Wish upon the Stars chapter 865

We arrived at the doors to the exit chamber about forty minutes later. We kept having to move along the hallway to do our calculations because the energy flows were pushing us, but apparently Skartaris had decided to be sneaky and ended up shooting himself in the foot, because the progress was very gradual.

When we reached the entrance, Crell stopped us. “Everyone knows their places?” He asked quietly. “C-rankers up front, along with the ten strongest D-rankers, and the rest of you bringing up the rear. Invocations where you can do them, otherwise just look for ways to help.

After a nod, he stepped forward and slammed his hands into the doors, blowing them open as we all marched into…a garden.

I’d been expecting something ragged or untamed. He’d said the exit was in a courtyard, but I’d figured it would be something like the portal to the undersea city. This was just a pleasant gren meadow with water features and stones all over it. I could see fish in ponds, dizzying colorful flower arrays, and even some pleasant garden furniture, including dozens of tables with people sitting at them.

The exit itself was just a hole in reality, but rather than a jagged rent, it was a neatly cut black doorway with a well made teak frame. The frame was carved with murals of happy woodland creatures frolicking and playing, and I had to focus hard to see the enchantments in the carvings.

Next to the doorway was a small round table, a glass pane laid on top of a curlicued iron frame, with a small plate of finger sandwiches and a fragile looking teapot.

It looked like a garden party, more than anything, a bunch of fancy dressed C-rankers with ballgowns and suits and bowler hats. When we entered, a stylish young man with the kind of messy, devil may care hairdo that made it clear someone had spent at LEAST an hour styling it when he got out of bed this morning, stood and spread his arms wide.

“Crell!” said the dark haired young man brightly. “You made it! I was so worried, you were supposed to be here ages ago.”

Skartaris the Weeper was…not what I was expecting. FIrstly, he was young. Like…my age physically. He had a boyish face and a wide smile, and the only reason I knew who I was looking at was the blindfold tied over his eyes, and the dark tracks tattooed down his cheeks.

His clothes were unusual, a black silk shirt and white silk tie, worn under a purple velvet waistcoat. A black bowler hat perched on his head jauntily had a single white strip of silk above the brim that matched the tie, and a white silk kerchief poked nearly out of the breast pocket of the coat, with the only other obvious accoutrement aside from a chain that I was pretty sure connected to a pocket watch being a black wood cane with an ornate silver pommel.

The head of the cane was engraved with a series of complicated diagrams and models that I recognized as completing several of the formations Chelsea had pointed out. Formation masters sometimes anchored formations to physical objects that could be moved, making it easier to manipulate the energy flows. These were called “anchors” and were complicated to deal with.

We’d figured he might have one, but had really hoped he wouldn’t. It was going to make this much harder to handle.

Formations were big and terrifying, but inherently difficult to manipulate because of their scale. Anchors created  a small formation inside the big formation, and manipulating the anchor manipulated that, which moved the bigger one. It was a bit like clockwork, and was extremely complicated. It reminded me a bit of witchcraft with extra steps.

Crell smiled insolently at his former boss. “Sorry, Got held up plotting your inevitable doom.”

“Oh, I think my doom is extremely evitable,” Skartaris chuckled. “But by all means, lay your cards out. If you haven’t realized you’ve been outmaneuvered yet, one of us is much less intelligent than they think they are. I hope it isn’t me.”

Crell sighed, looking past the smiling man to the surprisingly delicate looking red haired woman sitting behind him, sipping tea daintily from a china tea cup. She was wearing a red silk tunic and leggings, and had a long sword belted to her hip. I might have ignored her, not seeing a difference to the rest of the people here, but she felt…sharp. Her aura was just different. It reminded me of the way Abel got in fights. Like his Path was leaking into the world around him. Except this wasn’t bloody or gleeful. It was just sharp metal.

“Alanna,” the tower master said with a sigh. “You’re really taking his side? You know we can leave, right? We have a way out. If you stay, the void will come, and this place will be miserable.”

She shrugged. “Can’t practice cutting without vegetables. I just want to train in peace, Crell. Outside is too messy. Too many big fish looking to snap up talented Ascendants for one reason or another. That’s always been your problem. You aim too high. We were kings here, why rock the boat?”

“We are NOT kings,” he snapped, eyes flashing. “We are PETS. He puts us in fancy collars and feeds us better scraps, but we’re still DOGS Lana. Maybe you’re content to live like that, but I’m not. I never have been.”

Skartaris clicked his tongue. “So this is what you really think of me, old friend? A despot. A tyrant. Someone who holds your leash?”

“Don’t play the victim with me,” spat Crell. “Don’t forget who you confided in during your moments of weakness. Who you shared your paranoia and doubt with. How many times did you plot Alanna’s murder? How close did you get to giving that order before I talked you down. Or Carmine’s. Hell, or MINE. I wasn’t there for those, I imagine, but knowing you it happened more than once.”

The blindfolded man shrugged. “I’ve made mistakes. Had moments of weakness. But it was all for this. All to accomplish this goal. For all of us, Crell, not just the few I like best. Can you really justify what you’re doing? Abandoning all these people you’ve spent years claiming to want to save?”

It was strange. With Dantalion active, and studying the area as I was, I could see the energy flows. Not just the formations, but the shift of the power in the room. The inherent Impact in the world being…moved was the wrong word. The flows didn’t CHANGE the Impact. More like…stained. Like something was seeping through them, changing the color in a way I couldn’t describe.

That was what I’d been seeing before. Not really moving energy, but something moving behind the energy, causing it to move in response. Like someone tracing the back of a sheet of paper with a marker, drawing designs I could see through the page.

But what was staggering was that given the detail of the energy layout in the room, I could see the subtler things against the backdrop. I could see them both fighting.

Doubt was a sort of confusing mist made of shimmers, pouring off Crell and rolling over the crowd. Skartaris, to my surprise, had something coming off him too, not directly, but seeping through the power flows nearby, shaped by the formations. Some kind of persuasion formation maybe?

The fight was already happening, Crell was trying to chip away at Skartaris’s influence, undermine his position, and Skartaris was trying to steal legitimacy from the tower master, to make him seem pathetic and useless. An upstart he could magnanimously pardon if he got in line.

I didn’t worry about that. I was thinking, planning, and analyzing. Dantalion was stockpiling information, collating with the blueprints and running it all through the Ten Demons Tree, tapping into the Wisdom of Solomon.

I didn’t have much of that left, after Callie’s upgrade, but I didn’t need much. I just needed to run some permutations of possible breaks in the formations that Chelsea had proposed. She didn’t have time to figure out what the responses would be, but standing in the room perceiving the energy flows myself, with a full diagram of the surrounding area and blueprints for all but the VERY center of the formations, I was basically just solving a math problem. And that, I could do.

The two of them argued, sniping and riposting, and I could see the surrounding watchers shift back and forth. As they spoke, portions of the crowd with sort of…change color, according to who they were being influenced by. It was surprisingly even, but Skartaris was slowly pushing Crell down, suppressing him with overwhelming momentum as he surrounded us with the energy he was channeling through the formation.

I watched, I waited, I calculated. And then, after about three minutes, I casually lifted a hand and pointed to one side, locking eyes with Carmichael as I did.

The big man MOVED, his whole body pivoting, twisting in on himself like a spring uncoiling, and his fist smashed out, a massive manifestation appearing above him, the illusory fist slamming into the empty air.

There was a slight cracking sound, and Skartaris staggered, and I bellowed, “NOW!” And all hell broke loose.

Argaunt drew and fired, his arrow striking empty space, while Delilah flicked her fingers, bringing shadow to life in a demonic waltz as dark forms lifted from the ground, mirror images of the guests, and launched themselves at the people who sat at the tables.

All around us, the other fifty plus C-rankers took advantage of the lull from the surprise attack to unleash hell, and Skartaris’s troops rose to meet them, shedding their affable garden part disguises as they howled in depraved glee, weapons and despicable energy being unleashed towards us in a wave.

The two forces slammed into each other and cancelled out, and as they did, I triggered Limbo, keeping Dantalion active. I could see dark forms covering the battlefield, possible futures of all of our people. But unlike in the past, I’d learned more about what my forms could really do. Belial didn’t just erode, it could corrupt and control, and while that would be impossible to manage on a C-ranker normally, this wasn’t normal circumstances.

I triggered the ability the Ten Demons Tree had only recently developed, elevating one of my forms, and used it on Belial, even as I used it to take control of our side of the battlefield. Our people knew what I was planning so they didn’t fight, and suddenly I was wielding fifty new weapons, destroying possible futures as I manipulated the battlefield like a chess board.

Skartaris had been planning the same thing, I could see PEOPLE integrated into the formations, being maneuvered by his anchor, and I cursed, whirling my staff to direct my own forces, smashing into his will through the otherworldly collision of our two distinct abilities.

Carmichael punched again, but it was intercepted by a sword image that neatly bisected the space above us, and Crell stepped up to help only to be attacked by a colossal man with a brutish face that I was pretty sure was Waylon Dreft, the Dragon Ant. Carmine jumped in to help, but I had to reposition him to counter an ice based C-ranker, and the whole fight just devolved. It got more and more chaotic, and I was barely able to keep up with Callie’s help.

That was fine, I had planned this out, and I was just holding him still, getting ready to break the deadlock. My friends were building up power, working with the other D-rankers to create an invocation that would reinforce the massive combination attack we’d used in the sea. Once it was ready, the tide would shift, and I just needed to be prepared.