Wish upon the Stars chapter 887

“So, this is going to be a bit tougher than expected,” I told my friends as we came to a stop in the middle of the plains. I had us under Murmur, so we weren’t exposed, and it was safe enough to stop to plan our approach. There were a LOT of people ahead of us. “Belsara, any information on who we’re dealing with?”

My new ally frowned, squinting into the distance. Her aide, Jessa, a tall blonde woman with strong features and piercing blue eyes, reached into a pouch, passing her a small brass telescope. It was pretty old school, but I could see the enchantment script flowing across the side. Not a variation that I’d come across before, but very dense. Whatever that thing did, it was more than just make things look bigger.

Belsara put it to her eye, watching carefully for a minute or two, then sighed. “I don’t recognize a lot of them. I’m guessing there are a few groups from the C-rank candidate factions, maybe even one or two from a B-ranker’s retinue. I DO recognize Andros, Veslia, and Best. Two from the Orphan branches, though not the same as me, and one from Percival’s branch.”

Animal hummed with interest. “This trial isn’t as simple as it looks. The spheres are in the caves. Most of the newcomers will probably drop down and head for Yettin through the lower cave entrances, but there are caves on both sides. The ones on this side will probably be skipped. If we can access them from out here, we can bypass the crowd, benefit from the free space, and then make it to the other side in time to sweep up the tired remnants of anyone who is still down there.”

“Damn it,” Benny sighed. “We’re going underground again? I hate when we have to go underground. Remember that creepy underground lich castle in the scavenger hunt back home? I still have nightmares about that place.”

“You didn’t even have to go IN,” I protested. “If anyone should have nightmares it should be me or Callie.”

After bickering for a minute, I sent Archie out to scout. My companion trilled cheerfully as he swept off into the air, but I watched him carefully in case someone took a shot at him after he left the Murmur Domain. Once he was up and out far enough, I connected our vision. After a minute or two, I found a small valley not far away.

The valley was in the middle of a small copse of trees (there were several of them spattering the plains) and the shrubbery camouflaged the entrance so thoroughly even Archie’s amazing vision barely caught it.

He returned quickly, swooping down to perch on my upraised arm. “Found a small valley nearby. We can look for an entrance to the cave system there, and if there isn’t one, we can make it.”

“Make it?” Animal said curiously. “I realize there isn’t much rock out here, but this is still a higher planet. Even if you have some kind of digging ability, it’ll burn through your energy faster than normal to get through even loose dirt.”

I grinned at him. “I can handle a little dirt. Don’t worry about that. Though it would be better if there’s a natural entrance there. I’ll scope everything out when we arrive.” We made good time to the valley, and I was surprised how deep and spacious it was. The thing was barely visible from the surface, with only an aerial view giving me a small glimpse, but once we entered the copse of trees and pushed through the thick underbrush, we exited into a totally hidden crevasse, a nearly horizontal shaft of space leading down and in, with a canopy of plantlife interspersed with tree roots cutting it off from the sky.

Once we got inside, I let Murmur drop, focusing instead on using my staff to push Dantalion to C-rank so I could scan the nearby surroundings. Dantalion had all my Perception skills worked into it. Song of the Soil was included in the form, and being pushed to C-rank let me penetrate the ground with that subskill easily enough.

My Perception spread into the ground, sinking through the dirt like water as it extended around us. I turned, walking through the crevasse until I reached the far edge. Callie followed me over. “There an entrance there?” She asked quietly.

I shook my head. “Not exactly. There’s an offshoot of a longer distance cave system running beneath the valley, but it’s not connected. About fifty feet down. I can make a tunnel. Just back everyone off.

She did, and I cracked my neck as I prepared to do some excavation. Triggering Agares, I pressed my staff against the ground, channeling my Dust Construction based form into the dirt. It took me a minute to permeate the high level ground, but it WAS just loose soil. With a grunt of effort, I dissolved it all into dust, and then started the process of compacting and condensing the dust into a fifty foot tunnel complete with staircase.

It took about ten minutes, but I got it finished, and then gestured for the others to follow me down. “Not bad,” Animal said as he joined Callie, Abel, Bethy, and my sister at the front with me. “That must come in handy.”

“You have no idea,” I confirmed. Our shoes hissed slightly as we walked across the hard black stone, green acidic veins running through it to strengthen the material. “Now, anyone here have scouting abilities? Because I don’t have time to scan every tunnel one by one, and Beelzebub would take too long.”

My wife snorted. “It’s like you completely forget what I can,” she bumped me to the side with a playful swing of her hip, strutting forward to kneel down and touch the shadows at the corner of a nearby wall.

Her hand sinks in and I see her eyes fade to black as it does. I blink in surprise, because I didn’t remember if that had happened before. Was it a side effect of her new Solid Path? I sent a quick pulse through the bond, and just to make sure I was comfortable, she tapped into her heretic flame. Her eyes, previously pitch black orbs, flared to life with a ring of blue fire, creating a flaming iris within the darkness out of nowhere.

Before I could ask, I felt a surge through the bond, and a parallel was created through Piece of Mind. She connected it to the bond directly, and I was suddenly looking through the shadows in a dozen places, eyes scanning the area from a point of view beyond human limitations, even MY human limitations.

Sure enough, we found one, two…nine golden spheres. Unfortunately, we also found several other parties of people and…other things. “Fuck,” I spat softly. “Kobolds. They’re the dragon ones.”

Kobolds, as I knew from earlier research, came in two flavors. Draconic kobolds were a humanoid lizard people similar to goblins. As Animal had mentioned, they ate humans, and each other, and small rocks or piles of dirt. Kobolds were omnivorous, but they had a special affinity for anything shiny. I glanced back at my group, most of whom wore some kind of armor and many of whom glowed in some fashion from some kind of power expression when active. I sighed.

Callie looked distracted but distressed, her face a mask of distant discomfort. “Warbands. And several of them. There’s probably a city down here somewhere. Must be deep if Yettin hasn’t run into them. Wonder why that didn’t come up in the recon?” I held up a hand, kneeling to push Dantalion into the earth. Rather than spread out, I pushed my sphere of perception into more of a cone, the point starting at my hand, and extended it as deep as I could searching for any kind of settlement. I came up with nothing. Shaking my head, I stood back up.

“If I had to guess, it’s the spheres,” I said sourly. “The organizers must have known. Why else use gold as a points marker. And make us carry them across the chasm personally. We’re basically walking bait. No way to estimate population either, because I didn’t pick anything up with Dantalion, so the city is LOW down.”

Sighing, I just shook off the concerns that were now slowly bubbling up. “Doesn’t matter, we ignore it. Nearest sphere is about two miles that way,” I pointed to the southeast. “And probably a mile down. Bethy, do me a favor and find us a route.”

She brightened. “Wait, really?” At my nod, she squealed with excitement and then exploded into a cloud of bats. The bats scattered, chittering happily, and we all waited in the tunnel for about two minutes. After that, the bats came roaring back, condensing into Bethy’s excitable form as they gathered. “Ok, I got it, this way!”

With a flash of movement, she blurred off down the tunnel, and we followed after her as best we could. She wasn’t exactly slow, but with Dantalion it was easy enough to track her passage, so we made decent time behind her.

We emerged into a massive chamber covered in complicated symbols, all of us stopping at the edge of what appeared to be a perfectly clear moat. In the center of the moat was a pedestal, and on the other side, staring at us hungrily, were a large crowd of very small lizard people salivating as they stared at our group.

Between my faction and Belsaras we were up to three hundred and fifty people, and they had easily five times that number. Some of them carried strange weapons or wore bones or body parts pinned to their clothing. Their armor was meticulously crafted and incredibly delicate, which made both the adornments and the creepy scenes of screaming victims engraved on them very disturbing to look at.

‘Warband,” I commented to my wife lightly. “Now I get it. Any chance they’re NOT going to try to murder us to get that thing?”

“Nope,” she said without taking her eyes off the leader, a tiny purple kobold in luxurious silk robes wearing a scarf of what I was unfortunately sure were human intestines. Lungs hung from the neckwear, and they inflated and deflated in time with someone’s breath, though disturbingly NOT the breath of the kobold wearing them.

I paused for a second, then shrugged. “Archers!” I called loudly. “Take them out! Defenders, split up and take up positions on the bank of the moats.” Before I even finished talking, my people deployed, getting into position, and I turned to Bethy. “Get me that sphere,” I told her bluntly.

Nodding excitedly, Bethy exploded into a cloud of mist, even as arrows began to rain down on the huge army adjacent to us. To escape, they split up, and as expected, hugged the shore of the circular moat in two waves as they flooded toward us. They slammed into the two shield battalions and stopped cold, but after we stalled the initial wave, the rest of them just kept coming, trampling their comrades and climbing over them to get into the middle of my people.

Cursing, I triggered Agares, creating a thin film of dust over the hard ground that I could use to move my people easily. I pulled us all together, then lifted, creating a platform that allowed our shield legion to fully encircle our force. With the ability to stand shoulder to shoulder and reinforce, we stalled them again, but I saw even more of them spill into the cavern from the cave mouth on the other side.

Snarling, I threw out a hand, tapped into my staff, and ignoring the pain from forcing it to do this twice, used the elevation function to push Wrath to C-rank. A lake of burning toxic dust expanded beneath the army and they started to fall in, screaming and scrambling atop each other to get away. I thought things were turning around, until a deep voice boomed. “FOOLS!”

The purple kobold in the robes had hung back, and it lifted its staff, calling to some sort of…spirit. A massive draconic skull image manifested in the air above it, and a crushing force slammed down across the entire cavern. Wrath was forcibly cancelled, and I glared at the wizard kobold. Apparently this wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d hoped. Oh well, game on.