The Third Portal: Chapter Seventeen (Patreon)
Content
Sorry for the delay! I accidentally scheduled it for 8pm, rather than am
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I gasped as I sat up from where I’d hit the ground in front of the entry to the anthill to the sound of battle raging around me. A quick pulse of Internal Pocketwatch revealed that I’d been out for close to ten minutes, which had given the desolants time to get to the hive.
I spat out a curse and surged to my feet, blasting out my mana senses to get a view of the situation.
It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The fight hadn’t been going on horribly long, as the ants were only halfway up the anthill.
My small army of ghost ants were holding back the barrage of mental assaults, but none of them were fourth gate. Some of them weren’t even all the way at third gate. The only reason they were able to do this at all was the fact that they had half again the number of the psychic desolants.
The more elemental focused soldiers were steadily climbing up the hill, being pelted by the myrmekes, but the desolants had twice the number that they’d had last time, and with the ghost ants holding back psychic assault, the myrmekes should have already fallen.
They would have, save for one fact.
The myrmekes queen had emerged from the chamber, and all around her a powerful aura flowed, layering over the myrmekes. It was complex, layering multiple elements to make her daughters stronger, faster, tougher, and add potency to attacks.
The desolants might not be sapient, but they did have some cunning, and they’d begun to send their attacks upwards and over the myrmekes soldiers, in an attempt to hit the ant queen, only to some success. One of her antennae was clearly damaged, the hair on it burnt, and her thick carapace was cracked in a few spots, oozing a clear liquid.
A pair of second gate worker myrmekes were fussing around her, trying to pull the queen back into the tunnels and safety, but she stood resolutely, her aura magic empowering the soldiers.
I grabbed some of the healing potions I had left and uncorked them, then passed them into the gentle mandibles of the workers. Their mana senses and antennae were sensitive enough that they were able to pick out the bands of life energy knotted into regenerative power inside the potions, and immediately began dumping them onto her wounds.
With that done, I reached into my spirit.
The root around my foxstep spell had fully manifested, running from the material, deep into the ground, where it touched on my other teleportation spells. It interacted with them in a strange way, letting me absorb parts to replace them.
I’d figure that out later.
For now, I had Foxstep back, after months of having to deal with the downsides that I’d experienced every time I used it.
I reached into my belt and drained a haste potion, then lit up Enhance Forging. It ran in concert with Briarthreads and Fungal Armor. In the same instant, I channeled power through Harvest Distance, Foxarmor, Impel Senses, and Placid Mind, then Foxstepped into the air over the battle.
I caught myself in the air with Immovable Lock, then teleported down into the mass of ants.
Spells crashed against me, and my own magic blazed with power in retaliation.
Briarthreads knocked attacks that should have hit critical areas to instead strike the thickest plates of fungus, and blows that should have been glancing were turned aside entirely.
The Fungal Armor stopped blows dead, and it drained from my body’s energy reserves to restore itself any time it cracked. I hadn’t even known it would do that, but it did make sense – the ablyssal shmabler had a healing factor as a full-gate spell, so of course the armor could interface with large quantities of life and death energy in its caster.
I crashed punches against desolants near me, casting Curse of the Wild Spirit on them, injecting hudau mana into their mana-gardens. It paralyzed their ability to use mana for a few moments, and I swept my arms out, layering empowered Fungal Locks onto the soldiers around me, all the while keeping my mana senses swirling tightly around me.
Before the desolant’s attacks could concentrate enough for my armor to start putting a major toll on me, I Foxstepped elsewhere, slamming fists into more ants and layering Fungal Locks and Curse of the Wild Spirits over them, then Foxstepping away again. Mental attacks started pounding down on me, but my ghost ants helped hold them off. With them so much closer, they were able to mostly keep my mind shielded, and my mana senses were able to lock out the rest via Placid Mind.
I flashed around the battlefield, layering draining fungus and curses, and started cycling Mantle Dragonfire. Pinpoint Boneshards shot from me, striking at the legs of the ants to knock them aside or off balance. I tossed handfuls from my belt on the ground.
Then I was gone, and using Transport Item to draw the Pinpoint Boneshards back to me. I wasn’t completely immune to attacks, of course. The constant waves and shifting of elemental attacks broke my Briarthreads and forced me to re-cast the spell several times, and even with my deep reserves of bodily energy, even I couldn’t keep things going forever.
But I forced the squad of more than fifty to split their focus. They couldn’t ignore me, because there was always a chance I could pop up next to them next, but they also couldn’t catch me. I knocked attacks aside, slowed them with Foxarmor, took them on the Fungal Armor, and was always gone a moment before they could fully shift their focus to them.
The entire time, the Myrmekes kept up their rain of forged spikes of mana.
I teleported up into the air, sweeping my hand out as I prepared to unleash my mantle dragon’s breath. In the heat of battle, I wasn’t sure how many times it had cycled, but it was at least twice, probably three, possibly four.
I thrust my hand down, and red and brown light erupted from me, but the Desolants finally had a clear target. They unleashed waves of attacks, all concentrated to a single spot.
At least, they thought they had a clear target.
As my beam of dragonfire swept down, I caught it in a Captured Moment, then left a Material Echo of my body and a Lesser Image Recall of the spell hanging in the air, while I Foxstepped down and to the west. I repeated my actions, sweeping the dragonfire across them, before leaving my duplicates.
To the south, north, and east, then I began going in between. Waves of illusions scythed through the ants like wheat, while I attacked from a different angle in each moment.
The ants were thrown into chaos, and I drew out what soul mana I could from my beastcore. There wasn’t much, the reserve recharged slowly, but I took what I could and flooded it into my Mantle Dragonfire, teleporting up, down, left, right, amongst them, the power ripping from my hands.
I teleported back to the mouth of the cave and assessed my mana levels. Throwing out magic with no regard for cost had been effective, but it had also left me running low in a lot of regards. My spatial mana was in the best shape, with life and death both trailing a ways behind, and then temporal and beastgate mana nearly completely drained.
I quickly converted the mana I had left into my life gate, then raised my staff into the air.
Throughout the fight, I’d thrown bits of stonesprout all over the ground. It wasn’t much, but alongside the bits that I’d planted on the anthill before?
Mass Enhance Plant Life surged, and I quickly forced out quick, temporary stonesprout.
Thick spikes of forged life and telluric energy exploded across the battlefield, spearing through the desolants. I immediately harvested the power, then sent it surging out again, then harvested and sent another surge. It had worked well before, and the desolants hadn’t used their little bit of time to develop a counter.
I lowered my staff and leaned on it, looking over the battle.
The ground was littered with scars from where I’d swept my Mantle Dragonfire, or where Stonesprout had torn up the earth. It was littered with ants, and I felt sick to my stomach as I looked over it.
More than thirty ants were dead, either skewered by the myrmekes, the stonesprout, or else roasted by my dragon breath.
I couldn’t say I regretted killing the invasive kidnapper ants, but I certainly regretted that it was necessary.
Of the surviving ants, most were injured, and struggling to re-organize under the rain of stone spikes that the myrmekes soldiers kept up, but I felt a flash of pain as mental attacks began slamming into my head. I quickly checked my ghost tethers and cursed.
While the ghost ants had been holding off the attacks, they hadn’t been invulnerable, and most of their mana was spent. If I had more death mana, I could keep feeding them, restoring their power, but as things stood…
I turned to face down the horde of twenty or so peak third and fourth gate ants, and reached for Burn Future.
I thought I’d done a good job breaking my reliance on the spell, all things considered. I hadn’t needed to use it when I’d fought the assassin, and I’d only drawn on it when I hadn’t had any other options available.
I thought this qualified as an emergency that even Ikki wouldn’t object to me using it for, though. I’d restore myself, restore the ghosts, and protect the colony.
The thought had my Nascent Truth of the Guardian beating, and the Nascent Truth of Benevolence agreed with the self-sacraficial move.
I took in a breath and started to draw power when chains of light shot down from the sky. They slammed into the ground and tangled around the legs of the desolants, wrapped around their bodies, and bound their thorax and antennae.
Mallory’s mom catapulted down from the sky, and my mouth hung agape. Around her were four shields, forged of glowing green creation mana, while her hands held the glowing yellow chains binding the desolants. Four hammers, also forged of creation mana, materialized in the air around her, and she swept into battle.
There was a flicker as a simulacra of herself burst into reality, taking an attack before dissolving, a shield knocked another aside, chains yanked someone aside, and a hammer blow crushed the ant’s skull.
Mallory’s mom spun through the wave of ants, forged a bubble around herself to take an attack, knocked another aside with her hammer, and kicked off a shield to leap into the sky. One of them swept under her feet and she bounded off.
One ant was crushed, then a second, and all the while, I felt creation mana in the sky above.
The psychic attacks came crashing on her, but a crown of glowing purple that felt oddly like mental mana mixed with creation appeared over her head, and the attacks were turned against the ants.
Dusk blazed down from the sky, moving like a comet, and air-shattering cracks, lances of sand, and orbs of snow joined together with the hammer blows and conjured copies.
Then the battle was over, Mallory’s mother still hovering on one of her conjured green shields. She hopped off, calling a flying carpet from a storage ring, and floated over to us.
I pulled Dusk into a hug, then bowed my head in the direction of Mrs. Cromwell.
“Thank you,” I said.
Her eyes flicked between me, the queen, Dusk, and the ants who were currently emitting ‘symbiote’ pheromones, and she nodded.
“We’re launching an assault on the Desolant hive in half an hour, but your spirit friend insisted that I go ahead with her.”
She tossed me a vial, and my eyes widened as I recognized it as a third gate mana recovery elixir. I’d rarely used recovery elixirs – they were too expensive.
I turned to the ant queen, and pulled out the blueshade. It took a moment for me to produce the scent that I’d smelled once before, but I managed to emit a ‘counterattack’ scent, then pointed at Mrs. Cromwell and emitted ‘symbiote symbiote’.
The queen chittered and released an agreement pheromone.