Malcolm Tent
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Wish upon the Stars chapter 767
🕑 Added 2024-11-28 14:04:10 +0000 UTCIt took me about three steps to notice the needles. I’d started with momentum to try to ride my early wind to victory, and they were so sharp and fast I barely even noticed them to start. Of course, my first three steps happened in a split second, so once it caught up to me it all hit me at once.
First was the physical pain, the needle was too thin to actually shut down the joint, but every time I moved I could feel it thrumming inside my flesh. It punched right through Mornax, but just eyeballing the others nearby, I was PRETTY sure it hadn’t gone as deeply into me. Maybe. I could have confirmed it with Dantalion, but it would have meant soul usage, and the low burn permeating my spirit from the poison was already beginning to build.
“Huh,” said Mnemosyne from next to me. “That’s not so bad.” It might have been more convincing if she hadn’t been spitting the words between gritted teeth, but I smiled at the attempt.
“Bet you I get further than you,” I chuckled. “Hey, Harper, you want in on this? We’re putting up bets for the furthest walked.”
It was interesting. This particular test was much different than the others. The more you used your soul the stronger the pain would be. It was a tradeoff, amount of physical agony withstood vs. amount of raw hurt you could take. The soul pain would get worse the more you leaned on it, so uniquely among the trials this one could be pushed through with raw grit without having to lean on Ascendant ability.
I could also see why this one would be the one that broke so many people. There was a certain kind of helplessness that washed over you when you knew that resisting would hurt you even more. Most of us, despite being tough as nails, leaned hard on our powers to resist. There weren’t nearly as many masochists here as one would expect.
My next step caught another two needles, then three, then another lone spike of pain in my lower spine. I suspected the ghost metal wasn’t entirely physical, because with so many spikes in me I was pretty sure I should be having trouble moving.
Well, I WAS having trouble, but not as much as having spikes of metal through my joints should be causing. I took another step and three more spiked slammed into me. At this point I was starting to run into genuine problems taking another step. Cautious but curious about potential advantages, I bit the bullet and triggered Zagan.
Green flame flooded my body, doing nothing for the needles, but seemingly blunting some of the soul poison. I hadn’t expected even that much, but between that and the flood of energy, I got back into my rhythm, pushing myself several steps ahead, another fifteen or twenty needles thunking into my body in a multitude of fun places. I had to bite down a scream when one somehow went INTO my ear drum, my head exploding with an endless wave of pain and nausea as I wobbled on my feet.
Knowing the agony that was coming but not caring, I triggered Abomination Engine and them Gluttony, letting the cocktail of soul poison, agony, and residual Zagan flame pool in the pit in my gut, exploding through my body via Abomination Engine like rocket fuel.
Gritting my teeth, I pushed forward, letting the pain wash through me, driving me onward like a burst of flame as my body exploded with power…until another fifty or so needles thunked into me in several key locations and my power stuttered to a stop. I froze, disbelieving as I realized what was happening. The ghost metal needles were disrupting Abomination Engine.
Apparently whatever spiritual disruption they were making me experience wasn’t able to touch domain shit, because Gluttony was fine, still swallowing down the dispersed energy like a bottomless pit, but without Abomination Engine to run it through my burst of energy was gone.
Pain was being consumed even as it was generated, but my soul was active, so I was hitting basically a net zero state in terms of agony.
Step, step, step. I had five minutes to get through this place, and my only advantage was that I was in so much pain every second felt like an hour. I tried to construct Abomination Engine again. It failed. And again. Nothing. Every time I triggered my technique it fell apart. The soul was deeply involved in technique creation, and the poison seemed to be punching holes in it somehow.
Despite all that, domains still worked though. Gritting my teeth, I dismissed it all. Gluttony vanished, along with Abomination Engine’s dregs and Zagan’s fire. The pain exploded through me like a white phosphorus volcano, washing away my consciousness in a sea of endless suffering beyond anything I’d ever experienced.
Before the trials, I’d have passed out, the sheer torment would have been enough to wipe my mind blank and leave me twitching on the ground. But I was more now. Not because of tricks, or useful abilities. I KNEW pain. I understood it, welcomed it. Pain was part of me, and when I accepted that it couldn’t hurt me. So I didn’t need to resist the pain. Didn’t need to wash away the cleansing fire narrowing my consciousness to a pinprick. I just needed to advance.
I called for Limbo, for the path of destruction and manipulation that would let me find my way through this.
I took a step, a dozen more needles landing, my fist lashed out, once, twice, a dozen times. I destroyed every future before me where I fell. The next step, and another, and a third. The needles rained down, and they were horrifying, but I ignored them. More pain was fine, it was washing through me like a creek bed, pouring over me and out the other side.
My soul was burning, but I found it was familiar. This was the agony I’d experienced so often coming up. This was the scream of tortured spirit I fell into when I pushed my soul beyond its limits. Except this wouldn’t hurt me. Not really. I wasn’t destroying my soul, wasn’t breaking myself beyond repair. I just felt like I was.
I watched the futures unfold, destroying the ones I didn’t like, and I saw all the potential pitfalls. I saw a needle take me in the eye, interrupting my brain function and dropping me near comatose, I saw one sink into my heart, stopping it and keeling me over temporarily dead. Whatever non physical attributes the ghost metal had made them incapable of permanently killing us, apparently.
But it didn’t matter. I didn’t want to fail. Didn’t want to stop. I destroyed those futures, banished them with fist and fire, and made my way forward, taking the needles in the least damaging places.
I felt a sort of synergy inside me, my Path pushing forward, growing and refining. This was what I was meant to be. Fatewalker. One step, one destiny. Destroying all the versions of the world that didn’t belong, that weren’t for me. I was pulling ahead, and I wasn’t the only one who noticed. A wave of my fist banished a future where a spear lodged in my back, another an arrow that took me in the throat. Attacks from the others I was passing that I didn’t allow to hit me.
Of course, they still LAUNCHED the attacks. The spear skidded off my armor and the arrow lodged in my gorget (the metallic collar piece under my armor meant to protect the neck), though it snapped off with my next movement.
Unfortunately, the resonance with my Path broke at the moment of distraction, and I lost that realization I’d been on the cusp of. I was pretty positive it had been the road I needed to tread to condense my Chronicle, but I wasn’t sure that was a good idea yet. My Goetia Staff Art seemed…unfinished. Eight wasn’t enough forms. I’d considered thirteen, but I needed at LEAST nine. Symbolism and all that.
I’d have to consider what I wanted my last form to be. I needed to condense my Chronicle soon, and I knew that once I did, once I constructed it, I wouldn’t be able to add more forms anymore. I could still create pseudo Domains, but some part of me was sure Goetia would solidify once bound into physical form (or whatever you would call a Chronicle).
I sped up, the distraction allowing me to push aside the pain as I continued to get deeper. There were SO MANY needles in me. I probably looked like a porcupine, but I’d managed to avoid any seriously debilitating hits. From what I could see, it only aimed for places like the brain, eyes, and heart, when you were actively pushing ahead of the pack, but Limbo was helping me avoid those.
Three minutes had elapsed, including the thirty seconds or so of Gluttony, and I had two left. Two minutes and I was only about sixty percent of the way to my goal. I needed to speed up. I let out a roar of pain and fury as I pumped my legs, the pinpricks of a hundred spikes of admittedly non physical metal tearing me apart as they raked through my muscles and joints and bones.
The pain crescendoed, exploding to a new level I couldn’t have imagined, but I ignored it, let it flow through me and push me onward. My vision was going white, the combusting agony beginning to dissolve my sight as it threatened to swallow even the laser focused pinprick my consciousness had become.
And then, like magic, I saw it in front of me. The futures began to narrow, converging to one final slew of possibilities. The tablet was ahead of me, right there on a pedestal, and I could take it. In fact, my options were take it or collapse into a heap. I swung my fist sloppily, desperately, destroying that last future, wiping away all choice except the one I needed, and then I let Limbo dissolve as I fell forward, hands weakly grabbing onto the tablet.
An electric shock ran through me as I touched it, an explosion of energy, and my vision cleared, pain and blurriness blown away by victory. The tablet had some sort of mechanism to relieve my suffering, because even as I watched, the needles dissolved, blowing away from my body in a cloud of mist.
The soul poison was cleansed too, though I wasn’t sure that was the tablet, given the glow beneath my feet. I slumped onto the pedestal as I dropped the tablet in my ring, wheezing and panting as I let the stone hold me up. The absence of agony was such a profoundly jarring experience it ACTUALLY hurt, the sensation of armor on skin, of air ruffling my hair, everything was magnified and so overwhelming it made me want to scream.
I didn’t use Zagan, I didn’t need it. I wasn’t injured, not in body or soul. I was just…damaged. I breathed through the pain, letting my body reboot, letting myself recover. I did NOT pass out, and I was pretty proud of myself, grinning foolishly as I pushed back to my feet, turning to look back through the cavern.
The distance shocked me. Not because it was so long, but because it WASN’T. It looked like a few hundred feet. It had felt like so much more. I watched the others stagger toward me, so lost in torturous pain that they didn’t even notice that I’d made it.
Looking around, I spotted a path to the side, and I walked down it and through an opening in the wall, taking a side path down and around the trial to emerge behind a rock off to the side of the cave entrance. Darian spotted me, grinning widely as he threw back his head and howled. “And we have a WINNER!” And as all of the emissaries cheered for me, I had to admit. I felt like a winner.
Comments
CamChains
tftc
CringeWorthyStudios
At this point I’m half expecting someone to try to stab Shane in the middle of the night because he keeps beating all their asses. Thanks for the chapter!
Michelle Ray
Thank you for the chapter. 💙
