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

[Malcolm Tent]

The Lady's artifact was not, in fact, in the city. It didn't take me long to get through the town and out the other side, headed beyond the city and out into the planes beyond it. That was the bad news. The GOOD news was the the planes beyond the city weren't as large as expected, and on the other side of them, we found a huge white marble castle.

Obviously, the arrowhead pointed right towards it, and I let out a whoop of excitement when I confirmed the artifact was inside. We headed for the entrance, ready to find and collect the item in question…but ran into a small problem.

As we tried to enter the castle, a pair of huge statues on either side of the entrance came to life, swinging their huge polearms down to smash them into the ground in front of us, blocking our way. From around us, a melodious, high pitched voice began to echo. "Let those who enter with hungry hearts, beware the venom of power's draw. Dismiss not the guardian's arts, lest what's inside digest you raw."

I blinked, looking around for the source. "Um, hello?"

There was no response. "Can I get like…a clarification on that? Because I'll be honest, you weren't super CLEAR. And if you're not going to tell us anything why bother with the warning. Like you might as well not have said anything."

A slight pause reigned, and I was about to try to push on, assuming no one would answer, before a peeved voice said. "Look, rhyming is hard, ok? There's valuable stuff in here, but it's guarded, and you have to pass tests to take it. If you try to steal something is going to eat you. How about that? Clear enough for you, Mr. Critical?"

"Crystal," I said sheepishly. "Sorry. But wait, what do you mean the stuff inside is guarded. And how much stuff? We're here for one item."

"Well there's more," the voice said in an annoyed tone. "You stand before the Hermetic Hall. This hall was previously the fragment of the great god Deveskane, god of restriction, and after his fall ended up here. The Order of Deveskane, in hopes of reviving their fallen lord, began a pilgrimage across the Chaos Chasm, collecting divine artifacts and fragments and placing them within the vaults of the hall."

That made me pause. "How did they move them? Don't you need to be connected to a deity to move their objects of power? Or are they all fragments."

"Some are fragments," the voice admitted. "But the Order possesses a powerful artifact of their own. The Seal of Deveskane. Stamping the seal upon an object will render it inert and harmless, at least temporarily. Once that was accomplished, the items were transported to the Hall, a powerful divine artifact in its own right, built to work in tandem with the Seal."

I whistled. That was actually really impressive. So the Seal suppressed things to a containable state and then the Hall kept them in stasis or something? Unfortunately only someone connected to Deveskane could use it, otherwise I might try to bargain for it. I DID have over a hundred wish scrolls. I shook off the distraction. "Fine, so we need to pass tests?" I asked with a sigh. "Of what? Combat? Cunning?"

The voice snorted. "Do you think the Order cares about your faculty for violence? No, the tests are purely intellectual. Deveskane, as a god of restriction, was a fierce proponent of wisdom and good judgement. To be deemed worthy of removing an artifact from this hall, you must prove your intelligence and character."

I blinked at that. "Huh, that's…almost responsible."

"And what is THAT supposed to mean?" demanded the voice angrily. "Do you look down on Lord Deveskane simply because his story has faded from memory?"

"Not at all," I assured it. "I've just met a lot of gods and they're usually not worried about being responsible. Or reasonable. Or much of anything really, barring things that are actively trying to kill them, and even then it's a toss up."

The voice paused for a moment, then sighed. There was a warping of the air, and a woman appeared in a blur of shifting wind. Pale white skin, bone white hair, silver white eyes. Between the coloring and the blurry legs, I had a strong guess what she was. "You're an Aeriad, right?" I asked casually, having seen plenty variations of spirit being before.

"The correct term," she said sharply. "Is Aurai. Though Aurea is also acceptable. But yes, I am a wind spirit, bound in service to this patch of sky. I act as the first layer of protection for this place. Should you attempt to pass by force, you will learn the error of your ways."

I believed her. The Aurai was an A-ranker, and a STRONG one from what I could tell. We'd ventured far enough into the ring that I was pretty sure S-rankers could no longer be present here. Considering what a Dryad could do with access to their tree at A-rank, I was seriously doubting whether any A-ranker who came through here would be capable of taking this woman down, and I was POSITIVE we couldn't.

"My name is Solomon," I said with a short bow. "This is my companion, Dayna."

She nodded solemnly. "I am Elodie, eldest remaining member of the Order of Deveskane. For twenty millennia have I stood watch over this hallowed Hall, acting as its caretaker and guardian. I bid you welcome, in the name of my lord." Her eyes pinned me in place. "Your earlier claim rings true, I sense many divine auras upon you."

"You can sense auras?" I asked warily.

"I'm an AURAI," she enunciated with a roll of her eyes. "Where do you think that term comes from? Regardless, you are the emissary or perhaps the descendant of a divine being, and as such, you are due a certain amount of respect, hence my formal greeting."

Nodding slowly, I turned to glance past the statues. "I wanted to get a friend of mine over here before attempting the tests, is that allowed?"

"Of course," she nodded. "The rules are as follows: A maximum of ten participants may enter. Once the participants have entered, they may not consult any outside forces. The participants may not leave the premises before the completion of their trial without forfeiting the attempt. One attempt is permitted per person per century. The item in question must be declared before the attempt, and if the item is unknown, the participant must describe its provenance to the best of their ability. Finally, should the participants fall, their possessions may be added to the Hall, provided they are of sufficient value. In order to be retrieved, the trial must be undertaken."

I hummed in concern. "Are you familiar with entities native to a Domain?" I asked hesitantly.

"Domain bound beings may enter, but may not leave the Domain. Domains will be sealed on entry.," she answered immediately.

That took me by surprise, but on further examination I got it. Any building that could bind a divine artifact could bind a C-ranked Domain, and probably anything else shy of a whole world.I nodded my understanding, then turned and walked away. I called out Chloe, Azazel, Dantalion, Piece of Mind, and Wisdom of Solomon. Turning to Chloe, I gave her a sheepish smile. "You think Deanna could help us out? We could use the extra Focus."

I could have brought three more people (Dayna and I taking up two spots), but honestly I just preferred it this way. I'd have been picking just to pick if I did it like that. These were the best possible helpers I could think of for a mental challenge.

Chloe nodded cheerfully, then blinked her eyes. From one moment to the next, everything about her changed, and her sister was left in her place, smiling confidently. I started to explain, but she waved me off. "I'm aware. I have to say, I'm looking forward to this challenge. It's been some time since I had some good old fashioned intellectual stimulation."

Dan chuckled. "I too am looking forward to this. Do we need anyone else for the attempt?"

"I don't think it would matter," I shrugged. "You're all pretty much smarter than me anyway. Except for Piece of Mind. He's about as smart as me, just a bunch of times over."

That got a laugh, but everyone knew it was true. We all headed back over to consult with Elodie. "Alright," I said as we returned. "This is our group. Seven of us is within the rules, right? Like we can all go in?"

She squinted at us. "The auras of these beings is very similar to your own. Fascinating. But yes, you may all enter. Simply remember the rules as stated." Her hand waved casually, and the two huge statues lifted their polearms away, uncovering the entryway into the Hermetic Hall. "Enter, challengers!" she intoned in a booming rumble that reminded me of a storm breaking over a silent forest. Then, with a whoosh of air, she dissolved into a gust of wind and vanished.

"Well that was dramatic," Dayna observed dryly. "Some might even say TOO dramatic."

"Dayna, don't mock the omnipresent A-ranker who lives in the wind," I told her flatly. "It's a poor life choice." I was about to head inside, but I froze, thinking over her last bit of advice. Remember the rules as stated. I cleared my throat. "We're looking for an object of power previously belonging to Felicity, the Lady of Lamentation, goddess of torment. Her aura should be the most recent divine signature on me, and if there are more objects, I just need one that I can access personally."

The air of the archway fizzled, snapping and popping like cold water dropped into boiling oil. Then it rippled, leaving a reflected image that reminded me of nothing so much as looking through a pond that had just had a rock dropped in it. I smiled at the others reassuringly, then remembered I was wearing a mask and none of them could sense me emotions like Callie, so I cleared my throat and said. "Alright everyone, I think we're good. Let's head inside."

Making sure the others were on my heels, I stepped into the rippling reflection, and between one breath and the next, I felt everything around me change. It was hard to quantify HOW it changed, to be fair, it just did. My post D-rank senses were intermingled with my ability to sense Impact, and my grasp on the world went beyond things that I was actively aware of or could categorize. Still, I kept my eyes peeled, watching the shadows of the nearby hallway carefully for a minute or two, and when I confirmed we were safe, I gestured the others forward.

My Domain was, as I'd been told, sealed. I wasn't sure how I even knew that, I could just feel it, like a limb I didn't realize I'd been using had fallen asleep. It was an odd and unsettling sensation.

We walked down a long white hallway, arriving at a large set of double doors. Once we pushed them open we found ourselves standing on a huge floor made of grid squares. As we entered and glanced at the squares. Each of them had a simple image, mostly an animal or shape of a specific color. The squares stayed as they were for about ten seconds…then blinked and went blank.

I frowned, stepping forward onto the nearest square. Nothing happened until I tapped down again with my foot, and then a red image of a badger appeared. I froze. "Shit," I said with a sigh. "It's a matching puzzle." I turned to the others. "Please tell me one of you memorized that?" Dan stepped forward, cracked his neck, then stepped onto the square I was occupying. He bent his knees, rocked his arms back and forth, and jumped about five squares, landing halfway into the room. He jumped once, and the square lit up with the same image. I laughed cheerfully. "Alright, looks like someone did. Let's get started then."

 

[Malcolm Tent]

After getting past the matching game, the next trial was some kind of math challenge. I had zero interest in participating, having never been much good at math, but Wisdom of Solomon passed it easily, so it wasn't much of an issue, and we moved onto the third room. This room was where things started to get a bit less straightforward.

The room itself was large and open, with a single clear pool in the center. In the pool was a small sand island, with a bridge leading both to and from it, and on the island was…a thing. It was tall and strong, lying in a sort of reclined position on all fours, back straight and head up. It had the face of a human being and the body of a lion, except the eyes, which watched us with predatory feline amusement.

"A Sphinx," said Oz (my informal name for Azazel). "Body of a lion, head of a woman. They like to tell riddles."

I grinned. I liked riddles. I wasn't great at math, but I could be pretty creative. "I think I'll take this one, if nobody minds," I announced. "Though anyone else can chime in if I get stuck, of course, this is a team effort. I just kind of want first crack."

No one argued, and I cheerfully strolled across the bridge out onto the island. The sphinxes eyes tracked me as I approached, and I got the feeling that she was just waiting to pounce on me and tear me apart. Those leonine eyes were disquieting in a human face. "Hey there," I said with a wave. "I'm Solomon. What's your name?"

The eyes blinked at me lazily. "I am hard, but soft. I am rare, but plentiful. Men war for me, beasts covet me, and lightning is my friend. What am I?"

I hummed as I took in the question. Starting right off the bat? Or was this her name? Was she answering my question? I went over the possibilities, finally settling on the obvious answer. "Gold. Soft for a metal, considered precious but easy to find, men fight over it, dragons collect it, and it conducts electricity well. So, gold. Or rather…Goldie? Is that your name?"

She smiled, baring extremely sharp teeth that did NOT belong in a human mouth. "Correct," she purred menacingly. "I AM Goldie. Of course, as you were the one who asked the question, this riddle counts not toward your goal. Three answers I seek, and three shall you give, all three correct should you wish to live."

I nodded. "Sounds fair. I mean, obviously if you try to kill us we're going to fight back. Don't think being B-rank means you can take us down easy," I cautioned. "But obviously NOT having to fight you would be preferable. Anything I should know about the rules before we start? I'd rather not break them by accident."

She let out a growling chuckle. "Ten minutes per riddle, that is your time, exceed that span, and pay a fine."

"The fine in question would be-" I started, and she cut me off.

"Death, yes," she said with a feline grin. "I was being poetic. Now, decide, challenger, are you ready to begin? Your time starts as soon as the first riddle is uttered, and does not pause until it is complete."

So the rounds were timed individually and I could pause between. Good to know. "Alright, go ahead," I said confidently. "Give me your best shot."

The sphinx inhaled deeply, as if scenting prey, and nodded dreamily, her mouth opening as a rumbling WAVE of sound crashed out. It was less like she was talking and more like she was a giant speaker, broadcasting a request for knowledge from forces beyond this world. "Two bodies have I, though both joined in one. The stiller I stand, the faster I run."

Her mouth closed with a snap, leonine eyes regaining their luster as if she had taken control of her body back from some mysterious force.

I closed my eyes, thinking over the riddle. I suspected she went with something easy to start out, but it still took me a minute to figure out. "An hourglass," I said after thinking for a bit. "You're an hourglass."

The sphinx nodded slowly. "Correct. You may request your next riddle at any time." She yawned broadly, showing off even more of those too sharp teeth. There seemed to be more of them in her mouth than should be able to reasonably occupy the space along her jaws. It was not a comforting sight.

I didn't choose to ask right away, deciding to go back and consult my friends. Sure enough, when I got there, Oz frowned at me. "You noticed the problem?" he asked grimly.

I nodded. "I don't know how old that sphinx is, or if it's just a regional issue, but I get the feeling the answers to these riddles are going to be…dated. The hourglass is a common symbolic motif in a lot of things I've seen, but no one USES them for anything anymore."

He nodded. "Which is an issue, because none of us are very old. We've mostly had simulated lives, but they were simulated based on your experiences. As for the non demonic members of our party, they're mostly in their twenties. The question is: does the sphinx give these same kinds of riddles to everyone or did she identify our party composition and target us for our relative inexperience."

"I'm not sure it really matters at this point," I frowned. "We're on the hook for two more riddles, and I get the feeling a fight wouldn't be to our advantage." I gestured around the room. "There's a reason this place is set up so you can just walk around the island. Without passing the trial there's no point in moving forward."

He nodded. "Do you have any confidence?"

"More than you would think," I nodded. "I have quite a few memories of playing Doom Sovereign, and there was plenty of anachronistic content in that game."

After conferring with the others, I headed back to speak to the sphinx again. "Alright, I'm ready for the second riddle," I told her, taking a deep breath to prepare. I theoretically had ten minutes each time, but obviously waiting until the last second was a bad idea.

Once again, her eyes went hazy and her mouth opened, with the riddle issuing forth as if called from another world. "It foams without anger, it flies without wings, it cuts without edge, and without tongue it sings." After she finished speaking her eyes cleared again, and she watched me carefully.

I winced. I'd been afraid of this. I was almost positive some of those hints were based on old style references to certain phenomena. Some of the words might not be in use anymore in the way they were being referenced.

But I knew some of them. The first one was obvious. Foam wasn't something you got many places, and it was pretty much exclusive to drinks nowadays. From there, the last clue was the next one that helped me contextualize. Sings without a tongue. Bottles could sing if you blew on them. As for flights, you could get beer in flights, more specifically ale for the most part. I didn't know what the cut thing was referencing, but three points is triangulation.

"A bottle of ale," I said slowly, ready for a fight if I was wrong. I'd kind of wanted to say beer, but I remembered the sphinx was going old timey with these, and ale was the more old timey way to refer to beer anyway.

The sphinx closed her eyes, nodding sagely, then returned to her composed waiting. That had been the right answer, apparently.

After a brief pause to regain my faculties, I prepared myself and then approached the sphinx again. There was no point dragging it out. I was as ready now as I would ever be. "Alright," I told her after swallowing heavily. "Give me the last riddle."

The same process occurred, but this time, the riddle that issued forth had a resonant, echoing quality. The air grew heavy, and I felt a charge in the atmosphere, like lightning was about to strike. The number three was significant, and it seemed this whole process functioned a bit like a ritual of sorts. I wondered what it was for. Was it designed to trigger if I passed or if I failed?

Regardless, I didn't have time to think about that, as the sphinx issued me my final test of cunning. "I was before the world began, and shall forever last; Ere father Adam was a man, Or out of Eden cast. Your youthful moments I attend, and mitigate your grief; The industrious peasant I befriend, to prisoners give relief. Make much of me if you are wise, and use me while you may, for you will lose me in a trice. As I for no man stay."

I blinked. Ok, that was a bit wordier than I'd expected. But wordy wasn't bad either. That just meant more clues. I went over each individual point. The last riddle had shown me that cherry picking clues from the content of the riddle and putting them together could make the solve easier, and I didn't need to go in order. So I tried to pick out the ones I knew.

Mitigating grief was my breakthrough point. Only one thing did that. Lasting forever and before the world began solidified my answer. The last segment made it a lock though.

"Time," I answered after a minute or two of thought. You make use much of it as possible to do things you want, use it while you can, and it's existed forever and always will. It mends grief, frees prisoners, and it's always passing, so it doesn't stay for anyone."

The only thing that made me unsure of my answer was the peasant thing. I wasn't sure how time would be useful to a peasant, their lives were pretty much the same level of suck all the way through as far as I knew, but it was probably some kind of poetic license thing that I didn't have the context for.

All the energy building in the air just sort of…burst. Like a bubble popping. There was a wave of force that covered the room, sweeping over all of us, and to my surprise, it wasn't just an effect. I blinked at the sphinx in shock. "H-how did you just do that?"

I'd gotten stat points for that. A decent amount of them. Ten thousand, which, granted, wasn't absurd, but they'd just been GIVEN to me. It almost felt like a wish, but not quite the same.

"A game was played, and stakes were set," she said casually. "But even victory incurs a debt."

Translation: that HAD been a ritual, and while I wasn't sure I wanted to know what would have happened if I lost, I had risked my life and played by the rules, and victory had gotten me a little something extra. I nodded solemnly to her. "Thank you. I had fun. Your riddles were very challenging. May we move on?"

She nodded lazily, closing her eyes as if dismissing me from her presence, and I waved the others forward. We passed through the island, then out the other side, emerging into the next room.

I felt…exhiliarated. It was nice to rely on something other than brute force or combat skill for once. Using my brain was fun, even if I wasn't convinced it was something that would happen too much going forward. At least not that directly. Still, we had more trials to get through, and I had a sneaking suspicion they wouldn't remain so easy. So we set off into the unknown, ready for whatever the Hermetic Hall could throw at us. And at the end…well, who could say? But I didn't mind that either. The surprise was half the fun.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The rest of the trials were in a similar vein. Puzzles, riddles, math, at one point a personality quiz that assigned us a color based on our food preferences, at which point we were forced to play a game of ten person chess against three constructs in order to pass the round. It was harder than it sounded.

Finally though, we came to the final room. We KNEW it was the final room because there was a big sign over the head of the person waiting there that said 'welcome to the final room'. Sometimes it was nice when people were direct.

The woman waiting for us was…strange. She had wide, unblinking eyes behind large round glasses, a light dusting of freckles, and wild curly hair that looked like hammered bronze more than any natural color. Her eyes were a mirrored brass color, and they shimmered with hopeful enthusiasm.

She was possibly a little TOO enthusiastic, actually, sitting at a table with a large cake and a pointed hat, multicolored decorations and paper plates surrounding her. "Congratulations!" she cheered. "You passed the test! Please, sit and have some cake!" I blinked at her in confusion, thanked her politely, and then moved to walk around her. "No, wait please!"

I paused. "Oh, sorry, was there another test?"

She slumped slightly. "No," she said desolately. "I just…don't get guests very often. There are quite a few of these testing paths, and mine isn't chosen even when we DO get trial participants. Plus when they DO come this way, they usually die. That Sphinx is an asshole. It's eaten the last eighteen people who attempted my trial path."

"Really?" I asked with a bit of surprise. "I mean, the riddles were kind of novel, but not 'kill eighteen people' novel. Nobody got them?"

She rolled her eyes. "They were easier this time. It's under review after what it did to the last party. Some of the riddles it used were weirdly ambiguous, and Elodie was suspicious it wasn't playing fair."

I frowned. That Sphinx had been pretty strong, but I was almost positive we could have taken it. I wondered if that had been part of the reason it had apparently gone easy on me. I was also pretty pissed hearing that. Those riddles had been pretty tough and I was proud of myself for figuring them out.

Looking at the sad girl in the party hat, I sighed and took a seat at the table. The others all sat down, and the girl cheered happily and started cutting slices of cake for us. "So, who exactly are you?" I asked. "Not to be too abrupt or anything."

"I'm Shayla," she said proudly. "And I'm four hundred and seventy third daughter of Deveskane!"

"Wow…" I said slowly. "That's…so many kids. You have almost five hundred siblings? And I thought my family was complicated. Not to be indelicate, but do you all have the same mother or…"

She giggled. "Not like that, silly. I'm a spirit of knowledge. My father manifested a new child every time he had a grand idea. There were eight hundred and sixty four of us total, so I'm an older sister. I am the spirit of destinium, created when my father discovered the recipe for his most prized alloy."

I blinked in fascination. "That's really cool. So were you part of his Domain? How old are you? How does your growth work?"

Something about the way she'd been born reminded me of my own Domain. I hadn't really heard of any entity manifesting creatures through the power of their Domain the same way I did, and even if he'd been a god and didn't exactly count in some ways, hearing more about someone who had taken a similar path could only be helpful.

She blushed. "I'm…not very old. It takes a long time for an idea to gestate into a living being. My brothers and sisters and I hatched from our memory crystals after our father had already passed away. I only know as much as I do because of Elodie. We were part of an experiment father performed in an attempt to use his sealing powers to store important memories to pass them on to his disciples. Sadly, the crystals were unable to transfer the memories directly, but Elodie says we were a happy accident and an even better result."

I was fascinated. The world of Ascendants was so wide and complex, so many of us had unique or unusual powers I'd never even considered before. Deveskane hadn't taken my path, but being able to create almost a thousand beings was impressive.

Azazel seemed just as interested. "I imagine so," he said eagerly. "I myself am a created entity." He jerked his head at me. "This is my king, though we don't profess any family connection, it was he who was responsible for my manifestation, as well the seventy one other demons in our court of Gehenna."

Shayla's eyes widened. "You're a progenitor?" she gasped. "At C-rank? That's fascinating. I've never heard of anyone creating life on a large scale that early before. Even many of the gods never reach progenitor status these days."

"There's a term for it?" I asked with interest. "My ancestor hadn't really heard of it before." I paused. Had he said that? I couldn't remember. Maybe he hadn't addressed it at all. He'd said Gehenna was unique, but that didn't mean he'd never seen anything SIMILAR, just that he'd never seen anything the SAME."

She nodded excitedly. "Elodie told us that father always dreamed of being a progenitor. Apparently it involves the secret of ascension to Overgod."

I froze, my heart almost stopping in my chest. "I'm sorry…to WHAT now?"

"Overgod," she chirped. "That's the rank after god, of course. There hasn't been an Overgod in this universe in quite some time, sadly, but father dreamed of being the first. Sadly he was destroyed before he could manage." I tried to pry a bit more into the details, but Shayla didn't seem to know any more than that. It was a shame but understandable given the subject matter.

There was a rank AFTER god? I mean, I had kind of assumed, given the desire the vanished gods had to Ascend the universe, but I hadn't heard of anyone MENTIONING it. How old was Deveskane? I knew gods didn't age, but I'd assumed he was maybe a peer of Suvaya or something. Knowing he'd been alive less than twenty thousand years ago, I'd assumed he'd been destroyed by the six like she had.

Except I'd forgotten something. This was the Void. The six had cleansed realspace of other gods in order to prevent the Ascension of the universe, but the old man made it clear that only had an effect when the god's world was connected to realspace. Hanging Lands, fragments, the hidden worlds of the vanished gods, it was clear there were a lot of ways to maintain a world in the Void without making that connection.

Deveskane could have been a god in hiding in the Void. Maybe from a time as far back as Atlas himself. The fact that Atlas's realm had ended up here showed that the Chaos Chasm was a place where various powerful fragments could end up. Hell, it was possible Deveskane had been hiding IN the Chasm. If anywhere was safe from the six and the Void Children it was here.

Which begged the question, what had killed him? Was it just a random Ascendant who had taken advantage of the suppression, or was there something really dangerous in here with us that we hadn't even thought to consider. Or maybe I was being paranoid again. I did have a tendency to do that, as earned as it might be to think that way. I decided to put it out of my mind for the moment and focus on the task at hand.

Still, even after refocusing my mind was racing, and I barely tasted the cake as I wolfed it down. I had so much new information to process. Shayla chattered away as we ate, talking to Azazel raptly, and I could tell my first minister was really enjoying the conversation, but sadly we didn't have time to chat about casual things, we had a job to do, and I had information to pass back to my family.

Before we left, Azazel passed the girl a small pad and paper. "This is a thaumaturgic tablet. The study of fate has a strong connection with linkage and connection. Basically, writing on one side of this tablet changes the destiny of the other side, which creates a corresponding text. I should function across any distance and even between realspace and the Void. After all, destiny is ever present. This way, we can keep in touch and you won't be quite so bored." He smiled at her in a way I recognized from my own face when talking to Callie, and I tried not to snicker as she lit up and snatched the paper away. Then she thanked him and gave him a hug, and we set off through the large door behind her, into the treasury of the Hermetic Hall.

Shayla, aside from waiting to have cake with us because she was absurdly lonely, had also been our guide of sorts. She'd told us exactly where to go and which item to take from the treasury. She had been EXTREMELY specific about what to do, informing is that if we tried to take something that wasn't ours, we would die horribly.

The treasury was so strict that even she couldn't enter. Only people who had successfully won the trials, and only to collect the single object that they had earned. Any deviation would mean destruction.

Upon entry, I was surprised how low key the treasury was. Based on the design and location I'd expected a huge hall with like…golden chests floating on clouds or something. But in reality, it was a small dark room with white stone pedestals on the floor. The stone was carved with faint reliefs of great battles and heroic rescues, but you had to get close to see them. The only reason they were visible at all was the bright pools of light shining down from above, casting shadows along the faint edges.

We followed Shayla's directions, turn left, down ten, turn right, up seven. We came to a stop in front of one of the pedestals, upon which lay an open wooden box with a velvet cushion inside. On top of the cushion lay a short wooden handle, nine black leather straps connected to the end, braided with the same black glass I'd seen on the Lady's throne.

I looked around to double check I was still ok, then stepped forward and reached into the light. I paused incrementally as I entered the illumination, worried something would happen, but it didn't. I withdrew the item slowly, gripping the handle tightly as I felt the energy pass out of it and into me. Along with the energy, I felt a surge of information. Tale of Nine Cats, a powerful beast taming relic. When used…

I groaned. Apparently strikes with the Tale would injure the wielder, transferring the understanding caused by that pain to the struck beast in order to form a bond. The more powerful the beast, the more lashes required. Of COURSE the Lady would invent a whip that tortured you to allow you to make friends.

Still, it WAS a powerful object. While you might theoretically need a whole bunch of strikes to tame something above your rank, you COULD still do it. If I was willing to endure the torture I could tame an S-rank dragon. It would require SO much pain, but it was possible.

Snickering, I tucked the whip into my belt, planning to drop it into Gehenna once we were outside, then turned to the others. "Alright, mission accomplished, now we're headed further into the interior. This is where the hard part begins."

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Leaving the Hermetic Hall was an interesting experience. I could feel the eyes of Elodie on me. I hadn't felt anything on the way in, but now that I knew what to look for, it was clear as day. I glanced back, not having any eyes to meet but feeling something as I stared into the sky, then continued on.

The Hermetic Hall had been functioning in the Chasm for millennia, and I was pretty sure, based on what Shayla had told us, that it was MUCH better defended than it looked. I'd thought them collecting god artifacts was some kind of holy mission at first, and that might be true, but I was pretty sure it was something else, too. Bait. Under the suppression of the chasm, no one above A-rank could exert power this deep into the ring continent. Given the sheer numbers and Elodie's power, the Hermetic Hall was basically unassailable.

I wondered how many people had attacked the hall hoping to steal god artifacts. How many forces had gathered and smashed themselves on the rocks of Deveskane's fortress unknowingly. I had a feeling the number wasn't small. I doubted there were many factions capable of challenging the hall at all, though I also doubted any groups that had been around very long were willing to try it at this point.

Fishing it the blaze of heretic fire that I'd been given at the temple, I set our heading, then settled in to check on my friends. Chloe, Brad, and Dayna were all out with me on the road, and I was concerned I'd been ignoring them all in favor of the mission. This was a stressful place to be, and I wanted to touch base at least.

Brad and Chloe were, unsurprisingly, fine, but Dayna was acting odd. I fell back to walk beside her, curious what was going on. "You alright?" I asked her.

"I'm not sure," she admitted. "This entire trip is…complicated. First I thought I was betraying Verdyn by working with you, and I made peace with that, then I found out I WASN'T betraying him, and I kind of made peace with that. But after a certain point, the back and forth kind of underlines an issue I'd been avoiding thinking about."

"Your freedom," I nodded. "But you work for Bethy, right?"

"I do," sighed the elf. "And I can never repay her for her kindness. But the thing is, she doesn't WANT me to repay her. She just wants me to LIVE. And that's the one thing I'm not entirely sure I know how to do. It was easy to write that off when I was just your tour guide, but returning to the Lodge, taking a stance, talking to Mama. It makes me wonder if I can't have more. Be more. And then I feel disloyal for thinking that and then I feel disloyal for feeling disloyal because I know Lady Bethany WANTS that for me and then I feel disloyal for THAT because part of me still feels like a supplicant to Lord Verdyn."

Whistling, I shook my head. "That sounds like a lot. Trying to be one thing while feeling like you should be trying to be something else. Maybe you should just…stop trying? Just be. See where it takes you."

She seemed thoughtful, which I thought was a good sign, but I wasn't able to follow up because I suddenly felt a MASSIVE surge of fearful warning. I froze in place, my eyes darting around as I scanned the area. Danger Sense was going INSANE. Ever since Gehenna, my Danger Sense, as an actual living being, had been able to filter out the minor annoyances more than it previously had, and I only really got hit with blasts of actual Danger.

This was more than that thought. Something terrible was here. I glanced around, searching for any possible danger and finding nothing. Waving a hand, I pulled the others into my Domain, then incarnated Sammael, Mephisto's Waltz, and Azazel, wincing at the extra strain. Three incarnations was a LOT, even if I only planned on it being momentary.

Without hesitation, I beat my wings, vanishing in a blaze as I flashed forward through space…and the area I'd just been standing was consumed in a rain of cutting energy.

Flapping again, I pushed myself further away even as I glanced back to see…"Oh come on!" I bellowed in outrage. "How is it YOU again?" I vanished again in another burst of fire, snarling in fury as I took in the implacable form of CLARENT, the swordmaster from the shallowing where we'd gotten the damned arrowhead.

Unfortunately, rather than answer he just tried to cut me in half again, forcing me to dodge. I cursed. He was strong, I'd forgotten HOW strong. I could tank those cuts with Mornax, but that would leave me a sitting duck, and I wasn't confident in my ability to resist long term.

I was in shock. Clarent had plummeted into the void a few weeks ago, and I hadn't expected to see him again anytime soon. How had he gotten here? How had he found his way out of the far reaches of the Void at all? I'd been led to believe it would take him ages to get back. And I couldn't recreate what we'd done last time and even harder to beat him any other way. Brad had done away with him easily out on the Void Roads, but without access to those circumstances, it was going to be tough to beat him in a straight fight.

Luckily, I had another option. We'd been making our way inward, heading deeper towards the vortex, and the deeper we got the more the suppression affected us. All of us. I was a C-ranker, which meant at our current depth, where A-rankers were barely functional, only a B-ranker could threaten me. Clarent, of course, WAS a B-ranker, and rather than risk my life and my Domain fighting him head on, I was determined to lose him and make my way deep enough into the ring continent that no one above my own rank would be able to exert power.

At the same level, I wasn't afraid of anyone, so I doubled down, flapping my wings like crazy and letting Azazel guide me, pulling me toward specific spots in the sky as I flashed forward at my fastest pace, flickering back and forth in bursts of dark fire.

I made a note to consider Mephisto's Waltz as my second template. Sure, it was technically just a specific application of Mephistopheles destructive fire, but Life Nova was a subskill too. More mobility couldn't hurt at least. I was so wrapped up in the thought that I almost missed a dodge, and I cursed in pain as a sword slash tore a hole in one of my wings. As soon as it did, I went into a spin, my flight interrupted as I spiraled down towards the ground.

Another flash of Black Flame had me on the ground, and I folded my wings as I started to run, spamming the waltz every step as I bolted deeper into the continent. I could feel the suppression increase, and I was pretty sure we'd entered B-rank limit territory, but that wasn't enough to help. Azazel was whispering in my ear, guiding me along, and I cursed and followed his path until I came to a massive cliff. I stopped at the edge, looking down. "Are you fucking high?" I demanded of my first minister, despite him being inside my head right now. "I can't even see the bottom of that thing!"

The canyon in front of me was DEEP. So deep. Deep enough that all I saw at the bottom was blackness. Looking closer, I could catch a slight strip of shining light, but I had no idea what it was. I didn't have time to wonder though, because I got an intense warning from my Danger Sense. Cursing, I dove forward, turning in mid-air as I plummeted into the canyon to watch Clarent stop at the edge and stare after me. I watched him for a moment or two, then turned and aimed into the canyon, putting my hands out like a diver to increase my speed.

I felt another warning and waltzed again to avoid a slash, but before long, I'd gone so deep I was sure he couldn't see me. The darkness around me as I fell got deeper and heavier in a way that couldn't be natural.

Below me, in the distance, I started to catch sight of a thin strip of glowing light. It looked like a hair almost. But as I fell, it got bigger, and closer, and wider. And I realized that it wasn't a hair. It wasn't even thin. It was a HUGE glowing river. Some kind of massive waterway formed of what looked like liquid moonlight. As I fell, it got closer and closer, and I realized that it had looked small because it was SO far away. In reality, it was less of a river and more of a big strip of sea.

Grimacing, I turned my attention to one side, triggering the waltz again, and tried to spread my wings to steer. The big hole in one of them made it tough, but between the two movement techniques I managed to reach the wall of the cliff below where I'd jumped. I clung to the almost sheer black rock face, squinting down at the water below suspiciously.

I felt something from it. Something dangerous. Almost like heat, except it wasn't physical. I had a strong suspicion I didn't want to fall into that stuff. I was also half expecting Clarent to follow me down, he didn't seem like the type to give up easy. I was watching so closely, getting so lost in the whirl of the moonlight water, I almost missed the shadow. Almost. I managed to trigger the waltz and move aside at the last second as a colossal B-rank dolphin erupted from the river, razor sharp muzzle slashing open the cliff where I'd been hanging seconds before.

Staring at the cliff, I barely managed to pick up traces of vibration. Glancing up, I couldn't see through the darkness, but a brief flash of Dantalion let me get a vague impression of what was happening on the wall. Blades. Clarent was using swords to scale the wall, stabbing his way down. And I was in an even worse position now than I had been up there. If he reached me I'd be a sitting duck, and I didn't think Gehenna would do much good down here.

I stared at the wall where the slash sat. That was a nasty cut. Very nasty. These were sturdy cliffs. I reached down into my belt and withdrew the Tale of Nine Cats. I gritted my teeth, watched the water, and waited.

A shadow loomed, then exploded out, and I dodged, whipping my arm back to bring the lash down. I grit my teeth as the pain scored my back, and I felt a vague connection form. But not enough. Rinse. Repeat. Dodge and lash. It hurt. It hurt SO much. But I kept going. I heard the clang of the swords in the cliff getting closer, but I ignored it. Dodge and lash.

Finally, the connection solidified. The dolphin poked its head from the water, eyeing me suspiciously. I held out a hand and it rose closer, then, after it confirmed I wasn't going to try to attack it again it offered me its nose. I climbed out onto it, getting down to wrap my arms around it, and then released the hold on Sammael, Azazel, and the waltz. I focused entirely on Mornax, and on Leviathan to be safe, and then called them both.

The last thing I saw as the dolphin turned and dove into the water, carrying me away, was Clarent dropping the last few hundred feet toward me, eyes hard, sword drawn. Then the massive river sea swept me and my new companion away, and all I could see was blinding moonlight.

 

[Tiny_Dragon]

Here is my late reaction to learning about Overgod. "Muhuhahahaha! The path to ascension will never end! All hail the Holy Grind!"

Clarent is giving me T-1000 vibes

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I rode on the dolphin's back for an hour. It was wild, dramatic, and if I hadn't been in Mornax, I'd have suffocated. Finally, I felt the sense of Danger vanish, and decided to come up for air. I reached for the link between me and the dolphin (who I decided to name Croissant for reasons that had nothing at all to do with missing Bethy or my other friends) and pushed him to resurface.

We surfaced from the moonlight water after a few more minutes, and emerged onto the bank of…well, a bank. Or a beach maybe? It wasn't exactly a big expanse of space. More than anything it looked like someone had bashed a dent in the bottom of the cliff and left the dust to settle at the base into some kind of sandbar. I hopped down, letting Mornax fade away as I turned to regard my new friend. "Thanks for the help, bud," I told him solemnly. Croissant the dolphin screeched in concern, but I just smiled and waved him off. "I'll be fine. Just be careful and stay low. I don't want you to get got by that sword bastard."

Croissant, snorted derisively, but then gave me a playful splash and dove back into the water. I grimaced as I wiped the liquid off my bare skin, noting the distinct burn where it had touched. Without Mornax I wasn't meant to be touching…whatever this stuff was. Luckily it was just a dash, and my body refinement had been moving apace, so it started healing almost immediately.

I watched him leave bitterly, sad to see my new friend go. I'd have to be careful with that Tale of Nine Cats in the future. It wasn't a one way connection. I genuinely regarded Croissant as my good friend now. The pain I'd endured had bonded us together tighter than I was bound to most of the subordinates I didn't know very well.

Turning away from the water, I took in the spot that I'd landed. There was a small crevice in the rock, almost a natural cave, and it led into the darkness of the cliffside. I called out the others. Dayna, Deanna (who had emerged during our flight because Chloe was afraid) and Brad. Along with them, I summoned Dan and Oz, hoping they could help me figure out what to DO.

"So, we can go into the cave or try to free climb it," I said bluntly. "But to be honest, I don't like the feeling I get from the cliffside. Also, I feel…trapped. Like my clothes are too tight."

"We're deeper in the vortex," Dan informed me. "The suppression has reached the limits of C-rank. As someone at the halfway point, you shouldn't be affected yet, but the deeper we go from here the closer you get to actual weakening."

I grimaced, but nodded. "Fair enough. Just means Clarent has no shot at taking us out anymore. So, what can you tell me about that cave?"

Dan looked into the darkness critically. "I get a strange feeling from it," he said slowly. "But I can't gather much information. Whatever is in there is too high ranked. The vortex suppresses active effects, but the inherent quality and Impact of items is still the same. To quote an idiom I heard during my research at one time 'a starving camel is still bigger than a horse'."

That was unfortunate. I turned to Oz. "How about you? Any idea what could be in there? You getting any danger vibes?"

He shook his head. "Nothing specific. It feels…dangerous. But not in an active sense? Maybe potential danger. Like there's risk but we won't necessarily come out the worse for it. The kind of risk that comes with reward."

I chuckled. "My wife is a bad influence," I said dryly. "Because hearing that makes me determined to go inside. You guys heading back into the Domain or coming with me?"

"That's a quality pit," said Brad with the tone of a professional appraiser. "Not too wide, but deeper than you'd expect, and very evenly worn. I'd love to explore it, I bet there's all kinds of treasure inside."

"I think you might be making assumptions based on personal experience," I said with a wry laugh. "But fair enough, Deanna, Dayna?"

Dayna rolled her eyes. "Don't ask stupid questions," she said simply.

"I'm coming too," Deanna said with interest. "I'm intrigued by the sensations I'm getting from this place."

I sighed after getting the final nod from Oz. "Alright, looks like this is a team effort. Look alive people, we have no clue what's inside. Danger and opportunity are great, but the danger is still there. I don't want anyone getting killed for no reason."

The demons would be fine, and would promptly return to my Domain. Probably. I had no clue what would happen to Brad, and wasn't excited to check. He SHOULD respawn the same way, but it seemed stupid to assume. Just to be safe, I activated Mornax again, taking the lead position. Under C-rank suppression, it was impossible for anything to hurt me down here anyway.

Stepping into the cave, I was immediately met with…more cave. It was just a normal rock corridor. I frowned, advancing forward. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing squared. Finally, the cave opened up, revealing a large chamber with a huge decadently engraved black stone door. On the front of the door was a massive engraving of a skull, its eyes blazing with eerie red light.

As soon as we stepped into the cavern, the red light blazed, and a menacing voice boomed. "Welcome adventurers, to the Tower of Zand!"

"Nope," I said immediately, turning to leave.

"WAIT!" shrieked the skull in a panic. "Please don't go! There's treasure in me! Riches beyond your wildest dreams! And more! We have…scones!"

I stopped, turning to raise an eyebrow at the skull door. "Scones?" I said dryly.

"And jam?" it offered desperately. "The butter's gone bad, even through the stasis, but the jam is very fresh."

I sighed, heading back into the chamber. "I ask, you answer, then MAYBE we go inside. And don't lie to me. I can TELL when people lie. Or…you know. Doors. I can just sense falsehoods so don't even think about it."

"Don't worry, I can't lie!" it chirped happily. "My name is Drexel!"

"Nice to meet you Drexel, I'm Solomon," I said politely. "Now, I have some questions. First of all, you said you're a tower? But…this is a cliff. We're underground. Towers are traditionally built…you know…up."

The skull sniffed, despite having no nose. "Obviously the tower existed before the cliff. I was buried under rock and dust, for millennia have I lain dormant, finally awakened by the arrival of the chosen few! Rejoice, travelers, for your fortunes have turned, within me lies the great treasure of the god Emperor Zand! Long did he reign and mighty was his power, across the vast planes of the galaxy did he roam, gathering treasures beyond mortal imagining, and today, you have the chance to receive these treasures!"

"This is starting to feel depressingly familiar," I sighed. "We have to take a test right?"

"NO," boomed Drexel. "You have only to take a te- oh…yes. That's right. How did you know?" He sounded a bit put out.

I shook my head. "Look, we aren't really looking to get caught up in something like this," I said apologetically. "I get it's your purpose or whatever and you feel like you need us to come in, but we have a quest to get on with, and we can't really stop."

"B-but the treasures!" he protested as. "The Great Zand requires a successor! If you pass, great wealth will be yours. Weapons of mass destruction, unimaginable elixirs, priceless artifacts! We have a Continuum Ant Nest, a Lamp of the Eternal Djinn, and even a Cosmic Phoenix Cinder!" He pled.

I stopped. "I'm sorry…" I said slowly, turning around. "What was that last one?"

"The Cosmic Phoenix Cinder?" he asked excitedly. "Truly a wondrous artifact. The Cosmic Phoenix was a unique creature who burned with a spatial flame. Nine Nirvanas did it undergo, and nine worlds did it birth. Though only an ember, the Cosmic Phoenix Cinder has the unique property of strengthening and enhancing the world or Domain of gods and mortals alike! Of course, it must be integrated with the body, but there are many methods to infuse a physical being with such power."

My mouth went dry. That was…a lot. I wasn't sure about the mechanism of S-rank, but I DID know that a large portion of it was dependent on Domain strength. I was strengthening my body with the Nine Phoenix Reincarnation Art to prepare it to merge with my Saga, and that fusion would have some affect on my Domain. I wasn't sure what kind, but I WAS sure that bigger and stronger was better for Domains. Especially stronger. Lark was known for his absurdly powerful Domain, but his method for strengthening it was pretty much impossible to copy.

And this wouldn't just be a one and done. If I used this to condense a template, the Cosmic Phoenix's flame would be PART of me. I would potentially have a method to continuously improve the size and quality of my Domain beyond what anyone my rank should have.

I glanced at Oz, whose eyes were gleaming, and whistled internally. Risk and reward indeed. My first minister knew what he was doing.

Turning back to the skull, I cleared my throat. "I have questions," I said tentatively. "First, will this tower lead to the surface? Second, if we pass, will I be required to STAY? Third, I already represent a god, will this interfere with your master's inheritance, and fourth, what does that inheritance entail and what are my responsibilities?"

Drexel's eyes pulsed excitedly. "Oh nothing too restrictive. You can indeed exit to the surface from the top of the tower, you won't be required to stay, and inheritance is a strong term. Rather it would be correct to say that Zand simply wishes you to keep the name of his ancient enemy and usurper in mind on the off chance you have an opportunity to avenge his downfall. It probably won't come up anytime soon!"

I squinted at it suspiciously. "And what about the tests? I assume they're very dangerous?"

"Moderate danger," it assured me. "Reasonably extreme at most. No real risk of death. You might be horribly maimed, or perhaps go insane, but that'll be the worst of it!"

"Comforting," I said acidly. "Give us a moment, please." To my surprise, the lights on the skull actually dimmed, and I looked at it suspiciously for a moment before turning to my friends. "Ok, so…I kind of need that Cinder. Anyone against going through this tower to get it? Because…yeah, I can't DESCRIBE to you how much I need that thing."

The others looked dismissive. "We told you we were coming along already," Dayna said with a snort. "You don't need to explain to us."

I grinned at her widely, knowing she couldn't see my face, I also gave her a thumbs up before turning back and approaching the door. "Drexel!" I called, my voice buzzing with confidence and power. "I want to attempt the trial in your tower. Will you permit me entry?"

The red eyes blazed to life, brighter and stronger than they had been before. "HEARD AND WITNESSED!" it howled triumphantly as the doors began to grind open. "Heard and witnessed by this humble spirit. Enter challenger, and beware, for within lies the makings of your doom, or of your ascension!"

Both doors stopped when they were parallel to each other, creating an empty, open dark space that led into the tower. Turning to confirm with my friends, I nodded to them and then stepped forward, ready to enter the tower and undertake the trial. I had a feeling this one was going to be a doozy, but I had another feeling too. A bubbling, rioting excitement in my gut. If I could pull this off, this would be a turning point in my life that I would never forget. And so I vanished into the darkness as the door slammed shut behind me, and the trial began.

 

[Tiny_Dragon]

LOOT! *heavy breathing* We must get all the loot.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The inside of the tower was dark. Not the kind of dark you see when you turn out the lights, or even the type of dark you saw in the Void. This dark wasn't an absence. It was a presence. It was like a terrible monster looming behind me with fangs bared. A suffocating blanket of blackness crushing down on me like some sort of abyssal gravity.

I reached into myself, calling for Zagan, pulling the power of my purifying flames of life through me as I incarnated the great demon into my body. My hair flickered to life with green flame, the flickers of cleansing fire driving back the unnatural darkness just as easily as I had hoped they would, illuminating the space around us so I could see where we were. "Drexel?" I called in annoyance. "Traditionally during tests you TELL people what you're testing."

There was a pause. "Do you?" asked the curious voice of the tower spirit. "How novel. I suppose that must be a recent development. Well, I suppose if that's how things are done now, I'm not in a position to argue. Very well. Welcome to the first grand game. This one is called 'enemy'. The rules of enemy are simple. One of you has been replaced, swapped out for a simulacrum while the real thing has been put in stasis. To get them back, you must discover the identity of the enemy. You have ten questions to ask anyone in the room determine who it is. If you fail, you'll be ejected, and the taken prisoner will remain for eternity."

"You could have mentioned that," I frowned. "Tell me the parameters of the questions." I was very careful not to ASK for them. I demanded he tell me so he couldn't take that as my first question.

Drexel's chuckle filled the darkness. Outside the pool of light from my burning hair, the dark remained, and in the flickering green firelight, the expressions on my friends faces were eerie and distorted, the whole thing giving the bodiless laughter a menacing and threatening air. "Clever," Drexel said cheerfully. "You didn't ask. Alright then, the rules for questions as such."

"You may ask a question of any of the participants. The participants don't have to tell the truth, but they can't lie twice in a row. When you finally select the enemy, everyone aside from that person must unanimously agree that they're the suspicious one. Should you choose the WRONG target, that person will join the captive in stasis, and the process will repeat. Once only one person remains, the doppelganger will transform into a monster and attack. Oh, and you can't ask them if they're the doppelganger directly."

I grimaced, but nodded. "Alright, that's all I need."

He went silent, and I turned to look at the others. "Alright…here's the deal. I'll ask the questions, you just need to answer. Don't say anything except to respond to things I ask, and DON'T answer a question with a question."

They all nodded their understanding, and I started looking back and forth. Dayna, Deanna, Azazel, and Brad. Dan hadn't come along, which was kind of a blessing at this point. One less potential doppelganger to eliminate. I turned to the others, looking around suspiciously. Questions. Ten questions to figure out who was the fake.

I should have been able to cross off Azazel immediately, and probably Brad, given they were my demons, but something about this oppressive darkness had sealed my access to my Domain. Zagan I could access through incarnation, but with Azazel and Brad already OUT here the blockage from the dark force was preventing even that much communication. Whatever that stuff was, it was strong.

Shaking off the thought, I focused on the task at hand. Questions. What should I ask? I squinted around at my companions. Should I ask something only I would know about them? Or maybe some kind of general knowledge question? Instead, I turned to Brad. "What…is your favorite color?"

"Clear," he answered proudly. "Because there is no sight more glorious than the absence of substance contained within a pit!"

"Ok, it's not you," I said, immediately turning away. It was impossible for anyone to answer a question that stupidly and NOT be Brad. I turned to Azazel next. This one was tougher. Azazel was wise. He knew basically everything I knew, and more, but that made it even harder to come up with a question. "How many demons attend the court of Gehenna?" I asked slowly.

He blinked at me. "Seventy two," he answered after a moment of hesitation. I assume he was trying to figure out if there was some trick.

Nodding, I moved on. My eyes locked on Deanna. "What…is the name of my best friend?"

She smiled confidently. "Benny," she said with confidence. "You've known him since you were a child."

"Absolutely correct," I said with a wide smile. " Except I never told Deanna that. It's her."

The others glanced at her in surprise, but none of them argued. Announcing their decision to believe me. Her eyes went wide. "Wait, what? NO!" She lunged forward, but froze midair like a paused image on a screen. Before our eyes, she faded from existence, and she was immediately replaced by another Deanna, this one sleeping peacefully.

Around us, the darkness fell away, revealing a wide open space with stone floors and an extremely wide spiral staircase climbing the wall starting nearby. "Awww," said Drexel's. "You figured it out."

"It wasn't too hard," I admitted. "The obvious strategy would be to use up all my questions asking them two at a time. After I used one on Brad and Azazel, that left me two questions for each person. I said I'd eliminated them, but who knew if I was telling the truth. So the common sense move would be for the doppelganger to be honest for the first question and save their lie for the second. So rather than worry about whether it's true or false, I just asked the doppelganger something they shouldn't have known. That way, even the true answer gave them away."

As I explained everything, I began to steadily search the nearby area, calling Dantalion into me as I did. Something was wrong. Drexel was…different. Outside he'd seemed excitable and friendly, almost desperate for companionship. He'd reminded me of Shayla, actually, and that had put me at ease. But regardless of how easy that had been for me, Drexel's attitude just not had been radically different.

The voice that had responded to my questions was mocking and sadistic. He'd put on a show of being cheerful, but there was malice behind his words, and he'd taken Deanna without any mention. Then I thought back to Azazel's warning earlier. Risk and reward. These trials weren't difficult. The risk was probably coming from something else.

All of this information led me to a few conclusions. First, Drexel's reasons for wanting us here weren't what he'd said. I hadn't scented any direct lies, but he'd clearly been misleading me. Second, Drexel had to follow the rules of this tower just like we did, but there would almost definitely be some way for him to exploit them to his advantage later. Thirdly, Drexel had some means of gathering information about us.

He'd known EXACTLY what item to mention to draw me back when I was leaving, and that doppelganger had been far too aware of the details of my life.

The question was WHY would he want us here? What purpose did us going through the tower have for him? I thought back to everything he'd said. I couldn't think of any obvious loopholes. You'd think I'd have been more paranoid after the Roland thing, but he just seemed so…goofy and harmless.

Super competent badasses like Roland were suspicious, but I had a blind spot for goofy idiots. Bethy, Brad, so many people I knew fit into that category or were at least adjacent to it. Drexel had known that. Had figured out what buttons to press to get us in here.

"Drexel," I said slowly. "I still have seven questions. Your rules didn't mention the questions not being effective anymore after the game. I can ask anyone questions. And they can't lie more than once in a row. That includes you. I never thought to ask earlier, in fact, I think you made SURE I didn't think to ask. What is the name of the enemy that was responsible for the fall of Zand?"

There was a pause, and then the ground began to rumble. At first I thought it was an attack, but after a moment I realized what was happening. The tower was LAUGHING. "I already told you that, Shane. My name is Drexel."

Grimacing, I summoned my staff, preparing to fight if necessary. "This is a trap," I said flatly. "Is there really a Cosmic Phoenix Cinder here? And is there really a Cosmic Phoenix Cinder here? I'm asking twice." I would be able to scent the lie on whichever answer was inaccurate. I was really hoping there was.

"Oh of course," he said happily. "And yes, as I said. I never lied to you. For instance, it WOULD be correct to say Zand would want you to keep in mind the name of his usurper IF you had the chance to avenge his downfall. Because my name is how people summon me. You would be unable to obtain vengeance without it. Of course, you don't HAVE that chance, so keeping my name in mind would be extremely unwise for you at this juncture."

I frowned at that. "Ok, but we've been using your name for ages, why haven't you shown in up in the flesh?"

"I'm bound to the tower," he sighed. "You have to think my name OUTSIDE to release me. That's why I'm giving you such simple tasks. Once you're done and you get your prize, you'll carry me outside tucked into your dense little minds, and then I'll be free."

I frowned at the tower around me. "Who exactly are you?"

"Why, I'm Drexel," he said happily. "Your friendly dimwitted tower spirit. Or maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm something very old. Something awful. Maybe I'm a whisper of dark dreams in your waking mind. A seductive purr of evil desires in the back of your head. Maybe I'm a terrible god who you've unwittingly begun to release on this universe."

"That first part was a LIE," I hissed angrily. "So I'll ask again. WHO ARE YOU?"

"I am Drexel, the Mindplague," he cackled in a gleeful voice. "A god of corruption and deceit, trapped in this buried tower for eons uncounted. I am the darkness in the mortal heart. The sickness you hide from the world behind your mask of civility. Your minds will carry me from this place, will spread me once more to the worlds beyond. And the best part is that you have no choice. You are all my hosts, and you WILL transmit me."

I glanced around worriedly. This was my last question. "How?" I asked simply.

"You're carriers," he answered casually. "Anyone who learns my name becomes either a carrier or an infected. Infected can't spread the influence, so I didn't bother turning any of you. Once yo leave, I'll spread to anyone connected to you. You don't need to meet them face to face, even karmic connections will do."

My blood was ice. This was BAD. I'd gotten us infected with some kind of divine mind virus. And the worst part was that it wasn't even my fault this time. I'd love to berate myself for my greed or whatever, but honestly it had probably saved our lives and the lives of our friends. If we'd turned around and left we'd have spread the virus anyway, since we'd already learned his name. I wasn't sure why he'd wanted us to go through the tower at all, unless he'd been concerned we might die attempting to scale the cliff and wanted to make sure we made it safely back to the surface.

The question was, now that I knew all this what the hell did I DO about it? Because whatever it was, I'd better come up with the answer fast. Otherwise we were either going to be stuck here forever or potentially dooming the universe. Neither one seemed like my kind of party. Which meant now I needed to outwit a god. Fantastic.

 

[Hyperion47]

Woah,this turned on it's head in a flash.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Drexel's haunting laughter echoed through the tower. "Your faces!" he chortled sadistically. "I can see your little minds running rampant inside your thick skulls, desperately searching for a way out. I'm a GOD, children. You don't beat gods. You don't outwit them. You just submit. It's easier that way."

I frowned at him. Because that was the wrong tone. He wanted us to leave willingly, wanted us to spread his mind virus. He should be cajoling us, tempting us, trying to get us on his side with lies and false promises.

Mocking and bullying us in these circumstances didn't make any sense…unless he didn't have a choice.

Which is when I remembered where we were, and what the Lady had told me. Even gods couldn't run amok in the Chaos Chasm. That was why she'd sent me. Drexel being sealed in this tower was one thing, it meant his power couldn't extend outside, and that made sense. Drexel being sealed in this tower inside the CHASM was another. It meant even within the tower, he had the same limitations as anyone else.

He was bluffing because he didn't want me to notice that and fight back, because he knew that we had a real chance to break his influence.

I grinned nastily into the dark. "Bullshit," I said bluntly. "Dayna, come here."

She stepped up next to me as I triggered Zagan, laying a hand on her shoulder. But not JUST Zagan. I reached into Gehenna and called forth another friend. Genesis Burst. A soul healing, purifying demon whose bailiwick overlapped almost perfectly with this situation. Sammael was next, boosting me further. I didn't use my staff's boosting skill because I knew that C-rank was the limit here, but within C-rank I wasn't someone to mess with.

One of the drops of phoenix blood inside me, condensed from the power of life nova, roared to like, kindling like accelerant as it ignited under the fires of Zagan, and I felt the power pour through me, racing through my veins as I let it build and build and then pushed it firmly into Dayna's body.

She stiffened, but didn't move away or make a sound. Drexel was less sanguine. "What are you doing? Stop that!"

In my head, I saw an image. A black miasma of suffocating darkness like the stuff that had weighed down on us earlier, concentrated around Dayna's brain. As the flames struck the miasma, there was a sound like water hitting a ripping hot pan and a wail of hate and anguish. The miasma roared and expanded, puffing itself up like it was trying to ward off a natural predator.

A second drop of blood ignited, and the fire roared higher, burning back the darkness as it snarled and screamed and hissed.

"Stop this," Drexel screamed with a dreadful howl. "Decist immediately. You've no idea what you're doing! You'll regret this!" The miasma exploded again, expanding to triple the size, and I gritted my teeth, igniting one drop after another until all six were blazing, temporarily boosting the quantity of flames by an enormous degree.

The Nine Phoenix Reincarnation Art wasn't just a simple modifier manufacturer. It was more than that. It was the process of BECOMING a phoenix, of altering myself at a fundamental level. And a phoenix was more than just a fiery bird that liked one kind of flame. They were creatures of primordial fire, manifestations of the endless blaze. I'd seen that. FELT that. A phoenix's affinity for its flame was more than just a gift or a knack. It was an EMBODIMENT.

Finally, the last of the darkness was blasted away, leaving behind not even a speck of black visible in the spiritual vision I was somehow accessing. Dayna stepped back, her eyes glowing green with fiery exultation, inhabited by the lifegiving spirit of Zagan's purifying fire.

"I feel…whole," she whispered, flexing her hands. "My doubts. My unease. They're gone. I have a clarity of purpose I haven't felt in quite some time."

"Oh…oops," I said sheepishly. Technically speaking most forms of emotional trauma were minor soul damage. That was why my cousin Felicity had her soul scoured by the repeated emotional torture her dad had put her through. Genesis Burst was a soul healing technique, so it made sense it would cleanse things like negative emotional buildup. "That'll come back once the fire fades," I assured her. "Sorry about that."

She snorted. "Hardly anything to apologize for. I appreciate the surcease, temporary as it may be."

I nodded, then moved on to the others. Deanna, Brad, Azazel, one by one I burned them clean of the Mindplague.

"How dare you!" howled Drexel as I turned and headed back for the door. "You can't leave! Stop that this instant! I refuse to allow it!" I smirked as I approached the door, staring to push it open and walk back out, heading up the cliff instead…but I froze.

The door. The door was part of the tower, and Drexel controlled the tower. But I could open the door fine…which meant he wanted me to leave. I stopped, stepping back, and the voice cut off. "Something is wrong," I said slowly. "That was too easy. Rank or not, he's a god, gods are bullshit. He should have some form of response, some backup plan. Screaming impotently at us is too…mortal. Not to mention this door shouldn't be opening. What did you do?"

"Nothing at all," he said saccharinely. "You've beaten me. I'm completely outmatched. I can't stop you from leaving, and can only allow you to have your way, stranding me in this tower for eternity as I lose my only chance to escape."

And that was when I noticed it. He was lying. OBVIOUSLY lying, I could SMELL him lying. And he didn't care. But I hadn't smelled a lie before. I went back over his explanation in my head, considered it carefully, and my blood went cold as I realized what he hadn't said. The Mindplague had infected us, and all of us had been carriers instead of actively infected. All four of us. But there were five people in this tower.

"Chloe," I whispered. "Chloe is infected. She's a full host. The kind you can possess. You made sure you'd have a backup plan. You made sure we would bring you out even if we noticed something was wrong."

"Did I?" he asked innocently. "That doesn't sound like me. Far too sneaky. I'm a very straightforward deity."

I sneered at him. "Whatever, I figured it out, I'll just cleanse her like I did the others."

"Maybe," he said spitefully. "Or maybe as soon as she changes forms the contagion will erupt and you'll be forced to fight her to the death. You were right, I AM weakened here, and it WAS too easy. But in a host…well, that's more than just a matter of simple addition."

Deanna went pale. "What did you do to my sister?" she snapped.

"Why, I gave her a GIFT," he cooed. "She'll be so much stronger now. So much more. She won't be dependent on some parasite living off her body, stealing her life, her family, her purpose."

"First of all, we're not letting that happen," I told him bluntly. "Second of all that's not how she sees Deanna, and third of all, YOU would be that parasite. Like if you're going to try to undermine people's self esteem and be an evil manipulator you could at least be consistent."

He sniffed in annoyance. "You know, I really dislike you. I'm going to enjoy using that girl's body to crack open your chest and chew out your still beating heart." He said it mildly, like he was announcing that he liked the weather. But there was an undertone of malicious glee in the statement. He had us, and he knew it.

I closed my eyes, blocking out his mockery and Deanna's panicked shouts. There was a way out of this, there had to be. I went over the facts. Chloe was currently not in ascendance, and Deanna had been cleansed. The two of them counted as separate people to the Mindplague, but only one of them could have the body at a time, so Chloe was in a state of limbo where the plague hadn't been initiated because she wasn't in control of the body.

If Chloe emerged, she would be in charge of the body, and the Mindplague would take over her body, essentially allowing Drexel free access to the world at large. We'd be at the VERY least seriously inconveniencing the universe, if not outright dooming it. I mean sure, the other gods would probably deal with it…and then I froze.

Other gods. Chloe was possessed, she'd been infected with a fragment of hostile power. In order to cleanse her I would need to call her out, and then she would be strong enough to fight back and not ALLOW me to cleanse her. Purification wasn't what we needed in this situation. SEALING was. Restraint. My eyes lit up. "Let's go," I told the others. "I know what to do. We can save Chloe."

I hoped. Deveskane was probably our best chance, and even if we couldn't fully fix her, the sealing artifact at the Hermetic Hall should at least be able to stabilize her until we could find something more permanent.

"He's lying," gloated Drexel. "None of you can disperse my Mindplague. Not the TRUE Mindplague. Carriers are in a dormant state, but trying to cleanse me in the fullness of my power is futile. Especially once you leave this place. Exiting the Chasm will restore my true strength, and then you'll see what I'm really capable of."

I squinted at him. I wasn't lying. But he seemed to really believe that. I was beginning to suspect I had overestimated exactly how much information Drexel had been able to glean from us. His "mind reading" was seeming more and more like a parlor trick. I debated throwing Deveskane in his face to see his reaction, try to figure out what he thought of the idea, but I didn't trust him as far as I could throw this tower. Better to just end this interaction.

Kicking the door open, I waved to the others as I addressed the evil god. "Sure. Lying. That's me. We're all doomed, I'm gonna go cry about it."

"Wait!" he sputtered. "I mean, no, don't wait, I mean…this is a VERY frustrating interaction!"

I flipped him off as we walked away. I wasn't sure if he knew what the gesture meant, but I figured a big bad mind god would be able to figure it out. Once we reached the beach, I called for Croissant again, and the huge dolphin surfaced within minutes. We all climbed onto his back and I directed him back in the direction we'd originally come from. Clarent might be there still, but we had bigger fish. Both to fry and on our actual team now, so I wasn't really worried about that.

Once we were far enough away from the tower I explained my plan. Deanna, who had been silently staring into space during the ride (which was much slower because we stayed above water the whole time, I was NOT putting her back into my Domain until we got this whole godplague thing taken care of) lit up at the explanation, clearly hopeful that my solution might be a viable option.

Once we reached the mark on the wall where Croissant had tried to slash me open, I said goodbye to my Dolphin friend again and we began the slow climb to the top of the cliff. From there, we retraced our steps back to the Hermetic Hall. As the building came into view, I felt something in my get unclench, I just hoped they would be able to help Chloe. And more than that, I hoped whatever price they demanded was one we could afford to pay.

 

[SilverEagle2121]

@Malcolm Tent just an FYI, you labeled the threadmark for the last chapter as 1094 when it should be 1095.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We arrived back at the Hermetic Hall in a hurry. Elodie, sensing our approach, appeared before us, ethereal as ever, her brow furrowed in confusion. "You're returned," she said slowly. "What can I do for you? I'm afraid if you wish to challenge again, you may not-"

"We need help!" I blurted out. Deanna was swaying on her feet, Ever since we'd emerged into the less suppressed area around the Hermetic Hall she'd been unsteady. She said that Drexel was trying to force the change back to Chloe to take over. We hadn't even known he could DO that, but gods gonna be gods, and that was the reality, so we were all kind of panicking.

Elodie blinked in surprise. "What are you talking about? What's happening?"

I blurted out the story in the most concise way possible, tripping over my own words as I spoke so fast my mouth barely kept up with my thoughts. Luckily, Elodie was an A-ranker, so she had no issues following my speech.

"The Mindplague?" she muttered worriedly. "I've never heard of it. But I don't like the sound of that at all. You were right to come here. Unfortunately, I'm not able to make the decision to help her. I'm just a keeper. The Master of this Hall is my Lord's firstborn son, Kane. He'll be the one you need to speak to."

I nodded quickly. "Understood, but can you do something to help her?" I nodded at Deanna. "If he breaks out we're screwed." I very carefully didn't say his name. I wasn't sure if I needed to be a carrier for it to transfer but it didn't seem worth taking the chance. Keeping things vague should be safer.

She frowned. "Get her inside. The Hermetic Hall is a hall of sealing. Just like it sealed your Domain before it should be able to suppress this darkness for now, at least until we can beg Kane to intercede."

Nodding, I swept Deanna up and rushed forward, carrying her into the hall at my top speed. This time, the statues didn't try to intervene, probably because we had Elodie's permission, and once we made it inside, I felt a surge of terrifying power descend from above, slamming me to my knees and shrouding both Deanna and I in bright light.

Suddenly, everything special about me just…vanished. Like someone flipping a light switch. My strength, my speed, my Domain, my connection to Callie. All of it went out like the flame of a candle in a harsh draft, and I was left gasping on the floor, feeling for all the world like a new born baby screaming my first breath. I dropped Deanna, writhing on the tile as I tried to process what was happening, and then…it was over.

I sat up gasping, my lungs heaving like great bellows, flexing with all the power of my nearly one million points of Might. It took a second, but I finally stabilized, blinked around at the others as I reestablished my equilibrium.

Staggering to my feet, I wheezed out "What the hell was THAT?" at Elodie.

"That was the Hermit's Hold," she said bluntly. "The top tier suppression of the Hermetic Hall. Otherwise how did you think we were planning to seal a god, fragment or not? You're fine, it's not permanent, obviously. It just took a second to calibrate properly. We didn't want to risk messing up the suppression. How's your friend doing?"

I grumbled in annoyance at not being warned for a second, then turned and knelt to check on Deanna. Triggering Dantalion, I scanned her as best I could, checking for any signs of either Chloe or Drexel. I got nothing. As I was checking, she groaned and her eyes fluttered open.

"Shane?" she rasped. "What happened?"

I stood, pulling her up with me. "You were almost forcibly possessed. Elodie activated the Hermetic Hall's defenses and suppressed Drexel's influence, but it's only temporary. If we want a proper seal, we need to talk to Kane, Deveskane's first born."

"I'll escort you back," Elodie said formally. "Kane doesn't guard any of the trials, he has his own chambers." Her voice sounded more…respectful, than it had before. Like she was observing a strict etiquette.

Frowning at her, I raised an eyebrow. "What are you not telling me?"

"A great many things," she said bluntly. "But I've said all I can. Are you going to follow me back or not? Payment will need to be discussed with Lord Kane himself."

"Not like I have much choice then," I sighed. "Lead on." I gestured ahead of us, allowing her to go first (not that it mattered, given the immense rank disparity). She didn't need to be told twice. Gesturing for us to follow, she led us down a long hallway, stopping in front a mural painted across the back of a rounded alcove with a statue in it. She reached up and pressed the eyes of the statue and it began to turn, the stone floor grinding as it dropped away to reveal a tight spiral staircase.

We descended, and when we reached the bottom Elodie flicked her fingers, lighting a row of torches along a long, thin corridor lined with teal engraved panels made of some kind of smooth stone. The flickering flames cast an eerie light across the engravings, creating a sort of movement effect that made it look like dark creatures were waging war across the walls, only inches away from us.

Finally, we reached the end and she gestured us forward. "He's on the other side of the mirror," she warned. "Just…be careful. He doesn't like being disrespected, so keep your comments polite. If you remember that you should be fine."

Normally I'd have made a joke about how I was always polite, but we didn't really have the time. I nodded and then stepped forward to look into the mirror. I reached up, and so did my reflection, and when we touched, things…flipped. I didn't know how to describe it, but I was inside the mirror and he was outside. Or nothing was outside? I didn't know, but I was somewhere else now.

That became even clearer as I turned and took in the complete lack of other people around me. The others didn't seem to have followed me. I assumed Deanna at least had stepped through, but maybe they'd separated us somehow.

"Huh, creepy mirror hallway," I observed. "I'm sure this will end well."

A chuckle rolled up from the depths of the darkened hall, bouncing off the walls until it sounded like an army was laughing at me. "It might, oh chosen of Atlas."

I blinked at that. "Wait…you know who Atlas is? Adam Atlas? The Heretic God?"

"I do," the voice said softly. "After all, I was one of his worshippers when I was human. He died before my ascension, so I doubt he remembers me. At one time, he was quite popular." The voice, still bouncing creepily out of the darkness, paused. "Well, are you going to come down here, or are we going to shout at each other across this hall all day?"

"Sure," I said dryly. "That's not ominous at all. I'll just head into the depths of this dark forbidding hallway where no one can hear me scream."

The voice chimed in cheerfully. "I could hear you scream."

"Not helping," I said ruefully as I strode into the dark. "But thanks for trying." The hallway seemed very similar to start, but the deeper I got the more things seemed to change. Finally I arrived at the end of the hall where a middle aged man sat sipping a cup of tea. He was sitting in an overstuffed chair sipping his drink and reading a book, and he smiled urbanely when he spotted me. A roaring fire lit the space, but one I hadn't seen until I entered the circle of light it cast. "Kane, I presume. Or should I call you by your full name, Deveskane?"

He beamed at me. "Well reasoned. Not wholly accurate, but not wholly inaccurate either. I am not Deveskane, per se, but I am a memory of him. The other memories manifested into independent beings, but I, as the first, was the most heavily imprinted with the personality of my former self. So I both am and am not Deveskane, though you may call me that, if you wish."

"Well, in the spirit of honesty I'm not Atlas's champion," I clarified. "My wife is. We have a soul bond, which is probably what you're sensing."

He hummed, nodding in understanding. "I see. That explains a few things."

"Yeah," I said, choosing to change the subject. "So, do you also know Drexel, or…" I tried to lead him back to the topic at hand.

He shook his head. "No. I got a basic understanding of the creature from the scan during my suppression, but I don't recognize it. I suspect it predated me by quite some time, and possibly Atlas himself. Hard to say. Regardless, the fragment is malicious and quite petty. You were right to bring your friend here. Had she succumbed to the possession fully there would have been no chance to save her."

I sighed in relief. "So there IS a chance. You can help?"

"I can," he nodded. "In fact, it would even benefit me to do so. Such a fragment would provide me with fascinating research material for quite some time. The question, however, is whether I CHOOSE to do so."

"I assumed you would demand a price," I sighed. "Go ahead. What do you want? Need me to steal something? That's a popular request."

He grinned. "Oh not at all. In fact, I want you to do the exact opposite. If you came here for Atlas, I assume you're heading to the Temple Mount?" I could practically hear the capital letters, but I had no idea what the term meant.

"I…guess?" I said slowly.

He snorted. "The Temple Mount was Atlas's personal mortuary. It was where he interred the corpses of the gods he killed. I assume you know why such a thing would be useful?"

"God flesh can be used in certain rituals to resurrect dead deities," I confirmed. "I've been involved with that kind of thing before. You're saying Atlas has the materials needed for his resurrection there? But you don't want me to take them?"

"Not take," he assured me. "Place. I want you to carry a fragment of Deveskane with you to the Temple Mount. As for my reasons…I couldn't tell you. I just feel that you might accomplish something. I don't know what measures he may have taken there, or how it will be useful, I just feel very strongly this is an opportunity. Divine instinct can be quite prescient, you know."

I wasn't sure either. God flesh was only one of the necessary ingredients for divine resurrection, and I didn't even think I knew what all of them WERE. The rituals the vanished gods used had involved some nasty stuff on Hatescream's part. Still, I wasn't against the idea of carrying a divine fragment with me, especially not once we headed deeper into the Chasm. It wouldn't be doing much anyway.

"Fine," I said after thinking it through. "I agree, just help me save my friend."

"Very well," he said energetically, surging to his feet and clapping his hands together. "An adventure then. What fun. I'll be keeping the fragment of the Mindplague, of course?"

"Yeah, sure," I waved him off. "I don't want it. It's all yours. When do we get Deanna in here?"

He chuckled at that. "Why, she's already here." He snapped his fingers and the fire flared, the light circle expanding and revealing a large flat ceremonial table, with Deanna lying atop on top of it, apparently unconscious. "Now then, how would you like to assist me with a bit of psychic surgery? Yes? Excellent, then let the operation begin!"

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Kane escorted me over to the table where Deanna lay, gesturing for me to stand opposite him as he took up a position on one side of her. I glanced down at my friend, noting the serene expression on her face with relief. It seemed that whatever Kane was doing wasn't painful at least.

Honestly, I didn't know Deanna that well. She was our guide to get here, and she'd helped me out back at Mourne Kayze, but I was smart enough to realize there was a bit of transference going on here. I was used to traveling with my friends, taking care of my own as best I could no matter what was a reflex for me these days. I could have taken a step back, accepted reality and just left her here or something…but I didn't WANT to do that.

Deanna was one of my people. Maybe a recent one, maybe a temporary one, but that didn't matter. I was the Wishmaster, damn it, and I was already responsible for the lives and happiness of a massive intergalactic clan. If I couldn't even safeguard the friends who were actually WITH me, then what business did I have trying to run a faction?

Beyond that, I just WANTED to help. Deanna's relationship with Chloe reminded me a little bit of me and my sister. Not the overt stuff, obviously, but just the amount of care they took of each other, even when they weren't around the other. If Chelsea was in a situation like this, I'd want someone to help her as best they could. I knew how much Chloe meant to her sister, and I liked both girls too. I didn't want to see Chloe gone or Deanna suffer, much less watch either girl die.

"So, how do we do this?" I asked Kane bluntly. "And what do you need me to do?"

"The process is intensive, but not complicated," he assured me. "It can essentially be divided into five steps. Step one is isolation. We need to seal the souls inside the body individually to suppress them. Once the original occupants are sealed, we then initiate step two and UNSEAL the intruder, allowing it to become ascendant inside the body."

I blinked at him. "Your solution to them being possessed is to LET them be possessed? This is sounding less like a medical procedure and more like the insistent promises of a guy trying to sell me a moon."

He snorted. "In order to act with impunity on the invading influence, it needs to be in control. We bring it to the surface so we can act on it freely. Which brings us to step three. Preparing a secondary vessel. That'll be what I need YOUR help with. When I suppressed your abilities earlier, I got a good sense of your capabilities. Can you imbue a sphere of that crafted material with your Leviathan power?"

That was a good question. I wasn't sure. Leviathan wasn't an ACTIVE ability, exactly. Like it was, but not one I could imbue or pass on. It wasn't like Belial's toxic fire or Zagan's purifying flame. Leviathan was an internal state of protection.

Closing my eyes, I started to calculate. What would I need to do to make that happen? I'd need a physical medium, but Agares took care of that, and Agares COULD be imbued with other abilities like the Heretic Fire. Leviathan wasn't a transmissible state, but I had ways of getting around that too. Piece of Mind could imbue a copy of my mind into the sphere and then I could use Leviathan on THAT.

But Agares wasn't conjuration. I couldn't make something from nothing. I opened my eyes to look at Kane. "I need stone. Preferably ground to dust. I can handle B-rank material, but nothing stronger. I don't have the tools to work that."

"Shouldn't be an issue," he assured me. "The fragment implanted is C-rank, presumably because of the restrictions in place at the location of implantation. Otherwise it wouldn't be so simple to seal and extract it. A B-rank prison artifact will be more than acceptable. Do you have any specific material requirements beyond rank?"

I shook my head. "No, past that it doesn't matter." Whatever he gave me would be reduced to dust and reconstructed anyway. I paused. "Actually…do you think you could get me some A-rank materials. I want to try something."

Agares was a demon of construction, but his power of disintegration came from Pit of Despair, who had recently merged with BRAD. Brad who could create casual holes in VOID ROADS, which shouldn't be possible.

He shrugged, waving a hand, and there was a ripple in the air. A block of stone materialized in front of me, plummeting to the floor with a bang that shook the whole room. I nodded my thanks then called Agares to incarnate into me. Just to be safe, I also called up Brad, manifesting his power inside me at the same time, and then I triggered my staff's upgrade skill, pushing Agares to B-rank.

I focused on the stone, calling Brad's power through me, and I pushed the power of Pit of Despair to its fullest.

It took a second, then another, but slowly, ever so slowly, the A-ranked stone began to disintegrate. Bit by bit, little by little, dust flaked off it, collection on the ground beneath the block. It took ages. Minutes at a time. I had no clue why the hell Brad could do this instantly to the Void Road but it was taking me the better part of a half hour, but I wasn't complaining. Theoretically I should NOT be able to disintegrate and A-ranked stone block, no matter how overpowered my techniques or Domain were.

Once it finished, I reached for the dust with Agares. Because Pit of Despair and Brad were one, and Pit of Despair was part of Agares, I could FEEL the dust, like a part of my body that had fallen asleep, slowly coming back to life as the power of Agares filled it.

"This isn't going to be fast," I panted. "If that's a problem tell me and I'll switch to something weaker."

"No," he said firmly. "The better the prison the easier the final two steps will be. Creating a link and then sealing the intruder would normally need to be done very precisely, but if you can construct a prison that can withstand the pressure, I can greatly improve the speed and reliability of the process." I nodded at that, and then got back to work on constructing the orb.

That took an hour. I had to manually imbue every GRAIN of dust with B-rank power over time to fill them up, like trying to use an eye dropped to fill a pitcher. But I kept at it, pushing forward, and finally all of it was saturated. I reached for Piece of Mind, manifesting a parallel inside the pile even as I slowly sculpted it into a sphere.

It wasn't a matter of just thinking about it either. When I completed the sphere, it was still rough and patchwork. I packed it all together and then had to slowly polish it, grinding away the excess space inside and purifying the gaps until finally, about three HOURS later, I had a complete sphere of A-rank material. Inside the sphere, a parallel of my mind sat, and it was child's play to reach out to it and, triggering the rank up ability of my staff again, imbue it with Leviathan.

The sphere pulsed with power, the glassy black surface flickering with arcane green light. I held it out to Kane, my eyes opening as I shakily passed it over to the former god. "How is this?"

His eyes locked on the sphere as he took it, wide with enthusiasm and awe. "That…shouldn't be possible. You just used some kind of Divine power. But not. What a strange sensation. I'm not sure what to make of that. It is, however, quite satisfactory for our purposes. You've done very well. Allow me to complete the rest of the procedure while you recover."

I nodded slumping over onto my side as I watched him begin the process. He tossed the sphere up casually, and it froze above Deanna, hanging in midair as if sitting on a pedestal. Then he gestured and that same suppressing light he'd used on my descended from above and landed on Deanna again.

As I watched, she began to squirm in place, her body moving and leaving behind a frozen, translucent outline. Then another beam of light descended and another outline was pinned in place. The body sat up with a gasp, eyes flying open, and I saw a glow I recognized from the eyes of that skull on the tower door. The head jerked to stare at me, lips peeling back, but Kane didn't give Drexel a chance to talk. Lifting a short cane, he smacked Deanna's body on the head, driving it forward to thump into the prison.

A bright light shot through the cane and her head to touch the orb, and as she drew away, a trail of light came with her.

Grinning maliciously, Kane slammed the cane on the floor and the light flooded the room. This time it didn't come from above, but from all around us. I watched it slowly close in on Deanna, and as I watched, another outline manifested over her body, this one the same suffocating darkness I'd seen in the tower.

Slowly, an inch at a time, the light surrounded her body and began to contract, condensing the darkness until it was the size of a marble, at which point it pushed the marble down the tube of light connecting her head and the sphere and into the orb, as Deanna fell back to the table, unconscious. The orb flashed, then shook, and I heard a rumble as Drexel tried his best to escape. Wordless screams of incoherent rage wracked the orb as it shuddered and leapt as if trying to escape.

Finally, the shaking stopped, the orb resuming its eerie stillness. Kane tapped his cane twice, the suppressing light shattering and drifting away in the ether. Deanna groaned, and before my eyes, melted away into the familiar form of Chloe, whose eyes fluttered as she woke up. "Owwww," she moaned, clutching her head. Kane snatched the sphere away before she could bump into it when sitting up, and she looked around blearily. "What happened?"

It was so similar to what her sister had said earlier that I couldn't help but snort out a laugh. Once I did that, it was over. I couldn't hold back anymore. I broke down cackling, leaning my cheek against the cool floor as I released all the pent up tension I'd felt on the way over here. I filled her in on what happened, and she looked frightened, but still grateful.

Suddenly, I stopped, then started cursing. Chloe frowned at me, looking confused. "What? What is it?"

"I forgot to get that fucking PHOENIX EMBER," I snapped. "I was so focused on saving you that I didn't even LOOK for it!" She stared at me for a second, then SHE started laughing, and I picked it back up. In retrospect, it actually was pretty funny.

Climbing to my feet, I stretched and then offered her my hand, helping her off the table, then I turned to Kane. He was holding the orb in one hand, spinning it on a finger like a ball. "Thank you," I told him tiredly. "So much. Now, can you bring me this fragment I'm supposed to be carrying with me. And do you happen to have some sort of MAP to the Temple Mount? Or at least a general idea of distance?" From his apologetic smile, I was guessing the answer was no, but that was fine. Guess it was back to the road for us.

 

[Quenster06]

It's funny, I started getting videos in my YouTube feed like this: https://youtu.be/TA5TBB_VkjM?si=HAhx5bYKtAh0QZPs : and then this chapter comes out with something similar.

Thank you for the chapter!

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"We should go back," Brad announced boldly as we followed the arrow of Heretic Fire towards what I was assuming was the Temple Mount. "We can totally get in and out without him noticing! I can make a big hole in the tower!"

"He IS the tower," I groaned. "How would he POSSIBLY not notice that? Also, we barely got out last time. We're not going back. Trust me, I WANT that cinder, but it's not worth the risk. He's too big of a threat." It took a serious effort not to say Drexel's name, but now that we were clear of him I was taking no chances.

Which was why I refused to entertain the idea of raiding the tower for that cinder. I wanted to. I wanted to do it SO bad, but I knew that it wasn't responsible. Chloe had almost died and taken Deanna with her, and I wasn't risking anyone else. Even my demons weren't safe.

"It's just not fair," he spat angrily. "You did the right thing! You cared about your friend and helped and you LOST out because of it. To have a treasure that was in your grasp snatched away like that…it's unimaginable!" His voice was almost shaking with rage, which seemed odd…until I remembered who Brad was. Brad was a pit. Specifically one that had held treasure. For him, possession was more than just an act, it was his nature, and now he was part of my Domain. I was his king, so handing over the arrowhead wasn't too big of a taboo, but the idea of someone stealing something he considered mine was anathema.

I clapped him on the shoulder gently. "I appreciate the concern, but I'm not too upset. Easy come easy go. I know about the cinder now, and I can look for another one, but I can't replace a friend so easily. People aren't like items, there's only ever one of them."

It was easy to forget Brad was essentially a newborn. The pit had gained sentience recently, and gained form even MORE recently. He had essentially only been a person for a few weeks. As his king, it was my job to teach him about life, and that included more than just showing him around and laughing when he tried spicy food for the first time (which had been hilarious).

Brad nodded seriously. "I see. So friends are a different kind of treasure."

"You could think of it that way," I nodded. "Let me put it this way. A pit isn't just a place to conceal objects, it can also be a refuge. The high walls can keep away predators, and the overhang can be used to get out of the rain. In fact, lots of defensive emplacements are built inside of pits. Cellars, bunkers, all sorts of things. You can't just think of a pit as an absence of material, you should also think of it as the presence of absence. Empty space can be used to create living areas, fortifications, all sorts of things people need in their daily life."

He bit his lip. "Presence of absence," he said slowly. "Fascinating. I feel…drawn to that idea."

"I'm not surprised," I told him. "Pit of Despair, who you merged with, is a part of Agares. In terms of seniority, you could consider Agares your big brother, and Agares's whole worldview is about construction. You should get in touch with him, I bet he could teach you a lot."

He nodded thoughtfully, strolling ahead. I hung back, watching him go with a smile. Brad might be a little odd, but he was a good kid. And it was nice having someone look up to me. Not like the demons did, that was a little uncomfortable, but like a kid brother. I'd missed a lot of sibling interaction with Chelsea growing up, and seeing Chloe and Deanna's relationship made me with I had a younger sibling like that.

After a few weeks of travel, I was getting fond of the kid, but time would tell. Dayna, meanwhile, was staring at me oddly, and I cocked my head as I settled into step next to her. "What's up?"

"You meant that," she said bluntly. "About not being worried about the cinder. About friends being more important. Despite how much power it would have brought you. I've been around you long enough to know you REALLY wanted that thing, it must be a huge opportunity, and you're just…giving it up. To keep us safe."

I laughed at that. "Of course," I said cheerfully. "Do I want that thing? Hell yeah. But don't get it twisted. Power is for protecting the things you care about, the things you care about aren't for protecting power. Getting too obsessed with how strong you are isn't a good thing. I want to gain power to live longer, to protect my loved ones, to enjoy life. I want to help my family and keep them safe, make sure innocent relatives don't get separated from their parents because of some nonsense game. That's why I became the Wishmaster."

She just blinked at me. "I…don't know how to respond to that. That's madness. You're aiming to become a GOD, right?"

"Sure, because gods are immortal. I want to achieve divinity with my wife and all my friends. Not sure if I can DO that, but I want to try." I shrugged. "That and I think growing and learning is fun and interesting. Like I won't pretend I don't LIKE being strong. Obviously if I have a chance to get better I'll take it. But you have to remember what you're fighting for. Otherwise you're not fighting at all, you're just throwing a tantrum."

She was staring at me like I was a lunatic, and I just laughed. "Look, I'm not some kind of saint. That's my mom. I'm a selfish guy. My friends make me happy. I love them. Love having them in my life. If something happened to them I'd feel like shit, so I do my best to get strong enough that it doesn't. Same with my family. I care about them, gods know WHY because they're all assholes, but I do. I want to make things better for them because it'll make ME feel better to do it."

"I'm not sure there's a difference," she said wryly.

"Like hell there's not," I snorted. "I know people who do good just to do good. My wife is like that. Despite all the bullshit her dad put her through, Callie cares about other people. She genuinely wants to help. To make the universe a better place. She makes me a better person just by being near her, and I doubt I'd be even as concerned with people as I am without her. But that's not me. Callie is a hero. I'm just a stubborn asshole with a possessive streak."

Dayna was staring at me now, and I could see something like…awe on her face. I looked away. I didn't like that. Dayna was a friend, I didn't want her looking at me like the demons did. "I think," she said quietly. "That you give yourself too little credit. And that maybe I see what Lady Bethany sees in you."

"None of that," I said with an uncomfortable laugh. "Helping out a friend isn't some big achievement. Besides, you'll change your tune the next time you have to save me from the idiotic consequences of my own actions. It happens a lot."

I glanced back in time to see her bare her teeth in a wolfish grin, the odd look vanishing as she barked out a laugh. "Now THAT I believe. So, what did that spirit give you, anyway?"

"Kane?" I asked. "He gave me a fragment of Deveskane's soul. A very small one, from what I can tell." I reached into my Domain, withdrawing a shard of mirrored glass about the size of my palm. "It doesn't seem to be aware. Or maybe it's sleeping. He didn't tell me what to do with it though, just said he could sense I would be able to put it to use."

She stared at it in fascination. "A shard of a dead god," she muttered. "Strange."

"Very much so," I agreed. "But it's not like this is the only one we'll be running into. While he couldn't tell me where it WAS, Kane did tell me a bit more about the Temple Mount. Apparently, in order to enter, we need to pass through a place called the "Valley of the Broken Gods". It's some kind of repository for trapped fragments of the various dead gods inside. You need to pass through a gauntlet of them to enter."

She flinched. "A GAUNTLET of gods?"

"Heavily suppressed ones, I suspect," I reassured her. "Given where we're headed. And at the same level I'm not scared of anyone. It's lucky the Temple Mount is in here, because a defense mechanism like that would be impassable in the outside world. Anyway, once we're through there, we enter the outer layer of the mount, the mortuary. Beyond that, and up the slope, is the Acropolis. He's not sure what's in there, since he's never been, but he said if Atlas left behind some sort of backup plan, it would probably be in there."

That seemed to give her pause. "If you're sure," she said after a moment. "I promised Lady Bethany I wouldn't let you get yourself killed. If this was before I'd have been hesitant, but you HAVE just dealt with two different gods. I guess you know what you're doing."

"Let's not go crazy," I said wryly. "I wouldn't say all that. But I like the confidence."

We both laughed, and then we settled into a brisk walk, not bothering to talk anymore. We'd said what needed saying, and we were both fascinated by the surrounding environment of the Chaos Chasm. As we walked deeper in, the scenery changed. First a forest, then a meadow, then a canyon. The changes were dizzying, far surpassing variety you would see in a natural world, but the deeper we got the more variety there was.

More than that, I could feel the pressure mounting, the force of restriction from the vortex growing as we approached the center. By the time we spotted the mountain in the distance, it was at mid C-rank. My stats were only that high, though I made a mental note to check on that. After becoming Wishmaster I probably shouldn't wait too long between stat updates, otherwise I might end up biting off more than I could chew. My thoughts were drawn away from that concept though, by the appearance of the Temple Mount.

The Temple Mount, contrary to what Kane had implied, was not ONE mountain. Rather, it was a whole RING of them. A huge wall of nearly sheer cliffs piercing the sky. Directly ahead of us, set into the side of the cliffs, a single crack extended into the depths of the mountains. Outside it, a pair of huge statues towered like silent guardians, faces long since worn away by wind and rain.

I held up the pointer. "I think we found it," I said dryly. I moved it back and forth, and sure enough, the arrow remained locked. "Alright everyone, Domain time. This part I need to do alone."

No one argued, though a few of them looked unhappy. In a blink, I was alone, and I strode forward toward the crevice with unwavering purpose. Whatever waited in there, I would get past it, I would help my friends, help Atlas, and hopefully resolve the burgeoning Void War while I was at it. Then, once everyone was at peace, we would all be able to relax and live our lives, and I could get down to the business of fixing my family. On second thought, maybe I would prefer to deal with the war after all.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Stepping into the crevice that was the Valley of Broken Gods was a surreal experience. In some ways, it just looked like an empty cave, but I got a palpable sensation of otherness on entry. Or rather, several senses of otherness. Such as: a hungry beast lurking in the darkness, a shadowy presence waiting at the top of the stairs, the sensation insects crawling through my veins, and about a dozen others all unique and nearly impossible to put into words, colliding inside my brain in the worst way.

Leviathan's protective warmth rolled through me, melting the encroaching frost of the conflicting auras like warm sunshine blazing down over new fallen snow. I let out a long, slow breath as the conflicting energies cleared away, stepping deeper inside and looking for any visible sign of what I was sensing.

It didn't take me long. The walls of the crevice were lined with shrines. Nothing fancy, just some rectangular stone boxes with peaked rooves set into indents equidistantly along the wall. Each box had a small door made of opaque glass set into the front of it, and from behind the glass I could see various glows of different colors, shades, and intensities. The two closest were red and green respectively.

I stepped forward, and the omnipresent auras faded into the background as two of them slammed down with bonerattling force, nearly driving me to my knees. "MORTAL!" boomed a growling voice. "SUBMIT!"

Gritting my teeth, I turned to the blood red aura, which was the one that had spoken. "Bite me," I said bluntly.

This was not a god. This was a fragment. These were all fragments, which meant they were all dead and that wouldn't be changing unless I decided to change it. Which I wouldn't. I saw no reason to be polite with these things, especially not while they were actively attacking.

"YOU DARE!" howled the voice. "Do you know who I am? I am Alrax the Decimator! I am the great beast who dwells within the blood red sun! I am the unceasing ferocity of the unending chase, the screaming terror of impending doom! I am-"

"Dead," I finished for him. "For a while now. Which means you're no longer any of those things."

A ringing snicker split the air. "He's got you there, Rax. You're just a jumped up ghost with an attitude problem now."

"Like you're any better Alraune," rumbled the first voice. "The might god of insidious whispers reduced to a muttering nuisance. You're one step up from commentary section at a children's blood ritual."

I blinked. "I…a what? Nevermind. I'm going to move on if you guys don't need anyth-"

"HALT!" boomed Alrax. "Go no further, mortal! To pass through our influence, one must be worthy! You are not. To prove yourself worthy of my acknowledgement, I require a mighty warrior who has lived a live of strength and violence. You are but a suckling babe of a single score of years, I find you wanting and reject your passage!"

When I tried to continue, a wall of force smashed me down to my knees, and it became clear that I absolutely would not be bypassing this hurdle by forcing it. I glared at the red window. "Theres got to be fifty gods down here, there's no way any one person could pass all the tests, right?"

"It is possible," he intoned. "But yes, very difficult. That is why the Valley of Broken Gods has kept intruders out of the Acropolis for…hey, what are you doing? Stop that! Get back on the ground."

I grinned at him as I rose, stretching expansively with an exaggerated yawn. "Thanks for that. I had a crick in my back. I'm good now."

"Impossible!" he spat. "I just assessed you! You weren't worthy! You should be unable to pass!"

Smirking, I stepped forward, hitting another wall as the green window flared. "Interesting," said the second voice, the god Alraune apparently. "You have some means of bypassing the tests, but those means are manual and must be activated. Curious. How did you do it?"

"I have the strength of ten men because my heart is pure," I answered sarcastically. "Now what's your qualification?"

In reality, I had cheated. When he mentioned the qualification of being a lifelong warrior, it occurred to me that I HAD warriors in my court. I'd incarnated Abaddon, letting his entire life roll through my head, and it had allowed me to pass unhindered through the wall of force.

The green voice paused for a moment and then sighed. "Very well. I was Alraune, as my oafish brother already revealed, I was the god of insidious whispers. Secrets revealed in the dark and unmentionable deeds were my purview. But my true love, my most treasured pastime, was subversion. Not the secrets themselves, nor the whispers, but the extrication of that forbidden knowledge with guile and grace."

Nodding, I let the power of Abaddon fade away as I called forth Belial. Sure enough, as soon as my first form manifested in my body, the wall of force faded, and I was able to pass easily forward.

The issue was that incarnation was not a casual act. I hadn't allowed most of my court to dwell within my body, and there was a reason for that. Trying to process a whole other life, and more than that, two other lives counting Leviathan. After a slight pause, I triggered Piece of Mind, manifesting a parallel and putting it in charge of running the other selves. My main brain was immediately freed up from the quagmire, and I let out a sigh of relief as I stepped forward to stand in front of the next shrine.

Rather than bullrush through and get stopped, I just waited, and the yellow light behind the glazed glass pulsed warmly as a cheerful feminine voice all but sang. "Oh, hello! A visitor, how exciting. My name is Mara, goddess of, happiness, love and cherished kinship. Those who wish to pass through my trial must have strong and enduring affection for others and prove their regard with word and deed."

I frowned, not sure which demon to manifest, but before I could decide, the voice continued. "I see you are a caring and affectionate person, and you are welcome to pass. Be safe along your journey, and please feel free to come by again and visit. It does get a bit monotonous down here."

"Thanks," I said slowly. "I just…pass? Like I'm allowed through right away? No hoops?"

"I'm not sure what a hoop is," she said happily. "But it sounds delicious. And yes, you're free to pass. You're a wonderful person, from what I can tell, and I wish you luck and wisdom on your journey."

"Well, thank you," I said lamely. "That's very nice. I was expecting more pushback on that."

I nodded gratefully to the shrine and then moved on, approaching the next shrine, a sky blue glow flickering behind the window. "Halt," intoned a gravelly voice. "You stand before the great got Durrus, lord of earth and stone, master of stoic protection. Only staunch defenders may pass my trial, those who remain implacable against unrelenting force."

This time I did hit the wall, and I admitted that was fair. Luckily I had this covered. Mornax made an appearance, and the life of my most durable defensive form was an easy pass for Durras's trial.

I couldn't help but feel a little in awe of Atlas's security features on this place. I assumed there was some kind of back way or alternate route to get in since there was no way having twenty legendary heroes on hand to get you past this every time was sustainable, but this was SO perfectly suited to me that it blew my mind.

Had he foreseen I'd be here? Had he influenced my choices to make this happen? Was it just a crazy coincidence like so many things involving gods? Was it somehow all three of those things? I genuinely had no idea, but I completely understood why I would be the one who needed to come to this place to access whatever plans he'd left behind. The only way through this place if you weren't ME was a huge team of incredibly specific people with very focused personalities.

The next shrine was a bit more ominous. Darkness. Not like an absence of light, but like tangible black energy clinging to the inside of the window. The voice that spoke this time was dull and distant, like the whisper of dead leaves over a cold grave. "Mortal," it whispered. "What is it you seek?"

"I mean…this is a hallway," I pointed out. "And I'm already partway down it. I'm not sure how much clearer I could make my intentions."

The voice laughed darkly. "That isn't what I asked. I asked what you SEEK. What is your deepest desire?" I frowned at that. It sounded…familiar. I stepped forward, and the voice spoke up. "You never ans-hm?" It stopped, trailing off. "I sense the power of the wish. You are worthy to pass. How interesting. Your divine blood, from whence does it come?"

"My ancestor is Alistair Wyndham," I said without bothering to conceal anything. Either this thing wasn't a problem or it WAS and I didn't want to piss it off. "They call him the Wishmaster."

"A boastful moniker," it sneered. "Ill suited to a creature of subtlety."

I shrugged. "Not sure I'd call him that. Guessing you don't know him. Was wondering if you were like…my grandcestor or something."

"Your blood smells of familiar power," it said slowly. "Child, know this. You stand before the last remnants of Rylant, god of poison desire. Should you wish to explore your gifts, to understand the heights to which the power of the wish can be polished, return to this place. Your bloodline is novel, but its might pales in comparison to the true force that can be unleashed by the desires of the heart."

That should have been an interesting concept, and I might have been tempted, but before I could respond, I got…almost a premonition. A flash of insight so strong that it nearly drove me to the ground.

Rylant's wish power was fundamentally opposed to my nature. The god of poisoned desire stood as the antithesis to my ancestor's concept of the wish. Fairness, balance, technical perfection. The principal that both parties benefit and making those benefits more than the sum of their parts.

My ancestor was kind of a dick, but he was a FAIR dick. He did his best to remain impartial and to give people what they wanted, as long as he got something out of it. Rylant was different. Rylant was like those genies from the old stories. His entire purpose was to twist and subvert the desires of others, to use their wishes for his own ends. He was closer to someone like my dad than the old man.

"I'll keep it in mind," I said slowly. I wouldn't, not personally, but I wasn't against letting my dad know about this place and this particular god. I suspected he could use the information for something, and if he could, that meant I could extract payment from HIM, which had already come in handy a few times. His more flexible wishes had helped me out of a couple jams.

Rylant went silent, no longer deigning to speak to me now that he'd said his piece, and I moved onto the next shrine. One by one, I passed through them, using the incarnations to bypass each individual requirement, until finally, after one or two dozen of the damned things, I emerged from the crevice, from the Valley of Broken Gods, into a massive…place.

I didn't have words to describe the hollow in the ring of mountains, its sheer size beggaring my imagination, but I DID recognize some of the smaller mountains inside the ring. The corpses of gods. I sighed as I glanced around. Now what the hell was I supposed to do NEXT? Then I paused. Actually, I didn't need to figure that out. I had access to a primary source. Time to contact Callie and have her wake up her old man. I had some questions for Adam Atlas, and I wasn't going to be ignored this time.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I arrived in my wife's soul space without much fanfare, but she knew the second I showed up. It only took her a second to appear, and I could see from the concern on her face that she wasn't expecting me to be there. "Shane," she said as she hurried over to where I sat by the altar. "What's wrong? Is everything ok?"

Chuckling, I put my arms around her, taking the time to pull her against me and set my chin on top of her head. I hadn't seen her in a while, and I never passed up a chance to spend time with my wife. She snuggled up against me, though her voice was sardonic as she muttered "This really isn't helping the anxiety." Reaching up to pull off my mask, I smiled as I stepped away from her.

"I'm fine, just a lot happening," after the mess with Drexel, seeing Callie was like a drink of cool water for my parched nerves. I always felt better when she was around. "As for what's wrong…how much time do you have?"

The answer, as it turned out, was a lot. So I told her everything. Last time we'd talked had been a few days ago, at least in detail, so there was a lot to cover, but by the time I was done, she was glaring at the altar, or rather the gem in the pommel of the sword floating above it.

"Adam!" she snapped. "You've been dodging my calls for weeks, but if you don't respond to me right now I'm going to pitch that damned sword into the Void. You owe us some answers."

"You don't have to shout," came a calm voice from behind us. "I'm right here."

We both spun, surprised to find Atlas himself reclining in one of the pews, looking supremely unaffected by anything that was going on. He beamed at us both. "Sorry kids, been a bit busy. What can I do for my favorite daughter and her intrepid husband?"

I scowled. "You know why we're calling. Your oracle had to have told you by now."

His eyebrows went up. "You're in the Chasm?" He frowned, expression troubled. "That's not right. You shouldn't have arrived there for another two years." His eyes snapped to Callie. "What happened? Who attacked you?"

"Morwenna!" she spat. "Which you would know if you ever answered your godsdamned calls! I've been trying to contact you through the gem for ages."

He grimaced. "It's not that simple. The amount of will I can seal into the gem is limited. It's a divine artifact, and being my daughter gives you access, but being able to properly USE it is different. The gem is a storage device. That's its purpose. It holds power. I left a limited number of fragments of my power in there to operate autonomously if you needed it. Remote contact is a huge powersuck, so it wasn't a function I implanted. I can activate it myself, but you can't."

"Then how are we talking to you right now?" I asked bluntly. "Because the fact that you're here suggests-"

"I've been getting strange feedback lately," he admitted. "I wasn't sure what it was, but oracular outreach makes sense. Probably attempts to let me know you were in the Chasm. I assume you've made it to the Acropolis if you're calling me?"

I wondered how he knew the difference between the urgency of the calls. I assumed he COULD hear them and had chosen not to answer. "I am," I admitted. "I'm in the mausoleum at the moment, but I have no idea what I'm doing here. I assumed you left some kind of backup plan there, presumably to do with the god flesh. Is there a method here to resurrect you?"

"And what do you mean you're busy?" Callie asked in annoyance. "You're DEAD. What could you possibly have going on?" I put a hand on her shoulder, and she closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. "Sorry. I meant to say, what's been keeping you so busy?"

Callie had a bad experience with her dad, and I knew, even if she didn't talk about it, that she'd been excited about her connection to Atlas. She'd been looking forward to getting to know him, and to be unable to contact him for so long, she felt abandoned. Atlas seemed to know it too, because he gave her a sad smile. "It's…complicated. Dead gods are dead, but we're still gods. We have certain methods of interaction, with each other and with the outside world, ones I can't talk much about."

"I get it," she sighed. "It's just been…a lot."

"I can imagine," he said sympathetically. "You said Morwenna came after you? Morwenna the Witch? The one who I made my original deal with? I have to admit, I thought she was long dead at this point."

I snorted. "Pretty much the opposite. She's a Void God. She had this huge complicated plan targeting my family and our inheritance ceremony, and she benefitted from it enough that she was able to inch her way over the finish line on her own. THEN she tried to have Callie assassinated by a traitor inside the WCP because she's scared of entering the war while you're still active."

He snorted. "That sounds like her. She was always obnoxiously cautious. Never a direct route to anything if there was risk involved. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised she survived."

"But if WE had another god in our corner," I pointed out. "A living god, who she was scared of, not to mention you would be able to help directly against the Vanished gods. The question is, can it be done? What is this resurrection ritual. I don't know too much about it aside from the need for god flesh."

"Well, you'd need one of my divine artifacts," he said casually. "But luckily, you have one of those. Your connection should enable you to summon Calliope's sword directly, if only for a short time. But that's hardly the only ingredient. The ritual I left behind in the Acropolis wasn't one I expected to ever use. It was more an emergency measure in case of a severe crisis."

I nodded, plumbing the depths of my memory. "We also need…spiritually reactive biomatter? Something we can use to clone the god flesh to create a body for you." Then I paused. "Although…actually, more than just you would be even better." I filled him in on Deveskane, mentioning the man's identity as a former worshipper. When I asked him if he remembered the other god, he just shook his head.

"Nothing specific," he replied sheepishly. "I had a lot of worshippers. It makes a lot more sense that he'd remember me than the other way around. But it's not impossible. I'd need to speak to him directly and establish terms. There's an artifact present in the ritual chamber that can allow us to speak. You'll have to get to it first. Which might be a problem, because there MIGHT be a bit of security in the inner ring of the city. And by might be, I mean there definitely is."

"What kind of security could you have that's still active after…however many thousands of years that place has been in the Chasm?" I asked, appalled at the very notion.

He shrugged. "I had a few clans of ascendants on site, and multiple stasis fields. Which ones lived, which ones used those fields, and which ones are still around, I have absolutely no idea. But you'll need to be careful in any case. The key to the Acropolis was one of my divine artifacts. It bypasses all the security, but I don't have it anymore. You'll need to go in the hard way."

"Somehow, I kind of assumed that," I sighed. "I ALSO assume you can draw me some kind of map?"

"Best as I can," he said apologetically. "That kind of proximity to the Chasm is going to seriously mess with long term enchantments. No telling HOW it'll do that, however. You're going to need to go slowly. Take your time and do it right."

I blew out a breath. "Ok, I can do that. But WHAT am I doing? You keep mentioning the ritual, but I don't know what materials we need, or how to do it. Seriously, what am I looking for?"

"Right," he said absently. "Sorry, I'm doing several things at once right now, I got distracted. One of the downsides to a shattered soul. Most of the fragments are gone or dormant, but the ones that still exist are sucking up attention. Anyway, I have instructions. You said you're in the mausoleum? Which side did you enter through?"

I blinked. "There was…only one entrance that I saw? It was the one with all the dead gods?"

"Yes, I know, which dead gods?" he said impatiently. "There are four of those passages, one for each cardinal direction."

"How many gods did you KILL?" I asked in an appalled voice. "I don't know whether to be horrified or impressed. There were a bunch of them. One of them was…Alraune? And his brother was a god too. And there was a goddess of like…affection?" I listed off all the deities I could remember. There had been quite a few of them and they had kind of been blurring together by the end. Their presences had been overwhelming, and I was getting worn down by the time I got out.

He chuckled. "More than you might expect. But it's not important. I know roughly where you arrived. Do you remember the layout of the area around you?" I did, and I mentioned it to him. He nodded slowly, closing his eyes as if digging through his memory. "That should be…the left hand of Roald, the wrist of Shang-Jin, and the calf of Dox."

"I meant to ask, actually, what's the deal with god remains like that?" I had been wondering about it. "Like I've met gods. They're not gigantic. Why are the body parts so huge?"

"A god and their world are one," he said with a sigh. "Upon death, a god realm fragments. The parts that have something to keep them stable, like an object of power, or a fragment of divine soul, or even certain lingering types of intent, they die. Those dead realm fragments return to being physical manifestations of the body, but at the SIZE of a realm." He paused. "Ok, there's some spatial nonsense involved, so the size doesn't translate, it condenses, but that's pretty much the reason."

I filed that information away for later. "Sorry, getting off topic. The gods you mentioned, will their flesh work? Like can any flesh be used?"

"No," he said immediately. "There are requirements. You need to find me a specific appendage. The eye of Habeus. The parameters for revival vary based on the situation, the eye should be optimal for my current state. It's not far from you. I'd say about fifty miles northwest." There was a slight flicker in his image, like a screen going blurry, and he cursed. "Damn, can't maintain this connection. Something is interfering."

The gaze he turned on Callie was apologetic. "Calliope, I am so sorry I haven't been here for you these last few months. If all goes well, then we can have a proper reunion soon. I have so much to ask you. So much I want to teach. But for now, just take care of yourself. You have the tools. I see you've been making improvements to my gifts, and you're already on the path to far surpassing me someday.

"Shane, I need you to listen carefully," he said as he turned to me. "I have a lot to say and not much time to say it. The specifics of the ritual will become more obvious once you reach the ritual chamber, but there are a few things you need to know first.." As he filled me in on the details, I filed it all away. I was determined to make this work. Having another god on our side, possibly two…there was no better way to keep my family safe.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Emerging from the soul space took me a second to adapt to. The environment of the Chasm was so radically different from the interior of that church in my wife's soul. I opened my eyes calmly, searching around for the others. Once we'd gotten in, I'd let Dayna, Chloe, and Brad out of the Domain to watch my back while I communed with Callie.

I was expecting it to be a formality, but when I opened my eyes, I spotted Chloe and Dayne waiting for me with serious looks on their faces. Coming to my feet in a single movement, I snapped my head around, checking for danger. Once I confirmed there wasn't any, I turned to my friends. "Ok, you two look like you just saw a ghost. What exactly happened while I was out?"

"Tell him," Dayna said grimly. "He needs to know."

Chloe bit her lip. "But I'm not sure. I mean, I am sure, but I'm not SURE sure, just mostly sure and-"

"Chloe," said Dayna firmly. "This is important. I know it's just a hunch, but even a hunch about this is critical info. Just tell him. He can decide how viable the information is as he goes, but he NEEDS to decide."

"Ok," the nun said sheepishly. "Well, you know my Perception is very high, but my Focus isn't good. Still, I'm a VERY good lookout. I thought it would be helpful for me to keep watch to make sure nothing was lurking around here." She hesitated slightly. "This is stupid, I was probably imagining things."

I held up a hand. "Chloe," I said firmly. "I have faith in your senses. If you noticed something, I need to know about it."

"Well, I thought I saw someone out there among the graves," she said slowly. "A man. With a sword. I've never seen him before myself, but based on what Brad told me, he might have been that Clarent person he dropped into the Void."

I frowned. That wasn't just bad, it was borderline impossible. "Are you sure?" I pressed. "How would he have gotten past the gauntlet?"

She hesitated, and Dayna put a hand on her shoulder. "It's ok. Like I said, he needs to know."

"I think…I think IT helped him," Chloe whispered fearfully. "The THING from before. The one that tried to take me."

My blood went cold. Drexel. She was talking about Drexel. Clarent had been chasing me in that crevice when we found the tower. We'd gotten away, and I hadn't seen him since. I'd assumed he just fucked off somewhere else to look for me, maybe followed the river of moonlight, but if he doubled back…if he'd entered the tower like we had, Drexel could have corrupted him. He'd have no chance of resisting or purifying himself based on what I'd seen. And once he was out, he could have been infecting people left and right.

"Are you sure?" I asked her quickly. Maybe too quickly, she flinched a bit, and I pulled back. "Sorry, I believe you, I just need to confirm. This is a BIG deal, Chloe. If Clarent was in that tower and then came out…" I was sure Drexel had some tricks to get past the gauntlet, but I was more worried about who he might have met before coming here. If Drexel had infected even a few people and sent them out to spread his name…well, they didn't call him the Mindplague for nothing. I'd seen that first hand.

Chloe swallowed hard, but at Dayna's squeeze of her shoulder, she took a deep breath and nodded. "I'm sure." Her tone was hard, eyes determined. "I would know that THING anywhere. Even after you helped cure me, I have this…connection to it. I try not to think about it, but it's still there. I knew the second I saw him."

I nodded, but I wasn't really paying attention. I was running through facts in my mind. Why would Drexel come here? Easy answer, resurrection. Drexel was a god, and he was dead. He clearly had abilities as a dead god that others didn't, presumably something to do with his Domain as a living deity, but the fragments we'd seen were limited to B and C-rank. Being in the Chasm had obviously eroded his powers. If he could fully resurrect as a god though…he could possess anything and anyone he came across. Considering how easily he'd taken other C-rankers under suppression, I wasn't sure even other GODS would be safe.

Which meant we NEEDED to beat him to the ritual chamber. I wasn't sure I would have been able to make it there and activate it without help from Atlas, but I also wasn't an ancient ghost god that could possess legions of people. There were beings inside the Acropolis Atlas had warned me to be careful of, and if Drexel got his claws into enough of them, he was going to become an even more impossible problem.

I swallowed hard. "Alright," I said, shaking off my slight panic attack. "That's alright. Thanks to you, we know he's here. You can't just use any god flesh, there are parameters. I know where we're going, but D-HE doesn't. We can get ahead of him. We need to."

Of course, what I left unsaid was that even if he wasn't resurrected, Drexel's spread would be terrifying. If we stopped him, I was still worried about how we were going to take care of this bastard if he got out of the Chasm. We hadn't unleashed him ourselves, but he'd gotten loose all the same, and I wasn't looking forward to seeing what he would do released into a universe at war. Given how chaotic the front lines of the warfront were, Drexel could do a LOT of damage.

Deciding to put aside the potential apocalypse that I'd inadvertently helped let loose on the unsuspecting universe at large, I turned northwest, peering into the gloom to try to get a heading on our destination.

Between the mountains, I could see clouds of fog, but they were natural, easily revealing their secrets in the form of silhouettes and…shapes. I frowned. I'd just caught some movement. "Hey Chloe," I said slowly. "When you said you saw Clarent out there, did you mean that you ONLY saw Clarent? Or did you see other things?"

"Oh, you mean the monsters?" she asked cheerfully. "I forgot about those! Yeah, they're very scary, aren't they? Did you see them too?"

"Everyone up," I said quickly. "Up and over here, get in close." I triggered Murmur, covering us in my Domain as they crowded in. In the distance, I could hear the sound of roaring in the distance. I had specifically asked Atlas about any occupants in the Acropolis, but I hadn't bothered asking if any of them were out HERE. I wondered if he'd forgotten to mention it or if there had just been escapees.

The roaring got closer, and I cursed. "Chloe, Brad, get in the Domain. Dayna, you ok sticking around to watch my back?"

"Obviously," she said in a scornful voice. "You can't be trusted on your own, that's why I'm HERE." Her eyes were bright and she had a teasing smile on her face as she said it, so I knew she didn't mean any harm. If anything, the banter helped center me. Chloe and Brad were protesting, but I ignored them and pulled them in. There was a loud bang as something crashed into a nearby rock, knocking it over, and my eyes went wide as I took off running.

I called for Sammael, and more than that, Asmodeus to lend his strength to Dayna, and we took off running, building up enough speed to spread our wings and take off in the direction of the eye. My Danger Sense screamed, and I flapped hard, banking up at the last second and yelling for Dayna to do the same. As we left the space above the ground, a pair of…things, leapt from the fog and crashed down where we'd been.

They were horrifying. They looking like werewolves, only shaved and made of melted wax. Their muscles bulged and twisted under their misshapen skin, tearing the dermis as they flexed, only for it to heal moments later. They jerked their heads up, jagged teeth thrusting from both side of their long muzzles, not set in a neat row like normal teeth, but just haphazardly jammed into the roof and floor of the mouth like fields of broken glass, with the teeth set in seemingly random patterns and alignments.

But the worst part was the eyes. Glowing gold with hate and madness, cross shaped pupils bisecting the metallic iris as sideways lenses flickered across the overlarge eyeballs. They screamed, rage and hate and pain mixing with hunger and glee as they hurled themselves off the ground, gravity giving way under their terrible power as they almost seemed to float up toward us so fast I could barely track it.

Barely wasn't not at all though. I flapped, as did Dayna, and we blurred forward, dodging the jump. I wanted to use my waltz, but Dayna couldn't, and I was proven right to have her along when she screamed a warning just in time for me to dodge sideways and avoid a third monster I hadn't seen. My Danger Sense wasn't any help here because there was danger all around.

We flapped furiously, flying at high speed towards the eye as the monsters gathered, a pack of them converging and leaping up in long, gravity defying bounds, bouncing off peaks and valleys alike as the nipped at our heels (literally at one point, one of them almost bit my foot off). "What ARE these things?" Dayna screamed as she dodged another attack.

"I'm sorry, did I get here before you?" I bellowed back, dodging a pair of them and kicking off a third to avoid a fourth. I flapped harder, ascending a bit higher to hopefully get out of the way. "We need to get over there!" I pointed to the spherical mountain that was obviously an eye.

"How are you going to TAKE that thing?" she asked as we dove, giving up the high ground in exchange for speed and distance.

I just laughed, wind whipping my hair as we plummeted. "Domain!" I yelled over the rushing air. "Atlas says it should be easy! Once we've got it, we can head for the interior. The defenses on the Acropolis should stop these things from entering, provided we find the right entrance!" There were a few ways in, and we needed to find one where the path for entry couldn't be brute forced. Luckily, I'd been given several entry paths, and I knew just the one to pick.

We arrived at the eye in moments, and I swept down in a spine tingling dive, hand reaching out like I was skimming water with my fingertips. Once I made contact, I followed Atlas's directions, reaching into my soul and PULLING with my Domain in a way that was the opposite of a projection.

This would have been impossible anywhere else, but luckily, the god flesh was suppressed by the vortex, so it was legitimately only C-rank at the moment. That meant my Domain could safely hold it, whereas something like an actual divine being would have probably popped my soul like an overinflated balloon.

In the blink of an eye (pun intended) the mountain vanished, and I crowed with triumph as I pulled up, rocketing into the air like a slingshot and clearing another mass attack effortlessly, Dayna right next to me as I cheered and pulled us into a turn towards the center of the ring of mountains. "We're heading down there!" I yelled, gesturing to a clearing lit by a pair of burning green torches that blazed through the mist.

That was the entrance we needed, and the fastest way inside the Acropolis. From there, I had a few more ingredients to get, and then we were headed for the ritual chamber. I just hoped we managed to make it there before Clarent and Drexel. Otherwise, I had a feeling we weren't leaving here alive.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The entrance to the Acropolis was creepy. I had kind of expected that, but I wasn't prepared for exactly how jarring the place was when we entered. The torchlight acted as kind of a barrier, forcing everyone who entered to pause and then continue carefully. Specifically, the flickering light caused a mesmerizing shadow effect that hid the secret path through the clearing, leading into a long dark passage under a huge stone archway.

As soon as we entered, I led Dayna forward about five feet, then sharply turned left and walked another three. Behind us, the monsters arrived, howling for blood…which they got pretty much immediately, but not in the way they were hoping. As the nearest monsters charged us, they hit an invisible wall of jagged edges.

There was a low, ragged scream from the throat of the first monster as it literally tore itself apart. It was like watching a slow motion wood chipper in action. The monster was terrified, but it was also very stupid. It tried to get away from the pain by dragging itself further, hastening its demise, and eventually just kind of…fell apart. A slurry of parts spilled onto the ground, washing against the invisible barrier as a small tide of blood carried diced up monster pieces deeper into the maze.

Stupid or not, the creatures weren't INSANE. They stopped immediately, staring down at the shredded monster scattered across the ground in confusion and fear. They glanced up at me, snarling fearfully as if suspecting I'd done it.

Which I supposed I had, in a way. I'd brought them to the invisible maze because I knew what kind of place it was. Dayna, who was right ahead of me, swallowed hard and tucked her wings in. Which wasn't a bad idea, but I decided an even better one was to just dismiss Sammael and Asmodeus. Dayna nodded gratefully at me before looking around in concern. "What is this place?" she asked slowly.

"Atlas called it the Minus Maze," I said with a sigh. "But we're not in too big of a hurry. It's impossible to sneak up on us here. We should move a little further in, but once we do, we can take a minute to regroup. This is probably the safest place in the Acropolis for us."

Her expression lit up. "You're talking about an update? It HAS been a while."

"Yeah, the only problem is that you're as broke as I am," I teased. "So you can't afford to cash out these wishes. Still, I'm the Wishmaster, so a few months of stats should be a huge windfall. Probably don't want to leave it too much longer. I doubt it'll be enough to overtake my current stat value, since that would put me at B-rank, but it should be a decent amount. Plus, I talked to Atlas about it, and he thinks that the suppression from the vortex will actually help us process the point influx, keeping it from overwhelming us. We need every bit of advantage we can get, so taking advantage of the safe area is the smartest call."

We headed deeper into the maze, following the directions I'd gotten from Atlas, just in case, but when we made it a little further, far enough that I was sure the creatures wouldn't get lucky, we both sat down to prepare for the influx.

It had been so long since my last batch of stat gains, I was almost afraid to let it hit. As the Wishmaster, I was undoubtedly the recipient of plenty of renown, both among my own people and among the rest of the universe. My last batch of gains had been for just the coronation, and while there were plenty of S-rankers there to give me quality income, the quantity of people who would have become aware since then should more than make up for it. Closing my eyes and taking a deep breath, I relaxed the almost subconscious restraint of my soul, allowing the renown to funnel into me.

To my delight, Atlas had been completely correct. I could feel the renown being…not degraded, but slowed by the vortex, the reality of those hard numbers belonging to the higher realm we lived in diminished in significance by the Chasm's pull.

Letting out the breath, I finally took in the changes, and I was surprised to see that it wasn't just my stats that had grown. I hadn't checked on my demons actively in a while, and the ones I hadn't been paying attention to had been hard at work, training and growing inside my Domain, at least most of them. There had been relatively few actual upgrades, tiers weren't such an easy gap to cross, but at the very least some of them had become stronger.

I was excited to take in the changes, but I calmed myself, forcing my mind to focus on the stat gains first.

Wishmaster status. C-rank. Ability: Grandmaster Wish- Nine times a day grant a Grandmaster wish in return for proper compensation. Wish must be feasibly achievable by the candidate's own efforts within a three day period with current statistics.

Grandmaster Path of the Demonbinder- The Domain of a Great King.

Wishmaster candidate points-1000

Might-1,451,963

Impact-155

Fantasy-1,034,640

Vitality-1,379,527

Focus-1,299,126

Perception-1,161,873

Creation-972,921

Progress to next rank:7,300,205/10,000,000

Soul strength- Tanzanite Soul Body

Body Forging: Nine Phoenix Reincarnation Art- 6/81 drops- First Layer 1/9

Chronicle: Ten Demons Tome (pages bound:2- 1 Zagan, 1 Leviathan)

wish scrolls stockpiled: 189 (5 in the possession of friends to be used over time)

Bonded companion: Archimedes (Life Nova Phoenix)

Weapon: Ten Demons Tree (reincarnation tree staff that lets him simulate alternate lives to perfect his forms, and when combined with the library lets him simulate and deduce techniques in a process called the "Wisdom of Solomon")

Stored: 10 Adherent Fire, 7 shadow attacks, 10 shadow jump (seven in reserve), 10 Stealth charges,10 triple strength tranq blows (ten in reserve), 10 spider leg attacks (ten in reserve), 3 gravity attacks, 1 shadow clone, 18 scan heals (I-rank ability so Shane can hold more)

Financial resources: 0 B-ranked, 0 C-ranked, 0 D-ranked(worth 100 E-ranked, past master rank is a watershed)

Court of Gehenna:

1.Doom Sovereign- Tier 7

2.Valtek- Tier 2

3.Cooking- Tier 7

4.Inventing- Tier 2

5.Balam- Tier 3

6.Nine Phoenix Reincarnation Art- Tier 2

7.Piano- Tier 1

8.Guitar- Tier 1

9.First Aid- Tier 1

10.Angelic Bond- Tier 6

11.Dust Construction- Tier 5

12. Stone Limb- Tier 6

13.Moonlit Night- Tier 4

14.Consecration of Flame- Tier 6

15.Ripple Running- Tier 3

16.State of Grace- Tier 4

17.Steam Arrow- Tier 4

18.Afterburner- Tier 6

19.Pit of Despair- Tier 6

20.Mountain Stance- Tier 6

21.Heart over Body- Tier 6

22.Mercy Kill- Tier 5

23.Double Trouble- Tier 6

24.Touch of Tears- Tier 5

25.Flurry of Blows- Tier 3

26.Heavy Hands- Tier 2

27.Marked for Death- Tier 4

28.False Fatality- Tier 3

29.Blood Curse- Tier 4

30.Creeping Darkness- Tier 2

31.Final Strike- Tier 6

32.Overlay- Tier 4

33.Song of the Soil- Tier 3

34.Rhythm of the Wild- Tier 2

35.Eye of Revelation- Tier 6

36.Danger Sense- Tier 6

37.Piece of Mind- Tier 6

38.Empty Spirit- Tier 6

39.Belial- Tier 7

40.Abomination Engine- Tier 6

41.Mephistopheles- Tier 7

42.Cosmic Collapse- Tier 6

43.Circle of Damnation- Tier 6

44.Mephisto's Waltz- Tier 6

45.Mornax- Tier 7

46.Zagan- Tier 7

47.Life Nova- Tier 7

48.Genesis Burst- Tier 6

49.Bael- Tier 7

50.Beelzebub- Tier 7

51.Agares- Tier 7

52.Dantalion- Tier 7

53.Sammael- Tier 7

54.Limbo- Tier 7

55.Gluttony- Tier 7

56.Wrath- Tier 6

57.Pride- Tier 7

58.Retribution- Tier 7

59.Murmur- Tier 7

60.Leviathan- Tier 7

61.Behemoth- Tier 7

62.Glory- Tier 7

63.Abaddon -Tier 7

64.Wisdom of Solomon- Tier 7

65.Promethean Fire Soul Body- Tier 6

66.Fate Sense- Tier 7

67.Scent of Truth- Tier 6

68.Damnatio Memoriae- Tier 6

69.Dark Reflection- Tier 6

70. Asmodeus- Tier 7

71. Astaroth- Tier 7

72. Azazel- Tier 7

I was blown away. Nearly two point three MILLION points. Granted, this was my first boost post coronation, and I'd expected a hefty influx, but still…I was ALMOST three quarters of the way through C-rank already. No wonder so many people tried so hard to become the Wishmaster. I made a mental note to save my wishes for Callie. My wife would need my help to keep up with this kind of pace, at least a bit. Although, her connection to Atlas should give her a sharp increase in stats once he returned to the universe, so that would help.

Beyond the stats, a few of my demons had grown as well, and I was surprised to see which ones. Scent of Truth had reached tier 6, stepping into the Master level, and Fate Sense had reached tier 7, taking his place beside my most powerful demons at the Grandmaster equivalent tier. Danger Sense had reached tier 6, and Life Nova tier 7, though that was less surprising given my body forging efforts.

While all my demons had grown, it was clear that the ones I worked with the most often were the ones who benefited the most. Autonomous training didn't yield the same results as real interaction with the outside world.

Inside the Chasm, I couldn't bring my new stats to bear, which would have seemed like a distinct weakness if I hadn't talked to Atlas. Instead, I knew exactly how big of an advantage the suppression was. Large influxes of points took time to acclimate to, and would put you off your game too much to be an effective strategy mid journey. Inside the Chasm though, not only did the impact of the point gain diminish, but the points that I obtained would be kept from affecting me too deeply by the suppression.

I was going to STAY at half C-rank levels of power, regardless of the new stats, and that meant I would acclimate gradually without needing to go through any kind of weakening period. I turned to Dayna, waiting until she opened her eyes. "So, how'd you do?" I asked eagerly. I was used to sharing my rank ups with my friends or my wife, and I admit I might have been a little enthusiastic about the debrief.

She took it in stride, rolling her eyes as she reminded me. "It's not really polite to ask about people's stat gains." I blinked, because I had forgotten that was a thing. I was so open about stats with my friends it hadn't come up in a long time. My shoulders slumped, and she sighed in exasperation. "But fine. Five hundred thousand or so. A substantial income, most likely the result of Lady Bethy's promotion of me to others."

I bit back a wince. Five hundred thousand. It really put into perspective how much NORMAL Ascendants could grow in the same amount of time. Being the Wishmaster was every bit as terrifyingly efficient as expected. Combining it with a god war probably helped too, admittedly, but still, I could see how Aiden made it so far in only a century.

Considering the hundred million points needed to cross B-rank, and the billion needed to cross A, it seemed like a cavernous gulf to reach S. But with income like this, it would definitely be possible, slowly but steadily. I was sure it would drop as time went on, but even so…I could see it. Hope for divinity. But to get there, I needed to get through THIS first. So I blew out a breath, stood, and gestured for Dayna to follow. Our break was over. It was time to move forward.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We entered the Acropolis carefully. The rest of the maze wasn't too much trouble, and when we passed through the passage down into the earth, I was surprised by how quiet and empty it was. Eventually, we emerged onto a large plateau overlooking a quiet, dark cavern.

It was…astonishing. A city frozen in time. Dark macabre buildings, all sharp angles and dark glass, stretching out into the distance. Streets unmarred by motion, lamps along their edges still glowing with unearthly blue light through some unknown mechanism. It was one of the resplendent and haunting settlements I'd ever seen in my life.

But it looked dead. I knew that there were probably living beings hidden somewhere nearby, but from this vantage, all I could see was the cooling corpse of a once great city.

"Nice place," Dayna said slowly. "So, where are we going? The ritual chamber?"

I shook my head. "Not yet. The ritual chamber was set up and sealed, but some of the reagents were too valuable to leave unguarded. The biomass Atlas used is a bit more sophisticated than the slapdash experimental muck Hatescream had to make do with. He said we're supposed to go pick up the substance, and that it's contained within one of his artifacts of power. A box that isolates anything inside it from everything. Called it the Heart of the Void."

Which was incredibly useful, and which I was definitely hoping to keep once we resurrected him. We'd need it for the ritual, granted, but after that…well, we'd have to see.

She shot me a cautious look. "See, I would have expected you to make some wisecrack about yet another person asking you to do a heist. But your complete lack of enthusiasm for this task makes me think there's more to it that you're letting on."

"Yeah…" I said with a sigh. "He said this place originally had protectors. Clans of warriors with access to stasis fields. Some might still be around, but he didn't know which ones or where. I get the impression he didn't expect the retrieval to be simple. I'm just a little worried about what we might find at the location."

"Speaking of, what location did he give you?" she asked. "You didn't mention where we're going."

I pointed off into the distance, where a large, broad manor house spread out behind the city. "The City Lord's Manor," I said dryly. "Because of course it's in the creepiest possible place, right?"

And it was. Even from here, I could see the manor in stark relief. Lit by the same ghostly blue flames in glass posts, the yard of the manor was a lush, expansive lawn of pitch black grass, lined with tall thorny black hedges, periodically dotted with long lines of dark earth in the form of rows of thin gardens, all planted with dark, gloomy plants, black roses, thistles, heather, and many other plants, speckled with silvery dew that made the plants look like nothing so much as a captive galaxy.

Which raised the obvious question. "Who do you think has been taking care of this place?" I asked as we headed down into the city and made our way down the empty, silent street. "No debris, no dust, even on the street. The lawn looked well maintained and those bushed were all neatly trimmed. You think some of the defenders decided to keep up gardening duty?"

Dayna's eyes were scanning the shadowed store fronts of the city as we passed between them. "Maybe. I feel…unsettled. As a hunter, I can see an uncountable number of places from which to observe unsuspecting prey. I can feel the eyes on me as we walk."

"Like…ACTUALLY feel them, like it's a real technique or skill, or feel them like you just have a gut instinct?" I asked cautiously, calling Dantalion to try to map the area for observers.

I didn't pick anything up, but oddly, that didn't help. Azazel was whispering to me that Dayna was right. We were being watched. I kept my eyes peeled as we approached the City Lord's Manor, and when we got close enough, I stopped Dayna. "There's something in there," I told her slowly. "Several somethings. They're not moving, but they are humanoid." I paused, waiting for more information to come in through my senses. "They're…huh. They're dead?"

Frowning, I inched towards the door, staff manifesting into my hand ready for a fight. When I reached the door, I wedged it open slowly, glancing inside.

Bodies. Dozens of them. Shriveled and dried, lying twisted on the floor. It took me a moment to process what I was looking at. They were…blue? And they had multiple arms. I had no idea what I was looking at, but Dayna did.

"Asura," she said warily. "One of the warrior races. I did a lot of research on battle specific racial traits growing up. Heaven Murder Elves are one of the elite warrior peoples, and the Asura were at the top of that list. Blue, six arms. Three faces. I don't like that there are so many here. Asura are monsters in combat. They're on the same general level of being as your wife's Archangel trait, and there are twenty or thirty of them here. What could kill this many Asura?"

I knelt down to poke at one of the bodies, letting Dantalion process the information, and my jaw tightened. "Oh," I said slowly. "Oh dear. That's not good." She raised an eyebrow at me, and I swallowed hard. "The Asura. Their veins are empty. All of them. But more than that, they've had stats drained away. Something DRANK their Might stats. That's why their muscles have shrunk alongside the desiccation. Draining blood is one thing, but I only know one kind of creature that can drink stats."

Her eyes snapped up, scanning the room quickly. "Vampires. Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but I was told that Vampires don't EXIST in this universe anymore, at least not aside from Lady Bethy and her family."

"They don't," I confirmed. "Or shouldn't. But the Chasm is in the depths of the Void and the vortex shields it. If there ARE vampires here, he probably wouldn't have been aware of them. But still. Atlas didn't mention a vampire. I feel like that would have been important to bring up. Or hell, maybe they were a dime a dozen when he was alive. Whatever the case, we'd better be damned careful. If there's a vampire loose in this house we're in serious danger."

Memories of getting my teeth kicked in by Bethy when she let loose were rattling around my head. Sure, Bethy was a special breed, even for vampires, but still. Lark was considered the strongest mortal in existence for a reason. Bloodsuckers were not something wise people fucked around with.

I summoned Zagan, allowing it to incarnate inside me. I didn't know anything about this new threat, but Zagan had helped me take down Bethy last time. I couldn't hurt to give it a try. Well…it could kill me, I guess. But that probably wouldn't hurt. For long.

The green flames cast an eerie glow over the twisted forms of the dead Asuras littering the ground. "You should take the bodies," Dayne said bluntly. "Full grown Asura with all three faces are S-rank. They were suppressed by the vortex, I'm assuming. Or the vampire in here is the next best thing to a god. I'm hoping the former. Either way, the bodies were drained of Might, but should still have plenty of other stats."

I wasn't big on graverobbing, but I knew that S-rank corpses could be used for important reagents, so I gritted my teeth and stashed them all in my spatial ring. I didn't put them in my Domain because I didn't want it to explode when we left the vortex and the suppression faded.

More than the materials though, I wanted Bethy to check out the bodies. If those things were S-rank, then draining the Might from them shouldn't have been easy. Maybe the vampire had just drained the suppressed Might, and they would refill when they were out of range, but I was also unsure if maybe the vampire had been feeding on them consistently for a very long time. I needed feedback from an actual bloodsucker on how this all worked.

Once we stashed the bodies, I followed Atlas's directions, heading down to the basement and accessing a secret door behind a bookshelf in a well appointed basement study. Another set of stairs brought me to a large empty room made of stone. Or at least, it WOULD have been empty. If not for all the corpses.

"Huh," I said as I stared down at the body of the Asura closest to the floating black box. One of its arms was clawing at the latch to the box. Which had been sealed shut. Frantically. "Is it just me, or does that look like-"

"A coffin?" Dayna asked nervously. "Yup. It does indeed. And it kind of looks like he died closing it. What exactly IS this biomatter we're supposed to be getting from in there?"

I swallowed hard. "Blood," I admitted. "A drop of blood from some kind of ancient blood god. Atlas said his name was Varian, the Bloodsea. Apparently he could be reborn from even a drop of blood under the right circumstances. Atlas said he cleansed the drop, so the resurrection wasn't a concern, but the replication properties of the blood would be ideal for the ritual."

"A blood god," said Dayna in a wary voice. "That sounds vampire-ish."

"It does," I agreed. "But that's not really relevant. We have a job to do. We have to confirm that the drop is still there. If we drag on too long HE might get in and activate the ritual before us. Which means we need to open the box. But before that, I think maybe some time with Dantalion scanning this place would be useful."

She agreed, and I sat down. We were in a hurry, but an hour or two wouldn't kill us. So I waited. Gathering information from all over the room, easily managed in this suppressed environment. Finally, I opened my eyes.

"Ok. So I've got a basic idea what went on." I said slowly as I pieced it all together. "They opened the box. There was a vampire in the box. It got out and killed them all. More Asura's showed up and chased it down here. There was a fight. The last Asura managed to slam the box but had lost too much blood and died. Not sure WHY there was a vampire in the box, I can only assume that something went wrong. I need to contact Atlas, but unfortunately that's not an option at the moment."

She grimaced, but nodded. "I understand. Lets at least stack the deck in our favor before we open it."

I agreed, and started calling my demons. Mornax, Abaddon, Belial, about twenty tier 7 demons appeared around us, and we all began preparations for countering a threat. With my confirmation, Mornax began to inch forward, reaching down to open the coffin. Slowly, he lifted the lid, grunting in effort at the weight of it, to my immense surprise. When it finished opening, we all looked down into it.

It was large and empty, a room inside the box that shouldn't have fit there. Inside the room were two items. One was a pedestal, upon which was a glass box. Inside the box was a single blood red ruby. It had a million shifting facets, changing form as I watched.

Next to the pedestal was ANOTHER coffin. This one was on the ground, and it was made of white marble. It was also open, and a woman lay inside of it, arms crossed peacefully over her chest. When the light from the basement room fell on the woman, her eyes opened, revealing blood red irises, and she sat up, looking around the room coldly.

I froze. The face was so familiar it hurt. The eyes notwithstanding. A face I saw every night when I dreamt. A face I had stared across the aisle at during my wedding. Those red eyes flicked to me, and my mouth went dry with shock. "...Callie?" I croaked, as I stared down at the vampire who shared a face with my wife.

 

[Vongrak]

Surely the first assumption when dealing with something like that is not to assume it's a doppleganger of your soul-bound wife but that it's an illusion? Then again, considering they're so close maybe Shane can tell?

 

[SilverEagle2121]

Not what I expected there at all. This should be interesting.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The vampire who looked like my wife stared coldly up at me, hard ruby eyes the polar opposite of the bottomless blue black Callie sported, both in color and regard. It fel…alien. Like she was a hunting falcon who was eyeing a mouse from afar. It was painful to see that expression on features I loved so much.

But the more I looked, the more differences I saw. Not pronounced differences, mind. Whoever this was, she had about a nine parts similarity to my wife's facial features. But there WERE differences. Enough that I felt the need to verify the impossible nonsense I was seeing. So I reached for two of my skills. Angelic Bond and Beelzebub. One an unbreakable connection and one a skill for making clones.

There was a slight resistance, and then I felt Callie trigger Piece of Mind and create a parallel. Thankfully it seemed like she wasn't busy, because she came herself, leaving the parallel in charge of her body.

One second I was standing alone (or as along as one could be surrounded by demons and a friend) and the next, Callie was right next to me. She looked confused as she glanced around, until her eyes settled on the vampire, and then she froze as solid as I had. "Um…what the actual fuck?"

The vampire cocked her head sideways, an uncanny expression that reminded me of a dog more than anything. Callie called for her sword, bracing for an attack, but one never came. The vampire's eyes simply snapped to the pommel, glued to the stone in the hilt.

"Altas," Callie said coldly. "Atlas. Atlas." She invoked his name three times, and I assumed that was some sort of prearranged signal, because there was a flare of power and he manifested beside her in a blaze of heretic fire. It was showy and intimidating, much more than his appearance in the church. I knew he'd been capable, since we were planning to use the gem to call him here for the ritual, but this felt different.

He appeared next to her casually, his eyes scanning the room…and stopped cold at the vampire. His gaze stuck like a fly to flypaper, unable to pass. "A-Alara?"

"What the hell is going on, Atlas?" Callie asked in a hard voice. "Who is that? Why didn't you warn us about her? Why does she LOOK so much like me?" I noted a bit of hurt in that last question, and I tried not to wince, but Atlas looked like'd had the wind knocked out of him.

"Alara," he whispered. "Honey? How are you here?"

The vampire just stared coldly at him, those unblinking alien red eyes flaring with unnatural power. "I don't think she can hear you," I said slowly. "I've seen this before. She's in the bloodlust. Bethy gets like this sometimes. I take it this wasn't intentional? You didn't know she was in there?"

"Did I know that my daughter's dead body was stored in the Heart of the Void, kept preserved against the ravages of time?" he asked roughly. "Yes. But again, she was DEAD. The radiation from the blood drop has powerful reproductive and revivification properties, it's true, but nothing like THIS. It doesn't raise the dead. There's no reason…unless the rumors were true. Varian really was the first vampire. I always thought that was just good PR on his part."

He sounded troubled, swallowing hard as he stared down at her. Callie cut in. "That's all well and good, but why does she LOOK like me?"

"She doesn't," Atlas answered bluntly. "You look like her. She's much older, after all. Did you think you were the first person in all of creation, in the countless eons since I died, who was close enough to the Heretic Fire to make a connection? I told the truth when I mentioned taking notice and extending the power, but there was a REASON I took notice."

Callie looked unsure how to take that. "Why?" was the question she finally settled on. "Why do I look so much like her?"

"No idea," he said immediately. At her glare, he held up his hands. "I swear. I don't know. You might be a distant relative. You might be some kind of reincarnation, there are some powers that do that. It's a big universe and strange things happen sometimes. Maybe you're some kind of Atavistic throwback. Your compatibility with the Heretic Fire didn't come out of thin air, after all. Though you've altered in ways I didn't expect. That was fascinating."

The entire time we were talking, the vampire watched us, eyes glinting with ruby fire. But not a flicker of recognition passed over her face. It was that same alien regard, that same hunter's stare. Callie stared back, and I reached down to take her hand, sending a surge of calming thoughts and emotions through the bond.

Callie stopped, processed, and started to relax. Yes, this was an unusual surprise. But it seemed that Atlas hadn't intended for this to happen. He hadn't set a trap or manipulated us. He was just as shocked to see his daughter alive as we were. Callie felt a bit like a replacement, and I could tell he'd need to work to earn back her trust after this, but she also recognized that this wasn't the time.

"Atlas," I said quietly, nudging him. "Tell us what's happening. If it's what I think, I might be able to help."

"It's the Vortex, I would assume," he said dully. "She was exposed when someone opened the box, and her power was suppressed. The blood drop was too, but once the coffin closed, the influence on the drop slowly faded. It kept the suppression in place on her, probably because of the preservation enchantments on the inner coffin. A C-rank corpse bathed in the radiation of a divine blood drop for untold millenia. There was some kind of mutation."

He swallowed hard. "I didn't even consider it. It shouldn't be POSSIBLE. The chances of spontaneously mutating into a vampiric being through radiative exposure to an artifact like that, even if Varian WAS the first vampire…they're astronomical. But then, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Alara's ability when she was alive was passive probability manipulation. She was always blessed with freakishly good luck."

My eyes narrowed. That sounded…suspiciously fortuitous. Even for someone with a luck power. But then again, the universe tended to warp when gods were involved. Just look at Satala and Suvaya. The goddess was brought back by a ritual, but the universe had conspired to bring her child with her. Things just…worked out like that for them. But that left us with a rather large problem. Namely, how to extract the blood drop for the ritual with a homicidal vampire seemingly standing guard over the item.

I reached out for Zagan, calling the demon in person, and he stepped forward. His intense green eyes met the Vampire's. He stepped forward, and the woman's form flickered, crossing the distance between them faster than my eyes could take in. I blinked in shock, because I was still using Dantalion.

That had been fast. We were all suppressed to the same level, so the modifiers of her current racial trait must have been IMMENSE. No wonder she'd killed all those Asura. She stopped right in front of Zagan, eyes meeting his.

He reached up, setting his hands on her face, and started to push his power into her. She froze, then leaned against his hand, all but purring like a cat. Slowly, ever so slowly, Zagan infused his power into her, purifying the fog of blood over her consciousness. The red began to dim, the glow subsiding, until finally, her eyes shifted to a deep violet color. I was pretty sure it was blue mixed with red, actually.

She blinked blearily, swaying on her feet, then turned to where Atlas was standing. "P-papa?" she slurred. "Where am I? What's happening?"

Atlas flickered and just…appeared beside her, wrapping his arms around the vampire girl tightly. "Alara," he rasped. "It's ok. You're ok. You're alive. You're alive." He just kept muttering that. Repeating that she was alive. Like he didn't believe it, and was trying to bully the universe into keeping up the charade by brainwashing it with repetition.

Finally, he pulled back, and Alara looked around at all of us, her face confused. "Who are these people?"

Atlas gave a shaky laugh. "That's a good question. Well…this is Calliope. Your sister. And this is her husband Shane." He gestured to us both proudly. "They're the reason either of us could be here right now. They're family." His gaze turned almost uncomfortably grateful. "Thank you. Both of you. You haven't even resurrected me yet, but thank you. I know you didn't do this, but if you hadn't come to this place, I'd never have found out, and Alara might still be trapped in that terrible state.

Callie relaxed a bit. I could feel through the bond that she'd been half expecting him to just disown her, or never mention the parenthood thing again. She'd felt like he only claimed her because she looked like his daughter, and now that the real one was miraculously alive again, he wouldn't need her. I knew she had mixed feelings about her new parent, but she DID care. If anything though, Atlas seemed even more determined to claim us as family, and I think it helped soothe a lot of the hurt I could feel coming from my wife.

Atlas spent the next ten minutes or so talking to Alara. He filled her in on as much of what was happening as he could, but he wasn't able to stay. He turned to us, mostly looking at Callie. "Calliope, this is…a complicated situation. I know. I wasn't expecting it, and frankly it's not fair to ask you to deal with it. But Allie is alone and scared. She doesn't know what's happening, and I don't know if the vampirism might regain control. Can you-"

"We can watch out for her," Callie said without hesitation. "Of course. This discussion isn't over, mind. We have a lot to talk about. But none of that is on her." She smiled warmly at the other girl. "And I've always wanted a big sister."

Atlas nodded in relief. "Thank you. Both of you take care of each other. I'll be there in person soon, and then we can figure out what to do. Alara, stay with your sister and her husband. Help them. You're obviously powerful for your current rank, and they have enemies there. You two can fill her in on that rogue god that's running around, as well as where you are and why she's so weakened. Alara was S-rank when she died."

I was curious about that. About Alara's life…and more importantly, about Alara's mother. I might be reading into things, but I'd only remembered Atlas mentioning one woman back in the day. Morwenna. Could she be the girl's mother? Or was I just jumping to conclusions. He'd been alive a long time, and dead even longer. Assuming I knew what was going on was a good way to get blindsided.

Sadly, I'd have to wait to find out. For now, Atlas had to leave. He needed to recharge before the big ritual, because we would need him here to help conduct things. That was part of the reason for summoning Gossamer.

I'd originally thought Gossamer was going to be the artifact he used, but I realized now that he didn't want to do that. He didn't want to deprive Callie of her weapon, even for a while. Using the coffin was a convenient way to avoid that. I glanced over to where my wife was talking to her new vampire sister, and pondered what was happening here. I felt the presence of an unseen hand tipping the scales. Was I reading into things? Or was there something out there that could push even the gods around like pieces on a board. I had a feeling it would be a long time until I found out.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"How are you doing?" I asked Callie as I left Dayna to deal with my wife's new vampire twin. "That was…a lot. I know you were just starting to get used to having Atlas in your life, and now suddenly you have a sister? Speaking as an expert in suddenly having a twin sister, I can tell you the experience is a bit jarring."

She snorted at that. "I guess you'd know," she said wryly. "I'm fine. It's not like I have a reason to be upset. I just feel kind of blindsided. But this could be an opportunity too. Alara seems like an interesting person, now that she's not planning to murder us all and bathe in our blood."

"Don't be silly," I assured her. "That was never going to happen. That would be a huge waste of blood." I paused. "Unless they can absorb it through the skin. Can vampires apply blood topically? Like are their whole bodies just blood sponges? I feel like Bethy would have mentioned that."

She giggled, some of the severity leaving her face. "Never know with her. Anyway, I don't think I can stick around much longer. This clone is being weakened by the vortex here. It's actively drawing power from me to try to force itself back up to mid C-rank."

I frowned. That wasn't good news. It made sense, because Beelzebub was designed to make clones as powerful as I was. I even considered trying to fix it, but considering this was probably the only place in the universe where I was likely to run into these conditions, it didn't seem like an effective use of my time. "Alright, you go ahead and get back. I'll keep you posted, and I'll keep an eye out for your sister."

Her smile was warm and sweet, and it suddenly struck me as ludicrous I'd confused Alara for Callie for even a second. Aside from the blue highlights in her hair and the wings, Callie's whole demeanor was completely different. I knew it was a mistake I'd never make with more than a second to look. I leaned down, pulling my mask up to give my wife a soft kiss. She wrapped her arms around me, returning the favor before pulling away, giving me a quick wink and vanishing in a blaze of Heretic Fire.

I strode over to where Alara was talking with Brad and Dayna. "And there's ice cream, and pizza, and steak, and tons of other kinds of food. But not spicy stuff. That hurts."

Alara raised an eyebrow at him. "I know what steak is, that's just cow meat. The others sound interesting, however. I suppose I could allow you to be my guide to this new and fascinating world."

"Well he's less than three months old," I said dryly. "So he's probably not the most qualified. But I'm sure I can arrange for a suitable guide once we get out of here. You're aware of what we're trying to do?" Having an S-rank vampire onboard, even one who had been heavily suppressed, was a welcome addition to the team, but I needed to know she knew what she was getting into.

"My father's resurrection ritual," she agreed. "I was…somewhat aware, when I was in that terrible state." Her expression wilted. "I remember many things I wish I did not."

I winced. "Yeah, I have a friend in a similar boat. She's got that same bloodlust." Then I froze. "Oh shit. You're a vampire." She raised an eyebrow questioningly, and I explained. "Vampirism isn't…well, I don't know how common it was back in your day, but it's kind of a taboo now. The current strongest being below divine rank is a vampire. In fact, ONLY he and his children are vampires. He killed the rest of them. Literally wiped them from existence."

Lark's vampirocide had, to be fair, been a method of building a stronger Domain and funneling as much renown to himself as possible. Now that he was S-rank, there was less need for vampiric singularity, hence his many children. But still, vampirism was kind of his bottom line.

Her eyes flared red. "I am not afraid of anyone who is not a god. I am the daughter of the Heretic God. I've slain even the divine. My current state will only aid me in combat."

"That's…good to know," I said slowly. "But Lark isn't just the strongest S-ranker, he's the father of one of my best friends, who happens to be Dayna's mistress. It would be best if you two DIDN'T kill each other. There's really no upside to that fight for me. Luckily, it might not be an issue. Atlas will be coming out with us, and there's no chance Lark will try something with him around."

Morgan Lark was a monster. The kind of beast who could fight up a rank across the divine watershed of a thousand points of Impact. But he'd gotten that rep fighting BABY gods. Unity was the youngest and weakest of the six, and Lark had fought him to a draw, but Atlas wasn't a spring chicken. He'd been a god for eons, and had slain hundreds of other deities. He'd been a headhunter for the Void and there was NO S-ranker, regardless of talent, that stood a chance.

The peak of C-rank was ten million points. Peak of B was a hundred million. A was a billion, and S was ten billion. The peak of god rank was a hundred BILLION points of stats. PAST the thousand point watershed. Atlas, assuming he was at the peak of god rank, which seemed a safe bet, had ten TIMES as many points as Lark.

And being past the watershed meant that every one of those points was more valuable to Atlas than to Lark. There was a reason even a peak E-ranker needed to essentially cheat to beat a beginner D-ranker. Every multiple of ten in Impact was a qualitative change in the essential nature of a being. Being able to fight Unity, who was pretty newly advanced at the time, across that divide was ALREADY enough to make Lark invincible at the same rank.

Long story short, the chances of Lark being strong enough to even look at Atlas funny after his resurrection were vanishingly small. Even if he was hobbled and needed to recover like some of the vanished gods after rebirth, Atlas was untouchable at the same rank too. Even a newly god ranked Adam Atlas would mop the floor with Morgan Lark.

That actually made me feel better. Lark was cantankerous and occasionally stubborn, but he wasn't stupid. You don't live to be the baddest ass in the universe by being a moron and picking pointless fights. He wouldn't try to fight Atlas.

Alara, for her part, looked dangerously unimpressed with my suggestion that she hide behind her dad. I felt the need to redirect that ire somewhere else, so I dropped the other shoe. "But that's not going to be an issue if we can't get out of here. Which will be a problem if we trip over…him." I grimaced at my inability to say the same, and then filled her in on the details as best I could.

Her eyes narrowed, lips peeling back to reveal long, sharp fangs. "He DARES? In my time, even the most decrepit antique knew better than to set his sights on the property of the House of Atlas."

I blinked at that. I…hadn't actually thought through the whole name thing. I always figured Adam Atlas was some kind of title. Based on her statement, it WAS a name, and one she shared. Alara Atlas did kind of roll off the tongue. I was glad Callie was keeping my name though. Calliope Atlas didn't sound as good as Calliope Wyndham in my opinion.

"I get the impression he would have been VERY old, even in your day," I said grimly. "Also still imprisoned. Just be careful not to say his name. Thinking it appears to be fine. I don't actually know how it works, except that he can create carriers and infected hosts. It's honestly likely that I COULDN'T infect you by saying it aloud, but I'm not willing to take that risk. Getting rid of him once he gets in is no simple task, and I'd rather not go through that mess again."

She looked skeptical, but nodded anyway. "Very well. Worry not about this foolish corpse god. We stand at the edge of the deepest hollow. Here, all beings are equal. Divine abilities or no, I fear no evil."

Thinking back to the field of Asura corpses, beings described by Dayna as being roughly equivalent to the power of an archangel, I could believe that. I wasn't quite sure how overwhelming luck could make someone that powerful, but then again, I knew better than anyone that your born ability didn't have to be your strongest combat skill.

Walking over to the box, I checked through the opening to ensure the ruby still floated on its pedestal, then I slammed it shut and dropped the box into my Domain.

We headed back up the stairs. "So, what did you mean by 'the deepest hollow'? Is that the name you all gave the hole to the lower realms?" I didn't know much about the vortex aside from the small amount I'd been told by the Lady, and I had to admit I was curious.

"It is," she nodded. "Though that description is…incomplete. For every reaction, there is a reaction. For every state, a balance. Tell me, what do you know of rising and sinking realms?"

I frowned, trying to construct a summary. "Well, not much. I know that this realm caps out at god rank, and that too MANY gods would cause it to be elevated to a higher rank, and to Ascend. Similarly, there are other realms below ours that are less powerful. I imagine they're something like lower level planets."

"Somewhat," she said slowly. "But also not at all. Lower planes aren't all less powerful. You HAVE seen a lower power version of a Universe, however. God realms are the nascent form of Universes. However, to consecrate a god realm, to entrench it in reality and allow it to grow, it must be planted in fertile soil. In higher planes, there are unique hidden realms that can serve this purpose, but for a god at a level of reality like this one, the only way to do this is a process called 'the sundering'.

"It's essentially the realm equivalent of shattering a soul." she explained. "You break a realm, then drop the pieces into a deeper plane. The requirements for a realm shard to take root and grow into even a low level plane are strict and complicated. Very few gods choose to undertake the sundering.

"But because of its existence, lower realms are often littered with shards of powerful god realms." her tone was solemn. She clearly thought we should be worried about this. "And not just god realms. The requirements to pass Overgod are even more stringent, and the incidence of sundering is even higher. One a realm takes root as a lower plane, it can Ascend as any other plane, and being the main deity of a universe grants many opportunities. In fact, it is the only known way to advance from Overgod to Worldgod."

I saw what she meant. "So not all the realms below are lower planes," I clarified. "Some of them are fragments of powerful realms. So if you could retrieve objects of power or domain seeds from places like that…"

"You would have a smooth path to Overgod, or even further," she nodded. "So take care. Not all the shattered gods biding their time in this vortex are here against their will. Some are merely lying in wait for an opportunity. And those won't hesitate to destroy anything that gets in their way." With that ominous proclamation, she turned and strode up the stairs, leaving us in the dark basement. We REALLY needed to find and stop Drexel, complete the ritual and leave. I was suddenly far less secure being in this damned Chasm.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

It took me about twenty minutes to get my head on straight. The various secrets Alara had let slip about the nature of reality were staggering, awe inspiring even…and functionally useless to me at the moment. Getting locked in on the forest and running face first into a tree was the exact opposite of what I needed to be doing right now.

Filing away the explosive information for later, I focused on what was important. The ritual.

Unfortunately, there were some problems. First was Deveskane. I'd fulfilled my promise to him, bringing the shard here and making introductions to Atlas, but according to Alara, the ritual couldn't be used to bring him back now. The blood drop had possessed more than enough energy to be used to fuel the ritual more than once…but that was originally. After who knew how long with Alara draining it to bring herself back and strengthen herself, there was only enough left for a single pass of the ritual.

Drexel, meanwhile, didn't have even that much. I wanted to assume that he couldn't pull off the ritual given his lack of resources, but his presence implied he had some other way of getting it done. Alara didn't know what it was, but we both agreed it couldn't be allowed to happen, which meant we needed to HURRY.

Finding the ritual chamber itself was surprisingly simple, and accessing it was even easier, but upon stepping inside, I found myself frozen in wonder at the sheer opulence of the chamber.

Noticing my shock, Alara smiled grimly. "This chamber was only in the beginning phases of construction when I died. Even I, who was privy to my father's plans to construct it, find the completed product awe inspiring. This is a grand working of Formation craft from a practitioner whose skill has reached the Divine Threshold. Even in a suppressed state, this location is a work of art the likes of which this universe has scarcely seen. Welcome, to the Orrery of Creation."

She spread her hands dramatically as she spoke, the gesture encompassing the entirety of the space, and despite the melodrama of the action, I couldn't bring myself to consider it overkill. Dramatic was the only way to reveal something like that.

The Orrery of Creation was…dizzying. A massive spherical room, every inch of it was covered with complicated scrollwork and symbols, engraved into a durable, shining brass I couldn't place, but that felt powerful and deadly. Among the rippling, turbulent space within the sphere, islands of calm floated, held aloft by currents of tightly controlled power so fine that I had to concentrate to see them, even with my powerful stats.

Within the islands, I could see sparkling stars and phantom planets, a tiny galaxy overlaid on space like some kind of holographic display. "Is this a chamber for resurrection or stargazing?" I asked skeptically as I glanced around. "It looks a bit…specific."

"The Orrery is a ritual chamber with many uses," she clarified. "The Astronomer, the Formation Divinity who designed it, was quite enamored with the warp and weft of the cosmic streams. He built this chamber to take advantage of the Void's malleable nature to connect a million points of reference to powerful realspace cosmic anchors. Every ritual performed here channels the natural flow and rhythm of an entire galaxy."

Staring into the phantom stars, I could see it. Like I was looking through space itself and finally drilling down to stare at an actual celestial body. Formations that used natural energy constructs to enhance power were pretty standard. Doing more with less was what Formation Mastery was all about.

But creating what amounted to a miniaturized spatial construct that connected an entire galaxy…I froze. I'd seen something like this before. On a much smaller scale, but very similar. A room that looked like a patch of space, all the way back on Callus. "Cosmic Witchcraft," I said aloud, my voice hushed. This was just like Stella's office, but scaled WAY up.

Alara blinked in surprise. "Tangentially," she admitted. "Energy is a part of reality. Ascendants, monsters, gods, all use the same core forces to manipulate this universe. We take different paths, but as you approach the peak of those paths, they begin to converge somewhat. Witchcraft is a useful and powerful discipline. Though in truth, it's a very broad designation for a large variety of different force application techniques, all of which have some common elements."

"Thaumaturgy," I nodded. "Symbolic linking. What happens to the small happens to the big."

"Even so," she confirmed. "Formation Mastery isn't witchcraft, because it acts as a CONDUIT to representation rather than using it directly. But as I said, at higher levels, paths converge. The peak of the formation path dips into the domain of witchcraft, and vice versa." She gestured around us. "This is the pinnacle of Formation crafting below the god rank. The Astronomer, despite reaching divinity in his skill, was no god. But he was about as close as one could get to being a true formation god without true ascension."

I nodded as I took it all in. "And this can be used to bring back Atlas? This ritual will allow us to do what the vanished gods did?"

"The Orrery is a tool. A type of metacraft that can be adjusted to many uses," she clarified. "It's not the ritual itself. It just massively streamlines and refines the process, allowing for the execution of rituals that would otherwise require specialized settings, times, and preparations. That said, this particular tool has already been preconfigured for the purpose we have in mind. We need only supply a few final ingredients." She gestured towards the center of the Orrery. "Can you see the locations where our ingredients need to be places? The flows of power outline the points of input, if you know how to look."

The sheer detail of the place was mindblowing. It was currently a C-rank construct, after so long being eroded and suppressed, but the foundations were still at the peak of S-rank. It was like my Wish power. Despite being ostensibly the same rank as other abilities at C-rank, Wish was a perfected bloodline ability inherited from a god. It was quantitatively the same, but qualitatively VERY different in terms of utility.

Even suppressed to C-rank, this construct was lightyears beyond anything I had ever seen in the field of formations. Its usage of power and application of force had reached a critical extreme that shouldn't have even been POSSIBLE at C-rank. It was just like with wishes. Perfect enough power application could create exponentially greater results than the sum of its parts.

Not to mention that this place was still made of S-rank material. Power usage might have been suppressed, but the actual physical device was able to withstand usage and concepts from far beyond its apparent strength.

Following the winding strands of power creating the phantom web that made up one layer of the formation hurt my brain, but I DID manage it eventually, and was able to identify the spots I needed to interact. I could see several, actually, but most of them seemed to have already been anchored to special materials or constructs. The last two were like gaping holes in the room, waiting to be filled with the powerful materials we brought.

The first up was the Eye. The gargantuan piece of divine remains I'd harvested into my Domain when we'd passed through the mausoleum, was ready to be inserted.

Luckily, the process for doing so was pretty straightforward. This whole place was basically one big maze of spatial warping and symbolic connections, which meant it could hold substantially more material than it appeared. Despite being bigger by a large margin than the sphere we currently stood inside (we were standing on a suspended deck about midway through the room), I was easily able to reach into my Domain and pull out the eye, tossing it from my own projected Domain (much more easily accessible due to what must be shielding from the spherical room) into the indicated space.

Rather than slot into some hole or shrink, I was shocked to see the object enter the spatial turbulence and move through the warping, dropping INTO the star that had been indicated. As that happened, the rest of the room came to life, beginning to shift and move, streams of power speeding up and interweaving in a series of dizzying patterns.

"The ruby," called Alara. "Add the power source, the Orrery is redirecting the cosmic forces to the star furnace. The eye has begun refinement!"

Cursing, I streaked across the room, dropping the box and flipping it open before tossing the faceted red gem into the central point of the Orrery, a black hole that acted as a funnel for the energy. As soon as it fell in, the dark void sparked with red energy, and the flows of power through the Orrery blazed to life.

Watching the interweaving matrices of energy spin up, I could see the process go into overdrive. I reached down and picked up the box, carrying it to the center of the platform we were standing on. This object of power would be the link between the ritual and Atlas.

I was about to set it down when my Danger Sense began SCREAMING. I hurled myself aside as a slice so absurdly powerful it looked like it could split the universe crashed over and rolled harmlessly off the durable bronze of the Orrery. I whirled to find a familiar form standing not far away, holding a long sword made of some kind of toxic looking green glass, a horrible glow in his eyes.

Sneering, I climbed to my feet, calling Dayna out and tossing her the box. "Get started. I've got this."

Drexel grinned sadistically. "Oh, do you? Do you 'got this', boy? Do you think yourself the equal to a god? I've blown specks of dust off my lapels with more relevance than you. And now that I have this body, I'm going to enjoy carving that fact into your very BONES."

I smiled back just as unpleasantly. "Maybe. And maybe fighting you would be a mistake. Luckily, I'm not going to be fighting you. At least not for the most part. I don't need to. Because while you might be a god, I'm something far, far greater. Something beyond your petty understanding, something that exists above your archaic and out of date worldview." I blustered as hard as I could, hitting every annoyance button I could think of for ancient, powerful creatures. It wasn't hard, there were a lot of them.

Sure enough, Drexel's eyes narrowed in arrogant dismissal, but he didn't attack. He wanted to know what I was talking about. "Oh, and what is this ineffable, inconceivable thing that I would have no knowledge of, child?"

"Well, I'm not sure what you guys called it back in your day," I said gleefully. "But we do have a simple word for it in this time. We call it 'a distraction'."

Say what you would about Drexel, but he wasn't stupid. As soon as he processed what I'd said, he reacted, beginning to spin to check behind him…but moving far too slow. Alara, with the grace of a pouncing jaguar, erupted from the shadows behind him, landing on his back. Her head went back, baring her unreasonably sharp fangs, and then plunged down, digging them into the throat of Drexel's host.

He screamed, jerking and twitching, but he wasn't down for the count. He grabbed her by the hair, hauled her forward, and HURLED her across the room as he howled. "KILL THEM ALL!"

There was a ripple in space, and a dozen or so forms exploded onto the scene from seemingly nowhere. Tall blue forms. With three heads. And six arms. Asura. I sighed as I spun up my staff, ready for a fight. "Oh hey," I called to Alara. "I guess you didn't kill them all." And then the fight was on.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Asura were scary. I mean, I'd KNOWN they were scary physically, having seen them dead on the floor in the City Lord's Mansion, but a dead Asura and a living Asura were very different things. The first thing they did was surround me completely, creating a wall of blue muscle around the spot I was standing, effectively locking me in place.

Grimacing, I started calling for my demons. Mornax, Abaddon, Dom, Sam, Oz, and a half dozen others. Once I had my actual physical reinforcements on hand, I started incarnating. Belial, Leviathan, and Zagan.

Oz shot me a quizzical look, clearly not seeing where I was going with this, but I ignored him as I prepared my offensive. My staff materialized, and I accessed the power of Belial, utilizing the ability to remotely manipulate my people as my staff struck out, subtly bumping and repositioning the demons into a seamless and coherent force. As my strikes landed, Belial's power poured of me, infecting them directly…but not with toxins.

The defensive fire of Leviathan and the cleansing flame of Zagan were carried through Belial's corruption, infusing my people with each tap. Their bodies we quickly covered with webs of green flame as Belial "corrupted" them, ensconcing them in a protective barrier of defensive fire.

It was the easiest way I could think of to protect them from Drexel's influence, but more than that, it allowed their bodies to carry the power of purification. Each hit did little to help purify Drexel from the Asura…on its own. But the more punches they landed the more the corruption spread.

Unfortunately, once I finished that little infusion, I realized that I couldn't exactly stick around to help. Despite her staggering power and confidence, Alara was having problems. Drexel was wielding the green glass blade in a blurring storm of malicious murder, patterns of deadly coruscating light blending into the air around him as he all but became an aurora.

Alara was skillfully weaving around the attacks, but the range advantage of the sword was keeping her at a distance, preventing her razor sharp claws from finding purchase. Smiling unpleasantly, I triggered Double Trouble, appearing behind the Mindplague's host, and unleashed the most brutal Extinction Event I could condense from my current power right into the base of his fucking skull at full force.

Sadly, I wasn't able to land it clean. He sensed the attack somehow and tried to move to avoid it, but the blow still caught him behind the ear, and he stumbled forward as the cleansing and protective flames discharged into his head like an exploding grenade. He stumbled to one side, dropping the glass sword as he tried to blink away to interference. Which I had been hoping for.

Drexel the Mindplague was a very similar mechanism to Belial, at the end of the day. Belial wasn't sentient in the same way, or I guess he was because he was a demon now, but regardless, they worked a BIT differently. Still, when combined with Leviathan and Zagan, Belial's corruption had become a purifying, protective force, essentially allowing it to corrupt his corruption, interfering with his control.

Alara, true to her vampiric nature, didn't waste the chance. With a primal scream of glee she hurled herself on him, savaging the god possessed swordsman with claw and fang as she did her best to ingest as much of his blood from the source as possible.

In fact, the drain from her initial attack had already seriously weakened him. For some reason, her draining was eroding not just his stats, but his stat LIMIT. He was getting weaker as she drank. Not much, but slightly, and it was adding up.

Now I could see why she was so sure of her ability to beat him. She WAS terrifying. Even beyond the draining, her combat skills were superb, her claws weaving webs of deadly consequence and her ever seeking fangs driving him deeper into her traps as she dismantled the divine puppet.

But alas, all good things must end. Drexel managed to get his footing (metaphorically, he'd been standing still the whole time) and with a roar of fury hurled the vampire off him as he dove for the sword. My staff flashed out, smashing into the hilt and sending it spinning across the platform. He whirled on me in a rage. "Insolent GNAT!" He screamed as he dove toward me.

I activated Double Trouble again, appearing behind him as he passed harmlessly through my illusory double. I stepped forward, lunging as I unleashed another attack. This time, I decided to go for something a bit different. Extinction Event worked fine because Belial's attacks were ostensibly damaging, but they were really meant to free Clarent from his prison of flesh, or at least force Drexel to deal with him more directly.

The butt of my staff slammed into the turning head of the surprised godhost, specifically, the temple, and this time it all poured out in a single pulse of soul purifying healing as I unleashed my Genesis Burst.

Drexel went stumbling, screaming as he clutched his face. One eye blazed the purifying green of Zagan as he started to hack and cough up green flame infused blood. He glared at me hatefully, about to attack again, only for a cackling vampire to plummet from above and land on his back, bearing him down to the floor as she tore back into his neck.

It didn't take him near as long to get out of her hold this time, hurling her across the floor, and he surged to his feet with a scream of "ENOUGH!"

He threw his hands up into the air and a wave of stifling darkness erupted from his body, washing over the chamber. I could see the glow of bronze beneath us, the ritual chamber itself clearly all but ignoring the assault, but it did its job. It rendered me incapable of seeing. Cursing, I dismissed Mornax back to the Domain and activated his incarnation, reinforcing my body with the ultimate defense even as SOMETHING landed on the small of my back with a horrendous screech.

Cursing, I clutched at my armor, which had been sheared through, and felt blood dripping from the wound. Energy flooded into me from the injury, inundating my cells. I was terrified for a moment…until I felt something else. Something deep inside my body. Hunger. My bloodline's hunger for power of the same kind.

My lips peeled back into a triumphant snarl. This fucking IDIOT had the brought Cosmic Phoenix Cinder out of the tower. He was trying to use it to KILL me. I could feel his corruption of the object, clearly one of his own objects of power. The whole thing had been a trap, meant to trick me into taking his artifact with me if I somehow got away.

But while it WAS an item infused with the Mindplague, it was also a Cinder, or rather, a FEATHER, of a Cosmic Phoenix. And the Cosmic Phoenix recognized its own in me. The six drops of phoenix blood ignited, burning away the cobwebs of Mindplague corruption that had been seeping in past my defenses. Like a match being dropped in liquor, my phoenix blood BURNED.

An unearthly avian screech erupted through the chamber as I threw my head back and screamed, waves of cascading flames sending a paroxysm of agony through my body. I felt a white hot stab of pain too faint to notice, and then another, as the Nine Phoenix Reincarnation Art operated without direction. It took me a second to figure out what was happening, and when I did I almost laughed.

He was stabbing me. Over and over again, trying to kill me, and every thrust of the blade drove more of that power into me. The divine corruption was burned off as a fuel source, used to power my pain and impart the meaning of sacrifice as it poured into me. I could see my blood burning on the sword, and he finally noticed, screaming and dropping it to the ground in disbelief.

There was a rippling crash of soundless thunder as something inside the weapon broke, and another phoenix cry erupted from the weapon as the flames blazed up, purifying the tainted god's influence as the glass sword faded to a bright azure blue.

I was confused what had happened, until I looked around and saw the blazing stars, and almost fell over laughing. This was a COSMIC Orrery. The whole place was designed to allow access to huge areas of space for ritual purposes. Between my blood, my flames, and this place, not to mention the dimensional suppression, all the ingredients for the phoenix ember's freedom were present.

Even the transformation into a divine artifact was limited by the vortex, and at merely C-rank, it became a matter of quality. The combination of factors had conspired to cleanse the taint of the Mindplague from the ember entirely, essentially destroying the artifact I was pretty sure he planned to use for resurrection.

More than that though, the explosion of purifying force had created a shockwave that had stripped the Mindplague's influence from the chamber, or at least from the beings inside it. THe Asura, Clarent, all freed as their bodies were cleansed by the high level purifying fire.

The light flared up, and above us, cast across the vastness of space, I saw a terrible shadowy form. "You. Will. Pay." Drexel hissed, before that fragment was wiped away by the pulse of purification.

That was scary, but I didn't have time for that right now. I was overflowing with power. Seven drops. Eight. Nine. The template condensed and the power kept flooding. The first drop of the second template, the Cosmic Phoenix template, condensed on its own before the power burned itself out, leaving me gasping and twitching on the floor.

Not that I was there for long. As the first template snapped into place, I felt a was of vital energy roll through my body, soothing aching muscles and washing away pain. Vitality. The modified for my first template was here. Three times the effective Vitality. I was lucky too, because this was my Vitality suppressed to low C-rank. Adjusting here would be much easier. Still, I felt energized as I sat up, body humming with power.

Alara appeared beside me, eyebrow raised. "Did you do that on purpose?" she asked suspiciously. "Or did you just get stabbed a bunch of times and get lucky?"

"I think…both?" I said slowly. "If I hadn't been using that exact combination of powers when he got me it wouldn't have worked. I think the superposition of the demons made it possible for the cinder to count that whole thing as a ritual and channel the power from the chamber." I blinked. "Oh shit, the chamber. Did it use up the blood drop?"

She shook her head. "Not enough to matter. It only had enough for a single use, but it wasn't EXACTLY enough for a single use. There was excess, and the power withdrawal was minimal." Her eyes flicked over to the altar, where the box had started to warp and shudder in space as the star forge where the eye had ended up emitted a cloud of concentrated divine power, a fog of shimmering gold energy the likes of which I'd never seen before.

After I picked up and stashed away the Ember in my ring, we walked over to the altar to stand next to Dayna, who was standing guard. None of the Asura would dare interfere now that they were cleansed, and Clarent was gone. Drexel had almost definitely infected more than just the ones he brought, which meant he was loose now, but Atlas would be back soon, and once he was…well, he could handle the Mindplague. As the gold mist infused the black coffin shaped box, I felt my lips peel back in victorious glee. This was almost over.

 

[Hyperion47]

As the gold mist infused the black coffin shaped box, I felt my lips peel back in victorious glee. This was almost over.

Click to shrink...

Too soon,rookie?

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"So, how does this work, exactly?" I asked, I asked as the golden mist soaked into the coffin. "Like I have some small grasp on how Domains work, but everyone just tells me it's advanced stuff and not to worry about it. Now that I have my OWN Domain though, I'm curious to hear where I got from here. What IS an object of power exactly, and how does it work?"

Alara hummed with interest, shooting me an assessing look. "It's simple enough. You are aware, of course, of Domain Seeds?"

I nodded. "Yeah, they're like…fragments of a Domain that can be used by weaker Ascendants to start their own. I know a few gods who used divine Domain seeds to lay their own path for future advancement." I paused. "Though how they managed that I'm not sure, since I heard taking a path already taken by a god is a dead end."

"Only if that god is still extant," she corrected. "Dead gods that have faded from memory can't soak up renown. That said, using Domain Seeds to create your Domain has other issues. But yes, your understanding is essentially correct. A Domain Seed is a crystallization of a Domain, a condensation of all the power of that Domain into a tangible shape. This process is undertaken to harvest "worldforce", a unique force native to realms that can be used to solidify a Domain into a god realm."

I nodded along. "Ok, and objects of power contain worldforce?"

"Precisely," she confirmed. "That short sword you cleansed contained worldforce, for example. However, it didn't contain very much. I assume the god who created it took the quantity approach."

That sounded familiar. "What do you mean, quantity approach?" I asked. "I was told that the less objects of power you have, the better."

She waggled a hand. "It's somewhat complicated. In order to solidify a realm, worldforce is required. The more worldforce, the better, and there are thresholds. Condensing a Domain Seed takes time, and energy, and having a more powerful Domain means you have to do it fewer times to reach the threshold of conversion. This has the added benefit of making your realm more stable. Objects of Power can also be referred to as foundational pillars. The fewer pillars, the more durable they each are, and the more difficult to destroy.

"But you can go in the other direction," she continued. "If you condense a great many foundational pillars, your realm is more stable because there are more of them. They're easier to destroy, but destroying one has much less of an effect on your realm. This is not a commonly taken path, because as mentioned, it takes time to condense a Domain Seed, and even more time to merge it into an item to create a foundational pillar. You need a LOT of foundational pillars to offset the downsides, so most people take the quality approach. Quantity is mostly for gods who possess some means of propagation. Swarm types and the like."

Which explained why Drexel would do it, and why I'd been able to cleanse that worldforce, because there was so little of it. But I was getting off track. I pointed to the coffin. "So, the worldforce in that thing is part of the ritual?"

"It is," nodded my wife's new sister. "Gods become one with their worlds, merging the foundational pillars into the Saga which has become one with the body. The process of apotheosis is complicated, but you could say that worldforce is the lifeblood of a deity. When their souls shatter and their realms are dispersed, only fragments that remain connected to foundational pillars keep their form. Those that lose connection with their pillar resume the form of divine remains, while the pillar is lost in the void."

"So, the ritual is draining the worldforce out of the object and infusing it into the divine remains to create a new divine body?" I asked, trying to put everything together. It was a complicated process. "What about the object itself, will it be destroyed?"

She shook her head. "No. The object was created to be fused with a realm. In fact, that particular object is already fused with THIS realm fragment, and is the foundation of this city. You could consider it the glue that combines soul fragments with realm fragments, reforging a divine whole. The fragment in question will need to be summoned through my sister's sword, which will be your task, using your bond."

"So, basically we're turning this city into a god world?" I puzzled out slowly. "And then…what? Atlas will move it?"

This was complicated, but I was starting to get at least a basic idea of how it all worked. To my surprise though, apparently I didn't have it ALL down. "Not immediately," she corrected. "My father will need to regain his strength. The process won't be too lengthy, given his age and experience, but this is an optimal place to perform it. With all of us suppressed to C-rank, all that matters is combat standards. Between the two of us, even an army of enemy gods or Void Children would be incapable of shaking us."

Which meant it would be some time before they could help us with the Void directly. Still, their existence meant Morwenna would be unwilling to commit to an all out war, and would probably direct most of her forces here to try to assassinate Atlas before he regained his full strength.

The golden mist started to thin, and Alara let out a slow breath. "Alright, it's time. Invoke my sister, if you would."

I did so, reaching out for Callie. I knew she'd want to be here for this, even if she couldn't stay too long. The shadows nearby coalesced into the image of my wife, and I nodded to her solemnly. "It's time," I told her.

To be honest, I'd assumed we wouldn't NEED the sword if we had the coffin, and that Atlas had switched so he wouldn't need to deprive Callie of her weapon. Now that I knew about worldforce, I was pretty sure that was PARTLY true, but we still needed Gossamer as a focal point to summon the fragment of Atlas.

Which was apparently what we'd been doing this whole time. Using the gem as a gateway to access the soul fragment. An ability Atlas had purposefully forged into the sword for just such an occasion. I hated working with gods sometimes. Their foresight often made me head hurt, and it was hard to tell how much of it was actual prediction and how much was just bullshit they made up on the fly and brute forced by being absurdly powerful.

Callie let out a loud sigh and called for Gossamer. I could have done it, like we'd discussed originally, but after the big family reunion reveal, I got the impression she wanted to be involved. I didn't mind having her here with me for this either.

Gossamer appeared in her hand, the black blade infused with blue black flame, the power shining through like a soap bubble. Reaching out with the sword, she tapped it on the coffin, and the gem in the pommel flared deeply with a dark blue light. There was a shuddering wave of energy, and the coffin lid slammed shut as the blue energy mixed with the remnants of the gold mist.

A spark erupted from the gem, traveling down the length of the blade and shooting into the coffin, the combination of mist and energy catching fire as a familiar blue black flame consumed the box.

The chamber around us shifted, stars reconfiguring as the energy of a galaxy was funneled through the blood drop, soaking the illusory night sky with an endless sea of bloody light. Then the energy was sucked into the coffin, the flames flaring into a column of black fire like someone had tossed a bottle of vodka onto it, and the box began to shake. It went on for about ten minutes, and then the blaze started to die down, slowly guttering out to leave just the box, hot enough to resemble a piece of burning coal.

Slowly, inexorably, the lid began to lift, a single, long arm pushing it open. From inside, a familiar form emerged, sitting up as if drawn by an outside force. For the first time, I could SEE Adam Atlas. Before, his eyes had drawn my gaze like black holes, sucking in my attention so I couldn't process the rest of him, but here, under the suppression of the Chasm, his true form was revealed.

He was…tall. Like unnaturally tall. Eight feet or so, at least based on what I could see of him. His body was lanky and densely muscled, and very pale, to an almost unnatural degree. His skin was covered in dark, complicated tattoos, winding themselves around him like some kind of enchantment, and they MOVED like they were alive.

His hair was pitch black, with blue undertones, like Callie's, and it was long and lank, hanging to mid back or so. The beard he sported was the same blue-black color, and it framed an angular face of harsh lines. In every other context I'd seen him in, my impression of Atlas, at least as much of an impression as I could form, was kind, but here…it was like looking at a tiger in person instead of on a screen. It looked the same, but the impression was VERY different.

Turning slowly to look at us, his keeps peeled back from perfectly straight teeth. "My children," he boomed in a baritone so deep I didn't think you would ever find the bottom if you threw in a penny. "I am returned."

Callie snorted, trying to cover her shakiness with snark as usual. "Put some pants on, you're embarrassing yourself. Honestly, grown man sitting around with no shirt on in the middle of the day."

He stared for a moment, then burst out laughing. "Apologies, Calliope, you're right." He climbed out of the coffin, revealing that yes, he WAS eight feet tall. Even I felt tiny in comparison. He was wearing a sort of loincloth that showed the tattoos on his legs, but a snap of his fingers replaced it with a magnificent suit of black glazed armor. It reminded me of Gossamer, actually. That same soap bubble blackness. "Yes, that's much better," he chuckled as he leaned back against the box.

After a slight wait, he opened his eyes. "Thank you," he told us all. "You've done splendidly. Driving off the interloper was well done. Though your release of the vessel was…unfortunate."

"Clarent?" I said in confusion. "I mean, he was just freed from D-the other one's control. He should be pretty unwilling to start trouble. I'd imagine he's probably just going to go home, I know I would after an ordeal like that."

"He might have," the ancient god nodded. "Were he in possession of his own faculties. Unfortunately, you have forgotten the first rule of vessels. When you empty one out, there is still room inside for it to be refilled, have you a substitute on hand for its contents. You brought such a substitute along on this journey, did you not?"

I blinked at him, and then my eyes widened. I checked my ring, cursing as I realized what was missing. "Deveskane," I cursed. "The fragment overheard us say we wouldn't be able to resurrect him. He took Clarent's body after we emptied it out. Can he do that?"

He sighed. "Sadly, yes. The act of hosting a deity alters the fundamental nature of a being. A true vessel is stained by their experience in a way that is not so easy to cleanse as this. The door was open, he simply needed to walk through." He waved me off. "It is not your fault. You had no way of knowing, and that one was old and clever. I am unsure of his purpose though I suspect we will become aware soon enough. Until then, let us make haste to the receiving hall," he beamed at us. "My family is united. Tonight, we FEAST!"

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I was surprised to find a meal waiting for us when we arrived at the receiving hall. I'd been planning to cook myself, but apparently some of those Asura were chefs, and they'd left the hall immediately after being freed to prepare a meal for the return of their god. I eyed the three faced blue people suspiciously, not sure how well they would stack up to my cooking demon, but when I dug into the food, I was pleasantly surprised by how good it was.

Callie, meanwhile, wasn't really here. The clone could eat, and even taste, but it wouldn't receive any of the benefits from the food, which appeared to be chock full of restorative energy that filled my body with humming power.

Luckily, I still had the connected spatial ring I'd gotten all those months ago, though it didn't see as much use lately. I stashed her food in the ring and she took manual control over the clone while eating it on her side. Just to make things more realistic she even made a shadow meal for the clone to eat. It was honestly kind of adorable, but I didn't bring it up because I knew she just relished the idea of a family dinner like this.

"Ok, this is really good," I said as I took a bite of the crimson steak on my plate. "What exactly is this?"

Atlas grinned widely. "Tarasque meat. Sadly, it wasn't kept quite as well stored as it might have been in my Heart of the Void. Under constant exposure to the maximum output of the Chasm, it's been ground down to C-rank. The flavor is still excellent, but it's a bit less nourishing than one might expect from such a creature." His eyes scanned me with interest. "You're practicing a body tempering art?"

I nodded. It wasn't surprising Atlas knew about body tempering. The old man had said it was something of a lost art, but Atlas was OLD. He nodded approvingly. "Excellent. This should help your progress. Body tempering is about cyclical creation and destruction. Proper nourishment is critical to advancing."

"Ok, but I haven't really been eating anything special and I've made it to this point fine," I pointed out. "Not that I don't appreciate the help, but where have my current nutrients been coming from? Is it just the life energy from my Life Nova flames?"

He chuckled. "You have nutrients stored in your body. Most people call them toxins, the parts of elixirs that can't be broken down. Yours are almost gone, actually, probably burned off in that big rush of advancement. I'm surprised, usually someone as strong as you at your age would have quite a bit of stored nutrients."

"I…uh, had them cleansed," I said slowly. "I was under the impression they were a bad thing?"

"To most," he acknowledged. "Any excessive dosage of cure is poison. Without a way to process them, I doubt it's desirable to have such things in the body. It's like taking vitamins to address a deficiency you don't have. You can overdo it."

The Lady had purified all my excess toxins back during my trials, but I'd taken more elixirs since then. I still had plenty of them leftover after taking my D-rank dosage. Speaking of…"I don't suppose you have access to some elixirs?" I asked hopefully. "I'm coming up on B-rank, and I'm not sure where I'd get my hands on the kind of volume we need. "

Ideally I'd get enough for Benny and Jessie, maybe Abel too, but it seemed too greedy to ask him to stock all of us. Callie was his daughter and I was his son and law, plus we just saved his ass, so I felt ok about at least bringing it up, but I didn't want to push my luck.

Fortunately, he looked pleased. "I'm sure we can scrounge something up. Do you think that'll be enough to get you all the way to B-rank?"

"It...actually might," I chuckled. "I'm at around seven and a half million. Another million will put me at eight point five million, and I wouldn't be surprised if I can net another half million when I process it all. That would put me at nine million, only one shy of the peak. I could be at B-rank any day now, it shouldn't take too much longer."

I also needed to condense a few pages of my Chronicle. I'd accomplished a few biggies here, and it would help prepare for B-rank, when I needed a hundred of the damned things to progress. Considering how long Zeke had been stuck there, I wanted to be as prepped as possible, because I had no illusions that it would be simple to get through to A. And that wasn't even considering the actual stat cost.

Callie sighed sourly. "Damn it, I need to get started making a name for myself out here. I've been doing too much training." She glared at me. "This is your fault, I'd be getting way stronger if you hadn't arranged a babysitter."

"Or you'd be dead," I pointed out cheerfully. "And you wouldn't be getting very strong at all if that happened." My smile dropped. "I'm not apologizing for wanting you safe. The war front is dangerous. I have the resources to make sure you have insurance, and I'm damned sure going to use it. Or would you be happy letting me run off to risk my neck in a war zone?"

She flinched at that. "No," she admitted. "I get it, and you're not wrong. I just…" her jaw clenched. "We're partners. We do this together. Seeing you pull ahead so fast just reminds me of how out of my depth you are. How much danger you're in where I can't reach you."

I reached across the table to take her hand, giving it a squeeze. "I need you for more than just stabbing things. And besides, we're going the same place. Even if I get there first, I'll just be waiting when you arrive. We're going to be gods together, Cal. You and me for the rest of eternity. Even if I have to rank up this godsdamned universe myself to make it easier."

Her smile was like a shot of warm sweetness injected directly into my heart. A rumbling laugh cut out moment. Atlas was grinning. "You see," he told Alara. "Look at them. I'm expecting grandchildren any day now."

"Oh don't YOU start too," Callie snapped. "I get enough of that from Sasha." She gave me a flat look. "Your mother's subtle hints have become less subtle and less hinting. I think she's worried I'm going to get killed before we can have kids. She keeps making comments about how pretty my hair would be with green eyes."

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Yeah, I'll talk to her when I get back. So, Alara, what are your plans? You're going to be staying to guard Atlas while he recovers, right?"

"At LEAST call me Adam," laughed the big god. "I can't abide family being so formal. And no. Alara will be heading for the the battlefront." The vampire looked up sharply, obviously unaware of the plan. "I've just decided," he said serenely. "Your sister needs a hand, and I think Morwenna needs a reminder of exactly what an Atlas can do."

Despite the surprise, I could see a spark of eagerness in Alara's eyes. Still, I had my own concerns. "There is the matter of the current reigning S-rank champion. He doesn't play well with vampires." I'd been counting on Atlas to back him off, but if the elder god was stuck here for the time being, Alara would be on her own. I could offer her protection with the WCP, but none of the S-rankers in the Palace would cross Lark, and I REALLY didn't want to see them fight.

He chuckled. "I'll get in contact with this vampiric young man. I may not be leaving anytime soon, but I do still have methods of extending my reach. Besides, I'll be sending my agents out into the world to retrieve my other soul shards and realm fragments, not to mention my other foundational pillars. I could recover without them, or dissolve them at a distance, but this will be much faster."

Which answered the question of why the hell I'd been SENT here. The Lady was going to use the world force in the Tale of Nine Cats to reforge a piece of her realm. She must have already collected the soul shard and realm fragment she needed.

As for his agents…I glanced over at the dozen Asura stationed around the room. As far as I could tell, they were the last of their kind, but they were nothing to sneeze at. Not all of them had the full three faces, telling me they weren't fully grown into the S-rank Alara had mentioned they would become, but some of them were. Not to mention they weren't your average S-rankers. Even without him and Alara, Atlas had the makings of a peak faction in this room.

Alara turned to smile fiercely at Callie. "Don't worry little sister. I don't care how famous he is, he can't compare to being the representative of a god." Atlas cleared his throat and leaned over to mutter in her ear. She coughed and blushed slightly. "Oh. Well, still. I'll ensure your speedy rise. And you'll have those elixirs even if I need to make them myself. I was always a dab hand at alchemy." She winked. "Good luck with brewing, you know."

My wife beamed at her, and I felt a burst of warmth through the bond. She felt… safe. Cared for. By me, but also by Atlas and Alara. Callie's mom had raised her, but she'd run away from home at a young age to live on her own. She'd never really had…this. She didn't have any older siblings or even a dad really.

Having been raised by uncle and getting to meet my mom and sister as an adult, I could deeply sympathize, and I was so happy for her that she got to experience that. I nodded to both of them. "We appreciate the elixirs. Really. I'll need it if I want to get caught up on stats."

Atlas gave me an odd look. "You have that…Wish ability, yes?"

I nodded, but explained. "There's a limit to how many stats I can accept or transfer with my wishes. I need to improve myself over time to enable me to gather more per wish."

"Improve yourself…physically," he said in an insinuating tone. "Improve your bodily foundations in a way that prepares your flesh to conduct more energy, perhaps?" His smile was knowing, as if he was in on a joke that I wasn't…I froze.

"The body tempering art?" I said in a daze. "Damn it why didn't I THINK of that?" I was so used to the idea that I would gradually accrue strength that would enable to raise my wish limit. But thinking back, it wasn't the soul that needed to improve. My stats, my physical body, were the limiters on my wishes. The body tempering art was MADE to improve that. To prepare my body for fusion with my Domain and soul.

I hadn't checked on my stat cap in a while, just assuming it was the same. I'd meant to check after my big stat boost recently, but didn't have anyone on hand to trade with besides maybe Dayna.

Alara just laughed, reaching over to pat me on the shoulder. "We've all had moments of missing the obvious, little brother. Tomorrow, before you leave, I'll prepare your elixirs. We can try to get you as close to B-rank as possible. You'll need every advantage to keep up with my sister once I'm there to help." I laughed, digging back into my food to prepare for more training. Just because I wanted Callie to catch up didn't mean I wouldn't fight to keep my advantage. At least for a little while.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I wanted to take the elixirs as soon as she gave them to me, but I knew that would be a bad idea. The next morning I stockpiled the day's scrolls and we headed out. I'd already delayed my return to Mourne Kayze to come help Atlas, and the Lady was waiting for me to get back. With Atlas still trapped in the Chasm, I knew that the most important thing was to make sure Morwenna didn't get any more gods on her side.

Making our way out was easier than expected, but I was somewhat concerned about Clarent and Deveskane. The swordmaster had chased us here hoping to kill us, and while I HADN'T actually betrayed the sealing god, things hadn't gone the direction I think he was hoping for.

Despite my concerns though, he didn't show up directly. Just in case, Alara decided to escort us out directly, so I took the time to share my concerns and report everything I'd seen. My sister-in-law was clearly experienced and well educated in Ascendant matters, or at least the ones that had existed in her time. She knew a lot about gods and their abilities, and after hearing my description, she formulated her own theory about what the Hermetic Hall really was.

"It's a storage device," she clarified. "Did you wonder why Deveskane went to the trouble of traveling around and sealing the various objects, and then allowing others to undergo trials to release them?"

I nodded slowly. "I mean…I did. But I guess I just assumed he was a rare example of an altruistic god."

She snorted. "There ARE altruistic gods, but their Domains are BASED on that altruism. Always remember that gods are the manifestation of a concept. Of a path. Gods obey their NATURE in all things. They may direct and even focus that nature, but you can always predict how a god will act based on their Domain. A god of sealing will seal, this is natural, but as for the second step? The trials? What's the logic there?"

I thought for a minute, but couldn't come up with anything. "I'm not sure," I admitted. "You said it's a battery?"

"I'm almost positive," she nodded. "You see, Domains work on certain principles. Deveskane is a god of sealing, and can seal items, but he can't UNSEAL them, because he isn't a god of UNSEALING. However, he CAN alter the parameters of that sealing, to align with certain truths of ownership. Items of power can only be used by those with a connection to a god. So, by manipulating the parameters of his seal to align with this natural truth, he can create circumstances by which one can unseal those items."

That made sense, but didn't explain the battery comment. "But if that's the case, what is the battery for? What is he storing?"
"In a word? He's storing the unsealing," she clarified. "That which is can also be that which is not. He can sense and manipulate the energies of sealing, and therefore can also sense their absence. He can't manipulate the absence, but he can create it through other means, and then harvest it."

I frowned. "But…if he was harvesting that unsealing power, why would he try to get me to bring him out? Unless he was finished? That seems a little coincidental in terms of timing."

"When it comes to gods, there are no coincidences," she said bluntly. "But this, I suspect, is not an example of manipulation or precognition so much as patience. I expect he'd achieved his goal well before your arrival. Utilizing that power, which was antithetical to his Domain, probably required a physical form. When you did not provide one, he took the opportunity to acquire his own."

"What could he be trying to unseal?" I asked uneasily. "Especially here, after what Adam told us…"

She nodded. "It could be almost anything," she admitted. "I suspect we won't be aware of the exact nature of his target until he reaches it. Whatever it is, we'll deal with it when it appears. I wouldn't worry too much, however. The Chasm itself seals its contents. Anything unsealed from its depths won't remain in the Void, it'll break through to realspace directly when unleashed."

I let out a sigh of relief. That meant even if something happened before we could leave the Chasm we would be fine, and even once we left we'd still be in the Void and could avoid the problem for the moment. I had enough trouble in my life without whatever fresh hell Deveskane was planning to unleash. Part of me felt guilty for that. He'd obviously needed me to do…whatever this was, but I couldn't worry about that when I was already trying to prevent/win a war and reforge an entire clan of lunatics.

"So, you're heading to meet up with Callie after you see us out?" I asked Alara as we walked. The others were in my Domain, since Alara's luck aura could be pushed to one other person with effort but wouldn't work for more. "I already passed her those elixirs you made us, so she should have made some serious progress by the time you get there."

Between a million points and whatever renown she'd been farming at the war front, not to mention a serious bump in potential stat points per scroll and the nearly two hundred of the things I had on me, she'd be getting almost as close to B-rank as I was.

I thought of Benny and Jessie, training on Stratholme with the others, Benny learning to work with his new dragon and Jessie's reputation for immense Vitality growing with ever story told. I wondered how long it would be before THEY hit B-rank. I made a note to send over some scrolls directly as soon as Callie ranked up. It would take them a while, but I wanted to get the team back together as soon as humanly possible.

The rest of the trip out of the Chasm was surprisingly low key. The further we went, the more power Alara could use, and the better the insurance of traveling with her. To my amusement, she spent the entire time asking me questions about Callie, wanting to learn as much about her new sister as possible. It was clear that her time in the coffin had been lonely, and she was eager for some kind of human connection. With her father (the only living person she knew most likely) trapped here for the foreseeable future, Callie and I were likely her only link to the world outside. Her obvious intention to dote on my wife was endearing, and I found myself sharing plenty of funny but inconsequential stories as we traveled.

Finally, we reaching the outer ring of Void Road, and it was time to say goodbye. She escorted me up to the path we'd taken down from Mourne Kayze, but when we arrived, she had to be on her way. "Are you sure you know the path?" I asked her worriedly. "Callie isn't exactly close by."

She waved me off. "The Chasm is the deepest point of the Void. From here, you can travel almost anywhere. My father made inquiries before we left, and gave me a map I can use to reach my sister. You need not worry for me," she grinned fiercely. "I am not so easily dissuaded by outside forces."

I started to laugh, but before I could respond verbally, I felt something new. Shaking. It took me a second to realize why the nearly indestructible Void Roads SHOULDN'T be shaking, and my eyes snapped up, scanning the outline of the nearby area…before finding them drawn to the central Chasm. The massive exploding riot of colors and light had changed, roiling with large swathes of red and black as a strange circle composed of complex symbols constructed itself from the leaking excess power.

A sense of pressure erupted from the center of the Chasm, driving me and Alara both to our knees as we watched the circle begin to open. "So," I ground out. "What are the chances this ISN'T related to the sealing god I let loose in a random body?"

From inside the opening circle, something began to emerge. A spire of some kind, so immense it was hard for me to take it in even at this distance. As it rose, I was able to dial in my gaze a bit more and finally see what I was looking at. Which was…a clocktower. Just an absolutely massive clocktower with a small (relative to itself) building complex at the base. Even from this distance, it was crushing my flat in a way I couldn't really comprehend, and it wasn't until Alara whispered a single word that I understood why.

"Overgod," muttered my sister-in-law in horrified awe. "That's an Overgod ruin. How? Why? Bringing that here…what is he trying to…" her eyes widened. "Regression?" she whispered. "He's a sundered. He wasn't expecting you to resurrect him. He was planning this all along. He needed to take a new physical form to take advantage of the ruins. It's a legacy trial."

There was a burst of power as an explosive force rocked the Void, sending us both skidding away from the Chasm as the clocktower burst upwards, exploding from the Chasm like a rocket achieving liftoff.

Something in the Void CRACKED as it burst through, vanishing into what I assumed was realspace with a rumble of ominously quaking space.
We stared in awe at the space where it had been as the circle slowly closed and vanished back into the primordial soup of the Chasm. "What just happened?" I rasped to Alara. "What did he DO?"

She swallowed audibly. "He excavated a ruin…it's not…it shouldn't be possible to do that. Not a ruin like that. He must be a sundered Overgod. He descended from above for a chance to become a Worldgod." Her eyes flicked to me, large and haunted. "This is bad. Sundering is necessary to descend into the primary planes, but not to descend to this one. You can still DO it, but it's not a vital step."

I blinked at her in confusion. "Ok, but why does that matter?"

"Because Overgod inheritances are rare and precious, and if another Overgod sundered himself to find this one, it has to be something special even among them." Seeing I still didn't get it, she sighed. "That means that other forces will be interested in it. Higher forces. Forces who can now REACH the legacy trial without sundering themselves. No actual Overgods, thankfully, this plane can't hold them, but powerful gods and their offspring can descend to attempt the trial."

My blood ran cold. "You're saying that we don't need to worry about the vanished gods Ascending this plane, because the Ascended gods are going to be coming HERE?"

She hesitated. "Maybe not many of them. Not at first. If the plane Ascends, the legacy will be dragged back down. They won't risk it. Probably just a few actual gods. But below that…armies, maybe. This plane is about to see an influx of power the likes of which I've never even dreamt of."

I grimaced. I wasn't sure how this could possibly get worse for us…which was, of course, almost an invitation for my wife's voice to ring through my head. "Um…Shane?" Callie's thought speech intruded into my own panic spiral tentatively. "Judging by the timing of the spike of fear I just got from you, I'm assuming you can explain the giant clocktower that just appeared on the war front?"

My mind went blank. The legacy had entered realspace…on the frontline of the Void War. Deveskane had just thrown a stick of dynamite into the muddy waters of the God War and Void War both, and I had no clue what we were going to do about it. I closed my eyes and took a long, slow breath. This was why I didn't like going on trips. Terrible shit always happened when I wandered off on my own.