Wish upon the Stars (Original Superhero cultivation sci fi litrpg)

[Malcolm Tent]

We emerged from the tear in space into a warzone. Dean Gibbons had decided we were going to miss our window if we pushed it too far and we headed for the canyon. But when we got there, we found…carnage. Bodies, flames, frozen time, curses everywhere. It was a mess.

Dean Gibbons knelt to check one of the corpses. "Resentment backlash," he said clinically. "Harper waited for them to enter and then destabilized the canyon's aura."

I perked up. "That's good, right? I mean, the canyon is huge, so they must have taken heavy losses." Of course Dean Harper would have countermeasures in place, I started to relax a bit, until I caught the Dean's head shake.

"They knew he would do that, it was the obvious move," he pushed the body with his foot. "This is a C-ranker. Most of the bodies are. They sent in a wave of fodder to soak up the damage."

"How did they get enough people?" I protested. "Did they really turn this many?"

Elonwy stepped forward, kneeling next to one of the higher ranked corpses. "I don't think so," She said grimly. "Hey, Prof, is this who I think it is?"

"Bennet Kane," Professor Hawkins said clinically. "Huh, thought he died at the Radiant Mountain Riot." He squinted around. "And that looks like Sanders Quilg. I KNOW I got a death report for him after that beast tide in the Shivering Second Canyon eight years ago. I don't know the fodder, but their high rankers are recognizable. Some of them vanished ages ago."

Dean Gibbons grimaced. "Yes, this has clearly been in motion for quite some time. Which makes it all the more certain that they had inside help."

I thought back to the stories about people vanishing, and how casually it had been brushed off. The Academy was safer than most places, but it wasn't SAFE. People died here. But knowing that was coming and intercepting them before it did, all without being noticed…they would have needed someone with a deep working knowledge of the ins and outs of Frozen Moment.

Clearly, I wasn't the only one thinking that. Dean Desmond looked grim. "That means they have someone with transport powers. And since it's not me…"

"Wendy," said Dean Gibbons sadly. "I had hoped it wouldn't be one of my few friends. I can't say I'm surprised, however. But she couldn't have done this alone. Besides the obvious, the others haven't shown up yet. Someone is delaying them. With the three of us here, Wendy involved, and Harper pinned down, that leaves seven of us unaccounted for. Someone should have shown up by now. If we assume the crafters might be keeping back to prepare, that leaves us with four."

"Theodora would never," said Dean Windermere firmly. "You know how she feels about the Void. And Corey disdains outside help in anything to an almost self destructive degree." Theodora was Jessie's Dean, the Overgod of Life called the Sister of the World Tree, and Corey Down was The Unrelenting Edge of the weapons department. "But if we assume they're each tied up, then that means they've been waylaid by-"

"Kell and Clara," grunted Dean Desmond. "Shit."

That meant that of the possible traitors, most likely all three of them had turned on us. I was beginning to feel uneasy. This felt…too balanced. They had taken too much into account. Whoever made this plan, be it the Void Child or one of the Deans, had been working on it for a long time. They had accounted for every variable so far.

"We know who they'll send to stop us then," Dean Windermere said coldly, frost beginning to gather around her.

"Of course," came a soft, airy voice. "Who else would it be?"

We all turned to find a small, delicate looking woman with a sad smile standing in the path. She was wearing loose, flowing clothes, and had a wide hood over her head. At first I thought the hood had shadowed her eyes completely, but a closer look told me she was wearing a deep black blindfold.

Dean Windermere's fingers flexed slightly. "Hello Clara," she said in a soft, dangerous voice. "Anything to say for yourself?"

The other woman shrugged. "Nothing in particular. It's only business, you know. The stars have stagnated since we established the academy. I'd reached a bottleneck. I needed momentum, celestial disruption. The Void is good at that."

"And now you're riding the power surge of tracing your path in the constellations," Dean Windermere said icily. "Do you think that's enough to take all three of us?"

"I don't think it needs to be," Dean Clara Temple, the Stargazer, said warmly. "I just need to slow you down. I've seen how this fight goes, Sela. Every detail. My victory is written in the stars. Just wait this out with me and we can all walk away safe and sound."

I had no clue what they were talking about, though from context it sounded like Dean Temple could see the future and had manipulated us into walking into a trap somehow? I didn't know what her stellar Domain could do, but it was clearly effective here. It seemed like because the Overgods were just fragments, their ability to leverage the environment played a big part in their individual strengths, hence the use of projects like the Frozen Moment.

Mentally, I tried to think of what I could do. Maybe if I pushed Kronos to the peak of A-rank I could disrupt the timestream nearby? But as soon as I had the idea I tossed it away. I wasn't an S-ranker or a god, I couldn't do anything here. Any tricks I pulled would be useless at this level. I glanced around desperately, looking for something, anything that I could do to help or even escape.

Nothing. Just trash, cursed artifacts, disrupted energy, and miscellaneous detritus. I even spotted a…street sign. I froze. 'Monday Street'. I read slowly. And it was directly to the right of Dean Temple.

Reaching into my ring, I pulled out the map that I'd gotten from Professor Saunders. As soon as it emerged, I realized something had changed. The previously normal map was glowing a bright, distracting red, just like the energy from the ritual. As I stared in disbelief, the map floated out of my hands, drifting up into the air. Each of the locations marked down was circled, and as I watched, the map burst into flames, burning away to leave only the circles hanging in the air.

There was a pulse of energy as the circles arranged themselves into the shape of a constellation, then exploded up into the sky, suspending themselves over us and creating a dome of red energy around us all.

"Oh, that little BRAT," spat Dean Temple, seemingly angered for the first time. "She SEALED the stars? And she used my own damned ritual to do it!"

"This is why she came to my department," Dean Gibbons said with a wolfish grin. "She was wasted on stargazing. Temporal mechanics are far more flexible. So…what are you going to do now, Clara? Sealing the stars has completely severed your celestial path here. Your chances of fighting the three of us to a standstill in an open match are effectively zero."

I shot my Professor a confused look, and he took pity. "Allegra Saunders used to be Dean Temple's disciple. She learned divination in her department, but left for a position in Temporal Dynamics after she completed her doctorate. It was a big scandal at the time. Changing majors happens, but Dean Temple was grooming Saunders to take over as her successor. She never quite forgave my teacher for poaching her."

"She was like a DAUGHTER to me!" she spat at him. "And he turned her against me with nonsense promises about exploring the underpinnings of reality. She had so much talent, and she threw it all away to play with equations!"

"Clearly not," said Dean Gibbons smugly. "She hijacked part of your ritual and used it to starlock you. She used the map as a connection point to absorb the power and had the kid carry it right in here under your nose. Which means she foresaw this entire confrontation and knew EXACTLY how to block you. She'd never have come up with that when she was working for you. Face it, I'm a far better mentor than you are, Clara."

I was blown away. Professor Saunders seemed so…flighty. To be able to outfox an Overgod, and her own ex mentor at that, not to mention she'd used US to do it. I got chills just thinking about that level of prescience.

In fact, it was more than that. This whole plan had been laid out to perfectly counter the Deans, it had been years in the making, and Professor Saunders had made the ONE perfect move she could to break the deadlock. She must have predicted this years ago, and had been steadily setting all this up ever since. It was staggering.

"Don't think I can't defend myself," spat Dean Temple, her face beginning to twist with panic. "I'm still an O-" her statement never finished. The frost that had been building around Dean Windermere had been quietly condensing, getting colder and colder, twisting the space nearby so subtly I'd barely noticed it. Her hands flicked up as Dean Temple spoke, and then…the other woman was frozen.

Not in ice. Or at least not only in ice. I flinched back when I tried to use Dantalion to analyze what had happened, but I managed to catch a slight scrap of information as my eyes started to bleed. Nine Layer Permafrost Prison. Time, space, soul, body, mind, Domain, heart, and fate, all frozen solid and frozen over again in a layer of indestructible permafrost.

Dean Gibbons whistled. "Wow, you took that a little personally, love. That's not going to thaw anytime soon."

"Treachery is just a part of life," said Dean Windermere coldly. "I'm less forgiving of incompetence. If you're going to stab me in the back, at least do it properly. Otherwise you're just embarrassing both of us."

"Very true," Dean Gibbons said brightly. "As for this little seal…" he lifted his fingers and snapped. The red dome around us flickered and went out. "I'll have to remember to give Allegra a contribution bonus for that. It was a flawlessly executed strategy. Now, let's go see if it was enough to turn the tide in our favor. I have a feeling the tides haven't turned completely just yet."

He turned and strode off in what seemed to me like a random direction and we all followed. I shot Callie a look, reaching out to grab her hand and sending a surge of hope and cautious optimism through it. This was a good sign. There were only two traitor deans unaccounted for, and they were most likely holding off two of the others somewhere else.

That meant our three would be able to focus on helping Dean Harper suppress the Void Child, or at least Dean Desmond would. I wasn't sure exactly how much actual attention was needed to run the Frozen Moment, especially since I didn't know what it WAS. Dean Windermere had gone in to get it alone before we left, and we'd never gotten to see what the device actually looked like, but I supposed that would change soon enough.

As we arrived at the entrance to the chamber, we all stopped to take in the scene. Dean Harper was there, standing in front of the exit, blocking off the passage with his enormous bulk. Red energy boiled around and past him from below. Around him, Void cultists attacked, ignored for the most part. Some gods, some A-rankers.

I recognized one of them as the familiar long haired man from the station. The one I now knew was Deveskane. He hadn't been able to reforge his Saga, and was apparently at the peak of A-rank still, but I could just tell it was him. When we stepped from the passage out of the row of trash, his eyes flicked to me, locking gazes, and I called my staff to my hand. I'd been waiting a long time for this.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Elonwy and the Professor spread out, obviously planning to engage with a few of the cultists. To my surprise, the two of them picked off three each, all at the same rank, and drew them off to open up the space for us. We were still outnumbered, but I was afraid of anything but numbers. I released about a dozen tier eight demons, and just to be safe, I boosted Asmodeus to tier nine and infused its power into Callie.

"Be careful," she told me solemnly as she stepped back. Callie knew that Deveskane was my responsibility. I'd been responsible for his release, and it was my job to fix it. Not to mention he'd taken a shot at my wife, and I wasn't letting that go.

I approached slowly, staff up, waiting to see what he would do before choosing my method of combat. Several cultists intervened, and I dispatched them with short, brutal strikes when they couldn't be avoided. Finally, I reached the fallen god. He shook his head ruefully. "You're gotten yourself involved in things far beyond your reach, boy. This will not end well for you."

Snorting coldly, I reached out with my Domain, wrapping it around us as I dragged us both inside. It was a little dangerous, but with the Seal and Pillar supporting my already much more durable than average Domain, his presence shouldn't be able to damage it, and it was at the very least safer to be inside than risk getting sucker punched by some insane cultist at an inopportune moment.

Deveskane didn't resist, allowing himself to be dragged inside, and we ended up in the throneroom of my castle, surrounded by the dozens of demons who didn't follow Callie into battle. He gave me a cold smile. "I suppose the tables have turned. How fortuitous for you."

"Nope," I said as I began to limber up. "I'm not going to mob you. That's too easy."

"You realize how stupid that is?" he asked dryly. "I find people like you, who allow emotion to dictate your actions rarely have a good end."

I raised an eyebrow at him. "And I'm supposed to take advice on good ends from the broken ghost of a former god who spent untold millenia trapped in an Impact meat grinder before selling yourself to an unknowable monster who isn't even from our reality. Like if you're going to betray humanity for the Void at least make it OUR Void. You're not even rooting for the home team."

"Your juvenile attempts at mockery have no effect on me," he said in a voice that was just SLIGHTLY tighter than it had been before. "If you wish to battle, proceed with the attack. But I warn you, while I may be unable to complete the step into S-rank, I possess all my old skills with my Domain, as well as a sizable boost in power from the Void Child. I am incomparable to my past self at this point. By the time I complete my breakthrough back to divinity and then from there to Overgod, I'll be beyond the reach of any other deity. I'm not the kind of enemy a B-ranker, even one like you, can compete with."

I nodded slowly. "Maybe," I said casually. "But maybe you're underestimating me." I reached for my power, for the four forms I had prepared for this exact moment. Mephistopheles, my most powerful offensive form. Life Nova, the apex of regeneration and healing. Cosmic Waltz, a powerful wielder of spatial fire, and finally, Song of Arcadia, a champion made to stand against the Void.

"Archdemon," I intoned as I connected the timepieces mentally. "Bennu." As I did, I pushed with my staff, elevating myself to A-rank, and I felt the four colored fire wash over me, rolling through my body, pushing me beyond what should be possible for me to bear. Even with my body refinement, even with my powerful soul, even with the staff and Seal to bear the weight, it was almost too much, it almost crushed me under the sheer awful power of the new form. Almost.

I grit my teeth, letting the weight crash down on me, letting it press me into the floor as my eyes squeezed shut, letting my soul groan under the stress, and all of it just sort of…solidified. Like I was being sublimated. I felt my soul, body, and heart aligning like planets in a syzygy. Under the strain, the thirty six drops of phoenix blood inside me burst to life, catching like jet fuel, and blazed up inside me, seeming to refine and meld the disparate elements of me together under the influence of the four colored flame.

When I opened my eyes, I felt lighter than air, like I had a sun burning in my veins. The four colored fire licked around me, and not just that, but behind me. I could see, out of my peripheral vision, a pair of glorious feathered wings, in black and green and white and glassy transparent flame. Behind me, the tree near my throne groaned a bit. I knew that I wouldn't be able to achieve this state outside my Domain. Only here, in the heart of my power, could I manifest this much of my strength. Four timepieces, four bloodlines, four fires of primordial power wielded against an enemy god in the center of my being.

It was insane. The risk, the recklessness. Bringing him here, doing this, it was almost more than could be logically accepted. There were so many other ways I could have done this, so many smarter, less dangerous paths to have taken. But…none of them were me. None of them were right. This was who I was. What I was. This was the purest representation of me.

I stepped forward, vanishing into the flows of space. Cosmic Waltz had gone beyond what it had once been, especially here. Every inch of this place was mine, and I could be anywhere I desired with a thought. My staff came around, the power of the Life Nova propelling the explosive end that was Ruin as I swept the staff towards Deveskane's head, aiming to cave in his skull.

His eyes widened at the speed and strength, and he dipped back, flicking up his hands. A pair of long, dark metal manacles unwound themselves from his wrists, hanging impossibly in the air as if underwater. My staff struck them head on, and they shuddered and rattled as they wrapped around it, draining off the momentum and trying to seal my attack in place.

The power leaching though the metal was staggering, and I knew it was Deveskane's Domain. Even with his body lacking a Saga and his foundation shattered, his use of his Domain was for more elegant and precise than mine.

But despite that, I realized something fundamental as I slipped my staff from the chains, retreating. Sealing. His Domain was based around sealing.

I thought back to lessons with my parents, to my lessons on using my Domain. The essence of my Domain, at its core, was Binding. I was Solomon, and I was on the path of the Demonbinder. My connection to my demons was my strength. My Bond with my wife was my conviction. My ties to my friends and family were my reason for being.

My staff flashed, thunder crashing as it tore the very air, four colored fire exploding against black implacable chains. I was winning, barely, but that wasn't enough. I knew what I had to do. What all this had been leading to. I could see it stretching out ahead of me like a shining road, leading me to this moment, preparing me for this. I pressed my attack, burning myself at both ends to push him harder and harder, until finally, with a grimace of rage, Deveskane finally stopped being cautious.

With an unearthly roar, he pulled on his Domain, forcing it into mine, manifesting the heart of his power within my realm to assert his dominion on my space. It was exactly what I'd been waiting for.

His Domain was hideous, a world of dark chains wrapping a thousand floating coffins, dark, monstrous things slithered and writhed in the blackness beyond where the chains faded from the dim light that showed them, jagged and covered in hooks and barbs. I drove my staff forward, exploding with four colored fire. Life Nova bolstered Peaceflame and purified the darkness, Ruin eroded the connections to Deveskane himself while the Cosmic Flame solidified the Domain itself.

I barely had the strength to finish it, to push over that last Domino. Because it had all been leading to this, every bit of training and innovation and growth. I'd been heading to this spot since I first set foot on the road to the chasm and I hadn't even realized it until just now.

With the last of my willpower, I triggered my staff, boosting Brad to the next tier, and bellowed "NOW!"

A hole opened beneath Deveskane. A pit of such utter, fathomless darkness that it ate my sight just to look at it. I thought of how many coincidences had needed to happen to bring me here. Discovering Brad, learning of his pit ability against the very Ascendant Deveskane was possessing, learning to create pits in people to imbue them with power, all of it for this one moment.

With the full weight of all my power, of all my demons, of all my Domain, I threw my whole soul against Deveskane, shoving him into the pit, Domain and all. After the purification, the erosion, the stabilization, and then Brad's intervention, not to mention his suitability as a material, it was almost shocking how smoothly he slipped into the pit, vanishing forever as it snapped shut behind him.

I stood frozen in shock as I stared down at the space where Deveskane had been. Just like I had used the feather for a material for Cosmic Waltz and the Lantern Shield for Song of Arcadia, I had just used Deveskane himself as a material for my Domain. His sealing capabilities had fed my Domain, shaping and changing it, and I-

My knees buckled. Power receded from my, Bennu rolling away, only for the strength to come crashing back ten times over as the enhancement from integrating Deveskane into my Domain finally hit, carried back like the returning tide as it crashed over and through me, and out into Gehenna. The castle shuddered, expanding and widening around me. Chains snaked over and through the dark stone, space expanding, and I could feel the changes to the plains outside too.

Forty two miles of Domain became fifty, then sixty, finally stopping at a full seventy two miles. An increase of thirty, almost as much Domain as I had originally started with. I felt a slight stress in the makeup of the Domain itself, but the chains bound it together despite the natural urge to fracture under such rapid expansion, and magmatic veins of Cosmic Fire erupted from the cracks, pouring around the suture like bindings and repairing it.

I checked my stats. No change to any of my core statistics, but aside from the expanded Domain space, my physical body had massively improved. My previous five thousand point per scroll cap had DOUBLED. I could faintly sense there were other effects, but I didn't have time to dig into them. I called Zagan over, having him blast me with life fire, and closed my eyes for a moment while he replenished my power. After the upgrade, my limits were far from what they had been, and all I was lacking was energy.

With that done, I stepped from my Domain, ready to rejoin the fight. I had no idea what had just happened, mostly, or what it meant, but my wife was still in danger, and that meant I was still needed. Everything else could wait until we were safe. Once I had emerged, I summoned every tier eight demon to battle, and we waded in. No rest for the wicked, after all.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The fight was absolute chaos. I was Kronos, at the moment. The glimpse into the temporal mechanics was giving me the time and predictive abilities to operate on the needed level. With my newly enhanced body, keeping it at A-rank wasn't even hard, and I was suddenly able to process what I was seeing so much better. Whether that was my progress through my current rank bleeding over or the power boost from consuming Deveskane, I had no idea, but it was convenient.

I flowed over the battlefield, staff lashing out to jam up the gears, stuttering time to a stop for a split second here and there to make openings for my demons, or just tapping the fighters and spreading the flames of Ruin to them as I stepped past.

One after another they fell, taken apart by my unnatural speed and grace. It just felt…easy. Right. I felt like I belonged here, in this space between heartbeats, standing inside the breath of creation as it stopped before the exhale. I was untouchable, unstoppable, and nothing could prevent me from bringing the inevitability of my wrath to my enemies.

I was so wrapped up in it that I almost didn't notice the attack in time. Only Callie's horror through the bond was enough to break through the thrill and enable me to react. Double Trouble carried me away, even as another horned monstrosity like the one that had gored me last time charged and passed through my illusory copy. "Thanks hon," I called out to her. "That was close!"

Double Trouble flashed again and I slammed my staff into the gears behind the monster's head. The blow jammed the mechanism, stuttering it to a brief stop for an instant, then continued on and exploded against the back of its head. The monster had somehow resisted, squirming against time itself to break free, and after it caught, I leapt back, removing the staff, and all its resistance spun the gears at speed without the blockage.

The small flame of ruin was amplified, pushed forward through time, and it consumed the monster in moments, dissolving it into ash. "What the hell are all these things COMING from?" I snapped. "Did this many students die mysteriously over the years?"

"No," my wife grunted as she flicked her blades, bisecting a pair of A-ranked Void monsters. "These are spawn, not vessels. The Void Child made them, or gave the vessel the power to make them. They won't stop coming until it's put down. The Deans need to hurry!" She glanced up worriedly, confirming the fight was ongoing, then returned to her battle. She'd circled around, her back to mind, and our wings formed a buffer zone to keep the monsters clear of each other's spines.

Above us, absolute pandemonium was ongoing. Dean Harper had manifested into a huge, terrifying monster. Its features changed constantly, seeming to mutate from one moment to the next, but it was always exactly what it needed to be when it needed to be it. Chitin, claws, fangs, ephemerality, strength, speed, a dizzying blur of features and qualities rolled over the beast, whose form changed and writhed like the sea in a hurricane.

Around him, space warped, swirling and shifting as it augmented his already unbearable speed. I wouldn't have been able to even perceive it if not for the underlayer of temporal mechanics, they were moving too fast. It was terrifying to catch even the afterimages. Dean Desmond was creating pathways of warped space to increase the speed and lethality Dean Harper was bringing to bear, creating a symphony of twisted space as he conducted the battle like a master composer.

Above him, Deans Gibbons and Windermere floated in the air, dark clouds gathering between their raised hands as they called forth the power of a single, terrifying blue snowflake. The flake was…painful. It hurt to look at, like it had too many points and edges for the space it occupied, and was shredding my eyes even from a brief glance.

Beyond it, and the clouds brewing around it, I saw a sea of red, the unsealing power of the ritual, tracing out a shape in the stars and condensing into a beam that the snowflake was trying to combat even as it attempted to freeze the unbearable creature the other two deans were fighting.

It was failing. The ritual was too much, too powerful. It wasn't as qualitatively dense, but there was just so much of it.

I had no idea how I knew that. I shouldn't. I wasn't really suited for this kind of formation work, I'd never learned. Something about this one though, it spoke to me. Like I'd seen it before. Not just once, I knew it like the back of my hand. And then it hit me. Deveskane, this was why he'd been brought here. This whole thing was based on his power. Literally. That red energy was Deveskane's WORLDFORCE. Or at least an inverted form of it. Hell, maybe that was part of why he'd needed to fall from Divinity, the ability to create this new unsealing force.

And suddenly, something clicked in my head. "Callie!" I screamed for my wife. "I have a plan! But I need your help!"

She shot me a confused look as she danced under a claw swipe, eviscerating a passing cultist and flicking Oblique clean. Oblique for the cultists, Gossamer for the spawn, she was already perfecting her combat style against these things. I was damned proud. "What kind of plan?" she yelled back, deflecting a tail swipe.

"Too much to explain!" I told her bluntly. "But I need you to let me use your vault!"

"Do it!" she laughed. "And make it flashy. I want to see something really crazy! I love when yu get like this."

Laughing, I spread my wings behind me, Sammael's feathered appendages sending me bursting upwards as I flapped, the ground retreating from under me. I approached the Deans and their snowflake. "Dean Gibbons!" I yelled to him. "Can you hear me?"

"Are you stupid, boy?" he snapped. "What are you doing up here?"

"It's not enough, right?" I asked him quickly. "The unsealing is proceeding and its undoing the seal of the moment, right?"

Dean Windermere nodded. "It is," she confirmed. "At this rate…we'll need to take extreme measures. Clara must have spent centuries perfecting this design. The Worldforce they used is unusually pervasive and temporally resistant."

"I can help with that," I said bluntly. "I need you to focus on holding back the ritual for a moment. Leave the Void Child to the others. I have an idea that should help a LOT. Not enough to matter alone, but it should give you the chance to push this over the top." I tried to put as much feeling and confidence into my voice as possible. These were Overgods and I wasn't even a real A-ranker yet. They would be insane to listen to me, but I had to hope they were.

Dean Gibbons looked at me…oddly. His eyes seemed to flicker with the reflection of a thousand shattered moments, just for a split second, and then they were back to normal. He nodded. "Alright, we'll do it. But don't take too long."

Dean Windermere didn't argue, just following his lead. Their hands snapped up and around, the downward pressure of their sweeping arms inverting as if they were holding up the sky. The black clouds pushed away the red light, and it enabled me to fly up between them. I closed my eyes, flickering into my Domain, and appeared in the throne room. "Brad!" I called. "Angelic Bond, I need you both!"

They appeared, and I nodded. "Bond, I want a door, open it right here. Straight into Callie's Vault, she knows it's coming. Brad, you go through it. Wait for my signal." Stepping back outside, I reached for my power again, this time projecting the throne room itself into reality, up there sitting on the black clouds.

Turning, I checked and found the door, I nodded and then reached for my newfound power. The chains shot out, winding over the frame of the door and then through it, climbing off the walls and into the Vault to bind my Domain and my wife's together. With the Bond as a foundation, the integration was seamless. We were already basically one in spirit, and this was just an extension of that.

"Alright!" I bellowed down to the Deans. "Let it DROP!" The black clouds receded from above me, allowing the pillar of descending red to plummet down upon my throne room. I should have been afraid, should have been terrified…but I wasnt.

This might be unsealing Worldforce, but it was crafted by Deveskane on the properties of his original. It was just backwards. I was still able to steer it, push it along, and I did, sending it right through the door and into Callie's Vault. "BRAD NOW!" I pushed with my staff, feeding every ounce of power and intention to my demon, and he HEAVED, opening a hole in the air from the Vault's position in the sky to right above the snowflake the Deans were controlling.

As the power funneled through me, I grit my teeth and groaned. I wasn't moving it, barely nudging, but this was so far beyond what I should be capable of. The chains holding me together and Deveskane's sealing power within my Domain were offsetting the damage, but I didn't know how long I could hold.

Luckily since I was the one nudging, Callie wasn't actually interacting with the power beyond changing it as it went through. It funneled along the Vault, entering as red unsealing energy and shifting as it went. It took a second to process, and for that moment, I felt my stomach clench into knots…

But the tension released as a waterfall of pure BLUE energy erupted from the hole Brad had opened. As it descended, it hit the snowflake, and the icy energy inside it caught like a high grade propellant with a match dropped in. The clouds darkened, expanded, and the blue energy EXPLODED down onto the battlefield.

Everywhere it passed, enemy fighters froze. Literally froze in time. The storm of blue glowing particles were like a wash of snow as they swept over and around, encircling the Void Child. Everywhere it made contact it began to freeze, sealing rapidly as it struggled. It let out a horrible scream, writhing and fighting to escape, but in the end, it couldn't manage. The very sealing energy that had been freeing it, once inverted, began to not only seal it again, but to convert the remnant unsealing energy inside, creating a sort of extra strong hybrid energy it couldn't escape from.

Red and blue met and the creature was subsumed in purple ice within about five minutes. As soon as it was done, I triggered Double Trouble, letting my projection drop as I appeared out of its path. The Deans caught the descending pillar of force much easier this time, and I almost fell out of the sky, only caught because Callie appeared where I was plummeting to scoop me up.

She beamed at me wildly, peeling off my mask and smashing her lips into mine. "That was INSANE!" she bellowed in my ear, laughing so hard tears ran from her eyes. "Do it again and I'll kill you."

"You'd have to kill US," I corrected. "Team effort love. Couldn't have done it without you!" I was laughing and crying a little myself, and as we touched down, I wrapped my arms around her tightly, clinging to her with everything I was. We did it. We'd survived, and I'd even managed to actually HELP with the big fight. I'd better get a ton of contribution points for that shit.

Laying my forehead against hers, I just let the laughter take me as relief drained every ounce of strength from my body. It was over. We'd all lived. Now all we needed to do was cleanup. And graduate. Which I was GOING to do without taking any more of the final. They owed me that much.