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

[Malcolm Tent]

I woke the next day surprisingly excited. I was supposed to head out today to check the tournaments for possible recruits. I was going to get to explore, see some of the talents of the WCP, maybe try some good food. It was shaping up to be a pretty fun day.

After a night of sleep and some downtime after arriving, I felt a lot less pressured and more…excited. This was my home, or it would be in the future, and I was going to get to experience it at its biggest and most ostentatious. That sounded like a real party any way you sliced it, and being able to go out and do it while I spent time with my wife and friends? That sounded like a blast.

"So, is everyone ready?" I asked excitedly as I strode out of the suite Callie and I were staying in. I felt shockingly refreshed. The bed we'd been given was absurdly comfortable. It was C-rank, because any higher and the Impact would have made it uncomfortable to sleep on, but it was the highest quality C-rank bed I could have imagined.

Callie was almost floating alongside me. "What," she sighed happily. "Are Peace Sheep, and how much does it cost to buy a whole farm of them?"

"Peace sheep are a special breed of beast used by luxury designers," my grandfather said with a laugh. "One of them costs enough to buy a small planet. They're born at D-rank, too, so finding a C-rank juvenile to shear for that bed and having it crafted before you arrived was probably a lot of trouble. Adult Peace Sheep are mostly A and B-rank."

"Personally, I'm more enthused about the sheets." I said with a laugh. "The pillows were great, but that Heavenly Caterpillar Silk was like rubbing against the concept of inner peace."

My grandmother nodded. "They certainly did pull out all the stops. Most of the amenities here are better than what your grandfather and I have at home. To be fair, the WCP IS a mercantile faction, so they have access to the most luxurious goods."

Honestly, the stuff at my grandparents house was actually really nice, but I'd been staying in the guest wing. While everything was high quality, it wasn't on the same level as a suite designed for the incoming faction leader. The Church and WCP also had very different styles of doing things. The WCP was all about luxury and excess, so they naturally had the best of everything. I wasn't planning to go nuts before leaving on my quest, but if they were going to give me a super luxurious bed, I wasn't going to complain.

"So, we're doing the Tea Ceremony Tournament first, right?" I asked as everyone gathered up to leave. Bethy, Abel, Mel, Chelsea, Gabe, Fade, Alanna, Zeke, Stella, my parents, and my grandparents. It wasn't quite the two thousand plus people I'd been traveling with back during the succession war, but it was a decent sized retinue.

My mother perked up. "I'm incredibly excited. I haven't seen a Tea Ceremony in years. It's considered one of the most elegant applications of formation arts. Your father doesn't practice much any more."

"It's not the same when you don't have the time to devote to it," he grumbled. "I used to grow my own tea leaves. Special blends I created by infusing them with different soul properties. It's part of why I was willing to help Bethany with her wine grapes. It reminded me of some of my old projects."

We all laughed as we followed him out into the hall. "So I assume you know how to GET to the tournaments?"

He snorted. "I DID live here for a while. Not all of us jumped right into the deep end during our succession war. I had already reached D-rank for a while before mine started, and you know that after that point you can come back and make connections."

I nodded, I'd kind of assumed that was the case. My dad knew his family too well not to have had personal experience with them. Plus everyone in the WCP was terrified of him, and while I didn't know exactly what he DID during his succession war, I was guessing it had taken a while to cook up a rep like that.

We followed him down a side corridor away from the suites, and I put an arm around Callie. "So, you excited about this?" I asked her as we headed after them. "Because I'll be honest, I'm kind of excited. This is going to be fun, right?"

She beamed at me. "Of course, we get to try some tea, observe some art, just relax and observe. It sounds so peaceful." Her face closed up. "Shit. I just jinxed us, didn't I?"

I held a finger up in the air as if testing the wind. "Feels like…yes. Or maybe no. It's definitely one of those two. Or possibly both. Neither is also an option, but it's not likely. So really, there's about a twenty five percent chance you jinxed us."

"You aren't funny," she told me flatly. "You THINK you're funny. But you're not." Her tone was teasing, and I could tell she was more amused than annoyed.

"Well you certainly didn't marry me for my brains," I noted wryly.

She winked at me. "Now that's where you're wrong. I'm planning to eat them one of these days while you're sleeping. I'm just letting them cook. It happens bit by bit whenever you think about something too hard. I can see the steam coming out of your ears."

"How dare you," I said with a gasp of outrage. "I never think about anything."

That got a giggle out of her and I had to laugh along. I saw her open her mouth to respond, but she was cut off as we came to a stop at the edge of a large chamber we'd just turned into.

It looked…outside. Like the ceiling was dotted with crystals that made it seem like there were stars above, and a single bright moon, and I could feel the humidity and wind of a real night out under the stars. Grass covered the floors, and the whole room was filled with small picturesque houses that reminded me of some of the districts back on Callus. It was like a little village.

"Well, this is nice," I said with a smile as I inhaled the scent of the outdoors. "What is this place?"

My dad shrugged. "Just one of the lowtowns. They're pop up locations that the lower ranked members of the family cobble together to socialize. There are more upscale districts, but they're mostly inhabited by candidates and bloodline holders. That's not even going into some of the branch districts. I'll take you to your grandfather's place in the next few days. You'll be blown away."

"Maybe literally," my mom muttered under her breath. "Oh, wait, did I say that out loud?"

My father just rolled his eyes. "I know you don't LIKE my dad but he wouldn't try to kill us. He might ignore someone ELSE doing it, but he wouldn't do it himself. He swore an oath, remember?"

"That's not the supportive statement you think it is," she said dryly.

Zeke, meanwhile, was just snickering at both of them. But he stopped at a glare from Stella, who had accompanied us on this little outing. She was my grandmothers apprentice now, and had grown a LOT over the last six months. Being personally taught by a legendary S-ranker whose parents were gods would do that. She was already at D-rank, which was pretty impressive, all things considered.

Choosing not to start a fight, my Uncle turned and pointed off into the distance. "Oh hey, is that the tournament we're here for?"

It was. A small stage was setup outside one of the wooden buildings, and a crowd surrounded it. The stage had a series of tables on it, and each table had a different contestant at it, each of them performing some beautiful and complicated action.

"Look, we made it in time," my mother said excitedly. "It looks like they're at the finals."

We headed over to line up near the stage, excitedly taking in the various entrants and their ceremonies.

When you hear 'Tea Ceremony' you think of a few different things. Or I did anyway. I thought of somber, contemplative intent. Slow and deliberate preparation of tea in beautiful and elegant cups.

Which, to be fair, WAS an aspect of what was going on. It just wasn't all of it. More than just the act of making the tea, there was a kind of…poetry to the motions. A harmonization with the world. No. Wait, not with the world. With their paths. These Tea Ceremonies were all unique techniques, individually customized by their creators.

There were five tables in total, each person operating their Tea Ceremony in a unique way. The first table was a guy around my age. He had long hair pulled back into a ponytail and a goatee. The cups in front of him floated above the table on clouds made of rainbow mist. As we watched, he played notes on a small pipe, and as the notes rang out, the clouds would rise and fall, tipping water into various vessels and steeping and mixing the tea.

As the tea percolated, steam rose and condensed into yet another cloud above his head, shrinking as he played until finally, he blew one last note, and a single solitary cup floated up off the table and the cloud rained into it, filling it with a rainbow cup of tea made from a multitude of leaves.

The second woman had a paintbrush and an easel. She was dipping the brush into palettes made from tea leaves and painting on the canvas. When the pictures were done they pulled themselves off the canvas and climbed into the water, dissolving peacefully in the different cups.

The third was a swordsman. His blade flowed through a complicated series of cuts, the wind lifted and spinning tea leaves in a whirlwind and carrying water on another. As he cut, they weaved together, the heat and friction from the cuts boiling the tea.

The fourth was using some kind of shadow puppetry to manipulate the leaves. Picking them from the darkness beneath the leaves and making tea from the shadows themselves.

And finally, the last one was doing…poetry. He was speaking to the leaves, reciting poems, and as he spoke, the leaves were changing along with his words. He boiled the water by hand, altering its composition with the leaves and his words, creating something unique with each sentence as he worked his way through a collection of leaves.

The whole thing was just…fascinating. But my dad didn't look impressed. "Showboating," he snorted. "Tea Ceremonies aren't about style, they're about substance." He eyed them all critically. "The artist might be ok," he admitted. "The pictures are manifestations of the leaves conceptions, reinforcing the path of each cup. She'll probably win."

We watched the rest with interest, but by and large, he was right. They all seemed to be…lacking something. All except the artist. She seemed to genuinely care about what she was doing. In the end, the judges gave her the victory, and we approached her as she packed up her supplies.

"Tea paints," my dad said with interest as we approached. "It's novel, but it retains the spirit of the ceremony. Impressive."

She didn't look up. "Thank you. It took a lot of work to perfect my process, but I believe I have come closest to the essence of what my teas mean. It's nice to meet someone who understands tha-" she froze as her eyes rose to lock on us, her mouth falling open in absolute shock. "Uncle Eli?" Huh. Well, I mean, to be fair given how many siblings my dad had that wasn't TOO unexpected. Though apparently it was as big a surprise to him as it was to me.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

My dad looked shockingly caught off guard. "Do I…know you?" He asked slowly, clearly trying to match her face to what I assumed was a list of relatives that had probably gotten way out of hand given how familiarly even distant Wyndhams had taken to referring to each other.

"I'm Victoria," she said with a sigh. "Natasha is my mother."

He nodded in understanding. "Ah, that does make sense. Have we…met? I feel like I would remember meeting a niece."

"No," she explained. "I was born after you left, so you wouldn't know me."

His eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Then how is it that YOU know ME? Just recognizing me at first glance is a tad suspicious. Do you have some sort of mission to try to kill me? Because I remember Percy was handing those out a few decades ago."

She blinked at him in confusion. "No…you're…well you're red. And you have horns. And you look like grandpa."

He stared at her for a moment, assessing, before nodding to the rest of us. "She checks out."

My mother smacked him upside the head with a glare. "Go stand over there," she snapped in exasperation. He sulked, but did as she told him, and she rolled her eyes, muttering to herself. "Honestly, man's the next best thing to an intergalactic information broker and can't even recognize his own niece."

My dad, who had stalked off to stand under a roof where she'd point, called back over his shoulder (he was facing away in a fit of pique) "I have like twenty of them! I cannot be reasonably expected to keep track!"

I caught a slight smile on my mom's face, but she buried it. It was enough for me to suss out that this was a bit of theater to help my cousin feel a bit more at ease. My father's reputation among the WCP was pretty fearsome, and a lot of my relatives were terrified of him (which, having seen him rip the souls from living A-rankers I couldn't exactly fault them for). It made sense that they would want to help him seem more approachable for my potential cabinet members.

My mother turned to Victoria with a warm smile. "I'm sorry about him, dear. He can get a little focused. He didn't mean anything by it."

My cousin snorted. "Oh, not at all. Honestly I was kind of relieved he didn't know me." Her eyes widened. "Not that I'm not pleased to meet him. It's just he's…well…Uncle Eli. He's kind of the family boogeyman." She shot him an appraising look. "He's not what I expected."

"You're RUINING my reputation, woman!" My dad called dramatically without glancing at them.

My mom just winked at Victoria. "Now, I don't think that's true. Vicky seems like a lovely girl. You can keep a secret, can't you dearheart?"

She shrugged. "I mean, sure. Kind of the family business. At least when you're like me. I don't get to participate in much of the other stuff." Her smile was bitter. "No one has much use for the defectives."

My dad actually did turn at that, his eyes narrowing. "Are they still using that term? Moronic mindset. Everyone can be useful, if you have the brains to put them to work."

Staring at him, she looked…surprised. "That's…I can't actually tell if that's sweet or not. But…thank you? And the term has fallen out of favor. It's not something people say to my face, really, it just kind of goes unspoken."

"Well, we actually DO have a use for you," I said dryly. "If you're interested. Not to mention you'll get to participate in plenty of the 'other stuff'. If you know who he is I'm guessing you know who I am?" I was a bit surprised she hadn't commented already, but to be fair my parents were forces of nature who could not be denied. Thankfully their dramatics and magnetic personalities seemed to have skipped a generation.

She raised an eyebrow. "Do I KNOW who the next Wishmaster is? Yes, I have a passing idea of who the future leader of my whole faction is, thanks."

"Then do you know what a cabinet is?" I asked with a laugh.

Frowning, she shook her head. "I mean…a place where you put your dishes? From context I'm guessing you mean something else though."

"Yeah, the Wishmaster gets a small council of…you could call them advisors maybe? It's not a requirement but anyone sane would avail themselves of the opportunity." I grinned at her disbelief. "Which of course is why Aiden doesn't have one, and you've probably never heard of the concept."

Vicky was around my age, I was pretty sure. Maybe a bit older, because she was born after dad left, but he'd left the WCP well before having me and Chelsea, after the last succession war. She could be anywhere from a hundred to twenty, come to think of it. Managing to reach this level (she was a late D-ranker) with no wish power at her age was pretty impressive, though I guessed growing up in the Palace probably had its perks.

Regardless, because she was a member of my generation (give or take), it made sense she wasn't familiar with the concept of cabinets any more than I was, since Aiden didn't have one, and I doubt he'd have enjoyed everyone else talking about how dumb that was.

"So this cabinet," she said slowly. "I take it you're interested in me being on it. Which I can't really understand because you just watched me make tea and what could that possibly qualify me for? But assuming that IS what you're looking for, what exactly would it entail and what would I get out of it."

I laughed at her forthright question. "If I had any doubt we were related, that would have put it to rest. 'What's in it for me?' might as well be the Wyndham family motto. But your Tea Ceremony has more to do with you being picked than you might expect." I gave her a brief explanation of the cabinet positions.

Luckily, she was smart enough to pick up my intentions after I explained. Smart enough, but still not EXPECTING it to happen. She just kind of stared at me. "You want me to…work for you? To become a member of your cabinet and be part of the ruling council of the entire WCP?"

"I mean, ish," I said with a shrug. "The elders kind of run things. The Wishmaster is sort of ceremonial, and we share the power with the old guys. And don't think of it as an opportunity. Think of it as having to do all my work like all the time. Because that's what you're signing up for. All my work. At least as it relates to planning events."

She raised an eyebrow at me. "Has anyone ever told you that you're not a great salesman?"

"Only right before I sold them something," I responded solemnly. "But I know this probably sounds too good to be true. It's not. I don't want you joining up thinking I'm offering you a one way ticket to easy street. This is MY ticket to easy street, and if you ALSO think you don't have to do any work then my whole strategy kind of falls apart."

That got a snort of laughter. "Well, at least you're honest. Or partly." She shot me a wry smile. "I think you want to make sure I go into this with my eyes open so I don't have regrets later."

"He does," Callie said with a snicker. "He just doesn't want to admit it. He gets that from his dad." She held out a hand. "I'm Calliope, Shane's wife. It's nice to meet you Victoria. We were really impressed by your Tea Ceremony, and we think you'd be an excellent fit for the cabinet. We ALSO think you could help us find other talented and trustworthy cabinet members, since you'd know this place a lot better than us."

I felt my heart warm. Not because she decided to weigh in, but because I could feel WHY. She'd seen what I had with my parents, that they were trying to make Vicky feel more comfortable, and she'd been inspired. Seeing how they'd worked together seamlessly and played off each other's personalities had driven her to try to be a more active partner in my recruitment.

It was successful too. Despite my approachability, I was still the future Wishmaster. I wasn't exactly an easy casual conversation partner. Callie though, she was sweet and friendly and cheerful. Easy to talk to for anyone.

From the surge of amusement that came through the bond, she didn't agree with that assessment at all, and I must have sent it directly if she knew what I'd been thinking that exactly. I shook off that thought though, focusing on my cousin. "So, what do you say? Are you interested in being a Mistress of Ceremonies? You'll probably end up having to help take charge of this absurd coronation festival right away even before being sworn in. That's a lot of work for no credit."

She snorted. "Considering they're letting LUTHER plan it right now? I don't think I want credit. Even I can only do so much to save a party." At my cocked head, she explained. "I'm a big fan of event coordination, you don't master Tea Ceremony with an interest in organization and arrangement. Anyone here could tell you who the current event coordinator is. The branch heads take turns nominating their people. Luther is from Desmond's branch, and he's…not well liked."

"Desmond is one of the ex-Wishmasters right?" I asked, turning to where my dad was pretending not to listen ten feet away. "I'm guessing Luther was HIS Master of Ceremonies?"

He shrugged, turning around and dispensing with the farce. "Before my time, but I would assume. I've met Luther before, he's…a little much. He's very enthusiastic about bloodsports, for one. Uses a lot of antlers in his decorating. He was the one who tried to restart the Wild Hunt in the WCP a few generations ago, but it didn't take. If he's in charge of the coronation, I would expect hunts."

I grimaced. "Ew, forests, gross. Vicky, you're hired, go stop this from becoming a thing. I don't want to spend my coronation in the woods. I hate the woods."

"Don't I get a say in this?" she protested. "We were just having this whole conversation about how big a commitment this is and then you just press gang me?" She glanced at Callie in faux outrage. "Don't you have anything to say here?"

"Nope, I hate the woods even more than he does," my wife denied. "But you weren't going to turn us down anyway, were you?"

Vicky just pouted. "No, but it doesn't bode well for me that I'm already being taken for granted and I haven't even started yet. Guess I should put together a list of possible cabinet members too. Though I imagine you'll still check the tournaments. How many positions are open?"

"Oooh! I know!" came a familiar bubbly voice. "It's four! So far we have you and me and Crell." Bethy came bouncing out of the group we'd brought with us, throwing her arms around Vicky in a friendly hug. "It's SO nice to meet you. I can just tell we're going to be best friends. Your tea stuff was so pretty! I want to learn to do that with wine! I make wine by the way, also I drink blood. I'm a vampire you know. My name is Bethy and I'm Shane's bestie and his Mistress of CHALLENGE!" She bellowed the last word like she was proclaiming to to the cosmos, stepping back to spread her arms wide.

Vicky just stared at her in confusion. "You'll get used to that," I lied. Maybe I should have been honest with her, but this seemed like it was the kinder option. Besides, she wouldn't get USED to it, but it would at least become less jarring. She'd learn to love Bethy as much as the rest of us. Probably.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"So," I asked my cousin as we sat down at a nearby table. "How about you make us some tea and we talk about some of the potential recruits you might know about?" I had to admit, I was REALLY interested in trying the tea. It was a picture in a cup. Some of the images had been of animals, plants, even some natural forces. I really wanted to know what a lightning storm tasted like.

She chuckled at my expression. "Well, you ARE the boss. Who is going to be attending this little tea party?"

I glanced around. My parents and grandparents were both gone, as were Zeke and Stella. Chelsea, Bethy, Gabe, Abel, Mel, Callie, and I were the only ones left. "Guess just the seven of us," I shrugged. "Now, why don't you tell us about the tea before we start. I'm guessing the different blends are better for different things?"

Her face lit up. "Of course." She pulled out her palette of paints. "Now these are just my basic color mixtures, I tend to do them on elemental or attribute lines. It keeps things simple. But for custom blends we can get a little more esoteric. How would you describe your ability?"

Assuming she didn't mean the obvious one, I hummed to myself. "I guess…video games come to life, turn me into a bunch of demons and lets me wear a lot of hats?"

She stared at me in confusion. Callie hummed introspectively. "Actually…that's pretty accurate, though I could see how it would be completely unhelpful. Do you have a mix that would work with his wish power?"

"Maybe," she grimaced. "I don't associate with a lot of bloodline holders, but I guess I DO have a blend I've been experimenting with."

She reached into the bag hanging at her waist, pulling out a small grey tin and then a mortar. She dropped some of the leaves in, ground them up, and then dropped in a few other plants. "Bit of Dreamshade, some essence of desire, Paradise Poppies," she paused. "Don't worry about those, they aren't euphoric in teas. Or addictive. And finish it off with…hmm, you mentioned games. Hah, Puzzle Violets. That'll work."

The resulting mix of colors came out a sort of radiating sparkly violet that reminded me of wish lightning. Dipping her brush, she started to paint.

Using the purple as a base, she slowly painted out a sunset, with Callie and I standing below it on a cliff holding hands. The purple made up most of the sky, and she used a few other colors as secondary binders. Finally, she finished, then picked up the page. Lifting it, she dropped the paper, her hands quickly moving to pour boiling water into the cups. As it reached a level with her eyeline, she BLEW on the page, and the image just floated off.

Drifting into the air, it split in two, half sinking into each cup. Steam hissed up from the teacups, and within the steam I could see images of Callie and I together watching the sun sink below the horizon.

I reached down, picking one up, and she nodded at me with a smile, pushing the other toward my wife. Callie picked hers up, and we each took a sip, and it was…I had no words.

It TASTED like sunset. Like love and companionship and dreams fulfilled. I could taste the Wish in there, but that wasn't the POINT. I'd assumed she'd make the tea to capitalize on my powers, but that wasn't it. That was just a carrier, to flavor the emotions, to deliver the sensation in a way that connected with me.

I felt Callie get the same thing through the bond. Each of us feeling half of the story, and the bond carrying it back and forth, echoing between us and growing louder with each repeat.

"That's…" I breathed, steam flowing from my mouth. "I don't understand."

Vicky nodded, reaching back to tie her hair up., smudging a bit of glowing purple on her cheek as she did. She had the same sandy hair as I did, though her eyes were steel grey rather than the usual Wyndham green. "Yup. I figured." She winked at me. "You two are pretty obvious, and anyone whose talked to you for more than five minutes can pick up how crazy about each other you are. I'd be a pretty terrible artist if I couldn't put that down in paint."

"Yeah," I said dryly. "Can you imagine? What about the others? Think you can do them?"

She hummed, glancing at Bethy next. "Bloodnettle flowers, Sunshine Daffodils and…" she sniffed, eyes narrowing. "Tantalus Root. As a base shade. Something like loyalty for depth, maybe some hidden pain for shading." She bit her lip as she dug back into her bag and started painting again.

This time the image was a little different. A blood red teddy bear sitting in a dark room, red moonlight pouring through the window covered by clouds, dim enough to make it tough to see.

She raised the paper when she was done and tapped it into a cup, then pushed it over to the vampire. Bethy, raised an eyebrow but shrugged, lifting it to her lips to sip. Her eyes fluttered. "That tastes like…home. Sewing with mama on one of her good days, going with daddy to see the opera."

"Ok, that's not just observation," I said flatly. "You're DOING something."

She shrugged. "I see the world like an artist. We find shades of color other people don't know to look for. Is it a function of my Skill? Yeah, but it's not really active. It's not something I'm DOING, it's something I'm BEING."

And I realized why my dad was so interested in me working with her. Because really, what was a party but creating a painting using the emotions of all the guests. Finding the emotional shade every person projected and creating something not just harmonious, but better than the sum of its parts.

Abel slammed his hands down on the table. "Alright, my turn," he said boldly. "I bet it's not even that impressive. I mean tea is great. But like, I can handle it, even if Bethy can't. And why pick her to be your Champion. I would be an awesome champion. How is she better than me?"

"I mean…" I said slowly. "Aside from like…comprehensively?"

"That was a rhetorical question," he snapped in aggravation. "I wasn't actually asking you to NAME a way."

I shrugged. "Then I guess I gave you a rhetorical answer."

He glared at me, but I pretended not to see him. I MIGHT have been taking out my urge to banter on Abel. I also MIGHT have been holding a bit of a grudge from training. He rolled his eyes, and turned to Vicky. "Alright, go ahead. I can take it."

Despite his confrontational tone though, I could see excitement behind his eyes. I was pretty sure he was trying to goad her into making something more visceral for him. I wasn't sure if it was working, but at least he seemed pumped about it. So she started painting, and I took the time to ask her about some other possible cabinet members.

"So, any ideas about where we could find a Master of Secrets?" I asked with a sigh. "Becuase I'll be honest, that one seems like the hardest to pin down."

She hummed as she painted. "Maybe," she said slowly. "I mean, there are definitely plenty of information brokers. Tons of information brokers. Too many honestly. Like this is the WCP, everyone is selling something, and information is easy to get. Or at least easy to get information is. If you're talking about reliable sources of genuine secrets, the list narrows a bit."

I didn't rush her. She was thinking as she painted, more talking out loud than answering, and I wasn't in a rush. "Maybe Radia, or possibly Carey. Scott or Decker might be viable options."

"You seem unsure," I said skeptically. "Isn't there someone that springs to mind when you think secrets. Some name that immediately pops into your head as the best option? Who was the first person you thought of?"

"Wulf," she admitted after a slight pause. "But he's…odd. Almost impossible to find for one thing. But he has some kind of sensory Ability. He hears things you don't say, responds to questions you didn't ask. I just…I don't know. I don't think he's 'politics' material. You don't want him representing you…anywhere."

I shook my head as she blew the picture of an armored pit fighter into a cup and pushed it over to Abel. "It's not a problem. The Master of Secrets isn't really…well they're not customer facing, to put it in a weird but accurate way. They won't interact with anyone but me. And…well, whoever their sources are." I paused as Abel closed his eyes, inhaling as he processed his cup of tea. "Also how come the paintings are different for us. In the ceremony the climbed off the page?"

"Because I'm putting in effort," she said as she started mixing paints again. "Those were just individual doodles. These are full scenes relevant to your lives. It's a more involved process, but the result is more personalized."

"Makes sense," I nodded. "So, what do you think? Can you find this…Wulf?"

She shrugged. "I can ask around. If nothing else word will get back to him. It'll be up to him if he gets in touch after that. But he probably will. He seems like the type."

"What type is that?" I asked with amusement.

"The type who's looking for somewhere to belong," she answered bluntly. "Lot of that going around here." She glanced past me towards the rest of the village. "It can be…empty. The WCP is all about getting ahead, but for those of us who never will, it feels aimless. I've got it better than most, granted. Grandpa doesn't care much about us, but he takes care of my mom, and she takes care of me. Some of the other branch members don't even bother with that."

There were only thirteen S-rankers, and a LOT more Wyndhams than that. Not everyone could be a direct descendant from an S-ranker, at least not in recent memory. If Vicky was overlooked this bad despite being my grandfathers grandkid, how bad was it for the others.

I wanted to do…something. To help. But what was I supposed to do? Tell everyone to be nice? Stop treating them like shit? That had zero chances of working if I was even able to codify it, which I wouldn't be able to. It was yet another thing on the list of shit I was going to have to fix with no earthly idea how to DO that.

Sighing, I shook my head. One step at a time. First get my cabinet together, then get through the coronation, then recruit vanished gods to save the universe, THEN fix my fucked up family. It helped to put my priorities in order. Not.

"Put the word out," I told her, leaning back as she passed a cup to my sister. "Let him know we're looking for a meeting. I'm not promising anything based on hearsay, so don't imply that, but I want to meet him. I can tell a lot about a person on first meeting." Dantalion could read information from anyone. I could scan him for a bit and see what he was like, then go from there.

"You're the boss," she said with a laugh. "I'll make it happen. Now, as for the others, I believe you wanted to check out some tournaments? Because for your Master of Banking, I know JUST the place." Judging by her sadistic grin, I had a feeling this would be much less entertaining for me than for her, but what else was new. I nodded in concession and she laughed. "That's the spirit. Next stop: Kingdom Siege."

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"So, this is where Wulf wants us to meet him?" I asked dryly as I looked around the abandoned theme park. We'd postponed the Kingdom Siege thing Vicky had mentioned after Wulf had gotten in contact and asked for a face to face. "Because I'll be honest, this does not inspire confidence in his reliability." I looked around the place with mild curiosity. "Also, what IS this place? The WCP didn't seem like the kind of place where someone might build…this."

Vicky shrugged. "It was called Wishland. I think one of the B-rankers built it as a joke. I came here a few times as a kid. Their mascot was 'Wishy' a giant scroll with eyes. They hired someone to wear a costume and everything. It was not well thought out."

"Clearly," I said as I brushed past a hanging sign that appeared to have popped off the base it was mounted on when one of the corners rusted off.

Abel chuckled. "Yeah concepts for places like this are key. It kind of reminds me of back home though. I wonder if its for sale? I have some money saved up from all those tournaments Mel and I took part in. And I've been meaning to invest in some real estate." He glanced at Mel. "What do you think, honey? Needs a bit of spit and polish I admit, but I bet we could fix it up."

"If by 'fix it up' you mean 'pay someone else to repair it' then maybe." She said dryly. "Because you don't actually know anything about construction."

He snorted. "What? Of course I do. It's just breaking stuff in reverse."

"That's-" I started. "I feel like that's not accurate, but I can't actually say WHY. I…I have no response to that." I turned back to Vicky. "Did he say WHERE he wanted to meet us? Behind the creepy abandoned hall of mirrors maybe? Or inside that dark tunnel where I don't think anyone will be able to hear us scream?"

Bethy giggled. "Don't be silly. Plenty of people would hear us scream. They just wouldn't care."

"Thank you," I told her dryly. "I feel better now. But jokes aside, I'd ACTUALLY feel better if I knew where we were going, and the instructions didn't boil down to 'walk into this obvious trap'."

"To be fair," my wife added cheerfully. "That describes like…half of our meetings. It usually works out fine. Except when people try to kill us. Which is admittedly not uncommon. But I have a good feeling about this one."

I raised an eyebrow at her. "Do you think that's some manifestation of our bond, like you're using my fatewalker senses?"

"Nah," she shrugged. "Just a gut feeling."

Of course, I ALSO had a decent feeling about this. My current 'nerves' were mostly just a stalling tactic and to present an opportunity. People like Wulf, who dealt in secrets, were dramatic and showy (hence the meeting place). Easiest way to get them to show up was to give them an opening to appear and make a dramatic proclamation. It would work on me at least.

Sure enough, a voice murmured out from the darkness right after she spoke. "A surprisingly insightful one."

There was a rush of shadows, or what seemed like shadows (a closer look revealed them to be dark birds) and suddenly a man was standing under the overhang, a dark lupine mask covering the top half of his face, eyes glowing like citrine coals. "Well," I said after a moment. "That was dramatic. But your shoes are untied."

"Wait, what?" He looked down, catching himself halfway. "Shit!" He glared at me. "That's not funny, you know. I was following you for like twenty minutes waiting for the right opening."

"I know," I told him with a grin. "That's why we gave it to you."

He narrowed his eyes at me, then rolled them with a sigh. "So, you're the new boss. Boss-to-be, whatever. I've heard interesting things. Should I call you Solomon, or would you prefer…Wayne." His voice was gleeful as he said that last part and my blood ran cold.

"It's Shane," Abel said with a snort, unaware of my dark history. "Some information broker you are."

"Yes," Wulf said slyly. "Shane. My mistake."

I sized him up. That little tidbit wasn't one I'd shared with many people. It had happened inside the dungeon, and I was pretty ashamed of it, so I hadn't spoken about it to almost anyone. I assumed Wulf had inquired about my information when I contacted him, or maybe when I became the heir, but still. It was an impressive bit of sleuthing.

Not enough to qualify him for Master of Secrets, at least not alone, but enough to warrant further investigation.

"So, I assume you know why I contacted you?" I asked him bluntly.

He nodded. "You're looking for cabinet members. I assume you're interested in me as a potential Master of Secrets. If I couldn't infer that much I wouldn't be much use in the position, now would I?"

"Maybe not," I chuckled. "But that does change the tone of this interview a bit. I suppose that only leaves two questions. Are you interested, and are you qualified?"

Bethy's eyes snapped to him, scanning his body. He noticed and raised an eyebrow at me. "What's that about?" He sounded a bit uneasy. "I know she's a vampire, do I look extra delicious or something?"

I sighed. "No, I used the word qualified. I got into an argument with Bethy a few months ago about the definition of the word qualification. Which she insists means turning something into a koala." I glared at her. "It does NOT, and I told her so, but then she asked me what you WOULD call the process of turning something into a koala, and…I don't really have an answer."

Bethy pouted. "Stuff can mean two things. I just wanted to see if he was actually koala-fying. But he's just a dumb human person in a wolf mask. He's not even secretly birds like that guy you told me about. He was just using them for cover."

"Anyway," he said loudly, reclaiming our attention. "I can't tell you if I'm qualified. That's your decision. I CAN tell you no one within a few ranks of me has the kind of connections I do. I can tell you the access I can get you, not just here but throughout the faction, is unparalleled. The WCP are active in almost every system in the known universe. You don't just need someone who has friends he can ask for information, you need someone who has friends who have friends who can tell you ANYTHING."

His tone was confident, and I could understand why. Because his little name drop earlier was a hell of an advertisement. That information had been something he could only have gotten through contact with someone who had come out of the dungeon. That was a short list, and he'd have needed to do it fairly quickly to have the information ready for this meeting.

"How about a test?" I asked after a moment, a grin growing on my face. "I'll give you a person to find. You have to find him. If you do, you're in. You get the position immediately. What do you say?"

Snorting, he cocked his head. "You think YOU can ask me to find someone I won't be able to locate?" He looked dubious. "Challenge accepted. Who is the target?"

My grin was so wide I wouldn't be surprised if he could see it past my mask. "He's an old friend of my parents. His name is Tim." He paused, blinking at that. "I don't have a last name," I went on. "But he traveled with them when they were younger, and they were pretty well known. He might have even been on my dad's team during the last succession war. Is that enough to go on or do you need more?"

He puffed up. "It's plenty," he said acidly. "I'm a professional, you know. I have contacts you can't imagine. Just wait on my word, boss." Then he stepped back, vanishing into the darkness in a rush of feathers.

I turned to look at Bethy, who held up a finger, brows furrowed. After a moment, she nodded. "Ok, he's gone." She pouted again. "So sneaky. Not Koala-ty at all."

"So, you sent him after Tim," my wife said wryly. "Isn't that the friend your dad said hasn't been seen in decades and habitually wanders into pocket dimensions? The one he compared to Bethy? You really expect him to be able to find that guy?"

"Nope," I said with a cheerful grin. "Not even slightly. But he has a bit of an ego. I figured I'd give him an impossible task to knock him off his game a bit before I tell him he has the job. People work harder when they don't think they're meeting expectations. I shot her a wink and she rolled her eyes."

Despite her amusement, she seemed almost impressed. As did my cousin. Vicky was shaking her head in awe. "That's…so mean. But so amazing. I can't believe you did that. He's going to be furious when he finds out."

"I think I'll risk it," I laughed. "Now, second topic, do you know anyone here roughly my size with similar hair?" I'd been planning to just grab someone for the Master of Substitution position, but walking around I'd made an unfortunate discovery. I got most of my height from my mom's side of the family. Wyndhams were, by and large, not my size. And the ones that WERE didn't have my same hair color. The mask would keep them hidden, but the body shape and size needed to match.

I'd also probably need to lend them my old armor, because I sure as hell wasn't giving the Seal of Solomon away. My Abyssal Plate was a little tattered from the tail end of its usage, but it was still mostly intact, and we could patch the holes if needed.

That seemed to bring her up short. She looked me over. "Huh. I mean…you're a big guy. I can think of one or two, but the height is the only thing that fits. They're too wide in the shoulders, wrong hair, etc. Maybe Dante? His hair is the right color, but it's longer. You'd need to convince him to cut it, which wouldn't be easy, he's been growing it out for a century from what I hear."

"Got a picture?" I asked her with interest.

She just sneered at me, plucking a paintbrush and a palette from her ring and then quickly painting out an image of a tall, relatively lanky guy with long blonde hair. It was a good likeness. Well, it was a good likeness of SOMEONE. I didn't know if it looked like the person she was trying to paint because I'd never seen him. I nodded anyway. "Got it, and I don't suppose you know where to find him?"

"Oh sure," she said with a grin. "Anyone can tell you that. He never goes anywhere besides the fighting pits in the fifth sublevel. He's a battle maniac. If you want to recruit him though, you'll have to beat him. No other way."

I opened my mouth to respond, but I was cut off by a musical laugh. "Sounds like fun," I turned to find Bethy grinning, her fangs showing and eyes glowing an eerie red in the shadows of the abandoned park. "Time to show everyone around these parts what your Champion can do, huh boss man?"

"Maybe," I said with a chuckle. "But FIRST, I think we can spare some time to check out this abandoned theme park. It's kind of cool, and if Abel wants to buy it we need to scope the place out. So…anyone interested in checking out the haunted house with me?" That got a series of laughs, and we all headed off to explore. Had to take moments of fun where we could get them.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We didn't head down to the fighting pits until the next day. In the morning, I stockpiled my scrolls (which counting yesterday's had reached thirty six, not counting the five reserve I always had my friends keep on hand) Once that was done, we headed down to the pits in the underground layers of the Palace.

"So…how does this place have underground layers?" I asked as we descended a long staircase. "Because from what I saw outside it's basically just a floating building."

"The Ancestor wanted it to have underground layers," said Vicky dryly. "So it did."

I chuckled at that. This was the Wishworld, the personal Domain of the old man, and it made sense that things worked a little differently if he wanted them to. Especially considering what I'd seen when he granted my wish. It seemed like his power worked on a whole different level here, at least compared to anything I'd seen.

I let VIcky drift forward to talk to my wife and sister as I hung back, drawing even with Abel. "You sure you want to do this?" I asked him quietly. "I know you haven't been able to do as much lately but-"

My mentor held up a hand. "I need to. My Path of the Infinite Blood Sea is solid, but I've run into a dead end trying to condense my Chronicle. Now that I'm C-rank, it should be more than possible, but it's not…I'm doing it wrong. I've become complacent. Weak. I'm too comfortable acting as part of a team. Which is fine, mostly, but I let it overshadow who and what I am."

"Is that really worth risking your life like this?" I asked with a frown. "These people are veteran C-rankers who grew up in a god faction."

"And I'm a genius who was trained by the strongest S-ranker in the universe," he said coldly. "This is what I'm talking about, Shane. You've gotten so used to dealing with people like Bethy that even you forget who I am." His hand drifted up to touch his mask. "I'm Appolyon, the destroyer. I was unmatched in the fighting pits of Doomtown for decades. These people might not take me seriously when I get down there, but you can bet your ass they'll take me seriously by the time I leave."

I frowned at him. "That's…I take you seriously. I know what you're capable of, Abel. You make it sound like I think you're a joke."

"I know you don't think that," he assured me. "But you also don't have that same awe that you used to have when you look at me. Which is fair. It's been too long since I showed my fangs. Not just to you. To me. I could die down here. Could have my head pulped by some peak C-ranker. But that's why I have to do this. It's why I need to fight. Because the old me, the real me, he wouldn't have even hesitated."

His voice was implacable and unrelenting, like an oncoming tide. I knew I couldn't talk him out of this, no matter what I said.

We continued down the steps, reaching the bottom after about twenty minutes, and then turned into a dizzying warren of tunnels. The tunnels were the same dark stone as the rest of the Palace, but they were much smaller and more cramped. Add to that being lit by torches, they gave the impression that we were in a dungeon. When we finally reached the right spot, Vicky raised a hand and knocked on the wall.

I expected her knuckles to tap the stone, but to my surprise, they passed right through, echoing off what sounded like thick wood. Almost immediately after, the illusion hiding the door dissolved in a puff of black mist, and the door opened to reveal a huge, beefy looking man with a handlebar mustache.

"Whatcha want?" he grunted, eyes narrowing at us.

Vicky rolled hers. "We're selling vacuum cleaners. What do you think we want? We're here for the fights."

He snorted. "You got a token?"

My cousin frowned. "Token? Since when do I need a token to get into a pit fight? I've been here a dozen times."

The big man shrugged. "Lots of tourists in, security's up."

"Is Preston in there?" she asked after a moment. "Tell him Victoria is in with guests, he'll vouch for me."

From his expression, that probably wasn't going to be enough, but to my surprise, he grumbled and slammed the door in our faces. I was about to leave, but Vicky held up a hand. "He's coming back. The illusion would have reset." Sure enough, after about five minutes the door opened.

"You can come in," he grunted, stepping back.

I raised an eyebrow at Vicky as we passed. "Who exactly is Preston?" I asked with interest as she led us into a large open chamber with a dirt floor. In the center of the chamber, a huge pit had been dug and lined with torches, and a pair of people were brawling inside of it, beating each other senseless.

"He's a disciple under one of the branch heads," she shrugged. "Don't remember which one. He had a bit of a thing for me, but I wasn't interested. He got bored and went away, but he still tries to ingratiate himself when I see him."

I shrugged, and we headed over to the edge of the pits. Vicky shaded her face, squinting to see better under the overwhelmingly bright lights shining down into the pit from above. She nodded over to a tall man with long blonde hair. "There's Dante. You ready for this?" I guess she was talking to me, but I glanced over at Abel, who nodded.

With that out of the way, I walked over to where the big man was standing, meeting his eyes since we were about the same height. "You Dante?" I asked rhetorically. He nodded. "Wanted to talk to you about a job."

He raised an eyebrow. "Might be interested," he said slowly. "Depends on the job. And on the talking. I'm not much of a fan of running my mouth. Prefer to let my hands talk."

"What a coincidence," Abel said, stepping past me. "I'm the same. How about we have a nice long conversation and then you and my boss can sort out the finer details later." My mentor's eyes were burning with fervor, his hands hanging at his sides ready to be used, open but poised.

Dante's eyes lit up with a matching intensity. "Well, that sounds like a good time. You smell like oceans of blood."

I blinked, because that was…weirdly accurate. Abel didn't seem surprised, just nodding. "And you smell like a giant waiting among the stars." That made no sense to me, but considering what Dante had just said, I had to assume he was somehow scenting the other man's Path, which…I hadn't known was possible.

Apparently I wasn't the only person picking up weird abilities and techniques. The two of them nodded to each other solemnly, and then headed for the pit without a word to anyone else. They took up position on either side, waiting for the fight to end. Once it did, the two of them hopped down into the hole, feet squelching through mud that I suspected was wet with blood and not water.

Seeing them there like that was interesting. Abel was much smaller than me, and therefore much smaller than Dante, but he looked…solid. He'd taken off his shirt and shoes, though he left the mask, and he'd sunk his feet into the mud for purchase, bending his knees slightly.

The announcer, having been informed of the particulars by someone, announced Abel's name as Appolyon and did a brief overview for Dante. And once that was done…it began.

I expected it to start with spatial lubrication, or maybe the blood sea. But Abel didn't bother with either. He blurred forward, fist snapping out to hammer into Dante's gut. The bigger man was clearly surprised by the force, his breath whooshing out slightly as he leaned forward, not doubling over but hunching into the blow.

In a strange flowing bit of footwork I could barely track, Abel whirled down around and under, coming back up and smashing his elbow down into the back of Dante's neck from above.

There was a low bang, not like damage, but like someone had punched a metal pillar, and Dante sank down to one knee, but then planted his hands and snapped his feet up to lock around Abel's neck.

But as his legs tried to lock into the triangle choke I saw him aiming for, the space warped, and Abel flowed out of the grab, his body shifting to that blurry red that indicated he'd condensed his Ragam Blood Body. The timing was good too, because as I watched, Dante roared in defiance, surging back to his feet as his skin shifted to a cosmic starscape, his hair blazing into blue light and his eyes becoming exploding stars.

"Path of the Star Titan," Vicky whispered. "That's his dad's Path. It's how Franklin married into the family."

A lot of the family members who didn't have the bloodline inherited some ability from their other parent. It had happened to Chelsea. But if Vicky KNEW this Path well enough to recognize it, I was betting Franklin was not someone to be trifled with.

And sure enough, neither was his son. Dante roared, and his fists fired like crashing meteors, raining down on Abel with terrifying destructive force.

It had been a long time since I'd seen my mentor get serious, and I'd forgotten just how terrifying it was. Those plummeting star fists slipped past Abel's blood body seamless, missing by microns, and as the attacks rained down, Abel slipped right back.

The Infinite Blood Sea was undisturbed by the meteoric punches, but the Star Titan was incapable of keeping the raging tides of blood at bay.

It wasn't just the skill. It was the complete domination of the battlefield. Abel didn't just pummel him. He made Dante HELP. Every dodge, every fretful escape attempt, just drove him deeper into the blood sea, pulling him into the depths.

Knuckles crashed on his starry skin like waves breaking on a mountain, and admittedly they didn't seem to be doing as much as I'd have liked. But they just kept coming. A blow to the kidney, the ribs, the spine, the eyes, the jaw. More and more hits piling up, wearing away at the Titan like stone being eroded by water.

Abel's leg snapped up, knee smashing into the bottom of Dante's chin, then swept out and around, hooking the back of his ankle and flipping him into a full rotation.

Dante left the ground, and I saw Abel's Path…shift. The Infinite Blood Sea morphed, going from a mostly peaceful ocean of red to a choppy ferocious typhoon as Abel landed a blow that seemed to contain all the force from all those earlier punches, channeled through his elbow as he brought it down on Dante's spine mid air.

The ground shook as Dante was smashed into the dirt so hard the air shattered, and Abel stopped, stepping back, a bloodthirsty grin of triumph on his face.

He waited for Dante to climb to his feet, then offered his hand, which the other man shook with a nod of respect, and then the two of them hopped out of the pit to head back over to where we were waiting.

"NOW you can make him a job offer," Abel said smugly. "And he'll definitely accept it." Oddly, I could see a sort of spark behind his eyes that I hadn't in a long time. My mentor was back. He'd just needed the motivation to reignite that old spark. I couldn't have been happier for him. After all, I'd be leaving soon on my mission, and I had a feeling Abel would be just fine when I was going.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Dante was thrilled to join up after the fight. He and Abel really were the same kind of person, and they were both incredibly excited for the opportunity to find a new sparring partner. They made plans to fight again later, after they'd healed up, and I didn't even have to explain what I wanted Dante to do before he agreed.

We headed back up to the guest wing together, chatting about the tournaments I was planning to hit to find my last few cabinet members, and I was JUST starting to relax when we were stopped.

Well. Stopped was a polite term. Surrounded was probably more accurate. I wasn't too worried, given where we were, so I just stared down the line of robed figures, waiting for one of them to let us know what they wanted. Sure enough, after a moment, they moved, and a new face emerged. "Well," sneered the vaguely familiar guy with disdain. "If it isn't the pretender."

I blinked at him. "Ah, it's…you," I trailed off. "Nope. I got nothing, you look kind of familiar but I can't place it. Can you tell me who you are so I can proceed with your mockery?"

His face twisted hatefully. "Trash!" he hissed. "You think you're so special. That you deserve any of this? Your garbage father left the Palace in shame, and then you think you can just come back and take from those of us who are entitled to this? Like we'd ever believe you CAPABLE. I know what you are."

"Once again," I said slowly. "That is not mutual. I do not know you. Please introduce yourself, because I'm very lost."

"Fool," he snarled. "Play your games for as long as you can. You must recognize your own cousin."

I raised my eyebrow at him in disbelief. "Do you have ANY idea how little that narrows it down?"

"Devon," he snarled. "My name is Devon." I stared at him blankly. "My father is Percival! The eldest of our grandfather's sons!"

Then it clicked. "Ohhh! You're Percy's kid. That makes sense. Kind of surprised we didn't meet on the Heirworld. Guess you weren't around for any of the big stuff. Something I can help you with, Dev? Because I'll be honest, if you wanted to talk you could have called. Maybe sent a messenger. Surrounding me with goons in the middle of the hall is kind of sad."

"I wanted to give you a chance to take it back," he snarled. "You ARE family, even if you don't act like it. Withdraw silently and pass the mantle to someone more deserving and no one needs to know what you've done."

"I mean…someone needs to know," I said uncertainly. "Namely me. Because I have no clue what you're talking about."

He all but screamed in frustration. "Don't play games with me! You know what you did! There's no way a D-ranker saved an entire planet. You must have had an inside track on what was happening. You were working with the Void, weren't you? Biding your time so you could switch sides and cheat your way to victory."

"Ohhhh," I said with understanding. "So you're just an idiot. Sorry. Took me a second to catch up."

I was pretty sure he barely stopped himself from attacking me. "You're a liar!" he hissed. "You cheated and I'll prove it. I'm invoking the charter. I suspect you used outside interference beyond the parameters of the trial to win, and I'm calling your coronation into question. You can play as dumb as you want in front of me, but once the charter is invoked, there has to be a trial. It's the law."

"What?" I said with alarm. "That's ridiculous. You just let anyone claim foul play? What's to stop any of the dissatisfied candidates from calling bullshit whenever anyone wins."

"Because," came the tired voice of my father from off to one side. "Invoking the charter on an ascending candidate over an invalid charge is grounds for execution." The wall of robed figures parted and he stepped inside, grimacing at Devon. "Congratulations, by the way. You've managed to annoy me almost as much in the ten seconds I've known you as your father did in the first few years we interacted. That's a genuine accomplishment, considering how obnoxious my brother is."

Devon sneered at him. "Well if it isn't the traitor. I assume you helped him with this farce. You'll be dragged down in his wake just like the others."

I was still focused on what my dad said. "Wait…you're that bitter? You're willing to DIE on the off chance your totally ridiculous theory turns out to be true? Which, by the way, it isn't." I looked at my dad. "Can we walk this back? He might be an ass but he IS my cousin. I don't want him dying over this."

"I WON'T die!" he screamed in rage. "Because I'm RIGHT! You'll be exiled in disgrace and I'll have the chance to claim my birthright! I was supposed to win! I'm the oldest grandchild! I was going to do what grandfather never could. What father didn't manage. YOU weren't even supposed to be a factor. You're a fucking poison. An infection rotting away the heart of this family. And I'm going to expose you!"

My dad just shook his head. "See, this is why smart people don't practice Skills like 'Discord'. Because you do practice, right? You don't have a second ability, but you were able to learn your mother's family Skill."

"Of course," snorted the cocky idiot. "Why would I possibly neglect such a deadly ability."

"Because it works equally well on YOU as it does on others," my father said with a sigh. "You're lying to yourself. You're so in denial about this nonsense you're willing to kill yourself to be proven right. Disturbing your own life because you're applying the Skill in ways you don't understand."

My cousin looked troubled, but shook it off quickly. A literal headshake cleared his clouded face like someone shaking a snowglobe. "You're just trying to trick me. It doesn't matter. I made my accusation, and it was witnessed. The trial proceeds. Within the hour everyone will know about your son's shameful deception. We'll be called before the elders and he'll answer for what he's done. He'll be banished and I'll take over."

"Would you even be in the running for that?" I asked skeptically. "Because I feel like I'd have seen you at the ceremony when we finished if you had the points. You didn't really come up that I saw."

His glare became even more ferocious. "Because of cheaters like you! I'm a genius, and I'm destined for great things! Even if my points weren't up to it, if I expose a Void traitor they'll have to take me seriously! I'll be crowned Wishmaster in your place out of meritorious service to the faction."

"You definitely won't," my dad observed helpfully. "I mean, Shane didn't betray anyone, which should be obvious enough after a witness or two is called, but even if he had, exposing him would get you an attaboy at best. And not a particularly sincere one."

"Liar!" snarled Devon. "My father told me you were a liar. That you would try to trick me. I know better than to listen to you."

Snorting, my dad shook his head. "But not better than to listen to him, apparently."

"What's going on here?" Came an arrogant voice that I recognized almost immediately. Ayra Vetala, Devon's mother, swept through the ring of figures, her gaze raking over us. Focusing on her son, she frowned. "Devon? What are you doing?"

"Oh that's a great story!" My dad said cheerfully. "Your idiot offspring just lodged a formal challenge against my son's coronation under the charter."

When she'd spotted him, her lip had curled in disgust, but as he spoke, her eyes widened and her face drained of blood. "That's…that's absurd. He wouldn't do that. The charter hasn't been invoked in millennia. The punishment for a false allegation is execution by soul destruction."

My eyes widened too. Soul destruction? Gods dad, way to bury the lede. Execution was one thing, you could wish people back from the dead. Having your soul shattered was irreversible unless you were at mirror soul. Which, given Devon was C-rank like I was, I could be certain he wasn't.

Devon raised his chin arrogantly. "I have faith, mother. I know that my righteous cause will win out in the end. I have truth on my side. There's no way that traitor's mongrel can accomplish something like defeating an S-rank Void incursion. This is all a farce, and I'm going to prove it. I won't let this affront to father's dignity stand."

She was staring at him in horrified stupefaction. "Oh, my boy," she whispered. "My poor, stupid, simple boy. What did you DO?"

From her tone, I was guessing she could see what my dad had. That he'd been training his Discord Skill and it had backfired somehow. It made sense. I imagined if you wanted to believe something badly enough you could convince yourself of anything, even without a Skill that made it easier.

"What he did," came a somber voice as yet ANOTHER A-ranker showed up. "Was lodge a formal accusation of misconduct against the heir." His eyes fell on Devon. "Take him into custody. I don't want him fleeing before the trial…or after." Two men in dark cloaks and masks stepped out, each one grabbing one of Devon's arms. His eyes turned to me. "I trust I don't need to warn YOU not to run?" He asked coldly. "I'd prefer to extend some modicum of courtesy to the heir."

I was shaken, and it took me a moment to realize he was asking a question. "I…no. I'm fine. I mean I'm good. Not going anywhere. I didn't do anything wrong and I'm fine with a trial."

"What is this?" Devon yelled as he yanked fruitlessly at his arms to try to escape. "Unhand me! My father and grandfather are elders! You can't DO this! This is collusion! They're covering for him! I deman-" he was cut off by Ayra's hand smashing into the base of his neck with a sharp chop, his eyes just rolling up as he slumped in place.

"Apologies," she told the man solemnly. "My son is…out of sorts. Might I take him back to our quarters? I won't let him run. I know what that would mean. I'll keep an eye on him."

Her voice was sad and quiet, and she was looking at her son with the kind of terrified surrender that I could imagine on my own mother's face in that situation. The A-ranker stared hard at her, but eventually nodded, gesturing for the guards to let him go. Ayra reached out and smoothly caught her son before turning to me sadly. "This was a mistake. I don't know this will end, but if you can…please be merciful."

She lifted him up in her arms, cradling him like a baby, and then walked away, the circle of cloaked figures parting before her and eventually scattering. When she was gone, I turned to my dad, who was staring after her.

"I'm not crazy, right?" I asked him quietly. "That was…weirdly convenient."

He nodded. "It was. Him losing composure like that and making a challenge at exactly the right time…something is going on. Someone is making moves here, under the old man's nose. Which shouldn't be possible. Maybe they got to him before he came back?"

Left unspoken was that it didn't matter. Something was happening, and I wasn't stupid enough to believe that it was unrelated to the prediction I'd gotten. Not to mention the Void and their ability to hide from almost anything…I had a sneaking suspicion that this mess was only just starting. Things would get worse before they got better. And if I didn't figure out the game in time to learn the rules, we were all going to be the losers. And I'd just been starting to like it here.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"This is bad," I said frantically, pacing back and forth across the floor of our rooms. It was just me and my parents in here at the moment. "Something is going on." I kept remembering the chill that word had sent through me. Apostate. This was it. It had to be. It was coming for me and I needed to DO something before it got me and a bunch of other people killed. "We need to talk to the old man."

My dad actually barked out a laugh at that. Not for effect either. He was genuinely amused. "Shane, do you know the last time anyone but the reigning Wishmaster SAW the old man without him randomly deciding to summon them, prior to your visit to him the other day?" I shook my head and he snorted. "After the LAST succession war when he met with Aiden. And based on what I've heard, he LIKES Aiden. The one before him saw the Ancestor ONCE, for thirty seconds, and didn't even get acknowledged."

"So?" I demanded. "We're his FAMILY. His clan. We're in danger and this is his world. We need help! We need-"

He sighed. "Shane…he doesn't care what we need. All the old man cares about is his research. I get that you've been interacting with Black Sorrow and the Revenant, who are among the three youngest gods, but don't forget what they ARE. Sorrow and the Revenant still have attachments to their humanity. They AREN'T human, but sometimes they still act like it. But the elder three? They've long since severed those bonds.

"We aren't FAMILY to the old man. We're tools. A convenient batch of experimental subordinates who get things done while he works to keep him undisturbed." His face was worn and sad. "It's not malicious. He doesn't hate us. He just…doesn't care. About any of it. If we all died, he would just shrug and start over. If he even noticed. Might take him a few centuries to figure out no one was stopping by."

"But…he helped me," I said weakly. "He gave me that book. He didn't have to do that."

My mother looked heartbroken on my behalf. "Because he liked you, sweetie. But he's liked a lot of people. If you died he wouldn't care. And he cares even less about the rest of the family."

That was just so…depressing. Was this what I'd been waiting for? What I'd spent years working towards. To be the stand in of a creature so alien it didn't even care if I lived or died? Was any of this even worth doing? If the old man didn't care…

But no. Because I cared. I cared about everyone. My parents. My sister. My cousins. Even Devon, annoying little asshole that he was.

It didn't matter if the old man was involved or interested. It just mattered that I was. He'd stepped back from the reins for a reason. Let the rest of us take over. Part of that was undoubtedly for the free time, but part of it, I thought, was to teach us to stand on our own.

Despite what my parents thought, I didn't think he was apathetic exactly. Looking back, while there was certainly some coldness, he wasn't empty. More…obsessed. His scale of time was so wildly different from ours, his goals so alien, that we just couldn't relate. What was his Focus now? His Perception? But regardless of the truth, they seemed convinced he wouldn't help. Wouldn't interfere in this mess.

So I'd fix it myself. "So what's this going to be like?" I asked after a moment. "The trial?"

"A mess," my dad said bluntly. "But one in your favor. As the standing heir, you'll have the benefit of the doubt. Like he said, if you're found guilty you'll be ejected in disgrace. But it's never happened in the history of the faction. It's why NOBODY invokes the charter. It's been done by exactly three people since the founding of the Wish Curse Palace, and all of them died."

"So we can be sure it wasn't Devon's idea?" I asked grimly. "He couldn't have just randomly come up with a really stupid plan?"

He shook his head. "The charter is DENSE. People dedicate their lives to studying charter law. Charter lawyers are an entire PROFESSION here. The exact clauses governing the coronation are varied and complicated. The only reason I even know about the objection clause is that the three people who invoked it were executed SO PUBLICLY that their deaths actually influenced history during the time periods where they happened. Like…outside the faction.

"Devon wouldn't have gotten there on his own," he emphasized. "Someone pushed him. And his demeanor was wrong. Like he'd been damaged. Ayra knew it too, it's why she got him away. The good news is the trial won't be quick. Like I said, charter law is dense. You aren't even going to be expected to give your initial statement until later today. They need to select the tribunal and then THEY need to read up on precedent."

"They won't just use charter lawyers?" I asked in confusion.

He shot me a look that said I was insane. "Do YOU want lawyers picking the next Wishmaster? Even by veto? They'll be consulted. Chances are good you'll get a jury of your peers. Which is to say, former Wishmasters. Aiden might be on it. Or he might abstain. He's lazy enough that it wouldn't shock me."

"Alright, so I give a statement, I assume enter my plea, and then what?" I asked worriedly. "Trial by combat?"

"Nothing so showy," he laughed. "Remember where you are. Wishmasters aren't fighters. After the statement you'll call your witnesses. The prosecution will cross examine. Then call theirs. You'll give closing statements and then the tribunal will rule. This needs to be sewn up before the end of the festival period preceding the coronation, one way or the other. They won't drag it out."

That was a relief, at least. I'd been worried about my mission to Mourne Kayze. "Should we like…contact some witnesses? We'll need to talk to them right? Or is that considered witness tampering?"

"Not an issue," he assured me. "There are methods to determine truth from falsehood. Given that any actual memory alteration will be detected and they can't lie, coaching is perfectly acceptable. If you can twist the truth enough that the prosecution can't ferret it out with iron clad truth detection then it's assumed you deserve to get exiled. Like I said, it's never come up before."

I nodded slowly. "Ok, so we need to pick our witnesses. What exactly are we setting out to prove here? Like do I need to prove that I DIDN'T collude with the void?"

"No," he said bluntly. "I told you, you have the benefit of the doubt. You don't need to prove a negative, HE needs to prove a positive. Your witnesses are going to be there to testify to your character, and as bait to encourage the prosecution to ask specific kinds of questions. The questions they can and will ask depend on the people you pick. When were they present around you? What was happening at the time?

"Witnesses aren't just there for information, it's a dance. You bait them into asking about a specific subject, they try to do the same to you." He grinned at me. "Ascendants are all about the narrative. Controlling the perception of events."

My mom nodded. "There are always three sides to a story involving two people," she said solemnly. "My dad taught me that as a girl. There's one persons perception, the other's, and then there's what actually happened. It's like the old parable about the blind men and the elephant. One of them grabbed the tail and said the elephant was like a rope, one of them grabbed the trunk and said it was like a snake, one grabbed a leg and said it was like a tree."

"But I just…didn't do it," I protested. "Shouldn't we just call ME?"

My dad recoiled. "Gods no! Don't even joke about that. Shane, do you ever have any thoughts you aren't proud of? Ever had a passing flight of fancy sympathizing with the Void? Because that's the kind of thing they'll dig up. The trick to witnesses is that you're viewing their OPINIONS of you. Opinions are glamourized or demonized mostly. People either overlook or focus on your flaws. So you curate them to that effect and the tribunal sees you through rose colored glasses. But if YOU'RE a witness…"

"It's not an opinion," I finished. "It's a fact. And they can cherry pick which 'facts' they let the jury hear. What's to stop them from just calling me themselves?"

"They can't," my mom added helpfully. "You're protected from being directly implicated as the standing heir. Until you're stripped of the qualifications you can't be compelled to testify. The people who wrote the charter weren't new at this, you know." She smiled comfortingly. "They knew what a pitfall something like that was, so they arranged protections to prevent the misuse of the system. If you WERE guilty it would still come out during the trial through the witnesses both sides choose."

I grimaced. "So…we need someone to question THEIR witnesses, right?" I asked slowly. "Someone who can twist things in our favor?"

"Preferably," she nodded. "They'll pick people who can make you look the worst, probably people who actively dislike you. It would be stupid to have Devon testify…but given how rabid he is he might do it anyway."

"So this has NEVER ended in a conviction?" I asked as I thought over what they'd said. "Like no heir has even been a traitor?"

My dad snorted. "No, none of the three heirs with people willing to ACCUSE them has ever been a traitor. It's a desperation move. Candidates only accuse the heir if they have no hope of overcoming the heir through other means, which means they're mostly pretty secure in their positions. People who are easily winning don't really feel the need to betray the faction to get ahead. They're already ahead."

I hadn't considered it from that perspective. It made sense though. "Ok, so we need someone to question their witnesses, and ours. I want Crell to do it. His Doubt Skill is pretty absurd. He's a B-ranker and it's at Mythic, so he can even affect A-rankers. They won't call and S-ranker, will they?"

"No," he said quickly. "And they would be declined if they tried. You can INVITE a witness, but can't compel one. Testifying against you would be beneath their dignity, not to mention alienate all the other involved elders on your side. It's a lot of risk for very little reward, and I can't think of an S-ranker who would bother. No, they'll probably call people from the succession war itself, given the premise of the accusation."

I could live with that. I'd made a few enemies, sure, but not too many. Most of the family members I'd met had been pretty decent. I was sure I could find some with a good opinion of me to question, especially with Crell asking the questions.

My brief moment of respite from the dread was cut off by the unwelcome sound of my wife rushing into the room, terrified. "Shane!" Callie called as she entered, Chelsea, Abel, Gabe, Bethy, and Mel in her wake. "We have a problem!" Her tone was panicked in a way I hadn't heard outside actual life or death danger.

"Whoa, slow down," I told her comfortingly, putting my hands on her shoulders. "What's wrong? I'm sure whatever it is, we can handle."

"I went to go see Derran about the trial," she said quickly, eyes full of lingering terror. "He was around during some of your clashes with the Void, and I was sure he'd be able to clear things up." She stopped, swallowing hard. "Shane…Derran is dead. They found him butchered in his room. They said his soul was shattered. He's completely gone." And that was when the bottom fell out of my stomach for real. Because the stakes had just gone WAY up. And I wasn't sure I could afford to play anymore.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"What do you mean he's DEAD?" I asked her in horror. "Like…someone snuck into his room and killed him? Here? And no one noticed?" I glanced around, suddenly much less secure in my knowledge that we were safe in the Wishworld.

My dad noticed the slight motion and shook his head. "These are the heir's private quarters. The security here is far beyond what any average B-ranker would have. I don't know what killed him, but it would need to bypass S-rank security measures in order to enter. No one would be able to manage it here without attracting the old man's attention."

"How did he not notice THIS?" I demanded. "This world is HIS, right?"

He nodded. "It is. But extending his Perception through it requires at least some effort. He doesn't bother, dedicating his mental processes to research."

I remembered meeting him, and what I'd seen with that book. He sealed portions of his consciousness into research projects to maximize study efficiency. I wondered exactly how cognizant the old man even was most of the time. I gritted my teeth in frustration. I didn't know if my parents were right about him being apathetic, but he was definitely at least fairly nonchalant.

"Derran is your oldest sister's son, right?" I asked my dad. "Arabella?"

He nodded. "Ari is going to be…" his face clouded. "I feel bad for her. Having a child undergo soul destruction is unimaginable. I didn't know the kid, but his dad is a decent man, and Ari is my sister, even if we don't always get along." His tone was quiet and sad, affected in a way I had never heard from him before.

My mom laid a hand on his shoulder. "We'll go extend our condolences after Shane is settled," she said softly. He nodded, giving her a grateful smile.

I hadn't seen my dad this emotional before, really. Not this way. He'd always seemed so calm and measured. It hit me how absolutely horrifying this was going to be. More than that, it hit me how horrifying it COULD be. "What about the others?" I asked quickly. "Derrick, Delia, Roland, all the friends I made in the succession war. They need to be put under guard."

"It's been handled," my paternal grandfather said as he strode into the room. "I came as soon as I heard, and I dispatched an A-ranker to guard each of them. I'm not sure if that'll be enough, but they're in constant contact with each other, so it should at least act as a deterrent."

"Dad," my father said with a nod. "Has Ari been notified?"

Malachai swallowed hard. "No. She's in seclusion working on a new technique. I sent Davis to get her. He's…not doing well. Derran was a good boy. I try not to get attached to the young ones, just in case, but he was…talented. Charismatic. He had a bright future." His eyes were hard and angry. "Someone is going to scream for this. They killed a promising young man. It's such a waste."

"How the hell did this HAPPEN?" I demanded. "Was there no security on his rooms? This is the Wish Curse Palace! And we've got visitors, there has to be some kind of active security measures in place."

"Patrols," he said in an empty voice. "The killer slipped right through the rotation. Could be an inside job. Or some kind of predictive power. I asked Aiden to contact the Ancestor, but he says the Great Book Heavenly Library is sealed. I'm assuming he's gone into retreat to deduce whatever information he can extrapolate from what you showed him. The timing is…suspect."

I wasn't sure if the fact that they'd timed this to avoid him made me feel better or worse. At least he wasn't completely unconcerned. Of course, this meant that despite some modicum of interest being possible he wouldn't be available to help us. It ALSO meant that the possibility of this being an inside job had gone up, and that the person 'inside' was substantially more connected than we'd hoped. At least I assumed so.

"How many people knew he was in retreat?" I asked grimly. "And do you think this is related to the mess with Devon?"

"Highly possible," he admitted. "I'm going to have someone examine Devon for influence. We assumed he just snapped out of envy, if I'm being honest. It's not exactly out of character, the boy is an irredeemable brat. His mother spoils him. The timing here is too coincidental though. This is a targeted assault."

My dad sighed. "My concern is that precautions were taken to prevent discovery. If it IS an inside job they probably used wishes to cover their tracks. You know as well as I do that secrets trend towards concealment. It's easier to obscure than reveal."

"I know," my grandfather admitted. Malachai looked tired. "I…I don't know what to do here. This has never happened before. A member of my direct lineage murdered INSIDE the Palace? Soul dispersed by an unknown assailant?" His jaw tightened. "It's an outrage. But I don't know where to aim my anger. And Ari…" he looked lost. "I'm not supposed to have favorites. But you and Ari have always been the children I was most proud of. I'm sure that's not a surprise."

My dad shrugged. "I'm not really concerned with making you proud."

"I know," said my grandfather with a bitter smile. "That's why you manage it. Ari though, she's my eldest daughter. Her mother was my first wife, Layla. She and Percival were my only children with Layla before she passed."

Dad nodded. "I've heard of her. She was gone before I arrived, but mom mentioned her a few times. Said she was good people."

My head snapped up. I knew NOTHING about my maternal grandmother. I'd never met her or even heard her MENTIONED. I considered asking about her, but given the circumstances it didn't seem like the time. I made a mental note to bring it up later.

Malachai just sighed. "I don't know what I'm supposed to say to Arabella. How do I tell her I let her only son get butchered right under my nose. That the person she cared about most was murdered in the one place where he was supposed to be safe." His fists clenched so tightly I heard his joints crack. "How dare they? How DARE they do this here? "

To my surprise, my mom was the one to comfort him, putting a hand on his shoulder. My mom didn't like my grandfather. At all. His handling of my dad's upbringing, even after returning to the palace, infuriated her, and the number of children he had and how many women he'd had them with bothered her. That said, as a mother who had lost a child (albeit in a not quite so permanent fashion) I could tell seeing him in pain bothered her.

"We'll help you talk to her," she said kindly. "I've never met Arabella, but I'm sure she needs people to lean on in such a horrible time. Her husband, her family. We'll be here for her."

I was actually kind of worried she was going to blame me for this. It seemed clear to me that Derran was killed in order to cast doubt on the trial. But then again, that was only clear to me because I had a lot of context. I doubted Arabella was going to put that together from the available information, and given she was almost definitely A-rank at minimum, I had no desire to paint a target on my back where she was concerned.

At the same time, I DID want to help her. Derran had been a good guy, and I'd liked him. Back during the succession war he hadn't hesitated to welcome me to the family despite being competitors, and he'd looked out for me without any real prompting. I couldn't believe he was just…gone. I'd just been getting to know him.

This was my first time encountering soul destruction. When people died, it was sad, but it wasn't really the end. You could bring them back later, like we had for Perit and Alan. But this…Derran was gone. Even the gods couldn't bring him back.

Soul destruction was just…the end. This wasn't the shattering of the part of the soul people like my dad and Benny used in crafting and combat. This was a complete cessation of existence. An absolute unmaking of everything you had been as a person. That was why Devon's potential punishment for this challenge was so terrifying to most people. Unless you had a mirror soul, there was no coming back from having your soul shattered.

It was tragic thinking of it happening to someone like Derran, a cousin I'd just been getting to know. More than that, it made me even angrier about Devon. My other cousin was, without a doubt, being used by someone or something to get this trial going. And if I survived, he wouldn't. I had no doubt that if I got ejected from the faction, I'd be dead within days. Whoever was doing this wanted me out from under the protection of the Palace, and once I was, nothing good would wait for me. But even if I DID get out of this, I'd be losing ANOTHER cousin.

Which was unacceptable. I wouldn't allow Devon's family to go through what I was watching right now. I might not LIKE Ayra Vetala, but I didn't want to see her suffer something like this. And I could see from my dad's expression he was thinking the same thing.

The question was, who the hell was DOING this? And why? Were they just after the Wishmaster position? Were they after me to get to Callie? To stop me from contacting the Lady on behalf of the WCP? I'd gotten involved in a frankly ridiculous amount of things well out of my depth up to this point, so it wasn't exactly easy to tell.

One thing I did know though, this wasn't over. More surprises were coming during this trial. Whoever was making moves here had an endgame I couldn't predict, and whatever it was, I was pretty sure it had to do with the Apostate. Whoever or whatever that monster might be, it was coming, I could feel it hovering over top of me like a headsman's blade, ready to fall the second I stopped thinking about it.

Callie sidled up next to me, wrapping an arm around my waist, and I put one of mine over her shoulder. She shook against my side, every bit as afraid as I was. The idea of soul destruction was…well, it was horrifying. More than even normal Ascendants, Callie and I had an understanding of the soul. We were in contact with each other's every day. The idea of seeing Callie's soul shatter. Of feeling her vanish forever in a way I could never fix, tore a gaping hold in my chest.

She was even more afraid. I'd cracked my soul multiple times in combat. I tended to be impulsive and innovative when fighting, and more than once I'd gone too far and put my soul in danger. She'd been terrified every time, but it had been academic. She'd never SEEN anyone's soul destroyed.

I could also feel the terror and nausea of her reaction to his death. People kept using words like 'butchered' and as she buried her face in my shoulder, I tried very hard not to think about what my wife must have seen done to my cousin to make a hardened warrior like her this sickened.

"Where is he?" The silence was broken by a loud voice echoing through the halls outside. "Where is that bastard?" The door of the room smashed open, and a tall, dark haired woman with steel grey eyes strode into the room, only for those same eyes to fix on my dad. "This is YOUR fault!" She snarled, and then she snapped a black baton shaped object and the room filled with blood red lightning.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The red lightning surged across the room, but shockingly, it didn't fork towards me, just towards my dad. It never made it to him. He raised his cane slightly, ready to rap it on the floor, but before it could strike him, a spike of ruby ice erupted from the floor, interposing itself between him and the attack.

As it struck the ice, the lightning was swallowed, bouncing around inside the facets of the ice crystal, unable to advance.

My grandfather, Malachai, stepped in front of the ice, his face grave. "Arabella," he said softly. "You need to stop."

She shook with rage. "Stop? STOP? My son is DEAD. Destroyed. Gone forever!" Her eyes, the grey of steel in the morning sun, began to shimmer. Not with some kind of power, but with unshed tears. "My baby is GONE. And it's HIS fault!" She pointed a shaking finger at my dad. "He brought his fucking games here and now my boy is dead!"

"It's not his fault," my grandfather said sadly. "You know it isn't. He had nothing to do with this. You're angry, and heartbroken, and you have the right to be. But killing Elijah won't bring Derran back."

Turning, she lashed out with a fist, smashing it into the wall so hard the room shook, a long jagged crack running up the dark stone to the ceiling. "SHUT UP!" She screamed at him. "Shut your fucking mouth! My son doesn't just die! Someone has to pay! Someone needs to BLEED!" The tears were pouring down her face now.

He smiled sadly. "I know they do, love. But it won't be Eli. He didn't cause this. It wasn't his job to protect Derran. It was mine. And I failed." To my absolute astonishment, his own eyes started to water. "If you need someone to die, I understand. It'll be me."

She flinched so hard she almost fell over. "That's not…what are you even talking about? I could NEVER."

"When you were born," he told her in a choking rasp. "I was SO happy. Percival was…well he was the heir. He had his job to do, and I always knew that. But back then I wasn't an S-ranker. I was just a run of the mill politician. You were my baby girl. And I swore. I SWORE to your mother I would protect you.

"I pulled every string I had, called in every favor, to get you exempted from the succession war." At the looks of shock that ran across the faces of everyone else in the room, he smiled. "I know. It's unthinkable. It used to happen occasionally, though it was always rare. They closed that loophole not long after that, but I kept you with us. Raised you. And I kept my promise. Even after your mother died, and I realized how precarious my position was, and started making moves to expand and consolidate, I always kept you safe."

Arabella was staring at him, and the absolute devastation in her eyes made me want to weep. "Daddy," she whispered. "You didn't DO this."

"I did," he told her stonily. "I was supposed to keep him safe. Was supposed to watch over him when you were in retreat, and I didn't. And now he's gone. A debt is owed. And I'll pay it. Because I failed you and broke my promise."

She stared at him for a solid minute, eyes swimming with grief and unwillingness and confusion, and then she turned and punched the wall again. Except this time she didn't stop. Her fists pulverized the stone as she screamed, again and again until something inside her just broke and she collapsed into a pile of bloody rubble, her hands ruined and face covered with dust and tears as she sobbed on the floor.

Malachai walked over and knelt beside her, pulling her against him as she cried. I just…stood there. Because I didn't know what else to do.

WAS this my fault? I didn't think so. But no matter how you sliced it I was involved. And I didn't know what to say. I couldn't imagine the pain. The grief. Even thinking of losing anyone in my life like that tore me open in a way I had never even considered.

"I'm sorry," my dad said after a minute or two." She looked up. "I didn't have anything to do with you losing your son. But…I AM sorry. Sorry you had to go through that. I can't imagine Ari. I just can't even begin to comprehend it. I wish I could have just let you attack me. Could have allowed you to hurt me to try to take away some of the pain. But I was afraid after me you'd have gone after Shane and-"

She SPAT at him. "He's a CHILD Elijah," she hissed. "I'm not STUPID. I know it wasn't you. Know I'm being unreasonable. But I also know that whoever did this most likely wanted me to blame your son. I refuse. I won't let my boy's death be a weapon. Won't allow them to cheapen him like that. YOU I might kill out of rage, but I won't attack my nephew at the behest of the monsters who murdered my son."

The admission seemed to make her…smaller. Not the part about me. But saying out loud that my dad hadn't been part of it. It had been hope. In a way. That she might get justice. But now that hope was gone. Her son was dead and she had no clue who had done it. She might never find them, and all her hate and rage had nowhere to go except for inward.

"We'll find who did this," I said suddenly. "I promise you. I don't know what this is about. I don't know if it's about the Wishmaster title, or something about the Void, or if I was even really involved. But whatever caused it, I'm going to find out what did this. WHO did this. And I'm going to have them punished." I swallowed hard, averting my gaze from her scorching glance. "And…I'm sorry about Derran. I didn't know him very well, but I really liked him."

It seemed so pathetic to say that. So insubstantial. But it was all I could say. It was all I had to share and I felt like I needed to share SOMETHING. That I owed it to her to let her know that her son had made an impact on my life.

To my surprise, she smiled weakly at me. "He liked you too," she said sadly. "He told me all about you when he got back from the succession war. He wasn't one for all the games the kids play around here. After he got back when he reached D-rank, he mostly kept to himself. Spent time with me and his father." Her eyes overflowed with tears. "He was such a good boy."

My mom walked over and knelt down next to her, wrapping her in a hug as Malachai pulled away. As she held her close, a warm white flame consumed them both. Flames of purification. Nothing offensive, just…warmth. Nurturing comforting warmth. Helping to soothe the grief. She couldn't wash it away, and even she could I don't think Arabella would have wanted her to, but she was able to do SOMETHING.

My grandfather cleared his throat, looking up at the familiar form that filled the door. "Davis," he said softly. "How are you?"


"Enraged, sir," said the big man. "After I contacted Ari I took control of the response units sent to take care of the other potential targets. There was another attack." Our heads all jerked up, but he held his hands out to forestall the reaction. "No other fatalities. They attacked Roland. Which proved to be…unwise." His smile was cold and angry.

My grandfather sighed in relief. "Do we have the assassin in custody?"

"Gone," Davis said grimly. "We found him in his room, heavily injured. He was comatose. Based on the damage to the surroundings, we think he drove them off with a surprise attack. Roland is one of the more combat capable members of his generation. It would make sense he'd have contingencies in place. Der-" he choked, closing his eyes. "Derran was never one for violence. That was changing, after Kara…he asked me to help train him. I was busy with the coronation security."

"This is NOT your fault," Arabella said fiercely. "If I don't get to blame Eli you don't get to blame yourself. Besides, we'll just have to make up for it when Dana comes home."

At my surprised look, she smiled sadly. "Dana is Darren's little sister. We've probably got a decade or two before she comes home." Her eyes filled with tears. "He was so excited to meet her." She closed her eyes, forcefully shaking off the grief. "In any case, you'll have to make sure she gets trained right when she gets here," she told him.

It struck me how…absurd this family was. Malachai had needed to trade away what sounded like quite a few favors to keep his daughter, had been alienated from all his other children. Darren had only met his parents probably a few decades ago, and he had a sister he would never even get to see. And all of it because of some absolutely ridiculous decree from some previous Wishmaster. I didn't even know if the cuckoo bird strategy for raising kids had been proposed by the old man himself.

This invisible…thing, that we all accepted, that had shaped our whole lives. How many families had it ruined?

And that, ultimately, was what turned the fear off. And the grief. And even the self pity. I wasn't sad anymore. I was MAD. Someone had come into my home, my family's home, and killed someone I cared about. Maybe it was some evil Void plot, but maybe it was just some petty asshole who wanted a JOB. Who wanted to keep things the way they were, and keep things like THIS happening to more kids.

I'd let myself get lost in the weeds again. Let myself get distracted by the how and abandon the why. I wanted to be the Wishmaster for THIS. For these people. For my friends and family and loved ones and even people I didn't like much. So that people like my aunt wouldn't need to wait for their children to come home after growing up alone. So that they didn't need to worry if they would come home at ALL.

The flickering embers of a mission that had been guttering under the weight of Void wars and politics flared into an inferno and then CRYSTALLIZED. Into a certainty. Whoever did this wasn't going to win. Not in any way.

I WOULD find them like I promised. Would see them punished. But more than that, I would make sure that none of their goals came true. I'd change the family, prevent the Void from taking over, and foil any other nonsense they were hoping to accomplish. Because they'd woken up a part of me that had been sleeping since I'd beaten Travis to death on an ice field back on Callus with my bare hands. My pettiness.

More than just winning, I wanted THEM to lose. I wanted them to suffer. To experience the pain they inflicted on my family and on me.

"Do you need somewhere to stay?" I asked, finally snapping out of my rage fuelled daydream. "Sorry, I should have asked earlier. I mean I know you have a place but I don't know if you want to be there right now…"

"She'll come home," my grandfather said firmly. "Both of them will. "Ari's old room is still untouched. Davis can stay with her there." He gave his daughter a small, broken smile. "It'll be nice to have you back in the house." She smiled back, and her smile was as broken as his. Oddly though, it seemed like those jagged pieces might fit together into something resembling a whole. But only time would tell.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I was exhausted after the meeting with Arabella, and I hadn't even DONE anything. It was just…draining. Seeing how broken and raw she was made my stomach knot up, and it started to wear on me after a while. My mom stayed with her, helping her through her adjustment period and giving advice on what it was like to lose a son. Her situation with me hadn't been the SAME, mind, but it was the closest anyone nearby had been, and Arabella just needed a sympathetic ear.

Meanwhile, after a good night's sleep I headed out (under guard by Zeke) to meet Wulf, who almost definitely had nothing so far, which I wanted to point out. My heart wasn't really in the idea of rubbing it in his face today, but the plan was already underway, so I made it work.

"So, you put a tracking mark on him when we met him?" Callie asked in surprise. "I didn't even know you could do that."

I shrugged. "Did you forget about Marked for Death? It does give a damage boost, but it's also a literal mark. Given the scale I work on at this point, following it over a long distance isn't much trouble. I have six digit Perception, after all. I split off a clone after he left and had it track him under Murmur. It followed him to…here." I gestured to the ramshackle building. "Which, to be honest, I wasn't expecting. He struck me as the fancy type. Swimming pool indoors, crystal chandelier, maybe a pool table."

The building the clone had followed Wulf to wasn't a fancy house or manor. In fact, it appeared to be some kind of cannery that had been retrofitted into a dwelling. It was made of old red brick that was crumbling and faded letters were painted on the sides. 'Redmond fish canning.' I blinked, turning to Vicky. "What is this place?"

She, Bethy, Chelsea, Gabe, Abel, and Mel had all accompanied me on this little adventure, with Zeke trailing behind us with Stella trying to be inconspicuous. Well, trying to TRY to be inconspicuous. I think he was messing up on purpose, because his incredibly unconvincing 'street sign' mask wasn't fooling anyone. My cousin looked intrigued. "Looks like one of the old industrial districts. Over the centuries, a lot of businesses have been started and abandoned. New passing fads that boomed until they stopped and were left to rot. Haven't heard of this one, but that's not surprising. Those bricks are D-rank. If they're crumbling like that they've been here a LONG time."

That made a lot of sense actually. The WCP was exactly the kind of place I could imagine small pop up enterprises aimed at gaining profit quick exploding onto the scene and then dying off. Apparently the Palace was so big that they didn't even bother to clear out places like this. It made me wonder about the actual size of this place.

More than that, it made me question how much I knew about Domains and spatial folding. This was a pocket dimension INSIDE of a pocket dimension, with another pocket dimension (the Great Book Heavenly Library), nested inside THAT. Like a dimensional Turducken.

Shaking that off, I knocked loudly on the large sheet of riveted metal on the tracks in front of the building. No answer. I knocked again. And again. And again. I kept going for about fifteen minutes until finally, the door was flung open and a thin man with curly dark hair glared out at me. "WHAT!?" He snarled. Then he froze. Then looked behind him, then back at us…and promptly slammed the door shut.

I raised my fist to knock again and he flung the door open. "Do NOT!" He snapped, pointing a finger at me. "You're going to break my damned door. Do you not SEE the dents?"

"They'll hammer out," I shrugged. My knuckles were C-rank and wrapped in B-rank metal. They'd been leaving dents in the rusted D-rank metal, even with literally no intention of causing damage on my part.

He glared at me for a moment, then sighed. "How did you find me?" He said tiredly.

"A little birdie told me," I said with a chuckle. I whistled, and Archie, who had been waiting nearby, swooped down to perch on my extended wrist. Of course, Archie had NOT been following him, but I'd dispelled the mark after he'd answered the door, and my clone wouldn't have been able to keep up without it. He'd done MULTIPLE heat runs to lose any tails, but he hadn't bothered checking the skies.

I liked Wulf well enough, but I didn't know him yet. I wasn't going to give away too many of my secrets to a stranger. Besides, it was his job to find things out. If he wanted to know what my Skills were he could piece them together.

Looking us all over, he sighed. "Look. Just…come in. I heard about your recent troubles, and despite what I assumed is a high ranking escort standing down the street dressed in perfectly normal clothes with a mask that appears to be decorated by what looks like a daffodil in a flowerpot, I'd rather not get sucked into your mess. We can meet INSIDE. I assume you weren't followed?"

"My uncle is our escort. Janus?" I cocked my head expectantly, and sure enough he flinched. Hurriedly, he stepped aside to let us in. Looking around anxiously as he slid the door shut. "Thanks, I told him casually. So, I came to check on the progress you've made on that test."

He scowled at me. "None. I've made NO progress. I've been able to PRELIMINARILY confirm the EXISTENCE of the person you mentioned, but he hasn't been seen in decades. It took some doing too, you didn't even give me his full name." He seemed genuinely frustrated by his inability to accomplish the task. Perfect.

"I don't KNOW his full name," I shrugged.

"I think it's Timberly," Bethy chimed in happily. "He sounds like a Timberly, don't you think?" Her question was aimed at my sister and Gabe.

Wulf didn't seem to care. "He does NOT sound like a Timberly!" He snarled. "NO ONE sounds like a Timberly! That's not even a real name. No parent in the history of this universe has looked down at their newborn precious bundle of joy and said to themselves. "This one is gonna be a TIMBERLY!"

"I don't know then," she said innocently. "Maybe it's short for Kevin?"

It was hard not to laugh at the incoherent scream of rage that erupted from Wulf as he turned and stalked off into his home. So I didn't bother. Laughter is good for the soul. Bethy shot me a wink as she walked by and the amused grin on my face softened into a grateful smile. She'd known we were all still reeling from losing Derran and was trying to help.

We followed Wulf across the floor of the old factory. It was…gross. Puddles and rotten wood and bits of trash and rusted tools. It looked pretty much like you'd expect an abandoned factory to look. He led us to the back, then took up a position next to a huge piece of factory equipment braced against the wall. He pushed it aside, then shoved the grate of a freight elevator up and gestured us in.

Once we'd entered, he grabbed a handle on the back of the machine and pulled it back into place with a soft grunt, then slammed the grate shut and hit a red button hanging nearby. The button was one of three on a black remote hanging from a chord, and when he pushed it, the elevator lurched and began to rise.

"Don't worry about us being followed." He said with a grin. "The elevator is small void corridor connected to a pocket dimension. The space we're currently ascending into doesn't exist without access to this elevator shaft, and that machine that looks like a canning rig is an extremely pricey mad scientist shielding device I had hooked up. Cost an arm and a leg. Luckily they weren't mine and I didn't need to get them from the same person, which really cut down on the overhead."

I couldn't tell if he was joking, but given the WCP as a whole, there was a better than average chance he wasn't. I decided not to worry about it. The elevator rose slowly, and after about five minutes (far too long for us to have still been in the building) it stopped with a lurch. Wulf pulled up the grate and then pushed open a rolling steel door to reveal…

"I called it," I said with a grin. "What did I say?" I pointed at the chandelier hanging over the extremely large wood floored foyer, and past it at the pool table visited in the well appointed study. I turned to Wulf. "Do you have a swimming pool in here?"

"Obviously," he snorted. "It's the best way to get my cardio. It's a salt water pool though. The chemicals in a traditional pool fries your hair with consistent use, and I hate those swimming caps. Why?" He seemed excited to share, but noticed Chelsea trying not to laugh as Abel grumbled and passed Gabe a C-ranked chit.

"No reason," I said brightly. "Anyway, thanks for having us over. Your place is nice. I assume it's safe to talk in here?"

He nodded, knocking on the wall. "Wishcrafted subspace bunker. Highest quality. No one is eavesdropping on us in here. Not unless they followed us in or have some VERY advanced observation abilities."

Relaxing, I nodded. "Alright, good. Now asking about Tim WAS on my list of things to do, but more than that, I wanted to ask you to check into something for me."

"No," he said immediately. "Derran was a B-ranker. I'm not digging into his death."

"Not even for a job?" I asked him bluntly. "Because I'll hire you on the spot if you agree. I need this information, and you're my only reliable source here. Everyone else I brought with me. They're not local or connected. And think of it this way, joining my cabinet only benefits you if I win. You get to ride the gravy train up to B or even A-rank. No preludes. You join up right now, contract and all."

He froze. "That's…" he gritted his teeth, groaning in frustration. "I want protection. At least a B-ranker. Someone who can keep me safe while I dig into things someone obviously doesn't want anyone digging into." I opened my mouth, but he cut me off. "That's a hard line. I can't gain renown if I'm dead. If you want me to work for you I need an investment. Protection."

"Fine," I grimaced. I glanced at my sister. "Ellie just broke through, right? Can you have her put on guard duty? My B-rankers are limited and most of them are on Stratholme. I pretty much just have Alanna, Crell, and Fade here, and Crell isn't a combatant. The other two are my personal guards when my parents and Zeke aren't around."

She nodded. "Yeah, mom had her assigned as my protector, but as long as I stay with you we can just double up."

Ellisara, my mother's disciple, had been peak C-rank when I first broke through six months ago. Due to her involvement in the succession war, she'd made the jump to B-rank on the back of her already completed Chronicle during the honeymoon. I was relieved to know she'd be watching out for Chelsea when this was over.

"Sounds good," I turned to Wulf. "There, protection promised. Now let's go over your contract and then we can talk about the information I need." I was going to fill him in on all the details I could remember about the succession war and hope he could jog something loose in the ether. I refused to play defense this time. I was going to hunt THEM down before they could hunt me.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

After we filled in Wulf on everything we knew (which admittedly wasn't much), we headed back to my guest suite, Master of Secrets in tow. Nominally because we had nothing else to do, but really because I was feeling…restless. I needed to focus up and maybe get some training done. My Fatewalker sense had been bugging me lately. Not just about the Apostate, but about myself.

I had three more pseudo Domains left before I finished constructing my full Domain. My mom had told me most people didn't make them before B-rank, but I knew that was just because they lacked a Chronicle.

With mine constructed, I could now form my Domain, merging together my multiple pseudo Domains to form a coherent whole. But I couldn't do it without those last three pseudo Domains. Nine forms, thirteen pseudo domains. Something about that was important. Not least of which was Pride, my library pseudo Domain and current soul space, which had been designated my thirteenth circle.

Zeke's trick with the last page of his Chronicle when he ascended to A-rank was a clear example that it was a bad idea to leave things like that unfinished. But I could also feel that I shouldn't do MORE than three more pseudo Domains. Or create any new techniques for the ones I had. Only three. The question then became what the hell should I DO with them?

I had a lot of problems. But I also had SOLUTIONS to most of those among my current kit. Defense, offense, healing, utility, my build was diverse. Honestly probably TOO diverse. If I was anyone else I'd have self destructed under the sheer weight and variety of my Skills and techniques. I'd considered condensing them, creating a handful of super forms out of multiple aspects of my powers, but it felt…wrong.

Quantity was a quality all its own, and I was approaching some kind of threshold. My Fatewalker Sense had never led me wrong. So I had to trust it.

I sat in the room with my wife, frowning down at my hands. I'd explained everything to her, and she'd understood. She was probably the only one who COULD given our bond. Anyone else would have just assumed I was deluded. But Callie knew what my Fatewalker Sense could do. Knew how accurate it could be.

I'd never actually condensed a technique for that, come to think of it. I considered trying to base a Domain off of that, but it felt wrong. I already had that. I needed something unique. Or at least new enough to be valuable. Especially given how dangerous things had been for my friends and family lately. I just wished I had a way to help THEM get stronger…and then I blinked.

That wasn't a bad idea. I considered my potential tools. My forms allowed me to take the essence of my various demonic alternates into me (albeit essences I created) to become something stronger, and I had Sammael as well. Sammael was my strongest form, and the one I'd created to give me a universal boost to my base stats. So what if I could make something LIKE Sammael but for others. Something that let me incarnate myself into them as a sort of secondary form that could enhance them with my own powers. It didn't need to be me specifically either. Beelzebub clones could use my forms and pseudo Domains. I could use them to basically pass out powerups.

I explained my idea to Callie, and she seemed intrigued. "That's pretty cool," she admitted. "But how would you even DO that?"

"I've been studying that Skill book that the old man left me," I said slowly. "I'm nowhere NEAR deciphering it, obviously. But deducing it has been slowly improving my understanding of Skills and techniques. The biggest hurdle isn't creating the form, it's creating the attachment mechanism."

She raised an eyebrow at me. "In what sense?"

"Sammael bypasses the traditional need for a racial trait to become a part of you because it was created through the use of my second ability, which IS a part of me. It uses that connection to emulate a racial trait. Like how when I made your heretic angel trait we anchored it through the soul bond. Your ability is the Skill most connected with your soul, and racial traits NEED that connection to make the changes necessary to empower you."

"I get that," she said slowly. "But I don't get WHY?"

I grimaced, trying to articulate it. "It's kind of like…access permissions. The ability is connected to the soul in a unique way. It's ALLOWED to change you. When something ELSE tries to change you, it has to fight against your nature and all your impact. Like turning someone else into a giant monster isn't going to make them stronger, it's going to seriously fuck them up. It's an invasion, and the body treats it like one. It fights back. You might get a temporary power boost, but it's not GOOD for you."

"So if it doesn't come from the ability, aka the legitimate source, it'll be considered an attack?" She asked slowly. "Well that makes sense, but how are you going to bypass it? You don't have a soul connection with everyone. And I'm not cool with you trying to establish one, by the way." She smirked at me to let me know she was kidding. She knew I'd never do that.

Callie's connection to my soul was unique and irreplaceable. It was also JUST shy of intrusive. If it had been anyone else or the bond had been just a hair deeper into my psyche, I'd have been horrified at the connection.

She was right though, I couldn't just mass produce soul bonds. I needed some way to temporarily bypass the defenses.

Then I blinked. I had a way to do that, actually. A perfect way. "Can I borrow some of your Adherent Fire?" I asked her urgently. "I just had a pretty amazing idea, but I need you to switch forms to make it work."

Void. Adherent fire was Void attributed by default, because it was the opposite of Heretic fire, which was anti-Void. The Void specialized in tainting people, altering them in ways they might not have agreed to. Void taint turned creatures into entirely DIFFERENT creatures. And it seemed to be a consistent improvement in base state. There were side effects, but I was pretty sure they were intentional and not incidental.

Shrugging, she switched to her Adherent Archangel form, her hair turning blue and eyes inverting. Through the bond, I could feel the surging possibilities of her flame, a wispy insubstantial riot of strange energy. I could feel it, and I could tap into it.

Inspiration struck me like a bolt from heaven, my mind filling with possibility, and I closed my eyes, slipping into Pride. Stalking over to a nearby table, I swiped everything off of it knocking it all to the floor with a clatter as I grabbed an empty book and shoved Adeherent Fire into it. THe book glowed blue and then caught fire, burning with an azure light as it was consumed but not destroyed.

Because I was Callie's husband, it didn't hurt me at all. I dropped it on the table and snagged another few books. One of them was the oldest in the library. Belial. My first form was a being of corruption, spreading his toxins to others. Originally those toxins had only allowed me to poison people, but as I'd improved with the power, I'd gained new skills and applications. Control. Subversion.

The last ingredient was, of course, Sammael. My angelic base form was the strongest of all in terms of pure potential. It was designed to amplify and enhance everything about me, and it was good at its job.

Stacking the books together, I held out my hand, and my staff shot from its spot floating above the Tome that was the centerpiece of my library and smacked into my palm. Holding it tight, I reached out with it to surround the books, using the deductive power of Wisdom of Solomon to begin the process of compiling the three of them. As I did, I triggered Dantalion, which I boosted to B-rank with the staff, and I poured myself into the deduction, BECOMING part of the information as it compiled.

It felt…transcendant. Like swimming in an ocean of knowledge made of my own blood, but in a good way. I had this singular awareness of the connection and comprehension that was being established, and I was able to shape it as it progressed.

Sammael was the base, obviously. It was the core of this idea. Sammael was the foundation on which I could contend with those above my level. A qualitative shift, if only a temporary one. But Sammael couldn't be anyone but me, couldn't connect to the souls of those he wasn't a part of to begin with.

So then came Belial. Belial was the corruptor. The ability to dominate and subvert enemies on the field of battle, to make them dance to my tune. Belial would be the delivery mechanism to propel Sammael into the souls of my allies.

Finally, I added the secret ingredient. The mysterious Adherent Fire my wife had created in a moment of inspiration. A power source we didn't really understand yet, but one whose known capabilities made it perfect. If Belial was the delivery vector, then the fire was the carrier that smoothly swept it past their defenses. The Void could invade the soul, and Adherent Fire was made up of an inverted purification flame. It complimented Belial's corruption perfectly.

In an instant, the Wisdom of Solomon deduced a thousand potential variations, a million. Deeper and deeper it went, the ocean of information tossing and turning, a sea of possibility whipped to a frenzy by a storm of inspired brilliance. And from that ocean rose something…new.

Sammael was a dark angel, a being of shadows and overwhelming power. But this new form was different. He wasn't an angel at all. He was a corruptor, a possessing entity created for the sole purpose of bestowing infernal power on my chosen. Granted, the corruption was a purely mechanical thing, since I didn't want to turn my friends into monsters, but it was still his nature.

The deduction came to a screeching halt, and I was shoved out of the connection, stumbling back as I reeled at the shock of severance. Once I steadied myself, I lifted up the book that had been left behind, reading it over.

Asmodeus. That was the name of this form. A demon of beguilement and infiltration, who beguiled the hearts and minds of the unwary. As I picked up the book, I remembered the mental image of this being. He looked like me unsurprisingly. But as opposed to Sammael's wide feathered wings, Asmodeus's wings were a pair of dark bat wings, and on his brow sat a crown of curling ram's horns.

I opened my eyes in the real world, grinning at my wife. "It worked," I told her excitedly. "I mean, I think. Might need a bit of tweaking. I think I eliminated all the side effects. I simulated millions of possible builds." I frowned. "Eight out of ten of them went berserk and tried to kill everyone, and half of the last twenty percent weren't very strong. But the last ten percent was good and I was able to cook them down into something perfect. Want to try?"

"Probably best not to mix stuff into my racial trait," she grimaced. "Who knows what it might do."

She had a point, and I grimaced. "Yeah, fair enough. Let's go find Abel. I bet he'll be psyched to try it out." As we got up to leave, I felt a sort of pulse of encouragement from my Fatewalker Sense. Another step had been taken. Two more and I'd reach the end. Or maybe the beginning. I'd have to wait and see.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I was thrilled about my new pseudo Domain. Asmodeus felt…different. It was a call back in some ways to my time as a pure support. Asmodeus wasn't just a way to enhance my friends, it made ME that enhancement. I'd fight by their side to watch their backs, and that was appealing to me in a way that I hadn't realized I'd been missing up to now.

This new pseudo Domain was going to fill a huge hole in my arsenal. Of course, it was closer to a form, but so were Behemoth, Glory, Leviathan, and a few others. The main difference between them was scale. Pseudo Domains put a lot of strain on my Chronicle because they were made by combining forms and sometimes even other pseudo Domains. Forms were made from combinations of Skills. It was an important distinction. And in this case, it was going to be the thing that made this particular pseudo Domain really shine.

Abel, meanwhile, was skeptical. "Look, I understand the concept," he said slowly. "But I'm just not sure I NEED that kind of boost. Also, no offense, I don't want to get possessed."

"It's not really possession," I clarified. "That's just the mechanism for bestowing the power. You'll still be in control. I'll just be your copilot. Like one of my parallels when I'm running piece of mind. I can help offload some of your mental strain, direct techniques, watch for enemies. It'll be like having a second pair of eyes."

He hummed with interest. "I'm not against it. But we'd still need to test it out. Who would we do that with?"

"Who else?" I grinned. "The strongest person either of us know at the same rank."

Groaning, he put his head in his hands. "Oh gods no. Please don't make me. She's going to demolish us. I still have my pride, you know. Are you sure we can't train against one of the B-rankers? At least when I get crushed by Fade I can console myself with the difference in power."

"We need someone we can accurately scale against," I said with an eye roll. "Fade has never fought either of us seriously. Even if it's a huge improvement, we won't actually know because he'll just try a little harder to match us. Bethy HAS had to try against us, we've just been overwhelmingly beaten every time that's happened. It's the best possible test and you know it. Stop being such a baby."

"Fine," he hissed in annoyance. "Where are we doing this?"

There was a wisp of mist and Bethy appeared from behind him like a ghost. "Surprise attack!" She screamed, chopping a hand down into his throat.

"Oh shit!" He choked, stumbling backwards and clutching his neck.

I closed my eyes and sighed. "We're testing the new pseudo Domain, Bethy," I told her tiredly. "Which means we need to be IN the new form in order for the test to be successful. You can't just attack him before we're ready."

"Not my fault it doesn't work reactively," she sniffed. "Seems like a design flaw."

"It isn't," I sighed. "Because you can't make a reactive move that you need to prepare to use." I turned to Abel, who was wheezing and glaring at Bethy. "You about ready for this?" I asked him with a grin I didn't even try to hide behind my mask.

He rolled his eyes. "Fine," he said again. "Let's get this over with."

"That's the spirit Amber!" Bethy said excitedly. "We're gonna have a great time together! Just try not to pass out from the pain too quick, that's always super boring."

I tried not to laugh at his expression when she called him that. I did not succeed. Turning to me, his face became solemn, and he nodded. With that last bit of formality out of the way, I triggered my newest pseudo Domain. Asmodeus.

It was a unique experience. I felt myself get…lighter. More insubstantial. Like I was becoming mist or smoke. My body darkened and turned immaterial, and then there was a pulse of blue fire at the core of my being. My new smoke self caught flame, exploding up into a funnel of towering Adherent Fire. Then the flames burst downward, bypassing the physical and them infusing into Abel.

Not his body, exactly. Deeper. Suddenly, I was Asmodeus. Well, I was me with wings and horns, and I was floating over an endless ocean of blood. The infinite blood sea. Beside me floated a familiar form. Abel, in his old Spruce Bunny mask. He blinked at me. "Well…this interesting. How am I here?"

"You're not," I corrected. "This isn't a conscious conversation. This is your inner self reflecting a guide for me. A way for us to link together before we start fighting. Here, I'll show you." I reached out and grabbed him, my hand passing through him and absorbing the spiritual fragment into me. Suddenly I felt like there was two people in my head, a not unfamiliar situation given my abilities. I let him have control, and when I stepped back, I opened my eyes, or rather, Abel's eyes, in the real world.

It felt…strange. I really did feel like one of my parallels, which considering I could perceive what they felt wasn't so odd, but the sensation of being a half foot shorter was weird.

Abel, meanwhile, was enthralled. "Holy shit," he whispered as he stretched his arms out. "I feel so damned powerful. Maybe halfway through C-rank? Which is nuts considering that even triple my current stats wouldn't get me there. I'm overflowing with power here." Sammael had plenty of power to spare. Afterburner was included in the creation of the form, and it was easily one of my most overwhelming abilities.

Asmodeus was even stronger. Something about the Adherent Fire and Belial mixed together to increase the potency of Sammael's raw power. While it WAS an enhancement, it was also corruption, which was Belial's whole schtick, and the trio of powers had mixed together to create a powerful cocktail.

Behind Abel, wings snapped out, and he blinked in confusion. He reached up touching the horns on his forehead with interest. "Well, this is cool. Not sure I'll be able to fly with no training though. That might be an issue."

"I'll take care of it," I said into his mind. "I can act as your flight instincts during the fight. Just do what you'd normally do, I'll make sure your wings make it happen just the way you need it to." Our brains were pretty closely linked right now, hence my ability to talk to him like I did to Callie through the bond. It wasn't exactly the same, more like yelling to him from across a room, but it was enough for me to adapt to his needs in the fight.

Bethy, standing across from us, looked thrilled. "That looks so COOL!" She squealed. "But just know I won't hold back. You face the wrath of Ange-Bethy!" She threw her hands dramatically into the air, and thunder cracked the sky as wings erupted from her back. I had no idea how she'd done that thunder thing, but the wings I'd expected. They mostly just let her fly, but she clearly wanted a dramatic reaction. When we didn't give her one, she pouted, but then got serious, flexing her fingers, claws emerging.

Blood colored fire coated her nails, and I winced internally, but Abel didn't seem too worried. He raised both fists and focused, the pair of them catching fire almost instantly. The flame was…odd. Dark teal and sort of heavy. Like a mix of Belial and the Adherent Fire with a bit of shading from Sammael's flame. I really did have too many different flames to work with.

This particular mix was especially potent though. The power of Sammael mixed with the toxicity of Belial and the defense penetration of the Adherent Fire. The flames of Asmodeus were the most deadly poison I'd ever handled, and clearly Abel felt the same. He grinned, leaned forward, and then took a blurring step, warping the space with the infinite blood sea to close the gap.

Bethy met him head on, her claws flashing like ten flawless knives of fire, carving through the air. The space elongated for Abel as he slipped between the attacks, weaving like a snake before unloading a pair of heavy punches into the vampire. One across the jaw and one up under her ribs. Snarling, she backpedaled, warding him off with her claws as she left burning lines of power in the air.

"Alright," Abel said eagerly. "Seems like that works, lets go BIG then!"

Throwing out his arms, I felt something inside him SHIFT. It was odd to feel someone using their ability like this when I'd never felt it before, but I could easily recognize the sensation of the infinite blood sea expanding around us. Rather than condense it into the Ragam Blood Body though, he let it expand into a massive avatar of himself, already alight with the corruptive flames of Asmodeus.

The avatar's fists flashed out, smashing the air so hard peals of thunder shook the room. The training area we were standing in was a wide open space with a false sky (making Bethys earlier trick even more confusing). She looked mostly annoyed as she tried to dive out of the way of the attacks, and the slight hue of toxic fire permeating her jaw and midsection made it clear she WAS feeling the effects of the flame. The next time Abel punched, though, she didn't even both dodging. She tanked the punch and just…shattered, exploding into mist that dispersed around us.

Cursing, I tried to spot her, but she was nowhere to be seen. I could see traces of the mist, but it wasn't coming from anywhere. It seemed to be almost gathering though. And then the bottom dropped out of my stomach. The mist gathered at the feet of the avatar, and we looked down to see it, and when we looked up, we were standing in front of a castle, under a blood red sky.

Above us, in the sky, a fanged smile stretched across the skin of the world like a tear in reality itself. "You punched me in the face, Alice," said Bethy's voice reproachfully. "I'd normally be mad. But I have to admit. That fire of yours doesn't taste too bad."

Abel snorted at her. "Please," he said boldly. "You're strong, and your Domain means you can probably beat me, but it won't be easy. That flame had to hurt. And now? After I've infused it into the Infinite Blood Sea? I won't go down easy, I can tell you that for sure. I'll make you use the right name this time."

She clicked her tongue. "Oh Alfred," she said with a giggle. "You'd think training with daddy would have helped you figure it out. If you honestly think you're going to even come close to beating me you're dreaming. And this dream is a bad one. But you're right, I know exactly what to call you. I think I'll call you…lunch." The fangs in the sky flashed in the red moonlight before snapping out to lock onto Abel, and then-

I blinked, standing back in my own body next to my friends. Abel was on his hands and knees, grimacing, and Bethy was licking her lips. "I think you should rename that Path," she giggled at Abel. "It's totally not infinite. It IS delicious though. It'll recover on its own though, I didn't take too much. And you didn't even scream. That's super impressive!"

He grunted, forcing himself to his feet. "It wasn't a real bite," he admitted. "And I came close. Point made, though. I got a little cocky." He glanced at me with a wry smile. "I think maybe that form of yours made me a little extra prideful. Something to note." I nodded. In retrospect I noticed that too. Still, it had been a great experiment.

"I'll keep it in mind," I told him. "Now, with that out of the way, how about we go and get something to eat? I'm starving." Bethy cheered in triumph and Abel just rolled his eyes and we headed over to the edge of the training room where my wife and Zeke had been watching the fight to meet them. That had been a pretty successful test drive. One pseudo Domain down, two more to go. After that…who knew?

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Unfortunately, the fight was probably the last bit of genuine relaxation I was going to have for a while. Specifically, I'd been called upon to come before the elder's council in regards to the trial. The meeting had actually been delayed a bit, and before I'd been summoned we'd been planning to go to that Kingdom Siege event Vicky mentioned to look for a Master of Banking, but once the elders called, I was obligated to answer.

"Just stay calm," my mother told me anxiously. "This is a formality, your father normally they would choose the tribunal for your trial at the meeting, but since only three of them have been Wishmasters, it's kind of predetermined. This is more of a formality than anything else. So be respectful, polite, and try not to bow and scrape. But don't be confrontational. Just stay calm no matter what you do!"

She gripped my shoulders anxiously as she spoke, shaking me slightly, and I gave her a dry look. "I mean, I wasn't. Until about ten seconds ago. But thanks for trying."

Grimacing sheepishly, she let my shoulders go. "Right. Sorry. That's my bad. I'm just WORRIED, you know?" She glanced towards the colossal doors of the council chamber. "Seeing what Ari has been going through…the idea of losing you makes me sick."

I pulled her into a tight hug. "Hey, I have a DESTINY, ok? I'm the next Wishmaster. I'm married to the daughter of a god. Not to mention I'm related to half the current divine pantheon. Let's make a list. Grandma and grandpa are HERE right now, and grandpa is one of the ten strongest S-rankers in the universe and a legitimate demigod. Grandma won't let anyone lay a finger on me, and if she steps in and gets hurt, Black Sorrow will peel the skin off whoever does it, if she gets the chance before Grandpa Nick does it."

She relaxed slightly as she pulled away. My mom was very close to her parents, and had unshakeable faith in her father. "That's true," she said slowly, chewing on her lip. "Most of the council aren't combatants either. The majority of them couldn't stop my dad if he wanted to save you."

"I'd like to reiterate that your life is not in danger," my dad added dryly. "You will be EXILED if you're charged. Granted, you might be attacked AFTER that, but you aren't under threat from anyone HERE."

"Neither was Derran," I said bluntly. "How did that work out for him?"

He winced. "That's…a good point. But the council took the oath. Until you DO get exiled, they're bound not to harm you. So this meeting won't be a big deal."

I nodded gratefully and approached the door. Crell stepped up next to me. "You ready for this?" he asked me nervously. "Because I'll be honest, I'm somewhat intimidated. Are you sure you want me to do this?"

"You're basically my official lawyer," I chuckled. "I don't know who else I'd ask. Could have my dad do it, but given his history with Percy and the family in general that seems needlessly antagonistic. But like he said, this is a formality. No one is expecting you to bust out a brilliant legal defense and immediately save my bacon. They're just going to confirm the situation, tell me the relevant legal information from the charter so you know where to do your research, and then let us go."

He snorted. "Shut up and listen, got it." He turned back to the doors. "Alright. Let's do this."

I nodded, reaching up to knock on the door. After a brief pause, a solemn voice said "Enter."I pushed the door open, stepping into the large chambers, while Crell slipped in behind me.

The council chamber wasn't what I expected. I'd been thinking it would be a conference room, or some kind of meeting hall. A big round table where everyone could sit around debating maybe. It was none of those things.

My first impression of the hall was scale. It was HUGE. Not just normal room huge, either. Spatially expanded huge. In fact, it didn't seem like a room at all. It was more like a world. When I stepped through the door, it swung shut behind me, slamming with a boom, and we stepped out onto a long, thin catwalk of dark stone. The catwalk was hanging in mid air, over a bottomless chasm filled with churning clouds.

Dark vapor roiled and seethed below us, mirrored in the sky above, and I could smell an overwhelming scent of ozone sparking on the air. We followed the catwalk to a single round platform of the same rock. Past the end of the platform, the endless abyss of clouds churned, broken by a series of thirteen towers of black rock, each set with a luxurious throne on which sat an S-ranker. They stared down at me impassively, literally sitting in judgement, and I stared back at them with worry.

"Welcome to the Path Choosing Chamber," my grandfather said from his seat off to one side. While none of the thrones were behind the door, they were arrayed in an almost full circle, so any given throne I picked to focus on put one or more of them behind me.

I nodded to him. "Gramps," I said casually. "Nice to be here. Cool place you've got here. You can tell the person who designed it wanted visitors to feel comfortable and welcomed."

His implacable mask cracked, a grin spreading across his face. "What can I say? Sometimes subtlety is a waste of time. How will you know you're beneath us unless we're ACTUALLY dozens of feet above your head. Having to strain your neck to look at us makes it much clearer than just saying it out loud."

"Enough." Desmond said in annoyance. "We're not here for banter. This is a formal inquest before a trial. Statements need to be given, pleas entered, and we need to inform the accused of his rights and responsibilities under the charter."

I shrugged. "Well, not guilty, obviously. This whole thing is absurd, you can't honestly believe-"

"SILENCE!" boomed a familiar voice. I turned to glare up at my Uncle Percy. "The accused will not address this body regarding the pending charges! Any further attempts to bias the potential jury pool will result in contempt and possible immediate ruling in favor of the prosecution."

"Watch yourself, Percival," Desmond growled. "You aren't in charge here. You don't get to make unilateral decisions about punishments." He shot me a mildly apologetic look. "He is right, however. You can't address the council regarding your charges outside the official court setting. At least not to attempt to dispute the charges. We'll take your statement, and your plea is entered, but there are procedures to follow."

I nodded slowly. "Sorry, won't happen again. I take it you'll take the lead on the statement then? Ask me the questions you need the answers too? I don't know how I'm going to give a statement without biasing you all, so you're going to have to walk me through it."

"Acceptable," said the eldest of the former Wishmasters. Desmond seemed to be in charge of the council, though I hadn't really picked up on that before. I also glanced around at the branch leaders. I remembered a long time ago, back at the conclave, Zeke had mentioned that not all of them were bloodline holders. Some of them had married into the clan. It made me think of Vicky and my Aunt and Uncle who I hadn't met. I got the impression things were hard for them. How difficult must it be for an outsider to get a place on the council.

It made me think of the 'orphan' branches. Wendy and Patricia were treated differently than the other branch heads. I hadn't really understood why until now, but maybe those two were the non-Wyndham branch heads. It would explain their insistence on taking in Wyndhams without much family background.

Desmond had gone silent, seemingly thinking about what he wanted to ask. "In your own words, describe the involvement of the Void in the succession war trial, and your role in foiling their objectives."

That was…broad. It gave me lots of wiggle room. But I wasn't the best person to use that wiggle room. I glanced at Crell, who nodded and stepped forward. "Crell Preost for the accused, your excellencies," he said respectfully. "If I might answer for my client?" Desmond nodded, and Crell let out a sigh of relief, and then began to talk.

I'd filled him in on everything at various points over the last day or two, at least what he didn't already know. He was descriptive, concise, and articulate. He made me sound better than I could have managed, at least, and despite Percy trying to interject and derail things, he just continued to smoothly recount everything in the most beneficial way possible to my case. I was honestly kind of impressed.

"Fascinating," murmured Desmond. He didn't comment more than that, avoiding letting me know what he was thinking. He glanced around the chamber. "We have chosen the tribunal who will sit in judgement for your trial. Myself, Cristoph, and Warren. Only a Wishmaster has the right to judge a Wishmaster, and so you shall have a jury of your peers, or at least as close as any might come to meeting such a criteria. Do you have any objections to this selection, Heir Wyndham?"

The formality was kind of intimidating, but I could tell he wasn't trying to make this hard for me. Like my parents said, they were giving me the benefit of the doubt. Given the stakes of what was happening, the charter had been written to make sure that while an inquest like this WAS always an option, it would be an option of last resort. They would hear Devon out, but wouldn't encourage him, because they didn't want other clan members trying to use this particular law to stir up trouble in the future. I grimaced internally at the idea of the very public soul destruction waiting for my cousin if he lost this.

The fact that Percy was his father wasn't lost on me as I took in my uncle's seething fury. I was glad they hadn't tried to put him on the tribunal, at least.

"I have no objections," I told him solemnly as I bowed my head. "Was that everything that you needed?" I'd been told this would be pretty quick, and I didn't want to overstay my welcome. Getting it done and getting gone was our best bet to leave a good impression.

He shook his head. "You may go," he said. "We'll be in touch about the next phase of the trial. The charter will be made available to your representative. The relevant subsections to this particular incident is in chapter four thousand eight hundred and seven, subsection nine eight two, beginning with paragraph eleven and ending with paragraph two thousand four hundred and seven. Relevant appendices may be cited given proper cause, to be determined at the discretion of the tribunal. Do you acknowledge your legal standing as cited?"

I glanced at Crell, who nodded, and then did the same. "I understand. Thank you for your time."

"You may go," he said with a tone of finality. As soon as he finished speaking, his stone chair tower dropped into the cloud bank below, retracted like a deadbolt on a door. My grandfather nodded to me, then did the same. One by one the others disappeared, until only Percy remained. He glared hatefully at me for a moment, then vanished as well, leaving us alone on the platform.

"Well, that was certainly dramatic," I said cheerfully. "Apparently I get that from BOTH sides of my family tree. Now, let's get going. I believe we both have some reading to do." Then I turned and strolled back down the catwalk, Crell following behind. They wanted him to study the charter, but I wasn't going to ignore it either. Dantalion was going to get a workout.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I had plans to sit down and try to absorb all of the charter, but I was unfortunately forced to let Crell handle it to start. Callie and Chelsea had come to get me and dragged me away from research to go to this Kingdom Siege thing. I wasn't as enthused about it as them, but we'd been putting it off for a while, and I NEEDED a Master of Banking.

"So, tell me how this Kingdom Siege thing works," I told Vicky as we all walked through the halls of the Palace underground. We were back in the tunnels, heading for who knew where, and given what had happened to Darren, I was a little nervous. Luckily Zeke was here with us, so we WERE safe, I was just being paranoid, and what better way to do that than to hear about whatever it was we were going to see.

"Oh, it's a ton of fun," she said excitedly. "Basically everyone gathers around a sort of basin. Inside there are holographic representations of kingdoms, and each of the contestants is given an avatar to act as the royal treasurer. Basically he allocates funds to whatever aspect of the kingdom he sees fit. If he puts it into military funds he gets bigger armies, technological advancement means more powerful armies, crop or exports he can hire mercenaries, and so on. The avatar is more of an advisor, but certain things in game can kill them."

I raised an eyebrow. "Things like what?"

"Well beheading," she said, ticking things off on her fingers. "Exsanguination, heavy organ damage, excessive blunt impact, poison, suffocation, strong allergic reactions, choking, head trauma, impalement, defenestration, extreme food poisoning, and snakes."

"Ok, first of all," I said slowly. "That's…just death. You just pretty much listed all the ways a person can die."

She shook her head. "They're immune to fall damage."

"Then how do they die from defenestration?" I asked in confusion. "Isn't that just falling out a window?"

"THROUGH a window," she stressed. "It's the glass that kills them."

I stared at her, searching for some sign she was joking. Sadly none appeared. "Right. Ok, moving on. So, the contestants just…what? Try to outdo each other until everyone else is conquered or gives up?"

"Pretty much," she chirped. "Kingdom Siege is considered top tier entertainment. The WCP is a trade power, so financial skills are desirable, and people bet real money on the outcomes. More than one new enterprise got its seed investment from a Kingdom Siege win. It's a huge social event, and everyone can participate." She grinned. "Plenty of us who didn't get the bloodline like to take part. It's all about skill and intelligence, no Wishes required."

I nodded to her with a grin. "Sounds like a party. I'll need you to introduce everyone who is up when we get there."

"You got it boss man," she saluted. "Speaking of which, we're here." She gestured to the side of the hall. Instead of a door this time, a large intricately woven rug was tacked up on the wall. She reached up, pulling it aside, and as soon as it moved away from the wall, sound erupted from inside. She jerked her head and I gestured to the others to follow.

Zeke stuck close, just in case, and he grinned as we came inside. "I forgot about this," he said wistfully. "Your dad was never much good at it. But we came to a few when we were here. After he hit D-rank we spent some time at the Palace before the succession war. Getting to know people, make connections. We tried a few of the various forms of entertainment here, and this one left an impression."

"I don't recommend placing any bets," Vicky warned. "The win lose stuff is never very good odds. All the money is in prop bets, and they get so byzantine and complicated it's impossible to keep track of them unless you have a lot of experience with the game.

"Basically, everyone here has been doing this for decades, and they're all masters of manipulating the rules," she laughed. "If you want to come back a few times, you could make some good money here though."

I was once again thrown. Decades? How was it possible for it to take DECADES for someone to get to the point I was at? I'd done it in a few years.

I'd heard things like that before, and it just didn't makes sense. They had the Wish power, just like I did. But thinking about it, I realized I could kind of see it. Because while the Wish power had ramped me up hard in the beginning, the higher I went, the less it bridged that gap. Wishes had accounted for a relatively small percentage of my rise to power, actually. Most of my stats came from renown and big events I'd taken part in.

And the scale of it actually snowballed. The less stats I had the less stats I could trade for. The early parts of the Wish power's development were slow going. And more than that, I'd been born with more stats than most people. Because my parents were A-rankers, I'd started with several stats to work off of. Normally even getting to where I'd began might take a week or two. Zeke had commented that I was faster than most.

If I hadn't gotten the hundreds of thousands of points I had from renown, where would I be right now? If I'd played it safe and been a pure Wishmaster, would it have taken me decades to get here?

Hell I'd taken months if not a year to go from D to C-rank, and only a very small part of that had been Wishes. The more I thought about it, the more grateful I was that I'd pursued the path I did. Improving my Path fo the Doom Sovereign, focusing on my external development rather than just passively playing support.

"Hey, you in there?" Vicky asked me wryly. I blinked at her. Right. She was talking about the Siege game.

"Sorry," I said with a chuckle. "Lost in thought." It had been a while since I'd done that. "Go ahead and introduce the contestants. I assume you DO know who all the favorites are?" I grinned at her. "This is your scene, right?" I glanced around at the sea of shouting young people surrounding the various pits. Apparently they weren't all using the same one. "I had you pegged as being the quiet type."

She snorted. "I'm a complex and multi layered individual thank you very much. I can enjoy tea AND kicking ass."

"I think 'kicking ass' is maybe a strong turn of phrase to describe watching nerds do math," Abel said with a grin. "I usually reserve it for activities where feet make actual contact with asses. Or heads. Or throats. Any blunt force trauma qualifies, really."

"Don't be a combat snob," said Mel reproachfully. "Being tactically savvy isn't useless just because your idea of subtlety is punching someone slightly less hard than you could have."

He grinned at her. "That's my idea of RESTRAINT" he said wolfishly. "Subtlety is when I punch them in their blind spot. But fair enough, I guess your nerd math might be cool. I'll keep an open mind. Convince me."

"I'll get right on that," said Vicky. "Except I have no idea who you are or why I should care again. I just remember Bethy calling you Ashley. No one else has even mentioned you to me."

He froze. "My name," he said, eyes narrowed. "Is Abel Castleton. I am your boss's combat mentor, and one of his most trusted lieutenants. We've been through thick and thin together, and he trusts me more than anyone."

I hissed through my teeth. "I mean…I trust Benny more than you. And Callie. And Chelsea."

"Ok, well, yeah," he said after a brief pause. "Benny is your best friend, Callie is your wife, and Chelsea is your twin. I guess I get that."

"Also Bethy," I admitted.

"What, no!" He protested. "Come on! She's so unreliable! At least let me have THAT." His shoulders slumped.

I shrugged. "Sorry, but you've been falling behind. Gotta buckle down and do some training."

As expected, that kind of challenge was something he couldn't allow to go unanswered. He glared at me, straightening his back. "I'll show YOU reliable." He said with a steely glint in his eyes. "Just wait, I'm going to make that list."

"That's the spirit Abner," Bethy cheered. "I'm sure you'll be the best pastry chef ever!"

He glared at her. "I'm a professional arena fighter!" He snapped. "And you know it. I don't bake pastries."

"Have you tried?" she asked with what sounded like genuine curiosity. "Because I bet you could if you put your mind to it. You seem like a determined sort of guy, I bet pastry making wouldn't be enough to stop you. You could probably learn it in a year or two. Don't let your hesitation keep you from your dreams!"

Abel looked genuinely confused for a second, then shook it off. "You STOP that this instant," he snapped. "I don't WANT to be a pastry chef. I never did, and stop trying to convince me to attempt it."

I sighed. "ANYWAY," I said loudly, forcibly redirecting the talk. "Why don't you tell us about these contestants?" I asked Vicky.

Chuckling, she shook her head. "Well I don't knew them all," she admitted. "There are dozens per pit. But I can tell you the favorites." She gestured over to one side, where I could see a tall, beefy man. He had long brown hair, a scruffy beard, and glasses. He was wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, his feet bare, and he looked like he was standing in his kitchen more than in an underground kingdom game. "That's Peter," she said with excitement. "He's a wizard with numbers. He does part time work accounting for some of the subfactions around here."

She pointed past him at a small girl with bright blue buns in her hair, wearing a hoodie and a dark pair of slacks. "That's May. Peter is an all around savant, but May specializes in military supply and logistics. Her armies grow faster than anyone else, and she's aggressive.

"That's Thomas," she painted at a short, gaunt man with wide shoulders. "He's a trade powerhouse. Mercenaries are his go to, and he's always the first to get them out. The one next to him is Sylvie," she gestured to a redhead with short hair and a lanky frame. "She's got a brilliant mind for infrastructure. She always manages to get her fortifications to an absurdly high level early on."

She introduced about ten more of them. Some were specialized in technology advancement, some in weapon production, some in more obscure things like resource location and acquisition, which apparently mean finding and extracting ore and things like that. I imagined that involved Skills like my Song of the Soil.

I wondered if that would help playing this game. Part of me wanted to try it for myself, see what Dantalion and Piece of Mind could net me in terms of an advantage, but that wasn't why we were here. We came to find my Master of Banking.

So, with that said, we picked a pit to watch, the one where Peter was waiting, and stepped up next to the pit. Inside, rolling hills of green sat in miniature, and thirteen small settlements had been erected at the edges of a thirteen pointed star, separating them from the main body of the pit to start.

As I watched, the thirteen contestants each selected a settlement and began the process of assigning their limited funds. I glanced at the others, who were all watching with rapt attention, and then focused up myself. Hopefully they could show me something that would impress me.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The Kingdom Siege pit was expansive, even if it wasn't that big. Because we all had incredibly high Perception, they were able to pack a lot of detail into a very small area. Despite the pit being probably a hundred feet around tops, there was what looked like a scale of thousands of miles packed into it, and I was able to pick up the details of even singular blades of grass as the waved in phantom winds too faint for us to even notice outside the pit.

Peter, whose village we were watching, had already begun his construction. Vicky had said they were all supposed to be ministers of finance for a Kingdom, but from what I could tell, they were more like ministers in exile. They'd been placed in these obscure border villages, and this area in the center was neutral ground between these thirteen kingdoms.

Each minister was given supplies to use, and was told to expand and claim land in the empty space to help build their Kingdom. After a certain time, the empty space would be locked in a detente when they all ran into each other, and the sieges would begin.

Each of them had, as Vicky mentioned, an avatar. It was fascinating to see this little miniature Peter interacting with the villagers from inside the town hall. He'd been set as the interim mayor, and as we watched, he did a quick inventory of the town's assets, and then immediately started sending messengers to bring him different townsfolk.

"Oh, shit, he doesn't have any coal," Vicky cursed. "That's going to delay his production speed by like two fold if he doesn't seize someone else's. At least unless he goes all in on something like steam tech."

A girl standing next to us scoffed. "Please, were you even looking at that ledger? He has a Red Maple grove. The wood is nothing to sneeze at, but more importantly, bees LOVE Red Maples. Which means he almost definitely has hives, especially if he…yup. There he goes, he called the carpenter there and he's mapping out plans for a bunch of ten frame beehive boxes. He'll be drowning in honey within a month or two."

"Shit, you're right," said Vicky excitedly. "And honey is priceless. Not only is it a nearly imperishable sweetening agent that can be used on almost anything, you can use it as a preservative."

I blinked at her. "You're FOLLOWING this?" I asked wryly. "Because I'm pretty lost."

"It's the buildup," she explained. "The beginning is the hardest part of the game, because what you end up with is random. Some people spawn next to gold deposits, and they're set, provided they ALSO have a blacksmith because how the hell are they going to mine it without picks. See what I mean? How you roll with the punches is key. Peter always hits the ground running."

"It's love of the game," said the girl next to us proudly. "Pete does nothing but Kingdom Siege. Even when he's not playing, he's watching, or reviewing footage."

I raised an eyebrow at her. "I take it you know him?"

"Duh," she said with a laugh. "He's my husband. I'm Holly. You guys place any bets on my boy over there?"

"I told them not to," Vicky said with a head shake. "The prop bets can get weirdly complicated and are almost always more involved than they seem. Like I bet there's a bet on the number of months until he has a functioning honey economy already being laid."

Holly grinned. "There is. I already placed mine on my scan ring."

"That seems pretty straightforward though?" I said slowly. "Like you said only a month or two, right?"

Vicky snorted at that. "A month or two until he has FUNCTIONAL hives to trade with. That's not the same as a stable economy. Especially because this map is the Mendari Highlands, which is on Drelden, and which has a notoriously harsh six month winter. It's going to massively stagger the initial stages of his build, but the long term economic boost will be worth it. Like I said, honey is a preservative, and having preserved food for the winter is a HUGE boost in the early game."

"Smart girl," Holly said appreciatively. "You really ARE a KS nerd. Most people don't know the maps on sight. Since there are about two hundred of them."

My cousin flushed. "I just pay attention," she said wryly. "Oh shit, they kicked up the timespeed." We glanced back down, and as I watched, things began to change. Right before our eyes, plants grew and died, leaves fell from trees, wind, rain, snow, and even tornadoes ravaged the land. Through it all, the various champions continued their work undeterred.

Peter completed his hives, then harvested the honey. He traded it with a neighboring village for a modicum of coal, which he used to power his forge to create more complex infrastructure. After he built those steam generators, combined with a water wheel on the nearby river, he started training and outfitting military patrols, and then explorer teams. Within a year (about ten minutes real time), he had an outpost a few dozen miles into the highlands, and then from there he began construction on a new starter village.

"This is INSANE!" spat Vicky as she watched with bated breath. "How is he fielding that many rangers?"

"It was the seventeenth initiative from the last town meeting," Holly said excitedly. "He's borrowing against future growth to outfit the ranger regimens. It's a risky policy, because if they run into anything too strong and get wiped out he's sunk, but if he can…yup, see, they just discovered an opalite vein."

Weirdly, I got why they were so excited. If I'd been playing this game I would have probably been mildly amused, and watching it in normal time would have bored me to tears. But because of the absurd timespeed, we were watching months pass in the span of minutes."

"So…is there any Ascendant stuff in this?" I asked slowly. "Magic, abilities, that kind of thing?"

"Obviously not," Holly scoffed. "Abilities are way too randomized. This is a contest of skill and intellect. There's some small role for luck to play, as with anything, but the most important thing is brains."

I glanced at the girl with amusement. I didn't think she knew who I was. Not that I minded. I wasn't looking forward to the fawning and trying to curry favor once my coronation was over. She was an imposing figure in her own way, despite her tiny size. Being all of five feet, her eyes were heavily shadowed and she had on black lipstick, her green hair pulled into a pair of pigtails and a dark metal ring in her nose.

She didn't notice my appraisal, because my mask covered my face, but my wife did, raising her eyebrow at me in question. I just shrugged. Holly seemed smart and capable, and there was no rule I couldn't recruit people OTHER than my cabinet members. She nodded approvingly, then slowly made her way over to stand beside the other girl opposite Vicky.

Shaking off the brief curiosity, I focused back on Peter, realizing I'd missed quite a bit. The started village was gone, replaced by a medium sized town a bit bigger than the original. In fact, looking closely, it looked like Peter had actually disassembled a lot of the original town buildings and moved them to the new city in wagons. Using premade parts had saved him months of construction and prep time, and within a few months he'd assembled a workable settlement.

Once that was done, he sent the rangers out to explore, and they identified several resource nodes to claim. Unfortunately, he wasn't the only one. It was at this time that he finally ran across one of the other players.

Peter was cool as a cucumber. His previously completed military patrols, dispersed throughout his territory, were alerted immediately, and flocked to his aid, surrounding and destroying the single military unit that had attacked his one mining outpost. I was expecting them to send reinforcements, but to my immense shock, there was nothing.

Callie mentioned her confusion aloud, and Holly beamed. "It was the rangers. The bet he made back at the beginning, when he leveraged potential earnings against founding the ranger unit, paid off. The rangers don't just scout, they also hunt and forage. They've been bringing back food to stockpile for the winter, but also keeping the town well fed. Well fed families have more children, which increased his town's population growth. He's got about twice as many soldiers as his nearest neighbors."

"And they're better outfitted," added Vicky with enthusiasm. "His coal boom at the beginning enabled him to forge the parts needed to create steam powered infrastructure. It massively increased his production output, which means he was able to arm and protect all his soldiers despite their numbers."

The next few hours went by in a blur. Watching an entire kingdom get built in a short span of time was fascinating, and once the kingdom GOT built, the real impressive stuff began. When I thought about banking, I thought of boring audits and number transactions, but Peter was a fucking maestro. He balanced books like some of my friends balanced a blade.

In the first hour, Peter's town was discovered by raiding parties. He drove them off with a mounted infantry he'd set up as a guard unit. By the time their reinforcements came, the troops had retreated. He left the gates open a LITTLE too long, and they barred them, following his forces inside triumphantly…and dying horrible deaths.

He'd lined the entire interior with huge pots he'd had filled with leftover grease and oil from food prep over the last few YEARS, and when they were coated, he had his archers light them up with fire arrows.

The entire interior of the walls, I realized, had been constructed with a special area designed to contain the flames and prevent the spread of the roaring fire.

Even as he did that, his own forces were riding out the back gate of the town, having headed straight through and looped around to bypass the army and strike directly at their home base, a town that the rangers had identified months before.

After stripping the city for parts and using them to expand his own town, he slowly grew his empire, absorbing other forces. Some he absorbed through violence, some through diplomacy, and he even bought a few out. I assumed those players had prop bets tied to specific thresholds and stood to profit even if they lost, which underscored what Vicky had said earlier. There was a whole other set of rules and wisdom involved in the prop bets.

Within another two hours, Peter's endless series of small advantages began to pile up. He seemed to have predicted every single expenditure his enemies would make just from small interactions. He'd trade with a town, identify its imports, exports, and supplies, and then deduce the exact composition and size of their army.

Early on, he just seemed competent and skilled, but as the game progressed, he slowly began to overtake the other players, snowballing his forces and territory until he was an unstoppable wave of efficient consumption and perfectly balanced logistics.

I'd expected to measure the capability of all the players to find my Master of Banking, but Peter was so overwhelmingly superior in terms of skill that I couldn't be bothered to even watch the others. They were basically just set pieces to make him look good. Holly was gloating. "Ok, I have to admit, he hit a bunch of really lucky starting conditions there. But still, that was probably the cleanest sweep I've seen in years." She turned to grin at me. "So…what did you think? This is your first KS game right?"

I laughed and nodded. "It was, and it was a good one. As for what I think…well, I'll answer your question with a question. Do you think Peter would be interested in a job? Because I have just a position available I think would be perfect for him." Her eyes narrowed contemplatively, and she turned to wave the man himself over to talk to us. I had a feeling he was going to be a hell of a negotiator.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I had been wrong about him being a good negotiator. Peter was difficult to talk to, but not because he was sharp or focused. He was difficult to talk to because he was incredibly distracted and had almost zero interest in the conversation. Holly, of course, was VERY intrigued by the idea of Peter being a cabinet member, obviously excited to see her husband embarking on a project that suited his interests and would present such a huge challenge. But Peter himself seemed mostly ambivalent.

"So, are you interested?" I finally came out and asked him. "Because if not, we can look around for someone else."

Peter, who had been reading over a spreadsheet, stopped reading and looked up. "I might be," he finally said. "But I need to know your plans first. Who will I be working for, and how many of these positions are filled already?" I got the impression he'd been paying more attention than he let on, because he certainly seemed laser focused now.

"All but one, if we count you," I shrugged. "I'm just missing a Master of Development."

He glanced at Holly, who had perked up noticeably. "What do you think?" he asked. "He's your brother. I could make a prerequisite. And it wouldn't even be a violation of any oaths I might take. He IS brilliant."

She swallowed hard, glancing at me worriedly. "I don't know if that's such a good idea, Pete. That feels like extortion, and extorting the future Wishmaster would be…"

"Par for the course," he said bluntly. "You don't get it, because you're not a Wyndham. This is how we do things. He'd hardly respect me if I didn't take advantage of my leverage." He turned to look at me. "Holly's brother Marco is in some trouble with a local faction. He's a compulsive gambler at these games, it's how we met, and he got in deep to a particularly brutal enterprise run by a man named LeClaire." Now I understood his earlier disinterest. It was feigned to put me on the defensive so he could leverage me into...something.

"Ok, so you want me to what? Buy out his debt? Because I'm pretty sure you have more money than me. It's kind of the reason I'm trying to hire you." I wasn't sure where he was going with this.

He shook his head. "Marco is in default, so they won't take cash. They put a rider in his contract forcing him to repay them in service hours, and they set the repayment rate APPALINGLY low. Unfortunately, they have backing of their own, and we can't just bully them into releasing him because of the terms of the contract itself. Which they still have."

"That's fascinating," I said slowly. "And I don't mean to be heartless here, but since you basically admitted to blackmailing me with your employment status, I feel pretty comfortable asking how that's my problem?"

"It's your problem, because Marco is the PERFECT person to be your Master of Development. I'm pretty sure they entrapped him with the gambling debts specifically to trick him into that contract. He's being forced to repay them with production." He raised an eyebrow at me. "What do you know about meta abilities?"

I shrugged. "As much as any Wyndham. The Wish power is a meta ability. It's any ability that interacts with any other ability. Most of the highest level bloodlines are meta abilities of one stripe or another."

"Accurate, if incomplete," he acknowledged. "But the important thing is that despite the existence of clans and modified abilities through growth, abilities in their base form are extremely random. Which means sometimes, in rare cases, naturally occurring meta abilities DO pop up in low level Ascendants."

"And Marco is one of those?" I asked with interest.

He nodded solemnly. Glancing at Holly, he waited for her to nod before informing me in a quiet voice. "Marco's ability is called 'Master Polymath'. In a way similar to how certain racial traits act as a modifier for stats, Polymath acts as a modifier for talent. Specifically in production related Skills. It triples their rate of improvement."

My eyes widened in shock. "No shit?" I asked numbly. "That's…that's insane. No wonder they want him. I'm assuming you want me to recruit him as my Master of Development?"

"I think it would be beneficial to both of us," he admitted. "I get to free my brother in law and you get a loyal and capable subordinate who is grateful you rescued him from a bad situation. The only caveat is that because of the terms of the contract, you can't just break him out or directly pressure them. There's no way they'll let you have someone with that much potential, no matter WHO you might be in the future."

I nodded along. "You're right, but I might have another option." I turned to where Zeke was leaning against a wall nearby. "I'm guessing they'll have kept the contract close?"

Contracts, especially high level contracts, were powerful binding artifacts. You couldn't just casually make copies of them. They put pressure on the signatories, and depending on who was involved, even having two copies might be too much. This meant that at our level, PHYSICAL contracts were actually important to the construct of a deal.

One of the few exceptions to this seemed to be the Wish power itself. I could add contractual obligations to wishes and use them as a sort of carrier for the terms. Wish terms couldn't be so easily broken.

Zeke glanced over at Peter. "I take it LeClair isn't a Wyndham? That sounds like a last name." Peter looked to Holly, who confirmed. "Then yes, they'll have kept it close. A contract with service stipulations aimed at someone like that would be invaluable. No way they'd let it out of their sight. You thinking of stealing it? That'll be tough to pull off. This is the WCP. Security for things like that is top notch. Stealth won't be enough to pull it off. Aura locked contract safes are pretty much standard issue here."

"I'm guessing you can't just do it?" I asked dryly.

He snorted. "I'm on guard duty. If your mother finds out I left you alone to go pull off a heist she'll peel off my skin like an overripe banana and throw my flayed corpse into a cauldron of boiling sewage."

"You have such a way with words," I snarked. "You should write poetry."

"No offense kid, I'm more scared of her than you. Besides, this is a good opportunity for growth." He shrugged. "This is your cabinet you're recruiting. You aren't going to win points with them passing the work off to me. You're leaving them alone to run things for you when you head out to the Void, right? Better not to half ass this."

He was right. In fact, I'd been thinking about this exact problem for a while anyway. Aura signatures. Or rather, other people's perception of my aura. When people looked at me, they saw a normal human. A C-ranker, sure, but just a person.

But once I was in the Void, I wasn't going to be able to walk around as a normal human without being noticed. Stealth might help, but it wouldn't work on everyone. Misdirection might work better than deception. I nodded slowly. "Alright. So if I get in any steal that contract and tear it up, you'll both come work for me?" I asked Peter.

"I will," he said simply. "As for Marco…" he glanced at Holly. "I can't speak for him, but I don't foresee an issue convincing him. Holly basically raised him, and he does whatever she tells him to do."

Holly grinned. "He's a good boy. The question is will you do it? Is my word enough?"

"It is for me," I told her solemnly. "Of course, as we discussed you'll be working with us too. Is that acceptable?" Holly clearly knew plenty about the inner workings of the WCP, and she was obviously intelligent and resourceful. Having more competent C-rankers on my team was unlikely to ever be a bad thing, especially given MOST of mine were currently in the empire, too far away to be of much use to me.

"In the meantime," I continued. "I'll need you two to fill me in on everything you know about LeClaire, and I'll need to stake his place out for a while. I trust you're not in too much of a hurry?"

Holly shook her head. "Marco has been there for years now. They aren't mistreating him exactly, just overworking him. Honestly he's probably benefited from it. They supply all the materials for him, so he's been able to grind a lot of skills pretty high. I know his Inventing, at least, is Mythic. Alchemy, Enchanting, Tailoring, Blacksmithing, pretty much everything else is firmly at the Grandmaster level, despite him being only C-rank."

Which meant he had a Chronicle. That wasn't as impressive at C-rank as it had been at D, but it still wasn't the norm, especially not at the early stages.

Peter and Holly followed us back to our guest rooms, and we went over the contracts they would sign. Holly even helped write up Marco's and okayed it for use. Once we were done, they headed out and I told them I'd contact them when it was done. After that, I headed for the training room, already coming up with a plan for what I was going to do.

My forms, up to this point, were almost all extremely versatile and useful. But I had at least one big weakness that had quickly revealed itself to be a problem. I could easily disappear and walk unnoticed, but what if I NEEDED to be noticed? What if I had to infiltrate someone else's faction, to pretend to be another person. Going into the Void, this would almost definitely come up. In fact, Wise had somewhat inspired this thought with his impersonation of me six months ago on the heirworld.

The Void were experts at misdirection, concealment, and similar tactics. And I had access to something even better than the Void. I sat down, closed my eyes, and considered the tools I had at my disposal.

Before I could blink, I was standing in my library, and I cleared off a table as I sat down to explore the possible combinations of my abilities that might produce the pseudo Domain that I needed. Callie appeared beside me not long after, pulling out a chair silently to take a seat, and she picked up a book and started to read.

I'd used the staff to deduce Asmodeus very recently, so it hadn't recovered yet. This one was going to have to be done the long way. Careful research, slow and steady testing. I triggered Dantalion, because of course I'd need as much information as possible, and then I used Beelzebub and Piece of Mind to create a series of duplicates imbued with parallels of my brain to work on the problem from multiple angles at once.

With that done, I settled in and got to work. All the while, I could feel something inside me changing, shifting slightly. Becoming more whole. I was approaching a fundamental shift in my power, and I had no clue what it was, but finishing this pseudo Domain would bring it one step closer.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flicker of purple flame, and turned to look at the spot it had come from. My Ten Demons Tome, the staff floating above it, flickered with a tongue of fire so fast it almost couldn't be spotted. It felt…climactic. Like it was building to something, reaching a state of fullness. Once it got there, it would overflow and I had no idea what would happen. I just knew it would be a qualitative shift in what I was capable of. Before that, though, I still had two more pseudo Domains to perfect. So I turned my attention back to the first of them, the deceptive shapeshifting domain I was going to call…Astaroth.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

After I completed Astaroth, I headed for LeClaire's headquarters under Murmur. In order to use my new form, I needed to study LeClaire and his people. An understanding of the person I was mimicking was pretty much required.

Dantalion was all but made for this kind of thing, so as I settled in for my stakeout, I only had to create a parallel to manage things as I took stock of my new domain.

Astaroth had been complicated to create. Mainly because I needed to construct a complete framework for deception, and I didn't really have the base components for it. I'd considered for quite a while before I settled on the ingredients, and the final results had seemed pretty much perfect for my purposes.

I'd started with Double Trouble. Teleportation was only one of its abilities, and a useful one, but not what I was looking for here, at least not yet. Rather, the second portion of the subskill, the one that left behind an exact duplicate, had been the seed I'd needed to grow my masterpiece.

Secondly I'd used Murmur, the manipulation of the senses was its whole purpose, so that had been a no brainer, but my third choice had been a little unorthodox. Mornax for solidity, melted together with Adherent Fire tied into the spatial aspect of Double Trouble, all of it blending to create a unique deceptive framework.

Essentially, after I used Dantalion to create a profile, I'd trigger Astaroth, and the original me would vanish. Rather than changing my features with some kind of illusion, Double Trouble and the Adherent Fire shifted my physical form into a semi Void state, taking advantage of the Void's stealth capabilities. My Void self remained out of synch with reality as the illusion simulated the aura and physique of the person I'd copied, which, after solidification from Mornax, because a perfect duplicate that even higher ranked watchers couldn't identify without certain special skills.

It had taken an exceptional amount of creativity to create Astaroth, because unlike Stealth, which just deleted me from people's perception, Astaroth was designed to operate under scrutiny. The key to good Stealth was not being noticed, but Astaroth was another level of difficulty entirely because the POINT was to be noticed, and still pass undetected.

The project was one of the most complex I'd ever undertaken. Barring a few with special senses, it should withstand cursory scrutiny even from high ranked Ascendants. AND it would work even better in the Void, considering the nature of Adherent Fire and how it could intrude in realspace.

I'd been somewhat inspired by both the lessons learned from the old man's tome and by Callie's brilliant and unconventional approach to her own powers when she'd created her new form, and I'd been right, it was nice to stretch my creative muscles.

I was so excited about testing it out in the field, I barely noticed the time passing. Finally, my parallel informed me I'd gathered enough information to begin my infiltration, and that LeClair himself had just left for the night. I turned to Zeke. "You coming along for this? Or are you going to watch from a distance?"

He shrugged. "You don't need me underfoot. If anyone too scary gets the drop on you I'll step in."

I smiled at him. "You've been awfully quiet lately," I told him sadly. "Nothing to say?"

"I'm not sure how much right I have," he said after a pause. "I'm not your dad, Shane. Sure, I was always around, but you raised yourself. And now especially, with Eli and Sasha back in your life…you don't need another parent."

"No. I don't," I agreed. "But I still need an Uncle. You're not replaceable. Not even by my dad. I know you and him have a ton of history, but I barely know the guy. I don't need to be parented. Not by any of you. But that doesn't mean I'll ever stop valuing your contribution. I always want to hear what you have to say."

He smiled sadly. "Maybe. But you're growing fast. The day is coming when you won't need my protection anymore. You're almost as strong now as I was when you stepped onto the Path, and that's nothing to scoff at. Only a few short years and that dumb little introvert I raised is about to become the Wishmaster. I don't want to step back either, but it's about time you start learning to stand on your own. Not all at once, of course, but one day you'll turn around and I'll be far in the rearview, too weak to help. When that day comes I don't want you to get blindsided."

My chest tightened. He was right. I was C-rank now, and I'd be B-rank in time, and then I'd reach A. At the rate I was growing, there was no way Zeke would break through to S-rank before I caught up. And once I passed him…what would that be like? Zeke had never been overt about his protection, but he'd always BEEN there. No matter what I did I'd known I had him on my side. Supporting me. Keeping me safe.

"What are you going to do when that happens?" I asked him. "I know you aren't planning to desert or anything, but you and Stella have been getting closer with so much time together. Mom has been bugging ME to have kids, albeit subtly, I can't believe that someone your age isn't thinking about it."

Not that I assumed everyone wanted children, but Zeke…Zeke was good with kids. He'd seemed unreliable growing up, but over the years, the comments he'd made and the discussions we'd had made it clear that he'd always looked out for me. He'd be a great dad, and the way he talked about his family sometimes…I was pretty sure he wasn't opposed to the idea. Once he was free of his responsibilities to me and my dad what reason did he have to avoid it?

"I've considered it," he admitted. "Stacy, Stella, whatever name you want to use, she's just starting out on her path with Celia. But she's made a few comments that make me think she wouldn't be opposed. You were a surprisingly cute kid. I do kind of miss that."

"First of all," I said in faux outrage. "HEY! And second of all, you would be good at it. I can arrange for you to have a place to settle down here. Somewhere lavish and well protected. Assuming I don't lose this trial, get exiled, and then get brutally assassinated the second I step out of the Wishworld."

He snorted. "Are there no lengths you won't go to in your quest to evade responsibility?"

I just laughed at that. Trust Zeke to reassure me I'd be fine by openly mocking me. "The offer is open," I reiterated. "Now. If you'll excuse me, I need to go effortlessly bypass one of the most complex security systems I've ever seen with the poise and grace of a professional thief."

I stood up, stepped forward, and, with a slight shift of my perspective, triggered Astaroth.

There was a kind of…dissonance. The world doubled, like I'd gotten incredibly drunk of had my head injured. One of the sides stabilized into a normal point of view out of my eyes, albeit a little lower to the ground, and the other was my normal self.

I stood behind a figure, towering over them. The figure was shorter than me, with curly red hair and a mustache, wearing a wine red pea coat and orange scarf. He had on a pair of half moon glasses with smoky black lenses and his eyebrow was raised insouciantly, like he was defying your expectations just by standing in front of you, and was proud of it.

Raising my hand, I examined it, and the figure did the same. Zeke, who was standing where I'd left him, GAPED at me.

"Shane, what the actual FUCK?" he sputtered. He squinted, and I felt a sense of exposure. Zeke was one of those people with the unique senses to penetrate this kind of deception, especially as he'd just seen me use it. It still took him a minute to manage. "Gods, kid, that's…holy shit. I can barely see through that. What did you DO?":

I explained it to him, and he shook his head in awe. "That's kind of brilliant. Seeing through a disguise is easy, but that avatar ISN'T disguised. It's a construct, and it's made with excruciating detail. It's not foolproof, but it's nothing to sneeze at, even to someone at my level."

Which was a huge compliment. Zeke was an A-ranker. Two full ranks above me. I didn't know if it would hold in front of an S-rank Ascendant, but even if it didn't being able to do this much was incredible. The things I'd managed to learn from the tome, and the various unique power interactions I had access to, they were all coming together to form something unique and powerful.

Shooting him a grin, I saluted grandly and then turned to head over to the huge warehouse complex LeClaire used as his business headquarters. Sure enough, as I approached the gate, the guard snapped to attention. "Boss?" His voice sounded confused. "You forget something?"

"Yes, I left behind some of the shipping documents for the Renaud exchange," I said with a relaxed smile. While many high ranking Ascendants were assholes to their subordinates, the interactions between LeClair and his people were pretty harmonious. He was more carrot than stick when it came to those already in his employ.

The guard, Theo, chuckled. "Ouch, yeah, you don't want to mess that up. That miss Lacey was a scary one."

We shared a chuckle, and I strolled past him, heading inside. He didn't notice a single issue. Astaroth wasn't a simple disguise, it was a CREATED being deduced from the traces read by Dantalion. My information gathering form could unearth and deconstruct myriad phenomena, not just baked on observation, but on various psychic resonances and special senses designed to detect metaphysical information buried in the very aura of a place or thing.

Dantalion's model didn't just make a face, it made a whole body. Vocal chords, muscle memory, balance, gait. After reverse engineering years of interactions engraved in the very stones of this place, the construct I was currently controlling was so thoroughly like LeClair, I doubted LECLAIR could tell the difference, much less his guard.

I strode through his complex, ignoring all the workers except those few he would normally greet, and even those I mostly just dismissed with a nod. Finally, I stepped into his office, situated in the back of the lot.

Closing the door, I turned to the safe. Dantalion had, of course, deduced the code during my stakeout. But the code was only half the battle. I had to hope that the aura I'd copied was good enough to fool this thing. Which was no mean feat. This was an Archimedes Ten Didexotronal Temporal Script safe. It was top of the line. A B-class security device that should be completely impossible to fake or bypass.

I punched in the code without hesitation, following the muscle memory of the hands that had done this a hundred times before. The screen was a series of complex pictograms and each touch sent frissons of exploratory chill through me as it scanned my body, looking for any signs of deception. And found none. A solidified illusion projected through the Void and deduced from perfect information gathering. Flawless.

With a beep, the door opened, and I pulled it clear, sifting through contracts until I found Marco's. I didn't destroy it yet, not wanting to tip my hand. LeClair would notice when it went up. I pushed the safe door closed and headed out in the direction I'd mapped as Marco's lab. Time to go pick up my Master of Development.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Walking among the employees at LeClair's compound as LeClair would have been just asking to get approached, so as soon as I was around the corner, I did a quick switch to another random employee who had left around the same time. I'd gotten a pretty decent catalog of potential forms from the stakeout, given Dantalion's range and the time I'd spent.

The new guy, Bill, was an unobtrusive porter. He didn't talk to anyone and was pretty much always moving around the complex, so I was unlikely to get stopped.

After walking for about fifteen minutes, I stopped outside of a large brass door covered in gears. It was set flush into the wall, and all the gears were built around a central wheel with a handle. You turned the wheel in in a complete rotation and the gears would withdraw bars of metal that were driven into the brick at intervals up the length of the barrier.

Reaching out, I rapped on the surface in a particular pattern. The sheer amount of insignificant details I'd picked up after a few hours of Dantalion research on this compound blew my mind. The longer I stayed, the deeper I got. Names, dates, food preferences, allergies, composition of items. Luckily this place was just a business owned by a C-ranker. If the materials were too advanced my senses would have bounced off. As it was, it had taken me quite a while to deconstruct the safe. I could do one rank higher with enough time invested, but that was my limit for Dantalion.

The clanging of my knuckles on the door rang out through the hallway, breaking the strange stillness of this area of the compound. It was quiet here. Unnaturally quiet. An oppressive, overwhelming stillness that made it seem like someone had killed everyone who had ever set foot here.

One minute after my knock though, the gears began to spin, and the door popped open, releasing a cacophony from the other side. Waiting to see if anyone invited me, I shrugged and pulled it open, stepping inside.

Marco sat suspended from a harness in the middle of the room, a large can of some kind of chemical accelerant burning in a tight, controlled jet. I'd have called it a blowtorch, but the flames looked like they were made of glass and had frozen mist coming off them, so I wasn't sure that was the right word.

In front of him, hanging from the ceiling by a series of thick chains, a giant mechanical spider dangled. He seemed to be working diligently to perfectly merge disparate pieces of metal with the torch, and where it passed, the surface became smooth and conjoined like they were being remade into a single unbroken plane of metal. He was wearing a pair of thick goggles covered in lenses that could be flipped down or up in succession, and he had several of them down and was observing the melting metal.

"What is it Bill?" He called, distracted by his work. "I'm on a deadline today. I need to get this done for the Rayken Expo on Saylar 4 next month, and the transit time is going to be hell. I have three hours to get everything sewn up."

"Think you're going to miss your deadline," I said wryly as I withdrew his contract from my ring. "In fact, I think you're going to miss a lot of deadlines. Your sister sent me."

He paused, flame hanging in the air, tongues off glass fire warping the space strangely before he switched it off. Turning in his harness, he pushed up his goggles to stare down at me in confusion.

His face was shockingly young. Not like actually childish, really, he was probably physically around the same age as me. But he had round cheeks and big eyes that made him seem excessively youthful. One eye was green, the other blue, and under his mop of curly dark hair, they stood out even more than they would on most people.

"How do you know I even HAVE a sister?" he asked suspiciously. "LeClaire can't mention her to anyone. That was part of my-"

"Your contract," I interrupted. "Yeah, I know, I'm holding it right now. I know what it says. But I don't work for LeClaire. Bill does, but I'm not actually Bill, as you may have already begun to surmise. I'm your sister's new boss, and I'll be YOUR new boss too, if you accept my terms and allow me to get you out of here."

He seemed too stunned to react. "I…what?" He was staring at the contract. "Where did you GET that?"

"From the safe," I said with a shrug. "Where else? Now you ready to go? Because I've got stuff to do today. I can explain the details once we're out, but your sister drew up a job contract for you to sign." I produced it and flicked it up to him. "Don't sign it now, wait until we're out, just read it over and let know if it works for you."

Frowning, he scanned the information. Anyone that deep into crafting would be heavy on the Focus, so remembering and reading over a contract wasn't hard. It was a little denser than most documents, but he finished it quickly, then tossed it back.

"You said my sister already works for you?" he asked slowly. "I can believe she helped write this. The rider forbidding me from gambling sounds like her."

"Yeah, I'm not letting you do that," I informed him bluntly. "It got you into trouble last time."

He scowled. "Because they CHEATED. I calculated every possible vector for that horse race. Physical condition, windspeed, I even modeled the potential interaction values and the chances of injury. They were doping those horses. The whole thing was a trap to get me into their service. I don't have a gambling problem."

"That's a relief," I said cheerfully. "That means stopping immediately won't be hard for you at all. Look, your sister told me that you only started gambling to pay for materials to grind your skills. After so long working for LeClaire, I'm guessing that's not an issue anymore, and I'll supply your mats once you're working for me. You'll be too busy to play the ponies anyway. So are you coming with me or not?"

From what Holly told me, the situation with Marco really WAS LeClaire's fault. Marco wasn't so much a gambling addict as a desperate scientist in need of funds. He'd managed to calculate several optimal strategies for gambling when starting out, and had made lots of money for his work. Unfortunately, he'd gotten arrogant and become obsessed with winning. He'd forgotten the first rule of gambling: never bet anything you can't afford to lose.

Honestly I had no issue with gambling, having been to casinos myself, but if this guy was going to be my Master of Development I needed him focused on ACTUAL development and not trying to calculate odds for horse racing. Hence the stipulation.

Holly seemed pretty sure he'd do it. She didn't think he really cared about the gambling itself, he was just unhappy with giving up when he was beaten. Eventually, he sighed and nodded.

"Excellent," I said with a grin. "Now, since we're here and not coming back, why don't you tell me which of these things is valuable so we can steal literally all of it." Breaking into the safe had me feeling heisty, and I had zero qualms about robbing someone who fixed a horse race to trick someone into eternal servitude.

He blinked at me, thrown by the rapid tone shift. "Umm…ok?" he said slowly. "There are a few valuable materials earmarked for other projects, and a couple pieces of equipment that he bought at my request." He raised his hand to show off the glass flame blowtorch. "Like this Freearuk Condenser. The fuel comes from the blood of a rare mutated offspring that belongs to an A-rank monster called a Valbeshir. They are extremely dangerous and difficult to catch, and that's when they AREN'T mated."

"Cool, pass it," I said, holding up my hands. He tossed it over and I put it into my ring. Marco himself didn't have one, presumably for this exact reason, so I was going to need to carry everything personally. Which I was fine with. I had the space.

So we spent the next hour or so grabbing everything that wasn't nailed down. And some things that were. And the nails that were securing them. We ended up with quite a haul. A lot of machines I had no context for, but also some really interesting materials. Various types or rare energy infused ores and metals, gemstones with special properties, and even a few plants still in the pot.

When we were done, I glanced around the room and couldn't help but let out a soft whistle. The floor was totally empty, with big outlines where machines had been, and only the odd bolt rolling away from the empty spaces we'd cleared. We'd even taken the door off its hinges (apparently it was made of some special silencing metal that was pretty expensive on its own), and now it was definitely time to go.

With the security out of the way and the contract retrieved, I dismissed Astaroth and called Murmur into existence. Seeing me turn from Bill the inconsequential porter to a six and a half foot tall behemoth in high grade armor wearing a frankly terrifying mask was understandably jarring for Marco, but after the last hour or so he was getting used to surprises, and he barely even flinched.

"Now that we're under concealment, I can introduce myself properly. My name is Shane Wyndham, have you heard of me?" He nodded slowly and I smiled. "Good, that makes this much easier." He hadn't heard of the cabinet positions, being much too young, so I filled him in on everything, including his own potential position. Then I pulled out HIS contract with LeCLaire and burned it up with a casual flex of Mephistopheles.

He didn't hesitate for a moment after that, requesting the contract his sister had written out and signing it immediately. I just laughed. "Impressive resolve. I like it. Come on, let's go see your sister. Don't worry about anyone noticing us, we won't be seen."

My Dantalion stakeout had given me absurd levels of data about this place, down to the bedrock. Murmur contained Dantalion as well, which was why it deduced and improved stealth from sitting in place for a long time, but after hours of mapping the complex, my Stealth was pretty much unbreakable by anyone who wasn't an A-ranker. It wasn't as good as Astaroth, but it was good enough, especially with another person on hand to hide.

As expected, we ran into no issues strolling out of the place, even after someone noticed the missing door and all the stolen materials and activated a lockdown, we strolled right through the panicking security like they weren't even there.

We met Zeke outside, and he was grinning at me with what I could only describe as overwhelming pride. "You robbed them!" he said enthusiastically. "I was worried you'd just get in and out with no benefits."

"They tricked Marco into eternal servitude," I said with dignity. "They deserved it."

Marco nodded along, and Zeke just laughed. "Of course they did, kid." There was a lot of subtext there. Zeke thought anyone who had something he wanted deserved to get robbed, and that I was making excuses. Which I wasn't. But it didn't matter.

"Come on," I told them with an eye roll. "Let's get out of here." As we walked down the street I left Murmur active, and I chatted with Marco about what it would be like working for me and what his duties would be. It was a nice, pleasant conversation. And if we occasionally got sidetracked discussing where to sell the materials we didn't need…well that was pleasant too. For me at least.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

After rescuing Marco, I finally had all of my cabinet slots filled. Which meant my only major business, barring the big festival if it was still happening, was the trial. Thinking about that though, it reminded me of another thing I hadn't done yet. "We should go visit Roland," I told Callie. "We got so wrapped up in Darren's death we didn't even think to see how he's doing."

I felt bad just thinking about it. Poor Roland had been a victim of an attack same as Darren, and we hadn't even bothered checking in.

It wasn't hard to get directions to his place, and as soon as we did we headed out.

Unlike Darren, Roland did NOT live in the main wings reserved for high level family. Despite his talent and ability, he had a small single unit house in one of the villages. It took a surprising amount of time to make the trip, given all the twists and turns, but when we arrived and knocked on the door, a familiar face answered.

Delia looked EXHAUSTED. The oldest of my cousins from the succession war, Delia and Roland were close friends. I'd expected him to have a parent or something around, but given how good their relationship had seemed maybe she was his sister or something.

She gave us a wan smile when she saw us. "Shane, Callie, good to see you both. Are you here to see Roland?"

"Yeah," I said sheepishly. "We would have come sooner but-"

Snorting, she waved a hand. "Everyone's heard about the trial. You've got bigger problems. He's still unconscious anyway, so it's not like he'd have noticed. Please, come in. Can I get you something to drink?" She let us inside, and I looked around the incredibly spartan housing. Everything looked…worn. Cared for, but very well used. Couches, end tables, all of it was surprisingly low end.

My surprise must have shown in my body language, because Delia chuckled. "Roland is an atavist. You know how some Wyndham's are born without the bloodline? Well sometimes distant relatives with no real family support develop it too. A lot of them end up in the Orphan Branches. It can be hard, because when we hit D-rank and come back, most of us meet our parents, siblings, or grandparents. Roland doesn't have any close relatives in the clan."

I could almost see the story play out before my eyes. Advancing as fast as I had made me pretty uniquely lucky among Wyndhams in some ways. It got me lots of attention and appreciation. Plus I didn't hit D-rank and have to scrape out a living here among all the clan descendants. The image of Roland working his way up from D-rank, living here and barely getting by, was a rough one to swallow.

"So, you said he's unconscious?" I asked Delia, feeling like I needed to focus. "What's wrong with him?"

"They don't know," she grimaced. "Some kind of poison energy. It's lingering in the wounds. We're on the list for treatment, but healers who are strong enough to fix it are rare everywhere, especially the kind we can afford."

I frowned. "Well what about the energy? Does it give any clues to who might be responsible?"

"Not that we can tell. It's tough to say, really. This IS the WCP, and attack scrolls are always on the table. Single use wish based poisons aren't COMMON, but they're not rare either. So it's impossible to tell who the attacker was. Wish, ability, consumable scroll, it could be any of them. Whatever it is, it's nasty enough that the B-rank healer I hired couldn't do anything about it."

"Can you tell me more about what's wrong?" I asked with interest. Purification and healing were two of my strongest powers. If it was a B-rank injury, combined with my Ten Demon Tree's ability to raise the rank for a form or ability temporarily, I had a good chance at being able to clear it out. Much like Mornax, Zagan, as one of my peak forms, were basically unrivaled at the same rank.

She sighed bitterly. "Like I said, we don't really know. The wounds are infested with some kind of lightning locust poison. It's not an animal, but it's not REALLY energy. It propagates, and when the healer tried to clear it out, the faster they destroyed it the stronger it got. Roland's body seems to be keeping it in a deadlock, but any attempts to tip the balance makes it worse."

"Can I see him?" I asked carefully. "I promise I won't do anything without understanding the situation."

I could use Dantalion to examine the wound before I tried anything. While I was pretty sure Zagan would be able to handle the problem, I didn't want to make it any worse than it already was. A thorough examination was the best bet.

She stared at me, her face conflicted, but she knew I had means beyond what most people were aware of. She'd been around for the Void incursion and seen some of the stuff I'd pulled off. Plus I was the upcoming Wishmaster (probably), and that wasn't an office you snagged without being able to walk the walk.

"Alright," she finally said with a deep breath. "Follow me, he's in here." She nodded to a small wooden door in the back of the room, tucked away in a corner I might not have noticed if she hadn't mentioned it.Pushing it open, she ushered us into the room where Roland was bedridden.

He looked TERRIBLE. Pale, sweating, hollow cheeks. Like he was being eaten alive. He wasn't wearing a shirt, and a wound on his side was buzzing with yellow energy insects made of some kind of…decomposing lightning. The yellow of the bugs was a sickening color, not like sunshine or gold, but more like pus from an infection, and just seeing it made me slightly nauseous. The energy was just BLEEDING corruption and disease.

Stepping closer, I triggered Dantalion, focusing on the wound. I winced as my senses locked onto the composition, and I started to shake. One second. Two. Then I cut it off, jerking back and turning to vomit into the corner, barely opening the mouth of my mask in time.

Callie lurched forward, but I held up a hand. "I'm good," I rasped. "Just…a lot. First of all, that's a rank higher than me, second of all, the design is disturbingly optimized. The parasites are evolving second to second. Every time someone tries to get rid of them, or his body tries to fight them off, they get a little stronger. I can't trace the origins because there have already been THOUSANDS of iterations, but I can tell you based on the frankly horrifying construction, this was most likely made by a wish."

Either that or someone who had spent their whole live refining this ability. But no one with THIS much juice in B-rank would have managed to fly under the radar, not even here. The Wish power was a unique ability in that it perfectly maximized stats. It found the absolute most effective configuration of power and created a skill that could execute that.

This attack was the result of a skill like that, I could just TELL. Which was bad. Because it meant whoever the Void had active here was a bloodline holder. Theoretically, it could be a coincidence, or just someone mad with jealousy about me becoming the Wishmaster, but given the timing and the excuse they used, my assumption was that this was Void related. It was the thing that made the most sense.

"Does that mean you can't fix it?" Delia asked anxiously. "He's going to die?"

"No," I reassured her. "It just means I can't STOP fixing it once I start. And it's going to take a while. Callie, can you help me out with some deduction? Don't hit it head on like I did, just focus on point of contact. I'm going to need everything concentrated on the process."

My wife nodded, and I triggered Zagan, elevating it to B-rank with the power of my staff. Life and purifying power rolled through me, bolstering my confidence in a way I hadn't realized I needed. The corruption of the swarm of lightningrot locusts (apparently I'd deduced a name by accident) had actually tainted my consciousness, poisoning me by association just from trying to observe them.

I reached out and took Callie's hand, making sure to flood her with purifying fire before she began her deduction, keeping her safe. Leviathan would have worked better but she couldn't upkeep two forms, especially not for a delicate operation like this.

Within moments, I felt information flooding the bond, and my hand shot out, clamping down over the wound. I poured a torrent of green flames into the injury, and Roland screamed, arching up off the bed. Delia, without even being asked, stepped forward and clamped her hands down on his shoulders, pinning him to the bed so he didn't throw me off.

It was appreciated, but barely noticed because as soon as I made contact, I felt a SURGE of overwhelming disgust as the fucking parasites tried to burrow into ME even as I started burning them away. Closing my eyes, I focused on Callie's information. The locusts were alive, and they were reacting, but with the read from Dantalion, I was able to react to their reaction, directing my power to where it was most needed.

When I'd first seen Roland my eyes had been drawn straight to the wound, but looking back I realized that wasn't the only spot where I'd seen yellow. The locusts had climbed into his veins and were burrowing under his skin along the length of them. The hollowing of his flesh made the subtle writhing yellow of the veins stand out even more, but I'd been so distracted I'd missed them.

Now though, I wasn't missing anything. I was following the flame through the wound and into his veins, splitting off parallels as I diverged to keep track of everything. Callie clutched my hand tightly, directing my assault, telling me where to give ground and where to double down.

It was slow. It was agonizing. And I felt like I was burning alive myself as Zagan continuously ground out the infiltrating power of the parasites as they tried to invade my body and Callie's. One step forward, two steps back. It was a slog. Step by step, I burned away the infection, cleansing Roland's body, and the deeper I got, the harder it became. As I moved forward, they started to adapt, resisting the cleansing fire of Zagan a little longer with each locust.

Not THAT much longer, mind, and I was still eradicating them too fast for them to make up the difference. But barely. The time dragged on, my mind splitting and groaning under the pressure. But I kept it up. I'd trained for this kind of pain. It was nothing to me.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity but according to my scan ring was more like five hours, the last of the infection was purged. I dropped Zagan immediately, collapsing to my knees in pain and stress from maintaining a B-rank form for that long. Even as a C-ranker with a Chronicle, that was NOT fun.

Callie caught me, but I could tell she was almost as tired as I was. "Holy shit," Delia said in awe. "Is it…did you do it?"

"Yes," I said bluntly. "Yes we did. And you're welcome." With a groan, Roland, who had been incoherent for the entire time we'd been here, say up, body shaking and skin too tight over his bones.

"Thank you," he rasped. "Thank you so much." His eyes filled with tears, and he slumped back onto the bed to cry silently. I turned away to give him privacy, and Delia pulled him into her arms for a fierce hug. And honestly, despite the strain…it felt pretty good.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Roland, to my dismay, didn't know much about what happened. "It was kind of sudden," he said fuzzily. "Like I wasn't expecting to be attacked like that so I wasn't really aware of what was happening. I know that's frustrating but I don't have any more to tell you."

I grimaced. I'd been afraid of that. "It's fine, I helped because you're a friend. I'm just glad you're ok." My face fell. "Derran wasn't so lucky."

Roland's brow furrowed. "Something happened to Darren?"

I'd actually met the two of them near the same time, and I knew they were acquainted. It was hard to break the news given the connection, but Roland deserved to know, and as Darren's first cousin, I felt like it was my responsibility to tell him so Delia didn't have to. It was hard to get through, and when I was done, Roland slumped forward, head in his hands.

"Shit," he rasped. "That's…soul destruction? Whoever did it must have been a ruthless bastard. I mean, I get wanting to prevent him from leaking information, but that's beyond the pale."

I knew how he felt. After years (which sometimes felt like decades honestly) as an Ascendant, where death wasn't the end of the line, having someone I knew just…stop like that was disconcerting. And Roland wasn't like me. He HAD been around for decades. Maybe centuries. This must be even more shocking to him.

"Look," I said slowly. "This is my fault, I think. They came after you because they knew I'd ask you to testify. If I make it clear you won't they shouldn't try again."

Roland's eyes flashed. "Did I say I wouldn't?" he snapped. "I'm no coward. You think this is my first assassination attempt? I refuse to be scared away by a near death experience. I WILL testify, and there's nothing you can say to talk me out of it."

I felt my chest tighten in gratitude. "Thanks," I said quietly. "That means a lot." I stood up, clearing my throat. "I'll leave you guys to talk. You just woke up and I'm sure you must be exhausted. Feel better, ok? And if you need anything, anything at all, you let me know. Even if I DON'T become the Wishmaster, I've got some pull with my grandfather. I can help you out if you run into trouble."

"Look at you," he snorted. "All grown up and flexing your connections like a real young master. Must feel pretty good, huh?" His grin was teasing.

"It doesn't suck," I admitted with a laugh. "We can talk tomorrow, ok? Just get some rest."

Nodding weakly, he slumped back onto the bed. Seeing him so exhausted and emaciated was almost scary. Roland was a B-ranker, and not JUST a B-ranker, probably the most combat focused B-ranker among the main bloodline holders. Roland was a swordmaster who focused almost all his wishes on collecting blade skills. His direct combat abilities were comparable to someone like Zeke before he'd broken through, and whatever had attacked him had done…this. I'd thought he was past it originally, but as soon as he finished talking he'd dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. His previous animation wasn't recovery, it was sheer stubborn willpower.

Callie and I said our goodbyes and left Delia to take care of Roland, and Zeke met us outside. He grimaced when he saw me sway a little. "That was reckless," he chastised. "I know you felt responsible and wanted to help, but that poison was no ordinary attack. Even with all your tricks you almost couldn't beat it. And it was KILLING him. Did you consider what energy on that level would do to YOU if it successfully counter invaded?"

I blinked because…no. I hadn't. I'd been so focused on saving Roland that I hadn't even hesitated. But he WAS B-rank. If I'd been seriously infected by the lightningrot locust poison I'd have been a dead man.

"He knew the risks," Callie said firmly. "And he asked for help. Worst case scenario I would have used Gossamer's gem to channel Adam. I don't believe some B-rank poison could counter the intervention of a god." Her tone brooked no argument, and she met Zeke's eyes dead on. "I'm proud of him for risking himself to help a friend, and even more proud for thinking it through enough to have backup."

He rolled his eyes. "You are a terrible influence, you know that? I swear it's his mother all over again. Teaching him to care about others and take responsibility for his actions? What kind of bleeding heart nonsense is that?"

Despite his words, his tone was wry and, if I paid attention, a little proud. Laughing, I turned to head back. While we walked though, I decided to consult an expert on the strange poisons. "So do you think it was a wish that made that poison?"

"Yes," he said without hesitation. "Ascendant powers can do almost anything, but the wish power is…sterliized. It's technically perfect, but you can always tell wish effects from normal abilities and skills for that exact reason. Everything is optimized. It's sort of soulless. The old man doesn't see an issue with that, and given how strong his bloodline is it's hard to argue it's a genuine weakness, but you can always TELL."

I hadn't ever really considered it from that perspective. Wish powers WERE exceptionally clean and optimized. Not as much as the Wish ability itself, obviously (that was where the multiplier came from, the Wish ability was perfected and could exert power beyond the sum of its parts), but I thought back to things like Benny's early Inventing Skill.

He'd always mentioned how it was so deep and perfectly complete. Of course, I knew that later on that would fade. Not only because of limitations on ranks and Wish costs, but also because technical perfection would have made it impossible to properly adapt Skills on your own once you reached intermediate. In fact, part of the reason I could integrate wished for stats so easily was because of that very effect. The sanitizing prevented me from having to deal with too much recursion, and I suspected it diluted the incoming recursion from other sources at the same time because of the mythology involved.

When we reached the suite, I said my goodbyes to Callie and Zeke and then headed for one of the reading rooms. When I entered, I was amused to find Crell hunched over the book with the charter in it. His eyes were wild, hair disheveled and he looked like he hadn't slept in months, despite having been fine when I left. "Hi…" I said slowly. "You having some problems?"

"It's fucking ENCRYPTED!" he spat, gesturing to the book. "All of it. Each letter is an encrypted LIBRARY of information. Just the short section they referenced contains about two hundred thousand books worth of content. LONG books."

"That…actually makes a lot of sense," I admitted with a sigh. "Otherwise why would people be so reticent to study it? If it was just a normal book, even with incredibly dense writing, no Ascendant would be worried about reading it all. How far into it have you gotten?" I gestured to where he sat poring over the first page.

He pointed murderously at the third sentence. "Here!" he snapped. "I'm HERE."

"Ok, yeah, that's not ideal. I think we're going to need to switch tactics." Crell had been planning to memorize the entire charter, just in case the prosecution busted out some shady legalese bullshit that wasn't referenced in the sections we'd been quoted. Unfortunately, with this news, it was basically impossible for that to happen in time for the trial, whose opening statement I had been informed upon return would be taking place TOMORROW.

So I had to cheat. Luckily, I was exceptional at that. I triggered Beelzebub, then had each of my clones trigger Dantalion. They FURTHER triggered Piece of Mind twice each, which, counting myself in Dantalion, meant FORTY of us working on the same issue. Then we all settled in and started deducing the charter.

To make sure Crell was able to actually read them, each of the clones began inscribing the information into normal books.

Crell, looking relieved, settled in and started digging through the books as my clones produced them. Without the actual DIFFICULTY of decrypting, he was free to just read the information, and considering he was a B-ranker with an exceptionally high Focus, he was finishing them almost as fast as my boys were writing them, at least individually.

Luckily for me, there were forty of us decrypting, and while the clones could only write two books at a time (one hand each), the third parallel was organizing and optimizing the process as they went, which was still enough to keep up with and far surpass Crell's reading speed.

Honestly, it felt kind of relaxing. Sure, Beelzebub took some of my soul strength, but the processing wasn't nearly as difficult as fighting the locust poison, and more than that, the longer I did it the more I optimized the process, perfecting it as Dantalion slowly sucked up more information about the book as a whole.

Book after book was stacked on the table. The original estimate of two hundred thousand volumes was based on the kind of overly condensed super compact script that most Ascendants favored for physical media. I did NOT choose to write it out like that, figuring that it would be faster to read in NORMAL font size. As such, it actually ended up being closer to five hundred thousand books.

Even with Ascendant speed and grace, it took most of the night to finish. I remembered Callie coming in at some point to bring me food, and I was pretty sure I'd fallen asleep at least once, though who knew for how long.

Finally though, I finished. With forty decryption specialists writing twenty six books at a time, I'd gotten far ahead of Crell's reading speed, and after dropping Dantalion, I couldn't help but wince at the throbbing in my head. Rather than soul strain, this was more like mind strain, and it was something I hadn't really experienced before.

I checked my scan ring. "Alright, the opening statements are tonight at six P.M. It's currently…six AM. I'm going to go sleep. I suggest you catch a few hours now and get back to reading when you wake up. You look like hell."

He slammed the book he was working on shut with a sigh. "Yeah. That might be a good idea." He took in the pile. "You can be kind of scary sometimes, you know that?"

I shrugged. "I've got some tricks. For now though, my sleeves are completely empty."

"Fair enough," he laughed. "Just get some sleep, boss. With all this transcribed you've done the hard part. Reading a few hundred thousand books won't be much of a challenge. The hardest part will be trying not to tear the pages while I'm flipping."

I laughed, because he was right. The sheer processing power of a B-ranked brain would put any low ranked supercomputer to shame. I almost laughed when I thought back to the decryption program the guild had used to crack that scan ring back on Callus during my first big caper. Dantalion made the equipment they'd used look like a tin can on a string.

After saying my goodbyes, I stood and stretched, then headed for bed. Callie was already asleep, and I just took off my armor and climbed in under the covers, drifting off to sleep. Helping Roland, helping Crell, and admittedly helping myself a bit with that second one, today had been a surprisingly good day despite everything at stake. As mind drifted off, I wondered what tomorrow would hold, and if any of those surprises would be pleasant. Despite my current optimism, I somehow doubted it, but I'd handle whatever issues arose as they came. Whatever happened, I would damned sure be ready, and that preparation was really all I could do.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

After I woke up, I did my usual daily stockpiling of scrolls and then went to find Crell. He'd caught a few hours, but managed to read through a huge chunk of the charter, including the necessary sections. The fact that he hadn't managed to finish it demonstrated exactly how densely the damn thing had been encrypted.

I picked up one of the black books, opening the stone cover carelessly and flipping the thin slate pages quickly as I perused one at random. Books that could be used for this weren't exactly growing on trees, especially not so many, so I'd just decided to use Agares to construct them as I went. My clones had engraved the words onto the pages directly, which had been simple enough to manage, and then we'd stashed them back in my ring as they were finished.

Five hundred thousand books was a lot, but luckily, I had a lot of material to work with. The tunnels of rock and dirt I'd scoured in the heirworld had filled my spatial ring with nearly endless piles of materials for Agares to work with, and while I was now almost out, unfortunately, it had at least been enough for this particular task. Honestly, the books were starting to fill up my ring, but luckily the tomes themselves were MUCH smaller than the rocks I'd made them from, so I still had some space to work with.

As I flipped the pages, I studied the engravings. Dull green flames licked the insides of the carved lines, illuminating the information in the books even in darkness. Technically the fire was toxic, but I hadn't really prioritized that aspect of Agares in a long time, and it wasn't a danger to a B-ranker. Or to me for that matter. I made a mental note to hit the books with Zagan before I let any of my friends read them though, if they showed any interest.

"So, how are you feeling, you ready for this?" I asked as I slammed the book shut with a snap. The slate pages were sturdier than they looked, and while I COULD easily break them, casual handling was unlikely to do much damage.

"Ready as I can be," he shrugged. Double checking my armor, I nodded and we left the suite. I knew Zeke would be following behind, but he didn't appear or interrupt. I guess he wanted me to have some time with my lawyer. Speaking of which, I wasn't sure how this whole 'opening statement' thing even worked.

"So…what are we doing during this?" I asked as we walked towards the council chamber. "Because I already told them everything that happened. So do they want us to just repeat that or…?"

He shook his head. "Opening statements aren't about establishing facts, they're about establishing credibility. Remember, the tribunal is basing this off your suitability as a candidate, at least partly. You don't just need to prove you're innocent, you need to prove you're right for the job. Then they'll DECLARE you innocent. Whether you are or not."

"What, so it's just one big popularity contest?" I asked with not a little bit of frustration.

He raised an eyebrow at me. "You DO understand how ridiculous of a complaint that is coming from you, right? Like…any Ascendant, really, but especially you."

"Point," I admitted with a grimace. Cultivation was ALL a popularity contest. "So I just, what? Talk a big game? Make him look useless? I'm still not sure what exactly I'm supposed to be trying to accomplish here."

He chuckled. "First will be the reading of the endorsements," he clarified. "That part is…kind of a game, honestly. Basically, you state your endorsements, and then he states his. He can choose to challenge yours, and if anyone you listed chooses NOT to endorse you, it deals a huge blow to your case. Same with him. Basically, it's a game of political chicken. You can claim endorsement from anyone under the sun, but the higher up they are the more likely you get called on it."

"Then can't he just call me on every name and hope he gets lucky?" I asked with concern. Not that I was planning to use any names I wasn't sure of, I had plenty of friends even among the high rankers. But still, there was a lot of room for abuse. And if one of my sure things decided not to back me, it could seriously damage my case.

"Nope," he said with a wry grin. "Because it's meant to illustrate good judgement as well as connections. If he challenges you on an endorsement and it turns out to be reliable, HE takes as much damage to his reputation and standing in the case as you take if he catches you in a lie. Which makes every challenge as risky as calling an endorsement to begin with. Of course, you can challenge HIS endorsements too, but as the one doing the accusing, he's less likely to take the risk."

I knew that the point of this was to flex the power and connections of the potential Wishmaster, and that it was supposed to be a layup for me to set a good tone. There was a reason that no one in my position had ever lost a challenge. But I was pretty sure THIS time wouldn't go so smoothly.

We arrived at the door to the council chamber sooner than I'd have liked. I closed my eyes, calling Sammael into my body and relaxing as my wings spread behind me. I just felt more secure with all the extra power. Not that it would help if shit broke bad, but it gave me confidence, and that was no small thing in this kind of situation. Pushing the door open, we followed the catwalk we'd taken before to the platform overlooked by the towering chairs.

This time, we weren't alone. Devon stood beside me, his mother behind him with a cold, peaceful look on her face. Apparently she was his legal representative. I didn't know if that was good or bad.

On the one hand, she might curb some of his dumber stunts, but if he LOST he'd be executed via soul destruction, and there's no way she'd risk that, so she was damned motivated to win this. Joy. I faced the council. "You have been summoned," Desmond boomed. "For a matter of propriety. Your character must be entered into the record, and then you will state your case. Do you both accept the necessity of these proceedings?"

"I do," we both said in unison. Devon turned to glare at me, but I ignored him. He wasn't worth the attention at the moment. I had bigger fish.

Nodding, Desmond turned to me. "As the defendant, you may be the first to declare your endorsements. You understand the rules of this phase of the process?" I nodded, and he smiled slightly, looking pleased. "Very well, you may begin."

"I claim endorsement by Celia and Nicholas Anders, S-rankers of the Church of the Red Revenant, Elijah Wyndham and Sasha Anders-Wyndham, Ezekiel Cavendish-" I listed a bunch of people I trusted. Sebastian, Fade, Alanna, Killian, all people I knew would support me if I claimed endorsement. When I got to the end of my list, I hesitated. I didn't claim any gods. While I was reasonably sure the ones in my family would support me, they were far too unpredictable. The only god I was SURE would back me was Atlas, and I didn't even know if he counted, seeing as he was dead. But there WAS one big fish I could call on. "I claim endorsement from Morgan Lark."

Devon's head snapped over to glare at me. "Objection!" he snarled. "I challenge! You're a liar! There's no way trash like you has the Vampire's support!"

Desmond frowned, but nodded. "Challenge has been given. Satisfaction must be provided. Summon the character witness." His voice was austere and regal, as impartial and implacable as a moving glacier…and nothing happened. He turned to glare at the other councilors. "I SAID summon the character witness!"

"But like…do we have to?" Warren asked. It was only the three former Wishmasters here, and Warren was the youngest. "He really doesn't like to be disturbed. Like I'm not scared of him," he hurriedly insisted. "But also, I'm kind of scared of him. Last time someone in the WCP pissed him off was Felix. Do you remember what HAPPENED to Felix?"

"No one ever proved that was him," said Cristoph patiently. "Or even that anything happened at all."

Warren glared at him. "I heard him SCREAM. We all heard him scream. For WEEKS. He kept begging us for help!"

"Yes, but it might have been a prank. We never even found him." Cristoph dismissed.

"THAT WAS WORSE!" shouted Warren. "We looked EVERYWHERE. We used WISHES! We didn't even find a body!"

Desmond sighed. "I'll do it," he said impatiently. Standing, he reached into his robe and pulled out a scroll. Breaking the seal with his thumb, he tossed it into the air. The world pulsed as it unfurled, and I realized that this scroll was WAY stronger than one of mine. I suspected this came from an actual council member.

He muttered a few words, and the scroll in front of him sparked with purple flame and then exploded. A column of fire shot into the air, and within moments it condensed into a familiar figure.

Morgan Lark, the strongest S-ranker in the universe, the unstoppable beast of blood who had battled a young god to a standstill from below the divine threshold, stared down at the chamber.

Lark was terrifying. This was a man who could fight S-rankers ten to one, could pin down a hundred enemy combatants his own rank with his Domain, and barely break a sweat. "Desmond," he said mildly. "I was about to have breakfast. You'd better have a good reason for this."

He nodded. "Apologies, Morgan, we called you for a matter of great importance. Our fledgling Wishmaster is on trial, accused of falsifying his succession war results and colluding with the Void. He has named you as an endorsement, and has been challenged."

"Hmm?" Lark said with interest. He turned to glance at me, and I felt my blood all freeze in my veins at even a distant simulacrum of a look from him. This felt…different than last time. Whether because he wasn't holding back or because I was now powerful enough to perceive this kind of pressure, I had no idea, but this didn't feel the same as last time I'd met him.

"Hi Bethy's dad," I said cheerfully, forcing myself to wave. "Sorry to interrupt your morning."

He stared at me. Hard. For a minute. Then two. Then threw his head back and burst out laughing. "I can see Elijah in your bearing, at least a little, but the attitude is pure Nicholas. I heard you gave my baby girl her first real job? Not sure you thought that through all the way, but I appreciate the sentiment. Bethany never has anything but good stories to tell when she calls home about her adventures with you." He glanced at Desmond. "He has my endorsement. Don't call me again."

Then the flames just…went out. Desmond frowned, and I got the impression that hadn't been supposed to happen. I was pretty sure he'd thought he was going to have to dismiss the projection. I sympathized. Morgan might be less effervescent, but he was every bit as frustrating as his daughter.

Speaking of whom, I owed Bethy a thank you. Her good stories about us to her dad had probably just saved my ass. Or at least, delayed its descent into the fire. They had NOT been so fortunate for Devon, however. I turned to see my cousin's face shift to a deep crimson. Before he could speak though, Desmond just shook his head. "You have accused and been refuted. I impose upon you, the first sanction." Above Devon, a phantom image of a stamp with a familiar skull and lamp design manifested, and before my cousin could object, it slammed down, crushing him into the platform. I turned to glare at Crell, who looked just as shocked as I was. Apparently that had been covered in a LATER section of the charter. We really needed to finish that thing after this statement.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

My speech was honestly kind of underwhelming. But…well, I could TALK, so I was doing better than Devon. Whatever that sanction had done to him hadn't been gentle, and his own attempt at an opening statement had been even more rambling and incoherent than MOST of the shit he'd been saying since I'd met him.

His mother looked thoroughly infuriated, but under the pressure of the triumvirate of former Wishmasters she had almost no room to object. Crell and I made it out unscathed and suspiciously quickly.

Despite that, I wasn't pleased. Crell seemed to pick up on it. "You look worried. It went pretty well I thought."

"Too well," I said with a frown. "I know this was just the opening statement, but someone is pushing him into this. I don't believe anyone is bored enough to arrange this kind of challenge just to waste my time. Assuming this is someone's plan, either that person is a complete dipshit, or we're not seeing all the angles. The BEST case scenario is that they have a hidden trump card that'll screw us later in the trial."

"Because if not, it means the trial wasn't ever the point," he sighed. "And if that's true we have no idea what their endgame is, and our one even tangentially solid lead goes up in smoke."

Blowing out a long breath, I nodded. "Yeah. So honestly I HOPE something goes wrong. Hope Devon has a trick up his sleeve. Because if not, then we're missing something BIG, and I don't even want to think about what that might be."

"Ah, cheer up," Zeke said, appearing beside us as if he'd been walking with us the whole time. He slung an arm over each of our shoulders. "If you spend all your time wondering if someone is plotting your horrible demise, you'll never have any fun. It's a completely pointless thought exercise most of the time anyway."

"Why, because it's pointless speculative paranoia and usually nothing comes of it?" I asked hopefully.

He snorted. "No, because they almost always are. There's just no point thinking about it."

"Thanks," I drawled. "That's super helpful." We made it back to the suite soon enough, and Callie and my parents were waiting to confirm I wasn't dead.

My mom, ever the worrier, swept me up into a tight hug when she saw me, and my dad gave me a solemn nod, which was his version of composing a ten page epic on his worries about my safety. "Shane!" my mother said anxiously. "You're ok. What was it like?"

Callie, oddly, was the most serene, probably because she knew what I was capable of best of all. It warmed my heart to know she had so much faith in me.

"It was awesome," I said blandly. "They had pizza, ice cream. They even hired a clown. It was the most fun I've ever had having the course of my entire life decided by a trio of ancient sociopaths who I neither know nor trust."

She rolled her eyes and smacked me in the shoulder, glaring at my dad. "That smartassery is all you. Now why don't you tell me what actually happened?" I chuckled, then filled her in on the events of the day. She frowned. "That's…nice. I'm glad it went well. But I'm not sure that's a good thing, exactly."

"That was my thought," I grimaced. "Not much to do about it for now though. Anyway, Crell is going to get back to reading the charter, but I'm pretty wound up from all this trial stuff. So I was thinking maybe we could head over to the big event. It should be a few days in right? We can meet up with some of the visitors, check out that stuff they have going on. Not just the local tournaments they're having here, but the main tourist stuff."

The majority of the dignitaries were staying in the Back Palace, a connected but separated space that wasn't too vulnerable or close to the core area. "Willit be awkward to show myself though?" I asked after a little thought. "I AM on trial."

"Which none of them have any clue about," my father snorted. "Do you know how BAD that would make the WCP look? Not just the accusation itself, but the result will either be you getting ousted or the humiliation and execution of a direct branch descendant. Consider the fact that none of the accusations against any previous heir have actually come to fruition, why would they possibly disclose something like that?"

I shrugged. "Ok, so then they don't know. What should we go do then? I assume you know some of the events that are happening? What do you suggest for our first outing as a family? Also where are grandma and grandpa?"

"The Back Palace," my mom said with a chuckle. "Apparently, my grandfather decided to send an official representative. Specifically, my Uncle Moon." At my uncomprehending silence, she rolled her eyes. "The Moonlight Pope. You said you met him once, right?"

"I mean, MET is a strong term," I laughed. "I SAW him once, during the god skirmish where Black Sorrow killed Raxus. Isn't it kind of a statement sending him though? He's the second strongest S-ranker in the universe, right? The Church's secret weapon? That almost feels like a power play."

My mom just shook her head. "Uncle Moon doesn't play games. If he wants to make a point he makes it. Grandpa can't even control him most of the time, though he usually doesn't try. Uncle Moon was his first disciple, and he's even on decent terms with my grandmother, which is frankly absurd. He's here to observe and to see me, I think. But it's definitely not a bad sign that he's around. Barring Lark deciding to attend, there's no better guarantee of safety."

I smirked to myself at the idea of Lark showing up in bunny slippers or something, having been summoned during his morning coffee or something. "Well, who did the Empire send? Was it Schrader?"

Schrader had been the third participant in the fight against the vanished gods. An Imperial King, and a combatant on the same general level as Lark and Moonlight, I assumed he was another of the top five strongest demigods, though to be fair I hadn't heard the whole list.

"No," my mom said firmly. "Schrader is an invaluable combat resource. The Emperor can't spare him for a symbolic event. Uncle Moon goes where he wants and does what he likes, so he's not leaving any specific engagement unattended. He's more of a troubleshooter. Or I guess troublestabber. Not to mention he tends to solve problems quickly. There's a reason he's considered second only to Lark below the divine level."

"I'm sorry," cut in Fade, who had appeared out of nowhere. "I couldn't help but overhear, are you implying that the MOONLIGHT POPE is going to be at this event?"

I blinked at him. "I mean, not implying. She just confirmed it. Why, you know him?"

"Do I kn-" he sputtered. "No I do not KNOW the Moonlight Pope. That's like asking someone if they know the Red Revenant himself!"

"But I DO know the Red Revenant," I pointed out. "I'm actually related to him."

"That's not the POINT!" he shouted in frustration. "That's obviously not a NORMAL thing to say. Most people don't know the gods. You're just weird. Similarly, I do NOT know the Moonlight Pope, the Single Sword Sovereign, the Butcher of Radiant Light,the King of the Cutting Edge-"

I held up a hand. "Did you hit your head or something?"

"Uncle Moon has a lot of titles," my mom added with a laugh. "You tend to pick them up when you're an S-ranker. Or even before that. You haven't got any because you've been growing too fast, but Callie has one or two. Godslayer, Demoncharmer, Night Witch. That one was from when she was training with my mom."

Fade looked aghast. "Pardon me for being in AWE of the presence of the most skilled and powerful practitioner of the blade in the known universe. The Moonlight Pope is the idol of every sword wielder who knows what an S-ranker IS. Even on the Heirworld we used to hear stories about the things he's done. His duel with the Devil Prince Corfel right after he broke through to S-rank was the stuff of legends. And his defeat of the Demon Dragon of Velneth Thirty? They wrote SONGS about that!"

"Yeah, really obscure ones," Zeke snickered. "I don't think I've even heard the Ballad of Velneth Thirty. You're a huge fan huh?"

Fade looked embarrassed, but my mom just smiled at him warmly. "It's alright dear, we all have our heroes. There's no need to feel self-conscious about it. Would you like me to ask him to sign something for you?"

"I'm not feeling self-conscious," he said defensively. "I have a perfectly normal level of interest in the Moonlight Pope." He paused, not meeting her eyes. "And yes, I'd like that thank you."

"Well, guess we know where we're going," I laughed. "So where exactly can we find your Uncle his holiness?" My mom snorted at the form of address, but she seemed plenty interested in visiting her Uncle.

My dad chimed in. "Last I heard, he was going to the Sword Dance Symposium. Some of the cousins have been talking about it." We all turned to stare at him and he shrugged. "I've been tentatively reaching out to a few old contacts. To help Shane. Most people are terrified of me, but terror makes everyone really excited to have you on their side."

I couldn't really disagree with that. But the thought of some big sword demonstration reminded me of someone else. "Should we stop in and see if Roland wants to go?" I asked Callie. "I mean, it really seems like the kind of thing he would love, right? And if FADE is geeking out this hard over Moonlight I bet Roland is just as big a fan."

"I think we should leave him be," she said gently. "He just got over a pretty rough ordeal. He can always go if he wants, but pushing him seems a bit intrusive. Why don't we just call and mention it to Delia. She can decide if she wants to tell him, and he can decide if he wants to go."

"That sounds fair," I said with a sigh. "He WAS in rough shape." I shuddered. "That poison was horrible. I thought MY poison was bad. Whoever came up with that was a monster."

I was kind of lost in the thoughts of what had been done to Roland, but I was interrupted by Fade reappearing with Alanna. I guessed she hadn't been eavesdropping, but he'd gone to get her anyway. She didn't seem as excited, probably because she'd come to power trapped in an isolated dungeon where the Moonlight Pope hadn't been talked about, but she did seem kind of enthused, so I assumed he'd filled her in.

I glanced at my mother, who chuckled. "Well might as well go get everyone. Make an evening of it. Even those of you who aren't blademasters might learn a few things. You can gain inspiration from almost anything if you're open to it."

Thinking back on how Alanna had helped me prepare for Fade's combat trial, I realized she was right. I could probably use the Sword Dance Symposium to help refine some of my stances. I had a bunch of them to work on, and I was always trying to keep my physical combat skills balanced with my Skills and techniques. It was all too easy to get reliant on my tricks and not bother to polish the basics. Combat was comprehensive, and I needed to shore up my foundations. Plus I got to see cool sword moves. Sounded like a good time all around.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The trip to the Back Palace was surprisingly fast, but it was also kind of weird. We headed out into the hallways, making our way down into the underlayer, and then along the underlayer until we reached a large sort of enclosed tunnel. The tunnel was kind of a half roof over a descending stairway, and when we walked down it, we emerged into a large sort of domed atrium.

Aside from being vast, the whole place felt kind of empty. Most of it was tile, with an overhanging walkway of weirdly compressed grey carpet and glass sided metal railings looking out over a long, narrow walkway. Or rather, two walkways, each lined with small carpeted seating areas. The seating areas had letters and numbers over them, and they seemed to be connected to a variety of special archways with labels above them.
In the center of the walkways, a single long strip of black rubber in the shape of an aisle rotated consistently, with black rubber hand rails on either said atop sturdy metallic siding. One of those mobile walkways.

"Where the hell ARE we?" I asked with immense confusion.

"The Terminal," my mom said cheerfully. "You know how the Wishworld connects to all those points in space? Like the gate we came through. Well, the terminal is how you access them. When coming INTO the Wishworld you have to come in through an entry point, but leaving you can access them all through the terminal."

That was complicated, but honestly pretty smart. Giving outsiders access to the core of the Wishworld would have been stupid, but allowing our own people to traverse most of the known universe in much shorter periods of time was brilliant. I marveled at the spatial engineering it must have taken. "So one of these leads to the Back Palace?" I asked as we descended from the overhanging walkway.

"No, that's at the end of the moving path," she gestured to the rubber walkway. "The Terminal also connects most places inside the Wishworld. You just need to know where to get off the path."

Sure enough, there were a series of small gates in the railing of the rubber path, each corresponding to either a sitting area or one of the open hallways that led off seemingly deeper into the Terminal. I blinked around the place. It felt…sterile. Alien. Unwelcoming. "The old man's aesthetic taste isn't exactly warm and homey," I observed.

"No, but it is efficient," my dad said with a shrug. "The old man doesn't worry about homey. He just wants efficiency. The Terminal is pretty much perfectly designed for him. Now everyone hop on, we have a ways to go before we hit the right hallway to access the Back Palace."

I nodded along, but I was already imagining the scene we were heading toward. I had no idea what a Sword Dance Symposium would be like, BUT I had a swordmaster on hand. I turned to Fade. "So, what exactly is the Sword Dance Symposium about?"

"Swords," he said with a smirk. At my unamused look, he rolled his eyes. "Ok. Well, the blade is infinite. It contains endless mysteries, and any technique can be a sword technique if you have the imagination. But there are a certain number of major categories that most sword techniques fall into."
I wasn't familiar with any categorization, but it sounded interesting, especially since Callie was following a sword path with Gossamer now. "Such as?"

"Well, about ninety percent of all swordmasters fall into the first category," he said contemplatively. "I call that one 'cut anything'. It's what it says on the tin. The pursuit of raw severing power. It's the most brute force and simplistic of the sword categories, but it's also the most accessible. People in this category just want to split things in two. Metal, people, planets. All sword paths can lead to the peak, and that one can be as deadly as anything. The Moonlight Pope pursues that path. He swings his sword and the world parts.

"The second category is what I like to call 'cut nothing'," he continued. "Now, this obviously isn't an inability to cut, but rather the ability to exercise a choice. Swinging your sword at something doesn't mean you want to sever it. Masters on this path can pass through objects without actually cutting them, and it lets you do things like bypassing armor. Most sword nurturers are also in this category."

He was about to move on, but paused. "To clarify, the ability to not cut something has a prerequisite of being ABLE to cut it. You can't decide not to cut an object if you're unable to cut through it to begin with, that's not a choice, it's just incompetence. So the second category is pretty intertwined with the first, it's just a different path."

"And the last?" I said, having a feeling he was going to stop at three. Whether a fate sense thing or just intuition I had no idea, but I was sure there was only one more.

"Cut everything," he said with a smile. "This category focuses on mysterious techniques. The ability to sever emotions, dreams, even destiny. Being able to cut the uncuttable. It's one of the rarest subdivisions of swordmasters.

"Of course, once you reach a high enough level they all tend to blend together," he admitted. "All paths converge at the peak. The sword, in its ultimate form, serves the will of the wielder. It cuts what you want it to. Legends say that Sword gods can sever the firmament and ascend to higher planes with a single swing. There aren't any left, so we can't ask them, but considering how incredibly combat focused they are, they don't usually go down easy, so maybe their absence is its own form of proof."

I knew you could become a god on any Path, but that reaching divinity through a Path basically closed that Path behind you. Anyone else who tried to walk it would be competing with a literal deity for renown, and their chances were slim. I supposed sword paths were more of a broad spectrum of paths than a singular path that could be closed. After all, lots of S-rankers used swords. I was curious how it worked though, so I asked Fade.

"It's complicated," he admitted. "Reaching divinity through the sword happens fairly often. It's a common weapon. But that doesn't make you a SWORD god. Sword gods are rare, because in order to become one, you have to essentially monopolize the reputation of every swordmaster. It requires talent so absurd, skill so polished, that from the records I've seen, there hasn't been a true Sword god since before the Aetherbright Empire."

"That's not entirely based on talent requirements," my dad added. "The Sword Path is difficult and time consuming. It's very basic, which means it has extremely high limits, but it also means it's hard to stand out. Paths that INCLUDE the sword, like he said, are common. Void swords, time swords, nightmare swords, swords of holy light, I've seen more sword Paths than I can count, but sticking to JUST the sword…it's a challenge." He raised an eyebrow at Fade. "You didn't do it, did you?"

Fade grimaced. "No. My Path is mixed with metal control. The Hall of Steel isn't the Hall of the Sword, for a reason. Purists have low ceilings. At least, unless they're a lot scarier than me."

His comment reminded me of the Spear Legion, a faction I'd met back on Callus. It seemed like they were purists like he was talking about, and I thought they might have even mentioned something about that at some point, though I didn't remember the details. "I'm guessing the Moonlight Pope isn't a purist either?" I asked, hoping to make my bodyguard feel better.

"Nope," my mom said immediately. "Uncle Moon's Path is the sharpness of the waxing crescent. He embodies the moon cutting the sky as it reaches its apex. It's a cleaner Path than most, honestly. By the time people hit A-rank, Path's tend to be muddled. That's part of why people Author Chronicles. At B-rank you Bind them, and each page enhances an aspect of you Path and abilities. At A-rank you Author those pages, shaping them to more singularly focus on your chosen Path. Uncle Moon has managed a level of refinement in his Saga that most people don't manage. That means he can…" she trailed off, glancing at me. "Nevermind, don't want to get into that right now. You'll find out about it later."

I grimaced, but understood. My parents and Zeke sometimes declined to bring up aspects of cultivation, not because they didn't want to share, but because focusing on things too early could result in mistakes. Like my early presumption that Domains were powerful and should be acquired early on. That was TECHNICALLY true, but getting a Domain without a Chronicle could cripple or even kill you. Accepting a Domain seed from someone else could bypass that issue, but there were all sorts of rules for that, or you might end up locking yourself behind a Path that was already occupied. Bethy was the only person I knew who had managed it successfully, and that was because Morgan Lark had violently murdered pretty much every person on the Path of the Vampire aside from his own family.

Fade looked intrigued, but he forced himself to focus. "Anyway, the Sword Dance Symposium caters to all three categories. Everyone can learn something at an event like this. And the Moonlight Pope being in attendance means we might get to see him unleash his Path. Any technique demonstration from someone like him is bound to be great inspiration."

"Isn't that dangerous though?" I asked. "Like what if his Path is so awe inspiring it changes how you think about the sword and your own Path becomes a derivative of his?"

"Less of an issue with the sword," he assured me. "Swordmasters are all obsessed maniacs. Plus like I said, it all mostly leads to the same place. Regardless, there's always more to learn, and being able to make it your own is a prerequisite of any Path or Skill. Any high ranking Ascendant can knock you off the Path if you don't have a solid mindset, doesn't matter what weapon they use."

That…was a good point. My own Path was so weird and off beat that it was nearly impossible to derail me. I could incorporate almost any concept and keep my core direction intact. It was one of the major strengths of DS Mastery and the resulting Solid Path, in my opinion.

So I was looking forward to learning more and applying it to my current power system. I was looking forward to whatever big change I could feel coming, and adding in some crazy overpowered sword mastery technique wasn't out of the question if something caught my eye at the Symposium.

"Well, enough talking about it," my dad chuckled as he pushed against the rail, sliding open a gate and stepping out onto the tile. We followed him out and he led us down a long tiled hallway. "You can experience the event in person. Because we're here." As we emerged from the hallway, he held out a hand, gesturing to take in the huge fairground covered in straw and orange yellow leaves.

I stared in awe as I processed it all myself. Swords were everywhere. People were juggling them, carving with them, sculpting them from ice, throwing them, riding them, swallowing them, BREATHING them like sword dragons. If you could imagine something to do with a sword, someone here was doing it.

Fade was mesmerized, and I didn't blame him. It was a shocking sight. Callie stepped up next to me, eyes gleaming, and I grinned as I felt how exhilarated she was. She had a lot to learn here too. Maybe I could ask my mom's Uncle Moon to give her lessons. After Aiden of course. By the time I got back from the Void, Callie was going to be even more terrifying than she was now. I couldn't wait.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The Sword Dance Symposium was in full swing, pun intended. And our particular target was at the center of the action. Looking…very bored. The Moonlight Pope, or 'Uncle Moon' as my mom called him, was a tall stately man with grey hair. Not the grey of old age, but the silvery white-grey of moonlight off polished steel, a uniform color that told me his hair was naturally that color, or that he dyed it frequently.

His expression wasn't half as bright as his hair color as he sat on a raised dais next to a dozen other swordsmen, listening to them all chatter with his chin on a palm as he stared down at a pair of D-rankers duelling.

"That is…disgraceful," Fade hissed. "Look at those idiots. Flailing their blades around like sharp baseball bats. No artistry, no intent. Imagine displaying such incompetence in front of his excellency." His tone was scornful and dismissive, but between his hard gaze and the tightness in his jaw, I could tell he was genuinely offended. I half expected him to attack them.

Luckily, that didn't seem to be necessary, because the Moonlight Pope's stern iron grey gaze, which had been drifting over the contestants, found our group, and a smile split his mature face.

Unlike most of the Ascendants I met, the Moonlight Pope didn't look young OR old. He was pretty firmly middle aged. He looked somewhere around a well preserved forty, which meant he as MUCH older than that. Being the oldest of the Red Revenant's disciples, that wasn't surprising. He would probably have been around when the Revenant was still a mortal, or at least not long after. Still, as a Demigod his lifespan was upwards of fifty thousand years, so it wasn't like sticking around for a while was unusual.

He took a step, and suddenly, he was standing in front of us. It took me a second to process, because it happened instantly. It wasn't speed, there would have been air displacement, he just kind of…ignored the space. I couldn't resist trying to see what had happened, so I focused on Dantalion, shifting my form to pick up any traces. I doubted I'd get any legitimate results because whatever he'd done was WAY out of my weight class, but I wanted to at least check.

To my surprise, I WAS able to pick something up. Or rather, I couldn't NOT pick it up. As soon as I turned my eyes on the empty space, I screamed and doubled over, grabbing my face.

Blood flowed from my eyes sockets in rivers, and I could feel that my eyeballs had been literally clawed from my skull somehow. Given my pain tolerance, the scream had been more of a shout of pain, but I clamped down on even that, hissing between my teeth as I got the agony under control.

"Shane!" my mom said worriedly. "What happened?"

"Ah, that was my mistake," an apologetic voice rumbled. "Sorry about that, Sasha. I used a quick sword step to cross the distance. I wasn't aware your son had such an astonishing analysis technique. I'm surprised he could even spot the traces. That said, just because you CAN do something does not mean you should. Here, allow me." There was a snap, and suddenly…I was fine.

I blinked, shaking my head to clear the blood from under my mask, wiping under my chin with a rag I pulled from my ring. "Sorry," I rasped. "Was just curious. Though now I'm even MORE curious how you fixed it."

"The energy cut your eyes when you tried to study it," he shrugged. "So I cut the damage, and then they were fine."

Demigods, I decided, were absolute bullshit. That was theoretically a technique I could see someone making, but judging by his tone, he hadn't USED a technique. Just sort of…intended it kind of hard. Granted, techniques were related to Domains, and I knew part of the Demigod level was integrating your Domain into yourself. Maybe it was similar to Fade's sword body thing, where anything could be a technique.

It was more impressive than Fade's though, because swords are made to cut, so cutting with a sword technique made sense. HEALING with a sword technique was absurd.

But then, I'd seen people do more with less. In fact, I'd seen a DEMIGOD do that. Morgan Lark had once, in full view of a large group of people, consumed a large amount of dangerous S-ranked lightning because it was 'made of plasma'. I'd dismissed it as crazy Bethy shit by proxy, but maybe it was crazy Demigod shit instead. I wasn't sure if that made me feel better or worse.

"Impressive fortitude though," the Moonlight Pope said with a smile. "Most people would have been screaming their heads off if their eyes were gouged out by sword energy. After that first shout you barely made a noise."

A booming laugh shook the area and a big man stepped up beside him with a grin. My Uncle Sam was beaming ear to ear as he slapped the Pope on the back. "I told you so, didn't i? He's got that Anders grit. None of that wisht washy Wyndham whining." He seemed completely unconcerned with the fact that he'd just potentially offended the whole WCP.

The Pope, meanwhile, pinched the bridge of his nose. "Is tact a foreign concept to you, Samuel, or do you just forget to consider what comes out of your mouth before you say it."

Uncle Sam shrugged. "Whatever. If one of their council tries to mess with me you'll cover them, and anyone at A-rank I can more than handle." It occurred to me that my dad, who was one of the most feared A-rankers I'd ever heard of, considered Uncle Sam scary enough to treat him as a potential threat, and had even taken a punch from him to avoid escalating things. Part of that was for my mom, sure, but part of it was probably also his own skill. Exactly how strong WAS my mom's oldest brother?

"Can you two maybe not discuss how impressive my son's resistance to TORTURE is," my mom said sweetly, her eyes glinting with barely suppressed malice. "And don't think for a second I believe that was an accident Uncle Moon. If you were sloppy enough to go around shredding the eyes of random C-rankers, grandpa wouldn't let you leave the Holy Dominion."

He froze. "I…well, that's not…I slipped?" he tried weakly. Her glare pinned him in place and he sighed. "Fine. It was just a little test. I fixed it didn't I? And I didn't MAKE him look. It was still his fault. I was going to magnanimously offer him a reward and make a good impression, I didn't mean anything by it."

I sighed internally. The worst part was that I could tell he meant that. The higher the rank, the more detached from reality people got. At S-rank especially, when the body merged with the Saga, it refined a lot of the humanity out of an Ascendant from what I could tell. The Moonlight Pope was a swordmaster, and swords weren't known for being kind of cuddly. Of course, that didn't mean it wasn't annoying. S-rankers weren't gods, they still had some humanity left, and he SHOULD have known that was a shitty thing to do.

"You're going to teach my wife," I decided aloud. "She got a sword recently, and she needs a teacher."

His mouth gaped open. "Excuse me?" he sputtered. "I'm an S-ranker! I'm a godsdamned Pope! I'm-"

"A very poor guest," I finished. "You came here for my coronation, and playing little tricks on the guest of honor is very rude. It's also a huge waste of all there's people's time. They were distracted by your antics, and as such, a lot of time learning swordplay was stolen. So in return you'll pay that time back teaching Callie. That seems fair, right?"

His expression wavered. "I…but it was only a minute or two!"

"Sure," I said reasonably. "But there are thousands of people here." I did a quick head count. "Four thousand six hundred and fifty, to be precise. Which is ninety three hundred minutes if we use your generous two minute allowance. Which is one hundred and fifty five hours. That's not too long. You'll be done in no time."

My mother was snickering. This was honestly his own fault. If this had been a family meeting, or an informal dinner, I could have let it slide, or at least let him get away with a bribe or something. But this was my coronation. The WCP wasn't like the Church, where people obeyed the leaders out of respect. The WCP was a vicious tooth and claw free for all, and there was no WAY I was showing weakness in front of all these jackals, not even to an S-ranker.

Which he understood, I could tell. This had been partly a test for me as a junior, sure, but it had also been partly a test of the new Wishmaster's bottom line.

While the different lineages of the Church might be mostly harmonious, there were divisions. I knew several of the Popes were at odds. Given my mom's relationship with the Moonlight Pope, I'd assumed he was an ally, but it appeared things were a bit more complicated than that. Despite my dressing down, and his grudging acceptance, my mom was still glaring. I didn't think she was going to forget this anytime soon.

I was ambivalent, honestly. Now that I knew where I stood, a little agony for top tier sword lessons for my wife wasn't a huge deal. I wouldn't be trusting him at my back anytime soon, but then, he wouldn't need to go behind my back to hurt me. Barring the old man's intervention, literally no one here could stop him if he decided to kill me.

So I just put it out of my head. Worrying about getting swatted like a fly wasn't productive, it would happen or it wouldn't.

I was about to ask him about the autograph, if only to break the tension, when there was a low boom and the ground beneath us shook. I was intrigued, figuring something interesting was happening with the fair, but when I saw my grandparents, the Moonlight Pope, and several other powerful people nearby perk up their heads intently, the bottom dropped out of my stomach.

"What was that?" I asked quickly, looking around to try to spot some kind smoke or something. Anything to tell me what was happening.

The Moonlight Pope's face was grim. "Something just fractured the walls of the Wishworld. Something BIG. There are cracks in the world membrane, and something seems to be seeping through."

"What?" I sputtered. "What the hell could do THAT? Is this a Void Incursion?"

My dad shook his head grimly. "Not the Void. There aren't any Void Gods right now, and even if there were they'd be new. No nascent god is going to be stupid enough to try to pick a fight with the old man in his own territory. His authority in here is absolute. Only another god would even think to try it. And the old man isn't just any god. He, the Emperor, and the Queen are the oldest and strongest living deities. Each of them is at the peak of the divine rank. Coming here alone would be suicide, which means-"

"It's more than one," my grandfather agreed. "And I can only think of one force that could field an offensive like that. The Vanished Gods. But even then, they have to be insane to think-" He froze, his expression twisting with disgust. "What IS that?"

But I already knew. I'd been thinking about what the Pope had meant when he said "something was seeping through". If the Vanished Gods were here, that meant Hatescream, and I knew exactly what my grandfather, whose Domain was purification, must be sensing. Liquid Lamentation.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I was panicking. Liquid Lamentation. I had some bad memories regarding that stuff. Hatescream had used it to corrupt the ruined soul temple to gain access to the ruins of Aetherbright Academy, and even a small amount of it (and not very high ranked either) had enabled his people to hijack a trial that was considered sacrosanct by most of the known universe.

Of course, I'd said none of this out loud, but my distress was obvious, so my mom immediately asked what was wrong. I filled them all in, and my grandfather's lip curled in outrage. "Disgusting," he spat. "No wonder it smells so toxic. But this isn't the stuff you ran into before. It couldn't be. You'd have been dead the instant you got within a mile of that." He jerked his chin in a direction I assumed was indicative of where the sensation was coming from.

"Well, I assume they used higher grade stuff," I said with a shrug. "It's made from tortured souls, so they must have just used…bigger ones. How strong is it?"

The stuff I'd seen at the temple had been so toxic it defied logic. If they were injecting an even stronger mixture… My grandfather grit his teeth. "Strong. Here, come with me." He grabbed me, and there was a brief sensation of displacement, and suddenly I was standing outside the Back Palace, floating in the air beside him. The rest of my family appeared next to me, or at least my parents, grandmother, and uncle.

Off in the distance I could see cracks forming in the air, space itself fractured. Through the cracks, disgusting writhing muck seeped into the space, dripping down to glop onto the meadows below. Where it touched, earth cracked and hissed, blackening and rotting away.

"How much more powerful is that than you remember?" He asked urgently.

"A LOT," I responded instantly. It honestly didn't even look like the same substance. This stuff was more…alive. Like sentient darkness made of hate and hunger. Flickers of red light danced inside the blackness like ruinous stars twinkling in a sick and horrible parody of a sky.

Above us, the sky darkened, and I breathed a sigh of relief as purple lightning gathered. Sadly, I seemed to be the only one relieved. As the lightning rained down on the muck, I glanced at my family. "Ok, that must be the old man, right?" I asked slowly. "Why is that bad? Because you all look like that's bad."

"This is the Wishworld," my dad said. "Inside the Wishworld, the old man's will is manifest. He can alter reality. The fact that he had to manifest a physical force to grind away at that stuff…it's not a good sign. It means it's so corrosive that it's rotting the foundation of his Domain. That's DIVINE corruption. It's taking a substantial amount of time for him to counter it, which means it's taking a substantial amount of focus. And with a second god most likely around…he's going to be fully engaged."

"But we have the Moonlight Pope with us," I frowned. "Barring Lark himself showing up, we should be safe, right?"

The man himself wasn't looking at us. Or at the corruption being combatted by the purple lightning. "Wrong," he said quietly. "Because they didn't just bring the gods. They brought S-rank backup. Laplace."

He nodded to the side of the corruption, where yet another huge hole had been in the empty air. Through it, I saw several dozen figures pour in. Multiple S-rankers easily distinguishable among them.

Hanging back, lazily stepping inside, a tall, dapper man in a black and white suit with a monochrome checkered top hat and a mask of the same two colors strolled unhurriedly through the air. The mask was odd, half white comedy mask, half black tragedy mask, and between his fingers he twirled a swirl patterned black and white cane.

"Who is Laplace?" I asked quietly, worried he might notice us. It seemed like he was distracted by the curtain of cascading purple lightning for now, but who knew what S-rankers could do when pressed?

"One of Hatescream's closest subordinate's," the Pope said grimly. "A monster who glories slaughter. He's a demigod himself, and a strong one. He's not LARK, but he's strong enough to give me trouble." His eyes flicked to my grandparents. "Nicholas, Celia, I'll need your assistance with the others. They only brought a dozen, if it was just them I could have pinned most down, but Laplace is a genuine threat. I won't be able to protect any of you." His eyes flicked back to Laplace. "Shane, I'm sending you back. We'll keep them from penetrating too deeply, stay with your cabinet."

He flicked his sword and I was just…gone. Or rather, I was somewhere else, standing next to my friends. Callie's eyes widened. "What happened?" she asked urgently. "What's going on? Why are they attacking?"

I opened my mouth to answer…and then I froze. Why WERE they attacking? It made no sense. This was one of the most well defended events the WCP held. There were S-rankers from all over here. There was literally NO worse time to do this. Which meant that was the POINT. "This is a fucking distraction," I spat. "The main force of the attack is drawing our attention to the back palace."

I tried to call for Zeke. My dad. My mom. Anyone. No one came. It didn't matter. "Fade," I told my bodyguard. "You're taking point. We're headed for the terminal. We need to get back."

Something was wrong. I didn't know WHAT or what I even planned to do, but I could FEEL that I needed to get back to the main palace. The timing of this attack was too coincidental. Something was happening while everyone was distracted. Did that mean the Vanished Gods were behind the trial? Or were they cooperating with the Void. It didn't matter. We'd find out soon enough.

Of course, it was possible I was about to get murdered by some scary A-rank infiltrator, but I didn't FEEL like that would happen. My instincts were telling me I could make a difference, and all I could do was trust them.

When we reached The Terminal entrance, there was a bit of a struggle to get in. Lots of the weaker members of the visiting parties and even the WCP were trying to get out of the Back Palace. I didn't know where they were GOING, but they seemed very determined to get there, wherever it was.

After a few minutes, we broke through, entering the formerly peaceful terminal, and what I saw chilled my blood.

Slaughter. The entire place was crawling with hungry eyed monsters made of pure darkness, an eerie blue glow shining from their eyes. Mantises, werewolves, birds, manticores. Void Spawn of every size, shape, and description were surging in through the holes in the Void that we'd been assured were all one way.

Grimacing, I flicked my hand out, manifesting my staff. "Alright people, circle up."

Callie spread her wings, Heretic Fire washing over her as Gossamer appeared in her hands, catching fire from within. Fade drew his sword, and as we strode forward, the blade parted crowds of the Void Spawn with brutal efficiency. Even with his constant strikes though, he wasn't killing enough of them. They poured past him, reaching us in staggered groups. I called for Glory, my staff becoming a spear of black flame infused with Heretic Fire.

No matter how many I killed though, it wasn't enough. I triggered Beelzebub, a dozen other me's appearing, and I had several of them shift into Asmodeus. Abel, Bethy, Mel, Chelsea, Gabe, Vicky, Wulf, Dante, and all the others within reach were imbued with the absurd power of Asmodeus, horns growing from their heads as wings exploded from their backs.

We ran through the crowds, Fade drifting in and out as he vanished to deal with some of the B-rank Void Spawn getting in our way.

My staff sang, slicing through dark forms like a knife through butter. We fought through the hordes unendingly, until, finally, we reached the end of the rubber walkway. "Callie!" I yelled as we hit the base of the stairs, only to be stopped by a crowd of Void Spawn. "I need something big!'

She nodded. Raising one hand, I saw her grimace with strain, and her left hand glowed the inverted blue of her Adherent Fire. Lashing out, she shattered the air in the same move I'd seen before, then, with the Heretic Flame still burning on her sword, drove it into the spatial crack. Fragments of space erupted around the crowd, and Callie's blade swept through them, cleaving the horde like a meat grinder as they swept through the group.

With unearthly howls of hate and rage they all burst into flames, dissolving into piles of ash. Callie staggered, and I caught her, passing her back to Chelsea as soon as I could. Fade appeared, stalking up the steps, and a giant Void Spider fell on him from above.

His eyes never even moved to the creature, his arm just flickered and it fell to pieces around him, parting around his body seamlessly. When he reached the top of the steps, he kicked the double doors open, glancing around the hallway carefully before looking back to give us the all clear. "We're good," he assured me. "Now where the hell are we GOING?"

I paused. I didn't actually know that. I knew we were needed here, but not where to go. Except I actually did. I didn't know why, it made no sense to me at all but…"Devon," I said with certainty. "We need to find my cousin, he's in danger."

"Your cousin who accused you of treason?" Callie sputtered. "The one whose FAULT all this probably is?"

"He's an idiot," I agreed. "But that doesn't mean he deserves to die. Besides, if they want him gone, we don't. Something weird is happening here. I have no clue why they want him dead when he's working for them, but I have a feeling preventing it is the only way we get to the bottom of this."

She groaned. "Of course it is. We never should have gone to the Seraphim Tower. Clearly you've picked up all sorts of bad habits."

I grinned at her wildly, but I knew she would follow me wherever I went. I turned to Fade, pointing down a hall. "That way," I said firmly. "Clear us a path, and try to make sure it's a quick one. I don't think we have a lot of time."

He nodded, turning towards the hall. Raising his sword, he took up an odd fencing stance, and above his head, a massive avatar of his sword manifested. A stomp and a thrust and the manifestation tore through the hall. Literally THROUGH the hall, walls, floor, and ceiling. He twisted as he withdrew, and the rotating blade bored a hole through the underground space, creating a long open tunnel.

Everything that had been INSIDE that tunnel just…ceased. The construct was made of pure sword energy, so even the flat of the blade could cut. That one twist wiped away all the physical matter occupying these halls, including the Void Spawn.

I slapped him on the back. "Thanks man, that was just what we needed. Let's go." We took off down the empty tunnel in the direction I felt my gut pulling.

We ran for about twenty minutes, and when we emerged from the tunnel, it was into a huge stone room resembling a buried cathedral. Like someone had sunk a church into the earth. When we came out though, we were forced to stop in our tracks.

Devon was surrounded. Not just by enemies, but by bodies. His guards were all dead, but Devon himself had a nasty looking pair of hooked daggers he was using to rip apart the Void Spawn. Even as we watched though, one of the monsters, a minotaur of some kind, drove its horns through his back into his gut. With a sigh, I spun my staff and charged. No rest for the wicked.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I'd expected Devon, based on my weaselly impression of him, to be incompetent or pathetic. I was surprised to see that wasn't even remotely the case. Devon moved through the Void Spawn like a wheat thresher, mowing down monsters with the curved daggers. No wonder he felt robbed of the Wishmaster position, he might have had a legitimate shot at it based on this display.

Of course, that didn't mean he wasn't a dick, but I wasn't going to let my cousin bleed to death if I could help it. A quick Life Nova (available even outside of Zagan now that I'd made progress with it) shoved into his gut wound, and he was at the very least on the mend. My staff whirled around him, sweeping away the Void Spawn, the sharp blade of flame at the end of my Glory spear driving them away, giving him some room to breathe.

As soon as I did, the others swarmed us, circling up to defend the two of us, with only Marco joining us inside the circle.

Devon glared at me hatefully. "I was FINE!" he hissed. "I didn't need your help."

"You've been stabbed," I said dryly. "In the guts. I can SEE your lower intestine. You do not have the high ground here."

Snarling, he produced a potion of some kind, pouring it on the wound. Interestingly, the liquid seemed to catch fire, Zagan's flame treating it like fuel as it closed the injury. That was something to file away for later. I wasn't sure what was IN that potion, but I needed to get some asap.

Still, he didn't exactly look stable. I let out a low whistle, and a large green form swept through the air, landing firmly on my upraised arm. I nodded to Devon. "My cousin is wiped out. Can you top him up?"

Archie trilled his agreement, then hopped off my arm onto Devon's shoulder with just a single half beat of his wings. Devon was still sneering, but when Archie landed, he screamed. "Oh gods! Oh, claws, claws, claws!" Archie gave him an innocent chirp, adjusting his grip, and then poured life energy into him. I might have believed it was an accident if the bird hadn't WINKED at me when Devon's gaze was averted. As it was I was just glad my mask covered my face.

"Alright, what the hell?" I demanded as Devon's face began to fill with color again. "Why were they attacking you? And why are they here? And don't give me any bullshit about not knowing, because they almost definitely work for you. What happened? You lose your usefulness when you crashed and burned in the first part of the trial?"

He sneered at me. "Absurd. You're the one in collusion with the Void here, traitor. I have proof. You think your little tricks will protect you, but I'm going to show people what you really are. Just wa-"

There was a screech from beneath us, and one of the guard corpses, eyes blazing Void blue, surged up, baring a mouthful of needle like teeth, and sank its jaws into Devon's throat. Once it had a grip, it lurched back, tearing itself free and taking most of his windpipe with it, hot blood spurting freely into the air.

Cursing, I drove my Glory spear into its head, vaporizing the damned thing before letting my staff return to my soul space. I shifted to Zagan, dropping to my knees with a curse as my hands snapped out to clamp over the wound in his throat. "Fuck!" I snapped as I flooded the damaged area with life fire. "Archie, give me a baseline." My partner screeched, then strong green energy surged through his claws into my cousin.

"Don't you die on me you asshole," I snapped. Because honestly, if I hadn't been here he WOULD have. I could feel the Void Taint in the bite, surging into his body like an infection tainting his blood. I was burning it away as it seeped out, but it was massively slowing down the actual healing. That was why I needed Archie. I was purifying the Void Taint, leaving him to do the actual healing.

"Shane, what happened?" Callie called from nearby, her sword flashing as she bisected a Void Werewolf.

I snorted. "My disphit cousin got his throat ripped out because he was too busy complaining about me to pay attention to his surroundings. Honestly, I'm not even upset. Apparently I was about to listen to a long drawn out diatribe about how I'm a traitor. Seems he really DOES believe his own press, but I'm not sure why. I'm also confused as to why he seems so damned certain he's going to win this trial."

Whatever his so called evidence was, it wasn't accurate, and with Roland as a witness to the whole thing, I wasn't worried. Well, I was a little worried Devon was going to be executed, but I had Crell figuring out a workaround for that.

"Shane!" Callie screamed, her voice surging over both the bond and the intervening distance between us. My head jerked up as I triggered Mornax on reflex, boosting it to B-rank with my staff.

Only after that was done did I glance up to see what Callie was looking at. Sure enough, a giant Void Scorpion was plunging down from above me, stinger flashing toward my eye. The monster was B-rank, which meant while I could block it, I wasn't going to enjoy the process. I grimaced, wishing I still had Glory active. I'd dropped it in order to focus on Zagan, and using that and Mornax at the same time was pretty much all I could handle at the moment, given how much I was already doing with Asmodeus.

I braced for impact, ready to tank the strike to my face, but before the scorpion could get close, there was a flash of light. I blinked in shock as the monster literally DISINTEGRATED into tiny pieces, blowing away on the wind.

There was a click, and I looked down to find Roland sheathing his sword as he stepped out of a side passage. I exhaled in relief. I'd been worried about his health. Given the attack on him last time, I'd thought he might have been a target, but not only did he not look like he'd been attacked again, he looked like he'd recovered well from the last one already.

"Thanks for the assist," I called as he approached. Delia emerged from another corridor, sighing in relief as she saw her friend and joined him.

Roland nodded casually. "I owe you one. Hell, I owe you a dozen. Happy to start evening up the debt." He glanced at Delia. "You were supposed to wait back at my place," he admonished. "You're a strategic target. I'm not worth nearly as much."

"I was WORRIED about you, ass," she sneered. "Not that I should have bothered. Need I remind you that you were DYING not long ago?"

He shrugged. "Dying is a yes or no thing. I was dying, now I'm not. One has nothing to do with the other. Besides, I knew Shane was around, and the kid gets into more trouble than a trombone section. Was I just supposed to let him die?"

She sighed. "No, obviously not." Her eyes turned to me, a warm smile slipping onto her face. "I'm glad to see you're ok, Shane." I hadn't expected she would care that much. Delia seemed to like me fine, but she was also a veritable stranger. I expected Roland to be fond of me because of the whole saving his life thing, but apparently that had endeared me to Delia too. She glanced around. "What are you doing here anyway?"

I nodded down to the still pale Devon. "My idiot cousin almost got himself murdered."

"And you saved him?" she seemed genuinely perplexed. "If he died, it would have been all but impossible for him to pursue the trial. At least before the end of the coronation. Resurrection is possible, but there's no way any powerful Wish user would have thrown in their lot with him during the trial given his poor showing. They'd have waited until it ended and you were crowned Wishmaster to curry favor."

"His dad would have saved him," I shrugged. "Besides, I don't want to see a blood relative die. Devon is a moron, but I'm becoming increasingly sure he isn't malicious."

She frowned at that. "What do you mean?"

"Umm, guys?" Roland said warily. "I hate to break up the debrief, but we have a pack of Void Jackals coming in from the northwest, and I think they're B-rank. You're saying that Devon is the target?"

I nodded. "Almost positive, yeah."

"I'll take him to his mother," Roland said with a grimace. "I agree with you, I don't want to see a member of the family dead because of stupidity. Ayra should be able to save him easily enough. Pass him here."

Delia shook her head. "Let me," she interrupted. "I don't have your combat skills. You can watch out for Shane during this mess. If they don't track Devon, he might need the extra firepower."

Roland hesitated. "I think I'd be faster," he said worriedly, clearly unhappy at the idea of Delia running around with a LITERAL target on her back. She arched an eyebrow at him, and he sighed in resignation. "Alright, go ahead and take him. But come back as soon as he's safe, alright?" I could tell the idea of letting her go out there was really bothering him, and she obviously could too.

"Don't patronize me," she said with a teasing smile. "I'm not exactly a wilting violet. Don't forget, I'm the fastest in our generation." She leaned down and lifted Devon effortlessly. I'd cleared enough of the Void Taint that he was stable, though I warned her to hurry, because it was going to start building up again soon.

My fate sense was completely silent. Apparently the problem I'd been sent to solve was Devon's death. Why that would have negatively affected me I had no idea, but apparently unlike Delia thought, if he'd been killed the trial would NOT have gone smoothly for me. Or I'd have opened myself up to some other danger, who knew?

She vanished out the door, and Roland sighed deeply. I clapped him on the shoulder. "Don't be such a helicopter…" I trailed off. "What actually is your relationship with Delia? I thought you might be related somehow, but given the atavism thing…"

He smiled sadly. "Her sister was my wife. Penny was another candidate I met when I was out growing to D-rank. We fell in love and got married, but she was killed before I returned to the Palace. I found Delia here and told her about it. They'd never actually met, but Delia sort of…adopted me. Her honorary big brother. Delia and Penny were only a few decades apart, but I felt compelled to look out for her."

I squeezed his shoulder comfortingly. "She seems like a badass," I commented with a grin. "Could probably take you in a fight. I don't think she'll be that easy to take down. Don't worry so much, ok?"

He snorted. "You know, as the older and higher ranked relative, I should be consoling YOU. Aren't you SCARED of this whole invasion thing?"

"This?" I asked derisively. "This is a Tuesday for me. It'll take more than that to shake m- OH GODS WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?" I screamed, jumping back as what appeared to be a Void…Clown Demon, jumped out of my shadow with a huge knife. Roland bisected it with a casual slash, chuckling at my fear. "Hey, shut up!" I snapped. "Anyone would have been scared of that. That was horrifying." His laughter only got louder, and the very solemn and dignified expression on my face in no way resembled a pout as we rejoined the battle. Honest.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The invasion ended with a whimper, not a bang, and it put my teeth on edge. Something had happened here, something I hadn't seen yet, and we were all missing it. The timing of the attack was too coincidental, too perfectly staged. The Void invasion striking when the old man would be distracted by the Vanished Gods was obviously intentional.

But I just couldn't see the POINT. Devon's attack implied this partially involved me and the trial, but none of it made SENSE. The Void being involved was understandable, but what where they trying to DO? Accusing me and then letting Devon fall flat on his face, then trying to kill him? Why was Devon so convinced I was guilty, and what proof could he have to offer when the proof shouldn't even exist?

The more questions were answered the less sense this all made, and that meant I was missing something big. I had a terrible knot in my stomach insisting that something AWFUL was coming, and I had no idea what it was.

"Shane, you alright over there?" a concerned voice cut through my analysis, and I turned to see Roland looking at me worriedly. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Several," I admitted. "But they don't worry me much. No, I'm just spiraling a bit. A lot is going on that doesn't make sense. I feel like someone is pulling my strings. I hate the feeling of being right in the middle of something huge and not knowing which way is up. Devon…he doesn't know what's going on, but he has SOME kind of trump card, even if I don't know what the hell it might be."

He smiled at me reassuringly, clapping me on the shoulder. "Hey, don't sweat it. I've got your back. I promise you, I'll testify. Wouldn't miss it for the world. And besides, you have a secret weapon don't you?"

I raised an eyebrow at him, and he rolled his eyes. "Didn't I hear you have some kind of soul connection with your wife? So she must have had a front row seat to everything. Why not have HER testify on your behalf. She was a first hand witness to all of it through you, right?" I could tell he was pretty pleased with himself for coming up with such a clever strategy, and I had to hand it to him, it was brilliant.

"Would they allow that?" I asked slowly, starting to get excited. Callie was always sensing what I was feeling, we didn't talk consistently, but even if my own account wasn't considered compelling (which to be fair, made sense, they couldn't just take my word for it) her awareness of me meant there was no possible way that she could miss something like that.

He shrugged. "I don't see why they wouldn't. I mean, you're being accused of Void collusion right? Isn't her dad some sort of renegade anti-Void deity?"

"It's complicated," I hedged. "But yeah basically. You think that would help my case?"

"Only if they aren't idiots," he laughed. "Between her testimony and mine, I don't think it matters what kind of tricks Devon is planning to play, the end result is basically a foregone conclusion."

Laughing, I threw my arm around his shoulder. "That's genius! Man, you're really saving my ass here, you know? If you ever need anything, just say the word. I can't tell you how big of a load off my mind that is." Sure, it didn't solve the issue of whatever was going on behind the scenes, but honestly I wasn't going to be ABLE to solve that issue. It was out of my league.

This at least wiped away my worries about the trial. I could pass off whatever grand design this was to Zeke and my parents. As the Wishmaster, learning to delegate was a skill I'd need to pick up anyway, might as well start now.

"What's genius?" my wife asked as she appeared next to us, folding her wings as her sword vanished. "Because Shane sometimes has weird ideas about what is and isn't a good plan."

I sniffed officiously. "My plans are fantastic. I'm not dead yet, am I?"

She gestured to me demonstratively, as if to say 'You see what I'm dealing with?', rolling her eyes at my joke, but I spotted her smiling a bit, so even without the bond I'd have known she wasn't really bothered by how I did things.

"Anyway," I said in a leading tone. "Roland had a great idea. Because of our bond, you can testify on my behalf in the trial." I paused. "I mean, if you want to. I know that's kind of a big ask, what with the Void stuff and how much attention you've been getting. If you aren't comfortable with that I-"

She yanked my mask off, pulling me down for a firm kiss to shut me up, then pulled back, laughing. "You're my HUSBAND, idiot," she scolded. "Of COURSE I'll testify. You didn't even have to ask." Her eyes softened as she laid a hand on my cheek. "But it means a lot that you did. If there's ANYTHING I can do to help, I'm there. It's you and me baby. Always."

Roland was smiling at us sadly. "I have to admit I envy you two," he said with a chuckle. "You're a lucky man, Shane. Your wife is an amazing person. Reminds me of my own a little bit. I think what I envy most is that bond though. Maybe if Penny and I had something like that she'd still be alive. Or I wouldn't. I think I'd prefer it that way." He frowned at us. "Do you know what happens if one of you dies? What the bond would do?"

That brought me up short because…no. I had no idea. "I guess I've never considered it," I said slowly. "I mean regular death maybe nothing, but if one of us gets out souls shattered…we're connected pretty deeply." I was staring at Callie with worry. "If something happens to me it might-"

"Good," she cut me off fiercely. "Maybe you'll be a bit more careful. Now that you know your death might mean mine, do you think you'll be as reckless with your life?"

I exhaled loudly. "I don't," I admitted. "Now I'm glad I arranged those defensive shields for us. Even a god won't be able to kill you easily. With one for each of us I don't have to worry about anything happening to your soul in the short term, right? And vice versa."

Roland's eyes were wide. "Wait…defensive shields? Gods? What are you talking about now? I haven't heard this story."

I just laughed. "Nothing crazy. I got a wish from the old man in exchange for some information. I had him pay me with divine ranked defensive shields. They're consumable and single use, but still, they're a hell of an insurance policy."

Callie and I had discussed the shields, and despite our brief consideration to keep them secret, we decided spreading it around wasn't a bad thing. If anything, knowing they were there might keep some assholes from testing them. The reputation of divine countermeasures could be almost as good as the thing itself. Roland certainly looked poleaxed by the revelation.

I couldn't help but be a little smug. It had been a pretty good idea in hindsight. I smirked at my wife. "And you said none of my plans are any good."

"Well, monkeys and typewriters," she said sweetly. "I'm sure you'll do something to prove me right any minute now. Either way, I love you just as much, bad plans and all. I just feel the need to remind you of your flaws sometimes so you don't get a big head."

I snorted, but couldn't help a smile. I could feel her concern for me. She'd picked up on my little panic spiral earlier and was doing her best to fill Benny's shoes by poking at me to take my mind off things. She was a lot gentler about it than my best friend, but I could feel her good intentions, and sent my own reassuring emotions back, along with a heaping helping of adoration.

"Shane!" boomed a familiar but EXTREMELY loud voice. "Shane, where are you?" I turned just in time for a tall blonde form to smash into me at a speed too fast to track. I was briefly worried I'd been attacked, and seeing Callie get grabbed too didn't ease my worry, but I quickly realized we were just being aggressively hugged. My Seal of Solomon DID creak ominously under the pressure though, and I had to croak out a protest.

"Mom, I'm fine!" I wheezed. "But you're crushing me."

Her grip loosened but didn't drop. "I'm so glad you're ok. What were you thinking running back here on your own? With the trial in full swing, anyone could have attacked you."

I patted her on the back, letting her squeeze the life out of me a bit longer before pulling away. "I'm FINE mom. Seriously. What about you guys? Where's dad and Zeke? The grandparents? Did anyone get hurt? What happened?"

She laughed, smoothing my hair down. "Everyone is fine," she assured me. "As for what happened…" her face hardened. "Hatescream. And Stralthrem. They fought the old man head on. Whatever that MUCK that Hatescream was feeding in weakened him, but he burned it off quick enough. It acted almost like poison. Gods and their Domains are linked, and the liquid lamentation messed the old man up something awful. He ended up having to break out the Scroll of Wisdom."

At my confused expression, she chuckled. "Sorry, one of his objects of power. They're even more effective inside the Wishworld. Even with both gods working together they were no match. But he vanished pretty quickly after." She lowered her voice, looking around furtively. "I think he might be injured."

That was…bad. "Liquid lamentation doesn't grow on trees," I said slowly. "That stuff is made from tortured souls. If it affected the old man that must have been A, maybe S-rankers. Where did they GET them all?"

"My dad helped purify the tainted area," she said hesitantly. "He said…there was something in it. Something wrong. Unnatural. He thinks it's from the Void."

I felt my stomach drop. That was worse. Hopefully the old man could study it and adapt. Knowing they had something that could affect a god, even if it was something that was hopefully difficult to make, was not comforting.

I informed her of what I'd discovered. My instinct to come back, saving Devon, and my suspicion that there was more going on. She frowned. "That's…odd. I don't understand what the Vanished Gods would gain from an alliance like that. I mean, travel through the Void is one thing, but they can't actually expect the Void to honor any promises they make."

"Maybe they can," I said slowly. "Remember, the Vanished Gods want to elevate the universe, to push us up to a higher world where they won't be limited by the six or by the constraints of realspace. If they do that, the Void might be let behind. All the noise they hate would be gone in the blink of an eye. I could see how they might be tempted to play nice. Especially if they approached someone who used to be human, and might be more reasonable."

"Morwenna," she said in a worried voice. "I'll mention it to Dad and Uncle Moon, and your father can reach out to the council. It makes sense, but it's concerning. At the very least Morwenna didn't make an appearance here."

I nodded slowly, but I was sure I was right. Morwenna was involved here, somehow. I just didn't know how all of this fit together yet. With a sigh, I shook off the doom and gloom, focusing on my mom. "Anyway, I want to hear all about the battle. Tell me everything." With a laugh, she pulled Callie and I in and dragged us off away from the others, telling us all the details. It was a pretty good story.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The first thing I asked for after hearing the story was to examine the scene. My mom wasn't happy about it, but my reasons were sound, so she brought Callie and I along to the blasted area where the liquid lamentation had been seeping into the earth of the Wishworld.

It probably seemed like an unnecessary bit of theater to the high rankers, but I was sure we could glean something useful from the data. Callie and I were probably some of the most familiar Ascendants with the energies of the Void in realspace. Between her Heretic Fire, Adherent Fire, and my own research into the creation of her forms and how integrated her energy was into mine, I was sure I could identify once and for all if Morwenna's hand was in this attack.

We said our goodbyes to everyone else, then headed down to where the liquid lamentation had been dripping through the cracks in the world. When we landed, I stared down at the blasted and cracked ground and had to hold my gorge.

It was…ruined. Not just physically. Dirt was dirt, if you broke it, someone could just till it or dig it up and refill the hole. This was different. Something had torn a hole in the CONCEPT of this dirt. It wasn't dirt anymore at all. It was un-dirt. The corpse of dirt. This was dead earth. And it was more than just the physical and conceptual. The IMPACT of the ground seemed damaged somehow. Cracked. Like it was less real than it should be.

The sensation was sickening, because it was so hard to conceptualize. I could almost see the weight of the earth here in my mind, melted and twisted like candle wax. It was like the general shape of the physical world was there, but it was formed from charred remains. Hollow, missing pieces.

Callie put a hand on my shoulder to steady me, and I nodded gratefully, then closed my eyes, triggered my staff's ability, and entered Dantalion at B-rank.

When I ran up against things that were too powerful to analyze, there were a few different ways it could be perceived to me. The most common were that I couldn't get anything, or sometimes the scan worked but the object was so dense with information that it would take me decades to get anything from it.

What I had NEVER experienced though, was to reach for data and find…nothing. Not a lack, either. The PRESENCE of nothing. It was heavy on the air, suffocating in its immensity. Concentrated nothing, condensed to the level of a collapsing star. Such an abundance of absence that it became a tangible force.

The sensation was horrible. It was like my soul had been walking up a flight of steps and my foot had landed on empty air. I felt a dropping sensation in my get and then I was flailing, falling into the heavy mire of complete nothingness, being swallowed by the un-being of the thing I was trying to understand.

I fell. Spiritually and mentally, I fell. For years. Decades. Centuries. And only seconds. Not even seconds, milliseconds. And then, in the span of a complete lack of a heartbeat, I was through the gap, coming out the other side of the emptiness and plunging into a caustic spiritual pool of filth.

My body dropped to its knees, clawing at its face to remove its mask as it began to vomit, my soul was screaming, crying, tearing at itself with spiritual claws, like the skin of my consciousness had become ants that I was desperately trying to tear away.

"Shane!" I heard from far away. But I couldn't recognize the sound, couldn't process the name. Shane was a person, a being of will and thought. I was none of that anymore. I was pain. Suffering and desperation and anguish. I was a singularity of despair collapsing into a core of absolute misery so dense it punched a hole through the world and dragged everything around it into a screaming oblivion of endless woe.

And then I felt something make contact with me, and there was a flare of green behind my eyes. I heard a birdsong somewhere off in the distance, and my mind cleared, JUST a bit. Just enough for me to disperse Dantalion and SHOVE Leviathan into place where it had been.

I collapsed, panting, eyes unseeing, body coated in sweat. Callie's hand was in my mouth, and I tasted blood. It took me a second to realize she'd shoved the web of her thumb between my teeth to prevent me from biting off my own tongue as I'd seized up. I reached for Zagan, but Archie screeched at me aggressively, hopping off my shoulder and, brushing her hand with a wing, sending a surge of life nova into her injury.

"What the FUCK was that?" Callie spat, her face twisted in terror. "What just happened?"

"I don't," I tried to speak, but my words dissolved into a wracking cough, my throat torn and battered from the screaming. Callie pulled a bottle of water from her ring, propping me up to pour it down my throat slowly. I sipped, letting the cool water refresh my ravaged windpipe. "I don't know," I finally finished. "I…that was…wrong. Something wrong."

My mom had said that too, when she told us about what happened. And my grandfather. "I need to go check the library," I told her shakily. "Dantalion was recording. Just in case we needed to study it, I had clones taking dictation, translating the information into physical form."

"I'll come with you," she said gently, and I nodded.

Closing my eyes, I pushed myself into my soul space. I arrived at the entrance to the library, and looking over to where the tables were, I froze.

Corpses. A dozen of them. Different versions of me scattered across the floor. Eyes clawed out, tongues ripped away, some of their heads had just straight up exploded. The books they'd been writing on were scattered everywhere, coated with blood and thicker, darker things I didn't want to think about.

Liquid lamentation had infiltrated my soul, splattered across the bookshelves and the floors, hissing and burning away at my soul space. I was terrified for a second I was doomed, because I could feel that if that shit had gotten on my Chronicle, I'd have been completely screwed.

Luckily, when I looked over towards my Ten Demons Tome and Tree, both were shockingly untouched. In fact, the whole pedestal where they sat was completely clean. Looking at the floor, the dark sludge had been flung towards the core of my soul space, but before reaching it, had just…stopped. Tracing the barrier, I realized that it formed a complete circle around the SECOND pedestal in here. The one that held a book made of purple flames and lightning.

The book, thankfully, wasn't USED. It had just established its territory and the muck couldn't enter within that range. It suppressed the liquid lamentation by its sheer presence.

Callie made a choked sound, gagging at the sight of so many bodies, all of them me. The clones were still there, which I didn't think they should be. This wasn't real, this was my soul, and the clones were just a form. Beelzebub should have faded when they died, but they were…stuck. Decomposing like real bodies.

They were carriers for the liquid lamentation. Like plague corpses. Leviathan blazed around me, protecting me, and Callie had coated herself in heretic fire, but she threw her arms around me, squeezing me tight.

I held her for a minute, about as shaken as she was, and then I walked over to check on one of the bodies.

It was sprawled on the ground, dragging itself forward. A book sat beside it, full of…something. Unintelligible gibberish. Dark lines of ichor were smeared across the pages seemingly at random, also unreadable. There were more books, torn pages, shredded spines. I ignored them. Reaching down, I hefted the corpse. It weighed less than it should, but I ignored that too. I walked over to the barrier around the defensive shield and with a heave, tossed the corpse at the book.

When it hit the radius where the filth had stopped, it exploded into a rush of white smoke. A bit of darkness rose within the smoke, and I could hear it scream as it dissolved, banished from my soul directly. My fate sense and the crawling corpse had made it clear how I needed to clean them out.

I began the long, slow work of cleaning. Tossing the corpses was the easy part. Gathering all the books was tougher. I flipped through them. Nonsense, interspersed with smears of dark ichor. Perfect. I stacked them all on the table, getting ready to toss them into the field. Callie burned away the splatters from around the library, and it was a slow process. The liquid lamentation was much higher level, and even with only flecks of it, she had to spend ten or twenty minutes to purge a drop.

The pitted and scarred surfaces left behind were even worse, but I'd get to them later. For now I was trying to make sense of the books. The gibberish was…weird. Not uniform size or shape, not all written left to write, or even side to side. I couldn't decipher it for the life of me, no matter how many books I flipped through.

And it wasn't just whole books. Some of the pages had been torn out and littered the floor. I collected them, trying to decrypt what my clones had been trying to tell me.

I flipped through them for hours, searching, and finally, I caught…something. A bit of text was cut off, half a symbol on the edge of a page, and another clone had written what looked like the OTHER half in another book.

With that clue to work from, I started sifting through the books and pages, finding connecting symbols, deducing patterns like I was putting together a puzzle. It was long and slow work, but Callie finished her purification and came to help. We worked for a while together, perfectly in synch and spreading the pages out on the table.

As we did, I noticed something…unsettling. The writing wasn't the only thing that was connected page to page. The streaks of ichor were carried over too, and despite being large and seemingly random, as we laid out the pages, they started to resolve into a shape. Or rather, into a series of letters. My stomach knotted, desperately hoping it didn't say what I was absolutely SURE it said, but we continued on anyway.

We had to tear some of the pages out, because some of them were marked in different places. Sure enough, once we finished it, the paper was scattered in a huge macabre mosaic of semi-nonsensical text and images. Not just words, images of people screaming scratched into pages with what looked like blood and ash.

But the most disturbing part was the ichor. I'd known it was a word, known I wouldn't like what it said, and I had been VERY right. Because it was a word that I recognized. One that had occupied my mind constantly lately. One that, even without context, had chilled me to the bone the first time I heard it. There, scrawled out in the blood of my own multitude of corpses, lay the word 'APOSTATE'. Because of course that was what it said.

Callie stepped up next to me, staring down at the terrible masterpiece. "It's Morwenna," she confirmed, staring at some of the incomprehensible text. "Whatever this is, she helped create it. It's…I don't know what it is. But it feels familiar, and I very much don't like that. I have a feeling this is going to get worse before it gets better. I'm just glad I can't sense the future the way you can. Maybe I'm wrong." I didn't have the heart to tell her I had the same sense. But then, I didn't need to.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I woke up groaning. Callie was sitting next to me, looking concerned, and my mom and sister were behind her. Zeke was napping in a chair nearby, and my dad was leaning against a wall looking away, though the effect was kind of spoiled by him shooting glances back at me. "You're up," Callie said with a relieved smile. "Did you get it all repaired?"

After Callie helped clear all the lamentation liquid out of my soul space, she'd returned to reality while I continued trying to repair all the damage as best I could. Which was, frankly, not that well. Genesis Burst applied directly to the damaged areas let me slowly fill in the pits and scars on the library, but it took HOURS to repair even a few of the surface level abrasions.

"Most of it," I hedged. "It's still underway. I left a few clones in there to keep at it. I was going stir crazy."

I could still feel the damage. It felt…off. I'd cracked my soul before. It was a natural part of cultivation, even if one you were REALLY supposed to try to avoid. But that was cracking. This was worse. Cracks were light and spread out, but they were mostly even. The damage from the lamentation liquid was irregular and uneven. A deep gouge here, a light scrape there. It was unbearable.

"Did you guys carry me back to the suite?" I asked slowly, looking around.

Callie nodded. "We did. Actually, Bethy did. She used her Domain to bring you back, because she was worried about jarring your concentration and messing up your recovery."

I glanced over to find the tiny vampire sitting with Chelsea, looking at me worriedly. I shot her a grateful smile. Bethy's senses were a lot sharper than most people our rank. Even Callie might not have been able to see as much about my situation from the outside as Bethy. "I appreciate that," I told her sincerely. "It means a lot."

"Of course," she said quietly, with a shaky smile. "You're my bestie. I was…you sounded really bad, Shane. Really bad. The screaming was awful. I've never heard someone sound so absolutely devastated."

Honestly, I was more worried about HER than I was me. I could handle pain, even soul pain. I'd long since subjected myself to infinitely worse. I was almost positive that recursion played some role in my frankly absurd pain tolerance, but even that hadn't saved me this time. Luckily pain tolerance wasn't just an in the moment thing. It was also how you dealt with pain after the fact, and I bounced back fast.

"I'm good," I assured her. "Bit of a rough time of it for a minute there, but I'm mostly healed up, and it's just pain." I grinned at her. "Besides, do you have time to worry about me? Aren't you planning a huge D-rank stampede?"

Her eyes widened. "Wait, how did you know about that?' She turned to Chelsea with a scowl. "You told?"

"She didn't," I assured her. "A little birdie told me." Bethy's ire turned on Archie, who she'd gotten kind of close with when he was staying in her Domain. "You? You were supposed to be the one! You were going to record it all while it was happening!" She slumped back into her chair with a dramatic wail, and Archie just cawed mercilessly. She sat up. "Well why didn't you just SAY it was too heavy?" He cawed again. "How was I supposed to know you actually MEANT it?"

Callie raised a hand. "Um, what is a D-rank stampede?"

"She was going to turn them all into cows and let them loose in the halls with numbers painted on their sides," I said bluntly. "I believe she was ALSO planning to skip a few numbers in the middle. Twelve, thirty two, and sixty eight. That way when people were searching for them, they would think they'd missed a few and keep looking. She might have gotten away with it too, except for one thing."

"It was a bad plan?" Callie asked mildly.

I nodded. "Terrible, yes. Also Archie is very lazy and she wanted to use an oversized high resolution camera."

"It records in nineteen dimensions," she protested pleadingly.

"Bethy, you can't even PERCEIVE that many dimensions," I reminded her. "Where did you even buy that? And how much did you pay for it, because it was almost definitely too much." Despite the tone of our banter, I could see Bethy relaxing. Our familiar dynamic was helping her forget the stress of seeing me go a little crazy.

While my constant need to shut Bethy down when she did things probably seemed negative or destructive to outsiders, Bethy valued our relationship a lot. She'd mentioned to Callie that I was one of the only people that consistently said no to her, even when she was being unreasonable, and that she respected my willingness to stand up to her. To this day I had no clue how much of her…Bethy-ness was faked, but I was happy to play the bad cop, if only because I was always highly entertained by her antics myself.

We chatted for a while before Gabe came and he and Chelsea took Bethy to get something to eat. She'd been waiting her for hours apparently, and I made sure to thank her for being such an excellent Master of Challenge, then turned to my parents.

"What happened?" my mom demanded anxiously, having been holding in her worry as I put my friends at ease. I appreciated it, because that had been a lot.

"The lamentation liquid was…tainted. Something was in it. Something I'm almost positive Morwenna is responsible for. It felt familiar somehow." I turned to Callie. "Did you feel that? Like something about it reminded me a little of…"

She nodded. "Adam," she confirmed. "But not. I mean, it DOES make some sense. Morwenna was there for his initial rise, right? Maybe she like…copied his original power? Experimented with it?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "I don't know a lot of things. Have you been able to contact Atlas?"

She shook her head. "I've been trying. I'm not even sure he can BE contacted outside of the space we went to when I formed my Chronicle. He's been dead a long time, and even as his avatar, there are limits. I've been trying to use the gem in Gossamer's hilt to reach him, because your mom said it was an object of power. I feel…something. Like there's an open line there I can't connect to. I'll work on resonating with the gem."

"You should also take my scrolls," I said with a grimace. "I only have about fifty, but any little bit helps. In the meantime, I'm going to let my stats roll in. I need to get stronger. Like…now. With all the buzz from the trial and the coronation, I have to have at least STARTED getting some of that Wishmaster income, even if I haven't been crowned yet. Any little bit will help."

I handed over fifty four scrolls to Callie. It wasn't many, but every little bit helped. I couldn't help but laugh at my own largesse as I had that thought. Fifty four wishes. Back in the day I'd had far fewer wishes per day, and I couldn't stockpile them at all. Not to mention my stat cap was ten points compared to the current one hundred. My income from wishes was incomparable to what I could net now.

But still…it wasn't enough. At my current income it would take me thirty YEARS to hit B-rank without any supplementation from renown. I had always been kind of perplexed how other members of the family could spend decades in D or even C-rank. But doing the math…I got it. It would be even longer at a lower rank with a lower stat cap.

Luckily I didn't need that. I DID have income, and I was sitting on a huge backlog most likely. So I retired to my room to get ready to let the power roll over me. I just hoped it wasn't too big of a percentage of my current value.

Closing my eyes…I let the energy hit. It was quite a bit. It wasn't double what I had, but it was definitely close. Maybe two thirds? It took me a minute to grit my way through the pain as I let the stats bolster me. Shockingly, most of my income was in Might and Focus. Since it was all from the same two sources I supposed that made sense, but it was still kind of staggering exactly how many of the points were concentrated in those stats.

Three hundred and twenty thousand Might, two hundred thirty one thousand Focus, and varying amounts in my other stats mostly coming in at less than a hundred thousand, giving me a current grand total of two point five million, two thousand six hundred and ninety four.

But more than that, I achieved something else. What I'd done earlier was nothing short of staggering. Driving out the energy of actual gods, even with help, was no mean feat. And I had decided that it was a skill I wanted to double down on. When you bound a page of your Chronicle, the skill or technique used in the binding created a powerful enhancement effect. As a thing became part of your legend, it became more legendary, and I was unwilling to let this particular skill bump go.

So I reached for the fact of what I'd done. Describing how to bind a Chronicle page was kind of like describing how to breathe. You can document the general motions, but it kind of misses out on how fundamental an act it is. Your chest moves and air gets sucked in doesn't really cover the miracle of inhalation, and describing the actual act of binding a page doesn't even come close.

But still, I knew how. I'd done it before, I could do it again, and I did. I pulled the truth of my earlier actions around me like a swirling cloak, pushing and condensing it into the Ten Demons Tome. The page was imbued with Leviathan, but also so much more. It was imbued with defiance. With resistance. With the very concept of raging against the Void, the corruption of Hatescream, and against anything that would attack my soul.

I felt the truth of these factors engraving themself into me, slowly integrating into my being in a way that I hadn't really experience before. I got SOME of this during stat increases, and I'd bound a page before, but I had been a little distracted. Now though, I was experiencing a change of my very nature (and one done at my own recognizance) and it was truly staggering.

Even thinking back on what had been done to me, I felt…less. Less bothered, less worried. If that happened again, I could feel that I'd be better prepared, that I was MADE to fight back.

Callie busted into the room, eyes wide as she searched the space frantically. "Shane!" she shouted in a panic, before freezing when she found me staring back at her with a raised eyebrow. "You…I felt, that is…what?"

I chuckled, then described what had happened. She nodded thoughtfully. "That's a smart idea. Increasing your resistance. Maybe I should do the same. I did help you cleanse it, and I have a feeling it might not be a bad thing to be prepared for running into Morwenna's…whatever that is, again."

"That's not a bad idea," I nodded. "But that's your first page, are you sure that's what you want?"

She nodded fiercely. "I never want to watch anything like that again. If I'd been more prepared maybe I could have helped faster. Besides, Morwenna will be targeting me, I'm sure. Might as well be prepared." I nodded, then gestured for her to sit down. I was already down here after my own binding, might as well help her out with hers.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

After adding the fifty four hundred points to Callie's Creation stat (she paid with ten charges of Adherent Fire, which I couldn't access through the bond and was VERY interested in researching) and binding her first page, Callie and I decided to take the rest of the night off. It had been a big day, and we were both exhausted. We fell asleep pretty quickly, and the next morning woke up eager to start the day. For some values of eagerness.

"I wish I was dead," I moaned loudly, burying my face in a pillow. "Kill me and put me out of my misery."

My wife snorted. "How were you chosen by an actual goddess of torment to receive her favor, have been LEGITIMATELY tortured by experts, and only last night endured the most painful soul baptism anyone we know has ever heard of, but THIS is where you hit your limit?"

"But it's so UNCOMFORTABLE," I whined. "My head is buzzing, and my throat is scratchy, and the roof of my mouth feels like it got kicked by a horse."

Yes, I, Solomon, future Wishmaster of the Wish Curse Palace, was sick. I had no idea how or WHERE I had caught it, and I'd been briefly worried it might be some sequelae from last night's Apostate adventure, but it turned out, I'd been overthinking it.

As soon as I'd woken up, Callie, who had also been worried, had run off to find my parents, who had promptly informed her…that I had the cold.

I'd tried everything to fix it. Purification, healing, even enhancement. Nothing worked. According to my mother, the common cold had such a reputation as an invincible bane on anyone it touched, that it had recursively mutated to become an invincible super bug. It didn't kill people, at least not ones with a decent amount of Vitality, but it DID wreck anyone who caught it. Basically, the cold had a reputation for making anyone who got infected JUST miserable enough to want to die, but not actually finishing the job. Lucky me.

Even more obnoxiously, Callie was apparently IMMUNE. Recursion turned the cold into a superbug when it came to even Ascendants, but it didn't apply to beings perceived as 'nonhuman'. Callie's racial trait apparently rendered her completely impervious to the dreaded virus, while my own part-time angel status meant nothing.

I was miserable. It didn't even really hurt. Like it did, but it was more of a bone deep ache. Everything was more sensitive, and I was shaky and weak, and my eyes were tearing up and the tears felt like someone was pouring boiling oil down my face. I hated every second of it.

Seeing how genuinely upset I was, Callie dropped her teasing, her face twisting in sympathy. "I know, hon. I can feel it, just…try not to think about it ok? Do you want me to get you some soup?" There was a knock on the door, and I groaned in pain as I wrapped my pillow tight around my ears to block out the loud sound. "I'll get that," she sighed.

"Hey Callie," my mom's voice echoed loudly from the door. So loudly. Like she must have been screaming. Even though it kind of sounded like she was trying to whisper. "How is he?"

My beloved snickered. "He's a whining pile of aches and complaining. Please tell me there's something you can do?" I peeked out from under my pillow helmet, glaring at her reproachfully, but winced and retreated because the light from the hallway was getting in my eyes. We'd been keeping the room dark because it helped my headache.

Sighing, my mother made a noise of sympathy. "Not really. The cold is…complicated. Recursion means you can't really beat it, just endure it. Some things kind of help. Soup, tea, it varies person to person. I actually had my mom make some hot soup for him, I wanted to deliver it in person but given what he's got…"

"Yeah, best leave it with me," Callie agreed. "Don't worry, I'll look after him. Here pass it over."

There was an obnoxiously loud clank of glass on wood, and then my mom called. "Feel better ok sweetie? If it helps, everyone knows the worst colds are always twenty four hour bugs, so that's the form it always takes for us. Just tough it out for a day and you'll be fine."

Callie thanked her and closed the door, walking over to sit on the bed next to me. "Shane? Honey I need you to stick your head out so you can eat this soup."

"No it's cold!" I whined, burrowing deeper into the pillow helmet.

"The soup is hot, though, it'll help warm you up," she coaxed gently, reaching over to wriggle the pillow away from me.

I retreated quickly. "No, it'll burn me!" I whined.

Internally, I winced at my whiny tone. I wasn't PROUD of my demeanor, admittedly. But I'd forgotten how much it SUCKED being sick. Pain was just…different when you were ill. Like even the toughest person would become a whimpering sack of meat when they were under the influence of the dreaded cold. I wondered if this was ALSO recursive. Like maybe this exact phenomena gave the cold some kind of pain tolerance bypass ability.

Sighing, my absolute saint of a wife cleared her throat, then scooped up a spoonful of clear, brothy soup, and began to blow on it. I poked my head out, looking at her suspiciously. She rolled her eyes and then offered it to me. I took the spoon carefully, sitting up, and then swallowed it. She raised an eyebrow. I shrugged sulkily. "S'good," I admitted.

Scoffing disgustedly, she held out the bowl itself. "I'm not feeding you bite by bite. I love you, but there are limits." I took the bowl, sniffing in offense (or as best I could), and then slowly started to eat. She let out a sigh of relief. "Is it helping?"

Despite my current suffering, I forced myself to clamp down on my whiny knee-jerk response, pasting a smile on my face. She was really worried, and I didn't want to make this harder on her. "It's helping," I said, trying to ignore the faint slur in my voice from the post nasal drip. "Feels good to eat something hot."

She smiled softly at me. "No it's not, but it's sweet that you're trying. I'm sorry you're in so much pain, baby, I wish I could help. On the upside, your mom says it's really rare. It's kind of a shock you caught it."

"I'm guessing something about the attack from the lamentation liquid softened me up," I grimaced as I burned my tongue. Not enough to cause damage, but all my sensations were heightened now in the worst way, and with my Perception so high, that was unbearable, especially since it didn't seem to affect my Focus at all, so there was no balance. It felt like my whole body was a raw nerve.

"Maybe," she hedged. "You did get hit pretty bad. But that's more of a soul thing, and the cold is physical. Mostly. I guess maybe there's a soul aspect. Since the damned thing DID mutate from recursion, who knows?"

I snorted, hot soup going up my nose, which set me off on a coughing fit. "Yeah," I wheezed. "Who knows? How much does it suck that we live in a universe where viruses can evolve to higher ranks?" I was just lucky that common wisdom claimed that the cold wasn't fatal, because I had no clue what rank this virus WAS but I was pretty sure it was powerful enough to kick my bucket if it hadn't been against the rules.

"It DOES suck," she allowed. "But I'm also kind of glad." I glared at her and she just laughed. "Not that you're hurting, obviously. But I know you. After what we saw, your first instinct would be to charge off into the unknown and look for any traces of Apostate here. Whatever the hell that is."

"And?" I said sharply. Or, well…dully. I didn't think it was possible to sound sharp when your head feels like it's full of bees. "We need to know what's going on, Cal, people are dying and-"

"And I'd prefer you not become one of them!" she snarled. "Damn it Shane, you don't THINK! This stupid trail of breadcrumbs is basically custom made for you. Step by step, someone is leading you off into the dark to get slaughtered. I know Darren dying shook you. He was family, even if you didn't know him that well, but you can't just run off to investigate without thinking about how it might work out!"

She was crying. I hadn't seen her cry in a long time. I hated it when she cried. "I…" I stammered, not sure what to say. "I'm fine-"

"You sounded like you were DYING you idiot!" she snapped, eyes blazing. "The screaming…I've heard your SOUL crack, and it wasn't that bad. That was…I was so SCARED, Shane. You don't make sounds like that. Not in years. Not even during the Lady's trials. So can you just…take a beat? Take one minute to process and heal and THINK before you run off and get yourself KILLED. Which, in case you forgot, we were recently told might kill ME too if you need any more motivation than my literal begging."

That stopped me cold. Because she was right. I'd been told her life might be tied to mine and I'd almost gotten my fucking soul destroyed less than an HOUR later. "I can't just let this go," I said stubbornly. "It's not even about my own desire to look into it, something is going on, and we might be in danger. If we ignore this I have a feeling it'll come back to bite me in the ass hard."

"Did I SAY to ignore it?" she asked archly. "Did you not just spend days recruiting a small council of people with a variety of useful skillsets specifically designed to make sure you don't need to do everything yourself? Maybe call Wulf back from that stupid goose chase you sent him on and have him do some actual work."

I blinked, because…she was right. I could have done that to start. I was so used to running off to handle shit myself that I'd ignored plenty of important assets. I wasn't convinced Wulf could have found anything from the lamentation liquid, but I'd been planning to chase the lead myself, and that WAS what he was there for. She put her hands on my face, resting her forehead against mine. It felt cool against my overheated skin.

"I'm not mad," she clarified. "I'm afraid. Not of me dying, but of losing you. It means a lot that you're thinking it through now though. I know that it's hard for us to change. All that recursion pushing you down the same road. You're putting in the effort and that's all I'm asking for. Do you want me to contact Wulf for you? And don't say you want me to call him here, if he gets sick he won't be productive, and we don't have the day to waste on a prank."

I grinned at her. "You know me so well. Yeah, have him put feelers out. Anything to do with Apostate, the Void, Morwenna, or the Vanished gods. Cast a wide net. And tell him to report ALL of it. Rumors, whispers, snippets of conversation. I don't care if his girlfriend's cousin's sister's husband's great aunt's hairdresser thought he saw something vaguely void shaped in his TOAST, I want to know."

With Dantalion, I could parse tons of data, but I needed some data to parse. Since I was sick anyway, I might as well do something productive. I tried not to think about the buzzing in my head as I considered processing all that information. This was not going to be a fun day.