Wish upon the Stars chapter 912

The sphere of pure Void corruption (or was that an oxymoron?) cracked like an egg under the spike as Abel’s Ragam Blood Body hammered it in

The sphere of pure Void corruption (or was that an oxymoron?) cracked like an egg under the spike as Abel’s Ragam Blood Body hammered it in with a devastating punch. On contact, it split, and the spike dissolved, consumed along with the Void taint as both of them burned off. Inside, the Filthsmith stared in horror as we kicked the door in, rushing inside.

Stomping my foot, I triggered Agares, dissolving the floor and using the dust to form the same shackles I’d used earlier, infused with heretic fire. 

Freezing, his eyes widened, and he jerked against the bonds several times before stopping, staring mutinously around at us. “What ARE you people?” He demanded. “This is…this is preposterous. All of our countermeasures, our defenses, you just…ignored them. What have you DONE? How DARE you?” His eyes finally focused on the bindings, and they widened even more. “What? You’re…HERETIC! HERETICS IN THE CHASM!” His voice rose in pitch, becoming a screech of alarm, like he was trying to notify someone we were here.

Which…he didn’t. Even if there had been anyone to listen, I had us under Murmur. Nothing he was saying was going anywhere.

I sighed, turning to Bethy. “Think you could do the thing?”

She shrugged, turning to stare at him. Behind her, her Domain expanded, taking the form of a pair of blood red eyes. The eyes bore down on the man, burning into his soul, and I was standing so close I could FEEL the pressure she was putting him under.

Shockingly though, he didn’t buckle. He just sneered at us. “Pathetic parasite. My mind belongs to the great darkness beyond the stars. I have been subjected to sights and knowledge your feeble mind can’t even begin to comprehend. Your paltry mind tricks cannot breach the sanctity of my enlightened brain.”

I walked up to him, humming as I leaned down to look into his eyes. Then I hauled back and slapped him across the face with a blue black flaming hand. He squawked falling over backwards. Everyone stared at me, and I shrugged. “What? Sometimes stuff starts working when you hit it.” Especially given the heretic fire. I hadn’t slapped him that hard anyway.

“Anyone have lightning powers?” asked my mentor brightly. “We could try turning him off and back on again.”

“Love the energy,” I complimented him. “Not super ok with killing an unarmed captive, even temporarily, but great stuff. If you want to kill someone go off Terrence. He’s on my list anyway.” I paused, looking around. “Actually where IS Terrence?”

My sister raised her hand. “If you’re talking about the guy with the bowler hat that was me. Sorry. I knocked him into the lake of fire. He never came back up.”

“Sucks for you,” I told Abel mercilessly. “Looks like Chelsea beat you to it.”

He shrugged. “Not really my scene anyway. I was mostly joking about killing this one. Senseless death is such a waste. I like my deaths to make sense. Stick me in a ring and only let one of us leave. That’s the good shit.”

“You’re a deeply disturbing person,” I informed him cheerfully. “You should seek professional help.”

He hummed with interest. “Like a booking agent? That might be useful, actually.”

“Call of the VOID!” screamed the Filthsmith. “I’ll TALK! Just please stop BANTERING at each other! I can’t take it anymore! You’re so annoying!”

I flinched. “Whoa,” I said in a hurt tone. “That’s pretty hostile. I mean, honestly if that’s your attitude I don’t know if I even WANT your information anymore. I bet it’s not even that important anyway.”

“Shane,” Callie said in a reprimanding tone. “Don’t be petty. Of course you want his information.”

The Filthsmith, still annoyed, blinked rapidly, his eyes fogging for a second before they cleared. Behind Bethy, the red eyes of her Domain flickered slightly in a low,soothing pattern. My wife turned to him, smiling kindly. “Mr. Smith, please. Finish your thought. I’m so sorry my husband interrupted you.”

He blinked again, eyes flickered. “Of course. I…yes. I can forgive the impetuousness. How kind of you. My…thought. I was…telling you the truth about this place?”

This was a new technique Bethy had been working on with Crell before we’d split with the C-rankers. We’d known her hypnosis wasn’t likely to work at all times, so the Legendary Doubt Master had been teaching our vampire a few new ways to apply those abilities.

She smiled happily at the captive. “Of course, you want to tell us everything,” she said, her voice layered with soothing, enticing vibration. “How else will we know how amazing your masters are. You have to educate us on their greatness. Heretics and blasphemers like us could never understand their shining glory. But if you guide us down the right path, you could bring them even greater benefits.”

“Yes,” he drawled blankly. “Philistines. To show you the truth of their undying perfection would be the greatest act of merit.” He smiled dopily. “You’ll be so in awe of their genius. The construction of the Void Ladder will be our grea-” he didn’t even finish the word. The second he uttered the phrase ‘Void Ladder’, he tipped back his head, cutting off the rest of his sentence with a high pitched scream as darkness erupted from his mouth, eyes, nose, and ears.

Torrents of dark energy poured from him, and Callie stepped forward, waving a hand to conjure her heretic fire to counter it, burning the stuff away as it came. It took a surprisingly long time. When it finished, she stared down at the body, looking…disturbed.

“You ok?” I asked her gently. “That was sudden, I know, but-”

“It’s not that,” she said worriedly. “It was the last thing he said. I know what a Void Ladder is. And if they’re building one on this planet…this is bad, Shane. This is REALLY bad.” Her voice was shaky, her eyes alight with panic as she tried to form coherent words for what she knew. I put a hand on her shoulder, squeezing it as I pushed my love and support through the bond. She closed her eyes, exhaling heavily, and smiled as she opened them. “Thanks hon’, I really needed that.”

“Any time,” I beamed. “Now, how about you tell me what the hell is going on?”

Callie’s disturbed look returned. “A Void Ladder is kind of the opposite of a shallow. It’s a method to pull a piece of realspace into the Void. Normally it’s done to places with spatial isolation like the dungeon, but the formations around the heirworld are probably enough to count.”

I frowned. “I mean, why would they bother though? The Void wants to wipe out realspace to quit their territory. Why would they bring the heirworld into the Void on purpose. Isn’t that just dumping a bunch of trash in their own yard?”

“It’s the candidates,” my wife said, her eyes widening. “Wishmaster candidates are almost impossible to get ahold of. You move around constantly, most of you have guardians, and the Void’s presence in realspace is minimal. Catching one or two is maybe possible, but the strongest will most likely be protected. Godworlds are in the Void, but they’re not actually OF the Void. The god in question has complete dominion, so anything inside is basically untouchable. Void invasions of godworlds rarely accomplish anything, because worst case the god can just send anyone they want to out of the Void before the local forces accomplish anything.”

“Which makes this a perfect opportunity to attack us en masse,” I finished with a grimace. “The heirworld is cut off from support. If it gets dragged into the Void, every candidate is at the mercy of the Void forces. There’s a lot of powerful people here, but the Void is endless. Once we’re over there, they can bury us in bodies.”

She nodded solemnly. “We need to get in touch with your grandparents. They can alert the elders up in the station. But we can’t leave now. The infinity crystals are a key component in the construction of the Void Ladder. I don’t believe for a second this was the only operation targeting them. The Void always uses redundancies. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were traitors embedded in the depot protection detail just in case.”

“We can’t contact them from down here either,” I said with a grimace. “The mist makes any sort of communication impossible. Even if I used a wish, the cost would be mindboggling because of the interference, there’s no way any of us have the juice to grant that wish.”

Which meant we had to do this on our own and worry about reporting in later. When this had just been a slight chance of mild void subversion, I could justify keeping the WCP leadership out of it. We didn’t know who had been turned, and contacting the station could be dangerous for us. But now…this was going to be a fucking nightmare. We needed help.

Not to mention I knew this wouldn’t END the succession war. This was the most important tradition the Wish Curse Palace had, there was no way it would be delayed. The succession war could be moved up, but never postponed. Not even the god war had been enough reason for that.

I turned to look out the window at the boiling must being held at bay by twisting strands. “Alright. We hit the depot first, snag the crystals and keep them away from the Void. Once we finish that we get our asses topside and contact my grandparents, then head for the C-rank area. My cousin Felicity should be there, along with some of our other forces, and the backup will be helpful.”

What I REALLY wanted was to speedrun to the inner zone where my parents were waiting, but I knew that I’d have to do tasks as I went to accrue points. Points were how I could recruit more locals, and I wasn’t naive enough to believe that a Void invasion would make my crazy family members stop squabbling and band together. I needed to prepare for this possible calamity AND win this damned war. Fantastic.

Luckily, five hundred people couldn’t fit in this fucking house, so most of them were still outside cleaning up. I was also erasing the traces of this conversation with Murmur, so no one had overheard. I turned to Devlan, the one local who HAD been involved. “So…you freaking out yet?”

He shrugged. “I don’t LOVE the sound of what’s going on, but I’ve dealt with worse. It’s just the threat of death or captivity. For a chance to get off this godsforsaken rock I’d risk much more.”

“Good to hear,” I laughed. “Animal, I want you in charge of the locals. I trust you, and I noticed them giving you some intimidated looks. Can you keep them in line?” The redhead Clement was kind of a dick, and I didn’t trust him to stay on task during this raid. The last thing we needed was some showboat going rogue. Well. Another showboat. When I went rogue it was charming and practical.

We headed outside, lining up in the formations we could cobble together before Bethy took everyone into her Domain. I had her leave Callie and I outside when she did though, just to check in. “You doing ok?” I asked her before we set off. “No pins and needles?”

She beamed at me, shaking herself all over like she was doing some weird dance. “Nope, all loosey goosey. I’m totally good to go.”

Nodding, we had her bring us inside, and then we were off. She didn’t share her view through the moon, which she’d explained earlier was because the visual feedback of being a mist in a weird collection of particle sized pocket dimension was jarring and uncomfortable, and that trying to display it would hurt.

As we waited, I reached down to grab my wife’s hand, squeezing it tightly. This whole thing made me even more aware of how much we needed to hurry up her progression. I was going to start looking into acquiring the elixirs for D-rank, because the extra hundred thousand points was bound to help. We both needed to be stronger as soon as possible to be ready for what was coming.