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

[Malcolm Tent]

Over the next eight or nine hours, we caught three more B-rank Void infiltrators. Not all of them were Vessels, sadly. In fact, only the first one, Faustryche, had been a vessel. Personally, I didn't think it was so bad, we'd still taken down some Void worshippers, and even if they didn't happen to be big bosses, they were still powerful assets we were denying the other side. Not to mention they still had bounties, which meant we'd still get points.


My parents though, looked deeply unsettled. "Something is wrong," my mom commented as we finished off the third. "There were supposed to be a few different bounties down here, and these were the least consequential."


"It's been bothering me for a while," my dad agreed. "This isn't how the Void operates. They hate us, but they also mostly hate each other. Void Children aren't insane so much as UNsane, but they're certainly too alien to operate in a coherent formation. Even to each other. The way this whole thing has been going, it's like someone is moving pieces on a board. Which they shouldn't be capable of."


I frowned at him. "Really? It's seemed a little…haphazard, don't you think? I mean yeah, they have a shared goal, but they're not working TOGETHER. They're just kind of aimed in the same direction."


"That's more than they should be capable of," he said flatly. "This is off. Working towards a coherent goal like this is…complicated. I could maybe see enough of them agreeing to throw their people scattershot at the planet, but planning the infiltration on the lifts? The attack on Calliope? It smacks of purpose. Of overarching goal. That shouldn't be possible. There is no HEIRARCHY among the Void Children, not beyond the inherent hierarchy of power."


I froze. His voice prickled something in the back of my head. "What if there was," I said slowly. "Or at least, what if there could be." I told him about the Vessel I'd run into who had tried to recruit me. I hadn't really thought about it since it happened, but in retrospect, it seemed odd.


"That's…bad," Zeke cut in. "Like, scale of one to ten, thats fifteen points of total fucking disaster. Void Children cooperating is cataclysmic."


My mom nodded. "It is. There's no way a truce like that will hold. Once we've destroyed the ones inhabiting the nearest areas to realspace, the others will expand to fill the gaps." I cocked my head, and she explained. "The Void is complicated. But as best we can tell, the rank of a Void Child is related to the space they take up in the Void. The more Void they control, the stronger they get."


"So if we worked with them, they'd help us kill the others, and then use the space to get stronger?" I said in horror.


"Worse," Callie cut in with a grimace. "Once they expanded, they would be adjacent to realspace. So the ambivalence that allowed for the truce would no longer be viable. They'd be driven just as insane by the neighboring noise."


My dad shook his head. "That's not the worst of it. The worst is that the power blocs formed by these…what was it he called them? Deepchildren? Will influence the rest of the Void spawn. The Void is fractured because they're constantly clashing. No one force can gather enough power to centralize. But if the Deepchildren manage to form a large enough power base, they can pressure the others. Conquer or destroy them. It'll snowball into a cohesive and unified Void."


Callie looked pale. "I think…I think that's happened before. Sometime a long long time ago. There was a god. A Void god. But it died." She grimaced, clutching her head. "This isn't…ow, ow, ow, fuck!" She collapsed, and I was there next to her, panicking.


"Cal?" I said anxiously, shaking her. "Honey, what's wrong? What hurts?" I shifted to Zagan, flooding her with cleansing life giving flame, but it didn't help. I turned to my mother. "Mom, help! Use your purifying flame!"


She knelt down beside my wife, putting a hand on her head and flooding her with white flame. It didn't hurt her, of course, but it also didn't help. Maybe because Callie had some of the purifying flame in her heretic fire. I snarled, laying her down on the ground as I fumbled for a scroll. Her hand snapped up to grab my wrist. "No!" She hissed. "It's not…it's not the Void!" I frowned, not understanding what she meant. "It's my trait. The Heretic Fire is trying to commune with me."


I blinked at her dumbly. "I don't understand," I said in frustration. "But if it's that, I can help." I reached into the bond, where the trait was connected, and pulled it toward me, trying to offload some of the pain or pressure or…whatever, to myself.


It didn't work, exactly, but it did help a little. Her face eased. I pulled her up, leaning her head in my lap. "Don't scare me like that, damn it," I said tightly. "What the hell is going on?"


She grimaced. "It's not over yet. I can feel it trying. My trait wants me to know something, but the Void is rioting inside my brain. I think it has to do with how all the Void spawn seem to know what the flame is. What I am. With that ancestral hatred of Heretics. I think…I think the Heretic God is the reason the Void doesn't have a god anymore."


As soon as that came out, she threw her head back and SCREAMED, the pain echoing off the distant cavernous walls. I snarled in frustration my fingers digging uselessly into her shoulders as agony wracked her body.


This…this was fucking TORTURE. Why was this happening? Why couldn't I help her? I could handle pain, she should just give it all to me. It would be so much less horrible than holding the woman I loved and watching her suffer when I couldn't do anything. My breathing go heavier, faster, I felt like the world was narrowing to a pinpoint. I was failing. She was going to die and I- my brain came crashing to a halt. I couldn't go into her head and help or anything, but I could do something else.


Pulling my mask off, I lowered my head to hers, pressing our foreheads together and pulling and then…we were inside my library. I picked her up, carried her to the table in the center of the room, and then started grabbing books. Empty books by the armload. I triggered Beelzebub, twelve other me's joining in, and we started pressing the tomes to her body anywhere we could find.


Then we all triggered Dantalion (I upgraded it to C-rank with my staff) and PULLED. Dantalion was the demon of information. This was the Great Book Heavenly Library, but it was also my Pride pseudo Domain. This place was made for information, for its capture and preservation, for its deduction. The tree above my own Chronicle shifted, the branches reaching down to pick up books, adding them to the connection.


Callie's screams faded. Information. Forbidden or not, this was about information. Her Void Path was telling her something, her Heretic Angel trait was telling her something else. They were fighting over what she was allowed to know, but here that wasn't their choice. In the presence of my Ten Demons Tree, with Dantalion running a rank higher, INSIDE my library, no information was hidden from me. Not the kind contained in D-rank skills or traits.


The books were filling. Mostly with gibberish. Black jagged symbols that looked nothing like letters, written in strange spiral patterns that interlocked and intersected in strange and frankly uncomfortable ways.


One of the books slammed shut, and I threw it over my shoulder, grabbing another. Then a second one did the same. I snarled, calling for more. The library had no limits on knowledge. It could hold anything. I KNEW it could. Because the library wasn't just mine. It came from the old man. He'd used it to create the most powerful Skill the universe had ever known. The perfect Skill. The Void wasn't more powerful than he was. I refused to admit that.


Books began to slam shut, and I threw them away, grabbing new ones. As I did, Callie's pain started to ease. It wasn't over, but something was happening. Just not enough. Not fast enough or completely enough. My wife was dying. I could FEEL it. And it was my fault. My half assed idea to counterbalance her Path with a trait too early. She couldn't handle combining them and…I froze.


Leaving the others to work, I turned and bolted over to one of the books. I opened it, wincing at the jarring script, and tried to use Dantalion to process or parse it. I just needed to know…pushing through the pain, I bared my teeth in a vicious grin. Perfect.


It was hard to describe the sort of inspiration that I got when dealing with these kinds of things. My natural talent and instinct for Paths. But it was there, and it was real, and my own Path, with elements of the Fatewalker, was particularly attuned to those strokes of brilliance. If it hadn't been, I doubt I would have been able to do or even explain my actions following that discovery.


I threw the book on the floor. Then went and grabbed another, and another. I piled all the books that were filling with Callie's Path and stacked them all as high as I could go, grabbing more from the tree and from my other selves as they were completed. I quickly ran out. Eventually, the books stopped filling, and Callie started whimpering in pain. "It's ok love," I told her softly, pushing sweat soaked hair out of her face.


She didn't have her mask in here, it was just those beautiful blue eyes I loved so much, staring up at me clouded with pain. I had to physically tear myself away from her side as I rushed to complete my task, but I did it. Her safety was all that mattered.


Once the book stack was complete, I ran over to grab my staff from where it floated above the tome. Then I ran back over, and I reached through the bond. Finding her Heretic Angel trait was simple, given my connection to it, and pulling on her Heretic Flame was even easier. A fist sized sphere of blue black fire manifested on the end of the staff, looking for all the world like a torch, and I lowered it to the pile.


There was a whoosh and the entire stack of books went up like they'd been soaked in kerosene. The flames caught, exploding outward and literally BLOWING me off my feet, consuming my vision in darkness and sending me falling. Falling where, I had no clue, but fall I did. I could still hear Callie screaming and I tried to get to her, but I couldn't and then…


It was over. We were both fine, sitting in a chair across a familiar table. This was the executive cafeteria in Valen, back on Callus. The first place I'd ever seen my wife. Across the table from us was a man I'd never met before. A man with startling blue eyes that faded to black rather than having a defined pupil.


He was sitting at the table, eating a steak, and when we appeared (because I somehow knew we had) he smiled warmly at the two of us. "Hello little ones," he said in a voice like simmering honey. "I've been expecting you." He gestured to the table in front of us, where a pair of plates containing a sort of red rice based stew I'd never seen before sat waiting. "Please," said the Heretic God. "Have something to eat. We aren't in much of a hurry. And I imagine you have quite a few questions."

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I stared at the kindly man in shock. Or rather, I tried to. I couldn't see him, really. My eyes were inexorably drawn to his, falling into the blue black abyss. He had the same eyes as my wife, but…more. An order of magnitude more. They were magnetic, hypnotic, whatever term you wanted to use, I couldn't look away. Like they were pulling me into an endless abyss from which I'd never escape.


And then, they weren't. "Apologies," he chuckled ruefully. "I forget that happens to mortals. I haven't entertained company in quite some time."


Callie was staring too, but she didn't seem captivated or consumed, just…lost. "I...I know you. How do I know you? Not just like, who you are, I mean. I feel like you're familiar. Like you're someone important to me. But we've never met."


"Well of course," he beamed warmly. "I like to think all children know their parents."


Her eyes hardened. "You're not my father," she said firmly. "Trust me, I wish that was the case, because you almost couldn't be worse than the one I have, but he is who he is. He might not have parented me much, but I got enough physical and mental traits from him that I couldn't deny it if I wanted to."


Laughing, he just shrugged. "Is that what makes a parent? Because it seems to me you have as much of me in you as him at this point. After all, haven't you noticed you've got my eyes?"


That seemed to throw her off balance, and I could tell she wanted to argue but didn't know how. "Yeah, about that, how did you manage that?" I forced the conversation back onto me. "Because we were just kind of throwing pasta at the wall to see what stuck. I originally thought the Heretic Flame was a lucky accident, but even my luck isn't that good. You did something."


"What a wonderful man you've found for yourself, Calliope," he laughed. "Such presence of mind. Most would take credit for such an occurrence. It's a rare man who questions his gifts and not just his misfortunes."


Callie's hand found mine, gripping it tightly enough that I could tell she was overwhelmed without needing my eyes or the bond. "That's not an answer," I pointed out.


He shrugged again. "You got close enough. The presence of the Void, the purifying flame, and a few of your more esoteric tricks. It gave me enough to work with. Once you got my attention, I just…tapped your elbow, so to speak."


"You can do that?" I said warily. "Affect a working when you're, I assume, dead?"


"Gods don't die," he told me matter of factly. "They just kind of scatter. And once they do, they retain bits of what they once were. Our Domains are…inextricably linked to who we are. With a shattered soul, it takes a VERY close match to stumble into a god's sphere of influence. But it does happen. How do you think Hatescream orchestrated his resurrection? The information necessary to engineer that kind of ritual is far beyond what you could leave in written instructions. Some fool tripped over his divinity by mistake and ended up an avatar. It happens."


Callie spoke up. "So I'm your…avatar?" She chewed on the word like it was oatmeal. "What does that mean?"


He waved it off. "It's just a word for a being through which a god acts. After a deity dies, if you want to use that word, their power is diminished to near nothingness. But stories never end. And neither do the gods they become. You know that Domains can interfere with each other, it's why Morgan Lark killed all the other vampires. They can also interact, as can the forces that will one day become them."


"I see," my wife said inscrutably. "And you used this connection to make me…what I am."


His smile was kind. "I did. Gods have always acted through their children, when they have nowhere else to turn. Your friend Satala, for instance. I chose you, Calliope. You were the only option, admittedly, but I haven't regretted that choice. You've made me proud."


I felt Callie's churn of emotions through the bond. Confusion, anger, hurt, longing. Callie's relationship with her dad was BAD. Understandably, because Paul Reynolds was a fucking scumbag. But this man was kind of a relative. Kind of a new start. And kind of intrusive, which wasn't helping. He seemed to pick up on that, because he changed gears. "As I said, I'm sure you have questions for me?" he prodded.


My wife nodded, getting her head back on the matter at hand. "Yes. So many. But I think for now, we need to know what the trait was trying to tell me. About the Void god. Could he be coming back? Could this all be because of him? If gods don't die…"


He waggled a hand. "That's complicated. The Void god called itself a god, but it wasn't, not really. Void Children, and the things they become, are not capable of divinity as we attain it. They don't have souls, exactly. Though they do have SOMETHING. Ruxx was a particularly powerful being, but its return is unlikely. I destroyed it quite thoroughly, though the effort destroyed me in turn."


"Ok," I said slowly. "Probably a bit of a sidetrack but…how? How did you do all this?" I waved at him. "The Heretic God, the Heretic Flame. Like, was that just your Domain? Did you build your whole legend around destroying the Void?"


He shook his head. "Not at all. In fact, I got my powers from the Void. It's why Calliope was so compatible with me. But I suspect you already guessed as much."


"You mentioned it was an ingredient in the Heretic Flame," I acknowledged. "But I didn't expect…that. How does that work? Like you were a god and you bent the knee to serve, what was its name? Ruxx?"


His sigh was wistful. "Not at all. I gained my divinity in service to the Void. I was originally…well, I had a complicated childhood, let's say that. I was very strong as a boy. Possibly too strong. All the other children in my city looked up to me, and I gloried in the adulation. I was tall and powerful, everyone expected great things from me."


Those blue black eyes lost focus, staring off into the distance. "Except for one small thing. I wasn't an Ascendant. I didn't have a point of Impact. Several of the other boys did, and they gained power quickly. I was left behind, abandoned, and I was angry.


"We knew about the Void, in those days," he explained. "And were taught its dangers. But some were seduced by its power. There was a witch, near the city I grew up in, named Morwenna. I went to see her, and I begged her for power." His smile turned bitter. "And she gave it to me. Oh yes. I became an Ascendant, I stepped onto the path to power, and I never looked back."


I grimaced. "Favors like that aren't free. Especially not from the Void."


"No," he said with a sad laugh. "No they are not. This one certainly wasn't. I was approached years later, once I reached D-rank. I was told I would become a Vessel.


"Being the Vessel of a Void Child is…awful," he explained. "And wonderful. It burns out a part of you. A part that people need, but one that most of us would rather not have. The part that feels shame. Uncertainty. Doubt. The part that hesitates." His eyes narrowed with remembered pain. "It makes us monsters. And I was the very worst."


Callie was staring at him in horror. "So…what happened? How did you go from that to this?"


"When a Void Child grows, so does its Vessel," he said tightly. "And mine GREW. With my help and influence, Ruxx climbed the ranks quickly. I was powerful. My black flame was mighty, and it consumed all it touched. The fires of the Void are hungry things, and none could stand before them. Or me. Until Ruxx crossed that final threshold. Until he became a god, or some version of one. And so did I."


I blinked as everything clicked together. "Your soul," I said as I got it. "The damage he did was to your soul, but when you became a god it pushed your soul up with you. Mirror souls are special. It fixed whatever he did."


"It did," he nodded. "It was the most excruciating thing I have ever experienced. But when it was done, I felt…everything. And I hated. Myself. Ruxx. Morwenna. Hell, I hated the world." As he spoked, he began to weave his fingers, pulling specks of burning cinder from the air. He started to weave, and I knew without looking what he was making. A Chronicle. Callie's Chronicle.


He reached out and pulled free some of her shadow from the table, using it as thread as he started to stitch together a book. Callie watched, but didn't stop him. He was doing this, but we both knew he wasn't. She was. This place was hers, and he was acting through her to create this. We could both feel his good intentions, both feel how useful this would be, so we just sat and listened to the story as he stitched.


"I spent millennia wallowing," he said as he worked. "Hating, and breaking, and healing. Until I made a choice. I decided that I had had enough. That the Void's grip on realspace was too strong. In those days, the universe as a dark and terrible place. They kept us alive as servants. As pawns and amusements. Because Ruxx was lazy and liked what we could do for it.


"So I began to plan. The fires of the Void were powerful, but they couldn't affect the Void itself. They were a weapon that could only be turned on my own." His voice rang with shame and self loathing. "So I went out and began to search for ways to change them. I searched for centuries, eventually stumbling upon a spark of divinity from a goddess of purification. An ember that had been one of her objects of power."


He held up a hand, and the blue black flame we had come to know kindled in his palm, leaping and dancing as he stared into it. "There was more. It was a long journey. But I eventually reached the end. I kindled a spark of Heretic Fire. I burned the Void from my very BONES, and I took up a war standard against the Void Children, driving them from our space and freeing my people from the servitude I help cast them into.


"They lauded me as a hero," he said in disgust. "No one was left who remembered what I had done. What I had been. When I changed sides, realspace had been under the boot for tens of thousands of years. I was almost glad that destroying Ruxx killed me. It was a relief not to hear their undeserved cheers of gratitude anymore. They made me sick."


His hands stopped, and he set the object he'd been holding down. It had been burning cinders before, scraps of the books I'd lit aflame to bring us here. That had been why I'd done it. But he'd stitched them together into a single, solid tome, and he pushed it towards Callie. She took it reverently, feeling the power from it, just like I could. He'd combined them for us. Her Path and Trait. Combined them more perfectly than I ever could have, and I wasn't quite sure what the result would be, even if I was eager to find out.


Callie picked it up, looking lost still, but she had one more question. This place was coming unravelled. And she had one more thing she needed to know. "What was your name?" She asked him softly.


He smiled fiercely at her. "I haven't spoken it for eons now. No one has. But I suppose, oh daughter of my heart, that if anyone deserves it, you do. I know you don't think of me in such a way, and maybe you never will, but someday, I hope to earn that regard. To have family again after all this time, and leave a mark on this world that will wash away the stain of what I did. When that day comes, when you feel ready to claim me as kin, lift your head with pride, and tell any who ask that you are the child of Adam Atlas." And then, we woke up.

 

[Quenster06]

Spoiler: Corrections

In those days, the universe as a dark and terrible place.

Click to shrink...

The universe was

Can't wait until Callie gets rid of that Void Priestess corruption. Burn the Void beings out of Realspace!

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We came back to reality dazed. The first thing I did was check on Callie. "Cal? Sweetie? You with me? How's your head?" I surged Zagan, flooding her body with life energy before she could answer, and she giggled and smacked at my hand.


"Wait til I respond, idiot," she said fondly. "And I'm…good." She sounded conflicted. But not in a bad way. I helped her sit up, smiling the whole time. I was just so relieved she was alright.


Everyone around us looked frantic. I glanced around to find my family and friends huddled nearby. "Hey, assholes," snapped Benny. "Maybe show some consideration? Callie just screamed and collapsed and then Shane went down after her. I don't know what happened to you idiots but I do know the rest of us were freaking out about it, so maybe take a minute to reassure us?" His voice was ragged, and I recognized the same tight helplessness I felt earlier.


"I will," I told him firmly. "AFTER I check on Callie. I need to make sure she's ok, we just went through something a little crazy, and I'll tell you all about it in a minute."


Callie stood up, spreading her wings…which had changed. Rather than a single pair of large wings, she now had three pairs of smaller wings. Oddly, these seemed much less intrusive, able to be folded up in a way the others really hadn't, but it was still shocking. Holly, one of the angels who were part of my crew and Chelsea's retinue visibly flinched when she saw them, looking terrified. "Holy shit, are you an ARCHANGEL now?"


My wife blinked in confusion, then her eyes went hazy in the way I had experience myself a thousand times when checking my stats. "Yes," she said with interest. "My Path is gone, and so is my trait, and my ability. The only remaining evidence of any of them is 'Master Trait: Heretic Archangel'. I'll be honest, that's a bit of a let down. When Shane gets a new power his stat sheet always gets way longer and more complicated. Mine was already pretty thin."


"Trust me, that's a good thing," I assured her. "Keeping track of all my bullshit is exhausting. But I am a little surprised. I mean, I figured you'd get some kind of demigod trait after…that. Though I guess it doesn't work like that."


Holly shook her head. "You don't get it." Her voice was frustrated and tight. "This is…there are no Archangels. None. Not even S-rankers. The transition from angel to Archangel isn't a matter of degree, it's a matter of type. Archangels aren't just 'angel but better'. They're…primordial entities. It's like comparing chickens to velociraptors. An Archangel is the beloved child of a god. An entity custom built to serve the will of their deity. Angels are BASED on them, but it's like someone trying to paint a masterpiece based on the description someone gave after seeing a blurry photograph one time."


Her tone had become both reverent and terrified. Callie looked conflicted. On the one hand…cool. On the other, while we'd known creating her Chronicle would let Atlas guide the way her traits blended together, hearing about it in that way made it seem intrusive and kind of stifling. It was clear from context that he's woven together the three Skills in such a way as to make the absolute most of her trait, in the same way that the old man had created the Wish power.


Honestly, we probably would have been a lot more worried, except he had ALSO blended the bond in, and left it just as strong as ever. I could still feel my wife beside me, still feel her soul touching mine, and it put both of us at ease.


My SECOND reaction after caution was awe. Binding the Chronicle like that…it was something I hadn't even imagined doing. But it was also a direct extension of my own abilities. And I knew that he'd shown me that on purpose. He's not only rewritten her story to have the effect he wanted, he'd disassembled MY OWN books to create hers, and had used that physical representation as a direct medium to alter her nature in a way I hadn't known was possible.


Atlas understood Skill and ability creation in a way I don't think anyone I had ever met did. Possibly even moreso than the old man. And speaking of the her Chronicle, I turned to my wife with an eager gleam in my eye. "So, you have your Chronicle now, right? What is it?" My Ten Demons Tome was unique. An extension of myself and my powers. Binding a Chronicle was a deeply personal thing, and given how much Callie had put into the Skills he was working with, I was sure the result within him helping guide her had been something amazing.


She held up her hands, which whooshed to life with blue black fire. "The Book of the Final Flame. It's an extension of the Heretic Fire, which is…more than I thought." As she stared at her hands, the blue black flame shifted subtle, the blue becoming muted, and I felt a sort of cold seep into the air. The same cold and despair I felt from the black mist of the Void taint. I blinked at her. "The Flame of the Void," she explained. "The Heretic Fire contains the seed of Void flame. It was Adam's old power, after all. Now that I'm better with it I can draw that out."


"Because Heretic Fire only works on the actual Void spawn," I nodded. "Now you have a weapon against other Ascendants when you need it. Though I have to wonder, if suppressing the heretic part creates that, what does suppressing the Void part create?"


She blinked, then focused on her hands. The blue undertones in the Heretix Fire strengthened, the black parts washing out, and it felt like…I stared down at my own hands. Zagan. Kind of. More purification than life force. But still a solid healing ability. That would be useful. Holly didn't seem to care though. She was more focused on something else. "What about the sword?" We turned to look at her in confusion. "Archangels aren't just angels but better, I TOLD you that. They're the sword of their god. Literally. Archangels have a soul weapon. Like Shane does."


I blinked at that. I hadn't realized the relationship I had with the Ten Demons Tree could be replicated, but I probably should have. Hell, the tree was GROWING out of my tome. I wondered what the connection was there to a god's object of power. Regardless, Callie seemed excited by the possibility.


Personally, I was more focused on something else. "If she has a soul weapon. She must have a place to keep it. My library is a pseudo Domain based on the old man's. Does that mean Callie has her own pseudo Domain like that?" My pseudo Domains were seeds of and ACTUAL Domain, and the foundation, I was pretty sure, of a god world, albeit in a VERY indirect way. If Callie had one, it could potentially give her all sorts of unique advantages, depending what the damned thing actually did.


Holly looked pretty confused, and at a general loss, which didn't shock me. Callie, however, knew from entering my library how this worked. She smiled softly at me, closed her eyes and then…


We were alone. Or rather, together. But everyone else was gone. We were standing inside of a huge black cathedral. The windows along the sides were towering murals of stained glass showing scenes of Callie's life. One was her meeting me, one was her slaying a god, one was our wedding, and the moment I proposed, and a dozen other important moments, some featuring myself and others not.


The pews of the cathedral were empty, as was the aisle, but at the end sat an altar. It was carved of gleaming black stone so dark it ate the light, and a book sat upon it, flickering with blue black flame. Above THAT, sat a sword. A huge behemoth of a weapon, easily six feet long and made of the same black rock, polished to a sheen and sharpened to a razor's edge so sharp it stung my eyes to look at it. In the pommel, held in a clawed hand, was a deep gem of startling blue, the tones deepening to black towards the center.


Callie approached, looking awestruck. I couldn't blame her. This was…a lot. Atlas was really working for that father of the year mug. I had no idea how he had DONE all this. Apparently gods were WAY more bullshit than I had been aware of. Which made sense. I hadn't had much contact with them, really, and never when they were serious about doing something and unopposed. Also Atlas was OLD. Maybe this was just a factor of him being THAT scary.


My wife approached the altar reverently, reaching up to wrap her hand around the hilt of the colossal weapon, lifting it free of whatever orbit was holding it over the book. She lifted it easily, the blade seemingly lighter than air, and whipped it back and forth a few times, her face splitting with unconcealed glee.


I sighed. Because of COURSE he would know that giving her loot was the fastest way to my wife's heart. "Shane!" she squealed in excitement. "I have a SWORD!" She spun, whipping it in a quick series of cuts that, while mildly impressive, made it clear she had no clue how to handle a weapon that size.


I winced and stepped forward to grab her wrist. "Whoah there, let's maybe not disembowel me. Not sure what it would do here, but I'd rather not find out. I'll talk to Fade about you getting swordplay lessons." I frowned. "I'm a little jealous. Why don't we have a staff master on the crew? Remind me to find one of those."


She snickered, then flicked her fingers and the sword appeared back above the book. "It's…amazing," she whispered in awe. "I think it might be one of his objects of power. Or part of one? I don't think I could hold the whole thing. But it's powerful, and it'll get stronger as I do." Her smiled was so wide it threatened to split her face. "I've always been so jealous of your weapon, Shane. Like I didn't say anything because why bother? But this…? This is all mine, and it's AMAZING!"


Flicking her fingers again, the blade caught fire, and the whole sword lit with the internal glow of the Heretic Flame. It looked imposing and majestic, but insubstantial. Like fire trapped in a black soap bubble. "Does it have a name?" I asked her with a grin. "My Ten Demons Tree didn't until I gave it one, so maybe you have to pick it?"


She blinked at that, her hyperfocus on the blade shaking as she was brought back to the present. "It doesn't. But I think I'll call it….Gossamer."


A word that meant something filmy and insubstantial. I could kind of see it. I smiled as she raced forward to snap it up again, retreating to the empty area behind the altar to swing it around. She looked so happy, all I could do was watch and smile. At least on the outside. Time in the soul space could be weird, so we weren't in a rush, but I had other concerns besides my family waiting for an explanation.


Because this was…a lot. Like yes, Atlas wanted Callie to be his legacy, to right his wrongs and redeem him to the world. I suspected he probably eventually wanted to be resurrected, but that was between them. We'd deal with it when it came. But to do all this for her. This wasn't currying favor with your new kid. This was arming his daughter for war.


We knew the Void was planning something. It was probably related to the Void god, or at least a new one, judging by what had triggered the Chronicle formation. But that was ALL we knew. What I was more worried about was all the things we DIDN'T know? Who were our real enemies? What were they planning? And how awful was it going to be that a dead god had felt the need to give Callie THIS to prepare her for it. There was no such thing as a free lunch, and I had the unsettling feeling this particular meal was going to include us eating a lot of crow.