Chapter 9-269: Wishes and Fishes (1/2)

“Your Wish is granted!” Bey 'Azzar exclaimed immediately, and a whole lot of subtle power began to flow through the Seal on my back.

“I Wish that the planetar being currently Sealed by me be subjected to a Restore Mind!”

He probably didn’t know what that was, but I did, and I was the one making the Wish. “Your Wish is granted!” he proclaimed boldly again.

“I Wish that the planetar being currently Sealed by me be subjected to a Greater Purification!”

“Your Wish is granted!” he finished up with loud approval.

Having a planetar owe him a favor, or three, could only be really, really good for him in the future, after all!

A return to original condition and invigoration of the body and soul. An easing and strengthening of the mind to repair the immense trauma of his time of torture. A cleansing to rid the celestial of any lingering Taint or corruption from this time, place, and the energies that had ravaged him.

I didn’t know if it would truly be enough, but the waves of relief I could feel coming from the Seal certainly couldn’t be a bad sign.

“One more gathering of helpful volunteers eager to save everyone, and then off to Detroit. You can dump the souls then, and I’ll be able to put the planetar in the hands of those who can take care of him.” As the Ward interfered somewhat with the outside world, they didn’t know what had happened here, and wouldn’t until I went outside and memory-dumped for everyone.

Eh. Probably didn’t need to see the two of us looking like this, either.

“That should fill up most of the spikes,” Master Fred agreed, looking over the pattern.

“I can always make more!” I volunteered helpfully.

“Noted!” she confirmed in ninefold stereo, and we were off to find some more charitable souls ready to save the citizens of Hong Kong.

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Dusk was coming. We’d lost a day of making magic items, but the Naming Karma had been fine, so it was all good.

There were certain areas burning on the island of Hong Kong. There were certain people who had been beaten to a pulp, trucked up to a certain Hellstar formation, and then thrown onto the rings of empty spikes thoughtfully left around the edges of it. The hellfire didn’t mind at all.

Perhaps the Cultivators could have done something to act on it, but the new Dome of blackness hiding hellfire inside it spooked even them. A couple junior ones did try to get through it, and then the Curses that it held went off on them, and they began to burn and scream as their Sins, starting with consuming the soul of their progenitors, burned inside them, and they fell flaming into the sea to be reduced to messy guck and ash.

There was no Cultivator invasion. The Buddhists tried purifying the thing, confident that their Light could do the job... and unfortunately, forced enslavement of the minds of mortals was a fundamental Sin, and the hellfire leapt back along the Light and devoured the shining sources of the ‘cleansing illumination’ very happily, indeed. Burning black, the monastic Enlightened also fell burning and screaming into the sea...

Yes, it was a very effective Ward, indeed. They’d be very safe for some time, without a doubt.

Nobody who wasn’t a really Good person was going to get through that Dome, either, so the fishermen were going to have to be pretty careful.

I hooked back into the Markspace as we drove outside the Dome, and a bunch of interested people linked back up and wondered what had gone on.

I told them to get a biiiig tub of holy water ready, heated warmly in sacred fires, the purest incense they could find, and asked the Angelos if he recognized a certain face.

-Commander Haru’Ara!- he /blurted out instantly, his joy radiating through the Markspace... and then instantly falling to horror when I relayed to him what had been done to his superior.

“Break off your horns as you step out from the Pacts, and you should be able to return to your normal self.”

Master Fred reached up to the horns instantly, and despite them being reinforced to be strong enough to satisfy her vastly boosted strength, they snapped off with a flare of Wrath as if they were as brittle as china.

With a woosh of dissolving hellfire, the raven’s wings vanished into nothing, leaving a golden-haired Amazon there in front of me.

“The lack of pain is a relief, despite itself,” she admitted quietly in her multi-layered voice. “My Hellpact does not want me to backtrack.”

I just reached forwards and hugged her once. “Yes. And it is your choice, not its. I imagine all your new guests don’t want to experience what hellfire does to a person, either.”

Her eyes glittered. The Ruedian Amazons had gotten off pretty easily, all things considered. They were just dead, they weren’t burning in hellfire for however long they could last before dying... then to burn again if they ever got to Hell.

There was no doubt they knew they were going Down to burn, and if Master Fred was standing between their Pacts, they were just normal women, who likely didn’t even qualify to be Threes or Fours, and didn’t have the Amazon auto-conditioning of a warrior’s mindset.

They were just normal women, now forced to fully face the horror of what they had done.