Malcolm Tent
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Wish upon the Stars chapter 684
🕑 Added 2024-08-05 22:25:17 +0000 UTCThe entrance to the WCP was familiar. In fact, I was shocked to see that it was nearly identical to the back in Valen. It took me a while to sort through my ring to find some of my older gear, and dig out the black card I hadn’t touched in so long. I ran my fingers over innocuous card, not feeling much except the smoothness I’d expected.
Swiping it in the card reader, I stepped onto the elevator. It felt…surreal. Hundreds of miles and years of time separated me from my old self, from the wide eyed newbie who had taken an identical elevator down into the depths of the Valen branch only to find out the branch manager was my drunk of an uncle.
Now I was in another city, heading to meet one of the masters of Callus, someone who was the same rank I was, after having been chased out of my own wedding.
The elevator stopped, and the doors opened, letting me out onto a familiar catwalk. Rather than actually descend though, I headed off to one side and took up a spot out of sight of whoever might be down there.
Despite spending the last few months relaxing, I’d been thinking long and hard about my needs. I had forms for attack, deflection, healing, and defense. What I needed still though, among other things, was a way to move undetected. My Moonlit Night was an effective and powerful skill, but it was also obvious as hell.
I’d been considering a new form for quite some time, and I’d come up with some ideas on how to make it work. It was a tall order. Moonlit Night itself couldn’t act as a proper base, I needed at least three different skills to build it. One of them would be Afterburner, since it boosted effectiveness qualitatively. I always included it in my forms.
It had taken me quite a while to figure out what other pieces I could use to build it. I’d considered stealth, but that was a part of Moonlit Night and I didn’t want to overbalance it. But after studying my skill book for quite some time, I realized there was another way to do it. Specifically, I could invert the skill I needed to create something new.
It only worked because of the way stealth functioned. As a Perception based ability, one needed to be able to detect the traces of something and then erase those traces to create stealth.
By inverting Eye of Revelation and using Afterburner to multiply the effectiveness of both that and Moonlit Night, I was able create an exponentially more powerful stealth ability, one that detected and erased its own traces, using the fog as a cover and then erasing the fog to provide double layered stealth with each layer having multiplied effectiveness.
I started constructing the ability, using my crown and Eye of Revelation to slowly and meticulously weave the stats together to create a flawless construct that would channel all the power I needed. “Goetia Staff Art. Fifth form.” I intoned. “Bael.”
Looking down, I saw myself…vanish. Fog covered me and then dissolved, whisking away all traces of my body. Multiplied effectiveness. It wasn’t the same as stacking, creating a skill that was more than the sum of its parts was a mark of how much I’d grown as a skill creator.
All my forms had Afterburner, and other meta skills that amplified them, but this was different. The skill wasn’t just amplified by Afterburner, the layers amplified each other. The total effectiveness of my stealth was worth something like seven to ten times my ACTUAL perception, which was pretty damned impressive.
It wasn’t even close to what my ancestor had done, of course. THe wish ability tripled the effectiveness of EVERY stat, including Impact, which was just…monstrous. I still had no clue how the hell he’d managed. That wasn’t just “more than the sum of its parts” it was making something out of nothing, and I had a long way to go until I reached that point.
Bael, however, I could still manage. Specifically because the multiplicative effect was only using one stat, which was fairly limited. I couldn’t have added a second, which severely compromised the variety of forms I could make at this level.
Still, it was a step in the right direction. The more proficient I got at constructing skills, the closer I got to making my chronicle later on down the line and creating a more perfect foundation.
Now that I was all finished with my form though, I was confident in pulling this off. Rather than take the steps down, I vaulted the railing of the catwalk, letting State of Grace slow my descent, with the occasional Ripple Running platform to alter my direction.
I landed in a back alley, out of view of the street, and slipped quietly to the edge to peek out. I was careful, but I didn’t honestly expect it to be necessary. With Bael active, my effective Perception for the purposes of stealth was over seventy thousand. I was confident nobody in E-rank would be able to detect me, barring some hyper focused monster who only used that stat.
The streets were empty for the most part, but my Eye of Revelation picked up signs of a struggle, and a few bloodstains on top of that. I could see plenty of barriers on the surrounding shops, locks and gates and door bars. There were people here, but they were hiding.
I ignored them for now. Flicker could help me coax them out when we finished talking, but I was guessing if there was blood the enemy was already down here.
Slowly creeping down the street, I watched for any sign of occupiers, ready to attack at a moment’s notice. I had my staff out and in position, and even activated Mephistopheles alongside Bael, slowly condensing dark fire into a cosmic collapse for a powerful finishing move.
As I came around a corner, I stumbled on a group of creepy looking guys in patchwork leather armor. They had a variety of (suspiciously human looking) skin cloaks hanging over their shoulders and bone jewelry, eyes flickering from side to side as if scanning for prey.
All three were pale and tall, with overly long arms and lank hair in a variety of earth tone colors, like a pile of leaves on a forest floor. The one in the middle, the shortest of them, froze in place, sniffing the air. “Do you smell that?” I rolled my eyes, triggered Double Trouble, and smashed the cosmic collapse into the back of his skull.
Moonlit Night had a damage boost on attacks made from stealth, and the cosmic collapse was already a powerful technique, the staff penetrated into the base of the skull and the explosion of flame consumed the brain, exploding out from the eyes, nose and mouth.
My staff whipped over, planning to use the element of surprise to kill a second one, but my eyes widened and I was forced to trigger Double Trouble again to avoid a dinner plate sized hand tipped with claws like butcher knives.
The distended grey form of the wendigo howled in fury as it and its friend tried to pursue my. I stepped off the air twice, coming up over the edge of a building. As soon as I broke line of site I triggered Bael again.
While my new form WAS powerful, using that backstab trick forced me out of it. I’d assumed it wouldn’t matter, given one was dead and the second was on his way, but clearly I was wrong.
“Fun fact.” I sent to Callie through the bond. “Wendigos can take human form. Probably some vanished gods bullshit. Still, something to note.” I saw the hideous horned heads of the Wendigos emerge from over the lip of the roof. They scanned around, sniffing heavily, and they seemed to fixate on my for a second.
I was getting ready for another charge when I noticed something odd. Smoke. There were curlicues of smoke wafting up from the building below, the Wendigos seemed to notice it as I did, and they glanced down, confused.
The curlicues coalesced into the form of a woman as soon as they averted their eyes. She grabbed a set of antlers and jerked them to the side, snapping the neck of the Wendigo and swinging it bodily into its companion, knocking them both off the roof. I triggered Pit of Despair below the building, racing to the edge to see the result.
The Wendigo backflopped on the melted stone, body crushed by his dead companion, and started sinking into the ground immediately. I dissolved my skill, letting the ground harden, and the monster ended up half submerged in rock, tangled up with the corpse of his buddy and hissing for release.
“Nice reflexes.” Came the raspy voice of the person I assumed was Flicker. “And I like the mask. Familiar style of craftsmanship, that.”
I glanced over to focus more on her. Flicker was short and muscular, with a dark mantle and hood. Her own mask was one of those pointy beaked ones you see in old timey video games, and the eyes were a blazing ruby red. She looked ominous as hell.
“Shane Wyndham.” I introduced myself directly. “My uncle is Ezekial Cavendish, formerly the branch managed in Valen. And your mask looks pretty familiar too.” Specifically because I remembered Zeke making it when I was eleven. That thing had given me nightmares for weeks. It had this creepy living avian vibe, like it hated everyone around it.
She stared for a moment, eventually nodding. “You’re here about the invasion.” She guessed, though I suppose it was actually pretty obvious.
“Followers of the vanished gods.” I confirmed. “I’m not sure how much you know, considering how recently things went down. They’re looking for me and mine, and are planning to mass sacrifice everyone on the planet to make an example. We’re looking for powerful locals to join up. We have a plan, but we need more muscle.”
She turned, flicking her finger, and a spear of smoke arced down and smashed through the skull of the still screaming Wendigo. “Sorry.” She growled. “That was getting annoying. If you’re a Wyndham, you know how this works. We can’t do anything for you without payment.”
I sighed, I’d been afraid of that. Luckily there was more than one way to skin a cat (a deeply disturbing saying whose origin I had always wondered about) . I stepped off the edge of the building, floated down to where the entwined Wendigos lay immobilized, and ripped an antler off of the one I’d immobilized.
Tossing it from one hand to the other, I grabbed hold and bent it slightly, nodding in satisfaction. “This would probably go for about ten E-grade chits. Two per head, and undoubtedly plenty of wendigos to go around. You help us, and I’ll let you keep them all. Even the ones we kill.”
She cocked her head. “That’s…an interesting offer. I suppose I’d be forced to intervene personally in any case.” She mulled it over before finally sighing. “I accept. I suppose you have some sort of means of enforcing loyalty?”
I grinned, pulling out a piece of paper I’d worked up on the ride over. I left plenty of room for it to hold multiple signatures. She leapt down and I passed it to her. Reading it over once, she nodded, then pulled out a pen and scribbled her name. “There. Now that I’m onboard, what exactly is our next move?”
Spinning my staff lazily, I grinned at her from behind my mask. “Oh that’s simple. Now we go and help the others. We still have a bunch more new friends to pick up. We can take care of the stragglers down here first, though. Grab the antlers and get ready to go. You can bring anyone you like, but have them wait at the entrance down here. Up top will be dangerous.”
Comments
Kevin McGuire
Kinda surprised he even made a stealth form since Callie normally covers that. I can't wait to see what neat things it can do.
