Malcolm Tent
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Wish upon the Stars chapter 840
🕑 Added 2025-03-12 00:27:19 +0000 UTCCarmichael filled the rest of us in on his situation once Abel came back. The C-ranker had gotten entangled with an Abyssal Lord before his disappearance, and had ended up dragged into the sea. They’d battled underwater for weeks, only for Carmichael to get pulled into the Void Shallow, the entrance of which was apparently at the bottom of the ocean.
His experiences here weren’t much more detailed than ours. From his perspective he’d only been here a few days. Entering had been a bit more complicated, and he told us more than a few things about the entrance, including exactly where in the ocean it happened to be, namely at the bottom of one of the deepest trenches in the abyss.
The entrance location wasn’t the WORST thing to hear, but it wasn’t ideal. It meant once we got out we’d need to break for the surface, and Callie was pretty sure that it would be impossible to use the bangle in the depths because of all the void taint imbued in the water.
Which brought me to my big question…”What’s the point?” I asked my wife as we walked. “What does all of this accomplish? The Void Child has to be doing SOMETHING with the emotions it’s harvesting, and with all that mist. What does this have to do with…this place?”
To my shock, Dayna was the one who answered, the taciturn elf speaking to me directly for possibly the first time. “It’s the Shallow,” she said bluntly. “The Lord told us to be careful of this dungeon. The Void Child is known to the gods. It seeks to expand the Shallow across this dungeon, creating a foothold in real space through which the Void can launch an assault.”
My blood went cold. This dungeon was capped at C-rank, and the Void Child here was presumably at the peak of that rank. But there were bigger fish in the void. Bigger Void Children and other things. If the void managed to create a beachhead here and possibly break the shield around this place as they did it, that would create an entry point for big and more horrible Void Children.
Part of why everyone had been so surprised by the presence of the Void Child here was that they couldn’t normally enter our reality. Openings to the void were small and fleeting, not enough for the Void Children to find or fit through. A big gaping hole like this though…this was basically an airlock that could release void creatures into real space. Even if it was still limited to C-rank, the void was outside time and space. In an infinitely charged negative realm, there could be billions of C-ranked void children, and with no spatial limitations they could be here instantly if alerted.
That might be why the vanished gods were working with them. An army of foot soildiers like that would be invaluable. It would also ruin this world, but being gods who lived in their own realities I doubted they cared, and once they managed to elevate the universe, it would be the problem of the higher realm, and not one I expected would cause real problems for the monsters up there waiting to enslave whole galaxies.
Which meant that goddamn ocean was like…partially congealed void. No wonder we couldn’t use the bangle. It also implied some distressing things about the void that suffering and despair could be condensed into void stuff. I wondered if it was really the despair, or if it was something more like hopelessness. Ascendants got stronger from faith, belief, and renown. Was the void congealed from the loss of those things?
That said some alarming things about the world that I’d rather not delve into, and it was pur supposition anyway, so I focused on Carmichael’s story. Having a powerful C-ranker would be a huge coup for us…except raw combat power wasn’t the name of the game in the abyssal city. The rules made fights difficult and overly complicated. We hadn’t run into too many of them yet, but Carmichael had passed through several more areas than we had, and was severely limited by the signs he’d come across.
He was very careful not to tell us any specifics. Apparently rules only became active once you learned about them, hence the signs. If he’d told us about the effects currently active on him, we’d have been placed under them too.
When we came to the next section of the city though, we ran into a problem. The street narrowed out, and the path forward condensed into a single narrow tunnel, a dark archway with a sign above it on which three rules were listed.
Rule 1: Only one person may enter the tunnel at a time, five minutes must elapse before a second entry can occur.
Rule 2: Once inside the tunnel, the entrant may only advance, never retreat.
Rule 3: Don’t look back.
I grimaced at the tunnel. “Bet that isn’t going to be fun to go through. I’m first.” I saw a few of my friends tense to argue, but I held up a hand. “No, no debate. I’m the sturdiest. I’ll let Callie know the situation, and if it’s safe, follow in five minutes.”
With that out of the way, I strode forward, entering the mouth of the tunnel quickly enough that it was still a walk, but one that the others would have had trouble catching up to. With the prohibition on running my long legs actually served a purpose here, and the advantage let me keep ahead of my sister, who had objected and tried to cut me off.
I appreciated her concern, but I was just as concerned about her. I had the best chance of survival, barring maybe Abel. Bethy was still recovering from having her Domain shredded. She seemed fine outwardly, but kind of off balance, so I wanted to avoid putting her in a bad spot.
As soon as I entered the tunnel, I realized what a huge trap this was. Firstly, it was DARK. That might not seem like an issue, but since the light from behind me was gone, I was having trouble identifying which way was forward. The rules were clear about not retreating, so if I’d gotten turned around, I’d have been fucked.
Luckily, I had a countermeasure. My overlay activated, and I was able to use the arrows to orient my direction, maintaining my forward motion.
Once I’d advanced a bit further though, the noises started. Screaming, crying, begging. Some of it was my friends, some of it was strangers, small children or old people who needed help. After that it became offers of power and glory, whispered temptations of what I could gain if I just turned around. I blocked it all out. I made sure to alert Callie to both of those problems through the bond, and was glad to see it was still working fine.
I walked on, ignoring the sounds from behind. The arrows guided me, and after five minutes I felt Callie reaching out for the overlay. I let her connect and could feel her using the same arrows to light her way, keeping track of her progress as she went. But instead of just reporting back, Callie decided to try something a bit more indirect.
As she walked, she left behind a rope of abyssal energy. Since this entire place was abyssal energy, the tunnel didn’t affect the rope, and it just floated there behind her. After five more minutes, the next of us was able to enter, and with the rope in front of them, they had a guide rail to proceed further.
Since Callie and I were the only ones with a bond, we had no way to actually confirm it was working, but Callie was able to sort of sense them through the rope, so we knew someone had grabbed it.
Halfway through the tunnel, I reached a junction. Three separated turns, lit by a single torch, and above each was a new rule.
Rule 1: If you pass someone on the path, you must stop and greet them.
Rule 2: There are no torches in this tunnel, if you see one, do not approach.
Rule 3: Enter any archway with your left foot first.
I stared hard at the second rule, then at the torch whose light I was reading by. It was situated in the center of the chamber, surrounded by empty space. It wasn’t the green flame of the candles from the walkways of the Shoals, just a normal orange fire. But the more I looked at it, the more it seemed…off. The flames leapt and flickered like a normal flame, but the tongues moved in an oddly repetitive fashion. It didn’t look like a flame, it looked like an image of a flame on a loop.
I had to pause there, figuring out what to do. I had to mind the rules. Don’t look back, don’t turn around. Go straight ahead. I needed to get to the center branch of the tunnel, but that required going around the torch, or rather, not approaching it.
That was a complicated concept. Because approaching was a vague term. It took me a minute to figure out what to do. I turned myself at an angle toward the edge of the archway in question, then walked straight ahead. I passed through the circle around the torch, but nothing happened. I was pretty sure the circle was a trap. The rules only said not to APPROACH the torch, they didn’t say anything about avoiding the circle. The easy answer was that the circle was a misdirect.
I walked through it unaccosted, made it to the archway and entered, then I sent a message back to Callie warning her about the trap, and she left a shadow message above one of the signs as she passed through so the others would be warned.
After another ten minutes, I came across a figure walking along the path in the opposite direction. I tensed, ready to stop and greet it, but I realized something. It didn’t have eyes. I froze. The rules of the tunnel were clear, but the rules of the city were still in effect as far as I knew. The rules on the tunnel had been…different. They seemed more temporary, and when I asked Callie, she confirmed. The tunnel rules were tunnel rules. She’s been able to tell that, but hadn’t realized it until I asked.
I noted that phenomena in case I had questions later on. Having Callie check signs would be a smart play going forward. Still, now that I knew, I continued on, walking right past the figure. Sure enough, there was no reaction, I didn’t get kicked out into the void.
I sent a message back to Callie, and she created a sign in the tunnel. We weren’t sure it would be visible, but in the end it was all we could do. We just hoped the others would remember the rules from outside.
Finally, after about an hour, I reached the end, stepping outside of the tunnel. Sure enough, there was a sign outside. “All rules from the tunnel entrance to this point will cease to be enforced.” The format was different, like the ones in the city instead of the numbered designations. Sighing in relief, I stepped past the sign and turned around, waiting for the others to emerge.
It took about two hours, but when they all arrived, we gathered behind the sign. “Alright, we’re clear,” I said with a sigh of relief. “That was…rough. I hope the rest of the trip is less eventful. The central building is close though. Right over there.” I pointed to a large building off in the middle distance. It was clearly the middle of the city, and now that we were closer it was easy to identify our target.
Sadly, it wasn’t exactly right next to us. We had a ways to go. Looking ahead, I could see a large town square type platform in the next section of our path, full to the brim with ghosts in various poses. I had a feeling my wish about the trip being uneventful was destined to go unfulfilled. I couldn’t decide if that was irony or not, but since it was inconvenient I was guessing it was.
Comments
Void
This war is going to further escalate isn't it?
CringeWorthyStudios
safe, you can follow in five minutes > you has a y in it… which means you should probably double check it isn’t used elsewhere.
