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

[Verdthandi]

Sounds good but do i have to read it from this forum or its available on different platform like kindle or google or something else?

Click to shrink...

Hit "Reader Mode" and you'll only have the content posts. AFAIK it's not available anywhere else.

 

[DoomDash]

Hit "Reader Mode" and you'll only have the content posts. AFAIK it's not available anywhere else.

Click to shrink...

Found it.....Thanks.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Sounds good but do i have to read it from this forum or its available on different platform like kindle or google or something else?

Click to shrink...

Book one is on kindle, everything else is here, but you can also read it on scribblehub and Royal Road.

 

[DoomDash]

Book one is on kindle, everything else is here, but you can also read it on scribblehub and Royal Road.

Click to shrink...

I'm actually fine with this 'reader mode' now. I was initially wary of encountering other chats in between reading chapters, which would surely prevent me from being fully immersed in the story. But now it's alright. But thanks anyway.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

After we divined what Suvaya was doing and decided on gathering support, we pooled our information on the local geography and what teams most likely ended up where. It was a rough estimate, but by mapping out where we'd all been when we got on the slides and where we'd ended up, we were able to create a vague approximation of a formula that predicted the way the distance changed from one side of the slides to the other.

Using that data, and the knowledge we all had about where the other teams were in the bazaar, we managed to get an idea of where certain teams may have come out. I personally had assumed it was random, but once he got the idea in his head Benny had insisted on at least checking to see if there was a pattern, and it had paid off huge. His investment in Focus up to this point was definitely paying dividends.

"So, with this information we should be able to match people up with a list of teams to contact." Benny said, scrawling some more numbers on the page of the notebook he had borrowed. "Our list of known teams and their locations isn't huge, granted, and nowhere near complete, but the more teams we bring in, the more information we can get. Especially if the searchers note down the location their quarries landed so I can refine my formula. It's pretty general right now, even if we SHOULD see some results."

"Ah." Said Templeton greasily. "So this little exercise won't be accurate?"

Benny sneered at him. In the time we'd all been working on mapping this out, pretty much everyone had grown to dislike Templeton. We also did our best to let him speak as infrequently as possible. "It WILL be accurate. Just not to a fine degree. With so few use cases I was only able to calculate rough areas, the more data points we get the more exact I can get it. At the very least it'll give is a direction and an approximate distance. Which is more than we had before."

Gabriel nodded, cutting into the discussion. "Clockwork is right. We have, what, two teams listed for each of us? When we bring them back we'll have another eighteen teams and can gather data from them. Then we have twenty seven teams to send out to find the rest. It's the fastest and most accurate way to gather everyone quickly. We only have a month or so worst case."

"Agreed." Sneered Valsa. "So shut the hell up, Templeton. Nobody needs to hear from you anyway." While the rest of us disliked him, it seemed like Valsa had a special grudge against Templeton. I didn't much care as long as she helped keep him quiet.

I looked down at our own list. We'd been given the names of two team leaders, one of whom was selected because he was someone Nat knew personally. My cousin had traveled extensively, and had run into quite a few famous people of our own generation, so it wasn't a shock she might know one of the team leaders.

"I think we're ignoring a major issue." Said Chad grimly. "Designated meeting place or not, can we really ask Annalise to stay up here? It can't possibly be safe. I suggest we change the meeting place to somewhere else."

Nat snorted. "And how would we do that exactly? Alistair, Solomon, and I are completely tapped for wishes for the day. That means we have no way of reaching them until tomorrow, and chances are SOMEONE will make it here by then. Hell, how do we know the other teams aren't all already on their way? What if we miss them and they show up here? We'd be wasting our time showing up at their landing spot."

"I don't think so." I said. "Anyone close enough to see the mountain would be close enough to have gotten here by now. You know how fast we are, especially anyone at the peak of F-rank. I think our best bet is assuming all the attendees who are coming are already here. But I see Chad's point. Annalise, you sure you don't want out? I know you said it didn't bother you."

The fae shook her head. "It would be a meaningless gesture. If we don't prevent this ritual from taking place we're all going to die regardless. Being here doesn't put me in any more danger than being elsewhere. If nothing else, I suspect the manifestation will shatter this planet. You're familiar, of course with what happens when someone ranks up on a planet too weak to withstand the process?"

My eyes widened. "Shit. This place is peak of F. Forget the injunction against E-rankers, if she Ascends here it'll push the place into trying to rank up early. It'll collapse itself." I hadn't realized that when she'd mentioned the danger earlier. I thought it would be the rank up process itself that did the damage.

The others looked worried. "Well." Said Abel grimly. "At least we have some motivation for the rest of them. Self-interest will be important even for those that hadn't used the drops. Always nice to have motivated team members."

"Wait." I said anxiously. "If she comes back into being at the peak of F-rank, she could attempt to break through to E-rank anyway. Wouldn't that cause the same problem? We'll need to put her down immediately to prevent her from killing all of us. Once she hits E-rank she can use the stockpiled stats she has to rank herself up again pretty quick, couldn't she? Can she shoot herself back up to S-rank?"

"Doubtful." Said Annalise. "I'm sure you know how painful it is to grow your stats too quickly. But you're right that she'll embark on her Ascension rapidly and be a danger. We will need to stop her as soon as she restores herself. We were expecting that fight in any case, though."

Which made this more and more annoying. I turned to Alistair. "I think you should stay. Gibing Annalise access to wishes while we're gone will give her a way to narrow down the exact timing of the ritual, something we're going to need. She can also help Clockwork refine his formula...which is why I think he should ALSO stay. Along with Celine, Perit, Valk and Mel." Half of our team, but it would give him enough backup for me to be comfortable without leaving my own portion of the team vulnerable.

Benny, obviously, did not look happy, but I think he realized my end game here. This was important and we needed to find these people as quickly as possible. With access to wishes and someone with as keen a deductive mind as Annalise, he could basically make us a map to each team. It would massively save us all time. He'd already demonstrated how helpful he could be, and this would make his Focus even more useful.

He stared at me inscrutably for a minute before sighing. "Agreed. I'll stay and work. My suggestion is to keep in regular contact. Scan rings are good, but in person check ins would be safer. Assuming we're writing off the possibility of Suvaya waking up and punching us all into orbit. I think we should dispatch the teams in a staggered rotation to pick up singular targets. Means the mountain won't be running on a skeleton crew for longer than necessary, and we'll have teams in and out."

I knew he wasn't worried about the priests, given what we knew about them they were all currently in their tombs or nearby at least. Annalise theorized that they needed to stay put to act as foci for the lightblooms. No, he was worried that some of the other teams might decide they wanted to run the search, or that we were wrong, or any number of things. He was right, keeping the barebones crew we had set up here all the time would present a tempting target.

"Sounds good." I said nonchalantly. "Gabriel, Bethy? What do you guys think? If we stagger it we can make sure one of us is here at all times." While I wasn't a powerhouse, Callie and I together were pretty scary, and throw in Abel and you had a nightmarish level of variety in a combat scenario. Plus with Nat we had two candidates, which was its own form of disincentive. The other two were straight up monsters. If we staggered it so one of our three teams was here, people would be way less likely to start shit.

Gabriel nodded slowly. "I'll move out first. I'm the fastest given my team is mounted. We'll head out today, and tomorrow you can leave on your own search. We can relieve the Vampire when we return, then she can head out, and you can relieve us." Leanding his support, and theoretically Bethy's to the plan made it much more likely not to kick up a fuss.

While being a candidate might make me someone worth listening to normally, there were three of us here. i wasn't the oldest, the strongest, or the most educated. I was making plans because of momentum, but I DID have the biggest voting bloc in terms of raw power, and making the calls as a group would help add legitimacy to the proceedings. Especially once more teams showed up, because the power structure was bound to become more complicated as we went. Ascendants loved complicated.

After we hammered out the details as best we could Gabriel took his team and left. How they got fucking HORSES up and down the mountain I neither knew nor wanted to guess at, but apparently they'd done so, or left someone down to guard them. I knew Gabriel's charger was a construct, but the others had been riding real animals. I didn't see them up here, granted, but it was a big mountain. They might be over a ridge or something.

Once he was gone, I turned to Nat. "Alright. We have a day to prep before we leave, getting down won't be a problem, I can float us, but I still want to know more about this Renaldi person we're looking for. You said you knew him from your travels right? That's why you picked his team to look for?"

She nodded. "Miles Renaldi. Absorber. He can take on the attributes of materials he touches for a time. He uses it pretty well, I'm not shocked he won a tournament. I ran into him on a little planet called Revarge about five years ago. Granted him a few wishes. Some Skills he made good use of. He paid, but he considered it a bit of a favor so he told me he owed me one."

I exhaled a breath i hadn't realized I'd been holding."So he'll listen to you if you tell him what's up?" That was a relief. I was pretty sure we were going to have trouble convincing some of them. The more we had on side when we approached the easier it would be. I wasn't going to turn down any advantage in this mess. "You know anything about his team?" Most of our information was incomplete. We knew most of the relevant team leaders, but no one had bothered keep dossiers.

"I remember his girlfriend Sierra." She said with a shrug. "Earth manipulation. Other than that not especially. He's a pretty relaxed guy though. As long as we don't try to sneak up on him we should be fine."

"Alright." I said with a sigh. "I'm going to set up the bunker over there." I pointed off into the distance. "Then we can all crash. If we're going to ride all out tomorrow we want to be as well rested as we can be. After hours of that deduction shit I could use a nap, and I wasn't even deducing." She chuckled and I slipped the rock spike out of my ring. Tired or not no way was I going to sleep without solid walls around me. Not in mixed company, and not here. I couldn't get off this mountain fast enough.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Getting back to the ground the next day was actually really fun. State of Grace lasted five minutes, though stretching it out over five people (and a bear) was tough. Still, Callie helped me offset some of the strain through the bond, and we all plummeted through the air in a big spread out circle, whooping in enjoyment of the wind in our faces. We touched down in the forest near the base of the mountain pretty easily.

Callie, Abel, Nat, Jessie, Randall and I. We'd brought along our healer just in case, but the rest of the group was picked specifically because I thought they could handle themselves (or in Nat's case because she knew the guy we were looking for). I wasn't entirely thrilled leaving my best friend up there alone, but it helped that either Bethy or Gabriel would be there to help at all times.

"Wow." Said Callie as we all caught our breaths. "That was bracing. We should definitely try the sky diving thing again sometime."

I snickered. "I'm betting we're going to do it another five times at least here. I'm more worried about getting back up. The way down is quick and painless. I could do without the agonizing trip to the top of damned mountain, I'm not looking forward to a repeat."

She gave me an angelic smile. "That's weird. It seemed pretty comfy to me." I noticed Nat glare at her and stifled a snicker of my own. Callie had been hanging off my back, so she hadn't gotten slammed into the mountainside a few dozen times on a rope. When she followed my gaze and noticed she gave an apologetic shrug. "I'm just messing with him, no offense meant."

Nat shrugged. "So what's our heading? You had Benny add it to that magic map right?" We'd used the map to establish a baseline for the calculations Benny had been doing, and it had auto updated as it was supposed to do. The far reaches of it weren't really filled in, but we did have a basic idea of the scale we were working with and a direction to go. I slipped the map out, unrolling it to check our current location.

"Looks like we're heading northwest, at least based on where he probably landed. Templeton saw him around the time he hit his own slide. Benny's calculations say he probably landed about five hundred miles that way." I pointed. "It looks like more west than north though, we've already traveled a decent distance into the interior. We're not like, halfway or anything but he didn't land even close to the center anyway."

We'd considered bringing the wolves with us, using them as transportation, but given they were only G-rank it seemed like kind of a risk. Jessie had been working with them using her new and improved lifeweaver ability to try to get them stronger, but she couldn't just poof them to F-rank. Her ability was more about healing than enhancement, so the speed of improvement wasn't enough for our purposes.

Sadly, that left us all running the distance between ourselves and the spot where Renaldi and his people probably touched down. Not that it was tough, we all had enough Might to make good time, but running in the woods, even with Perception to notice obstacles, Focus to process them, and Might to avoid them, was annoying as hell. It was anything but a straight line, and the trees grew thicker the further in we got.

We kept up our pace for a few hours before we drew to a stop in the approximate area that had been marked out. "Alright." I said as I looked around. "Keep your eyes peeled for any sign of passage. Benny didn't have the data to give us a solid location, so we're going to need to search nearby manually." I had my Eye of Revelation up, using it to search for any signs anyone had been here.

"So what are the chances we actually FIND them here?" Asked Nat skeptically. "I mean, no way they just sat around for days doing nothing. If they didn't get picked up by a kingdom like we did, they might have just gone out searching for lightblooms."

"Assuming they know what those even are." I agreed. "But either way, that's actually best case for us. Tracking them out of the core and into a kingdom would be nightmarish. Luckily, I don't think it's likely. They may have met up with someone, but it doesn't make sense to drag them out of the core just to meet up with some politicians and send them back in. More likely they had some sort of mobile force out with enough power to strong arm them, either that or they really are free agents out here."

She nodded. "I could see that. I take it you're planning to look around for a while and then wish for some kind of tracking device if you can't find them?"

"Pretty much." I said distractedly. "But between my Perception and my Eye of Revelation I suspect I'll be able to find SOME trace of their passing. The approximate area Benny gave us wasn't small, but it's not more than a few miles wide. I wouldn't want to waste the wishes."

With that in mind, we spread out to look for clues. My Eye was damned useful for work like this, but it didn't turn out to be necessary. Within an hour I got a scan ring call from Callie, with directions to where she was. When I arrived, I found her standing in front of a pretty large stone tower. It wasn't big enough to poke out of the trees, which were pretty damned tall here, but it was sizable.

"So." She said in amusement. "What are the chances that they DIDN'T go into the spooky magic tower?"

I snorted. "I don't know. If we'd landed near one of these and didn't have any idea what was going on, what do you think we would have done?"

"Yeah, I think they're inside too." She chuckled. "Think this one of those wizard towers?" She asked, eyes scanning the length of the building. I could see runes carved into the stone, but they looked much less...ancient, than stuff on the temples.

"Probably." I said with a shrug. "My issue isn't whether they went in though, it's whether they're still there. Even if they did go inside, they could have cleaned the place out and bailed by now. Hard to say though, since we've never actually gone into one of these things. I think out best bet is to use a wish from Nat to get one of those compasses. It'll tell us not only if they're in there, but WHERE in there they are once we enter."

I'd been hoping to keep our wishes in case of an emergency, but I wasn't too broken up about using one or two if I had to. Callie seemed to be on the same page, or so I felt over the bond. She didn't have time to respond because Nat showed up the very next moment. I did love Perception sometimes, letting me pick up things like shoes on leaves when I was listening for them.

Focus normally precluded that kind of incidental spillover from stats, but given where we were I was keeping my ears peeled as well as my eyes. Turning to see my cousin, I waved her over even as Randall and Jessie emerged from the woods, with Abel showing up about a minute later. "Hey, we think they might have gone into the tower but aren't sure they're still there even if they did." Slipping out a bag of chits, I tossed it to her. "I wish for a method of tracking Miles Renaldi. Preferably an active one like a compass."

She weighed the bag with her hand then nodded. I watched the gathering electricity flow over her skin and blaze in her eyes, the distinctive purple lightning that only we could use or even see. It gathered in a blinding flash in the hand opposite the bag, and when it faded, a small golden compass was sitting in her empty palm. She tossed it over to me and I caught it easily.

Holding it up, I got a direction, it WAS pointed at the tower, but that could have been a coincidence, so I did a single lap of the outside of the building, and sure enough the compass continue to point right at the place. "Looks like we found them." I told my friends."Plus we get to explore this place. I can't wait to see if there are any spellbooks!" I paused. "We're sure all the conduits are in temples, right?"

Callie shrugged. "Based on what you and Annalise puzzled out I'd wager the places were built as some sort of amplifier or focus. Or at least used to map out the ritual. This place doesn't look as old either. Probably just some random wizard's evil lair."

I shrugged. "Works for me. Give me a minute to this in to Anna-Marie just in case she has some kind of information about this place." I retreated off to one side to spin up my scan ring, and the princess answered pretty promptly.
"Solomon?" She said worriedly. "I haven't heard from any of you in a while. No one's hurt are they? You called with all those questions and then just vanished."

"Nothing is wrong." I assured her. "We had a big meeting that took ages then went to sleep for a while. We just got finished a trip. We ran into what we think is one of those wizard towers you mentioned, but we wanted to run the datails by you in case it was something else."

She looked relieved. "Of course. I'm happy to help. Show me the location?" I held up my ring, showing the screen towards the building as I walked another slow circuit around it, letting her take in all the stones and the runes and all that. She consulted with her team of experts and their books, and within probably twenty minutes was back with an answer.

It was a wizard tower, though not one that she'd heard of. We weren't lucky enough to learn the wizard's name or favor breakfast food or anything that would help us traverse it safely. I thanked her and hung up, and then we all gathered at the entrance. The door inside was big, with a crossbar holding it shut. It was large enough for Randall to enter easily, which was nice, but I wasn't sure I liked that the wizard needed a door that size.

After Callie did her trap seeking thing and I gave the place a once over with Eye of Revelation, we pushed the bar off the door (how it had gotten back on if Renaldi's team was still inside was another question I didn't want the answer to) and then made our way inside...and froze.

The other side of the door was dirt. Like actual earth you'd find outside. We stepped onto a huge chunk of rock and the door slammed behind us, a thump answering the question I hadn't wanted answered. I wasn't worried, we could break the door, it wasn't enchanted that I could see and it was only F-rank wood.

That wasn't the part that stunned us though. Past the rock we were on there was just...empty sky. Purple and orange and yellow clouds, like a permanent sunset, with black ones floating mixed in sparking with white blue lightning. The lightning struck out at the staircases that ran between our rock and other similar rocks with doors on them, grounding harmlessly about twenty feet out from the steps.

"Ok." Said Callie in a hushed tone. "I have to admit. This is pretty cool." I nodded along as we stared out into the endless expanse. Wizard's tower indeed. This place was amazing. I just hoped it wasn't as dangerous as it was fascinating. Sadly my luck never seemed to work that way.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I admit to a bit of vertigo. Even standing on solid ground, the churning lightning struck sky around us was...disorienting. For once I didn't have some glib remark about our surroundings. I was just too blown away. "Stick close." I said to the rest of my group.

Luckily, the stairs were big enough for even Randall, so we didn't need to leave the biggest member of our party behind. Approaching the steps at the end of the rock we were on, I noticed something else unusual. The stairs were spiraled. The looked like a DNA helix. It was hard to see from a distance because of the strange warping effect around them (which was what had caught the lightning) but up close it was painfully clear.

The first section, at least, was oriented right, so stepping onto the thing wasn't an issue. Once we mounted the stairs the space started to sort of list to one side, and after a few steps it became clear WE were spiraling along with the staircase. It was a weird sensation. It also didn't make a ton of sense. "Why the hell would they waste power on doing this?"

Nat shrugged as we continued our climb. "It might be an incidental result of the way they altered space here. Sloppy spatial warping can have odd effects. Or it could be insurance to prevent people from breaking the shields around the staircases. If they're tied to the effect then smashing them could drop us into oblivion. Hard to say really, there are just too many possible answers."

I rolled my eyes. "There are shorter ways to say that you don't know." She glared at me and I shrugged. "What? It's true."

"Never admit ignorance, cousin mine."She said loftily. "We live in a world where perception is reality. If you act like you always have the answers, that's how people will perceive you. Instead of saying you don't know, give educated guesses and state them with conviction."

"That explains so much about you." I said dryly. "But I'll take it under advisement." We chattered on about mostly nothing as we walked, following the compass as best we could. Unfortunately it pointed us straight at our target, but apparently didn't account for elevation...or depths, as the case may be. Since none of us felt like jumping into an endless void of lightning and clouds we did our best to follow it while sticking to the steps.

It didn't help that at the top of some of the steps were doors that appeared to lead nowhere but in fact came out on other landings with more steps. Not every landing had a door, some were connected to each other by stairs, but it seemed to be mostly random and it made trying to track anything in the whole mess impossible.

Which was why when reached the top (bottom?) of the stairs where the first door was, I wasn't surprised to find the compass pointing out into the nothingness to the left of us. Looking up I could vaguely see a rock island in the clouds off in that direction, high above us, not that it did us any good.

Deciding it didn't really matter since we only had one exit available, I pushed open the door (a surprisingly large one that Randall was able to squeeze through at an angle given how tall it was) then stepped inside. The other side of the door didn't drop us over the side of the stone and into a bottomless plummet like it should have, instead it brought us to an entirely new place.

Past the frame we stepped onto a polished floor made of multicolored tiles. The tiles appeared to be made of gemstones fit together intricately to create squares of color that blended into a beautiful mosaic. Some squares were one solid block of gems, some were a variety, and the effect reminded me of nothing so much as puzzle pieces. I could see that they were F-ranked gems too, but when I tried to touch them my hand stopped above the floor like it was hitting an invisible pane of glass.

Callie was almost drooling. "Those are ALL gems with naturally occurring runes in them. Whoever made this was...rich. Also a genius. I don't know if you could call this a formation, because it WAS crafted, but it's not quite an enchantment either. No chance we can take any though. I'm pretty sure this is a force field, and based on what Nat said about breaking those in here it's not worth the risk."

I nodded. "I think it's some kind of node eye. I'm betting there are more rooms like this, probably at strategic points up and down the tower. This whole thing is a massive three dimensional construct." At their looks I shrugged. "I still know the odd bit about Enchanting, even if I can't really do it anymore. This is...impressive. The question is which way do we go?"

Gesturing up from the floor, I waved at the four closed doors identical to the ones we just came through. The walls between them were black stone, smooth and unblemished, and all the light in here came from the floor, as the ceiling seemed to be a mass of writhing black clouds, though thankfully not one that discharging all the flickering blue white lightning.

The mosaic itself was no help, it appeared to depict a beautiful woman in a green dress dancing across a rainbow, followed unknowingly by shadowy demonic forms. Callie gestured for me to hand her the compass, which I did, and help it up. "Well...compass says that way, but since we know that it doesn't take into account elevation and this place has literally turned us upside down a few times...I'm not sure how much it'll help."

"Better than nothing." I shrugged and headed for the door on the western side of the room. Pushing it open, we emerged onto another staircase. I sighed and then got climbing, following it up to another landing with another door. Inside THIS door though, wasn't just a room with more doors, it was something infinitely more interesting. A library.

The mosaic her was different, a picture of a female knight locked in combat with a massive grey skinned demon. I noticed her hair was the same strawberry blonde as the woman in the dress, but she looked older, and she had a scar marring one cheek. I made a note of the images, which seemed to be different points in the life of one person. Turning away from that though, I took in the walls filled with rows and rows of BOOKS.

Grinning, I made to step forward and then stopped. The others kept moving and I held up a hand to stop them. "Hold up. This is too easy." Flipping on my Eye of Revelation I scoured the place for any clues or traps. I frowned as I settled on the glowing forms of mops and brooms leaning against the tables in front of the shelves. Reaching into my ring, I pulled out a random rock I had lying around from somewhere (it was hard not to be a pack rat when you had spatial storage) and tossed it.

One of the mops leapt up, spinning around in midair and every tendril of the mop head lashed out separately like a whip, cracking the air as the reduced the rock to dust particles under a flurry of blows.

"Well...I think we can confirm that they didn't end up here." I said glibly. "Either the mop trap would be gone or there would be a body...unless...do you think the mop trap cleans up after itself?" I mulled it over. "Nah, better to assume we just took a different door. The compass points to where they are not where they were. So these traps should by bypassable." I hummed in consideration. "Abel, can you grab a book from here with your ability?"

He shrugged. "Maybe." Reaching out, he warped the air, creating a trail of lubricated space. It took him a minute to do since he was trying not to trigger the traps, but finally it reached the shelf. He reached out, and the space warped his arm, letting him grab a random book. It was still weird watching him work, and the mental glitch of the space just...coiling, as he pulled it back made me pause for a second before he handed it to me.

"Cyringian Table Manners, fiftieth edition, third appendix." I said with a sigh. Flipping it open to make sure it was what it looked like, I sighed. "Ok, so not all of these are winners. Fork ordering, dish size...guest execution methods? Okay that's a world of no." I snapped the book shut and dropped it where I stood. There had been pictures. "Let's try another one, shall we?"

My teacher chuckled, reaching out again and coming back with another book. This one was bound in blue leather. "Tributaries of Power:Sources of the water tribes." I flipped it open. This one seemed much more academic, and did NOT have pictures of people being murdered. "This is functionally useless to me." I finally declared. "But it might be a nice present to Anna-Marie." I stowed it away. "Again."

So we spent the next two hours slowly clearing books off shelves. Encyclopedias, history texts, instruction manuals, geography books, local fairy tales, books on boatbuilding, books on boat DESTROYING, books on building boats to COUNTER the books on boat destroying (this wizard had been VERY fond of boats), books on music, art, culture, cooking (which I kept), shoemaking, and any number of other things.

We did find exactly TWO spellbooks, one for a Skill called Cumulo Nimbus, which let you summon lightning clouds, and one called Fire Whip, which did exactly what the name suggested. Two out of roughly four hundred books on the one wall we'd already gotten through. Eventually, Abel just got fed up.

"Enough!" Snapped my tired looking mentor. "We have stuff to do. We can hit the other walls when we come back through, AFTER we find Renaldi's team." I noticed he was out of breath and sweating, and was grateful my mask covered my smirk. He was right though. Besides I was pretty sure the spell books had been left here by accident, this was most likely just a normal library.

"Fair enough." I pulled out the compass, holding it up to figure out where it was pointed. "Everyone get ready to go, we're headed north." That got groans from various members of our party still combing through the piles of books we DID have (none of them were spells but there was some interesting topics, Jessie found one on local flowers). Everyone stashed the books they wanted or that seemed useful in their rings, tossed anything that seemed weird or murdery with the table manners book, and we moved on.

There were doors in each of the walls of books, so we headed through the one the compass pointed through, following the stairs up to another stone island with another massive door. When we went through THIS one though, we were pleasantly surprised to find a group of people The exact group of people we were looking for, in fact, at least based on the descriptions.

The leader, a tall bronze skinned man with blue eyes and wavy black hair, looked up from where he was sitting in the middle of the empty room. "No wait don't it's a tra-!' His warning was cut off as the door slammed shut behind us and the wood of the barrier melted into a solid sheet of stone matching the archway around it. Renaldi sighed miserably. "A trap. Oh well, welcome to the first day of the rest of your lives, I suppose." Looking around, I realized there was no other way out...well shit.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Seeing the defeated forms of the other team slumped in the center of the room, I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. Not defeated in the literal, 'beat em' up' sense, but just mentally run down. "Miles Renaldi and company I take it?" I said with a wince. "I take it you DID get our message?" It was nice to know that the wish had gotten past the defenses here, because it meant we had at least one way out.

The leader chuckled. "Oh we got it. Not that it meant much in here. We've been stuck here since the day we landed. Lucky we stocked up on food and other necessities." He gave my cousin a cheerful wave. "Nice to see you Natalie. Shame about the circumstances."

Nodding to my friends, I walked about halfway to where they were seated and sat down. We looked over the place first, but I didn't see any attackers to worry about. "You've been here since the first day?" I tried hard not to think about how shitty that must have been.

He nodded. "Not that we can tell you how long that is. The first day we kept track of the time but..." He shrugged. "It was making it worse, you know? So we stopped checking. The rest of our time has been spent trying to get the hell out of this place. The doors sealed behind us like they did with you. My girlfriend, Sierra, is an Enchanter, and she's been working on trying to decipher the enchantments on the floors to open them back up, but it's slow going."

The red haired girl with blue eyes sitting next to him nodded. She'd had them closed when we entered, seemingly meditating, but I was guessing she was leaning into Focus, and had probably long since memorized the flooring. "The enchantment in this place is...complicated. The floor IS enchanted, but the enchantments aren't just linear two dimensional constructs."

"I noticed." I said with a sigh. "They're part of a three dimensional structure. Not just the enchantments we see, but a larger construct based on where in the sky the islands are hanging. I'm guessing you have to take all that into account with any changes you make?"

She sighed. "It's worse than that. Every rune IS part of the whole, but they're also tied into vertically aligned enchantments strung along the length of the tower." She pointed at a square of sapphire. "This isn't just part of the enchantments next to it, it's ALSO part of an enchantment tied into the corresponding tile in the floor above us, and one to the side, and they're all interlocked like that. I don't know who made this place, but they were a GENIUS."

"Well, we can help you look for a way out." I said with a reassuring smile. "And if not...well, we have other means of departure we can all use." Hell, with Nat here even I had a way out. But that was ignoring the obvious. We might be stuck, sure, but if wishes could get us out, they could get us UNSTUCK. We could just wish for the doors to open back up or something.

Frowning, she shook her head. "I'm not sure what means you're talking about, but most of the options I can think of would trigger the tower's defenses. There actually IS a way to open the doors, but my issue is that it's tied to some sort of super monster construct waiting to attack us if I do. It's peak of F-rank, and I don't think we can take it."

Ah, so she'd been looking for a back door before triggering the defenses and killing them all. That was definitely a problem, but since this place was only at base Impact value it was less of one than one might expect.

"We might be able to help." I said slowly. "How do you know it's peak F-rank? Have you seen it in person? Is there some kind of script for it in the Enchantment?" Depending on where it was we might be able to look it over. If we could just kill the thing without using up our wishes that would be a better use of our time. We could always escape with wishes later if we needed to, but I admit to being fascinated by the idea of more spellbound.

"There's a script." She said, pointing to a segment of flooring. When I looked blankly at it she sighed. "Right, none of you can see the spell constructs stringing these places together. It's a gargoyle, big and scary. Peak F-rank and it comes out of the doorways."

I wished we had Benny with us. His Focus specialization would have been useful here. Sadly that wasn't the case. I sighed and considered our options. "If I tell you we can take it and get you out of here, would you believe me?"

"Well." Said Miles with amusement. "You have a bear the size of a bus behind you, so yeah, probably. Plus Nat is far too cautious to travel unprotected. Since her guards aren't around, I have to assume one or more of you is competent. That's not even getting into the fact that most of you seem to have more Impact than we do. I'm guessing you used some of the Moonglow Dew? Speaking of, what was up with the message? You didn't exactly tell us much."

So I filled him in. I told him how we got here, how we'd been taken in by Ladrigan, how we'd run into Gabriel, how we'd decided to help them out with the temple. How we'd found out about Suvaya, and on and on. I filled them in on everything we knew, and by the time I was done, Miles was wincing in sympathy. "So." I said finally. "We have people to find, and we have to get back on a timetable. I'm not up for staying here too long, but we can still do a cursory search and be back in time for the switch. You up for finishing this?"

He just laughed. "You know what? Fuck it. Why not. We've been stuck here for days, it only seems right we get something out of it. You sure you can take out the guardian? It might be safer just to leave."

Grinning, I hopped up and walked over to the doorway. "Sierra. What sets off the gargoyle protocol. Just the back door you found? Or is there some secondary trigger we need to watch out for." I suspected there was one, and I was pretty sure I knew what it was, since it was the first thing any rational person would try.

"The doors." She said succinctly. "If you try to break open the doors."

"Just the doors?" I asked intently. "Or the doors AND the frames." The doors were malleable and designed to change, that's how they melded into the frames, but the frames themselves were most likely the source of that particular enchantment. I was sure if they started to break SOMETHING would happen, but I wanted to know if breaking was going to set them off or if we'd be ass deep in gargoyle with just one attack.

She studied the ground in front of her. "Just the door. The frame has failsafes, but it's not actually protected in and of itself." Grinning, I pulled out my staff. I triggered Touch of Tears and Consecration of Flame. As the green cracks rolled over my staff, I reached out and touched it to the archway, the green flame spread, and I continued to move around, using State of Grace and Ripple Running to reach higher up until I'd covered every inch of the doorway in acidic poison.

"Alright." I said quickly. "This is going to do enough damage eventually to trigger the defenses, so better to do it on our terms. Randall, get up front, Abel, it's going to be moving slow because of the erosion, Jessie post up next to him and make sure he's topped up so he can throw hands. Callie, I want you to string this thing up as best you can with shadows. Avoid the green spots, it'll have places that aren't covered."

Miles chuckled. "Well, you don't mess around, do you?" Snapping his fingers, I saw a dully glowing orange metal appear in his grip. Just a tiny sample that he tossed back like a pill. Even as I watched the skin of his body change color, I knew he was using his ability.

Sierra withdrew a series of tiles, tossing them up in the air. They glowed with runes, hanging unassisted as she reached up and started rearranging them. The other eight members of their team stood up. One, a big green haired man with a thick beard, stood behind a short woman with crimson skin and horns. A devil, most likely, though I'd never seen one before.

Once we were ready, I nodded to Abel, who sent a quick jab at the door, raising an echoing boom as it made contact. The attack didn't do much to the door itself, but as soon as it landed the frame began to shift as a massive pair of hands emerged from the stone.

The huge form of the gargoyle resolved itself slowly, and Callie did as expected and started stringing every spare inch of it that wasn't glowing and acidic with containment constructs. The constructs didn't have the Might needed to hold up against something like that, not with the difference in power and specialization, but they DID have an extra point of Impact, which was enough to offset a solid amount of the gap.

Not that it would have held for long, the gargoyle finished emerging and roared, trying to get away from the containment and reacting to the pain. Before he could tear free, Randall roared and slammed a paw into the side of the monster's head. The massive bear was even more gargantuan on his back legs. The gargoyle reared back, and another fist blow, this one condensed from about a dozen punches stacked on top of each other, smashed into its head.

Spinning my staff, I stacked up a Mercy Kill and a triple stack density shift, and I stepped off the air, sailing up too high to be detected to get a better vantage point from which to attack the gargoyle. Once I got high enough, I bounced off the air again, and sent myself hammering down, with my E-ranked staff leading as I brought it smashing down into the head of the construct.

The stone split under the weight and power of my staff, which, while not a perfect equalizer, was a material much harder than the material that comprised the monster. There was a loud crack as the staff split the stone. Even as it landed, I saw giant hand constructs grip the horns and PULL.

The crack widened and I jumped free, leaving Randall to smash his paw down on the damaged head and smash it to chunks of pottery. The gargoyle fell over, dead, or at least as close as an inanimate object could get. The door behind it was revealed to have reverted to the normal wood, easily opened now, and I grinned. My team was getting the hang of punching up.

Of course, the distance was still pretty huge. The Impact helped a bit, but we were going to need to start padding our points to close the gap soon. We only had a month until we had to fight a literal goddess, and I didn't want to really any more on petty tricks than I had to. That was why I was choosing to continue the climb. I wanted more spellbooks, and to find out who made this place. More than that, I wanted to find out more about the woman in the mosaics. After all, those black forms chasing her had reminded me an awful lot of the Night Pride.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"So, how long do we have in here before we need to head back?" Asked Renaldi as we walked up another set of twisting stairs. We'd been through several more rooms, one of which was another gargoyle trap. "And what are we looking for here exactly? Aside from the spellbooks I mean."

I shrugged. "Couldn't tell you. I saw something on one of the murals that makes me think this place might have some relation to Suvaya. Whoever built it might have left behind some books or something that will help us identify the conduits. Knowing where each one is and what they can do would be a pretty big help. If not, then yeah, spellbooks are the main goal here. We still have a few hours before we need to head back."

Probably more than that, but I was accounting for the annoying trip back UP the damned mountain, which took much longer than the trip down. Maybe one of these books would have a damned teleport spell in it. He seemed unruffled.
"How about the tower? Any idea how much further we have to go?"

Sierra, who was talking to Abel about sausage recipes of all things, looked up at that. "Oh, I can answer that. I don't have a map or anything but based on the construct layout used for..." She waved a hand. "This. We have maybe one or two more floors."

I sighed with relief. "Well, I just hope the library at the top is of more use. The one we found on the lower floor wasjust a dumping ground for books. Some interesting stuff in there, granted, but only two spellbooks. If we're lucky the rest of them will be up top." I still wasn't sure what type of magic the tower's master had done, since the two books we found had been based in different things.

When we reached the next room, we found another four way intersection, and Sierra called us to a halt. She'd told us at the last one that the spiralling staircases served another interesting purpose aside from shielding. They also made it functionally impossible to tell if you were walking up or down. These four way rooms were another sort of trap we'd bypassed with the compass.

Since they were WITH us, there was no way to know exactly which door to take, but Sierra was able to use the spell construct's orientation in regards to the tower to determine which spellwork was leading upwards instead of down. That let us at least keep moving in the same direction.

As she did her thing, I glanced over the floor. The mosaic here was different, in that the woman's strawberry blonde hair had faded to white. Her face was only lightly lined with age, which made sense since she was an Ascendant. In this mural, she sat in a chair, looking out a window at a darkened sky with a huge moon in it. Seventeen lines traveled from the ground to the moon, and I became even more convinced this place held some information about Suvaya.

We climbed another staircase, and when we reached the second to last room, it became clear that this was where we'd been meant to end up. Sierra turned around, double checking her work. "That four way intersection is where all the other paths lead. Any way you climb the tower you end up here eventually." She pointed at the door on the far end of the room. "That'll be the way to the peak of the tower."

As the last of us stepped into the room, the doors slammed shut. I was half expecting another gargoyle trap, but instead the mural on the floor began to glow. No, not mural, murals. In fact, Surrounding the big final mural on the ground was smaller versions of ALL the other murals, seemingly in order.

There was the woman in her dress, running from the dark forms, the knight, the sad woman in the chair, but laid out like this and interspersed with other murals from rooms we'd presumably skipped or bypassed, they told a complete story.

"She wasn't native." I said in realization. "She entered by accident. Not during an awakening, but just...slipped through the distortions by mistake. She was F-rank, so she didn't die, but she was talented. She spent her life learning about this place. How it worked. Why it was the way it was. She found the temples, figured out what was coming, but she couldn't do anything to stop it."

As we watched, the murals began to move, one at a time, acting out the stages of her life, showing us what she'd been through. She'd made a home here. Made friends, found family. Tried to help the people here as best she could while she lived. She traveled for a while fighting monsters, hence the knight. But she'd lived too long. The awakening came, the outsiders descended.

"They killed her." Said Jessie in a whisper. "The worshippers in the local kingdoms convinced them she was evil. They sent people like us to kill her off, and they did."

"That's why I didn't contact the locals about the ritual." I said bitterly. "Aside from the insanity that is local factional politics, we don't know how many of her loyalists are still here. They've dug in deep from what we were told. If they find out we're trying to ruin the ritual...well, I'd rather just avoid the whole thing."

Callie pointed at the second to last mural. The woman, looking sad and resigned, putting a map in a small chest and locking it. She handed the key to what looked like a younger version of herself who inserted it into her own heart. Some kind of golem or something. As the motions reached the final mural, the center of the circle lit up. A picture of the woman in the dress.

Gingerly, she stepped forward out of the image, walking into three dimensional space, the world warping as she appeared standing upright, looking at us peacefully.

The golem was...a work of art. She looked like a real person, but somehow even more lifelike. Skin made of literal ivory, hair carved into curling waves from flickering rubies, eyes with irises of actual sapphires. She felt...strong. Like Crighton felt strong. Impact. Forty points at least. I didn't think we would be able to beat her if we fought.

Smiling warmly, she nodded to us. "Well done." She said cheerfully. "You found the combination. I do so appreciate the release, I was getting quite bored."

"Combination?" I said in confusion. "We just read the story. Exactly as it was laid out. I don't see how that could be considered a combination. Haven't any other people managed to get this far?" I wasn't really in a position to argue, but that seemed a bit too easy.

She shook her head, the stone she was made from moving like flesh and hair without any stiffness. It was disconcerting to watch. "Not at all. Firstly, this tower was sealed with the death of its owner. The harvest approaches, and it shows itself once more. Secondly, the combination was for someone to learn the WHOLE story. An understanding of the ritual was key to that puzzle, as was the perspective of an outsider. Had you lacked those components...this conversation would have gone much differently."

Which implied the tower had read our minds or something. I'd normally be creeped out, but I had other things to worry about. "Alright. So...can you help us? We need to find and eliminate the conduits before Suvaya manifests or a lot of people are going to die. Can you tell us where they are?"

"I can." She said calmly. "But before I do so, I must test your mettle. The key contains a map and a ritual diagram that the tower master compiled over her long life. To earn it, I must taste defeat."

I grimaced. Because of course she must. "We're expected to beat you? Because with your Impact I'm pretty sure you could crush us. You've got to be at the peak of F-rank stat wise, and given you're an animated pile of rocks I'm guessing you're pretty Might focused."

She shook her head. "As I said, only a taste is required. A single blow to prove your competence. You must be strong enough to weather what's to come. To defeat the strongest of the conduits, this level of strength is the minimum. Should you fail the test...a quick death here would be much more merciful than the fate you may suffer when the harvest comes."

"I have one question." Said Callie before we started. "How did you make sure this place would be found? Just leaving it to sit and wait would have been way too big a leap of faith, even considering fate sense."

The golem chuckled. "The tower master mapped the starlight slides during the last 'awakening'. She arranged for the tower to relocate when next the moon was revealed. Now, which of you will be attempting the challenge. Only one may attack." I looked at Abel, who nodded, stepping forward.

Walking over, I laid a hand on his shoulder. Mercy Kill, Afterburner, and with a very large amount of effort, I even channeled Marked for Death through him, targeting the golem. I swayed on my feet a bit as I stepped back, but I could see the power thrumming through him. "If we pass, you give us the key and escort us to the chest?" I asked intently.

"Not only that." Said the golem. "I will aid you in your quest." That was...useful. If this worked.

"Alright." I nodded. "Abel, hit her with everything you've got. No holding back." He grinned at me, cracking his neck as he stepped back. I saw him take up a stance, fist cocked back and readying for the blow. Afterburner gave ten hits of amplified power, and with his stacking ability he'd be able to layer those. To my shock though, I saw his hands start to glow as they transformed into golden flame.

It occurred to me the only time I'd seen Abel cut loose was in the tournament. Without the single fighter rules, he had another source of power. His bond with Mel. It had to be at least as strong as the one I had with Callie, he was the one who taught it to us.

Space warped, and he stepped back, leaving behind a flaming image of his body. Then another step, and another. When he finished, there were nine figures in varying positions in a line behind where he'd been. Like looking at a stop motion instruction for a wind up and a punch. Abel, standing at the back of the line now, took a deep breath, and then flickered forward through the lubricated space.

As he took each position he overlapped and stacked the flaming versions of himself, all of them heavily condensed from powerful flame but not harming him at all. It was like watching someone wind up and perform a martial arts kata on fast forward, and when he reached the end he let out a roar of challenge and SWUNG, with every single but of force he had in him.

A crystallized image of living flame condensed from his Expert level Ragam Skill appeared in front of the golem and brutally smashed a fist into the figure. On impact, the construct exploded in a massive firestorm of force and fire, swallowing the thing whole.

As the flame faded, i saw the golem standing there, mostly unharmed. Mostly. From its nose dripped a single bead of melted ruby, like a drop of blood. Looking down at the floor I saw a small scuff in front of one of the dainty diamond heels. The golem nodded, smiling slightly as she wiped her nose. "Well done. You pass. Barely." Turning her back on us, she waved a hand and the door behind her opened on its own. "Now come. Claim your prize."

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The stairwell to the top floor wasn't a spiral. Since we'd figured out the whole point of that was to confuse people when they tried to figure out a way up that made sense, but it was still interesting enough to note as we followed the construct up to the last floor.

Yvette (as she informed us she was called) had been here for a LONG time, but had spent most of it in stasis. She seemed excited to meet new people and filled us in on lots of trivia about the tower and its functions. Once we reached the top floor, she made a beeline for the center of the room where a pedestal sat empty in the middle of another room filled with bookshelves. Pressing several symbols on the black and gold surface, she opened a compartment in the top and gingerly removed the chest inside, setting it atop the pedestal once it closed.

After she removed it, she pressed a hand against her chest and the ivory skin became...like a gel? Her hand passed through and emerged with a black and gold key set with an unsettlingly glowing ruby. She inserted the key into the lock without fanfare and twisted, the lid springing open to reveal a rolled up piece of parchment.

"So, this is a map?" I said cautiously. "Or a ritual diagram?" She hadn't been super specific about that, though I couldn't tell if that was by design or she was just really lonely. I got the impression she didn't have the chance to chat often and she seemed to have gotten side tracked.

"Both." She said as she withdrew it and handed it to me. I unrolled it, placing it down on a nearby table half covered with books (which I would definitely be examining soon). Looking over the parchment, I could see what she meant, and I sighed in relief. This would make finding the locations of the other conduits a non issue. I frowned in confusion. "Wait, what are these lines?"

She cocked her head. "The conveyances. The channel the power along the lines of the ritual and during the awakenings they reach through the distortions to allow transport."

"Wait...those are the starlight slides?" I hadn't considered they were part of the ritual, but it made some sense. This whole place was a trap from the start, including the distortions. Of course the entrances were part of it.

Yvette seemed impatient. "Obviously. The conveyances will be the mechanism of the ascensions, as well as the harvest. They'll connect the conduits to the moon herself. As you can see, the conduits must ascend in a certain order for maximum effects. Once they've all ascended, the conveyances will attach to the primary temple, and the moon's light will descend in full."

"Primary temple?" I asked. I'd forgotten the temples were called subtemples, I supposed a primary made sense. "Is that on the mountain? We know that's some kind of remnant of her divine body."

She pointed to a symbol in between the other seventeen. "The primary temple accepts the lunar blessing and focuses it through the lens of the gathered power. It's redirected to the mountain. The moon is the mind, the temple is the spirit, and the mountain is the body. This is an important factor in stopping the goddess. Should she attain her fully functional form, even hobbled as she might be by rank, you will all die."

That...wasn't ideal. It pretty much blew up our whole plan. "That doesn't really work for us. The plan was to kill all of her conduits and then gank her physical form when it limps in through the ritual, underpowered from the lack of energy. We thought she would be weak. The conduits are."

"The conduits." She sneered. "Are remnant ghosts possessing their own rotting corpses. They are pathetic demi souls hollowed out by the ritual. They can barely string together coherent thoughts, much less wield their Skills with precision and finesse. The goddess is the mind behind the ritual. She sleeps, her dreaming weaving the webs you see before you. When she wakes, she will wake whole, if diminished in scope."

"Fuck!" I snapped, turning to kick a chair. We'd had a plan! We'd had hope, had a real shot at this. "So what? You brought us up here to tell us we're screwed and there's nothing we can do about it?"

Shaking her head, she pointed to the temples. "No. I said when she wakes. The ritual is in its infancy. If you can disconnect the conduits in a specific order, or close to it, given your mention of killing them, you can force her to manifest as a spirit alone at the central temple. Without her flesh to act as a material, her created form will be much weaker, and she will lose access to many of her abilities."

Oh. Ok. That...sounded good. I let my shoulders slump, allowing the anger and frustration to drain out of me. "I'm...sorry." I said woodenly. "This has just been a lot. We came here expecting to run around literally flower picking, with the occasional quick fight among our peers. In no universe could I have imagined we'd be fighting a vanished god. I didn't even know those were THING until I got here."

She just smiled reassuringly. "I understand. Now, the disposal of the conduits must be done in as exacting a manner as possible. The deaths of the already vanquished can be accounted for in the sequence, but it would be best to minimize the deaths until preparations can be made."

Callie spoke up. "I'll call back to base and let them know to spread the word. Those mapped lines, the places they lead wouldn't happened to be the landing points, would they? Because we could use those."

Yvette nodded and my girlfriend grinned, snapping a picture of the parchment. "Benny is going to be so pissed he did all that work for nothing. I can't wait to see his face." At my cocked head she just shrugged. "What? You're a bad influence on me. I was an angel before I met you."

"You're mispronouncing the word asshole." Drawled Nat with a smirk. At Callie's scandalized look she just winked. "Seemed mean to let you pick on poor Benny when he isn't here. Someone had to fire back."
My girlfriend's face broke into a wide grin. "I knew I liked you for a reason."

"Nope." I interjected firmly. "I do not prefer this. You." I pointed at my cousin. "Are enough of a pain in my ass without conspiring with her. Please bond with someone else. Jessie is available. She's excellent company, or perhaps I can interest you in an elf best friend? Maybe you'd like to make the switch to being a battle maniac for some strange reason, and then Abel might be less annoying to you than he is to the rest of us."

My mentor's middle finger was casual, so I knew he didn't take it personally. Nat just grinned smugly at me and I rolled my eyes, turning back to the map and the construct holding it. "Please give me more terrible news. I'd like to be distracted right now."

Yvette's ruby lips (not symbolism, actual rubies) twitched up in a smile. "Well, the ritual will take place relatively soon, so you'll need to begin your purge as quickly as possible. The order is also not based on power, so you will be unable to save the most dangerous for last."

I sighed. "The first time in my life someone gives me what I ask for and it's this. Is this why other people always say 'be careful what you wish for?' because I've never understood that phrase."
"Of course you haven't honey." Said Callie sweetly. "But at least you're pretty."

I shot a flat stare at Nat. "Look what you've done. Now she'll be making wise cracks for hours." Letting out a breath, it was hard not to smile a bit at the sensation of camaraderie. Banter was excellent stress relief. Not as excellent as punching things, but close. I loved Callie for being there for me, especially given where we were standing and how much she must be salivating over the bookshelves behind us.

"So." I asked Yvette. "Since we got the map, does that mean the rest of these books are for us too?"

"Indeed." She said solemnly. "The world's largest trove of cartography books are now at your disposal. The years of study needed to accrue the knowledge to make this map are all contained within their pages. They used to be spellbooks, but the tower master stripped the ink to write more map making notes."

I blinked at her solemn expression. "That's...are you fucking with me right now?"

Her small smile came back. "It seemed to be entertaining. I wished to attempt such witticisms. I find them to be very amusing." She looked at Callie. "Did I do that properly."

My girlfriend was nearly doubled over with laughter. "Yes." She gasped out. "You did great." At my glare she snorted, trying to control her laughter. "Sorry sweetie." She choked out. "It's just...your face. You looked so horrified. Plus the books are fine so there's no need to be all grumpy." Her laughter stopped. "The books...are fine right? They're all spellbooks?"

Yvette shook her head. "Not all, but several. They are, of course, yours to do with as you will. I do hope they will be helpful to you in your pursuit of our shared goal." She gestured expansively to the shelves.

I was pretty sure if it were physically possible Callie's eyes would have literally turned into credit signs. Smiling at her
enthusiasm, I decided to follow her lead, spreading out along with the others to pour over the variety of books packed onto the shelves. Callie, being the responsible partner she was, forced herself to make that call back to base to let everyone know what was going on, but as soon as she was finished she dove into helping us sort through the books,

Granted, it wasn't exactly a quick process. Much like the downstairs library, the majority of the books weren't spellbooks. I'd expected this top floor to be packed with the things, but apparently I'd underestimated the value of the texts. We did find many more than the previous floor, and the non spell texts were still useful, and much more locally focused than the ones downstairs.

I was sure that Anna-Marie and her people would find this particular library endlessly useful, even moreso than the last. As for the spellbooks we did find, they ran the gamut. Some fire, some ice, some more esoteric spells like line of sight teleportation.

Most of them I passed on, despite my desire for new abilities, because I already had powers that could mimic their effects. My friends all found some interesting tomes to check out, but I was kind of disappointed with the options available, at least for myself. My mostly meta focused skillset wasn't exactly easy to complement. I was planning to look over them more carefully once the others had all chosen.

Finally, we finished stripping the place for books and it was time to head back. We had to make our way to the mountain and scale the damned thing in time to relieve Gabriel and his team. Bethy should have already switched places with the other group, and I didn't want to leave them stuck there too long, not to mention the new map and how useful it would be for our current project.

I felt much more confident than I had back at the mountain. Between the map and Yvette we were in a much better position than we had been before. Anyone tough enough to take a punch like that from Abel and barely get a nose bleed would be a welcome addition to the team. At this rate, we might make it out of this after all.

 

[MichaelSuave]

I suggest pulling an Old Man Henderson, and kill not only the avatar but also the awakened embodiment of the dread entity... when in doubt, use more explosives.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Getting back up the mountaintop was surprisingly easier than expected. For me. Yvette made the climb, hauling us all up. She was literally ten times stronger than the rest of us, so it wasn't a tough trip, and she managed it smoothly and in like a fourth of the time I had, even WITH my little jump cheat.

Which meant we still had plenty of time to make it to the camp by nightfall even after getting up there. It made the whole thing about a thousand times easier and more convenient. When we arrived, I wasn't shocked to see Gabriel around, having relieved Bethany and sent her off to find the next team.

"Hello the camp." I said with a wave as I approached. I caught sight of Benny and Celine over by Annalise's canopy bed, and my best friend turned and saw me.

"You son of a bitch!" Benny yelled, more in irritation than anger. "I pulled a fucking all nighter managing those calculations and trying to put together a proper map and you just FIND one!" From Celine's groan I was guessing this particular complaint wasn't a new one.

I smirked at him. "You realize if we hadn't found the map we were all going to DIE probably?" I inquired politely, which I absolutely knew would drive him up the wall. Much like myself, the thing Benny hated most was being spoken to calmly when he was pissed off.

"I KNOW that!" He hissed angrily. "You ass. But NOW I have to completely rearrange our search parties and factor in the order we need to kill these things in, whatever that is. I've been recalculating based on the drop off locations we got and the teams should be easier to locate, but I think you'll need to make some more of those compasses. I have Gabriel standing by for a rework, apparently his second target point was slightly off." Celine snorted, and Benny turned to glower at her. "Was SLIGHTLY off, within an acceptable margin of error."

Annalise, who had been watching smugly as he spoke, added sweetly. "A hundred mile margin of error."

"This is a big planet!" Benny scowled. "There's a lot of STUFF here. And this stupid mountain doesn't follow the laws of physics, even the nonsensical version that WE live by. I was basing my calculation partially off of distance traveled on the way here. It was a perfectly reasonable thing to do."

Laughing, I turned to Yvette. "Can you help him with this please? Maybe consult with him for the calculations to decide the order we need to kill the conduits?" She gave me a solemn nod, and I rolled my eyes as I turned to head away them, saying to Callie. "I forgot how whiny he gets when he's wrong about something."

"I heard that!" Shouted Benny from behind me. I just gave him the finger over my shoulder.

"You were meant to!" I responded loudly. Callie snorted and shook her head. "Anyway, did you find anything good among the spellbooks? I know the others found some too. Any interesting shadow spells?"
She shook her head sadly. "Too niche. I've been working on something though." She withdrew a pair of daggers I hadn't seen before. "You remember my bike?"

"The one I refused to get on for fear of a sudden fiery death? The one that looked like you'd crashed it a dozen times by the time I saw it?" I said flatly. "No, no memory at all." She rolled her eyes with a huff of annoyance. Everyone in our team had agreed not to let Callie drive. It wasn't exactly that it was bad at it, she had amazing reflexes like any Ascendant. It was more that her definition of acceptable risk when driving pretty much anything was much different than anyone elses.

"Anyway." She said loudly, forcefully talking over me despite me being completely silent. "The reason I asked is because if you remember, I had it made from special materials like my coat is, so I could imbue it over time with darkness. Made it pliable to my power without it being part of me." She held up the daggers. "These are not made of special material, other than being F-rank. Seems like a side effect of the power change is that I can still do it. Eventually. It's taking a really long time."

I held out my hand, and she passed one to me. I weighed the thing in my hand. "Nice. That's huge, Cal. You have a dagger teacher you can work with?"

She nodded. "Gabriel's crew is here for a while longer, and one of the guys he works with uses daggers. One of the girls uses a staff too. I figure the two of us could ask a favor, maybe get a little training if you're up for it. Your staff is damned useful, but you don't really know how to use it except for spinning it around and smacking things with it."

"I'd argue there's no other valuable use for a big stick." I said solemnly. "But a bit of hands on training can't exactly hurt. I assume you don't want to just ask on your own?"

To my surprise, her face pinched. "I want to get back into the habit of training together. We haven't been fighting like we used to since I got my power. I know the whole spy mistress thing is damned useful, but I don't want to lose our combat style. I have a lot of fun fighting with you."

I didn't know what to say for a second, then I nodded. "Yeah, I have fun fighting with you too." I reached down and took her hands. "Look, we're still getting our balance, ok? First you were way stronger than me, now that I've caught up you had this big power change. It'll take some time, but we're just finding our way on the battlefield again. We've got this, right?"

Her grimace smoothed out. "Yeah. We got this." She let out a deep breath. "We got it. So all we have to do is train together a bit more."

"Nope." I said bluntly. At her look I just shrugged. "What? We can't just punch stuff together and magically make things better. But I think we've already been doing other stuff. I think a lot of the problem is that you're having trouble finding your place in the group since giving me the reins. Or am I wrong?"

"Not...wrong." She hedged. "I mean, sure, I can do the whole intelligence gathering thing, but it's not really the same."
I nodded. "I know. But that's not all you do. You're my partner. You've been letting me take the lead to find my way, to...middling success. But you're still involved. We're still doing this together. It's not like you aren't up front when I do things wrong. And I'm glad. I need someone to yell at me when I do something stupid. It's going to happen sometimes."
"Sometimes?" She said skeptically, though I could tell she was fighting down a smile.

I rolled my eyes. "This? This is why we can't have nice things. I was TRYING to have a moment here. You couldn't let me be romantic for a minute?"

She smiled sweetly and took my face in her hands. "You're always romantic, sweetie. It's one of the things I love about you. Another is that you care enough to check in with me about my own insecure bullshit. Everything you're saying is true, and I know we're in this together. I'm feeling a bit aimless after transitioning between jobs. That's not about us, and I know the difference."

Blowing out a breath, I nodded. "Well...that's good at least. I guess that means I can't help with the whole aimlessness thing, huh?"

"You?" She said incredulously. "You literally JUST figured out what you wanted to do with your life like two weeks ago. That's not a dig. It's just my point. Sometimes it takes a while. Most of my life has been about sticking it to my dad, and now he's just some random asshole on a backwater planet. I'm adjusting to the change in scale before I set my sights on something new."

Which was fair. It wasn't like I could take shots at her for not having a life goal, especially not given what I'd been doing up to now. "Alright, well I still thing training together is a good plan, and I'm glad you brought it up. Any time I get to spend with you pretty much guarantees a good day."

She rolled her eyes, but she was smirking. "I still don't know how you say gooey romantic shit like that and make it sound reasonable." Letting her hands drop from my face she grabbed one of mine and started dragging me toward Gabriel's group. "Come on you sap, lets go get started letting someone beat you violently about the head and shoulders with a big stick."

"Joy." I deadpanned. "Exactly what I always wanted."

We headed over to where Gabriel was, and the big blonde man nodded somberly as we approached. "So, you heard we've been temporarily benched I take it?"

"Yup." I said succinctly as I dropped into a seat nearby (they'd set out a whole living room set for some reason and one chair was free) Callie plopped down in my lap since it was the only empty seat. "I take it you heard about the ritual and the fact that we were probably going to die following the original plan?"

He nodded. "I did. I'd say it was lucky they found the tower, but between fate sense and intentional placement, it doesn't seem like there was much luck involved. Still, it's certainly not a bad thing to have more information. We found another of the teams, and Bethany was sent out for one. The other seven search parties had varying levels of success. Four of them came back with their quarries, the other three reported no results. Either those teams are dead or they were too far away to find."

"Fifteen total then." I said with a sigh. "And four potentially dead. Not ideal, but it could be worse. With the new map we should be able to dispatch another wave of search parties, but I have a feeling you, Bethany, and I will probably end up on a different sort of detail. In light of that, I was hoping I might ask a favor. Callie mentioned one of your guys is a dagger expert, and one of your team members uses a staff?"

He nodded. "Archimedes actually uses daggers most of the time. And yes, Willow is proficient in staff techniques. I take it you were hoping for some training while we wait?"

"If you're open to it." I said with a shrug. "I can pay for it with wishes. Callie is my girlfriend and making her safer is in my best interests since we fight together. And I could really use a better handle on my own combat style. The meta mechanics I have down, but some more advanced techniques would certainly help." I actually had plans to eventually create my own staff art based on the techniques I already had from DS Mastery, but walk before you run, right?

"I believe that could be arranged." He said after a moment. "We'll be working together on this in any case, and your gesture helping us with the temple turned out to be even more fortuitous than expected. You may have saved our lives by joining us, and I won't forget it." I didn't mentioned the information he might be holding onto about my mom, whatever it was, I didn't think now was the time. I was off balance enough. Standing up, he gestured us over to where some of the team members not seated with him were talking. "How about we get started right away."

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Willow, the knight that was going to teach me (that wasn't her job I don't think, but all of Gabriel's people wore armor and rode horses) was a tiny redhead, nearly as short as Callie, with bright green eyes and a friendly, heart shaped face. She had a smattering of freckles and a friendly smile that made you want to like her, and generally gave off the impression of a cheerful, kind person. At first.

As soon as she drew her staff she basically turned into a drill sergeant. Which wasn't to say that she was rude or angry. No, it was worse than that. The smile never faded, the friendly chirp never left her voice, and she never stopped being upbeat, even as she beat ME up within an inch of my life.

"Nope, sorry. Elbow in." She chirped as her staff flicked out and slammed into my funny bone. My armor was supposed to PREVENT blunt damage. How was she even doing this? That stick wasn't E-ranked. I let out a low groan but adjusted my posture accordingly. "There you go!" She cheered happily. "Now you're getting it!" I wasn't. As was evidenced by her next strike to correct my footwork...by slamming her gods damned stick into my ankle.

"Why are you doing this?" I whimpered. She was a demon. She was worse than Abel. I hadn't even thought that was possible, but at least he mocked openly. Her damned perky smile WAS mocking me, I could FEEL it, but she acted like she was just a genuinely nice person so I couldn't even be properly mad about it.

She just giggled. "I'm just teaching, silly. You're doing so much better! Just keep trying." I hoped she was mocking me, to be honest, because if whoever trained her had conditioned her like this to the point she actually thought it was ok, I'd have to feel bad for her.

"You're a monster." I wheezed. And she just giggled again like I was making a joke, which I absolutely wasn't. Even a little bit.

I had to admit, despite the pain and annoyance, this was a fairly effective way to adjust my technique. Willow had demonstrated a series of katas upon our first meeting, and was now having me go through them from memory one by one. My Focus made that a completely viable approach, but seeing someone do something once isn't enough to perfectly replicate it, even if you can remember what they did. She seemed to have an uncanny ability to perceive the exact muscles I was using even through my coat and armor and was making minute adjustment to each kata until I performed it perfectly.

"You've got that one down." Said the evil creature that wouldn't stop beating me in a deceptively cheerful tone. "Now I want you to try the next one. Raven in the Trees, please." I nodded, clearing my mind so I could remember her exact movements when she'd demonstrated.

My staff lashed out at ankle height, and I flowed back around in a reversal, spinning the shaft around my body and then striking at head level. Another smack to my elbow drew another yelp from me, and Willow chuckled. "You could pretend you aren't enjoying this so much." I said bluntly, running my elbow.

She shook her head. "Don't be silly. You're doing really well." Her excessive cheerfulness faded a bit, replaced with soft reassurance. I wished I could just hate her properly, but she was so NICE. "I know this is tough, but you need to learn these forms properly. People like to say practice makes perfect, but only perfect practice makes perfect. These techniques can save your life, but they need to be learned properly."

"I know." I said with a sigh. "And unnecessary abuse aside, I do appreciate the help. I can see how these would be useful. What exactly is your style called?"

"Valtek." She said with a warm smile. "It's a fairly common staff form back on my home planet, but things don't work worse because people know about them. It's been refined over generations, and is an excellent foundation for crafting your own techniques once you've mastered it. Now, try that one again, and adjust the elbow as you spin."

Ascendant martial arts, even ones without crazy built in abilities, tended to the dramatic. It was in our nature to seek attention. This particular movement was useful in more than just an offensive sense, though. The spinning was meant to be used as a deflection. I tried to incorporate that understanding into the movement, and saw her nod approvingly as she smacked the back of my knee and dropped me on my ass.

"Very good." She said with a nod. "That was much better, though not good enough. I see you're starting to understand some of the nuances of the staff though. The staff is a uniquely powerful weapon, not for its weight or damage dealing capabilities, but for its versatility. People will tell you power is the most important factor of a weapon, but they're wrong. The spear can do many things the staff can, but I consider it an inferior weapon, do you know why?"

I paused. I didn't, I couldn't think of a reason putting a blade on my staff would be bad. I'd even considered getting a spear at one point, but I'd decided the learning curve was too steep and that I wanted to take advantage of my existing abilities and skills. "Nope, can't think of a reason."

Willow didn't seem surprised, but she gave me a minute to sit down as she talked, so I listened. "Leverage." She whirled her stick in a circle. "With properly applied leverage you can shift a planet with merely human strength. Every force has to deal with leverage, and the staff is one big lever. To alter trajectories, to shift incoming force vectors, that's the true art of the staff. Offense and defense at the same time."

I climbed to my feet, thinking that over. "I guess that's true." I mused. "If you look at everything as force to be leveraged, that does kind of change your application. But there has to be at least some solid attacks to be landed, right?" I tended to rely on single blows to win fights. This training would help that, but I still needed to be able to land hits.

Her stick blurred out and landed on my knee with a slam and I hissed in pain, hopping on one leg. "Of course." She chirped. You just have to know how to leverage your own power. You'll get it eventually. Now, I want you to try Raven in the Trees again, and I'm going to attack while you do it."

It wasn't hard to recognize that she'd been holding her attacks until after each attempt. Now she wanted to demonstrated what I could do once I learned them properly. I attempted the kata, moving exactly as she'd coached me and including her notes. She stepped over the low blow, but then attacked herself with a sharp thrust. I was already spinning, the staff close to my body, and I was delighted to see the stick swept into the the twist as my own staff knocked into her wrist.

The attack was redirected and the weapon was seamlessly plucked from her grasp to fly a few feet away into the snow. She stepped back, withdrawing her hand without any obvious pain, and clapped excitedly. "That was fantastic! Did you feel what I meant when I corrected you?"

I nodded. "Yeah, it was all leverage. Caught your staff against my body and then used myself as a fulcrum. The blow to your wrist made you let go and the staff just came free."

"Yup." She said as she walked over to the staff, kicking it up off the ground with some kind of small foot movement and catching it midair. "Try that one another few times just to make sure you've got it, then we'll switch to Stalking Tiger. Remember the most important thing here is that you get the katas perfect. Once you've got them mastered, you can repeat them on your own time. Our time he isn't endless, so I want to make sure you're properly prepared to practice on your own."

I gave a sheepish laugh. "Yeah, I do appreciate the help. I feel like you're being a bit harsher than needed, but I do appreciate the time and guidance." Speaking of which, I turned around to where Callie was standing in front of Archimedes. "How's it going over there honey?"

Archimedes was NOT just constantly attacking her, part of why I was annoyed. He'd taken the inverse tactic. He was having her attack and putting himself in a position where only a proper strike would land. Daggers weren't nearly as evenly disposed to attack or defense as the staff, they heavily favored attacking, which meant training Callie on defensive moves was pointless.

She'd been working with him as long as I'd been working with Willow, and she was soaked in sweat and panting as she stopped to take a break and call back breathlessly. "Not bad. I'm landing more hits now. Archie says I've got a knack for this kind of thing."

The other man nodded casually. "It's true. She's naturally gifted at knifework. I suspect her rock solid foundation in...what did you call it? Balam? Is helping. She's incorporating circular motions into her attacks as best as possible while following the forms I gave her."

Sadly, my own mastery of Balam wasn't anywhere near that point. Skills acquired through Wishing might need more work at Intermediate, but Benny had shown how valuable the earliest versions could be. Foundation was exactly right, and having learned mine through actual practice instead of having it dumped into my head meant mine was shakier. It also wasn't as compatible with the style Willow wanted to teach.

I'd learned a few katas for Balam too, or forms as they were called, but they didn't really translate to armed combat well. Callie's weapon of choice worked on similar mechanics and at a similar range to hand to hand. "Alright. Back to work. You'll be sparring in an hour or two." Said Willow with a smile. "Got to make sure you're up to fighting different kinds of opponents."

I sighed and got back in position, moving through the Raven in the Trees kata again. I managed to get it perfect two out of three times, and she let me move on after that. I could already see how this could all be applied to my combat style, how it could be applied to my abilities. I'd be able to make my own staff moves to complement my Path soon enough.

Paths were something I hadn't really been able to understand well. It seemed like they were based on following an ideology of sorts. How that tied into your legend I wasn't sure, but I was positive they had something to do with it. I knew people like Abel and Gabriel had paths, and getting one early was a big advantage for some reason. I'd seen that I could exert more power when I was following my Path.

Maybe my hypothetical staff art could be the way I merged my Path and combat style, once I figured out what it even was. I was jarred from my thoughts by a strike to the side of my knee and winced. Right, I was training still. Had to get my head back in the game. If I wanted to make my own martial art, I'd have to learn one to base it on. A staff art of my own, and this was the best opportunity for that. I sunk back into my stance and tried again, repeating the motions I'd seen before and including all the notes Willow had made. One step at a time.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We ended up finishing our training (at least enough of it to get a Minor Skill), within a few hours. Since it was already dark, we decided to camp for the night, and Bethany actually got back a bit earlier with the team she'd been sent to fetch. We all ate together at base camp before settling in, though the literal dozens of people meant we were mostly interacting in cliques. I sat with my own team, as well as Bethany, her thralls, Gabriel, Willow, Archimedes, and the wolves.

Bethany was extremely excited to spend time the puppies, and particularly liked Jin, who she showered with love and affection, occasionally interrupted by 'Donuts' who in proper cat fashion managed to display his extreme aggravation with being ignored in such a way that implied he didn't NEED to be paid attention to, but that Bethany was failing in her duties as a two leg by not doing so.

The shadow cat was able to take physical form from Bethany's shadow...somehow. Best not question the Vampire. He repeatedly swatted at Jin from relatively far away, but my G-rank puppy ignored him, intent to snuggle with the petite vampire and loll his tongue smugly at the other animal.

"So, you've got an idea where to send us now?" I asked Benny as we chowed down on a surprisingly flavorful stew. One of Gabriel's people had made it, and it was exceptionally well done. Stew is tough because...well most stew is tough. Literally. It's really easy to boil the tenderness out of the meat and end up eating shoe leather. This was pretty well handled though, I wondered how they'd done it.

"Yeah." He said as he ate. Celine looked annoyed at his bad table manners, but I was guessing she recognized his good work enough that she decided not to yell at him. That or she was going to do it later. "Yvette was a huge help, and so was Sierra, we went over the matrices of the ritual and calculated exactly what feedback pattern will default the ritual to the central temple."

He pulled out a rolled up map, not the same one, but something he drew by hand, and flicked it out to unroll on the ground so we could all see it. He used one hand so he could keep eating, and I made a note to force him to have seconds. He was clearly starving.

I looked down at the map and then scowled at him. "Seriously?" I pointed at the circled temple. "How far away is that? I don't want to walk that far. At least it's only a former B-ranker like the last one. I'm dreading having to fight any of the former A or S-rankers. Do we know anything about this one?"

Benny snorted. "Not much, but as for the distance, I had some ideas there. Keep in mind how high up we are. I think with State of Grace as a factor you could probably glide there. Have Callie set up some kind of hang glider. Can't take Jessie though, Randall would be a bad fit for that kind of thing, plus I don't think bears like to fly."
That...I turned to Callie. "Can you do that? Because we're really high up. That might actually be viable."

"What do you mean ACTUALLY you dick." Complained my best friend. "I just spent the better part of a day rehashing math formulas to help point you at a target." He clicked his tongue on disgust. "Actually. I'll actually kick you in the throat while you're sleeping."

He wouldn't. After a particularly vicious prank war as children we'd declared sleeping time sacred and made a pact not to mess with the other when they were unconscious. Waking up with half of your head and both of your eyebrows shaved has a way of motivating you to sue for peace, much less what I'd done to him in retaliation.

Callie rolled her eyes at us. "What is it about your bickering that seems to deflate your brains? Yes, I can make a glider, especially now. And yeah, I would avoid hanging a bear from it. What's the team composition for this going to be? I know I have to go because I'm the ride, I assume Shane will be with me."

Bethy's hand shot in the air as she bounced excitedly like we were in a classroom. "Ooh! ooh! Me! Pick me!" We looked at her and she shrugged. "There's a bunch of us here now, so I don't think we need anyone to watch them. Plus we'll need all the power we can get. Me and crusader cutie over there should be part of the elimination team."

Gabriel rolled his eyes, but I swear I saw his lips twitch a bit. Bethy was a hard person to dislike, apparently even if you were part of a religious organization that considered her an abomination. The big man cleared his throat. "I'd definitely like to come along. We can leave some of my people here to keep the peace. Willow is more than capable of taking care of anyone that becomes a problem."

My body was wracked by shudders as I remembered the stick wielding demoness and her big bright smile. "Agreed. So me, Mel, Abel, Callie, Bethy, Gabriel? Five person team worked ok last time, and six should be fine, but are we sure we don't want to do a full complement of ten? We ARE going after an ancient undead powerhouse. The extra combatants can't hurt."

Yvonne chuckled. She'd been so quiet I hadn't even noticed her. "You forgot me. With the seven of us we should be more than sufficient. I don't claim it to be a simple task, but it shouldn't be impossible."

Right, the forty Impact golem made of literal rocks. I wasn't sure if that would effect that hang glider, but I was pretty positive my State of Grace could offset it with enough effort. "So we go tomorrow then?" I asked after a moment of thought. "I'd rather not take to the skies out there with the angry birds without being able to see."

Everyone agreed, and we got back to the business of dinner, digging into our stew as we told stories about our adventures. Bethy was particularly verbose, though Aida consistently cut in to correct her outlandish claims, not seeming to notice that her corrections were only slightly less outlandish. By the time we headed to bed we'd all spent a nice evening laughing and enjoying ourselves, and I felt pretty refreshed.

This whole dungeon run had been much more stressful and dangerous than expected, and as I drove my rock spike into the mountain and our bunker constructed itself, I was forced to admit that the downtime tonight had been much needed. Not just for me, but I could see Callie holding herself a bit less tensely, seeming a bit less primed to snap. It was a good reminder that being leader didn't just mean telling my people when to fight, it also meant telling them when not to. Given my own problems with that concept, it was something I'd definitely need to work on.

"So, am I the only one excited to see Bethany fight?" Said Callie as we laid down in our tent inside the bunker. "Because she scares the shit out of me, and the closest we've come is seeing her little rumble with you, where I'm pretty sure she held back a lot."

I snickered. "You're just interested in how she tamed that shadow cat. You want one of those, don't you?"

"Obviously." She snorted. "I have power over shadows. I SHOULD be able to do the same thing, but I have no clue how the hell she managed that."

I just shrugged. "Vampires. Anyway, we can ask her on the way, it'll be a much shorter trip there with the hang glider. You're going to be key to this mission. I'm sure she'd be willing to talk about it and maybe help you pull off something similar."

"I'd be much more reassured by that if I was at all sure she KNEW how she'd done it." Callie complained. "But I guess you're right."

"I'm always right." I said solemnly. "I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken. Now go to sleep, we have a long trip in the morning." She giggled a bit before snuggling up to me and closing her eyes. I let myself drift off peacefully, always happiest when we were together.

In the morning, Callie got up first, squirming free of my arms and waking me up as she rushed to get into costume and get ready to go.

Laughing, I put on my armor and we headed out into the bunker. I'd already pulled the rock spike, so we left the bunker to come apart in its own time as we headed outside. Bethany was already out there, a small decorative umbrella held up to give herself a bit of extra shade. Her skin wasn't burned by the sun or anything, but clearly she wasn't a fan.

Gabriel was sitting at a fire, cooking a skillet full of bacon. When they saw us he waved us over. The cold mountain air nipped at our skin, but I had to admit, something about sleeping in a tent and waking up to cold and the smell of bacon reminded me so much of camping trips with Benny's dad as a kid. There was just something so peaceful about it.

As we approached, I couldn't bring myself to talk. Something about the morning chill and the fact that everyone was still asleep except us just made the silence feel heavier, harder to break. It wasn't anything oppressive though, just the odd feeling that I was waiting for my ability to talk to wake up with the rest of me. I breathed out, letting a cloud of mist fog the air in front of me as I sat down.

Gabriel passed me a plate with some bacon, and for a while, the sound of silverware on dishes was the only sound aside from the crackle of the fire. Even Bethany didn't seem to see a need to talk.

The silence broke as Mel and Abel showed up and my mentor flopped down onto a chair he brought out. "Man that smells good." He groaned. "Remind me why I'm awake this early?"

"Because shut up." Said Mel shortly. She withdrew a thermos from her ring and poured out a cup of black liquid, sniffing it serenely before taking a long pull. She didn't have her mask on, which still felt weird to see. Coffee, based on the smell. Abel grinned at her, holding out his own cup, and she grudgingly poured a small measure into his mug. He looked at it forlornly before shrugging and downing it in a single toss.

We all ate in silence, enjoying the morning, and even Callie seemed almost at peace, though she had a measure of nervous tension that told me she was anxious to get going.

Once we finished and found Yvette, we set out at a brisk walk toward the edge nearest to the temple we were aiming for. I wasn't convinced we could glide the whole way, even from a place this high up, but even if we couldn't we'd cut down the trip by a substantial margin.

Reaching the edge, Callie got to work putting together her construct. She'd consulted Benny a bit the night before on construction, and my best friend had given some notes on what pitfalls to avoid and how to make the whole thing a smoother and more relaxing experience. She created a giant hang glider with a platform at the base we could all stand on, and once it was done I triggered State of Grace. Once I'd done that, we pushed forward, the tiny wheels on the corners rolling us down the steep incline towards the edge of the mountain, then with a stomach dropping yank, we hit the air, and we were flying.

 

[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.

 

[Mastersenseinewby]

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.

Click to shrink...

As long as you are smart about it then that's a good thing the world needs more kindness in it​

 

[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.

 

[Verdthandi]

"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.

Click to shrink...

So setting aside the excellent buildup, my general excitement for the next chapter, and my awe at how well you're keeping up the pace on writing this story - this is legit one of the funniest exchanges I've read in months.

 

[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.