Discordant Note: Crescendo | TBATE

Chapter 163: Channels

Beta-read by Infinity21

Toren Daen

Circe carved a spell in the ground, one point of three. Her finger shook slightly as she expertly traced her blood across the grassy surface, streaks of crimson red trailing the digit.

She heaved for breath as she finally completed the tiny symbol, falling onto her back weakly as she groaned. She covered her face with her arm, blocking out the sun from on high as it streamed down.

"It's done," she breathed out. "Just gotta... activate it, and they'll all connect."

I knelt, looking at the patch of red on the ground. The rune wasn't anything super special, but if I strained my ears...

Yes, there it was. A bit of heartfire weakly pulsed within that blood, separate from the body. There was a bit of lifeforce in every drop of freshly spilled blood, but was there something different about this?

In The Beginning After the End, Circe Milview could heighten the effects of her three-point array crest by using her blood to trace the anchor points instead of normal mana. But how?

"Wait a minute to activate it," I said, walking from this one rune to one of the others across from it. I knelt, trying to hear out the differences in pitch and tone in the little bits of blood. There was a small bit of mana that coursed along the crimson splotches, but it simply held its intent and purpose close.

"It won't work in a few minutes, Lord Daen," Circe said weakly, looking extremely tired as she lounged in the sun like a cat.

"I figured that," I said, sensing the thrum of energy as a musician senses pitch. The mana didn't seem to react to the heartfire, but it was somehow kept in place by the aetheric binds of blood.

The problem was that blood itself was a good conductor of mana even when the heartfire within had evaporated. Was the effect I witnessed a result of the blood insulating the mana, or of the lingering traces of lifeforce doing so?

"Activate your spell," I said absently, immersed in the act of listening.

Circe weakly clapped her hands together.

And my ears erupted with noise. I felt my eyes widen as the initial tump-tump-tump became a steady hum. Yellow mana condensed from the atmosphere, bouncing from each rune. The mana continued in a flow as the particles bounced from the first point to the second and third, then finally back to the first.

It creates a sort of feedback loop, I thought, standing up with a slight frown on my face. A vaguely triangular star of mana glowed within Circe Milview's front lawn as the particles danced in an even flow. The mana goes around and around, like...

Feeling as if I were onto something, I engaged my Acquire Phase. Circe's weakly pulsing red heartfire became visible to me, alongside the burning orange-purple bonfire in my own chest.

And the lines of the array glowed a deep red crimson, seeming to match the chain runes over my arm. Heartfire moved in tandem with the mana, darting around in a triangular circle that tainted the normally yellow lines of mana a slight red.

My eyes widened as I watched the interplay. The aetheric sparks of lifeforce seemed to gravitate around the mana, agitating it in a way I couldn't understand. The mana seemed to glow a bit brighter every time the swirling specks of deep red brushed along the edges of the spell, pushing the light faster and stronger.

I stepped around the light, getting a better view of each point of the array. I was able to feel as the lifeforce flowed in a circle that defied my understanding.