Wish upon the Stars chapter 1134 (Patreon)

It took another week. A week of constant work and experimentation between Wisdom of Solomon, Nine Phoenix Reincarnation Art, Life Nova, and Mephistopheles to FINALLY create a working template to use as a guide. Intellectually I knew that it wasn’t that long. A week was actually pretty amazing, considering how much time it would save in the long run. I’d managed my first bloodline in maybe a week or two, vs the months it had taken for my second, so a week to lock down that kind of speed was hardly anything to sneeze at.

But it felt slow. I had everything I needed to start, I should be able to get to work on my body tempering, but I couldn’t. I was just stuck sitting on my thumbs waiting for them to finish, and when they finally did, I was chomping at the bit to begin.

I STILL hadn’t used all my stockpiled scrolls, numbering two hundred seventy at this point, but I knew that even a slight boost to my body tempering would increase the per scroll cap, and multiplied by so many scrolls it would mean a legitimate difference in gains, so I held off.

Since I had nothing better to do, I spent the week hammering out a bunch of tasks, albeit at a much more reasonable pace. I netted myself five credit points to use on daily necessities or potentially on places of power once I condensed my bloodline. I knew that some of the places could increase understanding of attributed energy for Mythcrafting, and that would be on top of the natural affinity I’d get once I condensed my Ruin Phoenix template, it should make the learning process much faster.

Still, when they came to get me to tell me the good news and so we could get started on my body refinement, I had to admit I was actively excited to begin. I’d been waiting for this for a while, and having a third Bloodline (I was curious about what the enhanced attribute would be since I didn’t have a specific direction in mind to steer this one), would be a qualitative advantage going forward, even without the affinity.

“So, how does this work?” I asked them as I sat down across the table in the conference room behind my throne. We’d been meeting there semi-regularly for this whole business, given its out of the way location and relative privacy. “Nine probably has the template memorized, so all I need to do is incarnate him, right?”

“Phil and I both,” he clarified. “But just the two of us. Zagan and Life Nova should also be on hand. Ruin is…well, ruinously destructive. Your natural regeneration can keep up with short bursts, but given Zagan’s synergy with your Life Nova bloodline, you’ll be able to dedicate exponentially more time to refinement per session with those two assisting with your recovery. That should speed up your bloodline condensation quite a bit.” Despite the relatively formal tone it was clear Nine was excited as the rest of us for this.

I looked around. It wasn’t just the innovators here. Owen and Limbo had made their own appearance. My other two time attributed demons were as excited as I was. While I’d be learning the fundamentals of Mythcrafting in general, my main focus in the department was time. I’d be learning to utilize time attributed Mythology more directly in combat, and between Limbo’s utility, Phil’s destructive potential, and Owen’s Perception, I had all three of the major pillars of combat covered with which to express them. With my bloodline granting me extra affinity I was expecting my combat abilities to soar when working with any or all of the three. Once I had learned that, the Pillar and Wisdom would be able to reverse engineer the Mythcrafting to refine all my demons, so I was expecting a power bump across the board, but it seemed likely those three would be my go-to combat options in the near future.

“It’s important to note that this template isn’t like the others,” Nine warned intently. “This is a purely destructive energy. Life Nova and Cosmic Phoenix are both beneficial energies, but Ruin is just…breaking things. And that includes you. Luckily, body refinement is ABOUT breaking things, just in a controlled way. But you need to take it slow to start, work up to it. You can’t just go full blast out the gate or you’re going to do serious damage and we’ll have to stop and wait for you to recover.”

That was unfortunate. Honestly, pain had been the main boost to refining speed in my first two templates. Hardship and difficulty seemed to act as fuel to the fire of the phoenix. If I had to guess it was because of the symbolism of rebirth through a crucible, but regardless, I’d been counting on that to help here.

It made sense that there would be different rules for a purely offensive template though. And it wasn’t just a subversion. The Ruin Phoenix WAS a phoenix, and its mythology was pretty much the opposite of the ones I’d had access to before. In fact, that was the point. Its whole mechanism was to be the opposite of rebirth, the inevitable end of all things, worn down through the destruction of the ages.

“Anything else I need to know?” I asked them as I prepared. I had considered using the Pillar for this, but it wouldn’t help. The Pillar allowed for simulation and multiple attempts to perfect the art, but body refining wasn’t mental. I had to ACTUALLY carve the template into my body with the flame, so I might as well get to it.

When they all confirmed there wasn't, I nodded to Mephistopheles and Nine Phoenix, incarnating them both with a long, slow breath. With all my reinforcement, it was easy to hold two, even two who had recently grown quite a bit. My mind was flooded with information from Nine Phoenix, symbolism and imagery of a pitch black bird that heralded the apocalypse, the death of all things, and the winking out of all the stars in the sky. Ruin. The final end of every living being.

Time is the fire in which we burn. A phrase and a concept that I had never really pondered. In some ways, it was very true. Old age blazed away, refining and destroying us. At first it melted away the weakness, purifying and strengthening, but eventually once the growth ended, the descent began. The fires of creation banked and the flames of ruin ravaged our flesh, devoured our minds, and eventually consumed us utterly, leaving nothing but dust, the ashes of history.

My vision was complex and layered, and I was shocked at how detailed they’d gotten it in just this one week. It wasn’t as impressive as the Cosmic Phoenix revelation, but that had come from an ACTUAL cosmic phoenix feather. Doing this much with just the candle was impressive.

I began the process. First came the pattern. I knew it well by now, the Nine Phoenix Reincarnation Art was a complicated and powerful construct that carried the energy through my body, refining and improving it. With more knowledge of attributes I was able to mostly work out what I was doing now. Rebirth. The inherent power of the phoenix was baked into the art. It was a process, slow and steady, one step at a time as I forged out the impurities of my body, reforging myself in the crucible of the nine flames.

Mephistopheles had been training as well. Learning to control the power he’d gained when he integrated the Ruin. And those lessons served me well, allowing me to call forth just a trickle of that strength to roll through the channels the art had made. It was slow and almost gentle. Like a trickle of water flowing down a dry riverbed, most of it seeping into the cracked, broken dirt. My instinct was to flood it, but I knew that was the wrong move. I continued as I’d been told, slow and steady.

It didn’t make it any less painful. It felt like my veins were full of battery acid, but only a very small amount of it. I honestly wished that I had more of the stuff in my system, because the very finite amount of pain surrounded by the pop and flicker of splattering corrosion along the length of the channels was actually WORSE than just being flooded with the shit.

Ruin SUCKED. It wasn’t just painful. I could deal with painful. Ruin felt like death. Like I was approaching my end, and there was nothing I could do about it. The finite approach of mortality heralding the twilight of my life.

I was so engrossed in it that I barely noticed the flood of life energy as Zagan and Life Nova poured it into me. It washed away the pain, but that just meant I needed more, so I couldn’t find it in myself to be grateful. I just focused, increasing the flow of Ruin through my body. Inside me, the nine drops of Life Nova ignited one by one, and for each new wave of power I had to increase the flow to offset the regeneration. 

By the time all nine were lit, I was pouring a pretty steady stream of Ruin into the art, and I could feel it beginning to change me. Slowly. Inexorably. Ruin wore down all things, and here it was wearing down the resistance to change. Of course, it was also wearing ME down alongside it, but with my regeneration, my helpers, and my bloodline, I was barely keeping up, and I’d managed to find a perfect balance between creation and destruction.

Unfortunately, while balance sounded nice and peaceful, it really wasn’t. I was in agony. Not my usual agony either. Ruin seemed to carry some sort of conceptual fear of death that added an almost corrosive sting to the mental toll it took as it hurt you. It was the mental version of poison, and it was building up. The regeneration was healing the physical wounds, but the mental toll was mounting, and I could see why Nine had mentioned a limit to how much of this I could take per session.

But I wasn’t there. I was a chosen of a goddess of torment, a descendant of the lady of the Enshrining Darkness, and the master of the Wish Curse Palace. Pain wasn’t just an old friend, it was my BROTHER. My companion and constant faithful hound. Pain served me in all things. It drove me. Broke me. Made me.

And that was when I realized why this particular art had called to me so heavily back in the library. Not for the fire, or for the ease of incorporating the skill.

Because I WAS the phoenix. I always had been. I was a creature forged in flames, reborn in pain, again and again I rebuilt myself stronger than I had been before. I stood in the center of a mental inferno, and as I had that realization, I just…let go. I let it take me. Consume me utterly. My mind went blank as the agony ate away my vision from the edges, darkness taking my sight from me even with my eyes wide open.

I felt a shift inside me, a riotous spark kindling to life, and my blood caught fire, the Ruin riding my veins across every surface of my flesh, tearing at my sanity with maddeningly welcome claws as it shredded every thought in my head, devouring my sense of self as fuel for my evolution.

And then it was done. It ended, and I dropped to my hands and knees, panting, throat hoarse from screaming. But I wasn’t upset. Not even close, because deep inside me, in a place that had previously only been occupied by the two sets of nine blood drops of my existing bloodlines, blazed something new. A single drop of blood the black of an endless abyss. I looked inside, the ravaged tatters of my mind fluttering in the breeze of victory…and I started to laugh. One down, eight to go.