Wish upon the Stars chapter 1185 (Patreon)

“So, we’re doing this an hour at a time, right?” Callie asked worriedly as we stood at the dock where the Strang Aeons Ship was moored. “Because I’m feeling a lot less sanguine about this now that I’ve seen that ‘ship’ in person.” She made air quotes with her fingers at the word ship, and I had to admit I didn’t blame her. It looked…well, it looked like a pile of junk.

The boat was small, thin and long and made of dark, moldering wood. There were holes in the hull, some patched and some open, yet somehow not filling with the flowing multicolored water that flowed beneath it. Within the stream, I could see faces, places, and objects. They flashed by too fast for me to track, but I knew what I was looking at. This was, quite literally, the ‘Time Stream’. Or at least some version of it.

Not that it led anywhere. The section of water under the ship was only about ten feet by five. It faded into nothingness at either end, blending back into the normal water of the rushing river where the dock had been built.

“I had to admit, I don’t exactly feel confident looking at that thing either,” I said slowly. “I thought the Dean made this.”

“He did,” Elonwy said cheerfully. “But the Dean isn’t the Professor. He’s not always so constrained by things like aesthetic. Some of his projects get…strange. This one, he made with help from Dean Temple, actually. This was before he hired Professor Saunders, don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe. But it involves some strange principles of star navigation and fate.”

I frowned as I looked down at the stream. “This doesn’t look very focused. How exactly does it work? Like I won’t just get lost in time, right?”

She pointed down to a pile of dark rope on the floor of the boat. “You’ll need to lift that out and drop it in. It’s a karmic anchor. It’ll attune to you when you pick it up, and drag the river of time to catch on important moments in your past. But be warned, not everything you find is going to be some grand moment of import. Sometimes it’ll catch on moments that were defining for you but never quite made it to the public eye.”

“Honestly,” I said as I considered her words. “I don’t mind that. I know that pages bound directly affect your recursion, it’s part of the reason to author them. Binding a few moments that are symbolically important might help me keep track of the person I am, and the person I always meant to be.”

Elonwy shrugged. “Not my monkeys, not my circus,” she said bluntly. “I don’t know you well enough to give that kind of advice.”

“Wasn’t really looking for it,” I admitted. “I was mostly thinking out loud. But I appreciate the sounding board. Callie is right, though. I’ll do it an hour at a time. We won’t be leaving for a few weeks yet, so I’m in no hurry. For now, let’s get today’s session out of the way. How do I do this?”

“Just climb in, pick up the anchor, and I cut you loose,” she said with a laugh. “The river only functions in intervals, so the hour will start once you’re off, and then you’ll pull back in when it’s up.”

I snorted. “Well at least it’s user friendly,” I said wryly as I hopped onto the creaky old boat. It was surprisingly solid, and my landing barely made it rock. Reaching down, I sifted through the pile and picked up a small golden anchor about as big around as a dinner plate. It was connected to the boat by a dark, bloody rope covered in rough bristles, and it cut my hands when I pushed it aside to pick the anchor up.

Despite my gauntlets, the bristles slipped between the joints and shredded my skin, the blood leaking out to stain the anchor, dying the golden glow a deep, sinister red in the places marred by the droplets.

“Alright, cutting you loose,” she said cheerfully. “Please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times, no flash photography, and I would advise against bringing food or drink on the voyage. Thank you for sailing Strange Aeons and have a terrifying cosmic day.” She lashed out with a knife that she pulled from seemingly nowhere, chopping the much less evil looking rope anchoring the ship to the dock, and there was a rain of sparks as it parted.

The ship beneath my feet lurched and began to move, and I yelped and hauled back to hurl the anchor into the river before I passed the faded border in front of me. As it hit the water, there was a loud splash and the time stream rippled around me. In the reflections of the rippling water, I could see different images, ones I recognized. Before I could process anything specific, the anchor caught, yanking back on the rope and pulling the ship to a halt. It stopped right at the edge of the border, halfway over, and as I stared ahead, I found myself looking out over an endless abyss of darkness, like I was hanging at the edge of a cliff.

It felt like hours, but in reality, the ship only stopped for an instant, hanging there in the air as the momentum caught up, then jerked forward over the edge, and the world around me was consumed entirely in technicolor chaos.

Reality shattered around me, a kaleidoscope of fractured space and time in so many colors I didn’t have the words to name them all, colliding and bouncing off each other as if trying to recreate an image and unable to decide what to be. Behind up, the anchor dragged in the shattered space, the rope a line of darkness against the rainbow riot.

Then, without warning, the boat jerked. The fractured rainbow fragments collided in JUST the right way, and they reconfigured themselves into an image, coalescing into a familiar scene.

At least, it was sort of familiar. It had been a long time ago, and I barely remembered it. But I recognized the players. Me, tied to a chair, and a familiar clean cut man staring dispassionately down at me. Stricture. The serial killer who had murdered Jessie’s brother and several others, the one I had caught by accident in the dumbest way possible. The first person I’d ever killed.

His arrogant face was twisted in a sardonic grin. “What can I say?” he said, in that same smarmy tone I remembered. “I have a flare for the dramatic. Anyway, I’d close my eyes if I were you. Based on the expressions on my victim’s faces, watching you blood pour out onto the floor makes it worse, for some reason.”

The next part happened faster than I remembered. I triggered Double Trouble, appeared behind him, and punched him in the neck, using my armor to enhance the force. I’d forgotten it used to store impacts. My old gear seemed so far aware. Hell, even if I’d had my weapons on hand after being captured, I’d used tonfas back in the day. The punch landed, the spine cracked, and the other me just…crumpled.

I’d been drifting along through the room, the space vanishing inch by inch like I was sailing through space itself, but after he collapsed, everything froze.

In the chair, a copy of me sat, my illusory self from the subskill, and he cocked his head at me with interest. “Well now,” he said, in a voice just like mine. “Isn’t this fascinating. Where exactly did you come from?”

Blinking at him in shock, I slumped down into the boat, sitting down as I stared at him. “You can see me?”

“Should I not be able to?” he asked with amusement. “You’re sitting right there.”

“Well, you’re an illusion,” I pointed out. “The real you is unconscious. Oh, and I’m currently time traveling.” I frowned. “Or I think I am? Is this real time travel? Or is this just a vision I’m having?”

He shrugged. “How would I know? You’re the one who lived through this before.”

“Again, unconscious,” I pointed out. “But I have no way of knowing if this conversation really happened. I supposed I never asked myself what happens to the illusions after they’re gone. I wasn’t really prepared for this situation, to be honest.”

He chuckled. “Fair enough. Well, I suppose since I’ll cease to exist once this moment ends, it won’t matter if I decide to ask a question, will it?”

“No, probably not,” I confirmed. “So…ask away.”

“Do you regret this?” he asked in a curious tone. It wasn’t cold or empty, just…devoid of much emotion. Like he was asking my favorite flavor of ice cream.

I shook my head without pausing. “Nope,” I said immediately. “Aside from him being a dick who killed my friend’s brother, and was trying to kill me…so much came from this moment. So much of who am was because of this. What I have. This was a part of me, and I like myself. Why, do you think I should?”

Of course, I had come to understand my past self better, and this would contribute to that. “I don’t,” he said with a shrug. “Maybe it’s because I’m an illusion and I’m going to fade anyway, but I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with doing what you have to do to extend your existence.” He chuckled sadly. “I wish I could extend mine.”

“Well, why don’t you?” I asked casually. “Or rather, why don’t I?”

He cocked his head. “You can do that?” he said in wonder. “You have some way to preserve an illusion?”

I held out a hand, and Gehenna pushed past the boundaries of the boat. I grimaced as I felt something…twist as I tried to expand my Domain. It hurt. But I ignored it and kept pushing. It was nothing serious, just resistance. When the field of dark sand reached the chair, a figure appeared in front of the illusion. A nondescript man who looked like me and like no one at all. Double Trouble.

He reached out to touch the illusion, and there was a sort of…shift. I let my Domain snap back, and the demon appeared beside me. I reached for the connection between us, and through it to find the fragment of illusion, before triggering my binding ability to force him to remain manifested within the demon that represented him. It was a lot like what had happened with Pit of Despair and Brad, but even more seamless. Although given the power difference, it was more the other way around.

He blinked at me as the ship began to move again, staring at me wide eyed. “That…what was that? What am I? What’s happening?”

Chuckling, I clapped him on the shoulder. “All very good questions,” I informed him. “And ones that you can have answered in Gehenna. Suffice to say that things are very different with me these days. But I’d still like to hear from someone who remembers what I used to be like.”

I waved a hand and he vanished into my Domain. Azazel would talk him through the changes. I was interested to see how this would affect my demons.

Meanwhile, the ship had started moving. When I reached the point about as far away from my previous frozen position as the edge of the border had been from my starting point, I fell into the rainbow riot again, the world shattering as I plummeted into infinity. I laughed as it did, and as I fell, I focused inward, on the Myriad Demons Manual, and specifically on Double Trouble, condensing this incident into a page in my Chronicle.

It didn’t feel like more than a few minutes had passed, and I had a hunch that this hour was going to take me through quite a few more moments in my past. I wondered if this had actually happened before, or this was all hypothetical? Maybe I would be able to confirm if I landed somewhere I’d been awake to see it. Of course, who could say if that would happen, I had spent a LOT of time unconscious when I was younger. I was still laughing when the anchor yanked again and the world started to resolve. Time for the next stop.