Wish upon the Stars chapter 1058

The killing glade looked somewhat similar to the knockoff version we’d seen in the shallowing, but also nothing like it at all. If I had to compare the sensation, if would be something like looking at a projection of a place through a scan box. It was sort of…condensed into an approximation, but it was also qualitatively different in some indescribable ways.

“Welcome, kids,” Marius said grandly. “To the killing glade.”

Dayna sighed. “I’ve been here before. I’m FROM here, remember?” She looked around, checking to see if there was anyone nearby. “Although I haven’t been to this specific spot. Where exactly are we?”

“First ring, B octant,” he said immediately. “We’re going to need to go a little serpentine to get to where you need to be. Straight line paths are rare, especially to the deeper wood.”

“And there’s people adding new traps on the regular, right?” I asked uneasily, looking around for evidence of that. Traps weren’t an issue if I had Dan out doing his thing mapping a path, but we didn’t have time for that. Staying here for that long risked that hunter coming back and Verdyn finding out through the grapevine that we were here. If the hunter god got even a whiff of a reason to check for us we’d be fucked. No amount of my stealth would prevent him from noticing us inside his own world if he decided to check.

Marius led us deeper into the forest, sidestepping seemingly empty spaces, hopping over bushes, and even vaulting off tree trunks. We followed his steps exactly, as instructed, and made it through the first ring octant within probably an hour.

Once we did though, things got a little more challenging. “The deeper we go, the more traps there are,” Marius warned. “So you need to be extra careful. We can’t avoid them now, we need to start setting them off. I’m going to give you the exact locations, but I want you to come up with your own countermeasures. Once we arrive at the entrance to your mapped path, I’m going to need to part ways with you, and I want to ensure you can both continue to protect yourselves.”

I nodded, stepping forward and raising both hands. I did NOT summon my Domain, because there was no way Verdyn wouldn’t notice that inside his own world, but I did summon Brad and Agares.

Brad looked excited to be out, looking around with interest, and his face lit up with recognition. “Is this…home?”

I shook my head. “No. It’s a similar place though. We’re trying to get past some traps, and I thought you might have some unique insight. You’ll be working with Agares, I’m not sure if you know each other?”

Agares was a big, square jawed man with a beard and a shaved head. His rippling muscles were clearly honed with frequent use, and his stomach was padded with a layer of fat over what looked like extreme muscle. His forearms in particular were thick and dense, and he was examining the clearing we were standing in with clinical detachment. At my words, he glanced over at his new partner, nodding solemnly in greeting. A man of few words, Agares.

“So, the traps here are complicated,” Brad said slowly. “I can sense them, in the ground. And the trees. And…I think there are a few of them literally built into the surrounding space.” He pointed at a seemingly empty spot, glancing at Marius. “Is there something there?”

Dayna’s brother hummed, squinting at thin air. “Huh, it’s a Hide and Freak. Haven’t seen one of those in a while. Good catch.”

“A Hide and Freak?” I asked, somehow HEARING the capital letters. ‘What does it do?”

Marius snapped his fingers, and a full unplucked turkey appeared in his hands. He tossed it at the spot in the air Brad had pointed to, and as it got close, the air warped and a…thing appeared. It was huge and humanoid, with an eyeless, stitched together face and wild seaweed like hair that drifted uncomfortable in the air as if underwater. It wore a series of mismatched clothes and its hands were tipped with literal butcher’s knives, which it used to tear apart the turkey in moments before vanishing again.

“Well…” I said slowly. “I hate that. Just, everything about it. How do we kill it?”

“You can’t,” he said with a shrug. “At least not in a way that’s worth the trouble. It’s not really there. It’s kind of like a puppet made from space. They’re a huge pain to make, but they’re even harder to destroy. There are houses in the Lodge that have had one of those for over a century at this point.”

I saw where he was going with this. “Which means we need to go around it. No reason to get sucked into trying to break something we can just ignore.” He nodded, and I glanced at Brad. “You got this?”

“Sure thing,” he said, looking up from where he’d been whispering to Agares. “We’ve got a plan. This whole thing is about controlling the environment. If we’re going around this, we might as well go around all of it. But since the traps are in bother the air and ground, we need to make sure we have the space. Which is where I come in.”

He raised his hands like a concert pianist, beginning to conduct as he hummed to himself. As he did, pits began to form. Some were wide and deep, some just wide or just deep. Some were at an angle, and some went THROUGH trees, essentially deleting physical matter from surface level as they imposed a hole that wasn’t there before.

Rather than just vanishing the dirt completely, however, I was surprised to see it appearing in midair above the ground. Moving in a sort of flowing dance, Agares reached out his large, callused hands and sort of caught it, pulling it towards him and beginning the process of condensing it all into a thick, dark stone.

The two of them continued like that, Brad cutting holes in the ground and Agares manipulating the dirt and condensing it into the powerful stone he was known for, then slowly layering it together into a dizzying array of complicated shapes and mechanisms as he began building a study bridge through the air, leading off into the distance. They kept going, gathering more and more, and after the bridge was far enough away, we all stepped up onto the construct, following along as they led the way into the forest.

The first thing I noticed up stepping on the bridge (aside from the fact that it corkscrewed through the air and swirled around past spots that seemed suspect, including the Hide and Freak) was how solidly it was built. Agares was simulated with a lifetime of experience in architecture and construction, and had clearly polished those skills to their absolute peak, being able to make excellent use of his natural gits.

The footing was solid, the stone was sturdy, and the comfort of the rock under my heels was surprising given it was…well, rock. What confused me though was HOW this was happening. In order for the staff to simulate Agares’s life as a contractor, it would have needed to BE one.

It was a question I hadn’t needed to ask much up to this point, because most of the demons were self referential. Learning to bring your skills to bear more effectively was a matter of repetition, but become a master architect wasn’t something you could do through trial and error. The staff would have needed to supply the knowledge from somewh-

And then it hit me. Dantalion. My information gathering demon had scanned hundreds of buildings, indexing and internalizing their construction, history, and even aspects of their architects. The sheer amount of data he’d collected over the time since his creation was staggering, and it was clear that the staff was using that as a foundation for its derivation of different skills and lives.

Given the existence of Wisdom of Solomon I probably should have expected that, but seeing it in action was still amazing. I did have another concern, though. “Is this going to draw attention?” I ask worriedly, watching Brad snatch huge chunks of dirt and trees on repeat to be repurposed as stone for our current path.

Marius, who had ostensibly been leaving it to us, but had in reality been subtly guiding the two demons to help them avoid the worst of the traps, just waved me off. “It’s fine. People dig out here all the time. This is a lot of earth for one person, but in the grand scheme of how much of the forest is being modified and reconstructed at this very moment, it’s not even a rounding error.”

Which was fair. I had been more worried about the nature of Brad’s abilities, given his ability to cut a pit in the Void Roads, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was doing some conceptual bullshit that damaged the Domain.

Azazel was completely silent, though, and I was pretty sure he’d have noticed if I was making a huge mistake, so I decided to just sit back and enjoy the ride.

“We’re making pretty good time,” I said cheerfully as we continued our surprisingly leisurely walk through the sky. “Maybe we can take this thing all the way to the entrance to the passage. Would save us a lot of trouble.”

“Unlikely,” Marius denied. “Modification like this in general areas will go unnoticed, but a large scale operation like this in the vicinity of a strategic resource like an escape tunnel? There’s no way the Lord won’t pick up on it. Once you reach the map location, you’ll need to take it slow. Same reason I can’t go with you. Mama made a point to mention on the map you showed me that and sufficiently powerful faction member being in proximity will draw attention.”

I grimaced, but nodded. “I know. We’re honestly lucky no one takes C-rankers seriously.” Most of the people at my rank had no Chronicle, and as I’d noted before, the effective difference between an Ascendant WITH a condensed Chronicle and without one was like night and day. B-rankers were under quite a bit more scrutiny, even inside of a god world.

Sadly, the peaceful progress couldn’t last. All too soon the bridge touched down and we all hopped off, landing in the grass in an idyllic clearing. I glanced behind us, along the line of the whirling bridge, and grimaced. It was pretty, but leaving it would draw a ton of attention. I briefly considered destroying it and just leaving the shards or dust lying around, but then I had a better idea.

Putting a hand on it, I reached for the power that connected it to Agares, and through him, to me. With an effort of will, I pulled on the construct, and it began to slowly flow toward me. I might have been able to just yank it into my Domain wholesale if we were in a normal world, but given the possible scrutiny that would invite, I decided to do it the slow way, dissolving the bridge and pulling it toward me bits at a time.

It took about ten minutes, and by the time I was done there was a huge pile of heavy black dust inside my Domain, sitting outside the palace. I turned back to the others. “Alright, we should be good to go.”

Marius whistled, impressed. “Not bad, kid. You’d make a hell of a contractor. Anyway, this is the place.” He pointed to a small cave outcropping between two trees, spiraling down into the earth. “The map shows you’re headed down there. This is where I leave you.” He turned and opened his arms to Dayna, not insisting but just offering a hug. She sighed and stepped forward, wrapping her arms around him. “Take care, little sister. Be safe.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, squeezing him tightly. Then let go and cleared her throat. “I mean, yes. Your well wishes are appreciated. And returned. You should also be safe.” With a loud laugh, he clapped her on the shoulder and turned to vanish into the forest, leaving us alone in front of the cave entrance, and the next step of our journey.