Wish upon the Stars chapter 866

It felt like it went on for eternity. The moments dragged, somehow spawning from between each other, stretching seconds into minutes. The staff was starting to flag, I’d asked too much of it too quickly. But I had to keep going, had to hold it just a bit longer.

This was the plan. It was all on Crell, really. His power was the fulcrum on which we were balancing this entire raid.

We’d talked about it while we worked on the formation diagrams, helping Chelsea sort them all out, and I’d also been analyzing it with Dantalion. He’d been right next to me, and he used it reflexively pretty frequently. Nothing crazy, but just little things, smoothing over conversation, redirecting attention. He sowed doubt like most people breathed.

But beyond that fact, I’d learned something else. Much like my Wish power, Doubt was a support ability. It depended on the person using it. How convincing, how cunning, how tricky. But most of all, it depended on momentum, on the situation, and on opportunity.

People will believe almost anything if they see it with their own eyes. That kind of bias makes conning others difficult for a lot of people, because when you can’t show someone evidence, they just write anything you say off. But conversely, if someone DOES see evidence of something, even if that thing is absurd, even if it CAN’T be true, they have to believe it.

It’s a factor of control. Admitting you can’t trust your own senses is abandoning all control over a situation, and it’s something most people can’t abide. Complete surrender to the circumstances is anathema to almost anyone, but especially to the powerful.

Which was what this whole plan hinged on. Crell couldn’t counter that formation. He didn’t have the ability. He could lie, cheat, and scheme, he could manipulate and bamboozle. He could make people’s powers outright fail if he could make them believe it, but he couldn’t just point to a powerful formation that Skartaris had built himself and tell him it wouldn’t work.

Part of that was knowledge. Understanding made sowing doubt easier, a little knowledge was a dangerous thing, and that could be a sort of evidence itself. But part of it was the fact that Skartaris BELIEVED in that formation. He’d poured his blood, sweat and tears into it (no pun intended), and he was sure it worked. There was no room for doubt, no space for negotiation. The formation worked, and that was a fact. I bet he’d refined and perfected it for YEARS to make sure of it.

So Crell couldn’t counter the formation. Skartaris knew it. I knew it. Crell knew it. But the formation was BEING countered. Skartaris was watching it happen. He didn’t know who was doing it, had no context for my ability to make it happen. He was currently fighting Crell, and his formation was being countered.

This was fact. It was proven. And he couldn’t dispute it. And so he started having doubts.

It took a few minutes. Almost so long the staff’s rank up charge gave out. It was subtle at first. That silvery mist that represented Crell’s powers started to infiltrate my pawns. Sliding through them, over them, beginning to merge with the corruption influencing them. It subsumed and overtook my Limbo domain, and I let it. I started to pull it back, to let it recede slowly, pulling my power away an inch at a time, leaving only the doubt.

But it didn’t matter. Skartaris had faltered. He’d let it creep in, and now Crell had something better than power. He had LEVERAGE.

I gasped, stumbling back, and Callie caught me, helping to steady my armored form far easily than one might expect from someone her size. That new racial trait gave her flat modifiers for her Might, and it made her MUCH stronger than she should be with her stats. It was fantastic.

Archie trilled above me. He’d been circling, pouring green flame over our people, and now he landed on me, pulsing life nova fire to recharge my flagging energy. My soul was fine, given my Chronicle, but my physical body had been overworked by all the power running through it. I’d never used Limbo like that before, not combined with the new powers I’d dug out of Belial.

I glanced up above us. In the air, shimmering behind the plane of this world, I could see the energy of the formation, slowly being infected by Doubt. It was subtle, insidious, and terrifying. I had to tip my cap to Crell, he was a scary fucking guy.

More than that, it was beginning to become static. The energy flows slowed and congealed. The deadlock was holding the formation in place, making it solid, and that was exactly what we wanted. We had one chance at this. After studying the formation structure for a half an hour, my sister had essentially confirmed that no little trick she could manage would halt this beast.

She didn’t have the foundation in formations to counter a Legendary formation master. In the end, power was required. B-rank preferably, but that wasn’t doable, so we needed something C-rank, but with some extra kick.

Beyond even that, we needed to pin the damned thing in place. To make it a single solid target instead of a complicated web of moving pieces. That was how we’d gotten here.

Now that we had the formation pinned, and Crell was holding it, it was time for the REAL attack to begin. I closed my eyes, knelt down, and focused on the earth. And then, I called for a Behemoth.

An arm erupted from the ground first, as big as a bus, then the shoulders, along with the head. Wings exploded from the back, spreading behind the massive armored figure like the blazing sun behind and unstoppable charge. There was a ripple, and a Domain expanded, Bethy cloaking the hardened stone of Behemoth in her power, and space warped as Abel poured his infinite blood sea into its veins, supercharging the construct.

Unlike last time, the void seemed to see a threat. Space shuddered as…something congealed behind the world where the formation was sitting. But before it could attack, Callie flexed her will and flooded the construct with her own power.

Blue black flames poured into the green glowing cracks in the black rock spitting like an azure and onyx volcano. Something about the heretic flame caused the entire thing to become more solid. We were in a strange place, an in between state where the void met the real, and the heretic flame was of both in some ways.

It wasn’t just Callie though. Chelsea poured her Enshrining Darkness into the black rock, and it used the heretic flame to fuse into the stone, condensing and elevating it. The angels lent their own holy fire to the cause, and the blue black flickers in the cracks took on bronze and gold sparks.

The construct started to shake like it was going to explode. I grimaced, but there was still one more bit of power we needed. I glanced at Gabe, nodding, and he set his jaw, he held out a hand, and as he did, I put the last piece in place.

I’d had a few interesting new tricks come out of the staff. The temporary upgrade, the enhanced calculation time, but the biggest thing that had changed wasn’t the effects, but the staff itself. The image of that towering tree made it clearest, because it illustrated what trees did. Trees GROW.

I whipped my hand, and my staff snapped into a spin, arcing up into the air in a parabolic whirl as it flew up and forward. As it did, it started to shift, and expand. It was a tree, and trees are big. The C-rank reincarnation tree might have only been a sapling, but my B-rank Ten Demons Tree? It was mighty.

The body of the staff expanded, shooting out as it exploded in size, and the hand of the construct caught it out of the air mid spin, fingers snapping around it like an iron vise. I pushed my will, shoving the power of Mephistopheles into the construct itself, and I felt my Chronicle shake under the pressure of so MUCH power. I could barely hold it. I felt a hand in mine, and I looked down to find Callie staring up at me determinedly.

That soul pressure lessened, and I saw pain on her face. I turned aside from that, I could feel she’d be ok, but we needed to hurry.

“NOW!” I bellowed, the breath from my lungs smashing the air like a freight train as the sheer sound of my shout blew the space in front of me apart. Gabe clenched his fist, and the power of the Adamant, of the unyielding unstoppable force, gathered on the top of my staff as I drove it forward into the formation, powered by all my rage, my frustration, my worry, and my fear.

I HATED this fucking dungeon. I hated these people, who sold their own kind to monsters, I hated having to be here because my friends were in danger, and that they’d been put in danger by me.

There was so much rage, so much power and fury locked up inside me, and I used it. I used it all. And my friends echoed it. I could feel them, their fury crying it in counterpoint to mine. They wanted out, wanted to be free, wanted to go home. All of them. We were trapped here and this THING was all that stood in our way. And there was only one thing to do when something stood in the way of freedom.

I drove the staff forward like a descending comet, all the force of all of our power packed into it, and it hit the solidified formation with the power of a fucking rampaging supernova.

My staff, B-rank and implacable, struck the frozen formation behind the air, and the energy CRACKED. There was a shudder through the whole room, Skartaris SCREAMED, clutching his head as he vomited up blood, and he staggered backward, reeling from the pain of having this massive formation shatter while he was tied into it.

Crell had been waiting. He’d been advancing slowly, getting close, using lots of feints as he attacked with a sword cane that reminded me a lot of Skartaris’s (though with a hooked head). When the weeper grabbed his head, Crell didn’t even flinch. He sheathed the cane, flipped it so he could catch the bottom, and calm you please, hooked Skartaris’s ankle with the hook, pulling lightly.

Skartaris screamed again, this time less roaring pain and more squeak of shock, and then…he fell through the door. And he was gone.

Everything stopped. Everyone in the whole place froze, turning to stare in disbelief (and horror in some cases) at the exit doorway. Skartaris never came back. He never would. He was gone, a C-ranker without suppressing going through the void boundary. He was lost forever.

Slowly, inevitably, people started to drop their weapons. A few at first, but then more. With Skartaris gone, most of the remaining C-rankers would join Crell, and anyone still fighting would be mobbed. They all stared at him in mute terror, and then they began to fall to their knees, pressing their heads to the floor in a silent plea for mercy. Or a not silent one. A lot of them were literally pleading.

Crell twirled his cane between his fingers, strolled over to the chair Skartaris had vacated, and dropped into it casually, staring out at the rest of us smugly. “Alright lords and ladies, time to start the cleanup. We’re on a schedule, but it just got a bit less tight.” I just chuckled. Of course he was a sore winner. He seemed like the type. Well, he wasn’t wrong. Besides, some of these C-rankers were going to have to stay behind. Maybe I’d finally found a way to help the people we were leaving in here. I was out of wishes, but I could still write contracts. Time to do some business.