Wish upon the Stars chapter 846

The underside of the Ghost Bone Tower was surprisingly homey. I’d expected yet another huge chamber with a grand sweeping design aesthetic, but it was pretty cozy. The hallways were small but not cramped, painted in warm colors, and there was a thick cushy carpet along the length of the corridor.

Rather than the secret base of a powerful organization, it reminded me of a finished basement at someone’s grandmother’s house. I half expected to see finger painting artwork framed and hanging on the wall.

I didn’t, obviously, though there was some nice vases with fresh cut flowers in them, sitting on worn but well cared for wooden tables. Paintings DID hang along the length of the hallways, watercolors and soothing landscapes, but they were clearly professional artwork, and I was impressed by the taste of the person who picked them out.

“This isn’t what I expected,” Dez said to her dad as we followed him deeper into the complex. I could understand her confusion, the design choices clashed heavily with the bleak aesthetic of the Shoals as we’d seen them, but that made sense. I hadn’t been in anyone’s house really, just creepy places. Not everyone was going to want to live in some kind of edgelord fantasy novel, and despite the base level of society following certain trends, this place wasn’t too far behind the Empire tech wise.

Carmichael chuckled. “The tower master here is a bit eclectic in his tastes, at least assuming it’s the same guy. The cloaks run the upstairs, but Silent Sorrow has its own case officers. Bonehook is Veldran’s place, and he’s not exactly your average Ascendant. He practices a type of formation ability mixed with interior decorating. This place might look pleasant, but it’s basically a fortress.”

I blinked at him. “I don’t sense any of that, Chelsea?” My sister had a decent grasp on formations.

She frowned, looking around. “I…I think that warmth is a formation. But only a surface level one. Some kind of comfort and relaxation formation layered on top of whatever defensive formations are here, to disguise them. I wouldn’t have even noticed it if you hadn’t brought it up.”

“Yup, this place is pretty secure,” said Carmichael. “I’ve only been once or twice, since this isn’t exactly my territory, but it’s pretty memorable.”

We continued down the corridor, and I studied the paintings, carpet, and decorations as we went, trying to find traces of the formation. I could spot some faint patterns in the layout, at least. Something was definitely deliberate about the placement, even if it didn’t look like more than that to me. I even considered activating Dantalion, but I was worried there might be some kind of detection formation under the one we could see that would alert the guy in charge.

We took a few turns, eventually coming to an unassuming wooden door. Carmichael knocked, and there was a slight pause. “Come in?” said an uncertain voice.

Pushing the door open, the C-ranker walked into the room, the rest of us fanning out behind him. The new room was still just as homey. A small pit in the floor created a recessed surface in the center of the room, and inside of it a large couch, curved into a half circle, sat facing the door. A guy sat on it, young looking and wearing a short sleeved shirt and a pair of casual linen pants. His feet were covered in sandals, and he had a book in his hand, a well worn paperback.

It looked…weird. Not because there was anything abnormal, but because there WASN’T. This dungeon was so old fashioned and grim, seeing a normal guy in a t-shirt reading a paperback was strange. I knew they had connections to the outside, so it wasn’t like I hadn’t considered the possibility of seeing more modern items around, but it was still strange.

At the very least, they weren’t MODERN modern. Whoever had been trading with them given them antiques or something. The video playback device sitting in the wooden cabinet off to one side of the room was a PHYSICAL screen, and I hadn’t even ever seen one of those. It wasn’t even the old fashioned glass faced holofilm displays some of the really old mortals on Callus still used. It was a glass screen set into a wide backed black box, connected to some sort of hole in the wall via wire.

The layout of the place was surprisingly roomy, given the design of the hallways. Aside from the main chamber with the recessed floor, there was a wood paneled side hall that led off to a bathroom and an office, and in the other direction, a second room with a built in bar. There were also doors set in multiple places, though I couldn’t see where they went.

The guy on the couch, a red haired lanky looking man with freckles, loose curls, and a goatee, smiled at us all as we looked around. “Visitors! How wonderful. I don’t recognize most of you, but you’re carrying a GBS, so you’d be welcome either way. I do know at least one of you though. Carmichael, I thought you were dead.”

“Yeah, that’s going around,” the older man said wryly. “The place still looks the same as ever, I see.”

Veldran looked appalled. “It is NOT,” he said firmly. “The carpet is a hundredth of an inch taller, a shade darker, and the ply is about ten percent thicker. I also painted the walls, replaced some of the paintings, and shifted everything about a quarter of a tenth of a half inch lower on the walls to account for slight fluctuations in the spatial warping. Combined with a few other tweaks, my power output on the defensive formations here is up forty percent.”

Carmichael snickered. “Impressive. I’m guessing that you’ve made some progress with your ability?”

“Well, it’s not like I can rank it up,” Veldran said sourly. “Though my base formation Skill IS up to Grandmaster. Not much else to do down here except experiment and read. Well, and watch the occasional movie. I have a fascinating collection of these chips I bought through the Tower, you insert them into a small device that plugs into that viewing box.”

I doubted I’d recognize any of the movies he had to watch, so I was momentarily tempted, but I shook it off quick. That relaxation formation was a bit more insidious than I had expected, because that definitely didn’t seem like me.

“Where is everyone?” Carmichael asked, glancing around. “This place being empty is fine, but the tower was pretty much deserted.”

Veldran shrugged. “There’s people around, but mainly on higher floors. The cloak tries to discourage people from loitering in the entry chamber, just in case they notice the entrance to this place. So, since you’re alive, what is it that you’re looking for?”

“We’re not looking for anything,” said Carmichael with a grin. “Or at least, we’re not looking to buy. We ARE interested in doing some trading. For instance, how would you like to get out of the Shoals?”

The red haired man’s eyes snapped up to Carmichael’s face. “What did you just say?” he demanded. “Because it sounds like you just offered to help me LEAVE this fucking place. Which we both know is impossible. We’re C-rankers, the exit trip would kill us. And not gently either. Soul shattering, the kind you can’t recover from. People have been trying for millennia. It’s not possible.”

I flicked my wrist, grabbing a scroll from my ring, and tossed it to him. He caught it, and when he saw what it was, his eyes widened in shock. “Where did you GET this?” His voice was shaking. “I’ve heard of these, but I’ve never seen one. They’re supposed to be crazy famous in the outside world but one of the larger factions has a monopoly.”

What I found interesting was that he knew what it was at all. Clearly the Ghost Bone Tranquility Tower’s connections with the outside world were more extensive than I had anticipated. Still, that was nothing but a benefit to me.

“He got it from me,” I said as I stepped forward. “If you know what it is, I assume you know how it works, so I’m not worried about you trying to coerce me. I can only grant wishes for fair compensation. I CAN take you out of the Shoals, and I WILL, if you agree to work for me for…” I paused, considering the value. “A hundred years. That shouldn’t be too big a chunk of your lifespan.”

C-rank lifespan was over fifteen thousand years as a base, so a century for what I assumed was several thousand years of freedom was a pretty solid deal. I honestly could have done less, but I felt like it might be useful to have a personal force of C-rankers WITH me when I went to the WCP. Assuming I won, but I was admittedly already counting those chickens pre-hatch. If I lost, I’d deal with it then, but making plans for victory seemed like the smartest move.

He looked conflicted. I could understand why. He wanted to leave, but he’d been with Silent Sorrow for a while, presumably. Based on what Carmichael said, getting to C-rank outside of Skartaris’s inner circle was rare and difficult. An organization like Silent Sorrow would undoubtedly be a huge help for something like that. Reaching D-rank seemed to be simple enough here, given how many of them there were, but C-rankers were rare.

Finally, he glanced at Carmichael. “What do you think? You were always pretty ferocious about the cause. Should we really do this?”

“Have you seen the rain?” Carmichael asked gently. At his nod, he shrugged. “According to my friends here, that means this place is about to turn into hell. I for one don’t want to be here when it happens. One of the things I plan to have you do if you join up is send someone to fetch my wife and daughter. I don’t see it as abandoning the cause, only doing what we need to do to make sure there’s a cause left when this is over.”

That still rankled me. We had a plan, but the plan was to escape. There was no winning here. The Void Child had been preparing for a long time, and this plan WAS happening. We were just trying to get gone before things broke down.

Leaving so many people behind was unconscionable, but I knew my grandparents wouldn’t ignore something like a void incursion. I had to trust them to try to help, because a whole void beachhead full of C-rank Void Children was so far out of my league we might as well be playing different games.

Veldran looked pensive, but finally, he nodded. “I’m in, assuming this offer will be extended to the rest of Silent Sorrowe?”

“The more the merrier,” I nodded emphatically. “We’re going to need as much firepower as we can to get out. I can give you the ability to leave, but actually using it will mean punching our way through the exit to the Shoals.”

He winced. “Yeah, I was afraid you were going to say that. Sneaking a few of us out might be doable for the boss, but a large scale exodus will mean a fight.”

“Exactly,” Callie beamed, cutting. “And now we can count on you. Now, we need you to help me locate some people once you finish with that. Also, I wanted to talk to you about a potential decorating job after we finish up a few quick errands. I think you could really help make our future house into something special.”

I grinned at her, not that the others could see it behind my mask. I’d had a similar thought, but I’d gotten distracted. My wife knew what she wanted, and she wasn’t afraid to dive right in. I was a pretty lucky guy.