Wish upon the Stars chapter 489

The next section was something a bit confusing for me. Hate. Stepping  onto it, I felt a bit thrown by the sensation. I wasn't a hateful  person. I disliked people, was annoyed by people, even got violently  angry at people, but hate...I'd only hated one or two people. Pietro,  the brat from the Black Sorrow Cult. Aiden, for what he'd done to Cass  and the other kids. Even then I hadn't dwelled on it.

But  as I took the next step, the sensation grew. I hated. Hated so many  things. I hated the feel of air on my skin, hated the weight of my  armor, hated the creak of the leather as I took a step. Hate hate hate.  It was deeply unsettling. I couldn't imagine being this kind of person,  the kind of person who felt this disgusted at each and every experience  in their life, who looked at the world like this.

Most of  all, I hated the idea of continuing. I wanted to stop, wanted to go  back, wanted to give up and stop feeling like this. I paused, breathing  deeply as I tried to come to terms with the sick churning awfulness in  my gut. I'd assumed hate would come with anger, but this was so much  worse. This sort of infected rotting emptiness inside me, like nothing  would ever make me happy again.

I glanced across the  stairs, my eyes landing on Callie, though, and suddenly, the burden  lessened. My girl. There was no way to feel the way I felt looking at  her and that creeping nothingness at the same time. It was like someone  lit a candle in the abyss that had been consuming my gut, and the light  was driving away all that darkness. Not completely, I still felt it  around the edges, but it helped. Helped remind me who I was.

Despite  that, I forced myself to look away after I was stable. Love helped more  than I could say, but I needed to get through this. I needed to be able  to survive this kind of experience on my own. That was why we'd come up  onto the steps separately. To show we had what it took.

I  stepped again, and then again, resuming my climb. I was already ten  steps up, but it was getting harder. The disgust and loathing were back,  growing inside me, and as it grew worse I started to worry. It felt  like it was hollowing me out, consuming me. If I kept going there might  be nothing left of me.

That feeling got worse as I  stepped, but I ignored it. Pain, misery, this was all temporary. I could  take anything for a little while, I knew it would pass, the clouds  would part and the sun would come out again. The positive imagery sadly  faded after a few more steps. The shine came off the apple, but I  focused on the practical facts. I was going to make it. This feeling was  awful, but I'd get through it. It couldn't do anything to me I didn't  let it.

Emotions can be tough to deal with. Even if you  know what you're feeling isn't rational or logical, that doesn't make it  go away. Pain is pain, hurt is hurt. But people can adapt, they can  adjust. I stopped at step twenty five, ready to just about collapse. I  focused on the sensations hurting me. I felt the pain, the hate, the  disgust. Then I felt it again. And again. And again.

I  beat myself over the head with it, forced myself to live in that  terrible loathing. The more I experienced it, the less it hurt. It had  less power over me as I got used to it. Then I took another step, and  did the same thing again. The tricky part wasn't becoming accustomed to  it, it was not letting it change me as I did.

Making that  hate a part of me was awful, adapting felt like it was bringing me  closer and closer to the worst version of myself. Terrible thoughts  about everyone I loved, about people who didn't deserve it, started to  seep into my head. Questioning their intentions, why I needed them,  whether they were waiting to betray me. I felt like my heart was a raw  open wound weeping with infection.

Still I walked on.  Every step made life worse. The world was disgusting. I felt like I was  moving through sandpaper and razor wire. I was halfway up now, and the  thought that it would keep getting worse made me want to die, but I kept  going. My emotions were a mess, every positive thing I had ever  experienced seemed sinister and awful.

So I focused on  things that weren't positive. Things that were just true. My strength,  my effort, the pain I'd been through. I needed a reason to keep going,  and I forced myself to make power that reason. Strength for the sake of  strength felt hollow most of the time, but right now hollow was what I  needed. It was safe, and selfish, and I couldn't hate it. I needed so  badly not to hate something.

That helped, the focus on  pragmatic power growth, for the moment. But it made me reevaluate myself  in so many ways, these steps stripped you bare one emotion at a time,  they showed you things about yourself you'd never see normally. I could  feel myself becoming more real too, more parts of me becoming solid and  factual.

I looked around in shock as I got to the seventy  fifth step, I didn't see anyone but Callie, who wasn't paying attention  to me, nearby. There were others but they were further down. Unlike the  greed steps, they weren't tearing into each other like I'd expected,  they were just trying to move forward, and they were going a lot slower  than before. The hate steps were harder for most people I think, and it  was definitely showing. I turned back, focusing on moving forward again.

Focusing  on the top of the steps, I looked for Billy. He'd already passed the  section and started the next. Looking at him actually kind of helped,  because all the hate focused on him and that drove me forward somewhat.  Fuck that guy. But it didn't last, I had to bring my mind back to the  neutral place I'd found in my path to power to continue, letting the  hate wash off me like water off a ducks back.

Finally,  after what seemed like forever, I stepped onto the second platform,  looking back to make sure I was alone before sitting down to pull in  soul energy. I was still damaged from the fight, and the destabilizing  influence of the steps didn't help so I had some mending to do before I  started improving my soul past where it was.

I used that  as an opportunity to smooth over the jagged edges of the emotional  damage.  The hate was gone, but the influence it had on me persisted.  Callie was behind me, and made it up to the platform to stand guard over  me, but I ignored her as I focused on myself. Let go of the disgust,  the fear, the despair that the hatred had ground into me, let myself  feel happiness again, feel joy.

Hate was so much more  destructive than greed, at least to me. I slowly sifted through my  memories, rediscovering the good, finding my loved ones, the happy times  in my life, reminding myself of who and what I was. The soul crushing  stair was aptly named. These emotions it forced on us were poison, a  creeping destructive venom of our own making that would twist and warp  us if we let it.

The feeling of becoming real as it  happened just pushed it deeper, made it matter more. These platforms  were necessary to find yourself after and remember what you're supposed  to be like. Oddly, I felt more like me when I was done than I ever had. I  had a new perspective on my life, on my heart and the way I saw things.  I felt like I'd touched even more deeply on my heart shackle, though I  still didn't know what it was in a way I could articulate.

Stripping  yourself down and rebuilding yourself let you remove the poisons that  were already there. The few bits of hate that had been in me before had  been sanded down, made smooth and simple by the experience. I could  think about Aiden, and about Pietro, without getting angry or agitated.  They were truly behind me.

Once that was past, I started  pulling in the energy from the platform, siphoning it into me. It  spilled into my soul, infusing and filling me. Maybe because I was  partially real at this point, it felt different. More profound. It  started at the bottom of my feet and slowly rose, washing through my  muscles and bones, reinforcing the me inside my skin without affecting  my body at all.

This was my first  time experiencing the soul refinement energy of the Ruined Soul Temple  with my physical form, or at least part of it. After probably twenty  minutes though, my body reached saturation. Just like with Callie on the  first platform the energy had filled my body to the brim. I could still  take more in but most of it would just overflow, there would barely be  an effect.

Feeling  the energy, I could understand how the stairs worked. The damage I'd  been undergoing from the emotions of the soul crushing steps was a type  of sublimation, and the process would use up the energy, transforming it  into refinement. It was much more effective than just bashing my soul  up and using the energy to patch the damage.

I  opened my eyes, glancing at Callie, who was standing guard nearby.  "Hey." I said softly. She jumped, whirling around from where she'd been  eyeing a few people who had just arrived. "You want to take a turn? I  imagine you've been pulling a little, but you need to fill up before the  next section if you want the full effect of the steps."

She  waved me off. "Nah, it's fine. I don't think we're expected to fill up  completely. I still have leftover energy from the first platform. I can  fill up on the next one again and be fine." She grimaced. "What is the  next one anyway? That was...bad. It wasn't as insidious for me as the  first section, but it made me feel sick."

Climbing  to my feet, I held out a hand and pulled Callie tight against me. "I  know. I felt it too. It was a really unpleasant sensation. Next section  is Delusion, and I have absolutely no clue what that even entails.  Getting lost in heartbreaking daydreams? Who knows. I'm kind of worried  about that one too."

"It'll  be ok." She said with a soft smile. "We'll be fine. This is how we get  stronger. Before you know it we'll have broken out second shackle and be  on our way to an Azure soul body. I'm thinking of trying to train my  Shadow Manipulation to Master level. I have to keep it ahead of my  ability to rank up now that I've synergized anyway, and having a Master  rank Skill would be pretty neat."

I  grinned. "It would, or you could try to go the Path route like I did,  and turn your Path into a Skill." I wasn't sure how hard it would be,  but it would give her a good leg up on reaching D-rank.

"We'll  see." She giggled. "The point is, we'll be fine and we're looking out  for each other. Now, let's split up again and walk up another flight of  stairs terrified and alone." I could tell from her flippant tone that  she was trying to be lighthearted, but I could feel her worry through  the bond. Still, I nodded to her gently, gave her hand a squeeze, then  dropped it. We still had five more flights to go. Time to get moving.