Wish upon the Stars chapter 914

“The kobolds,” I said grimly. “Because of COURSE their backup plan was the kobolds. How did I not see that coming?” I grimaced at Bethy and

“The kobolds,” I said grimly. “Because of COURSE their backup plan was the kobolds. How did I not see that coming?” I grimaced at Bethy and my wife. “I don’t suppose either of you is secretly holding back a ton of power you previously neglected to mention? Because I’ll be honest, I don’t love my chances against that asshole head on.”

Callie shook her head in exhaustion. “I’m tapped. Getting us in here took a lot out of me.”

Sadly, Bethy wasn’t doing any better. “My Domain is crazy unstable right now. I can admit one person at a time, but I don’t have the juice to keep up a battle while I do it.”

Chelsea couldn’t help either. Her diagram was useful and strong, but the more people we involved here the more difficult this would be. I didn’t have the strength to use Belial on five hundred people again, not without the staff boosting it. I COULD, however, use it on two. “Animal. Abel. Looks like this next part is going to be on us.”

The others needed to stick close to Bethy and Callie in case they needed help with the getaway. My wife needed to rest up because even with that door gone, the shadows were our best exit if we didn’t want to be ambushed on the way out, and Bethy needed to focus on our escape plan. Animal and Abel were the absolute minimum force I could see managing to actually win this fight.

Oddly, I had the distinct feeling that we didn’t need anyone else, and bringing any more would limit our capabilities too. My fatewalker abilities didn’t pop up too often, at least not so noticeably, and when they did, I tried to listen.

Animal, to my surprise, looked genuinely excited to fight. The taciturn man was usually pretty laid back and apathetic, so seeing him get amped was an experience. More of an experience was watching him transform into…something. From one breath the next, Animal became a beast. Not one that could be easily defined, because it had parts from so many creatures mixed in.

The head was shaped like a bear, with a bat’s squashed muzzle and a snake tongue, the eyes were hawkish and the shape of the body was closer to an ape than anything else, but there were slight deviations in some of the limbs that seemed to come from minimal contributions from other creatures. It was such an asymmetrical and off kilter being that I had trouble actually picking out all the individual aspects, because there were SO discordant that they didn’t seem to fit with anything besides the current shape, ironically taking the beast all the way back around from patchwork to looking like a cohesive whole.

Bethy’s eyes lit up. “It’s so CUTE! I want one! Shane! I want one! Can I wish for one of those? Hey, you, what’s that called? Did you come up with a name yet? It looks so weird but so cute. We should call it something that fits. Like…a Chinchilla.”

“Bethy, Chinchilla’s are already an animal,” Callie reminded her with a chuckle. “Seems like it might get confusing.”

The vampire snorted. “Whatever, they don’t do anything but make coats. They can change it.”

Considering her father had MURDERED every living creature in the universe that wasn’t related to him so he could be the only vampire, I felt the need to nip that plan in bud. “How about you just come up with something else,” I suggested. “I’m sure whoever came up with the name Chinchilla wasn’t half as creative as you. You can definitely do better. Why rip off some lame guy who no one even remembers.”

That got me an impressed look from my wife, and a solemn nod from Bethy. “You’re right,” she said in a somber tone. “I’m better than that.” Then her face melted into its usual cheerful grin. “Thanks Shane, but you should really go fight that dragon thing before it kills us all.”

I laughed at that, turning to Abel and Animal. Flexing my will I triggered Belial. My first form would have trouble offsetting the mist still, but with just two people I didn’t need the rank boost from my staff. Once I had them connected to me though, I could actually maneuver them like weapons. Since they were so strong already, I mostly just left them free rein, but I did steer them slightly as I pushed off, wings spread and with Glory active, heading for the void dragon construct.

Without much prompting, they split off, circling around to hit the monster from either side. Abel went for a wing while Animal exploded into a ball of snarling fur in the eye socket of the monster.

One of the only downsides to this weird mass manifestation method that I could see was that damage was shared among the kobolds. My own staff flashed as I dove forward, dragging a line across the side of the neck, and I saw several weaker kobolds die as my attack tore a long gash in the dark shimmering scales.

The kobold forces were behind the dragon, in the main room of the vault, and a ring of kobold warriors were engaged with the other units, protecting their lizard wizard and his core group of batteries. As they started to die though, the guardian kobolds were closing ranks, folding the odd less important guardian into the formation to power the dragon.

That would have been a much bigger problem, except that I had heretic fire infused Belial avatars attacking them. While this helped offset the mist, it ALSO slowly corroded the construct with heretic fire based poison, and as I watched, blue black cracks began creeping out from the injuries we were all leaving as we made them. I saw some of the kobolds start to cough blood and smoke as the heretic fire fed back into their working through the mechanism of Belial's corruption, and I grinned at how well my plan was working.

Which of course is when three of the kobold warriors broke off to attack. They were scary looking bastards, huge draconic monsters with black scales and the glowing blue eyes of Void tainted creatures. Their skin had split from expanding muscles, with blue light leaking out between the tears, and their fangs were too long and sharp for their mouths, forcing their jaws apart into a permanent snarl.

The monstrous kobolds broke away from the encirclement, punching right through the local defenders, and headed right for us, breaking off to attack us one each.

Snarling in annoyance, I triggered Beelzebub, splitting off a dozen clones. My clones couldn’t maintain more than one form each, and they all had to use Belial to offset the mist (Sammael didn’t count) so none of them were able to use Glory. Still they were all extremely powerful with the amplification of Sammael and able to perfectly communicate through my own Belial connection, so using them to form a formation to counter one of the kobolds was doable.

My main goal was to make sure they didn’t distract us so thoroughly the dragon construct would have a chance to tear me apart. Unfortunately this took up the attention of all my clones. Or rather, the single parallel of Piece of Mind I was able to make to control them. I was juggling too many things right now and my soul was exhausted from constant use, so I couldn’t spare the soul weight for the constantly compounding parallels.

Since I’d gotten my Chronicle, I’d rarely done anything that required quite so much soul strain as this whole mess. I’d been using forms left and right, amplifying and then spreading Belial, creating a new domain, I just couldn’t keep this up long term. Luckily we were almost home free, but this was hardly the best time to be hitting my limits.

More than that, it seemed like Glory was a bigger strain than my other domains. I wondered if the fact that it was so antithetical to the jack of all trades, versatile support image I’d been cultivating that it was having a negative effect on the domain. I’d never asked anyone if recursion could erode skills, but it could boost them, so it only made sense. If that was the case, the problem should solve itself after a few demonstrations of the power, but until then I’d be pretty screwed.

I should have created a single combat form earlier, but I’d been so wrapped up in my support and amplification capabilities that it just hadn’t seemed important. I was paying for that now.

With a roar, the dragon construct snapped toward me, massive teeth shearing the air. I triggered Double Trouble, amused at the confusion when it bit down on “me” and got only air. I considered using it again to flank the lizard wizard, but I was almost positive the others would fall on me like rain and tear me apart, and even if I tanked all the attacks I’d catch the attention of the local defensive units.

Instead, I glanced down, smirking as I had an idea. I used Agares, focusing all my attention on the grating beneath the kobold wizard’s feet.

Metal came from the earth, and there wasn’t a ton of the stuff there. Not to mention it was already under MASSIVE stress from resisting the constant erosion of the mist. It wasn’t too hard to push it over the edge JUST enough to dissolve into dust, and the wizard shrieked as he dropped about two feet, his legs plunging into the mist. The collapse of the grating rippled out, dropping more and more kobolds into the mist, and the dragon construct flinched, its dark scales rippling.

The kobolds were screaming, the Void taint on them burning off in the infinity mist, but they couldn’t get OUT of the mist because the encirclement was keeping them confined to that one area.

Raising my spear, I forced a huge surge of heretic fire into it, then whirled it once and slammed it down on the construct, spearing right through it and slamming into the ground. The huge torrent of heretic fire disrupted the cohesion of the dragon, already floundering with the unstable Void taint that was able to get through after the mist burned it off, and it exploded, shredding the whole energy body into fragments of burning Void that floated down from the sky like black flaming snow.

The backlash stun locked the kobolds, sending them screaming to the ground clutching their heads. The distraction caused the kobold warriors holding off the locals to lose their footing on the gap in the grating and tumble back into the mist themselves, and the guard units surged forward, spears and swords and various other weapons turning the misty hole in the grate into a sea of blood.

“All done, time to go!” Bethy chirped as she skipped forward across the mist, casually disembowling the kobold fighting Abel.

Callie swept up behind me, grabbing me as Bethy pulled Abel and then Animal into her Domain, and then grabbed our vampire friend as she jerked us back into the shadows, pulling us through the Void laden darkness even as the rest of the locals came surging in.

We emerged behind the shed, out of breath and reeling, and I dropped everything but Murmur, keeping our traces concealed as Bethy prepared and pulled us into her Domain with the others to carry us safely out through the mist. Once we were inside, I collapsed onto the bed in the room she dropped us in, letting every single one of my forms go as I clutched my aching head.

Callie flopped down next to me, letting out a relieved groan. “Man. This was SUCH a dumb idea,” she said with a laugh. “Why did we agree to this again?”

“Money,” I told her solemnly. “And influence. So the same reason anyone agrees to a dumb plan.” That got a giggle out of my wife, and I couldn’t help but dissolve into laughter myself. We lay there for about ten minutes, cackling over something that wasn’t really funny. This HAD sucked. But at least it hadn’t sucked alone.