The Third Gate: Chapter Sixty-Three

After Orykson left, I decided that I may as well head to the graveyard and see if there were any spirits that I could help out. I would leave tomorrow, sure, but that was no reason to not get a bit of practice in today, especially since Ed, Kene, and my dad were all working. 

As I walked I started by sketching out the spells one at a time and flooding a bit of power into them, in order to form the array inside my body. I had the oddest sensation that they were writing themselves onto my liver, though I didn’t know if that was just because of Orykson’s earlier talk about organs, or if they were actually working themselves into my liver. The biological spells had to stay somewhere, after all. 

As I stepped into the graveyard, passing through the wards that kept the spirits within contained, I flared my mana senses out around me, and felt the clusters of death from the bodies beneath the ground, slowly dissolving up into telluric energy. Multiple spirits rustled through the graveyard, and I stepped forwards, allowing my mana to gently pulse out of my body, from where it was always leaking out around me.

I felt spirits watching me, moving around in the graveyard, and I shifted awkwardly.

“Hello,” I said. “My name is Malachi. I’m beginning to practice ectomancy.” 

I let my power slide through the arrays that I’d just built, specifically Ghost Tether and Ghosteyes. I wasn’t sure how well Spirit Circle would have been received.

“I wanted to know if any of you had any unfinished business that I could help you with. I’m an okay combat alchemist, a pretty good combat mage, beast mage, and plant mage. I’m just dipping my toes into ectomancy. Actually, I think I already saw that.” 

I coughed slightly. 

“I’m going to be visiting the Isle of Crysite soon, as a part of the settlement efforts.”

A spirit appeared before me, of a middle aged woman in her thirties. Her face was slightly blurred, somewhat forgotten, but she looked average. Her power was fairly average as well, a first gate mage. 

“I was an accountant,” she said. “I wanted to see the world. Explore. Maybe have children one day.” 

I blinked, a touch surprised that she was lucid enough to realize that she was dead. 

“How did you die?” I asked. “Wait. Is that rude? What’s your name?”

“The enchantments to hold me on my broom broke, and I fell,” the ghost said. “I died on my way home from work.” 

“What’s your name?” I repeated. 

“I wanted to see the world,” the ghost said mournfully. 

“Do you have a name?” I asked, and the spirit was quiet for a long time.

“I don’t remember,” the ghost finally said. “But I remember that I was saving up money to explore. Can you show me some things?” 

“I can,” I agreed. “I need a name for you, though.” 

“Hannah,” the woman finally said. “It wasn’t my name, but it was the closest I can remember.” 

“Well, Hannah, welcome aboard,” I said. I extended my hand to her, as if for a handshake, and focused Ghost Tether onto her. She took my hand, and magic rushed into her. It spun around, gradually filling her spirit, and then formed into a somewhat stable knot of death mana, like when I formed a self-sustaining Spatial Anchor. 

I let go of her hand, and she faded out of sight, but despite that, I could still feel her. Not just in the sense that I felt something with my mana senses, either. I could feel the tether, reaching out, tying me to her, and her to me. 

I flicked power through Ghosteyes, and suddenly, I was staring at myself. My tail rapidly thrashed around me, and I stumbled back. The connection broke a moment later, and I was booted from my body, falling onto the ground. I picked myself up, and felt a thin pulse of amusement through my tether to Hannah. I waved a hand, tearing open a portal to Dusk. 

“This is a large demiplane, aspected to forest mana,” I told her. “You’re welcome to explore around in there all you’d like. It’s about eighty acres or so? But it should be easy enough for me to call you when we get to Crysite if you’re in there.” 

Her spirit drifted in, and I surveyed the rest of the graveyard. 

“Do any of you need some help? Even if it’s not coming to Crysite. It’s not always the most comfortable thing to–” 

“Bully! I am up for a hunt!” 

An older ghost, who seemed to be about third gate, with a dominion thrumming around him materialized. His mana was weak, and he was clearly old, having expended much of his power. 

“Hello,” I said. “Who are you?” 

“I am Markus! Hunter extraordinaire! Bully! I am up for a hunt!” 

“I don’t know how much actual hunting I’ll be doing,” I pointed out. “I mean, I’m not big on killing things.” 

“Bully! I am up for a hunt!” Markus repeated. “I am Markus, the great hunter!” 

I put my hand on him and cast Lesser Psychometry. I didn’t project the images outwards, but instead just let them flow into my mind. I was met with flashes of Markus while alive, creeping through a forest. He stopped at a wet patch in the ground and sniffed it, using that to discern the direction of his prey. He tracked it to a cave, where I spotted a group of Draigg-Blaidd. Markus unleashed a battery of spells, but they were fuzzy and indistinct, as if the ghost couldn’t fully conceptualize what magic it had once held. 

The Draigg-Blaidd packlord released a metal spear that killed Markus – he remembered that, and his dying wish that he’d gotten one final victory against the wild beasts of the land. 

I made a face. The devastation of the Draigg-Blaidd was a horrible, sad thing, not something to be celebrated, and I couldn’t say that I was happy to be learning about one of the people who. 

But if the thing this ghost needed in order to pass on and become one with the world again was one victory against a monster, then I’d take him along. At least in Crysite, I could turn that dominion and impulse against something like feral zombies or slaughter spirits. 

I spun a Ghost Tether spell between us until the connection formed, where I began fueling him with mana, restoring some of the power he’d lost. I fetched a Spirit Gourd from the tree and sucked him in, mentally instructing him to stay in the gourd while I looked for an opponent.

“Bully!” the ghost shouted into my brain. 

I winced. He had wasted mana to amplify that mental shout, for no reason. Ugh. Well, at least he’d be able to lay to rest soon. 

The third spirit that emerged from the graveyard wasn’t one I expected – it was a tall, regal figure, with a staff, all made of drifting shadows. I frowned. 

“I know you. You’re the shade that guards this place.” 

The shade tilted his head in a nod. 

“Goodbye, farewell, endings, reunite,” the shade said, and it plucked the threads of the Ghost Tether as it did. It marked them, allowing them to pass through the wards, and I bowed my head to the shade.

“Thank you,” I said to the shade. “If I had the ability to offer you mana, I would, but…” 

“Peace, hope, pass, rest,” the shade said. “Now begone, leave, depart, exit.”

Then it was gone, and I was alone in the graveyard again. I shivered slightly, a chill wind sweeping down my back, and took the shade’s advice, leaving the graveyard. I felt the connection with Hannah shimmer, and she drifted out of Dusk, sliding into my own body. As she did, I felt… smarter. She had connections in her spirit that resolved numbers into logical patterns, rather than meaningless noise.

Hannah watched through my eyes, while Markus seemed to go dormant. His legacy and dominion were meant for a hunt, and waiting was a part of it, allowing him to wait as long as need be. At least he wouldn’t be shouting ‘bully’ in my head every five seconds… 

I spent the rest of the day working in my mana-garden, alternating between removing the last bit of tile from my beastgate and digging out the steps for my life gate. As the clock ticked to three, I removed the last bit of tile from the beastgate, and raised my finger. I took a slow, nervous breath, and then started sketching out the kirin’s spell. 

I was a bit nervous here, uncertain of what was actually going to happen. After all, the last time I’d worked on a full-gate spell, I hadn’t had Beast Mage’s Soul projecting the top layer of my spirit into my body, creating circuits that largely let me skip the sketching stage. I suspected that would essentially force the spell into instant mastery, as there was no possible flowing through the circuit, it just sat there. 

More pressingly, the last time I’d worked on a full-gate spell, the roots of resolve that were currently running through me hadn’t been formed.

I slowly and deliberately sketched the spell out. It was massive, as all full-gates were, taking every single drop of my second gate hudau mana in order to even sketch, and in the last second, as I finished the last little flourish, I felt it snap into place. Within my spirit, a massive crystal shot upwards into the sky, a spiraling rainbow steeple that ran between the towering tree and megalithic mushroom. 

The major root of resolve, integrated at the connection point where the rainbow crystal met the mycelium and tree roots, blazed to life. Burning, hungry void reached out, hungrily tapping into the rainbow spire, prepared to consume, and the prismatic power allowed it to happen. 

For a time. 

It allowed the growth factor to be consumed. I didn’t know how the spell was originally intended to grow. It had been opaque and strange, even Meadow not being able to provide an answer. But just like my Foxstep consumed my Seven League Step to allow some of it in, so too did the full-gate spells. The Magister’s Body and Beast Mage’s Soul devoured the growth factor, and made their growth into its growth. The Kirin’s spell would grow in tandem with how I pushed them. Body and spirit, growing together. Break my limits, and I would grow. 

The void hungered for more. It was easy, and I could see that now, both my winds rising in my spirit.

Since the Idyll-Flume, I had thrown myself into dangerous situation after dangerous situation. I had pushed myself, broken my body, broken my spirit. All to grasp for the next bit of power. 

Orykson had told me that it was difficult to ride the line of connections and consumption, but that I was doing it. But my quest for power had driven me increasingly to the void. 

I stared into the root of resolve that wanted to consume the entire rainbow spire, to break it down and integrate it into itself. It could. I could let the root absorb the entire Kirin’s spell and siphon its effects out to lie within my already existing full-gate spells. It wouldn’t keep working, but it would let me find another full-gate spell to fill with. Perhaps a draconic empowerment. I didn’t know how many full-gate spells it could hold, how often I could consume them to break into my existing ones, but I could. 

I could open a burning hunger, and as long as I kept it fed, I could keep growing in power. It would have a cost, but everything did. 

“No,” I said quietly. “That’s enough.”

On rainbow light, the cloud of void drifted away. The root activated, but it only consumed the growth factor, imposing on it so that it would grow as the other two did.

And as I watched, the kirin spell ingrained itself. Rainbow threads, much like the ones that I’d seen connecting things when I’d developed the Testudinal Basin, rushed through the ground of my mana-garden, and where they passed, they formed connections, enhancements that weren’t there and yet should have been. 

My beast spells began supporting one another, my myriad of overlapping space and time spells, my vast number of sensory spells and growth item. Plants and fungi and beasts and ghosts, all a part of nature, all working together as one. It came with some limits, too, but I accepted those gladly. Of course if I used Ghost Tether to force something to stay beyond its natural span, it would lose its connection. Such was the way of things. 

My eyes lit with power as the mark of fortune finally took its place, and allowed me to feel those closest to me, as if they were at the very edges of my senses. It wasn’t invasive, I couldn’t look at them and tell what they were doing, but I could feel that they were safe, and that was enough. 

I was the guardian of Dusk, and now I was the guardian of my family. I had acted as a guardian to children being hunted by an asomatous, to Dawn while she grew stronger, to the mantle estragon, to the forest terragon, and even to Kene’s village. I was a protector, a guardian, and as the deep mana imprint within me made me into their guardian, I accepted it. 

And the second of the three floating crystals around my staff, the connections to Nascent Truths, lit up.