Malcolm Tent
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Wish upon the Stars chapter 772
🕑 Added 2024-12-05 20:49:59 +0000 UTCI waited the extra two days to finally have my friends use their wishes (minus the five emergency scrolls). Seventy two wishes at twenty five points apiece gave me eighteen hundred up front, not to mention a substantial gain of another sixty two hundred or so from the renown of doing as well as I did in the trial.
I put the eighteen hundred into Fantasy, and twelve hundred of the rest joined it, while three of the other five thousand all ended up in Might, and two ended up in Vitality.
With all that out of the way, I forced myself to take a deep breath, readying my mind for the trial ahead. The last trial. Today was the day, the day I proved myself, finished the last hurdle and took my place working for Felicity.
Not only was it important for my growth to pass this with flying colors, but chances were good the amount of points I accrued would enable me to more reasonably affect where I would go and what I could do. I’d begun to suspect, based on the fact that points were still being accrued despite so many conclusive victors, that they might serve a purpose besides just keeping track of us.
Regardless, I’d worry about that after this was all over. Today I had one more test to get through. One more trial to undergo.
Mnemosyne, Harper, and Bernadette met me at a clearing outside the town where I was staying for the last time, picking me up in a shuttle to take me to the final location. “So,” I asked as we took off. “What’s the last trial? Can we know about it yet?”
Bernadette just shook her head. “Now where is the fun in that? Every new trial is a spiritual experience. The anticipation is part of the test.”
“The tests are torture,” I said bluntly. “You’re saying this is EXTRA torture on top of the torture?”
She gave a sad sigh. “Torture is such an ugly word. I wish you would think of it in a different way. You could call it self actualization.”
“You’re saying it isn’t torture?” I asked her skeptically.
“No, I’m saying that calling it that isn’t very nice.” She beamed at me happily. “But fear not new brother. It’s almost time for you to reach your truest self and be accepted into the loving embrace of our Lady.”
I shook my head. “Why do I feel like that embrace will break some of my ribs?” She ignored me, humming happily as she turned back to where she was… “Are you knitting a sweater out of barbed wire?” I asked in disbelief. “Who would even wear that?”
“I’ll have you know that this is a birthday present for my brother in law,” she said loftily. “He’s very fashion forward.”
I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath and deciding to ignore her for the rest of the ride. It didn’t take long, because within a few minutes the shuttle came over a rise and I saw… “Ok, I call bullshit,” I snapped. “There’s no way that’s been here for any length of time. That thing was clearly transported down to Rackham from somewhere else. No way would something like that form naturally here.”
My hand shot out, finger pointing accusingly at the massive caldera into which poured a literal waterfall of crystalline lava. Molten glass, glowing and clear in different places poured over the edge of a basalt cliff, plummeting into a lake of liquid with a single platform floating in the center. The platform was connected to the sides of the lake with a series of walkways that served to hold it up, anchoring it to three sides of the shore.
She just shrugged. “I never said it did. We brought it with us. No one said the last test was a native feature, and installing the Falls of Lamentation, while complex, is hardly impossible. We’ve been working on them since we arrived, and they were only completed recently. We won’t be landing this time. Don’t want to damage the shuttle.”
Nodding, I headed to the edge of the shuttle, staring out over the edge. After a quick gauge of the trajectory, I checked to make sure any shielding was down, then hopped out.
I flexed my State of Grace as I fell. Not enough to be noticeable but enough to offset the extra weight of my armor. I wouldn’t be injured, but hitting the ground in C-ranked plate at high speed might get me stuck in the rock, and I didn’t feel like having to dig my way out.
Landing lightly on the edge of the caldera undoubtedly looked more impressive than slamming into the ground at high speed too, but that was just an added benefit.
Once I was on the ground, I slid down the slope, feet skidding on volcanic glass and dirt, until I reached one of the bridges and followed it to the platform. It extended out from the center, coming close enough to actually breach the falls, though there were holes in the platform to prevent the streaming liquid from collecting on top.
Mnemosyne appeared next to me. “Well, that’s certainly dramatic.”
“Haven’t all of them been dramatic?” I asked with a laugh. “It’s to be expected that the last one would be the craziest. You can feel it, right?”
She nodded. “The heat from that lava…it’s hurting my soul. My skin too, at least a bit, but it’s more than physical. This test is going to hurt in ways we can’t even imagine.” She didn’t sound worried about it, just a bit grim.
“I expected that,” I said again. “They were always going to want us to go out with a bang.”
I stared up the falls, taking in the sheer height of the basalt cliff. I had a sneaking suspicion what we would be doing, and I was REALLY hoping I was wrong, because I really didn’t want to climb up a fucking lava waterfall.
The more I looked though, the more sure I was. Through the crystalline lava I could see small notches along the cliff, and the holes in the platform lined up in a way that made them seem like individual starting spots.
To no one’s surprise, Darian joined us on the platform, excitable as ever. “Greetings everyone!” he chirped. “Are you ready to start your final journey?”
As ominous as that sounded, we all agreed gladly. This had been a rough few months, and I was glad to finally be through the ordeal. Just this one last trial. To my surprise, Mnemosyne was the one to broach the subject I assume more than a few of us were wondering about. “Now that we’re here, can you tell us what the points are all about?”
His face lit up. “Ah yes,” he announced grandly. “My tantalizing comment several trials ago, meant to leave you desperately searching for more information.”
“You mean when you screwed up and told us too much?” I asked blandly.
“No! I didn’t! It was on purpose!” he said petulantly. “But it doesn’t matter because now its time. You will learn the truth of the power of…points!”
A groan of annoyance bounced off the walls of the caldera. “Oh for the love of the gods, just TELL them already. I swear, you could turn taking a bite of a sandwich into a production. Not everything needs to be a show.”
“Shut UP Chad!” shrieked the kitsune. “I’ll tell them how I want! Oh forget it, you ruined the reveal. Fine, the points are to spend on stuff when you enter the faction. Assignments, gear, even Skills. You need a certain amount to actually make it in, but past that threshold it all depends on your positions in the trials. There, I explained it in the most boring way possible, happy?”
I homed in on one particular phrase. Assignments. I had been told I’d have some way of affecting my arrival at the pocket world from here, and it appeared this would be it. Which meant I needed as many points as possible, just in case the pocket world was a sought after assignment.
In fact, I was sure it would be. Harvesting rare stuff from a mostly empty pocket dimension full of expensive plants and minerals (assuming it was the way I’d imagined it) sounded pretty cushy. I’d most likely need to spend a lot on it.
Which was fine, because the alternative was that I’d have had to manipulate an actual goddess into assigning me where I wanted to go. Still, that meant I needed another win. I needed to maximize my points. If I had leftovers maybe I could buy a new weapon or something, I’d have to look at their list, but first I needed to make sure my mission succeeded.
“Now, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, behind me is the Falls of Lamentation,” continued Darian. “The waters, and I use that term loosely, of the Falls lay bare the agonies suffered by the soul inflicting your moments of greatest torment on your spirit even as they sear your flesh. The Falls can’t kill you. It’s impossible. But they can make you wish you were dead. There won’t be a convenient escape button here. You climb until you can’t and then when you reach your limit, you’ll jump off.”
I winced. That wouldn’t be fun. Hitting the ground would suck after being so severely weakened, even if it wouldn’t kill anyone here.
He gestured us towards the falls. “If I were you, I’d take the opportunity to test the waters before we start.”
We all glanced at each other, only twenty five of us left, and approached the edge of the platform. When I reached my section, I stopped, thinking about how to do this. It would be a way longer climb than five minutes, so Gluttony was out at least until the home stretch. For now I just triggered Mornax, then, after a slight pause, I held out my hand.
The liquid glass seemed to flow through the cracks in my armor like water rushing downhill, magnetically drawn to any weaknesses as it seeped into my defenses and coated my skin. It felt…awful. Indescribably terrible in a way I had never experienced. I’d known they would save the worst for last, but this was next level.
It reminded me of the fear fire I’d been under for the second trial, but so much worse. This wasn’t burning my courage, it was burning ALL my emotions, stripping away every part of my sense of self to leave me a motionless hunk of rock without even the will to move.
I pushed back, forcing my willpower to dominate my body, and I was forced to experience the physical burn so much more while I pushed my consciousness deeper into my flesh, manually controlling every individual muscle in a way I couldn’t really describe. I had to purposefully force each tendon and ligament to move, puppeting my body like I had myself on strings, and each muscle I acknowledged and controlled made the pain worse.
In the background, I barely heard them call a start, and I almost didn’t have the presence of mind to push myself forward. Almost. I took a step, then another, the liquid poured over more of me, and I needed more strength of will to dominate myself.
My soul was doing the work, I realized, that was why I was experiencing more pain as I went deeper. Mind over body. This was a technique. I was bolstered by that. It should take the others longer to realize how it worked in that case. I pushed forward, one step after another, until I reached the cliff, my fumbling hands gripping a couple of basalt spikes as I pulled, lifting myself up.
The first pull was rough, it took me a minute to process the increased pain. Apparently the lava lost efficacy the further it got from the source. Fun. Taking a long, slow breath, I adjusted my mental state, prepared myself, and then began to climb. I had to be first to the top.
Comments
CamChains
tftc
thaughton2
Switching to manual, full soul uptime, I see.
Michelle Ray
Ouchie. 😱 Thank you for the chapter! 💙
CringeWorthyStudios
… are we sure Shane isn’t a Masochist at this point? Callie’s outfit *does* have a lot of skintight black material after all… Thanks for the chapter! 😅
Jachin Nelson
"while three of the other three thousand all ended up in Might, and two ended up in Vitality." Supposed to be five thousand
Celas
Hmm this sounds like potential inspiration for a future skill and skill modification. The new skill would be something along the lines of an internal manifestation. The skill modification would be a Zagan healing variant to heal using the soul as a guide to heal the body and the body to heal the soul.
