The Fourth Gate: Chapter Twenty-Four

The River Lord inclined his head, and I stepped up to the next table. It was visually the most impressive table by far, with loads of stuff on it, but it was also the least powerful table in terms of overall spiritual presence. The other tables, including the one I hadn’t been to yet, had treasures that could re-shape a person’s life in an instant, or permanently alter their interactions with magic. This table had useful things, but nothing so dramatic, not at my current stage of advancement. 

“Normally, tradition dictates that you would take five minor rewards from this table,” the River Lord said. “However, we must account for the Tripartiate Sphere. You may take four.” 

My eyes glimmered with what was, admittedly, an amount of avarice that I didn’t usually indulge in. I didn’t think of myself as an especially greedy person, but I had to admit that I was a bit more susceptible to greed when it came to the realm of magic. The first thing that my eyes were drawn to admittedly didn’t look quite as nice and appealing as I might have imagined. It looked like… well, like a weird organ kept in a preservation spell. A liver, I thought. 

“The Immortal Green Bull Liver,” the River Lord said. “If eaten, it modifies your liver, assisting in filtering toxins, and regenerates even better than an ordinary human liver.” 

“Gross, but effective,” I said with a nod, before moving on. The next several items on the table weren’t ones that I needed much instruction on, my ordinary mana sense could suss them out well enough. There was a statue of a lion about the size of a dog, but that radiated the power of a fifth gate creature. An animated defensive statue of some sort – useful, if I managed to establish a guild in the future. 

A painting of a far-flung desert landscape, painted in seven different hues of orange, caught my eye next. It seemed to have a warping effect on the air around it, generating a field of gentle abnegation energy throughout the entire pagoda. Not a combat item, but enough to prevent bruises and scrapes. It could probably protect an entire household, or a large area of a common room. 

One of the treasures I’d seen in the Arcanist treasure hall was here in triplicate: sympathetic-pearls. Each one could be used to tie an ascension together, cutting down on the mana costs and time needed to spend advancing each gate individually. Certainly a useful item for me. Though it hadn’t been an issue thus far, I was a bit nervous about the fact that to advance to Arcanist, I’d need to overflow each of my mana types sixteen times over. That was a lot of mana, and more than I could just casually gather with a few spells and pills. It’d need deliberate effort. 

That was when I ran into another object I couldn’t place, a stone that was made of forged mana, like the one Corra used, but was a stone nevertheless. When Orykson saw it, he snorted. 

“A stone of spirit growth. Don’t get too excited. I mean that in the most literal way possible. It will allow Dusk and Dawn to grow to roughly the size of a person, without needing to use their Authority to alter their projection. Useful, but nothing like the terrible name suggests.”

I nodded and moved on to a suit of robes, cut in a similar style to the Silent River Sect’s uniforms, that felt like sixth gate work. They looked almost ornamental, with elaborate filigree, and it contained a similar enchantment to my coat, allowing my Fungal Armor to form on top of it, as well as some standard reinforcement, toughness, and self-repairing spells. A strong defense, certainly, even if robes weren't really my style. 

There was a large, woven basket with a bamboo slip sitting inside. I fished out the slip and examined it, noting that it bought entry into the inner sect gardens, I glanced up, hoping for more clarity, and the River Lord explained. 

“You utilize a variety of plants and fungi. While our sect does not specialize in alchemy, we do have a number of alchemists among us to tend to our baths and produce the pills and elixirs needed to keep a sect running. With that slip, you would be permitted to explore the inner sect gardens and collect cuttings or fruits in the basket, until it is full.”

“I see,” I said, before picking up a small gate-like structure. It clearly moved along the axis of dreams, with some shadows, and felt like… well, like it was a gateway into dreams. It clearly was meant to be a single use item, built in two halves. Get in, get out. Useful, for if I reached Arcanist and was able to take a plant from the Dreamrealm into myself. 

Following the gateway, there was a basket that contained a handful of different elixirs, clearly intended to help me advance through. Spell growth potions, bottles of shimmering spiritual wine, pills to speed ingraining, and boxes of powders galore. I had advanced to nearly the peak of fourth gate in terms of raw mana quantity, but this would help speed me along in the spell department. There was a lot to do, so it still wouldn’t be incredibly fast, but it was still access to clear and smooth advancement. 

Then I came across a pair of objects that I didn’t recognize. They felt barely magical at all, like they were barely even first gate, but also made from ungated mana, and maybe with a touch of creation? Even then, I wasn’t sure, and I looked around. 

“Spell matrix implants,” Orykson said. “They create a minor soul bond, with an effect like the very weakest versions of the Beastgate tattoos. They create a small form in one of your first gates that can be filled with any first gate spell from a friendly human or elemental, and will allow you to cast it using your first gate mana. Given that you’re fourth gate, the efficiency of the imprinted spell will be poor, but it’s still quite useful.”

Despite his dismissal, I knew that Dusk had discussed usually preferring to be small, but wishing for the ability to be big sometimes, so I knew she'd love it. I hesitated before moving onto the next item. The next item was a smoothly polished sphere of crystal that hummed with fifth gate mana in a true abundance. More than enough to have powered one of my gates open for ascension. More than that, it clearly had replenishing arrays similar to a harvesting spell, and it had the same, odd legacy-enchantment feeling that the moon mana flask had. Presumably, they’d been made by the same person, who had a legacy that allowed mana storage devices they made to be used by anyone, regardless of their mana type. If I did form a guild, that would be quite the boon.

After the mana storage device was what appeared to be a ship in a bottle. A sloop, I thought, though I wasn’t entirely sure. It had been enchanted to fly over sea or sky, with some minor defensive magics worked in, as well as a below-decks cabin and mana generator.

The final object on the table looked like a rambutan fruit, and it radiated as much power as the basket of advancement elixirs put together. Despite that, the power it let off was soft, gentle, and stable. I wasn’t an expert in spirit-fruits, but this was clearly a very high quality one, likely bred from generations of empowered trees for its effect. Judging by the feel, it was designed to move currents of energy in the body around in a pattern, granting some of the effects of a second mana meditation through the use of the body’s free energy. I didn’t think it was capable of reaching fully to ninth gate, but I guessed it could empower my practitioner and spellbinder layers of the meditation. 

“An excellent table,” I said. “I’ll need to consider it heavily as well. I don’t suppose you have a lushloam seed, or a purestar or hollowvoid?” 

“For a minor reward?” the River Lord asked. “Hah. Now, if you want to talk about turning over the rose…” 

“No, I’m fine.” 

“Glad that is settled, then. Now, you will want to summon your spirit for the final table, as it is for her,” the River Lord said. I nodded and reached inside. Dusk was still sleeping, but I mentally poked and prodded her until she responded, then wearily emerged. She didn’t even have the energy in her to summon her cloud, and just sat on my shoulder as I walked to the last table in the room. 

On it, there were four objects, and my eyes were immediately drawn to the first of them, a silvery plant with an unusually rich sense to it, almost like the healer’s heart plant. But where that drained and concentrated into something new, this released an outpouring of magic. Meadow must have taken pity on Dusk’s tired state, as she stepped forward and immediately began to explain. 

“This is a plant called the steward’s soul, one of only a handful of ensouled plants on the planet. It’s often considered to be the polar opposite of a healer's heart. It vitalizes and strengthens all life in an area, as well as increasing spiritual potency of plants, making them more likely to spawn dryads and the like. At first gate, it covers hundreds of acres, and at ninth gate, it can enrich a whole nation. Vinopae has three, and is perhaps the only nation in the world to have so many.” 

Dusk let out a sleepy nod, and I moved her to examine a strange door-like object that seemed to continually fold in on itself. This time, it was Orykson who spoke. 

“That is the Thousand Door Polychron. An enchanted item built by the Space King, much like your original key. It allows for linking of different points in space via a series of physical doorways, which can then be moved between with relative ease via a centralized demiplane of countless doors. On its own, a fantastically useful device for anyone who wants to travel. Given your territories, however, and the Stone Gates that Malachi has set up, the potential for what you could do with it is immense.” 

Meadow stepped up again and pointed to a large, round, mango-shaped fruit with bright purple skin and yellow striations. 

“Fruit from an ancient hamadryad, one older than most of the current Magi. I believe she’s expected to be somewhere around fifteen or sixteen hundred years old, and she has dedicated much of her life to the process of refining her spirit fruits.”

“Though, despite this skill and age, she's only a fifth gate mage,” the River Lord interjected. 

“Indeed,” Meadow agreed. “And yet, she’s managed to produce something unique. The fruit empowers the knitting of energy and spiritual dominions together. Dryads would normally be the ones to seek out this sort of fruit, but given your store of trees, learning to more easily knit together your dominion with their energy could be quite useful.” 

That brought them to the fourth and final treasure on the table, a pinecone that folded and unfolded as we watched. It resonated with a sort of spiritual energy, like a blank dominion. The River Lord’s voice rolled out as Dusk looked at it. 

“Treasures to give a form somewhat akin to, or actively the same as, a beast form are common. Spellbinder roses are far rarer, usually only around two dozen found each year, only a quarter of which hit the open market. But a treasure to grant someone a dominion? Virtually unheard of, outside of deep mana imprints, the odd sepulcher treasure, or objects from starfalls. This does not grant you an entirely new dominion, but it will create a second sub-dominion from your primary dominion, operating at half strength.” 

“Why would you want a sub-dominion?” I asked. For all that I cared about Dusk and Dawn, dominions, dominion-altering spells, and other more spiritual aspects of magic were a bit of a blind spot for me.

“Specificity and power,” Ikki responded. “A fire elemental will always be stronger than a solar elemental who does not specialize. Dusk’s dominion is complex and very broad. Have you noticed that without Enforce Reality, she frequently loses head-to-head battles of clashing dominions? How her spells lack the punch of someone like Skoira? A large part of that is due to the breadth of her dominion.” 

“Right, so, with this a telluric elemental could form a sub-dominion of glass?” I asked. “Then by adding the additional power of that dominion, they’d retain the breadth of telluric mana, but be able to hit with the power of glass?” 

“Precisely,” Ikki said, and Dusk yawned, nodding. The River Lord clapped softly, drawing my attention to him again. 

“You have examined all the offerings. You may take some time to think, but we do have many others who are in need of my time. Unless you have any requests or alterations, I would ask you select your final treasures within the next half-hour.”