Wish upon the Stars chapter 1079

Drexel’s haunting laughter echoed through the tower. “Your faces!” he chortled sadistically. “I can see your little minds running rampant inside your thick skulls, desperately searching for a way out. I’m a GOD, children. You don’t beat gods. You don’t outwit them. You just submit. It’s easier that way.”

I frowned at him. Because that was the wrong tone. He wanted us to leave willingly, wanted us to spread his mind virus. He should be cajoling us, tempting us, trying to get us on his side with lies and false promises.

Mocking and bullying us in these circumstances didn’t make any sense…unless he didn’t have a choice.

Which is when I remembered where we were, and what the Lady had told me. Even gods couldn’t run amok in the Chaos Chasm. That was why she’d sent me. Drexel being sealed in this tower was one thing, it meant his power couldn’t extend outside, and that made sense. Drexel being sealed in this tower inside the CHASM was another. It meant even within the tower, he had the same limitations as anyone else.

He was bluffing because he didn’t want me to notice that and fight back, because he knew that we had a real chance to break his influence.

I grinned nastily into the dark. “Bullshit,” I said bluntly. “Dayna, come here.”

She stepped up next to me as I triggered Zagan, laying a hand on her shoulder. But not JUST Zagan. I reached into Gehenna and called forth another friend. Genesis Burst. A soul healing, purifying demon whose bailiwick overlapped almost perfectly with this situation. Sammael was next, boosting me further. I didn’t use my staff’s boosting skill because I knew that C-rank was the limit here, but within C-rank I wasn’t someone to mess with.

One of the drops of phoenix blood inside me, condensed from the power of life nova, roared to like, kindling like accelerant as it ignited under the fires of Zagan, and I felt the power pour through me, racing through my veins as I let it build and build and then pushed it firmly into Dayna’s body.

She stiffened, but didn’t move away or make a sound. Drexel was less sanguine. “What are you doing? Stop that!”

In my head, I saw an image. A black miasma of suffocating darkness like the stuff that had weighed down on us earlier, concentrated around Dayna’s brain. As the flames struck the miasma, there was a sound like water hitting a ripping hot pan and a wail of hate and anguish. The miasma roared and expanded, puffing itself up like it was trying to ward off a natural predator.

A second drop of blood ignited, and the fire roared higher, burning back the darkness as it snarled and screamed and hissed.

“Stop this,” Drexel screamed with a dreadful howl. “Decist immediately. You’ve no idea what you’re doing! You’ll regret this!” The miasma exploded again, expanding to triple the size, and I gritted my teeth, igniting one drop after another until all six were blazing, temporarily boosting the quantity of flames by an enormous degree.

The Nine Phoenix Reincarnation Art wasn’t just a simple modifier manufacturer. It was more than that. It was the process of BECOMING a phoenix, of altering myself at a fundamental level. And a phoenix was more than just a fiery bird that liked one kind of flame. They were creatures of primordial fire, manifestations of the endless blaze. I’d seen that. FELT that. A phoenix’s affinity for its flame was more than just a gift or a knack. It was an EMBODIMENT.

Finally, the last of the darkness was blasted away, leaving behind not even a speck of black visible in the spiritual vision I was somehow accessing. Dayna stepped back, her eyes glowing green with fiery exultation, inhabited by the lifegiving spirit of Zagan’s purifying fire.

“I feel…whole,” she whispered, flexing her hands. “My doubts. My unease. They’re gone. I have a clarity of purpose I haven’t felt in quite some time.”

“Oh…oops,” I said sheepishly. Technically speaking most forms of emotional trauma were minor soul damage. That was why my cousin Felicity had her soul scoured by the repeated emotional torture her dad had put her through. Genesis Burst was a soul healing technique, so it made sense it would cleanse things like negative emotional buildup. “That’ll come back once the fire fades,” I assured her. “Sorry about that.”

She snorted. “Hardly anything to apologize for. I appreciate the surcease, temporary as it may be.”

I nodded, then moved on to the others. Deanna, Brad, Azazel, one by one I burned them clean of the Mindplague.

“How dare you!” howled Drexel as I turned and headed back for the door. “You can’t leave! Stop that this instant! I refuse to allow it!” I smirked as I approached the door, staring to push it open and walk back out, heading up the cliff instead…but I froze.

The door. The door was part of the tower, and Drexel controlled the tower. But I could open the door fine…which meant he wanted me to leave. I stopped, stepping back, and the voice cut off. “Something is wrong,” I said slowly. “That was too easy. Rank or not, he’s a god, gods are bullshit. He should have some form of response, some backup plan. Screaming impotently at us is too…mortal. Not to mention this door shouldn’t be opening. What did you do?”

“Nothing at all,” he said saccharinely. “You’ve beaten me. I’m completely outmatched. I can’t stop you from leaving, and can only allow you to have your way, stranding me in this tower for eternity as I lose my only chance to escape.”

And that was when I noticed it. He was lying. OBVIOUSLY lying, I could SMELL him lying. And he didn’t care. But I hadn’t smelled a lie before. I went back over his explanation in my head, considered it carefully, and my blood went cold as I realized what he hadn’t said. The Mindplague had infected us, and all of us had been carriers instead of actively infected. All four of us. But there were five people in this tower.

“Chloe,” I whispered. “Chloe is infected. She’s a full host. The kind you can possess. You made sure you’d have a backup plan. You made sure we would bring you out even if we noticed something was wrong.”

“Did I?” he asked innocently. “That doesn’t sound like me. Far too sneaky. I’m a very straightforward deity.”

I sneered at him. “Whatever, I figured it out, I’ll just cleanse her like I did the others.”

“Maybe,” he said spitefully. “Or maybe as soon as she changes forms the contagion will erupt and you’ll be forced to fight her to the death. You were right, I AM weakened here, and it WAS too easy. But in a host…well, that’s more than just a matter of simple addition.”

Deanna went pale. “What did you do to my sister?” she snapped.

“Why, I gave her a GIFT,” he cooed. “She’ll be so much stronger now. So much more. She won’t be dependent on some parasite living off her body, stealing her life, her family, her purpose.”

“First of all, we’re not letting that happen,” I told him bluntly. “Second of all that’s not how she sees Deanna, and third of all, YOU would be that parasite. Like if you’re going to try to undermine people’s self esteem and be an evil manipulator you could at least be consistent.”

He sniffed in annoyance. “You know, I really dislike you. I’m going to enjoy using that girl’s body to crack open your chest and chew out your still beating heart.” He said it mildly, like he was announcing that he liked the weather. But there was an undertone of malicious glee in the statement. He had us, and he knew it.

I closed my eyes, blocking out his mockery and Deanna’s panicked shouts. There was a way out of this, there had to be. I went over the facts. Chloe was currently not in ascendance, and Deanna had been cleansed. The two of them counted as separate people to the Mindplague, but only one of them could have the body at a time, so Chloe was in a state of limbo where the plague hadn’t been initiated because she wasn’t in control of the body.

If Chloe emerged, she would be in charge of the body, and the Mindplague would take over her body, essentially allowing Drexel free access to the world at large. We’d be at the VERY least seriously inconveniencing the universe, if not outright dooming it. I mean sure, the other gods would probably deal with it…and then I froze.

Other gods. Chloe was possessed, she’d been infected with a fragment of hostile power. In order to cleanse her I would need to call her out, and then she would be strong enough to fight back and not ALLOW me to cleanse her. Purification wasn’t what we needed in this situation. SEALING was. Restraint. My eyes lit up. “Let’s go,” I told the others. “I know what to do. We can save Chloe.”

I hoped. Deveskane was probably our best chance, and even if we couldn’t fully fix her, the sealing artifact at the Hermetic Hall should at least be able to stabilize her until we could find something more permanent.

“He’s lying,” gloated Drexel. “None of you can disperse my Mindplague. Not the TRUE Mindplague. Carriers are in a dormant state, but trying to cleanse me in the fullness of my power is futile. Especially once you leave this place. Exiting the Chasm will restore my true strength, and then you’ll see what I’m really capable of.”

I squinted at him. I wasn’t lying. But he seemed to really believe that. I was beginning to suspect I had overestimated exactly how much information Drexel had been able to glean from us. His “mind reading” was seeming more and more like a parlor trick. I debated throwing Deveskane in his face to see his reaction, try to figure out what he thought of the idea, but I didn’t trust him as far as I could throw this tower. Better to just end this interaction.

Kicking the door open, I waved to the others as I addressed the evil god. “Sure. Lying. That’s me. We’re all doomed, I’m gonna go cry about it.”

“Wait!” he sputtered. “I mean, no, don’t wait, I mean…this is a VERY frustrating interaction!”

I flipped him off as we walked away. I wasn’t sure if he knew what the gesture meant, but I figured a big bad mind god would be able to figure it out. Once we reached the beach, I called for Croissant again, and the huge dolphin surfaced within minutes. We all climbed onto his back and I directed him back in the direction we’d originally come from. Clarent might be there still, but we had bigger fish. Both to fry and on our actual team now, so I wasn’t really worried about that.

Once we were far enough away from the tower I explained my plan. Deanna, who had been silently staring into space during the ride (which was much slower because we stayed above water the whole time, I was NOT putting her back into my Domain until we got this whole godplague thing taken care of) lit up at the explanation, clearly hopeful that my solution might be a viable option.

Once we reached the mark on the wall where Croissant had tried to slash me open, I said goodbye to my Dolphin friend again and we began the slow climb to the top of the cliff. From there, we retraced our steps back to the Hermetic Hall. As the building came into view, I felt something in my get unclench, I just hoped they would be able to help Chloe. And more than that, I hoped whatever price they demanded was one we could afford to pay.