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

[Malcolm Tent]

Since my ability awakened, I'd done plenty of amazing things. Seen places I couldn't imagine, done things I'd never dreamed of. I'd fought fucking undead dragons, stolen from evil necromantic castles, stood on the blade of a sword the size of a skyscraper, and dozens of other unbelievable things. Despite all that though, there'd always been a sense of...unreality, of being on the other side of the looking glass.

Flying was beyond all of that. I don't know what it was about this type of flight that seemed so much more amazing than taking shuttles, but as we sailed over hundreds of miles of jungle, I knew this was an experience I'd never forget.

Maybe it was the fact that I'd helped to do this, that Callie and I had made this possible together, just us, but it was...transcendent. I knew it wasn't just me, either. I could feel Callie through the bond, her amazement, her joy. She was experiencing every bit of this that I was, and as she took my hand and squeezed it, I couldn't help the smile that plastered itself across my face.

"Damn." Said Abel in awe. "Now that ain't something you see every day." We could see the jungle far off into the distance, and behind us we could see the mountains that made up the closer side of the ring. I saw buildings out on the distance too, closer to the ground. Towers, temples, fortresses. All spread out among the trees and cleared of brush and debris in a way that made it obvious that they were long since claimed by forces unknown.

Bethany whistled. "This is so beautiful." She said in a surprisingly somber voice. "Thank you. For letting me see this. I've never witnessed anything quite like it. It's not just the sight, it's the fact that I know this place is unspoiled by those above us. F-rankers and the only people who can get in here. This view is just...just for us."

I nodded. "That's it. That's what I couldn't put my finger on. We own the sky. Sure there are birds up here, but they're obviously leaving us alone. This is...the view from the top. At least temporarily." The beauty was remarkable, but there was more to this feeling, under all that.

We all stared in awe, taking it in. The knowledge that we were literally on top of the world right now. It was a heady sensation. This was a preview of what it would be like, I thought, to be an S-ranker, or even a god. Even if we lost the Impact somehow and never gained anything else from this trip, this moment was enough. This made everything worth it.

It was more than just feeling like a big shot. We were feeling it together. Me and my friends on top of the world as a group. I wondered how many Ascendants lost their perspective climbing up this high in the outside world. How many abandoned their loved ones for these heights, never remembering the whole point of wanting to get here.

This was nothing less than a reminder. To stick together. To keep climbing as a group. To help each other, so someday, we could be here in reality, we could stand above everything together like this and REALLY know we made it. The feel of the wind, the sound of the rushing air, the green blanket of beautiful trees stretched out below us, I memorized it all. So that when it came to it, the next time I felt unsure, I could remember this moment.

I saw Callie's eyes tear up, though she subtly wiped it away. She'd needed this, just like I had, needed the perspective. She'd been feeling small since we left Callus, and lost. But it was impossible to look down from here and feel like anything less than a giant.

We sat, and watched, and enjoyed, for hours. Our starting point was so damned high (and the spatial distortion had kind of launched us as we got clear) that we'd been able to glide for most of the day. Slowly drifting lower, even more slowly for the use of my State of Grace. Its increased hangtime was a massive boost to the already lengthy trip, though I had to use it sparingly when we started to hit a downdraft, at least after the first shot.

Finally, after most of the day had passed, we came down. I used State of Grace to land us, so we could avoid any bumpy contact when we touched down. We aimed for a clearing relatively nearby, and the landing was pretty smooth. Hopping down, I offered Callie a hand and helped her to the ground as everyone disembarked. Taking out the magic map we'd bought, I checked out current location versus the temple's position.

"Alright." I said as I eyeballed it. "Three quarters of the way there. It's about..." I checked my scan ring. "Three P.M. I'd say if we rush we could arrive by nightfall, but I think that would be stupid. I think we should keep a steady pace, and then camp a few dozen miles out. Let the night pass before we plan our attack. I don't know if these undead are stronger at night but...well, they do worship a moon goddess."

Everyone paused. "Yeah." Abel chimed in. "I actually hadn't considered that, but it seems like a stupid risk to take when we can just avoid it." At the shocked looks he got he shrugged. "What? I like a good fight, I'm not suicidal. The less godly bullshit we deal with the better, I'm reckless, not nuts."

I chuckled at that, nodding along. "Alright, lets head out then." Using the map to orient, we headed for the temple as best we could. We made good time, of course, given our stats, and weirdly, we didn't run into anything that might slow us down. Not because we were keeping track, but because they seemed to be avoiding us. No monsters, no animals, nothing.

On the way to meet up with Renaldi we'd run across a few monsters we'd had to scare off or fight, though nothing that had slowed us down much. Now though, it seemed like we'd been left completely alone so far.

Triggering my Eye of Revelation, I'd pushed my soul to try to pick up what might be causing it, and I'd come to the conclusion that they could sense that we were traveling with a bigger predator. Bethany was so fucking scary everything was avoiding us out of sheer terror at her presence.

That kind of...aura, reminded me of Abel in some ways. That presence of danger he exuded when pissed off, but with Bethy it seemed to be completely unintentional, just a natural side effect of her being an apex predator. Once the sun started going down we all slowed to make camp. Yvette filled us in a bit on the details of how the temples worked at we made dinner.

I wished we'd brought one of the compasses, but the search parties had needed them more. My wishes for yesterday had gone toward making sure they all had a method of finding their targets, and the twenty five points of Might I'd gotten off it had been useful, but the assumption that having a stationary map would render the compass unnecessary might have been a bit hasty. At the very least I still had today's wishes, since I'd used the other ones last night.

"The conduit we're approaching is Jainus." She said as we sat down. "The tower master did extensive research on all of them. Jainus has a summoning ability. He creates dogs made of storm elements. Water, wind, lightning, sometimes combinations of the three."

I grimaced. Summoners were annoying to deal with. On the upside it meant the actual undead should be easier to deal with. Heavy fantasy stacking would mean less physical power to offset, especially with Yvette here to help.

The ability to tank higher Impact attacks would be crucial for us going into this, and someone who could take Abel's strongest attack to the face and barely budge certainly had that ability. After she went over everything she knew about Jainus, we set up the bunker and Callie used up all my wishes for today. She traded me another six shadow jumps for thirty Might just to be prepared, and I didn't complain given how useful that would be for me.

In the morning, we woke up to get ready, everyone enjoying the fresh scent of grass and trees as we made breakfast and got ready, then headed for the temple with the sun overhead. Despite the sun being out, the moon was still visible huge and menacing in the blue sky, but the light was muted by the daytime sky, which for some reason made me less worried about whatever tricks Suvaya might pull.

Of course, that was nonsensical, because she was a literal god and being in the daylight probably wouldn't stop her if she roused and decided to interfere, but comfort didn't have to be logical.

The last leg of our trip to the temple was peaceful, more of a morning nature hike than anything, and once we got there, we had Callie do her intel gathering thing while the rest of us warmed up just in case. Going into battle with something like a conduit rusty and tired would probably be the last mistake any of us would make.

Bethy, alone amongst those of us who were human (Yvette was unphased as always), seemed to be mostly relaxed and excited, deciding to use her captive cat as a spy to scope out the inside of the building in ways Callie might not be able to pick up. After a few minutes she skipped over to us. "Donuts says there are other kitties inside." Her gleeful enthusiasm sent a shiver through the rest of us.

Callie, who had just returned, nodded in confirmation. "I caught the edges of the night pride too. Couldn't get any actual information on them, like I said before they're a weird kind of unnatural darkness. We should be able to use the same trick as last time. As long as we don't...where is Bethany?"

We all looked around to find that the vampire girl had vanished. Callie knelt down and her fingers dipped into the shadows. "Shit, I think she...yep. She went in by herself. She seems to be...I think she's chasing them." She turned to look at the temple, only to see the Vampire emerge from the temple dragging a now corporeal shadow cat a bit smaller than donuts by the tail as she shouted after a series of fleeing shadows.

"No!" She shouted petulantly. "Come back! I just want to love you!" We all stared in disbelief as she stomped back over to us, still dragging her newest captive. She yanked it forward in front of her, where the cat laid down motionlessly, its eyes locked on the small form of our team member. "This is Poptarts." She said in annoyance. "He's the only one I could catch."

Abel raised a hand slowly. "I'd like it known that, though this isn't something I'd normally admit to, you scare the shit out of me."

Bethany's smile was WAY too full of teeth to be comfortable to look at. "Well aren't you sweet." Her smile flattened into a pout. "Anyway, there aren't any more kitties in there. DONUTS." She said the name spitefully. "Tried to warn them I was coming. He's such a naughty kitty. He's going to stay in time out for a while. I guess Poptarts will get all the cuddles."

The huge terrifying shadow beast flinched when she said the name. I noticed her shadow was actually touching it, though not an angle it should be. I guessed that was how it was manifesting. Deciding it was better for my sanity not to think too much about how Bethany did anything, I decided to refocus the group. "Well." I said jauntily. "That happened. Somehow. Anyway, I think we're about ready to head in." Hopefully fighting the conduit was as easy as getting rid of his guards.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The fight started fast, and was easy enough to get going with, because the undead here wasn't nearly as talky. He just went straight to trying to kill us when we entered the chamber, having already long since left his coffin. Yvette was a big help. She was NOT, however, nearly as useful as we'd hoped. Specifically, she could stall the undead easy enough, but as a summoner, he had a bunch of storm hounds to harass us with, which made it harder for us to focus on him like we needed to do to take him down.

"How are CLOUD dogs a thing?" I snapped as I used the overlay to predict and attack and avoid it. Callie had a pair if shadow blades in hand she was trying to tear into our enemy with, but it wasn't really working. You can't stab clouds. Though apparently they CAN bite you. I had a wrenched shoulder to prove it. "Clouds are water vapor! Also that doesn't even look like a cloud. More like smoke."

Callie hissed, dancing back as her blades were consumed in sparks. "Smoke isn't full of lightning." She paused. "Most of the time. Someone probably has a lightning smoke power somewhere I guess."

"Probably." I agreed as I stepped off the air to avoid the jaws of the smoke dog. My staff lashed out and passed right through the damned thing. Despite the lack of contact, the monster whined and jerked back, clearly hurt by the high Impact weapon even if not severely.

It took a minute for me to realize what had happened. The life draining feature of my Stygian Branch. I looked around to check on the others. Abel was fighting a pair of the hounds, one made of water and one made of pure lightning, Gabriel was fighting one that seemed to be lightning and water, and Bethy...

My eyes landed on the Vampire and I flinched. Bethy was attacking the undead with a pair of stakes that I suspected were the special ones she got from her father. More than that though, she was...different. Gone were the smiles and the bubbly cheer. Bethany Lark wasn't a ditzy friendly airhead. She was a monster.

Her jaw was unhinged slightly, extending her face in an elongated silent scream, her eyes blazed with hellish light, and her teeth we bared in a rictus of anger. Her nails had lengthened into claws, chalk white skin paling even further, but despite all that, the most disturbing thing was the way she MOVED.

Ascendants have an inherent advantage in our movements. We have stats that make it easy to move fast, to calculate what we need to do beforehand, to pick up on minute changes in environment. Despite that though, the way we move, even if at a higher scale, is still HUMAN, at least all the Ascendants I'd ever seen.

Bethany didn't move like a human. She didn't even move like an animal. She moved like DEATH. Not like a predator, but like THE predator, like the force that comes for us all in the end. A sort of slithering, jerking, clipping movement that allowed her to cover ground in odd fits and starts that almost looked like stop motion. She would vanish and reappear, not just because of her speed, but because of a strange mental effect she didn't even seem to control.

The undead roared as he tried to get past Yvette to attack the Vampire, who had just tried to stake him and left a long shallow gash on his body. The golem stopped him in his tracks, but he flicked a hand and another pair of hounds manifested, one of whirling sleet and one of pure cycling wind. They dove forward to attack, and Bethy vanished like she had in her fight with me, into a cloud of bats.

It became clear as she reformed that she had NOT been taking that fight seriously. As she manifest, her mouth closed, her eyes still blazing like the embers of hell. Reaching up with a claw, she slit an arm open, dripping her blood onto the stakes, which began to sizzle and pop.

Another blurring jerking blink and she was on the monster again from behind, trying to jam a stake through his eye. Jainus snarled and leapt back, the wrinkled undead clearly genuinely worried about the monstrous girl.

I expected she had some multipliers on her stats like the wendigo had, but more than that, something about her blood struck me as profoundly WRONG. It looked unnatural. Too red, like melted rubies, and the thought of touching it made me sick. I was pretty sure Jainus felt the same. I didn't get to watch more because the smoke dog recovered and attacked again, and Callie had to tackle me out of the way so I didn't get disemboweled.

"Watch it!" She snapped. And I nodded, hopping back to my feet. "You ok? It's not like you to get so distracted."

Telling her I got distracted by cringing in terror from an apex predator in a frilly goth ball gown seemed like it might be embarrassing, so I just shook my head. "I'm good, but we need to figure out how to kill these things. This guy is managing to hold off Bethy and Yvette both, apparently the last one she fought wasn't putting his back into it."

She snorted. "I feel so honored that he thinks we're worth it. Kill the minions then. Any ideas on HOW? Because I don't have any conceptual death abilities."

I paused. "I think I do. I'll have to check a few things, but I can think of a few ways we might be able to do it. Don't suppose you can capture one with shadows? Actually..." I turned my head. "Hey, Bethy! Let us borrow your cats!" I shouted at the Vampire.

She turned her blazing eyes on me, inspecting me for a second like I was a bug on a card. I could tell she took a second to process who and what I was...other than food. I felt my skin prickle as my whole body shuddered, but it passed quick. Between one breath and the next, something shifted in her face, and she gave me her usual big toothy grin, somehow less threatening despite the fangs still being there. "Okay!" She chirped, then flicked a finger.

A pair of cats made of pitch black shadows barreled from beneath her feet, one of them hitting our smoke dog while the other one attacked the wind dog that had come at her to keep her off the conduit.

I saw a burst of flame as Mel attacked the sleet hound from the side, a blast of flame consuming the animal as it dissolved into a puddle. The night pride seemed to be more than capable of damaging the summons, which was good, because it opened me up to try some of my ideas.

Glancing at the smoke dog, I used Marked for Death, then triggered Double Trouble, appearing behind it, swinging my staff down hard. The glowing green of poison fire didn't seem to do much, but when I triggered just a bit of the death energy inside, the staff made solid contact with the beast. I wasn't sure if it was the sure hit of Marked for Death or the death energy itself, but one of them made hitting the incorporeal monster completely possible.

Grinning, I turned to look for my next target...and my world went white. One of the summons, a lightning dog, had snuck up behind me and as I turned it went for my throat. As the teeth sank in, I triggered a heal burst, but unfortunately for me, that didn't really matter.

The monster, rather than tear out my throat, melted into me, slipping under my armor as the lightning funneled through my entire body. The charge raced down my limbs and through my chest, carried along my blood and muscle as it searched for an escape from the armor holding it in.

I dropped, screaming, as I felt my flesh cook only to be repaired by my supercharged Vitality and Jessie's stored heal. I dug my fingers into the stone floor under me as I heard Callie shout my name in panic as she raced to my side.
Despite that, she came to a stop standing over me, her face panicked as she tried to figure out what to do or how to help me.

Gritting my teeth, I stood. I triggered Double Trouble again, appearing behind a water dog that Mel had been dealing with, and I shoved my arm into it. The dog howled as the water picked up the charge, dispersing it to manageable levels even as it boiled the water, and the construct collapsed at the same time I did as the lightning grounded out.

I was breathing heavily as I lay there on the ground, smoking and smelling of charred meat as the heal burst continued trying to repair the damage.

"Shane?" I heard from what seemed like far away. "Honey are you with me?" Callie. I nodded jerkily, body still sore and burned.

"M'fine." I mumbled, trying to sit up. I triggered another heal burst, and grimaced as my head focused. "Get me one of those stakes." I said through what felt like a mouth full of cotton.

She didn't look convinced, but seeing the still filling room even now being stuffed with storm hounds she nodded, sending a shadow clone off towards Bethy. While we waited, she tried to give me a once over. "You doing OK? Where does it hurt?" I could see how scared she was, so I tried to be reassuring.

"It's not as bad as it could be. The pain is only everywhere." Judging by her worried expression my joke had fallen on deaf ears. I was confident that was just a side effect of the fear, I was definitely as funny as I thought I was.

The clone came back, and Callie held out a hand, the shadow construct slapped the stake down into her hand and she held it out to me. "What are you going to do with it?" I plucked it from her fingers, pushing to my feet as I tried to force my body to move properly, not that I managed to do so. Even with the healing my muscles were sore and damaged. Bruising, tearing, and plenty of other unpleasant things caused by rapid contraction from electrical damage.
"What are you doing?" She snapped. "You're not ok yet, give it at least a few minutes with the healing. You can't go into battle like that."

Cracking my neck, I rolled my shoulders painfully. "I know. But I've got the best shot at making this stick." I glanced at the undead, choosing not to think about how much this was going to suck. I needed a boost. Afterburner, Marked for Death, Mercy Kill, triple stack density shift, Flurry of Blows, Double Trouble. I vanished, leaving behind an illusion and knowing Callie was going to be pissed about me leaving mid conversation.

I was in too much pain to argue or slow down though. Afterburner filled me with energy and power, but it was going to end soon. Appearing behind the conduit I shoved the stake forward. Flurry of blows made it faster, the other abilities made it stronger, and the ten percent boost to armor penetration from Heavy Hands combined with the Marked for Death defense bypass allowed me to slam the thing home right in his heart. Perfect to soften him up for the finisher from our resident cavalry.

Of course, I burned an Afterburner charge on five of those abilities AND on the actual attack so that was half of my juice. As I felt the stake sink in and activate, I used Double Trouble again, slumping against the wall to catch my breath and using another three heal bursts to burn all the rest of my charges, flooding my body with superempowered healing as I watched the stunned conduit stare in horror at Gabriel's charge. I needed a break.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Gabriel's lance punched right through the weakened conduit, carrying him off into the distance and pinning him on the wall. As soon as he was still, Mel unleashed a torrent of golden fire at the thing, and the combination of all the attacks finally did it in. The stake had been amplified, and given its usefulness against undead and Bethy's blood on it which seemed to synergize somehow, it had weakened the bastard quite a bit.

The other hounds had collapsed into their respective elements, and we were alone in this place now. Callie stepped up next to me. She looked relieved more than upset, seemingly not caring about me just teleporting away after seeing me fried like that. "You ok?" She said tentatively. "Everything still hurt?"

"Only when I breathe." I grunted out with a chuckle. "I'm getting better though. I burned three Afterburner slots on heal bursts at the end there. Plus I already had two active. It's helping a lot." The heal bursts weren't instant heal abilities, Jessie's power was strong and useful, but it took time. With so many active though, it was doing a damned good job of repairing the damage, and the energy was combating the weakness from using Afterburner, so I felt...shaky, but ok.

"That was the right call." She admitted unhappily. "I was panicking. That lightning bypassed your armor and I felt the pain. I could literally smell you cooking. We needed to drop the conduit, and it worked out. I've got to get better with my daggers. We were supposed to be a team out there, but we got split up and I wasn't able to support you when you got jumped from behind."

I could feel the guilt through the bond. She hadn't been watching my back. I didn't blame her for being distracted in that shitshow, but I knew saying so wouldn't do any good, so I just put my arms around her and pulled her close. Honestly I'd been freaked out myself. Sometimes you just needed a hug from someone who loved you. It certainly helped me focus enough to clear my head.

Half expecting Benny to be there to tease me about being too affectionate, it was almost a surprise when I let Callie go without anyone noticing. Part of me was a little bit sad not to have the chance to rankle my buddy a bit, and when she felt that through the bond, Callie snorted and rolled her eyes. "We should check in with the others, make sure they're all right."

"Good point." I said as I looked around, trying to find where all our team members were. Mel and Abel were over by the corpse, and Bethy was nearby. I headed over to check on the Vampire, who looked winded and a shaken now that she'd returned to a more normal state. "Hey there, how are you feeling?"

She gave us a brittle smile. "I'm fine. Sorry. I don't like going all vampy like that. It does weird stuff to my head. Makes people look like food." Her smile faltered, her eyes growing melancholy. "It makes me sad to see the world like that. People don't matter, they're just bags of blood. Some of my siblings are like that all the time, but I don't do it unless I have to."

It occurred to me that the rapid shifting between scary bloodthirsty and ditzy airhead might not be entirely a factor of blending in. Some of her mood changes were probably part of her nature. Hell, given how recursion worked, it was possible the cheerful flighty version of her was a purposeful impression she tried to give to offset the other side of herself.

"So you can turn that on and off? Or is more like a dimmer switch?" I realized if I looked close there was always SOME element of unrealness to the way Bethy moved. I think that was part of what threw me about her at our first meeting. My subconscious picking up a predator. It was just a shadow though, nothing genuinely frightening.

"Daddy calls it the rising blood." She said miserably. "I can push it down, but it's always there. Vampires are legendary predators. In a literal sense. Not just as in we feed and are legends, but we feed ON legends. Its how we drain away stats. The process of preparing ourselves to ingest that sort of thing changes our souls, makes them...different. It's hard to explain. It doesn't help that daddy likes to be all vague and poetic about it."

"Is that just you though?" I asked cautiously. "I met a Wendigo once, and it was...very distinct from a person. Fae are like that too. Any racial trait alters what humans are at their core, it's how we get new races. Those can be passed on to children too, so it's a fundamental change. But part of what makes being an Ascendant so amazing is that we can change. That's what you're doing right? Trying to change your nature in a foundational way through recursion?"

She nodded. "I want to do it this way. I might be able to mess around with synergizing Skills to try to fix my nature, but that could go wrong as easy as right, and then I'm stuck that way until D-rank. Working with recursion and trying to stack my stats in a specific direction is a subtler but more stable way to change." She chuckled ruefully. "I even considered asking you for a wish, but what would I wish for, to be a friendlier vampire?"

I shrugged. "I don't know if that would work, but if you want help, we can try to help you. Doesn't have to be one big wish. There are subtler ways to change. I bet Nat would be happy to help you too. I take it your dad knows about what you're trying to do and doesn't mind?" I'd rather not piss of the strongest S-ranker in the universe if at all possible. I'd help her either way, but if he didn't care I could be more overt about it.

Honestly in some ways this could be a trial run for my intentions to change my own family once I was in charge. Helping someone become something different. If I could help Bethy in her quest to change her nature I'd be a lot more confident about overhauling the system of a massive deity level clan.

Callie nodded from next to me. "Shane can't really coach you on wishes, but I'm sure I could help. We'll need to do some research on vampirism and what elements of it interact with your personality. Do you think you could get us some books? I have to imagine your family has a decent selection."

Bethy shrugged casually. "Oh sure, Aida is a huge nerd about stuff like that. She's always reading, so I bet she has some books that could help. You really think we can figure out how to change me? How do you think we should do it? I've been working on recursion for a while, and it really helps most of the time, but it's not really a change exactly."

"Yeah, I think we'll need to be more direct." Callie said cheerfully. "Synergizing with racial traits is a bit tricky, but with the right Skill and proper research it should be safe enough if we take it step by step. If nothing else we can use wishes to map out your potential options to make sure you pick something viable. I don't know much about racial traits though, so I'm not sure if you'll need a catalyst when changing yours."

Despite the uncertainty, I could see genuine joy on the face of the Vampire girl. I could tell this was something she'd been worried about for a long time. Some of the things she'd said implied her siblings didn't think anything of their bloodthirsty nature, so she probably didn't get a lot of sympathy for her point of view.

Leaving them to chat, I headed over to check on Gabriel, and with him, the corpse of the undead he'd killed. "Damn." I said as I approached. "I'm impressed. That lance is pretty scary. What's it made of?" I hadn't paid much attention to his lance, not with his crazy starlight charger ability, but the thing was clearly extremely powerful, and looking close I could tell it was E-ranked like my staff.

"Sunfury Platinum." He said with a chuckle. He was cleaning the weapon carefully with a well worn but soft looking rag. "It's highly compatible with my combat style and with my charger. The weapon, the ability, and my path form a harmonious system that allows me to put forth my most powerful strength with every charge. In some ways, the lance is the ultimate expression of the Adamant. No retreat, no hesitation, only forward momentum. Unstoppable."

I nodded thoughtfully. "I could see that, yeah." That actually made me curious about something. "Can you tell me more about Paths? You mentioned them, and I know Abel is on one. I have a Path but I don't really know how it works or how to improve it."

He sighed. "Sadly, I can't tell you much. Not because I'm being secretive, but because Paths are deeply personal and unique things. Even people on the same Path can manifest it differently and access it in different ways. I can tell you that a Path is something every Ascendant needs to gain eventually, but that getting one early isn't necessarily a benefit. If your Path isn't suitable for you, it's often better to try to find another one, or just to wait."

"What is a Path? Something to do with recursion?" The vague commentary wasn't as helpful as I'd hoped. I needed a straight answer, but it didn't seem like he could give me one.

Gabriel paused for a moment. "In some ways. Paths can provide some protection from recursion if used properly. If you think of your legend as a mountain you build with stats, a Path is literally the road you travel to reach the top. Lower down the mountain it isn't important, you can just walk anywhere, but as it becomes steeper and you climb higher, you need to follow a trail."

"So how do I access it? I've felt some small aspect of it in battle before, but I don't use it like you or Abel do." It sounded like this was something I wanted to gain a better understanding of. Something that could make me stronger and help me stand out from other people the same level as me. "And is a Path a Skill? An ability?"

"It can be either. Both. Neither." He said with a shrug. "It's complicated. The most reasonable way I can describe it is probably that a Path is the way you navigate your own legend. Recursion and renown may draw the map, but a Path is how you walk it. What form that takes varies from person to person."

I nodded slowly, thinking over what he'd said and the experience I had before. Fatewalker. My Path of the Doom Sovereign was paved with my fatewalker class in the game. Following that particular track seemed to be a way to progress down my Path. Or resonate with it? Whatever the case, it gave me an idea how to move forward.

"I'll keep all that in mind. Now, why don't we go and check in with Yvette." I said, gesturing to the construct who was currently investigating the ruby coffin. "She might have an idea what we should do next. Or if we need to do anything. Worst case we can just move on to the next target." I wasn't sure how we rerouted the ritual, but Yvette would know if there was anything we needed to do. He finished cleaning his weapon and stowed it away, standing with a nod, and we both headed over to talk to the closest thing to an expert on this ritual that we had.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"Alright." I said as we made it over to where Yvette was poring over the coffin. "How do we do this? I'm not really sure I understand how it even works. Do we just kill them and then the ritual changes? Because that seems...too easy. Not that I'm complaining. But it doesn't really fit with how complicated this whole thing is."

"It doesn't." Agreed Yvette. "Because it's not that easy. Basically, the ritual is laid out in a specific way. As each of the conduits gets activated, it creates a channel that links every single one of the people who have taken part in the ritual. Killing the conduits severs the connections between themselves and the people who partook of the lightblooms, but it doesn't remove them from the actual ritual, they just get passed over."

"So how does killing them in order like this change that?" I asked in confusion.

"It doesn't." Repeated Yvette. "What it CAN do, if properly calculated, is reroute the energy transfer. There are redundancies built into the ritual to prevent things like what we're doing from stopping the harvest, but those same redundancies can be used against the goddess. She made backups within backups, and one of those backups is a contingency for what happens if the mountain gets destroyed before her ascension."

Callie, who had wandered over with Bethany, nodded as she stepped up next to me. "Ah, so we're going to trick the system into tripping that contingency so it defaults her manifestation point back to the central temple?"

The construct nodded. "Precisely. But to do that, we have to make some alterations to this chamber, and to the ritual itself. Minor alterations, because anything major might trigger a failsafe and kill all of us and everything within a hundred miles." We all froze, staring at her, and she blinked. "Did I not mention that could happen?"

"Must've slipped your mind." I said dryly. "So what do we do?"

"Exactly what I tell you to." She said flatly. "The changes need to be made in stages along the path we've calculated, they'll cause small alterations that will cascade further and further as each of the temples is accessed. Of course, this is assuming that the goddess banked the spare stats and Impact from the Ascendants who have already died in case of catastrophic failure, but that seems to be a safe assumption."

With the explanation out of the way, she started dispersing us to various parts of the temple. Looking close it was easy to see small, easily overlooked grooves and carvings on the dark stone, Once she set up the ruby coffin back in its spot, she had them drag the remains of the undead conduit over and dump them inside. Once the coffin was resealed, it started to glow, and Yvette shifted it in a circle.

Like a deadbolt clicking into place, the coffin lit up the symbols on the floor, flooding the room with light. I could see why we needed to do this after we killed them, it looked like the coffin was using the remnant energies of the former conduit to temporarily activate the temple. We could make the changes now, but my understanding of Enchanting told me it wouldn't last long. In the other two temples we couldn't do the same because the energy had probably faded from the corpses already.

"Alright." Said Yvette. "We don't have long to do this. Shane, go and stand over there." She gestured me to a spot about fifty feet from the coffin, adjusting her directions a few times until I was standing exactly where she wanted me. "Now. This is going to be complicated. I want you to put a foot on the L shaped symbol to your right, and the other on the one shaped like a bull's horns."

I did. "Alright, I've got it. Not sure what you want me to do here though. I don't have an enchanting Skill anymore, I merged it into my DS Mastery during my prep for reach F-rank."

"You won't need it." She said confidently. "This is an active ritual right now. Standing on those points means you're plugged into it, which means you can modify it with your soul like a Skill. Don't do that yet. We need to get the others in position." She started giving instructions to the others, setting them up in various parts of the room. Once they were there, she nodded to Callie first. "Alright. Calliope. I want you to close your eyes, focus on the energy running through you from the runes. Then I want you to flex your soul like you're modifying a Skill, and focus on switching those two symbols."

Callie nodded, closing her eyes, and I felt the strain on her soul as...something happened. Looking down at her feet, I saw two of the glowing symbols flicker and switch places. Yvette nodded. "Excellent. Gabriel, now you. Calliope, reposition yourself over there." She sent her over to another spot, and Gabriel swapped the two runes. She ran us all around in circles, having us stop and switch out runes periodically, and between all of us managed to change about fifty symbols.

I could see what she was doing. She'd said we needed to do this slowly and methodically, and I couldn't think of a more methodical way than this. Sadly, the longer it went on, the dimmer the lights from the runes got. The energy left in the corpse of the undead was fading. Yvette didn't panic, just started talking faster. She had us switch places a dozen times, and was just finalizing the last rune as the glow finally winked out.

My relief was almost palpable as I saw that we'd made it. This temple had been reconfigured slightly, and while on its own that wouldn't do much, fourteen more of these would add up to the trigger we needed to prevent ourselves from being out and out murdered by an evil goddess when she finished resurrecting herself.

The fact that Yvette could do this at all was...staggering. The Enchantments on this building were sprawling and extremely complex, trying to rewrite them even minimally just by switching runes would be like trying to change the image on a scan box by switching a few pixels. Even with the cascading nature of the changes (runes weren't pictures and had a ton of interactions that could cause untold ripples) it was amazing.

But then, that was probably why Yvette even existed. If you want something to calculate and alter a massive Enchantment by inches, a golem would be a good start. They were basically magic robots. Yvette had involved Benny and the others too, but more and I thought that had just been to make them feel involved. Yvette was a tool that was custom built by the tower master for this exact purpose.

"That was...anticlimactic." Said Bethy cheerfully. "I was expecting a big boom or a whoosh! Some crazy diagram of magical symbols appearing above us and rearranging itself. Switching a few symbols and then watching the lights go out is a bit of a let down."

"What you are describing would have killed all of us." Yvette said helpfully. "We didn't want the system to notice the changes we made. I told you earlier, Suvaya built in multiple levels of redundancy. Triggering the failsafe measures would have resulted in our horrifying and rather painful deaths."

"You're not a comforting person." Callie said conversationally. "In case you weren't aware."

"I am not a person at all." Replied the golem. "I am a construct. Interaction is a secondary concern. I don't mean to be insensitive, but my first priority is the dissasembly of the ritual and the prevention of the collapse of this subspace."
I shook my head. "That doesn't seem right. You seem like a person. You might be a golem, but racial traits are a thing. I guess you were made instead of born, but I wouldn't say you aren't a PERSON. You don't need to be human to be a person. Bethy isn't."

The cheerful Vampire nodded. "He's right. I've never been human. What about after we stop Suvaya. You aren't just going to shut down are you?"

Yvette paused. "Not to my knowledge. I was made to hold the key and aid in the destruction of the ritual and the prevention of Suvaya's ascension. Once that is done...I suppose I'm not sure what I'll do. Perhaps return to the tower? Keep watch over it."

"That sounds like a shitty life." I said bluntly. "I mean, if you want to be alone in a tower for eternity you do you, but if you're just doing it because you don't have any other options it seems like a waste. The tower master was a genius. You're the most complex golem I've ever seen, pretty much a literal work of art in terms of engineering. If nothing else, I refuse to believe anyone put that much work into making a person only for you to serve a single purpose."

Gabriel nodded. "She made you in her image. Did she not? Perhaps you were a way for her to live on after this all ended. A legacy she left behind. If anything, you could probably consider her your mother in most ways. Parents don't want their children to suffer or waste away. They want them to live a full and exciting life. You could leave this place after we destroy the ritual. It'll most likely end the distortions, right. Maybe you can find her family."

I winced at that parent comment, it hit a bit close to home with all the shit about my mom lately. But he was right. "If you don't want to do that, you can still try to live your own life. Make friends. Find your own family. The point is, there's no reason to just hang it up and bow out of life because you accomplished your goal."

She looked...pensive. Yvette wasn't an emotive person. She made Celine look effusive. But despite that remoteness, it was easy to see what we'd said had at least given her food for thought. In the end, that was all we really could do. It was her life, that was the point we were making to start with. It wasn't like we could force her to live it.

"Anyway." I said, clapping my hands. "We should head back to base camp. We need to find out our next target. Knowing them they probably sent a few of the other teams out for the next conduit once more of them checked in. Which is good, because we have zero chance of clearing them all out if we do them personally and one at a time."

Yvette nodded. "An accurate statement. I suspect we will need much larger groups for some of the more powerful conduits. As this one demonstrated, superior or even equivalent force of arms isn't always enough to offset certain advantages. I was pinned down in this case, and the hounds were able to attack the rest of you at your leisure. If you had been less able, this could have ended very differently."

That was the nicest way anyone had ever overlooked my near death, which I was grateful for. I still felt sore, but she was right, we'd gotten lucky, but some of those fucking conduits were former S-rankers. With everyone's agreement we headed outside, taking off for the mountain, though our pace wasn't exactly top speed given my own recovery.

One down fourteen to go. This had been rough, but the fun was just getting started. Gabriel had made a good point earlier though. When the ritual was defused, did that mean this place would become open to the outside world? Without the Dew I wasn't sure how they would integrate with the wider universe, though I doubted so many people with heightened Impact would be ignored at least. A problem for later, for now, we had to make sure everyone survived.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We didn't make it back to the mountain. We called to check in with Benny, and he gave us the next temple. Yvette knew the order, but since we had other teams showing up, we ended up hitting them out of order. Yvette had given him all the alteration patterns to pass to the other teams, and he was sending out groups of twenty just to be safe, and Bethy made sure each group was armed with a stake and one of her thralls. It was kind of a relief not to have to climb the damned mountain again at least.

Lucky for us, the next temple wasn't actually too far away, and we made our way directly there. It was about a hundred miles, which was nothing in the greater scheme of things. When we arrived at the temple, we went about the same routine as the last time. Callie mapped the place with her shadows, and Bethy was ready to head in to take care of the cats. But to our surprise...there weren't any.

"There's no security at all?" I said skeptically as we stared at the squat building. "Because...why wouldn't there be? It just seems like a stupid sloppy move for someone who was...what? An A-ranker?" Yvette nodded. "Yeah I just don't see how this could be anything but a trap."

She shrugged. "I can see every inch of the place. No traps. No Night Pride. Just an open temple with none of the unnatural dark we've seen in the others."

"And you saw the undead?" I said in disbelief. "Just...sitting there?"

"Yes." She said with consternation. "I know it doesn't make any sense. But she was just sitting on the ground with her arms around her knees. She doesn't look shrivelled like the others we've seen. Whether that's because she was A-rank or some other reason I don't know, but she doesn't look hostile. Just sad."

Yvette nodded. "Satala." She said solemnly. "Suvaya's daughter. She was the youngest of the priests. Perhaps that made a difference? Regardless, as her mother's only child, she was powerful. I do not know why she would allow us to approach, we should proceed with caution."

We all nodded, it made sense to be careful, though we had to go in anyway. Yvette took up the front position, since she was the sturdiest, and we all made our way inside slowly. The inside of the temple felt barren and empty. The long stone halls echoed with the sounds of our passing, and we never let down our guard, but we finished our trip inside soon enough, and found ourselves standing at the door to the same kind of chamber.

In the center of the room was a girl. Small, delicate, with silver hair and bright blue eyes, downcast in sorrow. She was hugging herself, and tears dripped down her cheeks. Based on the dust on her arms and legs she hadn't moved in quite a while. She twitched when we came in, but didn't look up.

"Hello." I said, slowly. I wasn't sure what else to do. We couldn't just attack her. She wasn't offering anyone violence. She just looked sad and small and broken.

She kept staring at the floor, tears running down her cheeks and dripping onto her arms, leaving spots in the dust. "It wasn't supposed to be like this." She said quietly. "We didn't want to hurt anyone. We were kind to our people. Mother wouldn't have wanted this. Not the real her."

I cocked my head. "What do you mean? Suvaya is your mother, right?" She was the one who created this whole ritual."
She let out a short, bitter laugh. "Her children were suffering. Her most loyal. Most faithful. They saw her as a danger, and so they came for her. She couldn't resist them. Not in such numbers. And my brothers and sisters, her flock, they cried out for her as she died. They lost everything. She just wanted to help them, to raise them up, to make something good out of it all. We thought it would only be you. Their heirs. Their descendants."

Her eyes finally came up to stare at us, and they looked haunted. "But our people stayed. They raised families, and became part of this land. The ritual was flawed. The moonlight leaked, and our own began to partake of the poison. So many of them will die. My mother wouldn't want this. But there's nothing left of her. Just a ghost, obsessed with her grand work."

I looked around, at the lack of security. At the lack of cats. "You want us to kill you." I said in realization. "You know we're trying to stop it. You're going to let us do it."

"This is wrong." She snapped. "They don't deserve it. You don't even deserve it. Our time is over, and we should have accepted that. The hate has poisoned them. They're all so angry. It's her anger. It seeped into them. But she protected me. Even as a spirit. She always did love me best." She gave a sad smile.

"Don't you hate us?" I said sadly. "For what our families did? They killed your mother. Ruined your lives, and for what? Fear? Power?" I felt sick. I'd never stopped to ask if the six killing off the vanished gods was the right thing to do. It was easy to paint myself as the hero, but I'd been ignoring something Zeke had been telling me for months. The universe wasn't nice, and it wasn't fair.

She shook her head. "I'm just tired. The world is so different now. My brothers and sisters are all mad or dead. My mother raised them all from infants, even though they weren't blood, I still loved them like they were. Ralik, who would carry me on his shoulders as a girl so I could pick apples. Dara, who taught me how to braid my hair." Her tears picked up again, and she let out a choked sob.

"No." I said stonily. "This isn't right. I'm not going to kill an innocent person." I turned to Yvette. "Can't you help her? She's willing to come peacefully. Can't you use her life force to fuel the temple and switch the runes without killing her? That might even work better, right?"

The golem looked pensive. "Maybe." She mused aloud. "It would be quite painful, and if we tarried even a moment too long she would die. But it's possible."

I looked at the others. "I want to try at least." I said pleadingly. "She didn't do anything wrong. If she lets us continue altering the ritual...it sounds like after the changes she'll be weakened. She won't be a threat." I looked at her. "Satala, do you want to try? As an F-ranker there's no way the gods would bother with you. You never got strong enough to bother with, they probably don't even remember."

Not that I knew shit about the six, but this whole thing gave me the impression that they didn't really care much about the small stuff. They killed Suvaya and just...left her soul floating around. This whole thing was their fault. They wouldn't come after a former A-ranker who'd lost all her Impact. Zeke could keep an eye on her just in case.

Callie took my hand, nodding in determination. "Please." She asked the silver haired girl. "Let us try? We want to help you. You don't deserve to die alone in a stone room."

She could be lying to us. Could be manipulating us to get us to spare her. Maybe she would snap and attack at any second. I saw Abel ease into position for that, Gabriel taking up a stance on the other side, just in case. But I didn't change my mind. This wasn't right.

The universe might not be fair, it might be brutal and ruthless. The gods might attack other deities because they were potential threats. But Callie and I were heroes. Or we were supposed to be. Just because something was easy didn't make it ok. Treating everyone with suspicion and trying to kill them before they killed me might be smart, but it also sounded sad.

Callie squeezed my hand, shooting me a smile of solidarity. She felt the same way. Gabriel looked approving. Bethy looked a little in awe. Abel looked like he wanted to smack us both, and Mel's mask kept me from seeing her expression.

Satala stared at us. "You ask me to put my life in your hands, though I have already done so. Even then...what do I have to live for? My mother is gone, and you seek to destroy what remains. My brothers and sisters are to be put down like animals, and I cannot even plead on their behalf. My very essence was drained away to fuel the ritual, and I will not recover. I assume I am to be severed from my connections to my old strength?" She aimed that at Yvette.

The golem nodded. "The modifications to the chamber will sever the links. I may have to alter them slightly, but they will do so. You will be greatly weakened by the process, and you will not recover. You may regain your former strength through the same means you acquired it in the first place, through cultivation, but the pieces of your legend thrown away will never return."

Oddly, that seemed to be almost a relief to her. But she still looked undecided. It was Bethy who found a response to give. "Your people are still here." She said. "Not the originals, but their descendants. Some people still worship your mother. Didn't you say you wanted to take care of them?"

Satala might not regain her A-rank abilities, but she WAS still rocking forty Impact and a peak F-rank power level. She could make a difference here, hell, she was the same level as the king was in Ladrigan. Plus her soul was probably WAY stronger. She stared down at the ground for a minute, then nodded. "Very well. We shall attempt the process. Should I die...I suppose that is my fate."

She didn't exactly sound HAPPY about the whole thing, but I'd take what I could get. The thought of murdering a helpless crying person in the middle of a dirty temple made me sick. That was the kind of thing the Cultists would do. Some kind of ritual sacrifice. I prepped myself to apply my healing burst if needed. I really wished we had Jessie here with us.

Despite the terrible situation, and the risk, I found myself smiling under my mask. I'd done a lot of things I didn't really like since I became an Ascendant. This wasn't going to make up for all of it. I wasn't sure how much of it I needed to make up for really, but at the very least, this would be a chance to prove to myself that I could do the right thing sometimes. That just because I accepted what the world demanded from me that I didn't need to bend.

I think that was the trick to being an Ascendant, really. To see the places where conventional wisdom failed and ignore them. I'd spent so much time learning to be more like all the others, learning to accept what I was supposed to do and be a better candidate. Maybe sometimes it had to be ok to say no. To decide to do things different. Maybe it was important to put down my enemies, or to be ruthless when I needed to be.

But even if that would grow my legend, that wasn't the only kind of person I wanted to be. I didn't want to be my dad, terrifying and effective. I wanted to write my own story. And if kindness was something that other people mocked me for, then that could just be one more story everyone told. Either way, it felt pretty damned good to try.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"You sure this will work?" Callie asked anxiously as Yvette worked on the preparations. Rather than just slot in the coffin and turn it like before, the golem was actually carving new symbols onto the coffin itself. Since we'd killed all the other conduits and would probably kill the rest, they were automatically severed from their connections to their own Impact and the people who had ingested it.

Satala wasn't going to die (hopefully) which meant we had to manually sever the connections. That was part of why we weren't sure if she would survive. This was going to be dangerous and traumatic, and my healing bursts might not be enough to fix it, not to mention she'd be having her life force sucked out to fuel the temple.

"No." Said Yvette flatly. "Just as I was not sure twenty minutes ago, and I will not be sure when I complete these adjustments. This was not part of my designated purpose, and I still believe it may be a foolish decision. However, I amd willing to try to aid you in this endeavor, since it will still result in the deactivation of the ritual."

"Yeah, but we have an advantage this time don't we?" I pointed out. "Satala is willing to help deliberately. The other times we had to hurry and trigger the effects of the temple and the coffin because the dead bodies were losing energy by the second. With Satala taking an active role, we can actually study the necessary changes ahead of time and set up an efficient order and timing to get the changes over with as quickly as possible. That'll give her the best chance to survive."

She nodded without looking up. "This is true. But I urge you not to become complacent. There is still a good chance this may end in tragedy."

Bethy cleared her throat loudly. "She can hear you. We can ALL hear you. Come on Yvette, show a little compassion will you? You're talking about the girl's death." The Vampire had latched onto Satala and was sitting with the former A-ranker, trying to comfort her. Admittedly, Yvette's casual discussion of Satala's grizzly painful death wasn't exactly the most compassionate thing I'd ever heard.

The golem shrugged. "She wished us to kill her. A minimal chance to live is still better than certain death."
"It's alright." Said the silver haired girl with a wan smile. "She's right. You're doing so much for me already. I don't mind her being realistic about my chances. It means so much that you're willing to take such a risk to help me. I know that your opinion of my lineage must be abominable."

To my surprise, Abel was the one who spoke up. "Not really. Sure, your mom did some terrible shit, but so did the six, or I guess the five at the time, I think this might have been before Unity Ascended."

I hadn't even considered that, but he was right. If it was that long ago, it might have been pre-Unity. I didn't know why, but for some reason that made me feel a bit better. I'd never met the Unity, but the god of the conglomerate was the person I associated with the heroic organization to which I nominally belonged. The knowledge that he might not be involved in this was some small comfort.

Callie took my hand, squeezing it gently. She could feel my unease, and the discomfort I'd felt since we learned about what had happened. The worst part was that I couldn't really say that it was shocking to me. It sounded like something the factions would do. I could see where it might even seem necessary, I doubted most of the vanished gods were as friendly as Suvaya apparently had been. But it left a bad taste in my mouth all the same.

"It's ready." Said Yvette finally, slotting the coffin into the circle and then gesturing for Satala to get in. "Don't worry, we won't be starting just yet. I'm going to make instruction lists for the alterations. Solomon is right, we have more than enough time to do this properly, and preparation will make your survival all that much more likely."

Satala smiled at her gratefully and climbed into the open coffin. Most of the final changes to the device had been carved on the lid, I understood precisely none of them. I'd lost my skill in Enchanting, and the little bit I did remember was nowhere close to this level of complexity.

Yvette passed out a series of papers, each one for one of us, with a number of instructions written out on what to alter. Since we had time she was able to study what changes needed to be made and how to make them fastest. Cutting out the whole 'direction' aspect of the ritual alterations would make it MUCH faster.

We were all powerful Ascendants with high Focus and Might. Being able to think and move so quickly meant listening for someone to manually call out the changes was highly inefficient, it just wasn't something we could help because Yvette was recalculating all the changes to the ritual from a new starting point after we'd killed two of the conduits in advance. She needed access to the actual temple to give us the altered formulas, even if most of the work was already done in advance.

Once we had them all memorized, we each took up position near out starting points and prepared as best we could. I triggered State of Grace, and then Yvette hefted the coffin lid back up onto the coffin with Satala still inside and began to shift it into position. As soon as the light flooded the room, we started to move.

I was almost shocked into stopping when she started screaming, but I powered through. I felt Callie's horror through the bond, but she kept focused too, following the instructions we were given in exacting detail, making sure we performed our parts at exactly the right time.

Listening to the muffled screaming from a girl I'd just met, I suddenly felt a LOT worse about my stunt with the shield back at the fortress. Imagining Callie having to hear this from me made me feel a little sick. I didn't even know Satala and I was horrified. In movies, when people scream, it's usually just noise. Loud exhalations of surprise or fear. But screams from people who are in agony, from people suffering true torment, those sound different.

Despite the horror my girlfriend and I were both feeling at having essentially volunteering a person to be tortured for an uncertain chance at life, we pushed on. I blurred forward. Touching a spot on the floor with each hand as the glow flared through the runes all over the temple. I shoved hard to switch the runes as I'd been instructed, then shifted my hands and swapped one of those two with another.

Ten feet and another three or four runes, then fifteen feet. I was using my overlay to avoid banging into the others as they blurred around the room, trying to get this finished as quickly as humanly possible. In the background, the screaming began to dim, and I knew not a single person here thought that was a good thing.

Finally, I finished, looking around and confirming that I wasn't the only one. "Everyone done?" I shouted? At the affirmatives I dove forward, kicking the coffin lid and sending it flipping off into the air as I reached in to grab Satala and pull her out. The runes began to dim as they lost their power source, and I wasted no time at all.

Afterburner, heal burst. Five times I dumped an enhanced healing burst of life energy into the shuddering tear stained form of the silver haired girl. Her skin was waxy, eyes sunken and unfocused, and she was twitching like electric shocks were wracking her body.

As the supercharged life energy roared through her, Bethy and Callie arrived by my side. My girlfriend was the most observant of us, and she noticed the seizure before it had a chance to really begin. She manifested a thick strap of shadows and jammed it into Satala's mouth as her jaws slammed shut, her back arching as her body became a battleground between the leaking sieve of her lost connections to her former power and massive overload of life energy I'd dumped in.

Honestly, if she hadn't been literally about to die from energy bleedout and life consumption I would never have even tried it. Each of those charges was hundreds of points of Vitality, multipled several times over by afterburner and then stacked on top of each other. If one of those was like a healing energy drink, all five was like jump starting her heart with a regenerative car battery.

Bethy reached out and clamped down on her wrists, keeping the silver haired girl pinned as Abel arrived and grabbed her feet with help from Gabriel. The green light bleeding from here eyes as her body seized was much more unnerving to see at this level of intensity. It took several minutes for her to stabilize, her body managing to repair the damage from the severed connections, which while not physical were more body related than soul, being stat based.

Through it all, the Vampire talked to the silver haired girl softly, telling her it was ok, and that she would be alright, and not to worry. Meaningless nonsense that was meant to comfort her and give her something to focus on, but kindness all the same.

Once she stopped jerking like she was being electrocuted, we were able to let her go, and Bethy cradled the still twitching girl and stroked her hair. Not in a romantic way, but just out of concern. I suspected our Vampire saw a bit of herself in the other girl's situation. What that might be I had no idea, not having a firm grasp on Bethy on my best day, but at the very least I knew empathy when I saw it.

Finally, she was healed enough to sit up slowly, and we all helped her up. "Water." She croaked in a raspy, torn voice. Callie was closest, and called a bottle from her ring to pass the other girl, who drank it slowly with a wince. Having recently screamed so loud I'd torn my own throat during my adventures in shielding, I recognized the signs there.
"I'm sorry." I said when she finished. "If I'd known it would be that bad..." I trailed off because I probably still would have suggested it. I hadn't wanted to murder her, or let one of my friends do it.

She gave a tired smile. "It's a relief in some ways. Being free from the abomination that became of my mother's last desperate gambit. Being free of all the things she made me. I still love her, but the Impact and stats harvested from me were twisted up in the harming of a great many innocents. Having to start over isn't so bad, really."

"Weird question." Said Abel. "But why aren't you like...old now? Maybe not dead, but you must be thousands of years old
to be an A-ranker, even independent of how long you were in that coffin. Now that you're an F-ranker your lifespan should be like four thousand years."

She giggled. "The coffins kept us in stasis, but I'm only about thirty years old aside from that. My mother was a goddess. Accruing renown and gathering resources were hardly an imposition for my family."

I hadn't known it worked like that, but I guessed it made sense. The children of gods would be massively renowned and by that token would grow absurdly fast. A-rank in thirty years. I wondered if that was some kind of record. "Well." I said with a sigh. "Good to know we didn't waste the effort at least. Now, let's get back to base camp. I need to rest up, and then we have to figure out how we're going to help Satala." Saving her had been the easy part. Now we had to deal with the fallout.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"I'm just saying I don't get why we have to tell everyone!" Said Bethy stubbornly as we approached base camp. "Why can't we just hide her or something? There's no reason to call a big meeting and put her in front of the group like she's on trial. She's so weak right now, it's a huge risk." She gestured at Satala, who was currently being pushed in a shadow construct wheelchair.

"It's our only option." I repeated in exasperation. "We already decided as a group to minimize the involvement of the locals. The chances of there being hidden loyalists embedded is too high. Since we agreed to that, how the hell do we explain where she came from?" I pointed to the ethereal, silver haired girl. "Oh, this is my cousin Suzie, her parents sent her to study in this ISOLATED DUNGEON SPACE? Or do you think they just wouldn't notice us coming back with a new team member?"

Callie sighed. "He's right Bethy. Besides, like we said, it's not as dangerous as it sounds. We don't just represent the thirty people on our teams, we also represent all our allies and other groups from our factions. Templeton will probably try to mobilize those opposed to try to squeeze us for resources, but there's no way the majority of people will be stupid enough to kick off a civil war amongst the only group we have that can stop the ritual."

"The Church represents a solid third of the current outsiders." Said Gabriel soothingly. "They'll side with us, and the WCP factions and those related will side with Shane and Natalie. Shane is right. If we do it this way, we can leverage our majority to have her actually protected instead of having to hide her away. She'll ultimately be safer that way."

We'd even discussed sending her to the locals, but the thing was, while some of them might be loyalists and willing to shelter her, most people didn't worship Suvaya anymore and would probably resent the assumption of authority. Not to mention by siding with us and helping she was effectively turning against her mother, so even the loyalists would probably want her dead. Once Suvaya was gone, we could work on smoothing things over, but at the moment we didn't have the time.

"Bethany." Said Satala weakly. "It's alright. I owe you all so much already. If Shane and Gabriel think this is for the best I trust them. Besides, I'm sure you wouldn't let the others hurt me after going to so much trouble to save me, would you Shane?"

"Of course not." I said with a wave. "This is all a formality, but an important one to establish a precedent we can refer to after the defenses on the dungeon collapse. This place will be crawling with high rankers trying to figure out what's going on. As the only agents on scene, the current lineup of outsiders are acting on behalf of their factions. If we get the green light from them you'll be safe from the higher ups."

I didn't think there was any threat there, given she was effectively crippled now, but it was best to take thinking out of the equation.

Bethy looked skeptical. "You don't honestly think the factions will honor what their heirs say? My daddy wouldn't let what I said bind him to anything." She paused. "Unless he felt like it. Then he probably would."

"Your dad is the strongest S-ranker in the universe." I said bluntly. "He's also mostly independent, which puts him in a good spot to ignore what people think. Factions have political agendas, and lots of agreements and contracts between them. Involving this many forces mean tons of red tape, and unless the gods bother to get actively involved chances are good they'll keep this a local problem." I glanced at Callie. "At least that's my read."

She nodded. "Agreed. Any big sweeping moves against public interest would piss off way too many people. Better to let sleeping dogs lie. This is, of course, dependent on us stopping the ritual. If a bunch of high ranking faction members get their Impact ripped out and die of soul collapse the six will probably glass this whole planet."

Which begged the question how Suvaya planned to survive her ascension at all, but that was her problem. Mine was making sure WE survived it.

"Templeton is our main issue." I said with a grimace. "His weird power makes him a nightmare to negotiate with. What do you think he'll try to get out of us?" I asked Gabriel, who seemed to know the most about him.

"Anything he can." He said unhappily. "I suspect the details will depend on exactly how the sides play out. If it's close to fifty fifty in his favor he'll have more capital to squeeze us. If it swings more in our favor he'll have less leverage. He'll take a mile for every inch we give him, but less inches means less miles."

I nodded. "Well, fair enough. We can make a binding contract for everyone to sign with a wish. I can get one from Nat or Alistair. I'm already going over some possible legalese to shield us from any of the higher ups as much as possible. I'll probably mention my mom and dad too. Having the shadow of two A-rankers behind me will probably help." I glanced at Gabriel. "You willing to back me up about my mom? Or are you still not sure."

He shook his head. "It's not that I don't trust you. It's just that you're asking me to put my reputation on the line for hearsay. I can stay silent, which is an endorsement of its own, but I won't forswear myself. It isn't in my nature."

"Close enough." I said with a shrug. "Now everyone put your game faces on, we're about there. This will be much more crowded than last time based on what Benny said on our call. Be prepared for an audience." I glanced at Satala cautiously. "About the other thing...are you really willing to help Yvette dismantle your mother's ritual?"

Not approving of her mother killing off the descendants of their worshippers was one thing, but actively helping us prevent her mom from coming back...I was worried that was too much to ask.

She smiled sadly. "My mother is already gone. Her spirit has been soaking in hatred and malice for millennia, just like my brothers and sisters. Moreso, even, because I truly believe she was shielding me from my own portion of that influence. I believe the person she was before wouldn't want to see this twisted approximation reach divinity. Not at this cost. This is my responsibility, and I will see it through."

My heart broke for her. Not least because of my own family's role in all this. But I could tell she was being honest. My divination class, had very few tangible benefits, but I'd been able to sense honesty a time or two. Having stepped onto a Path, I was even more in tune with my role as a Fatewalker, and given the importance of Satala's help, this was very much a turning point in a great many fates.

It felt weird, sort of like my fate sense, but like...the other hand? A secondary ability I wasn't used to using. I could feel that this was more in tune with what I should be doing with my Path, not just stabbing things.

As we approached the base camp, I noticed the density of powerful Ascendants, and couldn't help but tense. They watched us go. Some I knew, most I didn't, but they didn't speak, didn't glare, they just waited. Templeton stood in the center of a ring of people, and he raised a brow imperiously as we approached.

"Was it necessary to call us together like this?" He said lazily. "We've all of us important work to do if we wish to survive. Too many of our own have partaken of this poison. Now you call us away from our work for the sake of the enemy?" The attention from his side of the circle seemed to redouble, and I felt ranks close behind us. There seemed to be a line in the sand, our side versus his, and to my delight we were edging him out.

Of course, that could change if we didn't present a strong case. Callie had been extremely clear that conclaves like this were fickle. Momentum mattered, if opinion started to swing too far to one side it could snowball, and we would be in trouble if that happened. Bethy wasn't going to let anyone hurt Satala, and neither was I. She'd trusted us, was still trusting us, and I could feel how important she would be.

"We've come across new information." I said solemnly. "Information, and a new ally." Satala had agreed to let me talk. She had good reasons to hate the factions, and getting her involved in the politicking when someone like Templeton was arguing for the other side was a bad idea.

I gestured to Satala, and filled them in on a simplified but still technically accurate version of events. I'd been tweaking my retelling the whole walk back, just to make sure not to give Templeton any openings. I wasn't clear on his exact relationship with truth and lies, but I suspected spewing bullshit during this little negotiation would be a mistake. Whether this was my Path, my fate sense, or just my gut I had no idea, but it didn't hurt to be careful.

My biggest priority was making Satala sound like an asset. She was, of course, but I needed to highlight the upsides and minimize the risks. My mind wandered back to a lesson with my dad as a boy. I asked him why anyone would ever sign an uneven contract. If it wasn't fair, what was there to be gained? I knew why the person who come out on top would sign, but why would anyone sign a contract that benefited the other person more.

He'd told me something I hadn't really remembered until recently. "Contracts are a manifestation of compromise, and compromise means both parties get what they want. The trick is to convince the other person that the things that you want are the things that they want."

I didn't need to convince these people to help me protect Satala. I needed to convince them it was the best way to help themselves. Yvette was called up to testify as to her usefulness, and I realized that this little argument had devolved into a legitimate trial.

That was fine. We'd considered that possibility. Templeton wanted to wring some benefits out of us, which meant he needed to put us on the defensive. We didn't need to talk to him, we needed to talk to the others.

When I finished speaking Templeton opened his mouth again, but to my surprise, Annalise cut him off. "Enough. From both of you. This isn't some casual decision. We're not idiots. If we come to a quorum here it will represent the will of all of our factions if we all survive this. You've said your pieces. Let us talk amongst ourselves. Regardless of the decision, it's clear we'll need documentation."

She glanced at Nat, who nodded. No one here had the contract Skill at Intermediate as far as I knew, and even if they did, a lot of the teams seemed to have partaken of the Dew. A normal Intermediate contract wouldn't work. If we were going to come to an accord here, we'd need a contract with a powerful geas. A wish was the best way to manage that.

No one seemed put out by that, but we hadn't figured they would be. After all, we were going into battle against a goddess together for the sake of all of our survival. Having everything spelled out as a real binding agreement would put everyone at ease. This wasn't just about Satala anymore. This had just become a competition to accrue influence over who would draft the agreement that would set the stage for the rest of our time here. I groaned internally. This was why I hated fucking politics.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Of course, they didn't stick us in a corner and make us watch the others deliberate. This was a full on conclave now, and everyone was mixing and discussing, including Templeton and I. That was something to worry about, honestly, but the people here were all monsters, I was sure that they knew what the slippery bastard could do better than I did, and probably had defenses against it that I didn't.

I was kind of lost, and wasn't sure who to appeal to. Despite the new stakes, and I could FEEL them now, this was still mainly about Satala for me. Sure, this was definitely a turning point in history, and the senses I'd been developing as a Fatewalker were buzzing like there was a swarm of bees in my brain, but that would be the case either way.

This meeting had spiralled pretty far out of control, which meant there WAS a possibility she might end up as collateral. While we'd figured this would be a formality, the fact that the negotiations would have such huge repercussions meant there was a non zero chance they'd want to make an example of her to set the tone.

A contract like this wasn't going to JUST set the tone for our cooperation, it would also represent one of the biggest joint undertakings anyone had ever heard of. I hadn't understood the exact scale of this kind of compact, but hearing everyone talking about it really drove home exactly what we were doing. Politically we would be setting the possible tone for interactions between the factions for our entire generation, interactions that could effect policy even in the current faction leaderships.

Which made it important to be careful. Despite many of us being important members of our respective factions, we weren't REALLY important. Not every faction picked their leaders by trial like the WCP. Our cuckoo bird strategy was fairly novel among the big factions. The result there was that nepotism and power concentration were rampant. No one here was a core member of the younger generation of a major faction, which meant everyone from one of the big six had to represent their faction fairly and without making too many waves.

Theoretically this freed up people from S-ranked factions and clans to be more aggressive, but not being part of a larger machine also meant they had less separation from their respective overlords. If a member of an S-ranked clan did something their family's founder disapproved of, they much just get killed.

That said, NOT taking part would also be unacceptable. It was insane to miss out on an opportunity to network like this, not just because of missed chances to make connections, but because this would be a HISTORIC accord, and the people involved would be winning renown from their factions in general and the universe at large if it was well received. My head was hurting just listening to all the muttering, but that might just be the buzzing from my damned Path.

Callie took my elbow deftly and walked us both casually off to one side, making sure no one could tell how much pain I was in. Path then, politics might make my head hurt, but it wasn't usually this literal. My girlfriend's steadying touch was helping though.

"This has gotten out of hand." She said quietly. "I was expecting things to escalate a bit when we all got together, but this has turned into something bigger than I think any of us could have anticipated. We might have made a mistake."

She was right. We'd lit a match and tossed on a pile of sticks, but we'd missed that they were soaked in gasoline. "How much of this was Templeton, do you think?" I asked in annoyance. His power was complicated and hard to understand, but it might be possible for him to pivot a large scale meeting into something like this.

"Doesn't matter." She said with a shrug. "We need to get out there and start swaying people to our side. The final decision here is going to effect the balance of power in the actual team that helps draft the agreement. We're pretty much doubling down at this point." I knew that, I knew exactly what was happening. My Path was trying to take it all in, trying to push me slightly.

This was what being a Fatewalker was about, even more than battle, changing the course of destiny. And suddenly, several different things about the current situation just...clicked. I didn't magically get an answer, but I felt a hard shove that aimed me right at a specific group of people.

The devil girl I'd seen in one of the starting teams was talking to a tall, purple skinned man with curling rams horns, and I could feel that I needed to talk to him too. I started walking before I figured out what I was going to say, and talking before I finished deciding. I stopped in front of him and held out my hand, my Path pushing me to introduce myself a certain way. "Hi there, Shane Wyndham, son of Elijah."

I knew my dad had become a devil from Zeke, though I had no clue what the circumstances were. From the widening of the purple skinned demon's slitted orange eyes, he definitely did. "Elijah...Wyndham?" He said slowly.

"Yeah." I said with a chuckle. "I know he's got some connections in the devil world." Which wasn't true, but it was easy to assume. Not just because of the push from my ability, but because there really weren't that many A-rankers out there in the grand scheme of things, and I knew my dad had made the shift to being a devil to break our of B-rank. "You know of him I take it?"

He adopted an inscrutable expression. "What do you know of how the devil leadership is arranged?" He was watching me intently. From what I'd seen of the devil girl, she was leaning to Templeton's side, and since they were friendly he might have been too, but he seemed to be hanging on my every word here, so it might be possible to pivot him to our camp.

"I heard you guys are kind of like fae? Though I'm not clear on the differences." One of the fae had mentioned it to me once, but it hadn't made much sense.

He waved me off. "It's not important. For the purposes of this conversation you can treat us as a subset of the fae. We live in a territory of the Fairyland technically speaking, but it's mostly its own area. Being the nearest god, the Fairy Queen nominally holds dominion over us, but we're ruled by a council of nine princes, all high in the S-rank and their generals, who are all A-rank."

"And my dad is one of the generals?" I asked, seeing where this was probably going.

"My family falls under the purview of the demon prince Adramalech, and the Wish Devil is his most recent general." He said helpfully. "He's considered a unique resource, and has been extremely helpful to the prince. As his son, you could be considered half a member of the Adramalech faction, and you have my support." He glanced at the devil girl. "Nasha, can you convince your team leader as well?"

She nodded. "Probably. It's close enough not to have any serious repercussions either way right now." She shot me a winning smile. "Just try to mention me to your dad next time you see him."

That was unlikely to happen anytime soon, but since I was wearing a mask my grimace went unnoticed. "Sure thing." I said lightly. I'll mention you both." I cocked my head at the taller demon. "I don't think you mentioned your name?" I wouldn't be a dick about this. I'd try to remember to mention them to my dad if I saw him, after I finished telling him what an asshole he was.

"Markoth." He said, bowing his head slightly. "My father is Lieutenant-General in the prince's army, Malkor. It's an honor to be of assistance to the son of the Wish Devil." The way he said that made me incredibly curious exactly how much my dad had been doing in devil territory. I knew he was an A-ranker, and that meant he'd be effective, but the reverence in his voice implied a certain level of fame. Or infamy I guessed.

To my surprise, Markoth headed off to speak to others on my behalf almost immediately, as did Nasha, and our political sway seemed to pretty much triple. Whoever Malkor was, he was clearly impressive in whatever circles he ran in. I wondered if he was considered an invincible B-ranker like Zeke. Then again, I'd already noted these weren't core members of the major factions. Maybe Markoth's dad was just local, or was well known in local circles.

My Path didn't push me in any new or useful directions after that. In fact, it seemed to drain off after that conversation. I guessed my divination was only strong enough to influence events slightly. Hopefully that would be enough.

Finally, after what seemed like both far too long and not nearly enough time, the conversation seemed to wind down. I couldn't have said how it happened, there was no indication, no one called things to a head, everyone just kind of...knew. Templeton took up the role of spokesperson again, once more making me suspicious he'd steered things to this point.

With everyone already quiet, it was simple for him to make himself heard. "You've all discussed this." He said solemnly.
"You know the importance of this decision. We are the mercy of the masses. Should we decide to put down the interloper, I will do my best to represent the interests of all of us when I craft the document on which this alliance will be built." He said it with a slight smile, as if he was discussing sunday brunch.

Bethy was glaring at him from her place next to Satala, and as he met her burning ruby gaze, I saw him flinch a bit. It was hard not to smile at the sight of that. I looked around. "All in favor of letting our new friend aid us in this important task?" I resisted the urge to try to subtly slip in some references to how necessary she was for our survival.

Hands went up. Lots of them. I counted slowly and let out a loud sigh of relief as I confirmed that we'd pulled out ahead. About sixty percent. Not as big a margin as I'd hoped. Templeton was more convincing than I'd given him credit for. Ignoring the snarl on the bastard's face, I turned to Satala with a smile. "Then I suppose it falls on me to welcome you to our alliance."

Of course, Satala would have to sign the accord we came up with. Not only would this ensure her safety, it would ensure OURS. I might be optimistic and fairly sure of my abilities, but I wasn't stupid. Insurance was necessary to make certain we were all protected.

Turning to Nat, who was waiting nearby, I grinned. "Now, since we're going to need to get started on the drafting process, I wish for a binding geas in paper form, suitable for the purpose of a large scale alliance agreement. I offer as payment first pick of the spoils upon our defeat of the goddess Suvaya." There were plenty of winces, but no one objected. This was an important step for all of us, so we should all pay. Of course, Nat was on my team, so I'd be keeping the potential windfall in the family, but the opportunity was big enough to be worth the wish at least.

There was the usual lightshow that only we could see, and Nat passed me a piece of paper rolled up in a scroll. Nodding somberly, I turned and glanced at Annalise, Gabriel, Bethy, Markoth, and my other allies. "Now, if you might help me hammer out the terms, we can arrange a beneficial accord that will carry us through this battle and together into a brighter future." And with that, our true work began, and the drafting of the Pact of the Fist commenced.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The codification of the terms of the Pact of the Fist (Benny named it, and he'd been so helpful with all of this no one argued) took about a full day. We were short on time, but no one was willing to move forward with the missions until we'd hammered everything out. With the entire group of nearly a thousand outsiders gathered, there were too many interests represented for any of us to feel at ease leaving things to chance.

The numerous bindings on betrayal (ostensibly for everyone) that were thrown in to make sure Satala didn't screw us took the longest. Templeton and his goons had to make them vague enough to be technically applicable to all of us but also not restrictive enough to box in anyone but her. Still, there were several provisions for protections from family and factions for all involved parties that would be useful to us as well as them.

Finally, at about noon the next day we finished writing it all out, and everyone got in line to sign the agreement. One by one, we put our names down, and I felt the temporary draw of Impact in the same way I did when Enchanting. It wasn't just me either, everyone gave some up from the look of it.

The paper that the geas was written on collected power as we went until finally the last signature was put down and the thing burst into purple flame. The electric current I associated a with shot out from the blaze and slammed into us all, tightly binding us to the agreement we'd just signed, and I for one felt both much better and a bit worried at the same time to have it over with.

The geas fell heavy on us all too. Nearly a thousand F-rankers, most of whom had gotten ahold of the Dew, contributed to the binding, and the damned thing was pretty sturdy for all the help. Once it was done, we all gathered around Yvette and Satala, both whom were, while signatories, NOT involved in the crafting of the accord and had plenty of time to work on the calculations for the ritual shutdown.

In fact, Satala was familiar enough with her mother's abilities and personality that she was able to streamline the alteration process, cutting down on the time the temples needed to be active during the changes, and making it much easier for us to manage them in the allotted time.

It was incredibly useful, considering that based on that and her own understanding of the conduits, they were able to set up a plan for us to evenly distribute our forces and complete the alterations within one more round of missions. Satala in particular seemed pleased about this, filling us in on her reasoning without any hesitation.

"Basically, the sooner we trigger the ritual, the less prepared my mother's spirit will be." Said the silver haired girl. "Theoretically, doing it the day before is fine, but if we can manifest her soul body weeks in advance, she'll be much less coherent and much less dangerous to all of you."

Yvette nodded. "That isn't in doubt." She gestured to the ground, where she'd sketched a complicated diagram. "I've been able to refine my process considerably, and along with the information Satala has shared about the conduits and their names and traits, I've been able to work up guides similar to the one we used at her temple for each of them."

"Which means we can dispatch teams to each of the conduit temples directly." I nodded. "All at once. With so many of us here, we can even assemble the teams best suited for each fight. But will that trigger her descent immediately? Because somehow I feel like that would be a mistake." Suvaya was a goddess, fallen or not, weakened or not, deprived of her body or not, she was a threat that not a single one of us would survive alone. We needed to fight her as a group.

"Of course." Said the construct. "We've arranged things to account for that. It'll take a day for the ritual to cycle once it's been activated. The last conduit will complete the script and trigger the reroute, but we've built in buffers to slow down the process. Once you've completed your assignment you'll regroup with the rest of us outside the main temple to prepare for the final battle."

I sighed with relief, then held out a hand for the little booklet she'd prepared for my team specifically. Honestly moving the timetable up like this was better. I hadn't been excited about spending a month sitting around picking off scary targets while checking in constantly back here. This place freaked me out, and if it wasn't the only landmark that would work from a distance I'd have been happy to avoid it.

Which reminded me. "How did we get everyone back here for the meeting?" I asked Benny. "I get Templeton pushed for it, but did he have some method of contacting them we didn't?"

"Alistair." Said my friend in distaste. "He doesn't seem to have the same problems with Templeton as everyone else. I'd have assumed he would be more...I don't know, loyal to the team? Isn't he like your second cousin or something? He's a relative at least."

"Nothing that close." I said, shaking my head. "He's from another branch, which means literally the closest relative we probably share is a great-grandparent. My grandfather is branch elder for ours, and I know for a fact that there's competition. Family politics means that siding with us earlier is probably about the most support we can expect from the guy."

Benny whistled. "I'm SO glad I'm not related to you. No offense. Your family is seriously dysfunctional. And I thought Maria's bad taste in boyfriends was family drama."

"Yeah, I'm not a fan of all the backstabbing either." I paused. "Though I guess with the whole competition thing it's more frontstabbing. At least they're direct about it."

Flipping open the booklet, I flipped through it. "Oh hey, nice. We've got Gabriel, Abel, and Bethy again, plus a bunch of backup. Willow is coming along, she can definitely help." The girl scared me more than Abel did, so having her on our team was pretty cool. "Twenty man team. That makes me feel a lot better about this next..." I trailed off, closing my eyes with a sigh.

"What?" Said Benny, raising his eyebrow. "Twenty people seems...shit." He stared at the page on the booklet. S-rank. We were going after Pallax, a former high priest of Suvaya, or in the parlance of current religious organizations, a Pope. Sure, he was stripped of most of his power, but based on the serious danger we'd faced fighting the last guy...

"Hey." I said consolingly. "At least we aren't going in blind. We don't just have a general idea of his abilities, Satala put together a whole package on him. Skills, techniques, habits, if we have to fight a complete monster at least we get to do it prepared. And with twenty people we can do a LOT of preparing. Imagine the invocations we can manage, especially with someone like Yvette acting as a focus. She's got so much Impact."

He nodded slowly. "I could actually see that working. I mean, we have to talk to the others and get a list of their tricks, but a huge invocation would be a great way to level the playing field."

I wasn't sure it would be QUITE that easy, but it was definitely a direction to work toward. "Hey, Abel! Bethy! Gabe!" I called three strongest members of my team verbally and reached out for Callie through our bond. She noticed immediately and headed over, plucking the booklet from Benny's hands without bothering to ask for it.

My snicker at that might not have been the most diplomatic response, but his expression was funny. Celine also stepped up, followed by Jessie, and both of them were with us, so that worked out for the best. Callie whistled as she read the booklet. "We have a good lineup, but they sent us after a tough son of a bitch."

"Guess that's what we get for being the best." Abel said with a shrug. "What do we have." He grabbed the booklet and flipped through it. "Gold manipulation? Transmutation too. That doesn't seem so..." He trailed off as he started reading some of the technique descriptions. "Oh. Nevermind. Well, that just seems excessive."

He passed it to Mel, who scanned it with a visible wince, and then started passing it around. We all had pretty high Focus, so it wasn't like we needed to read it more than once. "We were talking about possible invocations to deal with the conduit. With so many people, plus Yvette coming along, we can really cut loose. She has so much Impact she should be able to leverage that much power easily."

Gabriel nodded. "Maybe. The conduit himself will have plenty of Impact, and don't forget there are other options for dealing with attacks than just tanking them. We have to land the hit in order for it to be effective. Still, it's a good strategy for dealing with a powerful enemy."

"I don't think we should attack." Said Callie thoughtfully. "We have functional attack methods already. His Impact is the same as the others, it's his capabilities that are a problem. We should find out if anyone on the team has binding abilities. A powerful binding would probably serve us well in this instance. If we can pin him down Gabriel, Shane, and Bethy can lay into him with their respective weapons."

"Nasha can do that." Said a voice off to one side. I wasn't surprised to see Markoth approach. He was listed among our allies, though I didn't know how strong he was. Since the devils seemed to be considered fairly impressive on a large scale, I was hoping he'd have some useful abilities to contribute. Racial traits could be pretty scary as I'd seen with Bethy.

The demon girl waved cheerfully, offering us a bright smile. "My main Skill is Unholy Binding. Not only should it be pretty helpful for pinning him down, it counters divine energy to an extent. Is that going to be a problem for you, Crusader?"

Gabriel shook his head. "Unlikely, I just need to avoid being bound myself. As for the other aspects of it, while I know some members of my faith dislike your people, the devils aren't considered proscribed by our Lord. I'm happy to have you working alongside us." He offered his hand, and Markoth and Nasha shook it in turn.

"For sure." Chirped Bethy. "Devils can be super strong. You guys work for Prince Drama right? Daddy says he has a fine understanding of the importance of presentation."

Both of the devils flinched when she said that, and I had to hold back a laugh. Only Bethy would reference an S-ranker by the embarrassing nickname her father used for him. I doubted Adramalech was going to start a war with the Vampire over something so mundane, so I guessed she would get away with it.

"Well then, seems like it's time for us to get started planning." I flipped back through the booklet. "Alright, I've got a list of everyone we need, you guys want to have a meeting before we go? Or we can talk while we walk. I really want to get off this fucking mountain forever as soon as possible."

That got a laugh and a round of agreements from my friends, so we rounded up our group so we could head out. It would be a bit of a trip this time, Pallax's sub temple wasn't close, but this would be the last one. Once we finished this, we could group up and prepare for the descent of Suvaya. After that...well, I couldn't wait to get off this fucking planet.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We made pretty good time getting to the temple, but we didn't head in immediately. "Alright." I said to Callie. "Can you scope this place out for us? Satala says this priest guy doesn't like the Night Pride, and he shouldn't have any guarding him. With her dossier on his techniques, and your information gathering ability, we can definitely avoid any casualties. Speaking of which, Bethy, you bring any of those stakes?"

The tiny Vampire nodded cheerfully. "Yup." She withdrew a pair of them. "These are my last two. I sent some with Aida and Tracey too, just to keep them safe, but these two should be more than enough. You want to carry them? Your neat little armor bypassing trick worked really well with them last time."

I took one, waving off her attempt to pass me the other. "Better to have two points of attack in there. Will they still work?"
She waggled a hand. "Yes, but not as well. That guy's soul is probably monstrous, with enough soul power you can resist a lot. It won't be enough to save him, but he might be able to force himself to move still."

"It's fine. Nasha, you ready with your binding Skill?" Her Unholy binding should keep him still long enough for us to put him down, which would save us so much trouble here. I had a plan for taking him out if we could get the shot, and it was a pretty good one, but it all depended on opportunity.

The demoness looked troubled. "Yes, but I'll need him to stand still long enough to actually use it. We need to pin him down with attacks before I can pin him down with my Skill."

"That won't be a problem." Said Abel confidently. "I'll make sure he keeps still. Gabe and I should be able to distract him, especially in combination with the invocation teams. I'm like...60% sure no one is going to be mummified alive in a living coffin of molten gold!"

I winced. That particular technique had bothered me too. Nasha didn't look particularly reassured. Callie glared at our mentor. "Can you be serious for once!"

"I am being serious." He said in a wounded voice. "I really think we might all survive this."

Mel smacked him in the back of the head. "She's unhappy with the implication that there's a 40% chance we might NOT all survive. You're not supposed to talk about possible fatalities before a raid. It's bad for morale. No one here wants to think about all the terrible ways some of us are probably going to die!"

I palmed the forehead of my mask with a sigh. And she winced, apologizing quickly as she decided to stop talking. "We'll be fine, guys. We're insanely prepared for this. Plus we have Yvette to leverage our power into a strong invocation."
"Yeah, about that." Said Benny in confusion. "I thought invocations were based on soul strength, shouldn't we be letting Abel do this?"

"Kind of." I hedged. "If you think of an invocation like a lever, the soul is the material, and Impact is the fulcrum. Better Impact lets you pull of more powerful invocations without as much soul strain. At least that's how it was explained to me. Yvette is our best bet for pulling this off. She has as much Impact as Pallax himself, so she should definitely be able to bring some serious power to bear."

There was a loud roar as Randall, who was nearby, stood up on his back legs and crowed in triumph. Jessie, who was standing next to him, pinched the bridge of her nose. "That's not what that means Randy. It's just an expression." The bear paused, cocking its head and issuing a confused growl. "No I don't know why they phrase it that way." She rolled her eyes. "Yes, bears are very powerful."

Bethy, who was standing nearby the two, was trying desperately to hold in her giggles. "Your teddy bear is pretty funny!" She said, grinning at Jessie. "You've gotta teach me how to train my kitties like that."

My blonde team member nodded smugly. "I am an expert in animal training. I have tons of experience."

"You're basically an animal puppet master." Said Benny incredulously. "You just shove life force into them and use it to make them do what you want until it sticks."

She shrugged. "It works, doesn't it? How many giant animals have YOU trained?"

He shot me a smirk. "Just the one. Though to be fair, yours smells better. Plus it doesn't hog all the hot water with it's absurdly long showers. I don't even think mine knows any tricks."

I sneered at him. "Well I can do magic." I flipped him off. "Look, a bird." Callie cleared her throat over the sounds of Jessie and Bethy choking back laughter and I cleared my throat. "Anyway, Randall will be incredibly useful in this fight. Though we'll need Abel's help to get him inside. He can just ride him."

"You want me to ride into an ancient forgotten temple to kill the high priest of a vanished god on the back of a giant supernatural bear?" Said Abel slowly.

"Yeah, why is that a problem?" I hadn't expected him to mind, honestly.

He reached up and pinched the skin of one of his arms. "No." He said absently. "I just needed to make sure I was awake. I legitimately have no idea when my life got THIS awesome."

"If it helps remember that you might suffocate to death on molten gold as it boils your lungs from the inside." Said Mel helpfully. We all threw up our hands, giving her a what the fuck look, and she winced. "Oh, I said that out loud, didn't I? Right, bad for morale."

"I thought it was informative." Said Abel charitably, and we all just rolled our eyes at their antics.

"So, what do we have?" I asked Callie. "You get a good look at the inside of the temple? I'm betting there are some traps laid out for us."

"You could say that." She said helplessly. "He coated the entire place with gold. Every inch of the walls and floor is plated with the stuff. If we set foot in there we'll basically be walking right into his hands. I couldn't tell exactly from the shadows, but I'm pretty sure it's all forty Impact gold. Which means it's much more durable than any normal F-rank metal, and if he turns it on us we're screwed."

I cursed. "Not what I wanted to hear, but I guess it's better to know at least." With that bit of information, we got down to the serious business of planning a raid.

Within an hour we had officially prepared and we moved into the temple as a group. We had several defensive ability users on the team, and by grouping them all up we'd put together a first line of defense in case Pallax tried to ambush us. Despite the preparation though, once we entered the golden halls of the temple, nothing happened. We peacefully headed into the heart of the place.

When we arrived, we found a golden haired man sitting at a golden table, drinking tea from a golden pot. When he saw us, he smiled lightly, took one last sip from his golden cup, and then set the tea cup down. "Ah." He said warmly. "You must be the current generation sent by the false gods. I take it you're here to kill me?"

Despite the words, Pallax seemed perfectly at ease, and I stepped forward to speak for everyone, a bit of hope kindling in my chest. Maybe this was another person like Satala, who couldn't bear to kill their own people. "We are. I'm Solomon, one of the potential heirs of the Wish Curse Palace. Are you Pallax?"

The golden haired man smiled sadly. "I am. I'm surprised you were willing to talk. Are you hoping to resolve things peacefully?"

"We are." I confirmed. I didn't even need to ask everyone, if we didn't have to fight the former S-ranker, we shouldn't. That just seemed like common sense. "We've already helped one of your own, Satala, break her ties to the ritual. She couldn't bear the thought of killing so many descendants of your worshippers."

"That sounds like her." He said with a fond chuckle. "The little princess was always the kindest of us all. I can understand why she would take that path as well. I too find the thought of killing the descendants of our flock sickening. I've only recently become aware of the leakage, and I would mourn their loss."

I let out a relieved breath. "I'm glad. I thought you might hate us for what happened. I know that malice has infected most of your fellow conduits."

"I'm sure." He said easily. "But no. I hold no hatred in my heart for any of you. Not just you, I don't even blame your ancestors. All things must end. My brothers and sisters were always far too easily swayed. I've felt out mother's madness for centuries, I know she has strayed from her path."

This was going perfectly. "So you'll help us put a stop to this? Make sure that no one else gets hurt? Because I have to say I'm incredibly relieved by how reasonable you're being about this."

"No." Said the golden haired man with a sad smile. "I'm afraid that isn't the case. I'm going to finish my tea, and then I'm going to kill you all. It's nothing personal, of course, simply my duty. If you remain still I can at least make it quick. There's no reason for unnecessary suffering."

My smile froze. "What?" I just blinked at him. "But you just said you don't hate us, that you know your goddess has gone crazy, and that the thought of your worshippers and their descendants dying is sickening to you."

"All of that is true." Said the golden haired man. "It is also irrelevant. I am a priest. It is not my place to question, or reason, or cajole. I am not an advisor. I am an instrument of my lady's will. Her divine judgement made manifest. Madness, fear, vengeance, I act on her designs. If you hoped to negotiate with me, you've gravely misjudged this situation. I bear you no ill will, and that will continue to be true even as your lungs fill with my moongold."

There was a slight rumble, and I watched in horror as the walls and floor began to vibrate. No, not vibrate. Superheat. The gold began to glow as he used his control over it to accelerate the kinetic energy in the substance, heating it to a molten state even as we stood inside.

Cursing, I triggered Moonlit Night. Fog filled the room rapidly, and I felt the stealth imbued water clash against the heat and counter it slightly, steam filling the room as our defensive team triggered their invocation. A massive transparent turtle shell came into being above us, a membrane manifesting below us, and Yvette winced as the gold on the walls and floor exploded down at us in a massive omnidirectional wave.

However, with Moonlit Night up, the attack was off center. More of the gold hit the back side of the shell than the front, and the force sent the whole defensive construct rocketing out of the mist and away from the golden deluge, revealing the normal dark stone walls of the chamber appearing before us as the gold formed into a massive serpent and shot after us, emerging from the steam and fog searching for our location.

Which was when a fist materialized from the air and smashed right into the snake's golden face. Abel had stepped up as an alternate for the invocation teams to offset the disadvantage. The snake was made of a LOT of condensed gold, but Abel's punch was superimposed multiple times, enough to even leave a small dent. Sadly that was all it did. I had a feeling this fight wasn't going to go as smoothly as the last few.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The sight of the giant golden snake made all of us pale. This technique was one of the ones mentioned by Satala, but it was on a totally different scale. According to her briefing, it took time to transmute things into gold, and the materials used mattered. Coating the walls and floors must have taken him ages, and a not insignificant amount of soul power. By condensing the gold he made it stronger, and was able to effectively make a low level enchanted weapon.

"Huh." Said Benny as he looked up at the serpent through the transparent turtle shell. "Guys. I think this might be a trap."
We all turned to glare at him, and Celine pinched her nose. "Yes, love. We knew that when we came in here. Also, in case the walls made of gold didn't give it away, the whole building coming alive and trying to kill us made that quite clear."

He shrugged. "That's fair. I wasn't really paying attention, honestly. You guys talk a lot, and I sort of drift in and out. I was working on ideas for new inventions." He squinted up at the snake. "I wonder what I could make out of that thing. Actually, I'm going to use that. Dibs."

"You can't call DIBS on the giant golden snake weapon." I protested. "If anyone gets dibs it's Nat, we're contractually obligated to give her first pick."

"Can you two PLEASE focus." Snapped Callie. "We're about to be eaten by a giant construct monster."

"I don't think it's going to eat us." I said uneasily. "Look at its mouth." The snake's jaws had begun to fall open, and I saw a terrifying glow from within. That explained why he'd superheated the walls before making it. Shit. "Brace for impact!" I shouted, grabbing the team member who was making the shell and channeling Mountain Stance.

The snake reared back and struck, not biting, but throwing its whole body forward like a whip as it vomited forth a TORRENT of glowing golden metal.

"Oh shit!" Yelped Benny. "It can breathe molten gold? I didn't know it could do that. Did anyone ELSE know it could do that?" His voice was high and panicked, which I understood as I grimaced under the force of the blow to the turtle shell. Of course, if I was shaken, that was nothing compared to Adrian, the thin, long haired man making the shell.

As the golden deluge hit the shield, he vomited blood, doubling over, and the shell began to crack. I could see the burning metal starting to seep through the cracks, and hear the hissing as I realized the snake had somehow made the gold fucking poisonous. Or venomous? It wasn't a real snake so I wasn't sure. Regardless it was eating through the shell and Adrian was failing fast.

"Drop it!" Barked Abel, and I nodded to the other man, still doubled over. Adrian dropped the shield and Abel lashed out with a hand, making a waving motion and creating an arc of lubricated space the diverted the gold.

Then he lashed out with a phantom hand and slapped the snake away. I looked around, seeing that Bethy and Gabriel had split up to hammer attacks into Pallax while Yvette held his attention. Sadly, the binding plan was on hold because the golden haired priest was VERY mobile, even while operating his fucking giant snake.

"Does that thing look smaller to you?" I called hopefully to the others still in our group? A chunk of them had split off to help try to pin down Pallax with invocations, but we still had ten with us, counting Adrian who admittedly wasn't in great shape.

Jessie appeared next to him, laying on hands and pumping in life energy while Benny laid one on his shoulder to channel spiritual calming. "Probably." Said our healer distractedly. "That gold had to come from somewhere, and condensing it only gets you so far." She grimaced as she stood up. "That's all I can do. Most of the damage wasn't physical. Benny will be more help for the soul stuff."

Abel stepped up next to her. "That works. Mel is off trying to help the Vampire and the choir boy. I need a partner for this next part. I had an idea if you'll trust me. I need you to get Randall within touching distance."

"Sure." She shrugged. Her bear companion was close by, acting as a shield against the snake that was still recovering, either from Abel's attack or from vomiting up half its mass. I was concerned the gold might have either been part of or be damaging the temple, but at a glance it was clear some of the enchantments were defensive. They did NOT want this thing broken.

Randall shuffled back, and Abel put a hand on Jessie's shoulder, and one on Randall's flank. He grinned like a lunatic as he screamed. "BEAR WITNESS!"

With a massive heave of power, he leveraged Ragam, pulling the other two into the invocation and leveraging his powerful soul to handle it. IN the air above them a MASSIVE image of a fucking BEAR made of green energy appeared above him, glaring right at the snake as it roared in defiance, sweeping its paws up and around to create a series of afterimages just like the six arm attack stance Abel used in combat.

The snake froze, staring in bewilderment at the huge green animal before Abel's bear construct started raining down a torrent of slaps on the golden monster. The impact of each blow was only enough to make slight dents like before, but the rain of smacks was knocking the snake around like a sock in a windstorm.

We all just stood there and stared at the giant green energy bear. "Well." I said faintly. "That's something you don't see every day." The bear was absolutely ruining the snake's day. Randall's massive Might, Jessie's life force to keep up the output and Ragam to tie it all in a bow. The combination of all those factors made the damned construct an absolute MACHINE of destruction.

"They've got this!" Shouted Callie in my ear, trying to be heard over the noise. "We need to help the others with Pallax!"
She was right, tapping the others (minus one or two people to watch their backs while they fought) we bolted over to where the battle with the priest was still going strong. Gabriel's charger was dashing in circles trying to circle around the blonde man, and Yvette was hurling herself in front of attacks to try to prevent him from smashing the others. Bethy had her cats out and was flashing back and forth trying to exploit weaknesses, using them to attack when she had him distracted and vice versa, though to minimal success.

Pallax, for his part, looked mostly serene as he shuttled across the stone, hurling wobbling orbs and whips of molten gold to try to control the battlefield. I lashed out with a hand, triggering Pit of Despair, and he cursed as the ground dissolved into dust under him, catching himself with a golden claw.

I made sure the ground reformed once he was free. I was surprised that even worked, but I didn't want to damage any important enchantment portions. The distraction forced him to sit still though, and Gabriel's lance smashed into his exposed shoulder with a bellow of "RUBRUM GLORIA!"

The priest soaked the damage, being thrown backwards, and landed gracefully, glaring at the crusader. He'd finally gotten upset at the situation, but it was too late. There was a blaze of dark energy, and the ground beneath him opened up as a pair of flaming green skeletal hands reached up and snagged a wrist each. I saw Nasha sway, Markoth propping her up as a bunch of the others funneled stats into the invocation.

"Bethy!" I bellowed at the top of my lungs. "Tee me up! On his back!" She seemed confused for a second, then looked down at her stake and realized my plan. She slashed her wrist, bleeding on the weapon as she dove at his back, slamming the stake into it and grimacing as it stopped at only a few inches in. But I didn't mind that at all. I'd expected it in fact.

Double Trouble. Afterburner. Marked for Death. Mercy Kill. Triple strength density shifted attack. Touch of Tears. Consecration of Flame. A full power swing from my staff, and all the death energy stored in the thing. I put every ounce of power in my body into the strike as I swung my E-ranked weapon in one of the forms Willow had shown me to maximize sudden power.

The staff came down with a terrifying force...right on top of the exposed end of the stake that Bethy had yanked her hand away from and left stuck in Pallax's back. The raw force of my blow hit the end of the stake like a hammer driving a nail into a plank of wood. The massive stacked attack drove it right through his back and into his heart, the death energy being carried through it by the power of all my subskills.

Unfortunately for Pallax, the stake wasn't made to be smashed in with an E-rank bludgeon, and once the staff completed its arc it fucking EXPLODED in a shower of flaming green poisony death right inside his back. He threw back his head and howled, but he wasn't down for the count. I snagged my own stake from my belt and yelled. "Gabe!" As I hurled it end over end to the crusader.

He reached up and snatched it from the air, tying it to the end of his lance in a way I suspected wouldn't have worked for any non Ascendant. Pallax roared, yanking back and forth and the skeletal hands started to crack as Nasha screamed in agony. Markoth roared. "HURRY THE HELLS UP!"

Gabriel mounted his charger, and I could feel the air shift as his Path infused his lance, his steed, and his whole being. His eyes blazed with divine light as he blurred forward, an avalanche of unstoppable force and fury as he repeated his battle cry of "RUBRUM GLORIA!" At the top of his lungs. Path, ability, weapon, and fair merged into a gleaming comet of shining glorious death as the lance hit Pallax head on and SPEARED the stake right into him, hammering it into his heart.

The priest threw back his head and roared in pain and despair as a torrent of white light poured out of his body, the merged attack funneled through the stake exploding inside him as blazing faith powered Adamant strength shone from eyes, nose, mouth and ears.

Nasha released her hold with a wail and fell to the groun, Markoth catching her as Benny blurred over to help with his spiritual calming. Almost in slow motion, Pallax's body toppled to the floor, eyes charred out, limply sprawled on the dark stone as his massive snake construct lost its animating force and slammed into the ground with a crash. I triggered a pair of my heal bursts on myself, and walked over to use one more on Nasha, hoping to help with the last of my Afterburner buff.

"Everyone alright?" I croaked as the weakness tore through me, mixing with the vital energy to create an extremely nauseating cocktail of sensations.

Almost two dozen voices called their affirmative, and I slumped to the ground, exhausted and panting. We'd made it. Our last mission before the biggest fight of our lives and no one died in the attempt. Sadly we still had to do the real work though. I groaned and got to my feet. "Alright. Places everybody. We need to get that bastard in the coffin and adjust the ritual before all the life in his body fades." After that though, I was gonna take a fucking nap. This had been rough.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We arrived at the rendezvous point the next morning. Most of the other teams had beaten us there, probably because they had much weaker priests to deal with and mostly larger teams. We'd been expected to make due because of the concentration of elites we had.

Sadly, the major issue we discovered when we arrived wasn't related to our fellow outsiders, it was related to something...worse. Specifically, the MASSIVE army of undead cultists shambling around in the plane outside the central temple.

"Ok." I said slowly. "So...I feel like considering how many of those look like they used to be local worshippers, not involving the locals was the right call. Thankfully they're zombies, because I doubt we could stop the other teams from straight up murdering them to get to that central temple. They don't look so tough though, so there's that. I'm not too worried about scything through a few thousand random corpses."

"That's because you're not paying attention." Spat a nearby voice. I turned to find Templeton glaring down at the field of zombies. "They aren't there to slow us down, they're there to soak up damage and force us to use our energy before we reach our target. Soul strain and energy depletion might be minimal for one or two of those, but there are about twenty thousand down there. More than a dozen a piece even if we had our full complement of a thousand."

Which made sense. Shit. "Meat shields." I sneered. "Classy." I looked around for our resident expert, who was with us by virtue of us abandoning the fist mountain for this location. I spotted her telltale silver hair and waved her over. "Satala!" I called as I made my gesture. When she got close enough I nodded down to the shambling corpses. "So any idea where these things came from?"

She nodded. "If I had to guess probably the temple. They're most likely people that have come to try to break in over the centuries, maybe some cultists mixed in there." She frowned down at the bodies. "I can't believe my mother would disrespect her faithful in such a way. To have fallen so low. She must truly be suffering."

I personally felt like the mass murder of tens of thousands of Ascendants throughout the known universe was a pretty good indicator of dickishness. Still, it was her mom, so I didn't say that. I just sighed. Callie stepped up beside me, staring down into the valley where the massive black stone temple was housed. It reminded me of all the sub temples, but bigger, though there was some space warping going on from what I could see of the zombies walking patterns.

"This is going to suck." She said matter of factly. "It won't be as simple as twenty or thirty a piece. A lot of us don't have the skillset for mass carnage. We need to carve through them in the most efficient way possible, but without burning up our energy." She paused, thinking it over. "I think our best bet is physical combat. Rely on weapons to tear through them as quickly as we can."

In the end, we decided to charge them horde and wipe them out manually on the way inside. Jessie agreed to charge everyone up as they entered, effectively erasing any physical drain and undoing the damage from the trap. Of course, this was all predicated on no one getting injured in the fight, but it wasn't like we could wait. The ritual would trigger in a few hours and we needed some time to set up.

Yvette had some last minute alterations she wanted to make to the temple to minimize Suvaya's power when she manifested, something she hadn't expected to have time to do. Satala's information about the ritual had been invaluable to us so far.

So, with that said, we made our way down into the horde as a group, spreading out to present a single long front with plenty of room between group so we could clean them all up. I spun my staff up as we approached. "Is it just me, or are you kind of excited about this?" I asked my girlfriend casually.

She chuckled. "This part? Yeah. We haven't been in a real fight as a team like this in a while. The whole godslaying thing is a bit intimidating, but the coming fight should be good." As she spoke, a small subsection of the horde broke off and started to surround us.

Offering my hand, I grinned at her. "Well then, may I have this dance?" She laid her hand daintily in mine and I pulled, spinning her into a twirl. As she slid behind me she dropped into my shadow, vanishing from the field of battle. With a bellow of joy, I waded into the melee. As a regular mechanism of her ability her shadow port didn't strain her much over short distances, so using it for positioning should be fine.

Waiting for them to clumsily stumble into range, I saw Callie appear inside a group with her daggers. I lashed out in the low high combo move I'd learned earlier, sprawling one corpse into two other as Callie neatly severed their spines at the neck and the tendons behind their knees. A followup smash pulped their heads after she disabled them as she moved in to the next one.

I'd forgotten how nice it was to fight like this, the bond feeding me everything I needed to know alongside my understanding of my partner, losing the flow of battle as I blended seamlessly into her combat style and she into mine. Even with the new additions to our fighting styles we had Balam as a common element and combined with the bond we were easily able to keep up with each other.

Zombies aren't particularly smart, so we didn't need to do anything but play meat grinder. I could see Gabriel's people riding through the crowd, literally herding them toward us so we could cut them down. A few of the other groups that had proven particularly effective took up the same position, while the less slaughter oriented waited at the edges of the melee's picking off stragglers.

Step, shift, backspin. Attack, defend, counter. The forms that Willow had shown me were useful and versatile, and stupid clumsy zombies were an ideal training mechanism to improve. One would think that trying to learn complex patterns of attack while working around my girlfriend would be tough, but in fact it made it easier for me to comprehend the style.

Not only did I have my own experience and senses, our combat styles were intertwining perfectly. Through the bond I could feel her reactions to the moves I was making, and even sense her own responses before she made them, allowing me to adjust small imperfections in my combat flow. Callie's daggers worked with her Balam mastery surprisingly well too, the circular patterns of Balam not contradicting the striking maneuvers my girlfriend had learned.

The biggest benefit of the fight though was Callie's perspective allowing me to feel out what Willow meant about leverage. Every attack, every defense, all of them were vectors of force, acting on someone or something. With my staff I had a level that could enable me to act on those forces. Not energy, at least not yet, but physical forces and forms. A stab of the staff into the ground and then a snap could redirect a zombie into another, or into the path of a blow.

As I fought, I activated my overlay, and I felt all the disparate elements of my combat style congeal into one whole. My staff art, my stats, my experience, my instincts, as all merged into one big tapestry of information, and as I saw it, I found a Path forward. Striding through battle, slightly shifting the tide of battle for maximum effect. Fatewalker. This was possible because I was at an important point in history, granted, and even outside this battle I was involved in a historic task, but at this moment, I was ALL the way in.

My Path shifted and so did the overlay, and suddenly it was guiding me, showing me the way. I took two steps and then slammed my staff into the dirt, leveraging a chunk of earth up into the face of a zombie as the end came up and over, splitting one's head. Then the back end slammed in reverse, smashing in the nasal bone as my next blow shattered an ankle.

The zombie with the ankle toppled over and tripped another that fell into the backswing of my attack as Callie shredded one coming at my back without me ever needing to turn around. Callie wasn't on my Path, but she was keeping up with my movements at least. Finally though, the last blow landed, and as I turned there was no one. Gabriel called from across the field of bodies. "We're through, let's go everyone, time is wasting."

I blinked, looking around to see that yes, we'd demolished all of them. Granted, they were garbage tier undead, but still, I'd expected it to take more than a few seconds. "Shane!" Yelled Callie as she grabbed my hand. "Come on, we need to get inside. Satala said that when we start tinkering with the ritual the shields on the central temple will go up. If we don't get there in time we'll be stuck out here while the others are left to fight Suvaya alone."

Grinning as I came down from the weirdly charged state I'd been in, I blinked in shock as I casually checked on my progress before going in. While there was no stat gain, I realized that my soul had progressed a full FOUR percent during that fight. I was up to twenty three percent of the way through orange after that little Path experience. Granted, some of that might have been from my small Path interactions not too long ago, but still.

I made a mental note to check with Zeke and possibly Abel about this later. If the Path was helpful to soul strengthening I needed to know about it. This wasn't like just aimlessly training, my soul didn't feel strained right now, it felt ENERGIZED. It might be hard to enter that state, but if it let me train longer and more efficiently I should definitely look into this Path thing more. It explained how Abel's was so strong too.

There would be time for that later though, for the moment we had other things to do. Callie and I raced into the temple, finding Yvette poised outside the door to a room similar to the conduit rooms, except instead of a coffin, there was an altar in the middle of the room, underneath a skylight partially ringed by mirrors made of the rare silver we'd found in the mining complex, all aimed through a smoky and unusual lens that overlooked the room.

Around us, the symbols on the ground glowed a blazing silver-white, and Yvette stepped forward with a grim look. "The buffers didn't last as long as calculated, we only have a short time to finish the final alterations. Everyone, I need you to do exactly as I say. If you follow instructions, we can finish this in time to prevent ourselves from being killed."

My battle joy from earlier faded, replaced by resolve. Yvette started point out spots where we needed to be, positioning dozens of us for this one last push to prepare. As she did, those not involved took up their own positions, readying invocations to use to slow down the monstrous entity we were helping bring into the world.

Weakened, disoriented, unprepared, we'd made sure to arrange every possible obstacle we could in Satala's path. We needed to manifest and kill her before she tapped into the energy still in the ritual to create a proper body, or worse got to the mountain and used that. If she fully manifested she could use the severed connections in the ritual to link up to everyone who had gotten any of the Moonglow Dew and then she'd be on her way back to full power and we'd be dead. But hey, no pressure, right?

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"Alright!" Called Gabriel from his position. "Is everyone in position?" We'd finished altering the final aspect of the ritual and we managed to get it done in time. Now the building power was being rerouted and was about to crescendo, and we were all tense and readying ourselves for this fight.

Nasha called out from her spot towards the back of the temple. "Binding team one is ready!"

"Binding team two is ready!" Shouted a voice from the back I didn't recognize. It was echoed by two more, four binding teams for four limbs. Despite her stats being roughly the same as ours, Suvaya had been a god. We had no idea what kind of beneficial effects that would bring, even without her own flesh to craft her body, her soul was bound to be freakishly powerful.

Our only potential saving grace was that her Impact couldn't withstand a soul that was too much more powerful. Two ranks was the hard limit for base level Impact, but she'd been a god. Which meant she was likely going to be at LEAST Master Candidate level with EVERY SKILL. She would be like Abel on steroids.

"We've got incoming!" Bellowed Bethy. I grimaced and triggered my poison fire, readying my staff. Callie drew her daggers and took up a position at my side, both of us turned slightly to protect each others blind spots. As we watched, the light from the lens condensed, shooting right down to the altar in the center of the room.

The white, milky stone absorbed the light, beginning to glow with an unearthly radiance. As we watched, lightning began to play along the runes on the floor, jumping back and forth in short arcs. As it approached the walls and then climbed them, the runes increased in power, as did the electricity, until it hit the rim of the lens and condensed into an eye of lightning above the altar.

A beam of condensed electricity slammed down into the glowing stone, and the power coursed through the rock, bouncing back and forth and increasing in strength. I saw a lot of the power arc off though, and it was obvious that not having her body to work from and having to use the backup was costing her most of the stats she'd saved up from the conduits.

Despite the leakage, I saw the stone begin to flake and crumble, bits of it falling off and chipping away with each arc until it was all gone and all that remained was a female body. The electricity condensed into a set of flowing silver robes and then hair, and with an explosion of power, Suvaya, goddess of the moon, stood and took her first breath in the mortal world for thousands of years.

Eyes still closed, she tilted her head back, exhaling the same silvery mist that condensed over the lightblooms. As she did, her skin shifted, changing to become actual flesh from the stone it had been. Her eyes opened, swirling silver orbs that seemed to focus on all of us and none of us.

"Blood of my destroyers." She purred, her head cocking to one side like a hungry cat. "You've robbed me of my flesh." She glanced down at herself. "This form is...weak. You've killed my chosen. Or at least, most of them. Is that my own daughter I see behind you?"

Satala flinched, but took a deep breath and pulled herself up straight. "Yes, mother. It is. This ritual was wrong. Our own people were going to be harvested. The descendants of those we swore to protect. I understand your anger, but I refuse to allow this."

"You...understand my anger?" Said the goddess coldly. "You understand NOTHING!" Her eyes were wide with rage as she hissed at her daughter. "You accomplished nothing in your life I didn't give you. I CREATED you. And now you side with our enemies over some thin blooded descendants of the sheep who fawned over you?"

The younger silver haired woman looked wounded. "Mother, you taught me guarding our flock was out most important duty. That we needed to protect them above all else."

Suvaya laughed, a harsh, brittle sound. "Our flock? Tell me, do you think the inhabitants of this barren rock are all the descendants of those who worshipped me? Do you think I became a goddess on the belief of a few thousand or even a few million adherents? Where are the rest, Satala? Where are the prayers, the devotions, where are the beliefs? Why are the only worshippers I sense a few hidden cultists caught in this trap of my own devising?"

Seeing her daughter at a loss, the goddess smiled cruelly. "They're gone. All of them. Not dead, not at first. Defected. I was cast down, and they all turned their backs. Only a few of them made their way to this place when I called, before I was able to erect the distortions keeping the dungeon hidden. The rest turned their adoration to others, to the very gods that killed me. Tell me, then, what care I should show them? What duty I have?"

"But the ones who came were your most faithful!" Protested Satala. "They stood by you through the worst. Their descendants deserve our respect and loyalty."

"Their descendants deserve NOTHING!" Roared the maddened goddess. "Simpering cowards too weak to make their way without me. Did they speak up when the others left? Did they spread the word of their goddess? Look at the state of them. A fringe cult hidden inside a population of millions, barely any worship to speak of."

I decided pointing out how hypocritical it was being pissed at the ones who betrayed her and the ones that didn't equally wasn't a great idea, so I kept quiet, but my hand tightened around my staff as I readied for combat.

Satala shook her head sadly. "You've lost your way. I refuse to stand by while you do this. I won't attack you, mother, I could never, but I stand with our people. Take that as you will." Her tone was blunt and forceful and her jaw was clenched stubbornly as she spoke. It was clear she meant every word of it. Which was a good distraction for the skeletal hand that erupted from the floor to grab onto Suvaya's left arm.

The goddess's silver eyes narrowed in rage, but before she could react, a massive root ripped out of the ground and encircled her leg up to the knee, then a golden chain encircled her other leg, while the tail of a massive ethereal fox grabbed her remaining wrist. All four binding teams had moved like a well oiled machine to lock her down.

Bethy stepped forward, ripping open her palms and splattering her blood on the floor. As the blood touched the stone ripples of change rolled across the ground. Grass, grew, the earth shifted, and as we watched in shock and hill under a blood red sky manifested in the real world.

Our usually jovial and flighty vampire friend was glaring at the goddess, her eyes blood red all the way through, no iris or pupil, even as blood dripped from her tear ducts. Despite the sky, there was no moon, with the red light beaming from behind the clouds and illuminating the hillside.

"Domain." I murmured in shock. That made a bit of sense, considering all the stories about the Vampire, but it opened up so many more questions. Those would have to wait though, because it was clear Bethy couldn't hold this for long.

Above us, a green bear with six arms roared in defiance as Abel and Jessie pulled their new trick, and several other groups triggered invocations, lashing out at the restrained former deity. Fists, blades, animals, poison, every one of us let loose at her. I triggered Double Trouble, slamming the butt of my staff into the base of her skull with Mercy Kill, Marked for Death, Flurry of Blows, and any other useful ability I could manage tacked on.

Her head jerked forward with a hiss and she whirled to glare at me, tearing THROUGH the skeletal binding and the root as she dove for me. There was a rush of darkness and cold as Callie yanked me through my own shadow, pulling me out of the way as the goddess's fist slammed into the air where I'd been so hard that the shockwave cracked the stone. Abel's condensed green punch smashed into the back of her head, pitching her forward, even as Gabriel's lance slammed into her kidney.

Snarling, she stomped down hard, tearing away the last two bindings with an explosion of force as she cratered the stone beneath herself and unleashed a wave of white flame that threw everyone back and off their feet. Abel, Jessie, Randall, and Benny, who were trying to recover, would have been sitting ducks for that burst except Valk erected a shield of blue gel in front of them to soak up the fire, though it started melting on contact.

Callie hissed in distress as she looked around. "Shit!" She cursed. "We lost all four binding teams and like eight of the attack teams."

"Gods, are they dead?" I asked in horror. "And thanks for saving me there Cal, if my head had still been there you'd have had to hose me off the walls."

"Of course." She said with a wan smile. "And no, not dead as far as I can tell, the breaking of the bindings soaked up a lot of the damage. Unconscious though, and not in good shape. I managed to pick up which were the worst when I was in the shadows, Jessie is already on it. We need someone to pin her down while we get situated again! If we can't catch our breath we're screwed!"

Suvaya spun in circles, staring at the blood colored light and washed out grass until she finally found Bethy. Our vampire friend was still up, though she was nursing a broken and burned leg. Yvette appeared in front of her, Satala next to to her. The goddess sneered at her daughter. "I thought you couldn't bear to harm me?"

"I can't." Said the silver haired girl sadly. "But I can't let you hurt my friend either. Bethany has been nothing but kind to me. I can't just stand by while you harm her."

While she stalled, I was trying to get my head on straight. This temple was big, but we'd decided early on that trying to mob her would just result in casualties. Most of the weaker members of the raid had been sorted into the teams, tens or more of them helping fuel invocations to minimize the attack vectors. Unfortunately the attack that had crushed so many of those manifestations had knocked out a ton of people.

I caught Gabriel's eye, and he gestured for me to come over. Snagging Callie I triggered Double Trouble, appearing behind him without covering the intervening space. "Ok, what the hell do we do?" I asked the crusader tensely. "This is a fucking train wreck, we've got dozens of wounded, and potentially a few dead. We planned this out to the most minute detail and it still wasn't enough."

Looking to where Yvette had engaged Suvaya with Satala supporting defensively to protect Bethy, I grimaced at the image of them getting knocked around. Bethy's Domain was weakening the fallen goddess, and it still wasn't enough to offset the advantage. Not in raw power, but in sheer skill level.

He grimaced, then looked to me and then Abel. He frowned slightly, then nodded. "Alright. I think I have an idea. We need to get over to where Apollyon is. We might have a way to offset her advantage, but it's going to be tough to pull off, and I'm going to need to teach you both some more about Paths." I winced. I had a feeling this was going to be tough to pull off.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"So...you're sure this will work?" I asked Gabriel suspiciously. "Because...I feel like it probably shouldn't based on everything I've heard about Paths so far." From what I could tell, paths were a deeply personal and unique thing that made it possible for Ascendants to climb to a higher level after becoming a Master. That last bit was conjecture, of course, but it lined up with the obscure 'something else' Zeke had mentioned needing to advance to D-rank.

"Not at all." He said bluntly. "I wouldn't even suggest trying it if we weren't both about to die and in possession of these." He held up a hand with a pair of glowing rings on it. "I took the opportunity afforded by our comrades distraction to approach Alistair and wish for the catalysts that I believe will allow us to pull this off."

"What did you pay him for them?" I said, picking one of the rings up to marvel at the delicate craftsmanship and the surreal glowing metal.

He gave me a flat look. "His life. I said we would save him if he gave them to me. He seemed to think it was a fair deal. Wouldn't have worked with you or Natalie, since you're friends and I planned on doing that in any case, but I find Alistair repugnant at best, and his death wouldn't be particularly sad for me."

"Huh." I said with a nod. "Makes sense. What happens in you fail to save him though?"

The big crusader just shrugged. "Well, we'll most likely all be dead, so probably not much. But that seems like a problem for future Gabriel."

I laughed and slipped a ring on. "Fair enough. Let's do this then." I turned to my mentor, who had been unusually quiet. "You capable of this Abel? Honestly I wouldn't blame you if you're not. I have no clue how I access my path most of the time. These Resonance Rings will do the job, but we have to supply the fuel. I'm honestly shocked an F-ranked candidate could make something like this."

"It's single use." Said Gabriel flatly. "They both are. They're linked to me because my Path seems to be the one best suited for this. Not that the both of you aren't going to be an important part of this."

I waved him off. "I get it, don't sweat that part. You'll be the one to finish this, I have no issues teeing up a winning shot."
That said, the rings were...weird. I wasn't sure how I felt about using them. Gabriel had warned us that the magic items could have some odd side effects for a bit. The necessary mechanism for pulling off the crusader's plan was going to make this deeply unpleasant to experience.

When Abel finally nodded, now focused on losing himself in his own Path in preparation, I decided to cut the chatter too. I stepped back as Gabriel mounted his starlight charger, bringing his lance to bare. I wanted to stack a bunch of skills and abilities on it, but I knew that wasn't going to be helpful. Not for this. I'd need every ounce of soul strength I had to use these rings. Especially given they would be breaking down even as we formed the connection.

Unfortunately, this wouldn't be a quick process, at least not based on what Gabriel said. We needed time, which meant we needed a distraction. Yvette was doing her best, but the golem wasn't up to handling Suvaya. Despite being made of magical stones like the former goddess's new body, Yvette didn't have all the overpowered Skills and the terrifying soul the moon goddess could bring to bear.

That said, the golem was doing better than I had feared she might. Her blurring form and fluid movements allowed her to at least attempt to keep up with the silver haired beast she was fighting. Satala was trying to cut in to prevent Yvette from becoming too damaged, but she was also guarding Bethy, whose Domain was hamstringing her mother enough for any of us to survive this.

For every blow that Suvaya took, Yvette took two, and they did more damage. Luckily for us, most of the teams were still in the game. A massive black flaming demon avatar joined manifested above Suvaya with a howl, and I saw Markoth standing over Nasha protectively with several other people joining hands to fuel his construct.

The turtle shell we'd used to escape Pallax came into shape around Satala and Bethy, and I spotted one of the Dew users with higher Impact channeling that one, alongside what looked like a twin to share the burden, supported by a crowd of Ascendants helping power the invocation.

Our second wind came as all the teams who hadn't been knocked flat in the first wave came together to help pin the vengeful deity while we got ready. Exhaling loudly, I closed my eyes, feeling Callie take up position next to me to protect me as I let myself drift down the connection to the ring.

It was...weird. The sensation of being two people and also one person and then suddenly three people when Abel joined was strange. This had been the plan, the Resonance Rings were unique as far as we knew, and if they hadn't been single use and basically disposable quality trash they probably would have been to expensive to wish for.

The ones we'd gotten left us to do the heavy lifting, but that was fine. I felt my place in our shared head, Gabriel's head, and Abel's as well. Gabriel was the momentum, the power and the force. I was the understanding, the guiding hand that lit the way, and Abel was the determination, the unflinching force of will.

Gabriel was a brilliant fighter with a lot of momentum, but he wasn't Abel. Being invincible might be good for confidence, but Abel's personality was tough as diamond. The combination, guided by my Fatewalker instincts and the overlay, would be a winning one, if we could pull this off.

The world in front of me superimposed itself as my mind joined with his and Abel's. I saw the temple from atop a starlight charger, staring down at my enemies from my invincible perch. Pushing with my soul, I triggered my overlay, and I saw the world resolve into a series of golden arrows. As we focused, I also felt a deep upwelling of fierce violent determination, like blood welling up from a puncture, and Abel was there besides us.

We had to adjust for a second, three souls weren't meant to exist in one body. I felt my soul begin to groan under the pressure as the ring on my hand cracked and spat, coming apart violently as it threatened to drag me back into my own head. I pushed myself back down the link, despite the blood I could feel leaking from my eyes, ears and nose.

I made a mental note. Just because wishes CAN let you do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD do it. This wasn't natural. It was wrong and it was killing me. Still, it was already happening, and I shoved the damage and pain to the side, just as Abel did. Gabriel was mostly fine, thankfully, so the host body was holding up.

As one, the three of us threw back our head, roaring out in defiance. "RUBRUM GLORIA!" And we charged. The sound of starlight hooves on black stone was like thunder carrying us to victory, the lance shone with a blinding golden light, and the full weight of all three of us propelled us to glory. An Invincible spear, guided by Fate, and propelled by Blood, slammed into the formerly stone body of the goddess and sent her into a spin as we rode past.

Swinging around at the end of our charge, we saw the damage it had done, blood gushing from the hole in her shoulder as she glared at us. "Insipid children!" She hissed. "What is this abomination? You're tearing yourselves apart. To pervert the natural order in such a way is blasphemy."

We didn't bother responding. We charged. The feeling of being spurred on by the momentum of every victory, like a snowball rolling downhill and gathering speed, was intoxicating, and pushing it forward was the unbreakable will to do battle at any cost, my mentor's lust for blood and combat accelerating us. Three Paths superimposed on top of each other, and I could feel my soul about to collapse with the sheer power of it.

She was right, this was unnatural. But I didn't care. I wasn't going to let her hurt my friends, wasn't going to let her take anyone I loved from me. I'd had enough of ineffable forces snatching away people I loved without my permission. The WCP waves a hand and my dad leaves, my dad decides she should go and my mom leaves. I wasn't letting someone take away anyone else. Not Benny, not Jessie, and CERTAINLY not Callie.

The second pass slammed right into her chest, the glowing lance crashing into her sternum, lifting her off the ground and carrying her back. She howled in rage, hands going up and conjuring a giant spectral moon behind her, bringing it slamming down on our heads like a boulder.

Before it could hit though, a swarm of bats flooded the air above us, overwhelming the image and holding it back. Not just bats though. Silver bats. I glanced over at Bethy (with my own normal bloody eyes somehow) and saw her latched onto Satala, drinking from her wrist with her eyes blazing the same blood red, except this time with silver irises.

I was jarred back to the present by the impact against the wall as the lance slammed THROUGH Suvaya's chest and heart, pinning her against the black stone. She was snarling in rage, and she started to actually PULL herself down the lance an inch at a time trying to get to us.

My soul was cracked and nearing shattering, I had nothing left in me, and the damned overlay faded but the rings were still holding on, leaving me trapped in Gabriel's body. I wasn't sure what would happen to us if we got killed in here, but I doubted it'd be good. Gabriel couldn't move, having channeled too much power himself tapping into the Paths all at once, and Abel had nothing left in him.

I watched the made face of the enraged goddess draw closer and closer to us, teeth pulled back in a rictus of hate as she reached for us with deceptively small hands, ready to crush us into pulp. And then a black staff smashed down on her head with a crack. I felt my bond with Callie manifest more strongly as I realized she'd taken my staff and was using our connection to wield it.

There was no style to it, no form or martial arts. Just rage and frustration as she hauled off like she was beating a pinata and slammed the staff down on Suvaya's skull over and over again. "Don't." Slam. "Touch." Slam. "My." Slam. "FUCKING BOYFRIEND!" That last smash included every ounce of death energy stored up in the staff since the fight with Pallax, including all the energy it had just harvested from Suvaya herself.

By the time she was done, the goddess's skull was shattered and her head was basically pulp, the E-ranked staff having completely decimated the formerly stone head. Callie was standing over her, panting as she gripped the staff and stared down at the body of the fallen goddess.

I grinned in my normal body as the ring finally shattered, catapulting me back into my body along with Abel. Callie, who had stepped into the shadows as she felt me revert through the bond, caught me and lowered me to the ground as she appeared behind me, and I smiled up at her in relief. I was still smiling as the world faded to black. It was all over.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I woke up with my head killing me. Which was pretty nostalgic, because I'd managed to avoid knocking myself out from overexertion for quite some time. "Did anyone get the number of that planet sized truck that hit me?" I groaned without opening my eyes.

"Pretty sure that was just the feeling of being blindsided by your own stupidity." Drawled a familiar voice that I hadn't heard in what felt like forever.

I shot bolt upright in bed, eyes flying open as I twisted to find my uncle draped across a couch, quaffing a relatively large bottle of liquor. "Zeke!" I said with delight. "You're here! That must mean..."

"The distortion is gone? Definitely. It collapsed when the moon cracked. You missed quite a show." He scanned me over, obviously checking for damage. "Though you put a pretty decent one on yourself. That was pretty shocking. I was almost impressed."

My grin was smug. "Because I killed a god? I bet you've never done that. Well...Callie killed a god actually. Is she ok? She must be worried sick, I tried to keep the damage isolated from her."

"I'm impressed." He said with a smirk. "That you managed to accidentally stumble upon the stupidest and most dangerous possible way to get yourself out of that situation. Did it not occur to you that there might be a REASON people don't Path Stack?"

"I...thought we invented it?" I said with a wince. "Plus it was so damned useful. We never could have beat her without it."

He pinched his nose. "You may have homebrewed your Skill and stumbled on a Path early, but you're a ways off from reinventing the wheel, kid. Path Stacking is a known phenomena, it's just considered reckless and dangerous and no one does it. Dying is the BEST of the possible bad outcomes. I've heard of path stackers fracturing their souls in such a way that they all mix. Becoming a distorted mashup soul with qualities from all three and no sense of self."

"Oh." I said faintly. "I...was not aware that was a possibility." Note to self, no more Path Stacking.

That got me an eye roll. "The things you don't know could fill a planet of libraries. But it worked out. Smart using a wish as a buffer. They can pull off some crazy shit. Speaking of crazy shit, how's your soul doing? Bet you got quite a bump off a stunt like that."

Closing my eyes, I focused inward, blinking in surprise. "Thirty three percent of the way through Orange. That's a ten percent bump." The shield had given me a decent boost, but not THAT decent, and the further you refined a soul the harder it was to effect it, at least based on my observations.

"Very nice." He said appreciatively. "Bet you got plenty of stats incoming too. This mess isn't quite sorted, so the points are delayed, but you made a big difference in that fight. Of course, you didn't FINISH it, so you won't be getting most of the credit. Your girl is in for a hell of a boost."

I grinned at that. "I'm glad. She saved our asses out there. I thought Suvaya was going to kill us for a second." It also might help Callie pull further ahead and let her feel like more of an asset to the team. I was more worried about her downtrodden mood lately than getting credit for godslaying. I could always get the points through wishes later. Besides, she deserved to be treated like a hero, she really had come through in a big way. Even on the verge of death Suvaya was a massive threat. No one else had the guts to take the final shot. I was proud of her.

Zeke, who knew me better than anyone, just rolled his eyes. "Anyway. With all this over several VERY powerful people are on the way. Luckily the contract you all signed will act as a template for this interaction. Smart move getting them all locked into an agreement in those circumstances. Given their positions they all had emergency powers that make that kind of thing feasible."

That actually reminded me. "What about Satala?" I was worried they might decide to just ignore the contract and kill her just in case.

"You're concerned they might just ignore the terms and do whatever they want?" He asked archly. At my nod, his expression became a grin. "As well you should be. If one of the gods showed up any agreement you made would have fallen apart. In the end, power is the only real currency in our universe. Luckily for your tinsel topped project, the baby vampire got attached. Lark is on his way apparently, and no one is going to tangle with his baby girl over a crippled former A-ranker."

"The Vampire is coming HERE?" I said in shock. "Are we going to meet him?"

"What are you, stupid?" Asked my uncle in horror. "No we aren't going to MEET him. We're fucking leaving. He's not the only S-ranker coming, and we aren't going to be here when they all arrive. This planet is their problem now. Though it would be a good idea to pick up as much Dew as we can before we leave. With Suvaya dead the mechanism to condense it is gone, but Impact doesn't just vanish. All the Dew already on the planet is still here and after a quick once over has been confirmed to be safe."

"Nat should be able to pick some up for us." I said in relief. "Part of the terms of the contract when we wished for the document we all signed."

"I saw." He said with a smirk. "You did a decent job on that thing. Eli would be proud. However much Dew you can get, I would do so. It's a nonrenewable resource. Still, don't spend too much time on haggling or searching. Like I said, I want to be gone when all those terrifying geezers hit the atmosphere. Shouldn't be more than a day or two, so do with that what you will. Once this is done we'll head for the Ruined Soul Temple."

I wasn't sure how long it would be until the trials, I didn't remember getting an exact date, but Zeke was the expert so I'd leave the travel arrangements to him if I could get away with it. As I had that thought, the door opened and Callie came blurring in, tackling me onto the bed. "Ow. Ow. Ribs!" I croaked as she squeezed me.

"Oh my gods." She said in dismay. "Did your ribs get injured in the battle?"

"No." I said with a chuckle. "Just when you squeezed me like an old tube of toothpaste. You're a godslayer now, honey, you'll need to be careful with all that muscle."

She rolled her eyes, but her lips quirked into a smile. "Oh please, I haven't even gotten my points yet. Seems like it'll be delayed a bit until the meeting. We're doing the ceremony thing again. Still not sure how that works, but Bethy knows how to delay the stats until they can hit all at once."

"Still." I said happily. "You're going to be famous for sure. No way it isn't going to get out. The first godslayer in...what? Centuries?"

Zeke nodded. "At least. Probably longer. Closest we got recently was the Vampire's fight with Unity. I hear that was a hell of a dust up. Still, even then it didn't actually devolve too close to a deathmatch. There's a big difference between a mortal and a god." He grinned at Callie. "You're going places, kid. I'd start preparing for the stat drop, because it's going to be ROUGH."

Her face went slack. "Oh gods, I forgot about the pain from bulk stat gains. It's percentage based right? What do you think I'll be getting? A few hundred? Like a fifty percent bump tops probably right?"

We both gave her a pitying look, and she slumped against me. I smiled and kissed the top of her head. "I'll try to offset some of the pain with the bond. I played a big part but I didn't finish her off. Plus my stats are crazy evenly distributed so chances are good I won't have too much in one spot."

"Alright, enough of your cuddling." Said my uncle with a laugh. "You can gaze lovingly into each other's eyes later. None of the rest of us have time for that. Besides which, you have visitors, Shane."

Raising an eyebrow, I looked up to see Cass barrel into the room and throw herself bodily at Callie and I. We caught the little girl easily enough, and she dissolved into giggles as we did. Cark stepped in with a laugh. "Cass, you're supposed to be gentle with sick people, not smash into them at terminal velocity."

"She's fine." I said with a wave. "It's good to see you guys. Hope your time up there wasn't too boring? Was Zeke able to teach you anything?"

Cass completely ignored where I was looking, chirping. "Tony got beat up a whole bunch! It was really funny. I did all my froms just like Master taught me before he left. Why are you so sick, Shane? Didn't you eat something bad? You don't look like you got hurt so I think that must be it."

Zeke groaned. "It's FORMS Cassidy, and I told you not to call that brat Master. He isn't even close."

"Hey!" Said Abel from the door, where he was leaning against the frame looking nearly dead. "I'm definitively close. I'm an Expert. Don't be a snob you washed up theater kid."

Zeke rolled his eyes. "I'm being mocked by babies now. Oh how the mighty have fallen. Shouldn't you be in bed like he is?"
Mel, who was standing behind her boyfriend anxiously, nodded. "Yes, he SHOULD. Unfortunately along with common sense and taste in music, he completely lacks any self preservation instincts. Exhibit A." She gestured between the two of them and then smiled at Callie and I as Cass jumped down and ran over to tackle hug Abel, who apparently she hadn't gotten to see yet. "Good to see you two up and awake. Plenty of people have been hoping to talk to you."

"Me?" I said with a laugh. "I think you mean HER? I was just riding shotgun with Abel and Gabe. I didn't put Suvaya down for good."

"You LITERALLY staked her out for me to kill." Callie said in annoyance. "I refused to talk to anyone until you woke up. Still pretty sure it'll trigger the stat gains. Zeke said not to do it before you woke up. The soul strain this time was bad. He was worried dumping stats on it might kill you."

I nodded in understanding. "Good call. I'm firmly against my own death. I'm surprised you aren't berating me for the risk to be honest."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm not insane. We all would have died if it wasn't for you three. I'm against you taking stupid risks when you don't think them through. This wasn't a stupid risk, it was a necessary one, so I'm not going to complain." She buried her head in my chest. "I'm just...so glad you're ok."

I squeezed her tight. "Only thanks to you, Cal. She'd have killed us for sure. In any case, I'm awake now, so lets get the meeting shit out of the way. I want to get the stats and get to collecting as much Dew as possible before we have to leave. We have to be gone before all the S-rankers show up." I was just glad they were taking their time getting here. Then again, this whole mess was still a bit below their level. Callie grinned and hopped off the bed, pulling me to my feet and throwing my arm over her shoulder. I wondered how many of the others were waiting. I hoped it wasn't all of them.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"Shane!" Benny said as he barreled into me, lifting me into a crushing hug. "You're up. I'm so glad you didn't scramble your egg by accident. Also, I want priority on wishes for a while, seriously between Jessie's bond with Randall and now all this shit, I'm lagging behind."

"Thanks for your concern, ass." I said with a chuckle. "But I'll see what I can do." I looked around spotting Gabriel, Bethy, Satala, Markoth and a bunch of the other people from the raid. "Hey guys, thanks for waiting, I heard we have a meeting to attend. We don't have to do this up on the mountain do we?"

Abel snorted. "Like they would leave that where it was. The first wave of seniors from the various factions snatched that up. Not sure who got it, but it's long gone."

"Valak Dante." Said Zeke with a grimace. "A-ranker from the Labyrinth Lord's clan. Sneaky fucker. I'd have fought him for it if it wasn't so slippery." That was a stark reminder that Zeke wasn't a normal B-ranker, I was guessing this Dante guy wasn't a combat focused A-ranker though. I'd been getting a clear lesson on how rough it was trying to punch up.

To my relief, the meeting happened to be in a nearby clearing, apparently someone had texted everyone when I woke up, because the whole crew was there when I arrived. Well, the ones who were left. Which was apparently about eight hundred and fifty of us. I looked around, and the only person missing I knew was Chad, the team leader I'd met at the party back at the Bazaar.

It was rough to realize we'd lost so many people. I thought we'd all made it. Apparently some of those unconscious people had never woken up. It was a stark reminder of the kind of danger we'd all been in.

Once we arrived, Callie got called up to address the group. She made a nice speech about using the contract we'd signed as a foundation for future cooperation, some comments that implied she might try to recruit some of them into my faction, and then officially called the task of defeating Suvaya to a close.

I'd positioned myself behind her as she did, and when she collapsed, I caught her easily. Or at least, I WOULD have, if my own brain wasn't basically imploding from the pain. Not just my own pain either, but her pain as well. She was getting it much worse than I was and I was glad I'd been able to offset some of the agony for her. Once it was done, I lowered her to the ground, vision blurry, as I checked my own stats.

Wishmaster candidate status. F-rank. Ability: Intermediate Wish- Six times a day grant an Intermediate wish in return for proper compensation. Wish must be feasibly achievable by the candidate's own efforts within a three day period with current statistics.

Might-475
Impact-33
Fantasy-500
Vitality-220
Focus-220
Perception-204
Creation-180
Progress to next rank:1832/10000
Soul strength Orange-33%

Stored:7 shadow attacks, 7 shadow jump, 10 Stealth charges, 0 fire attacks,0 triple strenth tranq blows, 5 triple strength density shifted attacks. 9 spider leg attacks, 10 heal bursts(10 in reserve), 4 gravity attacks, 3 shadow clone, 21 scan heals (I-rank ability so Shane can hold more)

Pet- Wolf named Jin

Skills:Intermediate Path of the Doom Sovereign, Lesser Valtek Mastery, Lesser Cooking Mastery, Lesser Inventing Mastery, Minor Piano Mastery, Minor Guitar Mastery, Lesser Balam Mastery, Minor First Aid Mastery,Lesser Paired Dueling

DS Subskills. Monk: Stone Limb, Moonlit Night, Consecration of Flame, Ripple Running, State of Grace, Steam Arrow, Afterburner, Pit of Despair, Mountain Stance.

Rogue: Mercy Kill, Double Trouble, Touch of Tears, Flurry of Blows, Heavy hands, Marked for Death

Diviner: Overlay, Song of the Soil, Rythym of the Wild, Eye of Revelation, Danger Sense

Two hundred points of Might and two hundred points of Fantasy. That had been rough. The pain was based on percentage, and luckily I hadn't doubled either stat, so I wasn't QUITE fried out of my head, but Callie's boost had been MUCH bigger than mine, and she'd gotten it bad. I rested her head on my lap, cleaning the blood off her nose and waiting for her to wake up. "Hey." I said with a smile as she eventually came around. "How are you feeling?"

She groaned. "I don't think this can be considered pain anymore. I need to invent a new word. I feel like bees made of molten bleach are colonizing my brain stem. My eyebrows hurt." I laughed and helped her up. "How about you? I know you took some of that for me. How are you still so...lucid?"

I shrugged. "My brain is pretty used to pain by this point. The Path Stacking was pretty much just as bad. So? How did you make out? I got four hundred points across two stats. Surprised it was so focused, but I guess my main impression was Might and Fantasy. Crazy impressive lightshow and big stabbing."

She giggled, then winced. "Ow. Stop making me laugh. Laughing hurts. Anyway, I think I did ok. Honestly better than ok. I'm blown away."

Calliope Reynolds F-rank. Ability: Abyssal Infiltration- Enter the shadows and emerge where you will within range, shape the darkness to your call, moving it as if it were part of your body, and even extend your senses through the shadows to spy on your enemies.

Might-1050
Impact-33
Vitality-342
Fantasy-550
Focus-108
Perception-875
Creation-485

Progress to next rank: 3443/10000

Soul strength- Orange-14%
Pet-Wolf named Rellia

Skills: Minor Tracking, Minor Dual Dagger Mastery, Beginner Stealth, Beginner Trap Mastery, Beginner Disguise, Lesser Balam Mastery, Beginner Shadow Manipulation Mastery. Lesser Paired Dueling

"Holy Shit!" I gaped at her. "That's...so fucking many stat points. Eight hundred and two might? Five hundred Perception? Three hundred Creation? I know you killed a god but damn. No wonder it hurt so fucking much. Over two thousand points. You almost literally tripled your total. And congrats on the increase in your soul strength. I know you've been working on that. Five percent is a nice jump." The bump to Focus was probably just the natural drift from her being higher ranked. Lagging stats tended to creep up naturally.

"Your staff Mastery jumped up a rank though." She pointed out brightly. "And your soul is WAY more advanced."
"Hey I'm not complaining." I said with a grin. "I'm used to chasing after you. I just need to step up my game a bit. You're pulling ahead again." I frowned. "I'm honestly surprised it was only this much. For slaying a god I'd have figured you'd have hit E-rank or something."

"Not a chance." Zeke said with a laugh. "There are limits to bulk drops of renown. She'll get a steady income over time for this, but remember, just like you need stats to withstand Impact bestowal on rank up, you need Impact to withstand mass stat dumps. It's cyclical and builds on itself. That's why we improve one step at a time. Don't worry though, the story is only just getting started disseminating. She's bound to keep riding that rocket through F-rank at least. Probably further."

I grinned at her. "See! You're in the fast lane. Now I'm going to be playing catchup." She squealed and reached up to wrap her arms around me, but Zeke caught her.

"Whoa there." He said sternly. "Lets not pulp the nephew. Your Might just pretty much quadrupled. You need time to adjust so you don't accidentally murder people when patting them on the back. one of the downsides to fast growth. We'll have plenty of time for you to train on the way to the Ruined Soul Temple. We're taking the long way, since we have some time. Which is good, you'll all need some serious training before the trials."

"After we pick up some more Dew." I said firmly. "An Impact advantage isn't something we can give up. But before we do that, I want to check with everyone else. I bet they got some pretty solid boosts."

I stood on shaky legs, helping Callie up, and we made our way over to Gabriel and Bethy, who were seated with legs
crossed, having apparently been way better prepared for this than we had. Why hadn't I decided to sit down? Rookie mistake.

Gabriel nodded as we approached. "Shane, Callie. You look like you had decent returns. Especially you, Callie. I imagine as the final victor you've gotten quite a boost. Your condition certainly suggests that."

Bethy nodded cheerfully. "He's right! You look terrible! I did pretty well I think. My Domain helped out a lot, and people saw me tank that moon attack for you guys at the end. Still, I think aside from Callie you three are the big winners. I bet you'll get some more points off this over time."

Gabriel shrugged. "I'm approaching E-rank, and once I cross the dividing line, those trickling stats will be far less of a benefit. As big of an ordeal as this has been, its still just an unusual dungeon run. It's a big universe, and strange things happen every day. I doubt this will carry us as far as you might expect."

"Boo! Hiss!" Bethy jeered, literally saying the word hiss instead of hissing. "Don't be such a buzz kill Gabe. Don't you know frowning ages you. Speaking of, you guys totally have to meet my daddy when he shows up! He'll be so excited to meet my friends!"

We all flinched, and Callie offered her a weak smile. "Oh, sorry Bethy, we can't stick around. We have those trials in the Ruined Soul Temple coming up. Have to head out so we can make it on time. We're taking the long way apparently." I had zero idea what the long way even WAS, but I didn't let that stop me from using it as an excuse. having seen Bethy in full vamp mode, I didn't want to meet her dad, who was the person who CREATED that state of being.

She pouted. "Oh fine." Then her face lit up. "OOH I can come to the trials too! Daddy says its really important to reach the peak of green soul in F-rank. If you wait longer you'll be behind once your soul solidifies at D-rank. He says achieving that edge of blue soul quality is called the 'Azure Soul Body' and that it's a necessity for anyone who wants to become a god."

I hadn't known about the name, though I knew the rest of it. Still, scary dad aside I welcomed Bethy. The more friends we had in the trials the better, probably. I still wasn't sure what they were exactly, but I wasn't complaining either way. Before we headed off to search for Dew though, I pulled Gabriel aside. "Alright. You were being vague earlier, faction secrets, whatever. But you know something about my mom, and I want to know what it is."

He stared at me with a complicated expression for a minute, then nodded. "You're right. We've been through quite a bit together. I've seen into your soul from a certain viewpoint, and I trust you. This isn't common knowledge, so I hesitated to speak on it. I only know about it because I met her. It concerns the reason that the Star Queen will be at the Ruined Soul Temple to begin with."

"Actually." I said with a frown. "That's a good point. Why is an elite A-ranker being sent to babysit a bunch of kids. Important or not, that seems like it would be beneath her."

"It would." Said Gabriel, his face blank. "Except for one small factor. The Star Queen isn't going to the Temple to babysit a bunch of kids. She's going there to babysit her own. She's attending the trials in order to bring along her daughter." He gave me a sympathetic look. "I don't suppose you knew about it, based on your earlier comments, but I suppose I'll be the first to inform you. Apparently you have a sister."

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I admit, my mind was a mess after finding out about my sister. My mom had another kid. Was she dad's? Did mom have a new family? Was that why she left us? But what role did dad play in that? I'd come to the conclusion from things Zeke hadn't said that dad had chased mom off, or at least was involved in her leaving.

Callie sat next to me, holding my hand and looking worried. I appreciated the concern, but I forced down the bad feelings. I was going to see my mom soon. I could ask her this in person. I wasn't going to let it ruin my time with my friends. Family drama could wait. I looked up at Benny, who was nearby, waiting quietly with Celine. Clearing my throat, I forcibly changed the subject. "So, Ben, how did you do? During the meeting."

Gabriel had long since left, and we'd retreated so I could get me head on straight, grouping up in a clearing. My best friend looked surprised, but also relieved to have the out. "Pretty well, honestly. I was kind of worried since I didn't play a big part in the final battle, but I guess all the calculations and mapping I did during the hunt for the conduits left an impression, even after Yvette showed up."

Benicio Cortez- F-rank. Ability: Intermediate Mechanical Embodiment- Allows the integration of existing inventions into the users body for the purposes of strengthening and enhancing them. insignia is a half gear in the shape of a C

Might-405
Impact-32
Fantasy-56
Vitality-41
Focus-683
Perception-82
Creation-71

Progress to next rank: 1370/10000
soul strength: Orange 19%
Pet- Wolf named Rolf

Current integrated tech. 9/10. Torso: G-ranked intangibility for short bursts. Right fist: triple punch. Left forearm: F-ranked energy barrier or variable shape. Left fist: minor slow acting tranquilizer effect. Right foot: Density shifting to create heavier kicks and more powerful jumps. Left Foot: momentum neutralization to allow stopping instantly. Head: slight cognitive boost to allow more thinking time. Back: ability to grow a shell to tank damage. Chest: Pair of golden G rank spider legs that arch up from the shoulders. Waist: Belt of spiritual calming

Skills:Minor Cooking Mastery, Intermediate Inventing Mastery, Minor Haggling Mastery, Minor Stealth Master

"Not a massive bump compared to you guys." He said after sharing. "But two hundred twenty one points in Focus as well as some natural creep in most of my other stats isn't bad at all." He glanced over at our resident healer, who had been extremely quiet, clearly as worried about me as the others. "How about you, Jess? Bet you did pretty well, considering not only did you heal most of the wounded, you also helped Abel make that crazy bear construct."

She brightened a bit, looking excited. "Yeah, that helped a ton I think. As usual, technically everything I do leans mostly to Vitality. I got a bit of creep, and some Might, but I got a LOT of Vitality."

Jessica Evans- F-rank. Ability: Intermediate Lifeweaving- Infuse living things with life itself and direct their actions while the users power flows through them. Control had limited effect on sapient entities. Prolonged exposure to life energy may cause lasting effects in controlled subjects.

Might-375
Impact-32
Fantasy-78
Vitality-1292
Focus-55
Perception-65
Creation-58

Progress to next rank: 1955/10000
Pet- Wolf named Lily and bear named Randall(Beginner Beast Bonding with Jessie)
soul strength: Orange- 14%

Skills: Beginner Horticulture,Beginner First Aid, Minor Herbalism, Minor Flower Arrangement, Minor Beast Taming Mastery, Beginner Beast Bonding, Intermediate Shape of the Wild

"Five hundred points of Vitality, two hundred of Might, plus various bumps to lower stats." She said proudly. "I'm right on the edge of two thousand total. Plus my soul is up to fourteen percent. Benny's got his spiritual calming so he jumped higher there, but my bond with Randall is a steady and consistent stress on my soul. I think it's really helping."

Seeing it laid out like that, I realized Benny was right. He was lagging behind. Sure his Focus was a huge help here, but he hadn't been in the fight as directly. He needed my focus for the next few months until we could catch him up. Not to mention his soul improving at the temple meant he might be able to push up to Expert in Inventing, and exert more control over what he made.

"Well, sounds like we all made some progress." I said cheerfully. "Now, why don't we talk about getting some more Dew before we leave. Now that Satala is gone its just free floating impact. Think we can buy some off Ladrigan or some of the other outsiders? We still have plenty of things worth trading for. The metals from the mining complex, the spellbooks we got from the wizards tower."

"You want to trade those?" Said Callie in shock. "I thought for sure the thought of learning magic would have been too big a temptation to pass up."

I shrugged. "It normally would, but in the end, more Skills are just going to pull focus. Sure I could merge them into my DS Mastery, but honestly I need to learn to use the Skill as it is, complicating it more won't help. Meanwhile Impact is a method to pull ahead of our competitors and keep ourselves safe. It's kind of a no brainer."

She shrugged. "You're not wrong. It's a solid plan, I was just surprised. I can call up Anna-Marie and set a meeting if you want. There must have been other teams that arrived after we left, at least before this whole mess, plus they had native forces searching. With the dungeon open to the world again, Impact is going to be less valuable to the locals than support from larger organizations."

I nodded. "I could see that. Any random E-ranker should be able to take on the king, and if not one, then two. Being exposed to the whole universe like this, they're better off finding a backer. No way they can hoard all that Impact for themselves, if they don't sell to us chances are good someone less pleasant will just take it by force."

"That's a good point." She said with a wince. "In the meantime we should definitely talk to some of the others. Gabriel mentioned finding some Dew didn't he? I'm not sure he'd trade it normally, but the spellbooks we found are rare and hard to get too. I'd bet we have some options that would fit well with some of his people." She grimaced. "I wish we could just ask Zeke to find the stuff for us, but that would definitely violate his geas."

"True." I said with a nod. "But with so many people showing up, I'd bet we could arrange for some Dew another way." I glanced over at Nat. "Twelve wishes. Think we can get some of the teams from the other factions to do our work for us?" Between the wishes, the metals, the spellbooks, and Nat's first dibs on materials, I was betting we could scrounge up enough of the stuff to get some for everyone.

Her eyes sparkled. "That's a fantastic idea. Most of the smaller time faction members won't be able to hold onto their Dew anyway when the big boys start arriving. Better to sell it off for something as incredibly valuable as a wish. I'll go talk to some of the other teams about the wishes and the spellbooks while Callie reaches out to the locals." She gave me an encouraging smile. "You just buck up ok?"

My groan of exasperation got a chuckle from my best friend as the scattered, Jessie heading off to try to feel out some of the people she healed while Celine went with Nat. Abel was around somewhere, probably nursing a headache after the soul damage plus the stats. I sighed, looking at Benny. "You gonna give me the 'it's ok pal' treatment too?"

He shrugged. "Honestly, I don't think it's as bad as it seems to you right now. Sure, it's not ideal, but you and Maria always got along great. Doesn't it seem like it might be kind of cool having a sister? Sure you don't know her, but you can change that. Did Gabriel tell you her name?"

"Chelsea." I said matter of factly. "Her name is Chelsea and she's sixteen. I can't help but note my mom left when I was pretty young. Maybe it's because she was having another baby. She clearly cares a lot about her, since she's taking up the chaperone position on this trial. Based on what I've heard, she isn't the type to babysit. She's supposed to be my grandfather's iron fist."

I tried not to be jealous, but the thought of my sister living the life I could have had. Raised by mom, considered a princess by the Church and taken care of with the best of her generation...well, it was difficult not to resent that a bit. Benny nodded sympathetically. "Maybe so. Have you talked to Zeke about all this?"

"What's the point?" I asked with a shrug. "He can't tell me anything. I'd imagine the reason the geas tightens up so much when my mom comes up is specifically because my dad didn't want me to know about my sister. Gods only know why, but then, who knows why my dad does anything."

He shook his head. "Your family is a mess, man. But hey, at least you've got Nat and Zeke. Plus your sister might be cool, and you can still try to talk things out with your mom."

"I will. For now, let's go check in with Bethy and Satala, see how they're doing after all this." The silver haired girl had been present for her mother's gruesome death, so I wanted to make sure she was ok. Plus Bethy was going to be leaving much later than the rest of us since she was waiting for her dad, I wanted to say goodbye at least.

We found her easily enough, she had Donuts and Poptarts both out, and they seemed ok. Whatever damage being out of her shadow had done to Donuts at the beginning apparently it could be staved off under the right circumstances. When she saw us she squealed and clapped her hands. "Shane! Benny! It's good to see you guys. I was just helping Tala pick her new clothes. She's decided to stay one as one of my thralls!"

She gestured grandly to where the former A-ranker was standing shyly, wearing a pair of dark blue pants covered in buckles, a white tank top with a silver snow flake on it, and some lilac sleeves that weren't attached to anything. The finishing touch was a dark blue beret sitting askew on her head. She seemed...better than I expected, a bit lost, but not as upset as I'd have figured.

Despite that, I could see Bethy was trying hard to distract her, and of the course the vampire fashionista had decided to dress her new thrall up. I smiled and waved at her. "Hey Satala, haven't seen you since the fight, hope things are ok."

"Of COURSE they are!" Squealed Bethy energetically. "Tala is going to stay and keep an eye on this place. Daddy says he's going to claim it and give it to me as a present. It's only F-rank so no one is going to fight him too much on it, though he says he's going to have to let them take some of the Dew. Cost of doing business and all."

I just gaped at her, having not expected THAT even if I probably should have. Then I chuckled, shaking my head, and Benny and I sat down to catch up with the both of them. Good for Bethy, it was nice to know this place would be taken care of at least. Satala obviously cared about it a lot. Until then, I'd leave the others to work on sourcing that Dew, if they couldn't get enough we could ask Bethy for some before we left. For now I'd just enjoy spending time with friends.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"Alright, so how did we do?" I asked my group as everyone gathered up to submit all the Dew they'd gathered. "Remember Zeke wants us gone before the Vampire gets here, so to be safe this is our last day on planet. Nat and I managed to gather thirty six drops total between us, three per wish. Plus another twenty seven on her part gathered as first dibs." Thankfully we'd already used some, so the subjective value was lower.

Callie grinned. "Between the metals and the spellbooks we managed to swing fifty two." She seemed pretty happy with the haul. "Anna-Marie came around to our way of thinking easily enough. Since there was little chance they could keep any stockpiled drops, they figured it was a better idea to trade it for future favors and wring as much value out of it as possible, especially since the king has already reached full saturation."

"More than a hundred then." I said with a grin. "We'll give the excess to the group members who didn't get any before, fully distributed we should be looking at enough to get us each to about thirty five Impact. It's not forty, but that was never going to happen on a large scale." I glanced over at Zeke. "You sure we can't stay and compete for more?"

"Nope." He said cheerfully. "I'va already arranged our ride out of here. Cashed in a favor with an old friend and caught passage on a transport ship. Like I said, we're taking the long way to the temple. The trial won't be starting for a few months still, and sitting around there waiting won't accomplish much. Better to spend the time improving and getting used to your new abilities."

That made sense. "So, where is this ship then? Do we need to find a way back up to the Bazaar to get on?" I was kind of excited. Teleporting was great, but I was going to be getting on an actual spaceship. Flying through actual space. Despite having crossed a galaxy, I hadn't really had a chance to enjoy that kind of travel. Now I was going to become a real citizen of the universe.

He shook his head. "They're coming to pick up some of their own kids, so they'll be providing a shuttle. The ship itself is too big, so it'll be parked in orbit. The shuttle should arrive in a few hours, so take the time to say your goodbyes and use up that Dew. Carrying it onto a huge ship full of strangers would be pretty stupid."

I nodded. He was right about that. We distributed the Dew, and each of us secluded ourselves to take it, prepared for the insanity to come and wanting to minimize exposure. As for goodbyes, we really only had a few friends here. Bethy and Gabriel were both planning to attend the trials (the Crusader was going to be hitching a ride) so we'd see them there. We hadn't gotten close to anyone else.

Satala would be staying to govern the planet in Bethy's stead, so we would need to say our farewells to her, and Yvette was sticking around to help her, so that was one more person to see us off. We also had to visit Anna-Marie and wish her well, she'd been a good friend to us since we'd been here.

Despite how busy we were, the time flew by surprisingly fast. I took the drops slowly, letting my soul process them since I was still a bit injured. With the improvement though, it wasn't too big of a problem. Still, I was pretty sure given my friends soul strength thirty five Impact was the limit of what they could handle anyway. I could probably have managed thirty seven if we'd had the Dew for it, but it was more important to get all of us on a similar level.

Once everyone had gotten caught up and said their goodbyes where needed, we all filed out to a large open field to wait for the shuttle. To my surprise, the 'kids' that were getting picked up were Annalise and her team, and we waved to the fae girl as we settled in to wait.

It didn't take long before the shuttle descended. A monstrous open sided thing made of black iron and burning with runework. The enchantments were tiny but carved in groupings that created spiraling designs that enhanced the ferocious image of the shuttle, making the jagged dark edges look even more imposing.

Callie tugged bumped me with her elbow. "We totally need to get one of those! I bet I could even imbue it with shadow energy!"

Normally I worried about her driving, but since the sky was basically infinite, if she could literally merge into the shadows it should be fine. Actually given her ability to view things through the dark, I was betting with access to a shadow imbued vehicle she's be a flawless driver now, or at least much better able to avoid accidents. Still, in my head I couldn't shake the image of all the dings on her bike. Best to let Jessie do the driving.

I made a noncommital noise as we headed for the shuttle, and got a suspicious glare as she picked up my emotions through the bond. Once we were on board we sat down on the padded leather couch, taking advantage of the spacious interior (bigger on the inside) while we settled in to wait for the trip to be over.

My own mind was kind of blown when no doors or anything closed, the shields kept the air inside, and we got to watch in real time as the shuttle began to rise, the ground falling away as we watched the planet start to recede. I gave a bittersweet smile as I looked down at the place.

I'd been through a lot since becoming an Ascendant, but the Moonsong Glade had been a special experience. No Zeke, no family nonsense really, just crazy Ascendant bullshit I hadn't expected and had to adapt to. We'd made friends, fought battles, and established even more of a reputation than we'd had before. Now we were heading back out into the universe, stronger than we'd ever been and ready to take on whatever came next.

Even more incredible was when the jungle of the core, the massive mountain range of the ring, and the rest of the Glade fell away and we were staring out into the perfect dark of outer fucking space. I could see stars out in the distance, but I put an arm around Callie and just stared in awe and wonder at the emptiness of space firsthand. The Bazaar had been huge, so it had just been like looking at the night sky, but actually being out here was...amazing.

"It's so...dark." Said Callie in a daze. "I've seen dark before, but that's nothing compared to this. Shadow is only the absence of light, but this...it's like it's swallowing everything. Like a bottomless Abyss." Her tone was soft and shocked, like she was being hypnotized. I could feel through the bond she was in a weird state, but before I could shake her out of it, Zeke put a hand on my shoulder.

"Whoa kid, hold up. She's gaining enlightenment." He seemed genuinely amazed. "That's extremely rare, especially at lower ranks. Might be because of all the renown she's gained recently pushing her forward. She might be on the edge of discovering a Path, or at least the nascent version of one."

"Is that a big deal?" I asked, raising my eyebrow. "I mean, Abel and I both have a Path, and so does Gabriel. I mean, it's good that she might step onto one, but it's not like it's some crazy thing."

Zeke rolled his eyes. "Kid, you need a Path to advance to D-rank. It's one of the requirements for Mastery. Plenty of people NEVER develop one, and the ones who do usually do it at the peak of E when their souls are notably higher quality and they have a lot more raw stats to stack up for it. Abel is a freak, and so is that Gabriel kid, and you just happened to get stupidly lucky."

I'd kind of figured that D-rank thing out from what he'd said about it before, but it was nice to have confirmation. Since it was a rare chance I went ahead and left Callie to contemplate her possible path and went back to staring out at the vast expanse of nothingness in front of us.

At least...it was nothing to start. Then we reached the right height and turned, and suddenly my vision was absolutely filled with a metal behemoth of a vehicle. Expansive dark metal plating engraved that I was sure would be engraved with runes, but that even I couldn't get a good look at from this distance, sprawling for miles below us as it loomed over the Moonsong Glade like a specter of death.

"That." Said Zeke with a grin. "Is the Necromedes. The current flagship of Killian Zayne, the Black Arbiter. Kill and I go way back. His father was actually the one who taught me the Soul Dissection Skill that I used to create my Voltomancy ability. He and Eli and I went on plenty of adventures together. He was the second of our little group to hit A-rank actually. But I don't count it because the Zayne clan is old as dirt." He cut off with a wince.

I was fascinated by the idea that my parents had once been in a group like mine. I could see from his expression as he stopped talking though that Zeke had run up against his geas again. Still, that meant that Killian Zayne might know more about my mom and dad too. I'd definitely ask him about it if I got the chance.

As we approached the ship, the form of the Necromedes loomed larger in my sight, consuming the whole of my view as we approached a small open bay that seemed to be protected by a similar shield to the one keeping us all from being sucked out into space.

Touching down, I turned to check on Callie, who was still in a bit of a daze. Taking her her arm in mine, I led her off the shuttle leaving her to process whatever she'd gained from the view. The whole thing made me incredibly curious about how things like renown and the soul played into Path formation. It made sense it would all be intertwined, but I wasn't sure how.

The bay around us was completely empty, with only some other shuttles around. Zeke gave a whistle. "Man, Kill's taste is as bad as ever. These things look like they were hammered together out of scrap."

"At least I don't paint porcelain masks like a wierdo" Bit out a voice from behind us. Turning, we saw a tall, thin man, his pale chest exposed by his long red velvet coat, which lay open down to the ankles of his leather pants. His eyes were a swirling mix of red and black and his hair was black and white, split right down the middle. It should have been too much honestly, lots of colors, but weirdly he pulled it off.

Zeke grinned at him. "You might want to invest. Your face is pretty terrifying, a few nice masks to put people at ease could only help. I can't imagine the scare you get when you look in the mirror."

The tall man laughed, stepping up to hug my uncle, clapping him on the back before pulling away to nod at us. "This is Eli and Sasha's kid huh?" He said with interest. "Poor kid takes after his dad far too much. Oh well, welcome to the Necromedes everyone. I guess I should probably show you around." And with that, he turned and strode off, leaving us all to stare after him for a second before following. Man, why were all the high rankers I knew so weird?

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The Necromedes was both huge and fascinating. As expected, it was bigger on the inside, but aside from the outer layers where the docking bay had been, the interior was wide and open, like a floating city. There was even a sky, presumably made through enchantments.

Rather than being all dark and depressing, the interior felt like we were standing on a mountain peak, cold, chill air wrapping around us. Killian looked pretty proud to show everything off. "We tend to use the flagship for VIP transport when possible. The favors and payments we extract are always useful, and unlike most clans, the Zayne's have no stable location to defend. We're spacefaring, so don't need to worry about being attacked so easily. It's a win win."

"I still say it's not the same." Disagreed Zeke. "Something about having real, hard dirt under your feet is just...different. Fake it as well as you want, but I'll take planetary living any day of the week."

Killian shrugged. "Yeah, but you're a snobby artist. I still can't believe you took my family's soul stitching skill and turned it into arts and crafts. My ghost binding talent is so much more useful, which is obvious since you still haven't hit A-rank with your ridiculous clown faces."

"Empty shells." Sneered Zeke. "They keep their stats but lose their ability. What's the difference between that and using golems? Sure you can have way more of them, but an army of generic ghosts can't compete with my ability to use more than a dozen different abilities."

This sounded like an old argument, so I jumped in, cutting them off before they could get sucked in. "So your whole family lives in space?"

Killian refocused on me. "Oh sure. My son Blake is around here somewhere. And my wife Cara. My whole branch is on this ship." That didn't fit with what I knew of branches, and my confusion seemed to be easily visible, even behind my mask, because he laughed an elaborated. "S-rankers start branches of god factions, or their own clans, but S-ranked clans with only one S-ranker can benefit from branches as well. In those cases A-rankers are allowed to branch off."

"Forgive me for saying so, but you don't...seem like an A-ranker." I'd half expected him to be a hundred feet tall and breath fire, considering what A-rankers were capable of.

He just chuckled. "I consider that a compliment. Only weaklings and incompetents flex their power unconsciously. Restraint is an important component to success. I'm sure you've long since realized that Zeke doesn't let out most of his strength when he's around you. It would be massively inconvenient to smash everyone you meet into gibbering paste just by your sheer presence."

We chatted for a while as we walked, learning more about the Zayne family and the Necromedes itself, until we finally came to a wide open area with a massive white stone building. Killian stopped. "This is our training hall. Lots of cutting edge equipment in there. Some high Impact exercise gear for training, targets for practicing dangerous abilities, and even sparring golems that can be set to variable levels or both combat skill and raw power."

Zeke sniffed. "It's a bit low tech, but it's not like we can't make do." He kept his haughty expression for a second, then winked. "Kidding, thanks for the help." His eyes drifted to me. "This is already as close to overt help as I can give you on this. Technically speaking I just happened to ask a friend for a ride to ensure our safety, his allowing you to use his training hall is a coincidence. That said, I won't be able to do anything to help directly."

"It's fine." I said with a chuckle. "I'm grateful you managed to find us a place to improve. We've probably got a lot more points coming in the next few months, and having somewhere to acclimate and work on our combat abilities will be important if we want to do well at the trials. Speaking of which, what ARE the trials? Like do you have any hints you can give on passing them?" I glanced at Killain. "Either of you?"

They shook their heads, our host answering for both of them. "Nope. We THINK they change, but it's not possible to tell really. The trials don't take place on the physical plane. The Ruined Soul Temple is a spiritual space, and almost all of the memories you make there get left behind when you emerge. I've been myself, and so has Zeke, but we only have a vague understanding of what's there."

I cursed. "Damn, well thanks for telling me what you could at least. How about the timeframe? How long do we have on here? Zeke said we're taking the long way."

"Yup. Lady Valsara, the fae who contracted us for the pickup of her daughter Annalise, is also planning to do some training before arriving at the temple." He winked at me. "We get paid more this way, so I don't mind. It'll be about three months. If I were you I'd use it on soul tempering. Having a higher soul will give you a huge advantage in the temple. The better your soul the higher your starting point, even if we forgot most of it that much is easy to remember."

Abel grinned at that. His soul was at the peak of yellow, having been boosted a full grade on rank up just like the rest of ours, and having already reached the peak of orange in G-rank. Training the soul past one full rank ahead (Master Candidate status) required special resources and techniques, or places like the Ruined Soul Temple. Hearing that he's have an advantage in the trials had to be pleasant for him.

Of course, I was better there would be plenty of other Master Candidates showing up to this if that was the case, and probably even monsters whose souls had advanced to a level close to the two grade higher limit. Since the Ruined Soul Temple trials gave prizes, some of those clan heirs who had trained on their family's own inheritance would probably make an appearance to try to sweep the rewards.

The thought of fighting more people like Abel was...kind of exciting. And I had three full months of training against Abel himself to hone those skills. My mentor had beaten me before, but that had been a while ago. And I'd come damned close to winning. I'd advanced quite a bit since then in terms of combat fundamentals.

I felt Callie start next to me and glanced over to check on her. She looked pretty intense, glancing around wide eyed as if she had no idea where she was, but I could tell from the bond that she was excited. Apparently she'd had some success with whatever comprehension of her Path she was working on. I wanted to ask about it, but now definitely wasn't the time.

So we followed Killian, enjoying the tour and listening to his stories for an hour or two, until finally the A-ranker was called away for some business or something and left us to head to the dining hall to grab something to eat. It had been most of the day since my last meal, so I for one was pretty damned hungry.

Sitting down at a table, we all ordered food from one of the waiters they apparently had on staff here full time, and then I gave my girlfriend a curious glance. She shook her head, giving me a quick 'later' gesture, and then asked me to fill her in on what she'd missed during her downtime.

"Huh. This place is pretty cool." She said in wonder, glancing around the dining hall to try to see something interesting. Of course, we were in a building so she didn't see anything but tables and food, but for my girlfriend, the latter would always be the most important thing in the room. "Also those steaks smell AMAZING." She grinned at me. "Honey..."

"No." I said flatly. "You got an eighteen ounce ribeye and like four sides. I'm not sharing.

"But I'm so HUNGRY." She moaned, letting her head slump to the table dramatically. "I used so much energy on my epiphany, I need sustenance."

I glanced at her suspiciously, then over to Zeke. "Is that actually a thing? Do epiphanies make you hungry?"

"I'm pretty sure BREATHING makes her hungry." He said wryly. "But I guess it's possible soul strain from working on a potential Path would drain stamina? Theoretically? Seems like a stretch, but you might as well just give up on your steak and order another one."

I rolled my eyes with a sigh, nodding my head and eliciting a squeal of delight from Callie, who threw herself on me in a crushing hug. I smiled under my mask where no one could see, closing my eyes and enjoying the warmth of us all being together. In the background, Cass, who been unusually quiet from her spot riding on Randall, started to chatter excitedly to Jessie, who laughed as she entertained the smaller girl.

Selka was haranguing my cousin, asking her rapid fire questions since she had only been allowed to join up with us at the last minute. I thought Nat's guardian being so worried was sweet, but my cousin mostly just seemed annoyed. Benny was sitting next to me, and as the food arrived and I gave mine to Callie and ordered more, he rolled his eyes and cut half a steak and dropped it on my plate.

"Thanks." I said with a solemn nod, which he returned. I wasn't just talking about the food, and he knew it. Benny had been there through the whole dungeon mess, often relegated to the back line, and he'd come through for us every time it mattered. He'd been patient and helpful if slightly annoying, ready to do anything he could to turn things around.

Jessie and Callie were both mostly taken care of in terms of growth, and that left Benny to help out. I owed him, not just for being there during this but for my whole life, and I was going to pay it back ten fold. Three months of stats was enough to explosively boost his abilities, and since I should be getting some rollover renown from the godslaying (if not as much as Callie would) I could dedicate most of my wishes to that.

Some of them would go to improving my own power, of course, but Benny had some great attacks to pay with, and I knew I'd be using them consistently in training, so that was a win win. A hand closed around mine, Callie grasping my fingers and giving them a light squeeze as she speared a steak with a fork and started chomping into it from one side, much to my amusement.

I felt a surge of warmth from her through the bond, and I returned it wholeheartedly as I looked around. Family. I was going to look for my mom, meet my sister, and eventually get answers from my dad. I was going to change the way kids grew up in the family, and make my name ring through the whole universe. I was going to do that for family. Not just my parents or relatives, but this family, the one I'd made.

I'd taken a step with this whole dungeon episode, a step out onto the wider stage. People would be hearing my name, would know who I was. I'd officially joined the wider universe, even if, based on what Zeke said, I was competing with enough ridiculous shit that I wasn't likely to stand out at first. It was still progress, still a story that other people would tell. I'd written the first chapter of my legend, of OUR legend, and I couldn't wait to write the next.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The next three months flew by. Constant combat training, soul training, and a consistent influx of rollover points mixed with some wishes had slowly sharpened and molded me. I'd spent a large amount of time working on my staff art, trying to fuse it to DS Mastery by creating unique staff moves that melded well with my subskills, to middling success, but I'd become much more skilled with my staff as a result.

At the moment, I found myself resting after a rough fight with Abel, panting and exhausted as I glared at my mentor. "Why can't I beat you?" I complained. "I keep getting stronger, but you keep being just that little bit out of reach."

He snickered. "You're not the only one getting stronger, kid. Not only do I have a bunch of stat points rolling in from that last battle same as you, I'm also fighting with you, Blake, Callie, Valk, and about a dozen other people pretty much every day. You're training and working on your soul and Skills. Learning to harness your Path, and any number of other things, all I do is fight until my knuckles crack."

"Freak." I said scathingly, though it probably would have been more biting if I wasn't collapsed in a puddle of my own
blood and sweat.

"I'm sorry." Abel said with a laugh, cupping an ear. "Did you say 'weak' because while you are pretty disappointing in combat I wouldn't go quite that far. I'm sure you can catch up eventually." He snickered at my glare. "Jokes aside kid, you're improving more quickly than most. I'm just extremely narrowly focused. Not to mention I have a lot of room to grow after recently breaking through to expert."

I groaned, but acknowledged the point, crawling across the sandy floor of the training hall to a bench with a towel and water bottle to wash and wipe down my face. I considered healing up with a heal burst, but I was running low, and my Vitality was pretty solid, so I felt like it would be better to just wait it out for the moment.

To ensure maximum training efficiency I'd taken to sparring without my armor. It didn't do much good against Abel anyway, since it wasn't particularly effective against blunt force. My mask too was sitting to one side, since wearing just the mask and normal clothes felt weird. Callie, who was lounging nearby, grinned at me. "That was pretty impressive. Your new staff technique is coming along well."

Chuckling, I pulled myself up onto the bench. "You say that, but your growth over the last few months has been absurd. Not quite as much as that first burst, but still, you've already hit the halfway point of F-rank. I'm scrambling to catch up as it is." Though her soul growth was only up to sixteen percent, the one department she couldn't quite keep up in.

She grinned proudly. "True. I AM pretty amazing. I'm so close to forming a Path, I can almost taste it. Though I don't think I'm likely to form a Solid Path like you have, at least not anytime soon."

"Killian says that's actually less useful in the early days. Makes it harder to use." I said with a shrug. "I've progressed pretty far with that theoretically, but he's seen people form a Solid Path early and get stuck because of it. People like you and Abel and Gabriel can use your path at will, while I have to try to align myself with it manually."

While Zeke was forbidden to help us too much, Killian had no such restrictions. Having an A-ranker around willing to answer questions (some questions at least, he claimed he couldn't tell us too much or it might fuck up our progress) was extremely convenient for our growth. Not to mention his son Blake had become a friend and a hell of a sparring partner.

Speaking of. "How's Benny been doing?" I gestured to where her fingers had slipped partway into the shadows, no doubt using them to keep an eye on all our friends. Callie tended to get bored and check in with everyone regularly. Benny, who had improved explosively under my nearly complete attention, had been working with some new gear and a massive bump in stats, trying to improve as the rest of us did.

His growth in the soul department was particularly impressive, having managed to grind his way up to twenty five percent of the way through orange by virtue of his Spiritual Calming belt. I'd grown a bit more than that, reaching fifty percent, but mostly because I was using my Solid Path to push me ahead.

According to Killain. Forming a Path was a necessary and important step, but most Paths started as Illusionary Paths. Illusionary Paths, like Abel's, Gabriel's, and Callie's, were much easier to use and alter, as well as being more intuitive. This particular step was considered integral to refining your path to be more closely aligned with your personality and combat style.

Solid Paths were the NEXT step in the process, creating a literal Skill for your Path. He refused to expand on the later steps of the process, saying it wasn't important, but the fact was I'd skipped some steps. Unfortunately that didn't seem to be a good thing. Instead of mapping my Path to my combat style, I was forced to map my combat style to my Path, slowly finding a way to bridge the gap and activate my Path as I fought.

The only saving grace was the my DS Mastery was my main combat Skill already, so I didn't have to completely reinvent the wheel, but I'd always used it more as a utility Skill, ignoring the underlying elements of the Fatewalker class in order to lean into my strengths. Now I was forced to learn how form a cohesive whole, and it was much harder than it would be for most people because I was feeling around in the dark instead of defining my own way.

Callie clicked her tongue. "Only you would be upset that you're somehow accidentally much further along than the rest of us. Sure you have to catch up to where you're at, but there are plenty of people who never take the step of forming an Illusionary Path, much less a Solid One. As long as you can figure out how to stick to that, you shouldn't have any problem advancing all the way to C-rank right?"

"Other than the obvious problem of actually GETTING there." I snorted. "Bit premature. Wishes are lagging behind in terms of stat buildup. I need to get my name out there the normal way too. The godslaying fight was a good start, but we all have a long way to go before we can even think about D-rank, let alone C-rank."

She leaned down to peck me on the cheek. "Can you try to enjoy yourself a bit please? All this hardcore training is making you a bit too results focused. You're missing the forest for the trees honey." Which was easy for her to say...but also fair.

I sighed. "You're right. I never wanted to become someone who cultivated just for the sake of getting stronger. I'm too wrapped up in accomplishing as much as possible. Luckily we should be approaching the Temple soon. I can relax now, because I won't be able to accomplish much before we arrive anyway."

"Close enough." She said with an eye roll. "Tell the others to slow down too. Not Abel, of course, since he's a lunatic, but the rest of the team has been hard at work following your example."

My wince at that was hard to hide. "They have been, haven't they." I sighed in frustration. "I didn't want to push them into overdoing it, I was just kind of worried. We're going to be pretty disadvantaged as it is. I know that we can't actually die in the temple but if something happens in there that wounds our souls..."

She took my hand, squeezing it gently. "I know, honey. But you've done everything you can, both individually and as a team leader. Everyone has seen how much you've been helping Benny. Celine says he's really started to buckle down. Even Cass has been trying to do her katas more rigorously because she thinks you've been so cool." She giggled at my grimace. "It's cute. Jessie's been patching her and Cark is making sure she doesn't go too far."

"I guess." I said with a sigh. "But you're right. We need to make sure everyone calms down to relax a bit. Proper rest is a key aspect of growth too, something I should probably have thought of earlier. Jessie's lifeforce can only do so much for us. How long until we get there?"

"A week." She said matter of factly. "The traffic as we approach the Temple is pretty dense apparently. Killian said he didn't expect to run into this many obstructions. In any case, as to your earlier question..." She winced. "Benny isn't doing great. He's training with Blake right now, and we all know how that ends."

That made me wince as well. Blake was Killian's son, and had inherited the Zayne family soul stitching method. He used, like I was told Killian did (I'd never seen the older man fight) ghost binding techniques. Like Zeke had sniped at Killian, they had some downsides relative to Zeke's Voltomancy, but it was essentially a quantity for quality exchange. Fighting an army of high F-ranked ghosts was obnoxious and painful.

"Well, he can heal up and come find us when he's done." I said with a shrug. "I think since we're getting close we should do like a team movie night."

She smiled sweetly. "Sounds like fun. I'll gather everybody. I think Cark took Cass to the entertainment district. We barely managed to get her to stop practicing." She turned to glare at Abel. "Which we all blame you for, Abel!" He just flipped her off and went back to doing cool down pushups.

"Ignore him." I said with a laugh. "Just tell her I'll make Pepper jack mac and cheese tonight. It's her favorite, so it should be plenty of motivation to sit still and watch a movie. Although, do we have anything good?"

Her shrug was carefree. "I'm sure one of us has something from the can box saved to a ring we can watch. If not, Cass probably saved some of her cartoons. If nothing else it'll be hilarious seeing Celine have to sit through them. She seems like the type to dislike childish antics."

Despite the teasing I knew she didn't want to really upset Celine. The two of them had gotten much closer during the time we'd been here, along with Nat, they were basically always together. Nat who had been working with Celine constantly helping her keep up with Benny. Our elven friend was writing a lot of checks her family would need to cash, which I thought was pretty hilarious.

Standing up, I helped Callie to her feet, turning to the still exercising Abel. "Hey, quit the cardio and come on, we're doing a movie. Callie already reached out to everyone." Her shadow abilities were particularly useful for carrying messages around the ship, since she could either drop off written noted or pass her mouth through to shout.

I mentioned to her as we left to invite Blake too, and Annalise if she could find her, our friends could use the downtime too. It had been a hard few months, but now that we were coming up on the end of the journey, I couldn't wait to show what I'd accomplished. We'd all gotten stronger, and those assholes at the Ruined Soul Temple would never see us coming. After killing a god, I wasn't even scared of meeting an F-rank master. We were going to train our souls to the limit and win some of those rewards, and nothing they could do would stop us.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"Benny!" I greeted my best friend as he finally made he way into the manor we were staying in. "How was training?" Killian had lent it to use as our traveling accommodations, and everyone had long since gotten used to it. Callie and I were laid out on the couch waiting for everyone to get back before picking a movie, and my friend groaned and tiredly dropped into a seat nearby as he arrived.

"Painful." He said with a grimace. "But useful. Between the considerable help you've given me over the last few months and my new piece of tech, I put up a much better fight."

Callie hummed with interest. "What are your stats actually at by the way? You've been pretty secretive about the whole thing. Even Celine doesn't know. Granted, she told me she hasn't told you hers either, but that's just retaliation for being so secretive."

He shrugged. "I've been avoiding saying anything because it feels like I'll stop making progress if I talk about it. I know it's stupid, but it's like a hot streak or something. Secrecy is my lucky underwear. If we're going to slow down on training for the remainder though, might as well tell everyone. Once Cel gets here I'll share my progress, as long as you guys do the same."

We both agreed, since it wouldn't be a bad thing to let people know where we were. Some of our team members weren't at the point where they were comfortable sharing that stuff, but Jessie, Callie, Benny, and I didn't have much to hide. Probably had something to do with the drastically different environment we'd come up in compared to the others, plus the speed. Honestly whatever we shared would be out of date in a month or two anyway.

Celine, Nat, Perit, Valk, Abel, Cark, Cass and the whole rest of the team showed up, and once we all settled in, we decided to show off how awesome we were before the movie. Benny, being the one of us with the biggest change recently, went first.

Benicio Cortez- F-rank. Ability: Intermediate Mechanical Embodiment- Allows the integration of existing inventions into the users body for the purposes of strengthening and enhancing them.

Might-1405
Impact-35
Fantasy-56
Vitality-141
Focus-1683
Perception-282
Creation-171
Progress to next rank: 3773/10000

soul strength: Orange 25%

Pet- Wolf named Rolf

Current integrated tech. 10/10. Torso: G-ranked intangibility for short bursts. Right fist: triple punch. Left forearm: F-ranked energy barrier or variable shape. Left fist: minor slow acting tranquilizer effect. Right foot: Density shifting to create heavier kicks and more powerful jumps. Left Foot: momentum neutralization to allow stopping instantly. Head: slight cognitive boost to allow more thinking time. Back: ability to grow a shell to tank damage. Chest: Pair of golden G rank spider legs that arch up from the shoulders. Waist: Belt of spiritual calming. Heart: Illusionary double

Skills:Minor Cooking Mastery, Intermediate Inventing Mastery, Minor Haggling Mastery, Minor Stealth Mastery

Everyone just stared in shock at the numbers. I grinned, buffing my fingernails on my shirt and then blowing them clean. "After the big jump from the godslaying incident, I can do seven points per wish now. Twenty two hundred of my three thousand seven hundred and eighty total points for the last few months went to Benny. We didn't just put them into his mains either, though most of them went there. Two hundred of it was rollover from the battle, but he didn't get quite as much attention as the rest of us."

Benny grinned. "Plus my new heart device which lets me create an illusionary double. It's twice as effective because the double is technically me, which means it can access my abilities despite not being corporeal. The spider legs have physical presence because they're an effect, which means some interesting possible combinations."

Callie whistled. "Damn, you really have been putting the work in Shane." She raised an eyebrow at my friend. "The invention is neat, but it's not really the same amount of effort." He rolled his eyes and flipped her off, and she just snickered, before turning to the rest of us. "As you know, I've been making steady gains since the battle, and I've hit the halfway point, though it's starting to slow down."

Calliope Reynolds F-rank Abyssal Infiltration- Enter the shadows and emerge where you will within range, shape the darkness to your call, moving it as if it were part of your body, and even extend your senses through the shadows to spy on your enemies.

Might-1250
Impact-35
Vitality-342
Fantasy-1105
Focus-108
Perception-1875
Creation-485
Progress to next rank: 5200/1000

Soul strength- Orange-16%
Pet-Wolf named Rellia

Skills: Minor Tracking, Minor Dual Dagger Mastery, Beginner Stealth, Beginner Trap Mastery, Beginner Disguise, Lesser Balam Mastery, Beginner Shadow Manipulation Mastery. Lesser Paired Dueling.

"Well...a bit over half." She admitted cheerfully. "Most of it went to Perception though. My Might gains were mostly from people who were there, my stealth and Perception abilities got hyped a lot in the aftermath, apparently people are making it sound like a backstab." She didn't sound particularly upset about that, which I could understand given her truly ridiculous gains.

"Guess it's my turn then." I said with a grin. "While twenty two hundred of the wish points went to Benny, I also spent a portion of the time doing point rebalancing for some of the other people on the ship, resulting in a substantial gain for me."

Wishmaster candidate status. F-rank. Ability: Intermediate Wish- Six times a day grant an Intermediate wish in return for proper compensation. Wish must be feasibly achievable by the candidate's own efforts within a three day period with current statistics.

Might-975
Impact-35
Fantasy-500
Vitality-720
Focus-720
Perception-704
Creation-260
Progress to next rank:3914/10000
Soul strength Orange-50%

Stored:7 shadow attacks, 7 shadow jump, 10 Stealth charges, 0 fire attacks, 10 triple strenth tranq blows (ten in reserve), 10 triple strength density shifted attacks (ten in reserve). 10 spider leg attacks (ten in reserve), 4 heal bursts, 4 gravity attacks, 3 shadow clone, 21 scan heals (I-rank ability so Shane can hold more)

Pet- Wolf named Jin

Skills:Intermediate Path of the Doom Sovereign, Minor Valtek Mastery, Lesser Cooking Mastery, Lesser Inventing Mastery, Minor Piano Mastery, Minor Guitar Mastery, Lesser Balam Mastery, Minor First Aid Mastery,Lesser Paired Dueling

DS Subskills. Monk: Stone Limb, Moonlit Night, Consecration of Flame, Ripple Running, State of Grace, Steam Arrow, Afterburner, Pit of Despair, Mountain Stance.

Rogue: Mercy Kill, Double Trouble, Touch of Tears, Flurry of Blows, Heavy hands, Marked for Death

Diviner: Overlay, Song of the Soil, Rythym of the Wild, Eye of Revelation, Danger Sense

"Fifteen hundred and eighty points from that, and another five hundred from the battle over time." I said smugly. "Not to mention all the soul training from working on my Path, which has put me up to a full fifty percent. Callie may be way ahead on stats, but I'm not exactly being left in the dust." I was damned proud of my progress actually. Though it made me wonder about our last original team member. "How about you Jessie?"

She shrugged. "The complete Vitality focus left a big impression. I got about a thousand off the battle in the last few months. Plus about five hundred rollover from the Bond with Randall. My soul is up to about eighteen percent now."

Jessica Evans- F-rank. Ability: Intermediate Lifeweaving- Infuse living things with life itself and direct their actions while the users power flows through them. Control had limited effect on sapient entities. Prolonged exposure to life energy may cause lasting effects in controlled subjects.

Might-875
Impact-35
Fantasy-78
Vitality-2292
Focus-55
Perception-65
Creation-58

Progress to next rank: 3458/10000

Pet- Wolf named Lily and bear named Randall(Beginner Beast Bonding with Jessie)

soul strength: Orange- 18%

Skills: Beginner Horticulture,Beginner First Aid, Minor Herbalism, Minor Flower Arrangement, Minor Beast Taming Mastery, Beginner Beast Bonding, Intermediate Shape of the Wild

I whistled. "Benefits of hyperfocusing. That Bond is kind of bullshit too. Still, barring our resident godslayer, we're all pretty similarly far along. I admit I expected Jessie to lag a bit, I was planning to dedicate some wishes to boosting her for a while, but it seems like that won't be necessary."

She nodded. "Might from Randall aside, I'm WAY overpowered as a healer for my level, which makes a big impression. I'm not surprised a lot of those people I saved were talking about it. I've also spent the last month healing everyone who needs it on the ship, so there's been some renown from that too. Probably not much but you know what they say, ABH, always be healing."

"No one says that." Said Benny with an eyeroll.

Jessie grinned at him cheekily. "Well they'd better start if they want me to heal them next time they get their teeth kicked in by an army of ghosts." He gave conciliatory shrug at that, and the rest of us laughed. "Now I believe there was some talk of a movie being chosen?"

Cass, who had been unusually quiet (practicing her damned katas again) began to bounce with excitement. "Oooh! Let me pick!"

"No." Said Cark shortly, glaring around at all of us. Despite Cass being like a little sister to the whole team (I'd even caught Nat sneaking her candy a few times) she was Cark's ACTUAL sister, and we deferred to him when it came to making decisions for her.

"I think I should pick." Said Callie loftily. "I AM the strongest F-ranker in the group."

"In terms of stats." I said with a scoff. "I have the strongest soul." Abel cleared his throat and I rolled my eyes. "Or whatever. You know what I mean. You don't count, you're a monster."

Benny groaned. "Oh gods, can we just take a vote please? Everyone's submission counts for the same amount. Otherwise we'd have to just let Zeke pick." He shuddered. "Which would be a tragedy. He has absolutely terrible taste in movies." He glanced at me for backup. "Remember that six hour romcom marathon when we were eleven?"

I ALSO shuddered. "I don't think it was possible for me to forget that BEFORE I had seven hundred plus Focus. Voting is better."

"I like romcoms." Said Callie in an affronted voice. "They're not so bad."

Shaking my head, I corrected her emphatically. "Except he doesn't watch regular romcoms. He watches THEMED romcoms. Zombies and werewolves and aliens and shit. The production values are always awful and the writing is trash. I have no clue where he even finds them. I've never heard of half the movies I was forced to watch growing up anywhere else. It's like he conjures them or something." I shot him a suspicious look.

He just grinned. "I don't. Nor are they wish based or anything. I just have a pretty decent sized collection. Granted they're in an alternate format, so I had to have them converted into scan files, but it was all worth it. Besides, it's not my fault anyway. Your mother was the one who got me into those. Eli hated them, but Sasha would force him to watch them every time we had a movie night."

The geas didn't activate, presumably because that bit of info wasn't related to cultivation. Still, I ate up every syllable. I just couldn't picture my ice cold dad being bullied into watching bad movies. That sounded like something Callie would convince me to do. What had my parents relationship been like? I always envisioned it as like a marriage of convenience or something. Mom had left when I was too young to form many memories, so I hadn't seen them together.

It was just another in the long list of questions I had for my mom about why she left us. About why she took my sister away. I was getting really sick and tired of being in the dark about my own life. I tensed for a minute, but then forced myself to relax and enjoy the bickering from my family. I would find out the truth soon enough, for now I should live my life as it was now. No use dwelling on the past when I couldn't get the answers I wanted until later.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The movie night was a huge success. Granted, not because we found a good movie, but more because Benny (who had won the vote) had picked a terrible movie and we all spent the whole time mocking both it and him mercilessly. Even Celine got a few jabs in, and my best friend swore vengeance on all of us, saying he wold similarly excorciate or own taste when it was his turn.

And like that we decided to do seven movie nights, one for each day we had left before reaching the Temple. The next morning, I actually tracked down my Uncle in one of the entertainment districts to ask him a bit about where the Ruined Soul Temple was and what the situation there was.

Zeke had been around since we got here, but he was mostly keeping back. I think he was feeling guilty about not mentioning my sister. I still hadn't really brought that up, or even talked to him much one on one, because I knew deep down he'd have told me if he could. Asking him about it was only going to hurt him, and Zeke was the one person who had never bailed on me, regardless of the reasoning.

Despite knowing he was bound to me, I think part of me was terrified if I ever pushed him on things I'd lose him too. I almost never really dug in when I got mad at anyone, honestly. Losing my parents like I had made it way too scary to strain my relationships. It was clearly simple for people to leave me, and I couldn't take the thought of more loss. That was something I was working on, but I think even if it wasn't the case I wouldn't have called him on the omission. It wasn't his fault.

So, avoiding the elephant in the room, I plopped down across from him. I didn't bother with niceties, figuring the distraction of an actual conversation was better than awkward stammering. "So, I was curious about something. I wondered about it in the dungeon, first off, had you heard of Suvaya?"

He blew out a breath. "Nope. She was before my time. The vanished gods were gone long before I came on the scene."
"Fair. But she mentioned the six. I thought Unity was pretty young for a god." Honestly, part of me wished he hadn't been involved. We'd never really asked, but I'd always felt like the Conglomerate was just that little bit better than the other factions. Even having seen the nonsense politics and the corruption, part of me wanted to believe there were real heroes there.

"He is." Said Zeke. "Only about a thousand. I'm not familiar with Suvaya, but based on the timeline Unity wasn't there when they took her out. It was Hatescream. I wasn't around for it, but I knew people who were. Hatescream was the leader of the Blood Murder Palace, he was the fifth member of the alliance before Unity came on the scene."
I grimaced. "Blood Muder Palace? They sound like fun guys to have at a party."

"They shouldn't." Said Zeke dryly. "They were dicks. Like...all of them. Hatescream tried to install sleepers in all the other factions, presumably to eventually stage a coup and wipe them out. Clearly it didn't work, the others found out and he got killed. The Palace got wiped out after that from what I heard, though one of them pops up now and then to be a nuisance."

That was...kind of a relief. Not that terrifying murder cult that apparently used to be one of the major factions of my universe, but the fact that Unity hadn't been one of the six at the time. My ancestor still had, but then, I'd always known the WCP was morally ambiguous at best. Knowing the Conglomerate hadn't been part of that was a weirdly huge relief.
"Anyway." I said, happy with my answer and ready to change the subject. "We're a week out from the Temple. Where is it by the way?"

He chuckled, taking a pull of his beer. "No man's land. It's a small system stuck in the middle of the territories of four of the factions. The Cult, Church, Fairyland and Empire surround it, so no one faction has too much influence. As a consequences, the entire system is kind of a horrifying free for all of bandits, space pirates, and criminals who have escaped all the other territories. They leave the Temple itself alone, of course, so they don't give everyone else a reason to clean the place out."

"So...should we be worried about that? Are we in no man's land yet?" I hadn't considered we might get attacked in this ship. It was owned by an A-ranker after all, but hearing we were in some kind of lawless wasteland wasn't super comforting.

He shrugged. "Probably? Who knows. There are bandits that might try it, depends if we run into them. We're just inside the limit of no man's land, so it's possible. Most of the time I'd say we were safe, but the trials will have attracted a ton of factions large and small, chances are good that includes more dangerous bandits hoping to try their luck."

"And you guys can...handle that, right?" He didn't SEEM worried, but there was a non zero chance that Zeke wasn't capable of feeling personal fear anymore. I'd never seen him show any evidence of it, so I decided to operate on the assumption that he just didn't worry about his own mortality at all.

His shrug this time came with a wolfish. "Probably. Who knows?" He repeated. At my glare, he rolled his eyes. "Listen, don't worry about that kind of stuff."

"Why?" I said hopefully. "Because you guys have it under control?"

"Nah." He snickered. "Because if something comes along that can kill us there's nothing you could do about it anyway. No sense stressing for no reason."

I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. "Thanks Zeke. That's comforting." I'd been expecting something a bit more reassuring.

"Look kid." Said my uncle with a sigh. "Let me tell you a secret that all Ascendants learn eventually. It's not cultivation based exactly, so I can share without repercussions, but this is a truth you'll need to accept if you want to make it in very far. Don't worry about it."

I blinked at him. "That was a lot of build up just to change your mind and rug pull me."

He rolled his eyes. "No, idiot. Don't worry about it IS the advice. Between abilities, recursion, fate sense, monsters, objects, and just random assholes doing random asshole things, our entire world is a dumpster fire of unrelenting chaos. The universe is a twenty way intersection interspersed with train tracks with no stoplights, where all the cars are made of explosives and the only speed limit is 'floor it'. If you don't learn to roll with the punches you're going to go crazy."

"So I just...what?" I said. "Accept that I could die at any second? That my friends could die at any second? What kind of life is that?"

His look made it clear he thought I was an idiot for even saying that. "Does not accepting it change anything? A random S-rank piece of space junk could punch through the hull of this ship and smash your head clean off right this second and you'd never see it coming. Does that mean it's something you should worry about? Just take things as they come, because constantly asking what if accomplishes nothing."

That actually made WAY too much sense. I'd always gotten a sort of 'devil may care vibe' from my uncle. Not like he didn't care about ME, but like everything that happened he took with the sort of casual nonchalance you would expect from someone who got slightly less than the full pound of cheese they paid for at the supermarket.

But learning about his little philosophy explained a LOT. No wonder he never seemed to freak out about anything. Because he was right, crazy shit happened to Ascendants all the time, if you got thrown by everything weird you stumbled on you'd have a nervous breakdown. Hell, worrying about what could go wrong would be a full time job.

Hell, in some ways I'd kind of already stumbled on this little pearl of wisdom on my own. I'd been trying to live in the now and not worry so much about the future for a while, I just hadn't really put it into those exact words. I could understand his point, but I honestly felt like he might be kind of overdoing it with the devil may care attitude. "Ok then." I said with an annoyed hiss. "Then when, exactly am I ALLOWED to worry. Because you can't just completely ignore all your problems can you?"

"Of course not." He said calmly. "I said take them as they come, not ignore them completely. Stay loose, keep on your toes, be ready to react to anything. It's a cultivated mind set, no pun intended. Like the ship, don't worry about whether we'll get attacked, there's people lined up to deal with that kind of thing. It's above your paygrade, so just don't worry about it."

"Like I asked earlier." I repeated. "When do I start worrying? What grand sign do I wait for that tells me that it's officially time for me to start giving a shit about my own survival." I was getting frustrated by his casual dismissal of my concerns. I understood the concept, but it was annoying to talk to someone who essentially just told you to blow everything off.

He started to shrug again, but pitched sideways suddenly, eyes narrowing with annoyance as the floor, no, the BUILDING under us rolled below our feet. He glanced down at his beer, which had spilled while he was distracted, and growled in annoyance as he put it down, sucking on his shirt so as not to waste the alcohol.

I stared at him, eyes wide in fear, and he grinned back at me, glancing up towards the ceiling. "Well, I don't know about you, but I kind of feel like THAT might have been the sort sign you were thinking of." Standing up, he offered me a hand up from where I'd been thrown against the side of the booth. "Here, come with me. Seems like we might have company on this little trip."

"And what?" I demanded, batting his hand aside to stand on my own. "You want to show them to me so I can die terrified?"

Rolling his eyes, he started out the door. "No, moron. I want to show you that worrying accomplishes nothing. If the sky falls, someone will be there to catch it. Us being attacked isn't your problem, it's Killian's and to an extent mine. So I'm going to escort you to the observation deck so you can watch us take care of business, and then maybe you can calm the hell down a bit."

"I've seen you fight before." I said with a scowl as I followed after him. "It was plenty scary, but that doesn't mean you can handle everything."

"You've seen me play around." He sneered. "Those were chump change B-rankers with almost no battle experience. I'm near the peak of B-rank kid, I can fight fucking A-rankers, and have done a time or two. You need to see a real battle between your old uncle here and some heavy hitters so you can stop underestimating me and relax."

I wasn't entirely sure he was right about that, but as we bolted through the ship toward wherever he was taking us, I had to admit I didn't care that much. I was going to see a real high ranking battle...in space. Whatever his reasoning for showing it to me I'd be an idiot to pass up the chance. I was currently scared out of my wits about the attack, but at the same time I couldn't stop my heart from pounding in anticipation. This was going to be good.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Apparently the others had noticed the huge influx of people bolting for the observation deck, because they fell into step with me as I ran. Zeke was with me, but while he was definitely moving at running SPEED, I noticed at a second glance that he was mostly just strolling with purpose.

Benny was the first person to catch up, with Callie on his heels, though neither of them was going at top speed obviously. "What the hell is going on?" Asked my best friend in a bewildered tone. "Did we hit turbulence or something?"

I rolled my eyes. "We're in space, dipshit. Turbulence is like...air currents or something. There's no air in space."

"There's no air in your skull." He grumbled. "No brain either."

I sneered at him. "Brutal comeback. You've clearly been secretly developing a repartee Skill."

"You're both equally morons." Said Callie helpfully. "Now can you please focus and tell us what's happening? Because if we're sprinting across this damned ship for no reason I'm going to kick someone in the throat." I snickered at her exasperation. She didn't really begrudge us our bickering, she just felt like she needed to keep us on task.

So I filled them in on what I knew about no man's land and how Zeke said we were probably getting attacked. Callie glared at my uncle. "You couldn't have TOLD us this before?"

He shrugged. "Like I said, not really relevant. At least until it was. Can't spend all your time worrying about what might happen." Finally we arrived at...the sky? But not the sky, a wall that looked like the sky. The edge of the section of the ship that looked like it was outdoors. Zeke help up a hand and pressed it against the wall, and a panel slid open, letting is into a large open metal hallway. This was the portion of the ship that was actually shiplike, and we'd never even been in here. "Follow the hall that way." He said, pointing to the left. "I have to go check in with Kill."

Then he was gone. Nice to know what it looked like when Zeke actually hurried. We followed his directions, and came out in a massive domed chamber where the rest of our friends and associates were waiting. "You guys!" Called Jessie, waving us over. "Glad you made it so quick. Blake was about to come look for you."

She gestured at our host's son, who cheerfully mirrored her earlier wave. I nodded back. "Ok, so Zeke said we were under attack and sent us here to the...observation deck? What actually is this place?"

Blake pointed to the wall, where I could see a shitload of stars. "Ok, so this is an A-ranked ship. I'm sure you noticed, of course, that you aren't being smashed into paste standing inside it. That's because the Impact is all being routed to various enchantments. Defensive runes, quality of life stuff, there's a whole industry for shipbuilding. Interspersed throughout the bindings engraved on every inch of the ship are millions of Perception runes, which aside from doing various tasks are also connected to this room, creating a complete 360 degree image of the space outside, though obviously not to scale."

Looking around, I saw that the dome DID have images of space on it. Lots of space, tons of tiny stars showing the area around us. Blake led us over to one of the walls after spotting movement and drew a circle before tapping it. The area inside the circle zoomed in, showing a pair of men in large grey cloaks holding bows, with a huge man standing behind them rippling with muscle, his face completely covered by a black metal helm shaped like a skull.

"Shit." Cursed Blake. "Those assholes shouldn't have messed with us." At our look, he pointed at the brothers. "Those are Valak and Carus Brightwind. Exiled A-rank elven archers from the Faerie Land. They lurk around here and hit ships as they pass by, but they shouldn't hit something as big as the Necromedes. The Zayne Clan is way out of their weight class." He pulled up a screen on his scan ring, flipping through a bunch of images.

"Ah, damn it." He threw the image he'd stopped on, projecting it up next to the circle. "That would be the reason they're willing to pick this fight. Archers aren't great at up close combat, and at A-rank that can be a long distance. That guy with them is Fabian Rayner, captain of Bone Ghost Pirates. Which means there's probably more of them around here."

Before he could go on, a booming voice rolled over the observation room. "Can you idiots not?" Asked the lazy drawl of my uncle. Blake drew another circle, and zoomed in to find Zeke and Killian standing on another asteroid, looking relaxed next to a short older man with tanned skin and black hair going grey at the temples.

"Oh shit!" Said Blake, flinching back from the image. "Grandpa sent Great Uncle Miles?" At our looks of confusion, he explained. "My Grandpa's brother is the closest person in the family to S-rank. Grandpa founded the clan, but he didn't do it alone. Great Uncle Miles is his brother and right hand, and he's in the high A-ranks. Rayner is strong, according to this but not as strong as Miles."

The skull masked figure let out a loud, rumbling laugh. "Miles Zayne." He boomed. I wasn't sure how we could even hear any of this. I guessed they were projecting their voices somehow to be heard through the vacuum of space. High level Ascendant bullshit probably. "They sending you on babysitting missions now?"

A calm, measured voice rolled across the room, somehow quiet despite its absurd volume. "Shouldn't matter, Rayner. Not if you have the sense the gods gave a rock. Who gave you the guts to try to pick a fight with a Zayne family ship? And with just a pair of ragtag point ear stick flingers?"

Rayner spread his arms wide. "And who exactly told you I JUST brought the Brightwinds?" The air behind Miles, Zeke, and Killian blurred, and a shadowy figure flashed forward, driving a dagger at my Uncle's back. A ghostly outline faded into being behind him, the form of a spectral knight, and the fire smashed into and through it. When the figure hit Zeke though, the weakest of the group, it passed right through him.

Miles hand went to his belt, drawing a sword, and a dozen ghostly blades formed around him, all superimposing on the black cleaver like monstrosity in his hand as he hacked at the shadow. There was a flicker and the figure vanished, appearing next to the skull masked pirate, holding an arm lashed open with the spectrally imbued sword.

Zeke, who was fine and not where he'd been standing a second ago, just laughed. "Morons. First rule of fighting up ranks is make sure you're never where it looks like you are. Did you idiots really think I'd just stand there to get backstabbed?"

The injured figure stepped forward, revealing a black robed man with a shining golden humanoid mask. "How did you sense me?" He hissed, his voice blasting through the room like the rustle of dead leaves over gravestones. "I should have been undetectable to a B-ranker, not to mention no illusion you made should have been that effective." He sneered Zeke's rank like it was an insult.

"Well you see, what I did was..." Zeke paused. "Oh wait, I'm not a fucking moron, so I'm not going to tell you that." Snapping his fingers, a bag appeared, and he dropped it on the asteroid, unzipping it and flicking his fingers. Ten masks rose out of the bag as he withdrew a robe, each coalescing into an identical robed figure as Zeke removed and eleventh mask and place it on his face.

The eleven figures were all completely indistinguishable from each other, and with another snap, they all vanished except the one who had been standing by the bag. Killian snickered. "Man, I don't envy you morons. I hate fighting Zeke. You never know which way is up. Even across a rank gap this is gonna be a bad time for you."

One of the archers stepped forward. Carus I think. "I'll take care of the gnat with the masks. Can the three of you handle the other two?"

His brother drew an arrow. "I've got the ghostling. You two can handle the old man together, can't you?" They didn't seem worried about being overheard, or maybe this weird projection speech only had one setting. I still had no clue how they were speaking audibly in space. Or breathing for that matter. Although I could hold my breath for a long time, so chances were good they could too. Maybe it was some kind of psychic speech.

Rayner nodded. "Miles is a tricky bastard, but Krian and I should be able to handle him two on one. He's not that much stronger than I am, and I have my own tricks."

That got a snort from Miles. "Rayner, I always heard you were Might focused, but with an imagination like that your Fantasy stat must be through the roof." He hefted his massive black cleaver sword over his shoulder, with a grin. The colossal blade was a jagged squared off hunk of dark sharpened metal lashed to a huge bone. It had a sort of awful necromantic beauty to it even without the glow from the inhabiting ghost blades.

Killing cracked his neck with a grin. "Whoever finishes first comes to help Uncle Miles. Or Zeke." He called over to the lone remaining figure. "Try not to die out there buddy."

Zeke snorted. "The day I'm in danger from some scumbag pretty boy elf with shooty shooty powers is the day I hang up my masks. Honestly, a bow? That's barely even a weapon. Might as well fling literal shit at me. How much do those arrows even cost? Because if they're A-rank they must be obscenely expensive."

Carus's face was turning purple with rage. Benny whistled next to me. "Damn Shane, no wonder you're so good at annoying people in combat. You came by that shit honest."

I snickered. "I still have a ways to go to reach that level. But hey, at least I have good examples both on and off the battlefield." He flipped me off but didn't take his eyes off the display, which was fair. Mine were glued to it too. I was actually torn between my excitement and worry for my uncle.

I'd seen people fight up ranks before. I knew percentage wise the difference in stats between someone at Zeke's level and the archer's was minimal, but still, it was a big Impact difference.

But as I stared at the screen, I paused. Why did Zeke have ten masks? I could have sworn back on Callus in the tournament he'd only had eight. Those last two (not to mention the one he was wearing, which I guess he hadn't needed before) must be newly made from the souls of those two bishops. One of them presumably had the conceptual dark skill the cult members seemed to love. I wasn't sure if it was the actual Enshrining Darkness ability Black Sorrow used or some kind of knock off, but it was damned powerful either way.

As Zeke bantered taunted the archer, I let my tense body relax. The excitement was still there, but the worry was washing away in the face of my uncle's confidence. If he was sure he could beat this guy I'd believe him. Besides, this was all just basic shit, I hadn't even seen any of them use their paths yet. Whatever was going to happen in this fight, I doubted it would be anything I was expecting. I'd just have to wait and see how it turned out. However that was, I was pretty sure I was about to see something amazing.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I watched in fascination as Zeke vanished from where he was standing. Seconds later, I saw him reappear some distance away as a massive arrow of light smashed into and vaporized the asteroid he'd been standing on. Miles and Killian had already moved to engage their own opponents, and I realized this view screen wasn't going to be good enough if we kept trying to watch everything.

"Can we make one of these circles just for Zeke?" I asked Blake. "I know you probably want to watch your dad and great uncle, but I want to see what my own uncle can do." I also wanted to make sure he didn't die horribly, but it seemed like a jinx to say it out loud.

He blinked at me. "Oh. Yeah, sorry. These are viewing portals. Watching A-rankers fight in real time is pretty much impossible, but the ship is A-rank and can keep up. It lets you watch as everything is happening. It's...my dad explained it, not slow motion, more like a kind of embedded imagery enchantment. In computer terms, you're watching normal frames per second, but each frame is a zip folder with a hundred images."

That was useful to know, but not as important as being able to watch Zeke. Blake, seeing my impatience, made another circle with his finger pushing it off to the side so we could go watch in private. He stayed behind, presumably to watch his Great Uncle Miles fight the other two. Meanwhile, when I resumed watching Zeke, I arrived just in time to catch him talking again.

"You know." He said conversationally as he poked a chunk of asteroid that floated by. "You might want to look into glasses. Eye strain can be a huge problem. Especially for snooty ass elves who have to constantly squint down at people from their high horse."

The end of the sentence was picked up by another chorus of voices as the ten other masked figures flickered into existence on nearby smaller floating space rocks.

Carus glared at them. "I don't know how you're doing that gnat, but mirroring your aura across all ten of those puppets won't save you. If I can't hit your copies one at a time with a single shot..." He trailed off, drawing the tall silver bow back slowly. Along its length, eleven lines of light coalesced, the points glowing like stars as Carus's eyes flickered. "I'll hit you all at once."

There was a ripple in the void around us as he spoke, his voice heavy and alien in a way I'd never experienced before. I knew without asking what this was. This was a Solid Path, at least. Probably one or two levels past that. Whatever that even was.

He released the string, and an explosive scramble of shooting stars spread out and smashed into every one of Zeke's clones, so fast that even through the weird slow motion of the viewing portals it was almost too quick to see. There was a deafening explosion and the forms of the masked figures were consumed in a conflagration of white light.

"Tsk. How gauche." Drawled my uncle's snide voice. "We were having such a nice talk. No wonder the elves kicked you and your brother out. Short tempers are a no-no for them. At least that's what my friend Alessa told me back when she ran with our little group."

Carus snarled loudly, spinning in place, clearly looking for my uncle. There was a flash of black as two of the masked figures appeared on either side of him and raised their hands. A storm of horrible conceptual dark shot through with red lightning consumed the elf, who screamed in pain. There was a series of arrows blasting free, tearing holes in the power, and it faded as the two figures vanished again.

I knew how Zeke was doing this, roughly. His mask didn't use stealth, it was an illusion effect. Probably enhanced by some other abilities, but regardless, Perception might not help as much here. The slightly ruffled and enraged elf was revealed as the darkness fell away. "WHERE ARE YOU!?" He screamed furiously. "Show yourself coward!"

Two more figures appeared, one yanking off his mask and throwing it at another. The mask slapped down on top of the first, a now bare faced Zeke vanishing as the mask glowed red, the two of them seeming to melt together. The figure gestured and the black chains we'd seen on Callus shot up, but this time the black was different. Like they were MADE of Enshrining Darkness.

Another pair of them appeared, one slapping its mask onto another as its robes fell to the rock below empty, no longer animated without a mask. The figure manifested the giant bow and arrow we'd seen him use against the bishops, but it was reinforced with red lightning. Zeke appeared next to it, smirking under his hood as he winked at the the elf. "How ironic is it that I'm going to kill you with archery?"

"That's not IRONY!" Howled the elf. "It's just a coincidence!" Zeke shrugged, snapping his fingers as a massive arrow made of red electricity barreled toward the elf. The archers eyes blazed with light again as he called his Path forward again, managing to draw his bow even with the chains taught, albeit just a bit.

A blinding arrow of light sheared through the chains and slammed into the asteroid below him, dropping him out from under the attack and into space. His foot came down as he stepped on starlight, vanishing and appearing on the other side of where Zeke and his masked alters were. He drew his bow again, a dozen arrows flashing toward my uncle, who threw up the same defensive barrier from the tournament before vanishing.

Carus was livid. "Why won't you just DIE!?" He screamed at the top of his lungs. Several places where the chains had touched his skin was blistered and cracked and his eyes were wild with pain and fear.

"Oooh, sorry!" Echoed nearly a dozen simultaneous voices. "We're all out of 'just die', perhaps I could interest you in some 'go fuck yourself'?"

The elf let a scream of incoherent rage and his hands blurred, a cosmic river of star tipped arrows blanketing the area around him. The various asteroids were reduced to powder as waves of white light consumed every inch of space within miles of the enraged A-ranker.

"That seemed uncomfortable." Noted the voice dryly. "Maybe it was something you ate?" This time, the voice was accompanied by all eleven of the figures appearing around the archer. Their hands came up, and a series of abilities harmonized together, condensing into a dark prison. A coffin like cube of dark energy manifested around the archer, red lightning playing over the prison as black chains wrapped it up securely.

Above the chain coffin, a massive bow, shining with that sharp yellow glow from last time and covered in purifying white flames. One of the figures stepped back, crossing their arms, and I saw that it was Zeke, the actual Zeke and not a copy, stroking his chin. "Is this derivative?" Then he shrugged. "Whatever, who doesn't love magic." He snapped his fingers ten times times and the bow released its arrow, redrawing and reorienting with each snap until the dark box was full of arrows.

The box began to shake unstably as the crackling red electricity built, and Zeke's eyes went wide. "Oh shit." He kicked off the empty space below him retreating fast and far enough to be clear of the blast radius when the box fucking EXPLODED in a conflagration of confusing conflicted energies.

"Huh." He said with interest. "I guess THAT'S what happens when you mix Enshrining Darkness and the Flames of Purification. Good to know. I wonder how much the other abilities amplified it though?" He was so distracted talking to himself he missed the white starlight arrow that sped out of the explosion and speared him through the chest. Zeke's eyes went wide and he stared down at the arrow, blood leaking from his lips. "Ok. Didn't see that coming."

"FINALLY!" Shrieked a livid voice from the dispersing cloud of energy. "You FINALLY shut up!" The archer looked...bad. Burns, bloody holes, but all of it was closing, albeit slowly. "I admit." Spat the enraged elf. "For a gnat, that was actually mildly alarming. But it takes more then that to kill an A-ranker, boy."

A pair of figures appeared on either side of my uncle, each grabbing an elbow. The same dark energy shield flashed into existence around the three of them, albeit not quite as close in. Zeke looked...bad. Blood was leaking from his mouth like a faucet, and his face was pale. His eyelids were fluttering weakly as if he could barely stay up, and I felt an icy claw of terror grip my heart.

"Damn." He burbled. "Really thought that would do it. I put a lot of power into that attack."

"Power?" Mocked the elf with a greasy sneer. "There wasn't even a Path in those blows. Is this the standard of a B-ranker from a major faction? I'd at least heard of you before, so I figured you might be worth something. It seems the other forces are just easily impressed."

My uncle actually looked offended at that. "Oh sure, mock me while you're punching down. Because it takes any skill at all to beat someone weaker than you. Plus you're stuck out there anyway. Is it really a defeat? I'm healing that arrow wound, albeit slowly."

Carus smirked. "Oh, is that right?" He raised his bow, and began to fire rapidly. The arrows slammed into and then stopped at the dark shield, suspended in air, but each on drove in deeper, cracks beginning to spread. He grit his teeth and shot faster, clearly winded by what he was doing. Once the shield collapsed, he stepped down once, like he was stepping on starlight, and appeared in front of Zeke.

He drew his bow again, and put a point blank arrow into Zeke, who screamed. His two constructs backed off as the elf archer approached, grabbing the fading white arrow and solidifying it just so he could twist it. Carus drew back his fist, and with a triumphant yell, punched it right through Zeke's head.

I cried out in anguish, but before I had a chance to react past that, one of the hooded figures appeared behind Carus and tapped him on the shoulder. As Carus stared in confusion at the shattered porcelain floating around his non blood covered fist, the figure flipped down his hood, revealing ZEKE'S FACE on the back of the hooded figure's head.

It reached up and tore the face of my uncle clear of its nonexistent skull, and as Carus turned around, slapped Zeke's face right on top of the elfs. The archer panicked, hands shooting up to claw at Zeke's face on his body, even as the face began to laugh. The other figures all appeared, chains lashing out to hold him still as all eight of them (not the one that had been shattered by the punch) grabbed onto the chains and pulled, yanking the elf spread eagled.

The lone remaining figure unoccupied reached up and removed his mask, revealing another Zeke, who snicked at the struggling A-ranker. "Janus is the god with two faces, moron. But thanks for letting me soften you up. How's that for a Path?" Reaching into his ring, he drew out a pair of gloves. "Now compensate me for that damn mask you pointy eared fuck."

As he drove both hands into the chest of the elf, we all stared in shock at my uncle killing an A-ranked. Callie swallowed hard, looking up at the screen in a mixture of awe and fear. "Remind me not to piss off your uncle. Like...ever." I just nodded dumbly. No shit.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We all stared in shock as Zeke ripped the soul from an A-ranker, just in time for Killian to appear next to him with a whistle. "Shit, that was brutal, you're still as terrifying as ever. Honestly I think you'd have hit A-rank before I did if you didn't keep killing all the witnesses every time you got in a tough fight."

Zeke reached over and snagged a broken mask shard from the air. "I need materials. These things always get broken in big fights." He grimaced at the thing. "Shit, this was my Piercing Metal mask. Armor penetration is always super useful." He kicked the floating elf corpse that he'd freed from the chains after the soul was removed. "Smarmy pointy eared bastard."

Killian chuckled. "Well hey, at least you got the soul. You think you even make a mask out of an A-ranker?" I couldn't remember if Zeke's power could do that either, though I knew he needed materials.

"It's fine." Said my uncle with a wave. "My Archery mask will provide a solid platform to attach it to. The soul has been fully integrated into that one and elevated the quality of the porcelain infinitely close to A-rank. I'll have to structure the enchantments carefully, but it should be more than suitable. Plus I can add his path to the arrows." He pocketed the flask containing the soul as he put away his gloves.

Killian just shrugged. "Fair. Let's go help Uncle Miles. He's going two on one, and Rayner is proving to be shockingly competent."

Zeke shook his head. "You go. I put way too much into that. The capture only worked because I channeled my whole Path into the mask at the end, plus the fake out arrows and the attack that softened him up were mind numbingly draining. Unless you need me?"

Killian shrugged. "Nah. Already killed mine, and Uncle Miles and I use similar abilities, so we can synergize easily enough. I just figured it would be fun to fight together again." Turning on his heel, he vanished, even as Zeke groaned and did the same. Assuming he probably wasn't coming right back to watch the fight with us, and assured he was ok, I walked over to join Blake at his own viewing portal, where he was watching Miles do his thing.

Much like Carus, Miles was obviously using has Path liberally. He was also using what appeared to be a weapon mastery with that sword, as a massive blade of condensed ghostly death was raining down blows on Rayner. The black masked man had condensed a manifestation of his own above himself, this one a massive version of his own body, arms made of the same dark metal as his mask.

Miles probably would have won, except he kept having to deflect dagger strikes from the rapidly appearing and vanishing gold masked man, who was emitting a concentrated air of death energy of his own. Weirdly, despite the similarities, the two auras were as different as night and day. Miles's Path was the chill of the grave and the ghostly, while the masked man seemed to be channelling the sudden ending of a life.

To my surprise, one of the daggers actually caught Miles along the ribs on the last attack, deflected too late, and the old Ascendant snarled, raising his cleaverlike blade. A dozen ghostly outlines of identical blades manifested around him, superimposing themselves on the manifestation of the blade, and the sword began to literally hum with power.

I wasn't sure at first why this seemed so different than last time, but the I spotted Killian standing to one side and realized what was happening. Those blades were made of ghosts, and Killian had just poured in his own ghost army to subsidize Miles's full power attack.

The gold masked guy didn't even bother to pretend to thing about it, he just dipped out, vanishing instantly. Rayner, frozen in fear, only had time to say "Shit." Before the colossal manifestation of that huge terrifying sword swung down like a headsmans blade and BISECTED both the construct and the pirate lord who had made it.

The two halves of him floated gently away from each other, bobbing in space, and I winced. It just went to show how easy battles could turn. It went from two to one against Miles to two to one against Rayner. That assassin was just gone the second things got bad.

"Alright, well...that was over faster than the other fight." I said in mild disappointment. I had been hoping to see another awesome display like Zeke had shown us.

Blake shrugged. "Most fights are like that. We had way more firepower and just crushed them. Granted, Great Uncle Miles is a monster, even for an A-ranker. He'd probably have ended them even sooner if that assassin wasn't directly restraining him. But once dad showed up, the assassin stopped the attack. Can't really backstab without leaving your own back open."

Killian appeared next to Miles. "Hey, you ok? Saw he got you." The words weren't echoing through the room anymore, but the viewing portal was still picking them up.

Miles coalesced a small, ghostly knife, then jammed it into the gash in his side, working it in slowly. After a second he managed to lever out a shard of dark smoking...something. "I'm fine." He grunted. "Don't get to my age without learning to deal with poison. That's a nasty one though. Hopekiller. Lucky he got me and not you, your vitality ain't near enough to suppress it."

He fished out a vial, stowing the dark smokey fragment, then put it away. "Let's get back. The assassin will be gone after losing his backup. Maybe this will be enough to dissuade any of the other. Rayner had a hell of a reputation out here, and killing him is bound to be intimidating to some." His sword vanished and he cracked his neck with a groan. "I hope so, because I could use a nap."

Killian chuckled, then turned his head, and somehow, his eyes fixed right on the viewing portal. "Why are you still watching us?" Echoed his voice through the hall, once again projecting loudly. "Tell everyone to get back to work, and let our guests move on with their day. Show's over Blake." Then he snapped his fingers and the portal disappeared, along with all the others, leaving us looking at a massive empty sky of stars.

I could just barely notice a speck in the distance if I focused, and with my Perception could probably have seen something if I looked hard, but it wasn't worth pissing off an A-ranker.

"Well." Blake said loudly. "You all heard him. Get back to work if you're a crew member, and if you're not enjoy your day." He turned to us. "I can take you to the docking bay they probably used. Zeke should be there still,I'm sure you all want to check on him."

We did, so we thanked him and he led us out of the observation dome and off down the hallway. It didn't take as long as I'd expected to come to a large open metal room with an open doorway off the ship on one side. There was a screen of green light across the doorway, and I saw Zeke slumped over a chair, taking long pulls from a very large bottle of liquor.
He finished his swallow and set the bottle down, nodding as he saw us. "Kids. I take it you enjoyed the show?" His smug tone made it clear that he knew we had. Which was fair, he had reason to be smug, it had been impressive as hell.

Abel chuckled. "You were in total control of that whole encounter for the entire fight. Every single action you took was bait for what happened next, wasn't it?" He sounded almost awed. "Would that initial arrow attack have even done anything to him if it had landed?"

"Not a thing." Zeke said casually. "Which is why it didn't. If there's one lesson I can teach you, it's that raw power isn't what decides a battle. Control is. Your enemy should never make a move you weren't expecting them to make. HOW they make the move can vary, but at the end of the day, they should be attacking when you want them to, defending when you want them to, and catching you when and if you want them to."

"So that whole thing with the copy of you getting shot?" I asked in amazement. "You knew that was going to happen? From the very beginning?"

He shrugged, taking another pull. "Of course I did. Otherwise the one who got shot might have been the real me. The same with the punch, I even framed myself up nice and perfect with a pair of masks just to make sure he was focused on the right me. The whole fight was a shell game."

"What about the mask?" I asked, putting my finger on one thing that had been confusing me. "You mentioned it was a Path ability you used. Why didn't it feel like one? When Carus used his I could sense it. Same with Miles. It like...changed reality. Like most Paths seem to do."

Zeke sneered. "Showoff nonsense. I make masks. Masks are discrete objects meant to conceal and confuse. How could my Path be the kind of noisy trash you can see at a glance. The power, much like all identifying features, lies UNDER the mask. Everything I did in that fight was in accordance with my Path, it just wasn't blatant. That last attack was definitely leaning into it pretty hard though."

"Yeah, what was with that?" I said, thinking of the crazy switch he'd pulled off. "Is that the nature of a mask too? Because I've seen your masks eat people, but that was almost like you were becoming him."

"Don't worry too much about that." He said with a wave. "Suffice to say that the concealment of a mask isn't always beneficial. I suppressed his personality. As for the mask I used, it has to do with the nature of my ability and my legend. That kind of thing isn't something you'll need to worry about until much later."

Did that mean that the next step in Path usage was to fuse your solid Path with your identity as an Ascendant? Or even an older story? I shook that off. I wasn't even finished learning to use the Path I had. Zeke was right, I had a long way to go before I needed to think about the next step.

Still, Zeke had made his point, in a way. He hadn't been lying in wait to get attacked, he'd reacted when it came. Whats more, he'd shown me that rolling with the punches didn't mean you had to constantly improvise. Plans and tactics were still useful and possible during short term engagements. I was sure part of the reason he'd done it this way was so I didn't abandon my attempts to think things through.

Zeke listened to all of our questions, deflecting most of them, and drained his bottle of what I was pretty sure was bourbon. Then, when he was finished, he bid us all goodnight and headed back to his room to sleep. I suspected he was much more exhausted than he was letting on.

I said my goodbyes to everyone and Callie and I decided to take some time to ourselves. Just walk around and digest some of what we'd seen and learned. Not training, we were still trying to take some time off, but just think things over.
Besides which, once we emerged back out into the ship, we were able to bask in the lovely scenery. Just a nice long walk with my girlfriend as we hurtled through space on a giant block of enchanted metal. My life could be pretty cool sometimes. What would it be like when I reached Zeke's level? I couldn't wait to find out.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Despite my insistence on not training for the week, I still used the opportunity aboard the ship to get my wishes all done. At seven points per wish and forty two per day, the week netted me a full two hundred ninety four points. I made sure they were all in Creation, evening out my weakest stat a bit. It was a nice little bump as we approached the temple, getting me just that little bit more ready.

Other than that, we just hung out. Spent time together as a group, and just generally enjoyed our last few days of prep before we arrived at the temple. One the seventh day, I got a call from Zeke and Killian, telling me and the others to meet the in the observation dome.

We all packed up and headed over there, and when we arrived, we found them both relaxing in a pair of chairs, stargazing. "Shane!" Said my uncle with a wide grin. "We just arrived. Thought you might want to see a distance view of the place you're going to be spending a significant amount of your time for the next few weeks at least." He took a long pull off the icy blue drink with the swirly straw he was sipping.

Stepping up next to him, I rolled my eyes. "And you needed to show us this lounging on beach chairs and sipping icy poolside drinks?"

"NEED to?" He said with a scoff. "I NEED to do very few things. It's one of the main perks of being me. Basically baby sitting you is the only thing I need to do. Speaking of which, look at the temple and quit interrupting my starbathing." He flopped back down, fully dressed and seemingly unconcerned that 'starbathing' wasn't a real thing.

Still, I stepped past him, gazing into the viewing portal that was already open and gaping at the site of the Ruined Soul Temple in all its majesty.

Our destination floated in space, built atop a large chunk of rock that was flat on top but looked like it had been scooped out of the ground with a spoon or something. The building was made of burnished bronze, the metal glowing with an unearthly light. Golden symbols blazed, throbbing like a beating hear, scrawled across every surface, but they weren't carved into the bronze, instead seemed to be permanently branded onto it with energy.

The temple was surprisingly small, at least the main building, and it was open enough to see that it wasn't bigger on the inside. Just a small well kept area, at the center of which sat a bronze brazier, blazing with a golden light that pulsed in time with the symbols around it. The brazier seemed to be the center point of all the symbol chains, each of them feeding into the golden flame.

Surrounding the small building was a huge web of intricate golden runes and symbols, with open spots where large circles showed the perfect image of a thousand golden lotuses.

There was something sacred about the building, something holy. The bronze looked old and weathered, but it was still whole, and for the life of me I couldn't understand why it was called 'Ruined'. I whistled, and Zeke chuckled from where he slumped in his chair. "Yup. It's always a pretty interesting sight. Your parents and I were in one of these trials, along with Killian and a few of our other friends."

"That's the Ruined Soul Temple?" Callie said in confusion. "Why do they call it ruined? Looks pretty well maintained to me."

Zeke shrugged. "How the hell should I know? Who has any idea why people refer to anything as anything. Ascendants are absurd sometimes. All I know is that while you can always access certain parts of the temple, the trials are only open for a limited time. We got here on schedule, so the Temple should open later today. Don't bother trying to get a position closer to the building, it doesn't really matter anyway."

I squinted at the viewing portal. If I paid close attention I could vaguely make out a tiny shape in an elaborate dress. "Is that Bethy?" I asked, pointing to the figure.

"Probably." Said Zeke with a shrug. "Lark showed up after we left, and he's bound to have faster methods of transport. An A-rank ship is impressively fast, but Lark is the kind of person who can demand teleportation services on a whim. Hell, he could have had a whole ship teleported. He probably brought his daughter straight here."

I wondered if he was still around. Despite the terror of everything I'd heard, I kind of wanted to meet him at this point, just to see if he lived up to the hype.

Everyone seemed excited that Bethy was here, at the very least. And the massive metal clad blonde figure besides her was probably Gabriel. She'd offered him a ride last time we talked, and apparently he'd decided to come along. I hoped they'd gotten Satala settled. From what I was told, The Vampire was offering her protection, so I doubted there had been much trouble, but I kind of worried about her stuck back in the Glade alone.

"So." Said Killian, cutting off my train of thought. "You'll be taking the shuttle down there, same one that brought you onboard. It'll be a quick trip, but we can't get too close with such a big ship or we might activate the Temple defenses. There's plenty of pretty terrifying destructive capabilities hidden under that fancy exterior."

I tried to glance over the symbols, seeing if I could recognize them, but no luck. Whether that was because it was some abstruse form of powerful enchanting I'd never seen, or if these were homebrewed symbols the architect threw together on the fly, I had no idea, but the whole place might well have been painted blue and covered with glitter for all the mystical understanding I gleaned from studying it.

It only took us about twenty minutes to board the shuttle and get ferried down to the base of the temple. To no surprise, Zeke didn't follow us off the ship. He waved us goodbye, telling us it was the general agreement that high ranking Ascendants stay off the platform until after the trial. No one had ever figured out how to successfully cheat in the trial that they knew of, but none of the factions wanted to be in competition when the first person did.

There were a surprising number of people here, but I didn't see anyone I would consider unusually similar looking to myself or dad. I had no clue what my sister actually even looked like. I decided to head over and talk to Gabriel and Bethy. The Crusader probably had a better chance of knowing where she was.

When we arrived, the bouncy Vampire noticed us first. She squealed with glee, hurling herself onto Callie and I. "Friends! Hey guys! It's so good to see you. I'm glad you made it. Daddy said this trial is pretty boring, and that going with friends should help."

"So is your dad sticking around?" I said, looking around. Whether to confirm he was here or that he wasn't I didn't know, but I was curious either way.

She shrugged. "Who knows. He might stay and sleep on the ship, or he might be hiding behind that pillar over there." She pointed at a pillar, but after a slight pause, she nodded seriously. "He's not behind the pillar I don't think. Now we're narrowing things down."

Callie giggled at that, and I had to smother a grin myself. Same old Bethy. I turned to Gabriel. "Hey man. So...you said the Star Queen was going to be here. And her daughter. I don't suppose you've actually MET Chelsea before? Because I could use an introduction." I offered my hand as I spoke, and he took it, shaking briefly and then pulling away.

"No." He said firmly. "She's far too important to run into someone like me. I might be an Adamant, but I'm still an F-ranker. Even the leader of my sub branch isn't higher than D-rank. Chelsea is the little princess of the Radiant Papacy, she's far more important than any of us."

Bethy gave a pointed cough and narrowed her eyes at him, pouting. "Excuse me? Speak for yourself, I'll have you know I'm very important. Maybe you're just giving your little crush too much credit."

"Please don't even joke about that." Said Gabriel warily, looking around in concern. "There are multiple juniors of the church here that would burn me alive if they even suspected I was harboring those kinds of intentions. The Judgement Pope's grandson has a well known affection for her, and his purifying flames are at the Master rank. I could probably hold my own in that fight, but I'd rather not have to do it just because you don't think I'm giving you enough credit."

For someone like Gabriel to be worried about losing to another person they must be a monster. Gabriel's Path was that of the Adamant, always charging forward and never losing. I knew that there was some selective combat mixed in there, since if he fought an E-ranker he'd lose, nevermind someone like a D-ranker. Still at his own rank it must be a scary person who could intimidate him.

The flames of purification were actually an ability I was familiar with, being one of Zeke's mask abilities. I still wasn't sure if that was the Red Revenant's actual ability or just a skillset he developed for his followers. The Church seemed to rely far less on the Revenant's specific gift than say, the Black Sorrow Cult, most of whom used at the very least a variation of their goddess's Enshrining Darkness almost universally from what I'd seen.

Regardless of the origin, being a Master at F-rank meant the guy had already undergone soul refinement the two levels possible. The peak of Green, the highest someone could reach at F-rank, was also called the Azure Soul Body. The soul solidified when you actually reached blue, and past that the only way to improve was to rank up. If you didn't reach the Azure Soul Body by F-rank reaching godhood would be impossible.

From what I'd been able to puzzle out, there were actually two soul ranks past violet, which was where the soul would naturally be in S-rank. In order to reach godhood your soul needed to have advanced those two thresholds ahead, or else you wouldn't be able to sustain the Impact needed to attain divinity, and your soul would shatter at the attempt.

People like the pope's grandson, had private heritages and training resources to help them reach their peak in time, but for the rest of us the Ruined Soul Temple was the only viable soul training mechanism. As a candidate I wasn't eligible for the WCP's heritage if it even had one. My family left me to fend for myself. But not Chelsea, at least not mom's side. I wondered what she was like?

Gabriel seemed to sense my thoughts and sighed. "I can, however, accompany you over to speak to her. I don't know if she'll meet with you, but it can't hurt to try. If she doesn't you can always try again in the temple. That is, if you think you're ready?"

I froze, but only for a second. Callie's warm hand slipped into mine, squeezing gently, and it felt like she was pushing calmness and serenity right into me. I let out a long breath. "Alright." I said firmly. "Yeah, take me over to her. The temple doesn't open for a while yet. Before that happens...I want to meet her. Introduce me."

He nodded solemnly, clapping me on the shoulder and turning to head off into the crowd nearby. Bethy, meanwhile, bounced up and down with a squeal, clapping her hands."Oh this is so exciting! Meeting a new sibling is always so much fun. I've met a bunch of mine, and they're usually super nice. Except Varis. He was mean, but daddy ate him so its ok." I winced at the casual way she mentioned that. Note to self, don't ask about Bethy's family.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Gabriel led us off around the central building, through the crowds and over the various symbols until we came to a group of young people on the other side. There were almost a dozen of them, holding court around a few central figures. Three of them exactly, actually. One girl with strange miscolored hair, intermittent locks of black and white, and the same green eyes I saw in the mirror every day.

Next to her stood a tall red haired guy about my age, with a haughty sneer on his face, absurdly gaudy red and gold robes, and amber eyes. The man on the other side had black hair and slate grey eyes and wore a somber expression over his suit of gunmetal grey armor.

"Lady Chelsea doesn't want to talk to deal with your monotonous drudgery, Vincent." Sneered red hair. "If she wanted to be bored out of her skull she wouldn't be attending the trials at all."

The dark haired guy chuckled. "I suspect any level of boredom is worth avoiding your presence Nathaniel." He said in a soft, steely voice. "But I think Lady Chelsea can speak for herself. Unless you're claiming the marriage proposals your grandfather has been sending his holiness have been accepted."

The world warped around the hands of the red haired man as white fire blazed into existence. I'd expected to be blown away by the power of Master ranked Flames of Purification, but since Zeke's were higher than that it made sense that these weren't that impressive.

In order to reach D-rank you needed to achieve a Path, but this guy had done something closer to what I had. He'd reached master rank with the flames (presumably he was on the job system so they were just a skill), so they had BECOME his Path. Just an Illusionary Path, mind you. My Skill had evolved into a Solid Path early, but still, he had already taken the step that would bring him to D-rank.

Gabriel grimaced. "That's the current youngest disciple of the Twilight Pope. Vincent Landrey. And the grandson of the Judgement Pope, Nathaniel Davies. They don't get along, and Lady Chelsea is the target of both of their affections. Don't worry though, the Saintess never sends her daughter anywhere without protection." He gestured to where a VERY large blonde man with a braided beard had stepped up behind the girl I suspected was my sister.

"The Lady." Boomed the giant, who had to be at least seven feet tall. "Chooses her own company, and she doesn't wish to entertain either of you brats. Get lost before I stomp your teeth in and wear your faces for shoes."

Gabriel actually grinned at that. "And that." He said smugly. "Is Callen Windermere. The high Crusader. Strongest F-ranker in the holy order. Technically each papacy has their own high crusader, but Callen is the Radiant High Crusader, and is generally considered the strongest of all of them. His Holiness supplies Callen with resources in exchange for his decision to halt at F-rank and wait for Lady Chelsea to Ascend."

The two puffing peacocks both looked unhappy, and I saw the redhead actually consider attacking, but apparently Callen was scary enough to make an F-ranked Master worried, because he whirled and stalked off. Chelsea pouted up at the man. "I didn't need you to do that Cal. If I don't scare them off myself they'll never stop pestering me."

The giant let out a booming laugh and reached down to tousle her hair, getting a yowl of annoyance from my sister as she batted at his hand. He ignored it as he beamed down at her. "I know, little one, but if you cripple or kill one of them it'll cause trouble for his Holiness. Best to let me play the bad guy. It's what I'm here for."

She snorted. "As long as you know I can handle myself." She stifled a small smile. "It WAS rather funny seeing them flee from you."

Callen's eyes, so full of good cheer, became chips of ice as he tensed, seeming to sense something. He looked up to see us, but his eyes stopped when he saw Gabriel. His brows furrowed, and then smoothed out at recognition hit. I took that as my chance to approach, and Gabriel nodded to the big man and to my sister in turn. "High Crusader, Lady Chelsea. Greetings to you both."

"Brightlaw." Said Callen, as if he'd just solved a puzzle. "Archbishop Julian's son. You're an Adamant. How is that going?"
Gabriel stood a bit taller. "Quite well sir. I recently returned from the incident at the Moonsong Glade. I've even been offered a spot in the Horizon Citadel after the trial if I do well."

The big man nodded. "Impressive. I hope to see you there. I'll be attending with her ladyship once she breaks through to E-rank. Why don't you introduce us to your companions. They certainly seem like interesting people." I was having some trouble getting a bead his age. He was older than us, but if the Horizon Citadel was a school he wasn't THAT much older. Most of the impression of age came from him being giant and bearded.

Gabriel nodded. "Right. This is Bethany Lark, youngest daughter of Morgan Lark. This is Nightstrike, and her boyfriend Solomo-"

"Shane." I cut him off. My eyes glued to my sister as I held out my hand. "Shane Wyndham. My dad is Elijah Wyndham."
She froze, staring at me with wide eyes. We stood there like that, for a minute, before she seemed to realize where she was and cleared her throat. "Ah, well. Nice to meet you...Shane. My name is Chelsea Anders." Her tone was a bit shy, but not hostile, and I smiled with relief as she shook my hand. I also reveled in the knowledge of what my moms last name was. I'd never actually heard her maiden name mentioned, Zeke just referred to her as Sasha.

I wanted to ask her more about herself, but when I opened my mouth her hand clamped down on mine harder. Her eyes were widened meaningfully, expression pleading with me not to say anything. I was confused, but I was willing to play along for a bit. "Of course." I said with a smile. "I've heard a lot about you."

"That's very flattering." She chirped. "But sadly I can't stay and chat. If fate wills it, we can meet again inside the trial. It's so crowded out here in any case. It's a terrible environment for getting to know someone."

Ah, she was afraid people would listen in. We could stealth, of course, but that only worked on similar levels of Ascendant or if the eavesdroppers weren't focused on you. Anyone stronger who was paying attention was more than capable of breaching our stealth with their higher Perception.

Patting me on the shoulder, she gave me another meaningful smile as she turned to walk away.

"Ouch." Hissed Benny from behind me. "That was rough man. I guess she doesn't want to talk? I'm sorry Shane, don't worry too much about it."

I cut him off, worried he might say something that tipped her hand. If she didn't want people hearing about us being related she probably had a reason. She hadn't struck me as a bitchy elitist, and her expression had contained some genuine fear. "It's fine. She was busy. I'm sure I can meet Lady Chelsea later. I didn't have any pressing business with her."

Benny hadn't been shaking her hand or standing right in front of her, so he hadn't noticed the subtext, but he wasn't stupid either. My hint was enough for him to realize what was up and shut his mouth about it.

The biggest shock for me was meeting Chelsea, and not just that, but seeing that she was the same age as me. I'd expected her to be a few years younger, maybe sixteen, but she looked to be about my age. She might just appear older, but if not, it meant Chelsea wasn't just my sister, she was my TWIN. No one had ever mentioned that, and for some reason it just made everything that much worse.

I'd always wanted a twin. It might be a weird thing to wish for, but the inherent closeness they share, the knowledge that you were essentially born with a best friend...I'd always been so jealous of that. Finding out I might have one of my own and had never been allowed to know her? I was angry, and sad, and frustrated, and a million other things that all swirled together into a miasma if misery in my gut.

Callie grabbed my hand, squeezing it. I don't think she knew exactly what I was thinking, but she could feel my pain, and she wanted me to know she was here for me. I squeezed back. Having her with me, watching over me, caring about me. It meant more than words could express. I didn't know how I'd have taken this alone, but I didn't have to find out either.

My questions could wait. They'd have to. Until then, we just had to head into the trial. Once we were in there I'd find Chelsea and finally talk to her about what was going on. Finally get a real chance to meet my sister. I glanced off the stone platform, out into the starry void. Powerful Ascendants waited, and watched, out of sight but not out of mind. They were probably the ones Chelsea had worried about tipping off. Well, some of them, because my mom was out there with them. My mom who I hadn't seen since I was a child. Who I had maybe one memory of.

Not the time for that. I'd worry about meeting mom later after I talked to Chelsea. My sister could tell me what happened when I was a kid, and there wasn't so much baggage there. I was really excited to meet her. She seemed like a fun person, and probably pretty strong based on her apparent desire to curb stomp an F-ranked Master.

Since it didn't matter where we ended up going in (that we knew of) we posted up nearby, claiming our spots. Twelve people wasn't a big crowd, but it wasn't the smallest group here either. I saw more than a few groups of one or two. Sitting down in one of the lotus circles, I looked around at my friends. "So, anyone know how this works? These are the entry circles right?"

Bethy nodded. "Yup. Daddy says these are some kind of powerful enchantment that will separate our soul and whisk it off into the trial. You can't die in there, but if your avatar gets hurt it'll cause soul damage. We also can't bring equipment in. Not really, anyway. We can bring in the images, but they don't have the same powers."

I cursed internally. That meant my staff was going to be staying out here. It didn't matter though, in the week of travel during my downtime, I'd been working on something new. The initial seeds of my own unique staff art, which would blend my Path and combat style together perfectly.

It wasn't DONE yet, obviously, but it would give me a leg up, especially since I'd already trained my soul halfway to yellow. While a lot of the elites here had gone further, there was a huge group of people. Most of them would probably be weaker than we were.

My thoughts were interrupted by a clanging sound, like a phantom bell that shook the ground we were sitting on. "It's time." Said Gabriel solemnly. "We should come in close together, but I'm not sure of anything. The rules change often, so don't take anything for granted." The brazier in the center of the building erupted in a fountain of golden flames, the energy sweeping out into the symbols and surrounding us, then the light was blotting out my vision, and we were falling.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The sensation of falling didn't let up as the light faded. When my vision cleared, I found that I WAS falling, plummeting really, through a massive and expansive cavers. A huge cylindrical shaft of stone rimmed with overgrown flora and beautiful waterfalls. They all gathered at the bottom, so far below it was hard to see, and the splashback created an impenetrable bank of mist.

Along the descent were beautiful islands full of lush greenery, linked together by rainbow bridges, and spread out like a wide staircase. My friends were nearby, but they seemed to be falling at different speeds. Abel was shooting downward faster than anyone else, I was falling the second fastest. As I fell, information was shoved into my mind, telling me exactly what was happening.

This was the trial of perseverance. I smirked internally because the powerful souls of the faction elite weren't going to help much with this. This trail pushed all of us to the bottom of the chute, and we all had to climb. The stronger your soul, the heavier the pressure weighing you down. Soul strain would press down on each of us at all times, making the journey all the more difficult for the strong.

For the moment, we were all just freefalling, though it was taking a while to get to the bottom. "Whoooo!" Squealed a familiar voice. I turned to see Bethy using a shawl she'd pulled from nowhere to catch the wind like a flying squirrel. "This is so much fun!" I remembered what she said about forms of items staying the same. I grabbed at my jacket, trying to do the same.

It...sort of worked. I looked around, trying to glide towards Callie. When I got close enough I was able to grab her hand, and was delighted to see that when I did the weight on me reduced. Of course, the weight on HER increased, but between the two of us it kind of evened out.

Despite the fact that items didn't work though, Skills still should. I reached for my overlay, looking for possible ways out of this. I noticed a few golden arrows, and grinned as I confirmed my Path had a way out. I triggered State of Grace and Ripple Running. Stepping on the air, I followed the golden arrows, and the power of my Path shielded Callie and I from the pressure as I pushed off.

While there might be Masters here, there was no one else with a Solid Path that I was aware of. I had a unique advantage. Stepping off the air, I charged forward, heading for the nearest island, determined to start further up than everyone else. I wanted to bring my friends, but I couldn't reach them, I just had to trust they'd be ok. We could meet up later.

To my shock though, when my foot hit the air, I felt the weight return, slamming me down on the Ripple Running step. I gritted my teeth and took another, and the weight redoubled. I stared in desperation as the island. I had ten steps, but as far as I could tell, those steps would each double in difficulty at least. Callie had swung up onto my back, squeezing me tight, and I felt her lift some of the burden, letting me know she was with me.

I took a third step, then a fourth. My soul groaned, even with the training, but I was determined. One more step and I was halfway there. Ten steps to freedom, and I'd finished five. I pushed forward another step, and almost collapsed from the air with a scream. I refused though. This was training, good training too, my soul would improve here. I stepped again, seven down.

By the time I made the tenth step, my soul was cracking, it was about to break, but to my shock, as soon as my foot hit the island, not only did the pressure vanish, but a rush of cooling power flooded me, repairing the damage and elevating my soul strength by a level.

I slumped down on the grass, panting and shuddering, but I was still thrilled. Callie looked a little let down. Since the majority of the damage had been to me, I'd had more room to absorb the cleansing energy.

"Ok." I said with a gasp as I sat up. "I get it now. The walk along the rainbow bridges or trying to fly damages the soul. The stronger your soul is the more damage it does. When you reach the islands the energy there heals you, but there's a finite amount here. I can feel it depleting. So if you take too long to climb you lose out. The system rewards people willing to push through adversity to advance."

Callie grinned. "It's also a net loss for the stronger elites. The ones whose souls have already achieved perfection as the Azure Soul Body. Since they can't advance any more, the healing will just top their souls up to their original limits. How much did yours improve?"

"Five percent." I laughed. "But it was a fluke. The ability I used was something the trial didn't approve of, the damage redoubled and stacked. It meant I was under way more pressure than I should have been. I was pretty close to permanent damage, though I don't think I'd die if my soul broke here. I'm pretty sure this is just a portion of our souls, so even shattering would just kick us out."

She sat up next to me. "Alright. Then we need to rest a bit. How high up are we exactly?" I leaned out over the edge to look, trying to gauge the distance.

"I'd say three or four islands up." I said with a grimace. "Probably best I didn't try that higher up. I don't think I'd have managed at a higher island." I squinted through the mist. "I think someone landed on one of the lower islands though. We can take a minute, but we don't have too much time."

She nodded, giving me a minute to decompress and process. While we'd both been healed by the power of the island, I'd still just been functionally tortured for a few minutes. Mentally I needed to realign. Once my brain was working better, we headed across the small island and made it to the rainbow bridge. I held out my hand, but Callie shook her head.
"No. It might help, but we should make the most of this opportunity." She cracked her neck. "I'm way behind in terms of soul power, and I want to catch up."

"Works for me." I said with a smile. "Just be careful." Each of us took a long, slow breath, then we stepped out onto the rainbow. The first step was pretty easy, the second a bit harder. Taking the path laid out made the strain more gradual than fudging it to reach the island. Callie seemed to be under the same amount of strain despite out different levels of soul refinement, which proved what we'd suspected about the adjustable difficulty.

By the time we reached the other side of the bridge, we were both in agony, pouring sweat and panting. We thumped down on the island, letting the power flow into us and heal our spirits. "So." I wheezed. "This seems like it's aimed at weaker people, right? Or is that just me?"

She shook her head. "Nope. But that makes sense. The Ruined Soul Temple was created to help people refine their souls. The trials might admit ringers, but why would they reward them?"

"I hadn't thought of it like that." I mused. "But you're right. Hell, by that logic, I'd imagine that the benefit for people with lower ranked souls would be bigger too. You see any bump in yours? After those first ten steps, not to mention that walk, you probably shot up quite a bit."

"Four percent." She said with a grin. "You?"

I checked my soul again. "Two percent for the bridge on top of the five from the first ten steps. I think I got most of the refinement from that first bit because I was taking the steps."

After a few minutes of rest, we got back to it. This was a race, and were damned if we were going to lose. As we walked, we were able to see some of the lower rainbow bridges, and I could make out small forms stepping purposefully across them. The others were on the way. I felt kind of bad I couldn't catch them too, but they would be fine. I just wanted to make it to the top before the ringers.

When we reached the next island though, I realized quickly that might not be as easy as I'd expected. Someone had beat us there. Looking closely, I realized there were multiple islands on each layer and multiple bridges connecting them. Our view had just been bad from where we were falling.

"Hello neighbor." Chirped the small, pale man with a black mask tied around his head. The mask came down of his eyes and covered his hair, with two eyeholes cut out. The rest of his outfit was light dark armor. There was a sword on his hip, and his eyes were sharp and predatory. "You made good time. I didn't think anyone else would be up this high yet."

Despite his focus and clear animosity, he wasn't moving. I was assuming he'd been pushing hard to get up here this fast and hadn't let himself fully heal yet. The longer he waited the better shape he was going to be in, but we were recovering too, and there were two of us, so I let him stall.

"Same here." I said casually. "I'm guessing you've been sprinting through the islands, figuring you would heal on the last legs once you'd already won. Why go through the trouble though. What does an individual win matter. There's a bunch of these trials right?"

He nodded. "There is. But each trial awards the winner a piece of a key. First place is a gold key, second place is silver, and third place is bronze. You manage to get a whole key and you can unlock one of the treasure rooms at the end. That's what all the Azure Souls are here for."

"I had heard there were prizes." I admitted. "But I'm just here to improve myself. I'd never dream of aiming for such valuable winnings."

He snorted. "And the Emperor's my dad. If you're going to lie to my face at least make it convincing. That's just insulting."

"Sorry." I shrugged. "Thought it was worth a try. After all, you're only having this conversation so you can heal up and try to recover before we fight."

That got a grin. "Yeah, but you're only letting me because you don't think it matters. Not a great bet, by the way." His hand blurred to his hip, rapier clearing its sheath in a fluid movement as he flashed forward to attack.

My staff came up and around smoothly, smacking the spot on the blade where all the force was collecting and knocking his hand back. I stepped forward as Callie fell into her shadow, the F-ranked replica of my Stygian Branch whipping up and around to smash into the guy's jaw.

He took the hit and went flying, and I felt pretty proud of myself until I realized he'd just rolled with the blow and thrown himself out of reach. His hands slapped the ground and he bounced up into a handspring, avoiding the scything pair of dark blades Callie had manifested when she emerged for the dark.

Grinning, he swung his rapier in a quick series of cuts, limbering up most likely. "Ok, that wasn't bad, but I'm just getting started here. Neither of you is leaving this island alive." I just grinned and spun up my staff. No risk of death here (for either party) meant I didn't have to hold back. I wanted to try out the new staff art I'd been working on.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Creating my own staff art had been on my mind for a while, but I'd never been sure how to go about it. I needed a way to connect my path with my combat style. After watching Zeke fight though, I realized there was other connections I could make. Zeke's dual mask thing was a way to invoke the legend of Janus. I'd done some research on the two faced god, and I could see why he'd be aiming for that, it was a source of power and fear added onto his already massive reputation.

It also gave me ideas for what I should do with my own combat style. Being a fatewalker and connecting that to my fighting style was fine, but if I could connect that to the actual legends of Solomon, that would give me that extra little bit of buzz. So I'd sat down and dug into every story about Solomon the Demon Binder. I'd scoured every possible source, looked through every obscure book.

No one was sure where those stories came from, they were just part of the public consciousness, the massive trove of legends and myths from who knew where that floated around space. But my research had clarified some of what the stories were about, how they worked, and how I could use them.

"Goetia staff art." I said levelly. "First form: Belial." I'd built the staff art around DS Mastery, so my Path would be inextricably linked, but using my path, and especially the strength of my soul, I'd been able to do things that I never could have before.

My body changed. Blackened stone covered every inch of me, crackling with toxic fire as I became a demonic avatar of poisonous flame. Rather than depend entirely on skills like Touch of Tears or Stone Limb, the first form of my staff are made me and my weapon both creatures of pure destruction, sharpening and refining multiple skills that I'd usually have to use in succession into a stable whole I could use for much longer than five or ten minutes.

My enemy whistled. "Well...that's new." He said in appreciation. "Never seen anyone do...whatever the hell that is. Don't think it'll save you though."

He blurred forward, sword cutting the air like a thousand arrows as he lashed out with dozens of stabs to try to poke me full of holes. His blade pierced me, but I felt no pain. Belial wasn't coated in poison magma. He WAS poison magma. This was the first step on my Path, and it was strong. I triggered my overlay, letting fate guide me. A wall of arrows showed me where I was being attacked.

I turned my body slightly, not enough to dodge, but enough to avoid getting hit in any vital areas. I had no idea if I'd heal completely when I resumed my human form, and I'd rather not bleed out. My staff came up, made of the same material as I was, and spun, knocking aside countless blows so that only a few of them actually landed. As soon as I saw an opening I drove my staff forward like a striking snake, my Path and my staff art combining to create a vicious piercing attack.

The man in the mask, shoved off with a foot, sending himself backwards with the force of my blow, but was forced to strip off the jacket over his armor with a curse as my ability infected it. "Shit." He said, waving his sword to clear off the corrosive liquid magma that should have been blood. "That's unpleasant. I don-" His eyes widened and he hurled himself to the side as Callie emerged from the shadows again, daggers aimed at his throat.

My staff came down hard on the spot he was heading for, and he barely managed to block with his rapier in time to avoid taking a direct hit. Callie and I were perfectly in sync, and he was in danger from either of us. Looking around, he cursed, and without a second of hesitation hurled himself over the side of the island, plummeting down into the mist below.
I blinked. "I...didn't know he could do that." I looked at Callie. "Did you know he could do that?"

She snickered. "Never change, honey. And speaking of change, can you turn off...that." She pointed at me. I let Belial retreat, wincing at the pain of a few almost closed stab wounds. I also exhaled in relief as the soul damage from using my new ability was repaired. Belial was powerful, but it put a lot of stress on my soul. Not enough to be unusuable or distracting, but it let me milk a bit of extra energy out of the island.

We rested up for a minute while I filled her in on my new staff are. She was intrigued, but I told her I'd only managed one form so far, and I didn't want to talk about any of my other ideas in case I jinxed it. After our break, we got back to it, not wanting to get intercepted again. Finding out there was more than one entrance to each island made it much less safe to lounge around.

Mounting the rainbow bridge, we continued on our way, slowly scaling towards the heights of the shaft. I hadn't seen what was at the top very clearly, since we'd started falling partway down, but I was pretty curious.

More than that though...I was having fun. No risk of death for me or the others, no excessively political nonsense, no dead gods trying to murder us. Just a game that I was having a blast with, and one that I thought I had a real shot to win. Callie seemed to be enjoying things too. We took our time walking, looking down at the scores of people making their way up.

We'd headed into a more central portion of the ascent, so we could see the multitude of other islands better now. It let us keep an eye on our competition and make sure no one was sneaking up on us. I spotted Benny and Celine fairly low down, making their way slowly but surely. Abel was several islands up, and despite being under much more pressure than we were because of how strong his soul was, he was absolutely crushing it.

"Should have known that monster would breeze through this." I muttered. "You see Gabriel and Bethy anywhere? I can't pick them out."

We were still walking across the most recent rainbow, but talking helped take my mind off how grueling this was. People are not designed to be tortured and then healed ad infinitum. Callie grunted, shaking her head as she wobbled, and I grabbed her elbow to steady her. "Nope. They're probably behind us or something. The layout here is nuts. We'll se the- what the hell is that?"

I turned my head where she was looking and spotted what she was talking about. A jellyfish. Just floating through the air. It was orange, and it flopped harmlessly through the air, coming slowly toward us.

"So...what are the odds the mysterious floating sea creature approaching us is a good thing?" She didn't respond and I sighed. "Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. Can you hit it from here with shadows?" I didn't want that thing getting close to me. I was sure whatever it was going to do would hurt.

Callie scoffed. "How? We're standing on a rainbow. Even if I could find a shadow here there isn't one out there, and my constructs will be under the same strain as me. I'd basically be increasing the surface area of my soul and artificially inflating the resistance. Can you reach it with your staff?"

I flicked my hand out, my staff shooting to full extension before I caught the end in a firm grip. It extended out over the abyss, but didn't even come close to the jellyfish yet. As I did that though, it started to drift sideways, like it was circling around. I blinked. "Well that's convenient. Apparently it's scared of...Callie walk faster."

Able to sense my distress, her head snapped around to where my gaze had followed the jellyfish. A swarm of orange gelatinous creatures swarmed toward us, and as they drifted over the island, their tentacles dragged over the grass. Energy sparked and played as they began to very slowly pale, going from orange towards yellow.

"Shit." I snarled as we sped up. "Soul eating jellyfish? This is bullshit!" If I had to guess it was some kind of balancing mechanic for the people pulling ahead. Whoever had designed this fucking trial was a grad A asshole. We made it to the next island, stumbling forward to collapse to our knees, and looked back at the last island. The jellyfish were still there, soaking up the soul energy as they became more and more yellow.

"Once they're done there they'll come here." I said anxiously. "I don't suspect that them touching us would be beneficial, since we're fucking MADE of soul right now. Death by soul eating jellyfish isn't a death I've considered before, but it's low on my list even so."

I let the power flow into me, breathing deeply as I tried to suck up as much as I could. Sadly, I could only take in as much as I needed, and I quickly hit capacity. Pulling Callie up by her hand I yanked her with me across the island to the next bridge. We immediately mounted the next rainbow.

"Which way should we go?" She asked worriedly as she looked back at them. "I think we're in the lead, but that's not exactly a good thing right now. We need to get up to the top, right?"

I nodded. "Unless this is a giant fuck you to everyone the test has to be passable. Maybe the jellyfish are a reaction to me using my Path to bull ahead, or maybe they're there for another reason. That masked guy was up here too, so it's not just us. Chances are good some of the ringers have run into them, or will. But yeah, the top is probably a safe zone. I don't want to fight those things, especially not after they hit yellow."

Speaking of soul strength, mine was slowing down as we went. The higher it got the more energy was needed, and the less the damage I was receiving meant in terms of percentage. It was the same difficulty, but progressing was getting harder and harder. Nonlinear improvement, swell.

When we hit the next island, we stopped again, turning back to watch the jellyfish swarm the one we'd just left. The one before it, the one we'd last seen them on, was dead and blackened, every single plant a desiccated husk. Further reinforcing my idea that I didn't want to get caught by those things. Before we could move on another person stepped onto the island.

It wasn't anyone I recognized, just a short, green haired guy, but I didn't wait for him to react to our presence. I hit him while he was recovering and I wasn't, smashing his head with my staff as Callie tied him up. Then I carried him to the other side of the island and threw him bodily off toward where the jellyfish were just leaving the last island, hoping he'd keep them occupied.

When he hit the cloud of jellyfish, his body went rigid, and he started screaming as they consumed all the power in his spirit. We didn't stay to watch, heading for the other bridge, but we saw enough. I was just glad no one actually died in here. He'd be ok on the outside, if a little pissed off. Callie grabbed my hand and squeezed it, letting me know she understood and was on my side, and we resumed the climb. I didn't know how much time we'd bought, but we needed to make the most of it.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The rest of the trip to the top wasn't so much boring as...anticlimactic. We were on edge and ready for a fight the whole way up, as well as in pain and just generally waffling between exhausted and healed up. Despite the multiple moments of weakness though, we didn't run into anyone else. We had to basically sprint to stay away from the jellyfish, so maybe that was why, but when we finally made it to the top we were definitely the first ones there.

I was still deciding which of us should go first when Callie pushed me ahead of her. At my obvious confusion, she just chuckled. "You're way ahead on the soul thing, and have a much better chance of actually winning this. I'll take the silver key fragment, you can have the gold. Besides, I already got some benefits from this. My soul is up to forty two percent of the way through orange after all that."

Mine was at sixty four, a consequence of the increased difficulty as we went. Still, we'd both made an absurd amount of progress. The first bump from that initial energy had been a huge boost, but the rest of them had really added up. I nodded to her gratefully, happy to be with someone who cared about me enough to pass up such an amazing chance.

The trip up had been pretty harrowing, and having Callie with me had certainly given me plenty of moral support, even if the trial tested us separately. Every step towards the end had been agony, and having her with me had made it possible for me to keep going, even when I was dreading the pain I would be feeling in the next second. I couldn't describe the relief of reaching the end of the line.

As we stepped onto the island, I saw a small, golden temple situated in the middle of the space. It looked peaceful and relaxing and very safe, and I just had a positive feeling from staring at it. I found myself walking forward almost unconsciously, but I wasn't worried. The temple was a good place. When I reached it I felt a soothing wash of power flow through me, cleansing the anxiety, the pain, and all the residual stress from the climb.

I was suddenly...at peace. I'd healed from the soul damage, but the mental strain had been taking its toll, and I hadn't realized how much exactly until it was all gone. There was a flash, and a small golden piece of metal was floating in front of me. I tried to take it, but as soon as I touched it, it just melted into energy and merged with my soul. I tried to find or interact with it, but there was no reaction.

Callie stepped up beside me, and I felt the cleansing through the bond before the silver fragment appeared in front of her and did the same thing. "Wow." She said with a relaxed sigh. "That is...nice. It's like a million good nights of sleep and a billion of the most soothing cups of tea ever all at once." Her voice was dreamy and serene. She was feeling the same things I was, and neither of us ever wanted it to end.

I nodded lazily, taking a seat for a minute inside the temple to process. We needed to decide our next move but I didn't see any of the others nearby, so it seemed like a good time to think. Going from terrible pain to perfect serenity in a few seconds was whiplash inducing, and I think we both needed a few minutes of down time on top of that to make sure we were in the right headspace to continue. After a few minutes of basking though, it became clear we'd waited long enough.

"So...what do we do now?" I asked. I had a decent idea, and we'd talked a bit about this, but I wasn't thrilled to consider it. Having to switch back to a normal headspace after being so relaxed certainly wasn't helping.

Callie sighed. "We move on." She said firmly. "We talked about this before we came in, if we got separated it might be necessary to split up." We'd made a few plans before coming into the temple, just contingencies for various situations, and getting separated was among those."Waiting here would be dangerous. Someone could find out we have the key fragments, not to mention no one can get seriously hurt or killed here. The others will be fine, but we can't hang around."

She was right, but I hated it. Not just because I felt like we were abandoning our friends, but because I desperately wanted to wait and talk to my sister. Sadly, Callie was right. Staying would put us at odds with everyone who came here. Judging by the way the keys melted into us, we'd need to be killed in here to retrieve them. If I died and got kicked out I might never get the chance to talk to Chelsea.

I gestured over to the doorway at the far end of the temple. Soothing golden light swirled within it, so bright it was impossible to see inside. "I'm guessing that's the entrance to the next trial. Getting a headstart will probably be helpful." I stood up, walking over to the portal slowly, trying to mentally prepare. I glanced at her. "You realize we might get separated in there too? In fact, it'll probably happen eventually."

She nodded. "I do. But hey, absence makes the heart grow fonder right? Besides, I need to get stronger on my own. My soul is way behind yours. We're both aiming for the same thing here, and if we stick together the whole time I'll be leaning on you and vice versa. It might be best to separate." She sounded nervous, and I got it. A bond like ours was habit forming. Knowing someone was there to watch your back, FEELING it.

Separating wouldn't be a big deal to most people, but losing that constant feedback would be like losing a part of me. Which...was probably all the more reason to do it. Because she was right, this place was about refining your soul, and while the normal percentage bumps were possible just by repetition, the actual transition to the next level was more involved than that. Unless you were a jellyfish, apparently. But for human beings elevating the soul to the next level was difficult.

It was why outside of a place like this temple you could only go up one soul rank. Abel had reached the peak of orange at G-rank, and was now peak of yellow after rank up, but he couldn't break through to green without help. He'd told me a bit about what he'd needed to do to hit orange in the first place, and it was going to require serious willpower. Any weaknesses might screw us both over.

Leaning down, I removed my mask, pulling my girlfriend into a long kiss. When I was done, I squeezed her in a tight hug. "You be careful ok? I won't be there to watch your back this time."

She snorted, a suspiciously wet noise that made me suspect she was crying, though I didn't mention it. "Shut up. I'm stronger than you, I should be worried about you getting killed in here. If I make it to the end and you fail out after I gave up that gold key piece I'm gonna be super pissed. I better see you again before we reach the end of this." I nodded, kissing her on the forehead. Then I turned and walked through the portal, letting the gold light consume me again.

When my vision cleared. I was alone, and in a completely new place. A serene and peaceful forest surrounded me, mist blanketing the ground to my knees and giving the place a transcendant, ineffable appearance. It wasn't spooky, it was too pleasant for that, but it looked surreal and unnatural.

I triggered Eye of Revelation, looking for...anything. Nearby humans, animals, hell, I'd take some particularly chatty plants. Sadly, there were no sentient beings nearby that I could sense. Within a minute or two I felt the information I'd been expecting drop into my head, at least what there was of it.

Second trial. The Tranquil Forest. Callie and I had been right to split up, the forest would have separated us anyway. Maybe fate sense pushed us that way, but regardless, everyone who entered came in here alone.

Where the first trial tested determination and willingness to endure, the second trial tested something completely different. While exciting and dangerous evolution was an important part of refining the soul, peace was needed as well as war. So many Ascendants couldn't handle the quiet contemplation of true solitude. Unstable thrill seekers were a dime a dozen among powerful Ascendants, but among those who could advance past the limits of the soul, that wasn't enough.

This trial was unintentionally kind of a hot button issue for me, because being alone was something I had a lot of trouble with. I was almost never alone. I was with Benny, or with Callie, or spending time with Zeke. My training was alone sometimes, but my friends were always nearby, always a shout away. Being here like this, in total solitude...this was something I had no experience with. Especially not long term.

But if it was just solitary meditation there wouldn't be a forest, there would just be a room. There had to be more to this test. So I started walking, into the depths of the forest, through the mist, and tried my hardest to understand the trial here. To understand what the temple wanted from me.

The deeper I went, the higher the mist rose. I could feel the trees around me, so I didn't bump into them, but the world itself began to be consumed by stifling white vapor, occluding itself from my view, isolating me even further. And that was when I understood what was happening.

There are levels to being alone. Not conscious ones, not really. But they exist. A person in a crowd can be lonely, and a person alone in a room can be with friends. But that lonely person alone in a room will be more deeply alone than the other person. It's another level of lonesomeness, another tier of solitude.

Being alone in the forest was a first tier, and as I walked deeper, I became more alone. I was sure this would continue as I got deeper. There must be a central area to this place. A finish line like the last place had, and in order to pass through I needed to reach it. I needed to keep walking through the loneliness.

But I doubted it would be that easy. There was no jellyfish here, no other people to fight. This was a trial of the self. Of the heart as much as the soul. I stopped, taking a deep breath and letting my uneasiness fade a bit. I didn't like this place, not at all. I needed a second to catch my breath and shake off some of the fear.

This trial was the worst one I could think of for me. The most primal weakness I could think of. Which was why I was now determined to complete it. This was a way for me to grow stronger. Not with stats, but mentally. I was confident that because of my issues I would get more out of this trial than anyone else.

I started walking again, the mist getting thicker. This would be my test for myself, more than anything. I had a nice head start here. I could get through this faster than anyone. It was a shame my soul wasn't strengthening here, otherwise I'd have been hoping to use this opportunity to break through to yellow. Oh well, I could do that on the next trial.