Wish upon the Stars chapter 1194 (Patreon)

I caught up with the rest of the team easily enough. While I’d gone to my room to check my stats, the rest of them had started on the tour early. There was a LOT of library to cover, and everyone was excited to get a look. Callie was in contact with me as I chased after them, and she filled me in on the details of the introductory tour as I tracked them down.

Basically, the library was divided into a few different categories. Rather than sorting them by something ridiculous like color or heat, Terry had arranged them into wings, with each one being based on the source of the flame. One wing was naturally occurring fires, one wing was flames created by abilities, and one wing was flames created by the starcradles mashing together combinations of the other two.

Of course, each wing was further divided into things like utility, enhancement, recovery, offense, defense, but those were sort of unstable qualifiers, given the overlap.

Technically speaking, for instance, my Belial flame was both utility, offense, and enhancement. My Ruin flame was offense and utility, because it was both damaging and ALSO aimed at destroying equipment. 

When I caught up to my group, they were in the natural flame wing, specifically in the utility section, looking for a flame for my sister.

As I arrived where they were waiting, I slowed down briefly to take in the sight, blown away by the sheer grandeur of the place. While the library itself was made of dull brown stone, albeit gorgeously carved, the interior of the library was a lot more colorful. Along the rows, cubbyholes resembling sectioned off bookshelves were stacked with bell jars containing floating spheres of colored flames.

Rather than dance or burn though, the flames inside the jars were spinning slowly, perfectly compressed to flawless roundness as they spun lazily through the air, the flame rippling as if under some kind of dense suppression.

“What’s that one?” Chelsea was saying, her eyes locked on a rippling white flame. Despite all of them being suppressed and spinning the same way, the flames were…different. It was hard to describe, like they had a different texture, almost. Within the bounds of the spheres the things rippled and surged, and I could see the varying thickness and manifestations of the flame.

The one Chelsea had picked out was thick and viscous, the inside of the sphere sloshing like flaming honey. Inside the orb, gossamer white danced with rainbow flickers as they surged like the inside of the world's most psychedelic mother of pearl snowstorm.

Terry, for his part, looked like he was in hog heaven. “That,” he said proudly. “Is Celestial Starfire. Harvested from a very special sun whose development was influenced by several nearby light-attributed worlds.” He shot Elonwy a grin. “At least, so we assume. We’ve always been able to categorize energy, but your methods have helped us refine our parameters considerably.”

She chuckled. “I suspect you were doing fine without me,” she said appreciatively as she traced her eyes around the interior of the building. “This is a fascinating space, and your methodology was surprisingly advanced even before you understood the finer points of Mythcrafting. That formation outside is a work of art.”

“Yes, everyone is very good at science,” my sister said impatiently. “What does Celestial Starfire DO?”

“The same thing your purification flame does, roughly,” he said with a shrug. “It just does it better.” He shot my grandfather a smug smile. “It’s always amusing to me how many of my fellow disciples can be replaced a well chosen flame.”

My grandfather snorted. “Why don’t you tell Moon or Judgement that,” he said sweetly. “I dare you.”

“ANYWAY,” Chelsea said loudly, butting into their squabbling. “What do you mean roughly?”

“Means not smooth,” said Terry automatically, but he flinched at Chelsea’s withering stare. “Ugh, your glare is just like Celia’s. That’s not fair. Fine. I say roughly because the underlying principles are different. Since we started studying attributes and Mythcrafting, we’ve developed a new systematic approach to identification. We’ve figured out how to more completely map the attributes of a flame. We haven’t done all or even most of them, but this one has already been mapped. It’s basically a purification flame based on the concept of overwhelming goodness as manifested through judgement.”

I nodded. “The harsh light of day,” I said, bringing everyone’s attention to me. “Hey there friends,” I said with a cheerful wave. “Sorry I’m late.”

“That’s a good way to describe it, actually,” Terry admitted. “And welcome back. I hope you found the rooms to your liking? We’ll head to the dining hall to eat in another…” he checked his wrist. “Twenty minutes.”

I glanced at his watch casually. “I can make you a better one of those,” I said helpfully. “I have a lot of practice.”

While I didn’t have a skill for it, I DID have Dantalion, Agares, and Piece of Mind. The ability to make obsidian smooth parts to a microscopic level of detail while splitting my mind into countless threads made me an excellent watchmaker, even without an entry on my skill list. That said though, I’d been considering changing that. I could see a few ways to do it, perhaps using my piano skill as a base. I could work something musical into my watchmaking easily enough.

He looked intrigued, but Chelsea cleared her throat. “Sorry to interrupt, but if we only have twenty minutes I want to look at a few of these before we go. Celestial Starfire is pretty good, but I’m looking for something categorically opposite to my enshrining darkness. Do you think that’ll work?”

Humming consideringly, Terry bit his lip. “Maybe, hold on, follow me. I think I might have something.”

Turning he headed off down the hall, and all of us piled in behind him. He led us out of the naturally occurring wing and past the ability wing towards the wing where they kept his experimental flames. We took a few turns, down a couple aisles, until we finally arrived in front of another sphere.

This one was the same colors, but something about it was…different. The liquid texture was thinner, moving faster, and flickering with a few colors beyond the pearlescent sheen. Crackles of multicolored electricity jumped through it at regular intervals.

He gestured at it proudly. “This,” he said in the smuggest possible tone. “Is Celestial Thunderfire. It’s made from a combination of a combination. The thunderfire base infused with scouring windflame to create a storm attribute that we bonded to the Starfire. Balancing the energies is hellishly difficult. But the three of them all have cleansing properties. Thunderfire is known to have scouring effects on certain dark energies, and the windflame came from a desert planet where it formed naturally in a giant sentient sandstorm that blasted the surface clean for ten thousand years.”

Chelsea’s eyes were locked in the fire, flickering with a sort of reverence I hadn’t really seen from my sister before. She reached out her fingers, sparking a white flame across the tips of them and holding it up to the jar. As it grew closer, the storm inside raged harder, still bound into the sphere, but clearly attempting to reach the fire. Her eyes narrowed, and she stepped back.

“Let it out,” she said confidently.

“Wow,” I commented wryly. “I legitimately can’t think of a possible way that’s a good idea. Can anyone else?”

My sister smiled tightly, eyes not leaving the jar. “Fate sense,” she said simply. “I need to do this here and now. It’s in an excited state, and still in flux. I can merge it with my flame through my Path, but it needs to accept. Yin and yang isn’t about coercion. It’s about balance.”

Sighing, I glanced at Terry. “You heard her,” I said with an apologetic grin. “You willing to do this?”

“The research value is immense,” he said eagerly. “Don’t worry about the other flames. The protections are more than up to the task of isolating the process. The REST of us might want to step back. That particular flame isn’t exactly safe.”

“Is it S-rank?” I asked worriedly. “Because she might not be able to-”

He shook his head. “It’s a flameseed. It’s TECHNICALLY S-rank, and high S-rank, but that’s qualitative. The seeds are a storage method that works through suppression. I’ve been told you’ve been to the chasm? Same general idea. In fact, we perfected the process based on data from that place. It’s one of the many functions of the formation. If you pay close attention, the spheres look a lot like the supernova’s shape.”

“Thaumaturgy,” Elonwy said appreciatively. “But backwards. Using a symbolic connection to the formation to suppress the flames, relying on the scale of difference to grind down the ranks to a manageable level.”

“Yup,” he agreed proudly. “Exactly. The supernova is millions of times bigger, so the suppressive force compresses them down millions of times. Of course, we all know Impact isn’t really linear, so it ends up being quite a bit less across ranks, but still, it’s extremely effective. It takes a while for them to recover though, so the flame will be about B-rank until it does.”

I nodded, gesturing everyone back. “Alright,” I said lightly. “Chelsea, you ready.”

Raising her hands, my sister manifested her yin yang diagram. It spun between her palms, darkness surging and trying to consume the light. I saw her grit her teeth, clearly struggling to hold them in balance. “Do it,” she spat.

With a gesture, I had Terry pull away the jar like. As it came away, there was a crack like breaking glass and the sphere shattered. With an unearthly howl of fury, the flames exploded toward Chelsea, blazing across the hallway toward my sister in a column of screaming sentient fire.

Her hands snapped up, palms out, and the flames slammed into her diagram. As they approached, the diagram began to spin. As the spin accelerated, the flames condensed into a funnel, pouring into the single spot of light on the dark side of the diagram. The more it poured in, the brighter the other side blazed. I saw Chelsea’s eyes flare up with power, and she stumbled back, Bethy catching her with a worried expression.

It took about five minutes for her diagram to drain it all. Chelsea’s yin yang Path allowed her to combine things that shouldn’t be combinable. It wasn’t as complicated or versatile as mine, but my sister’s Path WAS powerful and scary. She was a genius, and a natural soul constitution with dual abilities from birth.

Her merge this time was almost too much, I think. She was infusing the flame into her bloodline, making it part of her, and she was obviously winded and sore from the effort. Her hands parted, the diagram dispersing as Bethy helped her sit down in the middle of the aisle.

“You ok?” I asked her, heading over to make sure she wasn’t hurt. “That didn’t look fun.”

“I’m fine,” she rasped blearily. “Just need a second. Once I’m through it I’ll be able to wal-” she tried to stand up, her knees giving out as she shouted. “Whoah!”

Bethy caught her, clearly concerned for her girlfriend. “Careful,” she said softly. “Don’t overdo it.”

“Yeah, I think you’ve done enough,” I said wryly. “I assume you’ll need time to digest the gains here? Because I can’t imagine integrating a bloodline like that is easy.”

She laughed, shaking her head. “Not easy. And yeah, digestion would be good. And not just the spiritual kind.” She let Bethy help her to her feet, turning to smile at Terry. “I believe you mentioned something about food?” She had used a ton of energy, I was sure, so it made sense she’d want to replenish.

He snorted, shaking his head in amusement. “Indeed,” he confirmed. “We;re having beef wellington tonight.” Everyone perked up, me included. I loved Wellington. Always nice to get a good meal.