Wish upon the Stars chapter 968

When Wise rose from the shattered remnants of the mirrored wall, his face was…wrong. Broken like the glass. The visage of me that he’d been using was cracked, and black mist leaked from inside of it. He snarled, his hands coming up to his face, trying to press the flaking shards back into position. It didn’t work, and he finally gave up, tearing the worst offenders free and tossing them aside.

“That seeming was EXPENSIVE,” he hissed at my mother. “Must your whole family be a constant thorn in my side?” He sneered at me. “When my lady told me that you were so troublesome, I thought she was exaggerating.”

“Ok, do I KNOW you?” I demanded. “Why are you so fixated on me. Using my face, targeting me specifically? What the hell did I do to you?”

He snorted. “Not me, fool. My lady. You ruined her cult in the Screeching Shoals. Luckily you ALSO left a trace behind for her to harvest to create the seeming. It was laborious work, creating something that would withstand scrutiny and hold up under my advancement. But I suppose I have no need of it now.”

I blanched at his words. They’d made this thing from TRACES I’d left in the dungeon? That fucking cult was just the gift that kept on giving. As if the nightmares weren’t enough.

“You are a constant annoyance, you know that?” his voice was boiling with barely restrained hate. “First you ruin the shallowing we were trying to cultivate as one of the anchor points, then you steal the infinity crystals we were using to replace that project after word got out, and THEN you come down here and destroy my damned ritual! Can’t you bastards just lay down and DIE?”

My mother stepped between us, making sure to be in his path as he prepared to lunge. He just sneered. “An A-ranker. You think you’re capable of stopping me? I admit I was unprepared for your punch, but you’re not a match for me. You’ll die just as easily as he will. Being forced to watch me kill his mommy will serve as a fitting punishment I think.” The others moved, preparing to back my mom up, but she held up a hand.

“Wait,” she said coldly. “Not yet. Stay on alert, and you can cut in if it looks bad, but I don’t need any help with trash like this. Not directly. Calliope, dearheart, might I borrow that gem from the pommel of your sword?”

Callie blinked at her in confusion, but looked down at the jewel. She reached down and gripped it, then pulled lightly, and it came loose more easily than it should have. Shrugging, she turned to my mom and tossed it. My mother caught the gem without looking, then held it up, staring through it to look at the darkening center with interest.

“A divine fragment,” she said with interest. “I assumed he’d need one of these to construct a weapon like that for you. Thank you, dear, I’ll return it in a moment. I just need to borrow it for a bit.” She clenched her fist around it,  closing her glowing white eyes, then with a deep breath, she shoved it into her chest. Her body ripples, the flames that made up her form began to waver, flowing towards her heart, and as they did, a blue black stain began to spread through the ivory flame. It rolled through her whole body, under the mirrored chest piece and gauntlets, until her entire body had gone from bright white to the blue black of heretic fire.

“Oh, that is lovely,” she grinned coldly. “I can feel the extra power there. Not a trade I’d willingly make permanent, but I think this should do just fine to settle things.” Her eyes flicked back to Wise. “Now, I believe you mentioned something about killing me in front of my son? Please, feel free to give it your best shot.”

I’d never heard her sound so…enraged. Hateful. My mother was a warm and nurturing presence. Sometimes sad, or guilty, and I’d seen her mad a time or two, but she wasn’t…dark. Vicious. She was one of the kindest people I knew.

Wise didn’t seem to share that sentiment, he spat on the ground. “You think that scares me? That some heretic fire is enough to bridge the gap of a whole rank? I’m an S-RANKER, you ignorant-” there was a blur, and his head snapped back, smashing into the crater he’d already left in the wall.

My mom was standing over him, her mirrored knuckles shedding black mist. “First of all,” she said harshly. “You’re going to drop that insulting charade. I won’t have you using my boy’s face to spew your toxic nonsense.”

Both her hands blurred, and there was a kind of…delayed ripple, and then the wall behind him cave in, a spiderweb of deep cracks running from behind him as she pummeled his head and chest into the mirrored stone (not glass oddly enough) too fast for my eyes to track. She stepped back, and he staggered up from the wall, more of the seeming flaking off. “That’s not…how are you?” His eyes fixed on the gauntlets. “Is it those?”

Her eight gauntlet blurred as she backhanded him off his feet again. “I said stop it,” she hissed. “Drop the mask before I slap that look right off your face.”

He spat, crawling to his feet again, peeling the shattered remnants of my face off to leave nothing but a mass of Void taint covering a face I couldn’t quite make out. My mom reached out and clamped a hand over his face, channeling the Heretic Fire through the gauntlet and into him as he screamed, the Void taint burning away to reveal…nobody. Nothing special. Just an average looking man I didn’t know.

She threw him to the ground, straddled him, and then started to beat him across the face. Slow, steady punches, left, then right. His head cracked against the ground, and he reached up to paw at her, trying to get her off him, but he couldn't. The Void that gathered in his hands burned away on her body.

“You can’t beat me,” she said conversationally as she slowly pummeled him into the rock. “Because this power isn’t yours. It comes from your master. I probably could have done this with just my flames of purification, honestly, but it wouldn’t have been as hopeless.”

She stopped hitting him, getting up to walk across the room to Callie. With a grunt, she shoved a hand into her chest, removing the stone, and handed it back to my wife. “Put it back in the hilt please.” My wife did so, and then my mom held out her hand for the sword. Callie handed it over, looking unsure as to what was going on.

Walking over to me, she reached down and pressed the weapon into my hand. “This is yours to finish,” she said kindly. “He almost killed you. Stole your face. You deserve to end it.”

I glanced at Callie, who nodded solemnly, and I walked over to where Wise was lying, beaten to a pulp, on the ground. He was gurgling, blood foaming up between his lips as he looked at me with absolute loathing. “That won’t kill me,” he hissed. “I’m an S-ranker. You can’t kill me.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you?” I ran my eyes over his body. “Because it seems to me that my mom just beat every ounce of Void out of your body. All I see now is a badly injured C-ranker with a superiority complex. It’s just a shame that your patron benefited from all this. It got to S-rank off your hard work, and all you get out of it is a pathetic helpless death. Doesn’t seem fair.”

He snorted, dissolving into a coughing fit as he spat up blood. “Fair, that’s rich coming from you. You and your disgusting family think you’re the heroes. Protecting the universe from the Void. Newsflash. It’s THEIR universe. Everything came from the Void, and everything will eventually return. You can’t stop it. It’s inevitable. This isn’t a victory. I’m just a tool. A Vessel.” He was grinning, and his eyes had started to glow again, flickering with Void light.

I didn’t hesitate, I hefted Gossamer, infused it with Heretic Fire, and drove it down through his chest into the floor, spearing his heart. “Yes, that’s very scary,” I told him drolly. “Or it would have been, if you weren’t choking to death on your own blood. Before you die though, I’m curious. What’s the name of you Void Child? Who is the monster that’s using you to try to claim the throne of the Void god after all these years.”

He shook his head, baring his bloody teeth at me with a wet, sickening giggle. “No one special, really. She’s not someone you’d have heard of. In fact, she wasn’t even always a Void Child. She used to be human. She served under the last Void god, and he rewarded her service by remaking her in his image. Her name is Morwenna.”

My eyes widened, because I knew that name. “Wait, don’t-” but it was too late. His head flopped back, the last gasp of breath rattling from his lips. I cursed, pulling the sword out, and if it hadn’t been Callie’s soul weapon I’d have thrown the damned thing.

She stepped up next to me, and I handed it back. It vanished into her soul, and she took my hand in hers. “It’ll be fine.” She said softly.

“But you heard him, his patron is-” she cut me off, a finger to my lips. “I know. I heard. I think that’s why he interfered so much this time. I’ve been trying to get in contact with him for the last few minutes, but I guess it doesn’t work that way. I represent him, but I don’t get to speak with him whenever I want. I’m honestly just glad he let your mom channel his power through the gem.”

I sighed. “I think it worked because the purification flame is an ingredient in the Heretic Fire. We used it to make your trait, too, so he had a connection.”

“This is all fascinating,” Zeke said as he approached, dragging a wounded leg behind him. “But some of us want to get the hell out of here, kid. So scoop up your bounty and have the rest of these rookies carry up anything they can find, because these bodies are going to be worth a pretty penny point wise, if we have anything to say about it.”

I laughed at that. I couldn’t help it. The thought that this, all of this, had just been a GAME. That the succession war was a contest we’d been doing for POINTS. After all the horror and bloodshed and fear of the last hour. It was laughable.

Reaching down, I stashed Wise in my ring. He was dead now, so the body went in easily. Then I turned and started making my way back to the staircase. My mom fell into step beside me, silent and supportive, and I reached over to pull her into a tight side hug. My sister joined in on the other side, and we all walked out of there together, her arm around each of us.

It was…over. I mean, there might be a few more trials or whatever, but I was confident all this had netted me enough points that I should be able to maintain a solid lead. I was going to win this. I was going to be the Wishmaster.

And that felt…empty. After all this pain and sacrifice. It felt like it meant nothing. But I knew that wasn’t true. Because after my honeymoon (and you could bet your ass I was taking one now), I could begin. I could start the work of fixing my family, whether they liked it or not. And once I got started on that, I just had to convince some of the vanished gods to join up and help us repel the Void invasion. Piece of cake, right?