tobiasbegley

The Third Portal: Chapter Twenty-Two

Two days after Orykson’s arrival, I finally made enough progress on digging out the steps of my spatial and temporal mana-gardens to hit a wall, and I prepared myself for a breakthrough. 

Much like Kene and Dusk’s first breakthroughs back in Delitone, Meadow had taken an Analyze Mana-Garden potion, and joined me as I picked up the stick that I’d been using and stabbed at the ground. Dawn landed next to me and used her claws to scoop out dirt, while Dusk did the same – ineff...

The Third Portal: Chapter Twenty-One

I sighed, biting my lip as I considered my next move. 

I did want to see Kene – the weeks on the boat had been long without them. I also knew that the earlier I could get the portal network set up, the better it would be, even if forming the platforms did take a long time. 

It had taken about three weeks in Delitone, when I’d been setting one up in Dusk and on the log. Of course, Dusk had been able to handle most of the platform inside of herself, but I’d still had...

Oops polls are evil and didn't post

The Third Portal: Chapter Twenty

As a reminder, starting next week, we return to five or six chapters a week: Three Mana Mirror, and two or three of Effaced Book Two

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It took us a long time to sort out a plot of land. 

I wasn’t especially picky about the location of my land, but it was going to be a point that I was coming and going from regularly, so I didn’t want to pick something out that looked awful. 

Heading out and looking over the plot took time...

The Third Portal: Chapter Nineteen

When we pushed into the anthill itself, which had been partially destroyed by the giant shovels that Mrs. Cromwell had used, the battle grew both easier and harder. 

On one hand, desolants were able to swarm in a confined space, the fire mage had to hold back, the giant armor had to shrink to only six feet tall, and we couldn’t use anything that would risk a cave in. 

On the other, we could only be attacked from two directions, and with the myrmekes defensive walls, wa...

The Third Portal: Chapter Eighteen

The powerful restorative ran through my body and spirit, and my mana surged and boiled. It rushed from the elixir and into my garden, rapidly filling it back up to normal. The excess power tried to compress and rush into my beastcore and restore my soul mana, but it was horrifically inefficient, only restoring around a tenth of what I could hold. 

The mana toxin flushed through my body, since both the elixir and the titan shield that I’d used to forcibly advance my defensive spel...

The Third Portal: Chapter Seventeen

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 o...

The Third Portal: Chapter Sixteen

If the ants held to their previous pattern, I would have a few hours before they attacked, so I turned options over in my head. I could try and make more potions, to seed the ground around the anthill with fire bombs and more stonesprout, but that could just as easily kill a myrmekes if I forgot one. Better to stick to spreading the stonesprout on the fly, and using potions in combat. 

Besides, there was one obvious thing I could do to improve my odds: Advance. 

I had sp...

The Third Portal: Chapter Fifteen

Dusk flew as fast as she could, gathering power from her birds, from her insects, and from the sky estragon within her. With all their spellcraft supporting her, she blazed through the sky, moving almost twice as fast as the original, terrible broom that her older brother had once used. 

She was glad it was gone – flying on a cloud or under your own power was so much better than flying on the power of a stick. She understood why Dragontooth didn’t allow people to fly on items i...

The Glass Orbs

The Dreamer sat, crouched over the network of more than a thousand glass orbs. 

Well. Sat was a relative term. He was in a chair, but only the balls of his feet were touching its cushions. He balanced on them in a low crouch, and squatted with his back arched terribly over the table where the orbs lay. 

Across from him was his fellow dream weaver, the so-called Avatar of Sin. Where the Dreamer was hunched, messy, and plain, the Avatar rippled with the muscle and cockynes...

The Third Portal: Chapter Fourteen

I sat above the colony, hovering in the air. I wished that I’d had the foresight to pull out as many potions from Dusk as possible before she’d left, since I couldn’t just teleport them into my hands or mouth with her so far away, but our stronger connection and stronger spirits meant that it didn’t take too terribly long to open a portal. Collecting the hour-duration flight potion, as well as a stock of other potions and supplies, had been well worth it given that Foxstep was still o...

The Third Portal: Chapter Thirteen

I glanced at Dusk and Dawn, as well as manifesting Hannah, and we had a brief discussion. 

If I could manage to simultaneously get rid of an invasive species, get a portion of their loot, and restore the kidnapped myrmekes workers to their native colony, then I’d be happy to do so, but I’d promised Kene I wouldn't be running off recklessly, and I’d just driven off the voidlike greedy promises of one of my resolve roots. Given the things that Idyll had suggested might happen i...

The Third Portal: Chapter Twelve

I turned to assist Dusk with her own battle, but it was already winding down, with the desolants retreating the long way around the tunnel. I limped over to her, and only then did I look down and see that I’d taken a deep but clean wound to the leg. I hadn’t even realized that it had happened. 

I summoned a healing potion and doused my leg and the cuts on my arm with it, then began running Starfish Regeneration. The minty regenerative power rushed through me and set to work on ...

The Third Portal: Chapter Eleven

The ant that had been dragging me suddenly changed its course. It turned, shoving me to the side, then rushed out. The other grave tending ants rushed out as well, and I started to move, but Dusk whistled that I should clean myself first. 

“Right,” I agreed. 

I didn’t have time for a full shower, but I cast a series of quick, ungated spells to eliminate the scent lingering over me, then spritzed myself with the citrusy scent, before sprinting up the tunnel alongsid...

An(t) Ant-ense Vote

The Third Portal: Chapter Ten

Figuring out how to get the blueshade to produce the same mildly citrusy scent as the ant’s non-threat pheromones took some time and experimentation. 

Enhance Plant Life was a good spell, but it wasn’t capable of doing fine, on the fly adjustments to the structure of plants. I could flood the blueshade with power and eject a burst of whatever scent it had been tuned to make, but tuning it took a lot more time and continual application of both it and the harvesting spell, like a...

The Third Portal: Chapter Nine

After a bit of discussion with my bonds and Hannah, I reached out my hand, then paused. 

There was something… off… about it, that was tickling my nascent truths, or perhaps the wind of fortune. I didn’t know exactly what it was, or even if I was imagining it, but it was enough to guide my hand. 

“There’s something off,” I said, explaining the feeling to the other two. 

“I don’t really care either way,” Hannah shrugged. “If you’re feeling ...

The Third Portal: Chapter Eight

Edgar told me about how Elio, the guild leaders, and himself had done battle against the handful of truly power beings on the island. They’d fought a peak sixth gate slaughter spirit that simply evaporated everything around it in absurdly hot temperatures, a cabal of three supercharged necrotic t-rexes, and an old and powerful frost and death spirit that seemed to have a hatred for any living creature larger than a coyote and would work to systematically eradicate any life – including tre...

The Third Portal: Chapter Seven

“Is it going to transform my heart?” I asked. 

“The spell’s biological array is in the heart, which will cause it to turn it a whitish-gray, which will look… interesting… with your resolve veins. But it’s more to do with being the heart of your entire mana-garden,” the old tortoise said. “I suspect it will pair very well with that kirin’s spell.” 

“What does it actually do?” I asked. 

“When you channel mana through it, the mana rege...

The Third Portal: The First Vote

Elysian Tournament Origins

This story is set over four and a half hundred years before the events of Mana Mirror

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If you were to ask an average citizen in the modern world what the Elysian Mastery Tournament was, they could tell you that it is a test of skill and power. That it’s held twice a decade, and existed for over four hundred years. That Spellbinders and Arcanists gather to show that their nation, or their personal power, is the greatest on Ddeaer. There are all ...

The Third Portal: Chapter Six

I bounded forwards, using Immovable Lock to catch one foot in place, then bore down on that foot to fling myself forwards again with more momentum. 

With my Foxstep currently throwing my spirit into disorder every time I used it, I was trying to work on expanding my other methods of magical movement. This wasn’t quite as fast as flying, nor as convenient as a potion, but it worked out my muscles and didn’t require the formation of a potion to work, so I figured it was worth lea...

The Third Portal: Chapter Five

When I slipped inside, the attendant looked up and greeted me with a blunt, “Oh, it’s you,” before she immediately returned to reading her novel. I gestured around. 

“Which of these do I need to charge to get to Port Heliodoor?” 

“Yellow,” the attendant grunted. I wondered if she’d had to deal with an annoying mage or something, considering that this was definitely not what she’d acted like before. I shrugged, then walked over to the smooth disk of yell...

The Second Gate is now out!

Hello!

For those of you who haven’t been following along, I’ve had an extremely difficult time getting this book out.  

Due to some issues around the copyright with some piracy sites, the pre-order was removed, and I had to show them the DMCA report that I'd tried to get it removed. That let them put the pre-order back up, but then it released without the ability to come up. I reached out a bunch of times, and was met with automated messages.

Thankfully, things...

The Third Portal: Chapter Four

“There are currently four major adventure guilds with different outposts on the other slices of the island, except for the central mountains: Port Sapphire, Port Emerald, and Port Heliodor. We need more, a lot more, since they’re not even really towns or even villages. They’re hamlets with a live-in arcanist, more rendezvous points for missions than anything,” Ivy explained. “Then there are two dozen other major guilds that are here, alongside tons of smaller guilds with less than f...

The Third Portal: Chapter Three

“So, the first thing you should know is the customs house,” Ivy said, leading me away from the docks into a large stone building. It was fairly sparse, unadorned, but there were people moving about. A pair of large boards was set up at the end of the hall, and six desks were on each side of the room, which Ivy pointed to. Most of the twelve had small lines in front of them, with people approaching and leaving.

“These are where you can turn stuff in and get points, which is what mo...

The Third Portal: Chapter Two

“Idyll!” I said, reaching out and extending my hand, while Dusk buzzed over to the older worldspirit on her cloud. 

“Malachi. I am glad to see you are well,” Idyll said, bowing her head slightly. “I recognize Roh, Araceli, Octavian, and Elizabeth. Who are the rest?”

“This is Simeio,” Octavian said. “And that’s Kerbos, and his bond, Ed.” 

“Liz’s fiance,” I supplied. 

“Define me in every way but as my own person, why don’t y...

The Third Portal: Chapter One

A beam of crackling black and white light, streaked with electric blue seared towards me, and I Foxstepped out of the way, materializing behind my opponent in a flash. Octavian’s elbow flashed out, hand suddenly made of metal, and I caught his hand. For a moment, we struggled, matched in strength, but mine came from my body, and his from a spell. It was a losing battle, and he knew it.

Fortunately for him, it wasn’t his only trick. 

Simeio and Araceli rushed me from the b...

Year in Review, Updates, and Next Year's Roadmap

Hello! First and foremost, I wanted to thank all of you for the amazing year. I've been able to write a lot more full time, despite running into some speedbumps, and I'm very optimistic that I'll be able to continue this for a long time. I've had some problems with Amazon towards the end of the year, but that's hopefully resolved. 2025 is going to be a big year, as it's my first full year as a full-time author, and I've got high hopes.

As a part of this, I'm going to be changing the pri...

The Third Gate: Chapter Sixty-Five

For my final night in Mossford before one of the few boats to Crysite arrived, we threw a potluck. Given that there were only four local Mossford guilds willing to make the journey back and forth until the waters around the isle had been cleared of monsters and proper routes had been established, and the fact that Arcanists were charging upwards of twenty thousand silver for the trip to Crystite, even Octavian and his moms arrived. 

I’d have to open a portal back to Delitone for ...