Wish upon the Stars chapter 1064

I didn’t know Sister Bernadette that well. She’d always struck me as a ditzy good natured devotee of the goddess, with a strong sense of responsibility I’d only recently started to see, and a good sense of humor. More recently added to my list of Bernadette’s traits? An explosive temper.

“RAT BASTARD!” she roared, hurling a full sized metal dumpster across the alley with a snarl of rage. The receptacle smashed into the brick of the building wall, shaking free a could of dust as the ground shook beneath our feet. “This is just like him! This is why we’re separated, you know? He always has to get his way, and if you don’t agree with him, he’ll dupe you into doing it anyway. Even his own brother wasn’t immune to it. Poor Dexter.”

I vaguely remembered her mentioning a brother in law back on Rackham, though not really in what context. I winced at the tired sadness in her voice. “Hey, I get it’s not great, but this is a pretty standard request for people who want stuff from me. It’s not so bad.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry. He just…he STILL makes me crazy. Even after all these years. And then he has the AUDACITY to act like he did nothing wrong. ‘I always keep my vows to you Bernie’” She sneered that last one in an abnormally low voice that I considered a terrible impersonation of Wesley (not that I was stupid enough to say that).

“So…do you know anything about this Maxis guy?” I asked slowly. “Because if we’re robbing him-”

“Maxis Velsarian is the current Lord Commander of the Order of Abomination,” she said tightly. “His lodge is located in the middle of Abomination Alley, which is a special district SPECIFICALLY for members of the order.”

I blinked at her in horror. “Is that…is that even a task we can accomplish?” I’d met exactly one member of that Order, and he’d scared the shit out of me. Unless I just happened to run into their boss out in the wilderness, I was guessing Mazis was MUCH worse. Even I had limits, and this sounded like it might be beyond them.”

“We can’t,” she confirmed. “At least, not in the traditional way. But we DO have options. He proposed this “test” because he knew that I had a connection to Maxis.”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “Oh? You know him?”

“No,” she said with a sigh. “But Chloe does. Exceptionally well, in fact. He’s her father. She could get us in to see him.”

I blinked at her. “Ok…but will she? That seems like a big ask.”

“Bigger than you might think,” she murmured. She turned, heading down the alley back towards the priory. “Chloe is…complicated. Part of the reason her mother indulged her desire to join the Witless is because she’s a bit special. She has a unique soul physique called a Gemini Soul Body. Basically, she’s two people in one body. Except it's more than just a split personality. The stat distribution of the two halves of her soul is WILDLY different. Deanna, her ‘sister’, is almost entirely specialized in Focus. She’s prickly and sarcastic and fanatically protective of Chloe.”

“That’s certainly interesting,” I said slowly. “But I don’t understand-”

She sighed. “Chloe is her mother’s little girl. They’re very close. But Deanna is closer to their father. Unfortunately, she almost never comes out, and she hates everyone except her parents and sister. If we want to get in to see Maxis, we’re not going to need Chloe’s help. We’re going to need Deanna’s.” Her tone was grim, and I could tell based on her expression that it wasn’t going to be an easy thing to pull off.

We started going over the details, and came up with a rough plan. I’d sneak in with Deanna and split off to locate the card. Once I got it I’d either escape on my own, or if the security was too tight, join back up with her on the way out. 

Of course, this was assuming we could get her help.

The issue was that because of her stat distribution (being almost entirely based in Focus), Deanna was EXCEPTIONALLY stubborn. Unlike Chloe, who was constantly distracted and wandering off, Deanna committed like a rabid animal when she got her jaws in something. She’d pursue the same task until it killed her without thinking twice.

Which meant that first impressions were CRUCIAL with her. I was going to get exactly one chance to sway her to our side. If I couldn’t convince her in our first meeting, her involvement was basically guaranteed to be off the table.

So naturally, I asked Bernadette to tell me more about the twins and their lives, and I had to admit, it was a fascinating story. Chloe and Deanna’s parents were basically mortal enemies. They weren’t exactly violently competitive, but they were decidedly rivals. Despite Maxis being A-rank and Chloe’s mother being S, they had maintained a regular antagonism for most of the girl’s lives without it ever boiling over into unhealthy friction. For whatever values of that you could find in a family who worshipped a torture goddess.

The result of this was the girls being shuffled back and forth between the orders of mercy and abomination throughout their lives, which had had the side effect of their radically different stat builds.

Deanna spent more time with Maxis, who had built the Order of Abomination up from almost nothing and was considered a strategic and complex thinker. Chloe, meanwhile spent more time with their mother, who was notable for being incisive and nearly impossible to deceive, a reputation she had quickly glommed onto herself.

Bernadette had gotten all of this from Chloe herself, because the girl LOVED to talk and was easy to prompt given her tendency to get distracted mid conversation. She’d actually only MET Deanna once or twice, because the thoughtful sister preferred to let Chloe keep control most of the time.

Ultimately though, after listening to her speak for a while, I realized that I was massively overcomplicating things.

Becoming the Wishmaster had made me responsible for so much, I was trying to put my most faction leader-y foot forward at all times. But this wasn’t a job for Solomon the Wishmaster. This was a job for Shane Wyndham, twin brother.

So I went to see Chloe, finding her in a chapel near the back of the priory lighting candles on a shrine. I stepped up next to her, not speaking at first, letting her finish her task. “Hiya,” she said brightly, without looking up. “Can I help you with something?” Her tone was guileless, and listening to it, I was even more sure I was doing this the right way.

“Can I tell you a story?” I asked, sitting down on the ground next to her.

She beamed at me. “Sure, I’m always happy to listen to a friend.” She looked around, and the look of pure joy on her face was dazzling. She LOVED it here. Truly loved it in the way you can only love something you really believe in.

“When I was born, I inherited a bloodline from my dad,” I started, after deciding how to begin. “It was a strong one, and it obligated me to certain…responsibilities. My dad was from a big clan, and they were important, and from the moment I inherited their gift, my future was kind of decided for me in some ways.”

She hummed. “That sounds like a lot to put on a kid.”

I waved a hand. “I didn’t know about it until later, though in some ways that made it a bit harder.The point is, while I inherited the gifts from my dad’s family, my twin sister, Chelsea, did NOT.”

Her expression stilled, eyes locking on the flames of a nearby candle like the fire could anchor her shaken mentality. “Chelsea inherited a bloodline ability from my mother’s side of the family. In fact, she inherited TWO of them. One was a particularly noticeable power that we weren’t supposed to have at all, and the existence of both sets of abilities in one set of twins made it clear that one of my parents was a blood relative to someone they were NOT supposed to be related to.

“In order to prevent people from taking notice, it was decided that we would be split up,” I continued. “My mom took my sister to live with her family, galaxies away from me. My dad was supposed to raise me himself, but he’s not very hands on. He left the job to my uncle Zeke, and I grew up the next best thing to an orphan, unaware I even HAD a twin sister.”

She turned to look at me warily. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I’ve known my sister for all of two years, and I couldn’t live without her,” I said solemnly. “She’s one of the most important people in the world to me. There’s just a connection with a twin that it’s impossible to describe to someone who hasn’t experienced it. It’s like trying to tell someone what it’s like to have an arm.

That got a chuckle from the nun. “I get that,” she said slowly. “Which I suspect you KNOW, or you wouldn’t have told me this story. The question is what does all this have to do with me.”

“I need your help,” I told her sincerely. “Yours AND your sister’s. To help MY twin. And my wife. And my parents. To help a whole lot of people who mean everything to me, and a lot more people I don’t even know. And ultimately, I think, to help YOU.

“Telling you this is a risk,” I said carefully. “But it's one I feel like I need to take. Because you deserve to know what exactly I’m asking. What the stakes are and what you’re risking. I’m involved in something big and dangerous and I’m probably going to piss off some very scary people, and I’m asking you to at least nominally take part in that. It might not cause you any problems at all. But I don’t feel right keeping the possibility from you.”

This felt right. Azazel, my Fate Sense, my bond with my wife, all of them were telling me this was what I was supposed to do. Chloe was a kind person, and her sister cared about her family. They deserved the chance to make their decisions with full knowledge of the gravity of what I was asking. 

So I told her. Not everything, but most of it. I told her who I was, why I was here, and what I wanted to do. I told her what I needed from her and her sister, and what it might cost, and who she might be upsetting.

At some point during the conversation, I looked up into unfamiliar hazel eyes set in a similar but different face surrounded by jet black hair, surprised at the change. Deanna (because who else would it be?) stared at me hard for a minute. I half expected her to mock me. To spit in my face and tell me I was an idiot.

Instead, she just stared into my eyes for a minute. Then two. And finally she sighed. “Fine,” she said shortly, her smile tight. “Just once. I’ll help you just this once. Because Chloe wants me to. And because you could have tried to manipulate her like most people. Tried to manipulate both of us. But you chose to just come out and ask. I don’t know if that’s stupid or genuinely decent. Hell, maybe it's both. But if you’re really the leader of your whole faction, you’re not any kind of faction leader I’ve ever heard of. I guess that’s worth the benefit of the doubt.”

I grinned back at her, even if she couldn’t see it, and laughed aloud in delight. In my head, the silvery ringing laughter of my wife was accompanied by a swell of pride and affection, and a warmth in my heart that was just as much my own pride as hers. Deanna was right. I wasn’t like any of the other Wishmasters. And if I had a say, I never would be.