The Fourth Gate: Chapter Sixteen

“The Ghostmind spell was only consolidated into a singular spellform roughly forty years ago,” Orykson began, and I leaned back, plopping down to sit in the dirt and listen. It seemed like I wouldn’t be getting out of a lecture, despite my best efforts. Ah, well. 

“During the age of the Spirit General, the effect was actually composed of three spells, two natural treasures, and an unknown number of ghostgifts. The primary treasure is also called a Ghostmind, as it is where the spell was largely reverse engineered from. It provided the ability to subconsciously process information with the power of ghosts ‘sleeping’ within your body, which is the function of the modern spell’s ingrained effect.” 

“I can see how even that effect alone would be worth taking the spell,” I said. “With my Timemind, I’ve seen a marked increase in my ability to move in battle. What were the effects of the other spells and treasures that the Spirit General used?” 

“Two of the spells are useless to you. First, you do not need to contest captured spirits attempting to break their orders,” Orykson said. “The second referred to the Ghostmind treasure, and now is baked into the existing spell as the active effect. Allocated throught-streams.” 

He slashed his hand through the air, and a projected map of one of the major rivers in Zhuanzhe appeared. 

“At the time, the thought was that humans thought like a stream, flowing in one direction. To shift to another, the river must jump banks. There is some truth to this line of thinking. Many mental mages created spells to break apart their thoughts into smaller streams, but it had the same issue as the tributaries of this river: they are all fed using the consciousness of the primary mind. Of course, modern mental mages have a dozen workarounds for this, depending on their stage of advancement, but at the time, mind and death mages sought a solution of a more spiritual nature.” 

“Then the active effect of Ghostmind would be like giving each tributary its own underground source of water?” I asked. “It lets them split off and rejoin without consuming the water from the primary train of thought, using the ghost’s ‘water’, instead of the caster’s?”

“Exactly!” Orykson agreed, snapping his fingers. “When dealing with ghosts that have a degree of higher order thought, such as Hannah–” 

Hannah waved.

“– you can unload complex tasks. Aerde fills this function for me. He can mark a thousand points in space for my Pinpoint Boneshard or Bonespears, while I simply empower the spell. Ghosts with a lesser degree of thought can be utilized in their passive form, or for simple tasks. Things like, say, tasking a ghost with feeding mana to the spells you just cast for the next three seconds. You’ll need to test the limits of each ghost, and set up their allocated thought-streams accordingly.” 

“That…” I started to say, before trailing off. That was massive. Even with just my third gate spells active, I had trouble holding my entire array of echo attacks while fighting. If I was able to get ghosts to handle sections?

“What was the next natural treasure? And the next spell?”

“The next treasure was one that the Spirit General fetched from deep within the Dreamscape, which he called dreaming polythought,” Orykson said. “Like some of the plants Meadow is preparing you to accept, it existed within the sea of his will, and was able to manage the flow of his mana. Normally, these sorts of treasures have a beneficial additive effect. Perhaps slightly more than additive. Somehow, utilizing a spell that I personally suspect was heavily altered through ghostgifts, he managed to be able to get the polythought to instruct the Ghostmind, including the ghosts within the Ghostmind.” 

“So he could set up things with the polythought to direct the ghostmind’s ghosts in given situations? That… oh. Primes. He could pre-program chains of ghosts? Have one ghost giving instructions to two ghosts, which instruct four ghosts to activate their dominions under different circumstances the first ghost identifies?” 

“Exactly. It was further strengthened by the fact his bond to Spirit Tether allowed bonded ghosts to more easily work their dominions together,” Orykson continued. “His endless conditions gave him optimized dominions for every situation. At least until he took massive spiritual damage. He would have survived, his Peach of Immortality would have eventually restored his soul. But when he retired to his pavilion, his wife stabbed him in the neck. An ordinary knife, a woman who wasn’t so much as first gate, but she felled the invincible Spirit General.” 

Orykson said the last bit with an iota of something that almost sounded like pride. Or perhaps not pride, but he certainly seemed to support the idea. He flicked his hand back to the diagram of the river, and it visually jumped banks between three different streams of thought at once. 

“Now, what the Autumn Weaver worked with you on was another method. In the same way you can burn some excess energy by sprinting, you can learn to rapidly switch trains of thoughts, in the hopes of learning to do so at a speed rapid enough that the drop in ‘water’ is hardly recognized. Your buildup of mental energy was especially useful here, as was training in a headstone, as it stopped you from suffering the headaches and accelerated the time period. Mental mages dedicated to the art, or those who reach Occultist, often have spells that take this training and compound it. I will admit, I am hopeful your Runelight Lens unlocks something of that sort at fifth gate, even if I’m doubtful.” 

“Can I combine it with Ghostmind? Like a mental mage would?” I asked. “I won’t be able to do what the Spirit General did. Even assuming I won the next round and asked for a dream realm plant to be implanted as a part of my prizes–” 

“Don’t,” Orykson said firmly, cutting me off as he slashed his hand through the air. “The costs of having another mage make that kind of alteration to your spirit and mind, allowing you access to your will early, are far too high. The plant alone is expensive, but the procedure would cost an order of magnitude more. Perhaps if you were ungated or first gate, having early access for that long would be worthwhile, but with only one gate to go? No.” 

“Noted,” I said. “Regardless. Even once I’m an Arcanist and have a plant, I won’t be able to make the streams flow upwards and set off chains of their own. Nor do I have the spells to force ghosts to obey that and form those paths, regardless of what they want. But if I can let Ghostmind help with jumping banks, I could probably get a lot more power out of both the Autumn Weaver’s technique and the Ghostmind.” 

“That is precisely why I said you are on your way to setting up something of your own,” Orykson agreed. “You have the potential to combine advantages of both. Now, I will forewarn you, do not treat this like a spell. It will not simply click into place one day with enough practice. It will be a continual, slow thing that happens in the background. Each time you jump banks, you’ll get a little better. Now the spell itself.” 

The river that Orykson was projecting into the air wiggled, shifted, and then became a spellform. It was a complex one, pretty well stratified between death and mental mana, in the same way Analyze Death was both death and knowledge. 

“Until you ingrain it, the passive mental boost from slumbering spirits will not be active. However, so long as you feed it mana, you should be able to create instructions and hand them off to ghosts.” 

I spent a moment sketching the spell, then once I felt it lock into my body, wrapping around my spinal cord, I hopped up and looked at Hannah. She had wandered off at some point during the lecture. Her form broke apart and flowed into me, and I raised my hand, then conjured my spear with four boneshards. I slashed my hand out, and sent a stream of power into both spells at once. As soon as I did, I felt weird. My mana moved, but it wasn’t me moving it. The bones shot forward, but I wasn’t controlling it. I felt like I was locked out of my own spirit and body. But I wasn’t, and my reflexive reaction caused my body to jerk and twist. I fell flat on my back, and the wind knocked out of me. A moment later, Orykson stepped over me, looking down implacably. 

“Not an unusual side effect. If you want to be ready in time, you are going to need to get that reaction under control.” 

I grunted, then struggled back to my feet. He was right. Though I’d been making a lot of progress, I only had two days left until I had to fight Corra. 

In a clearing within the summer section of herself, Dusk was seated atop her cloud, meditating. The parts of herself that were in Crysite, Delitone, and Mossford all hummed contentedly, at peace with both the world, and with her world of Ddeaer. 

The part of her that was a stone that could move, however, was not at peace. It had been carried far away. Though she was technically closer to Elohi than she was when she had been since she left Mossford, the continent was still thousands of miles away, across two large countries and an entire ocean. But despite how far away it was, she could feel the buzzing. Edgar had arrived in the preserve, and the stone was there with him. She or her brother could, technically speaking, open the portal to Elohi at any time now. She could deposit the nest that they had taken from the time catch. They’d probably be able to score brownie points with the Shepherd, and maybe with some of the other Elohian powers, like the Sun and Moon Queens or the Merchant. 

Her brother would be able to speak with the hudau foxes, and find the missing chunks of the spell that the Mossford Library had used. Foxthorn had been stuck at mastery, unable to be ingrained, for a long time now. If he got its full amount, it would be able to integrate with his senses… Somehow. Neither her, her brother, her sister, or the big turtle knew exactly how it would work, only that it would involve working with his senses in some form. 

The trouble was, she didn’t know if she should even tell him that Edgar had arrived in the preserve. If she told him, he’d go. Opening a portal to and from Elohi would take an absurd amount of mana. He’d spend time playing with the foxes and speaking to the big turtle, and talking with whoever was in charge of the preserve. 

But if she didn’t tell him until after he’d lost the tournament – be it in this round or any other – then she’d be lying to him. A lie by omission, admittedly, but she didn’t like the idea of lying to him in any way. She didn’t know what the right thing to do for the tournament was. She didn’t know what the right thing to do morally was. She didn’t know what the right thing to do was in any way. But she did know that she needed to decide.