The Third Portal: Chapter One

A beam of crackling black and white light, streaked with electric blue seared towards me, and I Foxstepped out of the way, materializing behind my opponent in a flash. Octavian’s elbow flashed out, hand suddenly made of metal, and I caught his hand. For a moment, we struggled, matched in strength, but mine came from my body, and his from a spell. It was a losing battle, and he knew it.

Fortunately for him, it wasn’t his only trick. 

Simeio and Araceli rushed me from the back, forming a perfect trio around me and lashing out with metallic and draconic claws at my back. They were met by Dusk and Dawn. Dawn’s magical progression was still limited, but her golden light flowed into Dusk, who punched out with a pair of shockwaves, driving back the pair of weaker bonds. Simeio was still early third gate, as was Araceli. 

That had confused me some, since I’d thought she’d been stronger before, but I was guessing this had something to do with the tool that Octavian had needed. 

Above my head, Roh released a gout of purple flame down on my head, and it left mild burns on my body. More dramatically, it sunk into my mana-garden and began to burn it away, quickly depleting my mana. I wrenched my spirit back under my control from where my Foxstep had lost it, then drove my hand upward, conjuring a spirit gourd in my hand. As I did, I flowed mana through my Ghost Tether and into Hannah, the accountant ghost. She was weaker than everyone else in this fight, but she burned the mana to use one of her ghostly spells, forcibly projecting her will and emotion into Roh.

I bolstered Hannah the best I could by calling my spirit lantern mushrooms out, flooding power into them with Fungal Entwinement. In the spars on the boat, using it to empower and draw from my ninelight morels, mistshrooms, and spirit lantern mushrooms, I’d managed to ingrain the spell, and working fungal magic was easier than ever.

But Roh was powerful, well into mid-third gate, and his mana had a strange sense of stability that Octavian, Simeio, and Araceli all lacked, allowing him to resist us as I pumped magic into the gourd and ghost. We struggled back and forth as I pulled him in, and he pushed away.

Octavian struck then. He’d used the time to conjure a pair of lenses, and released an amplified Sky Dragon’s Breath through them. I pulsed my Foxarmor as best I could, but ultimately, was forced to squeeze out another Foxstep. 

Roh unleashed his wispflame on Dusk, while Octavian conjured a mirror to pair with the lenses, bouncing his Sky Dragon’s Breath off of it.

 Even with Dawn’s magic overcharging her, Dusk couldn’t take fire from four opponents of roughly her strength, and she pulled herself and Dawn away, fleeing into her world. 

As part of the rules of our duel, that was considered a loss condition. In a real fight, it was an amazing strategy, but also one that we had to learn to do without – it was the same reason I was forgoing Mantle Dragonfyre. Well, that and the fact that it was far too deadly for a friendly spar like this. 

I wasn’t the only one restrained, though. Octavian was refusing to use his legacy’s ability to burn his mana and strengthen the respective familiar, and he and Araceli couldn’t use the windbody spell, since its internal costs were too high to use in training – whatever that meant. I didn’t know that particular spell. On top of that, both Octavian and I were wearing training restraints – the cuff, glasses, and ring that restricted our ability to sense, manipulate mana, and slowed our mana meditations. 

And, of course, I was holding back my soul mana. Ed and Liz knew, but at Orykson’s mention of the unusual ability, I’d decided not to use it against Octavian in sparring, and I was sure he had his own secrets he held back.

With my partners gone, I put up as much of a fight as I could, running my mana through Foxarmor, Tortoise Time, and running Enhance Forging with Briarthreads, all while lashing out with sweeps of blademoss and Pinpoint Boneshards. I managed to take out Simeio and Araceli, but in the end, Octavian’s tactics and numbers won out. I could fight up a tier, but so could Octavian, and he had three companions. 

I pulsed power through Starfish Regeneration – another spell I’d managed to ingrain, which seemed to speed my natural rate of recovery – and let the cool, minty sensation rush through me. Dusk and Dawn popped back out while I sucked in a breath after the spiritual discomfort. Dusk chirped that Octavian was now up nine to our team’s seven, and that she shouldn’t have tried to split her attention. 

“Probably,” Octavian agreed, then sighed. “I just wish I could keep up as a solo fighter. A warlock winning a group battle is expected, but I won’t always be with Araceli, Roh, and Simeio.” 

I shrugged as I pulled off my training restraints. It was true that when we sparred for solo matches, I tended to wipe the floor with him, but my plants, fungi, and ghosts let me beat him in versatility. 

In the ring across from us, Liz and Ed’s sparring match was winding down. They were honestly flirting almost as much as they were fighting, with Ed defending himself from her barrage of ice, shadow, water, acid and fire that Liz unleashed, cheerfully commenting on how taxed his mana was from this, and she talked about how hard his stone was. 

I threw a boneshard at them – physically thew the shard of bone, not cast the Pinpoint Boneshard spell.

“Stop it, you two,” I told them, and Octavian laughed, wiping his brow with a towel.

“I think it’s sweet,” he said. “I would like that with my own partner some day, whoever they may be.” 

“I should introduce you to Ivy, if I get the chance,” I said. “That’s Azalea’s son. He’s absurdly powerful, something to do with his legacy.” 

“Huh. Sure, I guess,” Octavian said. 

Ed landed, grabbing a towel of his own and tossing one to Liz. She took it and began patting her hair, which had gotten some of the backspray from her water spells. 

“We probably should begin cleaning up soon anyhow,” Ed said. “We’re scheduled to arrive today, right?” 

“No, there was the kraken incident, which blew us off course,” I said. “Captain said our arrival should be tomorrow morning.”

Dawn thrashed like a limp noodle in the air, incidentally whacking Roh with her tail, and I pulled her over to me, letting her wrap around my left arm, while Dusk took a seat on my right shoulder, kicking her tiny legs. 

“Hmmm,” Liz said. “Not gonna lie, I’m kind of horribly bored. Want to play poker?” 

I didn’t see how she could be bored. Pretty much all of my time on the boat had been dedicated to sparring, spell training, or to digging under the mist wall in my life and death gardens. 

The multiple-week-long boat ride had been pretty great for solidifying my spells. Sure, I couldn’t practice Seven League Step, and could only sketch my ghost spells into mastery, but plenty of my other spells had made leaps and bounds. 

Even though my combat capability hadn’t surged forward much, since only Fungal Entwinement really impacted it, the quality of life benefits from ingraining Starfish Regeneration, Quality Lifespan, and Improved Sleep were absolutely worth it.

And even if Liz hadn’t been quite as fanatically dedicated as I was, she and Ed had been together plenty. I’d actually kept away, not wanting to intrude. But if Liz needed a break…

“Sure,” I said. “I’m not betting anything, though.” 

“You’re no fun,” she shot back. 

“I’ll bet,” Octavian said. “Max bet of five silver, though.” 

“Boring!” Liz countered.

Ed gently put his hand on her shoulder. 

“Fine, five silver,” she sighed. 

“Ah, alright, I’ll pay and play,” I said. Then Hannah spoke in my head. 

“Oooh, I love poker. I’m great at counting cards.” 

I flicked power along the tether, manifesting her. 

“And I’ll pay for Hannah to play too.” 

Ed opened his mouth, then nodded, while Octavian and Liz didn’t seem to think I’d done anything strange. 

“We should invite Meadow,” Ed finally said. 

We found her on the deck of the ship, stretched out and enjoying a drink, and she agreed to join us.

She was the first out, leaving me wondering if she was just terrible at poker, or if she’d lost on purpose.

I was the next out, as Dusk kept trying to tell everyone else what cards I had while Dawn tried to shut her up with ineffective tail-whacks. Ed lost not long after I did, and it came down to Hannah, Octavian, and Liz. Octavian was the next out, when Roh accidentally lit the ace of spades on fire and Araceli had leapt on the table to stop him. She was trying to help, but just wound up knocking cards everywhere, and he was booted from play. 

When we finally got the game back going, it was pretty much just Hannah against Liz. I thought Hannah’s card counting skills outstripped Liz’s, but Liz seemed to be able to read her body better than Hannah could. How Liz was reading the body language of someone without a body and barely any corporeal form at all was beyond me, but she seemed capable of it. 

Liz eventually won with a lucky gamble, calling Hannah’s bluff, and took home the pot of silver, and we turned in for the night. 

The following morning, Crysite appeared on the horizon. With the official name of the Isle of Crysite, I had expected something fairly small. Obviously, it would need to be large enough to have a sustained city with some outlying towns, so it needed to be bigger than Delitone, but I’d thought that it would still be somewhere in the same ballpark. 

But where Delitone had sprawled across over a hundred thousand acres, the Isle of Crysite had to cover millions. Tens of millions, maybe. It sprawled out enough that I couldn’t see the edges on either side of the island, only the coast and part of the way inland. Maybe halfway?

Along this coast that I could see Port Ruby, and I instantly understood the name. A massive shipping yard had been erected from densely forged mana, a glassy red color, like rubies. They extended out into the land, forming a huge perimeter wall over an area large enough to fit a small city, though the spaced out buildings and farms made it look only to have grown of a medium town. 

It was covered in lush dark green vegetation, but as I cast Surveyor’s Eye, I noticed that it was mostly low to the ground scrub, tall grasses, and small trees. I could see three vast rivers extending out across the landscape like the spokes of a wheel, almost cleaving the island into different chunks of greenery and coastline. The air was crisp and cold, even though it was the middle of summer, and I thought that there might be a bit of frost along some of the greenery as it moved closer inland.

The rivers came together in a huge circular lake or inland sea, I wasn't sure which, at what had to be the center of the island, and in the center of that inland sea there was a range of mountains, that were... Floating?

The mountains hovered, some only a scant few inches off the ground, while others were towering more than a mile above the earth. They seemed to all be drawing up to a vast point, high in the sky, the summit of a massive floating mountain whose peak rose more than ten miles, straight up. 

Ten miles up doesn’t sound like a lot, but most of the mountains I’d climbed in the beastgate trials, which had been true, rugged winter mountains, were only a mile or two tall. I thought I recalled from a class that even most professional fliers don’t go higher than five miles up.

These stood double that.

Wrapped around my shoulder, Dawn sent me a frenetic impulse. She needed to get to the top of that mountain for her third gate breakthrough. We had to go. I gave her a tentative sense of agreement – I couldn’t make promises to get to the top, but I would try. 

In the sky above the island, a massive dragon, easily three hundred feet long, with three pairs of glimmering gemstone wings wove about, casting spots of multicolored light, and then a being appeared on the deck next to us. I had a moment of panic, then I recognized her. 

Idyll appeared on the desk. Her form was fuzzier, less distinct than it had once been, but she gave us all a sweeping bow. 

“Dusk, my dear. Welcome to Crysite.”