An Unbound Soul

"It has closed once more," stated Serlv while we were still mid-flight. A desolate, grey landscape was beneath us, stretching to the horizon in all directions, with no signs of life. If I remembered my geography correctly, it was known as the Scar.

The first time I heard of it—way back on my first trip to Dawnhold—I'd guessed meteor impact. That seemed harder to believe seeing it in person. A meteor crater had no reason to be lifeless after all this time, but also the sheer size made it implausible. That scale of meteor impact would have been catastrophic for the planet, and while the planet had suffered multiple catastrophes, Erryn hadn't mentioned any of them being natural.

Natural was a good point. The landscape actually reminded me of a certain unnatural expanse of glass south of Dawnhold. Not in appearance, but in the way a large chunk of landscape simply didn't fit in. It was also considerably larger than Krana's efforts. Perhaps whatever had caused this had been catastrophic.

"What happened here?" I asked Serlv, in case she knew.

"I do not know; it was present prior to my creation. But we have arrived. Do you see anything?"

"Mana is less dense than it should be, perhaps a little worse than the last one, but it's not completely gone. Aside from that, nothing."

"I likewise see nothing," she agreed. "Once more a waste of our time."

"Well? Now what? With how short-lived they are, it's unlikely we're going to get to one in time."

"This one lasted a minute longer than the previous."

That explained why the mana density had dropped more here than the last one. "If they keep getting longer, we'll catch one eventually."

"Eventually, yes. Assuming they do not achieve their goal prior to that point."

"Should we wait in Synklisi for the next one? Take the portals?"

"No. You possess an item that allows others to share spatial skills, do you not? We should seek out Horail."

"Ah, that. It's been kinda useless to me ever since my last class change, so it'll be nice if someone else can get some use out of it."

"Useless? How so?"

A question which required explaining the consequences of me taking [Temporal Mage] to answer, by which time we'd reached the Emerald Sea, the forest's western edge marking the border of the lifeless Scar.

Despite considering it on several occasions, I'd never visited the Emerald Sea. The seemingly endless forest was impressive enough, but the actual dwelling places of the elves were something else entirely. Enormous trees burst through the forest canopy, as if the rest of the trees were mere undergrowth. Or maybe even lesser. Grass, or moss, thinly coating the floor. They were easily the height of the Obsidian Spires' namesakes. Girth, too.

"Wow," I commented.

"Wow? What has caught your attention? I see nothing out of the ordinary."

"Just the trees. I've never visited the Emerald Sea before."

"Again, I see nothing out of the ordinary. They are perfectly normal lehibe trees."

"They may be ordinary, but I've never seen a lehibe tree before, so can't you allow me some surprise at how big they are compared to other species of tree?"

"I suppose," allowed the dragon.

Earth definitely didn't have lehibes, whatever lehibes were. It was an interesting point that while this world didn't have much overlap with Earth when it came to animal life, much of the plant life was the same. Potatoes were a staple part of the human diet. I'd seen oak trees, pine, fir, ash, beech and plenty of others I'd recognised. That didn't mean this place had no novel plant life, and those things made giant redwoods look like matchsticks.

Serlv swooped in, landing easily on a branch of a lehibe without needing to change her size. The branch didn't even flex.

"Well, now what?" I asked, when she didn't move for ten seconds.

The answer came not from Serlv, but from [Mana Sight], as a point of spatial affinity appeared in front of us, spirals of mana pouring from the pinprick in space, wrapping itself into a cocoon.

"Again?" asked the cocoon as the mana dissipated, leaving only Horail behind.

I'd never watched teleportation from the outside before. The initial pinprick looked very much like a miniature portal. Was that how it worked? Open a short-lived portal, then shift the spell's target through it?

"A new series of mana anomalies has begun, but they are shorter lived than the previous events. We cannot reach them in time, and require your aid."

The hard-done-by elf heaved a sigh. "I'm not sure how much use I can be. Even if I can teleport most of the way there, I'm unlikely to be able to reach the exact location."

"That will not be an issue. Peter has an item that will let you teleport others. You will teleport the pair of us, and I shall fly the remainder of the distance."

"I will, will I?" complained the elf half-heartedly. "Fine. Are they on any sort of schedule, or..."

"Serpent Isle. Now," demanded Serlv, interrupting him. "Peter, hand over your item."

Another portal? That was an even shorter gap than the previous pair! I used [Inventory] to pluck off my bracelet of transport and ejected it back out in Horail's direction. He caught it, slid it onto his wrist, and blossomed with spatial affinity. I saw the pinprick form again, right in the middle of his thauma, and then we were elsewhere.

I threw up over the grass we now stood on, teleportation being even worse for my travel sickness than dragon flight, finding myself suddenly thankful that I had [Redistribute] instead of a regular teleportation spell.

And then Serlv grabbed the pair of us and took off, without even stopping to ask if I was okay. I had a brief glimpse of the delvers' camp, which we seemed to have teleported just outside of, before I slammed my eyes shut. When that didn't help, I shut off my sensory skills, too.

In an attempt to distract myself from my stomach—which was very definitely not currently my friend—I pondered the fact that Horail had a thauma. It wasn't just externally that elves looked like humans. They had the same organ layout, too. Perhaps the thauma and lungs were a little bigger at the expense of a smaller liver and shorter digestive tract, but everything that should be there was present and functional.

Yet Harry had said that as far as their limited DNA testing had revealed, elves seemed completely alien.

He'd also said that the last common ancestors between Earth humans and local humans had been tens of thousands of years ago. Was that long enough for evolution to add or remove an organ like the thauma, along with a full mana circulatory system? There was obviously more going on here than their small amount of sneaky DNA analysis was capable of explaining.

"What the..." exclaimed Horail, causing me to open my eyes and flip my sensory skills back on.

Reality was broken. The first anomaly I'd seen had been a crack in space. This was not just a single crack.

The first difference was the scale; this one was ten metres in length. Second was that whatever was on the other side was operating in pulses. Every few seconds, the fissure flashed blue, and each time it did, the fissure widened, smaller fractures spreading from it like a shattering pane of glass in slow motion.

Reality was fighting back, and between each flash, the cracks narrowed. Not by enough to offset the growth, though. Something was hammering a nail through the walls of our universe, and it didn't seem to care about collateral damage.

Perhaps it was an efficiency thing. Harry's team had been trying to build a portal as efficiently as possible, whereas this had a more brute force appearance.

Either way, it needed to stop.

As far as I could see, I had three options. Attempt communication, politely close the portal, or impolitely close it. Tossing through a decay grenade hooked up to a monster core as a power source would certainly be impolite, but I didn't have such a weapon on me, couldn't jury-rig one at short notice and didn't want to launch an outright attack without better provocation.

I suppose I could ask Serlv to breathe at it, but given that a dragon breath was mana-based, it may not even survive the transition to Earth.

Communication was a nice ideal, but not one I foresaw helping. If it was this Maximilian, there must be a reason why he'd gone it alone rather than coming clean once Harry made a portal. If it was someone else, they may not even speak English, nor could I trust anything said by people who'd take advantage of a terrorist attack to kidnap researchers.

"Horail, how good is your mana control?"

"I have [Expert Mana Control] at level six. Why?"

Not maxed out? He probably hadn't originally taken [Mana Control], and had only started to work his way up from rank one once mana control skills had been proven useful.

"Just keep the spatial affinity I'm about to make away from us."

The portal was hungrily devouring the area's mana, but as with the others, I couldn't reach into it with my skills. Thankfully, I didn't need to have my skills act across the boundary. I detached a finger and tossed it in, using it as a source for my skills instead, and twisted mana into spatial affinity both inside and out.

The tear in space didn't like that very much. The sky rippled, the outer cracks expanding, but turning an eye-sucking black, truly looking like holes straight out of the world. The main crack flashed, then shrunk. My finger—which wasn't at all protected from the spatial affinity I was throwing around—was squeezed in the shrinking tunnel, but rather than being crushed, it popped out onto the other side, fired like a bullet.

If the portal didn't like the burst of spatial affinity, the equipment producing it was having a far worse time with it. Angles subtly shifted, and whatever high-powered equipment had been carefully aimed at things designed to absorb that much energy suddenly found themselves pointed elsewhere.

There probably would have been some interesting flashes and sound effects, but my finger had no eyes or ears available. All I could see were the silhouettes of things against the background of the dissipating mana.

Also, something was poking at my finger... Like it was being jabbed by needles.

I flipped on [Soul Perception], being the only sense I had available that would show me anything useful on the Earth side, only to discover I was being bitten by a rat. That was... odd. The rat was completely unable to pierce my endurance-stat boosted skin, but was giving it a spirited effort regardless.

And, looking further, the rat wasn't alone. There were thousands of the things surrounding the portal, layered a couple of dozen deep, crammed together in what must have been tiny cages, invisible to my [Soul Perception].

Why the heck were they stockpiling rats? There wasn't a single human in range of my [Soul Perception], but before I could investigate any further, the tortured portal finally collapsed, cutting my connection. That rat would doubtless get a good meal as my finger lost its System-enhanced toughness. And then probably die of something horrible.

Sorry rat.

Back on the outside, I sucked at the stub as [Regeneration] sealed the wound, and watched as the rift collapsed in on itself, the scar in space healing up as if it had never been. Within a handful of seconds, the only sign that remained was the lowered background mana.

"What did you do?" demanded Serlv.

"Broke the portal and damaged their generator by flooding it with spatial affinity."

"That seems a short-term fix at best. Did you see the perpetrators?"

"No. All I saw were stacks of caged animals."

At least, I assumed they were caged. I really should have sent an eye through, but I didn't have time to think, and I hadn't known I'd make it through to the other side. Given a few more seconds, I could have used [Inventory] to transport one.

ding

Skill [Detach] advanced to level 17

Skill [Regeneration] advanced to level 8

I dismissed the notifications. Levels were nice, but this wasn't the way I wanted to get them. Who was that, and what were they planning? And, perhaps more importantly, how much longer until they repaired their kit and tried again? I wasn't so stupid as to assume that a single setback would convince them to stop.