Wish upon the Stars chapter 895

We waited for the others to report back before getting up. Bethy and Abel had divided the group in two, and with them running things I wasn’t too worried. Bethy could scout pretty well when she needed to, given her mist form, and I’d her running point on recon. She might mess around sometimes but she’d never put our people in unnecessary danger when I was trusting her to run things.

They came back with seven orbs total, counting the ones we’d already gotten. After a brief consideration, I decided that was enough. Thirty two points after turn in wasn’t too bad. I still had no clue what anything cost, but based on the speed of collection, I doubted we’d need to drop hundreds of them per person or anything.

We headed for the exit at speed, and with Callie’s ability, we managed to avoid running into either people or kobolds until we reached the closest web bridge.

Arriving at the exit cave, we all stopped before we stepped onto the web. “Let me examine this stuff for a minute,” I told my people, holding up a hand. I knelt down, triggering Dantalion as I focused hard on the strands.

Aside from wanting to make sure the collection of thin semi translucent ropes my army of hundreds was about to walk across could hold up our weight, I was also making sure there were no traps here. The Kobolds had been in charge of this area for generations, and it wouldn’t be a surprise for them to have trapped some of the entrance and exit paths.

My senses permeated the strands, and I focused on them, waiting and watching as more and more data was accrued. After a minute or two, I realized a few things. Firstly, these threads weren’t exactly silk. They were more like a sort of semi silk crystalline structure. Veins of latticed structures bloomed inside the strands, laid out in special patterns to create formations. Beyond that, the strands THEMSELVES were woven in a specific way, creating a second layer.

Which gave me a sneaking suspicion, so I called Chelsea up, pointed out the construction, and then mentioned my hypothesis. She glanced around, studying the layout of the silk bridges, and eventually nodded. “Yup. This whole thing is one big formation. The caves, cliffs, and bridges are all specially laid out. Three layer formation structure like this is…I don’t know what the fuck made this, but it definitely wasn’t D-rank. A, at least. Maybe higher.”

“What does it do?” I asked cautiously. “Like no one mentioned dying from walking on it, so I assume it’s not offensive. No way the structure is only for durability. Can you figure out what the purpose is?”

“Gods no,” she said with a laugh. “This is for beyond my level it’s comical. It’s like asking a beginner blacksmith apprentice to take apart an S-rank artifact. The scale of knowledge separating us is so wide they might as well be engaged in a completely different profession.”

I cursed. “Fine, then I guess we stick with the old “if it wanted to hurt me, I’d be dead by now” standby. I declare this bridge safe to walk on. Now move your asses people, I’d rather not get sniped on the walk over.” I glanced around, studying the other bridges for groups of travelers. Luckily I didn’t see any right now.

Still, I let Kellan take the lead, Callie and I taking up positions behind the armored man as He held up his door sword. We made it about fifty feet before my Danger Sense went off. I triggered Mornax and Sammael, my wings spreading so I could pull strength from the air for the Mountain Stance portion. I pushed Callie behind me, ready to tank the blow, but I was shocked when nothing actually hit me.

Instead, there was a low whump of air being broken, and a wickedly sharp glowing arrow blurred across the intervening distance between us and where I’d finally spotted  the attack. I was able to see it in the light of the glowing shot right before impact, and was surprised to see that it was ALSO an arrow, one made of a thorny black iron, with lots of cruel looking hooks along the shaft.

The glowing arrow, fired by Dayna, split the other down the middle before arcing off into the distance. Almost before the sound from the collision had faded, there was a twang of a bowstring and another arrow flow past me, heading along the same angle the attack her come from.

Beyond that, another dozen arrows left bow strings as my archers engaged in a direct confrontation with the small party of darkly dressed figures two bridges over and three above us. We changed our formation quickly, using the wave of shots as cover to get our defenders to the side of the bridge, and then crouched behind them, the archers using small openings to aim and shoot without compromising our defenses.

“Thanks.” I told Dayna with a nod of gratitude. “You noticed that thing even faster than I did.”

She shrugged. “I’m a hunter. It’s my job to see vulnerabilities. It made sense for them try a sneak attack as soon as we stepped onto the bridge. Easy to relax once you’ve checked and confirmed there’s no danger.”

“Big weakness in my detection,” I admitted. “It’s based on proximity. Excellent for casing an area or finding gaps in defenses, but ranged attacks are a problem.”

Bethy crawled over to us. “Ahoy Cap’n! These scurvy bilgerats be three sheets to southwesterly. Our cannons are manned and ready, and these landlubbers are all but asking for a visit to watery deeps!”

I sighed. “Damn it, which one of you mentioned pirates? You know they’re on the list of banned topics. Check your list people! We update them daily.” The vampire pouted, and I just chuckled, ruffling her hair to let her know I was kidding. “Only joking skipper, at ease. Can you fly up there without being noticed? Easiest way to deal with them would be if they “accidentally” fell off the bridge.”

“No can do,” she grimaced. “Something about this chasm prevents flying, I can feel it. Even as a bat or mist, I’d drop as soon as I went over.”

I considered having Chelsea reinforce the archers with her diagram, but I didn’t want to tip our hand on that too early. We’d used the technique in the caves, sure, but we’d killed all those Kobolds and the Void Mantises. If we used it in the middle of this chasm everyone and their mother could see, and that particular ability could pull our ass out of the fire later at a key moment if we saved it. 

Turning to Whisper and Dayna, I asked them if there was anything we could do. They seemed kind of unsure, but to my surprise, Abel spoke up. “I have an idea,” He said after a moment. “If I can create a path for the arrows, not only can I possibly help our people attack from an angle they won’t expect, it should speed them up a LOT. Spatial lubrication was originally meant for speed, after all.”

“That’s a great idea,” I said enthusiastically. “What kind of angle are you talking? And how far out can you get it?”

He grinned at me. “Here, let me show you. Do me a favor and cover me with Murmur? This needs to be a surprise, and being invisible will help me set it up. Assuming Murmur can cover my pathway.”

“Should work if you go slow,” I nodded. “Long distances aren’t really doable, but if you have a stable structure for me to use as a bridge I should be able to manage for a short time.”

I worried briefly that the chasm’s attractive force might cause a problem there, but luckily, you didn’t get sucked in unless you left the bridge. That was why the arrows had worked, oddly enough, they were considered part of the archer until impact, for some weird reason.

Sure enough, I expanded my Murmur domain easily. We took a few more shots, our defenders easily tanking the arrows they were shooting at us based on our last positions. They couldn’t see us so while they were able to aim in our general direction, hitting us was a no go. Once that died down, Abel slipped out in front, knelt down, and manifested a giant arm.

He maneuvered his hand into a point with all five fingers pressed together, and after waiting to make sure I had it covered, looped it out and around to hook his arm up behind the other archers like a scorpion sting. It took about ten minutes to get into position because I had to make him stop to make sure it was covered, but when he had it set up, he nodded to the others and the massive blood red limb rippled, becoming more transparent like his old spatial lubrication.

The archers all stepped forward, the end of the arm (which cut off below the shoulder, acting as a giant funnel, and then just…started firing.

Arrows burst forward, hitting the structure and rocketing down the length of the arm to punch out the fingers. All five were pressed together and aimed the same way so they basically became barrels in a giant arrow gun.

The rain of the arrows came down on the crowd of archers like a meteor shower, and there were screams of pain and outrage, as well as at least one person falling off the bridge. Luckily, as I’d suspected, they’d prepared, and the one who fell vanished in a flash of purple electricity as an escape scroll kicked in. The rest of them survived, but there were multiple bad injuries from what we could see.

I dropped my domain and Abel dissolved his arm, and we waved to them cheerfully as we resumed our trek across the bridge. Aside from some very unfriendly looks, they didn’t bother us again. Most of the others were either too far or too busy to bother with us. A few attacked each other, but for the most part only a couple of groups had taken our path, with most of them being in the caves ahead, so they mostly just focused on crossing.

When we reached the caves on the other edge, we all breathed a sigh of relief. Animal stepped forward to tell us what to do. “Alright, so we need to follow these caves further inland. They’ll go up and our, and we’ll come out with our backs to Yettin. There’s no direct cave access to the city proper, it’s considered a security threat.”

Which made sense. Kobolds lived down here, and we’d already seen how nasty those little bastards could be. Still, with Callie and I to scout the way, we made good time extricating ourself from the cave systems.

When we emerged, there was a man waiting for us. He had on a black shirt and pants with some armor over it, and he held up and unfurled a scroll. In front of our eyes, an identical scroll unfurled, purple flame filling our vision as we were instructed to turn over our spheres. We did, and he made a note. Internally, I could feel my points tick up, letting me know I now had thirty two points in the competition.

I didn’t mention the shallow. We’d gotten rid of it, which we shouldn’t have been able to do. I did, however, ask if there was a way to contact outside forces.

He informed me massages could be sent but not received, to prevent interference, and said I could buy message scrolls in Yettin or use my own if I so chose. I thanked him, then we moved aside as more teams flooded out of the caves. After we finished the turn in, we all rounded on the city, eager for our first glimpse of one of the great cities of D-rank zone. And we were NOT disappointed.