Malcolm Tent
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Wish upon the Stars chapter 575
🕑 Added 2024-03-07 00:35:21 +0000 UTCThe next morning saw me up on the wall, supervising the placement of mine and Callie’s centuries along with a few spares as they took their places at the openings between the segments. Each of the front lines was equipped with gleaming black spears covered with obvious enchantments, weapons specifically made for killing the Stone Lions.
As predicted, a good chunk of our friends weren’t here. Callie would be on the other side of the walls, tapping into my abilities through our bond to take some of the segments off my hands and lighten the load, Abel and Mel were with Camden, Chelsea and Bethy were guarding Jessie, and Callen and Gabe were among the centuries below as backup.
Watching everyone get in place, I let out a low whistle. “This…this is going to be a mess isn’t it?” I asked my girlfriend, who was standing next to me watching the prep. My arm was around her shoulder and she was curled up against my side. I wanted to spend as much time with her as possible.
“No more than most things we’ve done.” She said with a reassuring smile. “At least there are no gods here this time.”
I barked out a laugh at that. “And hey, if someone dies we can just bring them back.”
Despite meaning it as a joke, I regretted it immediately. I knew she still blamed herself for Perit, and I’d stuck my foot in my mouth anyway. Before I could apologize though, she shook her head. “Not everyone.” She said softly. “We got lucky with Perit and Alan, they died in pretty simple and direct ways. No soul damage. But I looked into it, talked to Nat, Zeke, and Anna… Shane, if your soul shatters, like it can sometimes when ranking up or overstraining…you’re fucked. No second chances.”
“That can’t be right.” I said with a frown. “We’ve seen people bring back gods from fragments before.”
She shook her head. “A normal S-ranker who hasn’t broken any shackles can reach the Obsidian Soul Body at best. That’s the black souled version of the Sapphire Soul Body you have. The next step up, which you need to reach to become a demigod like Bethy told you about, is a Mercury Soul Body, and above that, which you have to reach to become a god without dying is a Mirrored Soul Body. Mirrored Souls are resilient and durable, they remain viable after shattering, but anything below that… wishes don’t really affect souls, you know that.”
“So we tell our people not to overstress their souls.” I said firmly. “That’s bad, but it’s manageable. We can make sure everyone is safe about this.”
Burying her face in my chest, she took a deep breath before pulling back, her face a mask of calm serenity. “Yeah, you’re right. We’ll be fine. I’m just a little worried about the others out there in the main battle. Ironically, I think we might be the safest out of everyone.”
“Maybe so.” I laughed. “Using his last few wishes to tilt the odds in favor of all the stronger lions emerging from the secondary entrance he made was a smart call on Camden’s part. With Zeke there to take out anything above D-rank and Anna helping with the E-rank and above, we should be able to take care of the rest.”
Part of that plan was to arrange for the lions to release into the formation Clairdon was bringing. It was just a shame we hadn’t been able to sway any of the other Barons like we’d been hoping for. Aside from the suspicion that Spencer might have already paid them off, Camden couldn’t give up the wishes.
Checking the time on my scan ring, I grimaced. “Alright, I think we should be getting close. Anna’s people in Clairdon’s estate said seven P/M on the dot, and Camden seems certain Spencer will time his attack in lockstep. The sooner we take these damned things out the sooner we can get over there and help Camden himself. Abel can handle most stuff, but I have a bad feeling about Spencer.”
Callie nodded, leaning up to give me a quick kiss before heading off to the other side of the walls. She wouldn’t be able to control a full half, but with my Expert Dust Construction at her disposal and access to Belial through me, she should be more than capable of mobilizing one whole side of the square palisade.
Once she was in place, I called down to my people to be ready, then looked down at the well in the center of the massive four sided fortification. We’d cleared a ton of space around it to be safe. Taking a deep breath, I reached out with Moonlit Night and blanketed the entire center in a thick fog.
I didn’t go all the way to the edges, leaving enough space for the spear formations between the walls to see them emerge and prep to spear them, since I couldn’t bring that many people into the Skill, not with everything else I had to do today.
Once that was done, I waited. And waited. More waiting. The wait continued. Just when I was about ready to scream in frustration, I felt a rumble. At first I thought it was the charge of the lions themselves, but a quick flex of Song of the Soil showed me that a portion of the cave system had collapsed. Luckily we were standing on conjured super firm foundation made to support literal tons of stone, so they were more than stable.
“Brace yourselves.” I bellowed. “They’re coming!” I could feel the lions, not perfectly, since they were only covered in rock and not made of it, but I could still feel them, and they were on the way.
I triggered Belial, then reached down into the wall with Dust Construction, and took control of three sides of the square. The walls dropped a few feet as I channeled the top few feet of stone into the base to increase the range of the stone tentacles and limbs, creating a deadly forest of toxic burning stone.
My soldiers, to their credit, didn’t react much to the fog, and I made sure the noise from the eruption of Stone Lions would carry through the obscuring blanket of mist so they’d know what was happening. As I watched, large stone forms spilled out of the ground like ants from a hill, basically all F-rank as expected.
With a shove of my soul through the walls, the tendrils and spears shot out into the fog, tearing through the lions as they came out, ripping apart the stone hides with ease. I watched them die by the dozens and was starting to think this might be easier than expected, until a small wave of E-ranked monsters erupted from the dirt, tearing the ground around the well as they emerged, and allowing some of the others to slip by me.
That was fine, we’d expected that. It was why we had outfitted the centuries with the spears. Sure enough, it didn’t take more than a second for the escaped F-rank lions to hit the wall of spear wielding defenders. They were all outfitted with sturdy but mobile shields, and like they’d been trained, they locked them together, bouncing back the charge of the lions as the next row rammed their own spears into the beasts.
When the charge broke, and the lions retreated, the shields retracted, and the front line jabbed dark metal spikes into the rear of the escaping monsters, felling quite a few with the parting shots.
I couldn’t pay to much attention to that though, I was busy using my walls to corral and contain the E-rank Lions. They had quite a bit more Might than I did, obviously, but it did them shockingly little good. My overlay was in full bloom, and I laughed as my toxic tentacles, spear tipped and otherwise, herded to the monsters together.
“NOW!” I bellowed, as soon as they were in a tight grouping. I dropped a section of wall as Gabe came streaking from behind it on his starlight steed, silver spear glowing and a mad grin plastered across his face.
He slammed into a lion, his spear penetrating through the damned thing and out the other side snagging another one on it like a kebab, and not even slowing down as I dropped a section of wall opposite the first to let him vanish out the other side. With the fog active the damned cats couldn’t even see what had happened, and I reapplied pressure with the walls to start herding them back together.
I was stabbing them as often as I could, but these were high E-rank. Apparently the wish had only been able to steer circumstances so much, which wasn’t a shock, Camden had asked for things to tilt in our favor, which was much more affordable than some kind of invisible wall that didn’t let E-rankers through.
Callie was doing the same with her wall, though I could feel the strain on her soul from using my abilities, she was almost out of juice. This entire thing was only possible because I had the gear to offset the strain and because this was MY Skill they had used. I knew it better than anyone, and Dust Construction mitigated even that level of strain.
The sound of screams and roars echoed along the walls and through the fog, and I saw some of my people die. Ichabod dropped his shield too quickly and a cat got under his guard, it grabbed his arm and shook him like a rag doll, throwing him over its shoulder as a series of spears perforated it, but it was already too late. Ranks reformed around the gap in time to prevent anyone else from that spot being lost, but he was hardly the only one to go down.
My smile dropped. This was suddenly much less fun, and my head was starting to hurt. Despite all the preparations this was a LOT of power to be handling. The only upside was that the toxic fire had seeped into the ground from all the dead lions, and it was corroding the new ones as they came out, softening them up for the spears, just like we’d hoped.
Despite the losses though, we were doing it, we were holding the damned walls and we were winning. There had been a lot of the things down there, and I was sure we had plenty to go, but if we kept this up we might actually get out of this alive in time to help the others.
Of course, as if fate had been taunted by the thought, that’s when shit hit the fan. A wave of plants erupted from the ground, driving into the walls and tearing them apart. They didn’t come down, my efforts at condensing and merging them paying dividends, but the plants ripped into the stone, destroying the enchantments and causing a failure in the Belial Skill.
I looked around in a panic as a vortex of wind swept away my fucking fog, revealing the now suddenly much more vulnerable defenders to a wave of very pissed off Stone Lions.
“Are you fucking KIDDING ME?” I howled. “What fresh hell is this?” I scanned the walls and crowds. “Who did that?” Unfortunately my question died on my lips as I caught sight of a familiar figure in rich robes.
The Magister. Fuck. He hadn’t actually intruded yet, presumably out of caution of the higher rankers I was backed by, but he’d essentially crushed months of defensive work in a pair of moves. I wanted to attack the rat bastard, but the longer that was put off the better, for now I needed to help my people.
Luckily for me, while the destruction of the Belial Skill definitely sucked, the walls were STILL made of my stone and I could still manipulate them. I took a long, deep breath and focused, redoubling my attacks. One thing at a time. I just hoped I would survive that strategy.
Comments
Malcolm Tent
Nah, it was a typo. Meant busy.
JJB4345_80_815
Thank you for the chappy! Friendly possible edit: "I couldn’t pay to much attention to that though, I was bust using my walls to corral and contain the E-rank Lions." 1) Pay too much attention... 2) I was going bust...??? Not sure on the second correction. I might have questions about the other 2 stories since I didn't know about those, but I will maybe try to do a bit of research on them.
Malcolm Tent
That's weird, it showed up before, I repasted, see if it works now.
Ramble
Appears to be missing any text in this chapter?
