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

[Malcolm Tent]

I had a LOT of rock in my ring, and after melting it down enough to thin and having Callie reach into the shadows…I dropped it all. There was a whump of displaced air as the light in the cave flickered wildly. Not enough to wake the bats, and not enough to be extinguished, but it was definitely dimmed in our nearby proximity as condensed D-rank stone coated the walls and floor of the maze within about a mile of me.


Sadly, while I DID have enough prescience to stockpile some rock, I wasn't actually able to see the future in any reliable sense, so I didn't have nearly enough of the stuff. Still, it would help smooth over the beginning of the journey, especially given several of the entrances led into the area I'd just covered.


I turned around, amused to find everyone in my retinue had made their way into the maze already…and was now covered in melted stone. My wife, being the person who dispersed it, had avoided being coated, but everyone else looked like they'd just come in out of an indoor rainstorm at a dirt factory. "I did a plan," I told them all solemnly. "It's genius in it's elegant simplicity."


"I don't think LITERAL mudslinging is a revolutionary idea," Benny said waspishly as he wiped his face clean."


Snorting, I triggered Agares, and then Murmur. I was fairly shocked to find that because of Song of the Soil being part of my Dantalion form, which was part of Murmur, the two overlapping abilities seemed to…synergize. It wasn't a new Domain, though I could probably make one if I tried, more just an exceptionally useful mix of tricks. Still, within moments, I was blown away to realize my Murmur domain had EXPANDED to fit the field of mud I'd created, using the liquified stone as a carrier for my senses and doubling down on my stealth and detection capabilities.


The boost made anyone detecting us nearly impossible, but more than that, it made anyone getting PAST my detection just as unlikely. Which meant…"Shit, we need to sit and wait." I said with a grimace. My stealth became more viable with time, and with this kind of boost, I was pretty much positive we could wrap up anyone who came in. We'd essentially be sneak attacking them with a thousand people from ambush.


We'd have to move eventually, but given we were at the entrance of the maze, someone would need to come through here at some point.


So…we waited. It was annoying, and felt counterintuitive, but it was the right call. And sure enough, within about an hour, a party of people came through. We'd retreated to the center of the mud area, so I could get as much warning as possible with which to position my people, so I saw them coming from almost LITERALLY a mile off.


Two hundred. A relatively small force. But I wasn't taking them lightly, because I recognized one of them. The copper titan. I still didn't know his name, but I'd seen him fight, and he was definitely someone's ringer. I had Abel on standby ready to take him down, assuming the surprise wasn't enough to drop him.


As he made his way deeper in with his people, I finally spotted what I assumed was his candidate. A small blonde girl with pudgy cheeks and sky blue eyes, her hair pulled up into a pair of braids that hung over her shoulders. She looked cheerful and excited, and I wouldn't have even known who she was if not for the purple electricity dancing in her eyes.


Apparently when you got the notifications about a task, it triggered the same visible energy surge as granting wishes. That was good to know. Nat and Belsara hadn't been around to see my eyes the last few times, and vice versa, so I had been unaware until now.


"Cryton, you don't need to be such a worry wart," she chirped happily. "We have our whole army with us. Plus you're guarding me personally."


The copper titan, currently copper but not titanic, scowled. "Can you not take things so lightly? This is DANGEROUS Alys. The rules of the game have changed. They're trying to keep us alive. It's not right. I don't trust it."


She snorted, blowing a raspberry. "That's just dumb, my family is being nice, that's a good thing."


"It is NOT a good thing," he snapped heatedly. "It's a SCARY thing. The Wyndham family are cold blooded serpents, to a man. You're the only decent human being in that den of vipers. The fact that they suddenly grew a conscience and are trying to keep all of you hale and healthy SHOULD concern you."


Alys pouted. "That's so mean. I know they can be a little standoffish, but they're still my family. I think its nice that they're giving us a way to get through this without alienating our family members. We'll all be serving in the WCP together in the future. It only makes sense not to take things too far."


I was feeling legitimately bad for planning to attack her at this point. She seemed so…nice. I wished more of my family thought like she did. Of course, given they were raised away from the branch clans, it wasn't surprising other Wyndhams thought like me. But seeing one was…kind of heartwarming. The only thing that made me feel a bit better was that I wouldn't need to hurt her. This was a fairly peaceful trial, like he'd said. We just had to pin her down and then move on.


Heart heavy, I raised my hand, pointing out positions for my people and getting them ready to waylay the incoming force with the most overwhelming advantage possible. The more we overpowered them, the less actual force we would need to exert and the less injured they'd need to get. The formations we'd learned in the Empire were definitely going to be a help in that regard too.


To my shock though, as they were walking into our trap, Alys froze, her head snapping up like a dog who caught a scent. "We're…not alone," she said slowly. "In fact, I THINK we might be surrounded."


With a sigh, I let the traces of us fade into being, halting my obfuscation of our forces. Keeping it up at that point would have been MORE dangerous. If they didn't know our numbers, they might be more likely to try to break out of the encirclement, and random attacks could accidentally kill someone even if they weren't aiming for that.


Cryton's eyes flared with incandescent rage as he started to grow, but Alys's hand shot out to grip his shoulder. "Wait! If you get too big you might breach the bats' airspace." She smiled wanly at me. "Hello cousin. You're Shane, right? I recognize the mask. It's super creepy by the way."


"Thanks, I try," I chuckled, stepping forward and raising my hands to show I wasn't a threat. That was nonsense, obviously, I could pincushion the whole army with a thought, or at least the D-rankers. But there was no reason to be too aggressive. "So, are we actually cousins, or is that just a general use term of endearment? I know my dad has about ten half siblings I've never met."


"Second cousins, I think," she shrugged. "It gets hard to keep track. Family is family, so most of us just say cousin to keep it simple. "So, I don't suppose you'd be open to negotiations?"


I cocked my head. "I mean…what kind? I waited an hour here to catch you guys, so I don't think I can just let you go. But I'm not unreasonable, if you think there's something you can pay me with that's worth potentially losing out on a local helper, I'm willing to listen. Though I'm surprised you're so reasonable, your buddy there seemed pretty dead set on coming for me when we first met."


"Oh, don't take it personally," she chirped. "He was just playing politics. You know that the branch heads put a bounty on you, right?"


"I wasn't aware it was anything that formal," I admitted with a laugh. "But I knew they put the word out. I suppose I can't exactly blame him for coming after me for benefits when I'm doing the same to you. Go ahead and make your offer, though like I said, I'm not sure how much we have to talk about. I can't just let you go."


She hummed consideringly. "Alright…how about a head start? Or the opposite of that, I guess. I'll trade you twenty scrolls for two hours. We stay put for two hours, and then after that time ends we're free to advance into the maze. Gives you decent odds of beating us out, and you'll get the points as long as you do, even if we make it out later. Plus it'll be a friendly start to our future dealings. I think the branch heads are finally starting to see the value in teamwork, so we might have a chance to work together in the future!"


Callie turned to me with a dazed look. "And I thought YOU were optimistic for a Wyndham. I almost want to keep her."


"Don't YOU start," I told her waspishly. "You already brought Tilda home. If you start picking up strays like Bethy does we won't have anywhere to keep them all." I glanced back at Alys. "Sorry, ignore that, my wife and I like to banter. I think your idea has merit. I DO like your attitude. And it would save us some trouble and possible injury."


Cryton snarled at me. "CERTAIN injury. You're lucky I'm hobbled in this damned cave, or I'd crush the lot of you."


"Can I punch him in the throat?" Abel asked acidly. "He seems like he could use a throat punch."


"No," I told him bluntly. "And shut up if you don't have anything nice to say. I'd tell him to do the same if I thought he'd listen."


Alys nodded approvingly. "I like that. Cryton, shut up if you don't have anything nice to say."


Cryton glared at me like I'd just taught his toddler how to swear, and I wondered briefly how they knew each other. A lot of candidates probably came with foster siblings or childhood friends. These two seemed close.


I withdrew a contract, sketching out some terms, and to my surprise, Alys tossed it back with a few addenda. I returned it with alterations, and we spent about ten minutes going back and forth before we finalized the terms. Of course, we used a wish to seal it, and she paid me for leaving them in peace with two hours lead time.


The wishes themselves weren't counted as part of the deal, mostly because appropriately valuing a scroll was basically impossible. She handed them over before we left, and we headed off into the maze.


I was happy to meet Alys, and looked forward to getting to know my newfound cousin in better circumstances, but we needed to go. However, this little encounter and the wait to prepare for it had given me a new idea. Given the synergy between Murmur and Agares in these conditions, maybe I could extend that particular window of usefulness.


Focusing on the mud, as well as on Murmur itself, I stepped forward, and with a grunt of effort, the liquid stone began to writhe and roil, slowly moving forward along with me. Inside the Murmur domain, the liquid stone was concealed, and the spread of the stuff allowed me to expand the domain beyond its normal limits. The soul strain of moving the whole thing was no joke, but speed seemed to affect the difficulty. So with that understanding, I just began moving as slowly as possible.


Jack, who had been watching in morbid fascination during the negotiations, seemed to regain his senses as we started moving, and he quickly took charge of our path, leading me towards the exit as well as he knew how. At this rate, it would only take a week or two to get out. Lovely.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We ran across another candidate not too far into the maze. Or rather, two candidates working together. Rather than be in the dark about these though, I was pleased to note that Belsara seemed to know them. I was LESS pleased that she tried exhaustively to convince me to stab them in the throat from stealth.


"Rega and Pallux are MONSTERS," she told me bluntly. "I've met them several times, and every single one they tried to kill or capture me. They control their subordinates through fear and constant competition, pitting their people against each other to keep them under their thumb, and their guard captain, Strelk, is a sadist who torments his own people for his own amusement."


"Where did you meet them, exactly?" I asked after she finished talking. "It seems like some of these candidates are more…immersed in branch politics than others. We were all raised away from the family, how do they know so much?"


She sighed. "What you need to remember is that while this war was moved up, it's still been DECADES since the last one, at minimum. Every Wyndham born since that event is involved in the current succession war. Lots of them hit D-rank years ago. Once your guardian is no longer active, you're technically not bound by the rules of non interference. A lot of the older D-rankers, or hell, anyone who has been in D-rank more than a few years, made their way back to check in with the branches and start vetting their factions."


I was curious why we hadn't done that. Was it a timing thing? We ranked up FAST, even for a candidate party. My library and natural talent let me accomplish things at E-rank most people didn't manage until years later. It was possible we'd just done it so fast there was no time for a check in with the family.


Then again…it might not be that simple either. Grandpa's branch was a mess, my Uncle was an asshole, and other branch heads hated me. Maybe dad had foreseen some of this nonsense and had Zeke steer me away from trying to involve myself too heavily with the family until I had the authority to keep myself safe. Hell, maybe he didn't want to change the way I saw the world. I knew he actually loved mom's heroic spirit, it was part of why he'd left me in the Congolmerate to begin with. The Unity had an idealized perception of the universe compared to most factions.


Still, dicks or not, I didn't like the idea of actively attempting murder on unsuspecting people, especially relatives. I shook my head. We'd been following them in stealth for maybe ten minutes, waiting to find a decent environment for an ambush or encirclement. Currently we were in a long glass hallway, and that didn't really suit for either. "No. When we get a shot, we take it, and we take them down hard, but no killing. Not from ambush. We restrain them and leave them here to rot. That'll have to be enough."


We stalked behind them silently, waiting and watching, until we came to an open room. My mud field had preceded us (and keeping them from noticing it was shockingly easy, considering it was an extension of my will, Murmur was able to erase it easily, and it got easier and easier the longer the substance spent in my domain. This really was an amazing combination.


Spreading out, we surrounded the pair of candidates and their minions. Three hundred of them, surprisingly. I was pretty sure we'd done better with local recruitment than the majority of factions we'd seen so far. Since we outnumbered them three to one, I decided to show up directly to discuss things at the start. It had worked pretty well with Alys.


To my surprise though, when we appeared they didn't seem bothered. Not like they were expecting us, mind, they just appeared to be completely at ease.


I had no clue WHY that would be a thing, but to my complete shock, my attempt at discussion was interrupted…by a growl. From BETHY. I froze, turning to stare at my friend, who was looking at the tall man in the black armor behind the two candidates, her eyes blazing an unearthly red, her lips peeled back in an ENRAGED snarl. "Harpy!" She hissed, her voice guttural and animalistic.


My sister, standing behind her, went pale with fright. "Shit," she spat, stepping forward to grab Bethy. "That's BAD."


I frowned at them both. "Bethy? Are you alright?" Bethy got bloodthirsty and amused, she got cold sometimes when she was doing something she needed to do but didn't like, I'd even seen her lose control. But THIS I had never seen. This was…HATE.


"No, she's not," Chelsea answered grimly. "We need to put these assholes down and leave, now. Bethy can't be around a harpy. Maenads and Harpies are OLD enemies. The reflexive drive to fight them is one of the few things Bethy inherited from her mom. Something about stealing wine grapes, I don't really know. She doesn't talk about it. But we need to-"


She yelped as she was cut off by a fucking SONIC BOOM as Bethy crossed the distance to the armored figure too fast for even MY eyes to track, her fangs snapping and claws flashing toward's the big man's throat.


To my utter shock, he didn't tank the hit. He just sort of…leaned back. Her nails passed a micron in front of his gorget, the wind creating a scraping gouge as her fingers cut through it. The man's arms snapped out and forward, metallic feathers sprouting from beneath then as his hands flickered forward, creating a shower of metal shards that Bethy effortlessly flowed between like a dancer.


Despite the ease of avoidance though, dodging gave him time to retreat, and I was barely able to follow the motion as he launched himself into the air, sweeping upwards and then unleashing another shower of razor feathers, this time at US.


Abel snorted, tracing a circle in the air above us, and the feathers fell into the spatial lubrication, swept into a circular motion that appeared to be gathering speed with every rotation. He flicked his fingers again, and they launched back out the same way they'd come, moving three times as fast. His eyes, barely visible behind a strange black birdlike helm, glowed an unsettling orange as they flicked to his boss and then back to Bethy, refocusing on his own fight.


Rega and Pallux seemed MUCH less calm now, their eyes narrowed under their platinum blonde hair. Each of them had one blue and one green eye, on opposite sides of their face. And their haircuts were incredibly similar, with Pallux's being a bit shorter from what I could tell, though not enough that you couldn't easily mistake him for his sister. "Drewnokk, what the hell are you doing?" Snapped Rega. "Put her down!"


I smirked. This wasn't ideal, but it was better for us than them. Presumably, they had been leaning on this Drewnokk guy, who, admittedly, was fucking TERRIFYING to be capable of competing with Bethy. But with him out of the picture, they didn't have anyone strong enough to protect them.


Between what Belsara said about the captain (Drewnookk I assumed) and their general demeanor, I was willing to kick their asses even if I still wasn't ok with unilateral execution of family members.


Glory blazed to life as I flickered forward, my staff appearing and lashing out in the same motion, the razor edge of the black flame spear driving right toward Pallux's face. He was the closest, and I held back enough that he wouldn't have trouble dodging, but to my surprise, he just screamed and stumbled back, tripping over his own feet. I just stopped, standing over him dumbly. "Are you serious?" I demanded. "Come on, man, have some self respect. You're a Wyndham."


I was so disgusted I didn't even bother with anything fancy. I just smashed the butt of the staff into his skull, knocking him out cold.


Despite being apparently a generally terrible person according to Belsara, Rega is NOT a terrible sister. Her eyes narrow in rage as she backs off from her brother. "Drewnokk, enough with her, get down here and tear a strip off this armored bastard!"


Cursing, I triggered Mornax immediately, planting my staff to tank the impact I knew was coming…and it was a good thing I did. In a movement too fast for me to track, the armored harpy man vanished, appearing in front of me with wings and claws flashing. His fingers were hooked with curved talons I hadn't noticed under his gauntlets, and there was a screech as they carved divots in my armor.


My C-rank plate didn't GIVE, exactly, but it certainly strained as he gouged out some of the metal. I was EXTREMELY glad to be wearing full plate, because if his talons did that shit to my plate, I didn't even want to THINK about what they would do to my flesh, Mornax or not. I was durable, but not C-rank metal durable.


I didn't need to find out though, because there was an incandescent scream of rage and Bethy fell on him like a fucking rabid animal. Her claws raked his armor, longer and sharper than I'd ever seen, and to my shock, something ELSE had changed too. Flowing blood red patterns had begun to wind their way along her skin, starting around her eyes, the sclera of which had been drowned in crimson. Not blood red. Something deeper and darker. More like…wine.


Drewnokk retreated, snarling and lashing out with a rain of feather blades. Before he could follow up though, a gleaming armored form smashed into him at speed, a lance concentrating the force into one spot as the unstoppable avalanche of power that was Gabe on horseback hit him at full force, sending him skidding across the floor to smash headlong into the black glass of the nearest wall.


Like Bethy, Gabe was in a state I'd never seen before. Raw, overwhelming fury. His normally amiable face was peeled back in a rictus of explosive fury. "Don't TOUCH her!"


That was sweet, if misplaced normally, because Bethy was way stronger than him, but I could see what was making him angry. Bethy didn't LOOK like Bethy. Not even vampire Bethy. This was a completely different version of my friend. Dropping Mornax and Glory, I triggered Zagan, then stepped between her and Drewnokk. Callie, aware of all this through the bond, surrounded us with a shadowy ward, and she sent Abel and my sister to help out against Drewnokk as our people dealt with the others.


The two candidates each had a hundred of their own C-rankers, meaning that despite our vastly superior numbers they had twice the high level combatants. Luckily, we had BETTER ones, and Ellisara, Felicity, and Argaunt were carving through their people with enough urgency that they didn't have time to spare thinking about the D-rank fighters.


Especially since the two candidates had been essentially left alone, and now that I checked, I couldn't see them anywhere. Rega seemed to have grabbed her brother and dragged him off who knows where. I didn't have time to worry about it.


I put my hands on Bethy's shoulders and she snarled at me, her teeth actually snapping towards my face. I didn't move, it wouldn't have done any good. "Are you done?" I asked my friend kindly. She stared at me, and I flooded her body with Zagan's purifying flames of life. As I did, the red patterns on her skin began to slowly fade away, like they were being bleached off in the sun.


Her eyes, formerly wine red across the entirety of the orb, faded back to the normal red irises, and her pupils returned. She stared at me in terror, horrified that she'd just attacked me. I pulled her into a tight hug, not letting up on the life fire, and she just sat there and cried. There was a flicker in the dark and Callie appeared beside us, wrapping her arms around Bethy from the other side and joining me in comforting our friend.


I didn't know who to blame for this bullshit, the elders, the twins, or myself. Regardless of anything though, if I saw Rega and Pallux again, I wasn't going to be gentle with them. I had some frustration to work out.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We stopped for the night after traveling for another few hours. We didn't run into any new candidates, thankfully, and I was able to condense the mile wide liquid rock swamp into a complete building for us to use as a base of operations. A Piece of Mind parallel to control Mumur, combined with my EXTREME familiarity with the stone in question meant the whole lodge was impossible to spot even when I was unconscious, so I was free to catch some rest with everyone else.


Before that though, I decided to cook dinner for the whole camp. I felt the need to connect with my people a bit more. Our force had expanded massively, and it was getting hard to keep track of everyone. Without a personal stake, I was worried my new faction members would lose motivation.


But cooking for a thousand people was…a lot. Like a staggering amount of food and effort. I needed something easy and quick but also heavy and filling.


I turned, in the end, to the tried and true method of using food to reach out to a friend. Which is to say, I decided to make something to cheer up our wilting vampiress, who had been withdrawn and nervous since the incident earlier.


"Hey Bethy," I called her over to where I stood in front of a huge metal pot. "I need your help with this."


She shrugged, standing up to walk over to me blankly. "I don't really know how to cook. You'd do a better job than me." She stared down at the pot, seeming to lose herself in the dark recesses of the cooking implement. But I was having none of that.


"Well, sure," I said casually. "But I'm making fondue. That's just melted cheese. I'm sure you have some…thoughts, on what kind of cheese I should use, right?"


Her eyes snapped up to me, narrowing in suspicion. "Cheese?" She said slowly. "I know a lot about cheese."


"I know, that's why I asked," I chuckled. "Of course, if you don't want to help, I could always make soup or something. You're a big fan of soup, aren't you Bethy? I think I have the stuff for…lentil garlic."


She flinched back, hissing dramatically. Chelsea, who had approached when she saw me drag Bethy over here, cleared her throat. "Um, hi, yeah, fondue is fine, but what's with the hissing? Is the vampire garlic thing real? I've never seen Bethy pass up food because it had garlic in it, at least not that I noticed."


"What?" Bethy asked in confusion. "No, I just really hate lentils." She pouted at me. "Hey. you're distracting me. I'm trying to be sad here."


Chelsea giggled at that. "Yeah, stop. Gabe has been all broody since the end of the fight. I think he needs a hug." She glanced at me. "After you help Shane pick out some cheeses for this fondue. I'm actually starving, and I want something to eat bad. What do we have to dip in it?"


I backed away as Bethy started digging in her ring for various wheels of cheese and plopping them down on a table she'd pulled from nowhere, loudly announcing the various types of dairy product we had on offer. I kept an ear out, but I was willing to let Chelsea handle that while I went and sought out another friend in need.


Gabe was sitting in the back corner, looking unhappy. Drewnokk had lost to our crew, and Ellia dn the others had driven off their C-rankers pretty easily. Once the twins vanished, no one had bothered to stick around to try to fight for nothing, and they'd scattered.


Our Adamant friend had immediately come to find us and check on Bethy, and on seeing her in tears over what had happened had pretty much shut down. His eyes looked haunted and blank, like he was lost in a fog, and I sat down next to him with a sigh. "Well, that fucking sucked, huh? This succession war isn't exactly a party. You regretting coming along?"


He snorted. "I don't do regrets," he said with a bitter chuckle. "At least, not for helping friends. I just…I feel like I'm falling behind. My drive to advance has been waning. Not that I don't want to keep up, but an Adamant is supposed to forge ahead, and you're all leaving me in the dust." He shot a glance at Bethy and Chelsea where the two of them were working on cheese picking. "I guess I just…I've been so comfortable here. Just one of the crowd. It's hard to stand out when there are so many amazing people around, but that's not always bad. Fitting in was…nice."


I raised an eyebrow at his soft expression. "I'm very specifically NOT going to ask which of them you're looking at right now, because if it's my sister I'd have to kick your ass, and if it's NOT my sister I might STILL have to kick your ass." I was more convinced it was both, actually, but that was a mess I wanted absolutely no part of, and would leave to Chelsea. They were all adults, and their love lives weren't my business.


"You think you could take me?" He grinned, his eyes lighting up with the challenge. "Think I might still be a bit too much for you. Never mess with cavalry. You should get a horse, it would pair well with that spear thing you've been doing lately."


I snorted. "I don't trust any mode of transportation that can make it's own decisions. You might be able to cheat with your magic star horse, but I'd probably end up with some sarcastic asshole horse that would dump me off its back all the time. Sucks Archie is still pretty small. Riding a phoenix into battle would be badass."


"That WOULD be cool," he said thoughtfully. "I wonder if I could figure out a way to adapt my charger into something that flies. Not a bird, but like…maybe a pegasus?"


I grinned at him. "Man, Bethy is a bad influence on you, huh? Or a really good one. Why don't you go ask her about it, since she's the most likely person here to figure out how to swing something like that." My vampire friend regularly altered a fundamental transformation she'd been born with on a casual whim, turning into things like cats and squirrels just because she felt like it. I might be a Path genius, but Bethy was a natural prodigy at altering Skills like that on the fly.


Gabe seemed to brighten slightly, standing up and clapping me on the shoulder. "Thanks, Shane. You're a good guy."


"It's cool man, you just need to get out of your head." I nodded to him, smiling as he headed off to talk to my sister and Bethy. Yawning, I stood up and stretched. I glanced around, noting that everyone was sort of grouping up. All except one person. Benny was off by himself at a table he'd brought in, working on…something. Celine, Jessie, Mel, Abel, and Daysia were over with Holly and Serah, talking about some plant thing or other, but my best friend was all by himself using a series of complicated tools to alter the axe he'd gotten from the siege.


I approached, interested to see what he was doing, and found myself entranced by the process. The axe lay on the table, a dark stained wooden thing with what looked suspiciously like manacles sticking out of the ends. They were open and ignored, with Benny only using the central area of the table. Surrounding the axe were a variety of beakers, test tubes, and flasks, all connected together and bubbling away atop multicolored flames.


One of the flasks I recognized as the kind Zeke used to hold souls, and that one was sitting inside of a circle of oddly numerical symbols. Above it floated…something. A vague shape that seemed halfway stuck between fog and solid, losing its form by the moment as Benny adjusted knobs, feeding materials from the different flasks into the connecting tubes. The liquids dripped down through the soul, and I saw it lose some of its cohesion even further as one of the droplets took on an odd shine.


Rather than hit the flask though, the droplets landed on a wide funnel that interrupted the distance between them, draining down into another tube that led over to the axe. At the end of it, a bright flame glowed, like a butane torch, and Benny was using one hand to slowly engrave things on the axe blades while the other adjusted the various knobs expertly, slightly changing the consistency and color of the flame as he carved.


I whistled. "Damn, is this your new inventing process? I knew your ability would change how it worked, but that's kind of involved."


"It is," he admitted, not even bothering to look up. "But the use of souls makes it both more and less restrictive. It's more…open ended, weirdly, but that also means I can impose my will and control it better. Downside is that souls have tendencies, and they have trouble synchronizing with items that aren't attuned to them."


That was interesting. I knew souls weren't people. They didn't have a consciousness or sentience, exactly. The souls that Benny, Zeke, and people like my dad used weren't trapped human beings suffering for eternity, they were just fragments of vital force that had been imprinted with the characteristics of the people they used to be. The ability for a soul to retain true consciousness was exclusive to mirror soul bodies, which was the reason they could be reformed after shattering.


He was staring hard at the axe head through a pair of odd goggles, but eventually grimaced and turned off the flame. He started packing everything up, taking the goggles off with a sigh. "This is starting to make my head hurt. I'll come back to it later."


"I noticed you haven't upgraded any of your gear recently," I said sympathetically. "I'm guessing this new style of creating has higher requirements?"


He nodded. "It does. Takes ages to get anything done. But I should never need to replace any of this stuff. Soul based artifacts will grow alongside me, and they have a much higher potential limit." He patted the axe fondly. "This beast is going to be the basis of a powerful new ability that will stick with me for the rest of my life."


Putting the axe away in his ring, he packed up the table, then stood and stretched. "Speaking of creating stuff, weren't you supposed to be cooking dinner?"


I didn't see the need to dignify that with a response. Flipping him off, I rolled my eyes, turned and headed back over to Bethy and Chelsea, who were currently arguing over the groaning table full of a dizzying area of cheeses. "No, we can't use ALL of them," my sister said indignantly. "More isn't always better."


"It's CHEESE," Bethy said with a mutinous pout. "More IS always better. Gabe tell her!"


"None of you get a vote," I said ruthlessly as I stopped next to the precariously stacked tower. "And this is WAY too much cheese. You can pick like…three kinds. This is fondue, not alchemy."


Bethy literally stomped her foot in outrage, but I couldn't help but smile. Goofing off with the others put that classic Bethy sparkle back in her eye. She glared at me murderously for a moment, then looked away with a snort. "Fine. Smoked Gouda is my favorite. And Colby Jack is good. And Pepper Jack."


She pointed them each out, and there were indeed several wheels of each. I tossed them casually into the pot, then lit the fire, making sure to keep the heat low. As the smell of cheese wafted out into the building, everyone else started flocking to the cooking pot and I grinned happily. This had been a pretty good plan.