Malcolm Tent
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Wish upon the Stars chapter 1051
🕑 Added 2026-01-01 04:23:02 +0000 UTCThe Voidwalker’s Guild was surprisingly jovial for a building tucked into a back alley corner of a city steeped in murder victim blood. As soon as we stepped inside, a few people took a look around, spotted Dayna, and cheered a greeting. The taciturn elf smiled slightly, nodding to them as we entered, and headed for the back of the hall where a big bearded man stood in front of a counter that seemed to double as a reception desk and bar.
He noticed her coming and shot her a grin, his deep set eyes and high cheekbones making him seem like a naturally friendly person even before he smiled. “Dayna-girl!” he crowed happily. “How's my favorite little stick flinger? You make the decision to upgrade to a real weapon yet?”
“That depends, Ian,” she said sardonically. “Have you figured out a way to use melee weapons without parking your oversized ass RIGHT next to your enemy and flailing around in arm’s reach for a few minutes?”
He grinned at her in a way that told me this was a familiar bit of banter, before turning to raise an eyebrow at me. “And who is your large intimidating friend? That’s a nice suit of armor, lad, though your mask is a bit unsettling, all blank and wooden like that. Face is your advertisement to the world, boyo, man can’t see that how’s he supposed to trust you?”
“Says the man whose entire lower jaw is hidden inside of a bush,” snorted Dayne. “This is…Sol. He’s a friend of mine.” I perked up at the terminology and saw her wilt as she realized what she’d said, but it was too late for her to take it back. I‘d known I’d win her over.
He barked out a laugh. “Fair enough, lass. Fair enough. Now, what are you looking for here today? Hoping to take on a job? We’ve got a nice little stockpile in the back I’ve been keepin’ warm for you. I know you love the exploration gigs, and you’re one of our most thorough mapmakers.”
She cleared her throat in embarrassment. “Yes, well, I do enjoy the chance to work on my shading, but sadly I’m already on a job. I came to check the routes and get the most recent news. I’d also hoped to check if you’d seen Anabelle lately.”
“Fraid not,” said the big man with a shrug. “With the realspace war heating up, us backline folks don’t see near as much action. Most of the godbloods are cycling out to the warfront or hanging back in their bunkers for safety. Annie-belle and the rest of your little rag tag band been taking jobs in the edgeroads.”
Anticipating my confusion, Dayna elaborated. “Plenty of Roads border realspace like we saw before, with the shallowing. The edgeroads are known weakspots like that, and the ones nearest the war front have been known to see accidental punch through.”
Ian laughed at that. “Yeah, it’s a bit like diving for trash at a junkyard. Never know what, if anything, is gonna come through. But it can be lucrative as hell if you get lucky. Anyone as can punch through the veil is going to be high B-rank at least. Or have a VERY effective attack ability. Anything they drop is most likely premium gear. And that’s not even counting things like spare body parts or souls. Scavenging the edge roads while your people fight the realspacers is like playing the lottery.” His smile, everpresent until now, dropped. “Course, we ain’t the only ones noticed, either. The Void spawn swarm those edges themselves, and scavs need to be careful not to get sucked into a fight with a horde they can’t handle.”
Dayna looked troubled. “Can I leave a message for Anabelle here?” she asked slowly. “I don’t like to hover, but she should know about some of the recent developments in realspace. In fact, I was hoping we might be able to trade some information for the routes we need? I can use my tab if needed, but this seemed cleaner.”
His eyes brightened, narrowing in interest. “Information, you say? Since when do you have connections in realspace?” She just stared back at him mutely and he shuckled, putting both hands up defensively. “Alright, no need to pout, little one. Tell me what you know.”
She glanced at me questioningly, and I nodded, trusting her to know what to tell him. “The realspacer gods have been skirmishing with our side,” she said diplomatically. “But the vanished ones are split. Hatescream and Stralthrem staged an attack on the Wish god but got repelled. One of the Void Children reached divinity, but she’s reticent to engage because the avatar of a lost god has appeared that directly counters the Void.”
“The lost ones are always a mixed bag,” he hummed. “What do you know about this avatar, are they one of ours?”
“No, she connected indirectly,” she said with a headshake. “That lost one’s fragment remains drifting, as far as I know. Based on how much antipathy the Void Children seem to feel toward him, I suspect it’s buried DEEP.”
My eyes widened. She was insinuating that Atlas had a Hanging Land. Which now that I thought about it, made perfect sense. Considering the requirements for resurrection for the vanished gods themselves, I suspected finding that would be one possible way for Callie to help resurrect her dad. I made a note to contact her later and bring it up. If we could mount an expedition into the Void and locate Atlas’s world fragment (apparently that was the local term), we’d have a potential method to counter the Void God directly.
Of course, any expedition would require a foothold, which meant we needed to contact and win over as many of the vanished gods as we could and put their side of the war to rest as fast as possible. Our mission continued.
Ian, meanwhile, looked incredibly intrigued. “Well now,” he said musingly. “What a complex and fascinating report.” He reached under the counter, pulling out an envelope. “Platinum route report,” he said decisively. “Covers everything local up to twenty four hours guaranteed accurate.”
Dayna’s jaw dropped open in disbelief. “That’s…platinum? I can’t afford a platinum route report. Those have faction specific intel and almost realtime engagement maps to avoid incidents. That’s premium product.”
“You can afford whatever I say you can afford,” he laughed. “And I say your intel was worth at least this much. I’m not sure where you got it, but from what I can tell, it’s a hundred percent accurate, at least to your knowledge.” He held up his hand, palm out, to reveal a clunky black metal bracelet set with a bright orange faceted stone.
Apparently that stone was some kind of truth device because Dayna’s face brightened with understanding. Still she gave him a grateful smile. “Thank you,” she said sincerely.
“Bah,” he snorted. “If I can’t be biased toward my favorites what’s the point of being a guildmaster.” His face smoothed over, eyes shadowing in trepidation. “But in all seriousness…be careful out there, Dayna-girl. When the cats are away, the mice will play, and even down here in the depths of the Void, the echoes of the war can be felt.”
She nodded again, and we turned to leave. I frowned at her in confusion. “We’re going already? I figured we would stop for a meal or something.”
“We’re being followed,” she said quietly as we stepped out of the guild hall. “That last bit about cats was a code phrase. Ian was telling me he’d clocked someone setting an ambush. He has methods of knowing what is happening in his territory.”
I frowned, then jerked my head to one side. “Follow me. I’ve got an idea.”
She didn’t even hesitate, following me into an alley with Brad and Dan in tow. We all walked in one end, and a short, plain looking man with grey eyes and black hair walked out the other side.
Astaroth had been designed for times like this, and I relaxed slightly as I watched the simulacrum of a man I’d seen in passing on the way to the guild hall stroll casually in front of me as I skulked in the recesses of space.
Dayna and the demons were stashed safely in my Domain, so where there had been four people, now there was only one, and he was no one special. I walked casually through the streets, my eyes peeled and searching for any evidence of the ambush she’d mentioned.
Sure enough, I spotted a few shady looking men taking up positions on the sides of the road and in recessed alleys, watching the road that lead from the guild
I let my legs carry me slowly and carefully towards the palace of doors, and then tapped into Piece of Mind, giving control of the simulacrum to a parallel as I slipped into my Domain mentally. Being an equivalent to my library soulspace, I could enter Gehenna without projecting the Domain itself, though I rarely did so.
When I arrived, I found my friends waiting for me. “You were right,” I told Dayna. “We were being tracked. They were waiting for us down the street. How did they find us? They must have had someone waiting for me. I’m sorry, I should have been using Astaroth from day one. I just figured we wouldn’t be too noticeable this far out. Between the armor and the mask, descriptions of me should be pretty general. I got cocky.”
She shook her head. “No way of knowing. Don’t forget that I have enemies as well. This is Verdyn’s territory, or at least nearby. Chances are good using my tab tipped someone off and they were moving to grab me while I was vulnerable.”
I chuckled lightly at that. “Look at us, making friends and influencing people, huh? I’ll get us back into the palace and then out of the city. Did you check out the route report yet?”
“I did,” she nodded. “Unfortunately the route I had planned to take back has been claimed by a particularly nasty group of Road bandits. We’ll need to divert. There’s an alternate safe route through the Dreamdark Forest fragment. Well…mostly safe. If we avoid going too deep. Most of the worst things in that fragment live deep in the woods. The rest of the predators there have been eaten by the big ones, and those tend to nap most of the year.”
She hesitated. I noticed and sighed. “Alright, what is it?”
“If they were after me, they’ll know where we’re going,” she pointed out. “Which means they’ll know the approximate route we’re going to use.”
“You think if they can’t ambush us here they’ll set up another in this forest fragment?” I asked slowly. “What if we don’t go through there, then? You said that’s the safest route. Are there any LESS safe ones that are still manageable?”
She paused, her eyes going wide. “I mean…Bonesorrow Canyon maybe? It’s incredibly dangerous for most people. It’s been a forbidden zone on the local Roads for years. But the undead there have weak Perception. If we moved slow, your stealth field might be able to hide us.”
“Bonesorrow Canyon?” I asked hesitantly. “What kind of place is that?”
“It’s a fragment that belonged to an ancient undead bug deity called the Desolation Digger,” she said with a grimace. “The god was a swarm type entity, and when its bugs latched on they would burrow into the heads of their victims and parasitize them into undead thralls. After it was destroyed, the thralls lost all connection to anything around them and the Canyon turned into a shambling wasteland. Almost no one goes there.”
I grimaced at the disgusting imagery, but if that was where we needed to go, that was where I’d head. “Alright,” I said with a sigh. “I take it there’s a door that leads to somewhere near this place?” At her confirmation, I slipped back out to pilot my simulacrum directly and leave them to prepare for this trip. To an evil undead bug world. Why couldn’t I ever be forced into going to a waterpark or on a cruise? Having a destiny sucked sometimes.
Comments
Jacob Oswalt
Does he have a destiny tho? I thought it was a self appointed job that he takes very seriously, like Spiderman. I was born with great advantages/power= responsibility when you have a conscious type of thing.
Redeyes Eclipse
Happy new years
Kemizle
Having a destiny sucked sometimes.😂😂😂
