The Star 29

The shock induced numb impact with the water wasn't followed by the inevitable pain Orison had expected. Instead, his surroundings faded as his consciousness climbed out of the one and only dream he'd ever had while in deep trance. He was sitting in meditative position near a sleeping woman's stone resting place.

At first he was confused but then he'd collected enough fragments of surviving obelisk memories and logical deduction to realize exactly where he was. At the very deepest layer of Satyra's bower, sealed under the menhir within the temple on Satyrus, he sat before a woman who was powerful enough to reduce him to nothingness by simply waking up.

A soothing and almost motherly voice, projected into his mind. "Fear not. It is true that upon awakening I shall be that great existence. But for now, I still slumber and my power is shared among many echoes.

"Though you remember not, we made bargain. Your dreaming within the dark needle touched upon mine own dream and we found mutual boon. The aid we did thus promise has been delivered, one to the other.

"The dream we have shared in this bower, its fortunes and costs are only real to you and that loathsome devil purse, no other. I sorrow for your loss of direction and purpose within my world and this reality but twas needful. I do not lack faith in your honor, sir, but in the security of your thoughts."

Mind racing to keep up with the whiplash of twisting events, Orison said, "And my son, is he safe?"

The soothing voice said, "In the only way I could, I have secured him and his future. That was the truth in reality of your missing potency's destination. What you have sacrificed and what I have seized from that... thing have sufficed, if only just so, in quickening me.

"Do not distress. You and I share no true kinship of blood or spirit. And though it is under strange circumstance, motherhood to a child of mine own spirit and body is something that otherwise may have been denied me. At the loftiness of my height in power upon awaking, there would be few who are both strong AND potent enough to fulfill such a task.

"Thus reborn, he will suffer no need to sever mortal fate. And he is innocent enough in mine eyes, that I may nurture him absent of aversion or any loss of joy in it. For my majority of willingness to do this for myself near as much as for you, I ask a token favor in turn."

Fighting to overcome shock, he said, "As long as it's within my ability and moral limits- Wait, was I not successful in replacing silk purse with Regen as Jammer's mom?"

Satyra's mental projection was quiet for a time before she said, "No, the devil artifact merely allowed it. But understand, she was never the mother. The origin of this soul is a strangeness.

"Leave your sating of curiosity at this, for it is the limit of what I know. The true beginning of this soul lies with a man named Theo and a woman named Harley. I have released his tortured soul free of its burden of memory along with all the other victims but... Harley was merely a shadow of reincarnation. Yours, possessed and used by another, abandoned at death.

"The side I fill is Theo's, by that freed shade's compassion and gratitude. You have ever filled your role for yourself at every turn, save the soul's half formed conception. It was a strange fate which began as a mere imagining within the devil artifact's illusions."

Orison sighed, not knowing how to feel. "My spiritual mother became the controlling consciousness of a collective known as The Kaleidoscope for a time. She abused the predictive power that gave her to help me more times than I can probably count. Sounds like she saved my son from being erased in all the existence invalidating my Greater Reality does."

Satyra gave the poor young mage some time to rest his overtaxed emotions.

Eventually, Orison recomposed himself and said, "Alright. What can I do for you?"

***

The young mage shook with rage inside the Void Cradle. Due to its unique nature, one could be both inside it and outside at the same point in time. The very moment that Druid had mentioned it, Orison reached with entanglement power to connect with it. A weak beacon to signal his existence was all it took for it to draw him there but he also left himself right where he was so that he could follow events.

From obelisk memories, Orison had a mixed but generally positive impression of Satyra, Hiidan and his once great grandfather. They were warm to family, generous to friends and fair to allies. For whatever reason, Orison didn't qualify to be any of those things. At least, not to Satyra.

In the hypothetical version of events that would never be, she had scooped everything of value out of him, lied and sent him to die removing the cursed items holding Hiidan prisoner. The last part hadn't even been necessary. Mr. Tidran would have eventually done it himself, just a few years down the road.

"Well, I have the cradle to help me do the things you showed me were possible in your dream world, Satyra. I won't leave you with no help, though. Being good to family and friends sometimes means being cruel to someone else. I get that... But, I'm going to turn your lies into truth. That will be both my revenge and your price for trying to take a stranger, who was more than willing to help you, for a ride."

Burning cradle resources to sift through 'what if's, he discovered that there were things she didn't lie about. Mainly because she couldn't and possibly because of back-up plans in case Orison got wise, survived or got in Hiidan's good graces. At least, that was Orison's reasoning. It seemed that no matter how things went, as long as he didn't betray or harm them, she did honor motherhood. She also had truly destroyed the black silk purse through a parasitic connection it had with him.

His first act was to use superior spatial power to switch the pregnant echo of Satyra with the primary one after reclaiming the potency that hadn't been needed to make Jammers happen. It wasn't that much. It seemed her robbing wasn't necessarily actually robbing.

Skimming a little more potential future review, he noted that she acted as if it was completely expected to be pregnant and there had been no deception. It was screwed up but he suddenly recognized what had happened. She was testing him. If he was a mook, she was going to treat him like one. But, if he was cunning and resourceful, she had arranged for dominoes to fall into a more honest pattern. He was still angry but not nearly as much.

Moving on, after determining how much a group of cradle jumping would cost in resources, he used the rest available. There wasn't much useful in laws that wouldn't possibly derail his natural spiral growth. So, he poured the lion's share into fixing his space. Unsurprisingly, the cradle knew what to do more than dream Thoth, who only knew what Satyra knew. Mistakes and assumptions were smoothed over and streamlined while shoring up an exploitation she had left behind.

Finally, he used the remainder on the origin marrow catalyst. The cradle couldn't push it deeper than soul core surface. It couldn't turn the motes of catalyst into a seed directly, either. But, it could stimulate conversion of soul to origin marrow in a particular direction.

Naturally, Orison chose to drive the conversion inward, sending a spider silk vein of it shooting as deeply as he could. It would be slower than an exposed seed, at first. But, conversion would be hidden from spirit sight and protected from dilution. His core would be riddled with veins and nodes before it would be overtly visible to invasive spirit sight.

"Now, with that done, I know how to best help Hiidan. But the question becomes, should I? I think I will but I sure as to hell ain't approaching with open handed friendliness like I had intended to.

"With the origin of this reality disconnected from its creation to force a middle ground merge far away from its dying core, the echoes are fading away from both ends. Mr. Tidren is going to free his dad from the other end and just on this side of the middle dividing line, the mirror barrier. That means Hiidan would lose a lot of his oldest and closest echoes to creation's origin. So, I need to use the cradle to get as close to origin as I can but leave myself enough time to free that echo of Hiidan and skedaddle before that reality echo collapses."

Playing it safe, Orison chose second to first. Hiidan might have been able to survive bursts of fracturing reality shrapnel after he recovered a little but the young mage was far from that durable. He still remembered 'air splinters' from the Plague Barrens. There was no way he was volunteering to expose himself to spreading shotgun blasts of them. There were likely other dangers he knew nothing about, as well.

Stepping into a the dim and dusty interior of the defunct Hollow Host's ancient and decrepit citadel, the young mage quickly made his way to where Hiidan was. The man had been pinned to a wall with powerful cursed artifacts by traitors several thousand years prior. The once and future patriarch had gone mad and reclaimed sanity multiple times during that span. Fortunately, he was on an uptrend with renewed hope.

"You got here a lot earlier than I... Who are you? A friend, I hope," Hiidan's raspy mental voice said.

Orison chuckled. "You know someone's really bad off when even their mental voice makes your throat hurt in sympathy... Before I became endless I would have been your great-great grandchild through a mortal line. Once Al's born with another soul, I guess that claim to fame's over."

Hiidan said, "So, family that won't be family, I'd offer a drink or something but I'm kind of in the middle... of the wall."

The young mage smiled and said, "Yeah, I can see that... Tell you what. I'll help you get unstuck but I need to know something for your safety and I need an oath for mine. A standard 'don't screw me over and play nice' one's good enough. I was going to play it a little more loose and breezy but someone gave me an 'Are you a simp?' test already. That left my blood running a little cold."

Hiidan agreed and offered a fairly basic equivalent exchange kind of oath. He tried to crack a joke but he got too mentally tired to keep conversation rolling, asking what Orison wanted to know.

"I have limited layer piercing transportation. It's the method I'm going to use to free you. Where's the best place to drop you off?" the young mage.

Hiidan said, "Just here is fine if I have a few hours before this reality echo collapses."

"More than three, less than five," the young mage offered.

Hiidan said, "That's good enough. We'll have an hour before a dimensional tidal wave of crazy bad rams this echo into something you can't survive."

Orison called out to the cradle for a ten foot, organic only, group teleport teleport. The shock of release and several unplugged holes in him technically killed Hiidan. The young mage jump started him with a dump of the remaining healing mud and life crystal shards in his snow globe.

Hiidan mentally squeaked, "Throw Still Body on me. No, not the spell, the cursed weapon! Oh, it was healing. That's not that useful. Your magic doesn't pack enough punch."

Orison said, "I know that but I need to stop the mutations to your body long enough... I see. A nearly dead tier seven is still tier seven... Here, one telekinesis delivered deadly cursed item."

The young mage could see that the man was taking in the curse essence faster than he could convert for use. But, the point wasn't recovery and survival. Hiidan would be feeding this echo of himself to the next directly, as he force ripped the curse items out.

He stopped gawking long enough to pick up the TSSRR suit bead when Hiidan said, "Drop that trash. If you'll take me to the next echo, I'll get you something better."

Orison 'dropped' it into his space. Then, he sighed as he burned the cushion phase shift from the current layer to the next down. He barely caught a breath before Hiidan launched into his copy like he was trying to kill it personally. The merge between the two and the recovery afterwards was brutal and efficient.

The young mage couldn't believe it but he had to step in and heal the guy to keep him from dying. Hiidan was being so brutally time efficient, he was calculating Orison's help into the equation.

"For a tier four, your heals aren't completely worthless. Good job on that," Hiidan said.

The young mage chuckled. "Coming from a tier sever, soon to be eight, powerhouse, I'll take that as a compliment. I might look like four banger economy but there's a v6 engine under the hood."

"No offense but your soul is hardly tier six equivalent," Hiidan said.

He looked at the old monster blandly and said, "It was a metaphor... Apparently a poor one. Blame the writers. Heads up, the next episode's a cringy musical."

Hiidan grimaced. "Nothing kills the momentum of a series more than one of those."

Seeing how genuinely affected the statement was, Orison laughed a bit nervously. In theory, there wasn't anything wrong with a tier seven ancient monster taking his TV shows seriously. But, it was a sign of a significantly damaged spiritual consciousness in practice. He could practically see the spirit essence oozing out of the cracks.

"I'm about to go knock over a couple of abandoned liquor stores, figuratively. You got about a decade worth of life essence I can borrow?" Hiidan suddenly asked.

Anxiety climbing a few notches, Orison said, "By my measurements of my life essence usage, not yours, I can spare thirty before I have to worry about entering a perpetual dying state. If you promise me you'll only take that much, I won't grudge the loan."

Hiidan said, "Damn, I guess a couple of months worth will have to do. Oh well. An avalanche starts with a snowball."

Unceremoniously, Hiidan snatched the young mage up and painfully ripped a chunk of his life away.

While he desperately ran healing to patch up the damage, the old monster told him, "Hang tight. I'll be back in a day, no more than two. I'll pay you back plus some generous interest, you loan shark, you."

Orison wasn't going anywhere. It took all of one day to shore up the leaking wounds of his life channels. The old monster had 'leniently' only taken about twenty-seven but the young mage had bled out nearly five before he was stable. For the next few hours after that, he reabsorbed the life essence he had trapped in the magic circle around him while in light trance.

He was snapped from his meditative recuperation by a modestly recovered and confident man's voice, "Well, aren't we the frugal one... Guess I was a bit rough on you. I didn't notice before but you're in pretty rough shape yourself."

Orison sighed. "Walked the long, dark road to get here. But what's a guy to do when he knows his son needs him?"

Hiidan's frivolous and mostly uncaring eyes softened towards him a notch after hearing that. "Did you get it done?"

"Helping my son? Yeah. Got him one hell of an upgrade for reincarnation. The mom's a bit too spicy in the cunning department but she's worth it. Since he's safe and secure for the moment, I gotta worry about me now. Don't want him showing me up in a few years. That's just embarrassing," the young mage said with a weak smile.

Hiidan chuckled. "Good fathers are a rare breed. I don't count myself among them but I'm going to try a little harder here on out... Here's a storage ring. It's not filled with stellar stuff but I feel like it balances us out with some to spare... Hehe. I'd introduce you to MY daughter when she wakes but... her servants are tier six. I'd hate to embarrass you."

Orison gave him a saintly smile. "Yeah, meeting your daughter right now would be pretty awkward."

Going 2D cutout, Hiidan added before disappearing, "Don't take longer than a couple of hours or you might get diced up."

He didn't bother sticking around. After using the cradle to send a boosted message to 'square one' echo Druid and allotting the man a group phase shift to the cradle, he headed off to a specific echo for the first of a few long term projects while he waited for Jammers to be born. It would take awhile.