Wish upon the Stars chapter 552

The Undertrek was a whole different world from the surface. I'd  expected it to be dark and gloomy, but the biggest difference for me was  the silence. Even with my Focus to block most of it out, the surface  was teeming with life and sound. Wind, small animals, distant people.  The million little sounds of life that had become like a background  symphony to which we all lived.

In the Undertrek there was  none of that. No wind, no animals that I could hear, just complete and  utter stillness. Silence and dark that made the atmosphere almost  oppressive.

"Well." Said my sister sarcastically. "This is  nice. It's what I always imagined under my bed to look like when I woke  up from nightmares as a child."

Bethy sighed wistfully.  "I never looked under my bed as a kid. My daddy used to rent the spaces  under all our beds to some of his monster friends. It always felt like  an invasion of privacy." At our collective horrified looks she giggled  and held her hands as if to ward off misunderstandings. "Oh don't worry.  They paid rent."

"This silence doesn't seem natural." I  said, shaking off the Bethy shock more quickly after multiple rounds of  exposure. "There should be like...worms and shit down here right?  Insects and burrowing creatures. We didn't fall into the center of the  planet, that was like two hundred feet. It wasn't nearly far enough for  us to be in some kind of alternate exosystem or some shit."

Anna  shook her head. "You're thinking like a mortal. Consider the difference  in the nature of the renown for above and below ground, especially with  the added dangers from past civilizations. There's probably a bunch of  undead fortresses at the core of this planet or something. Whatever is  down there, it's best avoided. We aren't going too deep, and if bats in  the belfry over there lives up to her end of this we won't even have to  do that."

"Hey." Snapped Chelsea. "That's not necessary.  Bethy is down here helping us out of the goodness of her heart. You  don't have to be a bitch about everything."

Smirking, the  D-ranker raised an eyebrow at her. "Well if it isn't the princess coming  to the rescue. You sure you want to pick a fight with me little miss  prim and proper?" She gestured to the walls. "We just discussed the lack  of sound. No insects or animals means nothing down here to hear you  scream."

"If you think Zeke wouldn't notice us down here  you're cracked." I said calmly. "Not to mention if you attack her you'd  have to kill me, which even if you managed it means no more wishes. Not  that it's a problem either way. I'd appreciate it if you'd stop pushing  buttons to find out what we're about. If you have questions just fucking  ask them."

She grinned. "You got me. I was testing." She  smiled at Bethy. "Sorry about that little one. Just checking some things  about your fearless leader. I didn't mean to scare you."

Bethy  smiled sweetly at her, but she pulled back her lips, exposing razor  sharp fangs. Her eyes began to glow a lambent red, lighting the darkness  around us somehow far further than they should have and too dimly to  see more than dancing shadows. "It's ok. There's no need to be sorry if  you didn't mean it. I know you wouldn't really threaten my friend down  here alone in the dark with me. That would be...unwise."

Anna's  face went pale, and she stepped back slightly, swallowing hard. It was  easy to forget that manic wacky Bethy was a Vampire, and the favored  youngest child of a man who fought fucking GODS at the S-rank. I didn't  think Bethy was E-rank yet, but even if she wasn't I wasn't totally sure  she wasn't capable of hurting a D-ranker if she felt so inclined. The  pitch black form of Luggage towering over her from behind probably  didn't help.

There was also the fact that there was only  one family in the universe who had fangs and red eyes like that. Even if  Bethy didn't manage to hurt her, Morgan would not take well to someone  touching his baby girl. Finding out you're sharing a dark tunnel with a  teen apex predator would shake anyone's nerve. The most impressive part  was how fucking scary she still managed to look wearing a big yellow  hard hat paired with her puffy blacc gothix dress.

"Now  that we've finished discussing Anna's gruesome horrible death and the  variety of painful ways it might occur, I think we should get back to  the mission at hand." I said casually. "She doesn't seem likely to stir  up any more trouble." I chuckled. "I think we can just count that as a  preemptive pass for any further tests you had in store for all of us,  don't you Anna?"

She grinned at me. "You're a mean little  bastard when you want to be, aren't you Shane? Yeah, tests passed.  Didn't expect to get bullied by a bunch of brats, but hey, if you want  to watch the gods laugh, predict the future." I'd never heard that  saying before, but I kind of liked it.

"Anyway." Said  Bethy cheerfully. "Poptarts and Donuts are back. They did a quick grid  pattern sweep of everything within about five miles. They found lots of  rocks and dirt, and not much else. But they said some of the rocks had  carvings on them. We can check those out if you want?" I hadn't even  seen the night pride return. Fucking shadow cats. Squinting, I could  vaguely make them out.

Bethy pointed randomly down a  tunnel. We had some light from the well above us, and with our  Perception we could easily pick it up, but the direction she pointed was  pitch black. "They said the symbols are that way."

"Do  they know what the symbols are?' I asked hopefully. Maybe we wouldn't  have to go down there at all. Rude or not Anna wasn't wrong about  avoiding the depths being preferable.

Bethy just shot me a pitying look. "No Shane. They're cats. Cats can't read. Did you not know that?"

I  suddenly felt a lot more sympathetic of Abel and his endless torment  (even if I knew he played along). Sighing, I nodded and just followed  them down the tunnel forlornly, stoically ignoring the muffled sounds of  laughter from Anna and my sister. I was pretty sure even the fucking  cats were laughing.

As we moved further into the tunnels,  Chelsea held up a hand and conjured a fistful of white fire. The  purifying flames cast a bright and sanctified glow on the walls of the  tunnels, and somehow I felt the silence recede a bit. There were no  noticeable sounds once it appeared, but the quiet just seemed...less.

Our  footsteps seemed to echo further on the hard packed dirt and occasional  stone we walked over as we traveled down the tunnel. When we arrived at  the symbols, Chelsea held up her flame and I crouched down. I peered  solemnly at the carvings for a few minutes before nodding sagely and  saying. "I was afraid of this." They all looked at me questioningly.  I  pointed to the symbols."I can't understand a word of what this says."

My  sister smacked her forehead with her palm. "Move you idiot." She said  waspishly. I snickered as I backed up, having successfully gotten my  revenge for their unfair mockery earlier by making them sit around and  stare at nothing for five minutes.

She squinted through  the light at the tiny etched letters on the stone, reading over them for  about fifteen minutes. We all got a bit bored, and Bethy started  shifting from foot to foot like she was resisting the urge to start a  fire. "You ok?" I asked her quietly. Bethy was energetic and  enthusiastic, but she wasn't one to freak out over nothing.

"I  don't know." She said slowly. "I feel...like we're being watched. Anna  would have noticed though I'm sure. I'm probably just imagining things."

I  groaned. "On the list of things you should never say out loud, that's  probably third, right after 'I'm sure nothing bad will happen' and 'it's  probably just a power outage, I'll go check the fuse box in the  basement'. Now I'm SURE something is watching. Can you send the cats to  scout for it?"

"I did." She said with a frown. "They  didn't find anything. I can't SEE anything either. I just...feel it."  I'd never seen her this serious, it kind of worried me.

Anna  stepped up next to her, peering out into the dark. "I'm a stealth  focused D-ranker. If there's something there I should be able to pick it  up. You Perception is well below mine I'm sure. That said, no one with a  brain between their ears dismisses the instincts of a Vampire. I had no  idea Shane had one of you with him." She narrowed her eyes at the  darkness. "I feel something. The dark itself seems to be...alert. Not  alive exactly. How did I miss that?"

My eyes widened and I  swung them to Chelsea. "Hey, take a break from that and come here." Her  flame cleansed whatever was making the air stifled, maybe that was an  effect of offsetting whatever was watching.

She grumbled,  but stood up and walked over to stand next to me. "Why are we staring  into the dark?" She asked as she tried to peer through the gloom. As she  stretched out her hand to see better, the dark receded, but even  outside the light of the flame it seemed to thin slightly. "Oh." She  said in interest. "That's fascinating. Let me try something." She  reached into a pocket and pulled out a red metal symbol. Brandishing it  in front of her, she bellowed. "RUBRUM GLORIA!"

As she  shouted, she channeled flame into her hand, and it was sucked into the  symbol, which began to blaze with an incandescent light. The expanded  range of the light smashed into the dark around us, and I heard a high  pitched scream, overlapping disharmoized voices hurting my ears.

Once  it was done, I looked around, able to see the entire cavern we stood in  thanks to the still blazing light. "So..." I said conversationally.  "Did anyone ELSE notice the big black doors twenty feet from us?"

Anna  whistled. "Sneaky. Some kind of stacked Perception overload. A woven  charm of overlapping discordant voices pulled together into a spell.  Whoever did it stitched it through the darkness around us seamlessly. My  Focus pushed it away as useless noise. D-rank work. Probably the  Magister. That's not...ideal."

"How did Chelsea break it?" I said in confusion. "If it was D-rank...she hasn't even hit E."

Chelsea  shook her head. "I didn't. This is a D-ranked focus. Grandpa gave me  the crimson icon to focus my powers of purification. It's basically  useless ninety percent of the time, but curses, poisons, and dark based  spells and Skills don't hold up well."

Nodding, I made my  way forward, moving slow. "Alright folks, we just go in, check on the  threat if it's in there, and then leave. Nothing else." I glared at  Bethy. "No monster taming."

She pouted but agreed and we  stepped up, leveraging the heavy dark metal doors open as we stepped  inside. The cavern inside was also pretty dark, but the crimson icon was  still lit. Looking out over the larger cavern mostly sunk below the  huge ledge we were standing on, my eyes widened in fear.

I  thought back to the list, picking through the half remembered  possibilities until I found the obvious culprit. Blow us, stretching out  into the endless distance, lines upon lines of large, leonine forms  carved of dark grey rock. I stepped back, covering Chelsea's hand and  pushing my sister out of the room as quietly as I could. We'd found the  threat. Stone Lions. A LOT of them.