The Fourth Gate: Chapter Seventeen

Bonus Chapter Today

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The rest of the day, as well as the next two days, were a complete blur. I was in a constant state of training, rotating between Spriggan Step, Ghostmind, and Fungal Armor. That last one was probably the easiest to train, as it basically just involved Ed firing off Stone Arrow spells at me. Imbued with his legacy, they were powerful, and helped build my armor’s resistance to telluric magic. Ideally, I’d have been able to train against a mineral mage of my own, but the only one that I sort of knew was Corra, and I couldn’t well ask to train with her.

I took three breaks in my training. The first was a lesson with Kene on acids, where he basically skipped over all the theory, and went right to the practical side of things, and instead created alchemical acids. 

“This is a horribly wrong, and entirely misleading way to think about it, but you should consider the acid-drip creosote to be something like… frozen destruction. It’s destructive, but not active, which is why you can’t use it to attack,” Kene explained. “The pitcher plants, however, produce an acid designed to eat flesh and bone. What we’re going to be doing is infusing the acid the pitcher plants produce with extra telluric, then stabilizing it with the creosote to only effect telluric energy, the purer the better.” 

“Why is it wrong?” I asked. 

“Because acidity is more than just destruction. It’s a type of thing. It tends to being destructive, which is why several acid spells can be cast with desolation, but nobody thinks putting lemon juice into your pasta is going to kill someone. I’ll go more in depth on that in the future, but for here and now, that’s all the theory you need – leave the stabilizing agent arrays in the creosote, and try and attach the acid to the telluric mana sources.”

“I wonder if there’s anyone out there with a lemon allergy?” I mused. “Though, even then, it’s not the acidity that would do it.” 

I read over the papers that Kene had laid out several times, then frowned and pointed at one of them. 

“This looks like the bone eating acid, but a bit different.” 

“Right,” Kene said. “We’re only making a small batch of that. Normally, that acid destroys the death energy within. This solution is bound more heavily to a split of energies, and has been restabalized with the addition of some of the components I listed on the side. I bought them from the shops.” 

I scanned over the list, the arrays, and then tried to click them together in my head, like I was making a spellform. After a moment, I thought I figured it out. 

“It makes bones… squishy? That’s a horrifying sentiment, thank you.” 

“You’re welcome,” Kene said, their brusque, hyper-focused attitude breaking for a moment as they grinned. “But yes. It will make bones temporarily flexible. They’ll lose about half their accumulated death energy, even when they resolidify. But if you can wrap a ring of bone around the tip of the arrow, it should let you launch them with Pinpoint Boneshard.” 

“Righhtttttt,” I said, nodding. “That makes sense. I guess if there’s any round to shill out my minimal savings for a potion I can’t normally make, it’s this one..” 

I could practically hear Orykson rumbling about creating enchanted arrows and using the same process on them, but I ignored those thoughts. Not because I thought they were a bad idea, but because I had no time to get distracted by enchanting right now. 

The second distraction was adjacent to the first – preparing other potions. The firebomb potions weren’t anything new for me, though making one with soul mana was rather new. But it was the third distraction that was by far the best. The flying obstacle course  competition had arrived, and it was time for Dusk to try it out. 

The stadium was fairly filled, more than it had been in the sensory spheroids event, and Dusk seemed especially nervous as she paced back and forth atop her cloud. I caught her gently and pulled her in a hug. 

“You’ve got this,” I said seriously. She made a sound like a bear growl, and told me that she’d be okay. Then, as if she’d been building up to it, she told me that she’d need to talk to me after I fell out of the tournament, but she hadn’t wanted to distract me.

“Oh,” I said, nodding. “That’s fine. I’m not upset.” 

I wished I had the time to go into a full moral diatribe about how sometimes people didn’t need to know things, or about the fifteen second rule I’d been taught growing up – if something in someone’s outfit or appearance can’t be fixed in fifteen seconds, don’t tell them about it. It was far from a perfect rule, but it had merit. But Dusk had to go, and she let out a sigh of relief as she floated down. An announcer – not the Patriarch of the Silent River Sect this time, floated into the air, holding a crystal to her mouth that had been enchanted with sound spells. 

“Ladies, gentlemen, and other distinguished guests! I invite you to the flying obstacle course! Before we begin, I wish to remind you all of the rules. The first to make it to the end of the course, collect their stone, and return to place the stone upon the pedestal is the winner. Touching the ground at any point…” 

While she read the rules, I swept my gaze and mana senses over the players, and to my surprise, I didn’t recognize any of them. I’d thought at least a few of the speed flight competitors would be competing here, but it seemed I’d been wrong. I did, however, notice several people on Immortal Clouds, much like Dusk’s own, which gave me a good feeling about her. Hers had been specifically enchanted into a growth item that would grow with her, and empower her ability to draw on her realm. She had this in the bag. 

“Begin!” the announcer called out, and there was a shimmering as the obstacle course appeared. Dusk exploded forward at tremendous speed, not even needing to duck beneath a blunted axe of creation mana that would have been at human head height, used a bird spell of some sort to spin through a series of rings in the air without issue, then drew on a spell that I couldn’t place to forge rings of bright purple light under her cloud. Each ring seemed to fall forward, catapulting her with the perfect timing to move through the opening and closing barrier. She slanted upward, calling on cavern estragon spells to shoot upward with no concern for the gravity spike, then used a flaring nimbus of light to weave through a series of changing, spinning panels. 

But Dusk wasn’t the only one doing well. There was a time and tempest mage who seemed to have a unique temporal spell that caused him to speed up and completely freeze in strange, syncopated bursts. It seemed almost random, but it wasn’t. He froze just in time to let him readjust his angle, then moved through the rings with a speed that completely outpaced everyone else, including Dusk, only to get stuck as he froze before the doors. 

Elsewhere, a woman with blue scales along her hands and the feeling of a sky dragon moved in almost the opposite way. She was all languid grace, flowing through the obstacles like water. Her base speed was lower than many other opponents, but she overcame each obstacle with such ease that she’d cleared through half the track before anyone else. 

A hummingbird-like creature, who was fully in its beast form, was also doing well, and passing by Dusk’s time. They weren’t as quick as the temporal mage, nor were they possessed of the fluid grace of the dragon, but they seemed to be the perfect middle ground. 

I leaned forward, urging Dusk on, and felt her reach for Burn Future. She’d done the same thing last race, and even I’d done it once, but there was still a part of me that shied away from the spell. I let her take it, though. For an instant, I felt Dusk’s mind rushing through her opponents, before she settled on the blue scaled dragon. She cast any thoughts of the dragon aside, and focused fully on measuring herself against the other two. She drew draconic spells of her own and out-finessed the jittering motions of the time mage, then drew on condor and falcon spells to outspeed the hummingbird.

She was threading a delicate needle, and my breath caught as she slowly pulled even with the other two. The dragon continued to move ahead, having already collected her stone. Then Dusk was there. She slapped her hands on the stone and pulled it into her realm. The time mage and hummingbird were there too, but that was when Dusk let out a laugh. She pulled power from me, and from several other inhabitants of her realm, and I felt my own full sensory suite light up. I didn’t know what she was doing here, but I trusted her. 

And she zoomed backwards. While the hummingbird and time mage were turning, Dusk was already moving backwards, flying her cloud in reverse. 

Dusk’s body wasn’t physically strong, but it was made entirely of solid mana, which meant it wasn’t subject to the same forces as an energetic body. A few wisps curled off her, but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t remake with mana. As she flew, she wove through the spinning panels, and why she’d called on me clicked. Everything in the course was made from forged creation mana, probably to save on costs while also making it look more like a spectacle. She had pulled a page from my book, and she was navigating the obstacles by her mana senses. 

For about half a second, both of the opponents that she’d pushed herself to defeat stared at her in utter shock, before they took off as well. Some of the others made it to their stones around then, but Dusk had made her big play, and with the speeds they were moving at, it was paying off. The time mage used some spell that gave him a surge of control – unusual, since so many spells like that gave power, not control – and closed most of the gap, which was when Dusk pulled out her next trick. Her tiny body lit up with a dozen spells from aurora toads, steelskin frogs, acidbubble toads, and more, and she leapt off her cloud. She catapulted backwards through the air, and slammed her hand into the pedestal, the stone materializing. Though she fell to the grass and had to clamber back onto her cloud after winning, Dusk had taken second place. Burn future faded away, as did her grip on the spells, and she threw her hands up in the air, celebrating her victory. I threw my hands up as well and let out a cheer, celebrating with her.

The other competitors made their way back, and the announcer called out the names of the top five, passing out medals to each of the people who had earned one. The one that Dusk had been handed was the size of almost her entire body, but she let it lie on her cloud, proud of her achievement. As soon as she floated back to me, she was excitedly burbling about how this would let her train in flying techniques with the Stormhorn. 

“The Stormhorn? Not the Windrider?” 

She shook her head and said that she’d been convinced that the Stormhorn was the better choice. He was a sky dragon, and she used many of their spells. She then showed off the gift basket she’d been handed – that one she had been willing to store in her realm. There was silver, as per usual, but also a potion that would improve her fine control over flight spells and a strange spinning samara seed that gave me the sense of wings in flight. A natural treasure that could be absorbed into the garden like a spell. She absorbed it and laughed, declaring that by the time for our fight, she’d be an even better flier than before.