Wish upon the Stars (Original Superhero cultivation sci fi litrpg)

[Malcolm Tent]

Carmichael took a bit to get Argaunt settled in, and in the meantime, we were all given rooms to stay in. The rooms were BIG. Like, each individual one was an apartment sized chamber. Callie and I were given a huge two story condo looking space with an open concept kitchen. We could see the second floor balcony from the mostly empty living room, and the wall opposite that was made of windows, exposing a view of the rest of Dawnrend, and even the island beyond it.


Most of the view was hidden by the slowly descending clouds, the entire sky a mass of black water, but the city was still a sight, even if it was fairly ugly at first glance.


The more we looked, the more interesting and complex the building designs looked, and the more we could spot the traceries of patterns across the surfaces, even from this distance. I walked over and settled on a stylish but comfortable couch with a sigh.


I had to admire the apartment. They'd really gone all out. Dark marble floors, they'd laid down a thick area rug in the center of the couches. Between the den area and the window, a pair of glass sheets rose from the ground, connecting to a sort of water enclosure, with the water flowing down one sheet and back up the other. Fish swam in the enclosure, which appeared to be floating above the floor. Normal fish, not terrifying evil fish.


We were the last ones to get a room, and it had taken long enough that there was a sharp knock at the door within minutes of me sitting down. I'd taken off my mask, and I shot my wife a pleading look as I groaned in dissatisfaction at the idea of getting up.


"You're so dramatic," she sighed in amusement as she rolled her eyes. "You're lucky you're cute and can cook."


I smirked at her as she headed to the door, checking through the peephole before pulling it open. "Carmichael, hey. Come on in. Guessing you're here to fill us in on the inner circle?" We'd been waiting for this conversation, so his arrival wasn't much of a surprise.


"I am," he nodded. "I introduced Argaunt to a guide, set him up with a meeting with the cloak to get some more detailed information, and then headed here. You'll need to know what you're going up against before things go bad. Best case scenario is that we can make a deal to get to the exit, but I wouldn't count on it. Skartaris is pretty much hitching his whole wagon to the void at this point, and letting you go would be stupid."


I shrugged. "Nothing is ever that easy. We've been preparing for a fight since we showed up. We're looking at around two to one odds, and there are steps we can take to counter that. Mostly I'm feeling rushed to get the hell out of this place before that water touches the ground. I can't imagine that'll be something we want to be here for."


"Confirmed," Callie said bluntly. "We absolutely do NOT want that. Actually, I think establishing my racial trait before we leave would be best. My connection with the void…it worries me. Even if we won't be here when the shallow is complete, I want to eliminate it as quickly as possible."


I nodded. "I'm almost done. I've been working on it the whole time, and I'm putting a lot into it. The staff evolving was enough to completely overhaul the whole project, so I had to start over, but it's worth it. You'll see. For now, let's focus on what we need to know. Alright Carmichael, give us the details."


He nodded. "The inner circle are the ten most powerful generals under Skartaris," he said after a brief pause. It seemed like he was thinking about the best order to do things in. "They have wildly varying abilities, skills, and temperaments. Each of them deals with some major aspect of the Shoals."


"Waylon Dreft is the Master of Currency. The minting of the scales and presumably the bone coins are his domain." He grimaced. "It's safe to say he's involved with the void. I can't imagine how he could have avoided that interaction, given his duties, and he's a DEEPLY unpleasant person. More accurately, he's a deeply unpleasant DRAGON, albeit a relatively weak variant."


I blinked at him. "Wait…he's a dragon? Like…a transformed beast? That's super rare though, isn't it? Most beasts become a more powerful version of their animal form when they rank up, don't they?"


"Yes," he agreed. "And dragons are even less likely to assume human form. They're incredibly prideful and powerful creatures. Waylon isn't a purebred dragon though. More accurately, he's a dragon ANT. Don't ask me why that's a thing, I couldn't say. Regardless, he maintains racial advantages after taking human shape, and he's dangerous.


"Next we have Alanna Rein, the current Mistress of Inquiry," he looked uneasy. "She's scary. She's got a Legendary Sword Skill. She's in charge of the Mistwardens as a whole. She MIGHT not be a Skartaris sympathizer. I've never been able to pin down exactly who she works for, but she's a very dangerous combatant and a highly respected military officer. If we can get her on our side it would be a HUGE win."


I was impressed, and said so. "How many people with Legendary Skills do you think there are in here?" Anyone who had a Legendary Skill, according to Carmichael, had a Chronicle, though the inverse was obviously not true.


"No more than two or three," he assured me. "If it wasn't rare, I wouldn't be considered so dangerous. I don't have confirmation of anyone else. Alanna is just extremely open about her sword proficiency. Third is Crell Preost. He's the Master of Ceremonies, responsible for any large gatherings, INCLUDING the court. His ability is called Doubt."


I blinked at him. "What…what does that do?"


"Basically, he can convince people their abilities don't work," he said with a grimace. "He uses flawed logic to point out holes in your techniques and Skills, and if you buy into it, they stop working."


"That's…so fucking broken," I said in an appaled voice. Most techniques were based on stories people told themselves. If you could take them apart by poking holes, especially if you had some way to SEE what those stories were, you could disable most Ascendants. Granted, my case would probably be an exception. The existence of my Library means that my techniques are recorded and perfected. Assuming he could FIND a flaw, I still wouldn't question my tome, because I had perfected and engraved it in my mind.


The issue there was that I was a D-ranker, and this guy was a C-ranker. Which meant that we'd need one of our C-rankers to counter him. He was at the peak of his rank, not someone I'd be able to keep up with even if I used all my tricks. I might be able to finish him off if they pinned him down, but since I wasn't sure they COULD with a power like that.


It was one of those abilities like moment chop that was just extremely well suited to dealing with ninety nine percent of people and luckily not me. One of the benefits of spreading myself so wide, I had counters for most things.


"I'm guessing you're introducing them in order of importance. Do you know if there are any we DON'T need to worry about?" He couldn't confirm whether those three were on our side, but some of the inner circle had to be demonstrably in the tower's corner, otherwise they wouldn't have the influence they did.


He nodded. "Master of Martial Force Carmine Zevka and Mistress of Soothing Whispers Delilah Scorz. Alanna is in control of the military, and Carmine runs the arenas and duelling houses, as well as controlling the mercenary guilds. Delilah is the tower's spy mistress. She's better informed than anyone in the Shoals. The Master of Medicine, Zellman Drexel, is neutral, and will help anyone he thinks needs it. We can probably count on him for this, considering what's coming."


He listed the other five, and they all had different jobs. Stuff like logistics, sewage, and a bunch of other pretty underwhelming sounding stuff. When he finished, he sighed. "We don't know which of them is the boss, like I said. A lot of people assume it's one of the big three. Carmine and Delilah are unlikely because they're so up front about their allegiance to the tower. But it might be a double bluff. Or the boss could be Drevan Swull, the Master of City Planning for all we know."


Despite that last statement, he didn't sound convinced by that one. I got the impression he agreed with the assumption that the boss was probably one of the top three. Or rather, one of the latter two. The Dragon Ant seemed unlikely, based on what he'd said about him.


Speaking of whom, I was really interested in meeting him. Not to fight, but because I didn't think I'd ever met a human form beast before. I knew that racial traits were somehow related to them, at least based on my own calculations, and Carmichael's comment about advantages reaffirmed that, but if I could meet one, it might help with my research.


"Are there any other human form beasts in the Shoals?" I asked him after a minute. "Like…ones who are on our side?"


He nodded. "One of the tower C-rankers used to be an bull, why?"


"Can I meet him?" I was getting excited now. If I could study a humanized beast I was sure Callie's racial trait would take huge leaps forward. Racial traits, at least the ones I'd seen, started human and then added the nature of monsters or other entities. I had assumed, based on my experience with the Wendigos, that they added recursion too, but knowing what I did now, I suspected the Wendigo spring had actually been pouring Wendigo MYTHOLOGY into people.


He shrugged. "I mean, Farren isn't exactly a people person, but sure, I don't see why not. I can set that up. He's here for the conclave anyway, which starts in a few days, by the way. He's probably here early, so I'll reach out."


"Thanks," I told him gratefully. "How are Dez, Caladwen, and your wife? Did you get in touch with them?"


He smiled gratefully. "They're on the way now. I had them tag along with a friend who was heading here, so they're safe until they arrive. I can't thank you enough for helping Dez. I don't want my family stuck in this hellscape."


I grimaced. "I'd rather not leave anyone, but at this point, I'm more worried about surviving. I'm hoping that once the gods find out about the Shallow they'll send someone in to clean it out and hopefully help the locals. I assume that Skartaris won't let the Void Children just massacre all of them right away?"


He shook his head. "Not likely. The population are his source of income and the foundation of his rule. He wouldn't sign off on killing them until the last minute, when he's ready to leave."


That tracked with what I knew of Ascendants too. He'd probably stage some grand sacrifice so he could harvest all the renown. We continued talking for a while, Carmichael filling us in on some of the inner workings of the city, before he finally said his goodbyes and left.


After that, Callie stood up, grabbed my hand, and pulled me to my feet. "Now, with that out of the way, I believe I'm owed some alone time." She pulled me in for a kiss, and I relaxed as I held her against me. Tomorrow we could start our planning. For now, I just wanted some peace and quiet.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The next day, after making my scrolls, I met with Dirk, the humanized Bull. I had to admit, I was pretty excited. I'd met plenty of beasts, but none of them had taken human form. I'd been told that most animals had no interest in assuming a human shape on rank up, and it could only happen after D-rank. Theoretically, it could happen ANY time after D-rank, but when an animal spent its whole life ranking up into a higher level form of beast, it took a big mental shift for it to change its spots, so to speak.


I was excited to see a human for beast, which I guessed was an ancestor to things like racial traits. Lucky for us, Dirk didn't seem to mind taking a meeting for Carmichael. They weren't friends or anything, but Carmichael was famous in Silent Sorrow.


Callie came with me, but we left the others to their relaxation as we made our way to a conference room on the fifth floor. When we arrived, we knocked loudly, and after a minute, a muffled voice called "C'min!" I glanced at my wife, who shrugged, and I pushed the door open, Mornax ready just in case.


I was back in my mask and armor, of course, and I was the sturdier of the two of us. I didn't expect trouble, but that was usually when it showed up, so better safe than sorry.


When we stepped inside, I was surprised to see that there was only one person at the table. Specifically, one very LARGE person with food piled high in front of him. The man was colossal, at least seven feet tall and carved from pure muscle. He had a healthy tan and brown eyes, and his hair was long and wild.


In front of him, the table was laden with dishes covered with every kind of food imaginable. Chicken, fish, fruit, vegetables, baked goods. It was a veritable buffet, and Dirk's dinner plate sized hands were grabbing up a large chunk of food with every breath, stuffing it into his mouth as he swallowed, sometimes chopping through the bone in his haste to eat. He looked ravenously hungry, and his eyes barely twitched off the smorgasbord in front of him.


"Dirk?" I asked after a full minute of nonstop devouring. He froze, blinking at us.


"Oh, right," he said with a mouth full of turkey. "You. You want some?" He pushed a huge plate of honey baked ham toward us.


I shook my head. "We're good, we ate earlier. We can come back if you're busy."


He shook his head. "Nah, this is just my midday snack." At our shocked look, he swallowed everything and laughed. "Yeah, people are usually pretty shocked. When a beast transforms into a human, it usually keeps some of its animalistic traits. I was a Heaven Swallowing Bull in D-rank, so when I transformed, I brought my tough hide, my strong legs, and my appetite."


I sat down across from him, intrigued. "So, your appetite is kind of like one of the modifiers on a racial trait? Is it just hunger, or does it give you some ability?"


He hummed, pausing to think. "I mean, I heal pretty quick. And I always get extra hungry when I'm hurt. I dislocated my shoulder in a fight earlier, so my snack is a bit bigger than usual. Is that what you mean?"


It was. "Do you mind if I use an ability on you?" I asked. "Nothing TOO intrusive, just a detection power."


I didn't know Dirk well enough to inspect his soul. But I also didn't necessarily NEED to. Dantalion was optimized for body investigation. While I could do soul checks, I needed permission and assistance. But bodies were much easier. Coincidentally, beasts integrated their stats into their bodies directly.


That thought made me pause. From what I knew, the soul and body merged at S-rank, with the Saga acting as a medium. Paths created a bridge between physical and spiritual, letting the soul merge with the flesh.


But animals integrated stats into their bodies and not their souls. Was that why they didn't need a Path? Or did they have Paths we weren't aware of? I'd never seen an S-rank beast, not had I HEARD of anything higher. I knew god beasts existed, but I'd never heard anyone talk about one directly.


Far from being a non sequitur, this line of thought was integral to how I created Callie's racial trait. I triggered Dantalion after he agreed and sat there for the next twenty minutes while he ate, investigating what I found.


It was…fascinating. First was the stats. They did make up the body, not just metaphysically, but they were used to create a solid mass. In humans, the stats affect the soul, which spills over to alter the body, but in this case, they had been combined into something similar to a Skill construct, but more tangible. It took me a bit to recognize where I knew it from. Specifically, it reminded me of a Chronicle.


In fact, looking at it that way, the entire concept of a Chronicle and subsequently a Saga merging with the body might have been a method to try to mimic this effect. I wondered if early cultivation was based entirely off beasts. Not just racial traits, but all cultivation. Paths, Skills, Chronicles.


Studying Dirk, I learned a few things. First, I couldn't create a physical construct body for Callie. I had no mechanism to do it. Chronicles were complicated soul bullshit, and while I'd MADE one, I had no clue how it worked.


Even if I'd been able to design a physical reformation like that, I wouldn't know how to apply it. Racial traits were applied to the soul, and changed the body that way. It was a natural mechanism and the body did half the work. Second, because of the way the stats integrated with the flesh, Dirk's body made more…sense. It was more grounded. Vitality where his heart and stomach were, Might where the muscles were, Perception in the eyes. It was more linear, more logical. This was what I would imagine a person looked like if they were made out of stats.


From what I could tell, even though racial traits mimicked this effect, the results were more irrational. The soul wasn't a physical thing, so it didn't obey physical rules. A racial trait body was different than a normal person, changed, but the mechanism of that change was kind of abstruse. It didn't follow any specific rules.


Which meant I needed to be very careful with my design. The soul wasn't as restricted in the changes it made, and the changes that DID apply weren't always ones you could understand or guess at. I'd been having trouble decoding racial traits that I'd been studying, and this seemed to be the main reason. Some of the things they did, they SHOULDN'T do.


With Callie's trait, I had a baseline. Angels of multiple types to use as a template, and Sammel to experiment with. If I stuck to that, I'd be safe enough.


But a lot of the theoretical changes and exciting new mechanics I'd been daydreaming about had to be scrapped. I wanted Callie to be strong, and she would be, but field testing that trait in the way I'd planned on doing would be way too dangerous. Anything could happen, and I had no intention of risking my wife.


It ALSO explained some things about racial traits I'd known but hadn't understood. Ones that I needed to know. Namely, it explained why it wasn't possible to make a racial trait out of a Skill that wasn't the primary. The main Skill for job users or the ability for heroic cultivators. It was because that Skill was already connected to the soul and had a direct influence on the body through that. It was the same reason you couldn't rank your main Skill up past your current rank. It was part of you.


Normally, this would mean that I was functionally incapable of making Callie a different species. We were waiting to merge the Path skill with the racial trait until she ranked up, making sure that it had been refined and perfected as best as possible before combining them, so it could suppress the Abyssal influence.


This would have meant waiting until she was at the peak of D-rank to apply the racial trait…under normal circumstances. But Callie had another option. Namely, she had another Skill connected to her soul, and one that I could directly influence. Master Paired Duelling.


If I used the bond as the anchor for her racial trait, not only would I be able to apply it early, I could also help her keep it stable. She could access Sammael through the bond to bolster it if her Path skill got overwhelming, and she could access the library and the staff and consistently refine and upgrade it like I did my forms, laying the foundation for the merge when she broke through to C-rank.


Callie had been silently watching as I worked through all this, but at my burst of enthusiasm her eyes lit up, and I put my arm around her, pulling her tight against me in a side hug. "Hey Dirk, I think I'm good. You need anything else?"


The bull Ascendant shrugged. "Not really," he said, swallowing the last of his current mouthful. "You don't need to like…talk a bunch? I kind of figured I'd have to talk a bunch. Humans talk way too much."


I laughed, shaking my head. "We're good. You can get back to your snack. We appreciate the help."


"Whatever," he said with a shrug, effectively dismissing us from his presence as he began actively ignoring us. I had to hide a smile as we left. He reminded me a bit of Callie when she was really in the zone digging through loot.


"So, what did you figure out?" my wife asked me as we left.


I grinned. "Everything. That was the last piece that I needed to finish. Tonight I'm going to complete the final form of your racial trait, and we can finally apply it. The way I have it set up, it should act as a filter for the influence from your Path Skill, at least until it can evolve enough to directly counter it."


Connecting it to the bond was genius, if I did say so myself. It would allow her to use the Ten Demons Tree to evolve it consistently without needing me to actively work on it. Which was good, because I was not even remotely confident now that I could properly make a racial trait from scratch.


The uncertainty and irregularity of the soul method of body modification meant any new things I tried could have almost any effect. The unpredictability made heavy experimentation completely untenable. I had some ideas for how to make sure the trait would still be powerful and counteract the Abyssal influence, but it would be based on energy construction, not on the actual design. That would be close to the boilerplate angel design.


Still, Callie looked so relieved it broke my heart. I knew from the bond how unsettled she was by the experience of knowing things out of nowhere. The Path was convenient for us right now, but it scared my wife, she was terrified it was changing her in ways recursion didn't, and that she might never be able to change back.


It wasn't, of course, I'd have noticed, but I was glad I could give her peace of mind. With that out of the way, we headed back to our rooms. This time, we didn't call anyone for the process. This was going to be just the two of us. The bond being part of this made it deeply personal. Still, I couldn't wait. By this time tomorrow, Callie would officially be safe from the Abyss. At least for now.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

When we got back to the room, Callie and I called everyone, letting them know not to disturb us, and then settled in to begin the real work. Deciding the best place to do said work was the library, we sat in the living room together, linked hands, closed our eyes, and then I pulled her through the bond into my inner world.


We arrived in the library without much fanfare. Callie blinked in shock as she looked at the Ten Demons Tome. Namely, at the giant ass spectral TREE that now floated above it. "Well…that's new."


I forgot that she hadn't been in here since the staff ranked up. "Yeah, that happened when the Ten Demons Tree hit B-rank. I have no idea why, but it seems to make using it way easier. That vapor shaking from the leaves is the stuff that Wisdom of Solomon runs on. So I can use it way more often."


"So, let's get started," I said excitedly, clapping my hands. I pulled her to a table, where I dropped a dozen books. "So, these are the tomes for your racial trait. Or rather, they're the tomes that recorded all the data I was able to dig up from the others. After what I learned from Dirk, I'm going to pull these two." I snagged the Vampire and Heaven Murder Elf tome, and tossed them on a shelf. "These two are the angel tomes, and this one is Sammael."


I picked up a fourth. "This one is Chelsea's ability. This is where we're going to get the secret sauce. I'm designing your ability specifically to offset the problems with your Path. Now Sammael is imbued with Enshrining Darkness, which is powerful, but it has some sort of connection to the Abyss. Which means it's not optimal for your form."


Flipping through the book, I grinned. "BUT, that doesn't mean we can't use it. Chelsea's ability, or rather, her ABILITIES, allow her to balance the two different energy types she inherited from my grandparents."


"One of these is Enshrining Darkness itself, and the other is the flame of purification." I flipped through the angel books, studying the construction of the racial traits as best I could, and comparing them to the construct I used for Sammael. Based on my observations, Sammael…shouldn't work. It was deeply flawed. My soul picked up the slack, self correcting the form, but it needed lots of work.


This was less of an issue than it might have been, though. I'd had a parallel down here researching for a while, and a large portion of that had been running Sammael through the Ten Demons Tree, experiencing it deeply and slowly evolving it, accumulating lots of data about the deeper mechanics and the mythology of the form.


I COULD have used the Wisdom of Solomon to iterate it to perfection, but I didn't want it to be perfect yet. Room for improvement meant I could incorporate new elements.


And I did mean elements. As in, plural. "Alright, so here's the plan. I want your feedback here, because this is your racial trait, and you'll be stuck with it for the rest of your life. Probably. I can't design a new species. I know WAY less than I thought I did, and the complexity is so far beyond me it isn't funny. But that doesn't mean I can't do anything useful. Angels have base elements, concepts that define them. The flames the girls use, Enshrining Darkness, and so on.


"What I want to do is use CHelsea's ability interaction, specifically her Path, which bridges the gap, to create a dual element angelic trait." I spun the book to show her. "Now, by balancing the two improperly, I can make room for you to integrate the Abyssal Path into your trait before you rank up."


She hummed with interest. "Ok, but correct me if I'm wrong, wouldn't that just make me imbalanced in the OTHER direction? That's bad too, right?"


"Depends what we use," I shrugged. "I'm planning to use Leviathan as a base. It's a domain, not a form, but they're still related. It should work. Leviathan has a soul strengthening method built INTO it, and Zagan's purification and lifeforce enhancement aspects are nothing but positive. I'll use Enshrining Darkness to offset, like Chelsea has. Because Leviathan is so heavily altered and upgraded, Enshrining Darkness should be substantially weaker."


The Enshrining Darkness ability was divine. It was SCARY. But it was ultimately just a normal ability. It wasn't a Domain, at least not the version I was using. It was Chelsea's inherited version. Strong and laden with mythology, but still just a high tier power.


It should mix PERFECTLY with the Abyss when Callie was ready, and the power from Leviathan would balance the combination. Especially with Callie's connection to my own soul. When we did this, we'd be upgrading the bond itself, so our connection would get even deeper. I was pretty sure Sammael might actually mutate due to the connection, though I wasn't positive.


She studied the books, flipping around, reading the stories, and missing the underlying construction. The tomes weren't really designed for the average joe to read. The stats that were used in their creation were sort of in two states, stat and construct, and it took a certain processing ability to sort through them. She could still read the stories they told though, and that gave her some basic idea of how things worked.


Finally, she nodded. "Alright. If you think you can do it. Can you integrate Chelsea's Path into this? Between that, the Enshrining Darkness, and Leviathan, this seems…busy."


"I have a LOT of juice to run the Wisdom of Solomon," I shrugged. "I can afford to be ambitious. Since I can't alter the template much, I need to make sure your energy is leagues beyond any other angel. Altering the conceptual makeup is the best I can do for you. This will give you the best possible starting point. Once you finish integrating the Abyss, you should be a top tier racial trait user. Maybe not BETHY, but who is?"


After I got her permission, I started my work. Closing my eyes, I reached out to the tree. This was my first time using the Wisdom of Solomon since my staff had ranked up. Rather than just treat it like a machine, I decided to lean into the tree theme. Symbolism and stories were important aspects of technique creation, and forms were very similar. I was going about this racial trait thing from my strong points, so I needed to go all out.


Luckily, I had a good idea how to proceed. First I grabbed all the books that I was planning to use and carried them to the pedestal. Lifting them up, I speared them through with the roots, letting them float in the air as the ethereal appendages of the illusory tree held them pinned in the air like a butterfly on a card.


Closing my eyes, I reached out through the tree, feeling the tomes at the ends of the roots. The staff, consciousness still pretty murky, was there in the background, eager to help, so I allowed it to assist as I pulled through the roots, drawing the water vapor floating around the leaves into the roots. The energy, that unquantifiable substance that allowed this mechanism (I suspected now that it was some form of mythology), soaked into the books, then was sucked out by the roots, drawing the latent information inside them up into the tree.


Having absorbed the information, the concepts began to mix, iterations coming forth, but instead of playing out in my head like a computer, fruits began to grow on the branches. Because of the connection between my soul and the tree, a glance at the fruit told me everything I needed to know about it.


One fruit was round and dark, and that one was just pure Enshrining Darkness, one had slight swirls of green, and that was clearly Zagan. The tree was concocting the fruits based on all of the elements. Not just the ones I wanted, it was starting with single aspects and then mixing them. The lowest level of the canopy held more simple single color fruits, but as it climbed they began to shift and mix, introducing strange patterns and unusual side effects.


It was dizzying. Even sticking to the main template, the changes I was making to the racial trait kept mutating it into strange variants. Three winged angels, tree angels, angels made of pure darkness. The more information it gathered though, the more perfected they became. Not just from the books but from previous instances, I was able to see the improvement as the fruits climbed the tree.


Sadly, that wasn't all I could see. The vapor was draining away FAST. I'd had way more of it than the last time I'd used this ability, and I was already almost out. I focused on a few of the most promising fruits and urged the tree to concentrate in those directions, splitting off a series of parallels to help it sort through the data.


Finally, right before I ran out of vapor, the process finished. At the top of the tree, situated in the same place the fruit had been back when it had just been a sapling, sat a single lustrous fruit. It was round and shiny, with mixed swirls of black through its mostly green and gold surface, creating strange swirling patterns that made me dizzy to look at. Reaching up, I beckoned to the fruit and it plucked itself, falling in a parabolic arc to smack casually into my palm. As soon as it was picked, the other fruits withered and dissolved, leaving the tree empty, though looking a little wilted.


I held up the fruit to my wife triumphantly, passing it over so she could examine it. "Ok," she said slowly. "So…is this the catalyst? Like is this a real fruit? Because you need a catalyst for a racial trait, don't you?"


"Not for this one," I said with a shake of my head. "Racial traits use catalysts to trigger changes in Skills through the connection to the body, changing the soul by the transitive property. It's kind of wonky, because it works the OPPOSITE of the way the traits function in the first place, but it's only a spark and it uses qualities and aspects of the soul to initiate the process. We're skipping that for you, because I'm connected DIRECTLY to your soul. I can make changes to the bond directly through our connection."


She frowned, looking concerned. "Does that mean the bond will go away? Will we lose it when it changes?"


"Nah, it'll just be altered," I pulled her in for a hug. "I'm going to use Sammael to anchor my end, so it'll just turn into something new. Still a bond, but it'll become a completely unique Skill that I'll have, while your side of it will turn into your racial trait. It's the only way I could think of to make this work without waiting until your rank up and integrating it into your main ability."


Taking a deep breath, she nodded. "Alright, I get you. So…how do we do this? Do I need a book or something?"


I tossed the fruit at her, and she caught it clumsily, raising an eyebrow at me. "Nope. It's a fruit. Just eat it. Make sure you're ready though, it's going to be a doozy, so don't just bite-" sadly, I hadn't talked fast enough. Following my instruction to just eat the fruit, my wife had reflexively bitten into it, her eyes widening as she heard the rest of my sentence, one turning pitch black and one flashing bright green, then they rolled up in her head.


Cursing, I opened my eyes in the real world and darted forward, catching her, then grimaced. "Ok, that was on me. I probably shouldn't have paused for effect." Her only response was a violent twitch. "Right, let's get you on the couch."

 

[Malcolm Tent]

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. " Master 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.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

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.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Five days went by in a blur. Forty more scrolls put me at ninety two, just one day short of a hundred (not counting the three emergency scrolls my friends kept on hand), and I wasn't any less nervous because of the excess. Bethy had been working with Callie and I the whole time, and we'd mostly come up with a stable method of training we were PRETTY sure would help.

Which was what we were doing now. Stacking our influence as we tried to prepare for the conclave. It was starting in about a two and a half hours (for us, there were people there already, but we weren't needed until the majority got there) and we wanted her to be in the best possible condition for this fight. I had no clue what this werewolf might have up his sleeves, and I wasn't worried about her losing, but if she lost control and started eating people the C-rankers would have to stop her, and that might be dangerous, assuming she didn't just escape.

"Alright, are you sure you're good for the next round?" I asked her worriedly. Bethy looked…bad. Hair matted, face soaked with sweat, and her ever present sparkle was completely missing. She looked grim and determined, which was a side I knew she HAD, but didn't make it less unsettling to see.

Callie seemed to feel the same. "I think that's enough Bethy," she assured her. "We've been chipping away at your bloodlust for almost a week now. It's just one fight."

Bethy shook her head. "Again," she croaked hoarsely. "We don't know what he can do. It's too dangerous to take chances." Her face looked gaunt and sallow. The process we'd been using definitely wasn't healthy. We'd been burning her bloodline away bits at a time and then using the heretic flame to reinforce the stripped spots. Zagan helped her regenerate, but there was some loss, and we'd done more than a few rounds.

The thing was, it seemed to be working. It wasn't really protecting the areas of stripped bloodline so much as being consumed, but Bethy's bloodline seemed to actively devour the heretic flame. It was integrating little bits of it into the sections that were restored.

What that actually MEANT I had no idea. I knew that you could alter racial traits, hell the werewolf we were preparing Bethy to fight had done it. It wasn't EASY exactly, but while not necessarily god level, Callie and I had tricks other people our level didn't come close to.

Taking a deep breath, I held my hands out. Genesis Burst. I poured the power into her, and Bethy threw back her head and screamed. Grimacing, Callie put her hands on our friend's shoulders and surged blue black heretic fire into her. Archie trilled, spreading his wings and exploding into a Life Nova that fueled all three of us.

The energy synergized well with Zagan, and it helped me keep up my output. There was an element of Zagan in the heretic flame too, though it changed the composition a bit. I could swear her flames looked a bit more greenish under Archie's influence.

After ten more minutes (which seemed like hours) we stopped, staggering away to sit down, taking deep breaths.

"Do you think we cut it a bit close?" I panted. "We only have a few hours to rest before we have to be there."

My sister, looking worried, stepped forward to help Bethy up. She and Gabe were standing by with Dayna. I could see on their faces that they wished they could feed her to help her recover, but if she bit anyone who wasn't a thrall it would cause agonizing pain as the stats were ripped from the body.

"It should be fine," she assured me. "Bethy recovers incredibly quickly as long as she has someone to feed on. Dayna is strong, and she should be in fighting shape within the hour." She glanced at the vampire with concern. "Is this going to be a regular thing? I mean, you can actually FIX her by doing this, right?"

I shrugged. "I mean…a bit. It's working a little better than the wishes. At this rate we could modify her trait within a few months, provided it doesn't start to adapt to the changes. At the moment it's sucking up the heretic flame like a sponge, but the actual changes are VERY minimal. If I had to guess Lark's mythology is infused into her through the Domain."

Which was frustrating, but I couldn't do anything about it. I still didn't know exactly where Domains fit into the whole soul body dynamic when it came to racial traits. I knew that animals didn't have them, but I wasn't sure how they impacted the way the Path connected body and soul. A lot of the way racial traits worked was counterintuitive, and seemed to have been made to compensate for the restrictions humans had that beasts didn't.

Of course, while it might seem at first glance that beasts had it easier than people, that was hardly the case. The percentage of humans competing for renown was infinitesimal, and it got smaller the higher up you went. With beasts, every single animal was competition for the renown of your species.

Killing other beasts and consuming them helped spread your legend, but beyond that, based on the way that stats were integrated into the bodies of animals, I was pretty sure they might be able to get stronger by eating other beasts. Which meant you had to worry about someone eating you for your renown at any time.

The elixir cap people had was based on soul strength, and since beasts had their soul and body (or at least stats) combined from day one, I doubted it was there. Of course, humans had their own advantages. Communication and systems of information dispersal, for one. I wondered if that had anything to do with why some beasts took human form.

I was distracting myself again. I focused on Bethy. "I'm going to keep trying. Don't misunderstand. I just don't want you guys thinking this is a tomorrow fix. It'll be months if not years before Bethy will see any changes to her trait, if she does at all."
The exhausted vampire shot me a heartbreakingly bright smile. "It's ok, Shane. I know how hard you're working to help me. It means a lot. This is why we're besties! Come here and give me a hug!" She threw her arms out, stepping forward to hug me, and I dodged back in horror, trying to avoid her sweaty embrace.

"Gross, Bethy you're covered in grime! Don't get my armor all sweaty!" Summoning some energy from deep within herself, she darted after me, cackling like a madwoman. I saw my wife snickering behind her hand and dove over her shoulder, taking refuge behind her much smaller form.

She gasped. "TRAITOR!" Then she wheeled on Bethy. "Bethany Lark, if you get my new costume all sweaty two hours before a big event, you will PAY. I'll make you sit with me and sort through Celine's economic impact reports. And I'll QUIZ you."
The maniacal vampire froze, reeling back in horror. "What?" She wailed. "But that's BORING! Celine's writing is SO flowery. It's like reading math based poetry. Anything but that!"

I wasn't aware we even GOT economic impact statements from Celine. I shot my wife a pulse of gratitude through the bond, and she just rolled her eyes. Bethy, pouting but subdued, turned and strode out of the room, head held high. Her adoring fans smirked and waved goodbye as they followed her out.

"I can't believe that worked," I marveled at my wife. "You made BETHY behave."

She blew on her nails, buffing them against her cloak. "What can I say? She knows who's really in charge in this family."

"My grandmother," I said dryly. Now it was Callie's turn to pout, but it quickly turned into a squeal of surprise as I tossed her over my shoulder. "Now let's go get cleaned up. We have to look presentable for this conclave."
We headed back to our rooms, each taking a shower (an hour a piece) and then spent the last thirty minutes relaxing together before meeting up with everyone else.

Carmichael was waiting for us in the hallway outside our rooms. "Alright, are you all ready?" He asked worriedly. "I have to admit, I'm pretty worried about this fight. I get the feeling it won't be as easy as you all seem to think."

"You might be right," I admitted. Everyone turned to stare at me in surprise. "What? I've been trying to cut back on my instinctive arrogance. Bethy is scary, but she's not operating unrestricted. Whoever this guy is has the backing of a deity. Admittedly, the whole werewolf vs. vampire thing is actually pretty cool, but there are a lot of species of werewolf, and I've seen a few scary ones. This will be a tough fight, even for Bethy. That's why we put so much effort into purifying and reinforcing her bloodline. The resistance to the bloodlust will let her tap into her power more deeply."

Her fight with me had stretched her limits, but there had been some purification after, while it had mostly faded, combined with all our work this last week it should be enough to let her put in some serious effort. Her fight with Dayna had been WAY beyond what she'd done against me. It showed how much stronger she could be when she wasn't holding back.

Dayne herself nodded. "I've fought you both. I believe you to be stronger, but don't underestimate Dastan. The Hound of Verdyn is a dangerous foe. Don't take this battle lightly. Lady Bethy needs to be in top form. No holding back."

We all glanced at our excitable vampire friend, and she just stared back innocently. "What? I always take things seriously. Except when I don't. That happens sometimes. But this doesn't seem like one of those times. I bet I'll be completely focused."

"Why are you WAGERING on that like it's out of your control?" snapped my sister. "Just don't mess around!"
Bethy nodded solemnly. "For sure. I'll definitely probably do that. I think."

"Alright," I said with a laugh. "Bethy stop taunting my sister, Chelsea you know better than to expect a straight answer about something like that from her. Bethy comes through when it matters, we have to trust her."

Chelsea had been winding up to argue, but at the last sentence, she froze. She glanced at Bethy, bit her lip, and then nodded. Gabe put a hand on her shoulder, giving her a warm smile. "Don't worry. I'll be right there with you. If anything goes wrong, we can step in instantly. No D-ranker in the world stands a chance against all three of us. And that's only if we beat Abel and Shane there."

"Which you definitely won't," Abel said conversationally. "It's not even on the table. I would never miss the chance to save her life. Imagine it, every time she tries to pretend she's forgotten my name, I can just be like 'Well I bet you remembered it when I was saving your life'."

Bethy recoiled. "What? That's not…that's never going to happen. Stop it." She glared at him. "I don't need your help Alice, I'm going to totally win this and you're going to be like 'Oh my gods, Bethy is so cool, I don't even care if she can't remember my dumb name, she's the best in the world'. That's you. That's what you'll sound like."

I shared a smirk with my sister as we watched Bethy officially shift from whimsical to focused. Apparently the idea of owing Abel her life was literally a fate worse than death. As we walked towards the conclave, Abel continued needling her, earning waspish replies from the vampire, and the rest of us just grinned and followed behind. Sometimes a little healthy rivalry was the best motivation.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

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.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The next stage of the conclave was much less mysterious. We'd left behind the basement full of stone pillars and had retired to a large golden ballroom. The walls were white paneled with gold trim, and the floors were white marble inlaid with gold. Weirdly, despite being similar material to the city outside, this place looked much more refined.


Among the golden trim, the white paint and marble created a sense of restrained wealth and complex elegance, as opposed to the garish "we dumped gold on your town" opulence of the rest of Dawnrend.


The ballroom had been lavishly furnished too, with a huge round table draped in white silk laid out in the center, covered in bone china plates inlaid with gold traceries. Naturally, my friends and I picked a spot near someone we knew, specifically Carmichael, and took our seats. Callie sat next to me, then my sister, then her guards, then Bethy.


At the end of our line of people was Dom, who had started chatting with Dastan about…wolf stuff. He seemed thrilled to find a kindred spirit, and Dastan was slowly recovering from what Bethy had done to him, though he was notably avoiding looking at her and seemed to be unconsciously leaning away when she got closer. Meanwhile, Selvara was on Carmichael's other side, and Argaunt was on the other side of her. And we were discussing terms of cooperation.


We'd made the initial agreements, of course, terms of service for freedom. We'd ended up with an even fifty C-rank cultivators, even more than expected given that several of the godchildren hadn't agreed. After handing over all fifty scrolls, my mood had soured a bit. That was potential points down the drain, but Callie reminded me that the renown from leading a C-rank army to charge out of the dungeon and expose the Void Shallow was definitely going to be substantial.


Now we were just deciding how exactly that attack would go down. Carmine and Delilah, the Master of Martial Force and the Mistress of Soothing Whispers, were the most familiar with the defenses at the palace, where the exit was under lockdown, so they were leading the discussion.


"I'm just saying, we can hit them head on. Sure, they have us outnumbered a bit, but if we surprise attack them, we can take advantage of the lull at the beginning to kill as many as possible." Carmine, a huge red haired man with a booming voice, slammed his beer mug (which he'd brought with him, because the rest of us had champagne flutes) forcefully on the table, his heavy brows furrowed.


Delilah, a slim, pale woman with black hair that fell to her ankles, sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. Her mouth was covered with a black veil, and her eyes were a shocking blue. So pale it was almost white. But her formerly composed appearance was shredded by her companion as he waxed on about the tactical benefits of shock and awe.


"We don't HAVE the element of surprise," she told him flatly. "They're EXPECTING us. We would be walking right into a trap."


He waved that off as if it was a small detail. "They're expecting SOMETHING. No way they know about our full forces. We send a small group in, with the majority smuggled inside the little Vampire's domain. Then when they surround our stalking horse we all jump out and tear them apart."


"And I think it's too risky," she sighed. "The initial group would be highly exposed. And what happens if the girl gets killed. I'm guessing we don't all just pop out of her Domain?"


He snorted. "Bah, she's squirrely. Did you see her fight with the dog boy? It's worth a bit of risk for such a pronounced advantage. Anyway, I don't hear you coming up with any better ideas, eh?"


"You don't hear anything at all over your obnoxious braying," she said waspishly. "I think we should divide and conquer. Five teams of ten C-rankers will enter through each of a handful of prearranged passages we can have 'conveniently' abandoned. Once everyone is in, the whole palace will go into seizures. They'll be running all over the place trying to put out fires and won't be able to mount a stable defense. Our elite groups will punch right through, and can join up at several prearranged locations, growing in strength until we reassemble in front of the exit chamber."


I frowned at her. "Um…that sounds like a super risky plan." She'd been so wrapped up in her argument, she took a minute to notice who had spoken, then turned to me and raised an eyebrow. "Never split the party." I told her bluntly. "That's dungeon one oh one."


She groaned in frustration. "Perhaps, but concentrating our forces leaves us open to a battle of attrition. If we get bogged down with the defenders, reinforcements might arrive."


"What reinforcements?" I asked, suddenly concerned. "I was under the impression all the C-rankers they had on side were city lords. I know they've been calling them back, since several of you are city lords who came in with the crowds, but the ones we accounted for should be all of them, right?"


"C-rankers are a major issue," she admitted. "But not the only one. A sufficient number or quality of D-rank threats can be just as deadly. And there are MANY D-rankers in the Shoals, most of whom work for Skartaris. I mean, our own forces aren't insubstantial, but a leaky bucket won't hold water. We've been forced to be quite circumspect with our D-rank subordinates to prevent information from leaking too badly."


I grimaced. Yeah, I knew we'd have a D-rank force coming along for the ride, though they didn't need wishes to get free. Last count we had two hundred and fifty D-rankers scheduled to come with us. A great many of them were actually peak D-rank, with a possibility of breakthroughs when they emerged, which was great news for my succession war forces, but at the moment, trying to organize them would be nightmarish.


It also meant that the number of D-rankers with each group was only going to be twenty five, with a total of thirty five ascendants each if we went with her plan. I didn't love that. But I did see her point. We needed to break through as quick as possible. If anyone got jammed up the other groups could converge and help them out, and I had a stockpile of scrolls still I could pass out. I could get some nice points for the help, so two birds there.


Humming uncertainly, I paused to think. We were rushed here. If we had time I'd have loved to teach them some formations, it might have helped our push. But we only had a few days to break out, and the longer we waited the more likely they'd see us coming. Managing to unite everyone so quickly was probably outside Skartaris's expectations, but they would be expecting us SOON.


Callie had been trying to scout for us, and her Abyssal Path actually helped, allowing her passage through the shadows, but there were a lot of places in the palace that were mysteriously blocked off, presumably by the Abyssal Lords. Which was another problem. Chances were good those bastards were around. I was pretty sure they were confined to the void laden areas, but if we dragged our heels, a quick sortie might be on the table.


"Two teams," I said finally. "One hundred and fifty apiece. A hundred and twenty five D-rankers and twenty five C-rankers. It'll let us split attention without leaving ourselves too vulnerable." I glanced around the table, where the other C-rankers were silent. "Anyone have any issues with that plan? Speak now, because your contracts won't allow you to defect. We can still change the plan if anyone thinks it's not workable."


While they were all going to have to fall in line, that was only if they actually escaped. If they didn't leave, the contracts would be void (pun intended).


I didn't think anyone here WANTED to stay in this abyssal shithole after we bailed, but if the choices were that or certain death, they would obviously defect rather than get killed. The easiest way to deal with that was to accept input on team distribution and entry strategy.


That made me think of the other issue. Namely all the innocent people here. While I couldn't help them personally, I was loathe to leave them here to suffer. Ideally, once we were out, we could have my grandparents dispatch a huge group of D-rankers, or maybe even requisition an Imperial Legion. They could hold the line while we evacuated the civilians before the void shallow finished integrating enough for C-rankers to leave.


I just didn't know if the five factions had the manpower, with the war ongoing. As much as I hated to admit it, this place might not be a priority. I wondered if there was another way to help them. Maybe have my grandmother open more of those portals so people who were still below C-rank could get out.


I got so wrapped up in my thoughts I missed the suggestions, but the parallel I left in charge of my body answered for me, keeping me apprised of the situation. Piece of Mind might not be flashy, but it was easily my most useful Skill.


Finally, everyone agreed on the plan. We'd had to accept a whole bunch of personnel changes to make everyone happy, and the teams were extremely lopsided, with the majority of the stronger C-rankers focused on the OTHER group, with us having only Carmichael and Carmine. But honestly, I wasn't bothered. We had our own confidence. My D-rank forces were superior, and most of the D-rank godchildren weren't bound by contract so I was hesitant to trust them anyway.


Meanwhile, my wife had been overflowing with confidence in a way I had never seen before. She wouldn't tell me why, just that she was working on something good, but I trusted her to know what she was doing. I was interested to see what had her so pumped, given that this particular change in demeanor had come AFTER her racial trait. She'd figured out some sort of deadly use for her new abilities, I suspected, and I couldn't wait to see what they might be.


Finally, after HOURS of talking, things started to wind down. With the distribution decided, all that was left was the timing, and everyone agreed that sooner was better. With that in mind, we officially planned the assault for tomorrow. The extra day would mean an extra eight scrolls, which meant an even fifty, one for each of our C-rankers as an emergency measure.


I was ALSO looking forward to seeing if I could get more stats per scroll, given my recent rise in power. Seventy five should be on the table, and any lit bit helped. I had one of my friends make an in person wish to test it, though I didn't grant it obviously because I'd used all mine up for the day. Still it confirmed that yes, seventy five points were on the table, and I made a not to request specific stats from each C-ranker as I passed them out.


Once that ended, it was dinner time. We'd been sitting at the table with empty plates for hours, and everyone was famished. A series of empty cloaks emerged from the entrances to the ballroom, trays of food floating beside them, and distributed the food to all of us. I had prime rib and mashed potatoes, while everyone else picked at the variety of unusual local dishes (some of them fish based).


All in all, it was a pretty decent night, considering how it started. I didn't let it fool me. Tomorrow would be the final push into the palace, and none of us were remotely ready for it. Once we got through though, we'd be out among my family, and we'd all be safe. I was just hoping that there would be room aboard the Acheron for all these people. It was going to be a tight squeeze.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The first thing I did the next morning was create and distribute my scrolls. I ended up asking all fifty of the C-rankers to try to offer Creation stats. It wasn't a commonly used stat for most Ascendants, and mine was laughably far behind the rest of my stats at this point. Once that was done though, we officially split into groups, getting ready to head out on our assault.


Delilah, who was going with the other group, gathered us all up to go over our entry points before we left, just to make sure the plan was fresh in our minds.


"Alright," she said as she pointed at the diagram she'd drawn on the wall. "Here's where we'll be entering the palace. There are a total of thirty six hidden entrances. Three of them are Skartaris's personal escape passages and are under heavy observation, twenty are in common usage by various criminal organizations for trades with palace personnel, and three of them are used for moving sacrifices for the Abyssal Lords. The last ten are used by various servants and staff for event prep and other purposes, and those were the ten I suggested we break into."


She reached up and circled two of them. "Among those ten, however, four of them are basically abandoned, and are even more secure, and I've selected the two furthest from each other for our entry, to give us the best chance of a quiet infiltration.


"This one is the quarry entrance off the third district." She pointed at a spot on the hand drawn map. "It's incredibly cramped, wet, and fairly dangerous. The whole thing is halfway underwater and it's full of snakes. The snakes are all venomous, and while the venom isn't LETHAL, it's deeply painful, and they tend to swarm. I cannot describe to you how much I hate this fucking quarry."


We were all staring, and Delilah stopped, flushing slightly. "Sorry, that was inappropriate. When I was younger I lived in the third district. We would often dare each other to swim in the quarry."


I wondered if the snakes were left there on purpose to prevent kids like that from accidentally stumbling into the palace entrance. It didn't matter. I was sure we could get by them. I had tricks for dealing with beasts. "We'll take the quarry." I said decisively. "You can have the other entrance, whatever it is."


She let out a relieved breath. "The cave system off the ninth district. There are a bunch of cave bats, but otherwise the only real problem is getting lost. The whole place is basically a labyrinth. I have a map, of course, so that won't be an issue."


"Honestly, I'm kind of surprised you gave us a choice," I said as I noted her relief. "You could have just assigned the entrances directly and I'd never have known."


She shook her head. "I work for you now. And besides, we'll need all the help we can get to push through Skartaris's forces. Alienating our allies for no reason is stupid. If you'd wanted to force it I'd have just gone to the quarry. I'm relieved you didn't though. I really hate that damned place."


Laughing, I went and collected our people. Carmichae, Dezcarta, and Carmine were the only C-rankers among our twenty five that I recognized. All the really impressive ones had gone with the other group. Our group, however, had all my friends, so our D-rankers were leagues above theirs.


Dezcarta and Caladwen had shown up last night, along with their mother, a cheerful woman named Delia. She was also pretty high in D-rank, of course, and she was coming with us when we left. As was, to my surprise, the Ordinary Citizen, who had tagged along with Caladwen and her mother.


Because it would be too obvious for a giant crowd of powerful people to stroll down the road together, we all split up after getting directions, agreeing to meet back up at the quarry, but the trip was quick and effortless.


We all arrived there pretty quickly, and we gathered at the top of a small cliff overlooking what appeared to be a tiny lake or a very deep pond. "So, this is the quarry," I observed as we stared down into the chalky water. "Why would anyone dare kids to swim in this? And why would they do it?"


"What, no kids on your home planet made stupid dares?" Carmichael asked in amusement.


I paused, thinking about my childhood. Benny had dared me to do some pretty dumb shit when we were children. After a couple moments, I just shrugged. "Not that I can think of," I lied. "I guess I was just too mature for that kind of thing, even as a child."


Callie snorted, and I turned to glare at her. She averted her eyes, lips twitching as she coughed something that sounded suspiciously like "mugs", and I very graciously ignored her.


"ANYWAY," I said loudly. "How are we doing this? I assume none of us want to swim in that shit and get ambushed by a horde of pain snakes. Anyone here have a water abi-" I paused. "Wait, I think I have an idea.


I'd been planning to make a chute through the quarry and then have someone drain the water, but thinking about it, there was a much easier way. I knelt down, and a quick flare of Dantalion allowed me to get a good image of the surrounding area. Once I had it memorized, I dropped the form and activated Agares.


With a slight effort of will, the stone in front of us began to dissolve and contract. I condensed it into a much denser rock, and in the process, created a series of black glass steps leading down into the earth. They were a bit steep, because I swept down and underneath the water, and I had to focus a lot of the hard stone into the ceiling of the tunnel as I went so it didn't collapse, but it only took me about ten minutes.


When I was done, I turned to the others, gesturing to the tunnel with a flourish. "There you go. Snake free. Probably. For now. We should hurry." I held out my arm to my wife. "Shall we?"


She beamed at me. I'd felt her distress about diving into murky water in her new costume. It had enchantments to prevent stains or tearing, but I imagine even with absurd strength, swimming in a ball gown would be annoying. Hooking her arm in mine, she followed me down into the tunnel, our heels clicking on the steps as we descended.


My sister was right behind us, looking intrigued. "One of your utility forms. I have to say, this one is pretty damned useful."


I tried to remember if she'd SEEN Agares. I was surprised to realize that she probably hadn't. I'd been on Rackham when I developed it, and I didn't use it much here. The only reason it was feasible now was that all the void energy had been drained into the clouds, leaving the ground slightly more brittle than one would expect from C-ranked rock.


Glancing back, I checked how far the others were from us. It was a decent distance between my group and the C-rankers and even the other D-rankers, so I went ahead and triggered Murmur, adjusting the domain to only filter sound. "Alright, we can talk freely. Yeah, this is Agares. You guys all ready? For the assault, I mean. I'm not sure exactly what this fight is going to entail, but I doubt it'll be pleasant."


Bethy and Abel, both supremely confident, just nodded casually. Mel, to my surprise, shrugged. "I'm not…I'm starting to fall behind. The training helped, your mom is a badass, but this idiot is on a whole other level now." He hooked a thumb at her boyfriend. "I feel off balance. Might need to ask for some wish priority. I want to start hyperfocusing into Might like Jessie does with VItality."


I'd been under the impression she was ALREADY doing that, but thinking about it, I didn't really know what her stats were. "Yeah, I'm down to help." Reallocating stats like that was easy, and it paid me as much as it paid them. We entered a bend in the tunnel, and then shifted from vertical to horizontal. This section of the tunnel was flat ground, and it was a pretty casual trip. "What about the rest of you? Any easy fixes for problems?"


Dom shrugged. "I could probably use more focus on Might and Vitality. Condensing my stats like that should help refine my ability on my next rank up. Honestly, it's probably a good idea for most of us."


I nodded. He wasn't wrong. Callie and I were exceptions, because her stats were distributed across too many specialties because her legend had grown WAY too fast, and I purposefully kept mine balanced so my ability DIDN'T upgrade (among other reasons). But Jessie had seen some absurd results from the focusing she'd done.


Honestly, along the way it would have been detrimental to stack everything into one or two stats, since most of us were still figuring out our Paths and abilities. But now that we had our combat styles confirmed, it was something to think about.


Originally, most of us had more versatile abilities than Jessie, whose entire portfolio of powers was pretty much covered under Vitality. Now though, with Paths and refinement of skills and techniques, we could mostly fit our combat styles into narrowed boxes.


Extreme specialization would make the abilities we DID have incredibly overpowered for our rank, which would snowball into more renown. Jessie got almost as much renown as Callie and I, and she hadn't killed any gods. She just did one thing and did it WELL. In all honesty, while the rest of us used tricks and shortcuts, Jessie was the best traditional Ascendant in our entire group in terms of gaining renown.


We let ourselves get distracted by that during the walk, though I kept an eye out for snakes. With Murmur active, nothing could sneak up on us, and I speared a few of them with steam arrows as they tried to slither out of wall cracks.


Eventually, we took another set of stairs I'd made up and ended up in another cavern, this one entirely empty and mercifully dry. We'd bypassed the quarry. We came out at the edge of a sort of…hallway. It was still kind of a cave, but the walls were made of ancient looking brick. An extension of the old ruins, I assumed.


"Alright, look alive people," I called over my shoulder, dropping Murmur. "This area is supposed to be abandoned, but we all know how that kind of thing usually plays out."


I heard some murmurs of assent, and we slowed down, taking our time as we picked through the tunnel, listening for any signs of ambush. Happily there didn't appear to be any, and we reached the exit with a surprising lack of trouble.


The passage up was a spiral staircase, and we took it up without any suspense. The area above was pitch black, which was creepy, and Dantalion couldn't pierce it. Some side effect of the ruins, I assumed. Once we were all out, we shut the passage, and I sighed with relief. "Ok, I think we're good. I don't think they noticed us. Anyone see anything to convince you otherwise?"


"I did," whispered an urgent sounding voice from the dark. "I'm pretty sure they know we're here."


I frowned, turning toward it. I didn't recognize whoever it was, but I was here with a lot of strangers. "Why do you say that?" I murmured back, trying to puzzle out my next move if we were ambushed.


There was a scratching sound, and the green flame of a candle illuminated the room, showing a crowd of people surrounding my group. A man stood at the front, smiling cheerfully as he held the flame aloft. "Oh," he said smugly. "Just a guess."

 

[Malcolm Tent]

There were a lot of people surrounding us. Our group was a hundred and fifty people, and they had us outnumbered two or three to one, at least. I grimaced. Someone had sold us out. But the weird thing was, I didn't FEEL any danger. Even now, my Danger Sense wasn't going off. I could see the threat, but I didn't feel threatened.


Of course, I wasn't stupid enough to assume we were safe. Maybe they had a way to block my danger sense, but at the very least I felt a bit less panicked than I normally would have. Trust, but verify, as they say.


"Who are you?" I asked the man with the candle. "And why are you waiting here for us? Skartaris sent for us, we're supposed to clean a nest of Crang Beetles out of the sewers. If those things get loose, he's going to be pissed." I decided the easiest thing to do here was to lie my ass off. They probably wouldn't buy it, but it didn't hurt to try.


He raised an eyebrow at me. "What exactly is a Crang Beetle?"


I huffed in annoyance. "Gods," I glanced at Callie. "This guy, works in the palace and doesn't know what a Crang Beetle is. Can you imagine anyone being more oblivious. Crang Beetles are a tier three invasive species, Mr. Silver Spoon. They're one of the biggest worries us mere mortals have in these tunnels, and you have a rank six infestation. There's a nesting mother down here, and we'll all be ankle deep in the bastards by lunch if we don't kill it."


He stared at me, lips twitching a bit. "You know, I think I've heard of Crang Beetles." I blinked. He definitely hadn't, I'd made them up five seconds ago. He glanced around at the others. "I think it's clear these people are here to take care of a pest problem. We've obviously come to the wrong place."


The big guy next to him, a bearded man with a shaved head, shot him a confused look. "I…what? Boss, that guy is obviously lying. None of us have heard of these things, and there's no way Skartaris would hire a hundred and fifty hardened soldiers to kill bugs in our basement and not tell us."


"Oh, so he has to tell you everything he does?" The boss asked archly. "Because last I heard, he was in charge. These people are clearly here in force because the infestation is a real danger. We need to let them through. In fact, I bet they're already recognized by the wards. Not only should we not kill them, if we try it would probably backfire."


The man looked confused. Then his eyes widened. "Crell!" He roared. "What are you doing?"


Crell Preost, the Master of Ceremonies, the Legendary Skill user who could disarm people's abilities by talking them out of thinking they would work, just smiled apologetically at him. "Sorry Baldwin. Nothing personal, you understand. You're part of the problem, and I'm in the solution business."


He flicked his wrist and the man choked, clutching his throat to try to stem the flood of blood from the wound that appeared across his neck as Crell snapped the straight razor that had appeared in his hand closed.


As he spoke, roughly half of the enemy soldiers turned and laid into their companions, tearing into them with weapons, abilities, and in a few cases, bare hands.


Within moments, half of the enemies, at least a dozen of them C-rankers, lay dead. The other half had taken up a position behind Crell, standing at attention. Crell smiled winningly, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a familiar stone, tossing it into the air and then catching it. "Like I said," he chuckled. "You're here to help with the pest problem, right?"


I stared at the stone. "You're THE boss. The Tower Master. The one who made the cloaks."


"Oh good," he chirped. "You aren't stupid. That'll make things so much easier. I was afraid you might be a total blockhead. I think it was that wooden expression that convinced me."


Serah, standing next to my sister, her face as impassive as ever, had been just as floored by that ridiculous comment as the rest of us. She had also been extremely amused. The taciturn angel snorted, and in a complete reversal of everything I'd seen from her up to this point, dissolved into GIGGLES.


We all stared at her, and she snorted a few more times, forcing her face back into its bland expression. "Sorry," she said flatly. "That was funny."


I rolled my eyes, then turned back to Crell. "Ok, well, I don't suppose you have ANOTHER team of powerful turncoats? Because an extra ten C-rankers and….what, a hundred D-rankers, will definitely come in handy, but it'll be kind of moot if an actual team of enemies intercepts our second group."


I wasn't relaxing my guard. The lack of Danger Sense made me lean toward trust, but it was too soon to tell. I'd also noticed he hadn't actually CONFIRMED my statement about him being the boss. He'd just sort of avoided the subject. Maybe that was a coincidence, or maybe it wasn't, but I wasn't going to be letting down my defenses until I knew for sure. I had Mornax and Sammael active, and Abomination Engine running alongside Gluttony, just in case.


Callie, meanwhile, had drawn a pair of daggers and coated them with her blue flame. They hung relaxed but ready at her sides. "Afraid not," he said with a shrug. "Sadly we'll need to invite them to our little party personally. And we'd better hurry up. Like you said, if they get taken out before we meet back up things will get much harder. I assume your exit strategy can accommodate my friends here?" He nodded to the ten new C-rankers.


"Of course," I reassured him. "It'll need to wait until we're at the exit. Can't be wasting any emergency measures in case we need them. I'm sure we can cobble together ten from everyone's stock though. None of my group have used theirs yet."


He nodded genially. "Fair enough. Shall we get going then? Time is the fire in which we burn, and all that. Chop chop, off we pop."


I stared at him tightly. Crell was FAR too casual about all this. The way he just lazily killed the guy he'd been talking to a second ago. I didn't like it. It wasn't a premonition or anything, he just rubbed me the wrong way. But sadly, sometimes you had to work with people you didn't like. He was here to help, and our chances of surviving without him were much slimmer. So I followed behind him, making sure to put myself between my friends and the tower master, just in case.


It might not have accomplished much, but it made me feel better. I would have some warning, most likely, if he turned on us, and between Mornax and my armor, I was the tankiest member of our little group, even including the C-rankers.


But my Danger Sense remained mute. I very carefully avoided bringing it up or discussing it with him at all. His power was based on persuasion, so as long as I didn't engage with him on the subject it SHOULD be fine, but I triggered Dantalion as we walked, just in case. I refused to be caught off guard in such a dangerous situation.


More than that, even once we got OUT things wouldn't be safe. This whole thing was a trap. For WHO I was still unclear on. I didn't believe my great-grandmother would let her daughter show up here if she genuinely expected anything bad to happen. She was pretty casual about life and death, but not when it came to my grandmother.


But still, SOMETHING was going to happen. I wasn't going to assume she'd foreseen all of this, but who the hell knew. Enshrining Darkness seemed to have some connection to the Abyss. Maybe she'd set all this up to trigger the void break, who knew with her?


Whatever was going on, I was assuming that it would be dangerous and crazy, since that was kind of her MO. Which meant the real risk wasn't the push to get out, but what happened AFTER we got out. The vanished gods knew we were here anyway, and we were about to steal a bunch of their best. We were jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.


I forced my mind off of that topic. It didn't matter. There was nothing we could do. The plans of gods were far out of my reach, frustrating as that was. I could only take it one step at a time.


Crell led us through the halls like he was watching live camera feeds. Twists and turns helped us avoid patrols that I only knew were there because of Dantalion, sharp turns led us into hidden passages that were invisible to even our Perception, ones not even my information gathering form picked up.


It took us twenty minutes to arrive at a large spacious hall. Our second force, Delilah and Argaunt and most of the godchildren, were being seiged down by a fucking ARMY of people in heavy robes. It was an easy aesthetic to recognize.


Crell stepped forward, ready to attack, but I held up a hand. He cocked an eyebrow but nodded, motioning for me to go ahead. Closing my eyes, I triggered Wrath.


Now, Wrath was a dangerous ability, but it was very situational. The ash from the lake of fire needed to come from the surroundings. In a place with such high tier materials, doing that weas difficult. But I was confident I could manage it for two reasons. First was that I'd been using Dantalion to analyze the composition of the stone, and second because I had a B-rank staff.


The Ten Demons Tree was heavily linked to all of my forms, and after ranking up, channeling abilities through it was much easier. It didn't make my attacks B-rank, but it did push them to a high enough level to affect the C-rank stone of the floors here.


With the ability to dissolve the rock and a thorough UNDERSTANDING of the rock from Dantalion, the speed with which Wrath hit was much higher than it had been in the past. The rock under the feet of the enemy shifted into burning ash, and they all screamed as they dropped into the incredibly fine sea of blazing dust.


Once they were fully submerged, I cancelled the attack, then staggered as I felt a wave of vertigo roll over me. Callie appeared beside me, catching me as I swayed. "Whoa there, careful." She sounded concerned, but I could hear the pride in her voice too as our forces converged on the now helpless enemy, all of them trapped in C-rank stone.


The staff simulating higher tier versions of my forms was a massively useful ability, but it was also extremely taxing. I realized with a start that Dantalion, Gluttony, and Mornax had all shut down. I was still in Sammael, but I was completely bare of any other forms at the moment. I'd have to watch that one. I noticed Crell heading towards the enemy, and I straightened up, heading to cut him off. "No." I told him bluntly.


He looked surprised. I explained. "We leave them. They're helpless and this will be over too soon for them to get free. Killing them serves no purpose."


I had long since gotten used to putting down enemies, but executing a hundred people who were literally incapable of resisting was wrong. The casual way he'd killed his Skartaris's men had bothered me, but this was his world. He had set this up and he knew what was what. There was too much going on for me to just decide he was a bad guy and call him out based on that.


This, though. This was a hard line for me. He seemed to know it too, because he stared at me hard for a minute or two, then nodded. "Alright. Then lets gather the others and find someplace more private. Now that our forces have convened, it's time for the final push. We're getting the hell out of here."

 

[prymael]

Thank you for the chapter, and I hope this finds everyone doing well and able to enjoy their weekend.