Malcolm Tent
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Wish upon the Stars chapter 638
🕑 Added 2024-05-31 22:35:43 +0000 UTCThere were dozens of people out in the central clearing of the forest. We could see them on the giant screen. The screens had been hopping from one person to the next, and currently, the image was fixed on Felicity. I winced as her empty symmetrical face appeared in the image, eyes flare and placid.
Knowing what had been done to her made it worse, somehow, seeing what she was. I imagine what it would be like to have your personality sanded down by conflicting compulsions until there was nothing left for recursion to latch onto.
“From the Wish Curse Palace.” Boomed the voice as she appeared in front of us. “We have the daughter of Craygen Norquill, a second generation member of the Wyndham family through clan adoption, and one of the most talented young members of the WCP’s ruling clan….Felicity Norquill!”
The detached girl, didn’t show a flicker of emotion, just reached down to tug at her dress in an awkward curtsy.
I grimaced, knowing how angry Zeke was likely to be. The others hadn’t met felicity, so when I turned to look at them I expected to see similar reactions…I did not expect to find Bethy staring out at the screen in horror. Pink tears ran down her cheeks as her reddening eyes locked on the image of the broken girl my family was using to participate in the contest.
Chelsea stepped up and put a hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong? Bethy? What is it?”
In a motion too quick to track, Bethy spun and glared at me. Her eyes were harder than I’d ever seen them. “Did you know about this?” She hissed. “What are you going to do about it?”
Callie stepped between us, holding up her hands. “Whoa, Bethy what the hell? Shane barely knows that girl. What’s gotten into you?” She glanced at the screen. “What’s wrong with her?” She was staring at Felicity’s image like she was trying to mine it for information.
“They broke her soul.” Whispered a furious Bethy. “Just…polished all the human off of it. They turned her into a machine. I can TASTE it. I didn’t even know that was possible. It’s like someone cracked her open and ate out all the person, then put the shell back together with tape and glue.”
Callie shot me a horrified look, and I nodded sadly. “Zeke told me. Apparently it’s some kind of anti-recursion training. People don’t use it because it’s too dangerous.”
“So?” My fiancee demanded. “How do we fix it? That’s monstrous. We can’t just let someone do that to a living person. Especially not your own family. Can’t Zeke intervene? Maybe a wish could fix her.”
Zeke sighed heavily, opening his eyes as he abandoned the pretense of sleep, easily able to hear us across a room. “I can’t.” He said sadly. “If it was just Norquill, I could make a case of it. I’m reasonably certain I could kill him. But Harrison is S-rank, and Norquill is Aiden’s right hand. Even if I was willing to start a branch war over a stranger, Aiden would never tolerate it during the conclave. Hell, the old man might get involved.”
“Not to mention that a wish to cure her might be difficult to arrange.” My mother cut in. “We’d need someone to pay for it, and it wouldn’t be cheap. Plus once she was detached from the Norquill family she’d need to join another branch.”
I was getting annoyed. “And why is that?” I snapped. “Why would she need to join another branch? Why couldn’t she just leave?”
“Because she’s useful.” Said Zeke simply. “Because she’s been in close proximity to the first lieutenant of the current Wishmaster. Because she’s strong and vulnerable and any Ascendant force worth their salt would snatch her up the second she was alone and crack her skull open to pry out any detail of the things she might know.”
My mom gave a sad sigh. “You don’t understand what it’s like, Shane. Not really. Being personally strong isn’t enough. You need to have friends. Connections. That’s why the candidacy race is the way that it is. Being powerful and alone is just asking to get snatched up by someone stronger.”
In the background, the Empire’s contestant, an Earl named Malkyr, was paraded out, but I didn’t care. The red haired noble could wait. “I don’t want to accept that.” I said angrily. “I don’t want to just…leave her there.”
Because I hadn’t let myself think about it before, when Zeke had told me what happened to her. They’d been there, when we met her originally, but hadn’t known the extent of the damage. None of us had. Now that I was looking at her again though, seeing that mannequin expression on her face, I realized I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave someone like that, and I was ashamed I’d needed to be hit in the face with it like this to make that call.
“Maybe daddy could help.” Said Bethy after a moment. “I know it’s complicated, but daddy doesn’t care about that stuff. He could make them give her up.”
Mom shook her head. “Not without cause.” She said firmly. “If he wanted her as a thrall, or even to give her to you, maybe he’d be able to bully Harrison into giving her up, but he’d have to pay in blood for it.”
“Wait…” I said slowly. “Pay in blood. What if he did?” They all turned to look at me. “Not literally, I mean what if he turned her. I know only Larks can be Vampires, but that’s because he said so. Worst case can he adopt her into the clan? She’s an adopted Wyndham already.”
Bethy bit her lip. “That’s…daddy doesn’t ever do things like that. He hasn’t turned another Vampire in centuries. My siblings and I were all born with our racial trait.”
I turned to my grandfather. “Gramps? What about the Church? Do you have some way to fix her if you can find a pretense to take custody?” I didn’t want to just give up on this. There had to be some way to help.
“Well…maybe.” He admitted. “The Church has plenty of top notch mind healers. We’ve been at war with the Black Sorrow cult for years, and their Heartrippers are infamous. We’ve spent millennia learning to reconstruct the shattered remnants of the people their inhumane methods leave behind, and even then it can only be done under very specific circumstances.”
I grimaced at the reminder of the assassins I’d dealt with back at the beginning of my journey.
Zeke cut in. “At the end of the day, helping her is all about leverage.” He admitted. “We don’t have it right now, because there are plenty of people stronger than us. But there are different kinds of power.”
My eyes widened in dismay. “You mean…”
“That’s right.” He said with a wry grin. “Politics. Aiden is the current Wishmaster, but he’s in the process of stepping down. He might not care, but even if he does, the old man is the real power in the family. If you can prove yourself as a relevant up and comer you could petition to have her transferred to Malachai’s branch. It’s not like she’s an actual Wyndham with the wish ability. She’s an outer clan member. A promising candidate would have more than enough sway to affect things, especially if you pick your timing.”
Callie grinned. “You mean bring it up during the interrogation so the decision is under the scrutiny of all the representatives?”
“Not exactly.” Said my uncle with a shrug. “To get that leverage you need to provide that proof. Which means you need to make waves and possibly even pull out a victory in the E-rank games. That’s a serious contribution to the family, and there's a reward. You could ask for Felicity to be transferred to you as a bodyguard. You don’t have any C-rankers in your entourage yet. And the leverage you’d earn bringing home a win would be more than enough to pay for that kind of protection.”
Bethy seemed to be cheered. “That would be amazing!” She said excitedly, switching from scary menacing Bethy to chirping cheerful Bethy so quickly I got whiplash. “We could totally save her and help her feel better! Then when I get stronger I can eat her dad!”
Strangely, I was pretty much fine with that logic. As was Callie, mostly because she probably saw Felicity as a cautionary tale of how she might have ended up if her dad had the option. I could see Paul Reynolds using a training method like that, and the concept of it infuriated me. Part of me wanted to challenge him to a fight as soon as we got back to Callus, but Callie didn’t need me fighting her battles. She was tougher than I was at this point. She’d break Midknight in half.
Shockingly, despite sympathizing with Felicity, I didn’t sense the same anger I’d felt for her that I usually did when her father came up. I gripped her hand, sending my curiosity along the bond. One of the best parts of the bond was the ability to have wordless conversations through emotion much faster than even telepathy could let us communicate.
There was a whirl of emotions as we traded back and forth, and I froze as I understood the reason she felt so…centered.
It was me. Not that I’d magically fixed her anger towards her dad, she still hated him. But more that she didn’t feel so alone. We were getting married, and we were going to be a family. After running away Callie and her mom were never quite the same. They loved each other, but there was still a distance there.
Now she had me, and that put some distance between her and the pain. Hell, I felt the same way. I was still a bit angry at my dad for what he did, but I couldn’t really be furious. Everything he’d done had turned out well for me. I’d still probably punch him the throat when I saw him, but that was all I really felt the need for. It was hard to resent someone for being responsible for all the happiness in your life, even if the lead up sucked.
I pulled her against me, feeling the love and warmth through our connection. More than that though, I felt her pride. The fact that I was so set on helping Felicity made her so happy, and I was proud to be with someone who pushed me to be better.
Sighing, we settled in to watch the C-rank games. Aside from learning more about Felicity before we traveled with her (hopefully) I also wanted to get a baseline for what the games entailed before participating. They had been doing intros as we talked, introducing a hooded figure with green clawed hands as Devnay of the Black Sorrow Cult, a tall red haired woman with golden eyes as Ellisara of the Church of the Red Revenant, and a silver haired male elf as Rorik of the Fairyland.
They were currently introducing the final C-ranker, a caped man named Aftershock with dark skin and long braided hair. Once they announced him, they filled everyone in on the rules. “Now, as some of you may know, this stage is called the forest of mystery. In various places throughout these woods, tokens are hidden. One must gather ten tokens to pass the stage, but there are only thirty tokens total.”
The trees were colossal on the screen, metallic blue bark towering over the contestants. It was strange, because the arena wasn’t that big, but it seemed like the contestants had shrunk relative to the rest of us when entering, or there was a spatial distortion around the woods. Everyone stared around the misty forest cautiously, waiting for the go signal.
After a minute or two of prep and a few more explanations, the announcer had everyone get in position. “Well, now that we all know what we need to do, it’s time for the first round of the conclave games to begin. Contestants…start!”
Comments
Malcolm Tent
That's kind of the core concept of heroism lol. If superheroes minded their own business all the time they just wouldn't be superheroes. Not that it's an absurd thing. Most cultivators would, but Shane is trying to find his own way.
Dylan Alexander
Never really been a big fan for people stepping into others business. Sets a bad precedent because anytime they see something they don’t like, they’d want to get involved thinking they can play hero all the time. You have to think of the larger considerations in place. Yeah what’s happened to Felicity sucks beyond believe but there’s probably thousands of her out there. What are they going to do , help them all? Anyway I guess we will see where this goes.
