Malcolm Tent
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Wish upon the Stars chapter 458
🕑 Added 2023-09-25 18:30:46 +0000 UTCThe movie night was a huge success. Granted, not because we found a good movie, but more because Benny (who had won the vote) had picked a terrible movie and we all spent the whole time mocking both it and him mercilessly. Even Celine got a few jabs in, and my best friend swore vengeance on all of us, saying he wold similarly excorciate or own taste when it was his turn.
And like that we decided to do seven movie nights, one for each day we had left before reaching the Temple. The next morning, I actually tracked down my Uncle in one of the entertainment districts to ask him a bit about where the Ruined Soul Temple was and what the situation there was.
Zeke had been around since we got here, but he was mostly keeping back. I think he was feeling guilty about not mentioning my sister. I still hadn't really brought that up, or even talked to him much one on one, because I knew deep down he'd have told me if he could. Asking him about it was only going to hurt him, and Zeke was the one person who had never bailed on me, regardless of the reasoning.
Despite knowing he was bound to me, I think part of me was terrified if I ever pushed him on things I'd lose him too. I almost never really dug in when I got mad at anyone, honestly. Losing my parents like I had made it way too scary to strain my relationships. It was clearly simple for people to leave me, and I couldn't take the thought of more loss. That was something I was working on, but I think even if it wasn't the case I wouldn't have called him on the omission. It wasn't his fault.
So, avoiding the elephant in the room, I plopped down across from him. I didn't bother with niceties, figuring the distraction of an actual conversation was better than awkward stammering. "So, I was curious about something. I wondered about it in the dungeon, first off, had you heard of Suvaya?"
He blew out a breath. "Nope. She was before my time. The vanished gods were gone long before I came on the scene."
"Fair. But she mentioned the six. I thought Unity was pretty young for a god." Honestly, part of me wished he hadn't been involved. We'd never really asked, but I'd always felt like the Conglomerate was just that little bit better than the other factions. Even having seen the nonsense politics and the corruption, part of me wanted to believe there were real heroes there.
"He is." Said Zeke. "Only about a thousand. I'm not familiar with Suvaya, but based on the timeline Unity wasn't there when they took her out. It was Hatescream. I wasn't around for it, but I knew people who were. Bloodvenom was the leader of the Blood Murder Palace, he was the fifth member of the alliance before Unity came on the scene."
I grimaced. "Blood Muder Palace? They sound like fun guys to have at a party."
"They shouldn't." Said Zeke dryly. "They were dicks. Like...all of them. Hatescream tried to install sleepers in all the other factions, presumably to eventually stage a coup and wipe them out. Clearly it didn't work, the others found out and he got killed. The Palace got wiped out after that from what I heard, though one of them pops up now and then to be a nuisance."
That was...kind of a relief. Not that terrifying murder cult that apparently used to be one of the major factions of my universe, but the fact that Unity hadn't been one of the six at the time. My ancestor still had, but then, I'd always known the WCP was morally ambiguous at best. Knowing the Conglomerate hadn't been part of that was a weirdly huge relief.
"Anyway." I said, happy with my answer and ready to change the subject. "We're a week out from the Temple. Where is it by the way?"
He chuckled, taking a pull of his beer. "No man's land. It's a small system stuck in the middle of the territories of four of the factions. The Cult, Church, Fairyland and Empire surround it, so no one faction has too much influence. As a consequences, the entire system is kind of a horrifying free for all of bandits, space pirates, and criminals who have escaped all the other territories. They leave the Temple itself alone, of course, so they don't give everyone else a reason to clean the place out."
"So...should we be worried about that? Are we in no man's land yet?" I hadn't considered we might get attacked in this ship. It was owned by an A-ranker after all, but hearing we were in some kind of lawless wasteland wasn't super comforting.
He shrugged. "Probably? Who knows. There are bandits that might try it, depends if we run into them. We're just inside the limit of no man's land, so it's possible. Most of the time I'd say we were safe, but the trials will have attracted a ton of factions large and small, chances are good that includes more dangerous bandits hoping to try their luck."
"And you guys can...handle that, right?" He didn't SEEM worried, but there was a non zero chance that Zeke wasn't capable of feeling personal fear anymore. I'd never seen him show any evidence of it, so I decided to operate on the assumption that he just didn't worry about his own mortality at all.
His shrug this time came with a wolfish. "Probably. Who knows?" He repeated. At my glare, he rolled his eyes. "Listen, don't worry about that kind of stuff."
"Why?" I said hopefully. "Because you guys have it under control?"
"Nah." He snickered. "Because if something comes along that can kill us there's nothing you could do about it anyway. No sense stressing for no reason."
I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. "Thanks Zeke. That's comforting." I'd been expecting something a bit more reassuring.
"Look kid." Said my uncle with a sigh. "Let me tell you a secret that all Ascendants learn eventually. It's not cultivation based exactly, so I can share without repercussions, but this is a truth you'll need to accept if you want to make it in very far. Don't worry about it."
I blinked at him. "That was a lot of build up just to change your mind and rug pull me."
He rolled his eyes. "No, idiot. Don't worry about it IS the advice. Between abilities, recursion, fate sense, monsters, objects, and just random assholes doing random asshole things, our entire world is a dumpster fire of unrelenting chaos. The universe is a twenty way intersection interspersed with train tracks with no stoplights, where all the cars are made of explosives and the only speed limit is 'floor it'. If you don't learn to roll with the punches you're going to go crazy."
"So I just...what?" I said. "Accept that I could die at any second? That my friends could die at any second? What kind of life is that?"
His look made it clear he thought I was an idiot for even saying that. "Does not accepting it change anything? A random S-rank piece of space junk could punch through the hull of this ship and smash your head clean off right this second and you'd never see it coming. Does that mean it's something you should worry about? Just take things as they come, because constantly asking what if accomplishes nothing."
That actually made WAY too much sense. I'd always gotten a sort of 'devil may care vibe' from my uncle. Not like he didn't care about ME, but like everything that happened he took with the sort of casual nonchalance you would expect from someone who got slightly less than the full pound of cheese they paid for at the supermarket.
But learning about his little philosophy explained a LOT. No wonder he never seemed to freak out about anything. Because he was right, crazy shit happened to Ascendants all the time, if you got thrown by everything weird you stumbled on you'd have a nervous breakdown. Hell, worrying about what could go wrong would be a full time job.
Hell, in some ways I'd kind of already stumbled on this little pearl of wisdom on my own. I'd been trying to live in the now and not worry so much about the future for a while, I just hadn't really put it into those exact words. I could understand his point, but I honestly felt like he might be kind of overdoing it with the devil may care attitude. "Ok then." I said with an annoyed hiss. "Then when, exactly am I ALLOWED to worry. Because you can't just completely ignore all your problems can you?"
"Of course not." He said calmly. "I said take them as they come, not ignore them completely. Stay loose, keep on your toes, be ready to react to anything. It's a cultivated mind set, no pun intended. Like the ship, don't worry about whether we'll get attacked, there's people lined up to deal with that kind of thing. It's above your paygrade, so just don't worry about it."
"Like I asked earlier." I repeated. "When do I start worrying? What grand sign do I wait for that tells me that it's officially time for me to start giving a shit about my own survival." I was getting frustrated by his casual dismissal of my concerns. I understood the concept, but it was annoying to talk to someone who essentially just told you to blow everything off.
He started to shrug again, but pitched sideways suddenly, eyes narrowing with annoyance as the floor, no, the BUILDING under us rolled below our feet. He glanced down at his beer, which had spilled while he was distracted, and growled in annoyance as he put it down, sucking on his shirt so as not to waste the alcohol.
I stared at him, eyes wide in fear, and he grinned back at me, glancing up towards the ceiling. "Well, I don't know about you, but I kind of feel like THAT might have been the sort sign you were thinking of." Standing up, he offered me a hand up from where I'd been thrown against the side of the booth. "Here, come with me. Seems like we might have company on this little trip."
"And what?" I demanded, batting his hand aside to stand on my own. "You want to show them to me so I can die terrified?"
Rolling his eyes, he started out the door. "No, moron. I want to show you that worrying accomplishes nothing. If the sky falls, someone will be there to catch it. Us being attacked isn't your problem, it's Killian's and to an extent mine. So I'm going to escort you to the observation deck so you can watch us take care of business, and then maybe you can calm the hell down a bit."
"I've seen you fight before." I said with a scowl as I followed after him. "It was plenty scary, but that doesn't mean you can handle everything."
"You've seen me play around." He sneered. "Those were chump change B-rankers with almost no battle experience. I'm near the peak of B-rank kid, I can fight fucking A-rankers, and have done a time or two. You need to see a real battle between your old uncle here and some heavy hitters so you can stop underestimating me and relax."
I wasn't entirely sure he was right about that, but as we bolted through the ship toward wherever he was taking us, I had to admit I didn't care that much. I was going to see a real high ranking battle...in space. Whatever his reasoning for showing it to me I'd be an idiot to pass up the chance. I was currently scared out of my wits about the attack, but at the same time I couldn't stop my heart from pounding in anticipation. This was going to be good.
Comments
Baconwargod
Ironic that Shane was admonishing Zeke for ignoring his problems when he is ignoring several of his problems by not being more frank with Zeke. Also guarantee the reason Zeke said he would breakthrough to A in the next decade is that when the contact for guarding Shane is up the payment will be a shit ton of stats.
