Wish upon the Stars chapter 893

We walked for quite a while, but we weren’t attacked again. Everyone was tense, ready for battle, but despite our sharpened senses and focus, we didn’t end up stumbling on anything for the next few miles. As we walked, the black trees became sparser, the air became colder, and the ground beneath our feet became hard and cracked. It felt like this place was dying, slowly losing vitality the further we got.

Finally, after about twenty minutes, we came to across something different. A house. Or, a shack really. A small cottage made of bluish grey boards that looked like they were barely holding together, with a V shaped thatched roof plopped right on top.

In front of the cottage sat a girl, maybe a bit younger than we were, at least physically. She was sitting in a rocking chair with a pair of needles, knitting…something. It looked like a muscle suit. But it was made of actual muscles. Like she was constructing the underlayer of a human body to slip between skin and bone.

On either side of her sat a pair of pitch black hounds, each sporting three large glowing grey blue eyes and strange fins on either side of their heads. They watched us approach silently.

The girl, with strawberry blonde hair swept up into a pair of braids under a large floppy hat, smiled at us. “Oh, guests! Hello. Sorry I can’t get up, I’m a bit busy.” Her eyes flicked to Callie, and the bottle green irises flashed copper, her pupils narrowing to slits as she sniffed the air. “And a distant relative, far from home. Welcome little sister. What brings you to my door?”

Callie stepped forward. “I’m here to find out who is turning this place into a Void Shallow.”

“To what end?” The girl asked cheerfully. “Are you planning to stop me?”

“I’d prefer you stop yourself,” my wife said wryly. “I don’t know who you are, but this can’t be a healthy thing to do. The WCP won’t look kindly on people interfering with their affairs. The Void might be beyond their reach, but you aren’t. You’re a priestess, right?”

The girl shrugged. “Whatever word you like. The Void Children are a force of nature. We, their servants, go by many names. I see you’re a relatively new addition to our family. Most of us have been enlightened to the Void from a young age. I can forgive a bit of ignorance from a new convert.” She smiled wickedly. “Rebellious children often make the most loyal converts.”

My stomach tightened. “She’s not converting to anything,” I cut in. “And you aren’t welcome here. Get lost.”

Her eyes flashed back to that copper snake state as she glanced at me dismissively. “The Void overlays all of reality. Welcome or unwelcome makes no difference to us. I’ve come to save this wicked place. The noise and violence of this fragile world are an affront to the peaceful silence of the void. I won’t be lectured by parasites like you, sucking the resources of the universe dry to feed your pathetic hunger for progress.”

Callie stared at her for a moment, then her eyes widened. “That’s why the Void is so hostile. Renown. Legends echo through the fabric of the universe, Ascendants acting like receivers and transmitters all in one. Renown is weighted, so the high rankers would be even louder in the ether. The Void Children can hear it.”

The girl actually teared up. “Our poor masters. Listening to the howling of you attention seeking children. Their peaceful sleep disturbed by a cacophony of senseless prattle. It’s no wonder they seek your deaths.”

“Well you don’t exactly seem like the quiet type,” I said archly. “You’re D-rank. You don’t get there without renown.”

She bowed her head reverently, an almost drunken smile on her face. “We are the blade of the silent, the hand of the unheard. We seek to silence the screams of the unworthy for our masters. Once our holy mission is accomplished, we too will close our eyes and sleep, descending forever into silence, becoming one with the void.”

“Oh, suicide cultists,” I grimaced. “Fantastic. Because that always goes well for us.”

“Shut your mouth,” she snapped, eyes flashing as she flowed to her feet. She was FAST. Like, so fast I barely tracked it. “You speak of our masters like you are worthy to cast judgement.” She stepped forward off the porch, the two hounds rising silently and spreading out around her, each circling in a different direction. “This is the company you choose to keep, little sister? Perhaps not even the will of the masters can enlighten you.”

I snorted. “Sounds like an excuse to kill her off because you’re intimidated. I get that, she’s pretty amazing.”

“Aww, thanks hon’,” my wife said warmly. “But I’m good with her finding me unworthy. I don’t want to work for those slithering fucks anyway. Besides, we don’t have the option of ignoring her.” She glanced past the girl. “Or rather, we’re not even talking to a person. Are you going to keep pretending?”

There was a shift, and the two windows of the house lit up. It happened from the bottom up, like eyelids opening, and the windows glowed with copper light, a pair of black lines through the center reminding me strongly of the eyes staring out of the girl’s head.

“She’s a fucking BUILDING?” I asked incredulously. “That’s a thing?”

Callie shrugged. “We’ve seen powerful Ascendant buildings, we’ve seen artifacts with consciousness, or at least golems. Why not a living building? Some sort of gatehouse I’m guessing.”

“I hold open the tears between this world and the world that is between,” said the girl with a smug grin. “You can’t close it unless you remove me. And I assure you, little sister, that will not be an easy task.”

As she spoke, the two hounds began to change. They grew larger, more indistinct. Their black hides became dimmer, to the point where they seemed to CONSUME the light around them rather than just fail to reflect it. They shifted from quadrupeds to hunched bipeds, paws becoming clawed hands and they hunched menacingly behind the girl, eyes blazing with hungry malice.

Callie grimaced at her. “I’m not your sister, and I don’t mind a little hard work.” She spread her wings behind her, the massive appendages billowing her cloak as her hands caught fire. The girl’s face shifted from malicious amusement to horrified outrage, but she didn’t have time to react before I reached out with Wrath, stomping my foot and creating a lake of burning ash under the shack that was her real body. Ash infused with heretic fire.

The blue green sea of burning dust that opened up under the house quickly began to swallow the wooden structure, and the girl’s face twisted in agony. “WHAT?” She screamed. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” She turned to glare at the dogs as she gripped her abdomen. “What are you waiting for, KILL THEM!”

Heretic fire. I still didn’t understand it. I designed the stuff to protect Callie’s soul from the Void. It even had soul defense elements in it. But somehow, the interaction between all the various elements had created something…else. Something  the Void KNEW about already and was apparently actively afraid of.

The house creaked and shifted as the heretic fire flooded the cracks and spilled out of it, consuming the building from the inside. The girl hacked up some blue flaming blood, screaming in rage, and then blurred forward to hit us head on.

With a swirl of mist, Bethy appeared between our group and the girl, clawed fingers slashing out to clatter against the needles the girl was using to attack. Their arms blurred, a thousand echoing clangs smashed so thoroughly together that they sounded like a continuous tone. The girl’s eyes filled with panicked hatred. “Who are you? How dare you defy the Void! Remove yourself from my path or suffer the consequences!”

Flecks of blood bubbled out from her lips as she spoke, blue black fire infusing it. Her speed was slowing, her body swaying and unbalanced. Abel had moved along with Bethy, smashing into one of the hounds, and Callie poured her flames out in a wave in front of the other one, driving it back with a hissing growl that did NOT sound canine.

With a scream, the house shuddered, exploding up out of the ash as it literally LEAPT on a pair of giant chicken legs. The girl glared hatefully at us as she flickered, appearing on the roof of the house as it crouched behind the lake of burning ash.

“Heretic!” she hissed at my wife. “You DARE? You show yourself to me? How do you have that flame? How have you acquired that power? The Heretic God is dead. To serve a rotting corpse after being chosen by my lords. Abomination! Unclean thing!”

My eyes widened. Because I finally realized something that I hadn’t actually considered until now. Callie was a Heretic Angel. While Angels could be a species with random abilities, historically, they were messengers and avatars of the GODS. I’d never considered the implications of what that racial trait might mean.

I’d thought I created that trait from whole cloth, but apparently I’d underestimated the depth of the waters I was swimming in. I’d somehow lucked into creating a catalyst for what had to be an EXISTING racial trait, and one that no one I was aware of had ever heard about.

This little encountered had shed a lot of light on a lot of things. A cult of specially raised Void servants existed, and they weren’t just people. Buildings at least, probably beasts, golems, artifacts. Regardless, we needed to kill this thing immediately. Callie’s current nature couldn’t be exposed, not if she was related to some ancient mortal enemy of the Void. My face hardened.

Kneeling down, I put a hand in the ash, then I triggered Behemoth. From the lake of burning dust, a colossal figure rose. Chelsea, knowing what I was doing, manifested her diagram. I felt power flow into me from the others, reinforcing and infusing me as I created the giant simulacrum. I threw my staff, and the hand of the construct snapped out to catch the expanding weapon.

Before the house girl could even reorient, I drew on the heretic fire again, infusing it into an Extinction event. As I did, I triggered the ability of my staff, elevating the blow itself to C-rank as I drove the butt of the weapon straight through the door.

There was a sort of ripple from within the house as the explosive force contracted in the center so hard it disrupted the air, then a sphere of dark blue fire expanded out at a rate too fast to follow, consuming the entire place in a ball of hyper destructive flaming energy. As it faded away, I swept the staff on a blurring slash, infusing it with as much power as I could draw. The two hounds, reeling from the death of their master, took the heretic fire infused hits head on and exploded into ash.

I flicked a finger, letting the construct dissolve, dust blowing away in the wind as I dismissed the staff back to its place in my soul. I turned to glance at my wife. “So, did that take care of the Void Shallow, or is there something else you need to do?”

She stared at me, eyes wide with shock. I got that. I didn’t usually do the overwhelming force thing. I honestly needed to develop a stronger attack form. All my biggest hits were cooperative. Which was great most of the time, but in an emergency I wanted to have some way to throw down some real damage.

“I need to work on the connection point,” she said after a second. “It’s under the dust. The house was on top of it. Can you…” I nodded, waving a hand and triggering Agares to dissolve and shift the ash. She beamed at me, leaning up to give me a peck on the cheek before she hurried away. I just frowned at the spot where the house had been. This situation was getting more complicated by the minute. I just hoped I could keep up with the changing circumstances well enough to protect Callie from the consequences of my own damned actions.