Wish upon the Stars chapter 1029

“Shane!” called a voice from the distance. “Shane, PLEASE wake up! Please, baby I need you to open your eyes! Why the hell isn’t this WORKING? You said this would fix him!” It took me a second to process the words, and before I could work through what they meant, I registered the voice. Callie. She sounded upset. Had something happened? My eyes shot open and I sat up with a guttural, throat tearing roar of agony as my brain caught up to the soulcrushing torment I was feeling from…basically everywhere. “Oh thank the gods!”

A pair of strong arms clamped around me, and I had to choke back an agonized howl. Every inch of my skin felt like it was wrapped around something jagged. My whole body was the next best thing to a bag of broken glass and lemon juice in terms of sensation. It hurt so badly I almost vomited from the pain.

Callie hissed in panic, jerking away from me, and my body slumped as I tried to get my brain working again. Forcing my absurdly heavy eyelids open, I raised my eyes to take in my wife’s tearstained face. And her hair. Which was green and on fire. I frowned. “How…?”

She glanced down at herself, then laughed. “Oh, right. Zagan. I’m acting as a host so I could heal you. Genesis Burst too. And Life Nova. Azazel said we needed all three, apparently it’s a fucking MESS in there.” At my confusion, she grimaced. “That last attack from Roland came VERY close to shattering your soul. Apparently Asmodeus and Leviathan stepped in at Dom’s orders. Azazel took charge of things after that and has been on damage control.”

“How do you know all this?” I asked fuzzily. “You shouldn’t have access to my Domain, especially not now.”

“Angelic Bond,” she explained wryly. “Turns out because of our connection he can directly access the church in my soul space. He’s been ferrying demons across to supplement my reconstruction efforts. Honestly, I’m kind of glad that I can’t see inside, because Azazel says it’s BAD. If you didn’t have a frankly absurd amount of regenerative abilities, all of which are unusually powerful, and if you weren’t wearing the seal, you would probably be dead.”

I grimaced. “Yeah. I SHOULD be dead. And would be, if it wasn’t for you. How did you get us to the Void? I thought this place was sealed off?”

“I didn’t,” she clarified. “We never entered the Void. Not exactly. More of a…shadow of realspace. That was why it took so long. I’ve been working on that technique for a while now, but I hadn’t tested it. I though we were done for. I can’t believe your Domain was able to block that.”

“It absolutely did NOT,” I laughed bitterly. “I didn’t BLOCK shit. Blocking implies that I stopped the attack. I threw pieces of my soul in front of it in succession to create drag, and even that wasn’t enough in the end.” I looked around. “Where are we, actually? We’re still inside The Quiet Room, I take it?”

She nodded. “I couldn’t really take us too far. But now that we’re away, my Adherent Fire and my old Stealth Skills are more than up to snuff to hide us. Roland won’t be able to track us down for a while.” She bit her lip. “I’m just worried you won’t recover in time.”

I shook my head. “Don’t worry about that. We knew this trip might be dangerous, so I made some preparations.” Holding out my hand, a tightly wrapped, innocuous looking scroll appeared. “I had my dad make this for me. Payment is going to be annoying, but as far as trump cards go, an A-ranked wish scroll seemed like a safe bet.”

While I’d tried my best to prep for this mess with Azazel and the others, I wasn’t willing to trust my safety (or my wife’s) to something as nebulous as luck. Unfortunately, I had absolutely ZERO chance of being able to successfully pay off an A-ranked wish, so using it directly was out of the question. Luckily, my dad’s ability wasn’t the same as the rest of the family. The Wish Devil, in exchange for the loss of his three times modifier, had obtained the ability to create incredibly one sided and even unwanted deals.

This particular scroll fell mostly into the first category. Or rather, it still had to be paid off, but the method of doing so was much less stringent. The scroll had been modified to absorb energy. With a two rank gap in power, the actual AMOUNT of the stuff that was needed was pretty staggering, but given a few hours of charge time, quantity could make up the quality.

I explained all of this to my wife, and she almost collapsed from relief. “Oh thank the gods. I take it Azazel didn’t know?”

“No time,” I shrugged. “He passed it to me right before we went inside. Or rather, he had Crell do it.” I grimaced. “I wish I’d had time to charge the damned thing, we could have used it to tank that last hit from Roland. But things went wrong too fast. I can use it for my recovery though. Unlike the standard Wish power, my dad’s ability has a much easier time interacting with souls, as you might have noticed when we saw him ripping them out of A-rankers.”

She snorted. “Burying the lead there, hon, but yeah I get it.” She reached down, gingerly taking the scroll, and the green faded from her hair, leaving her with the blue of the Adherent Archangel. Frowning, she started channeling energy into the scroll, her hands catching fire. “I’m surprised you’re allowed to have this, actually.”

“My dad isn’t a member of the palace,” I chuckled. “Nothing he does really counts as violating any mandates. Between his position as an outsider and the unique setup of his power, this was pretty much all he could do.”

“Seems like it’ll be enough,” she smiled worriedly. “The main question is, though, what do we do AFTER? Like once you’re fixed up we’re still stuck in here with multiple B-rankers who want to kill us. Taking out Roland might be doable, but even if you can fight him head to head, that leaves me fighting three on one. Our plans with Azazel were all predicated on even odds. We were counting on Roland helping us.”

I shook my head with a frown. “We were counting on that because of a prediction Azazel made. But I think we might have misinterpreted that. I mean, yes, we could have just been wrong, but I don’t think so. We’re in here with three enemies…but possibly not four.”

She stared at me for a moment and then groaned. “Oh, you have GOT to be kidding me. You want to try to flip Devon, don’t you?”

“I mean, I don’t think flip is the right term,” I corrected. “More like inform. Devon isn’t the asshole we thought he was. He’s just an egotistical moron. Roland played right into his blind spot, but then, he did the same thing to us, so I can’t really throw stones. Now that we know who was poisoning the well, though, we can correct his misunderstandings.”

“I’m not sure trading a B-ranked sword genius in for your brat cousin is the strategic coup you think it is,” she pointed out sourly.

I rolled my eyes. “Obviously this isn’t an ideal situation. But he SHOULD be able hold his own. He was reasonably confident in his chances as a candidate, and even if we assume he was massively overestimating himself, lots of people were of the opinion that he could pull something off in the succession war. Also…” I hesitated. “I don’t want him to die. I don’t want my uncle to have to go through what my aunt did. Devon and Percy are assholes, but they don’t deserve that.”

She reached out with the hand that wasn’t funneling power into the scroll, lacing her fingers in mine. “You think we can help him?” She asked sadly. “I mean, he knew the price for initiating the trial…”

“Except he didn’t initiate it,” I pointed out. “Roland did. He just used Devon as a cat’s paw. He admitted as much to us directly. Sure, it’s a technicality, but this is the Wish Curse Palace. We live for technical bullshit. Especially since given Roland’s confession, we can directly dismiss the charges, and my position as heir will be secure. I have enough power to forcibly substitute one execution for another.” 

Callie looked at me worriedly. “You say that like you’re going to carry out the sentence yourself. Despite what an asshole he is, you considered him a friend until not long ago. Can you really do that?” I glanced at her, and she held up her hands. “This isn’t a judgement thing, I’m a hundred percent in your corner here. I’m asking you literally. CAN you do that? Are you capable of destroying the soul of someone you cared about not long ago.”

My voice hardened, becoming cold. “Roland betrayed us. Tried to kill you. DID kill Derran. He confessed directly. With this trial under false pretenses, my position is secure. The rules about killing people in here are void, at least in this scenario.” I held up a hand to cut her off. “And yes, I know that isn’t what you meant. And the answer is…yes. Yes I can kill him. Really. Completely. I’ve killed before. Even destroyed a soul. I can do it again.”

It made me sick to say it. Not because he didn’t deserve it, but because it was a line I’d only crossed once. Killing Travis had been easy. I hadn’t liked him. Hadn’t cared about him. And honestly…he wasn’t RIGHT. Because Roland was. At least somewhat. His anger at the system that had caused the death of his wife was understandable. The way he was handling it was obviously awful, but he didn’t have that many options.

Despite knowing that though, despite having been his friend, I knew it wouldn’t matter. Because he’d killed Derran. Because he’s tried to kill me. But honestly either of those I could have probably forgiven. Or at least understood. No, his big mistake was targeting Callie. This had all been about her. Destroying her so that he could inflict Morwenna on my whole family.

Callie’s hand squeezed mine, and I winced at the sensation of the bones in my hands grinding together. Everything still hurt. Not just in terms of soul damage, either. I’d tanked the aftershocks of that A-rank attack. The Seal had soaked a lot of it, but I still took the hit. Actually, I turned to check on the condition of my armor. I had to twist painfully to check the back, but what I saw made me sigh in relief.

It wasn’t GOOD. Cracks spiderwebbed the back of my armor in a serious way. But they were mostly surface level. It had been a glancing blow, and apparently the A-ranked base material of my armor had survived the damage mostly intact. I’d have to get it repaired, but it should hold up for a few more engagements, which meant it would last until we got out of here, at least.

We sat like that for a while, just being together in silence. Callie funneled power into the scroll while I let Azazel and the others work on repairing my soul from the inside. It was slow going on both fronts, but eventually, the scroll reached capacity. There was a flash as the seal on holding it closed flashed, signifying the completion of the charge. I reached out and took it, cut the seal with my thumb nail, then unrolled it. A quick wish, and I settled into heal. Despite having such a convenient method to recover, I was still worried about recovering in time. I just hoped we could get to Devon before they realized he wasn’t necessary anymore.