Wish upon the Stars chapter 858

Meeting up with the others the next day was pretty amusing. I woke up, stockpiled my scrolls, and then headed down to see the reactions to my wife’s new trait. Most of them were pretty blown away by Callie’s changes. Her gorgeous blue black wings and new eyes highlighted her costume pretty well, though we’d had to send her coat to be adjusted for her wings.

Unlike Sammael, Callie couldn’t turn her trait OFF, which meant that she had wings all the time. Adjusting her costume to suit that was a pain, but luckily the tower had tailors on standby, and it had been a long time since she’d had her outfit replaced anyway.

Her new outfit, picked with input from Bethy, was a backless black ball gown with blue accents. Over top of that, she wore a huge velvet cloak in black and blue with a large hood that hung down in the front, giving her a mysterious look. It also covered her wings easily without looking too obvious, and allowed her to pass unnoticed in her new form.

Bethy, of course, had been excited to help, though it had taken her a bit to decide what to do, since, in her words: “You look different, did you do something with your hair?”

Once we had everything ready, we all met up to discuss next moves, and everyone was VERY impressed. “You look so cute together!” My sister gushed excitedly. “The armor and the ball gown, it’s like you’re going to a masquerade ball! Oh my gods, your babies will have little WINGS!”

I flinched. “Revenant, Chelsea can you NOT?” I subconsciously stepped behind my wife. “We haven’t even had our honeymoon yet!”

Serah and Holly, meanwhile, had stepped forward and were cooing over Callie’s feathers. “This is so gorgeous,” Holly marveled. “The blue and white and black just blend together so well. I’m SO jealous.”

Blank faced as ever, Serah nodded along. “You must be…flying.”

“Boo!” Ray said derisively, giving her a thumbs down. “That wasn’t even clever. You’re better than that.”

I rolled my eyes at their antics. “Argaunt, report.” I told the archer, determined to get this topic away from wings before my sister actually started getting ideas. “You spoke with a few of the C-rankers, how did it go?”

He grimaced. “It went…about as well as expected. Darwen was on board, but Selvara requires a bit more convincing. She initially wanted to fight Bethany, but since she’s a D-ranker, that was off the table. She settled on choosing a D-ranked champion to undertake the challenge for her. Specifically, she’s sending Dastan.”

Dayna grimaced. “That’s…not ideal. Dastan is extremely dangerous. Possibly the worst match up for Lady Bethy.”

“I assume he has a racial trait?” I asked tiredly. “Because otherwise who the hell would be stupid enough to challenge Bethy. Present company excluded.” I ignored the snickers from the surrounding parties.

Dayna nodded. “He’s a unique variant of werewolf,” she nodded. “Verdyn has a special connection with wild animals, especially deadly hunters. Dastan is one of his favorites. He managed to evolve one of Verdyn’s signature Skills to the point where he merged it with his racial trait and altered its nature.”

“She wants Bethy to fight this person?” I asked with a groan. “What’s the point? We have another fifteen of these C-rankers to convince, not to mention thirty plus at this conclave. We can’t be accepting one on one challenges from all of them, we’ll be here for months.”

“Which she knows,” he admitted sourly. “That’s why she set the challenge for the beginning of the conclave. She finagled an invitation based on possible cooperation, as did the others. She got in touch with them first and managed to form a bloc. She’s using the challenge as a litmus test, and has convinced the others to fall in line with her, though gods only know how.”

I glanced at Bethy. “So, you down to beat the shit out of a werewolf in front of a crowd of strangers?” She lit up, opening her mouth, and I immediately cut her off. “And no, you cannot KEEP him. We have enough strays, no offense Dayna.”

The elf shrugged. “I do not take offense. I would not consider this battle a foregone conclusion, however. Dastan is dangerous. The interaction between divine power and racial traits can be unpredictable, as I’m sure you know.”

That…was a good point. Sammael, and to an extent Callie’s Heretic Angel trait, were both examples of the kind of crazy you could get mixing racial traits with divine power. Something about god energy was…different. I suspected it had to do with mythology, but all the divine powers I’d seen had a special sort of authority in their own categories.

Still, Bethy’s power had its own cachet. Not just the vampirism, but the combination. Speaking of which, I turned to Callie, cocking my head, and she nodded. “I want to try working with Bethy until the conclave. My heretical fire is specifically geared toward soul defense. If I team up with Shane and Archie, I could probably seriously chip away at the negative effects of her tapping into her power.”

Our friend brightened. “You think so? I mean, we’ve done some work on it but I don’t know. I mean I have my bracelets but I don’t think they’re doing much anymore. I got them at E-rank. The purification you did a while ago has been helping a lot, but I don’t know if it’ll last. If you think this could help I’d love to try.”

She sounded nervous. I frowned. I hadn’t realized the purification was wearing off. If I’d known she was worried about this I’d have done another pass with Genesis Burst. “Of course we can help,” I told her firmly. “I bet Callie will be able to do even better than I can with her new powers. Genesis Burst is more about healing souls than protecting them.”

That was part of the issue with Bethy’s bloodline. Any ground we gained would slowly be eroded. The bloodlust was corrosive. It didn’t corrode FAST, but considering how few things could get rid of it at all, it was a problem.

Souls were tricky. Lots of abilities couldn’t affect them at all, and the ones that could tended to be INCREDIBLY dangerous. Killian’s soul stitching, my dad’s contracts, Zeke’s masks. Souls were almost an entirely separate power system from normal Ascendant elements, albeit one with a decent amount of overlap. That was why Paths became so key later in the Ascension process. They created a way to directly influence the soul besides altering a main Skill.

Bethy’s specific confluence of traits affected her soul because it was her racial trait, and therefore her main Skill, but I was pretty sure hers was damaged in some way. The more I learned about racial traits, the more certain I was that mixing the two that she had been born with had caused unintended side effects like the ones I’d avoided by refusing to create Callie’s trait from scratch.

Sadly, I still didn’t know enough about the construction and effects of racial traits to actually FIX the damned thing. And since it was a soul issue just wishing it fixed wouldn’t work. Bethy’s trait was really powerful, so from a Skill standpoint it was pretty much perfect. The side effects were more of a human error sort of thing.

Callie reached across the table, taking my hand. She could feel how frustrated I was. Though it might not be my main objective, fixing Bethy was definitely an important goal to me. Part of my aim in learning more about traits was not just to help my wife, but to help my friend. Seeing how much she hated the pain she caused and how heartbreaking her path to get here had been only filled me with determination to help make her life better.

But the more I learned, the more aware I became of just how far I had to go. Bethy’s trait was one Morgan Lark had created himself. I was almost positive it wasn’t the original Vampire trait, and even if it was, the mythology of him being the ultimate predator had seriously altered the equation.

We continued our conversation, ironing out details, and scheduled the battle for five days later, at the beginning of the conclave. We said our goodbyes and Callie and I headed back upstairs. I was in a bad mood from not being able to do anything for Bethy. I just wanted to be able to help my friend.

Speaking of which though, I did have a friend I could help. I turned to my wife excitedly. “By the way, I was checking my stats, and based on my initial calculations, I believe that I’ve officially reached the point where I can finally help Jessie. It’s been so long, and she’s been so patient, but if I’m not wrong, I can now officially grant a wish to resurrect a G-ranker.”

Alan, Jessie’s brother, had been murdered by a serial killer back around the time we first met. Jessie had been devastated, and had been inconsolable for quite a while afterward. Benny, Callie, and I had taken her in and sort of adopted her (and thank the gods we had, we’d have been dead fifty times over without her) and I had eventually proposed using a wish to bring him back.

I’d been unable to actually DO that, but even the hope of seeing him again had been enough to give her something to focus on.

Over the years, I’d done plenty of research on the requirements. There were various esoteric things needed, even with a wish. Or rather, the cost scaled based on several factors. Rank, obviously, but also the amount of time the person had been dead, the condition of the body, and method of death.

Stricture, the serial killer in question, had been relatively weak, so he hadn’t been able to use and soul damaging powers that would impede the resurrection. We had Alan’s body from our last trip to Callus when Jessie had quietly picked it up and moved it to her space ring, and it had been only a year or two since his death. Combined with his low rank, conditions were pretty close to optimal to bring him back.

My wife squeezed my hand again, this time in excitement. “What? You can? That’s amazing! I can’t wait to see Alan again, I always liked him.”

I blinked. “Right, I forgot you worked together. I didn’t know him, but I’m excited for Jessie. She’s been waiting so long for this. He’s going to have a lot to get used to, things have really changed.” Jessie was a D-ranker dating another D-ranker, and she and her girlfriend were both no longer human.

Racial traits weren’t common on Callus, with most of them being fae, and I vaguely remembered some tension from some of the guild members I’d worked with.

Callie waved me off. “Nah, Alan was cool. I doubt he’ll care about the dryad thing. He’s going to be pretty bummed about how strong she is though. He was considered quite a genius, hitting G-rank so young.” We glanced at each other and then burst out laughing. Poor guy.

Still, it was a wonderful thought. I’d been waiting so long to help Jessie, and now it was finally about to happen. It was such a long standing goal I’d almost started taking for granted it would ever happen. Resurrection was expensive and difficult, and even for someone as weak as Alan, I had almost despaired of ever managing it.

This seemed like a hopeful sign. I was finally going to be able to put one of my first promises to rest. To use my power in a way I’d intended to do for a very long time. And doing it before going into the succession war felt…right. Like a good omen. Things were finally starting to come together.