Wish upon the Stars chapter 844

The sea bed was…unsettling. The sand was black and crystalline, with strange purple flickers dancing across the surface of the grains when we looked closer. When we first emerged, the plants and coral around us had just seemed like normal sea bed stuff, but the longer we looked, the more upsetting it became. The coral twisted into unnatural shapes and the plants twitched and jerked when they sensed they weren’t being looked at.

Among the forest of rocks sound echoed strangely, skittering and scratching bouncing off the walls of the formerly undersea canyon as THINGS darted just past the edge of our vision.

To keep us all safe, I triggered Murmur, covering the whole group, and as I did, I hung back to check in on Elena, Vesper, Ray, Desria, Chess, and Cavallo. It had been nonstop chaos since the rescue, and I hadn’t had time to make sure everyone was alright. Bella had stayed with them, and they all seemed to have calmed down a lot on the walk, which was frankly astounding considering the shit that had been going on.

“Hey guys,” I nodded as I fell into step with them. “How are you all doing? Sorry it took so long?”

Elena shook her head. “No. Don’t apologize. This whole mess is our fault. I can’t believe you came here to rescue us. I mean, we’re friends, and we went through some things together, but this is above and beyond.”

I shrugged. “You guys would do the same for me. And if you wouldn’t don’t tell me about it, that would bum me out.” They all laughed, and some of the tension drained away. I was glad. Keeping score wasn’t for friends, it was for business partners. That mercenary ‘everything for benefits’ attitude was part and parcel of the WCP, but that wasn’t me. “How are you guys? It didn’t exactly look like a picnic down there.”

“No, though there were ants at one point,” said Ray dryly. “I’m pretty frustrated by the whole thing, but we do appreciate the help. Seems like every time you get pulled into my business we end up butting heads with Raxus’s people.”

“Well, he’s a dick,” I said with a shrug. “I wouldn’t worry too much. He’s gotten on the bad side of some scary people. Let them deal with him. Des, Cavallo, how about you two? I know Chess has been too busy flirting with my apprentice to dwell,” I turned my head slowly to regard Chester, making it clear I was watching him.

Bella sputtered. “Master! It’s not like that! We’re just friends, and you need to stop butting into my romantic life.”

“You realize that you just contradicted yourself?” I pointed out helpfully.

She glared at me. “You realize shut up?”

I snickered, but my face went serious as I sensed something. “Stop!” I snapped loudly, and everyone came to a halt. Murmur was a combination Dantalion and Bael, but it was condensed and geared more toward the physical. The void static in the air didn’t interfere too much with pure stealth, and even less now that most of it was raining down from the sky. Because of that, I could actually detect physical signs in the area through my domain.

Something was coming, something big. I kept my hand up, waiting and listening. The shake of the ground, the ripple of sound off rock, I was erasing all the signs of our passing, so detecting the signs of something else was doable.

It was coming from the left, and I looked over, as a greyscale form slithered past a rock, emerging from behind the stone in a sickly, twitchy, serpentine jerk that hurt to look at. The first thing I noticed was the size. The monster was C-rank, and HUGE. It was a disgusting slimy grey, with wet looking skin clinging tightly to an emaciated body that had WAY too many bones. It was build like a person in terms of shape, but the number of bones reminded me more of a centipede.

Despite all the bone, the skeleton seemed to warp and contract as it moved, allowing the limbs (too long and with eight clawed fingers each) to writhe and jerk in nonlinear ways. Its face was a nest of disgusting tentacles, all of varying widths and lengths, and a pair of burning red eyes glared out from inside, hidden in the darkness of the tentacle nest.

It slid along the ground toward us, swerving as it went like it was a dog trying to find a scent. Everyone tensed and Abel clenched a first, but I cleared my throat. “Stop,” I told him again. “It’s fine. Carmichael, if it notices us can you take it out?”

He shook his head. “That thing is peak C-rank,” he said in an urgent whisper. “It’ll butcher us. Unless you think your….giant rock monster thing can stall it.”

“Not this time,” I said with a sigh. “The godchild was newly ranked up. We can’t take a peak C-ranker.” Not yet at least. Once we were somewhere safe and had leaked the C-ranker kill, I needed to check my points. Hopefully all this chaos had gotten me a nice bump. “But that’s not the issue. This thing is easy enough to avoid, it won’t see through Murmur, not a bit of time for it to sink in. But why is it here? How did it find us?”

Callie cursed. “You think they alerted the Abyssal Lords. They contacted all the sea creatures still down here to have them look for us, didn’t they?”

“It’s what I would do,” I nodded. “But that’s going to make escaping tough. If that’s an Abyssal Lord, there might be more. If one of them trips over us we’re fucked. We need to move SLOWLY and methodically. I want everyone to follow me, don’t deviate at all. Just do exactly as I do.” I gestured for them to come after me, heading around the side of the monster. 

It loomed over us, face jerking back and forth, sometimes coming within a foot of one of use, tentacles snapping so close we could feel the wind on our skins. I just ignored it, leading my people around and out of the canyon. I used Murmur to check the environment as we went, and soon enough I managed to find a path we could use to get up on top of a nearby rock formation.

I didn’t know if that rock was going to be high enough to see the shore, but since the rainline above us was dropping slightly every minute we waited, I knew we didn’t have time to be picky.

We reached the edge of a plateau, and had gone about halfway around when I stopped and palmed my face. “I’m an idiot,” I announced loudly, turning to look at my friends. They all came to a stop, waiting for whatever crucial detail I’d missed.

“Well we knew that,” said Abel. “But refresh our memory, what specific idiotic thing are you thinking of right now, there have been so many.”

I flipped him off, then triggered Agares. Reaching out with the energy, I dissolved a few feet of rock off the plateau and reshaped them into a crude staircase. I rehardened them and then mounted the staircase, gesturing for the others to follow. I appreciated their attempts not to laugh as they climbed up behind me…mostly.

When we reached the top, I narrowed my eyes, gazing out across the sea of black sand and twisted rocks. Off in the distance I could see a line of hill that clearly ended at the top of a slope that I was sure was the shore. I tried to estimate the distance based on the height of the plateau and winced. “Alright, it looks like we’re about a hundred miles out.” In between the stones, I could see whipping, jerking shadows. Abyssal Lords searching for us.

I grimaced, trying to think of some way to get there fast. We didn’t have time for this. The longer we stayed out here the closer this place came to being consumed. I was pretty convinced we had no chance to stop it, but escape was on the table if we could hurry up, but the C-rankers would make quick movement through the distance impossible, and by the time we got out we’d be screwed.

C-rankers couldn’t enter this place, just like they couldn’t leave, but once the Shallow consumed the dungeon, the latter would cease to be the case, and I was pretty sure the former would stop being an issue too. Not only would that mean we’d be stuck in here with a void army, it would mean we’d lose our leverage to flip any of the godchildren.

Abel stepped up beside me, shading his eyes with a hand. “I think I might be able to get us over there,” he said after eyeballing the distance.

“What? How?” I asked excitedly.

He shrugged. “The Ragam Blood Body is the secret technique I created to optimize the Infinite Blood Sea, but it’s not the only way to use it. I do paths of spatial lubrication all the time. I could use the blood sea for the same thing. I just need a little help actually creating the path. Also concealing it. Can you help with that?”

“The second one, yes,” I nodded. “I can use Beelzebub to send some of my clones out as relays to connect a long form version of Murmur. With just a path to cover, it should be doable, if somewhat exhausting. But I can’t help with structuring it, and if I’m going to cover it with my domain it needs to be homogenous.” I glanced over my shoulder. “Bethy, you think you’re up to helping with this? I know you got injured.”

She snorted, taking her place next to us. “Pshaw, I’m fine. But we gotta work quick, ok?” We both smiled at her, and she grabbed Abel’s hand. “Alright, everyone hold hands!” Abel tried to protest but she pouted at him and he rolled his eyes. I think he still appreciated the save from Sebastian. He sighed, then grabbed my hand, and I chuckled as I focused on the task at hand.

There was a ripple, and a red path began to manifest, a flat distortion of blood in the air. I triggered Beelzebub, then sent a clone with a parallel ahead to jump up onto the read path as it began to extend further out of the bubble of Murmur. Shaping it along the path as opposed to in a bubble was tough, and I tried to cover the surrounding area to allow us to remain concealed.

Bethy focused, imbuing her Domain into the path, helping to shape it and keep it straight as it extended. Abel bumped my shoulder. “Don’t bother cloaking more than the path itself,” he advised. “It’s spatial lubrication. Once we step onto it we’ll be flung down the length of it like a slingshot and be out of this sea before any of them can react. Getting it in place is the hard part.”

I nodded, then sent another clone down the path, amused as I saw it whip past the first one and reach the edge, about ten miles out. He started to extend his own Murmur field along the length of the path, only using a bit to cover himself, and I beamed as we started to make progress. Finally, the path reached the shore, and we stepped back, gesturing for the others to climb on.

Chelsea was first up, and she hopped onto the red spatial distortion and rocketed off into the distance, slipstreaming through the space like a speeding shuttle. Then Callie, then the rest of my friends. Bethy went third to last, then me, and Abel hopped on behind me right after. I whooped with joy as we shot across the intervening space, bypassing the C-rankers as we flew over their heads. We landed safely on the shore, and I dismissed my clones as we let the path fade. It was nice to have a win with so much going wrong.