Wish upon the Stars chapter 892

The stabby bugs didn’t attack right away, to my surprise. Instead, their creepy eyes pulsed in time with each other, and an otherworldly cascade of overlapping voices rang out. “Halt, intruders. You enter the territory of the Anatta Mantis Clan. Retreat if you value your lives.” They had no mouths, so the speech just kind of appeared from midair, and as it did, they smashed their bladed scythe hands against each other menacingly as if to punctuate the threat.

“Oh hey,” Benny said in a faux cheerful voice. “The giant murder bugs talk. That’s not nightmarish at all. And look, they even have a freaky hive mind thing going on so they talk in unison.”

Bethy cooed in sympathy, patting his shoulder. “Aww, don’t be scared, I’ll protect you from the big bad bugs. If they mess with you, I’ll banish them to the caverns of eternal winter!”

“No!’ I turned to glare at her. “Damn it, what did we say about making up planes of torment? I’m pretty sure you convinced so many of the godchildren that the “pit of cheddary doom” was a real thing that you almost manifested it. I’m STILL not sure one of them isn’t going to end up making it into a Domain!”

She gave me a somber nod. “The pit as as real as it is delicious. May your cheddar be sharp and your gouda be smokey.”

“Can you talk to them?” I asked Callie as I turned away from the crazy Vampire I associated with.

My wife shrugged. “I mean, if they believe in cheese hell I doubt they’ll listen to any logical rebuttal. I guess I could try, but ultimately I think we’re just going to have to let that play itself out.”

I threw both hands in the air. “Am I the ONLY serious person here? The mantises! Mantii! Whatever the plural is.”

“I think it’s Mantee,” Benny added helpfully.

Bethy shook her head. “No that’s a sea creature. Or the student of a mentor?”

“Yes,” Callie said with a giggle. “I can talk to them. My Path will make it easy.” She smiled at our friends. “And thank,” she added. “For trying to take some of the tension out of this situation. I appreciate it.”

Bethy shrugged. “It’s ok, I could tell it was…bugging you.” She turned and looked over her shoulder. “Hey Serah, did I do that right?”

A hand raised from the crowd, showing a thumbs up. “Yes,” called the bronze angel. “That was an excellent joke.” We all groaned, worried and afraid that our resident deadpan punster was influencing Bethy. Because that was all we needed.

Callie turned to regard the mantis army. “Greetings,” she said calmly. I am Calliope Wyndham.”

“Priestess,” intoned the army. “Deepchild. You seek a parley? An alliance? You wish to cleanse the filth that infests our domain?”

Callie flinched. I think more at Deepchild because it reminded her of that creepy priest than anything else. “No,” she said firmly. “To the latter two. A parlay maybe, if you’re willing to retreat and abandon this Shallow.”

“Why?” they asked in unison, a cascade of voices echoing across the wooded area. “Why would we surrender? Why would we flee?”

“Because you’ll die,” she said calmly, and in the coldest tone I’d ever heard from her. Her eyes pulsed an unnatural blue as she spoke. “There is no other outcome, no other result. We will roll over you like death made manifest, and when we’re done, we’ll still destroy this place. THat’s wasteful, you’re important tools of the Void. You should preserve yourselves.”

They cocked their heads. All of them. It was creepy. “We are tools,” the said in confusion. “You spoke this truth. What good are tools if not used?”

“Use implies purpose,” she said mildly. “To die for no purpose is waste. It’s a sin against the Void. Your best use would be to retreat, to conserve yourselves for a useful function. Otherwise, you’re simply casting away the resources of the Void on worthless trifles. This is a failure of your mission.”

The mantises froze, waiting. The eyes blazed, then dimmed, then strobed in a strange, uneven flickering pattern.

“This is…your words…purpose…function-” The voice started to babble, its volume and pitch wobbling up and down as it spoke. “You are strange. You speak with the voice of the void, but your words are poison. False prophet. Unclean thing. Heretic. Heretic. HERETIC!”

Their eyes shifted from blue to blood red, blazing to life as they threw back their heads and SCREAMED the last word. I guess they did have mouths.

Callie cursed, spreading her wings, and flames leapt to her hands. She clapped them together and there was an explosion of heretic fire, rippling out in waves. I didn’t understand what she was doing until I looked closely and saw the invisible warping in the air as their screech met the flames. They had used some kind of sonic Void attack.

“Kellan,” I roared. “Position!” I stepped back as our defenders surged forward, erecting their shieldwall in front of us. We retreated and they formed a circle around us, with the second wave making a line directly behind them.  “Dayna, Whisper, arrow barrage.”

Our archers drew, firing like rainfall as the mantis army poured out of the trees around us. We were in the center of the circle of defenders. I grimaced, then turned to my sister. “Chelsea, think you could use your diagram to buff our archers?” I pointed at the mantises nearby, who had arrows sticking out of them, but only vaguely. They weren’t penetrating deep.

She nodded grimly. “I got it.” She closed her eyes, and her yin yang diagram appeared above us rotating slowly. I reached for Mephistopheles, emitting my destructive flame as Callie poured out her own. Gabe unleashed the Adamant, and Abewl’s infinite blood sea poured up into the spinning symbol. The forces all began to meld and condense, like they were being slowly ground together into a purer form of strength.

As the diagram expanded, the archers fell under its influence, and as we watched, their eyes began to burn with a strange greyish misty flame.

A lot of people underestimated my sister. Given my nonsense and Bethy’s craziness and Abel’s talent, Chelsea wasn’t always the standout in our group. But there was a REASON my parents had split up to protect us when she manifested her abilities. My grandfather was a demigod, a disciple of the Revenant himself, and Enshrining Darkness spoke for itself.

Her abilities were naturally antithetical, but both absurdly powerful, and the artistic conception of her current Path didn’t just SOLVE those problems, it capitalized on them. Rather than an explosion, her diagram created a strange force that consumed and coopted. The corruption of Enshrining Darkness and the purification of her flame allowed her to overtake and then cleanse any any energy, perfectly supplementing the concept of the diagram.

Chelsea wasn’t the first person to use that symbol, I’d checked, but she WAS the first person to form it with both a divine and semi divine inherited ability. It wasn’t even POSSIBLE to attain that level of complex ability at our level without being born with it, and Chelsea had been born with TWO.

Her grasp on combat had never been particularly high, but my sister’s potential surpassed every single person in our group, even Bethy. Chelsea was, unequivocally, a natural born monster, and she was finally showing the world what that meant.

With a half dozen twangs, bow strings snapped, and grey flamed arrows exploded out into the crowd of mantis warriors, tearing into their chitinous bodies like boiling water poured on cotton candy. Chelsea wasn’t done though. She growled darkly and the diagram churned out further, covering our entire circle. Kellan and his defenders had been taking a hell of a beating, but suddenly, they were infused with the powers of our core group. Bethy’s domain spilled out, augmenting Abel’s blood sea, and it infused their bodies, boosting them even more.

Whirling his door sword up to catch the hilt, Kellan roared, sweeping it before him like a wheat thresher, cutting down multiple mantises in a masterful melee of machine like massacre mentality.

The mantises, seeing the way the wind was blowing, leapt back up onto the branches, their numbers thinned to no more than a dozen. “HERETIC!” They shrieked in unison. “You will know no peace. No succor. You will be hunted and butchered like an animal. You are an affront to the sacred silence. An abomination against the Void. Your existence will not be tolerated! You wil-”

A head exploded under my staff. In fact. A dozen heads exploded under a dozen staves. All mine, all merciless. Twelve clones stood on twelve branches, staring coldly down at the toppling bodies of the mantis things.

“Nobody,” I said as I let Beelzebub fade and stepped lightly off the branch I had appeared on through Double Trouble. “Threatens my wife.”

I turned to my friends. “Now, understanding that we might have been able to question them to discover more details about what we might face moving forward, does anyone have any problems with how that was handled?” No one said anything. I stepped over the corpse that had landed just in front of where I’d stepped down. “Lovely, then why don’t we move on.”

I strolled back over, taking my place in the formation as it spread back out into its previous arrow shape. I put an arm around Callie’s shoulder, and she leaned her head against me. I could feel her relief, her fear, her gratitude, and even a little bit of annoyance all mixed together. I smiled. Callie wasn’t a shrinking violet. Part of her was irritated I’d stepped forward. But she also knew that was petty, because this was a big deal, and accepting help from family when you’re in trouble isn’t exactly shameful.

Sending my amusement and smugness, she pouted up at me, poking me in the ribs lightly with an elbow, just enough to be noticeable and let me know she wasn’t amused.

Benny stepped up next to us, whistling. “Damn, Shane. You just fucking crushed their heads like watermelons. How’d you know that would work?”

I blinked at him. “How did I know decapitation would kill them? I kills most things.”

“I mean, they’re bugs,” he pointed out. “Not to mention a hivemind. Honestly you had no reason to assume- OW!” He yelped, his ankle turning as he “accidentally” stepped in a randow sinkhole the size of a dinner plate full of nearly frictionless dust. He glared at me as Celine stepped up to help him out of it.

She gave him a reproachful shake of the head. “Honestly, do you have to ruin their moment? Serves you right.”

“How is this MY fault?” he whined as he pretended to limp forward on his bum anjle (it was fine, he was a D-ranker). “I was just pointing out the assumptions he made-” he tripped, sprawling face forward as ANOTHER mysterious pothole opened up under his foot.

My wife giggled, and I saw Benny wink at me surreptitiously, forcing me to smother a laugh. I knew my friend wasn’t a complete idiot.

Sadly, the amusement was short lived. “With them dead, will the Void know about you?” I asked worriedly. “Because I didn’t think this was going to turn into a target on your back. The heretic flame-”

“Is made to consume and nullify the Void,” she said gently. “Once it merges with my Path, it shouldn’t be as overtly offensive to them. But until I hit the peak of D-rank, it’s going to be a potential problem. That particular swarm appears to be gone, but whoever is managing this Shallow will probably notice if I use my flame in front of them. We need to be prepared.”

I grimaced, but I knew she was right. Unfortunately, that was probably going to be an issue of sooner rather than later, because the trees around us had changed, shifting to a much more ominous looking treeline of twisted black trunks without leaves. Whatever was coming, it wasn’t going to be pleasant. I tightened my arm around Callie, subconsciously putting myself in front of her as much as possible. We had no time to prep, and I was betting whoever we were heading for would notice my wife. If they did, they’d meet the same fate as those mantises. I wouldn’t even hesitate.