Wish upon the Stars chapter 1220 (Patreon)

We kept the trip slow as we made our way down the hallway that Beel had located for us. It was a long hall, made longer by the sense of creeping dread and the slow pace we needed to keep Murmur effective, and the distance wasn’t helped by the deafening silence of our group as we moved.

The halls of the city felt…haunted. Not by ghosts, but by tragedy. It felt like this place had been profaned in a way that precluded speech. Like the perversion of this holy space was so complete that speaking words here would only add to the abominable events, and worse, make us a part of that bloody legacy. I was still ruminating on that when I felt a hand smack me upside the back of the head.

I flinched, spinning around, staff coming up to point at…Abel. “I figured Callie wasn’t here to do that, so it fell to me by default,” my mentor said blithely. “Get out of your head, Shane. It’s dangerous to be in there instead of out here.”

Snorting, I rubbed my head, even though it hadn’t really hurt. I appreciated the wakeup call, though I would obviously never admit that to him. I was about to respond when I felt…something. Only a flash, a split second disturbance I’d have missed if it hadn’t twigged the edge of my Murmur field.

I spun on my heel, eyes snapping to the spot I’d felt. I caught Lark’s eye. “You felt that?”

He nodded slowly. “Barely. Whatever it was, it was fast, and damned sneaky. I’ve got better senses than most and I couldn’t get a proper lock. I’m surprised you picked it up at all, honestly. But it only went one way. It’s still there.”

Our eyes turned to the small alcove the disturbance had been heading to, waiting, watching, and finally, a sigh rang out. As we watched, a slight form emerged, a small girl, only fifteen or sixteen by the look of it. She was strong. A-rank. And she was an angel, with wings of crystal clear glass.

Her eyes were an unsettling glasslike sheen, hair like crystal filaments, and the whole thing, combined with her fragility and the pallor of her skin, made her look like the slightest jostle would break her to pieces.

Of course, I knew better. Aside from the absurdity of her being A-rank at such a young age, I knew that an angel’s wings and eyes were reflections of their power. The unique angelic flame that each angel possessed, each able to perform strange feats that defined their capabilities. I was betting the glass wings had something to do with stealth, if she could hide from an S-rank Murmur and Lark’s senses.

“Who are you?” she asked, in a voice like the whisper of wind through glass chimes. “And how are you here?”

“My name is Shane,” I told her kindly. “And this is my family and my friends. We came looking for someone. We thought we might be able to find her here.” I tried not to talk too fast, this kid was squirrely, and I was almost worried she’d pop like a soap bubble if I wasn’t careful. Just a flicker and then gone for good. She had information we needed, she had to.

She shook her head. “There’s no answers here. No people you would know. Only death lives here. You should go.”

“We can’t do that,” I said apologetically. “The person we’re looking for is my wife. She’s pregnant, actually. I’m trying to find her and my babies. Are you sure you can’t help us…sorry, I forgot to ask your name.”

“It’s Amandine,” she said softly. “But my dad calls me Amy. You’re looking for your babies?”

I nodded. “I am. They haven’t been born yet, but I’m really excited to meet them. We all are. I’m worried about them though. Do you think you can help at all? Anything you can tell use about this place would be useful.”

“Shane,” Lark said quietly. “Why is she out here?”

I frowned at him. “She’s just…” I trailed off. “Actually that’s true, why ARE you out here? You must have a safe place to hide, right? Why come out and risk being attacked by those things? Shouldn’t you be with your dad? Is he still around?”

“You’re looking for food,” Lark said quietly. “You’re hungry, aren’t you?”

She tensed, eyes going wide. “I…no, I don’t know what you mean. There’s no food here! Leave me alone!” She spun, looking ready to bolt, but she was stopped in her tracks by the familiar foreboding castle in the distance. She might be sneaky, but I’d seen Lark’s Domain hold a hundred enemy S-rankers. She wasn’t going anywhere.

“Whoa!” I said quickly, holding up my hands defensively. “Don’t run! It’s fine, we’re not going to take your food.”

“She’s not afraid of that,” Bethy said quietly, her tone more somber than I’d heard from her in a long time. “She’s afraid we’re going to kill her when you find out what she’s been eating. Think about it, Shane. She’s a little kid. How is she so strong? How is she so high rank at such a young age?”

I frowned. “I don’t know, she probably has a bloodline, or a mirror soul or…” I trailed off, floundering for anything that might explain it.

“Think it through,” Lark murmured. “Think about what we’ve seen.”

I frowned, considering what had happened since we got here. We’d seen the monster. Seen the bodies. Well, except that fir- I froze. “The body we didn’t find,” I said in slowly dawning horror. “And the growth. Their Impact was stored in their flesh. Somehow. I don’t know how that happened, but…you ate them.” She wilted under my horror, curling around herself like she was waiting to be attacked, and I flinched back, horrified at myself this time. “That’s not…it’s ok, I won’t hurt you.”

“I didn’t mean it,” she sobbed, her eyes spilling crystalline, sparkling tears. “I didn’t want to do it, but I was so hungry. Daddy said I had to. He said it was the only way I could be strong enough to survive.”

Bethy was there, from one blink to the next, putting her arms around the girl. “It’s ok,” she murmured, stroking Amandine’s hair. “They were already gone. You didn’t hurt them. You just did what you needed to survive. No one is mad. Can I see your teeth?” Amandine looked scared, but she nodded, baring her teeth.

“Ghouling,” Lark said distastefully. “That’s not optimal.”

“It’s not advanced,” Bethy said dismissively. “Her nails aren’t blackened yet. Her trait isn’t corrupted, it’s still in the body.” She glanced over at my mom. “Sasha, do you think you could help?”

I raised a hand. “Ok, so…what’s happening? She’s an angel, not a ghoul.”

“Ghoul is more of an umbrella term,” Bethy corrected. “There are a lot of kinds of ghoul, but it’s not really a species as much as it’s a condition. If you eat enough the ghouling process corrupts your trait. You turn into a ghoul, though what KIND of ghoul varies. Some really desperate people do it on purpose for power, but ghouls are extremely low level undead so only idiots bother.”

My mom stepped forward, stepping in front of Amandine. “Sweetie,” she said softly. “Do you mind if I help you? My power is for purification. It’s fire, so it might be a little scary, but it won’t hurt you. It’s just going to help repair your body a little.”

The girl sniffled, but nodded. My mom gave her a kind, encouraging smile, raising her hand to begin the purification. While she did, I decided to press on with the questioning. “I’m sorry you’re hungry,” I told Amandine warmly. “I’ll go ahead and cook you something once you’re finished washing up, ok? While we wait though, do you think you could tell me about this place? You live here with your dad?”

“Yeah,” she whimpered. “My mom got lost a few years ago. It happens sometimes. People go missing. One by one, they all vanish. There aren’t a lot of us left. Most of us are kids. The monsters don’t target the kids. We’re too small and weak. We don’t have whatever it is they want.”

I winced. That was…horrible. They’d been stuck here long enough to have GENERATIONAL fear of these things. That was heinous. I reached into my Domain, manifesting a version of me to task Cooking to put together a meal for this girl.

Then I refocused. “Alright. Can you take us to your dad? Once you’ve eaten I mean. We’d like to talk to him.”

She looked scared, but eventually nodded, and I turned to talk to Lark as Bethy and my mom took care of her. “So, what do you think?” I asked him quietly. We were still inside Murmur, so concealing the conversation was easy enough.

“I think there’s a lot going on here and very little of it has to do with her,” he said bluntly. “Her being forced to eat bodies is unpleasant, but the fact that it caused her to get STRONGER is concerning. Especially at this rate. Ghouls eat flesh for power, but as I said, it’s an imperfect path. You can’t just EAT a person’s Impact. If you could everyone would do it.”

“Do you think it has to do with the condition of the corpses?” I asked worriedly. “The Impact being preserved?”

He grimaced. “I do. Which is very bad. Because the fact that they’re looking for something and leaving behind something as valuable as easily harvestable Impact means that I believe I know what they’re looking for. They’re harvesting Domains.”

“You can do that?” I asked in an appalled voice.

“Not easily,” he corrected. “Or safely. Your Domain is…it’s part of who you are. There are methods to strengthen a Domain, but harvesting Domains from the dead implies they’re attempting grafts. Domain grafting is a stupid, perverse, thankless process. You stitch together a patchwork monstrosity of a Domain, then you force yourself up a rank and let the resulting boost sublimate the result. Or you die. Which is what happen ninety nine percent of the time.”

I grimaced. “Then why even do it?”

“The Domain connects to the soul,” he explained. “If you can integrate the pieces, it forcibly elevates your soul past the stable state. It’s a last resort measure for high rankers who failed to break their shackles. Based on the situation here, I would guess that something horrifying is on the other side of that gate, and whatever is stalking these halls is trying to gather enough power to get past it.”

“You got all that from a few random factoids?” I asked in disbelief.

He shrugged. “You get a feel for these kinds of incidents. What causes them, where they’re heading. It’s just pattern recognition. Regardless, if the gate guardian requires a grafted Domain to handle, I suspect it’s probably Demigod strength, at least. I doubt it’s a full deity, otherwise it wouldn’t have stuck around. But if it’s a problem for this thing, it’ll be a problem for us too. I can probably handle it, but it might be smart to make sure.”

Sighing, I nodded along. “Agreed. Besides, we’re not done here. I wanted to save Callie’s people, and I still do. We’re not leaving without helping. I’ll take them out personally if need be.”

“Alright,” my mom said from nearby, a tone of false cheer in her voice. “You’re all set. Let me see those teeth?” Amandine bared her teeth, which were now white and straight and NOT razor sharp like a shark. “There we go, perfect smile.”

I smiled as I approached, withdrawing a plate from my Domain that Cooking had prepared. “Hey, you said you were hungry, so I thought I’d make you something. Just some pasta with alfredo sauce, you ever had that?” She shook her head, and I passed her the bowl. She tore into it, and I smiled, letting her eat. Once she was done we’d get back to the questions and then she could take us to her dad. Hopefully he’d have some of the answers we needed.