The Fourth Gate: Chapter Ten

I returned to myself standing in front of the strange, abstract statue. It had lost much of its vibrant red color, and was now a dull blue, like a desaturated cyan. The curator let out a sniff and shook his head, muttering. I heard the words he said, though I didn’t think he intended me to.

“Children. One destroyed, one damaged, and now this one is drained enough that it will need additional time in recovery. Do they think that these grow on trees?” 

He snapped his fingers, and a wave of spatial magic struck me as he prepared to teleport me out of the hall, but there was something… wrong. My spatial sense was fairly well developed, and he wasn’t trying to bend things the way that he had once before. No, this time, he was sending me somewhere else. 

I dug my heels in and pushed my spatial energy against it. The man was a false occultist, that was true, but it was hard to teleport someone who was resisting. Foxswap only worked due to relying on bodily force, and even then, it was fairly easy to resist. I might have been three gates lower than him, but I had a lot of spatial energy, and was plying it into resisting. 

“Please. Don’t. Teleport. Me. Somewhere. New. Without. Asking,” I said, each word coming out clipped, and almost like a grunt. The curator glared at me and thrust his hand  forward. 

“Do not refuse your elders, child!” he snapped, and there was a surge of increased potency as he activated some higher gate meta spell. I bucked and strained against it for several moments, but then with a wrenching sensation, I was pulled through space. Oddly, as I lost the fight, the first thing that came to my mind was false ascensions. When the Shepherd had teleported me, I had been able to resist, but it was like a fisherman’s lure – he’d inexorably drawn me in, despite my resistance. But this had been more like a wrestling match. He might have been stronger, but I’d been able to put up a good fight. I supposed it was true what people said about the gap widening the further you advanced. 

Then I appeared, and my senses blasted through the room. I spun my mana, ready to defend myself, and my eyes darted all around me. I seemed to be in a tea house, perhaps in a private back room, given the paper screen covering the exit. That screen was filled with magic, clearly heavily enchanted to prevent eavesdropping and spying, even from some very powerful people. In fact, this was the first place I’d been where the Storm King’s winds weren’t blowing, and the screen seemed to be making a false impression on them, giving them the feedback that the room was empty. 

I was standing next to a chair, and there was a man sitting across the red and gold table. He was late in his middle age, and felt like a false Arcanist. Standing behind him were two people, both real Arcanists. One was a knowledge mage, and the other was a desolation and physical mage that I took to be a bodyguard. 

The menu on the table in front of me called it the Bitter Tea House, which didn’t sound appealing, but I thought there might be some cultural context around the word bitter that I was missing, given the way the monolinguistic spell twinged in the translation. A quick glance at the prices redoubled that thought, as even the most basic green tea listed were extremely expensive. There was a tea set on the table, with a bowl containing some tea. I felt nothing dangerous in the tea with my mana senses, but the entire thing still had me on edge. 

“Please, please, relax,” the seated man said, smiling. “I needed to arrange this meeting discreetly.” 

“Who are you?” I asked, the words coming out harsher than I’d intended. The man’s smile didn’t even waver, however. 

“You can call me One,” the man said. “It’s what everyone else calls me.” 

“The crime lord. Weren’t you linked to alchem–” 

“Yes, yes,” the man said, cutting me off with the wave of his hand. “Please, sit. It’s just a chair.” 

I blessed the chair thoroughly with my mana senses, but I didn’t feel anything off about it, so I very slowly sat down across from One. My stomach was churning with nerves, and my mind raced as I tried to figure out how I could escape. There weren’t wards to my senses. Could I literally just teleport out?

“You’ll have noticed that all my wards prevent eavesdropping,” One said. “None of them are containment wards. Trust me, I don’t want you dead. This is a conversation. I’ve left you the option of leaving on purpose, but I think you’ll want to hear what I have to say.” 

Before I could say anything, he removed a flower from his spatial ring and placed it on the table in front of me. As its presence swelled to my senses, my breath caught. 

A spellbinder rose. 

Its stem was dark, almost black in color, and covered in thorns. Not so many that it looked unnatural, but enough to be noted as a thorny rose. The flower itself was a pure white, whiter than fresh fallen snow. It radiated ungated mana unlike anything I had ever felt before, and not just in quantity. There was a certain protean feel to this, almost like my gates before I decided on their mana type. 

“Given the critical imbalance in your spirit, I suspect that a spellbinder rose is something you would find valuable,” Ome said smoothly. “Perhaps even life saving. I happen to have acquired this one as a part of my personal future plans, but I could be convinced to part with it.” 

“Out of the sheer kindness of your heart, no doubt,” I said, unable to keep the skepticism out of my voice. 

“I do run several charities. Good for the tax system. But you’re right, this one is not free.”

It was clear that One expected me to ask for a price, or maybe to get up and leave, but I was feeling a bit petty. Hoping to disarm him, I didn’t say anything at all. Unfortunately, he was a professional, and before the silence could grow awkward, he continued. 

“Given your connections, you will have no doubt realized that the structure of tournament rounds is not random,” One continued. “Of course, even I can’t spy on such a collection of Magi and Occultists when they’re gathered, but there are many weaker links in the chain.”

“You bribed tournament staff to get information. I don’t see how this relates to me purchasing a spellbinder rose from you.”

“Simplicity itself, Malachi. Next round you will be going up against one of the fighters I sponsored.” 

He summoned multiple sheets of paper and slid them over to me. I glanced at them, skimming the contents as he spoke. They seemed to be betting odds and statistical analysis for all possible future matchups, with particular lines highlighted to indicate my odds against Corra, the gun woman I’d worked with in round two. 

“Most people are betting on Corra, as you can see,” One continued. “She has yet to demonstrate her prize from the Arcanist Vaults, or the full power of her arm. You have played all of your cards, except for a Combat Echo and the three additional arrows locked up in Dusk’s demiplane, of course.” 

A chill raced down my spine as One casually threw out that information. The Combat Echo could have simply been observation, as anyone who figured out that I had real time mana could put together that I might have one, but the number of arrows? Then again, he had already admitted to bribing staff. It was possible he’d bribed or blackmailed the treasure hall records keeper.

“Not to mention, with your… eclectic, shall we say… blend of magic, finding a headstone must have been a terrible challenge. But as a mono-affinity mineral mage, Corra will likely have had no issues.”

There was truth to his words, and they were reflected in the paper in front of me. While the odds most analysts projected weren’t as one sided as he suggested, most betting houses had put Corra as the favored to win. Most marked her between ten to fifteen percent more likely to win, but there was a decent chunk who called it even, and a few who called it in my favor. 

“I can give you this spellbinder rose. All you need to do is lose. Fight your heart out, but ensure that she wins.” 

“That’s an awfully tempting prize for someone who is convinced that Corra is going to win the next round,” I pointed out, but One just shook his head.

 “Please, Malachi. I’m not going to insult your intelligence, so please do not insult mine. I know you have committed no less than two counts of portal fraud, five counts of falsifying documentation, one count of perjury, and three counts of illegally transporting endangered animals across national borders.” 

“Is that–” 

Before I could even get the words out, One held up his hand for silence and continued his little speech. 

“I also know that, even if I was to reveal all of this, most would be swept under the rug. Oh, you’d likely need to go to court. Pay some fines for the licenses you obtained illegitimately. Perhaps you’d even spend a few weeks in jail. But the big things, the portal fraud, the endangered animals? The Dragon Reserve, Edgar, Elio, the Shepherd, perhaps even one of your mentors. They would step in, and nothing would come of it.” 

“You’ve certainly done your research,” I said, suddenly very careful with my words, in case the meeting was being recorded. “Though I suspect that you’d have a difficult time proving I did any of those things, in no small part because I’m not even sure what all you’re talking about.” 

One gave me a blase look and shook his head. 

“I’m not threatening you, that is my point. You’re annoyingly difficult to blackmail, so I’m trying the bribery approach. I truly believe that Corra has an advantage, especially after she finishes certain projects, but I’m not going to claim that it’s a certainty that she’s going to win. I have a variety of prospects, of both personal and financial interest, that rely on one of my fighters placing in the top eight. I could bet on it, and there’s good odds that I will win. But I also could simply eliminate any risk on my part.” 

He picked up the rose with two fingers and held it to his nose, taking a long, gentle sniff, before tossing it on the table again.

“And of course, if you wanted something to be arranged for Dusk and your other bond, which I am willing to bet is not the shade of a sky estragon like it is listed as, I’d be willing to provide some degree of compensation for them as well, though nothing on the level of a Spellbinder Rose.” 

A final set of papers appeared, these ones brimming with the power of some sort of mind and knowledge spell that would bind me to throw the matches, but that would also bind him to turn over the rose and whatever else we agreed upon. 

“What do you think?”