Wish upon the Stars chapter 891

The first hint that something was wrong wasn’t an attack. We were waiting for that, but it never came. We walked for about ten minutes, taking turns along the path, and we passed a small pond with a bright orange fish in it. We avoided it, continuing our trek, and ten minutes later…we passed a small pond with a bright orange fish in it.

We passed it again ten minutes later, and the THIRD time, we finally stopped and stared at the thing in aggravation. “So…this is the same pond.” I said after a minute of uncomfortable shuffling.

Callie nodded. “Yup, we’re in some kind of recursive loop. Now that I’m looking for it, I can feel the shadows. They’re all the same.”

I hadn’t known she could do that. Which worried me. Because while I might have missed it, it was equally likely she COULDN’T do it before now. Which meant her Path was getting stronger. That was not encouraging, considering what had just happened with it.

She noticed my worried gaze, probably through the bond, and shot me a reassuring smile. Her eyes flared once, a wave of blue black fire rolling out from her pupils, and I relaxed a bit. She was on guard now, and she knew to be careful. If she needed help, she could pull on me through the bond, and I had Leviathan ready to supercharge her soul defense.

“So,” I asked my sister with a sigh. “I don’t suppose this was on the formation palms?”

She shook her head. “Nope. Which means either someone in here is adjusting it on the fly, or much WORSE, we accidentally did it when we changed the layout.”

“Why is that worse?” I asked skeptically.

“Because formations are not mad science,” she said in a somber tone. “If we adjusted this one by accident, we could have accidentally induced ANY kind of effect. And formations aren’t made to function like that. It’s like rewiring a device with the wrong wires. It might work for a bit, but the wires will wear out, maybe wear through, and possibly catch fire. If we accidentally jailbroke this formation, it could be a ticking time bomb.”

Cursing, I closed my eyes, focusing on Dantalion, and tried my best to pick up information. While I did that, I triggered a parallel to continue the conversation. “So, what are the chances that’s what’s happened here?”

“Not good,” she assured me. “Formations are very specific types of structures. Accidentally jailbreaking one would be like knocking over a sculpture made of dominos and accidentally having them all bounce off the ground and land perfectly in position to construct a DIFFERENT sculpture right next to it. Possible but VERY unlikely.”

I sighed. “Great, so we’re probably just trapped in here with a hostile maniac who can alter the formation while we’re still inside it. Joy.”

“To an extent,” she said with a waggle of her hand. “The formation is the Shallowing. Any serious alterations risk destabilizing the whole thing and shunting us all into the Void. Which would shunt THEM into the Void. Which means while they CAN mess with the structure, they have to do it within fault tolerance.” She grinned at me. “I’ve sent the last five months doing research on formations, and I’ve learned quite a bit.”

“Convenient,” I laughed. “You happen to learn how we get through this?”

She nodded. “Like I said. Fault tolerances. Think of formations like circuits. The circuit is set up ahead of time, then energy is run through it. Naturally formed, handmade, it doesn’t matter. Once the energy is flowing through the formation, it has to stay close enough to its original form that the circulation doesn’t break, otherwise the whole thing can collapse.

“You can build in redundancies that will allow more alterations later, but those don’t show up in natural formations almost ever.” She looked around with a frown. “This might not BE natural, mind, hard to tell. But regardless, based on the layout I saw there weren’t many redundancies. Which means a change like this has to be small and subtle. More importantly, it means they had to PULL that energy from somewhere to funnel it here.”

I grinned at her, finally getting the idea. “You think they made a weak spot. Rerouted the energy from the formation to trap us and left a hole we can use.”

That got a smug grin from my sister. “Yup. Think you can help find it?”

“I can,” I said cheerfully. “But sitting here waiting for Dantalion sounds like a waste. Bethy, help me out here. I need to check for distortions. Help me check how this whole loop is working, will you?”

The Vampire beamed. “Yes! I can do that! Check it out, I’m super fast.” Then she blurred, vanishing off into the trees.

“You think she knew you meant you needed to test ALL the possible passages?” Callie said with a chuckle. “Because honestly, I give even odds she was just so excited she didn’t care and ran off anyway.”

Bethy came barrelling through the trees, appearing in front of us. “Oh my gods!” She gasped. “Guys, you’re here! Did you know there are clones of you back there? They were pretending to be trapped in a space loop, but I saw through it and escaped!” She looked over her shoulder quickly, seeming to relax when she saw nothing.

I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Bethy, just…tell me what you saw.”

“Trees,” she said immediately. “And then a pond. And then you. And then trees again.”

Rolling my eyes, I gestured around us. “I’m trying to use Dantalion to scan this place. In order to do that I need points of contact. I want you to turn into mist and permeate the area, which will give me a better chance at picking something up.”

She nodded slowly. “Ooooh, ok. That sounds like it might work. You sure I can’t be cats again? That was fun.”

“You can be cats later,” I assured her. “For now I need fog, and preferably a lot of it.”

She gave me a serious nod, then transformed into a torrent of mist, spreading out over the nearby area, rolling across the pond surface and around the base of the trees. Closing my eyes, I focused. Dantalion scanned everything, every inch of the nearby area. It was actually kind of painful once I pushed it a bit, because when it hit the edges of the loop the scan folded up over itself and I started getting spots where the overlap caused weird feedback.

I ignored the pain, but focused on the feedback. Bethy, in her fog form, provided a sort of neutral backdrop. She was WAY too complex for me to scan easily, and it would have taken weeks of constant study to make any progress understanding her, so I was able to just ignore that information and focus on what I needed to know.

Slowly, I traced the feedback spots, finding small patterns in the formation’s energy flows. I couldn’t do much with them, but I was able to transmit them to Callie, who manifested them out of shadow for Chelsea to study.

Within five minutes my sister hopped up from where she was sitting with a cheer. She stalked across the clearing, stopped in front of some random tree, and then kicked it in the base of the trunk sharply. There was a sort of groaning wheeze and the forest around us flickered, literally blinked out of existence, replaced by a very similar but slightly different forest with a pleasant looking path leading further into the woods.

Bethy was staring at my sister in awe. “Wow, you just hit it and it broke. Do you think they can fix it by turning it off and back on again?”

“That’s a high level engineering skill,” Benny said solemnly. “It shouldn’t be used recklessly. But if it doesn’t work you can always try cleaning it out with an air compressor. That fixes almost any problem. Pretty sure I saw Sebastian cleanse a possessed zombie that way.”

“Can we go,” I huffed. “Before they manage to do something ELSE to stop us?”

Benny snickered, and we all lined up behind the defensive perimeter, taking up our positions in the formation. I was standing behind a towering man with bronze skin and copper eyes, his hair twisted into long braids and a neatly trimmed goatee. He was wearing blood red plate armor that shone like quicksilver and carrying a door shaped shield with a handle on top that disappeared into the body of the weapon and was revealed in two places midway down, one for a grip halfway and the other a quarter of the way down to see through.

“Kellan,” I greeted him as we resumed our trek. “Sorry you got stuck babysitting me.”

My wife had insisted that the strongest member of the defensive team be in position to defend me as we moved forward. Which would have been fine, except she also insisted I be on the left wing of the formation instead of front an center. Kellan was our tankiest fighter and should have realistically been the tip of the spear, so I felt a bit bad for the bigger man (a full seven feet tall).

He just shrugged, not turning around. “Happens,” he said in a surprisingly soft voice for such a big man. “You’re the boss, so keeping you alive is only natural. My brother told me to watch out for you anyway. Drayce never would have gotten out of that dungeon without your scroll, at least not without lots of fighting with those voidspawn. You did us a big favor.”

I just shrugged. They were working for me, so it wasn’t like I hadn’t been paid. Kellan and his brother Drayce were followers of the Lady. The Lady’s people had the most durable defensive warriors among all the vanished god factions, which wasn’t a surprise. I tended to get along with the Lady’s followers better than any of the others, given my own training with her people, and I was more than comfortable trusting Kellan with my back. Or, in this case, my front, since he was taking the lead.

We chatted for a while, distracting ourselves from the trip, but I maintained Dantalion, ready and waiting for anything to change. So when my Danger Sense triggered, I knew exactly what had caused it almost immediately, and I called out quickly for everyone to stop.

In front of us, along the path, was a long strip of high wheat stalks, swaying gently in the breeze. It was peaceful and serene, but I could sense something moving through the stalks, something low to the ground and fast, skittering back and forth among the wheat. I squinted into the field, which looked off bookended by rows of trees. The dryads had moved them out of the way of this path, and hadn’t mentioned the wheat, which meant it was probably new.

I considered who to send up to fix this…but then I realized I didn’t need to send anyone. I pushed through my people, Kellan the only one ranging ahead to cover me, and stood in front of the wheat. I rapped my staff on the ground and triggered Wrath.

A wave of burning ash spread from in front of me, consuming the wheat. There was a scream of outrage and a series of black shapes flew up and back, retreating from the what field and landing on tree branches nearby, glaring down at us.

Praying mantises. Mantii? Stabby bugs. They were big black stabby bugs covered in obsidian chitin. Their eyes glowed an eerie grey blue, and I could feel a sense of despair come off them that reminded me of the mist back in the dungeon. Void creatures. They hissed menacingly, and at the sound, a series of chittering screeches came from around us. Leaves rustled as about a hundred of the things skittered out of cover, revealing themselves as the emerged onto the branches in malicious expectation. Fuck. I hated bugs.