Wish upon the stars chapter 1200 (Patreon)

I swallowed hard at the appearance of the Bitter Conflagration. She looked like Callie. I knew, in this universe or the others I had interacted with, exactly ONE person who looked like my wife who was not Callie herself. Her sister Alara.

Despite calling themselves sisters, Callie’s actual relation to Alara was mostly unknown, at least via number and function of relatives. Ancestor was probably a closer term, but even Alara herself couldn’t say how many generations separated the two of them. Callie’s appearance had, most likely, been a strong motivator behind Adam Atlas, the Heretic God, deciding to adopt my wife when he performed her racial trait upgrade.

Alara, who had supposedly been dead until we found her in the chaos chasm post vampirism, was nearly identical to my wife in looks, with only small differences between the two. This woman, obviously, had her own deviations from the template the two sisters established, mostly via her apparent age (late twenties early thirties rather than the late teens early twenties or my wife and her vampiric sibling), not to mention her fiery red hair, but she still looked close enough to identify the relation at a glance.

She wasn’t slow on the uptake either, she noticed my reaction to her. Smiling warmly, she leaned forward to pour another cup of tea. “You’re running low, dear,” she said kindly. “Oh, it is SO lovely to have guests. It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen visitors. Well, except those Void spirits who came here before you. But they were very rude, they wouldn’t even sit for a drink.”

My grandfather tensed. “The Void spirits were here before us?” he asked nervously. This woman was…scary. I could feel the power rolling off her like a bonfire.

“Oh yes,” she said cheerfully, taking a long sip of her tea and sighing a happy sigh. “I do wish they might have shared a cup with me. This is my favorite blend, you know? I’ve been so cramped down here, and their loosening of my shackles was so very kind. It was a shame they decided not to accept my hospitality. But I repaid their kindness at least, they died quickly, and the pain was only horrible.”

Everyone at the table froze at those words, except the woman herself, who seemed oblivious to the disruption her little admission had caused. I swallowed hard, reaching out to Callie to try to stop her from coming. As soon as she’d caught my emotional response to the woman, she’d set off to join us. She’d even shut the bond to prevent me from trying to convince her. Whoever this person was, her obviously unstable worldview was NOT something I counted as safe to have around my wife, resemblance or not.

I kind of wanted to run, to meet Callie outside and block her. I didn’t know what she thought she could do to help and I didn’t care. It wasn’t safe here. Unfortunately, I was beginning to get the strong sense that if we tried to leave without permission very BAD things were going to happen.

“The tea is lovely,” I said blandly as I took another sip. It actually was delicious. “Might we be so forward as to request the pleasure of learning your name, miss?”

She giggled, like she hadn’t just admitted to butchering S-rank fire ghosts for the sin of not being polite enough. “Well aren’t YOU the dashing little gentleman. Of course you may. I am Belsara, the bitter conflagration, goddess of the creeping fire, vessel of the burning heart. And who might you be, little gentleman?”

“Shane Wyndham, ma’am,” I answered politely. “Wishmaster of the Wish Curse Palace.” I kept my response as sanitized of anything to do with Atlas as possible. I felt like I was dealing with Black Sorrow again, only worse, because Black Sorrow cared about my relationship  to my grandmother, and Belsara had no idea who I was. Although, the name did make me curious. It kind of reminded me of Alara’s in a way, and made me even more certain that there was some relation there.

Nodding like she had any clue what that was (though I wasn’t really convinced) she favored me with another smile. “How impressive. You’re a very accomplished young man, aren’t you? I can sense the fire of your vitality, and it burns strong. I’d put you at…perhaps twenty years of age? Maybe a bit more? And already A-rank, how precocious. Tell me, are you godspawned, child?”

“Not exactly,” I hedged. “I have several deities in my family, but my parents are not gods. Nor are my grandparents, who sit here before you.”

If she could sense how OLD I was, I wasn’t confident I could lie to her, or even hide anything particularly big. I was starting to panic a bit. That panic was magnified exponentially when I heard a bang at the door outside. The link flew open, and a flood of terror and desperate worry washed over me. Belsara looked up with interest. “Oh? More guests, how lovely.” She frowned. “But how will I answer the door? My guests are already here, and if I get up and leave it would be horribly rude. I suppose I’ll just have to kill the new visitors, musn’t neglect my company. One moment,” she raised a hand, fingers beginning to glow, and I barely stopped myself from tackling her.

“WAIT!” I yelled frantically. “I mean, wait,” I adjusted my tone as she cocked her head at me in concern. “I can send someone to get them. I have demons in my Domain, quite a few of them. They would be happy to help. If I could have your permission to invite one out into your home.”

“Hmmm,” she hummed indecisively. “I suppose that would be alright. I don’t know if I have enough tea though. What if there are too many of them?”

“It’s only two,” I assured her quickly. “My wife is worried and came looking for me.”

Her face lit up. “A FAMILY visit! How novel! Yes, yes, send your retainer, I would welcome your wife into my home.”

While that SHOULD have made me ecstatic, and I was definitely happy Callie wouldn’t be casually incinerated by an insane goddess, I had a knot in my stomach I couldn’t get rid of. Callie shouldn’t be here. I didn’t know why she would come…ok, that was a lie. I did know. She’d been scared for me and given her interactions with her dad and sister she figured Belsara might be more likely to let us go if she knew Callie was involved. She might even be right. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was all very wrong. Something bad was happening, was happening to all of us RIGHT NOW, and I couldn’t stop it.

My wife shouldn’t come into this house, but if she didn’t she’d die. And then I would die, because I WOULD attack Belsara if she hurt my wife, goddess or not. I conjured Azazel, hoping he would have some way of influencing things, though I realized that was unlikely. Then I sent him to get the door and let Callie and Terry inside.

At the very least, she hadn’t come alone. If Terry had let her run off into a base under attack without protection I’d have blown up his stupid formation myself. There was very little wait from the front door to the dining room, or at least, there shouldn’t have been. I frowned. Azazel was walking further than he should have to. Which meant either she was enlarging the space to the door or she had SHRUNK the space to the door when we arrived.

And suddenly this whole thing felt wrong. Belsara’s weird casual crazy about manners didn’t make sense, not when we’d just walked into her house and joined in. And the Void Spirits must have been able to enter easily to get in before us, but they’d been dead before my grandparents arrived. She’d killed them quickly, and most likely not over manners. She’d wanted them gone before we showed up.

Beyond that, her earlier threat didn’t make sense. Fragment or not, she was a god, and a strong one. If she wanted to kill Callie and Terry, I wouldn’t have seen her start the attempt. Everything that was happening here was being carefully curated. Nothing we’d done since we entered this Domain had been unscripted. She was manipulating us. But why? What was the point? If she was free, why not just leave? Why involve all of us in whatever this was. What was she hoping to gain?

In fact, how had she done this so easily? Thinking back, I remembered the changes to the bond. Had Callie actually shut me out at all? Or had Belsara hijacked it somehow. Because that series of events had been far too convenient to be a coincidence.

My heart hammered in my chest. This was wrong. All of this was wrong. We needed to leave, NOW. But we couldn’t. None of us could. We weren’t strong enough.

I watched in horrified fascination as Azazel arrived at the door, somehow visible from where I sat, and opened it to admit Callie and Terry. The look on Belsara’s face as they entered was one of such glee, such profound triumph, that I knew I’d been right. She’d known this would happen, all of it, and had arranged us like pieces on a chessboard to achieve this exact result.

Which begged the question…why? I could assume that there was some reason she couldn’t just walk out and grab Callie, maybe something about the formation? Could there be some way to beat her contained within the suppression of the library? Obviously it was capable of restraining her somehow, and had been doing so for a long time. Was there some way to activate it again? I was reminded of the tower with Drexel, only this situation was a thousand times WORSE. Drexel had been massively suppressed by the Chaos Chasm, but while Belsara too had been bound in captivity, the formation clearly wasn’t on the same level as the chasm.

“Shane!” Callie yelled as she spotted me, bolting past the insane goddess and my grandparents and throwing herself into my arms. “What happened? One moment I was trying to talk to you and the next the bond just slammed shut! Why did you close it?”

My eyes flicked to Belsara, whose eyes were wide and glittering as she stared at my wife. Yeah. Just like I suspected. She’d jammed Angelic Bond. Which realistically should be nearly impossible, but then again, the bond was based on the angel trait that Atlas had created for Callie when she formed her Chronicle. Assuming Belsara KNEW Atlas (which was all but certain at this point), it would be completely reasonable for her to have figured out a way to jam it inside her own realm.

“Must have been some kind of interference,” I said flatly, shifting my body slightly to put myself between my wife and the dangerous trapped goddess. “Why don’t you say hello to our host, Cal. This is Belsara.”

She frowned, turning to look at the other women and…froze. “Oh,” she said in a small voice. “Hello,”

Belsara’s eyes BLAZED with fanatical excitement. “Hello little one,” she said, soft enough to not spook my wife. “Welcome to my home. I hope you weren’t waiting too long. It’s truly wonderful to meet you.”

As expected, she’d known. She’d known all of it from the first moment we arrived. I frowned, considering my options…but eventually decided that the time for treading carefully was past. “Who exactly are you?” I asked quietly as I drew myself up to put further distance between the two of them. “And how do you know Adam Atlas and his daughter Alara?” Her eyes snapped to mine, narrowing in anger, and I sighed internally. Sometimes, I really hated being right about things.