Wish upon the Stars chapter 1245 (Patreon)

Stein led us deeper into the labyrinth with the kind of unnatural dexterity you’d expect from a necromantic construct. Beyond that, he also knew exactly where to go, despite the hedges seemingly moving to block off certain paths as we walked, and it didn’t take long for us to emerge from the passages into a small, forested clearing.

The center of the clearing contained a small, cozy looking log cabin, a chimney above it puffing away. In front of the cabin, sitting on a rocking chair and puffing on a pipe, was…well, an old man. He wasn’t small or wrinkled, mind, his skin was healthy and mostly unlined, but his silver hair was long and bald on top, and he had a great flowing beard and ruddy cheeks that seemed at odds with his unusually burly physique.

Seeing him, I couldn’t help but suck in air in terror. This guy was OLD. I remembered back at the beginning of my journey, when someone had told me that high ranking Ascendants looking either very young or very old made them terrifying. As a powerful Demigod, this guy had a probably lifespan approaching a hundred thousand years, the fact that he looked this old meant he’d been here for a VERY long time. I swallowed hard. “Greetings,” I said with a casual wave. “I’m Shane Wyndham, nice to meet you.”

The old man looked up, his eyes burning like the embers of a banked fire, irises smouldering a low red black. He reached up to remove the pipe, puffing out a small cloud of black smoke. “Hello,” he said lazily, before replacing the pipe.

I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t seem inclined, so I stepped closer, clearing my throat. “I was hoping we could talk,” I said in a cautious but optimistic tone.

“Aren’t we?” he blinked, clearly surprised by the statement.

“I…guess we are,” I admitted. “But I mean about some more specific things. Your vanishing citizens, this Domain, the Blood Witch. Are you aware of the Blood Witch?” I assumed he was, given the kidnappings, but I didn’t want to move forward with nothing but guesswork.

His eyes flared, the banked flames glowing to life as if someone had stirred the fire. “I am,” he said coldly. “What do you want?”

“To help you,” I said immediately. “And be helped in return. I’m on something of a quest to get my wife back, she was kidnapped, though not by the Blood Witch. I was hoping if I help you retrieve your kidnapping victims you could help with mine. I have the ability to cleanse the corruption from her magic, which means if she is using Blood Puppets to convert this place like we expect, I can help you fix it.”

He took another puff, staring at me hard. “And in return, you want me to help you retrieve your wife from…who?”

“Belsara,” I said immediately. I saw a flicker of surprise in those glowing eyes, but he got it under control fast. “She’ll probably be open to negotiation by the time we get there, if that helps.”

He sighed, leaning back in his chair. “Perhaps,” he said thoughtfully. “But I’d need more than just a casual promise of repair. Especially if you’re looking for more involved instruction. You ARE hoping to gain a better understanding of anthropomorphic Domains, aren’t you?”

My eyes lit up. “Is that what they’re called? And you can tell just by looking at me?”

That got a snort. “I’ve got good eyes,” he said in an amused voice. “Though I have to say, you’re a bit of a mess in terms of manifestations. How many do you have?”

“Seventy two,” I admitted. At his wince, I just shrugged. “It was part of my path concept, and it seems to be working out for me. Is it really that bad?” I didn’t know how any of this really worked but I couldn’t see the downside to my method based on my past experience, maybe he could tell me what I was doing wrong.

He hummed contemplatively. “Maybe, maybe not,” he admitted. “I’m not sure how your Domain hasn’t collapsed under the weight. Or your soul, for that matter. Or rather, I can see some of it, but the fact that you’ve lasted so long means you’ve clearly managed your own take on things. No two Domains are quite the same, so it makes sense you’d have your own unique quirks when it comes to yours, I suppose.”

That told me he might not have exactly the answers that I needed. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t teach me anything, I was sure I could learn a lot from interacting with the Demigod in front of me, if he was willing to teach. “Will you help me?” I asked, not bothering to prevaricate. He’d have made his decision already, so there was no use dragging it out.

“Maybe,” he said slowly. “If you can show me you can really deliver. I’ll need to see this purification you mentioned at work. If I can retrieve one of my citizens as you call them, will you make the attempt in front of me?”

It was a reasonable ask. I was sure he could probably reverse engineer some aspect of my flame by watching. Maybe not all of it, but if his power was as versatile as mine nothing was off the table. That said, I couldn’t worry about stronger Ascendants being able to overlap my capabilities or I’d go crazy.

“Do you even have one of the kidnapping victims?” I asked him suspiciously. “I kind of assumed you had nothing to do with that.”

“I don’t,” he confirmed. “But I can find one of them. This is still my Domain, and I can find anything within its confines. All I have to do is send Stein to retrieve one of my friends for you to check over. But I want your agreement to let me observe before I do so.”

I got the impression that it wouldn’t be quite as effortless as he was making it seem, or he’d have done it earlier, but I didn’t doubt he was capable of it. “If you’re open to helping me rescue my wife, I’m open to demonstrating my purification for you.”

Nodding, he glanced at Stein, eyes flaring like banked suns for a moment before cooling again. Stein turned and left, and those eyes flicked back to me. “Well, if we’re going to do this, then I should probably know your name. I can hardly just keep calling you ‘the Domain owner’ in my head, after all.”

He snorted softly. “You can call me Dabrock. I’m not sure if that’s my name, to be honest. It’s been so long since I’ve used one I’m a bit hazy on what mine is. I suspect it’s the name of SOMETHING, at least. Maybe a home or town. It should serve as well as anything, in either case. Now, I suppose while we wait, I can give you a bit of instruction in the use of your anthropomorphic Domain. First, though, I should ask what you know about such things.”

“I mean, nothing?” I said with a shrug. “Or everything, I guess. It’s hard to say, really. I know everything about mine, but I’ve never really seen anyone who had the same type of Domain as I do. Even my ancestor hasn’t and he’s a god.”

“It’s a rare subtype,” he admitted. “Similar to the Webworld we stand in even now. The circumstances of its creation are less defined, admittedly, but its power is no less potent. As I’m sure you’ve already discovered, there is a magic in the manifestation of a living being that is unequalled by mere repetition”

I thought back to Sunshineville, to the various Divine grade skills of his animal friends. I hadn’t even considered how far I could push one demon. Maybe he was right about me being spread thin. Maybe if I had fewer demons I would already have a tier 10.

“How do I help them improve faster?” I asked quietly. I had put a lot of effort into some of my demons, but others remained stalled.

“Embodiment,” he said with a shrug. “While training and repetition CAN help them improve, the true power of a manifestation is in their mythology. They’re constructs of song and story, and their truth is to live those legends. The more their lives are in line with their purpose, the more quickly they grow.”

I blinked. That made perfect sense. It also explained why demons like Cooking ranked up so fast while Piano and Singing made no progress. Aside from me ignoring them to make reincarnation easier, I also didn’t use them, or let them do anything related to their purpose. I considered how I might contribute to their growth, but it seemed like a long term project, so I decided to get back to my questions.

“How did you do…this?” I gestured around. “Merging this thing into a fragment of the Webworld? It seems so real in here.”

He waved that question away. “An advanced application of projection,” he clarified. “Nothing to do with my type of Domain, simply a powerful enough Domain to project, and quite a few millennia of practice doing so.”

“How much help can you give me?” I asked after a moment. “You said you can see a lot about me, can you tell me if you can actually help me improve?”

“I can,” he confirmed. “Though less than you might hope. You’ve already gone down a path that is unfamiliar to me. There are similarities, little lessons I can help with, but you’ve walked your own road quite a bit further than most your age. I wasn’t as deep into this life as you are when I reached my first century. How did you manage to improve so quickly?”

I shrugged. “Are you familiar with the Wishmaster?”

He was less than a hundred thousand, so chances were good he’d at least heard of my ancestor. I had no idea how he’d gotten in here, but he wasn’t like Mordu, who was kept alive by the magic of entropy. He was old in a way that I had context for, and clearly he knew the power players outside the Void.

Raising a brow, he nodded in confirmation. “That would do it. You’ve been chosen as the sitting Wishmaster? That’s quite an accomplishment at your age. Even with your prodigious growth rate, you must have taken quite a few strange turns to reach your current step. Especially given the nature of your Domain. I fail to see how one would manifest a Wish ability in such a way. I take it you’ve got a second ability?”

“I picked it up in the Ruined Soul Temple,” I confirmed. “Got myself a soul physique that lets me have two.”

“That thing is still around?” he asked in surprise. “It’s surprisingly sturdy for such a run down location. It was already ruined back when I was young. You would think it might have fallen apart by this point, given how roughly it tends to be utilized. I suppose whoever created it did a good job with construction.”

I was about to respond, but before I could, I was interrupted by the sight of Stein stepping back into the clearing. I was expecting him to be escorting someone, but instead, he was carrying a small doll.

I recognized the doll, of course. A Blood Puppet. It was just like the one I’d seen back in the Foundry. He brought it forward, laying it down in front of me, and Dabrock nodded happily. “Lovely, you found one. Well done, Stein. Mr. Wyndham, as you can see, your test materials have arrived. Are you prepared to begin experimentation?”

Of course, I wasn’t planning to experiment, but I decided not to mention that. I just sighed and nodded. “Do you have a place I can use for this, at least?” I had a feeling this would be a lot noisier than the last time I’d done this. Not that it would stop me. In fact, I was looking forward to it. I just had to prove my worth, it shouldn’t be too complicated.