reached out with the Nascent Truth of the Guardian, as well as my staff’s power. The Truth was somewhat weak, given that it was only through the power of my symbiote staff that I was able to channel it at all, but I had been training with resonance, and this was well in line with it. Even benevolence surged through, and… 

There. 

I felt it, just barely, as we pulled into the port. Elio’s power hummed in the air, a familiar yet different protection than the one I’d been wrapped in my entire life. I opened my eyes. 

“Elio’s magic is protecting this place, or maybe Idyll’s,” I said. “I think it’s safe to assume no slaughter spirits are going to show up inside Port Ruby itself, but they’ll be one of the big things that we’re going to have to clear out in the wilds. I know naturally arisen undead are another. Any idea of the others?” 

“The deadliest natural things,” Ed said. “Like if there are bombstones naturally growing out there, we’ll have to stop that. What else?” 

There was a general round of shrugging, and after a few more minutes of idle chatter, our group started to split apart as everyone had to do their last minute packing. Except, of course, Dusk, Dawn, and myself – I kept everything in Dusk, so I handed my ID over to the attendant, then Foxstepped down onto the dock. 

“Malachi?” a familiar voice asked, and I turned to see Ivy standing nearby. I grinned and waved. 

“Hey Ivy!” 

“Primes, my mom had mentioned that you’d changed and formed a tail, but… And who are these? I know Dusk, but” 

Dusk let out a waterfall sound of hello, and introduced Dawn, her younger sister, who was the mutated spiritual shade of a sky estragon. That was complete nonsense, but it was probably the most reasonable lie in the short term.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Ivy said, tipping his horned head towards Dawn. She sent me a strange mental impulse, one that I couldn’t even begin to decipher, and when it became clear I didn’t get it, she gave up and curled around my arm, resting her head on top of the opposite shoulder to where Dusk sat. 

“How are you?” I asked Ivy. “It’s good to see you.” 

“I’m great,” Ivy agreed. “Sure, I might not have changed as much as you, but I’ve been training here while I sharpen myself for the Elysian Mastery Tournament, and putting my degree to work as a functionary in the Brighteyes.”  

“When is the tournament?” I asked curiously. “I kind of want to try my hand as an independent.” 

I wanted a little more than ‘kind of’, since I might lose access to Ikki forever if I didn’t, but there was no reason to unburden myself like that on Ivy. 

“Eighteen or nineteen months, I think, but… You think you’re up to snuff?” Ivy asked. “I’m not even sure I am, and my legacy grants me a massive amount of power.” 

He didn’t sound disparaging, just doubtful. The competitors in the Elysian Mastery Tournament were some of the best in the world at their respective sports, combat rings, and dueling skills, after all. I doubted I would even place in the top hundred in most things, but if I was able to get the root in my Foxstep under control, I might be able to do well in some teleportation events. 

“Try me, I doubt you’ll even be able to touch me anymore,” I said, adding in a flair of false arrogance, like a rebellious character in a bad illusionary movie. 

“Hah,” Ivy said, shaking his head. “Anyways. I’ve been good. But Idyll sent me this way, told me to show you around Port Ruby, and get you acquainted.”