Malcolm Tent
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Wish upon the Stars chapter 777
🕑 Added 2024-12-12 16:42:56 +0000 UTCSaying my goodbyes was pretty sad. I’d grown fond of a lot of the people around here. Still, before I left, I made one last executive decision. I passed out a series of scrolls. Ray, Elena, Bella, Vesper, Chester, Desria, and Cavallo. Eight scrolls, my entire work load for the day.
I’d waffled on giving them over, even called Zeke to check what he thought, but in the end, I decided to do it for a few reasons. First, it would be a way for them to get in contact with me later. Second, apparently Wish scrolls don’t actually show up as anything until you use them. Zeke said as long as they waited until I wasn’t around it was unlikely to matter. The scrolls were in a dormant state until opened, and once I was gone, no one would be looking in on them.
The only thing I made sure to emphasize was that they should keep them hidden and only use them once I was gone.
Elena, who I knew was going to use hers to heal SImon completely without the difficult recovery, threw herself at me, squeezing the life out of me with one of the tightest hugs I’d ever had. “You come back sometime,” she said fiercely. “Don’t let this be the last time we see you. Simon is pretty young, so it might not occur to him now, but when he’s all grown I know he’s going to want to meet the man who saved his life, to thank you for this.”
I hugged her back with a smile. “I will. Might be a while, but I’ll be back. The rest of you…I’ll see you when I see you. Good luck. Bella, you know where your pickup point is?” I turned to give my apprentice a stern look.
“Don’t worry about me, Master. Just focus on making it through this next challenge and coming back safe.” Her voice was tight, and it occurred to me that I was sending her off to room with total strangers on a ship far away from the only planet she’d ever known. I put a hand on her shoulder, giving it a quick squeeze to let her know I was proud of her, then turned to Bernadette.
“So, how do we do this?” I asked calmly. “We taking a ship?”
She shook her head. “Teleporting. One of the main benefits of Void Realms is that they’re IN the void. Teleportation is exponentially simpler when you don’t have to breach the dimensional barrier on the other side. Or at least, not THIS dimensional barrier.” She beamed at me. “I’m so happy you decided to choose the Fields of Strakkenthar as your first assignment, it shows real commitment to our precepts.”
I felt my blood run cold. “Oh gods, why? You never sound that happy about anything unless someone is in horrible pain.”
“Now, now,” she chirped. “That would be ruining the surprise. But I just know you’re going to become a more empathetic person for the experience. Also, probably don’t eat anything that you don’t have to kill and cook. The plants there are violently poisonous.”
“Fantastic,” I drawled sarcastically. “Because that description isn’t at all alarming coming from a women who ACTUALLY poisoned me.” We turned and headed off, waving goodbye to the others. Bernadette hadn’t been around for the scroll gifting, so everyone kept theirs tucked away during the sendoff, and I was a bit relieved for her to be away from them. “So, I had some questions. Think you could give me a bit of extra info?”
She shrugged. “It depends on the information of course, why, what did you want to know?”
“I noticed on Mourne Kayze that a few other people picked the Fields. Do you know who? And do you know why?” There were multiple different ‘local specialties’ of the Fields of Strakkenthar, and I hadn’t heard of any of them. If I was going to be up against other top initiates, I’d prefer to know what we were competing over, so I could avoid going near it. I had the stone Callie had passed to me, and it would lead me to whatever I was looking for, I didn’t need extra work.
Pursing her lips, Bernadette hummed pensively. “I can’t tell you all of them. I don’t know and didn’t care enough to check. But I do know at least one. My best friend Amelia was an emissary on a planet called Veldosta. Her initiate won her selection. A girl named Sable. Red hair, fancy dress. You might have seen her. She picked the Fields to try to find Asphodel Flowers.”
I’d noticed those on the list of specialties. “Ok, I know the word, but not the plant. What do they do? You said all the plants there are poisonous, so I assume people don’t eat them.”
“Of course not,” she laughed. “They inhale them. Burning them in an incense pot with a series of other herbs puts you into a dream trance. It amplifies certain types of Dream based abilities. Divination, dream walking, nightmare sorcery. They’re extremely rare, because the land they grow on has to be horrifically blighted in a very specific way. They’re part of the reason the Fields are such an important resource for our Lady.”
Hiding my grimace behind a mask, I nodded. “You said part of the reason. What’s the rest of it? Is there another major export?”
“Mournehollow Toads,” she chuckled. “They eat curses. Bigger curses mean more toads are needed to get rid of them, but it’s one of the least complicated curse reverse methods. They bypass any redundancies or security traps. Just lick the curse right up. They live in the marshlands off the Deathknell Mesa, but I’d be careful if you want to try to grab some of those. If you think the normal plants are poisonous, the marsh plants are a thousand times worse. Walking through those marshes can be fatal if you aren’t prepared.”
I nodded along, asking more questions as we walked, until we finally came to a clearing where a small, unassuming man with mousy brown hair in a dirty brown suit stood next to a door. Not a building, mind, just a door in a frame sitting in the middle of the forest, seemingly with nothing on the other side. Interesting.
“Marmont,” said Bernadette with a smile. “You’re on time for once. I didn’t think you knew how to tell time. I remember on Blavast-”
The unassuming man glared at her. “On Blavast,” he cut her off scathingly. “I got kidnapped by a flesh wizard, and none of you even bothered to try to find me. I had to escape on my own, and I got FINED for missing work because none of you reported my absence until two months after I vanished.”
“I know,” she said cheerfully. “And think how much closer we all feel to you, knowing what you’ve been through. We even took you out to dinner to celebrate.”
“YOU MADE ME PAY!” he shrieked. “And Chad bought eleven bottles of wine and took ten of them home! Expensive bottles. I’m STILL paying off that bar tab. And they keep sending me really disturbing reminders about my debt. The last one was a dead fish. My front door still stinks.”
Bernadette turned to give me a happy smile. “This is Marmont,” she chirped. “He’s our Lady’s best teleporter. No one can get you where you’re going faster or more smoothly. And he’s so funny. He makes the best jokes about how much he hates all of us.”
I sighed, turning a sympathetic wince on the other man. “I’m so sorry that this is your life.”
To my surprise, he smiled. “It’s ok, they mean well. Besides, I stole Chad’s house the next time he went on assignment. He still doesn’t know where I put it. They can be obnoxious but they’re not so bad.” His face fell. “If you meet the Lady’s OTHER servants though, you should run. THe Order of Mercy tend to be where the more level headed of us wind up. The Order of Punishment though…” He shuddered.
Knowing what kind of goddess The Lady of Lamentation was, I’d know that she must have moire…offensively inclined servants. Putting a name to them strangely did NOT help make them less intimidating.
“Noted,” I said with a nod. “Now, how do we do this?”
He gestured to the door. “Knock three times, and picture your destination in your mind. The Void Door is a fairly specific ability, made specifically for Void Realm travel, but as I’m sure you know, there can be great power found in specialization. I do quite well for myself with my niche ability.”
Nodding quietly, I stepped up to the door, taking a deep breath. Raising my gauntleted hand, I rapped on the door three times, focusing on the concept of the Fields of Strakkenthar. I’d never been there, but they knew that, so I assumed it wasn’t an issue. As my knuckles struck the wood, I felt a pulse of…something, emanate from the door, rustling the leaves of all the nearby trees.
It took me a second to notice the changes, because they were so gradual, but after the burst of energy, the world seemed to shift. Winds began to pick up, shadows lengthened, the air became a bit more chill. It was gradual, but everything seemed to almost…fade. Like this section of the world was having all the color leeched out.
From the other side of the door, three booms echoed, as if something unimaginably large and powerful had struck a door a thousand times the size of this one. It trembled in its frame, and I saw Marmont wince, but he recovered quickly, then withdrew a large, ugly brass key hanging on a brown strap from under his suit.
It was warped and lopsided, partially melted and rusted in places. He slid it into the lock beneath the knob of the door and turned it three times. Then he reached down, turned the knob, and stepped back as he threw the door open, as if waiting to be attacked.
To my complete shock, the space on the other side of the door was…another world. I mean, I’d known he was a teleporter, but having met one when we made our trek to the Glade, I knew that this wasn’t how they worked. Apparently being Void specific made things easier to work with. This broke most of the laws of teleportation I’d heard of.
Bernadette put a hand on my shoulder, her face falling to become uncharacteristically serious. “Mephistopheles…be careful there. Not only are there creatures who might hurt you…some of the other initiates are new. They haven’t learned to embrace the connections between us all. And some of them ARE from The Order of Punishment. They don’t value our brothers and sisters the same way we do.”
“I don’t mean to speak ill of our Lady’s servants,” she said slowly, as if fighting herself on what to give voice to. “But their pain is a selfish pain. To be taken from others to sate their own dark urges. It heals no one, provides no understanding. Forms no bonds. They inflict pain for the sake of pain. Do not fall prey to them. You will not have a good end.”
That was the closest to a negative thing Bernadette had ever said about anyone who worshipped the Lady in my presence, so I took it to heart. “Thank you,” I said sincerely. “I’ll be careful.”
I’d also talk to my mom. These were good people. I didn’t want to see them swept up in god war bullshit because their goddess was making a thoughtless choice. If there was some way to save them, I would. With a final nod, I stepped over the threshold to the door. As soon as my foot crunched down into the dark grass on the other side, there was a thump as the door slammed shut, and when I turned, it was gone. Well then, I guess I was on my own.
Comments
CamChains
tftc
Michelle Ray
Thank you for the chapter. 🩵
