Wish upon the Stars chapter 1000

I was exhausted after the meeting with Arabella, and I hadn’t even DONE anything. It was just…draining. Seeing how broken and raw she was made my stomach knot up, and it started to wear on me after a while. My mom stayed with her, helping her through her adjustment period and giving advice on what it was like to lose a son. Her situation with me hadn’t been the SAME, mind, but it was the closest anyone nearby had been, and Arabella just needed a sympathetic ear.

Meanwhile, after a good night’s sleep I headed out (under guard by Zeke) to meet Wulf, who almost definitely had nothing so far, which I wanted to point out. My heart wasn’t really in the idea of rubbing it in his face today, but the plan was already underway, so I made it work.

“So, you put a tracking mark on him when we met him?” Callie asked in surprise. “I didn’t even know you could do that.”

I shrugged. “Did you forget about Marked for Death? It does give a damage boost, but it’s also a literal mark. Given the scale I work on at this point, following it over a long distance isn’t much trouble. I have six digit Perception, after all. I split off a clone after he left and had it track him under Murmur. It followed him to…here.” I gestured to the ramshackle building. “Which, to be honest, I wasn’t expecting. He struck me as the fancy type. Swimming pool indoors, crystal chandelier, maybe a pool table.”

The building the clone had followed Wulf to wasn’t a fancy house or manor. In fact, it appeared to be some kind of cannery that had been retrofitted into a dwelling. It was made of old red brick that was crumbling and faded letters were painted on the sides. ‘Redmond fish canning.’ I blinked, turning to Vicky. “What is this place?”

She, Bethy, Chelsea, Gabe, Abel, and Mel had all accompanied me on this little adventure, with Zeke trailing behind us with Stella trying to be inconspicuous. Well, trying to TRY to be inconspicuous. I think he was messing up on purpose, because his incredibly unconvincing ‘street sign’ mask wasn’t fooling anyone. My cousin looked intrigued. “Looks like one of the old industrial districts. Over the centuries, a lot of businesses have been started and abandoned. New passing fads that boomed until they stopped and were left to rot. Haven’t heard of this one, but that’s not surprising. Those bricks are D-rank. If they’re crumbling like that they’ve been here a LONG time.”

That made a lot of sense actually. The WCP was exactly the kind of place I could imagine small pop up enterprises aimed at gaining profit quick exploding onto the scene and then dying off. Apparently the Palace was so big that they didn’t even bother to clear out places like this. It made me wonder about the actual size of this place.

More than that, it made me question how much I knew about Domains and spatial folding. This was a pocket dimension INSIDE of a pocket dimension, with another pocket dimension (the Great Book Heavenly Library), nested inside THAT. Like a dimensional Turducken.

Shaking that off, I knocked loudly on the large sheet of riveted metal on the tracks in front of the building. No answer. I knocked again. And again. And again. I kept going for about fifteen minutes until finally, the door was flung open and a thin man with curly dark hair glared out at me. “WHAT!?” He snarled. Then he froze. Then looked behind him, then back at us…and promptly slammed the door shut.

I raised my fist to knock again and he flung the door open. “Do NOT!” He snapped, pointing a finger at me. “You’re going to break my damned door. Do you not SEE the dents?”

“They’ll hammer out,” I shrugged. My knuckles were C-rank and wrapped in B-rank metal. They’d been leaving dents in the rusted D-rank metal, even with literally no intention of causing damage on my part.

He glared at me for a moment, then sighed. “How did you find me?” He said tiredly.

“A little birdie told me,” I said with a chuckle. I whistled, and Archie, who had been waiting nearby, swooped down to perch on my extended wrist. Of course, Archie had NOT been following him, but I’d dispelled the mark after he’d answered the door, and my clone wouldn’t have been able to keep up without it. He’d done MULTIPLE heat runs to lose any tails, but he hadn’t bothered checking the skies.

I liked Wulf well enough, but I didn’t know him yet. I wasn’t going to give away too many of my secrets to a stranger. Besides, it was his job to find things out. If he wanted to know what my Skills were he could piece them together.

Looking us all over, he sighed. “Look. Just…come in. I heard about your recent troubles, and despite what I assumed is a high ranking escort standing down the street dressed in perfectly normal clothes with a mask that appears to be decorated by what looks like a daffodil in a flowerpot, I’d rather not get sucked into your mess. We can meet INSIDE. I assume you weren’t followed?”

“My uncle is our escort. Janus?” I cocked my head expectantly, and sure enough he flinched. Hurriedly, he stepped aside to let us in. Looking around anxiously as he slid the door shut. “Thanks, I told him casually. So, I came to check on the progress you’ve made on that test.”

He scowled at me. “None. I’ve made NO progress. I’ve been able to PRELIMINARILY confirm the EXISTENCE of the person you mentioned, but he hasn’t been seen in decades. It took some doing too, you didn’t even give me his full name.” He seemed genuinely frustrated by his inability to accomplish the task. Perfect.

“I don’t KNOW his full name,” I shrugged. 

“I think it’s Timberly,” Bethy chimed in happily. “He sounds like a Timberly, don’t you think?” Her question was aimed at my sister and Gabe.

Wulf didn’t seem to care. “He does NOT sound like a Timberly!" He snarled. “NO ONE sounds like a Timberly! That’s not even a real name. No parent in the history of this universe has looked down at their newborn precious bundle of joy and said to themselves. “This one is gonna be a TIMBERLY!”

“I don’t know then,” she said innocently. “Maybe it’s short for Kevin?”

It was hard not to laugh at the incoherent scream of rage that erupted from Wulf as he turned and stalked off into his home. So I didn’t bother. Laughter is good for the soul. Bethy shot me a wink as she walked by and the amused grin on my face softened into a grateful smile. She’d known we were all still reeling from losing Derran and was trying to help.

We followed Wulf across the floor of the old factory. It was…gross. Puddles and rotten wood and bits of trash and rusted tools. It looked pretty much like you’d expect an abandoned factory to look. He led us to the back, then took up a position next to a huge piece of factory equipment braced against the wall. He pushed it aside, then shoved the grate of a freight elevator up and gestured us in.

Once we’d entered, he grabbed a handle on the back of the machine and pulled it back into place with a soft grunt, then slammed the grate shut and hit a red button hanging nearby. The button was one of three on a black remote hanging from a chord, and when he pushed it, the elevator lurched and began to rise.

“Don’t worry about us being followed.” He said with a grin. “The elevator is small void corridor connected to a pocket dimension. The space we’re currently ascending into doesn’t exist without access to this elevator shaft, and that machine that looks like a canning rig is an extremely pricey mad scientist shielding device I had hooked up. Cost an arm and a leg. Luckily they weren’t mine and I didn’t need to get them from the same person, which really cut down on the overhead.”

I couldn’t tell if he was joking, but given the WCP as a whole, there was a better than average chance he wasn’t. I decided not to worry about it. The elevator rose slowly, and after about five minutes (far too long for us to have still been in the building) it stopped with a lurch. Wulf pulled up the grate and then pushed open a rolling steel door to reveal…

“I called it,” I said with a grin. “What did I say?” I pointed at the chandelier hanging over the extremely large wood floored foyer, and past it at the pool table visited in the well appointed study. I turned to Wulf. “Do you have a swimming pool in here?”

“Obviously,” he snorted. “It’s the best way to get my cardio. It’s a salt water pool though. The chemicals in a traditional pool fries your hair with consistent use, and I hate those swimming caps. Why?” He seemed excited to share, but noticed Chelsea trying not to laugh as Abel grumbled and passed Gabe a C-ranked chit. 

“No reason,” I said brightly. “Anyway, thanks for having us over. Your place is nice. I assume it’s safe to talk in here?”

He nodded, knocking on the wall. “Wishcrafted subspace bunker. Highest quality. No one is eavesdropping on us in here. Not unless they followed us in or have some VERY advanced observation abilities.”

Relaxing, I nodded. “Alright, good. Now asking about Tim WAS on my list of things to do, but more than that, I wanted to ask you to check into something for me.”

“No,” he said immediately. “Derran was a B-ranker. I’m not digging into his death.”

“Not even for a job?” I asked him bluntly. “Because I’ll hire you on the spot if you agree. I need this information, and you’re my only reliable source here. Everyone else I brought with me. They’re not local or connected. And think of it this way, joining my cabinet only benefits you if I win. You get to ride the gravy train up to B or even A-rank. No preludes. You join up right now, contract and all.”

He froze. “That’s…” he gritted his teeth, groaning in frustration. “I want protection. At least a B-ranker. Someone who can keep me safe while I dig into things someone obviously doesn’t want anyone digging into.” I opened my mouth, but he cut me off. “That’s a hard line. I can’t gain renown if I’m dead. If you want me to work for you I need an investment. Protection.”

“Fine,” I grimaced. I glanced at my sister. “Ellie just broke through, right? Can you have her put on guard duty? My B-rankers are limited and most of them are on Stratholme. I pretty much just have Alanna, Crell, and Fade here, and Crell isn’t a combatant. The other two are my personal guards when my parents and Zeke aren’t around.”

She nodded. “Yeah, mom had her assigned as my protector, but as long as I stay with you we can just double up.”

Ellisara, my mother’s disciple, had been peak C-rank when I first broke through six months ago. Due to her involvement in the succession war, she’d made the jump to B-rank on the back of her already completed Chronicle during the honeymoon. I was relieved to know she’d be watching out for Chelsea when this was over.

“Sounds good,” I turned to Wulf. “There, protection promised. Now let’s go over your contract and then we can talk about the information I need.” I was going to fill him in on all the details I could remember about the succession war and hope he could jog something loose in the ether. I refused to play defense this time. I was going to hunt THEM down before they could hunt me.