Wish upon the Stars chapter 1060

The heavens were broken. I’d forgotten about that. The crimson expanse had been shattered, a colossal web of cracks across the vault of the sky. If I looked closely, ignoring the consuming darkness peeking through the cracks, I could vaguely make out the shape of a titanic palm pressing down on this world.

I wondered if that was what had killed the Lady, all those years ago. Was that palm the last thing she’d seen before she’d been shattered by whoever had ended her life, relegated to being merely one of an uncountable number of vanished gods?

More than that, I wondered why I hadn’t noticed that before. Last time I’d been here I’d seen the cracks, but they’d been much bigger and hadn’t looked like anything. I supposed I’d just been in a bad alignment to catch the big picture. Despite that, I could see the huge black glass palace off in the distance, looming over the red wasteland of Mourne Kayze. I was almost positive that was where the black glass throne lay waiting, occupied by the bandaged figure with the tarnished silver mask.

“That’s where we’re headed,” I nodded towards the castle. “Looks like there’s a huge city at the base of it. We can approach someone from one of the Lady’s orders and try to get an audience.”

I knew a few people from the Order of Mercy, and at least some of my contacts from my time on Rackham should be active here.  “Halt!” Came a harsh voice as we stepped forward toward the edge of the plateau. I glanced down, realizing I had neither Astaroth nor Murmur active right now, and cursed to myself. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath turning to the source of the voice.

A man stood in midair, body covered with shards of broken black glass roughly shaped into armor. Blood wept actively from between the shards, rolling down the glass to drip out into the ether. The drops, rather than fall forever, simply struck invisible surfaces a few inches from the glass, exploding into wisps of steam that wrapped around the dark figure in a crimson vortex.

“Hi there friend, how can I help you?” I said in as cheerful a tone as I could manage.

Despite my calm demeanor, inside I was tense. This guy was strong, like easily B-rank, and I was almost positive this guy was a member of the Order of Abomination.

Felicity, the Lady of Lamentations, was the goddess of torment. This seemed like an objectively bad thing, but I’d learned during the trials that the Lady was actually one of the more merciful and benevolent of the vanished gods.

Her worshippers, however, came in many flavors. Some good, some not so good. Mostly, they belonged to one of three orders. The Order of Mercy believed that pain was a means of understanding. That since it was universal, it was a bridge to communication, and that only by experiencing someone else’s pain could you truly know them.

The Order of Punishment believed pain was a tool to subvert others. They inflicted suffering to ‘educate’ and to change. Torture was a big thing for them, and the Order was generally considered to be mostly made up of assholes.

Finally, there was the most mysterious of the orders. The Order of Abomination. I’d only heard them mentioned once, but when I’d looked into them, everything I found had made me incredibly wary. The Order of Abomination were…well, monsters. They were technically an extreme splinter group that had broken off the Order of Mercy, but their beliefs were sort of a hybrid of the two factions. They believed pain was a tool for transformation, and that inflicting it on themselves ad nauseum could drive evolution.

The Order of Mercy espoused similar beliefs, admittedly, but to a much less radical degree, hence the schism. Sister Bernadette, my guide during the Lady’s trials on Rackham, had mentioned them to me once, and I’d never heard anyone else talk about them aside from the few rumors I’d been able to dig up when I’d actively searched.

Unfortunately, THIS guy had Order of Abomination written all over him, and as a nominal Order of Mercy member, I had no idea how this was going to go.

Of course, the alternative was just to not had an Order to cite, in which case I was probably going to have to fight this asshole, and I REALLY didn’t want to do that. So when he boomed “State your purpose and your origin!” I sighed internally.

“My name is Mephistopheles,” I told him in a not exactly lie. “I’m a member of the Order of Mercy chosen during the selection of Rackham.”

His eyes, a vibrant shade of red, narrowed inside the shadowy visor of his jagged glass armor. “Typical. Just like one of the Merciful to traipse about in a restricted area.” His eyes cut to Dayna. “I assume this one is your partner. Learning to “understand” one another, are you? Leeches like you are blights on the Lady’s magnificence. I don’t have time for fools, remove yourselves, and should I spot you near this place again it’ll be your heads.”

I blinked at him in surprise. Apparently the Order of Mercy DID have a bad reputation with the Order of Abomination, but that had actually HELPED this situation? Seeing him glare harder, I cleared my throat. “Of course,” I said with a quick nod. “Thank you for showing mercy, friend.”  I gestured for Dayna to follow me and we both took off, pushing off  the plateau with Impact based flight rather than using my wings.

To my surprise, I deeply disliked the feeling. I hadn’t flown much wingless, but it seemed…wrong. Once we were far enough away, I detoured us to one side behind a plateau and triggered Murmur, even taking the time to use my staff to bump it up a rank just in case. Once that was done, I let out a sigh of relief.

“Alright,” I told Dayna. “I think we lost him. I’m a little worried about someone noticing you’re one of Verdyn’s, so I’m going to put you back in Gehenna, ok?”

She didn’t look pleased, but didn’t complain. “I understand, be careful” 

With a quick flicker of thought, she was gone, back into Gehenna to wait with my court as I made my way through the world here. Of course, I wasn’t going to risk getting discovered early, so I did the obvious thing. I triggered Astaroth, shifting into an in-between space as a perfect recreation of me as Mephistopheles manifested into existence.

Touching down, I let Murmur drop, switching to a walking pace as my D9-rank simulacrum wouldn’t have been able to fly without wings, and using them would have brought too much attention. Then I set off in the direction of the massive castle under the broken sky.

I made decent time, but when I arrived at the city, it became clear that entry would be more complicated than I’d expected. I stopped among a crowd of people, staring in grim discomfort as we all waited for a procession of monsters to pass. Familiar monsters. With pitch black chitin and glowing blue eyes.

The Void was here. Not just the mantises either. Dogs, cats, bears, pigs. Void spawn of every conceivable shape and size danced along the street, parading down the cobbled red road like they were putting on a show. Further back, several void spawned bulls pulled a luxurious black cart, and on the back of it sat a cheerfully smiling girl. 

Something about her just felt…familiar. Not like I knew her, but like we’d met somewhere I couldn’t remember. I was still trying to piece it together when a familiar voice echoed in my head. “She’s a vessel,” my wife muttered. “And more than that, I think she might be Morwenna’s vessel.”

“Shit,” I spat internally. “Is she actively courting the vanished ones now? I mean, I guess it’s not a shock they’d approach the Lady, given it was my idea too, but…this is bad.”

The ramifications of this were huge. Because if they were HERE, there were only a few possible reasons. First the most obvious but objectively least desirable: they’d been invited by the Lady. If that was the case, it was going to make my job exponentially more difficult, because it meant she was open to potentially siding with them in the war.

Secondly, there was the option that she’d been let in by someone in the Lady’s inner circle. This was still bad, but manageable theoretically. If they had supporters, but were here for a meeting, chances were good nothing had been finalized. That meant there were probably factions resistant to working with the Void.

I was leaning toward the second, because if the Lady planned to work with them, there would be no reason to invite them at all. Her word was law, and she could just declare her support. This parade smacked of campaigning, which meant they still needed to convince her.

That said, I spotted several B-rankers and even an A-ranker among the parade, which was a problem for me. I had no guarantee of safe passage, which meant the Void worshippers were within their rights to kill me. Which they could almost definitely do if given a reason. Luckily I had Astaroth active, and was in my old form. This body was not only much weaker, but also wearing different armor and a different mask.

No one had noticed me either, because Astaroth was one of my most singularly potent forms. It only did one thing, but it did it so well even Zeke had trouble punching through it, and masks were his whole deal.

Of course, I hadn’t ranked it up with the staff this time, but I was in a large crowd and as an ostensible E-ranker no one cared enough to look closely. Still, I had to be careful from this point on. I needed to contact some of my Order of Mercy friends and feel out the situation, not to mention get a message to the Lady to try to schedule an audience of my own.

This had just gone from a good will mission to a diplomatic race. I had to exploit my connections and advantages to get the Lady on side as soon as possible. Based on what Dayna had told me, if they got the Lady to ally with them, Verdyn would follow suit. With two more gods on their side, there was no possible way Morwenna would bother to hold back just because of Callie. The war would escalate, rapidly, and my family would be in even more danger.

Watching them proceed into the city, I waited and queued up with the random passersby, entering alongside the crowd of onlookers. Once I was inside, I found a secluded corner and summoned Dan. Making sure Murmur was active for a good hour before I dared to call him up. He bowed deeply, and I nodded. “I need you to find some people for me,” I told him quietly. I called up pictures I’d drawn during the wait of sister Bernadette and Marmont the teleporter, the two most senior Order members I knew.

“Of course,” he said solemnly, closing his eyes and extending his senses. Then it became a waiting game. Dantalion was decrypting every ounce of data hidden in the nearby street, looking for signs of my contacts. Nothing.

I repeated those steps several times before he FINALLY caught a direction, and then narrowing it down while jumping between alleys unnoticed was hellishly time consuming. Finally though, I ended up outside of a large, plain looking building. I checked the sign outside. “Our Lady of Perpetual Torment,” I said dryly. “Yeah, that seems about right.” I turned to Dan. “You’re sure Bernadette is in there?” He nodded solemnly, and I sighed, sending him back into my Domain and dropping Murmur. I’d considered a few ways to do this, but Azazel and my Fate Sense were both telling me to just trust Bernadette, so that’s what I was doing. Time to go see an old friend.