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

[Malcolm Tent]

They didn't notice me returning after my conversation with Azazel, not that I'd expected otherwise. My parallel had been keeping my body functioning as normal, which mostly meant drinking tea and eating cookies. Once I returned, I let myself slip into the conversation so I knew what was going on, and once I was caught up, I interjected. "Well, I'm excited to see this new bed when it's done," I said brightly. "But I was actually wondering if you could show us around the town a bit more. Not that I don't adore the library, but this wonderful tea has me in the mood to stretch my legs a bit."

Gordon chuckled. "I find tea has the same effect on me on occasion. Is there something in particular you were hoping to see?"

"I was interested in taking a walk in nature," I said with a smile. "Is there a park near here we could take in?" There was, according to the books, exactly one park in Sunshineville, and it was at the center of town. INSIDE that park, meanwhile, was a very mysterious hedge maze that no one in town had planted or took care of. It wasn't a sure thing, but it was a strong contender for the location of the Domain holder.

Gordon looked excited. "Of course, we can take a walk around Pleasant Park!" I almost winced at the name. The Demigod who made this place clearly had a very particular naming sense. More than that though, I was in awe of how REAL this place was. This was a Domain, a projection like Gehenna was for me, but this felt so…solid. I imagined part of that was because we were inside a Domain that had been merged with a body. The Saga contained the Domain, and when the Saga became part of an Ascendant, so did the Domain.

Of course, that wasn't going to stop us from finding this person. Just like I had a moment ago, he could manifest inside his Domain directly. Projecting a Saga infused Domain wasn't something I knew much about, though I'd seen Lark do it several times. All I could say for sure was that a post Saga Domain was stronger and more real, like this one.

It was, quite frankly, intoxicating to think about. How much I could learn from the Demigod who had created this place. I'd been floundering around on my own for a while now. I knew they wouldn't be able to give me one to one instructions, but I'd been blazing my own trail for so long now. Ever since I established Gehenna, I'd been slowly diverging further and further from common sense. Dean Gibbons, the Old Man, Atlas, there were plenty of people who gave me advice and helped me with things like mythcrafting, but my Domain had been just odd enough that they couldn't really help.

Seeing the animal people here, the town itself, and how real and solid everything was, I couldn't help but get excited. This Domain was anchored to the fragment we were in somehow, this wasn't a projection, it was a PLACE. I didn't know how they'd done it, but Dantalion was telling me clearly that we were in stable space in a way that wouldn't be the case in a normal Domain, even one like Lark's.

I was so caught up in my giddiness I almost missed Saunders asking me a question. In fact, I did miss it, but my mom roused my with a quick kick to the ankle as we followed them out the door. "Sorry, got distracted, what was that?" I asked sheepishly.

Saunders laughed. "I asked if you two were hungry? We have an amazing steakhouse in town, we could visit."

Considering we were standing in a town of what I suspected were anthropomorphized skills and most of the ones we'd seen so far were Divine rank (probably), I couldn't deny that I was thrilled at the prospect. Sadly, now wasn't the time, so I had to defer. "That does sound great, maybe after our walk in the park?"

"Sounds like a plan," he chuckled. "Hold up, Gordon needs to lock up the library so he can come with us."

I turned to see the Goat man closing up the library, locking it with a large brass key hanging around his neck that I hadn't seen until he grabbed it. "Oh, Gordon's coming along? That's wonderful, the more the merrier, I say."

Something about Sunshineville just made me want to act…pleasant. I wasn't sure if it was how nice everyone was or something about the Domain, but it was almost irresistible despite being very subtle. It wasn't just words either, everything about the place was mild and nice. The weather was JUST warm enough, with a cool breeze to balance it that carried the scent of pine and flowers, and even the street felt comfortable under my feet somehow.

I was so caught up in the spell I barely noticed we'd walked for a mile until we reached the park, and when we did, I stopped short as I stared ahead. "Um…that's a nice maze," I said slowly.

It wasn't. It was, to be frank, horrifying. The maze was constructed of bushes, which should have been inoffensive, but somehow the bushes were projecting some kind of force of malice. They were towering and terrible, with jagged dark branches and razor sharp serrated black leaves. The shadow they projected was much too large, and they gave the impression of looming hungrily over us like a great beast waiting to pounce.

"Isn't the park lovely?" Saunders said cheerfully. "I always feel so refreshed walking through here."

"You pass the maze often?" I asked, noting how he and Gordon seemed to be skirting around it without ever actually looking at it. He'd also ignored my mention of it a moment ago, which seemed a bit suspicious.

Saunders blinked at me. "The park?"

"The maze," I clarified.

"Oh, I love the park, isn't it lovely? I always feel so refreshed walking through here," his tone was identical to what it had been when he said the same thing just a moment earlier.

My mom put a hand on my shoulder. "It's warded," she clarified. "They can't see it. I don't think anyone in this town can. I've seen five or six other residents walk by and none of them have even glanced at it. One of them dropped something and chased it around the corner of the maze. Like it was luring him past. Something is keeping them away. I don't even think they can hear us talking about it."

Sure enough, when I glanced at them, I was surprised to see the two of them had turned and wandered off, chattering to each other…and to us, despite our not being there anymore. "Well, that's deeply unsettling," I said, staring at them in discomfort.

"Agreed, now what are we looking for here?" my mom said as we walked toward the towering twisted branches.

I told her, filling her in on everything I'd learned. She frowned at that. "Are you sure they're like your demons? You said they have Divine ranked skills, right? Wouldn't they be S-rank then, if they worked the same?"

"They would," I said slowly. "But they might not work the same. I mean, I can almost guarantee they don't actually. For one thing, my demons all look like different versions of me. The residents here are friendly animal people. The skills all seem to be lifestyle stuff. Teamaking, furniture crafting, baking. It seems like this person is focused on the enjoyment of life."

"You think that makes a difference?" she asked with interest.

I shrugged. "I don't know. In fact, I don't know what I don't know. Whoever they are, they've clearly gone MUCH further down this path than I have. I won't know anything until I talk to them about it. Which brings us to…" I gestured at the entrance to the hedge maze we'd stopped in front of.

"This place," she said grimly. "I don't love it. You really think they're in there?"

"Maybe," I admitted. "Theres a few places in the Domain they might be. But this one feels right to me. I can't say why, it just seems…likely. Maybe it's my fate sense, or maybe it's the similarities. Whatever the case, we need to go inside. Even if the Domain holder isn't there, we might find some clues to the missing townsfolk."

She nodded, then paused. "Actually…where are the others? Should we be letting them wander off on their own?"

"It's fine," I shrugged. "Bethy seems to like everyone, and if Mordu has anyone in town, they'll be paying attention to them and not us. Mostly because I sent a clone after them before we entered the library, so she'll think them IS us. If nothing else, it'll give us an excuse to look around without drawing any attention. Or it would if this place wasn't apparently some kind of cognitohazard for the locals. That was not part of my plan."

She snorted, but despite her amusement, she tried to step forward into the maze. I held out an arm. "I'm wearing S-rank armor," I said dryly. "And I have a powerful defensive form." I activated Mornax, boosting it with my staff before stepping forward. "I'll go first, and you can back me up." I grinned at her from behind my mask. "Just sit tight old timer, I'll keep you safe."

Her eye roll was undermined by her slightly exasperated grin. "All grown up and too big to let your mom protect you now, huh?"

I chuckled as I called for my staff, stepping into the maze. "What can I say, I've come a long way." Despite the joking tone though, my words lost a lot of their strength as I stepped into the maze. It was the strangest feeling, one second I was out in the town where the weather was perfect, albeit under the shadow of the branches, and then I stepped over the threshold and the air went icy cold.

Under my feet, dead leaves crunched, branches rustled around us, and off in the distance I heard a murder of crows squawking loudly. "Well," my mom said worriedly. "That was dramatic."

"It feels like another world," I frowned. "It feels like…" I paused to consider. "Like the citadel. Shit. You think this place is already compromised? We should have brought Lark along. In fact…" I closed my eyes, reaching for the clone I'd sent, and redirected it to my location. I made sure it knew to bring Lark along, and I gestured for my mom to wait. "Hold on." I warned her. "We're waiting."

I wasn't sure if the Demigod was here, but if they were, and if they were corrupted, I'd be screwed without Lark to help. To my surprise, it didn't take him long to find us, and as I stepped out of the maze to meet him, I was surprised to see him jump slightly. That added a bit of credence to the whole other world theory.

"What do you need?" Lark said, obviously bored. "It's usually good manners to send that in the message. Not just 'come here, will you?' Just for future reference." He didn't seem too put out, but I winced anyway.

"Sorry," I sighed. "There's a lot going on." I filled him in on the various bits of information, the theories, and everything we know or suspected. "Basically, we need you to come with us into this creepy haunted maze where no one can hear us scream." I shot him a grin to let him know that while I WAS joking, I was also being very serious.

He just rolled his eyes. "Fine," he groaned. "I guess I'm interested to see what's in there." He turned and walked away. He strode through the opening in the bushes and vanished, and after a quick shared look with my mom, I trailed after him. I had a feeling we didn't want him to get away.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

AN:// Ok, quick note. Over the last few months I've been running more stories, and I've been necessarily scaling back my output. I've found that the resulting chapters, with more time breathe and percolate, have been coming out much better. Therefore, as some of my patrons may already be aware, I'm going to be scaling back WUTS chapters to MWF. The patreon is still 20 chapters ahead, but I feel like this is the best way to make sure the last two books of the series are going to be as great as I want them to be.

The inside of the maze really felt like another world. Sunshineville, even around the hedge maze, had this underlying sense of stability and safety, but this place was different. Here, everything felt kind of…vague. Like I was lost from the moment I stepped inside. My mom frowned as she sensed it herself. "Shit," she said softly. At my confused look, she sighed, explaining. "This isn't a maze."

Lark nodded. "Labyrinth," he said in a flat voice.

"What's the difference, exactly?" I asked in confusion. "A labyrinth is the same thing as a maze, isn't it?"

"Mazes are two sided," she corrected. "They have an entrance and an exit, but their purpose is to be navigable. Mazes have a bunch of paths, but they also have an entrance and an exit. A labyrinth doesn't. It has an entrance and a center, but there's only one real path to get to that center."

I nodded slowly. "You're talking about that weird sense of unreality."

"It's called directional vertigo," Lark grimaced. "It's a labyrinth thing. They've got recursion about getting lost. Also monsters waiting inside, usually. Not sure that this one will have that, it might not fit the vibe, but then again maybe it does. I don't know enough about the Domain holder to say. Just keep an eye out."

I nodded absently. "Of course. This place is definitely not the nice little hamlet Sunshineville is. It's pretty gloomy. I wonder if the Domain holder found some way to concentrate all the negativity into this small space? Maybe something to do with his Path? Like how my Domain could seal and bind. Whatever the case, we were here now, and I was no longer wondering if this was the right place. I could feel that we were getting close to the source of this place.

Gripping my staff, I stepped around the corner, ready to take on anything. I still had Mornax at S-rank. I was sure that in his armor, Lark was tougher than I was, and possibly out of it given he was a Demigod, but my gear wasn't anything to sneeze at either, and I was confident leading from the front in this case. I was ready to hold my ground no matter what I found, ready to handle whatever came my way…until I saw what was actually there and froze in my tracks, gaping at the sight in front of me.

It was…haunted. Not in the grim, terrible sense, though it had some of that too. More in the sense that it looked like a haunted house. Tombstones and cobwebs, spiders and spooky pumpkins, not to mention skeletons standing around with swords and shields.

Everything here was a threat, mind, but it was the most stereotypical creepy setting imaginable, to the point that it created a sense of dissonance. This stuff shouldn't BE scary, not really, but it was and I didn't really understand how. There was even a big hexagonal box with a cross on it that I knew was a coffin, and as we came around the corner, it began to open slowly, the noise of its creaking splitting the still air as mist began to usher forth from under the lid.

Lark's head snapped up, red eyes glaring at the coffin, and the creepily opening lid froze mid swing. The Vampire stared daggers at the box, and the mist was sucked slowly back inside, the coffin lid easing itself closed. The second it was shut I heard a series of clicks, like someone had just thrown a bunch of dead bolts, and the box went still. Lark looked like he was debating ripping it open anyway, but eventually snorted and turned to leave. I swear I heard the box sigh in relief.

I raised a brow at Lark, but he didn't bother to turn back, and after a suspicious look of my own at the box, I shook my head and followed him, assuming he'd picked up some kind of direction somehow. We walked off down another hallway and the graveyard fell away, revealing another room, this one appearing to be a spooky laboratory.

"This place is weird," I said slowly as I looked around the room. "But it feels different than the last one. Any ideas why?"

Lark nodded. "Because we found the labyrinth guardian," he said calmly. He gestured to the center of the room, where a table was reclined at about forty five degrees. It took me a second to figure out what he meant, because there was a sheet over it, but as I watched, the figure on the table sat up, the sheet falling away to reveal a truly colossal man.

The man was pale, his deep set eyes flat and black all the way through like dark glass, his face was sharp, with hard edges and a blocky jaw, and I could feel the staggering power coming off him in waves. This was a Demigod level being, and not a weak one. His eyes bored into Lark's and I could almost feel the pressure crackling on the air between them as the man climbed off the table.

His physique was strange, his body proportions unsettling, as if he was built from parts that were all slightly too big for their bodies, and the overall effect was far from harmonious. I could see stitching on his exposed flesh, a clear indication that this was a necromantic construct, though one that felt much different than Rawhead and Bloody Bones. This one wasn't leaking the same terrifying corruption as the last. This being felt…scary. But in a protective way. Like someone had weaponized bad dreams as a shield against evil.

I wasn't sure what gave me that vibe, but I had it, and I knew that I should follow it. So I did. I stepped forward, between the two Demigods, interrupting Lark before he could attack. "Hello," I said to the large man. "I'm here to speak to your creator. Is he available?"

The menacing momentum building throughout the chamber sputtered, the atmosphere fading as both of them just stared at me in disbelief. The large man spoke, his voice like the rumble of a thousand crashing landslides. "You wish…to talk?" He sounded almost incredulous. I was pretty sure. It was hard to tell with that baritone.

"I didn't come here to make an enemy," I shrugged. "We're here to help. The Blood Witch has been taking your citizens and using them to corrupt this Domain. We want to take away her power, and that coincides with your needs. There's no reason to fight about this. In fact, I have a lot of questions for your creator, not just about this issue, but about several other things we have in common. So…yeah. I'd like to talk. Will he meet with me?"

Lark looked like he'd bitten into a lemon, but my mom was grinning like a loon. I could understand his position, to be honest. I'd only been Wishmaster for a year or two now, and I'd already gotten used to acting from a position of strength. Someone like Lark would have been a million times more used to getting his way or fighting.

But honestly, I didn't WANT every single interaction with everyone to be a battle. I wanted to work with the Domain holder, and if that meant exercising a little politeness, I didn't mind bowing my head a bit.

The big man stared at me for a moment, finally nodding. "I will extend your offer," he rumbled diplomatically. "My Master will make the determination for himself."

"I appreciate that, Mr…what do I call you, exactly?" I kept my tone polite and pleasant.

"Stein," he boomed. "My Master calls me Stein. I would ask that you wait as I seek his counsel. Similarly, I wish for you to restrain your…associate. He appears quite eager to shed blood, and we have residents within these walls who fear his potential reprisal." I wasn't sure how he knew that, but it confirmed that there had been some kind of Vampire in that coffin, and that Lark understandably terrified the poor thing.

I shot Lark a look and he grimaced, but nodded. "I haven't seen any confirmed instances of anything I would be forced to react to with violence." He said casually. "So long as that continues to be the case, I don't see why I couldn't remain here peacefully while you get in touch with your boss." Translation: keep your vampire out of my sight and I won't have to kill it.

Which made me wonder how exactly the meeting between him and Alara would go. Had gone? Had they met already? I knew she'd had friction with Bethy, which had then been smoothed over, but I hadn't heard anything specific about her interacting with Lark that I could remember. How much did his reputation as a vampire scourge control his actions? Clearly he could choose not to cause problems if he wanted to, but was that request not to see the other vampire a kindness or a necessity? Would he go crazy if he caught sight of them?

Whatever the case, he clearly wasn't crazy now, and he leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms as Stein walked past us, keeping a close eye on the large construct. Once he was gone, he turned to look at me critically. "You sure you want to do it this way?"

I was surprised he sounded so measured. "You're not going to call me an idiot?"

"I told you," he said bluntly. "Do everything you do all the way. You clearly want to make peace, and this is a good tone to start with. Just because it's not how I'd choose to proceed doesn't make it a bad strategy. Plus your mom beaming at you over my shoulder is bound to undercut and criticisms I make, so I won't waste my breath."

My mom laughed. "What can I see, you and my husband may be the shoot first questions later type, but I still like to take a diplomatic approach when possible. I'm proud that my son got at least that much restraint from me. Besides which I suspect my daughter in law is going to be just as pleased when I tell her about this. Especially if this ends up netting us another ally for the upcoming conflict. That Stein person seems formidable."

"He does," Lark admitted. "He feels…heavy. And I get the feeling he'd be a better match for me than most. I almost want to start a fight anyway to see what he can do. I won't, obviously, I'm here on business, but it was tempting."

"Well I appreciate your forbearance," I said dryly. "It's nice to know you're committed enough to the current job not to randomly attack strong people because you're bored."

He nodded graciously. "As long as you know. I'm giving up a lot here."

I rolled my eyes, because I knew there was no way I was winning this argument with Bethy's dad of all people. He might be less wacky in the day to day, but she'd learned her nonsense from him. Still, it was nice to know he was in our corner, even when he had interests elsewhere, I hadn't really been sarcastic about that part. He could have started a fight and there wouldn't have been much I could do.

We stood and waited there for about ten minutes, and eventually, I heard a steady thump in the hall outside. I blinked, looking up to see Stein enter the room. He was moving with purpose, and when he spotted me, he nodded deeply.

"My Master has heard your request for parlay," he said formally. "And decided to grant it. You may follow me to his location." I nodded, expecting him to continue, but he just turned and wandered back out. I glanced at my mom, then at Lark, and then I shrugged and followed behind him. Guess it was time to meet the big boss.

 

[Verdthandi]

Do what you gotta do! I'm thoroughly enjoying whatever updates come across my path, here.

Regarding this chapter:
* Poor vampire!
* Always nice when someone actually tries diplomacy.