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

[Malcolm Tent]

It took me three days to successfully undo the corruption. Well, it took US three days. I used Dan to deconstruct the process and Wisdom of Solomon to simulate possible solutions, and between them and the soul of the creature (whose name was apparently Steve, of all things, though my dad refused to let us call him that because he said it was underwhelming), we were able to reverse the corruption of all the monsters and return them to their prior angelic states.

This was extremely important because while Amy's mom WAS among the corrupted, there were also several very old angels who had firsthand knowledge of the Phoenix Foundry, and they were more than willing to share information on the subject once we fixed them up.

Still, the wait for the three days it took to fix them, despite being objectively worthwhile, ate at me a little. If not for Callie's excitement when I told her about all the new angels, I don't think I'd have been able to stop myself from spiraling at the wait. Three days was about two weeks at our current timescale, which was closer to five to one than the seven to one it had been outside, but two weeks was still two weeks. I didn't like it.

Despite that though, I had to admit the heartfelt video thank you from my teary eyed wife, not to mention the long letter she'd sent to Amy after hearing about everything the girl had been through, soothed a lot of my discomfort at waiting. Callie wasn't just ok with me taking my time, she was happy about it. My wife was a true hero, and knowing I was helping her people had lit a fire under her in a way I was almost shocked about. The gleam in her eyes in that video almost made me feel sorry for Belsara. Almost.

"Credit for your thoughts?" Abel said as he sat down next to me. I raised an eyebrow at him and he shrugged. "We might be on different levels now, but I was your teacher for a while. Your buddy, sister, and healer asked me to keep an eye out while we're on this trip. They asked Bethy too but, well…"

I grinned. "Bethy is Bethy," I agreed. "She's currently putting on a lion taming show for the angel kids with Apples. The fact that none of those children is even remotely worried about the cat is honestly scarier than fighting the ACTUAL Manticore. Bethy's powers are truly great and terrible. I'm glad she's doing better after her run in with Steve."

"Your dad said not to call him that," Abel said, in a voice that told me he cared even less than I did.

I just laughed at that. "Because he likes to seem powerful and mysterious, and after he converted Steve into one of those mirror souls, he's an asset."

"Pretty sure he was an asshat well before that," Abel said solemnly, and we both burst out laughing. "But yeah, she kind of took that whole snack pack thing personally. I get it though, she's got her issues with that kind of thing. I was mostly coming to see how you were doing. You've been keeping a lid on it but you've got to be getting a little antsy."

Chuckling, I shrugged. "It helps that we got so much information on the Phoenix Foundry. Not just the flame, mind, but information that might help us bypass a few links in this endless nonsense chain of webworld fragments as we head to the central area. The Summer Palace."

Because that was its name. We knew that now. Some of the older angels we'd saved DID remember Belsara, and they'd been happy to share what they knew. Admittedly that wasn't as much as I'd have preferred, but it also wasn't nothing. Beyond that, the Foundry was apparently where Belsara's forces had forged their weaponry. It probably wasn't full of perfect quality gear waiting to be cleared out, but it was likely SOMETHING had been left behind, and anything from the realm of a god as powerful as Belsara had been would be at least competitive in today's forging environment.

My eyes trailed down to my armor. The Seal had been falling behind since I hit A-rank, and while I didn't have the old smith who made it to do the upgrade, I DID have Zeke, who was not only a master craftsman in his own right but had participated in the last upgrade.
On that note, I approached him directly about the possibility of upgrading the suit. "So, this Foundry place should have some useful materials and maybe some forging equipment intact. Did you learn enough during my last armor upgrade to push this to S-rank if we find the right mats for it?"

"Not personally," he admitted. "But then, I don't need to. I have a mask with a crafter in it, and your dad should have at least one soul that can pitch in. I learned enough about the process that we can pull together to make something workable."

My mother weighed in. "I can help with that," we all turned to stare at her, and she rolled her eyes. "My father's bloodline is a type of fire that purifies things. You don't think he ever tried applying that to forging? Dad went through a long blacksmith phase, and I learned quite a bit about making and maintaining arms and armor as a girl. I'm a bit out of practice, but I'm sure it's as easy as welding the frame of a bike."

That got a nod from my dad. "She used to have a forge back at our old house on Callus when you and your sister were small. Not sure if you remember it, but she spent quite a bit of time out there."

"I don't," I admitted. "I don't remember a lot from that time in my life. But having more help can't hurt."

"It definitely can," my mom warned. "Communal projects only work if there's a strong sense of direction in the forge. Tempo is key when working with metals, as is timing in general. But given your father has at least one mirror soul in his collection with forging abilities, we should be able to manage something if we plan it out first. That said, while we COULD muddle through, we have better options for this than you think."

I raised a brow at her. "What options are those?"

"Well it seems to me," she pointed out. "That what we're doing is a form of information sharing. We're gathering disparate skills and techniques from different parties and mashing them together alongside specifications for materials and your current gear and trying to create a result that gives us the best possible result. Sound like anything you have a solution for?"

I blinked, because when she put it like that…"Dan," I said slowly. "And Wisdom. We know Dan can take information from people and objects directly, as long as nothing is fighting him, and Wisdom can iterate with that information in different configurations to find the best usage for it. Hell, I bet Celestial Fabrication could help too, might help him get a tier or two, and probably improve the overall quality of the armor."

My mom nodded approvingly. "It is important," she said firmly. "To remember that there are often more ways to solve a problem than you think. There are many kinds of Ascendant, but those of your particular inclination especially need to remember to make the best possible us of the tools you have. Your forms and archdemons are one way to do that, but not the only way."

She was right. I'd gotten so used to stacking my demons together to create compound effects that I didn't even consider just having them work together. Although…"Actually, do you think archdemons are off the table for this?" I asked cautiously. "Because thinking about it, creating a forging demon from those three would probably be the best way to maximize our results on that armor redesign."

"You're not wrong," she admitted. "Are you sure that will work? You need time to get that together, don't you?"

"Less than I used to," I corrected. "Celestial Fabrication helps with designing new timepieces. It'll take us a while to gather materials and search the Foundry anyway. Wherever the summer phoenix flame is, I somehow doubt it's going to be easy to get at."

She nodded grimly. "That flame…if what they told you about it is true, you might be the only person who can use it properly."

"It's definitely terrifying to think about," I acknowledged. Aside from information on Belsara's palace, at least one of the older angels had been able to tell me the details about that flame, or at least the phoenix it came from. It was a familiar, if counterintuitive concept. The flame of the Summer Phoenix, Halcyon, was the flame of progress. Which was to say, it was a flame that embodied time's ability to allow for growth.

My Ruin Phoenix was the exact opposite of that particular concept, and I couldn't help but think of the sheer variety of possibilities for something like that. Of course, I still wasn't sure exactly the side effects of that bloodline would be. Maybe it would boost Fantasy? Or Creation? Whatever the case, if it was like Ruin that would just be the icing on the cake. The real benefit would come from the flame itself.

In fact, I could already think of a dozen applications for something like that. Applying it to something like Zagan or Genesis Burst, for instance. A temporal shift with additional benefits to positive effects involving growth and improvement would make any healing ability I mixed it with exponentially more effective, I was betting.

Of course, I still needed to complete my template for the clear mind flame, not to mention a few others before I could hit S-rank, but that was something to worry about later. For now, identifying my sixth flame was progress, and finding a solid place to look for it was even better.

"You know, as much flack as I gave your uncle about his criticism," my mother said dryly. "It really IS a bad idea to space out in the middle of hostile territory."

"THANK YOU!" Zeke bellowed from across the room.

She just rolled her eyes. "Stopped clock, twice a day, etcetera. Statistically he had to be right about something eventually." She winked at me when Zeke yelled a wordless objection, making it clear that she just liked teasing him. I knew him well enough to know he wouldn't take it personally anyway.

"We should be leaving soon," I finally said as I focused on the door nearby. "But I don't want to abandon Amy so soon. She still seems a bit shaken. I'll stay and work on my new archdemon, so we have it ready when we head in. We can set off for the Foundry tomorrow."

Laughing, she pulled me into a hug. I knew she was a bit worried about making sure Amy was ok too. I hadn't talked to the girl since we'd gotten back, since I'd assumed she'd want time with her mom, but I couldn't deny she made me think about what my own daughter might be like. Daughters? Now that I knew we were having twins I was completely in the dark again.

Chuckling, I headed off to find a private place to work on my archdemon construction. Dantalion, Wisdom of Solomon, Celestial Fabrication, maybe even Agares. I had so many ideas for possible additions to this one, and once I made it, I had a feeling we were going to see some serious benefit to this whole situation. I ran a hand over my forearm, feeling my armor as I considered my options for the future. Yeah, I couldn't wait to see how this would turn out.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Creating a new archdemon happened one of two ways. Mad fits of brilliance or LOTS of leg work. Unfortunately, while I had SOME idea what I wanted, I wasn't currently in the midst of an epiphany or in a battle for my life, so my fits of brilliance remained firmly in the realms of sanity there I distinctly didn't need them.

Of course, I had the tools to do it the hard way. Or rather, I had the assistance. Dan, Wisdom, Celestial Fabrication, Agares, I had the framework for the being I wanted to make, and I understood who and what it was.

I also had experience. I'd created several powerful archdemons, putting them together to synergize powerful abilities into a coherent whole to make an effect. I considered just doing that again, making modifications to each of them one by one until they could all just slot into place as needed. It would be easy enough to accomplish, but in the future, I knew I'd run into this same situation again eventually.

The truth was, I needed more. More than just one plus one equalling two. More control over what aspects of my power manifested and how they synergized. Making individual changes to timepieces was a functional method of doing what I needed, but it wasn't a GOOD one.

I incarnated Wisdom, Dan, Celestial Fabrication, and Agares, feeling them all swirl together in my head. I pushed Wisdom to tier 10 for this part, pushing him to the equivalent of S-rank so I could iterate properly as I reached for a large slate from Agares, creating a place for me to carve my designs just like the old days.

The truth was, there was a limit to what I could do with my current system. Making individual spot edits to demon timepieces to combine them was only feasible as long as I only needed to use a single demon for one or two archdemons. Past that point, the modifications would potentially conflict or even negatively affect the timepiece itself, possibly damaging it or resulting in a decrease in efficiency.

For some time now, I'd been toying with an idea for how to address that, a way to create some kind of base that would allow the timepieces to be INPUTS to a larger device whose whole purpose was to connect them externally without requiring modification of the timepieces themselves. A framework that would serve as an artificial input for multiple timepieces but stand separate from the pieces themselves.

I had a design for it in mind already, a potential path, and the clockwork of Celestial Fabrication had all the elements I needed to make it. Clocks were all about taking complicated assemblies of individual parts and making a greater whole, and while that usually meant gears, it could mean more than that too. I started to sketch, creating a housing, an assembly, a gear train.

It was hard work, honestly. I already had several archdemons that I had to fit into the variable design. The gear assembly needed to allow for several constructions and modification mid function, but more than that, I had to design the individual parts with the mythology to support each of the potential outputs that I wanted. This wasn't just complicated. It meant complications in a literal sense. Seventy two complications, the theoretical maximum of my design philosophy, all aimed at supplementary and support mechanisms in a way I'd never even considered before.

Honestly, it should have been impossible. The design I was aiming at was too nebulous, too ephemeral, it went against the conceptual underpinnings of the clockwork. But there was an element to it that I was able to pull from. An aspect of my power I had never allowed to influence my demons before. The Wish power.

The design for this timepiece was based around it. The ability to become whatever I needed, to connect disparate elements into a single perfect whole. I designed the timepiece to BE the wish power, but to be something else, something beyond and outside Gehenna, connected to my second ability, anchoring Mythic Wish to the Mythic Path of the Demonbinder to create something greater than the sum of its parts.

I built a clock. Obviously. But not just any clock. A massive grandfather clock. An edifice of gold and crystal and dreams and clockwork, with seventy two slots for the seventy to individual timepieces, and the ability to combine them, maybe not freely, but with effort and skill if I could envision a purpose.

The Throne of Goetia, a clockwork chair to sit at the heart of my throneroom at the base of my tree, upon which my Myriad Demons Manual would rest, and which would serve as the anchor that would allow the connecting of my two abilities in the future in truth as well as name.

My throne took shape in stages. One configuration after another I tried and one configuration after another failed. Wisdom of Solomon at S-rank was enough to push the processing power of the staff and armor to the breaking point, though thankfully not further. More than just them, too, the other archdemons were needed. Kronos reached into the sands of time to pluck the iterations I needed most, Yama traced the Karma to the parts I needed to connect, Bennu blazed with five colored fire, melding the disparate elements in a crucible of innovation, literally forging the individual pieces of the clockwork throne.

I wasn't sure how long it took. Hours, at least. Maybe a few days. My head hurt, my soul ached, my mind was hazy and unfocused. I created something. Something real and physical and solid that would set the foundation for what I would come to be someday. My first object of power.

By the time I finished, I was barely coherent, kneeling on the ground in front of my new throne and staring up at it in awe. With shaking hands, I assembled the pieces I needed, the individual timepieces I'd been trying to connect, I slotted them into place, following the esoteric knowledge still sparking in my mind as I shifted the faces and dials strewn across the front of the chair to create a formula for what I needed, dialed in to a picture perfect formation that only the manifestation of the Wish could have granted.

The chair hummed, the Wish power melding together the demons into a single whole in a way that would have normally been impossible, a granular recombination that granted me precise control of the result to create…

A new demon stood in front of the throne, staring up at me casually. He had black and white hair that reminded me of Chelsea, and a monochrome domino mask sat atop his smiling face. "Belphegor," I said slowly, meeting his eyes. "It's nice to meet you." He was here, but he wasn't, a potential being that was real and false in a way none of the archdemons had been before.

It was as if I'd plucked him from a potential future where those demons had become permanently fused, but he wasn't really here. When the Throne finished its work, he would return to that nothing place, allowing my demons to reform as they were. A method to create TRUE archdemons where before, the combinations had just been hollow amalgams with no self. He seemed to understand what I had done as well, smiling as he took in my work.

"Six out of ten," he said casually. Giving the throne a once over.

"SIX?" I gaped at him in outrage. "I made an object of power. This is going to be the foundations of my future realm! It's a work of art!"

He rolled his eyes. "It might EVENTUALLY become that," he warned. "You've got the bones. But creation is a process. You should know the iterations you've made here aren't the end of the line. They're the beginning. The concept is good, but we have so many things to improve on. This isn't enough to hold a seed of even your current, unfinished Domain, much less the completed version."

Sighing, I stood and let myself fall into the chair. I winced. "It's also not very comfortable," I admitted. "But now that you exist you can help me with all this. Celestial Fabrication was elevated a tier at least. I could feel him hit tier 8."

"I noticed that too," he said brightly. "This IS an accomplishment, don't get me wrong. And it was brilliant. Wish was the perfect vehicle to create this timepiece, this throne that is both a part of your court and not. Especially when you're approaching S-rank, getting ready to merge together the pieces of yourself to create your final bloodline."

I grimaced. I'd been worrying about that. About how the two abilities in my soul would fit together in my last step before godhood. Because I didn't want to lose my Wish power. Not the way I would presumably have to if I made any real changes.

This though, this presented a potential alternative. I hadn't changed it yet, simply made this clockwork chair as a representation. But it was complex and variable enough to potentially grow to truly represent my ability. To make it a part of the court in a way that would maintain the perfect utility of my ancestor's masterpiece. It wasn't there yet, not even close, Belphegor was right, but I could see the potential. See a path.

Shaking off the bright future I was trying to envision, I focused on the demon in front of me. "You can do what we need though, right?" I pressed. "The upgrade for the armor?"

He flicked a gaze at the throne. "I can," he confirmed. "In fact, I already have some ideas for how to make it even better. We just need the materials. S-rank isn't like the others. It needs to set the foundation for making a divine artifact. Because if you want THIS thing to be an object of power, I imagine the armor and the staff need to be the same."

"The staff is going to be complicated," I grimaced. "But yeah. I always wanted the armor to be a foundation object. After seeing Lark's armor that's even more true. I take it you can take some inspiration from that?"

He grinned wildly. "Oh very much so. But you know I won't be here the whole time. I can't stick around that long. Also you need to sleep for a while. Using the Throne isn't exactly easy on you, especially after eight whole days of nonstop crafting." At my flinch, he laughed. "yeah , you kind of got lost in it. But hey, I think the result speaks for itself, don't you?" He gestured down at his body, at the living, breathing, sentient archdemon that shouldn't be able to exist without permanently diminishing my court, but somehow could.

"Yeah," I admitted. "I'm not happy to have missed the time, given the constraints, but I know Callie would want me to take this seriously. If I'm going to get her back, I need to be in top form by the time I arrive. This armor as an opportunity to push myself further. If we can properly calibrate it into an object of power, even one without a domain seed, not to mention manage to elevate the staff too, I should have no problem withstanding a proper upgrade to the Demigod rank for one of you."

I wasn't even sure what that would look like, honestly, but I had a feeling a demigod rank archdemon would possess abilities beyond anything I had currently seen. Having caught a glimpse of what that tier of power meant in Lark's fight…I wanted it. I was convinced it was the only chance I would have to pull this rescue off.

He chuckled morbidly. "I think you're putting the cart before the horse there, boss," he said kindly. "But if that's the path you want to take, we can pursue it. For now, get some sleep. We can start work on the armor design once you wake. We need you in peak form for what's to come." It was a sign of how exhausted I was that I didn't even argue, I just passed out right there in the chair. My last conscious thought was how damned uncomfortable it was.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I woke with a groan. I stood slowly, feeling out what shape I was in. I wasn't feeling GOOD, though I also wasn't feeling bad, as much as I was just…tender? Like my body had been drained of energy and was preparing to be in pain by becoming hypersensitive. It reminded me of being sick, though it wasn't that, and I prayed it didn't BECOME that because the timing couldn't be worse.

Just to be safe, I called Zagan into the throne room letting him blast me with a few waves of revivifying fire. Once I was feeling human again, I stepped from my Domain, emerging in the refuge where the angel survivors had been staying, though with the rest of the city opened back up, it had mostly emptied out.

The only ones left behind were my own people, and sure enough, as soon as I emerged, I was swarmed. Well, swarmed implied there were lots of people involved, really it was just my mom, but she was EVERYWHERE. She scooped me up in a hug, then dragged me off, lecturing me about taking care of my health while insisting I eat and calling my dad to come make sure I was ok and giving me an update. There was so much happening at once it took me a second to figure out there was just one of her, and by the time I did I was already sitting at a table eating pancakes.

"So, you're finally out," Lark said, sitting down across from me. "You took a while in there. Eight days isn't exactly a blink, especially with…what? Five to one timescale still in effect? That's over a month."

I grimaced as I chewed. "I know," I admitted. "But I already talked to Callie about it. She knows hurrying is just going to screw me over in the end. Neither of us likes it, but the steps I'm taking are important. I created my first foundational pillar when I was in there. I'm planning to have three of them."

"Quality over quantity," he nodded. "I get that. But it's a bit early to start item creation. You need to do a lot of things first. Create your worldforce then condense your Domain seeds. And if you're going for a trinity you'll need to be careful and go slow. Your first reinforcement won't be too tough, but the more Domain seeds you imbue into an item the higher the requirements. Rushing is likely to bust whatever you're using."

Grimacing, I set down my fork. "Ok, so that's as good a segue point as any. I need to know more about how this works. I got the broad strokes from Alara. Less items, more power, harder to destroy but more damage if you do. How does it actually work though?"

"Domain seeds are somewhat complicated," he said, snagging some bacon off my plate and chewing it thoughtfully. I ignored him, waiting for him to continue, but I pulled the plate toward me and wrapped an arm around it protectively. He rolled his eyes as he finished chewing, but kept talking. "So you know what a Domain seed is?"

I nodded. "It's the crystallization of a Domain," I confirmed. "More Domain seeds is better, right?"

He nodded. "Sure, but do you know why?"

I shrugged. "Domain seeds like…multiply your power, right? It's like stacking more Domains on top of each other, and it empowers your eventual realm."

"Sort of," he said. "The first thing you need to know is that a Domain seed is not just some magic item you pull out of nowhere. You know that the objects of power, once you reach the peak of S-rank, need to be merged into the Saga to reinforce the realm in preparation for ascension?"

"I was told," I confirmed. "Not sure how that works, but yeah, I've got an idea."

He chuckled. "Well it works because they originally COME from the Chronicle to begin with. Or rather, the pages. See, as you may have noticed, not all Chronicles are created equal. Not just in terms of raw power, though different events can provide different levels of mythology, but also in terms of compatibility. You saw that yourself during your little page binge, from what I'm told, that sometimes to keep yourself balanced it's better to take less impactful events that are more meaningful."

"Sure," I acknowledged. "I took a few weaker ones from earlier in my timeline that I thought better reinforced who I was as a person."

"Which is an approach," he said with a wave. "But not the only one. You can go the other way and max out your most epic deeds. Stack power and meaning regardless of how compatible those things are with who you want to be. As with everything, this has benefits and downsides."

I frowned as I considered that. "And the benefit has to do with Domain seeds?"

"Sometimes, yes." He paused to consider how to continue. "So, Domain seeds are condensed from pages of your Chronicle. The more Domain seeds you have the better it is, by and large, BUT the number of them you can condense depends on the quality and compatibility of your pages. It's not JUST a matter of raw mythology per page, mind, it's also a matter of how compatible that mythology is with the objects you choose, and how compatible your WORLDFORCE is with the pages in question."

I blinked at that. "Wait…so that means that A-rank is REALLY important," I pointed out. "Because it's the only chance you get to author your pages and reconfigure them after the fact. Wouldn't that mean forming your Worldforce in A-rank gives you a huge advantage?"

"It might," he allowed. "If you could do it. But Worldforce is the power of a god. You need to be at least a Demigod to handle it safely. Not that it's impossible to do earlier, with the right kind of support or tricks. That used to be an even bigger potential landmine because we couldn't control Worldforce or really understand how it worked. Mythcrafting wasn't a thing before you brought Elonwy back, so you were kind of flying blind with all that."

"That's why some of the gods used divine Domain seeds," I said in understanding. "Like Black Sorrow and the Revenant. They were able to prepare early because they could study the Worldforce and map their pages to it ahead of time. That meant they had more Domain seeds, right?"

He nodded. "But as with everything, that's a trade off. Black Sorrow and the Red Revenant were forced to rapidly alter their Chronicles, and the resulting changes altered THEM at a fundamental level. Made them more like their predecessors. Even then, they didn't get it to the point where they were able to condense more than a single Domain seed for every two pages. That's still pretty substantial, mind, fifty seeds is nothing to sneeze at."

"How does that translate to objects though?" I asked consideringly. "Why didn't they go for less of them. Black Sorrow has a bunch, right? And she even got another one connected to the god she got her Domain seed from. Why would she want more? Just to make them less vulnerable?"

"Not exactly. It's more than just the one factor," he sighed. "Like I said, the compatibility of the object matters. Domains aren't created equal. Beyond how many pages they take, Domains also have variable amounts of power. Imbuing multiple powerful Domain seeds into the same item takes time and preparation, but depending on the item there's a limit to what they can hold. The more seeds per item the more power, but if you overload the thing it's pointless to even make it."

I considered that. "You can move the seeds, can't you?" I asked slowly. It was the only thing that made sense, considering the way foundational artifacts were treated and the purposes they served. "And using a compatible existing object of power means it can hold more."

"Yes, and Black Sorrow was able to move quite a few into that scythe," he confirmed.

"So I want to perfect my pages to the point that I can make on Domain seed per page?" I asked slowly, thinking about my options.

He grimaced. "That IS a tactic, but not one almost anyone uses. The amount of time and effort it takes isn't worth the investment. Most people consider anything more than fifty to be diminishing returns, though again, they don't have your options. Still, it's a balancing act, because in order to properly prepare your Chronicle you need to risk changing your whole personality. It's usually accepted that you want to give yourself a bit of breathing room for that kind of thing per page."

Which made sense. In fact, it might not be ideal to go for a full one hundred seeds even if I found a way around that. My power seemed to work best with the number seventy two, and if I wanted to go with three foundational artifacts, which I still did, that meant exactly twenty four seeds per artifact. I'd need to perfect my pages for my eventual worldforce until I could get one seed per one point three eight pages or so, but one less than a quarter of a complete Chronicle would probably be a fantastic power balance for an artifact.

Though it brought up another question. "What about the items?" I asked. "You said compatibility is key. How many Domain seeds can items fit? If Black Sorrow was willing to go through all that for the scythe, it must be a limited thing."

"She baptized her objects of power ten times each," he said with a shrug. "The scythe, last I heard, she managed to get to thirty, though she might have been bluffing, I'm not close to her and only kept an ear out to sate my own curiosity. Mine are baptized about thirteen times. And no, I won't confirm how many I have."

I was pretty sure someone had told me at some point, but it might have been misinformation, judging by what he'd just shared, so I decided to put it out of my head. I took a bite of pancakes. This whole talk had given me a lot to think about. My future had so many moving parts.

Mostly though, I was focused on what I needed to advance. Upgrading the armor to be compatible with me and to help my body withstand the formation of a Worldforce. If I could form my own ahead of time I would be able to author my pages to be as suitable as possible without a lot of the downsides of conforming myself to an existing Domain seed.

Though that made me wonder if Lark had done that. It was clear he'd somehow prepared for divinity in a way other people hadn't, had he done the same thing that Black Sorrow and the Red Revenant had, but just taken longer to acclimate? Had he slowly rebuilt himself around the Domain of a dead god in order to condense the highest number of Domain seeds? It would certainly explain a lot.

But I decided not to get into it. He'd already shared more than I could possibly ask. Shared secrets that most A-rankers would probably have killed for without any promise of compensation. I knew a favor when I saw one.

"Thank you," I told him bluntly. "For telling me this. And for helping me."

He smiled sadly, and suddenly, the sharp, predatory gleam drained from his eyes. "I know what it's like to watch the woman you love get taken away from you, kid. Just be glad it's something you can fight. Sometimes life isn't that kind, and when that happens…that's when you find out what can really break you."

I frowned at that, thinking about the story Bethy told about her mother, alone in a tower, and how I'd never met her or spoken to anyone who recently had. "In my experience," I said slowly. "There are ways to rescue people from a lot of things. Even themselves. You taught me a lot about being an ascendant in this conversation. Maybe I could teach you about that someday. As repayment."

He stilled, his pupils turning into slits as he regarded me slowly. The predator was back. "Maybe you can," he said after a moment. "But don't hold your breath, kid. You're not there yet." And then, we lapsed into silence, and I dug back into my breakfast. There was nothing else to say.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Stepping into the Phoenix Foundry was kind of unnerving. Without Apples guarding it, the place was abandoned, but despite that relative 'safety', the only impression I got once I entered was one of overwhelming danger.

"I hate the underground ones," my dad muttered as he stepped out behind me. "Always makes me feel like I'm in a tomb."

He was right, it did feel like that. The interior of the foundry was cramped and dark, the walls were made of black stone, though from what I could tell, it seemed that they hadn't always been black. The ground beneath our feet was crunchy shale, clouds of ash floated at random intermittent points, and the sounds of baying and growling could be heard drifting along the stone corridors toward the door we stood in front of.

Lark seemed perfectly at ease, of course, but he didn't head out like I expected. Instead, he knelt down, touching the shale and lifting it to his tongue. "Interesting," he said slowly. "I can taste the nearest metal stockpile."

"You can TASTE it?" I asked in disbelief. "How?"

He gave me a big smile and a thumbs up as he pointed across his body down one of the nearby corridors. "Simple, that direction has higher iron content."

Bethy cheered, clapping excitedly. "You show them daddy! Vampires know everything about iron. I was totally gonna do that if you didn't. Now we know the best place to find all those cool metals. You guys all think too simply of us. We vampires know blood the best, and what are long hallways full of iron rich materials but veins carrying blood!"

That…almost made sense. "Alright, we move then. Can you send Apples ahead? Whatever is out there will probably avoid him, right?"

She looked scandalized. "Apples isn't some coward who needs his reputation to scare off challengers. But fear not, he'll definitely help clear the way, he'll just do it with his own strength! That's why I designed THIS for him!" She held up a large black domino mask. "Apples, come forth!" she called dramatically.

The manticore appeared, and she set the mask on his face officiously. "Fuhuhu-" she laughed in a weird way I hadn't heard before. "Now they'll have no idea that they face their doom. When they stumble on you, they will see not Apples, the manticore, but ORANGE, the OTHER manticore!"

"Bethy, you hadn't named him the last time he was here," I said bluntly. "And also I don't think the mindless monsters prowling around here can differentiate between manticores. Or would care to try if they could."

She scoffed. "Fool! Orange will be invisible to them until the moment of their demise. They'll see a helpless, weak little manticore, nothing like the terrible Apples they knew and feared. Only when it's too late and they've stepped into our ruse will the trap be sprung, and by then, there will be nowhere to hide."

I opened my mouth to argue, but eventually just sighed and gave in. "You know what? Sure. Fine. Send him out."

Clapping again, Bethy thrust out a finger, pointing in the direction Lark had indicated. "Go forth, Orange! And teach them to fear the sound of your new name!" I pinched the bridge of my nose as the confused manticore raised a paw and pointed at itself. "Yes, YOU," Bethy snapped in obvious frustration. "Who ELSE would I be talking to?" It meowed again. "It's a pseudonym!" she snapped. "So they won't know who you are!" Another meow. "Just go!"

He turned and skulked away, leaving Bethy with her arms crossed, pouting in outrage at the fact that no one understood her plans. In fact, she literally MUTTERED that last part under her breath as it left.

Apples stepped around the corner and vanished, and we waited for it to return for about five minutes before it shuffled back into sight. During those five minutes, the howls and snarls of whatever was out of our sight devolved into yip and squeals of fear, and when the cat came back, it was carrying what looked like a metal jackal in its teeth.

The manticore strode up to Bethy proudly, dropping his prize at her feet, and she glared at him before pointing at his face. "You MASK fell off," she snapped. "Now they all know your true identity!" The Demigod ranged beast hunched its shoulders, whining, and she rolled her eyes and said. "Well, I guess your present was nice, you're still a good boy. Come here." She leaned in and gave him a long hug then sent him back into her Domain. Then she turned and gave us the same thumbs up her dad had just used earlier. "Mission complete, boss man! We've got a clear shot to the nearest stockpile."

I burst out laughing as she scooped up the metal jackal and tossed it into her Domain along with the manticore. "Sounds good, lead the way, oh master of challenge." She gave me a sharp salute and turned to march off into the unknown, the rest of us following behind.

We trekked through the shale, following the footprints Apples left behind, and eventually came to a stop outside a large metal door that had been ripped halfway off the hinges. The tear left a big empty spot near the ground for us to duck through, and once we were inside, the difference was like night and day.

The walls were still black, but they were swirled with gold and red, the floor was polished, shining marble with veins the same color as those swirls, and in the center of the room, a giant crucible hung over a metal pit, an inverted half dome with a cradle inside, set with molds that were currently in the shape of metal ingots. Next to the pit a small stack or red gold metal bars sat neatly configured into a cube of interlocking ingots.

My mom stepped forward, kneeling down to pick up a bar. "There's three kinds of metal here," she said slowly. "This one I don't recognize, but based on the feedback, I'd say it's some Solar Copper derivative, probably an alloy with Blood Bronze." She picked up a bar from deeper in the pile, this one was dark green. "THIS is Eldritch Ebony, I've never seen this much of it before. It's absurdly rare, and I've only seen it used in things like tracery work on expensive S-rank historical jewelry."

I grinned as I picked up the bar, surprised by the weight of it. It wasn't heavy, not to someone like me, but it weighed more than any bar that size ought to. "What about the third one?"

"It's tin," she said bluntly.

"I…what?" I blinked. "Like just normal tin?"

She shrugged. "Well, Terror Tin, technically, but no one calls it that. It's legitimately the most basic S-rank material you can find. It's used in the creation of almost every type of S-rank bronze. And there are a lot of those, for some reason. Like more than most metals. No one is really sure why. It's how my mom was able to build the Acheron. It's like…forty percent Terror Tin."

"Oh," I said dully. "Well that sucks."

That got a laugh. "Don't be so sure. Metal isn't a math problem. You don't just add up the rarity or the cost to figure out how good it is. Different metals have different properties, different tensile strengths. We won't get the best result for your armor by just building you a gaudy suit of mega materials. Gold is expensive for mortals but you don't want a chainmail shirt made out of it. Having some simpler base metals for alloys will be a net positive."

"She's right," said Belphegor as he stepped past me to examine the stack. I'd manifested the Archdemon through the throne as we'd approached, though I hadn't manifested him out here. Apparently he could just leave when he wanted to, though I suspected stopping him wouldn't be difficult given the nature of my Domain. He knelt down to pick up the bar of mystery metal. He squinted at it for a moment, and I could almost see the information flashing behind his eyes. Dan could scan info from things and Wisdom could iterate with that info, the combination meant Belphegor was more than capable of instantly scanning items, especially crafting related objects.

My mother looked intrigued. "You get anything?"

"It's called Novium," he said absently. "It does contain Blood Bronze, hence the tin, but the other material isn't Solar Copper, it's Starsteel."

She winced. "That's made from Nebula Iron, that stuff is a nightmare to source. You have to condense it from stardust in particularly energy dense star fields. The amount of dust you need is substantial."

He nodded. "It is. But we should worry more about what to do with this stockpile than how to get more. We'll need to continue searching for the various leftover metals, and beyond that, we need to find the Summer Phoenix flame. It should be doable to track it down if we find a few more of these smelting chambers." He pointed up at the ceiling. "You can see the flame control mechanism up there if you look. It leads that way, but one direction won't do much."

"We need to triangulate," I nodded. "Lark, can you find us a few more of these places? We'll search the rest of the room first in case there's cabinets or something, but then we should set off for the next one." He nodded, stepping back out into the corridor, and I glanced at Belphegor. "So, I take it we can use these?"

"We can use almost anything," he corrected me. "But the more materials we have to work with, the more suitable I can make the suit for you. Given your plans for that thing, you'll want to get it as customized to your purposes as possible. Of course, it IS possible for me to make alterations later, but recast artifacts rarely reach the same heights. Materials have limits to them, and recasting pushes those."

I nodded. "So we want to find as many metals as we can, and let you do your thing. Will we need one of these rooms? Like can you smelt the metals together to make new alloys?"

"Probably," he allowed. "And with your mother's help, we can get some good results too. It'll take me some time to process all the metals we find though. Once we have a full list to work off of, then I can get to work with my full creation plan. I have some rough outlines for the upgrades, of course, but nothing too specific will be possible without knowing exactly what I'll be working with."

I felt a thrill of excitement shoot through me. S-rank armor. I had never even dreamed of that when I'd first started out. S-rank materials were rare and hard to find, and armor in particular required quite a bit of it. My grandmother's ship was the exception, not the rule, most people couldn't source that kind of treasure.

My mom seemed to get what I was thinking, because she clapped me on the shoulder with a laugh. "It'll wear off," she advised me. "We all had moments like that starting out, and most of them happen around A-rank. Eventually you'll be just as jaded and cynical as the rest of us."

I laughed at that, but didn't argue. She was probably right. I was still chuckling when I started making my rounds of the room along with the others. We searched under work benches, in boxes, we even found a few secret compartments in the floor and walls. Belphegor took the contents, both the metals and, surprisingly, a few blueprints. Once we'd confirmed the room was clear, we stepped out to check with Lark, and after he confirmed our heading and we sent Apples ahead, we set off for the next stockpile. I couldn't wait to see what we found.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I stepped out into the chamber I'd found slowly. Lark had given us all different directions, pointing us each at our own individual rooms. It was almost nostalgic, walking through this place alone. Part of me wanted to worry about getting jumped, but it only took a second of serious thought to remember that I was the number two strongest person in our group right now. Unless I wanted Lark to follow me around, I wasn't getting any backup in a fight if someone was stronger than me.

And honestly…I liked it. It felt good, finally being relevant and strong. Especially out here with my parents and friends, being someone they could rely on was kind of intoxicating. Of course, that just brought me back to thinking about Callie.

My jaw tightened as I closed my eyes and reached into my Domain. The door that usually connected our souls was sealed shut by whatever Belsara had done. I'd tried to pry it open, to whittle away at the chains that bound it closed, but nothing I did was even shaking them. My thumb stroked my wedding ring, with its shared space, the only way I could get in touch with her these days.

I paused, then decided to drop a message in. It only took a second for my scan ring message to return, and to my surprise, once it did I got a short text rather than a long update. I frowned at the contents. Setting the ring down, I backed away, not sure if this would work, but willing to try anything.

There was a ripple in the air, and to my delight and surprise, a shadow erupted from the ring on the ground, manifesting above it into a doppleganger of my wife. "Holy shit!" Callie crowed. "I can't believe that actually worked!"

"Me neither," I admitted. "How are you even doing that?"

"Shadows," she said with a grin. "I've been experimenting with that aspect of my powers. You know that I never lost it, my adherent form proves that, but more than that, I've been researching how the shadow is the natural counterpart to my Void flame. Adherent fire is the shadow of the Void, but that's a metaphysical thing. Flames cast shadows of their own though, so I've never really been missing that aspect of my power, just haven't explored it. This ring uses a special quantum superimposed space, and I'm currently projecting a clone in the shadow of that space."

I grinned at her. "I'm gonna be honest, I followed very little of that and I don't really care either way. I'm just so glad to speak to you in person. Can I hug you?"

"Better not," she grimaced. "This is a shadow clone, and I'm not really up to date on practicing those. I kind of thought I lost the ability, at least in this context. I'm going to need to do some serious training. Plus I'm HUGE right now," she glared at me. "Your children are inflating me like a balloon, and you're just skipping the whole process. Training for a rescue my ass, you're just dodging pregnancy duty."

"I'd sit through a million pregnancies to get you three back," I said bluntly, my face solemn. "Don't even joke about that, Cal. It's killing me to be away from you. To be missing so much."

Her face softened, and the clone reached up to put a hand on my face. "I know," she said softly. "My stupid, reckless idiot. I hate being away from you too, but I'm so proud of how you're handling this. I can get back time apart, but I can't get you back if I lose you. Take your time, plant your feet firmly. We'll be waiting at the end, and you'll get here sooner walking steady than hurrying and tripping over your own feet."

I swallowed hard, putting a hand over hers. "I'm trying," I told her in a hoarse voice. "But I don't know how to do this on my own. Everything I see and do reminds me that you're not here. I've been out by myself before, and I can handle that fine, but this…I'm so scared for you."

"You don't need to be," she said firmly. "Belsara isn't exactly sane, but she's also not crazy. She took me for a reason, and that reason wasn't to kill me. The babies and I are safe. Safer than we would be most places, honestly." She paused, looking conflicted. "She's not as bad as you'd think," her tone was hesitant. "She really cares. It kind of does remind me of being back home with mom. Back when I first came back from running away. What are you planning to do to her?"

"Whatever she makes me do," I said coldly. "Look, I'm happy she's being kind to you, and Atlas seems to care about her too. If I can get you out of there without a confrontation I'll do that. But if she's in the way, I'll move her. I WILL get my family back."

Her shoulders slumped. "I know," she sighed. "I knew you'd say that before I asked. I just wish I could see some way for this to end without someone dying. Not just because I like her, but because she IS a god. There's no guarantee the person who gets moved won't be you. I believe in you more than anyone in this world, but it's STILL a risk, even if I think you'll make it work."

"I don't know what'll happen," I told her sadly. "But I know that this ends one of two ways. Us together, or me dead. There isn't a third choice."

Her jaw tightened. "I hate when you say shit like that," she spat. "Do you think I like hearing that from the father of my children? That I'm moved by your loyalty or something? I'm NOT. I never doubted how much you loved me, you don't need to prove it. All I feel when you say things like that is mindnumbing terror at the idea of living in a world without you in it."

"I know," I chuckled. "But that doesn't mean it isn't true. How this goes is up to her. I'm going to be with you and the kids, or I'm not going to be. Simple as that. Although…" I trailed off, hesitant to even bring it up. She sounded so afraid though, and maybe she'd see something I didn't. "Atlas did give me some advice," I admitted. "About Belsara. He said she sees herself as the good guy, and that if you give her a way to feel like a hero she'll do your work for you."

She frowned at that, biting her lip. "That's interesting," she said slowly. "I might be able to work with that."

I shrugged. "Do what you can. We'll see what happens when I get to you. For now though, I wanted to check in on the babies. How are they? How are you? They're feeding you properly, right?"

Laughing, she rolled her eyes. "Yes, Shane, they're FEEDING me. You think I'm this big without nourishment?" She gestured down to her very swollen belly.

"I'm not sure what you mean," I said innocently. "You're the picture of svelte perfection. In fact, I'm worried you're skipping meals. You look too thin. If you turn sideways you might disappear, lucky there's no strong wind in here, you'd probably blow away in the breeze."

She shot me an unamused look. "I'm seven months pregnant, ass, with twins. Pretending I'm not fat right now isn't sweet, it's just patronizing."

"Oh no, your shadow image has cut out," I said loudly, as if I was calling to someone down a long tunnel. "I can still hear you and feel you but I have no visual contact at all. I can't possibly comment on any details vis a vis your appearance now!"

That got an eye roll and a giggle. "Coward. But fine, I'll let you off the hook this time. Just because I know how worried you are."

The smile fell off my face. "Seven months," I said slowly. "That's…I've missed almost as much of the pregnancy as I was there for at this point. I mean, yeah, the closer we get the less of a time difference there is, but we're still looking at five to one. I don't know if I'll be there for the birth."

"Who cares?" she said with a laugh. I blinked at that and she shrugged. "Look, the babies aren't going to remember being born, I doubt I'm going to spend much time dwelling on it, and honestly, I don't think you being there will make it suck much less. Do I want you to be the first person to hold our children after they come into the world? Yes. But you know what matters more than the first time? All the OTHER times."

Her eyes hardened. "You worry about helping me raise these kids, about being better parents than we had. So you take your time, and you do this right, and you show up and save us like you just said you would, and then we'll raise these kids together. It's not like we're talking about years or anything. They're not going to remember a few months where you weren't around, not if you're there for all the ones that come after."

I knew it wasn't that simple. That she did care, and that it would matter, but maybe it wouldn't be quite as much as I'd thought. "I will," I told her hoarsely. "I'll be there as soon as I can, and no sooner."

"Good," she nodded. "Then I can focus on my own training. I want to hit A-rank before the babies are born. I want them to benefit from the rank up, to have the same advantages you did at the beginning."

I nodded. It was easy to forget that I'd been born with extra stats. It might not have seemed important, but it had been a huge bonus to my strength at the beginning and had snowballed more than a bit over the years. The Wish power functioned on stat totals, and having even a slightly higher one started you out on a much stronger footing. Not that I knew if my kids would inherit the power, but even if they didn't, having those early stats were a net positive. I wanted that for them.

Callie smiled up at me, leaning up to give me a soft kiss, then leaned back. "I can't keep this up for long. I'm piggybacking the shadow projection on the spatial construction between the rings. They weren't made for this, and if I keep doing it they might break. It'll take a few days your time before we can do this again. I just…I needed to see you.

"I'm fine," I told her softly. "Seeing you has me back on track. Take care of yourself and the kids. I'll see all three of you soon for real."

Rather than respond, the image of her dissolved into a cloud of misty black smoke. I sighed and picked up my ring, slipping it back on my hand. Blowing out a long breath, I centered myself, closing my eyes and letting my heart calm down. It hurt already, her being gone again. Watching her dissolve into smoke was almost as painful as watching her get taken to begin with. I was almost grateful to Belsara for binding our bond, because I didn't want Callie feeling this from me.

Opening my eyes, I turned back to the room I had entered, beginning my search for the metal I had come here for. As much of it as I could find, because the more material I had the more likely I'd be able to make something truly great. Now the question was, how many of these damned bars did we need to stock up on before we had enough?

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"And done," I grunted as I dropped an armful of metal on the ground with a teeth rattling thump. "How many bars is that?" We'd been at it for hours, wandering around and grabbing every bit of metal we could find. A lot of the stuff we'd come across had been low ranked materials (relatively, mostly B and C ranked metal) but we had gotten a few more types of S-rank metal at least.

My mom held up a bar of what looked like iron and bit down on it viciously, grimacing and spitting chunks of metal on the floor. "Ugh, no, that's about 80% pig iron. Half of these are useless. They've been heavily mixed with scrap metal to fill out the count."

"It's not a surprise," my dad said from where he was lounging nearby. "The chances of the people who left this place leaving all the good stuff are low. We got lucky with that first room. But quantity has a quality all its own, and even if there are lots of impurities and mixed metals, with the smelting rooms and your powers we should be able to put together some good stuff, right?"

She blew out a breath. "Probably," she admitted. "The only reason it might work is that the pollution isn't one way. There's trace elements of the more powerful metals in these bars. That was why I did the taste test."

"You couldn't think of a better way to do that?" I asked wryly. "Because biting metal seems dumb no matter how you slice it."

"She didn't slice it though," Bethy said as she picked up a random block and bit into it herself, chewing thoughtfully. "She just took a bite. Actually that's not bad. A little spicy. What's in this? I thought it was just steel."

I rolled my eyes, plucking the bar from her hand. "Don't EAT the metal, she spat hers out, and DON'T make any comments about needing more iron in your diet, that doesn't even work here."

She pouted at me as I passed the bar back to my mom, who shot her a conspiratorial wink when she thought I wasn't looking. Sighing, I called for Belphegor, manifesting the demon into reality from my Domain. "We got it," I jerked my thumb at the huge pile of metal. "You ready to get started?"

He blew out a breath, strolling through the room, picking up individual bars of each metal to analyze and then putting them back. Sometimes he'd knock on one, or knock two together, and he DID bite a couple, though only lightly, not enough to take off a chunk. Still Bethy shot me a smug grin and pointed to him when he did it, a fact I studiously ignored because I was a wise and benevolent ruler and her dad scared me.

"So," I said as I stepped up next to him. "What kind of prep work have you been doing? I know you said you needed to know what materials we had for blueprinting, but you also said you'd started work."

"Mapping your current suit," he ticked off on his fingers. "Retracing Zeke's experience of the last upgrade and deducing possible paths it could have gone down, not to mention backtracking the composition to a pre-upgraded state so I could compare the before and after and get a firm grasp on the design philosophy. Honestly I just dug into it for as long as possible, and went back as far as I could. Seeing the different iterations of the armor gave me a lot of data to work with."

That was interesting. I could see how he might've done it, too, given the access he had from my Domain. The staff and armor had representations inside Gehenna because of the designs being made to help offset the strain of soul overuse.

"So you've managed to iterate some possible upgrade routes for the armor even before getting the metals, and now you just have to plug in the materials directly, right?" I asked excitedly.

He snorted. "No, that would be insane. Do you know how many different materials there are? And we don't even know about most of them, especially these, which are old as dirt. No, what I've managed to do is create a design template based on the upgrade philosophy and techniques shown during the previous upgrade and by studying the changes the armor has undergone since creation."

"Oh," I said slowly. "That's…cool too. So how long will it take to iterate the new design with all the materials gathered?"

"Unknown," he shrugged. "But more important than the materials is the forging room. S-rank materials require more than just knowledge to make use of. They require power. We need S-rank equipment at the very least. Luckily, we already HAVE that here, I'm assuming that's why you waited until now to retrieve the Summer Phoenix flame?"

I nodded. "Yeah, it seemed like the smart idea. We triangulated the location through mapping the connector piping in each smelting room, so we knew where it was from pretty early on, but obviously I thought it might come in handy for the forging process."

"We need to take a look at the central mechanism, can you bring me to it?" I glanced at my mom, who perked up, clearly excited to play with her new ancient forge.

"Sure," I shrugged. "Mom, you know the way, right?"

She nodded quickly. "Of course, it's this way. Eli, bring the metal," she called over her shoulder as she all but ran from the room. "No spatial rings!"

My dad sat up from his lounging, looking desolate. "What? But there's like…ten thousand bars of it? That's so much to carry." She didn't bother responding, and he groaned and tapped his cane. Within moments, a horde of shadows rose up, in every color of the rainbow and the metallic shades of mercury and mirror. They began picking up the bars in big armfulls and heading off in the direction my mom had gone.

I followed behind him, amused at his hangdog expression, despite knowing he was playing it up for his own amusement (or hers). When we finally reached the central control chamber, I couldn't help but gape in awe at what we found.

Because of the search for the metal and my talk with Callie, I hadn't bothered coming to check this place out, and I was regretting that decision now. The central mechanism of the foundry was…well, staggering. A huge apparatus of black metal pipes shot through with crystalline filaments that glowed with gold and red light. It reminded me a bit of circuitry, only so much more complicated and somehow almost alive.

In the center of the room, the pipes fed into a giant boiler sort of construct with a circular crystal window on either side of it showing a flickering golden fire. The fire was in the shape of a huge golden phoenix, but despite the birdlike facade, if I focused hard enough I could see a small feather floating in the middle of the boiler.

My mom was studying the control console beside it when we arrived, and I strolled up to look over her shoulder as she examined it. "So…what does that button do?"

"Coffee dispenser," she said absently. "But that one sets you on fire, and I think they change positions periodically, so probably don't touch anything until I tell you what does what." I gaped at her and she snickered at the expression. "I'm kidding. About the coffee. That one DOES set you on fire and you really shouldn't touch any of these without knowing what they're for."

"I'll have Belphegor help you out," I decided. "He should be able to analyze the tech to figure out how it works."

She didn't look happy, but she nodded. "I'd like to turn you down, but I know what's at stake here. I'm not petty enough to risk my grandbabies because I want to play with a new toy…even a really, really cool one like this. But I'd like to find a way to take this with us if we can, or at least to have one recreated. I'm guessing you can do that?" she asked, turning to an approaching Belphegor.

"I can," he confirmed. "Not sure it'll be quite as powerful, given my limitations, but I can recreate the design at least. Once Celestial Fabrication breaks through to tier nine it should be a lot easier to make simple modifications and upgrades. At that point I might really be capable of making my own one of these at full capacity."

He stepped up and put his hand on the console, letting his power roll over it as he began his scan. "Interesting," he said slowly. "I can do a lot with this. It's extremely delicate, I'm surprised it survived, but because it did I think we have a much better chance at this. More than just production methods, this thing helps control the ratio of smelted metal, helps apply it in very specific ways. It'll be key for integrating traceries of material into the plate internally in ways a normal forging process just can't manage."

"In what manner?" I asked with interest.

"Pattern welding," he clarified. "It can forge layers of metal together and bond them in such a way that the patterns themselves can form runes or formations. It provides a method of integrating shapes and designs into metal alloys that can affect the whole without showing externally. Especially if you plate the material."

That certainly sounded useful. I knew that if we put that ability to good use we'd be able to work in a lot of upgrades while keeping my suit mostly functional looking.

My mom nodded as she flipped through options. "Purification might not be a problem either. Even without my flame, this machine will do most of the work for us. Honestly, I'm feeling almost useless at this point. This device is so automated I think a five year old could forge a suit of armor on it, much less a whole team of A-rankers."

"It's not that dramatic," Belphegor laughed. "A proper blueprint is still indispensable. This machine will certainly make it easier for us, but we still need to put in the work."

I left them to their chattering, stepping away and moving towards the boiler like device. I placed a hand on the crystal windows and stared into the device at the golden fire inside. This was the flame of the Summer Phoenix, Halcyon, Belsara's companion. It felt…strange to look at. Not just because I planned to use it, but because it felt…kind. Heroic. Knowing the goddess we were after worked with a creature like this was almost unsettling. It felt too holy, in a way I didn't associate with gods for the most part.

The whole thing reminded me of Callie, who seemed to be bonding with Belsara somewhat. I could understand her desire to spare someone who was being kind to her, but I just couldn't see a way for it to work out. We couldn't afford to hold back anything when we finally reached her palace.

I wasn't even sure we COULD kill her, mind, but I was sure whatever we tried couldn't be half assed enough to be merciful or we were going to die trying. Beyond that though, there was this nagging feeling. That this was more complicated than I was seeing, and that maybe Belsara wasn't the only thing we would be dealing with once we reached the interior.

The land of endless summer had been empty for a long time, it had been infiltrated by more than just the creature. My eyes scanned the room around suspiciously as I considered this strange place. We'd seen almost nothing here, but was that the whole story? What lived between the cracks left in Belsara's broken control from back in the day? Or was my paranoia just acting up? Whatever the case, I'd keep my eyes open to be safe. I knew better than to ignore my instincts and get blindsided. For now though, I'd focus on my armor. Having S-rank protection and a way to offset some of my soul strain couldn't be anything but helpful.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The next ten or so hours were a blur of constant smelting, moving, reorganizing, and a thousand other tasks I didn't really understand but did anyway. Belphegor had a plan, and I had faith, so I was more than happy to go along. Still, it was a lot of work, and honestly I was more exhausted from carrying S-rank metal for ten hours than I had been in a while.

Exhaustion, in this case, was pretty reasonable, I thought, and was a decent excuse for why I didn't notice something was wrong immediately. I walked past the mirror about four times carrying metal…before I realized there was no mirror in here.

I froze, turning to look at…well, me. A towering figure in armor and an admittedly creepy mask, staring back at me from behind a pile of ingots. "Oh, what fresh hell is this?" I moaned. The other me spoke in unison with me, seemingly having noticed me at the same time, and around me I heard a bunch of other mutters that had me turning to take in the scene in the forge.

Duplicates. Of every single one of us. They'd appeared during work, mixing in with the group, and there were enough of us here and we were busy enough that we hadn't really noticed until they were right in our faces. As soon as we DID notice, all hell broke loose, and we all summoned and prepared our weapons, about to launch attacks until I (and my double) called for a halt. "EVERYBODY STOP!" I bellowed over angry shouting. They did.

"Ok, I'm almost positive this isn't going to work, but raise your hand if you're a clone," no one raised their hand. "And raise your hand if you're real." Every hand went up. "Yeah, I kind of figured it was gonna be like that. Give me a second to think, and BETHY STOP MAKING FACES AT YOURSELF IT'S NOT HELPING!"

The twin Bethys giggled sheepishly, lowering their fingers from where they'd been pulling their cheeks apart.

"I think these are Dopplegangers," the Larks said in unison, then frowned at each other in identical annoyance. "Stop that. No you stop it. I'll kill you if you don't shut up!"

"No killing them!" I yelped, alongside my double who helped me break them up. "They're not attacking us. Bel, can you detect which ones are the fakes? I'm kind of worried this might be witchcraft."

My mom winced. "Oh," she and her double said in conjunction. "Blood puppets. That would be…not good."

"Some kind of wound transference?" I asked dryly.

"Something like that," she said worriedly, staring at her duplicate. "Blood puppets are complicated and hard to make, but they're also hard to deal with. If you don't do it in a very specific way the puppet BECOMES you. They're old witchcraft. The last Blood Witch I heard about was back when my grandfather was still mortal. He and grandma fought one on a planet called Kaledon. The planet had to be razed to ash when it was over, because the whole population had been replaced."

Lark looked intrigued. "Blood puppet, you say?" his voice was excited. "What a fascinating art. What was the name of this Blood Witch?"

"Deltreya," my mom said flatly. "But this isn't her. She's been dead a long time. My grandmother doesn't half kill things. That said, witchcraft is a tradition, and is often passed along mentorship lines. They never did figure out where she learned her craft."

"Alright, so no fighting," I confirmed. "Bel, can you verify what we're dealing with, just in case?"

Belphegor, currently the possessor of Dan's powers AND Wisdom, was staring at his own duplicate, who was staring right back. After a moment, they both nodded, simultaneously saying. "She's right, it's a blood puppet."

"Well that's helpful," I sighed sarcastically. "Alright, mom, how do we get RID of blood puppets, if we can't fight them?"

She grimaced. "You have to break them," she said bluntly. "They actually think they're us. If you can make them slip up and figure out what they are, they turn back into puppets. They're siphoning memories through the blood connection, though, and they'll keep doing it until you stop them. If you DON'T stop them, they'll steal every thought from your head, and once they've fully assimilated, YOU turn into a puppet."

"Ok, let's see if we can undo this manually." I said, trying to calm everyone down. "There are more options than fight or flight." I called on Zagan, allowing my purification demon to manifest. To my relief, another blood puppet didn't appear when he did. Whatever was causing this had made its move. I could work with that. "Zagan," I said firmly.

He nodded, then turned and began releasing clouds of green, purifying flame to wash over all of us. I felt a surge of energy and stamina roll over me, smiling confidently as I turned to find the other me…also standing perfectly fine, presumably smiling behind his own mask. "So…this doesn't count as an impurity," I said slowly. I glanced at my mom. "Any ideas why that might be? It's like a curse or something, right?"

She wiggled a hand. "It's TECHNICALLY a parasitic bond, but it's high witchcraft, so it's kind of acausal. During the process both parties are technically both host and parasite, because you both have roughly equal chances of becoming the real one or the puppet. Real high power thaumaturgy can get twisty."

I grimaced, then tried a few other things. Yama showed identical karmic ties, Song of Arcadia didn't manage to do anything, my Gaze of Certitude didn't pick up any differences. I even tried manifesting Beelzebub to see if the clone making clones might trip it up, but it didn't seem to be functional. It even had a copy of my soul weapon. Humming, I considered my options. I needed to break this thing to sever the link, which was the only safe way to disconnect it. Once I figured out how I could apply it to the others and solve the situation, I just needed to think through what the possibilities were.

Frowning at the double of me (which was the only one I could CONFIRM was a double…probably, but pursuing THAT line of thought was likely to have me curled up in a ball in a corner so I decisively didn't do so), I reached up and took off my mask, knowing he'd do the same. Interacting with him behind the mask made everything a lot more complicated, given I couldn't see his expressions. When I finally could, I confirmed that it was…the same as mine. Obviously.

"This was less helpful than expected," I admitted in annoyance. Of course, he said the same thing at the same time, which was annoying, but not a surprise. I frowned as I considered the possible responses…then I got an idea. I turned to look at my mom. "Hey, do you know what the true form of the blood puppet looks like?"

She frowned at me in confusion. "I think so?" She frowned, raising her hands and manifesting her purification flame. She shaped it into a small doll, then tweaked it a few times. Then frowned and touched her temples. The fire flowed into her head, her eyes lighting up, and she tweaked the image a bunch more times. "This story was one of my favorites as a little girl, but it's been a long time. Mom used to put on shows for me before bed, and I asked for this one a bunch of times. I'm not sure where SHE got the image, but considering how much grandma likes to brag, I imagine it's probably at least semi accurate."

As she talked, she worked, then finally held up a small, shabby looking doll. "Something like this?"

I reached for Astaroth, still at the eighth tier, and pushed it up to tier nine with the staff. Then I manifested myself in the form of the puppet. Of course, the actual puppet had the same idea, and then I, as the puppet, pointed to it and said. "You're a puppet." It did the same thing, of course, but when I spoke, it froze. "Yeah," I nodded. "See, I'm not actually a puppet. But you are. So when you said that to me, I just denied it in my head. But your whole schtick is not being able to realize you're a puppet, so when you tried to deny it, you realized that you couldn't, and you got stuck."

I returned to my normal form, reaching out to catch the puppet as it dropped, lifeless, to the ground. I dismissed Belphegor, summoning Dantalion, and tossed him the puppet. "Give me a breakdown on how to tell which is which."

He nodded as he began to study it. The blood puppet of Belphegor, meanwhile, had obviously ALSO figured out it was a puppet, turning back as well, and I snagged it and handed it over to my information demon, because two reference points was better than one. He studied them for about twenty minutes before coming to a conclusion.

"No easy solve," he said grimly. "At least not without a bit of cheating. Luckily, we love to cheat. Put me back through the Throne? Belphegor should be able to create something to serve as a countermeasure for this, now that I've broken it down."

Nodding, I closed my eyes, mentally entering my Domain to stand before the throne of goetia. Tapping into its power, I felt the disparate demons who made up Belphegor flow together to create the avatar of the Archdemon. He grimaced as he appeared, cracking his neck and rubbing his shoulders. "That is deeply unpleasant to do twice in a short period."

"That's interesting," I commented. "Because you basically don't exist until the throne manifests you. It's odd to hear that going from a liminal state to manifestation causes discomfort. Does that imply that existence is pain? That's a little grimmer than I want to contemplate."

He stared at me flatly. "We need to get your wife back," he said in a dry tone. "You're getting maudlin without her."

"Just shut up and build stuff, nerd," I said with an eye roll. "All the other demons call me 'my lord' and act all formal, why can't you be like your brothers? Well, I guess not the ministers. Azazel kind of does but it's mostly ironic I think."

"He seems like the type," Belphegor admitted. "As for building stuff, I already have been. I had Wisdom cooking from the moment I manifested. And now, I present…these!" He held up an object he pulled from nowhere, which looked like… a pair of giant scissors. With blades of crystal with golden circuitry running through it and solid gold handles, they looked like a really gaudy version of the scissors people used to cut ribbons at grand openings for businesses.

I took them with a snort. "You couldn't come up with a more subtle design?"

He shrugged. "It was totemic. Made things easier. Besides, they're VERY specific. They only work on blood puppets. Cost for speed. You'll never use them again, most likely, but they'll get the job done here easily enough. Now let me back out so I can get back to work organizing resources for the armor build. This gave me a couple of ideas and I need some time to work them into my blueprints without any noticeable material alterations."

Shrugging, I took us both back out into the smelting room where everyone was waiting tensely. I hefted the giant scissors up onto my shoulders, glancing around at everyone nearby, and said with a grin. "Alright, whose first. I want to get this done so we can get back to work on my armor. Once we finish…well, I think I'd like to meet this so-called Blood Witch in person. I have some pointed questions to ask her." Every single hand went up, and I saw hungry looks on the faces of my companions. Well, it was nice to know we were all on the same page.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Matters with the Blood Witch were somewhat pressing, but not immediately important. More than that, the most important thing we had on hand was still finishing the upgrade to the armor. "Alright," Belphegor said after an hour or so of calculations. "I think I've got this. Between your plans for eventually using this as an object of power, needing to match the throne, and the existing upgrade paths, not to mention the interesting new linking design I just picked up, I know how we step into S-rank."

I glanced around the smelting room at the various complicated piles of metal ingots. I counted them and groaned. "Seventy two?" I demanded. "You're working seventy two different metals into the armor? Doesn't that seem a little ambitious?"

"Well, they're not all S-rank," he clarified. "The benefit of metalworking is that you can create different effects using different materials. Some metals, like copper, conduct very well, but they aren't very durable. Even an S-rank copper is less suited to armor plating than A-rank steel. Not because it's less valuable or powerful, but because as with Ascendants in general, materials tend to specialize."

"So there's no all rounder super metal we could use?" I joked.

He shrugged. "Diversification lowers the parameters across the board. That's how it works. That's not to say what you're talking about is impossible, the same way the Rainbow Pope searches for a primordial flame that encompassess the origin of all fire, it would theoretically be possible to find or make a primordial metal. But even if you did-"

"It wouldn't be real," I said, remembering what Dean Gibbons had said during one of my classes on time. "It wouldn't be THE primordial metal, it would be MY primordial metal. If enough people believed in it that might not matter, but it's more like the manifestation of a concept than any kind of actual matter."

"Pretty much," he nodded. "But we're getting off track here. My POINT is that just because a metal is higher rank doesn't mean it's more suitable for every purpose. Bronze contains tin and copper, but with a little Phosphorus you can use it to cut diamond. Metals can be more than the sum of their parts. Even independent of just mixing them together, creating a great work is more than just dumping all the strongest metals you can find into a mold and calling it a day. For the armor to reach its full potential, it needs more than pure materials. Luckily, everyone has a part to play here, so you'll all see what I mean soon enough."

I nodded. That had been the point of creating Belphegor in the first place, to have someone to preside over the crafting. He was here to maximize our abilities and make sure we got the absolute most out of the armor creation process, utilizing everyone's talents in the best possible way.

With everything in place, Belphegor began the process. First he sent mom over to the crucible. Melting the metals and distributing them meant very minute amounts of heat control, as an experienced forger and a wielder of precise flame power, she was the best suited for that. Zeke, given his skill with delicate workmanship, was given the task of drawing several of the metals into wire. My dad had been given the job of handling the tempering, using a special type of soul tempering method he'd learned in his youth, while Lark, Bethy, and Abel were jointly responsible for handling the iron derivative materials that would make up the casing of the plate.

Crell was using Doubt to fix minor mistakes, Alanna and Fade would be doing engraving, and I was going to be manifesting demons like it was going out of style, and their power was instrumental in my dad's soul tempering task, since each metal needed to be tempered with the power of a different demon to complete the design.

Everyone got a task, and we began the process. The first part was slow. Belphegor began to grab different ingots and toss them into the pits lining the room. The central crucible was connected to a dozen others, each one set up along insulated cables that allowed variable heat through. Belphegor had mom melting some in the center, then altering the heat as it ran to other mixtures.

The tools in the smelting room were shockingly complicated, as I watched, Belphegor began working the controls, and the pits set into the ground lifted out, revealing a variety of vessels shaped for specific types of extrusion, with nozzles and grates at the bottom. The central crucible my mom was working with lifted, the others sliding into place, and the armor began being…I guess printed was the easiest description?

Zeke, who had been working on drawing wire, passed it along to the archdemon, who wove it skillfully into the layering metal, and my dad manifested souls as I did demons, creating a strange resonance between the two by striking the metal with his cane before moving on to the next part of the process.

Bethy and Lark lifted their hands, molten iron streaming out across the chamber to coat the forming suit like an apple dipped in caramel while Abel infused the infinite blood sea into the metal, imbuing it with a dark, scarlet glow that seemed to enhance their control.

The process was exceptionally draining. The timing was precise, requiring me to manifest demons consistently into the world and then dismiss them, and the others to subtly alter their processes to give me access to a dozen overlapping traceries of different wires, joints made of varied metals, and individual plates that sat below the iron like sharks below dark water.

By the time the last demon was used to temper the final piece of the armor, my soul was aching, my head was swimming, and I was ten seconds from passing out on the spot. Abel caught me as I wobbled, and I gave him a grateful smile as he helped me sit. As my head cleared, I looked forward at the new suit of plate in expectation of what we'd created.

It was…amazing. Rather than a complex webwork of metals like the last one had been, this suit looked more organic. Not in the sense of looking like flesh, but in the sense that every flow and curve looked natural. Wires emerged from the dark metal like surfacing serpents in the sea, twisting below the surface only to emerge in the shapes of overlapping sigils. The symbols they formed flowed together into a concerto of complex meanings, each one representing its own demon but also a discrete meaning in a language I had never even conceived of, a story told in steel and gold across the face of an impregnable bulwark of supernatural engineering.

The suit itself was S-rank, that much was obvious, more than the sum of its parts even. I could see how it had been prepared for the Domain seed that I'd be imbuing into it, even. Though saying that, there was one thing I WASN'T clear on. "Um…how do I put it on?"

"It's soul armor," Bel snickered. "That's why we tempered it with the demons. It's a part of your Domain through that resonance, which means you can recall it just like you can them."

My eyes widened. "Wait…you mean it's like the staff? I can just…will it onto myself?"

I admit, my voice was a little excited, but it was hard to describe exactly how ANNOYING it was putting on armor manually. I could do it without help because I was so much more than human, but even with my stats it was inconvenient at best. The idea of being able to WILL myself clothed even overtop of my existing clothing was almost the coolest thing about the whole process.

Focusing on the armor, I reached out with a part of my mind I almost never consciously thought about, finding it accessible just like the rest of my Domain. I made a brief effort of will and the suit vanished from its spot, and then another effort and…I was armored.

I expected it to feel different, maybe heavier or more restrictive, but the armor had been made for me. I felt barely any resistance to my movements as I bounced on my toes, rotating my shoulders and rolling my elbows before touching my toes, just figuring out the way it fit. It was like a second skin, barely even noticeable. Even the weight was almost nonexistent, and I barely felt like I was wearing anything at all.

"Hey, punch m-" I turned to Abel, barely managing to get out the request before he hauled off and blasted me in the ribs with a brutal punch. He howled, clutching his hand and falling to his knees, and I rolled my eyes. "A was GOING to tell you to punch my HAND you lackwit. What made you think decking a suit of S-rank armor full force was a wise idea."

The iron in the armor had been tempered with the resonance of Mornax himself, my ultimate defense demon, and was even more durable than defense oriented metal of that rank SHOULD be. The various secondary effects of the demon resonance were way too complicated for me to understand, but based on what Belphegor told me, their overlapping was half the reason the armor functioned, and their interactions were the purpose of the surface runes that had manifested along the black iron shell.

Sighing, I reached down and placed a hand on Abel's shoulder, reaching to incarnate Zagan. To my shock, I felt almost no strain from it at all, and was able to channel the green flame directly through the armor with almost no thought or effort. Abel groaned, flexing his fingers as he stood up with a shrug.

"Might have jumped the gun on that one," he admitted. "But to be fair, I was very bored and punching you sounded fun."

"I'm not sure you get how excuses work," I pointed out. "They're supposed to make the person in question less angry. Or at least make the attempt. But whatever, that works as well as anything else. I can already tell I have a few new tricks, and I'm interested to see what this thing can do as I no doubt learn more of them. For now though, with this out of the way we can move onto our next order of business." I let Belphegor vanish, calling Dantalion from the Domain. "Dan, tell us what you can about the Blood Witch."

The puppets had been prepared last second, which meant that the Blood Witch must be nearby. Given my earlier bad feeling about something being wrong in this place, leaving her at our back before we went to find Callie seemed stupid to the extreme.

Dan sighed. "I've got a heading, but unfortunately the Blood Puppets themselves weren't able to shed much light on her abilities."

"Don't worry about it," Lark said grimly. "She's a blood manipulator, I can handle her. Regardless of her abilities, I'm a natural counter. Worst case scenario I just drink up all the blood she's using. If she tries any direct manipulation I assume you can counter that?" He raised an eyebrow at me.

"Purification should work," I agreed. "But just in case, I'll put together something special. The Blood Puppet gave me some ideas for ways to counter things like curses and abnormal causal conditions."

I had been brainstorming an Archdemon for this as we worked, and I was pretty sure I had a solve. The throne was going to make the combining process a lot more intuitive, though I had decided that if I had more options for combinations I should try different ones before settling on any specific Archdemon configurations. Giving me a chance to try out different Archdemons to see what worked best was a major advantage I planned to take advantage of.

My mom looked hesitant about chasing down her childhood boogeyman, but she didn't contradict the decision. She understood my reasoning, I could tell, she just didn't like it. So, with that decided, I gestured to Dan to lead the way and we set off to find the Blood Witch. I just hoped she was really the source of my feeling of impending doom. If not that meant there were more threats on the horizon I didn't see coming, and that was the last thing I needed.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We stepped out of the cavernous corridors of the Foundry and into twilight. We'd followed the traces of the Blood Witch through the labyrinthine maze of chambers until we discovered a hidden gate. It was inside of an actual iron maiden, which had been locked and wrapped in chains, and it had taken about ten minutes with my Ruin flames at S-rank to get into the damned thing so we could enter.

"You sure you want to wait to integrate that new flame?" my mother asked as we peered out into the gloom. "I know you're not finished with the last one yet, but-"

"It's fine," I said with a smile. "I have it sealed in my Domain, and Belphegor and Nine Phoenix are working on the new template. Bel thinks he can increase the refinement speed by backtracking the different processes that have formed the bloodlines, and in the meantime, like you said, I still have a few more drops of clear min fire bloodline to get through before it becomes an issue."

Belphegor was ALSO designing the object I would be using to bind the Summer Phoenix flame, which I was pretty excited about. Given his experience and abilities, I was curious what he'd come up with and how it would compare to my previous attempts. After all, as soon as I incarnated the archdemon, I'd learn everything he had learned, or at least start on the process a bit at a time.

That was a matter for future Shane though, present Shane was standing on a spooky cliffside, overlooking a black ocean, and looking up at a mist shrouded dark citadel lit only by a single flickering candle in a high window.

"I'm going to go out on a limb and guess the witch is up there," Abel said, pointing up at the castle.

"Nah," Bethy disagreed. "It's too obvious. It's totally a bluff. I bet she lives in a cottage on the grounds or something. Or maybe she's waiting on the path pretending to be a guide. Witches love pretending to be stuff."

My mom snorted. "I think most Ascendants are guilty of that one, Bethy. Everyone stay close, I get a strange feeling about this place."

She wasn't the only one. It felt…wrong here. Hollow almost, or maybe dead? Something had happened to this fragment of the Webworld. She noticed me stilling as I took it in. "What do you sense?" she asked softly. "Your Perception is probably higher than mine at this point, that's never been a stat I excelled at."

"I think…I think the Blood Witch stole this fragment," I said slowly, piecing it together. "I think she made it into a Blood Puppet maybe? That's why she sent the puppets after us. We got too close."

"Can she do that?" Abel asked, sounding concerned. "Just…take a fragment of a god's realm like that?"

I grimaced, trying to work through it as best I could. "Belsara died. When the Webworld fractured, the individual fragments would have devolved. She clearly hasn't reassembled them, which means she hasn't recovered. It would make her technically below a god, at least in the context of defending herself in here. You mentioned Webworlds were more vulnerable in some ways, Mom? Unstable?"

She nodded. "I wonder though, how did she get inside? Finding this place wasn't easy for US and we had a guide. What are the chances a Blood Witch would happen to wander into such a vulnerable Webworld?"

Something about that sounded important to me. My fate sense twinged, and I wondered if she really HAD just wandered in. All of this seemed a lot more intentional than I was able to reliably describe. Something more was going on. The fact remained, however, that this made things more complicated by far. This witch represented a third side in this little conflict, and if she was making moves on us directly, I suspected she had a bigger stake than just this single fragment.

More than that, there was the part I wasn't saying, that if she could do all this, she must be terrifyingly strong. Not a god, obviously, but the next best thing. A Demigod, most likely. And probably not an average one.

But this was all guesswork until we learned more. So I turned and faced the citadel, and I began to walk. I didn't know if the Blood Witch was here, or her power was just tied to something in this place, but this was where the trail had led, and because of that, this was where we would go. If this witch was coming for Belsara, that meant Callie and the twins were in danger. I could handle my wife's crazy ancestor, but this threat felt so much more insidious.

I felt the eyes of something upon me, as we walked. Something huge and alien and horrible, just past the edge of my sight. I felt like there was a great beast looming at the corner of my eye, but every time I looked there was nothing there. It wasn't just me either, Lark looked ready to explode into violence and Bethy was wilting into herself, unsure what to do.

We arrived at the citadel, striding up to the massive doors, and I expected a fight, or a monster, or something deadly, but instead, the door just…opened. It swung inward smoothly and silently, beckoning us inside.

"Oh cool," I said dryly. "That's definitely not a trap. We're being led into the depths of a haunted castle where no one can hear us scream. Best day ever."

I reached through my armor for Mornax, triggering the staff to push him to S-rank just in case, and stepped ahead to walk inside first. When we entered, the space around us ballooned, expanding like every angle was a funhouse mirror, the walls and ceilings retreating into the distance, shrouded by shadow and hundreds of feet high, making us feel like we were caught in some kind of dark jar, bugs in a glass trap. I grimaced, but ignored it, walking forward until I finally came to a large, empty room.

In the center of the room, a figure sat, hunched and ancient, face covered by a hood as she worked bloody thread on a spinning wheel. "Greetings," I said, keeping my tone civil. "You must be the Blood Witch. We met some of your puppets." The figure didn't pause, she simply spun unhindered. I frowned. "What's your name? This will be easier if I have something to call you."

A dry, rasping giggle erupted from beneath the fathomless hood, though the bony white fingers never stopped spinning. "Heroic hearts ablaze with wrath, our heroes charge into the black, they meet Mordu at her spinning wheel, too late, they're trapped, they can't get back."

"Mordu?" I asked slowly. "Your name is Mordu?"

Lark stilled, and I turned to cock my head at him. "I…something about that name. I feel like I've heard it somewhere before. But I don't know where. It must be old though, something I stumbled on in ruins somewhere?"

"Three sisters, scattered, witches all," purred the figure. "A line of darkness and of hate. Of blood, and void, and shadow's fall, to guard the locks on the Final Gate."

My blood chilled for some reason. Abel caught it before I did, and spoke up immediately. "Ok, did anyone else hear that last bit in capital letters? Because I could swear that was capitalized somehow despite her saying it out loud, and I really don't like that sensation."

I was too focused on something else. Something about what she'd said a second ago. "Void witch," I said slowly. "Are you talking about Morwenna?"

"Poor Wenna," she sighed. "Youngest and weakest in our art, her fall from grace a tragic tale, a family dissolved by a broken heart. But though she runs, her path looks bleak, unable to dodge her terrible fate. The Final Bells begin to toll, and signal the opening of the Final Gate."

"Ok," I said firmly. "That time I definitely heard the capital letters. And it happened twice. Also, broken heart? Are you saying her and Atlas were a thing? Wait why am I focused on that, what do you mean weakest, she's a god. What the hell is going on? Why are you here? What do you want with Belsara?"

The hunched witch shook her head, cackling wretchedly. "A key, a lock, a coming dark, the pieces move and find their place. When the Bell is struck with the blue black flame, it heralds the end of time and space." The blue black flame. Callie.

"Ok, I'm done with this shit," I snapped as my blood went cold again. "You don't get to talk about my wife and expect to walk away. Get her." I reached for the throne, pulling on Bennu, and pushing the five colored phoenix demon to S-rank even as the five colored wings unfurled behind me. I blurred forward, staff coming to my hand and sweeping out to striking the hunched figure. I'd take Mordu down and have Dan rip every scrap of information from her withered old head.

My staff hit the figure head on, fuelled by all my power and determination and a not insubstantial amount of fire…and then bounced off.

I was sent skidding back away from the figure, who cackled again, maliciously. The witch stood up. And up. And up. The cloak covering her fell away as a strange, horrible creature of bone and sinew and gleaming eyes the color of a septic wound glared down at us from over a much too wide mouth full of much too many teeth.

Its face was bare of skin, exposed muscle surrounding the horrible features, and red blood dripped down to cover the skeletal frame, formed of far too many bones like someone had tried to build a human being with only a vague idea and a snake for reference. Lark hissed in disgust and what I suspected was genuine fear. "Rawhead and Bloody Bones," he snarled. "It's another puppet."

I cursed, of course she wouldn't really be here. What kind of idiot put THEMSELVES in a trap as bait? I'd gotten so caught up in her riddles I'd ignored the obvious danger. I retreated, Cosmic Waltz allowing me to step to the side of my friends in a blink. "Ok, so you know what that is, I take it?"

"An act of grand necromancy," he spat. "Or I suppose blood magic, in this case. I suppose it involves both. The bones are from the witch's victims, the blood from her devoted servants. The face she keeps for herself. It gives her power over the monster. They're terrible monsters, and creating them is a labor of millenia. Each bone comes from a different body, and represents the ruining of an entire life. The blood is painted over the skeleton to trap their resentment. It festers and decays inside the beast, creating a walking infection that pollutes the world with its very presence."

The monster loomed above us, its horrible yellow eyes glowing with gleeful malice, its gaping, jagged maw dripping corrosive saliva that seared the floor as each drop struck. I glared right back. I wasn't scared. I didn't have TIME to be scared. That witch had mentioned my wife, Callie was in danger, and clearly so much more was happening here than I could have possibly understood. I needed answers, and that meant I needed to go THROUGH this thing.

I slammed my staff on the ground, five colored fire flaring over its length, flames of life and purification and ruin intertwining in a way they hadn't before Bennu had a spirit. Before the throne gave him real life. I hadn't even met him yet, but I could feel him within me, his will blazing like an exploding star in time with my own thundering heart. This witch and her monster had threatened our family. Our life. Our CHILDREN. Rawhead and Bloody Bones might be an infection, but we had the cure.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Rawhead and Bloody Bones was fast. Horribly, unnaturally, terrifyingly fast…but so was Lark. In a move so quick I could barely track it, Lark appeared in front of me as the monster's claws raked down to cut me in two. His sword slashed up to intercept the long, bony fingers that had unfolded like the rest of the creature, black sword clanging against the jagged claws as he shoulder checked me out of the way.

"Get your head out of your ass, boy," snapped Lark as I stumbled away. "This thing is a Demigod. You can't fight it head on. Am I here as decoration? Think! You clearly have a method to deal with it, so work with me. You're getting sucked into the witch's rhythm."

I froze. He was right. That had been stupid. Not trying to kill it, but trying to stand against it directly. I DID have the means to destroy this thing. It was made of Resentment, which meant the Peace Flame would counter it. But Bennu wasn't just Peace Flame. He was the five colored fire. My phoenix demon was more than the sum of his parts, but he was STILL those parts. He craved purification, craved Ruin, and manifesting him like I had influenced me to crave the same.

Taking a deep breath, I focused my mind, clamping down on the impulses. "You're right," I said slowly. "I'm sorry. Hold it off. I have a plan."

He nodded, his arm bulging beneath his armor as his sword crashed against the claws with the inevitability of a descending star. The monster was blown backwards, but its body twisted in the air, the bones that made up its unnatural skeletal body twisting to catch it against the wall behind it, its limbs and torso inverting entirely despite the raw head staying faced toward us.

"Everyone into my Domain," I snapped behind me. I flicked a finger, dragging them all into Gehenna where they would be safe as I prepared for the next steps. I hadn't been lying to Lark, though I might have exaggerated somewhat. I DID have a bit of a plan, but I wasn't sure how well it would work. I needed my family out of the way of this mess if I was going to try though. And once they were gone, I could begin.

The five colored fire was mighty, and it had many aspects. Space was one, through the cosmic phoenix, and so the space around me burned as I waltzed the cosmic waltz, vanishing and appearing behind the monster as it met Lark head on.

My staff rose and fell like a paintbrush, a head of five colored fire appearing as I dragged it along a bone. I was briefly worried it wouldn't take, but I was relieved to see that it did. The Peace Flame aspect of the five colored fire countered the resentment, and the ruin destroyed the physical. The monster was hardly idle though, it turned on me with a howl of fury, its other hand lashing out to tear me apart as its first held Lark in place.

Unfortunately for Rawhead and Bloody Bones, when I had pushed my friends into Gehenna, I hadn't pushed ALL of them in. The monster's skeletal hand might have been ferocious, but it was no match for the tail of a Manticore.

Apples had been waiting, watching, and planning, and as the monster took its opening, so too did the Manticore, spearing the hand with its corrosive tail.

I vanished, appearing behind the monster, and my staff flickered again, carving another furrow. Its head whipped around on its neck, trying to bite me, but I was already gone. Around and around I danced, staff leading in a tempest of surging five colored flame as it carried me around the monster. It wasn't enough to do much damage, just carving little divots here and there, but it was all I needed.

Rawhead and Bloody Bones raged against Lark and Apples, wailing and snapping hatefully as they tore into it. My strikes were barely doing more than itching the thing, and I knew that the gulf between a Demigod and an S-ranker wasn't so easily overcome, even by someone like me.

Still, I continued, carving away at the monster bit by bit. I didn't slow, didn't stop, I just etched into the bones a pattern I had burned into my mind and body in the past. Because my plan was simple and yet so very complicated. I wasn't sure if it would work, but if it did, I was sure this would end the battle.

Meanwhile, Apples and Lark were being pushed to their limits. It was horrifying how powerful this monster was, Lark, who had battled a hundred S-rankers and crushed the Manticore, could barely hold on, even with assistance. His armor was rent and and ragged, his sword beginning to chip, and I could tell Apples was only holding on because Lark was putting himself on the line to draw attention.

It was infuriating. Despite not having spent too much time with him, I considered Lark a friend, if not something of a mentor. He was Bethy's father, and he'd sacrificed a lot to come here to help me. Seeing him torn to shreds because I was too weak to help was like being eaten alive by ants.

But I knew that my part in this was most important. Lark couldn't kill this thing, for some reason, perhaps it restrained him specifically, I didn't know. But I knew that I needed to be the one to finish this fight, so I continued to carve, etching away at the monster as they battled.

Despite its initial fury, after a few dozen scores, the monster apparently decided I wasn't a threat. It still snapped at me if it got a chance, but it had clearly deprioritized me in the fight, which relieved some of my pressure but ramped up Larks. It wasn't ideal, but it helped me finish my project in record time.

When I finally stopped carving, the monster barely noticed. It didn't even attack as I appeared behind it. I grinned triumphantly as I slammed my staff into a spot I'd carved into its back and roared as I poured in five colored fire.

Like a match striking a trail of gasoline, the five colored flame rolled along the intertwining grooves, covering the body of the monster, the flame rushing through the scores like a flood refilling a river. The monster roared and jerked, trying to get at the fire, but it couldn't do anything, staggering back in pain as it slapped uselessly at its body.

Lark appeared next to me. "What did you do?" he panted, looked rumpled but mostly ok.

"Body tempering," I grinned. "That's the template for the energy route that I used to condense my Peace Flame bloodline. I carved it into the bones. It'll take a while to work though. If I pump in more fire it'll speed up, think you can keep it busy?"

He snorted in disdain, then exploded into a swarm of bats that flocked toward the wriggling monster. I grinned, flashing forward and slamming my staff into a spot on the top of its foot, pushing in more fire. The flame fell into the tracery of engravings like a single drop into a bucket, but the tracework of flame DID flare a bit brighter.

After that, it was a death by a thousand cuts. One burst of flame after another, I poured every ounce of power I had into the engraving, and as I did, the monster began to slow, began to weaken. Its movements became labored and jerky, its attacks clumsy and desperate, and before long, there was a flare of five colored fire along its whole body and the creature screamed, its body consumed by the Peace Flame as its stolen skeleton fell to pieces on the floor of the citadel.

Lark, who had been fighting the whole time, groaned and slumped back against the wall. "Damn," he spat. "Been a while since I've had a fight like that. I hate necromancy." I cocked my head at him, and he explained. "Vampires are the ultimate form of undead…mostly. But this is something everyone involved in undeath knows. Most powerful necromancers have at least a few custom undead dedicated to countering us, and GRAND necromancy is some of the most polished, perfected necromancy around."

I wasn't sure anyone had confirmed for me that vampires WERE undead, to be fair, but I could see his point. "You're going to be ok though, right? He damaged your objects of power."

"It's fine," he said dismissively. "All of my weapons and armor can reconstitute through blood. I've got more than enough surplus to make repairs." He scowled around us at the citadel. "Has this not been broken yet?" with a dismissive sneer, he did…something. Used his Domain in a quick burst like a hammer and shattered the distorted space around us. "It was anchored to the puppet," he explained. "With it dead it wasn't too hard to destroy."

Now that the distortion was gone, I was happy to release the others. As soon as they appeared, Bethy rushed over to check on a miserable looking Apples. Lark rolled his eyes as she ran right past him, and only after making sure her cat was ok did she circle back to check on the older vampire.

Still, it was obvious she was concerned, and she even dragged my mom over to use her purification flame on his wounds. She insisted it wouldn't help, and Bethy eventually gave up, coming to ask me to try to help with the five colored fire. Of course, I was happy to attempt it, and sure enough, there were tiny particles of resentment and corruption in the wounds that hadn't been noticeable before we checked.

The fire poured into the injuries, and they both hissed as inky black smoke boiled off the damage. Lark grimaced. "Ok, that would have been bad," he admitted. "I owe you one, kid. I thought that kind of attack wasn't likely to do much to me, but I guess that monster's resentment had stewed longer than I thought."

I grimaced. Resentment. The Void was involved with resentment. And with Morwenna. But Mordu made it sound like Morwenna had run away from her sisters. Escaping from the Final Gate, whatever that was. It certainly didn't sound nice.

None of this was giving me a very good feeling. Especially knowing Callie was the key to all this. Or was she? The blue black flame COULD be Atlas's heretic fire. But somehow I doubted it. Did that mean Mordu had come here for Callie? But she had to have been here for such a long time. How could she have known? Did she have some kind of divination ability?

I found myself once again trapped in the dark, completely ignorant of what was happening. The schemes of gods and monsters had dictated my life for far too long, and I was getting about sick of dealing with it.

As a near S-ranker, I couldn't afford to let myself be swept along anymore. I had always treated gods as forces of nature, storms that swept me along the river of fate like an unmoored ship. I didn't try to interact as much as survive, even the ones I respected or liked. But at the current heights I'd reached, I could and would do more. I could make them take me seriously…and I knew exactly where to start.

I turned to my dad, eyes locking with his even through my mask. "I need to make a wish," I told him bluntly. "I need to get in touch with Atlas." Someone knew something about what was going on, and I needed to know it too. Atlas had better have answers for me, because I had a feeling if I didn't have them before this was over, we were all going to be screwed.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I got in touch with Atlas easily enough. While Callie's connection to me had been blocked somehow by Belsara, wishes were generally a decent way to get in touch with anyone from any distance. My dad might not have the same three times modifier I did as a Wish Devil, but he was still an A-ranker, and not a weak one. Plus his wishes required far less in the way of payment, or at least they could. Dad's whole schtick was uneven payments.

When I finally managed to manifest an image of Atlas, he seemed pleased to see me. "Shane," he sighed in relief. "What's going on? How is Calliope? Did you find her?"

"We're on our way," I said, forcing the conversation back to the matter at hand. "I'll let you know. We have bigger problems than that. We ran into someone here. A Blood Witch named Mordu. Do you know her?"

"Mordu is alive?" he spat in an appalled voice. "How? That hag was ancient when I was still a mortal."

I shrugged. "Couldn't tell you. But she is, and she's here for Callie. At least that's what she implied. She wasn't extremely clear, she kept talking in weird rhyming riddles, it was really annoying. Do you know what Final Gate is?"

"A myth," he said bluntly. "Morwenna's family were part of some kind of doomsday cult. They claimed they were servants of some kind of horrible destruction deity beyond the confines of creation. The Final Gate was supposedly the last barrier between the monster and the end of all things. Morwenna told me about it when…"

"When you guys were together?" I said dryly. "Yeah, Mordu mentioned that. We don't have time for me to critique your love life, I'll let Callie do that when she gets back. Are you SURE the Final Gate is a myth?"

He looked uneasy. "I mean…no? It always SEEMED like a myth. Morwenna believed it, but she didn't want any part of that mess. She sold herself to the Void to escape it, in fact. She never actually said it was real though. She made her sisters sound like fanatical lunatics, and the few things I heard about them made me believe it."

"How are they not dead then?" I demanded. "Demigods have what? Fifty thousand years, tops? They're not deities, how are they alive?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "If the Final Gate IS real, it's possible they made some kind of deal with whatever is behind it. I'm not sure what could do that though. I've never heard of anything being able to grant true immortality like that. Not without a horrible cost. Most forms of cheating death I know of end up being worse than actually dying."

I grimaced. We didn't know enough. Atlas hadn't been hiding anything from me, he'd just been ignorant. That was worse though. It meant we were flying blind here. "We need to know more. What about the third sister? Mordu said there were three of them?"

"Morgotch," he said distastefully. "I never met either of them, but Morgotch was the one Morwenna was really scared of. She's the oldest, and her abilities are…she's some kind of witch, but I'm not sure what kind. Morwenna was a Void Witch when I knew her, and you said Mordu is a Blood Witch."

"Mordu called her a witch of 'Shadow's Fall', whatever that means," I shrugged.

He grimaced. "That's not ideal. Shadow's Fall is an old poetic term for Entropy. I haven't seen an Entropy Witch at that level before, but I've met one or two weaker ones. They aren't something you want to deal with. Entropy magic is nasty, and the power tends to twist the people who use it."

That made me come up short. I'd heard that before. Somewhere. It took me a second to remember where. Dean Gibbons. My mentor had mentioned the Entropy attribute back at the Frozen Moment Academy. He'd said much the same thing…he'd ALSO mentioned that Entropy was atemporal, or not confined by time. I hadn't known what that meant, but if Morgotch was an Entropy Witch, that might explain how she and Mordu were still alive.

"I might have an idea about how Mordu survived," I said after considering it. "You need to talk to Elonwy. If I'm right, she'll know more about this."

He nodded grimly. "I will, but that doesn't change the danger you're in. Mordu isn't a god, but she's VERY old. Honestly, I'm not entirely certain WHY she isn't a god at this point, but I imagine whatever the reason, it's not a good thing for any of us. You're sure she's not, right? You said you didn't see her in person?"

"I didn't," I confirmed. "Just a puppet. But still. Lark seemed sure. I trust him. Plus if she was a god she'd have crushed us all by now. Belsara is still recovering, and from what we can tell, Mordu is corrupting the fragments as a means of countering her, presumably to get her hands on Callie. You're sure you don't know anything else about this Final Gate?"

"Certain," he confirmed. "I'd tell you if I did. My relationship with Morwenna wasn't as close as you seem to be picturing. We had a brief dalliance during my time as the Void God's puppet. We spoke a bit about her family, but it's not like we had deep heartfelt talks. I'm honestly surprised I even remember as much as I do, it wasn't really a priority at the time or even after." He frowned. "I might be able to ask around. The fragments in the Necropolis are of varying ages. Several of them are much older than I am."

That made me pause. "I might have another lead," I said hesitantly. "Drexel. The Mindplague. I think he might have been older than you. The tower he was trapped in was put together by some ancient emperor to keep him trapped. If there IS a Final Gate, someone probably built it. Maybe that Emperor was involved. It's a longshot, but honestly I need to track that monster down anyway, I don't feel right leaving him on the loose."

"Something to look into, at least," he sighed. "I'll contact the fragments, and your friend. Hopefully she can shed at least some light on things. The Final Gate, from what I remember, was supposedly beyond the Void. Since we know the Void, or at least A Void exists in higher realms, perhaps there's some analogue to it there."

"Not a bad idea," I paused, considering what to say next. "We need to figure this out, Atlas. For Callie, and for the twins. I won't let this ancient bullshit endanger my family."

He seemed surprised by the declaration, but not for long. He nodded solemnly. "I'm right there with you. Like I said, I'll get into it. If I need to go out and crack some skulls, I will, but I'll find us answers. In the meantime, you need to be CAREFUL. Mordu is dangerous, and if you get yourself killed Calliope will be alone at her mercy. Belsara is too straightforward to deal with witches. She's a powerful warrior when she's in good condition, but she isn't…complex. She's a hammer, not a scalpel. It's how the Void subverted her before."

I grimaced, because I could see where this was going. Between Callie's earlier request for me to go easy and now this new threat…Belsara was going to get away with this, I just knew it. I hated that. She'd made me feel helpless, stolen the thing I loved most, and tore my family apart. She SHOULD suffer for it. Maybe not die, if it would hurt Callie, but suffer.

But ultimately, I knew that if it made Callie happy and safe, I wouldn't pursue my vengeance against her. For my wife and children, I'd make friends with the unstable goddess. It wouldn't be my first time.

"I assume you want me to approach her?" I asked tightly.

"If you can, you should," he said without flinching. "I know you dislike her, but she wouldn't risk Calliope's life. She looks too much like Alara. Belsara was always a good mother. She'd have done anything for our daughter, and she'll do anything for this one. It's just who she is. If she knows there's danger she can help."

That was another problem. "CAN she help?" I asked doubtfully. "Like is she even capable in this state? She died, and she's not fully recovered. With her Webworld being subverted by Mordu, she must be a lot weaker."

"I can't really say," he admitted. "I don't know her condition. But I know that if she regains her full strength, she'll be one of the most formidable warriors on this plane. My wife was perhaps the most dangerous single combatant I've ever seen in the field of battle. She and Halcyon terrorized our enemies for millenia, may it rot in hell."

"The Summer Phoenix?" I asked in confusion. "Why do you sound like you hated it?"

He snorted. "Because I DID," he spat. "I was the one who gave her that thing when it was an egg, but it loathed me. Any time I got close it would attack. She thought it was hilarious. And of course Alara loved that bloodthirsty chicken. Winged rat. Regardless, the two of them were a deadly combination. If you can find Halcyon it might be able to help her recover."

"I don't think that's on the table," I said with a grimace. "It's dead. But I MIGHT be able to work something else out. I have its flame. I'd need to negotiate with her though. If I'm giving her back her power I'll need assurances."

Beyond that, what I wasn't telling him was that I still wasn't sure I was willing to work with her. If she wasn't strong enough or she wasn't actually treating Callie well I would make sure she died. In order to confirm that though, I would need to see her in action. Which meant…we needed to resume our trek to where my wife was. I needed to infiltrate the castle and get eyes on the situation.

Atlas seemed to sense I was holding something back, but not what. He gave me one last uncertain look and then said his goodbyes, vanishing from in front of me as the Wish connection ended. Once he was gone, I turned to where my dad had been waiting nearby. "What do you think?"

"I think he doesn't know much," he shrugged. "But he'll try to find out, like he said. He had nothing to gain by lying. As for the goddess…I've worked with enemies before. It can be a smart call. As long as you make sure they won't turn around and bite you."

"I know," I assured him. "I'm not going to take any stupid risks. I can't afford to anymore. But I also can't afford to let my emotions prevent me from helping my family."

He nodded approvingly. "Now you're starting to sound like my son instead of just your mother's."

"You don't need to insult me," I said dryly. "Regardless though, in order to learn more, we need to actually reach Callie, and I have a feeling this trip won't be as casual as we were expecting. Belsara might not know or care that we're coming, but Mordu sure as hell does. We're going to run into active resistance sooner or later, and I don't believe Rawhead and Bloody Bones was her only trick by a long shot."

He sighed at that, but ultimately, he could only shrug. "You're not wrong," he said after a moment. "Whatever is in our way, we'll deal with it. This is a pretty decent team. And once we do, we'll reunite you with your kids." Despite the usual stoic nature of his tone, I could sense a tightness and a bubbling anger under it, and I got the feeling it was on my behalf. I chose not to mention it of course, wouldn't do to embarrass the old man. Still, I did appreciate it. When he put it like that, it made it so easy to believe him.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I stepped out of the castle into the dark and the fog. I took a deep breath, hissing in distaste at the tang of blood and rot still clinging to the mist outside the citadel. "Gross," I said flatly. "This whole thing was gross. Give it to me straight, what are the chances she has more of those things, because I'm not sure I could win that fight again. Hell, I'm not sure YOU could win that fight again."

Lark grimaced. "It wouldn't be easy," he admitted. "That was a hard one for me. I'll recover, but if we meet another one of those things soon, we're screwed. Luckily, Rawhead and Bloody Bones isn't some penny ante necro party trick. That's GRAND necromancy. That Blood Witch might be ancient and scary as hell, but the reason for that designation doesn't change. Grand necromancy is a complex, involved, resource intensive discipline. She doesn't have more. She can't." We'd stepped outside to strategize (or I had at least, and I'd dragged him with me), about what to do next. I valued his advice a lot, but I was still wary of trusting his instincts too much.

"She's been around for millennia," I protested. "Who knows what she's been stockpiling in here!"

"Not how it works," he disagreed. "Abominations like Rawhead and Bloody Bones aren't slapped together overnight. You have to steep them, refine them, craft them. The rituals that they require TAKE millennia. There's ways to do it faster, but it's a matter of specialization. A Blood Witch isn't a necromancer. There's overlap, but it's a venn diagram, not a circle. Especially since she's been working on other things. Those puppets, converting the realm shards. These things take power."

I blinked at him as I realized what he meant. "You're saying she got desperate," I said slowly. "That she sent her last resort to take care of us because we're a genuine threat, and now you don't think she has anything in reserve?"

"I didn't say all that," he snorted. "Things that old always have tricks. But I do think she took her best shot and we put it down hard."

My hands tightened. "We have her on the run."

"We have her CORNERED," Lark corrected warningly. "Which is, statistically, the absolute most dangerous way to confront a predator. It'd be easy to comfort yourself here, to let yourself feel confident and believe in yourself. Don't."

"Why not?" I asked in frustration. "Shouldn't I have faith in myself?"

He let out a bark of laughter. "No, kid. You shouldn't EVER have faith in yourself. Look, do you know why I'm so dangerous?"

"Because of your freakish and overwhelming modifiers?" I said dryly.

"Hell no," he snorted. "Lots of scary beings out there in the universe. Ones whose stats can stack with mine even. You've seen me fight two of them since we got here. No. The reason I'm dangerous is the same reason everyone knows my name. Because I do the job. Every time, every kill, every fight. I do it right, I do it thorough, and I do it bloody. When I became a vampire, we were mid tier hemophages with a reputation for being hard to kill. We weren't feared, we weren't respected. We were parasites."

I blinked at that. I'd know it, actually, or something like it, but hearing him talk about that time was different. "So, how did you do it?"

"Faith is a finite resource," he said bluntly. "And so is fear. Sometimes they're the SAME resource. But ultimately, the point is that people can only hold so much regard for a concept. It's why you can't follow the path of a living god to divinity. You'll always be competing with them, you'll always be the second thing people think about, because until you cross that line, and you never will, you'll be the mortal and they'll be the god."

"So you removed the distractions," I said quietly. "You killed the others to make yourself the only one."

He shook his head. "No. That doesn't work. People have tried it, to middling success. It gives results, but not like I wanted. See, the duality of my plan is that I did destroy vampirism, but I did it AS a vampire. I didn't kill them, kid, I DEVOURED them. I ate them up. I became their superpredator. See, if you kill the vampires, then when they think of vampires from then on they think of prey. But I'm a vampire. I didn't want to ruin myself alongside them.

"Instead, I didn't destroy vampirism, I perfected it," he said emphatically. "I hunted them down and consumed them, I made myself the avatar of hunger, or blood and violence. But all that is just a fancy way of saying the obvious thing. I gave it my all."

It took me a second to get it. "You're saying your secret is that you don't underestimate anyone? But I've seen how you treat people. You consider most high ranking ascendants garbage."

"Sure," he shrugged. "But it takes effort to throw out garbage. Cleaning filth can be dangerous. You're picking up broken glass and don't treat it with respect you cut yourself. Maybe you get an infection. My point is that the secret isn't some mystical supernatural power. It's not raw force or violence, though I am supremely talented at both. It's a mindset. A code. A lion hunts even a rabbit with its full strength."

"That's it?" I asked incredulously. "Your advice is to stay paranoid?"

He rolled his eyes. "Look. People aren't built for consistency. We put in the work, then we pull back. Once the job is done, you don't need to try anymore. That's how complacency gets in. That's when you start making mistakes and leaving flaws people can exploit. So don't do that. It sounds simple, because it IS simple, but it's sure as hell not easy. Everything you do, do it all the way. Put the time in and exert maximum attention to every task. That'll carry you further than any martial art or magic object. That's how you survive."

I considered what he was saying…and then I considered it again and my eyes widened. "That explains SO MUCH about Bethy," I laughed quietly. "You gave her that advice as a kid, didn't you?"

"Bethany was always the only one of my children who listened when I talked," he smiled fondly. "The rest of them heard me, but they all thought they knew better. Bethany was the one who really LEARNED. It's why she's my favorite, and always has been. Some of the others resent it, but if they wanted my regard they should have paid attention to the things I told them."

"I think that I'll take your advice on hunting," I said with a laugh. "But remind me not to ask for any on parenting."

That just got a shrug. "I don't make apologies for who I am. Regardless, you have my stance on things, the question remains what do you want to do here? You said you wanted to head for Calliope, do some recon, is that still how you feel?"

I considered my options, what he'd said, what my responses were, and I shook my head. "No," I said finally. "If we rush through here, we leave all this possible leverage on the table. You said she probably has tricks up her sleeves. I want to take the sleeves. I want to pull her up by the roots as we go and leave her floundering."

"Interesting," he said with a slowly dawning grin. "Show your work."

"Bennu's flame," I said firmly. "It was able to cleanse the Rawhead, even as a Demigod. And that's not his final form. I'm on the edge of finishing my fifth bloodline and starting my sixth, and the Summer Phoenix will not only be highly compatible with this task, it'll have a huge homefield advantage. If I push Bennu to a six colored flame, I should be able to use it to purify Mordu's influence from this fragment. And the next. And the one after."

My eyes were alight with malice as I fought back a bloodthirsty grin. "The puppets, the Rawhead, it's all a misdirect. Whatever she's planning is about this, it's about the fragments she's marshalling to bring to bear against Belsara. If she gets to that fight and is suddenly missing a bunch of them…"

The laugh this time was more than a bark. "See, now THAT'S what I'm talking about. Hit her where it hurts. We're cornering her, but we don't have her boxed in yet, if we do it like this, by the time she's actually caught in the trap she won't just be out her sleeves, she'll be missing her hands and not even notice. But are you sure you can do that? This isn't the same thing as cleansing Rawhead, this is a fragment of a whole realm. That's going to take some serious power."

I frowned. He wasn't wrong. It wasn't a matter of quality at this point, it was more about quantity. But I wasn't exactly out of options. "I have a plan," I said vaguely. "But I need to work some things out. Firstly, I need to complete that fifth form, then start the sixth." Luckily the throne would help me integrate that particular demon into Bennu, but even with that bit of assistance, I wasn't looking forward to the whole process.

Beyond that, I knew that my current stats, at less than halfway into A-rank, weren't going to cut it for this. While I had plans to maximize my power output for this project, they would be infinitely easier to pull off with more stats.

I checked my reserves, noting my more than one hundred thirty scroll stockpile. It was certainly enough to do something, though less than I'd like. The only saving grace was that I knew for a fact that the new bloodlines would increase my stat limit per scroll. Once I completed the fifth form and started the sixth, I should see a massive surge in my numbers, much like I had entering the fourth layer. The sixth bloodline would put me in the final third of the reincarnation art, and I'd already seen how important that could be.

Thanking Lark, I headed off on my own to think. I grimaced at the idea of taking all this time, but I knew it was the right call. Reaching into my pocket, I fished out a scan ring and hit record. "Hey Cal," I said with a wry smile as I took of my mask. "I don't have the time for a two way conversation right now, but I love and miss you. Wanted to catch you up on everything that's going on at least, considering you're involved."

I swallowed hard. "There's a lot," I admitted. "I don't understand most of it, but I'm working on that. Just do me a favor and stick with Belsara. As much as I hate her for taking you away, you're safest around her right now. I'm still on the way, but it'll be a while before I get there, for obvious reasons."

Then I filled her in on the recent events. I told her about Mordu, Morgotch, and the Final Gate (as much as I knew about it at least), and about what we'd learned. I told her how dangerous these things were and asked her to stay safe, then I hung up and slipped the message into my wedding ring.

With that out of the way, I took a long, slow breath and took up a stance. Just like last time, I began the process of going through my body refinement form. Before anything else, I had to finish the fifth layer of the Nine Phoenix Reincarnation Art. I wasn't exactly upset at the task, after all, nothing helped clear your head like a bit of manual labor. Time to lock in and get to working out.