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

[Malcolm Tent]

After we got everyone up to speed we identified a way for everyone to get down to the ground with the goats (which could apparently walk nearly vertically when needed), but as per my brilliant plan Callie and I decided to take the quick way down. In order for us to hit them at the right time (in the middle of the night) we waited up on the cliff while the others took the slower path, made even slower than it would have been by Randall.


"So." Said my girlfriend after the team left. "You're taking to this planning thing well. This is a step up from having Abel throw you at a flying monster."


I gave an embarrassed chuckle. "Not my finest hour, but this should work out. With State of Grace I can float us down over to the fortress and you can bring us in through the shadows. You can transport me like that right?"


She nodded. "I can. Our bond means you can use my Skills and can count as an extension of me if I push. Luckily my ability is still MUCH less complicated than yours."


I sighed, wincing as I remembered trying to let Callie tap into my Wish power. It had been a painful and completely fruitless experience. "In any case, it'll take them a few hours to hit the ground and by the time they do it'll be go time." I gestured to the cliff edge. "Care to sit and watch the sunset with me?"


Beaming, she dropped down to snuggle up against me as I sat. "I'd love to. This is a beautiful view. Don't you thing?"


I smiled softly at her. "I'm becoming accustomed to being overwhelmed by the beauty I see every day." I made sure my tone and the bond left no doubt I was talking about her. I also took me mask off, because it seemed like it might kill the moment.


Her kiss was giddy with affection and contentment, and I reveled in how intense it could be feeling her emotions like that while she was feeling mine. The feedback loop of adoration and happiness was kind of intoxicating.


Leaning her head against my chest, she looked out over the core. "I love you." She said softly. "Not just for all this, but...this is amazing. I would have never imagined any of this before I met you."


I smiled, putting an arm around her. "It wouldn't mean half as much if you weren't here. Getting to travel the universe is pretty cool. Getting to do it with the woman I love is a dream."


"Speaking of dreams." She said wryly. "I felt a bit of a shift in the way you were feeling not long ago. You seem more purposeful, more driven. Kind of like you did when you decided to look for your mom. Make any big life decisions?"


It occurred to me that I hadn't mentioned that to her. I'd made the call in head but I'd never shared the realization that I wanted to save my family from themselves.


"I realized why I need to win this." I said quietly. "Up to now this has been a game, or a means to an end. I decided to push on to help with my goals, but this is going to be more than that. I'm going to be the Wishmaster. I need to be. Because I realized the other day that the way I was raised, that Nat was raised. I hate it. I don't want any of my relatives to have to grow up like I did."



It felt stupid saying it out loud. I was so far from the Wishmaster title that it wasn't even funny, and who was I to gainsay the way my family had been doing things for centuries. But...I didn't care. It was my path, and I was going to walk it the way I wanted.


Callie must have been feeling what I was through the bond. She laced her fingers through mine and squeezed. "Hey." She said firmly. "That's a really great goal. And I'm in."


I paused. "If I do become the Wishmaster, I wonder if there's an office you inherit. Like is there a Wish Mastress?"


She pinched the bridge of her nose with her free hand. "The female form of Master is Mistress. Mastress isn't a word. And if that was you proposing to me I'm going to kick your ass. And also say no. Not because I don't love you but just-"


"Too soon." I said firmly. "Waay too soon. Trust me, I'm not crazy. It was a joke. Not that I might not someday. I probably will. But I'll put a lot more thought into it."


Her smile was brilliant. "You'd better." It was funny, the bond saved so many misunderstandings. She knew what I meant, what I felt, and I knew her. There was no offense taken or meant. We loved each other, and we both knew it, and that was enough.


We stayed like that for about two hours. Holding each other and watching the sun set. Once it went down we stated up at the absolutely colossal moon above us, until finally there was a red flash of fire off to the side of the cliff where the others had started heading down.


The signal that they were in position. I double checked the map, which had filled in for everything we could see from up here, and once I confirmed they were in the right spot I stood up, reaffixing my mask. "Alright love. You ready for this? The plan hinges on you being able to get us in and keep us stealthed."


She snorted, blowing a strand of hair from her eyes as she stood and fixed her costume, smoothing out wrinkles that admittedly wouldn't have stuck around anyway and brushing dirt off her coat where she'd been sitting on it. "Please. I was born ready."


I snickered and offered her my arm. "Shall we? Careful of that first step. It's a doozy."


Smirking, she took my arm as I actived State of Grace and we stepped off the cliff, drifting much slower than we should have and forward as we fell leisurely toward the fortress in the distance.


Shifting in the air, I aimed us nearby but not on the actual fortress. As we touched down, rather than hit the ground, we slipped through the shadows and into...nothing.


I'd never traveled through the shadows with Callie before, and the sensation was like nothing I'd ever felt. Cold and dark and empty in a way I'd never experienced, then within one heart beat and the next, I felt warmth wash over me as I was shoved back into the real world again.


I shuddered a bit as we emerged. That had been unpleasant. I glanced at Callie, who shrugged apologetically. "It gets easier. The space between shadows is weird. Kind of a void. I've been in a few times, and my shadow manipulation skills makes it easier. We're under Stealth by the way."


I hadn't noticed, too distracted by the jarring sensation. After adjusting, I nodded. "Alright. Can you identify which of them are the locals? They'll be the strongest. We want to take the peak F-rankers out first."


She grinned. "I know which are which. I did a search through the shadows when we entered. I found them, and I should be able to hold them for a minute or so especially with the extra Impact. Are you sure you can take them out? Your tranq attacks are all G-rank aren't they?"


I heated my staff. "Yup. But the Stygian Branch is E-ranked. That won't increase the effectiveness of the tranquilizer attacks enough to put them down easy, but if I use the poison as a carrier the combination should be close to enough. I'll be using Afterburner at the same time, which works for ten attacks. If they're immobilized and I target their heads that should keep them under."



I'd have to be careful not to hit them too hars or I might kill them, but all the modifiers combined with my staff directly impacting the brain should do the job assuming they didn't struggle.


Triggering Afterburner and Touch of Tears I decided to forgo Consecration of Flames, since that would be more geared toward damage. Overhwelming their regen would be great, but not if I was targeting the brain, I might accidentally kill them.


This was already risky, but as peak F-rankers their Vitality should fix any incidental damage. I nodded to Callie, who had waited for me to process and get ready, then she gestured for me to follow and lead me toward the first target.


She'd found one of them asleep, letting us slip through the door easily under stealth and as we approached she closed her eyes and gestured. The shadows around the bed snapped up into chains encircling the local warrior up the length of his body.


Pinned to the bed with an arm under his head and one between his legs he was in a supremely awkward position, and my measured smack to the back of his head landed squarely. His eyes rolled up in his head as the compounding effects delivered the tranquilizer to his brain.


I nodded and we moved on. We took out the other four locals the same way, some of them standing guard and not expecting an attack from behind, some sleeping like the first. After we subdued each we tied them up with a more durable rope that wouldn't dissolve, making sure they were bound too tightly and in too awkward a position to exert enough force to escape.


Once that was done though, we ran into a small issue. I had three more tranquilizer blows in stock, and four more hits with Afterburner (the poison had taken one). We debated whether to try to take out the leader of the enemy team, but decided it was too risky.


Sneaking into the nearest rooms to the gates, we took out the three most likely to notice the gates opening. Stealth served us well, and we managed to remain completely undetected. Their sentries had been the locals we'd taken out, attention all focused outward.


I could see why Callie liked this kind of thing so much. This whole attack had gone off without a hitch. Granted, it had been pretty much an ideal situation, but it felt good to operate how my build was meant to, and better to do it alongside my girl.


Once we took down the last one we made our way to the front gates and opened them. Sadly, our luck could only hold for so long. The gates made a huge racket as they opened, and I heard the shouts of alarm as they realized their companions were gone. We'd hidden the subdued team members so they couldn't find and free them before this was over, so all they could do was attack.


A column of red ice smashed down from above, and I prepared to block, but it wasn't necessary. Our part was over, and a massive fist slammed against the descending column, stopping it cold before a huge cloud of flame consumed it entirely.


Abel and Mel stepped past us calmly as the enemy filed out, Randall looming behind them with Jessie on his back as the other fanned out in front of us. Stepping in front of Callie, I used my last charge of afterburner to trigger my Mountain Stance, and prepared to tank anything that made it past my team.


I wasn't too worried though. This had been a perfectly executed raid, and now I'd leave the rest to the people best suited for the job. It was my first real time experiencing it, but damn, I loved it when a plan came together. I could get used to this whole leader thing.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The weakness hit me after I finished with Afterburner, and I felt Jessie's hand on my shoulder almost instantly. Randall had continued into the fray, but our team's healer had stopped to check on us first. Callie was fine, if winded now that she'd had a chance to slow down. I was exhausted, though Mountain Stance was keeping me up. Jessie's life energy boost certainly helped, and I was able to keep my feet while I watched the others go at it.

The red ice had mostly shattered rather than melting properly, a shower of red smoking shards plummeting toward us, but Mel had erected a shield to stop them, and despite being sturdy enough that the inner portions of the ice pillar hadn't melted, the ice wasn't fire proof. Abel was raining down phantom punches at them from above, and the remaining seven had grouped up for defense, surprisingly in tune with each other.

The leader, a small, pale looking guy with dark circles around his eyes, seemed to be on defense. He had a hungry expression on his face as he inhaled, creating a dark vortex that literally ripped a chunk off one of Abel's fist manifestations. My teacher cursed as he pulled back, shaking his hand and flexing his fingers, clearly trying to get it to move properly. "Shit." He cursed quietly. "That hurt."

I kept my defensive stance up as I walked forward. Mountain Stance required ground contact to function, and it usually worked better from a standstill, but I was familiar enough with altering skills that as long as I walked slow and took it one at a time I COULD move. It had the added benefit of being really intimidating, and as I thumped forward I called for everyone to stop.

"Let's talk." I said loudly enough for the enemy to hear. "We're from the Starchaser Pavilion. We got you, this fight is pointless. Your local escorts were the only peak F-rankers you had, and we took them out, while ours are still very much active. Beginning F-rank to peak F-rank isn't a fight anyone could manage with these numbers. MAYBE if there was one of them you could take them down in a group, but with these odds? It's not happening."

The leader raised an eyebrow. "I assume you have some idea how this should go? Or are you just laying out our loss because you're a braggy asshole?"

I grinned at him. I liked this guy. "We want you to switch sides. You're one of the dungeon groups like we are, which means the kingdom you're working for is a temporary employer at best. We took out their representatives and now you're free agents. You work with us and we're willing to cut you in for part of our Dew haul. We have ways of making sure you don't switch sides again, of course, but nothing painful or problematic long term."

I'd had the idea to offer them wishes and use their service as a cost. With them under a geass to temporarily work for us we wouldn't need to worry about backstabbing, and we would have someone to man the fortress when we had to head out to search the core. I didn't want to be cooped up here all the time when there were wizard's towers to explore and other teams to meet. Plus when we WERE back in the fortress they could do patrols to look for flowers so we had no down time.

The guy looked pensive. "Maybe. I'd need to hear about these 'ways'. You're right that we don't have any real loyalty to our current hosts. The prince of the kingdom who picked us up is an asshole, and spends most of his time flirting with Tiffany." He pointed at a tall, slim girl with olive skin and purple hair, her eyes slitted like a cat. She gave an embarrassed cough and waved at us and I chuckled a bit. She clearly preferred to let her team leader handle the talking.

Turning back to the more vocal member of the team, I nodded. "We'll need to restrain you. Nothing personal, but we don't know any of you. Before we do though, I can bring out the restrained locals and the three members of your crew to show you that we haven't hurt them and can be trusted with members of your team at our mercy."

He didn't look happy, but I think he knew that even if he said no we'd just kick their asses and restrain them anyway. I gestured for Valk to get and get the others, and smiled when he glanced at Nat for approval. My cousin smirked at me but gave him the go ahead and he went to retrieve the unconscious bodies. He brought back seven of them, dumping them in front of me, and I froze. "Where's the last one?"

Valk raised a brow at me. "These were the only ones." I looked over the faces, realizing one of the locals had somehow slipped his restraints and escaped. I cursed, looking to the leader of the other team. "Ok, two questions, who is missing and what's your name? I can't keep referring to you as 'team leader' in my head."

He chuckled at that. "I'm Samuel. Samuel Stark." He looked over the bodies and winced. "Shit. Mazrik is gone. He was our scout, nominally, but more realistically he's a spy for prince Bertrand. I imagine he went to go tell the prince about us losing the fortress. Guess side switching is our only option. I'd wake up my boys there if I were you, because you'll need us to defend this place. We're going to be ass deep in Kargath soldiers in less than an hour."

Cursing, I focused my Eye of Revelation on him, looking for any signs of deception. I found none. Luckily, we had options. I called Nat over, explaining the plan to her. She grinned. "Geasa are a traditional way of making deals with shaky allies. Your old man is famous for that. I approve. I haven't used up my wishes for today, I usually keep them in reserve, so I can bind six of them, and either you or I can do the other four tomorrow."

"Alright." I said firmly. "Get the leader and five of the others that are still functional. The one with the red ice powers and Tiffany, since we know they're relevant, then pick three more."

She chuckled, nodding and heading off. I also glanced over to Callie, gesturing after her. Ostensibly it was to give her support, but letting my cousin make the contracts wasn't exactly risk free. Callie knew some tricks from working with me on the subject, and she'd make sure Nat didn't slip any extra instructions in while she was at it. Trust bit verify and all that.

With that done, I looked for Abel, finding my mentor nearby talking to Anna-Marie. I strode over in time to hear him asking her about defenses, and I decided to jump in. "Hey." I said as I reached them. "We think Kargath might hit us soon. This is a fortress, and it's literally designed to stop an army. Can you tell us anything about the defensive capabilities of this place? Any standard they might use?"

She shook her head. "I'm not even remotely up to date on this kind of thing." She looked at the five peak F-rank guards. "Do any of you know how these places are laid out? This is close enough that it might have been a Ladrigan fortress when it was built."

The closest, a small, severe woman with dark skin and tightly braided hair, shook her head. "No, your majesty. This would have been before our times. Perhaps if we had a map."

I saw the princess realize it the same time I did, and reached into my ring to pull out the map, passing it over. The guard looked over it. "I can work with this. I'll start setting up our defenses."

"Oh." I said in realization. "Here." I passed it her the bone wall. "This is the only defensive artifact that will be overtly useful here I think. If you find any uses for the others let me know, Anna-Marie has a list of what we bought. Thank you for your help..." I trailed off, unaware of her name.

She smiled. "Amaya, sir. Captain of lady Salara's house guard. She sent me to keep an eye on her little girl, so thank you for making that easier." She looked around at the fortress. "Oh, and sir?" I cocked my head so she'd know I was listening. "This wasn't a bad plan, but in the future, remember to leave room for improvisation. Abilities and Skills make any plan a tentative failure. It's a common first time mistake." I guessed she'd seen the guilt already starting to gnaw at my gut for screwing this up.

I nodded as she hurried off. I felt a slap on my back and jumped. Abel was smiling at me. "She's right kid. I can see the hamster wheel in your brain turning, but don't second guess yourself. This was solid, you can't account for bullshit powers. Like yours, actually. That damned escape skill of yours would have made this whole thing pointless. Nobody is perfect."

It only took a minute for the purple electricity of my cousins wishes to settle and for everyone to gather up. "Alright." I said as they all assembled, including the now healed and only slightly grumpy three captives we'd set loose. "Callie, I need you on overwatch. Hit the shadows and figure out where they're coming at us from and how many. Jessie, I want Randall at the gate. They'll try to breach through there most likely. It's easier to pop open than the walls."

She nodded. "I can have him pin it shut, but I don't think it'll be an issue. There's a giant ass bone wall in front of it now." I looked over and sure enough Amaya had used the bone wall to cover the front gate, covering out major weak point. "Mel." I said, moving on. "Can you do a flame shield that covers this whole place?" I had an idea to help with that if she could, and I exhaled in relief as she nodded.

"I can." She said slowly. "It won't be particularly sturdy or dangerous, but I can whip up something thin."

"Perfect." I grinned. "I'll work with you on that. Abel, you're on Callie. Make sure nobody takes her out while she's giving us intel. Once they arrive escort her to where Mel and I are working. Valk, you're on Jessie with Perit, Benny, Celine, and Nat. Help her defend the front, but more importantly make sure our healer isn't taken out. Benny, Celine, make sure you don't get bogged down, we might need you to move."

With a plan in place we all scattered. I was...I was terrified. My last plan had just gone terribly wrong, and now I was throwing them to the wolves, so to speak. Jessie had the wolves with Randall, actually, but still. I followed Mel to the center of the fortress, climbing up on the roof as she looked around. "Well." She said impatiently. "I assume you have a plan?"

I grinned, putting a hand on her shoulder, triggering, Consecration of Flames, Touch of Tears, Mercy Kill,a triple stacked density shift, and with a massive wrench at the skills via my soul, Stone Limb and Mountain stance. "Do it." I grunted. And she erected the shield. Which was touching the ground.

I nearly blacked out from the pain as I forced the two skills to work in a way they were never intended to, but managed to hold on. As my head cleared I saw a massive dome of green acidic magma form over us, reinforced with as much defensive power as I could reasonably handle. Mel looked around with a long whistle. "Ok. That's actually kind of impressive. That's probably going to help." My only response was a low keening whine. My head was killing me.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The shield was MASSIVE. It didn't seem that big honestly, before I'd started. The fortress wasn't huge, at least not on the outside. It was just a reasonably large building, and given the scale I could work on when needed I wasn't too worried about pulling off the invocation. In retrospect, that was pretty stupid.

I could FEEL every inch of it. The actual working was so absurdly difficult it almost broke me. One massive crushing blow to my soul that would have shattered it if it lasted any longer, followed by continued pressure that I could feel Callie helping me offload. I had to stay standing, keep my feet planted, to maintain Mountain Stance, and I'm pretty sure that was all that prevented me from passing out from the pain.

On the upside, the damned thing was STRONG. Mel's Might was ridiculously high considering her flame abilities, not to Jessie's level of specialization, but closer than most. Her flames were extremely hot even spread out. Infused with Consecration of flame to enhance them, Touch of Tears to make them stronger, Mercy Kill to boost their power, and then with all that offense turned to defense by Stone Limb, they were formidable already.

Making that dangerously hot and sturdy magma three times denser with a density shift triple stack, followed by Mountain Stance to triple the defense of the whole thing...it wouldn't stop them completely, couldn't given the stat disparity in some cases, but even peak F-rankers would probably need some time to get through it.

Honestly a working this size would have been impossible before my rank up. Having an orange soul was a qualitative difference from having a red one, and being fifteen percent of the way to the next level gave me that extra bit I needed. Mel cocked her head at me. "I'm impressed. Somewhat horrified, but impressed. Having just cast that, I realize the strain you're currently under. I have no clue how you're conscious."

"Practice." I grunted. "I'm not Abel, but I put in the work when it comes to soul strength. I'm used to working through the pain." Every word felt like someone was driving glass into the back of my eyes, so clearly not THAT used to it, but I didn't say that. As the leader, I needed to do SOMETHING to help with this battle. I saw a slight flicker and Amaya landed on the roof next to us.

"Sir. I take it this defensive dome is you?" Her voice was impressed, and I was glad I had a mask on since my face was bright red and probably currently dripped blood from my eyes and nose.

Unable to nod, I gave a grunt of affirmation. "It is. Hope I didn't disrupt your plans for our defense." I hadn't know what they were doing, but the bone wall showed me they were ok with defensive enclosures, so I'd taken a gamble on this whole thing.

"No sir." She said, shaking her head. "To be honest this is ideal. We've identified and begun repairing the defensive enchantments on the fortress. They're of Ladrigani origin, if somewhat out of date, and one of my teammates is classically trained. I don't know the details, but apparently our kingdom has developed a standardized set of enchantment runes for ease of repair. It'll take some time, but if we can fix them we should be able to hold this position until we can send for reinforcements from lady Salara."

I hadn't realized we had that option, but I supposed taking this place was a coup for Ladrigan, if it could be held, that would be a major strategic advantage. Salara would be stupid to pass up the opportunity, and even if she didn't have the guards on hand, she could always hire more, or borrow some from the king.

"How long is it going to take?" I asked through gritted teeth. I might be able to hold the shield as I was, but I was functionally useless in any other fashion right now. Callie would be distracted too, though not as much considering she was only offloading about a quarter of the strain. She kept trying to take more, but only one of us needed to be paralyzed with pain, so I only gave her what I couldn't handle. Still, I'd probably be dead without her. I loved that girl.

She looked uncertain. "Anywhere from an hour to four." She said apologetically. "The enchantments are carved into the bedrock of this place, but they're old and very damaged. Some of the runes need to be recast to get them running again. Luckily we're on top of a natural wellspring of energy, so we don't need to worry about a battery. In fact, the one part of the enchantments that HAVE been working were the power siphon runes. It's been soaking up energy for decades."

Which explained why the enemy hadn't been using the wellspring. I made a note, because if this could benefit us it could screw us. The original builders of the fortress had an advantage when it came to occupation, though not an absolute one, or they wouldn't have lost the damned base in the first place.

Swallowing hard, I forced my tunnel visioned gaze back to Amaya. "I'll hold as long as I can. Work with Callie. Try to get your people into the best possible defensive position. Hell, try to get MY people in the best possible defensive position. I gave them all orders, but I'm not a tactician. You have way more experience with this kind of thing, so command is yours."

Her posture straightened and her fist went up to her heart. "Thank you sir. I won't let you down." Then she turned and stepped off the roof in a few quick paces. Mel chuckled. "Good call there. Always defer to the expert. Want me to follow her? I'm on the fence about whether or not you need protection."

"Go." I said firmly. "I'll be fine. Let the others know Amaya is in charge. Should have asked her what to do to start with. Didn't consider requesting the help since she's not one of my people. I won't make that mistake again."

She gave an approving nod and hopped off the roof, vanishing into the darkness. To my surprise, she was replaced shortly after with Benny and Celine. He grinned at me as he appeared. "New boss lady thought you might need a body guard, and apparently we're less useful out there than watching your sorry ass take a standing nap."

"I'd flip you off." I grunted. "If I could raise my arms." My head was swimming, but it was also helping to talk to Benny. Gave me something to focus on.

The help became much more pronounced when he put a hand on my shoulder and a wave of cooling, soothing, relief rolled over me. Not enough to completely counter the pain, but enough to offset it quite a bit. My head cleared enough that I'd consider the remaining agony something like an ice cream headache instead of paralyzing waves of searing torment.

True to my word, I raised my middle finger at my best friend, who laughed, before saying in a hoarse voice. "Thanks. That belt is awesome. You have anything in your new bag of tricks that might help? I never got the chance to ask about any of the upgrades. Assuming you got them done."

He chuckled. "I did. Two of them. I got rid of the rope and the long range attack attraction device in my left forearm. I managed to rig up a few things that would be useful, but the two I liked best were respectively a G-ranked artifact that allows momentary intangibility, and an F-ranked defensive artifact that creates a small energy barrier of variable shape. Both useful, especially combined with my other tricks."

I whistled. "Not bad. Especially the shield. I assume the density shifting works on that?" I admit I was a bit excited about trading for some charges with those too. Benny's new tricks suited me pretty well. The intangibility would compliment my combat style perfectly.

He grinned, raising his left forearm and manifesting a plane of energy in front of it that he shaped into a hand holding up a middle finger. Then he concentrated and the yellow energy became brighter and more opaque. I took that to be a yes.
Celine scoffed. "Honestly, can the two of you behave? If Callie finds out I let you get each other killed because you were too busy making crude gestures and flinging veiled insults she'll never forgive me."

"Veiled?" I said in a wounded voice. "Our insults aren't veiled. We're very up front about mocking each other. Aren't we fuckface?"

Benny burst out laughing, but quieted immediately when his girlfriend glared at him. What a pushover. I felt a small burst of irritation from the bond, and remembered MY girlfriend was currently inhabiting the shadows in the surrounding area to do recon, so I cleared my throat and stopped messing around. Which was totally different. For some reason.

"Anyway." I said with a nervous laugh. "I should feel if they breach the shield, but keep your eyes peeled for anyone who has an ability that can bypass it. That's the trick we used on them, so no chance we don't see it exploited. I'm sure the enchantments on this place have a failsafe for that, or if not that they'll add one. But until they're up we're vulnerable."

The two of them nodded, taking up position on either side of me, Benny keeping his hand on me. It helped for a bit, but within five minutes I felt something smash into the dome, and my knees buckled. The only active connection I had was Mountain Stance, but that was keeping me on my feet, so them slamming into it like that threw me. Benny and Celine caught me under the arms. "Whoa there." Said my best friend, voice light and unconcerned enough that I might have believed he wasn't worried if not for the death grip on my arm. "Don't trip."

My whole body shuddered as they assaulted the damned dome again. And again. My brain was whiting out from the pain, but with the spiritual calming effect I was able to hold on. I became lost, set adrift on a sea of blazing white agony, I felt like fireworks were going off behind my eyes now, melting and cauterizing the shards of glass and their wounds. But I stuck with it.

Days. Months. Years. It felt like eons. Like an eternity. I lost all sense of time and meaning, nothing but pain existed. Every second felt like it would be the end of me, like it would be too much, but I always managed to push just a bit longer. I started screaming at some point, I don't know when. But I realized I was doing it when my voice gave out and I couldn't anymore.

And finally...it stopped. The connection snapped, the dome came down, and I slumped bonelessly to the ground, heaving and choking out gasps of pain. I would have cried, I think, if I'd had any strength for tears. Instead I just lay there. After a few minutes my eyes started working again, and I groaned and say up. Benny and Celine were posted up around me protectively.

I heard explosions in the distance, saw flame and fist and red ice raining from the sky. They'd gotten in. I turned to Benny, who gave me a fake grin that didn't reach his horrified and concerned eyes. I coughed, clearing my throat and taking our a bottle of water before managing to croak out. "How long?"

"An hour." He said shakily. "Give or take. They almost have the defenses up, Amaya was here a few minutes ago. They weren't as damaged as they'd feared. Are you...are you ok, man? That was horrible."

I just chuckled, thumping back onto the roof and letting my eyes drift shut. I was too injured to help with the fight. My part in this was over. I just hoped I'd done enough. "I will be, Benny. I will be." The pain had been horrible, but it was nothing compared to the pride. Maybe I really could do this leader thing, even when my plans didn't go the way I'd hoped.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"Ow." I said weakly. "Remind me never to do that again." My head felt like jelly. I thought it had been a few more minutes since the shield fell, but I couldn't really keep track of time. Benny still had a hand on my shoulder, and now that I wasn't holding up the shield the Spiritual Calming was helping a lot more, actually repairing the strain instead of offsetting it.

"Oh trust me." Said a furious voice. "I will." I froze, eyes snapping open as I looked up at the viciously glaring form of my girlfriend.

"Hey, honey." I said nervously. "I just got done helping with the defenses safely from behind a pair of guards. You know, all safe-like."

"Really?" She hissed. "Because it FELT like you just got finished nearly collapsing your soul in an attempt to bear the brunt of a massive soul weight. One I had to help you with just to keep you alive, and one so crushing you very nearly destroyed your entire being."

I could have ignored the anger. But the quaver of fear in her voice broke my heart. "I..." I searched for words. "I screwed up, both here and on the plan. I figured helping defend the place could make it right. I didn't realize how much it would take to do it until I'd already started, and my options were take the pain or drop the shield and let you all get hurt. I'm sorry. I should have thought about how you would feel."

"You should-" She hissed angrily. "Have worried about your own damned LIFE, Shane. Being stupid and reckless with your body is one thing, Jessie can heal that most of the time. Being stupid and reckless with your SOUL is something else." Her eyes started to swim, tears rolling down her cheeks, and I flinched. Callie crying was the most heartbreaking thing I'd ever seen. She NEVER cried, especially not out in the open. I felt like someone was tearing my heart out.

She felt it too, because her face crumpled as she slumped down on where I was laying and started straight up bawling. "I could FEEL it." She sobbed. "FEEL your pain and fear. The whole time. Most of the other times you were in trouble the bond fried. This was...it was awful Shane. It felt like you were dying. Like I was dying. Please don't ever do that to me again. Don't EVER scare me like that."

I put my arms around her and just held her, feeling like I couldn't have fucked this up any worse if I'd been trying. Tonight had been a rollercoaster. Infiltration had gone well, then I fucked up and didn't account for one of the locals slipping away, then the shield had been helpful, but I terrorized my girlfriend by accident. I wasn't even sure what to feel anymore. Was I supposed to be happy about my victories? Guilty? I was mostly the latter honestly.

Looking around, I heard nothing, seeing the explosions and manifestations had stopped. "Did they get the defenses running again?" I asked the night at large, not willing to pull away from my crying girlfriend to check personally when she was this upset.

Callie, as a rule, was not a weepy or easily shaken person. I HAD seen her cry, usually about personal emotional topics we discussed in private. This was a whole different thing. I was worried I'd subjected her to something horrible. The pain had been brain melting for me, but arguably worse for her, because she was feeling how I reacted to it, on top of being in agony herself from her portion of the weight.

"Yeah, they got it done." Said the surprisingly gentle voice of Abel. "The princess is consulting with her guards about possible reinforcements, and your cousin is keeping the new hires at bay while you two get your heads in order. Figured you might need a minute. That sounded like a bad one, kid. I've been through some shit, but hearing you scream like that was...unsettling."

I winced. If ABEL had been worried, I must have sounded horrible. "Yeah...it's been universally agreed I kind of fucked up there. I think I miscalculated the strain because of the weakening from Afterburner." Because I HAD. I hadn't expected it to be quite that awful. I'd reverted to reacting instead of acting. Which was fine, you couldn't always have the initiative, but I hadn't thought it through. I'd reacted on instinct, and mine weren't great yet.

"How are the defenses holding up?" I ask after a few minutes, when Callie and I both calmed down enough to sit up. Benny had stepped back, and my head was...not great, but working at least.

"Not bad." Said Abel casually. "There's an exclusion field apparently, first thing that happened was every member of the enemy force was covered with hives. Helped most of them were poisoned already. That damned shield did a number on everyone who tried to get through. Even after it came down they were all in serious pain. Not bad kid."

Callie's leg lashed out, slamming into his shin hard enough to make him wince. "DO NOT." She snarled. "Encourage him. There were other options. We could have all curled up in the bubble shield or something. We bought defenses for a reason."

I held up my hands in surrender. "Whoa. You're right, just breathe, love. I was hoping to save those for when we were out in the wilderness finding ruins. I realize that lagging on my decisions for some undetermined future moment isn't exactly a brilliant call. I'll do better next time."

She grabbed my coat, wiping her eyes with it and glaring as if daring me to complain, then stood up and hauled me to my feet. The she took a long, soothing breath, and nodded. "Alright. I'm good. We can go meet up with the others. And..." She looked at our teacher. "Thanks Abel. I appreciate you covering for us."

He just shrugged, obviously not interested in talking about it. As we climbed to our feet (me unshakily) I looked at Callie. "How did recon go. How many were there? Were you able to pick them up in time?"

She nodded, surreptitiously slipping close enough to tuck herself under my arm. She made it look affectionate, but I could tell she was trying to help keep me from wobbling. I hoped she could feel the gratitude and affection through the bond. "It was easy enough." She said simply. "There were about thirty of them. Thankfully most of them were either peak G-rank or early F-rank, so holding them back wasn't too much trouble."

That sounded like a sanitized version of events, but since they hadn't mentioned any casualties I wasn't complaining. Abel cut in. "Once the exclusion field got them out a shield went up. Some huge barrier that can somehow tell who is and isn't a Ladrigan loyalist. The enchantments here are peak F-rank, maybe even half step E-rank, as they call it. We were damned lucky to get them back up."

"This is true." Said the pleased voice of Anna-Marie as she approached with Amaya. "That shield was brilliantly done, Solomon. We couldn't have held this place without you. It's so old I'd never heard that it used to be one of ours. Lucky we discovered it."

"How did they lose it if the enchantments are so strong?" I asked cautiously. I didn't want to find out the hard way there was some kind of secret back door that was going to screw us.

Amaya grimaced. "Probably the same way any of us lose them. They drowned it in bodies. The core isn't a great place for long term occupation. The awakening is ironically the best time, because the saturation of forces means all the old garrisons are being retaken. Committing too many men to a single assault is pointless when you're just taking one of a thousand fortresses. We got in early and your plan let us take advantage of a gap in their awareness, I doubt it will be so easy going forward."

Anna-Marie nodded. "And despite the personalized enchantment style of the various kingdoms, my enchanters say if they get enough time to dig in the enemy CAN activate the defenses on outside fortresses. Takes serious reworking, and it's usually fixable easily enough if you can get back in. That was what the damage to this one was. Alterations by the enemy who took it in last, whenever that was."

I guessed that completely reenchanting a whole fortress would be pointless if you could just make a new one, so I could see why they just kept jailbreaking the things. Looking at Amaya, I cocked my head. "Does that mean we have actual reinforcements coming to help us hold this? Being so close to the Ladrigan access passes makes this a strategic win, right?"

She grinned, the first real smile I'd seen from the taciturn warrior. "That it is. We've already contacted Lady Salara to send more forces our way. She's speaking with the king now, we'll most likely see the army arriving soon. I take it you'll be heading out once they arrive?"

"Yes." I said firmly. "We definitely will. The longer we wait the more behind we fall. We got a bit of a head start finding the flowers so early, but we don't want to rest on our laurels."

Callie cleared her throat menacingly and I chuckled a bit. "Though of course we'll be staying here tonight no matter what. It's dark and going out on our own at night without scouting would be a stupid choice. Plus we have to talk to our new employees." And wait until tomorrow so I could finish binding the rest of them. I wasn't trusting the last four to abide by the contract just because of their buddies.

Anna-Marie beamed at me. "Well you're certainly safe here. You can have your pick of the rooms. We'll keep them clear for you when you're gone as well, so you can come back for a rest at any point. I take it you'll be searching for ruins?"

"Yeah. Wizards towers, temples, that kind of thing." I said excitedly. "We can search them for interesting artifacts or books when we find them, between finding new patches of flowers." Even Callie, bad a mood as she was in, looked thrilled at the idea of exploring ancient ruins for treasure. I should start carrying treasure chests in my spatial ring to pass her when she got mad at me.

Still supporting me, she grabbed hold of my arm and smiled at the princess. "Those rooms sound lovely if you could lead us to them. We're all tired and we could do with a nap."

Anna-Marie nodded to Amaya. "Captain. If you could take them to their rooms? I know it's a bit below your pay grade but the others are clearing out the rest of the fortress to make sure there are no traps or anything. The cleared hallways have been marked so finding a room should be simple enough."

Amaya nodded solemnly. "It would be my honor, your majesty." She turned to us. "Please. Follow me." She turned and strode off, and I shrugged my free arm and followed her, the rest of our party trailing after. The wolves encircled us as Randall tromped behind us, and I saw Abel slip up next to the bear, ready to help him through any doorways that would have been too small.

It didn't end up being necessary, the halls and doorways were HUGE, made for armies and not people, so he got through fine. When we reached a cleared hallway Amaya gestured us in, and all of us picked out rooms to rest in. I limped over to the bed and lay down, Callie climbing after me to curl up against me. I expected more yelling, but she just held me as I let myself finally drift off to sleep. It had been a long day.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I woke up with a headache. Go figure. It wasn't a bad one, just a light throb of pain. A bit of spiritual calming should get me up to speed. One of the first things I did was snag a mirror from my spatial ring. I'd picked the piece of equipment up in the bazaar to monitor and check the progress of my soul. Pressing my thumb to the base of the mirror's setting, there was a hum as the reflective surface turned orange. Specifically orange bleeding slowly to yellow.

I had to do some calculations, but I was able to clarify that I'd officially reached nineteen percent of the way to yellow. I whistled. That was the result of tons of training and long weeks of practice, but last night still must have been quite a bump. I was almost a fifth of the way to the next level of soul strength. I knew it would get exponentially more difficult as I went, but it was still nice to know that my pain had been worth something.

"Oooh, testing the soul mirror?" Callie said sleepily from her place next to me. Sitting up, she smiled softly at me, and I was just blown away by everything about her all over again. Her black hair cascaded around her delicate face like a waterfall of the shadows she communed with, and her blue eyes were always just a bit brighter first thing in the morning. Like they were saving up the radiance for when she opened them in the morning and had to vent all that sparkle immediately.

Grinning, I held it up. "Sure am. Want to give it a try?" She didn't train the soul as much as I did, but she DID train it, or she'd started to anyway.

She groaned. "Can't we just relax for now? I just want to cuddle and sleep in." She buried her face in my shoulder sulkily, and I chuckled, running my hand through her hair. Somehow it never got tangled in the morning, always managing to be more 'windswept' than messy. Styled by pillow, I called it, though she insisted on brushing it out every morning anyway. I told her I liked it the way it was, but I was informed I knew nothing of hair care and that I should keep my bad opinions to myself.

"Relax?" I said in surprise. "What is this...relax? It sounds delicious." She giggled and elbowed me in the side, which I retaliated to by tousling her hair. She tried for mine, but being so much bigger I was able to keep away, and she was forced to pounce on me. I squawked and pulled back and we both fell off the bed in a tangle of sheets as she ruthlessly messed up my sandy hair.

"Victory!" She crowed, throwing her hands in the air like she'd just won a tournament. I just slumped back on the floor, laughing softly and staring up at how the light framed her sheet wrapped form. "Now all your treasure belongs to me. I've defeated you and lay claim to all you have."

I snorted. "I wonder what THAT'S like." I grabbed her and tossed her onto the bed. Even with the higher Impact, we were near the same level and she was much smaller than I was, so it didn't take much effort. Standing up, I stretched, rolling my eyes as I caught her propped up on her elbow leering at me. I raised an eyebrow reproachfully. "I'm not a piece of meat you know."

She winked at me. "Dragon steak baby. Only the finest." Her lips quirked up as she stifled her grin.

I just rolled my eyes again and headed to shower. "How do you make that sound like a compliment?" I turned on the water and raised my voice a bit. "So, what do you think we should do once we head out on our own?"

Her voice carried over the water from the room easily, given our Perception stats. I probably hadn't even needed to raise
mine, but it let her know who I was talking to. "Don't be obtuse. You know you want to raid a wizard's tower. You were straight up drooling over the idea of spellbooks." She made an incredulous sound. "Still can't believe people used to WRITE skills DOWN. That's just crazy. Wonder how long it takes to learn them that way."

"Ask Abel." I called back. "He did that with Ragam remember? Probably a while though. Upside is there's no limit to how many people can read a book. Crystals are limited use."

I forced myself to shower relatively quickly, much to my horror. We had things to do today. I was almost surprised they even HAD showers here, the whole rustic kingdom thing seemed like more of a bath environment, but even if they used a more old timey aesthetic, the people who founded this place were still Ascendants, and showers had existed for a long time.

Stepping out to slip into my armor I groaned with relief. It felt good to be back in my second skin. You'd think the armor would get uncomfortable or claustrophobic, but it just made me feel safe. It was comfortable, durable, and had saved my life plenty of times.

When I stepped into the room I saw Callie waiting in bed still, watching me with a dopey smile that made my heart pound a bit. "I'm gonna go in search of breakfast. I know how you get when I don't feed you. I'll talk to the others about where we should head and catch you up when you're done."

She stuck out her tongue at me and I laughed, turning and heading out as she went to take her own shower. Stepping outside, I walked over to knock on Benny's door. "Ugh!" Came an annoyed grunt from inside. I laughed and knocked again. I heard feet slapping against the stone floor as he stomped over and threw the door open with a glare. "What? What do you want?"

"Come on nerd, we're getting breakfast." He glared at me for a second and then groaned. "Hey Celine you hungry?" I called to the rumpled pile of blankets. A slim hand emerged from the blankets, flipped me the finger, and the retreated, and I burst out laughing. "You are a TERRIBLE influence, Benny. What happened to our proper self contained noble? You're turning her into just as much of a hooligan as you."

Benny grinned. "She's been trying to teach me manners, so it's only fair I teach her to have more fun. Besides, you deserve rude gestures on principle. Who wakes someone up at..." I swiped his scan ring and winced. "Noon? Shit. We must have been wiped from last night."

I blew out a breath, nodding solemnly. "It was pretty rough. But we're past it, and once we're out and mobile we're less likely to undergo a siege. We should be on the offensive, looking around for ruins to explore. When we find somewhere good we can use my skill to detect the flowers."

He groaned. "Fine. I'll come eat." He looked over his shoulder, calling. "Cel, get up sweetheart we need to go get some food before we go, it's noon." She groaned loudly, and he laughed and turned to me. "Go look for some food, we'll meet you out there."

I said my goodbyes, turning to look for the others, and almost jumped out of my skin to find Abel, Mel, Jessie, and somehow Randall behind me. I looked around and spotted Callie grinning at me from one side, apparently she'd rushed her shower so she could sneak up on me. Damned stealth skill.

She must have hurried, high Might makes moving fast more than possible, but to get ready completely in a short conversation was impressive. I glared at her. "How did you even get them all out here that fast? No way you hit all their rooms."

Rolling her eyes, she held up her hand, the one opposite her spatial ring. "Group text genius." I cursed. She must have messaged them as soon as I was out the door. I laughed it off and we waited, discussing possible food we might try to throw together if they didn't have a premade breakfast.

Finally, Benny and Celine came out, Benny looking much less sleepy and Celine somehow managing to look both furious and blank faced. We all set off after stopping to get Nat, Perit, and Valk and headed into the fort proper, looking for some of the guards. Once we found one they directed us to where Anna-Marie was currently eating lunch (we'd missed breakfast).

"Princess." I said with a grin. "Mind if we join you?" The bottom of my mask was receded so I could eat, so my smile was fully visible.

Anna-Marie beamed at me from her place next to Amaya. "Solomon! I was beginning to think you'd sleep the day away. Come in, please, have a seat." She gestured and a bunch of formally dressed people appeared to slide chairs up to the table. "My mother sent reinforcements, and we've gotten the entire fortress detrapped and ready for habitation. My father was over the moon we've reclaimed this location. He sends his thanks."

I kind of doubted that. The king wasn't the type to say thank you from what I'd seen. "So, we were thinking about heading out today, have you seen the other team? Or are they still asleep?" My cousin had contracted the leader and a bunch of the others. The last four I needed to do, or have Nat use today's wishes, but as shitty as it felt, I wanted the insurance of having a bunch of them bound to me directly. I didn't think Nat would hurt us, but better safe than sorry.

It made me all the angrier at my family, to raise us in such a way that I had to fear betrayal from my only nearby family member just because we were related. Anna-Marie nodded. "We've got guards on their rooms. Your cousin told us that they were safe to leave alone, but we prefer to trust but verify."

I shrugged. Her suspecting them wasn't a bad decision. I probably wouldn't take them with us either. Sending them off on their own might be a bit risky, but not as much as sleeping next to them would be. We'd stop in and talk to them before leaving. "How about scouting? We were hoping for a basic layout of the area outside the map. Or folklore? Any stories about this place any of your guards know that might point us to some ruins or something?"

"Any notable location nearby is bound to be empty." She said dismissively. "At least ones we have an exact location for. The core itself has thousands of legends about random palaces, temples and ruins, you're free to go over any of our books. As for scouts, yes, we sent some out to look around for any ruins. As expected, they didn't find anything nearby or it would have been picked clean."

I nodded with a sigh. That made sense. We needed some way to find ruins or a wizards tower or something. Worst was that a lot of them might be underground. Anna-Marie had mentioned subterranean buildings were big here in the core, given how chaotic the surface was most of the time.

Getting into a reinforced structure like that would be a nightmare. Especially since a lot of them were LITERALLY reinforced, surround by metal structures to prevent...I paused. Metal. Large deposits of underground metal. I turned to Callie, my grin splitting my face. "I think I know how we can find a place to start looking." It was time to get some use from the OTHER new skill I'd made. Song of the Soil was about to get it's trial run.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I stopped in to talk to the other team. Their leader, Kagan, was polite enough, even if he clearly wasn't a fan. I spent four wishes on them, binding them to us. Sadly since the geas was the payment, I didn't GET anything for those wishes, and I only had two left for the day, but I felt better knowing they were locked in as being on our side. Once that was done Nat and I told them to go look around for any fields of flowers and report back with whatever they found.

We promised them half, which was enough that I suspected they wouldn't try too hard to shake the geas, and since they were the ones looking anyway it wasn't like we lost anything. Paying people with their own stuff was kind of a win win from my point of view.

Once that was done, the whole group headed out into the woods. We didn't use the goats, obviously, though the summerspark crystal and other snow counters weren't going to be completely useless. Anna-Marie informed us that several of the ruins we'd run across would have other biomes inside. Entire worlds could fit into some of them, so it was best to be prepared.

Standing outside the fortress I took a long, deep breath as I called out for Song of the Soil. My voice rose into a tempo of cascading vibration. The music was a medium, the resonance of my voice acting as a translator between my mind and the earth around me. Singing came from the mind, and vibrations bridged the gap between that and the ground

The skill formerly known as earthseeking would help me find minerals and metals, both of which would be large portions of any underground structures. I felt my consciousness spill out into the dirt, rolling through the earth like otters gamboling in a river. It was a weird sensation, my Perception sort of...dispersing.

I'd describe it as something like I imagine echolocation would be, except I wasn't using hearing to receive the feedback. I could feel every worm, every beetle, every rock for MILES. It was overwhelming and jarring, and I was pretty sure I could literally taste mud. I grimaced, forcing myself to concentrate. Song of the Soil was information overload, but after a few minutes of the song I was able to make some sense of things.

I started to walk. Not in a specific direction or toward anything, I just...walked. My eyes were closed, but I could feel the earth and had no problem avoiding obstacles. Trees and plants had their roots in the dirt, rocks were buried below the ground, I started to speed up, breaking into a jog and then a run.

Making sure not to flat out sprint and leave my friends behind, I raced through the jungle vaulting large boulders and bushes without ever opening my eyes. It was...glorious. I was lost in the song, one with nature, each step made me feel more free, and I poured that into my music and that made me more in tune with the world around me.

Finally after an uncertain amount of time, I felt...something. A spire of stone rising up into the air and plunging down into the ground. I turned and bolted for it. I heard yelps of surprise from behind me as I changed direction but I ignored them, I had other things to do, I needed to find this place.

I reached a clearing where the spire stood and stopped, letting my song come to an end as I breathed heavily, my lungs pumping like bellows and burning from exertion. That had been...hard. Harder than it should have been. I leaned against a tree, panting as I tried to regain my balance and rest up a bit.

Breaking branches heralded the approach of the others. "Damn." Said Abel as he jogged up. He wasn't winded, but he sounded annoyed. "A bit of warning next time? Running in the woods is irritating, all sorts of stuff in the way." He looked around, spotting the spire in the middle of the massive clearing. Above the earth it wasn't exactly towering. Maybe two or three hundred feet. The trees nearby were about that big, and easily obscured it.

Beneath the dirt it was MUCH larger. This spire was just the tip of the iceburg. "How far away are we from the fortress?" I said with a frown. I...had no clue where we were.

I heard a giggle behind me and turned to find Callie smirking at me. "I'm sure he has no idea honey, since you're the one carrying the self updating magic map."

Blinking, I froze for a second. "Oh. Shit I forgot about the map. Sorry my brain is kind of fritzing. Plus I still taste dirt. Which is objectively not pleasant." Reaching into my spatial ring I slipped out the map to glance over it. I wanted to know where we were in case we had to make a quick exit later.

We were....far. I must have been in that trance a while. We looked to be hundreds of miles into the core. Granted as even partial speeds that still meant we'd been going for an hour or two, but still, it was a hell of a trek.

It still blew my mind the scale of distance Adcendants dealt with. When you could run more than a thousand miles per hour your definition of 'far' had some marked differences. Of course the core specifically and this entire planet in general were HUGE, as evidenced by the gravity here, so it kind of evened out.

"So." Said Benny. " Anyone have any idea what that is?" He pointed at the spire. "Like, I know it's a building...kind of. But there were a bunch of options for what we'd find. Is this a temple, ruins, a wizard's tower? Also, what are we dealing with if it IS a temple? Like...there are only six gods right?"

"Now." Said Nat firmly. "There are only six gods NOW. There have been others. Not a lot, as these things would be measured. But they've existed. It's kind of a mystery what happens to them. General consensus is that gods usually GO somewhere after ascending, though that's not universally agreed upon. Different religions have different opinions on where that might be."

"So there might be temples to vanished gods here?" I asked with concern. I'd dealt with the worshippers of gods a few times. The Red Revenant Church, the Black Sorrow Cult. Devotees of gods could do strange things. They sometimes had access to imitations of their patrons powers. "Will they have any vestiges of those deities in them?"

She looked troubled. "Maybe? Not many gods in the grand scheme of things is still hundreds over the millennia. Some predate the current six, some were contemporaries. Some people think the vanished gods were killed by the six. Whatever the case there might be remnants of their strength. You've seen power from gods manifested by worshippers without their intervention. Black Sorrow does it all the time. I can't promise we won't see something like that."

Left unsaid was that if we WERE going to run into that, it would be somewhere like this. Somewhere mainly beyond the control of the six and their organizations. As much as this little dungeon run felt like a carefully curated field trip, this was a good reminded that this place was ultimately wild. Just because the other humans we were meeting up with probably wouldn't try to kill us didn't mean nothing would.

I was suddenly feeling a lot less sanguine about this raid. "We need someone familiar with local lore." I said firmly. "Because Benny is right. Running headfirst into a building without knowing what it is would be stupid any time. If it's a wizard's tower we need to know so we can keep an eye out for...magic...traps...or whatever. I don't know shit about wizard protections. If it's a temple we might want to just avoid going in."

Callie nodded. "You're not wrong. So I take it we do our flower search first? Then make our way into the spire if we decide to do that?"

That sounded good to me. Sighing I closed my eyes and triggered Rhythm of the Wild. It was much less...primal, than Song of the Soil. Something about the musical aspect made the earth skill hit harder. Rhythm of the Wild was much more functional for quick and easy use.

Pulling out the map again, we pored over it. I saw dozens of tiny spots of plantlife, lots of them seemingly useful or valuable. Even if the flowers didn't grow, it was clear proximity to places like this made for a nice bump in plant effectiveness. To my disappointment, we didn't find a field of the flowers. It made sense, we'd gotten lucky before, but hitting a field the first time we found a place would be a bit over the top.

I put the map up. "Alright, call Anna-Marie. Have her gather her people and ask around about some of this. Take pictures of the spire, get close if you have to. I want to know exactly what we're walking into." Scan rings, aside from being connected to an overarching network usually, had walkie talkie functionality through a special short range (relatively speaking) signal that allowed them to communicate even without a network to piggy back off of.

While Anna-Marie hadn't had one when we arrived, I'd had Callie pass her one before we left just in case. With a nod, my girlfriend peeled off with Jessie and Randall to approach the spire. I turned to my cousin. "Nat. Take Perit and Valk and scout a perimeter? I'd have asked Callie, but she can use her shadow perception to get an idea what's inside without actually going in. Might help with the identification."

She nodded. "Solid thought. Yeah we can set up a cordon. Don't want to get snuck up on." She gestured for her guards to follow, vanishing into the trees at the edge of the clearing. Celine had started pacing off the trees, doing some kind of wood elf mojo I didn't ask about because she already had a job, and Benny went with her, leaving just me, Abel, and Mel.

"So..."I said slowly. "What do you guys thing about all this?"

Mel shrugged. "We don't have much of a background with this nonsense. We're city dwellers. We can fight, but this adventure shit isn't our speed." She jerked a thumb at Abel. "This one will be happy if you find him something to punch. I'm...intrigued. This is fascinating stuff. Such a big world I hadn't been able to look into before." She chuckled. "But then, that's not what you're asking, is it?"

I shrugged. "Maybe not. I admit I'm curious how you think I'm doing. As a leader I mean." They'd both led their own factions, or at least Mel had. Abel...I wasn't sure he knew or cared much about leadership. He was kind of a loner, he was just often a loner with company. It was an odd thing to think about but it was the only way I could really describe him.

"Want to know a secret, kid?" She asked warmly. "No one is a good leader. You make decisions. Sometimes they work out and sometimes they don't, but it rarely has shit to do with you. A leader is just a fancy name for a person who has to deal with all the bullshit. Deal as best you can and move on. Unless people start dying you did your job. Sometimes even then."

That was a sobering thought, but...she wasn't wrong. That didn't mean I'd stop trying to be better, but maybe it meant I didn't have to take fuck ups quite so personally. Things could always be worse. I gave her a nod of thanks and turned back to the spire to watch my girlfriend and teammate send back their report. All I could do was my best.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Callie came back about twenty minutes later, having photographed all the symbols carved into the spire and several that had been sealed inside in the dark. "Well, we figured out what this place is." She said cheerfully. She held up a screen on her hand, showing an image of Anna-Marie, who waved happily.

"Hello, Solomon." She chirped. "You all made excellent time finding a place. I've had several of the older guards reassigned to a library Amaya had shipped down, they've been combing through all the legends and old forgotten stories we have, both native and from nearby countries. Based on the script that spire is from the Binvari Empire. It's an extinct civilization that eventually ended up becoming the Banwar kingdom. They kept the language alive orally."

I made an intrigued noise. "Fair enough, does the script tell you exactly what this is? Like is it a temple? Because we can just leave."

She shook her head. "The spire is the ruins of a mining outpost. Most of the mine was underground. As for what's in there...who knows. It's possible it was cleaned out and abandoned, it's possible they all died out without moving any of the ore. Or possibly they got half of it and then left the rest."

"Huh." I said with interest. "Good to know. I'll talk it over with the others and we can all decide if we think it's worth the risk. Do you know what they were mining?"

She smirked. "Of course. The only thing near Ladrigan WORTH mining. Heartstone. There was a massive vein of the stone branching off the mountains. Most of it might be gone, but if there's anything down there, it will be VERY valuable." That was definitely going to be a factor.

I said goodbye and nodded to Callie, who did the same and then cut the call. "Ok. So...what do you think?" I said slowly. "As the only person here whose gotten a look inside, and our resident trap master, you've got the best idea of whether this will be literal suicide or not."

Biting her lip, Callie glanced back at the spire. "I'm not sure." She said haltingly. "It's not suicide, I can say that for certain, but...I don't know if it's worth it. Can your ore detection power be used more...specifically?"

"Nope." I said with a sigh. "It picks up big ass rocks and metal, it doesn't pick up big ass rocks FULL of metal. It doesn't do anything that in depth. It's only part of an Intermediate Skill." She grunted, seeming annoyed but still obviously understanding. Skills could be pushed, but only so far. Sometimes you just needed a different Skill.

"I think we should go in." She said finally. "That much heartstone, even if they only left a fraction of it, could fund our operations out here indefinitely. With that much cash, we could afford to not only kit ourselves out even better, we could literally just hire an army most likely." Considering it sounded like Salara had done that with part of the reinforcements, we could go through her at the very least.

"Alright." I said, because really, I agreed with her. This was a possible treasure trove. But we needed to be careful. "We go slow though." I warned. "And you and I will be up front looking for traps. With the bond I can use your Trap Mastery a bit for a second opinion." It wasn't that I didn't trust Callie, I was more worried about her getting excited and impatient.

She felt the concern, and rather than getting offended she just sighed. Callie had her faults, but she cared about the team. She wouldn't put anyone in danger because of her loot madness. Not if she actually stopped to think about it. She just gave a short nod. "Yeah. I can do that. It'll be safest. Anna-Marie said that places like this, aside from more specific stories that make them more dangerous and powerful, also benefit from the overarching legends of the core. People know that ruins out here are all dangerous and filled with monsters so..."

"So they are." I sighed. "Sometimes it's really inconvenient living in a world where concentrated belief can alter reality. Those times are usually good days."

She chuckled as we rounded everyone up and told them what was happening. Benny look excited. "Fantastic. Even if the heartstone is gone, mining operations strip out tons of small pockets of different materials. There might be some even rarer metals or stones they didn't need or recognize stuffed into a corner."

I blinked, but then remembered that Benny's dad was a big shot in the mining community back on Callus, and my best friend had a decent amount of experience with this kind of thing. "Alright man, you're up here with us. Try to identify anything important, though stay back to avoid traps." He grinned and took up a position behind us, while Mel and Abel stepped to either side.

We approached the spire, finding a door at the base. As a precaution I triggered Eye of Revelation. It would be supplementary to the Trap Mastery and help me discover any issues. It also made things easier to spot. Less knowledge based when things lit up.

Stepping down into the long stone tunnel, I noticed all the carvings around us light up. It wasn't a lot of light, sort of a dim ominous glow, but there were so many of the things that it created a sort of everpresent luminescence throughout the tunnel. The place was, as usual, bigger on the inside, and we had no trouble getting in, even Randall.

Speaking of Jessie's big bear, as soon as he crossed the threshold a rumbling growl bounced off the walls, and Jessie tensed up. "Something is nearby." She said in a low voice. "We need to be super careful here guys."

I nodded. "Probably past the traps, but we'll keep an eye out." Callie and I stepped forward, scanning the ground and walls of the tunnel. I noticed as I searched that some of the symbols glowed just a bit extra under my Eye of Revelation. I tapped Callie on the shoulder. "You seeing this?"

"Yeah." She hissed. "There are...a lot of traps here. Not all of the symbols, obviously, but there's a bunch. I can see a path through but it's going to be REALLY tight. I'm not sure some of us can even make it. No way Randall can squeeze through there."

Grinning, I pulled her back. "I have an idea." I pulled her and the others fully out of the tunnel, then triggered one of my shadow clone charges. The clone saluted me and then bolted past me into the tunnel. I pulled back far enough to avoid any splashback and then waited as the clone ran headfirst through every single trap.

There was a dull thump of displaced air and then I felt a burst of pressure and heat as a massive jet of flames burst from the tunnel. We were off at an angle so we weren't in any danger, but it was still shocking. I walked back to the hallway, looking in and whistling. "Damn. It only tripped like six of them before it died."

I triggered another two charges, then retreated again, dispatching the clones one after another, making sure they sprinted full speed to set off as many traps as possible. Considering how much Might I had, that was FAST, even with the enhanced gravity. The second clone tripped a dozen of them. The third managed to get about forty, because he tried jumping off the walls to hit different spots.

Finally the explosions settled. Callie and I approached the tunnel, eyes peeled through the smoke and debris. The entire tunnel was chipped and cracked, several hundred symbols were dimmed or completely extinguished, and there were rocks and dust everywhere, but still, from what I could tell there was a path now.

The clones hadn't hit every single trap, but they'd gotten all the ones on the floors along a specific route. "Alright, looks like we should be good to go." I looked to Nat. "I figure Mal, Abel, Perit, and Valk should be the ones up front now that we've cleared things out. That work for you?"

My cousin grinned. "I have guards for a reason. If I wanted to directly endanger myself I'd be more like you." She gestured them ahead. "You heard the man, you two. He's in charge. If you get blown up or crushed by a giant rock it's all his fault and has nothing to do with little old me."

At me glare, she shot my a mischievous smirk. "What? Being in charge means you get all the blame. Everyone knows you're supposed to blame the boss." I just rolled my eyes as the four of them got in formation at the front like we had, Randall taking up a space behind them in the center of the tunnel to block off anyone getting past. Jessie waited behind him, and the rest of us brought up the rear.

"So am I the only one thinking about the fact that there are primed traps in here?" Said Benny. "Because that either means they cleaned it out already and set the traps behind them, or they tried to use this place as fallback post. Whatever happened to the Binvari Empire anyway? Did Anna-Marie happen to mention that?"

The sounds of our footsteps echoed down the hallways as we headed further in. I forced myself to speak as low as possible, because the echo made even whispers sound like an avalanche. "No. But she didn't really have to. This place is a hotbed of conflict. Chances are good the Binvari got wiped out by some other faction in the core. Maybe one of the nomadic groups that live here, or maybe an early equivalent of another kingdom. If they were still around someone would have noticed or mentioned them."

He nodded grudgingly, and we continued down the tunnel, my Eyes of Revelation sweeping the walls and floors for more traps. There weren't any. Like at all. Which seemed weird until the tunnel let out into a new chamber and symbols hidden in the engravings on the walls lit up brightly. I hadn't had time to notice them before they trigger, since they were on the wall above our entrance, but there was a grinding and four stone walls smashed down, sealing us inside the stone chamber.

I heard scraping and chittering, and I looked around through my Eye of Revelation to see from where, and froze in trepidation as I finally caught the glow. They'd been hiding outside the room and had entered in, but the weird...humanoid spider centaurs with green chitin and preying mantis heads and claws were quick to spread themselves out around us, surrounding our group.

Letting out a whistle, Abel looked around impressed. "Damn. I mean, they're entry level F-rank, but the sheer number of the things is impressive."

Deciding to at least TRY to negotiate. I stepped forward. "Excuse me." I called. "I don't suppose any of you are willing to negotiate? You all seem like reasonable...bug creatures." My Danger Sense triggered (apparently it didn't count them as threats until they decided to actually attack) and I sidestepped some kind of chitin spine fired from a hole at the end of the claws of one the smaller ones in my field of view.

The spike slammed into the stone, gouging in deep, and I sighed. "Yeah, I guess that would have been too much to ask. Mel, no big blasts of flame, this is a sealed room and you'll cook us. Abel, don't collapse the walls or ceiling by accident. Cal....go nuts and don't get hurt. Valk, use your gel to protect Celine and Nat. Everyone else do your normal thing, don't get in each other's ways." And I triggered State of Grace. Guess it was time to fight.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I'd seen a lot of weird creatures, but these...whatever the hell they were, they were probably top of the list for horrifying imagery. My staff was out and spinning before a barrage of those chitin spikes rained down on me as I sailed backwards, triggering my usual combination of Touch of Tears and Consecration of Flame. The others had scattered when we started, and I saw Mel whirling a tightly contained helix of golden flames. Her rank up had given her some serious boosts to control it seemed, because the fire was so dense it looked almost solid.

A flick of her wrists had the helix whipping up and around, disconnecting at certain points and reshaping as she spun it, incinerating the spikes before they even got close. Callie had vanished, and was emerging from the wall a hundred feet up even now, driving a pair of shadow spikes into the head of one of the monsters before vanishing back into the dark, while Abel was leaning on his ability to slam blows into the monsters in tight quarters without using his manifestations.

I was forced to abandon my surveillance as I finally came down from my backward leap, feet hitting the ground and back hitting the wall just like I'd aimed for. Triggering Mountain Stance, I used the complete lack of room behind me to funnel the monsters my way as my staff swept out, crushing heads and knocking aside slashes. Poison fire licked from the wounds as the creatures fell back, some roaring in pain and some just straight up dead.

The storm of energy inside my staff grew with each hit, and I felt several more spikes smash into my armored body, bouncing off as my triple strength defense prevented them from harming me and my armor held off the piercing damage. I kept wanting to use some of my skills, but it was hard to know when I should. My tricks were mostly made for damaging single large enemies.

Using Pit of Despair on either side, I at least tried to funnel them in a bit tighter. The pits of frictionless dust created a single alley of usable stone between them that led the enemy towards me. I heard a colossal roar the shook the ground and saw a wave of the things thrown free from around Randall, who was tearing through them like paper.

There were so many of these things. I had no clue how they procreated, but however it was, they did it A LOT. Hundreds of the monsters poured out of the tunnels above us. I snarled in annoyance. "Alright, everyone group up." I bellowed. "I have a plan!"

Bulling through the enemies, I headed for where I'd left Valk protecting my cousin and Celine. Benny had stuck with his girlfriend and was putting all his unique tricks to good use, but when we all got close together again I made a gesture to Abel bumped his fist with Valk, then cupped a hand and created a massive blue simulacrum as a shield.

"Alright. I assume we don't have long." I nodded to Abel, who winced and returned the gesture, one of his hands clenching. "Mel, can you create a massive firebomb on a time delay? Pack a ton of flame into a sphere or something and launch it up into the air?"

The red masked woman shrugged. "Don't see why not. Worst case I just set it up to blow when it hits the ceiling. Why? I thought you said no big fire blasts because it would cook us all?"

I reached into my bag and pulled out a sparkling sphere made of chips of diamond. "This. From what Giancarlo said it'll keep us totally protected while it's up. You can't attack through it, but if you send up the attack we can raise it pretty fast. Granted, we can't take it DOWN, and we'll need to wait an hour for it to come down. I figure that works anyway because it'll give the room time to cool down."

She chuckled. "Yeah, that'll work." Glancing over at Abel, she said. "Give me a few minutes, hon. I know that has to be painful." He grunted as she cupped her own hands, beginning to condense golden flames into a baseball sized orb of fire. I felt no heat coming off the thing, but it was getting brighter as time went on, the flames becoming denser and more powerful. It was shocking to me that she'd managed to control the heat so well we couldn't even feel it.

"You ready for this?" She asked me as she focused on the orb. I grunted in acknowledgement and she let out a long breath and closed her eyes as she concentrated. After a few minutes, she opened them again, shouted. "Now!" And as soon as the hand construct vanished hurled the sphere straight up. I spat the activation word Giancarlo had given me for the defensive bubble, and a massive white shield wrapped protectively around the group, reaching about ten feet in every direction.

There was a slight shift in the light, and then the bubble was completely drowned in golden radiance as Mel's flame attack burst, completely coating the room in a powerful flame. I heard hundreds of high pitched shrieks as the creatures were all incinerated by the wave of fire, and I whistled as I watched Mel's handiwork.

"Damn." I said with amazement. "You weren't messing around." Granted, I imagined having slightly more Impact than the bug things had helped. All her attacks would be just slightly higher level. Still, that kind of power and volume was nuts, and I made a mental note to trade Mel for some flame attacks at some point. Maybe I could help funnel some of her stats into Might. Even as a fire user she couldn't have gotten the kind of focused distribution Jessie had with my help.

She shrugged. As the flames faded, it was shocking to see what became of the room. Melted rock, heat warped air, blackened walls, the whole place was a burnt out graveyard. To my amazement though, the melted rock appeared to be pouring out of the way of the four exits to this place, opening it back up to the rest of the tunnels and letting the heat disperse, albeit slowly.

We sat down to wait, and I passed around some jerky I'd picked up at the bazaar. I wasn't sure what animal it was from, but they had free samples and it was really good. Sort of a naturally spicy red meat, kind of like dehydrated sausage.
Callie busted out some nice smoked cheese she had on her, and Nat ponied up some wine that I didn't have any of, and we all spent the next hour having a mini picnic and chatting over how we were enjoying the dungeon.

Finally, the sphere of energy flickered a bit (an automatic warning built into the thing) and then five minutes later went out, leaving us in a slightly warm but completely survivable room.

"Well, I have to imagine that killed most if not all of them." I said grimly. "But Callie, why don't you do a shadow check just in case." I honestly should have had her do that to start with,but hadn't thought of it. Live and learn, I suppose. Nat wasn't wrong. We'd all survived so it was a good day.

That had a lot to do with the people I surrounded myself with and their abilities, and I was silently grateful for having such good friends to depend on. She nodded, but grinned at me before dropping into the darkness. "Don't forget the loot."
I groaned as she vanished, but triggered my Eye of Revelation, looking around for anything legitimately useful. To my surprise, there was actually a lot. The mantis blades had been actual metal, and as such hadn't been vaporized in the fire.

Picking one up I tapped it a few times. "Hey Benny." I called. "Come give me a second opinion on this stuff?"

He walked over to take a look. "Looks like some kind of silver. Probably F-rank based on the fact that it SURVIVED that. My Inventing Skill is decent, but I don't have the same absurd foundation at this point that I started with. The further I go on my own the less that initial knowledge matters. I'd ask a local."

Which was fair. I spun up my scan ring, a screen appearing with Ann-Marie's face in it. "Solomon." She said with a smile. "I didn't expect to hear from you so soon. Everything alright?"

I showed her the room, briefly describing the creatures. She passed it on to her research team, who were able to find the monsters fairly quickly given their unique appearance. After a few minutes, she came back, around the same time as Callie appeared from the shadows. "Apparently the creatures you encountered are called the Rakshari. Some kind of hybrid guard beast of the Binvari empire."

"Makes sense." I said with a grimace. "Nothing that ugly could be naturally occurring. How are they not dead though? Like...what do they eat? Aside from apparently handsome wishmaster candidates."

She snorted. "Personally, I find your resting expression a bit wooden." Callie snickered behind me as the princess continues. "But they seem to eat metal. That's where the blades come from. They consume raw ore and their bodies process it into the scythe blades." I held up the blade, and she asked me to do a few tests before her eyes widened. "Starbreak Silver. There must have been a small pocket of it near the main vein."

I raised an eyebrow. "What exactly is it? It sounds...dramatic. What does starbreak even mean?"

"It's poetic." She said excitedly. "Starbreak silver doesn't break stars. It fractures MOONLIGHT. It's a rare metal that can be made into special mirrors that refract and condense the light of our moon. They can be used to accelerate the condensation of the god Dew. Granted, you still need the flowers for it to work, but they can speed the process immensely."

I started immediately picking the things up and shoving them into my spatial ring. She just laughed. "Don't get too excited. I would imagine there are plenty of other metals mixed in among the Rakshari remains. Starbreak Silver is rare. Still, it will sell for quite the price back in the city."

Thanking her, I started picking up the metal blades after hanging up. Of course, Callie was grabbing them even faster, using shadow tendrils to snatch them up en masse. Once we finished collecting them all, we reoriented and headed further into the tunnels.

The Rakshari were apparently pretty vehement about territory, because it turned out we HAD killed them all. Callie had found no living being in the rest of the mines. When we reached the lower levels where the vaults were, we confirmed that they had in fact emptied out the heartstone. There were however, several caches of secondary metals left behind, including a small stack of partially eaten Starbreak Silver.

We packed it all up, and after we finished up we headed for the surface, happy with our haul and looking to head back to make camp for a while before heading out to look for more ruins. As we emerged from the tunnel though, we froze. Or at least, I froze. I could almost feel Abel and Mel shifting into position behind me, in case we needed to fight.

Staring down at me from the clearing ahead was a large blonde man with a square jaw, seated on a massive steed made of coagulated starlight, a V of similarly seated riders arrayed behind him. His piercing, slate gray eyes were focused on me intently. "Well." Said Gabriel Brightlaw. "I see another team has beaten us to this particular bounty." He gave me a cold smile. "Perhaps we can have a discussion about what you found down there."

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I didn't flinch. Brightlaw was scary. I could feel a pressure off him that reminded me of the bloodlust that came off Abel when he was angry, but it was...cleaner. Like I was standing in front of a force of nature. Smelling the storm on the air before it hit. That didn't mean I was going to let him screw me over. "Why exactly would we do that? That's a pretty confrontational attitude. Can't we all just get along?"

My voice was slightly mocking, but not enough to start a fight. I knew we couldn't win a fight with this guy, and I didn't want one anyway.

The horseman to the left of him, a tall, athletic, pale guy with floppy dark hair, snorted. "You think anyone wants to get along with the WCP? You're parasites. Leeches sucking the blood from the entire universe. You don't care who you do business with as long as you get paid."

"Wow." I drawled sarcastically. "You sure know me pretty well. You're telling me shit about myself even I wasn't aware of. It's amazing. Got any more insight for me? Maybe you can tell me what I'll have for lunch? Or what kind of socks I should pick up next time I got shopping. Knowing a guy with all the answers seems convenient."

"Riley." Said Brightlaw flatly. The dark haired guy fell silent, but kept up his glare. "As distasteful as his attitude is, I can't say I disagree with my friend. The Wish Curse Palace might not be a plague on the order of the Black Sorrow Cult, but you're still intergalactic spies and assassins. I can't see much issue with relieving you of your ill gotten gains."

Nat snorted. "What a surprise, the Red Revenant Church has a high opinion of itself that justifies robbing us blind. Must be nice to always have the moral high ground."

Before he could respond, I held up a hand. "Stop." I said firmly. "This is...well, to say a misunderstanding might be inaccurate, but it's certainly not what you think. I'd been hoping to run into you actually. My mother is a member of your faction, and I was hoping you might be able to give me more information about her."

Brightlaw raised a single dark eyebrow. "Truly? I'm afraid you've got the wrong idea. I'm not involved in personnel. I'm unlikely to have any knowledge of your average church member."

It was Benny's turn to snort. "Well good thing his mom is a Saintess. I guess you guys call her the Star Queen?"

The ice blue eyes that had been pinned on me snapped to Benny. "That is a very stupid and dangerous claim to make. Her excellency is the daughter of his holiness, the Radiant Pope. Her name, even her title, is not something shady individuals like yourselves have the right to invoke."

"Don't know what to tell you." I said bluntly, doing my best to take his attention off my best friend. "My mom's name is Sasha and she's an A-ranker. We were told the Star Queen was the only Saintess the church had who fit the bill. Regardless of what you might think about it, barring some gross miscommunication, she IS my mother, and I'd very much like to know where she is."

"If." He said flatly. "And that's a big if, I had any idea where I might find someone of the Star Queen's level. I would never tell a person I've never met from a faction that brings the universe nothing but pain and destruction. You're lucky this isn't a more confrontational situation, or I'd end you just for making that claim."

I shrugged. "I'm not taking it back. It's true. What are you gonna do about it? Fight me?" I really hoped he wasn't going to fight me. There was absolutely no chance I could win, hell, Abel probably couldn't win.

He shook his head. "If I fight you, I'll have to win. You might die, and while I find your organization distasteful, I'm not so foolish as to end the life of a Wish Curse Palace representative. No. You have a choice. We can attack as a group, wage war upon your friends here, or I can select one of my number for you to battle. Think of it as a punishment. If you win, I'll allow you to move along unimpeded. If you lose...I'll take what you retrieved personally if necessary."

I felt that same pressure again, but stronger. I didn't mind though. He wasn't engaging me directly, and I had a vague idea why. I'd done a bit of looking into Adamant cultivators during our time at the Inn back at the bazaar. While being undefeated was an impressive feat, there were obviously limits. No D-ranker was going to beat a B-ranker, regardless of their path or momentum.

People like Brightlaw often traveled with powerful protectors, who could intercept threats that far outstripped their level before they had a chance to lose. Unfortunately for him, the dungeon capped out at F-rank. His protector almost definitely couldn't come in, same with my own guardian. Which meant he had to be selective about who he fought.

"Fine." I said calmly. "Pick your champion, and I'll fight them myself. But I don't go in for gambles where only one side wins. If I beat your champion I want whatever answers you can give about my mother. I know you don't have a location for her, but I want any information you deem...acceptable to part with."

He hesitated, which was good, because it meant he was considering consequences. People don't hesitate when making false promises, there's no stakes so nothing is holding them back. Finally, he nodded. "Only information I feel doesn't breach the security of the Church. But fine. I can give you a few odd facts. IF you manage to win."

Gesturing to one side, he called. "Archimedes. I'll leave this one to you, my friend." An olive skinned man rode forward out of the formation, hopping down. His hair was shaved on both sides of his head, and long on the top, pulled into a ponytail. His dark eyes bored into me as he walked forward, withdrawing a pair of hand axes covered with runes. They were clearly enchanted, and were both F-rank weapons.

I slipped my staff from where I had it secured under my coat and spun it casually a few times. "So, what are the rules here?" I said calmly. "I'm assuming this isn't a death match. We going off the first one down?"

Archimedes gave me a grim smile. "Down is fine. This shouldn't take long." He twirled the axes, eyes burning with malice. He felt...strong. Higher end of F-rank. His stats were WAY higher than mine, except for the lack of the extra point of Impact I had. I triggered my usual poison fire, sort of wishing I'd just kept the weapon burning after the fight earlier.

He raised a brow as he saw the weapon start to glow, but shrugged it off. "So...you ready?" I nodded. "Then watch ou-"
I vanished. Double Trouble. Afterburner. Mercy Kill. Moonlit Night, triple stacked density shifted attack, Flurry of Blows, Marked for Death. And I topped it all off with the release of all the death energy stored in my staff as I brought it crashing down on his collarbone from behind.

There was no big fight, no struggle. I couldn't beat him in a drawn out battle. So I cheated. Afterburner applied to every single one of those subsequent boosters, and the stacking combination was an overwhelming burst of power he had no chance of standing up to.

Double Trouble left behind a duplicate, Moonlit Night shrouded me the next second. He was bracing for an attack from the front and the Stealth kept him from perceiving it before I landed my hit, not to mention my E-ranked weapon and my own enhanced Impact.

The blow slammed into his shoulder and collarbone and I felt it crack, Marked for Death bypassing his armor. To my shock, it didn't crush him entirely, but it drove him to a knee with a roar of pain, and he dropped one of the axes. I let Moonlit Night vanish, keeping the extra Afterburner charges in reserve as I stared down Brightlaw, who I was pretty sure would have manage to either tank or deflect that.

"We good?" I asked dryly. I tried not to let on how tired that made me, or the slight headache developing from all those stacking attacks. The fact was, that was NOT repeatable. I'd saved a bunch of death energy since I'd gotten my staff, and that had been the basis of most of the damage.

I'd taken advantage of the extra point of Impact and my powerful weapon to sucker punch him, but even that wouldn't have worked outside this exact scenario. I MIGHT have been able to kill him in a one on one with that shot if I aimed for his head, but he had teammates and I wasn't trying to kill anybody, so my only chance for winning this little contest had been a one and done blow with everything I had.

Brightlaw looked impressed. "That was...an impressive blow. I felt a hint of a path in that attack. Though not one I recognized." Path of the Doom Sovereign. I wondered if it was just using the Skill that did it, or if it was because I'd been utilizing my Fatewalker build to its full potential. How did one walk a path? Something told me the answer was different for everyone.

"You aren't pissed about the sneak attack?" I'd honestly been unsure if he would even accept the sucker punch. It had been a bit shady for the way I'd seen the Church doing things. Well, I hadn't seen much from real Church cultivators. Mostly fakes and distant relations. Still, it didn't hurt to make sure there were no hard feelings over how things went down.

He just snorted. "Don't be absurd. The match had started. Once it begins attacking is simply the best course of action." He paused. "Well, for this opponent. I'd have been more difficult to ambush in such a way." Looking at his absurdly long lance and the shining charger he sat on, I could believe that. Marked for Death made a shot unblockable against anyone close to my level, but it still had to actually land on the target. It could be parried or deflected.

I offered a hand to Archimedes. "I can heal that up for you man. It's going to take a long while to heal on its own." The death energy mixed with the poison was a nasty combo. Even after the poison skill ended, it would take time to mend. Especially given my E-ranked weapon. He grunted, nodding tightly, and I put a hand on his other shoulder, using one of my new improved heal bursts.

It didn't close visibly quickly, of course, but that should speed up the repair. Brightlaw nodded approvingly. "Alright, well, I did give my word. A bit of information sharing won't hurt." Looking back at his riders, he called out. "Disembark. Set up a table for us to sit at while we talk to our new...friends." He sounded a bit unsure of that last word, but I figured this could have gone a lot worse.

They dismounted, setting up a table, and we all sat down. I admit, my heart was pounding in excitement. My mom. I was going to learn more about the woman I could so faintly remember. I was going to learn more about myself. Stowing my staff I glanced across the table at Brightlaw. "Alright." I said solemnly. "So, you have some information for me? About the Star Queen? I want to know anything you can think to share. Tell me all about her."

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The table was surprisingly lively. Everyone seemed energized and excited, except Archimedes, who was groaning as his buddies smacked him on the back and laughed at his misfortune. He didn't seem upset about it though, either with me or them, just taking the ribbing good naturedly.

Brightlaw looked over his team and snorted, shaking his head in amusement. "Incorrigible, the lot of them. Sorry for the wait, I wanted to get everyone settled before I share what I know. Mind you, that isn't much, but a deal is a deal. Before I begin though, I have to ask...are you really the grandson of the Radiant Pope?"

"That's what they tell me." I said with a chuckle. "I'd love to hear about him too. I hear he's a terrifying guy, but then, any S-ranker has to be, right?"

He hesitated. "He is...driven." He sounded hesitant to speak. "His holiness is a powerful and complex man. His youngest daughter was the only one of his children to become a Saint, though he has one son who is at the peak of Arch-Paladin, the church's B-rank combat job. It's the combat equivalent to an Arch-Bishop. Regardless, the Radiant Pope was a household name long before the Saintess was born, and was, in fact, the youngest Pope in church history."

I nodded. "I heard someone mention he killed one of Black Sorrow's daughter personally. That's got to be a big deal."
"The Saintess of the Drowning Shade." He nodded. "She was, by all accounts, a complete monster. We've all seen the kind. Spoiler little brats with powerful parents who think they're the gods gift to the universe. The problem was that Drowning Shade was RIGHT. She was a natural genius with her mother's ability, Enshrining Darkness. You've seen tame versions of it, learned as a Skill, I'm sure."

"That...weird conceptual rotting dark?" I said cautiously. "Because yeah, I've seen a few people use that. A Skill huh? That makes sense. Sounds like she must have been a nightmare. How did he beat her? And what power does he even have? Or well, what's his Main Skill, since he's obviously using the job system."

Brightlaw shrugged. "No one knows. No one has ever seen it and lived. He arranged a meeting with her on one of the Church's A-ranked planets, the challenge was very public, and she accepted without hesitation. Rumor says she brought her three strongest guards along, against their bargain, but none of them were ever heard from again. There is no planet there anymore."

I blanched. An A-rank planet. Even if he was AT A-rank at the time, that was just...monstrous. How many people had died there? Cultists or not, the thought of inflicting that level of slaughter was just nauseating to me. Luckily my mask hid my expression. "Yeah...complex. I see what you mean." I wasn't sure I wanted to hear any more stories about my grandfather. "What about his son, the Arch-Paladin you mentioned?"

"Samuel." He said with reverence. "The Shining Hand. One of the strongest of the combat order. At A-rank, Sainthood is achieved, and the clergy and combat orders merge in preparation for the ascent to the Papacy. Some say Samuel reached the limit of B-rank some time ago, and holds himself back so he might continue to serve."

I nodded. "Sounds like a scary guy. Tell me about my mother. You have to know something about her, right?"

"Some." He admitted. "I know some of the stories. The Fist of the Radiant Pope isn't exactly a common sight in the Holy Dominion. She often travels, and even when she returns to the central system, a place I'm rarely able to go, she keeps to herself. I know she's powerful. I know she has two abilities, and..." He paused. "I can't say everything. Some of this is faction secrets."

I opened my mouth to protest but he held up a hand. "I know. I understand your frustration, and I do not seek to abandon my honor. I must simply decide what I may share." He paused, thinking it over. "Her location is not....closely guarded. Given her power. I don't know where she is, but I know where she will be. After this. The trial at the ruined soul temple. She'll be there accompanying some of our most talented."

Settling, I let out a breath. That was...a lot. It was more than I expected. I'd have loved to hear stories about her, but it was clear there was something he couldn't reveal. Knowing where she was going was a big deal. I gave a shallow nod.
"Thank you. I realize you could have just fed me some nonsense. That's more than I've ever had. I'd like to work together at some point, if you're open to it. Maybe if you see you can trust us sharing more would be more acceptable."

He gave a slow hum of consideration. "Perhaps. I will consider it. We did find a building some distance from here we were...hesitant to approach. It bears the stink of the fallen gods. Perhaps we might journey inside together." His blue eyes pinned me, looking for any sign of cowardice and weakness.

Grinning, I nodded. "I'm definitely interested. You'll need to tell us more about it, and I might run it by some of my local lore experts to see what they know. We found out the hard way that forewarned is forearmed. You guys have a hookup for local information?"

"No." He said with a shake of his head. "The kingdom we find ourselves allied with is...distasteful. They simply throw us at problems, hoping we'll either come back with the Dew they require or not at all, so they might steal it from our corpses. We've not found any of the Lunar Cascade Lightblooms. I suspect we're being steered toward the most dangerous areas possible to clear the way, while the local forces do all the real searching."

That sounded stupid as hell, given what I knew about how the flowers reacted to us. We were their best bet for finding them. Whoever was running his allied kingdom was too greedy to be sensible. I took a bite of the pastries that Brightlaw had laid out when his people set up the table. Cherry, and delicious. "Are you willing to switch to a different kingdom? Ladrigan is trying to scoop up as many of us as possible, and they're actually being smart about it."

He grimaced. " The Banwar Kingdom has several dangerous generals that have been augmented with Dew over a long period of time. I believe I could defeat one in a direct fight, but sadly, I don't think I'd get the option. If we try to renege on our arrangement, chances are good they'll send someone after us. Not that I'm not willing to do it anyway, but I plan to wait until more kingdoms get involved and things are more hectic."

"Fair enough. Do you have any pictures or anything from the ruins you mentioned?" Probably more accurately a temple, given what he said about that fallen gods.

He shook his head. "No. We didn't think to photograph the site. We can lead you to it if you wish to attempt your own research." He seemed pretty interested in how we would do that, and I didn't mind showing him. I'd be avoiding the Banwar Kingdom like the plague (interesting that the kingdom descended from the Binvari were already active).

"Sounds good, we can go whenever you're ready." I heard a loud groan from Benny's direction as he heard me. He and Celine were chatting amiably with some of Brightlaw's team. Callie heard me too, and turned to give me a nod as she started getting everyone ready to leave. I wasn't sure what I'd do without that girl.

Brightlaw (who insisted I call him Gabriel) had them pack up the table and led us off into the jungle. My Danger Sense remained pretty damned silent given where we were, so I had no issue following him. Plus I got a good feeling about the guy. He was scary as shit, but he was also a man of his word.

It didn't take long to reach the over grown building, a massive stone monolith of a place covered in moss and vines. It was so densely coated I thought the damned thing was a hill until we got closer. I turned to Mel. "Can you clear some of that greenery out without covering up the stone with soot?"

Abel waved the question away. "Soot can be blown away with force. Just burn it clean. Worst case somebody can water blast it. I'm sure SOMEONE here has an ability that can manage."

At my nod, Mel just shrugged. "One flashfire pressure wash coming up." She snapped her fingers, sparking a small, blazing light, then tossed it at the building. She didn't put too much power into it, since we were trying to clean off the stone without damaging it. The moss and vines were G-rank, so lowballing the power was more than feasible.

The spark touched the green and the whole thing went up in a sea of golden flames, but to my surprise, it burned absurdly hot for just a second and then went out like a candle. Mel had excellent control. Abel stepped up and swung his hands, manifesting a pair or giant images that clapped together in a short, sharp explosion of force and pressure. I felt wind buffet me as the soot was blasted off the building by the sheer force of the vibrations.

"Cal? That good for you guys?" I asked my girlfriend, who had already spun up her scan ring to contact Anna-Marie.

The blue skinned princess nodded with a wide smile, returning my nod of greeting. "I think that's plenty. Make sure to send over some more pictures for us up close, but that exposed enough of the building to work with. Not just symbols, architecture can be a big clue to what we're dealing with. The researchers tell me that building methods, materials, and things like that vary as time passes, when certain types of materials have more renown at certain times you can see wide shifts in style and construction." I hadn't considered that, but it was an interesting line of reasoning.

After hanging up to take the pictures and send them over, it didn't take long for them to go over the new information and get back to us. The group she had hired or cobbled together were excellent researchers, and she must have dropped a pretty penny on books too. It was shocking what you could do with enough resources. Salara was clearly bankrolling her daughter generously.

Gabriel looked impressed too as the return call came up and Anna-Marie gave us a worried look. "Ok. We found...something. You're at some kind of...sub temple? But also probably a tomb. There's no concrete information about when the place was built, based on the materials used all we can tell is OLD. A few of the symbols were translatable, though more because they seem to be proto-versions of symbols we've seen in ancient dialects than because we know what they are."

"Sub temple?" I asked cautiously. "So this isn't a temple to one of the fallen gods?"

She shook her head. "We don't think so. The symbols we managed to translate meant guardian, servant, disciple, and trove. That kind of thing. At least, that was the meaning the more recent variants had. We think this person was some kind of priest or something. A direct disciple of one of the fallen gods you mentioned. We also believe they were buried with...quite a bit of wealth. We don't know anything else."

I nodded. "Thanks. We appreciate that." I looked over at Callie. "I have a weird feeling that this place is...important. But I don't want to just jump in and get us all killed. Can you check it out? Be careful, but some recon would be the smart call here I think." I knew she'd want to go in when she heard trove, but I was determined to place this safe.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Callie looked...concerned, when she returned from her recon. "There's...something down there. I felt it in the shadows with me. I couldn't SEE anything though. Roaming the halls or protecting the tomb. Are you sure you want to do this? We can just go, there's no reason to go down there."

"Because I think we have to." I looked at Brightlaw. "You're feeling it too aren't you? That's why you brought us here. Your fate sense is picking up something weird."

He nodded. "It is. This place is somehow related to the nature of this dungeon. The way this entire construct works is too...deliberate. Too structured. It's been active for millennia, and should be safe enough, but something about it is just..."

"Off." I said firmly. "Agreed. I think this opening of the glade is different. I don't know how. Or maybe it's not, and there was something weird going on here the whole time. Regardless, something down there is involved. I can just...feel it. We could turn around and leave it alone, but I feel like I would regret it." I'd wondered before about the reasons for the Glade being like it was, but I'd just shrugged it off as Ascendant weirdness.

This place, though, this was related. My fate sense had never been this...overt, before, but I knew what I was feeling. I was being actively pushed toward something important. I wasn't entirely sure this wasn't a side effect of my Path either. The Fatewalker build was partly rooted in divination, maybe there was some synergy with my fate sense?

Callie smiled and took my hand. "Hey. You don't need to explain it to me. You were willing to charge in head first when you thought it was loot because you knew I'd want to do it. If you think this is necessary I trust you. Just...we should be careful. There IS something in that place, even if I couldn't see it."

"I'll send in a clone." I said cautiously. "Just because we're going in doesn't mean we can't be smart about it." Circling around to the front of the squat, imposing stone building, I approached the front, triggering a charge of my stored shadow clones. I only had three of them left.

A dark version of my warped into existence next to me, nodded, then headed inside. Closing my eyes, I focused on the connection and shifted it slightly with my soul. It took some effort, but with the progress I'd made after that shield incident it wasn't too tough. I was able to force my vision to connect to the clone, able to look through it's eyes with some effort.

It was...weird. Not just seeing through another set of eyes, but the WAY I saw. Shadows can't EXACTLY see in the dark, because they don't see how we do at all. Vision is just the eyes picking up light, and shadows don't do light. The washed out shades of gray the clone had instead was, at the very least, completely functional in pitch black.

Until the clone got ripped apart violently by what appeared to be some kind of huge angry cat beast. Made of pure darkness. My eyes snapped open as I felt the connection snap. I winced. That was much more intense when I was leaning on the connection so heavily. "Well." I said hoarsely. "I know what was in the shadows with you."

Spinning up my scan ring, I called Anna-Marie. I wanted every bit of information possible before we went in. Just like the Rakshari, these things might be a known phenomena.

She answered quickly enough, raising an eyebrow. "Solomon, calling again so soon? What can I help you with?"

"Cats made of sentient dark." I said bluntly. "There appear to be a bunch down there, ever heard of them before? They seemed like something that might have come up."

Frowning, she paused. "I...that sounds familiar actually." She turned to the side. "Amaya does that sound familiar to you? Not from the books, but something I heard as a little girl." Her brow furrowed. "I don't...where have I heard that before? It's on the tip of my tongue."

"Suvaya." Said Amaya's voice quietly. "You're thinking of the Night Pride."

Anna-Marie's eyes went wide. "Oh!" She sounded disturbed. "I suppose I am. I almost forgot about those stories. So few people worship the Moon Lady anymore. You think the tomb belongs to one of HER priests?" I could hear a tension in her voice I'd never heard before.

"The Moon Lady?" I prompted. "She sounds like she might be one of the vanished gods. She's important here?"

"She created this place." Said Anna-Marie. "At least, that's the story.The moonlight, the Lightblooms, these are all hers. But her priesthood has been extinct for longer than anyone can remember. You only hear about her from old family lines that passed down the teachings orally. Giancarlo's family were worshippers, that's how I remembered about the cats."

Well that was certainly a hell of a coincidence. And if my fate sense was pushing me toward this place I doubted it was anything pleasant, but that was a problem for later. This was a sub temple, which meant we had time to learn about Suvaya later. For now..."Tell me about the Night Pride."

"At first one darkness, then apart. The Night Pride comes to take your heart." She repeated mechanically, in the style of a children's rhyme or parable. "They're big cats that don't exist until they do. They're completely silent and VERY fast."

"Charming." I drawled. "Any special methods of defeating them? I assume something with light might help?" Or maybe not, since my poor clone got ambushed in pitch black. The entrance descended down sharply and the light vanished pretty fast. A sharp flight of steps and then BAM pitch black.

"The Night Pride doesn't fear the light." She said worriedly. "They are, however, somewhat special. Though they are ambush predators, they attack in such a way as to be seen at the last second. If you don't see them, they're just regular darkness. It's why their eyes glow."

I hadn't known they did, but that wasn't important. What WAS important was that I had an idea. "Awesome. Thanks Anna-Marie. Also when we get back I want to talk more with you about this Moon Lady."

I didn't think whatever was going on was a right now problem, but it might be soon. It occurred to me that this temple suddenly showing up now of all times probably wasn't a good thing. We said our goodbyes and then the entire group assembled in front of the entrance. "So." Said Benny hesitantly. "Evil shadow panthers that only exist at the last possible second when you see them...anyone else REALLY not like this?"

"We'll be fine. And put your hand down Abel." I glared at my mentor, who snickered slightly until his girlfriend elbowed him in the ribs. I thought I heard Mel snicker a bit as she did, but it was impossible to tell under the mask. "Anyway, I have a plan to get us through. The Night Pride can only attack after we see them, right? So what if we don't see them?"

"You want to walk in blind?" Said Benny incredulously. "Because I'll be honest, that doesn't seem like the...best idea."
I shook my head. "No. Not blind. I'll be able to see, but the rest of you will be following by touch, and they won't be able to see us either." Moonlit Night solved both problems, and assuming they couldn't attack us. When no one argued, I just shrugged and closed my eyes. "Alright all, everyone put a hand on someone's shoulder." I felt a hand on each of mine and triggered Moonlit Night.

A cloud of dense mist enveloped everyone, and I opened my eyes to a world bathed in light that only I could see. Striding forward, I focused on the skill, shifting it slightly to make sure the mist followed me, keeping us at the center instead of letting me remain mobile in the cloud.

"Remember before when you said we would NOT be blind?" Complained Nat as we walked forward. I heard a yelp and a curse as someone tripped and fell into someone else, and my cousin groaned. "Ow, damn it Valk. Watch where you're going." I heard a muttered apology, and I had to tamp down on my laugh.

"Just be careful." I said in amusement. "On the upside this will keep us under stealth, so we don't have to worry about talking. Not that you knew that a second ago. Also I can SEE you sticking your tongue out at me Natalie. YOU'RE blind, I can see perfectly." She froze, then shrugged, looking away innocently. I just rolled my eyes at her antics. It felt kind of nice to banter with family.

The hardest thing here was trying to keep Randall protected. The massive bear was a complete pain to deal with. I actually felt...something, shift the fog in a few places. It was hard to pick up, but Stealth is a form of Perception, and the movements of what could only be the Night Pride were detectable that way, if VERY subtle.

Callie gave directions as we walked. She hadn't really been able to search thoroughly exactly, but the layout wasn't complicated. A dozen hallways surrounding a central room with doors leading out to everywhere. We walked for about twenty minutes, my head starting to swim from stretching Moonlit Night so long and pushing it to keep up. When we finally reached the door I pushed it open and led them all inside, slamming it shut.

After checking with Callie, I let Moonlit Night drop, and I followed it down, collapsing to my knees and holding my head. My Stealth had covered twenty people, and I'd held it for almost half an hour. Still, it was already receding, and Benny put a hand on my shoulder to help. This was no giant lava shield. My head started clearing pretty fast.

"So, there are no Night Pride in here?" I asked as I finally stood up, breathing through the pain. Looking around, I noticed something...weird. "Wait. I think I see why. There's no DARK in here. Or light? The whole room is like...red?" It was weird to look at. A sort of bloody twilight that dyed the room visible shades with no visible light source. Like using red night vision.

Callie squirmed. "I don't like this. There's no shadows here. This is...gross." She glanced around before starling. "Oh!" She pointed off to one side. "A coffin. Is that ruby? F-ranked Ruby too." It was. Whoever was in that thing was F-rank like we were, though they had more Impact. I looked at the coffin, the stone exuding a bloody radiance that blurred the static red like a flare, almost painful to look at.

This had been one of the reasons I'd even agreed to this. No one over F-rank could come into the dungeon. We were safer with Gabriel and co than with basically anyone. I triggered my Eye of Revelation, looking for traps, and blinked as the red was forcefully suppressed. The coffin was the sole source of light now, also red, but less pervasive. More like a red light than red night vision.

I stared at the thing, until it began to twitch. My eyes got wide as the lid started to push open, slowly rising as a dessicated hand emerged, forcing the ruby covering aside as the corpse inside sat up. It's socketless mummified face turned to look at us, and it's dry, cracked lips peeled back from yellowed and rotten teeth. "Oh good." Rasped the obviously ancient undead. "Visitors."

My girlfriend stared at it for a minute, and I expected her to mention us being too hasty coming in here, but after a second I realized she was just drooling over that giant gemstone coffin and rolled my eyes as I began to get a sinking feeling. "Howdy." I said with a wave. "Nice to meet you. Think you could answer some questions?" Because sadly, from what my fate sense was telling me, this guy was the reason we were here. I hated being right.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The thing that climbed from the coffin was...wrong. Not a lich, I'd seen one of those before. This thing was corrupted on a fundamental level, to the point where even its Impact felt like a distortion. And it HAD Impact. A lot of it. Maybe not as much as Crighton, but I'd put it at thirty eight probably.

"Sacrifices." It cooed. "Always so curious." The raspy voice held a hint of mockery, and I could definitely tell why. I hadn't seen many situations where the word sacrifice was a good thing.

I shrugged. "If you're planning to kill us anyway might as well answer the questions. If we're dead we can hardly spread it around." I was kind of hoping this thing predated the concept of monologuing by too much to worry about what he said. I was ALSO a bit worried about getting murdered before we had a chance to act on his information.

But something about all this Moon Lady stuff was bothering me. The things I'd noticed about the dungeon and how deliberate it seemed. Something here was off, and I had the sneaking suspicion it would kill us if we didn't find out what it was. This dungeon wasn't what everyone thought it was, and with my luck I was pretty sure I'd gotten sucked into the endgame of whatever was happening.

"Foolishness does not become wisdom in death." It clucked. "But very well. Amusement, then. If only for a short while. Ask your questions, sacrifice. Though know too that your suffering will not be abated. Merely postponed."
I grimaced. Shit, this thing really loved to talk. "What are you exactly? And are you a servant of Suvaya? I-"

The undead stomped once, the floor cracking as we as stumbled to get our bearings. "Heretics!" It howled. "Speak not the Lady's name! Find Her magnificence squirming twixt your unworthy lips again and I'll rip them from your faces to sew myself a coat!" We all stared for a minute, and it stared back before hissing, seeming to calm down for a bit. "Very well. I am undead. As for my specific provenance, that is irrelevant. Simply know I was a great power who allowed myself to be diminished in service to my Lady."

I didn't even realize that was possible. I mean...I did, but you could only do that if you didn't have too many stats. Unless...I considered what Zeke had said, about being able to diminish Impact safely if you hadn't exceeded the stat threshold. You could have stats taken too. So maybe..."Did she strip all your stats away? Before...diminishing you?" What would that even be like? Valk said even losing a few was horrible.

The undead cackled. "A necessary toll. Millions of points of me, ripped away, dripping my soul out. Once they were gone I was primed to be the fuel for her ruse. Not alone, no, there are others. Other servants. We give the weight of our existence to fatten Her prey. She waits for the harvest, to recoup from them all we have given and more. Enough to make us all as She is. A new PANTHEON of gods!"

"The flowers?" I said, appalled. "She's squeezing out your Impact through the moon and allowing people to absorb it through the Dew. How is that going to give you MORE Impact. Hell, why would she even NEED to do that...she's hurt too, isn't she? Did she get injured by the other gods?"

"Jealousy!" It wailed, the sardonic sadism fading into literal lunacy. "Despicable pretenders, envious of her majesty. They'll pay! They've fallen into the trap already. So many of their children and descendants have supped of our strength. It seeps into them, becoming part of them, infecting. When She reclaims it, the interest will kill them all! They'll suffer the fate they visited on Her. Emptiness, nothingness, condemned to exist as a whisp of a thing, if they continue to exist at all!"

So...this whole fucking place was a trap. Some old god who had been killed by the six wanted to return to life and she was going to kill a shitload of Ascendents to do it. Which was a huge problem because WE had used that fucking Dew. I saw the others shifting uncomfortably. They understood what he was saying too, and they weren't any happier about that shit than I was.

"Alright." I said firmly. "I've heard enough. Abel, Gabe?" The undead cocked it's head in confusion...right before a massive fist train wrecked him into a stone wall hard enough to leave a psycho shaped whole in the wall. There was the sound of hooves and a lance slammed into the spot his head should have been.

Sadly, 'diminished' or not, he was a fucking monster. The lance bit into the stone deeply, but Gabriel had to release it and hurl himself sideways to avoid a vicious claw of sickly green flame aimed at his through. The big warrior rolled seamlessly to his feet as the charger he'd been astride dissolved into silvery starlight, and the lance returned to his hand with a snap of his fingers.

Peak F-rank stats then. His Impact wouldn't be enough to hold any more. Being able to strip him away layer by layer was crazy, but it didn't change the rules. What he'd said about the others though...that wasn't great. How many more of these crippled old monsters were in sub temples like this around the core? Tombs that were resurfacing now presumably because it was almost time for the 'harvest'.

It seemed less crazy we'd stumbled on this place. Or that Gabriel had at least. I was betting more than a few people might have walked into places like this. I hoped it wasn't anyone we knew. Because we'd gotten REALLY lucky to have come here together. Probably. We might still die. Speaking of which.

I withdrew my staff from under my coat and started stacking attacks. I needed to wait for a proper chance to strike, but as soon as I got one I'd do everything I could to help. I cursed the fact that I'd used Afterburner earlier. The skill didn't last forever, so even though I hadn't finished all ten attacks I'd dismissed it. The weakening effect had been diminished at least, so I had already recovered.

Touch of Tears, Consecration of Flame, Mercy Kill, Marked for Death, Triple Strength Density shifted attack, I stacked the blow high. My staff was our best bet. Being E-ranked it should easily bypass the Impact difference. I assumed that was what was making Gabriel and Abel's attacks so inefficient.

They were...scary. Abel was up close, spinning around the undead like a top. He kept getting hit with vicious attacks, only for the form to melt away into one of his doubles. He was even doing damage, not much, but some. Cicada Stacking Steps was making each blow multiple times stronger than expected.

Gabriel had dropped the lance and drawn a short sword, stalking forward to engage the monster alongside my teacher. He swung the blade in short, sharp chops, mixing in stomping kicks and backhand blows, and he was somehow everywhere Abel wasn't. The two of them seemed to meld together perfectly at first glance, but on closer inspection I realized what it really was.

Abel was attacking all out, and Gabriel had just slotted himself into the attack flawlessly. Every move was perfect, the exact angle, the exact speed, the exact power needed to keep the pressure off my mentor. It looked like they were playing music almost, except in reality, Abel was just the rumble of thunder, and Gabriel was composing an entire symphony set to the crashing booms.

The others were trying to limit the damage from ranged attacks. Randall had taken up a spot in front of them as a shield, Callie had a massive shadow barrier up, and Valk had crafted a layer of his blue gel like defense in front of it to protect them further and to stop Mel's flames from adversely affecting the shadows.

It was shocking to see how much damage the green flames were inflicting. At short range they were dodgeable, but the further they went the more the attacks expanded. By the time some of the blows the two front liners were dodging reached out people they were huge. Several of Gabriel's riders had taken up places in front of the shield and were softening up the attacks with counter abilities and their own blows.

I flicked on my overlay, focusing hard on the fight with the undead, as well as using Eye of Revelation to notice any traps as I waited for a weakness to exploit. I saw nothing. But I didn't give up. Even if my head was killing me. This was so many things to hold at once, especially for an extended period of time. Despite the pain I gritted my teeth and waited.

Finally, Gabriel managed to land an admittedly shallow cut on the thing's leg. It flinched as Abel slammed a blow into it's nose, and I triggered double trouble. My staff whistled through the air as it smashed into the back of the undead's skull, carrying literally every ounce of force I could muster as I smashed my strongest blow into it.

E-rank staff plus plenty of other bonuses made the swing an absolute nightmare. If it had connected properly it would have been a crippling blow, or at least a severely debilitating one. Sadly, it was neither. Despite the surprise, I hadn't used my Moonlit Night, which not only robbed me of a stealth attack bonus, it also meant the monster heard the blow coming. I managed to impost it's arm between the attack and it's head before it landed.

There was a thunderous crack as the arm shattered, and the monster howled and leapt back, clutching the green glowing, burning limb. My mentor didn't let the attack go to waste, blurring forward and coming driving a brutal fist into the injured limb before hauling back and beginning to attack the monster's face and head.

As it spun to try to keep up, he whirled alongside it, keeping in it's blind spot and leading it away from looking at Gabriel, who had once again mounted up on his silvery charger. The blue eyed man had his gaze focused hard on the undead, and began to murmur something that I couldn't make out (maybe it was under stealth?) The lance he'd been using started to glow a brilliant gold.

With an earthshattering below, the Adamant cultivator CHARGED. Every bit of his aura and intent behind the attack. I saw why he'd chosen the combat style he had. Because his whole attack strategy was MOMENTUM. Crashing toward the enemy with all the power of an unstoppable object.

Abel, who was on the other side, saw the attack coming and smoothly flowed out of the way. The monster, still disoriented from the all but destroyed arm, took a second to realize he was gone, and actually tried to catch its breath, so to speak. That was the last decision it ever made. I felt Gabriel's attack in my BONES as the floor rumbled with a shout of "Rubrum Gloria!"

The tip of the lance smashed into the side of the monster's head like a freight train, driving the head of the thing to the side with a blazing flash of golden light. The lance point went INTO the undead's EAR, lifting it off it's feet and driving it forward with the charge...until it hit the wall. Then the charge kept going. And the undead's head did NOT.

Gabriel's charge stopped pretty much at the wall. His lance had been driven halfway into the stone, and the expanding length had exploded the head of the monster as it pushed in further. The big man was panting, looking drained, but I could see why he was an Adamant cultivator. I wouldn't have wanted to take that blow. I nodded to the others, wincing at my own exhaustion. I gestured for Jessie to come top us up. "So...we have some serious shit to talk about."

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We were all sitting outside the tomb, Callie seemed pretty chipper, since we'd kept the ruby coffin (apparently the Church crew didn't want something so...corrupt). "Alright." I said as we all sat down. "Lot to unpack there, but before we start, do any of the rest of you feel...different?"

Most of the surrounding Ascendants looked confused, but Callie, Abel, Nat, Valk, I recognized a pattern in the ones who raised their hands. Five of us. The exact five who took the Dew. Callie nodded. "Ok. So only those of us with enhanced Impact. There has to be a reason for that. Do you think it has to do with the whole...Impact theft thing they were talking about? Like that our Impact came from them?"

That's when some of the random floating puzzle pieces we'd been getting clicked together. "Shit." I said emphatically. "It probably does. He mentioned a harvest, I don't know how all this fancy higher level shit works, but if she's using Impact she gives to harvest the full power of whoever incorporates it, why not just...keep it all? She'd have been done millennia ago right? Tons of people have been through here. She has to have a reason for making her 'pantheon' right?"

My girlfriend's eyes went wide, because as usual she followed my train of thought best. "You think she needs them? Like they act as some sort of conduit for the Impact to return once it's gone out? That would make sense. If that's the case than the Impact we got must have come from deadhead in there. Which ALSO makes sense, since this is relatively close to Ladrigan, and the mountains where we harvested our Dew."

I nodded. "Maybe. Could be a whole other reason, but if that's the case does that mean we're safe from being sucked up like juice boxes? Or just safe-ER. Because who knows if that Impact all came from one person. Maybe it was a mixture. We can't count on being safe."

Nat cut in. "Agreed. We need to get in touch with the others, tell them what's going on. Not just for protection or to save them, but because we need to call a conclave or something to figure out what to DO. If these assholes are waking up after who knows how long, chances are solid this shit is coming to a head. This 'harvest' is about to go down, and it's going to tear a hole through a large amount of the five factions AND the WCP when it does."

"Really?" I asked. "Are we sure? Like so many people would already be dead wouldn't they? Given how rarely this place opens?"

She shook her head. "Some, sure. But several of the higher rankers live for thousands of years. They were the ones who knew what this was about and sent us in. If they all go down at once, it'll be anarchy, not to mention that's potentially THOUSANDS of Impact, which IS enough to make several hostile gods. I'd rather not be standing in their nursery when they're born."

"Point." I grimaced. "I'm guessing even if we weren't on the hook for this because of using the Dew we couldn't just dip out?"

Nat grimaced. "Nope. We're here until the dungeon space starts to destabilize. Those marked by recent use of the slides are ejected. It's why they said this COULD take months. Sometimes its a bit longer, sometimes it's a few weeks. At least that's what I was told."

"It's true." Said Gabriel solemnly. "As for the conclave, it's a good idea. At the very least we have a place to start now. Perhaps if we kill all of these...conduits, we can slow or stop this 'Moon Lady'. I have several friends among the other factions. Do you have anyone you can contact."

"Bethy." I said without thinking, then winced and changed the form of address. "That is...Bethany Lark. The Vampire's daughter. She's friendly enough, and will probably be willing to listen." Speaking of listening, I was guessing the mask didn't let Zeke listen in unless I was in active danger, or he'd have tried to contact us by now. We really were on our own down here.

Callie looked worriedly off into the distance. "That thing was...scary. I don't think we could have beaten him without a really scary lineup. If any of the others run into one of those and they're a little light on muscle? We need to get in touch with everyone fast." Her face lit up. "Wait! You have two more wishes left today. I wish for a message to go out to all the outsiders in the dungeon immediately to warn them." She fished into a pocket, withdrawing a small bag of coins. "I'll pay up front."

I caught it without looking as the familiar words scrolled across my vision. Wish detected. Grant wish? I accepted without bothering to check the stat requirements, it was a message wish it shouldn't be too crazy. There was a flash and a small scroll appeared in my hand. I passed it to Callie. "Write your message and burn it. It'll carry over to everyone who came in with us."

She was right, it was a smart play. I was glad she'd thought of it. Taking the scroll she started to write, pressing the unfurled paper against the stone side of the temple. I turned to Gabriel. "Should we pick a time and place for the conclave now? Might be best to do it while we have a way to reach everyone."

"Agreed." He said. "I suppose sooner is infinitely better. Perhaps tomorrow? We should give people time to arrive. Speed is not something Ascendants lack, but the core is very large. For the location...perhaps here, we can show them the truth of our words in person."

I shook my head. "Too close to Ladrigan, and I don't trust them all. Plus finding it would be a nightmare. No. I think we should meet there." I pointed up at a mountain on the very edge of the skyline shaped like a closed fist. "That should be visible from plenty far away, and if its not a quick trip up into the atmosphere would make it that way."

"I've heard stories about that." Said Callie gravely. "Fist mountain. An ancient forbidden place where everyone fears to tread. "

"Really?" I said, raising an eyebrow.

She grinned at me. "No, but it kind of seems like every place we go here ends up being like that right? I give it even odds." She winked at me, clearly trying to lighten the mood.

It worked, I burst out laughing, and Gabriel and his people looked at us like we were insane. I just shrugged. "Sorry, just sometimes things can be ridiculous. Laughing at the absurdity is a good way to keep things in perspective. Plus Callie always knows how to make me laugh."

She gave a satisfied smirk a she continued writing, before passing it to me. "What do you think?" I skimmed it, and it looked pretty solid. Information about the trap, about the time of the meeting, which I approved of, and generally just everything I needed them to know.

This really was a great idea. The cost was low because everyone was pretty low rank and relatively close together. I handed it back to her, and she handed it to Mel. "Got a light?" The red masked woman rolled her eyes, grumbling about never having heard THAT one before, but sparked a flame and burned the scroll.

The paper went up nearly instantly, being consumed by the same purple fire I saw roll across my vision every time someone made a wish. Once it was done, she turned to me and grinned. "Also, I wish we had a compass that would lead us to Bethany. I'll pay that one off with one shadow jump."

Wish detected. Grant wish? I excitedly confirmed, flashing past the requirements without caring. I was really interested in trying out the shadow movement aspect of her abilities. While out bond let us share some easily accessed tricks, stuff like her shadow jumping and my wishing wasn't so easily copied. I hadn't been able to experience the ability to move through shadows yet, and it looked like a blast.

It also took me a second to realize she made the wish in Stealth and no one else had heard exactly what she said. They were pretty shocked when the compass manifested. The scroll was interesting, an item being a more convenient way of sending out the message. Turning to Gabriel, I pointed up at the mountain. "So we'll meet you up there tomorrow? We need to go pick up a friend on the way and we want everyone to have time to make it."

He nodded. "Some won't, most likely, but we're in a bit of a hurry. Waiting around doesn't seem like a wise choice. The question is, what do we do if we find more of the Lightblooms. Should we avoid using them? CAN we avoid using them if we hope to succeed in getting out of this?"

That was a solid point. I grimaced. "Keep any Dew you find on you. We can discuss it at the conclave as a group. I can see both sides of that argument, and I feel like putting it to something like a vote is our best bet. Assuming we can even get everyone to play nice."

"Please." Snorted Callie. "Gabriel and Bethany both having our backs will be a pretty powerful motivator. Everyone has heard about the Adamant, and nobody wants to piss off a Vampire." Which was true. I knew I certainly did it. Bethy was...mercurial, in a way that made her scarier than someone who actively wanted to just kill you in some ways. Though she seemed to be mostly under control.

The Adamant cultivator nodded. "We'll see you there. I'll try to contact any groups we see on the way. I hope most of the important teams are close enough to make it on time. I don't know how big the core is, but I do know Ascendants can move quickly when pressed. We should be able to muster at least ten teams of the hundred that came."

Running full out I could get three quarters of the way to ten thousand mph, so he definitely wasn't wrong, though the numbers were a bit skewed with the enhanced gravity and Impact in this place. It was much easier to move back on Callus. Still, even half of that would be enough speed to get to the mountain from plenty far away if given a day or two.

We said our goodbyes, Benny and Celine waving off their new friends and the rest of us saying goodbye and wishing them luck. Once that was done, we set off in the direction the compass pointed. There was no indicator of distance or anything, but given how fast we could move I doubted it's be necessary. Callie paid off her wish with the shadow jump she offered, and it took active effort not to use it just for fun.

As we walked, I thought over everything we'd learned. My mom's upcoming location, the fact that this was a trap, the fact that we might die. Not to mention all the people in the dungeon that would die, people like Anna-Marie and anyone else who got access to the drops. I felt terrible for getting her sucked into this. If it wasn't for us she'd never have been in any danger.

Just another reason we had to try to stop things. Self interest aside, there were so many natives that could and probably would die during the harvest. Not all of them were awesome people, but some of them seemed pretty cool. I felt a hand slide into mine and looked over to see Callie smiling at me comfortingly. She squeezed my fingers and I squeezed back, the weight lifting just a little bit. This might be a mess, but it was one I didn't have to tackle alone. We'd be ok, we just needed to take things one step at a time.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"It's super dark here." I said uneasily, as we wandered deeper into the jungle that was the core. "Like, obviously I'm fine with the dark, we've been in worse but this feels...thicker. Like why isn't my perception piercing this?" The trees had started to shift as we walked further in, from jungle palms and...other jungle trees, to more forest like pines and oaks and stuff.

As that had happened though, the light coming through the trees above us got thinner and weaker, and the dark had begin to condense in a weird way. Callie looked particularly unhappy, and I realized a lot of the worry I felt was coming through the bond. "I feel like I'm swimming in mud." She muttered. "The darkness here is gross." She held up a hand, and I saw the dark above it writhe slightly as she tried to condense a shadow snowflake, but it dissolved before completion.

I wasted no time triggering my Eye of Revelation, through which I saw...trees. Right. Middle of a forest. "What's the compass say?" I asked Callie to distract her. I could tell the unnatural darkness was bothering her. As an Abyssal Infiltrator Callie didn't just use shadows. She WAS shadows, at least in some ways. And being cut off from such an integral part of her legend was seriously disquieting for her.

She just pointed deeper into the woods. "That way. You think this darkness is something she did? It IS kind of...Vampirey." She had a point, but I just shrugged.

"Not sure." I said worriedly. "Could b- wait what was that?" Something had flashed past. Something FAST. I froze. Wait, could this be more Night Pride? But I hadn't seen anything like that. Then again, I hadn't really seen them in the temple either.

There was a rustle behind me, and I spun around, seeing another flash of movement out of the corner of my eye. Benny laughed uneasily. "Anyone else feeling like we're in the last twenty minutes of a bad horror movie? When the last of the characters get killed off."

Abel snorted. "Please. No one as cool as me gets killed in horror movies." He paused. "Though, you would probably be the first one down. Quirky comic relief. They always die first." His vicious grin was all teeth as he aimed at my best friend, who looked even more disturbed.

Benny made an uneasy noise and Celine, cleared her throat. "Mr. Castleton, please do not TERRORIZE my boyfriend. It's petty."

"She's right." I said solemnly. "That's my job. Get your own verbal punching bag."

I seamlessly dodged a random rock Benny snatched up and threw at me, but I grinned as it deflated the tension. At least for a minute. Then we all lapsed into silence. Abel, however, seemed...ill at ease after the exchange. "I don't pick on easy targets." He said finally. "And the kid isn't one to shake in his boots."

Callie nodded, eyes narrowing. "It's the dark. It's...doing something. Something bad. I can feel it scratching at the back of my head like nails on a chalkboard. Scritch. Scritch. Scitch." She twitched with each word, and I felt her uneasiness grow as the dark seemed to condense even more.

I cursed. "Shit. This is some kind of fear feedback loop. It makes us freaked out, which makes it darker and less passable." I saw another flash of movement and whirled, missing the source completely. Then my Danger Sense went off hard and I hurled myself to the side. Looking back, I saw a massive black cat congeal from the dark right where I'd been. But it vanished a second later.

Shooting to my feet, I scowled and triggered my Moonlit Night, concealing us all in fog. Night Pride. Why were they outside? Had another of the conduits gotten out? Was Bethany fighting the thing right now? Using Eye of Revelation, I approached my team, grabbing them and linking arms as we went. "Alright guys, cool it. We're safe in the fog."

"Oh yeah." Drawled Benny. "Because nothing terrible ever happened to anyone in impassable fog." At the pointed silence he just shrugged. "What? I'm not freaking out because of the dark anymore, but walking around in nothingness is unsettling."

Jessie nodded. "I hate to agree with him, but he's right. This is almost as creepy. What happened?"

"What do you mean you hate to agree with me?" Said Benny indignantly. "Fuck you. I'm right about a ton of stuff. See if I let you date my sister now."

"Alright children, enough." I said with an eyeroll. "Don't make me send you to your rooms without dinner. I got attacked by what I THINK was a Night Pride. What is the singular for the Night Pride? Is it just Night Pride? Because that might get confusing, but are they just called cats individually or..."

"Honey." Interjected Callie. "I love the curiosity, but cat killing idioms aside, I don't think now is the time. You saved our asses with the fog, but we can't just stay in here." She held up a hand. "For one, the stealth is fucking with the compass. Thing is just spinning in circles now."

I cursed. "That's bad. Do you remember the direction it was in before? Maybe we can move in fits and starts. Walk a while in that direction then stop and drop the fog for a second?"

She nodded, pointing into the fog. I could see easily since it was my fog and the dark underneath couldn't occlude my Eye of Revelation, so I started leading us that way. Once we'd walked a few miles I stopped and looked around. "Alright." I said slowly. "Dropping the fog. Everyone be careful." Letting the skill fade, I held up the compass...which stopped spinning and then started to shift quickly but steadily from off to my left to my front.

I felt my Danger Sense, but before the cat that materialized out of the dark could hit me, a gleeful voice squealed. "KITTY!" And a fucking BLUR of blue satin and black hair smashed into the thing mid lunge and carried it clear out of sight. I looked down, and almost burst out laughing as I saw the compass needle had followed the blur right past me.

Sighing, I climbed to my feet, calling to the others. "I found Bethy!" I listened to the thrashing and slamming through the trees, until our vampire friend came jauntily skipping back into the small clearing we'd stopped in, dragging a particularly large and scary looking panther made of solid darkness by the tail. Which was bullshit, that wasn't even supposed to be possible.

"Hey guys." Bethy practically sang. "Did you see my new kitty? Thanks for distracting him. He ran away after I killed that gross zombie guy." She pouted. "The others all got clear, but this one was too slow. I couldn't pin him down though." She paused. "I think I'll call him Donuts."

"Zom- wait Bethy did you go into an old temple?" My eyes widened. She was a LOT scarier than I had expected. Holy shit. The other conduit had taken, me, Abel, and Gabriel together to put down. Had she killed one all by herself? That was crazy.

She nodded. "I liked the ambiance. Daddy says crypts and temples are good thinking places. He calls it the 'majesty of the profane' but only when he's around other people and is trying to sound pretentious. I think he does it half the time to see if anyone has the guts to laugh at him about it. Nobody ever does though. I got your message by the way. Super cool delivery method. But I'd already killed that old corpse by the time it showed up."

That was probably more than I should safely know about the trolling habits of the strongest S-ranker in the world. But it was nice to know the message delivery worked properly. Not that I'd doubted my power, but I wasn't sure how immediate the delivery might be. Or how overtly noticeable. For all I knew the thing might have dropped a scroll into their pockets or something.

I stared at the manifested shadow cat that didn't seem to be following the rules of its own existence and pointed at it tentatively. "I...I think it might be suffocating."

She looked back at the cat casually before releasing its tail. "Donuts, go to your place." The desperate and terrified shadow panther dove for her shadow, immersing itself in the darkness behind her which looked...deeper than it should. Apparently Vampires COULD mess with darkness.

Acting like the hadn't just completely subverted most of the rules we were given about the Night Pride, Bethy gave us a wide, toothy smile. "So you guys came to pick me up? That's super sweet. I was totally going to head to the mountain myself soon. I gotta find my besties though." She giggled in embarrassment. "I MIGHT have ditched them when I was chasing Donuts, but I'm sure they'll catch up, yeah?"

I somehow doubted Aida and Tracey were so sanguine about being left behind. "Sure, we can wait. Sorry we can't help you find them or anything, but the compass only works on you." Callie held up the device. It was pointing right at Bethy still, which was interesting. I supposed the wish hadn't been that specific, and going with an item meant the effect wouldn't fade, at least not soon.

"Whoa!" Bethy said, eyes going wide. "That's badass. You have a compass that always finds me? That sounds so useful. I bet Aida would totally buy that off you."

Pausing, I considered that. It was Callie's compass, she'd wished for it, but the fact that it still existed was pretty useless to us now. "We can talk about that later." I turned to Callie. "Since apparently Bethy chased away the Night Pride." And let them LOOSE. "Can you check the shadows near us to make sure we're clear of any more unwanted visitors besides..." I paused, grimacing as I forced myself to say the ridiculous name. "Donuts."

Even in a situation like this, it was hard not to smile at the absurdity, and Callie had to fight down a giggle as she nodded, which might have been Bethany's entire point to picking it. My girlfriend closed her eyes, kneeling down, and slid her fingers slightly into the shadows at her feet, just enough to barely breach the surface.

I wasn't sure if there was a connection between how deep she went into the shadows and her range, but I didn't think so. More likely she was dipping a toe to be safe in case she needed to pull out in a hurry. The Night Pride were dark creatures, so it was probably a smart move.

Bethy just giggled. "Let me know if there's any more. I want to get Donuts a friend." I could swear I heard a whimper from her shadow as she said that, but I chalked it up to my imagination.

Callie's eyes snapped open. "Nope. Whatever weird corrupted darkness the things were using is gone, they really did run. I DID, however, find the rest of Bethy's team. Aida and Tracey are ahead of them, charging off after you." She pointed. "They're in that direction."

Shrugging, I looked at the Vampire. "Want to go pick them up before we leave?" She seemed comfortable out here, somehow she'd avoided having her blue velvet dress and long fingerless gloves ruined during the scuffle, and none of the plantlife seemed to dare to get near her.

Nodding happily, she turned in the direction Callie had pointed and raced off. I sighed, looking at my girlfriend with grim amusement. She just shrugged, holding up the still active compass, and we all trekked after her. We didn't bother running, we'd get there eventually. Once we did, we could head for the mountain. In the meantime I decided not to question things that Bethy did. Too much of a headache.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"This mountain is much bigger than it looked from that temple." I complained as I hauled myself further up the rock face we were currently climbing. "Like...unnecessarily big. Also nearly completely vertical up the sides. What is this even for? Like nothing could possibly live up here? Unless it flies. Are there like, dragons up here?"

Callie snickered from her place hanging off my back. "Less talking, more climbing. Also this is a plateau, not a mountain. It's flat on top."

I glared over my shoulder. "First off, that's just being pedantic. Second of all, why am I climbing with you on my back? You have a higher might than I do? I should be riding on YOUR back." I paused and leapt for a crevice about a thousand feet up that I could barely see because of Eye of Revelation, which I missed. I pushed off the air with Ripple Running to course correct, snagging it and holding on while the others used the ropes to climb up to my last handhold.

This mountain was HUGE. There was some spatial bullshit going on with it, because once we got close it seemed to multiply in size. It SHOULD have been fine, but unfortunately we'd run into a problem with scaling it. The thing had been worn very nearly smooth and the rock was fucking F-rank stone and chipping through it took effort and energy. Making handholds up the side would have taken weeks.

In truth, i knew why I was climbing. State of Grace made any screwups irrelevant (important given the enhanced gravity and the absurd size of this thing) and Ripple Running let me catch myself if I missed, which even with Eye of Revelation I sometimes did. Callie poked me in the ribs. "Don't you know you aren't supposed to comment on a lady's weight? You're going to give me a complex."

Even as an F-ranker Callie wasn't that heavy, given I was the same rank and twice her size, but I still groaned and wobbled back and forth dramatically. "Can't. Breathe. Darkness. Closing in." Then I paused. "Speaking of darkness, why don't you just port us up there?"

She giggled at my dramatics, but when I asked the question looked genuinely ashamed. "It's too far. I think you're right about the spatial bullshit. It's hundreds of miles up this thing. If it helps, once we hit the curve of the fingers on the fist shape this becomes a normal mountain climbing trip. It's a slope not a straight climb from there."

I boggled. Hundreds of miles. That was...insane. "Did you ask Anna-Marie about this mountain? If it's warping space this badly there's no way it's normal."

She shrugged. "She didn't know anything. Probably predates the books she's using. This rock is...hard. Like, harder than the stuff the castle is made of. It's got to be old as shit. It's at LEAST F-rank. Might be half-step E-rank. Hard to tell because there's so damn much of it the Impact is overwhelming my senses. I think the gravity is even worse here too.

Nodding, I huffed out a laugh. "I didn't want to say anything, but yeah. This is winding me more than expected. Of course, the extra cargo isn't HELPING!" I bellowed pointedly down to the literal twenty people, four wolves, and giant BEAR hanging from the fucking ropes tied around my back and shoulders.

"Shut up you wuss!" Yelled back Benny, trying not to cackle in glee. "What's that giant lumbering ass of yours for if not to be a beast of burden? We don't pay you to think! Mush!"

"I will DROP you!" I yelled back, but he completely ignored me, giggling up a storm as I glared down at him. "I hate this place." I grumbled. "I can't wait til this bullshit is over and I can go meet my mom." I grinned through the mask at Callie. "I wonder if she's going to be as welcoming as your mom was. The thought of you two teaming up against my kind of fills me with dread. Like...in a good way."

"Ah yes." Callie said sagely. "Because mother-in-laws always get along with the wife." Her mouth snapped shut, and I felt mortification through the bond as I let out a gleeful cackle of my own. "Shut up!" She yelped before I could respond. "It's a turn of phrase. Don't say a word."

"Yes, dear." I drawled, grunting as she elbowed me in the ribs again. Worth it.

Identifying a new spot, I jumped again. Another one or two thousand feet, but unfortunately, this time it was mostly horizontal. Another big reason to have me in charge of climbing was the State of Grace could mitigate our falls if need be. Benny's density shift wouldn't be nearly enough.

"About your mom though." Callie said softly. "Just...don't have too many expectations? It's great that you might find her again, but she DID leave. Even if your dad made her, that's not...great."

I sighed. "Yeah. I feel you. I'm trying to keep things low key. Hope for the best expect the worst and never be disappointed. I won't get ahead of myself." Some people might have taken it personally, might have assumed she was being negative, but I could feel the love and concern wrapping around me through the bond. Callie was terrified my mom would let me down, be just another bad parent to complete my set. She didn't WANT that. She wanted me to have a mom like hers, but she was still scared it would happen.

"Are we there yet!" Bellowed a bored voice from below us. I rolled my eyes. "Bethy! Don't make me turn this spelunking expedition around! We will TELL you when we get there! Also we won't be vertical anymore, so keep an eye out for that as a good indicator!"

"But I'm BORED!" She wailed. "And Donuts is hungry! He says the razor taloned eagles that nest on this mountain taste terrible!"

I froze, looking down at her. "WHAT RAZOR TALONED EAGLES?"

Even from dozens of feet up, I could see the look of confusion on her face as she pointed. "Those razor taloned eagles!" I turned to look over my shoulder, past Callie, as a MASSIVE bird whose talons appeared to be LITERAL steel razors silently swept down on us.

I tensed and readied myself to attack, but I stopped as a massive hand materialized and slapped the bird out of the air. It fell about a hundred feet and then caught itself, eyeing us angrily as it circled away, staying within range but steering cleer. I looked down to see Abel shaking out his hand.

"How many more times can you do that?" I called down to him. I wasn't sure how much good it had done, but it seemed to have at least deterred the beast.

"A bunch!" He yelled back. "But it's not really going to hurt them. Airborn enemies are more vulnerable to a stable attack like that, but it's more jarring than damaging. We need to hurry up and get to the curvature! Once more of those things show up we're screwed."

Glancing to Callie, I made a sound of consideration. "So...how durable is this rope do you think? Like, could I swing it around without it breaking? Because I feel like a bear on a rope is a good counter to eagles." It WAS an F-rank rope, but there was a lot of F-ranked PEOPLE on it, and it could get cut or something by the talons.

A chorus of voices echoed up from below as every member of my team started screaming at me NOT to use them as a bludgeon to attack flying apex predators. Wimps.

"Honey." Said Callie slowly. "That's a REALLY bad idea. We're dozens of miles off the ground next to a gravity warping super mountain. If the rope gets cut they'd all fall to their deaths."

Sighing, I nodded. "I KNOW. I just figured I'd bring it up. How often do you have a giant bear on a rope? My question is why haven't we seen more of them. You think they might be nocturnal? Because if so Abel is right and we need to hurry up. I don't want to get swarmed in the dark."

"Maybe." She grimaced. "How long do you think it'll take if you push? To get us up to the curvature?"

"I could...probably manage it in an hour if I'm willing to fry myself." I said hesitantly. "If I spam Ripple Running I could just jump us right up the side one step at a time. My head will be mush by the time we hit the top though, I'd be useless for hours."

I really DIDN'T want to do that. The extra gravity meant the jumps would be even less effective, and it seemed to be increasing the higher we went. That last jump hadn't been quite a thousand feet, even horizontally. I COULD get us to the top, but it was going to SUCK.

Grimacing at my upcoming pain, I sighed. "Can you do a pair of shadow wings, Cal? Combined with State of Grace is should increase hang time a little and reduce drag." If it had just been us I wouldn't have been as worried, but speed blitzing up hundreds of miles of mountain stepping on midair with literal tons of F-ranker hanging off me was...intimidating. Anything I could do to make it easier would be preferable.

"Of course." She said with a slow nod. Closing her eyes, a pair of massive shadowy bat wings unfolded from behind her, and she clung to me. "If you start getting too out of it tell me. We can look for another handhold and give you a rest. It's more important that you're ok than that we get to the top fast. We can always fight off some birds."

I nodded, swallowing hard. "Alright!" I called down to the others. "We're taking the express elevator here, folks, so hold on!" I waited until I got agreements from all of them, then I pushed off backwards to get some room. There were screams at the abrupt motion, but with the wings and warning nothing too bad. I still had a few steps left of Ripple Running. I planted my feet on the air, bent my knees, and pushed off HARD.

Two hundred fifty might goes a long way, even with tons of animal and human hanging off you and enhanced gravity. I felt a jerk as the pressure shot us upward, aided by State of Grace. When I felt myself begin to fall, I stepped again, another powerful shove with my legs. Then a third. I mapped the distances in my head, and I could feel myself going just a bit less far with each jump.

After four jumps I ran out of Ripple Running and triggered the skill again, bouncing once more off the air to carry us up. I felt my legs begin to burn a bit, but I wasn't worried. I triggered a heal burst, flooding my body with energy, and it easily countered the strain. I jumped again, and again. The world became a blur around us as I carried us up, one jump at a time, scaling the mountain.

This was going to take a long time, I could tell, but that wasn't a problem. It would be ages before using Ripple Running would start to effect my soul. It was just a normal skill, after all. I felt Callie clinging to my back, wings folded, spreading them at the apex of each jump to slow us down. I just hoped there was a decent amount of hiking to do once we hit the curvature, this conclave was going to be a big deal, and I wanted to be at my best. Wouldn't do for everyone to know how out of my depth I was here.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

To my surprise, I wasn't fried by the time we reached the top. I was sore and my head was ringing a bit, but I was more than functional. That whole mess with the shield had really worked out my soul, and shockingly, I was starting to see real gains from the constant grinding.

Once we hit the curvature, we had to pull everyone up, and I smirked a bit as I saw them all glaring in annoyance. Benny flipped me off when he finished untying himself. "That rock is HARD. We smacked into the damn mountainside like six times on the way up. You couldn't have been a bit more careful?"

"Considering I made like a thousand plus jumps?" I shrugged. "I feel like I did a damned good job." I slumped down with a groan, breathing hard. It was an interesting sensation. Unless Impact was involved my physical prowess had mostly been more than enough to handle anything I got into up to now. Not that I hadn't been overpowered on several occasions, but just wearing myself out through constant physical effort was something I attributed to the old me.

He rolled his eyes. "Whatever." Looking up the mountain, he winced. "So, this curvature thing isn't going to be a small trip huh?"

I sighed. "Probably not nearly as long as the tip up in distance, but given the sharp incline and the ice, not to mention whatever else is probably up here, we're most likely going to need to take it slow. It's coming up on nightfall, and I think going through frozen steep mountain terrain in the dark is a stupid plan. Luckily, we brought a ton of useful materials for exactly this environment."

I snapped my fingers and a glowing orange stone appeared in my hand. Tossing it to Benny, he gave a pleasant groan when he caught it. "That feels amazing. Like taking a dip in a hot tub. What is this?"

"Summerspark crystal." I said as I withdrew another and passed it to Callie. "We traded for it with Anna-Marie's brother. It'll be used up after a few hours, but while its active it cocoons your body in warm air. You can use a larger amount to cover an expanded area, create sort of an exclusion zone for cold. I'm going to set one up for the bunker. The conclave is tomorrow, and showing up so early won't have much point. Might as well rest up."

He nodded. "Seems like a good plan. I know I could use a break. Slamming into rock walls and being dragged through the air for hours isn't much fun."

"Next time YOU can jump on air for hours to drag literal tons of F-ranked beings up the side of a gravity altering space warping super mountain." I said sweetly. Then I paused. "Oh wait, no you can't, so shut up." Callie snorted at that, but when Benny and I turned to look she was gazing back at me innocently.

I heard a squeal of glee and Bethany basically APPEARED out of nowhere, scaring us all shitless. "That was SO MUCH FUN!" She cheered. "Can we do that again? Best ride ever!" Clearly she hadn't had a problem with hitting the side of the mountain, though somehow that didn't surprise me.

"I think we'll have the next conclave somewhere a bit less...hostile." I said with amusement. "In the meantime we're going to go ahead and bunker down for the night, literally. You guys have your own accommodations or do we need to share?"

She waved me off casually. "Oh no. Daddy makes me travel with lodgings. My Bone Burrow is pretty comfy. What about you? What did you guys bring to camp in?" Her cheerful demeanor made it clear she considered this a fun little outing, despite the circumstances. I also realized she wasn't holding a summerspark crystal and yet she was clearly fine in the cold. Vampire stuff probably.

Reaching into my spatial ring, I pulled out the spike of stone that was our enchanted bunker. "Picked this up in town." I said, brandishing it proudly. I really hoped it could actually penetrate the mountainside or we'd be screwed.

She looked it over with interest. "Wow, lots of really tiny runes on that, it must be super enchanted. This your first time using it? I bet it looks pretty cool when it makes your bunker for you. I can't wait to watch!" Her eyes were blazing with crimson glee as she stared at the device. It was honestly kind of terrifying.

Not that she was wrong. It did sound like it would be pretty interesting to watch. "Alright." I said with a laugh. "Let's get a bit further up the slope, maybe find a patch of more level ground or at least something away from the edge."

Callie nodded, pointing off to the left and ahead. "I scouted as best I could. I think there's a flat spot over there we can use. Hard to get a read with all this snow. The shadows aren't exactly numerous up here. It's stupidly bright."

I paused. She was right. We were high up in the air, and night had fallen. The oversized moon above the dungeon had turned this snowy mountain slope into a field of blinding white light with barely any shadows to be found aside from a few random spikes of rock jutting up.

That was...unsettling. Seeing the moon so bright and close made me nervous, given what we'd learned about Suvaya. What exactly was this mountain? I shook that thought off. I was being paranoid. Not everything was some huge conspiracy. Probably.

Following Callie's advice, we DID find some flat ground, a small indent in the steep rock. I stepped inside, looking around with Eye of Revelation to make sure we were safe, then, kneeling down, I cleared some snow and slammed the rock spike into the mountain side as hard as I could.

It sunk in about an inch. I growled in annoyance cracked my neck, took a firmer grip, and triggered Mercy Kill as I brought it back down. Heavy Hands was passive and with Mercy Kill boosting the attack and all my power behind it I got the damned spike halfway into the cold rock.

Once it dug in, I pulled my hands back, watching as a series of runes so small they were almost unreadable even to me lit the entire spike with yellow orange light. The light traveled down the spike then back up a few times before it finally expanded out into the small cracks in the rock around it.

The cracks widened, pushing themselves open as the ground under us shook slightly. As I watched, the stone began go spike up around us, the spears joining into joints and lines as they began to outline a rather decently sized building. I stepped back, watching in awe as the bunker constructed itself out of the mountain itself.

Once the rumbling stopped, I stepped inside and walked to the center of the floor where the spike still sat, yanking it out and looking it over. The thing looked...drained. I knew it wasn't single use, but it would take a while for it to recharge off the ambient mana. I stowed it away and walked to the door.

The stone had formed a barrier on a sort of interlocking rock hinge that could be pushed open easily, once I did, I stepped out of the spacious bunker and looked around, spotting my friends a bit away.

Benny whistled as he approached. "Well that's a neat little trick. Is it like a temporary template made of the natural rock? You removed the original spike right?" His inner Inventor seemed to be at the forefront, and I passed him the spike.
He looked over it. Benny wasn't an Enchanter, but runes played a part in enchanted items of all kinds and he could understand their basic meanings. Studying the tiny script, he hummed in interest.

"How does it work?" I admit I was curious myself, I knew WHAT it did, but how was a bit too much trouble to bother puzzling out.

He handed it back. "It's basically a rechargeable enchanting template. It makes the bunker and enchants the thing as it does. The banker's enchantments fade over the next twenty four hours as the thing recharges, this will be gone by the time we can make a new one. You can leave it in place if you want to make it more long term but it won't charge while its embedded."

Nodding, I reached into my ring, withdrawing more of the summerspark crystal. "Alright, help me setup an exclusion zone around this place. Rock doesn't exactly retain heat, especially not up here. I don't want to sleep freezing my ass off."

He snickered and he, Callie, Bethy, and her two thralls who appeared from nowhere to help, all took crystals and laid them out in the formation I gave them. The Landrock Bunker itself was, as we'd been told, a twenty five foot square. At least on the outside. It was bigger internally, which could have been a feature of the enchantments Benny mentioned or could have been because of the nature of the mountain.

Giancarlo had said it drained power from the nearby rock when creating itself, and I wasn't sure exactly what that would do in a place like this. The rock was still F-rank, even nearby, so it wasn't like it drained it all dry. Once we set up the exclusion zone for the cold, I turned to the others. "So, everyone can pick wherever they want to sleep inside. I have sleeping bags in my spatial ring if any of you don't. Bethy's people will crash in her Bone Burrow apparently."

Ten people inside of a relatively spacious bunker wasn't too tight a squeeze, especially since several of us would be sharing sleeping bags. The interior, based on the quick look I'd had, was probably about a hundred feet in each direction. Stepping inside, I was relieved to see there was plenty of room. Well...for humans. Randall slept outside, playing guard bear and enjoying the warmth since he couldn't fit comfortably into the bunker.

After we confirmed everything with Bethy and agreed on a time to wake up, we all piled into the bunker, setting up our sleeping bags inside. In fact, the place was so big we were able to set up whole tents for a bit of privacy. Once we got settled, we all gathered around the spot the spike had been stuck in and I set up a small magic stove I'd picked up at the bazaar.

I cooked everyone a nice meal of grilled cheese, and we washed it down with some canned tomato soup. It was delicious, of course, and everyone seemed to be in a good mood by the time we finished. Once we were done, I paused a second before speaking to everyone. "Guys. This conclave tomorrow. It's going to be tense. No one will be happy finding out we're all sacrifices. Hell, some of them might not believe us. Be on your guard ok? I don't want to lose anyone."

Abel nodded solemnly. "People do stupid things when they're scared. Don't worry, kid. I'll keep an eye on everyone best I can. That Brightlaw guy seems like the type to back us up if we need it too. Between the two of us I doubt anyone will get anything by us."

I chuckled, remembering how we'd put down that undead in the temple. He wasn't wrong. As a combination my group and Gabriels were pretty damned scary, hell, just the three of us were kind of a nightmare. "Fair enough. We're not exactly pushovers." I wasn't going to take anyone's safety for granted, but at least I felt a bit more secure. With all that out of the way Callie and I retired to our tent to sleep, we had a big day tomorrow.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

After a nice rest, we packed up and got back on the way to the site of the conclave. We hadn't specified where it would be, but the most reasonable place to meet was the flat area on top of the mountain, so we kept going up, enjoying the brisk mountain air and NOT getting frostbite thanks to the summerspark crystals. I could see why Anna-Marie negotiated so hard for the things, they were life savers.

We hadn't set any specific time for the meeting, though I'd been planning for somewhere around sunset. Arriving at the mountaintop though, we obviously had plenty of time left before that. Even the several hours of hiking the mountain only put us at midafternoon when we arrived.

We were greeted by a small gathering of people, all sitting in what appeared to be furniture they brought themselves. It was a motley assortment, some of whom I recognized from descriptions, some of them completely new. One of them, a girl with absurdly long golden hair, was sitting on a canopy bed, reading a book while several other girls held up and brushed her voluminous locks. Another of them was a dark skinned girl with purple hair and eyes, sitting at an easel painting the faded form of the still huge moon in the daytime sky.

"Ok." I said slowly. "Guess some of them beat us here. I wonder if all ten of the teams will show up?" Between the two of them, Bethany, us, and Gabriel that was a full half of the represented forces. Fifty people all told. Of the other teams, I knew the identity of two of them, my distant relative Alistair and the team with the twins, Flicker and Blink, that left three more mystery attendees and their own teams. Possibly ones with Raul and Christina, assuming they weren't part of one of the ones we'd already seen.

Speaking of Gabriel, looking off to one side I noticed the man sitting on a padded red couch with Archimedes and a dark haired woman with what appeared to be a frequently broken nose. I'd never seen that before on an Ascendant, but I supposed it must have healed slightly wrong. She had delicate features, but her shoulders and arms were thick in a way I'd seen in boxers. The gloves she wore had no fingers, but they were plated at the knuckles.

Heading over, I nodded to the big Crusader. "Gabriel. I see you made it pretty quickly. You bring one of those others with you?"

Sipping gingerly at a teacup that looked WAY out of place in his big gauntleted hands, the blonde man nodded. "I did. My friend Valsa is at the easel over there. She's an Imperial noble. The one with the long hair is from the Fairyland. Her name is Annalise, and I believe she's some kind of fae." his eyes flicked behind me. "I see you found the Vampire."

Bethy cleared her throat. "That's DOCTOR Vampire. I didn't spend five years in Vampire medical school for nothing." He just stared at her, face stony, and she rolled her eyes. "Ouch, tough crowd. Shame, you're kind of cute. I always like the driven, warrior of faith types."

He cracked a small smile. "Get thee behind me, Vampire."

She just winked and said. "That IS where I prefer to bite from." Flouncing over to sit on the opposite end of the couch, she gave an expansive yawn, showing off her fangs. "So, when are we starting the meeting? Do I have time for a nap...maybe a quick bite." She grinned at Gabriel, but the Adamant cultivator didn't rise to the bait, ignoring the Vampire and drawing a pout from the charismatic girl.

"Well, Alistair isn't here yet." I said, searching around. "At the very least having another candidate in this would be useful. I'd also prefer to confirm he hasn't been torn into tiny pieces by some millennia old corpse."

Nat nodded. "I'm betting his people are probably pretty scary. Most candidates have an impressive retinue. Not all of them, of course, but a few people with serious power." She gestured to her own minions. "Perit and Valk are mine. I find keeping it to two makes the process faster, though as you know people vary in that respect."

Bethy, who had given up on teasing Gabriel when the situation for serious, frowned thoughtfully. "I don't mind a bit of a wait, given the severity of the situation, but we'll have to start eventually. Not everyone will necessarily show up, and some of them may have died." Seeing her switch back to her serious mode was a bit jarring, but I'd seen the overly formal and remote behavior already so it didn't throw me too much.

Aida and Tracey were standing behind the couch, remaining almost perfectly still as the stood guard, and their presence gave her a sort of gravitas, like some ancient queen. It was kind of weird to see funny, silly, admittedly scary Bethany look so poised. Her comment made me thing of something else though. "You ran into one of the conduits didn't you? They're ancient, if somewhat stripped of power. You said you killed it right?"

She grimaced. "Yes, though not without some difficulty. The one I met wasn't particularly well protected against enthrallment. I hypnotized him like I tried to do to you. He stood there monologuing as we surrounded him and impaled him with a variety of dangerous high ranking instruments. Most of them coated with poison." I shuddered a bit. That was...terrifying. Being unaware as ten people ran you through all at once. She gave me a toothy grin, her voice slipping back into her usual friendly chirp. "It's so much easier to take down the baddies when they sit still and let you work, huh?"

Aida cleared her throat. "That said, most of the weapons we used on him were single use. Bloodbound stakes that Lord Lark provided us. He tends to be...sensitive, to the possibility of undead. Many of them hold grudges against him for his purge of vampiric cultivators. The stakes are single use consumables designed to inflict a great deal of damage on undead. We have more, but not many."

Bethy's eyes snapped up to Aida, and the woman flinched slightly under the ruby glare before she sighed dramatically. "I suppose that would have come out regardless. But watch what you share Aida. That information was not yours to disseminate." Her tone wasn't formal this time. It was cold. I hadn't seen her like that yet, and I found myself almost as scared as the thrall appeared.

Lowering her head, Aida curtsied to the girl. "Apologies, mistress." Weirdly, her voice wasn't shaking or frightened, it sounded more...ashamed. Bethy's face softened and she offered her thrall a soft smile, which seemed to placate her. I got the impression the relationship there was much more nuanced than it had seemed. The thralls weren't her keepers, not really, she just liked people to think they were.

It occurred to me that ditzy Bethy was as much of a mask as Vampire Bethany, maybe more. Whatever her real personality, the girl was clearly more dangerous and focused than she liked to appear. I saw Gabriel studying her too, clearly taking in the same things I was, and probably learning even more.

"If possible." I said, waiting so I didn't interrupt and give up possible information. "I'd love to get my hands on one or two of those stakes. If not I get that, if your dad made them, even if they're restricted to your own rank, they must be special items."

She bit her lip. "I can't...those aren't mine, exactly. They're emergency measures to keep me safe. Using so many of them was problematic. I'm not saying no, but it would need to be something we negotiate. I'll reserve judgement until we see who comes to this."

Speaking of who was coming, I noticed a form resolving itself off in the distance, a familiar form with red hair and a beard. Craygen. The big man spotted Abel and grinned, waving over at us, and Cady joined him as he made his way over, leaving their team with Chad.

"Apollyon, my friend!" He boomed as he came in close, holding out a hand to grab Abel's and pull him in for a slap on the back. "We got your team leader's message. We appreciated the warning. One of our own had located one of those damned temples not long before and we'd already entered. Thanks to you we dodged the inevitable dust up with the super zombie. We owe you one."

I realized Callie had been in charge when we met them, but I didn't see a reason to correct them. We were partners, if they wanted to treat her as the leader that was fine. She deserved it, and still did plenty to help me with running things. I nodded to him. "We appreciate you making it here. Must have been a hell of a run."

He guffawed loudly. "That it was. The climb was even more irritating, luckily one of ours had a set of enchanted spelunking gear that made things MUCH easier." I grimaced. I should invest in something like that. It would have been so much less tiring than the way we actually got up here.

I also considered the shape of the mountain and winced. we'd come up the back of the fist, up between the knuckles, since we hadn't seen anyone else, they might have had to climb up the front which seemed like it would have been...aggravating. "I think we should wait on the others. I want to explain the details as few times as possible, so we can just tell all the groups as they show up."

"We saw one of them on the way up." He said casually. "Recognized one of them from the party. Raul. Short guy. Dark hair, carries a big axe. They should be here soon." He pointed off into the distance, and I looked out to see a series of figures. The one in the lead wore a dark cloak, and Raul and another smaller figure were trailing him in a way that seemed familiar. They followed him like Perit and Valk did. Alistair most likely.

They didn't approach as they reached the flat expanse we were all standing on, walking over to speak to Annalise where she sat reading on her canopy bed. Three teams left then, one of whom was probably whoever Christina worked for, or possibly the woman herself. That might be...tense, but we'd get through it. This was bigger than a bit of petty squabbling, and hell, we might have been doing her a favor.

Speaking of. "Any of you guys find any more drops?" I asked of the collective allies I found myself amongst. "Because we didn't run into any."

They all shrugged, except Gabriel, who nodded. "I came across a field of lightblooms. We collected the Dew and are keeping it in reserve until we all discuss the circumstances. It might be worth using it, trap or not, assuming we can actually find out the details of this little plot. I had some ideas about that, by the way, once everyone arrives." He looked at Nat and I, and I understood where he was going with that.

Wishes. Wishes weren't great with secrets, hidden information had a weight to it that drove up the price, but there would be ways around that, and I was sure between the three of us here we could get SOME kind of outline of what Suvaya was going to do and when, especially since we already knew a decent chunk of it. Or at least suspected. So, with that plan in mind I reached into my spatial ring and pulled out a chair, albeit a much less comfortable one than most of the others, and sat down. Now all we had to do was wait.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We waited for a few more hours, and two of the remaining three teams showed up. One was the team with Christina in it, the blue fog wielding psycho I'd been warned was not to be taken lightly. She glared hatefully at us, but didn't attack, staying behind her apparent boss, a weaselly dark haired guy with a pencil mustache that Gabriel sneered at as soon as he saw him.

"Bad blood there?" I said casually as we watched the other team approach the team I was pretty sure was Alistairs. The cloaked man I suspected was my relative reached out a hand and greeted the mustache guy.

Gabriel, literally the most controlled person I'd met up to this point SPAT on the ground to one side. "Templeton."
Bethy hissed. "THAT'S Templeton? As in SIMON Templeton? The youngest current descendant of The Whispered Lie?" Her eyes narrowed. "I'd heard he was going to enter, but I didn't think he would make it in. His powers aren't suited for a tournament setting."

The Crusader sneered. "Templeton doesn't do his own dirty work. He probably had a dozen participants lined up waiting to pass him the entry slots."

"Ok." I said cheerily. "How about we pretend not everyone is part of your super special young masters and mistresses cluib and that I don't know who any of these people are. And then we can stop pretending because that's the exact case here and you can just tell me what the hell you're talking about."

Bethy giggled at that. "I knew there was a reason I liked you, Sol. Sorry. I'll explain." She gestured us closer, triggering a Stealth Skill so her voice wouldn't carry. I'd been developing a feel for that kind of thing. "The Whispered Lie is...well, he's a monster. A mind mage who brainwashed his entire planet into loyal servants. Templeton is a descendant, and he inherited the Lie's powers, but they aren't a clan. The Lie only has one son, and he only had one son, Templeton."

"What kind of mind mage?" I asked uneasily. Magic, I knew, was just Skills that were distilled from unusual abilities and taught. Mind magic would be the same, but mind control seriously skeeved me out. I didn't like the idea of telepaths or mind readers, even without adding free will diluting bullshit to that.

Gabriel interjected. "The Whispered Lie's power is complex. When he speaks, his words are...weighted. If he says something untrue and you believe it, he can then say something true and make you believe it's false. The more he talks the more the truth starts to bend. He can convince you of anything, and he uses his ability to deadly effect. Templeton does the same. It doesn't sound like mind control, but that's what it is when used the right way."

"Do we need to worry about him?" I asked. "And what about the other group, anyone know them?"

Craygen, who was in our little group and could therefore hear us, nodded. "Dralka. He's imperial. Nothing special or weird, just a scary ass fighter with a ridiculously powerful sword ability. Master candidate. Dralka isn't one to mess with. We're still missing one though."

I shrugged. "We'll need to ask around about them. But this is the end of the waiting period. We need to get this party started." Bethy nodded, letting the Stealth Skill drop, and I walked towards the center of the flat space we were occupying, where everyone could see me. "Excuse me." I called. "We're about ready to start. Anyone seen the last crew?"
Valsa, the girl at the easel, shook her head, her purple hair bouncing. "Ferak was the last but...he was closer than I was last I talked to him. He wouldn't have missed this either, not with your warning. I suspect he's dead. We can check after the conclave, but I move we begin proceedings."

"Seconded." Intoned Dralka, a huge bear of a man with thick black hair and bushy eyebrows. Apparently we were being super formal about this, good to know.

"The motion carries." I said smoothly. "We'll begin immediately. Allow me to introduce myself before we begin. My name is Shane Wyndham, from the Wish Curse Palace." I decided to use my real name because if I didn't no one would listen to me, and it wasn't like these people had any context for it anyway, so my identity wasn't a huge deal.

Alistair stepped up, pushing back the cloak to reveal a fine boned, skeletal man with green eyes much like my own. I could see echoes of my dad's features, around the eyes, but it was faint. Apparently we'd inherited some stuff from the Wishmaster in terms of looks, since this guy was supposed to be from a whole other branch. "Greetings." Said the man in a quiet voice. "I am Alistair Wyndham, my branch elder is Darius."

"Malachai." I said bluntly. "My grandfather." I was assuming branch elder was the person who founded his branch, the S-ranker who was allowed to start his family. His eyes narrowed a bit, but he was interrupted as Nat stepped forward. She nodded and I pointed to her. "My cousin Natalie, same branch."

Alistair looked floored. "You're in an alliance? Well...that speaks well of you. It's uncommon someone so low in rank manages to make an ally in the family. You mentioned a threat, but weren't too specific, just that there was a problem with the Dew and powerful enemies. I mostly came because the Crusader and the Vampire were involved, but I'd be willing to hear your story."

Nodding, I looked around to make sure the others were listening, then began to fill them in. The temple, the fight, the information we'd gotten from the others, and all the suppositions we'd made based on the evidence we had. It didn't take too long to tell it, but I was still glad I waited and told them all at the same time.

The biggest reason for that was that with my Eye of Revelation active I was able to somewhat observe everyone's reactions. That might seem pointless, but there were several interesting things I noted during my recitation. Templeton, for instance, didn't look worried or afraid, he seemed to momentarily light up, then his gaze shot over to Gabriel. I was assuming Templeton was thinking that he might have the means to get rid of the Crusader.

Annalise looked tense and worried, and I was pretty sure she knew the team that had gone missing and agreed with Valsa about their probably death. Alistair looked wary, though even my eye didn't give me any clues as to why that might be. Once I was done, I waited for any response. Chad was the one who reacted first. "Well...shit." He said succinctly. "Show of hands, how many of you have ingested some of the Dew?"

I put my hand up, and so did more than half of the assembled ninety people. I sighed. "Well, seems like most if not all of our teams are stuck here. Anyone in contact with any of the others? Seems like the slides might have dropped us off at least somewhat in the proximity of our closest neighbors, considering we all seem to know each other. I can only assume the other teams are further away since they didn't respond to the message, any of us have means of contacting them?"

A few people nodded. "Alright, after the conclave I suggest any of us who might manage to do so contact one of the other teams. There are a thousand of us out here and that's a solid force to bring to bear. They've already gotten the same message you did, so they know the basics."

Annalise nodded, before intersecting. "I'd like to stay here. We can use this place as a sort of home base. Some of the more distant teams may have only come into sight range of the mountain recently, or might not have done so at all. If they make their way here I can relay what we've learned."

"Speaking of which." Drawled Templeton. "I believe we have quite an advantage here. Three Wishmaster Candidates in one place. With the proper wording and a decent mind for deduction, we could bypass even the infamous 'secrets' vulnerability of the Wishmaster. The right questions in the right places would give us information that might not be the most complete, but eighteen points of correlation is enough to find the shape of the issue, as it were."

His voice was...oily. I disliked him almost immediately, and his power made trusting anything he said suspect and incredibly uncomfortable. But he'd basically repeated what we'd already considered doing, and he had a point. Gabriel spoke up. "True. But I think I speak for all of us when I say YOU shall not be the one asking such questions. I'll thank you to remove yourself from any such information gathering."

Templeton shrugged. "So suspicious. I'm naturally the best fit for such a thing. My skill at sussing out information is legendary." It was...nervewracking, listening to the man talk. I kept trying to figure out if he was lying or telling the truth. If I believed a lie he'd be capable to making me disbelieve a truth later, and while that seemed innocuous, being able to tell someone something you KNOW they won't believe is as good as being able to tell them something you know they'll take as fact.

I was pretty sure he hadn't lied yet, but that might be the whole point. Annalise cleared her throat. "We of the fae are known for our gift for such matters. I take it no one has a problem with ME being the one to try to suss out the direction of this vanished goddess's plans?"

Most of the rest of us breathed a sigh of relief, shaking our heads. Alistair smiled at her. "Personally, I have no issue with Simon being the one to attempt to wrangle us some answers, but I'm always happy to work with the fae. Such fascinating people your lot are." Annalise raised an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed with the obvious flirting, and Alistair just turned his attention to us. "Well, how many wishes do the two of you have remaining?"

"Six." I said directly. "I haven't used mine yet today. Just woke up a few hours ago. Nat?" My cousin indicated she was full up too. "How about you? You have all of yours remaining today?"

He nodded. "Eighteen in truth then, Templeton is right, even with our...limitations, we can get some decent information. Not to mention we already have a decent idea of the shape of things. Whoever makes the wishes can simply confirm things we believe and then go from there. Yes or no questions are easier than just asking for information, not to mention we have so many chances."

Sighing, I agreed, and we all gathered around Annalises canopy bed. As we'd spoken, she'd gestured to her...hair maids? And they're started plaiting it into a ridiculously complicated braid that somehow shortened it by about twenty feet. Sitting up she poked her bare feet out, and one of her maids slipped a pair of dainty slippers on her feet as two others helped her down from her perch.

She gave us all a calculating look, then pulled out a small journal and a pen. "If we're to do this properly, we must learn as much as we can and extrapolate as much as possible from what we know. Please repeat everything the undead said. And you as well, Vampire. Then we will compare notes and decide what facts we can take as indisputable. When we verify those, we can then begin to deduce." I blinked, because that sounded pretty damned effective. Bethy shrugged at me from nearby when I looked at her, and then she began to tell her story. I had a feeling this would be a long day.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I groaned, slumping back onto the couch that Annalise's maids had brought out after the third hour of our little powwow. Alistair was lounging not far away, and Nat was on the other side of the couch next to Bethy, and all three of them looked as annoyed and drained as I probably did. Not physically exhausted, obviously, but mentally drained from literal HOURS of constant annoying back and forth.

We'd told our stories. Then we'd told them again. Then we'd told them in reverse order. Then we'd told them with our eyes closed (apparently to check for any scents we might have overlooked, though why that would be important I had zero clue). Annalise just sat there, constantly scribbling in her stupid little book, making us repeat things as she compared facts from both recitations.

Once that was done, she started asking us questions. Nonsense stuff mostly, asking us how we felt about individual word choices, what the undead's voice had sounded like at any given time, and a host of other weird things that didn't seem to mean anything. After an hour. AN HOUR. Of questions, she finally made her first wish, asking for confirmation of a yes or no question.

Which she wrote down. In her book. I hated that book. But that question seemed to act as a new lens through which to view every detail she'd dragged out of us, and she forced us to reexamine every comment, interaction, and minute pause before asking the next. That one didn't take an hour, only about forty minutes. Then we did it again. And again. EIGHTEEN TIMES.

Finally, Annalise snapped her book shut. The second half of our little session hadn't just been us. She'd called Anna-Marie and grilled her on the legends she'd heard of Suvaya. Had her gather all her researchers and anyone she knew nearby that might have any understanding of the situation. Once all that was done she'd altered the questions somewhat, though kept them to yes or no.

It DID really bring down the cost of the wishes when she did that. Considering how absurdly expensive it had been the other times I'd tried fishing for secrets it was a relief. "So." I said with an exasperated huff. After she closed the book Annalise had closed her own eyes, then just kind of sat there.

No one else was nearby, the others had gotten bored and wandered off ages ago, some to go talk or drink or play games and some to explore the mountain, though my own crew stayed withing sight. Annalise opened her eyes. "Ah. Yes. Apologies, merely...sorting information."

She had to have some kind of investigative or information gathering Skill. Maybe some kind of nobility thing. Finally, she exhaled. Which I noticed easily, thanks to the twenty four points of Perception I'd gotten from her for the wishes she's made. At least there was one upside to this nonsense. "So...what did you figure out? Aside from the obvious stuff we already knew."

Shrugging, she tossed her thickly braided hair. "It was mostly confirmation of what we knew, as well as context for why this is all happening. You aren't stupid, your suppositions were accurate for the most part, though somewhat incomplete. You lacked some background information."

I'd gathered some of that listening to her questions but I suspected I'd missed some of it. "You know why she picked now to act?"

"Oh that one isn't a mystery." She laughed. "Bad luck. Her net has been cast far and wide, but part of the issue is that in order to utilize her 'conduits' as you call them, they had to be willing. She had to make them promises, her promise to make them gods has delayed things quite a bit."

I paused. "So she was really going to follow through on that?" She hadn't asked for that confirmation, so I wasn't sure where she got that bit of info.

"It's the only thing that makes sense." She said firmly. "Suvaya was a goddess, which means a full thousand Impact. That's the threshold for godhood. Among other things. Regardless, she had thirty three high priests bound to her, all of them powerful and high ranking Ascendants. B through S-rank. When the six destroyed her, part of her consciousness landed here, but it was too damaged to reconstitute."

"So she decided to farm Impact." I said impatiently. "Yeah, we gathered that. That was one of your questions, if all thirty-three survived to become conduits."

She nodded. "They didn't apparently, though we don't know how many did. That's where the local legends come in. Suvaya isn't just the moon goddess, she's the MOON as far as these people are concerned. The story about her seventeen stars is obviously a reference to the priests. Well, fifteen now."

"So you said she needed to honor her promise, does that mean she needed eighteen thousand Impact worth of Ascendants? Because...that's a LOT. Especially considering how many people never make it into the triple digits. Sure, the people who come here tend to be elites who usually make it higher, but still. And what happens if someone dies early? Does she still get their power?"

Annalise shrugged. "I have no idea. I'd assume so. Otherwise this would have taken much longer. Honestly the fact that she managed to make this place is absurd. She must have used the stripped stats from her priests to fuel its creation. No other way some damaged soul shard could manage it."

"I'm guessing she couldn't strip them past F-rank." I said with a grimace. "Otherwise why limit the dungeon like that. My question is how the hell did the six not NOTICE. They've been sending us here for millennia."

Nat answered that one. "There's no end of weird shit out there, cuz. Since they were never able to actually come here themselves its no wonder they didn't notice. It's not like they have anything to compare it to. No reason to jump to the conclusion one of the vanished gods was somehow still around."

Put that way, I could kind of understand. The Universe was huge and weird. Belief warped whole worlds in unexplainable ways and constantly shifted what could be considered fact. The six, being at the top of that pyramid, probably saw crazy and unbelievable things daily. I just wished this particular issue hasn't been the thing that slipped their notice, considering it might kill me and everyone I cared about.

Moving on, Annalise continued enumerating her findings. "In any case. She's recently come close to stockpiling the needed Impact. Something about the process requires her to imbue it all at once, probably the limits on the dungeon itself. The actual ritual for her to reform and for all the priests to Ascend will take place relatively soon, though I wasn't able to confirm a specific date. We didn't have enough questions for me to even try."

I nodded. Aside from being a secret and therefore expensive as hell, something open ended like a date would basically be process of elimination.

"Ok. Do we know WHERE exactly the ritual will happen?" I asked hopefully. She'd clearly gleaned a lot more from the stories and questions than I had, and hadn't said most of it out loud. No wonder she'd been writing so much. It was a fascinating look at the potential uses of my power when combined with the right inputs, and I'd seen Callie watching us intently, clearly trying to learn something.

She looked at me archly. "You didn't figure it out?" I felt my stomach sink. I knew what she was going to say. I didn't even need to think about it after hearing her tone. Because OF COURSE she was. The world sucked and fate sense tended to push us to the most interesting possible

"This..." I grimaced before continuing. "This isn't a mountain, is it?" Which would explain the gravity and spatial warping. Because of COURSE the hand of a vanished god was just sticking out of the ground in the middle of this dungeon.

Her answering smile wasn't really happy so much as cynically amused. "No. No it is not."

"Should we leave?" I asked tensely, ready to book it off the edge and State of Grace my people to the ground if need be. I wasn't taking any chances with the safety of my friends. I cursed my damned fate sense for being so annoyingly inconsistent. Pushing me to the temple to figure out the problem then up here to what...die?

"Unnecessary." She said with a wave. "She can't interact at the moment or we'd already be dead. She's in stasis after using most of her energy to create this place. The sleep of the moon, as the locals call it. This isn't her ACTUAL hand, obviously. Just the spiritual representation of the fragment of her manifesting when she created this place. She's a goddess, but they don't randomly grow to thousands of miles tall."

Which meant it might be a decent idea to keep a presence here, especially since more of the teams might be coming to help. Leaving them to wander around up here and possibly die couldn't be a smart call. "You're the one who has to stay here when we leave, are you ok with that? And speaking of leaving, does this mean we have an actual plan that can help us stop this?"

Annalise nodded. "Yes to both. You were on the right track. Seventeen priests. Seventeen conduits. If we kill them, it disconnects the threads she's woven through all the possible Impact she could harvest. Granted, some of the dead ones might have been harvested early, but she'll need Impact to make herself a new body and reform, not to mention repair the damage from the severed connections. If we disconnect all the conduits before she manifests, she SHOULD come into being as an F-ranker."

"Ok, that shouldn't be too bad." I said with a relieved sigh. "We DID kill that undead with just two teams. We can take the others. Especially with so much help."

"If only it were that easy." She said wearily. "I told you the priests vary in strength. They're all severely weakened and damaged, but some of them had a higher starting point. None of them will be able to breach the E-rank, but some of them will be literal former S-rankers. Even damaged and stripped of much of their strength...I shudder to think what they might be capable of."

I shuddered too. That sound terrifying. Abel made it clear to me what advanced Skills and techniques could do at the same level. "So...what do we do? Can we even kill them? It sounds like we'd be fighting a Master Candidate on steroids. Are their souls still higher level?"

She nodded. "Much. It's the only way to explain the possibility of Ascension. Still even with absurd Skills and soul power, stats are the building blocks of abilities. Without the stats to back it up they won't be able to throw around high rank power. Just use what they have REALLY well. If we attack as a group and plan things well, we can manage. Also, the more of them we kill the more strain is placed on the others."

"So we off them in reverse order." I said thoughtfully. "Take the weakest and make sure the big dogs are under more pressure when we come for them. Can you identify which priests are which?" I wasn't sure how she'd be able to, I hadn't heard anything that might, but hey, didn't hurt to ask.

"Some of them." She said, to my surprise. "The three I suspect are S-rankers were mentioned more than the others. At the very least we ought to save them for last. But even then, there's going to be quite a bit of power disparity. We need more of the teams on this. Luckily, while I didn't identify when the ritual would be, I did identify when it will NOT. As in, it will not be taking place in the next month."

My shoulders relaxed. That helped a ton actually. "Alright." I said firmly. "So, the plan is to find and recruit more of the teams then. Once we have the forces we move in and wipe out all seventeen of them within the next month. Then we jump Suvaya a thousand to one and crush her with numbers so we can get the hell off this hellhole." I paused. "Plus...maybe get some more those drops after she's dead if we can." From the grim smiles on the others, I suspected I wasn't the only one thinking about the fight that was going to be, but we had time for that later. For now...I guess we needed to get ready to kill a god.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

After we divined what Suvaya was doing and decided on gathering support, we pooled our information on the local geography and what teams most likely ended up where. It was a rough estimate, but by mapping out where we'd all been when we got on the slides and where we'd ended up, we were able to create a vague approximation of a formula that predicted the way the distance changed from one side of the slides to the other.

Using that data, and the knowledge we all had about where the other teams were in the bazaar, we managed to get an idea of where certain teams may have come out. I personally had assumed it was random, but once he got the idea in his head Benny had insisted on at least checking to see if there was a pattern, and it had paid off huge. His investment in Focus up to this point was definitely paying dividends.

"So, with this information we should be able to match people up with a list of teams to contact." Benny said, scrawling some more numbers on the page of the notebook he had borrowed. "Our list of known teams and their locations isn't huge, granted, and nowhere near complete, but the more teams we bring in, the more information we can get. Especially if the searchers note down the location their quarries landed so I can refine my formula. It's pretty general right now, even if we SHOULD see some results."

"Ah." Said Templeton greasily. "So this little exercise won't be accurate?"

Benny sneered at him. In the time we'd all been working on mapping this out, pretty much everyone had grown to dislike Templeton. We also did our best to let him speak as infrequently as possible. "It WILL be accurate. Just not to a fine degree. With so few use cases I was only able to calculate rough areas, the more data points we get the more exact I can get it. At the very least it'll give is a direction and an approximate distance. Which is more than we had before."

Gabriel nodded, cutting into the discussion. "Clockwork is right. We have, what, two teams listed for each of us? When we bring them back we'll have another eighteen teams and can gather data from them. Then we have twenty seven teams to send out to find the rest. It's the fastest and most accurate way to gather everyone quickly. We only have a month or so worst case."

"Agreed." Sneered Valsa. "So shut the hell up, Templeton. Nobody needs to hear from you anyway." While the rest of us disliked him, it seemed like Valsa had a special grudge against Templeton. I didn't much care as long as she helped keep him quiet.

I looked down at our own list. We'd been given the names of two team leaders, one of whom was selected because he was someone Nat knew personally. My cousin had traveled extensively, and had run into quite a few famous people of our own generation, so it wasn't a shock she might know one of the team leaders.

"I think we're ignoring a major issue." Said Chad grimly. "Designated meeting place or not, can we really ask Annalise to stay up here? It can't possibly be safe. I suggest we change the meeting place to somewhere else."

Nat snorted. "And how would we do that exactly? Alistair, Solomon, and I are completely tapped for wishes for the day. That means we have no way of reaching them until tomorrow, and chances are SOMEONE will make it here by then. Hell, how do we know the other teams aren't all already on their way? What if we miss them and they show up here? We'd be wasting our time showing up at their landing spot."

"I don't think so." I said. "Anyone close enough to see the mountain would be close enough to have gotten here by now. You know how fast we are, especially anyone at the peak of F-rank. I think our best bet is assuming all the attendees who are coming are already here. But I see Chad's point. Annalise, you sure you don't want out? I know you said it didn't bother you."

The fae shook her head. "It would be a meaningless gesture. If we don't prevent this ritual from taking place we're all going to die regardless. Being here doesn't put me in any more danger than being elsewhere. If nothing else, I suspect the manifestation will shatter this planet. You're familiar, of course with what happens when someone ranks up on a planet too weak to withstand the process?"

My eyes widened. "Shit. This place is peak of F. Forget the injunction against E-rankers, if she Ascends here it'll push the place into trying to rank up early. It'll collapse itself." I hadn't realized that when she'd mentioned the danger earlier. I thought it would be the rank up process itself that did the damage.

The others looked worried. "Well." Said Abel grimly. "At least we have some motivation for the rest of them. Self-interest will be important even for those that hadn't used the drops. Always nice to have motivated team members."

"Wait." I said anxiously. "If she comes back into being at the peak of F-rank, she could attempt to break through to E-rank anyway. Wouldn't that cause the same problem? We'll need to put her down immediately to prevent her from killing all of us. Once she hits E-rank she can use the stockpiled stats she has to rank herself up again pretty quick, couldn't she? Can she shoot herself back up to S-rank?"

"Doubtful." Said Annalise. "I'm sure you know how painful it is to grow your stats too quickly. But you're right that she'll embark on her Ascension rapidly and be a danger. We will need to stop her as soon as she restores herself. We were expecting that fight in any case, though."

Which made this more and more annoying. I turned to Alistair. "I think you should stay. Gibing Annalise access to wishes while we're gone will give her a way to narrow down the exact timing of the ritual, something we're going to need. She can also help Clockwork refine his formula...which is why I think he should ALSO stay. Along with Celine, Perit, Valk and Mel." Half of our team, but it would give him enough backup for me to be comfortable without leaving my own portion of the team vulnerable.

Benny, obviously, did not look happy, but I think he realized my end game here. This was important and we needed to find these people as quickly as possible. With access to wishes and someone with as keen a deductive mind as Annalise, he could basically make us a map to each team. It would massively save us all time. He'd already demonstrated how helpful he could be, and this would make his Focus even more useful.

He stared at me inscrutably for a minute before sighing. "Agreed. I'll stay and work. My suggestion is to keep in regular contact. Scan rings are good, but in person check ins would be safer. Assuming we're writing off the possibility of Suvaya waking up and punching us all into orbit. I think we should dispatch the teams in a staggered rotation to pick up singular targets. Means the mountain won't be running on a skeleton crew for longer than necessary, and we'll have teams in and out."

I knew he wasn't worried about the priests, given what we knew about them they were all currently in their tombs or nearby at least. Annalise theorized that they needed to stay put to act as foci for the lightblooms. No, he was worried that some of the other teams might decide they wanted to run the search, or that we were wrong, or any number of things. He was right, keeping the barebones crew we had set up here all the time would present a tempting target.

"Sounds good." I said nonchalantly. "Gabriel, Bethy? What do you guys think? If we stagger it we can make sure one of us is here at all times." While I wasn't a powerhouse, Callie and I together were pretty scary, and throw in Abel and you had a nightmarish level of variety in a combat scenario. Plus with Nat we had two candidates, which was its own form of disincentive. The other two were straight up monsters. If we staggered it so one of our three teams was here, people would be way less likely to start shit.

Gabriel nodded slowly. "I'll move out first. I'm the fastest given my team is mounted. We'll head out today, and tomorrow you can leave on your own search. We can relieve the Vampire when we return, then she can head out, and you can relieve us." Leanding his support, and theoretically Bethy's to the plan made it much more likely not to kick up a fuss.

While being a candidate might make me someone worth listening to normally, there were three of us here. i wasn't the oldest, the strongest, or the most educated. I was making plans because of momentum, but I DID have the biggest voting bloc in terms of raw power, and making the calls as a group would help add legitimacy to the proceedings. Especially once more teams showed up, because the power structure was bound to become more complicated as we went. Ascendants loved complicated.

After we hammered out the details as best we could Gabriel took his team and left. How they got fucking HORSES up and down the mountain I neither knew nor wanted to guess at, but apparently they'd done so, or left someone down to guard them. I knew Gabriel's charger was a construct, but the others had been riding real animals. I didn't see them up here, granted, but it was a big mountain. They might be over a ridge or something.

Once he was gone, I turned to Nat. "Alright. We have a day to prep before we leave, getting down won't be a problem, I can float us, but I still want to know more about this Renaldi person we're looking for. You said you knew him from your travels right? That's why you picked his team to look for?"

She nodded. "Miles Renaldi. Absorber. He can take on the attributes of materials he touches for a time. He uses it pretty well, I'm not shocked he won a tournament. I ran into him on a little planet called Revarge about five years ago. Granted him a few wishes. Some Skills he made good use of. He paid, but he considered it a bit of a favor so he told me he owed me one."

I exhaled a breath i hadn't realized I'd been holding."So he'll listen to you if you tell him what's up?" That was a relief. I was pretty sure we were going to have trouble convincing some of them. The more we had on side when we approached the easier it would be. I wasn't going to turn down any advantage in this mess. "You know anything about his team?" Most of our information was incomplete. We knew most of the relevant team leaders, but no one had bothered keep dossiers.

"I remember his girlfriend Sierra." She said with a shrug. "Earth manipulation. Other than that not especially. He's a pretty relaxed guy though. As long as we don't try to sneak up on him we should be fine."

"Alright." I said with a sigh. "I'm going to set up the bunker over there." I pointed off into the distance. "Then we can all crash. If we're going to ride all out tomorrow we want to be as well rested as we can be. After hours of that deduction shit I could use a nap, and I wasn't even deducing." She chuckled and I slipped the rock spike out of my ring. Tired or not no way was I going to sleep without solid walls around me. Not in mixed company, and not here. I couldn't get off this mountain fast enough.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Getting back to the ground the next day was actually really fun. State of Grace lasted five minutes, though stretching it out over five people (and a bear) was tough. Still, Callie helped me offset some of the strain through the bond, and we all plummeted through the air in a big spread out circle, whooping in enjoyment of the wind in our faces. We touched down in the forest near the base of the mountain pretty easily.

Callie, Abel, Nat, Jessie, Randall and I. We'd brought along our healer just in case, but the rest of the group was picked specifically because I thought they could handle themselves (or in Nat's case because she knew the guy we were looking for). I wasn't entirely thrilled leaving my best friend up there alone, but it helped that either Bethy or Gabriel would be there to help at all times.

"Wow." Said Callie as we all caught our breaths. "That was bracing. We should definitely try the sky diving thing again sometime."

I snickered. "I'm betting we're going to do it another five times at least here. I'm more worried about getting back up. The way down is quick and painless. I could do without the agonizing trip to the top of damned mountain, I'm not looking forward to a repeat."

She gave me an angelic smile. "That's weird. It seemed pretty comfy to me." I noticed Nat glare at her and stifled a snicker of my own. Callie had been hanging off my back, so she hadn't gotten slammed into the mountainside a few dozen times on a rope. When she followed my gaze and noticed she gave an apologetic shrug. "I'm just messing with him, no offense meant."

Nat shrugged. "So what's our heading? You had Benny add it to that magic map right?" We'd used the map to establish a baseline for the calculations Benny had been doing, and it had auto updated as it was supposed to do. The far reaches of it weren't really filled in, but we did have a basic idea of the scale we were working with and a direction to go. I slipped the map out, unrolling it to check our current location.

"Looks like we're heading northwest, at least based on where he probably landed. Templeton saw him around the time he hit his own slide. Benny's calculations say he probably landed about five hundred miles that way." I pointed. "It looks like more west than north though, we've already traveled a decent distance into the interior. We're not like, halfway or anything but he didn't land even close to the center anyway."

We'd considered bringing the wolves with us, using them as transportation, but given they were only G-rank it seemed like kind of a risk. Jessie had been working with them using her new and improved lifeweaver ability to try to get them stronger, but she couldn't just poof them to F-rank. Her ability was more about healing than enhancement, so the speed of improvement wasn't enough for our purposes.

Sadly, that left us all running the distance between ourselves and the spot where Renaldi and his people probably touched down. Not that it was tough, we all had enough Might to make good time, but running in the woods, even with Perception to notice obstacles, Focus to process them, and Might to avoid them, was annoying as hell. It was anything but a straight line, and the trees grew thicker the further in we got.

We kept up our pace for a few hours before we drew to a stop in the approximate area that had been marked out. "Alright." I said as I looked around. "Keep your eyes peeled for any sign of passage. Benny didn't have the data to give us a solid location, so we're going to need to search nearby manually." I had my Eye of Revelation up, using it to search for any signs anyone had been here.

"So what are the chances we actually FIND them here?" Asked Nat skeptically. "I mean, no way they just sat around for days doing nothing. If they didn't get picked up by a kingdom like we did, they might have just gone out searching for lightblooms."

"Assuming they know what those even are." I agreed. "But either way, that's actually best case for us. Tracking them out of the core and into a kingdom would be nightmarish. Luckily, I don't think it's likely. They may have met up with someone, but it doesn't make sense to drag them out of the core just to meet up with some politicians and send them back in. More likely they had some sort of mobile force out with enough power to strong arm them, either that or they really are free agents out here."

She nodded. "I could see that. I take it you're planning to look around for a while and then wish for some kind of tracking device if you can't find them?"

"Pretty much." I said distractedly. "But between my Perception and my Eye of Revelation I suspect I'll be able to find SOME trace of their passing. The approximate area Benny gave us wasn't small, but it's not more than a few miles wide. I wouldn't want to waste the wishes."

With that in mind, we spread out to look for clues. My Eye was damned useful for work like this, but it didn't turn out to be necessary. Within an hour I got a scan ring call from Callie, with directions to where she was. When I arrived, I found her standing in front of a pretty large stone tower. It wasn't big enough to poke out of the trees, which were pretty damned tall here, but it was sizable.

"So." She said in amusement. "What are the chances that they DIDN'T go into the spooky magic tower?"

I snorted. "I don't know. If we'd landed near one of these and didn't have any idea what was going on, what do you think we would have done?"

"Yeah, I think they're inside too." She chuckled. "Think this one of those wizard towers?" She asked, eyes scanning the length of the building. I could see runes carved into the stone, but they looked much less...ancient, than stuff on the temples.

"Probably." I said with a shrug. "My issue isn't whether they went in though, it's whether they're still there. Even if they did go inside, they could have cleaned the place out and bailed by now. Hard to say though, since we've never actually gone into one of these things. I think out best bet is to use a wish from Nat to get one of those compasses. It'll tell us not only if they're in there, but WHERE in there they are once we enter."

I'd been hoping to keep our wishes in case of an emergency, but I wasn't too broken up about using one or two if I had to. Callie seemed to be on the same page, or so I felt over the bond. She didn't have time to respond because Nat showed up the very next moment. I did love Perception sometimes, letting me pick up things like shoes on leaves when I was listening for them.

Focus normally precluded that kind of incidental spillover from stats, but given where we were I was keeping my ears peeled as well as my eyes. Turning to see my cousin, I waved her over even as Randall and Jessie emerged from the woods, with Abel showing up about a minute later. "Hey, we think they might have gone into the tower but aren't sure they're still there even if they did." Slipping out a bag of chits, I tossed it to her. "I wish for a method of tracking Miles Renaldi. Preferably an active one like a compass."

She weighed the bag with her hand then nodded. I watched the gathering electricity flow over her skin and blaze in her eyes, the distinctive purple lightning that only we could use or even see. It gathered in a blinding flash in the hand opposite the bag, and when it faded, a small golden compass was sitting in her empty palm. She tossed it over to me and I caught it easily.

Holding it up, I got a direction, it WAS pointed at the tower, but that could have been a coincidence, so I did a single lap of the outside of the building, and sure enough the compass continue to point right at the place. "Looks like we found them." I told my friends."Plus we get to explore this place. I can't wait to see if there are any spellbooks!" I paused. "We're sure all the conduits are in temples, right?"

Callie shrugged. "Based on what you and Annalise puzzled out I'd wager the places were built as some sort of amplifier or focus. Or at least used to map out the ritual. This place doesn't look as old either. Probably just some random wizard's evil lair."

I shrugged. "Works for me. Give me a minute to this in to Anna-Marie just in case she has some kind of information about this place." I retreated off to one side to spin up my scan ring, and the princess answered pretty promptly.
"Solomon?" She said worriedly. "I haven't heard from any of you in a while. No one's hurt are they? You called with all those questions and then just vanished."

"Nothing is wrong." I assured her. "We had a big meeting that took ages then went to sleep for a while. We just got finished a trip. We ran into what we think is one of those wizard towers you mentioned, but we wanted to run the datails by you in case it was something else."

She looked relieved. "Of course. I'm happy to help. Show me the location?" I held up my ring, showing the screen towards the building as I walked another slow circuit around it, letting her take in all the stones and the runes and all that. She consulted with her team of experts and their books, and within probably twenty minutes was back with an answer.

It was a wizard tower, though not one that she'd heard of. We weren't lucky enough to learn the wizard's name or favor breakfast food or anything that would help us traverse it safely. I thanked her and hung up, and then we all gathered at the entrance. The door inside was big, with a crossbar holding it shut. It was large enough for Randall to enter easily, which was nice, but I wasn't sure I liked that the wizard needed a door that size.

After Callie did her trap seeking thing and I gave the place a once over with Eye of Revelation, we pushed the bar off the door (how it had gotten back on if Renaldi's team was still inside was another question I didn't want the answer to) and then made our way inside...and froze.

The other side of the door was dirt. Like actual earth you'd find outside. We stepped onto a huge chunk of rock and the door slammed behind us, a thump answering the question I hadn't wanted answered. I wasn't worried, we could break the door, it wasn't enchanted that I could see and it was only F-rank wood.

That wasn't the part that stunned us though. Past the rock we were on there was just...empty sky. Purple and orange and yellow clouds, like a permanent sunset, with black ones floating mixed in sparking with white blue lightning. The lightning struck out at the staircases that ran between our rock and other similar rocks with doors on them, grounding harmlessly about twenty feet out from the steps.

"Ok." Said Callie in a hushed tone. "I have to admit. This is pretty cool." I nodded along as we stared out into the endless expanse. Wizard's tower indeed. This place was amazing. I just hoped it wasn't as dangerous as it was fascinating. Sadly my luck never seemed to work that way.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I admit to a bit of vertigo. Even standing on solid ground, the churning lightning struck sky around us was...disorienting. For once I didn't have some glib remark about our surroundings. I was just too blown away. "Stick close." I said to the rest of my group.

Luckily, the stairs were big enough for even Randall, so we didn't need to leave the biggest member of our party behind. Approaching the steps at the end of the rock we were on, I noticed something else unusual. The stairs were spiraled. The looked like a DNA helix. It was hard to see from a distance because of the strange warping effect around them (which was what had caught the lightning) but up close it was painfully clear.

The first section, at least, was oriented right, so stepping onto the thing wasn't an issue. Once we mounted the stairs the space started to sort of list to one side, and after a few steps it became clear WE were spiraling along with the staircase. It was a weird sensation. It also didn't make a ton of sense. "Why the hell would they waste power on doing this?"

Nat shrugged as we continued our climb. "It might be an incidental result of the way they altered space here. Sloppy spatial warping can have odd effects. Or it could be insurance to prevent people from breaking the shields around the staircases. If they're tied to the effect then smashing them could drop us into oblivion. Hard to say really, there are just too many possible answers."

I rolled my eyes. "There are shorter ways to say that you don't know." She glared at me and I shrugged. "What? It's true."

"Never admit ignorance, cousin mine."She said loftily. "We live in a world where perception is reality. If you act like you always have the answers, that's how people will perceive you. Instead of saying you don't know, give educated guesses and state them with conviction."

"That explains so much about you." I said dryly. "But I'll take it under advisement." We chattered on about mostly nothing as we walked, following the compass as best we could. Unfortunately it pointed us straight at our target, but apparently didn't account for elevation...or depths, as the case may be. Since none of us felt like jumping into an endless void of lightning and clouds we did our best to follow it while sticking to the steps.

It didn't help that at the top of some of the steps were doors that appeared to lead nowhere but in fact came out on other landings with more steps. Not every landing had a door, some were connected to each other by stairs, but it seemed to be mostly random and it made trying to track anything in the whole mess impossible.

Which was why when reached the top (bottom?) of the stairs where the first door was, I wasn't surprised to find the compass pointing out into the nothingness to the left of us. Looking up I could vaguely see a rock island in the clouds off in that direction, high above us, not that it did us any good.

Deciding it didn't really matter since we only had one exit available, I pushed open the door (a surprisingly large one that Randall was able to squeeze through at an angle given how tall it was) then stepped inside. The other side of the door didn't drop us over the side of the stone and into a bottomless plummet like it should have, instead it brought us to an entirely new place.

Past the frame we stepped onto a polished floor made of multicolored tiles. The tiles appeared to be made of gemstones fit together intricately to create squares of color that blended into a beautiful mosaic. Some squares were one solid block of gems, some were a variety, and the effect reminded me of nothing so much as puzzle pieces. I could see that they were F-ranked gems too, but when I tried to touch them my hand stopped above the floor like it was hitting an invisible pane of glass.

Callie was almost drooling. "Those are ALL gems with naturally occurring runes in them. Whoever made this was...rich. Also a genius. I don't know if you could call this a formation, because it WAS crafted, but it's not quite an enchantment either. No chance we can take any though. I'm pretty sure this is a force field, and based on what Nat said about breaking those in here it's not worth the risk."

I nodded. "I think it's some kind of node eye. I'm betting there are more rooms like this, probably at strategic points up and down the tower. This whole thing is a massive three dimensional construct." At their looks I shrugged. "I still know the odd bit about Enchanting, even if I can't really do it anymore. This is...impressive. The question is which way do we go?"

Gesturing up from the floor, I waved at the four closed doors identical to the ones we just came through. The walls between them were black stone, smooth and unblemished, and all the light in here came from the floor, as the ceiling seemed to be a mass of writhing black clouds, though thankfully not one that discharging all the flickering blue white lightning.

The mosaic itself was no help, it appeared to depict a beautiful woman in a green dress dancing across a rainbow, followed unknowingly by shadowy demonic forms. Callie gestured for me to hand her the compass, which I did, and help it up. "Well...compass says that way, but since we know that it doesn't take into account elevation and this place has literally turned us upside down a few times...I'm not sure how much it'll help."

"Better than nothing." I shrugged and headed for the door on the western side of the room. Pushing it open, we emerged onto another staircase. I sighed and then got climbing, following it up to another landing with another door. Inside THIS door though, wasn't just a room with more doors, it was something infinitely more interesting. A library.

The mosaic her was different, a picture of a female knight locked in combat with a massive grey skinned demon. I noticed her hair was the same strawberry blonde as the woman in the dress, but she looked older, and she had a scar marring one cheek. I made a note of the images, which seemed to be different points in the life of one person. Turning away from that though, I took in the walls filled with rows and rows of BOOKS.

Grinning, I made to step forward and then stopped. The others kept moving and I held up a hand to stop them. "Hold up. This is too easy." Flipping on my Eye of Revelation I scoured the place for any clues or traps. I frowned as I settled on the glowing forms of mops and brooms leaning against the tables in front of the shelves. Reaching into my ring, I pulled out a random rock I had lying around from somewhere (it was hard not to be a pack rat when you had spatial storage) and tossed it.

One of the mops leapt up, spinning around in midair and every tendril of the mop head lashed out separately like a whip, cracking the air as the reduced the rock to dust particles under a flurry of blows.

"Well...I think we can confirm that they didn't end up here." I said glibly. "Either the mop trap would be gone or there would be a body...unless...do you think the mop trap cleans up after itself?" I mulled it over. "Nah, better to assume we just took a different door. The compass points to where they are not where they were. So these traps should by bypassable." I hummed in consideration. "Abel, can you grab a book from here with your ability?"

He shrugged. "Maybe." Reaching out, he warped the air, creating a trail of lubricated space. It took him a minute to do since he was trying not to trigger the traps, but finally it reached the shelf. He reached out, and the space warped his arm, letting him grab a random book. It was still weird watching him work, and the mental glitch of the space just...coiling, as he pulled it back made me pause for a second before he handed it to me.

"Cyringian Table Manners, fiftieth edition, third appendix." I said with a sigh. Flipping it open to make sure it was what it looked like, I sighed. "Ok, so not all of these are winners. Fork ordering, dish size...guest execution methods? Okay that's a world of no." I snapped the book shut and dropped it where I stood. There had been pictures. "Let's try another one, shall we?"

My teacher chuckled, reaching out again and coming back with another book. This one was bound in blue leather. "Tributaries of Power:Sources of the water tribes." I flipped it open. This one seemed much more academic, and did NOT have pictures of people being murdered. "This is functionally useless to me." I finally declared. "But it might be a nice present to Anna-Marie." I stowed it away. "Again."

So we spent the next two hours slowly clearing books off shelves. Encyclopedias, history texts, instruction manuals, geography books, local fairy tales, books on boatbuilding, books on boat DESTROYING, books on building boats to COUNTER the books on boat destroying (this wizard had been VERY fond of boats), books on music, art, culture, cooking (which I kept), shoemaking, and any number of other things.

We did find exactly TWO spellbooks, one for a Skill called Cumulo Nimbus, which let you summon lightning clouds, and one called Fire Whip, which did exactly what the name suggested. Two out of roughly four hundred books on the one wall we'd already gotten through. Eventually, Abel just got fed up.

"Enough!" Snapped my tired looking mentor. "We have stuff to do. We can hit the other walls when we come back through, AFTER we find Renaldi's team." I noticed he was out of breath and sweating, and was grateful my mask covered my smirk. He was right though. Besides I was pretty sure the spell books had been left here by accident, this was most likely just a normal library.

"Fair enough." I pulled out the compass, holding it up to figure out where it was pointed. "Everyone get ready to go, we're headed north." That got groans from various members of our party still combing through the piles of books we DID have (none of them were spells but there was some interesting topics, Jessie found one on local flowers). Everyone stashed the books they wanted or that seemed useful in their rings, tossed anything that seemed weird or murdery with the table manners book, and we moved on.

There were doors in each of the walls of books, so we headed through the one the compass pointed through, following the stairs up to another stone island with another massive door. When we went through THIS one though, we were pleasantly surprised to find a group of people The exact group of people we were looking for, in fact, at least based on the descriptions.

The leader, a tall bronze skinned man with blue eyes and wavy black hair, looked up from where he was sitting in the middle of the empty room. "No wait don't it's a tra-!' His warning was cut off as the door slammed shut behind us and the wood of the barrier melted into a solid sheet of stone matching the archway around it. Renaldi sighed miserably. "A trap. Oh well, welcome to the first day of the rest of your lives, I suppose." Looking around, I realized there was no other way out...well shit.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Seeing the defeated forms of the other team slumped in the center of the room, I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. Not defeated in the literal, 'beat em' up' sense, but just mentally run down. "Miles Renaldi and company I take it?" I said with a wince. "I take it you DID get our message?" It was nice to know that the wish had gotten past the defenses here, because it meant we had at least one way out.

The leader chuckled. "Oh we got it. Not that it meant much in here. We've been stuck here since the day we landed. Lucky we stocked up on food and other necessities." He gave my cousin a cheerful wave. "Nice to see you Natalie. Shame about the circumstances."

Nodding to my friends, I walked about halfway to where they were seated and sat down. We looked over the place first, but I didn't see any attackers to worry about. "You've been here since the first day?" I tried hard not to think about how shitty that must have been.

He nodded. "Not that we can tell you how long that is. The first day we kept track of the time but..." He shrugged. "It was making it worse, you know? So we stopped checking. The rest of our time has been spent trying to get the hell out of this place. The doors sealed behind us like they did with you. My girlfriend, Sierra, is an Enchanter, and she's been working on trying to decipher the enchantments on the floors to open them back up, but it's slow going."

The red haired girl with blue eyes sitting next to him nodded. She'd had them closed when we entered, seemingly meditating, but I was guessing she was leaning into Focus, and had probably long since memorized the flooring. "The enchantment in this place is...complicated. The floor IS enchanted, but the enchantments aren't just linear two dimensional constructs."

"I noticed." I said with a sigh. "They're part of a three dimensional structure. Not just the enchantments we see, but a larger construct based on where in the sky the islands are hanging. I'm guessing you have to take all that into account with any changes you make?"

She sighed. "It's worse than that. Every rune IS part of the whole, but they're also tied into vertically aligned enchantments strung along the length of the tower." She pointed at a square of sapphire. "This isn't just part of the enchantments next to it, it's ALSO part of an enchantment tied into the corresponding tile in the floor above us, and one to the side, and they're all interlocked like that. I don't know who made this place, but they were a GENIUS."

"Well, we can help you look for a way out." I said with a reassuring smile. "And if not...well, we have other means of departure we can all use." Hell, with Nat here even I had a way out. But that was ignoring the obvious. We might be stuck, sure, but if wishes could get us out, they could get us UNSTUCK. We could just wish for the doors to open back up or something.

Frowning, she shook her head. "I'm not sure what means you're talking about, but most of the options I can think of would trigger the tower's defenses. There actually IS a way to open the doors, but my issue is that it's tied to some sort of super monster construct waiting to attack us if I do. It's peak of F-rank, and I don't think we can take it."

Ah, so she'd been looking for a back door before triggering the defenses and killing them all. That was definitely a problem, but since this place was only at base Impact value it was less of one than one might expect.

"We might be able to help." I said slowly. "How do you know it's peak F-rank? Have you seen it in person? Is there some kind of script for it in the Enchantment?" Depending on where it was we might be able to look it over. If we could just kill the thing without using up our wishes that would be a better use of our time. We could always escape with wishes later if we needed to, but I admit to being fascinated by the idea of more spellbound.

"There's a script." She said, pointing to a segment of flooring. When I looked blankly at it she sighed. "Right, none of you can see the spell constructs stringing these places together. It's a gargoyle, big and scary. Peak F-rank and it comes out of the doorways."

I wished we had Benny with us. His Focus specialization would have been useful here. Sadly that wasn't the case. I sighed and considered our options. "If I tell you we can take it and get you out of here, would you believe me?"

"Well." Said Miles with amusement. "You have a bear the size of a bus behind you, so yeah, probably. Plus Nat is far too cautious to travel unprotected. Since her guards aren't around, I have to assume one or more of you is competent. That's not even getting into the fact that most of you seem to have more Impact than we do. I'm guessing you used some of the Moonglow Dew? Speaking of, what was up with the message? You didn't exactly tell us much."

So I filled him in. I told him how we got here, how we'd been taken in by Ladrigan, how we'd run into Gabriel, how we'd decided to help them out with the temple. How we'd found out about Suvaya, and on and on. I filled them in on everything we knew, and by the time I was done, Miles was wincing in sympathy. "So." I said finally. "We have people to find, and we have to get back on a timetable. I'm not up for staying here too long, but we can still do a cursory search and be back in time for the switch. You up for finishing this?"

He just laughed. "You know what? Fuck it. Why not. We've been stuck here for days, it only seems right we get something out of it. You sure you can take out the guardian? It might be safer just to leave."

Grinning, I hopped up and walked over to the doorway. "Sierra. What sets off the gargoyle protocol. Just the back door you found? Or is there some secondary trigger we need to watch out for." I suspected there was one, and I was pretty sure I knew what it was, since it was the first thing any rational person would try.

"The doors." She said succinctly. "If you try to break open the doors."

"Just the doors?" I asked intently. "Or the doors AND the frames." The doors were malleable and designed to change, that's how they melded into the frames, but the frames themselves were most likely the source of that particular enchantment. I was sure if they started to break SOMETHING would happen, but I wanted to know if breaking was going to set them off or if we'd be ass deep in gargoyle with just one attack.

She studied the ground in front of her. "Just the door. The frame has failsafes, but it's not actually protected in and of itself." Grinning, I pulled out my staff. I triggered Touch of Tears and Consecration of Flame. As the green cracks rolled over my staff, I reached out and touched it to the archway, the green flame spread, and I continued to move around, using State of Grace and Ripple Running to reach higher up until I'd covered every inch of the doorway in acidic poison.

"Alright." I said quickly. "This is going to do enough damage eventually to trigger the defenses, so better to do it on our terms. Randall, get up front, Abel, it's going to be moving slow because of the erosion, Jessie post up next to him and make sure he's topped up so he can throw hands. Callie, I want you to string this thing up as best you can with shadows. Avoid the green spots, it'll have places that aren't covered."

Miles chuckled. "Well, you don't mess around, do you?" Snapping his fingers, I saw a dully glowing orange metal appear in his grip. Just a tiny sample that he tossed back like a pill. Even as I watched the skin of his body change color, I knew he was using his ability.

Sierra withdrew a series of tiles, tossing them up in the air. They glowed with runes, hanging unassisted as she reached up and started rearranging them. The other eight members of their team stood up. One, a big green haired man with a thick beard, stood behind a short woman with crimson skin and horns. A devil, most likely, though I'd never seen one before.

Once we were ready, I nodded to Abel, who sent a quick jab at the door, raising an echoing boom as it made contact. The attack didn't do much to the door itself, but as soon as it landed the frame began to shift as a massive pair of hands emerged from the stone.

The huge form of the gargoyle resolved itself slowly, and Callie did as expected and started stringing every spare inch of it that wasn't glowing and acidic with containment constructs. The constructs didn't have the Might needed to hold up against something like that, not with the difference in power and specialization, but they DID have an extra point of Impact, which was enough to offset a solid amount of the gap.

Not that it would have held for long, the gargoyle finished emerging and roared, trying to get away from the containment and reacting to the pain. Before he could tear free, Randall roared and slammed a paw into the side of the monster's head. The massive bear was even more gargantuan on his back legs. The gargoyle reared back, and another fist blow, this one condensed from about a dozen punches stacked on top of each other, smashed into its head.

Spinning my staff, I stacked up a Mercy Kill and a triple stack density shift, and I stepped off the air, sailing up too high to be detected to get a better vantage point from which to attack the gargoyle. Once I got high enough, I bounced off the air again, and sent myself hammering down, with my E-ranked staff leading as I brought it smashing down into the head of the construct.

The stone split under the weight and power of my staff, which, while not a perfect equalizer, was a material much harder than the material that comprised the monster. There was a loud crack as the staff split the stone. Even as it landed, I saw giant hand constructs grip the horns and PULL.

The crack widened and I jumped free, leaving Randall to smash his paw down on the damaged head and smash it to chunks of pottery. The gargoyle fell over, dead, or at least as close as an inanimate object could get. The door behind it was revealed to have reverted to the normal wood, easily opened now, and I grinned. My team was getting the hang of punching up.

Of course, the distance was still pretty huge. The Impact helped a bit, but we were going to need to start padding our points to close the gap soon. We only had a month until we had to fight a literal goddess, and I didn't want to really any more on petty tricks than I had to. That was why I was choosing to continue the climb. I wanted more spellbooks, and to find out who made this place. More than that, I wanted to find out more about the woman in the mosaics. After all, those black forms chasing her had reminded me an awful lot of the Night Pride.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"So, how long do we have in here before we need to head back?" Asked Renaldi as we walked up another set of twisting stairs. We'd been through several more rooms, one of which was another gargoyle trap. "And what are we looking for here exactly? Aside from the spellbooks I mean."

I shrugged. "Couldn't tell you. I saw something on one of the murals that makes me think this place might have some relation to Suvaya. Whoever built it might have left behind some books or something that will help us identify the conduits. Knowing where each one is and what they can do would be a pretty big help. If not, then yeah, spellbooks are the main goal here. We still have a few hours before we need to head back."

Probably more than that, but I was accounting for the annoying trip back UP the damned mountain, which took much longer than the trip down. Maybe one of these books would have a damned teleport spell in it. He seemed unruffled.
"How about the tower? Any idea how much further we have to go?"

Sierra, who was talking to Abel about sausage recipes of all things, looked up at that. "Oh, I can answer that. I don't have a map or anything but based on the construct layout used for..." She waved a hand. "This. We have maybe one or two more floors."

I sighed with relief. "Well, I just hope the library at the top is of more use. The one we found on the lower floor wasjust a dumping ground for books. Some interesting stuff in there, granted, but only two spellbooks. If we're lucky the rest of them will be up top." I still wasn't sure what type of magic the tower's master had done, since the two books we found had been based in different things.

When we reached the next room, we found another four way intersection, and Sierra called us to a halt. She'd told us at the last one that the spiralling staircases served another interesting purpose aside from shielding. They also made it functionally impossible to tell if you were walking up or down. These four way rooms were another sort of trap we'd bypassed with the compass.

Since they were WITH us, there was no way to know exactly which door to take, but Sierra was able to use the spell construct's orientation in regards to the tower to determine which spellwork was leading upwards instead of down. That let us at least keep moving in the same direction.

As she did her thing, I glanced over the floor. The mosaic here was different, in that the woman's strawberry blonde hair had faded to white. Her face was only lightly lined with age, which made sense since she was an Ascendant. In this mural, she sat in a chair, looking out a window at a darkened sky with a huge moon in it. Seventeen lines traveled from the ground to the moon, and I became even more convinced this place held some information about Suvaya.

We climbed another staircase, and when we reached the second to last room, it became clear that this was where we'd been meant to end up. Sierra turned around, double checking her work. "That four way intersection is where all the other paths lead. Any way you climb the tower you end up here eventually." She pointed at the door on the far end of the room. "That'll be the way to the peak of the tower."

As the last of us stepped into the room, the doors slammed shut. I was half expecting another gargoyle trap, but instead the mural on the floor began to glow. No, not mural, murals. In fact, Surrounding the big final mural on the ground was smaller versions of ALL the other murals, seemingly in order.

There was the woman in her dress, running from the dark forms, the knight, the sad woman in the chair, but laid out like this and interspersed with other murals from rooms we'd presumably skipped or bypassed, they told a complete story.

"She wasn't native." I said in realization. "She entered by accident. Not during an awakening, but just...slipped through the distortions by mistake. She was F-rank, so she didn't die, but she was talented. She spent her life learning about this place. How it worked. Why it was the way it was. She found the temples, figured out what was coming, but she couldn't do anything to stop it."

As we watched, the murals began to move, one at a time, acting out the stages of her life, showing us what she'd been through. She'd made a home here. Made friends, found family. Tried to help the people here as best she could while she lived. She traveled for a while fighting monsters, hence the knight. But she'd lived too long. The awakening came, the outsiders descended.

"They killed her." Said Jessie in a whisper. "The worshippers in the local kingdoms convinced them she was evil. They sent people like us to kill her off, and they did."

"That's why I didn't contact the locals about the ritual." I said bitterly. "Aside from the insanity that is local factional politics, we don't know how many of her loyalists are still here. They've dug in deep from what we were told. If they find out we're trying to ruin the ritual...well, I'd rather just avoid the whole thing."

Callie pointed at the second to last mural. The woman, looking sad and resigned, putting a map in a small chest and locking it. She handed the key to what looked like a younger version of herself who inserted it into her own heart. Some kind of golem or something. As the motions reached the final mural, the center of the circle lit up. A picture of the woman in the dress.

Gingerly, she stepped forward out of the image, walking into three dimensional space, the world warping as she appeared standing upright, looking at us peacefully.

The golem was...a work of art. She looked like a real person, but somehow even more lifelike. Skin made of literal ivory, hair carved into curling waves from flickering rubies, eyes with irises of actual sapphires. She felt...strong. Like Crighton felt strong. Impact. Forty points at least. I didn't think we would be able to beat her if we fought.

Smiling warmly, she nodded to us. "Well done." She said cheerfully. "You found the combination. I do so appreciate the release, I was getting quite bored."

"Combination?" I said in confusion. "We just read the story. Exactly as it was laid out. I don't see how that could be considered a combination. Haven't any other people managed to get this far?" I wasn't really in a position to argue, but that seemed a bit too easy.

She shook her head, the stone she was made from moving like flesh and hair without any stiffness. It was disconcerting to watch. "Not at all. Firstly, this tower was sealed with the death of its owner. The harvest approaches, and it shows itself once more. Secondly, the combination was for someone to learn the WHOLE story. An understanding of the ritual was key to that puzzle, as was the perspective of an outsider. Had you lacked those components...this conversation would have gone much differently."

Which implied the tower had read our minds or something. I'd normally be creeped out, but I had other things to worry about. "Alright. So...can you help us? We need to find and eliminate the conduits before Suvaya manifests or a lot of people are going to die. Can you tell us where they are?"

"I can." She said calmly. "But before I do so, I must test your mettle. The key contains a map and a ritual diagram that the tower master compiled over her long life. To earn it, I must taste defeat."

I grimaced. Because of course she must. "We're expected to beat you? Because with your Impact I'm pretty sure you could crush us. You've got to be at the peak of F-rank stat wise, and given you're an animated pile of rocks I'm guessing you're pretty Might focused."

She shook her head. "As I said, only a taste is required. A single blow to prove your competence. You must be strong enough to weather what's to come. To defeat the strongest of the conduits, this level of strength is the minimum. Should you fail the test...a quick death here would be much more merciful than the fate you may suffer when the harvest comes."

"I have one question." Said Callie before we started. "How did you make sure this place would be found? Just leaving it to sit and wait would have been way too big a leap of faith, even considering fate sense."

The golem chuckled. "The tower master mapped the starlight slides during the last 'awakening'. She arranged for the tower to relocate when next the moon was revealed. Now, which of you will be attempting the challenge. Only one may attack." I looked at Abel, who nodded, stepping forward.

Walking over, I laid a hand on his shoulder. Mercy Kill, Afterburner, and with a very large amount of effort, I even channeled Marked for Death through him, targeting the golem. I swayed on my feet a bit as I stepped back, but I could see the power thrumming through him. "If we pass, you give us the key and escort us to the chest?" I asked intently.

"Not only that." Said the golem. "I will aid you in your quest." That was...useful. If this worked.

"Alright." I nodded. "Abel, hit her with everything you've got. No holding back." He grinned at me, cracking his neck as he stepped back. I saw him take up a stance, fist cocked back and readying for the blow. Afterburner gave ten hits of amplified power, and with his stacking ability he'd be able to layer those. To my shock though, I saw his hands start to glow as they transformed into golden flame.

It occurred to me the only time I'd seen Abel cut loose was in the tournament. Without the single fighter rules, he had another source of power. His bond with Mel. It had to be at least as strong as the one I had with Callie, he was the one who taught it to us.

Space warped, and he stepped back, leaving behind a flaming image of his body. Then another step, and another. When he finished, there were nine figures in varying positions in a line behind where he'd been. Like looking at a stop motion instruction for a wind up and a punch. Abel, standing at the back of the line now, took a deep breath, and then flickered forward through the lubricated space.

As he took each position he overlapped and stacked the flaming versions of himself, all of them heavily condensed from powerful flame but not harming him at all. It was like watching someone wind up and perform a martial arts kata on fast forward, and when he reached the end he let out a roar of challenge and SWUNG, with every single but of force he had in him.

A crystallized image of living flame condensed from his Expert level Ragam Skill appeared in front of the golem and brutally smashed a fist into the figure. On impact, the construct exploded in a massive firestorm of force and fire, swallowing the thing whole.

As the flame faded, i saw the golem standing there, mostly unharmed. Mostly. From its nose dripped a single bead of melted ruby, like a drop of blood. Looking down at the floor I saw a small scuff in front of one of the dainty diamond heels. The golem nodded, smiling slightly as she wiped her nose. "Well done. You pass. Barely." Turning her back on us, she waved a hand and the door behind her opened on its own. "Now come. Claim your prize."

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The stairwell to the top floor wasn't a spiral. Since we'd figured out the whole point of that was to confuse people when they tried to figure out a way up that made sense, but it was still interesting enough to note as we followed the construct up to the last floor.

Yvette (as she informed us she was called) had been here for a LONG time, but had spent most of it in stasis. She seemed excited to meet new people and filled us in on lots of trivia about the tower and its functions. Once we reached the top floor, she made a beeline for the center of the room where a pedestal sat empty in the middle of another room filled with bookshelves. Pressing several symbols on the black and gold surface, she opened a compartment in the top and gingerly removed the chest inside, setting it atop the pedestal once it closed.

After she removed it, she pressed a hand against her chest and the ivory skin became...like a gel? Her hand passed through and emerged with a black and gold key set with an unsettlingly glowing ruby. She inserted the key into the lock without fanfare and twisted, the lid springing open to reveal a rolled up piece of parchment.

"So, this is a map?" I said cautiously. "Or a ritual diagram?" She hadn't been super specific about that, though I couldn't tell if that was by design or she was just really lonely. I got the impression she didn't have the chance to chat often and she seemed to have gotten side tracked.

"Both." She said as she withdrew it and handed it to me. I unrolled it, placing it down on a nearby table half covered with books (which I would definitely be examining soon). Looking over the parchment, I could see what she meant, and I sighed in relief. This would make finding the locations of the other conduits a non issue. I frowned in confusion. "Wait, what are these lines?"

She cocked her head. "The conveyances. The channel the power along the lines of the ritual and during the awakenings they reach through the distortions to allow transport."

"Wait...those are the starlight slides?" I hadn't considered they were part of the ritual, but it made some sense. This whole place was a trap from the start, including the distortions. Of course the entrances were part of it.

Yvette seemed impatient. "Obviously. The conveyances will be the mechanism of the ascensions, as well as the harvest. They'll connect the conduits to the moon herself. As you can see, the conduits must ascend in a certain order for maximum effects. Once they've all ascended, the conveyances will attach to the primary temple, and the moon's light will descend in full."

"Primary temple?" I asked. I'd forgotten the temples were called subtemples, I supposed a primary made sense. "Is that on the mountain? We know that's some kind of remnant of her divine body."

She pointed to a symbol in between the other seventeen. "The primary temple accepts the lunar blessing and focuses it through the lens of the gathered power. It's redirected to the mountain. The moon is the mind, the temple is the spirit, and the mountain is the body. This is an important factor in stopping the goddess. Should she attain her fully functional form, even hobbled as she might be by rank, you will all die."

That...wasn't ideal. It pretty much blew up our whole plan. "That doesn't really work for us. The plan was to kill all of her conduits and then gank her physical form when it limps in through the ritual, underpowered from the lack of energy. We thought she would be weak. The conduits are."

"The conduits." She sneered. "Are remnant ghosts possessing their own rotting corpses. They are pathetic demi souls hollowed out by the ritual. They can barely string together coherent thoughts, much less wield their Skills with precision and finesse. The goddess is the mind behind the ritual. She sleeps, her dreaming weaving the webs you see before you. When she wakes, she will wake whole, if diminished in scope."

"Fuck!" I snapped, turning to kick a chair. We'd had a plan! We'd had hope, had a real shot at this. "So what? You brought us up here to tell us we're screwed and there's nothing we can do about it?"

Shaking her head, she pointed to the temples. "No. I said when she wakes. The ritual is in its infancy. If you can disconnect the conduits in a specific order, or close to it, given your mention of killing them, you can force her to manifest as a spirit alone at the central temple. Without her flesh to act as a material, her created form will be much weaker, and she will lose access to many of her abilities."

Oh. Ok. That...sounded good. I let my shoulders slump, allowing the anger and frustration to drain out of me. "I'm...sorry." I said woodenly. "This has just been a lot. We came here expecting to run around literally flower picking, with the occasional quick fight among our peers. In no universe could I have imagined we'd be fighting a vanished god. I didn't even know those were THING until I got here."

She just smiled reassuringly. "I understand. Now, the disposal of the conduits must be done in as exacting a manner as possible. The deaths of the already vanquished can be accounted for in the sequence, but it would be best to minimize the deaths until preparations can be made."

Callie spoke up. "I'll call back to base and let them know to spread the word. Those mapped lines, the places they lead wouldn't happened to be the landing points, would they? Because we could use those."

Yvette nodded and my girlfriend grinned, snapping a picture of the parchment. "Benny is going to be so pissed he did all that work for nothing. I can't wait to see his face." At my cocked head she just shrugged. "What? You're a bad influence on me. I was an angel before I met you."

"You're mispronouncing the word asshole." Drawled Nat with a smirk. At Callie's scandalized look she just winked. "Seemed mean to let you pick on poor Benny when he isn't here. Someone had to fire back."
My girlfriend's face broke into a wide grin. "I knew I liked you for a reason."

"Nope." I interjected firmly. "I do not prefer this. You." I pointed at my cousin. "Are enough of a pain in my ass without conspiring with her. Please bond with someone else. Jessie is available. She's excellent company, or perhaps I can interest you in an elf best friend? Maybe you'd like to make the switch to being a battle maniac for some strange reason, and then Abel might be less annoying to you than he is to the rest of us."

My mentor's middle finger was casual, so I knew he didn't take it personally. Nat just grinned smugly at me and I rolled my eyes, turning back to the map and the construct holding it. "Please give me more terrible news. I'd like to be distracted right now."

Yvette's ruby lips (not symbolism, actual rubies) twitched up in a smile. "Well, the ritual will take place relatively soon, so you'll need to begin your purge as quickly as possible. The order is also not based on power, so you will be unable to save the most dangerous for last."

I sighed. "The first time in my life someone gives me what I ask for and it's this. Is this why other people always say 'be careful what you wish for?' because I've never understood that phrase."
"Of course you haven't honey." Said Callie sweetly. "But at least you're pretty."

I shot a flat stare at Nat. "Look what you've done. Now she'll be making wise cracks for hours." Letting out a breath, it was hard not to smile a bit at the sensation of camaraderie. Banter was excellent stress relief. Not as excellent as punching things, but close. I loved Callie for being there for me, especially given where we were standing and how much she must be salivating over the bookshelves behind us.

"So." I asked Yvette. "Since we got the map, does that mean the rest of these books are for us too?"

"Indeed." She said solemnly. "The world's largest trove of cartography books are now at your disposal. The years of study needed to accrue the knowledge to make this map are all contained within their pages. They used to be spellbooks, but the tower master stripped the ink to write more map making notes."

I blinked at her solemn expression. "That's...are you fucking with me right now?"

Her small smile came back. "It seemed to be entertaining. I wished to attempt such witticisms. I find them to be very amusing." She looked at Callie. "Did I do that properly."

My girlfriend was nearly doubled over with laughter. "Yes." She gasped out. "You did great." At my glare she snorted, trying to control her laughter. "Sorry sweetie." She choked out. "It's just...your face. You looked so horrified. Plus the books are fine so there's no need to be all grumpy." Her laughter stopped. "The books...are fine right? They're all spellbooks?"

Yvette shook her head. "Not all, but several. They are, of course, yours to do with as you will. I do hope they will be helpful to you in your pursuit of our shared goal." She gestured expansively to the shelves.

I was pretty sure if it were physically possible Callie's eyes would have literally turned into credit signs. Smiling at her
enthusiasm, I decided to follow her lead, spreading out along with the others to pour over the variety of books packed onto the shelves. Callie, being the responsible partner she was, forced herself to make that call back to base to let everyone know what was going on, but as soon as she was finished she dove into helping us sort through the books,

Granted, it wasn't exactly a quick process. Much like the downstairs library, the majority of the books weren't spellbooks. I'd expected this top floor to be packed with the things, but apparently I'd underestimated the value of the texts. We did find many more than the previous floor, and the non spell texts were still useful, and much more locally focused than the ones downstairs.

I was sure that Anna-Marie and her people would find this particular library endlessly useful, even moreso than the last. As for the spellbooks we did find, they ran the gamut. Some fire, some ice, some more esoteric spells like line of sight teleportation.

Most of them I passed on, despite my desire for new abilities, because I already had powers that could mimic their effects. My friends all found some interesting tomes to check out, but I was kind of disappointed with the options available, at least for myself. My mostly meta focused skillset wasn't exactly easy to complement. I was planning to look over them more carefully once the others had all chosen.

Finally, we finished stripping the place for books and it was time to head back. We had to make our way to the mountain and scale the damned thing in time to relieve Gabriel and his team. Bethy should have already switched places with the other group, and I didn't want to leave them stuck there too long, not to mention the new map and how useful it would be for our current project.

I felt much more confident than I had back at the mountain. Between the map and Yvette we were in a much better position than we had been before. Anyone tough enough to take a punch like that from Abel and barely get a nose bleed would be a welcome addition to the team. At this rate, we might make it out of this after all.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Getting back up the mountaintop was surprisingly easier than expected. For me. Yvette made the climb, hauling us all up. She was literally ten times stronger than the rest of us, so it wasn't a tough trip, and she managed it smoothly and in like a fourth of the time I had, even WITH my little jump cheat.

Which meant we still had plenty of time to make it to the camp by nightfall even after getting up there. It made the whole thing about a thousand times easier and more convenient. When we arrived, I wasn't shocked to see Gabriel around, having relieved Bethany and sent her off to find the next team.

"Hello the camp." I said with a wave as I approached. I caught sight of Benny and Celine over by Annalise's canopy bed, and my best friend turned and saw me.

"You son of a bitch!" Benny yelled, more in irritation than anger. "I pulled a fucking all nighter managing those calculations and trying to put together a proper map and you just FIND one!" From Celine's groan I was guessing this particular complaint wasn't a new one.

I smirked at him. "You realize if we hadn't found the map we were all going to DIE probably?" I inquired politely, which I absolutely knew would drive him up the wall. Much like myself, the thing Benny hated most was being spoken to calmly when he was pissed off.

"I KNOW that!" He hissed angrily. "You ass. But NOW I have to completely rearrange our search parties and factor in the order we need to kill these things in, whatever that is. I've been recalculating based on the drop off locations we got and the teams should be easier to locate, but I think you'll need to make some more of those compasses. I have Gabriel standing by for a rework, apparently his second target point was slightly off." Celine snorted, and Benny turned to glower at her. "Was SLIGHTLY off, within an acceptable margin of error."

Annalise, who had been watching smugly as he spoke, added sweetly. "A hundred mile margin of error."

"This is a big planet!" Benny scowled. "There's a lot of STUFF here. And this stupid mountain doesn't follow the laws of physics, even the nonsensical version that WE live by. I was basing my calculation partially off of distance traveled on the way here. It was a perfectly reasonable thing to do."

Laughing, I turned to Yvette. "Can you help him with this please? Maybe consult with him for the calculations to decide the order we need to kill the conduits?" She gave me a solemn nod, and I rolled my eyes as I turned to head away them, saying to Callie. "I forgot how whiny he gets when he's wrong about something."

"I heard that!" Shouted Benny from behind me. I just gave him the finger over my shoulder.

"You were meant to!" I responded loudly. Callie snorted and shook her head. "Anyway, did you find anything good among the spellbooks? I know the others found some too. Any interesting shadow spells?"
She shook her head sadly. "Too niche. I've been working on something though." She withdrew a pair of daggers I hadn't seen before. "You remember my bike?"

"The one I refused to get on for fear of a sudden fiery death? The one that looked like you'd crashed it a dozen times by the time I saw it?" I said flatly. "No, no memory at all." She rolled her eyes with a huff of annoyance. Everyone in our team had agreed not to let Callie drive. It wasn't exactly that it was bad at it, she had amazing reflexes like any Ascendant. It was more that her definition of acceptable risk when driving pretty much anything was much different than anyone elses.

"Anyway." She said loudly, forcefully talking over me despite me being completely silent. "The reason I asked is because if you remember, I had it made from special materials like my coat is, so I could imbue it over time with darkness. Made it pliable to my power without it being part of me." She held up the daggers. "These are not made of special material, other than being F-rank. Seems like a side effect of the power change is that I can still do it. Eventually. It's taking a really long time."

I held out my hand, and she passed one to me. I weighed the thing in my hand. "Nice. That's huge, Cal. You have a dagger teacher you can work with?"

She nodded. "Gabriel's crew is here for a while longer, and one of the guys he works with uses daggers. One of the girls uses a staff too. I figure the two of us could ask a favor, maybe get a little training if you're up for it. Your staff is damned useful, but you don't really know how to use it except for spinning it around and smacking things with it."

"I'd argue there's no other valuable use for a big stick." I said solemnly. "But a bit of hands on training can't exactly hurt. I assume you don't want to just ask on your own?"

To my surprise, her face pinched. "I want to get back into the habit of training together. We haven't been fighting like we used to since I got my power. I know the whole spy mistress thing is damned useful, but I don't want to lose our combat style. I have a lot of fun fighting with you."

I didn't know what to say for a second, then I nodded. "Yeah, I have fun fighting with you too." I reached down and took her hands. "Look, we're still getting our balance, ok? First you were way stronger than me, now that I've caught up you had this big power change. It'll take some time, but we're just finding our way on the battlefield again. We've got this, right?"

Her grimace smoothed out. "Yeah. We got this." She let out a deep breath. "We got it. So all we have to do is train together a bit more."

"Nope." I said bluntly. At her look I just shrugged. "What? We can't just punch stuff together and magically make things better. But I think we've already been doing other stuff. I think a lot of the problem is that you're having trouble finding your place in the group since giving me the reins. Or am I wrong?"

"Not...wrong." She hedged. "I mean, sure, I can do the whole intelligence gathering thing, but it's not really the same."
I nodded. "I know. But that's not all you do. You're my partner. You've been letting me take the lead to find my way, to...middling success. But you're still involved. We're still doing this together. It's not like you aren't up front when I do things wrong. And I'm glad. I need someone to yell at me when I do something stupid. It's going to happen sometimes."
"Sometimes?" She said skeptically, though I could tell she was fighting down a smile.

I rolled my eyes. "This? This is why we can't have nice things. I was TRYING to have a moment here. You couldn't let me be romantic for a minute?"

She smiled sweetly and took my face in her hands. "You're always romantic, sweetie. It's one of the things I love about you. Another is that you care enough to check in with me about my own insecure bullshit. Everything you're saying is true, and I know we're in this together. I'm feeling a bit aimless after transitioning between jobs. That's not about us, and I know the difference."

Blowing out a breath, I nodded. "Well...that's good at least. I guess that means I can't help with the whole aimlessness thing, huh?"

"You?" She said incredulously. "You literally JUST figured out what you wanted to do with your life like two weeks ago. That's not a dig. It's just my point. Sometimes it takes a while. Most of my life has been about sticking it to my dad, and now he's just some random asshole on a backwater planet. I'm adjusting to the change in scale before I set my sights on something new."

Which was fair. It wasn't like I could take shots at her for not having a life goal, especially not given what I'd been doing up to now. "Alright, well I still thing training together is a good plan, and I'm glad you brought it up. Any time I get to spend with you pretty much guarantees a good day."

She rolled her eyes, but she was smirking. "I still don't know how you say gooey romantic shit like that and make it sound reasonable." Letting her hands drop from my face she grabbed one of mine and started dragging me toward Gabriel's group. "Come on you sap, lets go get started letting someone beat you violently about the head and shoulders with a big stick."

"Joy." I deadpanned. "Exactly what I always wanted."

We headed over to where Gabriel was, and the big blonde man nodded somberly as we approached. "So, you heard we've been temporarily benched I take it?"

"Yup." I said succinctly as I dropped into a seat nearby (they'd set out a whole living room set for some reason and one chair was free) Callie plopped down in my lap since it was the only empty seat. "I take it you heard about the ritual and the fact that we were probably going to die following the original plan?"

He nodded. "I did. I'd say it was lucky they found the tower, but between fate sense and intentional placement, it doesn't seem like there was much luck involved. Still, it's certainly not a bad thing to have more information. We found another of the teams, and Bethany was sent out for one. The other seven search parties had varying levels of success. Four of them came back with their quarries, the other three reported no results. Either those teams are dead or they were too far away to find."

"Fifteen total then." I said with a sigh. "And four potentially dead. Not ideal, but it could be worse. With the new map we should be able to dispatch another wave of search parties, but I have a feeling you, Bethany, and I will probably end up on a different sort of detail. In light of that, I was hoping I might ask a favor. Callie mentioned one of your guys is a dagger expert, and one of your team members uses a staff?"

He nodded. "Archimedes actually uses daggers most of the time. And yes, Willow is proficient in staff techniques. I take it you were hoping for some training while we wait?"

"If you're open to it." I said with a shrug. "I can pay for it with wishes. Callie is my girlfriend and making her safer is in my best interests since we fight together. And I could really use a better handle on my own combat style. The meta mechanics I have down, but some more advanced techniques would certainly help." I actually had plans to eventually create my own staff art based on the techniques I already had from DS Mastery, but walk before you run, right?

"I believe that could be arranged." He said after a moment. "We'll be working together on this in any case, and your gesture helping us with the temple turned out to be even more fortuitous than expected. You may have saved our lives by joining us, and I won't forget it." I didn't mentioned the information he might be holding onto about my mom, whatever it was, I didn't think now was the time. I was off balance enough. Standing up, he gestured us over to where some of the team members not seated with him were talking. "How about we get started right away."

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Willow, the knight that was going to teach me (that wasn't her job I don't think, but all of Gabriel's people wore armor and rode horses) was a tiny redhead, nearly as short as Callie, with bright green eyes and a friendly, heart shaped face. She had a smattering of freckles and a friendly smile that made you want to like her, and generally gave off the impression of a cheerful, kind person. At first.

As soon as she drew her staff she basically turned into a drill sergeant. Which wasn't to say that she was rude or angry. No, it was worse than that. The smile never faded, the friendly chirp never left her voice, and she never stopped being upbeat, even as she beat ME up within an inch of my life.

"Nope, sorry. Elbow in." She chirped as her staff flicked out and slammed into my funny bone. My armor was supposed to PREVENT blunt damage. How was she even doing this? That stick wasn't E-ranked. I let out a low groan but adjusted my posture accordingly. "There you go!" She cheered happily. "Now you're getting it!" I wasn't. As was evidenced by her next strike to correct my footwork...by slamming her gods damned stick into my ankle.

"Why are you doing this?" I whimpered. She was a demon. She was worse than Abel. I hadn't even thought that was possible, but at least he mocked openly. Her damned perky smile WAS mocking me, I could FEEL it, but she acted like she was just a genuinely nice person so I couldn't even be properly mad about it.

She just giggled. "I'm just teaching, silly. You're doing so much better! Just keep trying." I hoped she was mocking me, to be honest, because if whoever trained her had conditioned her like this to the point she actually thought it was ok, I'd have to feel bad for her.

"You're a monster." I wheezed. And she just giggled again like I was making a joke, which I absolutely wasn't. Even a little bit.

I had to admit, despite the pain and annoyance, this was a fairly effective way to adjust my technique. Willow had demonstrated a series of katas upon our first meeting, and was now having me go through them from memory one by one. My Focus made that a completely viable approach, but seeing someone do something once isn't enough to perfectly replicate it, even if you can remember what they did. She seemed to have an uncanny ability to perceive the exact muscles I was using even through my coat and armor and was making minute adjustment to each kata until I performed it perfectly.

"You've got that one down." Said the evil creature that wouldn't stop beating me in a deceptively cheerful tone. "Now I want you to try the next one. Raven in the Trees, please." I nodded, clearing my mind so I could remember her exact movements when she'd demonstrated.

My staff lashed out at ankle height, and I flowed back around in a reversal, spinning the shaft around my body and then striking at head level. Another smack to my elbow drew another yelp from me, and Willow chuckled. "You could pretend you aren't enjoying this so much." I said bluntly, running my elbow.

She shook her head. "Don't be silly. You're doing really well." Her excessive cheerfulness faded a bit, replaced with soft reassurance. I wished I could just hate her properly, but she was so NICE. "I know this is tough, but you need to learn these forms properly. People like to say practice makes perfect, but only perfect practice makes perfect. These techniques can save your life, but they need to be learned properly."

"I know." I said with a sigh. "And unnecessary abuse aside, I do appreciate the help. I can see how these would be useful. What exactly is your style called?"

"Valtek." She said with a warm smile. "It's a fairly common staff form back on my home planet, but things don't work worse because people know about them. It's been refined over generations, and is an excellent foundation for crafting your own techniques once you've mastered it. Now, try that one again, and adjust the elbow as you spin."

Ascendant martial arts, even ones without crazy built in abilities, tended to the dramatic. It was in our nature to seek attention. This particular movement was useful in more than just an offensive sense, though. The spinning was meant to be used as a deflection. I tried to incorporate that understanding into the movement, and saw her nod approvingly as she smacked the back of my knee and dropped me on my ass.

"Very good." She said with a nod. "That was much better, though not good enough. I see you're starting to understand some of the nuances of the staff though. The staff is a uniquely powerful weapon, not for its weight or damage dealing capabilities, but for its versatility. People will tell you power is the most important factor of a weapon, but they're wrong. The spear can do many things the staff can, but I consider it an inferior weapon, do you know why?"

I paused. I didn't, I couldn't think of a reason putting a blade on my staff would be bad. I'd even considered getting a spear at one point, but I'd decided the learning curve was too steep and that I wanted to take advantage of my existing abilities and skills. "Nope, can't think of a reason."

Willow didn't seem surprised, but she gave me a minute to sit down as she talked, so I listened. "Leverage." She whirled her stick in a circle. "With properly applied leverage you can shift a planet with merely human strength. Every force has to deal with leverage, and the staff is one big lever. To alter trajectories, to shift incoming force vectors, that's the true art of the staff. Offense and defense at the same time."

I climbed to my feet, thinking that over. "I guess that's true." I mused. "If you look at everything as force to be leveraged, that does kind of change your application. But there has to be at least some solid attacks to be landed, right?" I tended to rely on single blows to win fights. This training would help that, but I still needed to be able to land hits.

Her stick blurred out and landed on my knee with a slam and I hissed in pain, hopping on one leg. "Of course." She chirped. You just have to know how to leverage your own power. You'll get it eventually. Now, I want you to try Raven in the Trees again, and I'm going to attack while you do it."

It wasn't hard to recognize that she'd been holding her attacks until after each attempt. Now she wanted to demonstrated what I could do once I learned them properly. I attempted the kata, moving exactly as she'd coached me and including her notes. She stepped over the low blow, but then attacked herself with a sharp thrust. I was already spinning, the staff close to my body, and I was delighted to see the stick swept into the the twist as my own staff knocked into her wrist.

The attack was redirected and the weapon was seamlessly plucked from her grasp to fly a few feet away into the snow. She stepped back, withdrawing her hand without any obvious pain, and clapped excitedly. "That was fantastic! Did you feel what I meant when I corrected you?"

I nodded. "Yeah, it was all leverage. Caught your staff against my body and then used myself as a fulcrum. The blow to your wrist made you let go and the staff just came free."

"Yup." She said as she walked over to the staff, kicking it up off the ground with some kind of small foot movement and catching it midair. "Try that one another few times just to make sure you've got it, then we'll switch to Stalking Tiger. Remember the most important thing here is that you get the katas perfect. Once you've got them mastered, you can repeat them on your own time. Our time he isn't endless, so I want to make sure you're properly prepared to practice on your own."

I gave a sheepish laugh. "Yeah, I do appreciate the help. I feel like you're being a bit harsher than needed, but I do appreciate the time and guidance." Speaking of which, I turned around to where Callie was standing in front of Archimedes. "How's it going over there honey?"

Archimedes was NOT just constantly attacking her, part of why I was annoyed. He'd taken the inverse tactic. He was having her attack and putting himself in a position where only a proper strike would land. Daggers weren't nearly as evenly disposed to attack or defense as the staff, they heavily favored attacking, which meant training Callie on defensive moves was pointless.

She'd been working with him as long as I'd been working with Willow, and she was soaked in sweat and panting as she stopped to take a break and call back breathlessly. "Not bad. I'm landing more hits now. Archie says I've got a knack for this kind of thing."

The other man nodded casually. "It's true. She's naturally gifted at knifework. I suspect her rock solid foundation in...what did you call it? Balam? Is helping. She's incorporating circular motions into her attacks as best as possible while following the forms I gave her."

Sadly, my own mastery of Balam wasn't anywhere near that point. Skills acquired through Wishing might need more work at Intermediate, but Benny had shown how valuable the earliest versions could be. Foundation was exactly right, and having learned mine through actual practice instead of having it dumped into my head meant mine was shakier. It also wasn't as compatible with the style Willow wanted to teach.

I'd learned a few katas for Balam too, or forms as they were called, but they didn't really translate to armed combat well. Callie's weapon of choice worked on similar mechanics and at a similar range to hand to hand. "Alright. Back to work. You'll be sparring in an hour or two." Said Willow with a smile. "Got to make sure you're up to fighting different kinds of opponents."

I sighed and got back in position, moving through the Raven in the Trees kata again. I managed to get it perfect two out of three times, and she let me move on after that. I could already see how this could all be applied to my combat style, how it could be applied to my abilities. I'd be able to make my own staff moves to complement my Path soon enough.

Paths were something I hadn't really been able to understand well. It seemed like they were based on following an ideology of sorts. How that tied into your legend I wasn't sure, but I was positive they had something to do with it. I knew people like Abel and Gabriel had paths, and getting one early was a big advantage for some reason. I'd seen that I could exert more power when I was following my Path.

Maybe my hypothetical staff art could be the way I merged my Path and combat style, once I figured out what it even was. I was jarred from my thoughts by a strike to the side of my knee and winced. Right, I was training still. Had to get my head back in the game. If I wanted to make my own martial art, I'd have to learn one to base it on. A staff art of my own, and this was the best opportunity for that. I sunk back into my stance and tried again, repeating the motions I'd seen before and including all the notes Willow had made. One step at a time.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We ended up finishing our training (at least enough of it to get a Minor Skill), within a few hours. Since it was already dark, we decided to camp for the night, and Bethany actually got back a bit earlier with the team she'd been sent to fetch. We all ate together at base camp before settling in, though the literal dozens of people meant we were mostly interacting in cliques. I sat with my own team, as well as Bethany, her thralls, Gabriel, Willow, Archimedes, and the wolves.

Bethany was extremely excited to spend time the puppies, and particularly liked Jin, who she showered with love and affection, occasionally interrupted by 'Donuts' who in proper cat fashion managed to display his extreme aggravation with being ignored in such a way that implied he didn't NEED to be paid attention to, but that Bethany was failing in her duties as a two leg by not doing so.

The shadow cat was able to take physical form from Bethany's shadow...somehow. Best not question the Vampire. He repeatedly swatted at Jin from relatively far away, but my G-rank puppy ignored him, intent to snuggle with the petite vampire and loll his tongue smugly at the other animal.

"So, you've got an idea where to send us now?" I asked Benny as we chowed down on a surprisingly flavorful stew. One of Gabriel's people had made it, and it was exceptionally well done. Stew is tough because...well most stew is tough. Literally. It's really easy to boil the tenderness out of the meat and end up eating shoe leather. This was pretty well handled though, I wondered how they'd done it.

"Yeah." He said as he ate. Celine looked annoyed at his bad table manners, but I was guessing she recognized his good work enough that she decided not to yell at him. That or she was going to do it later. "Yvette was a huge help, and so was Sierra, we went over the matrices of the ritual and calculated exactly what feedback pattern will default the ritual to the central temple."

He pulled out a rolled up map, not the same one, but something he drew by hand, and flicked it out to unroll on the ground so we could all see it. He used one hand so he could keep eating, and I made a note to force him to have seconds. He was clearly starving.

I looked down at the map and then scowled at him. "Seriously?" I pointed at the circled temple. "How far away is that? I don't want to walk that far. At least it's only a former B-ranker like the last one. I'm dreading having to fight any of the former A or S-rankers. Do we know anything about this one?"

Benny snorted. "Not much, but as for the distance, I had some ideas there. Keep in mind how high up we are. I think with State of Grace as a factor you could probably glide there. Have Callie set up some kind of hang glider. Can't take Jessie though, Randall would be a bad fit for that kind of thing, plus I don't think bears like to fly."
That...I turned to Callie. "Can you do that? Because we're really high up. That might actually be viable."

"What do you mean ACTUALLY you dick." Complained my best friend. "I just spent the better part of a day rehashing math formulas to help point you at a target." He clicked his tongue on disgust. "Actually. I'll actually kick you in the throat while you're sleeping."

He wouldn't. After a particularly vicious prank war as children we'd declared sleeping time sacred and made a pact not to mess with the other when they were unconscious. Waking up with half of your head and both of your eyebrows shaved has a way of motivating you to sue for peace, much less what I'd done to him in retaliation.

Callie rolled her eyes at us. "What is it about your bickering that seems to deflate your brains? Yes, I can make a glider, especially now. And yeah, I would avoid hanging a bear from it. What's the team composition for this going to be? I know I have to go because I'm the ride, I assume Shane will be with me."

Bethy's hand shot in the air as she bounced excitedly like we were in a classroom. "Ooh! ooh! Me! Pick me!" We looked at her and she shrugged. "There's a bunch of us here now, so I don't think we need anyone to watch them. Plus we'll need all the power we can get. Me and crusader cutie over there should be part of the elimination team."

Gabriel rolled his eyes, but I swear I saw his lips twitch a bit. Bethy was a hard person to dislike, apparently even if you were part of a religious organization that considered her an abomination. The big man cleared his throat. "I'd definitely like to come along. We can leave some of my people here to keep the peace. Willow is more than capable of taking care of anyone that becomes a problem."

My body was wracked by shudders as I remembered the stick wielding demoness and her big bright smile. "Agreed. So me, Mel, Abel, Callie, Bethy, Gabriel? Five person team worked ok last time, and six should be fine, but are we sure we don't want to do a full complement of ten? We ARE going after an ancient undead powerhouse. The extra combatants can't hurt."

Yvonne chuckled. She'd been so quiet I hadn't even noticed her. "You forgot me. With the seven of us we should be more than sufficient. I don't claim it to be a simple task, but it shouldn't be impossible."

Right, the forty Impact golem made of literal rocks. I wasn't sure if that would effect that hang glider, but I was pretty positive my State of Grace could offset it with enough effort. "So we go tomorrow then?" I asked after a moment of thought. "I'd rather not take to the skies out there with the angry birds without being able to see."

Everyone agreed, and we got back to the business of dinner, digging into our stew as we told stories about our adventures. Bethy was particularly verbose, though Aida consistently cut in to correct her outlandish claims, not seeming to notice that her corrections were only slightly less outlandish. By the time we headed to bed we'd all spent a nice evening laughing and enjoying ourselves, and I felt pretty refreshed.

This whole dungeon run had been much more stressful and dangerous than expected, and as I drove my rock spike into the mountain and our bunker constructed itself, I was forced to admit that the downtime tonight had been much needed. Not just for me, but I could see Callie holding herself a bit less tensely, seeming a bit less primed to snap. It was a good reminder that being leader didn't just mean telling my people when to fight, it also meant telling them when not to. Given my own problems with that concept, it was something I'd definitely need to work on.

"So, am I the only one excited to see Bethany fight?" Said Callie as we laid down in our tent inside the bunker. "Because she scares the shit out of me, and the closest we've come is seeing her little rumble with you, where I'm pretty sure she held back a lot."

I snickered. "You're just interested in how she tamed that shadow cat. You want one of those, don't you?"

"Obviously." She snorted. "I have power over shadows. I SHOULD be able to do the same thing, but I have no clue how the hell she managed that."

I just shrugged. "Vampires. Anyway, we can ask her on the way, it'll be a much shorter trip there with the hang glider. You're going to be key to this mission. I'm sure she'd be willing to talk about it and maybe help you pull off something similar."

"I'd be much more reassured by that if I was at all sure she KNEW how she'd done it." Callie complained. "But I guess you're right."

"I'm always right." I said solemnly. "I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken. Now go to sleep, we have a long trip in the morning." She giggled a bit before snuggling up to me and closing her eyes. I let myself drift off peacefully, always happiest when we were together.

In the morning, Callie got up first, squirming free of my arms and waking me up as she rushed to get into costume and get ready to go.

Laughing, I put on my armor and we headed out into the bunker. I'd already pulled the rock spike, so we left the bunker to come apart in its own time as we headed outside. Bethany was already out there, a small decorative umbrella held up to give herself a bit of extra shade. Her skin wasn't burned by the sun or anything, but clearly she wasn't a fan.

Gabriel was sitting at a fire, cooking a skillet full of bacon. When they saw us he waved us over. The cold mountain air nipped at our skin, but I had to admit, something about sleeping in a tent and waking up to cold and the smell of bacon reminded me so much of camping trips with Benny's dad as a kid. There was just something so peaceful about it.

As we approached, I couldn't bring myself to talk. Something about the morning chill and the fact that everyone was still asleep except us just made the silence feel heavier, harder to break. It wasn't anything oppressive though, just the odd feeling that I was waiting for my ability to talk to wake up with the rest of me. I breathed out, letting a cloud of mist fog the air in front of me as I sat down.

Gabriel passed me a plate with some bacon, and for a while, the sound of silverware on dishes was the only sound aside from the crackle of the fire. Even Bethany didn't seem to see a need to talk.

The silence broke as Mel and Abel showed up and my mentor flopped down onto a chair he brought out. "Man that smells good." He groaned. "Remind me why I'm awake this early?"

"Because shut up." Said Mel shortly. She withdrew a thermos from her ring and poured out a cup of black liquid, sniffing it serenely before taking a long pull. She didn't have her mask on, which still felt weird to see. Coffee, based on the smell. Abel grinned at her, holding out his own cup, and she grudgingly poured a small measure into his mug. He looked at it forlornly before shrugging and downing it in a single toss.

We all ate in silence, enjoying the morning, and even Callie seemed almost at peace, though she had a measure of nervous tension that told me she was anxious to get going.

Once we finished and found Yvette, we set out at a brisk walk toward the edge nearest to the temple we were aiming for. I wasn't convinced we could glide the whole way, even from a place this high up, but even if we couldn't we'd cut down the trip by a substantial margin.

Reaching the edge, Callie got to work putting together her construct. She'd consulted Benny a bit the night before on construction, and my best friend had given some notes on what pitfalls to avoid and how to make the whole thing a smoother and more relaxing experience. She created a giant hang glider with a platform at the base we could all stand on, and once it was done I triggered State of Grace. Once I'd done that, we pushed forward, the tiny wheels on the corners rolling us down the steep incline towards the edge of the mountain, then with a stomach dropping yank, we hit the air, and we were flying.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Since my ability awakened, I'd done plenty of amazing things. Seen places I couldn't imagine, done things I'd never dreamed of. I'd fought fucking undead dragons, stolen from evil necromantic castles, stood on the blade of a sword the size of a skyscraper, and dozens of other unbelievable things. Despite all that though, there'd always been a sense of...unreality, of being on the other side of the looking glass.

Flying was beyond all of that. I don't know what it was about this type of flight that seemed so much more amazing than taking shuttles, but as we sailed over hundreds of miles of jungle, I knew this was an experience I'd never forget.

Maybe it was the fact that I'd helped to do this, that Callie and I had made this possible together, just us, but it was...transcendent. I knew it wasn't just me, either. I could feel Callie through the bond, her amazement, her joy. She was experiencing every bit of this that I was, and as she took my hand and squeezed it, I couldn't help the smile that plastered itself across my face.

"Damn." Said Abel in awe. "Now that ain't something you see every day." We could see the jungle far off into the distance, and behind us we could see the mountains that made up the closer side of the ring. I saw buildings out on the distance too, closer to the ground. Towers, temples, fortresses. All spread out among the trees and cleared of brush and debris in a way that made it obvious that they were long since claimed by forces unknown.

Bethany whistled. "This is so beautiful." She said in a surprisingly somber voice. "Thank you. For letting me see this. I've never witnessed anything quite like it. It's not just the sight, it's the fact that I know this place is unspoiled by those above us. F-rankers and the only people who can get in here. This view is just...just for us."

I nodded. "That's it. That's what I couldn't put my finger on. We own the sky. Sure there are birds up here, but they're obviously leaving us alone. This is...the view from the top. At least temporarily." The beauty was remarkable, but there was more to this feeling, under all that.

We all stared in awe, taking it in. The knowledge that we were literally on top of the world right now. It was a heady sensation. This was a preview of what it would be like, I thought, to be an S-ranker, or even a god. Even if we lost the Impact somehow and never gained anything else from this trip, this moment was enough. This made everything worth it.

It was more than just feeling like a big shot. We were feeling it together. Me and my friends on top of the world as a group. I wondered how many Ascendants lost their perspective climbing up this high in the outside world. How many abandoned their loved ones for these heights, never remembering the whole point of wanting to get here.

This was nothing less than a reminder. To stick together. To keep climbing as a group. To help each other, so someday, we could be here in reality, we could stand above everything together like this and REALLY know we made it. The feel of the wind, the sound of the rushing air, the green blanket of beautiful trees stretched out below us, I memorized it all. So that when it came to it, the next time I felt unsure, I could remember this moment.

I saw Callie's eyes tear up, though she subtly wiped it away. She'd needed this, just like I had, needed the perspective. She'd been feeling small since we left Callus, and lost. But it was impossible to look down from here and feel like anything less than a giant.

We sat, and watched, and enjoyed, for hours. Our starting point was so damned high (and the spatial distortion had kind of launched us as we got clear) that we'd been able to glide for most of the day. Slowly drifting lower, even more slowly for the use of my State of Grace. Its increased hangtime was a massive boost to the already lengthy trip, though I had to use it sparingly when we started to hit a downdraft, at least after the first shot.

Finally, after most of the day had passed, we came down. I used State of Grace to land us, so we could avoid any bumpy contact when we touched down. We aimed for a clearing relatively nearby, and the landing was pretty smooth. Hopping down, I offered Callie a hand and helped her to the ground as everyone disembarked. Taking out the magic map we'd bought, I checked out current location versus the temple's position.

"Alright." I said as I eyeballed it. "Three quarters of the way there. It's about..." I checked my scan ring. "Three P.M. I'd say if we rush we could arrive by nightfall, but I think that would be stupid. I think we should keep a steady pace, and then camp a few dozen miles out. Let the night pass before we plan our attack. I don't know if these undead are stronger at night but...well, they do worship a moon goddess."

Everyone paused. "Yeah." Abel chimed in. "I actually hadn't considered that, but it seems like a stupid risk to take when we can just avoid it." At the shocked looks he got he shrugged. "What? I like a good fight, I'm not suicidal. The less godly bullshit we deal with the better, I'm reckless, not nuts."

I chuckled at that, nodding along. "Alright, lets head out then." Using the map to orient, we headed for the temple as best we could. We made good time, of course, given our stats, and weirdly, we didn't run into anything that might slow us down. Not because we were keeping track, but because they seemed to be avoiding us. No monsters, no animals, nothing.

On the way to meet up with Renaldi we'd run across a few monsters we'd had to scare off or fight, though nothing that had slowed us down much. Now though, it seemed like we'd been left completely alone so far.

Triggering my Eye of Revelation, I'd pushed my soul to try to pick up what might be causing it, and I'd come to the conclusion that they could sense that we were traveling with a bigger predator. Bethany was so fucking scary everything was avoiding us out of sheer terror at her presence.

That kind of...aura, reminded me of Abel in some ways. That presence of danger he exuded when pissed off, but with Bethy it seemed to be completely unintentional, just a natural side effect of her being an apex predator. Once the sun started going down we all slowed to make camp. Yvette filled us in a bit on the details of how the temples worked at we made dinner.

I wished we'd brought one of the compasses, but the search parties had needed them more. My wishes for yesterday had gone toward making sure they all had a method of finding their targets, and the twenty five points of Might I'd gotten off it had been useful, but the assumption that having a stationary map would render the compass unnecessary might have been a bit hasty. At the very least I still had today's wishes, since I'd used the other ones last night.

"The conduit we're approaching is Jainus." She said as we sat down. "The tower master did extensive research on all of them. Jainus has a summoning ability. He creates dogs made of storm elements. Water, wind, lightning, sometimes combinations of the three."

I grimaced. Summoners were annoying to deal with. On the upside it meant the actual undead should be easier to deal with. Heavy fantasy stacking would mean less physical power to offset, especially with Yvette here to help.

The ability to tank higher Impact attacks would be crucial for us going into this, and someone who could take Abel's strongest attack to the face and barely budge certainly had that ability. After she went over everything she knew about Jainus, we set up the bunker and Callie used up all my wishes for today. She traded me another six shadow jumps for thirty Might just to be prepared, and I didn't complain given how useful that would be for me.

In the morning, we woke up to get ready, everyone enjoying the fresh scent of grass and trees as we made breakfast and got ready, then headed for the temple with the sun overhead. Despite the sun being out, the moon was still visible huge and menacing in the blue sky, but the light was muted by the daytime sky, which for some reason made me less worried about whatever tricks Suvaya might pull.

Of course, that was nonsensical, because she was a literal god and being in the daylight probably wouldn't stop her if she roused and decided to interfere, but comfort didn't have to be logical.

The last leg of our trip to the temple was peaceful, more of a morning nature hike than anything, and once we got there, we had Callie do her intel gathering thing while the rest of us warmed up just in case. Going into battle with something like a conduit rusty and tired would probably be the last mistake any of us would make.

Bethy, alone amongst those of us who were human (Yvette was unphased as always), seemed to be mostly relaxed and excited, deciding to use her captive cat as a spy to scope out the inside of the building in ways Callie might not be able to pick up. After a few minutes she skipped over to us. "Donuts says there are other kitties inside." Her gleeful enthusiasm sent a shiver through the rest of us.

Callie, who had just returned, nodded in confirmation. "I caught the edges of the night pride too. Couldn't get any actual information on them, like I said before they're a weird kind of unnatural darkness. We should be able to use the same trick as last time. As long as we don't...where is Bethany?"

We all looked around to find that the vampire girl had vanished. Callie knelt down and her fingers dipped into the shadows. "Shit, I think she...yep. She went in by herself. She seems to be...I think she's chasing them." She turned to look at the temple, only to see the Vampire emerge from the temple dragging a now corporeal shadow cat a bit smaller than donuts by the tail as she shouted after a series of fleeing shadows.

"No!" She shouted petulantly. "Come back! I just want to love you!" We all stared in disbelief as she stomped back over to us, still dragging her newest captive. She yanked it forward in front of her, where the cat laid down motionlessly, its eyes locked on the small form of our team member. "This is Poptarts." She said in annoyance. "He's the only one I could catch."

Abel raised a hand slowly. "I'd like it known that, though this isn't something I'd normally admit to, you scare the shit out of me."

Bethany's smile was WAY too full of teeth to be comfortable to look at. "Well aren't you sweet." Her smile flattened into a pout. "Anyway, there aren't any more kitties in there. DONUTS." She said the name spitefully. "Tried to warn them I was coming. He's such a naughty kitty. He's going to stay in time out for a while. I guess Poptarts will get all the cuddles."

The huge terrifying shadow beast flinched when she said the name. I noticed her shadow was actually touching it, though not an angle it should be. I guessed that was how it was manifesting. Deciding it was better for my sanity not to think too much about how Bethany did anything, I decided to refocus the group. "Well." I said jauntily. "That happened. Somehow. Anyway, I think we're about ready to head in." Hopefully fighting the conduit was as easy as getting rid of his guards.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The fight started fast, and was easy enough to get going with, because the undead here wasn't nearly as talky. He just went straight to trying to kill us when we entered the chamber, having already long since left his coffin. Yvette was a big help. She was NOT, however, nearly as useful as we'd hoped. Specifically, she could stall the undead easy enough, but as a summoner, he had a bunch of storm hounds to harass us with, which made it harder for us to focus on him like we needed to do to take him down.

"How are CLOUD dogs a thing?" I snapped as I used the overlay to predict and attack and avoid it. Callie had a pair if shadow blades in hand she was trying to tear into our enemy with, but it wasn't really working. You can't stab clouds. Though apparently they CAN bite you. I had a wrenched shoulder to prove it. "Clouds are water vapor! Also that doesn't even look like a cloud. More like smoke."

Callie hissed, dancing back as her blades were consumed in sparks. "Smoke isn't full of lightning." She paused. "Most of the time. Someone probably has a lightning smoke power somewhere I guess."

"Probably." I agreed as I stepped off the air to avoid the jaws of the smoke dog. My staff lashed out and passed right through the damned thing. Despite the lack of contact, the monster whined and jerked back, clearly hurt by the high Impact weapon even if not severely.

It took a minute for me to realize what had happened. The life draining feature of my Stygian Branch. I looked around to check on the others. Abel was fighting a pair of the hounds, one made of water and one made of pure lightning, Gabriel was fighting one that seemed to be lightning and water, and Bethy...

My eyes landed on the Vampire and I flinched. Bethy was attacking the undead with a pair of stakes that I suspected were the special ones she got from her father. More than that though, she was...different. Gone were the smiles and the bubbly cheer. Bethany Lark wasn't a ditzy friendly airhead. She was a monster.

Her jaw was unhinged slightly, extending her face in an elongated silent scream, her eyes blazed with hellish light, and her teeth we bared in a rictus of anger. Her nails had lengthened into claws, chalk white skin paling even further, but despite all that, the most disturbing thing was the way she MOVED.

Ascendants have an inherent advantage in our movements. We have stats that make it easy to move fast, to calculate what we need to do beforehand, to pick up on minute changes in environment. Despite that though, the way we move, even if at a higher scale, is still HUMAN, at least all the Ascendants I'd ever seen.

Bethany didn't move like a human. She didn't even move like an animal. She moved like DEATH. Not like a predator, but like THE predator, like the force that comes for us all in the end. A sort of slithering, jerking, clipping movement that allowed her to cover ground in odd fits and starts that almost looked like stop motion. She would vanish and reappear, not just because of her speed, but because of a strange mental effect she didn't even seem to control.

The undead roared as he tried to get past Yvette to attack the Vampire, who had just tried to stake him and left a long shallow gash on his body. The golem stopped him in his tracks, but he flicked a hand and another pair of hounds manifested, one of whirling sleet and one of pure cycling wind. They dove forward to attack, and Bethy vanished like she had in her fight with me, into a cloud of bats.

It became clear as she reformed that she had NOT been taking that fight seriously. As she manifest, her mouth closed, her eyes still blazing like the embers of hell. Reaching up with a claw, she slit an arm open, dripping her blood onto the stakes, which began to sizzle and pop.

Another blurring jerking blink and she was on the monster again from behind, trying to jam a stake through his eye. Jainus snarled and leapt back, the wrinkled undead clearly genuinely worried about the monstrous girl.

I expected she had some multipliers on her stats like the wendigo had, but more than that, something about her blood struck me as profoundly WRONG. It looked unnatural. Too red, like melted rubies, and the thought of touching it made me sick. I was pretty sure Jainus felt the same. I didn't get to watch more because the smoke dog recovered and attacked again, and Callie had to tackle me out of the way so I didn't get disemboweled.

"Watch it!" She snapped. And I nodded, hopping back to my feet. "You ok? It's not like you to get so distracted."

Telling her I got distracted by cringing in terror from an apex predator in a frilly goth ball gown seemed like it might be embarrassing, so I just shook my head. "I'm good, but we need to figure out how to kill these things. This guy is managing to hold off Bethy and Yvette both, apparently the last one she fought wasn't putting his back into it."

She snorted. "I feel so honored that he thinks we're worth it. Kill the minions then. Any ideas on HOW? Because I don't have any conceptual death abilities."

I paused. "I think I do. I'll have to check a few things, but I can think of a few ways we might be able to do it. Don't suppose you can capture one with shadows? Actually..." I turned my head. "Hey, Bethy! Let us borrow your cats!" I shouted at the Vampire.

She turned her blazing eyes on me, inspecting me for a second like I was a bug on a card. I could tell she took a second to process who and what I was...other than food. I felt my skin prickle as my whole body shuddered, but it passed quick. Between one breath and the next, something shifted in her face, and she gave me her usual big toothy grin, somehow less threatening despite the fangs still being there. "Okay!" She chirped, then flicked a finger.

A pair of cats made of pitch black shadows barreled from beneath her feet, one of them hitting our smoke dog while the other one attacked the wind dog that had come at her to keep her off the conduit.

I saw a burst of flame as Mel attacked the sleet hound from the side, a blast of flame consuming the animal as it dissolved into a puddle. The night pride seemed to be more than capable of damaging the summons, which was good, because it opened me up to try some of my ideas.

Glancing at the smoke dog, I used Marked for Death, then triggered Double Trouble, appearing behind it, swinging my staff down hard. The glowing green of poison fire didn't seem to do much, but when I triggered just a bit of the death energy inside, the staff made solid contact with the beast. I wasn't sure if it was the sure hit of Marked for Death or the death energy itself, but one of them made hitting the incorporeal monster completely possible.

Grinning, I turned to look for my next target...and my world went white. One of the summons, a lightning dog, had snuck up behind me and as I turned it went for my throat. As the teeth sank in, I triggered a heal burst, but unfortunately for me, that didn't really matter.

The monster, rather than tear out my throat, melted into me, slipping under my armor as the lightning funneled through my entire body. The charge raced down my limbs and through my chest, carried along my blood and muscle as it searched for an escape from the armor holding it in.

I dropped, screaming, as I felt my flesh cook only to be repaired by my supercharged Vitality and Jessie's stored heal. I dug my fingers into the stone floor under me as I heard Callie shout my name in panic as she raced to my side.
Despite that, she came to a stop standing over me, her face panicked as she tried to figure out what to do or how to help me.

Gritting my teeth, I stood. I triggered Double Trouble again, appearing behind a water dog that Mel had been dealing with, and I shoved my arm into it. The dog howled as the water picked up the charge, dispersing it to manageable levels even as it boiled the water, and the construct collapsed at the same time I did as the lightning grounded out.

I was breathing heavily as I lay there on the ground, smoking and smelling of charred meat as the heal burst continued trying to repair the damage.

"Shane?" I heard from what seemed like far away. "Honey are you with me?" Callie. I nodded jerkily, body still sore and burned.

"M'fine." I mumbled, trying to sit up. I triggered another heal burst, and grimaced as my head focused. "Get me one of those stakes." I said through what felt like a mouth full of cotton.

She didn't look convinced, but seeing the still filling room even now being stuffed with storm hounds she nodded, sending a shadow clone off towards Bethy. While we waited, she tried to give me a once over. "You doing OK? Where does it hurt?" I could see how scared she was, so I tried to be reassuring.

"It's not as bad as it could be. The pain is only everywhere." Judging by her worried expression my joke had fallen on deaf ears. I was confident that was just a side effect of the fear, I was definitely as funny as I thought I was.

The clone came back, and Callie held out a hand, the shadow construct slapped the stake down into her hand and she held it out to me. "What are you going to do with it?" I plucked it from her fingers, pushing to my feet as I tried to force my body to move properly, not that I managed to do so. Even with the healing my muscles were sore and damaged. Bruising, tearing, and plenty of other unpleasant things caused by rapid contraction from electrical damage.
"What are you doing?" She snapped. "You're not ok yet, give it at least a few minutes with the healing. You can't go into battle like that."

Cracking my neck, I rolled my shoulders painfully. "I know. But I've got the best shot at making this stick." I glanced at the undead, choosing not to think about how much this was going to suck. I needed a boost. Afterburner, Marked for Death, Mercy Kill, triple stack density shift, Flurry of Blows, Double Trouble. I vanished, leaving behind an illusion and knowing Callie was going to be pissed about me leaving mid conversation.

I was in too much pain to argue or slow down though. Afterburner filled me with energy and power, but it was going to end soon. Appearing behind the conduit I shoved the stake forward. Flurry of blows made it faster, the other abilities made it stronger, and the ten percent boost to armor penetration from Heavy Hands combined with the Marked for Death defense bypass allowed me to slam the thing home right in his heart. Perfect to soften him up for the finisher from our resident cavalry.

Of course, I burned an Afterburner charge on five of those abilities AND on the actual attack so that was half of my juice. As I felt the stake sink in and activate, I used Double Trouble again, slumping against the wall to catch my breath and using another three heal bursts to burn all the rest of my charges, flooding my body with superempowered healing as I watched the stunned conduit stare in horror at Gabriel's charge. I needed a break.