Wish upon the Stars chapter 857

The changes of the fruit started to appear before Callie woke up. Specifically, my Master Paired Duelling skill changed to become a completely new skill. Master Angelic Bond. It was a Skill I’d never heard of before, nor had anyone else with us. This was especially notable because Serah and Holly came from an entire faction of angels, and they would be exactly the kind of people to know about a Skill like that.

I held Callie through the changes, keeping her from hurting herself. I had to shove my hand into her mouth at one point to stop her from biting off her own tongue, and I ended up triggering Zagan to heal from the damage, because she dug in HARD.

Finally, the twitching stopped, and Callie sat up so fast there was a blur. She blinked her eyes, head snapping around as if she was looking for something, but she didn’t seem to be tracking any specific object.

Her eyes were…odd. Seriously odd. They were still blue, and at the edges the color had lightened to a nearly icy white, but the further in the iris went the darker the blue became. Her pupil was no longer delineated like a normal pupil, not even blown up. The blue faded into black in the center, giving her eyes the impression of being deep sea abysses that you could fall into.

From her back, black and blue wings erupted. Similar to the eyes, they started dark at the spine, with the feathers becoming brighter and brighter blue until they turned white at the very tips. Only the end feather around the edges had a bit of white, so the majority of her wings were darkly colored, but it looked gorgeous.

I reached out to stroke her wings, and she giggled, squirming around and pulling them away, hiding them behind her back. “Hey quit that!” She laughed, her face clearing and the confusion retreating as her mind finished processing.

I grinned at her. “What’s with all the blue?” I asked her with a laugh. “I was expecting some green and black, like on the fruit.”

She shrugged, then held up a hand. On her palm, a cerulean fire blazed to life, white at the edges and darkening to black and the center, shot through with deep blue as it worked its way in. “I guess the combination of the Enshrining Darkness and Leviathan made…this? I think it’s altered itself to prepare for the Abyss.” She stared down into the flame. “It feels so…sacred.”

“What’s your new Skill called?” I asked eagerly. She was the first person I’d heard of to get a racial trait outside of her main Skill slot. I was sure the name would be something unique, and I was curious what the ability ended up DOING.

She frowned, her eyes flicking up to stare into space. “ Racial Trait: Heretic Angel,” she said after a minute. “I can feel our connection through it. Though the bond feels different. More…central. What changed for you?”

I told her about my new Skill, and then checked into something I hadn’t seen at all yet. Namely, the changes that had occurred to Sammael. I trigger the form, wondering what would happen when I did. My wings unfolded, and my eyes flew open wide as a pulse of power rolled through me, and then out, and then back. My body locked up as energy seemed to cycle out of me and into Callie and then back.

At first she had way more of it, then I did, and it gradually crested and troughed until finally equalizing. I exhaled deeply, opening my eyes to meet my wife’s. Which were glowing. Sort of. There was a sort of dark light emanating from the depths of her abyssal pupils.

I felt stronger. Like, notably. The amplification from Sammael had increased. My base stats had been amplified originally, but now that enhancement had grown substantially. By almost a full fold actually. If before, the increase had been a factor of one, now it was two. Callie was staring at me, eyes wide.

“Your eyes went black just now,” she told me worriedly. “Like all the way through. It’s like looking into a bottomless pit.”

Grinning, I cracked my neck. “I’m sure. But we can worry about all that nonsense later. For now, I’m going to teach you the best part about being an angel.” I held out my hand to her. “Want to go flying?”

We were supposed to stay within this area, but that was in terms of horizontal movement. Pretty much nothing I’d met here could fly. Granted, we couldn’t go too high, because of the slowly dropping void corruption, but then again, Callie’s new fire was custom made to resist that stuff, so it probably didn’t matter. I focused on my other hand, concentrating, and a small blue black flame appeared.

Sure enough. I could use her ability through the bond. Her heretic flame was different than my Leviathan’s fire. It was more geared toward soul defense than purification. Which was odd, given the sources, but intent and story mattered more than solid facts for techniques and forms.

Sure enough, she was thrilled. She grabbed my hand, then dragged me to the windowed wall of the tower. Reaching down, she popped open the glass, then pushed it open and hopped up on the ledge. Letting go, she turned to beam at me, spread her arms, and then fell backwards out the window.

I yelped and dove forward, but I was blown back by a burst of air as a blurring form exploded past the window with a whump of flapping wings.

Apparently the racial trait made her much more naturally agile with her wings than I had been. I wouldn’t have been able to do that right off the bat. I could now though, I grinned, got a  running start, and then leapt out the window, my wings catching me as I glided forward, swinging into a wide circle that took me fully around the tower.

I could see Callie above me, wings spread, grinning from ear to ear as she sped upward. I laughed. She was already too high to reach easily. While flight was possible after D-rank, the necessary level of power to DO so depended on the rank of the world you were in. This place was C-rank, albeit with a peculiar design. It would have required a B-ranker to fly here. At least, without wings.

Callie shot up and into the dark clouds above. As she rose, a wave of blue black fire cloaked her, and I tensed slightly, watching to be sure she would be ok.

Sure enough, when she hit the rain cloud, the abyssal energy not only didn’t harm her, it actually got sucked into the heretic fire and consumed. I felt a thrum of energy through the bond as her new ability literally consumed the void energy and cannibalized it into raw strength. 

Callie’s new trait was designed to perfectly incorporate the Abyssal Path once she hit C-rank, and it seemed that it was already hard at work preparing. The void energy was being refined and added to the Enshrining Darkness at the core of her power, providing a foundation for the Abyssal Path once she integrated it. I literally couldn’t have designed it better myself.

The Wisdom of Solomon was terrifying in some ways. The Ten Demons Tree could internalize my intentions and adapt to them, which meant it could literally alter the end product to suit my desires without me even consciously considering them.

I flapped my wings twice, and a strong updraft exploded out beneath me, shooting me up into the clouds after Callie. I was already resistant to the mental effects of the void mist, but I tapped into the heretic fire just in case, and sure enough, I felt it consuming the energy, transferring it through me into Callie.

With my higher Might, I caught up to my wife in seconds, tackling her into a cloud, and we laughed and rolled in the air, wrestling back and forth as we darted around inside the cloud of steam let off by the boiling water as it hit our cloaks of blue flame.

Below us, I could make out a few figures in the city, on higher rooves and buildings, but I didn’t think they could actually see us up here. The void around us seemed to isolate the area. I could sense and interact with it through Callie, her Abyssal Priestess Path allowing her to piece the obfuscation, but unless I’d been spamming Dantalion, I was pretty sure I’d be blind as a bat up here.

Which meant we were free to actually enjoy ourselves. I kept an ear out (mentally speaking) for my Danger Sense, but surprisingly, there wasn’t any up here. Without the clouds being able to actually influence us, there was zero danger in the skies of the Screeching Shoals.

“Why didn’t you tell me this was so much fun!” Callie shouted over the roar of the rain. “I LOVE flying!”

I just laughed. “You couldn’t do it before, it just seemed mean!” I called back. “We should probably head back in though! This place isn’t exactly ideal. A quick flight is fine, but we should get back under cover.” I grinned at her. “Race you down, bye!” I’d been slowly letting myself dip as we’d been talking, and I was already about twenty feet lower than her, With a whoop of triumph, I let myself drop like a rock, tucking my wings in, then once I was coming down at the right speed I opened my wings slightly, adjusting my trajectory.

“Hey!” She called indignantly behind me. The sound was lost in the tumult, but I got the gist through the bond. I plummeted through the air towards the tower, air whipping past me, and pulled up just enough to send myself streaking through the open window we’d left through. I tried to pull up, but only managed to upend myself when my wings caught, and I pushed on State of Grace to ease the fall as I rolled to absorb the impact.

I managed to come up to my feet in time, barely, but Callie came in too hot behind me and hit me head on, knocking me sprawling as we both went flailing in a tangle of arms and legs. We came to a stop against a wall with a light thump, managing to avoid doing any real damage to anything but ourselves.

“I hit the wall first,” she said proudly. “I win.”

“What?” I gaped at her. “I was the first through the window, I OBVIOUSLY won. How is hitting the wall first a victory?”

She smirked down at me as she propped her elbow up on my chest. “Next time you should state the winning conditions instead of trying to cheat and win with a cheap shot. This was definitely my win, and I demand satisfaction in the form of delicious food.”

I chuckled, rolling over and tossing her bodily onto the couch, eliciting a cute shriek as she tried to get her wings out to catch her, unable to manage in such a short distance. “Delicious food? Unthinkable. I would never cook for you. What behavior in our past has given you the impression that I am willing to debase myself with manual labor vis a vis the preparation of food?”

She pouted at me, adjusting her hair, which I could see now had blue highlights in the black. “Now you're DEFINITELY cooking.”

Laughing, I rolled to my feet. “Yes dear,” I told her blandly. “What exactly am I going to be making for dinner?” I brushed myself off, glad I wasn’t wearing my armor right now, having changed into comfy clothes for the work.

“Seriously? You can’t guess?” She just stared at me like I was the biggest idiot in the world, but I had no clue what she was trying to say. Finally she groaned and gestured behind her back. “Wings. Obviously.” It was my turn to groan, but I couldn’t hold back a laugh as I headed for the en suite kitchen. Of course.