Wish upon the Stars chapter 1130 (Patreon)

We finished the job in the next few hours, as expected. On top of the twenty credits for the original task, we’d earned an extra hundred once we turned in the bounty. In one afternoon I had gone from out of credits to twenty percent richer than I had been when I first started, and it made it clear that my Domain had SERIOUS potential in terms of credit gain.

Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to double down on some good old fashioned moneymaking, I had other things to worry about at the moment. After a good night’s sleep (and stockpiling my scrolls in the morning), I realized that I had reached the third day of my stay, which meant it was finally time for me to head out to Common City and meet up with everyone.

It was honestly…nice. Leaving my friends and family before to go to the Chasm had been kind of depressing after a while. I was able to handle it, of course, but I’d missed them. I kind of assumed the same thing would happen here, but I’d barely had TIME to miss anyone, and more than that, I’d been kept so intellectually engaged by this place in the time I did have I wasn’t even thinking about them.

This was what I imagine being at an actual academy would have been like back on Callus, if we hadn’t completely blown off all the academic portions of the experience.

To my complete lack of surprise, I wasn’t alone on this little trip. Sorwen had arrived in the morning with coffee and a spring in her step, excited to follow along to common city to meet with all my friends. She was so cheerful and upbeat about it I couldn’t bring myself to say no, so after an awkward conversation, I just agreed and headed off in the direction everyone was going to find the exit.

It wasn’t too hard to find, since apparently they’d decided to label the place. At the end of the city cavern there was a small chamber with a vaulted ceiling. Set into the cavern floor was some kind of ivory mosaic set with gemstone portraits of people I mostly didn’t recognize, but who were probably the deans based on the two that I did.

When we stepped onto the platform, a cage of lightning leapt up to surround it, sealing us in, and the mosaic lifted off the ground, revealing itself to be a sort of elevator, albeit not one on any sort of cable.

We drifted through the air, the outside of the cage mostly obscured by the lightning, for about ten minutes. Eventually, there was a slight shudder and the cage dissolved into sparks, leaving us standing on a flat hilltop overlooking a small walled off town. From the base of the platform, a path led off toward the city. One of the teachers I didn’t know stepped out. “This platform will remain open for three days. Should you go past your allotted time, a penalty will be applied to future visitations. Should you go past the three allotted days, you will no longer have access to Moment City. This is a one time courtesy, any lateness in the future will not be tolerated.”

Everyone nodded. Given the strict terms we were informed of at the beginning, I wasn’t surprised that we’d be left behind if we waited too long. I was more surprised by the grace period, honestly. This place struck me as more of a sink or swim kind of school.

Once he dismissed us, we headed down the path towards town, and I couldn’t help a bubbling excitement. Common City…didn’t look like much. It was a large rounded city on a cliff made of yellow stones. It could have come out of any generic fantasy movie, but despite the relatively innocuous appearance, I could tell this place was a treasure trove.

All the majors dealing with artifacts and enchantments were based on their own cities, but this place was where all that melted together. Common City was the land of opportunity where we could best exploit the resources of this academy.

Sadly, my ability to actually DO that was pretty limited. I was stuck at a hundred and twenty credits. Nothing to sneeze at, but not enough to be considered a sizable windfall. I thought about Callie’s excitement at so many new artifacts to potentially add to her vault and couldn’t stop a wince. There was no way I would have enough.

Given she was still at C-rank I was worried about my wife, and there was nothing I’d like more than to help her arm herself. Of course she’d never ask, but I felt bad I couldn’t help her prepare before her rank up.

I was so lost in thought I almost missed the slight twinge of Danger Sense. Luckily almost was still enough to step aside and avoid the dark haired blur screaming “Surprise ATTACK!” at the top of her lungs. UNluckily, I was so distracted by the obvious bait that was Bethy that I missed the secondary and tertiary assaults.

Chelsea hit me in the chest like a cannonball, knocking me backwards a step, shaking my footing JUST enough for Gabe’s absurdly low charge to slam into the back of my legs and dump me on my ass. My sister stood atop my chest, fist in the air, triumphantly screaming “VICTORY!”...right up until I triggered a combination of Double Trouble and Pit of Despair.

My twin yelped as she plummeted into the frictionless dust, Gabe diving to catch her hand as I cackled madly. “Fools!” I crowed in smug satisfaction. “You thought your pathetic attempts at subterfuge coul- oh shit!” I sensed a razor sharp wave of energy coming towards me, barely activating Mornax in time to tank the slash from Fade. Gritting my teeth, I turned to glare at my bodyguard, preparing to engage him too when a familiar voice cut off my momentum.

“Will you idiots quit it,” my wife demanded archly as she arrived, standing nearby with arms crossed.  “We are in PUBLIC you know? And we’re representing our whole plane of existence.” Despite her acidic tone, I could tell she was amused, but she really did think it was a bad idea to fool around here, so I sighed and put away my staff.

“Sorry, hon,” I said sheepishly. “But they started it.”

Benny stalked up to glare at everyone. “They started it EARLY,” he snarled. “You said you would wait for me!”

“Bethy got bored,” Chelsea said with a shrug. “She gets bored easily.”

Bethy hung her head in shame. “It’s true. I’ve recently been informed that my attention span is- oooh butterfly!” she trailed off, turning to sprint away from the clearing, and Benny rolled his eyes at her obvious attempt to use the new trick she’d learned from Chloe to dodge his ire. I rolled my eyes, turning to Sorwen with an apologetic smile.

“Sorry about them, they’re really very nice when you get to know them.” Then I paused. “Ok, only some of them. Sometimes. When they feel like it.”

Callie arched an eyebrow at me expectantly and I chuckled. “Except Callie, of course,” I corrected immediately, gesturing to her grandly. “My beautiful wife is perfect in every way and could never fail to be the life of any party.”

“Overdoing it there a bit, kid,” Abel snorted derisively.

I just smirked at him from behind my mask. “And this is my old mentor, Alex. Or is it Amber? Or maybe Aardvark today?”

“I will snap your neck like dry kindling!” he hissed menacingly, stepping forward to loom as best he could. Which wasn’t very well since I was much taller and a rank above him. When he saw my lack of fear he deflated, pouting sulkily. “What is this nonsense? I can’t even bully my own student anymore? What is this world coming to.” He turned to Sorwen, bowing with a flourish. “My NAME, dear lady, is Abel Castleton, also known as Appolyon, Spruce Bunny, and to my closest friends ‘hey you’.”

“Now who's overcompensating,” I snickered. “You hoping if you give her enough names she might slip and use the right one by accident?”

He pointed at me threateningly. “Don’t YOU start. It’s bad enough when Bethy does it. I won’t have you ruin the opinions of total strangers and turn me into some kind of laughinstock! I demand respect damn it! Or at least fear. Even pity would be fine, just please don’t show everyone how to bully me.”

I chuckled at the feigned despair in his tone, but I could tell he was a little bothered for real, so I changed the subject. “Anyway, everyone this is Sorwen. She’s in the Department of Temporal Studies with me. Sorwen, these are my friends.”

As I spoke, the others started to show up. All my cabinet members, my guards, Jessie and her girlfriend, the other teams from the Lady and the lodge. We drew a crowd pretty quickly.

Sorwen, for her part, looked…a bit shell shocked. “There are…certainly a lot of you,” she said weakly. “I feel like I didn’t see this many of you before when we were negotiating. Where did they all come from?”

I just laughed. “I ask myself the same thing pretty much every day, things are getting pretty crowded, but everyone here has earned my trust.” Well, most of them. The newcomers not so much, but I wasn’t going to bring down the mood by backpedaling. Everyone seemed touched so the speech had done its job anyway.

“Now, I believe we have a city to explore?” I said with a grin. “I figure we should find out who didn’t make it to Beginner and let them pick what we do first. The rest of us can figure out what’s happening around here once they’re gone, since we have so much more time here.”

A few of the faces looked relieved, clearly having been worried about the ticking clock. Once we had that simple plan though, I turned to my wife and opened my arms. She all but tackled me, kissing me fiercely (possibly a little TOO fiercely, I was starting to doubt her claim about not being just a LITTLE jealous). I laughed as I pulled back. “Love you too Cal, and I missed you.”

Benny groaned as he arrived next to us. “Still? How are you STILL this stupidly in love with each other. I hope Celine and I are this nauseatingly happy after we get married.”

Laughing, Jessie joined us. “You will be. And we’ll all mock you for it mercilessly. Just you though. We actually like Celine. Besides, having to be married to you is already a thousand times worse than any mockery we could devise. The poor girl will have been through enough suffering.”

Benny flipped her off sourly and we all laughed. I grinned and started filling them in on my time in the department, and enjoyed their own stories as they told me all about the other majors and what they were like. Sorwen, to my surprise, fit in shockingly well, quickly adapting to the tempo of shit talking and genuine fondness that my friends and I tended to use when talking (at least my closer ones).

I was pretty sure that was partly because we were a fairly eclectic grouping and were used to adding new people, but even so, it was impressive. We continued down the path together, eventually reaching the city gates and being admitted directly. Once we stepped inside though, we all went silent, staring at the bustling metropolis inside the tower with awe and fascination.

It was…beautiful. So many kinds of people doing so many things. I didn’t think I’d ever seen such a bizarre grouping of Ascendants in my life, and the fact that so many were gods and S-rankers didn’t make it any better. Putting an arm over Callie’s shoulder, I looked back at my friends. “Alright, like I said, anyone who is below Beginner picks first. So…what are we doing?”