Wish upon the Stars chapter 904

Our total assets from this were substantial. Two hundred and seven C-rank chits, a series of random treasures we needed Zeke to identify (or I guess I could spend a day with them in Dantalion) and the key we’d come for. Once we packed everything up, I got to work setting up for my big plan.

When entering, I had been worried about leaving. Once anyone entered the vault, they were going to realize something was wrong, and when they did, they’d lock the place down and search top to bottom. This was naturally not a dealbreaker, we had our ways to retreat, and worst case, we could use wishes to get out, I still had some on hand just in case, and any of our people could wish for our exit. Hell I could use one of Nat’s scrolls.

However, the earlier meeting with Wendell had provided me with an opportunity. Reaching into my ring, I pulled out the shard of glass with his blood on it.

I had a lot of abilities. Big, small, consequential and pointless. My mistwalking power hadn’t been valuable in quite a while, for instance. I even had powers I’d never used before, and the one that was going to help me out of this particular jam was one of those. Namely, Blood Curse.

I’d gotten Blood Curse one or two rank ups ago, and while I had included it in one of my forms, I’d never had occasion to actually use the power itself. It let me use blood as a connection to attack people from a long distance, and was, to my knowledge, MOSTLY untraceable. Kneeling down, I began the process of the Blood Curse.

While Blood Curse was useful and powerful, it had a lot of conditions. It was meant to be a long range assassination technique, not a battle skill. To make that work, the most important thing was setup. Blood Curse itself was less of a skill and more of a ritual. My form could use it without prep because there was no distance between me and myself, essentially allowing me to skip that step because I was using it in EXTREME proximity.

Cutting myself, I slowly traced a series of patterns on the flood of the vault, then glanced over to Bethy and my sister. “Alright, so the plan is simple. We use blood curse to take out Wendell. He’s a huge creep who is using Void taint to mind control people, so he’s not exactly a loss, but more importantly, he’s high profile and currently out with a LOT of important members of the fortress’s younger generation.”

Once Wendell died, everyone would freak out. The whole fortress would surge over to where the party was ongoing to investigate and check on the others, and we could walk right out the back door.

Bethy grinned viciously. “Good, I didn’t like that guy at all. What do you want me to do?”

“I figured we’d use Chelsea’s diagram to infuse your Domain into the Blood Curse, and then once it was connected, you could like…eat him.” I trailed off at that last bit. “Was going to think of a nicer way to say that, but I guess it is what it is. You cool with a snack?”

I knew Bethy’s Domain could consume, just like Lark’s. I’d seen them use it like that. Plus it was blood based, which meant the curse should carry it flawlessly.

Bethy grinned, exposing her razor sharp fangs. “I have been feeling a bit peckish.” I nodded to my sister, who close her eyes, and her diagram manifested above her. I felt the power of the Blood Curse sort of…well, for lack a better word bleed, into another powerful force, and Bethy’s Domain flowed into the circle of sigils I’d drawn. When it had merged in, there was a low boom as the air inside was displaced and the blood making up the symbol caught fire, crimson flames licking the air.

Inside the circle, a small figure appeared, it went stiff and then started writhing, and the flames seemed to siphon red from the figure, the writhing becoming more and more extreme until it completely dissolved.

I felt the curse SNAP as the figure vanished, and assumed that meant Wendell was dead. The blood red flames exploded outward, funneling towards Bethy and pouring down her throat. She stumbled back, unable to stand as the excess points poured into her. Bethy’s ability to consume stats wasn’t WEAK, but she didn’t do it the same way that Lark could. She actually bit people. 

I turned to Sable to check if things were ok. As a legitimate witch and a group member who’d been here the whole time, she might be able to shed some light on the details. “Do you know what’s going on with her? I was kind of counting on her help on the exit. I have contingencies, but is she going to be…ok?”

Sable grimaced. “Something about the synergy between the admittedly witchcraft adjacent blood curse and her Domain seems to have created a MASSIVELY improved consumption speed. Witchcraft is all about affecting the large with the small, using symbolism to create large scale changes with tiny catalysts. Considering how powerful her catalyst was…” She glanced at Bethy worriedly. “She might be out of it for a while.”

My vampire friend looked all but comatose as her eyes flickered between bright red and deep crimson, stuttering like she was processing something. Abel caught her, looking concerned, and I had him hand her off to Dayna as I prepared for our exit.

We made our way through the garden on the bridge easily enough, and once we reached the other side, I covered us all in Murmur as we pushed through the door.

We were greeted by utter chaos. People running through the halls, screaming and shouting. Someone stopped as they ran by, glanced at the Vault, and ran over to slam their hand down on a carved lion’s head on one of the pillars.

There was a deep grinding sound, and the floor lurched as the Vault began to presumably descend into the basement. I shrugged. Bit late now. Hell, that might actually help, since it would prevent them from discovering the thefts until the figured out who had killed Wendell. The only issue was…it was probably pretty obvious.

Vampirism was RARE, and there weren’t a lot of beings that could kill a person in that fashion. We’d have to be careful not to let Bethy’s existence get out while we were in Yettin, which meant binding contracts with any allies. Her strength was one of my trump cards, and was a big motivator, so I couldn’t exactly keep it secret, we’d have to compartmentalize the information as best we could.

Heading for the access to our passage, I watched the locals run around like headless chickens, babbling and screaming. It didn’t seem like most of them even cared who was dead, they just heard someone had been killed in a weird way and immediately decided they were “under attack”.

“They KILLED Wendell!” I heard someone wail from down the hallway. “They’re after our WINE!”

“Shut up Kyle,” bellowed someone else. “Someone is dead, worry about wine another time, stop freaking out about fucking alcohol. FREAK OUT ABOUT THE FACT THAT WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!” Everyone screamed, and the hubbub picked up. I pushed into the passage, covering us with Murmur so no one saw the entrance, then pushed it closed.

Turning to the others, I rolled my eyes. “Fucking babies. One person gets killed and the world is ending.”

“Umm… Shane…” Callie said worriedly, withdrawing her fingers from the shadows. “You might want to see this. Actually, no, you probably shouldn’t. Suffice to say I understand the panic. Wendell is basically a skeleton at this point. Note for the future, we should NOT combine those two abilities again.”

Sable hummed consideringly. “I’m not sure about that. Thinking it over, witchcraft is mostly symbolic. It’s worth mentioning that Wendell’s power was wine based. Given Bethy’s nature, it’s possible that played a role in the increased consumption. Symbolically she was drinking the wine he tried to offer her earlier. Ritual is a big part of things like this.”

I winced. “Right, so we need to do some testing with Blood Curse, especially when using it in combination with something like Bethy’s Domain or Chelsea’s diagram. It’s fine, we were planning to kill him anyway, he was a scumbag. We just maybe went a bit overboard.”

Putting that out of my mind, I led the others back down through the tunnels. We had to be very careful in the warded hallway, but we got through, making it back down to the basement access hatch without too much trouble. The distraction, despite a bit of over the top drama, had worked perfectly. By the time we arrived in the basement, Bethy was waking up, and we set her on a table to come to before we activated the lift.

She yawned blearily as she sat up, rubbing her eyes. “Oh wow guys, I just had the strangest dream. You were there, and you,” she pointed at us all in succession. Then she continued cheerfully “we were in a castle made of candy canes with chocolate spider legs that was trying to shoot down the moon.” She giggled. “Man, I always have the weirdest dreams after I eat bad guys. So, is it time to go?”

I sighed. “Yeah, looks like we’re taking the lift.” I grimaced up at the wooden platform. “I don’t LOVE the idea of being lowered into a seemingly bottomless abyss that tries to eat people. But it’s better than nothing. Let’s load up.”

Everyone hopped up on the platform, which thankfully didn’t shift or groan ominously. High rank Ascendant materials were pretty damned sturdy. Mere age wasn’t enough to wear out this rope. Not that I trusted that. I used Dantalion to thoroughly inspect both the rope and platform, and once that was done, I had Sable send a root clone over to the pulley system in the corner.

The lever was on a kind of winch, so you would pump the handle back and forth and it would ratchet you down. Even if you let go of the handle, the platform wouldn’t fall, it would just sit there stably.

As it began to ratchet, another puppet kicked open the door, and within seconds, we were slipping past the floor of the basement, past the stone of the floating island, and slowly descending into the chasm below. It took what seemed like forever to reach the web bridge, and when we did, we dismounted quickly, careful to remain stable while getting the fuck off that thing as fast as possible.

With a quick thought from Sable, the platform rose back up into the island and the trapped door slammed back into place, blending seamlessly with the rock above us. Grinning, we took off into the cave system ahead.

I was absolutely thrilled to be out of there, and we made it through the caves pretty easily, emerging back out onto the hillside, only to be met by one of Devlan’s people who helped hurry us through the check points. They even paid for us to take the nice path up, and we stopped for souvenirs and food on Devlan’s coin.

When we finally reached the club, the smarmy butler wasn’t even glaring at us as we made our way in to see his boss. I dropped the key onto his desk with a thump. Before he could react, I started grilling him about Wendell, seeing what he knew and what he could find out. He seemed nonplussed, but he answered hesitantly when he knew what to say, and promised to look into the rest of it.

Finally, he offered us free rooms in the club, and put us up for the night. We were all exhausted, so we agreed to head to bed and discuss our expansion when we woke up the next day. Aside from finding more allies though, we had some searching to do for the source of that Void taint. It was going to be a busy day.