Malcolm Tent
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Wish upon the Stars chapter 653
🕑 Added 2024-06-21 22:01:02 +0000 UTCWe woke the next morning feeling surprisingly refreshed. It too me a second of sensing to realize Benny had sat himself outside the door and allowed his spiritual cleansing field to wash over us. Since I hit Sapphire it hadn’t really been useful, but it had definitely helped in this case. I shook Callie awake, checking to make sure she was feeling better too.
“G’way.” She grumbled, smacking at my hand and face. “Sleeping.”
I laughed at that. “Yeah, we both slept, for like…eighteen hours. It was the middle of the day yesterday when we went to sleep.”
“Damn.” She said in a shocked tone. “That new technique had some serious kick to it. I don’t know if you should use it again. I could feel how much damage it was causing, and how much pain.”
I shook my head. “Most of the damage was from using six simultaneous parallels with Piece of Mind. If I repeat it it’ll be easier. Still absurdly difficult and draining, but not as hard on my soul. I created an actual technique I can trigger, after all.”
“What did you end up naming it?” She said, propping her chin up on her palm as she watched me change into some civilian clothes for what felt like the first time in months. I briefly considered going out like that, but in the end I felt too naked without my mask, so I slipped that on.
I cracked my neck, stretching widely and enjoying the feeling of not having anything to do for the day. “Genesis Burst.” I said with a chuckle. “It just seemed to fit.” With the games finished and the final banquet still one day away, there was no pressure on me to do anything. I’d need to recover before I could use that technique again. I just had the day off.
Holding out my hand to her, I grinned. “Milady, might I interest you in some relaxation?”
She pouted at me. “I don’t want to get up. Make me breakfast in bed.” She flopped onto her back bonelessly, letting her head turn dramatically away from me.
“A grim vision of my future.” I said dryly. “But fine. I suppose I can do that. What do you want for breakfast?” Her head snapped back around, eyes fixing on me like a cat spotting a canary. She clearly hadn’t expected that to work.
Honestly, I normally would have badgered her into coming down with me, but she’d been supporting me from behind for the last few days without even mentioning it. During the games, during the treatment, she’d been there without flinching and hadn’t expected a thing in return. I absolutely didn’t mind making her breakfast.
She felt my gratitude and adoration and her expression softened from exaggerated greediness to a soft smile. “Whatever you want.” She said quietly. “I’m happy with anything.” Then she paused. “But nothing egg based. That’s the wrong texture.”
I let out a booming laugh. “I’m in the mood for blintzes. You can borrow my soul book while I cook if you want.”
Rolling her eyes, she shook her head. “That’s not how you take a day off. I’m going to watch something on the scan box I think. They have them in the rooms and I never checked out the selection. We’re in another galaxy, so there’s no way the same shows are on. I want to see what people watch here.”
“Daytime programming is like death and taxes.” I said solemnly. “It never changes and it’s inevitable.”
She snorted at that. “Go cook our breakfast. If you have time to make ominous proclamations about mundane subjects you have time to cook.” She winked to let me know she was kidding and blew me a kiss. Literally, a kiss mark made of shadow floated across the room to thwack loudly against the cheek of my mask.
I just laughed and headed downstairs, making us some food relatively quickly before returning to our room and hopping into bed, passing her a plate. We both ate, then watched the scan box for a couple of hours…but we got bored.
“Lets go visit you mom.” Callie said after we’d been lying around for a while. “I bet she’d be happy to see us.”
I actually had to do my wishes for today anyway, but I decided to leave it for later. “Yeah, that sounds like fun. Should we invite my sister?” Benny was probably already over there doing some training.
In the end we did invite Chelsea, and she decided to tag along for a family outing of sorts. We arrived at my mom’s building to find her sitting at her table beside the lake, pouring some sweet tea from a pitcher. She smiled as we approached. “Shane, Calliope, how good to see you both.” She pecked Chelsea on the cheek too, but since my sister basically lived here a special greeting wasn’t necessary.
“Hey ma.” I said, dropping into a chair casually. “Figured we’d come see how you were. Benny was planning to visit at some point for training.”
She gave me a radiant smile. “He already did, dear. He’s in the lake.”
I glanced over at the body of water. I’d thought it was a pond, but given the expanded interiors of Ascendant buildings a lake would fit too. Looking at it though, I didn’t see Benny out there anywhere. “Wait…do you mean like…INSIDE the lake? Like he’s underwater?”
“Of course.” She said cheerfully. “He’s at the bottom. Holding his breath is no problem, but he needed a dark and oppressive environment to help with his image training. That Path of his is interesting. I’ve seen Draconic Paths before, of course, but most of them are more supremacy themed than based on evolution.”
Nodding, I scanned the water for my friend’s form. “Yeah. He wanted something more fantastical to balance out his more scientific powerset. Maximizing the advantages of both types of strength. Especially given the role Fantasy plays with technique formation.”
“It isn’t a bad choice.” She said with a shrug. “There isn’t really a bad choice to make. Paths are personal things, and making them work depends on the individual. I’m sure you realized that based on your own. Though I suppose in your case it wasn’t exactly your own choice, it’s certainly working out for you.”
I hadn’t even realized how lucky I’d gotten with my Path until recently. Advancing to a Solid Path is HARD for most people. They have to combine their chosen Path with their ability, or with a Skill that they combine with their ability later, which can make it even more complicated. My Path just coalescing by itself when I got DS Mastery to a certain point was absurdly good luck, and getting a second ability was even better.
Seeing Callie (and presumably Benny in the future) struggle to get past that step just illustrated how suitable my Path was for me and how fortunate I was that I’d obtained it the way I had.
“So, underwater training, huh?” I said as I glanced toward the lake. “How long has he been down there?” I had no clue how long I could hold my breath now, other than probably a very long time.
She shrugged, glancing at an hourglass on the table. An hour glass that had already been run down by the time we’d arrived a little while ago. “More than an hour.” She said after a brief pause. I tried not to laugh at the nonchalance, though Callie didn’t even bother with that level of nicety, giggling at my best friend’s misfortune.
“So, grandpa still stuck in today’s meeting?” I asked with a laugh. “He must be bored out of his mind.”
Now it was mom’s turn to giggle at the misfortune of others. “He’s climbing the walls, not that you can tell from looking at him. He’s been sending me messages all day, brainstorming increasingly elaborate plans to get him out of there. He won’t actually do it, he’s not going to derail negotiations at this level, but he’s tearing out his hair in boredom.”
“I’d have thought he’d need to stay on his toes when negotiating.” I said slowly. “Especially with the Cult there?”
She grinned viciously. “Normally, yes. But you humiliated Deathwish, and everyone else was smelling blood in the water. Harrison has been using that little slip up of his as an excuse to eviscerate them at the negotiating table. There’s a few planets on the line, and I think he might be able to get an entire system if he plays things right.”
“That’s a big deal, right?” I asked with interest. “The factions avoid letting the WCP have their own territory as compensation for allowing them to spread around past borders right?”
“Exactly.” She agreed. “But as you know, we’re in an unprecedented situation. With the god war looming wishes at the A and S-rank level are invaluable. It could be the difference between losing a planet, a system, or even a whole army. Not all systems are created equal, and there’s no way the cult will give up anything central, but then, the WCP doesn’t need it.”
I nodded thoughtfully. “If anything, border territories are better because they can possibly combine them, and any geographic or power based conditions can be adjusted with wishes.” The freedom and flexibility of owning a territory with access to a wish power was something I’d grown familiar with, at least tangentially, on Stratholme. At the higher ranks, I imagined planets and systems could reap similar benefits.
We chatted about that for a while, but eventually got off the subject, because I really wanted to spend time with my family on my day off doing something other than talking politics. Instead, Callie started asking my mother about her life, and my sisters life. We’d already learned some of that stuff from previous discussions, but my sister was almost twenty, same as I was. There was always more to learn.
Mom had plenty of stories about Chelsea growing up, and I found that hearing about her life bothered me less and less as time went on. My engagement especially had eased a lot of the resentment I hadn’t wanted to feel but that had been bubbling under the surface.
It was easier to smile and laugh at a story about my eight year old sister getting bored and falling asleep in one of the drawers of grandpa’s desk and accidentally kicking off a galactic manhunt because someone decided she’d been kidnapped. I told some stories of my own childhood with Zeke too, and my mom was practically glowing at the conversation.
We had just finished hearing about the time Chelsea accidentally sold one of grandpa’s S-rank artifacts (not an active one obviously) for a life size statue of herself made a chocolate (she wandered into a chocolate shop in town and offered the enchanted scales to the owner) when Benny climbed up out of the water noisily, dripping as he slogged up the shore and toward the table.
My mother held up a hand. “Towel.” She said, pointing to the ground in front of him where a large beach towel appeared. “And you’ll sit in the grass. I don’t want you dripping all over my chairs.”
They were nice chairs, so I couldn’t blame her, though I don’t think that stopped Benny, who picked up the towel, dried himself as best he could, and then started taking his clothes off and wringing them out onto the grass like sponges. He maintained eye contact with us, especially my mom, as he tipped his boots over and dumped enough water out of them to resemble a pitcher.
Finally he stalked over and sat down in the grass sulkily, and all of us pretended we weren’t trying not to laugh. Eventually, he started smiling about it too, and he joined in telling some stories about me as a kid. It was one of the best days I’d had in years.
