Wish upon the Stars chapter 860

The conclave took place in the bones of the tower. It was different than the other towers we’d been to. This was missing Veldran’s cute little complex, underneath this tower was something different. Emptiness. Miles and miles of it. 

We came down a small staircase into a colossal chamber. The roof was maybe three hundred feet above us, but we couldn’t see any of the walls, just darkness that seemed to stretch on for eternity. The roof was being held up by huge stone pillars, grey rock that matched the floors, equidistantly spaced, with all the light seemingly gathered in a single shaft in the center (I was pretty sure) of the room.

After descending the stairs, we moved forward into the shaft of light. Around us, dozens of figures sat obscured by oddly thick shadows. With our eyes, Perception being what it was D-rankers, they should have been entirely visible, but instead we just saw a bunch of vague shapes outside the light circle.

In the center of the light circle were two people. One was a tall, ghostly pale woman with pointed elfin ears and silver hair and eyes. Not silver as in grey. Silver as in silver. Like the metal. Her eyes resembled spheres of metal, with her hair looking like nothing so much as tinsel. It was shaved on one side of her head, and on the other, it had been twisted into a long braid with complicated iron jewelry.

Beside her stood an unassuming man, short and brown haired, with a plain face and a harmless looking smile. Everything about him screamed mild mannered…except the eyes. His eyes were wolf yellow, and they shone with a barely repressed madness. It was chilling, because he was smiling guilelessly if you only looked at his lower face, but the second you met those blazing chips of citrine, it was like you were drowning in a sea of animal rage. He caught sight of us, and his harmless mask cracked, his lips peeling back into a too wide smile, fully exposing his incisors in a habit that seemed like it was developed to show off fangs he didn’t have right now.

“Oh!’ he said cheerfully. “New friends! So lovely of you to join us. Look, Vara, our guests have arrived!”

The silver haired elf rolled her eyes. “We’ve been over this Dastan. Don’t play with your food. It’s gauche.” Her eyes scanned over our group, which had emerged into the light shaft directly as a while. Her silver orbs locked on Dayna. “Hello, little sister. You dare to show your face here? I knew you were shameless, but I assumed you were considerate enough to keep your humiliation out of my eyeline.”

Dayne shrugged. “That’s the difference between you and I, Selvara. I don’t feel humiliated by a well deserved loss. You always did care too much what people thought.”

“What about ME, Dayna?” hissed the other elf. “Do you care what I think?”

“The only person who has to live my life is me,” our elfin archer said placidly. “The day that ceases to be the case is the day I answer to you about what I choose to do with it.”

I glared at Dayna. “Can you NOT openly antagonize the enemy before the fight?” I groaned in exasperation. “You can stick up for your life choices when this is over and she works for me, we’ll be in a much better position. The polite way to handle this situation is to pretend this isn’t a formality and treat her like a serious opponent until Bethy actually wins.”

My wife smacked her palm into her forehead with a sigh. “Shane, honey, why do you talk?”

I shrugged. “What? It’s true. Dayne can shit talk later. It’ll be way more satisfying once Bethy demolishes her champion.”

Dastan, who apparently didn’t enjoy being spoken about like he wasn’t there, turned and snarled at me. I glanced at him, annoyed, and then reached into myself and triggered two of my forms. Sammael and Bael. When Bael activated though, I tweaked it. The form usually made me invisible, made it impossible to notice me. But this time, I inverted the effect. I made it so people could ONLY notice me. I dragged all the attention in the room onto myself, the entire thing amplified by now even stronger Sammael form.

“Bad dog,” I rumbled, tapping into my Mephistopheles voice. “Heel.”

Dom, who had been on the other end of that particular insult before, snickered as the werewolf flinched, the combination of overwhelming power and unbreakable focus causing a shock that made him step back in surprise.

Selvara reached up and slapped her champion upside the head. “Enough,” she snapped waspishly. “You’re making a fool of us both. Curb your snarling and save your animosity for the match. Submit your champion. The terms have been agreed on, and there is nothing more to be said. We are beyond the time of speech. The only way forward is action.”

“Action is always the only way forward,” Bethy pointed out helpfully. “Moving is an action by default. If you’re not taking any actions you’re just standing around.”

I choked back a laugh as the elf girl glared at my friend, who summarily ignored her, skipping to the middle of the light circle. “Alright, you want to go first? If I attack you at the beginning the match won’t last very long. You can have the first move.”

Dastan whirled, glaring into her eyes maliciously. Throwing back his head, he let loose a primal scream. His hands hooked into claws, then he reached up, grabbed his face, and started tearing. He ripped his own skin off his body like he was unwrapping a christmas present under compression. The skin gave way and a massive lupine humanoid just…sprang free like an unfolding pop tent.

By the time he finished, he wasn’t short anymore. He was ten feet tall, massive slavering jaws lolling open in an expression I recognized as the grin from earlier.

Bethy returned it, her eyes burning deep crimson as her delicate fangs gleamed in the light of shining down on her. With a roar, Dastan hurls himself forwards like a charging elephant, jaws snapping and claws carving into the air. Literally INTO the air, as they tear furrows in the space itself. The descending claws rake over Bethy, and we all tense…but nothing happens.

As the claws land on my friend, her body DISSOLVES. Not into bats. Into fucking MIST. It rolls over the razor sharp talons of the werewolf, drifting to the ground gently, and the wolf goes ballistic. Snapping, snarling, tearing. He bites and rips at the mist. The fucking SPACE is being torn with every attack, but it still can’t find purchase, the mist dispersing around every blow, pooling on the ground.

After a minute, the werewolf is standing in a circle of mist, and Bethy’s form gracefully rises from the cloud of fog behind him, nails extended and gleaming wickedly red. With a casual ruthlessness belied by her pleasant expression, Bethy’s hands blurred.

Every nail nicked a tendon or a ligament, muscles detaching from bones, joints severed. She basically took him apart at the seams, dismantling the werewolf like he was a reverse jigsaw puzzle. As she continued though, her face began to wrinkle with frustration. Her cuts were healing as soon as she made them, and while she was too fast for him to react properly, nothing was sticking.

Finally, as she was cutting into his torso, the werewolf roared and threw himself on her, seemingly so mad with rage that he’d forgotten how he ended up in this situation.

Once again, Bethy dissolved into mist. It was a really scary ability. The bats had been bad, but this was worse. Bats could die. You couldn’t kill mist. I could only assume this form took a LOT of power, and was probably really rough on her bloodlust. But with our preparations, Bethy was running at a hundred (or at least at way more than she had been).

As she rose from the mist this time, she didn’t claw or slash. She waited until he was off balance, then reached up and grabbed the ruff at the base of his skull. Planting a heeled stiletto in  a spot on his lower back, she yanked on his head, and the unconsciously arched his spine to prevent her from impaling his spine. When he was arched up onto his toes, fully pent over backwards, Bethy jerked her head back and STRUCK like a cobra.

His body seized up, stiffening into a bow of agony as strangled screams began to grind themselves out of his throat. Bethy just clamped down, taking pull after pull, and I could SEE him getting weaker, getting less vital.

When he shifted back to human form, she dropped him, and the now emaciated form of Dastan crumpled to the ground. She’s drained his regeneration. Because of its connection to blood, things like life force and regeneration were within Bethy’s domain in terms of consumption. It was like how Lark could eat “plasma” because he decided it made sense.

Bethy hadn’t eaten all of his Vitality, or probably even much of it, but she’d sucked his life force mostly dry. Selvara glared at us, staring down at the incredibly anticlimactic end to her ace in the hole, then she rolled her eyes with a huff. “Alright, FINE. You’re not incompetent. You’ve convinced me. Now can one of you please repair my minion? I require him for the rest of my stay.”

Chuckling, I gestured for Archie to do a flyover. I didn’t want to get close to a dangerous werewolf. My phoenix friend trilled, circling above the man, and trails of green flame rolled down from his tail, repairing the emaciated body of the werewolf with surprising speed.

When he was done, he glided over to land on my outstretched arm. Bethy skipped back over, beaming at my sister. “See, I told you it wasn’t a problem.” She surreptitiously licked her lips, cleaning off a bit of blood. I laughed to myself. We shouldn’t have doubted her. There was a difference between overconfidence and pattern recognition. Bethy won. It was in her DNA.

I remembered how easily Lark had defeated all those S-rankers. I knew he was the strongest, and maybe Bethy was the strongest too. But what we the second strongest like? I was pretty sure my grandfather’s senior brother, the Moonlight Pope, was second in terms of raw power. How strong was he?

Shaking off the thought, I turned to focus on the others, who all looked poleaxed. “See, this is why we don’t ask Bethy to take things seriously,” I scolded Abel. “Now everyone here is going to be terrified for the rest of the conclave.”

Because she had NOT been fucking around. She’d tried to butcher him, and when that hadn’t worked she ATE him. It had been the most decisive fight I’d ever seen.

He shrugged. “At least it didn’t happen to one of us.”

I rolled my eyes, and Mel glared at him. “This is why you aren’t allowed to participate in diplomacy.” She criticized.

“Oh no,” he said dryly. “How will I ever survive?”

I rolled my eyes, then turned to see Selvara coming over. Someone else had emerged from the dark, and was escorting Dastan out of the light. He very carefully didn’t look at anyone from our group. “So, what exactly am I expected to do here?” She demanded as she came to a stop in front of us. “Because I will not swear myself to you as Dayna did. It would be humiliating.”

“Not asking for an oath,” I assured her, withdrawing a scroll. “You know what this is? It only activates after I’m paid. You and your people will sign contracts in payment for these, and in return, you’ll be able to leave safely.” I looked around the circle. “Now why don’t you get them all out here, and we can get started.” As the shadowy forms emerged, I noticed there was way more than fifteen of them. Apparently Bethy’s demonstration had convinced everyone. Our army was taking shape.