Wish upon the Stars chapter 329

The crystal palace was...palatial. The whole place looked like a  massive crystalline castle. Some of the ice was frosted, and some was  clear as glass, and the combination created an effect like windows and  walls in what was essentially one big ass piece of carved unmelting ice.  It wasn't just ice either, looking close I could see what looked like  millions of tiny runes around the edges. This thing was enchanted, and  judging by the scale, it must be absurdly high level material.

"Does  she have a stockpile of high ranked materials or something?" I said  curiously. "Because this is E-ranked ice. You said she created this  right? She didn't make ALL of it did she?" I wasn't surprised that she'd  made something her own rank, but this place was absolutely massive.  Being able to create an ice castle on this scale and then enchant  it...Frostbite must have a ludicrously high Creation stat, even for an  E-ranker.

Callie just shrugged. "Hard to say. Obviously  'she built the giant ice castle herself with her bare hands' is a much  better story. You have to question everything you hear about Ascendants,  especially high rankers. They're masters of media manipulation. Nine  out of ten things you hear about them could be bullshit. Of course, that  tenth thing is the one that'll kill you if you assume it isn't true, so  you can't dismiss anything outright."

I raised an eyebrow  at her dryly. "Wow. That's so helpful. Don't believe anything you hear.  But don't not believe it either. Because it could be true. Or false.  Any other wisdom to drop on me."

She smiled at me sweetly.  "Yeah, don't make fun of your girlfriend if you don't want to sleep on  the couch for the next two weeks." She winked to let me know she was  teasing and then the smile melted off her face. "But seriously,  just...be careful. All the E-rankers we've met have been either allies  or constrained by circumstances. Frostbite is too when it comes to  dealing with you, but if she decides to take out Midknights daughter..."

"I'd  throw myself in the way and let my mask swallow her whole." I said  icily. "Not to mention that small scale faction war or not, Alexander  would fucking murder her if she hurt you. Frostbite is an E-ranker at  the top of one of the biggest organizations on this planet. I refuse to  believe she'd stupid and reckless enough not to know the consequences of  killing either of us. Plus if she was going to off us it would be  stupid to invite us here to do it. Make more sense to assassinate us  somewhere unrelated to her. Blame it on one of the visiting factions."

Callie's  jaw dropped as she looked at me and I shrugged. "I've been putting lots  of thought into possible assassination strategies. I don't want to get  backstabbed by some cultist because I wasn't paying attention, and you  have too much on your mind for it to be fair to expect you to do it  alone. Politics might be beyond me, but figuring out ways someone could  kill us I can totally do."

She smiled and stood up on her  toes to kiss my mask, then pulled back slightly with a grimace and  kissed the side of my jaw. I snickered at the reaction. "Yeah, I would  prefer you avoid kissing the mask too. After I saw it eat someone I  haven't been able to look at it the same way." Granted, I could still  WEAR it, mostly because the security was more important than the creep  factor, but things had definitely changed in the way I viewed the thing.

Chuckling  lightly, Callie looped her arm in mine and we headed to the massive  double doors of the palace. She reached up and rapped three times on the  opaque ice. The boom that shook the area was much deeper and more  resonant than expected, like she'd been knocking on a sheet of metal.  After a minute or two the door slid open to reveal a small pale woman  with bright blue hair and icy eyes. Her blue lips quirked up in a smile  as she saw us.

"Can I help you?" The F-ranker said in a  melodic voice. Her frozen blue eyes seemed to crack and shift around the  irises, like there was a snowstorm or a pair of crashing glaciers being  projected through a pair of wheel shaped viewing screens. She was so  pale it literally almost hurt to look at her and it took me a second to  notice that her ears, behind which she'd swept her long hair, were  pointed like Celine's. Some kind of ice elf maybe?

Callie  smiled, holding out a hand. "Yes, I'm Nightstrike, this is Solomon.  We're her to see Frostbite. She should be expecting us?"

Her  lips curved up in a paradoxically warm smile. "Of course." She said in a  voice like the wind through a forest of icicles. "My name is Rime. I'm  Frostbite's personal valet." She stepped back, swinging open the door  with a gentle tap of her fingers. As she did, we were able to see that  she was much taller than she'd looked before, having been leaning out  the door. I'd have put her at six feet, though the silver heels under  her shining silver dress might have been throwing me off.

Her  blue hair was held back by an icy crown and was lost in a bloom of  white fur draped over her shoulders that spilled down her back to very  nearly sweep the floor. Some kind of thick pelted animal, and not a  small one. She gestured us past her and we both nodded out thanks as we  entered.

"This is a lovely building." Callie said  politely. Clearly not sure what to say to the woman when we'd spent so  much time focusing on how to address Frostbite.

"Yes." Said Rime happily. "It is." We...had no response to that, and we both decided it might be better to just shut up.

We  mounted a set of spiral stairs along the perimeter of the building and  began to ascend. The external steps led us along the outside edge of an  absolutely massive space inside the castle. Along the edge of the space  were balconies that acted as floors, leading out into the external parts  of the castle away from the towering hall. Crystalline walkways  threaded between the balconies and across the vast open expanse,  reminding me of nothing so much as that crystal spider web back in the  cave in Doomtown.

The sun reflected through the icy canopy  above us was diffuse in most places because of the opaque ice, but  there were a few clear spots like skylights that shone beams of  startling light down into the atrium, each beam hitting the walkways and  scattering into prismatic rainbow cascades that crisscrossed the open  space.

"This..." Said Callie breathlessly. "This is  amazing. Now I see why they call it the crystal palace. You live here?  It must be wonderful getting to see this every day."

Rime  shrugged. "You get used to it. It's still pretty, but it starts to lose  some of its impact after the five thousandth viewing. Though I admit, I  imagine it loses its appeal much slower than an office building, so I  suppose I'm still lucky in that regard."

She stopped  talking again, but we weren't in the mood to gape silently now that we  had the ball rolling. "So do you know Cold Snap?" I asked politely.

That  drew a snort from the F-ranker. "I changed his diapers as a baby, so  yes. That explains how you got this meeting. Frostbite isn't usually so  accessible to the younger generation." She shot a sideways glance at  Callie. "You might have managed it just from the sheer amusement of your  little display at the opening ceremonies. Though admittedly it probably  wouldn't have been so quick."

So she knew who we were.  She could have saved us the intro at the beginning, but then again, I  suppose that was just basic politeness. Finally after minutes of  walking, we approached the top of the massive atrium. As we climbed, the  balconies began to take up more of the space as the castle narrowed,  the catwalks and empty rainbow filled nothingness condensing until  finally we stepped off the stairs onto a large floor with only a  relatively large hole in the center you could look down from.

Rime  led us across the floor, which alternated opaque and crystalline  squares in a DEEPLY unsettling and yet incredibly majestic way, then  stopped in front of a huge pair of double doors carved from what I was  pretty sure was black permafrost. I looked around. "Is there  like...nobody else here? Because this place is a total ghost town from  what I've seen. Seems weird to have a castle this big with no people."

The  blue haired woman rolled her eyes. "Of course there is. They're in  other parts of the palace, on the floors and in their offices. The steps  and catwalks are transport, people don't spend time lingering on there.  The prismatics can be disorienting with long term exposure, even for  Ascendants." She raised a hand and rapped three times on the black door.  "Wait here until the doors open then go inside. She'll arrange for  someone to pick you up on the way out..." She paused. "Or throw you out  the window. Probably not though. She hasn't done that in months."

With  that last very unsettling statement she turned and strolled away,  seemingly unbothered by the idea that we may be thrown from the top of a  castle...or possible just fucking with us. I took hold of Callie's hand  just in case, readying Leaf on the Wind. Better safe than sorry I  always said.

Callie smiled at me wryly, and I felt through  the bond that she was just as sure that had been a joke, and just as  disturbed by the possibility that it wasn't. We stood there like that,  waiting, for a few minutes, before the doors creaked slowly open,  allowing us inside.

We stepped in, and my break was taken  away by the sheer majesty of the room we entered. The scale wasn't as  grand as the main hall or its prismatic walkways, but the DETAIL of the  icy carving here was staggering. It was a large room with a vaulted  ceiling, and every single inch of it was absolutely perfectly carved.

Furniture  was shaded various colors of blue and purple and black that somehow  seemed like a full spectrum with shading, a fireplace sat to one side of  the room, a lifelike crystalline carving of flames so realistic it  looked like they were leaping affixed to the center as light danced  through the facets, causing it to glow with a rainbow radiance, and in  the back behind a large black desk of shiny ice, sat Frostbite.

With  all the grandiose pageantry I'd expected her to be flashy and dramatic,  but she just looked...normal. A pretty girl who seemed only a bit older  than us with a cornsilk blonde ponytail and bright blue eyes, wearing a  t-shirt and jeans. Her one nod to her Ascendant identity was a long  snow white trench coat she wore draped over her shoulders, her arms not  even in the sleeves. To cap off the image, as she watched us calmly she  popped a huge pink bubble noisily, slurping the gum back up to continue  chewing it.

She looked interested, if not terribly  enthused by our presence, and I saw her flip a folder closed on the desk  as she stared at us. She seemed to mull over what to say to us for a  minute before she finally opened her mouth and said something. So." Said  the E-rank executive of one of dominant faction of this entire planet.  "You guys want some ice cream or something? It's home made."