Wish upon the Stars chapter 1045

No one was amused by my banter, sadly. Their weapons all came up (spears mostly, but made of a weird hooked crystal with an energy sphere floating inside the hook) and they levelled them at me pointedly. “Silence!” screamed one of them. “State your purpose!” I looked at him uncertainly, and he gestured with his spear again. “I said state it!” He screamed, seemingly on the edge of hysteria.

One of the ones next to him sighed and leaned over, whispering to his friend. “You told him to be silent, Dan, so he’s doing that.”

“Fine,” snapped Dan. “Unsilence and then state your intentions here!”

These people were deadly, serious, and generally not messing around…but I couldn’t bring myself to care. They were C-rankers, same as we were, and not late in that rank. I just wasn’t intimidated by people my own rank anymore, and my tendency for sarcasm got the better of me. “I’m Todd, from the accounting department. I’m here because you all forgot to sign the new timecards.”

Dan, for his part, froze. “I…what?”

“The timecards, man!” I shouted emphatically. “We’re changing insurance providers, and none of you resubmitted your worked hours. If you don’t affirm your schedules before the new premiums go into affect they won’t match your monthly payouts. It’s leaving money on the table.”

The Dao of Bethy. When in doubt, be confusing. Violence could solve a lot of problems, but judicious application of the unexpected could prevent things from becoming problems to begin with. One of the other men sneered at me. “Lies and trickery! You’re simply trying to confuse us because we have you surrounded.” Ok…so I wasn’t as good at it as Bethy. Oh well.

“Do you?” I asked solemnly, dropping the pretense. “Or do I have YOU surrounded?”

I snapped my fingers, and the world warped, my Domain projecting over them, sweeping them all into the planes of Gehenna, where my backup plan was waiting. Because while my nonsense HAD been aimed at throwing them off their game, it had ALSO been to buy time so my demons could get in position where I told them to.

Seventy two demons of my court (admittedly only about a third of them were C-ranked) stood menacingly in a large circle around both sets of attackers, teeth, claws, and weapons bared as they stared down the enemies.

“Sabateour!” snarled one of the closest men. “Sneaking an army inside our borders inside a Domain. Do you work for Clarent? Versailles? We won’t allow you to succeed!”

I blinked at him. “Ok, well, I don’t know either of those people, so…no. Look, we didn’t mean to come here, we were traveling through the Void Roads, and we stumbled into your shallowing by accident.” That was a lie, but it seemed like it would calm them down at least. Sure enough, after I made that statement, their expressions went from hostile to suspicious. I held up both hands. “Really, I mean you no harm. My friends stay in my Domain for ease of travel, and you were all being a little menacing, so I decided to bring you in so we could talk like civilized people. I have no idea who you are, who your enemies are, or even where we ended up. Can you tell me a bit about what’s happening here?”

I was here for…something. Something useful was in this place. In fact, I suspected, based on the situation, that the old man’s exit door might not have been as stable as he’d implied. This had the feeling of tampering, and as a god, that was well within his ability.

The man closest to us, who I realized was wearing blue, frowned suspiciously, but eventually nodded after looking around at my court. “This is Debois,” he said quietly.

On the other side, THEIR leader, who was wearing red, rolled his eyes. “This is NOT Debois. This is a pocket realm INSIDE Debois. A pocket realm that is technically unclaimed, despite how passionately Renier and his cronies claim otherwise.”

“So, do you work for one of the people he mentioned? Versailles or Clarent?” I glanced at the red army. “Becuase you seem aggressive enough to be invaders.”

Red leader cleared his throat. “We’re not INVADERS. This place is unoccupied. It’s not like it’s their home or anything. They showed up not long before us. We’re only here because this place is naturally occurring.”

“Wait, it’s what?” I asked quietly. “How is that possible? It’s a shallowing. You have to make those.”

Or at least, someone had made every shallowing I could remember being in. To my surprise, Dayna shook her head. “Not exactly. Naturally occurring shallowings exist. Or rather, the term naturally occurring is a misnomer.” She glanced at the reds and blues. “Could we speak privately?”

I turned my head, glancing at the dark hooded form of Murmur. I gave a quick nod, and he erected a bubble around us to prevent eavesdropping. “Alright, we’re good. What’s up?”

She glanced around suspiciously. “It’s this place. Shallowings are man made protrusions from realspace into the Void. There are ways to use Void taint to stabilize them and thin the connection, even creating access points if its done well, but barring that, they’re the result of pressure on space itself from the realspace side.

“Pressure like that isn’t easy to make, it requires time and effort, but there IS one circumstance where you don’t need it.” Her voice was fast and excited. “When certain items are extant in realspace, they can put undue pressure on the world around them. Items anchored to the Void, normally, and not just any items. There are a lot of requirements, but basically you need something of the Divine grade and it needs to be broken and leaking power.”

She gestured around us. “Natural shallowings are incredibly rare, because despite the number of gods that have existed, objects of power tend to just fall through the barrier into the Void and vanish into nothingness with enough time. But BROKEN objects, ones leaking power, they disperse the pressure, and they drag on the barrier instead of puncturing it. Humans learned to make shallowings from seeing this happen. If he’s telling the truth about this place…”

“Then there’s a broken object of power here,” I said excitedly. “That must be why I felt drawn here. But why would I get pushed into this place now? And why would the old man drop us here? Whose object of power is it?”

“I have a theory,” she said slowly, glancing around as if she could see out of my Domain. “After the vanished gods died, their objects of power scattered. Some were kept in the god worlds and some were retrieved, but some were just gone. This might be one of those, if you believe that we were sent here on purpose by your ancestor. He might want us to reassemble one of the lost objects to use as bartering power?”

I paused to think that through. “Yeah,” I admitted. “That seems like his style. But what makes you think that? I mean just assuming this is a vanished god’s object is a bit of a leap on its own.”

“Because I recognize the castle we landed in when we arrived,” she said grimly. “It took me a moment, because it’s different in a lot of ways, but the architecture is a dead match for Verdyn’s hunting lodge with some of Stralthrem’s modifications done to it. The materials are completely different, but I grew up in that lodge. I can just TELL.”

“Stralthrem?” I asked in confusion. “The god of Dread Fabrication? That mad scientist guy?”

She nodded. “Stralthrem and Verdyn have been rivals for millennia. The god of the blood wood disdains the encroachment of civilization. In fact, seeing his power infecting the lodge makes it pretty clear WHICH item is here. It’s Verdyn’s Arrow. He famously pierced Stralthrem’s mechanical heart with the missile, staining it with his heart’s blood.”

“Ok, so we have an idea of where to go,” I said with a sigh. “Do you know how to navigate this…lodge? I assume the shallowing took the form most familiar to the arrow, so you knowing the place might be an advantage.” I glanced out of the dome Murmur had erected. “Unfortunately, it seems like we’re going to need to figure things out on the fly, preferably once we can separate from these people.”

She frowned. “We are inside your Domain, with the fullness of your forces against them. Could you not just slaughter them?”

“Ok, loving the enthusiasm,” I said slowly. “Super happy you’re so onboard, now I’m going to need you to take it down like…five thousand percent. My general method of operation is that I don’t needlessly kill people. If they attacked us, we could put them down, but I don’t want to just summarily execute people for the sole sin of being in my way. They DID threaten us, but they weren’t too aggressive about it so we don’t have a reason to end their lives.”

She frowned at me, but eventually sighed and shook her head. “My lady was right. You ARE too soft for your own good.”

“Wait, BETHY said that about me?” I said, flabbergasted and a little hurt. 

“She did,” said Dayne bluntly. “Though she phrased it as if it were a positive thing. Saying you have a “good heart” but that you would need me to help make sure that someone didn’t rip it out of your chest.”

I grimaced at the imagery. “Ok, gross, and also…that’s good I guess? You’re kind of a huge buzzkill you know?”

“I would much rather be responsible for the death of ‘the buzz’ than for yours,” she said apathetically. “While I am not attached, you are proving to be slightly more interesting company than expected.”

“Gee, don’t I feel special,” I said wryly as I gestured for Murmur to drop the shield. When we reappeared, I noticed that things had gotten extremely tense without us accessible, but that my first minister had stepped in to smooth things over. Azazel, flanked by Dom and Sam, the other two ministers of my Domain (Doom Sovereign and Sammael respectively), stood between the two conflicting parties now.

When he saw me, he bowed formally. “Your majesty,” he said in a way that automatically made this all my problem. “We welcome your return.”

“Wow, thanks Oz,” I told him dryly. “I’m so glad you decided to hold off on solving this problem until I returned to take care of it for you. Anyway, sorry, I got a bit distracted. My name, since I never gave it, is Solomon. This is my Domain, called Gehenna, and it’s where I hold court. I bid you welcome to my territory.” I nodded regally.

Red leader looked unconvinced, but given our numbers, he held his tongue. The blue leader looked relieved, if anything. “Greetings, Lord Solomon. It is an honor to have you inside of our pocket realm.”

“Yeah, about that,” I said slowly. “We’ve decided to take a look around the place ourselves, and to that end, we could really use a guide of some sort. I don’t suppose either of you would be willing to show us around? We’re interested in finding out more about this fascinating natural shallowing you guys have here.”

And stealing it. Or at least the thing that made it. But they didn’t even know it was here, so it wasn’t really stealing. Besides, I was sure between all of my demons I could come up with a way to leave this place intact when I took the arrow fragment.

The two of them seemed unenthused, but after a glance around at the menacing forms of my demons, sighed and nodded. “Lovely,” I chirped. “Seems like we’re all going to be great friends. Now, how about your people stay here and keep my friends company while you and I take our little walking tour.” Oddly, that idea did not excite me. Honestly, I’d even asked nice. There was just no pleasing some people.