Wish upon the Stars chapter 1246 (Patreon)

The place Dabrock provided was the inside of his cabin. I’d expected it to be huge and expansive on the inside like most places of Ascendant make, but to my surprise it was actually pretty modest. Modest for a Demigod, mind, so it wasn’t small, but rather than a palace it was more like a fairly sizable hunting lodge with a nice bearskin rug and a cozy fire burning in the stone hearth.

“Nice place,” I said appreciatively as I followed Stein inside. He was carrying the puppet gently, clearly trying not to damage it. I remembered what my mom had said about the Blood Puppets, and wondered for the first time if I COULD fix this. 

Realistically, I was better suited for this than Black Sorrow or the Red Revenant had been at the time. My six colored fire had several attributes that directly restrained and refuted this process, and I had studied it in several instances and managed to reverse them where others might not have. The question became, would it be enough to undo the completed link.

The way I saw it, I had a few things going for me. Firstly, the link wasn’t EXACTLY completed. The manifestations weren’t discrete entities, exactly, they were part of Sunshineville, which was why this whole thing could even work. That meant that while the individual might have been subsumed, the final link had not been forged. Second, we were inside the Domain of the man who created this being, and he was here to help.

“Before we start,” I said slowly. “I need information.” I triggered Dantalion at S-rank, letting him begin his scan, but I also glanced at Stein and Dabrock. “Can you tell me about this person when they were still in their proper shape?” I paused. “Also can you send Lark back out to watch my friends. Seeing this makes me worry a bit about whoever Mordu has in here.”

Dabrock nodded to Stein, who left the house. My mom was outside with Lark, and he let her in when Lark left, but she didn’t say anything, just moving to stand by the wall and let me work. Dabrock ignored her, turning his eyes back to me. “His name was Timothy,” he said simply. “He was a mouse, and he had a fondness for making clocks.” His expression as he looked at the puppet was sad. “I based him off a pet I had as a child, and he was one of my first manifestations. He was kind and brave, and he adored chocolate. He was chronically late to almost everything, and he insisted on napping in the sun whenever the weather permitted.”

I blinked at that. He sounded so…sad. And tired. It occurred to me that unlike my demons, which were all just variations of me, his manifestations were more like friends. It made me feel a little ashamed of how I treated my own residents. Had I been taking my demons for granted? Should I do more to learn about them?

I had already made the decision that I needed to invest more time into learning about them so I could get stronger faster, but this made me just as determined to learn about them as people. Regardless of the faces they wore, they were their own beings, and they deserved the chance to have lives and wishes outside of my own.

Rather than lapse back into silence, I let Dabrock continue. He began to tell stories of Timothy, about his habits and his passions and who he was as a person. How he was beloved by children and would always sneak them sweets when their parents weren’t watching. How he was lazy and constantly tried to trick other people into doing his work for him. How he was one of the few manifestations who had seen real battle, and was from the time before Sunshineville’s current iteration when Dabrock had created residents for war rather than just simple living, and how he had been so relieved to lay down his knives to open a clock shop.

The more he talked, the more complete the picture Dantalion was able to build of Timothy, and the more exact he could be in undoing the link. With a more comprehensive schematic to work from, he could design a more specific countermeasure. I even considered creating another set of shears, but this was beyond that particular device. No, this was a completed link, or at least something like one. The flame was needed.

But rather than just apply it with brute force, I started to consider my options. There were mechanisms, structures that I could use that would empower the flame. A technique. It had been quite some time since I’d made one on the spot rather than just using my demons. But I still could. I had that power.

So I considered my sources of inspiration. Things I could use, ways I could apply my strength. I had fire, and that meant I needed…and then I stopped. Fire. Fire used for purification. I had something for that, actually. Something recent.

I closed my eyes, beginning to trace back my sight. Back to a dark series of stone chambers lit at the center by a Summer fire. The Phoenix Foundry, where an element of my six colored flame had been central in the smelting and purification of ore. I held out a hand, focusing on the puppet, and it floated up into the air. I called Bennu to me through the throne, and he came, sliding over my skin like I was shrugging on a cloak.

Once I had the flame at my command, I lit the spark. Six colored fire flickered beneath the puppet, guttering to life below it like the open flame on a stove. Once that was done, I began my mental inventory.

First I took the basic materials. Timothy the mouse. I considered what I knew of him, what I’d been told, what I’d sensed, what Dan had discovered, and even what I imagined. But not just him. I considered his friends, his neighbors, his fellow residents. I added them like seasoning, modifying and perfecting my vision of him.

Once I had his connections to others, I added in the other materials. The memories, the quirks, the flaws. Timothy wasn’t just a single unblemished whole, he was a composite, an alloy. Timothy was made up of lots of different materials, and I needed to add as many of them as possible during this stage. I could refine the puppet back into the whole, but if I didn’t have enough material, I wouldn’t be able to complete the smelting.

With each bit of information, the fire flickered and grew. This was creation, crafting and building in ways that I wouldn’t have been capable of until I saw Belphegor making that armor. I had an understanding of materials now, of the composites of creation, and even if I wasn’t making metal right now, I WAS smelting. It helped that I had the blueprint, of course. The puppet was more than just materials. It was the true form of Timothy. It was his core and his heart. It might have changed, but it still REMEMBERED being him. And that could be used.

So for my next ingredient, I smelted TIME. Time, after all, was the fire in which we burned. My Ruin flame was the embodiment of that concept, and it could burn all things. I’d seen that already, seen what conceptual destruction like Ruin could do if applied properly. Entropy could be used to preserve life, and Ruin could be used to restore it.

I burned away the years, burned away the changes, and restored Timothy to what he was. Without the rest of the materials it wouldn’t have worked. It would have been an empty shell with nothing inside, but with them, I was able to begin to fill in the mold.

More than that, it wasn’t just me. From around us, I could feel memory and emotion and love flowing into the fire, stoking it higher and higher. Dabrock remembered, which meant Sunshineville remembered. All the residents in their homes and their shops remembered their goofy, lazy mouse friend, and they all wanted him to come home.

The Summer fire kindled higher, the flame of the hearth that burned in a loving home blazing up to smelt the good memories and happy times of the residents of Sunshineville into the heart of Timothy the mouse. As it did, the flames consumed the puppet, burning away the tiny sad looking ragdoll. Rather than dissolve into ash, though, the doll began to melt, changing in composition as it became molten and began to twist and warp.

Golden particles began to pour into the fire from around us, flowing into the lodge from outside. More memories, more friendship, more love. The things that made up a person, the things that connected us to the world.

As the golden motes poured in, the molten worldstuff that the puppet had become began to grow, the amount increasing as the memories were smelted into the being I was restoring. Not to life, because he hadn’t died, but restoring to truth. To home.

The melted substance began to shape in the air, guided by the memories and the hope and my own image of the mouse. It formed a shape. A pair of squat legs, broad shoulders, tiny, beady eyes. Big floppy ears and a cute little muzzle and a set of luxurious clothes including a burgundy waistcoat and a green velvet vest.

Finally, when the shape had finished forming, there was a roar as the fire blazed up, ignited as if by some kind of accelerant. The golden motes from around us poured into the flame, and the last of the smelting was completed. Before the end, the motes gathered above the form in a giant floating blob and, once the flames guttered out, poured over the top of the being I had reconstituted, tempering him in the will of this world as he was baptized back into being by the very Demigod who created him, using the power of his Domain in a way I found very similar to my ability to seal and bind.

I staggered as Timothy dropped to the floor neatly, landing in a graceful crouch. He stood, looking around and blinking, whiskers twitching. “Well,” he said in casual surprise. “This certainly doesn’t look like my cellar.”

Dabrock was staring, his eyes wide with disbelief, shining with suppressed emotion as he stepped forward and hugged his friend. “You silly old mouse,” he said hoarsely. “Look what you’ve gone and gotten yourself into. You’ll be lucky if I even let you move back into your house. I have half a mind to put you up under guard in the town hall.”

Timothy snickered. “They’d go mad within days and let me escape for a reprieve.”

“I’ve never heard anyone sound so proud of being an inconvenience,” Dabrock said with an eyeroll. “You’d think it was a cultivated skill rather than something you were born with.”

“Well, if I was born with it that makes it your fault,” Timothy pointed out cheerfully. “Now what exactly is going on? How long have I been gone, that we have humans in Sunshineville? It’s been millennia since the last visitors.”

Dabrock turned to look at us, and for the first time, I saw a spark of genuine happiness in his eyes. He smiled warmly. “This is Shane Wyndham and his mother Sasha. They’re our guests. No. More than that. They’re our friends.” He held out a hand for me to shake. “They’re here for our help, to recover some people who are very important to Shane, and we’re going to get them back. His wife and child have been taken and are in danger.”

Timothy’s face, despite being a mouse’s visage, became cold and determined. “Well, why didn’t you just say so? I suppose I should go dig up the old knives.” He gave me a firm nod. “Don’t worry Shane, we’re here to help. You’ll be back with your family soon.” And the funny part was? I believed him.