Wish upon the Stars chapter 1053

I emerged from my mental conference with my wife refreshed and ready to take on the world. Which might have been a poor choice of words, because as I opened my eyes and looked at the surrounding wasteland, I noticed a distinctive uptick in the number of figures. As in thousands of them.

Turning to Dayna, I raised an eyebrow. “Ok…what the hell happened?”

She growled in irritation. “What HAPPENED is your damn bird spotted a small lizard and decided it needed a snack!”

“First of all,” I said calmly. “Archie is a HE not an it. Second of all what do you mean he saw a small lizard? I thought this was some kind of death world? Why are there small animals running around here?”

“They’re called corpsechewers,” she explained with a sigh. “I’m sure you can puzzle out what they eat.”

I grimaced. “Ah, that explains how they’re still around. Surprised the bugs haven’t killed them off. Also how many dead people are in this fragment that it’s been a no man’s land for decades and they haven’t even made a dent?”

“A great many,” she said bluntly. “Unfortunately, your bird’s snatching of the corpsechewer roused some of the nearby corpses. They didn’t see him, but one of them noticed the vanishing lizard. The thralls aren’t really sentient, but they have a certain instinctive animal cunning that lets them function at a reasonably high level. It’s going to make traveling through here…complicated.”

“Just get me a route,” I told her. “I’ll take care of the rest. Murmur can get us through, assuming there aren’t a bunch of A or S-rank corpses lying around here?”

She shook her head. “Thankfully not nearby. The stronger ones tend to lunk near the corpse of the god’s main body. It’s in the center of the fragment. Normally there wouldn’t BE a corpse in a fragment like this, given the nature of gods, but this one was swarm type.”

Which actually brought up the question of how this whole world thing worked? Gods were one with their worlds, but I knew the vanished gods had died without their worlds fracturing. These worlds were fragments though. How had the vanished ones managed to keep their worlds together after death.

After thinking about it for a minute though, I suspected I had the answer. Objects of power. Fragments of an object could create a shallowing, so maybe a whole object could anchor a world. Or maybe more than one. It was just a guess, but I had a feeling I was right.

Which meant that the vanished gods all had objects of power squirreled away in their worlds. Complete objects of power they could use for other things if needed. Things like war.

I shot a mental message to Callie over the bond, since she was still in the WCP. She could get the word to Aiden who would have some way to tell the old man. He probably already knew, but it didn’t hurt to make sure my family was prepared in case the worst happened.

Dayna, meanwhile, looked skeptical. “This was your idea,” I reminded her. “Poor Perception, remember?”

“I know,” she sighed. “I’m just having second thoughts. And then third thoughts. And I’m currently thinking a fourth time. This is reckless and potentially dangerous. I wouldn’t have proposed it if we had any other option.”

“But we don’t,” I shrugged. “So we have to make do. Do you have a route?”

She hesitated for a moment but eventually nodded. “Yes,” she finally said. “I found a small path through a nearby rock formation. It’s on the map, though part of it was blocked off by a rock fall. I had to map an alternate path to go around the blockage. Archie got me the last of the information I needed before his ill advised snack attempt.”

“Alright, then let’s go.” I stood, calling up my staff and channeling my power into Murmur, pushing him up to B-rank as I incarnated the demon. The stealth pseudo Domain poured out of me, covering myself and Dayna as I called for Archie. He flew back to me with a trill, landing on my arm. “I’m going to keep you out in case we need spot checks for recon, ok?” I asked my companion.

He trilled his agreement, and I turned to Dayna. “You’re up. We need to move slow. The longer we stay in place the more protected we are. More importantly, the radius of the field is about a hundred feet at the moment, so the overlap means if we move slowly and wait a bit at the edge of the area we can ensure that each individual step we take is heavily concealed.”

“Come with me,” she said, turning towards the edge of the rocky platform we were standing on. I followed behind her as she led me to a small cliff, hopping effortlessly down a series of descending rocks to land in a sandy crevasse. Once I arrived behind her, she held up a hand. Then we waited.

With my hundred foot coverage for Murmur (I’d condensed the pseudo Domain to increase effectiveness), the field was currently covering at least three different corpses. They weren’t sensing us, but we also weren’t exactly in their faces. So we waited.

Five minutes, just to be sure, and then we stepped out from the rocks and began to make our way slowly across the open space. We moved carefully, minimizing the noise and disturbance. The less trace we left the less I had to erase with Murmur. It was agonizingly slow, incredibly frustrating, and deeply unnerving. Coming within ten feet of the corpses, I could literally see the green glow of the insectoid passenger flickering in the back of their pupils. They felt…strong. And brutal. Hungry for something, anything, to kill. They were C-rank, but something told me they wouldn’t be an easy fight, and I was damned sure I wouldn’t get just one of them on my ass if I screwed up.

 I’d be swarmed, and no matter how many tricks I had, it wouldn’t be enough against these kinds of numbers. Seventy two demons might be a lot against a single B-ranker, but against an army of creepy hive mind demon corpses I was doubting my Domain was going to do much good.

We made it past the first round of corpses pretty quickly, and I was relieved to be through the gauntlet. Until we turned the corner and I saw the NEXT step in it.

Two hundred shambling undead, all dressed in various suits of cracked and rusting armor, ragged clothing, or ruined jewelry. It honestly looked like this dead god had rolled its army in a low quality flea market.

Of course, I could tell from the Impact that some of the gear was legitimately powerful, and I knew the degraded state was just time wearing it away. I wondered exactly how long some of these bodies had BEEN here for C and B-ranker armor and accessories to be coming apart like this. We waited at the edge of the pack for a few minutes, doing our best to remain still as Murmur deduced and perfected its concealment further.

Finally, we stepped forward, slowly stretching and climbing between the dense army of dead Ascendants, trying to avoid physical contact, which only served to make it harder to hide ourselves.

We’d made it about halfway across the crowded space when Dayna froze, eyes locked on the sky. I carefully tuned to look, and spotted a figure off in the distance. They were standing on a plateau, face covered with a heavy cloak and hood, and holding…a bow. My eyes widened. “Dayna,” I said as quietly as possible, freezing in place to avoid alerting the zombies. “Please tell me that person can’t see us right now.”

“I really wish I could do that,” she whispered tensely. “But I don’t think it would be the truth. I suspect that person has some sort of observation based ability. I believe they’re at B-rank as well. We need to move. Now. Before-”

My Danger Sense went INSANE. I cursed, reaching into my Domain and calling out Mornax, pushing the demon to tier 8 with my staff as I did. He materialized in front of us JUST in time to tank the arrow from the archer, and I sighed in relief. Apparently the shooter wasn’t too powerful, so no one was hurt. It would take a lot for someone at the same rank to damage Mornax.

My relief lasted EXACTLY three seconds…and then faded into a creeping buzz of absolute horror as I looked around me. The arrow hadn’t hurt Mornax at all. But it had hit him. Loudly. And with a bright flash of light. None of which I’d had time to compensate for with Murmur. The zombies all froze, heads turning slowly toward the source of the sound. They couldn’t see us yet, but they were looking the right direction.

I dropped the stealth, banishing Murmur as I pulled Dayna, Mornax, and Archie into my Domain. Sammael rolled over me, pushing my strength up to the next level as I bent my knees and exploded off the ground, beating my wings to get as much air as possible. In the distance, the archer drew again, unleashing another shot.

The arrow missed, blurring past me as I vanished in a burst of black flame Mephisto’s Waltz descended, incarnated into my body to give me the absolute peak speed possible. With so much sky to work with avoiding the arrows with the warning I had was doable, though not easy. I was getting pissed. Below me, the zombies began to bay and howl. To my annoyance, several of them lifted off the ground, carried by wings.

I was mostly just grateful the bugs were too stupid to know how to fly the normal way, because there was no suppression here. Still, I had bigger problems. A version of my manifested inside my Domain. “Dayna, where do I GO?” I snapped. “I need to move and I don’t have a heading.”

“West!” she said quickly. “Theres a small cave west of our current location, it's under a pair of crossed outcroppings that look like collapsed pillars. The Void Corridor is inside.”

I nodded then shifted back to my main perspective. My wings beat the air so hard they cracked like whips and I exploded in a blaze of black flame as I pushed my waltz to its utmost limits. The archer calmly continued to draw and fire.

One of the arrows was a bit more well placed than the rest, and I reappeared in front of it, the tip plunging into the gap in my shoulder and slamming into my ball and socket joint like a wrecking ball. I was knocked off course, which actually saved my ass because it knocked me out of the way of two MORE arrows, and I pushed myself a bit further.

Mephisto’s Waltz was only tier 6, but I had Sammael incarnated at the same time, and the synergy (and my wings) were keeping me ahead of the enemy for the moment. I had no clue how long that would last though, I needed to get the hell out of here.

Blasting through the space in a constant cascading stutter of black flames, I barrelled forward, searching desperately as I tried to remove the arrow. It tore and ripped at my joint, designed with some kind of barbs to hook and tear on their way out and maximize damage. I couldn’t afford that right now so I just left it in.

I touched down outside the pillars Dayna had mentioned, turning to see the horde of zombies tearing after me, some by land and some by air. I ignored that, diving aside as an arrow smashed into the rock ahead of me, tearing it apart. I was lucky this archer seemed to be more sniper than bruiser, because a real powerhouse would have probably killed me with that shoulder hit.

Diving inside the cave, I stumbled forward, calling Dayna out as I turned to watch for intruders. We’d moved just fast enough, and she managed to slit open the exit with that weird spatial arrow she’d used to get us in. The last thing I saw as we escaped was a horde of zombies pouring into the cave. Definitely not going back there again anytime soon.